“At least now I can tell her to be quiet, and she does!” Kel huffed, throwing up his hands as if the motion would accent his point.
During the animated explanation, the ship had been silent. Lasher sat up slightly, trying to make his next statement more intimate, “Ravi de te rencontre.”
There was a sound that came over the speakers, like a small child being gifted a pony. “You see that, Kel? Here is a man who knows how to treat a lady.” Her accent was accurate to Lasher. She seemed a cultured speaker of Trade-2 who grew up speaking Trade-1. “It's nice to meet you too, Lasher.”
A new voice cut into the conversation, “It's good to see you healing.”
Lasher cocked his head. This was a disembodied voice he recognized. She sounded smoky to him, reminiscent of a woman who had sung all of her life. He hadn't expected to hear her come out over the ship speaker system. “I like your voice much better without all the static. Are you okay, Kat?”
Kel looked at Lasher as though he had just been insulted.
“What?” Lasher asked innocently.
“How do you know her name? I know that you two were doing that tapping thing with each other back in the cells. What did I miss?”
Lasher grinned while Kat sounded amused over the speakers. “Kel, our friend here has the ability to manifest certain effects by tapping into cosmic forces. It didn't occur to you that he could read minds?”
Kel took on the appearance of a guilty man confronted by the law. “Wait. What? You can read minds?”
Lasher started to laugh, right before the pain played against his ribs like a xylophone. He coughed a few times, managing a giggle through the affair. “I can't read your mind whenever I want to. I've only ever met a few Templars that can do that. I can reach out to project my thoughts. I can only read minds if I can make a connection. Since I'm not experienced enough to force one, you have nothing to worry about.”
Kel let out the breath he wasn't aware he was holding. “So how does that work with the machine?” Kel spun on his heal to look down the hall toward the lounge. “Kat. I meant Kat.”
The dusky voice drifted around the ship through the speakers. “Oh, nice catch. You're learning.”
Kel grinned, raising his hands apologetically.
Lasher eased himself up, grimacing with the effort. He was clearly in pain, doing his best not to let it get the better of him. “Kat is not a machine in the traditional sense. Nor is she an AI.”
“What then?” Kel had clearly reached the end of his patience for the wait and see game the other two were playing.
There was a second of silence. It felt like right before a levee broke, spilling a river onto an unsuspecting town. It was Doll who spoke first. “I have a comprehensive database of possible intrusion cyphers that set off countermeasures if I am being sliced. One of them is very old. It is often included in with my model because there is a possibility to run into it out here in the Frontier. I noticed it when you connected her to use our speakers. If you don't mind me saying so, Miss Katerina, you strike me as a total conversion cybernetic organism with a Nyosaga Data Core and a Gemini Combat Matrix.”
Except for the whirring of the engine and occasional tones sounding throughout the ship, the med bay was silent. The strangers all sat in silence, chewing on what Baby Doll had just uncovered. Kel looked over to Lasher, who was nodding for him to take the next mental step.
“Cyborg as in the type from the Exodus Wars?” A tinge of fear slithered into the criminal's tone.
Kat came over the speakers, her voice laden with caution. “Yes. Does that scare you?”
Kel stared at the floor. Anyone looking could tell the man was reasoning for a way to make sense of what he was hearing so that he could either profit from it or escape. “It doesn't scare me to know we have a broken down, potentially psychopathic killing machine on board. It does worry me we gave you access to one system, with the potential to worm your way into more and possess the ship.”
“She won't do that,” Lasher said.
“How do you know?” Kel regarded his injured ally. “They went insane, killing hundreds of thousands on multiple colonies. They made orbit, claiming to be refugees and then slaughtered anyone who wouldn't let them land. I wasn't very good at school, but I paid attention to those history lessons. They scared the Hells out of me.”
“Still, she won't do that.”
Kel had not let his gaze drop from Lasher's. It was Kat who broke the tension. “The main reason Orin knows I wouldn't do something like that is because he could kill me from where he's laying.”
Brows furrowed on Kel's face. “Come again, now?”
Lasher swung his feet over the side of the medical bed, dropping his bare feet to the floor. The tingling from the cold deck plates made him smile. His ankle was on fire. It hurt his ribs and shoulder to stand upright, but he had feeling. That was something.
“No one is killing anyone on board.” Lasher said, holding up a placating hand. “We promised to escape. We did that. We all kept our word to each other. No one would be left behind. We did that. We overcame a platoon of lancers and got free from three Marshals Templar. We did that.”
Lasher looked around the room. He stumbled to one of the in-wall cabinets. He opened the panel, removing an auto-injector from a marked case before setting it back and closing the panel. Taking a steadying breath, he plunged it into his thigh. There was a pfshhh sound as the painkillers in the syringe were delivered by a hypodermic pneumo-puncture system. He closed his eyes, letting the back of his skull rest against the wall with a thunk. Breathe. “Listen. The three of us came together and did the impossible. We know the strength of our word. So what's next?”
Fourteen
Darting lights illuminated the clouds in the distance as night fell over the Kesthi plains. Yuzheff walked from out of the cut in the mesa. It was rare to have flights of any type over this part of the steppe. He ran back inside and told one of the lookouts. There wasn't much in the way of danger on the steppe. Even though hazards were few and far between, it paid to have guards watching at all hours of the day.
There were many legends among the Surando about how the mesa had been cut and hollowed out. Yuzheff didn't believe any of them. He had lived for a time in one of the big cities that had sprung up like a wart on his world. He had seen the way different races built and modified the environment to suit their needs. He was sure that his people had done the same for the rock.
A dozen young Surando men came with their Targen bows. Yuzheff was terrible with a bow. It was one of the reasons he left for the city. He couldn't shoot a bow and he detested the smell of live Serapti. He pulled a Torin Modular blaster pistol from his belt. He checked the energy magazine for its capacity. It was full. His mentor in the city had said, “Always check the mag. Don't think that it's full. Know that it is.”
The lights loomed closer before a warship dropped from the clouds. It had the symbols of the Templars emblazoned on the sides. He could make them out among the landing lights. Most of the time, when a Templar came to the steppe, it was to help. The events of the last few weeks had thrown the world into chaos. Yuzheff wasn't taking any chances.
The ship came to rest on its landing gear. Geysers of gasses vented from the bottom of the ship. Pilots in the city used to tease Yuzheff about the nature of the gasses. His mentor had finally told him what they actually were. Whenever he saw a ship land, he always remembered the jests and the kindness of a stranger who eventually took him in.
A figure strode down the ramp. His hands were visible and held out to the sides of his body. Whoever he was, the newcomer didn't want to be shot. Yuzheff thought to himself that the scene was comical. The man coming from the ship could have leveled the mesa with it, taking whatever he wanted. Instead, he chose to walk down the ramp, unarmed, hoping not to get shot himself.
“State your business with us,” Yuzheff yelled. He had been taught a few of the trade languages in the city. It was good to know one or two of the main ones
as most people in the Frontier could make them out.
“Anyone around here know where to get Serapti puffs? I was thinking to myself, who in this uncivilized grass patch would know where to get something like that?”
The Tyth were not a people prone to emotional outbursts. They could be driven to violence or exuberance, but it rarely showed on their faces. Yuzheff''s mouth opened in surprise. “Kel?”
“Hey, Yu!” Kel made his way down the ramp, a smile crossing his face.
Yuzheff quickly barked at the security standing with him to put up their bows and recover their arrows. That done, he turned and ran to Kel. He towered over the man, as most Tyth were much taller than humans. Yuzheff threw his arms around him, hoisting him into the air. Full belly laughter, uncommon behavior for their people, roared over the sound of the engines cycling down. “So good to see you. I heard you were taken by the lancers. How did you talk them into giving you a ship?”
Kel cocked his head to the side, raising his facial expression to one of confidence and swagger. “One minute you're in a cell, the next, you're in a ship looking for meat puffs.”
“Ha!” Yuzheff barked a laugh as he set the man down. “You are welcome here, my old friend. But first, we must hide the ship. I assume you didn't make a deal to come for a carry-out meal like on Onsun Street.”
“You got that right,” Kel said, patting his friend on the back. “But I do need your help.”
“You have only to ask. You mentored me through the city and took me in when no one else would.” Yuzheff gestured toward his home. “If it's within my ability to grant what you ask, it is yours for the taking.”
The moon above the steppe was particularly bright as the wind swept over the grasslands. Each pass of the breeze made the grasses sound like they were panting. A quick rhythm marked the ebb and flow of the pattern. The panting grass sounded like a person on the run from something.
The wind had another effect at the top of the mesa. Each swoop of air caught a glob of thick smoke that was billowing from a crack in the stone. The scene gave the appearance of the steppe being a great grassy engine with the mesa as its smoke stack.
The smoke was frothing from the crack, into a passage through the mesa, originating in a room at the bottom floor. The entire area had been hollowed out, with stone structures carved into the rock. The ones at ground level were less stunning than those above. The homes above the ground were an impressive feat of engineering from a simpler time. Window-strewn edifices were carved straight from the rock, indicating that dwellings were just beyond. The whole affair resembled a giant child's mobile, the structures hanging partially in mid-air, threatening to fall to a shattering doom should the rock ever release its hold.
A good portion of the tribe looked into the smoke-tinged room as the light of the large fire in the middle flickered its ghostly story across the wall. The top of the room was blackened with use, the smoke consistently finding its way to the hole leading to the top of the mesa. The large fire pit was central to the room, with four walkways cut into a plus sign. The smell coming off of the fire was salty, with an earthy tinge to it. On one of the walls, a series of racks contained an assortment of jars, mixed with modern medical scanners and equipment.
Several Tyth males and a female walked around the room. They had on aprons with a slick appearance, possibly from hide or a resin cover. The shoes they wore were slip-ons with flat soles so as not to disturb the tilled soil that rested between each of the walkways. The female watched her medical data slate scrolling symbols and heart rhythms across the screen. She was holding the pad in arms wrapped in modern medical gloves. Her eyes, tinged orange, were covered in a luminescent circuitry. Medical-grade contact lenses allowed her to operate digital devices by twitches of the eye and blinking so that her gloves could remain as sterile as one could in a dirty, fiery room.
One of the males walked to her, raising a hand to get her attention. “Doctor Heseth, all of the worms have been introduced to section one.”
The female turned to regard him. She nodded once and blinked toward the data slate. The screen changed to reflect a new scan. The earth closest to the entrance of the room came up on the device. It showed a cutaway scan of what was actually a deep pit, filled in with dirt. A man was buried in the pit, roughly a meter down. Small slivers of light, presumably the worms, were advancing on the “patient.”
“Okay, Yu. Explain this to me again.”
Yuzheff turned to his friend with a large smile on his face. “Creeps you out, doesn't it, Kel?”
“More than a little.” Kel's scrunched his face at the macabre scene only a few meters away. “It's stuff like this that keeps us regular folk from liking you.”
Yuzheff chuckled. “By regular folk, you mean colonial intruders?”
Kel raised his hands like a politician campaigning for office. “Hey, pal, I was born here. I'm a local.”
“Ah-huh. Arms look a bit too stubby to be a local.”
Old friends shared a good-natured laugh over the sweet nectar tea they both hovered over.
“Stork.”
“Squat,” replied Yuzheff. “Back to your original question, the soil under this mesa has medicinal qualities. The qualities come from the worms that burrow throughout the ground, excreting a type of slick ooze. Sometimes, the worms will feed directly from a patient. They digest dead flesh and excrete the slime into the soil, which aids in healing. Certain herbs and other medicines can be fed to the worms, which can have curative effects to different ailments.”
“‘Slime’ sounds so medicinal.” Kel mocked.
“Shut up, Kel.”
The two clinked their tea cups together. They laughed at their feigned insults as the throng of onlookers behind them watched for a glimpse of the worms to crest the surface, a tradition dating back centuries. Seeing the worms supposedly brought good luck to the onlookers. A promise of luck was also a good way to gather a crowd full of positive vibes all aimed at the patient. No one was sure if it helped, but it sure couldn't hurt.
Kel pointed to the pit. “So they loose the ooze and then what?”
Yuzheff was rubbing his chin, his other arm resting near his ribs, the drained tea cup swinging loosely on his finger. “They will actually crawl all over him, secreting the mucus as they go. The mucus opens up pores and wounds, drawing in the microbes from the soil. They go to work, further eating away damaged cells while regenerating new ones. It's pretty interesting.”
Yuzheff looked at Kel, who was mid-sip into his tea. His friend’s eyes were locked on to him, as though he wouldn't be able to keep down the Vasga bread he'd just eaten. Yuzheff rolled his eyes. “You are such a child. Yes, all the bugs crawl over him, allowing the magic dirt to work.”
Doctor Heseth had been amused by the exchange. Her cyber-optic went back to the pad, seeing an opportune time. “Add the Chesabin now.”
The two apron-clad males grabbed a few jars and spread what looked like crushed floral grass over the spot where Lasher was buried. The worms churned under the soil, dragging the flowers beneath to be eaten. One worm, a nasty toothy monster that looked more eel than worm crested the surface, dragging a leafy specimen into the dirt. The assembled crowd cheered. Kel knew a little of the Surando dialect, hearing a spattering of “he should be good, now,” and “going to be a good week.”
Kel turned to Yuzheff. “So what am I going to owe you for this?”
“I seem to remember being on the street, hungry, cold, and alone. You took me in and got me back on my feet. You never asked for anything.”
Kel's eyebrows cocked to one side as he slid a smirk into place. He knew the mocking tone in Yuzheff's voice when he heard it.
Yuzheff smiled, “Fine. Normally, what you did for me would get you a discounted rate from the doc. However, your friend avenged several high-profile murders and kept this mesa in our family. One of those killed was the doctor's uncle. We all knew who Lasher was the second he came down the ramp. I'm pretty sure they want to heal him and turn
him loose because they feel it is their duty to do so. Our higher power sent him to us as an instrument of justice. We should see him healthy again just to see what he'll do next.”
Kel softened his tone, adding a hint of respect. “You never told me about your religion.”
“That's because you are a Squat.”
Kel laughingly choked on his tea. “Damn Stork.”
Dirt fell from the ceiling in waves for the second time since the worms had started to cocoon Lasher. The stink of musty lichen combined with the dampness of the soil brought a sweet and tangy smell into the air. The dust had been knocked free from the walls in an apparent tremor.
“That normal?” Kel asked.
Yuzheff had a perplexed look on his face that bordered on confused. “Not really. There were stories from when I was a kid, before you Squats came along with your big cities. But nothing in recent memory.”
Kel's worry was overshadowed by his interest in taunting his friend. “Still with the Squats, eh?”
Yuzheff moved over to the doctor, motioning for her to approach. “Do the tremors have something to do with the process?”
Doctor Heseth's hands were furiously working the data pad. “All of you should clear the walkway.”
The two male attendants made their way from a free path, onto the hard stone to join the rest of the assembled crowd. Everyone was staring at the doctor.
“I have never seen anything like this.” Heseth said, more to herself than anyone else. “Worms are migrating from the other pods, jumping the walkways to enter the soil containing your friend. He is completely cocooned in them now. Normally, they writhe around each other, passing over the patient and back into the soil. The soil feeds the worms, the worms feed the soil, and the patient is healed. I have never seen an event where the worms formed an actual cocoon and were held in place.”
The Mongrel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 1) Page 14
