For the Love of Gelo!

by Tom O'Donnell

  One evening, the old Oru was pushing his squeaky cart through Central Crossing and enduring the usual verbal abuse of the other prisoners.

  “Oh boy, oh boy! I sure hope it’s seeds!” said Becky, her voice thick with sarcasm.

  “If you like seeds,” said Little Gus, “you should really try the nuts.”

  As usual, the old Oru said nothing as he pushed four packets through the slot. I thought I caught him giving me a strange look. I was about to say something, but he was already gone, wheeling his old cart to the next coop. He probably wouldn’t have answered anyway.

  I noticed that my leafy food packet was larger and heavier than normal. Perhaps I’d accidentally gotten a double or even triple helping. I wasn’t sure I wanted extra seeds, but even so, I unwrapped the folded leaves.

  There—instead of my usual dinner—was a small homemade technological device. It took me a moment to recognize Taius’s static electricity gun.

  On the inside of the leafy wrapping, one word was scratched in faint human letters: “Tomorrow.”

  • • • •

  “Help!” pleaded Little Gus to the guard. “Please, I think it’s choking!”

  The legionary waved him off. Compassion was not the Vorem legion’s guiding principle.

  “Choking! It does having choking!” repeated Hollins. The guard was still unmoved.

  “Look, you have to help,” said Becky, pressed against the mesh of our coop. “This is the offspring of the Xotonian leader. If it dies, don’t you think Ridian is going to be mad at you?”

  The guard cocked his head. This approach seemed to strike a chord with him. He looked around, but his overnight comrade was off somewhere, patrolling the far side of the chamber. He cautiously approached our cell, blaster rifle out.

  “Everyone get back!” ordered the guard. The humans did. The legionary unlocked the door of our cell and peeked inside.

  He found me lying on the ground, not breathing, my skin an oxygen-deprived shade of blue. The Vorem prodded me with the tip of his heavy boot. I didn’t move. He looked to the humans for support. They stared back at him, terrified.

  “Is it . . . dead?” asked Little Gus, his voice quavering.

  “Shut up,” said the guard.

  “Please, that’s my second-best friend there!”

  The Vorem knelt beside me to feel for a pulse. But then he realized that his hand was covered with a heavy armor gauntlet. He removed the gauntlet and—

  An arc of electricity jumped from Becky’s hand to the Vorem guard’s bare skin. He convulsed for a few seconds and then flopped on the ground.

  “No fun, is it?” said Becky to the unconscious guard.

  I sat up and changed my skin back to its normal color. Hollins had already grabbed the legionary’s blaster rifle. He tossed the octagonal coop key to Little Gus.

  “Go get Ornim and Chayl,” said Hollins. Gus turned to run, but then froze. The other guard was jogging toward us, blaster out. He must have heard something.

  Hollins fired at him but missed. The guard stopped and then ducked behind a row of coops. He returned fire, knocking a chunk out of the concrete wall behind us.

  “Damn,” said Hollins, trying to get a sight. “I can’t shoot him without hitting the other prisoners.”

  Hollins leaped to his feet and ran after the legionary. I followed him. Little Gus and Becky closed the door to our coop, locking the unconscious guard inside.

  Hollins fired and missed again. The legionary now crouched behind a big pile of rubble. All around us, the Aeaki prisoners were squawking wildly. More red laser blasts flew our way.

  Hollins fired back, but the legionary was already gone. He’d made a break for the long passage to the surface—the only way out.

  “He’s going to leave and come back with reinforcements!” I cried.

  Hollins gave a nod, and we ran after the fleeing guard, up the tunnel, and toward the city above. Hollins sent laser blasts whizzing past him as we went.

  We lost sight of him. But around the next bend, he popped out from behind a concrete pylon and returned fire. Hollins screamed and tumbled to the ground.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” said Hollins, scrambling for cover behind a broken chunk of asphalt as I caught up to him. “Except . . .” He held up the blaster rifle—or what was left of it. It had been blown to pieces.

  The legionary knew we were unarmed, and he wasn’t running anymore. He walked back toward us now, leading with a hail of red laser blasts. We were pinned down, totally defenseless. All we could do was wait for him to arrive and disintegrate us.

  “Well, we gave it a shot,” whispered Hollins. “‘It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.’ Teddy Roo—”

  Just then, I heard something: a familiar voice echoing down the passage behind the legionary.

  “But if igneous is formed below the surface, it is called intrusive. There are more than seven hundred types of igneous rocks. Most of them are formed beneath the planet’s crust.”

  The Vorem whipped around to see someone standing in the hallway between him and the surface—a lone, frizzy-haired figure clad in a sensible sweater.

  “Can it be?” I whispered.

  It was none other than my fifth-grade geology teacher, Ms. Neubauer.

  The Vorem grunted with surprise and started wildly shooting at her.

  “Now if you’ll please sync your workdrives to location seventy-six, you’ll find a quiz covering today’s material,” continued Ms. Neubauer impassively while dozens of laser blasts whizzed harmlessly through her. “Please complete it by the beginning of class tomorrow.”

  The Vorem realized too late what was happening. A rusty door burst open beside him, and Becky flew out. With a wordless battle cry, she charged the guard. Fully armored, he must have weighed at least three times as much as she did. But she hit him just below the knees and took his legs right out from under him.

  He tumbled to the ground, and his blaster rifle bounced away down the corridor. Two seconds later, Hollins was pointing it right at his face. The confused legionary slowly put his hands up.

  “Nice work, Becky!” I cried.

  “Not Becky,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face.

  “What?” cried Hollins, doing a double take.

  “Eyf, can you hand me my glasses, please?” she said. Eyf stepped out of the darkened doorway, trembling.

  “Hi,” said the little Aeaki as she handed Nicki her glasses.

  “Nicki?” cried Hollins in disbelief. “But—but you tackled that guy like some kind of maniac. That’s not really . . .” He trailed off.

  “Not really something ‘the smart one’ would do?” She finished his sentence as she deactivated Ms. Neubauer and collected her holodrive from the floor of the tunnel.

  “Well . . . yeah,” said Hollins.

  “Well, maybe I’m not so smart after all,” she said, smiling. Then she frowned. “Wait. No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “No, I know what you meant,” said Hollins. “You’re capable of more than I gave you credit for.”

  Nicki nodded.

  “But how did you manage to get the static gun into our food?” I asked.

  “That was all Eyf,” said Nicki, smiling. “She managed to persuade Rezuro—that’s the name of the old-timer who pushes the food cart—to help. He’s an Oru, you know.”

  “Finally, an Oru who isn’t a jerk or a mold-brain!” I said. “Thanks, Eyf!”

  Eyf shrugged modestly. “I just kept talking and talking until he finally agreed to help. . . . I can talk a long time.” If she hadn’t been covered in feathers, we might have seen her blush. “I think there are many Aeaki in Hykaro who do not like what is happening,” she said. “I’ve tried to tell them what you said. That they don’t have to fight each other.”

  “Um
. . . can I go?” asked the Vorem legionary, startling us all.

  “No!” we cried in unison. We’d all temporarily forgotten he was still there.

  “But . . . they’ve detonated the tunnel,” said the legionary. His hands were shaking now.

  “What?” I asked.

  He nervously pointed. There, on the wall, was the black explosive device. The red light on it was no longer blinking.

  Eyf, Nicki, Hollins, and I looked at one another for a split second.

  “The rest of the prisoners are still down there!” I cried.

  And we ran as fast as we could, back down toward the coops. The legionary leaped to his feet and made for the surface.

  I don’t know whether he got out or not. Ten seconds later, we heard an ear-splitting boom echoing down the corridor behind us. The walls of the passage started to shake and splinter. There was a great rumbling noise, and I felt a wave of heat.

  We reached the end of the tunnel just as it collapsed with a deafening crash. Shards of metal and chunks of concrete as big as me whistled past us. The air was filled with choking dust, even thicker than the storm in the Glass Desert.

  Hollins, Nicki, and Eyf were beside me, coughing. Hollins’s mouth was moving, but no words came out. All I heard was ringing.

  As the dust settled, I realized we were sealed inside the old train station. But worse than that, the walls of the chamber now wobbled uncertainly. Huge cracks were spreading through the structure. The collapse of the tunnel had severely damaged the chamber. The whole place might fall in on itself at any moment.

  As the ringing in my ears faded, it was replaced by the sounds of Aeaki shrieking in terror. I looked around. About half were now out of their coops, but the other half remained caged. Some were flapping around blindly through the dusty air of the chamber, colliding with the walls and each other in their panic.

  We found Becky, with Ornim and Chayl, surrounded by an angry mob.

  “Stand back!” cried Chayl. It had a length of old pipe clutched in its thol’grazes. Though much smaller than an Aeaki, Ornim and Chayl were no pushovers in a fight.

  “Come on! We freed you!” cried Becky. “This is super ungrateful!” She was ready to fight too, but there were far too many of them.

  “You outlanders don’t belong here!” screeched an Aeaki.

  “We’re going to die in this hole!” screeched another.

  “Do not!” cried Hollins, waving the energy blaster over his head. “Staying calm!”

  A big Aeaki went for Ornim, who ducked out of the way and grappled at her feet. Chayl swung the pipe, and it thudded off her wing. She squawked in pain and stumbled back.

  “Everyone, please!” cried Nicki. “Just quit fighting for a second! We have to . . .” No one was listening to her. Another crack spread up the wall.

  Hollins fired an energy blast at the roof, temporarily bathing the dark chamber in red light. And for a moment the Aeaki did stop fighting. As one, they all turned and stared at the weapon. Then they rushed Hollins.

  “I don’t . . . want . . . to shoot them!” Hollins screamed desperately. All around him, Aeaki were pummeling and jostling him from every angle, each one of them trying to pull the weapon from his hands. A wing battered his face, leaving his nose bloody. A clawed foot kicked me in the back, and I fell. Aeaki wrestled and pecked one another in the dirt around me.

  One of them emerged from the scrum, holding the blaster. She flapped up on top of an empty coop, screeched once, and began firing wildly around the chamber. Someone hit her with a rock, and she went down.

  I heard another deep rumble and saw the roof shift. “Please,” I cried, “the whole place is about to fall. . . .” No one could hear me.

  A wild-eyed Aeaki was looming over me now. She’d picked up a heavy chunk of masonry, and she was ready to bash my brains in with it. Then, for some reason, she cocked her head at me and blinked.

  I realized my skin had automatically camouflaged itself to the mottled gray of the concrete upon which I lay. The Aeaki looked up, surprised, just as a heavy blue paw swatted her out of the way.

  Little Gus pulled me to my fel’grazes. Pizza stood beside him, hackles raised, snarling at the other prisoners.

  The scene around us was pure chaos. Aeaki were fighting Aeaki. Dozens of them were piled on the floor, scrabbling after the blaster rifle. They would still be fighting each other when the station caved in, I realized.

  “Stop it!” a voice cried. It was an Aeaki voice, loud and commanding. The other Aeaki turned to see the speaker, perhaps to challenge her authority. Those still locked in their coops quieted their wild screeching.

  “Just stop!” the clear voice cried again. “Stop fighting among yourselves!” The chamber fell quiet. She had their attention now. I could finally see who was speaking. It was little Eyf. She was using a voice far bigger than herself.

  “Why should we listen to you?” cried a tall Aeaki warrior with green and burgundy feathers. A cut above her eye was oozing blood. Apparently, she had won the blaster rifle, which she pointed at Eyf. “You’re just a hatchling of the—the . . .”

  “What clan is she?” cried someone else, ready to meet whatever answer with derision.

  “What clan?” called others.

  Eyf held out her wings for all to see. Plain white. “No clan,” she said.

  A whisper ran through the crowd.

  “I’ve answered a question. Now I’ll ask one,” said Eyf. “Where are we?”

  “In a Vorem prison,” someone cried.

  “In a tomb!” shrieked another.

  “In your tomb, you Yko traitor!” snapped a third.

  “No,” said Eyf. “We are in Hykaro Roost. . . . So why are you fighting?”

  The crowd grew uncomfortable now. None of the Aeaki wanted to answer her.

  “The rule,” said Eyf, “practically the only rule we have left on Kyral, is that when we are here, we don’t fight one another.”

  “Now that the Vorem are back, all bets are off,” said someone. “It’s the end of the world!”

  More of the Aeaki cried out in rage and fear.

  Eyf held out her wings for quiet. “Enough,” she said. “History is very, very, very long. Everybody attacked somebody. But at some point, instead of looking back all the time, we have to look forward. It’s our only hope.”

  “Hope?” shrieked the Aeaki warrior holding the blaster rifle. “The Vorem have burned all the hope. They left us with the ashes. There is no hope on Kyral.”

  Eyf thought about this for a moment. “If we don’t like what the Vorem ones are doing, there is only one thing we can do to try to stop them.”

  “Oh?” demanded the one with the blaster rifle. “You know what we need to do? A child. You have it all figured out, do you? You can tell a warrior how to defeat the mighty Vorem?” A few others around the chamber laughed with derision.

  “Yes,” said Eyf. “We have to work together.”

  They were all quiet now.

  “The Yko will never work with the Esu!” someone cried. But their voice sounded weak and unsure.

  “How?” cried someone else.

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” admitted Eyf. “But the Xotonians have figured out a way to work together. So have the humans. I think we can too. All I know is the first step.”

  “What is it?” someone cried.

  “Tell us!”

  “Look around you,” said Eyf. “You see other Aeaki. Strangers—enemies, maybe. But you must imagine whomever you are looking at has the same color feathers as you do. Or that you have the same feathers as them. Or, if it makes it easier, imagine that both of your feathers are like mine, with no color at all.”

  Some of them shook their heads in disbelief or anger. Others listened though. They glanced or stared right at one another. They cocked their heads, and their shiny l
ittle eyes glinted in the darkness.

  “Imagine that we are all one clan,” said Eyf. “Aeaki.”

  A few of them were nodding now. I couldn’t believe it. They were heeding Eyf’s words. After all the centuries of bloodshed, were they finally tired of killing each other?

  “The legends say that Kyral was a very, very, very great place long ago,” said Eyf. “If we can forget the old grudges, forget who attacked whom and who robbed whose hunting traps, then maybe it could be great again.”

  Just then, there was another rumble. A massive chunk dropped from the ceiling and crushed four coops flat. Thank Jalasu Jhuk all were empty. This set the prisoners panicking anew. Central Crossing swayed and wobbled.

  “Now, does anyone know of a way out?” asked Eyf, her voice calm.

  “That way!” I cried. I pointed to one of the walled-up arches. “It’s a tunnel.”

  Eyf looked at the arch, then she turned toward the Aeaki who held the Vorem blaster rifle. “You, with the energy blaster,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “I am Tanihi of the Ati,” said the warrior proudly. Here was at least one Aeaki who wasn’t ready to give up her clan yet.

  Eyf looked back to the arch. “Well, Tanihi, my friend says we need to break through that wall to escape. Otherwise, all of us will die.”

  Tanihi looked at the blaster she held. Then she looked at the two hundred Aeaki around her, their dusty feathers every color of the rainbow—some of them sworn enemies, no doubt.

  She lowered the blaster rifle, and she fired. A blast knocked a chunk out of the center of the walled-up arch. I saw pure darkness behind it—a way out.

  Carefully—stone by stone, so as not to destabilize the arch—we widened the hole until it was large enough for an Aeaki to fit through. Meanwhile, Little Gus and Becky worked to free the rest of the prisoners. With Pizza present, though, many of the Aeaki had to be coaxed out of their coops.