Sci-Fi Fantasy Collection (A Citizen Tale Books 1 & 2)

by S. K. Holder

  Skelos barged into the room and lunged at the guard with the painting. ‘That’s mine!’

  He felt a sharp pain in his chest as he was thrown against the wall by some unseen force. He landed on his side. The guard from whom he had attempted to retrieve the painting glared at him, the painting still in his hand. The guard next to him laughed.

  Skelos staggered to his feet, coughing. The knock had left him winded. He tried to take stock of what had just happened. Was there an electromagnetic field around the table or a problem with Narrigh’s gravity? Or had he moved so fast that he had bounced off the wall? He had been walking a while and was a little wobbly on his feet. ‘What are doing?’ he demanded. He felt a blue blush creep up his neck.

  ‘Getting you to shut up, Blue,’ said the guard who held the painting. He had now tucked it under his arm out of reach. ‘We weren’t speaking to you.’ He wore a battered pair of boots and a dented armoured breastplate. He had the bulk of walrus, yet Skelos knew the guard had not touched him. He knew better than to confront him. His body was not built for battering, whether by a seen or unseen hand.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Noec.

  ‘Next left,’ said the guard with the painting. ‘Third door on the right.’

  Noec tried to take Skelos by the arm. Skelos whipped his arm away.

  As Skelos was leaving, he watched the guard in the dented breastplate hold the painting aloft. ‘Callaway Castle for this one. It’ll look nice against the drab background.

  ‘And what about this?’ A guard held up the Shard Skelos had hidden in his robes before his arrival. ‘This glass thing.’

  ‘Put it in the vault,’ replied the guard in the dented breastplate. ‘The one that’s always locked. Someone will get around to looking at it eventually.’

  ‘Those are my possessions,’ hissed Skelos.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Noec. ‘They’re the property of the Shardner now. I wouldn’t make a fuss about it if I were you. You’ll upset this lot. He nodded at the guards around the table. ‘You don’t want to do that. They might break something, like your legs.’

  Skelos reigned in his anguish. ‘What threw me against the wall back there? I was told technology was not permitted.’

  ‘It’s not,’ said Noec. ‘That was magic.’

  ‘Magic is nothing more than illusion. It’s not real.’ Although the blow that was dealt him felt very real.

  ‘It could be that magic is not real where you come from, but here it is as real as your technology.’

  As they made their way along the passage, a putrid smell drifted up Skelos’s nose. It was faint at first, but grew stronger as they progressed. As did the noise: a mixture of squawking, flapping, and scratching. He jerked his head back and pressed his hand to his mouth. The overpowering stench came from behind an iron door.

  ‘Want to take a look?’ Noec asked.

  He was at the door before Skelos could answer. He plunged a key through the keyhole and the door swung open.

  The smell hit Skelos full on. It turned his stomach, making him heave.

  Inside were large crates held in place by thick metal chains suspended from the ceiling.

  Noec laughed. ‘The smell takes some getting used to.’ He sauntered up to one crate. It slid across the floor, rose at one end, and then hit the ground again with a loud bang. ‘You’re a fiery one today. Aren’t you, Marmaduke?’ He turned to Skelos. ‘I name them. Come take a look.’

  ‘No.’ The guard wanted to taunt and torture him. ‘This place is disgusting. Take me to my laboratory. I don’t see why we have to loiter around here.’

  He glanced at the ceiling wondering if the chains would hold the beast within.

  ‘You’re afraid.’

  ‘I most certainly am not,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Move out of my way.’ He stared through the gap in the crate at a large bird with black wings and tusks. Its skin was crawling with worms. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dal-Carrion. Flesh eating beasts with a nasty bite. Now you’ll have the chance to exercise your skills.’

  ‘You want me to experiment on these?’ Skelos backed away from the crate. The warehouse used to store the beasts went back further than his sharp eyes could see.

  ‘No, on these.’ Noec delved into his pocket and took out a winged-metal object. He handed it to Skelos.

  Skelos laughed. ‘What do you expect me to do with this?’

  ‘This is the device we use to capture them. A Herming Moth Wing. They’re a breed of rare moth. It’s where they get their name. Huge things. Thankfully, we don’t see a lot of them in the Kingdom. The Dal-Carrion are dangerous and breeding fast. We want to conduct a test on at least twenty, maybe more.’

  ‘What do the wings do exactly?’

  ‘I just told you. They trap them.’

  Skelos looked at the wing no bigger than his hand, at the enormous crate, and then back at Noec. He came to the conclusion that the subhuman was mad or drunk – possibly both. ‘I’ll need a demonstration.’ If this was another one of their illusions, he would have to see it for himself.

  Noec told him to stand back. He took out a handkerchief and threw it in the air along with the Herming Moth Wing. The handkerchief suddenly vanished. It happened too fast for Skelos to comprehend.

  ‘Like magic.’ Noec grinned. He picked up the closed wing and opened it up. The scarf reappeared, torn in the middle. ‘My best one, too.’ He returned the handkerchief to his pocket.

  There is no such thing a magic. There is science or the Maker: the unexplained. ‘Why do you want to study them?’

  ‘I don’t know why the Shardner wants to study them, but I know that they created them.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘How should I know? You can keep that one.’ He tossed Skelos the Herming Moth Wing.

  Skelos let it drop to the ground. He had caught sight of Noec’s grubby hands and did not want to touch him or the wing without his gloves. He pulled the sleeves of his robe down over his hands and awkwardly picked up the wing. He deposited it in his pocket. I may be able to find some use for it.

  ‘How many Dal-Carrions are out there?’

  ‘Thousands.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Skelos almost wept when he saw his new laboratory. There was nothing to it. It was smaller than his former wife’s closet. It was furnished with a table, a joint basin, two stools, shelves stacked with archaic lab equipment, and a glass cabinet filled with small reptiles and furry brown creatures with short tails and long noses that he had never seen before.

  A man in a wool coat stood in the laboratory. He had drooping eyelids, but shrewd eyes. He waited for Skelos to survey his new workspace for some time before introducing himself. ‘I’m Tural, one of the supervisors here,’ he said. He didn’t smile, bow, or offer his hand to Skelos.

  Skelos couldn’t care less for the phoney gestures of the unmarked. ‘You expect me to work in here? Where is the energy source?’ he said. ‘There are no lights. What do you want me to do? Generate my own?’

  ‘We have slow burners,’ he pointed to the sconces on the wall. ‘And oil lamps should you need them.’

  ‘I can’t work under these con-conditions alone.’ And by alone he meant without the company of other Citizens.

  ‘You’ll have an assistant.’

  ‘By assistant, I hope you mean a droid and not some simpering child.’

  ‘As I said there is no technology here. You want technology – then invent it.’

  ‘You want me to invent energy?’

  ‘If you can manage to do it without the Shardner ever finding out, be my guest. In the meantime, use your theoretical knowledge to figure out how we can stop the wings from springing open sporadically.’

  These people are mad. Every last one of them.

  ‘I was told I need to work on this.’ He took out the Herming Moth Wing.

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, they’re not working as well as we had hoped. You see they were created by a sorcerer who used a special brand o
f magic. Unfortunately, he’s dead. And the last doctor who tried to fix them has been disposed of. Faulty wings were not his area of expertise.’

  Skelos didn’t believe in the concept of magic. He always thought that if one studied what was perceived as magic, a reasonable explanation for its mysteries could always be found. He found no such explanation in the object presented to him: the Herming Moth Wing. He selected a pair of surgical gloves from the table and slipped them on. He then banged the Herming Moth Wing on the table. Next, he held it up to his eye. It looked as if it was made from a blend of different metals: aluminium, copper, bronze, and countless more. He shook his head. Clearly this was nonsense. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do with this. I’m a scientist not a magician.’

  ‘We don’t think it’s the magic that is at fault, but the metallic components used to create them. We thought you could adapt it somehow.’

  Skelos stared at him dumbfounded. ‘Adapt it from what? I don’t know magic, and the equipment you have given me, if you can even call it that, is no good. You would need to harness the means of teleportation to trap the beasts. It’s the only way you can replicate the Wing’s function. You said there was a doctor before me. What kind?’

  ‘He specialised in genetic engineering.’

  Then what did they expect? No doubt, I shall meet the same sorry end. ‘This doctor of genetics you mentioned, his name doesn’t happen to be Oliver Best, by any chance?’

  Tural selected a microscope from one of the shelves and placed it on the table. ‘Yes. I didn’t know the two of you had met.’

  Skelos cleared his throat. He would not have believed Oliver’s account of how he arrived in the Red Caves if he had told him then or now. ‘What you’re asking is nothing short of manual labour. I’m a neuroscientist, not an engineer or an ironmonger. I don’t know anything about metals and magic.’

  This wasn’t true. He had studied metals as part of his neurorobotics research, but such metals appeared not to exist in Narrigh.

  ‘You use metals for your neurorobotics.’

  ‘I never made cyborgs, you fool. I only enhanced their capabilities.’

  ‘Is the premise not the same? You have the Wings. All you need to do is modify them. You can use the specimens in the cabinet as case studies. We can obtain other materials for you, should you need them. Your apprentice will be here shortly. The Wings are the Shardner’s greatest priority.’

  ‘More of a priority than my niece, I suppose.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Tural. He gave a small bow. ‘Of course finding your niece is our highest priority.’

  Skelos rolled his eyes. He slotted the wing under the microscope. It would be quite an achievement for him, as a neuroscientist, to fix magical metallic wings. It would be a testimony of his intellect and resilience.

  Yes, it truly was the Maker’s Will that he should come here. He sighed, still harbouring a hope of escaping. Surely at some point an airship would arrive, one he could stow away on. And there was Amelia. She could be clever when she put her mind to it. And then there was the Avu’lore. Of course, if he could somehow escape and collect the Shards, then he could put the artefact to use.

  He clung to the notion that the day would come. And when it did, he would applaud it.

  Skelos Dorm’s adventures continue in The Quest of Narrigh, Sci-Fi Fantasy series, THE OTHER WORLDS.

  To learn more about The Other Worlds visit tridanentertainment.com

  Thank you

  * * *

  [1] Unmarked Ones – non-Citizens

  [2] Citizens – race of superhumans from the planet Odisiris, located within the Andromeda galaxy.

  [3] Stores – research facility.

  [4] Unmarked One – non-Citizen.