The Exiled Earthborn

by Paul Tassi

  “It is more than a story, it seems. I discovered actionable intelligence of the creature’s existence, and the fact that it had been tasked with our extermination.”

  “Well, perhaps you will be fortunate and it is halfway to [garbled] by now looking for you, and will have to make a long return voyage.”

  “Perhaps,” Alpha said, but did not sound confident.

  13

  Lucas stopped by a large hut that sat on the edge of a crystal-clear lake within the cave. It housed more than a dozen injured Guardians, some Lucas knew, others he didn’t recognize. His old sparring partner Axon was unconscious and feverish, stricken by some sort of jungle ailment like Lucas had been. He was being treated by the Kal’din, a witch doctor of sorts, using a combination of herbal remedies and Xalan technology. He waved a metal stick with a blue light on the end of it over Axon’s body like it was a magic wand. His face was hidden behind an elaborately carved mask, and he had two outstretched handprints tattooed on his bare chest. Lucas wanted to thank him for his role in his own recovery, but the language barrier prevented him from doing so. The Kal’din barely acknowledged his presence as he darted from patient to patient. Lucas could see a number of Oni warriors were lying on wooden mats as well, many nursing fresh wounds.

  In the rear of the room lay a pile of Guardian armor and weapons that had been salvaged from the forest during the search for survivors. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to be useful, and Lucas slipped into a stealth suit, as full-scale war plating was not ventilated or maneuverable enough for the murky jungle. In addition to Natalie, he took an energy pistol, a pair of pulse grenades, and a combat knife that could be lengthened into a machete if the situation called for it.

  Soon he and his newfound party were marching through the dreaded jungle once more. Because of the forbidden place they were headed, this “Dead City,” Zeta and the Oni had pulled out all the stops when assembling the team. Zeta had ordered her entire personal guard to accompany Lucas, and Toruk had volunteered to come as well, bringing three of his best warriors with him. Also in tow was Toruk’s vornaa, which Lucas learned roughly translated to “bloodwolf.” But mere minutes after they set out, it bounded into the jungle to scout ahead, as was apparently customary for a bloodwolf escort. It’s why he’d felt hunted during much of his time in the forest.

  Though the Xalans and Oni could communicate to each other with a series of gestures that Zeta had developed over the years, Lucas had no such way to converse within his own group. To rectify that, Zeta donated her translator collar to the leader of the squad, a tall Xalan corporal who had a pair of automatic plasma submachine guns strapped to his hips. It took him some time to get accustomed to it and they traveled mostly in silence for the first few hours. Lucas was the first to break it.

  “How far to the city?”

  “[garbled] is [garbled] away from our present location,” the Corporal replied, immediately frustrated with his translator’s inability to relay the Oni name of the city or a presumably Xalan unit of measurement.

  “How many days?” Lucas tried.

  “Two, if we keep this pace,” said the Corporal, grateful for the rephrasing.

  They were making fantastic time through the jungle, led by Toruk. There weren’t exactly paths, but there were definitely moving through less dense brush, routes the Oni assuredly took when they went hunting for food, or for Xalan troops.

  Lucas took a sip from his canteen. His leg felt noticeably better, and healing gel had almost regrown all the burnt-away skin on his arm. The dark stealth suit reflected the sunlight with its mirrored microfibers and kept him cool. All in all, it was a far more pleasant experience than his last time out there, half naked and half dead. The eight fearsome-looking warriors to his front and rear helped put his mind at ease, as did the bio-signature masking device implanted into his shoulder. He was now a hunter, not the hunted.

  Surprisingly, the dark fell without rain, and the group made a small camp in a clearing they deemed safe enough to stop and rest in for a bit. The Corporal took a small bowl out of his pack and placed it on the ground. When activated, a white, barely visible flame shot out of it and heated up the surrounding area quite nicely without giving off too much light. As humid as it was in the day, it got rather frigid when the giant moon came out. Toruk was chewing on a piece of fruit he lifted from somewhere in the jungle, while his Oni brethren had taken to the trees to scout and slumber. The Xalans were seated on a downed log, each cleaning their guns, grunting to each other occasionally. Lucas attempted to chime in.

  “So why did you join the resistance? You all look like you come from the military,” he asked.

  The Corporal turned to him.

  “Indeed. Our team served on [garbled] for many years. I have killed more Sorans than I care to count.”

  The tone sounded more despondent than boastful.

  “What made you switch sides?”

  The Corporal grunted to the men around him, presumably translating. Turning back, it was a while before he spoke.

  “Many of us grew up together in [garbled], a small village on the homeworld. We only were allowed to see our clans sparingly, often deployed on missions for months, even years.”

  The faces around him were solemn, as was his own.

  “We were sent to the siege of [garbled], where we assaulted an extra-solar Soran base. It was a prolonged affair, and quite far from home. When the battle was over, we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to see our clans again back on Xala.”

  He lay his rifle against the log. The enormous moon could now be seen through the trees up ahead.

  “When we returned home, our hearts broke. Over the year, our village had been ruined by famine. The Council had issued a tax meant to pay for a new warship, at the expense of food and water for a string of local settlements along the [garbled] coast. Even our wages sent home to our clans were appropriated. They were left with nothing.”

  He stared straight ahead at the trampled leaves underneath his clawed feet.

  “My mate, my six sons and four daughters were already in the ground when I arrived. The same was true for many of my men.”

  This was the sort of thing Alpha had told him was happening, but to hear a firsthand account of it was unsettling.

  “When our leaders kill more of their own citizens than the Sorans, the time for intergalactic war is over. The time for civil war is at hand.”

  Lucas nodded.

  “Can’t fault you for that.”

  “And you?” the Corporal asked, his voice shaking off any hint of sorrow. “Is it true you and your mate are the last survivors of Earth campaign?”

  “More or less,” Lucas said. “We brought a child as well, and have another on the way.”

  His “mate.” He wondered what Asha would think if she heard that. She’d likely be back at the Oni village in a few more hours. He was glad she was alive, but hurt feelings still lingered after what had taken place on the Spear.

  “You must despise my people, for destroying your world.”

  Lucas chuckled, which caught the Corporal off guard.

  “Yeah, most. But a few of you aren’t so bad.”

  “The Oni have been hospitable, but to have true Soran allies is a welcome development for the movement. Your High Chancellor actually sanctioned this?”

  “It was practically her idea,” Lucas said, taking another swig of water. “Peace with Xala is good for everyone. Preferably peace by way of the death of your Council and all the corrupt who support them.”

  “Then we are in agreement,” the Corporal said. Toruk turned his head in their direction as if he were about to speak, but went back to eating his meal, carving out the pit of his red fruit with a jagged knife.

  As the night progressed, it was Lucas’s turn to take watch up in a tall tree. He found a particularly wide branch that would suit his purposes. The giant moon was lofted in the sky again, though it was waning a bit now. The light it gave off masked most of the stars aro
und it; only a few could be seen outside of its radiance. The forest was still and mostly quiet except for the occasional jarring screeches from some of the local wildlife. Their path had hooked around the base of a mountain. It was in the exact opposite direction Lucas had been traveling earlier. Far off in the distance, Lucas could see the lights of what looked like some sort of settlement. A Xalan city? It didn’t appear to be very large, but it was hard to tell.

  Lucas jumped when he saw a pair of eyes peering at him from an adjacent tree. It was Toruk, who had somehow managed to scale the massive trunk in complete silence. He was munching on something else this time, a piece of charred meat skewered on a sharpened branch. Where had he gotten that? Lucas was further surprised when Toruk spoke.

  “I know you truth.”

  His Soran was heavily broken, but understandable.

  “What?” Lucas said, incredulous. “You speak Soran?”

  “Yes,” Toruk said. “Small.”

  “How?”

  Toruk took another bite of his meat.

  “White Spirit Seat of Great Knowledge. Learn many thing.”

  Seat of great knowledge? It took Lucas a minute, but he thought back to how he’d learned Soran for the first time in, the programmable captain’s chair aboard the Ark, which transmitted training through neural wiring. Zeta must have a similar model in the Khas’to settlement somewhere.

  “Need learn new ally tongue.”

  The words were scattered, often pronounced wrong and lacking any semblance of grammar, but it wasn’t bad for probably, what, a few hours in the chair at the most between rescue missions? Alpha must have programmed it for him on the fly. Toruk continued.

  “I know you truth.”

  “My truth?” Lucas asked. “What truth?”

  “White Spirit say you mountain people. You no mountain people. You Mol’taavi people.”

  No more wild sounds came from the forest; the night was completely still as the two of them spoke.

  “Mol’taavi?” Lucas asked.

  “Mol’taavi.” Toruk said, pointing upward at the moon overheard. “Fall from sky. You brothers of Saato. Sisters of Valli.”

  “Saato? Valli? I’m sorry I don’t understand.”

  “You forget. All forget. Mol’taavi home ancient Oni. Saato, Valli first man, woman. Rule over Great Jungle of Ak’tai. Cover all Mol’taavi. Jungle burn. Oni sent here.”

  Lucas was trying to make sense of all this.

  “Sky demon turn Mol’taavi white ash. Now sky demon burn Makari jungle. Saato, Valli spirit send you. You help. You kill sky demon with White Spirit and Oni. Bring great magic. Great courage.”

  Another creation myth, it seemed. Toruk and the Oni apparently believed the giant moon, Mol’taavi, to be their original home where the first Oni, Saato and Valli, lived. After their forest was destroyed, they came here, to Makari. Was that right? And who were Lucas and the Guardians supposed to be? Some sort of resurrected spirits of the old homeworld? Falling from the sky probably had helped bolster that myth.

  But what good was attempting to explain Earth and Sora now to this man? That the Xalans weren’t demons, that their technology wasn’t magic. Such concepts would be impossible for Toruk or his people to comprehend. Lucas now knew what it must have felt like for Alpha to try to explain to them how a water-powered null core opened a rift in space-time for intergalactic travel. So Lucas decided to go along.

  “Yes, it’s true. We are from Mol’taavi, but you can’t tell anyone. Saato and Valli’s spirits are not supposed to interfere with the Oni,” he improvised.

  Toruk smiled broadly, which was odd for a man as menacing looking as him strapped with ancient and modern armor and weapons and the claws of a dozen dead Xalans around his neck.

  “I knew, I knew,” he said, still smiling. Lucas had apparently made his day with his confirmation.

  Lucas had a flashback to a conversation he’d had with a drunken Maston a few months back.

  “Kyneth and Zurana were the first two Sorans. They arose out of the Blessed Forest a few million years ago and gave birth to our entire race.”

  Two original humans in a place of lush greenery. Taking into account Earth’s own similar tale and now this new Oni story, this was starting to sound less and less like coincidence. There was a connecting thread here that was starting to gnaw at Lucas. Why there were planets of humans scattered across the galaxy had always been a mystifying thought. As they branched out to new worlds, it appeared there was an answer out there somewhere, but Lucas felt like he’d put together three pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle. Alpha would be better at analyzing this, were he not occupied with attempting to save civilization itself.

  Toruk had his hand stretched out and Lucas realized he was offering him a piece of his cooked meat.

  “Uh …” Lucas said as he eyed it.

  “Even brother of Saato need food. Eat.”

  Lucas was rather famished and took it from his hand. It crunched when he bit into it, but the taste was pleasant, almost pork-like.

  “Not bad,” he said. “No good food on Mol’taavi these days.”

  Toruk tried not to fall out of the tree as he burst with laughter.

  It wasn’t until the next day, when they rounded the back side of the mountain, that Lucas caught his first glimpse of the Dead City. Dark stone towers could be seen rising from the jungle above the tips of the trees. Toruk’s bloodwolf had returned to them a few hours ago and it was somehow communicated that Maston was indeed in the city, and there were no other enemies nearby. How the two managed to converse in that level of detail was a mystery, but one that would remain unsolved, because the bloodwolf bounded back into the jungle after receiving fresh orders from Toruk.

  A few of the Oni started whispering to each other when they saw the pillars, and they clutched their weapons a little tighter. They’d progressed through the jungle without incident, invisible to Xalan forces, but that was no longer what they had to fear if the rumors were to be believed.

  Eventually the trees started to thin out and glimpses of a wall could be seen up ahead. It was cracked and broken down. The rock it was made of was dark and smooth. Lucas presumed it was volcanic, but now was not the time to ask Toruk for a history lesson. As they moved inside the city, they began to get a scope of its size, something that couldn’t be seen from the forest. Though many former buildings were no more than piles of decaying wood at this point, many were chiseled from the same black stone and stood resolute against the greenery that had engulfed them. They could see the wall curved around the city, and the towers they’d seen from the jungle were a few hundred feet high. There were six of them stretching back toward the eventual end of the city, which seemed to be quite far away. Only two were fully intact; the rest had been broken off at various points.

  Though simple homes stood at the outskirts, the buildings became more ornate as they moved toward the center of the city. What black-stone buildings were not destroyed had glyphs and murals carved into them. The outer wall of what appeared to be some sort of temple had an interesting scene in the stone. A dozen Oni knelt before two figures, each with their right hands raised. Behind them was a large sphere. Mol’taavi.

  There were no references on any of the murals to the Xalan invasion like there had been back in the Kha’sto cave village. Lucas assumed the city had been destroyed too fast for such stories to be told here.

  Lucas’s wrist map told him Maston was still about a mile away. This really had been a massive metropolis once, and Lucas couldn’t even see the outer wall anymore through the maze of structures.

  The jungle was silent here. Lucas had long grown used to the cries of various alien animals out in the forest, and the quiet was unsettling. When he rounded the next corner, stepping over a collapsed statue, he understood why no living things dared to tread here.

  In front of them was an open stretch of town with a central stone sphere. All around it lay the bones of countless creatures, each in various stages of decay. Some of t
he bones had been swallowed into the ground by encroaching moss or vines, others lay atop the greenery.

  There were few full skeletons to be found, so it was hard to tell what many of them were. Some of the bones were tiny, others enormous. Toruk picked up an odd-looking one and turned to Lucas.

  “Vornaa,” he said.

  It didn’t take long to find a human ribcage, then a skull, and another, and another. If this was the creature’s feeding grounds, it appeared it had caught many Oni over the years. Lucas was surprised to find a few Xalan skulls amid the bone piles as well. Did this thing eat its own? Was it even Xalan at all? Lucas shivered involuntarily as he moved around the spherical statue and saw a huge skeleton, picked clean, with bones shining a brilliant white. The skull was larger than he was, and it had at least three rows of foot-long teeth. An obvious carnivore. It had long arms, legs, and a tail, but if Lucas didn’t know any better he’d say the shape of the skull looked rather … prehistoric, to borrow from Earth’s timeline. Lucas saw another similar creature in pieces a few dozen meters away, crumpled up against a collapsed pillar. What the hell was this thing to be able to take down rival predatory beasts this large?

  Lucas kept his eyes fixed on his surroundings, as did the Corporal, Toruk, and their respective men. He glanced down at the map and saw Maston’s signal was coming from just a little further ahead. They moved out of the graveyard clearing and into a section of destroyed buildings, which were tricky to navigate. Lucas hopped from stone to stone, the stability sensors in his suit steadying him. The Oni leapt with no such aid, but didn’t seem to need it.

  Finally, he stopped short when he found there was no place left to jump. Rather, a large hole stood in front of him, newly disturbed dirt around its edges, blackness obscuring the view of what lay inside. But according to Lucas’s locator, he knew what he should find. Maston.

  As he reached the lip, he opened his palm and shone a light from his mesh fiber glove into the opening. He could see the ground about a dozen feet down. Without hesitation, Lucas leapt down. His suit took all of the impact, and the other eight quickly followed him, eager to get out of the open where unknown dangers lurked.