Tyril froze, holding his breath, as the invaders above kicked in the door to his shack. Angry words reached him, words without meaning. The off-worlders were sweeping the area, no longer interested in slaves for their mines, they wanted something else, badly.
In the hidden space beneath the floor, Tyril caressed the crystal mandalla. For days now, it had lent him strength and courage, turning him gold with its soft cold fire, dazzling his eyes, his heart with the light of wonder.
They left me no choice, his heart spoke to the memory of his father. I’ve left it alone these many years, waiting for a time of desperate need. That time is now; I will not let my people go to the stars in chains.
His grip on the crystal tangle tightened. He poured his thoughts into it. Timeless one--hear me! We have walked in your way, honoring the strangers at our gates. Now, we need your dread power. We invoked your august presence. Come to us... Starshade!
The boards overhead creaked as strange feet tread them, searching, over-turning furniture, breaking the clay jars that stored food and water. The searchers grew still. A new voice bringing order, sprouting gibberish. Tyril stared at the aliens through a crack in the floor. The new arrival wore a tunic of metallic cloth with odd devices strapped around his body. As he spoke, a box on his belt echoed him in several languages. Tyril found he could understand one of them.
"Is it here?"
"Not sure. Some strange background radiation...hard to pin down."
"Damn it! We’re too late. I feel it in my bones. All right. Order everyone back to the ships. Take what you can carry. If the slaves slow you down, cut them loose. Our lives are more important than the property. We‘ve gotta run for it."
"Are you sure, Captain. That seems a little extreme. I mean, I’ve heard the legends all my life, but never seen hide nor hair of HIM."
"Those that see him don’t live long enough to speak of it, fool. Don’t question my orders. Carry them out, or die where you stand. You survive in this business by showing a healthy respect for the unknown."
The subordinate saluted crisply. "Aye, Sir, as you say. Wait a minute. The footfalls here sound different, hollow."
A thrill of fear went through Tyril. He crouched lower in the root cellar. They had him. What now? He had no weapon, no training, no chance. He was a common potter, not a warrior. He calmed himself. It doesn’t matter. Even if I die, Vengeance is coming.
He threw back his head and laughed as the trap door was torn away. The Strangers looked down on him. A moment later, he was drawn forth. Alien hands snatched at the crystal mandalla, trying to strip it away from him. It flared brighter. The aliens cursed, jerking their hands away, cursing.
"You were right, Captain. That’s a sub-space inductor he’s got there. Crystalline in nature, reading as an inorganic lifeform. Should I blast the thing?"
Another alien waved a pinging box over the prisoner. Its sound increased in tempo, becoming a steady drone. "Emitting an unknown type of radiation. I‘d say we found this planet‘s Keeper. And I wouldn't damage the thing. If it breaks, we could all be dangerously irradiated, Captain."
"Fine. Let him keep it. If we get away fom this planet, we'll space him and it at the same time."
"How long’s he been down there?" someone asked.
"Can’t you hear him laughing," the Captain said. "It’s the sound of a fanatic in the hands of his god. I’d say there’s no time left for stupid questions. Back to the ship! Bring him. We may need a hostage of value before we’re clear of this cursed world."
"Aye, Sir." A reptile-faced bi-ped jerked on Tyril’s arm. "Come along, you."
Tyril made his frail legs keep the pace set by his captors. They dragged him past the mud buildings of his city, past the shattered wall that once shielded it, out into the neglected fields. The slaver ships waited, great gaping maws open, swallowing the long chained lines of his people. The sight broke his heart. He stopped his feet and was dragged along after that, still clutching the mandalla.
They reached the closest ship. Those outside it, wearing chains, were released and sent scurrying away. The slaves inside were dropped into a barren hold. Tyril was pitched in with his people. They caught his tumbling body and eased him to the deck. Every face turned to him. Every eye fixed on the treasure he held. It battered back the darkness of their pen.
"Hold on," Tyril told them. "He comes."
"Maybe, but will it be in time?" The deep rich voice came from a black-cloaked stranger.
Tyril’s eyes blazed. "I will not live without hope--I cannot."
"Hope’s fine and good," the man said, "but I’m of a mind to do something to help myself. If we had fought strongly at first, none of us might have come here."
"We’d be dead instead," someone complained.
"Maybe," the cloaked stranger said, "But our children would be free, and we will have taught them the price of freedom. We will have taught them to fight for their dreams instead of waiting for them to fall effortlessly from the sky. And the raiders would learn that we men not beasts. They come again and again, thinkin’ us easy prey because we are. We have the power to change that--starting here and--"
"Who are you?" Tyril interupted. "Why do you hide your face?"
There was a rattle of chains. "I am Moran, of Chundra province, a trader in spices and silks. As for my face...what’s left of it isn’t a pretty sight. Let it be."
"What would you have us do?" one of the others asked. "Bare hands are of no use against off world magic."
Moran was silent a moment. Then his voice came again, deeper, adamant. "If we didn‘t leave our battles entirely to figures of legend," the big man said, "we could learn off-world technology, build our own weapons and ships. We could go to the stars and free the captives on other worlds. We could extend our hearts to the rest of the universe." The big man drew all eyes, commanding silence. "Even now, we are not helpless; we have numbers, we have courage, and weapons are at hand."
Moran rattled his wrist chains. "I’ve found an air shaft that leads deeper into the ship. We can come out of the walls and drag the slavers down, one bite at a time."
"Until we lose the element of surprise and the alarm is given. Then they will be merciless with us," Tyril argued. "It is best to wait for help."
"You wait," Moran rumbled. "I’m going." His voice became a bracing thunder. Who comes with me?"
The men and women huddled around the trader roared approval at his words. Tyril knew it was folly, but he too felt his blood heat, his heart pound. The wild thrill of resistance was contagious. He found himself boldly entering into the common madness, following along as Moran strode across the hold to a distant bulkhead.
The crowd parted and urged him ahead. Moran needed the mandalla’s light to see. He stood beside a shaft that crawling men could manage, but the shaft was closed off by a round grill made of steel bars. There was no chain, catch, or visible lock. A murmur of disappointment swept back over the captives.
"I can't find a reason, but it's sealed tight," someone muttered.
"What now?" another voice asked. "It's useless."
Tyril found himself nodding agreement with the sentiment. He closed his eyes and hung his head, fighting an urge to cry. So close. So close to freedom, he could taste it.
"Don’t let so simple a problem defeat you," Moran entreated. "There’s dampness in the shaft. It’s bound to have effected the hidden mechanisms. Part of the door may well be rusted through, as slovenly as these raiders are. Come on. Grab the bars. When we meld our hearts and minds together, anything can happen."
Tyril reached out hesitantly and grabbed a bar. He tried to rattle the door, but felt no give or take in it. Hopeless. But under Moran’s approving grin, the other hand joined it. Moran gripped the bars as well, straining against all reason. Then came other hands, one pair after another, joining in. Men snarled and cursed as their muscles swelled, rippled and knotted.
"Put your backs into it." Tyril found himself yelling.
"That’s the spirit," Moran said. "Keep at it." There was a snapping sound. The grating swung open. "That’s it," Moran thundered. "It’s open!"
"All right," Tyril said, "gather up your loose chains. Try to stay as quiet as possible for as long as possible." Tyril and Moran led the men into the shaft, choking it with rebellion. The journey on there knees seemed to take forever. The only saving grace was that the air quality improved as they went along.
While Tyril quickly lost all sense of direction, Moran never faltered. He seemed led by some uncanny perception the others didn’t share. At one Y junction, Tyril called him on it. "How do you know which branch is right? You seem a little too familiar with this ship’s design." He reached for the other man’s hood, to twitch it aside.
Moran caught his wrist in an iron grip. "Don’t touch, and be careful. You almost dropped mandalla. Trust me. You don‘t want to do that. Come on. It‘s not far to the engine room. If we start by taking that, we can cripple the ship before counter measures are taken."
"If this is a trap..." Tyril’s words trailed off.
"What?" Moran whispered. "You think I got everyone to escape just so I could trap everyone? Don’t be stupid."
They reached an air duct grill where the crawlspace ended. Tyril rolled the mandalla up in his shirt so its light would not give them away. Past the lattice-work, lay the engine room. Aliens scurried about, servicing strange mechanisms, watching gauges and panels full of flashing lights. At the center of the room was a huge cylindrical chunk of smoky crystal.
Moran pointed at the crystal. "That’s the heart of their power source. We have to close down the magnetic funnel draining away its energies. The crystal will overcharge and fracture, becoming useless to them."
Setting his shirt aside, Tyril tested the grill. Despair stabbed his heart. It was all for nothing. "Locked," he hissed. By the time we force it, we’ll have lost the element of surprise. They’ll have called armed guards here to cut us down."
"You sure," Moran asked. "Let me try. It might just be stuck. Ah! Thought so. I’ve got it open! Let’s go!"
The grill swung open and Moran went first. Silent as death, fluid and quick, he lead the men over instrument casings and down pipes to the lower floor. His fist snapped out like meteor strike, dropping every alien in its way. They had half the room down before the rest realized there was trouble blowing in. Alien voices babbled questions and yelled in fear and anger. The emotions were plain if not the language.
Somehow, Moran read the alien schematics and sealed off the doors to the area, buying time. Tyril did his best, but he knew they owed their success to this hooded stranger. Moran sent the men back into the air shaft. Tyril went last, waiting in the mouth of the shaft to see how the big man was going to disable the thing called a mag-neh-tic fun-nul.
Something small moved under his hand. He picked it up. Several small pieces of metal. He unwrapped a bit of his shirt, needing light to see what he’s found. A strange cold chill went down his back as he realized he held what was left of the lock that had once secured the grill. The largest piece was steel. It had a large thumb-shaped impression in it--as if someone had quietly squeezed it apart.
Tyril looked out the shaft at Moran. The man had stripped his hooded cloak. His face was smooth, strong and unscarred. His hair was black. His eyes pools of shadow. He stood sheathed all in black. Tyril’s trembling lips shaped a word...a single name... It was less than a whisper. More like a prayer--an answered prayer.
Starshade.
The man he’d called Moran wore two cuffs and a wide belt of lusterless bronze. These bands glowed with a deepening light. The stranger wrapped his arms around the smoked crystal, holding it tightly. The crystal brightened as well. A crystalline scream filled the air. The light dimmed and Tyril dropped his hands from shielding his eyes. Crystal fragments lay everywhere, shattered.
The stranger was gone, and Tyril knew he‘d not be back again--until the mandalla sang its song.
Pieces of Eight, Part III is a collection of eight novellas to complement the eight in Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight, Part II and Pieces of Eight, Part IV.
Evil Seed: Mother Earth vs. the Human Race; Who Will Survive?
Launched onto a surreal odyssey by a desperate call for help, a heroine reluctant to save her own unworthy species, coupled with her closest friends and a band of otherworldly allies,
This chair is not your grandmother's rocking chair! In fact, you wouldn't want your grandmother or any loved one near it! So find a well lit room and enjoy an intense read of this Sci-Fi thriller.
