Terra Mortem

by Ethan Proud

  The hallway was surreal. Women, children, and men not fit for war, or too cowardly, were huddled against the wall, clutching tin cups full of water and wrapped in blankets despite the scorching heat of the planet. They truly looked pitiful. No one in a Hydra colony would ever act so helpless or destitute. Hydras had scratched out a living among rocks, all the while providing for these pathetic people. Treya felt disgusted at the thoughts that flitted through her mind, but she knew they were accurate, which made them all the harder to block out. The report of gunfire sounded outside, wove its way into the Shrike and echoed from wall to wall as it traveled across the ship. It was then that Treya realized she had brought no weapons with her. She cursed her stupidity. She knew Asia and Jackson were well prepared, and inferred that Toledo being a soldier would not overlook such an important aspect. Nonetheless, she felt foolish. She was ancient, a crone, her ability to plan stunted by the thrill of the moment. She would make do though, she just needed to be more aware.

  Those were her thoughts when she saw two familiar faces being taken down a hallway. Both forms were unconscious, and the Shrikers were literally dragging them but their faces were visible. Not for a second had Treya thought she would ever see her fellow clansmen alive. Yet here were two of them. Yuto and Deirde.

  She tugged on Toledo’s sleeve and broke away from the rest of the group. Toledo wordlessly followed.

  X

  “Utria should have returned by now.” Rhea addressed Gana and the other fourteen remaining members of her unit. They had three rovers, it would be more than enough to transport them back to The Wreckage.

  “You think something ill befell them?” Gana inquired, twisted towards her so his good ear could catch her voice.

  “No, I think something ill befell the Shrike,” Rhea said. The radios had run out of batteries yesterday and were now charging on the roofs of the rovers, but the wind constantly tipped them over or blew them off the hood. It was slow going. But the radios could be damned. Something happened to their city. Which meant something happened to Aqi.

  The three rovers ripped through the sand a moment later, leaving at least one radio battery-pack behind in the sand in their haste to depart.

  X

  The lights flickered overhead and abruptly went out with a static pop. A moment later, the generator whirred and the lights came back on. The entire hallway was bathed in a harsh fluorescent light. Not a single Shriker had spotted Toledo or Treya as they ghosted after the Hydra Seven captives. They made certain not to follow their quarry too closely lest they were spotted. Their footsteps echoed faintly against the metallic floor, just decibels below those of the guards.

  The sound of scuffling footsteps reached Treya and Toledo’s ears as one of the captives stirred. A moment later, the sound of a fist ramming into flesh was followed by a grunt, then silence. Judging by the voice behind the guttural noise, it was Yuto who had regained consciousness, albeit only momentarily. Several times the footsteps halted, and Treya was certain they had been discovered. Before she knew it, however, she heard the sound of bodies slumping, doors clanging, and keys jangling.

  “We’re going to have to kill them,” Toledo whispered as he looked about the hallway. He was familiar with the prisons. The corridor they were in led to a T junction, and to the left was the prison, while the right led to a control panel. After they freed the Hydras, the panel could also be destroyed to further the rebellion.

  “I don’t know how to use a gun,” Treya said, before admitting, “And I didn’t bring one.”

  Toledo only smiled. “There’s too high a chance of ricocheting in here. We can’t use guns.”

  “I didn’t bring a knife either,” Treya said perhaps a little too loud.

  Toledo pressed his finger against his lips and drew a kukri from a scabbard across his lower back. He pressed himself back against the wall as if trying to become absorbed by the metal, his body flatter than Treya thought possible. She heard the guards approaching when she realized she was standing in the middle of the hallway. She moved to dart towards the wall, but ended up tripping and falling splayed out across the floor.

  The Shriker soldiers rounded the corner and started with alarm upon seeing the woman. The soldier closest to Toledo grunted audibly as the blade slid across his midsection, opening up his guts, which splattered as they unraveled like a spool of yarn before hitting the floor. The second barely had time to react before the blade pierced his abdomen and traveled upward into his heart. Both men died with hardly a sound.

  Toledo offered his non-dominant hand to Treya, which thankfully wasn’t covered in blood like the right, and hoisted her to her feet.

  “Now to save your friends.” He smiled grimly.

  “I don’t think they’d call me that,” Treya said as she hurried around the corner.

  “If they don’t thank you, we can leave them in the cells,” Toledo joked, but Treya ignored him.

  Thirteen doors lined the halls, each cell designed to hold forty humans. The door to the cell had a circular window with safety wires crisscrossing the pane. Little did she know, but there hadn’t been prisons on the Shrike. Nonviolent criminals worked in the boilers, machine rooms, and performed janitorial services, while violent criminals were executed. Each of these rooms had been classrooms. Reproducing on the Shrike in flight was a privilege and each family could have one child every six years to not overcrowd the ship. Hardly any of the cells were occupied, as criminals could not be tolerated in a society of rock scratchers. They needed every body available and little was illegal on the lonely planet. Only two of the thirteen rooms had penitent Shrikers and the third (though the cells were not abutting) held the Hydras.

  “The keys?” Treya asked, and Toledo cursed and jogged easily back to the fresh corpses and snatched the key ring. He ran back without even a catch in his breath. He was sorting the keys when Yuto pressed his forehead against the glass. Deirde stirred behind him. He smiled, despite his black eyes and bloody teeth, but it wasn’t a comforting smile.

  “I killed Rumo. And I’ll kill you next.” He jabbed his index finger against the glass and Toledo paused, the correct key clutched between his index and thumb.

  He glanced at Treya, at whom the threat was aimed.

  “We probably deserve the same fate, and you can give it to me once we overthrow the Commanding Family,” Treya said evenly.

  Toledo turned so his back was to the door and the prisoners couldn’t read his lips. He mouthed, We don’t have to open the door.

  But Treya shook her head. “Free them.”

  Yuto stepped back from the door so it could swing open without clocking him in the face. The lock clicked and Toledo twisted the handle and pushed the door open, his kukri still gripped firmly in his right hand.

  Yuto caught the door and tensed, ready to spring. He recoiled slightly when he saw the blade before going slack.

  He sneered at Toledo before facing Treya. “Is this your prize for selling us to the Original Settlement?” he rebuked her, but she remained stoic.

  “My prize is my guilt,” she said simply.

  “That’s rich,” Deirde said, rubbing a hand against her temples as she brushed by Yuto. He really needed to learn to live and let live. Survival was at stake and he still wanted to be childish. That didn’t mean she forgave Treya, but she could be pragmatic. “Why are you here?”

  “To rescue you,” Treya answered.

  “Why, though?” Deirde said with a roll of her eyes. “I do not believe that you did it to clear your conscience. Something is at hand.”

  “You are correct. We are rising against the status quo. There is a mission from Earth 2.0 en route to AE625 to take us to our promised land.” Treya said grandly. “The current Commanding Family will not be boarding.”

  Deirde snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding me? In the autumn of our society you decide to lead an uprising and jeopardize our chances of escape. You might as well have doomed us all.”

  “Being a Hydra Seven member, you
would have been executed. The Commanding Family will allow no witnesses to the massacre to survive, let alone spread rumors in their new home,” Treya said bitterly.

  “It’s true, it’s doubtful that any of the Hydras would be allowed to live. The laws of the Second Earth might demand punishment if their injustice was revealed,” Toledo supplied helpfully, his knife still trained on Yuto.

  “I suppose we don’t have much choice, other than to follow your ploy…not much has changed,” Yuto spat out. “What next?”

  “We disable the power in this quadrant of the ship. There are four main generators in the Shrike and in each sector is a control panel which contains breakers. Most of the wiring has been spliced too many times and the breakers are near irreparable. The Shrike is running low on supplies and the maintenance crew will not be able to replace the breaker with a spare. The colony is on its last legs,” Toledo explained and gestured for Yuto and Deirde to walk towards the panel he spoke of. He pointed with his blade, but never took his eyes off Yuto.

  The two Hydras crept slowly down the corridor, wary of more soldiers, though when they reached the junction, Toledo pushed past them and found the control panel easily. Surprisingly, there was no lock on the panel door. He found the range breaker and yanked hard but it refused to budge. He looked closer at it, seeing that it had been melted into its socket by a welder or conductive heat. He growled and examined the grip of his kukri; the handle wasn’t metal, and hopefully wouldn’t electrocute him. He jammed the blade into the box and sparks flew from the panel before it let out a gust and flames erupted. The generator whirred again, the lights flickered, died, and this time they stayed off.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In the subterranean realm of the Greylings, the light of the surface was a distant memory for the Exo captives. Rio most of all. With the exception of Herma, he was completely isolated. Unlike his companions, he wasn’t even in an earnest dwelling. He was in a natural alcove that had been transformed into a cage by placing a large rock at the opening. The boulder could only be moved by pulleys from the outside as it fit into a cleft in the cave floor that was three feet deep. Rio could stick his fingers out from gaps between the makeshift door and the entrance of the cave, which earned him a quick rap across his knuckles. Try as he might, he could not get the boulder to budge, and after hours of throwing his weight into it, or kicking it, all he succeeded in doing was wrenching his knee and nearly dislocating his shoulder.

  The cave walls were slick with moisture too, which he had reveled in at first, but now it chilled him to the bone. His clothing had been designed to keep the sand and sun off his skin, not wick moisture away from his body. Out in the desert heat, the sweat trapped between his skin and the first layer was a welcome relief. Now he shivered, and his teeth clattered in their sockets. Herma languidly swam in a pool of water. It had tried to comfort Rio at first, but now resigned itself to floating laps, its body flat against the water. Only Herma’s tail moved, like a little propeller. The sight would have been comical if Rio wasn’t sure this would be his deathbed. He had explored every crevice of his confinement, but there were no cleverly hidden outlets, rubble piles to be dug through, or underwater passages. He was trapped. Together man and beast languished in their confinement, waiting for the end.

  X

  In an undetermined location within the Greyling City, Taiga, Lepiro, and Jarrod sat in relative silence. Since Lepiro’s hypothesis, none of them had much to say. Lepiro and Jarrod were still on board with leaving the fourth member of their party, though Taiga alone objected.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Taiga asked in the dark room. “Once we cross the lake, I have no real recollection of the path we took.”

  “Not to mention the molla farmers,” Jarrod said sourly. “Do you still have the pistol?”

  Taiga somehow knew that he was referring to the weapon tucked into her waistband. “Yes, I do. But I don’t know how to use it.”

  “It’s not difficult,” Jarrod said, and it seemed that his answer was good enough for her.

  “What is it? Other than a pistol.” Lepiro had to ask, his curiosity piqued.

  “It’s a gun, a .40 caliber. But none of that will mean anything to you. If we make it out, and the clip is full, I can give you both a brief lesson.” By his answer, Jarrod did not think that their escape was likely.

  “If we get to the tunnels, Icharus can lead us to the surface,” Lepiro said, looking at the creature curled on his chest, fast asleep. The little animal was snoring peacefully, and once again Lepiro began to wonder why the monster in the lake had grown to such a size. If Icharus stayed underground, would he too become immense?

  His musing was interrupted by a terrible keening, that started out low before transforming into a wail that shook the foundations of the very cavern they were trapped in. Taiga leapt to her feet and pressed her face against a small window and took in the spectacle taking place on the streets. Greylings of all ages lined the streets, all of them wearing headdresses of molla, rock necklaces, and body paint that glowed orange.

  A parade was winding its way down the wide street. Each of the Greylings in the procession wore long cloaks that trailed on the ground and were bound to their wrists to appear as if the marchers could fly. The artificial wings were made from the bodies of many of the scorpion-tailed moths from the tunnels, stitched together so that the strip of orange on one set of wings matched that of the next set. Their bodies, however, were painted with a faint blue-green gel that was probably extracted marrow from the bones of dead gonis. The Greylings danced through the streets, their arms outspread and cloaks shimmering as they raised their hands skyward or swooped close to the ground, the rustling of the exoskeleton cloaks heard even by the Exo prisoners.

  As the goni dancers passed, the groan of wheels and creaking of planks could be heard. Three massive goni sculptures, made of a scaffolding of dried molla stems, were being pulled on carts. The keening call of the Greylings became more unified, until it became a chant, “GONI, GONI, GONI.”

  “At least we can agree on one word with them,” Lepiro said dryly. Jarrod thought back to the paintings he had seen in the tunnel and the repeated number nine. He briefly toyed with the thought of sharing his theory, but quickly shot it down. These people would not appreciate it.

  “Do you think we are next? After Rio?” Taiga asked, her skin, even in the limited light clearly pale.

  “We may be sacrificed right next to him,” Lepiro said without taking his eyes off the symbolic parade.

  “Sacrificed?” Jarrod piped up. “To what?”

  “The goni, are you dense?” Lepiro jeered, though his voice cracked and Jarrod could tell his bravado was false.

  “Obviously, but for what purpose?” Jarrod elaborated and Lepiro shrugged.

  “Protection, a good harvest, prosperity…victory in a coming war,” he supplied. “What would you petition the gods for?”

  “The gonis are their gods?” Taiga asked incredulously.

  “Our god was water, whether we knew it or not. Or perhaps the Original Colony. At least this civilization lives among theirs,” Lepiro said and tickled Icharus under the chin. The creature screed excitedly.

  “Can you imagine being devoured by your god, or seeing your children devoured?” Taiga asked in disgust.

  “I think the term you’re looking for is ecstasy,” Lepiro said and snorted, fascinated by the culture he was witnessing. Momentarily, he forgot that he was a prisoner.

  “Rio will be able to tell you soon.” Jarrod’s wry answer garnered him a half-hearted kick across the shin from Taiga.

  Before anything more could be said, the door rattled to reveal an incredibly tall Greyling. His molla headdress rained spores down on his shoulders as he ducked to enter the small hut. The orange scorpion-moth ichor was painted in three vertical lines beneath his lower lip and one line from the bottom of his left eye to his jawline. On his chest, the number nine was painted three times, one large integer in the mid
dle, and two smaller at the junction of his pec and deltoid. Other than the headdress and a necklace of molla caps, he was completely naked, not that the Greylings ever wore clothes to begin with.

  He smiled broadly and proffered a rock bowl to the Exos. It was full to the brim with molla spores. The Hydras greedily dug their fingers into the bowl, and insufflated the black powder, but Jarrod refused it politely and attempted to hand it back to the Greyling. The creature was clearly offended and held its palm out in a stop gesture and indicated that Jarrod partake. With a sigh, he dug one finger into the bowl, and half-heartedly snorted the spores. The high hit him immediately and he stuck his face into the bowl and inhaled deeply. The Greyling chuckled heartily and this time received the bowl and motioned for the Exos to follow him.

  Unsure of what they were getting into, Taiga, Lepiro, and Jarrod stepped out into the ceremony, almost deafened by the sound in the streets. The walls of the hut had offered some insulation against the decibels, but out here the cacophony bounced from crag to crag and back into the colony amongst the dancers. Woodwind, or mollawind instruments made an unlordly wailing that had an undeniably catchy beat, but perhaps that was the understated drums rattling in the background. Orange flitted through the blackness, as painted bodies moved to and fro. The luminescent ichor gave off enough light that it seemed a predawn grey was overtaking the cavern, soon to give way to the sun.

  Taiga tried to peer past the Greyling bodies but did not see hide nor hair of Rio. Their Greyling guide led them behind the procession until they reached the edge of the lake. The three wicker gonis were placed in a triangular pattern on its shore. Nine poles were erected on the outside of these in a misshapen circle, with two ropes attached at the top of the posts on a large ring. At the opposite end of each rope, it split into two strands that ended with a piece of what looked like bone that had been whittled down and sharpened. A female Greyling stepped into the middle of the circle—she alone lacked any body paint—and held a massive molla cap, upturned. Eighteen male Greylings approached, dipped their hands into the gills of the mushroom and took a whiff of the spores before smearing their fingers across their faces, chest, shoulders, and stomachs. The black streaks were visible along the glowing body paint, applied earlier.