Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  “That’s the coolant system at work,” Annalise said. “Re-entry should have these things burning red hot. Once they start to heat up, the internal systems kick in. Practically freeze the outer shell once it hits a certain temperature, which is why they were such good escape pods. Stabilizers control impact.”

  “How do you know so much about these?” Melanie asked. “Or was this something else you read at Beaumaris?”

  “Do you live here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then how do you not?”

  Melanie stepped back and scoffed. She rolled her eyes and joined Davion, who’d taken his turn looking down the hillside. “I’d expect as much.”

  “Whatever was inside is heading that way,” I interrupted. I pointed out the myriad crevasses bounding down the hill, hardly noticeable until pointed out. One large bump in the decline showed claw marks having grabbed at the soil to slow down. The two snapped tree branches at the bottom of the fall confirmed it for me – it must have cracked them on impact. Annalise looked in the direction I pointed. She groaned, slumped, and looked up into the sky.

  “Dammit. Of course. It only makes sense,” she muttered. “We have to warn them.”

  “Warn who?” Melanie asked. Annalise nodded her head to the area beyond the trees, towards the suburban sprawl I’d seen. The one I’d been able to blot out, maybe an hour or two’s walk through the woods.

  “If we were closer, outside of the farm, you could see a certain house.” Annalise began. I didn’t know what she meant by farm, but something told me she was referencing the odd placement of the woods at the bottom of the hillside. It never struck me until later how odd the trees looked in comparison with the clay and dirt, even with sporadic patches of grass erupting from the soil at discombobulating intervals. “Near the second cul-de-sac at the end to your right. Blue, with green trim. That’s my house.” She sighed and shook off the look of regret. “On the other hand, if we can make it there, I have an idea on how to get going a bit faster.”

  “Oh no,” Davion mumbled. He crossed himself, and we all watched as he knelt down and began to pray. His lips moved quickly, and he pursed his eyes shut. A distant tumbling of rocks and the sound of someone impacting with soil caught our attention. At the bottom of the hill, a boy and girl scrambled out of the tree-line.

  The boy had hit the miniature version of crags introducing the decline to the forest. They were both trying to escape something. He clawed at the top and tried hoisting himself up the hillside, only getting caught in the flattened region while pebbles and clumps of dirt rebounding to the ground rewarded his hard work. The girl cowered by his side.

  It should have been night when we first saw the Belovore. There should have been a mist dredging itself up from the soil or a swamp impossibly placed in the middle of the woods. But, as it stands – and from the way the creature stood – it made me think of a scorpion.

  Davion would classify it as a Belovore later, but for that moment we all thought of it as a monster. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Its first appearance was stepping around a tree trunk barely wider than it, scowling and pushing away the brush with the heels of its feet. The creature stood roughly six feet tall and bipedal. Its skin came in segments; plates of black with just a hint of red around the edges. I wouldn’t have called them scales or an exoskeleton, but armour. Two large, bulky legs propelled it forward, no toes. They attached to a hip that could have once been the inner workings of a codpiece displaying smooth craftsmanship. It had two sets of arms. The upper set was muscular, like the arms of bodybuilders, to a hand of spindly fingers. The second set was what reminded me of the front end of a scorpion. The two smaller arms wrapped around in thin poles to claws which locked together at the navel and belted across the creature’s waist – these were the chelimbs. When the creature turned, I could see its spine protruding from the skin. Its face was flat and nearly human. There, the blackened plates had a fresher, dark red sheen and came in smaller sizes to allow facial expression. The creature’s mouth arced downwards. Its eyes were pure white, dotted by cat’s eye slits. It had no hair. I could see why the young man and woman were terrified, as everything about the Belovore cried out that it meant to kill them.

  The boy was no more than twenty, thin, and his cheekbones jutted out from his face. His clothes hung loose around his body. The girl was taller than him, also thin, and had long brown hair that curled around the tips. It matted where sweat had stuck it to her shirt and neck. She was well-chested and her arms were a healthy size – easily matching her ovular face. The boy scrambled to his feet as she helped him up.

  Just then, they both looked up at us.

  My heart froze when I realized the creature’s eyes watched me – burned into me like nothing I’d ever felt before: we were the brief distraction interrupting its hunt.

  My first reaction was to place my hands in the air and claim my innocence.

  A cracking sound registered, faintly, displaced by my own fear.

  The creature had moved his hand over his torso reflexively. Another rock tumbled to the ground. It jangled against the soil and a few other pieces of refuse as the creature kicked it aside.

  A small chip in the skin-armour revealed itself when the creature pulled away its hand. The kids scattered away, putting distance between them and the creature.

  The Belovore ignored them and kept its eyes on us as it neared the cliff-side of the hill. It scaled up the incline easily on all fours. I looked left as Annalise pulled back – she had a rock in her hand, looked at me, and smiled before launching it at the creature. At least she’d distracted the creature from the kids long enough for them to get away. It pierced the soil with its claws and climbed slowly.

  Annalise scrambled to pick up another rock.

  It crumbled partly in her hand as she flung it down the hill.

  Her knuckles were red from squeezing too hard. Her shoulders had tensed and it looked as if she couldn’t turn her head. She watched the creature with intent fixation. I watched the two teenagers hide. The boy pulled the girl past the first layer of trees, and they disappeared from my sight.

  Davion yelled: “Young woman, you cannot attempt to hurt a Belovore! Melanie, please help; stop her before she brings us to our deaths!”

  Melanie didn’t listen. She’d taken Annalise’s cue and was looking for stuff to throw. She must have felt the landed escape pod was perfect, as she scrambled towards it and began pulling at the open bowl-shaped propulsion source at the end. She tore at the edge, afraid to touch the blue ribbons on the inside.

  The next rock missed and Annalise swore.

  She turned around. Her hands stuck out from her side as if she’d forgotten something important, but she was only looking for a larger rock. Her eyes darted around us and then fixed on a boulder set in the soil, only a hump poking out. It was the size of a large ball, with rough corners stabbing out at random intervals around the curve. Her hands plunged into the soil and she clawed at the corners of the large stone.

  Davion, doing nothing but yelling, said something that confused me even more, a plea that I’ve never heard before: “If you have any faith in your own Lord, then allow mine to work through you. I am not afraid to finish what you are beginning, but I hope you gain the resolve to stop before it needs finishing!”

  Before long – less than a second or two after she’d begun digging – the boulder was loose.

  She smiled.

  She couldn’t lift it, but instead of asking for help, she knelt and rolled it to the hillside edge.

  The creature pounded into the dirt, climbing slowly.

  We had time to run, but it seemed I was the only one considering getting so far away that the creature couldn’t pursue. I felt the nerves in my arms jumping, urging me to tell everyone to run with a wide gesture. Again, fear held me back. Daniel popped into my mind. He asked, ‘How long had it been since you stood up for something? Maybe it was best you lost everything. You certainly aren’t fighting for i
t.’

  Melanie continued to search for something more substantial than a rock. She fingered the edge of the pod until she found a line indicating a release catch in the canopy. The plate hadn’t fallen off; it had simply conjoined with the piece behind it. She dug her fingers into the slot and started to pry the lid off. When Annalise had pulled the boulder from the soil, Melanie released the catch to the cover. It slid off, whispering metallic.

  Annalise let the boulder fall.

  It caressed the hill, the way it fell.

  Life slowed.

  The Belovore continued climbing, not noticing it.

  Annalise watched, placing her hand over her mouth.

  The boulder connected with another rock embedded in the soil and bounced. The clack made a solid reverberation that stung my ears. The Belovore heard it and looked up. His eyes were now slits, and they focused on one, if not all of us. It stood. The incline made it look ready to charge, and it shook clumped dirt off its fists.

  The boulder aimed at its knees. However, it pulled out a hand and caught the stone. The Belovore was only sent back an inch or two. Its feet dug into the hillside. Streams of dirt scattered away. The Belovore rolled the boulder around him and let it continue sliding down. It scowled. Two flat-edged teeth bore from the corners of its mouth.

  “Huh,” Annalise muttered. The boulder crashed into the trees and thumped against a large trunk. Something round and heavy flew past my sight. It flew like a Frisbee before I realized that it was the sheet Melanie had pulled off the pod.

  The Belovore tried to dodge the cone, but it flew too fast for the creature’s reflexes and landed on the its left chelimb. The arm snapped off like a crab’s claw. The crack reverberated up the hillside as the Belovore yowled, sounding like a dog singing to an out of tune cello. The creature’s chelimb dangled from a very loose thread-like tendon, and the other chelimb started to spasm as it dislodged and reached for the severed arm.

  I wanted to be stupid. I couldn’t help it – seeing all of them do something and knowing that I was too afraid to act forced my hand. I remembered thinking about my rage for Davion earlier, about how Davion could have been a better man to Daniel than I. I looked around and knew that everyone had been acting of their own accord, whether it was to save themselves or some complete stranger.

  What had I done?

  Was I really going to die like this, after running away like I had?

  The Belovore surveyed its broken chelimb and jerked it from the sinewy thread keeping it connected. It tossed it behind him and let it casually roll to a stop a metre away. In that same moment, I inched closer to the hillside. The decline was still just as terrifying, but something about the way the Belovore stood on it, defying logic, had skewed my perception. The thought only occurred halfway, ‘I still have time…’

  I slipped.

  “Stop!” shouted Annalise; I faintly heard her add: “what’s his name, again?”

  My gallant and noble show of strength had become a coordinated fall.

  I impacted with the Belovore headfirst. My skull connected with the creature’s chest plates and the ringing sent a shiver down my spine. My arms spasmed and shot outwards, wrapping around the Belovore’s torso. I’m sure there was pain, but when I think about it now, all I can remember is cold. Blunt, uncontrollable cold. My sight dulled and my hearing was nothing more than the ringing of a phone in the back of my head. The creature smelled of machine oil and rust. Its skin was hard to the touch, a fact my head had already discovered.

  Physics did the rest of the work. All I could really think was: Daniel was right.

  The Belovore tore at the ground and pushed me away with its remaining chelimb as we fell. It stabbed at my side with the remaining chelimb, and could have easily cut a rib had our tumbling not screwed with its aim. I could have sworn it had pierced my skin, but a look at my clothes later revealed it hadn’t even cut a thread. I had no control of my own movement until the Belovore pushed me loose.

  Grass and dirt caught in my mouth as I separated from him. I pulled my arms to my chest to cover my face with my hands. Everything changed in a second – the hillside was smacking into me with blunt force, and then suddenly, nothing. I was floating.

  I wondered what Annalise, Melanie or Davion saw.

  I must have looked ridiculous. Falling free down a hillside that had only scared me before because of its drop; acting like this was all part of my plan, because nothing else seemed to work. If Melanie believed I was here on vacation still, I could at least lie again and maintain that I was a hero. At the time, I had no considerations of dying, just pain. Lots of pain. I’m not proud that my miscalculation had been played off as deliberate, but it achieved the same results I’d originally hoped for. Good enough?

  The boy caught me by the shirt before I hit the tree, ripping the underarm of my sleeve. I heard the crack of something heavy against wood all the same - a sickening crunch that reminded me of someone cracking open the shell of a lobster or crab. Part of me wondered if it was the sound of my own body snapping against the trunk of one of the trees. I thought it was the sound of my arms or legs breaking.

  But what had happened was different than my body’d said. I’d hit the Belovore with the force of a cannonball. We rolled and he pushed me away. The boy and the girl had jumped out from the tree-line and raced after me. He caught up when we rolled over the miniature crag. When he’d caught me, I spiralled into the girl, knocking her over until I’d ended up in her lap. She smelled of sweat and lavender. With my eyes swimming back and forth, unable to focus, I had come to a controlled stop at the bottom of the hill.

  The boy helped me up, but I didn’t have the energy to stand. He pulled on my arm, and moved me enough to rest flat on the ground. The girl scooted away. I let my head fall into the sudden patch of grass beneath my head and closed my eyes.

  The young man yelled, “Be careful, go slowly!”

  A few moments later, Annalise was by my side. The others continued a very slow climb down the decline.

  “What was that about?” Annalise asked.

  I opened my eyes. When I looked up, refusing to move my body – my legs were stiff and sore, my arms throbbed, and I was certain the top of my head had succumbed completely to a future of perpetual migraines – Melanie and Davion finished their crab step down the hill

  It seemed Annalise had started coming down as soon as I’d started my tumble. “Were you trying to be an idiot?”

  “It was all I could think to do,” I said.

  She started laughing. “It worked, I think. Hasn’t moved since it landed.”

  “You must have been the guy who brought a nuclear warhead to a water balloon fight, huh?” Melanie tried to add something in. She lowered herself over the crag, letting her stomach bundle over the edge until she pushed away and landed.

  Sitting up, I shook my head slowly and winked. Annalise dusted dirt and refuse off my shirt.

  For all they knew, I’d always fought back, and this was normal.

  I wasn’t going to correct them: it hurt my head to do so.

  The pain still sang a high G in my ears, which throbbed and pulsated behind my eyes.

  After Annalise forced me to stand and take a couple disjointed steps, we all stepped closer to the Belovore – the two kids joined us. The girl looked more interested in the beast; the boy stepped close. The Belovore had impacted against the tree hard enough that the second chelimb snapped off where it connected with the lower vertebrae. It lay horizontally on the ground. On closer look, the Belovore’s spine had also been crushed. Parts of the vertebrae sat nearby on the ground. Other, sharper, bits embedded in the trunk of the tree. And behind that, the tree itself had been dented. One stiff push could dislodge it completely.

  The Belovore’s eyes closed. Its arms were still, and its legs bent up behind its torso.

  While we stared at it, Davion hoisted the boulder Annalise had rolled down into his arms and walked up to us. He feigned that it was light, but the strain caus
ed his neck to pulse and a vein atop his head – right where his hairline touched forehead – bulged. The vein was a deep blue, and the skin around it crimson.

  “What do you think it wants?” Melanie asked.

  Annalise shot her a ‘really?’ expression, but didn’t say anything.

  “Will not be forgiven,” the Belovore whispered. The sound made us all jump. I don’t think any of us expected it to speak English, much less still be alive. “You will not –“

  Melanie, behind me, pushed forward from behind even though I refused to budge. I felt her breasts pushing into me, and as a result felt how heavy her breathing had grown.

  “What does that mean?” she whispered.

  Before I could answer, Davion skirted by and dropped the boulder on the Belovore’s head. Its skull cracked instantly, and a flow of something deep red poured out.

  Annalise shouted and Melanie nearly tripped, avoiding a large chunk of something I could have only guessed was brain. The kids looked more concerned with what had happened than with Davion having killed it. The girl’s eyes were red, and her cheeks the same. The boy struggled to breathe past the urge to vomit. Annalise folded her arms against her chest. I expected her to say something.

  I could have sworn I’d heard a guttural sibilant come from the Belovore.

  A ship penetrating the sky had chosen that moment to break atmosphere, sounding like another detonation screaming towards Sondranos.

  Chapter Five:

  Introductions

  The roar from the sky startled us all.

  The sound was the sonic boom of a ship crashing through the atmosphere. We all turned towards it. It descended from the apex of the sky; we followed its controlled fall in our semi-sanctuary between the hillside and the makeshift woods. Far enough away so that we weren’t in immediate danger, but big enough to carry at least a million passengers. A dark black cloud lingered on the skyscape, pinpointing the former city. The ship plunged through, shoving all cloud wisps aside. Flames and red-hot singes stressed the bottom of the ship as it moved downwards. It slowed halfway between the ground and the apex of the sky. The ship strained against gravity, and four large thrusters spat out blue flame to keep steady. The silver hull glistened in the sun. The shape reminded me of something old, like the rotting arm of a rocking chair. Large steel struts and beams connected and crossed to form the exterior shell, and nooks and crannies – which must have been as wide as the transport I’d come in on – dotted the surface.