Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld

by James Wittenbach

  He looked back. The men in black were calling to him. He could not make out what they were saying.

  He leaped into the churning water.

  Chapter Twenty

  Eden – The Farside

  Kate set down on a windswept stretch of beach not much wider than her own wingspan, a stretch of frozen, compacted sand squeezed between crashing ocean waves and sharpened ridges of hard, igneous rock.

  The hatch opened and a ramp pushed out meeting by a gust of stinging cold air speckled with ice and salt. The Marines charged out of the ship first, with counter-weights in their suits activated to help them keep their balance in the low gravity and icy terrain. Winter left the ship next to last, but charged to the fore of the landing party. She had refused the offer of landing gear, her arms were naked to the cold, cutting wind. Redfire followed near behind, using his hand-held tracker to lead and guide them to the runaway slaves. The runaways were only two hundred meters from the ship, but it was a rock-strewn expanse on a slight grade for the first hundred and a steep climb for the second. Winter led them up the shore, walking along an outcropping rock that curved along the shoreline like a misplaced scimitar. Once behind it, they were in a kind of channel, which sheltered them from the wind, but cut them off from the ship. Quarters were too cramped for a good fight. They picked their way quickly up the side of a hill, moving away from the beach toward a fold in the rocks where the runaways were sheltered. The going got tougher. The rocks were steep and slippery-smooth. Tiny metal spike-grips deployed from the toes and heels of their landing boots.

  A Republicker Marine named Chevron was the first to realize the obvious, that it was easier leaping over the rocks than trying to climb up them. She jumped first, and one-by-one the others followed, grasping hands at the top of the cliff to steady themselves. In a minute or less, the entire company was almost to the top, except for Redfire and Winter.

  “I can’t,” she told him, not the helpless plea of a frightened woman, but an angry acknowledgement that she was from a low-gravity world and had a low-gravity physiology.

  “Get on my back, woman,” Redfire ordered. She climbed onto his back, he commanded the suit to compensate for the extra mass, then bounded upwards, making the long, not quite flat slope of the upper rocks. He nearly slipped but caught himself. Winter slid from his back. He reoriented himself with his Tracker. “The runaways are in that hollow,” he pointed down the rock face. It had been agreed that Winter would approach the runaways. The landing team, in their strange gear, could have been taken for chasers. This would have sent the runaways into certain panic.

  Winter walked across the rocks and Redfire found himself staring at her backside, the sway of her hips unlike anything he had ever seen before. He had watched a lot of women walk on his time, but there was something about the back of her legs that seemed to be hypnotizing him, commanding him to come up behind her and wrap himself around those amazing thighs, feeling the muscles straining in and out.

  She disappeared into the hollow. Over the wind, he could hear nothing. Redfire looked around the Marines and crew arrayed on the open rocks, occasionally lit by flashes of lightning from beyond the horizon, where a horrendous storm was raging. The lightning was from too far away for thunder to follow, but was bright enough to wash out all color from the landscape, turning the scene into a flashlit charcoal drawing each time it flashed. It made for a strange effect of desolation, strobe lit, streaked with smears of precipitation. A few minutes passed, and then the first two runaways appeared, a man and woman. Redfire was shocked. They were thin as starving dogs, and the rags wrapped around them wouldn’t have kept a starving dog warm on a spring day in Kandor. “Get them back to the ship,” Redfire ordered. He shouted an order to the Medical Technician over his comm-link.

  “We have sixteen incoming casualties, malnutrition, exposure, hypothermia. Prepare heating blankets and nutrition packs.”

  They emerged from their hiding space in ones and twos. When he had been a boy, an air transport had crashed in the Arcadian Rainforest. The survivors had fought their way through the jungle for 130 days, nearly starved, set on by parasites, clothing in tatters. They looked like butterballs compared to the Edenian runaway slaves. Winter was the last to emerge, carrying a child in her arms. She ran to Redfire and shouted at him. “I told them you would take them to Green Witch. I told them you were my emissaries.”

  “They’re in no shape to make it down the way we came,” Redfire tried to take the child, but she clung to Winter with a grip of iron. “The slope is a little easier down that way.”

  “Have the chasers seen us?” she asked.

  Redfire looked up and raised his Tracker in the direction it said the Aswanees were huddling. The Shrieks had lights trained on the spot and were pumping out sonic wave blasts. The ships bounced and weaved in the night like hyperactive incandescent banshees. The course Redfire indicated met the rock channel almost precisely below them.

  “They’re so close,” Winter whispered.

  “They haven’t seen us,” he reassured her. He took her hand in his. Even through the glove, he could feel a warm vitality pulsing through it, radiating outward and coalescing with his. This impression he let fade to background noise as he and she picked their way down the trail, the last in the line of runaways and Marines. Two other Marines hung back, guarding the rear entrance to the channel.

  The first of the runaways and their Marine guardians had entered the channel when the night was lit by a prolonged flash of lightning. Redfire and Winter saw the head of an Aswanee peer over the rock ledge and point. The Aswanee called to his comrades and they were all torn away from the Shrieks, looking down at the landing party and the runaways. They all howled in unison... and began to transform.

  Redfire saw clearly three of the Aswanee chasers, huge, four-armed men of the type Alpha Party had seen in the Scion’s Court, transform into monsters. Huge, cobra-like cowls grew around their heads, edged with bony spikes. Though mist and distance muted the light from the Shrieks, he could see that these hoods were brightly colored with red, blue, black, and yellow spots. Their jaws lengthened, and their hands became claws. For a moment, Redfire was transfixed. There had been a thriving community of physical alteration artists in New Cleveland. Most of them used body paints and epidermal pigment modification, the more extreme had altered their bodies genetically, sprouting ram horns or lengthening their extremities to absurdity. They probably would have sacrificed half their reproductive organs to pull off anything like this.

  “That is a really cool trick,” Redfire said to himself as the monsters vaulted over the cliff and came running down the rocks, now shaped like large hooded, reptiles, who ran like dogs on six powerful, many-clawed legs.

  “Orbs,” Redfire shouted. “They’re coming. Get those people to the ship.”

  Two of the Marines jumped up from the channel and took up positions. They sighted and fired pulse cannons at the Aswanees. They were intended as warning shots. The wind and sea salt air were throwing their targeting instruments awry. Most of the energy pulses were bouncing off the rocks.

  The snake-dogs continued coming, very close. Ignoring Redfire and the Marines, they were headed for the channel. The runaways would be pinned down. “Situation One!” Redfire yelled, authorizing deadly force against the Aswanees. The next two Marine pulses connected. And when they did, the horrible creatures were briefly enveloped in yellowish light that crackled and snapped, then they fell to the ground in mid-lope.

  “Get into the channel! I’ll cover you!” Redfire shouted. One Marine dropped in. The other shook his head. Neg, sir. You get into the trench. I’ll cover you. All of a sudden, behind Redfire’s head came a sort of roaring hiss. He whipped around and was face to fanged, hissing, venom-dripping face of an Aswanee chaser. He raised his pulse cannon, but the monster slapped it away with one swipe of his clawed hand. The beast jumped on Redfire and brought him down, teeth snapping at the commander’s throat. Redfire tried to push it away, but althoug
h the thing weighed little, it held him in a death grip. Redfire saw himself reflected in the creature’s glowing red eyes. It jaws snapped closer. It struck at him like a pit viper. A yellowish liquid suddenly shot from its mouth. Redfire dodged his head just in time to hear the venom splatter and crackle against the rock. One instant, the beast was snapping at him, then something smacked its head, hard. Redfire glanced up to see Winter smashing its head with the stock of a pulse rifle. The beast snapped back at her and she grabbed its jaws in her own two hands and slammed them together. The beast howled. Broken bits of teeth fell around Redfire’s head. With the beast distracted, Redfire recovered himself, his training had disciplined him in a technique that used mental concentration to alter his perception of time. The beast’s thrashing slowed. Sound diminished to a dull hum. Light flashed again, leisurely spilling over the scene like a dawn. He saw the Marine, trying to take aim without risking him or Winter. He saw Winter, her face full of ferocity, hands in a fighting stance, ducking a blow from the beast’s forearm. He saw that she was going to take a glancing blow from the beast’s razor sharp claws. Redfire raised his right leg and kicked hard into the beast’s abdomen, focusing his energy into the blow. The beast lifted up and back, its claws just missing Winter. Redfire flipped himself up to his feet. He and Winter pounced together onto the beast. They landed in a heap, struggling for position, and ended with Redfire pinning down both legs with his own and one foreleg with his arm. His other hand was clutched at the beast’s throat, and overlay Winter’s hand. He felt the pulse of the beast’s neck below his hand, and the pulse of Winter’s hand above that. Her right leg pinned down the beast’s other forearm. Her right hand was free. It was with this hand that she withdrew a long stiletto from a sheath on her belt. The creature had just enough time to confront its mortality before she slipped the blade into its neck.

  They held it down until it twitched and breathed no more, an oily pool of blood spreading beneath it on the ground. Redfire had half-expected it to turn into a man again, but it didn’t. Its cells were dead.

  He and Winter picked themselves up from the ground. Blood pounded in his veins, his temples throbbed, he sweated, he bled, and the blood of the hell-beast was smeared on his hands. When he looked at Winter, sliding the knife back into her belt, he could feel only one prerogative and he would have acted upon right there on the rocks had he not been distracted.

  “Commander, we need to get back to the ship,” the Marine called.

  Winter moved close to him, so close he would inhale what she exhaled. Her eyes met his, and it was as though he could see the future in them, a terrible, wonderful future. She touched her forehead to his and he knew she could feel it, too.

  “We … have to get back to the ship,” Redfire said, almost apologetically. She nodded, turned away then swung back to press a powerful, mind-blowing kiss on his mouth before turning and running back toward the Aves.

  Redfire followed her as eagerly as a puppy and as willing to obey as a trained shepherd. Eden – The Dayside

  After brief and decidedly one-sided negotiations with the lead high Guardsman, Keeler, the rest of the landing party, the boy, and the still unconscious Lord Paperlung were loaded into long-handled baskets for the journey to Chiban. Each basket was carried aloft by two guardsmen. George was carried aloft in a great net carried by five exceptionally well-coordinated guardsmen.

  The flight was anything but smooth. There was a constant insidious lurching in time to the beats of the guardsmen’s wings during level flight. When flight was not level, when they encountered a downdraft or an upward thermal, it was all Keeler could do to keep from being pitched out of the basket and sent falling to his death. He held the sides of the basket in a death-grip that would lead to an ache in his hand that would not go away until something worse happened to it.

  After nearly an hour of terror-inducing flight, they came upon a large lake. It was shaped like a footprint and half encircled by a range of beautifully symmetrical mountain peaks. In its heel was an island, looking like a golden, three-pointed leaf resting on the waters. V-shaped wakes from a flotilla of small boats pointed toward the glistening isle. The light of day was only just beginning to fade, but already, the island glittered with lights and fires. A few more fires were visible at the shoreline, but obviously, the island was where the desirable real estate was. As the flock of guardsmen descended and closed on the island, Keeler saw the buildings resolve themselves from a cancerous architectural growth on the landscape to individual monuments of wonder. The island was cut through with canals, and on their banks were built palaces two, three, and eight times larger and grander than those in the Citadel Altama, spires and towers reaching heavenward. Like Altama, the walls of one building ran into the next, creating a labyrinth of deep, narrow streets between the canals. Keeler would have bet a month that there was not a single blade of grass on the whole island.

  They were set on the ground somewhat inelegantly, in front of a huge, eggshell colored, sea-shell shaped building. Rows of obelisks were arranged in straight lines on each of the four sides around the building. One obelisk was broken off about three-quarters of the way to the top, like a broken tooth. There was no sign of the missing portion. The others in his party were stumbling and unsteady, regaining their land legs as they left the baskets and stepped forward on the vast plaza under the watchful eyes of what seemed like hundreds of guardsmen. Lord Paperlung took a step onto the concrete, then promptly turned and vomited into his basket.

  Keeler approached the lead high guardsmen. “This is not the Second-Best palace,” he hissed.

  “The palace is for the reception later,” the guardsman explained. “First, the Temple of the Z’Batsu.”

  “So, this is the Temple of the Z’Batsu,” Keeler said, casting a wary but admiring eye toward the many-domed edifice. “Big One. Tell me, good guardsman, who were the Z’Batsu?”

  “Is this a test, Lord Keeler?”

  “If it will get me an answer, then, za, it is a test.”

  “The Z’Batsu made this world.”

  “Good, and what is the purpose of the temple.”

  “When the Z’Batsu walked these lands, the Temple was the location for ceremonies of bone and flesh. Here, the Z’Batsu cast the Lords, the Priestesses, the low and high guardsmen, and all the Gifted Castes, who given dominion over the slave castes and common people. It was sealed when the Z’Batsu departed, and remains sealed to this day.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “All the power the Z’Batsu brought to this world is inside. Guarding the Temple of Z’Batsu is the sacred mission of the Scion Chiban.”

  “Bring him on,” Keeler ordered.

  “Lord?”

  “Bring on the Scion.”

  “He is coming,” the Lead High Guardsman looked uncomfortable. Such impertinence in the court of the Scion was unknown, yet, he could not rebuke Keeler for it. Keeler was eager to find out why not.

  Eden – The Nightside

  The flight back was a blur to Tactical CCommander Redfire. A ship crowded with refugees, with medics and Marines busily distributing blankets, head and nutrition packs among the eerily quiet and complacent former slaves. He couldn’t remember a word said or a facial expression from any of them, Marine, medic, or refugee. He had not gone near the command deck.

  When Kate set down once more, Redfire and Winter scarcely waited for the hatch to open before they jumped out into the snow. She took him by the hand and led him toward the village at a pace that was almost a sprint. The first hints that the long night might be ending were asserting themselves in a pale glow at the eastern horizon. Faint golden light was edging the jagged mountain tops that ringed the Valley of Green Witch. A wind was blowing, cold, but promising the warmth of the day to come.

  Redfire and Winter passed through the cluster of small stone hovels, like ghosts fleeing the night, casting three shadows each in the pale moonlight. Children awakened as they passed, and bawled. Birds fluttered frantically within t
heir nesting sites. Dogs growled, and stared at doorways.

  She led him to a place on the other side of the village, away from the hovels of the villagers. He did not realize where they were until she stopped. They were both out of breath, their sides heaving. Beside them was a pair of great fallen trees sheltered beneath the thick branches of two mature trees. When he could almost breathe normally again, she pulled him into the space between the fallen trunks, below the sheltering boughs. It was a snug space, with walls formed on either side by the large dead fallen trees. These were interwoven among the low branches of still-living trees, covered with filagree like long soft pine needles. There were thick branches above his head, soft blankets and skins on the ground at his feet.

  “Is this where you live?” Redfire asked.

  She held her hand against his mouth, and Redfire could not help but breathe the scent that came from her fingers, like flowers and blood. It filled him, warmed him, set-off fireworks in his brain. He felt himself growing hot, felt the last fragments of his reason slipping beneath some internal horizon.

  He faintly realized he was no longer looking at her, or even hearing the soft guttural noises she was making deep in her throat. Strangely, he became hyper-aware of the smells of her body, her breath, as though he could sense the very iron in her blood and catch a hot chemical whiff of the hormones burning off her skin. The piney scent of the wood, the musty odor of the furs, the aroma of smoke and the morning breeze surrounded them both. His hands came up around her waist, a reflex as natural as breathing. He pulled her small, hard body close to him. Their eyes locked, and he felt himself falling into hers. He felt as though every part of him was on fire, locked into a single need he was powerless to defy. They did not so much kiss as devour each other. She guided his hand between her legs, and he found her space covered with soft, dense fur. She pressed him against it, and he felt the skin beneath, hard and swollen like ripe fruit.

  With a brief and tiny voice, the final shard of reason in his mind begged him to pull away, but he could no more resist what was happening than he could will the sun to retreat back into night. As soon as she guided his finger to catch a drop of the moisture that had begun to flow from her body, she owned him, became his master and he her obedient servant. At its touch, he cried out softly, and then took her. No longer a man, Redfire became an animal, awash in a great storm-at-sea of pheromones and ancient, primal urges. He took her without tenderness, or desire, but only a great need to plant his seed within her. He took her and plowed her deep. She fought against him, but he knew this was only to insure that only the strongest and best of him made it inside her.