by Chris Harris
The Titan had disappeared into an ever-growing cloud of space-traffic around the golden planet. Devilclash gasped involuntarily and took a step back; the Adjeti were alive.
“Get us out of here, Pyrious.” Lutun ordered softly, his voice trembling.
“Of course.” Pyrious grabbed the nav-sticks again and the ship began to turn.
Something struck the ship, knocking the Pyrkagia apart. The Hive-Stones called them back together as the ship continued to rock. “What was that?” Amnich was terrified; it showed in the Swarm.
Three ships came into sight; red and gold boomerangs bristling with weaponry unlike any Devilclash had ever seen. They had no propulsion system that she could see, but she could see the single Adjeti in the cockpit; even from this distance, she could see the hatred on his face. And she understood his hatred, because she felt it too.
Calls for the Pyrkagia to surrender were answered, and the ships released some sort of laser-tether and dragged the Hive-Ship towards Oblivion.
Chapter 30
Tors 5
After being overtaken by the Xaosian soldiers, the windows on the Evacuation craft were blacked out entirely; Tors had no idea where they were being taken, but the voyage seemed to take an age without any sense of time or distance. The Xaosians had put guards outside of each cabin, and the residents of which were violently “encouraged” to keep silent. Cane, Pandora and Emola exchanged glances with Tors, but he couldn't read what they were meant to convey.
When they were unloaded onto a planet, Tors could see exactly what planet it was through the high barbed-wire fence; Irin. The domed cities gave it away; he wished he was in there, rather than an open-air prison camp. There was no-where to sit or sleep but the hard ground; essentially, the prison camp was a large square of land surrounded by a barbed-wire electric fence. Xaosians guarded the outside, and patrolled the inside, guns in hand; Tors couldn't identify the type, he had never been interested in guns. Food was distributed by various cooks, who presumably were doing this against their will, travelling from the nearby city to deliver the small food rations.
Sat to the left of Tors was Cane, with Pandora and Emola on his right. Cane looked troubled, moreso than any others; he was the only Raanian here, perhaps the only human; Tors couldn't see any others, anyway, but he hadn't really been desperate to find one. While Cane was lonely in terms of species, he also missed his wife and child on Raan. Hearing about the quakes from whisperings by the guards had stunned him into silence and anger. No tears, just rage at his home being destroyed; he had no idea if they had survived, but his optimistic streak hoped they were. His realist side, however, accepted them as gone, but he tried ignore it.
A small Scaliman child shuffled past Tors. Tors smiled at him, and the kid tried to smile back, before one of the Xaosian guards jabbed him in the back with their rifle. “Move it kid, get back to pen seven.” The kid fell to his knees and, as he tried to pick himself up, he looked at Tors, his smile sliding off his tear-streaked face. “Move!” The guard forced him up, and pushed him, the kid nearly falling down again.
“Hey!” Cane stood up. “Leave him alone!”
The guard pointed his gun at Cane, who strode over to the guard. The kid ran away, scared of both the armour-clad guard and the large, loud man. “Cane, stop.” Tors placed his hand on Cane's shoulder, but he continued walking.
The Xaosian shifted stance so that it was somehow both defensive and mocking. “I'd sit back down, if I was you. Both of you.” As Tors realised that the voice was female, she gestured to both of them with her gun. “Now.”
Cane swung a punch. The Xaosian blocked, returned one in the gut. “Sit down!” She yelled. Other prisoners rose up. Shouting and roaring soon turned to screaming as gunfire pierced the night. The Xaosian pushed Tors aside and shot Cane in the knee. He screamed and fell to the ground. Without hesitation, she shot at other prisoners before smashing the butt of the gun into Emola's face, and kicking Tors down to the ground. “Enough!” She yelled over the sounds of violence. She then spoke into a com. “I authorise deadly force.”
Screams were silenced, one by one. Some surrendered, some died; it was one of two choices, there was no middle-ground. Cane clutched his knee, gingerly dabbing at the blood with a piece of blue fabric torn off of his shirt. The guard came over, and Cane backed away. “I only want to see.” She moved his hand out of the way, looked at the damage, and called for a medic from the nearby city.
“Why bother helping?” Pandora asked.
“I don't want you to die.” Tors noticed that a small badge on her com identified the Xaosian as Kivina. “I just want you to do as I say. Xaos hasn't said what to do with you, but he'll probably want you alive. For his army.”
“We'll never join him. Not after this.” Tors gestured around the camp.
Kivina gave a sad smile. “I said that once. But then,” she pointed at a small silver device in her ear, “he can be very persuasive.”
Chapter 31
Otor 2
On the surface, Otor was escorted out of the Titan vessel and given a hero's welcome. Cheers echoed around Oblivion's capital of Tayah, and he raised his arms half-heartedly. With no exoskeleton to cover his skin, the Adjeti around could see the scars and the burns he had sustained over centuries. Whether it had been a glancing bullet, a haphazardly swung knife, or the prolonged torture Xaos had put him under, it was all mapped out over his red skin, much darker than any other Adjeti's here.
Most of the Xaosians remained in the Titan, but Guran followed gingerly. Otor looked back when he heard the young Xaosian's footsteps, and beckoned for him to join them. He jogged for a moment, before standing only slightly behind Otor and removing his helmet. The clean air of Oblivion reached out and touched his silver scales and red eyes, before sneaking its way into his body and refreshing him fully; the lad had never known anything other than the vacuum of space and the pollutants of Xaos.
As Otor reached the end of the ramp, he hesitated; is this all real? All too good? After all this time, could this really be my home? One more footstep would confirm it either way; if it was just a dream, his foot touching the ground could delete this fantasy. But if it was real...
His boot met solid ground.
He took a step back as a gasp escaped his lungs; it was real. He looked around at the gathering Adjeti and smiled awkwardly; the first true one he'd had in centuries. One Adjeti, exoskeleton covering him from feet to neck, came over to him and extended a hand. Otor eyed him up; the gold markings on his exoskeleton matched Otor's faded ones, identifying him as a fellow Warchief, with the piercing blue eyes and the mane of naturally-white hair defining him fully.
“Keinam,” Otor took the hand and shook it, “It has been far too long.”
Keinam nodded and grinned. “It really has.” He turned to the ever-growing audience and yelled, “An Adjeti has returned from beyond the Oblivion Gateway! We are saved!”
The cheer of the crowds felt like an earthquake to Otor's ears, louder than anything he heard on Xaos. Louder even than the roars of “traitor” and “burn it!” that had too often penetrated the night. His knees nearly buckled, but he held onto Guran's shoulder.
“Our saviour,” Keinam continued, “is none other than Warchief Otor, the one who sealed the Gateway to save our world from the Pyrkagia. And now, we shall wipe them out!”
As the cheers continued, Keinam walked with Otor back into the Titan ship. “Let's get somewhere quiet,” he had said, “your ship will do.”
As they entered, Otor dismissed the Xaosians to the cockpit as Keinam sat down on a small bench. “How has Oblivion fared in my absence?”
Keinam sighed. “The first few decades were the worst; cut off from all our trade routes, we had to adapt. Slowly. We tried to build another Gateway, or a small portal stable enough to send one of us to somewhere else in the Empire. We didn't have the resources for the Gateway, nor for another intergalactic craft; lord knows we tried but the older one is
still, as you must remember, adrift somewhere in the dark. The portals; no-one ever came back, or even arrived at the coordinates. They just vanished. Died in the void.” He looked at Otor, the memories hard to bare. “Our brothers...the Warchiefs...are dead. Following our failures, riots. But I brought order to our world, united us all with the promise of vengeance against the Pyrkagia. And you've made sure that I can honour that promise. After I announced this intention, we tripled our space-force, upgraded them all and held them ready.” He looked at Otor's scars. “What did that to you?”
“Xaosians.” Otor said bluntly. “They tortured me until I made them a smaller version of the World-Burner. They tortured me until I agreed to fight with them in a war they started. And then they tortured me until I promised them an army of Adjeti.”
Keinam stared at Otor and saw the suffering in his eyes. “And will you honour your promise?”
Otor bit his lip and briefly considered it. “No. I want to kill them all.”
Footsteps.
Otor turned to see a Xaosian by the door, who must have heard their entire conversation. Eyes wide, he fled, but his run did not last long as Keinam's arm twisted and shot a blood-bullet through the his skull. “Shall we make a start?”
Otor held a hand in front of his brother-in-arms. “Spare Guran, the one who accompanied me. He's not like the rest.”
Keinam paused, before nodding. “Of course.”
Otor let his exoskeleton cover him, head to toe, and twisted the left arm into the cannon form. He led Keinam into the cockpit where Guran approached them, leaving three other Xaosians bent over a console. “Guran, get behind me.” Otor commanded, the young Xaosian obeying, unquestioning. Keinam fired on the leftmost Xaosian, Otor on the right, before Guran drew a pistol and shot down the remaining soldier. “What are you doing?” Otor rounded on Guran, as Keinam went to check the bodies.
“We heard what you said,” Guran dropped the pistol, seeming conflicted over what he had done. “and you're right. Those who did this to you must be punished. But not our race, not our species.”
“I will destroy every Xaosian inbetween me and Xaos.” Otor vowed. “And I have an army to help me now. We will return to the Empire and right its wrongs with whatever means we see fit. And you shall join me.”
Guran nodded as Keinam returned. “They managed to broadcast a transmission before we silenced them. A signal booster and an AI somehow configured together to make that possible. Wish we'd coded something like that, eh?”
“The Xaosians do have a strange AI system in place,” Guran observed, “I never could make sense of it.”
“Neither could I.” Otor agreed. “It's like it's constantly recoding itself; much too advanced for any common use aside from strategic or military operations.”
“Ah well, let the Xaosians have their machines.” Keinam led them out of the Titan. “We have another issue.” He tapped the implant in his throat and listened for a moment; most Adjeti warriors had com-units implanted in their throats. “You were followed.”
“What by?” Otor clenched his fists; that wasn't meant to happen.
“Pyrkagia; a basic Hive-Ship with four of the insects.” Keinam almost hissed the words. “Crews are bringing it here; we need to give the people a...demonstration of our intentions.”
Otor nodded, before turning to Guran. “You stay back, you hear me? One of them could kill you, four would desecrate you entirely.” He nodded and stayed behind Otor.
The ovoid Hive-Ship was towed by three of the Adjeti Wingships and, as crowds parted from Tayah's city-square, unceremoniously dumped onto the browning-grass. The hull cracked from the impact, and a squadron of Adjeti surrounded the ship. Keinam waved them away, before assigning one to keep Guran safe. “Pyrkagia! We have your ship surrounded! Come out now!”
Otor moved slowly closer to the Pyrkagia ship, before the Pyrkagia emerged. Four, just as Keinam had been told. And Otor recognised one of them, and he could tell that she recognised him. “You.” Otor said, pointing at her. “You said I was wrong. Well, look around. Who's wrong now?”
The Pyrkagias seemed to leer at him, but did not say anything; Otor knew just as well as she did that the Pyrkagia here were already dead, only being used as scouts for the Primary.
“Do you surrender for execution?” Keinam asked; Otor was sure that he knew they would not, especially as one had turned its bugs to stone. When silence answered, he asked a different question. “State your names.”
“Amnich.” This was the one, Otor noted, that was both the largest, and the one who turned his bugs to stone.
“Pyrious.” The Pyrkagias said his name only quietly, and Otor barely heard it.
“Lutun.” The smallest of the quartet, his voice wavered as he spoke; unusual for one of them.
“Devilclash.” Otor smiled when she spoke; now he knew his aggressor's name, he may feel satisfied when he killed her. It would be a much more personal vengeance than it would be against a nameless drone.
Keinam once again twisted his arm into its cannon form. “Amnich. Pyrious. Lutun. Devilclash. For your species' crimes, you are sentenced to death.”
“No.” Amnich leapt at Keinam, who twisted out of the way and fired at the bugs protecting the Hive-Stone.
The other three sprang into action, with Pyrious running over to Keinam, and Devilclash and Lutun running over to Otor. Going on the defensive, the exoskeleton closed around both Adjeti's mouths, shielding them from any bugs that may take a wander inside. Instead, the Pyrkagia targeted the eyes. Devilclash lunged for the eyes, while Lutun's bugs secreted an acid which attempted to burn through the natural armour. Otor tried to block Devilclash's attack, slapping the bugs away from his eyes, but he fell down to the floor as Adjeti all around stayed away, held back by Enforcers.
Keinam dodged his aggressors' attacks and kept firing on the bugs, annihilating more and more with every blast. They tried to avoid, but Amnich's stone armour was near-enough destroyed now; it may provide protection, but it was shit at evading. Taking the offensive, Keinam snapped his exoskeleton back around his hands, dodged Pyrious's usual clumsy attack and smashed a fist into Amnich's armour, cracking the stones. Amnich took a step back, throwing a punch of his own. Keinam blocked that punch with one arm, before shattering the armour around the Hive-Stone with his second. He felt the Pyrkagias's fear as he grabbed the Hive-Stone. As his fingers wrapped around, his exoskeleton changed and shifted until it was the same murky-green as the Hive-Stone. “Only Hive-Stone destroys Hive-Stone.” Keinam muttered, before crushing Amnich in his palm. The bugs stopped in mid-air and fell to the ground; the only thing granting them life was the Hive-Stone.
Seeing Otor's situation, Keinam ignored Pyrious and touched his hand to Otor's shoulder, pulling him up. Otor's armour slowly became the same consistency of the Hive-Stone, just like Keinam's. Devilclash gasped, before diving out of Otor's way as he swung a wild fist. Grabbing Keinam, Otor pulled himself up, joints aching like never before. He thought he heard a crack in his knees, but with the crowd's noise, he couldn't be certain.
Deciding now to deal with Pyrious, Keinam extended part of his exoskeleton into a blade, snapped it off with his free hand and threw it like a javelin at Pyrious's Hive-Stone, watching with satisfaction as the clumsy Pyrkagias fell, stone shattered and dead. Lutun and Devilclash were still putting up a fight, Devilclash knocking Keinam down to the floor. Otor barely dodged Lutun's punch, before he was able to form a blade around one arm and slice Lutun's Hive-Stone in half.
Devilclash stood over a downed Keinam, before turning to Otor. “Please, Otor. Don't do this. Punish those who did this to you. Not our species.”
“We did nothing to provoke your kind trying to destroy us.” Otor spat. “We have proof, footage, that Pyrkagia fired the World-Burner on Orbus, framing us for it, hoping that the backlash would do your dirty work for you. You were cowards, and you nearly succeeded. All around the Empire, my people were hunted down like dogs while you looked on. We will not
give you mercy, because you gave us none.”
Devilclash relaxed and stared at Otor. “You're right.” She nodded. “I never knew about that deception, but we did hunt you all down. Obviously I've lived with the humans for too long, because I've developed a conscience which my peers do not have.” Her voice stayed level and strong when she concluded with, “You should kill us all.”
She grabbed her Hive-Stone and passed it to Otor, who took it suspiciously. He wasn't sure if it was genuine, or just another Pyrkagia's trap. The bugs moved in a nodding motion, and Otor cracked the Hive-Stone in his hand. No response.
He felt no satisfaction when he split the stone apart, and neither did the silent crowd. Even Keinam bowed his head in respect to Devilclash, as she tried to atone for the sins her forefathers had wreaked.
He bowed his own head in respect, before beckoning to Keinam. “The Pyrkagia are no threat right now. If we are gain the support to eliminate them, we must head to the Empire's new capital: New Orbus.”
Keinam tapped his throat and spoke into the embedded com. “Ready the fleet.”
Chapter 32
Xaos 1
“Otor was right,” Havn's voice blared through the com as Xaos listened to the transmission from Oblivion again, “the Adjeti are alive, and he is in talks with them now. Wait, hang on-” The transmission ended with shots fired and a static crackle; something had fired on the Xaosians. In Xaos's mind, the only logical answer would be that Otor had betrayed them. Logical that he would do so, Xaos berated himself, but he had always deemed Otor to have been honourable.
Luckily, he had a backup plan.
Rising from his throne, he strode over to the door and threw it open wide. Ignoring the two guards outside, he continued walking, wisely assuming that they would follow. A few seconds of silence passed, before one of the Guards, Atil, asked, “Where are we going, my lord?”
There was a quiet whisper in Xaos's ear, before he answered, “Buun.”
Even though he could not see Atil, Xaos knew that his forehead would furrow in the way that only lesser people do. “Why, sir?”
Xaos smiled. “Because you were right. You said that the Adjeti could not be trusted, you hated them; I saw you say it.” The whispering in his ear continued. “They betrayed us. We will better them; the Pyrkagia are their ancient enemy, we can recruit them, I'm sure.”
