Creator's End Page 16

  Sax sighs and closes his eyes, waits for the pick-up.

  It’s strange being stuck in a capsule with little view of the outside. All Sax can see, in fact, is dark space. There’s too much ambient light from Solis’ nearby star to get a glimpse of a nebula or other twinkling dots, but even a blank black is better than staring at Nobaa and his endlessly blathering mouth.

  Rescue comes partway through Nobaa’s seemingly endless iterations on how the Teven’s going to undermine the Vincere ship’s control systems and use them to confuse, frustrate, and drive the ship’s crew insane with blaring alarms, randomly locking doors, and food dispensers set to continuously spray nutrient goop onto the floor.

  “Evac mod, we’re tracking you. Who’s inside?” the intercom buzzes with the stern, light voice of a Flaum pilot.

  Sax feels the Oratus should be given the chance to fly fighters too, but they’re too big. Creating a craft that could hold an Oratus in comfortable position yet still be able to twist and turn in heavy atmosphere isn’t a problem the Amigga think they needed to solve. So instead the Vincere trust their space acrobatics to the most prevalent and, until he’d met Nobaa, what Sax thought was the most annoying of species.

  “This is Sax,” the Oratus says, right foreclaw pushing in the panel for a response. Now that he’s said his name, though, Sax isn’t sure where to go. So he falls back on instinct. “I broke free of the Vyphen traitors holding me, and I’m ready to come home.”

  It sounds weak, but then, that might be what they’re expecting; an Oratus who played with rebellion, found it wanting and forced to fight his way free without his pair? Yes, that could mean a tired voice. A sad soul.

  The Flaum pilot takes her time in responding, and then only gives an acknowledgment that Sax is going to be taken in.

  “That worked!” Nobaa exclaims when the intercom cuts. “They believed you!”

  “I’m too valuable to kill outright,” Sax hisses. “At the least, they think I have information to give. Either I’m being honest, which means they’ll interrogate me and, probably, waste me for being disloyal, or I’m lying, in which case they’ll waste me for being a traitor.”

  “Neither of those sounds like the outcome we want.”

  “Neither of those is the outcome they’ll get,” Sax says. “Just remember your role; get out, get access, and clear a path for the Mobius. If we can’t get a full on fight started, then we need to get down to Solis and find Bas.”

  “Of course! It’ll be easy. I can hack...” Sax stops listening to Nobaa’s drivel and lets his eyes drift back to the window.

  There’s a shiver as something latches on to the escape mod and redirects its path. After a moment, the big Oratus ship swings into view, a monstrous oval spiked with antennas, and coated in glowing docking bays. They’re heading towards it.

  At least, that’s what Sax gets to think, for a moment, until one of the two frigates swings in front of the viewport, its docking bay looming large and close. Too close to miss now.

  They’re going on the wrong ship.

  Through the viewport, Sax watches as the escape mod settles into the frigate’s empty bay. Clear bluish-black floors meld with yellow-aged walls and white lights to make for a sterile Vincere appearance.

  “Why’s it so empty?” Nobaa says. “Are they that scared of us?”

  “They think this might be a bomb,” Sax replies. “Suicide or otherwise.”

  “Do Oratus do that? I thought you were too valuable?”

  It’s weird to think of himself as some sort of commodity, but Sax supposes that, yes, there’s a price for him and every other Oratus. Sending one of a limited species on a bombing run against a low-value target wouldn’t be smart. Wouldn’t be profitable.

  Then again, the Chorus doesn’t deal in profits. The galaxy they’ve built serves as a mechanism to support their experiments, their ambitions. They wouldn’t care how many Oratus have to destroy themselves so long as the Chorus comes out ahead.

  Sax and Nobaa are separated the moment the mod arrives on the frigate. Stiff Flaum and Whelk shuttle Sax through the docking bay and towards the bridge - Sax has been on plenty of these sterile frigates before, and knows where he’s heading. What he doesn’t understand until he’s stalking through the halls - flanked by miners on either side, in front and behind, is just how bland these ships are. Scrapper Station, Astre’s Spire, and, most of all, the Mobius teem with the evidence of life; stained walls, nicked surfaces, littered junk and half-finished projects. Stories told in the ambiance.

  Here, though, the Vincere keep things clear and clean of the past. Sax can’t tell what lives have been shared in these hallways, and the silver sheen on the walls tells no tales. Even his vents pick up only the most mild scents from the creatures around him - tasteless goop to eat and plenty of showers mean his captors are blanks.

  Before, Sax would have thought these things meant perfection and order, essential traits for a military force. Now, now it reminds him of the Chorus’ ultimate objective; a universe they control.

  The distaste must show in his stance, because when Sax is brought into the small bridge and face-to-face with the ship’s Oratus commander, a brilliant gold-scaled one who introduces herself as Rav. The second thing she says is:

  “You don’t look like you belong here.”

  “I lived in these ships for a very long time.” They’re no longer his home, though.

  Rav doesn’t bear the scars of long-time war - her scales are too perfect, her claws unbent and sharp. Sax suspects she’s never been on the front lines, relegated to back-water command posts like this one. The question is, why?

  “I’m not supposed to interrogate you,” Rav hisses, throwing a glance towards the Flaum manning the bridge’s Q-Net communications array. “They’re sending a transport to pick you up. Apparently you’re going to be torn apart, mentally and physically, so they can find what’s wrong with you.”

  “They?” Sax asks the question knowing the answer.

  “The Chorus.”

  “What do you see in front of you, Rav?” Sax says, trying to think like Bas. “A damaged, broken thing, or another Oratus?”

  Rav tilts her head, bares her teeth slightly. “I see a traitor.”

  “To what? The Chorus? Because I choose to do something other than their will?”

  “Because you choose to be yourself,” Rav gestures with her foreclaw around the bridge, to the pair of Whelk standing - as much as a Whelk can stand without legs - behind him with their miners ready. “The Vincere needs loyal soldiers, or else how can we keep the galaxy safe? What happens if every Oratus takes your path, if the Sevora are given free control to spread themselves throughout every inhabited planet.”

  “So choosing to think for myself means I’m letting the Sevora win?”

  Rav locks eyes with Sax. “Yes.” Then the looks past him. “Take the traitor to his room. Keep him there until the transport arrives.”

  The frigate isn’t equipped for much in the way of prisoner transport, much less one the size of Sax. So instead they stick the Oratus in an empty, square cabin without much inside except a long bench on the right. One that could have been covered with a cushion but, for Sax, is left hard and bare.

  There’s a screen occupying a wall opposite the bench, one that could be used to show calming landscapes, watch entertainment, or a dozen other things but that, for Sax, remains black and dead.

  Yet, when the door shuts behind him, Sax relaxes. He didn’t realize how tense it would be, confronting his own side, dealing with the accusing stares of lowly soldiers and staff that, before, would’ve been legitimately concerned with becoming his next meal. Now, Sax isn’t something to be feared, he’s something to be scorned.

  The cabin’s door sits flush with the wall behind him, and the panel controlling it’s been overridden from elsewhere. Sax taps a couple of the buttons just to see what might happen and each one greets his attempt with an indignant buzzing. The screen does the same when Sax experime
nts a second later.

  So they expect him to sit and wait. Stew, perhaps, in his own decisions.

  Instead, Sax hunts for the cameras. Finds one hastily latched onto a wall above the door, peering down at him from its black nub.

  What would they do if Sax attacks it? Would they open the door, miners in hand, and try to stun him enough to repair the thing? Or would they let him sit, hope that Sax doesn’t do anything rash as they’re unable to see him?

  Sax opens his mouth at the camera, crouches and jumps, swiping with a foreclaw and shredding the camera off the wall. As soon as Sax lands, he rakes the door’s panel with his claws, knocking it off its perch and sending it sparking to the ground. A couple hard swings with his tail and the wall screen is coated in cracks, which has to make any camera looking through the glass a distorted affair.

  “Why?” Rav’s voice snarls through an overhead intercom a second later. “What’s the point, Sax?”

  Sax takes a bit of smug satisfaction from knowing they’re using the frigate’s alert system to talk to him - the cabin’s private intercom was on the door panel. Sax can’t exactly talk back to Rav here, but at least he knows she’s frustrated.

  “You’re not getting out of that room,” Rav continues. “I’m ordering the outside guard doubled. The Chrous transport’s already leapt into the system, so your pointless destruction will get you nothing.”

  But it’s satisfying.

  And now he knows they’re blind.

  15 What Lies Beneath

  The dull pearl bones carpet the floor, and at first I want to panic, push away the pain and run. The bones aren’t human. Not all of them anyway. Even the one I just stepped on is longer than my own leg. Thick, with a knob on either end.

  “T’Oli, do you know whose bones these are?” I manage to ask.

  “Given the size, it seems plausible that these belong to other Fassoth,” T’Oli says. “Unless your planet has other large predators with a predilection for dark, damp environs?”

  The Ooblot surges ahead of me, rolling over the bones and deeper into the cavern, around those blue-coated pillars. I don’t really try to keep up, instead focusing on my awkward shamble, trying not to fall into what would be a nightmare.

  “If the bones are here, though, doesn’t that mean it comes back to eat?” I ask.

  To the right, as I pass by the first pillar, I see the grand sphere of a Fassoth skull, almost perfectly unbroken save for a crack in the upper right temple. I only guess it’s a Fassoth because there aren’t any holes for eyes or ears, or a mouth.

  “I don’t know much about how Fassoths live, Kaishi,” T’Oli replies from up ahead. “But your thought seems likely.”

  “Which means we shouldn’t be here.”

  Two choices, then. Either we turn around, hope that Viera and the others took a different path and that they’ve killed the Fassoth chasing us, or we keep plunging ahead this way. Hope that the Fassoth or whatever lives here doesn’t decide to come back. Or isn’t waiting behind the next pillar.

  The bones thin as we go deeper, where a small stream makes its burbling self known. It cascades along the left wall, filling a small pool before vanishing through some unseen crack in the rocks. I can picture this as a Damantum house - the boneyard being the dining area, the stream marking the kitchen.

  Which means we’re coming to the bedroom.

  Beyond the stream, the fungal growths dwindle as the cavern closes together into a dead-end. A smooth, rounded closure whose ground is coated in soft-white hairs. T’Oli’s waiting for me there, its eye stalks scanning the area.

  “I can’t find another way forward,” the Ooblot says as I wander up, right hand on the wall.

  ‘So we chose the wrong way.”

  “Depends on what you consider wrong,” T’Oli replies. “We didn’t find the Fassoth, so, in some ways, we chose the right one.”

  “What I don’t understand, is you said you found the Fassoth’s den on the other side of the pool. And I can’t imagine Diego and the others taking up this close to two of these things.” I glance back towards the blue pillars. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “A full day’s walk away is distance enough, and Fassoth would be wary of attacking a large party,” T’Oli says. “They simply may have hid while Diego and the others moved through.”

  “Still doesn’t explain the two dens.”

  “Do human families stay close together?” T’Oli asks.

  “Generally,” I reply. “Why?”

  As I finished the answer, there’s a clear rustling from back up the cavern. The sound of many thick feet pounding on the rock, and heading this way.

  “Fassoth,” T’Oli says. “Are the same.”

  I press against the den’s back wall. T’Oli starts to sluice up me, to form its armor again. Not that the Ooblot’s protection saved me the last time.

  Of all the ways I thought I might die, trapped in a cave with a monstrous beast wasn’t on the list until this moment. I’d pictured growing old in my village, possibly going out through disease or a hunter’s spear. Maybe getting sacrificed to Ignos.

  But this? No.

  So when the Fassoth shows up, as it picks through the bones, kicking some aside and, using one of its eight legs, handling others, I try to think. Try to ponder some way out.

  The Fassoth doesn’t seem in a rush to get to me, so I watch it move. It looks larger than the one that emerged from the pool, and there are gaps in its white fur where scars make themselves apparent. Some of the bones it puts down are snapped, or have grooves cut in their smooth surface, as though the Fassoth is somehow sucking out the marrow through its feet.

  What I don’t see, though, is a weakness. A way around the creature and out of the cavern. Especially when moving faster than, oh, a slow walk would make me pass out from the pain.

  So when the Fassoth finally finishes with its inventory of the bone hoard and ambles towards me, I feel around my feet for a loose rock. Figure that, if nothing else, I’m going to go out with a short, pitiful fight. T’Oli twitches against me, but says nothing.

  Not like the Ooblot has to worry - it’ll live through this. T’Oli can go all stone and it’ll be fine. Maybe T’Oli can take my bones when the Fassoth is done with me, bring them to Viera and the others so they know.

  The Fassoth, so close now, dips a foot in the creek’s pool. I can smell its sweaty stink, hear its thick breath. It’s made no motions towards me, though. No aggressive gestures as I keep myself pinned to the wall.

  No eyes. The thought hits me hard. No eyes, and no visible ears. The Fassoth might not know I’m here. I haven’t made a sound, haven’t moved.

  Only now the creature’s moving away from the pool, towards me and its bed of white fur. If it gets so close, it might be able to hear my breathing, or the rapid-fire beat of my heart.

  So I throw the rock. Launch it hard across the cavern to the left side, where it strikes a pillar and rattles into a pile of bones. The Fassoth jerks immediately, tracks the rock as it flies and then shifts towards where it lands.

  Then it bursts.

  I’ve seen juar - large, predatory cats - do the same, but the Fassoth is larger. Has more legs. The Fassoth I’d first seen used by the Lunare were tame, controlled. This one leaps through the air, legs flailing out, and it crashes into the bones, scattering them everywhere.

  “Go,” T’Oli pats quietly.

  And I do. Push off from the wall and run. Towards the right.

  I make it all of two steps before the side of my chest breaks me with stabbing pain. It’s like I can’t feel my legs anymore, can’t focus, can’t land the next step and I wind up falling. Splashing into the end of the creak, and the icy cave water soaks my clothes, and me.

  At least it numbs the pain.

  The Fassoth isn’t fooled. I see the creature wheel around towards me, and as the rock I threw fails to keep moving, the Fassoth begins creeping my way. I crawl, dragging myself forward, trying to get my legs beneath me, but they’re
half-frozen from the water and I’m half-stunned anyway.

  I can’t outrun this thing.

  Which means I have to fight it.

  “T’Oli,” I say, causing the Fassoth to start, to lift its eyeless head and point it towards me. “Can you form a point? On my left hand?”

  T’Oli, to its credit, doesn’t ask questions. The Ooblot just goes. Slimes away from me, disintegrating my armor and going, instead, along my left arm and over my hand, then, building off of itself, T’Oli extends my hand until it ends in a hard-rock spear.

  The Ooblot’s two eye stalks fold back along my arm, turning to look at me.

  “Yeah, like that,” I say to the stare.

  The Fassoth rumbles over, standing over me. It raises its front right leg and there, between the claws, I see how it eats. How it survives. In between those deadly points, there’s a mouth. A slit filled with jagged, broken teeth.

  “Stay away from me,” I growl, and punch up with my left arm, right into that mouth.

  The pressure, the strength of the hit ripples along T’Oli’s form, to my arm and along my body as the Fassoth rears back from the strike. There’s no roar, no angry call as I’d expect from anything else getting such a wound. Only the shuffling of dirt and bones, only the drip drip of the creek.

  Life or death determined in silence.

  “Having never been a weapon before, I’m not sure I like it,” T’Oli says by thawing a small portion of itself near my elbow. “Awfully brutal.”

  “Welcome to life for the rest of us.” I use the seconds bought with the strike, while the Fassoth changes its calculus on its prey, to get to my feet.

  I back against the wall, the creek running just in front of me, and watch as the Fassoth heads around the pillar, careful to keep its wounded leg off of the ground. I, though, keep my Ooblot spear raised in front of me, ready.

  “You know any way to scare these things?” I ask T’Oli.

  “They’re trainable,” T’Oli says. “If you have the right tools, and catch them young.”

  “Thanks.” I edge along the creek, towards the boneyard and the cavern entrance.