Liberation (Alien Attachments Book 3) Page 6

“Ah. I take it you two…” Kit looked between Dani and Balastar again.

  “Just a date,” Dani replied.

  “She couldn’t stay away from me.” Ian wrapped his arm around Dani and squeezed until she slapped his arm away.

  The two were a beautiful couple. Something stirred in Kit. Something she shoved aside. No doubt Balastar had dated many women in his life. She watched Dani interact with her mate. The woman really did look familiar. Especially when she laughed at Ian’s antics.

  “Oh, Mother Goddess.” She’d captured the attention of the entire group. “They were coming to see you.”

  “What? Who?” Dani asked.

  “Play the vid, Balastar,” Kit said.

  Balastar pulled out his com. “As I told Rucon, I tracked down the vendor where Mordo and Durgan found the other unit. Like most venders, he had a security cam. I persuaded him to give me a copy. That’s how I knew to look for Kit here.” He projected the image and let it play.

  Kit watched Dani, not the vid. As soon as the older couple came into view, she paled and grabbed hold of Ian’s arm. She looked like she was going to faint. She turned to Kit with a questioning look.

  “You have her smile,” Kit said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why the Torogs took them, but they didn’t kill them. There’s hope.”

  “What’s going on?” Balastar asked.

  Kit raised an eyebrow at Dani. They were obviously coming to see their daughter. It had to be a shock seeing your parents kidnapped.

  Dani stood there with her mouth partially open.

  “Are you okay?” Kit asked. “You must have been wondering why your folks hadn’t arrived yet. They are your folks, right? You look just like them.”

  Dani’s expression wasn’t what Kit expected.

  “You must be mistaken,” Ian said. “Her parents died in a plane crash ten years ago.”

  “What do you mean?” Things were going from bad to crazy.

  “An aircraft limited to the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s how humans get around. Theirs crashed, and everyone aboard was killed.”

  Dani found her voice. “Or so I was told by my aunt. Play it again. Freeze on their faces.”

  Balastar brought up the image of the couple.

  “It’s them.” Dani reached out as if to touch them. “How is this possible? You were with them just a few weeks ago?”

  Kit nodded. “They hired me to bring them to Earth.”

  “From where? Where have they been?”

  Kit didn’t see any reason not to tell them. “On Vertan. It’s where we’re from.”

  “And now the Torogs have them.”

  Kit nodded again.

  Dani sat hard on the sofa.

  Kit was about to explain how she’d come to be with Dani’s parents when four more men joined the party.

  The first two were a tall albino and a shorter, stockier dark-haired man with a boyish grin. They wore the same attire as the other EPs.

  Rucon introduced them as the rest of the Earth Protectorate team. The dark-haired one was Marco, and the albino was Armond. She sensed instantly that Armond was also part Vertan.

  The last two were older men. She recognized from Balastar’s description that one was Ian’s uncle, Mordo, and the other was Durgan. A Portal Master. Kit tensed even though Balastar had assured her he wasn't a danger.

  “It’s all right,” Dani said quickly. “Balastar told us about you when he called. About your fear, I mean. The masters here are good men. That’s why they left the guild and fled Sandaria with us.”

  “She’s correct,” Durgan said. “I had recently been elevated within the guild. One of my new duties was taking over communications with a group of Torogs who had been keeping an entire planet on lockdown. I knew then I had to leave.” He was a tall, slim man. Grey peppered his black locks, and there was a kindness in his eyes.

  “That has to be our planet,” Kit said, nodding to include Corvak.

  “So I gather.” Durgan extended his hand.

  Her gut tightened. She’d spent her life in fear of the guild he served. Had served. She looked to Balastar, who nodded his head the slightest amount. She raised her head and shook his hand.

  He had a firm grip. The moment was surreal. Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d shake the hand of a Portal Master.

  Corvak’s face was a motley red color, and he refused to acknowledge the man.

  She threw him a disapproving look. He wasn’t helping matters.

  Durgan held her hand a few beats longer than necessary. “Forgive me. I’m fascinated by your psi. And the fact there’s an entire planet of your people.” He let go of her hand. “In hindsight, I should have put the two together. An alternate psi and a planet repressed. Left unfettered, you’re a threat to the guild.”

  “So we guessed.” Corvak’s anger was written on his face.

  “All right,” Rucon said. “Now that the introductions are over, please find a seat, and let’s begin.”

  Kit sat next to Corvak on a cushy settee. They were both tense, and she didn’t like being the center of attention. She was more of a background and sidelines kind of girl. Still, as a whole, the group seemed more like a family than anything menacing. Balastar was the only one not staring at her, seemingly preoccupied with his com. Without intention, her psi reached out to his. She bit her lip as pleasure shook her to the core.

  He shot her an angry look.

  She reigned in her psi and gave him an apologetic look. He had a right to be angry. She hadn’t meant to tease him like that. Gods, but that man rattled her.

  Rucon gestured to Kit. “The floor is yours, young lady.”

  She took a slow, deep breath and tried to focus. “Right, so me and a group of other captains have been smuggling our spatial distorters off Vertan for years.”

  “Is that what you call these?” The albino held out a distorter.

  “Yes.” She reached for the box. He handed it to her only after Ian nodded. She inspected it quickly and gave it back. “Where did you get this?”

  “This is the one we purchased from that street vendor on Florin 5,” Armond said.

  “That’s why I was there,” Balastar said without looking at her. “We knew there could be more devices. I wasn’t counting on flesh and bone.”

  Did he have to say flesh? She focused on Armond. “Do you have more?”

  “We have one more,” Durgan said. “It was the first we encountered. Ian and his team obtained it when Torogs attacked our people on Earth. The Torogs used it to block all off-world portals, trapping our team here. They destroyed Ian’s villa and nearly killed Dani and him, but they managed to escape alive.”

  Kit’s mind was reeling. “Wait, so have you used that?”

  “We have,” Armond said.

  Corvak leaned forward, elbows on knees. “In that case, you’re damn lucky.”

  “Why?” Ian asked.

  “Because,” Kit said, “as I told Balastar, Portal Masters learned years ago how to alter the distorters so the only place they’ll go is Vertan. They have to get their dirty paws on them first, but they’ve been disturbingly successful. They make the alteration and filter the units back into our colonies. Try to make a portal and boo-ya, you’re stuck back on Vertan.”

  “Why would they do that?” Dani chimed in.

  Kit toyed with her own distorter. She’d been ready to port out to her ship if there was any danger. She doubted it would be necessary now. “Before they put us on lockdown, they wiped out our technology and destroyed anything that could be used for space travel. That included almost ten thousand people that happened to be working at those facilities at the time. It was months before the first communication came in from the Portal Masters. Torogs were working on their behalf. They hadn’t been aware of our off-world ship-building endeavors. My grandfather was a pioneer. If not for that and the number of Vertans living off-world with distorters, we would have been completely quarantined. It’s been cat and mouse ever since. We get people of
f Vertan to further our race and build colonies. Earth would have appealed with its climate. I’ve spent my life smuggling distorters off-world so that we can obtain some kind of freedom. Torogs have wiped out or stranded entire colonies of our people by altering distorters and getting them back into the hands of unwitting Vertans. The only way to tell if a unit has been tampered with is to use it. I’m assuming Dani and her parents were part of an early Vertan colony that got stranded on Earth.” Kit thought about it a minute. “You grew up here, right?”

  “Yes, and I had no idea my parents were anything other than human. My dad used to talk about how he believed there must be intelligent aliens out there. We loved watching science fiction movies together.”

  “I bet he missed Vertan,” Kit said, feeling sorry for Dani. “They must have suspected their distorter was corrupted. Why they’d use it after so long, I don’t know. But they were obviously coming back to you. It cost them a great deal to get here. They must have saved for years.”

  There was a long pause while Dani seemed to adjust to her new reality. “Is there anything else you can tell me about them?”

  “Not really. I’m so sorry. We didn’t talk a whole lot. The galley in my ship is cramped, and we took turns using it. Not a lot of chat time. They were nice, polite, but aside from the fact they were going to Earth, we didn’t know anything about them. Smuggler's code I guess. They didn’t offer, and we didn’t ask.” It seemed almost rude in hindsight, but that’s just the way they operated on the rare occasions they had passengers.

  “We’ll find them, Dani,” Balastar said.

  “We will,” Rucon said, turning the subject around. “First, we need to deal with these two before they leave. Your people can manufacture and use these devices to create portals anywhere the Portal Masters can. Is that correct?”

  “As far as I know,” Kit said. “The limits seem to be the same. Four ports an hour and a max of eight hundred and fifty pounds per trip.”

  “Ours are closer to eight hundred,” Durgan said. He looked excited. “And how many are needed to create the portal?”

  Kit wasn’t sure what he meant. “What do you mean? It takes two distorters, one on each end.”

  “No, how many Vertans do you need present when you create a portal between two of the devices.”

  Was it a trick question? “One.”

  Armond stood and Durgan exclaimed, “One?”

  “I can verify that,” Balastar said. “She did it on Florin 5. Multiple times.” He caught her eye on the last statement and pulsed her with a near orgasmic blast of psi.

  Kit didn’t know if he had any more control over it than she did, but either way, she deserved that. Payback from earlier.

  “Only one.” Durgan looked at her in awe.

  “How many people do you need?” Kit asked.

  Armond paced by the large windows overlooking a lake. “Using your device, we are currently making portals with the nine Portal Masters here on Earth and either Ian, Dani, or myself. I have been successful with seven. It did not occur to me to try with less.”

  Kit nearly laughed. “That’s a lot of people.”

  “Indeed,” Mordo said. “And it’s led to some inherent weaknesses with the guild’s portals.”

  “How so?” Kit asked.

  “We don’t know for certain, but it appears portals are failing across the galaxy because Durgan and the other PMs left the guild’s compound. Our guess is that their psi continually fed the portals somehow.”

  “And when they left, that feed stopped.” Kit finished for him.

  “That is the theory,” Armond said.

  “I can tell you it doesn’t work that way with these.” Kit continued toying with her distorter. “The portal is anchored to the box.”

  “Like a battery, maybe?” Balastar asked.

  Armond, Durgan, and Mordo all lit up at once.

  “That would make sense,” Armond said.

  “Yes,” Durgan said. “It also fits in nicely with our assumption there is something in the compound on Sandaria that is functioning in similar fashion.”

  “Minus the battery element,” Armond said. The albino almost looked happy. Kit had the feeling he didn’t do happy often.

  Durgan nodded. “That’s why the PMs contained your planet. Vertans would have destroyed the entire guild.”

  “Not entirely,” Kit said, her anger at the guild never far from the surface. “We can’t create the interstellar gateways needed for ships. That’s all guild. They could have left us alone.”

  Durgan pulled at his chin and shook his head. “You were a threat that had to be contained. The more we learn about the guild, the darker their history gets.”

  “Do you know where they took my parents?” Dani asked.

  “I have no idea,” Kit said. “I really don’t understand it. Historically, Torogs will either port our people back to Vertan or simply kill them. I don’t know why they would start abducting anyone now.”

  “You’re lucky you escaped,” Dani said.

  “They been after my Kit for years.” Corvak squeezed her knee. “If there’s a Torog Most Wanted list, she’s at the top.”

  Corvak’s touch felt oddly foreign. He’d said “his Kit,” which rubbed her the wrong way. She glanced up to find Balastar looking at her, and her gut twisted. “So that’s about all we know.” She turned her attention back to Rucon. “Balastar said you’re friends with the Supreme Commander of the GTO.”

  “I am.”

  “He also said that things are changing. That maybe the GTO could help free our planet.”

  His expression wasn’t comforting. “I’ll have a talk with him as soon as we finish here and let you know what he says. I can tell you the GTO is stretched thin right now. Too thin if you ask me. But Torril Anantha is an honorable man. He will help you, but I can’t say when. It will take a few hours for me to get through to him. Please make yourselves comfortable and stay as long as you like.”

  “Thank you.” Kit nodded. He will help you. The words echoed around her head. It was a start.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Later that afternoon Kit sat at the small table in the kitchen nook with Ria and Dani. Corvak was killing time in the village while they waited to hear from the commander of the GTO. Gina had laid out a tea service with pastries and small sandwiches. The food was great, but the drink they called tea was more like watered-down caff than anything else.

  Dani peppered her with questions about her parents.

  She really didn’t know much, but told her everything she could. “So that’s really all there is. They contacted me through a mutual friend and hired me to get them to Earth. I made arrangements for them to take a portal off-world and picked them up on Wenarth. We only stopped on Florin 5 to pick up the distorters. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let them leave the ship, but it was crowded with the four of us on board. They were so excited to get off Vertan and see another world. Your dad was like a kid with new toys.”

  “You wouldn’t have made it to Earth,” Ria said.

  “Yeah, we didn’t know about the battleship. Your folks had been out of contact with Earth for so long, we didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not that.” She took a sip of the watered down stuff. “We may have been okay. If they’d tried to communicate with us before taking us out. Who knows?”

  “We’ll figure this out,” Ria said. “The fact they took them alive means they probably still have them someplace.”

  Ria put a hand on Dani’s shoulder. It was clear the two women were close. She and Corvak had pretty much been a two-man show for the past few years. She hadn’t realized she’d been missing the company of women. Damn. I need to get back to Vertan. See my family. Then maybe make another run. Every trip home was a risk. Over the years, the Torogs had pared back their security, knowing the planet was unable to reach the stars again. They were partially right. The only way on or off was via portals, and they had to be few or the signature would be detected. Communication was limited for th
e same reason. She’d have to put in a request with the consortium that managed all illicit travel on and off Vertan and take what she could get for a visit home. And she was going to have to figure out where she and Corvak stood. After the trip here, she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

  Ria pulled her from her reverie. “Balastar tells me you have a unique ship.”

  Kit grinned. “Yeah, she’s sweet. There’s only a handful like her in the galaxy, and not many that can outrun her.” She loved that ship and was always happy to talk about it. “You want to meet my Tiger?”

  Dani and Ria both jumped at the chance. They finished their tea and put away the leftovers. Minutes later, they were on the Cavacent’s base station.

  Ria’s energy was contagious as they entered the lounge area. “Which docking station are you in?”

  “Five,” Kit said.

  Ria and Dani bolted around the corner, and Kit took off after them, laughing.

  “Oh, wow.” Dani stood with her hands on a large window.

  Kit smiled as she stepped in between the women. “That’s my baby.”

  Tiger had been designed especially for stealth and speed. She couldn’t carry anywhere near as much as Balastar’s ship or last as long in a fight, but she could outrun most anything. Her hull ran sixty feet with a span of eighteen. Twin engines hugged her rear with dual plasma cannons on the bow. Vertical thrusters were recessed in her belly. The designers had wrapped the cannons and engines inside another hull layer so the ship appeared as one long, sleek craft. Aside from the aerodynamic benefits during atmo entry and exit, the design allowed for a fair amount of additional storage space. Not to mention an additional layer of protection. Depending upon where on the exterior she was hit, you could wipe out about forty percent of her exoskeleton and not make a dent in her functionality. She’d lose a large amount of provisions and spare parts, but she could disappear before any real damage was done.

  Kit led the women inside. It was a good-sized ship, but nothing like Balastar’s. The creature comforts were limited here. She did have a small galley that doubled as the entertainment and exercise area. The bridge was her favorite part, and she walked them through it.