***
Talokta looked at Kate fast asleep on her bed. He knew she had not been sleeping well and was tempted to give her more of the drugged wine to relax her.
But Kalvich had sent fresh orders telepathically to the commander.
There is another way to reach Leah and reassure Kate. Under no circumstances is she allowed any alcohol or drugs of any kind to interact with her brain, at least for twenty-four hours. Wait until she is asleep and place her stones in each hand. Her old teacher, Cemel from her past is going to help her.
Talokta’s reply was would it not have been more simple to use a private communication station? Kalvich assured him this way would reach her subconscious mind more efficiently. It would also give many unanswered questions a chance to be answered before they arrived at Heliostronus.
As Talokta picked her stones up, with a cloth, a stone slid into his hand. Nothing happened; he felt a tingle but nothing like the bite pain that Manutaai had reported. He placed them both into the palms of Kate’s hands and closed her fingers around them. He could not take his hands away. A vision began unspooling in his mind; he felt strange, dizzy…
It was a beautiful sunny morning. They were sitting on a blanket with a hamper of food and wine that she had packed for them. He looked at his surroundings—they were on the banks of the Pellucid River. He had not appreciated its beauty until Leah was with him.
Leah looked stunning. A light breeze drew a wisp of hair over her face, and she pushed it out of the way. She was talking, but he could not hear clearly what she was saying. She turned her head and smiled at him. He leaned over and lightly kissed her, as if he feared she might disappear. The kiss consumed into a burning passion. The intense lovemaking was incredible. He had never felt this way with any female before. When they were spent, they lay in each other’s arms. For once in his life, he truly felt happy, contented. She spoke, in a voice that sounded like it was under water, “We must go. They will find us.” They dressed. She was giggling. He was bewitched with her incredible beauty, and could not believe his luck: a beautiful woman like her was all his.
His world shattered when he heard the unmistakable sound of a Gloctol being fired and shouting. He jumped to his feet and judged fifty meters away soldiers were heading in their direction. It was Leah that grabbed his hand and pulled him into the bushes. They ran like they had never run in their lives.
“This way!” she gasped. He followed her to a cave entrance. “Hurry, before they track us.” She led him inside as they huddled trying to catch their breath and keep their lungs from bursting.
“Leah, I am so sorry, it is all over. They will kill me, and I don’t know what he will do to you.”
They both heard the guards closing in.
Her eyes were full of tears. “They must have followed me. I wasn’t sure. I never should have done this. This is my entire fault.”
He lifted her chin. “We love each other. That’s all that count.”
She looked into his eyes and softly murmured, “We both tried to resist, but love always finds a way. You are right. He will kill you. You are his friend, and he trusted you.” She looked at him, with fiery determination. “You must go now. You can escape if you do what I tell you to do. Get on a ship. You must never come back here. I will come to you, one day.”
“What do you mean?”
“No time, they will be here soon. He will be angry, but you will be safe.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me; I’ve been through worse. I am Queen Leah,” she laughed.
She handed him one of her stones she had bound into a necklace. “I will be able to keep in touch.” She smiled. “Now go,” she urged. “The stone will protect you. Use your instinct and you will know what to do.”
She kissed him–was it for the last time? “Go my love and don’t look back.” With heavy heart, he reluctantly headed deeper into the cave that turned into a torch lit tunnel. He recognized where this would lead him and sure enough came to an unguarded security door. Ten meters past this door would be an invisible force field guarding the entrance to an underground entry to the docking bays for the ships. He entered his security code hoping it had not been disengaged. To his relief, the door opened and he ran through.
Now the forcefield. Only the twelve members of the Verone Elite could activate and cancel the force field: Kalvich, himself, and the ten other Elite warriors. Each had an individual code, known only to its owner. Kalvich would know straight away. But now, it did not matter.
He spotted a signal remote tower two meters in front of the field. There were a dozen towers spaced out around the perimeter of the Fortress’s dome. They were there to maintain the integrity of the field in case the internal control tower inside Casus Belli was ever compromised.
He heard noises behind him and knew it was too late to do anything. Then he did something that was foreign to his tactical way of thinking, something quite instinctive.
He threw the rock into the force field. It hit with a mighty CRACK! and a blinding light came zapping out like lightning. It had caused a rip in the field. Wasting no time, he leapt through the rip and scooped up the unharmed stone. He looked behind him, and the force field was in place as if nothing had happened. The stone had enabled him to escape. Leah was so right.
He entered the small lift that would take him underground. It should be easy now; no one would question him. He exited the lift heading straight to an awaiting shuttle, which would take him to the docks. Once he got on his ship, the control tower would require a flight code but he could override their security protocol and be clear before they realized what had happened.
Within two short minutes, he was at the docks and parked the shuttle. He saw a scout ship and headed towards it. So strange the dock seemed deserted. It was never deserted. Something was wrong.
Kalvich walked up from behind the ship. He had Leah in a choke hold and a gloctol against her throat. Guards surrounded him.
The Supreme Ruler’s face was contorted, dark with anger and worse, a strange, mirthless laugh emerged from his clenched teeth.
“Do you think you could betray me, and get away with it? After all these years, you still do not know who you are up against. You have ultimately turned the queen against me, and for this, you will pay…Lae Tu!”
He heard Leah screaming as the searing white hot pain of a Gloctol blast tore into his body…
Talokta jerked awake, gasping for air. His heart was thumping inside his chest. He was back to reality. He was still on his knees; his hands still touched Kate’s hands with the stones. He quickly and very gently removed them so not to wake the sleeping woman. She looked peaceful.
It was so real, he called her Leah, he had tasted forbidden fruit, but nothing escapes Kalvich. He shot him! He glanced down at his chest and checked out his body. Yes, he was still in one piece. Was it a premonition? Were the stones connecting him with Leah? His mind was racing faster than his heart. Could it be Kalvich tricking him, perhaps warning him? Or was his mind acknowledging subliminal feelings for her. He glanced at his ring to ascertain the time, the vision had only lasted for a mere few seconds, how could that be?
His many years of ingrained hardened discipline took over, and he finally calmed down. That was the first vision he had ever had in his life. It scared him, and very few things scared the great, notorious Lord Talokta.
Surely, it could not have been him. He was a fierce, cold hearted, extremely disciplined, and loyal soldier.
Nevertheless, he made a stern decision to keep mentally and emotionally distanced from Kate. It would be better for his health.
And glancing down at the peacefully sleeping woman, her shiny dark hair framing her lovely face, he understood why this decision would take all his will.
He remembered his orders and made sure her fingers were wrapped around the stones.
They were taking her deeper and deeper into the depths of total relaxation.
&nb
sp; Kate had no knowledge of the events that Talokta experienced when he made direct contact with her stone. Her mind and body both had succumbed to much needed good old fashioned slumber.
But for Talokta, he could not sleep. His mind was ruminating over the vision, trying to analyze it. The part where Kalvich had shot him played over and over in his head. Deep down it was something that would not happen…could not afford to happen.
It occurred to him that the stones somehow had linked into him. He thought only the Chosen One, Kalvich, and Cemel were physically able to make contact with the stones.
What if it was not him! What if he was seeing the vision through someone else’s eyes, and somehow spied in on the vision.
That was a bit weird.
While Leah experienced the dream world, Talokta was perched, totally preoccupied, on a chair by Kate’s bed cradling a cup of mulled wine and wondering what Kalvich had planned. Why would he let Cemel talk to her in a vision? He could not force the old man to convince her she was doing the right thing. Anyhow, the Elder Gods would step in. Maybe they would not this time, due to her somewhat fragile state of mind.
Kate stirred, and then carried on breathing deeply, in her peaceful world.
Talokta was relieved. This time there was no sweating, distress, or screaming like the previous night when the guards had roused him.
“My lord, the woman, she is screaming.”
Talokta ran to Kate’s room and found her tossing and turning, sweating profusely. She had stopped screaming, but she was talking rapidly in her sleep. He dismissed the guards and sat on the edge of her bed running his hand soothingly over her forehead. That seemed to calm her for a moment, then she screwed her face up as if in pain and began babbling, talking at a fast pace that was hard to decipher. She clearly cried out in Trimadian, “Tel mehi oh sield.” Talokta had no clue she spoke his language. Maybe subconsciously she could.
That morning, when Talokta had told Kate about her restlessness, all she could remember was dreaming about people running from an unknown enemy, urging them to go through the BSP, “Sorry, Door of Endless Light as you call it.”
She did not know where or when, only what she saw. “Yet another disjointed vision.” She stated disconsolately.
“In your dream, I heard you speak Trimadian.”
“I did? I can? What did I say?”
“You were sounding like you were yelling to others. You said, ‘Tel mehi oh sield.’”
She raised an eyebrow.
“It means leave or you will die.”
Kate had semi lied to Talokta, and hoped he could not tell. Her dream scared her. She was urging her teammates to escape through a BSP. They were under heavy attack from the Trimadians closing in on them. While she was urging them to escape, to her horror, she realized she was the one who was responsible for leading the attack. Do dreams suffer from identity problems as well?
Kate had no idea if the vision was something planted in her head, a Trimadian trick, or if it was a possible premonition, or more than likely, a result of stress. She hoped to God she was not responsible for sending her team to their doom. In her dream, she had a subliminal feeling of weird omnipotence again, and it had calmed her. She knew intellectually it was evil, at least something that was not normal. She had suffered mixed feelings, she felt ashamed. It was so irresistible. It felt so good. She felt like nothing could touch her, as if she were immortal. Ever since she was getting closer to Heliostronus, her weird feelings were getting more pronounced. Her visions had come alive again, mainly through dreams at night, but once more it was getting harder to tell the difference between a vision and reality. Would it get to the point where she could not tell?
What the hell was happening to her? She decided on one thing though, she was going to keep all this to herself. She suspected the more she told Talokta, the more chance he would be sharing it with his Supreme Ruler.