Flame Wind

by Tim Niederriter

  The inside of the tyrant reminded Yajain of bionetic verses citing the proper ways to dissect a corpse. Morbidly, the ancient poet always followed the word for corpse with words for beauty or works of art. Yajain had never liked some parts of the ancient bionetics, including that detail. Even modern poets and monks sometimes delved into such rapture at times. In a blackened maw of frost desiccated flesh and dried saliva she began to mentally compose in that style despite her distaste for it.

  Tongue lies inert, bent into a deep jaw.

  Recessed flesh, bruised black, teeth sharp within…

  She refused to add words for beauty. This thing, this dead alien, should never have been in her power. Not like this. Is that how I should feel? I doubted the fight. I always hated the war. But even this alien, this monster, deserves life?

  Yes, she thought, at last, surprising herself. Even this alien deserves redemption.

  Yajain raised the scalpel and cut through the tissue at the back of the mouth over the throat. She dropped the sample into one of the bags Dara had given her, held in her other hand. The dark tubes of the creature’s windpipe led down beneath her. She shone the light from her shoulder mount down the passage and found it constricted. The creature may have asphyxiated, though it had been a single bullet fired from Adya’s rifle that inflicted the fatal wound.

  She reached down into the tight passage and felt there and confirmed the taut contours of vocal cords similar to humans. Yajain began to push her way out, satisfied for now. She emerged from the mouth, hazard suit covered in flakes of dried tyrant remains.

  Dara looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Spur of the moment thinking?”

  Yajain held out the bag of tissue sample from the throat.

  “We should analyze the cellular structure and run an echo map of the whole body. I think they’re equipped to speak our languages if they tried.”

  Mosam approached them.

  “Good news, I suppose. Negotiations could be possible.”

  “Maybe,” Yajain said. “But we can’t count on it.” She turned quickly to Dara. “Did the jaw seem light?”

  “Not light, but less than I expected.” Dara rolled her shoulder back and stretched. She glanced at Mosam. “What do you know about those stacks?”

  “The stacks produce pheromone-laced pollen.” Mosam shrugged. “To be honest we know a lot more about the pollen.”

  “We?” Yajain asked. “How long has the Harvest known about these aliens?”

  “Not the whole Harvest, just Adya and me.” Mosam gazed up at the tyrant’s back. “This would be a dream come true if it wasn’t for the guards waiting to take me back to my cell.”

  Yajain felt her face flush when he mentioned Adya. She paced around the tyrant on the table. Her eyes traced the tentacles stretched along the table’s sides and draped over heavy feet. The tentacles were still armored in places where fused with the metallic shells.

  It doesn’t matter how close he is to Adya. It doesn’t matter because he’s a criminal and a traitor. But if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have made it through the academy. I may never have been able to accept who I am.

  She activated her lifts and boosted to tread arc over the humped back of the tyrant where the three stacks rose. Mosam was already there, swimming awkwardly through the air. He peered into one of those tubes of black cartilage and then turned to her.

  “It looks like the pores that produce pollen shriveled up when it died.”

  “Take a sample and we’ll look over it later.”

  “Right.” He kicked upward slightly, then sank and stuck a vial into the stack. He deftly retrieved it and returned to the floor with an odd twist of his legs to slide past to the tyrant.

  Yajain swam over the creature, past the tyrant’s death wound. She took pictures of the wound at a few different angles, then set to surveying the rest of the corpse. She and Dara and Mosam worked for hours, trading shifts. As the dark approached, Pansar arrived with guards. Mosam let them lead him away to Yajain’s relief.

  She and Dara made their way out of the lab and Yajain tried to get Adya off her mind. Better to focus on dead flesh and frozen aliens.

  “Want to get a drink?”

  “I don’t think so, Dara. See you next change.”

  Dara pressed her lips together.

  “Alright, Yajain.”

  She started down the length of the ship to the cabin she’d been assigned for her stay on Castenlock. Halfway there she caught a ride on a mover going the same way. Her room was vacant, but it had a real bed, narrow and single. Yajain sat on it for a moment and looked at the bag she’d brought aboard with her from Solnakite. Her reading pad sat atop it. Despite her weariness, Yajain picked up the pad and started scripting a poem describing the tyrant.

  Spiny Tyrant: Qualities

  Gray flesh, wrinkled, frozen, desiccated.

  Bone spines, cartilage stacks, dark eyes.

  Four feet. Four toes each foot.

  Blackened, bruised mouth

  Stiff jaws, sharp teeth

  Bulky tail, Razor sting

  Thorned hide, tension armor, light build,

  Tyrant, remains from Battle of Sifar.

  Kaga Pillar, 8 Cycles Ago

  Yajain flew to the gates of the Bionetic Temple located above the settlement, swimming on lifts. She landed, cold, poncho dripping with mist water. She hadn’t been to the temple in over a cycle, not since she’d graduated, two-hundred changes before Mosam left. The thought of him chilled her even more than the water. But she forced those memories from her mind. She had come to this temple for a reason, and it had nothing to do with Mosam.

  The courtyard of the temple was built on a small terrace overlooking the abyss on the opposite side of the pillar from Kaga Settlement. Yajain swam through both light and darkness and floating groves of close-growth caphodel trees to get there.

  Birds winged their way between those trees, and small mammals scurried over their trunks. Darkness and light seemed fitting to mark the beginning of her plan to leave Kaga.

  Darkness for the guilt she felt at leaving Mother and Father and Lin.

  Light for the freedom she could gain as a student in the central expanses, maybe even the imperial academy.

  She removed her poncho and hung it on the visitor’s rack outside the double doors of the teaching wing. The proctor of her exams might still be in class. She would wait if he was. She needed those test scores transferred with her applications. Official training as a bionetic poet could give her application an edge if officially supported.

  Yajain pushed through the doors. A young nuinn monk swept the hallway beyond. His broom made swishing noises as it passed over floor tiles. Yajain ignored him and walked past.

  Her shoes left wet footprints on the clean floor. Through another set of doors and up a shaft to the offices she went. The door to her proctor’s office stood ajar. She approached it cautiously.

  “Come in Yajain,” said the voice from within.

  She swung the door open and stepped across the threshold.

  “Sir,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “I can always read the sounds of feet. No one walks quite like you, except—”

  “Lin.” Yajain looked down at her feet. “It’s the light bones.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps.” The monk climbed from the meditation mat he sat upon and gave Yajain a solemn nod. “But despite what the others will tell you, the answer isn’t always in the body. Sometimes it’s in the mind.”

  “I suppose you know why I’m here then?”

  “Does it involve your test scores?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I study minds as much as I study corpses, my dear.” His eye twinkled. “One should interest me more, the other less.”

  She looked at him for a moment. He stood, stern, except for that light in his eye. She smiled slowly, then released a laugh.

  “I need them sent t
o few universities, and the academy.”

  “Of course, my dear.” The monk turned to the small writing desk to the side of his meditation mat. He picked up a pad and began to leaf through it. “I think its good.”

  Yajain’s brow furrowed.

  “What’s good?”

  “That you should leave this place for a while. The universe is too large for someone like you to endure obscurity.”

  “Someone like me?”

  The monk shrugged.

  “Too many talents are abandoned for foolish reasons.”

  She sighed.

  “I should stay to help my family.”

  “A mind like yours can do them more good out there.” He tapped the pad a few times. “Now. I’ve got them. The academy you said?”

  “Well I don’t expect to get in, but applying is worth the chance.”

  “Yes, of course.” He hit the pad. “I don’t think I’d have it any other way.”

  She smiled.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s been a privilege to help teach you. Good luck, Yajain.”

  Six and a half cycles later she would earn the title of doctor from the academy and joined Dara Merrant’s survey of the outer clusters.

  Castenlock and relief fleet led the way for DiKandar Hall and her escorts and banner ships into the gap between Tambala and Bakhan. Bakhan, the transit hub leading to Kerida Cluster, looked much like any of the other pillars leading in the Shaull Cluster. Bakhan’s rounded nondescript gray shell, pocked with docking maws where blue and red signals blinked, caught the light from Tambala’s green solna and turned a sickly acid shade.

  A week of study had seen the team make little progress on the tyrant’s language. Yajain pored over structural readouts, sound files, and genetic samples, half-exhilarated and half-exhausted from the week of intense research.

  “It’s going to take a lot longer,” she said.

  Dara paced behind Yajain’s seat at the terminal.

  “We’ll have to wait to do more when we get to Kerida.”

  At the mention of the cluster where the image of Mosam had been captured, Yajain sighed.

  “Vilmanorin, the gatehouse. Everything seems to be leading to Kerida.”

  Dara stopped pacing and leaned down beside Yajain.

  “Gatehouse?”

  “Mosam said that’s how he got back to Toraxas where he joined the fleet in disguise. Apparently, it can transport someone anywhere they have coordinates.” Yajain took a deep breath and leaned back, arms folded. “The Doctors of Harvest control it. Sorry I didn’t tell you about it sooner.”

  “That’s not what worries me, Yajain.”

  Yajain glanced at Dara.

  “But you’re worried? About what?”

  “You.” Dara shook her head, drew back from Yajain. “Doctor Coe is a good man. But don’t forget, he’s a criminal.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Because I don’t know why, but you and he seem close.”

  “It’s not that.” Yajain flushed. “It’s not that at all!” She pushed the chair back along its track and stood. Her hands shook but she fought to still them as she turned to Dara.

  Dara raised her hands in a placating gesture.

  “I know he used to be important to you, but that has to be over. Even if we all make it out of this, he’s not going to be free. He’s going to be imprisoned at the least.”

  “I know!” Yajain glared at Dara, fingers curling into fists. “But I can’t just forget our past.”

  “What did he do to earn this?” Dara faced Yajain and raised her voice. “You said you were going to find him. I thought you wanted to punish him. What about that?”

  “My sister would punish him. I don’t…I don’t know if I can.” She took a deep breath. “He saved my life. Did you know that, Dara?”

  Dara hesitated for a moment, mouth half open. At last, she said. “Didn’t he betray you?”

  “Yes. But I wouldn’t have made it as far as I did without him.”

  “You don’t owe him your life. Not now.”

  “Maybe not.” Yajain forced her fists to unclench. She turned her back on Dara and took a few steps toward the door of the main lab. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe me.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh? Why wouldn’t I?”

  Yajain whirled back to face Dara.

  “You’re pure nuinn, of course, you wouldn’t understand!”

  “Is that what this is about? Newsflash Yajain, Mosam is nuinn too.”

  She felt her face redden.

  “He taught me I wasn’t a freak just because I wasn’t like him. Now I know you won’t understand that!”

  Dara dropped her eyes, arms folded.

  “Yajain, I—”

  “Are you sorry now?” Yajain seethed. “When the war started the happiest time of life ended. All because I’m part Ditari.” She turned to the door just as it opened. Agan Pansar followed Mosam Coe into the lab, a military police officer at his side.

  Yajain felt her face redden even more. She stared at Mosam. He nodded to her, his face expressionless. Yajain stormed past him toward the doorway.

  Pansar turned, and stopped her, saying, “Wait, Doctor Aksari.”

  “Please excuse me, Agent Pansar.”

  “I’m not the one who needs to excuse you,” Pansar said. “Doctor Coe had an idea. The Redoca wants your assistance with.”

  She turned, hand on the door frame.

  “What is it?”

  “She wants you to observe the tyrant during transit. See if it reacts at all.”

  Yajain’s hand fell to her side. She nodded to Pansar.

  “Fine. I’ll do it.” Anything to get out of this conversation. “It’ll be good to see how it reacts.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Dara. “Transit to Kerida is twenty hours from Bakhan.”

  Mosam smiled.

  “The three of us, then.” He turned to Pansar and the MP. “After all, it was my idea.”

  The guard posted in the tyrant’s prison on DiKandar Hall consisted of three armored hunters and a pair of military police from Castenlock. Yajain took a seat in a transit-ready chair facing toward the transparent wall where the three-tailed tyrant sat on his haunches, wounded leg sticking straight to one side.

  Dara paced between her and the creature. Worry lines stood out more than ever now. She had been quiet since leaving Castenlock. Yajain, despite her gratitude for the time to think, also hoped her and Dara could bury their anger soon. Having Dara in the room was better than being alone with Mosam.

  The MPs played cards at a table behind Yajain, voices muted. Two Ditari guards stood by the door near where Mosam, hands still free, stood and scratched his bearded chin.

  “I see we’re not talking.”

  The third Ditari, a handsome man in his early twenties whose gold trimmed armor had a third prosthetic arm extending from his left shoulder, glanced at Mosam from across the room.

  “Doctor Coe, it is an honor to meet you.”

  Mosam shrugged.

  “I’m only an agent of the Harvest, Lord DiBaram.”

  “Lord?” Yajain glanced at the guard. “What are you doing on guard duty?”

  DiBaram’s lips curved into a smile.

  “I’m only here by choice. I wanted to meet the three of you.”

  Dara stopped pacing.

  “Is that so? And the best time you could find was now?”

  “I’ve been busy elsewhere commanding my banners.” DiBaram’s smile turned toward Dara. “You seem on edge, Doctor Merrant.”

  “Of course I’m on edge. We’re about to begin a twenty-hour transit and I’m going to be stuck in this awkward room the entire time.”

  “Dara.” Yajain stood up and approached her friend, nervous about Dara’s slow to ignite but slow to cool temper.

  “Right, right. We hav
e a job to do.” Dara took a deep breath and turned from Yajain to face the tyrant in the cage.

  DiBaram met Yajain’s eyes.

  “Doctor Aksari,” he said. “I heard you were the one who captured this creature.”

  “I was part of the team.” She sighed. “If it wasn’t for Ogidar DiSayul though, I wouldn’t even be alive now.”

  “I had no idea one of our hunters was with that group.”

  “He was Ditari but not a hunter.” Yajain shook her head.

  Mosam’s footsteps announced him crossing the floor to her side.

  “He wore a Dilinian Uniform.”

  Yajain hung her head and fought the urge to cry again. A hand touched to her shoulder, DiBaram, not Mosam. His smile faded to an intense frown of concern as he looked into her face.

  “I’m sorry he did not survive,” said DiBaram.

  She nodded, pressed her lips together, began to speak, then stopped.

  DiBaram’s grip on her shoulder grew firmer, gentle despite the artificial muscles linked to every joint of his hand.

  “Many Ditari have chosen to live among Dilinia’s people following the war,” he said. “We all regret the fighting, but some want to make amends more than others.”

  “Are you’re on one who wants to make amends?”

  “Yes, if only for my people. We cannot live as exiles and separate Redocates forever.” He released her shoulder. “Ogidar DiSayul chose the better path.”

  One of the other Ditari hunters started to speak. DiBaram turned toward her, which cut her off.

  “My opinion is my own, DiKolsa. Don’t mistake it for anything else.”

  The hunter bowed her head. Mosam walked past Yajain and DiBaram.

  “Dilinia isn’t the way to unity,” he said. “It won’t matter that they won the war as they refuse to accept the rest of humanity as equals.”

  The rhetoric of Harvest brought Yajain’s glare to Mosam.

  “Dilinia isn’t perfect,” she said. “But it is better than anarchy.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mosam. “But I’m not going to convince you anytime soon.”

  Dara took a step closer to the cage and waved at Mosam.

  “Quiet.”