Reni's Trial by Fire Read online

  He looked around and asked, “Does anyone who hasn’t peed on me want ice-cream? And maybe something more than that to eat?”

  The children started after him, but Donovan coughed sharply, and the children came to a halt and turned to look at him.

  “Alright, troops, we’re guests here, so best behavior. I have to go back down and pick up a few more people, but I’ll see you soon. Until I do, this fine young man holding the puppy is your commander, okay?”

  The children managed various forms of salutes before charging off down the hallway after the young officer, who was putting on a big show of trying to remember all their names.

  “Bob? Bob? Bill? Bob? Bill?”

  Reni looked at Donovan curiously. “Who are we going to pick up?” He thought they’d cleared the town, and only the last of the peace-keeping forces remained.

  Donovan stared at him in silence. Finally, “Are all your people blue?”

  “Yes, it’s a lovely color, isn’t it?”

  “Uhuh. There were two blue ones who were servants at one of the merchant’s houses, but the damn merchants ran and left them to be taken, just before your ship got here.”

  All of a sudden the game playing was over.

  “Who took them, and where did they go? What information do you have?”

  “Do you have a map?”

  “Real time photo-map?”

  “Perfect.”

  ‘Sari, I need you in the small transport bay right now.’

  They enlarged the planet’s photo-map on the wall, and Donovan did some quick measurements and calculations. When Sari came in the big man looked startled, and obviously debated whether or not he should say something.

  “What?” Sari stared back at him.

  “Well, just, do you have a twin?”

  “You mean we all look alike to you?”

  Donovan looked annoyed. “No, I mean one of the ones I’m going back down for looks like he could be your brother, although thinner, a lot more tired. But for a moment, I felt, I don’t know, something …”

  Reni and Sari stared at each other for a second, and then Sari said, ‘Gods, could it be? My younger sibling Dena was one of the ones taken …’

  ‘We’ll bring him back, whoever he is. I’m feeling a pull, maybe he’s my beloved? That would explain a lot …’

  He turned back to Donovan. “You know this country. How many people do we need, and what in the way of weapons?”

  “You’re a hospital ship, aren’t you?”

  “Just for the moment. Our larger transport bay is still an emergency ward. But I can have one hundred warriors ready to go while you’re trying to count that high.”

  “Good to know, but we can’t. They’ll kill their prisoners if they think they’re being attacked by any kind of force. Guerilla tactics, that’s what we need. Just two people and what we can carry.”

  “What about three teams of two – scouting, diversion and extraction?”

  “I like the way you think. You got any weapons on this fancy ship?”

  The contents of the weapon lockers rendered Donovan speechless for a brief minute, and then his face lit up with happiness at the selection available. Reni picked out what he needed and watched as the big man stroked various guns and launchers and murmured lovingly to them.

  “How many prisoners, hostages, whatever you want to call them, do they have altogether, do you know?” Reni asked.

  “Not sure. I was trying to get them all to safety, but everything went to hell pretty quick. Maybe ten or fifteen, including your two. Mostly women, I think, which is what those bastards want for captives, to keep for themselves. Your two they probably think to ransom. You’re going on this, despite being Captain and all?”

  Reni hesitated. “What do you know of our people?”

  “Fair bit. I talked to those two whenever I had a chance. Interesting people. You mindtalk, and bond in triads? Androgynous ‘til you sense your mates, then you morph? So the one down there will be starting to morph?”

  Reni let out a breath of relief. “Yes. One of those down there is my beloved. I have to go - I could find him in the dark.”

  “Ah. And I’m the other, you think?”

  That did surprise Reni. He turned to stare at the big man just as that one was strapping the last of several gun and ammo belts around his large frame, and slinging a rifle over his shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah, I feel it too. We’ll deal with it later, I think. But I can find him, too, and you’re the Captain. Your responsibility is to the ship. You know that.”

  Sari grinned, without humor. “That’s what I was going to say, and I’m the one going down there, not you, sir. With all due respect. It’s my job, as Second, whether or not it’s your beloved or mine down there. Or maybe both of them, which I think it is. Sorry, Captain …”

  It had been a long time since anyone had argued with Reni, and he found himself getting angry, and then he realized that they were right. Damn. Not only were they right, but his morphing hormones were kicking in, and he was getting temperamental. He took some deep calming breaths.

  He did have a larger responsibility to the ship and the crew. It was one thing to take a shift down on the ground helping to retrieve the wounded, and another to be going off on this kind of mission. He had a perfectly competent Second Officer to do that.

  “Sorry.” He smiled apologetically at Sari, who smiled back, and took the items that Reni had picked out.

  “No problem, sir. And you have good taste in weapons. And beloveds.”

  Donovan grinned. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It would have been nice to know you could mindtalk!’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’ Donovan did an excellent innocent look, which Reni thought he’d have to keep in mind.

  The other two teams had already finished equipping themselves, and they had a final look at the visual of the area before they transported. The small caravan of militants they were after would have to go through a narrow pass some time during the night or the next morning, and that was a logical place for an ambush. For that reason they wouldn’t attack there, but just afterwards, as everyone relaxed.

  One team would keep to the high country, scouting the column, and one would be ready to provide a diversion on the other side.

  Eight or nine adults at a time was the maximum number who could be transported at once, and if the prisoners were all shackled together they would have to be cut apart into two smaller groups. One team would have to get close enough to take care of that. That would be the job for Sari and Donovan.

  The plan was simple, and should work. If it didn’t, they were well armed, and Sari was a master of strategy. Reni suspected that Donovan was no slouch in that department either.

  “Should we send a shuttle craft down?”

  “They have rocket launchers,” Donovan said, “and they’re deadly with them. You’d risk losing the little craft and its crew.”

  “Alright, we’ll stay with extraction by transport, and keep a shuttle on stand-by in case we need it.”

  Reni continued to worry about what they could or should do, until Donovan shut him up with an unexpected kiss, and then the six were gone, leaving Reni with his hand pressed to his lips, staring blankly at the map. It didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know, so he made his way to the bridge, and settled into his chair to wait. He was still staring at a smaller version of the surface’s photo-map when the sun went down below them and the screen went dark.

  Waiting, he realized, yet again, was far more difficult than being in action. Maybe he wasn’t suited to be a Captain after all. On the smaller ship Envoy he had been involved directly in almost everything that happened. Now he was supposed to sit and watch while others took the risks? He wasn’t sure that he was right for this. Had Oki been wrong in recommending him?

  Chapter 3.

  The first message from Sari was that they were safely down and in place. The next was from the two scouts, that the militants had all of their captives i
n a cave for the night, and they couldn’t get at them, or even get a count of them. They were going to try again in the morning when the group moved out, and would rest and keep watch until then.

  Reni wandered down to Medical to see how things were going there, and if there was anything he could do. Medical was gradually clearing out as they transferred patients to other ships, and there was only one patient left; the big man who had been screaming as they cut him down from the wall.

  The man looked slightly better now, although the numerous tubes and wires coming and going didn’t do anything for his appearance. Someone had done a skillful job of stitching up the many wounds on his face and chest, but his mangled leg was obviously still a work in progress.

  Reni found Nisa, his Chief Medical Officer, standing at the man’s side, looking worried.

  ‘Is he going to lose that leg, Nisa?’

  ‘Probably, right now I’m more concerned about keeping him alive. He’s not stable enough to transfer, and I’m not sure who he belongs to anyway.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  Nisa stared at him with tired, bloodshot eyes. ‘Are you bonded?’

  ‘What? With him? No. Oh, do you mean can I offer nursing?’ Reni thought about it, and debated his internal hormonal state. ‘Probably? I have found both of my two, but we haven’t actually made the bond yet. I’m developing, though. It’s worth a try, and it would go a long ways to helping him heal, wouldn’t it?’

  Reni stripped off his tunic and sat on the edge of the bed, and two of the med techs gently sat the human up and held him in position so that he could nurse, with Reni cradling the man’s head as carefully as he could.

  Reni guided the man’s mouth to one of his nipples, and prayed. He could feel the man mouthing the nipple, and then he latched on and sucked, even if it wasn’t strongly, and Reni gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘I think so, Nisa, praise the gods. Yes …’

  The man suckled for a few minutes and then dropped back into a deep sleep, and they laid him softly back down again. Nisa checked his vitals, then smiled wanly and nodded.

  ‘If we can do that every two hours or so …’

  ‘Strange, that I can help heal a human that way, isn’t it? The more we know of the world the more intricate we know it is. But probably in a good way.’

  Nisa nodded. ‘One of the street kids that Donovan brought up to the ship, a human, was in here earlier. She wants to be a physician, a healer she calls it, and wants to know how to go about learning more about that. She’s a smart one, and I’d be honored to help her out. I’ll adopt her if I get a triad soon, and maybe even if I don’t.’

  Reni spent the night alternating between nursing the human and hoping – futilely – for messages from the teams on the ground. There was no reason to expect a message so soon, and they had agreed to keep the mindtalk to a minimum, in case any of the enemy could pick up on it.

  Restless and anxious, he included the transport officers in his loop, to their obvious annoyance.

  ‘Double up the crew on duty, be alert for anything, the slightest signal.’

  He was sure they rolled their eyes behind his back, but he didn’t care. There were a lot of lives at stake here, and the militants seemed to be a particularly unstable lot. If anyone needed to be transported, a mere second delay could make all the difference. He had a bad feeling about this mission.

  He lost track of the number of times he made his rounds, and no-one dared tell him to go to bed and rest. Sometime in the early hours of morning he staggered back into Medical and found a young woman, still a girl, really, sitting with her eyes closed and her hands just barely over the nearly-destroyed leg of the human. He started to object, but the intent look on her face stopped him. She seemed to be drawing on some higher power, and he had to respect that.

  The two med techs on duty were watching, but not interfering, and he trusted their judgment, too.

  “There we go,” she said, and then looked up and saw him. “Weaving things back together,” she explained, as though that would make sense. Maybe it did. Nisa used his equipment to do pretty much the same thing. Maybe she was just drawing on a different power, or the same power through a different channel?

  She stood up and swayed on her feet, and he helped her to an empty bed. She was asleep before he got a blanket over her, and he turned back to the man, thinking to nurse him again. Gray eyes were staring at him, and he moved cautiously to stroke the man’s brow.

  “You’re going to be alright now, you’re with friends here.”

  The eyes were more confused than frightened, which was an improvement. He purred gently at the man, and the man must have felt the benevolence of the sound, because he relaxed, still watching but not trying to move. The two med techs held him up for nursing again and the man accepted the offering after only a brief hesitation. When he was done he seemed to be trying to speak, searching for words, but was asleep again before he found any.

  Nisa appeared at Reni’s elbow, and Reni thought he looked worse than his patient.

  ‘Will anyone die if you get some sleep, Nisa?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Get some sleep.’

  ‘Only if you will.’

  They curled up in two of the big chairs to sleep, and the med techs wrapped blankets around them before settling in to keep watch for what remained of the night, with orders to wake them up every two hours.

  Reni and the girl took turns with the gray-eyed human, one nursing and the other healing the leg. And the leg was healing – that was obvious to everyone.

  The girl wasn’t surprised that Reni’s nursing helped, although she was curious as to how it worked. Reni didn’t actually know, but explained that nursing, other than for babies, of course, was usually a ritual for bonding within triads, and most effective for healing within triads or between close friends. They weren’t sure how it worked, but it did. The healing she did, how did that work?

  She looked embarrassed, and said she didn’t really know. She’d never known her parents, so didn’t know where she was from or where that gift had originated. She’s started healing the younger children when they’d all been living on the streets taking care of each other.

  Healing sucked energy out of her, and on this scale left her exhausted. Even as she finished explaining she was asleep again.

  When Nisa was next awake he checked the leg, and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Maybe I should apprentice with her instead of the other way around. The leg is better every time I look at it. He’s got circulation in those toes now, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.’

  Reni shook his head. ‘I think we’re getting too linear, in a world that is multi-dimensional. We can all learn from each other. None of us knows everything, I learn that every day. I’m learning from Sari, and from Donovan. Even from the puppy, who made friends with those children faster than I ever could have.’

  One of the cooks appeared with hot meals and nutritious drinks, and Reni tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. He woke the girl up so she could get some food into her, too.

  “What’s your name, little one? I’m Reni, and you’ve met Nisa?”

  “Leah. I’m not that little.”

  “Sorry, we call everyone we are fond of little one or sweet one. And you’re doing wonders to save the leg and the life of this one. Do you know who he is?”

  She shook her head, but then said, slowly, “He is special, somehow, maybe just to me, but I don’t know his name.”

  “Special to you is enough, little one. And to the universe, as is everyone. Here, eat.”

  She shrugged, looked embarrassed again, began to eat, and then stopped. “The children, have they eaten?”

  Reni forbore from pointing out to her that some of the children were probably the same age that she was, or not much younger. “I don’t think they’ve stopped eating since they got here. Just eat and sleep. They’re being well taken care of. Children are precious to us, and Donovan is precious to m
e.”

  She might be shy, but the mention of Donovan’s name made her face light up. “He’s something, isn’t he? The number of times he risked his life to save all of us and then keep us fed while the city was being blown apart around us …”

  “And now’s he’s gone back down to the planet surface, along with my friend Sari, to save some more. Pray to whoever you pray to, little one – Leah.”

  Shortly after dawn they received a message from the scouts. There were twelve hostages, and they were indeed tied together, but with rope, which at least would be faster and easier to cut than metal shackles and chains. They were getting ready to move out, and the Crusader’s teams were moving into position.

  Reni moved to the transport console to work with the crew there, and waited.

  Chapter 4.

  Everything happened at once, which seemed to be the way of the universe, he thought. The line of prisoners, loosely surrounded by militants, straggled out of the pass and into the open desert. The two Ceruleans were roughly in the middle of the column, which made it easier for the rescue team, assuming that those two could mindtalk. Donovan would know if they could, Reni thought. He had spent time with them before fighting had overwhelmed the city.

  “Get ready …” Reni told the transport officers, although he was really talking to himself. They didn’t need any urging from him to do their jobs, the jobs that they were probably the best in the universe at. This was, after all, the Crusader, and only the best had been selected as crew.

  On the ground, lying behind some rocks, Donovan brought his rifle to his shoulder, and held steady. The two blue ones seemed to come alert, and then the rear-most one stumbled, or pretended to, and the rope between him and the other one pulled tight. Reni watched in awe and amazement as Donovan took several rapid shots in succession, severing the rope between those two.

  “Go, go, go …”

  The transport locked onto the rear lot of prisoners, the most vulnerable to attack, just as a smoke and fire grenade from the diversion team went off, confusing the militants. For a second it looked like it was going to go smoothly.