by J. N. Chaney
“Listen,” I started. “I’m not sure if you can understand me, but there’s no way out of here. You shoot me and this dog will tear you apart from limb to cybernetic limb. If he doesn’t kill you, then the Civil Authority Officers who are on their way will.”
As if to emphasize my words, heavy footfalls from a pair of Civil Authority Officers, or suits, as we called them, could be heard rounding the corner. I saw them out of my peripheral vision but didn’t turn to see who the pair were.
The Rung in front of me didn’t look like he knew what I was saying, but he understood the predicament he was in. Instead of lifting his weapon, he lowered it to a holder on his right side.
He lifted both hands slowly into the air, the universal sign for surrender, even here, it seemed, then gave me a toothy smile. Short, stubby teeth poked up out of his top and bottom gums.
What’s he doing? I wondered. He has to have some kind of plan here.
The Rung moved the thumb on his left hand to his middle finger and pressed a button on the black gloves he wore.
Thrusters sounded on the back of his tight-fitting suit. I let go of Mutt, lunging for the Rung as he lifted off the ground a second later.
It seemed both Mutt and I had the same idea. Mutt grabbed onto his left booted foot, crunching down with powerful jaws. I abandoned my rifle, running to him and finding two handholds on the belt the Rung wore around his waist.
Two heartbeats later, we were tearing over the tops of the tents. The Rung was too busy trying to keep airborne to deal with me and Mutt. It was obvious whatever propulsion system was hard-wired into his suit was not designed to carry three bodies as it struggled to gain altitude.
Yelling and shouting from below took a back seat to what I was focusing on now. My hands were full as I tried to climb up the Rung’s body. I needed to take control of the thruster on his back via the control system he used on his hand.
Mutt fell a second later, taking the Rung’s boot with him in his jaws. The dog crashed into a tent not even a foot below us, seemingly all right. Without his extra weight, the thruster propelled us higher into the air and I held on for dear life.
Trying to fend me off and maneuver the thrusters was proving too difficult for my opponent. We careened into tents, the side of the wall, and even slammed into one of the two watchtowers that flanked the main gate before sliding across the catwalk.
If nothing else, I was stubborn. One hand clinging to his belt, I tried to work my way up to his right arm, where he controlled or at least tried to control our trajectory.
The Rung was getting annoyed with my tenacious hold on his person. Thus far, he hadn’t struck out at me, but it seemed he had had enough. It was just my luck that his free hand was made of cold, hard metal.
He hit me, opening a painful cut above my right eye. Warm blood oozed into my vision. When he came at me again with the hammer fist, I changed my grip. Holding on to his belt with my left hand, I caught his fist with my right.
I had no idea where we were, thanks to the swirling topsy-turvy motion of the thrusters. All I knew was that we were still inside the Orion wall, or so I hoped.
I saw him right before he leapt off the catwalk. Boss Creed was either a genius or a mad man, maybe a bit of both. He must have seen us heading toward the wall, gaining altitude faster since Mutt had fallen off.
He timed his jump just right. Boss Creed sailed over the catwalk that circled the inside of the gate like some kind of gymnast, grabbing onto us both.
The other man’s weight proved too much for the power of the thrusters, which were obviously made for one occupant. As one, the three of us fell from the sky, slamming into the hard ground underneath us.
I was the lucky one on the bottom, cushioning the falls of the Rung and Boss Creed, who knocked the wind out of my chest when they both landed on me. While the Rung couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds, Boss Creed most likely was double that and I’d felt a sickening crunch come from my left shoulder when we landed.
Pain shot through my shoulder and down my arm and I had the absurd urge to laugh. It really was no laughing matter and it felt like broken glass had been shoved into my rotator cuff right through to the bone.
Boss Creed and the Rung recovered before I did. They battled on the dirt ground next to me as I tried to focus past the agony and get back to my feet, sucking air in to get through the pain.
This isn’t going to kill you, I coached myself in my head. Back up, get back on your feet.
Too stubborn to do anything else, I regained my footing. I could feel blood flowing freely from the cut above my eye and my left arm was useless from the shoulder down. I had dislocated it once before, years ago in the gladiator pit when I fought Harry “The Hammer” Rycker. The pain was the same sensation all over again, needles and pins, really big ones.
Lucky for me, Boss Creed had the Rung pinned on the ground, his whole body stretched across the much smaller being, his right side concentrated on pinning down that cybernetic hand. Seconds later, Mutt, Stacy, and a group of suits were on the alien as well.
Following them, a horde of worried Orion survivors looked to one another for direction. I felt bad for the mass of onlookers, as most of them had bought into this whole venture to find a new and better life, not constantly go up against the danger the crash had subjected them to.
“Are we being attacked?” I picked up a voice in the crowd.
“Is it the aliens or Legion?” another voice asked.
I ignored them both and looked for something to press my shoulder against. I needed get it back into its socket.
“Hey, you okay?” Ricky’s familiar and welcome voice cut through everything else. “You don’t look so good.”
“Yeah,” I gasped, wincing. “I just need you to pop my shoulder back into place.”
“Your what?” Ricky looked me up and down, uncertainty evident on his face. “Dean, I don’t know if I’m qualified for that. I’ll go get the doc and—”
“Ricky!” I growled. “You can do this, brother. I’ll walk you through it. But it needs to be now.”
“Okay, okay.” Ricky took a tentative step forward. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just hold my arm and pull when I tell you,” I instructed through gritted teeth.
“Okay, yeah, just hold the arm,” Ricky said, walking himself through the action and looking a little green. “I can do that, sure. Just hold the arm.”
He grabbed my forearm, and I braced myself for the pain I was about to feel.
“Pull!” I shouted, jerking my torso back at the same time. A loud pop brought a fresh wave of discomfort and pain, but it only lasted for a second.
Ricky dropped my arm, shaking his head as he did so. “You’re a wild man, Dean. What happened here?”
“Mutt cornered a Rung spy,” I said, rotating my arm and nodding over to where Boss Creed and Stacy still had the Rung pinned down. “At least, that’s what I think he is. I didn’t know how he got over the wall until he took me for a ride. Must have used that jetpack sometime during the night to get over.”
While the suits in the area tried to maintain order by creating a perimeter under Stacy’s direction, both Tong and Jezra appeared. Tong’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion as he eyed the Rung.
Jezra actually looked pleased, which, considering her earlier words, wasn’t exactly surprising.
“We’ve got him cuffed and that jetpack he was wearing removed,” Boss Creed said, looking down at the Rung, who was now in a sitting position, his head pointed down to the ground, much as he was when we found him with Mutt guarding him. “Any idea why he’s here?”
“Any idea anyone could have as to why our guest is here would be nothing more than a guess at this point,” Jezra said, making us all scratch our heads on that one. Sometimes it was hard to tell if the alien was intentionally speaking gibberish or if she was getting her English confused. “Please, we must speak with him.”
“Not here,” Stacy said, rejoi
ning the group. She looked meaningfully at the crowd of Orion colonists gathered to see what was going on. “Somewhere inside the Orion or a tent.”
“Agreed,” Tong said, finally realizing that she didn’t want the colonists to panic.
Stacy and Boss Creed helped the Rung to his feet. They marched him through the camp toward the command tent that had previously been used by Arun.
Elon had taken on the full responsibility of overseeing the Orion colony since Arun had been infected with the Legion virus. Stacy and Boss Creed acted as his right hands. Doctor Allbright and Doctor Wong were also helping to shoulder the burden.
Mutt appeared at my side a moment later. He whined up to me as if to ask if I was okay.
“You did good, buddy,” I assured him, ruffling his soft ears then kneeling to check him over for any injuries from the fall. Thankfully there was no blood on him and he moved fine.
I followed Stacy as we made for that tent now, along with a myriad of colonists who wanted to know what was going on.
“Take him in and start talking to him,” Stacy instructed Boss Creed. “I’ll address the mob before they work themselves into a frenzy.” I couldn’t blame them for wanting to know what was going on. An unknown alien had snuck into camp, pulled a gun, then tried to fly away with me attached. They were bound to have questions.
“Got it,” Boss Creed said.
We entered the large green tent. Not to our surprise, Elon was nowhere to be seen. Since Arun had been infected by the Legion virus, either Ricky or Elon were by her side at all times, ready to assist when she needed them.
Boss Creed shoved the Rung to a chair inside the tent. Arun had kept her headquarters simple with a desk and chair on one end, a bookcase along one side, and a table. There were hard light amplifiers set into the corners of the tent as well to allow Iris, the Orion’s Cognitive, to take form if she so chose.
“Iris, are you there?” I asked the empty air in front of me.
“Always,” Iris said, using the hard light amplifiers in the room to give shape to her body. She looked at me. “Sorry, I know you get scared sometimes when I appear out of thin air. You used to ask for a heads up.”
“I’m good,” I told her with a smile. “Guess I’m getting used to it.”
Although Iris was a Cognitive, she looked like an Eternal, from her white skin to her piercing blue eyes. She wore a tight-fitting grey suit.
“Iris, can you translate for us while Tong and Jezra talk to our new friend?” I asked.
“Of course,” Iris said with a nod of her head.
Boss Creed stood beside the seated Rung in case he tried anything. At the moment, the Rung seemed to be no kind of threat and looked nothing short of defeated. His hands were secured behind his back. He hunched forward, eyes directed toward the ground in front of him.
Tong and Jezra stood in front of the Rung. Ricky and I stood further back near the tent entrance with Iris.
Tong started the conversation, his native dialect sounding like hard clicks of his tongue and long “S’s” strung together to form short sentences and even shorter words.
“Tong is asking him how he got inside the wall and what he wants here,” Iris explained to us.
The Rung finally looked up from his perpetual gaze on the ground in front of him. He said something to Tong that rattled the Remboshi if his wide eyes and furtive motions were any indication. Jezra just smiled and nodded, as if she had expected this answer the entire time.
“He says he’s come to broker an alliance.” Iris looked at me, confused. “He says he knows of a way to end Legion for good.”
3
“He knows!” Ricky nearly shouted in disbelief. “He knows a way to cure people from the Legion virus?”
“That’s what he said,” Iris confirmed.
I grabbed at Ricky too late. His love for Arun drove him forward. Without thinking, he lunged at the Rung, grabbing his throat and throttling him.
“Tell us,” Ricky said with a fierce look in his eyes that made Tong and Jezra each take a step back. “Tell us what you know. Tell us how to put a stop to Legion.”
The Rung’s eyes bulged out of his sockets.
Boss Creed and I went over and laid firm hands on Ricky. Each of us could have ripped him off, but we didn’t. We understood the rage that lived inside of him, the anger that arose from having to see Arun suffer for the last month, day in and day out.
“Easy,” I told Ricky as I gripped his left shoulder. “He can’t tell us anything if you kill him.”
Ricky’s eyes were red from lack of sleep, veins crisscrossing the sclera. He swallowed hard, finally releasing his hold on the bound Rung’s throat. The alien gasped then coughed, spitting on the floor. He sucked in a lungful of air, the panic in his eyes leaving as they deflated back to their normal size in the sockets.
“He’ll tell us,” Boss Creed said with no doubt in his voice. “I know he’ll tell us everything.”
Ricky nodded and moved out of the way, making room for me to crouch in front of the now terrified alien. I leveled a menacing stare at him making sure that he understood me without words.
“Tong,” I said, not averting my eyes. “Tell him that I don’t appreciate him sneaking into our camp and attacking our people. If he wants to live, he better tell us what we want to know.”
Another series of clicks and “s” sounds followed, with Iris translating.
My show of force must have worked because true to Boss Creed’s prediction, as soon as the Rung regained his breath, the interrogation continued, and he told us everything. How he was sent by his people to gauge our commitment to uniting against Legion. How he used the cover of night with his booster pack to get over our wall. Finally, he told us how to kill Legion.
“He says his name is Sulk,” Iris said, listening to the others chat away. “He’s a specialist, or at least that’s what his people call him. He was chosen to bring us the news due to his ability to negotiate with enemies. They have been fighting Legion for the last month. It seems Legion deems them an easier target at the moment than the Orion. The Rung have suffered serious casualties, depleting their forces at a rapid rate.”
“Good,” Boss Creed said quietly. “I haven’t forgotten what you said they did to our expeditionary crew that went out in search of the communication section of the Orion.”
I nodded in agreement. Boss Creed was right. The Rung had slaughtered an entire team that had just gone out to try and recover our communication devices without asking any questions. They also had shot Ricky and nearly cost him his life. I closed my eyes, remembering when my friend’s survival was touch and go. Although the experience made me more appreciative of Ricky, who could be annoying at times, it was something I didn’t want to go through again.
The conversation went on, with Jezra taking the lead.
Iris suddenly perked up. Her bright blue eyes, which were nearly luminescent, were now wide with wonder.
I waited, barely holding in the tension of the moment. Although I didn’t know what they were saying until Iris translated for me, it was clear something of great importance was taking place.
Jezra spoke quickly, leaning in to Sulk as if she didn’t want to miss a word.
For his part, Sulk spoke slowly and intentionally in monotone, as if he were reciting facts he had read from a reference book, though that was hard to ascertain as he wasn’t speaking a language I knew.
“Iris?” Ricky asked, unable to bottle his need for answers. “Iris, what are they saying now?”
“Legion managed to get into their main underground bunker. He killed or turned more than half their number,” Iris said in a low whisper so as to not miss the conversation still taking place between Jezra and Sulk. “Sulk said the Rung survivors have a plan to kill the heart of Legion in the jungle to the North. They have the plan, but they need the manpower.”
So, there it is, I thought to myself. There’s the kicker. They have the plan but need our help to carry out the mission. Which means
they want us to share in the dying.
“Are they kidding? The Rung want us to help them clean up their mess,” Boss Creed said, shaking his head in disbelief. He laughed, a short bark with no actual joy in the sound. “Am I the only one that remembers the Rung were the ones that created Legion in the first place? Now their Frankenstein monster has spun out of control and they want us to help them?”
The tent grew silent, with everyone lost in his or her own thoughts.
More than anything, I wanted to throw the Rung out over the wall and be done with it, but we had to be smart about this. This could be the one and only olive branch extended before Legion wiped out the Rung. After the symbiot killed the Rung, it was obvious where he was going to go to “recruit.” Legion would fixate on the Orion next.
“Does he have a cure to heal those already infected?” Ricky said, swallowing hard, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
Tong asked Sulk the question.
The Rung answered back in a series of sharp T’s and S’s.
“He said once Legion’s core is destroyed, then those with the virus will be released from his hold,” Iris explained. “Kill Legion, cure those he infected.”
Stunned silence descended on the tent as that news set in.
“Then that’s what we will do, for Arun and everyone that’s infected,” Ricky said abruptly, looking around the tent for support. His gaze fell upon me. “We have to try. We have to do something, figure out a way to kill Legion.”
“We will,” I promised. “We’re going to help Arun, Ricky. We just have to go about this the right way. You know there are a lot of people who aren’t infected, and we have to think about them first.”
The spark in my friend’s eyes dimmed for a moment. As passionate as he was about finding a cure for the woman he loved, he understood what it meant for the rest of the colonists. Not just a fight but a war was at our doorstep. The Orion survivors who had already been through so much hardship were about to be asked to go through even more.
“We need more information and Elon needs to be told about what’s going on as well,” Boss Creed said, looking over to me. “I’ll stay here with Tong and Jezra. You two should go let him know what we’re dealing with.”
