Neverwylde (The Rim of the World Book 1) Read online

  “No. It’s wood.”

  “Wood? Where would someone find wood around here?”

  “That’s what we’re all wondering.”

  Kyber noticed the bandages around the guard’s ankles. Another glance over at where most were gathered revealed Tojun wearing a sling around his arm and shoulder. Likewise, Gaveer’s face bore some sort of glowing patch over his lacerations. Quickly, he scanned the room for sign of the female. She was sitting alone to one side, eating from…

  “You shared our rations?” he asked the guard.

  “They had none of their own. I mean, they did, but the carrier they’d brought with them disappeared during the fight. I authorized the sharing. I figured it was a good trade, considering what their doctor has done for us. Don’t worry. We’re thinning out the portions as much as we can, but inevitably the food will run out, as will the water.” The man shook his head. “After that, it won’t matter whether we fight each other or not. Eventually, we’ll all die.”

  Kyber clenched his teeth. Massapa was right. One way or another, they all would die on this world. “Help me to sit up,” he ordered the man, holding out his arm. The guard managed to lift him to where Kyber could use the wall behind him as a prop. He was adjusting himself when a water pouch was shoved in his face. Glancing up, he saw the woman bending over and smiling at him.

  “Welcome back. Here, drink some water. It’ll make you feel better.”

  He reached out to take it from her, and their hands brushed. Impulsively, he held onto it, turning the palm over to examine the fingers with their blunt nails. The knuckles, the grasping thumb. Even without a covering of fur, or the long tapering talons, it was much like his own. It made him aware of how much her kind and his were alike, despite their appearance. Releasing her hand, he gruffly thanked her and took a swig, replacing the cap after the one swallow. She nodded, understanding.

  “I take it you’ve found out we’re sharing your rations.”

  Kyber grunted in answer as he surveyed their new locale. Anything to keep from staring at the female with the blue eyes and mane of dark brown hair she had knotted behind her head. Several strands had come loose, which she unconsciously tucked behind her ear every once in a while.

  “In our culture, it’s rude to watch a person for any extended length of time,” he told her, keeping his own eyes averted to keep her from noticing how he continued to study her.

  She saw him gazing at the ceiling, or where the ceiling should be. It was difficult to tell how high up it might be, being veiled in darkness. “It’s been hours since we left our ship to come here. Typically, nighttime at home averages around ten hours. Hopefully it’ll be daylight soon, and we can see more of what this place looks like.”

  “And those worm things when they prepare to attack,” he remarked.

  The woman grinned lopsidedly. “Unless they sleep during the daylight and only come out to play in the dark.”

  Kyber grunted again. She had a point.

  The female plopped herself down next to him without asking permission, and crossed her legs, resting her back against the wall behind them. Kyber was tempted to remark that what she was doing was also rude. But it occurred to him that perhaps it was time certain proprieties were disregarded, given the circumstances.

  “Do I make you uncomfortable?” she asked. He gave her a surprised look. She grinned again. “I ask because you have that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Among my people, it’s the look they get when they deem something’s distasteful. I don’t know if it’s the same for you. That’s why I asked.”

  She was astute as well as brave. And beautiful.

  The last admission gave him a start. For a hairless Terran—discounting what was on top of her head—she was indeed very beautiful. To him, at least. The others might not agree with him, but their opinion didn’t matter. What mattered was that this female had to be very intelligent to be a pilot of one of their vessels. And in the way she had intervened in their near skirmish by logically pointing that both species needed each other if anyone was to survive on this planet.

  “Well?”

  He gave her a questioning look.

  “You zoned out on me for a moment there. Are you all right? I heard you lost a lot of blood.” Consternation crossed her face, and she pointed to his uniform. “Whatever that’s made of, it’s a dark red. Made it hard to tell you were wounded until you keeled over.”

  Keeled over. A Terran phrase, but one he understood without explanation. Again, Kyber mused silently over the similarities between her species and his. In the back of his mind, he wondered how many more ways they might be alike. Or different. He gazed back down at the water packet in his hands. “These rations will not last long. Not with all of us sharing them.”

  “I know. I sure as hell would like to know who took off with our trundle of food.” She sighed. “Maybe, if we’re very lucky, we’ll find something here.”

  He frowned. “Your optimism is to be commended, Lieutenant. But I’m afraid it’s more whimsy at this point.”

  She made a face at him. “I know you’re technically my superior, but I wish you’d call me by my name instead of my rank.”

  Kyber noticed how no one seemed to be paying attention to him and the female. An odd sense of relief went through him at the idea their conversation wouldn’t be overheard. Regardless, he lowered his voice. “To be frank, at this point, I, too, believe ranks are inconsequential.”

  She beamed. “Good. My name is Kelen.” She kept her voice low, taking her cue from him. “Can I call you Kyber?”

  “I would not mind if you did,” he admitted.

  “It works!” The cry came from the far side of the room, in an area not illuminated by the fire’s light. Earlier, Kyber had noticed someone using a tube light, but had dismissed it as one of the men either investigating the area, or looking for a place to relieve himself. It was neither, as a small Terran with a slight build walked toward the commander. He held an object in his hand, and he appeared to be very pleased with himself.

  “What works, Dox? What have you got for us?” Dayall asked.

  The man called Dox held out an odd-looking device. “Made a sensor. Checked for more of those eye worms. So far, zero.”

  “Excellent, Dox! How far does this track?”

  “Seventy meters.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  Dox made a small adjustment on the device. “There. Set it to warn us. If one comes into range, it’ll make a loud sound.” Leaving the sensor with the commander, the little man returned to his personal area, obviously quite pleased with himself.

  Kyber looked to Kelen. Before he could say anything, she snorted softly. “That’s Dox for you.”

  “He is…” Kyber searched for a word that he hoped would not offend her.

  “He’s an isotope baby,” she went on to explain, saving him the trouble.

  “I was going to say he is different.”

  She nodded. “He is. He’s very different. He was created in a lab.”

  “You create your own kind in labs?” Kyber didn’t know if what he felt was revulsion or shock.

  Kelen quickly shook her head. “No. I mean, some are. You see, when the Heimer virus hit us nearly a hundred and eighty years ago, we lost many of our most prominent minds. Our space program grounded to a halt because there were too few intelligent minds left to run it. No one knew how to operate the equipment, or even understood how it worked, much less be able to build more ships. It forced the remaining scientists to find a way to breed intelligence back into us. Most of us, like the commander and myself, and the others, we’re bred from prime stock. People whose genetic material would produce the highest functioning offspring. That was, until the Gruber Project was developed. Instead of having specific people breed, they were able to take the DNA from the most promising candidates, and create progeny with finely tuned abilities. Dox, there, is a genius with just about everything that has to do with
electronics.”

  “He reminds me of a child proudly showing off his work to a parent,” Kyber remarked.

  “Yep. It’s a side effect of the process used to create him. A super genius brain doesn’t think like ours, so he doesn’t communicate like the rest of us. But give him a chance. He’ll grow on you.”

  She gave him a smile, and for a moment Kyber’s gaze riveted on it. Why did this Terran female fascinate him? It was both a puzzling and intriguing dilemma. But what surprised him more was the realization that he didn’t feel uncomfortable around her. Talking with her seemed as natural as any conversation he’d have with one of his own kind. He narrowed his eyes at the sight of the commander talking to the man with the weapon. Maybe it was a good thing. His people needed someone like Kelen as a go-between.

  “Hey, Commander?” A Terran entered into the fire’s circle of light. Kyber got the impression the man had returned from being outside the room.

  The commander gave the man his attention. “What is it, Jules?”

  “I think it’s starting to get daylight.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “I mean, you need to come see this.” The man surveyed the entire room. “All of you. You’re not going to believe this.”

  Kyber tried to get to his feet, but he was rocked by another round of dizziness. Fortunately, Gaveer appeared by his side to help him stay up. He noticed that Kelen remained with him, although she didn’t offer to lend a hand. He wouldn’t have accepted her aide, even if she had.

  Moving slowly, he followed the rest of the people out the door where the first faint rays of sunshine were beginning to peek over the horizon.

  Chapter 9

  Rim

  The sun was a distant, blue-white star in the sky. It barely brightened the darkness, or generated any heat, but it was enough to where they could see their surroundings with more clarity.

  As Kelen had suspected, the tower’s ceiling soared hundreds of meters above them once they exited the room where they’d taken refuge. The hieroglyphs they’d seen carved into the walls and columns extended upward as far as she could see. Yet, for all the intricate designs and pictures, not one of them resembled a face or being of any type.

  “What kind of civilization doesn’t honor their great leaders or heroes with a statue or a bust of some sort? Or pay tribute to some kind of higher order of being, like a god?” Her words reverberated softly back to her.

  “Hey, Chambliss! You coming or not?” Mellori yelled at her.

  She hurried to catch up as they reached the back entrance of the structure. Like the front, there was no doorway. Another a square-shaped opening led out onto a sloping sheet of rock. The others were already outside, standing on the precipice, when she abruptly stopped and gasped.

  There was no horizon. The weak sun shone, a single orb suspended in the heavens, with no visible sight of land anywhere beyond the rock ledge and the temple.

  She heard Fullgrath swear. Glancing over at him, she directed her eyes in the same direction where he and several others were staring.

  The planet ended at the temple. Literally. As if some cosmic knife had sliced the world in two, right where the building was located. Except, in this case, she wondered what came first—the building, or the catastrophe which carved open this world. To the right and left, the world disappeared. A ragged edge of land stretched as far as she could see on both sides, leading away from the structure. Space lay beneath their feet, with only the thin haze of an atmosphere separating them.

  Jules was the first to voice what she, and possibly everyone else, was thinking. “How can this place exist?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to find Kyber watching her. It took a moment for that to sink in. Why was he watching her and not this incredible spectacle before them? She opened her mouth to remark, when she caught sight of the small figure lying at the edge of the rock, his head sticking out over the chasm to peer below.

  “Dox! Get away from there!”

  Dox looked back at her and grinned. “It goes on forever.”

  “That’s her point,” Dayall remarked. “Get away from the edge.”

  The little man reluctantly scooted backwards and sat up.

  “It appears to be a phenomenon we’ve never encountered,” Bertriol muttered. He looked at the Seneecian standing nearby. “How about you guys? Ever see something like this before?”

  The gray-furred alien, the one with the broken wrist who’d introduced himself as Tojun, continued to stare in silence. “No,” the light brown Seneecian standing beside him answered. “We’ve never seen anything like this. Or heard of a world with an edge.”

  Kelen looked back at Kyber, who was now standing by the side of the temple and trying to see down the side of the immense divide. “Notice anything?”

  “The clouds are too thick.”

  “I wonder how far down it goes?” Sandow wondered aloud. “There has to be a bottom down there somewhere, don’t you think?”

  “If there is, it’s too far to see,” Dayall commented.

  Mellori stepped closer to the edge and took a deep breath. “No sulphur. Nothing dangerous that I can tell coming from beneath us. If there is a core lying somewhere in those depths, it’s not emitting any odors or noxious fumes. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Dox, make a note that we need a sensory readout spectrometer when you’re able to cobble one together.”

  “Note taken.”

  “The edge looks like it may once have been completely straight,” the light-brown furred Seneecian commented, pointing outward. “But time and the elements have eroded the ground to the point where chunks have fallen away. That’s why the rim isn’t straight any longer. Por D’har, it’s possible this building was on the rim of a large city when a major catastrophe occurred. It may also be the reason why the inhabitants are no longer here.”

  “If they are no longer here,” Kyber countered.

  “The sun did it,” Dox remarked.

  Dayall gave him a questioning eyebrow. “What makes you think so, Dox?”

  “Sun went nova. Exploded. Wiped the trees away before it shrunk.”

  Sandow nodded. “Makes perfect sense to me. If that sun went nova, the heat could very well have decimated this planet. Destroyed all plant life, and ultimately all other life.”

  “Would it account for this, Doc?” Bertriol questioned, gesturing toward the planet’s edge.

  “That’s way beyond my level of expertise. Sorry.”

  Kelen made a note to herself to remind Kyber and the commander that introductions had yet to be made. Everyone needed to know each other’s names if they were going to try to coexist. She noticed again how Kyber appeared to be engrossed with what lay below. Bertriol walked over to stand beside him.

  “See something?”

  Kyber glanced at the man. “It appears this temple isn’t relegated to the surface.” He motioned downward with a nod of his head. “I believe this building, and this city, or what’s left of it, extends deep into the crust.”

  Stunned, Kelen moved forward to look for herself, when a figure shoved her aside. She cried out in surprise as Cooter ran toward Kyber, his rifle raised to fire. She never noticed Dox launching himself forward to try and stop the security officer. Instead of catching a leg or ankle, he snagged the man’s safety suit. Off-balance, Cooter threw out his arms to keep from falling over the edge. His momentum slammed him into Bertriol, and the systems operator sailed over the lip into space.

  Kelen screamed as Bertriol disappeared into the fathomless bottom. His cry of despair gradually became softer, then vanished altogether as she dropped to the ground, numb with shock.

  Kyber grabbed the rifle, jerking it out of Cooter’s grasp, and tossed it to one side. Taking the officer by the shoulders, he lifted the man off his feet. In two strides, he stood at the lip of the rock ledge and held the helpless man over the abyss. As soon as he realized he couldn’t break free, Cooter yelled at Dayall.

  “Tell this sneek t
o put me down!”

  “I’ll put you down,” Kyber growled. “I’ll put you where you sent your own crewmember.”

  “Jamse, why? You killed him!” Anger replaced her shock, as it did with the rest of them.

  “It was an accident!” Cooter sneered at the Seneecian holding him. “It should have been you, you freak!”

  Dayall stepped closer to where Kyber held the hapless security officer above the chasm. His expression was grim. “That was a deliberate move on your part to kill the Seneecian.”

  Kyber gave the security guard a look that sent pure fear through Kelen. All he had to do was relax his grip, and the man would follow Bertriol. Cooter seemed to finally realize that all his struggling might make him slip from the Seneecian’s grasp, and there was nothing beneath his feet but air.

  “If you were my crewmember, and you made that pathetic attempt that got a fellow Seneecian killed, you would have already paid for your crime.” Kyber glanced over at where Dayall stood. “How will you handle this?”

  The commander motioned to Fullgrath. “Take the rifle. There’s too few of us already. We may need his help at a later date. But for now, bind the man. Put him on a short leash so he doesn’t try that stunt again.”

  Kelen watched as Kyber pivoted around and lowered Cooter until the toes of the man’s boots barely touched the ledge. Once Fullgrath had the guard’s hands tied behind his back, Cooter was set on his feet.

  The Seneecian shot her a look that burned. It wasn’t difficult to read. The shock of his near death had rattled him to the core.

  “Dox! We told you to get away from that edge!” Sandow barked again.

  Whirling around, Kelen saw the little man backing away with a funny expression on his face. She’d seen him that way only one other time. That was when he had come up with a way to divert power from the main engines to their ship’s cannons. Although it had left the Manta free-floating in the middle of space, the ingenious, albeit unorthodox strategy had been enough to destroy the Androsian war craft that had been pursuing them.