ROMULUS (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 1) Page 2

  While José loosened their bonds, Victor spoke into the intercom. "Pete." When there was no response after a few minutes, he tried again. "Pete, are you there? Pick up." Still no answer.

  Victor slammed his fist against the speaker and barked at José. Aster listened intently to his instructions. Her Spanish lessons hadn't prepared her for their lightning-fast, garbled communication but she deduced that the engineer was an accomplice and José was to find him. A few minutes later, José's gravelly voice babbled excitedly through the intercom.

  It was not necessary to understand the language to see that Victor was hearing disturbing news. Aster turned her head and pretended to be fixing her coffee, her ears alerted to the conversation. Victor might reveal something important if he thought no one understood what they were saying.

  "Slow down. I cannot understand you. Where is Pete?"

  "Dead... cold... needle... arm... What..."

  "Stow his body with the other one and get back here. Now I will have to do his job too."

  While they ate, Aster told Betty and Cherry as much of the conversation as she had understood and Betty confirmed Dan's death. Apparently, Victor was too macho to think three women could be plotting and allowed them to chat. They knew they might not get out of this alive unless they did something. Overpowering the two remaining hijackers was out of the question as long as they were awake and holding weapons.

  A loud splash in the water outside diverted the women's attention. Victor rushed to an open window and leaned out. The others followed his lead.

  Aster spotted Harold who had managed to sneak out of the lounge and get a raft into the water. But he apparently landed in the water himself when he tried to jump from the deck. His hands now clawed desperately at the sides of the small craft as he tried to climb in. Just as he managed to heave his upper body over the edge, heavy footsteps pounded along the deck below and Aster saw José. Taking only a split second to get his balance, José extended his machine pistol and released a long series of pops.

  Everyone stared in horrified silence as Harold's bullet-riddled body collapsed over the edge of the life raft. Again José fired his weapon and the small rubber boat deflated. The surrounding water took on a murky reddish film as Harold's body sunk into the ocean.

  She spotted one pointed fin which was joined by several more as sharks appeared from the deep. Agitated by the bloodied water, they ripped Harold's body to shreds in a frenzy of activity. Only a few scraps of rubber remained floating to attest to the macabre scene.

  With both fists raised in the air, Cherry let out an anguished wail and threw herself at Victor. His eyes revealed his momentary panic in the face of a rebellion. He jerked his gun up and caught Cherry's shoulder and upper arm with a three-round blast. She gaped at the wounded limb hanging by her side then slumped to the floor.

  Aster rushed to Cherry's side. The sight of blood and splintered bone meshed with mutilated flesh made her gag on the bile rising in her throat but the pain visible in Cherry's eyes brought her to her senses. Aster looked around frantically for something she could use as a tourniquet and settled for the length of rough rope that had previously bound them. As she tightened the knot above the wound, a hard tap on the back of her head made her turn to face Victor's gun. It was so close she felt the heat from its barrel. She should have been terrified into speechlessness but revulsion overcame her fear.

  "What kind of animal are you?"

  "Watch your mouth, bitch. You can easily be next. Get over there so José can tie you up with the others."

  Aster's body vibrated with fury. "I'm not leaving Cherry. If you want me to move, you'll have to shoot me too."

  Victor squeezed her cheeks in his hand and pushed his face close to hers. "Listen to me, bitch. You and I have some business of our own to attend to before this is over and if you think that will keep you from getting what she got, you better think again. I don't particularly care what condition you're in when I take what I want from you. Keep that in mind the next time you want to smart-mouth me."

  He released her face with a shove and Aster quickly turned her back on him. She grasped Cherry's good wrist and located a weak pulse. The brunette's eyes were closed now and her face somewhat relaxed in unconsciousness. Aster could see Cherry's chest rising and falling very faintly but knew she was losing too much blood to hold on without medical attention. Time passed, but Aster refused to move. She stroked the other woman's hair, counted to three, stroked again then counted to three. Her body rocked back and forth in time with her counting until she blotted out everything but the numbers and the rocking. It had been some time since she had needed her mental escape routine.

  The reduction in the boat's speed roused Aster from where she had fallen asleep next to Cherry, and she noticed that night had fallen.

  "What did you slow down for?" Victor demanded of the captain.

  "Look around us. We'll tear up the engines if we try to race through that. Anyway we're almost at your coordinates."

  A full moon and a clear, star-filled sky dimly lit the interior of the lounge. Slowly, sleeping forms moved and stretched, perhaps awakened by the same thing Aster had sensed. Cherry's limp hand felt cold in hers, but it was not yet rigid. Reassuring herself that her friend was still alive, she rose. Her legs throbbed as the blood pumped feeling back into them.

  "How is she?" Betty asked.

  "Alive. But I don't think she's been conscious for a while." Aster gave Cherry another glance before turning to Betty. "What's going on now?"

  "Come take a look outside."

  They had cruised right into a solid green mass of seaweed. The breeze had completely disappeared and the air had changed as well, heavy now, so that it was impossible to take a deep breath. She looked questioningly at Betty.

  "We're in the Sargasso Sea. People often include it as part of the Bermuda Triangle mystery but it's only very thick seaweed. Johnny and I usually try to avoid the area if possible." Betty lowered her voice to a whisper. "I overheard Victor talking to someone called Madre Uno over the radio. He told Johnny packages had been dropped for us to pick up."

  The ship plowed slowly through the dark green field then José's shout announced the end of the trail. Thousands of brown plastic bags tied to blocks of wood floated on top of the plants.

  Victor ordered everyone to go below as Captain Johnny reduced speed and the ship drifted to a stop.

  After a quick glimpse at Cherry's still features, Aster went down onto the deck with the others. José hauled in one of the packages with a fishing net while Victor kept his gun pointed at them and issued his directions.

  "José and you three men will bring the packages in using the nets. The women will start stacking them along the companionway. Now, move it! We want to be out of here before dawn."

  Victor's eyes were bleary and the gun shook slightly in his grip. Aster imagined him passing out. With all of them moving around freely, surely it would be possible to push José overboard before he could shoot anyone. With renewed hope, she whispered her plan to Betty and found her companions had been thinking the same thing.

  The task of loading the boat was monumental. Aster watched as the men's arms strained under the effort of lifting the packages out of the tangle of seaweed. As she placed one of the packages on top of another, perspiration trickled down her face and made her pajamas cling to her body. Package after package was carried from the nets to the growing stacks on deck and Aster realized that breathing itself had become hard labor.

  Sheila sank down on the deck and pressed her hands to her temples. Paul slid down onto the deck where he had been working, too weak to move to Sheila's side.

  Victor lifted his gun to threaten them again, but his arm drooped back down. The effort seemed to have drained him even more and he leaned heavily against the railing.

  Aster hesitated, waiting for him to fall. A surge of adrenaline filled her with renewed energy. Betty stood in readiness as well.

  Victor must have sensed the sudden tension aro
und him and recovered slightly. "Okay, you two take a few minutes break and then start separating all the bags from the wood. That shouldn't be too strenuous for you."

  Aster noted that they were close to completion when the first hints of dawn appeared. But by this time, even the younger members of the group were barely moving. She hadn't noticed anything unusual about the ship until Victor called it to Johnny's attention.

  "Captain, I think the engine has stalled. I can't hear the generator, either. Go up to the bridge and get her started again. No funny business or you know what will happen to your wife."

  The captain grunted with disgust as he hauled in his last package and dragged himself up to the bridge. A few minutes later he reappeared, breathing hard.

  "There's no... power. Everything's... dead. I tried... to warn you..."

  "What the fuck do you mean, no power? This craft is in excellent condition and has all sorts of backup systems."

  Aster groaned. She was not worried about the power, only that the problem had jolted Victor into wakefulness again.

  Johnny drew in a shallow breath. "If you don't believe me, go check yourself!"

  Victor put José in charge and hurried to the engine room. When he finally returned, his confusion was evident. "There didn't seem to be anything wrong in the engine room, so I went back up to the bridge. I don't understand it. The compass is spinning around, crazy-like, first in one direction then the other. NAVSTAR shows no reading at all, as if this ship isn't even here. It must be some kind of magnetic field. It'll pass. Just finish up and be ready to take off as soon as we get power back."

  By now the sun should have risen. The sky should have had at least a tinge of pink and baby-blue but a dark cloud blocked it out. It was getting lighter, but not from the sky. Gradually, Aster realized the rapidly brightening light was coming from around and beneath them, up through the seaweed. It was eerie and fascinating at the same time.

  To her further bewilderment, a bluish-green fog began rolling in on them. Suddenly an odd tingling sensation raced through her body, as if she had been plugged into an electrical socket. She spun around and discovered the entire ship was now enveloped by the peculiar haze.

  Johnny's temper finally erupted. "Victor, you stupid son-of-a-bitch! Now you and your precious cargo can go to hell together!"

  With a savage growl, the captain lunged at Victor, but he had given him too much warning. Victor fired into the other man's chest before he could close the distance between them. Blood gushed from the captain's heart. Red matter exploded out of his back where the bullet exited. Aster was so close her face stung where Johnny's blood pelted her. The captain remained upright for several seconds beating then collapsed on the deck.

  Captain Johnny's murder pushed the others into action. Nick and Paul jumped José, knocking his gun into the water. Aster and Betty flew at Victor before he could fire again. The attack succeeded in momentarily stunning him but he maintained a grip on his weapon. The women struggled futilely against his greater strength. Just as he managed to turn the gun toward Aster's head, a deafening roar of rushing water distracted him.

  The next instant a powerful gust of wind knocked Aster off her feet and blew her across the deck. Struggling against the force of the wind, she crawled back to Betty, huddled beneath the side rail.

  Anything not permanently secured took flight around them. A small skiff was ripped from its mooring cables and flung into the fog, as if by some enormous, unseen hand. The loose bundles they had labored so hard to stack simply vanished in the swirling mist. Was it a hurricane? A sea tornado? A deck chair soared by and struck Victor in the head. As his body slid across the deck leaving a trail of blood, Aster hoped he was dead. In a flash, his body and the captain's levitated inside a ferocious wind tunnel and disappeared.

  Aster could no longer see any of her companions and prayed they had found better shelter than she and Betty had.

  The roar grew louder and louder, but the wind suddenly died down. Using the railing as a lever, Aster pulled herself up to peer over the side. An unbroken wall of blue-white frothing water completely surrounded the ship. It had no beginning and no end. The gigantic fountain extended as far as she could see in every direction, shooting straight up to the darkened sky. She slumped back down and accepted Betty's embrace.

  She mumbled desperate prayers but was convinced they would go unanswered. The ship began to move, to turn. She was overcome by nausea and a wretched vertigo. The yacht spun faster and faster within the circle of wild water, like a Tilt-a-Whirl at a carnival, pulling her out of Betty's arms. Then the centrifugal force pinned her firmly against the side of the ship.

  With superhuman effort Aster managed to move her head. She cried in horror as Betty's face was pulled back tighter and tighter until it resembled a skeleton mask. Blood oozed from her flared nostrils and her eyeballs collapsed under their lids.

  Aster lost her sight but not her hearing. Metal screeched against metal. Some unspeakable power was wrenching the ship in half. Soundlessly, she screamed in pain and terror as the ear-splitting noise obliterated her sanity.

  Chapter 2

  Romulus touched the screen of the vidcom embedded in the desktop and the monitor shifted to an upright position. "Operation Palomar, confidential data file, text only." A flicker of light scanned his retina for authorization and the requested material appeared on the monitor.

  As with everything that had crossed his desk in the past week, he was looking for a flaw, an oversight, something to explain this nagging feeling. His nerves were on edge, a highly unusual state for him, and he was certain it was because he had missed an important fact that only his subconscious had picked up. He reviewed the facts on Operation Palomar.

  Reports from Innerworld's Stellar Monitor Control were normally repetitious observations of the positions and conditions of the planets in and around Earth's solar system. But two weeks ago, an SMC technician had recorded a shift in Jupiter's gravitational pull against the sun. It had caused a realignment of bodies in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars and several asteroids had altered their individual orbits entirely.

  Many asteroids' orbits were normally irregular and might occasionally cross Earth's path but were rarely a matter of concern. This time, however, one particular asteroid—actually a planetoid since it measured almost two hundred miles across—was heading directly toward Earth. From its current position and speed, its collision with Earth would occur in just over a year.

  As a respected member of Earth's scientific community, Innerworld's Emissary K66's assignment was to make sure his Terran colleagues picked up the shift and were proceeding properly with all due haste. K66 was in a position to help the Terrans prevent global destruction without any overt assistance from Innerworld or their home planet, Norona. The Ruling Tribunal's directive of noninterference would not be disobeyed.

  But the Terrans definitely needed that assistance, Romulus thought grimly to himself. Earth's own experts disagreed on whether to explode or attempt to deflect the planetoid. If they decided to destroy it, a fragment might ricochet at an even greater speed and still hit Earth. If that fragment were as big as ten miles in diameter, the resulting earthquakes, tidal waves and pollutants could destroy all life on the surface and Innerworld could be sealed off. If the planetoid was not deflected at all, it would knock Earth out of its orbit and destroy Innerworld as well. They would have no choice but to evacuate.

  The most efficient method would be to implant rockets in strategic locations on the planetoid. When detonated, the blast would change the planetoid's orbit again, redirecting it into the sun, where it would burn up.

  The problem was the timing. It was essential that the planetoid be diverted within a precise area of space. If several of Earth's governments pooled their resources, they would have a sufficient number of space shuttles and firepower to do the job. Given the limited speed of their ships, however, even if they launched tomorrow, they would not make the rendezvous point in time.

&nbs
p; Emissary K66 was responsible for handling that problem also. He would have to feed the knowledge of how to achieve the necessary speed to the right Terran scientist.

  But Romulus knew there was no reason for concern. The solution was simple and the situation would not become critical for another six weeks.

  He requested an intermediate update then called for his assistant, Tarla. He needed a powerful energy drainer.

  * * *

  Tarla leisurely chose a seat in the empty gallery. When word got out that Romulus was playing, the Arena benches would be jammed. He was respected as Chief Administrator of Car-Tem Province, but his outstanding skill in the games was what roused the fans.

  To her right, at the far end of the field, a giant black stallion pawed the dirt as its rider mounted. What fantastic luck! An hour ago when Tarla had called the Arena for an appointment for Rom, she had used his name to insist on a human opponent for the games, but she had never expected it would be the infamous Black Knight. Rumor had it the mystery man was actually a trainer who only accepted the most adept students and refused to play in the games for fear his superior skill might result in injury to his opponent.

  She could imagine Rom's immense pleasure when he discovered who he would be fighting. She knew better than anyone how badly he needed to burn off some excess energy. For the last several weeks he had been uncharacteristically nervous and impatient.

  Thank the heavens, the official notification of his nomination had arrived today. In spite of being half the age of the current Governor of the Innerworld colony, Rom was obviously the best qualified of all the candidates nominated for the governorship. Tarla had expected the news to delight as well as calm him. Instead, he had gotten worse.

  The Arena games excited her as much as they did her boss. After a millennium of social and cultural refinement, the primitive man still lingered deep inside Innerworld's occupants. Since their laws prohibited violence, they had been forced to create outlets for their unreleased aggression.