by A. R. Knight
“That’s too bad. Here I thought I was gonna have myself a couple roasted Oratus.” Agra-Red deadpans.
“You’re expecting us to stay in all this garbage?” Bas says to the Whelk.
“Not my problem,” Agra-Red replies. “Plake says we’re leaping soon so if you want a comfortable ride, I’d find a seat.”
Agra-Red and Engee head out of the room, slapping a wall panel on the way that shunts closed a door. The two Oratus are alone, stuck in a disaster area. Sax sweeps his eyes over the mess. Buried under some mounds of wrapping looks like some old crash chairs. Things that could be used, if needed, to ride out a leap.
“I wonder where Coorvin went,” Bas says as she starts picking through the junk.
Most of it looks like scrap metal; parts torn off of other things collected here in a giant jumble. Some are set aside, on top of the table the Teven was sitting at when they came in. The beginnings of a project, something long and cylindrical. A weapon, or maybe an engine. Sax isn’t much for gadgets unless he’s using them.
“That Flaum took him,” Sax replies. “Coorvin seems to know them.”
Bas rakes her tail, sweeps the jumble from the table and moves the clutter onto the floor. It falls fast, which tells Sax that the ship is using magnetic gravity. An electrical charge run through magnets in the base of the ship. Keeps things tugged towards the center. Doesn’t work so well on living creatures, but then, Sax and Bas are used to keeping themselves stable in unstable places.
“How long do you think Coorvin lived with the Amigga?” Bas hisses as she and Sax clear junk away from their seats.
There’s a net across the back of the wide chairs, and they each pull it on. Slip their claws through the gaps and watch the stars spin from the small viewscreen on the wall.
“Long enough to go insane, I think,” Sax says. “Or nearly. He doesn’t smell normal.”
Which, for Flaum, meant fear. Skittishness. Sweat and shedding fur. At least when Oratus come around.
“How should we get back to Evva?” Bas asks.
“We could take this ship if we wanted to,” Sax replies. “Except I haven’t seen evidence of a crime. We would need to declare it a military necessity. Or get them to do something criminal.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Then we confiscate it, fly this ship wherever we need to go.”
“Where is that?” Bas says. “To the center? Right to the Chorus and the main Vincere fleet?”
The question catches Sax by surprise. Why wouldn’t they head back to the Vincere? Why wouldn’t they head back, rejoin the war against the Sevora?
“Are you suggesting there’s elsewhere we should go?”
“We just killed an Amigga, Sax,” Bas replies. “Yes, it was self-defense, but the Chorus doesn’t look favorably on those that kill its own. Going back might just put us in a cell.”
Sax waits. It’s not like Bas to start a perfectly logical explanation without following it up with something more interesting. Besides, self-defense would play well. A deranged Amigga, left alone on the edge of the galaxy, gone insane with its own experiments, tried to kill both Sax, Bas, and three specimens that could mean an end to the bloodiest conflict in recorded history?
Sax feels he has an argument.
“But most importantly” Bas finishes. “I don’t think Evva is there.”
Sax is about to ask why, when Plake’s voice booms over the ship’s intercom. An announcement, a call to say that the ship is about to leap and they should all get ready for it. From there it’s a quick countdown. Sax takes deep breaths with his vents. It’s weird not being on the bridge, weird being surrounded by all this random garbage as the universe tilts sideways and he spins through the cascade of sensations that come with the leap. That come with the tearing and repairing of his atomic structure.
At least it’s quick. Mere moments and then Sax blinks from one part of the galaxy to another. It’s a physical cost, and a mental one, but thus far Sax hasn’t had any lasting effects and he’s done hundreds of the things. So long as you know where you’re going, leaping isn’t that bad.
In seconds both Oratus are out of their webbing. A few more after that and they’re both standing by the door. Waiting.
“Don’t know whether you’re getting any ideas,” Plake’s voice comes over the intercom. “We’re not letting you out of there until we’re docked. I don’t like randoms running around my ship in the best of times, and these aren’t those. Sit tight. We’re coming in on Scrapper Station, and once we get there you can get off and leave me alone.”
“So much hate for the species protecting your lives,” Sax growls, though he doesn’t think the intercom is sending anything back to the captain.
“It’s not hate, Sax. It’s caution.” Bas says. “Scrapper Station isn’t a civilized place. We’re not going here because she wants to turn us over to the Vincere.”
The Whelk, Agra-Red, is right about one thing - when the Oratus imposed their version of order on the Vincere, they displaced the ragged cluster of species who’d made generations out of serving the grand vision of those twelve Amiggas making up the Chorus. Cast out and uncared for, the sudden influx of pilots, mechanics, soldiers and support staff began forging their own destinies in a galaxy that, so long as they weren’t being too violent, didn’t spare a thought for them.
Sax hasn’t been to many of these outposts - the ones he’s visited are those that fell to Sevora incursions, and he left most of those drifting ruins - and he’s not thrilled to visit another. The dirty room they’re in now serves as an accurate impression for what they’ll encounter on Scrapper Station; trash, both of the physical and mental variety.
“If the Vyphen betrays us, then we’ll make sure she regrets it,” Sax says, taking up position just outside the door and looking back to Bas, who seems content to lounge in her chair.
“Murder doesn’t go unpunished, Sax.”
The words twist Sax for a moment. He’s been a sanctioned killer for the entirety of his existence, given permission to do whatever is necessary to advance the Vincere’s, the Chorus’, agenda. The species on this ship, on the station, aren’t Sevora. Aren’t enemy agents. Unless Sax feels his own life is threatened, he doesn’t have any standing to slaughter Plake and her crew.
“I don’t like this anymore,” Sax sighs through his vents.
“You’ll recall I suggested killing the humans back when we left Earth,” Bas replies. “We could have left them to Dalachite, departed Cobalt and we wouldn’t be here now.”
“That perversion deserved its end.”
The ship shudders as it begins its docking phase. The magnetic gravity decreases to prevent interference with Scrapper Station’s own systems, and Bas, with a flick of her tail, sends a pile of gray-metal tiles floating through the air.
“We’ll find a way to contact Evva from the station,” Bas says, her eyes tracking the chips. “She’ll know how to get us back home.”
The two of them share the space for a while longer, feeling every part of the docking process in the shakes and jolts of the freighter. It takes far longer to dock a ship of this size than it does the shuttle Sax and Bas used to fly - the freighter’s too large to simply fit in a bay. Instead, Scrapper Station uses a series of arms to ‘catch’ the ship, once the freighter matches the station’s velocity, and then it extends a long tube to the passenger airlock.
When that tube connects, the door to the Oratus’ room shunts open, and for the first time Sax is face-to-face with Plake. The Vyphen is half Sax’s height, and her red skin shimmers beneath the thick white and yellow feathers running along her back and arms. In low gravity, and on the small world the Vyphens called home, Plake could fly.
Not that it would help her escape Sax’s claws in tight quarters like these. By her eyes, narrowed and deep green, Plake knows this. But she doesn’t crouch away, flinch, or clench her webbed hands when Sax glares down at her.
Plake has the respect of her crew, and S
ax begins to see why.
Agra-Red and one of the black-furred Flaum stand behind Plake, both with miners trained on the Oratus. Backing up their commander’s courage with the firepower it deserves.
“You’ll follow me,” Plake says. “They’ll follow you. Let’s go.”
As they leave the room, Sax hears the churning, banging, shifting noise of unloading cargo. He throws a look over the railing and back down the deep bay. Bright white lights pierce the soft yellow of the freighter’s illumination, showing where the robo-skiffs are working. Grabbing crates with their magnet arms, floating with them to the bay’s cargo airlock, where, after pressure’s drained, the skiffs would take their goodies across a short expanse to the station.
“I thought those were meant for Cobalt,” Sax says to Plake’s back as they move.
“Cobalt doesn’t exist anymore,” Plake replies without turning her head. “Figure that makes them mine to sell.”
“Does the Chorus agree?”
“Who’s going to tell them? You?”
Sax bares his teeth, though the Vyphen can’t see it. He doesn’t need Bas’ tail tap to keep his mouth shut this time.
The connection tube doesn’t give them much more than a view, through thick glass, of the station. It’s enough to tell Sax why Scrapper Station has its name - built in the aftermath of a thick Vincere-Sevora battle, Scrapper Station looks like someone swept up a bunch of junk and glued it all together. There’s no semblance of organization, no planning - the station shoots out in all directions, with jutting points and nodes veering out into space.
There’s no planet near here, which means no gravity grabbing all these lanky parts. Only asteroids, stocked with valuable metals and the reason for the fight in the first place. As they walk, Sax can see small mining ships blasting to and from tiny bays, grabbing platinum and gold from spinning rocks and returning it. A big refiner craft, like Plake’s freighter, is doing its own docking procedure. It’s shaped like a cylinder, and the raw ore will be loaded into one end, refined during the trip, and the cleaned product will be ready on delivery to whatever crafters want it.
“There’s more here than I expected,” Bas says.
“None of you know what’s going on in the galaxy you’re trying to protect,” Plake replies. “You see all those little guys? Grabbing the metals? They’re supplying you with all your weapons. One run at a time.”
“Would you rather we focused on this station than the Sevora?” Sax cuts in. “We’re keeping you alive.”
“By destroying Cobalt? Didn’t think it was the enemy.”
Sax doesn’t have an answer for that. It would be easy to say Dalachite tried to kill them, that it was performing strange, reprehensible experiments, but the galaxy depends on its hierarchy and the Amigga stand at the top. Undermining their authority goes against everything Sax, and those who fight in the Vincere, stand for.
So he marches in silence until they’re through the tube, passing through a dented door - evidence, perhaps, of a few desperate entry attempts - and into one of Scrapper Station’s arrival areas.
Rather than the cluster of species mingling their way back and forth, dealing in promises both physical and not, the wide room stands deserted except for a trio. Two of them, crag-like Lutos, hold large miners in their black-dirt arms. The single-eyed, mud-coated monsters don’t talk much, and Sax is surprised to see any of them outside of their molten puddle of a home planet.
“Just as you promised, Plake,” the voice comes from the third, the only species capable of talking, a yellow mound with a pair of stalked, bulbous eyes. “I’ll take them.”
The Ooblot says the words. Sax is ready to dodge, but the fire doesn’t come from in front, from the Lutos. No, the searing pain, the numbing shock that sends the Oratus down into black strikes from behind.
5 From One Prison…
The Cache spills Vimelia’s past out to me, and I’m surprised at how similar it is to our own. Ignos gave the impression that its people were ordered, were above us humans, but they fight and struggle as much as we do, even if they’ve exchanged spears for words and lifetimes sentenced to darkness for our sacrifices atop our Tiers.
I find out, too, that they’re losing.
The slaughter of the Sevora at the hands of the Vincere and their Oratus - I remember Sax and Bas and wouldn’t want to be the target of their deadly claws, much less an army of them - is a saga that seems to go on forever. I wind up turning away from the Cache’s litany of battles playing out in my mind for fear of being lost among the swirling ships exploding into mini novas.
The shift brings me to the Chorus, and the Cache begins to struggle; Brushing up against the edges of its knowledge feels like grasping at a fading memory - there’s tantalizing wisps of possibility, but nothing concrete. Nothing beyond the sure sense of more Amigga, and their power over everything.
And hate. Such a feeling of it that I get angry. I’m not with myself and yet my thundering heart races my lungs in a sprint towards exhaustion. These things, these terrible Amigga are the reason the galaxy is in so much pain, the reason for all the death, destruction, and war that’s tearing species after species apart.
“Kaishi!”
It’s not Ignos breaking apart the Cache’s hold on me this time but an actual voice. One I recognize as the fog of relentless knowledge clears away.
“We have to go, Empress,” I parse Malo’s words now, and turn around, towards the bars.
What I see doesn’t mesh with the reality I left behind. The lighting’s all wrong, for one. I’d jumped into the Cache with a bronzed orange glow filtering through the top of the prison, but now it’s a brighter white. Though that only serves as a backdrop for the characters looking in at me:
Malo and Viera star front and center, both looking mostly like I last saw them, though Malo’s wearing a warning on his face, while Viera shakes her head and looks confused. Glancing past them, it’s not hard to see why.
A bluish-green creature lurks between the two, hunched over and wearing something I can only call a cloak, though with the way it catches and turns the light, which makes the creature flicker, it’s clearly more than anything my father wore to our ceremonies. In its hands are a pair of small miners, both angled ever-so-slightly towards Malo and Viera. Its swamp-green eyes, though, are locked on me. By the time its mouth opens, and the long, pink tongue inside it shivers, I’m already moving to what’s going on behind.
Where are the guards?
Ignos echoes my own question, and I wonder if the constant flashes of blue and red behind my friends have anything to do with the conspicuous absence. The blasts come from down below and up above, accompanied by occasional shrieks of pain or howled words I don’t understand.
“Kaishi. Focus.” Malo’s command yanks me back.
“I’m here.” I move towards the bars, though they’re still closed.
I’m still trapped.
Don’t. They mean to destroy you. Ruin any chance you have of peace.
Which doesn’t mean much to me. Ignos has to work on its tactics - I’ve been torn away from my family, my empire, and all I’ve ever known and exposed to things I could never have dreamed of. Peace is nothing more than a joke to me now.
I make it to the bars, and as I do so, I see the creature’s tongue uncurl from its mouth. The slathering pink tendril snakes its way around two of the bars and, as I watch, it shivers. The creature tenses.
Kaishi, you must listen to me. They mean you harm. These are not your friends!
There’s a creaking snap and the two central bars of my cell bend inwards and then break in two. It’s not much space to get through, and the jagged spikes of the broken bar ends keep me careful, but I make my way out to the balcony.
And look onto chaos.
What was, when we entered, an ordered set of routines is now a cascade of blown-open walls, frenzied firefights, and more than one up-close tussle between things I can’t name. Even Ignos is too stunned to respond.
&
nbsp; Then I feel the creature touch my arm. It’s a cool, sliding sensation, like grabbing a jungle vine coated with morning dew. I shiver, and it grips me.
“You’ve taken too long already,” the creature says, and its voice is a burbling brook, a rushing river. “My friends die now for your delay. We leave.”
It’s a command, not a question, and the thing pulls me away from the conflict playing out elsewhere. I stumble as it tugs, but my feet are well-versed in running and they find their steps quickly. Malo and Viera follow, though the creature doesn’t pay them any attention; one of its black pupils is locked on me, the other ahead towards dangers unknown.
A few shouts harangue our run as we pass by unopened cells; those too unlucky to be part of the breakout. The creature pays them no mind, and I can’t afford to as we’re running now. I’m still wearing the mask from Cobalt, and it coats my feet as they stamp on the hard, smooth floor.
Fight back! To run with this one means death!
I can’t help but hesitate at Ignos’ words. The parasite hasn’t ever tried to kill me, after all, even as it pursued its own ends.
The creature feels my pull, turns and glares at me. Its mouth comes to a point, and I realize there are a set of four tiny nostrils over the top of it, ones that flare at me now, coating my face with hot, sticky air. Then it cocks its head to the side, as if listening to a sound I cannot hear.
“You’re the hosted one,” the creature says.
“Yes, there’s one inside me,” I reply, though the creature doesn’t seem to need the confirmation.
Ignos yells at me to run, thrashes in my head enough to make me wince. A gesture the creature notices.
“For the moment,” the creature reaches into one of the many pockets of feathers coating its body, pulls out something I recognize: a long, thin metal fork.
“Hold her,” the creature says to my friends.
I barely have a chance to react before Malo and Viera each grab an arm. Pin me back against them.
