by Lucia Ashta
“Hell yes I am.”
“Sanders have condensers and they don’t even know what they’re for?”
“Exactly.”
And then Dolpheus started laughing until his laughter dissolved into wheezing. It was Kai that muttered, “Then Sanders are true nutters.”
Ilara brought her arms akimbo and cocked a hip to one side. “I’d be thrilled for you to enlighten me.”
But there was no opportunity for enlightenment. We snapped to attention.
“What the hell are they saying?” Lila said.
Someone had spotted us and started shouting. Lots of other someones joined him, no bigger than dark giant ants across a foreign landscape. They moved toward us, their voices growing louder as they approached.
But that didn’t help me understand a single thing they were saying. “What’s wrong with their voices?”
Ilara started waving her arms in wide circles around her, as if we hadn’t yet been spotted. “There’s nothing wrong with their voices.”
“I don’t understand a thing they’re saying.”
“That’s because you probably don’t speak Arabic.”
“What’s this Arabic?” Lila said.
“The language they speak, which I don’t, a regrettable thing given our circumstances. Never had the need to learn it.”
“You’re telling us that people speak a language other than ours on Sand?” Lila asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. In fact, there are hundreds of languages across Earth. I don’t even know how many, but lots.”
Lila’s eyes widened. I could tell without looking at her, probably because mine were widening as well. “You mean to say that the people of Sand don’t all speak the same language?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” Ilara was focused on the men running toward us, not the shock in our voices.
“Does each person know all of these languages? I guess probably not, if you don’t know how to speak with these men.”
“No, Lila, no one can possibly know all the hundreds of languages on Earth.” Ilara sounded as if she were instructing a child in the obvious.
“But you have ways to communicate with them even if you can’t speak to them, right? You mind speak or something?”
Ilara flung a huffy look back at Lila. “No, we don’t mind speak. We don’t understand each other easily. That’s just the way it is. We do our best with hand signals, like I’m doing know.”
“That’s your great communication with our, hopefully, rescuers? Waving your arms around your head when they already clearly know we’re here?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Ilara snapped.
“No, but I am starting to worry about what kind of back-assed place Sand is.”
“Hey.”
“You can’t even communicate with each other? That’s nuts. How does a planet even function that way? And you said it’s divided into countries. There isn’t even one central organization. How can you ever have peace and understanding that way?”
“We don’t. Not much of it at least. But I wasn’t under the impression you had an overabundance of it either, given how many people tried to attack us or kill us while I was on Origins.”
Lila didn’t have a comeback for that. The peace on O had been tenuous as long as I’d been alive, which was one of the main reasons it was so important to get the princess returned to her place at the throne before the fragile stability of the monarchy could be knocked further into chaos.
“Oh fuck,” Ilara muttered then started calling out, “We mean no harm.”
“What the hell’s happening?” I asked.
“They’re drawing their guns. They must’ve spotted your swords.”
“What do guns do?” I realized it wasn’t the time for explanations, but this was an important one.
“Once they get close enough to us, they can shoot to kill before they get close enough for you to use your swords.”
“How close?” Dolpheus barked, with the urgent need of a soldier heading onto alien soil and finding himself unexpectedly overwhelmed.
“I don’t know.” Much of Ilara’s cool had evaporated into the dry air. “Forty feet?”
“You need to be more exact.”
“I can’t be! I’m not accustomed to getting guns pointed at me. I don’t usually travel with an armed group of superhero lookalikes, okay? This is new to me too. Dolpheus, don’t.”
Dolpheus paused in the middle of drawing his sword. “Why shouldn’t I? You said they could harm us.”
“Yes, but if you draw your sword, they’ll be even more likely to harm us. Don’t do anything that will make them think we’re a threat to them. I’ll explain it away. Even though I have no fucking idea how I’m going to manage to explain away Thor and his kickass crew, especially when I can’t speak the language.”
And then debate ceased to matter. Five men swarmed around us, metal contraptions that didn’t look as dangerous as Ilara said they were pointing and swinging, circling our group.
“They wouldn’t harm wounded men, would they?” Lila asked softly.
“They shouldn’t.” But I could hear it in her words. They shouldn’t, but they might.
We’d survived the Sahara Desert. I’d be damned if I’d let some idiots of men finish us off now.
But there was little I could do just then beyond appearing harmless and insignificant, two things I most definitely was not.
21
“Do as they say,” Ilara said while she put her hands behind her head.
“But we don’t know what they’re saying,” Lila complained.
“We don’t need to know what they’re saying to know what they’re saying. Just lay flat on the ground like I’m doing.”
That was something much easier for her to do than any of us. She wasn’t injured or carrying a nearly-dead man. But every single one of my instincts screamed in protest at the idea of making myself even more vulnerable than I already was when I had friends to protect. I didn’t give a damn about my shredded calf or my torn-open shoulder, I’d fight to the death to keep my friends safe.
That was hard to do with my nose in the sand.
The circle of armed men shrunk further, cutting off any route of escape—if we’d had a place to escape to. They were right in our faces, pointing metal guns at us.
One of the men got in my face, yelling at me, spittle forming in the corners of his mouth. His words were fast and unintelligible, but his meaning wasn’t. He pushed the tip of his gun against my chest and then Lila’s. Lila might not be my favorite, but no one did that to my friends.
I was about to retract the arm I was using to support Lila to draw my sword when Ilara called, with words as hard and urgent as our aggressors. “Don’t even think about it. Tanus. Dolpheus. Get on the ground. Now.”
I hesitated. From the corner of my eye I saw Dolpheus do the same.
“I mean it. Get on the ground however you can right this second. They’ll start shooting if you do anything else.”
Lila moved her arm from where it’d been draped across my shoulder and sank to the ground, extending her viper-bitten leg straight behind her as she lowered herself.
I glared at the man in front of me, but he didn’t back down. He got angrier, as if my defiance were a personal insult to him and his mother. Already, the man was jumpy, and when I continued to defy him, his finger moved to a small lever within a loop at the bottom of the gun. If I’d doubted him before, I didn’t now. If I didn’t get on the ground soon, he’d shoot, and I’d see from personal experience whether guns were as formidable weapons as Ilara said they were.
“Tanus, please!”
Ilara sounded tortured by my defiance. And so I relented. I lowered myself to the ground gingerly from necessity, hating every movement I had to modify to accommodate my shoulder and calf.
When I finally made it down, the man with the itchy lever finger ground a boot into my back, pressing me down, my face pressing painfully against the sa
nd. Already, I regretted having listened to Ilara. I hadn’t been this vulnerable in a fight since I was a boy making my first mistakes in combat. But I was a fast learner, and I rarely repeated the same mistake.
This was a far greater disadvantage than I could accept when so much was at stake. I was a superior warrior, but was I good enough to outmaneuver a gun when I couldn’t even see it anymore?
The guy kept barking orders at me, pushing me harder. He sounded angrier than before, even though I’d done what he wanted.
“Ilara,” Lila said, “they don’t seem to be backing off!”
Ilara didn’t answer, and I risked aggravating my aggressor to turn my head so I could look in her direction.
The man shouted at me and shoved his boot against my cheek, but I’d managed to turn. And when I saw why Ilara hadn’t answered, I didn’t even bother getting angry about the sand the man ground into the scruff of my cheek with the hot, beat-up sole of his dirty boot. I experienced a rush of fury so great that any other thought but rising to the defense of my love was forcibly ejected from my mind.
The blood pulsed loudly through my head, whooshing anything but the idea of rising and shaking this guy off me from it. Ordinarily, I was more or less restrained. I wasn’t the most controlled of men, but I wasn’t the least of them either. I was used to tempering my anger so as not to take action I’d later regret. I was measured, as any good soldier must be.
But I didn’t give a flying fuck about restraint, regret, or what might happen once I did what I was certain to find a way to do. I’d charge like the fiercest of mowabs, and I’d achieve it.
I knew it with the surety of the love I had for Ilara.
No one lifted the hem of her skirt with the tip of their gun. No one got to leer at her the way the three of them were.
There was only one good thing about the situation, and it was only good because it would better allow me to crush the men doing the leering to dust. In their admiration of Ilara, three of the five men were distracted, sending only the occasional glance our way. I imagined they thought us defeated, controlled, all of us laying flat against the ground.
I didn’t know what men on Planet Sand were like, but I was far from defeated, and I had no doubt that Dolpheus was also plotting on how to crush our opponent into oblivion. These men would be space dust by the time I finished with them.
One of the men continued to slide Ilara’s skirt up with his gun while a second one positioned his filthy boot between her legs. He sidled his foot from left to right, pushing her legs apart. She was wearing leggings, but they were mostly translucent, and from where I was, I could make out much of what I considered my path to salvation and redemption. The men right next to her might not consider her a sacred lover as I did, but they surely were seeing plenty that should be destined only for my eyes.
Risk be damned, I coiled my muscles for sudden movement. The man above me might have noticed my intent if he’d been watching me as closely as he should have been. But he too watched his comrades and Ilara.
I inched my hands beneath my shoulders, and even though my torn shoulder complained so intensely that the pain made my eyes water, I’d manage to stand quickly, even with a man atop me, I knew it. A little pain—and even a lot of it—wouldn’t keep me from protecting the princess of Origins if she was that, or the queen of my heart, something she surely was.
I drew in a deep breath to fuel my parched, fatigued body. The surge of energy that came during combat would be sufficient to propel me through my next steps; it’d have to be.
I curled my fingers into the sand beneath my shoulders. Ready.
Then I hesitated a moment when I least wanted to. But I hadn’t expected what happened. I realized Ilara was a fiery lioness queen, no matter who she turned out to be—it was one of the things I most loved about her, even if it made her a wild force to contend with. I just hadn’t considered that she’d have the courage to fight off three men on her own, when guns pointed at her, when anyone who could come to her defense was prostate on the ground.
I watched Ilara roll her back to the ground so fast that the man who had his leg between hers lost his balance and fell to his ass. She knocked the gun from the hem of her skirt with a sharp push that sent the shot the man accidentally got off into the sand between her legs.
She jumped to her feet in a motion so swift that I admired her grace and strength of movement before I secured my wits.
My aggressor was equally awed and surprised by Ilara’s movements, affording me an easy window to leap to my feet, swallow the pain and nausea that shot from my limbs to my stomach and throat, and give him a hard shove that landed him on his ass. He umphed as the air left his body. I charged at him, drawing my sword as I went, hearing another sword off to my right, knowing Dolpheus was in motion with me.
In two fast movements, I pushed my sword through the man’s side. I meant to incapacitate, not kill, but the shrill shriek the man let out indicated that he thought I’d killed him.
I drew my sword back to pierce him another time. He scooted backward on his ass, leaving his gun behind.
I snatched his gun up, slung it across my chest, and advanced, allowing a quick glance toward Ilara. Two men were on the ground and she was kicking another in the stomach with a fast extension of her leg.
But one of the men on the sand could still reach his gun. He was reaching it for it now.
I landed a hard kick of my own to the man in front of me, intentionally hitting him where my sword had already pierced him, the place that’d most easily keep him down and out of our way.
Then I was running toward the man on the ground next to Ilara, the one who had the greatest chance of hurting her.
I was only a few long paces away from him, but they seemed like a hundred. I sprinted, ignoring the complaints from my calf.
But even with our movements distilling once more into slow motion, they wouldn’t be sufficient. He’d reached the gun, pulled it into his hands. Two more of my steps and he pointed the gun straight at my love, straight at her chest, where he could take her from me in a few furious beatings of her heart.
I’d managed to bring her back from death, from another planet. And now I’d have to watch her die over something stupid we didn’t even understand. A misunderstanding we’d likely be able to maneuver our way out of with enough time and patience.
Fuck no. Hell no.
I stretched my legs to their maximum. I leapt the final distance.
But my target changed.
I no longer aimed for him.
I aimed for his target, or at least the trajectory his gun would take to reach it.
I dove between his gun and Ilara’s chest when a second crack exploded in the desert.
22
Ilara was right. Guns were formidable weapons. From a body’s length away, the man with the gun managed to puncture my side as surely as a sword.
And I was unprepared for the next one. I didn’t know the gun could shoot again right away, although the truth was that I hadn’t considered it. The weaponry was so different than ours, so much more sterile than our way of killing on Planet O.
It didn’t seem fair that a man wielding a gun could inflict so much damage without feeling the impact of it vibrate down his arm. Without hearing the slicing of flesh or crunching of bone as it gave way beneath the force of the assault. Without having to stare deep into his victim’s eyes to witness the effects of his actions, without having to see life leaving its host.
Killing was something I’d never done lightly. It seemed as if guns were designed to make light of killing. I didn’t like it, and it seemed an unworthy end to a warrior who’d fought fairly and bravely for centuries. If I died, I’d die far away from my home, so far that they couldn’t take my body back.
But with my love and best friend nearby. At least that was something.
The next shot echoed into the dry air of the desert, at the same time as the shrill, incoherent yells of women reached my ears. I registered Ilara’
s panic as she screamed and whirled to catch me. I saw Lila moving on the sand and Dolpheus nearly upon the man with the gun aimed now straight at my chest instead of Ilara’s.
Dolpheus charged the man on the ground as the second bullet tore through my torso, close to the already-angry wound in my shoulder. It was as if the bullet were on fire the way my flesh burned in its wake. It stung like a motherfucker, like a hot poker plunged into flesh that was meant to feel the gentle caress of a lover, the whisper of a breeze against bare flesh.
It wasn’t made to withstand the tearing, ripping, burning, unbearable tracks that guns left, impassive to the pain they caused.
Would I die? I had no idea. I’d survived and recovered from wounds that had seemed worse than these at the time.
If I based my condition on Ilara’s expression, then death was coming—and swiftly. Her face held as much anguish as if it were her body, not mine, riddled with holes.
I slumped into her waiting arms as Dolpheus pummeled the man who’d shot me into oblivion. I knew how I’d feel when confronted with the possibility of my best friend’s death—I’d considered it many times during our lifetimes on O. The life of a soldier, especially the kind of soldiers we were, wasn’t safe or easy. I could imagine how he felt.
But nothing prepared me for the desperation on his face, even while his movements were efficient and precise. He moved like a warrior who’d been training for moments like these all his life. It was who he was. But did anything truly prepare us for the loss of the people we loved?
He knocked the gun from the man’s hand and then stabbed him in the same spot I’d stabbed the man who’d tried to subdue me. It was a good spot, soft and fleshy, between the ribs and below the heart. It missed any major organs with precision. It incapacitated but didn’t kill, the thoughtful attack of a human being, not a lifeless instrument.
Dolpheus stepped to his left with the same motion he used to withdraw his sword. He swooped to pick up the gun, looping its strap across his chest while he leaned into the next man, who was moving to get up from the ground, where Ilara’d put him. The man didn’t quite get his feet under him before Dolpheus shoved him back down—hard. He pierced his torso decisively, landing in the same area that he and I’d chosen for the two fallen men.
