Shadows of Mallachrom, Book 1: Blue Fire Read online

  "You know the old adage, be careful what you wish for? They should warn you never to make stupid dares to Fate, too."

  "Your wicked and wasteful past is catching up with you?"

  "Hmm. Something like that." Rhianni wrapped her arms tighter around her legs, hugging her thighs against her chest. She balanced on her tailbone, her head tipped back enough to put a slight ache in her neck. She shivered, but from no chill the thermal lining in her hunter green jumpsuit could tackle.

  At the apex of the observation dome, Mallachrom hung like a peach and green jewel in the inky diamond dust expanse of space.

  "When Mama got so sick and died, just a year after we got transferred out, I threw fits, demanding to go home with her body, to help bury her. Dad wouldn't hear of it. Years later, he told me he'd had this itching sense that something was wrong. When the robot transport with Mama's ashes arrived, three years after she died, the Talroqi had been in control nearly five months. A passenger flight would have been faster. I would have been down there when the Talroqi hit."

  "So that's what you demanded," Nureen said. In the background, the controls gave off thin pops, beeps and whines. "What did you dare?"

  "When we heard about the Talroqi invasion, I swore I'd never go back. It hurt too much, knowing what the Talroqi did to my home. My friends. They did such a thorough job, and communications were so bad during that phase of the war, nobody knew they were in power until the robot transport reported anomalies. It just orbited the planet, managing to avoid getting shot down, during the whole struggle to liberate the colony. Friends of ours who were part of the liberation made sure Mama's ashes were buried. Along with so many of our friends. Dad got first-hand reports of what happened, what was done... He didn't want me to see them, but I got into his records anyway. I vowed I'd never go back, even when Dad decided something reeked about the situation. When he couldn't get straight answers from anyone on Mallachrom, he decided nobody could be trusted. That he had to do it himself. He started assembling his infiltration team five years ago, sending them in slowly, so no one would get suspicious. We were so close to the final phase. Dad had one more mission before he took his cover story of retirement and returning to Mallachrom. And now look where I am."

  "Taking over the infiltration team for him. Doesn't make sense, with you a medic. But when your closest kin commands the Corps, doesn't do much good to say no."

  "Never did, where Uncle Chor is concerned." Rhianni closed her eyes. "The thing is none of the Rovers who have been trickling in, pretending to be settlers over the last four years have learned anything. The First Wave settlers don't confide in newcomers. The Second Wave are doubly bad snobs, just to make up for arriving during the rebuilding. And the Taken are so insular. The only way this mission is going to succeed is with a native-born to bridge the gaps."

  "You."

  "Me." She swallowed hard, hating that growing feeling that she would burst out crying soon.

  Rhianni hadn't cried during all the hours she sat at her father's side, fighting to keep him alive. She hadn't cried during the debriefing, even when General Day showed up to hold her hand. She hadn't cried during the service honoring her father, the cremation, and the ritual of leaving half his ashes on the planet that killed him. She hadn't cried when her uncle ignored her protests and shoved this poisonous mission down her throat.

  Not even now, when the scar on her thumb sent tendrils of blue fire through her dreams, and her dream-lover didn't soothe but made her more restless than ever. Nothing in the universe would make her cry now. Not over a bad dream.

  That bad dream had plagued her for years after hearing the Talroqi had taken over Mallachrom.

  Rhianni knew what the Talroqi did to Humans. Her father encouraged her to become a medic rather than a Rover soldier, to protect her. He realized too late that medics faced far worse things than cellular disruptors, beamers and old-fashioned radiation bombs. Rhianni had helped put the hopeless sufferers out of their misery. She had helped destroy Talroqi who lived off the living dead.

  Those who weren't torn limb from limb and fed to the drone soldiers were paralyzed and used as hosts for the drone larvae. The Talroqi fed conscious adults to the lower ranks in their hierarchy of brain and muscle. They kept children for the more intelligent Controller breeds. Pre-pubescent flesh and adolescent hormones acted like concentrated energy rations for them. Rumors said the Talroqi harvested ovaries and sperm to grow Human babies to feed their Queens.

  Learning many of Mallachrom's children had survived, spirited away by the Shadows, hadn't helped. Rhianni's bad dreams only stopped when she read the names of Petroc and Tam Ash, and Janese Brohan on the list of survivors. The Taken.

  Then the stories began, the rumors, the vaguely worded reports from the authorities, detailing how the Taken had changed. Some said the Shadows had mutated the children they rescued.

  Recent rumors claimed the Taken weren't Human anymore. The leaders of Mallachrom, headed by Rhianni's grandmother, feared the Taken would one day snap, mentally and emotionally, and rise up in revolt.

  Colonel Joras Day hadn't believed that. Rhianni didn't believe it either, because a Shadow had adopted and defended her mother out in the wilderness of Mallachrom. Starfire had followed Mandia back to civilization and healed her of small injuries, kept away Mandia's morning sickness and then acted as nursemaid and favorite playmate when Rhianni was a child.

  Rhianni knew the Shadows would never hurt anyone, except to defend a Human they had adopted. Her belief wouldn't be accepted in court, though. She had to collect evidence. Rhianni had to slip back into her place in the colony of her birth and learn the truth behind what the government said about the Taken. Even more difficult, she had to get the Taken to trust her, to learn their side of the growing conflict. She might even have to act as judge and jury, if the situation got as hot and unstable as her commanding officers believed.

  This mission was as much to save the Shadows as it was to learn the truth of what had really happened to the Taken nineteen years ago, and what they were doing now.

  "I'll go in there and do my job," Rhianni whispered. "Then I'm going to get my tail out of this quadrant and never look back. There's nothing here for me."

  Something inside her trembled as she spoke the words. Her thumb ached as if a Shadow had bitten it.

  "Call me. I'll get you out of here so fast we'll leave echoes for the next hundred years." The ping of an incoming communication came through the speaker. "Sorry--duty calls."

  Then Rhianni was alone completely alone, no invisible watcher listening to her breathe. She almost preferred it, fearing the link between her and Nureen would prompt her to share things she hadn't settled in her own mind.

  A fragment of her recurring nightmare returned. It had come tonight, too, tearing her from her dream-lover's arms with unusual viciousness.

  Something chittered and scrabbled through the darkness behind her. Like claws on bare rock. Like the clicking of enormous insect mandibles and wings. She moved on her toes, afraid to make the slightest sound, create the smallest vibration to lead the hungry beaks and ripping claws to her.

  A spark of blue fire ripped through the darkness. It wrapped around her, scorching her skin, scraping open all her senses, racing through every nerve and synapse. Then blue fire burst from her eyes and mouth and ears.

  Rhianni couldn't control the ravaging power careening through her body. If she could learn how, she would not only survive, but destroy the danger that waited to devour her.

  But how?

  Who could teach her?

  Her dream-lover? She sensed him waiting at the edge of her dreams, wreathed with blue fire. When she could finally see his face, hear his voice, imprint his scent and taste and warmth in all her senses, then she would be able to control the blue fire, too. And she would be safe.

  For now, all she had were dreams. Fragments of clues. Dark eyes. Long-fingered, strong hands. Wide shoulders made for carrying heavy burdens. A sense of strength and sol
idity that melted her inside as the blue fire couldn't.

  Who? Where?

  Those hands had touched her in her dreams for years. Hot and calloused fingers against her bare skin. The memory took away her breath. Rhianni drew her legs closer against her chest, clenching all her muscles, trying to drive away the ache in her belly. She had resisted the blandishments of the cream of the Rover Corps for the sake of this dream.

  Would her dream be all she would ever have?

  Two days later, Rhianni landed at the spaceport on the edge of Core, the main city of the colony, in a Rover Corps shuttle. The official story said she was on medical leave from the Rovers.

  It was the truth. Just not the whole truth. Her father had died ridding a Gen-Tek operation on the other side of the galactic axis. As a Rover, Rhianni was entitled to one Standard year of rest and recuperation leave.

  That didn't mean the Corps would let her take it.

  She accepted this job for her father's sake. He had lived for years believing he had abandoned Mallachrom when his adopted home needed him most. Military documentation said otherwise, but as her father would say, when did bureaucracy override the heart?

  "Is it possible to borrow a two-man sled for the morning?" Rhianni asked the field security team that met her at the shuttle hatch.

  "No, Captain. The sleds are for official business only. Sorry," the leader of the team hurried to add, with a nod of deference to the Rover Corps knife-and-flame emblem, scarlet and black on her green fatigues jacket.

  "Oh. Could I send a message, then?"

  "Until you clear security, no private communications. Verbal?" The leader held out a recording wand.

  Rhianni nodded and frowned to fight a grin. She refused to let these brainless drones know they had aided her strategy. She nodded for the man to press the recording button.

  "To Mistress Shoreel of the Council," she said, speaking slowly and louder than necessary. "Grandmother, this is Rhianni. The Colonel--my Dad--is dead. I'm home on medical leave. When I've completed an errand, I would like to visit you. I should be back in Core by this afternoon."

  Silence. The field team barely hid their panic. They had said no to the granddaughter of a Council member--forget her status as a Rover Corps medic.

  The leader of the gray-uniformed team consulted his datapad, fingers stumbling across the buttons. He sighed and a crooked grin lit his too-pale face.

  "Captain Day, I believe a sled has just come free," he said with reasonable calm. "If you could wait half an hour for maintenance to make a routine check, I'm sure we could accommodate you."

  "Thank you. I appreciate the favor." She let the field team take her baggage to the security scan area and climbed back into the shuttle. "I hate throwing my weight around like that," Rhianni said with a grin while Nureen went through pre-lift procedures.

  "Mum always warned me not to do that unless it was absolutely necessary--or the officials got too officious. The less you throw your importance in their faces, the more deadly it seems when you do," Nureen said. "Especially when you have big, powerful, nasty relatives, like my grandad. There's a reason they called him 'Killer' Keala in his younger days." She sighed. "I think you needed that."

  "I need to establish my cover story. Dad always said landing field crews were the worst gossips."

  She smoothed the wrinkles from her black trousers and tugged straight the loose, vivid green Rover-issue jacket. She would wear civilian clothes during this mission, but pieces of Rover uniform would remind people of her rank and the power invested in it. A Rover Corps captain had the authority to put Mallachrom under military rule.

  "You're on stage, Captain," Nureen murmured, as she tapped in the last commands to the engines. "Blessings." The two childhood friends hugged.

  Rhianni leaped down from the hatch and jogged across the thermo-crete to get out of range of the lift jets. She didn't watch the shuttle launch.

  The trademark acid stink of all spaceports washed over her as she headed for the security gates. Fuel fumes and hot metal, the scorched surface of the landing field and the chemical wash for decontamination. Through it, Rhianni caught that green aroma she had always identified as Mallachrom. She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the pollution of synthetics and the destruction caused by commerce. Underneath the stink, she smelled mud and growing things, the fragrance of gisseg blossoms and the fruity red aroma of crushed sweetsoul. She hadn't had sweetsoul tea in years. Thousands of happy, innocent memories rode on the phantom perfume.

  "Home," Rhianni whispered.

  Her two trunks would be scanned and shipped out to the queue for cargo hauling, marked for Outpost QSE. Though her grandmother lived in Core, Rhianni would live in her parents' old home. The questions, problems, and answers lay in the outer fringes of the stunted colony.

  Rhianni carried one small bag with three changes of clothes, toiletries, a pulse communication pack disguised as a portable reader, and enough disks to get her through several long nights of solitude. She doubted she would be bored on Mallachrom.

  Rhianni glanced around the spaceport field, studying the rings of fences, the medical inspection building between the first and second fences, the cluster of three-wheel carts and the two-story warehouses, offices and living facilities circling the oval, twenty-square-kilometer spaceport. Everything was the gritty gray of mass-produced construction typical of the first buildings on any new colony world.

  There should have been new construction by now, even taking into account the disruption of the war. Some color, something new and fresh. There should have been something to show the character of the planet had crept into the sterile, institutional facilities.

  The pitiful exports that barely met quota, lack of expansion, overbearing security regulations and immigration requirements that discouraged new colonists, alleged dangers posed by the flora and fauna of the planet. All this combined with the tensions between the Taken and the colonial government to create a red flag someone should have seen more than a decade ago. They should have seen it when the first team of scientists shipped the Taken off-planet and the children who had survived the Talroqi invasion died, like plants separated from their roots. Just like her mother had died. Nobody noticed or reported the social chasm that developed between the Taken and the adults who managed to survive in underground bunkers and evade capture. Maybe because the Taken learned early not to trust the specialists and authorities who declared them damaged and kept them from having a voice in their alleged rehabilitation and treatment. When the ones who controlled communication with the off-planet authorities were the oppressors, how could the oppressed protest? The Taken had done what came naturally--what helped them survive during the Talroqi invasion. They had retreated to the edges of civilization and to the wilderness.

  That is, if the situation was as Rhianni desperately wanted to believe it to be. What if the Taken were as dangerous, as damaged, as sick as the whispers of rumors coming from Mallachrom claimed?

  Who could be sure? The slowly dwindling war had kept the entire quadrant in an upheaval. Resources and overseers and inspectors and auditors were stretched thin. There was always a ready excuse that seemed plausible when someone did question the situation. In the end, people were simply too busy to care. People and reports and justice fell through the bureaucratic cracks.

  Rhianni wondered if her father had been more right than he knew, when he speculated someone kept the truth from leaving Mallachrom.

  Twenty minutes later, she went to claim the two-man sled secured for her use. She took a deep breath, getting the essence of Mallachrom into her lungs.

  As she passed through the last gate of the spaceport, she saw a few shallow, dirty piles of snow scattered around. Rhianni had lost track of the passing of seasons; not that it mattered in a Rover squadron, where they could visit ten different worlds and seasons in a Standard year's time.

  The sled waited for her all by itself, a sleek, silver and black box with a pointed nose, bug-eye style wraparound view
ports, and a fan-like arrangement of thrusters out the back. Rhianni looked forward to flying without an emergency situation. From her pocket she took the magnetic key and inserted it in the hatch lock. The double-wing hatch doors slid out and up, folding back into the roof. She slung her bags into the back cargo box and slid into the pilot's seat. Her hands flew over the simplistic control board. In moments, thrusters blasted, lifting her off the landing field surface until the forward jets kicked in.

  Home.

  Images of QSE Outpost flooded her mind. She and her parents had left their home just about this same time of year. They hadn't regretted leaving, because they thought Mallachrom was safe from Talroqi invasion.

  What if the rumors were true? What if the authorities were right and the Taken served the defeated Talroqi? What if, as some people claimed, the Shadows were in league with the aliens and handed the children over to be programmed, like time-delayed bombs, to destroy the colony?

  Just because she had loved Starfire was no reason to believe the sentient predators were friendly to Humans. Humans were also sentient predators, and look how untrustworthy, two-faced and vicious they had proven through the millennia.

  Rhianni had to determine what was the truth and act. Even if it meant killing childhood friends.

  The curved windows of the sled let her look down at the landscape she passed without tipping the craft. Rhianni saw mud everywhere, with leaves bursting from every tree branch, moss turning dull green, scarlet and dusty blue on the ground, and feathergrass glistening silver in the morning light. Memory gave her the sweetness of fruit tree blossoms whispering through the pungent aroma of mud, water, wet rock and lumber. For a moment, she felt physically ill with a mixture of longing and reluctance touched with fear.