Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  “Good to go.”

  Vernsky looked toward the open capsule craft. On impulse, he whispered, “Mose?”

  Mose glanced up. What could Vernsky say? Good luck out there? Anything like that would only be offensive and absurd.

  At last, he said the only thing that seemed right.

  “Take care of yourself.”

  For a moment that felt longer than it must have been, Mose stared at him across the space. His expression was so blank Vernsky half wondered if the drugs were already taking effect. Vernsky almost missed the moment when Mose nudged the air in a jab—a tiny motion so quick he’d have missed it if he hadn’t been paying attention.

  Then the black casing closed, shutting the Osk away from view. Hydraulics whined, sliding the capsule into its narrow launch berth and out of sight. Vernsky felt the subliminal vibration travel up from the soles of his shoes as the Damyata fired the capsule craft toward the waiting maw of the gate. Toward whatever fate awaited Mose on Teluk.

  For a second, the capsule craft’s stabilizing engines winked blue as the system made small corrections to its trajectory. In the next second, the engines shut off and the capsule craft disappeared against the black. Vernsky watched the tiny bronze coin of the gate through the bay window for at least half an hour, hoping to catch sight of Mose’s craft again, but it was too far away.

  For the first leg of the hyperstream transit, Mose knew only darkness. No schema-induced memories visited him under travel sedation. Indeed, he didn’t dream at all. He was completely unaware until the first dose wore off and he awoke to total blackness and the sensation of choking. A hard tube filled his throat. He thrashed against the acceleration gel as a millisecond of unthinking panic seized him, before his training reasserted itself and he remembered to breathe through the tube apparatus.

  Closing his nostrils to avoid inhaling acceleration gel, Mose focused on taking long, slow breaths as he felt along the craft’s inner wall. He found the control panel by touch and pushed the largest button. With a sucking sound, the gel drained partially away as it was siphoned into storage tanks. The space created was just big enough for him to stick the end of his snout above the gel’s surface. The air above the gel was breathable but freezing; he could already feel the tip of his snout going numb.

  He found the nutrient tube and pulled it toward him, at the same time palming the control to release the tracheal tube. It went slack, and he reeled it carefully out of his throat, trying and failing as always not to gag as it brushed past his uvula. At least he’d gotten good about not throwing up; his first few capsule trips had been even more unpleasant than this.

  Mose sucked on the nutrient tube, several hours’ hunger overriding the bland tastelessness of the paste. After the prescribed five minutes’ feeding time, the tube sealed itself off and he let go. Mose found the third button, this one square, and pressed it, signaling the capsule craft to begin the process of putting him under again. A needle-mounted tube slithered up his arm until it found the insertion point in the crook of his elbow. His body was already feeling fuzzy as he grabbed the tracheal tube and reinserted it. There was a vague pressure as it pushed its way down his throat, but the sedative had taken care of his gag reflex this time. The gel surging back over his head caught him unawares; he felt the icy seep of it flooding his nostrils, and expelled it with a snort before the tube took over his breathing. He just had time to wonder if maybe this time—

  His dream-body is on its back, and every inch of skin seems to smolder. The ground underneath feels as hot as a clay baking slab. Up above, the dome of the sky is black, roiling clouds of smoke smeared over its normal dull orange. More oily columns plunge from sky to ground like tongues of the volcano god Koraak itself. His ravaged skin prickles with points of pain from the rain of hot ash falling from the sky, so thick he can feel his scorched spiracles struggling to take in air.

  He wraps four lithe arms in a fragile shield around his burning torso, but even those familiar limbs feel rough, their skin hardened and cracking from the heat. His forward-facing eyes are squeezed shut, but his side-facing eyes are still open; he can still see the seared bodies of fellow People of the Sand sprawled all around him. They were all of them caught unawares by the first brutal blast of steam-hot, hurricane winds that blew like the breath of a demon out of a clear orange sky. And he can see, too, what approaches them: a raging wall of fire looms across the entire western horizon, kilometers across and sweeping closer with each second. It casts a brilliant negative shadow onto the steep peaks of the Koraak range whose cave-riddled cliffs begin only a few meters away. The fire is close enough that it swallows all other sounds in its furnace roar.

  Pri knows she will not escape it.

  Just like that, the cool insectile presence rings forth again. Even while Mose’s alien dream-body burns, a chilling calm pervades the Drevl Char mind beside his. Pri has begun her ritual of surrender to death. A lattice of overlapping lines coalesces in the dark behind his eyes and shapes itself into a circle, glowing soft white on black. Something twists in his head, tugging on the base of the antennae where they enter the Drevl Char’s skull. The mandala unfolds into a sphere of white branches, their edges gnarled with jagged protrusions. Fear and despair pour off those thorns into the sphere.

  Pri is inducing this image; he can feel the concentration radiating from her. Mose realizes that the sphere is a visual representation of her mind. As he watches, the sphere’s branches writhe into life, extending their reach until they encompass the entire field of view. One by one, the spikes of fear blighting them wither, and he feels her terror ebb. A frisson of awe thrills through Mose: They can observe their own minds from within? Control them that much?

  The tranquility spreads beyond Pri as she reaches out to the minds around her, enveloping them in a circle of calm. He feels the distress of the other Drevl Char, radiating in spiky filaments, lessen and smooth out under her contact. It’s as if Pri has reached out and grasped the limbs of each and every one of them.

  The air is thicker now, the smoke almost like liquid at the foot of the awesome wall of fire. Mose can hear other sounds under the roaring: a dull low rumble, punctuated by sharper cracks as the fire instantly superheats the sap inside the scru-bland’s stubby trees into steam. Minds grip at Pri, and she holds them to her. If this is the end, let them face it together, as one People of the Sand.

  Pressure crushes Mose’s chest. With the sudden friction of stone against skin, his insect body is jerked across the sand.

  Spots dance before his two sets of eyes, then his vision fades into darkness.

  «Pri!» The Drevl Char eyes open on a blurry insect face. It’s dark in the lee of the cave entrance, though the outside is lost in a haze of orange light. His sight sharpens, and the mind beside Mose emerges from its cocoon to assign a name to the face.

  «Bef!» Pri levers herself up, glancing between her rescuer and the glare streaming from the cave mouth. «We—we have to get the others—» She tries to stagger upright, but her legs buckle under her. Mose can feel exhaustion hovering over this form like a lead blanket.

  Bef doesn’t move. «They’re dead, Pri,» he sends in a harsh tone. «That wall is going to hit in one, maybe two minutes. I’m getting you to safety while it is still a possibility.» He grabs her unresisting body in all four tentacles and drags her deeper into the cave. There is a lava tunnel there, leading farther into the Koraak range. Shelter from the coming storm, for any Drevl Char that can reach the natural catacombs in time. She doesn’t think that number will be many.

  The light of the approaching blaze illuminates the cave’s interior, throwing the mouth of the underground tunnel into sharp relief. Bef drags Pri into the passage, spiracles wheezing from hauling her dead weight. He’s pulling her across a floor of jagged volcanic rock, and the pain waxes and wanes as she wavers in a fog between unconscious and awake.

  «We just . . . have to . . . make it far enough . . . down,» gasps Bef. Mose didn’t know until now that physical
fatigue could translate into mental speech, but the negotiator’s thoughts are definitely coming slower the farther they descend. «Then we . . . should be safe . . . from the blast.»

  But Mose can already feel his arms and chest and battered spiracles warming in a glow of unnatural heat. He can hear the roar building in the methane soup around them. And he can remember the black scars on Pri’s chest. Mother Oskaran, I’m going to see how she got those scars. I’m going to feel how she got them.

  Pri struggles to all eight feet, leaning her torso on Bef for support. «Slowing . . . you down. Have to be faster or we both die.» She turns her back on the awful glare and hobbles as fast as she can, Bef helping her every step even though he too quivers with exhaustion.

  Ahead, the tunnel narrows to a slot in the rock, just wide enough for a Drevl Char to pass through sideways. A dank breeze blows through it, hinting at the deep cave beyond. If they can just get through that tight space . . .

  The roar suddenly builds behind them with the impersonal force of a jet engine. The sides of Pri’s vision fill with orange light as the air in the tunnel behind them ignites. She wedges herself sideways into the crevice, reaching two tendrils out to Bef.

  «Grab hold! Quickly!» Mose feels the leathery embrace of Bef’s tendrils as he begins to wedge his upper body into the crevice after her.

  Then the maelstrom of burning air hits.

  Pri’s head is turned half away from the tunnel, and all her eyes snap shut at the blast of heat, light, and sound. She feels but does not see the flashover of burning methane as it shoots into the crevice and sears the tough chitin of her chest. There is a single stab of agony, like a sharp gasp, before the searing mass pushes her violently through the gap. Pri tumbles head over tentacles into the larger cavern, landing on her back in a tangle of limbs.

  She keeps her eyes squeezed shut, sure she is about to be incinerated as the roar of igniting methane fills her world. Then the whoosh of burning gas cuts out; dimly, she realizes that this far down in the cave system it’s been starved of the oxygen it needs to continue the reaction. As the incredible heat fades, it’s replaced by a pain in her chest almost too great to breathe through.

  Pri isn’t aware of sending her consciousness outward to escape the pain until other minds touch her own. The mental analogue of the cavern is filled with Drevl Char voices, shrilling in alarm and concern. She eases her eyes open to see a circle of Drevl Char huddling around her as she sprawls on the floor of the cavern.

  Sensing her wound, they push gently at her mental barriers. Gratefully, unresistingly, she lets them in, the mental contacts as soothing as ice against her raw nerve endings as they stimulate her brain to secrete pain-killing compounds. The terrible tight throbbing in her thorax recedes, and as it does she becomes aware of the grip of Bef’s tendrils, still twined with her own.«We made it,» she sends. «We’re safe. Bef—» Pri turns her side eye to look at him.

  There is no Drevl Char beside her. Not a whole one, anyway. She stares, uncomprehending and then with mounting horror, at the two arms entwining her own. Arms that end in tattered, charred stumps.

  Pri gazes dumbly at the awful sight, the sections of her star-shaped mouth flexing open and closed. «He was here.» Her sending is barely a mental whisper. «He was right here!»

  They’re pulling gently at her now, the other People, whispering in calm sorrowful tones. «Come away, Pri . . . Let us help you . . . Please come away . . .»

  But she scrabbles away from them over the cold stone, dragging the amputated remnants of her friend with her even as she claws at them with her other two arms. The People in the cavern reach after her with tendrils and minds, but she closes herself off from them, welcoming the flaring pain in her chest as their mental analgesics are cut off from her. She deserves the pain, deserves that and worse. Everyone on the surface is dead—Dur, her entire Hearth, every last person who couldn’t make it to the safety of the caves—because of her.

  None of the others could have imagined stranding the Gnosis. None of the People before her had ever conceived of even such a simple act of violence. Only Pri: first of her Line, the first to share in the Terrans’ alien minds. The first to discover ambush, sabotage, tactics. War.

  She convinced her people to make war on the Terrans. And its consequences have killed them all. She has killed them all.

  The beseeching contacts of the others—refugees, because of her—are drowned out by the rising volume of her screams.

  Pri recoils from the grief and the horror, the guilt, retreating into a numb black void, a realm of no sensation at all. Merciful unconsciousness envelops her, and she fades

  into the nimbus of metallic cold that pervaded his capsule craft. Mose felt his limbs—six of them, not twelve; frozen, not burnt—flex against the containing metal curve. A hurt so great he could not name it welled up around his heart, and then he too was fading.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Herask Illimersk passed a tense two weeks with the Djandjer-Pralsh waiting for the White Arrows’ kill squad. He spent the time obsessively inventorying their remaining medical supplies and drilling the medtechs left to him in first aid. Though he knew if the Arrows descended on them the end would be fast and brutal and would leave no survivors to treat, himself included.

  No kill squad came. From the leaked communications that filtered down their web of shadow market contacts and hacked terminals, it became clear none of the Arrows suspected who had slaughtered their base. From their quarter came only milling confusion.

  And something else good had come out of that night: not long after, Ariveth had proposed a far safer and more efficient way they might gather intelligence via combined data/EMP spikes sent into the targeted bases’ mainframes. Her idea laid the groundwork for the next two raids in half the time of the first. Lorsk had praised it at the last staff meeting, after their third raid.

  It was during one of his physical therapy sessions that Lorsk brought it up with Herask alone. The two of them were in Lorsk’s quarters. It was just before sunset, and streamers of orange squeezed through the plywood covering the balcony windows. In the half-shaded living room, Lorsk sat on a low, padded seat while Herask gripped Lorsk’s extended forearm and worked his stiffened fingers into the ligaments attached to the narrow end of Lorsk’s sheath.

  “It was a good idea. Demonstrably.” Lorsk spoke in short bursts between deep inhalations. The stiff tendons in his elbow shifted under Herask’s fingers as he tried to manipulate suppleness back into them. “But I have misgivings about its source.”

  Herask didn’t ask the question this demanded right away. Instead, he released Lorsk’s arm and said, “Try to extend now.”

  Lorsk flexed the muscles in his forearm. His blade slid to half length, then caught.

  “Halfway,” Herask said with an encouraging smile. “That’s better than last time it seized up. Can you get any farther?”

  Lorsk continued the flexion, exhaling into the motion the way Herask had shown him. The point of the blade gave a stutter in its sheath, but slid no farther. Herask gave a jab.

  “I’ve broken up the adhesions in your elbow joint; if I had to guess, the keratinous inner lining is calcifying again. I’ll get the gauntlet.” He rummaged in his medical bag, withdrew a carbon fiber–reinforced gauntlet, and slipped it on. Herask wrapped his now-protected fingers around Lorsk’s stubborn blade and began to pull it forward, while Lorsk flexed on his end. Centimeter by torturous centimeter, the blade extended, Herask’s added force helping it cut through the calcifications inside Lorsk’s sheath.

  When it was over, Lorsk was rubbing his forearm and grimacing, but his blade stood free, covered in a fine layer of calcium dust. Herask rubbed it clean with a dry cloth. His immediate task accomplished, he took up the thread of conversation.

  “You have doubts about Ariveth? She may be young, but she’s got a keen mind.” Herask unscrewed the cap on a contain-er of cooling ointment. “And she knows the stakes as well as any of us.”

&n
bsp; Lorsk drew his palm through the air. “It’s not Ari I’m thinking of. I’m concerned Gau may have put her up to this.”

  Herask took Lorsk’s forearm and began to rub in the balm. The cooling compound imparted a chill to his fingers and would reduce the inflammation in Lorsk’s muscles from the session just completed. “So what if he did? We’re already following his plan, and it’s working.”

  Lorsk exhaled slowly. “I have told no one this, but . . . after the first raid, Gau disobeyed orders and returned to the White Arrow base.”

  Herask’s fingers continued applying salve with the deftness of routine, while his mind was blank with shock. “Why?” he finally asked.

  “To raid their computers. He said we needed more data on the Arrows.” Lorsk clenched his jaw. “Which was true. But what he did could have compromised all of us. I told him that.”

  Herask wiped his hands clean and replaced the cap on the jar. So that was why Lorsk had assigned both Gau and Drej the tasks of setting and retrieving the EMP spikes the last two missions. Drej was acting as Gau’s minder. Trying for a positive perspective, Herask said, “Gau must understand what he did was dangerous. That’s why he and Ariveth have come up with this alternative.”

  “Bypassing me to do it,” Lorsk said quickly. “Bypassing the whole chain of command, and hiding behind Ari rather than taking credit for the idea. As if they were still children trying to sneak into a tactics meeting. It’s childish.” His gaze grew faraway, looking at the wall without seeing it. “And not the type of behavior I expect from one to whom I thought to entrust my legacy.”

  Replacing the ointment jar in his bag, Herask paused. “You want to give Gau command of the Djandjer-Pralsh?” That was the most ready interpretation, the surface he dared scratch; from the slight quaver that had entered Lorsk’s voice, Herask sensed layers further in. As far as he knew, the Edrasshii lineage still prospered on Teluk, but Lorsk was its last descendant on Aival, and not by choice, Herask knew. He would not bring up that old pain.