by Amber Stuart
Glancing forward, I saw Nihkil staring at me, too, his eyes now a pale blue. Through the thread between us, I felt a flush of warmth, an open affection that held more than a small amount of relief. Clearly, he approved of my means of getting rid of the giants.
I felt something else there, too, strong enough that I found myself remembering the look on his face when I sat astride him on the bed.
Even as I thought it, Nik looked away, his expression sliding back into indifference.
Ledi's voice rose in the quiet of my implant.
"I had intended to handle it differently," he told me. "But well done, Dakota. Your way was infinitely less prone to complications.”
A screeching noise indicated the elevator was slowing.
I held the wall, pulling back into shadow to hide my face.
I needn’t have bothered.
The two giants walked off the end of the elevator car with only a last, disgust-filled glance in my direction. I heard them arguing about food as the doors began to close, then another drop lurched my stomach.
It was probably good I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours.
We made a few more stops, then accelerated into a long, sickeningly fast drop and landed with a shuddering crash.
Lights flashed. A low siren signaled the end of the ride.
The elevator car slowly began to clear.
Wall seats lowered jerkily to floor level. Then, before we could start to move on our own, a flat piece of metal came out of the back wall and pushed out the remainder of the car’s occupants, dumping everyone into a wide causeway crammed with jostling bodies.
Corridors twisted off in all directions. From the rotating diagrams, I surmised that a few hundred hangars fanned out from the central hub through different tributaries. A few of the larger ones appeared to be public, but most were clearly private and heavily guarded by private security teams. Even the displayed map looked like a maze, with residencies mashed up against gambling and sex shops, drug centers and kiosks, hotel-like guest houses, bars, places to buy illegal aboge or to engage in virtual battles with strangers, places to buy clothes, eat, relax, smoke, get in some target practice or even go swimming in underground bath houses.
Taking a risk, I tried opening my implant link, to see if I could get any additional information through the network.
Nik's gaze swiveled to mine at once, his eyes a light yellow.
"Dakota. No. Not on the main concourse."
Nodding without arguing, I shut it down, but not before I saw the air light up around me, clearly showing that multiple layers existed where the information grids were linked to the networks.
So the civilian side was pretty well wired, after all.
Behind me, one of Ledi’s guards shoved lightly at the small of my back.
Feeling the playfulness behind the gesture, I didn't glare at him, as much as I wanted to.
Clearly, I’d scored points with the guards with my whole “blood worms” charade.
Moving my feet in the direction the guard indicated, I tried to relax.
I still felt like I was getting ready for a fight.
* * *
MINUTES LATER, WE were walking through one of the smaller tributaries, through a snaking, tube-like corridor that made me feel like I was traveling through the den of a monstrous snake.
Unlike the upper-level tunnels I'd seen around The Pit, this tunnel looked smooth as glass, with a faint sheen over the rock as if it consisted of a single, unbroken piece.
"This is from the original settlers of this world,” Ledi said from next to me, through his implant. “Like the animal sculptures on the military side, the carved ceilings of the great halls... and that dragon tunnel we passed through above. It is very old."
I glanced over at him, surprised. "Were they human?"
"Our conceit tells us they were.” He smiled. “Truthfully, we do not know."
Nodding, I found myself touching the glass-like walls. "Did they make the wars that screwed up the planet?”
"No," Ledi's thoughts came through as amused. "No, those were ours. I am told that when the first humans settled here, the place was a paradise. Rivers and lakes teemed with fish, birds darkened the sky, lush wild gardens and fruit orchards covered rich land, herd animals roamed the grasslands that were good to eat...” Ledi glanced at me. "Nihkil tells me this isn't entirely gone from your home world... ?"
"No," I said, not meeting his gaze. "Not yet. But we’re getting there."
Ledi nodded, a faint smile on his lips.
I still felt tense. When we turned a corner and the space opened up around us suddenly, my hand dropped to my side in reflex, only to remind me that I was completely unarmed.
My eyes swept the cavernous hangar, lingering in dark areas and corners even as I assessed the overall layout.
The hangar held only one ship, smaller than the one I'd ridden in with Nihkil... but still large enough to take my breath. I hadn't gotten used to the scale of things here. Nor had I really been reminded of that fact in awhile, being locked up inside the military settlement with its monotonous banquets and views that seemed almost unreal in their distance.
The ship was immediate, close enough to be intimidating.
Stretching up several stories, it shone a pearl-white in color, with the blunt nose of a sperm whale from back home. One of those trunk-like appendages hung down, as if waiting to suck me up into its belly... which, yeah, I didn't find particularly fun the first time around.
I also didn’t like the look of the twenty or so black-clad soldiers that stood under the ship itself.
Staring around at their faces, I felt myself stiffen.
I wasn’t even sure why, at first, but all of the soldiers around me halted, as well.
Nik stared at the cluster of uniformed men with the look of a feral animal, the gold in his eyes sharpening as if he’d caught the scent of a predator in the stale air of the hangar.
I glanced at Ledi, and saw his mouth had thinned to a pale line. He also clutched his side holster, only his held an actual weapon. Some of his guards now held guns, as well.
Ledi followed my eyes around at our protective detail, as if trying to decide his next move.
Looking back at the soldiers under the ship, I tried to decide if I had any move left at all.
Our greeting party stared back at us, unmoving.
Unlike the pale, round faces of most Pharei, these people had chins. They also had a darker cast to their eyes, even when the surface color appeared to be blue, green or even an oddly-dark yellow. The similarities of their appearance nagged at me. I stared from face to face, not realizing how silent it had gotten in the hangar until the guard behind me cleared his throat.
Only then did I realize my hands once more gripped the holster at the side of my belt, looking for a gun that was no longer there.
I didn’t see him move, but the next time I turned my head, Nik stood beside me.
He angled his body as I watched, putting himself between me and the waiting party by the ship. I didn't have time to think about whether that might be a head’s up of some kind, too.
Right then, one of those robotic transport vehicles kicked into life right next to me.
The sudden sound and movement made me jump.
Lurching forward, the crawler began passing us on the right, clutching a metal cage in its claws with what looked like a baby dragon inside. Something clicked as I stared at the animal’s face, seeing its dark red beak snapping as it lashed its tail against the sides of the metal cage. Its green eyes stared at me in hostility, but also fear. Maybe it was the lizard itself, a vague memory of seeing something like it in Palarine’s red-tinted skies.
Or maybe it was those dark green eyes, set in a face with red skin.
Either way, when I looked back at that line of soldiers, I knew.
They were Malek. They'd done something to darken their hair... and lighten their skin. They must be wearing th
e equivalent of contact lenses to change their eye-color, but it was a crappy disguise, all in all. It hadn’t fooled anyone. Not even me, and I wasn’t from here.
Before I could say anything, though, or decide what to do... it was already too late.
This thing we’d just walked into?
It had already started.
23
GUNS, DARTS AND EXPLODING STONES
I FOUND MYSELF slammed, hard, against the side of the robotic transport vehicle.
It happened so fast, I was momentarily stunned from the impact.
For the split-second it took me to shake the stars from my eyes from cracking my head, I had no idea what had just happened. I raised side of my head from the ridged metal skin of the crawler, touching the trickle of blood that slithered from under my hairline with my fingers.
Before I could turn, that same someone shoved me down and against the crawler a second time, as soon as I raised my head. I avoided banging my skull that time by gripping the transport's wheel with my free hand, keeping my head obediently low as I forced myself to breathe... maybe so I could punch him in the mouth, since I was pretty sure I knew who’d clocked me by then.
Even as I thought it, a mouth pressed close to my ear.
"Don't move," he said. "Be angry at me later, Dakota."
I craned my neck to peer over my shoulder, still blinking against the rising pain in my head.
Nihkil stood flush with my back, gripping my uniform coat in both hands as he held me against the side of the still-moving robotic transport, shifting sideways to keep me behind it as the transport crawled towards the white-skinned ship.
While under different circumstances, I might have elbowed him in the face for what he'd just done, by then I could hear gunshots, so my reaction ended up slightly more mixed.
Well, more specifically, I heard impact concussions.
After a few seconds, I felt reasonably certain I knew what they were from.
I’d seen the specific weapon before, what the Pharei called doong, or doong-ki, meaning “blast rocks.” Hand-held packets of death, they were fist-sized and nearly featureless except for a row of indentations on the side that were impossible to discern unless you knew where and how to look for them.
I'd first seen their power demonstrated on the streets of Seattle, where just one of those bolts knocked down a streetlamp.
Ledi also treated me to a few hours of test-firing a few of them at a military shooting range.
The thing has shockingly little kick-back, considering the wallop it packed.
Seeing another blue-white bolt heading our way, I ducked, sucking in a breath as it exploded overhead, slamming into the rock wall of the hangar behind us.
Nik pulled my head further down, so that the large, metal, caterpillar-like wheels of the crawler shielded most of my upper body.
I winced when another series of blasts got traded, some impacting a handful of paces from where we hid. I tried again to peer out from behind the wheel, but Nik jerked me roughly back. He didn't manage to ruin my view before I scoped the basics on the doong-fight, though.
Thanks to Gantry and a few of my other fight instructors over the years, I'd been trained to figure out, fast, who was shooting at me, (meaning how many) and where from, well before I cared about anything else.
That was usually followed by whether they were any good.
Why they might be shooting at me was definitely less of a priority.
After all, even on Earth, sometimes that shit was inexplicable.
My eyes easily picked out the group of twenty or so Malek I'd seen earlier, dressed as Pharei, firing volleys back and forth with Ledi’s team. A third group seemed to be shooting from behind the largest wall of crates, too, to our left.
I hadn’t seen anyone down yet––on our team, I mean––but the odds didn’t look good for us, in terms of numbers.
On the plus side, whoever they were, they didn’t seem to be shooting to kill.
I could tell that much, even in my one quick look.
After all, if they’d wanted us dead, they probably could have accomplished that by now.
We’d essentially walked into a turkey shoot. Trapped between the faction behind the crates to our left, and the Malek soldiers dressed as Pharei to our right, our position was less than ideal, in any case.
Some of the Malek using projectile weapons I’d seen on the firing ranges a few times, too, including what they called a tengey, which worked more like an earth gun, even though it looked more like some kind of modified, high-powered blow-dart. The tengey shot what amounted to a glass shard the length of my pinkie finger. Generally, those shards shattered inside a person’s body, acting not unlike hollow-tip bullets did back home.
They were also highly accurate, Ledi informed me.
I watched through the treads of the transport vehicle as the Malek hit a few of Ledi’s team with the tengeys, crouching, aiming and firing from the shadows under the nearest ship, their accuracy almost unnervingly good as they went for legs, arms and lower torsos.
From what I could tell, those on the outer edges were mainly using the doong to keep us from trying to escape, and the tengeys to get us to drop our weapons.
A few they did kill, though.
I saw two of Ledi’s guards get tengey-shards through the throat, which dropped them pretty much instantly.
No one appeared to be shooting at me and Nik at all.
Which was a good thing, really, since one blast at the crawler from a doong would likely have sent hot shrapnel into both of us, killing us outright.
Whoever these guys were, they were better shots than any Pharei I’d seen out on the ranges, too. They were also better shots than most of the Malek, if the stats I’d seen on that kind of thing were at all accurate.
Really, I’d only seen one group of beings that displayed stats like these jokers.
Once the thought solidified, I turned my head.
"Nik! Are they morph?" I said.
I shouted to be heard above the ricochets and the tearing screeches of metal.
Another set of booming discharges started up at once, most of the sound coming from doong ignitions when either side pumped another blue flame across the cavernous hangar. Explosions peppered the gunfire, along with tile cracking and glass breaking and more groans and low rumbles as the sides of ships and the rock walls got hit by stray blasts.
"Nik!" I yelled again, turning all the way that time to meet his gaze. "Could they all be morph? These Malek? Something’s wrong, right?"
Nihkil stared at me, his eyes a flat, dark gray.
Fighting to pull my mind off trying to understand what I could feel from him, as well as the look in his eyes as he scanned the hangar, I focused on the meaning behind my own words.
Whoever these people were, they wanted to bring us in alive.
Which likely meant they knew who me and Nik were.
I contemplated risking another peek past the crawler, but Nik’s hands clamped down on my shoulders before I could move, pinning me against the ridged metal. Before I could protest, either, or even look at him, he crushed me against him, holding me so tight I felt my skin bruising under his fingers. He was breathing harder, almost panting.
I got the feeling he was trying to hold something in, like he thought some part of himself might explode outwards if he let go of me.
“Nik!” I pulled at his hands, trying to loosen them. “Nik! Let go! You’re cutting off my air!”
His fingers didn’t move.
“Nik!” I said, louder. “Nik, you have to let me go!”
Just then, a razor-sharp pain went through my chest, silencing me.
I thought at first I’d been stabbed with a tengey shard.
I thought it would kill me, too... but it all happened so fast, I couldn’t make a sound. I fought to take in air, feeling like I’d been kicked in the solar plexus, as if something hooked into me with razor-sharp metal
, ripping me open like a gutted fish.
I don’t think I’d ever felt so much pain in my life. I don’t think I’d ever felt so vulnerable in my life, either. I couldn’t bear it... I almost couldn’t make myself want to survive it.
Nik’s hands tightened on me again, but I barely felt them that time.
I felt that desire on him again, almost overwhelming.
With it came compassion... and something else... something I’d never felt on him before.
The feeling came closest to gratitude, but that one word didn’t cover half of the things I glimpsed in Nik in those few seconds. It felt like watching a patient with amnesia regain their memory all at once, or someone who’d been traumatized understand in a flash how to overcome whatever had broken them.
I found myself remembering my grandmother after she got senile, when she’d occasionally click back into the high-powered businesswoman she’d once been.
“Nik...” I fought to say more, couldn’t. I turned to look at him. “Nik!”
His irises shone coal-black.
A loud whistle jerked my eyes forward.
My hands rose reflexively to my ears in protection.
I looked for the source of the piercing sound, but I don’t know what I was expecting... a rocket launcher, maybe? An alien bazooka? In either case, I winced even after I had both palms clamped on the sides of my head, still crouched low behind the wheel in a feeble attempt to shield myself. The vulnerability was still there, and the pain in my chest, but I could think again. I could remember who I was.
The high-pitched, piercingly loud noise managed to overpower the doong blasts and the explosions that followed. It overpowered the noises from the tengey and the flame darts I’d seen Ledi’s team use in the second half of the fight, too.
“Cease fire!” someone yelled, seemingly from right beside us. “Cease fire!”
More voices took up the call.
Some spoke Pharize, like the first had. I heard shouts in a few other languages, as well.
The gunshots swiftly died down.
It happened so uniformly across the different groups that I just crouched there in the silence at first, panting, not really understanding why it was so quiet. I listened to the echoes of those final shots even as the last notes of the high-pitched whistle continued to linger in the cold air.
