The Ta'e'sha Chronicles 2: Shards of the Mind Read online

  Kyrin held up a holoreader. “Thea left a note. She’ll be gone for a few hours.”

  Both men crawled onto the bed and soon fell into an exhausted slumber.

  Several hours later Thea peeked into the bedroom and checked on them. Seeing they were both dead to the world, she backed out and shut the door securely behind her. She made her way into the kitchen and began preparing dinner, mentally figuring how long they should sleep before they wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. She had decided to sleep in her workroom tonight, so that they could get a decent night’s sleep.

  As she carefully rinsed sand from vegetables, she reviewed her tentative plans for the marriage veil she was planning for Sya’tia.

  Sya’tia was her best friend, and her husbands had been encouraging her to court the other woman. The polygamous marriages common among the Ta’e’sha were still a bit odd to her, but she was coming to accept them. Although, if Sya’tia accepted their proposal, she didn’t think she would want to add any more members to their marriage. Their courting habits were very casual by human standards. They spent time doing what friends did. It seemed slightly deceptive to her since you would not know if you were being courted or if the person merely enjoyed spending time with you.

  She went back to her plans for the marriage veil. It was the same as offering an engagement ring. A veil was commissioned, then woven in colors the same shades that comprised the person the veil was being offered to. If the proposal was accepted, the person wore the veil until the marriage ceremony. The veil could be worn in any way the person liked.

  Thea had been toying with the idea of making the veil pattern based on Celtic knots with a stylized tree in the center, but wasn’t sure if she should go with a pattern more traditional to the Ta’e’sha. She didn’t want Sya’tia to feel like Thea was pushing her culture down her throat.

  Moving the vegetables to the cutting board, she thought about using abstract swirls on a white background. Sya’tia was very pale, so most of the shades of the veil would have just the barest hints of color.

  She decided to draw up a few ideas and see which one the men liked best. After tossing the now chopped vegetables into a pan with some melted butter to sauté, she went to wake her husbands up.

  Kyrin cracked an eye open as she came in and mumbled a sleepy greeting.

  She sat down next to him and rubbed his chest. “Dinner will be ready soon.” She patted Daeshen’s leg to wake him, grinning when he groaned and rolled over.

  Kyrin stood and stretched. “All right.” He pulled on a pair of shorts and stretched again.

  Thea slipped back out to check dinner while they got ready.

  Daeshen came in a few minutes later and stole a quick kiss. He took plates and cutlery out and set the table. “What were you doing in medical today?” he asked casually.

  She concentrated on stirring the rice she was making to go with the vegetables. “Um. I went to talk to one of the counselors.”

  Kyrin strode in with his usual confident energy. “What did you want to talk to the counselor about?” he asked, catching her reply.

  Thea ladled the rice into a bowl to avoid looking at them. “The attack.” She sprinkled spices over the vegetables. “I think I need some help dealing with it. And maybe you guys should talk to Reba too. Or go with me a few times.”

  Silence filled the room.

  She chewed on her lip and waited. Anxiety tightened her muscles. She felt them watching her and wondered what they were thinking. She hoped they were willing to try therapy even if they didn’t understand her need for it.

  “All right,” Daeshen said cautiously. “We were thinking about going to the asana, but if you’d feel more comfortable with this, we can do both.”

  Thea relaxed. “I would rather not go to the asana yet. My control isn’t very good and I can feel their emotions. It makes me uncomfortable.” She handed Kyrin the bowl of rice. “Kyaness said she’d help me with my shields first, then after that we could deal with the attack if I want to.”

  The men sat down as she finished scooping the vegetables into another bowl and came to the table. They asked her questions about how human therapy worked as dinner progressed, and she was relieved they were willing to try it and see if it helped. They were a little apprehensive since they didn’t know how a nontelepathic person would be able to help, which changed the course of the conversation a little as they talked about the differences.

  After dinner the men washed the dishes while Thea got her sketchpad out and started to draw a few rough pictures of some of the ideas she had for the veil. They adjourned to the living room and the men watched a Ta’e’shian video while she worked.

  Once the movie was over she showed them both the sketches and asked their opinions. Each sketch was studied carefully.

  “I like this one,” Daeshen said, pointing at the sketch featuring the tree.

  Kyrin hummed softly. He looked over all the sketches again. “I do too. But I also really like this abstract one.” He tilted his head.

  Thea didn’t say anything. She didn’t think he was done looking and didn’t want to influence him about his choice.

  He finally looked up. “Could you combine the two somehow?”

  She sat up and thought about it. “Well…I could paint the abstract on the background… Hmm… If I used silk it would be very easy to paint the design around the weave.” She picked up her sketchpad again and made a few adjustments to the tree picture. “Like this?”

  Daeshen and Kyrin both nodded.

  Kyrin smiled with pleasure. “That would be beautiful.”

  Daeshen agreed enthusiastically.

  Thea gathered up her tools. “I’m going to get started on this. I need to make a list of supplies I’ll need and ready my loom. I want to make a long veil so she can drape it across her hips while she’s working. It won’t be in her way if she needs to fight or exercise.

  Daeshen kissed her gently. “I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late.”

  Kyrin followed him after a more lingering kiss.

  * * * * *

  Condezl surveyed his teams. They were good. Very good. Each team was carefully matched to balance both members. Well, for the most part. Humans would have been amazed that they could work together; after all, they were enemies by evolution and instinct.

  He nodded to his partner, Myst. It was time.

  Myst cawed loudly, as only a raven can, calling the meeting to order.

  Eight large cats and eight large birds formed a semicircle around them, and the room quieted.

  Condezl stood and stretched from the tips of his ears to the tip of his tail before slowly padding along the line, inspecting each member of his crew.

  First up were Lapis and Vons. Lapis was a delicately boned caracal and Vons, a massive, long-suffering raven. He reminded Condezl of an impassive English butler, which perfectly suited Lapis’s nit-picking and princess airs.

  Next were Orchid and Lyre. Orchid had chosen the form of a margay for this incarnation. She was sweet and calm and generally cooled the hotheads in the group. Her partner, Lyre, was a brilliantly cobalt-shaded blue jay with a bright happy personality.

  After them came Twitch and Poe. Condezl occasionally wondered what the Lord and Lady were thinking to put those two together. Twitch, an ocelot, got his nickname due to the fact that he had an eye twitch and saw a conspiracy behind everything. He was currently fixated that alien abductions were fact and now was positive that he was right about everything else as well. Poe didn’t help. A morose, depressed, and slightly moth-eaten looking raven, he was always willing to take a pessimistic view of things.

  He paused for a moment and winked at Budweiser and his partner, Jorgette. Budweiser was a large, laid-back Maine Coon. His last incarnation was somewhere very southern in the United States, and he retained the accent and mentality in this life as well. Jorgette, a grackle, was the perfect southern lady, which meant she had a sweet tongue like a razor blade. The two of them spent most of their t
ime trying to keep the rest of the teams out of trouble. Condezl was considering making them his seconds, but wanted to see how they handled their missions first.

  Moving on, he quickly inspected the next pair, Chimera and Chicory. Chimera flicked an ear at him in lazy acknowledgement. When the Lady had introduced him to the female tiger, he had thought she was going to be a problem with her dominant personality and acidic sense of humor, but he had quickly learned she had no problem taking orders, and was very pleased with her new role. Her partner, Chicory, another blue jay, balanced her well by giving a quick verbal smack anytime she got too mouthy.

  The next two teams made him sigh inwardly in resignation. Skids, a marmalade tom and Doober, long-haired black tom. They both stared at him expectantly, positively quivering with the need to get into mischief. Their partners were two crows, Eric and Ash. Both crows were currently wearing sunglasses and had cigarettes hanging from their beaks. Balance was not their strong point. If the cats weren’t getting into trouble, they were. He shook his head and moved to the last team.

  Shrayne and Cray. He wasn’t sure where to put them yet. Shrayne had chosen the form of a clouded leopard and was well-known for handing out fortune cookie advice. She was mystical and deeply spiritual. He wondered if she had spent too many incarnations in a hippie commune. Cray, on the other hand, was very practical and could be counted on to make sure she ate and that the Wonder Twins, as the group was now calling the kittens and crows, didn’t bother her too much.

  He returned to his post next to Myst. He had chosen the form of a jaguar after the Lord had told him that Thea loved them. It wasn’t his first incarnation in this type of body, so he was very comfortable with it.

  The Lord and Lady had given them three gifts to help them complete their missions. They would retain those gifts until they asked to be released from their duties. The first gift was that they would not age. The second was the ability to change their size. The third gift was that of illusion, hence the sunglasses and cigarettes.

  “Skids, Doober, are your teams ready for your first mission?” he asked them quietly, mentally speaking on a thread all could hear.

  They both snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!” they chorused.

  “Very good. I want you to shrink down and have Ash and Eric fly you to each of the heating cores so you can spray each one. There are fifteen cores and each one turns on every fifteen minutes. Get in, spray, and get out without getting fried.” He fixed them with a steely eye. “This is not a video game, you don’t get three lives, and I don’t want to explain Crisp Kitten à la carte to the Lady. Twitch and Orchid? Your teams will keep watch. Any questions?”

  The other teams nodded in acknowledgement of their duties, and all affirmed they had no questions.

  Condezl nodded. “Good. Get to work!”

  The teams scattered.

  It wasn’t long before Twitch was sighing as he watched Skids and Doober duck and roll their way down the halls while humming the Mission: Impossible theme. Eric and Ash flew wildly above them. They were invisible to everyone but each other. He rubbed his shoulder against Orchid. “Which set of twins do you guys want, and what did we do to deserve this?”

  Orchid chuffed softly in amusement, making a passing crewman look around in confusion. “We’ll take Skids and Eric. And I was gonna ask you the same question. At least it won’t be boring. You guys start at one end and we’ll start at the other and meet in the middle. Sing out if you have problems!”

  Twitch nodded his assent and told Doober the plan. Both teams split off at the next intersection.

  Fifteen minutes later, Twitch positioned himself at the base of the heating grate. There was warm air issuing from it. Doober and Ash shrank, slipped inside, then waited for Twitch to tell them when to go.

  “Okay. Five minutes to the core, five minutes back. It shuts off in two. Go now and it’ll be cool by the time you’re there.”

  They were off like a shot, Doober clinging to Ash’s back and singing a Beach Boys song with edited lyrics. This mission filled him with glee.

  Five minutes later they reached the core. He jumped off Ash’s back, enlarged his body, and turned to face away.

  Ash backed a distance away. “Soldier, present arms!”

  Doober lifted his tail.

  “Aim!”

  The cat wiggled his butt.

  “Fire!”

  Doober let free a stream of urine.

  He stopped after a moment.

  Both of them examined the dripping fixture. It looked like it had gotten a thorough dousing.

  Doober shrank and jumped back on Ash. “Let’s go! Twitch says we have eight minutes!”

  An hour and a half later, they returned to the cabin they had commandeered for their use.

  “Water…” Skids whined plaintively. He headed for a bowl waiting for him, Doober right behind him.

  Twitch and Orchid presented themselves to Condezl. “Mission accomplished, sir. No casualties” ‑‑ their mouths dropped open in feline grins ‑‑ “yet.”

  Condezl nodded, pleased. “Very good work. Myst and I have a mission; we should be back in half an hour.”

  The teams acknowledged his words and went back to what they were doing: some napping, some planning other missions.

  Condezl and Myst flew quietly down the halls until they reached the grate they were looking for. They quickly shrank and followed the vents until they entered a sterile, white room. A quick glance assured them no one was present. The room was filled with cryogenic tubes. Condezl walked along the hall between each row, Myst sitting on his back, until they found what they were looking for.

  Barik’s tube.

  Myst hopped down and Condezl grew to an enormous size, still invisible. He jumped up on his hind legs and rested his paws at the top of the tube, inspecting the face of the man inside. He dug his claws carefully into the plastic casing and dragged them down, scraping long curls of plastic off the case.

  Marking him as a dead man. Maybe not now, maybe not soon. But he was a dead man.

  Never exchanging a word, they exited as quietly as they had entered.

  Chapter Three

  Kyrin was going over some of his notes. They were preparing to return to Ta’e in the next few days. Daeshen and his team had just informed him that they’d stored the samples they had room for, and the remaining items on the God List, as his team was calling it, had been sent to the other two ships still in orbit for collection. There was a distinct possibility that another ship would have to be sent out to collect the rest, since it wasn’t likely all the items could be collected on the three ships they already had there.

  It had caused a mad scramble to gather as many of the samples as possible without completely destroying the schedule for their return to Ta’e.

  His nose twitched. He inhaled. There was a faint pungent scent in the air. He ignored it.

  If everything is stored by the end of the evening, we should be able to leave within the week. He scribbled out another note on the holoreader, then reached for another reader. This one contained his correspondence not related to the running of the ship. A quick smile graced his face as he scanned several notes. They were thanks from members of the crew and several of their human mates for adding the new entertainments, such as movie theatres, hair salons, and restaurants.

  What is that smell? It was growing stronger and decidedly more unpleasant. He pushed back from his chair and entered the main deck. The odor hit him in the face like an enraged woman. “What is that?” Several members of his crew looked at him miserably.

  Whist looked up from his work briefly. “No idea, Captain, but maintenance is looking into it. They say complaints have been pouring in for the last hour. It seems to be striking some of the humans strangely. They start laughing hysterically whenever someone mentions it.” He looked perplexed.

  Kyrin shuddered and commed maintenance to see if they had found the cause yet. After a moment, they responded that they were still looking for it. He req
uested they turn the air filters up only to be told they were already running at maximum.

  The smell grew worse as the day passed. Even the human women no longer found it humorous.

  Several hours later he received a com from the maintenance department. “Captain, we have found a substance on the heating cores. We are turning them off one at a time to clean them and see if we can discover what it is. Hopefully, the smell should be gone in an hour or so.”

  “Let me know as soon as the analysis is complete,” Kyrin replied quietly. “And see if you can discover how someone got into the vents to reach the cores.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Four

  Daeshen hummed softly to himself as he carefully packaged the sheaf of papers he had received from the Ta’e’shian deities. They would be placed in a temple once he had finished making copies of the lists. Each page was filled with the ornate script of his people, but it was dry reading. It simply listed the names of different life forms indigenous to the planet Earth.

  The papers had been given to him with instructions to gather samples of each. The samples would be given to the scientists on Ta’e to be used to terraform one of the planets in his home system. His team had been scrambling to gather the requested items and catalog the samples that had already been stored by his ship and the others already orbiting the planet. They were hoping to collect as many as possible before they left, but they were running out of room.

  One of the human women helping them identify the items on the lists approached him with a frown. “Hey, Daeshen, I think we have a problem.” She set a holoreader in front of him. “These items are extinct. I have no clue how we’re going to get samples.” She leaned down to point at an item. A necklace swung free of the top of her blouse.

  Daeshen stared at the necklace, distracted from her questions. It was made of silver and featured a star set inside an ornate circle created by two crescent shapes. It was polished to a high shine and showed signs of long wear. He reached up to touch it. He looked up when she stiffened.