A wave of laser fire suddenly erupted into the streets of Odem. The whine of thruster engines closed in on the masses of Agonotti congregated in the small town. Kale recognized the ship as soon as he saw it.
Elam's personal command shuttle strafed Agonotti warriors as its flight path brought it up to the market area where its owner had just met his demise. Kale called his kemsticks away from around Elam's body and replaced the extra pair on their clips while keeping a pair at the ready.
The mounted guns hanging from the under portion of the wings made the ship look more like a fighter craft than a shuttle. They blazed a trail through the predators which took their attention off of Kale, Emil and Tiet at the moment. The cloud still hung thick over the town and many of the Agonotti dematerialized as the laser turrets blazed through their ranks.
The shuttle came to the place where Tiet and the boys huddled together and landed beside them while the Agonotti scattered. The boarding ramp extended as the shuttle door opened and Kale expected to see Elam's personal escort emerge, but instead Juli ran out the door to meet him.
"Come on, Kale, we've got to get you out of here!"
The Agonotti cloud grew in size again as the individual warriors dematerialized, looking like statues of loose sand torn down by a mighty wind. Kale was so happy to see Juli alive. Looking through the pilot's view port, he saw her father Olson at the controls.
The boys helped Tiet get to his feet and assisted him into the shuttle. He groaned under the pain of his internal injuries. Kale looked at his father and felt sorry for having unknowingly been the cause of his pain for the second time now.
After strapping his father into a flight chair, at the rear of the main compartment, Kale made his way to the cockpit. Juli shut the main hatch again as the cloud of Agonotti swirled around the ship. Kale walked right up to the girl and hugged her so tightly her feet lifted off of the compartment floor. She returned the gesture, wrapping her arms around his sweat soaked head during the brief moment. Kale let her down and for a lack of words he just held her arms smiling like he had just been given a fortune. He looked beyond to the cockpit where Olson and his wife, Aylah, were seated in flight chairs.
"Good to see you well, Master Kale," Olson said as he powered up the thrusters and took the ship skyward again.
"You don't know how good it is to see all of you safe. I thought Elam had killed you all in the explosion."
"We weren't in the house," Juli said. "Father took us to the bunker he built beneath the house. The tunnel goes all the way back into the mountain."
"How did you get this ship?"
"Well, when I came back out of the emergency entrance on the hillside I saw what was left of the house. You were there at the shuttle with Elam," Olson said. "When you got on board with him I wasn't sure if he had captured you, so I shot the hull with a tracker pin."
"Good thinking."
"By the time we caught up with the ship, only Elam's pilot was inside."
"And we got rid of him pretty easily," Juli said.
The shuttle continued to rise through the storm of the Agonotti.
"What course, Master Kale?" Olson asked.
Emil interrupted. "The signs in the place where we came through said Sector City. We have a recall gate that will appear there if we can get to it."
"Take us there, Olson."
The shuttle burst away from the ghastly scene in Odem as the cloud of beings took up the chase. The storm of creatures willed their immaterial forms to follow the craft and they were keeping pace with it. Obscene appendages of the gaseous formation launched outward to caress the small shuttle in flight, but had no substance to hold it with.
The adolescents made their way back to check on the king. Tiet remained only half conscious. His breathing was noticeably labored.
"What happened to him?" Juli asked.
Kale looked at Emil, "It's a long story. I think he may have broken ribs and a pelvic fracture, maybe even some internal bleeding. I've got to get him back to my mother-being a doctor, she can help him."
"I've already activated the recall on the transgate," Emil said. "I don't know how long it will take to transmit the signal all the way back to Kosiva and put a new portal in place.
"Sector city is only about twenty minutes of flight time from Odem," Juli said.
Kale looked out of nearby port holes, on either wall of the craft, and saw the swirling mass trying to overtake them in flight. "I hope we can make it."