Purge of Prometheus

by Jon Messenger

  Finally spent, they held on to one another, their sweat intermingling as Yen’s power collapsed into his body. Slowly, they lowered down toward the bed until Keryn was able to slide from on top of him, to collapse exhausted into the bed.

  “That was absolutely incredible,” Yen heard the woman next to him say in a voice very different from Keryn’s.

  He turned toward the woman and stared into Scyant’s sparkling green eyes. Overwhelmed, he watch tears stream from her eyes. Her chest still heaved as she struggled for breath, her whole body spent from the experience. The air around him slowly settled; the shimmering subsided until he was left alone with the Uligart beside him.

  “I can’t believe how powerful that was,” Scyant said breathlessly.

  Yen felt the pain building within his skull. The soft light of the room seemed suddenly like he was staring into the center of a sun and he squinted against is brightness as his headache grew. The pain spread from his temples into his neck and shoulders, stiffening them with tension as he gritted his teeth against the pressure.

  “Are you okay,” he heard Scyant asked, genuine concern reflected in her voice.

  He looked at her again, her naked body covered in sweat. His eyes passed over her small breasts as he looked up toward her face. Frowning, Yen suddenly couldn’t figure out why he had found her so attractive earlier that day. Her body, though athletic, seemed lacking and, while handsome, was still far from beautiful. Scyant sensed his displeasure and absently covered her chest with her arm.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, seemingly scared of his pending response.

  “This was a mistake,” he growled, the pain in his head threatening to split his skull in half. “You need to go.”

  Scyant sat in stunned silence as she stared at Yen. Tears unrelated to her pleasure welled in her eyes, but she still didn’t move. His anger growing, he felt the power reaching out again, probing eagerly. Yen knew that his power would not be caressing were it released this time around.

  “Go!” he yelled at her, shocking her into action.

  Visibly crying now, Scyant got out of bed and hastily pulled on her dress. Yen noticed now that her dress seemed a poor cut for her body, hardly accentuating what she barely had to begin with. She turned as though to say something venomous in response, but froze, her mouth agape, when she met Yen’s evil stare. Turning, sobbing loudly, she rushed to the door and fled out into the hall beyond.

  Yen leaned back into bed, his mind racing and a battle being fought along his nerve endings. He cringed in pain, knowing that sleep would be hard to find tonight. A thousand other thoughts crossed his mind – that he needed a shower to wash her smell from his body, that he had a meeting with Merric and Captain Hodge tomorrow to discuss upcoming strategy, and, most importantly, that he truly did miss Keryn’s touch – but he lacked the conviction to do anything about any of his thoughts at the moment. Instead, he reached over and remotely turned off the lights in the room, sitting in blissful silence and cradling his head against the wracking pain within.

  CHAPTER 13:

  All was quiet now in a city once teaming with life and activity. Not the sort of quiet one normally thinks of. Not silence, but a solemn hum of death and defeat, a murmur of subjugation. The sun had been gone from Miller’s Glen for two long weeks and a bitter and unforgiving cold had settled across the city. The dropping temperatures dumped more than two feet of snow over the ruins of the once bustling trading city. Buried beneath the snow lay metal and glass like assassins’ daggers, waiting patiently for the clumsy or tired to collapse upon their blades. The stone and exposed girders protruded from the snow like giant’s fingers, probing the surface of Othus.

  Beyond the city, the jungle had quickly withered and died. Without sunlight, the proud green leaves had faded to brown before passing quietly in the eternal night and falling forgotten to the ground. The undergrowth that had once hindered movement now laid shriveled, mere shadows of its former self. Where once the lush green jungle had stood now lay a graveyard of foliage; the skeletons of trees twisted idly in the frozen wind. The world had died, a stark reflection of life within Miller’s Glen.

  Following the invasion, the Terrans had herded the survivors of the bombing to the far side of town from the spaceport crater, far away from the barracks established for the Terran soldiers. Their new homes, in which once lived a single family, now housed dozens of men and women. At night, the floor was littered with the bodies, people too exhausted to make their own space and too cold to complain about the body heat.

  By daybreak, loudspeakers, barking orders for them to dress and gather for the day’s labor, roused the homes. Marched day after day into the heart of the city, the survivors slaved and died, trying to clear away the rubble and bodies of those who had been lucky enough to die in the explosion. Those who hadn’t managed to collect warmer clothing to protect themselves against the arctic winter. Some died of exposure; they collapsed into the snow and disappeared under the surface, their blood as frozen as the ground. Others dug under the snow with numb hands, not noticing that blisters spread and tore open, only to be replaced by more.

  Bundled with coats stolen from one of the surviving shops in the central part of town, Keryn, Adam, and Penchant stood in the frozen wasteland and watched as the Terrans paced back and forth while they supervised the clearing of the old city. The Terrans stood confident, their bodies warmed by the insulation within their combat suits and their weapons bristling with deadly energy. Reaching down, the trio moved a rock or two into an awaiting cargo truck, hovering a few inches above the snow surface.

  The invasion force had said little after the destruction of Miller’s Glen. They had made their point when they dropped two plasma bombs on the city. Little more needed to be said after that. Conversation between the trio had been light immediately following the invasion as well. They had gathered their belongings in sober silence and moved quietly through the streets, ignoring the cries of the wounded and dying. Even then, the temperature had started dropping, leaving the damp air cold and the wind strong enough to cut through their thin jackets. Passing through the ruined towers of the business district, they found stores with wares openly displayed in the windows and bodyguards long since gone, either from the destructive explosion or from fear. They had smashed open windows, stealing the thick wool jackets that they still pulled tightly across their bodies and the insulated boots on their feet.

  Keryn reached down and dug through the snow as a Terran passed close by. Moving a large stone out of the way, she uncovered a small hand buried beneath a collapsed stone wall. She looked at the hand dispassionately, her heart hardened to the bodies that littered the city like confetti. Gesturing toward the other two, they moved the rest of the stone slab and pulled out the body of a young girl, her blond hair caked with dried blood. Penchant took the girl’s body in his clawed hands, his face always an emotionless mask, and tossed it into the truck alongside the rubble they had collected.

  The trio had been quick to hide their weapons on the far side of town, in an abandoned department store, certain that being caught with them would be the same as a death sentence. The Terrans had been conducting thorough searches of the survivors. The haggard people were lined up outside randomly selected buildings where the Terrans had set up registration booths. As they entered, the survivors were photographed, their information added to a computer database, and then were unceremoniously stripped of their clothing. Each person was thoroughly searched for hidden weapons and explosives and underwent a genetic scan before their clothes were returned. All Lithids that had assumed a different form were identified, forced to assume their natural state, and tagged with a tracer bracelet.

  Penchant turned back to the uneven rubble, scratching absently at his bracelet. He wanted nothing more than to pull it from his wrist, but they had already identified the explosives that were firmly attached to the perimeter of the thin metal band. Unsure of how potent the explosives would be, they had wisely decided to leave i
t well enough alone.

  As a whistle blew over the installed loudspeakers located throughout the city, the trio collapsed heavily in the snow, caring very little about the cold that seeped into their skin. For two weeks, they had been laboring in the city, unable to escape. The Terrans had established a curfew and enforced it with deadly efficiency. The time they had chosen, time that would have been considered nighttime before, had been chosen arbitrarily. It was always nighttime in Miller’s Glen.

  Keryn looked dejected as she collapsed in the snow next to the other two, ignoring the frigid cold that spread into her skin. Adam pulled out a nutrient bar, the staple of their new diet. Grimacing at the texture, he swallowed hard, forcing the rubbery food down his throat. The Terran guard nearby gave them an erstwhile glance before turning and pacing further up the street, the light on his helmet adding to the strong illumination from mounted spotlights which filled the ruins in which they worked. When he was far enough away, Keryn dropped the façade of being beyond exhaustion and the defiant look returned to her eyes.

  Reaching into her thick winter jacket, Keryn pulled out a battered piece of paper. Unfurling it on a piece of stone rubble, her lithe, tan fingers traced the outline of a crudely sketched city. They had created the map over the past two weeks as they transferred through a myriad of work groups, clearing rubble from different parts of the city. Overall, they had mapped the major locations of the Terran occupation force.

  “We need to get off this planet.” she said bluntly. “We can’t stay here. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of slowly but inevitably freezing to death.” The other two nodded in agreement. “We need a plan, something the Terrans won’t expect. Ideas?”

  Adam reached over, pointing to a collection of hastily drawn buildings near the easily identifiable crater. “These are the barracks they established for the soldiers. They’re prefabricated structures, the type that burn easily if given the right incentive. We could take out most of their invading force with a couple well-placed explosives.”

  Keryn shook her head. “No, no, that won’t work. We might be able to take out their entire occupation force in Miller’s Glen, but what’s to stop them from just glassing the planet from space after that? No, we need something that won’t result in the entire city being destroyed… again.”

  “Then we get out of the city,” Penchant suggested. He pointed out a series of dotted lines that ran through all parts of the city. “We have mapped the majority of their patrol routes and could easily avoid them. We sneak out of the city one night after curfew and find another way off the planet.”

  “We can avoid the patrols easily enough, but they’ve set up sensors all along the perimeter of the city,” Adam replied. “We trip one of those and we’ll be lucky if they just set off an alarm. More than likely, we’ll be triggering an explosive that will be just strong enough to amputate both our legs as a warning to others. Anyways, where are we going to find help? From everything I’ve heard, they’ve taken control of every major city just as efficiently as they did Miller’s Glen. There’s no place left to go to on the planet”

  “And smaller cities?” Penchant suggested. “They might have small puddle-jumper ships that could get us off planet.”

  Adam and Keryn both shook their heads. “The Terrans glassed them all,” Adam explained. “If it was too small to bother occupying, they just destroyed it.” Adam raised his hand to stop Penchant’s inevitable next question. “And getting a ship out of one of the warehouses here will be suicide. We don’t have the access codes to get inside or open the bay doors on the roof. And even if we did, we’d be swarmed with soldiers before we got off the planet.”

  Keryn stood and stretched her legs. She covered her eyes as she watched the other survivors eat their lunch meal, their clusters of groups spotting the white landscape. Where they had trudged back and forth through the deep snow, the intersecting walkways had turned to brown mush as the snow was trampled underfoot. By this evening, however, the new snow would have hidden any disturbance from the day before. When they arrived for work tomorrow, the landscape would be pristine once more.

  “There is another option,” Keryn said flatly, knowing how the others would respond. They looked up from their meals. “There is another ship out there.” They had the same conversation at least three times previously, always with the same recommendation: just wait. She was tired of waiting. And, more importantly for her, the Voice was tired of waiting as well. At night, when others had already fallen asleep for the night, the Voice crept into her thoughts, urging her into action. She wasn’t sure if her resolve was weakening or if she genuinely agreed with its rhetoric, but she was starting to believe the Voice was right.

  “We don’t know that the Cair Ilmun survived, Keryn,” Adam said chidingly. “If you go out there, you could be walking into a trap.” He put a hand on her strong calf. “We couldn’t afford to lose you.”

  Keryn looked down, surprised to see genuine compassion reflected in his eyes. She wanted to reply, but the blaring whistle sounded again, notifying the workers that lunch was over. Keryn quickly slipped the map back into her jacket. The others stood, separating only slightly across the rubble to avoid suspicion, and began loading rocks into the back of the truck once more.

  Adam passed her, heaving a large stone into the back of the flatbed truck. As he walked past her again, he paused, his hand slipping affectionately around her waist. “Promise me you’ll stay with me, just a little bit longer,” he whispered gently into her ear. As Adam slipped past her and moved back into the rubble, Keryn stood both stunned and, to her surprise, yearning for his touch once more. She stared after him, unsure of how to respond.

  She lifted a few rocks absently and loaded them on the truck until her immediate area was clear of debris. Glancing around, Keryn looked for the Terran guard who would quickly separate any survivors who strayed to close to one another for too long. Congregating outside the sleeping areas was strictly forbidden under the new regime. Not seeing the guard anywhere nearby, she meandered through the rubble until she was only a few feet away from Adam. His back was still turned as he moved another stone and he hardly noticed as she stepped through the dirty mush that accumulated on the ground and stood by his side.

  “I don’t think I have much of a choice,” she conceded, wanting to recapture the tender moment they shared a second ago. “Even if I wanted to go, I have no idea how I would get out of the city unnoticed.”

  A polite cough interrupted the two and they turned to find Penchant standing nearby. “I think I might have found a solution to your problem.” Gesturing, they followed his gaze to where he had been removing the rubble of a collapsed home. Beneath the shifted rubble laid Keryn’s answer and her encounter with Adam fled from her mind.

  On the ground where Penchant had been working laid an exposed sewer entrance.

  CHAPTER 14:

  Yen awoke with a start the following morning, his throbbing head sending sparks of white exploding in his vision. Even from his prone place on the bed, he knew that trying to stand today would cause immeasurable suffering. His requirements, including his meeting with the Captain on the bridge later that morning, forced him up.

  Crawling from bed, his mind screaming in protest, he pulled his knees underneath him and tried to stand, using the bed as a support. As his feet were pulled underneath him, a sickening sense of vertigo overwhelmed Yen and he staggered forward, dropping to his knees. Bile rose, burning the back of his throat and causing him to gag. Fighting off the pain in his skull, Yen rushed to the bathroom, sliding to his knees in front of the toilet only moments before he vomited violently into the bowl. Yen stared in horror as he saw the water in the bowl turn bloody red, the coppery taste filling his mouth and dripping from his lips. His vision hazed, wavering as though looking through a desert mirage. Above his head, a sharp crack resounded, followed by a crash as his toiletry kit dropped from the sink’s countertop. Looking up, Yen noticed the wavering tendrils of power, larger an
d more powerful than he had seen them before. A single tendril pulled away from the now shattered mirror as another drew its length across the sink. Still others curiously searched the shower to his right or rolled lazily up the length of the doorway.

  Fear tightened like a belt around Yen’s chest. The exertion of his power last night had left him drained, emotionally, physically, and mentally. What worried him more, however, was that last night had acted like a catalyst, driving the power free from his body. He watched as the tendrils, each the width of his leg, groped their way through the small bathroom. Shaking his head, Yen knew that he didn’t stand a chance at containing the power in his present state. Taking advantage of his weakness, the air around him whipped chaotically, shimmering and blurring the world around him. Standing, he wiped the blood from his mouth and nose with a tissue before turning and walking back into the bedroom. As he entered, he heard objects dislodge from on top of the dresser and shatter on the floor below. A drawer blew free of the nightstand, crashing onto the floor, its contents erupting into the room like snowfall. Yen staggered to the bed, his head throbbing as the power parasitically drew more and more power from his body, the tendrils now lashing out aggressively toward the few standing objects in the room. Collapsing into bed, he pulled the pillow over his head in an attempt to block out the sound of destruction being caused by his wayward psychic energy.