Nightmare Kingdom: A Romance of the Future (5 page)

For just an instant Jamie considered, than he looked down to here old George and Isaiah stood together. They would never abandon New London.

Besides, the irrational thought lingered in his brain that Claire, her task with the Gare completed with the young emperor’s death, would come here.

Like the original settlers who had died so tragically before he and his friends arrived, he suspected she would come back here for sanctuary.

And, in spite of all that had happened, he wanted to be here when the
blue-eyed girl came home.

Claire had intended landing on Capron as planned, but  only briefly as a ruse to confuse anyone possibly following them, and then rising again into space to travel on to Sanctuary.

Without a far speaker, the great empire governed by a little boy and his regent was virtually deaf. Under Mathiah’s leadership, communications technology was in infant stages on the home world, but it was hardly sophisticated enough to reach a distant and disregarded planet like Capron.

Grandmere had more important matters to concern her than an escaping daughter-in-law who had stolen the two princesses and taken off on her own. She had to keep the young emperor alive and secure the palace and its environs before she had time to reach out in space and pluck Claire and her daughters back into her control.

Claire closed her eyes, knowing that New London and its residents would be
on top of the new regent’s list. Little Michel’s survival depended on a quick and dependable supply of O negative human blood.

A quick touch-down, refueling and resupply, and then they would be off to the distant planet on the edge of the empire where her friends lived.

Instead their cruiser had barely been brought into dock when they were boarded by a mass of rough-clad men and women who quickly overwhelmed the small crew and laughed at the attempts Claire and her daughters made to defend themselves.

She wasn’t surprised when they were shoved and yelled out, though Adaeze quickly hid her dismay and Lillianne stared at these strange Aremians who resorted to audible speech and were inches shorter than those they had known.

She had always heard that the inhabitants of this unfortunate planet had regressed from the high level of civilization that existed on most of the planets of the imperium.

They fought to stay alive on this harsh world and their bodies and brains were insufficiently supplied with nutriments and medicines.

Their use of the Aremian language was not only unacceptably verbal, placing them in the ranks of such low-lifes as herself, but was also a mongrel version of acceptable speech, slurred and mispronounced.

Their manners were terrible as well. Claire found herself gripped in hairy arms and foul smelling breath nearly knocked her out. She was even more horrified to see her daughters treated with equal indignity.

Her memory took her instantly back to the time in her youth when she’d been a captive of the pirates of Kyria for a few days. In comparison Captain Henry and his troopers had been gentlemen and women.

Her crew was held at weapon point. “We made arrangements,” the captain protested. “Protection for my passengers should be available immediately.”

Several of their captors laughed out loud. “That arrangement was made with the previous government. And we’re not fools here on Capron. You and your people can get right back on your little ship.”

“That’s a fine little craft,” one of his men protested. “We should just kill them and keep the ship.”

An individual of less than medium height by Aremia’s standards smiled with thin lips. “That would be very short-sighted, my friend.” He went over and shook Claire free of the grip that held her so tightly. “If I’m not mistaken, and I’m quite sure I’m not, this little lady is our empress.”

One rough hand brushed against her gleaming black hair. “Bow, gentlemen, before the Empress Claire.” He nodded at Adaeze and Lill
ianne, and then grinned. “And the two princesses,” he added. “Bow, gentlemen, bow!”

Several did just that, bending in mock bows and howling with laughter.

“Seems to me that his almighty greatness Mathiah the tenth will be awful pleased to get these ladies back, so pleased that he’ll pay almost any price.”

He shook Claire as though she were a rat caught in his grasp. She gathered he wasn’t very fond of the ruling Gare, but then she supposed nobody on this prison planet would be.
Though his info was hardly up to date.

Maybe it would be best not to tell him that Mathiah no longer lived to ransom them.
She and the girls seemed to have fallen from fat into fire.

Nobody seemed to want to talk to her. Instead they addressed themselves to the captain of her ship, who looked as though he could barely stand the indignity. She suspected that the aristo Gare captain would rather have fought to the death than be captured by such degenerates.

Not to be a snob, but she almost felt that way herself.

She listened while he was instructed that he would return to Aremia and explain the precarious position in which the members of the royal
family found themselves. He was to return with the huge ransom demanded or the empress and the two princesses would die horribly.

Any movement against the people of Capron and they would meet the same fate.

Claire’s agile brain ticked away busily. Even if Mathiah still lived, these rebels would never dare let the three of them go. Grandmere might meet the demand to see Adaeze and Lillianne freed, but she would have no such anxiety about her daughter-in-law. She would most likely be pleased to see her so easily disposed, knowing it would be a simpler matter to retrieve the needed blood-donors from New London.

Anyhow it didn’t matter what the regent did. These people would hold her and her daughters forever as the only guarantee they had that the empire wouldn’t blow them out of existence. Surely they knew the prison planet would be considered expendable.

But then they didn’t seem to be too politically savvy, these people. They hadn’t even figured out that something must be going on for the supposed empress to be landing on their desolate planet.

Nobody on Aremia was going to save them, not in the midst of a revolt. She had to make other plans that had more to do with finding a way to rescue themselves.

Mathiah’s captain and friend refused to take orders from his captors and the rest of the crew proved equally loyal. Even though that loyalty was not so much for herself as for her late husband, Claire couldn’t help being impressed.

No need for them to stay here and die. And perhaps, just perhaps, she could manage a small intrigue.

“Do as they say,” she said quietly. “You know it’s our only hope of surviving. Go to my home and summon help.”

She could only hope that their captors would understand this as a call
to the captain, who was an exceptionally perceptive man who had known her since her earliest days on Aremia, and would know where her real home lay.

She was sending him to Sanctuary. Most likely they would barely remember her there, but she was counting on one man
not to have forgotten.

Jamie rolled over in his solitary bed in the well-fortified old town hall, trying to shake off dreams where the youngsters sent to the planet Sanctuary were being picked off one by one, disappearing to an unknown fate.

He’d been their leader back then, an inner core of responsibility having been instilled in him by the grandparents who raised him, and he’d been bound and determined to rescue all the missing.

He had been successful with all but one. Claire had chosen to stay with the Gare emperor who had selected her for the honor of becoming his wife, half because she’d come to care for him and half because she made a bargain that safeguarded the youngsters of New London from the predators who would steal away their lives one by one.

Who would have thought that the pretty girl from Chicago, who had seemed so
self-centered and frivolous, would have made such a sacrifice? He guessed nobody else would have suspected the determination that lay within her.

He grinned at the thought. Claire
Shiray had possessed a streak of stubbornness that was about a mile wide.

Her position within the empire had depended on the support of her husband
. He fully understood that much about the strangely convoluted system that operated throughout the planets. Only males ruled because only men displayed the far speaking gift that united those worlds.

And Claire had no son, only daughters.

This made him consider his own isolated state. In their small society originally without modern birth-control methods, the teens that made up the community had produced a goodly crop of children.

He himself had enjoyed a brief
liaison with Karen and a few other short-termed relationships over the years, but he hadn’t seemed to be destined for long-range closeness with any woman. He had a child from one of those relationships, but since the society had evolved so that it was not the male who engendered the birth, but the man who raised the child who acted as father, he was more like a fond uncle to his son.

It was certainly not the life he’d imagined when he was growing up back on the farm in Oklahoma. He and his sister having been abandoned by their parents at an early age, he
’d planned a future with a stable family around him. It just hadn’t happened.

His thoughts drifted as they so often did to
Gran, Grandpa and his younger sister, Marti. He wondered if they were all still alive and well. Years passed since that last visit before he’d returned to help the people of New London. He’d had no contact with his family on Earth since then.

He turned over again and tried to sleep. Each night he told himself he must rest because he had to be at his best and strongest for what might come at any day now.

Kevin Hartley had convinced the people they were safe and could go about their ordinary lives, but like Jamie, the members of the resistance party had made their homes inside this fortified building, armed with powerful weapons they’d acquired over the years.

Some might consider their cause hopeless, but Jamie had been raised by the descendants of strong-minded Oklahoma pioneers and he would defend the community with every fiber of his being.

The knock at the door of what used to be an office and was now his bedroom startled Jamie to his feet, his hand already reaching for the weapon he kept nearby.

Each knock, each shrill call from outside, anything
unusual jarred him to awareness. He didn’t know how the attack would come, but he knew it would come. Soon.

“It’s me.”

“Come on in, Isaiah,” he called, waiting for his friend to come in before seating himself on his bed.

The room lay in total darkness since there were no windows to admit even star light. He heard Isaiah fumbling past a chair, stumbling and then righting himself. Good old Isaiah, he was always having small accidents as his body and mind didn’t always work together because his brilliant brain was always out there, thinking, calculating, and not aware that he was tripping over something.

Jamie turned the lights on low and saw not only Isaiah standing there, blinking at him like an owl caught in a sudden glare, but George, still standing in the doorway.

They were both fully dressed and had obviously not been sleeping. Isaiah plopped into one of Jamie’s two chairs, while George eased his arthritic body into the other.

Jamie waited for what they had to tell him.

Looking so weary that his face seemed to sag, Isaiah nodded to George. “Mack’s boys slipped out to do a little spying,” the older man said without drama. “Found out that the little boy emperor is showing signs.”

Jamie didn’t have to ask what signs. “He’s a far speaker?”

“Possibly. Everybody’s hoping.”

“Claire?” It was the logical next question. Even the former empress would be sacrificed if the health of a far speaker was in question. And yet, he reminded himself, Mathiah had gone for years without negative symptoms. Only in the months before his death had he become ill. Claire and her daughters might still be safe.

Isaiah answered the question only indirectly.
“They’re worried about him.”

Jamie sat still, betraying no emotion, while he remembered the emperor’s older brother who had not been a far speaker, but yet had suffered from the genetic illness that went with it. Neither his life nor his death had been desirable
and he’d taken at least one Earther life with him.

“You’ve told Kevin.”

“Mack and Karen took the boys to him first thing. He got all hot and bothered because they’d dared wake him up.” George grinned, showing what was left of his teeth. “Then he fussed at them for sneaking into the city.”

Jamie felt the lines deepen on his forehead. “He didn’t consider this ominous?”

“Said we should be glad for the Gare that they have a new leader.”

“The man’s a fool,” Jamie said quietly.

“No need stating the obvious,” Isaiah said.

Old George only raised his thin eyebrows to indicate unsurprised agreement.

“You’re somewhere around a hundred and ten, George.” Jamie relaxed enough to tease. “And you look more wide awake than either of us.”

“That’s
‘cause I don’t waste much time sleeping these days,” George responded.

The next visitor didn’t bother knocking on the door. Karen Russell came bursting into the room, not even looking slightly embarrassed to break in on Jamie’s supposed privacy or that he was clad only in the underwear he’d worn to bed.

But then Karen was rarely embarrassed, having been over-endowed with confidence at birth. “Something’s going on,” she announced breathlessly.