by A. R. Knight
No.
Sax turns back to his path, is about to go on, when the tiniest flicker of a flash makes its way up into the vent. Followed by a panicked yelp.
“You can’t kill me! That’s not fair!” Nobaa’s shouting.
“Why not? This isn’t a prisoner ship, and you don’t have anything to trade,” a Flaum voice says. “If word gets out that more Oratus are turning traitor, that wouldn’t be good for us. Others might get the same idea. Rav told us you’re not going to leave here, and I’ve got other things to do. Make peace with yourself, Teven.”
Sax tears his way through the duct before he really thinks about what he’s doing. As soon as he hits the vent staring down into the larger room - apparently made for medical evaluations - where Nobaa’s backed against the wall, Sax uses his head to smash the vent down. The metal grate crashes into the Flaum aiming his miner at Nobaa and, with his foreclaws tearing a wider hole, Sax squeezes through and lands on the captor.
Sax rips away the miner, lifts and throws the Flaum against the room’s walls. The red-furred guard hits the wall hard and collapses to the ground.
“You rescued me!”
Sax takes a deep breath. Looks back towards the duct, then at Nobaa. Maybe...
“Let’s go,” Sax starts, moving towards Nobaa. He figures he can throw the Teven up there and Nobaa can pull himself the rest of the way.
“No, wait!” Nobaa’s carapace looks strange now, covered in empty hooks and belts. “I need my things.”
“Your things don’t matter.”
“You want to survive this?” Nobaa counters. “Then I need my gear so we can take this ship over the right way.”
Nobaa’s idea of the right way is a lot more complicated than Sax’s - for one, as Sax understands it, there’s not even a need to slash and tear through any Flaum at all.
“If you really want to murder some things, I’m sure you’ll have the chance,” Nobaa says as Sax opens the door out of the medical room where they’d been holding the Teven. “This ship is full of people.”
The frigate doesn’t have an expansive med bay, only a dozen rooms, most of those smaller than the one Nobaa was in. They’re clustered around a single monitoring station currently occupied by a robot that, after a flash scan from across the room declares Nobaa and Sax to be in good health, ignores them.
“Kind of small, isn’t it?” Nobaa says. “For a ship this size?”
“Not a lot of space combat that leaves you alive,” Sax replies. “Better to give the rooms to more weapons, more energy, than beds that won’t do you any good.”
Nobaa doesn’t have a response to that other than a twitch of his arms as he turns his carapace to get a good look at the place.
“Where’s your gear?” Sax hisses after a moment. “They’ll find us soon.”
“I don’t know,” Nobaa says. “I thought it would be out here. They took everything after bringing me onboard.”
This frigate doesn’t have cells, so it probably doesn’t have a designated spot for a captive’s gear either. Which means they’d toss Nobaa’s electronics in the same spot as the rest of the general junk the frigate’s maintenance people might need. Or it’s near the docking bay, waiting for the Chorus’ transport to take it back with them.
Sax tosses these options at Nobaa, who doesn’t have a suggestion.
“You’re no help,” Sax hisses at the Teven.
Before Nobaa can properly describe how hurt he is by the insult, there’s a shout from outside the med bay. Alarms bang suddenly, the harsher tone indicating everyone should find immediate shelter. The robot acts on it - whirling into activity and calmly calling for everyone in the med bay to seal their doors.
Sax takes a couple long lunges and gets to the med bay’s entrance, a double-wide sliding door leading out to another corridor in which Sax can see plenty of armed Flaum and Whelk heading their way. Sax hits the panel to close off the med bay, which, so far as he can tell, is going to buy them a second of time.
“We need a way out!” Sax hisses back to Nobaa.
“You’re talking to me like I know this place! Wasn’t this one of your ships?” Nobaa replies.
It was, but med bays weren’t a space Sax frequented. That’s what the masks - and his raw talent - kept him out of. The Oratus runs his eyes around the space, and falls on the only thing that might make a difference.
“Take the miner, buy me time,” Sax hisses to Nobaa, passing off the Flaum guard’s miner to the Teven, who, at least, holds the weapon like he knows how to use it.
“Shouldn’t you be the one doing the fighting?”
“I wish I was.” Sax blows by the Teven, heading for the terminals left vacant by the robot.
There’s several of them, showing bars and numbers that, Sax guesses, have to do with the occupants in some of the rooms. What he’s looking for, though, is a channel to the bridge, and he finds it on the right terminal. Taps the icon with his right midclaw.
“Rav,” Sax says as soon as the terminal beeps that a connection’s been made. “Call off your force.”
There’s hissing laughter on the other end. “You’re better than I thought, Sax, but the Chorus’s transport is docking now. Give yourself up. Don’t hurt the Vincere more than you already have.”
Rav didn’t go for it the first time Sax made his pitch. She refused to play the part of traitor with him, refused to turn on her own troops or try to convince them to join Sax’s cause.
“They’re going to kill you,” Sax hisses. “All of you. All of us. I’ve seen it, Rav.”
Behind him, around the wall, the med bay door judders open. Nobaa, standing near Sax and using the corner, immediately lets loose a pair of bright-blue stunning bolts. Smart - stuns use less power than deadly shots, and everyone they don’t kill will be one less reason for Rav to despise them.
“The Amigga are making better versions of us, just like we were to the Vyphen. Then we’ll be replaced. But Rav, we can’t reproduce. We’re not a natural species. When they decide we’re done, we’re done.”
“And you think that by fighting the Chorus we can live somehow?”
“If we take Solis, yes! That’s where the hatcheries are. Where the Oratus can survive!”
There’s a heavy hiss on the other end of the line. Nobaa unleashes a few more bolts, and Sax sees a couple return shots burn blue into the far wall past them.
“Rav?” Sax asks.
“Even if I believed you,” Rav says. “Even if there’s a chance you might be right, then what? The Chorus would destroy us all before they let your plan succeed.”
“They’ve been trying to destroy me for a while now, Rav, and I’m still here.”
There’s another blue blast and Nobaa falls back from the corner, his little limbs slinking limp to the ground, the miner beside them.
Sax is out of time.
He can’t wait for Rav. Sax reaches down, grabs Nobaa’s fallen miner in one midclaw and the Teven in the other. The med bay goes in a ring around this terminal bank, with the single open door directly behind Sax, through the back wall of a supply room.
“Oratus! Give up!” It’s the skittering, stern voice of a Flaum soldier. “No reason you have to die here!”
Sax glances left, right. Only patient rooms. And above is a flat ceiling - no time to crawl up into a vent even if he wanted to.
“We’re coming around to get you in ten seconds!”
That means Sax really has five. He spies his answer in one: the medical robot, moving from one room to the next and now passing by them on the right. Sax raises the miner and uses his left foreclaw to adjust the miner’s power, pushing it to maximum. Turns, and aims at the robot’s power supply, housed within its base, between the metal balls allowing the machine to get around.
Fires.
The bright red bolt strikes a robot never meant for combat duty. The heat burns through the robot’s shell, strikes the big power supply, and overcharges it. Because Sax is ready, because he’s gouged his
talons into the floor and has his tail bracing against the same, the explosion doesn’t send Sax flying.
It does, though, splash his eyes with heat, burn his claws and set all the lights in the med bay to a deep yellow warning glow. Alarms - true alarms - start off like wailing monsters as smoke pumps out from a dozen small fires, smoke that’s as quickly shunted towards the vents as the frigate’s systems take charge of preserving itself.
As Sax acts now to keep him and Nobaa alive. He twists around the corner to the right, talons pounding. The squad coming to capture him is in disarray, blown about the entry. Some are trying to help others, plenty more are lying still.
Sax hopes he didn’t kill any, or at least too many. Every death hurts his cause here.
Back in the main corridor, Sax turns away from the bridge and runs. There’s plenty of people there, mechanics and medics dashing towards the explosion and plenty more pushing to get away from it.
Nobody bothers to engage Sax, who towers over most of them and uses his foreclaws and tail to clear away anyone who doesn’t notice the Oratus trampling through.
Lit signs show up at intersections, signaling what lies which way. Sax goes by a cafeteria, a fitness center, and a simulator section before hitting what he’s looking for - cargo. The frigate’s not going to be hauling freight, but there’s a good chance that Nobaa’s gear would find its way there.
The Teven’s still not conscious and Sax has no idea how long it’s going to take a small creature like Nobaa to wake up from a heavy stun, which means even if Sax finds the Teven’s things, it’s going to require hiding out on the frigate for a long time.
Time Sax doesn’t have.
Sax hisses away some of his anger, drawing plenty of frightened looks and a couple of squeaks from the crowd, who add distance from Sax as the priority to their paths through the ship. It’s a problem, as Sax is getting farther away from the aftermath of the explosion, and the panic isn’t following as far.
As Sax nears the frigate’s aft and its massive engines, he hunts for a place to drop the dead weight in his midclaws; Nobaa isn’t helping Sax unconscious and there’s a good chance the Teven’s going to get shot hanging limp in the middle of a big target.
And Nobaa’s body is far too small to make a good shield.
In this, the constant overhead announcements tracking Sax’s progress and ordering all non-combat personnel to stay out of the Oratus way serve as an advantage. Hallways are clear, rooms are empty, and nobody accosts Sax as he barges into a storage room and stuffs the Teven in a food locker. Nobaa doesn’t exactly blend in with the crates of nutrient goop, but he’s not likely to get blown apart in there either.
Back in the main corridor running from bridge to stern, Sax catches some more shots from another cadre of Flaum and Whelk guards. The fire doesn’t come all that close to hitting Sax, and the bolts are a dim blue - low power. The reason’s clear - there’s plenty of valuable equipment in the frigate, and Sax is running out of places to go. Why risk damage when they’ll have the Oratus trapped soon anyway?
Soon, though, isn’t now.
Sax takes the opportunity to jump and dart along the corridor towards the engines, past all sorts of glowing lights and locking doors showing ways to cafeterias, crew quarters, and maintenance bays. As the Oratus moves, the crystal white lights shift to red spectrums, adding to the constant warning drone to hide.
The corridor ends in a wide, locked and sealed entry to the engines. These are thick silver shields, meant to cushion and even block any explosion if the frigate’s big thrusters decide to end themselves in a fiery death. It means Sax has run out of room.
There’s a single panel near the doors, one that Sax uses to call the only place he can. To act on the idea that’s made its way into his mind as his talons have scrapped and scratched their way this far.
Sax taps to call the bridge and there’s a blip as the Oratus on the other end clicks into the line.
“Rav,” Sax hisses. “You don’t have to trust me.”
“I don’t have to trust you? That makes it easy.”
“Trust Evva instead. She’s a four-letter Oratus. A Vincere commander. She’s abandoned her post. Why?”
“Because she’s insane? A traitor?”
“Because she learned the truth, Rav.”
The Flaum and Whelk soldiers have caught up with him. They’re arrayed across the corridor, miners raised. Sax keeps talking, because as soon as he stops, he’s not getting another chance.
“That the Amigga are all evil, and we’re all being played for fools?”
“Exactly.”
There’s a heavy silence on the other end of the line. Sax keeps his eyes on Rav’s guards. Why haven’t they shot yet? Sax hasn’t heard Rav give an order for them not to.
“Sax, even if I wanted to believe you, even if I wanted the Oratus to rise up and take their destiny into their own hands,” Rav says. “There’s a problem.”
“What problem?”
“The Chorus has already won. I’m sorry, Sax.”
The line clicks off. Sax looks back at the guards, raising his claws. They’ll fire in a second, but if they don’t, Sax isn’t going to wait. He tenses his talons, looks to the right, where a set of lower pipes would provide grip for a bounding jump into the side of the Flaum line. Strike there and limit their field of view and maybe, maybe in the chaos there’d be a chance of survival.
But Sax doesn’t get his chance to act, because there’s a sharp hiss from behind the line, an order that causes the guards to split apart - Flaum stepping rapidly, Whelk sludging along the floor - to show something Sax didn’t think was real. Something he’s never seen before.
The Amigga created the Oratus to be weapons. Grew and designed the species to take the reins of war. That, though, was a narrow view of what Oratus could be capable of. There’d been plenty of rumors, gaps in new Oratus joining the Vincere, that suggested the hatcheries on Solis were being used for purposes less clear, less about keeping order in the galaxy and more about cleaning out what the Amigga didn’t like.
Its scales aren’t a single color. Instead, they shiver and shift as the Oratus moves, their surfaces reflecting the red and black lights, the glow of the dozen miners primed to fire, so that their owner appears less as a physical object and more as a wavering line, a reality-blending blur.
“They sent you?” Sax manages to say, which is all he can think to speak to a legend brought to life in front of his eyes.
The mirrored Oratus aren’t supposed to exist. Everyone assumed they were a tale told in the shadows, the price paid if one considered disobeying the Chorus’ orders. If one ever turned on the Vincere.
Yet, Sax and Bas hadn’t ever seen one. Hadn’t heard of one. How could they be afraid of what didn’t seem real?
“Your charges are clear,” the Oratus speaks, and even its voice is a reflection of itself, distorted and chilling. “You are a traitor to the Vincere, to the Amigga, and to your own species.”
Sax moves to the left, watching the blur go opposite him. Sax has to keep a little distance, give himself a half-second to adapt when the mirror Oratus decides to strike.
“You’d trust the Amigga over one of your own?” Sax replies. “Who’s really betraying their species?”
The mirrored Oratus doesn’t reply. At least, not with words. It leaps up, high enough to catch the ceiling and hook onto a vent with its foreclaws. The Oratus swings forward, red lines playing over its scales between darker reflections of the watching Flaum and Whelk, and lunges at Sax with its talons.
Sax dives forward, tucking in his tail as he rolls and feeling the shift in the air above him. Sax twists as he comes out of the somersault, winding up on all six claws and talons, crouched and ready if the mirrored Oratus makes a quick attack.
“What is your plan?” the mirrored Oratus asks instead, keeping on its talons.
Sax realizes its eyes are mirrored too - probably covered by a mask helping with the imaging.
“My plan?” Sax hisses back a reply. “You’re asking that now?”
“It will save me time,” the Oratus says. “Tell me, and I can deliver you a clean death now, rather than a slow one later.”
If there’s one thing Sax can’t stand, it’s mockery. He rises up, matching the mirrored Oratus on his talons.
“Our plan is to end the tyranny the Amigga have over this galaxy,” Sax hisses. “Starting with the Chorus.”
“Then they were right,” the mirrored Oratus hisses a laugh. “I’ve received more briefings than you can imagine, Sax. Removed all manner of traitors to the Chorus. Incompetent officials to high level Vincere officers. Even other Amigga deemed a risk. But never, never have I encountered any with such lofty ambitions.”
That isn’t what Sax expects to hear. He’s thinking the mirrored Oratus has a mask that’s recording everything, and as soon as it gets the information it needs, the Oratus will just signal to the guards who’ll burn Sax down in a blaze of miner fire. This is all just a show.
So why is the mirrored Oratus bothering to have a real conversation?
“I’ve risked my life many times for much less,” Sax picks a path. “About time I took a chance for something greater.”
17 Bar Nights
The common center that Anjo directs us to is about the only bustling part of town that I can see. It’s set against what must be the town square; a circle of packed earth with a large stalagmite rising up from the middle. Like our Tiers in the jungle, the stalagmite is covered in drawings and various dyes.
One stands out - a black and white version of a Fassoth, its many legs chasing after what looks like a pack of Lunare. Even the simple drawing sends a chill and I look away, over towards the warm fires glowing in the common house windows.
“Been a long time since we’ve seen human civilization,” Viera says to me.
“I thought you said it’s only been a season?”
“Feels a lot longer than that.”
I nod. Even though these cavern towns are far different than the Solare and Charre villages, there’s a lot about them that’s familiar; the low hum of human voices rather than the hissing and clattering of the other species I’ve been around, the simple smells of cooking food rather than the stale purity of nutrient goop, and the ramshackle dirtiness, the imperfections of everything around us.