The Teristaque Chronicles

by Aaron Frale

  _______

  Later that night when Haath-Nlo’s healing goo wore off, Kal awoke to the pain returning. She thought about Sarge. Even though he had betrayed her, she still wanted to defend the man. She invented a scenario where Sarge was as much of a victim of circumstance as she. She imagined Sarge seeing the spaceship in the sky and running to the village. Since he wasn’t as deft on the terrain, he would stumble over a rock, tumble down a hill, and be knocked unconscious. He would wake several hours later to a burnt out husk of a village. Kal envisioned Sarge kneeling in the crater of her home, weeping.

  However, Kal knew her fantasies were not true. Sarge was making his Kansas City barbecue of banjer meat and drinking the fermented grain drink. He probably built a new cabin deep in the woods and would live the rest of his life as a free man. Sarge was like every other inmate here; he was out for himself. Kal felt alone. She longed to be back in her village, and before she could stop herself, she wept.

  3

  Kal beat on the Teristaque prison cells with the rest of the prisoners on the way to roll call. She had established a routine: work hard during the day, try to impress the guard handing out work detail so that she would get cafeteria duty, and attempt to avoid pissing off the Orcandu, which was no small task. He seemed to anger easily. If there was one thing that each prisoner had in common, it was their hate for the Teristaques. Even though Kal had only been there a couple of months, she knew that every prisoner had their stories about how the Teristaques had wronged them.

  She wasn’t surprised that the Teristaques in prison needed to be separated from the rest of the population. So the inmates took their frustrations out with a loud smack on the Teristaque prisoner’s maximum security cell doors each time they passed. Kal imagined that the Teristaques inside knew that each thump represented a person who would kill them if given the opportunity.

  Even though Kal had never seen the doors to those cells open, she knew that even the maximum security would not save the occupant inside if a riot broke out. The guards were careful about keeping the inmates in control. Even though they would let acts of violence go on for a little longer than they should, they still broke up the fights before the situation escalated. The Teristaques had perfected a system always a few steps away from chaos. The more the prisoners fought with each other, the less they would fight against their captors. Kal wondered how fearsome the prisoners would be if they organized to achieve a common goal.

  After roll call, she was shocked to hear that she got cafeteria duty. Seayolar was jealous of her luck.

  In the cafeteria, she was given a quick overview of the food dispensers from the human, and the crowd began streaming into the dining hall. Kal worked tirelessly to provide the meals.

  Once breakfast was finished, the crew working the food dispensers gathered for their meal. There was the human, a creature that looked like a bird, with feathers that shimmered with many metallic colors, and a creature with a long, flat head with two eyes on either side. Kal set her nutritional supplement down with the others. She sat right next to the human.

  The creature with the long, flat head emitted a series of growls and said, “We did not give you permission to sit here. You are just a replacement. Suilarini will be back when he is not sick.”

  The human jumped to her defense, “Cut her a break, Cid. She’s only here for a little while.

  “I don’t like her.”

  “You don’t have to like her, just work with her the next couple of days, and things will be back to normal.”

  Cid emitted another series of growls and dug back into his food.

  “Don’t mind him. He doesn’t like change,” the human said. “I’m Hayden.”

  The human stuck out his hand. It was the same strange gesture of greeting that Sarge had taught her. Humans like to grasp each other’s hands to measure the strength of grip. Even though Kal was the weakest one of her village, she could crush the human’s hand if she displayed her true strength. Besides, strength was of no value to her people. Dedication to the village mattered more. Humans seemed to value the individual. Her people valued the whole.

  She gripped his hand in the human fashion. He smiled at her, his touch sending tingles up her arm, and she felt weak. He was attractive, more than any of the boys of her village. Even though his skin was pale, eyes hazel, and hair brown, all colors that didn’t appear on her people, she couldn’t help but want to look at him. She had barely spoken to him all this time in prison, and when she finally had the chance to speak with him, she had nothing to say.

  It wasn’t that she lacked conversation ideas. He knew Sarge, and more importantly he could tell her about her father’s patch. Since Makiuarnek sent her to spy on him, she knew he was an ally. She’d never intended to follow Makiuarnek’s orders. However, her brain seemed to shut down when she looked into Hayden’s eyes. She found herself hyper-aware of her body, how she looked, sat, and handled herself. If this was infatuation, she didn’t like it. She would rather have her wits, but instead thoughts of him and how she acted around him cluttered her mind. She hated it.

  “And you are…” Hayden said after the awkward silence.

  “Kal,” she blurted out and mentally scolded herself for looking foolish. The bird-like creature and Cid were already bored with the conversation and branched off into their own.

  “So, Kal, what brings you here?”

  “The Teristaques-“

  Hayden waved his hand, cutting her off. “Everyone here has a Teristaque story. I don’t want to hear about that. I want to hear about you. Why did you volunteer for cafeteria duty?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it would be easier than the ore processing.” Kal was only half lying. Serving the prisoner’s dispensed food seemed easy compared to the potentially lethal duties of the ore refinery.

  Hayden laughed, “You think? Let’s wait until the end of the shift and see if you still believe that is true.”

  _______

  Later that day, she was ankle deep in excrement, body parts, and other organic matter. She wore rubber overalls, thick rubber gloves, and held a pole. She broke up clumps of waste that had congealed together. The smell alone was enough to make her vomit, which also was in the waste sludge. She was in a pool that was thankfully pretty low. It took up the space of the entire room that was several times the size of the village square back home. There were no guards watching them in here. They didn’t have anywhere to go, and there was nothing to steal in this room.

  The cesspool was a holding tank for the entire prison’s waste. Everything flushed down a toilet eventually made it to this room. The dispensers that created her meal used the contents of this room to construct the food. They sucked up waste from the pool. The proteins were separated, and the leftovers incinerated leaving biomass to create more edible dishes.

  “The prison food tasting like crap is not an understatement,” Hayden said as he broke apart a particularly disgusting clump.

  “A least it’s not dangerous work.” The environment took romance furthest from her mind, and she was able to speak to him again.

  “I don’t know about that. Suilarini slipped in this crap and scraped his elbow.”

  “Is that why he is out sick? A scraped elbow?”

  Hayden laughed again. Kal wondered, what was this human obsession with laughing? They all seemed to enjoy doing it.

  “Oh no,” Hayden said. “Did I not tell you about the bacteria in the pool? They separate the proteins from the rest of the crap in this system, and they don’t make a distinction between living or dead.”

  “Suilarini was eaten by bacteria?”

  “Not all at once. A few got in his blood. Get some on the skin, and you’ll probably escape with a burn if you wash it off quickly enough. Get some mixed with your bodily fluids… well, having your organs liquefy from the inside is… you get the point.”

  “Couldn’t they heal Suilarini? Give him a pill or something…?”

  “Have you met the doctor?”

>   Kal nodded and slammed her pole a couple of times on a stubborn clump.

  “Besides,” Hayden continued. “Treatment is pretty expensive. Our warden won’t waste money on a prisoner.”

  “So what happens if I slip?”

  “Don’t.”

  Kal hit a clump, and it gave way easier than she expected. She stumbled and almost went into the goop. Hayden grabbed her by the shoulder and straightened her up. He didn’t let go of her shoulder. His eyes went narrow. He spotted her father’s patch. It was in her breast pocket. It almost slipped out into the goop as well. She tucked it back down and turned away.

  He turned her to face him. His hands were gentle yet commanding, “Where did you get that?”

  “On my home world,” Kal said.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not!”

  “The only way to get a patch like that is to pry it from a dead body of-”

  “It was my father’s!”

  “Your father was in the service?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?”

  “My mom said he died, ok?”

  “Oh…” Hayden said stupidly.

  Kal decided to change the subject, “Do you know Sarge?”

  “Sarge, hell I served with the man! How do you know Sarge?”

  “I taught him to make Kansas City barbecue.”

  Hayden laughed. “I doubt that.”

  “No, no. He escaped to my home world. I taught him to live off the land. He also liked fermented grain…”

  Hayden laughed again. “Beer, it’s called beer.”

  They began to talk; thankfully, Hayden did most of the talking. She was never good with social queues. Dealing with her people was confusing enough. A boy in her village once asked her to be his partner at story time by dropping the ceremonial bonding stick at her feet. She threw a rock at him because she thought he wanted to play sports with her. Human social queues, on the other hand, were much more complex, mind boggling even. Humans never said what they meant, and they would often expect the other participant to know the unspoken part of the conversation. When she first met Sarge, she thought there was half a conversation going on at a telepathic level, before she realized humans just expected everyone else to know what they were thinking.

  Hayden seemed to like her well enough. The real question was whether she could earn his trust enough to make a move against Makiuarnek. She needed to find a way to bargain with Hayden. Another lesson she had learned from Sarge was that humans always needed something for themselves before they would do something for others. Her village did everything for the good of the village. Humans made exchanges for everything, whether it was currency, favors, or something else. Humans had a strange view of the world, but she still liked them for the most part, with the obvious exception of the doctor. And this human had something else going for him. Later that night she would close her eyes and imagine Hayden being close to her, touching her. But for now, she had to put her romantic dreams aside because she had too much to accomplish.

  4

  During free time, she scoured through the books. Although most of them had missing pages since the “forbidden knowledge” had been removed, she could still tell that the humans had fought in a war. She couldn’t quite tell what war they were fighting or even who they were fighting against, but she had to assume that the humans were in conflict with the Teristaques since there was no mention of the enemy. There were references to some of the battles Hayden had mentioned and by all accounts, the humans fought bravely and with valor. He couldn’t tell her much about her father other than that his platoon participated in most of the major battles in the Teristaque Wars.

  Kal couldn’t understand the way the Teristaques suppressed knowledge. All instances of the word Teristaque were stricken from the books. Yet, the glory of the human empire was everywhere. If the humans were the fierce warriors the books proclaimed, then why glorify them? Wouldn’t showing the strength of the humans also display the weakness of the Teristaque? Kal now understood why humans were separated from all the other prisoners during free time. She only saw Hayden in the cafeteria because humans were such fierce warriors. Better to keep them separate, so they don’t incite a riot, and easy enough to accomplish since there weren’t many humans in the prison. In fact, she only saw a few, and they were always on work shifts.

  Once free time was almost over, she stored away her book and walked towards the door. She nodded to the lusty Seayolar and stepped into the hallway where Grannork blocked her way. He hadn’t bothered her for weeks, largely because she was good at avoiding him. But she always knew her luck wouldn’t last forever.

  His breath stank, and as he leaned closer, Kal rolled her eyes and prepared herself for another beating. She had heard he injured himself in the refinery earlier that day. Perhaps during his visit to the doctor, it stirred up old memories of when she sent him to be tortured in solitary. She considered running but knew she wouldn’t get far. The door leading back to the common area had to be unlocked by a Teristaque guard. And realistically, she knew that if they saw her running for her life, they were more likely to pull out a chair and watch than come to her aid.

  “You have disrespected my house,” the Orcandu roared and lifted her off the ground. “You have disrespected my name.”

  “Can’t we just let the refinery incident go? You already sent me to the doctor once.”

  “You have already paid penance for your transgressions in the refinery. By Orcandu law you will be free of persecution from that incident.”

  “At least Orcandu law isn’t totally barbaric.”

  “The doctor says you are the traitor’s seed! By Orcandu law, you will suffer the sins of your father.”

  “I take back what I said about Orcandu law- wait, my father? What do you know about my father?”

  “Enough talk! By the ancient rites, I will take your life for…”

  During her trips to the library, Kal had allotted time for reading about Orcandu physiology. She knew the exact placement of his sensitive genital area, and it was within kicking distance. With a swift flick of her foot, she connected to a region below his third rib. It had to be a narrow hit, but she was highly agile and accurate. Since the games of her village involved boulders and tree logs that would break her bones with the lack of precision, she had learned to hit her targets before they could hit her.

  From the screeching sound and loosening of his grip, she could tell she had connected to his private regions. She wiggled free from his hands and dashed down the hall. While the Teristaque guards may be useless for breaking up a fight, they couldn’t tolerate property damage. When she got to the end of the hallway that led to the common area, she looked around for a tool. There was a chair nearby in the hallway, used by inmates while waiting for their parole deliberation. It was a nice, strong metal chair.

  The Orcandu roared from the distance, and the Teristaque guard stood up to watch. While the Teristaques didn’t have any expression in their wide black eyes, she knew the guard was smiling inside. They enjoyed causing pain, and he thought she was going to use the chair to defend herself from Grannork. She knew the defense was futile, so she turned to the doorway of the common room and slammed the chair into it. As the glass window buckled, the Teristaque took out his floating disc.

  She slammed the chair again, and the glass shattered. Grannork rounded the corner, seething for blood. He charged, and the next few moments were a blur. The guard floated from the grate above and stunned Kal. The enraged Orcandu was already in full attack mode and slammed into the Teristaque, sending them both down in a heap. The stunner flared, and Grannork went limp. The Teristaque pulled himself from underneath the Orcandu, and Grannork’s body shook as it was shocked again. More guards floated down and began kicking Grannork.

  The Teristaque that Grannork had hit stumbled back and let his comrades do the beating. He leaned against the wall, clutching his bleeding thigh. The horn protruding from Granno
rk’s forehead must have gored the guard. There was a hole in the thick Teristaque skin and in the hole, there was blood and soft tissue beneath. So the Teristaques weren’t invincible. They could be killed.

  _______

  Kal woke before Grannork. They were in the doctor’s hallway. Grannork must be damaged because his breath came out in short gravelly rasps. The guards were brutal when they beat him. She felt sorry for him despite the fact that he had attempted to kill her minutes earlier. Damaging a person in a fight was one thing, but the Teristaques kept beating long after Grannork went unconscious. They were taking mounds of flesh for the inches lost by their wounded guard.

  Kal couldn’t help but think about what Grannork said about her father. Even if Grannork was an enemy of her father, he was closest she had been to discovering anything about him. Her mother would not talk about him at all, and Hayden didn’t know anything either. All Kal knew was that when the Teristaques invaded the planet, he decided to join the fight against them. Her mother had a deeply buried hurt related to her father. Whenever Kal would ask about him, it was like opening a wound from the past, and she learned not to push it for the sake of her mother.

  Kal had always assumed that the patch from the uniform was proof of her father’s death. If Grannork wanted to enact some blood feud against her, then her father’s death may have left her as the next likely target. She needed to find out more about her father. A hulking creature out for her decimation would pose a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. There had to be some way to convince Grannork that she wasn’t the enemy.

  In her village, Per’Ee’Tal would often compete against her as he was the weakest of all the boys. In the rare moments when Kal caught the throwing stone without breaking a rib, Per would be the first to try and tackle her. Per had trouble taking down the other earth brothers and sisters, so when he had a chance to block a scoring run, he would target Kal. At first, she hated Per, but then after a discussion with her mother, she felt sorry for him.