by PJ McDermott
He slumped to his knees and buried his head in his hands. Ten minutes before, he had been planning to have them executed, tortured as their reward for letting him down. Now, all Vogel could think of was what they’d once been and how proud he’d felt to be their leader.
He stared at the sword he had captured. Strange the creature would carry such a thing. Perhaps it had been attracted to the shiny metal. He scratched at an itch on his leg. He was alone now. But he felt thankful to be alive, even if life had been reduced to the most basic level in this Herek-forsaken land. He rubbed at his cheek absently. He’d have to forage more widely for food. His troops had just about hunted the surrounding area to extinction.
Animal life was scarce anyway in the Scarf, but fish were plentiful in the nearby lagoons—strange, brightly colored swimmers with legs as well as fins, and eyes that looked unsettlingly intelligent. It caused his stomach to churn when one of the bigger ones had been set on the fire to cook. Its eyes had turned to his, and he’d decided that he would eat them no longer. His soldiers hadn’t shown the same scruples.
He rubbed his head, then scratched at his crotch. What the—? He stood up and brushed at his clothes. Tiny insects covered him. They had burrowed under his clothes and into his hair, and they bit.
Vogel ran back to the ship, his arms flailing. He flicked on the purification system and stripped off his clothes. Hot water from the lagoon delivered via a crude but effective pipe system steamed forth and scoured his skin. He lathered soap into the small patch of hair on his head and scrubbed his body until it hurt. He stayed under the shower a long time, letting the warmth penetrate and soothe.
Afterward, the commander put on a fresh set of underclothes and his alternate uniform and then re-adjusted his radiation protection. He would miss the small comforts afforded by the ship when he moved on, but he wouldn’t survive in this swamp much longer. He picked up the sword absently and stared at it. Where did you come from, I wonder? The long blade gleamed brightly. Avanauri weapon smiths sometimes fused crynidium to the steel to improve its sharpness and durability. He heaved the sword in his hand, surprised at how light it felt. He swung it back and forth in a series of Bikashi training routines, and it felt almost as though the sword anticipated his moves and led his hand.
Vogel placed the blade in the corner of the ship where he could keep his eyes on it and mixed himself a glass of Shirezan. The Bikashi liqueur was standard issue on every ship from his home planet, Auriga. This was the last bottle. He settled himself into a chair and sighed. As he sipped the drink appreciatively, the Bikashi commander’s eyes sought the sword time and again. Eventually, he retrieved the weapon and laid it across his knees. Recent events and the bleak future that stretched ahead made him weary. Tiredness overcame him, his head drooped onto his chest, and he fell into a deep sleep.
*
Connat-sèra-Haagar sat astride the massive yarrak, her body encased in chain mail and an armored helm upon her head. Despite the bulky protection, she felt light of heart and filled with energy as she watched the Erlachi hordes approach. She’d waited for this day. Tensions had been building between the two neighboring states over sovereignty of the border for almost a year. When a party of Avanauri farmers decided to settle the land around Crodal, Erlach’s patience snapped. The Erlachi army slaughtered one hundred and twenty naurs and nauris and then marched south.
They were many, come to Ezekan to kill and enslave her people in the name of the one God, Balor. Connat spat. Both countries believed in the same God but would happily slay innocents as well as other believers in his name. Her glance took in the city guard stretched out in a sparse front to either side of her. They looked nervous, undecided whether to run or fight. She could sense they were almost resolved to surrender.
Since the sword had chosen her to be its champion, the young nauri’s sensitivity to the thoughts and emotions of those around her had flourished. Often, she understood what others were thinking and sensed what they were about to do even before they, themselves, knew. This was one of many changes wrought by the sword. Connat’s strength was unequaled in Avanaux, and her skill with any weapon such that none could stand against her. She had also developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Rarely did she feel the need for sleep, spending each night reading books and scrolls when all others had gone to bed. She’d studied every tome in the city library, a small building to look at, but one that held the priceless, written wealth of the nation, and she had journeyed far seeking to learn more.
The more wisdom she absorbed, the stronger grew the bond between her and the sword. The stronger the bond, the more its power flowed through her.
These wonders came at a price. Her family could not comprehend the extraordinary warrior she had become, and they shunned her. Friends she had grown up with feared to come near lest they be consumed by the strange lights dancing in her eyes.
Contrarily, strangers idolized her and left her little privacy. An object of awe and veneration among the Avanauri common people, Connat-sèra-Haagar drew attention everywhere she went. The lack of close friendships meant little to her, and she knew this was also part of the change the sword had wrought in her.
She struggled to remain faithful to the person she had been before the sword claimed her, cultivating a strict regimen of exercise, meditation, and prayer. She succeeded at least partly in retaining a vestige of the farm girl she had once been, hunting wild loopas with her friends in the woods and sitting at her father’s hearth listening to tales of the magical folk, the Lonilki.
But today, Connat knew it would be different. The enemy would come amongst them, and she would turn the power of the sword loose. She prayed to Balor for the strength to regain her mortality when the day was done.
She pulled on the reigns of the yarrak so that it reared high, then raised the sword and let the Avanauri and the Erlachi alike glimpse its power as it flared brightly in the light of the sun. “Ayeiii!” she screamed. “Today is a day to fight. Today is a day to maim and kill. For if we, the chosen ones of Balor, do not vanquish the barbarians, they will surely lay waste to our homes and murder and mutilate our families. Follow the sword, Avanauri, and it will lead you to victory!”
A roar of approval from the ranks was met by calls of derision and jeering from the assembled Erlachi. Connat urged her yarrak into a gallop towards the enemy. Hundreds of fighting naurs and nauris holding pikes and banners followed her and crashed into their adversaries. Yarraks and Perines alike shrieked with the lust for battle.
Connat swept the sword in a circle above her head and, uttering a primal scream, she scythed into the enemy. The Erlachi warriors facing her threw down their swords and crawled under the feet of yarraks in their desperation to escape. Others turned to flee but were pressed close by those behind. Every swing of the sword separated half a dozen heads from their bodies. Many others lost limbs or suffered wounds to their chest and stomach.
All the while, Connat controlled the movement of her steed with her knees and an occasional mental order to veer right or left. She sliced into the ranks of the enemy and swept out the other side. She turned time and time again, shredding the might of the Erlachi army so that her own troops found it an easy task to mop up the remnants. Occasionally, an arrow found its target but glanced harmlessly off her armor. No swordsman came within striking distance of the furious berserker.
*
Vogel woke abruptly, his heart hammering. Shafts of daylight poured through the open cabin door, temporarily disorienting him. He shook his head. The dream had been spectacularly vivid, real. He could still feel the astonishing power of the sword coursing through him; hear the anguished screams of the fallen; smell the blood of the victims and feel the exultation as he routed their forces. He had been as one with the female warrior, sharing her blood lust, her struggles to remain Avanauri in the midst of her excesses, her exhilaration, and her regrets. Connat-sèra-Haagar. The name came to him quickly—the legendary Avanauri heroine who had been responsible for the
defeat of the Erlachi thousands of years earlier.
What had brought this long dead general into his subconscious? After all, he had only passing knowledge of this legend from the mists of time. Perhaps the devastation caused by the giant flying reptile had affected his mind more than he realized.
The sword lay on his lap where he’d placed it. He brought it close, examining the weapon in detail for the first time. It looked identical to the one Connat had wielded: long, double-edged and shining, with a distinct hand-guard encrusted with colorful gems and molded in the shape of a bird of prey.
He ran his fingers across a row of faded symbols inscribed on the hilt, almost erased by time. In his dream, the sword possessed an incredible power. The heroine had been a vessel; at least partly an unwilling one, but a channel through which the sword worked its magic.
Abruptly, Vogel went outside. He gathered twigs and tree branches from the forest’s edge and built a fire on top of the hillock where the winged monster had landed. He added more fuel until the interior glowed white and blue.
The commander searched the ship for a hammer and selected half a dozen metal rods from the wreckage. He heated the rods until they were yellow-orange, then fashioned a rough scabbard for the sword. He would wear it on his belt. The makeshift holder would prevent the sharp blade from cutting into his leg. He tested out the combination and was pleased with the result.
Vogel considered his position. No one knew of his whereabouts, so it was unlikely anyone would arrive to rescue him. The communications panel was beyond repair, meaning he couldn’t send a distress signal. Indeed, little of value could be salvaged from the ship. It seemed pointless to him to hang around now that his companions were dead.
He wondered what manner of monster had killed them. He’d never seen the like of it, on this planet or any other. Perhaps it was indigenous to the Scarf. Why had it carried a sword, and one so finely crafted as this? Could there be a connection between his dream and the winged creature? He pondered these mysteries for a few minutes but came up with no satisfactory answers. He shrugged. The beast must be involved in some way.
He gazed across the inlet at the island with the strangely shaped mountain. It looked only a few miles away. The monster had left in that direction. Vogel decided to search the island for the creature and hope he would find answers before he killed it. He bore the monster no grudge: it was a wild animal; the slaughter of his men had been instinctive. The creature could bear no malice. But it was a matter of honor for him. His soldiers’ deaths must be avenged. This would be a fitting final quest to end his life.
He went back to the spaceship and bundled up the remaining food, water, spare clothes, an extra pair of boots and a variety of tools, and looked around one last time. He picked up his blaster, then threw it back on the couch. No point in bringing useless junk. It would only slow him down.
I Hate Jungle
“Hold on to your hats, boys and girls. We’re about to elevator-drop straight through the ionosphere,” said Jess Parker whooping gleefully. She could have put the drive into auto, but Jess loved the adrenalin rush from being in control of the ship.
Hickory glanced at the four passengers. Most of them had their eyes shut and were clinging fiercely to the arms of their seats as the ship bounced and shuddered. None were recognizable as Earthlings, as their physical appearance had been transformed by the maquillage process to mimic the main species of the planet Prosperine.
Modern Avanauri were humanoid, but a few features from their distant origins were still evident. Descended from warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates with traits similar to Earth’s extinct herbivorous dinosaurs, the males and females of the species—the naurs and nauris—were hairless except for their eyebrows and a strip running across their skull that stretched from the forehead to halfway down the spine. Their pupils were large and shockingly blue, and the females displayed prominently sculptured cheekbones. The most striking differences between naurs and nauris, however, were also evident amongst the transformed humans. Whereas the males had black pigmentation around their eyes, Hickory’s and Jess’s skin shone with speckled purple markings that began at their eyes and followed the curvature of their cheekbones to fade at their earlobes.
All IA personnel assigned to Prosperine underwent the same transformation process. The measures had been agreed between the IA and the Avanauri government to prevent panic amongst the superstitious medieval inhabitants who had no knowledge that aliens walked amongst them.
While the passengers’ appearance looked local, the most important changes couldn’t be seen. Because of the harsh Prosperine environment, each individual’s metabolism and respiratory system had also been modified. This allowed them to function in all ways as natives of the planet. Finally, their brown skin had been impregnated with a screening agent, without which the radiation from Prosperine’s sun would kill them within a few days.
The ship pitched violently, and Gareth Blanquette muttered under his breath. He had been with Hickory and Jess on other assignments, and while he appreciated Jess’s sense of fun, he didn’t enjoy her cavalier approach to flying.
“Mother!” he burst out. “Why don’t you just put the ship in control and let us cruise to the surface? You’ll have everyone sick in a minute.”
Here we go, thought Hickory. Gareth and Jess enjoyed a strange relationship. Jess was twice Gareth’s age, and she had a tendency to treat him like her son. Gareth’s response to this was to habitually refer to her as his ‘mother.’ They sparked off each other at every opportunity, but in any tight spot each would defend the other as if their own life depended on it.
“Quiet, boyo! Remember, you’re the reason we’re here. Sit back and relax, why don’t you? You’re making everyone nervous.”
Gareth spluttered, “I’m making them nervous? You can’t be serious.”
“All right, that’s enough,” said Hickory, shaking her head. If she let them, they’d both carry on this way until they either landed or they crashed. “Jess?” She raised an eyebrow at her best friend.
“For heaven’s sake, can’t a girl have some fun?” said Jess. “Oh, alright.” She snapped a switch on the dash; the craft sailed into the lower atmosphere and evened off.
They cruised until Hickory pointed to a flat, grassy area and Jess landed the ship without a shudder. She turned towards Gareth with a smirk on her face. “That’s what you call flying, boyo.” She tapped at a few keys and flicked a switch, and the engine whined into silence.
Looking at it on the viewscreen, the clearing had a ghostly feel to it. Tendrils of swirling vapor rose from the ground and disappeared into the hot air. In the mid-distance, a mist-shrouded thicket of stunted trees huddled together—the periphery of the jungle.
Hickory signaled to Pat MacArthur, the engineer. “Paddy, bring your gear and the map. Let’s see whereabouts we are.”
The landing area measured roughly three hundred yards in diameter. When they exited the ship, the ground felt spongy underfoot, and a cloud of tiny flies erupted from the mist at every step. A fifty-foot high flat-topped pillar of rock stood to one side of the clearing. Hickory and the engineer climbed to the top and spread out the map.
MacArthur’s chest heaved. “I hope the radiation protection they gave us works. It’s hot as Hades out here.”
“If it doesn’t, we’ll be dead in a couple of days, maybe less. So we better get on with it, eh?” Hickory laughed at the engineer’s shocked expression and slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Paddy. This is my third visit to Prosperine, and I haven’t had a problem yet. Our medical people are the best. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“I wish we had some decent scanning equipment,” said Paddy, smoothing his map on the rock surface. “They put this sketch together from orbit sightings. It’s okay for distances and topography, but it won’t help much with soil conditions like swamps, or sinkholes, or the biology around here.”
Hickory shrugged. “Blame the admiral. He doesn’t want to je
opardize his business relationship with the High Reeve by breaking the embargo on bringing advanced technology to the planet.”
“I know there’s a lot at stake, but I didn’t realize the Scarf was part of Avanaux’s jurisdiction,” said Paddy.
“It is, according to Yonni. Which is why we have to rely on swords and knives for protection. We don’t want to chance losing a blaster that might be picked up later by an inquisitive native. It’s not as bad as it sounds. We can make do with what we have for now.”
She studied the map and looked to the horizon through her spyglass. They’d landed on the edge of a shallow sea covered by several feet of tangled vines and seaweed that extended into the jungle. Beyond the trees, she could see a sparkle of light reflecting off more seawater. Further on, a large hill or perhaps a small mountain dominated the landscape. She checked her map again. It was marked as one of many islands in the area. The entire area known as the Scarf was a network of thousands of islands connected by matted weed. Six hundred miles wide, it encircled the entire planet. “According to Brox, the jet should be just the other side of that jungle.” She pointed. “Let’s round up the others and get started.”
“I can think of more pleasant places to take a stroll,” said Gareth, readjusting his rucksack and squashing an insect against his cheek.
The two IA Rangers, Barb and Jack, grinned at each other as they led the way through the dense thicket. It was shadowy and oppressive beneath the intertwining branches. The air smelled fetid and was filled with the hum of tiny flies that sought out any uncovered part of the body. Often, one or other of the company tripped over tangled roots that seemed to spring up as they passed.
