Flame Wind

by Tim Niederriter

  “Get ready,” DiBaram said. “They aren’t all human.”

  The tyrant behind Yajain made a guttural coughing sound.

  “So they do not intend to kill you,” he said. “At least not all of you.”

  Yajain spun to face the caged alien.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “They seek to control this ship, not destroy it.”

  “The Redoca,” DiBaram said. “They’ll be after her as well.” He pushed the hunter assisting him away. “We need to protect her.”

  Mosam turned to DiBaram.

  “Do you know where she’ll be?”

  “She’ll defend the other tyrant in the menagerie.”

  “Alright.” Yajain frowned. “But we’re stuck here.”

  “Not if we go through the cell,” Dara said. “We could get past them through there.”

  “That’s a big chance,” said the old MP.

  “Any chance is better than staying here.” DiBaram winced as he took a step toward the cage. “Tyrant, do I have to kill you to make sure you don’t betray us?”

  Dara gave a frustrated sigh and started to say something. Before she could speak, Yajain walked past DiBaram toward the cage.

  “We’re going to let you out,” she said. “But if you betray us. Me. You won’t live to be imprisoned again.”

  “Understood,” said the tyrant. “But you must protect me as well.”

  “I will,” she said without hesitation.

  DiBaram nodded to the other hunter.

  “Move back from the bars, tyrant.”

  The alien obeyed. The hunter raised an arm with a sonic rifle attached. The first whining invisible shot smashed the trasplastic window, and the next two broke the bars. The hunter bent the bars back enhanced muscles straining with the effort. Tyrant pollen drifted out into the room. Dara covered her mouth with her hand. The old MP handed out breathing masks from a case brought along from Castenlock. Yajain fastened hers over her nose and mouth as the others did the same.

  The tyrant floated forward over broken plastic shards. Yajain turned to Mosam and Dara and nodded.

  “Let’s go.”

  They advanced into the cell. The MPs kept their weapons trained on the tyrant, but the prisoner made no move to escape or fight. No matter how large and arrogant, the creature knew he couldn’t win against all of them together.

  Completely without camouflage, DiBaram limped to the far wall of the cell, his mask down and his suit’s additional robotic arm working its way down his side. He drew a slender sword from a sheath attached to one leg. Yajain followed him to one corner of the cell.

  “The door’s sealed,” DiBaram said. “A conventional blade won’t go through it, but this should.” He raised the sword.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A sol blade. Inactive at the moment, but stand back.”

  “Those weapons are radioactive.” Dara put a hand on Yajain’s shoulder. “We’d better listen to him.”

  Yajain nodded. She turned and followed Dara to the other side of the cell. Footsteps pounded on the floor in the hallway. She glanced toward DiBaram.

  “They’re almost here. Hurry!”

  DiBaram’s suit arm drew back and the fingers pinched the hilt of the sol blade. Yellow light flashed along veins in the weapon’s blade. DiBaram sliced first vertically along the corner of the room, then used his lifts in a kick to the ceiling to open the doorway. He sliced a line along the top edge of the wall. Metal melted and sizzled. He sliced down along the far corner. The entire wall buckled. DiBaram landed and deactivated the blade. The other hunter kicked off, flipped, and slammed both feet into the center of the wall. The metal buckled and bent down to the floor. The corridor beyond was speckled with black burn marks.

  Mosam whistled, which drew Yajain’s glance.

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “No time to admire it,” Dara said. “We have to go.”

  Yajain stepped onto the collapsed back of the cell and drew her vare blade. DiBaram winced as he sheathed the sol blade. The other hunter stepped forward to support him. Mosam and Dara followed Yajain into the empty corridor beyond the door, with the MPs, hunters and the tyrant close behind them.

  “You creatures are strange to trust me,” the tyrant said.

  Yajain didn’t look back, but scanned either end of the corridor for movement. One was a tee intersection, and the other a curving passage that led back toward the stern of DiKandar Hall.

  “You’re even stranger if you think betraying us will get you anywhere.”

  The tyrant gave a nasal-sounding grunt.

  Mosam turned to DiBaram.

  “Which way to the menagerie?”

  “Either will get us closer, but that intersection leads to where we fought the tyrants. “Take the curve to the map room.” Then he turned to the hunter supporting him. “You go on with them. I’ll stay here to keep an eye on the tyrants.”

  “My lord?” said the hunter in a soft, feminine voice.

  “My camouflage will hold for a while. Go protect the Redoca.”

  The hunter bowed her head. Yajain turned to DiBaram with a frown, but he’d already vanished into the air. The MPs started down the curve, pistols drawn and profiles’ low. Dara, Mosam, and Yajain followed them. DiBaram’s hunter let the tyrant shamble past her on all fours and then looked back. She paused for a second and then turned her masked face to join the others.

  “Good luck,” the hunter whispered.

  Yajain mouthed the same words.

  Yajain remembered the map room of DiKandar Hall from her first time aboard the massive ship. She’d met the Redoca there with Tulem, Mosam in disguise. The great room was dotted with irregularly placed pillars modeling the expanse where Yajain had grown up and the Ettellian Redoca, protector of all Ditari, had died in battle.

  The room stank of burnt flesh and was littered with the black shells of a dozen fallen hunters and at least twenty of their foes. Once again, Toltuashi Expanse was the site of slaughter. No tyrants lay among the dead, leaving the scene as one that could have come from the Alliance War ten years ago. This time humans had killed each other under the will of aliens.

  Yajain walked numbly through the carnage toward the model of the Toltuashi Verge, the vertical forest between two pillars where the final battle of the last war had taken place.

  The huntress who had stood guard with DiBaram flew past her on lifts and landed by the hologram forest. She knelt to check the pulse of a fallen hunter and then looked back at Yajain, face masked, expression hidden. The huntress shook her head.

  “I thought they couldn’t attack us in transit,” Dara said, sounding distant.

  Mosam and led the tyrant and the MPs after Dara and Yajain.

  “Is there any sign of the Redoca?” He looked around a pillar where two hunters had fallen. His back bent as he retrieved a coil rifle from their fallen attacker.

  “No,” said the huntress dully.

  “The menagerie,” Yajain said.

  The huntress nodded, then rose slowly. She pointed down a passage off of the map room.

  “There’s a vertical path to it, this way.”

  Yajain crossed the room with Dara right behind her. The huntress scanned the room with her sonic arm rifle readied as the rest of the group moved into the corridor. Yajain made it to the large entrance of a vertical corridor just off the map room when the huntress yelled a warning.

  Ten people without breathing masks but carrying coil rifles and wearing unmarked armor surged into the map room from a passage at the far side. The huntress flickered out of sight, her sonic rifle emitting a high pitched whine. Two of the tyrant slaves dropped, clutching broken limbs. The others took cover, ignoring their wounded comrades.

  “Go,” said the old MP to the younger one. “I’ll help her hold them here.”

  “That’s four to one odds,” said Mosam.

  The old MP leveled his pist
ol down the map room as coil shots sprayed the area where the huntress had vanished. He squeezed off a shriek of fluid that dropped one of the attackers, burning through a chest plate before the man could duck behind a pillar.

  “It’s getting better,” the man said. “Go prove why we shouldn’t shoot you too.”

  Mosam hefted the plasma rifle he’d found and smiled at the MP.

  “I don’t have lifts. I’m staying right here.”

  Yajain glanced at him, the questions she still needed to ask rising to her mind. Did you love Lin? Do you love me? Those questions still haunted her, but one other question came to mind.

  Can I forgive him?

  Dara put a hand on her arm.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll survive.”

  “Stay here, Dara.” Yajain turned toward the lift. “They’ll keep you safe.”

  “You trust him?”

  “He’ll do what he thinks he has to.”

  Dara frowned.

  “Good luck. I’ll watch the prisoner for you.”

  “See you later.” Yajain circled her heart, and then activated her lifts and jumped into the vertical corridor. A cold updraft filled the passage and deafened her to the sounds of the fight below. Yajain swam up and up the cylindrical tower with the young MP behind her.

  They emerged into the menagerie at the top of the passage into the transparent steel cages of DiKandar Hall’s menagerie. Two slave guards stood by the entrance. The MP knocked one down with a coil bolt but took a shot to the shoulder in the process. He crash-landed on the floor between transparent walls. Yajain drew the vare blade and cut through the other man’s rifle. The slave dropped it to the floor and went for a knife.

  Yajain dropped low and swept his legs out from under him. He fell. She held her knife to his throat. The wounded MP sat up and leveled his pistol at the man.

  “Go!” he said. “I’ll keep them down.”

  Yajain felt the color drain from her face, felt her stomach clench. I go alone. It’s better this way. No one else will get hurt because of me.

  She activated her lifts and swam down the broad passage, vare blade back in its sheath. Yajain stayed low. She did her best to stay hidden by the vegetation growing on the other side of the transparent walls where animals flitted and crept. Legs nearly struck the floor as she swam. Her normal hearing easily led her toward the fight, down twisting curved paths between different animal habitats, toward the larger enclosures. Roars of tyrants and shrieks of energy led her toward the place she and Mosam had seen that first tyrant while he’d still been in disguise.

  She started passing bodies, all of them, members of the tyrant slave force. She quickened her pace. A tremendous roar echoed down the hall, followed by the thump of a large body hitting the deck. Yajain rounded a curve and settled behind the smoking, pollen spewing body of a black-armored tyrant.

  She looked over it into a circular room. The bodies of hunters, slaves, and tyrants were strewn along the floor. Helle DiKandar stood at the center of the room, both arms and legs entangled by the tendrils of two separate black spiny tyrants. A third tyrant with three tails and silver armor circled behind Helle, escorted by a six-legged animal covered in gray fur of a species Yajain had never seen before. Helle struggled as the tyrants tore off her helmet and mask. Two tentacles from the tyrant on her left recoiled, torn and bloody.

  The creature with the three-tailed tyrant turned toward Yajain. Two black eyes fixed on her and a nose with five nostrils sniffed the air. The tyrant leader’s central tail arched to stab at Helle but hesitated.

  Yajain gritted her teeth. If they managed to enslave the Redoca the war could be over in seconds. And the tyrants would win.

  Yajain launched herself at the wounded tyrant gripping Helle’s left arm in its armor and strength enhancers. She drew the vare blade and slashed through a tentacle just as the governing tyrant’s pet released a warning bark. The tyrant Yajain cut recoiled. Helle’s face barely registered surprise before violent hope. She grabbed a blade from the floor with her left hand and stabbed it into the face of the tyrant still holding her.

  The tyrant leader’s tail stabbed down, narrowly missing Helle’s bare head and instead slashed along her armored back. Helle whirled, the blade still in her hand. Her enhanced kick knocked a limp tyrant, its tentacles slack to the floor. Yajain banked in the air and dove toward the tyrant leader.

  Helle’s eyes clouded as pollen filled the air from the governing tyrant’s stacks. Yajain landed on the alien’s back. The tyrant bucked and thrashed. She drove the vare blade into his side and held onto the hilt. Helle and the tyrant’s hairy pet circled each other, but the redoca moved slowly.

  Yajain’s attention tore from them before either struck. Beneath her, the tyrant inflated and rose into the air on gas sacs.

  She looked up. The ceiling closed, maybe five meters away. She twisted the vare blade. The tyrant screamed but went on pushing higher.

  Yajain flattened herself to the tyrant’s back. Pollen bursts blinded her. Though her breathing mask kept the pollen out of her nose and mouth it did nothing for her eyes. She hit the ceiling a second later in a flare of pain.

  Her head whipped up and connected with a crack, intense pain, and dizziness. She released the hilt of her vare blade. Blood trickled through her hair as the tyrant began to descend. Yajain slipped from the alien’s back and fell toward the floor.

  Her mind had just enough time to register the tyrant’s pet face down on the floor before Helle caught her with her enhanced right arm. The redoca whirled, a long-bladed lance in her left hand. She pivoted and hurled the weapon into the hovering tyrant above them. The lance sank into the eel-like belly of the alien. The tyrant lost all purpose, though it did not fall. The alien drifted in death. A stream of blood ran down the lance’s length.

  Yajain gently settled to the floor, disoriented. Darkness clawed at the sides of her vision.

  “Thank you.” Helle’s hand brushed the hair back from the top of her head. “Lady DiAksa.”

  Yajain’s world went dark.

  Six Cycles Ago, Central Academy

  The teaching assistant of the lab stopped by Yajain’s table and looked over her shoulder. The sink to her right was full of water tinged pink with fluid bled from a tissue sample she had partially spilled earlier. Yajain’s hair was tied back into a single tail. Her hands were occupied with the needle-tipped manipulator she moved under the microscope. She stared through the machine at the tissue taken from the brain of a bird of chaos and order.

  The teaching assistant hovered back to her other side.

  She noticed how he tended to linger around her more than other students. Maybe he liked her? Maybe he had just never seen a Ditari student before.

  Yajain shifted a bit of the brain sample. Her vision moved along crevasses and spongy remains saturated with black fluid. The bird of chaos produced both fluids used by junkies and commanders alike to see the future and illuminate the past. Yajain had never touched either type, neither the black of chaos found in the brain nor the white of order found in their eggs and stomachs. The assistant peered down at the sample under the glass beneath the scope.

  “Has the black drained yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet.” Yajain moved the sample just a little less than half a millimeter under the scope. “But I think I see how it worked.”

  “How what worked?”

  “The brain.” Yajain never took her eyes from the bulges and crevices of the brain sample. It had retained most of its shape. Only a few places had flattened and deformed from being held between the glass panels. “The black fluid relays signals in the bird’s brain, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” the teaching assistant said. “Supposedly the fluid is what enables them to learn so effectively even as they mature.”

  “Tiny brains. Smart birds.” Yajain found what she was looking for and smiled. Her view through the scope centered on a pore where black material woul
d well up in life. A bubble had formed over that tiny well. “That’s it. I found the drain.”

  She drew back from the eyepieces of the scope, still smiling. The assistant smiled at her. He didn’t seem so bad. Maybe she should talk to him after class.

  He looks a little like Mosam. She shook herself mentally. It wasn’t worth thinking that way, she might never see him again, and he would still be a traitor if she did.

  The teaching assistant leaned past her and peered through the microscope.

  “You’ve got it.” He turned to Yajain. “Good job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Say, would maybe want to get dinner later?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got plans later.” Her plans? Studying in her room alone with a takeout dish.

  Voices. Voices spoke in the distance.

  “I don’t know exactly how you two know each other—”

  Dara.

  “Then don’t try to tell me to leave her now.”

  Mosam.

  The regular hum of core engines joined the voices that drew Yajain out of darkness and into a hazy awareness of one of Castenlock’s hospital rooms. A muted throb remained in the back of her head where she hit the ceiling of the menagerie. A bandage wrapped around her forehead, holding a pad pressed into Yajain’s hair over the sealed wound.

  Dara and Mosam weren’t in the room. They must be in the hall outside.

  Dara raised her voice.

  “I’m not telling you anything. I’m asking what she means to you.”

  “You’re playing the part of the good friend,” Mosam said.

  “Not playing a part! I’m trying to keep you from hurting Yajain.”

  “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “I see how you two are together. She’s a mess when you’re around.”

  A loud clang sounded a second later.

  Yajain removed the drip patch from her arm and then climbed from the bed in her medical smock. Worried for Dara, she made her way toward the door, bare feet on a cold plastic floor. Don’t threaten her, Mosam.