by Richard Fox
“They’re really your caste?” Fastal asked.
“We don’t do family like you. Flesh and blood. Marriage. More important than…” He gestured to his Linker face. “How we really look doesn’t make things as complicated. Usually.”
There was banging against the top of the helicopter.
“General, we found the bad hydraulic line,” someone shouted.
“The King is waiting on you!” Fastal answered.
There was a curse and a toolbox slid off the side and crashed to the ground outside.
“By the Oath of Marsis.” Fastal sighed, putting his hands on his hips.
“‘What will go wrong will choose the worst time to manifest,’” Daniel said. “We have something similar. We call it Murphy’s Law. These Sky Raider helicopters were always hangar queens. I’m surprised they made it to the lodge without breaking down. So you’re taking me to the King?”
“To the Obsidian Dolmen. You don’t know? Your caste….your kind want to meet him there. How do you know so much about—no, just tell me what you are.” Fastal glanced out a porthole as his men scrambled to pick up all the scattered tools.
“I’m an anthropologist…but you don’t have a word for that. I study groups of people, like the family matrons. I’ve been here for a little over ten years, since just before you won the war against the Slavers,” Daniel said.
“Don’t give me any credit,” Fastal said. “I led the Blooded in a final war against those monsters. The pain of generations is what turned the tide at the end.”
“I’ll give you credit for crushing their armored corps at Tigane Pass. For breaking the siege of Lucansa. For winning a dozen battles from Vinica to the Port of Suffering. You deserved to be Marshal after the surrender,” Daniel said.
“You say you study groups of people, but you know a hell of a lot about our military,” Fastal said.
“Hobby of mine…and your military strength was an important part of my mission here.”
“You’re a spy. You know what we do with spies.”
“And I know what you do with demons.” Daniel shrugged. “I should’ve known better than to get caught. All my time here and you’re the first one that’s ever even suspected I was anything but another Linker trying to make a living.”
“Sazon,” Fastal said, cocking his head toward the ramp. “She’s been studying…you’re collecting on our military to report to that starship on the way from Kleegar.”
“We tried to learn as much as we could about the entire planet. The animals, geology. We meant to bring it back and prove that Tyr is precious, that you should be left alone, coveted for your uniqueness.”
“How many…how many worlds like Tyr are out there?”
“You look to the Sleeve, the gap in the nebula surrounding this system, and you see stars, stars just like the sun. You follow?” Daniel asked.
Fastal nodded.
“There are billions of stars in the galaxy—that’s something your astronomers are just starting to figure out. And most of those stars have planets, and a significant number can support life, like Tyr. Even we don’t know exactly how many there are. But human worlds…we’d settled several thousand by the time I arrived here.”
Fastal frowned, his eyes glancing from side to side as he did the mental math.
“By the gods,” the general said, slumping into a seat. “There must be so many of you…”
“For what it’s worth, it’s really difficult to get from star to star. Sending just a few people like my family is simple. Sending a colony ship is a whole other problem.”
“Colony. Colony?” Fastal jumped back to his feet. “No. We’ll never allow—”
“That’s what they will demand of King Menicus. And they will not take no for an answer.”
“Wait…you know us.” Fastal tapped his chest. “You know we will fight. Why—why aren’t you on the starship trying to talk some sense into your caste lord?”
“Because I know my people, Fastal. The best thing I can do for Tyr is to try and help you stop the invasion. Stop the colony. Because if they get a foothold, they will never stop pushing the Tyr out of their homes until there’s no place left and you’re all gone. Believe me, Fastal. I’ve seen them do the exact same thing to too many other planets. Too many species that lacked the will or the technology to fight back.”
“This has happened before?” Fastal asked.
“We’re rather efficient at it. The ones you fought at the depot? They’re not even the worst of it. If they send the Marauders…not even the Slavers are that evil.”
“And you couldn’t—” Fastal thrust a hand to the sky, “you couldn’t have told us about this years ago?”
“Took me by surprise too, if that’s worth anything. But moving in on a world like this is almost too difficult for us. Taking it without destroying it in the process and making the whole venture worthless, at least. Zike is desperate. That may be Tyr’s saving grace.” Daniel sighed.
“What would you tell the King?” Fastal asked.
“Stall. Stall until you have every Tyr that can hold a weapon ready to fight. Blooded. Worker. Priest…even the Islanders and any Indentured you trust with a rifle. Because the only way Zike will stop this is if it becomes too painful and bloody for him to justify the cost.”
“We just fought such a war,” Fastal said.
“No, you fought against the Slavers while the Worthy People to the south sat and watched. This has to be a total war, Fastal, a war like your people have never fought before.” Daniel raised his cuffed hands up until the chain went tight.
Fastal looked down at his boots, then to the cockpit.
“I need to make a call.”
****
“And where are they?” King Menicus asked from where he sat in the back of his personal limousine. Elsime sat catty-corner from him, a small clipboard on her leg and a quill in her hand as she jotted down the conversation between the King, Ciolsi, and Matron Virid.
“Engine trouble.” Ciolsi lowered a walkie-talkie from his ear. “They’re back airborne, but they won’t make it in time. Fastal’s passed on that the…subject…advises you play for time, that the non-Tyr from the starship are extremely hostile.”
“Perhaps we should cancel,” Virid said.
“The gods always give us an excuse to fail,” Menicus said. “They lay traps of naysayers, fear, laziness all along the path to salvation. But to stay true…at the end is salvation.”
“Sire,” Ciolsi said, “even the priests haven’t come to the conclusion that this is—”
“The crown is mine,” Menicus said. “I took it from my father after the gods punished him for despoiling the Slavers’ land. I won’t turn back from my test just because the situation is far from perfect.”
The limo was silent but for the scratch of Elsime’s quill against paper and the rumble of the engine.
“And the other two? The woman and child?” the King asked.
“En route to a safe house in King’s Rest,” Ciolsi said. “We’re doing everything we can to keep their arrival quiet, but there’s been a fair amount of unrest in the capital since their house…disintegrated.”
“Don’t even do an I-told-you-so because we shot down your idea to burn down the rest of the neighborhood to cover it up,” Virid said.
“Regardless,” Ciolsi shook the walkie-talkie and the antennae wagged back and forth, “regardless of hindsight, the city is on the verge of panic. Rumors about an Indentured uprising, something about a lost Slaver fleet that survived the war in the polar regions striking out as revenge…the constables have put down several riots already.”
“I will address the people once this is finished.” The King bent one leg over a knee. “When they know the gods look on us with favor…they will be at peace.”
Virid and Ciolsi shared a quick glance as the limo rolled to a stop. After a few moments, one of the Close Guard opened the King’s door.
Elsime jotted down the time on the side of her no
tepad, delicately rolled an ink stamp over the bottom-left corner, then slipped everything back into her apron as her door was opened. A hot gust of exhaust from the back of a tank hit her and her hair went into wild strands as a clip on the back of her head fell out.
“Oh no!” She reached down to pick up the clip from where it landed next to a tire, then stood and struggled to get her hair back under control. A ring of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and Blooded troops surrounded a wide grass field. In the center were glossy black stones, each polished to a mirror shine and cut to reflect the sky. They were in a ring, with similarly sized and cut stones laid across the top.
Elsime paused. She’d never seen the Obsidian Dolmen with her own eyes before. The place was reserved for the highest of each caste loyal to the King, and being granted access to the monument was one of the greatest honors the King could bestow. Now here she was…the King’s own scribe at one of the holiest places on the planet.
Virid snatched the clip from her and got her hair under control.
The King was in counsel with Marshal Hawn’ru and Ciolsi at the edge of a cobblestone walkway at the edge of the grassy field.
“Forgive me, Matron,” Elsime said.
“A gift from on high,” Virid said quietly into her ear. “The King didn’t want you recording what he’s telling those two.”
“And what is—”
“I can’t know either,” Virid said. “When the King does something like this, it’s done for our protection."
“Wait, but then…” Elsime removed her clipboard and looked over her last set of notes. “Perhaps the King…doesn’t believe that these not-Tyr are of the gods? I mean, there aren’t any priests here.”
“But if they are of the gods,” Virid tapped the clipboard, “then the King is on record.”
“And if they’re…not?”
“Then the record might not matter.” Virid lifted up the hem of her dress and went to the King, Elsime a few steps behind her.
A fresh breeze cut across the grass, gentle waves pressing down the blades. The sky was overcast and threatening rain.
“The last of a hurricane that came in from the Ryta Isles,” Hawn’ru said. “We don’t have long before it gets uncomfortable out here, sire.”
“The envoy said they’d be here in…” Ciolsi glanced at his watch just as shouts of alarm went up from the ranks of soldiers.
Elsime looked up, and a patch of cloud darkened even further. A mass of gunmetal grey sank out of the clouds. Turrets larger than any she’d seen on Navy vessels lined the hull, all pointed off to the sides of the enormous ship. It lowered without a sound, but a deep thrum built in her chest and her sinuses ached.
The ship was so massive that much of it was still lost behind the clouds. Running lights blinked through like the warning from a lighthouse in the fog.
Terror gripped her. All she wanted to do was turn and run, but Virid gripped her upper arm. She wasn’t sure if it was to help her or to steady the matron’s own nerves.
A golden circle appeared out of the bottom of the ship, and a disc lowered from the hull toward the ground.
Elsime watched the King. His face was upturned and wore a slight smile in the golden light as the disc slowed to a stop a few feet away from them.
There was a tall, golden being—the same Zike that appeared in the Sanctum—but this time, he was actually there. Beside him were two dark-clad warriors, the same that had attacked the nuclear depot. Both their faces were covered by horrific masks and each held strange-looking rifles in their hands.
Hawn’ru’s fingers twitched near his sidearm, and his knees bent ever so slightly, his body poised to act.
“Behold,” Zike lifted his arms, revealing long sleeves of a white robe that shone with gold and diamonds, “what a glorious appearance you’ve made. Yet…”
He looked from side to side slowly.
“We have gifts, as the gods require,” the King said. His bodyguards brought out several wooden chests with silver clasps and set them to one side between him and Zike. “May you receive them in their grace.”
Elsime felt a nudge. Virid had hit her with her elbow, and the scribe suddenly remembered why she was even there in the first place.
She readied her quill.
Chapter 33
Rain lashed at the jungle canopy over Yenin. She huddled against a tree trunk, feeling all the cold, wet, and miserable that her Corporate recruiter swore she’d never experience once she signed on to be a void-craft crewman, third class.
“Bastard lied to me,” she said as her teeth chattered.
Thunder cracked and lightning flashed through the jungle.
“Why are they setting up a colony on a shitty planet with this kind of weather? They think archology rats like me want this bullshit? No, we don’t. We want air conditioning and windows to see the weather. We don’t want to feel…feel?”
The touch of tiny fingers moved up her back. She looked over a shoulder at a neon-orange insect that looked like a cross between a centipede and a foot-long sandwich crawling toward her face.
She shrieked and spun away from the tree. The insect gripped onto her pistol holster, holding on quite well as she slapped at it and whipped through wet underbrush. Its many, many hind legs latched on to a trunk and it peeled off her waist before rearing up, its mandible shaking in the air.
“Well, the same to you! You’re lucky my boots aren’t bigger or I’d—”
The insect spat at her and a sticky red goo spattered along one arm.
“Oh…man…” She retreated and ripped off leaves to wipe away the goo…which had a remarkably pungent odor. Rainfall didn’t do much to wash it away, and the leaves she pressed against the mess came away with more and more effort as the goo congealed.
Something swooped past her face. Leathery wings flapped near an ear and she shrank into a bush with reedy fronds. A shadow thumped against a wide leaf on the bush and a pair of glistening eyes peeked over the edge at her. A Cheshire cat’s mouth of needle-sharp teeth glistened in what little light came through the storm, and a checkerboard of green and black skin on the lizard’s head alternated colors.
“Oh, hi there, little guy,” Yenin said, unsnapping the cover on her holster. “Look at those teeth…they for fruit? Maybe you’re a scavenger or—ah!”
The lizard chomped down on a bit of goo that had rubbed off on the leaf it clung to.
“Tasty? Smells like ass and sadness, but you do you,” she said, proffering up a handful of leaves thick with the stuff. The lizard jumped onto her wrist and began eating. Its wings were part of its forward arms, like a bat’s, but with ugly lesions in the folds.
“Hey…something’s sort of friendly on this mud ball. Maybe you’d make a fun pet.”
The lizard bit the finger of her glove and shook from side to side, trying to tear away the fabric.
“Whoa there, pal. Plenty of yummy leaf with bug spunk on it for you to…”
More wings flapped around her. She looked up through the fronds and saw a flock of the flying lizards overhead. One dove through the bush and struck her hand, knocking the first one away along with the clump of sticky leaves.
The lizards hissed and whooped at each other, fighting in a leathery ball that careened across the ground. More dropped through the bush and battled over the clumps of leaves.
There was a rush of air and her gooey arm was jerked across her body as wings flapped in her face. The whooping grew into a cacophony as more and more of the creatures assaulted her arm, ripping and tearing at the fabric of her vac suit.
Yenin screamed but could barely hear herself. Her arm went up as the flock tried to fly off with her. Her toes scraped the ground, but the creatures couldn’t get any higher.
She tried to get her sidearm, but a cluster of lizards were biting away at the frayed ends of her gloved fingers. She tried to grab the pistol handle, but a wiggling mass of lizard was in her palm.
“Stop! Stop eating me!” She wagged her hand as hard a
s she could, but the creatures were far more tenacious than she gave them credit for. Looking up at the arm held up overhead, she saw the emergency release in her shoulder seam and slapped her other hand against her body, feeling something crunch against her and driving one of them away. She brought her hand up to her shoulder and came face-to-face with one of the little demons biting into the back of her hand. It snarled at her, its mouth full of the outer layers of her vac suit.
Yenin snapped the safety on the emergency release and a zipper jerked open where the sleeve met her shoulder. Her feet lowered just enough that she could brace herself against a tree root. Yenin pulled back against the swarm and her entire sleeve ripped off.
The flock carried it up into the canopy and Yenin smacked into the ground, rolled onto her side, and sneered at the dead flying lizard that had taken the brunt of her fall.
“Hope you choked on that last meal of yours!” She stripped off her shredded glove and tossed it away.
“I wonder what Patience is doing over in Recovery ops,” Yenin said as she rubbed the back of her hand across her face. “Probably getting high and trying to get into Ragnar’s pants again. Not looking for me, that’s for sure. Bitch owes me money. Why would she want to come and find her flight-school friend that carried her through exams? Huh?”
Yenin double-checked that her sidearm was still in her holster, then started walking through the jungle.
“Nobody cares? Is that it?” she called up to the storm. “This is how it ends for a loyal Corporate employee with a stellar—OK, acceptable—work history?”
Lightning forked across the sky.
“Bastards and bitches, the whole lot of you!” She put her head down as she walked, the planet’s weather continuing to dump on her. She marched on, careful to avoid trees like the one where she’d encountered the goo-centipede.
The rain lessened to a drizzle and she stopped in a small clearing.
“What the hell?”
A few yards away was a wooden Y. A reptile the size of a cow with shark-grey skin was draped over the stand, dead and limp. She looked around and noted nothing else conspicuous.
