Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “You think you are.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or rather,” Odisseus amends calmly, “you want everyone else to think you are.” Odisseus feels his heart pound and his chest tighten. “That whole thing, what happened back then, can’t possibly be about you and you’re not so stupid as to think so.” His paws tremble, his fur stands on end and his tail carves anxious furrows in the mud behind him. “It’s too big. You understand what I’m saying? You say they took everything from you. They took everything from everybody. There’s an entire planet – two whole species – scattered across the galaxy now, because of what they did.” He points a claw across the fire. “Don’t you dare sit here and pretend that your hard-knock life was the worst fucking disaster to come outta Pequod.”

  Smoke stings the Ortok’s eyes as he continues, smearing his vision. “They made you feel small,” he summarizes, his anger cooling, his breathing regulating. “They made you feel small and you hate feeling small.”

  Nemo answers with silence. His vision obscured, Odisseus can’t tell what expression his saltbrother might be wearing right now. The galaxy’s foremost expert on Nehel Morel, he can’t even make an educated guess.

  “The point is,” Odisseus starts to assuage, once the silence has become painful, “I thought I was gonna die. Is the reason I started to say all that stuff.”

  The foliage past Nemo’s right shoulder snaps and sways, something emerging at speed through the underbrush. Odisseus doesn’t have the time or the wherewithal to cry out, reach for a weapon, even clamber to his feet before there’s a third figure among them, standing and panting on the edge of the campsite.

  “This way,” beckons Moira Quicksilver, clearly having sprinted halfway across the cavern to reach them. “I think there might be a way out.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Moira hacks left and right. The glassrock blade hews through the undergrowth like it was born to it, severing and scattering greenery with each swing. By inches and degrees, Moira is carving a semi-navigable path, straight down the center of the tunnel.

  It’s a small miracle that any draft reached Moira at all, down a passage this crooked and clogged with vegetation. The tunnel wends its erratic way beneath the earth, shaped by countless centuries of erosion. Down this tributary trickles, the underbrush of Fernhollow, all dangling vines and thick ferns. It’s up to Moira and her trusty glassrock sword to blaze a trail, following both the curve of the tunnel and her hunch.

  She’s filled with new energy whenever the occasional breeze brushes past her, sometimes strong enough to jostle the hanging growth. No aid or encouragement, after all, is likely to come from either of her companions, both lagging along behind.

  In the case of Odisseus, it could be argued that his weapon – the business end of the Skyscratch’s spear – isn’t well suited to a machete’s work. Nemo’s weapon, however – a Gitter hatchet, swollen to a battleaxe in anyone else’s hand – would be ideal for such work. When, early on this expedition, Moira suggested as much, he’d mumbled something about “torch duty” and would not be baited further.

  It was hardly unusual for Nemo to shirk actual work or responsibility. It’s extremely unusual for Nemo to keep quiet. Since Moira’d arrived back at the campsite, he’d not volunteered a single syllable – not a complaint, not a comment, not an asinine remark – this whole time. Since Odisseus too had lapsed into a very similar silence around the same time, it didn’t take much for Moira to suss out they were having a spat.

  Of course she’d overheard their raised voices as she approached the campsite. Something in their tone, however, was different, discernible even at a considerable distance. Those two couldn’t exchange six words without coming to blows; Moira’s not especially surprised they’d fight the second she left them alone. This time, though, there was something particularly portentous in the words she’d overheard and the way those words were used that told Moira she was better off ignorant.

  Let them have their lover’s quarrel. Long as they don’t obstruct this longshot escape plan of hers, Moira could care less how they spend their last few hours alive.

  Seemingly sick of sitting around and staring at each other, Nemo and Odisseus were pretty pliable, even marginally enthusiastic, about Moira’s discovery. They’d both seen the wisdom, without too much prompting, in marching to one’s death with weapons in hand, rather than twiddling one’s thumbs and waiting for the hunger pangs to start.

  Should worse come to worst, Moira knows she could scrounge enough supplies from Fernhollow’s wilderness to keep one mouth fed – just not three.

  It need never come that, though. At the moment, survival-mode Moira Quicksilver is committing all her resources, physical and mental, to following this tunnel to where it might lead and determining whether it might lead back onto the surface.

  Never mind that it might dead end. Never mind that they might become irreparably lost down here. All that matters now is seeing this passageway through to its conclusion.

  Moira ignores the soreness in her shoulder as she swats through each curtain of hanging vines. She ignores the ache in her knees and feet as she trudges through the muddy undergrowth. She ignores the pain in her lower back as she stoops beneath every low ceiling of rock.

  All her toil is soon rewarded. A little ways ahead, the tunnel flares suddenly wider, opening into an actual chamber. With a succinct military hand gesture that’s utterly lost on Nemo, Moira beckons him and the torch he carries forward to investigate further.

  At the tunnel’s mouth, the vegetation drops suddenly away, leaving only moss and mud to coat the cavern floor. The torchlight creeps down what Moira is dismayed to discover are forking passages. She sighs inwardly, standing at a literal crossroads.

  Nemo’s torch proves ultimately unnecessary when Moira steps into the chamber. Her gaze is drawn upward, toward the feeble rays of light that stream angelically down from above. Far overhead, Moira spots cracks in the ceiling, slivers of magnificent sunshine sneaking down into the darkness of the underworld.

  This glimpse – tantalizing and unreachable – only hardens Moira’s resolve to escape, to break free, not to die in this dank hole.

  “It’s daytime,” Nemo utters, that same longing clear in his voice.

  “Which way?” wonders Odisseus, sweeping his speartip past each branching passage.

  Moira has no answer for this. “Take five,” she suggests instead and heads towards the nearest side tunnel to investigate their options.

  This suggestion is met with universal relief. Over her shoulder, Moira hears the sounds of Nemo’s axehead and, more crucially, his torch hitting the mud. “That goes out,” she reminds him, “you’re getting left.”

  Moira doesn’t turn to catch Nemo’s reaction. She does hear, in a mocking falsetto, his very convincing Moira impression. “You’re getting left.”

  She wanders a few steps down the first tunnel, her elongated shadow reaching away into darkness. She stands there a few moments, uncertain what she’s really looking for – a change in elevation, a stronger breeze, any indication of where she should lead them next. On a lark, she even sniffs once, to test the air, but everything in this subterranean jungle reeks.

  It isn’t until she’s investigating the third otherwise identical passage that something quite literally jumps out at her.

  The smell down the third tunnel nearly gags Moira. There’s something utterly putrid down there, a stench both new and familiar. She opens her mouth, to make a wordless sound of disgust, when she suddenly remembers that smell.

  Moira stops dead. She brandishes the glassrock blade, once a machete, now a saber. She peers down the dark corridor, wondering whether hunger and sleeplessness are playing tricks on her.

  Then she catches a flash of movement. Something among the inert vegetation shifts.

  “Torch,” Moira barks, edging backward into the main chamber.

  “What for?”

  “Torch!” she barks again, taking the saber in two hand
s as a lopsided figure staggers into view from down the tunnel.

  Its trunk is twisted partially around, the spiny ridges all along its body cruelly corkscrewed. Several of its limbs are withered and hang uselessly from their joints. The left leg is cockled gruesomely to the side, its gait hobbled and almost comical.

  “Uh,” Odisseus stammers, spear at the ready.

  “Moons,” remarks Nemo, sitting on his ass in the mud, “these fucking guys again.”

  A second cactoid comes limping down another passage. A third, all armless and wobbling, follows the first. Soon, they’re shambling from every opening in the chamber, their putrid stench only growing in strength as more emerge from the darkness.

  Moira keeps scooting backward, the deformed Gitter thronging around the three beleaguered pirates. Weapons out, the torch flickering at their feet, they press together, back-to-back-to-back.

  “Ideas?” proposes Odisseus.

  “Don’t die,” is all the advice Moira can give.

  They come unarmed, their limbs outstretched and grasping desperately. They come in the dozens, streaming from the tunnels and shuffling towards the sunlight and the intruders. There is no alternative, with every escape route choked with enemies – they must fight.

  Moira makes the first move. She lunges forward, chopping hard with the glassrock sword. She doesn’t bother thrusting into that resilient trunk. Instead, she throws as much strength as she can into her chop, aiming for the highest shoulder joint. The glassrock cuts deeper than she predicts, slicing the Gitter nearly in half and stopping it dead in its tracks.

  It’s unconcerned, apparently, with the three-foot blade lodged through its torso. Reaching what working arms it can, it attempts to embrace or throttle Moira, she’s really not sure which.

  A few strong tugs make no progress on the stuck sword. Cactoid hands tugging at her clothing, Moira throws up a baby-stomper, plants it firmly against the trunk and kicks with desperation. The sword comes free at an askance enough angle to rip the cactus fully in two.

  The Gitter topples into a messy heap of twitching limbs, green flesh and milky liquid. The kill buys Moira zero time, more and more cacti crunching their brother’s corpse to mulch.

  Moira shifts a little backward and immediately bumps into a great wall of shaggy Ortok. With no more wiggle room, all she can do is heft the sword and slice forward. Here, her electrobaton and Tebi-Gali have no bearing. This is broadsword work, the saber far too heavy for anything but hacking and slashing. Definitely the strongest swordsman of the three, Moira knows there’s no way even she could cut a pathway through this forest of attackers.

  Odisseus is rather thankful for the length of his spear. Originally, he’d assumed he’d drawn the short straw in the choice of weapons, considering both the sword and the axe. Against a horde of attackers, however, that extra few feet of distance has saved his life thrice in the past minute of fighting.

  He currently keeps three at bay, swapping the spearhead between any that come too close. A spear through the midsection has little effect on a Gitter, however, much to the Ortok’s chagrin. Odisseus needs to throw his whole weight behind the stab to impede them any and that runs the risk of losing the weapon inside the cactoid’s body.

  All the while, his nose burns, the plangent cries of the abominable crowd overwhelming his senses.

  {Bless us, Vesselborn}, Odisseus hears them pleading. {We are unworthy…}

  Surrounded, pierced by a dozen spines, blinded by spores, Odisseus snarls like a beast, matching their desperation with ferocity.

  “Who the fuck,” he growls, swatting away one outstretched limb with the spear’s haft, “are these guys?”

  “Who the fuck,” pants Nemo, his axe flying wildly, “gives a shit?”

  While Odisseus is occupied fending off the cactoid to his right, one comes stumbling forward from the left. Odisseus wheels his spear around, unable to fully raise the weapon at speed. The spearhead, then, plunges into the bulb of flesh that passes for the Gitter’s kneecap. In a burst of milk, the knee gives way, coming completely free when Odisseus wrenches the spear away.

  {Forgive us, Vesselborn…}

  Down comes the Gitter, its shattered leg giving way beneath it. A moment later, it’s trampled by the press of cacti behind, disappearing under thorny feet.

  Fast as he can, Odisseus whips the spear back, to discourage either of his other two attackers from catching him off-guard. It’s immediately clear, however, that against the surging tide of cactoids, that no matter how hard he fights, how savagely he snarls, all they could do is lose ground and be overrun.

  {Take us from this darkness. Have mercy on thine unworthy, Vesselborn...}

  To either side, Odisseus feels the same conclusion dawn on Moira and Nemo as their fighting becomes all the more desperate.

  To his left, Moira’s glassrock sword is ever in motion, the meager sunlight dancing off the swinging blade. She’s become an artist of dismemberment, cactoid limbs littering the ground at her feet. This may buy her a moment or two but, if combat against the Gitter has taught them anything, it’s that these foes have limbs to spare.

  She still handles her weapon with a grace neither he nor especially Nemo can hope to match. From the corner of his eye, Odisseus watches her duck and weave, avoiding any grasping cactoid hand that comes near and punishing each with a clean cut through an elbow or wrist.

  If anyone stands a chance of cutting a path through this horde, it’s Moira Quicksilver.

  Nemo, however, is hopeless. He’s surprisingly effective in his hopelessness but is nonetheless destined to get torn to pieces.

  To the Ortok’s right, Nemo’s battleaxe freewheels about, swung with no balance or discipline. In a method that would appall disciplined Moira, Nemo throws his whole weight behind each tremendous haymaker, forgetting his footing with each swipe. He’d – of course – had the good fortune to choose the glassrock hatchet, a weapon specifically designed to fell trees. Whenever he chances to actually land one of his wild blows, it utterly annihilates his intended target, pulping cactoid flesh like a squashed melon.

  Neither Odisseus nor the incoming Gitter quite know what to make of his erratic and unpredictable fighting stance. Staggering drunkenly around his corner of the carnage, his footwork is always a dodgy thing, a stiff breeze all it would take to topple him to the ground.

  This is how he’s going to die, it occurs to Odisseus then, catching occasional glimpses of his floundering saltbrother. He’ll overcommit to an attack, surrender his balance and go tumbling forward, where he’ll be swallowed by the sea of spiny flesh that breaks before them. The 34th Galactic Menace will die down here, the ultimate ignominy, swarmed by mutant cactus monsters on a planet only a hundred offworlders have ever touched down on.

  Indeed, Odisseus watches it happen, watches Nemo flap his arms to regain his balance, watches him plant a foot backward on something unstable. With a strangled curse, the Captain flips over like a cartoon character and splats his ass down in the muck.

  He’s completely vulnerable, his weapon thrown from his grip, his belly up like an overturned crab. The malformed Gitter seize their opportunity, lumbering forward, reaching green and twisted hands out to apprehend him.

  {Bless us, Vesselborn}, they’re hissing in Odisseus’ nostrils. {Make us whole again…}

  Odisseus freezes. His saltbrother in peril, he has a second’s window to act, to leap into violence on Nemo’s behalf and rescue him from these monsters. Yet, he hesitates. Something interrupts the biological imperative, hardwired into his Ortoki brain, that demands he give his life to save his saltbrother’s. There he stands, spear in hand, watching slack-jawed as a kicking and cursing Nemo is seized by half-a-dozen cactoid hands, sinking their needles into his trousers and robe.

  Then Odisseus, too late, snaps back to his senses.

  With a bestial roar, the Ortok lunges. He leads heavily with the spear, burying the weapon up to its broken haft through not one, not two but three adjacent Gitter trunks
. Impaled on his spear like an unappetizing appetizer, the cacti hesitate, comically attempting to extricate themselves by pushing this way or pulling that way, Nemo forgotten at their feet. His weapon disappeared, Odisseus scrambles backward to escape their groping limbs, nearly bumping into Moira and throwing her off her routine.

  This distraction, however, proves to be precisely what Nemo needs.

  Rising with recovered axe in hand, he goes hewing through each of the pinioned Gitter. He slices and dices any trunks or limbs he can reach, as easily as though he were simply trimming the verge. What he makes is a horrific amalgam of stumbling legs and severed limbs, all held together by the Ortok’s spear. This serves as an adequate barricade to stem the tide of cacti, for a moment and no more.

  There’s a look exchanged between Nemo and Odisseus. Shamed and uneasy over his hesitation, Odisseus can’t quite meet the Captain’s gaze. The most attention he’s paid Odisseus since the argument, Nemo’s reaction – gratitude, suspicion and apology, all rolled into one – remains inscrutable as ever.

  “What’d you trip on?” wonders Odisseus aloud, like there wasn’t a horde of depraved Gitter an arm’s reach away.

  “Oh,” remarks Nemo, stooping to retrieve something. He comes back to his feet with the torch, a little guttered now from lying in the grime all this time. He sours his expression, considering the open flame. “Stupid thing,” he resolves petulantly and, heedless as a toddler, tosses the thing away – straight into the mass of Gitter.

  The reaction is instant. The first cactus struck hardly reacts, the length of wood clacking off its unrelenting flesh. The flame, however, finds an eager host in that flesh. A second later, the Gitter’s whole head-and-shoulders go up like a candle.

  A column of fire, staggering about in agony, inspires a sudden panic among the Gitter ranks. The fire spreads like an infection among the close-packed cacti, the blaze growing brighter and hotter with each passing second. Soon, one whole half of the cavern is raging inferno, a dozen cactoids flailing uselessly as the hungry fire chews through their bodies like kindling.