The Shattered Sky

by Paul Lucas

  It saw me, and charged.

  I had been confronted with a similar situation before, months ago with the Xique. My experience with them would serve me well against my son.

  I loosed a fire-spirit directly in front of him. A bright flash of orange-white flame sputtered briefly into existence at his feet, tens of billions of nanites self-destructing to release the needed energy.

  The blast burned off half his fur in an instant and turned the skin of his legs into blackened, blistering ruins. He barely slowed down.

  Not good.

  I loosed another fire spirit, with equally poor results. All the creature did this time was stumble for a step or two.

  It was getting too close for me to risk another fire-spirit. Instead, I swung the rifle up and started blasting.

  That got results, even if it did take over a dozen shots just to get the thing to slow down to even a slow trot. Every time I had to switch clips--three times in under a minute--the creature would take those few seconds to get back up to speed, despite the nearly two dozen holes I had blown through its body.

  Inexorably it reached the entrance to the node. I stumbled back to the far wall to allow it to enter. It gurgled blood-soaked rage at me. “Now, Dumas!” I shouted as it cleared the doorway.

  The spider at the controls danced its legs furiously over the keypad. The door slid shut as I emptied my last few bullets into the creature.

  Dumas’ element body hit the activate button.

  Nothing happened.

  I was expecting something--anything--to happen at that moment. I held myself rigid in anticipation. The creature took advantage of my moment of hesitation, swiping me hard across my jaw. I went flying to the side, impacting the inner wall of the teleport globe. The entire sphere rang like a bell.

  I shook my head, trying to focus past the agony in my midriff and jaw. That was good, in a way. If my body had gone numb in either region, it would have been a sure sign of something broken. By rights the creature should have shattered my jaw, but its weakened and wounded condition probably was sapping a great deal of its more-than-human strength.

  I squinted hard, trying quickly to regain some cognizance before the creature could press his attack. It limped slowly toward me, step after arduous step. It was wounded in a more than a dozen places, with two fist-sized holes from the clustering of my bullets blown right through his abdomen.

  I noticed a hideous stench, like overripe meat left in the sun too long. The creature was smoking from several locations on his body. At first I thought it was his fur still smoldering from the fire-spirits I summoned, but then I noticed it was not his fur but his raw skin underneath glowing cherry-red and occasionally hissing as steam ruptured from a gash in the skin.

  The nanites in his body must be working overtime to repair the atrocious damage done to his tissues. And the billions of nanites in his body, engaging in all that non-stop activity, produced a lot of heat.

  He was literally being cooked from the inside out.

  His genetic designers, the Others, had made quite a mistake in letting the nanites within him dedicate themselves so single-mindedly to healing.

  His wounds would have killed any mundane creature long ago. Spirits, I could actually see through his body in some places from the bullet holes! I was still too dazed and hurt to move quickly. But if I let the creature get a hold of me I was finished!

  In desperation I summoned a Shock spell and cast it at him. No effect. Of course. His body did not have mainstream nanites in it; they would not obey my commands. And any other spell I could summon, like a fire spirit or Louis’ Shattersound, would affect me as well in the confined space.

  The door to the node suddenly swooshed open. Outside was not the stark, silver-black walls of the Underworld I expected to see. Rather, a forest lay beyond the portal, one lush with thick trees and deep-green brush. Birds warbled in the distance.

  Spirits preserve me, the teleport had actually worked. We were somewhere else among the Shards!

  The creature turned at the sound of the swooshing noise. He was almost directly between me and the doorway.

  His moment’s distraction was the chance I needed. Now or never. I summoned what remained of my strength, and, yelling at the top of my lungs in some incoherent scream of rage and desperation, I flung myself at the creature, rifle first.

  I hit him off-balance, rifle between me and him so I could push him better. His skin felt burning-hot on the knuckles of my tool fingers. I gained momentum, the creature flailing at me wildly. His claws slashed shallowly across my back. I screamed in pain, but that only seemed to add to my momentary adrenaline rush of strength.

  Finally we stumbled out the door and out onto the leaf-strewn forest floor. The trees around us looked spectacularly mundane, pines and maples and oaks with the musty-humid scent that always hangs low in a virgin forest. Summoning all my remaining strength, I pushed the creature away from me.

  He snarled and charged me as best he could.

  Again, his wounds made him slow. I had time to grab the rifle barrel and use the gun as a club. The first blow caught my monstrous son clean across his jutting jaw. Another such blow sent him reeling backwards. I pressed the attack, despite the agony each swing would open up in my back from the creature’s cuts. I could not think of my own pain now.

  I landed blow after blow, driving it back. Finally, it tottered on a precipice that had been all but concealed by a patch of low-lying brush. Snarling my victory, I rushed forward to deliver the final blow that would send it reeling downward.

  The creature’s paw shot out and grabbed my arm. But as he did so, my momentum transferred to him, giving him just the small amount of force he needed to send him over the edge. He dragged me down with him.

  We tumbled end over end down that steep hillside, impacting rock and roots and brush in painful succession. The creature took the worst of it.

  Through the haze of motion and pain I saw us rapidly approaching another, much more steeper precipice. How far down it went I could not be sure, but I knew I had to avoid it at all costs.

  I kicked viciously at the creature, landing a foot squarely on his still semi-intact chest. I kicked out as hard as I could, the creature’s talons raking across me as it tried desperately to hold on. My hand shot out to grab something, anything. Miraculously, my fingers found the base of a narrow tree. I clutched desperately at it with all of my remaining strength. I stopped my fall, barely, nearly wrenching my shoulder out of its socket in the process.

  With one last howl of defiance, the creature’s grip on me broke and it went tumbling over the precipice. I heard him impact a second later with a dull, bone-crunching thud.

  For a long while I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I hurt too much. I was covered with dozens of bruises and cuts, plus the long gashes in my back caught my flesh on fire every time I twisted or bent my midriff.

  But I had to make sure my son was dead. I had to. His spirit had to be freed. It would be the only way my own spirit would ever find peace in the next life.

  Slowly, arduously, I stood and staggered over to the cliff’s edge. The forest was preternaturally quiet around us; our conflict must have scared the wildlife into silence. Leaning against a lonely, twisted oak I peered down.

  At least thirty wing-spans below I saw him. He had landed in a small clearing at the very base of the cliff, surrounded by ankle-high grass and wild flowers. From the acute angle that he lay it was obvious his spine was broken. His skin smoldered hotly as he mewled softly, pitifully.

  He looked at me and for the first time since his transformation I saw no malice, no alien hostility. In so much pain, with so many of his mutated nanites occupied, the programming of the Others was failing. Now the only thing that lay within that dying shell was a terrified innocent, who could not understand where he was or what was happening. His look was one of pure confusion and hopeless pleading.

  Alien creatures beyond my understanding had made him a monster. But now, in the final mome
nts of his life, he was what he should have been all along: a child.

  My child.

  I slumped to my knees. Spirits help me, this would not be as easy a task as I had thought an hour ago.

  I forced myself to relax, to clear my mind. I reached into myself to summon one, final spirit.

  The Nanotech Matrix responded, and I opened my eyes just in time to see the grass surrounding him burst into flames. The fire quickly consumed him, and I was not surprised to see his already-heated body catch fire. A few moments of agony, and at last he stopped moving.

  Tears stung my eyes. “Sunset,” I said to remind his departing spirit of who he was. “Your name is Sunset,” I shouted, sobbing, hoping he would hear and understand.

  I watched his body immolate for long time, until there was little left except ash and blackened bone. It was only after the flames died down to oily smoke that I realized that it was time.

  I wiped my eyes dry and slowly, methodically made my way back up the hill, retrieving the rifle from where it had landed half-way up. It took a long time to again reach the Teleport Node. I wanted to be somewhere I could see the sky when I made my final journey.

  I lay against the odd, mysterious machinery that surrounded three-fourths of the Node sphere, staring up at the sky. Just as I did so, night fell, the sun hiding itself behind its disk of utter darkness. All the Shards shone in their unfettered glory, a million, million star-like motes moving ever so stately against the velvety blackness.

  I thanked the Sky-Spirit for this one last gift.

  I held the short barrel of the rifle against my breast, just left of center, and pulled the trigger.

  PART 3

  The City Of The Sky

  FORTY-FIVE

  Click.

  I looked down at the weapon, disbelieving. I squeezed the trigger again and again and again.

  No ammunition left.

  What little strength I had left fled. The weapon fell from my tool-fingers.

  Lerner was dead. Sunset was dead.

  Nothing mattered.

  I curled into a ball on the cool grass, just breathing with my eyes closed, for a long time.

  * * *

  It was daylight before I was aware of the world again. I was on my back, staring up at the ghostly Shards meandered across the azure sky.

  A persistent dry scratchiness on my breast made me look up. A hairy black tarantula straddled my chest. It stared back at me with all eight of its tiny eyes.

  Dumas. Or, rather, the element body of his that had activated the teleport node. Being part of a group was as natural to it as flying was to me. I must be the only familiar creature it recognized around here, so with its limited, single-body intelligence it naturally congregated to me.

  I let it squat there.

  After several hours, the spider left me and returned a short while later. I heard the crunch-slurp of it feeding on something.

  As the day wore on I felt the steady tingly itch of sunburn settling in where my fur was the thinnest. My throat scratched with thirst, my stomach growled with hunger, and my muscles threatened to cramp.

  I had been foolish before, trying to kill myself with the gun. Too easy. This way, lying here waiting to die, I would suffer much more.

  The way it should be.

  * * *

  The massive doors of the teleport node shut by themselves with a loud clank late in the day. Dumas’ element-body leapt off me as the machinery around the globe hummed briefly, then went quiet again. I blinked numbly at the node. My vision had begun to blur, so I could only fuzzily make out the node’s circular silhouette against the sky.

  The door slid open, and out stepped a tall, muscular figure, unmistakably female. “Gossamyr?”

  “Amethyst?” I croaked.

  She rushed up to me, other figures emerging from the metal globe behind her.

  I tried to laugh at the absurdity of her being there but my voice cracked like sun-baked sand.

  But when the Orc woman knelt down next to me and tentatively put her hand on my head, the weight of her fingers like an electric shock. She was real, not a mirage as I first thought.

  I tried to talk, but only a small wheeze escaped my throat. I moved to sit up, but the effort only succeeded in tumbling my tentative hold on consciousness into a deep, dark abyss.

  * * *

  My eyes blinked slowly open. Amethyst’s face was above mine. “Hey!” she shouted at figures I could only barely make out with my still-gummy vision. “Hey, she’s waking up!”

  I noticed blearily that we were in a shelter of some kind, a tarp spread out between a plastic frame. A KN-made tent of some kind.

  Two new faces joined Amethyst’s in my line of vision. Louis and Cloud. Insanity. Didn't they know about the Node?

  “Relax, Gossamyr,” Amethyst said. “The worst is over. Your fever’s broken. You should be on your feet in a few--”

  Her words were cut off as I flung myself at her, wrapping my arms around her torso. The movement took almost all my strength and threatened to tumble me back into the abyss of unconsciousness. I was overwhelmed by the intense need to touch someone, anyone, just then. A cold shivering that I could not stop for all the world overtook me as I hugged her.

  Amethyst stiffened. Orcs aren't known for their displays of affection. Yet she took only a heartbeat to wrap her massive arms around me my waist and let me cling to her for as long as I liked.

  After a while, I surprised myself by soaking her shirt through with tears. I thought I had none left.

  I haltingly told the three of them what happened, including my attempt to take my own life.

  As my words wound down, silence reigned in the tent. Amethyst pulled back from me as her eyes flicked toward her rifle, propped up not far away against her backpack. “If you want,” she said very quietly to me, “I can free your spirit for you.”

  I thought about it long and hard. I did not know then, nor would I ever truly understand, why I shook my head shallowly and mouthed a very tentative “no.”

  And so a new life I could not have imagined a day before began.

  FORTY-SIX

  The chieftain’s name is He Who Flies with Nobility and Grace, or, as the crew’s been calling him, Flier. He seems one of those gruff-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside kind of guys. He’s a master of the stern, immobile, I’m-in-charge facial expressions, but you can tell that he listens intently to every single one of his people and considers any council they give him seriously.

  His wife, Windrider, is almost his exact opposite. Where Flier is large, imposing and stoic, she is small, wiry and fiery-tempered. She never lets a single, undiluted opinion of hers go unspoken, especially if it can stir up a bit of trouble. Her position as spiritual leader makes her the center of a great deal of the Myotans’ social lives.

  Both of them command immense respect in the community. Their heirs apparent are another story. Cloud (more accurately Majestic Cloud Girdling the Sacred Sky), the young but admittedly very talented Chief Hunter, will likely become the next Chieftain, but many here consider him far too arrogant and self-absorbed to be good at the job. And Gossamyr, my de facto assistant and liaison, is considered too odd-headed to be a competent Shaman.

  Many expect Cloud and Gossamyr to marry, just as Flier and Windrider did. They used to play together all the time as youngsters, and many consider the current rift between them to be only temporary.

  I just can't see them as a couple, though.

  --from the journals of Armand Lerner, entry dated 8 July 542

  * * *

  The weeks that followed were a blur to me. Many things happened, but most of them did not register as important enough for me to pay attention to. My mind was lost in other things.

  Much of the time I forgot to eat. Amethyst often had to cuff me on the head just to take a few bites.

  She and the others argued often. About what I could not recall.

  The teleport node hummed once a day for a while, delivering equipment
and supplies. Amethyst told me that they had hastily arranged for this before they had come on their rescue mission to help me. It made a strange kind of sense. Travel through the Node was one way; there was no way back. Provided the three of them survived whatever awaited them on this end of the Node, they would be stranded indefinitely, and would need all the help extra equipment could supply.

  It took about two weeks before I began to come back to myself. It began with the sudden realization of how filthy I was. I had not bathed or brushed my fur since Lerner had...since before I had come through the Node. Before it had not seemed to matter. Now, in the space of one heartbeat to the next, I could not stand the stink of myself.

  The others had discovered a river nearby, not even an hour’s walk away. When I asked Amethyst to come bathing with me (no Myotan likes to wash alone) she immediately grabbed a few towels and followed me, giving the males a stern warning not to peek.

  As she undressed, I felt intimidated by her again despite myself. Seeing her nude only reinforced how enormous she was. A full two meters tall with more curves than any two females of my species, she had shoulders as broad as my out-stretched arm and thighs that looked powerful enough to crush rocks between them. Her avalanche of dark hair alone, pulled back into a topknot and falling all the way to her hips, looked to weigh half as much as I did. I was used to having males much larger than me around; that seemed only natural. But a female of such proportions only served to make me feel very inadequate, and very lucky she had not shown up at the Tower sooner than she had. I could not imagine Lerner or any other male ever paying much attention to my barely-curving figure with a mountainous bosom like hers on display.

  “The water is cold,” I said, shivering as I slowly waded into the stream.