Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [22]
“It’s little enough to ask,” agreed Leyden.
The head guard raised his weapon and pointed it at Rahatan. “Don’t make me use this,” he said.
The youth smiled. “I’m not making you do anything.” Seevyn came over to him. “This is unnecessary,” she told Rahatan.
“I’ll decide what’s necessary,” he returned, glancing at her.
“You’ll just get yourself stunned,” Seevyn insisted.
Rahatan chuckled. “Will I?” Then he looked to the head guard again. “Just leave us alone and there won’t be any trouble.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Trouble? Is that a threat?”
Rahatan shook his head. “A force of nature doesn’t threaten. It acts without warning.”
Suddenly, the high stone wall began to shudder under the guards’ feet, loosening tiny pieces of mortar. Wide-eyed, uncertain of his footing, the prime guard thrust a hand out to support himself—almost dropping his stun weapon in the process.
“What’s going on?” one of the other guards barked.
Erid knew the answer. He could see it in Rahatan’s smile, in the way he held his hands out. So that was the newcomer’s power, he thought.
Rahatan could move things—perhaps a great many things. But what he was moving at that moment was the earth beneath the fortress wall, causing the barrier to tremble and scare the life out of the guards.
“It’s that one,” the prime guard concluded at last. He pointed to Rahatan with his weapon. “He’s doing it.”
“And what if I am?” asked Rahatan, seemingly unconcerned.
The prime guard didn’t answer. He just braced himself as best he could, took aim, and fired a stun blast. Nor was he the only one.
Rahatan didn’t make a move to elude his fate. He stood there and accepted it—and before the eyes of everyone assembled, endured the indignity of the guards’ barrage.
It made him shiver and twitch uncontrollably, then fall to his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head and his jaws worked furiously. Spittle ran from the corner of his mouth.
The ordeal lasted only a second or two. By the time the guards stopped firing, Rahatan had pitched forward and lost consciousness. He lay stretched out on the ground, paler than any living being had a right to be.
“Monsters!” bellowed Leyden, shaking his fists at the guards.
“What have you done to him?” Denara demanded.
Meanwhile, the shuddering of the walls had stopped. But despite that, the guards didn’t look as if they felt very secure.
“Disperse!” cried their prime, aiming his rifle at Leyden and then at Denara. “Walk away!”
“Or what?” asked the youth with the luminous eyes. “Will you do to us what you did to him?”
Clearly, the guards didn’t want to fire at anyone else. Their expressions were proof of that. But the cries of the transformed had begun to sound too much like a rebellion.
Then a handful of them began to move in the direction of the prime guard—or more accurately, the wall beneath his feet. Leyden and Denara and the man with the luminous eyes were among them. Corba might have advanced with them too, but she had paused to kneel at Rahatan’s side.
“Stay back!” the prime guard yelled sharply, glaring at Leyden and Denara and the others.
His admonition had no effect. The transformed kept coming.
When Leyden reached the wall, he hit it with the heel of his hand. Amazingly, the stone and mortar cracked under the blow, giving him a handhold. With the heel of his other hand, Leyden smashed another hole in the wall.
To Erid, at least, the transformed’s intention was clear. Making hand-and footholds as he went, he was going to climb the barrier. Leyden could never do it quickly enough to actually reach the prime guard, but that didn’t seem to discourage him in the least.
“Stop him!” cried the prime guard.
With that, he and his men unleashed another barrage. No doubt, it would have wracked Leyden as it had Rahatan, except Denara advanced to the strong man’s side.
Erid had never seen her activate her shielding until that moment. He hadn’t known she could extend it to protect someone else. But as he looked on, that was just what she appeared to do.
The stun barrage should have subdued Leyden.