by S. H. Jucha
He waited, but there was no return comm from Alex’s implant. While they kept watch, Julien monitored Alex’s vitals incessantly, scanning for changes and trends in hopes of alerting Pia to something of value to assist her in reviving the human, who had come to mean so much to him.
* * *
By the early morning, there was no change in Alex’s condition, and Renée was asleep on the couch, a coverlet spread over her by Pia.
“Is anyone going down?” Renée asked.
“One shuttle, piloted by Franz, will be headed planetside with several SADEs, security, and the twins.”
“Shouldn’t I be there?”
“Every Haraken would understand if you weren’t there, Ser.”
“Yes, but would he?” Renée asked, pointing at Alex.
“To that, Ser, I would say: What would Dassata request you do?”
“Exactly,” Renée replied. “Give me a few moments to refresh and change. I’ll meet you in the bay.”
“We’ll be ready, Ser,” Julien said, never quite as proud of Renée as he was then. Courage, Ser, he thought as Renée hurried from the suite.
-23-
Judgment
Pussiro gently woke Nyslara. She and every queen had less than a quarter of the dark period to rest. The deliberations took them into the early morning hours before a consensus was reached. What Nyslara observed was that the younger the queen, the more likely she was to work toward agreement. It was the older queens, who had lived most of their lives at war with other nests, who distrusted others’ suggestions.
“Yes, Pussiro?” Nyslara asked, her eyes having difficulty making out his image, backlit by the pale torchlights, but his scent announced him.
“The lookouts have spotted the descent of a Haraken ship, my queen.”
“They’ve come to observe the punishments,” Nyslara whispered. “That, in itself, is good, but they’re early. Wake me again at dawn.” Then Nyslara tucked back into her warm pillow bed and pulled her robe over her.
Since they landed before dawn, the occupants of Franz’s traveler tilted their seats back and napped, except for Franz, who along with the SADEs monitored the Fissla tents.
Julien’s rhetorical question left the SADEs dwelling on their own thoughts and patiently waiting for Celus to rise.
When the rays of the system’s star pierced the dark sky, Franz sent over an open comm,
Renée expected to lead her people to the tents, as Alex always did, but she was so tightly encased in bodies it was difficult to see where she was going. “Everyone, stop,” she said, halting her steps. “This isn’t going to work, and it will send the wrong impression to the queens. They’ll think that we don’t trust them.” Regarding the stern faces of those surrounding her, Renée amended her statement, saying, “Yes, we don’t trust them, but we don’t want it to appear as such. Now give me some room.”
When her people grudgingly opened some small space, Renée said, “More.” She was about to repeat herself, but the expressions on the twins’ faces said they wouldn’t hear of it. Renée meant to talk to them on the flight down, but she’d quickly fallen asleep as soon as her seat adjusted under her. Her concern was that the twins might feel responsible for failing to protect Alex, despite their incredibly swift responses.
The Harakens stopped 10 meters from the tents. Or better said, Étienne ordered a halt 10 meters from the queens’ tents, and Renée was prevented from going any farther.
While the Dischnya made preparations for the judgments, Nyslara approached the Harakens. Pussiro wanted to accompany her, but she told him to stay back. Her decision appeared to be correct. The closer Nyslara got to Renée, the more the Harakens’ hands twitched to grasp the weapons at their sides. Nyslara was careful to stop short of the group. “Ené, how fairs Dassata? Does he live?” she asked, after nodding gravely.
Willem provided a translation via implant, but Renée understood the question. “He lives, but he’s unconscious.”
Willem translated Renée’s response as, “He lives, but he sleeps the deep sleep of the head injured.”
This Nyslara understood, having seen many of her soma, who had been shot in the head, never join the living again. “Will he wake?” Nyslara asked with concern, glancing between Willem and Renée.
“This is unknown,” Willem replied.
Nyslara watched Dassata’s mate duck her head, sorrow etched in her face, but when she brought it back up, anger shone in her eyes, replacing the pain. Nyslara chuffed her understanding. “Judgment has been reached. Punishment will take place over there.”
The Harakens followed Nyslara’s arm, which pointed at a set of stakes pounded into the ground. Straps were tied to each set of four stakes.
Before Renée could ask a question, Nyslara strode back to the other queens. “We’re too far away,” Renée complained.
“Ser, what if the Dischnya use their slug-throwers to execute the perpetrators?” Alain asked.
“That’s doubtful, Alain,” Willem replied. The Dischnya appear to prefer to deliver their punishments up close and personal, such as what happened to poor Haffas.
Renée got her way, and the group edged over to stand about 5 meters from the sets of stakes. They didn’t have long to wait before the warriors hauled over Chafwa’s emissary warrior, the one who carried the blade. He was whimpering and unable to stand on his own, necessitating the emissaries drag him most of the way. The bonds of his hands were cut and he struggled to escape. It required four warriors to pin him down and bind his limbs to the stakes.
The Harakens expected some sort of ceremony, a pronouncement, or, at least, a reading of the charges and the judgment. But, no sooner had the traitor’s last limb been tied with a strap than one of the emissaries, who tied him down, raked a clawed foot against his neck. Gouts of blood sprayed into the air, and the disgraced Dischnya keened in panic. Soon, his wail faded to a whimper, and he passed into unconsciousness, the rush of blood draining his life from him.
The wasats brought out Foomas next. Unlike the lowly emissary warrior, the commander walked unaided. When his hands were freed, he lay down and extended his arms and legs to the stakes. As the last strap was tied, Foomas uttered a deep, savage growl just before a wasat delivered the killing blow. His growl turned to a gurgle before he passed ou
t.
The Harakens were rather sickened by the ceremony, but anger over what had been done to Alex kept them in place. However, the humans might have been even more disturbed by their SADEs, who were making good use of the proceedings. They calculated blood spray distance, blood volume loss, time elapsed until unconsciousness, time until breathing stopped, and time until the eyes indicated brain death, which they could witness via extended visual magnification.
When the queens brought Chafwa out, she wasn’t struggling, but she was railing against the Fissla and Nyslara, in particular. Willem attempted to provide translations, but many of Chafwa’s terms were deemed to be expletives, as they were references to animal organs and waste.
Miranda sent to Willem.
Chafwa was still swearing, while she was strapped down. But unlike the first two executions, the queens formed a line, starting at Chafwa’s side. One by one, each stepped up and raked a set of claws against a limb or chest, and they were none too gentle about it. Chafwa screeched with each blow, but the queens kept at it. While the young queens were more tentative in their punishment, the older queens sought to deliver harsh rakes with their claws.
For her part, Chafwa gained a brief moment’s respite, as one queen stepped aside and another stepped up. Recognizing the new individual, Chafwa would cut loose with a fresh stream of invectives, but by the time the last queen stood at her side, Chafwa was blubbering in pain and torment. Blood spewed from deep gashes across her entire body. Yet, she was able to recognize her final punisher, Homsaff, her heir.
Unlike the first two judgments, which were decided by lots, Homsaff requested to be the one to deliver the judgment against her matriarch. Listening to Nyslara and other queens throughout the night, she came to understand what was at stake with regard to the aliens, and how damaging Chafwa’s act of treachery was to the future of the Dischnya.
“If the Harakens come in the morning to witness our judgments,” she told the assembled queens, “then they might place more faith in the Dischnya if they see the heir to the Mawas Soma takes the life of the perpetrator.”
“Can you do this, Homsaff?” Posnossa had asked. While she managed to do the same thing, it was in a fit of anger over the mad queen’s treatment of her and for the killing of her sibling. But this would be cold and calculating, a difficult feat for one so young.
“I must do this,” Homsaff had replied determinedly.
Chafwa focused on her heir. She was drained of angry words. All she could do now was hiss at her young progeny, who poised for the killing stroke.
Homsaff tentatively lifted a leg, but set it back down. But when Chafwa barked in laughter at her, Homsaff raised her leg with determination and swept it hard across Chafwa’s neck. For the old queen, there would be no lingering shock, no moments for her to contemplate her death, as blackness crept over her. Homsaff’s strike had nearly cleaved Chafwa’s neck in two.
The young queen’s strike position was poor, and blood spewed up her legs and onto her belly. She howled in rage and terror over what she’d done, sinking to her knees in the blood-soaked dirt.
While the queens sympathized with Homsaff, none moved to comfort her.
Not so for Renée, whose heart was torn by the grief the young Dischnya was suffering. Before Renée could be stopped, she burst through her entourage and raced to Homsaff’s side. Unsure of what to do, as she slid to her knees in the pooling blood, she heard Alex say, “Do what your heart knows is right, my love.” Renée gripped Homsaff’s shoulders, and it startled the youngster, who halted her cry.
Homsaff stared in confusion at Dassata’s mate, never having been embraced in this manner and confused by what to do. She was desperate not to endanger the Fissla or an agreement with the Harakens by giving the wrong response. Much to her surprise, the Haraken female tilted her head back and gave a passing imitation of a Dischnya howl of pain, then regarded her. So Homsaff lifted her muzzle to the sky and sounded her own distress. She glanced at Renée, who repeated her pitch to the early light of Nessila. Then the two females joined in a duet of frustration, as they screamed their pain and anger in Dischnya fashion.
“Fitting,” Nyslara remarked to those around her. “Whether alien or soma, females grieve the same.”
The Harakens kept wary eyes on the Dischnya assembly, as well as Ser, who, in their minds, was too close to what appeared to them to be a distraught teenager — one capable of using the incredibly long claws on her feet to separate a head from a body.
When Homsaff quieted, Renée patted her shoulders and rose to rejoin her people. Her clothes were covered in Chafwa’s blood. She didn’t say a word to the Harakens or the Dischnya but simply trudged back to the traveler, her steps giving the impression she had aged a hundred years.
Turning to follow Renée, the Harakens missed an important clue about the makeup of the Dischnya society — the cleanup of the queens after Chafwa’s execution. Wasats and the newly promoted Mawas Soma sub-commander ran for pails of water, prepared by the Tawas Soma to wash the feet of their queens.
Pussiro’s warriors prepared additional water pails for Homsaff, and he fetched and placed them beside the young queen for her soma, who worked to remove the blood from her fur.
It wasn’t that the queens were unsympathetic to Homsaff’s agony for requesting to be the one to execute her mother; it was that the queens worked to prevent the mixing of their scents. They didn’t share drinking water, waste pails, pillows, or robes. More important, they didn’t touch one another. A queen wasn’t an elected position. She was the psychological linchpin for her soma, who were physiologically dependent on her scent.
* * *
After the judgments were rendered to the Fissla traitors, Renée, Pia, and every Haraken returned to their vigilance of Alex, waiting and hoping for his revival. Rather than responding to every query for an update, which Renée received incessantly, she requested Miranda to post notices on the Rêveur’s controller for the mission’s crew to access. After reviewing Miranda’s “no status change” hour after hour, most humans relented and decided to wait for a critical update, which they were sure would be broadcast shipwide. The SADEs simply linked an app to the controller to monitor every update.
But Julien detested the passive approach of waiting. He queried every SADE and every ship’s database for medical treatment information, comparing the data to that stored aboard the Rêveur. To his great disappointment, he found enormous amounts of repetition. Terese had been thorough in ensuring her people’s medical updates were widely circulated.
One particular SADE, Bartlett, a recent immigrant to Haraken, who had yet to touch foot on the planet, did have advice.
As Julien restructured his line of questioning to prepare an alternate line of investigation, Bartlett checked for an update on Alex’s condition and reviewed the operations’ procedures.
Bartlett sent.
Julien launched into an exhaustive search of his databases and that of the Rêveur for the appropriate material to entertain Alex’s subconscious. Both ancient and modern vids and stories were enjoyed by many crew members, especially Renée and him, but they weren’t Alex’s preferences. In fact, Julien had noted that Alex only watched the vids in Renée’s company.
Julien’s frustration built, the more his investigation failed to produce results. Now, it seemed like a simple selection of stimulating material was proving to be a disaster. With his emotional applications overriding much of his analytical thought processes, Julien had no alternative but to halt many algorithms driving his anxiousness.
Calmly and logically, Julien reviewed his personal history with Alex from that fateful first day aboard the Rêveur. It wasn’t that Julien saved every moment of contact time with Alex after the man jumped across vacuum to board the derelict liner. But Julien had a habit of keeping critical exchanges with Alex for future reference. However, over the years, as those conversations became irrelevant, he’d deleted most of them.
It was while reviewing their twenty years together that Julien realized he had faithfully stored something precious to both of them — their mock image battles. Not only had Julien backed them up in the Exchange’s vault, but they were data that he carried with him, and their fanciful exchanges took up terabytes of his memory.
Walking from the bridge to the medical suite, Julien started whistling a tune, and his favorite fedora appeared on his head.
Crew, witnessing Julien’s happy demeanor, quickly connected to the ship’s controller, expecting to see good news about Alex’s condition, only to be disappointed when they realized there was no change. Despite that, rumors circulated through the fleet that Julien appeared to be in fine spirits and hope revived among humans and SADEs.
