by S M Briscoe
Before he could leave the private balcony, Shu’ma spoke, stopping him mid-stride. “Stay your blade, Rho’uk. You will not be needing it.”
Rho’uk was taken aback by the command and remained standing, waiting for his comrade and superior to face him, who stood himself before doing so.
“You have already failed once at the hands of this human. You needn’t humiliate yourself or your clan a second time, old friend.” Shu’ma’s words were like daggers in Rho’uk’s back, each one meant to shame and injure him. To that end, they were successful. He had no intention of sparing Rho’uk anything. Quite the contrary. “This time, I will handle him myself.”
Rho’uk held Shu’ma’s steely gaze, keeping, as best he could, the rage and sense of betrayal he felt from showing on his face. He refused to grant him that satisfaction. Shu’ma had always been cruel. A trait he had no doubt learned from his father. Both were self serving and hungry for personal power, but they also seemed to take pleasure in the suffering they caused. Something that had always disturbed Rho’uk.
As warrior servants to the God’s their mandate required them to kill. This was the warrior way. He had devoted his life to becoming extremely efficient at dealing death to those the God’s wished it upon. Yet he did so dispassionately. He took pride in his victories and his service to the Gods, but unlike Shu’ma, he did not relish the pain he inflicted to achieve them. It was simply a necessity. A means to an end, as his father had taught him. He honored the dead, as it was through sending them to the next place that his connection to the God’s was strengthened. His gratification came from that connection, not the acts required to make it.
The opposite seemed true for Shu’ma. From a young age he had held himself above others, his actions and motives being directed inwards, on his own personal escalation and position within the warrior hierarchy, yet he had always honored the Gods first. A lesson Rho’uk’s father had embedded in all of his student. The foundation of every Rai Chi warrior. It seemed it was a lesson Shu’ma had forgotten, or one he had just never bothered to fully learn and embrace. He was crossing a line now that he would not be able to come back from. He was disobeying a direct mandate from his father and Overseer, as well as putting his own lust for vengeance and self gratification before the will of the Gods, for there was no doubt in Rho’uk’s mind that he was entering the arena with one intention. To end the human’s life.
If he succeeded in that endeavor, they would both suffer the same fate. Shame before their people and the Gods, followed swiftly by their own deaths. And then their true, eternal suffering would begin at the hands of the Gods. Forever punished for their disobedience and denied entry to the next place. To never be reunited with all warriors that had come before. Or to stand with his father once more. It was a thought Rho’uk could not bare to consider. Somehow, he had to end this. The question was how he could do so without turning on Shu’ma, his comrade and direct superior. To do so, even in order to prevent him from breaking their mandate, would be no different from breaking it himself.
Apart from convincing Shu’ma to reconsider his stance and return to their Overseer with the human, alive, which was clearly not going to happen, his only remaining option was to challenge his position. To fight and kill him and to take his place. It was the only way to usurp his authority and end this madness. And it was a step Rho’uk was not yet prepared to take. As far as Shu’ma had strayed from the path the Gods had set them upon, he was still a warrior brother and Rho’uk believed he could return from the destructive brink he was dangerously close to tipping over. The question was, would he do so in time to save them both?
“You would deny me the chance to redeem my failure?” he asked, finally, altering his approach to a more personal one, which his comrade would more than likely sympathize with, considering his current self interest. “To reclaim my honor?”
Shu’ma took a step closer to Rho’uk so that they were nearly face to face, the sharp edge leaving his voice as he spoke. “You’re prediction as to the human’s whereabouts has already redeemed you, brother. You’re honor is restored.” He placed a hand on Rho’uk’s shoulder and then looked back towards the arena. “It is mine that must be reclaimed now. With blood.”
As Shu’ma turned to move towards the balcony exit, Rho’uk thought to call out to him. To remind him of their mandate. Of his duty to the Sect, and more yet, to the Gods, before himself. He thought to at least warn him of the human’s ability. But he remained quiet. None of it would have convinced Shu’ma to reconsider. To swallow his pride and return to Gaia with the human, intact. His mind was set.
Instead, Rho’uk watched his comrade exit the balcony, their remaining compliment of warriors following him. He remained where he was, his mind finally made up. He would not interfere. The Gods had brought them to this point, which meant they had done so for a reason. It was time that he started to put his faith in that. Whatever came would be There will. When the time came for him to act, he would feel Them calling him to. Leading him down the correct path. He was sure of it. He had to be. Everything depended on it.
RYZA
“Everyone keep moving!” Ethan shouted in the general direction of the mass of, what were soon to be, ex-slaves, slowly filing towards the dock silo bay housing the freighter that would fly them all out of this place. At least that was the plan.
Once they had opened all of the doors to the containment cells and disengaged the restraint bands of all the slave workers within them, Ethan guessed it would take some prodding to get them to make a run for it. Living under the strict and constant regiment of their mechanized overseers, the instinctive urge all being’s felt inherently within themselves to flee and fight their way free from torment and enslavement had been systematically beaten from them. Though there had been little physical abuse, the monotonous drone of each day’s work schedule, along with the constant surety that any lagging or slight deviation from the daily regimented schedule, let alone an attempt at escaping, would be met with certain vaporization, had effectively broken the spirits of most of the beings held here.
With that in mind, it had expectedly taken some to convince them to get out of the cells and moving. Luckily, most beings were also fairly quick to recall those same survival instincts, and once the first few had freed themselves, without deadly repercussions, the others had quickly followed. From there, it hadn’t been fast going and they had made fairly good time moving the entire group from the cell quarters to the docking bay, though Ethan knew they were running out of time. Soon enough, the security mechs would free themselves from the trap he had sprung, and when that happened they would have a fight on their hands, with hundreds of unarmed ex-slaves caught in the cross hairs.
Pushing his way to the front of the group, he passed through the open bay door and stepped out into the silo where Elora and Mac were waiting, the latter with a rather sour look on his face.
“How many more are there?” Mac asked, impatiently
“They’re almost all out,” Ethan answered. “Tarik is sending up the last groups of them now.” He nodded towards the freighter. “Did you get the engines fired up?”
“They’re warming,” Mac answered with a nod. “We’ll be ready to dust off in a few minutes.”
Ethan gave the man a wary look. “So, you’ll be able to fly it?”
“It’s a little bigger than what I’m used to,” Mac replied, his eyes thoroughly surveying the mass of the vessel before them with a growing look of uncertainty, “but a ship is a ship, basically. Repulsers. Thrusters. They all work pretty much the same. I’ll get us off the ground.”
“What about landing?” Ethan pressed.
Mac’s confidence didn’t appear to improve. “Why don’t we worry about that once we’re in a position to land. First things first, kid.”
Ethan nodded, not totally convinced, and turned to his sister, who was eyeing him, oddly. “Did you make contact with Sierra and Kern?”
“We’re ready and awaiting rendezvous coordin
ates,” Elora’s comm crackled to life, Kern’s voice answering the question before she could. “Sure hope this plan of yours works, kid.”
“Me too,” Ethan answered, honestly. “We’ll make contact again once we’re in the air.” The comm clicked off, signifying Kern and Sierra’s return to wave silence, and he let his gaze come back to his sister, who’s curious look still remained.
“What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You should see yourself right now,” she answered, a bit of sadness mixing with her already surprised expression. “You’re just so . . . grown up all of a sudden. Were we really apart that long?”
“A lot has happened,” he admitted. And a lot had. Maybe more than he would ever tell her about. Much of it he wished he could forget himself, and knew that he never would.
“To both of us,” she added, raising a hand to touch his face. He did his best to smile and placed a hand over hers. He supposed they had both been changed by the events of the past few days. Maybe neither of them would ever be the same for it. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Ethan had fantasized endlessly about living a life like the one Jarred led. One ripe with danger and excitement. A constant adventure. He understood now how childish that dream had been. There was a dark cost to all that adventure. He had experienced it first hand. Behind the danger and excitement, there was an equal, if not greater amount of suffering and loss. People . . . innocent people . . . suffered and died.
But not today. Nobody else was going to die in this place. Not if Ethan could help it. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could just stop all the bad things he saw around him from happening and keep all of those suffering people from dying at the hands of their greedy tormentors. The universe wasn’t a kind or gentle place. He had seen enough of it in his life to know that. Nobody could save everyone. But he could help these people. And he intended to.
Once they were all aboard the bulk freighter, Mac would fly them clear of Ryza and they would then rendezvous with Kern and Sierra, find a safe place to land, send the ex-slaves on their way and make their own escape on the Fancy Girl. A simple enough plan, as long as nothing went wrong.
As Mac turned on his heel to return to the freighter, Ethan reminded himself there would be plenty of time catch up with Elora later. For now, there was still work to be done.
“I’m going to head back and check on the rest,” he said, stepping back from his sister’s embrace. “Make sure Tarik hasn’t eaten anyone.”
Elora smiled at the joke, but the sadness was still there in her expression.
“Just keep them moving towards the ship,” he continued, hoping the reminder of her own job duty would take her focus away from whatever she was feeling. The last thing they needed right now was to be distracted. As he turned to go, he heard Elora calling out to him again, and he glanced back at her.
“Ethan,” she said, raising her voice over the anxious lines of passing escapees, though he was still close enough with at she did not have to shout. “I’m proud of you.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Mom and Dad would be too.”
The comment surprised him a bit and he felt a rush of pride surge through him as the words’ meaning sank in. Growing up without either parent for some time now, he had been more accustomed to hearing comments akin to, ‘What would Dad say?’, or ‘What would Dad think about that?’, usually following one of Elora’s scoldings for something he shouldn’t have been doing. Would they truly have been proud of him? Apart from the fantasy of being an adventurer, which had so recently smacked him in the face along with the bitter taste of reality, it was what he had always secretly wanted. Considering the possibility, he supposed they would be. Ethan smiled back at his sister at that and continued on down the corridor.
Maybe Elora was right. Maybe he had grown up. He had always figured that growing up was something that just happened once you were a certain age. You reached it and then magically people would finally start seeing you as an adult. That was definitely a child’s way of looking at it. Now we was beginning to see that it was not that way. Not so simple. Maybe it didn’t happen with age, but with the things you faced and how you faced them. Maybe once you lived through certain things, saw and did certain things . . . you could never go back to being a kid again. Maybe that’s when you finally grew up. It had happened to his sister when their father was taken. She had been forced to become an adult. Forced to become the parent. Maybe it was his turn now. After all the time spent wishing for just that, it was funny that he now found himself hesitant to cross that line into the grown up world. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
A whaling alarm tone startled Ethan from his thoughts as the light panels in the corridor began to flash in red sequence with the repeating wails. His eyes searched through the quickly panicked crowd of escapees, still hurrying towards the docking bay, but he was unable to see to its end. Glancing back in the opposite direction, he was also no longer able to see the exit doors, nor his sister. Probably no closer to her than he was the end of the fleeing crowd, he knew there was only one real direction to go. One choice.
Ethan took his first step, in the opposite direction of his sister . . . of escape, and knew that he had crossed that invisible line. And the moment he made that choice . . . he knew that there was no going back. Pressing forward, he ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach and continued moving through the stream of escapees, determination driving him. Soon he had passed the last of the fleeing beings, and he set into a full sprint down the open corridor.
As he approached the cargo lift, which they had used to shuttle the groups of escapees up from the lower holding level, Ethan became certain that something had definitely gone wrong. There was no sign of Tarik or any of the remaining escapees, and they had been coming up steadily since their breakout had begun. He couldn’t be certain anyone was left to come up, but if there weren’t any remaining, then where was Tarik? If there were, what had delayed them? In either case, the answer probably meant trouble. And considering the alarm blaring in his ear, he would have to say that trouble was a definite.
Regardless, Ethan was faced with a few options. Firstly, he could wait to see if Tarik and any remaining escapees came up in the lift. Time being against them, that wasn’t ideal. The second was for Ethan to go down to the lower level to check on the problem himself. Considering the effort he had put into escaping this prison, returning to it was most definitely not a desirable option. That left him with one final course of action. To turn around and run back in the other direction. Back to his sister and the ship. To fly out of here and save himself, leaving whoever was left and Tarik behind. Admittedly, a part of him wanted to do just that. The scared little kid in him.
But he wasn’t that kid anymore. One that had fantasized endlessly about living a child’s idea of a life of adventure, right up until the moment he had been thrown into the reality of one. He had curled up into a ball at that point, wishing for someone, anyone to come to his rescue. That kid had been naive. Foolish. And he was gone, replaced by someone else. He was still Ethan Bishop, but a stronger, less naive version of him, forever altered by what he had experienced. For the better, he hoped. And this new Ethan wouldn’t succumb to his childish fears. He wouldn’t turn and run to save his own skin. Not when there were innocent people that needed his help.
Ethan depressed the lift’s activation pad, and was startled when the doors immediately slid open. It hadn’t even been called back down to the holding level. And it was still in functioning order, which eliminated the possible explanation of a simple malfunction in the lift itself as the reasoning for the delay. It also meant that it hadn’t been shut down by way of the alarm that had been triggered, the byproduct of the facility lockdown he feared had commenced. The fact that the lift was still running was a confirmation that was not yet the case, though he guessed the window on that eventuality was shrinking rapidly.
As he stepped into the lift car and pressed the sub level�
�s button, the doors sliding shut again, followed by the slight inertia of the lift beginning its decent, his mind began to race. If the lift was still active, what had delayed Tarik and the others? Obviously, the answer was whatever had triggered the alarms, and the odds were heavily leaning towards the security-mechs, which must have escaped from the high security detention area. He knew they would do just that eventually, but had hoped they would be long gone by that time. Unfortunately for everyone, he had been wrong. Ethan felt the lift come to a stop and stepped to one side of the car so that when the doors parted he would not be standing in the opening like idiot. Not that hiding in the corner would save him from whatever waited outside.
Once the doors had slid fully open, Ethan took a steadying breath and poked his head out to survey the scene. Surprisingly, he saw very little, the chamber the lift opened into having fallen into darkness, the only illumination coming from the sporadic overhead light panels flashing in rhythmic red sequence with the still blaring alarm tone. It took a moment for Ethan’s eyes to adjust, but he was soon able to distinguish the outlines of the chamber walls and the storage crates that were scattered about its floor space. As he continued to focus he began to see something more. Faces. The remaining escapees. A dozen of them. More.
Almost without thinking, Ethan took at step out of the car towards them, stopping himself short a split second later. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The beings were huddled closely together in the center of the room, all looking in his direction, obviously able to see him with the light of the lift car, but none of them were moving towards him. They weren’t moving at all, as though frozen by . . . fear? Something was keeping them there, and as that realization struck him, his stomach began to churn with nauseating certainty of what he had just walked into.
