by Tom Julian
Let’s take this one for a trip.
As Kizik touched him, Heelo felt as if his consciousness was being kneaded like dough. He couldn’t look away from Kizik’s awful face, his mandibles ruminating, his body shaking and buzzing as he talked to him with his mind. But suddenly, as fast as it had come, the terror washed away and Kizik was like an old friend, cheerfully dropping by unannounced. Where do you want to go? Heelo asked, smiling.
Let’s go out of town.
With a nod, Heelo agreed and disconnected the breathing machine from the wall. Somehow he knew he had to switch it to battery power and hook the breather up to Relaund’s face. As he pushed Relaund’s bed out into the hall, a nasty, pungent smell reached his nostrils, but it didn’t bother him. He walked past Timberwolf, frozen in place by Kizik, his only movement being his breathing. Salla stood, unmoving, in mid-stride on the stairs, looking right at him but seeing nothing. He saw his men writhing in pain in the stairwell, bloody and holding their eyes, but paid them no mind.
Heelo pushed Relaund’s bed out into the night, its rubber wheels moving easily over the crushed stone of the street. Nice night, Kizik mentioned. Heelo saw the alien walking beside him, but no one on the street rushed in terror from the man pushing the hospital bed towards the edge of the O2 zone.
Heelo took hits from his breather as the oxygen thinned, bringing the gold-trimmed apparatus to his face. When he was a few hundred yards outside of the settlement he stopped as Kizik appeared in front of him. Here is fine.
A small Arnock shuttle shimmered to visibility. It looked like a much smaller version of the snail-shell command ship. A gangplank descended and Kizik pushed Relaund aboard. Heelo stood waiting in the dust. Where do I go now? he asked.
Just follow us. Kizik suggested cheerfully. He found dealing with this mind so simple; it was nothing like the stubborn rock that was Timberwolf’s psyche. Kizik hated himself a little that he was enjoying this, but he continued. It felt like the worst parts of the war. Kizik raised the gangplank and Heelo waved goodbye. He took one last hit off his breather and placed it down. Kizik lifted off, hovering just off the ground. The shuttle backed away slowly, Heelo following, a guiltless smile plastered on his face. After a few moments, he began to stagger and sat on a rock. Have a rest, Kizik suggested.
I’ll just lie down here for a minute.
Once Heelo had closed his eyes, Kizik lifted off. He didn’t have to be inside Heelo’s mind to know he wasn’t going to get up.
THE CLAN
Rain Saling opened the creaking door to the fighters’ cages.
Underneath the fighting pit at The Diablo, Droma and the rest of Wessei Clan were kept in a caged enclosure. In another enclosure, a different Phaelon clan crouched on the floor. They looked to be half the size of the Wessei Clan. It was their lack of pride that made them look so small.
From his time working at the Phaelon prison camp on Glox Prime, Michael knew a little of how the Phaelon mind worked. Those others were beaten, resigned to their fate and ready to die however their god decided to take them. The Wessei Clan members raged against the bars when they saw Michael, nearly tearing the iron from the wall. Some of them were on their knees, hands stretched to the heavens, repeating the words “Wessei Trom” over and over. They were telling Trom, their deity, that the Wessei Clan was not resigned and that she could fuck off for now.
Rain took an electric prod and ran it along the outside of the bars. The electricity snapped through the Phaelon and Michael caught the scent of singed hair. Droma drove her shoulder into the bars again and again, visibly bowing them. Rain went to use the prod again, but Michael caught his arm.
“No! That’s not going to help.”
“If you go in there, they will tear you limb from limb,” Rain warned, hooking the prod to his belt.
“Get the hell out,” Michael said.
Rain shrugged and left, closing the exterior door and dropping a metal bar across it. Droma gave a deep growl from the pit of her stomach, her back scales fluttering. She made a motion of cracking Michael’s neck with her hands, her giant biceps clearly strong enough to do it. Droma’s heavy, sour breath came out of the cell and she growled in her best approximation of English, “Wessei Clan yours?” The others laughed and snarled, shaking the bars again. Droma seethed, her teeth bared and nostrils flaring.
“Yes. You’re all mine,” Michael said, crossing his arms across his chest in a manner he knew they would respect.
“More fight?” Droma pointed to the ceiling, to the fighting pit above them. Michael shook his head negatively. “Skins?” Droma was asking if her clan would simply be incapacitated and killed for the trophy of their hides, just to hang on a rich man’s wall.
Again, Michael shook his head. “No.”
Michael came up to the cage, close enough for Droma to reach through the bars and tear his head off if she wanted to. “We battle. War.”
“Which weapons?” Droma asked, wondering what of their armament would be returned to them.
“All. Full arsenal. Lasers, swords, spears, shields, plasma-shotguns, nets, grenades, grapplers. All!”
Droma grinned, her brow furrowing. “Who battle?”
“Men.”
Droma almost fell backwards, her face bursting with happiness. They were being given license to fight and kill humans. Her sister and brother clan-mates released guttural yells from the bottoms of their stomachs. For them, this was the ultimate gift. Humans had destroyed all but a sliver of their race. They had accepted that their species was essentially extinct. Most Phaelon now hoped and prayed for a good way to die; some, like the other clan in the cage across the room, had given up and had put their fate in their god’s hands. They’d take any death they could get.
Michael took out the key to their cage and opened it up. It was still entirely possible that Droma and her clan would kill him with their bare hands, but Droma beckoned Michael in, like she was inviting him into her mother’s house. One of the Phaelon opened a hiding place under the floorboards and pulled out two bottles. Others pulled Michael’s shirt off. He knew what was coming and exhaled deeply.
Droma placed a teacup in his hand. Michael knew from his time at the camp that he needed to drink all of it as fast as he could. Its effect wouldn’t last long. Droma slapped him on the back as he gulped down the bitter liquid, some of it spilling down his chin. The Phaelon stepped away from him, leaving him in the middle of their circle.
Suddenly, the tea got to Michael’s head and his hearing left him. The reptilian faces became a blur, the light in the room seeming to strobe. Sounds and colors came directly to his mind, skipping his eyes and ears. He sensed they had their batons out and that his knees were buckling.
The vibration of Phaelon laughter went through him as Droma made sure he was standing straight and his arms were over his head. Then the blows were coming down on his torso. He didn’t feel pain, just the awful sensation of his muscles squishing under the strikes. It went on much longer than he had expected, but then it was done and Droma was lowering him to the floor. As quickly as it had come, the effect of the tea was gone. Michael hadn’t known pain like this since the day he’d been thrown from a lifter on Telock Sen and earned the scars he wore on his face now.
Another cup was brought to his lips. The liquid was cool and sweet and almost instantly he found himself in a sleep that was beyond sleep. For just a few minutes he barely breathed, his body still and cold. He felt so heavy, like he was the bedrock and there was a mountain above him. He felt himself moving through the earth, burrowing and sliding through the mud like a serpent. He was rising out of a swamp now, on two legs, running through a forest of giant red trees…
He then found himself standing amongst the Phaelon again, his sight and hearing returned to him. When his eyes blinked open, they cheered and supported him under their arms. Michael ached everywhere, but the injuries that should have probably killed him were deadened. The first bitter cup of tea was a hallucinogen and an anesthetic, but his li
fe was truly in danger when he drank the second cup of sweet liquid. That had put him in a brief coma while billions of nano-menders rushed into his muscles and organs. It was a Phaelon battlefield remedy that had equal chance of killing you or getting you back into the fight. To the Phaelon, the “sweet death” separated out those worthy of battle from those that Trom could take to the afterlife to do her bidding.
“Vision?” Droma asked eagerly.
“I was one of you,” he answered. “In the mud and in the Red Forest.”
“Red Forest!” Droma exclaimed. That was a very good vision.
“Min ter,” Michael replied, using some of the Phaelon language he had picked up at the camp. It was the phrase for go but also meant go to war.
“Wessei min ter!” Droma growled, looking Michael dead in the eyes. “You are Wessei!” she snarled.
DARK HALL
Heelo had given Gray the address of Saint Agatha’s convalescent home. Like most buildings on Golgotha, it was a squat stack of old, converted shipping containers. There were plenty of places like this, run by the local Believer charities. Tower hounds got banged up all the time. Falls were common and many of them ended up paralyzed and beyond the help of nano-menders. Gray pitied Timberwolf for a moment, caught trying to see his brother, he assumed. Finally found the sentimental bone in his body.
Gray pulled out his sidearm when he saw the aluminum door was thrown open and creaking in the breeze. Something wasn’t right. The place was dark and silent. When a nurse saw him coming in with his weapon out, he beat it up the stairs. A pungent smell filled his nostrils. It was familiar…“Salla Birdwing?” he called into the darkness. It was the scent of the nerve agent she had used before on the guard who had been minding Achilles back on The Outpost.
Gray carefully worked his way down the hall. He saw one of Heelo’s men at the top of a stairwell, face bloodied and doubled over. “Where’s Timberwolf Velez?” Gray hissed at him. The man nodded to a room marked Relaund Velez, the door ajar.
Gray opened the door with his foot, the lamp at the end of his pistol slicing through the darkness. As he looked inside, the lights in the building went back on suddenly, a neon hum replacing the silence. Gray’s eyes went wide when he saw the bed was gone.
“Heelo?” Gray asked the man in the hall, who was struggling to his feet. Again, he pointed to Relaund’s room. “Heelo and Timberwolf went in there?” Gray showed the man the empty room and smirked. Unlike out in the hall, there was no sign of a struggle. The machines had been carefully disengaged from the patient and moved to the side. There was no indication of Timberwolf’s tendency to tear through a place like a bull in a china shop.
Behind him, Gray heard someone going out the door. He caught a flash of a woman’s brown hair and got off a shot that went wide. Rushing into the street, he looked both directions and saw nothing. Down on the crushed stone though, he noticed a faint impression. Someone had pushed a bed out the door. He began to follow the trail down the street, a drunken tower hound stumbling into his path. He pushed past him and when he did Timberwolf was there, standing in the street, weapon trained on him.
“Nice night, Timber,” Gray said, both of them pointing their weapons now.
“Relaund’s gone,” Timberwolf said, his face a mask.
“Don’t blame yourself. That’s my fault. I came here thinking you wouldn’t follow.”
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
“Hell of a fight, back on The Outpost. Why don’t we call it even?”
“Why don’t you shit up a rope?” Timberwolf spun the dial on the side of his pistol. The chamber glowed red. He’d grabbed it from one of Heelo’s men he had taken out, but it was a low-intensity weapon, barely lethal, even on the highest setting. Timberwolf could see the bulk of an armored chest-plate under Gray’s jacket. On top of that, Gray’s hand-cannon could turn a man into a campfire and take out half the street.
“I have seen you do a lot of things, but what you did back there was…you know they lost the whole cargo bay? Just floated away. You’re the promise we need. Men like you in more of those Sabatin rigs. Taking on the Arnock. Wiping them out. Making God’s will real.”
“You are one story inside of another. I bet you bark it good from the pulpit, just like back in basic.”
“Basic training? That was animal husbandry. I’m in a new line of work now.”
“Taking Highland? How’s that working out, Don Quixote?”
Gray shook his head. After everything that had happened, he couldn’t help still liking Timberwolf. His swagger and his sneer. The lack of a cause that put a purity in his violence. “There’s something you need to know.” Timberwolf raised his weapon higher as Gray went on, “What Dr. Tier’s told you is a lie. I didn’t abandon you after you were captured by the Arnock. I went after Kizik. I spun up an assault squad. We thought he was on a Tiaski station. I blew it to hell. I broke a bunch of treaties. I was ‘asked’ to leave the Assault Corps after that.”
“And that’s why we’re here now, so you can explain yourself and all this horseshit?”
“It’s the truth I have found. I have closed eyes.”
“Wait, close them right now. Just for a second.”
“You can kill me easy, but listen, I’ve got back-up coming,” Gray said. “You can’t get out of here alone. Not even you, against what’s coming. That was a nice trick you played, hiring out all the mercs here. Kees Leedy finally told me what you did, but you don’t want a piece of what’s coming down that street any minute.”
Timberwolf leveled the weapon at Gray’s face. That’d be the only way he could possibly kill him with the peashooter he held. Then something crossed his mind and he dropped his arm, shaking his head. “I just realized you’re right about something,” he said.
Gray smiled. “What’s that?”
“I just hired every gun on Golgotha.” Timberwolf fired at Gray’s knee and dove away. The shot deflected off his thigh-plate, but it was enough to give Timberwolf the half-second he needed. Gray returned fire, wild and high and Timberwolf was hurdling through the alleys and streets. He ran like a clock, fast and precise, spinning around corners that hadn’t changed since he was a kid.
A fireball erupted around him as Gray took shots, shanties flipping over from the blasts. People scattered in every direction and a dozen Glox swarmed over Timberwolf as he squeezed around a corner. He pulled his smart-device from his pocket and hunted for Salla’s private signal. She was running in the same direction he was, down an alley parallel to him. He cut over and met up with her.
“I assumed if things were exploding, you’d be involved.” She ran beside him, Timberwolf impressed she kept up.
“Where the hell were you?”
“I was about to shoot Gray in the head when you popped him in the knee!”
As he ran, Timberwolf yelled into his smart-device, “Call Kees Leedy!”
A few seconds later, a hoarse voice answered, “Hello?”
Timberwolf dove over a short wall, helping Salla after him. “This is Timberwolf Velez,” he said when he regained his feet. “I’m bringing a party to your place. Tell my hired hands to prepare me a welcome.”
“What the hell?” Kees demanded.
“I’ve just doubled the payday. Tell them that.”
Before Timberwolf could hear a response, a trio of shadows appeared not far away under a streetlight. It was Michael, and beside him strode two massive forms. No goddamned way! For a second Timberwolf flashed back to the Mile High Red Forest on Phaelon Prime—the warriors dropping down out of the trees on cables…the sweep of their chemical lasers through his squad…
Flanking Michael were two, seven-foot-tall Phaelon, their red armor gleaming in the dull light. “Oh Jesus.”
Timberwolf turned, slipping into a space between buildings two feet wide, Salla following. Above them, they could hear the heavy clomp of the Phaelon on the tin rooftops. Spears glowing with bright white plasma struck with a zing in front and behind them. At
tached to cords, they flew back up to the throwers. A Phaelon dropped before them. He drew back his arm to throw his spear, but in the slim space he was jammed. Timberwolf drove into him and pushed him with all his might while searching the beast’s belt for the jagged ceremonial dagger he knew would be there. Timberwolf had it and shoved it under the Phaelon’s chin, into his jaw. The Phaelon screamed, suddenly becoming a flurry of whirring claws as he tried to pull away.
A glowing spear passed right by Salla’s ear. She grabbed the cool top of it and stabbed the burning sharp end into the Phaelon’s leg. When he lurched in pain, he pulled the thrower down from above and the two warriors tangled in a mass. Salla and Timberwolf took the opportunity to leap away, spilling out into an alley.
Timberwolf didn’t see Michael there until he was on top of him. A plasma burst burned past Timberwolf’s stomach as the two tussled. Stepping back, Timberwolf struck him hard in the kidneys. He never would have expected it, but Michael crumpled to the ground from one punch.
Behind him, the largest Phaelon Timberwolf had ever seen stepped from the shadows. Droma saw Timberwolf hovering over Michael and released a scream that could have been heard all the way back on the Phaelon homeworld.
“You part of the clan now?” Timberwolf asked. Michael nodded, rolling over onto his back. “Looks like they took something out of you.”
“They’re going to take something out of you,” Michael groaned in response.
“You’ve sure upped the ante here with crazy. I’m going to give you this round. Gray’s idea?” Timberwolf asked. Michael nodded again.
Droma drew a blade from each hip and bent over so Timberwolf could see her back scales fluttering. Atop nearby buildings and from adjoining alleys, more Phaelon appeared, echoing Droma’s awful cry, but not attacking. “What the hell?” Salla asked, backing up to Timberwolf.
