Weight of Ashes

by Rook Winters

  “Such irritation. I look forward to eating you, human.”

  CHAPTER 57: KANE

  Kane sucked in air in short gasps as the world came back into focus. Kantarka-Ta had L37 pinned to the ground. The kid was running away. Next to him, his gun hung from the big man’s hand.

  Kantarka-Ta said that it looked forward to eating L37.

  No. No, it wouldn’t…

  He forced his head off the ground and saw Kantarka-Ta removing the body armor from around its feeding slit.

  Out in the open like this?

  The air on Earth was uncomfortable for Qyntarak, which is why they stayed in the controlled atmosphere of their bunkers and ships. It was why Kane had spent so many hours of his life trapped in a suit to protect him from the air mixture native to their home world. For a Qyntarak to expose its sensitive feeding slit this way was unprecedented in Kane’s experience.

  “Give me the gun.”

  Kane’s voice was almost nonexistent after his near strangulation and Bear didn’t react. He pushed himself to his knees and pulled the gun from Bear’s hand. That snapped the big man out of his terrified stupor. Kane had the gun pointed at him before he could react.

  “Back up.”

  Bear raised his hands and took several steps back.

  Kantarka-Ta’s mandibles had stretched its feeding slit wide and it swayed over L37, who was clawing pointlessly at the tentacle embedded in her chest.

  Kane raised the gun and fired three shots into Kantarka-Ta’s feeding slit, top, middle, and bottom. The alien made a painfully loud screeching sound. Its mandibles snapped shut and it yanked its stabbing tentacles from L37. Kane saw the damaged plating on its back leg and fired at it. The first shot was a couple inches high and bounced off the body armor. His second shot went straight in and Kantarka-Ta’s back end collapsed to the ground.

  Bear jumped forward and dragged L37 away. The alien swung a wild tentacle at them but missed.

  Kane aimed at the spot where the covering over a tentacle met the plating of the central body armor and fired. The Qyntarak screeched again.

  Seven shots fired. Three left.

  The Qyntarak only let humans use projectile weapons, saving the powerful and versatile gravity-based weapons for themselves. Modern bullets couldn’t pierce Qyntarak body armor, let alone the exterior of their facilities and ships, and the aliens didn’t care much about how much humans shot each other up, as long as it wasn’t cutting into their profits.

  The rules might change after this.

  Kane charged at the writhing alien, dodging its tentacles, and threw all of his weight against it, sending the much larger creature tumbling back, unable to brace itself without the use of its damaged leg.

  Kane slid his hand into the outer opening of the feeding slit and grabbed a mandible. Its tiny teeth-like ridges tore at his hand as he pulled. Several surrounding mandibles opened partway sympathetically and Kane shoved his gun into the opening. He fired toward the end where the Qyntarak’s internal organs connected to its emotive antennae. The bullet would bounce off the inside of the body armor, magnifying the damage.

  Kantarka-Ta spasmed and its tentacles collapsed into limp piles.

  His arm still covered in Qyntarak digestive fluids, Kane unfastened the body armor and slid off the covering to expose the thermal-optical organ and antennae fronds.

  “You were always such a son of a bitch.”

  He pressed the gun against the thermal-optical organ and the Qyntarak twitched, a single tentacle flying into the air and straight through Kane’s stomach. Kane made a gagging noise and felt the world around him start to spin.

  He pulled the trigger and dropped the gun. He wrapped both hands around the tentacle and tried to push it out but his hands slipped on the blood that was coating the outside.

  My blood.

  He closed his eyes, it was too hard to keep them open, and let himself slide to the ground beside his impaler.

  CHAPTER 58: COURT

  The inside of the pod went dark as the door closed. The only challenge to the blackness was the faint light from the heads-up display of the EVA suit. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the outlines of cargo boxes.

  The heads-up display announced, “Establishing intravenous connection.”

  He felt pressure and then the sting of a needle pricking his arm inside the suit.

  The status box in the helmet display showed LAUNCH -0:05.

  Court tightened his grip on the little white box. The transponder’s green light flashed momentarily, reminding him that it was on and ready to respond to the Willow Wisp’s locator signal.

  LAUNCH -0:03.

  Deep breath, Court.

  LAUNCH -0:01.

  He didn’t feel anything and then without warning it felt like the weight of the world was pressing down on him. The outlines of the cargo boxes grew blurry and everything went black.

  EPILOGUE: ELLE

  Elle watched the water ripple in her glass in response to Bear’s bouncing leg. Their advocate seemed indifferent to their distress as he read on his tablet.

  He looked up when someone knocked on the door. A woman stuck her head in and asked if she could have a minute with his clients.

  “Of course.” He left them alone in the room with the woman without asking for their opinion on the matter.

  “How are you two holding up?”

  “Do we know you?” Bear asked.

  “That’s right, you haven't seen me since my alterations. It's Ursula.”

  Elle leaned forward and studied the woman. Her hair color was different, the nose and cheekbones were wrong, and contact lenses obscured her eyes. Her voice sounded familiar but not right. Elle didn’t believe she would misremember Ursula that much even though it had been weeks since they’d seen her.

  “You don’t look like Ursula,” Bear said.

  “Reclamation leadership sponsored a physical identity redesign for me. Facial reconstruction and vocal cord alterations to change my voice. I’m like a whole new person. No facial recognition or voice analysis system will trigger on me now.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ll have to excuse me for being skeptical.”

  “Then ask me something that only I’ll know.”

  “Tell me about when we met,” Elle said.

  “You came in with Court. He looked sick.”

  “What did you give him?”

  “Water, in a chipped glass. And then you let Maud swindle you out of sixty qynars.”

  “It really is you.”

  “I told you.”

  “Do you know how Ainsley and Wilm are?” Bear asked.

  “I do. I wish it was all good news. Both have new clean identities with no debt records, same as you. Ainsley has full use of her leg now. Unfortunately, Wilm got himself into some trouble trying to restart Britt’s antiviral smuggling operation. We’re doing what we can but chances are he’ll be spending some time in a forced work program.”

  “That kid is more heart than head.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “What about Court?” Elle asked.

  “Still nothing. No word from the Willow Wisp, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t successful. They might have reasons for keeping quiet.”

  “You didn’t come here to see us in person because there was no news,” Bear said. “What’s going on?”

  “The reason the leadership had me change my appearance is because I was raided. One of the agents you tangled with, a man named Wilkes, was out for revenge. They took everything, including the original data vault and all the copies I’d made of the data. I’d only gotten a fraction of the information distributed to other parts of the Reclamation. They’re funding some research projects based on the bits we’ve been able to piece together, but it will be a long road. I wanted to let you know so you’d be cautious… We don’t believe the ruling will go in your favor today. We think they’re going to sentence you to an off planet forced work program.”

  “A red ship?” Bear
said and wrapped his big hands around the back of his neck.

  They sat in extended silence until the advocate came back into the room. “The committee is ready for us.”

  “Good luck,” Ursula said.

  She didn’t follow them into the hearing room where three women and two men sat on a platform several inches higher than the rest of the room. A handful of onlookers were in flimsy chairs at the back. Elle didn’t recognize any of them.

  “Eleanor Blake and Quinton Basque, the two of you were caught attempting to remove wards of the state from an officially sanctioned Aldebaran research facility. You misrepresented your identity to Aldebaran staff. You bribed or attempted to bribe numerous employees. You were in possession of stolen Aldebaran property, including uniforms and ID bands. The research facility in question is a high security installation. The seriousness of your actions cannot be overstated. After hearing from the affected parties, calculating restitution, evaluating your lifetime earning potential, and factoring in the specific circumstances, the conclusion of this committee is to assign you to involuntary labor aboard high orbit service ships. Because of the collaborative nature of your actions, you will be assigned to different ships to remove the opportunity for future collusion. The next launch is in nine days. You will remain in custody until that time. Thank you to the committee members for their thoughtful deliberation on this matter. This hearing is concluded and you are dismissed.”

  THE END

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  Rook Winters is a tea-fueled writer with a weakness for dad jokes. He lives in New Brunswick, Canada with his family and is definitely a dog person. Weight of Ashes is his second novel.

  Learn more at rookwinters.com, follow @rookwinters on Twitter, or search for Rook Winters Author on Facebook.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The seed of the idea for this book came from a satirical sci-fi short story I wrote in 2017 about alien bureaucrats expropriating Earth to use as a nursery for the larval development stage of their offspring. Since the larvae are non-sentient omnivores with voracious appetites, the aliens are evicting humans for their own safety. The story is structured as a series of letters and memos over a 200 year period.

  At some point, I will edit that story and release it. You can sign up for my newsletter at rookwinters.com to make sure you get a copy when I do.

  When it came time to write this novel, I didn’t want to do a comedic story, but I was intrigued by the notion of a gradual, non-military invasion. On the recommendation of sci-fi author Cary Caffrey, I read The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man while conceiving the plot of this book. It was a good reminder not to underestimate the terrifying potential of economic influence combined with targeted violence. Big military actions aren't the only way to devastate a people group.

  In Weight of Ashes, we don’t see the first contact event or the early decades when the aliens are peacefully building up their economic and political clout because a lot of that time period would have seemed like utopia. Instead, we start in the dystopian aftermath in which humans are second-class citizens and the colonizers are taking away even more rights. Writing it made me wrestle with some tough realities. I hope reading it does the same for you.

  Thank you to everyone who read the various versions of this story. Your feedback and encouragement were critical. Special thanks to Ally, Ann, Craig, Gavin, Jacqueline, Kim, Mark, Mel, and Steve.

  Most importantly, thank you to Beth, my great love. I never take your support and trust for granted.

  GIVING BACK

  I have pledged a minimum of ten percent of my proceeds from this book to global relief and development aid. Please join me in supporting the work of organizations that tackle poverty and injustice. If you aren’t sure where to give, I recommend World Vision Canada for its financial accountability and the integrity of its leadership team.

  WEIGHT OF ASHES

  Copyright © 2018 by Rook Winters

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author except for brief quotations for review purposes or as otherwise allowed for by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  For inquiries regarding this book,

  please email rook@rookwinters.com