by Doug Goodman
Trik Kree-kikik welcomed the change of topics. He held out a vial for them to see. “This was to be our salvation. Should the creatures not be destroyed while still in the sky, and should they prove more powerful than our network of channels, then the final prevention would be the Sleep Key. It is buried in the ground, as you have probably ascertained, underneath the statue of its inventor, the great Kittrik-ikik, who was killed in a horrible accident when he discovered the Sleep Key. The Sleep Key is a biological entity, a parasite that causes whoever it touches to fall asleep forever. It creates a stasis that keeps the host alive while it reproduces and moves along to find other creatures to touch.”
“Why didn’t it affect us, then?” Emily asked.
“The parasite can only live for up to three days in our atmosphere, approximately 108 hours. By our analysis, we have been asleep for over four thousand years.”
“That is our analysis, too,” Emily said, but she was thinking of the family locked away in the hidden chamber, with 93 notches carved into the wall. They had almost outlived the Sleep Key.
“We woke you, somehow,” Anna said.
“After the parasite has finished its life cycle, then in the presence of a second biological entity, such as yourself, the effects of the Sleep Key dissipate. If everything else failed, I was to give the retreat order. Everyone would return to bunkers high up in the pyramids, where they would be safe from the Sleep Key because it cannot climb more than 30 meters. The Sleep Key would silence the Rentok, but the Sleep Key would be prevented from affecting the rest of our planet by our high outer walls. See, you thought those walls were erected to keep things out. They were really to keep things in. After the Kroern were asleep, our robots would exorcise them of their demon parasites, and their homeworld would be none the wiser.
“Unfortunately, a warring faction released the Sleep Key before I could issue the command to retreat. They saw the Key as an opportunity for genetic purification, that it would put everyone and the Rentok asleep, and then they would cull the weak from our population while they were sleeping. They announced this as they turned on the Sleep Key. It was a horrible day for the Jedik-ikik. To finally have a solution to the colonizing Kroern, only to have a small group of our own use our weapon against us.”
For a moment, the Supreme Conqueror stared out at his city. Jedik-ikik do not cry. They lack tear ducts. But Cole noticed that when they were emotional, their mandibles chittered constantly. The Supreme Commander tried to hide it, but his mandibles opened and closed in a quick spurt like a small sob from a child or the single tear of a soldier.
“Thankfully, they were not able to survive the Sleep Key and fell into a catatonic state like the rest of us. When your presence woke our city, the first thing we did was purge Ximortikrim of this warring faction.”
Emily thought of the first drone images of the city after they discovered the Rentok. Jedik-ikik were executed. It had seemed strange then, but made sense now what she was seeing.
A small ripple of a Golgothaquake vibrated in the room. Guards rushed in.
“It seems the Kroern are not yet dead,” the Supreme Conqueror said. He removed the communicator and handed it to one of his guards. He said, “Take them to the network, with the other pilot. Hand them over to the Old Devil, and tell him I don’t want them back until he has all the information about the Kroern. Give him this so that he may be able to understand their words.”
“But we are not Kroern,” Emily said in the Jedik-ikik language.
“Are you saying that the greatest mind in Ximortikrim is wrong?” He stood with his arms akimbo and dared any of them to tell him otherwise.
When they did not respond, he ordered the crew taken away. “We have preparations to make. The Rentok will not survive this time.”
5
Twenty Jedik-ikik troops escorted their prisoners out of the First Pyramid and across the battlefield to the network of aqueducts. To get there, the escort circled around the giant tower that had become the Rentok, K’tang. From the bottom up, K’tang was like standing at the base of the Statue of Liberty and looking straight up. Unlike the Statue, though, K’tang was covered in molten lava, which left eerie black patterns in the giant shape, which had arms stretched out to the aqueduct channels.
The troops stopped at the far end of K’tang. One of their escorts, the one with the collar, entered a tent that had been erected there. While they waited, Emily surveyed the area for anything that could help her. She noticed that the door was open at the end of K’tang’s foot.
From the tent emerged the Old Devil, wearing the translator. He was a tall, hunched Jedik-ikik with long scars stretching up and down his torso. One of the eyes on his long face was caved in. When he spoke, his voice was hard as iron and sharp as a circular saw.
“Captain, your men are dismissed. Leave these wretched aliens to me.”
As the escort left, the Old Devil watched the astronauts scornfully, like a rancher trying to decide which cow-killing coyote to shoot first. He was a resolute Jedik-ikik, stern in his hatred. As the ground trembled, he stood tall. When he spoke, he spoke matter-of-factly.
“If it were up to me, I’d kill you zree now and not think twice of it. But my Supreme Conqueror wants you to stay alive long enough to give up your secrets.”
He nodded to Mathieu. The Old Devil’s troops pulled him in front of the others.
“You look like the strongest of your group. Your helmet. Why do you wear it?”
“I cannot breathe your air.”
“The Supreme Conqueror does not want you dead quickly, but I don’t care about these things. If you die, there are four others. Remove your helmet, or I will smash it.”
Mathieu looked to the other astronauts. Emily wished she could break through the pain in her head. She said, “Do as you’re told, Mathieu.”
Mathieu took several quick breaths—inhale, inhale, inhale—and pulled off his helmet. The soldiers took his helmet and placed it on a table.
The Old Devil smiled fiendishly. He motioned for a bucket to be brought to him. Two soldiers brought forward a heavy, black bucket. They carried it on two long poles, and placed it on a wooden stoop that groaned with the weight of the bucket. The bucket had a lid, and a set of tongs hanging from opposite sides.
“The goal of torture is to receive information from you that you’d rather hide. Most of my soldiers think the best way to do this is to cause you significant pain. If the pain is bad enough, you will talk. But they are wrong. Research has proven that the best way to get your secrets is to give you something in return. The absence of pain, for instance.”
He stopped and said to Mathieu, “Still holding your breath? Keep holding.”
Emily thought of their breathing trials. Mathieu could hold his breath for almost a minute and a half. That was supposed to be good knowledge in case a suit was compromised. This was another thing entirely.
“I need something I can give you in return,” the Old Devil clucked. “But what?” He strummed his fingers on Mathieu’s helmet while smiling.
He stopped and studied the expressions on the astronauts’ faces.
“We come in peace,” Emily said. “We mean you no harm.”
“You must be their leader.”
“No, I am,” Cole said.
The Old Devil laughed. “Don’t play me. You’re clearly the most conquered in this group.” He looked back at Emily. “What is your name?”
“Commander Emily Jane Musgrove.”
The Old Devil smiled. “Give him his helmet back.”
The soldiers handed Mathieu his helmet. He put it over his head just as he was starting to go blue in the face. He vented the atmosphere and gasped in the oxygen.
“See how well this works? You give me information, I give you air. The absence of pain is the information channel, not the pain itself. Now, the first thing you do when torturing a group of people is you show them how much power you have over them. They need to believe in that power. It is an important step. T
he way you prove your command is by utterly defeating their strongest member. Take his helmet back off.”
“No!” Anna shouted, reaching for Mathieu. One of the troops stood in her way.
Mathieu took several quick breaths.
Inhale. Inhale. Inhale.
The soldiers pulled the helmet off of him.
The Old Devil looked up at the behemoth towering over them. He breathed in deeply.
“Twenty under my command are buried in the lava flow beneath this monstrosity. Did you pilot the zree Rentok, K’t’chimigalpa-kiritikikikee k’tang?”
“No,” she said.
The Old Devil motioned, and the helmet was placed back over Mathieu. He gasped immediately.
“That was an easy question. Even I knew the answer to that. The pilot’s hanging up there.” The astronauts followed where he was pointing to the body, swaying in the wind.
“Now, some harder questions. Remove his helmet.”
Inhale. Inhale. Inh—
The helmet was ripped off him.
“Are you Kroern?”
“No.”
The Old Devil’s only eye traced down at her.
“Are you Kroern?” he demanded, more resolutely.
Already, Mathieu was turning blue in the face.
“We are astronauts from planet Earth. We are here to study and learn from your people.”
“What is ‘astronaut?’ The word does not translate.”
“It means we travel through space to learn about the galaxy.”
“Space?”
“Astro means space,” Cole intervened. “Naut means person who journeys. The roots of these words come from an ancient language from our world.”
The Old Devil turned his gaze to Cole and calculated his next question while Mathieu gave out and started sucking in unfiltered atmosphere.
“Space journeyers?”
“Yes,” Emily said. “Like your people, we believe in science and education. We are here to learn from you, but we thought everyone was dead. We didn’t know anything about the Kroern, we didn’t even know the mountains were Rentok. We didn’t even know what the word ‘Rentok’ meant.”
He leaned down close to her helmet. “Now that is good conquered truth.”
The helmet was placed back on Mathieu. The soldiers cuffed his hands behind his back. Mathieu coughed and gasped in the dirt, but he did not get back up.
“Can I tell you the good conquered truth I know?” the Old Devil asked.
“Sure.” Emily said it in a way that couldn’t care less. She reached for Mathieu with her eyes, but she couldn’t see his face.
“That was difficult to give up, I know. You had to admit that everything you’ve done has been a mistake. I want to reward that. But before I give you my conquered truth, I must tell you the second part of torture. We have a relationship established, you and I, Commander Emily Jane Musgrove. But you will always trip it up. So my goal is to find your lie and exploit it.” He growled knowingly, but Emily had no idea where he was going with this.
He continued, saying, “I spoke to the Kroern hanging up there, and he told me that there were many Kroern, and that they would not stop coming until our world was colonized and the Jedik-ikik were either enslaved or wiped out. I asked him how could a little zree like him pilot such a large monster. He told me his mind was melded with the monsters. He told me I would always know the Rentok Reitritz by this.” The Old Devil brushed his hand against the tattoo on Emily’s face.
Emily pulled away from him. “I did not know what I was receiving.”
The Old Devil nodded with understanding. He returned to the big black pot. With one hand, he pulled from underneath his cape what looked to be a set of deep cups, or goggles. He put on gloves and nodded to Mathieu.
“No, please don’t,” Emily pleaded.
“Don’t worry. I will put his helmet back on soon.”
Carefully, the old Jedik-ikik warrior pulled the caps half-way off of the goggles. Then he slid the lid off of the heavy bucket ever so slightly. It left an opening big enough for his tongs, which he then used to poke around in the pot, like he was picking a good fruit. But instead of a fruit, he pulled out a small, wormy insect like a centipede. It had two longer front legs, each with a giant hooked pincer. The small creature was like a cross between a centipede and a scorpion, but covered in spikes. It writhed in the eyepiece.
The Old Devil glanced at the astronauts, who watched in horror as he plucked another tiny nightmare and placed it in the other goggle.
“What is that?” Anna asked. “I thought there were no creatures but you remaining on 51 Golgotha.”
“The Sleep Key escaped over our broken walls and infected the forest, killing most creatures there. Fortunately for these creatures, they thrived in the desert wasteland, and the Sleep Key did not invade that far.”
A giant roar ricocheted off the pyramids. Everyone turned, even the Old Devil. The Rentok were not in sight yet.
“We must hurry this up,” he said to Emily. He closed the bucket and the goggles, then he strapped them to Mathieu’s face. Mathieu was so tired and confused, he barely struggled against his captors.
“This creature feeds on the fleshy innards of a juicy nut that falls from a rare desert tree. It will do anything to get inside those nuts, even chew through stone and wood and of course, the thick wall of the seed. We learned that we can use that voraciousness to our own means. You are going to tell me everything about the Kroern.”
“I will tell you everything you want to know,” Emily bawled. “Just don’t hurt him anymore.”
He placed his claws on the goggle’s caps. “You are forgetting the rules, Emily. First I pick the strong one out of the group.”
“No!”
“And then I destroy him.”
“Don’t open those goggles! You don’t have to do this. I will tell you everything, I swear. We are on a mission of peace.”
“I have no way to know for sure until after I have destroyed your strongest. That is the formula. Then you will tell me what I want to know, or I will do to the rest of your friends what I am going to do to him.”
The Old Devil pulled back on the caps. The little worms squirmed in the lenses. Though he’d been half-way unconscious from oxygen deprivation, Mathieu jolted awake, screaming.
6
“No more!” Emily yelled, straining against her wooden handcuffs.
“Restrain her,” the Old Devil said. Two of his soldiers approached her with additional bracers, when suddenly she reached out and popped one on the chin so hard Muhammad Ali would be proud. A fierce sound came out of her chest as she jumped at the second soldier approaching her.
Behind the city, a second roar of untethered anger bellowed out. The Old Devil looked over his soldier. The mountain peaks were back. They were silhouetted against the sky, rising over Ximortikrim’s outer wall. The Destroyer of Worlds had arrived.
The Old Devil shouted his order to attack.
Emily seized the opportunity to steal one of their spears and embrace its implementation against an unsuspecting soldier. The soldier’s insides exploded.
She was now close enough to Mathieu. She ripped off his helmet and then his goggles. Two deep gouges looked back at her. She could see the worms burrowing in his orbits. She grabbed the tongs and pulled the first one out. The little creature zigzagged its body in her tongs. She flung it toward the soldiers.
Mathieu groaned as she probed his eye socket for the second worm. Good, she thought. I know you’re alive.
She pulled it out and flung it just as soldiers grabbed her.
The Old Devil said, “There may be a link between her and Renslot. Hang them all. Now. The quicker, the better.”
7
A surly group of soldiers took the astronauts to the aqueducts while Renslot slammed into the city wall. A mass of rubble and troops went flying. The rock dragon looked around as if searching for something. Below him, Jedik-ikik warriors jumped onto his feet and began the long cl
imb up his mighty legs. It was like climbing a tornado. As Renslot moved, north became west, and wind rushed around the soldiers. But they knew Ximortikrim’s survival depended on their courage, so they clung to Renslot’s crags in the hope of being able to bring him down.
Renslot pushed into the city, running toward a pyramid. His body bashed into the ancient pyramid, leveling it. All the while, more and more Jedik-ikik warriors climbed his legs and waited for the pheromone signal.
Behind Renslot, another beast’s onerous war cry thundered across the sky. The three-legged Rentok had returned for his vengeance. The giant monster limped toward the Doomsday Engine at the heart of the city. The Doomsday Engine slowly cranked around to face the giant monster. While the ungainly giant gained speed, he crashed through the city buildings like a rhinoceros running wild through African huts. Stores and offices were crushed under his feet, and their remains scattered from his footfall. While all this destruction was going on outside, inside the dome, engineers loaded the weapon and began fueling. Just as the fueling completed, the giant monster rammed into the great dome. And just as Renslot had learned, the beast realized that the dome was too well built to be crushed or smashed.
Down below, like bees in a hive, the Jedik-ikik engineers felt the crushing blows of the zree on the dome. While they knew the dome was powerful enough to survive the first attack, they didn’t know if it would stand up against a second. They had not fully repaired the dome since the greatest of apocalypses, the Renslot, attacked them, digging at the dome’s infrastructure.
Soldiers were sent to try to gain the engineers some time. Firing the Doomsday Engine was not as simple as turning a key or pressing a button. There were protocols to follow to ensure that the rocket did not explode and take everyone in the dome with it.
Outside, the giant monster tried wrenching the barrel back and forth, but it was too well-constructed for that attack. The barrel was one full meter of thick iron all around.
Jedik-ikik warriors climbed onto the monster’s feet. They were the first to get there. Down the central street, they saw a patrol running down the street toward them.