by Aer-ki Jyr
“Ok. So what else do we need to take care of here before we move on?”
“You need to get used to your armor while I take care of some things, and you can practice with it by moving the carts. We need to make as many food cubes as we can carry with us, but before that you and I are going to get a quick sparring lesson in, then I’m going to get you your apple.”
“You want me to fight you?”
“Practice. Start by setting my pistol aside and hitting me with your arm.”
“Alright,” Esna said, putting the fat pistol on a nearby crate and stepping up in front of the huge mass of orange armor. She reached out with her right arm and punched it lightning fast thanks to the powered parts, but her hand bounced off and didn’t move him at all.
Esna flexed her hand. That had hurt a little, despite the padding.
“Rule number 1. Do not punch with your knuckles.”
“What? How else do you punch?”
“Sometimes you do, but your knuckles break easily, so use them only when it’s a good idea or you have no choice. If you do have a choice, try a part of your arm that won’t damage easily.”
“Such as?”
“The side of your hand or the palm. Try your palm and make contact at the base. You’ll need to aim upwards slightly.”
“Ok,” Esna said uncertainly, stepping forward and pushing hard. Her hand made contact, but it didn’t move him either.
Rammak sighed. “I can see we have a lot of work to do.”
“That bad?” Esna asked, cringing.
“Yes. Try your elbow this time. Take a step back and run it forward into me. Snap it up at the last moment and twist at the waist.”
“You want me to ram you?”
“Try.”
Esna walked back a bit then ran into him leading with her elbow. She felt his big body move a little, but he only took a half step back as she bounced to the side. Rammak reached out and caught her before she could fall and stood her back up as easy as if she were a life size toy.
“Better. Do you know how to fight at all?”
“Someone my own size, sure.”
“Those who hunt us will be my size. The ones that matter anyway, though you have no chance against them.”
“If I’m just a package you’re protecting why practice at all?”
“A Human that can’t fight is…insulting.”
“To you?”
“To Star Force. Everyone, Human and otherwise, is taught to fight in the maturia. Someone that doesn’t know how is…unusual. We’ll work as we travel, and maybe if we meet up with some local hunters you’ll eventually be able to handle yourself without a weapon.”
“I already know how to shoot. I am going to be carrying a weapon, right?”
“Several.”
“So I just need to learn to shoot with your equipment.”
“Yes, but later. Right now let’s just focus on throwing a punch that doesn’t land you off balance. We’ll start with palm strikes for now. Hit me again, but more slowly. You need to learn the proper motion before you put power behind it.”
Esna didn’t say anything, focusing on what she was doing and lightly tapped Rammak’s chest plate again. He gave her corrections and she repeated her strikes, gradually gaining power until she was landing with enough force that her hand started to get sore. She still couldn’t budge him, but at least she knew what he wanted her to do when the Commando made her switch hands and repeat, telling her that having a right or left bias was unacceptable. All warriors were ambidextrous, and if they didn’t start out that way naturally they had to train themselves into the balanced state.
At least she was equally awkward with both arms, so balance wasn’t something she was going to have to worry about. Totally sucking with both was actually an achievement of sorts and allowed Esna to practice evenly as Rammak played punching bag for a bit, but he didn’t keep her at it for too long, eventually taking her over to the apple trees and retrieving one for her.
She learned how to take her helmet off, then picked the apple up in both hands and dropped it onto her knee, splitting it in half as he’d instructed her to do then taking one of the pieces that was the width of her chest and breaking off a bit of the rim. Esna took a bite and found it tart, but juicy. It was a weird taste but so full of water that she instantly liked it, for it was nothing like the dried up crops that grew in the fields.
There was so much to the apple that she couldn’t eat a tenth of it now, but Rammak took the rest and put it into a processor that chopped it up and did whatever else was necessary to turn it into a powdery substance that got mixed with other ingredients in several different machines that each turned out tiny, dense cubes in racks similar to what she’d been eating along with the Calavari ever since they’d met.
It was good food, but eating the raw apple was something she was going to miss once they hit the road again…and she really hoped that whoever might be following them didn’t find and loot this place. If they ever came back here, she was going to want another one.
12
“We leave the speeder here,” Rammak said as they stopped several weeks later at an unremarkable crack in the wall of the cave network they’d been traveling through.
“Where are we?” Esna asked, getting out and looking around. There was nothing here that looked technological, and the fact that there had been no guide lights was telling.
“We go on foot from here.”
“How far?” she asked, grabbing for one of the gear satchels in the cargo bed.
“No,” the Calavari said, raising an armored hand. “We can only carry what will fit on our armor.”
“We’re leaving all this stuff here?”
“Our armor will shield us from ranged detection, but not the gear. It’s harder to spot than the speeder, but we need to be invisible.”
“Can they really see through all this rock?”
“Possibly.”
“Shouldn’t we leave the speeder somewhere else then walk back here? It kind of marks exactly where we went.”
Rammak pointed a finger at her. “Now you’re thinking.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, digging into one bag of supplies and trying to figure out what to take with them.
“Back to the surface.”
Esna stopped and looked at him. “Won’t that give us away?”
“We’ll be in terrain.”
“What about their sensors?”
“Sensors work by picking up something special about you. Our armor hides our heat signature and other things. If they looked closely enough at where we were they could see us, but that would defeat the point of searching. They have to cast a wide signal across regions of the planet looking for whatever return pings they can get that are different than the environment.”
“And metal is different?”
“Sometimes, but it’s more about moving metal. A parked speeder is better hidden than a traveling one.”
“And us walking won’t do the same?”
“No. Not unless some is looking specifically at us.”
“How do you hide in plain sight?”
“Lack of a return signal. Have you ever noticed blind spots in your eyes?”
Esna frowned beneath her helmet. “No.”
“Humans have them. It’s structural, not damage, and they’re symmetrical. One in either eye. You won’t see them, but if you’re watching a light with one eye only you might notice it disappearing.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Positive.”
“That’s why it’s called a ‘blind’ spot. You don’t even realize it’s there.”
“If I couldn’t see something I’d know,” Esna said stubbornly.
“If you knew how eyes work you wouldn’t be so sure. Your mind has to interpret what you’re seeing, and if there’s no signal it fills in the gap.”
“My mind lies to me?”
“
It guesses…and does it on lots of things. That’s how a lot of impressive abilities work.”
“You lost me.”
“When you do something a lot you get used to every little piece of it, like running. After a while you can run with your eyes closed because your mind can guess where the ground is without you actually seeing it. Do you know how?”
“Feet?”
Rammak nodded his giant orange helmet. “Your mind connects one to the other, so if one is missing it guesses based on the information you have. Your eyes do the same to cover for the blind spots, and if you have both eyes open the information from one fills in the blank on the other.”
“Why would eyes have blind spots?”
“Why would eyes see upside down?”
“Upside down?”
“The image coming through the tiny dot on your eyes gets flipped, so what gets absorbed and send to your mind is upside down. Your mind flips it back in processing the same way a computer would. A lot of stuff with your mind can get messed with, on accident or purpose.”
“The Viks can do more than read minds?”
“A lot more. It’s why the helmet you’re wearing is built to block their abilities.”
“Wait, then why didn’t you wear one of these…oh, never mind. They’d see a body without a mind.”
“Or just recognize the helmet.”
“You could disguise it with a bunch of other stuff on top.”
The Calavari put one of his four hands on her armored shoulder. “For an ignorant youngling, you’re clever.”
“Can you turn the…block off?”
“No. It’s hardware and blocks the Archons’ abilities too.”
“What could they do?”
“Talk to us, guide us, see through our eyes, help us do things we didn’t know how to. If they wanted, they could take control of our bodies away from us, and the Viks can do the same thing. We can’t fight them and win even in our armor, but without it we can’t even get a shot off and they could make me shoot you.”
Esna’s jaw dropped. “How can they be that powerful?”
“A very good question that I do not know the full answer to, but they’ve been around a very long time.”
“They could take control of my mind and make me shoot you?”
“Not you. But they could do it to me if they caught me without my helmet on.”
“Wait. What do you mean, not me? Why am I different?”
“You’re Human.”
“So…”
“You have a natural block against some of their powers. They can’t read your mind or take control of it, but they can disrupt it. Make you lose your balance, get dizzy, stuff like that. Your helmet will block those abilities too.”
“Why do Humans…wait. We are Zen’zat, right? It’s a protection they built for themselves?”
“Exactly. Which is yet another reason why they hunt you. No one can have their powers without permission.”
“What do I have to do to use my block?”
“Nothing. It’s automatic.”
“Well that’s good. But you don’t have one?”
“Humans came from the V’kit’no’sat, Calavari did not. Humans found and rescued us, then incorporated us into their empire along with a lot of other races. We became brothers, but Calavari do not have your powers.”
“I’ve only got the one, right?”
“You have the potential for the others buried inside of you.”
“And they don’t want me to figure out how to use them?”
“The Viks want all of you dead, and the sooner the better.”
“Which why you know they’ll be chasing us if they caught our trail?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“Ok,” Esna said, turning back to their mass of supplies. “Let’s get going then. What should I pack?”
“Food, weapons, and anything else you can fit. I’ll carry the big stuff.”
“Yeah, your pack is huge. How much does your armor weigh?”
“About four times your body weight…so not much.”
“Funny,” she said, digging into their allotment of food cubes and sticks. “Can I take these out of their packages to save space?”
“Yes, though they may smash together.”
“Smashed is better than less,” she said, pulling out a pouch of canisters and dumping them out, then using the empty bag as a catch-all as she emptied the neat racks isolating each item and piled them up inside. Esna filled it up as much as she could, then pulled her pack off her back and wiggled it around to make it fit inside, then pushed in some ammo packs on top, feeling the cubes smash as predicted.
“We’re not going to run out,” Rammak noted, being less forceful as he loaded up his pack.
“Better safe than sorry.”
“There will be more when we get to the next location.”
“How far?”
“3 or 4 weeks, depending on how fast you run.”
Esna groaned. “The whole way?”
“Not unless you want to take several months walking.”
“If all we need to do is keep moving, what does our speed matter? Or is there some place we’re eventually going to get to that we’re going to hide out at?”
“We’re going to keep moving until it is unlikely that someone is following us. If we make it that long then we’ll spend some time in one location training, but we need to disappear before that happens and that starts now. I’ll drive the speeder further down the cave then run back here. Stay put until I return.”
“Will do. How did you find this spot without guide lights?”
“I carved markings along the way. There’s no local power source here to run the lights off of.”
“True,” she said, walking over to the cave wall and sitting down next to it. She leaned gently back on her pack with a rack of weapons overtop touching the rock, though with their attachment points she knew they wouldn’t be dislodged. “I’ll just rest up here for a bit. Do I have long enough to nap?”
“I’ll give you 20 minutes.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, leaning her head back until it touched a rocky outcropping, then she closed her eyes and got very still as she heard Rammak leave. The cave was completely dark, but with her helmet she could see well enough. None the less, this was the first time that the Calavari had left her alone since he’d pulled her out of certain death on that street.
She was alone…and that felt weird and wrong at the same time. Teren wasn’t here and that still burned her, but it had become a familiar burn. Where she had always had him by her side she now had the Calavari, different as that was, but for this moment she was completely alone. That had rarely happened throughout her life, with only a handful of situations where she’d been off the farm by herself.
Yammar and Innit…
Damn it, she wished she knew how they were. Were they dead too or alive and wondering where she and Teren were? How crazed had the people in town been after they left? If it was Humans that made them go nuts, would they have taken that out on Yammar in town then gone back to kill Innit too?
She hoped not, but once again she reminded herself that if they were being trailed…or even not at this point…going back would only endanger them if they’d survived. Esna hated that with a passion, thinking there should be some other solution that wasn’t so…wrong…but it was what it was. Yammar and Innit deserved better, but she couldn’t do anything for them. And it was too painful to imagine what might have happened to them because of her and Teren.
What had happened to her brother wasn’t a matter of imagination, so at least she could deal with it. If only Rammak had been a little bit faster…
But no, she was fortunate enough he had even been in that settlement. In fact, given the entire planet that he seemed to roam, it was too much of a coincidence.
When the sound of his footfalls broke her out of her not quite nap she stood and watched him run up, then held up a hand for him to stop as he headed tow
ards the crack in the wall.
“Were you watching us? Did you suspect we were Humans?”
He looked down at her. “You are questioning why I happened to be there at that moment.”
“Yes I am. Tell me the truth. There’s an entire planet you could have been on, why there?”
“My being there had nothing to do with you. With all the time I spend alone I need to mingle and listen. Rumors travel fast and far, and if there are people on this planet that shouldn’t be I want to hear about it. I had no knowledge of Humans anywhere on Mace, and as fortuitous as it sounds, it was just that. Had I been watching you I would have been close enough to save your brother. As it was, I heard shooting and went to investigate, then arrived too late to save him.”
“You normally head towards the sound of weaponsfire?”
“I’m a warrior.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“Yes.”
“Not a good way to stay hidden.”
“Sometimes it’s best to hide in the open, and a complete stranger will draw more questions than a familiar nomad.”
“You got bored, didn’t you?”
“That too. And you’re stalling.”
“Ugh,” Esna said, wondering how he could see through her so easily. “What is it with you and running anyway?”
“It’s the basis of Star Force training, young one. Get used to it. In fact, dial down your armor’s power to…40% for the first 5 minutes, then you can put it back up to full.”
“Whaaaat?” she moaned, frowning heavily. When she didn’t act quickly enough Rammak used his interlink and lowered it for her. Suddenly everything felt heavier and she wasn’t even moving yet.
“Oh come on,” she complained. “Is this what I get for asking questions?”
“Questions are good. This is training. Or would you prefer we start with no power at all?”
