Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Fenli spat. “Made for midgets.”

  “They are low, so the wind doesn’t take them,” reprimanded Sket. “Sometimes there are storms here—the sand kicks up for a hundred miles!”

  Four select attendants led Miko’s band to a common area stretched out in the sand. Mats were laid out and fires licked from blackened pits, heating the black bottoms of dented stewpots and cauldrons boiling broths and aromatic herbs. A pang of longing hit Miko on sight of the lights of Skullrox winking ten miles away. Hard to believe only days ago he and Fenli had been in the Skull Palace gambling their lives away and drinking with the best of them.

  Miko frowned. “Seems weird that all this high tech and civilization are so close, but then these monkish folk with their spartan dwellings live in primitive squalor.”

  “It’s like this everywhere in the galaxy,” muttered Sket. “Been like this since the very beginning.”

  “I don’t think—” began Fenli.

  “It doesn’t have to be like that,” interrupted Star. Miko heard the emotion rising in her voice. “If I could fight for my people, I would. It’d be a worthy cause.”

  “You’re doing it right now,” growled Sket, in a tone radiating pride, not sarcasm.

  Several members of the band ushered Usk over to join a meal in progress. The locust had not uttered a chitter, likely wary or anxious that he might be the object of persecution at the hands of the strange nomads. To everyone’s surprise, they had taken Usk under their wing, like one of their own, as if he had been a long time friend. No one recoiled at the locust’s menacing body, despite his long pincers and single insectoid antenna.

  An elder sat down on a hide before a cookfire and sighed. He motioned to a young, cowled server and drinks were brought by waiting attendants. Miko and Sket moved somewhere nearby, taking the clay cups of spicy hot tea with gratitude. Usk and Star fidgeted while Fenli stood stiffly, arms-crossed, waving off the steaming drink, as if it were beneath him.

  “Engines that hum in the night like killer bees... Machines that never sleep.” The elder shook his head and spat. “We live in a world gone mad. Even though we live here without technology, no engines, no noise and filth and death with their doom-giving flames, we yet live in a world yet where our children hop the barbed wire fence and get their legs blown off.”

  Fenli snorted. “There is no way to avoid progress, old man. The universe has its way. If we were supposed to live like primitives—”

  The old man merely continued. “What are your hopes, warriors? Your dreams?”

  Sket gestured. “We mean to strike out for Farfan mesh,” he said grimly.

  “’Tis a fair ways.” The elder shook his head with concern. His eyes grew distant, gleaming with a faraway sadness. “Always the same, you men come and go, never to return, seeking the winds and shadows of destruction. Only death lurks at Farfan, you should know that. Machines, humming death, metal and wires boxed up in crates, all to create winds and churn water from poison pools. They make this place a ‘civilization’, they call it.” He spread his arms with sullen contempt. “You would do best to stay with us. B & D won’t harm you here.”

  Sket’s lip twitched. “He may not, but we have a mission, Iasan.”

  “Then you will suffer grief. There are demons there, at Farfan—demons that fly and breathe crimson fire.”

  “You rave, old man,” jeered Fenli.

  “Flying demons, Skull Rocs, the hooded guardians, we call them by many names—flying condors, fresh spawn from this evil age with claws and fire, death-bringing eyes.”

  Sket frowned. He bit his lip. It seemed to Miko that the outcast thought the chief no fool.

  “Have you heard any word of Karem and Sarl?” Sket asked weakly.

  “Naught.” Seeing the look of despondency in the outcast’s face, Iasan laid a hand on Sket’s shoulder.

  “B & D must have sold them off-world,” Sket spat. “There will be a reckoning.”

  The elder nodded fatalistically. “Ah, Zera. Come, child.” He motioned. A young woman came to sit and indicated that the bereaved man should bare his arm. Her large brown eyes blinked meekly and she set down her healer’s kit and smoothed her brown robe with its white sash.

  She cleansed the wound with a soft cloth while Sket watched on with piercing eyes, the occasional twitch of cheek being the only sign of his discomfort. Her healing stitches patched the wound, but Sket winced as a needle dug in deeper than needed and drew blood.

  “Here, give me that.” Star caught up the needle and thread. “I’ve had some training in first aid.”

  The woman blinked deferentially and relinquished the tools, then moved on to Fenli, who grinned in anticipation, peeling back his tattered garment to bare his gashed hip.

  Miko was impressed, for it seemed that Star could not only fight, but stitch with equal prowess. The more he studied this spunky woman, the more he liked her for her intelligence, courage and determination—and her backside wasn’t bad either.

  She finished the last stitch and wiped away the last blood with water. She chanced to brush against Miko who had crowded close.

  It was a surprisingly intimate brush and Miko stared anew at the brunette’s enticing curves. It was impossible to miss the lithe swing of hips, the pleasing shape of slender, taut body and sturdy thighs. “You weren’t really going to offer your body for money back there at the pawn shop, were you?”

  She snorted. “What do you think? I was hanging around that joint looking for marks like you to get me off this bare rock. I don’t need sex to gain leverage over men. I’ve got my wits. Seems I have bad judgment in men though, landing here with you as a slave of an ‘unwanted’.”

  Miko grunted. “You said it, not me.”

  She harrumphed. “What about you? What’s your story? Never met a man who has gills.”

  “Bet not. I’m a nobody. A lost spaceman, chased by aliens, trying to find himself.” Miko grimaced wryly, his words having more profundity than he intended. “You, on the other hand, are a minx in sparrow’s clothing. But a limber and beautiful one,” he added, ignoring her mocking grunt.

  “If you ladies are done,” muttered Fenli.

  Star sighed, her tough veneer crumbling. “I keep remembering that witch’s voice. To hear it crackling over the com, made my skin crawl.”

  She shivered. “Kinkiest thing. It’s her, that hag, Beardly, who rules the roost. Drek is just a puppet. Wanted me to whip his guards’ bare asses while those creeps of Siamese filth watched. Then the pavutts were brought in.” She shuddered involuntarily and glanced idly at several boys who were playing at a nearby campfire with young yappy dingos that looked remarkably similar to younger versions of the desert jackals.

  “Pavutts?”

  “Those things we saw earlier. The boars, or desert swine with gruesome tusks, whatever they are. They had rings through their noses and their legs chained. Beardly’s lackeys weren’t that stupid to let them wander free.”

  Miko had nothing to say. Sket sipped his tea stone-faced while Fenli wore his idiot’s grin.

  Attendants brought food over on low trays, served in clay pots. “Ah, the pigs,” grunted the old man. “We know much of these grisly creatures.”

  Outcast and fugitive shared hard bread and a thin, spicy soup in a moment of silence.

  “This stuff is good—” Fenli slurped “—whatever it is.”

  “I don’t doubt there is desert hog in it,” remarked Sket.

  “Doesn’t matter, I could eat a horse,” said Fenli.

  Miko grunted. “I could care less if it was desert crickets.”

  A squabble broke out near some tents and Iasan trundled over to deal with the problem.

  For some time, quiet moments reigned and the fugitives enjoyed some privacy.

  Between mouthfuls of food, Miko motioned to Usk and murmured to Sket, “The Skullroxers are prejudiced against locusts and kill them, as do your prison mates, yet these folk are only kind to him.”

  “If all folk
were as humble as the nomads, it would be a kinder universe.”

  “Well, it ain’t. And I suggest we hightail it.”

  “Patience, Fenli,” uttered Sket irritably. “We’ll be out of this camp soon enough. You’ll be squawking to be back here by that time. We don’t want to offend these people. They’re letting us pass through their terrain umolested.” A warning look flashed in his eyes. “See those spears piked by the chief elder’s hut? Those others who survived the mines will get those in their throats and bellies before the night’s over. The nomads only wish to honour their pact with their god, Beasilmus. Their hospitality is not to be sloughed off.”

  As the distant yellow sun sank beyond the crumbling ridge, the desert dwellers approached and gave the fugitives each a wristlet. To Star came a lovely necklace of black beads placed round her neck, at which she beamed in appreciation; the gleaming stones looked as if they had been cut from the hills.

  Fenli wore his wristband flippantly, shaking out his wrist and rattling the coloured beads, but he held his tongue, seeing that nothing was to be gained by ingratitude.

  Sket swallowed the last of his stew and took the elder aside. “We must push on, Iasan, though I am reluctant to leave this oasis.” He dipped his head and handed his bowl to an attendant. “We must fulfil our mission, and I thank you for your kindness and generosity.”

  The old woman who was his mate beamed and Iasan bowed, as was the nomadic way of hospitality given and recognized.

  Sket pulled Miko aside. “If those impulsive fools who tripped the land mines get to the mesh before we do, they’ll alert the utility guard and we’ll have no chance of escape.”

  “Follow the trail,” the old chief intoned. The flesh around his closed eye quivered. “Through the darkness of the desert you must tread and onto the next junction. “You’ll meet up with the combs again.”

  Miko gathered that the elder referred to the catacombs.

  “Nightwalker will show you to your destination. You’ll need water too...” Iasan snapped his fingers.

  A young boy wrapped in loose robes ran off and returned carrying two small water bladders crafted of pig hide. Miko gratefully accepted the first and wrapped the attached thin leather strap over his neck and shoulder. Sket tipped his head in thanks and took the other bladder.

  “Enough to get you to the mesh,” grunted the elder.

  It was a precious resource, and Sket and Miko did not miss the generosity of these simple people.

  Sket thanked the chief and they left the encampment, stumbling slantwise along the crumbling slope up the opposite way from where they had come. Slips and spills were many, resulting in scraped knees and twisted ankles and scratched palms. But finally they came abreast a low cliff face that caught the rising rosy moon. Usk’s hard, shell-cased hind legs clanked on loose stone and his eyes glowed in appreciation, craning his neck as they made their ascent.

  The guide, a willowy man with a jackal-pelt cap, led them on, speaking no words and padding barefoot silently and swiftly like the breath of the wind. Miko’s breath rattled in his chest. The air was thin here, less oxygen-rich than in the city, and even less than in the rank prison confines, which had a primitive filtration system.

  Nightwalker led them behind two shrivelled shrubs that faced the rock cliff. He pulled back a hidden door of twigs, branches and dry leaves stitched together cunningly to look as if part of the landscape. Miko looked grimly upon the darkened interior; it held the faint odour of must, rats and ancient dust. The combs were theirs for the taking.

  Miko turned to look back but Nightwalker had vanished into the night, as if he had never been.

  * * *

  The locust navigator of Audra’s pirated vessel docked the L-Doraxu on the outcrop above the lakeshore. Below, a strip of the vast desert yawned; here Audra picked out scatterings of human life farther down in the valley, of rude settlements, low hovels and makeshift tents, curling smoke and sooty little fires amongst the small ant-like movement of dark-robed figures. Miko was not amongst them, but somewhere in the ridge itself that towered at her back. She sensed it.

  She concealed the ship in a small enclosure on a ledge and ensured it was adequately powered down before unstrapping the locust from its command post, wrapping slimy tentacles around its limp form. She plunged it into one of the holding tanks. Then she sealed the stopper tightly. The creature’s sightless eyes glared and blinked as he twitched. What a miserable existence to live in the body of one of these lifeforms! She had learned the best way to subdue these enemies was to dunk them in the primitive vats, for they, the bloodsuckers of the universe, proved treacherous to the end. If she didn’t return to the ship, too bad, the three specimens would live long in their amniotic fluid...

  Exiting the craft, Audra moved toward the cliff wall where glinted a large, locked steel door. While the metal gleamed sombrely in the noonday sun, trails of smoke rose overtop the great crumbling ridge from a set of huge funnels belching waste fumes into the sky. Beyond the cliff face and the steel door was some air manufacturing plant or purification centre, she guessed.

  She peered about. Oddly, there was no one around.

  Seizing an end of the door with her powerful tentacles, she gave it a savage tug. The slightly corroded metal flew off and she drifted inside, like an emboldened thief, and no stranger to the sepulchral darkness and stale air that flooded out.

  An alarm trilled. Such did not concern Audra—she had a gut feeling that the place was only trip-wired. More of a concern was that an intruder recognition system might see her and record her image. This would give the enemy an advantage knowing her physical size and capabilities, something she wished to avoid.

  She shot off quickly into the thick, stale-aired passage. She sensed movement behind her. Not organic activity, but robotic devices, chirping and clicking with moving parts. No matter. The algorithms of these devices were inferior to her intellect; she could elude them.

  Making good speed, she navigated the tunnel through sombre, dim-lit, pipe-snaking ways, full of cobwebs and dust. Her limbs, unique to Zikri evolution, gave her a steady, gliding gait. She came to a cavernous, high-ceilinged chamber hewed out of the rock. The place was reminiscent of some primitive mine of undeveloped organisms on other planets. Tunnels led in different directions. Down the main shaft, she saw three large pipes trail into gloom.

  Audra studied these pipes with detached interest. She detected the slosh of liquids cascading through their massive lengths. Of greater significance was the vast array of engines that towered above her, set in the wall with flywheels, tubes and whirring parts. She guessed that these machines pumped air through some vast circulatory system to augment the oxygen content in the atmosphere. Some of the treated air was likely siphoned back to the city Skullrox via the complex tubings. The rest was pumped into the atmosphere, hence the ungainly funnels that she had seen erected over the city.

  Audra paused, her tentacles twitching.

  What an incredibly inefficient way to manage oxygen! Did the humans not know the difference between oxygenation and omni-ocidation? Obviously not. Their science was yet in its infancy, she recalled. Still, the VR ship that Miko piloted was quite impressive. Ahead of its time, for its size and shape, and human technological advancement. A giant leap for ignorant savages. Pity the craft had sunk into the mire on a planet now lost in a distant time.

  Time... What did it mean? A circle that went out to infinity and came back to the same point where it started. Audra’s mind flitted upon the concept in that breezy way of hers.

  She was light years from the place she had started. She was the oldest Zikri in existence! To get back to her time meant applying an equal and opposite force to the thrust that had plunged her and Miko forward in the space-time continuum. A difficult undertaking. The question remained, was there any need to go back to her time?

  She chortled and pulled herself out of such reveries, concentrating on the task at hand.

  * * *

  The massive p
ipes that ran side by side into the shadows evoked a mix of curiosity and uneasiness. She sensed that her bond-partner Miko wandered somewhere in this direction. The three pipes met a tall, sheer wall and disappeared in close-cut holes, with no gap to squeeze through. Only massive force would allow entry past this barrier.

  Audra considered. She could blast her way through with the ship’s weapons’ system. But that crude means would also alert the authorities. A glass hatch showed in the middle pipe. At a place where the conduit met the rock, murky water flowed, pumped likely by engines on the other side. Judging from the number of aquatic creatures that swept by, fishes, snails and larger, uglier things, she guessed it was the raw liquid pumped from the lake below for filtration purposes. At the very least, a source of food for her, these creatures. Locusts had been dull fare on the ship. Better to save the last few insects on board in case of unexpected contingencies.

  The beginnings of a simple but daring idea took form. She could always do with some exercise.

  Working the device hatch cap off, she slipped her slimy tentacled body inside, closing the hatch snugly behind her. Not a perfect job, but it would have to do. She would not be gone long—or so she hoped.

  The humans like Miko had learned that drowning could not affect her, as he had witnessed when he tried to feed her to the feral eel back in the Rogos swamps. That was unmerited. That he had stooped to cutting her flabs of flesh loose from their common bond was an act of defiance that could only be reconciled with punitive measures on their next meeting. It was an act of fate, or cosmic will that they were joined in the first place. My, how she had grown sentimental in her advancing years!

  She reached out a tentacle to play at the smirk on her cratered face.

  VIII

  The unlikely companions trudged the gloomy ways, bathed in the odd flickering light, eyes glued to the shadows. All remained on the alert for Murlag’s skulkers. The lights were powered by some unknown source. The minutes grew to hours.