by Ethan Proud
“We are Shrikers from the Original Settlement.”
It was the same line Treya had used on Ellie and her insurgents. The Elders approached cautiously, and Rumo started with the next line without being addressed.
“Can we speak in private, this is a lot of information to process at once. It would be best if your people heard it from you.”
The Elders nodded and ushered Rumo to a tent.
Lago and the other soldiers remained at the rover, the former reclined against the wheel in the shadow cast by the silhouette. He picked his nails with his teeth and drummed the other digits against his thigh impatiently as he waited for the elderly Exo to finish with his business. He began to count the members of the clan discreetly. It was difficult to get an accurate head count as they kept moving, and he eventually gave up. He had been trying to calculate if there were enough bullets that each Hydra could have one. He had nothing against the Hydra Colonies, but death came to everyone and he might as well be the one to deliver it. He couldn’t act out his fantasies in the civilization of the Shrike, but here in the desert…he had free reign.
Lago turned his attention to the gonis which filled the air or squawked noisily from the shoulders of their Exo companions. He began to wonder how the newest additions to The Wreckage would take to the Shriker’s diets. Saliva welled up between his gums and his molars as he watched one of the creatures float sinuously through the air. Its red skin caught the light and it shone like a ruby. Lago closed his eyes and imagined finding the tip of the tail caught on his spoon in a bowl of thick molla broth. He reached over to his backpack, sitting right beside him, and pulled out a pouch filled with dry meat. Goni jerky was the staple food of traveling Shrikers as it didn’t have to be cooked like molla and preserved well, unlike cooked molla.
The Shrikers rarely traveled, unless it was to meet the Elders at specified rendezvous points to exchange maps with small luxuries to make their lives easier on the fringes of society, to gather water from the aquifers in high walled trailers pulled behind rovers, or to build the aquifers. Lago had been on many such missions since he had been nine years old. Now he was twenty and had a healthy sense of disdain for the Hydras and the uncouth manner in which they lived. He also looked down his nose at the societal structure of the Wreckage, yet it was the price paid for decadence. If only he had been alive on Earth to truly know what the word meant.
After satisfying his cravings for the flesh of the scarlet goni with the dried jerky, he fished around until he found a vial of molla spores. He unstoppered the cap, tipped his head back and carefully spouted the narcotic fungi directly into his nose. He snorted deeply, capped the vial and tossed it back into his bag. Even in the blasted middle of nowhere, he brought a little decadence with him. He felt the eyes of the rest of his crew on him and sighed. Reaching back into his pack he tossed the vial of precious spores over his shoulder without looking. The soldier it was headed for caught it easily and passed it around to the other two and the last leaned towards Lago, the glass tube held between his outstretched fingers. It crossed Lago’s peripherals and he took it wordlessly and tossed it back into his pouch. Vultures. His companions were vultures and an old man. The Commanding Family hadn’t even found it fit to grace them with the presence of a woman. No matter, they would be returning to the Original Settlement soon. And probably deployed shortly after their return with more soldiers to hunt down Colonies Five and Six.
At the thought of another massacre, Lago felt his stomach tighten with excitement. He had been part of the squadron dispatched to track down Jarrod and destroy whichever Hydra Camp he had found. Part of him wished Jarrod had made contact with more colonies, the thought of war made Lago’s darkest tendencies rejoice. Ever since he was a child, he had an unnatural obsession with death and violent intrusive thoughts. He didn’t call them intrusive though, he called them fantasies. He knew in his youth he couldn’t act out on all of his impulses but it didn’t stop him from acting out violently towards his classmates. His parents wrote it off as a classic case of bullying, but when they found a dead goni in his backpack and he refused to tell them where he had found it, they grew concerned.
His parents had a conference with his teachers and it was decided that his time before adulthood would be best spent in the Early Entry Scout Soldier Program or EESSP. He had only been four at the time and usually classroom instruction began at seven years old and vocations were chosen by ten, followed by two years of apprenticeship. Vocations were not lifelong positions and could be switched after five years. Lago had found himself being ‘tempered’ as the EESSP Director referred to it or as he called it ‘beaten into submission’ when speaking with his parents. It wasn’t actual abuse, but he had to be broken down physically and mentally and tested likewise before he would ever be suitable as a soldier, let alone trusted near a gun. Lago didn’t resent his time at EESSP or the treatment he had endured, he could only imagine where his fantasies would have taken him if they had not been given direction as a soldier.
After four years his apprenticeship began and by nine he was the youngest official soldier of the Shrike Colonial Military. His early conscription, he suspected, caused him much grief from the Council of Warchiefs, of which Rhea presided over. The Shrike Colonial Military was made up of four branches, the scouts, police, palace guard, and the infantry. Only the scouts routinely left the safety of The Wreckage. The palace guard did exactly what their position sounded like and the police put down uprisings and maintained peace, while the purpose of the infantry had been a mystery up until now. It was their duty to protect The Wreckage from a Hydra insurgence.
Finally, Rumo exited the tent and Lago pressed his shoulders into the frame of the rover, shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and rose to his full height. He grabbed his pack by the top loop and tossed it into the back of the rover. His backpack was much nicer than those of the Hydras, a textile factory at the Shrike recycled old clothes into new fabric, often unraveling the clothes completely, reinforcing the thread with molla and weaving a whole new garment. As a result, little of the Shrikers’ clothing was a solid color but was usually mottled. Lago’s shirt was a mixture of the pale grey of the molla, a faded maroon, with eclipses of a teal color near the bottom and a different shade of grey near the neck. Hardened leather-like pauldrons of molla caps and pieces of the Shrike’s parachute were patched together making a tortoiseshell pattern. Another plate of the material covered his chest, and a larger section for his back. His pants were darker than his shirt and were primarily dark grey, black, and what appeared to be purple in the light, at other times green. Boots were harder to manufacture on a less than hospitable planet, and his were covered in wart-like patches. As a result, his feet were callused and rough.
“Are they on board, old man?” Lago spat in the dirt, his saliva tinted grey from the black spores.
“Yes,” Rumo said exasperatedly. “They will pack immediately and follow the map I gave them to the Original Settlement.”
“Good. Load up,” Lago ordered as Rumo clambered aboard the rover.
“Let’s make like a tree.” Lago smirked and took the rover from park into low gear and peeled away from the camp.
“What’s a tree?” one of the soldiers in the back seat asked.
“I don’t know. P-p-eople on Earth used to say it,” Lago said curling his lip. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. He had a slight stutter from when he was younger, but for the most part he had outgrown his speech impediment. He didn’t duck his head in shame anymore, but rather challenged people to make note of it. It only came out when he was embarrassed, angry, or excited. Luckily, he was none of those very often.
Hours later, and miles away from Camp Eight, Lago spotted two figures at the top of the next dune, their gonis scintillating in the light.
Chapter Eighteen
The Commanding Family, with the exception of Kilo, gathered round the radio that had been salvaged from the cockpit of the Shrike. In truth, everything they owned had been salvaged or man
ufactured with molla. Through the static they could make out the instructions of the woman on the other side.
“I’m…..going…….need….your….coordinates.”
Between the static they deciphered what she meant.
“We don’t have coordinates. We have generated several maps but nothing that would mean anything to an off-worlder,” Fleet said, pressing his fingers against each other in a steeple gesture. It was meant to be pensive, but Aqi knew that it was a nervous habit. He was lacking faith in their saviors.
“That…….problem,” the voice scratched back through the white noise.
“Clearly,” Mertensia said and crossed her arms.
“Won’t…” the woman on Earth 2.0 said back and Aqi swore she heard her chuckle. “We..been…..pping……AE625……you” Static. “an...identify…..landmar……..should…be able….to…….close.”
Aqi smiled. “We will study our maps and find three equidistant landmarks so you can triangulate our position.”
She turned to the palace guard member who was positioned near the door. His face was completely concealed with a mask that covered from his brow to the bottom of his nose, and a sheer fabric descended from that and stopped right at his collarbone. Or her collarbone. Aqi really wasn’t sure. The guard had a lithe figure and could be a young male or an adult female. Her eyes dropped to the hips, male. Even wearing the body armor, the hips were much too narrow to be a female. “Fetch us the maps.”
The figure nodded and left the room. As he exited, Kilo entered with Utria in tow. Her clothes were nearly completely sand-bleached, and small particles fell from her shoulders with each step.
“We have a development,” Kilo said.
The other three rulers turned to the radio, but the woman on the other side had heard.
“Take…..are….of…it. ontac….me…..when….you….have….your location.”
They heard a click as the transmission was ended.
“We found The Source,” Utria began. “It is guarded by monsters.”
Aqi’s mind raced, but she knew she couldn’t ask about Rhea’s whereabouts. However, she did feel Fleet’s eyes on her, monitoring her expression. She gave nothing away.
“Bring back all of our units. The Source is not our concern, rescue is mere months away. We can subsist off the resources we have,” Aqi commanded.
“Not with the influx of the Hydra Colonists,” Fleet began. “We should be prepared for the worst and at least take The Source. How many units would you need to remove the natives?”
“Two hundred soldiers,” Utria said confidently.
Kilo sucked in air between his teeth. “That is a third of our force. We wouldn’t have enough to quell an uprising.”
“There won’t be an uprising,” Aqi stated. “The promise of exodus will be enough to stop any rioters. We should go public.”
“And if the attempt fails? The populace will be at our throats without warning,” Mertensia hissed.
At once, all eyes landed on Utria. Her expression was stony but her eyes glimmered with hope. “My attention lapsed, forgive me.”
The Commanding Family looked inward and nodded, they could trust her not to say anything. Fleet turned back to her once they had wordlessly vouched for the scout in their midst. “Go, make the preparations necessary to establish a foothold at The Source.”
Once she had left, Fleet addressed his co-leaders. “We cannot fail, or our people die on this planet.”
X
Yuto and Deirde stared at the rover as it climbed the dune towards them. Everything around them was a blanket of desert, wrinkled with the massive dunes. They couldn’t outrun the rover—trying to sprint down one of the eroding hills would result in a tumble to their death or an injury that would halt their flight. And down was the only way for them to go right now.
“If we cooperate, we might make it out alive,” Deirde said, though her words stuck in her mouth.
Yuto only nodded.
The vehicle came to a rest twenty feet from them. The driver said something to the passenger, who seemed to disagree before a few hand gestures convinced him to exit the rover.
The Hydra Seven survivors recognized him immediately. Rumo approached with his hands held out in a peaceful sign. He took slow steps, either because of his arthritis or because he was treating his renegade wards like wild animals. No quick movements.
Yuto snorted. “Come to make your apologies?”
“Not quite. I come to offer you a place on the rescue ships,” Rumo said hesitantly, which both Yuto and Deirde noted.
“Rescue?” Deirde asked hollowly.
“Yes, the Commanding Family made contact with Earth 2.0, we are going ho-” His words were cut off as Yuto’s fingers clasped around his neck.
He easily forced the older man onto his back and let a flurry and punches fly from his right arm. The old man coughed, wheezed, and bucked but his feeble attempts were for naught.
Deirde hadn’t moved. The thought of stopping Yuto hadn’t even crossed her mind. Her gaze traveled from Rumo and Yuto to the rover, none of the soldiers had gotten out to intervene. She squinted, was the driver pumping his fist in the air? She saw the flash of white teeth and was instantly confused.
X
“Now this is what we’re h-here for!” Lago crowed. His fist struck the windshield twice accidentally, and a little spider-web crack appeared. He ignored it, just like he ignored his stutter.
“Are we not going to stop this?” a soldier asked as he fingered the rifle in his lap.
“Fuck the old codger,” Lago spat. “The Commanding Family doesn’t care if he comes back.”
“They said that?” the soldier piped up.
“It was implied.”
X
Rumo’s face turned purple as Yuto’s grip on his windpipe tightened. The man ceased squirming and his pulse weakened, but Yuto knew better than to release him just yet. Once he could no longer feel a heartbeat throbbing beneath his thumb he sat back on his heels. He pulled Rumo’s belt free of its loops and wrapped it around the Elder’s neck, just in case he didn’t finish the job. He rocked back onto his feet and stared at the rover—nobody moved for a second. Then a dark skinned soldier with a ridiculous patch of green hair got out of the driver’s seat. He held the rifle in one hand, pointed skyward and away from the two Hydras, but his finger was on the trigger.
“If you don’t make a fuss, we will take you back to The Wreckage unharmed,” he said with a charming smile.
Deirde felt the same sensation as when she saw Jarrod run from the back of her skull to the base of her spine. She silently cursed herself.
“Is it true?” Yuto asked, wiping the blood on the back of his hand on the side of his pants. Rumo’s face had been a myriad of cuts and ugly purple welts from Yuto’s fist before he finally expired.
“Why would I lie?” Lago asked, smiling deceptively.
“Only liars have to ask that. But I wasn’t referring to that. Is what he said true?” Yuto pointed to the corpse next to him.
“I don’t know what he said,” Lago said dismissively.
“Are we being rescued?” Deirde asked abruptly.
Lago let the gun slip a little in his hand. “Rescue?” The Shriker’s eyes narrowed.
“By Earth 2.0,” Yuto offered.
Lago’s demeanor shifted completely. He bristled and raised his rifle and pointed it directly at Deirde’s chest. “On the ground now!” he barked.
Yuto complied but Deirde hesitated.
“If we cooperate, what is going to happen to our gonis?” Deirde demanded, her voice not breaking or wavering despite her fear.
“We’ll eat them,” Lago snarled and pointed the gun towards the airborne Deirde.
“No!” The shriek came at the same time as the report of gunfire, but the goni dropped a few feet in the air unharmed and nosedived down the dune, Aileen right behind her. When they neared the bottom, their wings spread out to slow them down before they agilely changed directio
n and turned a corner out of sight.
Deirde felt a pain in her chest, knowing she would never see the creature again as long as she lived. Not of her own accord, she lunged and tackled Lago to the ground. He pulled the trigger two more times by accident as he fell before he dropped the weapon and grabbed Deirde by the hips in an attempt to thrust her off him. Screeching, no, roaring like an animal, her fist rammed into his nose and mouth, and blood filled both. Her next attack sent a fistful of claws towards his right eye. Lago felt it tear under her fingers and his right field of vision flooded with white light. Before she could do further damage, he launched his fist into her stomach. She gasped as the air left her lungs and rolled off him. For good measure, he kicked her in the ribs.
The two soldiers flanked Yuto, both with their guns leveled at his face.
“Cuff and gag them,” Lago ordered, and spat a gob of bloody saliva inches from Deirde’s face. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and roughly twisted her hands behind her back. With one hand he pulled his belt free and used it to prevent Deirde from speaking. He made a new notch with his knife and fastened the belt there. She still lay on her stomach, so he grabbed a fistful of her shirt back and hefted her from the ground. Her feet dragged through the sand as he marched her to the rover and tossed her into the backseat.
“I t-trust you’ll behave now,” Lago said with mock politeness. His right eye was mangled and didn’t look in the same direction as the left. In fact, it barely moved other than in little circles while it stared despondently at the ground amid its bloody socket.
Deirde swore she could see something reflective in the back of his eye from a small tear right above the iris.
Lago growled when he noticed Deirde staring at his now useless eye. He tore a length of fabric from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around his head; if there was any chance of salvaging his vision, sand would ruin it. Yuto was dragged to the rover and similarly shoved into the backseat.
