by Dan Allen
“By the way, that bird—you can ride them.”
“Cool.” Jet drew his sidearm. “Well, just in case it does come back.” He stepped forward. Nothing. He stepped again. Nothing.
Jet continued exploring the jungle. This simulation suite was all about apex species. Obviously, the bird was going to come back. It was just a matter of time.
A huge insect buzzed past his face.
“They’ve got mosquitoes, too—and bigger. Great. What else did you put in here, Angel?”
Apparently, with similar environmental forces, convergent evolution had made the Xahnan animals fairly similar to Earth’s, even if their DNA was completely different—like how dolphins and sharks had astonishingly similar characteristics even though their genetic histories were totally different.
“You know, I’d almost rather face a flock of riled up Avalonian bat chickens than those cave fish,” Jet said. His stomach rumbled. “Tasty critters. So tasty.”
Jet got one of those feelings. I’m being watched.
He turned to see a vine dropping slowly toward him from the tree overhead.
He looked up to see what kind of animal would lower a vine. Then the vine shot out and curled around his arm. An electrical pulse from the vine rocked his entire body. His muscles completely locked as he was hauled upward toward some digesting organ that oozed with a substance he was sure would eat his skin.
Just as Jet thought his heart would give out, the sim went dark.
“Zero for three.”
“Killer vines!” Jet ripped off the goggles. “Gimme a b-b-break. I can’t even f-f-feel my body.”
* * *
Following his training shift, Jet went to the gym. He was a marine. It was part of his regimen. But the three failures in Angel’s sim, and the lingering tingling in his arms, left him feeling less than enthusiastic.
His workout halted when every head in the gym turned to the entrance.
Teea.
There was no hiding her approach in a place like a weight room.
No matter how daintily she tip-toed through the few hulking human soldiers in the room, an Avalonian in a place like that was impossible to miss.
It wasn’t just the contrast in size, but the way her subtle movements of hand and eye drew attention like a magnet.
The entire gym was staring, Jet included. He couldn’t even tell if she was using pheromones.
Her ultra-fine, green-tinged hair and silken dress drifted behind her as she walked, as if there was some unseen breeze.
And she had purple irises—when she wanted them that color.
“Jet Naman,” she called in a playful voice. “Found you!” She danced over the tops of several barbells and did an effortless front somersault over a bench press station.
Jet kept waiting for the momentary numb sensation that signaled a pheromone engaging. Unfortunately, it didn’t come.
She sat balanced on the handle of a resistance trainer. The flex bar barely registered her weight. “I know what kazen are.”
Jet leaned back on his weight bench. “What?”
“A ka’s helpers—their emissaries, enforcers, that sort of thing.”
After Jet managed to focus on what she was saying, he realized she was talking about the people in a ka’s inner circle. He asked her if she had figured out how the ka gave them power.
She giggled. “That’s silly. They have power before they come into the service of a ka,” Teea said. She winked at a soldier staring at her from the deadlift bar—the bar that hadn’t budged since she came in the room.
That was strangest thing of all. Xahnans had superpowers of their own—not derived from the ka. Jet’s whole theory of the water being critical to a ka’s power seemed to develop a giant leak on the spot.
Unless the power came from the people, not the water. Perhaps the water merely combined their powers. It was an interesting possibility.
Teea fiddled with the hem of her dress as she talked about the treasure trove of information she’d dredged from a single conversation. “Our bugs only have forty minutes of battery life. One happened to land on a child. She was on her way to become a kazen because she was gifted—adept would be the nearest human word.”
So now, on top of overpowered superheroes, there were sidekicks.
“What sort of power do they have?”
“Still working on that. Lots of theories about talking to animals and mind control. But Avalonians can already do that. Would you like to see?”
She had that look in her eye. Once an Avalonian got an idea in their head . . .
Jet quickly shepherded her toward the exit. “You better head out before somebody accidentally drops a weight on their foot.”
She grinned. “It doesn’t have to be an accident.”
“That’s alright,” Jet said. “We don’t need—”
She flashed a grin at a nearby marine and blew a pheromone-loaded kiss in his direction. A second later his eyes defocused, and the barbell he was holding dropped onto his foot.
He didn’t even notice.
The rest of the gym burst into raucous laughter.
“That was what I was trying to avoid,” Jet said.
Teea grinned. “But wasn’t it fun!”
“So, this business about kazen and adepts—you figured it all out on your own?”
Teea shook her head. “No. I had help.”
“Who?”
“Someone I pulled from cryo who studied xeno-sociology.”
Jet’s heartbeat accelerated. “What’s her name?”
“I didn’t say it was a girl.” Teea said with a twinkle in her eye—a literal twinkle of light. “Anyway, her name is Monique.”
Jet laughed. “I was her squad lead on Rodor. She was transferred to Alpha squad after the Avalon mission. Did you tell her I’m on the first contact mission?”
Teea shook her head. “That’s above her clearance.”
“Not anymore it isn’t. You woke her. Might as well put her on the mission.”
“You can do that?”
Jet shrugged. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Can I come on the mission, too?”
Jet hesitated. “We’ll see.”
Teea leaned forward. “Don’t make me become persuasive.”
Jet lifted his hands. “Alright. No need to get all pheromone-ey about it.”
Teea grinned like a kid with a handful of pilfered cookies and darted from the room.
Monique. She was awake and somewhere on the Excalibur. Conscious of the muscle mass he had lost in cryo, Jet walked to the bench press machine and dialed up the resistance. “I’ve gotta get back into shape.”
Chapter 13
Reaching the freight barge seemed like the first good thing to happen to Dana in recent memory.
The taller bargeman handed Dana a tall tin flask. “You can drink that for sure. It’s fresh from a glacier above Norr. Sayathi don’t like the cold.”
Dana sensed no sayathi essence. She drank eagerly, then closed the stopper on the flask and reached into her pockets to share some of the bread Brista had packed for her. “Would you like some—”
“No need, we’re on company rations.”
“Welcome aboard,” said the tall man. “Name’s Jila.”
The shorter man tucked his sifa politely, save the lowest. “Turigan, of Salith Trading Company, Regalin Dominion, Torsica.”
Dana pulled in her inferior sifa and lowered her eyes briefly. “Dana.”
“Of . . . ?”
“Formerly of Norr.”
Both men smiled pleasantly, as if she were a ticket-carrying passenger.
Friendly folk.
It struck Dana as odd that anyone from Torsica could be that kind. Her last encounter had been with the warlock Omren.
Dana immediately dismissed the possibility that these laborers were adepts. Such were actively recruited and lived as well-paid kazen in blood-bound dominions.
It was the life she could have had.
Beyon
d their manners, there was a striking vitality to the men. Certainly, they were middle-aged, possibly only a few years younger than her father. But their smooth, tanned skin, the glossy black of their hair, and the silvery shine of their eyes was unmistakable. They simply looked too healthy.
Blood-bound. The sayathi parasites served their hosts well. These blood-sworn men would far outlive their unsworn peers in Norr.
“Are there any more bleeding wells downstream?” Dana asked.
“Not on the map. There was a tainted section a mile back, though,” said Turigan. “Good thing you waited for us.”
Dana nodded, her lateral sifa spreading proudly.
“That dead greeder back there—was that yours?” Jila asked.
Dana’s sifa went limp, dropping behind her ears along her neck. “I . . . yes.”
“Poor thing.” Jila put a kind a hand on her shoulder. “That’s a terrible loss.”
“It was raised in captivity,” Dana said, her lip quivering. She looked away, staring into the dense trees on the far bank. “. . . It didn’t know.”
“There, there,” Turigan said. He shouldered his long push pole, took Dana’s hand, and guided her to the pile of opalescent sayathenite in the center of the barge. She sat on the heap of crystal nodules and took a few shaky breaths, hoping she didn’t break into tears.
Her hand almost moved to the pouch in her pocket with the bloodstone, but she kept her hand clear of it. No need to draw attention to the one stone of sayathi origin on the boat that wasn’t in the pile.
What made the regular sayathenite nodules different from the queen bloodstones, she had no idea. All she knew about sayathenite was what Forz had told her. He called the sayathenite crystals poly-resonators. They turned electrical impulses into hundreds of sound resonances, and vice versa. The interactions between the sound waves could be adjusted by training at elevated temperatures.
The pile of them made for a lumpy seat, but Dana was glad to be off her feet.
Turigan and Jila dropped their poles into the water and levered the barge back into the main stream.
“How far to the coast?” Dana asked.
“A good way yet,” said Turigan, in the kind of vague answer she expected from a riverman.
“Well how far is that?” Dana asked. “For someone counting in days.”
“Now, don’t go touting your knowledge of things like counting days,” Jila said with a grim face. “We’re but poor simple folk.”
Dana rolled her eyes. “How long?”
“A day and a half—thirty hours, so long as we don’t hit any sandbars.”
“Do you sing any songs, Dana, formerly of Norr?” Turigan asked, his eyes expectant.
Dana smiled. All three sets of her sifa lifted proudly.
Jila gave an encouraging gesture.
Dana could do a lot better than singing. But she would have to spend some will. And of course, it would mean exposing the fact that she was an adept.
Why not? She wasn’t in Norr anymore. Being an adept wasn’t a crime.
Dana took only a moment to choose a fitting song: “Gentle River.” She carried the first verse, before giving in and calling in a few birds to join in the chorus.
“Maka-ka’s mercy!” Turigan cried, using the name of what Dana guessed was the supreme of his dominion. “She’s an adept!”
The three gray nodding birds continued the notes of the chorus in perfect harmony as Dana stood and made a few turns of the river dance.
Jila and Turigan joined in the second chorus, which caused the offended birds to take flight in protest. The men didn’t seem to mind as they bellowed the familiar tune beside Dana.
It was a beautiful moment. One so very different from her restrictive past in Norr. Life seemed so easy, so simple. People could simply love each other and be happy. She was no threat. But to leave it all behind felt like a kind of treason of the heart. She was free, but Forz was not. Neither was her mother.
She wiped the beginnings of a tear from her eye as she thought of her friends back in Norr, her parents who were probably still arguing about whether Dana really had a bloodstone.
It would keep them up at night, especially as they wondered what it had to do with Togath’s disappearance. What might she have done to get a bloodstone?
The authorities would have similar questions. It was better that she left now, before the rangers found the dead bodies in the forest.
Once Dana reached the port, she could head south and then turn west and ascend the Shoul River trade route to the city at its headwaters: Shoul Falls. With luck, she could find the city’s sanctum and keep the bloodstone out of the hands of any remaining Vetas-kazen.
The song faded when Dana realized she didn’t know the third verse and neither did the bargemen.
“One more, if you please, madam. Your singing is treasure to poor laborers like us.”
Dana felt the small tines on her sifa flare, fanning in a moment of indiscretion. Her sifa weren’t finished maturing. The lateral and superior sifa remained stubbornly, modestly bundled tight. But there was no hiding the genuine flush of pleasure to her cheeks.
What Dana had managed barely bordered on flirtation, though she knew the men found it attractive by the subtle flaring of their own feathery sifa.
“Of course,” Dana said. “But might I rest a few minutes?”
“Make yourself at home on our pile,” Jila said with a laugh. “Loaf as much as you like.”
“You’re a sweet man,” Dana said. She glanced at Turigan. “Both of you. Thank you for bothering to come rescue me.”
“Well,” Turigan said, blushing a touch as his inferior sifa shook proudly. “You are obviously a well-bred young woman. Were you raised at a sanctum?”
“No,” Dana said. “Norr is a free city.”
“Hmm,” Turigan said. “Quirky place, ain’t it?”
Dana reached out to several schooner fish hiding below the raft and urged them all to take a curious leap out from under the raft. The rainbow of leaping fish brought delighted cheers. Jila tried to catch one in his hat and had to grab his push pole to keep it from taking a tumble in the river.
“A little too much fun,” Turigan reminded, raising his lateral sifa in a note of caution.
“I’m just fine, you worry-wort,” Jila huffed.
Dana drew a hesitant breath. “Do you know of a supreme called Vetas-ka?”
“That one,” Jila said with a snort, “is ambitious.”
“He conquers other dominions,” Turigan added. “Thankfully he hasn’t reached so far south as Regalin.”
“Be trouble if he did,” Jila said.
Turigan lifted his pole and walked to the front of the barge to lower it again. “But not for long. If Vetas-ka’s bloodstone wants Regalin, Maka-ka’s stone might just give in rather than fight.”
“And you’d best watch your tongue,” Jila said. “You’re bordering on blasphemy.”
“And I’m just bored,” Dana said, changing the subject before the men could turn the topic and ask why she cared about a supreme ruler on a continent halfway across Xahna. She started humming a solstice song, and the men fell into silence, leaning as much on the trilling sound of Dana’s voice as their barge-guiding push poles.
A flash lit the trees on the bank. Dana jumped to her feet, heart pounding.
“Rhynoid strikes again,” Jila announced. “Gets my heart pounding every time.”
Whatever creature had been struck by the vines had died so quickly Dana hadn’t even felt its pain.
“Probably a dumb scamper,” Turigan said.
“Makes a nice stew,” Jila added.
“What? Like you’ve ever tried an electrocuted scamper! You clinging coward. You wouldn’t go within a stone’s throw of a rhynoid vine.”
“Would so.”
“Would not. And I’ll put a wager on it.”
“Oh, bargemen and gambling,” Dana said, brushing the argument aside. Her hands shook slightly from the sudden fright of t
he attack. Only a few feet from the edge of the river the rhynoid vine was curling around its prey, drawing the dead creature into the darkness of the jungle canopy where its juicing organ waited to suck the internal organs out.
It was lucky the vines lost their predatory instinct when they were severed from the juicing organ. Inside Forz’s mechanodrons, the vines were mere slaves to the electrical impulses of the sayathenite crystals, which repeated trained tones in logical sequence.
“I knew a man who took a rhynoid vine around his wrist and dragged the thing right out of the tree,” Jila said. “True story.”
“That’s a load of fresh dung, if ever I’ve smelt it.”
“You smell it all day on yourself.”
“Coming from a portly poopsmith, that’s a compliment.”
“Ah, you cut me.”
“When you reach the port, what are you going to do with your pay?” Dana asked.
Jila looked at Turigan who gestured back at Jila. Neither man appeared to want to admit his vices.
“Drink and song?” Dana offered.
“Ay,” Jila said. “That sounds about right.”
About dinner time, after several Norrian ballads which the Torsicans were content to simply listen to and enjoy, the bargemen lashed them to a mooring post, and Dana convinced several large gill bass to leap onto the shore. She excused herself while the men killed and gutted the fish. She left them to cook the meat as well, and ate from their rations instead.
Animals were not a part of her diet. But she had promised to cook something, and looking for food in the jungle in the dark wasn’t a good idea. Delivering the fish was a decent compromise.
“Not a great cook,” Jila noted, “but a fair fisherwoman.”
“More than fair.”
“Oh, you can keep your indecent compliments to yourself.”
“I was speaking of the fishing. And you can keep your bad breath to yourself.”
“I take no offense,” Dana said. Nothing brought out a rivalry like attention.
Dana smiled. She lifted her blanket over her head to avoid bites from nightfeeders and lay back on the grass in the clearing near the mooring.
“How far can those rhynoids reach?” Jila whispered.
“Right into your dreams,” Turigan hissed. “Better keep a wary eye.”