For the Love of Gelo!

by Tom O'Donnell

  Ornim and Chayl searched beside us. Despite the circumstances, I was glad to see a couple of familiar faces. In bits and pieces, I’d been able to glean the story of what happened to them on Kyral.

  As the Phryxus II approached the planet’s surface, it was attacked by Ridian’s trireme and shot down over the jungle. Luckily, they all survived the crash landing. Unluckily, their communications systems were critically damaged—which was the reason they never contacted Gelo. They decided that Hykaro Roost was their best hope for repairing the ship and possibly still finding a nyrine quantum inducer, which is what they’d been sent for. But as they approached the city, they were ambushed by a group of legionaries. After fierce fighting, the three of them were taken prisoner. This was the last they’d seen of Kalac.

  As I dug through a pile of ancient furniture, I could see the black skyscraper—the place Ridian had called his “palace”—towering above the other buildings of Hykaro Roost. Kalac was in there, somewhere. Still alive, I hoped. Lately, though, I was finding hope in short supply.

  “Look, a toaster,” said Little Gus, startling me. He was prodding a shiny metallic object with his foot. “Wait . . . ” he said. “Guys, there’s still toast inside.”

  “Please don’t eat eight-hundred-year-old toast,” sighed Hollins.

  “Too late,” said Little Gus as he chomped into what looked like a black doorstop. His smile faded. “You know . . . I don’t think it was toast after all,” he said quietly.

  “Get back to work,” yelled the nearest guard.

  The humans and I could talk among ourselves in their native language, as the Vorem had no idea what we were saying. Still, the legionaries wouldn’t tolerate too much idle chatter. We had a job to do.

  Nearby, Becky called out in Xotonian: “Oh my gosh! Is that a hyperdrive? Oh wow!” She waved at something under a mound of debris. Dutifully, the legionary took a look. Becky was pointing at an old bathtub.

  “No,” said the guard. “That’s a bathtub.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Becky. “Isn’t that the antimatter intake valve?”

  “That’s the faucet!” growled the guard. “Stop wasting our time!”

  “Sorry,” said Becky, feigning innocence. “I was confused. Can I see that picture again?”

  “No,” said the legionary.

  Becky pulled some variation of the same trick at least five times a day. It had no purpose, really, other than to annoy our captors. She considered that an end unto itself.

  “One of these days,” she said quietly in human as the legionary returned to his post, “I’m going to find an energy blaster in this pile of junk. Then I’m going to vaporize these creeps.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “No Aeaki would toss a weapon into the Midden. Not while there were other Aeaki left to shoot.”

  “Come on,” said Becky, “you haven’t given up that easily, have you, Chorkle?”

  Another day passed without a hyperdrive. As the sun dipped low, the legionaries rounded all of us up to return us to our cells. After a thorough pat-down—they wanted to make sure we weren’t hiding anything dangerous—we marched through Hykaro Roost in a long single-file line. Every twenty prisoners or so, a pair of armed Vorem marched beside us.

  “I don’t get it,” said Little Gus as we walked. “Why isn’t Ridian looking for some sort of communication equipment? He could contact another Vorem ship to come and rescue him.”

  “I don’t think he wants to call home,” said Becky. “After all, he screwed up pretty big back on Gelo. The only thing he wants is to return with the Q-sik.”

  “Where do you think it is, anyway?” Hollins whispered to me, as if the legionaries could suddenly understand his language.

  He’d asked me before, and I had no answer. All I could do was shrug. I had no idea where the Q-sik was. I guessed it had fallen out of my pack somewhere on Kyral. This was, without a doubt, the single stupidest thing I’d ever done. When you misplace something—an umbrella, your keys, maybe even a Feeney’s Original Astronaut Ice Cream bar—it might seem important. But the fate of the universe doesn’t usually hang in the balance. I wondered if this was the worst mistake ever made in the history of Gelo.

  The guards led us through the darkening streets toward our new home. Hykaro’s skyscrapers loomed above us. But instead of going up, we descended broken stairs into the ground.

  We followed a dark, moldy passage past several rusty doors. At last this passage opened into a vast underground chamber lit by a few dim Vorem lanterns. The remnants of gilded tile clung to the ceiling in scattered patches, offering no clue as to what the entire design might have been. Around the walls were six arched shapes, about five meters high and built of slightly different masonry. To one who has spent most of its life underground, they looked very much like walled-up tunnels.

  This was our prison. Our captors had filled the space with rows of temporary cells. Each one was a box of fine metal mesh with a heavy door on it. Apparently, mobile internment camps were a specialty of the Vorem Dominion. As a dark joke, the humans referred to these cells as “the coops”—mainly because of the two hundred birdlike Aeaki who were caged around us. The sound of their squawking and flapping and occasional fights filled the air with noise. Our fellow prisoners were only scared into silence when a loud roar echoed through the chamber.

  That was Pizza, locked away in his own cage. After the fight we’d had in the theater, the thyss-cat had been captured too. As Little Gus recounted, proudly and often, it took six Vorem to drag him down here, and he fought them every centimeter of the way.

  A legionary opened the door to our own coop and waved us in.

  “Home, sweet home,” said Hollins, stepping inside.

  “Did you want us to fill out a timesheet, or are you guys keeping track of our hours?” Little Gus asked the legionary.

  “Shut up,” he said. Then he locked the coop behind us with a little octagonal key that he kept on his belt.

  After all the prisoners had been secured, most of the guards marched back up to the surface. They always left two legionaries to stand watch throughout the night. Whether these were the same two night guards each time was a matter of some debate. It was impossible to tell, as all the Vorem legionaries wore identical black armor.

  We sat down and tried to make ourselves comfortable—as much as that was possible in a six-meter-by-six-meter wire cell—while we waited for our dinner. The contents of our coop were modest: a couple of woven Aeaki blankets and a plastic jug of water. If “nature called”—as Becky had said—you had to persuade one of the legionaries to take you out of your cell and lead you a little ways off to take care of it. Usually, you just had to hold it. It was a miserable place, and so it matched my mood.

  Soon came the familiar sound of a squeaky wheel. Our food was delivered by an old male Aeaki rolling a rusty cart between the rows of coops. His eyes were cloudy, and his feathers were brown with faded highlights of red and orange on his wings and throat. He never spoke, and none seemed to know his name. The old Aeaki didn’t occupy one of the cells, and he returned to the surface once his duties were done. The other prisoners despised him for being a “Vorem collaborator.”

  The old-timer distributed the typical Aeaki fare—seeds, nuts, and berries wrapped in leaves. Twice a day, he pushed four of these packets through the slot in the door of our cell. We ate them eagerly. Picking through mounds of refuse was hard work, and we had nothing else.

  Since our capture, we hadn’t seen any sign of General Ridian himself. Neither had we seen Taius. I hated General Ridian, but somehow my feelings toward Taius were even worse. I tried my best not to think about him. When I did, such anger swelled in my z’iuk that I thought I might be sick. The others felt the same way. Yet somehow they couldn’t stop talking about him.

  “I totally called it with Taius,” said Little Gus, not for the first time. “Remember? Red ey
es: evil. When I say stuff, you all should be writing it down.”

  “You also said anyone who liked your soup couldn’t be all bad,” said Hollins as he cracked hard seeds between his teeth.

  “But did he like the soup? Did he really?” asked Little Gus. “Or was it all part of his cover?”

  “I can’t believe I had a crush on that guy,” said Becky with a sigh.

  “Wait . . . you did have a crush on him after all?” said Little Gus, deflating like a punctured oog-ball. “Come on! He’s not even human, and you voted against him, and he’s—he’s got pointed teeth!”

  “Mysterious loner,” said Hollins with his mouth full.

  “Shut up,” said Becky. “Doesn’t matter anyway. When we break out of here, he won’t have pointed teeth anymore. I’m going to knock all of them right down his throat.”

  This brought them to their second most frequent topic of conversation: escape.

  “If only we could sneak something down here from the Midden,” said Hollins. “A piece of metal or something. Maybe we could pry the door off its hinges.”

  “How?” I asked. “The guards search us every day before we return to the coops. Even if they didn’t, the two night guards would hardly stand by and allow us to remove the door of our cell. Not to mention the fact that the door looks like it could withstand an awful lot of prying.”

  “All right, fine,” said Hollins.

  “Maybe, when they’re leading us back for the night, we could make a break for it,” said Becky.

  “And what’s to stop the Vorem from shooting us in the backs?” I asked. None of the humans had an answer. I will admit, I was hardly a font of optimism these days. And it was easier to shoot down their ideas than to come up with any of my own.

  “Well, I guess it’s up to Nicki and Eyf,” said Little Gus, shrugging.

  Perhaps they were still out there somewhere, hiding among the ruined buildings of Hykaro Roost. Once, a few days earlier, I thought I’d seen a little white speck soaring high in the sky above the Midden. It might have been my imagination or a fluttering piece of plastic refuse, but maybe . . .

  I refused to let myself think of it. After all, we’d had such incredibly bad luck—ever since the Core-of-Rock reactor had failed, now that I thought of it—why should I expect it to stop anytime soon? Nicki and Eyf were probably dead. Kalac too. The rest of us would be next. Then, after that, Ridian would locate the Q-Sik—wherever I had managed to drop it—and destroy the universe.

  Good, I secretly thought, because I was angry at the universe, but mostly I was angry at myself. I scowled and ate my dinner in silence.

  • • • •

  Days passed. Up in the morning. A leafy packet of food. Search the Midden. Back to the coops. Another packet of food. Sleep. Repeat.

  The Aeaki around us grew more and more restless with their imprisonment. Those who were deemed to be a flight risk (literally) were forced to work with heavy manacles chained to their legs. More fights broke out among them. Once, one of the prisoners even attacked a Vorem guard. She tried to peck right through his black helmet—and actually succeeded in putting a big spiderweb crack in the visor—before three other legionaries dragged her away. No one ever saw her again.

  Those Aeaki who hadn’t been imprisoned watched us—from perches in nearby buildings—toil in the Midden. The hostility in the air was palpable. The Aeaki prisoners hated their free brethren and probably vice versa. The prisoners hated one another owing to a mix of old clan rivalries and a general mistrust for anyone who didn’t have the same color feathers. Together, they all hated the Vorem.

  “Maybe the free Aeaki will rise up,” said Hollins one morning as we walked to the Midden. Hundreds of Aeaki in little clan groups watched us from above as we marched through the city.

  “Ha. That would mean different clans working together,” I scoffed. “It will never happen.”

  You see, my anger had faded to resentment, then to self-pity, and finally to hopelessness. I found myself barely talking all day long. My mind was constantly wandering yet somehow always empty. Slight changes in my daily routine—such as the Vorem leading us by a different route to the Midden—vexed me greatly. The details of our journey across Kyral had become fuzzy in my mind. I could only remember the Midden and the coops. And reaching for the Q-sik, only to find it gone.

  Sometimes I’d suddenly realize that one of the humans had been speaking to me for minutes at a time and I hadn’t been listening at all.

  “So what do you think?” said Becky, glancing at a nearby legionary. He had his back to us.

  “About what?” I asked. It was midday on Kyral, and the sun was beating down on us as we sifted through more offerings. Needless to say, my sunburn was worse than ever, which hardly helped my mood.

  “About that,” said Becky, wiping more dirt off it.

  I took a closer look. It was a poster that showed an impossibly complicated snarl of brightly colored lines. The lines were speckled with hundreds of little white dots. All were labeled.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t hang it in my dwelling. But what is art, really?”

  “It’s not supposed to be art, Chorkle,” said Becky. “It’s a map. I think—I think it’s, like, an old subway map. Of Hykaro Roost.”

  “Ah,” I said. I hadn’t been much of a conversationalist of late. And truth be told, I wasn’t particularly interested in the history of Aeaki public transportation.

  “Don’t you get it?” she whispered, looking around once again.

  I shrugged.

  “That’s where the coops are,” she said, “down in one of these old train stations. That’s how we could escape. Through the tunnels.”

  “Those tunnels are all walled up now,” I said, trying to burst her bubble.

  “So we break through. I’ve broken tons of stuff in my day: lamps, teeth, promises to get better grades. Breaking a wall should be easy enough,” she said. “And then we use this map to figure out where to go.”

  “How?” I said. “We can’t take it with us.”

  “I can’t,” said Becky. “But you can.” She tapped her head.

  I sighed. She apparently expected me to somehow memorize what looked to me like a plate of rainbow svur-noodles.

  “Impossible,” I said. “It’s just a mess of squirmy colored lines.”

  “No, Chorkle,” said Becky. “They’re not lines. They’re tunnels. They’re turns.”

  I blinked. She was right. Once I imagined the colored lines as different passages intersecting one another underground, some fundamental part of my brain kicked in. It wasn’t hard for a Xotonian to memorize a bunch of turns.

  Becky studied the map. “There are six walled-up tunnels leading out from the coops—”

  “Here,” I said, pointing to a white dot where three lines intersected: purple, yellow, and green. I checked the label beneath. “It’s called Central Crossing.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Becky, nodding.

  Mentally, I tried to place myself inside the tunnels and orient myself to the geography I knew of Hykaro Roost. With my frib, I traced the lines of the tunnels.

  “And that’s where Ridian is keeping Kalac,” I said, pointing to another station thirteen turns from Central Crossing. Its name on the map was “League Tower.”

  Becky smiled. “Good eye, Chorkle,” she said. “I was afraid we might have lost you, pal.”

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and feeling the fog clear a little. “I don’t know what’s been wrong with me. It’s just, I trusted Taius. And I can’t believe I lost the . . .”

  “It’s okay, Chorkle,” said Becky, placing a hand on my i’arda. “If things always worked out, just imagine how boring life would be.”

  Just then, we heard a nearby Aeaki squawk. It sounded like there might be another fight about to break out. Becky and I
followed the noise. Hollins and Little Gus joined us.

  Several Vorem legionaries had surrounded the shrieking Aeaki, but there was no fight. I gasped. There, beneath a mound of sports equipment and broken crockery and industrial cables was a complex cylindrical object with four curved tubes radiating out from it. All of us recognized it immediately.

  “The one hyperdrive on this whole planet,” said Hollins. “And now Ridian has it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Aeaki who found the hyperdrive—Ikabo of the Olo clan, apparently—was never seen again. Rumor had it that her “reward” came from the end of a blaster rifle. The legionaries, as always, were silent. And even though a hyperdrive had been found, the Vorem still forced us to search the Midden every day. Hollins guessed that Ridian was hedging his bets. Why not try to find another one while he tried to salvage the first? He had all the free labor he needed.

  All of this drove prisoner morale to a new low. Fights among Aeaki were an hourly occurrence now. There were two more incidents of Aeaki attacking the guards. One male tried to fly away from the Midden and was shot down by the legionaries, in front of everyone. After this incident, all of them wore chains.

  The situation in Hykaro Roost was deteriorating fast. But then something happened that pushed it from unpleasant to urgent.

  One afternoon, while we were returning from the Midden, we passed several Vorem in the passageway that led to the coops. They were installing something around one of the support pillars: a black box with a single blinking red light. The Aeaki had no sense of what they were doing, but the humans understood immediately: The Vorem had wired the tunnel with explosives. With the push of a button, they could destroy our only way out and leave all of us prisoners sealed underground. I didn’t doubt that the instant Ridian knew his hyperdrive was functional, he would do just that.

  With still no sign of Nicki or Eyf, the humans and I prepared for our escape. We didn’t have an exact plan, but we wanted to be ready when the opportunity presented itself. Each day we each secreted half our food away. I figured that to find the Q-sik, we might need to retrace our steps all the way back to Oru. Hollins did push-ups in our cell, for “strength conditioning.” Becky said he was just doing them to prove he could. I drew and redrew the subway map each night in the dirt of our coop so the humans could study it.