by J. C. Diem
“Ok, no random pushing of buttons,” Geordie said. “Do you think we could find somewhere safe to rest? I’m new to this staying awake during the day business and I’m already feeling tired.” His shoulders were slumped and he was fighting to keep his eyes open.
“If this facility is anything like the last one then we should be pretty close to the bedrooms,” I told the teen.
“They should be three more hallways down and two to the left,” one of Ishida’s female warriors said. Since her sense of direction was even better than mine, I gestured for her to take the lead. One of the male warriors shadowed her and stuck close to her side. I wasn’t sure if they were romantically involved or if the warriors had all decided to remain paired up for safety’s sake.
Picking up the pace, we followed the couple and discovered her sense of direction was accurate. This place was an exact copy of the previous facility. This time the doors opened automatically for us, proving that Robert had deliberately locked most of them to keep us under his control.
Geordie headed for the first bedroom on the left, unintentionally choosing the same one Igor had used last time. Maybe it was on purpose, I wasn’t sure and it didn’t really matter.
“Natalie, do you think you could find the monitor room again?” Luc inadvertently stopped everyone from dispersing into their rooms with that question.
“What monitor room?” Gregor asked.
“We couldn’t say anything about it earlier just in case Robert was listening to us,” I explained. “During our search of the other area, we found a room with a bunch of screens hanging in mid-air.”
“What did the screens show you?” Ishida asked. He also looked exhausted but his curiosity wouldn’t let him fall unconscious now.
“Destroyed cities,” Luc answered. “Dozens of them, as far as we could tell.”
Gregor tented his hands, deep in thought. “We should try to find this room and see what information we can glean about our enemies.”
I was pretty sure I could find the room again but I wasn’t sure what good it would do to see the blasted cities from afar. “It’s this way.” I pointed back up the hallway. Ishida motioned for some of his people to stay behind and one entered the room Geordie had disappeared into. I was glad the teen would be guarded while we were away. Aventius chose to remain behind as well. Cristov was torn but one of his European kin volunteered to watch the ex-Councillor so he could join us.
With a large entourage in tow and my friends at my side, I followed the map in my head and went in search of the monitor room.
.~.
Chapter Ten
After a couple of wrong turns and a bit of back tracking, I found the room I was searching for. Just like the last facility, dozens of wafer thin monitors hung suspended in the air. Each one showed a view of the cities that had been destroyed countless millennia ago.
Being heavily addicted to computer games, Ishida wormed his way through to the front of the group. This was probably the closest he was ever going to get to watching TV again. Studying the closest screen, he spied something and pointed. “What is that?”
Crowding around him, we squinted at tiny dots running across the ground towards one of the cities. They were too small to make out in detail but I was pretty sure they were Kveet.
“I wish we could zoom in,” Ishida said and touched the screen. Some of the small group started back when the view changed and we were suddenly watching the Kveet in close up.
Tiny and brown skinned, their heads were completely bald and perfectly round. One threw a look back over its shoulder as it sprinted, revealing a scrunched up face. Its eyes were slightly too big, it had a rudimentary nose and a wide mouth. While its features were alien, we could all recognize its terror easily enough.
“I wonder if their blood is drinkable?” Cristov mused. He had voiced the question that had been on all of our minds.
I counted half a dozen more Kveet sprinting flat out. Their bodies were thin and wiry and they wore shirts and pants that matched their skin tone almost exactly. All seven suddenly disappeared beneath the ground almost like an optical illusion. A few seconds later, a silver droid came into view. It was the same size and shape as Robert but the similarities stopped there. Unclothed, it was made of the same metal as the subterranean facilities. It didn’t have ears at all but did have glowing red eyes. The rest of its face was devoid of features but had a similar thin, lipless opening for a mouth as Robert. I figured it was some kind of soldier droid.
Stopping where the Kveet had disappeared, the robot pushed a button on the control panel on its wrist and violet light flared. Turning in a full circle, it scanned the area then shook its head in an almost human gesture of frustration. I had to revise my opinion that the robots were completely emotionless.
There was no sound accompanying the picture on the screen but I imagined the robot was stomping as it turned on its heel and stalked away. It only managed to take a few steps before Kveet erupted from the ground. They swarmed towards the droid and grabbed hold of its legs. Caught by surprise, the robot tried to shake them loose but there were too many of them. Like a swarm of ants, they climbed up its body.
Thrashing around like a person being stung by an angry swarm of wasps, the droid tottered and went down. Most of the Kveet jumped to safety but a couple were crushed to death. Blood that was as brown as their skin splashed across the dry ground and was instantly absorbed. The rest of the aliens rushed to subdue the metal man. One pulled a long, thin tool from beneath its clothes and jumped onto the downed droid’s head. Balancing precariously, it rammed the tool into a red eye then leaped clear. The rest of them turned and ran in different directions, as the robot climbed to its feet. Shaking its head, it put a hand to its injured eye to pull out the tool that had been inserted. A blinding flash of violet light burst across the monitor, making me wince and blink to clear my vision. All that was left of the droid were a few fragments of blackened metal.
Cheering silently, at least to those of us watching, the Kveet’s celebration came to an abrupt halt when they saw the bodies of their fallen. Grief etched their tiny faces as they tenderly gathered their dead and carried them towards the blasted city.
Ishida touched the screen again when they became too small to see and the picture zoomed in closer. This time we all saw the tiny tunnel they disappeared into just before reaching the outskirts of the city. The view wouldn’t move in any closer no matter how many times Ishida tapped the screen.
“If we could somehow communicate with these creatures and convince them that we mean them no harm, we might be able to form an alliance with them,” Gregor said as Ishida moved over to the only blank monitor amongst the collection.
“Robert said the Kveet could be cunning when cornered,” I told him. “But I didn’t expect them to be this intelligent.”
Resting his chin on his fist, Gregor was silent for a few minutes. Most of us were aware of his thinking process so we left him alone to plot. When he spoke again, he quickly gained our attention. “We are stranded on an alien planet with no way of returning home. The Viltaran race is extremely hostile and I cannot see us ever being able to come to a truce with them.” Putting it starkly like that, it looked like we were in serious trouble. “We need food and hunting Viltarans would be very dangerous. I propose that we attempt to make contact with the Kveet and seek their aid.” We’d originally been planning on hunting them down and eating the Kveet but this did seem like a much better strategy.
“How do we know they won’t just blow us up like they did to the robot?” one of the Japanese warriors asked.
“We don’t,” I replied. “I think Gregor is right, we need food and the Kveet are our best bet.”
No one was happy about it but they didn’t openly disagree with me. Motioning to Kokoro, I drew her out into the hallway. She didn’t want to let Ishida out of her sight, now that she had actually regained the ability to see, but I wasn’t taking her far.
When I judged we were far enough
away that no one would be able to overhear us, I asked a question that had been nagging at me for the past couple of nights. “Can you still read our minds?”
Shaking her head, her shoulders slumped. “I seem to have lost all of my gifts when I regained my sight.”
“You don’t have any idea what is going to happen to us on this planet, do you?” It came out sounding more accusatory than I’d intended.
“It is hardly fair to blame Kokoro for her lack of visions,” Gregor said as he stepped around the corner. He slid an arm around the ex-seer’s waist and she leaned into him with a shy smile.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said to Kokoro and touched her arm briefly. “Do you have any theories why she has lost her gifts?” I asked the most sophisticated of us.
Since he had snuck up on us so easily, he wasn’t about to let it happen again and Gregor motioned for us to follow him to the far end of the hallway. We gathered into a small huddle and he gave us his insights. “I believe we have moved beyond fate’s influence. By sending us here, it has corrected the mistake it made when it allowed us to be created. In effect, fate has washed its hands of us.”
I didn’t like his implication at all. “Are you saying that we’re completely on our own now?”
Gregor nodded. “We must make our own destinies and it is up to us whether we survive in this new environment or if we allow ourselves to perish.”
It finally hit me then, we were stuck on this inhospitable rock forever. We’d only been gone from our home planet for a short time and I already missed it. I missed animals, grass, oceans and actual living trees rather than dead petrified ones. I even missed the people a little. Sure they’d kicked us out of our home but, in their place, I might have done the same. Now we had to live in a radioactive-like atmosphere which resulted in hideous yellow skies, howling winds, dusty, parched ground and dead trees. Don’t forget the evil Viltaran overlords, my subconscious reminded me. I hadn’t seen any sign of animal life so we had a choice of feeding from Viltarans or the Kveet we had yet to meet. Neither prospect particularly thrilled me.
“We should probably keep this possibility quiet for now,” I advised the pair and received nods of agreement.
Entering the monitor room again, I noticed immediately that something had happened while we’d been gone. Luc stood beside Ishida and they both stared intently at the monitor that had been blank when I’d left the room. Manoeuvring through the crowd that had gathered behind them, I stood on the other side of the child king to examine what he’d found.
The once blank screen didn’t show a view of one of the ruined cities. Instead, it showed a series of rooms. All were identical, with a long metal table and matching chairs. Most of the rooms were empty of life but eight held Viltarans, talking animatedly. I guessed that we were the main topic of their conversations.
Between eight and twelve Viltarans were seated at each table and all had a droid servant identical to Robert standing behind their chairs. All of the Viltarans were huge, grey skinned and red eyed with the long ears that curled at the tops. Instead of being clones of each other, their features were widely different. Some had batlike noses, others had almost piglike snouts. Most had fangs but a few had tusks that thrust upwards from their upper or lower jaws. Many were bald but the rest had coarse black hair that was filthy from having never been washed. Most bore scars, presumably from decades of fighting their rivals. Roughly a quarter of the aliens appeared to be female, if the twin bulges in their chests beneath their plain black shirts were anything to go by. It was eerie how closely they resembled our species, except for their heads and skin colour. All were heavily muscled, even the females.
One of the Viltarans seemed to shout the others down and all eight groups settled down and turned to view a monitor on the table that we couldn’t see. Standing, he addressed the monitor in front of him, making a speech. Intuition told me we were looking at Uldar. When he sat, the other groups conferred amongst themselves. All of the groups finally finished their chat and their leaders spoke to the hidden monitor. As one, the eight leaders thumped their chests with their fists then our screen went blank.
“Is it just me or did it look like they all just came to some kind of agreement?” I asked the others uneasily.
“Their kind has been warring for millions of years yet they are now joined in a common cause,” Gregor said almost tiredly. “We can only assume that we are that cause and that they have just agreed to work together to eradicate us.”
“If that was all of the Viltarans, then there are less than a hundred of them and they die easily enough,” Ishida pointed out.
“That is true,” Luc said to the teen. “But we do not know how many servants they have at their beck and call. They could have thousands of robots and imp clones stashed throughout the planet.”
In this instance, I wished Luc wasn’t as intelligent as he was attractive. We both remembered the cells full of ravenous imps we had seen. I doubted we would be very tasty to them but I had a feeling they would tear us apart before they figured out that we were inedible.
“I vote we don’t wait for nightfall and head for the closest city now and begin our search for the Kveet,” I proposed.
“Agreed,” Gregor replied immediately. “We will be much harder to locate in the ruins.”
I led the way back to the sleeping quarters at a run. Again, Geordie was the only one who had fallen asleep. Everyone else was still too nervous and scared to allow unconsciousness to render them helpless. Igor collected his apprentice and we trotted off in the direction of the closest city.
.~.
Chapter Eleven
Dead to the world and unaware of the danger we were in, Geordie hung limply over Igor’s shoulder. Luc carried our only weapon and I was holding Robert’s arm. So far it hadn’t been necessary to push any buttons to open the doors but the arm could always double up as a club if necessary.
We’d been jogging for a few hours when I heard a faint chirping sound somewhere in the distance. Slowing down, I motioned for everyone to be quiet. Luc and I shared a glance, hoping the mini imps were still in their cages and hadn’t been set loose.
“Shouldn’t we have reached the city by now?” Gregor whispered when I waved for everyone to gather around.
“We should be near the outskirts,” I replied. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get any closer beneath ground. We need to find an exit to the surface.” Unfortunately, the sun was still high overhead and it would be several hours before it would sink beyond the horizon again.
Cocking his head to the side, Cristov looked worried. “Is it just me or are those strange noises getting closer?”
I’d been hoping that was just my imagination but there was no use kidding myself any longer. “I think some of the Kveet imps have been released from their cells and are roaming around free,” I said reluctantly. A picture of free range chickens came to mind, except chickens weren’t carnivorous and wouldn’t swarm over us and tear into our flesh once they saw us.
“They sound hungry,” Ishida murmured. “I wish we had some weapons to defend ourselves with.”
While the robot arm would make an effective club, my samurai swords would have been far better. They were probably decorating Colonel Sanderson’s walls back home. I felt a small stab of grief and anger at the thought.
“Standing out in the open like this probably isn’t very smart,” one of Ishida’s people pointed out.
Clumped together, we were almost soundless as we searched for an exit. The chirping grew close enough for me to be able to understand what the imps were saying. Not unexpectedly, they were searching for a meal.
“The stairs should be just around the corner,” said one of the Japanese warriors a little too loudly as she pointed off in the distance.
Almost instantly, the chirping surged in our direction. “Food?” The question was spoken longingly by dozens of voices that all sounded exactly alike.
Following the vampire who had targeted the exi
t, we raced down a long hallway to a set of stairs. We had passed several doors but none of the rooms would be able to offer us safety. The doors would open just as easily for the clones as they would for us. The sun was still out, which meant we were trapped in the underground facility.
“I have an idea,” Gregor said as the first tiny imp appeared at the far end of the hallway. “Hand me Robert’s arm.” He held his hand out impatiently so I gave him my only weapon. “Which button do you need to press to open the exit?” I showed him and he nodded his thanks. “The air does not appear to harm the Kveet but it is supposedly toxic to the Viltarans. I’m hoping the clones have been altered enough that the air will now be poisonous to them as well,” Gregor explained.
Our options ran out as more imps rounded the corner and spied us. Dozens of high pitched voices screeched in unison. “Food!”
“Quickly, into the room!” Gregor urged us and pointed at the closest door.
It seemed like a longshot to me but I didn’t have a better idea. Luc and I were last to enter the room. Tiny feet thundered down the hallway and my beloved pointed his stolen weapon low to the ground where the little monsters would appear. The others huddled at the back of the long, narrow room. Gregor pointed Robert’s arm towards the staircase out in the hallway with an expression of fierce concentration. He knew that his timing was going to be crucial. He had to wait for the imps to come close enough for the toxic air to wash over them before opening the doors. I hoped he wasn’t too far away for Robert’s arm to open them remotely. If he was then we were in for a battle and not all of us might make it through.
Gregor pressed the magic button a second before our door whooshed open and a pack of ravenous mini imps boiled into the room. Violet light dazzled my eyes as Luc blasted half a dozen of them into oblivion with one shot. Dancing dust motes were all that was left as they were evaporated.