Tag wanted to laugh and scream in horror at the same time. Was he still on the Argo? Had he overdosed on painkillers?
But the bite of the sulfurous air, the now-fervent voices, and the bright flares of color were all too real. This was no dream, no nightmare.
He guessed these creatures were the Forinths.
Sofia and Coren raised their arms slowly, fanning them. The creatures responded. Except instead of two arms, they raised eight each. And each arm had no hand. Rather, they appeared to be tentacles. The Forinths looked like evolved terrestrial octopuses. All at once the voices quieted. The people closed their beak-like mouths, and their arms froze. Their skin went white with red stripes.
Just like Sofia’s body paint, Tag noted.
One of the Forinths stepped forward. Its skin turned a shocking blue. All the others pointed their tentacles at it, and the blue Forinth glided toward Tag, Coren, and Sofia. It aimed one tentacle at Sofia.
She took a deep breath, then belted out a series of high notes with the timbre of a practiced vocalist. The blue one sang something in response, and Sofia made a sweeping bow, then gestured toward Tag.
Once again, the color-changing eyes all locked on him. It took every ounce of control he had to remain still. He pretended that he was standing at attention, ready to receive an admiral aboard the Argo.
Sofia crooned another short melody, and the blue Forinth faded back into the crowd. Just then, a staccato, off-key note sounded from a Forinth. The crowd parted, and each stared accusingly at the offender. The blue one marched to the singled-out Forinth and grabbed them. The offending Forinth’s colors shifted wildly, pink, then purple, then green, then yellow. The shifting colors conveyed a distinct feeling of panic to Tag.
He watched in silent horror as the blue one lifted the color-changing Forinth above its head. It walked to the nascent volcano. All the voices rose in a fast-moving song, hammering Tag’s eardrums. He clenched his jaw, and his whole body felt tight as the blue one tilted its head back. Its beaked mouth opened in a primal, gut-wrenching yell, and it threw the color-changing Forinth into the volcano.
The plummeting Forinth let out a pitiful screech. Its scream echoed, piercing the song of the others for what seemed to Tag like minutes. It may have only been a matter of seconds, but he was too shocked to tell the difference. Then the blue one turned to him. Its eyes seemed to narrow, and it padded along the dirt, careening for him.
Sofia’s hands clenched into fists, and she started singing louder, staring straight ahead. The blue one wrapped its tentacles around Tag’s shoulder. It was surprisingly strong, even through his EVA suit. He winced as the creature tightened its grip around his injury but bit his lip to refrain from uttering any sound. The blue one guided him to the center of the clearing. It lifted Tag above its head.
Tag wanted to yell. To struggle out of the Forinth’s grasp—but one glance at Sofia told him not to. The blue one held him above the hole straight to Eta-Five’s hell. Waves of intense heat washed over him. He could hear the growling belly of the planet through this volcanic vent, and the sulfurous odor irritated his eyes and assaulted his nostrils. His body went rigid, wondering if he should still heed Sofia’s warning.
If he was going to fight back, this was his last chance.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The blue Forinth unraveled its tentacles and let Tag go. Hot waves of sulfurous air rose from the depths of the volcano, buffeting Tag. In that moment, anger and despair flooded through him, but he gritted his teeth, refusing to scream like the Forinth they’d sacrificed. He wouldn’t give them any pleasure in his death. Then almost as soon as he’d started plummeting to the fiery bowels of Eta-Five, something grabbed him under his arms. A tentacle.
It tightened around his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs, until his bruised ribs ached. The single tentacle retracted and yanked him from the volcano. What game is the animal playing? Tag thought. He wrapped his fingers around the sinewy tentacle, refusing to let the monster drop him again. Screw whatever Sofia had said about playing dead and letting these Forinths treat him like their plaything. The blue Forinth hoisted him above the sweltering pit and raised him in the air once more. Tag opened his mouth to protest, his face already heating more from rage than from the volcano, but the boa constrictor-like grip the Forinth had on him prevented him from uttering so much as a miserable squeak.
The Forinth’s eyes caught Tag’s, and a soft melody drifted from its beaked mouth, almost like a lullaby. Bemused but wary, Tag clenched his fists, his muscles tightening. Still, something eerily comforting in the blue Forinth’s song crashed against the embattled emotions thundering through Tag’s mind. His fury gave way to a strange sense of comfort, as if he unconsciously knew he stood among friends and family. His fingers unclenched, and his muscles relaxed. The Forinth set him down. Tag fell into a trance as if he’d been slipped a sedative, all thoughts of danger and alarm drifting out of his head. The Forinth dipped its tentacle in a shell of some sort that another Forinth held. When it withdrew its arm, the tip was covered in red paint, and it smeared the paint over Tag’s face.
With the painting done, the Forinth’s mouth closed, and its song ended. Tag’s survival instincts returned, and he began to back away from the Forinth. His shirt clung to his back with sweat, and his fingers trembled with the surging adrenaline. He held his hands before him like a wrestler, ready to do battle with the blue Forinth.
But the alien didn’t pounce on him. Instead, it waved its tentacles toward Sofia and Coren as if to urge Tag to return to them. He did so with tentative steps, never taking his eyes off the creature. When he joined Sofia and Coren, they each bowed deeply, and the entire Forinth host dissipated into the woods, their flesh sparkling like fireflies until they disappeared entirely, blending into the trees and foliage. Their invisible retreat into the forest sounded not like a tribe of creatures stamping over dry branches and leaves but more like the soft whisper of a breeze through tree limbs.
Sofia shot Tag a meaningful look with her brows furrowed and lips pursed, no doubt a simple gesture to indicate he should remain silent. The trio departed the clearing and left the sulfurous air and insufferable heat behind as they marched over the path they’d traveled on. Once they’d walked for more than a klick, Sofia finally broke stride and slowed. She used the back of her hand to wipe the sweat off her brow and let out a long exhalation.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“We can talk now?” Tag asked, his eyes wide.
“Yes, we can.”
“Goddamnit, what just happened?” He couldn’t restrain himself. Here he’d come to whisk this anthropologist off the planet, and she’d subjected him to some kind of tribal social experiment. He’d always been interested in meeting intelligent life as a kid, reading about both fictional and nonfictional adventures of scientists in the field, but he’d had enough. No more so-called intelligent life for him. “I didn’t come down here to have some crazy species sacrifice me to their damn gods.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sofia said, a slight grin breaking across her face, irritating Tag more.
“What’s so damn funny?” His mouth went dry.
“Your reaction.”
“My reaction? I almost died.”
“No, as long as you did what I said, you were good. They don’t normally kill newcomers anyway. Right, Coren?”
The snake-person seemed to give her an exasperated look. “No, they wouldn’t exactly kill you. But you’d damn sure wish they threw you into that pit.” He gestured to his scars. “I fought back. Sofia told me not to when I first came to this planet, but I didn’t listen. And this is what I got for it. Those tentacles pack a lot of punch, as Sofia so often says.”
She nodded and held back a frond blocking their path. “They have small bone-like blades at the end of each. When they want to hurt you, they have no qualms about it.”
“And they’re strong,” Coren said. “Stronger than our power suits. Some of my people learned that t
he hard way, too.”
Tag had so many more questions. His head began to pound with confusion as he glanced between Coren and Sofia dubiously. One thing at a time, he reminded himself. Compartmentalize and proceed. “None of that really answers my question.”
“No patience,” Sofia said, indicating for them to follow a turn in the path. “They were holding what I’ve come to call a balance ceremony. They recognize that the resources in the Forest of Light might look vast, but they’re limited. And if the population grows too large, they threaten to upend the balance they’ve achieved over generations of living here.”
“Balance ceremony,” Tag muttered. The pieces started to come together. “So that sacrifice was because there’s new life down here?”
“Precisely,” Sofia said.
A spring of guilt bubbled up in Tag. “The one that died—that was sacrificed—was that on my account?”
Sofia laughed, and Tag scowled at her. How could she be so brutally callous about a species and culture she was studying?
“No," she said. “Don’t be so arrogant. They don’t care about our species. A new baby was born to one of the family units—another thing far too complex for me to explain now. When a baby is hatched, one of the old ones has to go.”
“That’s it? The oldest? Doesn’t matter if they’re important or not?”
“Right,” Sofia said. “Very straightforward, no-frills tradition, huh?”
“I’m not sure about no frills.” His body still felt like it was overheating. He pulled at his EVA suit’s collar. “What was my role in all of this?”
“The Forinths insist on introducing each Forest of Light newcomer to their gods. I went through it, Coren went through it, and all his people went through it. Once you’ve been dropped into the volcano and they let you dangle there, they seem satisfied to live and let be. You don’t bother them, and they’ll no longer bother you. But don’t mistake that for being ignored. You never know when they’re watching.”
“Right, that color-changing flesh. Remarkable. But as interesting as they are”—Tag stared daggers at Coren—“I want to know why your people attacked me.” He’d been so distracted by the Forinths and the strange power their music had over him that he’d almost forgotten the reason he’d found himself here in the first place. His hand instinctively inched to the empty holster on his suit, and he wished he had some weapon, any weapon.
“We thought you were hostile,” Coren said. His expression remained stolid, unexcited. “It’s as simple as that.”
“I don’t buy it. You don’t just massacre a ship full of people without warning because you thought they were hostile!”
Coren’s good eye twitched, narrowing slightly. “A ship full of people? There was no one else in your air car.”
“Of course there wasn’t,” Tag said, frustration welling up in him, “because everyone else was already dead before the Argo landed on this planet. You can’t tell me all that was a mistake, too.”
Coren glanced between Tag and Sofia. His statue-like seriousness began to fade, replaced with something that looked akin to worry. “Your ship was attacked?”
Suspicion crept into Tag’s thoughts. It was difficult to read this alien’s sincerity, but it certainly appeared as if he was shocked. “Yes, that’s exactly right. By a cutter-sized vessel with your people aboard.”
“You’re certain it was my people?”
“They boarded us. I saw them, face to face. Or at least, their armor. They wore the same black armor and orange visors I saw down here on your people.” Tag recalled the attacker he’d taken down outside the forest. “Only theirs seemed to have working energy shields.”
Sofia held a hand up to stop Coren from responding then indicated a small shack constructed of thick logs and branches. “This is my place. Should we go inside?” She eyed the trees around them suspiciously. “Sounds like we have a few things to discuss.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The interior of Sofia’s shelter proved hardly more alluring than its exterior. A holoprojection module sat on a crude wooden table next to a collection of comm equipment and pieces of a sensor array she appeared to be in the middle of working on. A picture—an actual printed 2D photograph—was pinned to the wall. It showed an older woman and man with Sofia. They all shared the same ruddy complexion.
Before Tag had long to study it, Sofia motioned for them to sit around the meager furniture. Tag took a worn canvas chair, and Sofia sat on the edge of her SRE navy-issued cot. She caught Tag eying it.
“Yep, it’s still as uncomfortable as training.” She grabbed a cloth and began dabbing at the paint on her skin. “Cheap and portable enough for missions like this, and just stiff enough to make you wonder if you’d be better off sleeping on the ground.”
The little bit of humor did nothing to buoy Tag’s dour mood, and her smile soon vanished as Coren settled on a log repurposed as a stool. Tag undid his suit enough to scratch at the now-healing wound on his shoulder. Sofia, eying the singed flesh, dug into a pack and took out a first aid provisions pack. She tossed it to Tag, and he caught it.
“Thanks,” he said then started rummaging through it.
“Did you see others?” Coren asked.
“Others? You mean besides your people?” Tag shot back. He pulled a tissue-regen patch from the pack and taped it over the wound.
“No, just the one cutter? No larger ships? No fleet?”
Tag shook his head, setting the pack down. “Just the cutter.”
Coren’s good eye closed. The lid on his scarred white eye fluttered as if it was trying to shut. A long exhalation escaped his thin lips. “Good.”
“Why’s that good?” Fresh heat flowed into Tag’s cheeks. His knuckles went white as he clenched his hands into fists. “Every single person aboard the Argo died. We had a much larger ship, a well-trained crew, and that little cutter boarded us and then sent the ship headed straight to Eta to burn.”
Sofia’s eyes went wide, and she stopped wiping the paint from her arm. “You mean they didn’t let you go?”
“No, of course not.” Tag was aghast. “They seemed to have every intention of killing me.”
“That’s—that’s almost unbelievable,” she said. “Their technology, their ships ... even a small cutter could take on an SRE light cruiser and win.”
“Tell me something new,” Tag said.
“How did you escape?” Coren asked.
“Why do you want to know?” Tag asked, his brow furrowed. “So you can make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
“No.” Coren smoothed out the short black fur along his scalp and neck. “Like Sofia said, that’s quite the feat. Luck or skill, you’ve somehow survived an attack I doubt many of your comrades could.”
“And how in the three hells would you know that?” Tag gritted his teeth, leaning forward in his chair.
“I used to be an engineer aboard a research vessel about the size of one of your battlecruisers.”
“Used to be?”
“Our ship and its crew of two thousand landed on Eta-Five.” His eye traced the dirt floor. “It’s as far as we made it.”
“The more you talk, the less I understand about all of this. Why did I watch people like yours murder my crewmates? I deserve a proper explanation.”
“Don’t we all,” Coren said. He sat straighter. The pointed ends of his fingers drummed over the log. “Let me try to put this all in context.”
“Please do,” Tag said sardonically. He folded his arms over his chest.
“Tag,” Sofia said, rubbing a spot of stubborn paint on her leg. “I get your skepticism. But I assure you Coren and his people, at least those on Eta-Five, are not the same ones that attacked your ship. You’re going to have to believe me and Coren on this one. Try to keep an open mind.”
The flames of anger flickered over Tag’s mind again. Flashes of Kaufman and Morgan and Captain Weber appeared there. All the crew members he couldn’t save. The people he was sworn to protect, to h
eal. Their lives spilling between his fingers like flowing water.
“Fine,” was all he said. It was impossible to dismiss the memories and emotions surging through him, but he kept his lips straight and shut, willing to at least listen to Coren. Maybe he’d actually learn something useful about these monstrous people.
“Thank you,” Coren said. “You will need to, as your people say, bear with me.”
Tag grunted.
“First, when you arrived here, we thought you were a threat.”
Tag opened his mouth to protest. Coren held up a hand, trying Tag’s patience. But he saw the look in Sofia’s brown eyes and closed his mouth again, using every ounce of self-control to listen to this snake-person. Once he forced his countenance to appear amenable again, she handed him the cloth. He took it and wiped the paint from his face.
“Go on,” Tag said. “Why did you think I was a threat?”
“I’m speaking of your arrival in the air car,” Coren said. “I believe the ship you ran into was our enemy as well. The people here are all that remains of my ship. And”—Coren paused, a sorrowful expression etching his slightly reptilian features—“we may truly be the last free members of our society.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Let me start at the beginning. My name is K’renojadajo,” Coren said. “The name seems to be hard for Sofia to pronounce, so I go by Coren for her benefit, and, I assume, yours as well.”
Tag tried to mouth Coren’s full name silently, but it felt clumsy.
“Like I said, Coren is fine.” He waved a long-fingered hand dismissively. “I’m originally from the planet Meck’ara, which is the homeworld for the M’jar Emtoradajo—my species. Again, the intricacies and nuances of the words cannot be replicated by your vocal cords or anatomy, so I’d advise you not to bother.”
“I’ve already tried,” Sofia said. “Coren is patient, but if you mispronounce their proper name to another, they don’t take kindly to the offense. It’s better just to call them by a nickname.”
Eternal Frontier (The Eternal Frontier Book 1) Page 14