Warden's Fate

by Tony James Slater

  “Yeah, true enough.”

  Tris reached out to see if he could find the Empress. She was there, waiting patiently, her nestship drifting aimlessly nearby.

  Young grub! For one so fragile, you do seem to court danger.

  I don’t always have a choice. He tried not to make the thought too pointed.

  The same is true for us all, she agreed.

  It wasn’t an apology — far from it — but he sensed that she regretted putting him in harm’s way. There was no point trying to convince her that the lives of the villagers were also valuable; as Kyra had so eloquently pointed out, Tris would eat a hamburger without giving a second thought for the cow that provided it.

  Hamburgers. His stomach rumbled. Ration bars were all well and good, but he felt robbed after missing dinner in the village. When he’d been sneaking off to the shuttle with Ella, he’d smelled the meat roasting and promised himself he’d stay awake to get some.

  I am sated, the Empress replied happily. The Princess’s mate made a mighty kill, for one so scrawny. He gave it all to me.

  The unique nature of the Gift meant Tris saw the pictures as well as hearing the words. He nearly barked with laughter when he saw who she considered Kyra’s ‘mate’, and then described Lukas as ‘scrawny’, but the sight and stench of the decomposing meat made him queasy.

  Why the hell did they have a dinosaur in the hold?

  I care not. But it was delicious!

  He decided not to pursue the matter.

  I need to return to the planet, she added, a note of urgency colouring her tone.

  Why? Not for more food? He shuddered.

  No. There is a… mystery close to the village. I must seek it out, but I do not wish to cause more deaths amongst your new friends.

  I’ll come down in the next shuttle then, and escort you, he offered. What is it?

  If I knew, it would not be a mystery.

  Fair enough. He figured he could wait till they were down on the planet, before broaching the topic he most wanted to discuss. Specifically, what the hell was happening to him, if she understood it, and if there was anything she could do about it.

  He didn’t have high hopes, but if anyone could explain what was happening to the Gift inside him, it was her.

  As the conversation finished, he noticed Kyra was staring. “You’ve changed,” she accused him.

  He made a show of patting his hospital-issue PJs. “My outfit? By the way, I think it’s most unfair that you got to keep your clothes and I ended up in this crap.”

  She ignored that. “The shape of your thoughts is different. Stronger, like there was some kind of nozzle restricting the flow before, and now it’s wide open.”

  He grinned at her. “If it’s my nozzle you want to know about, you should probably ask Ella.”

  She fixed him with a stare, and waited until the smirk faded from his face. “I’m serious, Tris. What’s going on?”

  Tris ran his hands through the stubble on his head. It had grown back about a centimetre since Lukas shaved him; he could probably clean his nails this way. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “My dad tampered with my DNA when he made me, or else something happened to it. He thought I was like an experiment gone wrong. When he first discovered it, I think he was scared of what he’d done.” He took a deep breath, but felt remarkably steady as he carried on. “Lately, a few things have been happening. I’m a bit worried that I’m… changing? Argh! I don’t know. Is it good, or bad? What is it, even? It’s just… it’s a mess.”

  Kyra took the news rather well. “Tris,” she said, fixing him with her very best ‘concerned’ look, “it’s perfectly normal. Most boys around your age start go through some changes…”

  “Kyra!” he protested. “I’m not growing new hairs here!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands. Her expression said she wasn’t sorry at all. “It’s just, you were so serious! I couldn’t help myself. Look, the thing is, you’re a clone. It’s not an exact science.”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah. So you think you’re a bit fucked up? Welcome to the club! Ask Kreon what it feels like to be half dead from the shoulders down. But whatever’s happening to your mind, Tris, it’s amazing! Your Gift is growing like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ve no idea how far away the Empress is, but I can’t hear her from here. And you just had a casual conversation with her, like she was sitting right next to us! Shit like that, man, that gets interesting. We’ve got to start doing some tests.”

  “Tests. Ugh.” Tris did nothing to hide his opinion of that idea. “You know what? We should ask the assassin that I sent flying using just my mind. Seriously — she was right there, and then I smacked her so hard she was gone. I was maybe half this room away at the time.”

  “What?” All banter was gone now, and Kyra was deadly serious. “Tris, that’s… not possible. The Gift doesn’t work that way. Are you sure Ella didn’t have something to do with it? She said she’d been watching you fight.”

  Tris studied the mess table, not feeling at all comfortable with how this conversation was going. “No. Ella couldn’t get a clear shot in. She missed the actual event while she was coming to get me. It was like… I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but she was about to kill me, and I just lashed out. It felt wrong straight away, but it also saved my life…” he trailed off, not sure what his point was anymore.

  Kyra was staring at him intensely now. “I think I met that chick,” she said, her voice distant. “There was something wrong with her mind… like it had been broken somehow.”

  Tris swallowed. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Kyra laid a hand on his arm — the closest she got to a comforting gesture, short of a kiss or a punch. “You did what you had to do. But this talent, Tris? It’s…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is. But I’ve never heard of anything like it. You’ve got the Kharash DNA inside you, same as Kreon. Maybe yours is mutating somehow? Making you stronger, giving you abilities…”

  “Great!” Tris made a face at her. “I always wanted to be Spiderman.”

  Kyra raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, never mind,” he said. “So what do I do? These things keep happening to me. I know my dad was worried. What if I keep changing? What if I start killing people with my thoughts? What if I just go nuts?”

  Kyra waited for him to run out of words, before giving his arm a squeeze. “Okay. The way I figure it is this: I’ve taught you to kick ass with your body. If we don’t all die in the next few days, we’ll see if we can find someone to teach you to kick ass with your mind. In the meantime, try not to kill anyone in their sleep, alright? And if you want to apply for position of ‘most fucked up’ on this ship, you should know; by the time I was your age, I’d already been responsible for the deaths of almost everyone I’d ever known.” She reached out and patted his cheek. “That’s just for perspective.”

  He met her eyes, and saw the humour was back. But he also met her mind, and knew that she wasn’t joking.

  “So in a nutshell, your advice is ‘stop being a whiney little bitch, and suck it up.’ Right?”

  She punched him playfully in the shoulder — right on the cut he’d taken from the assassin, whose mind he had apparently broken. “See?” she said. “You’re learning! We don’t even need to do these talks anymore. Next time, you can just skip straight to the punch line.”

  Stuffing the last half of her ration bar into her mouth, she got up to leave.

  “Kyra?” he said, stopping her.

  “Yeah?”

  He gestured at the wrappers strewn across the table. “Thanks for dinner.”

  ***

  Tris showered in his quarters, and changed into the Earth-garb he’d left in there. He was going through outfits at an alarming rate. Another trip to the armoury would be in order soon, but that could wait. He was down in the docking bay just in time to watch Nightshade slip in through the magnetic shield.


  He was so thrilled to be reunited with Ella that he decided not to mention her paralysing him.

  After all, she’d done it in his best interests. His mother would no doubt approve, though he had no intention of telling her. It wasn’t the kind of behaviour he was keen to encourage.

  They shared a long embrace in the docking bay, which turned slightly awkward when Kov and two of his villagers stepped off Nightshade’s access ramp.

  “They wanted to see the place,” she explained. “None of them have ever been off-planet before.”

  “Ah. Welcome to Outer Space,” he said, bowing extravagantly. “Askarra? Would you mind giving a tour?”

  The hologram flickered into place next to him. He’d expected the villagers to be startled, but they merely gazed at the projection with interest.

  “AI?” Kov asked, turning towards him. “I thought they were illegal?”

  Tris hung his head. Apparently, even peasants raised as livestock in stick huts were better educated than he was. “Um, yeah,” he replied, not quite sure what to say to that. So he put his finger to his lips. “Shhh!”

  Askarra led the villagers off — the medical wing was their destination of choice, all of them eager to address various ailments they were unable to treat with their level of technology.

  Tris was left alone with Ella, though sadly he couldn’t take advantage of the situation.

  “Do you mind running me back down there?” he asked her. “You must have been flying back and forth all day, so I don’t mind if—”

  She stopped his babble with a kiss, which was pretty much his favourite way of being told to shut up.

  “Of course,” she smiled at him, when she came up for air. “I’ve got to take the last batch of gear, too. Your mother has been stripping the remains of the Vanguard for every last thing, from bandages to wall-art. Once the loaders have finished, we’ll haul it all down to the village, and see if we can make life a bit more comfy for them.”

  “I’m sorry about Evie,” he said, taking her hand in his. “I know how much she meant to you.”

  Ella’s smile faltered, and silent tears tracked down her cheeks. “She wasn’t always like that,” she said, her voice soft. “There were times when we had to do… hard things. You know? She got me through them, we helped each other. But it changes you. I’d never have chosen this life for either of us. But if we’d stayed on Earth, we’d be long dead. Probably of the flux. Now here I am, a hundred-odd years later. And I’ve still got all my teeth! And I’ve got you.” She pulled him into a hug, and rested her chin on his shoulder. “And Evie… I think she got what she wanted.” She pushed him back to arms-length effortlessly, and looked him in the eye. “Two tier-one kills! Those girls they sent after me, they were the best Atla-Ra has to offer. I think Evie’s rep just went up, and she cared a lot about that. Plus…” and her smile took a turn for the mischievous, “they left all their gear behind. Do you have any idea how many fun toys the tier-one girls get?”

  The Empress accompanied them on the trip down, her mottled green nestship sticking close as Ella brought them high above the village. Then she moved ahead, and Tris told Ella to follow her. They landed close to the village, in the battle-scarred no-man’s land between the walls and the forest.

  Tris led Ella down the ramp, preferring her company if he was going back into those trees. Flashbacks of his last encounter, not too far from here, preyed heavily on his mind. It was alright for Kyra to tell him to suck it up, but he had no idea what he’d done to the girl that attacked him, or how he’d done it.

  But it left her mind broken…

  He didn’t want to think about that too much.

  Walking towards the forest, hand in hand with Ella, the late afternoon sun beating down on him, did wonders for his mood. They ducked into the trees, meeting the Empress who had landed as far from the village as possible. As she moved she used all five limbs, pushing off the ground and the trees just as easily. Tris could tell she’d be capable of horrific speed through this terrain, and thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t been born on a prey-breeding world.

  She was thoroughly occupied with her quest, and her thoughts drifted back to him; She is here, she is near, but where and why?

  He could only assume she’d lost one of her followers in the forest, perhaps injured during the night fight. Whatever the case, he was content to let her lead the way. A stiff hike through broken ground was by far the easiest activity he’d undertaken lately.

  But when they reached another huge boulder, similar to the one Ella had led them to before knocking him out, the Empress went berserk, waving her free limbs around in a state of agitation.

  What is it? he asked her.

  They have imprisoned her, she raged, seemingly offended by the very concept. She is old, and she was strong, but they have taken that from her and bound her here.

  Tris rounded the rock, and rising in front of him was the bloated form of a Siszar nestship. It was so unexpected that he took a step back, bumping into Ella as she came up behind him.

  One of yours? he asked the Empress.

  She is not! But far older.

  Tris looked up at the ship, noticing how rough and gnarled its skin looked. “One of yours?” he asked Ella, joking.

  “Yesss,” she breathed, stepping around him for a closer look. “This is how they got here. A Native Infiltration Vehicle.”

  “But it’s a Siszar ship,” he said, pointing out the obvious.

  “It was,” Ella corrected him, “at one time. But the Priesthood have adapted it for human use. This could come in very handy.”

  Tris eyed her warily. “Why? What have you got in mind?”

  Her smile brought dimples of innocence to her cheeks. “Assassination, of course!”

  28

  Tris approached the nestship with trepidation. The closest he’d ever come to one was when the Empress departed Admiral Benin’s battleship, what seemed like an aeon ago. They were huge for a single-occupant craft, each one bigger than any of the shuttles he’d traveled in. This one was bigger still, swollen and blotchy. Its squid-like appearance put him on edge; watching them fight, it always looked as though the ships themselves were alive. He couldn’t help wondering if at any moment one of those formidable tentacles could lash out, crushing them.

  The Empress’s reaction didn’t help. She was circling the ship warily, a kind of hissing coming from her. He could feel her mind probing, but he shied away from making contact with whatever it was inside the ship. Rage emanated from the occupant; a howling, screaming frenzy that put Tris in mind of the telepaths driven mad by the Black Ships.

  Ella wasn’t fazed, though. She stepped up to the ship and laid her hands against its dappled skin, moving them around as though searching for something. A minute later she gave a cry of triumph, dug her fingers in and peeled back a thick section of membrane. Revealed beneath it was a panel of dark metal, into which a hatch not much bigger than a car tyre was set.

  “There’s our way in,” she said.

  Tris raised an eyebrow at her. “We’re going in? Do you know what’s waiting for us in there?”

  “I’ve only heard rumours, but I’d guess there’ll be a Siszar prisoner, kept complacent with a steady stream of drugs.”

  “Yeah…” Tris made a pained face. “Complacent might not the best description of the state she’s in.”

  “Got it,” Ella replied.

  “Phew! So we’re not going in then?”

  “No, I mean, I’ve got the door open.” She had her hand in a hidden niche, and when she twisted it, the hatch slid silently open. “You want to go first?”

  Fortunately, Tris didn’t have time to embarrass himself. The Empress came from behind them and lunged at the hole, shoving two limbs inside and then squeezing the fleshy bulb of her body through after them. No matter how many times he saw it, that amazed Tris. He was already thinking how awkward it was going to be for him to climb in there…

  Ella went first, vaulting up the side
of the ship and catching herself on the rim of the hatch, then pulling herself inside headfirst.

  Tris’ version was less elegant, but years of parkour had at least taught him how to run up smooth surfaces. He cracked both elbows on the metal frame and lost a bit of skin as he squirmed through it, cursing his decision to wear Earth clothes. He’d always considered himself pretty agile for his age; hanging out with Ella and Kyra was crippling his ego.

  Squirming through a short steel tube that must have been inserted into the more organic structure of the nestship, he wriggled out to join the others — in what could only be described as the belly of the ship.

  Looking around in the dim light radiating off the walls, it was obvious this wasn’t a human ship. There wasn’t a single flat surface or right-angle in it; floors were rough-textured and concave, the walls curving and veined. Moisture dripped from the ceiling to pool at their feet, and hung in the warm, fetid air. Tris wrinkled his nose, and saw Ella do the same. The whole ship stank like the inside of a dead badger; with her enhanced senses, it had to be way worse. He hoped she had an enhanced gag-reflex to match.

  On the upside, the Empress seemed at home here, the tips of her tentacles dipping in and out of orifices that speckled the walls. She could reach all sides of the chamber simultaneously, and braced herself against the roof while she continued her probing. Apparently satisfied, she moved deeper into the chamber and began to pull aside a series of flaps that formed its back wall. Like spongy curtains, the flaps gathered up as she moved them aside, revealing further chambers beyond the first.

  Like valves of a heart, Tris thought, as he followed her.

  Somewhere ahead of them, the psychic storm continued — but the ship itself was silent.

  And when they reached the back of the ship, he saw why.

  It was a chamber of horrors.