Burning Bright

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I moved to the far side of the circular adobe building and looked at the other four structures. None of them were guarded, but the farthest one from me had a sliver of light coming out of the bottom of the door. It was also the largest building of the group, and it was made of bricks instead of adobe.

  I glanced over at the wall where the guards sat and waited until there was a burst of laughter from them before I ran. As soon as I made it to the next building, I stood still and listened to the men on the wall. They were laughing loudly now, and I was able to move toward the door. This one wasn’t locked, and I slowly pushed it open with my toe while I swept my submachine gun inside.

  This looked like a kitchen. There were eight fire pits, grates on the side of the building, and hooks hanging from the ceiling. The hooks were large, and I guessed they were made to hold the grasslands cattle. There was no one in this building, so I backed out of the room and checked the wall before I ran to the next closest door.

  As soon as I reached the door, a wave of numbness ripped through my muscles, and I leaned against the wall to keep from falling over. The sensation was beyond frustrating, especially because I’d felt half way decent since I puked, but it seemed like I wasn’t quite over the drugs yet.

  I moved to the doorway of the third building and tested the door. It was also locked, but I could hear snoring coming from the other side. I listened for ten seconds or so and guessed it was at least three men. My friends could have been in there, and the men could have been guarding them, but like the other building, I couldn't risk kicking the door in without checking the rest first.

  Thinking about these fuckers kidnapping my friends enraged me, but the thought of them as prisoners waiting to be sold into slavery made my vision turn red and my breath leave my lungs with volcanic urgency. I thought about Eve, and all time she already spent as a prisoner. She hadn’t sensed my presence and spoken to me yet. She was either unconscious, or not in this settlement anymore.

  I prayed she was just unconscious.

  There were two more buildings left, and I double checked the guard positions on the wall. I was exposed to three of the stations now, but the groups in the first two outposts didn’t seem to be paying attention to the central area of the town below them. However, the last group on my right appeared to be alert, and I let out a hiss of frustration after I watched them for a few minutes. They weren’t speaking to each other or looking around the rest of the campsite. They seemed to be focused on the last two buildings. They were doing their jobs, and this meant that I had a hard decision to make. Should I risk darting across the open center of the city so I could reach the last two buildings? Or should I infiltrate the caves of the cliff wall and try to take out the guards in each outpost silently? The latter was a slight change in plan, but I knew I was going to go there if I didn’t find my friends inside of any of these buildings.

  The sun was still rising in the distant sky, and I was running out of time to think through a strategy.

  I turned to where I parked the APC and darted back toward the first set of buildings. The first group of four guards was still laughing, whispering, and not paying attention, and I paused at the edge of the nearest building so I could study the cliff face.

  It was three levels, and each level was about four meters tall. Makeshift rope or wooden ladders connected the levels in various parts, but I also guessed the many cave entrances carved into the stone might have stairs leading to the other levels. The guard post was just a small balcony jutting from the third level of the cliff face, and the only way I saw to get up there was a ladder another ten meters past them to my right. I’d have to run directly under the sentries across the open courtyard, climb up the ladder, and then run back to them. They would surely notice me and blow a few hundred darts into my unarmored skull as soon as I set foot on the ladder.

  There was another ladder right below the guard balcony, but it only went up the second floor. Even if I somehow made it up there without the men noticing, I’d still have to figure out a way up to the third level, and there was no way I could make it up the ladder without them noticing.

  Each level had an adobe railing protecting people from falling off the edges. In my human form, I would be able to stand on the railing of the second level, grab on the lip of the third level, and swing myself up, but, I still didn’t have a safe way to get to the second level.

  Unless I shifted. Then I could make the jump easily.

  Changing to my tiger-man form would be too risky. I still didn’t know if my friends were being held here and I wanted to do this rescue with as much stealth as possible. I needed a way to get onto the second floor without alerting the guards at the first station, but I couldn’t see any sort of solution.

  I thought about going around the top side of the cliff, but the terrain there was less grassy hills and the more rocky beginning of a gorge. I’d have to run up, around, and through some chaotic terrain before I reached the top of the cliff. It would probably take me an hour on foot. The sun would have climbed high into the morning sky by then.

  I remembered the kitchen building and checked the guard station before I ran back to the circular building. The hooks hung from the ceiling with a good four meters length of chain, which in turn was attached to the stone with a metal dowel pin. I could easily climb up one of the chains, pull the pin out of another, and then use the hook to grapple to the railing of the second floor. Of course, that would be really fucking noisy. I’d be better off just shooting all the fuckers, climbing up to the third floor, and then killing the rest of the fucks before they could get organized.

  I looked at the metal shelving attached the walls. They were about four meters long, a meter deep, and I guessed they were crafted out of galvanized steel. They were attached to the wall with thick looking bolts and adobe legs to support them. The shelves almost looked as if they had once been sturdy fencing, and I wondered if they were remnants of the original ark ship pens that kept the livestock caged.

  I pinched my fingers onto one of the bolts and tried to twist it counter clockwise. The adobe crumbled around the joint, and the bolt started to spin in my fingers. The shelf was long enough to set against the base railing of the second floor. It would be at a steep angle, but I could run up it, flip up to the third floor, and kill all the guards there. I’d still have to worry about them seeing me set it against the railing, but the spot closest to the edge of the cliff might be dark enough to escape detection.

  I continued twisting the bolt as quickly as I could. It came out half a minute later, and I wiggled the shelf free of the wall. Then I folded my submachine gun, attached it to my belt, and moved to work on the next bolt. This one was a bit harder to move, and my fingers screamed with agony by the time I finished yanking it free of the wall. The shelf came free of its adobe legs with a quick jerk, and then I held the long plank sideways so I could get it out of the doorway.

  This was another hitch in my plan. The doorway was facing away from the guard station, but the shelf was long, and it might catch a bit of the corner as I carried it out. It was a risk I would have to take, though, and I prayed they would still be occupied with their discussion.

  I carried the shelf out of the doorway with my heart in my chest, and my breath held.

  The men laughed loudly when I was halfway out the door, and I paused to try and hear what they were saying. It did sound a bit like Japanese, but the dialect had been bastardized by a few thousand years of slang, so I could only understand one word out of seven. It wasn’t enough to get the gist of the conversation, so I focused my energy on carrying the shelf out. I slowly pulled the last bit of it out of the doorway, and then I quickly spun it around so its length was close to the wall of the building.

  The guards didn’t raise an alert, and I let the air out of my lungs with a silent sigh of thanks.

  I wasn’t going to be able to look at the guards without setting down my shelf, so this next part would also be perilous. There was no way around it though. If the
men didn’t see me, I’d be able to get it up without alerting them. If they did see me, I’d have to start hosing assholes earlier than I planned. I didn’t want to fight the entire town, but I was running out of time.

  I settled my nerves and darted out through the courtyard with the shelf.

  It was still dark, but there were a good ten meters between the edge of the building and the side of the cliff face. I glanced up as I ran, and saw the four men standing in a circle on the outcrop on the third floor. They were still laughing about something, and the only one facing me was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  I flipped the shelf up over my head, aimed it at the side of the balcony on the second floor, and then set it down as soon as I felt the edge touched the adobe. There was a bit of noise when the metal scraped across the clay, but the laughing men ignored it, and I scurried up the ramp like a monkey.

  As soon as I set foot on the railing of the second floor, I turned around to face the courtyard, jumped up to grab on the lip of the third floor, and flipped myself up onto the side of the railing. The guards were still laughing, and I felt a slow smile spread across my lips.

  They wouldn’t be laughing in a few seconds.

  I pulled my long knife out of its sheath and sneaked across the walkway toward the sound of laughter. It would be hard to take out four of them without them raising the alarm, but they were busy laughing, unprepared for me, and I was a fucking marine.

  And these assholes took my friends.

  I sprung out from behind the corner and grabbed the face of the one who had his back to me. He let out a gasp of surprise when my left hand closed around his mouth, and he started to gag.

  I slashed my knife out with a precise arc and sliced open the throat of the man standing to the left of the first fucker. A shower of blood sprayed across the other two men, but the third didn’t have a chance to gasp before I shoved my blade through his skull. The fourth man did get a gasp out, but I’d already pulled the blade out of his friend’s face, and I hammered the point home into his esophagus before he could follow up his gasp with a warning shout.

  The first man reached up to pull my arm and fingers free of his face, but I yanked down to pull him backward off balance. He clutched onto my wrist so he wouldn’t fall to the ground, and the knife spun in my hand as I reversed my grip on the blade. I stabbed him in the chest until he stopped twitching, and then let his corpse slide from my grasp.

  Their deaths caused the animal in my stomach to purr with pleasure, but then a small bout of dizziness almost brought me to my knees. I fought it off as I leaned against the side of the adobe, and then I went to work on the corpses of the men I just killed.

  I pushed the four bodies to the darker edge of the blood soaked balcony and took one of their hand axes. It was made out of a rough metal, but the edge was sharp enough to chop through anything that wasn’t armored. I wasn’t too familiar with the weapon, but I knew a few of the squads in Jupiter’s Marines carried well-crafted tomahawk melee weapons for close combat situations.

  There was an entrance to the cave systems next to the balcony, and I saw a distant glow of a burning torch. I glanced down the side of the cliff face to make sure the next outpost hadn’t sounded an alarm, and then I stepped into the narrow hallway leading into the rock wall.

  The tunnel was smooth, but it twisted to the right a bit as I walked. I guessed I had gone some twenty meters before I came upon the small burning torch. It hung on the wall over a long set of stairs, and I fought against a growl of frustration. The air inside the cave tunnel was cool and a bit damp. It made me think the tunnel continued deep into the rock, and the monster in my stomach thrashed with frustration.

  I walked down the stairs and hoped that my instincts were wrong.

  The steps continued for half a minute, and I came out of the hallway in a place which looked like the inside of an apartment courtyard. The space in the middle was much larger than I expected; at least five hundred square meters and the four levels were stacked with chiseled out alcoves that served as living quarters.

  There were at least two hundred of these alcoves, each with a cloth hanging across the opening for some privacy. Torches burned along the walls, but the area was a large cavern, and the light didn’t penetrate all the nooks and crannies of the various levels. The place carried a musky smell with a slight overtone of fecal matter. It made me think that, despite the size of the site, there were still way too many people living here.

  And I could hear their deep breathing, their snoring, and their restless movements. The whole city had no idea that an apex predator was in their midst.

  I didn’t see any guards or anyone awake, and the edges of each level were protected with a meter and a half high guard wall of adobe. If I were careful, I’d be able to sneak around this place, but I still didn’t know where my friends were, if they were even here, and I was running out of time before this city awoke.

  The stairs put me on the top floor of the four levels. I leaned over the edge of the rail and could almost see the bottom floor, but the angle was too acute. I could see all the other alcoves near me though, so I came up with the only plan I could think of: I’d sneak around the top walkways as quickly as I could, and keep an eye out for any alcove with bars instead of a cloth curtain.

  I set out at a light jog across the walkway of the fourth level. The dizziness returned after I’d gone a few dozen meters, but it wasn’t as bad as my earlier attacks, and I was able to fight this one off without halting my progress.

  My boots were too heavy for me to move at this pace with complete silence, but I didn’t think the noise of my passing would wake anyone up.

  I made it to the other side of the complex, but I hadn’t seen anything on the levels below that made me think my friends were being kept there. All of the alcoves had curtains, not bars, and I didn’t notice any guards.

  There were stairs on this end of the complex, but I ignored them and continued around to the other side of the fourth-floor walkway. Now I could see the alcoves beneath where I first walked, but these had no guards. My frustration grew as I circled back to my original position, and I debated going down the bottom floor or walking up the stairs to return outside.

  I was already here in the cave, so I decided to finish searching this place. Then I’d return outside, kill the guards, and try for the buildings. The decision didn’t make me entirely happy, but I couldn’t waste any more time pondering my next moves.

  I snuck down the rough cut stairs and ran into a woman running up them on silent, bare feet.

  “Dare desu ka?” she gasped with surprise, and the dizziness chose the perfect time to assault me.

  I dropped my axe and reached for her throat, but my movement was clumsy, and she back pedaled down the steps. She turned to run, but I caught her long black hair and got the point of my knife against her throat before she could scream.

  Fuck.

  “Where are the women?” I whispered in Japanese.

  “Women?” she gasped, and I could feel her body tremble against my chest.

  “My friends. Four of them. Your men attacked my ship and took them. Where are they being kept?”

  “I don’t--”

  “Don’t lie, I will cut you,” I hissed, but I knew I wouldn’t. I had no problem killing women soldiers who were shooting at me, but I knew I didn’t have the disposition to act out my threat against an unarmed female.

  “Please. I have a child growing,” she pleaded, and I glanced down her chest to see her slight bump over her stomach. Well, shit, now I definitely wasn't going to hurt her.

  “Help me, and I won’t hurt you,” I growled into her ear as I pulled her closer to my chest. “Four women. They were taken from me. I killed a bunch of your men and followed them here. Where are the women?” I tried to keep my words as basic as I could since her accent was all sorts of wrong.

  “They don’t let us outside during the Magate. I don’t know about any women. Please don’t hurt me.” Her
voice trembled almost as much as her body did.

  “You never leave?” I asked. “You never go outside?”

  “The Gayan will capture us, and they will give us to Magate, so they don’t have to give their own women. We don’t go out when they are here.”

  “Gayan is another tribe?” I asked.

  “Yes. Please. I have chi--”

  “Shut up,” I cut her off and pushed the tip of my knife into her throat a bit more. “When do the Magate come?” I asked.

  “This morning. We are hiding. I have seen no women. Please. If they find us, they will take us. I have a child inside of me. It is my first one, I don’t want to go.”

  “Does your tribe take women from Gayan?” I asked, but I guessed the answer before she gave it to me.

  “Yes. Magate needs women. We can’t anger Magate. I don’t want to go.” Her voice was starting to get a bit loud, so I pulled back on her hair some to make her gasp.

  “Where do they keep women they take from Gayan? One of the buildings outside?”

  “Yes. It is center most building. Please don’t hu--”

  I heard a roaring sound, and the stairwell I stood in started to vibrate. Some dust came from the ceiling, and my heart jumped into my throat.

  “Is that--”

  “Magate!” she gasped. “Please! Let me go! I need to hide.”

  I heard surprised shouting from up above and down below. It sounded like the whole damn city was awake now.

  I was out of time.

  “Hide. Don’t tell anyone I was here,” I said, but I knew she probably would. I let her go, and the woman ran down the stairs away from me.

  I bent down to pick up my axe, but standing unleashed a new phase of dizziness in my head. I leaned against the wall again, and the spell lasted for as long as the thrusters shook the walls of the adobe fortress.

  I moved up the stairs back to the fourth level, and then I crossed the short walkway to get to the other set of stairs the led up to the outside of the cave system. People were coming out of their alcoves, but I was only exposed for the three meters it took for me to run between the stairwell and walkway. I didn’t hear anyone raise the alarm about my presence.