by Richard Fox
Yenin shrugged and left her coffee atop a sink on her way out.
The doors opened to a hangar bay where cargo shuttles were slotted into berths up and down the bulkheads on one side, smaller fighter craft and kill drones on the other. One shuttle was on deck, the rear hatch open with a robot at the base of the ramp next to a containment unit large enough to hold three or four men if they were lying down.
“Ah…shit on me,” Cisneros said. “We’re doing this already?”
“Doing what when?” Yenin looked over the containment unit, a biohazard warning already pulsating on each side.
“This is your first bug clear, I forgot. Look, no matter what happens, don’t bust your seals, OK? Because if any of those psychopaths from—”
A pair of Myrmidons stepped out from behind the containment unit. They wore matte-black combat suits with augmented frames down their backs, over their shoulders, and along each limb, carbines slung onto a ring on their chest, and sidearms. Each carried a helmet in the crook of an arm. The taller man’s had a façade of a sneering jester, while the woman—who had a face that only a mother could love—had a helmet in the guise of an Oni—a Japanese demon.
“This ain’t hard.” Solanus put her demon mask on and her voice projected through speakers in the helmet. “Don’t make it hard. Don’t get in our way. Simple snatch-and-grab. Get the unit locked down so we can get this over with.”
“Ma’am.” Cisneros gave a sloppy salute and Solanus just shook her head at him as she went up the ramp. The other Myrmidon gave Yenin a wink before he bounded up and into shuttle.
“I’m still lost,” Yenin said.
“Just get the bio box locked down and,” Cisneros leaned close to her, “do not piss that bitch off. She will gut us as soon as look at us. You know how many reprimands she has for bodily harm?”
Yenin grabbed her helmet from a rack within the shuttle—a much simpler model with a wide, unadorned visor—and donned it. Seals snapped into place and she opened a direct channel to her crewmate.
“Why is she still working for the company if she’s that crazy?” She went to one knee and activated mag clamps built into the shuttle’s deck. The containment unit settled into a cradle with a snap.
“Because the company likes batshit-crazy Myrmidons. They do great work. And if their pay gets docked to compensate anyone they stab…they still end up in the black after an assignment. Aft locks set.”
“Starboard set. Didn’t the supervisor say this was just a shake-and-bake colony mission?” Yenin continued securing the bio containment unit. “What’s with this?”
“Head down, mouth shut, get paid,” Cisneros said. “Let’s not give those psychos any reason to notice us, OK? That other one was looking at you funny.”
“I knew I should’ve taken a starport assignment. The extra twenty percent ain’t worth this.”
The ramp came up with a groan of hydraulics.
Yenin stole glances at the two Myrmidons where they sat at the front of the cargo bay. The male lifted up a glass ampule and jabbed the tip into a port on his neck. He went stiff as he jammed the ampule home, then flicked the empty against the wall, where it shattered. The woman—Solanus—lifted her visor and snorted from an open capsule on her wrist. Then she bumped the back of her helmet against the bulkhead in a steady rhythm, never stopping, even after the shuttle lifted off and launched from the Matsui.
Chapter 14
“Elsime, get up.” Matron Virid shook the young Tyr woman’s shoulder.
The scribe jerked awake. Why was the matron in her quarters, and so close to dawn? Her mind raced as she struggled for a reason, then she gasped.
“No, child, you haven’t been betrothed. No sudden wedding for you.” Virid’s face was deadly serious. “Get your tools. The King needs you.”
“Before dawn?”
“Yes, now change out of your slip and into your apron and robes. You’ll know what’s going on soon enough—though you may not understand it. I don’t.”
The sound of the guards’ radios came through the closed door.
“Yes, right away, Matron.”
****
“You’re telling me this is impossible.” King Menicus flipped through photographs of Kleegar and the approaching Matsui.
Elsime rushed to her post and laid out her quills and scrolls, memorizing everything the King said as the council meeting continued. There were more of the kingdom’s elite in the room, all bleary-eyed from having been roused from sleep, not all in the best state of dress.
A meek-looking Royal, his shoulders hunched, stood just behind Marshal Hawn’ru, and he kept eyeing the main doorway as if looking for an escape.
“It’s impossible that the…object is some sort of spacecraft from the heretics,” said Ciolsi, the spy chief. “They haven’t even achieved manned space flight. That they could somehow get to Kleegar and construct that—ridiculous!”
“I have to agree with that,” Hawn’ru said.
“This is all an elaborate hoax,” said one of the priests flanking Osuda. “That unbeliever Ubom most have painted the object on his telescope and now he and his ilk are having a laugh at our expense.”
“There are three other telescopes within the kingdom,” Ubom said, raising a hand slightly. “They should all be awake and studying the stars beyond the Sleeve. Just ring them and—”
“Send police and operatives to secure each one immediately,” Menicus said. “No warning to the astronomers. We can’t allow this to get out to the public, whatever it is.”
“Sire.” Ciolsi stepped to one side and picked up a phone.
“Any unusual activity from the heretics? From the sea?” the King asked.
“Nothing, sire,” Hawn’ru said.
“And tell me again how you knew to call this one and have him turn his telescope to the moon?”
“I…” Hawn’ru raised a hand and bit back frustration. “As I told you, sire, I did no such thing. He was brought into my quarters at the Castle after presenting my secure cipher.”
“I got a call.” Ubom raised his hands.
“Then how by the dark of the moon did—bah!” The King threw the sheaf of photographs away from him and they fluttered across the room. One landed not too far from Elsime, and she peered at the strange vessel that contrasted starkly with the red sky.
“We have sent men into orbit,” Virid said. “Not many. None too far from Tyr. But we’re planning a mission to Ashtani. Is it not possible that some other…people are coming here?”
“No.” Speaker Osuda rose from his seat, his eyes sharp and clear. “This comes from the dark world, where the gods have banished those found wanting in their gaze. This is the time of judgment. We didn’t suffer enough for blighting the Slaver lands. Retribution is coming to—”
“You have lost your mind!” Ciolsi shouted. “The assassinations after the war were carried out by the Hidden, not by any sort of—”
“Stop!” Menicus slammed his palms against his desk and the room went silent. “I want an explanation for this…appearance from each of you. Ubom, you first.”
“Me?” the astronomer squeaked, clearing his throat and looking up at Hawn’ru, who growled at him. “There’s been discussion—heretical discussion, I admit—amongst some of my colleagues that there may be planets like ours beyond the Sleeve. We see some similarities between the rock samples taken from Ashtani and where the gods placed us, and the similarities point to a common origin. Once we can send probes to the other planets in the system, then—”
“That space vessel could be Tyr from another star,” the King said.
“Well…and this is where our speculation has gone rampant, but what if they’re not Tyr but some sort of green creatures that evolved under different conditions?”
“Heresy,” Osuda snapped. “I’ll have you and all your fellows at the stake for this.”
“No,” Menicus said, shaking his head. “We don’t have time for an inquisition. And what are the Speakers’ words on
this?”
“Divine punishment. A ship full of demons come to punish us all,” Osuda said. “We must repent before the gaze and then we may be spared.”
“Have you taken communion regarding this?” the King asked.
Out of the corners of his eyes, Osuda quickly glanced at the two priests on his flanks. “Well…no. We only just learned of—”
“Then your warning doesn’t come from the gods just yet, does it?” the King asked. “You need how long to complete your journey?”
“I was with the gods just recently. The oaxa will not have the same effect on me for another two mornings,” Osuda said.
“Then send someone else to commune,” said the King, leaning forward on his knuckles.
“To achieve my level of communion requires a more…heroic dose of oaxa, but it will be done." Osuda crossed his arms and stuck his hands in his sleeves as the two priests flushed with anxiety.
Elsime had heard stories of Osuda’s tolerance for the mushrooms that sent him into communion. Her own christening had been a single cup of tea laced with oaxa and the experience had been…mind-altering. Osuda was rumored to eat up to ten weight coins worth of the holy sacrament at a time, while those that consumed half that didn’t always come back from their journey.
“Not heretic,” Hawn’ru said. “I don’t know what it is, but I suggest we go to full military alert. Recall the reserves.”
“The heretics will consider that an act of war,” Ciolsi said. “We could…we could bring this to their attention.”
Laughter broke out from those assembled.
“Some of them can be reasoned with,” Ciolsi said.
“Careful now, spymaster,” Hawn’ru said. “We might suspect you’re looking for a reason to defect.”
Ciolsi reached for a knife sheathed on the small of his back, and guardsmen snapped into action, pinning his arms to his sides. Another went for Hawn’ru, but he knocked the man back with a stiff shot from an elbow.
“Is this how we’re to conduct ourselves?” the King asked evenly. “Like squabbling sailors just into port? We have two days until this spacecraft—that’s what we’re going to call it—” the King said, rapping the desk, “until it arrives. Be it star travelers or demons sent to scour our sins away, it will affect every last soul in my kingdom, as well as the heretics and the wild ones in the sea. Focus. All of you. Another outburst like that and I’ll banish you to the mines.”
“My apologies to you,” Hawn’ru bowed to Ciolsi.
“Place the military on alert, but do not activate the reserves,” the King said. “See that word of my desire to carry out surprise inspections leaks to the heretics. They can blame the alert on that and then maybe we can avoid an accidental war.”
“Easily done, sire,” Ciolsi said. “There is the matter of who got this ball rolling.” He turned to Ubom. “My men traced the phone call, and there was some sort of…interference. Whoever tipped him off did so from King’s Rest, but there are nearly a dozen different possibilities.”
“Put them all under surveillance,” the King said. “I want daily reports.”
“It will be done.”
“All of you back here for the mid-afternoon meeting,” the King said. “Not a word of this to anyone. No one leaves the Castle. Go.” He looked at Virid then stroked his chin twice.
Elsime put stoppers in her ink wells, her hands shaking as she tried to grasp all that she’d just heard. Tyr from a different world? Demons sent to punish everyone for their sins before the gods’ gaze?
“Don’t close up just yet.” Virid put a hand on her shoulder and kept it there as the rest of the council filed out. When the last one left, the guard went with them, leaving her, Virid, and the King alone.
The King sat in his chair, his elbows on his knees and hands against his forehead.
Virid motioned Elsime to him and she carried over the scroll and a quill.
“Record this,” Menicus said. “Record this, as these words must be passed down, no matter what that thing in our sky really is.”
Elsime hesitated then set the scroll onto the desk, nodding quickly and readying her quill.
“Three months after the nuclear destruction of the Slaver lands…I found my father, King Iptari, at this very same desk. Dead. He was in his prime of life and I had just taken my confirmation a few weeks before. The timing seemed provident. I feared that the gods had waited to bring his soul to their judgment until I was ready to legally take the throne, that they had a grand plan for me with the crown.
“Now I am the same age as my father when he passed and this…test is placed before me. The gods’ gaze is ever upon us. For my sons who may well read these words, or for my brother Ythrain who may serve as regent if I fail this test…know that I am but the servant to the gods. That I rule in their place until their rightful return as has been prophesized since the first Tyr were placed on this world to be judged. Never forget what the crown means to the people, or to the gods.
“There, that’s all,” he said. “Write up the proper scroll and leave it for me. I’ll seal it myself.”
“Yes, sire.” Elsime choked back tears, feeling unworthy of a moment like this. The honor of recording a king’s message to his successor should have gone to one with a better hand, one with more talent at script and accents with golden ink.
Yet the task fell to her.
Chapter 15
Dawn broke over Tyr, and a pair of astronauts at the analog controls of a small pod sipped at mud-colored liquid in pouches and watched as more and more of the blue and white planet below became sunlit.
“I’ll never get tired of this,” said Unbloodied Quboth as he let his pouch go and it floated in the zero g. The upper half of his space suit was bunched against his waist, leaving his chest and shoulders in just a sweat-stained undershirt.
“It happens every two hours,” said his crewmate, Baron Nixazar. “Not that I’m complaining, but we have work to do and ground command is listening to every word we say, isn’t that right, ground command?”
“Time for health checks,” came through the radio, bookended by loud beeps.
“Years of training. Endless fitness evaluations,” said Nixazar, removing a blood-pressure cuff from a plastic box mounted over the control panel full of gauges, switches, and knobs, “and here I am, checking your vitals like some new apothecary’s apprentice at a Toilers’ hospital.”
“Careful, Nixazar. Plenty of workers in the space program. They may take offense.” Quboth held his arm out and made a fist as Nixazar worked a stethoscope into his ears. “We need a functioning heat shield to get home.”
“Physician’s note, sarcasm levels increase after eight days in orbit.” Nixazar wrote down Quboth’s readings on a chart clamped to a clipboard. “Are we doing another live broadcast with some schoolchildren today? Or is it ‘test the nitrogen levels in our feces’ day?”
“Ugh.” Quboth leaned forward to look up through the glass panels in their cramped pod. “That’s going in the after-action report—better seals for waste disposal.”
“Mission, ground control…we’re picking up a second radar blip trailing you. Any damage to the craft?”
The two astronauts gave each other a quick glance, then both rushed to get back into their suits.
“I thought the hull rattled a little too much during lift-off,” Nixazar said as Quboth ran down an emergency-action checklist.
“Everything’s reading normal.” Quboth slapped his helmet on, ran air from the capsule, and continued down his memorized emergency checklist. Then he glanced at Nixazar, who was staring out the starboard view port. “Get your helmet on. Procedure.”
“What is that?” Nixazar asked, barely over a whisper.
“Get your dome on before—”
White light flooded the capsule and Nixazar reared back in shock, the back of his head striking Quboth’s visor.
“Control!” Quboth pushed Nixazar back into his seat and grabbed the control stick. He couldn’t see
anything but the blinding light, but he had the layout down with muscle memory. “Control, we’ve encountered some sort of an anomaly.”
All he heard back was static.
The capsule lurched, like a giant hand had grabbed it by the back and was pulling it away. Quboth triggered the engines, but the controls were dead.
“Nixazar?”
His companion groaned, chin slumped to his chest.
Quboth put his helmet on for him and connected him to the capsule’s air supply as the light faded away.
“Control? Control, we—”
Outside the pod, the star field wiped away as a ramp slammed shut. Quboth froze, the sound of his breathing and hum of life-support systems barely matching the blood pounding in his ears. Strips of light ran overhead and he felt a tremor through the capsule, like something was walking toward him.
Quboth may never have flown in combat, but he was still of the warrior caste and a trained soldier. He reached behind his seat to an emergency pouch and drew a small pistol.
A massive matte-black hand with a metal frame over each finger slammed down on the view port. Claws bored into the plexiglass with a dull whine, then there was the wrench of failing steel as whatever was outside ripped the hatch off his capsule.
Quboth came face-to-face with a demon, its face a mask of twisted onyx and a tight scaffolding of metal around its body. He snapped the safety off his pistol and thrust it at the demon, but it moved lightning quick and smashed the weapon out of his hand and into the other side of the capsule, where it fell into Nixazar’s lap.
The demon grabbed him by the front of his suit, ripped him out of the pod, and threw him against the floor. He bounced into the bulkhead and stars flashed across his eyes. He struggled to get up, but a boot slammed into his back and pinned him down.
On the other side of the capsule was another demon, its face different but still just as terrifying. Quboth looked around as far as he could move his head with the boot at the base of his neck. The place was like the hangar of an aircraft carrier, with light strips and bare metal frames on the walls. A large container, bigger than his capsule, was at the front of the space. There was another creature there, but in a dull-grey space suit with a backlit helmet.
