by A. R. Knight
Around them rise daunting metal walls, above and over which bits of tangled vine drape. None of the greenery, however, makes its way far inside the enclosure, which, Sax notices, is covered by a wispy laser shield, the kind of screen not visible except for the small insects and occasional bits of dust that strike and, in turn, are immolated by it.
Plake and Agra-Red have already been hustled away from the shuttle, where a quartet of Flaum watch over them. The Whelk is forced to take the battery pack from its embedded miner, ensuring the weapon is nothing more than an unwieldy club. Another dozen or so of the furry creatures aim miners of their own at Sax and Bas, while an Amigga bearing a taller, treaded and apparently weaponless exoskeleton stands over them all.
“Plake, when this is done, I’m going to find your contact and eat them,” Sax says across the yard to the Vyphen.
“I’ll serve them up to you,” Plake snaps back.
“Stop,” the Amigga commands, and Sax resists the urge to take a running leap over to the thing and destroy it right then and there.
The Oratus is wearing a mask - albeit a damaged one - and with Bas there, the two of them stand a decent chance of taking out all the Flaum. However, Plake and Agra-Red have no such defense, and sacrificing their companions for a risky move seems like a poor choice.
“You’ve arrived at Fenebris, and it will be your new home until the Chorus decides what they would like to do with you,” the Amigga says. “First, of course, we will gather your names. Then, we will submit them for your fates to be decided. My guess is that you will all die horribly within the next twenty-four hours. Any resistance will only confirm that fate.”
Flaum step up to Sax and Bas, reach for their masks and for the equipment hung therein. Sax catches his pair’s eye - do they fight back? She shakes her head slightly, and the decision is made. No resistance for now.
“You can take away my miners,” Sax says to the Flaum as they pull the weapons away. “I’ll still have my claws, and that’s more than enough for you.”
The furry creatures glance at each other, and Sax enjoys their quick steps away from him a second later. A little fear goes a long way.
The escort from the landing area is a short one - Sax is expecting cells, some form of detention center, but what they get instead is a shift from the wide area of the landing pad to a wider and far more sloppy yard where the ground, instead of paved stone, is mostly muddy dirt. Sticking up from the earth every so often are four-meter high heat sticks with glowing-orange bulbs throughout their length and soft fans on top to blow the heat down, and clustered around those sticks is the saddest collection of creatures Sax has seen since Scrapper Station. Flaum, Whelk, Teven and more huddle around each other, talking quietly or just seeming to sleep on the ground.
In the middle of the space is a large, circular trough. A few species linger there, picking at what looks like a flood of nutrient goop moving slow through the container, flowing up from one end and down on the other.
At the far end of the space, set against another large wall, stands a gate slightly taller than Sax, and aside from the way they came in - a similar gate - looks like the only way to go in or out of this space.
Altogether, the vibe Sax gets is a depressing one.
“The best part of being here,” the Amigga’s saying when Sax tunes back into its endless haranguing. “Is that you’ll never have to worry about leaving. There’s no more dreams to have, no more problems to solve. It’s just this space, the nutrient goop, and the glimmer worms.”
Glimmer worms?
Sax isn’t the only one with questions, as he catches a shrug from Plake and similar cocked-head confusion from Bas. The Amigga, though, doesn’t seem interested in going further; the creature, along with the Flaum guards, retreats with miners out and ready back through the gate, which trundles down and settles heavy on the ground.
“Can’t say this is what I was expecting,” Agra-Red announces in a huff. “Always thought I’d die in a firefight, not crumbling to dust in a labor camp.”
“I didn’t think the Chorus had these?” Bas says. “The Vincere never mentioned them.”
“I guess if you break the law on Aspicis, they’re not much for due process.” Plake sweeps a winged arm across the space. “Look at all these miserable things.”
The Vyphen’s not wrong. Sax would normally see a bunch of defenseless creatures as food to have, prey to hunt, but nothing here gets his hunter’s instinct going. The nutrient goop means none of the species he sees are shriveled or malnourished, but they’re dead in spirit. There’s no fire here.
If Plake’s right, though, and these are criminals, then they must not be grievous ones. The Chorus tried to kill all of them in the skiffs not long ago, but now they’re content with leaving dangerous captives in a labor camp?
“Your contact,” Sax says. “They didn’t tell the Chorus who we were.”
At Plake’s look, Sax goes over his reasoning. Namely, that the four of them should have been shot on sight, or stunned and used as an example. Why leave a dangerous quartet with outside friends alive?
“So they didn’t completely screw us,” Agra-Red burbles. “I’m still going to disintegrate them.”
“And I’ll eat whatever’s left,” Sax hisses. “What I’m saying, though, is that we might have a chance to get out of this. If they don’t know who we are, then we might have time.”
“Until they decide to look,” Plake replies. “I’m not trusting for a moment the Amigga here won’t run our images and see what it gets. I say we find a way to breach these walls now.”
Which is how they spend the next few hours. Sax and Bas, Agra-Red and Plake split and circle the wide walls of the camp, drawing wandering looks every now and then as they brush up to the barriers. They’re hard rock, though Sax feels his claws could pierce them.
“If we climbed over, then what?” Bas says when she notices Sax run his metallic claws across part of the stone, leaving a white-chipped line. “They either shoot us, or Plake and Agra-Red.”
“Then what, we wait?” Sax asks, and he can’t keep the derision from his voice. There’s nothing worse than waiting, especially when you don’t know how long. “I prefer doing something over nothing.”
Their conversation - the heated tones, more likely - attracts the attention of an older Teven, its mud-brown carapace chipped and cracked, that Sax didn’t even notice until the stick-like creature rises up from the ground near their feet.
“You ever hear of sleep?” the Teven announces. “It’s a practice where those of us who’ve worked our hides all day get back a scrap of energy so we can do it all again.”
Sax bares his teeth at the creature. Wants to take a swipe with his claws because Aspicis, on the whole, has been a giant crap pile for him, but Plake moves in front of him and talks straight to the Teven.
“Hear what we were saying?” Plake asks.
“How could I not? You’re all talkin’ like there’s some big thing you’re missing cause you’re here.”
“You know much about this place?”
The Teven laughs, always a strange thing, as Sax can’t see their mouths, so their flute-chuckles pop out from their carapaces at a seeming distance from the creature itself. Like hearing an echo.
“I’ve been here almost my whole life,” the Teven replies. “Tried to fix a way off this world, got caught for it, now I’ve caught so many glimmer worms it’s all I see when I sleep.”
“So there’s no way out?”
“Didn’t say that,” the Teven replies. “Just no ways for an old Teven all alone. Crew like yours, there might be options. These folks aren’t used to resistance. Push back, maybe you’ll find they break. Or maybe you’ll find yourselves fried and dead on the ground.”
“One of those options sounds good,” Agra-Red says.
Sax, though, is done listening to the Teven. Done standing around here. There’s not a single Oratus in this yard, which means it’s plausible this prison isn’t designed to h
old a creature like him.
“Watch,” Sax hisses to Bas, and then he breaks into a long-loping run towards the nearest wall, one of the long side ones without a gate.
The sparse light makes it hard to make out anything other than smooth stone rising six or seven meters before ending in a rippling series of what look like small spikes. Sax jumps before he gets to the wall, his leap carrying him nearly halfway up before his metal claws punch into the stone. His fore- and midclaws cut right through, and Sax scurries up towards the top without hesitation.
He’ll have to thank Nobaa for the claws next time he sees the Teven.
Sax hits the top of the wall and there’s no alarm, no streaking bolts from one miner after the next. Over the edge, Sax sees plenty of the vines, sure, but there’s something else. Something huge, glowing orange that spans half the horizon and rises up into the sky. Lights glow in the long purple twilight as dozens of skiffs and other transports flit into and out of the structure, the departing ones vanishing in all directions.
Cavignum.
Sax places his left foreclaw in between the nubs, glances back down towards his crew to tell them what he’s seeing, when his foreclaw goes numb. The icy blankness spreads along his arm, into Sax’s torso and all along every part of him, until even his eyes go limp and his lids close halfway.
Then, with no strength holding him back up, Sax plummets back to the ground.
19 Breakaway
At my words, Ignos nods behind me, and I whirl to see a red-patched Flaum standing in the doorway, a pair of miners in its claws hands pointing at me.
“She won’t be trouble,” Ignos says to the Flaum.
“That’s what you told us the first time,” the Flaum replies. “I’m inclined to destroy her right now.”
“You can try,” I reply. T’Oli takes my tone, broadens and hardens its shell so that I have what amounts to a shield on my left arm.
“Nasiya,” I get the sense that Ignos says the name for my benefit as much as the Sevora leader’s. “This isn’t the place, and you don’t have your Oratus host any longer. You’re not a weapon. She could kill you easily.”
Nasiya’s body keeps the miners steady for another heartbeat, then drops them to the Flaum’s sides. “You made a deal, Ignos. I will honor it.”
We disembark the ship in silence. Not even T’Oli has words for the still forms of Gar, Lan, and Viera as the Sevora Flaum and Whelk carry them from the ship. I can see Viera’s chest rise and fall as she breathes, but her eyes are closed. Her hands empty, dangling from her sides as she’s carried down the ramp I, back on Vimelia, ordered down for these monsters.
Like a ramshackle ceremonial procession, Nasiya leads us out through the docking bay and into a strange, huge section full of windowed buildings that rise from floor to ceiling. They’re smaller than the towering heights of the structures on Vimelia, but they make every other ship I’ve been inside feel tiny. Yet, unlike Vimelia and the underground dwellings in Marilo, home of the Lunare back on Earth, all of these windows are dark.
The avenues splitting the buildings are dim too, with only the occasional glow coming from tall poles dotted with hooks and branches. I’m not sure what those are for, but Ignos and Nasiya, who walk near me at the head of the group, each spend a few footfalls looking at the empty roosts.
What is clear, though, is that this seed ship is meant for far more than the few of us that are here. Thousands and thousands could fit in these spaces, and that docking bay had the resources for dozens of ships.
“A last resort should be empty,” Ignos says to me as we walk. “Still, these streets should throng with Sevora. This ship should hum with the possibilities of our species.”
“Isn’t that the plan?” I reply. “If the Vincere don’t blow you up again?”
Ignos ignores my jab. “It is the plan, but first we need to decide who to sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?”
“Sevora do not breed like you,” Ignos says as we near a large half-moon door that Nasiya calls a gateway. “One of us will need to mature, and from them, we can spawn a million more.”
“That doesn’t sound like a sacrifice.”
“At the center of this ship is a prison,” Ignos says. “It is couched in glory, but it is a prison nonetheless. The Sevora that takes residence there will never leave it. They will control the seed ship, and nothing else.”
The next area we enter is again filled with buildings, but rather than the block-like utility of the last section, these are laid out in vibrant, twisting designs. As if someone had shrunk and transplanted a part of Vimelia’s great city to the ship. Except this great city is empty. It’s one thing to stare at the dark windows of unoccupied homes, it’s another to look at a grand square, with a curling crystal spear sticking out of a dry fountain. Benches sit alone, pristine and never used. Terminals aligned in banks against the walls look back at us with blank screens.
All of us, even the Sevora, hurry through the section.
The next area grips my chest like a vice. I haven’t seen a literal seed since finding Ignos so long ago on that jungle night, but here they’re hanging row after row around a great ring. Their sharp noses point down, towards a gray metal floor far beneath us.
“It will open,” Ignos says when it catches me looking. “When it’s time for us to spread, this is how. A single seed can carry a Sevora for many, many light years until it hits its target.”
“How long did you travel to get to Earth?”
“Comparatively short,” Ignos replies, gesturing for me to keep walking with them as they circle the ring. “We already knew of Earth, that the Amigga were conducting some sort of test there. I was sent to see about the results, to corrupt them if I could.”
“You succeeded.”
Ignos laughs. “Succeeded? Here you are, despite my every effort to turn your species into slaves for mine. If anything, Kaishi, I helped your people achieve technological prowess sooner than they should have.”
“But if you hadn’t, you and all of your kind would be dead now.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Ignos says, then the Sevora gestures with Malo’s left hand towards a thin metal bridge going over the gap beneath the seeds to a squat square door. “That’s what we’re looking for. The final bridge. The Sevora that crosses over will never come back.”
I’m expecting Ignos to explain why, but it falls quiet after saying the words, and I realize Ignos itself is thinking about making that choice. The Sevora walks Malo forward, joining Nasiya’s Flaum host and a third, a small lime-skinned Whelk at the foot of the final bridge.
“They’re choosing,” T’Oli says.
“I gathered.” I look around at the other Sevora. Most are watching the trio discuss, and those that aren’t are hovering over Viera, Lan and Gar. The carriers have set the Oratus and the human down, and they rest on the floor, stiff and still. “ T’Oli, we have to find a way out of this.”
“I don’t think the two of us can beat all of them.”
“If we can’t, they’ll take us too,” I reply. “I don’t trust Ignos at all.”
“Right. That seems logical. That Sevora has betrayed you at every opportunity.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” I shift, with T’Oli around my wrist, closer to the stunned bodies. If any of them are close to waking up, I might be able to distract the Sevora long enough to get an ally...
“I will claim the honor!” Nasiya’s voice is high, skittering, and, beneath the bravado, trembling. “I will walk the final bridge, and become the founder of our new beginning.”
The words seem ceremonial, but the buzz, and even angry replies Nasiya gets from the rest of the Sevora show the proclamation isn’t a certainty. The entire pack of Sevora, even the ones watching the Oratus and Viera, descend on the trio, pushing and shouting at each other.
“I suppose the factions haven’t ended their fight after all,” T’Oli says.
“They’re giving us a chance.” I look at the bodies. The seed ship�
�s gravity isn’t as high as a planet - an aggressive run and I feel like I’ll float off the ground - but I don’t think I can carry an Oratus alone.
Viera, though, is much smaller.
While the Sevora struggle with each other, T’Oli slips off of my wrist as I squat down and slide my arms beneath Viera’s back. With my legs, I try to lift my friend. I strain, lift hard, expecting resistance and I don’t get much. Viera doesn’t float, exactly, but I’m able to tilt her upright and forward, where, as she begins to fall with her face destined to smash into the ground, I catch her, bringing up my arm to keep Viera’s chest pressed against my own shoulder.
It’s probably not comfortable for her, but as Viera’s in stunned oblivion at the moment, I’m not too worried.
“They’re noticing,” T’Oli says.
“Then distract them,” I reply, starting to run around the ring.
Viera’s feet and ankles drag on the floor as we go - she’s taller than I am - but my floaty jog gets us some momentum. Some of the Sevora yell, but no miner shoots at my back, no weapon strikes me down.
I wonder if they don’t want to damage their last ship.
After a few steps, with the seeds hanging like spikes up above me and the shining outer walls of the central ring to my right, I hazard a glance back. T’Oli’s taken control. The Ooblot’s swimming around a quintet of Flaum chasing after me, using its liquid and solid changing to trip and irritate the pursuit. Every time one of the Sevora tries to pull a miner, T’Oli liquefies its way up their body and slurps itself into the crannies of the weapon, then solidifies to burst it into pieces.
Still, T’Oli is only one Ooblot, and eventually a couple of the Flaum break past it and come after me. It’s a foot race I’m not going to win, but I’m close enough now to the open door of my destination; the empty entertainment quarter.
“Stop!”
Ignos yells the word. I keep moving.
“Kaishi stop!”
The doorway’s there, Viera’s in my arms. All that’s left is one foot in front of the other.
