by Eric Vall
“It’s beautiful,” I told Cyl’ass honestly, and the prince puffed out his gills and flashed his scales in what I thought to be pride.
“Yes,” he hissed. “It is. And you have still yet to see the best partsssss.”
Before I could respond, we passed the first block of buildings and entered the city proper. The streets seemed to be made of packed dirt and threads of X’ebril. We went straight for about two blocks, took a left, and then nearly drove straight into a huge crowd.
At the sight of our vehicle, the crowd let out an undulating cry in unison, loud enough to reverberate through the car even with the glass in the way. I gaped at the hundreds of faces, the thousands of flashing scales. Beside me, Neka and Akela were just as floored, and their jaws nearly scraped the bottom of the van.
“What is this?” I asked as Cy’lass began to creep the vehicle forward. The crowd parted easily for us, but they still cheered and stomped at the ground.
The prince of the Almort turned to grin at us, and the lights that flickered over his face reflected off the opalescent points of his teeth.
“Part of our hunting party left the beach while you slept and returned to the city to tell of your triumph,” Cy’lass explained. He gestured to the crowd through the windshield. “They have come to see who defeated the Opalks.”
“And saved the son of their chief,” Slal’ops added. There was no mistaking the gratitude in his voice, and I rubbed at the back of my neck sheepishly.
Our progress through the city was markedly slower than it had been through the countryside. The crowd didn’t stop us, but they did hinder our speed as they clustered around the vehicle.
“The market is in the western half of the city,” Slal’ops explained to us as we drove, or rather crawled, through the streets. He pointed to our left, over the tops of buildings he told us were citizen residential pods. “We won’t pass through it now, but perhaps later. It is a grand place, full of all the riches our land has to offer.”
We kept driving and soon we passed a large, oval shaped building. It was set a little further back from the street, and along the grassy perimeter outside were a series of small ponds full of dark, navy blue water.
“This is where our young are educated,” Cy’lass dictated to us, and sure enough, as he spoke a few small heads popped up over the surfaces of the ponds to watch us pass. An adult Almort walked along the edge of the ponds, my guess their teacher or chaperone, and they waved to us in greeting.
“Wow. You have schools?” Akela asked in awe. One of the Almort children waved at us from their pond, encouraged by their chaperone. Akela waved back, and a soft smile stretched across her face.
“Of course,” Slal’ops answered, and he looked at the mechanic with as much confusion as his face could muster. “Do you not also educate your young?”
Akela snorted in derision, and even Neka let out a long-suffering sigh. Slal’ops and Cy’lass glanced at me for clarification. I shrugged.
“We do our best,” I said, in an odd defense of my species. “But in a lot of places, there just isn’t enough money. Some families can barely afford to eat, let alone afford an education.”
“How did you become… what you are then?” Slal’ops questioned, and then he turned to Akela. “Or you become such an advanced machine-healer?”
The mechanic shrugged, but I could see some color had risen in her cheeks. “My father taught me most of the stuff I know. The rest I sort of just figured out as I went along.”
When Slal’ops turned back to me, I just put my hands up and chuckled in self-deprecation. “Don’t look at me. I mostly got by on charm, good looks, and a bit of luck. She’s the genius,” I said as I knocked Akela’s shoulder.
Slal’ops looked contemplative for a moment. Then, he looked at Neka. “Is he considered handsome for your kind?” he asked, and now the blood was rising in my face.
Neka sputtered as she blushed, too. “Wha—I… I mean I think… what I mean to say is um y… yes?” She glanced at me furtively out of the corner of her eye and then looked away just as quickly when she saw me smiling at her.
There was a crackle of static in my ear, and then Omni whispered, “Colby’s head is already big enough. Don’t go adding hot air to it.”
I rolled my eyes as Akela snorted and Neka giggled.
Soon, I realized we were driving toward the tower at the center of the city. As we drew closer, it got taller, casting its long, faint shadow over us. The crowd grew too as the streets became wider. It was like our very own parade.
“Wait,” Akela gasped, and then shuffled over to the left-side window. “What’s that?”
She pointed to a gigantic building that seemed to sprawl multiple city blocks. It was rounded, like most of the architecture in the city, but the walls of X’ebril were burnished in some places until they shone bright silver, like starlight made physical. Spires of blue and green, that almost looked to be made of glass, also rose from the roof, tall, though not nearly half as tall as the tower we were headed to. Vehicles, like the one we were in, also drove in and out of multiple sets of wide bay doors.
Slal’ops clicked and grinned at Akela. “That is where the X’ebril is refined after it is carved out of the mountains. Once it is refined, it can be made into almost anything. Vehicles, buildings, tools. Nearly everything we make that is not directly from the land is made, at least partially, out of X’ebril.”
Akela’s eyes were so wide I was afraid they’d pop out of her head. “Can we go there?” she asked breathily as she pressed against the glass of the window. Her amethyst eyes shined with curiosity. “I’d love to see how you get the metal to interact with organics. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard of.”
The two Almort looked proud at her words. “It’d be an honor to show you, machine-healer,” Slal’ops said with a deferential dip of his chin.
Akela grinned and turned to me as if to make sure I’d heard. I chuckled and knocked shoulders with her again. “I’ll make sure we check it out,” I promised her.
Finally, we turned a corner and were past the refinery. The tower was just ahead, surrounded by a large courtyard filled with even more people. As our vehicle approached, the waiting crowd let out a cheer that the procession behind us echoed. It was a cacophony of sound and motion. It was…
“Amazing,” Akela whispered.
“We are here,” Slal’ops declared with a flourished wave of his hand.
Cy’lass slowed the vehicle to a stop, and we exited the vehicle in an orderly fashion, as did the Almort in the other vehicles behind us. Once we were on the ground, Akela slowly turned in a circle and took in all the buildings with their natural lights. Culverts of water we hadn’t noticed from the van wove side by side with the streets, but the babble of the water was soon drowned out as the crush of people swarmed us. As the people pressed in, chittering and clicking too fast and numerous for our translators to catch, Akela and Neka drew closer to my sides.
Before we could be fully mobbed, Cy’lass climbed atop the hood of the vehicle we just exited and tilted back his head to let out a sharp, piercing cry. Almost at once, the crowd quieted, though there were still sporadic hisses here and there.
When he had the crowd’s full attention, Cy’lass thumped his chest and made his scales flash in a cascade of flickering lights.
“Almort!” he bellowed. “You have heard the tale of the starmen who slew the Opalks, yes?” As he said this, he threw his arm out to point to the carcass that his hunting party was now removing from the trailer.
The crowd cheered in a series of clicks and cries.
“Well, here they are! The conquering starmen! Who not only defeated the Opalks, but also saved me and mine,” the prince shouted as he thumped his chest again and gestured to Slal’ops, who stood at his feet.
The second series of cheers were louder than the first, and I began to feel self-conscious of all the people reaching out to us. Akela seemed overwhelmed, too, from where she stood slightly behind
my shoulder. Neka, surprisingly enough, looked the most at ease. She smiled at all the people as they called to us and waved at them when she realized that made them cheer more. The mechanic and I were uncomfortable with all the fanfare, but sometimes I forgot how different things were for my assistant. The cat-girl had generally been dismissed as a pet, or worse, when I had worked for Terra-Nebula. There had never been so many people happy to see her. It warmed my heart and made bearing the brunt of the crowd’s focus more bearable.
Suddenly, a cry, sharper and louder than the rest split the air. I spun to see a handful of Almort standing in a doorway at the base of the tower. One of them was taller than the rest, taller even than Cyl’ass and Slal’ops, who were nearly half a meter taller than me. His skin and scales were so dark green that I thought they were black at first glance. He wore straps across his chest that matched those of Cyl’ass and Slal’ops, and I realized this must be his father, Chief U’eh.
“Um, CT?” Neka whispered to me. She had stopped waving and had drawn behind my other shoulder, opposite Akela. “Is… that the chief? Because he doesn’t look very happy to see us.”
The cat-girl was not exaggerating. I was still learning the intricacies of Almort emotions and how they were displayed, but I recognized the stance the chief stood in. It was a fighting stance, legs spread shoulder-width apart, spine ramrod straight, chin lifted toward the sky. Even from at least twenty meters, I could tell that the chief’s face was creased in a scowl.
Cyl’ass seemed to deflate a bit as he jumped down from the hood of the vehicle. Slal’ops chittered something quietly to his prince, too quiet for us to hear, but the son of the chief just clicked in what I thought to be dismissal. The prince took a deep breath that made his gills flare, and then he turned to me.
“I will speak to my father first,” he stated, suddenly more formal. “He is… wary of starmen.”
With that explanation, Cy’lass drew himself away from the crowd and walked over to his father. Chief U’eh clicked harshly and quickly at his son while he watched my every move.
The two of them were too far away for our translators to pick up what was being said, and while I wanted to take a step forward so I could listen in on their conversation, I decided to let Cyl’ass handle it for now.
I watched as Cyl’ass hissed and pointed at the Opalks body first, then at Akela and I, before he thumped his fist against his chest, and every single one of his scales flashed.
Chief U’eh flared his gills, but the argument seemed to be over. He hissed one last thing to his son, and the prince wove his head from side to side. Then, as his father disappeared back into the base of the tower, Cyl’ass stepped back and came toward us.
“My father wishes to speak to you and your tribe in private,” Cyl’ass said to me. He clicked, and his two sets of eyelids blinked in rapid succession. He almost looked… uncomfortable. “Before the feasting.”
Ah. The prince was worried he was being a bad host. Seemed like Chief U’eh wasn’t as moved by our rescue mission as his son had been.
“That’s fine,” I told Cyl’ass. “I wanted to speak to him as soon as possible anyway.”
Slal’ops came up to join us, and together he and Cyl’ass led us into the tower base. The moment we stepped out of the open air and into the shadow of the building’s interior, Neka stepped close to my side, and her tail wound around my wrist in trepidation.
“The chief really did not look happy to see us,” the cat-girl whispered. Her pupils were dilated to the size of dinner plates in the low lighting, and her ears flicked from side to side, trying to catch every little note of sound.
“You know first-encounter species tend to be more than a little wary,” I reminded my assistant in an equally low whisper. “Remember the Igroth?”
“Yeah, but these aren’t a first-encounter species,” Neka replied. “Terra-Nebula and Nova-Sol have both landed here, and things obviously didn’t turn out so well.”
I frowned. She was right, of course. Arden Warrick was stationed up in orbit, as was the Nova-Sol Corporation. As much as I hated Warrick, he was a decent enough negotiator. If he hadn’t had any luck on this planet, the Almort must be particularly strong-willed.
And perhaps even dangerous.
Both Cyl’ass and Slal’ops had seemed genuinely grateful for our rescue, and they had been nothing but amicable since. Slal’ops had even humored every one of Akela’s million questions, and he never seemed irate or annoyed by them. I wondered if it was possible that it had all been a ruse, a ploy to lull us into a false sense of security so we wouldn’t protest being taken into what seemed to be their most fortified structure.
I considered the two Almort in front of me for a long moment and then dismissed the idea. The prince and his companion seemed honorable. They could have left us on that beach. Hell, they could have attacked us, and after that battle with the Opalks, I probably wouldn’t have been able to fend them off. Instead, they spoke of feeding us and of showing us their planet and their home. Most likely Chief U’eh was merely cautious and didn’t take too kindly to strangers that fell from the stars.
We walked along a short series of hallways before Cyl’ass led us to a grand staircase that wound around and around as it led up to the apex of the tower. The walls and floors were made of X’ebril, and each time the Almort’s feet made contact with the ground, flashes of blue and green danced up the walls.
The ascent only took a few minutes, but I was sad to say I was a little winded when we made it to the top. I’d let my exercise regimen slip since I had been terminated, and I was paying the price for it now.
At the top, the stairs opened up into one large room about forty meters across. Every wall was made of the same semi-translucent glass that had been in the vehicles, so we had an uninterrupted view of Ka’le and the fields beyond. From this altitude, we could see kilometers in every direction.
It was magnificent. I could very nearly see straight through to the coast of the bay where we had landed. The fields were kilometer-long stretches of dark blues and greens, flashes of movement like blinking stars flaring in the grass. This world may be steeped in twilight, but it was full of life, color, and brilliance. These people, with their organic technology, their cultures and schools… I wanted to protect all of it.
The urge washed over me like a tsunami, and in its wake came the thoughts of what would happen to this world, to the Almort, if Corporations like Terra-Nebula or Nova-Sol were allowed to colonize here. I knew what would happen, the people and planets stripped by Corporate abuse. I had seen it before. I never wanted to see it again.
I focused back on the room we were in, a new, steel resolve in the set of my spine. There was little furniture in the room save for a large table in the center that took up most of the floor. That is where we found Chief U’eh. He stood on the opposite side of the table from us, his back to the window, and every line and scale of his body screamed defiance.
Fucking Arden Warrick always had to make my life goddamn difficult.
Cyl’ass and Slal’ops walked ahead of us and came to a stop a few meters from the table. Slal’ops hissed and dropped to a knee a step behind his prince. Cyl’ass hissed a similar note but merely inclined his head.
Chief U’eh barely even glanced at them. The moment we had stepped off the stairs, he only had eyes for me.
He jerked his head and clicked a resounding note, and Cyl’ass beckoned me to come forward. Akela and Neka stuck close behind me, but let me step out about a meter ahead of them.
Chief U’eh sized me up as I came to stand before him. I inclined my head as Cyl’ass had but did not kneel.
“Hello,” I said as I felt the familiar broker mask slide over my features. I gave the chief my most genial smile. “You must be Chief U’eh. It is an honor to meet you.”
“Who are you?” the Chief hissed. His voice was much deeper than his son’s, and rougher, like stones being ground together until they turned to dust.
“My name is Colby T
ower,” I said, and I kept my tone light despite the hostility in the chief’s voice. “However, my friends call me CT.”
“And you think we are friends?” Chief U’eh bared his teeth and clicked in displeasure. I didn’t let it rattle me.
“Well, I’d like us to be. I think Cyl’ass and I are off to a good start,” I said as I gestured at the prince. Cyl’ass flinched and dropped his gaze. Not a good sign.
“My son is not Chief of the Almort. He is still a boy in need of learning,” U’eh cut a sharp look at Cyl’ass, and I felt bad that I had put the prince in such an uncomfortable position.
Before I could defend the chief’s son, however, U’eh continued, “But he does not lack honor. Cyl’ass tells me he owes you a debt. You saved him and his hunting party from an Opalks.”
I realized that although it did not sound like it, the chief had asked me a question.
“Yes,” I replied. “We had just landed along the bay in our ship and saw they needed some assistance.”
U’eh chittered and his gills flashed. “And why have you come to our home?” he hissed, and I realized this is the question he’d been dying to ask since he set his navy blue eyes on me. “What do you want?”
I knew that I had to tread carefully here. One wrong move, one slip of the tongue, and I had no doubt that U’eh would have us fed to the next Opalks that ambled along. I took a deep breath and summoned up the speech I had carefully crafted while the Lacuna Noctis had sailed through hyperspace on the way here.
It took me a few drafts to get to the final product since I no longer wore Terra-Nebula’s colors. I spent many a sleepless night looking at myself in the mirror and asking myself the same question U’eh had just posed to me: What do you want?
“I want to help you,” I said to the Chief of the Almort. “If you will let me.”
U’eh hissed and clicked in aggravation. “We do not need your help. The Almort need no help from starmen.”
So, it seemed that they’d had multiple interactions with galactic travelers, and it had left a sour taste in their mouth.
