Dum dum dum dumdumdumdumdum. For the first instance, I see only cave and more cave and droplets of running water and scattered rocks and then…a flash of opal.
Kiki sucks in a breath, then covers her mouth. I don’t move a muscle. I try not to sweat, not to think, will my heart not to beat. Dumdumdumdumdumdum. Ssssssssssack.
Thud. In the circular orange glow of my torch, a foot touches down. Or a hand. A paw. A limb of some kind belonging to no creature I’ve ever seen before — no creature I’ve ever even heard of.
Whatever body part that is, is lined in knives with serrated edges. In the artificial light, they glimmer like water. Claws, they’re called claws.
The beast takes another slow, languid step towards us, leaving my torchlight to pan across the entirety of its enormous, abominable body where I can now see seven thick, muscular arms, two razor-lined mouths pointing in opposite directions, and a short forehead full of beady green eyes watching me back.
“Kiki…” I whisper shakily, voice pitched as a question.
As if in response, the thing at the far end of the tunnel unleashes another sssssssackk and all at once, its seven claw-tipped arms begin working in unison to drag itself forward. Closing the distance between us.
Kiki’s hand is suddenly on my arm, jerking me into motion. She throws me towards the rock-covered entrance and even though she’s just shy of my height, she’s stronger.
I trip and fall, scree and larger rocks scattering around me. The cuts on my hands from shoveling rocks to get into this cave reopen, but I don’t care. We need to get out of here.
I start flinging rocks aside desperately, undoing all the work of the past quarter solar. I’m surprised when Kiki doesn’t join me immediately and when I glance over my shoulder, it’s to see the unthinkable — Kiki facing off against the creature.
“Kiki, don’t you dare think about trying the Grabar on that thing!” But I know her too well to be surprised when she pulls three pieces of metal out of the wrap on her thigh and fixes them together to form the weapon I made for her a rotation ago out of foraged Gra’en fibers and the steel trunk of Svera’s parents outdoor umbrella.
Even though the Gra’en will allow her to shock and cut at the same time, I’d never have gifted it to her if I thought she might try to use it against a creature like this — a monster with a wingspan the length of two aliens and two mouths each the size of Kiki’s own head, pointed in opposite directions, a smattering of beady, slick eyes between them.
“Kiki, use the amp!” I shout to her, but there’s no time for her to respond. The thing is on us now and Kiki is running forward to meet it. I need to get us out.
Sunlight pours into the cave as I unseat two heavy stones. I’m pushing now, kicking and tossing. I grab one of the smaller stones and heft it as hard as I can in the direction of the thing but it bats the stone easily out of the air without once breaking focus on Kiki.
Kiki lunges for it like a mad woman and the point of her Grabar connects with one of its eyes. Thin rivers of liquid grey pour down the valley between its two mouths.
“Ssssssack!” It screeches, the sound loud enough to make a few more rocks fall. I push a huge rock through, breathing hard and with relief. Now there’s just about enough space for a body to wriggle through. A human body.
“Kiki,” I shout over my shoulder, “Come on!”
I turn and watch in horror as the beast swipes for her chest. It’s fast. Too fast. I almost black out when it comes at her again, but she bends backwards in a move I don’t anticipate and in the next motion, stabs her Grabar up and strikes the thing directly in the center of its face.
It roars again as it recoils and then lashes out — this time with two arms. Kiki jumps over the first paw, but the second manages to clip her thigh.
“Augh!” Kiki’s voice comes as a shock to me — I haven’t heard it in two rotations, since the day warrior Kiki was born and beauty queen Kiki died.
She buckles, but doesn’t lose her weapon and then I see it — she has a plan. From her position, she’s almost between it’s thighs. Close to its eyes. She stabs for them again, and grey explodes everywhere.
The creature screams. I scramble down from the rocks and lunge for my amp on the ground — the only weapon I brought with me. It has two handles and just enough for one pulse.
“Kiki, I can use the amp. Move!”
But she doesn’t. She just keeps stabbing and the creature keeps swiping and she’s getting tired as she blinds it, one sweep of her Grabar at a time. The thing has started to retreat now, moving backwards down the tunnel.
“Kiki,” I call. But she’s closing in on it, chasing it away. I feel hope kick in my chest for just a moment, and with Kiki’s next step, it’s brushed irreverently away.
Slipping in one of the thick, glossy patches of its blood, Kiki loses her footing and the monster, seeing its opening, slams one of its serrated arms across her belly.
Kiki wavers where she stands. I hold my breath while everything inside of my body shrieks. Time is suspended and when it moves forward again, it does so faster than I could have ever imagined.
Kiki’s Grabar charges up, spear tip stabbing the thing through the underside of one of its jaw. It wails through the other, stumbling backwards a few feet before rising up with renewed vengeance.
I dart forward and grab Kiki by the arm, then push her up through the rocks I’ve cleared. She disappears through the opening and I scramble to follow her through, tumbling onto the ground out in the clearing unceremoniously.
I don’t have time to catch my breath as an enormous grey arm slides through the opening after us, stuck — but for how long?
I disengage the amp, moving my finger off of the trigger. “We’ve got enough time to run. Come on, Kiki, let’s get back to the colony. This…we can’t…this isn’t…Kiki?”
I grab for her arm but all she does is kneel there, looking up at me. No — looking past me. I follow her gaze to the craggy path we took to get here, and whatever thoughts I had about returning to the colony are snatched from my mind like an egg from a nest when I see another monster clawing its way over the black rocks towards us.
And there are two more behind it.
Sssack, sssack, ssssack sack sssssssack sackkk sack sack ssssssssack. I wipe my sweaty palms off on my shit-stained tunic and grip my homemade amplifier by the handles so hard I’m sure my knuckles will break through my skin.
There’s only enough for one pulse. One. Pulse. And there are three of them. Stars be damned.
The nearest creature is less than twenty paces from us and its claws create grooves in the solid stone every place they light down. The material must be dense. And one of those things got Kiki’s stomach. I don’t have time to look back to see how she’s doing. Doesn’t really matter. Neither of us have much longer…
Stumpy, trunk-sized hind legs make it slow, but the arms more than make up for the lack. The first one arrives in the clearing and roars and my thoughts flash fleetingly to the grey-blue alien, remembering the way he’d looked at me. The weight of his palm on my cheek. The fury he waged over Bo’Raku’s face when words were exchanged between them.
Without knowing what he said, I had the funny feeling that he was defending me. That he would try to help defend me if he were here. But he isn’t. We ran from him. And now we’re both going to die. And even if he were, would it matter? There’s a hundred claws all writing my death in the grooves they cut over stone.
The mathematical part of my brain calculates our dwindling odds of survival and I glance back at Kiki, hoping to remember why we came out here and why we thought this was worth it.
Her unfocused gaze offers me nothing. She just wavers where she kneels, clutching her stomach, while red seeps through her fingers in a way that fills my mouth with terror and bile.
“Kiki, are you here? It’s…it’s not over yet. I think if I can get them all in a line, I might be able to take them out at once…you just have to stay with me…”
She blinks, long lashes falling over lost and lovely eyes.
“Kiki…” I gasp.
Without warning, Kiki gathers a breath and surges up onto her feet. The motion sends the animals into a frenzy and they come faster now, maneuvering easily and lithely over the rocks in a way that doesn’t make any sense at all with their huge and horrible shapes.
Reaching me, she rips the amp from my fingers. I hit the ground hard when she shoves me and, looking up, am arrested by the look in her eyes. A look that says she’s willing to die. That she welcomes it.
“Kiki…” I hold up my hand, offering her a warning, trying to spear her determination with reason. “I built this myself and you, of all people, know that my inventions don’t always work. It’s by the universe’s grace that your Grabar didn’t collapse like tin foil. And even if it does work, the kickback will be too strong. You’re injured. Let me do it…”
Her thumb lights down onto the trigger. There’s a three second delay. Three seconds for me to get to her.
“Kiki!” I rush up onto my feet but she kicks me in the ribs, knocking the breath clean out of me. Stars dance before my eyes.
Three… My back hits a sharp stone and I release a cry while the monsters close in, coming at us from all sides.
Two… I hear the distant sound of a glider approaching…
One… I am blown back over the stone when the amp explodes in Kiki’s hands, radiating shit-stained wind and waves of cascading energy.
4
Raku
I touch down onto the moon — the human moon — when the world is still dark. History mirrors itself with Bo’Raku and Va’Raku flanking me as we descend the ship.
Bo’Raku, the welp, survived his trial. For lying to his Raku about the nature of the beings on this moon and denying them basic provisions, he was condemned, but because it was his Bo’Raku before him who initiated contact with this moon — a male already in exile for atrocities committed on Nobu — he was given a chance.
Perhaps his actions truly were not intended to harm. Perhaps he truly is merely a simple warrior following decrees laid down rotations earlier…
And perhaps he isn’t.
The trial by combat was as bloody as it was unsatisfying, for though I had the honor of dealing the final blow to his chest — a wound delivered by flail that stripped him of his protective plates, sure to scar, as well as Cxrian’s claim on the moon — I longed to do more. To do worse. To see him malnourished, wearing the threadbare rags of my Rakukanna’s people, stripped of all rights and returned to his slave name, as they carry their slave names still.
But now I stand beside him, exhibiting restraint. Unable to deliver the death blow, for I am Raku. Impartial. Just. Cognizant of the recommendations of my advisors, and aware of the danger in allowing my actions to be molded by my Xanaxana above my reason. Unable to ruin him. As Xoran would. But I am no longer Xoran.
Thus, Bo’Raku joins me now to help interpret actions and clarify past agreements between the Dra’Kesh and the humans. He also comes to voice the change in ownership of this moon colony to the humans himself, in a final act of submission.
Va’Raku, in turn, comes for reasons I do not fully understand. Nobu faces its most severe icefall and other xub’Raku volunteered, yet he insisted.
We descend onto the sands now, my xub’Raku falling slightly behind, as do all other thoughts.
I inhale deeply. My skin burns and tingles, like water rushing over the deadly shores of Mithru and its pearlescent crystallite beaches. The crystallite is the only thing left once the scalding acidic water retreats, and as it burns each solar, I burn too, as I have for the past rotation.
The air smells just as it had then. Flat and desolate, sand and brittle birch, a little like waste, but more than that, I can scent her, tendrils woven through the rest like a stain that once was and lingers, despite the source’s absence.
The leader, a female who is ascribed the slave moniker Mathilda rushes over the sands towards me, a small group trailing in her wake.
Behind this alleged Antikythera Council, pretty, youthful human females have gathered themselves into two rows in front of their cheap peg fence, waiting to be hunted, mated and bred as their ritual demands of them. And behind the fence, male and female humans stand gathered, looking on with ridgeless expressions I cannot interpret.
I exhale. Today, the torture of my Xanaxana ends and I make the female mine, whether she understands the meaning of Rakukanna or not.
There are no clouds in the sky to keep the sun from charring this barren land, so everything is brighter than it should be. Almost as bright as the xamxin river of my home, but nowhere near as magnificent. Under the harsh white sky, everything here is dull, putrid, forgotten. All things, but the one.
My gaze sharpens, plucking out an isolated form among the rest. My body stills. My xora stiffens painfully and my sac, below it, grips tight against my body. Weighted like stones, I have not released my seed in a full rotation, needing the female the universe made mine to complete the Xanaxana. That sacred instinct would accept nothing less. And here she is. My Rakukanna.
My Miari.
The Mathilda creature attempts to speak to me, but I raise my hand, demanding her silence as I wade forward, drawn to my precious human as a lesser planet to a star.
She kneels in front of the females utterly nude and saliva pools in my mouth. My ridged tongue swells, making it difficult to swallow as I take in such an expance of uninterrupted vermilion flesh.
Soft auburn curls drop to a narrowed waist and shift over the smooth, rounded mounds on her chest whenever the breeze touches them. She is so beautiful. Perfect, and yet, as I draw closer, I feel my Xanaxana’s strange retreat.
Something is wrong. And again, history repeats itself.
The female kneeling in the skin of my Rakukanna smells distantly of her, but she also smells of someone else. Jealousy absconds with my reason, but only until my next breath. Female. The scent she wears is female. Though that means nothing, I find myself both assuaged and simultaneously vexed. This is not her lover. This is something else.
Has the Xanaxana diminished with time? Did I miss the moment to truly claim her? I could erupt with rage at the thought, but I push past that frail disappointment and recognize that to have her here before me, submissive as she is, is enough. She will be mine soon and she will know her place at my side, and in my breeding harness, and on her throne.
“Rakukanna,” I say.
She tilts her face up, tracking my approach until I stand directly before her. I drop to one knee and grip her neck as a male grips his female in a Xiveri signal of respect and wait for the surge of heat I felt the last time I touched her.
One rotation ago the world had incinerated itself but now, only ice and chill are left. Something is wrong. My desire flattens like a corpse’s pulse. My xora softens. My Xanaxana retreats. I am gutted by this. Gutted by her. By this lie she seeks to tell me.
“You are not my Rakukanna.” I choke out the words, hating them and fearing them in equal measure. How long did she think she could fool me, the little snake who shed her skin in place of my Rakukanna’s?
Even if she has the same carmine skin and tight curls and full mouth that tantalize me, it is the scent, the eyes, the pull that are all wrong. There is no Xanaxana between us. No mating frenzy. Nothing at all.
Has the Xanaxana left me? Punishing me for not claiming my Xiveri mate sooner? Nox…I do not think so.
Because I can still feel it there, swirling in my chest like a breath I just can’t catch. Only now I feel it pulling me away from the false Rakukanna before me…pulling me somewhere else, towards the shadowed side of the planet. What does it mean? She is not here…but she is close…
I curl my hands around the female’s upper arm and shake her roughly. “Who are you?” I snap.
I can hear the imposter’s fragile heartbeat through her chest, where just one heart beats. On a quivering note, she whispers, “I am here as you reque
sted. I am Miari…”
“Your voice is not yours, and neither is your scent. My Rakukanna also does not understand the Voraxian tongue.”
“I…acquired a translator.”
“I did not include translators in the shipments provided, so tell me now. Who. are. you?”
“You’re hurting me,” she whispers and I glance down at the contact of my hand on her wrist. It trembles with barely restrained violence.
She wears my Rakukanna’s skin, and even her voice, through my translator, sounds eerily similar. It has been too long and I cannot remember. Seeds of doubt are beginning to sow. Maybe she is my Rakukanna. Maybe I am remembering it wrong. It could not have been so powerful. A magic like that is surely not possible…
I rip my head to the right and to the left, divesting myself of such thoughts. “Nox,” I bellow. “I know her.” With every inch of my Xaneru. Every ounce of my soul. And if this one brought harm to my Xiveri mate, it does not matter that she is female. She will die for her crimes. Slowly. Over rotations. Over eons.
“I am!”
“You are not. Now tell me that you did not harm her.”
It crosses my mind for a moment that my attention towards my Rakukanna could have put her directly into harm’s way — there are females on my planet who would have gladly disposed of her and, by some magic, attempted to lure me into believing she were they.
Pain skewers me like a spear through a wild tzyk. My mind momentarily blanks, hallucinating every scenario in which my actions have placed my own Rakukanna in harms way, until the little forged one before me says, “Nox, of course not.”
I exhale. I should not trust her words, but I need to. The alternative is too unknown, too great a pain to be endured. “Then who are you, you who did not harm Miari, but stole her face?”
“I…I am…I am…”
“Regrets of the fountain, Raku,” comes Va’Raku’s deep bass. “There is another female missing. One I do not scent. She carried the scent of your Rakukanna on her person in the last Hunt, but she is no longer present. In defiance of their Raku, it is possible that they have escaped together.”
Taken to Voraxia Page 4
