by Greg Hanks
V’delle frowned, trying to adjust to their new circumstances. So many Calcitra captured. One left?
Peavey stood tall and rubbed his wrists. “Where yer weapons? What kinda rescue party is this?”
“The only one you’re getting,” said V’delle. She threw on her hood. Invisibility peeled down her body like a light-bending waterfall.
“Sometimes blowing up the place doesn’t work,” Farin added. “Move.”
Peavey looked unimpressed as they walked through the door. He took a submachine gun from one of the dead Preen’ch in the antechamber. Miraculously, he didn’t complain about having to follow invisible allies. Farin would knock on walls to keep him aware. He kept low and tight. A rabid rooster, eyes wide and twitchy.
Cell block A was an open square chamber with four levels ringed with narrow, railed walkways. Prison cells lined the walls. Skeletons inside, clinging to chads of moldy skin and clothing. A chunk of collapsed roof hung overhead. Diamond-shaped opening where natural light entered as an opaque column. Vines dangled from the crevice and had grown down the walls like spider legs. Peavey and his two aqueous mirages appeared on the second level. A severed staircase at the end of the right walkway descended to the bottom floor. A dark maw of sparse grass and broken concrete.
V’delle heard footsteps above. With a fluid traversal, she jumped and grabbed the third level’s bars above. She hung there, rust misting away from her grip as she peeked above. Right in front of her, two Preen’ch.
One soldier saw Peavey and aimed down.
“What the hell?” he yelled. “The prisoner—”
V’delle climbed the rungs, reached up, and grabbed underneath his helmet. She yanked him over the railing. His neck smashed into concrete below. Spine up-ended over his body. Stuck the landing.
The second soldier called out in surprise. He fired an inaccurate burst at the half invisible being. V’delle had already let go of the railing and caught herself on the second level’s bars like a monkey.
Peavey and Farin were behind concrete pillars. Farin pulled a pistol from her hip.
“So yeh did bring weapons,” Peavey said.
“We’re not idiots,” said Farin, turning to shoot.
By now the Preen’ch had communicated to each other. More soldiers crowded the third level entrance, no doubt others would arrive on the second and first levels soon.
V’delle groaned in annoyance. She lifted her cloak to grab a stun bomb, another “Ketterhagan special.” Her thumb held the activator for two seconds, and she threw the bomb in a high arc. It hit the ceiling and dropped on the group. Bright blue light shook the third floor. Bodies crumpled together to jam the door.
Farin and Peavey leapt to the ground floor. V’delle let go of the railing and landed in the grass. She scooped up the submachine gun from the Preen’ch with the broken neck. A giant hole in the concrete wall led to grassy terrain outside about to be drenched in rain. The black clouds had fulfilled their destiny. Drums beating over the prison yard.
More Preen’ch entered other levels only to receive a beating from V’delle and Peavey. Some Preen’ch activated their pink-tinged bangle shields and stood inside the level thresholds as bullets pelted them into a standstill. Peavey wasted no ammunition, knocking down available targets with succinct bursts. Though his image showed otherwise, he was deft and articulate. Accuracy with a submachine gun was already shit at medium range.
“You know your way around a Khor’Zon weapon,” V’delle said to him as they backpedaled through the opening in the wall.
“S’not the only thing I know my way around,” he whispered.
“Was that supposed to be suggestive?”
“Everything’s suggestive if yeh want it to be,” he said.
They reached Farin at the end of the tunnel and looked outside. A far plain of quiet grass and razed structures stretched for a mile until hitting a wall of sludge green forest, the side where Farin had started. Oak, maple, ash, birch. From one prison to another. That was their destination. Preen’ch patrolling. Rainfall and black skies. A scratchy bellow from an impatient Warlord. The fields were treacherous.
“Here’s how this’ll play out,” Farin said. “You’ll be our distraction, Peavey. Walk straight toward the forest. V’delle and I will fan out. When you get noticed, we’ll take them out.”
“We wanna get outta here without bringing the whole complex with us,” V’delle added. “Don’t get too excited with that trigger.”
“Oh, I can manage,” Peavey said rudely. “What’re you, sixteen?”
“You wish.”
Peavey smirked and spat to the ground. He gave her a drunken look, then spoke quietly. “Still too old.”
“You smell like shit,” V’delle said, then crept outside, wondering why in the hell the Khor’Zon had decided to keep him alive.
Peavey smiled and licked his yellowing teeth. He began crouch-walking.
Swaying grass. The metallic scent of rainfall. On either side of him, the grass parted on its own.
Two Preen’ch ahead. Weapons up. Alert and tedious. When Peavey crossed the broken fence line, the Preen’ch to his left jerked to attention.
“Here!”
Peavey looked at the soldier as if browsing an art gallery, smiling.
Something pulled the Preen’ch into the tall grass. The Preen’ch to Peavey’s right tried to shout but vanished into brush and scrub. Peavey kept walking. Taller. Faster. Weapon aloft. One Preen’ch ahead. Eye to reticle, Peavey pulled the trigger and held it. The soldier’s body jolted several times.
A rock hit Peavey’s arm.
“What did I say, asshole?” V’delle snapped.
Peavey chuckled and followed their parted grass into the forest just as the hole in the cell block wall vomited a dozen Preen’ch.
Wet trunks in every direction. The canopy was heavy and black. Raindrops struggled to power through. The Warlord’s deep voice took chunks from the air, ordering his troops. V’delle worried about the group of reinforcements flanking the evac zone. She doubled-back and peered through the leaves. She could give Farin and Peavey some extra space. Extraction would be much easier.
“Keep going,” she told Farin through her earpiece. “I’m gonna slow them down.”
“You know where we’ll be,” Farin said, out of breath.
From the west, the Khor’Zon Warlord appeared on the grassy knoll before the forest. Dark, polished armor, a wounded gait, and three thorns hovering above his left shoulder. An image of Seen’ai zapped her memory, causing her to pause. The group of Preen’ch charged before him as he ushered their regiment with a fierce hand. He barked orders to split into three groups.
V’delle looked up. A network of dripping boughs, interconnected and spiky. The perfect vantage. She placed her sub-machine gun to her chest; the magnets of her suit received the weapon. She rocketed up the trunk of a thick maple, then grappled with the canopy to make a lateral cross toward the coming Preen’ch. Each movement calculated and precise. An Olympic feat.
The forest looked like the scribbled crayon drawing of a child. She assumed a gargoyle position. Her fleshy hand felt the wetness of the wooden branch. Pulling it off brought black tree shavings on a pale palm. She lifted her head and inhaled. Nature embraced her as a Preen’ch approached below. He slowed his approach as he crossed the tree line.
“Nearly there. Hurry.” Farin’s voice rang in V’delle’s ear.
A flicker of leaves. Her aqueous body struck the Preen’ch on the shoulders. Her legs cinched around his neck as he crumpled to one knee. Her knife came from nowhere and stabbed under his skull. She took the last stun bomb from her hip and chucked it into the coming squad. As it detonated in their midst, she fired a barrage, hoping to both kill some and pull the other groups’ attention.
“Coming,” V’delle said breathlessly, sprinting back into the woods.
A mile out, she found Peavey and Farin in a tiny clearing. She threw back her hood.
Farin twirled. Flushe
d cheeks and sweaty blonde hair. She looked to the sky and said: “We’re here, we’ve got him. Ready for pick up.”
“Few minutes away,” came a second voice in V’delle’s ear, a young male.
Peavey turned to V’delle. “So how do a couple bairn’s like yourselves getta be Breckenridge’s wee skivvies?”
“What?” V’delle said, trying to listen to the forest.
“Yer doin’ Breck’s dirty jobs,” Peavey reiterated. “How’s that happen?”
“We just do it out of love,” V’delle said. “We would do anything for our dear master, Breckenridge.”
“Remember those Preen’ch that escaped the Chalis three months ago?” asked Farin, positioning herself near the edge of the clearing, aiming at the other side.
Peavey raised an eyebrow, glancing at the two. His grin was sadistic. “Well, shite. We’re all escaped prisoners, how do yeh figure that?”
“Can’t wait to stay up all night and share prison stories with you,” V’delle said.
A thorn sliced her cheek and pinned her shoulder fabric to the trunk of a nearby tree. Erratic. Wiggling. She ducked. Her slicker tore. Another thorn stuck the bark where her head had been.
Farin’s body vanished into her cloak. Bushes and leaves parted as she disappeared.
The forest broke into chipping bursts and hailstorms of fully automatic fire. V’delle discarded her malfunctioning slicker and embedded herself in the dirt. The floor shook with the trundle of Preen’ch boots. She worked seamlessly with Farin as they closed in on the remaining troops from either side, tripping soldiers, slashing heels. Peavey managed to hold his own from the clearing, but V’delle needed to keep an eye on his aim; bullets were flying everywhere. After a loud two minutes, the noise dropped to a few sputters, and V’delle lay on her side, hidden in a shrub, watching the smoke and the wood chips melt into the rain.
Another thorn impaled Peavey’s forearm. Deranged laughter erupted from him as he threw his sub-machine gun to the ground and pulled the thorn from his arm. He sprinted into the forest. Blood flew in the wind.
V’delle chased after him, jumping over dead bodies.
Two shots from Farin’s pistol echoed across the copse.
V’delle broke through a grouping of trees. She saw the Warlord standing not far off. He held his body. Disoriented. Blood dripped between his fingers. Peavey tackled the alien to the ground. He took the thorn and drove it into the Khor’Zon’s face. Each thrust shotgunned blood.
“All right,” Farin said, trying to pull him away. “Enough.”
Peavey whipped his bloody hand into Farin’s face.
In heated retaliation, she punched him in the side of the head.
V’delle aimed at the ground below Peavey. He was about to swing. She fired.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Evac’s almost here, dumbass. A dozen more Preen’ch are probably on their way.”
“The hell is wrong with you?” Farin said, walking backward to the clearing.
Peavey recomposed himself and glanced at V’delle. Khor’Zon blood soaked his face and arm. He laughed nonchalantly, then dropped the thorn in the grass.
“Sorry,” he told V’delle. “Musta got carried away.”
A whirring hum gained volume over the clearing. V’delle ran back into the opening as the white underbelly of Khor’Zon metal pushed itself down through the canopy. Branches snapping. Grass flat. V’delle’s hair sprayed backward. The Swifty, a lighter, more agile dropship model. Prize of the Flonneburg raid three months ago.
Farin waived in the machine, but it stopped its descent, hovering in the air.
“Let’s go!” Farin yelled to the man in her ear. “You’re clear!”
A rocket struck the side of the Swifty. The dropship jerked into the canopy, crashing through tree limbs. Pieces of siding fell. V’delle, Farin, and Peavey evaded shrapnel. In a final explosion, the dropship was gone. Their means of escape had left in a plume of blue plasma and black smoke.
Preen’ch flanked the clearing with gunfire.
Farin threw on her hood and told Peavey to run north. V’delle went east to lead a few Preen’ch away. She’d meet Farin at their plan B rendezvous a mile off. No matter what happened, they couldn’t allow the Preen’ch to follow them back to Beliveilles.
Even the forest surrounding Piers’ old farmhouse couldn’t quite capture the dark thickness through which she ran. Bullets were a whirlwind through the leaves. One caught her shoulder blade. Off a tree she spun down a short decline into a massive fallen tree sticking out of the ground like a bent signpost. She inhaled mud.
The sounds of skirmish faded to the north. She pushed up. Muck spilled from her mouth. She wiped her eyes. The fallen trunk was her crutch. The bullet had glanced, and her shoulder burned with a new bruise.
A hooded Khor’Zon in a brown traveling cloak fell from the top of the trunk and landed behind her. Through a small opening under the fallen trunk, different hands reached under and pulled V’delle’s legs; she fell over, slapping the mud. She was yanked through the crevice under the tree, through the mud, and thrown against another upright trunk.
She tried wiping her eyes, but her wrists were pinned back by powerful hands.
“Wait, wait!” spoke a light female voice with a grizzled undertone. “It is . . . unbelievable.”
“What is?” said the second, a hoarse male voice right next to V’delle’s ear.
“We have to bring her back to camp, hurry!”
Rope bound her hands behind her back. Rags gagged her mouth. Lifted and carried away. A squirming mud larva.
DAUGHTER OF THE SAGE
Two Months Ago
Naon’s wasp yellow pupils and bloodshot black sclera returned her gaze in the dropship’s glass window. Ringed by raw exhaustion bags. Itching. What had sleep been like before Flonneburg? Sanction’s boxy skyline elicited no response in her. Towering monsters of golden windows, glossy spires jutting up like corrupting needles, constant drone swarms, and, rising above most of the buildings, the Lo’Zon’s palace. It was the first time she had seen it since its completion. The Ovulith, they called it. A gargantuan trapezoid. Totally obsidian. Angular planes reflecting the sun’s glare like water. As the palace grew closer, Naon’s heart remained deflated in the center of her chest as her body chilled.
This was her home now—Earth. She would never again see the spiked plateaus of Mengsha’ron or the majesty of Oro’nath. She clenched her eyes and exhaled anger. Why was she entertaining this mental drama again? The same thoughts had attacked her when she first saw the blue planet. She had sworn to never reminisce, never let herself become sentimental. Khorsha was gone forever. Gone forever . . .
Helipads were built into the sides of the Ovulith. Seamless hangar doors opened for her dropship. The Preen’ch pilot maneuvered the ship onto the pad. He opened the side door for Naon. She didn’t move.
“Warlord?” he asked. “We’ve arrived. The elevators are just across the bridge. Warlord?”
Naon took in a nosefull of air and stared at him.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
The walk to the elevators was flanked by a hangar the size of a football stadium. To Naon it was nothing. She licked dried blood on her lips back into its liquid state. Stretched and grime-cracked skin split her face from her chin to the tip of her skull fin. It had been a week since a wash. What was once considered elegant, fair skin was now ghastly. White Warlord armor dented and scratched. A pauldron missing. Pocked chest plate. She sped across a rampart bridge and reached the elevator doors without feeling.
“Welcome back, Warlord.”
A purebred Khor’Zon stood next to the elevator door holding a tablet. His thick, hairless brow shadowed scrutinizing eyes. He wore ebony silk robes that fell to a train. Sleeves held taut by middle finger loops. An ornamental chain circlet hung from his skull fin, its glittering emerald pendant resting in the center of his forehead. The common garb of Oro’nath. She could feel the material without feeling it, smell the odor
without smelling it, bear the weight of it without bearing it. She remembered Seen’ai reaching for her hand, ready to take her onto the hardwood floor of her tenement to dance . . .
“Warlord?”
Naon jerked her head.
“Is he here?” she asked, all one word.
He hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was sticky, poised, and demeaning. “I am assuming you mean the Lo’Zon. Yes, he arrived almost an hour ago.”
Naon flinched. “He was not to be here until three.”
“It is three, Warlord.”
“I know that. Why did he arrive early?”
“The Lo’Zon had a briefing with Sanction’s aerospace engineers—”
“Fine,” she snarled.
When the elevator doors closed, she exhaled. The wall supported her. Taking weight off her legs relieved some pain. An ache in her left knee had not stopped since the retaking of Flonneburg; an unsuspecting teenaged boy had tackled her, pinching a nerve. Filthy roach. At least the boy’s severed head had brought her some comfort.
When was the last time she felt real comfort? It could not have been Oro’nath? Over twenty years ago? Oro’nath used to be so beautiful before the Calamity. More magnificent than anything Earth could hope to produce. Highways as tall as buildings, weaving in and out, up and down. She traced each street in her mind via a mental taxi. Her mouth gaped when she recalled Ak’toh, the best ground meat delicatessen in all Khorsha. Seasoned beef wraps, fish fritters with a special cheese and pepper sauce, and the best part of the menu, the Mengsha’ron gloer bits. Gloer were like deer, only smaller and rodent-like, and were a staple of Khorsha cuisine. Deep fried. Meat tender enough to be gelatin. Every time she had ordered them, she would think about him. About Balien . . .
“Naon?” said a high-pitched, raspy voice, and suddenly every thought turned to rage, malice, horror, and stress.
Ghare, Mouth of the Lo’Zon, her old mentor. His long fingers wrapped in black linen held the elevator door open. Golden mask glittered, three distinct vertical bars carved into the metal where the mouth would be, and two openings revealing bloodshot, livid eyes. The skin around the eyes was almost festering, raw and cracked. He was the only Khor’Zon in the Chalis who revealed a part of their face, Naon recalled. He wore a thinner, charcoal-colored version of Warlord plate armor, its creases lit by an unnatural black glow that made the combination look unsettling and dissonant. A remnant of his Chalis garments hung as a foot-long cape, attached to his armored upper back.
