by P D Ceanneir
‘What is a Korzac doing here?’ groaned the prince, ‘wherever here is, this cannot be the Rogun capital!’
I would have to agree. The tunnel of light seems to have brought us here, like Driftwalking. Could it be that we have slipped into another world like ours?
‘A parallel world? As the one mentioned in the Elder Styx’s thesis, The Lore of Continuums, we studied at the Academy. It would explain much.’ The Korzac stood on all fours and sniffed the air. It gave a loud bark, which was acknowledged by similar cries around it.
‘It’s not alone.’
Neither are you.
The prince smiled at that remark. Desperate though the situation was he was glad of the Blacksword’s presence.
The ring!
‘What?’
The ring on the skeleton when we first entered the tomb, you touched it just before the tunnel of light, check to see if it’s still there on this corpse.
Havoc did so, returning to the Raider in the coffin and pulled off the armoured gauntlet. There was, however, no ring.
There was a loud roar from above and Havoc sprinted to the entrance. Above them, one of the falling particles of the meteor shower loomed large above the city. At first, Havoc thought it was some form of Sky Ship, but it had no sails, though there were wings jutting out of the hull. The craft was on fire from a starboard side cylindrical object and it was falling fast towards the citadel. As he watched, it veered left to avoid the tall spires of the palace but struck one, snapping it in two. The ship inverted and was lost inside the city buildings.
The Korzac on the mound barked again, jumped off the hump and sprinted on all fours towards the crash.
10
Vlaren’s head ached and her chest was on fire.
She groaned as she opened her eyes and felt completely disorientated. Slowly, her recent memories returned. The Lander had crashed upside down; she hung from her seat suspended by her seat harness. She punched the released catch with the palm of her hand and landed on the floor/ceiling with a grunt.
Apart from a nasty gash on her temple, she was surprisingly undamaged. Her chest still burnt, though, and she realised that the air here was thinner than her home planet. She tapped at the Tactical Suit Control Pad on her arm and her head covering buzzed as a liquid polymer visor flowed from a recess in her suit’s helmet to seal around her face. After a few seconds the pain in her chest eased as she received the proper airflow. The suit collected the right amount of air for her lungs to manage, in time her Plettraian physiology would help her adapt to the planet’s thin atmosphere.
She pulled herself out through the large gash in the starboard side, ignoring the pools of blood that aided her to slither out of the opening. In the cockpit, the dangling bodies of the flight crew were barely recognisable. She groaned again and tried to make sense of her situation and the terrain of shattered buildings around her. Above, the streaking storm of falling space debris continued, some struck the ground not far from her. She found herself thinking of her father and forced herself not to cry.
Movement to her right made her catch her breath. The rain obscured much of the landscape. With a tap of her suits control pad, her visor shifted the view to heat sensor status. Something large shifted beyond the sheets of rain, then another to her left.
She reached for her gun, but the holster was empty, looking inside the wreck of the Lander and she saw the CaB Blaster on the floor. She reached in to get it, but it was just out of reach. She stretched her arms and fingers, managed to touch the muzzle, and pulled it an inch closer to her hand.
Directly to her front a tall bipedal creature with pale skin, black eyes, a mass of black quills running down its back and the largest formation of super-sharp silver teeth in an elongated jaw she had ever seen stalked towards her from the ruins.
Her heart leapt to her throat and she desperately reached for the weapon. The creature sensed her hopelessness and sprinted towards her on all fours, gouts of muddy earth sprang up with every claw-fall. It was within several feet of her when something whizzed out of the darkness to her left and struck the creature in the right side. The animal crashed to the muddy earth and lay still. A sword with a black blade and a glowing pommel protruded from its flank.
The Blaster shifted and she frantically grabbed the grip and pointed it at anything that moved.
A shape, humanoid and shorter than the dead thing at her feet, somersaulted from a pile of bricks. It landed on it’s feet amidst a flurry of it’s long green cape and stood with his back to her watching for any attack from the ruins; she realised it was a human male. She now heard frantic barking and screeching from the other creatures hidden beyond the limits of her vision.
The next attack came from her right as she heard loud wet footfalls in that direction. The human had heard them too and turned towards the attack and, within the blink of an eye the sword few from the dead creature’s body and landed in his hand. He swung as the second monster leapt and the sword’s blade decapitated the thing in mid-air.
Vlaren pointed the blaster at the human when he turned towards her. He spoke but the sounds were gibberish to her. She kept the gun aimed and pulled out her PDU from its holster and began tapping on the scream to access the Translation Matrix Program.
‘Error Code 7, Translation Matrix not available at this time,’ said the unit’s computerised voice.
‘Oh, you piece of junk!’ hissed Vlaren. The human was watching with interest and some anxiety, he was also aware of the barking noises around them.
He spoke again, this time he said a Plettraian word, ‘Safe.’ She looked at him and then the PDU, but the translation program still showing an error.
‘…go…save…’
‘What?’
The human looked surprised. He pointed towards the ruins at the heart of the city and waved for her to follow him.
‘Safe…to…away from the…’
‘You speak Plettraian,’ she said.
The man shook his head, ‘I only …. a little of what you say…go….safe haven…inside ruins.’
She nodded, still unsure of his intentions, but reasoned that he was helping her and finding shelter away from those things was a logical choice. She indicated for him to wait and she scrambled inside the Lander found her plastic supply backpack and picked up the Pulse Rifle. After a few checks, she found that the rifle was working perfectly.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
11
Havoc’s mind was in a whirl. It was turning out to be a very strange day.
The woman he had just saved from the Korzac, and she was clearly a woman, was obviously not a being he had ever met before. She was as tall as the Blacksword and had a lean and athletic body, shapely, appealing hips and a pleasing, albeit alien, face. Her eyes were the most startling feature of all. They took up a large part of her oval face and were the most startling azure blue he had ever seen. She had no pupils that he could see.
Both of them raced through the ruins with the cries of the Korzac following them on all sides. Havoc, on several occasions during the flight, leapt up onto the high ruins of the former palace grounds to get his bearings. He indicated to Vlaren his intended direction with a wave of his hand. She followed.
Eventually he found what he was looking for, an opening in the wall that led to the palace library. Inside he found that most of the library roof was missing and the rain had turned the thousands of books to mush on the shelves and floor.
He took the stairs to the mezzanine, which was still intact though blocked by debris. This was fortunate because they could use it as a barrier in case of attack.
‘At either end of this level there are stairways leading to the battlements,’ he said to the strange female as he pushed a broken table onto the barricade, ‘we could escape that way if we need to.’
Vlaren watched him with wide-eyed curiosity.
‘Why is it I can understand you? My PDU is still not functioning properly,’ Vlaren indicated the strange glowing device in
her hand.
Havoc had thought about that on the way to the library. He assumed the Muse Orrinn on his sword’s pommel was the main culprit. ‘I think this allows us to understand each other,’ he said tapping the orb that sat just behind his right ear.
She did not appear to be convinced and continued tapping at the device.
‘Something is jamming it,’ she said.
‘Look. What is your name?’
The female looked at him, ‘I am named Vlaren, co-convener to the Plettraian Space Corps Council and commander of the Fourth Regimental of Tactical Regulars.’
Havoc was impressed.
‘And you?’ she asked.
For some reason, Havoc was reluctant to give his true name so he used one he had taken before in the past, ‘Gillem,’ he said.
‘Gillem?’
‘Just, Gillem.’
Vlaren looked him up and down, ‘I did not think there were many humans left on the surface.’
‘Believe me when I say I’m not from around here. So, where are you from?’
‘Plettra Prime,’ she said.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘You probably would not. This is our, shall we say, First Contact. Plattra is found on the outer rim of the Jarnishi Solar System. Your navigational star charts would refer to it as the Hearn Cluster.’
Havoc felt his legs wobble and he steadied himself against the palisade railing. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re from another planet?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Gods!’
‘The Gods play no part in this.’
‘That’s doubtful.’
‘Sorry?’
The prince waved his hand, ‘never mind. Tell me, why are you here?’
She raised a questioning eyebrow, ‘the Realmworld forms a significant threat to my home world.’
‘Realmworld?’
‘That is the name of this planet, is it not?’
Havoc shook his head and then slowly nodded. ‘Many different civilisations have various names for this planet. The Fyrandian Imperial Realm called it Realmworld, my people called it Earth.’
Vlaren seemed a bit confused, ‘according to our records, the Imperial Realm ceased to exist over three thousand years ago. The civilisations you talk about are long gone. There is little life left on this planet.’
Havoc took a broken chair and sat down, ‘three thousand years?’
‘Yes. Are you alright?’
Havoc was digesting all of the info he had discovered since arriving and he was not liking what he was putting together.
Have we travelled three thousand year in time? Blacksword asked, coming to the same conclusion. Havoc gave him a mental nod.
‘Wait a minute! If there are no civilisations left, why is this planet a threat?’
‘Because of the Dark Tanis.’
Havoc’s jaw dropped, he shook his head, ‘no, no, no… The Dark Tanis cannot exist, you are mistaken!’
‘Nevertheless, it has destroyed three planets and two space armadas on it’s journey through space.’
‘What?’
‘In sixteen…’ Vlaren tapped on her PDU, ‘…fifteen days, six hours and twenty seven minutes, my home world will be the fourth.’
Havoc got to his feet unsteadily, ‘show me.’
12
On the battlements the wind howled fiercer and the rain lashed to bite his face. He ignored it all as he scanned the ruined city, the city of his birth and now, possibly, his death. The words constantly flittering through his mind were ’why I have been brought here, is this the workings of the My’thos?’
‘When there is a break in the cloud, then you will see,’ explained Vlaren.
Havoc could not wait for the storm to abate. Anger flowed through him in the form of a Pyromantic Surge and he used it’s energy to punch a hole through the storm clouds. What he saw astounded him. Thousands of long tentacles stretched out into space to such a distance that it was impossible to see their end. The whole array of limbs protruded from the planet and it’s sight took up most of the distant horizon.
‘The thing is massive,’ he gasped.
‘Correct,’ said Vlaren, ‘our experts surmised that the bulk of the Entity is below the planet crust. It is using the surface as a protective shell. My mission was to command the task force on the ground to find a way to destroy the thing from within.’
‘How’s that plan coming along?’ said Havoc with a hint of irony.
Vlaren sighed, ‘the Plettraian fleet was destroyed in the attempt. The Task Force Landers were caught up in the fight that followed. I have been unable to communicate with any of the mission commanders. It is possible that I may be the last one alive.’
Havoc looked up at her sad, yet beautiful, face, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, it is I that should be sorry. Your world is dead, mine still has some time.’
Havoc nodded, ‘then I will help in any way that I can.’
Vlaren looked up towards the gap in the clouds that now closed, ‘how were you able to do that?’
‘Do you have anything on your records about Rawn Masters?’
Vlaren tilted her head to one side, ‘indeed, but I was led to believe they are extinct.’
‘They may still be if we don’t stop this.’
The device in her hand beeped loudly. ‘Ah at last, power has been restored to the PDU’s essential systems. I’m reading the Energy Spike again.’
‘What energy spike?’
She explained about the information that the space probe had picked up about the Realmworld before the attack. ‘You see, the energy emitted is so high in kilojoules that it would suggest an advanced technology, something not prevalent on this planet. It may have some bearing to my mission, because now I have very little of a plan left and few options.’ She tapped in more information in the PDU screen, ‘the signal is directly to our front about two of your Realmworld miles distant.’
‘Baronstown,’ said Havoc pursing his lips and nodded slowly, ‘let’s take a look then.
‘What about those creatures?’
‘The Korzac? You let me worry about them. When is daylight?’
Vlaren gave him a disarming frown, ‘Daylight? There...there is no sun. This planet has been drifting through space for thousands of years.’
‘So, why is there still heat and atmosphere?’
‘It is believed that the Entity generates heat and moisture. The black dust that muddies the ground all around is residue excreted from its various feasts. With every layer, the planet grows in size. Soon, any sign of civilisation will be totally covered.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that the Dark Tanis is pissing and shitting on us at this moment?’
‘Eloquently put.’
‘I am really having a bad day.’
13
The Korzac did not follow them; they seemed reluctant to pursue the couple beyond the limits of the palace grounds. Havoc and Vlaren took a route through the upper vault rooms of the library and the interconnecting battlement walkover to the Great Hall. Once they entered the narrow and brick-strewn streets of the city proper there was no sign of the Korzac, not even on Vlaren’s PDU.
Nevertheless, by the time they reached the ruined walls of the Baronstown limit they found more life, not many, but human nonetheless. They wore dirty, tattered clothing and scrambled about on all fours foraging for food. They were pale and malnourished, but Havoc was so elated in finding his kind still surviving in this nightmare that it gave him hope.
They approached one, a male. He did not seem afraid of the pair, even Vlaren’s alien appearance did not faze him.
‘Hello,’ said Havoc.
The boy was clearly young even smothered in dirt as he was, with shaggy black hair and large pupils tinged with green at the edges. He regarded them with interest. He scuttled towards them, tapped at Havoc’s armour and prodded the muzzle of Vlaren’s pulse rifle.
‘My name is Gillem,’ said Havoc.
�
��Moge,’ said the boy, who was finding it difficult to articulate the word. Obviously he did not speak much.
‘Hello, Moge.’
The boy nodded, ‘Moge.’
Vlaren waved her PDU in front of the boy, ‘sensor says he’s human. Needs food, also a sonic shower would not go amiss, either.’
‘Sonic what? Never mind.’ Havoc took a pouch from his hip and handed the boy a piece of crystallised Hojo fruit he got from Marrows Market the other day -three thousand years ago- he reminded himself.
Moge took the fruit and ate it hungrily; he looked like he really enjoyed it and started ranting with joy. Some of the words he spoke were difficult to understand, though.
‘It appears he and his fellows have regressed in the last few thousand years. They are barely surviving and it seems they have their own language. Note how his pupils are permanently dilated to get as much light as possible.’
Moge grabbed Havoc’s hand and dragged him, urging him to follow. He took them into the town and through an opening in a mansion house wall. There they found more like Moge, some children, two of them girls, most were young boys.
‘Pitiful,’ said Vlaren, ‘where are the womenfolk?’
Havoc asked Moge the same question about the women and all Moge said was, ‘Korzac!’
The prince nodded and Vlaren saw the look of sadness on his face. Havoc explained to her about all he knew of the Brethac Korzac.
‘So at night they are in their male form?’ asked Vlaren, who was growing uneasy with the prince’s explanation about these creatures. She wondered, if he had not saved her, what would become of her at the hands of the Korzac, would she suffer the same fate as the missing female humans?
‘Yes, and with no sunlight they will remain in that state. However, they are mortal in their male form and I only saw about a dozen surround you back at your ship thing.’
Vlaren took off her backpack and opened it. Inside were a number of strange items sealed in foil vacuum packs or stowed in their own compartments. She took out some of the foil packs.