Rokul

by Elin Wyn

  I liked this place.

  “I’m looking for a botanist. A Dr. Briar.” I announced loudly enough for the male sleeping at the table to jolt awake.

  The male sitting at the bar turned to face me. “I hired one, why?” he asked.

  “My superior requires one. Turns out the one here was promised to us but decided to take a quick side job,” I explained. “You’re the side job?”

  “Yeah,” the male scratched his head. “We’ve been having some trouble with the local plant population.”

  “Where’s Dr. Briar now?”

  “Left a few hours ago. I’m getting a little worried, truth be told. Sun will go down in about an hour. The forest is a lot less hospitable in the dark,” the male explained.

  “It’s not hospitable now,” I grumbled.

  “Exactly,” he nodded.

  “It would seem I’ll be journeying into the forest,” I sighed irritably.

  “There’s a supply store if you need anything.” The male gestured lazily in the general direction of the building on the other side of the market. In response, I pulled out the smaller of the two blasters I’d brought along.

  “I think I’ll be fine,” I grinned. “Do you know which direction Dr. Briar went?”

  “Nope.” The male turned his attention back to his drink.

  “Fantastic.” I turned on my heel and stalked out of the bar. He was right, the light was already starting to fade. I needed to find this scientist quickly.

  I looked at the ground for any disturbances. It was too covered in leaves and other bits discarded by the forest to show footprints, but that was merely an obstacle. There weren’t any outlying footprints on the thin road, so the botanist must’ve gone into the forest straight from the bar.

  I took an educated guess and headed into the woods. I soon found a faint trail of compressed debris and broken twigs. Something had come through within the last few hours. I hoped it was Dr. Briar, but, in this forest, there was never any guarantees.

  When we still lived aboard the Vengeance, we routinely ran night patrols. The forest surrounding the Vengeance lit up with something I’d learned was called bioluminescence. Apparently, little colonies of glowing bacteria lived on the plants and trees.

  I wasn’t much of a one for scenery, but the glowing forest had been a sight to behold.

  Who knew tiny bugs would be pretty?

  As I walked through this section of the forest, I found myself disappointed. As the light faded, the bioluminescent bacteria colonies began to glow, but it was dim and faded compared to what I remembered.

  Many of the trees bore signs of damage. I assumed the Xathi tore through here on their way to destroy Fraga.

  Something hard, harder than a branch, crunched underfoot. I took a step back and looked down. It was part of a Xathi leg. Rage boiled up inside me and my lip curled in disgust. With one swift motion, I picked up the Xathi leg and lobbed it as hard as I could against the nearest tree. It shattered into pieces.

  I didn’t feel any better.

  I’d accepted the fact that return to my home system was likely impossible, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t angry about everything the Xathi had taken from me.

  All of us were angry and it would take a long time for that fury to fade away. For many of us, not just the Vengeance crew but the humans, too, that resentment would mar us for the rest of our lives.

  I moved on, deeper into the forest. The trail wasn’t as strong now and it hadn’t been strong to begin with. At one point, I thought I’d lost it completely, but then I stumbled onto a piece of compelling evidence that someone – or something – had come through recently.

  A few meters in front of me was the body of a sentient tree. It wasn’t a sorvuc. I’d dealt with enough of them to feel confident identifying them. It must’ve been the other species. Its named slipped my mind.

  Whatever it was, it’d been badly torn up. Its lower leg was completely torn off. Dark, sticky sap pooled at the break. Stranger still, the creature lay face down. Its back had been split clean open.

  If this was the work of the botanist, he was a fearsome warrior indeed.

  Now I felt excited to meet him. Perhaps his counsel would be beneficial to us. He certainly knew how to kill sentient plants.

  Of course, there was the possibility that something other than the botanist had done this. That just made me more excited. At least that scenario promised a good fight.

  It’d been weeks since I’d had a good fight. Not a good position for a combat soldier to be in.

  I left the dead creature behind and continued my search. The light was fading fast. Within ten minutes it was too dark to see the trail I’d been following. I wasn’t worried about losing my way. I had a navigation system tapped into the Aurora’s network based on Karzin’s satellite system that he had set up in his quest to find a way home. It would work even all the way out here.

  The human male in the Crooked Swiggen had had a point when he said the forest becomes even less hospitable after dark. Despite my weapons, walking through a forest like this in the dark with no backup was not a tempting prospect.

  If the botanist did kill that sentient plant, I reasoned he’d be able to take care of himself out here in the dark. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time. I’d done what General Rouhr asked.

  Just as I turned around to make my way back, an ear-splitting scream echoed through the forest.

  A female’s scream.

  Tella

  The Helmria Ithalma was a rare flower. Only three or four of them had ever been found.

  Their vibrant petals were extremely sensitive to sunlight, so sensitive that even the thick layer of leaves and branches that made up the forest canopy didn’t provide enough protection.

  Luckily for the Helmria Ithalma, it figured out another option. Occasionally, if the topography was correct and the timing was perfect, the seed of a Helmria would take root in a shallow cave. The trick was, the cave couldn’t be too shallow. Any shallower than ten, maybe twelve, feet and the Helmria would wither away and die.

  Just because the Helmria Ithalma stayed rooted where it was planted didn’t mean it was non-sentient. Since it didn’t have the luxury of mobility like the kodanos or the sorvuc, the Helmria had had to get creative in terms of finding food.

  It was a carnivorous flower that required a considerable amount of food per day to survive. Remarkably, the Helmria had evolved vines that it could move at will. No one knew how many vines a single Helmria could grow, nor did anyone know how far a single vine could reach.

  The forests of Ankou were ribboned with vines that seemed to have a mind of their own. There was a theory that every sentient vine in the forests actually belonged to the elusive Helmria. I wasn’t sure about that. But I did have some idea of how many vines a single Helmria could produce. The leading experts were way off.

  And how did I come across such a groundbreaking piece of information?

  Well, as it happened, I was hanging by my ankles in the dank lair of an angry, starving Helmria Ithalma.

  It had at least twenty vines, though most of them were coiled up underneath the brilliant bloom. I guessed it was to conserve energy. This forest could no longer support the voracious appetite of a Helmria.

  Its vibrant crimson petals splayed apart to reveal a cruel, circular mouth-like hole lined with needle-like teeth in the center of the flower. For the better part of an hour, the Helmria had been trying to turn me into lunch.

  “I don’t want to do this to you!” I shouted angrily as I sliced through another vine. With only a small handful of known specimens, I wanted to escape its clutches without damaging it too severely.

  When I got out of here, the first thing I planned on doing was reporting this to the Ankou Botany Board. I wasn’t sure if it was still functioning after the Xathi invasion, but it would resurrect itself for a Helmria.

  I’d already cataloged its exact location. I’d pulled out my datapad and jotted everything down while fending of
f the probing vines. It was thanks to that momentary, but incredibly important, distraction, that I had a gash on my calf.

  Apparently, the damp coating on the outside of a Helmria hurt like a bitch when it came into contact with a cut.

  Trust me on that.

  The Helmria launched another vine attack towards me. I defected it with a flick of my hunting knife. I didn’t slice through the threatening vine. I only nicked it. The Helmria hissed and spat.

  I assumed that was a reaction to pain or frustration. I wasn’t sure if it could feel pain. I hoped it couldn’t. I felt bad enough about damaging it. I didn’t want to make it even more aggressive.

  But if it could, what an interesting result!

  Another vine lashed at me before I was prepared to deflect it. It wrapped around my wrist and squeezed until I was forced to drop my knife. It landed point down in the middle of another thick vine. The Helmria flailed about.

  “See, I bet you regret doing that,” I scolded it. “You’ve only gone and hurt yourself more. I bet that vine’s useless to you now.”

  My knife was my most prized possession. However, it wasn’t my only weapon. I pulled a small blaster out of the holster around my waist. I didn’t like to use it. I was a fair shot, but I wasn’t as good with it as I was with my knife.

  Another vine came at me. I fired a small beam that pierced the vine through. The Helmria wailed and thrashed.

  “Give me back my knife and I won’t do that again. Does that sound fair to you?” I groaned. The Helmria responded by lashing out with a vine.

  This time, I shot a piece of it clean off. For a brief moment, I got a perfect view of the exposed nerves that ran through the vine. Fascinating. I wish I brought more supplies for collecting samples. Every lab in the settled areas would beg to have me on their team.

  “You and I could make a great team. Do you not realize this?” I yelled at the stupid plant. “I’d let you live! You could even be my pet! I’d be open to that!”

  It swiped at me again. I fired the blaster and missed, but the noise startled it enough to make it yank the vine away.

  “Good! You’re learning,” I said. It still had me suspended by my ankles. I guessed that the only reason it didn’t lower me right into its gaping maw was that I was too big. Its mouth was big enough to swallow my head, but there was no way in hell that it could swallow my shoulders. Now that my knife was out of reach, I was tempted to shoot myself down. I took my eyes off the Helmria for a split second to look at the ground beneath me. It was covered in vines. From that brief glance, I couldn’t tell if they were living or not. I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  Another vine came at me. I fired. Nothing happened. My little blaster was out of ammo.

  “Damn it!” I screamed. When the next vine came for me, I had no choice but to grab it with my bare hands. It felt like solid muscle as it struggled against my grip. I dug my nails into its thick skin in an attempt to cause pain.

  It wasn’t working. Something to note.

  I was out of options, but I wasn’t going to give in that easily. If this thing wanted to eat me, it was going to have to work harder than it had ever worked in its life.

  I kicked my legs, trying to break free of the grip the Helmria Ithalma had on my ankles, but it was no use. My ankles might as well have been encased in cement.

  Then I heard something that made me pause. It sounded like thumping coming from somewhere above me. This particular Helmria didn’t live in a typical cave. The opening to its lair was above me, made from a lattice of dead roots. I could still see the hole it dragged me through. My arms were covered in shallow scrapes as a result.

  The thumping turned into a cracking sound. I craned my neck and looked up just in time to see a thick red arm punch through the opening of the Helmria lair. Soon after, a huge scaly Skotan dropped down onto the floor, weapons drawn. He fired like lightning at every vine near him before shooting at the vines that held me. I fell unceremoniously to the ground and landed hard.

  “Son of a bitch!” I hissed. I reached for my knife, but the Skotan grabbed it first.

  “I’ve got this,” he said. Then he winked.

  Who the hell did he think he was?

  With my knife in hand, he rushed at the bloom of the Helmria.

  “Wait!” I shouted but it was too late.

  He drove my knife deep into its gaping mouth.

  Dammit.

  It let out a high-pitched whine that sounded like a scream. Its petals twitched and its vines thrashed. When the Skotan removed the blade, its petals closed up and the vines went still.

  “This yours?” the Skotan asked, holding up my knife. It was covered in green liquid sap. I silently took it from him and sheathed it without cleaning it. That sap could provide valuable information later on.

  “You’re welcome,” the Skotan leaned in to whisper to me.

  “What exactly am I thanking you for? For killing an incredibly rare species of sentient flower?” I asked.

  “For saving your life,” he grinned. I took a moment to look him over.

  He was handsome and fully aware of it, and also armed to the teeth.

  “Do you always walk around dying forests looking for a fight?” I jutted my chin at his many weapons. “You just killed an incredibly rare and very endangered plant!”

  The alien looked at me as if I had turned into a plant myself.

  “It’s lucky for you I was out here,” he said. “If I hadn’t been looking for a botanist, I wouldn’t have heard you scream.”

  “A botanist?” I blinked.

  “Yeah, they’re like gardeners, but with more science. Did you see anyone else out here before you were grabbed by that thing?”

  Handsome, yet dense.

  Terrible combination.

  “I’m the botanist. Why are you looking for me?” I demanded.

  “You’re Dr. Briar?” Now he was the one who looked surprised. “You’re not a man?”

  “Last time I checked, I wasn’t,” I replied, glancing down at my chest. Yup. Still there.

  To his credit, he got past the woman thing pretty quickly.

  “You remember your friend Leena? The one you blew off today in favor of tangling with a death plant?” he asked.

  “I didn’t mean to blow her off,” I said quickly. “Did she send you to fetch me?”

  “My general did,” the Skotan said. “I’m not allowed back on duty until I bring you to the capital.”

  “Wow. Did you piss him off or something?” I folded my arms across my chest.

  His face fell a bit. “Yes, I did.”

  Handsome and dense, but also honest. Less of a terrible combination.

  Slightly.

  “Right. Well, we better get back, then.” Leaving the remains of the poor Helmria Ithalma behind, I climbed the lifeless vines and wiggled through the opening. The Skotan followed behind.

  “You’re not going to thank me for saving you?” the Skotan asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Now, let’s get back to Rigkon. This botanist needs a drink.”

  Rokul

  I’d like to think I was a hard person to surprise after everything I’ve seen and done. This botanist surprised me.

  I mean, yeah, the woman thing, but whatever.

  What surprised me more was the fact that she didn’t appear at all fazed by her near-death experience.

  Apparently, I didn’t understand the botany profession as well as I thought I did.

  I walked several yards behind her as she stalked through the forest with natural ease. That was just as surprising as her casual reaction to the carnivorous plant.

  I’d saved her life, yet she was annoyed with me for killing the horrid thing.

  And she was really pretty.

  Lots of surprises.

  “Slow down!” I called. I could’ve moved faster if I wanted to but frankly, I didn’t want to. I’d had a long day, I fought a plant, and I wasn’t in the mood to break a sweat anymore. I was still an
noyed that I’d been sent on this mission as a form of punishment.

  “Catch up!” she called back. I couldn’t help but smile just a little. The girl had some bite to her, no doubt about it.

  This was much better than toting a pale, skinny scientist-type through the forest. I didn’t have to worry about being her bodyguard. With a shake of my head, I jogged to catch up with her.

  “You never told me your name,” I said.

  “Dr. Briar,” she shot back.

  “I can’t keep calling you that. I rescued you. We should at least be friends,” I grinned. “Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine?”

  She turned her head to face me and gave me a long once over. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she found it.

  “Fine,” she smiled. “I’m Tella.”

  “Rokul,” I replied. “I’m a-”

  “Skotan. Yes, I know,” she said. “I made a point to learn about the aliens that saved our planet.”

  “Did you?” I was impressed. Not many humans went out of their way to learn about us. “Any thoughts?”

  “Not particularly,” she replied. “After seeing the Xathi, it’s hard to see you and the other aliens as shocking.”

  “Not much surprises you,” I ventured.

  “Almost nothing. Finding that Helmria Ithalma was a surprise, but not for the reasons you’re probably thinking,” she replied. “They’re incredibly rare. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Xathi killed most of them as they destroyed the human settlements.”

  “From where I stood, wiping those things out might be a good thing,” I commented. Tella bit the inside of her cheek, I suspect to stop the frown tugging at the corner of her mouth.

  Even though it was dark, Tella didn’t seem lost. I checked my navigation often just to make sure we were going in the right direction, which we were.

  I wasn’t sure what time it was when we got back to Rigkon, but I was more than ready to go back to the capital. I started off toward my aerial unit.