Sorrow's Fall

by Helen Allan

  “No!” Sorrow exclaimed, her eyes wide in surprise.

  “Oh yes,” Etienne chuckled, sipping his drink, “it seems she had a little disagreement with her dear brother many hundreds of years ago, and he killed her. Dipped her in gold, actually, and left her as a lasting reminder to others in the centre of the city.”

  “A disagreement over what, I wonder?” Sorrow mused.

  “That I cannot tell you,” Etienne smiled, “but I imagine it has something to do with a certain breeding program that seems to be going on right under the noses of the gods which they either refuse to see or simply have no clue about. That and the fact I believe the crazed twin may have sent all the male gods initially as leaders of the Gharial, but they died in battles – hence needing the red leaders. I have heard nothing to suggest they exist elsewhere, and many of the gods mourn the loss of their partners – still others hope they will return someday.”

  “Well,” Sorrow nodded, smiling as he took her hand and held it while she talked, “you are correct, the gods have no clue their eggs are being used to form red leaders. I wouldn’t have believed it either until I saw the genetic manipulation that took place in order to form the red leaders. They are not just Earthborn like I am; their DNA is altered with several other strands from several species. They are a mixed bag of genes, mostly human, but others too, the ova of the gods though, are necessary for the mix. It is a highly secret world in the breeding areas though; I have been working for the past months, in the infirmary – it is a closed world, separate and hidden and the security is ridiculous.”

  “So,” Etienne shuddered, “have you told Judgment that he is not purely Earthborn, but a mix of any number of aliens? Which, I might add, might explain why he is such a bastard.”

  “No,” Sorrow ignored his jibe, “I’ve meant to sit down with him and flesh out a whole heap of information, but we have not had any time so far, and to tell you the truth he is changed.”

  “How so?”

  “He was always reticent to share information,” Sorrow said quietly, thinking through her words carefully as she spoke, “but I put that down to his subterfuge on Avalona over who he really was. Here though,” she shook her head, “he is equally as secretive and very powerful. He commanded the respect of The Fist and the insurgents. I can’t help but think I don’t really know the real him at all. We are working together ostensibly to overthrow the Gharial, but I feel like I am simply an add-on and that he doesn’t fully trust me. I don’t really know what he plans much of the time.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “I do,” she said, haltingly, “I guess, yes, I do.”

  “And is your judgement, excuse the pun, clouded ma cherie?”

  “No,” she shook her head, “I no longer feel that way towards him. I’m thinking clearly.”

  “Then you trust him,” Etienne said, “I will remain if you don’t mind, somewhat sceptical. But either way, we must figure out a way to get out of here and join this revolution.”

  “Yes. Right now though, Judgment’s revolutionaries are being hunted by The Fist after he was betrayed by one of his own and I broke them all out of prison.”

  “That’s my girl,” Etienne laughed, shaking his head, “so where is your red leader now?”

  “He’s paying the piper,” Sorrow snickered, “he is sleeping with a goddess who requested his company and trying to find out about the torcs.”

  “No chance,” Etienne shook his head.

  “We shall see,” Sorrow frowned.

  7

  “Judge, if you are going to do this, do it now!” Sorrow shouted as the lasers continued to fire directly at them where they sat, strapped into the control room of the spacecraft, and a much larger, cannon-like weapon was wheeled into place by the Gharial airport guards.

  “I’m getting there,” he gritted, as the spacecraft hovered just above the ground for an interminable time before shooting straight up into the air and crashing through the roof of the hangar.

  For a second Sorrow closed her eyes as the craft careered left, then hard right and looked like it was about to slam into the ground before Judgment regained control at the last minute and shot them into the clouds.

  “Impressive flying,” Raphael snorted, once they were clear of the laser cannon fire from the ground.

  “Shut up,” Judge growled, turning the craft a hard right, in the opposite direction to the mountain retreat the resistance had once used as their base.

  Etienne, his knuckles white where they gripped his chair, looked across at Sorrow and shook his head.

  “Trust Judge, you said. He knows how to remove torcs, you said, he knows how to fly, you said.”

  “We are in the sky, aren’t we?” Sorrow frowned, “and your neck is free of the torc.”

  “Yes, and your little friend the chauffeur is free of this world,” he shook his head once more and turned his face from her, ostensibly looking out the windscreen as they flew.

  Sorrow swallowed hard. Etienne was right, this plan was half-baked at best, and she had trusted, once again, in Judgment without seeking all the details of his strategy. But they were free, and they did have a spaceship now – so not all was lost.

  “So, tell me,” Raphael said, trying to lighten the mood, “how exactly did you get the information out of the hag about how to remove the torcs?”

  “I didn’t,” Judge muttered, concentrating on his flying.

  “I beg your pardon?” Etienne asked quietly, his voice deadly.

  “I said, I didn’t.”

  “Then how did you know to use the atomiser.”

  “A hunch.”

  “Are you saying you risked our lives on a hunch?” Etienne growled.

  Judgment shrugged. “You wanted to leave The Finger. One way or the other you were going to leave, either in a casket, roasted by a dragon…the options were endless. I figured you were willing to take the chance.”

  “Wait,” Sorrow held up her hand, “you were supposed to fuck the information out of the goddess. What the hell were you doing all those hours?”

  “I beat the information out of her,” he shrugged, “what little information she had. Then I took a long bath.”

  Etienne and Raphael shared a worried look, Sorrow said nothing for a moment, sickened. She knew she had risked the lives of both her friends with her blind trust of Judgment, and even though he had come through and rescued them, there was a lesson to be learned here. They were still expendable as far as he was concerned.

  “So, wait,” she said quietly, “when you shot the torc off the chauffeur, and missed and turned him into a puddle, you were, even then, determined to continue to try on my friends, despite not even knowing if it would work?”

  He sighed.

  “The goddess told me she had seen a torc blown off a human in battle at The Games one year – the man had survived. I figured there was a 50-50 chance it would work. It would have worked on the chauffeur if he hadn’t squeaked and tried to move at the last minute.”

  “He was my friend,” Sorrow said quietly, “he didn’t even want to lose his torc or leave The Finger, he was playing the guinea pig as a favour.”

  “He played the pig because I had a gun pointed at him,” Judgment snorted, “he had no choice. Your slave and the bird are free; we have much to discuss and much to plan – there is no point looking backwards.”

  “You are an interesting ally,” Raphael chuckled.

  Etienne said nothing, but Sorrow noted the deadly look on the Frenchman’s face and the way his jaw clenched. She hoped he would wait until they landed before hitting Judgment which, if she knew her friend, and she did, was quite inevitable.

  “I so wanted to hear her voice,” Sorrow muttered, pushing her chair away from the aircraft console in frustration.

  “I told you it wouldn’t work,” Judgment shrugged.

  “It was worth a try, ma mie,” Etienne said, patting Sorrow’s leg and scowling at Judgment, “but it seems the pods can be linked via intercom,
not regular airships like this one. I imagine the distance between here and the Earth is very far.”

  “Yes, but I would have liked to have known Gabrielle got back there safely, and to get Mum’s advice on how to proceed from here.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what your mother would have said. But certainly, your Uncle Jamie can be paraphrased. He only ever had one solution to all the problems with the gods,” Etienne chuckled.

  “And what was that?” Judgment asked.

  “Nuke the lot of them,” Etienne smirked.

  Sorrow sighed and stood up, meaning to leave, when she saw the expression on Judgment’s face and the face of his new second in command.

  “No.”

  “It makes sense, Sorrow.”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I have already thought. It will be the final solution to all the Gharial, the gods, Tefnut. If we can pull it off it will come as a complete surprise,” Judgement said, nodding to Ib at some unspoken thought.

  “You risk killing everything and everyone on this planet.”

  “We can steal airships and escape - we already have this one. We know Tefnut has the obliterative weaponry that could do the job – he has threatened planets with it before. It is very similar to nuclear, only more advanced. We can drop the bomb from the air. If we do it while the portals are open it will blow them to kingdom come too – no one will ever enter or exit this planet via portal again – the poisoned air will prevent future colonisation. In the long run, we are saving this world.”

  “No. Etienne, talk some sense into him.”

  Etienne leaned back in his flight chair and studied Judgment, scrutinising his expression, before spinning his chair back to Sorrow.

  “The plan has merit,” he sighed.

  “No, it fucking does not,” Sorrow growled, “what of the local species, the Nãga, would you destroy an entire civilisation? We are no better than Tefnut or Seth if we go down this path.”

  “Sorrow,” Judgment frowned, “there is no option. There are hardly any of these Nãga creatures, if any, surviving on this planet, I should know I have lived here all my life, taken part in hunts, forays, battles the length and breadth of this land.”

  “There are some, though,” she said quietly, “and this was their planet before the gods came, before you came. We owe them. I have to, at the very least warn them - they deserve the opportunity to have an input into this decision.”

  “I do not agree,” Judgment said.

  “I have to say, ma cherie,” Etienne said from where he was sitting, now studying Ib with an artist’s eye and pulling out a pencil and folded paper from his pocket, “that I would expect no less of you, and you should certainly meet with these Nãga and tell them there are plans to nuke their planet.”

  “Thank you, Etienne,” she said, rolling her eyes at Judgment, his new second in command, and Raphael who sat silently, refusing to add his thoughts, “I will leave in the morning.”

  “And I shall go with you,” Etienne said.

  “No.”

  “My belle, I have already been apart from you for two years. I wish to accompany you on your mission.”

  “It might seem like two years to you,” Sorrow laughed, “but it was only seven months to me, and I’m still angry with you for following me. If you had done as you said you would, you wouldn’t have found yourself working as a sex slave for years.”

  Raphael laughed, but Etienne shook his head.

  “Have you learned nothing of me in our travels, Sorrow? I do not follow your orders; I am your friend, yes, but I follow my own judgement.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Sorrow smirked, “and Judgment needs you here.”

  “It’s true,” Judge sighed, “you are the only one who can slip in and out of The Finger without really being noticed. I need you to get into that aircraft hangar and find out everything you can about the security surrounding them now. When the time comes, and we are ready to infiltrate and destroy them, I want nothing left to chance. We will blow this entire planet to smithereens and escape in the space fleet – Tefnut will never see it coming.”

  “Judge,” Sorrow shook her head, “no matter what the Nãga say, we will only need one more spacecraft. There are only about 500 left in the resistance, plus their findailes and trainees – the remainder of the ships can stay.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “no one can be allowed to escape, Sorrow. Put aside your soft heart and think with your head.”

  “But,” she frowned, “the babies, the children…”

  “Won’t know what hit them,” he said quietly.

  Sorrow bit her tongue, there was no point arguing this at the moment, but she was determined to save the children, and if that meant opposing Judgment and scuttling the nuclear plan, then so be it.

  She looked across to where Jury sat on the floor next to Ib, both of them regarding her with deep, serious eyes. Knowing how the boy had been conceived, the beatings and hardships he had suffered from the moment he was born to make him impervious to pain, to suffer silently, to feel no emotion – she would not allow any who had been treated so to die a death they did not deserve in the fight to free the galaxy of Tefnut’s tyranny. The death of just one more child made the whole plan inconceivable to her.

  “I will go back,” Etienne nodded slowly, seeing Sorrow’s expression, “and I will gather the intelligence you require, but,” he frowned at Judge, “I will not help destroy the aircraft or blow up this world if Sorrow is not back by my side and in total agreement. I have known her long enough to trust her prodigious intelligence. And, I will do everything in my power to save the skinless and the children they birthed - do you understand me, monster?”

  Judgement and Ib both growled at the same time.

  “If we are resolute in saving the children, then it seems to me we will need a second, perhaps a third spacecraft,” Raphael said quietly, “we may as well try for them all. One for a small resistance team to get the bomb from the armaments depot and drop it, one for the bulk of the resistance to leave the planet before it goes off and one for the children to also abandon this rock – you said there were at least 500 little ones, Sorrow?

  “At least, and their skinless birth mothers,” she added, “we will take them too. They can look after the babies and children. And the findailes that have yet been joined to red leaders, we need to rescue them too; maybe we can take them all home.”

  Ib studied her intently as she said this.

  Judgment groaned, head in hands.

  “It sounds like a good plan,” Sorrow nodded, “if the Nãga agree to the bomb. If they are few, we will need another aircraft to evacuate them too. If there are many, perhaps I can persuade them, if they exist in any number, to join our army and fight the Gharial in the usual way, without the need for nuclear weapons.”

  Etienne and Raphael nodded.

  “If we are to go down this path I believe we need an agreement, a vocal and honest agreement, from our red leader,” Etienne said quietly, as he continued to sketch Ib, “just to be sure we are all on the same page. No surprises, no sudden change of heart that leaves some allies, how shall I put this? Dead.”

  “We go nowhere without Sorrow,” Judgment said, taking his hands from his face, his voice ice, “that you would suggest otherwise shows your complete lack of understanding of our situation.”

  Etienne put his pen aside and raised one eyebrow as he focussed on the red leader.

  “I would be happy to take you outside and help you understand my thoughts with clarity.”

  “Etienne,” Sorrow shook her head, “no more fighting. You are both covered in bruises from the last punch up. We are all on the same side. No one is going to blow the shit out of this planet until I have spoken to the Nãga and figured out a way to save those who are slaves to the gods; babies, skinless, findailes and humans. I’m trusting all of you,” she looked at each man carefully, “to work together and agree to this.”

  “Just keep in mind,” Judgme
nt sighed, “that my plan will be executed when the portals open in a matter of months. Get back before then, Sorrow.”

  “Our plan,” she said quietly, “you keep that in mind, Judgement.”

  8

  Sorrow walked across the hot sands, her weapons holstered, shielding her face from the sun with her hands, and hoped she had not miscalculated. Already she was feeling the effects of the low oxygen levels outside, although not as badly as when she had first landed.

  As she approached where Judge had indicated on the map the portal would have materialised in six months, had they not blown it up, she called out to the two Nãga guards sitting in the sand. They had their backs to her and appeared to be playing some sort of game with small stones.

  As one they shouted their surprise and burst to their feet, drawing their weapons and levelling them at her.

  She raised her hands high in the air and stopped, recognising instantly the two guards who had initially discovered her so many months before.

  ‘Oh great, Bill and Ted,’ she inwardly groaned.

  “I come in peace,” she said loudly, almost laughing as she said it as the next words of a song she had once heard resonated in her head of their own accord; ‘shoot to kill, shoot to kill.’

  “Don’t shoot,” she added quickly to the pair.

  “Hey, we caught it again,” one of the guards shouted, holding its weapon awkwardly out from its body as though it had never used it before.

  “I come to talk to your leader,” Sorrow said, advancing another small step towards the pair, “I am unarmed.”

  “No, you’re not,” the second guard said, pointing to her holstered weapons.

  “No,” Sorrow shook her head, “but I don’t have them in my hands. My hands are raised.”

  “But you said you were unarmed,” the first guard said, “so you lied.”

  Sorrow realised the pair were, as she remembered, not the brightest sparks. She would need to use simple language if she was to convince them to take her to their leader.