by James Somers
“Who are these Agonotti?”
“Well, these creatures—they feed upon our people. We try to fight them, but they become vapor--only taking physical form to feed or fight. They’re so fast we’re unable to stop them.”
“What about other people—other cities on this planet?” Kale asked.
“The Guardians protect most of the major cities. They have special abilities we don’t understand, but they are also able to defeat the Agonotti the way you did,” Juli’s father said.
“Then why don’t they protect your people?”
“Very simple,” he said. “We aren’t able to pay them the price they demand for their protection.”
“That doesn’t sound like a guardian to me. It sounds more like extortion.”
Just then, another man interjected himself into the conversation. “And just who are you to come here and judge. You’re a stranger yourself and we don’t have any reason to trust you either.”
“I am only passing through, as I told Juli inside the restaurant. I just wanted to get some food and supplies and be on my way. I don’t mean any of you any harm.”
“Just because Kale is a stranger doesn’t mean we shouldn’t trust him. Look at how he risked his life to save our people,” Juli said.
“Still, it’s not good for him to remain here among us,” the man said. Some of the others nodded their agreement with him. “He will only bring down the wrath of the Agonotti upon us if he stays.”
“We can’t just send him away,” Juli’s father said. “After all, he is only a boy.”
It might have been meant for his defense, but something about that statement crawled all over Kale. He wasn’t a boy by Barudii standards. He had passed the trials. He is only a boy? It made him shudder.
Juli, desiring to come to the aid of the nice young man, followed up with the same intent. “We can’t just send him out alone to let the Agonotti come after him.” She smiled at Kale as she said alone.
“I still say, you’re asking for trouble—you know the laws, Olson Barone!” the man said to Juli’s father, accusingly.
“Surely, Master Elam would not deny our people a hero and a hero’s welcome,” Olson argued. He stepped between Kale and the crowd. They had become eager to brand him a troublemaker rather than a deliverer.
“Young Master Kale,” Olson Barone said. “You may come to our home this evening and we will see you on your way with supplies when you are rested and ready.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Kale said.
“Not at all,” Olson said for the benefit of the crowd.
Juli ran back into the restaurant for a moment to gather Kale’s satchels he had brought with him. Olson guided Kale away, holding the boy by the shoulders as a father might his son. He stood nearly a foot taller and Kale thought that he must be a good half a foot taller than his own father. Juli hurried after them and met her father and Kale at their family’s transport.
Some of the crowd dispersed to attend the wounded and dead. The man that had challenged still stared at them and shouted his final warning. “You know the laws, Olson! You know the laws!”
RESCUE
Tiet picked up his supplies and slung the bag over his shoulder. He turned to look over the final jump coordinates as Mirah came into the transgate chamber carrying a small medical kit. She handed it to Tiet and kissed him goodbye.
“All you need to do is give him the injection intramuscularly near the base of his neck. The special Horva antibodies packaged in the serum will hopefully have the same effect on Kale’s symbyte organism as Emil’s natural antibodies did on the one that was in his body.
It was amazing how quickly Mirah had been able to find a cure once she had zeroed in on the differences in the clone physiology.
“You say that has my antibodies in there?” Emil asked.
“Well, I’ve engineered them a bit, but basically that’s right,” Mirah said. “Your father’s genetically enhanced physiology has given you the same kinds of ultra defenses as all the first generation clones had. There are really some amazing processes going on when you study it.”
“As long as it helps Kale.”
“Well you’ve got to find him first,” Grod said.
“We will—I know it, Father.”
Tiet and Emil had worked feverishly trying to figure out which planet Kale might have gone to. Hopefully, Draconis was correct.
“Are we ready, my king?” Emil asked.
“Activate the gate, Grod, and don’t worry I’ll watch out for Emil,” Tiet said.
“Actually, I was going to instruct him to keep an eye on you,” Grod said. “Be careful—there’s no telling what you will face on Draconis. Very little is known about it. Many refugees ended up there during the war, but who knows what has happened on Draconis since that time.”
Grod tapped the panel to activate the jump sequence to Draconis. The portal opened up before them. A wall of light quickly gave way to the blurred image of the planet beyond. Tiet and Emil walked through. They had prepared to return with a callback signal generator that could form a portal at the same location they would be arriving at.
As soon as Tiet stepped onto planet Draconis, he sensed kinetic power and supposed it must be his son. Tiet turned and saw Mirah in the portal and nodded to her with a smile just before it snapped shut. Kale had to be here somewhere. Now they just needed to find him.
They had traveled to one of the planet’s cities on record in the transgate’s database. Tiet had been so engrossed trying to sense Kale he paid little attention to his surroundings and the scene they had walked into.
He snapped back to reality as he noticed Emil’s kemsticks ignite in his peripheral vision and cut down a shadowy figure. Tiet realized an attacker closing in on him as well. He dodged an attack. The man rebounded off a building wall nearby and came at him again. Tiet’s weapons leaped to his hands, but Emil, with his sticks linked to form a staff, was quicker and cut through the humanoid.
Emil had shared with them all, how Kale had been training him while going through his own exercises with Wynn. Tiet had half expected to be protecting Emil on this search, but he was quickly finding it wouldn’t be necessary.
“Thanks!” Tiet said as the attacker fell to the ground.
But Emil had already turned his attention to the scene around them. They had entered the city during a battle. People ran frantically in every direction as dark figures swept through the streets of the city grabbing up people to feed upon.
Emil wasted no time in his response to the situation and quickly ran into the fray with his kemstaff spinning wildly around him. Tiet followed after and began to engage the humanoid creatures as well.
He employed complex mental attacks and took down several foes at a time—throwing them, crushing their organs and hurling nearby objects at them. More humanoid creatures came in to attack—like insects swarming over a busted hive.
Then Tiet noticed, among the chaos of screaming civilians and materializing marauders, another group of people fighting these beings and having success at it. At least, they seemed to be winning. The creatures just ran away from them as the group attacked with their advanced weaponry and special abilities.
Tiet saw ten of them in all—several who were flying and a few others using powerful psychokinetic attacks. Another appeared to have exceeding physical strength and stood twice the size of a normal human. Impressive to watch, but Tiet sensed something sinister in their interaction with the humanoids. They hadn’t killed any of them. The special group and the humanoid wraiths seemed, to him, to be engaged in an elaborate dance of simulated combat—a ruse perhaps?
But the creatures fell left and right to Tiet and Emil’s efforts and it drew the attention of the other group of warriors. Their dance had been interrupted. Then, unexpectedly, a mental attack sent a large wheeled vehicle at Tiet as he cut down one of the humanoids. He flipped up and back touching briefly on the surface of the vehicle as it spun through the air underneath him an
d then smashed into several others parked in front of him. Tiet landed in a crouched position with his weapon postured defensively. He quickly realized the mental attack had not come from the feeding creatures swarming about, but had come from among the other warriors pretending to defend the city.
Could it have been a mistake in the midst of the battle? The barrage of laser fire from two of the approaching warriors gave him a fast answer. Emil fought close by—bounding through the air with his staff whirling about him as he deflected the incoming blasts.
The technologically endowed pair of warriors flew at them under mechanical power and rained down an onslaught of laser fire on Tiet and Emil. Emil ducked behind a larger vehicle as the two potted its exterior with their weapons. Tiet didn’t care anymore if it was a case of mistaken identity. He seized one of the flyers with a mental attack, sending him crashing into a nearby building’s wall of windows. The resultant spectacle sent slivers of refracted light and glass everywhere. As he smashed through the panes the great shards of glass cut him to pieces.
The other mechanized fighter continued his attack on Emil. The young Horva burst up and over the smoldering vehicle he had taken cover behind and let fly a pair of spicor discs. One exploded in flight from laser fire, but the other found its intended target. The warrior’s upper body disintegrated in the blue sphere of the spicor ignition. The rest of him fell to the pavement.
Tiet watched the other warriors. They landed just down the street from him. One of the black wraiths approached the leader.
It seemed as though the creature sought an explanation for the counterattacks against his wraiths by Emil and Tiet. Then it happened. A thought, no, a message passed telepathically between them. Tiet heard it loud and clear, though wasn’t meant to.
Do not approach me in public! The people may become suspicious! Take your people and go now, I will contact Dirge when I have finished here.
There was an obvious connection between them. He decided to interrupt the conversation.
So, you have a league with these wraiths to destroy the people while you play the heroes for them?
The leader of the human warriors immediately shot a snarling glance in Tiet’s direction from down the street—a look that acknowledged his secret discovered.
The large muscular one, looking as though he made up two people, ran in for the kill, wailing like a carmaden stalker. He picked up one of the vehicles near by and brought it right over Tiet and slammed it down at him.
Tiet leapt away just as the object came down on his position. Emil’s staff cut through the air, flying toward the giant. The huge man brought his hand full of crushed metal back up from the ground where Tiet had stood and deflected the weapon with it. Then, he tossed the wad of metal at Emil, twenty feet away. The boy dodged away in time.
The huge warrior then picked up another vehicle and brought it to bear on Tiet again. Tiet put his mind on the behemoth and he stopped in his tracks. Tiet found the giant’s heart and interrupted the electrical conduction system keeping its rhythm. The mammoth man seized and dropped the vehicle he was holding to grab his chest in pain. He bellowed as he dropped to his knees and then fell over completely with a thud that Tiet felt through the ground where he was standing.
The citizens watched the fight. Their attackers had retreated at the behest of the Guardian leader, Elam, and now he called out to the people.
“Citizens!! These invaders have come to fight for the Agonotti against us!” Elam said. The Guardian leader stood tall with chiseled features. He wore a mane of shoulder length blonde hair that gave him a wild appearance. The man exuded power that could be felt.
Tiet looked at the expressions of the people around them. They began to murmur and others picked up objects as though they would attack.
“Isn’t it interesting!” Tiet shouted. “That I and the boy were the only ones actually killing any of your attackers?”
The people stopped murmuring and looked around to find that it was true. The only Agonotti dead, and their remains disintegrating, were around Tiet and Emil.
The Guardian leader became enraged as he realized the people might actually question his authority. “Is this the people I have given my life to protect?”
“But, Elam, we don’t know anything about these men,” said one of the citizens.
“I have told you all that you need to know! Destroy these invaders or you will be left to protect yourselves from the Agonotti. I will not be questioned by those whom I graciously give my best efforts to protect!”
Tiet realized it was no contest. These people were so terrified of the creatures that had been attacking them, that they would do whatever it took to keep these warriors protecting them—or at least the protection they thought they were receiving.
The men among them pointed their weapons. He and Emil only had a moment and Tiet realized the talking and reasoning portion of the meeting had clearly passed. He grabbed Emil by the waste and leaped over the crowd as they fired their projectile weapons at them. He released Emil as they touched down on the ground again and they ran behind a group of parked vehicles as the shots pounded the area around them.
Windows shattered and shrapnel flew all around them as the slugs of metal zipped wildly through the air. Tiet and Emil dodged about through lots of parked vehicles and building alleyways as the citizens followed after them.
He didn’t want to hurt any of them. After all, they felt like they had no other choice. Retreat was the only option at the moment. It didn’t appear that Kale was anywhere to be found in this area. But they still had to get out of this city alive to have a chance of finding him.
As they came around one of the buildings with shots pinging against the concrete all about them, Tiet noticed a large drain of some kind running below the street. Just ahead of them, he saw a metal plate that covered an access point to the large pipe below and he seized it with his thoughts.
The cover obeyed and jutted up into the air long enough for them to jump through into the pipe below. The cover came down quickly, but fitted back into place softly to avoid any noise that might give away their escape route. The tunnel stood tall enough for the pair to stand upright. Tiet reached out with his mind in either direction and found that one way ran out of the city to the east.
“It’s this way. Come on.” He began to jog down the pipe with Emil right on his heels. He drew his kemstick for light and away they went to find Kale, he hoped.
☼
The hover vehicle they rode in wasn’t nearly as fast as he was used to, but Kale found it enjoyable anyway. Juli sat across from him in the large rear compartment while her father piloted the craft from the front.
“Are you sure you’re not cold?” she asked.
He shook his head, though his lips may have been quite blue by now. She had the compartment canopy open about halfway and there was snow everywhere around them. Fortunately, his uniform was well insulated and the thermal fibers incorporated within the garment made it suitable for such environments.
Still, it was cold. Juli seemed to be quite used to this sort of weather; thoroughly enjoying the cool wind whipping through her shoulder length auburn hair. Kale thought the sight of her quite nice, though he never would have said so.
The intercom chimed into the compartment with the voice of her father, Olson. “We’ll be arriving very soon, young master. If you have any favorites for supper, I can call ahead to my good wife and she will prepare it tonight?”
“Anything would be fine, thank you.”
Kale liked this Olsen Barone and his daughter. They had been the only ones willing to trust him among the citizens of the town, even though he had saved them all from their enemies.
Within another fifteen minutes, they arrived at the Barone family’s small home, surrounded by snow and trees. This is nice, Kale thought as he scanned the hills around them. The snow had begun to fall again in great flakes, nearly the size of his hand.
Olson put his arm around Juli as they walked from the vehic
le toward the wooden house. Kale thought of his own father, far away, without any clue where his own son was. He felt quite sad and guilty at having done this to his parents, but his dreams of murder and the symbyte lying semi-dormant within, cured him of it. This was still for the best.
“Come, Master Kale, Mamma will have something hot for us to warm your bones.”
When they entered the house, the scent of burning wood and the wonderful aroma of food filled Kale’s nostrils. He had been hooked like a hungry fish. He supposed his last home cooked meal had been before the trials back home—before the symbytes had put them on the run.
An older woman version of Juli met them inside. “Supper’s ready, everyone!” she shouted as she hurried back to her cooking. “Juli, help Master Kale to find a spot and then help me in the kitchen.”
Juli found him a seat at the small table, big enough to seat about six people then headed off to help her mother. The house was very cozy and warm, with a fire burning in the stone hearth. Even the inner walls remained bare wood of some kind—primitive but peaceful. It reminded Kale of Wynn Gareth’s former home for its lack of overt technology.
Wynn had always hated the gleam of it. The old Barudii master enjoyed technology only as a necessity and he had often taken Kale out into the mountains to train for weeks at a time. Even Wynn’s Barudii blades and kemsticks were handled in etched wood. Kale had often noted that the ancient Barudii warriors had used adomen blades alone and were still quite deadly.
Juli and her mother soon returned to the table with a number of steaming dishes full of food that smelled even better sitting in front of his face. Kale sat next to Juli’s father who heaped his plate and passed the dishes around to him. Kale supposed he would enjoy everything they were serving and piled on the food as her father had done.
