Stealing the Sun: Books 4-6, page 43
The cottage was small, but clean. Skins lining the roof were stretched so taut that star shine glistened in the oils that covered them. The aroma of those oils seemed omnipresent. They repelled any burning rain that might fall, but they had to be steadfastly maintained. Jee had obviously refreshed them recently. Ahead, a clutch of katja grew over the eastern round, blooming fully now so it could feed off the colder morning air.
Katja did well in this new world: closing up as it did protected it from curling in the peak heat, and drinking as it did in the evening hours meant harder chills gave it more to live on. The flowers were green in the darkness.
The path to Jee’s door was swept clear of debris and lined in striated rock that had been perfectly placed. The hut’s rounded walls had been painted in the past season. That was Jee’s way. He was meticulous about everything he did, which is what made him so good at his job. And he knew his business, too. No detail went untouched. When it was collection day, he returned with what a Family partner owed, no more, no less.
If Baraq was counting correctly, today was that day. If so, Jee would be waking soon.
He laid his head against the stony concrete of the building’s wall.
Jee had been Tierra’s heavy for the past three years, and had bragged of his approach often enough. “It’s best to hit them before they get too tired,” Baraq remembered Jee saying with a hint of glee to his voice. “Before the heat makes them think crazy things about trying to hold out.” The Waganat security quadar never had any complaints about taking extra steps to ensure payment. Jee was big and strong. Usually, he intimidated the hell out of Baraq, but now Baraq was oddly pleased to realize he wasn’t afraid of this confrontation at all.
Baraq drew the Tegra.
Jee wasn’t pair-mated, so he was likely to be alone.
The window crease to the south of the cottage was open to the air. Baraq could go that way, and hope to avoid any unforeseen barrier that might be placed inside, or he could force the main doorway and announce his presence. One would tax his grace, the other his strength. Either would leave him briefly exposed.
Putting the gun back into his pocket, Baraq chose the window.
A glance showed the path was clear.
He gave a nearly silent click of confidence, then stepped out of the shadow. The sill felt hard under his hands as he reached up and wrapped his fingers over it. With a grunt he hoped was quiet enough, he pulled himself up.
A moment later he was seated in the frame.
The window led to a small common area. Jee’s sleeping pallet was in the back corner.
A glance inside said the landing area was clear.
“What is that?” a quadar spoke in the distance behind him. “Hey?”
Baraq glanced over his shoulder and saw a guard coming his way.
Instinctively, he pulled his legs up, swung around, and slipped into the cottage.
Blood rushed through his body. The sound of footsteps came closer.
“Jee El?” the voice asked.
“Who is that,” Jee said, waking.
Baraq stepped hurriedly toward the still supine quadar, fumbling to get his Tegra out. The barrel of the weapon caught on the cloth of his robe. His throat tensed as his fingers fumbled. The robe finally let go of the gun as he came to the bed. Jee was rolling away, but Baraq fell on him, managing to get the gun to Jee’s temple.
The sensation of cold metal on skin stopped his target in his tracks.
Jee peered upward. The quadar’s face was barely discernable in the starlight that came through the window.
“Who are you?”
“I am Baraq Waganat,” he replied, grinding the gun against the head of the man who murdered his son. “You killed my whelp.”
Nothing moved for a moment, and for that moment the only sound was the clomping of the sentry’s steps as he came to the window.
Jee’s face split into a wild grin. “You’re going to kill me then,” he said. “Is that it?”
Baraq leaned in. He felt powerful now. Certainty built inside him. It was right for him to kill this quadar. His eyes were wide and his body felt strong. He swallowed and clicked, and focused on the moment rather than the noise at the window.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said through teeth he had suddenly clenched. “Then I’m going to kill Tierra, and then I’m going to kill my father.”
“Good luck with that.”
“You think I won’t?”
“You want to kill Ranya Waganat, you’re going to have to move a lot of rock.”
Baraq frowned.
“You don’t know?” Jee continued, his smile getting more self-serving. “The old man’s dead.”
“What?”
“Put him under stone two heats back. Your brother runs Family Waganat now.”
Baraq froze. His father was dead.
“I’m coming in,” the guard said outside.
“Looks like you best be getting on to your business,” Jee said, the tone of his voice taunting Baraq.
The two of them sat as if locked in place. Baraq’s mind processed the news, and as he did he saw himself as if he was outside his body, kneeling over Jee, the whelp of his aunt three spaces over, the quadar’s huge muscles roiling under his knees and his shins. The image was horrifying. Grotesque. Who was he? What was he doing?
He lowered the gun.
“You drop that thing, and maybe your brother won’t have you killed straight out,” Jee said.
Behind him, the guard entered the window and came through the common room. A cold revolver clicked.
An explosion of pain blossomed along Baraq’s back like none he had ever felt.
He turned and shot back, rolling off a stunned Jee El, and bouncing off a rounded inner wall. He shot at the guard again. The quadar screamed and went down, clutching its leg.
Baraq took a step, screaming in pain as he moved.
His back was on fire but he had to go.
A warm trail of blood ran down his leg as he took two more steps, limping and dragging one leg, pain shooting through his back. Jee said something behind him, but the sound of the shots was still ringing in his ears.
Baraq threw himself out the window and hit the ground so hard he bit his cheek raw. He rolled as he fell, though, drawing breath and using his momentum to get back onto his feet. He found shadow, and slipped as silently as he could against another cottage, following it around a corner and back to the garden.
Behind him, voices raised and footsteps scuffled.
He pressed himself behind a woody bush and lay against a stone fence to avoid being seen. The need to pant was a physical thing. He fought it, listening with intensity as Jee’s voice echoed in the nighttime, and the Waganat security crew came to full alert.
If the shots had been the only disturbance he might have had some time. That’s what his plan had been based on, anyway. But now he was in trouble.
He put his hand down and felt the wound.
The bullet had torn up his central plate and penetrated at a lucky angle lower down in his back. If he could staunch the blood flow he would probably survive. He edged around the brush, and considered the lay of the compound. The disturbance meant he would never be able to get out the way he came in, though.
Probably best to go further into the complex, find a cave and get lost there.
If nothing else heading deeper into the complex might surprise them.
Gritting his teeth, Baraq straightened and rounded the brush.
“Hello, brother,” a familiar voice said from behind him. “Imagine finding you here.”
He turned to see Tierra flanked by a pair of guards, both with rifles pointed directly at Baraq’s gut.
“Take him to the cells,” Tierra said.
CHAPTER 31
If he was ever going to see the Solar System again, Torrance was going to have to find a way to call home. It would help, anyway. If Interstellar Command received his first transmission, they might be intrigued. But if they didn’t get a second, there was every chance everyone would assume Torrance had died in transit. Why come to Eden for nothing more than a dead body?
A second transmission would change the game, though.
Given the message Kitchell had decoded, it was clear this species understood radio communications. Torrance wanted to see how much Louratna knew.
When she came next, he diagrammed the planet with two stick figures on it—their default symbol for the two of them. He pointed to the figure that was himself, and said “Torrance.” Then he pointed the other figure, and said “Louratna.”
She nodded.
He pointed to the planet. “What is?” he said, using a phrase he used to ask an identity.
“Esgarat,” she said, starting with understanding. She pointed to the three. “Torranze, Louratna, and Esgarat.”
“Outstanding.” He smiled, drinking from his water bowl. It was good to have a name for where he was.
“Outstanding!” she replied with a phrasing that was almost right.
She seemed as excited as he was.
He proceeded to diagram Alpha Centauri A and B.
“Eldoro and Katon,” he said.
Louratna clicked in her positive way.
He drew a representation of another system on the far edge of the slate. “Earth,” he said, pointing to the planet. “Sol,” he said, pointing to the sun. Louratna studied him and then the diagram.
“Eldoro,” he said, pointing to Alpha Centauri A. “Sol,” he said, pointing to the other.
She clicked a positive.
“Earth,” he said, pointing. “Esgarat.”
All three of Louratna’s eyes got huge. She grabbed a chalk and made a figure on Earth, then drew a line between that figure and the Torrance figure on Esgarat. “Torranze,” she said. “Earth,” the last word coming out Eart.
Torrance nodded. “Yes, yes! Torrance is from Earth.”
He picked up a rock, then took it to one side of the chamber. He hesitated a moment, hoping his example of putting abstract concepts like messaging into simple terms would work, then spoke to the rock. “Hello, Louratna,” he said. After that was done, he marked it with chalk, then gently tossed it across the room. After it clattered to the floor, he walked to the rock, picked it up, and put it to his ear, repeating “Hello, Louratna!”
He looked up and smiled.
He repeated it, going the other way.
Louratna was still deeply engaged, though perhaps she just thought he was going desert crazy. She twisted her lips as if she was thinking, then went to the slate and methodically drew a horizontal line, then several intersecting lines that made it look like a fishbone diagram, or a numerical table without the border. She put a cap on the upper right table leg, then the lower leg of the next vertical line, then on the upper of the next, continuing back and forth until each vertical axis was marked. When she was finished, she looked at him with an expression he thought was expectation.
Was she saying that she understood wave oscillation?
He went to the water bowl and put his finger in the middle, causing ripples to cascade to the sides of the bowl.
Louratna chalked a quick diagram in the form she always used to represent an equation: vertical line for an equivalency, each side weighted. The wave equation was a partial differential, and it didn’t seem like she had the specifics down right, or at least not in a way he understood, but it was obvious her concept was there. What she had drawn was clearly a power function that used time and distance in an attempt to define the wave.
He nearly laughed in glee.
He wondered if Louratna understood amplitudes and phases, and assumed she had to. If they actually made radio work, quadar mathematics had to go beyond the high concept.
Torrance had to be sure, though.
He went to the slate and drew a fishbone line between Esgarat and Earth, then capped it as she had. He put a hand on Earth, and the side of his ear onto his hand. “Hello, Louratna,” he said in the direction of Esgarat.
Louratna went to the diagram and did the same thing with Esgarat.
“Hello, Torranze!” she called.
He grinned.
Amazing.
Yes, the quadars clearly had radio.
Now he just had to find it.
He went to the slate and circled the figure that represented himself several times, then drew a wave line to Earth. He put the rock back to his ear.
“Hello, Earth?” he said, his gaze glued to Louratna’s.
She hesitated.
He grasped the rock harder, and pointed to the figure of himself again. “Torrance call Earth?”
“Ohna,” Louratna said, using the quadarti term for negative.
Her face clouded. She picked up the chalk and went to the slate. After a few moments of thought, she drew a boxlike formation beside Torrance’s stick figure. From that she made a wave form.
“That’s a transmitter,” he said. “Take me to the transmitter.”
“Transmitter,” Louratna said, then added her own word.
“Yes, transmitter,” he replied, holding the rock to his ear again. “Hello, Earth?”
Louratna clicked in a gentle fashion. “Ohna,” she said. Then she leaned over and drew lines over the image of the transmitter. When she was done, she used the meat of her palm and cleared the whole image away.
Torrance swallowed hard.
“I see,” he said. “The transmitter is dead.”
“Dead,” Louratna replied.
It was clear she didn’t really understand the words he used, but it was just as clear that his assessment of her message was correct. Whatever equipment the quadars had used to hail the Solar System was no longer in existence.
He sighed and took a seat, staring at the slate with its messy diagrams.
Torrance felt hollow then. The skin across his whole body tingled with a sensation that he hadn’t felt before. The room was oddly silent, and the dim light and dark shadows added to the disjointed sensations that were playing over his mind.
The quadars understood radio, but if Louratna was telling the truth, they didn’t have anything powerful enough to provide for interstellar communication.
He put his head in his hands.
Despite Louratna’s presence, he felt oddly alone.
CHAPTER 32
Baraq lay on his belly, stretched out over a flat table, his hands and ankles tied.
A medic had tended to his gunshot wound, but mostly to ensure he didn’t die. He had been only lightly stitched, the wound fresh and still open to the air. It hurt just to breathe.
The interrogation room was in the second floor of the Family’s secondary tower, a distance away from the central nervous system of the compound. He was positioned so he could see out a small window and take in the city as Eldoro rose—a fact Baraq assumed was on purpose. Xian’s Tower stood in the distance. Smoke rose from fires around the area, probably hedgies and others of lower families still working to burn bodies. The air was already growing hot.
Tierra sat on a chair beside the window, draped in his Family robe and drinking from a bowl. He had a new guard with him, a huge and unnervingly quiet quadar who loomed above Baraq at an anxiety-creating angle.
“Where is the creature?” Tierra said, his voice sharp and direct.
“I don’t know,” Baraq replied.
“I hope you’ll understand why I don’t believe that’s true, Baraq.”
“I can’t help what you think.”
Tierra nodded to the assistant.
The quadar pressed a metal probe against his wound. Baraq groaned and clenched his body against the pain.
“That’s how it’s going to be?” he said once he had recovered.
“Not if you tell me what I want to know. The creature was stolen by outside forces. We know that much.”
Baraq said nothing.
“Does the name Louratna mean anything to you?”
Baraq took a breath, but again said nothing.
Tierra nodded, and Baraq suffered again. The vision in all three eyes blurred.
“How is Father?” Baraq asked.
Tierra smirked and clicked in a way that indicated disinterest. “I’m sorry about Brada,” he replied. “It’s a tragedy that had to be.”
Baraq recoiled. The acid in his first stomach ate at his throat.
“It makes sense that you were protecting him, Baraq. We understand that, even as we see it for the lack of loyalty it was. It had to be hard to see your own whelp bending so far from the Family.” Tierra rose from the chair and went to the window. He sighed, taking in the rising plumes of smoke. “But you were the adult, right, Baraq, and that means…?”
Baraq refused to tell Tierra what he wanted to hear. He clenched his fist and pulled against the restraints.
They did not give, and the effort hurt.
“Brada was his own quadar,” Baraq said. “It was something I admired him for.” The statement made him feel stronger. Even though it was too late, it felt right to stand behind his boy.
Tierra turned from the window, clicked sadly, and bent to address Baraq.
“Brother,” he said. “You are going to tell us where the creature is. The only variable is time.”
Then the pain came again.
CHAPTER 33
Torrance heard shuffling and voices outside, so he was already standing as the quadar entered. He was wearing a set of odd-fitting pants and a wraparound shirt the quadars found fashionable. The ensemble was comfortable enough, and made him feel more like he belonged here.
“Hey, it’s my tour guide. Is it time for my walk?”
Torrance learned the second in command’s name was Crissandr, but he had taken to calling her his tour guide because after the third time it was clear that her job was to take Torrance to the surface—which made him feel a little like a dog, but not so much that he was willing to bite the hand that fed him.
“Teckto,” she said, bending her knees.
“Teckto,” he said. It was a word she used often, a phrase accompanied by a hollow click from her front teeth. “Does that mean walk?” he said aloud. “Or exercise?” It felt strange to talk to the quadars this way. He knew they couldn’t understand him, but it felt better to speak.
