A few strong currents later, the Earthling has been moved to a secure room in the Surface Palace on the planet’s north pole and Vruhl has been there, holding intense meetings with the other Queens who make the journey north. The meeting with Wrrafpt in the disputed regions had not gone well; she implored Vruhl to see that the Earthling was taken to the IP but Vrulh refused without explanation. Wrrafpt left the meeting, swearing to take possession of the Earthling, and she is the only of the Queens who has not visited with Vruhl in the Surface Palace.
The Queen of the East, Tafptarr, was the first to arrive. The two met in a small room with a view of the varied terrain of smooth ice, and rocky hills that broke through the low, thin clouds under the bright light of the sun as the wooly bouren flew by the window and cleared the clouds with the movement of their wings. The wooly bouren are a species with thick feathers that are wooly like coarse hair. Tafptarr detailed the casualties of the war to Vruhl and wondered,
“Why are you risking your Dominance for this Earthling?”
Vruhl smiled, knowing that Tafptarr would not approve of the shady deal to secure the warpway. Instead she said,
“You can withdraw from the conflict at any time. This is a matter that I have chosen to handle alone. And do not make idle threats, little Queen.”
Tafptarr left insulted, but she did withdraw her help from the Equatorial efforts soon after leaving.
Vruhl dismissed the others in a similar fashion, though she’d been eager to host them to see the efforts they would take to secure the Earthling. The South Queen, Lrrpt, came with an envoy that attempted to infiltrate the Northern Surface Palace undetected while the Queens spoke, but during the meeting, Vruhl’s guards drug the infiltrators into the room barely clinging to life.
Today, she is eager to meet with the Ointite negotiators of the Mind Snatchers Cabal that executed the attack on the IP Representative that resulted in the Earthling in her possession. They kneel humbly in the vast main room and she sits high above them.
One of the Ointites stands and produces a black box. “Your warpway to the Banned Regions is secured, Queen Vruhl. I bring this message as a show of good faith. My company and I are happy to leave you so that you may consider it.”
She waves them away, and when they have cleared the main room, she activates the box. A message from an IP Representative, very interesting, Vruhl thinks. It seems that the IP is at war with itself.
Soon after, the Ointite messengers are preparing their ships to leave Vwrawl with the Earthling in their possession.
– – –
Darker won’t miss Vwrawl, but he is not eager to face what comes next. The eel people turn him over to even stranger alien people that look like the classic alien Darker was familiar with from science fiction movies on Earth. These new aliens are more human, but their eyes are so big that it unnerves him. And they look mean with their drab, grey skin. They have hard veins in their bulbous heads and no eyebrows, no noticeable body hair at all, but their eyelids are expressive and seem to be permanently arched to make their glare penetrating.
His hands are bound and the restraints extend to his legs. He is in a full body space suit and one of the big-eyed aliens is behind him, another leads him out into the bright, but hazy day on the ice. The clouds are thin, but Darker can only see about ten feet ahead of him.
He sees the weapon of the alien in front of him dangling at their hip and he knows he can grab it, but he doesn’t know if he is fast enough to do anything before the alien behind him stops him. And maybe the alien is so careless with the weapon because they know that Darker won’t be able to use it. Darker could overpower his captors, he is taller and knows that he is stronger than they are, or at least more durable, unkillable some might say, and maybe he could use the weapon to steal the ship that they walk toward on the ice, shuffling through what Darker assumes is snow.
But what if he can’t operate the ship?
Too many doubts, and they are almost at the ship; Darker can see four more of them moving outside and inside.
Then, there is commotion above him, winds stir and create a whirring sound as the snow and ice around them begins to swirl up like a tornado in the clouds that amass in a large circle. Darker and his captors look up and they see a spacecraft descending. It is larger than the ship of Darker’s captors, and the design is very different.
As they look up, Darker knows that his captors are confused as well, and as it approaches the ground, he wonders why a spacecraft would have a rotor like a helicopter. It is good for clearing the clouds, but it seems that it would be difficult to fly in space.
When the spaceship lands, the rotor begins to collapse and disappears inside the top of the ship. And the ship opens, a small black rectangle emerges on its shiny surface as something, more than one thing, flies out and directly toward Darker. Suddenly, his captors are shot, big holes seem to melt away their bodies, injured by whatever is making that sound, like a ringtone for a text message on a smartphone. The things from the ship are shooting, and his captors are dead.
Darker falls to his knees and takes cover in a huddle, ducking his head down to his knees and covering his head with his arms. He can’t die, but he can feel pain, and he wants to avoid whatever ripped holes through the aliens around him.
The noises settle, but he remains in his huddle. Then he hears her.
“Darker! It’s me! Maria!”
Darker peaks up and sees Maria land, she is wearing an awesome space suit with a jetpack, and he stumbles as he tries to stand in his excitement and bound as he is. She practically tackles him, hugging him and kissing him like she has been reunited with her father.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she says, “but we have to go. I’ll fly you to the ship. I’m glad you’re still alive.”
She grabs him and they fly toward the ship. Darker sees another person with a full set of wings on their back flying with them and they all land on the ship.
“The Queen’s troops are on to us,” the winged person says without removing their helmet.
“Let’s go!” Maria yells.
The ship blasts off, straight up, leaving a chaos of ice and snow in its wake.
Darker doesn’t speak as the ship rises through the thick clouds of the planet Vwrawl. He doubts that any of this is happening, that any of it is real. Maybe he had died when Eakran’s ship ripped apart, and everything since has been his descent into oblivion, away from the freedom he had experienced after his first death. But Maria had saved him from it. She smiles at him when she isn’t assisting the winged person who operates the ship.
Maria had snatched him back from a life lost in space. He would have been an oddity to whatever lifeforms took control of him, and he would never have felt confident enough to break free in whatever foreign land he might find himself.
But Maria is smiling at him on a ship, and he is dizzied by his recent experience.
PRL Serials 