Emergence (Unedited Edition)

by Chris Harris

  “We've gotta get to the escape pods.” Foton announced. Devilclash agreed, following his long, fast paces through the corridors. “So, what do you tell the Primary when you get to Buun?”

  “The Xaosians have waged war on the Empire, and an Adjeti was helping them in return for their help in somehow restoring the Adjeti.” Devilclash paused. “You said “you”. Don't you mean “we”?”

  “No.” Foton shook his head. “There is nothing I can do on Buun that will help in the war. I'm going home, to Prauw. I'm not a bodyguard, really. I'm an assassin, and I'm almost certain you suspected that. I can rally the other assassins to fight, take down Xaosian leaders. You can do the same for the Pyrkagia.”

  Devilclash was silent for a few seconds, until they reached the escape pods. Only two had been ejected, which made Foton feel a little better; at least two people had escaped. “So, your journey to Buun was for an assassination?” Devilclash asked warily.

  Foton gave an affirmative; he remembered Buun. Smuggler. Fifty-thousand Credits. “Had you figured it out?”

  “I had suspicions. Your hidden blade gave it away.”

  “And yet no-one else paid attention.” Foton gave a small smile in spite of himself. He moved over to the first escape pod and opened the hatch. “I guess this is goodbye then.” He extended his hand to her. She looked confused at first, before she took the hand and tried to shake it. “Nice try.” Foton commended her on her effort.

  She gave a small smile. “Thanks.” Her voice took on a solemn tone. “Goodbye, Foton. I hope we meet again.”

  “So do I.” He climbed into the pod, and reached for the door.

  Something smacked into his hand and he was immediately in pain. He looked around to see Otor, running along the corridor. Foton's heart stopped; how is he still alive? Then he saw Otor's wounded eye; it was growing back even as he watched. Devilclash looked at the Adjeti, before slamming the hatch down on Foton's escape pod.

  Otor ducked under Devilclash's wild attack, and grabbed the Hive-stone. With his free hand, he ejected Foton's escape pod and threw the Hive-stone out after it, casting Devilclash into the unknown void. Foton could only watch; there was nothing he could do for her now. He had read somewhere that the Pyrkagia could survive in space by turning the bugs to stone. He hoped that was true.

  Out of the small window, he saw the disc-like structure of Watchman being pummelled by missiles, before it fell apart in space. No sound, no flames.

  He punched in co-ordinates for Prauw and the pod changed course. Looking at his hand; he found that, while it felt fractured, it seemed to be fine. The only strange thing he noted was that it was shaking violently.

  Locked in an airtight box, drifting in an airless vacuum, after being attacked by a long-dead member of a genocidal race and having his principle killed, Foton felt more scared than he had his whole life.

  Chapter 20

  Tors 3

  The clock struck past midnight and Tors cheered, waking Pandora from her shallow slumber. It was Evacuation Day at last. Tors walked over to the window, before he sat in front of it. At this time of night, he couldn't see anything, but he figured that any ships would have landing lights on.

  “You're not seriously going to sit there for the rest of the night, are you?” Pandora's voice contained more than a hint of ridicule.

  “Yes. Maybe. I dunno.” Tors shrugged. “All I know is, I wanna be ready when they come. Where's Emola?”

  Pandora looked over at Emola. “Sleeping like a baby.”

  “Surprised either of you could sleep after seeing that...thing.” Tors shuddered at the thought of it. He remembered its shriek, and remembered the grating sensation that passed through his body as it did so.

  Pandora knelt down next to Tors. “Look. Maybe there was something. Maybe it was just our imaginations, or a natural phenomenon-”

  “-there was nothing natural about that thing.”

  “Well, even if it's alive, its natural.” Pandora rolled her eyes. “But maybe it wasn't real.”

  “It really was, though.” Tors hissed. “You know it. Deny it all you like, you know it.”

  There was a flash from outside, followed by sudden silence. The winds dropped again. Tors's scales shifted darker. “It's back.”

  “What?” Pandora seemed irritated.

  “The winds died before, and it came for us.” Tors was genuinely afraid, his scales shifting between various shades of dark red.

  Pandora put a hand on his back. “Tors, calm down.” Her voice seemed both soothing and irritable. A green flash from outside took them both by surprise. Tors moved closer to Pandora and she reluctantly put her arms around him, like a mother with a child. “Maybe they were real...” Pandora whispered, more to herself than to Tors.

  Outside, green wisps of wind formed together in the serpentine shape Tors knew the creatures to be. He leant towards the window, both afraid and fascinated by this being. Its...head?...opened up, as it did before, but this time it didn't screech. This time was more of a whisper, as if it was talking to something else. This was when Tors noticed other wisps in the air.

  More serpentine figures formed around the original and converged upon it. The whispering grew louder, mixed voices overlapping. Tors thought he could hear words in the winds, but he knew that it was just his imagination.

  “The hell are they?” Pandora asked, more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

  “What's going on?” Emola sounded sleepy and was rubbing his eyes as he came to the window; obviously the sounds outside had woken him. Then he saw the beings. “There's more of those things? Damn.”

  Tors realised that Emola must be too half-asleep to care about these thing, especially as they did no harm before. Maybe, Tors thought, they come with all storms, but we can't see them. He noticed the creatures moving over to the decaying statue of Ardican in the town square. Craning his neck, he could just about see them as they separated and formed a circle around the statue. “There's eight of them now.”

  “Yup.” Emola was still non-committal and vaguely dismissive.

  Seven moved back, widening the circle, but one stayed in place. As Tors watched, it leaned steadily backwards, before lurching forward. As it did so, there was a flash of blue, like lightning, from its head. Tors looked away as it flashed, and when he looked again, the Ardican statue was cinders. Even in his shock, he felt Pandora's recoil. Her arms moved off of him and she stood up and stared outside. Even Emola was shaken out of his stupor. “My god...”

  The offending creature shrieked, before decomposing into the wind. One other creature seemed to look at the cinders, before it lifted them into its own body. The others did the same, gathering the ashes into themselves. The ashes disappeared, but the winds grew darker, larger and somehow stronger. “Is this some sort of...feeding?” Tors asked, as if anyone else would know the answer.

  “Looks like it.” Pandora was squinting, to try and see them more clearly. Her hair was wild, but mostly still.

  As quickly as they came, the creatures disappeared, one by one.

  The wind and rain returned, but not as strong as before. They sat for hours, barely speaking to one another, but just sharing a silent hope. Their hopes were answered hours later. Lights burned through the dark-grey sky, illuminating the battered house. In unison, they ran to the window and watched the giant cuboid-like evacuation ships land. Battling the winds, agents barged into houses and gently pulled people from their homes. Some people grabbed small items, mementos of a time gone. Neither Tors, Pandora nor Emola bothered to grab anything. As Tors ran up the metal ramp into the evacuation ship, he looked back out at Narcsia and his destroyed town. A pang of sorrow tugged at his chest; he remembered when it was beautiful, just months ago.

  Putting that past behind him, he dragged himself aboard the ship, ready for a new and better life.

  Chapter 21

  Ilisa 2

  The Stinger's three feet descended as it touched down, locking onto grey rock. S
lipping into her spacesuit, and clamping one over the prone Strom, she opened the cockpit. Even through the heated spacesuit, she could feel the chill, which set her shivering. Dust on the ground rose up as her feet connected with it, and floated in the air like a small cloud, obscuring her vision. She hated the helmet she had to wear; it restricted vision from her peripherals. To Ilisa, this was blinding and, even though she was almost certain that there would be no-one else on Viran, it set her on high alert.

  The station on Viran was simple in terms of design; a cube, with four spiralling towers surrounding it. The spiralling towers actually fed solar energy into the power station below the surface; Ilisa wondered if it still functioned fully. A circular hatch was in place of a door, and Ilisa climbed through as the hatch screeched closed. In front of her, another hatch awaited, but this one was translucent; presumably it was once transparent, but the dust got in and marred it permanently.

  The other hatch opened and Ilisa climbed through. It closed with a hiss; airtight. While this should have meant that the station had an artificial atmosphere, Ilisa didn't trust it; it had been abandoned for far too long. And yet, it didn't look abandoned at all. Bright strip-lights illuminated the corridors, and Ilisa could see her reflection in the polished metal counters.

  The only two sounds in the station were Ilisa's boots and the whirring of various machines. Endless corridors led to an almost-infinite amount of small side-rooms, containing either computers or weapons of a lost era. She stumbled around the station for what seemed like an age, never really knowing what was around the corner. Her heart was pounding, but her mind was surprisingly clear; she was focused on only one goal.

  The corridor opened into a vast chamber; the shipyard. The walls were bland, but covered in burns thanks to the old fusion engines. Over time, an alcove in the wall had fallen in, throwing shards of metal over the concrete floor. She assumed that the wires had once sparked, but they just hung limp. She slowly entered the chamber, noting how differently her footfalls sounded in this chamber.

  The ships were, as the man had said, ancient. Ilisa could see that as soon as they were in sight. The ancient vessels were covered in pock-marks and scratches from old battles, and many were actually broken; just heaps of metal arranged in a cuboid, compared to modern vessels. Despite that, she couldn't help but admire them, like one admires an antique. These were obviously from around the dawn of the Adjeti Empire, hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago; the first vehicles used for interplanetary travel.

  The way the ship's hatch opened felt exactly the same as the larger modern ships, and the layout inside was near enough the same, if not more cramped. This was a four-man vessel, she saw, but three would have been a squeeze. The controls felt familiar, somehow, despite them being in an entirely different layout. She gripped the lever, pressing the “signal” button, which sent a signal to open the shipyard roof. It slid open, revealing the star-filled void above her. The fusion engine roared, and the ship yearned for the sky.

  Ilisa exited the ship, allowing the engines to boot up. Working her way back through the station, she knew her path now; get Strom, put him in the ship, and fly to New Orbus as fast as possible.

  She couldn't afford any delays, and she broke into a desperate run.

  Chapter 22

  Cinradahs 2

  “...and Sol has been emitting an unusual amount of solar flares as of late, worrying scientists. Back to our breaking news: Xaosians have reportedly declared war on...”

  The screen belted out the Empire News over, but it was only Saiun who was listening. The Quaren stood at the door to Cinradahs's office, while its owner sat in his chair staring at the screen. But Cinradahs heard nothing of what the Scaliman anchorman said; he was too occupied with his own thoughts.

  “Solar flares.” Saiun raised his eyebrows. “Fun...”

  Cinradahs broke his vigil. “Yeah, we don't need to worry about them.”

  “Scientists are worried.” Saiun said, with a cheeky grin.

  Cinradahs snorted. “They're always worried about something or other. Last week, it was the blips in the Empire Network.” Similar to the primitive wi-fi, the Empire Network was a web which linked every internet-enabled device across the Empire.

  “To be fair, we don't know what that was.” Saiun muttered.

  “Maybe not, but remember the whole “stars going out” débâcle?” Cinradahs waved it all aside. “Scientists, for all their smarts, are pretty stupid.”

  Footsteps clattered towards the door, and Yuki entered. She gave a cursory nod to both Saiun and Cinradahs, before asking, “Anything from Raan?”

  “No,” Cinradahs sighed. “As we told you earlier, The Dominion has left according to our software, but the planet is still under heavy bombardment. We also told you that we'd fetch you whenever we had news.”

  Yuki seemed to deflate upon hearing this; her shoulders sagged and her chin fell. She shook her head. “Damn this all,” she muttered, “Raan doesn't deserve this.”

  “No planet deserves an invasion.” Saiun interjected.

  Yuki rounded on him, bringing a finger pointing up between his eyes. “Xaos does!” She yelled, her face twisting itself into a distorted portrait of madness. She turned to Cinradahs. “You need to stop this.”

  Cinradahs stood, and put a hand on Yuki's shoulder. “I'm sorry,” he genuinely was; his own problems with the ruler of Raan were put aside for now, “but I can't until Lord Tahkshi commands me. And he went to get the support of the Pyrkagia.”

  Yuki leant back on the door frame and let out a sigh, before sliding down to the floor, sitting with her knees bent. Saiun slid down to join her and gave her a small smile. “We'll get it done. Don't worry.”

  She raised her eyebrows briefly, before falling into silence. Saiun glanced at Cinradahs, who gestured at him, and then at her. Saiun shrugged, and Cinradahs ignored him.

  Everyone's attention was caught when Cinradahs's personal-com rang. Brow furrowed with intrigue, Cinradahs answered it. “Cinradahs here.”

  “The Watchman is destroyed.” Even through the distortion, Cinradahs could make out Foton's voice.

  “Foton? Is that you?” Saiun and Yuki walked over to listen to what he had to say.

  “Yes. I survived the attack.” The transmission paused. “It was the Xaosians, they...they killed everyone but Devilclash and I.”

  “And Tahkshi?” Cinradahs's heart raced in his chest like a caged beast.

  “Dead. But not by Xaosian, but by-” a crackle of static roared over the end of the sentence.

  “By what?” Cinradahs asked. “By what?”

  But the message was over.

  “Did we get a recording?” Cinradahs gestured to Saiun, who quickly checked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Clean the static out.” Cinradahs demanded, in a more powerful tone than his usual. Saiun bowed, before heading down to a tech-room.

  Yuki was the first to address the issue. “So, he's dead? What now?”

  Cinradahs grabbed the local-com and punched in the code for the New Orban Shipyards. “They killed the Lord. Now we retaliate.”

  Chapter 23

  Ash 2

  Like the prisoners they were, Ash and Carnat were put in chains and marched through sandy chambers and tunnels; the building, like so many others on Rat'hak, was actually below ground, to allow for moderate protection from the sandstorms. Upon hearing of this, Ash had thought that the tunnels would be dark and dreary, but they were as well lit as the chambers themselves.

  “Carnat.” Ash whispered to his companion.

  “What?” Carnat hissed back.

  “Where are we going?”

  A Hak'i looked at Ash and jabbed the butt-end of a spear into his belly. Ash's breath left him, and he doubled over, grabbing Carnat for support. The guard laughed. “He's lasting not long, eh?” The others laughed too, even as Ash dragged himself back up; it wasn't that the blow hurt, but it was unexpected.

  Carnat looked down at him. “T
hey're taking us to fight. In the arena.”

  Ash stared straight ahead, giving no visible reaction. He knew that it would come eventually, but he didn't expect it to be so sudden. He cursed Carnat; this was his fault. As his stomach groaned, he wished he'd eaten more Protein Squares. He didn't want to die on an empty stomach; at least he could give the cleaners work when they have to clean his final death-shit off the bloody floor.

  The tunnel opened up into a huge oval-shaped room; the arena. The floor was sand, streaked with suspicious red stains, and all around the edges were tiers and tiers of seats, where hundreds of Hak'i sat and waited for the fight to begin. The guards unlocked his and Carnat's chains, and shoved them into the arena.

  A heavy, steel door swung shut behind them, and Ash heard the clunk of a lock.

  “Shit...” Ash patted the sides of his thighs in a vague attempt to stave off the itch of fear and desperation. “Carnat, what do we do?”

  Carnat gestured for him to follow, and Ash did so, until they reached a large rack. On the rack, was every kind of weapon Ash remembered, and more. Carnat reached up and passed him a black crossbow. It felt heavy in his hand, but lighter than the ones Carnat had made him use. Ash reached for a short blade, but Carnat batted his hand down. “You stay back. And try not to shoot me with that thing.”

  Carnat walked away from the rack without choosing a weapon. “What are you doing?” Ash asked, “You can't win without a weapon.”

  Carnat shrugged. “That's what you think.” He faced upwards to where a box of three seats stuck out from the rest. “Oh, Dominort!” He roared up to the Hak'i Dominort, or leader. “I am the warrior, Carnat, and this is Ash, a rising champion. May the sands bless you, my lord.”