by Barry Kirwan
“You miss him, don’t you?”
Kat did. She hadn’t talked about it, not to anyone else. “Like hell,” she said. She turned toward Angel, saw the frown. The boys were calling lewdly to Angel, but she never took her eyes off Kat. Abruptly Angel’s head turned to face the sea.
“He had no right to just dump you like that.”
Kat’s lips tightened. She didn’t like to talk about it; but she’d never seen her sister so concerned for her before. Their whole family was pretty stunted on the emotional register. She’d not even talked about it to her new best friend at school, Louise, or that strange new girl that had befriended her, Aramisk. “Pierre had to leave, you know that.”
Angel turned back with a flash of anger, opened her mouth as if to say something, then shook her head. “I know, I’ve just never understood.”
Kat sat up, moved closer. Angel had always comforted her, been the big sister, stood in for their mother who’d died when Kat was barely two, and had protected her from her God-awful uncle when their father had gone off the rails and drunk himself into oblivion. But now Angel was in pain. Kat stretched out her arm and, hesitatingly, placed it over Angel’s shoulders. Angel folded into Kat’s embrace, the first time their caring relationship had ever reversed direction. Kat felt her eyes water. The boys quietened, and moved further towards the breaking waves.
Kat needed to talk about it; had needed to for a long time. She drew in a breath. “Micah said Pierre’s gone to get help.” Her head started to ache; she should get out of the sun, it was so damned hot. She played with her straw hat, but didn’t put it on.
“Where on Earth is he going to get help, with the storm that’s coming. Don’t be naïve, Kat, he’s dumped you, that’s all there is to it.”
Kat felt as if she’d been slapped. What had gotten into Angel? “I don’t know any more than what Micah said, I’m not even sure he knows, but –”
Angel broke out of Kat’s arms. “Listen to yourself. It’s pathetic. Men stick together, cover for each other. Micah, Pierre, they’re all the bloody same. Christ, I should know.” Angel dug into her bag and fished out a cigarette, lighting it with a fluency that looked so adult. But Kat hated it when Angel smoked. She only smoked when she was angry – no, when she’d been let down by somebody.
Kat looked away. The boys had moved closer again, yelling something. Suddenly a ball thudded right next to Angel, showering them both with a hissing spray of sand.
Angel was on her feet in a second, shouting. “For God’s sake piss off and leave us alone.” She picked up the ball and gave it an impressive drop-kick into the ocean. She took a long drag, glaring at the boys till they ran off to retrieve their ball, looked down at Kat, and then dropped the cigarette into the sand, burying it.
She knelt down next to Kat and put her arms around her. “Sorry, Sis, I’m being a real bitch today. Forget about it, just forget the whole damned thing.”
Kat shook; if Angel wasn’t there for her, she wouldn’t – couldn’t – cope. But Angel hugged her tight, rocking her. She thought of Pierre, how he’d left, deserted her. But she couldn’t be angry with him; he wasn’t the first to leave her, everyone did sooner or later. Yet she believed he would come back. Why? She tried to focus. Why would he come back? She flinched at a stabbing pain behind her eyes. God, not another migraine! And her heart was thumping, which was odd. Must be the heat. She wanted to get in the water, put her head under, but she didn’t move.
Angel released her from the hug. “I hope he does come back, Kat. For you.”
Something clicked in her mind. “Not for me.”
Angel opened her palms upwards. “Meaning what? Don’t tell me he’s got a crush on me, I couldn’t –”
“No, no,” Kat said, with an urgency to verbalise the revelation while it hung in her mind. “Something else! The Kalarash were here on Esperia for half a million years.” Kat found it hard to concentrate. The sun, this sudden stabbing pain. Wait a minute. Esperia?
Angel rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that, Kat. But Louise told me Micah searched all the caves, the oceans even. Nothing. Gone, the same as Pierre.”
Kat gave her a quizzical look. “How does Louise know Micah?”
Angel put on her cynical face.
“Oh, I see.” Kat felt her face flush. “Well, anyway. The Kalarash did leave something behind.”
“Besides a few Hohash, you mean?”
Kat nodded, but pain lanced through her left eye. She cried out, cupping a hand over her face, squeezing both eyes closed. Angel moved toward her.
“Come here, let me see.” She pushed Kat’s hand aside. “Open your eyes.”
Kat tried, but couldn’t open the left one.
“Open it!” Angel shouted, her voice sounding odd, distorted.
Through her right eye, Kat saw dark shadows as the boys gathered around them. The pain grew, as if someone was pulling a needle through her left eyeball. “Angel, help me, please! Call an ambulance!” The boys closed in, pinned her down, their hands rough claws.
Angel’s voice hardened, sounding masculine. “OPEN YOUR EYE!”
Kat squirmed, trying to escape the boys’ grip and the blinding pain; she felt her left eye was boiling inside its socket. Angel’s fingers became talons, trying to tear open Kat’s eyelids, but they were glued shut. Through her other eye she saw the gull circling above, framed against a sky of pure fire. It dropped down, wings fluttering, until just above the boys’ heads. It landed on her chest.
“Get it off me! What the fuck is going on? Angel, please!” Kat glanced up at Angel, who was busy clawing at her left eyelids, teeth bared with the effort. The gull leaned closer, its own blood red eyes peering into Kat’s. One of the boys behind the bird unsheathed a knife, and passed it blade-first to Angel, who loomed closer.
“Now we’ll see what you’re hiding, Katrina.” She raised the knife high above her in a closed fist, then slammed it down into Kat’s chest and raked it downwards, carving a fissure in her ribcage. Amidst the spray and spume of blood, something stirred within Kat’s body, and then a small, black, four-legged spider emerged.
Kat screamed and screamed again, until she fell backwards out of her body. She felt her mind being tugged back across huge distances by the Hohash, back to Louise’s ship. Her last thought before her consciousness dissipated was that she’d never thought she’d be glad to get back there.
* * *
Aramisk studied the pad next to Kat, a finger on her carotid pulse. “She’s alive, barely, falling into a deep coma, there’s nothing else I can do.” She stood away from Kat’s bed, staring toward the other end of the room.
“Qorall’s not going to be happy with you, Arctura, though I think he got the intel just in time.”
A smoking multi-barreled rifle hung from Louise’s right hand, as she also stared at the molten mess at the foot of Kat’s cot, a hole scorched right through the Hohash. It was dead.
Louise inspected the rifle. She hadn’t been sure it would work against a Hohash, even though the weapon had a Level Twelve rating – Qorall had sent it to her five years ago as a reward after she helped bring down an entire enemy star system. Louise lowered the weapon. She’d grown too attached to Kat, even though she wasn’t Alician, even though Louise wanted all other humans dead, gone. Kat was the closest person she could relate to. Louise had been too long on the road, spent too much time with aliens. She knew Kat wasn’t a friend – quite the opposite, Kat would probably kill her if she ever got the chance – but Louise found she couldn’t stand by and watch Qorall literally frighten Kat to death.
She made up her mind. “The Hohash self-destructed, Aramisk. Understood? They’ve been known to do that. It sensed Kat was about to betray a Kalarash secret, and shattered. Tell the others.”
“Yes, Arctura.”
As Aramisk left, Louise called after her. “It’s just ‘Louise’, now. Tell the others that, too.”
Aramisk gave her a searching stare, then left.
Loui
se considered her options. She had to get out of Qorall’s service, she’d had enough: endless killing and espionage, all the time away from her own kind, serving Qorall, always his agenda. That wasn’t who she was. She had dared to ask to be released, but he always demanded one more task first. She knew better than to press the issue. As for where she would go if he did allow it, there was really only one option, given that the Mannekhi or a hundred other species she’d met held no interest for her. It would have to be Sister Esma and the Alicians.
She glanced down at Kat, her short hair matted with sweat; she didn’t smell too good either. Louise stroked the woman’s damp forearm once. “I will take you with me, if you don’t disappoint me. If you ever wake up.”
Her wristcom buzzed, a coded Largyl 9 message, an advanced Q’Roth dialect that Mannekhi could never decrypt. Qorall had the information he wanted. Louise was to destroy the Hohash, and go at once to Esperia and obliterate it, leave no trace.
Afterwards, she decided, she would leave his service.
Louise smiled. She picked up the pad on Kat’s cot, and while checking that Kat’s vitals had stabilised, noticed her own reflection. It was more like her old self. She spoke to Kat’s comatose frame. “Within a week, you’re going to be the last human alive. I will kill all of them. Don’t worry, I’ll get you upgraded if I have to do it myself.” As she walked away from Kat’s bed with a lighter step than in years, Louise killed the lights, and added, “Sweet dreams.”
Chapter Nine
Betrayal
The Ossyrian chariot skated just above the ground towards the pyramid-ship. Micah and Fornasson stood rigidly side-by-side behind their canine-like chauffeurs. Strands of the Ossyrians’ manes, jet black and shiny, flailed in the wind, whipping against their white tunics. From the corner of his eye Micah noticed Fornasson gaze out to a hillock beyond which his farm lay, then stare at the ground rushing past. One of Fornasson’s hands let go of the railing, and his body tensed. Micah seized the man’s wrist. “Don’t even think about it,” he said. “How far do you think you’ll get, assuming you survive the fall?”
Fornasson grimaced, grabbed the rail again and stared straight ahead. Micah let go of his wrist.
From afar, the pyramid glistened silver, but as they approached and began to decelerate, Micah noticed that he could see the Acarian mountain range straight through the three hundred metre tall pyramid as if it were transparent. He knew it was no such thing: the outer layer was stealth tech. From space it would not be detected at all, and would look like a shimmer of heat haze on the desert floor. It reminded him that the Ossyrians, a medical race bred to heal, weren’t naïve – even doctors needed defences, and in their case, that meant formidable bio-weaponry. None they would share – their convoluted equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath had been made quite clear on that point on numerous occasions, though as President he’d pushed hard. It was one reason he’d not been allowed back inside the ship for over a year. Officially he was here to see that Fornasson got proper justice, but he also needed to talk to Chahat-Me about defences once the Ossyrians departed, and promised reinforcements. The news from Kat had reminded him just how vulnerable Esperia was.
The chariot stopped slowing down. Fornasson fidgeted and glanced nervously at Micah, who looked straight ahead, hands firm on the railing. Images of the burned-out husks of the spider family flooded back into his mind, making him want to punch Fornasson. Yet he feared what the Ossyrians would do, how they would mete out justice as they saw it.
“Bend your knees a little,” Micah said.
A glass ramp appeared, extending down to ground level from about a quarter of the way up the pyramid. They hit the bottom of the ramp smoothly and shot upwards into the Ossyrian space vessel that hadn’t moved an inch from the ground since it had first landed. Despite knowing better, Micah braced himself for some kind of impact, but they simply stopped, as inertia-controllers relieved them of Newtonian momentum. Micah stepped off the chariot as if he did this all the time.
The room was cylindrical in shape, as were many in the pyramid whose Ossyrian name could not be pronounced with human vocal chords, but which they’d translated as the Pteraxia. The Ossyrians had never explained the name’s origins or significance; as usual they were very private about their past, as if they had something to hide. The floors, ceiling and walls were glassy, a shifting sea-shell collage of pastel pinks, tangerines and lilacs, but opaque all the same. There was a faint smell of rose petals.
Micah didn’t look at his kinsman. “Fornasson, you can get down.” His voice came out crisp. In his time as leader on Esperia there had only been three murders, and he had opposed the death penalty each time, carrying the vote against several respected Council members, even though prison was difficult to maintain in such a small society. The community of Esperantia had mercifully escaped anything like a serial killer.
Micah knew that if he himself had done something so heinous against the spiders as Fornasson had, he’d expect and accept the worst. But he hoped for redemption in others. Micah tuned out his anger and studied Fornasson, the creases on his face, the hooded look around his eyes and hunched posture. Was remorse setting in, or was Fornasson just sorry he was about to be punished? Micah couldn’t tell. What he did know was that although he personally wanted to drag Fornasson back to the scene of the crime and hurl him into the midst of the carnage and cindered corpses, instead he’d defend him, and argue for humane treatment.
Their Ossyrian chauffeurs stood in line with two others. One of them had more horizontal golds than reds, blues and blacks in the head-dress, which Micah knew signified her as the leader of this party. Micah had never seen a male, and had begun to wonder if they existed at all, or had been side-stepped somewhere along the Ossyrians’ evolutionary trek, their procreative function supplanted by medical ingenuity.
Fornasson stepped down and stood in front of Micah. He stuck his chin out and held his chest proud, as if ready to take responsibility for his actions and accept his fate; Micah decided that whatever Fornasson had done, he deserved some respect, and fair treatment. He also realized that he was the only person present who was going to stand up for Fornasson’s rights. He’d seen enough domestic justice situations over the past years, but he’d never had to defend a murderer before. The Ossyrians had already extracted a confession from Fornasson, and he suddenly wondered if there would be any trial at all, or if they would simply dispense punishment – whatever that might be – on the spot.
Micah made to speak, but felt a pricking in the back of his neck, and suddenly he was unable to move. His eyes waxed into a kind of stupor, and he realised his hosts had just anaesthetised him. Micah felt a sense of outrage, violation even, but his physiology failed to react – there was no blood rushing to his head, he couldn’t clench his fists or even glare. He beckoned his resident, but the Ossyrians had somehow deactivated it. His fingertips tingled, and Micah knew that it was his nannites; they were still active, awaiting his command.
In his peripheral vision he noticed Fornasson shift from one foot to the other, fists by his side, then take a step back. Micah saw why. Three spiders came into view behind the Ossyrian line-up, sturdy, silent and quick. The Ossyrians parted to allow the spiders through. Micah’s fingers itched, but the paralysing drug was too strong. The tingling shifted to his lips and throat. He tried to find a voice, yet still nothing came and he couldn’t move, except the muscles in his chest and diaphragm allowing him to breathe.
The spiders circled Fornasson, who remained as still as he could, given that he was shaking from head to foot. The bands around the spiders’ bodies pulsed scarlet and black. One at the front advanced, nudging Fornasson back towards the entrance, and it was clear they were going to take him away.
The implications of what was about to happen burst into sharp relief in Micah’s mind. Despite Fornasson’s crime, there were enough Steaders who would sympathise with him to cause problems, and a summary execution would fuel long-harboured fears about their alien
neighbours. Fornasson’s crime would be forgotten long before the fact that the spiders killed him in revenge.
Micah made up his mind. It was a long shot. His nannites complied, and surged around his torso, locking his diaphragm muscles. He reckoned he had twenty seconds, tops.
As one, the four Ossyrians turned towards Micah, just as his vision fazed and he slumped towards the floor. An Ossyrian moved so fast it was a blur, catching him before his head hit the ground. The Ossyrian’s quicksilver paw morphed into a needle and punctured his sternum. Micah gulped in air and arched his back, his body control returning. The Ossyrian released him, and Micah rolled over and promptly threw up, the acid taste of bile lingering in his throat. Still on the floor, he turned to find that Fornasson and the spiders had stopped and were staring at him.
Another Ossyrian entered: Chahat-Me, the Ossyrian contingent’s leader, the only one who spoke any decent semblance of English through their musical windpipe system. Her voice sounded like a synthetic choir.
“Micah. What are you trying to achieve?”
He got to his feet, and bowed to Chahat-Me. The Ossyrians never expected any such deference, but Micah always gave it, out of respect and gratitude, and in her specific case because Chahat-Me had helped defend humanity when they had been on trial.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, aware he must look a mess. “Fornasson is our responsibility. Justice should be served according to our rules.”
Chahat-Me looked toward the spiders. Her mercurial eyes flashed a tight band of colour at one of them, the laser-light ricocheting to the others in their cascading instant mode of communication.
There was a pause, and Micah felt that everyone, especially he and Fornasson, held their breath. The three spiders then moved in front of Fornasson. Light shone into the man’s eyes. Micah went to move towards him but Ossyrian leader’s arms held him where he was.