by A. R. Knight
“We’ll shoot!”
I reach the ramp heading up to the gateway. Risk a quick look behind me and see the two Flaum scrabbling my way, with T’Oli close to them. See Ignos with several more well back, with miners raised in my direction.
“I trusted you!” I shout back to Malo, to the Sevora inside his head.
And I run. Carry Viera through the gateway and back into the dark, empty mess of the entertainment section. No miner bolts blaze through the spot I leave behind. The two Sevora Flaum don’t even crest the gateway.
Which means I’m free to carry Viera through the dark, running between buildings, trying to find a place to hide.
The place must be a restaurant. The only clues to that are the large pieces of equipment in a separated room on the lower level, bulky metal pieces that look well-suited to cooking. Staying on the ground floor is a poor plan, though, so I drag Viera - whose starting to feel awful heavy even in the low gravity - to what looks like a lift.
It doesn’t move.
Of course not. The Sevora won’t turn this section on, not till there’s a reason to, and my needs definitely aren’t a reason. I chose the restaurant because the outside lacked the flair of the other buildings, only a nameplate in curling white on a black banner labeling the place “Verdant”. I figure they’ll search all the buildings eventually, so I might as well be caught somewhere with a name I like.
If I don’t get this lift moving, though, I’m going to be found way too soon. The idea is to get some weapons, defend myself and give humanity one last good showing before the Sevora devour my species or the Chorus grinds them into galactic dust.
“Having problems?” T’Oli’s slapping voice is a relief in the lonely dark, and I look over towards the entrance to see the Ooblot slime in.
“How did you get away?”
“The thing about Ooblots, they’re very hard to kill,” T’Oli replies. “I managed to slime a miner away from one of them, this beauty here, and your friend Ignos decided to let me go rather than get in a firefight.”
“I guess we take that. Any ideas?” I sigh, glance at the platform around me. “I want to get up to the second level, but I can’t get Viera there.”
T’Oli oozes up the side of the wall next to me, gets a little over my head, and then solidifies part of itself. “A new handhold. One of my many talents.”
“Nice. Viera goes first.”
Together, the Ooblot and I lift Viera higher and higher up the lift shaft, with me using my legs and all the energy I’ve got left to push Viera up one meter at a time. T’Oli wraps itself around Viera’s body, stabilizing her for my next push. Until, with one more jumping shove, I get Viera’s shoulders level with the next floor’s gap.
Just like in the sewer depths of Vimelia, T’Oli forms itself into a lever, pulling Viera up and over the edge.
“Have another jump in you?” T’Oli asks me a moment later.
I nod. Gather my legs, and leap. Doing this in low gravity is a freeing sensation that brings a momentary belief that I might never come back down. With T’Oli catching me, I never actually do. Climbing with the Ooblot isn’t at all like climbing a tree - it’s more like sticking your limbs into an immovable vice, then using that vice as leverage to pull yourself up and reach out with the other hand into T’Oli’s stretched out body, and repeat.
“Do you ever get tired of being used?” I ask T’Oli when we’re up on the largely-empty second level. Whereas Verdant’s ground floor was full of tables and cooking appliances, this space appears dedicated to a different type of gathering - long, wide tables split the area, and each one is surrounded by cushioned couches.
“Are you asking if I dream of doing more?” T’Oli says. “Don’t you think I should enjoy being useful?”
“Well, I...” I start, but T’Oli’s right. My idle question gets to a deeper point - what does T’Oli want? Why is this Ooblot tagging along with me?
“If I said I wanted to see the Sevora dead, would that work?”
“No.” I lift Viera onto one of the cushions, then step over to the broad windows on the second floor. The dim yellow lights in the section’s ceiling provide the little light we have, and all I see on the street are static shadows. Bent corners of buildings, rounded sidewalks aligning streets meant for bustling crowds. “You’re too calm for that. I’ve seen things driven by hate before.”
Sax, as the Oratus went after the Amigga on Cobalt. The Fassoth that tried to devour me in the caverns beneath Earth’s surface. Even the assassins after the Emperor’s death, who believed I would be the end of their entire civilization.
“What if I just live?”
“I don’t understand?”
“I don’t dream, Kaishi,” T’Oli says this like it says everything - without sorrow, without emotion, just as a fact. “I spent so long underneath the ground on Vimelia, seeing so many drive themselves to death chasing impossible goals, that I lost my own need for them. Instead, I do what I believe is best, and help those I choose to.”
“You’re choosing to help me?”
“It’s quite entertaining,” T’Oli says, the Ooblot sidling up near me. “I don’t have any grand motives. You’re here, you’re kind, and helping you has brought me to places I would never have seen otherwise. That’s quite enough for me.”
20 Going Hunting
Bas kicks him awake, laughter in her eyes as Sax blinks himself alert. He’s lying in the muddy filth beneath the wall, and the rest of their group stands around him. What’s clear, too, is that he’s been out for longer than a few seconds.
“It’s time to go,” Bas says. “I would’ve let you sleep longer, but...” His pair nods over to the far gate and Sax stands up to see a phalanx of armed Flaum standing outside of its open portal. “Apparently we need to gather glimmer worms.”
This seems to be the purpose of the prisoners here, as all the ones previously lying about the courtyard are now shuffling towards the open gate, with no excitement whatsoever.
As Sax gets up, he notices a few new aches joining in with the bruises from his earlier plummet through the vines. He’s putting the mask through its paces, and even with its protection, Sax makes a note to avoid far falls in the near future - he’s not averse to pain, but dealing with it every second gets tiresome.
“Does anyone even know what glimmer worms are?” Agra-Red asks.
“My guess?” Plake says. “The Amigga made everything on this planet, so they have to serve a purpose.”
Before any of them can follow up on the idea, a loose, low musical blast pours out of the speakers embedded in the corners of the prison walls. It’s loud enough to stifle any conversation, and the prisoners around them pick up their pace heading towards the gates.
“Come on, my friends!” the Amigga’s voice rings out in its tightly-synthed glory. “It’s another opportunity to earn my respect, another opportunity to power the galaxy whose gifts you so ignorantly spat upon. Hurry, now, to the Glimmer mines - as you know, any laggards will be melted once the final trumpet sounds!”
Sax winces as the Amigga’s booming voice makes his head hurt even more. The point, though, is made and they tromp beneath dark clouds in the dim light towards the open gate. They’re the last bunch through, and the Flaum guards don’t hesitate to toss Sax and the others sneers beneath their visored helmets.
“Should I eviscerate them?” Sax hisses, loud enough, to Bas. “There’s only a few.”
Two dozen, actually. All armed and skittish. Sax wouldn’t stand much of a chance, but that’s not what he’s going for; when the Flaum slip to slight panic, when they back away and a few squeak and raise their miners, Sax gets his laugh.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” Agra-Red grumbles. “Don’t want to die so you can have your fun, Oratus.”
“I don’t care what you want, Whelk,” Sax replies.
Then they’re through the gate, which opens into a wide tunnel slanting immediately down. Like the prison yard, the Glimmer Tunnel, as Sax
decides to call it, sports the bare minimum of supports holding the slick, black rock walls up. The tunnel’s floor is made of mixed rock patches and slippery sand, and with every breath, Sax’s vents pick up the stale scent of hundreds of unwashed, sweating species.
So far as experiences go, this isn’t going to be a pleasant one.
The tunnels spiderweb quickly, breaking off into larger corridors and tiny cracks. The pair of Oratus, three meters tall, find themselves with very limited options. Plake and Agra-Red, in the interest of following the trails of the other prisoners who, presumably, know more about where these glimmer worms are hiding, split off and leave Sax and Bas alone.
They have two options in front of them - one, lit by the usual glow lights jammed into the ceiling, seems the more traveled route. The other, with a few light spikes driven into the walls, jerks and twists out of their view a few steps along.
“Neither of these paths are going to take us out of here,” Sax says. He’s delaying partly because this crossroads is the only spot he’s been able to stand up straight for a while, and his sore back is luxuriating in the stretch.
“Sax, my pair, have the falls broken your mind so much that you only state the obvious?” Bas hisses in reply. She cloaks the words in a soft smile, though, so Sax doesn’t feel the cut. “We’re not escaping while we’re down here, so we may as well try and find one of these creatures.”
“You mean, a hunt?”
“It’s been a long time.”
Since a real hunt, of an animal and not a criminal, or a Sevora. Yes. Every so often with the Vincere they’d been lucky, been sent on a mission to a wild world that, after the objective had been secured, offered the chance to revel in their instincts. If being imprisoned by the Amigga is going to offer them anything, Sax will take the chance to fall inside his true self and the delight in the hunting that follows.
First, Sax opens his vents and catches another deep whiff of the cave’s many smells. There’s the already-mentioned stink, and beneath that the loam of growing plants, the dripping twinge of wet dust, but beneath all of those things, there’s something else. A jolt hanging at the tail end of every breath.
The scent comes from his right, down the twisting tunnel. Sax turns that way as Bas takes a step in the same direction. Their tails touch - no words necessary here.
As they set off, Nobaa again makes his modifications worth their efforts. Sax’s talons and, when he places them against the rock walls, claws pick up vibrations. Like scents, each tiny shake carries a pattern that Sax sorts through to find what he’s looking for. There’s the steady footfalls caused by the many pounding feet under the ground here, and in between those, a steady wriggling, a constant shiver in the earth.
“I can’t read it,” Bas says, her claws next to Sax’s own. “There’s too much clutter.”
“These can,” Sax says, pulling his metal claws away. “A snake lies this way.”
Sax takes the lead then, stepping through the tight tunnel. They bend around corners, duck beneath leering rocks and jump across small streams. The further they go, the less frequent the light, until the glow-sticks disappear entirely and the two Oratus use their masks to cloak their eyes in low-light vision. What was black and brown shifts to green grades, allowing the two of them to keep making their way.
Every so often, Sax touches the wall again and confirms he’s on the right track. Every time, the vibrations are there, only more pronounced as the extra noise from the other species fades. Bas catches it too, now.
Not a word’s spoken until the tunnel hits a new, wide chamber whose walls are perfectly visible to Sax because of the wriggling thing hanging down in the center. That the neon-blue-lit thing is a glimmer worm is obvious - not just because of the blue-white light the thing emits, but because it’s carved a hole through the ceiling and is now in the process of munching its way through a large, sparkling geode resting on the cavern’s floor.
With a blink, Sax gets rid of the blinding night-vision and takes in the glimmer worm, which appears to be taller than Sax, if thin. Its skin, pulsing with light, is covered in tiny hairs, each one occasionally launching sparks to another. The worm doesn’t have any feet, and the head devouring the geode is the only dark space, where small blue tongues lance out and take tiny chunks from its meal.
“Found it,” Sax says.
“Remember what I said about the obvious?”
“Not at all,” Sax says the words as he moves into the cavern, slowly making his way to the opposite side of the chamber.
Most prey can run. Best to cut off any escape before the battle starts.
Sax, though, doesn’t get halfway across the room before the glimmer worm pauses its crunching meal. The creature turns its rock-black face, with the tips of its blue tongues barely visible in the worm’s own light, towards Sax. They both hesitate, then Sax flicks his tail ever-so-slightly.
Alive. That’s how they’re supposed to deliver the glimmer worms. Dead, they’re worth nothing. So when Bas reacts to Sax’s signal, she leaps at the glimmer worm with every intention of tackling and driving the thing to the ground.
Instead, the worm sucks itself back up towards its hole, causing Bas to blow by beneath it. Sax takes his leaping turn as soon as the glimmer worm retracts, aiming to grab the thing’s head, and manages to snag it. The glimmer worm’s face is just as rock-like to the touch as it is to the eyes, and Sax’s heavy weight pulls the worm from its hole, the blinking body piling out and onto Sax as the Oratus lands on his back.
Any thought of victory goes up in a bright flash as the glimmer worm takes its sparkling blue light and flares. The cavern washes out in white, and Sax closes his eyes, yanks his claws back to cover them, and by the time the glow fades, the worm’s wriggling away further down the tunnel.
“That, that was terrible,” Sax manages to say.
“We don’t know anything about these creatures,” Bas hisses. “These Amigga are playing with us, sending us after prey without preparation.”
“They’ll die for it,” Sax says. “But now I want this worm. Set the masks.”
Sax flips his vision to infrared, a spectrum that runs on heat. He doesn’t leave it there - chasing the worm through the tunnels is going to be impossible if they can’t see any of the twists and turns - but now the mask will flip between the low-light vision and the infrared with barely a twitch of Sax’s eyes.
Then, with talons scratching on the rocks, the Oratus give chase. Running down prey is exhilarating - every step, every breath in pursuit of something using its every moment to get away. There’s no more pure comparing of strength, skill, and intelligence than a hunt.
Unfortunately for the glimmer worm, the Oratus are great hunters, and the caves don’t give the creature many options to get away. As Sax and Bas catch up they begin to pace the worm.
“It must be going somewhere,” Sax says as he and Bas settle for keeping the worm’s blue-lit tail end in view.
“Or it’s just running from us.”
“On Rathfall, I found a nest that let me survive,” Sax replies as they vault over a spiky set of rocks and splash through a stream on the other side. “If this worm has its own lair...”
“We couldn’t grab one of them, and you’re already thinking of more?”
“Planning ahead, Bas.”
“This new you is strange.” Bas, though, doesn’t sound all that upset.
The clue they’re waiting for comes soon after in the form of a rising glow further ahead. Going from night-vision dark to the bright green warning that it’s too bright is jarring, but Sax blinks over to infrared just in time to see a boiling mass of pinks, blues, and oranges.
There must be a dozen worms or more here.
The one they’re chasing dives into the pile, but the wriggling mass doesn’t make any moves to get away. The worms could be flaring constantly, for all Sax knows - it’s not going to help them here.
“Take the closest?” Sax says.
Bas touches her tail to
his in agreement, and they take a few steps forward, reach out with their claws, and grip the first worm. It struggles, but once Sax and Bas get it free from the rest of its group, the worm seems to realize it’s captured and falls limp.
“Playing dead?” Sax says, holding the flopping body in his midclaws.
“This is an Amigga creature,” Bas replies. “Any instincts it has are programmed into it. If they truly want these worms, then my guess is they’re primed to become passive once caught.”
“Then why would they flare?”
“Because you don’t want just anyone taking your glimmer worms,” Bas hisses. “Only those who know, with your permission, how to do it.”
As fun as the hunt was, an ending without a fight, without blood and carnage, fades the excitement from Sax’s two hard-beating hearts.
Still, at least they caught one.
They don’t get to hold on to the worm for long - after Sax and Bas carry the thing back up to the tunnel entrance, they’re directed to deposit the worm into the back of a large cargo skiff, where a Flaum pilot sits in front of a rectangular bin. As the worm slides in, joining three others, the skiff powers up and a soft purple sheen appears over the top - one that would no doubt give a nasty shock to anyone trying to breach it.
The Flaum guards watching Sax and Bas drop off their catch give the Oratus plenty of space, more than before, to which Sax attributes his constant flexing of his claws and baring of teeth. Keeping Flaum on edge is too much fun to stop.
“Batteries,” Plake says later when they’ve reformed in the crowded yard. “That’s what the glimmer worms are for.”
This time, Sax and the others have their own heat lamp. Nobody wants to tangle with a pair of Oratus, so they’re given plenty of space. With their masks, Sax and Bas aren’t cold, but Agra-Red’s skin is dull with chill and Plake has her feathers held in tight. If it’s going to take their entire crew to get out of here, Sax might as well help keep them comfortable.
“Why don’t they just use normal batteries?” Agra-Red replies. “Like everyone else?”
