The Last Cycle

by A. R. Knight

  Starships crash, miners misfire, or an ambush catches a pair off-guard. There’s a million ways an Oratus can die in this galaxy, and most of them don’t live all that long for it. Yet Sax has seen enough to learn his way of life is wrong. Or, at least, it’s in the service of the wrong thing. The wrong species.

  Being alone with his thoughts is the worst thing Sax can imagine. Well, not the worst thing, because where he’s at now, sequestered in a holding-tank of a cell, with a white ring-light up top for company, undercuts the awfulness of his imagination with the slicing knife of solitude. Not that Sax minds being alone - he prefers it to most company - but these tight walls, forming up square around the large Oratus, compress his single self until Sax is overcome with the impossible urge to

  GET OUT.

  The hissing roar goes nowhere. Bounces around the cage, makes Sax sick of his own voice. Still, it feels good to yell, to do something. He sticks out his foreclaw, running it along the chromed sides of his cell. There’s not enough room for Sax to extend his arm fully, so the strike, when he makes it, is haphazard and awkward. Even so, an Oratus’ strength should be enough to make a mark.

  The walls remain unblemished. They show Sax’s distorted reflection haloed in the light from above. Four arms sporting clawed hands, though his razors are no longer the organic originals. His claws gleam like the walls, like patches of his gray scales, ones stripped away and replaced with metal plating. Surgeries hiding the scars of his near death and giving evidence to the same. Sax’s tail wraps around his squatting talons, its tip twitching on occasion as an outlet for fraying, frustrated nerves.

  You gave yourself up for them.

  That’s the thought that keeps coming back. It calms Sax down, opens a mental gate to his pair and what Bas might be doing. Sax isn’t much for fantasy, for dreams beyond what he can see and kill, but in here he doesn’t have much choice, so when his hearts slow, Sax wonders.

  With the Cavignum, the planet Aspicis’ great power plant and the source of energy for his current prison, compromised, there’s a chance that right now Bas is launching an attack on the Meridia, which Sax is trapped inside. Evva, an older, larger Oratus and the leader of the force both Sax and Bas joined, would be acting on her plan, throwing her forces into an assault that could change all of civilization.

  The attack will likely get everyone killed and change nothing at all, but Sax can’t take that stance. He’s been bred not to fail, not to consider losing once a mission begins. He must fight to the last end, always striving for the goal. Before, the Chorus dictated that objective, and Sax, as a member of the Vincere, carried out the orders without a thought to a mission’s broader purpose or its affect on the galaxy at large.

  Now Sax centers himself on his pair. Factions change, worlds and space stations trade out for one another, but there is only one pair.

  He has to get out of here. For Bas.

  As if hearing his thoughts, there’s a light clicking and a series of hisses from above as the locks sealing Sax inside decompress and the hatch, the only way out of this room, swings up and open. Sax looks, not knowing what to expect, and bright light keeps him blinded. His vents, the slits in Sax’s long torso that feed his hungry muscles with air, take in the smells of life. Creatures are up there, and they don’t smell of dirt, of sweat and service. Higher officials, then, coming to gawk at their prisoner.

  The white glow shifts to a cerulean shade, the color of Aspicis’ sky, and a low-glowing band around Sax’s waist changes to match. As it does, Sax’s metal plates and claws tug too, a change in his localized gravity that sends Sax floating up from the floor and towards the opening on top. Sax is an awkward monster, and he has to help the ring bring his body through the hatch, but with scrabbles and contortions, the Oratus gets himself through.

  Most Meridia levels are tall, four or five meters high to allow for the variety of species, including Oratus that come marching through its halls, and this level is double that to account for the prisoners. Sax emerges from his cell into a black and red space, the latter’s bright color sectioning the various cells that Sax is now hovering over. Most are dark, but a few, like his, have a white-blue halo around the top.

  Sax’s view of the other cells vanishes quick, however, as sealing walls rise to cut Sax off from the rest of the level. Escape prevention, private interrogations, all sorts of devious deeds would be possible without prying eyes. The walls are the same black, shiny tile used everywhere else, and Sax bets the Amigga can run current through those tiles to stun or kill anyone stupid enough to try an escape.

  The first priority in a new, hostile space is target identification, followed by target elimination. Sax figures his death is imminent, and making that death expensive is the best move he’s got.

  The ring around his waist keeps Sax moving until he’s closer to the level’s ceiling, which leaves his talons a meter off of the floor. Without leverage, all Sax can do is wave his tail around, and when he sees his target, he stops. A single tail whip isn’t going to do much to the mirrored Oratus waiting with a miner drawn and ready to deliver an instant execution.

  “I beat you already, didn’t I?” Sax hisses at the Oratus, whose scales would blend in more fully with the light, but whose recent scars leave long lines of puckered red and pink through his reflective coating.

  Sax gave Kah those scars, and it’s always fun to remind your enemies that you won. Sax would go even further, remind Kah about every thrashing blow delivered outside of the mag-lev train station in the vine jungles of Aspicis, but it seems like a waste of energy. Kah’s not worth it.

  “Is that why you’re floating in our prison?” Kah hisses a reply.

  “I gave myself up.”

  “Nobody cares,” Kah says, but there’s a sigh that whistles out of his vents. “But as you surrendered once, perhaps you’ll consider doing it again.”

  A deal. This wouldn’t be Kah’s idea, then. No three-letter Oratus would strike a bargain with a captive. Better to eliminate the threat and move on to other things, especially when that threat is Sax, who, given an inch of freedom, will take every possible measure of revenge.

  “Speak,” Sax hisses.

  “I was going to,” Kah replies. “You don’t have any right to command me here.”

  “They’ve kept you locked up in here too long. You don’t know how to threaten someone properly.”

  “I don’t need to threaten you.” Kah gestures with the miner, as if the weapon’s going to do his job for him.

  “If you’re just going to shake that miner, then at least give me a Flaum to scratch. I’ve gone too long without a real meal.”

  Kah gives Sax a hissing laugh for his trouble. “Your pair and that mass of prey are preparing to launch an attack on the Meridia. They will lose.”

  The words clear up Sax’s fog. He didn’t know whether the attack had started yet, whether Bas and the others had made it free from the Cavignum after Sax’s gambit. Kah just confirmed both. Sax hopes a razor grin he can’t repress doesn’t give it away.

  Kah, though, isn’t watching him. Instead, the Oratus is glancing further back through the level. Kah’s looking through the one side of the square cell that didn’t rise, and while Sax doesn’t have a view to what Kah’s looking for, he can guess.

  Mirrored Oratus always have masters.

  “If you come out against the assault, if you help us turn their forces to our side.” Kah turns back to Sax, his voice a low rasp. “The Chorus is willing to guarantee your life, along with your pair’s. Your crimes will be forgiven, and you will have a choice of returning to Solis or choosing a planet of your desiring on which to retire.”

  Retire. Few Oratus get that chance, and the ones that do only receive it because of crippling injury. Any Oratus that can fight would, will, wants to fight. That is their purpose. That is their calling. Despite his life being tied to the idea, Sax snorts at the word before he considers what Kah even said.

  “Perhaps,” Kah allows at Sax’s sound -
he would understand, too, the insult in the idea of retirement. “We could arrange for a strategic post. Someplace where you could find plenty of entertainment.”

  Meaning things to slaughter. This would be better, except Kah’s offer comes with a deal-killer: Sax isn’t going to turn against his pair, against his former commander Evva and the cause he’s joined. Not to go back to the Chorus and their pack of traitorous manipulators.

  “You already know my answer,” Sax says.

  Kah glares in response. Matches Sax’s eyes for a long moment before the mirrored Oratus dips his head in a nod that, Sax thinks, carries a tiny bit of respect with it.

  “There is no other offer,” Kah replies, though the words come rote; a question whose answer is known, which must nonetheless be asked. “Accept, or you will never see Bas again.”

  Her name this time. A sweetener, and if Sax were a weaker species, he might fall into the trap of possibilities; imagined futures laid out before him with a single, simple yes dividing their brilliant promise from his miserable present.

  “There is no other answer,” Sax says. “I will not betray her.”

  Again the nod. This time, though, Kah’s motion is joined by a whirring noise from beyond the cell. The sound of micro-jets pulsing up, sending their cargo this way. Sax has sent the signal, and now he’s going to see what the Chorus cares to do in response. Maybe they slaughter him here. More likely the Chorus will use the opportunity; a staged execution for all the galaxy to see. It’s how traitors ought to be dealt with.

  Sax has seen plenty of them himself. And cheered along with the rest of the Vincere when those dissidents were brought to fatal justice.

  Kah steps across the room, behind Sax, as a pair of Flaum guards enter through the opening Kah’s been glancing toward this entire time. These aren’t average Flaum, small furry creatures with a penchant for squeaky conversation. No, these are armored in Chorus blue, carrying assault miners in their hands with secondary weapons attached around their waists. They stare at Sax with fierce focus that impresses the Oratus. If the average Vincere Flaum possessed this level of grit, it’s possible the Oratus wouldn’t be needed at all.

  “So you are bringing me dinner,” Sax hisses anyway, because it’s more fun to keep the prey unbalanced.

  “Quiet,” Kah hisses slow from behind Sax. “This isn’t time for games.”

  And when what’s following the Flaum, when the source of those micro-jets, slides into the room, Sax can only agree.

  3 A Farewell

  “What was it like?” I ask Malo later, when it seems like the two of us will go uninterrupted for a brief speck of time. “With Ignos, and the Sevora?”

  Malo’s slow in answering that question and I understand why - back when I’d been the only one with a Sevora in my mind, even coming up with the words to describe how it feels to have something else inside you was a struggle. And that’s when Ignos was trying to help me.

  “At first it was like this,” Malo says, and he’s looking away from me, over towards the wall, but he’s not really seeing the cold steel there either. “I woke up in a strange room with Flaum coming and going. I noticed their badges right away, and knew I’d been taken.”

  The furry Sevora captives had made sure Malo was healthy, to some degree, before doing anything else. Malo expected to be taken right away, but instead they ran him through strange machines. With miners and guards, Sevora scientists had poked and prodded Malo until, one morning, a green-shaded Whelk oozed into his room and told him it was time.

  “I wanted to fight, but Kaishi, there was nothing I could do,” Malo says, his fists clasping and releasing. “Every time I tried to do something they didn’t order, they’d shoot me. I spent a lot of time stunned, waiting to die.”

  That’s not what happened, though. Instead, the Sevora hustled Malo off to one of the big birthing centers, where rectangular pools full of dark ink swirled as lines of captive species waited to receive their Sevora hosts under heavy guard. The Flaum took Malo to one end, to a smaller pool with no line.

  “Meant for special Sevora, or so they told me,” Malo continues. “I went right up to the edge and looked over, said a prayer, and with their miners aiming at my back, stepped in.”

  The first touch of a Sevora on the mind is like the fading remnants of a dream - something else present in your consciousness, something that isn’t quite real. Unlike the dream, though, the Sevora never go away. With me, I could feel Ignos’ thoughts, its frustration as it tried and failed to crack my neural code and take complete control of my body. With Malo, the loss of himself was almost instant.

  “As if I was a series of locks, and I could feel it picking me apart one by one,” Malo says. “My arms, fingers, legs, then my eyes and mouth. Then I was a visitor in myself.”

  I want to continue, because I can tell that Malo’s still broken from that experience and I want to fix him. Or at least try. When my room’s door opens, though, and Viera’s there, her face tells us our time is up.

  “Can you walk?” Viera says to me.

  “I think so?”

  “Good, because Kolas says it’s time to say goodbye.”

  Getting out of the sponge bed is my first big test. After fighting my way onto and off of the Sevora homeworld, into and then through an entire seed ship, it’s disconcerting to try and stand only to fall over when my legs fail to balance. Malo catches me, holds me steady while Lan watches from the entry.

  “We’ll wait for you,” the Oratus says. “Take the time you need.”

  “Suppose their sense of urgency is gone now that the Sevora are dead,” Malo says.

  Maybe, but I get a different feeling from the lingering stare Lan gives me before she leaves. I was the one, after all, who killed her pair. Who drove a metal shaft through the Sevora that’d taken up residence in Gar’s mind. I don’t feel hate from Lan, but then, I don’t feel much of anything from her.

  “What is an Oratus like when they lose their pair?” I ask Malo as we make our way from my room.

  “I think they’d be like us,” Malo says. “When we lose someone we love.”

  We’re in a medical wing, as there are plenty of other rooms near mine whose occupants are making a variety of groaning, gasping, or chittering noises. Drones flit and wheel across the floor, trundling into and out of those same rooms, with a sharper shout or sudden, happy sigh as evidence of their work. Outside of each chamber, covering the spaces between, are large panels showing names and colored bars with values for things I don’t understand.

  I look at mine, and it’s all blank. Only my name, in luminous green, sits at the top. All of my bars are deep black and gray. Zeros abound. According to this thing, I’m dead.

  “Won’t be like that for the next one,” says a gravel-squeak behind me, and we turn to see an older Flaum looking around us to my screen. “We learned a lot about humans from the three of you. All about your insides, how they’re juicy. Plenty of things would be happy to have you for a snack.”

  “Uh, thanks?” I offer as Malo recoils. “Who are you?”

  “Your doctor, such as it is,” the Flaum, who’s wearing a soft blue mask around his fur, shrugs. “All I’m here for is to make sure the robots keep things on schedule, lend a hand if one of’em loses their minds.”

  “Robots can lose their minds?”

  “They can rot like anything else,” the Flaum says. “Throw a new situation at them, like you, and they’ll have no idea what to do. So I step in, teach’em that you’re a carbon-based creature and need some good old red blood to survive.”

  I’ve already thanked the Flaum, so the best I can think of to do is give the creature a nod. The Flaum, though, doesn’t seem to want to stop and reaches out with his clawed hand, tracing a line across my stomach and up towards my heart until I grab the offending limb and hold it.

  “Sorry,” the Flaum says, looking at his trapped hand. “Just remembering where we fixed you. The new parts should be better than your old ones. You’re welcome.
”

  Before I can respond, the Flaum slips his hand free of mine, wheels to another room and stomps away, leaving Malo and I staring after him.

  “Better than the old ones?” I ask Malo, hoping the Charre warrior paid attention when the Flaum was fixing me.

  “Like Ferrolite said, they grew everything,” Malo looks away, shakes his head. “I don’t understand how, or what happened, but they said you were dead and now you’re back.”

  I could press him for more, but there’s pain in those eyes, frustration. I know it too - ignorance breeds anger, despair, and worse. So I drop it, resolve to ask Ferrolite later, or maybe T’Oli. The Ooblot seems like it would know about this.

  We leave the medical wing through what appears to be a sheet of glass, one that shimmers as we approach and, when we walk through, leaves my skin, mouth, and eyes with a tingling feeling.

  “You get used to it,” Malo says as we continue on. “They’re everywhere on the ship. T’Oli calls them purifiers, says they keep us all from infecting everyone else.”

  One more miracle to add to the list.

  “If we can get things like this, the Chorus might not be that bad,” I say slow. “I don’t trust the Amigga, but this would save so many lives. Every summer, we lose so many to sickness.”

  Malo doesn’t reply as we walk down the long hallway. It’s wide and crowded with passing drones and myriad species. While the Sevora leaned into Flaum and Whelk, species I assume they could control, maybe even breed with little effort, the Vincere are a more diverse bunch. Groups of trunk-like Teven pass by, their carapaces ornamented with all sorts of designs, and larger, rock-like monsters roam, carrying materials or sporting large harnesses covered in what look like tools.