Slave Line (The Young Ancients)

by Power, P. S.

  "They... were just joking with you Tor. It backfired a bit, but they didn't mean harm I'm sure. A simple misunderstanding, that was all. I'm sure it's nothing for us to hold a grudge over." He sounded placating, but the words were wrong. Like he was denying he'd done it? But everyone had said they'd seen it. That Denno was showing everyone...

  "Um, what?" He looked around at everyone, feeling suspicious. Brown might just be trying to save himself after all. Place blame on the others or something.

  Burks stepped forward and sighed, his eyes not rolling, but the feeling he had about him was similar to that. Exasperated and a bit annoyed.

  "It seems that Trice and your mother heard of the ruse you used to help Denno escape and Laurie thought it would be humorous to tease you with it. She got the others to go along. I don't think she meant to harm you, I..." He stared at his daughter and looked horribly sad for a few moments.

  "Sometimes pranks can be ill times and misplaced. Like when a person is undergoing unknown massive psychological changes due to outside factors... I wish I had a better explanation for you, but that seems to be the only one."

  Tor started getting his amulets out, which made everyone tense, but he just wanted the Truth one. He slipped it over Denno's head, making the man wince in fear and glow a nice cream and gold at the same time.

  "Denno, it all that true?"

  "Yes." He said it smoothly and fast, but a black streak cut across the brilliant glow.

  Before Tor could ask for the truth he corrected himself.

  "What I said was all true. It also seems obvious to me that it wasn't simply a prank or joke, but your mother using a bit of information to hurt you in retaliation for not letting her run all over you anymore. It was meant to be a psychological attack from any perspective I can see."

  Then it stayed pure.

  He checked the others, one by one, getting about the same result. For the most part they really did think it would be funny. Then they didn't care about sex that much, either being too young, or from a different culture than he was. His ma simply refused to put it on at all, crossing her arms.

  "You brought this upon yourself by not listening to your mother. I can't believe you attacked an Ancient like that. What were you thinking? I have half a mind to send you home right now young man." Her voice lacked it's normal conviction and her body language seemed more subdued than normal. Arms crossed, but slightly hunched over as if trying to cover herself.

  Tor wondered what to do for a long time, just staring at her, trying not to lash out. Violence was bad and he'd hurt someone by mistake. That was horrible of him. Probably the worst thing Tor had ever done and he'd killed people. It had happened because his mother wasn't a very good person though. That was pretty clear. Something would have to be done there.

  "OK." He nodded for a bit, thinking about what he was going to say next. She was family and that was important, but if she didn't think he was worthy of respect it wasn't worth bothering with her any more, was it?

  "Fine. I brought this on myself and so did you. I'm no longer your son. Don't speak to me, don't ask for my help or aid. Don't seek comfort from me when all around you falls apart because of your hidebound and stupid insanity. You've driven me from you time and again and only now am I strong enough to tell you this. No more. You are often a horrible person, a bully with words and a harpy of the first rank. I'm finished with you now and for forever." Everyone was staring at him, but he looked at the Carriage hovering about twelve feet up. He had to float toward it, moving almost six feet off the ground, using the variable setting on his Not-flyer to just reach the bottom. He turned it off with a thought, which caused the remaining rope to fall down, laying in a loose curl on the ground, limp and fraying at the ends.

  Kind of like his life.

  No one said anything as he went and packed his belongings, which wasn't a lot of stuff, then came back and set the carriage up again at a level he could work with. The whole thing was a mess and he couldn't see any other way out of it than to leave. No one moved to go with him.

  "Alright. I'm going back home then. I guess I'll see you when you're ready?" He looked at Ali and then Trice, who both just looked back, not saying anything. Well, he was angry, but he wasn't writing them off. Just his mother. That was hard, but it was time. She deserved it.

  Trice started crying and Ali locked down totally, nothing getting past the wall that she turned her outer self into. His mom started yelling at him... Because that was the right thing to do given the situation no doubt. If you were a bully used to getting your own way through intimidation it made perfect sense.

  "Don't you leave without permission young man. If you leave here now, don't ever come back! I'm serious!" She sounded angry and like she really was.

  Tor knew differently and shook his head slowly.

  "No. You're not serious. You had your world challenged and couldn't take it, so tried to hurt me in a way you knew actually would. Guess what, it worked. Congratulations, you're successful. But you'll reflect on this and eventually realize you were just mad at the time and don't want one of your children to go away forever, no matter what you say now. The thing there is... I am serious. This is what you earned from me."

  "How can you say that, after all I've done for you..."

  "You have to weigh in all you've done too me as well. You just managed to tip the balance. Anyway... Goodbye." He started to close the hatch when someone actually spoke up. He expected it to be Ali or Trice, maybe even Tiera, but it was Denno. He sounded scared now. More than Tor had ever heard before. He looked it too. Terrified.

  He'd been only mildly pained while being kicked.

  "Tor, I didn't try to fool you at all. I need you to help us. If we have as little time as it seems, you might be the only person on the planet that can get us ready. I know that they might be friendly, or have a different purpose in mind other than attack or harm, but if they aren't and we haven't made preparations, we won't stand a chance. Just being capable of defending ourselves might make the difference... Don't leave us. Please?"

  One of the Blues spoke then, Tor wasn't certain which one, but it wasn't Cordes Blue, she sounded a little different. One of the others.

  "There is truth to that statement. We lack conventional infrastructure to prepare the needed vessels in time. If what I've been told is true, you may be the best practitioner of your kind of technology available at this time. While others will appear past this point, we may not have time for them to become your equal. Is your current anger worth the lives of everyone else? Is it even worth the potential for damage to our world, if that is the cost of your lack of involvement in this project? It is clear we need a unified force in this. Nothing else will work given the time frame and resources."

  Tor watched them all through the open hatchway, his mother already standing with her arms crossed, looking smug now, as if she thought that she'd won something. The woman that used to be his mother. It was a real enough argument, what Blue said, at least in potential. Yeah, other people were good at building too and should be able to build the needed vessels physically. A version of the larger house field should actually work, reshaped and with the needed modifications for air and water. Combined with some kind of propulsion. But that didn't give them faster than light travel, which they needed if they had to face things that moved across the void of space. He didn't have an understanding of how to do it either, but taking even one person away from the effort could be the thing that caused it to fail.

  It embarrassed him after making so many declarations, but he couldn't abandon an entire planet. That would be wrong too. What could he do? Just give in and be the weak one again? Be the good little slave that everyone expected him to be? That didn't seem like something he really wanted to bother with anymore. Oddly enough the solution came from the Cordes in his head. It was simple enough.

  All he had to do was hold to what he'd said about his mother, it didn't have to be him that left, did it?

  "I'll stay. We need to arr
ange for her to leave then. She isn't welcome where I am. If that isn't acceptable, which I do understand, then I'll leave." He pointed at his mother, as if no one else would get who he meant.

  She screamed at him. Not yelling, not just a raised voice, but a blood curdling bellow that had no articulation at all. A sound of pure rage and hatred.

  "How dare you! How dare you try to make me irrelevant! I'm your elder young man and not someone to just cast aside on a whim. I'm your better and not a hidebound male that always thinks with their hormones. You're just a foolish child that doesn't know what's good for you!"

  At least everyone else stared at her like she was being a moron too. It was kind of nice to know someone else actually saw it as her problem for once.

  Then she told them all that she wasn't going anywhere. Tor just shrugged, tired of it all already.

  "Fine. If you all vote to do something about this, let me know and I'll see if I can help build something. Or perhaps Laurie Baker here will do the work instead? Since she's my better after all. I won't make a personal problem into something for the whole world though, when she fails to even try. You know where I live." Tor looked at Ali, who simply looked away, like she was mad at him, or frightened. What did they think he was going to do though? Just take their crap yet again?

  It hit him then. That was precisely what they all expected. He'd just buckle under in a day or two, accepting whatever bits of kindness they had for him, just so he wouldn't have to be alone. Only he didn't have to be anyway. Theirs wasn't the only love or friendship anywhere. He could do without it.

  It wouldn't be easy or fun, because he actually had a heart left, for some reason, even after everything, but that was life. You did what you had to and then dealt with the remainder, no matter how bad it got. Even if it meant being alone forever. This didn't though. It couldn't. Tor wasn't who he was before, which meant he could see some things for the first time, but he wasn't evil either. He didn't want to hurt anyone, he just didn't want to be abused.

  It was hard, but maybe walking away was the only...

  Something came out of the north in the sky. It reminded him a little of the Austran craft he'd seen before. It left a cloud behind it in a thin line, but was smaller than the others. It was thinner and more like an arrow than anything he'd seen in the sky before. then he saw there were several of them. Ten, no... Fourteen.

  "Um... things!" He pointed knowing what they were, but searching for the name in the Cordes memories, they were coming in fast, faster than his craft flew even.

  "Missiles! Get into the house! Everyone. Inside, inside!" He kept yelling as he ran switching to Chinese, which got part of the villagers to run, though not all of them in the right direction. One of the Blues ran to their craft, but the others moved inside as fast as they could. Tor stopped though. Those weapons had to have come from a craft or a launcher nearby. They wouldn't have the range to come from too much farther away.

  Doubling back he got into his Carriage and sealed the door. He didn't have time to get out of the way, but maybe it would survive the blast. He tried to lift anyway, just in case he could beat it. His first guess turned out to be right and not one, but three of the explosives smashed into him, spinning the craft as it was knocked back, throwing him around several times, because the new movements weren't synched to the motivational field. A bit of an oversight on his part. His nose crushed into the flying control panel in front of him so hard he lost consciousness. Even with his shield on. He woke with a broken arm, the right one, and his face gushing blood hard.

  On the good side he still had all his teeth.

  Smiling Tor rose into the air and headed toward the place where the aircraft most likely was, flying away faster than he could go. It had the right familiar triangle shape and blue-gray color.

  He followed it anyway, even as it kept gaining distance on him. He chased it for an hour, but finally it got too far away for him to see anything. It hadn't just gotten away, it might as well have vanished. His arm ached, bulging against the skin, but not breaking it. His nose was broken too. He was familiar with the sensation of that. It burned in his nasal passage from the damage and he could taste the blood, a bitter taste of copper and iron.

  Using his left hand to steer, which still felt awkward, he headed back to Lyn's hoping that everyone was still alive. It would be a hard thing to handle if not, but it was clear that one of the Ancients had tried to have them all killed even if everyone was alive. The logical people to look at would be the Ancients that hadn't shown yet... and Denno.

  Those were Austran craft. At least they were built to look like it. Same shape and color. Tor didn't notice any markings, but then he never had on any of their "Airplanes", had he? No need for that, because there were so few of them in the world now. There should be less than forty.

  Unless Black or Gray had some hidden out?

  They were both late, but not unexpectedly so, not yet. It made sense that it was Denno though, didn't it? If they were from his land, he could have called them in somehow. Even Tor could see ways it could be done, if he really wanted too. Was that what his plan had been all along? Get all the Ancients together and kill them all for some reason?

  Tor didn't know if that could be the case, but he'd find out.

  Chapter nine

  Oddly enough, it was the Cordes in his head that got him to calm down before he got into the meeting house, suggesting that it might not have been Brown that called in a death strike right on top of his own head. No one would have done that, not just to get at a bunch of people they could have taken out with a strike that didn't kill themselves too. It probably gave them all a reason to at least be considered innocent to begin with. Or insane. But if that was the case it shouldn't be that hard to figure out who was guilty.

  Crazy was kind of hard to hide long term.

  Tor started to limp inside, his right leg aching too, even though he didn't think it was that badly injured. Just a bruise on the thigh where he'd landed on the top of the seat, just before his arm had broken. Floating in was faster anyway. He didn't know what to expect inside, but what he found wasn't good. Several of the villagers were dead and had been dragged into the huge open space. Ali was going around and tending everyone that was still alive, while the rest of them stood around yelling at each other.

  Apparently even Ancients could get worked up when people tried to kill them. that was good to know, since eventually he'd be as jaded and world weary as they were. It was pretty clear to everyone present that Denno looked pretty bad, since he'd arranged the whole thing in the first place, getting them all in one place. Orange was busily shaking him by the neck for instance, causing the smaller man to turn bright red.

  "Get us here then slaughter us all? Who are you working with? Is it Black? Gray? What do they hold over you to make you willing to sacrifice yourself? Talk damn you!" She backhanded the smaller man, knocking him out instantly.

  Tor shook his head.

  "Orange, wait..." It surprised him a little, but the woman turned to look at him and relaxed a bit, dropping the man in her hands allowing him to land on the ground limply.

  "Let someone else have a turn."

  He smiled, a grim thing that he didn't feel, but this was way deeper than just a prank or something like that, and a lot of it was confusing, which probably meant they were all being led around by someone that had taken a lot of time to plot it all out.

  Ali ran to him, looking at his arm and face, eyes horrified.

  "Tor! Here..." She had a healing amulet ready to go and tired to touch him with it, getting him to float away from her. It left her eyes looking hurt, like it was a rejection of her aid, or worse, her. Tor understood now why she hadn't said anything earlier, it made a lot of sense. He'd been angry and violent, which caused her to lock down her own expression, even if he wasn't mad at her. Even Trice had probably been doing something like that, since they'd had some issues with her not treating him as a real person in the past. That wasn't Ali's intent at all. Tor g
ot that now. Or rather the Ancient in his head did. Cordes, for all he'd gone crazy at the end seemed to be a well balanced and nice person over all.

  One good enough to try and keep his Rhetistic programing from effecting Tor too much.

  He shook his head and tried to look sympathetic toward his wife, speaking in a soft tone.

  "I can't use that for healing yet love. Remember the damage to my pattern? I'll have to heal up from this the old fashioned way I think."

  "Oh..." She went blank again but put the amulet away. "What do we do then?"

  He didn't know, his medical knowledge was pretty scant. The bleeding nose had stopped at least. His mother snorted from behind him, in the door way.

  "Set the arm girl, and fix the broken nose. Stupid boy has gotten himself hurt. No doubt fighting when it wasn't needed. It's what men do for fun. That and exploit nature." She looked young... and wasn't his mother at all.

  She was taller for one thing, and looked younger. That plus the fact that his actual mother was standing across the room was a good sign that it was his grandmother, Lara Gray.

  "Shut it granny. You don't have all the information yet, so you need to collect that before running your mouth. We were attacked. Austran craft firing missiles. The Fast Carriage I was in got hit by three of them. This place weathered the attack well enough it seems. It's basically a shield anyway. Right now we need you to go over to Orange there for questioning, since you and Black are the most likely suspects, having not been here for the attack itself." He looked at his wife and smiled.

  "Ali dear? This is my grandmother, Lara Gray, would you be so good as to provide Orange with a Truth amulet and help her use it for the questioning? I probably shouldn't recommend beatings for family members just yet. Even the annoying ones. Shields on everyone. She's a master of contagions and what not, so we might need to filter those out if she is the responsible party, here for clean-up."

  That got action and for some reason his wife suddenly seemed happier. Still frightened, sure, but she didn't seem as stiff. It was the kind of thing he'd have missed before, he thought, thinking she was mad at him or hated him now.