by P. K. Lentz
Ivar and the others of the Dawn drew back with gasps of surprise and disbelief. Not a few backpedaled from the metallic, highly reflective, gently green-glowing object. Only Arixa fully stood her ground, watching as Vax approached the round opening that appeared on the sphere’s surface.
“Gods, Arixa...” Ivar breathed,“if you could have shown your father this...”
She didn’t say so to Ivar, but she yet hoped to do even better than that. Much better.
She followed Vax into the skyboat, thinking how easy it would be to surprise and overpower him and steal the ship. She didn’t sense that Vax was any fighter, even if it stood to reason that he would be at least as strong and as fast as she.
It might be easy, but also foolish, for even if they stole the vessel, they couldn’t hope to operate it.
“Dr. Fizzbik, I have Arixa with me,” Vax said to his display of floating shapes and symbols. “She desires to speak with you.”
“You mean that clumsy human who called me a dog?” Fizzbik’s voice came from thin air. “I thought she went home.”
“She has a proposal which—”
“Dr. Fizzbik, I need your help,” Arixa said swiftly before Vax could attempt verbal sabotage. “I wish to save thousands of innocent people from the Jir, and I can’t do it without you. I understand that your faction doesn’t wish open conflict with the Jir. There need not be. I have seen our world as they see it, from the heavens. To the Jir, if they bother to look closely, after I have done what I intend, it will at most appear to them as if one city has been conquered or abandoned. They will never perceive your hand in it. Please, Doctor, I beg you. For you it is such a small defiance, devoid of risk, but it will save so many. You will be a hero. Please.”
Silence, then Dr. Fizzbik asked, “Is she weeping?”
Vax looked impassively at Arixa and answered truthfully, “A little.”
Arixa wiped the corners of her eyes. “You’re a human expert, Dr. Fizzbik,” she added. “Help humans. Save us.”
“Well, get on with it,” said the gruff voice of Dr. Fizzbik. “Tell me what it is you want.”
Arixa took heart, though she knew that any hope must yet be of the cautious kind. “I wish only for you to do to some others what you did to me. Augment them so that we can save our people.”
More silence, during which Arixa held her breath. Finally Fizzbik cleared his throat with a soft bark.
“There is some experimentation I would like to perform,” he said. “Might I have a volunteer for it?”
“Yes,” Arixa answered before asking belatedly, “What does experimentation mean?”
Vax sighed softly in defeat and explained. “He refers to the project he mentioned on your earlier visit. He desires a volunteer, particularly a fighter.”
“I have been adapting some Irunen technology for human application,” Fizzbik opaquely explained.
“His results have been mixed, at best,” Vax said. “This volunteer may die.”
An angry bark filled the chamber. “Unlikely!”
Vax shrugged.
“You may have me, Doctor,” Arixa said. The prospect frightened her, but she couldn’t offer him anyone else and would not consider denying his request.
“Perfect!” the Gaboon exclaimed. “Your body is already prepared, where the others would require augmentation first. See, Vax? You talked me out of using her when she was already on my table, but I got her in the end! Bring her!”
“How many of us?” Arixa asked, putting the other, disquieting matter from her mind.
Fizzbik muttered a bit before replying, “Twenty-four plus yourself. That’s about what the shuttle will hold.”
Arixa’s mouth gaped. The hysterical laughter which had earlier gripped her threatened to return. Stifling it, she said, “Yes. Yes, thank you! You’re saving Scythia. I can never repay you.”
Dr. Fizzbik laughed his barking laugh. “You will!”
A chime sounded, presumably signaling an end to communication.
“Well...” Vaxsuvarda said. “It seems your gods have smiled on you today.” He did not seem overly pleased by their blessing. “Go. Choose your twenty-four.”
With a thought to smoothing things over after her earlier harsh words, Arixa reached out and took the Persian’s hand. She met his gaze earnestly and said, “This is the right thing, Vax. A good thing. You have my deepest gratitude for making it possible, and for your kindness toward me.”
Vax’s expression grew subtly less dour. He scoffed lightly, withdrew his hand and waved it in dismissal. “Go!”
Arixa raced out of the sphere and into the waiting cluster of warriors. Over their heads she saw the dark mass of her mounted war band in the distance and heard the thunderous pounding of its approach on nearly a thousand hooves.
She would not need to go to the Dawn to make her choices. Alerted to potential danger, the Dawn was coming to the side of its missing leader.
“Ivar, Dak, Matas, Tomiris, get inside,” Arixa instructed of those already present.
She felt sure none of those named would balk at the idea of augmentation, and she wanted some of her people inside the ship quickly against the possibility of a change of heart by either Vax or Fizzbik.
“Me?” Matas questioned. “I’m an old man. Don’t waste a slot.”
“I’ve always had you by my side. I don’t wish for that to change. But the decision must be yours.”
As the other three named advanced to the entrance and climbed through with varying levels of visible apprehension. Matas pondered.
“No, Arixa,” he soon concluded. “I’ll remain by your side, but as myself. This body has served me well for half a hundred years. I’d as soon leave it unchanged. Send another in my stead. I would request it be my son, but I know he stands not among the Dawn’s elite. Yet. Choose as you must.”
“Uncle, your choice stands as a reminder of why I value your counsel so highly.”
The remainder of the band drew up on horseback more than two hundred strong to form a semicircle in the glow of the alien sphere. All human eyes were wide and fixed upon it, while the mounts champed and twitched under them at the proximity of something so utterly unfamiliar.
“Warriors of the Dawn!” Arixa cried. “If you doubted my story, I can hardly blame you. But here is the undeniable proof. I shall keep this brief. Some among you will shortly enter this vessel and travel to a place where you will be transformed as I have been. In honesty I can make no firm promises about what will happen once you step aboard. But I have faith. If you don’t share it, that is understandable. You have no reason, apart from my word, to trust in the beings who travel in this skyboat.
“If you don’t wish to board, if you fear submitting to the transformation of your body, move back now and feel no shame. I will take twenty-four, twelve each of men and women. Three have already been chosen. If I have my way, these twenty-four will only be the first, and another chance will come.”
There was murmuring among her war band, and continued restlessness of the horses, but no riders shifted to the back to indicate unwillingness.
They insisted on making her selection difficult.
Thinking deeply and looking over the faces bathed in green glow, Arixa began to choose. Some of the people she liked best she could not in good conscience select. She needed her most skilled and reliable warriors. That ruled out the Hellenes and Matas’s son Plin, among many others.
There was but one exception she would make, one of the twelve spaces for females which would be selfishly assigned.
“Leimya!” she called. “Come forward.”
Arixa didn’t know at first whether her half-sister had ridden out of the camp with the Dawn at all, but eventually she rode up through the ranks and dismounted to complete the approach on foot.
“But, Arixa, I... I...” she said between wheezing breaths. Panic and excitement could take the breath from her as easily as exertion. “I’m... not...”
“I know,” Arixa said, with a hard e
xpression to let Leimya know she would brook no argument. “Get in.”
Panting, her half-sister complied.
Minutes later, when Arixa had made her selections, the chosen men and women filed into the shuttle, leaving the rest to hide their disappointment.
“Matas, I leave the Dawn in these hands,” she said, clasping his and kissing one. “I don’t know when we shall return, so keep watchmen posted in our three meeting places who can lead us to you.”
“You needn’t ask. It will be done.”
“My darling Dawn!” she said to those to be left behind. “It wounds my heart to be separated from you. I will return! Until then, every last man and woman of you must remain alive! That is an order!”
As several hundred spoken farewells reached Arixa’s ears in a disjointed cacophony, she turned and boarded the waiting skyboat.
Fourteen
Arixa had wondered how twenty-five could fit in the skyboat. The answer, it turned out, was that there were additional chambers above and below the main one lined with alcoves into which passengers could be belted. The bulk of the twenty-four went to those, while Arixa and four others including Leimya rode in the main chamber with Vax.
Arixa took delight in watching the faces of her sister and the rest as they saw for the first time what Arixa had days ago, the world as as the eagle sees it. Vaxsuvarda this time did not ascend to view the earth from the vantage of gods, and Arixa declined to request it. Perhaps on the return. Better not to waste favors on less-than-vital matters when Vax’s good will seemed already on the wane.
Leimya’s breath raced, making a faint squeaking sound as she stared wide-eyed at the vast plains of waving grass stretching below them, at the lakes that were as puddles, trees as twigs. Arixa’s own face must have looked much the same her first time as a mere mortal seeing what only gods saw.
Not that the experience was wasted on Arixa a second time. She enjoyed the others’ reactions only briefly before turning her own attention to the majestic sights below, the quiet lands over which humans battled bloodily for control, slaughtering each other oblivious to the vastly greater common threat looming above.
Speeding over snow-capped mountain peaks which would take a person a moon to cross, Arixa grew quietly furious. This could not be allowed to stand.
Arixa had promised Fizzbik that her actions would not result in open conflict with the Jir, but she was hardly certain she would keep that promise. For the sake not just of her people but of all people everywhere, all humans, she would battle this enemy if it was at all in her power.
Scythians only withdrew from a battle in order to later strike a final blow. No matter if the cost was her life, she would slice off this enemy’s hand and stab at its very heart.
She would end the rule of the Jir over Earth.
Thinking these thoughts and gazing out over vast, flat stretches of ice, Arixa felt her eyelids grow heavy. She had not slept in so long.... so long....
Still, the fading feeling had come upon her so abruptly. Strangely so.
She looked over and saw Leimya’s head hanging limply, chin to chest, shoulders held in place by the seat’s restricting belts. The others slept, too.
She looked at Vax, and he back at her. He had donned some strange covering over the lower half of his face.
No longer able to keep her eyes open, Arixa succumbed to sleep.
* * *
She awoke lying on her back and quickly sat up.
Her armor had been exchanged once again for the white smock. She put a hand on her right side, just above the hip, where she felt a strange, tingling sensation. Her palm encountered some hard protrusion under the smock in that spot. Alarmed, she shifted her body to lift the fabric.
She uncovered a coin-sized disc of metal embedded in her flesh. No blood or scarring surrounded it, just smooth, unblemished skin. She fingered the thing and tried gently to pry it out, but the metal disc was a part of her.
She noticed a similar tingling on the underside of her right bicep. Lifting her arm, she found a second disc embedded there. Given its position, she could view this one more easily. It had what appeared to be small, covered hole at its center. By chance or design, it was centered on bare flesh, obscuring none of her tattoos.
A faint hiss drew her attention to the wall of the bare, metal-walled room in which she sat. Quickly Arixa pulled down her smock, making herself decent just as a door irised open.
Vaxsuvarda hung back without entering. Arguably, he had betrayed her. Arixa felt annoyance toward him for it, but no more than that. She felt no desire to attack, as Vax’s hesitant manner implied he half-expected she might.
“You made us sleep,” she accused.
“Yes,” Vax answered from the corridor. “Security considerations aside, your agreement with Dr. Fizzbik was for twenty-four augmentations, not accommodation, meals, and entertainment for twenty-four conscious guests.”
“Has he augmented them?”
“Yes.”
She turned her right arm to show and touch the disc under its bicep.
“And completed his experiment,” Vax said. His manner remained as she last recalled it, distant and mildly perturbed. “He says it was a success. Congratulations.”
“What did he do?”
“Something I believe you will find useful and interesting. I’ll let him explain.”
The reply frustrated Arixa, but she accepted it. “How long has it been?”
“Eighteen days.”
“Not as long as I was here last time.”
“Dr. Fizzbik works as quickly or slowly as he is inclined.”
Arixa stood. “I would like to see him and learn what he has done to me. But first I would see the Dawn.” A recollection made her gasp. “Leimya! I had hoped to ask Fizzbik to cure her infirmity as he cured me.”
“He performed twenty-four procedures,” was all Vax said. “Come. I will take you to them.”
She followed Vax down the corridor and into the elevator, where she stood silently and somewhat awkwardly beside him. They exited, and the next iris they passed through opened on a large, brightly lit room. Along its edges were rows of bedframes stacked two high. Scattered about the interior, talking and laughing and wrestling, were the men and women of the Dawn. They had exchanged armor and linen for tight-fitting, one-piece garments of black and blue and gray.
“Arixa!” a woman called out. Then they all saw Arixa and came racing.
“I shall leave you,” Vax said and quickly receded out the door, which irised shut.
The twenty-four crowded around her, laying hands all over her, pulling her this way and that for embraces and kisses on her cheek. Arixa’s eyes quickly found Leimya in the sea of faces. Her sister smiled broadly, and Arixa smiled back.
In the crush, Tomiris’s hand found the disc on the underside of Arixa’s arm. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” Arixa admitted. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Finally, Leimya ended up in Arixa’s arms.
“I can do anything!” Leimya declared with amazement. “Anything at all, and I don’t lose my breath!
She had been testing her limits, Arixa could plainly see and smell by the film of sweat coating her sister.
“I’m so happy for you,” Arixa said genuinely, squeezing her.
“It’s because of you. Thank you!”
Ivar pulled Arixa’s right arm off of Leimya and inspected the embedded metal. “We didn’t get this, whatever it is,” he said. “What does it do?”
“Fizzbik will tell me.”
“The dog-man? I hope we get to meet him.”
“You haven’t? When you do, be sure not to call him a dog. And I don’t think he speaks Scythian. Unless...” An idle thought occurred, and Arixa said to Ivar in Nexus-G, “Is that your face, or did your neck take a shit?”
“Hey!” Ivar exclaimed. Then outrage turned to confusion. “Hey... you spoke that yap-yap-yap talk, but I understood it.”
From their faces and laughter, e
veryone had understood.
Arixa chuckled. “I apologize,” she said to Ivar in Nexus-G. “Just testing a guess. I meant nothing by it.”
“Yeah, well, your... face...is...” Ivar returned haltingly in Nexus-G, “is... shitty... too.”
“A poet in all languages.”
“Arixa, you should see our strength!” Tomiris said with bright eyes. “I can lift Dak over my head!”
“And Dak can lift any four of us!” someone else added.
Dak began to do just that.
Watching them, Arixa laughed. Her desperate plan which yesterday had been a distant hope was today a reality. This was cause for elation, and she felt it. Yet her thoughts kept returning to Fizzbik’s experimentation. What had he done to her?
“Darlings,” Arixa addressed her small army of augmented. “Now that I know you’re well, I must go and learn about this.” She touched the disc embedded in her arm. “I’ll return soon.”
She went to the door and found that the iris refused to open.
“Vax?” she called. “Vaxsuvarda!”
“We weren’t sure if that was even a door until you walked in,” Ivar remarked, coming up beside her. “We couldn’t get it to open either. Are we prisoners?”
“Not exactly,” Arixa said. “I don’t think so, at least. They’re just wary of having guests like you.”
“Ah, you mean they’re civilized.”
“Right.”
Momentarily the door irised and Vax appeared.
“Arixa, are you ready?” he said in Nexus-G. “Apologies, but you must come alone. I hope you understand that for everyone’s safety, we cannot allow your friends to move freely about the base.”
“We understand,” Ivar said before Arixa could, employing his newfound language abilities. “But may we meet this Fizzkin? I’d like to thank him.”
“I’ll pass along the request,” Vax said. “And your gratitude.”
“Ivar, try not to let anyone get hurt,” Arixa said of the men and women presently performing various feats of strength.
She exited the room with Vax, and the door sealed behind them.
