The Faarian Chronicles: Exile

by Karen Harris Tully

  “Uh, hi?” I said, scooting away slowly. Part of my brain told me to run, while a strange place in the back of my head whispered recognition and a sense of safety. The resulting confusion froze me in place. I looked around for someone to help me out. Teague and Sarosh weren’t paying attention, the twins were gaping, several other people were watching with interest… and Thal was grinning and giving me the Macawan equivalent of two thumbs up: his fingers held up like football goal posts.

  Micha hopped up onto the hover-tractor, making it sway and tip crazily under her 1,000-pound weight until it regained equilibrium. I let out a squeak of, not terror exactly, but close as I held on tight and tried to keep my balance. She made that laughing, rumbling sound deep in her chest as she walked around me, rubbing up against my body like Meowman rubbed against my legs. Except Meowman didn’t almost knock me over when he did it. All the while, she purred her max volume, projected purr.

  I winced, covering my ears. “Do you have to do that so loudly?”

  She looked at me with her head cocked to the side and lowered her mental voice to a dull roar. You are an interesting one, girl-child. Is that better?

  I nodded.

  You know, you are more like your mother than anyone realizes.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  Don’t worry for her, girl-child. She is strong. She will prevail, I have no doubts.

  She grinned toothily at me and hopped off the tractor, making it tip and roll crazily again. I fell over on my side and held on till it steadied. What was that about? Reassurance? Really, I could do without the sudden display of creepy affection.

  By the time we took a break for lunch, Teague and Sarosh were in a pow-wow over something on their links. Apparently one of the haratchi hibernation dens marked on the map was ready to erupt soon and the warriors were planning their attack without their General. I snuck away to text Thal. He was right across the clearing from me, but I knew if I walked over there one of the adults would be nosy and interrupt.

  Hey Thal, you there? I thought texted, which was harder than it looked. I had to tell it to erase four times before organizing my thoughts enough to say what I wanted. Every time I put my thumb to the squishy, nubby pad, a random jumble of thoughts appeared on the screen with a box blinking ‘Send?’ at the bottom.

  Sunny, sorry we couldn’t talk earlier. I’m glad you’re okay. And Micha marked you, that’s awesome!

  Um, yeah, thanks Thal. Marked by a giant, alien symbiot tiger. Awesome. I’m fine, except that no one will tell me anything. Do you know what’s going on with my mother?

  My response took me forever. It would be so much easier if I could type it, but noooo, they were so advanced here, no one typed anymore. It was all voice or thought activated. And I couldn’t talk into the thing, because someone would notice. It was ridiculous that they could make a device like the link, with its mind reading and stretchy polymers, but Penthe didn’t have some sort of high-tech healing ray to fix my ankle. Her prescription: ice baths, Ace bandages, and ibuprofen.

  Yeah, those jerks. This isn’t your fault, Thal replied quickly. Don’t look over here or one of them will probably interrupt us again. Anyway, I overheard my mom talking with Alten earlier. She said it looked like that Anakharu hit his head on a rock and died when your mom tackled him out the window. Was it the texting, or was he being really blasé about this?

  But she was protecting me! He broke into my room and attacked me! How could they arrest her for that?

  I know. Believe me, I don’t get it either. Anyway, Alten sent the security tapes to the police this morning, so they probably won’t be able to keep her.

  Probably?

  Uh… oops. I mean, won’t be able to keep her. Too bad there wasn’t a recording device in your room. Only the ones outside.

  But the police knew what he was, right? I asked.

  Well, yeah. So?

  So it’s not okay to kill vampires? Er, Anakharu? I corrected.

  Uh, no. It’s not. Are you thinking of your untrue Earth stories again?

  Well, yeah I was, but... But he tried to bite me! They’re killers!

  Well no, not usually. Even rogues don’t attack people with chlorophyll, which is why this is so weird. But it’s hard to tell what he would have tried to do with you if he’d succeeded.

  I shivered.

  Anyway, Alten didn’t seem to think your mom killed him on purpose.

  But the cops sure did, otherwise she’d be home.

  Hey Thal, how do you think the police got here so fast? Would someone here have called, er, linked them?

  Huh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Usually the red police are pretty non-existent this close to the Great Desert. I can’t believe anyone here would go over the General’s head and link them.

  Not even Myrihn or Nico?

  He seemed to think about that before replying. No, not even they would stoop so low.

  I remembered Thal had said that most of the government had been taken over by the Molinidae. Are the police run by the Molinidae?

  He nodded. They are Molinidae.

  So people here don’t trust them.

  He shook his head.

  Ugh, this is so frustrating! I don’t even know how the system works here.

  Yeah, neither do I.

  I gave him an incredulous look across the field before quickly looking away.

  The red police have always left us alone. If someone out here breaks the law, the Kindred Council deals with it. But…

  They didn’t trust the Council to deal with their own General, I supplied.

  Yeah. There has to be someone we could ask, someone who wouldn’t brush us off and tell us to be patient, they’re working on it. Someone like…

  John, I said.

  Yeah, maybe. He and his family are the only Molinidae I know. It’s worth a shot.

  I started looking up his number to text him.

  But if I were you, Thal continued, I’d wait until you can do a holo-link and actually talk to him. Your thought texts are kind of a mess.

  I stuck my tongue out at him. Gee, thanks Thal.

  No problem.

  I put my link back on my hip, lost in thought. In my book, monsters that attacked people and climbed into girls rooms at night to suck their blood were bad. Period. End of story. This whole “oh no, you can’t kill the evil vampire” crap was garbage.

  A short time later, Teague and Sarosh got the message they were waiting for.

  "Okay, everyone, Etmar will have to wait,” Sarosh announced. “There’s a den erupting and we’ve got to go. I’m sending you the coordinates now.” My link buzzed and others pulled theirs out too.

  “Sunny, keep up on the tractor,” Teague added. “The rest of you are responsible for making sure she gets there.”

  I looked in bewilderment at the array of dials and read-outs on the hover-tractor controls, then back to Teague, but she and Sarosh were already gone, leaving only dust trails into the desert. Everyone else started running at normal speed after them.

  “Hey, wait!” I yelled. “I don’t know how to drive this thing!” But the others were too eager to get to the den to care.

  “No problem, I got it!” Thal said, jumping up into the driver’s seat. “We just program the coordinates and GO!”

  I grabbed for the back of the seat as the hover-tractor spun around and took off after the runners.

  “Geez Thal, some warning!” I exclaimed when I got my feet back under me.

  He just grinned and said, “Hold on!” The hover tractor quickly passed the runners on foot.

  “Hey! We want a ride too!” Lyta yelled as we passed the twins. Thal only waved over his head and kept going.

  “Those dummies,” Thal laughed. “We’ll get there way before they do.”

  A few minutes later we arrived in the middle of nowhere and stopped to stare at nothing - from a hundred yards away. Thal checked the wind direction and nodded to himself before landing the tractor and turning it
off.

  I could see the warriors and their Ahatu hunting partners in the distance. “Do we walk from here?” I asked.

  “No, we watch from here,” he replied in a whisper, getting down from the tractor and peering over it.

  I followed to stand beside him. “Here? How will we see anything this far away?”

  “Shhhh,” he replied and grabbed his link, stretching it to notebook size. “Distance view,” he whispered. His link zoomed in on the group of warriors and Ahatu prowling around a flashing red post in the distance.

  I pulled my link off my belt to try it myself. It was like a camera with a telephoto lens.

  “What are they waiting for?” I asked. “Where’s this den? I don’t see anything. And why are we whispering?”

  “Wait for it. The chicks burrow, remember? After they feed. They hibernate for years, and when they emerge as adults they have really good hearing. See that flashing red beacon there?” he asked pointing. “That marks the den’s last known location. The beacon starts out yellow for a few days, then orange on the day of eruption, and finally red. It doesn’t blink red for long, so we’re just in time, and when it turns solid red, well, there it goes.” He pointed and seemed to hold his breath, watching.

  For a moment, all I saw was Micha doing some strange, undulating dance, like she was possessed. Then I realized the ground below the tiger’s feet was actually heaving and rolling. Everyone jumped back and circled the mound as it started to crack and split open. The hairs rose on the back of my neck, and I found myself holding my breath and zooming in even more on my link.

  Bony, four-fingered hands broke through the sandy soil and then the whole pulsing mound exploded in a shower of dirt and rocks, leathery black, and pale iridescence. That color jangled in my brain. No plant or animal in nature was meant to be that oily greenish-blue color.

  DANGER! my instincts screamed. KILL! FIGHT!

  “SUNNY!” Thal hissed, grabbing my shirt collar and jerking me back. I hadn’t even realized I’d started to move around the hover-tractor to join in the fight.

  “What are you doing?” He yanked me around to face him and froze. “Wow, look at your eyes!” he whispered. “Hey, don’t snap at me! Get a grip! You’re not trained to fight adult haratchi, remember? Put your scy away before you do something crazy.”

  I made myself do a breathing exercise and tried to calm down, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene. I’d felt a similar rush of instinct with the egg sack, but that felt like ages ago, and this was ten times stronger. I felt out of control and shaky. It was taking everything I had to stay put behind the tractor. I felt Thal tug my scy out of my hands and cautiously put it back in the holster on my belt.

  The haratchi were no longer the fluffy, voracious babies I’d seen before. The birds were skinny now and tall, at least seven or eight feet each. They had a flat beak stretched like a mask over the lower half of their faces. Their bodies were pale from being underground so long, and their wings seemed weak.

  They poured out of the ground like giant bats in a bad sci-fi movie, but only stayed aloft a few seconds before falling quickly to the ground, going for the nearest food source. The warriors and Ahatu were ready, elegant and graceful, their moves almost choreographed as they took the heads of their enemies, one after another in a gritty, blood-spraying dance.

  My fingers itched on the hilt of my scy, but I didn’t draw it again. Instead, I watched the enemy and tried to learn the warriors’ moves. Only Micha was alone, leaping into the air and ripping out haratchi throats before they could even land. She seemed fierce and unstoppable, and every cell in my body ached to join her in the fight.

  At first, it seemed like the cats and their warriors had it all under control, but the haratchi just kept pouring out of their cave. I could see why they called it an eruption. Soon, untouched haratchi were feasting on their fallen brethren, stretching their wings between gulps atop growing piles of blue bodies. As I watched, they seemed to turn a deeper azure in the suns’ rays.

  On one hand, it was almost simpler to cut down the birds as they focused on feeding. On the other, it was easy to lose track of them behind and between the grisly piles. One bird seemed forgotten entirely as it finished eating its fill of meat, turning its beady eyes toward us. It spread its wings to take off. Micha spotted it and leapt, but instead of grabbing and rolling, tearing and spraying, she seemed to change her mind mid-air. She looked at me for a moment and seemed to say, Here, girl-child. Time to see what you can do. And she let the haratchi go.

  Chapter 26: First Kill Day

  “Uh-oh!” Thal moaned. The twins and other newbie patrolees had arrived at some point and were now watching the bird approach in horror. They drew their scys, cursing under their breath.

  My scy was already out – again – and I ignored the others around me as the giant bird flew toward us and the cartful of vegetables. My attention narrowed on the threat flying our way. It was full, iridescent blue now, that same unnatural color of their eggs, and its black wings beat strongly at the air.

  WRONG! KILL! MINE! some instinctive part of my brain yelled.

  “Sunny, what are you doing?” I heard Thal hiss as if from a great distance. “Get down! Let it have the vegetables.”

  One of the twins grabbed my ankle and tried to pull me down from my perch atop the tractor. She received a sharp kick in the face for her trouble. I didn’t remember getting up there, but knew that this was exactly where I needed to be.

  Ignoring the others cursing me in hushed voices from the ground, I crouched motionless behind the tractor’s control chair. I turned it so my hands were atop the seat as I peered over its back.

  Wait for it, wait for it, instinct said. My haratchi was almost directly overhead when I leapt, using the seat and back to launch myself into the air as the bird descended toward the vegetable cart. I spun in mid-air and swung my scy, even as it saw me and gave a ragged squawk. It tried to bring its wings down to fly upward again when my blade caught it, not at its scrawny neck as I’d intended, but at chest height. By then I was committed though, and had put my whole body into that leap and spin. The result was a horrible, jarring crunch through wing and bone and flesh before I fell back to land in a kneeling crouch on the ground amid a sprinkling of dark, disgusting blood. The bird crashed into the dust with a thump.

  I limped over to the still-twitching bird and found it dead and steaming, the smell of blood and hot bird flesh making me heave and turn away.

  “Sunny, that was amazing!” Thal exclaimed, running to pound my back as I tried not to lose my lunch.

  “Be quiet!” I hissed at him. The last thing we needed were more of those things coming over here.

  “It’s over.” He waved at the eruption site. “Here,” Thal handed me the link I’d apparently dropped. The warriors were coming over to us, while the Ahatu cats remained and were eating their fill of fresh haratchi meat. Ugh. I fought another wave of nausea.

  The twins and the rest of the team came over more slowly, looking warily at me.

  “She phased,” I heard Otrere say to her sister. “Just a little, but I swear she did.”

  “Nah, not possible,” Lyta whispered back before turning to me. “That’s some smell, huh, little cousin?” I nodded, my hand over nose and mouth, and moved away from the stinking bird corpse.

  Thal followed and gave an exasperated shake of his head, but he was grinning. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  I shook my head and grinned back at him sheepishly. I had a hard time believing it myself. My lame ankle hadn’t entered into my thoughts once, but now that it was over I looked around to find my crutches.

  “So, who did this?” Teague asked when the warriors arrived, looking down at the dead haratchi.

  “Sunny did,” Thal said. “It was amazing.” The rest of my team made noises of agreement, along with a few grumbles that I’d taken a big risk.

  “Well, there are certainly more efficient ways to kill haratchi,” Teague grunted
prodding the dead bird with her boot and opening the gaping chest wound even more. “Still, good job kid. Your first adult kill.”

  Sarosh snapped a few pictures. “Your mom should see this.”

  “If she’d done that the other night with that Anakharu, the General would be seeing it in person,” Myrihn sniffed.

  “Come on Myrihn, cut the kid some slack,” Thekla, one of the older warriors said. “She did well for her first time. Reminds me of the General’s first haratchi. Of course, she was quite a bit younger, but still, congratulate the girl.”

  “Oh, my mistake,” Myrihn simpered at me. “Congratulations, you not only endangered yourself, but you also managed to destroy the entire Etmar shipment at the same time,” she sneered, waving at the cart of vegetables now dripping with sticky blood. “Good for you.” She stomped away.

  I frowned down at my boots and started kicking a hole in the dirt. Was nothing ever good enough for that woman? The fact that several of my teammates, including Lyta and Otrere, followed Myrihn to start collecting and burying the haratchi back in their underground den gave me a clue how many others agreed with her.

  “Hey,” Sarosh came up to me and chucked my shoulder while I was busy studying the ground. “Don’t worry about Myrihn. We’ll be able to wash most of the produce and use it at the compound. The rest we’ll compost. Nothing goes to waste here, and Etmar will get their shipment tomorrow. I’ll have a talk with our cousin and remind her of her first haratchi.” Sarosh smiled and winked at me. “It came crashing down in the middle of Sumar’s harvest day celebration.” The others laughed, a few clapping me on the back as they passed to deal with the mounds of haratchi bodies.

  Micha strutted past them to me, mentally singing Elton John’s Honky Cat, her head swinging in funky circles with that ‘70s beat. She looked very pleased with herself, still licking blood from her chops. She sniffed the haratchi on the ground before coming up to me and nudging me with her bulk.