Chapter 9 – The Captured (chapter 1.2c--Leptis, Le-Yetal, Delah)
Leptis coughed as she sucked in smoke while sprinting through the burning rows of cornfield. Fire licked near her robes, arms, and feet as she dashed between the flames. Like a monster, the flames spread, devouring row after row of the crops. The landscape became a sore of destruction behind her. Fields of cornstalks smoldered. Blackened trees littered the land. The most shocking to Leptis were the dark clouds that billowed from the burning buildings and homes of Irema.
Her tears dried from the heat as she pushed herself to keep running to the clearing where the ship had landed. As she caught her breath, Leptis spotted a soldier on the ramp, aiming a pistol at her. There was no turning back. Irema, her hideaway and escape, had been destroyed. Where could she hide now?
“Identify yourself!” the soldier cried out straining to be heard above the wind and piercing alarm. Flurries of red-hot ashes circled around her.
Her hands froze at her side. She couldn't move them to check if the jewel on her bracelet turned green, which would indicate him as her contact. Her feet planted on the ground not obeying her mind to move toward the soldier. A coward, that's what she was while trembling at the harsh urgency in his voice while her home burned down.
Somehow, with an effort beyond the burning sensation in her throat, she spoke.
“I am Sit-Pel-AR1, your informant.” She coughed again, hoping he was her contact. She felt a sharp burn up her leg. Before she ran, the soldier sprinted to her. He slammed her down on the ground, patted his hands against her. She scratched his face, screamed while fighting him and the searing pain. He pushed her back down, took part of her robe, snatched it and smothered the flames that threatened to burn her alive.
Too weak and in pain, Leptis surrendered her resistance and allowed the soldier to carry her to his ship. She wrapped her arms around his strong neck. For one strange moment she felt protected, like a child hugging its parent for solace from a nightmare. She bounced in his arms as he ran for the ship, but each movement felt like a jolt of hot cuts into her flesh. The pain was unbearable. She moaned. To her relief, within seconds he reached the inside of the black carapace.
She fought the urge to pass out from each spasm of pain, but she forced to stay alert to her surroundings. Delah and Teeabu still had to be found.
“Alarms off!” The soldier's voice rumbled through her neck and shoulders. “Pilot Zere, take off now to our rendezvous point.” His pilot ran down the small corridor. Leptis's arms still clung around the soldier's neck. She turned her face away from the glaring light that came from the command core.
“Nav Ru, how is Specialist Ursalla?” the commander asked.
Nav Ru, with brown eyes that sloped down, a strong jaw and wheat brown cropped hair, pulled out a biomedical-data recorder from his cargo pocket. “She's holding her own, sir. If it weren't for the chip in her temple deflecting the blast, she wouldn't have made it.”
Leptis deduced it was their commander holding her. The commander took in a long breath and exhaled. “Nav Ru, hold her while I go below and hand her back to me at the bottom.”
He opened a small hatch while his navigator held her and he went down until his head disappeared. Leptis couldn't bear the pain and cried out while Nav Ru moved to hand her over. She didn't know how far below they needed to go. When she looked down and saw the commander's arms just a few feet away, she stopped yelling. Nav Ru knelt and bent down to place Leptis into the commander's arms.
It was tight in the small belly section of the ship. He carried her a few feet to the other side of the room. A filtered green light glowed from behind two horizontal capsules. A woman, dark and still, lay in the second capsule. Leptis couldn't make out the details on the recumbent woman because of the searing pain. The commander gently laid Leptis into the restorative capsule.
After the sweltering heat, it felt like being dipped into a pool of cool water. A shower of cool mist covered Leptis, coaxing her to lose consciousness. She wanted to slip into a deep sleep away from the horror, away from knowing that her loved ones and friends in Irema were either dead or captured because of her. She trembled while each thread of pain lifted from her nerves. The healing left a sealed coolness, wrapping itself around her.
“Sit-Pel-AR1, you are my informant.” His voice brought her back to clarity. The green glow lit his face and made him look like an apparition. “We're almost at the rendezvous point. I have very little time to be with you.”
He stroked her hair. This comfort gave her strength to answer back. Lying there, she grabbed his wrist and found the jewel on her bracelet glowed green, the same as his.
“It isn't supposed to be this way,” she said. “Do you know who I am?” He nodded. He did not know who she was or he would not have just nodded. She sat up and looked him in the eye. “I am Watchman Eyetna's sister. I was exiled to die out here among the Reedpods. But my precious father sought to keep me in his life. He hoped I'd stay alive and I did. I've kept in contact with him only to help negotiations of peace between Irema and Araidia. The plans of this city were only to use for peace. Why were we attacked?”
“You're Dignitary Leptis?” His eyes narrowed and she let go his wrist. He took a stumbling step back. She waited for him to ingest what she had said while he rubbed his temple. She cleared her throat and put on a dignitary snobbish tone to keep him submissive.
“Yes, Commander, and you're still indebted to me as you note from the message I sent to you. It is Watchman Ontomus's decree that you don't expose me and you ensure I’m protected. I can see that Watchman Eyetna hasn't officially received you as his military power or you wouldn't be here. Why this half-cocked attack? It's ill-planned, ignorant, and tragic.”
“Madam, I can't answer that. I only take orders.”
“I'll get the answers myself, then.” She raised herself out of the capsule and jumped off the edge then looked up at him. “You just make sure you keep this discussion confidential. If you disclose what has transpired, your career will be lost,” she waved her hand in front of his face, “psstttt, just like that, forever. And it won't be by my doing, either. You know exactly who will strip you of everything that you've worked so hard for.” His jaw moved from grinding his teeth. He wouldn't dare refute her station. He was only a military grunt to the royal dignitaries. She watched him lower his eyes and slowly nod his head. “I do have a request, Commander.”
“If it's in my power, I can grant it.” His eyes shifted to the wall where a light blinked red. “We're almost there so you'll have to ask quickly.”
Have you seen a young Araidian female?”
“May I ask why this is important to you?”
“I’m her mother and I need to see her.”
He gave a sharp bow and led her to the curved wall with three rungs and climbed after her.
Surprised to find how energetic and pain free she felt, Leptis followed the commander down the corridor. The light from the command core no longer glared and her nerves were healing. They came upon the first cell where she saw a small figure on the floor and eight feet across a lone man sat. She wanted to overstep her welcome by looking into the other cell.
The commander called her to Delah's cell and deactivated the shield rods that pulled up into the hull with a wave of his hand. Leptis noticed on the left side of the cell a man who sat in the shadows. The idea of Delah in a cell with a strange man unsettled her.
“She’s still sleeping.” The commander interrupted her thoughts. “I put her where I’m holding another informant.”
“Is there anyone else you’ve extracted?”
“This girl is the only Araidian taken aboard my ship.”
“Did you capture a young Shatarian boy with unusually long hair?”
Le-Yetal frowned and lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
She crossed her arms and tilted her head. “He confiscated my hydro-lift, that's why. I don't need to answer to you.”
“You have the trait of a true Araidian dignitary.”
Leptis narrowed one eye and pursed her lips.
“Madam, it is stubbornness. Was the lift yellow?”
Her features relaxed. She liked this commander's wit. “Yes, I’d like to see him.”
Giving into that need to peek at the adjoining cell, Leptis sidestepped the commander. She looked into the other cell shielded by four vertical rods, glowing bright light blue. Teeabu lay on the floor like a baby in a peaceful sleep. His hair sprawled around him and one arm tucked under his head while he lay on his side. His tunic showed signs of the struggle they went through, the fire and fighting. It was torn, full of holes. She turned away from the forlorn child. A lump grew in her throat. Nearly everyone the boy loved was left behind, dead, or now a slave. She wrestled back the tears that nearly escaped.
She turned from the cell with her head high.
“Once we land,” the commander tilted his head toward the other cell, “you'll be able to join him. By that time, he should be awake. However, you can see your daughter now.” He led her by the arm and opened the cell where Delah lay.
•••
On the floor, the child Leptis had raised as her own curled into a sleeping position. Delah’s eyes were closed. Her clothing was smudged with ashes and cute tunic skirt torn. Leptis wiped her eyes, chest heaving, tears were coming. She caressed the girl’s soft hair that she had just fixed in the morning. Little Delah’s boot was missing. Where was her boot?
Leptis turned around a few times in the cell. The shock of seeing most of Irema vaporized and escaping death in the nick of time left Leptis's mind in a fog. She had to bring herself back. Yutvah, Boon, the school, everything and everyone had been destroyed. Leptis sat on a slab protruding from the hull where Delah lay.
Across the cell, the man that sat on an identical slab stared at her, probably wanting something from her.
“You’re an Araidian, like her.”
She nodded.
“Informants belong in here.” He smiled showing missing teeth.
Turning away, she ignored the hideous balding man with strands of mustard colored hair. She put her mind to find a way of escape for Delah. First plan was to get her niece out of Araidia. Second, she would hide in the city away from the Watchman. Third, she had to somehow convince Yal, once a champion for the Shatarians, to help get Teeabu out of Araidia and renew the treaty. As a last resort, she could join the rebellion. Revolutionaries were everywhere there and could help her to hide.
She had hoped what little knowledge she had sent about the Shatarians would prove to the Araidians that humans were acceptable. Somehow her agenda had backfired. Her heart sank as she placed the hood back over her head and pulled her cloak tighter around her so the informant and soldiers wouldn’t see what she was about to do.
The Araidian spaceship carried them further away from Irema and Delah hadn’t stirred yet. It was time to take action after they docked.
Leptis’s motto from the Araidian days of royalty was to always prepare for times of adversity. She quietly placed her left leg on the slab. Before she moved again she checked for any soldier guarding the cell. It was clear. She gently swung the cloak over her leg. Her fingers touched an artificial layer of skin, rubbery and hard, above her ankle and slowly peeled it back to reveal a flat gray pouch of processed Reedpod leaves.
Even though no guards were around, she felt someone watching her. She quickly hooked the pouch to her belt and looked around the cell to find the man staring at her. Wrinkles cut deeper at the corner of his eyes while he sneered.
“Reedpods! You're not like me. You want to kill the soldiers,” he cried out.
A sinking sensation gripped her heart. She'd be exposed. “Don't you move or say anything.”
That scrawny man laughed and yelled out. “Guards, guards! In here!”
Leptis leaped from the slab and grabbed the man, poking a finger on his neck. She held him captive in a chokehold.
“Scream one more time and I'll put my finger straight through your neck. I can do it. Have you forgotten? I'm Araidian.” He tried struggling against her hold. She heard footfalls on the grating coming from the Command Core.
She quickly put her arm over his shoulders and pressed her fingers on his neck. Finally one of the crew members, she figured was Nav Ru, came to the cell's doorway.
“What's all that racket about?”
“Nothing,” the informant said barely able to speak.
“Everything is fine, navigator.” Leptis gave her best smile that went to her eyes.
“Commander ordered if any more noise is made, I'll need to shoot you.” Nav Ru directed that statement to the nuisance she held captive. “And if he makes one move against you, ma'am, holler. I'll be here in a heartbeat.”
She kept her arm around the man's shoulders until the soldier left. “And I will give you a worse death if I even smell you turning on me. Do you hear me?” The man kept nodding his head.
They landed in the outskirts of Irema. The commander quickly placed a hand on Leptis's shoulder and stopped her before entering the bottleneck to the hatch that would open to Irema's atmosphere.
“Ma'am, you need this so our men won't see anything unusual like an Araidian walking around without a mask. I won't need this. It's depleted of oxygen.” He reached up his left nostril and removed the small hose, pulled it from his cheek, behind his ears, neck, and finally pinched loose the end under his netted tee-shirt. She grimaced and took the gummy black hose that squirmed like a snake in her hand.
“I suppose we're sharing germs.” Leptis gave a weak smile. “Shall I put it on?”
“It won't hurt a bit. I have one more for your daughter compliments of Nav Ru.” He pulled out a badge with the Araidian military logo of a black circle with a red circle overlapping it. The black circle appeared like a crescent. “And you'll need this to get through. The Ident Badge won't be scanned. We'll be too busy getting the captives out of here. Before you leave, my question is why do you champion this race? They're weak, submissive, and we outlive them by nearly a hundred years.”
Leptis put her hand up and wiggled her nose. The end hooked in her nostrils and the tail of the mask neatly adhered to her skin. Tucking the last portion of the hose in her bra, she answered the commander's question.
“They're passionate and stronger than you think. Maybe not physically, but they persevere and stick to their beliefs. That's why I must contact Yal.” Leptis stashed the other nose mask and badge into her hip pocket.
“Yes, I understand now. He's a champion for our people and them, too.”
“What's your name?”
“Commander Ronull Le-Yetal of the Araidia's Elite Force.”
She squeezed his thick and course hand. “I'll never forget you, Commander Le-Yetal. Thank you.”
He nodded and stepped away, watching her leave. He was very helpful, Leptis thought. Actually, he had gone beyond the call of duty. She would put in a good word about him to Yal.
The partition shield came down as she entered the tube, dividing the commander and his crew from contaminated air. The section decompressed and the hatch door opened. She and her unconscious loved ones on the antigravity gurneys were met by Araidian guards.
“Make sure these two stay together.” Leptis flashed her badge and the men slightly bowed their heads and guided the gurneys with a remote.
The commander had dropped them off near one of the barges, larger than five scout ships. His ship and the five others left them there and flew away, colorful like round iridescent prisms disappearing against a muddied sky.
Newly arrived scout ships, clean and black, hummed above Leptis as she followed her loved ones on antigravity gurneys guided by guards from the barges. It might as well have been all of Araidia's military there bringing their higher technology, ships, barges, robotic droids, plasma whips, rifles, and whatever else that could down a human. The flying barges left contrails that convoluted the sky and dying city, already black and gray.
All her Araidian upbringing cringed at the awful sight of the colossus movement of ships and peoples. How could she wrap her mind around this?
Goosebumps prickled on her arm at the horrific and awesome sight. Three bulky cargo ships, long and gray were to carry the slaves. At least they could've left the city intact, Leptis thought. Even by spraying a smoke bomb to render everyone unconscious would have been much more efficient than singularly burning, shooting, whipping, and extracting people.
This black mark would forever render them as a hostile and unreasonable race. She pulled her hood tighter around her face while she looked down at Teeabu still knocked out on the gurney. Delah was on the other gurney, to Leptis's surprise, being taken to the opposite end of the barge by a guard.
They can't take my niece away! Her throat dried and heart thumped in her chest.
Teeabu and Delah needed to stay together. Leptis waved at the soldier that quickly guided Delah away on the antigravity gurney. Leptis covered her mouth with her hand to suppress screaming for her little niece. She couldn't decide whether to stay with Teeabu or to catch up with Delah. Her mind reverted back to the normalcy of life in Irema. As a boy, even a priest, Teeabu could take care of himself. She decided the youngest child needed her more.
By instinct, she took after Delah, ran around the captured people, burned and bloodied. They stood listless, huddled in small circles, ready to be herded into the barge at the first entrance of the ship.
Leptis kept running to the second entrance only a few strides away. Before she reached it, a hard shove on her shoulder knocked her down. She looked up in the red and brown mud and saw a man running from her. She recognized the back of his balding head with strands of mustard colored hair. His purple short-sleeved shirt, like a beacon, gave away his position in the crowd. When she got up, something felt out of place while patting on her belt and pockets.
Her Reedpod pouch--it was gone!
Darting in the opposite direction, she caught up with the thief and slammed into that foul creature. The impact caused him to fall face down. She had a triumphant feeling, pinning his hands behind his back. He smelled of sweat and brine.
“You shouldn't have done this.” Leptis spoke in his ear and pressed his face into the dirt. “Where is it? You know what I'm talking about.”
He brought his head up gulping for air. “No, no, no I don't know what you mean.”
She pushed his head into the dirt again. “You had the nerve to call me out on the ship. And all of a sudden, you're snatching my pouch. All you want to do is use this for yourself.” She kept him down while searching his pant pockets and fingered the bulge. It was the pouch. She pulled at the stubborn thing, but it wouldn’t budge. If she pulled too hard, the material would tear. With one more wrench, she freed the pouch from the informant’s pocket.
“You're not going to kill any of my people with this.” Leptis still held him face down. “There's a better way to escape. Now get up.”
She pulled him up by his collar and noticed a guard running to her. “One more word out of you, informant, I'll have to kill you. Do you get that?”
He sneered. “I could've made it.” The informant's eyes turned to the guard closing in on them.
“Not with me around,” Leptis answered back.
“Ma'am, is there anything I can do?” The guard stopped before them and poised his hand over the plasma whip.
She flashed the Ident Badge. “No thank you, I've got this informant under control. Take him to the right boarding entrance.”
Leptis shook her head as they left and pulled the hood tighter around her face. If the guard had seen she wasn't wearing a mask, he would've asked questions. A sigh of relief escaped her lips. The Ident Badge and nose mask really did pay off, thanks to Commander Le-Yetal.
She darted back around the soldiers, hearing the yells of Araidian guards, shoving and whipping the captives into the barges.
They won't take Delah from me, she vowed.
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