Chance of Stardust

Stardust (ch 8)

Cassie shifted on the thinly padded bed again, trying to get comfortable. Her t-shirt rode up and she pushed it back down with a huff. Darkness pressed in around her, velvety and absolute. She needed a blanket. Not for heat since the air temperature remained constant and comfortable. She craved the familiar weight, the feeling of safety. Anything to go back to sleep.


She’d managed a few hours of rest, at the end of her endurance in both mind and body, but had wakened, her mind churning.


Aliens. Well, it wasn’t as if she’d never entertained the idea of life on other worlds, she’d simply never thought she’d meet any of them. Not in her lifetime. That these aliens were fascinatingly beautiful rather than the little green men she would have expected didn’t help.


She gave up on sleep and sat up. A soft glow came on giving her just enough light to make it to the door and press the small mark to turn on the main lights. Scrubbing at her face, she sighed, wishing she knew what to do now. She needed to get home. Her parents would be crazy with worry by now. They might have even called the police to report her missing.


Should I find you wandering about tonight, I will not be so understanding.


Revelin’s words grumbled at the back of her head. Surely he didn’t expect her to simply sit in this room like a good girl and not try to get free? No, she decided. He expected her to try otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered with the warning. The thought of Revelin catching her in the halls sent a shiver over her. She really didn’t want to see him angry but, damn it, she couldn’t sit here and just accept her circumstances without even trying to fight back.


Mind made up, she shimmied out of her shirt and tossed it into the small container that cleaned clothes and dragged the black jumpsuit over her legs. Conform to her body? That was an understatement. The fabric molded itself to her like a second skin and she had to wiggle to get it over her hips. It took a bit of struggling and holding her breath but she managed to get it on and slid into her shoes.


She caught a glimpse of herself in the small mirror. Dear God, she looked like Catwoman in tennis shoes. A giggle escaped and she clamped a hand over her mouth. No noises. She couldn’t afford to get caught and, now that she knew to look for those tiny scratches, she stood a chance of getting out of here. Taking a moment to braid her hair to keep it out of her face, she worked up her courage and killed the lights.


The door slid open on a silent glide and she could make out the dim lines of the hall outside. She hesitated in the doorway. What would Revelin do to her if he caught her? Yell at her? Threaten her? Lock her in her room? Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to believe he would actually hurt her. He would be angry which would be scary enough, but he wouldn’t hurt her.


She took a tentative step into the hall and paused again. He’d treated her like a guest, trusted her enough to show her the controls to her room instead of keeping absolute control of her world. As much as she wanted to be free, she felt like she was betraying him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.


A shift of shadow locked her breath in her throat for a moment. Swallowing, she shook her head.


“Lurking around my door now?”


“I’m waiting for you to make up your mind.” Revelin’s baritone growl emerged from the shadows to her left. “Stay? Or go?”


“I’m trying to decide how mad you’re going to be,” she admitted.


He stepped into the dim light, hardly more than a darker shadow. “Not as angry as I had thought, it seems. If I were in your place, I would do everything I could to be free.”


She watched him come closer until his eyes were a faint gleam in the shadows. “But you didn’t lock my door. You didn’t tie me up or treat me like a prisoner.”


The light fell across his face, highlighting the tilted eyes and flatter shape of his nose. He reminded her of a cat on the trail of a particularly appealing mouse. He’d changed from his scaled metal shirt and sturdy pants into a loose fitting outfit designed for comfort. The big, bad alien was in his pajamas.


“What would it take for you to believe I have your best interests at heart?”


“Let me go.”


He snorted, his eyes narrowing on her face. “That would not be the freedom you think but a death sentence for you and anyone the Gurot found with you.”


Cassie threw up her hands. “And how am I to know that for certain? I don’t know any Gurot. I’ve never heard of them. I don’t know you, for that matter. I only have your word that you’re the good guys here and you’re the ones holding me prisoner.”


He thought about that and then nodded.


“Come with me.”


He turned and padded away without looking to see if she followed, his bare feet making no sound on the slick floor. Cassie cast a quick look down the hall in the opposite direction but decided against making a break for it. She’d seen him move. She stood no chance of getting away from him.


“Go ahead.” His voice drifted disembodied from the dark, fading as he moved away. “I might enjoy chasing you down.”


Muttering foul words under her breath, Cassie followed him. Damn man. She was trying to behave like a rational, mature person and he made her feel like a child throwing a tantrum.


He waited for her at a junction of halls. The one to the right led to the mess hall, she remembered. He lifted a brow at her disgruntled expression.


“I thought you would want answers.”


“I’m tired of following you around like a stray pet,” she muttered.


“Telling you to meet me on the observation deck would be a waste of time. You wouldn’t know where to find it.” His eyes flicked down over the skin tight black fabric of her jumpsuit. He opened his mouth as if to comment and then closed it again, shaking his head. Slapping the wall, he mumbled something she didn’t understand.


A narrow stair unfolded from the wall, spiraling upward through a dilated eyehole in the ceiling. Revelin headed up and Cassie followed, still not happy, but growing curious. Just what did he think he could show her that would make her happy to be here? There was nothing he could say to do that would make her willing to accept her situation.


The stair ended in a circular room where a handful of chairs sat scattered. Revelin strode across the expanse to brush his hand over something and Cassie froze where she was on the head of the stairs.


The walls, dark and solid, became opaque. Lightning flashed overhead as rain puddled and dripped in chasing rivulets across the glass. Not a viewing screen, she thought, amazed. There were no pixels or blurring that would indicate some sort of television type camera. The walls had become transparent. She took a step closer, taking in the view beyond.


They were still in the junkyard.


Beyond the rows of cars and mud, watery lights from the shop and house lit up the dirt drive. Blue and red strobed from a pair of police vehicles parked near the front door. As she watched, two uniformed policemen stepped from the house.


“Oh God.”


Behind the police, her parents stood illuminated in the doorway, her mother leaning into the taller, sturdy form of her father. She could make out the thin blue oxygen tank behind them in the foyer. Tears blurred her vision.


“I’ve got to get back. This is going to kill them.”


Revelin’s hands closed over her shoulders. “I’m sorry for them and for you, but I have my reasons.”


She swiped at the tears, angry at his callous disregard. “Nothing you could say can justify keeping me here and you know it.”


He didn’t respond, merely reached out to touch the rim of the clear portion of the wall and the view changed. The rain washed night vanished, the lightning gone from the sky. In its place, a forest spread around her under a morning sun. Green and brown blurred in a panorama of lush plant life and stark gray mountains sliced the horizon, still rimmed with a brilliant dawn.


“This was our home,” he said, moving away. “Only a few short decades ago, our world lived and breathed. Like you, we were proscribed and knew nothing of worlds beyond the stars. Then the Gurot came.”


A large black ship dropped from the sky to hover over a break in the towering trees. Cassie could make out little beyond a few flashes of light and some jostling of the ship. Out of the trees, a huge creature rose, thrashing in the grip of an invisible force that drew it into the belly of the ship. With a surge she could almost feel, the ship shot into the sky and was gone.


“They came to hunt large predators,” Revelin went on. “That creature you saw them take was a Rehsho. They were carnivores, easily five or six times my size. Even hirrient gave them wide berth, so when the Gurot began to thin their numbers, we were glad for it.”


He pushed a seat toward her and she took the hint, sinking into it, her hands folded between her knees.


“What happened?”


“It took a few years, but they became aware of our presence and they turned their hunting greed on us.”


“Oh God.”


“We were smarter than the Rehsho, faster and in many ways more dangerous.” He stared at the screen and the vast expanse of forest, lost in the memories. “We became their prey of choice. When we joined forces and attacked them, they destroyed our world.”


“Destroyed your world?”


“Yes. They burned the forest, killed the people and left nothing behind them but smoldering waste.” He flicked the wall and the view vanished, the rain once more pattering down, and shadows closed over him. A flare of lightning lit his face. What she saw there kept her in her seat, silent.


“A handful of scientists decided they needed to study us, to see if they could figure out how we could move so quickly and how we could change our shape. They took children, ten of us in all, tearing us from the dying arms of our families.”


Cassie could only shake her head. The pain in his voice was too real, to visceral to be ignored. She couldn’t imagine what he must have been through.


“We were thrown in cages and forced to watch as they decimated our home. Once they were done there, they parted us out to different scientists to study.”


Silence stretched. She cleared her throat, her eyes going back to her parents, garishly lit by the flashing emergency lights.


“Why are you telling me this?”


He turned his back on the view and crossed his arms. Muscles slid and flexed under the thin fabric making him look broader, more solid than ever. She could see him in a forest, she thought, hunting through the tree tops like a tiger.


“I know the Gurot, Cassie. After all, I grew up in their not-so-tender care. Once I reached full size, I was put in an arena to fight for my life for their amusement. I know them.” He dragged a chair to him and sat, his knees brushing hers. “Llyr’s father, Arno, was a mine slave on the Gurot controlled world of Gael. Eight years ago, he led a revolt that overthrew Gurot control and freed the people trapped in the mines. The other hirrient and I were on Gael at the time, fighting for the amusement of the troops. Arno heard we were being held and led a small force to the arena to free us. He gave us the choice of returning home but there was nothing left to return to.”


“You stayed.”


“We stayed.” His expression was bleak as he leaned his elbows on his knees. “We may have grown up in Gurot care, but we still know what honor is. We owe Arno a debt. He lost his wife to childbirth not even a year after he freed Gael. She was too weak due to conditions they’d suffered in the mines. There was nothing anyone could do. He asked that we keep his son safe. It is, in fact, the only thing he has ever asked of us.”


An enormous responsibility, she understood. Silence stretched between them as the story replayed in her mind. She rose, rubbing at her arms, stepping away to stare out in the night. The police were gone, she noted absently, her parents once more inside and out of the weather. From what she’d seen, they’d reported her missing and her mother was upset enough to require her oxygen tank. That hadn’t happened in nearly a year. She closed her eyes, leaning her face against the cool surface of the wall.


“You know what it feels like to lose a parent,” she whispered. “My mother’s heart is too weak to take this kind of stress. It will kill her.”


“My father died in the initial slaughter,” he replied in the same, soft tone. “My mother was pinned to the ground by General Gorman himself. I listened to her plead for my life as he pulled me out of her arms. The—” a blank space in the translation filled by a word that sounded so nasty it could only be profanity—“used his knife to gut her while I watched, laughing the whole time. She was dead before we made it out of the clearing. She was still reaching for me.”


A sob caught in her throat, her stomach clenching at the image he painted. A shuddering breath worked its way into her lungs.


“You’re sure these Gurot followed you here?”


“Yes. They came out of flux the same time we did. We managed to lose them in the burn entering your atmosphere, but it is only a matter of time before they locate this ship.”


“And then?”


“Then we will kill them.” She heard him stir behind her. “It won’t stop them. More will come. They want Llyr, to publically kill him and make an example of Arno for daring to rise up against them. They want to use his downfall to flog the other worlds under their rule into submission again. There have been too many riots on Gurot controlled worlds since Arno threw off their fist.”


“He’s just a boy.”


“He is a symbol. He is Arno’s only exploitable weakness.”


She rocked her face against the glass, her thoughts in turmoil. “You could leave me here and fly away. They would have no reason to stop here, no reason to hurt anyone.” She could home, back to her life such as it was, and forget that aliens existed.


“The Gurot don’t need a reason.” His hands touched her arms, the warmth of his body reaching out to her. “Cassie, if they scan for Universals, you will show up like a beacon. When they find you, they will use every painful thing they can think of to force you to tell them where we are. Even if you know nothing, they will kill you, slowly and painfully. You’ll be lucky if they kill your parents first instead of torturing them to break you. I’ve seen them do it.”


“I don’t believe you.”


It was a last wail of denial in the face of the coming storm and they both knew it. Revelin didn’t argue with her, didn’t call her a fool or a coward. Instead, he reached around her and touched something on the edge of the glass. With a last stroke on her shoulders, he left her alone.


The rain vanished to be replaced this time, not by trees and strange flying ships, but blood and fire. Hirrient dying in the mud, pieces missing and gaping holes burned through them. She turned, her stomach churning as she took in the pictures that continued to change, each more horrific than the last. Men, young and old. Women. Children. Her stomach lurched and she closed her eyes, trying to deny the truth of what she saw.


She sank to the floor, unaware of the tears that wet her face as the images shifted and changed. She closed her eyes against them but it made no difference. An image burned on the inside of her skull. Five hirrient youth in shades of gold and sable, battered and bloody, grouped in a defiant huddle around a pale hirrient, his body striped with blackened burn marks, curled in a ball in a pool of his own blood.