AVATARA

By Linda Chapman



To save her world, a crown Princess faces deceit, war, and betrayal. To save his people, an exiled Prince places himself between an avenging angel and her dark defender. To protect his queen, a powerful Warlord must balance honor against love.

CHAPTER 1 The muscles of his body were rigid with apprehension as Teolar waited impatiently for the life-giving oxygen to finish filling the pod. Beads of condensation had formed on the inside of the transparency; strain as he might, he could not see the interior. The only thing visible was the rhythmic flashing of a dim yellow light, indicating the renewal cycle was in progress.
Perspiration dotted his high forehead as he waited. This pod was malfunctioning, just as the others. He had been too late to do anything for the occupants of the first twelve pods. This one, bearing the most precious cargo of all, had been the last to fail. His whole existence and the life of his planet, Vascallion, lay inside that fragile tube. Feverishly he prayed he had been in time, that she still lived.
She stirred from her protracted trance, the heat from the radiant side panels dispelling the freezing chill. As the steady hissing of the oxygen injectors penetrated the dark hollows of her subjective mind, she opened her eyes. With the passage of so much time, she had no rational thought. She watched the yellow light flashing above her.
On . . . off . . . up . . . down . . . one . . . two . . .
The blinking yellow ceased, signaling the completion of the process. Teo extended a finger to press the square button over the vault, manually activating the lock mechanism. A series of tumblers clicked in, then silence. For a moment, it seemed as if nothing more would happen. He glanced frantically around the room for something with which to break the transparency. He was tightening his fist when, slowly, the pod began to slide forward on its contoured metal shelf. A whirring sound filled the air. The slab tilted, pointing the rotund head toward the ceiling. As it locked into place in an upright position, the hazy panel split vertically with a soft hiss, and the two sides rolled back into the shell of the pod.
The blinking was gone and she was moving. The vibrations of the mechanisms beneath her pod were slight, yet the gentle disturbance after centuries of suspension caused her shrunken organs to react violently. Her eyes closed. Nausea flowed over her. Her mind offered her no knowledge to fight it.
The motion stilled, then began again. She was no longer prone but upright. The vibrations had stopped. Instinct demanded movement. Her brain thrust the thought upon her and with it, the renewed intensity of nausea.
Teo groaned as he viewed the female form strapped within the narrow confines. The eyes were closed, bulging hideously under thin lids. The shrunken skin was stretched so tautly across the naked body that she appeared more bones than flesh. Long hair, the color of old straw, hung in dry straggles down the front of shriveled breasts. The nails on the fingers and toes were more than an inch long. Teo's heart wrenched with anguish at the transformation inflicted by life-support failure.
Quickly, he unfastened the circular bands imprisoning her. He scooped her up into the hollow of his massive forearms before she could fall forward, and rushed into the adjoining chamber.
Something touched her . . .
She sensed rather than felt hands, large hands, going over her body-touching her head, her arms, her waist, her thighs, her ankles, her feet. Innate fear of the unknown seized her, and her mind wailed in bottomless panic. Arms were around her, lifting her, and she was pressed against hard, unyielding flesh.
Fight . . . claw . . . kick . . . get away . . .
The body which encased her remained oblivious to her mute commands.
An immense ovoid vat, brimming with a rose-colored fluid, occupied the center of the room. He lowered her into this herbal-smelling substance until the gel reached her chin. Carefully, he eased the head support around the back of her neck and secured it. The gel was already beginning to take on a darker hue, its healing properties coaxing life to remain in the spare, near-mummified form.
Then the arms were gone and she was floating-gently, lightly, peacefully. As the warmth enveloped her, the panic receded and she knew an irrepressible weariness. Darkness . . .
Teo stepped back and stared down at her, his involuntary shudders giving vent to the pain in his soul. The complete incubation period would last many days. At the end of that time, if she did not awake . . . .
He sighed heavily, his hand going to the left shoulder of his black, one-piece garment. Unconsciously, he fingered the silver and red emblem-her royal symbol. For the entire span of his thirty-two years he had served the House of Shelocta. The High Lord Vulaj, her father, had entrusted her care to him when she was but a year old, and he a child of seven. If it had not been for the D'Gehr, they would not be here on this robot starship, traveling to nowhere with a purpose which must surely be obsolete after the passage of centuries.
When the second flicker of consciousness began to pull her up from the void of nonentity, it was through sensation, not motion. Every part of her, inside and out, felt needle-sharp pangs simultaneously. Her lungs burned and her breathing became a roaring wind in her ears. The pounding at the base of her skull turned frenzied. Searing streaks of nearly unbearable pain billowed in jagged flashes of color behind her eyelids, hammered on her incessantly until, writhing in agony, she screamed.
A hoarse cry abruptly shattered his bitter reverie. Teo grabbed the vial from the small table near the vat and hurriedly leaned over to pour the contents between her cracked lips. She coughed once, then her feeble struggles ceased. She lapsed into a more normal sleep, her slight mass sinking as the gel permeated her body.
A hand at the base of her neck raised her head. Something cold and sour trickled into her mouth and down the back of her throat. She gagged. The numbing liquid spread through her swiftly, taking with it the horrible, excruciating pain. Blackness . . .
She had revived more quickly than he had anticipated. A good sign. The gel would purge her tissue of accumulated toxins and adjust the cellular structure to its original programming, restoring her to the physical age and state of being at the time she was placed in suspension. It was out of his hands now.
Exhausted, Teo allowed his big-boned frame to collapse in the pillow chair hanging from the ceiling near the vat. From there he would keep the vigil-even if it be forever.
Copyright © 2000 by Linda Chapman

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