by A. R. Knight
All the while, the mirrored Oratus watches over Sax. All the while, the mirrored Oratus talks. Tells Sax all about the various horrible treatments he’ll be receiving at the hands of the Chorus. At the end of it, when he’s concluded any number of options for how Sax may meet his gruesome end, and when Sax has had himself pieced back together, the mirrored Oratus leans in real close.
“I’m not telling you this to scare you,” mirrored Oratus hisses. “I’m telling you this because you deserve to know the ways in which you will end.”
From there, with Sax barely awake, they take him to the docking bay, floating on the transport. A pair of Chorus pilots, red-furred Flaum wearing special armor and patches bearing a singles white spire jutting through black space, start launch procedures. Sax is locked into a couch at the back end. The mirrored Oratus sits across from him, giving Sax an endless dead-eyed look.
At least until the transport fails to start. At least until its microjets don’t fire.
Sax manages a weak, toothy grin.
The mirrored Oratus drips contempt at Sax and his smile. Because of the refracting scales, Sax only gets the outline of the sneer, which deepens into a dead-lipped frown as the transport doesn’t lift.
“What’s going on?” The mirrored Oratus throws his voice towards the two Flaum in the cockpit, who are busy squeaking at one another..
“The power’s cut,” the right Flaum replies. “All readings are negative. I’m not getting anything from the jets.”
“Looks like you’ll be staying here a while longer,” Sax says. “Good thing you made friends with everyone on this frigate.”
“They’re not my friends. They’re servants, like me. All of us, even you, must bend to the will of the Chorus.”
“Is that what you say to yourself?” Sax says. “All of this is the will of a bunch of blobs in a tower? You could tear any of them apart in a minute. Why take their orders?”
The mirrored Oratus exhales a heavy sigh from his vents, stands, scales shifting to match the yellow light in the shuttle’s interior. “Because I believe in something called loyalty. In paying back my creators for giving me life.”
“That was their choice,” Sax says. “You should make your own.”
The mirrored Oratus doesn’t reply, instead stepping around to the panel controlling the boarding ramp. With a claw, the mirrored Oratus opens the transport’s door and, after giving the ramp a moment’s head start, descends, leaving Sax onboard and captive.
But only for a moment.
The two Flaum continue their rapid-fire chittering, with one on the left eventually jumping up from the pilot’s chair and heading back towards Sax. The Flaum makes it near him, keeping well back from Sax’s claws as it heads to the door, when there’s a bright flash and the red-furred creature drops to the floor.
Sax hisses in surprise, seeing the other Flaum holding a pocket miner that it’s pulled from somewhere. That Flaum dashes through the shuttle quick and slaps the boarding door’s panel, sucking up the ramp and slamming the door. A moment later, after unlatching Sax from the net, the red-furred Flaum steps back behind its former colleague, miner aiming Sax’s way, though the twitching hands show cautious fear more than malice.
“What?” Sax manages to ask.
“The Chorus has fewer friends than you think,” the Flaum says. “The Resistance has more allies than you know.”
“And the jets?”
“He’ll find them working,” the Flaum glances towards the door. “We should leave.”
“No,” Sax says. “I have a friend on the ship. I’m not leaving him. And I have an idea; open a channel to Rav.”
Sax felt a shift in the last conversation he had with the frigate’s commander, and he’s going to bet everything that another push could sway her over to his side. With the frigate, Rav would be able to force a way for Sax to get down to Solis, to find Bas.
The Flaum gives Sax a wide-eyed side-glance, a look Sax recognizes well from his own experience. It’s wondering if he’s crazy, if it made a terrible mistake in choosing to help him over just following orders. But Sax is still an Oratus, and his damaged body is plenty able to handle the furball, so quick enough the Flaum decides a chance of life is better than a quick, certain death. They retreat to the cockpit and the Flaum opens up a channel.
“Why haven’t you left?” Ravs voice scratches through. “You’re clear. The bay is open.”
“There’s been a change in plan,” Sax says.
Dead silence on the other side. Silence that’s eventually broken by the hard thump of something crashing against the outside of the transport. The scrabble of claws digging into the hull.
“He’s figured it out,” the Flaum says, his voice dulling into the tone of the doomed. “This ship’s not meant for combat - he’ll tear his way in before long.”
“What are you doing?” Rav’s voice comes back. “What happened to the Oratus?”
“He’s clawing his way into his own ship,” Sax replies. “I’d be grateful if you stopped him.” Then, to the Flaum pilot. “Start the engines.”
“Why?”
“Do it,” Sax orders. “Rav?”
Rav cuts a dire, lost laugh. “You want me to stop him? How?”
“Tell your Flaum he’s the true traitor. That their race as well as ours depends on stopping this Oratus.”
There’s a ripping shriek from outside, and Sax turns to see bright light from the docking bay filtering in through a long gash. In a second, the mirrored Oratus will rend a hole big enough for itself and Sax is in no condition to fight. A quick scan of the shuttle shows no miners here either, save the small one clutched tight in the Flaum pilot’s hands. Such a small weapon, unless perfectly shot, wouldn’t do anything more than annoy the mirrored Oratus.
Sax teeth and claws will have to do.
“Last chance, Rav. Last chance to choose your own species.” Sax is kind of proud of that, thinks Bas would be proud of him too. Here he is, talking like someone who knows something outside of the ways of war.
Or maybe Bas has rubbed off on him over all this time.
Sax sees a pair of claws, their edges visible as black lines against the silver gray skin of the shuttle’s inside. They close across the gash and tear, peeling the hull back like it’s simple paper. Its entrance created, the mirrored Oratus pulls itself inside.
“Seems like we’ve lost power?” The Oratus growls at the Flaum pilot, sparing barely a look at its downed companion on the shuttle floor. “It seems like Sax is not the only traitor the Chorus is dealing with.”
Sax spreads his patched and bandaged claws out wide. “Maybe I am a traitor to the Chorus, but at least I’m fighting for something.”
“But you’ll die for nothing,” the mirrored Oratus says, stomping towards Sax.
Sax doesn’t feel like dying quite yet though, so as the mirrored Oratus stalks closer, Sax, using his tail, smacks the flight stick behind him, sending the transport lurching forward, its microjets very much alive.
The mirrored Oratus realizes what’s about to happen, realizes it has no time to get to cover, and neither does Sax, nor the Flaum. The transport rams into the back of the docking bay, the impact throwing Sax backwards, into the crumpling windshield of the transports front as glass bursts around him. The mirrored Oratus completes the crash a split second later, barging into and over Sax as they fall, with the ship, to the bay floor.
The impact sends Sax’s head for a loop, the universe splitting and blacking out even as the shrieks of rending metal and sparking snaps from snapping wires fill every available audio space Sax has. He lands on wreckage, the shuttle’s ceiling crunching close but not collapsing, with the smell of leaking energy ozoning the air. Smoke pours from batteries rent apart too close to food stores and the flammable fabrics coating the couches in the transport’s back half.
Consciousness doesn’t flee Sax entirely, though. Instinct survives, and pushes Sax up. He’s hurting, his left foreclaw and his tail, so recently burn
ed is again bearing the hallmarks of too hot, too close flame.
Sax staggers away from the wreck through the same hole his enemy’s claws created, but doesn’t it make it more than a few steps before the haggard hiss he’s waiting for emerges.
The mirrored Oratus pushes his way free, tilting over and crashing through the right wall shielding the shuttle’s cockpit. The slab cracks down on rubble, casting up a shower of smoke and dust as it hits, which frames the Oratus in the evidence of his own escape. The creature’s mirrored scales no longer the glisten, their reflective array now a battered black, coated in dirt and oil and grease. Chemicals drip off of its tail, while long scars across its chest show it landed hard on the exposed batteries powering the transport’s microjets.
It’s a dark, broken thing now. It stumbles towards Sax, its roiling green eyes the only bright thing it has left.
There was a moment, a time when the mirrored Oratus would have taken Sax back to the Chorus. Delivered Sax to its Amigga overlords: Sax would be readied for trial, for sentencing and eventual damnation. But this one is past the point of reason now. There’s only vengeance, eyes full of only anger and rage. Things Sax knows. Things he understands.
The mirrored Oratus is beyond conversation and it leaps towards Sax, flying through the air with too much strength. There’s no way the creature could be that hurt and able to fly that high, until Sax realizes the Oratus must have been wearing a mask. One no doubt damaged by Sax’s claws, one that gave its last protection in the crash. Doing enough to keep its wearer alive and deadly.
Sax can’t fight that, so he doesn’t.
Instead, he goes the other way. Dashes beneath the mirrored Oratus’ charge and blitzes back towards the wrecked transport. Claws-on-metal tells Sax the Oratus has landed, but he’s focusing on one thing sticking out of that inferno; a long burnt-metal shard that, moments ago, stood as the top bar holding the cockpit’s windshield. The crash sheared it off, but half of the bar juts out of the fire like a spear.
Sax gets the first burn on his foreclaws as he scrambles to the wreck when he feels a hard yank on his tail. A light stab as claws break through his scales, and then Sax is getting whipped around, flung through the air. He’s too heavy to fly far, and Sax hits the floor hard and rolls on wounded shoulders. He manages to stop himself and looks back towards the approaching mirrored Oratus, that scarred black form looking even more horrible in the bright bay lights.
“You’ll never win,” Sax hisses as the Oratus comes closer. “You’ll kill me, it’s the Amigga who get the victory. You’re hurting your own kind.”
“You think I care.” The Oratus goes for a kick at Sax’s face, but gives it away with a rippling tense of its strong legs.
Sax snakes out his foreclaws, catches the talon - at the cost of another gash on his left foreclaw, but at this point there’s too many to count - and Sax yanks the Oratus forward. Here the sharp grip of claws embedded into metal wind up hurting the mirrored Oratus, because his back talon doesn’t give and let Sax trip the creature. Instead, he holds steady while Sax yanks the Oratus’ leg forward. The bone pops above the constant crackle of the burning freighter, and the mirrored Oratus roars as Sax uses the pulled leg as leverage to swing himself around and tail-whip the mirrored Oratus across the face.
The impact and the sharp jerk that follows lets the mirrored Oratus free itself, and Sax is plenty gratified to see the enemy fall into a deep limp. An emotion that quickly dies when the Oratus twists and sends its own tail crashing into Sax’s head. The impact kaleidoscopes the bay and sends Sax skidding across the floor until he comes to rest against a set of empty fuel containers. They’re bulky cylinders, old and probably permanent fixtures of this frigate until Rav manages to pull an assignment on somewhere inhabited.
Right now, though, they’re what Sax needs to pull himself to his talons. To give the mirrored Oratus one last level stare. If he’s going out here, in this ruin of a bay, bleeding out from a dozen deep cuts, he’s going to do it standing up.
“You do our race proud,” the mirrored Oratus hisses as it limps towards him.
“And you betray yours.” Sax keeps his tail wrapped around the spent fuel container - his legs are mostly numb and Sax is sure he’d collapse without it.
“We all choose our masters,” the mirrored Oratus replies.
He gets close to Sax, and Sax can’t help but try, with his fore- and midclaws to get in a rake, but the mirrored Oratus catches all of them. Twists and snaps each of Sax’s wrists in turn, leaving his claws broken and limp. The pain’s immense, but Sax lets it all flow into the giant black hole that’s formed in his mind; a calm, endless void that grows as Sax’s hold on life gets more and more tenuous.
“I deny yours,” Sax manages to hiss.
The mirrored Oratus gets closer. Then, with a sudden jerk, all four claws knife deep into Sax’s vents. The mirrored Oratus leers close as it strikes, the hot air from its own vents blowing against Sax. Who responds in the only way he can.
He bites.
A quick, darting snap that gets Sax’s teeth around the throat of the mirrored Oratus. Sax rends the scales, stabs beneath and tastes every part of the burnt grease and the warmer, softer stuff beneath. Every ounce of strength Sax has goes into his jaws then, digging harder and further.
Sax doesn’t think he’ll live, but neither will this thing.
The mirrored Oratus breaks into a frenzy, tearing and stabbing with its claws. Each cut takes away more of Sax. His vision goes spotty and dark, he loses the feeling in his legs, his tail. Keeps his whole energy in his jaws.
Tighter, harder.
For as long as he can.
19 Sky Gambit
Celice doesn’t mince time or words. She moves with an angry purpose that fuels the rest of us. Up till now, I saw the Sevora and their invasion as an abstract, a menace we were going to confront eventually, but Celice embodies its effects; she wants to fight, to win, to save her home.
I do too.
After the first day’s journey, which ends in another village, bigger than the last, we see the wrong signs. This one’s common house is more crowded, and not only with soldiers. Carts litter the streets, and Lunare with them, curled up in makeshift tents and blankets. Others set off back the way we came, muttering talk of getting away, saving themselves.
“This isn’t going well,” Viera says to me as we continue the next morning.
“I thought we might stand a chance,” I reply. “I hoped that if the Sevora couldn’t take us as hosts, that they would leave us alone.”
“You weren’t empress long enough to learn empires kill what they’re afraid of.”
“I am still the Empress, Viera. I’ve just lost my empire.”
“You think we can take it back?” Viera throws the question out with zero hint of sarcasm, and with plenty of exhaustion.
“You don’t believe we’ll win, do you?” I reply. “You think this is it for humanity?”
Viera pats the pistols on her belt. “I’ve got a pair of these. That’s it, Kaishi. Avril might have a few tricks too, but nothing much better. The Sevora have ships that come from the sky and burn us away before we even see them. How do you win that fight?”
It’s a problem I’ve been pondering as we’ve stalked through the caves. One I’ve been talking to T’Oli, to Vee about too. There’s one solution we all keep coming to. One answer.
“We need help.” I nod at Celice and her men, parting another refugee train to let us through. “They’re going to fight to the end, and they don’t deserve to do it alone.”
“Kaishi, we’re not the help they need.”
“No. Remember Sax? Bas? They hate the Sevora. They said there’s a whole army of them. Vee says the same thing.”
“So you want to call in different monsters to fight the ones already here?”
“It’s either that, or we die,” I say.
She doesn’t have a reply to that, and we keep on moving. The tunnels blend together, and my heart ac
hes at not seeing the sky for so long. The stream of fleeing people thickens until it’s a torrent. They squirm back from Vee and T’Oli, and a few bother throwing insults their way, though a sliver of teeth from the Oratus shuts them up quick.
At night, the four of us toss strategies around. Ways we could get in contact with the Vincere, the force Vee says might be able to help us. T’Oli says sending the message is simple, provided we get a shuttle. Which, of course, is the hard part.
Until we get to the Lunare capitol, Marilo, in its vastness, and everything changes.
You can read a lot in a person’s expression, but I get a lot more from the way the refugees are running now, the way they’re pulling along their children with little else strapped to their backs. The carts are mostly gone - the ones that do rumble through, pulled by tamed Fassoth, are full of dead-eyed people - and rather than the low murmurs of the lost, the caverns ring with the shouts of the panicked, the afraid.
Celice starts cursing to herself as we get closer to the opening into the Marilo’s huge underground lake.
The view from the tunnel lip provides all the reason Celice needs for her epithets. All of the dark-forged glory of the Lunare is laid bare before us, and half of it, or more, is engulfed in bright-burning flames. Streaks of hot red laser pour out of several craft, hovering above the city near the cavern ceiling, but even that doesn’t hold my attention for long.
Because I can see the sky. And it’s clear blue.
Somehow, in some terrible way, a giant hole has been carved in the mountain under which the Lunare settled. It’s uneven, with slicing cuts in the rock, and some of the edges still glow a molten orange.
Down through this opening pour more shuttles, disgorging what look, from this far distance, like Flaum. The troops disappear down into the city, vanishing into the smoke or behind buildings.
