Being of the Field Read online

  This was it for Kassa. No way to avoid exposing herself if she wished to save her crewmates. ‘Lucian, please just hush and let me concentrate a moment.’

  Kassa turned towards the contained anomaly and bowed her head to focus; Lucian’s jaw tightened as he suddenly suspected so much, but he remained silent.

  ‘You promised safe passage for our vessel. What went wrong?’ Kassa raised her eyes to look at the anomaly. After a moment, she conveyed the information to Lucian. ‘The craft encountered one of the developing species on the surface…a tundrell.’

  Lucian opened his mouth to ask what a tundrell was—

  ‘These long tentacles of vegetation extend above the steamy mist on the surface to photosynthesise in our light. We have just discovered that, deprived of our light, as the area underneath our tunnel was during this exercise, tundrells will wave about seeking a better vantage point. We are most apologetic for this oversight.’

  Lucian couldn’t figure out what was more amazing: Kassa being a channel, or the anomaly’s explanation.

  ‘And what of our crew?’ he found himself demanding of the gas.

  ‘We are seeking them,’ Kassa conveyed, ‘and will report their condition to you as soon as it is known.’ Kassa then breathed a heavy sigh as the anomaly withdrew from her mind. Feeling faint after conversing with the entity, she staggered back to sit in Taren’s chair.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Lucian went down on one knee beside her.

  Kassa nodded and then dared to look at her old friend. She was not surprised to find a bewildered expression on his face.

  ‘How long have you had this Power, Kassa?’

  ‘All along,’ she confessed, forcing a smile.

  Lucian’s mind and eyes boggled. ‘But I’ve known you for over a hundred years and in all that time you never once even hinted—’

  ‘I’ve been a coward, Lucian,’ she admitted. ‘The importance of respect and acceptance was instilled in me from a young age. I doubt very much that I would be where I am if anyone had suspected my hidden talents. Such people are a risk to security…or at least they were in my younger days, before the MSS got many of us registered, under surveillance and under control.’

  ‘But they never pegged you.’ Lucian smiled for the first time in a while. In a way, he was proud of his old friend. ‘Well, your hidden talent could prove to be our hidden advantage.’ He tried not to think of all the adverse thoughts he might have had about Kassa over the years, which she had probably perceived in the midst of their disagreements.

  ‘You’ve always meant well, Lucian,’ she answered his thought. ‘That’s why I’m still here on AMIE. I couldn’t ask for a better employer or friend.’

  His smile broadened. He couldn’t hide how extraordinary he thought she was. ‘I’m fine with that.’ He stood, subconsciously hoping that distance might shield his thoughts. ‘I’m not too sure how the rest of the crew will handle the fact.’ He was thinking of Leal in particular.

  ‘Must everyone know?’ Kassa seemed ashamed to ask.

  Lucian frowned in thought. What was the moral thing to do here? ‘I feel that in this case, ignorance is bliss. I’ll leave it to your discretion who knows and who does not.’

  ‘Thank you, Lucian.’

  He had to force a smile now, as all his worries returned to haunt him. ‘Stay with our friend and let me know when it reports back.’

  ‘Will do,’ she confirmed, sensing how heavily circumstances were weighing on his shoulders. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Coming from your bones, Kassa,’ Lucian decided, ‘I find that encouraging.’ He knew she was referring to Taren and Zeven…Kassa had offered no such assurance about his wife.

  CHAPTER 6

  PROPAGATION

  When Taren awoke with her right temple throbbing, it was painfully obvious that she had hit her head. Her sight was blurred…then the steamy, wet shield window, against which pelting rain streamed sideways, came into focus. Taren was lying on her side. We’ve crashed!

  The last thing she recalled was seeing long, curling tentacles rising below their craft and flaying around violently. ‘What the hell were they?’

  Her eyes darted across and up to the pilot’s seat, where she saw Zeven hunched forward in his harness. Due to the slanted angle of their craft, he was leaning slightly over and above her. ‘Zeven!’ She raised an arm to try and slap him back to consciousness, but this required greater effort than expected—delayed shock was making her feel weak, shaky, and nauseated. The idea of being stranded on an alien planet without a pilot was an absolutely horrifying notion and she began to panic. Taren’s reach fell short of Zeven’s face, but she could stretch as far as the pilot’s right shoulder, which she proceeded to shake with all the strength she could muster. ‘Zeven! Please wake up! Please! Shit!’ When he did not stir, Taren decided to take off her harness in order to get to him.

  In her dazed state and awkward position, unbuckling was a huge effort. Once released from her safety harness, however, gravity cast Taren face-first against the side shield window. Through the window she could see that their craft was buried in mud topped by a layer of water that was, thankfully, not seeping inside. She crawled around to a kneeling position to wipe away the layer of mist on the inside of the front shield window, but nothing could be seen beyond the steamy, pouring rain.

  Taren turned herself around to face Zeven and the craft rocked beneath her in response to the sudden movement. It obviously wanted to tip down onto its belly, but for all Taren knew it could be teetering on a cliff face, or resting on a pile of rocks that might cause even more damage than it had already sustained.

  Taren leaned slowly towards Zeven, placing a hand on each of his cheeks. ‘Starman?’ She carefully positioned herself underneath him to look him in the face. ‘I really need you to wake up. You’re my pilot!’ As she inspected the bloody wound on the side of his head, her fears intensified and she began to weep. ‘You’re really scaring me now.’ She leaned in close to support his forehead upon hers. ‘Please, please, please, wake up!’ Zeven’s head remained a dead weight. He was still alive, but how much life he had left would rest upon her ability to take charge of the situation.

  ‘Get it together, girl.’ She sucked back her fear and looked at the control panel of the craft, which was blacked out. ‘What would Zeven do?’ The answer seemed rather obvious. ‘Start it up.’ She recognised the ignition button, but was that wise with the craft on this angle?

  ‘I have to go outside.’ It was the thing she was most loath to do, but she had to know the full extent of their predicament before she could take any action.

  With her suit helmet locked on, Taren climbed into the back of the craft and, using the manual override, she sealed off the rear section and prepared to open the exterior hatch. As she inched forward to pull the lock lever, the craft rocked before settling again. This is insane! Taren lost her courage for a moment, but the thought of her injured crewmate inspired her to endure. ‘If this doesn’t work, we’re going to die anyway, so what the hell.’ She unfastened the lever and kicked the heavy metal hatch open.

  Steam came pouring in at her, which immediately fogged up the exterior of her helmet visor…she couldn’t see a thing! ‘Not good.’ She felt her way out the door and stood up.

  There was light, but the pelting rain and steam prevented her from seeing anything. The read out on the monitor inside her visor was registering a breathable atmosphere, and as the lack of visibility was making her feel claustrophobic and frustrated, Taren bravely took her helmet off. Her head was instantly drenched by the warm, torrential rain.

  ‘Great wonders of the universe, that feels good.’ Taren revelled in the relaxing, rejuvenating force of the warm shower. The air, so pure and delightful, made her tingle all over, although at the same time it was like trying to breathe through water—it was a heavy, moistureladen atmosphere. Ripe for propagation, thought Taren. It felt like spring on Maladaan, but intensi
fied one thousand times. Ringbalin would appreciate some samples, and Taren decided she must oblige him before she left.

  If she left?

  This thought snapped Taren out of the strange natural high she seemed to be on and she looked around to get her bearings

  The craft was in the middle of a rocky marsh, in which grew huge fern-like vegetation. Unfurled, these plants rose way up into the and rain mist that was currently drenching the entire area. The storm itself was alive with the colourful lightning flashes that they had seen while flying to the surface through the cloud of gas. From the ground this phenomena was both exotic and spectacular to the eye.

  In the knowledge that the water and mud below weren’t deep, Taren climbed of the reconnaissance vessel and landed with a splash. She was grateful to find neither a cliff, nor large rocks, just a huge pool of water skirted by the tall vegetation. The ship was being prevented from righting itself by the collection of rocks that the nose of the craft had crashed into. Still, the damage appeared minimal.

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ Taren decided. Now all she needed was a forklift to move it off the rocks. With both hands shielding her eyes from the downpour, Taren noted that the remote tracking device for the pod, the monitor of which had swung around to the underside of her wrist, was picking up a signal. ‘The missing pod!’ Taren looked in the direction that the signal indicated. According to the read out, she was practically on top of it.

  ‘Well, aren’t you just full of surprises?’

  Taren gasped in relief at hearing Zeven’s voice and swung around to find him removing his helmet.

  ‘Look at you, Miss I-don’t-like-to-leave-my-lab, wading your way around an alien planet.’ He chuckled, delighted by her fearlessness. ‘And unprotected, too.’

  ‘Starman!’ Taren splashed toward the pilot as fast as she was able and overwhelmed him with a hug. ‘I have never been so glad to see anyone!’ She pulled back to plant a kiss on Zeven’s cheek, but he turned his head and drew her into a much longer and more intimate moment than expected.

  Her scruples told her to end the encounter—she was not serious about this lad. But her repressed sensual side just wanted her to rip off her spacesuit and have wild passionate sex in this steamy alien environment. Zeven may have been only slightly taller than her, but he had an amazing body, as her wandering hands were discovering. I’ve never felt this impassioned in my life! She attempted to justify her actions to herself, but her heart and her head were not buying her excuses. It’s just this place. Her reservation won out and she pulled away, hyperventilating on the excitement that was coursing through her veins.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she blurted. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘You could have fooled me,’ Starman grinned.

  ‘What I mean is,’ Taren took a few deep breaths to clear her head, ‘it’s the atmosphere here. It’s like pure aphrodisiac.’

  ‘All right!’ He was inspired, rather than deterred.

  As he made a move toward her, Taren held out a hand to hold him at bay. ‘Please, Zeven. Listen to reason.’

  Very reluctantly, he backed up. ‘That wasn’t good for you?’ It was a rhetorical question, for the answer was already clear to him.

  ‘That is not the point.’ Taren attempted to be serious. ‘Here we are, stranded in a hostile environment, with our mission in jeopardy. We have a crewmate missing and all we can think about is having sex! Is this how you would normally act under such conditions?’

  ‘No. But then I’ve never been in these conditions before, with company like you,’ Zeven emphasised, admiring how her white suit had gone see-through and clung to her skin and underclothes. ‘I have never seen a spacesuit look so…hot.’

  He moved closer once more and Taren was tempted to give in and match the lust she saw in his beautiful, big brown eyes. ‘I think everyone back at base is worrying about us…and my tracking device is bleeping.’ She held her wrist monitor in his face to remind him why they were here.

  Taren hated that her commonsense prevailed, for she was allowing a unique and amazing experience to pass her by. Professionally, it was the right thing to do, but personally, she felt she needed to be shot.

  ‘Right.’ Zeven felt very put in his place. She was right…they were here to do a job, they were in a lot of trouble, and this was probably not a girl’s ideal seduction situation. ‘Sorry, lost my head.’ He took a deep breath, hoping to regain perspective, but the surge of virgin air through his lungs only made him feel more aroused—he couldn’t drag his thoughts away from that kiss.

  ‘According to this…’ Taren moved off in the direction her reading indicated. ‘…our pod is about twenty paces this way.’ Taren picked up the pace as she spotted it sitting in the steamy water.

  Zeven was hot on her heels, and they both came to a stop beside the pod. ‘That would be it,’ he confirmed and moved around to the far side, opened a panel and smiled. ‘It still has juice,’ Zeven noted, referring to the power supply.

  ‘Can it get us home?’ Taren didn’t really see how it could, as needed to be launched.

  ‘Hell, no!’ Zeven obviously found the question elementary and amusing. ‘But I can use the communicator inside to inform base of our whereabouts,’ he continued, to Taren’s great relief. ‘So…then will you have sex with me?’

  ‘Starman!’ Taren whacked his shoulder, pretending to be surprised at his cheek, but she had to love his persistence and he was gorgeous when he was being heroic.

  Zeven shrugged nonchalantly and wiped the streaming water from his face as he began punching a code into the control panel of the pod’s locking system. ‘You don’t like that I’m younger than you, do you?’

  ‘It’s not that, really. I’m just not up for a relationship right now.’

  Zeven laughed and momentarily stopped punching in the code to look at Taren. ‘If that is you not up for a relationship…I would sure like to be there when you are.’

  He finally hit the last digit and the door opened, although his eyes remained fixed on Taren and she felt uncomfortably aroused by his gaze. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t focus on anything but kissing him again.

  And so it was that she found herself backed up against the pod, her suit being stripped from her wet body. Zeven’s passionate kisses were descending down her neck, and his hands upon her breasts made her gasp in delight—and he had yet to strip her of her singlet and underclothes. Her head rolled to the side and noted with some difficulty that the supposedly empty vessel was occupied.

  ‘Starman.’ She shook him off.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone, I swear—’

  ‘No, look!’ Taren pointed to the cockpit. She could only see the legs of the occupant from where she stood but she was fairly sure she knew who the legs belonged to.

  Zeven was quick to investigate. ‘Oh, please no.’ He was even quicker to turn about once he had seen the corpse. ‘It’s Amie,’ he explained to Taren, an expression of horror across his face. ‘Someone has—’ He couldn’t say it; instead he made haste to find a private place to throw up.

  Her prophetic vision had been accurate. Taren knew it before she saw the cut on Amie’s throat that ran from ear to ear.

  Leal thought he was alone on the flight deck of AMIE when the communication from the lost pod came through. He had been starting to doze in his chair, but as soon as he heard the tone, he was at the com-link in a flash. ‘Starman?’

  ‘It’s Taren here.’

  Leal began to panic. ‘Where is Zeven?’

  ‘He’s here, he’s fine, he’s just…not very good at being the bearer of bad news. Is Lucian present?’

  ‘No. Shall I fetch him?’ Leal offered.

  ‘Best not,’ Taren said, ‘just yet. Um…we’ve found Amie, and it would seem my nightmare was indeed a prophecy. Kassa will know what I mean.’

  ‘I understand,’ replied Kassa, whose presence both startled and delighted Leal.

  ‘What does she mean?’ Leal didn’t like
being left in the dark.

  ‘She means that I have some grave news to deliver to our captain.’ Kassa left to do so.

  ‘How grave?’ Leal queried, but Kassa waved off further comment.

  ‘Starman wants to know if you have a fix on our location.’

  Taren’s request dragged Leal’s attention away from the departing doctor. ‘Affirmative…but it’s going to take time to formulate an extraction plan. With you down there, I don’t know how we are going to communicate with our gas cloud friend and get you out of there.’

  Kassa stopped just short of the elevator. She could arrange the extraction with the sample in Taren’s lab, but then Leal would learn the truth about her telepathy and he would cease coming to see her with minor ailments and delighting her old ego with his delicious secret fantasies about her.

  ‘Tell Kassa I might be able to communicate with its larger body from down here. I’ll give it a go.’

  Kassa closed her eyes, grateful for Taren’s talent to think up a good cover story. Perhaps she didn’t have to lose her young flyboy’s attentions just yet. She promised herself that she would confess the truth to him at the first appropriate moment. ‘Leal, you pussy. Get your arse into a salvage ship and get us out of here!’ Starman’s voice came through the intercom, which made both Kassa and Leal smile.

  ‘I am so relieved you survived,’ Leal told him, wiping a tear from his cheek. ‘I was afraid that if you died and rotted there, we might end up with an entire evolution spawned from you! A Zevolution—’ he joked.

  ‘Leal, my friend, under normal circumstances I would be touched,’ Zeven replied flatly, ‘but I’m leaning over a corpse to speak with you, so whatever you’re planning, make it snappy…I really don’t want to spend the night here.’

  Leal was left gaping at his friend’s speech. ‘That’s a little graver than I expected…leave it with me.’

  Leal shot up from his chair to chase Kassa. ‘Is there anything I can do?’