Wyst

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  “Yeah, I get it,” C’ynyt replied through clenched teeth. “I don’t like it, but I understand it.”

  “Good. Now tell me which looks to be their leader and then turn on the speaker so I may address him. I believe it will be either be Captain Pryntal or Dr. Jyrl.”

  Pulling the tresl away from his ear, C’ynyt glanced at the uniforms, looking for the one with the most bling. Spying the hawk-nosed man who’d stayed back behind the fight, C’ynyt smiled. “Are you Pryntal or Jyrl?”

  Watching the man blanch at the sound of his name, C’ynyt allowed his smile an evil edge as he pressed the speaker button on Pam’s phone before tossing it into the man’s lap. “You’re up, commander. Put the fear of Tsiran into them so we can put this shit behind us, yeah?”

  Chapter Twenty Four

  By degrees, Wyst slowly became aware of the sounds around him before any of his other senses engaged. Even before his brain made sense of the Gyed-awful shards of pain radiating out from a pinpoint of fire in his chest. In an effort to alleviate it, he tried shifting his body but was held back by two strong hands on his shoulders.

  “Shh, babe,” the pixie’s sweet voice advised. “You’re been injured and this is just another thing to make you better.”

  He tried to answer her, but he couldn’t make his mouth work. So he tried to opening his eyes, willing his heavily weighted eyelids to lift. But that was a fruitless effort as well. However when he relaxed back into the softness underneath him, he felt the flutter of her thoughts and emotions beat inside him. Although they all ran together in a way he couldn’t understand.

  “He needs to sleep, but I’m not comfortable giving him any more of the herbs,” an unfamiliar feminine voice cut in, taking his mind away from the pixie’s mental voice telling him he was going to be okay, that he just needed to allow Blythe (whoever she was) to do her job (whatever that might be).

  What had happened? Why was he lying down and in such pain?

  “Our bodies aren’t as fragile as yours, my love. Give him enough to put him back out.” The gravely, male voice belonged to someone he knew but Wyst couldn’t quite remember his name or what he looked like.

  “He’s having trouble making sense of what’s going on and its scaring him.” He wished he could speak to deny the Pam-ah-la’s words. A warrior in the Picari Protectorate was fearless no matter what the circumstance! “Just give him a little more, Blythe, so we can get the transfusion going. That’s what needed, right? To replace some of the blood he’s lost?”

  “I think so, yes. But I’m uncertain how much his body needs in order to kick-start his natural healing mechanism.” There was the rustle of fabric and the sound of soft footfalls as the unknown female, one he knew wasn’t his mate, moved around the room. “I wish I knew if any of us could donate, C’ynyt, but…”

  That was the male’s name! C’ynyt. And he was…was a…the press of a cup on his bottom lip prevented him from completing the thought. And, after swallowing a sweet yet bitter brew in careful measure, the blackness again began to descend, but not before he heard C’ynyt next words. “Biologically we’re cousins, so we shouldn’t have any worries. Better to tap into one of my veins than poison his with human blood.”

  Sleep, my brave warrior. His female’s thoughts were a gentle balm and helped tip him over into a warm, dark, but safe place where there was no pain or the need to understand what went on around him.

  Then what felt like only a few minutes later, he was abruptly jarred awake by a deep buzzing sound, almost a growl that filled the space around him. With wahrom tingling, he shot to a sitting position and opened all his senses to find the danger his mind warned him was there.

  Close. Too near and not one of comfort!

  But what met his eyes made no sense.

  He was in some kind of sleeping quarters, that much he could determine from the bed and furniture. The fact he was only in his underwear, with nothing but a sheet to cover him seemed unusual in that he didn’t remember preparing for a sleep cycle. Especially when the sunlight escaping through the gaps in the window coverings said it was daytime.

  Wyst brought a hand up to his chest and discovered the area that itched so fracking much was covered by some loosely woven cloth. But that didn’t catch his attention as much as the needle sticking out of his inner elbow. As well as the rubber tubing which ran from it to the large muscular arm of the someone in bed next to him.

  What the frack?

  The sawing sound came again, giving him an idea of what had caused his wahrom to tingle in warning as if the noise heralded an attack of some kind. Although as Wyst let his eyes roam and his brain to process what he saw, he couldn’t help but grin. Unless Earth had a ‘death by snoring’ threat, he was good because it was just the Basule, stretched out beside him, their bodies connected by the rubber tubing. Although Wyst didn’t understand why they were connected.

  Much less sleeping together.

  If he’d had his choice of bed partners, the little pixie would do just fine instead of one of his mortal enemies. Finding himself weaker than anticipated, Wyst eased back down to the mattress as his brain became flooded by memories.

  There was a firefight with…with the members of the Searcher.

  C’ynyt by his side, yelling as he aimed and fired his (no, the pixie’s!) tresl in rounds too fast to follow.

  Yet he’d been hit, before staring down a...

  A young Picari male who held a tresl with shaking fingers, saying he didn’t want to harm one of the Protectors.

  His pixie’s voice telling him he needed to open his eyes and begin healing himself. As if that was possible, he thought with a mental snort. Everyone in the galaxy knew in order to heal, one had to be asleep.

  Rolling his head on the pillow, Wyst tried to make sense of what rolled through his mind.

  You’re awake!

  That I am, little one. Gyed, but it was good to hear her even if it was only in his head. Although he wished she was there beside him if for nothing else but to provide the kind of salty/sweet comfort only his tiny flower gave. Where are you, leca purvya?

  Dani, Reg and I are at the bar. How do you feel? Do you still hurt?

  He did a quick assessment before replying. My body is mending but the noise C’ynyt emits during his sleep cycle hurts my ears.

  Wyst was hit by a wave of warm caring, one bordered in delighted laughter. A blend of emotions so strong it found him holding his breath. Dani says we’re gonna close up early since most of our regulars are dealing with the repairs of their own shit from last night’s doings. So I’ll see you soon, okay?

  Yes. I hope to see you soon as well, mica jain.

  “Stop pulling on the goddamn tube, dude!” C’ynyt’s sleepy command took Wyst right out of the honey-coated mingling of thoughts between him and the Pam-ah-lah and back into the present. “Shit fucking hurts when you’re unmoving but you dicking around, getting all antsy as fuck, makes the damn thing worse.”

  “I apologize. But what is this?” Wyst let his fingers roam over the contraption in his arm and followed the tubing until his hand met warm skin that wasn’t his own. “Why are we connected this way?”

  “Think of it as a fucking necessity. You almost died, warrior. Lost a lot of blood.” The burly, former pirate paused as if to let what he was saying sink in. “Since we don’t know if our kind can handle human blood, I offered some of mine to help lead you to your healing path.”

  Somehow and in some way, Wyst better understood C’ynyt’s speech in that moment than he had in all the other times than before. Than he did when the male spoke in the crazy slang which hadn’t been included in the sleep tapes in his efforts to learn English. But which seemed to echo his little sprite’s way of speaking. “Thank you.”

  “Naw, don’t worry about it,” the male replied. “Since we’re basically the same species, I was your only hope. Glad to help out.”

  “I remember the word ‘cousins’ being used,” Wyst started, not quite sure what he wanted
to ask, but feeling the need to explore the connection he and C’ynyt had between them. A physical kind of similarity he didn’t understand since other male and his entire race were purported to be his bitter enemy. “What does it mean?”

  A large sigh echoed in the air as Wyst felt the other man turn as evidenced by the way the tubing on his arm shifted and moved in an uncomfortable way. “Didn’t anyone ever give you a history lesson? One from the time before each of the planets in the Picarian system decided to call it quits and keep to themselves?”

  Wyst considered C’ynyt’s words, thinking back to his studies although the lectures on ancient records weren’t his favorites. He remembered certain points of interest, like the initial battles with the wet, snake-like Isilks, the posket-bent beings who required the Picari life force in order to hatch their young. Or of first major battle with the Basules who thought to take out a battle-cruiser. But on the whole, Wyst was a disinterested student, preferring to concentrate on honing his physical skills in weapons and fighting. “I do not remember any such teachings.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe the Picarian leaders don’t teach that crap anymore because it kinda makes you and yours look like nothing but a bunch of assholes.”

  Wyst inhaled sharply in shock. He’d never heard anyone express such disrespect for the men who led and governed Galaxia and Nutrol. Leave it to a blue-lipped pirate to deride those leaders who’d kept the Picarian solar system safe and thriving throughout history.

  “As near as I can figure, the shit really hit the fan about two, maybe two and a half thousand yons ago. Before then, there we all were. Just one big happy plyca made up of five viable planets, each of us doing our thing and just getting on with life. That’s when we called ourselves ‘Baspics’. We had one common language, did a lot of inter-planetary business on different levels. Married and created younglings…you know, like, worked nothing but the happy life.”

  Wyst waited, his mind caught on more than a few points C’ynyt had revealed. Those of five planets and one common language, the trade. On certain levels it was still the same, but there was something in the other male’s voice that told a different story than what Wyst knew to be true.

  “At some point, there was one guy who didn’t like the fucking status quo. A rebel-rouser who needed to shake things up in order to gain power and more money.” The other male sighed and ruffled the sheet spanning the two of them. “There’s always one in every crowd. Unfortunately, this dick caught the attention of more than a few people. And it didn’t take long before his ideas started to become popular, gaining support in the most unlikeliest of places.

  As time passed, this ass-wipe got a wild hair and said, ‘Galaxia has a bead on technology and Nutrol knows crops and animals inside out. Ater has military strategy down pat and the beings on Brate know mining inside and out. Casticians are born traders, so maybe we should, concentrate our efforts on our planets individual strengths since it seems that kind of crap will give us the most bang for our buck.”

  Wyst followed what C’ynyt proclaimed because it was true. Galaxia revered technology while Nutrol was the supplier of crops and animals. Ater called itself a utopia where everyone was equal, but in truth was a planet of smelting factories and collieries. Processing the minerals and metals mined from uninhabited planet of Brate which provided limnet, a power source for all the worlds in their galaxy. Especially the Picarian fleet of starships.

  The hidden world of Castic was named as the traders of their system, providing whatever was needed to whoever needed it and had the credits to pay their inflated prices.

  “The first order of business was to rid Brate of the slime-worms, the race we all called Isilks, who were actually dedicated to peace and justice. But since their planet was rich with the threads they spun, threads which could be rendered into beautiful cloth, not to mention the veritable treasure of minerals held within what the rest of the planets called ‘uninhabitable’, they were the first to be overtaken. Even though the shitheads on Galaxia who thought sending the nonresistant bastards to another world in a far-off galaxy would keep ‘em quiet were sorely wrong.”

  A niggling in Wyst’s brain, a shred of a memory tried to come to the surface with the other male’s tale. He had heard something of this. Of how Isilks were his enemy because they didn’t look like the rest of the Picari peoples. That wet, swollen-looking worms weren’t humanoid and should be destroyed at every opportunity. Yet their world held the silk for those of means within the Gal-Trol’s borders. Silk which could be spun into garments so expensive only those with the means to afford it could wear.

  Yet the makers of such threads were unwanted.

  Bad.

  Because to appear different was to be ‘bad’ on several levels. Or so Wyst had been taught.

  “Yet there were more than a few people who didn’t like the new thinking. Ones who spoke up when it was announced Brate was clear of its peaceful, fruitful populace. Who mourned the deaths incurred as our leaders decimated their society. And who began to question the division between our different planets and the social stratas. Because at that time, Galaxia wasn’t only inhabited by scientists and programmers, anymore than Nutrol was populated by only farmers or ranchers. Are you getting my drift, warrior?”

  Wyst, so caught up in what the Basule was relating, could only nod before realizing in the dimness of the room his movement wouldn’t be seen. “Yes. But I must admit, I’ve never heard of this as a whole. In whispers and to provide realism to whatever tale was being told by either the priests or acolytes, yes. I understand what you are saying.”

  “Can I continue or have you had enough?” Why did C’ynyt’s voice hold the fringe of laughter with his question?

  “I would prefer to know the entirety of your knowledge, Ba…C’ynyt.”

  There was a space, more than just a couple of dueling heartbeats before the other male, the one on the other side of the mattress began to speak again. Yet when it came it was softer, more vulnerable. “When I was with them, we called ourselves the Sulari.”

  Wyst considered the term, comparing it to what he’d been trained to recognize since he could remember, in order to name the race he’d been taught to call his enemy. ‘Ba’, in Picari meant ‘against’ or ‘antagonist’. But ‘Sulari’ was the word for a life-sustaining truth in the old Baspic language. People fighting for the sentient legitimacy as deemed by the gods was how Wyst parsed C’ynyt’s name for his race into a cohesive phrase.

  Against the truth, was the shortened version.

  A naming which made the label of ‘Basule’ an unthinkable slur. Especially when Sulari meant the fight for truth, the fullness of what the Picari deities provided to each and every soul on all the planets.

  “My ancestors fought against that way thinking. Of the iconoclastic ideas of planetary-separatism. When we fought against it too much and too hard, we were corralled into pens, genetically marked with blue hair, lips and genitalia as traitors. That our irises were re-colored to purple was just an added goddamn bonus. As if that wasn’t enough, we were relocated to a small planet and left there with only the minimum of tools and supplies while told to ‘eke out an existence if you can’.”

  The emotional hitch in the male’s breath wasn’t hard to miss in his recounting.

  Wyst found every hair of his body standing at attention as he listened, took in and processed the other male’s words, even as the tube in his arm accepted the necessary life-force from his former foe. He hated to interrupt but there was something he needed to know. “How then did you become pirates?”

  “What choice did they leave us?” Wyst couldn’t help but to turn his face to look at the male lying next to him, even as the other man flung a forearm over his eyes as if to block out the vision of something enacted so long ago. “For a time we received an annual visit to replenish our tools, seed and stock. Actually I think it was mostly to assuage their fucking conscious for what they’d done to my people. But we got ‘em back because in the fifth yon afte
r relocation, the Sulari took over that ship. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Wyst didn’t know when C’ynyt’s tale found him holding his breath, not until he let in out on a long exhale. All he knew was the male’s story rocked him at a deep level. Especially because he and his warrior brothers experienced a similar treachery by the very people in power he’d naively thought had the continuation of their species as the primary goal. “How did you come to be here then?”

  “Was on a starship when one of your battle cruisers hit us hard, disabling our telemetry and a couple of our engines. Unable to control the ship, we shot through the galaxy until we were sucked into what I think was a worm hole. When the systems began to fail, we piled into a life pod, twice the number as recommended, just minutes before our craft exploded to hell and beyond. I was the only fucking one to survive when we entered Earth’s atmosphere.”

  As both men went silent, each wrapped in their own thoughts, Blythe poked her head in. “I think he should have enough to start healing. Can I disconnect you now?”

  “Yeah, babe,” C’ynyt muttered, and Wyst wondered at how weak the other man sounded. “I’ll need some fluids too.”

  Blythe flew to his side with a look of such loving concern Wyst had to turn his eyes away. Soon he felt the a tugging on the tube in his arm. “It might sting a little when I take the needle out, babycakes.”

  “Do your worst, woman,” came the answering growl. “And stop calling me ‘babycakes’, for fuck’s sake. Especially in front of a warrior!”

  “Where’s my pixie, do you know?” Wyst tried to follow their connection but either she was shielding him or out of range.

  “She and Dah’Ani went to get your belongings from the motor lodge. While you and my husband needed to be still for the transfusion, we thought it’d be better if you and your mate move in here for a while.” Blythe’s hands were gentle and Wyst couldn’t help his eyes shifting to look at her directly as she bent over him. Her large brown eyes were very beautiful and expressive. Though not quite as much as the Pam-ah-lah’s.