Uncharted

  Well, so much for a mysterious stranger challenging my claim to the plants—that’s a relief, anyway.

  Terex kept his blaster ready just in case and walked slowly and cautiously, but the long, straight corridor he found himself in was empty. Empty and completely silent, except for the echoes of his own boots on the stone floor and the soft hush of air through the ventilation system. He thought of what Valdor had told him.

  “I believe that wherever the little healer is being grown it will be only sparsely guarded or possibly even completely automated,” he’d said. “I don’t think Krumf will trust anyone to be in the vicinity of his precious regenerating plants for long.”

  So far it appeared that Valdor was right. There was no one and nothing to be seen until he reached the end of the long hall and found himself in a control area with a bank of monitors and a large, rectangular window in one wall.

  The window showed another room—a much vaster one than he had yet seen down here. In it were rows and rows of plants, growing in rich black soil. Overhead was a system of softly glowing lights, though Terex couldn’t see any watering system, which seemed strange. There was a long, straight mechanical arm with teeth sticking out of it, almost like a giant comb affixed to the ceiling, however. Terex wasn’t sure of its purpose—maybe something to do with the harvesting?

  The controls appeared to be fully automated—a completely stable environment where the plants could grow unmolested and untouched by anyone for however many years it took until they reached maturity. In fact, there was even a harvest button which was blinking green on the panel, right beside a small white fingerprint scanner and a retinal scanning device. Presumably all he would have to do would be to push the button and scan his print and retinal pattern to watch the plants be collected in an orderly fashion.

  Terex’s hand hovered over the button…but then he stopped. He wanted to get a closer look at the little healer plants before he ordered them harvested. Besides, he wanted to pluck a small bunch to preserve and take with him to the palace. Leaving the control room, he stepped into the vast, dimly lit room filled with soil and plants and silence.

  The little healer plants had dusky purple leaves and were about three meters in height, standing in quiet, orderly rows. Each one was just one long stalk about as thick as one of his fingers. At the end of almost every grayish-purple stalk was a single blossom like the one he’d put into the sphere to locate this place—silvery white with veins of bright purple. The blossoms nodded quietly in an artificial breeze sent through the ventilation system and looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.

  “They need absolute silence and a perfectly controlled environment to grow,” Valdor had told him before he left to find the plants. “They’re a genetically engineered organism and incredibly delicate. That’s why Krumf hides them away so carefully. That and the fact that without their distilled essence he will die.”

  “I don’t understand why he doesn’t simply plant a whole other crop of them—hundreds of crops,” Terex had said. “That way he could have as much of their distilled essence as he wanted.”

  “And risk them being discovered and used to cure the Need?” Valdor had shaken his head. “No, he’s too cautious for that. Besides, there’s a genetic instability which keeps more than one crop from growing at a time. So the field of little healers that you find will be the only one.”

  “But even if I can harvest the blossoms before he does, what can I do with them? How can I spread their healing properties over all of Nixelle Prime-Beta?” Terex had asked, spreading his hands.

  “I believe there is a distillery close to where the plants are grown but it won’t be necessary to use it. The blossoms are water soluble,” Valdor replied. “If you can just get them into the cloud system around the planet—even a few hundred over the major cities and urban complexes—their healing properties will enter the water supply.”

  “Spreading the cure for the Need over the entire planet!” Terex had looked at the other male admiringly. “You’ve really got this all worked out!”

  “I’ve been scheming and planning ever since I got home and saw what Krumf has done,” Valdor admitted. “And Krumf bragged to me about most of this himself—knowing full well I couldn’t do anything about it because I didn’t have the right prints and retinal scan to activate anything even if I was able to find where he’d hidden his private garden.” A grimace of distaste crossed his features. “He likes to rub in the fact that he wiped out the Kindred—that I’m a relic, the last of my line.”

  “You won’t be the last,” Terex had vowed. “Not after I spread the cure for the Need over the entire planet.”

  “The Goddess grant it may be so,” Valdor had said.

  “The Goddess grant it may be so,” Terex echoed now, speaking in a whisper, so as not to disturb the delicate blossoms. Before he harvested the little healers, he wanted to preserve some to take with him. He didn’t intend to wait for the cure to the Need to get into the water system—he was going to give them to Elaina and the other females of the harem who had been living in misery and bondage to Krumf for so long, to be certain they were healed immediately.

  Terex walked the length of the huge room, looking for the right bunch of blossoms to take with him. He had put away his blaster and taken out a long knife with a curving blade which Valdor had given him, much like the ceremonial sword he had worn with his Nixian court clothes before Krumf had discovered his ruse.

  He had just discovered the perfect bunch, at the far end of the room, when he saw something that made him frown. In the very back of the last row of plants, a whole swatch of little healers had been destroyed, their dusky purple stems bent and broken, their blossoms torn or missing completely.

  Terex re-sheathed the dagger at his hip and frowned at the wanton destruction. What or who had done this? Had it been the bloody-faced male he’d seen lying dead by the airlock? Had he been injured? Perhaps searching for some healing which had come too late? Terex didn’t know the extent of the healing properties of the plants before him, but he doubted they could cure massive internal bleeding or skull fractures. They seemed to be more geared towards the healing of diseases rather than traumatic injuries.

  As he was bending over the broken plants, considering the possibilities, someone slipped a massive arm around his neck and a deep but somehow familiar voice whispered in his ear,

  “Well Commander Terex, I knew you were looking for me. Isn’t it lucky we found each other before it was too late?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Let me go! Get the fuck off me!” Terex struggled against the massive arm around his throat, choking the life from him. Whoever it was that had him, they must be eight or nine feet tall and built on a massive scale. The hand he could see from the corner of his eye was bigger than his head.

  Suddenly he knew who it was.

  “Two?” His voice was tight and hoarse, a result of the lack of oxygen as the muscular arm cut off his air.

  “You guessed!” Mocking laughter filled his ears and the massive arm relaxed enough for him to breathe, although not quite enough to escape. He couldn’t reach his blaster but Terex thought of trying for the dagger he’d put back in the sheathe on his hip just moments before being caught, but he knew he’d have to be subtle to get it without the giant behind him noticing. Slowly, he began reaching for it.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “How did you know I was looking for you?”

  “Haven’t you Kindred learned by now? I have spies everywhere.” Two’s scion—grown in the flesh vats of the Scourge Father Ship—gave a high pitched giggle, which sounded extremely strange coming from the huge chest.

  “If you know that I’m hunting you, then you know I’m seeking revenge,” he said, still reaching for his knife. He had his hand on the hilt now but he wanted to distract the huge scion before he drew it and went for the kill.

  “Yes, yes, revenge…” Two’s scion giggled again. “I suppose you want to kill me.”


  “As a matter of fact, I do!” Terex drew his curving dagger and thrust it, hilt-deep, into the guts of the scion behind him.

  To his dismay, the scion merely grunted and the arm around his neck was not withdrawn.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.” Two’s scion pulled the curving dagger casually from his belly and tossed it aside to clatter on the floor. “Especially since I’m already dead—or as good as dead.”

  “What in the Seven Hells do you mean?” Terex demanded. “You seem alive enough to me.”

  “I am—but only for a little while longer. Look.”

  Then he raised his other huge arm, the one not currently wrapped around Terex’s throat, and held out his hand.

  At first Terex thought the hand was covered in a green glove…then he realized the pearly gray skin was simply written over in an intricate pattern of green lines…and those lines were eating into the skin, almost like wires. In fact, the index finger, which was as long as Terex’s entire hand, had almost completely rotted, showing bare black bone beneath the tattered flesh.

  “What in the Seven Hells?” he demanded, repulsed by the sight. “What did you do to yourself, Two?”

  “You know I grew this body in the flesh tanks of the Father Ship,” the scion told him, breathing his story into Terex’s ear as though they were lovers instead of captor and captive. “And then I went to the Scourge home world—the AllFather left so many lovely toys lying about, you see. I just had to explore some.”

  “What did you find?” Terex asked, although he thought he was starting to have an idea.

  “I found a kusax.” The hand was withdrawn and suddenly there was a knife at his throat, drawing ticklish, itching patterns just under Terex’s ear. “I pricked the tip of my finger on it, just like the princess in that Earth fairy tale,” Two murmured in his ear.

  “Gods!” Terex froze, hardly daring to breathe as the knife tip skittered delicately over his vulnerable skin.

  A kusax was a five sided triangular knife the Scourge—ancient enemies of the Kindred—had brought with them into battle. It was made of the evil black metal found only on their home world and had a glowing green tip which could poison the soul and rot the body of any victim it scratched.

  “I see you recognize my new toy for what it is,” Two murmured, still dragging the sharp tip idly along Terex’s throat. He hadn’t broken the skin…yet. “You wouldn’t think I would have a soul to poison, being in a vat grown body as I am—but apparently I do,” he went on. “I sought a cure, of course—through my spies I heard your prophesy of ‘the little healer which cannot fail.’ And so I followed you into the Blind and found this place long before you did. Not that it did me any good.”

  Terex looked at the decimated healer plants with their broken stalks and missing blossoms. “You tried to heal yourself by eating the flowers?”

  “Correct! You should win a prize for your amazing powers of deduction.” The giant behind him giggled again and then abruptly became serious. “Only the blossoms didn’t heal me. ‘The little healer that cannot fail’ failed me.” The deep voice was a snarl now. “Maybe if I had time to use the distillery attached to this place and boil down the essence of a million or two million blossoms, it might have worked. But I fear that my time…has run out.”

  The knife tip moved away from his skin and the arm around Terex’s neck weakened just a little.

  “You’re only supposed to last twenty-four to forty-eight solar hours after a wound from a kusax before the soul poisoning reaches your heart and becomes fatal,” Two’s scion remarked. “But this body is big and strong—I’ve lasted considerably longer than that. I killed the guard on duty and meant to wait and kill you, too. However, my strength…is at…an end…”

  The big body behind his slumped and the arm around his neck weakened. Seeing his chance, Terex pushed hard, lunging away from the giant scion to get free just as it toppled to the ground.

  “Gods!” He found that he was breathing hard, his heart pounding at the narrow escape. He stared down at the mountainous body before him. Two’s scion was lying on its face in the dirt of the plants he’d mutilated, the tiny, five sided kusax tipped with poisonous green still clutched in one enormous hand.

  Only the tip of the dagger wasn’t green—not anymore.

  Red—that’s blood—a drop of blood! Reflexively, he put his hand to his throat, where the knife’s deadly tip had been pressed.

  His fingertips came away bloody.

  “Damn,” Terex whispered, staring down at his red-smeared fingers.

  Suddenly the body in the dirt before him began to rumble with laughter. With a massive effort, Two’s scion rolled over and for the first time Terex saw his face.

  The features had been carved away by the curving green lines. They covered almost every inch of the gray, pearlescent Scourge skin, eating inward like the poison they were. The red on black eyes were dull…almost dead.

  “Did I get you?” The giant giggled, sounding weirdly like Two even though this body was so much larger than the ones he had occupied before. “I was hoping I would.”

  “You bastard!” Terex scrubbed his bloody fingers against the side of his trousers, wanting to deny what had just happened. But already he could feel the poison spreading and knew his days were numbered.

  “You have a choice now, you know,” Two said conversationally, though his voice was growing weaker by the minute. “You can harvest the blossoms and distill them into a single concentrated dose to cure yourself…or you can keep your promise to that idiot you were impersonating and take them back to the Nixian planet to try and cure the females of their Need. Oh yes,” he said, obviously seeing Terex’s surprised look. “I’ve been keeping track. I told you, I have spies everywhere. So tell me—what are you going to do?”

  “To start with, I’m going to do what I set out on this mission for.” Terex drew his blaster and pointed it between the scion’s eyes. “Say goodbye, Two. You’ve troubled my people long enough.”

  “Yes, I’ve had a good run, haven’t I?” The giant laughed weakly, his rotten features sagging grotesquely as he did. “But just because you’re finally seeing the last of me doesn’t mean the Kindred will never be troubled again. In fact, I happen to know of a very nasty individual who’s aware of you now.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re just trying to delay the inevitable,” Terex accused him.

  “Think what you like. But have you ever heard of the Hive?”

  “No.” Terex cocked his blaster. “Should I have?”

  “Probably not. They live on this side of the Blind, after all—what those idiot Nixians call Night’s Window.” Two laughed weakly again. “And they were never aware of the Kindred or that little planet, Earth you protect so obsessively before, either. But they are now…” He laughed and the laugh turned into a cough that rattled and shook the entire oversized body.

  “Two, you bastard!”

  “Think of it as my parting gift to you.” Two waved one hand weakly, the blood-tipped kusax glinting in the soft overhead grow lights. “Think of it as—”

  Terex shot him.

  The blast blew the scion’s huge head apart like a ripe melon. Black blood, fragments of skull, and rotten green brain matter splattered the dirt he was lying in.

  Terex cursed and jumped back, barely avoiding the putrid spray. He put a hand over his nose, gagging at the rotten smell that filled the air. Gods, if he’d known of the stench that would result, he might have shot the scion in the chest instead. But he’d been so intent on stopping the mouth from moving, on never hearing that cursed voice again…

  And yet, he still heard it in his head.

  “You have a choice now…You can harvest the blossoms and distill them into a single concentrated dose to cure yourself…or you can keep your promise to that idiot you were impersonating and take them back to the Nixian planet to try and cure the females of their Need.”

  Terex felt for the small wound on his thro
at and then looked at the chronometer he wore on his wrist. Whatever he did, he had to do quickly. Krumf’s men would be here to harvest the little healer blossoms very shortly.

  Gods, what was he going to do?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Elaina! Come quickly—to the small golden gate where you first met me!”

  “What is it?” Elaina looked at her friend in surprise as Zerana grabbed her by the hand and dragged her through the harem.

  “Come—you’ll see!” Zerana’s lovely triple-ringed eyes were shining with excitement and she pulled Elaina faster and faster until they were almost running.

  “What—” Elaina began but just then they finally got to the small golden gate at the very back of the harem where she’d first seen Zerana chained up and miserable. There, on the other side of the golden curling metal was a familiar face. The big Kindred on the other side of the gate was wearing unfamiliar clothes and a long cloak with the collar pulled up, hiding his neck and most of his face from view.

  “Master Valdor?” Elaina frowned uncertainly. “Or is it…could it be…?”

  The warrior pressed his left thumb to his left temple and for just a moment, his eyes went from triple-ringed to a deep blue that was almost purple.

  “Lavana,” he said gruffly. “I’ve brought you something.” He held up a huge bunch of fragrant flowers with long purple stalks and silvery white blossoms.

  The use of his pet nickname for her and the sight of his real eyes convinced Elaina.

  “Terex!” She could have wept for joy. “What are you doing here? How did you escape? And how are we going to get out of here?”

  “I have a plan in place,” he murmured. “Things are shortly going to become extremely chaotic here in the palace and indeed, all over this world. When they do, be ready to run. I’ll be waiting for you near the side entrance of the harem. In the meantime, I need you to hand these out quietly to the females. But first—here.”