by A B Lucian
Sabina jumped over the table separating her from him, knocking down a few tubes and needles, and hit the old arkanian in the neck with the butt of her gun. The arkanian croaked and his eyes bulged. His hands reached for his throat as he leaned against the table behind him.
Sabina sheathed the sword. The old arkanian was alone. She looked him up and down. Were the scales on his face pale from the shock of seeing her or because of his old age? As he leaned on the table gasping for air with his crooked, bent back, the arkanian was still two feet taller than her. Sabina didn’t let him recover, she reached behind his head, where the scales were thicker and larger than the rest. She wrapped her fingers around the largest and pulled. The old arkanian howled in pain, forgetting his throat. The largest of the scales shielding the cluster of nerves at the back of an arkanian’s head was excruciating if handled properly. Someone inexperienced might have pulled too hard and caused enough pain to knock him out, but Sabina was anything but inexperienced.
She kept a firm grip on the scale and pulled the arkanian closer until the brittle bones in his shoulders cracked and his face was inches away from her gun. “The old man, my grandfather, you have him on this ship. I know for sure. Take me to him now or I’ll show you what else I know of arkanian physiology.”
The old arkanian groaned and for a second seemed to consider not complying with her demand. Sabina’s grip tightened, and she jerked the scale while pushing the gun against his front teeth. The arkanian’s crazed eyes widened, and he nodded vigorously.
“Good,” Sabina said, releasing him. “Lead the way.” She encouraged him with her gun.
He stretched his back until it popped again and opened his mouth to say something, but must have thought better of it. A look of heavy weariness came over him and he ambled toward a door at the far end of the laboratory. It took them a minute to reach it. The arkanian stopped in front of it and pointed a shaky blue finger at the door.
“In there?”
The old arkanian nodded.
She hadn’t expected to succeed on her first try. “Any guards inside?”
The old arkanian shook his head.
Sabina pursed her lips. “You better not be lying. What about Mikail?”
The old arkanian shook his head again. “No… There were two guards outside, but Lord Munov took them with him when he left.”
Sabina lowered her gun, and the arkanian seemed relieved. She shot him in the knee. He wailed and collapsed on the floor. “Be quiet or the next one goes through your skull.”
The old arkanian clamped a bloody hand over his mouth. He was even more pathetic now. His breaths were ragged, irregular and every time he exhaled, he moaned into his hand, sending snot and spittle through his fingers. Sabina rolled her eyes at the sight and approached the door. The control panel for the locking mechanism seemed similar to the one in engineering. She slammed her fist into the panel a few times, and remembered how this approach failed last time. She cursed whoever invented doors and pushed her armored fingers beneath the bent metal fixture of the panel. Hacking had never been one of her talents, but she had learned a few tricks on Luna.
The panel’s input pad and display came off with the fixture and Sabina reached inside. It was time to hack a door. She wrapped her fingers around a handful of wiring and yanked it out, successfully shorting every circuit locking the door. The locking mechanism buzzed and hummed and crackled, and at last a soft thrum from the door told her it had released the magnetic lock. The heavy door jolted, revealing a tiny gap, smaller than a thumb. She holstered her gun, slid her fingers between the door and the wall and pulled. She groaned against the weight, promising herself that next time she’d check if the old arkanian had a keycard. With a final heave, the door clinked and slid open.
Wreathes of smoke billowed out. She unsheathed her sword, covered her mouth and stepped inside the room. The place was wrecked: burned equipment, scorched and cracked walls, and blood spatters all over the floor.
“Grandfather,” she called. “Are you in here?” She followed the weak grunt she received as a response through the thinning smoke. She saw a foot at first, then a leg, and finally her grandfather leaning against an upturned steel table in the center of the room. “No…”
His legs sprawled in a limp ‘V’ and he propped himself against the table, holding his reddened hands against his slick red shirt. Sabina dropped the sword and crouched next to him. Where were the wounds? Which one should she tend to first? Which? Dammit, what was she supposed to do? Olexander opened his bleary eyes as she cradled his head with one hand. A massive cut above his brow sent a narrow river of blood down the side of his face, his lips were split and his nose bent hard to the right. She tried to wipe the blood away with her free hand, but only smeared it over his forehead and made it seep into his white eyebrows.
A piece of raw flesh fell from his mouth as he smiled at her.
She tried to control her breathing and forced herself to smile back. She pointed at the glob of flesh. “His cheek?” she asked, barely holding back a sob.
He chuckled in his throat and stared deep into her eyes with his two icy blue marbles. “He said— He said I couldn’t break his damn rope…” her grandfather rasped and choked. A rivulet of blood poured through the side of his mouth. She looked at his trembling hands. Deep canyons wound around his wrists, bone and cartilage visible through the openings. Every time he coughed or spoke, blood poured between his red, crooked fingers. Sabina nodded and smiled a tight-lipped smile. Her eyes filled and stung; it seemed the smoke was getting to her.
“I tried to keep him…” he gurgled, then continued. “I tried to keep him busy until you took control…”
“Shh, don’t speak,” she said as she pressed a hand over his to stop the bleeding. “You’ll get through this. You’ll heal.” The muscles in her neck twitched as she spoke. She had been through the same situation with her mother. She held her head, her bloody head, in her lap until she disappeared. Until her eyes grew cold and still, and the ambulance arrived—two hours late. She spent the two hours trying to keep her mother with her, speaking all sorts of nonsense to her, even sang to her. She still died.
Her grandfather shook his head and coughed. “I failed you, I couldn’t stop him. Forgive me.”
Blast all this smoke, choking her and stinging the backs of her eyes! “You didn’t fail,” she said and kissed his cheek. She shook her head firmly to deny what he said and to get rid of the tears welling in her eyes. “Yosh stopped the countdown. Mandessa is safe, 800 million people are safe. You didn’t fail.”
Her grandfather flashed a faint, red-toothed smile. “Leave, girl… Take Yosh and leave.” His hand lifted from a gaping wound in his chest and clutched her arm. It startled Sabina to feel his grasp again—weak, so weak. Not at all like on Mandessa where he bruised her arm even through her assault suit. So weak…
“We’re not leaving without you,” she told him. “We came here to get you.”
Violent convulsions and coughs shook her grandfather’s body. Just when Sabina thought it would never stop, he inhaled, and the seizure ended. The hairs on Sabina’s neck stood on end. Was he dead? He couldn’t be dead.
Olexander smacked his lips and opened one eye. “No,” he said, gasping. “You came here to save millions of lives. You came here because you are Protectors…” His grip on her arm tightened. It was good to feel some strength. “Promise me you’ll keep Yosh safe. Promise me the two of you will free Earth. Promise…”
Sabina jerked her head back at the magnitude of his request. “Free Earth? I…”
Another trickle of blood spewed from her grandfather’s mouth and his breath fluttered a few seconds. “No more arguing, girl…” Another cough racked him and he squeezed her arm until she had to grit her teeth to bite back a scream. “It must be you and Yosh. Find your father. Find your siblings. Free Earth! Free humanity. Bury me there, somewhere green, by a stream—”
He coughed again, louder and longer than before. After a minute
, the coughing faded to a soft wheeze. Olexander’s eyes looked past her. Blood trickled from his forehead into his eye, but he didn’t flinch. He was gone.
Sabina tightened her jaw until it hurt and allowed two tears to fall. They raced to her chin as her grandfather’s grip loosened. Sabina wanted to scream her lungs out, but that wouldn’t help. She returned the table to its original position and placed her grandfather to rest on it, his hands crossed over his chest. The path forward was clear now. She had to save Yosh and free Earth, nothing else mattered anymore.
Sabina left the room in silence, followed the trail of blood outside to a storage closet on the far side of the laboratory. Without uttering a sound, she choked the life out of the old arkanian hiding inside.
Chapter Twenty
Commander Kagos’s thick, gloved hand engulfed Yosh’s fingers and crushed them even though this was the hand Assai had mangled. Yosh struggled not to flinch; It had to hurt Kagos a hell of a lot more. He held the big arkanian’s gaze, wondering if the savage handshake would satisfy his desire for revenge. Kagos held his hand tight and allowed Yosh a good, long look at his face, turning it slightly to the right. The scabby wound Yosh had given him in the abandoned kitchen during their first encounter spread from beneath his jaw to the two dark holes of his non-existent nose. Yosh wasn’t sorry in the slightest. He hoped the stern look on his face conveyed that fact.
Yosh had come out of the engineering bay alone to speak with Kagos, while Captain Dupont stayed behind to hold the room with the dogs. Kagos had no idea the captain could only use one arm, so it was really just the captain’s reputation and the fear of the dogs keeping the arkanians out. If Kagos wanted to kill or capture Yosh, this was the perfect opportunity to do it. He seemed sincere though. His Enforcers’s weapons were lowered and Kagos himself was unarmed except for a huge dagger strapped to his belt. Yosh saw no signs of deception in his murky red eyes, just pain mixed with fear. Probably the same thing Kagos saw in Yosh’s eyes.
Kagos grunted and let go of Yosh’s hand. He turned away and paced back and forth with his hands behind his back, his shoulders swaying stiffly. Some delicate equilibrium in his physiology was ruined because of his tail’s removal, and now he seemed to compensate for every step he took just to keep his balance.
Yosh crossed his arms over his chest, thinking it made him look tougher in front of a corridor packed full of arkanian warriors. He cleared his throat. “So how will this work?”
Kagos stopped his pacing and waddled toward Yosh, his crooked face filling his view. “Me and my Enforcers will hide one deck above engineering and wait.” He shook his head. “You must do this yourself. You can’t trust any of us to fight by your side once Lord Munov arrives. It’s hard enough to control ourselves right now.”
Yosh’s eyes flicked to the snarling Enforcers. Nervous tapping of armored boots, fingers twitching close to the triggers of heavy rifles, fists clenching and unclenching, eyelids squeezed tight, nervous mumbling—Kagos wasn’t lying, the conflict in his Enforcers was so plain it would have been funny… If Yosh wasn’t alone in the corridor with them. He breathed in deep. “So you can’t fight alongside me, okay. Then how exactly are you helping me?”
The corners of Kagos’s mouth twisted into a snarl, popping the scabs of his wound. “We are helping you by not shooting you on sight!” He growled, his nostrils flaring. After he calmed down, he sighed and explained: “When Lord Munov gets here, we will seal the doors behind him and make sure other troops who don’t share our views won’t reinforce him. Release your damned dogs once he gets here and if that’s not enough shoot him or stab him. I don’t care what, but he must die.”
Yosh shrugged. “Sounds good, but I don’t think the dogs will attack humans. They don’t just do whatever I say. I think they genuinely hate arkanians.”
Kagos waved away his protest. “Fine then, use them as a distraction. Munov’s bound to have at least a few arkanian guards with him. The dogs can attack them and you’ll have your opportunity.” He smacked his thin lips together. “It means more arkanian deaths, but there’s nothing I can do for those too close to Munov or too weak minded to fight his programming.”
Yosh couldn’t deny that Kagos’s offer was a godsend, but he couldn’t forget his crimes so easily. He had killed Ghett and his family and countless others with his own hands and was now using Mikail’s genetic tampering as an excuse. Yosh was sure Kagos would have killed the slaves even without Mikail’s orders. The image of Ghett trying to gather his daughter’s scattered brains flashed through Yosh’s mind. Then Ghett himself sliding down the transport ship’s window with half his head gone. Kagos’s very presence made Yosh’s skin itch and his fingers yearned for the gun strapped to his hip. It was a good plan, but all Yosh heard was Ghett’s voice in his ear yelling for justice.
Yosh and Kagos stared at each other. With the newfound stoop in Kagos’s shoulders, their eyes were almost at the same level. This entire affair left a sour taste in Yosh’s mouth and Kagos didn’t seem thrilled either. Yosh calmed his twitchy fingers. Collaboration was their best chance at taking down Mikail, so Yosh nodded. “We have a deal.” They didn’t have to state it, it was a known fact—like the stars are hot or everyone dies in the end—after everything was over, if they were still alive, there would be a bloody reckoning between the two of them.
Kagos nodded back. His communicator buzzed to life and his two dozen Enforcers grew tense and readied their weapons. “Commander,” the voice started. “Lord Munov is coming. He’s on the engineering deck and approaching your position. He has four guards tailing him.”
Kagos turned his back to Yosh. “Acknowledged. Get yourself and your team to the upper deck. Don’t let him speak to you and don’t let him see you.” He gazed at Yosh. “We’ll be heading to the upper deck too.” He hesitated. “Arkanians respect strength,” Kagos said as his eyes surveyed Yosh’s entire height. “Despite your frail appearance, you proved yourself on Mandessa and again here. Time to show your strength to my crew. Kill Munov at any cost.”
His words caught Yosh off guard. A strange feeling spread through him. He looked beyond Kagos at the eyes of the Enforcers—red and fierce as usual, but something unusual appeared there now. Two dozen massive arkanian warriors, genetically modified to be fierce and fearless, looked to him with hope in their eyes. The fear of Mikail had driven them all to such drastic measures as putting their faith in a seventeen-year-old human. Yosh pitied them, but why should their wellbeing rest on Yosh’s shoulders? How had he gotten himself into a situation like this? Kagos’s entire task force waited for a reply from him. If they were to work together, it was better if he motivated them somehow, but what should he say? Something encouraging? Something witty?
He opened his mouth to speak when the metallic cover of the ventilation shaft blew away from the ceiling and crashed on the floor, rattling. A slim, curly haired shadow dropped into the corridor without a sound, landing amid the Enforcers. Yosh choked on his words. He readied to jump at them if they attacked Sabina, but they backed away and held their fire, despite readying their rifles toward the intruder. Yosh breathed easy for the slightest of seconds, but cringed when his sister lifted her gaze from the floor. He recognized the anger, the hate, the sadness, and the blood thirst in her eyes and his insides froze. She had returned alone. No, please no, he thought. He can’t be dead.
Yosh’s throat tightened, and he blinked to rid himself of the burning sensation behind his eyes. He was too shocked to react when Sabina unsheathed her long kohiri sword and pulled out her gun. Both weapons glinted in the dim lights of the corridor as she prepared to use them. Kagos shouted something at his sister. He told her about their intentions as fast as he could, but Sabina didn’t seem to notice him. She became a blur of motion as she dived into the group of Enforcers nearest to her. She spun among the five arkanians, hacking at their weapons with her sword and discharging her gun from up close. The arkanians’s rifles were no good to them at such a close range. By the time the
y took aim, Sabina either danced out of the way or slashed the muzzles aside.
“Stop her, damn you,” Kagos yelled at Yosh and shook him by the shoulder to bring him out of his catatonic state. Sabina was already spattered with arkanian blood from head to toe and two of the five Enforcers writhed on the floor. “Tell her to stop or I’ll order my men to open fire. Do it, blast you, Munov will be here any minute!” The other three Enforcers were hurt, but they discarded their rifles in time and were now using knives against Sabina. Another four edged along the group of fighters, their rifles aimed and ready.
Yosh shook his head and swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in his throat. He had thought they would rescue his grandfather, that they would sweep in, stop the countdown, grab the old man, and fly away. But they were too late. What was the point now? He’d been too late and too slow. He looked at a panicked Kagos as if he knew what he was doing and nodded. “Sabina,” he said, his voice creaking. “Sabina, stop. They’re here to help us kill Mikail. Stop, now!”
It took a few seconds for the words to reach Sabina. Hadn’t she even for a second wondered why the arkanians hadn’t attacked Yosh before she came? Had she blocked everything out in her fit of vengeful rage? Yosh couldn’t blame her. He knew the depths the rage flowed from and how unstoppable it was once it swept its way to the surface.
Sabina dodged two swipes from an arkanian hunting knife. Her eyes widened as the new information sank in and she turned her head to stare at Yosh. The butt of a rifle struck her in the chest and knocked her against the wall. Another four rifles gathered and pointed at her. One of the arkanians grabbed and pinned her against the steel wall, the blade of his large knife against her neck. Blood streaked across the arkanian’s face. He growled and heaved as he pressed the large blade against Sabina’s thin, white neck. A sliver of dark red emerged from behind the blade and slid across Sabina’s skin down the thin neckline of her assault suit. Two others approached and snatched the kohiri blade and the gun from her.