Chapter 8

They were all naked and empty handed except for Dothan who held a milky white knife in his right hand. Unlike the other two, Jorie was feeling a delayed shock as they carefully wended their way back to the clearing where the two FADs sat in the lengthening shadows. He followed hairy or the smooth butt cheeks, depending on who was in front of him at the moment.

Although the irritation from the bug bites had eased from burning points to swathes of itching skin, the walk caused new scrapes and scratches from twigs and thorns. At least one of the plants had raised an angry rash on Jorie's right knee.

As they stepped into the clearing, they became aware of the destruction. A haze of dust spread out from the collapsed Citadel and hung over the entire area. A black gash showed where the weapon on the FAD had been fired through the grove of trees that hid the entrance.

One FAD had collapsed onto its side. Where Dothan had opened the door and climbed in, all of the surrounding metal was now broken stone. The other FAD had spreading splotches of stone on it where the stealth weapon had taken hold, turning metal into stone.

Jorie held his arms across his chest and shivered violently. His mind was doing something strange as he sensed a wide void that was empty of life. The loss of living creatures felt like a tear in the fabric of his soul. He became disoriented and stumbled to his knees without realizing it.

His eyes wanted to roll back into his head. Fighting with all of his might to stay conscious, Jorie's head rolled side to side as he tried to clear his brain from this set of novel sensations.

Two fingers touched either side of his head at his temples. He was commanded to breathe. He did and world stopped spinning.

"Open your eyes and focus on my face," the voice said.

Jorie followed the commands again only have his head snap back. Two faces came into focus. One was Mista's familiar face and the other was a long, deep black face with delicate nose slits. The faces competed for focus, until Jorie noticed other blurred faces behind the first two.

"Whoa," he said. "Which face is the real one?"

"Pardon?" Mista said.

"I see two faces," he said, describing them. "I see even more faces behind the first two but I guess they don't count."

The faces smiled with grand excitement.

"Choose the Mista face for now, Jorie," the faces said. Jorie blinked and then he blinked out the beautiful black one that reminded him of the love of the master. He felt sad.

"I'm back," Jorie said with a long sigh. "You've got a lot to explain to me Mista who isn't Mista."

"Explanations will have to wait, Jorie," Mista said. "We have to flee this place first."

Dothan emerged from the trees and walked over to them.

"Our FAD is untouched by the metal-rock weapon. Maybe hiding under the trees kept the dust off of it. If that is so, we should wait for the evening winds to sweep the dust out of the immediate area before we try to leave."

"The temperature will drop and we're naked," Jorie said.

"We have maintenance coveralls in the cargo hold. They are rough on the skin without underclothes, but they will keep us warm. We need to get out of sight of satellites though. You can walk?"

Jorie stood on shaky limbs.

"I can. It just may take longer than normal to walk to the FAD."

"No time, we need to get under cover," a voice next to his ear said. A strong arm came behind his back grasped him under his arms. "You walk and I'll take the weight."

"I'd rather wait for the next dance," Jorie said, suddenly giddy and lightheaded.

The next moment Jorie was wrestling against four hands pushing him into a pair of stiff coveralls. He had no recollection of how he had moved from point A to point B, which was disconcerting. He stopped fighting and focused on his breathing because it was hard to remember how his chest was supposed to move.

His nose slits were missing and his jaw no longer unhinged to swallow his food whole. He was half deaf as well, unable to hear the upper range any more, but the evening wind still brought good tidings for night's renewal. The leaves of the habong trees glowed sweetly in the twilight though.

Water touched his lips and Jorie sat up to pay attention. He was back in his body, which was a strange sensation when Jorie considered that he had never left it in the first place. The habong trees were pretty in the nighttime.

He looked from Mista's face to Dothan's face and saw the concern written plainly across their foreheads. He allowed himself a self-deprecating chuckle at his momentary stupor.

"I'm here," Jorie said. "I'm not pieced back together yet. Maybe not for a long time. The master transmitted a tremendous amount of material into my brain. It is going to take a while to sort through."

He stared at his arms and legs.

"What's this white stuff?"

"Topical analgesic and there is a venom antidote patch on your neck that you need to leave on for another hour," Mista said.

"Who thought of seeding the entrance to the Citadel with hoorhoor bugs? We should have died ten times over," Jorie said, trying to make conversation. He could see that the other two were mystified by his chat and he didn't know why.

"It must be knowledge from the master," Mista said. "Jorie, can you sit in the seat and buckle yourself."

"I've got some coordination back in my legs. It's just that I expect them to act like Cha'ortha limbs sometimes and I get confused. Just don't ask me to pilot," he said with a bit of false bravado in his voice.

Jorie levered himself to his knees and then stood up using Dothan as a crutch. To show he was better, he opened the gull wing door and climbed into the back seat. Shutting the door and buckling his safety straps was a near automatic reflex that didn't require concentration.

The FAD lifted and slid out of the grove and into the night sky.

"Are we going to your spaceship?" Jorie asked.

"No," Dothan said. "In spite of your compromised state, we have unfinished business at the base camp. We have to wrap up the loose ends before we can leave."

"Jorie, once we leave Tourmaline, we have a long trip ahead of us. Do you want to take this woman, Kita, with you for the journey? We have room for her aboard ship," Mista said.

"I would like to have her as a companion. However, I won't agree to bring her until I can read her," Jorie said.

"Read her?" Dothan asked.

Mista looked up from her display. "'Reading' is a Cha'ortha skill of scanning a person's intentions. Jorie can't distinguish between what's a human skill and what's a Cha'ortha skill yet. He has to sort all of that out. In some ways he is thinking like a child. To him they are all common skills, which everyone should understand."

"Can he scan me?" Dothan asked.

"Sure," Jorie said, chirping up from the back. "You've a sense of duty that's scary."

"Humph," Dothan said.

After several hours Mista turned her seat again and put food tabs into Jorie's hands. Recognizing a seriously empty stomach, Jorie began devouring his food, remembering to chew before he swallowed. He only bit his tongue once and it was enough to cure him of that Cha'ortha delusion.

"What loose ends do you need to tie up," Jorie said, after he had downed half a liter of water.

"Administrator Vantis allowed Family Rodrigo to land on Tourmaline. They are the ones who attacked us when we exited the Citadel. He must have given them access to the satellite intel as well. Such betrayal of the civil service and of the royal family must be answered. But first, we need his contacts outside the system in order to close this hole in our intelligence network."

"I bet you that he won't talk," Jorie said, taking his best guess.

"He doesn't have to agree to talk. We have a brainstem cap that will force whatever information we want out of his grey matter," Dothan said.

"Don't those things turn your brains to mush," Jorie said.

"If one is complicit in the attempted assassination of a royal, then let the punishment fit the crime," Mista said to Jorie before turning back to the pilot. "Time to ascend to target height."

After a moment of thrust Dothan announced, "Leveling off " and then "Release."

Jorie heard hydraulics underneath his feet, but that was all. The hydraulics reversed themselves.

Battle Sat functioning normally," Mista said.

Dothan took the FAD into a dive.

The pilot and the weapons master began talking to each other. Jorie had no immediate interest in what they were doing. He recalled the vision of the master smiling at him and he wondered if he would be one of those who would do more than the master. He settled back into his seat, slipping into his happy place of childlike wonder.

The master energy beam on the FAD fired. The FAD lurched as Dothan took evasive action, jerking everyone in various directions. The energy beam fired again. Several smaller beams were deployed from the sides of the craft and they began firing pulses in a staccato pattern.

Jorie was content to wait. Whatever Dothan needed to do was fine with him and Jorie trusted him down to his core. Besides, he was in his happy place where all was safe and comfortable. The vehicle shuddered once or twice, but nothing fazed Jorie's calm.