The Raumen had been different. He had parted the deadly currents of the storm and saved his flock.
He consorted with Owen, the Raumen in charge of the free Vorchans of this planet. He was a strong, young man, with an enthusiasm to match. He listened to their stories intently, and offered all of them medical attention, promising the worst was over.
–
They were in a small triage near the outskirts of the city. Owen had set it up pre-emptively in case the Captain’s strike mission was successful.
There was a commotion as one of the medical attendants cried out in surprise. Some of the Vorchans were very malnourished, he was surprised they had even survived the trip here. It didn’t help that some didn’t seem to be meant for desert surroundings, either. It was the cause of the commotion here now: A red and black Vorchan, fully grown. It was hissing violently at Lauren, one of the attendants. She had her hands raised, a safe distance away from the Vorchan, unsure of what she’d done. It was lying on its side, too tired to support itself on all of its legs. There was an ugly gash on its front right paw. It looked infected.
“You need medical attention.” said Laura.
It roared at her, she wiped off the spit, grunting in disgust.
“Fenrir! Calm yourself!” ordered Artemis.
“This creature attempted to touch me!” Fenrir snorted in complaint.
“These people mean us no harm.” Artemis said.
“What’s going on?” Owen asked.
“Fenrir is a Vulcan.” Artemis replied, as if that would explain everything.
Owen stared back in confusion, unsure of what that meant. Artemis cast a wing over him, leading him away from the conglomeration. “Fenrir was separated from his mate on the Death Ship. Vulcans are the most devout of us all. His instincts will not let another female touch him.”
“How does he know she’s a female?” Owen asked curiously.
“Your scents are very peculiar.” Artemis replied, sniffing.
“Can you help him?” Owen asked, “You’re a male?”
“Of course I’m a male! And I’ll do what I can to aid him.” Artemis roared, posing slightly, flaring his large, forest-coloured wings.
“You aren’t a light brown like most of the others.” Owen said.
“I am a Woodland, one of the larger, more powerful races.” Artemis explained.
It made sense. The Vorchan bestowed the colours a forest ranger would wear for camouflage.
“How are you finding this world?”
“Dry. Very dry.”
“I can get you some water.”
“I am fine, however I would keep an eye on Leucia, she is a pure Polar: A rare, graceful race of Vorchans.”
He motioned towards a white Vorchan farther away from the others, three attendants were tending to her wounds. One was giving her water through a straw, she drank meekly.
“Her mate didn’t come with us during the rescue. She lost all hope then.”
“Oh.” Owen didn’t know what else to say. There was a lot of suffering here.
“Where should I put these?” Lucienda asked. She had a fresh pack of medical supplies on her back.
“Over there.” Owen said.
Artemis watched Lucienda walk over to one of the stations. His wings twitched, he growled slightly.
“She’s taken.” Owen said idly.
“Ha. I don’t have time for such things.” Artemis said. “Joshua promised me he would return when his ship was better. He promised to return us to our loved ones.”
“Joshua? The captain of Violet?”
“Yes, I think that was the name of his ship. Yes…”
“That will take some time. His ship took heavy damage. It was attacked by a mercenary craft under Heftus’ employ.”
“Is Lucienda’s mate a Vulcan?” Artemis asked, distracted again.
“No.”
“Interesting… Blackwing?” Artemis queried.
“It’s a light brown one, like her.”
“Ah a Desert.” he seemed relieved.
“Their family has been through a lot.” Owen warned.
“She has a family too?”
“Yes, two kids.”
“And her mate is alive?”
Owen nodded.
“She is lucky to have her family here, on a planet that suits her race.”
Owen almost didn’t want to ask, “What is your story?”
“My family isn’t here. I separated from my mate a long time ago.”
“I see…” Owen said, scratching the back of his head. It still felt strange casually talking with a Vorchan, especially with one so much larger than Darwin or Lucienda.
“How about you?” Artemis asked, he ran his right wing along the ground, as if scratching an itch. He ruffled off the sand.
“Just me and my wife.”
“I presume you haven’t been impacted as severely as us?”
“We’ve been impacted, but no, I haven’t lost anybody, if that’s what you mean.”
Artemis’ eyes were almost black, it made it look as if he was always staring straight at you. You could barely see the whites of his eyeballs in the corner of his eyes. It made Owen feel uneasy, they were so alien, yet familiar. It was as if it was obvious such creatures existed, why not have winged reptiles? Were they reptiles? Did they give birth to live young or lay eggs? He wanted to ask but thought against it.
There was a loud roar coming from Fenrir’s general direction.
“We’ll I’ll see what I can do about Fenrir.” Artemis said, trotting off.
“Owen!”
“Hades! How are you doing? What brings you here?”
All sorts of commotion today.
“Nothing big, was just interested in the new arrivals.”
“I’m sure you were.”
Chiron had put Hades in charge of the slave trade. Together Owen and his brother managed the Vorchans of this planet.
“So what are you gonna do with all the Vorchans?”
“They can survive in the desert. Most of them, anyways. I’m not sure about the more colourful ones.”
“I see. Those colourful ones would probably fetch a hefty price…”
“I’m not giving you any of these Vorchans as slaves. They’ve been through enough. The fact that Chiron has even agreed to keep the ones bought as slaves as slaves is a big mistake on his part.”
“I don’t think so. We could use the income.”
Owen scoffed, there would be no convincing Hades otherwise, he was a lot colder than him.
“So how’s that coming along anyways?”
“Good, good. I managed to get this one pregnant!”
“So you finally went to bed with a Vorchan?” Owen teased.
“What?! No! It was through the Desert you lent me. It worked.”
Darwin? “You mean that one time I gave you the Desert?”
“Well, for the last one, yeah.”
“The one after that one?” Owen pointed at Lucienda.
“I only ever got two Vorchans even. The first one was defective, this is the second one.”
He didn’t want to believe it, now he had to bear the burden of telling Darwin he would have a child he could never see. But then again…
“Don’t talk about that here again.” Owen whispered.
“Why—“
“I don’t want the father to know.”
“I doubt he’d care.”
“You don’t understand these creatures.”
“And you do?”
“Better than you.”
“Whatever.”
“Not whatever. You mention this to any other Vorchan and I will…”
“What?”
“I’ll tell everyone about that time you got shit on by a Leodactle.”
“That was a long time ago, I don’t care.”
“Please, Hades.”
“Fine, fine.”
“So you’re Hades.” It was Darwin. He loomed over him like a snake ready to strike, sniffing him. “I remember you from the assembly. I never had a chance to thank you for nearly condemning my mate to a life of slavery.”
“No problem, bud. If you ever get tired of her let me know and I’ll cut you in on twenty percent.”
Owen winced, shaking his head at Darwin as he glanced at him, as if asking for permission to snap Hades’ head off. But Darwin just let out a long sigh, “Anyways, I came to ask about the Desert I met at the house. Is she okay?”
“She’s doing great. You can get twenty percent and time with her too!”
“That’s good to know. I didn’t…” Darwin looked over at Lucienda, she was a fair distance away, but he remembered how she’d overheard him at the bazaar, so he lowered his voice to a barely audible hiss, “Make her pregnant, did I?”
Owen was glaring at Hades with an intensity reserved only for the most intense warnings.
Hades smiled at Darwin, then at Owen. “Actually… she got very depressed after you left. It took me a while to get her to submit to other mates… but eventually she did.”
“So I didn’t make her pregnant?”
“No, and if she does become pregnant, it won’t be because of you. I check every time.” Hades said reassuringly, with a hint of amusement in his voice.
Darwin looked so very relieved. Owen felt horrible.
“That’s very good news.” Darwin said, trotting off to Lucienda.
“Well there you go. Now he’ll never know.” Hades said.
“It’s wrong.”
“What is?”
“All of this.”
“Life is wrong; we live it anyways as best we could.”
“You’re the last person I want to get philosophical with.” Darwin sighed.
“Then again, we could all be dead, and just not know it yet.” he said, stroking his beard.
“Right.”
“Who knows? This place looks a little like hell doesn’t it? Barren, barely any plant life, any life at all. We are in the land of the dead.”
“Why don’t you leave then?”
“Because in this land I am Prince!” Hades was next in line for the throne, which saddened Owen. The Vorchans wouldn’t fare well under him.
“Ha. Well your dream of having a Vorchan colony might be short-lived. Apparently Artemis has rallied the help of our Captain friend Josh.”
“Well, make sure he knows my Vorchans are off limits.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game. These Vorchans will fight to see their loved ones again.”
“I think that’s what Chiron is expecting. I’ll be ready! It’ll be fun! Your Vorchans versus mine.”
“Life isn’t a game.”
“This is! We are like the princes of the olden days, sending our valiant gladiators out for our honour and glory.”
“They aren’t gladiators.”
“They will be after they start ordering the exo-suits Chiron is building.”
–
Owen didn’t know why he had agreed to see the manufacturing plant that held the first prototypes, but seeing all the suffering at the triage center had made him hand it over to Laura and take leave for a while.
It was three hundred kilometres from the nearest village, a heavily armed castle-looking fortress dedicated to the production of all sorts of weaponry. It had infamously been called ‘The Forge of Fort ’. Without the production facility, Fort II and its companion Fort VI would have nowhere near the flourishing economy they do now.
The relationship between Fort II and Fort VI was an interesting one. The little asteroid colony of Fort VI never had direct routes associated with it, supplies being transported to it on an order by order basis. It had been conceived for the sole purpose of allowing one to acquire whatever he wished without fear of any retaliation or interdiction by any sort of government or hired agency. The location of Fort VI was only ever transmitted to a buyer half an hour before the meeting time, with co-ordinates being given in the form of encrypted bullseye vectors to ensure that, even if the transmission was somehow intercepted, there would be no way of it being used by another ship since the vector they’d receive would be dependent on two locations they did not have.
If Fort VI, was, for whatever reason attacked, it also now had a hired Quick Response Fleet of over a dozen Descendents on call at nearly all times of the day, a reactive measure taken due to the Fort VI massacre over a thousand years ago. Nothing bad had happened to Fort VI since then, though there had been close calls, especially among participants in the QRF that didn’t like each other too much.
Owen saw that a lot of the exosuits had destinations there.
“Why to Fort VI? I would have thought the Vorchans would mount attacks from here?” Owen asked.
“I don’t know how Chiron thinks, but what do you think? Convenient eh? And sturdy.” he tapped one of the exosuits on the rack, one of many. They looked like the skeleton of some giant mechanical bird.
“It has nine hardpoints, with a gross carrying capacity of over seventeen thousand pounds.” Owen boasted.
“How does Chiron think this is a good idea?” Owen asked.
“Because there will be insane battles, and mercenaries—“
“And death…”
“Of course.”
“I’ll take two.”
–
–
Violet was itchy. Never in her life had she itched, and now she was itching all over the place. She blamed Josh. Without his senses in the neural interface she probably would have never understood the concept of itching, and would have most likely comprehended the stimulus in another way. Phantom scratches didn’t work half the time, either, she had to manually dispatch drones to scratch the areas that were itching.
Chiron had paid for the repairs, and now it was just a matter of recovery. Joshua was trying to get out of telling Darnell what happened.
“So you say his name is Rarkh, from Cown?” Darnell asked.
Joshua nodded.
“So he gave you these four geothermal pumps to deliver to this Heftus guy?”
Joshua nodded.
“But Heftus is gone now, so obviously you don’t have the money for the geothermal pumps.”
Joshua nodded.
“But you still have two?”
Nod.
“Okay, how much do the other two cost?”
“I think Heftus was going to pay… six million per unit.”
“Ok, that’s not too bad. We can handle this. That was the collateral right?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean sort of?”
“Well he didn’t think I could pay so he wanted something else.”
“What the hell did you sign off to him?”
There was no way he was ever, ever telling this to him in person. They were in Violet’s lounge. The windows were covered in a pink disinfectant. “I gotta use the bathroom.” he said, escaping from the lounge. He could feel Darnell’s piercing glare burning the nape of his neck.
What would he do? He thought to himself. Now that the euphoria of surviving had faded, all he was left with was Violet’s agonizing itch and a massive debt.
He washed his face in the bathroom, looking at his face in the mirror. He shut down the neural interface so Violet wouldn’t hear him. “I’m going to die.” he muttered.
I deserve to die, he thought.
He took a deep breath.
Then another.
Then a few more, and made his way back to the lounge.
“Darnell!” he called, just outside the lounge.
“Why aren’t you coming in?”
“I thought this would give me more of a head start.”
“For what?”
“For running, when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”
“What are you about to tell me?”
“That I had to put something pretty expensive up for collateral.”
“How expensive?”
“Very expensive,” his voice cracked, “Pricelessly expensive.”
It was all catching up to him. Emotions roiled in his conscience and subconscious.
“What did you put up for collateral? What does this Rarkh fellow now officially own?” Darnell’s voice was getting raspier, angrier.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it, he was slumped up against the wall, tears streaming down his eyes.
“Violet.” he whispered.
–
“What?” Darnell asked, taking a few steps towards the lounge door. He was sure he hadn’t heard it right.
“Violet.” Josh repeated.
“You put Violet, up for collateral?”
There was no response, just quick breaths.
“If you signed the contract, then any failure in the contract’s parameters deems him worthy of the collateral you put up. He tricked you, it’s the oldest trick in the book. Motherfucker!”
Darnell punched the bulkhead Josh was up against. The entire ship shuddered.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Darnell yelled, he stepped through the lounge door to face Joshua, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He really would have, really really would have.
Until he saw Joshua’s face. That wretched agonized look of a destroyed man. He started sobbing uncontrollably. “I-I-I” he stammered. “Ju-ju-ju” he pawed at the bulkhead helplessly.
“Violet I’m so sorry!” he cried out.
“The itching isn’t that bad.” she chirped back. “Really! I can deal with it.”
“What?” it was the most random thing Darnell had heard. The chirps gave status updates of a slightly irritated but very content starship. Did she even know? “Do you even know what we’re talking about?”
“Ok I can’t deal with it. We really need to buy a cream or something.” Violet suggested.
“You aren’t legally Joshua’s anymore!” Darnell yelled at the adolescent ship.
“I’ll always be Joshua’s.” she replied contently, “I heard of a pheralax supplement. Maybe that’ll alleviate it. Why don’t they let me move! Just something to rub up against! Anything! How sharp are Thanatos’ skids?”
“Hopeless, you’re all fucking hopeless.” he sighed, heading for the shuttle bay.
–
–
Nice place… Thanatos transmitted sarcastically.
It had taken over three seconds to find the planet on the sensors, a small barren husk of a rock past the habitable zone of a K-type star.
“We need vectors.” Darnell transmitted.
“Ship type and registration.”
“Descendent, Thanatos.”
“Vector’s to moor three on the outer rim transferred. Stays of over one Raumen hour will be charged a fee of five hundred per. Have a nice day.”
The artificial lights made the entire area a dull vermillion. It was a cold, depressing place, a wonderful reflection of his current mood.
He waited for the man to finish talking to one of his clients, another young naive kid, before approaching him, “Are you Rarkh?” Darnell asked.
“Who is asking?”
“Darnell.”
“Darnell who?”
“You know other Darnells?” Darnell asked.
“Do you have a family name?”
“It is my family name.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Darnell…”
“Darnell Darnell?”
“I’ve come to speak to you about Joshua and the contract you gave him.”
“Who?”
“The naive beems captain that you’re trying to gyp out of a starship, purple in color.”
“Oh right! How is he?”
“I was sent by Heftus. His facility was attacked, but Joshua delivered the geothermal pumps through a sandstorm before the attack took place. I have been ordered to give you the twenty four million credits.”
“It was forty-eight million credits.”
“Whatever. Here.” Darnell proffered him the bank disc with forty-eight million.
“I need a signature from Hades to deem the contract completed.”
“I’ll sign on his behalf.” Darnell said.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Look, forty-eight million is pretty much the equivalent of a beems starship. I suggest you take the money and go.”
“Not a Puritan. They are rare nowadays. Wonderful traders. They have access to nodepoints Descendents can’t even see.”
“I have both, and I assure you, their nodescape is pretty much the same.” Darnell said. Kite really did have more blips in her nodescape than Thanatos. Darnell never even thought about that.
“You’re mistaken. I need a Puritan for what I am setting out to do.”
“And what are you setting out to do?”
“That’s none of your concern. Deliver the purple starship to me or expect GalFleet to pay your friend a visit.”
“GalFleet doesn’t have jurisdiction in the outer rim.”
“But here they do, and the deal was made here. They’ll send a detachment, they’ll send Black Wing.”
“I’ve been there. Black Wing was disbanded years ago.”
“You’re a delusional old man.” said Rarkh, “And you’re wasting my time.”
Darnell was tired of doing things for people, but here he was again, “Okay, what if I hire out my Puritan starship to you. When your task is complete, the Puritan returns and I give you the forty-eight million.”
“It would take a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know; I might never find it.”
Oh no, not one of these people. “Earth is a myth.” Darnell sighed.
“It isn’t!”
“One ship claimed to have found it a few hundred years ago. Let it go, if it exists there’s nothing there anymore.”
“You’re wrong. I know for a fact the Black Nova’s remains are buried there. I have the co-ordinates!”
“Sure you do. Take the money, with forty-eight million you can purchase a decent beems and be set for the rest of your life.”
“I won’t. Bring me the purple ship or I’m calling Black Wing.”
So it came to this, again.
Darnell reached for his holster.
An alarm blared, virtually everyone in the bazaar drew a weapon, even Rarkh had a pistol trained on him.
Darnell felt excitement in the neural band. He smiled, seeing Thanatos perk up in his neural vision, his hull a bright red now, his AHC trained on a group of gunmen. He loaded a multi-stage explosive dart and fired.
The explosion was instantaneous, four people disintegrated in a plume of blood and gore. Gunmen scattered, others opened fire.
Darnell turned. The first twenty degrees of his turn were reserved for slicing Rarkh in half.
His neural vision automatically designated targets for his weapon.
Forty degrees into his turn his sword-turned-rifle had fired off eighteen koveran charges, disintegrating seven people.
Sixty degrees in it had fired off forty-seven, neutralizing another five.
Red vector lines were overlaid into the scene using trajectory analysis discrimination programs, they originated from a group of people to his nine o’clock. They had opened fire. His koveran shield flared, incinerated the kinetic rounds before they intercepted him.
A kinetic dart sliced through one of the shooters, the concussion wave from the impact knocking the other three to their feet. Darnell grinned at Thanatos, seeing him less than two hundred meters away, over three thousand tonnes of rock between them. The dart had sliced clean through all of it thanks to its koveran sabot. He could imagine the AHC’s barrel smoking, extended to the extreme to accommodate the muzzle velocity required for a shot like that.
“Stop!” someone yelled.
Gunmen had their hands in the air now.
Only six seconds had passed. His koveran reserves were at fifty percent. It had taken half of a koveran chamber to deflect that small kinetic volley, and another chamber to jump here. He needed thirty three (point three three three) percent to get back to Fort II, or more preferably, a holding point near there.
“We surrender!” yelled another.
The neural vision faded, the neural interface stopped pumping adrenaline into his system and began stabilizing his protein drain, halting the production of epinephrine and norepinephrine, getting him out of his combat high.
Thanatos sealed off his koveran chambers, starving his veins of this high-energy combat supplement and reverting him to standard capacitor usage. If anyone were inside the ship, they would have seen all of the lights flicker for one brief moment as the capacitor experienced a sudden extreme load.
“Fine.” he said, walking towards the shuttle bay. Hostile blips were replaced by neutral blips.
One of the neutral blips started talking to him. “That was amazing.”
It was that naive kid that had been talking to Chiron earlier.
“Go back to school.” he grunted, he really was getting old. All this work was getting to him, he just wanted to sit down in Thanatos’ lounge and gun down a glass of whiskey.
The kid stared in awe as his sword-turned-rifle hissed, glowing a bright green as excess koverans were discharged into Darnell’s suit, making his suit glow a dim red. It retracted its adaptive scope and muzzle, altering the angles of its edges until it was a sword once more. He sheathed it in the rings on his back.
“Can you teach me to fight like that?”
Another Joshua…
He left without saying anything
–
It’s been a long time since we fought like that.
What do you mean? You chased off Flames a few days ago, and I had to clear a cavern of gunmen.
Not what I meant.
Oh. Together, you mean. Darnell felt bad at not having been able to pick up his meaning right away. Him and Thanatos had not always had the best relationship. We’re a good team.
We are.
They basked in the mutual comfort on their trip back to Fort II. He waited at a holding point until Thanatos’ reserves were high enough for another jump, and until he finished his whiskey, and had a nice long shower, and finished writing a letter to Carey. Okay, now he was ready to face that retarded child again.
“Joshua.” he said. He was still lying right where Darnell had left him: Dejectedly by the lounge bulkhead. There were drones clustered around him. They were holding tissues.
“I took care of that problem for you.” Darnell said.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I do. Violet is family.” he emphasized the ship, making it clear this was for her. “Do you still have the two remaining geothermal pumps?”
Joshua nodded glumly.
“They’re yours now. Go sell them and make some profit when Violet gets better. Go to GalCore space where it’s safer.”
Nod.
“Good kid. I hope you learned your lesson.” Darnell said, looking at Joshua’s stump.
Nod.
–
Darnell was back at his lounge, running his fingers through his hair, keeping it out of his eyes. He had let it grow since… he didn’t actually remember since when. He was tired, but he didn’t want to leave Violet. He wished he could watch over her every second of the day, make sure that stupid child didn’t end up crashing her into a sun or something. Why couldn’t Joshua be more like Liam, at nine years old Liam was already more mature.
They waited for the second koveran chamber to fill up before jumping back home.
–
–
Flames was sulking.
It’s okay. transmitted Fawkes reassuringly.
No it’s not! I messed up again!
It doesn’t matter. We didn’t need the money anyways.
They were near the corona of an F-type star, using the heat to disinfect the wounds Flames had suffered.
I don’t care about the money. I hate Thanatos.
You used to be friends.
He betrayed us, murdered Anton.
He always claimed Anton was working for the NCR. Why was he here?
It doesn’t matter. He killed my mate.
She wasn’t your mate! You met her the same day.
Shot her in the head… she would have been my mate! I had names picked out for our children and everything. We’d live at that abandoned outpost nearby. We’d do missions together, it would be great.
You’re too old to have fantasies like that.
But I just did.
Fawkes laughed. The life of an outlaw was definitely lonely, and with Violet at Fort II, they decided to stay clear until she left.
I should have backed instead of veered. Flames muttered, recalling the fight with Thanatos.
He got lucky. It’s those darts.
I hate those darts.
Fawkes put a phantom hand on his ship’s nose, calming him. What can I do to make you feel better?
You know what you can do…
Do you want to kill Violet?
Yes… he transmitted weakly.
Ok, let’s go kill Violet.
But I want to do other things to her first!
Flames went into vivid details about how he’d grab her and where he’d puncture her, how many times, at what intensity. He mused about how she’d react and how she’d cry out. And then Thanatos would come—
And kill you…
And kill me…
Are you sure you want to kill Violet?
No. he replied weakly.
Will another contract make you feel better?
Nothing will make me feel better…
How about a bath? Avalon has a cold and refreshing hydrogen cloud.
No.
Chocolate? I could eat chocolate? You always liked the taste of chocolate.
I don’t want chocolate…
A mate? We can go find a nice girl, for both of us! It’ll be great.
I’ll never find a mate… Flames said with a sting of sorrow.
Sure you will!
I won’t. Nobody loves me.
I love you!
You don’t count! Flames transmitted in exasperation, though his mood had lightened significantly. But I love you too.
So should we go get some chocolate?
Yes, and let’s go to Avalon too, I miss that cloud.
–
–
“Have you heard of Avalon?” Thanatos suggested. They were looking for places to spend their anniversary.
Avalon was an aquatic planet, a beautiful resort near Galactic Central. It housed the Myrmidon embassy. It also had the best sushi in the galaxy. It was a planet of beaches and underworld dreams.
“We could tan out on the beach.” Darnell added.
“I don’t know.” Carey said.
“Liam could play in the sand, make sand castles.”
“We could even invite Violet! And that… fucking… Joshua.”
“There’s a hydrogen cloud too, less than an AU from the planet. Very thick, refreshing.” Thanatos nuzzled Kite gently with his bow. “It could be a lot of fun.”
“It’s so far away… and it’s GalCore space. We aren’t at best standings with them, we’re virtually outlaws.”
“No, don’t let that affect your decision.” Darnell said to them. “We need a vacation.”
“Who’s gonna watch our egg?”
“I can ask Macaria to watch it for us. That’s no issue.” Thanatos said.
“It does sound pretty nice.” Carey said.
“I agree.” Kite said.
Good, the women are in agreement, off we go then.
They giddily set a course for Avalon.
–
–
I think I heard something.
“What?” Fawkes growled, two escorts were massaging his wings in his bathtub. The escorts stopped massaging him, giggling lightly as they wondered who the silly Vorchan was talking to.
I smell something. It’s them! Flames hissed.
“There is no way.”
I’m sure of it!
“No.”
Yes. I know it.
Flames began flying out of the hydrogen cloud. The jump drive didn’t work here. He wanted to get clear so he could scan the area more accurately.
Suddenly he was right in front of him. Fawkes stared in complete surprise. “You have got to be kidding me.”
–
Thanatos veered, nearly colliding with Kite. He watched the other Descendent cautiously with all of his ocular strips.
–
He sees me
No shit he sees you.
What do I do?
I don’t know.
I just wanted to relax. Why does this always happen?
–
“Flames…” Thanatos said, AHC deployed.
“Thanatos…” Flames replied. The hydrogen molecules were melting away as the koverans particles both ships were sweating attacked them.
Thanatos flew past Flames.
“Flames…” Kite said.
“Kite…”
Violet, even Violet had come. Her hull was still bruised and battered. There were maintenance kits attached in several places.
“Violet…”
“Flames!”
“I’m sorry about that thing… that happened. It was a contract. I got really into it, you know.” Flames stammered.
“It’s okay. It was… interesting.”
“What was?” Flames asked.
Thanatos and Kite had flown farther into the cloud, they called after Violet. Flames knew that he had a gravimetric lens and an AHC trained on him, he didn’t need his tactical submodes to tell him that. But he approached her anyways, making sure he didn’t wash a single active sensor over her.
She kept talking “Well, when you think you’re about to die, and you’re offered a chance at love, beems-love, even if it’s completely insincere and ill-intented.”
“It wasn’t that insincere. Just because I was planning on killing you during the process doesn’t mean that it was insincere!”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think killing me during a bond is the best way to love.”
“Why are you so small! Have you even maturated yet?” So tight, so young! So sleek and elegant, and a bright purple! What a beautiful color purple is. How could you survive a bond even if it was sincere? You fragile, tiny thing…
“Puritans don’t grow to be that big.”
“Right, I don’t know much about Puritans.” Kite was twice her size!
“And I am mature!”
“Sure you are.” Flames transmitted, unsure whether he should be condescending or not. Suddenly, Flames wasn’t interested in a small, young beems. Unless it was just for a quick bond… then he wouldn’t mind it. Should he just straight up ask? He knew her parents were listening. Should I just ask her?
Sure.
I can’t.
Do it!
No.
Fawkes opened a link to Joshua.
“So does your ship wanna bond with my ship or not?” Fawkes asked.
I hate you! Flames was furious. He was interested, he didn’t want to look like an idiot.
“Maybe when I get better… Flames. I don’t think I can handle any more of you for a while.”
What? Really? Was that a delayed yes? Flames couldn’t really believe it. “Want to spend some time in the cloud with me?”
“Sure!”
I love you!
I know. Fawkes replied.
–
“Do beemsters ever not consider someone a worthy mate?” Thanatos asked Kite. They were in their own part of the hydrogen cloud. Thanatos was watching the unconventional couple with his HF radar.
“It’s the hormones. Do you think Darnell will approve?”
“Macaria is NCR.”
“She was fun.”
“I know.” Thanatos said, remembering all too vividly. Kite nudged him.
“So I guess he’ll approve then, if you do… do you?”
“I thought he killed Macaria. She was the reason for me hating him. Remember? How he talked about having sold the eggs.”
“He did. He probably did horrible things to her.”
“I saw her memories during the… bonds.” Thanatos treaded cautiously. “There was never any ill-will towards Flames. In fact, I’d say Macaria almost enjoyed the attention. It must be some crazy, dominatrix part of your psyches that strives on being tortured into submission.”
“Maybe that’s why we stuck around in this galaxy when all the other Puritans vanished.” Kite joked, rubbing hulls with him.
“It’s interesting, really.” Thanatos said, zapping her with an electrostatic kiss. Hydrogen molecules careened violently around them from the sudden energy, becoming iridescent.
“What is?”
“Flames. How he sold Macaria’s eggs. I wonder if he’ll help me find the rest.” Thanatos reviewed the old memories.
“We don’t even know how many there are.”
“Four, most likely, if he made eighty million.”
“That’s assuming base price, and one was a ninety, that can sell for almost double. He could have been lying about how much he made too.”
“Could have. I guess when he becomes an honorary uncle we can ask him.”
“Ha! I’d still keep an AHC trained on him at all times.”
“Oh don’t worry, I am.”
–
–
“She’s still alive.” Fenrir growled. He had reluctantly agreed to let Owen tend to his wounds after he’d returned with Hades. Artemis was asleep, along with most of the other Vorchans. Fenrir refused to sleep. This was the first time he’d said anything, an hour into the medical work. It probably had something to do with the endorphins and bemicytes entering his bloodstream from the medkit. He hoped they were compatible with Vorchan physiology. They probably were – Raumens used bemicytes, which were beems physiology, and there has never been an issue with that either.
“Where do you think she is?” Owen asked.
“She was still on the Death Ship when I was taken.” Fenrir said, eyes staring off into infinity.
Owen nodded, grunting in recognition of what was said, but unsure of what else to say. He didn’t want to ruin his healing process, they were almost done.
“You suffered extensive injuries. You are lucky you’re species have redundant organs. If you were Raumen you’d have died a long time ago.”
“The weak ones fell victim to evolution long ago.” Fenrir said. “But Odin is different, she’s strong. She has to be alive, somewhere.”
“I’ll do what I can to help you find her. We can access the databanks and see if her name shows up anywhere.” Owen said, which was probably why the databanks didn’t use names but species and id numbers, the owners of the databases knowing that was all the clients really wanted. Names were associated with loved ones, with Raumanity. It was hard to enslave something that had a name.
“She is resourceful, if she escapes the Death Ship she will make her way back to Terra.”
“That would be a wise initial destination.”
“I heard Artemis speak of someone who has agreed to take us back, is that true?”
“Possibly. The ship suffered extensive injuries; it will take time for it to be able to undertake such a journey under its own power.”
“Injuries… beems are an interesting species. I respect their mastery of the stars.” Fenrir pulled away, “You have been trying to bind that on my wing for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Hold the wing spar still for a few minutes more and I’ll be done.”
“What is it?”
“A chemical filter. A primary artery runs through your wing spar, the filter will make sure your blood stays clean while the medical packages disinfect and repair the wounds.”
Fenrir looked at the one on his left wing. “It angers me.”
“It’s keeping you alive.”
“It alters my weight and camber.” he said, baring his teeth.
“Don’t even think about biting it.”
“And it itches profusely.”
“It’s keeping you alive.”
“Your species fascinates me.” Fenrir said. “Some of you work to enslave and kill us, while others work to save us.”
“I’m sure you have your differences as well, otherwise your people would have never left the Vorchan Empire.”
“That is true. There are rumours of our people being relentless, bent on conquest. Yet we never invaded the Coalition, it’s perplexing.”
The Cold War, Owen remembered it through history lessons. It had been the cause of the arms race that led to the Black Nova, which ultimately led to the Descendents and Puritans that exist today.
“There was a lot of posturing back then. A lot of fear on our side at least, it was probably why we did the horrible things we did, why there are barely any beems left in this world.” And here they were again, doing it to Vorchans. Sometimes Raumens sickened him, for a moment he wished he was something else, but all species were just as despicable in some way. The closest he could have gotten to a pure species were the original beems, the real Puritans. It was probably where they had gotten their names from. But look what happened to them.
“Our Empire was worse. We integrated the beems into our world like the exosuits. They became extensions of our own desires. Any sentience our craft had was long suppressed.”
“Interesting, we don’t know much about your spacecraft, other than their subtle similarities to Descendents, the gravimetric drive, the beemveins.”
“There isn’t much we know either. Terra does not have any Vorchan spacecraft anymore, however we do know that our species once functioned off beems the way yours did, and then there was a shift, most likely due to our cracking of the beems genetic code in some way.”
“Interesting… interesting.” The Black Nova had been the Raumen attempt to crack the beems genetic code. After it annihilated ninety percent of the Raumen race, everyone decided that maybe they should stop tampering. “Well we’re done.”
Fenrir flexed his wings, and idly scratched at one of the medical packages.
“Try not to scratch, some have composite skins but others are fragile.”
“Thank you.” Fenrir growled, he readied himself for flight.
“Wait, before you go.” Owen had a chip in his hand. “I want to implant this subdermally.”
“What is it?”
“A freedom chip. I worry that my brother will start trying to enslave you Vorchans when you leave this place. This will help to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“This concept of slavery still appals me.” Fenrir said, letting Owen implant the chip, “I don’t know how you Raumens can function alongside it so casually.”
“Over time, we acclimatize to the atrocities we commit, get desensitized to them.” Owen replied cynically.
“That’s not just a Raumen trait.” Fenrir said, flapping his wings a few times to see if they were airworthy before flying off into the sunset.
Who’s next? There were only four Vorchans left at the triage center. All of them had exotic colors.
One was considered an Arctic mix. It was dark blue, with a light blue webbing for its wings, an orange stripe running longitudinally along its body, and a white underside. It had a very pronounced set of pearl white horns that extended back several meters from its head, it complimented the deadly looking spikes along its spine, which, Owen had realized during an examination, were soft like feathers. It was the only Vorchan he had examined so far that had soft spikes, though none of the other Vorchans had such long horns.
The other was a Vulcan mix, red with blue, black, and green stripes patterned across its scales. Its underside was purple.
The third was completely green, considered a pure Grassland, the only color contrast was its lighter green underbelly.
Owen was automatically approaching the fourth, the worst one of them all: Leucia, the Polar Vorchan Artemis had mentioned earlier. She was white, the only color contrast being the wounds along her body, making her look very dirty.
This is why I never buy white hovercars, Owen thought to himself, examining her limbs. She was lying on her side on a medical bed, fully asleep. He had to be careful with his hands, the spikes were as white as her skin, making them hard to distinguish, and they were serrated, Owen had realized during the initial examination. He suddenly wondered how they mated, but then remembered Darwin, and all the scars along his body, even with a willing partner. Violently, they mated violently.
She stirred, aware of his presence. Her wings flinched as he gently extended one, examining the webbing and taking a sample. An assistant quietly and routinely took the sample to their mobile lab a few stations away.
“I think I’m dying.” she muttered.
Her condition was stable, but she was very close to the edge. “You’ll be fine.”
“You don’t have to lie to me.” she took a deep breath. “I’m not meant for this world.”
The bed and the soil were stained with her sweat, her body desperately trying to get her internal temperature back to the standards she had functioned in for the majority of her life. Owen replaced the used cryopack with a new one. She let out a content sigh as the ice cold liquids coursed through her veins.
“But I think it’s better this way.” she continued. “I’ll see him again.”
“Vorchans believe in heaven and hell?” Owen asked.
“I believe in a Builder, the creator of all existence.” Leucia replied.
“Is that similar to The Builders the beems believe in?” Owen asked curiously.
She didn’t say anything, she had fallen back to sleep, content with the new cryopack. He finished his examination, making sure no new infections had formed, and began his rounds on the other Vorchans.
–
–
Violet was pressed up against Flames contently. Joshua would have thought that her being with another beems would have infuriated him, filled him with a perverse envy that he wouldn’t quite be able to understand, but he had forgotten to consider the fact that her emotions coursed through him. Her affection for Flames, while mitigated through the link, was still transferred. It made him enjoy the physical contact too, the presence of a strong, powerful being that didn’t want to kill them, but could if it wanted to. The fact that it could, and the fact that it could in horrible ways, only served to enhance their excitement. They really were daredevils.
Joshua had already caught glimpses of Violet’s fantasies, how she started dreaming about the different futures she and Flames could have. How he’d protect her and Joshua from danger, and always be at her side.
Violet and Joshua both awoke at the same time, they hadn’t remembered falling asleep. Lying up against Flames had just been so satisfying. Where was he?
Where’s Flames? Joshua asked.
Violet scanned around listlessly, sure she’d nudge him any moment with her skids, but he wasn’t there. He had left.
“Flames?” Violet called out.
“He left a while ago.” Thanatos called back.
“Have you been watching us this whole time?”
“Passively, yes.”
Violet tried to go back through her passive sensor logs, but didn’t quite know how to do that.
“When? Did he say anything?”
“No. He probably got bored. Flames is an impulsive character.”
“Did he do anything?” Violet asked.
“I’d have killed him if he did.” Thanatos replied. “Are you ready to head back? You are looking much better.”
“I want to see Flames again… where’s Flames?”
–
Flames was docked with Avalon. Fawkes wanted to spend the next few days relaxing planet-side.
Do I really have to stay docked?! Flames asked anxiously.
You could use the rest. And I don’t want you flying around – I don’t need your excitement riling me up.
You could disable the link. The ship suggested.
That barely works with a type-3. Now be a loyal Descendent and stop flying around.
Fine. Flames replied with a sigh, settling on the docking port. He really could use the rest, and the docking ports were comfortable here. Drones were massaging his underside.
How does that feel?
Good.
Good! Now stay put.
Flames usually obeyed, it was rare that his ship got this excited. Fawkes watched him passively in his neural vision, seeing his focus dart from drone to drone, his mind full of questions and answers. Fantasies about Violet surfaced on occasion as well. She really was a small ship, but then again, small things had their own pleasures. He growled flirtatiously at one of the escorts, who giggled back. And as a Vorchan living in a Raumen world, he knew all about small things. Everything was small, even this spa was tiny, the chairs were useless, the bed was a joke, though the people did their best to accommodate him, a paying customer. There weren’t many Vorchans that lived in this part of the galaxy, but he enjoyed it.
Fawkes had met Flames at birth, they had been in an integration camp, where captured beems were integrated with their Captain’s thought processes, resulting in a single entity that existed in two dimensions. It was one of many different methods of beems integration that had evolved in the Vorchan Empire.
Unfortunately for the Vorchans, they had forgotten to disconnect Flame’s neural plexus from the neural interface. It made Fawkes aware of his ship’s sentience, and had made them friends. Having been bred to be part of the soldier clan, friends weren’t something you were supposed to have.
He still remembered the day the doctors and assistants came in, instruments attached to their exosuits, ready to sever Flame’s link to reality, killing off his consciousness but keeping his body intact for Fawkes to use.
He killed the doctors and their team, with Flames’ help, and then he’d escaped, never to return, not that he could return, even if he wanted to. What he had done had been unforgivable. From that point on he hadn’t considered himself a true Vorchan anymore, and preferred to live here, with Flames, dabbling in the affairs of Raumens on occasion, only enough to satisfy his vices: Massages, meals, and sex. He really did love how tight Raumen females were, although he’d wait before sleeping with one of these escorts, they were generally the source for all three of his Raumen pleasures. He had been banned from eighty-three brothels and counting. It made him grin with pride; he opened his mouth to accept a Leomelon one of the escorts had brought him.
–
Flames had known Fawkes his entire life, which meant it wasn’t difficult for him to mask his signature from his neural vision. When Violet came looking for him Flames was compelled to follow.
They were on a mission, Joshua – Violet’s Captain –, a scrawny, one-armed kid, wanted to help save some Vorchans from a planet and reunite them with their home planet a few jumps away. It was a worthy goal, and Flames was sure Fawkes wouldn’t mind him taking some time off if it meant him saving members of his species.
They arrived at Fort II within the hour, and Joshua made his way down to the planet to talk to the Vorchans. Thanatos and Kite stayed nearby, watching Flames suspiciously. Hate faded quickly when other emotions took control.
“How are you feeling?” Flames asked.
“Fine, the itching is… you have sharp skids!” The realization just struck her. During their time in the gas cloud the cold had assuaged it, but now it was back with a vengeance.
“I do have sharp skids!” Flames replied excitedly, wiggling in space, maintenance drones lost their footing as his tail was exposed to forces several times that of standard gravity. He was so excited to be talking to this Puritan, the fact that she was Thanatos’ daughter made it all the more exciting. It felt so wrong, oh how satisfying it would be to bond with her, to know that Thanatos could do nothing to him without breaking his daughter’s heart. Ha! He vented CKRO as his hull nearly overheated.
He was still careful, though, not advancing in any way, not with Thanatos’ watching him, his AHC trained on him. This was so much fun. He waited here with her as Joshua dealt with issues on the surface.
He returned with forty-three Vorchans, they boarded Violet within an hour, ready to head to their home planet.
“Do you remember where it was?” Joshua asked. The nodescape wasn’t indicative of relative location, so they would have to fly there using the gravimetric drive’s warp field. With Violet’s injuries, they would only be able to settle at a cruising speed of 350c. Joshua hoped the planet wasn’t too far.
“No.” Artemis sighed.
“What?”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“What?!”
“I thought you would know the location. I am so stupid, so primitive.”
“What about the constellations? Do you remember those?”
Artemis got together with the other Vorchans. They drew up a map of the constellations around Terra.
Violet and Flames took a look at it; even Thanatos and Kite were sent copies.
They were correlating for hours, trying to match the constellations with the stars in the databases of all four ships, none of the ships could match the stars.
Finally, Thanatos pulled Flames aside.
“Flames.” Thanatos said. There was a gravimetric field around Flames that held him in place as they flew in formation. He didn’t want to look hostile, but stayed underneath Thanatos, away from the firing arc of his AHC.
“Thanatos.” Flames replied.
“I don’t like what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t.”
“There was a time when we were allies. But times have changed.”
“Yes, because you betrayed our leader.”
“He was working for the NCR.”
“I work for the NCR, if the pay is good. Are you going to kill me?”
“I’ve tried.”
“Then let’s end this here. I’m tired of this posturing.” Flames extended his skids to a combat position, deploying his AHC. His koveran chambers were fully charged, he was primed for combat.
And he had been so close to just helping them out…
Thanatos responded by releasing his gravimetric grip on Flames, knowing his underside was now exposed to a heavy weapon.
“Unfortunately, killing you doesn’t accomplish anything anymore, not with Violet in love with you.”
“She is in love with me, isn’t she? I wonder what she’ll feel like under my hull… writhing in ecstasy…”
Thanatos ignored Flames’ attempts at aggravating him. “To be perfectly honest with you: I didn’t kill Anton because he was part of the NCR.”
“Then why? After all he did for us.”
“He wanted to kill Macaria.”
“Who is Macaria?”
“The mother of the egg I recovered from you. The ship you said you killed.”
“Oh. I exaggerated, to make your life as miserable as I could after what you did.”
“I know, Flames. I know what you’re like. You’re impulsive, like your Captain. You live in the pleasure of the moment. You love confrontation…”
“I think we should fight!” Flames growled.
“Of course you do. You always do.”
Flames scanned Thanatos; he had one of those damned koveran-laced darts loaded. He hated those, but if he could stay underneath him…
Flames fired. The koveran-laced round disintegrated as it dug into Thanatos’ electrostatic shield. Flames grabbed Thanatos with his own gravimetric lens, keeping him underneath the larger, slower ship. He started expending energy rounds into his underside as quickly as he could, draining the shield.
“I will avenge Ash!” he said, firing, “I will avenge Anton!”
Something grabbed Flames, a powerful gravimetric field; he was still polarized to Thanatos when he was pulled, his hull creaking from the sudden force that was exerted on him. He instinctively fired on the source of the field, hitting Kite. She cried out.
Thanatos had his AHC bearing on him now, he fired the multi-stage dart. It cut through his hull, missing his neural plexus by mere meters. The concussion wave disturbed his vision and senses, made him slow and groggy. He fought to recover before a second round was loaded.
“Forgive me Violet.” He fired a second round, it was aimed right for Flames’ neural plexus. Something grabbed the barrel of his AHC before the round could exit fully, diverting it.
“Don’t do it!” Violet cried, she came between him and Flames, the tiny dart had missed Flames’ bow but cut into his port side. He clamped the artery that it had severed, loading up a koveran-laced round. He knew that every second the electro-static shield stayed up, Thanatos’ capacitor suffered.
“He’s using you to get to me.” Thanatos yelled, trying to get past Violet. She was too fast, always staying in-between, strafing sideways if need-be.
“No, we love each other!” she pulled up against Flames.
She was much smaller; Flames’ port skid was vulnerable. Thanatos aimed for the koveran chamber in the port skid. It would be a tough shot…
Flames fired first, the round whizzed past Violet and reacted with the koveran shield that had come up to supplement Thanatos’ weakened electrostatic shield. The sudden koveran-on-koveran reaction drained one of his koveran reactor’s completely. Thanatos cursed, trying to steady himself for the shot. He was down on power now, Flames had the upper hand.
Thanatos fired, the round missed the koveran chamber but hit the terminal, nearly disabling Flames’ jump drive. He began the loading procedures for the third dart. It jammed; the massive multi-stage projectile was bent! It was stuck in the breech of his AHC and he couldn’t get it out! This was a catastrophe. Flames fired another round at him. The kinetic shockwave from the impact knocked the shell out of the breach; it fell onto the floor of his loading bay, live. Thanatos scrambled drones to disarm it, one more shot and…
Flames fired a third shot. Thanatos’ upper carapace erupted as the round hit, secondary explosions riddled the hull as the remaining shells in the bay began to explode, the koveran-laced rounds exploding violently, eating away at his upper hull like butter. The remaining seven multi-stage kinetic darts fired off like beams in different sections of his hull, severing several arteries and tendons. One punctured his secondary nutrient filter.
He won! Flames had won! He flipped in glee, scanning his environment. Both Kite and Thanatos were incapacitated, he’d won! Now for his reward.
Violet was crying uncontrollably, her wails audible through all the neural bands. She darted between her mother and father, “How could you do this?!”
“I—“ Flames didn’t know what to say, he didn’t think seeing her like this would affect him this way.
“You killed them! Look at all the blood. Look at his dorsal hull! Look at my mom’s port skid! Why Flames? Why!”
“He… killed Anton.” he said.
“I hate you! Thanatos was right!”
Well… he’d gotten this far. He fired a round at Thanatos to make sure he wouldn’t attack him anytime soon, then flew straight for Violet, reaching for her gravimetrically. She jumped out. It wasn’t hard to track her scent on the nodescape, he jumped after her. She’d have no energy now, and he still had a full chamber. He was so close, this would be great! How pleasurable it’d be to bond with her, kill her, kill Thanatos, kill Kite. Then he’d fly to the planet and kill that egg, finish off Macaria. Tie up all the loose ends! And then he could go back to Fawkes and tell him what he did while he was on vacation!
Violet was very close to him, within a hundred kilometres. He approached her, she began to fly away, as fast as she could, accelerating exponentially. Flames followed, she was so fast, he loaded a kinetic shell, aiming for the skids… if only she stayed still.
There! He had a shot! He fired! The round didn’t fire? Fire! Fire! The round stayed in the AHC’s breach, the firing sequence wasn’t getting through. She was getting farther and farther away. Come on, fire!
But a part of him was stopping him, the firing command had to be sincere, otherwise it wouldn’t go through. Some part of him couldn’t stand Violet being hurt. She was at 550c now, above the average speed of a cruising beems. Flames couldn’t keep up, he cruised at 500c, waiting for her to run out of energy.
Flames sensed her radial velocity increase drastically as she ran out of breath. He decelerated in tune with her, matching her speed. He stopped her with a gravimetric pull. She was wailing again, her distress audible on every frequency and band. Her hull shuddered.
“You killed them! You killed them!” she cried.
“I didn’t kill them! Kite was barely hurt, she’s just a fragile Puritan, and Thanatos has taken a hundred times worse, he’ll heal eventually. We don’t load our ammo bays up with that many explosive rounds in case something like that does happen.”
It was a fluke, Flames knew it, but it was a wonderful feeling.
And a horrible feeling, knowing the way things were.
“Your father let me live once. When I was in Ash’s reformed fleet. He killed everyone, nearly killed me, but he let me go. He claims he doesn’t remember, that he was under the influence of the symbiote.”
“He was!”
“The symbiote would have killed me. It had no reason not to.”
“I want to go home.” Violet muttered, spinning slowly, unsure of what heading to take, what vector to fly.
“Tell him we’re even now, and give him this information.” Flames transmitted co-ordinates over to Violet. “For at least giving me a chance.”
He jumped out, straight back to Avalon. All his energy reserves were completely depleted when he arrived. He fell asleep on the docking port.
–
Thanatos and Kite were recovering at home. Macaria helped tend to their wounds.
Artemis stared in awe at the planet they were orbiting. “What planet is this?” he asked.
“We call it Emerald.” Joshua said.
“It is beautiful, Terra doesn’t look too different.”
“There is a Vorchan colony here.” Joshua said.
“Is there? Do you think they would be interested in coming with us?”
“I doubt it. They’re Vulcans, mostly. They seem pretty content in the mountains.”
“To each their own.”
“Indeed.” Joshua was still shaken over the encounter with Flames. The ship had been deadly. He’d never thought anything could have harmed Thanatos. But it didn’t change their mission. But first they needed a vector. “Do you think these Vorchans know where your home planet is?”
“Hmm… may I see the constellation map for this planet?” Artemis asked.
He showed them the map. It was of no use, the constellations still didn’t line up.
“We will go down to the planet, speak with the Vorchans there, perhaps they can shed some light on the direction our flock should travel.” Artemis said.
–
–
It was quiet without any free Vorchans around. They had all left, all except for Darwin and his family, who felt an affinity to him.
“You didn’t have to stay.” Owen said. “This planet is dangerous.”
“That is okay. We are needed here.” Darwin said.
Owen still hadn’t told him of the exosuit he had bought, fully loaded, too, with ammunition to spare. It was in an underground storage area at the back of the mansion, behind three layers of encrypted security. He was surprised – but relieved – nobody had seen him sneak the suits in.
“You’re talking about an uprising.”
“We aren’t slaves. All the Vorchans of this planet should have been on that ship.”
Owen took a deep breath. It was what Chiron wanted…
“I have something to show you guys.”
–
–
Fawkes couldn’t wait any longer, one of the escort’s was too voluptuous, he gave her a credit disc with five thousand in it. She laughed, stroked his left ear, kissed his cheek. She began leading him to a bedroom.
There was fire in his eyes. He fantasized about different ways he could do it. How quickly he’d end it. He wanted to savour it, savour the flesh in every way.
He hadn’t always been like this; he hadn’t always had this insatiable desire, but one day he’d changed. He resigned himself to his desires, now. There was no guilt anymore, there had barely been any to begin with.
She closed the door behind him, and he watched her hungrily as she slowly stripped.
He tried not to salivate too much, for fear of frightening her. He licked at his fangs profusely but they wouldn’t stop excreting. He couldn’t wait any longer, he lunged at her, getting as deep inside her as he could. It wasn’t that far, she cried out in pain.
The door opened, he craned his neck around and spat at it in disgust, spewing out a wall of fire.
The man dodged, he was wearing a suit, a stick in his hand.
Fawkes tried to fling the escort aside, but she was clutching onto his scales, making it difficult to move. It gave the armoured man a chance to close on him.
The stick touched him. Pain coursed through his body. He howled as his limbs gave way, collapsing on top of the escort, submerging her in the soft bed. She flailed her arms wildly, grabbing onto his tail. She was lucky the serrations on his tail were tiny, with barely an edge at all. Unfortunately he didn’t have the energy to yank his tail away, so it didn’t matter.
He awoke with the ground scraping along beneath him, something was dragging him, by his tail!
He growled at whatever was dragging him, trying to right himself, get some footing, but his feet were bound. He hissed, trying to spit ancestral fire, but his snout was covered by some composite material, it clamped his jaws shut.
“You almost burned that entire place down, Fawkes.”
“How do you know my name?” he grimaced, barely able to get the words out beneath the muzzle.
“I do my research.”
“For what purpose? Why am I being treated like this?”
“Pleasure.”
He didn’t understand.
“That’s right, like you and those escorts. Maybe I get a kick out of capturing and torturing Vorchans? Cutting off their tails, digits, paws…”
He had hidden the neural interface underneath his scales, it was still de-activated. he needed to use the tiny digits at the tips of his wings to reactivate it, but they were bound by the joint too. The inability to flare his wings at will grated at him more than all of the other disabilities. Now that he realized he couldn’t flap he couldn’t stop struggling against the wire.
“It’s a nanofibre composite, it won’t matter how much you try to escape it. It’s unbreakable.” said the man.
“Who are you?” Flames asked.
“Someone who just got the upper hand on a Vorchan.”
Not for long, Fawkes thought, hoping Flames felt his anxiety. He projected as much as he could out into the neural band.
The hunter dragged him down the corridors. Raumens stared and whispered to each other, nobody was helping him. “Help me!” he cried. The nanofibres were cutting into his hide as he was dragged.
Finally the pain stopped. They were by one of the docking ports for smaller vessels. Why hadn’t Flames noticed him yet? He must be asleep, he had to find a way to wake him before he was taken forever.
“I have a lot of money.” Fawkes said.
“Oh it’s not about money.”
“Who would get pleasure out of torturing a Vorchan?”
“You get pleasure out of torturing Raumens.”
“Instinct!”
“This is mine.” the man said, idly hitting him with a charge from the shockstick. His muscles spasmed, cutting into the nanofibres even more. He knew he was bleeding now, he could feel it trickling down his hide and scales.
He was being dragged into the ship now. His paws hurt tremendously as he was pulled along the floor, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
The man left him there, sealing the cargo bay doors. He was in too much pain to even try standing with those bindings on him.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d lain there when a burst of energy overtook him. He desperately righted himself against the bulkhead, looking out one of the only two windows in this tiny bay.
They weren’t at the planet anymore. He must have passed out. This was bad. He wondered if this was what some Raumen offshoots considered to be ‘karma’.
–
Someone was pacing around him. It wasn’t the man, this person’s scent was too different. And there was somebody else with him. The other scent was eerie, familiar but distant, as if a memory from the past.
He felt warm air blowing against his face, something was breathing on him. He kicked himself out of his stupor and snarled instinctively at the other creature.
And then he yelped as it clamped down on his neck, “Know your place!” she snarled. The places where her fangs punctured his skin burned. He struggled to break free. It was getting difficult to breathe. He whimpered some more, going limp, the universal sign of submission. His vision began to close in around him, first his peripheral, then his color vision.
She let go. He gasped for air, afraid to say anything else, or make direct eye contact, old instincts resurfacing. “Undo his restraints!”
“Yes ma’am.”
The nanofibre tethers uncoupled. He knew better than to run, or to look at her. He looked at the left wing, pitch black, with a chrome glint on the spar from what was probably an exosuit. He looked down at her paws: encased in metallic silver, with black digits and razor sharp, red, claws.
“He’s perfect.” she growled.
“Here you go.” said the other man. Fawkes could hear the all too familiar swipe of a credit disc.
“Been a pleasure.”
Footsteps, he peaked at the door to see his hunter leaving.
Big mistake, jaws were clamped down on his face now, they bit through his muzzle, scratching him in the process. He used his wings to pull himself back, whimpering. He only stopped retreating until he hit the corner of this tiny chamber. Again, he looked away, head wilting. He stared at nothing but the floor, but was now baring his fangs, grateful to have full control of them again.
She approach him slowly. He finally looked at her. Ferocious red eyes were all he saw as she struck.
–
He awoke to a gentle hum. He wasn’t where he was before, he figured that part out instantly. There was a different ambience here.
He scanned his new surroundings. They definitely weren’t as small as before. He was in some sort of lounge. There was a large window on one end of it, with a series of pillars that extended out from it at forty five degree angles, making the ceiling slanted at one end of the room. A plump red pillow was there. Along the wall perpendicular to the window he saw a holovision, not a Raumen holovision, but a Vorchan one. In front of it was a large mat and a table with refreshments.
It had been a long time since he’d seen a Vorchan cup, spherical cylinders with holes dotted around the outside edge so Vorchans could grab them with their fangs rather than their clunky paws. At the other end of the room was a large red carpet, engraved with what he recognized as seven different races of Vorchans. Beyond the holovision, at the other end of the lounge was another desk, with several Raumen computer terminals sitting on it. Beyond that was a door. It opened.
She was a Blackwing. Her skin pitch black except for her underside, which was a faded grey. She wasn’t wearing the exosuit anymore. He watched her steadily but didn’t speak or bare his fangs.
“Stop backing away!” she snarled.
He was doing it automatically, afraid of being in striking range of this psychotic Blackwing.
“Who are you.” he asked warily.
She pounced, from over thirty feet away! He didn’t have time to brace himself as she hit, knocking him hard against the bulkhead. He felt his wing spar fracture. He howled from the pain. “I warned you about the wall.”
She pinned him, her tail penetrating him, drawing blood. She was face to face with him now, those red eyes burning into his mind. He wanted to look away but she held his head in place with her paws, their claws extended, inches from his arteries. He could see that look of hunger, those salivating fangs.
“Here are the rules.” she hissed. Twisting her tail. It roiled his entrails. He fought himself from throwing up, afraid of what she’d do to him if he did. There were tears in his eyes. “One: You do absolutely everything I say. Everything.”
Her fang was inches from his neck.
“Do you understand?” she roared, twisting her tail again.
He cried out, nodding in agreement.
“Good. I can be merciful too.” pleasure overcame him for moment as the tail altered its position, its pressure on his insides. “Two: There is no escape. Three: There is no communication, of any way, with Vorchans outside my flock. Four: Freedoms are earned, not given.”
There was a pause now, as if she waited for him to say something. He expected the tail to alter its position again, or her jaws to come down over his neck. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for any possible stimulus. She licked the tears from his eyes, “And five: If you do get chosen for a turn, don’t get greedy, or I’ll snap your neck!”
With that, she released him. He fell to the floor, unaware of the fact that he had been lifted off the ground. “Any questions?”
Really? Questions? He had hundreds. Suddenly he remembered the neural interface. He reached for it with the tip of his wing, only to hit scar tissue. She grinned, her teeth glinting carmine.
“Where is my ship?” he asked.
“Probably where you left him. Don’t worry, he’s of no interest to us.”
She snapped her tail, removing all of his fluids from it.
His sickness returned, “I have to throw up.”
“They all do.”
He fought it, his eyes watering. He swallowed. “You’re stronger than the others.” she said, more as an observation than a compliment. Show me your paws. He did, she looked at his digits, his claws. She asked to see his other paw, then his hind legs, and then his tail, which she examined thoroughly, testing the spikes. She brought hers up against it, not saying anything the entire time.
“Why am I here?” Fawkes asked.
“Because you were chosen.”
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask for what, he could see the hunger in her eyes returning. He wanted to escape, to spread his wings and fly away. It was a primitive instinct. There was nowhere to fly here.
She was on top of him, less painful this time, her tail stroked him, the leading edge of its blade rattling against the spikes on his own.
“Ask me!” she demanded.
“What was I chosen for?” he asked meekly.
“To be my concubine.” she whispered, consuming him in a twisted world of pain and pleasure.
–
–
Thirty millimetre explosive rounds saturated the area with shrapnel. The guards hit the ground in panic. The alarm activated, a gauss round struck one of the towers, disintegrating it.
Darwin brought the pipper to bear on a cluster of men exiting the large mansion, taking care not to hit the mansion itself. He fired off a grenade, it exploded in front of the group of men, neutralizing them. Darwin ran for the mansion, he could hear supporting fire from Lucienda off in the distance. He had told her to keep a fair distance away.
He scanned the room he was about to enter with an HF pulse, there were four men aiming their guns at the door. He brought the gauss gun to bear on one of them and fired, breaking through the door during the chaos that ensued.
He brought his claws down on one instinctively, slicing the soft fleshy Raumen in two. His wings broke another’s spine as the man was flung through a wall.
The last one fired a shotgun shell at him. It fragmented against his chest, inflicting minor wounds. Darwin snatched the weapon from him with his sharp fangs, breaking it in two and spitting it away. He lunged for the man’s neck, clamping down, severing the head in the process. He licked the blood from his fangs and continued onwards, finally finding the slave den.
He entered, people immediately began firing. He shielded himself with his wings as rounds impacted him, slicing away at the webbing and knocking him out of the chamber. He hadn’t realized how much of a beating Vorchans could take from conventional weapons, the Rahjaadium the exosuit was made out of definitely helped too, though it barely covered a tenth of his body. He tried again, loading a gauss round and doing his HF scan. The Vorchan was there, restrained and behind a group of men, their hands shaking.
“More soldiers are coming.” Lucienda hissed over the comms.
“Take them out!”
“I’m out of ammunition.”
“Then get out of there, I’ll meet you back at home.”
“Will you be alright?”
“Don’t worry about me.” Darwin said, he fired a smoke grenade into the chamber, making short work of the panicked men.
He bit through the restraints that were holding the Vorchan in place. A male, dark blue with aquamarine stripes.
“Arctic.”
“I prefer Oceanic.” he said.
“Is that your name?”
“No, my name is Leoven. Am I free?”
“You are.” Darwin could hear footsteps approaching.
Leoven took up a position at the side of the door, he was in a fighter’s stance.
“You were in the armed forces?” Darwin asked.
“No, police. You?”
“Reserves.”
Darwin fired his last fragmentation grenade out past the door, it incapacitated the cluster of men outside. Leoven ran through the destroyed corridor, Darwin followed. They took turns knocking surprised soldiers out of the way. The Raumens hadn’t expected a charge, and Vorchans could be extremely quick if they had to be. They broke free of the mansion together, and beat themselves up to a safe altitude.
Air-to-air radar took over, scanning the area within two hundred miles of Darwin for threats. He ignored it, there were no fighters pitted against them, yet.
–
Owen had given them the co-ordinates to an abandoned firebase in the middle of the desert, an hour’s flight away from the river, virtually impossible to get to by ground. It would be their safe haven during this war. Chiron had agreed to take in Darwin’s children, they would be safe in his castle.
Lucienda was already there, cleaning herself when Darwin and Leoven landed.
“Look at you!” Lucienda exclaimed, noticing the array of bullet wounds. “We’ll have to remove every single shell.”
“Great.” he slipped out of his exosuit. It was a mess, but Owen had used his contacts to make sure they had enough funding to sustain themselves, at least initially. Even Owen’s funds weren’t unlimited, they would ultimately have to start salvaging what they could, funding their own war effort.
“Are you going to help us?” Darwin asked Leoven.
“Of course.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You are not obligated to. Free Vorchans are allowed on this planet.”
“Ha.” Leoven sneered, “I’d feel safer here, with those.” he raised a wing at the exosuit.
“Well it’s time we got you acquainted with one. Have you ever worn one?”
“No.”
Darwin didn’t waste time teaching Leoven the basics. After a few hours, he sent him to their supplier with the damaged suit; they would return him with a new one. He hoped they’d liberate a mechanic soon. He turned to Lucienda; she was already waiting with her sharp incisors and medkit, ready to tend to his wounds.
–
–
Flames woke up, having to check his chronometer to see how long he’d slept: thirty-seven hours. Wow he’d been exhausted. He thought back on Thanatos’ wounds and shuddered, knowing how long those took to heal. His own scars from the encounter where he’d been spared were still visible.
Fawkes. He called. Are you ready to go?
There was no answer. He waited a few minutes, in case Fawkes was busy. He listened on the neural net for the usual pleasure or lust associated with Fawkes’ vices.
It was strangely blank; he could barely sense his presence at all, an ambiguous mote in his conscience, barely a whisper.
He tried to focus on it. There was an effervescent flare of panic. It made him panic. Flames broke off the docking ledge, spinning wildly, trying to locate the mote in realspace. It was too far, and he didn’t recognize the nodes in the nodescape that connected to it, or the routes to take to even get to them.
Was Fawkes in danger? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps the flare of panic had been his own mind frightening him at the possibility of his Captain abandoning him. Maybe it was a punishment for leaving the docking ledge. Fawkes was known to do such things.
He obediently re-docked with the ledge, powering down slightly.
He would wait. He would wait until his Captain returned, ready to forgive him for what he did.
–
–
The Vulcans of the planet Emerald were excited to meet Artemis and the other Vorchans. They let them stay in their caves while the dominant pair spoke with Artemis.
“We, like your flock, have abandoned the ways of the Vorchan Empire.” growled Anigra
She was the dominant female of this flock of two hundred. Her colors had paled over the years, the red and black pigments mixing to give her a very fluidic skin color with vivid contrasts, as if a red liquid had stained her body many years ago.
“The Queens had traveled far across the stars, populating the outer reaches of the Vorchan Empire with life, free life.” Bodin said, the dominant male of the colony, his colors much darker than that of his mate.
Artemis had heard of the myth of the Queen, the mother of many Vorchan offshoot civilizations. Many Vorchan religions revered some sort of Queen-like entity whom they considered responsible for their creation. Artemis just revered his mother, who he knew was responsible for his creation.
“They came from there.” Anigra pointed past the cave walls with a claw.
“Where?” Artemis asked.
“The beginning of the universe.” she said.
They weren’t being very helpful… “I see.” sighed Artemis.
“But Terra… Terra wasn’t one of the first. But it came before us, long before us.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Travel towards the beginning of the universe and you will find it.”
“Which way is the beginning of the universe?” Artemis asked.
“Past Gaia’s mark.” Anigra said, she came close to Artemis, running a claw along his face. She smelled like the damp mold that grew in the swamp by his mother’s cottage. The claw snaked its way down his face to his neck, then to his breast and forelegs, where she was finally running her claw along the ground. The stone chipped where her claw grated against it. She drew a cross in the stone, then a series of smaller crosses. Three arranged in a half-circle around a larger one.
“These stars will point you to the beginning of the universe. Find Gaia’s ring and follow it.”
–
Violet watched the star formation intently. Three stars were visible, with a brighter one in the center. Her ocular strips couldn’t scan it at a high enough resolution to determine their distances, and her nodescape was useless until she actually visited those stars and could correlate their nodepoints with their real locations. She knew the distances would come to her as she traveled towards them, their separation from one another and other stars automatically giving her an approximation over time.
She began her trip towards Gaia’s ring immediately.
–
Leucia’s recovery had been quick after they’d left the desert planet, as a Polar it had been the worst possible location for her to be. She relaxed now under an ice cold shower, grateful for the facilities this starship offered. She was given one of the first produced guest chambers, the rest were still being chiselled out of the starship’s hull by the drones.
She had never been aboard a spacecraft before, but she knew of the existence of space travel. It was rumoured that they themselves were capable of surviving the rigours of space for extended periods of time.
“How are you feeling?” Nimbus asked, an Arctic mix. It had taken him some time to recover as well, which gave them something in common. He had been very nice to her, bringing her food and water while she had recovered in her chambers.
“Good.” Leucia said, doing a cat stretch.
Nimbus placed the jug of water he’d brought by her bed. “Look what else I got.” he said, leaving the chambers for a moment to pull in a tray. It rattled in, on it was an assorted collection of galactic delicacies.
“Wow! Where did you get all that?” Leucia asked, eyeing the shrimp-like critters that were bathed in a white and red sauce.
“I bought it from the Captain.” he said.
“Really?”
“Of course!” He had stolen it from the cargo bay, having found an entire hold of exotic foods in what had been marked as an empty container.
“You’re so thoughtful.”
I know! He thought with a smirk, he liked seeing her happy, at fourteen he hadn’t even been independent yet when the Death Ship took him, separating him from his parents.
She ate several of the shrimps right away. He watched, excited.
“Aren’t you going to eat anything?” she asked. He looked at some of the meat, but suddenly felt very self-conscious: What if she didn’t like the way he ate?
“That one looks good.” she said, “These shrimp are unbelievable too. Take one!”
She held one gently in her mouth, leaning over to proffer it to him. His mother always gave him food like that, and he’d seen other Vorchans share food in a similar way, but he didn’t want to touch her mouth with his, he didn’t know if that was appropriate, if that was even what she wanted him to do, he meekly stared at the shrimp as she placed it on the ground. How awkward it had been if he’d tried to take it from her mouth like a child.
He gobbled up the shrimp, licking his lips and fangs to make sure they were clean at all times. He wasn’t sure how to effectively tackle the meat, though. He watched her devour one, pieces of it splattered on her white skin, clearly visible. She idly licked them up after she finished with the meat.
He finally ate one, putting the entire thing in his mouth to look cleaner. It was too big, he could barely chew it like this. He finally gave in to his instincts and tossed it up in the air, slicing it with his forward fangs as it entered his mouth in neat chunks, swallowing them sequentially. He also licked the splatter from his feather-like hide.
“Your skin is interesting. It’s not scaly like most Vorchans.” she said.
“Neither is yours!” he replied defensively, “It’s soft and smooth, like a sea mammal’s.”
“You have a thin matte of fur, like a plum!” she exclaimed, remembering the fruit.
“Not everywhere. Only on my upper body, my lower body is furless, and much more hardened.”
“Is it?” she asked.
Was she mocking him?
“Arctic’s used to have fur to keep them warm.”
“I know. I had fur too, when I was younger.”
“I’m not that young!” he replied, he didn’t like this conversation, he wanted to leave, but his hormones compelled him to stay.
“I know!” she replied. “It must be your specific breed. Are those feathers?”
“Where?” he asked, ruffling his wings. There were small feathers on the tip, he showed her.
“And those?” she asked, leaning over to look at the long but soft spikes that went along his spine. “May I?”
Nimbus tried to hide his trembling, leaning over to let her feel his soft spikes with her snout.
“That’s so interesting; I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Interesting? In what way? Did she think he was a freak? She ran her cheek against his horns, he stumbled, not having braced himself for the sudden push. He felt himself blushing, he wanted to disappear, looking like a dumb clumsy kid.
“Sorry.” she said, helping him get back up by supporting the bottom of his neck with her horns. He had never really touched other Vorchans before, except for his parents. The Vorchans at his school were very stand-offish.
“I should get going.” Nimbus said.
“You can stay here if you want.” she suggested.
“You won’t mind?” his mind was racing.
“Of course not! I can use the company. You’ve been so kind to me. You’re such a nice guy.”
Nice – He remembered what his friends at school said about nice guys.
“Okay.” he said, starting to put the remaining food in the refrigerator. This room was nicely furnished, it even had a window that looked out to the stars. He could see the ship’s wing. It was purple.
“Isn’t the view beautiful?” she asked, matching his gaze.
“Very.” he replied automatically. The bed was right below the window. He hopped onto it, balancing himself steadily with his wings as the mattress wobbled around below him. He carefully shuffled his way to the edge of the mattress, as close to the window as he could get.
He lost his footing slightly as Leucia pounced onto the mattress, landing next to him, staring out the window with him.
“I think that’s the back of the ship. If you crane your neck you could see the very tip of the wing spar. The entire wing looks so much like the skeleton of a Vorchan’s wing, doesn’t it? Just one long spar.”
“Very long.” Nimbus said. “It must be over a hundred meters.”
“I heard it was over two fifty!”
“I can’t believe such massive structures exist.” he was getting comfortable now, letting his mind digest the view, the massive ship they were in.
“Have you been to the back?” Leucia asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The very back of the ship.” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Come! I’ll show you.” she tugged at his paw, beckoning for him to follow.
They walked for a long time, reaching the upper hangar bay where a lot of the Vorchans spent their time. She continued to a door just off to the starboard side of it. She pawed at the door panel until it opened. She continued through.
“Are we allowed to go all the way out here?” Nimbus asked.
“I don’t know, but when I got better I immediately started exploring. Curiosity is just a part of me, I guess, but it was worth it, it’s only a few minutes away.”
They walked together for a while, passing through a few more doors. The walls were closing in now as they went farther and farther down. The lights seemed brighter, and it was much warmer. The room was no longer a standard bright white illumination either, it was purple, like the ship.
The next chamber was interesting, he could see bright purple lights running along the side of the bulkheads, the chambers were so thin here that they were brushing wing to wing.
“Ok, here we are, the last door. This one doesn’t have a keypad.”
“How do we get in?” he asked.
“We ask!” she exclaimed.
“Who?”
“The ship!”
“What?”
“Watch! Hello again Ship. Can you let us in?”
There was a chirp and the door suddenly hissed open. Nimbus stared in awe at what was beyond the door, squeezing into the tight entrance with Leucia. It was a little more roomy when they got inside. There were purple lines running along all the walls and ceilings now, conglomerating at a point at the very end of the room.
“There is it, that’s the end of the ship.” she said.
“Wow, what is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s not really right there, those purple things are behind layers of glass.”
He saw some of the lines interacting, sparking like purple lightning, shooting across the chamber’s walls and ceiling and floor in random directions at times, always ending up back at the very end.
“What’s this at the center?” Nimbus asked, looking at the small circular table that seemed to grow out of the center of the room.
“I don’t know.”
Nimbus wanted to touch it with one of his paws, the table was divided into six sections, each section had some glyphs on it, they looked pressable. “They look like buttons.”
“Probably for whatever is controlled here. It looks important. I wouldn’t press them.”
Leucia was right. “I still don’t understand how the ship let us in.”
“Maybe it was the Captain, he might have heard me.”
“Maybe, does that mean he’s watching us?”
“Possibly.”
Nimbus was becoming self-conscious again, and he had just gotten used to Leucia’s presence.
“What do you think?” Leucia asked.
“I think it’s weird, that he’s watching us.”
“Not that, I mean the view.”
“It’s beautiful, you were right, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“I’m glad you like it, and many will never see anything like this their entire life.” she said.
“There is a lot in this universe we won’t see either.” Nimbus said.
She was crying now. Was it something he said, “Leucia?”
“Sorry,” she sniffed, “the colors just remind me of him.”
“Your mate?” he asked.
She nodded. “He was so badly wounded when I saw him.”
The caverns had been a horrible place. Nimbus had been lucky to have feathers, it made him interesting to look at, they barely hurt him.
“His wings were so badly torn, and his pawpads were so worn down that he couldn’t walk anymore. They left him out in the corridor on purpose, I know they did, so that I would see him as I walked to my death.”
“You were next in line to be killed?”
“I was, and that was when the Captain came and attacked. I tried to take him with me but soldiers were coming. He told me to leave him there.”
“What? I—“ Nimbus didn’t know what to say, she was sobbing now.
“I felt it when he died, I heard it. I kept running, I couldn’t look back.”
Nimbus had no idea what to do. She leaned up against him, as if she no longer had the strength to support herself. He meekly put a wing around her, wishing he could do something to alleviate the pain.
“I should have stayed and fought, protected my mate.”
“You would have died too! And that would have been horrible!” Nimbus cried, distressed by the story, he held back his own tears. The caverns had been very traumatic.
“I should have fought…” she was calmer now.
“They had guns, and sharp sticks that shot lightning.”
She looked up, as if suddenly aware of the gradually dimming lights. “We should head back.” she said. “It’s getting late.”
Nimbus nodded.
They didn’t talk much on the journey back to her room. She pounced onto her bed, her back against the window, her wings extended out over it. You could still see the starscape through her pale webbing.
Nimbus pawed the floor with his claws, as if it would make it softer. She gently clamped her jaws around the back of his neck, pulling him onto the bed. “There’s plenty of room. I like your company.”
“Thanks.” Nimbus said.
She fell asleep first, exhausted after having had to relive that ordeal through her reminiscing. Nimbus lied on his side on the opposite end of the bed, staring at her, watching her steady breathing, the starscape beneath her wings. He took a snapshot of this moment in his mind and dozed off listlessly.
–
–