Chapter 39 - Kidnapped
The terminus of the long-range beam appeared as a glowing purple circle that revealed a faint outline of the transmitter grid at the palace. With the end of the storm and the cessation of the rain, it was now safe to travel past the city. The beam was powerful enough for groups of people, so Tymos, Kryslie, their attendants and two security personnel were to be the first to return to the Estate. When everyone used their personal transmitters to tap the beam, the attendants and security men disappeared, but Tymos and Kryslie remained.
“Tymos, try your transmitter again,” Kryslie suggested.
Tymos tried again, unsuccessfully. The security men and attendants returned. Tymoros looked sternly at his children, but his look relented as he sensed their sincere bewilderment. He approached them, adjusted the setting of his own transmitter and attempted to take them home. He materialized for a moment on the transmitter grid, and seeing he was alone, returned.
“It is not our intention to be difficult, Father,” Tymos said seriously. He did not want to return yet, but he had not even thought of trying to remain.
“Is it possible for our subconscious to prevent us from transmitting?” Kryslie asked. “Or there is still lingering interference from the storm?”
“Yes, to the first question,” Tymoros admitted with no explanation. “No for the second, my transmitter is not affected.”
“I cannot think of any reason not to return,” Tymos spoke back. “Krys?”
“Nor I,” Kryslie agreed. Yet she flicked a thought at her twin. “Must we encounter the aliens again?” She went on in verbal speech. “Something held us here. Father, will we all have to continue home by carriage?”
“It seems that we have no choice,” Tymoros decided. “We will camp here again tonight. Aldiv, send a message back to the Estate to advise Governor Reslic of our change of plan.”
Tymos and Kryslie slipped away from their father and joined Jonko and Keleb.
“What happened,” Keleb asked. “Why are we now going to stay here?”
Tymos simply shook his head. Finally, he said, “They could not transmit us home!”
“What does that mean?” Jonko asked directly.
“It seems it was not our choice to make. There is a reason, as yet undefined, for us to remain here,” Tymos shrugged slightly.
“Perhaps we must make a stand here,” Kryslie proposed. “Had we continued this morning according to our itinerary we would have been in that city surrounded by aliens.”
“They will come after us!” Tymos said with sudden conviction. “Tonight!”
“We will be with you,” Jonko promised. “Kel and I.”
Tymos grinned. “And father gave Kryslie and I two of the personal force fields those infiltrators wore. We should be fine too, and I want a chance to get at those aliens.”
“They know some of our strengths,” Kryslie reminded her twin. “And some of our defences.”
“Some, not all,” Tymos argued quietly. “If they do use that green force field, I bet the force shield should counter it.”
“That force field didn’t affect us,” Keleb reminded them. “But why would you let yourself be caught?”
“To get them to take us to their base,” Kryslie told him. “We still have our bio-monitors – we can be tracked. And we can learn things about them.”
“Dangerous – they might simply kill you,” Jonko warned.
“I don’t think so,” Tymos gave his considered opinion. “We are high enough in rank to be valuable. Listen – if they come for us, you can follow. Eight of the guards have these force screens too, so they shouldn’t be affected, but the aliens may be expecting such protection and try something else. Our idea is to pretend to be helpless and later overcome our attackers and work from there.”
“I don’t like it,” Jonko admitted. “Nor will your father.”
Kryslie did not admit to a shiver of premonition. “They will not kill us. They still think us naive, pampered, protected children. I think the alien leader that escaped will want to try to turn us against father. But he can have no idea who he is dealing with.”
Jonko recalled the hours just past. “No…” he agreed.
The camp on the hill was quiet. Guards watched all the approaches, and listened for aircraft. They did not discount cloaked ships approaching, but even with sound muffled, they would be heard in the quiet of the night. The outer ring of guards, outside of the protective dome, faced away from the camp so that the faint purple glow of the shield did not affect their night vision. A second ring of guards, inside the screen, faced inwards.
The royal party was small, the king, his two heirs, the two wards of Governor Xyron, twelve servants and one Elder. The other Elders had remained in Losk to oversee the last of the judicial matter. The security contingent, doubled since the afternoon, was forty strong.
Within the tents, all was quiet. Kryslie listened to Delia’s faint breathing, and Jonko’s occasional movement. He didn’t speak to her, they were both listening. Kryslie let herself recall Delia’s scandalised comments when Jonko had insisted on sleeping in her tent. She accepted it when it was phrased as extra protection.
Two tents away, she knew Tymos and Keleb were also awake. Morov had chosen to put his sleeping cot across the entrance to the round tent, but he too slept.
Kryslie felt the first faint prickling of the hair on her neck and then an intense chill – like a wave of cold water passing over her. The almost silence seemed to become more intense. Her mind registered that her wrist timer had stopped its quiet tick.
“What was that?” Jonko asked.
“I don’t know, but I am sure they are com…”
“What?” Jonko started to sit up, wondering why Kryslie had stopped talking in mid word. He heard no reply, and rolled off his cot to walk over to her. In his hand was a small portable light, and he opened it a slit. He saw that Kryslie’s mouth was open as if still trying to speak. Her eyes glittered as if she was trying to signal the rest of the message. He didn’t need telling. That one glimpse told him what was happening. He returned to his cot and quickly covered himself, feigning sleep. Through a narrow slit in his almost closed eyes, he watched a faint shadow pass around the tent. The silhouette was furtive…definitely not one of the guards. He had thought that the glow of the shield would betray their position, thought the senior guard explained that only Tymoreans could see it. Now he found it useful.
A sudden realisation made his heart race. He had to force himself to relax and keep his breathing even. The force shields, the protective dome had not stopped the aliens! He reminded himself that the aliens would have been ready for defences, as a shadow opened the tent flap. Only the faintest movement or air betrayed the fact that the shadow had entered. A faint light examined each of the sleepers.
Jonko closed his eyes when the light came in his direction, and opened them again when he heard a faint rustle of cloth. A small area of light shone down a black clad leg. The intruder had the light hooked to a belt, and it moved as he bent down to lift a limp and unresisting Kryslie over his shoulder.
Jonko watched as the shadow retreated and rose to peep through the tent flap. He felt an adrenaline rush as he began to follow the retreating figures. They never once looked around. He came out of the tent in a low crouch and could see the man with Kryslie striding down the hill. He took in the absence of the purple glow, and the green one that replaced it. He saw movement from Tymos’s tent as Keleb emerged. The three guards he could see were limp on the ground.
With a faint whistle, Jonko attracted Keleb’s attention. He gestured, indicating he would go right in a flanking movement. Keleb began to run left. As they past the limp guards, each took a weapon, and continued to run, adrenaline kicking in as they began to follow the abductors.
The aliens were arrogant and confident that no one would see them. They never looked around and went in a straight line, not even trying to keep to cover. Jonko made use of that, and put trees between him and his quarry, able to increase his speed. He came unexpectedly to an open area with dim lights outlining six small ships. He came to a sudden stop. The area was not deserted. He counted twelve figures moving around – watchful and alert. Trying to sneak on board one of the ships would be suicidal. He watched the ships until he heard the abductors trotting closer. He aimed his weapon at the sound, and fired at the legs of the abductor as he passed the tree.
Nothing happened.
He tossed the useless weapon aside, and prepared to pursue and leap. He had to stop again. Two armed figures followed the abductor, looking for followers.
The nearest ship powered up, its outer lights becoming brighter. Jonko watched helplessly as Kryslie was bundled into the ship, and two figures followed. He heard the air seal slam shut.
Further away, a second ship powered up.
“Jon! Kel!” Jonko heard in his head, like when Tymos had tried telepathy on him.
“Listening,” he thought tersely, hoping Tymos could read it.
“Can you see the picture?”
“Yes!” It was vivid. A glowing white dome, with its base hidden by trees.
“Go there! It’s the base ship. Northeast, twenty-nine miles. Summon power before you transmit. We’ll need your help. Hurry!”
The two powered-up ships blasted upwards one after the other. When they were at twice the tree height, they flashed away in horizontal flight. Jonko glanced at the stars, to estimate the direction – north-east, just as Tymos had said. Two more of the six ships followed.
Keleb crept up next to Jonko, and faintly whistled a tune they both knew. “Nothing works,” Keleb whispered. “Will the transmitters?”
Jonko drew his into his palm, the green pin light glowed brightly. “Yes,” he confirmed. “You heard Tymos?”
“Yes. We follow?”
“I’ll go now. You wait to see what the last two ships are waiting for. They had to have had a different green field on us, and I think they must have sent an EM pulse first to kill the shields and the guards’ weapons.”
“Get going!” Keleb urged. “I’ll be right along.”
Jonko wasted no more time – he keyed into the transmitter the distance and direction and pressed activate. He felt a subtle tingle as the repellor field pushed him away from something. He materialised amongst trees.
“Damn!” he thought. “I still didn’t have the range.”
He waited for the transmitter to charge again and recalled Tymos’s directions to summon power. He tried again with a similar result. As he waited for the next recharge, he heard the muffled sound of a ship flying overhead.
“At least I am going in the right direction,” he told himself, as he tried not to worry about his friends.
Keleb crouched in the cover of bushes and saw four heavily laden figures move into the light of the two remaining ships that were powered up, ready to lift. He couldn’t make out what each pair of figures carried, but the loads were heavy, and each was hefted into a ship accompanied by stifled grunts and curses.
“Odds on,” Keleb thought to himself. “Those things caused the green glow or the EM pulse. However, I don’t think they will let me look at them.”
He didn’t wait for the two ships to lift, but stood up to follow Jonko. He gave a brief thought to going and alerting the camp, but the guards would still be useless. During the attack on the estate, it took most people about ten minutes to recover from the green force weapon. Right now, time was vital and Tymos and Kryslie needed their help. He transmitted along the line Jonko followed, and he too discovered the need to travel in stages.
At the camp of the Royal Party, the green glow had disappeared when the aliens had begun to dismantle the generator. After about five minutes, the residual effects of the field of force began to wear off and the unconscious guards began to pick themselves off the ground. Two began hunting for their weapons.
As soon as he could move again, Tymoros ran from his tent and checked the one next to it. He encountered a woozy Morov, stumbling out.
“Tymos?” Tymoros demanded.
“Not there,” the servant said, fear for his charge evident in his widened eyes. “Nor is Keleb, Sire.”
“Princess Kryslie is not her tent either, nor young Jonko,” Aldiv reported from the other direction.
The first guards to wake up stood unsteadily and activated light sources and began to look around.
Clamping down on his fear and sense of helplessness, Tymoros began to give commands. “Contact the palace to have an air patrol sent up. Take the lights and see if you can find tracks. Find out what happened to the force screen.”
He glanced at his personal force screen and saw it was not operational. He toggled the switch but felt no tingle of activation. He was not surprised when the guard returned to report the communications system was dead, and most of the weapons inoperative.
Full of very bitter anger, Tymoros sent a thought to Reslic. He felt his fellow Governor wake and become instantly alert. Reslic heard the report and promised immediate reinforcements and air support.
He could find only one positive; the two terran halflings were also missing. The aliens could have no suspicion that they had not been overcome. The two missing weapons confirmed that they were acting freely. He hoped they would not rely on the weapons – the high tech stunners would be as dead as the rest.
As he thought that, he remembered that the transmitters would not have been affected. That was something the aliens wouldn’t know. The transmitters did not contain electronics as most species knew them. Instead, they had crystalline circuits, tuned to mind frequencies.
Jono and Perrin Reslic materialised through the purple glow of a long-range beam terminus. Behind them, a troop of guards and scouts came through and deployed ready for orders. Perrin gave directions as his brother spoke to Tymoros.
“You can do nothing here, Ty,” Reslic said, placing a gentle, sympathetic hand on his friend. “Get the servants back to the estate. You should return too.”
“No!” Tymoros refused, his anger simmering. “They are laughing at us. Telling us that we are weak and ineffectual, and that they can do as they like to us, go where they like. They came into my tent, checked I was there and left. They want me to suffer.”
“Ty, they only think they are moving freely,” Jono said intently.
“They have – my – children!”
“Yes, but your children are not what the aliens think they are,” Reslic stressed. “You and I know what Tymos and Kryslie are capable of – you saw it last afternoon. They killed, and they understood what they did. They are strong willed, and that is no longer a liability now that they are in full control of their power.”
“They do not have experience,” Tymoros argued.
“They have shared our minds and our experience. How they use that knowledge will be uniquely their doing, and I would not like to be the being that irritates them,” Reslic suggested. “Nor have we run out of options to find them.”
Tymoros seemed to slump. He did not want to admit Reslic was right. He should return to the estate and let those best-trained get to work. He had Llaimos to protect.
Although still unable to make his body move, Tymos had realized at once when the mental numbing had gone. His first instinct was to tell his friends where they were being taken. The flight plan and destination were clear in the pilot’s mind. Kryslie, as ever in tune with him, reminded him to mention how to extend the range of their personal transmitters. They were about to link and try to reach their father when a briefly glimpsed alien touched something to their necks. Blackness engulfed them as the rapid acting drug made them unconscious.
Eventually Tymos realized that he was again awake, but that his body would still not obey him. It was an improvement that he could feel the hard rocky ground beneath him. Then he became aware of the morning sun on his face and a chill throughout his body. Moving his eyes, showed him that he was in the focal point of an area of force and he could just make out the green aura.
“Krys?” Tymos thought mentally, for she wasn’t in his line of vision.
“I’m behind you Tymos,” Kryslie reassured him. “I have been awake for a while and I was afraid that they might have put the stronger field on us again because you would not answer me.”
“What stronger field,” Tymos tried to recall.
“At the camp…that field was not like the one used at the estate. I think the earlier intruders used a portable field, and it didn’t stop telepathy,” Kryslie began to explain. She sensed Tymos’s confusion.
“Jon and Kel are around, but can’t get to us yet. There are too many guards and for some reason they have us in the open. Kel saw aliens bringing bulky equipment back to the ships. He and Jon also think they sent an EM pulse to neutralise the guards’ weapons and the defence shield. I think they had the portable field on us until the big generator was set up.”
“How does that help us now?” Tymos asked. “We are stuck here like we were in glue.”
“I can’t fight this by myself, but we are stronger together. Try to sit up, Tym.”
Kryslie was herself fighting the lethargy induced by the alien force field. Her hands were glowing purple.
There was no mistaking it - the power they now fought against was alien and evil. Now two minds joined to a single purpose. Kryslie and Tymos dragged themselves together until they sat, each supporting the other, and then had to rest as even that much defiance had left them drained of energy. They could not draw in more from around them.
“You said Jon and Kel were around,” Tymos thought.
“I haven’t seen Keleb, but Jonko is in the cover of the trees that I can see at the edge of this open area.”
“Company,” Tymos warned mentally. “Must have seen us moving.”
Kryslie looked at the approaching group through her brother’s mind. She could study them without their awareness.
“Arrogant,” she murmured mentally. “Notice how his clothing mimics father’s robes of state, but in those ghastly shades of green?”
His clothes were elegant, a tunic over trousers in dark khaki green silk. The edges were trimmed with black and there were odd decorations on the left breast.
When the leader of the group strode closer, Kryslie studied his face. His facial structure and expression reminded her of the Tymorean Governors. His hair though, was light brown – a shade predominant amongst Tymorean commoners. His eyes, like those of the younger alien, had no white. She felt a touch of a mind on her mental shields and then she identified the alien. She had fought him when the aliens had attacked the Royal Estate.
He stopped and looked at them for what seemed like a long time.
“Your defiance, puny as it was, has shown me that you are more powerful than I expected,” he told them without preamble. “However, your power will not be sufficient to let you escape. I might say that nothing would delight me more than to kill you right now, but I want to learn more about you. I particularly want to know how your accursed father managed to keep your existence secret for so long. That, I will find out.” There was an anticipatory smile on his face.
“Don’t expect to see your fool of a father again,” he taunted further. “He should never have taken you away from the protection of the Estate. We may have failed to take you from there but here you are – helpless in my control!” He stalked around to look at Kryslie.
“Yes! Completely powerless,” he emphasized, watching her with suppressed hatred. “The two of you will pay for the loss of eleven of my men. Your little brother – he’s as good as dead too. No, on reflection, he’s young enough to be moulded. I will train him to lead our armies!” He seemed to find that idea a delicious joke.
“Don’t underestimate our Father,” Tymos warned, finding he was able to speak. He decided not to mention the other Governors.
“Oh, I don’t! I have his measure, I know how he thinks and I can out manoeuvre him. It was prophesised that his children would endanger our plans to control our ancestral world – I have enjoyed making sure that it wasn’t so. Twenty years we have been preparing for this invasion.”
“This isn’t your world anymore,” Kryslie denied.
“Our people were forced to leave here millennia ago,” he told her coldly. “We were lucky to find an uninhabited planet we called Aerdna – which means sanctuary…”
Memories of memories surfaced and Tymos said, “Your ancestors chose to leave. They went with mutual accord and took with them a terrain-reformer.”
“I do not need a wet-eared whelp claiming to know Aeronite history!” the alien leader said harshly.
“Obviously it is not such a sanctuary now,” Tymos remarked.
“Or they wouldn’t be trying to run home to their mummies,” Kryslie added, knowing she would irritate the alien. “They didn’t know how to look after their own planet, so they want to come and wreck ours. You should be trying to find who caused the fluctuations in Aerdna’s orbit, not starting a war you will lose. Your people have only a few more years before the problem reaches critical levels.”
“You will not preach to me! We did not cause the problem. We will regain control of this world and bring our people here!”
Kryslie sensed his anger, and realised his mind shields had slipped. She saw the image of hooded figures and sensed that another race was helping the Aeronites.
“You are deluded,” Tymos told him. “Coming here isn’t the answer.”
“Pah! We have the right to be here and you children…can’t stop me.”
“You think!” Kryslie taunted, and received a withering glare.
The alien switched to his own language, but continued to watch Kryslie.
“I won’t keep them here any longer,” he said casually to the surrounding guards. “It’s obvious that the Governors are too stupid to find them. Take them to the ship’s detention level, Cell Theta. It’s all prepared for them! There’s no need to be gentle!”
He smiled nastily, sure that his prisoners had understood him. He watched as his commands were obeyed and he led the procession back to his base ship.
Eight of the encircling guards touched something belted to their waist. The items seemed like flat boxes. Each then took an unresisting arm or leg of one of the prisoners in an extremely tight grip
Some of the remaining guards preceded the group the rest followed.
“We must escape,” Tymos stressed in his mind.
“If we were free to move we could overpower these guards, but they have the portable field generators,” Kryslie thought back at her brother. “And our borrowed protective screen generators don’t seem to be working. I assume too, that our bio-monitors are also inactive or out of range.”
“Can you see Jon?” Tymos asked feeling his arms being stretched and jolted.
“No, but I assume he will follow. Can you see anything of the ship…?”
Kryslie stopped thinking at her brother suddenly. “I think my arm has been dislocated,” she finally continued.
She felt Tymos in her mind and the pain began to numb.
“Thanks,” she though with relief.
“It isn’t fixed,” he warned her.
“I know, Tym. That bastard has it in for us!” she commented. “That’s the one that escaped from the Estate. He’s not just after us on principle, it’s personal.”
Tymos gave a wordless mental acknowledgement.
“All I could see before was a white dome above the trees,” he thought back – referring to his sister’s earlier question. “I don’t know if it was the ship or a visual distortion of it.”
“We will undoubtedly find out,” Kryslie thought. “However I do not wish to be on it when they decide to blast off.”
“No!” Tymos agreed lapsing into silence and watching patches of sky through the treetops as they were being carried. He tried to use pain-numbing techniques on his own arms and legs with only minimal success.
Jonko hadn’t understood the alien leader’s commands but they had soon become obvious. When the last of the rear guards had entered the trees, Jonko ran swiftly and silently across the clearing and caught up to the group. In the dimness of the trees, the guards carrying his friends were visible by the green glow around them; which was invisible in the patches of bright sunlight. The guards not carrying the prisoners were carefully keeping back out of the range of the force field.
Jonko waited for his chance and it came when one of the guards dropped back. What ever his intention had been, he didn’t get a chance to do it because Jonko launched a swift and deadly attack. He quickly pulled the body off the track, stripped it of the brown uniform, and pulled that on over his own clothes. With the dead alien’s weapon in hand and helmet visor over his face, he sprinted after the others but pulled up a short way behind and started scanning both sides of the track. He reminded himself to keep his eyes half closed, if he raised the visor, so that there was less chance of the aliens spotting the white in his eyes.
The distance from the clearing to the ship was about a mile and when the group had emerged from the trees, he saw the white distortion field was actually spherical in shape. Aliens were