Chapter Ten
Jordan rushed into his empty hotel room, scooping his jacket from the back of the chair on the balcony where such a short time ago he'd sat with Anita, enjoying their honeymoon. A glance into the bedroom proved that someone had recently packed up in there. The wardrobe doors hung open, only his clothes still inside. Not a single thing of Anita’s remained.
Patting his pockets confirmed that his com-link was still there. Obviously no one had thought to step outside, or Anita had managed to distract them sufficiently. Like the tablets the Earthlings carried with them, Terron com-links not only provided wide-spread communication, they were also loaded with masses of encrypted Terron information Earthlings knew nothing about.
As he hurried back through the living area, Jordan saw Anita's tablet lying on the floor next to the lounge. Odd, he thought. That should have been the first thing she would have taken with her. Jordan scooped it up, and was about to shove it into another convenient pocket when he saw a rather old-looking middle-aged man wearing a long white coat. The caption underneath was all about the man's failed time-travel experiment. Ah, so that was where Anita had gotten her Ruth Clarke story.
Jordan, they've taken me down to the hotel basement. They're making me get into one of these hover car things. Anita's concerned mind-link had him out the door and down the corridor to the elevator bank in seconds.
I'm coming, Anita. As soon as this damn lift arrives, he thought irritably to himself. Who else could possibly be using them at this time of night? He started to step impatiently from one foot to the other, wondering if Anita’s abductors had sabotaged them to slow him down.
Finally a lift arrived, and he hurried inside, jabbing his finger against the button for the basement where all the hovers were parked. Jordan knew he couldn't use his own hover. Being standard issue, it was instantly recognizable, and would reveal that he was following them. No doubt they would take action accordingly, such as blasting him out of existence. He hoped Anita would be able to direct him through their ability to mind-link. Then he could remain at a safe distance. But she didn't know her way around the Citadel the way he did.
One thing at a time, he told himself. Raching the basement before they were too far ahead of him was the first step. Even though the elevator sped him straight to his destination, it still felt like an age.
When the door finally slid open, Jordan stepped out cautiously, but he couldn’t see anyone and didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary as he surveyed his surroundings.
Neat rows of hovers greeted him, various sizes and various makes, gleaming under the overhead lights. What I wouldn't give for one of those Admin issue hovers right about now, he thought as he eyed the sleek silver vehicles parked in a separate section reserved for the elite soldier corps.
A soft hiss behind him alerted that another elevator had arrived. Jordan ducked behind the nearest hover. To his surprise, Anita's attendant and her mate stepped out. As Jordan tried to recall their names, they quickly made their way to the reserved section.
Crouched low, Jordan followed them, using his row of hovers as cover. Anita, what was the name of the woman who got your ready for our ceremony? he asked her.
Ah, Dana, I think, But why do you want to know? We're outside and flying away from the hotel. Where are you?
Still in the basement. But don't worry. I'm getting a hover right now. Well almost, he added to himself. What I wouldn't give for their hover and his weapon, Jordan thought, hungrily eying the big silver blaster Dana's mate carried loosely in his hands.
Suddenly the soldier turned, swinging the blaster in Jordan's direction.
"What the - " Dana began.
"Shh," her man hissed, pushing her behind him. Being so much smaller than him, she immediately disappeared from view.
"I know someone's there, so do I shoot now and ask questions later, or-"
"It's just me, Jordan Demantena." He rose to his feet and stepped out past the hover he'd been crouching behind.
Even though he lowered the blaster slightly, the man still eyed Jordan suspiciously. He wore his black uniform with pride, showing at least six impressive gold runes on each shoulder. His shrewd brown eyes narrowed as he regarded Jordan, obviously thinking he was up to no good. Not a man to mess with, Jordan thought, and definitely one to have on your side, if only he could convince him that his side was the right one!
"What the devil are you doing down here at this time of night?" the soldier demanded.
"I'll get straight to the point, shall I?" Jordan said. "Anita's been kidnapped by three Earth men and two of your guards."
The man glared suspiciously, hefting his blaster to point directly at Jordan.
"I'm down here to try and go after her." As he spoke, Jordan already felt the pull of distance, the only way he could describe the heavy weight that seemed to descend on him and make him feel sluggish and unsteady.
"On your own? With no weapons?" Now the man was taunting him.
"Look, I don't have time for this," Jordan snapped. "Not long before they came for her I discovered that her father's very high up in the Australian Government, and in cohorts with Rembrandt's Hytana oil shipping company. They obviously want her back for a good reason, if they're willing to risk breaking the Treaty for her." Jordan had no desire to tell these virtual strangers about Anita's arranged marriage to Rembrandt's son.
Dana's mate's frown deepened still further, and then suddenly he shouldered his weapon and held out his hand to Jordan. "My name's Derek Oustana. And this is my mate Dana Smith." He placed one massive arm around her slender shoulders, and with his other hand pointed his com-link in the direction of one of the elite hovers. The side door of the vehicle slid open to reveal its plush, roomy interior. "Shall we take a ride?"
"Oh come on, you're not taking me into custody. I wouldn't lie about something this important!" Jordan stepped back in protest.
"We're going after your mate, so are you with us, or not?" Derek smiled thinly, obviously enjoying himself.
"Bastard," Jordan grumbled, but preceded him to the hover. He climbed inside and took the back seat. Derek and Dana got into the front. With a click and a whirr, they were air-borne and gliding through the basement towards the exit.
"Any idea which way they're heading?" Derek asked as they shot out of the underground carpark and up into the night.
"No, but Anita should be able to tell me. We can mind-link," Jordan blurted out. Obviously the distance between them was not only making him feel sluggish and clumsy, but also addle-brained.
Dana turned in her seat to stare at him, and Derek gasped; "You lucky bastard!"
"Yeah, we only discovered it when she was kidnapped, and she got distressed. I'll ask her now where they are." Jordan was glad his admission hadn't backfired on him. But now that he thought about it, revealing the truth had not been such a bad thing. No doubt the pair would have started questioning where he was getting his information from anyway.
I've got transport now, Anita. I'm on my way. Any idea where you are and which way you're heading?
They've just set down the Terron guards, Anita told him. I don’t know why. Maybe they don't want them to know where we're going. To tell you the truth, I don't know where we are. This city is just so vast.
Are you north, east or west? Jordan asked, knowing south only led to the ocean. He hoped they were headed for the spaceport, but doubted it, since there wouldn’t be any flights back to Earth until the morning, and this was an unofficial departure. There were most likely going to hole up somewhere to get unauthorized documents together.
I don't know Jordan. I'm sorry.
All right, what does the place they let the guards off look like? Jordan asked.
Just like any city corner. Your streets don't have any names, and I can't read your language on the buildings.
All right, what do the guards look like?
How's that going to help?
Just tell me.
One has really blonde hair, almost
silver, and the other is black haired. They're complete opposites… Oh wait, there is something here that might help. We just passed a garden, with lots of things for children to play on. It has the biggest slippery dip I've ever seen.
"Yes," Jordan said out loud. "That's exactly the kind of information I need. They dropped the guards off at barracks opposite the Children's Castle Park."
"Back home to bed, eh?" Derek remarked drolly. "I don't think so." As he maneuvered the hover past tall buildings at a breakneck pace, he barked some orders into his com-link. "Yes, Blake and Samson, I want you out the front and waiting for me, pronto. You have a lot of explaining to do."
Jordan grinned to himself. Obviously Derek was their commanding officer, and those two men were now in deep, extremely hot water. He couldn't have found a better partner to help him out on his rescue mission. "Thanks for believing me, Derek," he said.
"No worries. I had a suspicion those two were moonlighting. Now that it's confirmed I will be stripping them of their weapons in about fifteen seconds."
The hover quickly descended and came to an abrupt stop outside the army barracks. Across the road, Jordan saw the dark silhouette of the children's amusement park.
"Wait here," Derek ordered both Jordan and Dana as he released the door and sprang from the vehicle. Jordan watched him march up to the two men waiting nervously on one side of the main doorway.
It took Derek no more than a minute to relieve the two soldiers of their weapons and dismiss them from the army, ordering them to start walking home and explain their disgrace to their families when - and if - they got there.
When he returned to the hover, he threw one of the blasters in Jordan's direction. "Know how to use one of these?" he asked as he shoved the other weapons on the floor behind his seat.
"It's been a while, but I'm sure it will come back to me." Jordan grinned as he enjoyed the feel of the big weapon in his hands. He examined all the settings and power-packs, deciding it was definitely top of the range, and far more advanced than the blaster he still had back at the farm. It was lighter than it looked, having been made from an extremely tough titanium alloy.
"I'm going to drop you off now, Dana," Derek said, setting the hover into gear.
"Oh no, Derek, I want to come," the small woman protested.
"This could get dangerous, love," Derek insisted, as they shot up into the night once more. "I did manage to get this much out of those two,” he said over the seat at Jordan. “They said the Humans were heading east.”
"I know," Jordan replied, because the sluggish feeling had eased. Anita wasn't as far away from him as she had been previously. He wondered if he could focus on this connection, use it to home in on her.
"Anita might need a female companion," Dana asserted. Jordan smiled to herself as he laid his weapon across his knees. The woman wouldn't leave her mate for anything. "Besides, what's if they take her so far away from me you start to suffer the distance, and can't perform your duties to you optimum potential?"
"Damn it woman, why do you always have to argue? I doubt they'll take her to the other side of the planet tonight! I'm sure they will want to get her to the spaceport some time tomorrow."
"Why don't you just put out an all points alert instead of chasing after her yourself?"
"Because they would have very good fake Ids and reasons for doing what they’re doing. If they are ruthless enough to kidnap her in the middle of the night, who knows what kind of technology they've stolen? Of course I’m going to put out a silent alert. I'm also calling for backup from the Dominion Barracks."
"So does that mean I can come with you?" she persisted.
Derek reached behind his seat and handed Dana the other blaster. "I rue the day I taught you how to use these things." He turned to grin at Jordan. "She's almost as good a shot as I am," he said proudly.
"Speaking of technology," Jordan prompted. "Are we cloaked? I heard these new hovers are undetectable."
"Of course we're cloaked. We have been since we left the barracks. But I’m also willing to bet those goons we're following are as well, since they took off with that idiot Blake's hover. So, any more news from Anita on their whereabouts?"
A tight knot of anxiety settled in my stomach like a badly digested meal as we sailed through the night. Part of it was air-sickness, since we seemed to fly about like a drunken bird. I strongly suspected these guys didn't know how to pilot a hover car properly. But mostly it was due to the dread that dogged me, since I had no idea where we were going and what these idiots were going to do with me when we got there. Even though there were now only three of them, I held little hope of escaping them and the array of weapons they still packed. We were many metres above the ground, Even if I could get a door open, the fall would kill me.
Now that I knew what had befallen my true self, I had no real desire to return to Earth, and even less to end up married to Rembrandt Junior. I had just been married. Didn't that count as bigamy? But I strongly suspected Anita's government official father would find some way of annulling my marriage to Jordan, just as much as he'd planned this kidnapping.
Just what kind of a nightmare had I managed to get myself into? I wondered as I began gnawing on an already ravaged fingernail. As Ruth I'd been a nail-biter, and it seemed this nervous habit had returned, even though I'd really appreciated Anita's lovely long nails. Guiltily I withdrew the digit, and began chewing on a stray lock of hair instead. Anyone would be agitated if they were in my shoes, I thought, so biting nails and gnawing on hair was wholly excusable as far as I was concerned.
I hadn't heard from Jordan in a while, not since I'd told him we had left the massive sprawling city behind, and were now flying over farms and smaller settlements. These didn’t appear to be hytana farms – they weren’t big enough.
In the half-light of the three Terron moons I realized they grew other kinds of crops, mostly the fruit and vegetables that tasted so much better than anything I'd eaten on Earth during my formative years. If only those wonderful Terron foods had been available when I was growing up, I’d never have developed such an aversion to 'healthy' meals and devoured them by the plateful, never putting an anywhere near as much weight as I had.
Why was I even thinking about my past? I was never going to get my podgy body back now. I supposed I was having such odd thoughts because there wasn't anything to do except think and fret as we careered through the night.
In fact I was starting to feel so sick that I thought I might puke. Throwing up on the unpleasant man sitting beside me, still with his weapon aimed in my direction, might have given me a small sense of satisfaction in the split second before he reflexively pressed his trigger, putting me out of my misery permanently.
I took a breath, trying to curb my rolling stomach. Some fresh air would have helped, but all I could smell was the rank body-odor of my companions. It dawned on me then that Jordan didn't smell anything like an Earth man. His scent was always so enticing, sweet and erotic at the same time. Perhaps it was because we were mated that every other man now smelt off to me. I had to admit the whole Terron male partner thing had a lot going for it, particularly since nature had made them so attractive in the first place.
Anita, Derek just had an idea. After so many minutes of silence, Jordan's voice inside my head startled me.
Yes Jordan, I responded. Please make it a good one, like you've just discovered you can teleport me out of this craft! I thought to myself.
Can you see the control panel from where you're sitting?
I shifted a little in my seat, not wanting to draw the attention of the guy sitting next me. Craning my neck a little, I saw the console, lit up with bright flashing lights and digits. Most looked like hieroglyphics, but some were numbers. Yes, I can see it.
Good. In the centre there's a readout that could show the same numbers on it constantly. If these numbers are there, they will be the co-ordinates of their destination. I'm hoping they programmed it in, since they're not natives and hardly seem
to know how to fly.
Yes, they're making me quite air sick, I replied, hoping I could find the numbers he meant and actually read them. I shouldn't have worried. As Ruth I would have had trouble without my glasses, but Anita appeared to have near perfect vision. It reads 45:57:19. Does that help?
Silence came from his end, and then, after about a minute he said; Perfect thanks. But why they would want to rendezvous in the middle of the Bengalona Forest is beyond me!
It's nice and quiet and no one can see them, I thought back, seeing nothing but a dark vista of trees below us.
That's it. Keep your spirits up. Derek's programmed the coordinates into our hover. We'll be with you soon. He was obviously trying to reassure me, and hearing his voice did help to allay my fears a little.
"We're almost there," the guy in the front passenger seat said as he peered out of his side window down into the wilderness below us.
"Where?" Mr Brown demanded from the driver's seat. "I can't see anything."
"That's because all the lights have been turned off, but I just spotted the clearing, and the tracker your guys set says we're here."
"All right. All right, Then guide me down. Flying these things is a nightmare."
So they didn't fly these craft on Earth. I could just imagine the nightmare traffic chaos all those hovercars would cause, particularly with the amount of road rage Sydney's congested streets had suffered in my time. Taking to the air would only have made things worse. It did make me wonder just what kind of transport system they did have on Earth now. After suffering for so long with fuel shortages until the discovery of hytana oil, maybe they'd finally had the sense to make public transport more reliable.
After some more stomach-lurching twists and turns, as well as a bone-jarring ride across some rough ground, we finally came to a halt in a clearing, surrounded by the tallest trees I'd ever seen. This was probably why they had chosen to hide a space shuttle here. Those enormous trees would conceal it from every angle save directly above. I assumed the craft taking up most of the clearing was a shuttle. It looked like a small jet with extra large engines, a ramp lowered for easy boarding.
As my gun-toting companion ordered me out, I wondered how I could delay their departure long enough to enable Jordan and his team time to arrive. Since I had no idea how far behind me they were, I didn't know how much time I had.
Instead of obeying his order, I bent double, and groaned. "I feel too sick to get out right now, thanks to your partner's stunt driving."
"Oh come on!" He nudged me with the butt of the blaster. It should have got me moving, but I really did still feel queasy, and in no hurry to test my rubbery legs, not unless he really did threaten to shoot me with that thing. Even though Jordan had told me they wouldn't use their weapons to kill, I figured being 'stunned' wouldn't be particularly pleasant either.
We're here Jordan. And they're making me get out of the hover now. When do you think you will you be here?
We're over the forest. The tracker is counting down quickly. A few minutes. What kind of craft have they got? Terron or Earthean?
How should I know? I asked in frustration, gazing at it again. To me it just looked like a large, souped-up jet fighter from my own time, with that pointy nose and swept back wings.
I thought I heard Jordan make an exasperated noise inside my head, but since I didn't think we could communicate emotions, merely our thoughts, I suspected it had probably been something from outside.
"What's the hold up back there?" Mr Brown demanded from the now open side door.
“She's complaining about feeling sick from the ride."
"Just great," Mr Brown muttered. "We're already behind schedule. "Just carry her, you idiot."
"Don't you dare touch me," I snarled at them. "I'll get there. Just give me a minute." I made a big pretence of breathing deeply, and then looking around for my shoes. Surreptitiously I nudged one further under the seat. "Has anyone seen my other shoe? I'm not going out there in bare feet. That grass looks awfully spiky.
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Mr Brown shoved the other guy aside to begin groping around under the seat. "Here it is!" He shoved the slipper into my hands.
I put it back down onto the floor, and slowly slipped my foot into it, knowing I had prevaricated enough. "All right, I think I can stand now." As slowly as I dared, I inched across the bench seat to the open door, and climbed out of the vehicle. I thought better of pretending to sway, since I didn't want any of them to lay their hands on me. But I did walk as slowly as I thought I could get away with towards the craft.
Clearly this wasn't fast enough for Mr Brown, because he grabbed hold of my arm. "You can feel sick all you like once you're strapped into your seat. Now come on." As he jerked my arm, he stumbled to one side, his weapon hitting the rough stony ground with a clatter. I stared down at him in disbelief, wondering if his own stunt driving had made him sick enough to suddenly pass out cold for no apparent reason.
As I turned to the guy on my other side, I saw him spin around and aim his blaster into the darkness, but he didn't get to fire a single shot. He too toppled over backwards, his body jerking once as he was stunned into silence. At least I hoped he was only stunned. Since I hadn't heard a single shot, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on around me.
Then I saw the most wonderful sight imaginable. Jordan was running towards me, a massive blaster of his own clasped in both hands, powerful legs pumping, long blonde hair whipping back from his determined face as he ate up the distance between us.
As I began to run towards him, he skidded, coming to a halt as his left leg buckled under him. Despite the dimness of the night, I saw blood bloom against the fabric of his light blue trousers.