Warrior Queen

by J. N. Chaney

  Be ready in ten minutes. P.S. eat the food.

  I read it again, just to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Someone had written it using hydroink. When Nell spilled the water on it, the message had appeared.

  Nell. Of course. The spill had been no accident. This made me feel better. While Nero’s behavior hadn’t been much of a surprise, the knowledge that Nell was part of the rebellion definitely was. I didn’t know what prompted her assistance, but I was glad all the same.

  Eat the food.

  Why would that matter? I didn’t want to waste any of the ten minutes but decided to eat while there was an opportunity.

  The message became clear when I tipped the bag into the bowl and a piece of metal fell out. Fishing it out of the food, I discovered it to be a key. Using the soggy napkin, I cleaned it off and inserted it into the keyhole on my cuffs.

  They sprang open, and I let them drop to the floor with a surge of excitement. I started working on getting my staff free from the table.

  The room was mostly bare, and I couldn’t find anything that would help me break the metal bindings that had been drilled into the table’s surface.

  There was a sudden commotion outside, and I whirled around, ready to fight. The dull thud of landing blows and grunts met my ears, then it went quiet. When the door slid open, Nell poked her head inside.

  “Here,” she said, holding up a hammer and a screwdriver. “Don’t know if it will work, but it was the best I could find. We have to hurry though.”

  “Okay,” I replied, taking the tools gratefully.

  Together, we worked on one of the bands until it finally cracked under the onslaught. With one half of the staff free it was a simple matter to rotate it and pop the other band off.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. Now let’s get the hell out of here. There are a few others, but I suspect they’re gone already. Mario is drunk with power and a lot of people are scared.”

  “They should be,” I said gruffly. At Nell’s pained expression, I softened a little. “We have to free the others first, you up for that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Wait, do you have a working datapad?”

  She shook her head. “No. Mario is too afraid one of us will try to contact the compound.”

  I snatched the hobbled one from the table. “Maybe Mark can do something with this one,” I said, stuffing it in a pocket. I followed her out, watching as she snagged a short spear from one of the fallen guards.

  We took off at a run down the empty corridor toward the prisoners. We hadn’t traveled very far before two rebels blocked our path.

  Angie Davis, an older hunter, and Roric Abernathy. I didn’t know Roric very well, only that he worked in the greenhouse with Jodi. “We’re not letting Visaro get away,” Angie said, taking a step forward and lifting her hunting spear.

  Roric took up the same stance. Neither had a gun, which I was glad to see. Mario had probably been too paranoid to give them one.

  “Use the staff,” Nell whispered.

  I gave a little shake of my head. “I don’t want to kill them.”

  “The floor,” she said urgently.

  Getting her meaning, I pointed the staff at the ground in front of them and loosed a bolt of blue light. The small blast sent up a shower of sparks and they jumped away.

  It gave us the distraction we needed to rush them. I took Angie, who was closest to me, and swept the staff low, trying to knock her off her feet. She danced away and sneered at me.

  “Come on, Daddy’s girl. Is that all you got?” She twirled the spear expertly in her hands and began to circle me.

  I grinned back and raised the staff again. “No.”

  Angie stopped spinning her weapon in response and we exchanged a flurry of strikes. The older, more experienced hunter was fierce and jabbed the spear at my face. I knocked it aside, but she pulled it back and drove it at me again.

  I countered again and again as she tried to slice me open, her spear bouncing off the more robust staff each time until she grunted in frustration. Angie slowed her attacks and I took the opening, bringing the staff down hard. It must have been what she intended though, because she sidestepped and used the shaft of her spear to connect with mine then performed a circular motion where her spear tip hooked the barrel of my staff and pushed it into the ground momentarily.

  The move allowed her to get close and kick out at my knee. She connected and I grunted, stumbling back. Angie, thinking she had me, took her spear off my staff and lunged forward. I jerked my arm back and let the staff slide through my grip, then thrust it at her. It struck her in the chest, and I delivered a miniblast that sent her lurching backward and collapsing ungracefully to the floor.

  When Angie didn’t get back up, I turned to check on Nell, mostly spent from our short altercation.

  She was handling the other man pretty well, at least in my opinion. Nell didn’t have the man’s height or muscles, but he was soft from working in the greenhouse. She ducked his unpracticed swings easily, delivering short jabs of her own and dancing away before he could react.

  The technique worked for a little bit, but Roric soon caught on. The next time she came within reach, he snagged part of her jumpsuit and yanked her back before she could bound away.

  He brought an arm around her neck, yanking Nell to his chest. Roric lifted her off the ground in a headlock as she kicked out wildly and tried to loosen his grip.

  I stepped forward, ready to strike, when Nell reached into one of her pockets and produced a stick. No, I quickly realized. It was her bow. She swung her arm up, the grip turning blue in her hands, and extended it, and hit Roric in the face, just above the eye.

  He cried out and let her go, clutching the spot that would soon become a bruise.

  “You bitch!” he snarled, reaching into his back pocket. The handgun he produced made every muscle in my body tense and I activated the staff on reflex, but Nell beat me to it.

  Her bow glowed with power and she set an arrow to it.

  She released it, and the projectile struck Roric in the hand. He dropped the weapon with a howl, backing away slowly before turning and running in the opposite direction.

  Nell retracted the weapon with a questioning look in her eyes.

  “Let him go,” I said. “We’ve got more important things to deal with.”

  She was breathing heavily, her blood pumping at the fight.

  “You did well,” I continued.

  “Thanks. Wasn’t sure if it would go that way,” she said. Her gaze focused on Angie. “Is she…”

  “Dead? No, just knocked out. She’s still breathing.”

  We began moving again, heading for the makeshift prison in good time. There was no one to stop us. Not yet, anyway, and I was glad for that.

  I put my hand on the door pad, but it didn’t open. Doors at the compound were hardly ever locked, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I felt a rush of panic but tried to calm myself. When the pad beeped angrily at me and went red, I realized the rebels must have modified it. Maybe they’d done so from the other side. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of them re-coding it.

  “Here, let me,” said Nell.

  I stepped aside and let her try, a little nervous she too would be locked out. Then the pad blinked green, the door slid open, and I stepped inside with a short-lived sigh of relief.

  The room was dark. Using my staff as a light, I stepped inside. An empty room was all that greeted us.

  15

  “Where the hell did they go?” I demanded, staring at the vacant room.

  “I don’t know,” replied Nell, looking just as shocked as I felt. She kept looking around the room as though the missing prisoners might reappear out of thin air.

  Unsure of what else to do, I walked around the space, looking for any clue as to where they might have gone.

  “Maybe someone else let them out,” Nell suggested, though she sounded doubtful. “We should
go to the compound and get help. Maybe they are on their way there.”

  I didn’t answer, mulling the idea over in my head. It had its merits, but I sincerely doubted it was the case. “But what if they aren’t? Then maybe Mario kills them all before we can come back.”

  Nell shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. But we can’t exactly stay here.”

  Knowing she had a point, I cast a final glance around the room. The cots were still there, along with a few ration wrappers, but not much else. I went over to where Mark and I had sat, thinking he might have left me some breadcrumbs to follow, but it too was bare.

  “Alright,” I started to say, then stopped when the glint of something shiny on the floor caught my eye.

  I bent down and picked the object up, studying it in the weak light. My eyes widened when I realized what it was. “I don’t think they’re at the compound,” I announced.

  “What did you find?” asked Nell, coming closer.

  “Prime Lambert’s pin,” I said, holding it out to her.

  “What, are you sure? He never takes that off. None of them do.” She took the pin from me and inspected it.

  “It’s his,” I confirmed. “He would never leave it on purpose. I think it’s a message. Mario wants me to know he has him.”

  Understanding bloomed on Nell’s face. “Oh, shit.”

  We both exchanged a glance, then spoke at the same time. “The cavern.”

  It was a small thing, but in the moment I was reminded of Karin. Pain filled my heart, but I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of grief.

  “I haven’t actually seen a Reckoning yet,” Nell admitted as we left the room.

  Her confession made me stop and I put a hand on her arm. “There are a few things I need to tell you about then.”

  She listened intently. I studied her face for any indication that she was lying but found none.

  “I knew it was bad,” she said when I finished. “People were getting taken away and not coming back.”

  “Tiberius is… terrifying.”

  “I really thought he was just something Mario made up to make everyone fall in line,” she whispered.

  “No,” I told her. “This isn’t going to be easy. Are you sure you can do this?”

  She nodded fiercely. “I owe it to them.”

  I didn’t disabuse her of the notion because, frankly, she was right.

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking off at a jog.

  The rest of the encampment looked abandoned. Was everyone at the caves? Or had that many people fled, unable to serve Mario? The latter seemed possible, given what Nell had told me and my own experiences with the man.

  It wasn’t hard to see how he had gained his initial following. I’d known him my entire life, and he’d always been levelheaded, a respected hunter, and my father’s closest friend.

  If he’d brought his concerns to the other hunters, I could understand them taking him seriously and moving to unseat my father as Director. Mario had said that no one had taken him seriously when he tried to tell them about Tiberius, though. What had he told the hunters to make them believe him? They were now part of his inner circle, for sure. The ones who had spoken against Cyril at the ceremony. There had to be more to how this all began, but I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. We had arrived.

  As soon as we cleared the passageway, Mario, Nero, and a dozen or so of their rebels came into view. All of them were armed, not with spears, but with rifles and handguns.

  Just great, I thought, noting how outnumbered we were. From the smirks on their faces, they knew it too.

  The prisoners stood in the same spot Laurell had the day before. A few more of Mario's men had weapons trained on them, I assumed in case someone tried to run. I scanned the group until I found Mark and Lambert.

  “How did you know?” I asked Mario, tightening my grip on the staff.

  He scoffed. “Stupid girl. How could you think I wouldn’t be watching?”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth I felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of course, he would have a camera in the lab to keep an eye on me. As soon as Nell showed up, he probably took action.

  “This is a job for adults,” he told me snidely. “Give up now, you’re barely a prospus out of training.”

  “And you’re crazy,” I shot back, not caring that it sounded juvenile.

  “Nell, dear,” he said, ignoring me and turning his attention on her. “Retrieve the staff and I’ll forgive you.”

  I tensed, more than a little nervous that she might sell me out, but she shook her head. “No. I’m done following you.”

  His eyes flashed in anger. “Then you want to die? So be it.”

  He lifted the rifle and I stepped in front of Nell protectively. I wasn’t going to let him kill again.

  “How can you be a leader if you have to make others do your dirty work?” I sneered. “If you want the staff, come get it. Unless you’re afraid of a prospus just out of training.”

  That caused a stir among his hunters and Mario looked around nervously, but his response was cut off.

  THOM.

  THOM.

  THOM.

  “Sounds like Tiberius is on his way,” I said. “I bet he’d love to hear all about how you plan to use this staff on him.”

  All the color seemed to drain from his face.

  “That’s what I thought. Let us—all of us—go now and he won’t hear it from me.”

  “Father, you can’t seriously be—”

  “Shut up, Nero,” Mario ordered.

  THOM.

  THOM.

  THOM.

  “You’re running out of time,” I said lightly.

  “Fine, take them and go,” Mario seethed. “We won’t stop you.”

  “If you shoot us in the back, know that I will use my dying breath to bring this entire cavern down around us,” I warned him.

  To show that I was serious, I activated the staff, a blue light forming around the tip.

  Mario scowled, clearly offended by the insinuation that he lacked honor. This man, who thought he was doing the right thing in all of this. “I won’t,” he said, simply.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Nell.

  We were almost halfway to Mark and the other prisoners when Tiberius entered the cavern, followed closely by three of his kind. His cold, blue eyes took in the scene before him.

  “What is this, Mario?” he asked, the words echoing loudly.

  “Run!” I yelled, grabbing Nell’s hand, but she seemed rooted to the ground.

  She was looking at Tiberius in horror, her mouth agape, body frozen. Nell wasn’t the only one. A few of the prisoners stood stock still, unable to move. Others scattered like insects, some of them screaming, and made for different tunnels.

  “No!” I shouted, panicking in the moment of chaos.

  Nell still wasn’t moving, so I did the only thing I could think of and slapped her.

  That seemed to jolt her. She flinched and stared at me.

  “Nell, we have to move. Now!”

  “Ri-right,” she stuttered, still terrified but at least out of her trance now.

  “Tiberius!” Mario yelled above the mayhem. “These Boneclaw hunters were the ones acting on Cyril’s orders and killing your family. They’re trying to get away!”

  Orders? I thought. What was he talking about? More than a few of his captives were not hunters.

  Tiberius swung his head sharply to fleeing prisoners and let out a series of fast clicks and chittering noises to the other three Boneclaws.

  All at once things became clear.

  This was how Mario had achieved an Alliance with the talking Boneclaw. He had told Tiberius that my father was purposely killing them. No wonder he wanted payback.

  Cyril had never issued an order like that. His and every Prime’s decisions were balanced toward the preservation and sustainment of every species of life on this world. It was the only way to maintain a future for ourselves. Mario, as Tiberius
’ only direct contact with humans, had convinced the creature that my father was to blame.

  I’d have to worry about that later. For now, we had to get out.

  I needed to slow the Boneclaws down. I fired a volley of small blasts from the staff at the cavern walls, careful to avoid Tiberius, his soldiers, and our people. My hope was that it would bring down enough debris to give us at least a few meters distance, but the walls held and it was all for little more than a few bursts of dust.

  But Boneclaws covered their ears. I suddenly remembered the video from the archives. They were sensitive to loud noises.

  “Everyone head for the smallest tunnel!” I yelled, raising the staff and shooting again as we ran.

  Mark heard me and started shouting at the people around him. A few caught on and changed direction, heading for the small opening I’d pointed out, but many had already scattered.

  Tiberius snatched a fleeing woman who was trying to escape and tossed her aside, as if she weighed no more to him than a datapad did to me.

  My blasts were starting to have an unanticipated side effect. As they struck the rock walls in quick succession the vibrations shook the ceiling. Stalactites began to break loose, arrowing into the ground and bursting, sending small stone fragments in all directions

  I stopped firing when a hunk of rock came crashing down nearby, narrowly missing one of the running prisoners, but it was too late.

  Another piece fell and struck one of the smaller Boneclaws in the shoulder. It howled in pain and scrambled back, unsure where the blow had come from.

  Tiberius roared again and searched the cave for the source of the blasts. His icy blue eyes landed on me and held my gaze. Then he charged.

  I ran with everything I had, eating up ground and wishing like hell Tiberius would trip and fall on his face. I made it into the tunnel just behind Nell and Prime Lambert, who didn’t move as fast as us younger ones.

  “Don’t stop!” I bellowed.

  It was a good thing I did too, because the tunnel wall shook as the massive creature struck the opening. His size prevented him from giving chase, but I looked behind me and saw his clawed hand arcing through the air.