by Dave Walsh
Tyr let out a mighty laugh, slapping Ingen across the back with a heavy palm. “You still make me laugh, Ingen. It’s been a full cycle since you last spoke like this. That’s when I know that things are going to get interesting indeed!”
“Tyr,” Ingen began as he stared off into the distance. “How far is the nearest Ministry, err, Banished settlement?”
“There’s an encampment forty klicks northeast, away from the wastelands. Do you plan on hitting it? Ingen, we are an honorable people. Our scouts have told us that it is just civilians, minimal military.”
“No, I don’t plan on attacking,” he said as he stretched out his arms and let out a yawn. “I’ve been away from my people for too long. I’m not sure what’s going on with them, and I only have a few people on board that I’ve spoken to a few times, but those links have all gone dead. They are jamming communications from the ground to the fleet; there’s nothing that I can do. We can’t be in the dark down here. I can’t let you guys go out into battles if we don’t know what to expect anymore.”
“So you are going to march right into a Banished camp as a proud Krigan warrior and...”
“Not exactly, no.” He couldn’t help but chuckle at how straightforward the Krigans' thought process was. “Like you said earlier, only the Krigans have opposed the Banished. I’ll pose as a Helgean monk, and they won’t even think to stop me.”
“Then what? You tell them that you are of them, that you were lost, then you abandon us while we are here without hope? Ingen, we’ve treated you as a Krigan, you are a brother...”
“No, Tyr,” he said as he faced the proud Krigan warrior, making eye contact. “I’m going to scout, going to try to send a few communications back up and see what I can find out before I return. This is the only way. I’m afraid of what is coming after today. This rebellion could be squashed easily.”
He picked himself up, his holoscanner in hand. “I can’t see any other way. I’ll leave in the morning. I can’t go back anyway, Tyr. They think that I’m dead. If they found out that I’m alive, they’d kill me on sight.”
* * *
It was a cold morning, but Andliosian mornings always felt like that -- biting cold. There were, of course, seasons on Andlios, but those seasons were (Ingen assumed) very mild compared to Earth's seasons. At least that's what he had read about Earth, that is.
He pulled open his Helgean robe to place his holoscanner in the pocket of the robe and conceal a single-handed pulseaxe on his belt beneath the robe.
He had only been on Andlios for what was two Earth years, but he knew better than to face the Andliosian wastelands without some form of protection. The camp wasn’t far away, which was both comforting and troubling at the same time. That meant that it would only take him a full day to reach the camp, barring any sort of inclement weather, but it also meant that his band of Krigans were that much closer to being attacked at any given time.
The Earthers weren’t afraid anymore, especially when it came to placing a civilian settlement that close to what was known as Krigan territory. The small expanse of wastelands that lay in between the Krigan base and Earther settlement was probably the only thing that was stopping them from expanding out further. There had always been plans to terraform the planet if they found the planet that they had called Omega (which Ingen now knew as Andlios) hospitable.
Reports from beyond the lines confirmed that they had indeed begun small terraforming experiments on parts of the wastelands, to varying degrees of success. He knew full well that they had the ability to terraform the entire planet if they wished, but that they’d need to pull everyone from the planet to do so and that Andlios wouldn’t be habitable for at least another cycle. Not fully, at least.
Ingen looked out over the expanse of the wastelands in front of him, back to the door when he heard a clattering of footsteps behind him. He turned to see Alva, pulseaxe in one hand and a Helgean robe hanging over the forearm of her other. Ingen laughed at the sight, shaking his head as the girl approached with a stern expression on her face.
“Alva.” Ingen knew that he wouldn’t be able to talk her out of coming, but he had to try. “Does Tyr know that you are here?”
“Yes,” she said. “I told him that I’m coming with you, no matter what.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said as he looked over the girl, dressed in her Krigan warrior gear, most of it ill-fitting. “Why?”
“I’ve yet to see battle,” Alva said. She hefted the pulseaxe into the sling over her shoulder before wrapping the robe around her shoulders. “I haven’t even seen these Banished yet. Father thinks that this won’t be dangerous and that you’ll look after me, but honestly, you don’t know these wastelands like I do.”
“So basically, your father thinks that I’m a fool who will be lost without --”
“Her father thinks that it will be beneficial for both of you.” Tyr’s voice boomed from behind them as the Krigan emerged from the cave door.
“Tyr,” Ingen said as he looked up to see the giant of a man looking over both of them. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“Yes, my friend,” he said as he gave him a pat on the back. Ingen almost stumbled forward at the force of the blow. He would never get used to that, he feared. “Alva knows these wastelands better than any man. I’d never allow you to face this alone, Ingen. Sending a Krigan warrior with our full beards might arouse suspicion, but Alva here, they won’t suspect her.”
“I know my back-story well enough for this,” he sighed. “But what about Alva?”
“You’ll think of something.” Tyr looked off toward the rising sun. “It may still be cold now, but it’ll be hotter the longer you wait.”
“Okay, okay, we are going already.” Ingen couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the girl’s affections for him. He had never known what it felt like to be in a family, but he imagined this being close to it. “C’mon, Alva. Get that thing cinched up, and let’s go.”
The girl tied up her robe and pulled the cowl over her head. They both nodded to Tyr and headed off toward the encampment. Ingen was about to ask Alva if she had taken any anti-rads before leaving, but he decided to keep quiet, remembering that Alva was his guide for the brief journey and would never be so short-sighted to head into the wastelands like that without at least preparing for minor radiation situations.
They walked in silence for what felt like a long while, with the sun indeed starting to beat down heavily on them. If they weren’t wearing those damned wool robes, Ingen thought to himself, their walk would be a whole lot easier. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be easy, he reminded himself. They were at war, and technically this was Ingen’s life in exile. It was penance for being born on the Omega Destiny and for the further violence that Earth brought to Andlios. He was trying, he sighed. He tried to make things better, but it all led to him walking through the Andlios wastelands with Alva by his side.
He could feel his legs already growing tired from wading through the debris of what must have been great buildings and monuments. He knew better than to ask a Krigan about what they were treading through because this was once important to them; this was once a bustling city that was reduced to just ashes and rubble.
Alva paused at the foot of a broken statue that had only the legs remaining on the base.
“Tired already?” Ingen quipped, only to see the expression on Alva’s face. The girl looked like she had just seen a ghost. She scurried behind the statue, pulling him along with her.
“Shh!” She peered around the corner of the statue before slumping back behind cover. “Two Banished coming this way, heavily armed, carrying rifles.”
“Fuck!” he swore under his breath. “They didn’t see you, did they?”
Alva shrugged. “I hope not. I’m not sure that we can avoid them, though. This is the only clear path through. Some of those ruins to the south might have a path through, but they cave in and things change. I’m not sure that we can go through there.”
> “Would we be able to get there without them seeing us at least?”
“No,” the girl said, her eyes still fixed on the guards.
“Fuck,” he muttered again. His mind began to race, and he tried his best to remember his cover story. He was just a Helgean monk, he reminded himself. The girl was a Krigan orphan boy that he was teaching the way of the order. Yes, that would have to work.
He looked down at Alva. “Follow my lead. Don’t say anything or make any sudden movements. Just be cool, okay?”
“Be cool?” the girl questioned.
“Be calm, I guess.”
“Okay.”
He stood up, keeping his head down and hands clasped, before walking out from his cover toward the two armed guards. He noted their movements, the rifles and armor. They were most definitely Earth Ministry soldiers; by the looks of it, they were just foot soldiers sent out on a patrol. Alva fell in line behind him, walking right toward the two soldiers.
The soldiers noticed them now. Ingen made eye contact -- or what he considered eye contact, considering the black helmets that they were wearing with their faces obscured -- then slightly nodded in a way that he thought a Helgean monk would.
“You there,” a gruff voice said through the helmet, clearly being filtered. “Stop, the both of you, before we are forced to take you down.”
“Yes, yes,” Ingen said as he held both his palms out toward them. “As you can see, we're just two Helgean monks passing through.”
“Coming from Krigan territory,” he snarled. “I don’t like this.” One guard turned toward the other.
“Gentlemen,” Ingen began, addressing them both. “The Helgean have never been a threat to any man; we are but peaceful men of the lords. We are simply passing through, heading to an encampment that we heard of to rest for the evening.”
“Did you come from the Krigans?” he asked, adjusting his hand on his rifle, which was pointed squarely at Ingen’s chest.
“We passed through Krigan territory last night, yes,” he said softly. “I was but finalizing a few details for the orphan here, who has joined our order.” He motioned back toward Alva, who stood silent.
“So the boy is a Krigan, then?”
“Yes,” he replied and gave a slight nod. “But the boy has sworn the oath, you see -- he’s vowed to live a life of peace and spreading the word of the lords.”
“But he’s a Krigan,” the second guard chimed in. “I think that they are Krigan scouts. You heard they wiped out Slattery and his whole squad just yesterday.”
“That’s true,” the first guard squawked. “We’re gonna have to call this in.”
“Sirs,” Ingen said as he approached, his hands still in the air. “If you could avoid doing so, we’d much appreciate it. You see, we are just heading to the camp and will only be there for a night. I’m traveling back to the monastery with the boy, and they are expecting us in two days' time. Any sort of delay to our schedule could --”
“Stay where you are!” the guard ordered as he pushed Ingen with the rifle. Ingen noticed that the second guard turned away and pulled out his holoscanner. Then he heard the cry of Alva.
Alva darted from the other side of the statue, leaping toward the second guard with her pulseaxe over her head. Ingen noted just how terrifying she looked with that ax over her head. She buried the ax into the back of the guard’s neck, and the first guard turned toward the commotion.
Ingen quickly sprung into action. With one hand, he pulled his own pulseaxe from its hilt, driving down his elbow into the top of the rifle and forcing the guard to drop it. The guard stumbled, trying to reach for his sidearm only for Ingen’s blade to come out from under the robe in a flash, the sun glinting off of the steel blade before it grazed the side of the guard’s armor. He stumbled back, and Alva pulled her own ax blade from the neck of the fallen guard who remained unmoving.
The guard’s hand was on his pistol, but Ingen pulled back and with one mighty swing, the ax reached right below the guard’s chin, catching the weakest point of the armor.
A spray of blood came out from his neck as his body fell to the ground, the ax cutting clean through. Ingen fell back onto a pile of rubble from the inertia of the ax, quickly scrambling to his feet to see the guard’s body twitching, his head partially dislodged from his body. The ax was only a few hairs away from completely taking the head clean off; instead it hung there in a pool of blood.
“Alva,” Ingen shouted, feeling his heart racing.
“Yes, Ingen,” Alva replied. She was already cleaning off her blade.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. How about you?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and looked down at his bloody ax. “I don’t think that these two will be telling anyone that they saw us, but we need to get them off of this main street, just in case.”
Alva silently moved into action, dragging the bodies into piles of rubble and using their pulseaxes to move rubble to conceal them. Ingen kicked some dust and dirt over the pools of blood that had accumulated from the bodies, sighing to himself. This was supposed to be a simple point A to point B mission. No one was supposed to get hurt.
“We need to move quickly,” he told her as he stowed his pulseaxe and straightened out his robe. “Even if they didn’t get to communicate that they saw us, if they don’t report in, there will be others looking for them. Are you doing all right, Alva?”
The girl nodded again, a faraway look in her eyes. There wasn’t time to check on her further, but he knew that for both of them, it was the first blood that they had ever drawn. Ingen had once been responsible for a life lost before, but there was no physical blood on his hands. He had never slain with his own hands before. He moved forward, following behind Alva who remained quiet.
“Alva.”
“Yes, Ingen?”
“You did well back there.”
The girl simply nodded as they continued along the road. The ruins seemed to run for what felt like hours, but Ingen knew better. A part of him was curious as to how ruins like that were still standing if the great war was so long ago. The same for the radiation.
“Alva.”
“Yes?” She continued to tread forward gracefully while Ingen stumbled around the rubble.
“When did the Banished leave Andlios?”
“Around 3,000 cycles ago. Why?”
“Because -- wait, 3,000?” He paused, puzzled. “That doesn’t add up. Why is this city still like this? Why isn’t it decayed further?”
“This was Andlian. It fell about 100 cycles ago.”
“So wait, there was another war? More atomics?”
“Yes,” she said as she turned back to Ingen, frowning. “The atomics used were smaller, which is why these wastelands are not as expansive as the great wastelands, but 100 cycles ago was the last one.”
“Okay,” he replied. He was trying to cycle through to find what he was looking for in that information, but he was still confused. “But back to the Banished. They left 3,000 cycles ago?”
“Correct.”
“That means that they weren’t on Earth as long ago as we thought,” he realized and shook his head. “That means that humanity was already on Earth and here as well? I don’t get it.”
“We believe in cycles, Ingen,” Alva explained. “A natural back and forth, infinite. This is the aftermath of our last war with the Cymages. Come -- we are close to the fringes of the wastelands. We’ll be there soon.”
Ingen simply nodded, and they both continued traversing through the ruins, noting that the planet had began overtaking what was left of the city a while ago. The planet was reclaiming the land as its own again. There was even wildlife burrowed deep into it. This was like nothing that Ingen had ever imagined after a lifetime living inside of cold metal tubes hurtling through space.
After they cleared the city, they stumbled upon a few devices out on the horizon. Ingen immediately recognized them for terraformers. They burrowed into the ground,
harvesting what resources that they could find and worked to quickly synthesize new life in the area. The Earthers were bringing a lot of terror to Andlios, but those would definitely be of benefit to the planet, although the cost seemed too high.
Ingen and Alva were speechless when they first got a glimpse of the settlement. The metal glistened in the distance, and Ingen immediately recognized parts of the Omega Destiny being utilized on the surface. They were using portions of the ship to build settlements, and it was nothing short of a marvel. Twisted steel and flashing lights in the middle of nothing. There were already great buildings standing erect, reaching out to the sky unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Alva stood, mouth agape for a moment. “I’ve always heard of great buildings,” she muttered. “But I’ve only known the ruins of the past and what is left of Krigar. Is this what your home is like, Ingen?”
“No.” He shook his head and pulled his hood down. “My home was a starship. If you mean Earth, I guess so, but I’ve only seen photos and videos at this point. Andlios is my home now,” he said with conviction.
“Good,” Alva said. She smiled and pull her hood over her head.
“Let’s hurry up and get to this monstrosity,” Ingen said as he smiled back at her, following suit and pulling his own hood down.
The heat from the lights and activity hit them as they got closer to the settlement. There were scattered guards throughout the area, but two Helgean monks approaching was nothing for them to fear -- in fact, it was commonplace. They passed by the guards silently. These guards were lacking the protective gear of those they had encountered in the wastelands; there was minimal exposure to radiation beyond the ruins. The faces were young and unscathed, and most looked scared.
Ingen felt pangs of guilt knowing that he should be one of them, a part of the force called to action to help make Andlios into Omega. The more he saw of their faces, the more he saw his own face in each of them and sighed. Policing a border like that was not the dream of those aboard Omega; it was not the promise. The promise was not war -- the promise was a new life, a life out in the open.
