“You really climb all of these every day?” Liam asked Nix.
“Gods no,” he replied. “There are servants responsible for each floor, hundreds of Dinari living here. I haven’t left the spire in ages and rarely leave my floor.”
Nix seemed to deflate after saying that last part, as though going outside was a source of pride for a Dinari. They continued their controlled descent down the stairs for ten more minutes before they neared the bottom. Nix slowed down until he only took one stair per step. Finally he stopped, putting up his hand to signal Liam and his crew to stop.
“The servant’s entrance is just below.”
“What are we waiting for?” Ju-Long huffed.
Nix turned his calm gaze to Ju-Long and replied, “Outside I’ve procured transportation, but when we reach them, I must cover his eyes. He cannot see where we are going or Toras will see.”
While they spoke, Liam placed his hands on his knees and sucked in air. He, Saturn, and Ju-Long were each breathing hard from the long descent, though Nix still seemed collected, if a little spastic. Nix reminded Liam of a gecko. Quick and a little odd by nature.
Ju-Long tugged at the material of his grey jumpsuit, his biceps bulging before ripping the sleeve clean off. He handed the piece of cloth to Liam and said, breathing heavily, “This should do.”
Nix nodded and continued down the stairs. As they rounded the corner they came out into a large, open area where supplies were stored in crates made from a white polymer. Liam imagined it was where all of the supplies were delivered to the spire. The four of them continued to the bottom of the stairs, where the orbs of light that lit the room changed from a soft white to purple. The abrupt change threw light into every crevice, the light showering each of their faces with brilliant intensity.
Nix’s face contorted as he yelled, “They’re going to lock down the spire, move!”
17
The massive metal doors slowly began to close as Liam, Nix, and the crew slipped through. Outside, a faint purple glow encapsulated the spire, almost liquid in nature and obstructing their view of the other spires and the rest of the city. Nix dug his feet into the gravelly sand and pushed off through the barrier. It didn’t seem to hold him back at all, so Liam and the others followed suit. The purple barrier made Liam tingle but it was anything but painful.
Twenty meters away were four vehicles that hovered half a meter off the ground, similar to the hover bikes of Earth. Nix ran to the first one and made it jump to life, numerous controls lighting up blue and displaying information in an unknown writing system. The body of the vehicle was otherwise black against the night.
“Hurry,” Nix said, gesturing with a clawed hand before instructing, “Put on the blindfold.”
Liam took the piece of grey cloth and covered his eyes, tying a knot over the back of his damp hair. Saturn took his arm and led him to the back of one of the bikes, getting him situated before hopping on in front of him.
“What about the fourth bike?” Ju-Long asked as he powered on his vehicle.
“Leave it,” Nix replied. “It can’t be traced back to us.”
Liam felt the vehicle zip off and he grabbed hold of Saturn’s waist to keep himself steady. Saturn’s ponytail blew back into his face, her smell wafting into his nostrils. Her curves were intoxicating and he found his hands sliding down, unconcerned with anything else happening around him. Saturn took one hand off the controls and placed it on his, gentle for a moment, before peeling it off and placing it higher on her waist.
From the rush of the warm air around him he could tell they were traveling at blistering speeds, perhaps two or three hundred kilometers per hour. Liam heard Nix’s voice come over their radio, somehow loud enough to hear over the din of noise from the whooshing air. “Veer left at the next spire and be prepared to stop.”
Liam had lost track of time, but they could easily have been traveling for several minutes. Whatever link he still had with Toras needed to be severed immediately, if only so Liam could enjoy the landscape in peace. Liam felt the hover bike turn to the left and Saturn’s abdominal muscles tightening as she maneuvered past what must have been the next spire. A minute later Saturn eased back on the throttle, slowing them down until finally they reached a stop.
“Are we there?” Liam asked.
“We’re close,” Nix replied from his left, “But we need to take care of your little problem first.”
Saturn got off the bike and helped Liam find his way to solid ground. He immediately noticed that the ground was more compacted there. Liam was led into some kind of structure. He could hear Nix and Ju-Long chatting quietly behind him, their footsteps changing from the crunch of compacted soil to an echo off of smooth stone. Saturn stopped him after taking several paces over the stone. He heard a door slam closed behind him before someone loosened the knot of his blindfold and tore it off.
Even the dimly lit room made Liam’s eyes strain after becoming accustomed to darkness. They were inside a small shop of some sort, broken devices littered all around in a half-hearted attempt at order. Saturn’s hand found its way to his shoulder in comfort, though Liam wasn’t sure why. Nix stepped up to the glass counter and touched a broken square device. It popped up on tiny metal legs and danced around, spitting out an obnoxious sound at far too high a volume. Nix too was taken aback and started hitting the device frantically.
A Dinari came in from a back room and touched the device lightly on its underbelly, silencing it and returning it to its previous state. The Dinari’s features were softer than Nix’s, but the scales were far darker, appearing burnt by a persistent sun. It held out a hand, which Nix promptly took and kissed.
“Sestra,” Nix said, bowing his head, “I’d like you to meet my new friends.”
She put up her nose and sniffed the air, her nostrils widening along with her golden eyes. “They are not Ansaran, nor Dinari or Kraven. So what are they?”
“The Caretaker called them human. They’ve come from afar and need our help.”
“What help could a lowly shopkeeper such as myself provide?” she asked in a tone that suggested she was neither lowly nor really a shopkeeper.
“This one,” Nix said while pointing at Liam, “Has seen the Inner Eye.”
Sestra hissed and raised her cowl until it obscured her face. “Fool! Why bring them here? Close your eyes outsider.”
Liam looked to Saturn and Ju-Long, who both nodded silently. Saturn’s grip on Liam’s shoulder tightened. “Go ahead, we’ve got your back.”
Liam closed his eyes and Sestra’s hissing ceased. There were a few hushed whispers before Nix spoke to him. Several moments passed and Liam was about to say something, when Nix said, “Sestra has agreed to help, but for her assistance, she will require payment.”
“We don’t have anything to trade, our ship crashed and is in Ansaran custody as we speak.”
“Oh, but you do,” Sestra replied.
Saturn’s grip on Liam’s shoulder tightened even more and she asked in a piercing tone, “What do you want?”
“What every Dinari wants. To be owed.”
There was silence while Liam thought about the implications of the proposal. “What do you mean exactly?”
Nix spoke up first. “In our culture, and with the outer colonies of the Ansara Alliance lacking in currency, most of our trade is predicated on favors. The level of service provided dictates what kind of favor will be requested.”
“What did you have in mind?” Liam asked Sestra, perplexed.
“You may be right that you have nothing I need at the moment, but it is my guess that you will. I would require one favor to be given at my pleasure in the future. You would be honor-bound to oblige.”
“We don’t have to listen to this,” Ju-Long said. “A favor without limits is a blank check.”
“Nix, what do you think?” Liam asked.
“This kind of contract is common among my people. By taking away Toras’ sight over you, she is saving your life. It is lik
ely her favor would entail a similar arrangement.”
Liam opened his eyes, prompting Sestra to cower behind the glass counter. Liam had spent most of his life in debt to someone and he didn’t want to start a new life in a new solar system the same way. But if Toras found Liam and the crew because of him and turned them over to the Kraven, their escape from the Asteroid Belt would have been for nothing. Once again, it looked like Liam didn’t have much of a choice. He needed Sestra’s help, and a promise to save her life at some unknown point in the future didn’t seem so bad, for now. At least he couldn’t be charged interest on an intangible debt.
“Done,” Liam said. “You’ll have your favor if you can break the link between Toras and myself.”
Sestra’s eyes widened, revealing a line of black around the gold. She covered her mouth with one clawed hand. “Toras is your link? Gods.”
Nix explained, “Toras’ exploits are legend among my people. Many Dinari have died by his hand for trifling matters.” Nix turned to Sestra and continued, “He is but a tool for the Caretaker, though, we must remember that.”
Liam took note of Nix’s words. He didn’t seem as skittish as he did in the spire.
“Let’s be done with this,” Sestra said, interrupting Liam’s thoughts.
Sestra turned and disappeared behind a tattered cloth curtain to the back of the shop.
Nix followed her back. Saturn frowned, releasing Liam’s shoulder and taking a few steps toward the counter. “This is a bad idea, Liam.”
“If we don’t break the link I’ll endanger all of you. They’ll find us eventually and we’ll be traded to the Kraven Throng.”
Saturn stopped when she reached the counter and put a hand on the glass surface. “What if there is no link and Nix is full of crap? Even if he’s right, Sestra might be able to help us now, but someday this is going to come back to bite us.”
“One step at a time,” Liam said as he walked past her toward the back room.
Ju-Long joined Saturn at the counter, putting his elbows down on the glass and checking out his reflection. “For the record, you’re right,” he told her. “But if it’s the way things work in this system, it’s better we owe a friend of a friend than a stranger.”
Ju-Long walked around the counter to join Liam in the entryway to the back room. Saturn drew a figure of a tree in the dust of the glass surface and said under her breath, “You forget, they’re both strangers really.”
18
Nix waved his clawed hand, leading Liam down a tight, winding corridor to a back room lined with a wall of gizmos and gadgets. Liam couldn’t begin to guess at their many uses because they looked nothing like Earth technology. Some of them were oddly-shaped and appeared to be meant to be worn solely by a Dinari. Sestra searched the racks for something specific, her claws rolling over what looked similar to their welding goggles.
They had an adjustable strap and two eyepieces, but they were made from a coppery metal Liam couldn’t place. It had a natural matte finish and a copper and rust color that was not due to oxidation. Sestra dropped them in his hands and he immediately noticed that they were at once remarkably strong and incredibly light. The glass lenses were tinted black and tiny pinpricks of light denoted some technological mysteries along the edges of the darkened viewports.
“What’s this for?” Liam asked.
Sestra approached him and took his hands, raising them up with the goggles until they were atop his head. “Put them on and they will break the telepathic connection. Toras’ Inner Eye will falter, confused, and simply give up.”
“Just like that?”
Liam had thought the process of breaking the connection would be difficult, perhaps painful. His stomach had been tied in knots since the spire’s stairwell. Sestra’s eyes narrowed and the corner of her scaled mouth curved upward at a sharp angle. Liam wasn’t sure if she was smiling at him or mocking him, and the translator wasn’t giving him much help. She said curtly, “Just like that, outsider.”
Liam took the frame of the goggles in his hand and began to pull them down over his eyes, but was stopped by Saturn’s cautious hand.
Saturn stepped up to Sestra and asked, “Are you sure this is going to work?”
Sestra’s cowl curled around her face, obstructing part of her visage. Liam thought she was a shady person to begin with, and the gadgets in the room looked more like torture devices than anything that would help his condition. Sestra shook her head. “You are outsiders. Your biology is unknown to us. This device was meant for a Dinari, but it is the only known way to release him from the eye. Be strong, we all have our burdens to bear.”
“I don’t feel good about this, Liam.”
Ju-Long spoke up, “She’s right, it’s too risky.”
Liam clenched his jaw and looked to each of them in turn. It was his choice and he had to do whatever he could for his crew as their de facto leader. He ignored them and pulled the goggles down over his azure eyes. They had to trust someone sometime or they weren’t going to get very far in this new world.
The outer edges of the goggles lit up and Liam’s vision turned to white as the bright lights shined back on his eyes. He felt a burning sensation in the back of his brain that made him collapse to his knees. A hand tried to steady him but he was thrashing now, unable to take off the coppery goggles. A searing heat burned his eyes, making him cry out in the tiny room.
Images flashed in his mind, vivid and bright. Images of the spire, of Ragnar through Toras’ eyes. They were connected but the roles were reversed. Was this how Toras saw through his eyes? Would he feel such pain? Liam’s thoughts were cut short as the light began to fade. His hands fell from the sides of the goggles and onto the smooth stone floor beneath him, cold against his sweaty palms.
Liam felt a hand tear the goggles off his head, peeling off a portion of skin with them, leaving deep red marks around his temples and eyes like a bad sunburn. Try as he might, he was unable to get his eyes to focus. Nix, Sestra and his crew knelt down around him, keeping him from toppling over.
“What did it do to him?” Saturn asked frantically.
“It was meant for a Dinari,” Nix replied. “Our scales protect us from heat as well as the sun. Our eyes are used to the brightness.”
“Are you okay?” Ju-Long asked with a hand on Liam’s back.
Liam was breathing heavy, sweat pouring down his face and soaking into his grey jumpsuit. His blue eyes were wide with fear, though he might have tried to label it surprise. The whites around the blue were crimson now, more bloodshot than they’d ever been. Liam brushed Ju-Long’s hand away and came up on one knee, attempting to stand and swaying a bit before catching his balance.
“I’ll be fine. Sestra, how do we know it worked?”
She picked up the goggles and examined the inside of the lenses. At various angles they showed images of the spire, their escape, and Sestra’s shop, as though a cheap hologram were emblazoned over the tinted glass. She smiled, slightly more surprised than Liam had hoped. “It worked. The process might have been a little rougher than usual, but the connection is broken.”
“How often does this happen?” Ju-Long asked.
Sestra gave him a muddled look and said, “Not often. But it has come in handy before.”
Nix reached into his cloak, pulled out a star-shaped piece of fruit, and handed it to Sestra. “You have my thanks.”
Sestra waved away the piece of fruit. “This is too much, Nix, I cannot accept.”
“Take it.”
She hesitated a moment before snatching it from his hand and forcing it into her mouth. Garuda was a very dry planet and Liam imagined certain foods were hard to come by. Liam hadn’t thought about what kinds of food the aliens might eat. With such similar features as creatures on Earth, regardless of how odd, surely they ate similar fare. His stomach growled. None of them had eaten since they landed and lack of sustenance was beginning to catch up with him.
“We must go,” Nix said. “They may not be able to fi
nd this place quickly, but it’s only a matter of time. Sestra, I suggest you stay out of sight for a few days until this blows over.”
Sestra nodded, pushing through a door to an adjacent room. Liam rubbed at his eyes, squinting and trying to collect himself. His sight still hadn’t returned to normal. He seemed to be chasing specs of light around his field of vision, never quite able to catch one. Moments later, Sestra returned with a black leather bag strapped to her back. She took a few items from the racks and began handing them out to everyone.
The device Sestra put in Liam’s hand had a coppery handle and two sections that jutted out in a thick point at either end, looking vaguely like a pointed horseshoe. When he gripped the handle, the tips lit up with a blue energy that connected between the two points. Sestra quickly pulled it from his hand. “Do not grip it so hard if you do not wish to destroy my home.”
Sestra passed out brown leather straps to accompany the weapons, showing Liam how to attach it to his leg. When she was done, the energy weapon slid snugly into the holster at his side. It was lighter than he expected, but its slight weight felt good hanging there, a comforting feeling he’d not felt since his last job with Vesta Corporation. He never felt safe without his gun at his side and he feared a year spent weaponless on the Asteroid Belt had made him tamer. He rejected that thought. He was back and he was ready to take on anything in his way. He rubbed his eyes. As soon as his vision cleared up.
•
Liam extended his toes, pushing down on the hover bike’s accelerator. The shabby buildings that made up the bulk of Garuda Colony were pinpricks in comparison with the massive spires sprinkled around them in the distance. The Dinari settlements were only a few stories tall and made from materials likely made or mined on the planet: stone, clay, jagged rock and glass. Liam marveled at the endless expanse, occasionally lit by glowing orbs hanging in the building entrances, melding together as he zipped by. The night was at its darkest and he began to have tunnel vision through his already clouded eyes, the lights merging in his peripheral vision to become a solid stream, lighting the path.
The Corsair Uprising Collection, Books 1-3 Page 8
