by Eric Vall
My heart and stomach had suddenly switched places at the base of my throat, and I struggled to swallow past my racing pulse. Akela met my eyes, and I could see my same worry reflected in her violet gaze.
“I thought we’d have more time,” she whispered, her voice raspy and jagged. As I watched, some fear transformed to anger in her eyes. “Time to prepare or train or, or... something at least! How can they expect you to be ready for whatever this is? We just crashed landed on this rock yesterday! We battled a sea monster and saved their prince, and they haven’t even told you what the fucking trial is,” she hissed, incensed.
Something about her words tickled at the back of my brain, but before I could chase the thought, Omni cut in again.
“That’s not necessarily true,” the AI corrected in our ears.
The three of us held our breath and looked at each other with wide eyes before Omni continued, “Chief U’eh said that the first trial would be a test of strength and physical prowess.”
We collectively exhaled a forceful sigh.
“Oh, okay, that’s great then! Problem solved,” Akela scoffed. She suddenly got to her feet and strode a few meters away as she muttered under her breath. The silver-haired woman began to pace, her anxious steps worrying a groove into the tall grass, the stalks blinking sporadically as they were crushed beneath the soles of her boots.
The flickering and fading lights caught my eye and, again, something nudged at the peripherals of my mind, but every time I tried to draw the full thought forward, it slipped away again, like smoke.
Neka squeezed my hands and brought my attention back to her. The cat-girl still knelt in front of me and her hands still cradled mine around the medicinal bowl. I looked up into her golden ocher eyes and there was fear there but there was also... faith. And trust. My assistant was frightened by the impending and unknown fight, but she believed in me. She believed that, no matter what had happened in the past, I had always been able to pull through. I always made everything work out in the end.
“Do you believe I can do this?” I whispered quietly to Neka, unable to stop the words from tripping off my tongue.
The beautiful cat-girl blinked up at me and, for the first time, I noticed she still wore the necklace I bought her. The delicate silver chains rested gently against the hollow of her throat and the bare skin of her collarbones, and I watched as it rose and fell in time to Neka’s breathing. The white metal really made the autumn color of her hair stand out, and I couldn’t help myself from reaching out and snagging a lock that framed her face. I let the silken strands slide through my fingers and brought my gaze back to Neka’s eyes.
There was no trace of trepidation left in them. Her face, which just a moment ago had been solemn and sad, was now determined and resolved, and the gentle curve of the cat-girl’s chin had suddenly taken on a very Akela-esque steely cut.
“Colby Tower,” my assistant said seriously, “I know you can do this. You are a great man, honest and brave, and Terra-Nebula didn’t make you like that. No matter what colors you wear, I will always believe in you. Nothing can or ever will change that.”
In the over five years I had known her, Neka hadn’t used my full name since the day we met, so I knew she meant business. Her eyes were suddenly twin suns, and they burned with the intensity of her faith. My heart slowly slid back down my throat to its rightful place in my chest, and my once frantic pulse slowed to something strong, sturdy, and true. I smiled at Neka with all the affection and warmth my heart overflowed with.
“If I can be half the man you say I am, these trials will be a walk in the park,” I told the cat-girl. Then I leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss to the soft curve of her cheek. “Thank you, Neka. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
My assistant blushed and brought a hand up to her cheek. With her hands no longer around mine, I drew up into a fully seated position and raised the cup I held in a toast to the cat-girl.
“Well, here goes nothing. Bottoms up,” I said, as bravado coursed through my veins and, with that, I opened my mouth and tipped the cup’s contents down my throat.
The Opalks juice had burned like liquid fire as it went down. This was worse. It was thicker than I had anticipated, more viscous, and it felt like cold mud crawling past my teeth and down my esophagus. I gagged but forced myself to swallow once, twice, and then I was gasping, grimacing, and spitting off to the side. My tongue felt gritty and tasted like salt, dirt, and something sharp and metallic.
Neka’s face was scrunched up in sympathy. “Are you okay, CT?”
“Never better,” I rasped in return, eyes watery, but then... something was different.
My mouth still tasted awful, but the roiling in my stomach came to an abrupt stop, and the pounding in my head slowly began to lessen and then abated completely. Now, I could hear the drums clearly as they beat a staccato rhythm somewhere across the fields. I looked off toward the sound and realized my eyesight and focus became clearer too because I could just make out the faint flash of lights toward the east where Neka said the crowd was gathered, just as the city of C’eka began to curve away.
I looked back at my crew to find them staring at me with varying levels of concern. Akela had even stopped her pacing.
“CT?” the mechanic hedged, and her voice chimed clear as a bell. In fact, everything sounded crystal sharp now: the rustle of the grass around us, the faint hum of static in my ear from the coms device, the pulse of blood racing through my veins. I looked down at my arms, and I thought I could see the zap of energy that now coursed beneath my skin.
“I’m good,” I gasped and looked up at the silver-haired woman with a wild smile splitting my face. “In fact, I feel great. Holy shit.”
I jumped up, and Neka yowled in surprise at my sudden movement. I landed nimbly on the balls of my feet and rocked back and forth for a moment. My heart was really racing now, and my chest heaved oxygen in and out in great gulps. I crouched and then jumped as high as I could, spun in the air, and delivered a high kick to an imaginary enemy. I felt exhilarated, charged, like I could sprint a hundred kilometers and not feel it, like I could run so fast I’d take flight.
“Whoooo!” I crowed as I shadowboxed in place. “Wow! This stuff feels amazing!” My feet danced back and forth in the crumpled grass and traced old patterns I hadn’t practiced in years, but everything flowed perfectly, seamlessly. I was back on Proto again, young and full of hot blood, my stomach a hungry hollow, and the only thing quicker than my smile was my fist.
I spun around in a circle and took in the fields around me with bright, fresh eyes. Everything looked crystal clear, like it was in ultra-high definition. My racing brain devoured every little detail my eyes could see.
For nearly a hundred meters in any direction from where we were standing, the evidence from last night’s feast was apparent. Tables and cushions still littered the grass around the huge, blackened crater that was the bonfire. The grass itself was trampled near flat by the hundreds of Almort feet that had danced around the fields last night, and the smell of smoke and charred meat lingered in the air.
However, there was no garbage, not a single discarded plate or cup or sliver of Opalks bone to be found anywhere. The fields look like they had been used, yes, but not abused, not destroyed. As my eyes darted to and fro, I felt a detached sort of awe as I watched the grasses begin to perk up. The bent stalks slowly straightened out and refilled with moisture, and the tips of the blades flickered with a pale light. It was an amazing biological wonder. I had seen Terra-Nebula officials destabilize whole space stations just for a celebratory drink. The Almort were clearly different. I remembered the horror on Slal’ops’ face when we explained pollution to him. It seemed they truly had no concept of it.
Before I could ruminate on that thought further, the drums had finally reached a crescendo behind me, and I whirled to face them. Their song of violence called to me, a primal, base call, and I bounced up and down on my toes, eager to answer it.
&n
bsp; “Fuck. Is he high now? Are you actually high right now?” Akela snapped at me. The mechanic swung around to stand in front of me, her hands planted on her slim and narrow hips, but it was like she moved in slow motion. I tracked every twitch of her muscles, every centimeter she shifted, even the breaths in between each moment. Everything was happening in high definition, and my brain raced a million kilometers a second to process all the raw data it was seeing.
I watched as the mechanic reached up, slow, so slow, to snap her fingers in front of my face, but I snagged her hand before she could touch her thumb to her middle finger. Akela gasped, and I grinned at her, wild but alert and hyper-focused.
“I’m not high,” I told the mechanic. “Just heightened.” Akela snorted, but I pressed on, goaded by the drums and their pulsing beat. “Besides, the healer told Neka I’d get a strength and vitality boost. So it’s nothing out of the ordinary, right? Right.”
I was distantly aware that I was talking so fast I had barely taken a breath between sentences.
Akela shot a skeptical look at Neka, but the cat-girl had turned to face the sound of the drums, too, and her tail lashed back and forth anxiously.
“Am I the only one worried about you being high off your ass? What if you have some kind of reaction? Well, at least a more severe one than you’re having right now,” the mechanic huffed, but I could see how the drums were putting her on edge. The scowl was mostly a front to deflect the fear that flickered in the depths of her amethyst eyes.
Static crackled in my ear, but instead of inducing a migraine, this time it felt like the starter gun going off at the beginning of a race. “CT is physically not in any danger from that particular cocktail,” Omni informed us via the coms. “Neka had me run a standard field toxicity analysis, and nothing scanned as being harmful toward the human constitution.”
“See?” I exclaimed and clapped my hands. “Everything checks out, so let’s get going. Don’t want to keep the Almort waiting.”
With that, I stepped around the cushions I had spent the night sleeping on and made to cut across the fields.
I didn’t get very far, however, before Akela jogged in front of me and slapped her palm against my chest to get me to stop. Her skin was warm and soft and smooth, and I narrowed my eyes at her, nearly vibrating out of my skin with the need to run, fight, move, fuck, anything. Before I could say a word in argument, though, the mechanic shoved a bundle of fabric in my face that smelt of salt and the sea.
I stumbled a step back and caught the clothes as they fell against my chest. It was only after I spotted the familiar black and gray color scheme, and the flash of Odrine yellow, that I realized I was still bare-chest and half-naked in the Almort’s formal occasion wear.
“Could you just wait a goddamn second? Jeeze. You can’t go competing in trials in your underwear, Tower,” Akela grumbled under her breath. She had her arms crossed, and her brow furrowed, still upset over the Almort steroid elixir, and the impending event the drums heralded, but I could also see a faint flush in her cheeks that extended down the pale, lithe column of her throat.
An evil, wicked thought formed in my brain, and because I currently had no inhibitions or filters or fear, I acted on it without thinking. I grinned at Akela, who still pouted, and then winked over at Neka, who stood a few meters away, and before either of them could say another word, I shrugged out of my gauzy tunic and shucked the utility belt/shorts combo I wore underneath.
Akela gasped and spun around. “CT! This is serious.”
Neka merely giggled and placed her hands over her eyes, used to my antics, but I could see the crimson stain on her cheeks, too.
I chuckled at the two women’s modesty as I reached down and pulled on my gray jumpsuit. “I know. That’s why I’m not wasting any time. Gotta get a move on.”
Akela flapped a hand vaguely in my direction. “Now you’re having too much fun at my expense,” she accused and threw my own words back at me.
I grinned even wider as I shrugged into my coat, the heavy, Odrine-lined material familiar and comfortable along the line of my shoulders. “Karma,” I parroted back at the silver-haired woman, and I was sure that if the mechanic had something to throw at me, she would have.
When I was fully dressed, I cleared my throat and gave a small spin and bow as the women turned around. “So?” I asked. “Think I look ready to take on this Akornath?”
Neka nodded her head almost immediately, her cheeks still sweetly pink but her eyes hard and determined. Akela still looked skeptical, but the mechanic looked me up and down and finally gave a nod of her head, too. I was still moving on instinct, so I walked over to the two women and pressed a kiss to the top of each of their heads.
“We’re gonna make it through this,” I whispered to them. “Just watch.”
“And I will be here to assist you, Colby,” Omni added in my ear, “in any way I can.”
“Thanks, O,” I told him sincerely as Neka and Akela wound their arms tight around me, both of their heads pressed against my collarbones. For just this one instant, we were all wrapped up in each other: me, Neka, Akela, and even Omni. Our own little family group hug.
And then that moment passed. Time marched on, and the drums called my name. I took one last inhale of the collective scents of my assistant and mechanic and then I drew away and turned toward the east. Even from this distance, I could feel the ground tremble beneath the relentless, thrumming beat.
“Now,” I said as I exhaled sharply. “Let’s go see what the hell this Akornath really is.”
And, with my crew at my back, and fire in my veins, I began to walk toward my destiny.
Chapter 15
The drums continued to grow louder and louder as we drew closer to Ka’le, and the rhythm reverberated up through my feet and into my bones. The Almort’s brew that coursed through my veins made me want to run toward the sound, sprint toward it, but whenever the urge crested in me, I remembered Neka and Akela at my back. I already kept a clipped and fast pace. Neka, with her shorter legs, had to skip or lightly jog to keep up, but my assistant didn’t say a word of complaint. Akela didn’t either, for that matter. My two crew members just followed me across the fields, their faces grim yet still determined.
Finally, we curved around the eastern portion of Ka’le, and the grass grew longer around us and more varied in color, with the usual blues and greens but also lilac and deeper indigos. The blades tickled at my waist and lower chest and nearly swallowed Neka as they rose up to her chin, but thankfully the vegetation parted easily around us. With just the barest sweep of my hand, the grass would flicker, sway to the side, and allow us to pass.
The drums were near deafening now, and when I lifted my head and looked out over the grasslands, I could see the edges of the crowd Neka had mentioned about a kilometer ahead of us. There seemed to be more people gathered this morning than there had been last night. A drop of trepidation slid down my spine, but I could not stop moving. My momentum projected me forward, and the drums pulled me the rest of the way.
As we drew closer, underlying the beat of the drums was a constant, droning hiss, like the sound of the sea as it lapped at the shore. The noise had started to become familiar, and I recognized it as the Almort talking amongst themselves, too numerous and overlapping for our translators to pick up. We were only about a hundred meters out from the crowd now and, quickly, that boost of bravado was being drowned out by the rapidly growing number of questions in my head. Questions like what the hell was going to happen when I reached those drums? What would this trial entail? Should I have prepared? Could I have?
I quickly shook those questions away. They wouldn’t help me now. I needed to focus because this was it.
The drums continued to play their violent, siren song, a rising crescendo that matched the thrum of my pulse. I felt the music imbue me with its power, with its strength.
This was the moment.
Everything I had ever done or ever been had led me to right here. All those end
less days scrapping on the streets of Proto with my stomach a hungry hollow and my knuckles a perpetual bloody mess. All the years working under the thumb of Terra-Nebula, and the skills I cultivated while under their employ, the things I learned about the ever-expanding universe, about people, about greed.
All of that was to prepare me for this test. A test in which I had to prove my worth not only to the Almort, but to myself as well.
I may not be a Corporate man any longer, I may not wear the colors, but I was still a broker. I was still the broker.
I was Colby fucking Tower.
And these trials would not defeat me.
There was no room for doubt. There was no room for indecision. This was the right choice. This was the only choice. Too long had Corporations like Terra-Nebula taken advantage of and abused the people and planets they swore to improve.
No more.
It was time for a paradigm shift. It was time for a change.
And this was the first step.
All I could do now was lift my chin and put on a face worthy of facing the Almort and their Akornath.
Neka, perhaps sensing my inner turmoil, reached her tail out and brushed it along the outside of my wrist. She didn’t hold on like she usually did, probably in an effort not to slow me down, but the caress was enough for me to understand that she and Akela had my back every step of the way.
For a moment, I felt grateful, lucky even that my crew was with me, but then we reached the edge of the crowd, the sound of the drums enveloped us, and I didn’t have room left to feel anything at all beyond the chaotic beat.
There were hundreds of Almort here, and the crush of their bodies made me want to look back and check on Neka and Akela, but I kept my head up and didn’t pause my stride in order to give the illusion of confidence. An important rule I had learned while growing up was to never let them see you sweat.
Surprisingly, the Almort parted for us just as easily as the grass had and fell back in line behind us as we went. They clicked and chittered to each other, but our translators were overwhelmed by the cacophony of noises, which was probably for the best. I didn’t think I wanted to know what they were all saying about me just then.
