Gemar [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 9] Page 2

  “It's all—” She stopped and swallowed hard enough to be audible. Bain finally opened his eyes and saw her white face and staring eyes. “It's all bloody,” she said, after a few seconds of moving her jaw and getting no sound out.

  “Lin says the best way to ignore pain is to think about other people."

  Bain tried to smile, but his entire body hurt, including his face. It was like the time he had run a fever that made all his muscles and even his skin feel swollen and inflamed. He managed to look past her without moving his head.

  Dust-smeared people were starting to struggle to their feet all around them. Tables were overturned, food and utensils spread out in ripples like a massive stone had skipped across a shallow pond and sprayed the water and plants and even the fish everywhere. Fine white and pale blue linen showed streaks of blood where wounded people had hit tables and fallen and rolled.

  “Rhiann.” Bain raised his hands and caught hold of hers, moving so quickly he barely felt a reaction in his torn back. Maybe shock was setting in. “Your mother and sister."

  “Mother?” Rhiann leaped to her feet and nearly tripped over the shattered remains of their table behind her. She stood on her toes and turned in a tight circle, searching the rubble with her eyes. “Mother? Herin?” Her voice cracked and threatened to rise to a shriek.

  Shreds of memory guided Bain as he slowly stood and turned to follow the path of that jagged chunk of wall that had flown across the room. He saw a black-uniformed figure, curled up in a fetal ball, half-buried under a table and a toppled serving cart. Both Captain Lorian and Herin had worn their dress black uniforms, to identify themselves as Leapers for security purposes. Bain took a step toward the figure. Dust still rained down from the shattered ceiling, coating everything and everyone. He didn't feel it, but knew the dust was turning into a thick mud on his bloody back.

  “Bain?” Lin's voice shocked him. “Bain, can you hear me?” Her voice sounded far off and metallic, though the collar link was still in place around his neck. He supposed shock affected his hearing, too.

  “I'm here.” He took hold of Rhiann's arm and turned the girl around to see where he pointed.

  “What happened? Ganfer registered a ship off course and multiple energy bursts aimed at the spaceport administration building. Could you see what happened?"

  “See it?” A laugh broke out of his throat, searing the lining all the way down into his lungs. “Lin, we're in the middle of it.” He had a sudden impulse to drop to his knees and start crying like a child.

  “I'm on my way. How are Lorian and the girls?"

  “Rhiann is fine. I—I can't find Herin and Captain Lorian yet."

  “Herin?” Rhiann broke away from him and leaped over three people on their hands and knees and an overturned table. She caught the toppled serving cart and lifted it off the prone figure on the floor, and flung it away with astonishing ease. “Herin? Are you all right?"

  “We found Herin,” Bain reported. “Lin, I'm not sure how much longer I can talk.” He swallowed hard. “Just get here, okay?"

  “Ganfer is reading stress and injury reactions. I'm on my way. You'd better be there when I get—where are you?"

  “The restaurant."

  “Fi'in bless us,” Lin whispered. Suddenly, her voice sounded very loud, echoing into his head from down a long tunnel. “That was the exact middle of the blast."

  “Who did it? Does Ganfer know?” Bain took a step, relieved to find his legs didn't buckle. He stepped around the people, who stayed on their hands and knees, and tried to follow Rhiann.

  She held her sister's limp body in her arms, tears streaking her face. Herin stirred a little, whether from the force of Rhiann's tears or under her own power, Bain couldn't tell.

  “First identification says it's the Nova Corona. It could be a mistake,” Lin said. Her voice took on that flat sound that meant she was uncertain, afraid and angry.

  “But that's a Spacer ship, a Free Trader.” Bain shook his head and nearly stumbled when red pain thundered through his body and tried to send him to his knees. “Lin, please—just get here."

  “I'm on my way."

  Herin moaned and her eyes fluttered open just a few seconds after Bain reached Rhiann's side. He didn't dare kneel or even bend over to see how she was doing or help. His back felt stiff and hard and he was afraid to move or even stretch his back. He had a mental image of blood trickling down his back again and the pain returning like a clawed creature climbing slowly up his spine, digging its claws in hard.

  “Rhi?” Herin blinked hard and tears came to her eyes. She pushed at her sister's chest, trying to sit up under her own power. “Rhi, she's gone."

  “No, Mother's still here.” Rhiann jerked her head up and stared at Bain, pleading making her eyes wide.

  He understood.

  “I'll find her,” he promised.

  “No, she's gone.” Herin coughed and wiped at her mouth. Her hand came away streaked with blood and mud. “She's dead, Rhi. I felt her go."

  “No,” the younger girl whispered.

  “She could be okay,” Bain said. He gestured at the pile of tables and cloths and rubble only a few meters away from where Herin landed. “She could be over there, just unconscious."

  “She's dead,” Herin insisted, louder. “I'm a Leap-captain's daughter and I have the linking gift. We were together, in our minds, just a few seconds. I felt her die. She knew—” Her voice cracked and her shoulders slumped and she hid her face in her hands. “She said good-bye,” came out as a muffled wail. Her whole body began to shake.

  “I'm going to look,” he insisted.

  “No.” Rhiann shook her head, making the tears filling her eyes spatter and streak her dusty, grimy cheeks. “If Herin says she's dead, then she's dead. Remember how Herin told Mother where we were, when Caderi captured us? All Leaper captains can link mentally. Herin could feel if Mother was still alive."

  “I'm sorry,” was all he could say. Bain stayed standing over them, protective, while Herin slowly wept, silently, her body shaking, and Rhiann held her sister and tears dug trails through her grime-caked face.

  Around them, rescue workers slowly trickled into the room and the uninjured came out of their shock and started to move around or vocalize their pain and beg for help. A man in a torn waiter's uniform approached them. He started asking them questions. Somehow, Bain couldn't understand what he said, but he knew what the man wanted. He glared at him until the man really looked at Herin and Rhiann and finally left them alone.

  Fragments of tables were lifted, injured people found and treated and carried away. Medics from the spaceport arrived and set up a care station in the next room. Bain heard orders shouted and saw carts of supplies brought in. He stayed standing guard over the mourning girls. From the corner of his eye, he kept watch on the pile of rubble with the two black-clad legs sticking out.

  As long as he stood perfectly still, he felt nothing. Not the stiffness in his torn back, not the weariness that should have been creeping up his stiff-locked legs. His eyes ached a little, gritty with the dust still sifting through the air. Bain blinked and refused to look away. Herin and Rhiann clung together, trapped in their own world of loss and he refused to let anyone break in on them.

  “You'd better come with me,” a man said, taking hold of Bain by his elbow.

  “No.” Bain turned his head a little to look at the man. A dull throb traveled down his back, like the first snort of a deeply asleep man, a warning of the pain ready to burst back into flames.

  “But your back needs attention. Right away. Don't you know what happened to you?” The man shook his head, dislodging some bits of debris that clung to the gray-shot brown curls.

  “I know. They need me.” He nodded toward the sisters. Bain almost smiled when the man looked down at the two at his feet and he stepped back, visibly startled. Hadn't he seen Herin and Rhiann there?

  “Mistress?” The man bent over and touched Rhiann's shoulder. “Are you hurt? Either of you?"<
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  Rhiann raised her head and glared at the man through tear-reddened, bloodshot eyes.

  “Leave them alone.” Bain took a step away, then another. The man followed him. “I think their mother is—” He gestured at the rubble and the two legs sticking out from under. The man blanched when he looked.

  “I'll bring someone to help dig,” he promised, and hurried away.

  “No, you don't understand!” Lin growled from somewhere nearby. “I have kin in there and I'm needed."

  How long had Lin been arguing, trying to get into the site of the attack? Bain couldn't be sure. He thought he had heard a background disturbance, but he hadn't been aware of anything beyond Rhiann and Herin and their pain.

  “I was in contact with him when the bombs hit,” Lin continued, raising her voice even more. “I know he's still alive. Bain! Where are you?"

  “Here!” His voice cracked and his throat and lungs hurt from the effort of calling. Bain almost smiled at the incongruity of the ache that penetrated through the deeper, sharper pains that seemed to numb his body and mind.

  Then Lin appeared in the shattered, arched doorway that led into the next room. She hurried around a team carrying a stretcher out, then dodged another group trying to lever a massive block of plas-crete off a trapped body. Bain looked away when he saw the blood-streaked underside of the block.

  The years vanished, and for a moment she was the same fuming, brightly dressed Spacer captain he had seen in the governor's office on Lenga. Bain wished he was still that little orphan boy, so he could hold out his arms and Lin would wrap him close and hold him and let him cry until the world became a friendly place again.

  “By the starry—” Lin went white and stopped five steps away. She stared at him and swallowed hard and tears touched her eyes. “Bain?"

  “It doesn't hurt right now.” Pain stabbed him down the center of his back, as if to call him a liar. “Lin, Captain Lorian's dead."

  She nodded and closed her eyes for a moment as a shudder worked through her body. Then Lin dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms tight around both Herin and Rhiann. She stayed holding them when the rescue crew showed up and levered the blocks and piles of rubble off Captain Lorian's body.

  Blood and dust caked her torn black uniform and turned her silver-streaked hair a uniform mass of gray-brown. Her face was oddly peaceful, eyes closed and mouth slightly open as if she were taking a breath when the moment of death hit. Her back was twisted and her head lay at an unnatural angle.

  “Thank Fi'in it was a quick death,” Lin murmured, when she lifted her head to look.

  Herin's head snapped up and she stared at Lin a long moment, eyes wide. Then she slowly turned and looked at her mother's body.

  “It was,” Herin said after several tense moments, when everybody just stood there and waited and no one seemed to know what to do.

  Rhiann burst out in loud sobs and clung to Lin, digging her hands into the woman's rainbow patchwork shirt.

  “Ganfer,” Lin said.

  “Here,” the ship-brain responded, his voice a pool of calm amid the background noise of shouting voices and the grating of stone and metal.

  “Contact the Estal'es'cai. Tell Dr. Haral where we are, that Herin and Rhiann are all right. Tell him—” Lin's voice cracked. “Tell him I am more sorry than I can ever express, but Captain Lorian is dead."

  “Yes, Lin."

  Everyone, Bain realized, knew what a Leaper's uniform looked like. No one stopped Dr. Haral and the two crewmen who hurried onto the floor from the single functioning transport lift. The rescue workers stopped in their tracks and stared, watching the progress of the three Leaper crew.

  By this time, Lorian's body had been removed from the rubble and wrapped in a salvaged tablecloth, her face decently covered and her wounds hidden from view. Herin and Rhiann sat beside their mother's body, with Lin between them and her arms tight around their shoulders. Bain stayed standing guard. He looked away when he saw Dr. Haral approaching them. He didn't see the man drop to his knees and Lin move away as the man enfolded his daughters in his arms. Bain jerked, startled when Lin touched his arm. He groaned as he felt heat and wet move down his back as his wounds cracked open. Then the pain returned.

  “Over here,” a woman said, and a cool, clean hand touched Bain's cheek. He stared uncomprehending as the Leaper medic led him a few steps away and made him sit down.

  She touched the side of his neck with a cold, short rod that hissed. Ice spread through his back, filling it with soothing numbness. Bain gasped and closed his eyes and let the stiff muscles of his body relax.

  “Better?” the woman asked.

  “How does it look?” Lin said. She shifted her hand down to Bain's hand and held it tight.

  “Let me get the dirt off first. Geran?” The medic gestured and her companion hurried over, leaving Dr. Haral and his daughters alone in their grief.

  Between them, the two Leaper medics washed Bain's torn back, examined the bloody raw flesh, spread antiseptics across the surface and sprayed on a foam full of healing co-factors that hardened into a flexible bandage.

  “It's like you've been skinned alive,” the woman said. She had introduced herself as Jennan while she worked. She stepped around Bain and squatted in front of him, drying her hands on a piece of torn tablecloth. “No gouges, no deep cuts. It'll itch like bloody fury while the new skin is growing back on, but you won't even have a scar."

  “You're sure?” Lin started to smile, but her mouth trembled too much to allow the expression to last.

  “Positive.” She glanced over her shoulder at father and daughters. Dr. Haral reached for the dirty cloth covering Lorian's body. She looked away quickly. “Feel up to telling us what happened? I don't want to put the Captain through this so soon."

  “But—Captain Lorian—” Bain swallowed hard as a surge of nausea tried to climb up his throat.

  “Herin automatically became captain on the death of her mother,” Jennan explained in a soft voice.

  She beckoned, and Geran, the other medic stepped into sight. He held out a thick wand with a grid at one end and a blinking red light. It looked enough like a voice recorder for Bain to recognize what it was for.

  Bain nodded, understanding. Lin held his hands tighter as he started talking, beginning with meeting Lorian and her daughters for lunch. He told about inviting them all for dinner for his birthday, and contacting Lin. At that point, she broke in and confirmed the conversation. When Bain told about the windows starting to vibrate, Lin confirmed that as well and relayed the energy readings Ganfer had given her.

  His voice stayed calm and even as he described seeing the first red streak shoot out from the black ship and hit the roof of the building. He described how he had stood and pointed and the others stood. He told how he had thrown himself down on Rhiann, how he saw Herin reach for her mother, the chunk of wall hitting them and grazing his back. His voice only started to falter as he related how Rhiann found her sister and then seeing the rubble that buried Captain Lorian.

  Geran turned off the recorder when Bain fell silent. A bubble of quiet surrounded the four, muffling the voices of the rescue workers around them.

  “We have to get out of here,” Jennan said. “We have to get out before someone official decides to take custody of—of her body and examine it."

  “Will they learn anything?” Lin asked, frowning.

  “Of course not.” Geran shook his head. His thin-lipped smile only seemed to make him more upset. “Your technology isn't up to the in-depth genetic study ... It's the desecration we object to."

  “I see. Being Leapers, everybody will be curious. Being Spacers, though...” Lin nodded. “We'll tell them you came here for the girls, but Lorian is a kinswoman of mine. If I ask, they'll send her body to Sunsinger, instead of to the morgue."

  “Would you?” Jennan rubbed at her eyes and attempted a smile.

  “It's as good as done. And as for the rest of you...” Lin stood, gently dragging Bain to his
feet. He couldn't help grinning as he stood and felt no pain, no protest in his back, not even stiffness. “We're going to my kinswoman's house. Nobody would think of looking for us there. The girls and their father need a quiet place to hide for a while. I don't want to even think of the reaction when people find out a Leaper died in that explosion. It won't be good, either way."

  “Yes,” Dr. Haral said, stepping over to join them. He held his daughters close against his side, an arm around each one's waist. All three were red-eyed with weeping, pale, stiffly controlled against more tears. “We've made sure the Commonwealth and Conclave understand exactly what will be gained by Leapers trading with your governments, and what will be lost if a Leaper is hurt. Outrage is only one reaction. The other is fear, and someone will inevitably decide that since commerce with Leapers is lost already, why not do more damage? It's already happened in one universe."

  “Hung for the loaf, instead of just a crumb,” Lin murmured, nodding.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Arin Cain and his cousin, Trinia were waiting at Branda's house when Bain, Herin, Rhiann, and Jennan arrived. Lin, Dr. Haral and Geran had gone on to Sunsinger to be there when Lorian's body arrived. They would wait until the crew of the Estal'es'cai came to retrieve their captain's body.

  “Commander,” Arin said, and saluted Bain.

  For a few seconds, Bain just stared. He didn't understand, and he doubted he had enough functioning nerve synapses in his brain to figure out what was happening.

  Then the cousins’ military stance cut through the fog slithering through his mind. They were his first recruits for the Scouts, apprentice Spacers ready to take on their own ships. Bain managed a sloppy salute. A quiet voice at the back of his brain snarled that this was no time to start playing games of make-believe.

  “We heard what happened and Droli inquired of Ganfer. He said you had been there.” Trinia pointedly looked at the blanket wrapped around Bain's shoulders, covering the tatters of his new shirt and jacket that still clung to him. “We figured, now was as good a time as any to get to work."