Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (3 page)

“I know,” she coos.

I undo silk buttons down her back, lift off her headdress and set it on the night table. ”Al, I'll always love you, no matter who you marry.” I kiss her smooth shoulders. Her hair falls on my cheek as I slip the gown down to her waist and undo the bra. “Oh, God, how I've missed you,” I murmur. “How I want you.” I open more buttons to ease the rustling gown over the curve of her hips.

Althea's crumpled headdress rustles there on the night table and contorts into a large white spider, grinning, panting.

“Suppose you back out now, April? I warn her, “if you want the creds for this dream.”

Your little indulgence would dissolve faster than a bad marriage. The spider's not me.

Althea rolls on top of me, spreads thighs around my hips, smiles down. But… I cry out as her face darkens. Her skin shrivels. “Al. No!” April!” Glowing threads of fire race up cracks that split Althea's face, circle her eyes like brands! I try to twist out from under her. Something silver shimmers, flows from within the spreading wounds of her charred body.

This is illusion, searcher,
I hear in my mind.
But Halcyon is not.

“April!” I scream. I choke on bile as Althea's blackened skin shreds and the amorphous silver being emerges as from a chrysalis. I'm trapped beneath its heavy weight! A piercing lick of flame erupts inside my head and I see a dark tunnel, its walls streaked with laces of silver. A smell of rotten fruit. The alien presence still radiates a sense of…of despair? Sadness!

“April, help me,” I cry. “Please. I'm losing control.”

“Shit!” she growls.

Shit indeed! It's just a dream,
I tell myself.
Just a –
My head burns. “Pull me out,” I beg.

“I can't!” she cries aloud. “Go to another vision. Quick! It's toasting my brain. Damn you, Jules, let go of it. You're holding me here!”

I drag in breaths and try to force away the image. The alien pushes back with a very undreamlike power.

Your destiny is on Halcyon!

The word echoes through my mind, touches that place where obsession waits. I find myself desperately searching my memory. Halcyon… I feel drawn to the word, the place.

“Shut off the goddamn IQ!” I yell to April. “Hurry up. Do it!”

“Something's…got my hands,” she says. “What the hell are you doing? Let go of the vision, you dumbshit cull!”

I clamp teeth against the alien mindlink, image an ocean absorbing the intruder, spreading his being like a silver oil slick.

He lifts a mighty wave against me.

“This is no dream!” I hear April draw in a breath as she pushes against the vision. “You're on your own, tag!” Her presence begins to fade. I feel a loneliness that has no edges as she slips away.

But fear strengthens me and I throw my mental defenses against the wall of water, image my enemy a black void. “Suck on this, slimeshit!”

The silver being doesn't recoil. His dripping body catches light in quivering motion. Droplets of water shake off him like haloes.

I moan as his telepathic probe burrows deeper. ”Who are you?” I mutter. “What do you want from me?”

Within that great sadness, an unraveling of time, rolling back to the beginnings of things organic. I take a shuddering breath as the being envelops me. A pulsing limb extends to my head. Light suddenly blazes behind my eyes. An explosion of energy within my brain. A sense of tel power I've never known.

Halcyon!
he whispers in a voice formed from sea waves.
Halcyon.
Where you will destroy the Terran ravager.
He fades out of the dream, leaving me breathing hard, with a bitter smell in my throat.

“What ravager?” I whisper. “How can I destroy him if I don't even know – “

Gone.

“What he is,” I finish.

The dream wanes, overlaps with April's dim room. “Like hell I'll go to Halcyon!” I throw after him…it.

I rubbed my forehead as I lay shivering on sweat-soaked sheets. The machinery wound down and violet lights faded in the visor. April was sprawled beside me, very still.

“April?” She didn't respond. I threw off my headgear and wondered if a dream could kill. “April!” I shook her.

She moaned and turned her head. Her hand slid off the terminal.

“Jesus, I thought you were dead!” I felt weak and nauseated as I lifted myself up. “Glad that was just a dream.” I smirked. “Right?”

She opened her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. “Goddamn you,” she croaked, “why didn't you tell me you're a telepath? I needed to know that. Why didn't you tell me you're in contact with some goddamn alien creature?” She threw off her headgear. “You could've killed me. Get out!”

“I'm not in contact with any alien. I mean I wasn't until now.” I ran a hand through my hair. “It was all just a dream. You told me that yourself!”

She glared at me. “It was as real as your tel-brain.”

I rubbed my throbbing temples. I'd sent and received from Loranths, but they're a telepathic species. It was this alien's own skill that had opened channels in my mind. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I told you to get me out.”

April rolled toward the bed's edge. Her back heaved as she vomited on the floor. She coughed and wiped her mouth. “Just get the hell out of my room!”

“Sure.” My knees trembled as I swung off the bed. “And thanks loads for hanging in there when the dream turned bad. Where's your autocount?”

“Never mind. Just go find a mind exorcist who needs the creds bad enough to take your case.”

“You know a good one?” I retorted. I saw her autocount unit behind hanging beads and went to it. “You must've sent him some customers by now.”

“Get out!” she cried shrilly and picked up her shoe, “before I call my husband.”

“Your…” I took out my wallet. “The skinny pimp in the bar?” Suddenly I felt fear. Not my own, I knew. I looked around. What the hell was going on? Human tels are rarer than mercy on the Flats. I had retained tel abilities from Kor's mindlinks. But now, a greater power had been awakened by this silver alien's probe with that blast of mind energy.

A pencil of ice found my stomach and scribbled graffiti there. In what star system was the planet Halcyon? I knew it was a pristine Earth-type world that had been staked and settled by a colony of eco- minded Terran tags whose mantra was: We will not desecrate Halcyon as Terrans have desecrated Earth!

More to the point, why couldn't this powerful, probably indigenous telepath destroy a Terran ravager himself?

He read my thought.
If I unleash my tel power,
he suddenly sent,
it will destroy the nervous system of every Terran on Halcyon. In the end, if I must do it to save my people, I will.

April was pale and wide-eyed. But I think I might have been paler.

You can do that?
I sent.

Only if you fail.

April swung off the bed as I opened my wallet. My hand shook when I realized that my compcard was gone. I heard a buzzer, looked up and saw her pushing a button on the IQ terminal.

“I warned you,” she said. “Don't say I didn't.”

“There were seventy thousand creds in my account last time I looked. Your prices are a bit steep.” I started toward her. “How are you going to explain this when I tell the dons you're hustling customers?”

Fear! Again. Stronger this time.

It stopped me. A door had been thrown open between my mind and the outside world and I was powerless to shut it.

A large wall mirror rumbled back, exposed a camera and the sickly pimp from the bar. Behind him a brawny tag with a naked paunch hanging over his fur pants leaned forward to peer at me.

“Where the hell were you, you two dumb fucks?” April shouted. “I was caught in that dream!”

“Hey,” the fur-clad tag responded, “you shoulda told us you needed help.”

“You should've anticipated it!” she shot back.

Pushy bitch!

It was not my thought. I glanced at the furred tag.

He was glowering at April. “You're the one said you could handle two like him. An easy vinewrap, remember? Only he's going to the dons, so now what?”

I backed to the door. I didn't see how they could use my personal card. It still needed my retinal scan as a backup. Still, if they wanted it that badly, they must have found a way to forge it for a withdrawal. I could stop payment from a sidewalk autocomp, providing I made it to a sidewalk. But I couldn't resist asking as I opened the door. “Just one thing, April.”

She stared at me, hair clinging to her sweaty cheeks.

“Which loser's your husband?”

“Both!” She spat as I went out the door. “Get him, you dumb grassmoles, before he gibbers to the dons!”

Heavy footsteps behind me. I stumbled down the stairs with a hand on the banister, still shaky from that alien dream…encounter. I decided against the lobby, sprinted to the fire door and threw it open.

The bastards were cranking up the drawbridge!

I felt like a holostage swashbuckler as I ran up the rattling bridge, leaped, cleared the moat and rolled onto grass with an eyeball-jarring thud.

Someone shouted “Stop!” from behind me. If I wanted to stop, I wouldn't be running. Shots! A flash of hot light seared a low rock wall as I vaulted it. I ventured a quick look back and saw a rad at a window lift his stingler and fire again. I threw up an arm as grass and dirt flamed to my right, and raced for my hovair.

My hand shook as I thumbprinted the vehicle's lock and realized I'd left the window open. I threw open the door and tried to jump in. Tickbag, the dog from the bar, was curled comfortably on the driver's seat. “Move, you dumb son of a bitch!”

He yelped as I shoved him off the seat. I prayed as I started the motor and taxied across bumpy ground. If that rad managed to hit the vehicle's batteries with his stingler –

Tickbag scurried to the rear of the craft. The fur-clad tag jogged across the lowered bridge. In the moonlight I caught the glint of something long and heavy over his shoulder. A missile launcher! April and the pimp followed.

I hit boosters, lunged skyward. Beneath me the trio set up their weapon. ”Shit!” I exclaimed as an explosion rocked the hovair. Below me, a boulder on a hill did a million years of eroding in a second that was very split. Tickbag whined and slid across the metal floor, his claws trying to dig in as we tore into the night sky. I felt his fear as another layer of my own. The comp corrected for buffeting winds as I made a dash for the other side of a hill. I flicked on my console screen and saw people swarm to their air vehicles on the Flats below. Six sets of headlights lifted and followed me as I headed for the hills. I switched my screen to nightvis, scanned, found a tight box canyon and dived into it. Too bad the ship's sensors couldn't see around corners! Too bad it wasn't equipped with a satellite tracking link. I checked rear visuals. The lights swooped down behind me. Those rads had the oysters for this box canyon, all right!

“Follow this!” I muttered, flew a nape-of-the-earth line inside the canyon, saw moon-silvered boulders and pine trees rush by like a stream. “Hang on, Tickbag!” I banked, headed for a cliff wall and yanked back hard on the stick.

My stomach caved against my backbone as the sheer ridge dropped away and the hovair streaked skyward in a shuddering climb that pinned me to the seat. Tickbag whined. I heard his claws scrape as he tried to get a grip. With my teeth clamped I hung onto the stick and watched a windscreen of stars. Through my port window, I saw the pursuing craft rise to follow.

“Here we go!” I muttered, slowing, and threw on full reverse thrusters. The hovair lurched over its right wing in a sickening dive. Tickbag howled. I sympathized as we plummeted. “And here we go again, son of a bitch,” I warned the frightened dog, tugged back on the stick and forced the sport craft into a pull-up that seemed to defy Einstein's laws of gravitational wells.

Hemorrhoid time!

I leveled, forced out a breath and bored toward my pursuers. Lights parted from the pack as two craft separated and left me a hole. When you act crazy, even your enemies give you some space. Red flashes from the leader's wing stingers went wide.

A burn of hatred in my mind. There it was again! A tel-link. I felt the leader's anger, his determination. He'd have to take me or lose face.

Then I was past them. They'd be a long time doubling back. Shit! The leader's craft rose to follow me in that wingover maneuver. He's scared, though. I can't block out his desperate attempt to fight panic. He concentrates hard on guiding his ship. But he hasn't grown up with hornet cubs, as I have. Didn't spend months with nothing better to do than push the limits of his skill in self-destructive despondency up there in the sky. A cold grip of fear in my stomach as his hand freezes on the stick. He's too close to –

The cliff!
I project to him.
Pull her up
! I moan as his silent scream rips through me and his craft explodes into the rock face. Terror! Inside my chest. Terror as the great void opens. Alone. I try to shake the link as he drifts into geth, the Loranths' name for that state between lives. Alone through a black chasm. A scream without a voice. Jesus and Vishnu! I'm locked with his spirit. I bank the hovair, circle above the blazing ruin of his ship, and project soothing thoughts to the poor bastard.
Geth state's peaceful,
I send.
And fun. You'll like it there.
I kept an eye on the returning pack of hovairs.

A light from within the well of the leader's death. His kwaii, soul in Terran, drifts toward it, hungers for it.

See you in the next life, brother,
I send before his final break with this life, and try to cut the link, afraid he'll take my own spirit with him. I bank the hovair away.

Gone now. His kwaii. Where I can't follow. Not yet, anyway.

My ears still rang from the roar of the tag's exploding ship. In the eerie red glow I glanced back at Tickbag. His bulging eyes caught fire points of light and he whined pitifully. Did he wish he were back in the bar, being kicked by the grizzled drunk? Couldn't blame –

“Cull!” A woman's voice came through my radio. I maintained silence as I climbed. ”You've won the night and we salute your skill and courage. We're prepared to make you an offer you can't refuse. Join us. The pay is good, the rewards are many. It's important to have family.”