Song of Sundering

by A. R. Clinton

  She slid across the walkway and into the room across from hers, hoping to grab food unnoticed by anyone. People filled the small space. The parents and sibling of her morning surgery, Vin, and Delilah, all sat around the table eating bowls of meal and sharing a pile of fry bread that had been spread with their sparse supply of honey. They all turned to look at her. Smiling and giving a small wave, she grabbed a bowl from the serving table by the door and quickly turned her back on them all to ladle her food into a bowl. She glanced at the way out and considered slipping back to her room to eat, but she needed to speak with Vin. She circled around the table and sat on the far side next to him, and ate.

  Vin was gesturing with his spoon and empty hand. The spoon was coated with a large lump of meal and Tani watched it, waiting for the food to fly off and hit someone at the table as he spoke, “Yeah, yeah, but it could. And once they figure that out, it’ll be smooth sailing to get the rest of it going, then we’ll be out in the stars again, like the people of Old Terra. Maybe we’ll find the places they lived and be able to live there. We can fix up this place, we can fix up those places, too!” He whirled his spoon in a circle near his head, referring to the lab and the Underground.

  The older man across the table, the husband of her patient, Tani thought he was, shook his head, “It’s not so simple. We have the blueprint, but no expertise. Maybe we get out there, sure, but we won’t get much farther for a long time.”

  Vin shrugged it off, like he always did when he was close to losing a fight, “I think, Shankar will work it out. And if we can’t live out there, then lets just send the Xenai. Problem solved!”

  The man smiled at Vin and continued eating. Tani felt relieved when Vin put his spoon back in his bowl. She shoveled a few more bites into her mouth and stood, nudging Vin as she did so and nodding in Delilah’s direction when he looked up at her. He elbowed Delilah, then stood.

  Tani walked back to her room, holding the flap open behind her as the signal for them to follow her. Vin flopped down on her cot while Delilah stepped in just far enough to allow the flap to close, then buried her hands in her pockets, where Tani could see her gripping the fabric.

  “Is everything ready for Mrs—the first patient?”

  “Mrs. Tatlock. And yes. It’s ready.” Delilah responded.

  “How has she been? You started her on the blood last night like I requested?”

  “Yeah, we started her on the Illara blood last night. She’s been fine, very low grade fever, but that is to be expected. Nothing alarming.”

  Tani nodded and waved her hand at Delilah for her to go. Vin jumped up to leave as well, but Tani turned and grabbed his wrist, “Vin—” she paused until Delilah had closed the flap and she lowered her voice, “There is a metal casing that says ‘Surgery 1: October 4’ on it in the fridge room. If I call for you during the surgery, I need you to bring it to me right away, ok?”

  Vin nodded, “You—uh—you want me to come into the op room?”

  She nodded, “Yes. I’ll have to send Ami out to the family if anything comes up, so you’ll have to take her place and hand us things. You can’t translate what’s going on to the family, she can. You can hand us things.”

  Vin understood, “I’ll be ready, if needed.”

  Ami finished her sweep around the patient. Without proper equipment, it was a balancing act of handing tools to Delilah and Tani and constantly checking the patient’s vital signs. No sooner would she finish one round of measuring blood pressure, listening to her lungs and heart, taking her pulse, and checking both the fluids being put into the patient and those being excreted that she would have to start the next round of checking everything again. Delilah was glancing at her more and more often and Tani was sure that it was because they had already administered the maximum doses of anesthesia, and soon would brush up against the time when they should close her up.

  “Focus. Watching Ami won’t get this done.” Tani muttered. She watched as Delilah refocused and looked down to where the last section of the implant site had been prepared. The smell of cauterizing flesh and burning blood drifted through Tani’s mask as if she wasn’t wearing one. She held her breath and was certain Delilah was doing the same. Mrs. Tatlock had been quite a bleeder, but Tani couldn’t be sure it was Mrs. Tatlock and not the Illara blood in her body causing excessive bleeding.

  “Get the diamond, Ami.”

  Delilah and Tani watched. Tani held her hand out as Ami returned with the diamond and checked vitals again. The small stone was the size of an old earth penny. Tani understood that in the days that were, such a diamond would have fed the entire city of Prin for years. Now, it was barely worth a glance by anyone but a Source-caster, and they preferred stones of greater weight for their casting trinkets. She held her breath and placed it into the hole they had carved into Mrs. Tatlock’s back beneath her shoulder blade.

  “Blood pressure has dropped a lot.”

  Tani noticed Delilah jerk in a panicked reaction. Someday she is going to have to get used to this. “Take it again.” Tani barked.

  Ami was losing her calm voice when she read the second reading out.

  “Delilah, take over.” Tani stepped back, ripping off a glove and heading to the LightTab mounted on the wall, then pressed the icon for Vin. He picked up immediately, “Get it.” Tani hung up before he said anything. “Ami, open the fluid line up and start a second blood line.” She walked to the fridge and started shifting through the bags of blood, for the blood marked AB+ (C), pulling it from the pile. She returned to Ami and hung it and primed the line just as Ami had finished inserting the IV.

  “Keep taking her blood pressure.”

  Tani returned to Delilah’s side, glancing at the door, waiting for Vin to come through it.

  Ami kept reporting blood pressure readings that were lowering, but at a slower rate. They finally got two readings in a row that were the same and then the door opened. Tani glared at him, he should have been here minutes ago. Vin shrugged his shoulders beneath the gown he had haphazardly tossed over his head, “I am not used to cleaning up.”

  Tani practically growled as she grabbed the sample from him, “Ami, go talk to the family. Stay with them. We’ll keep you updated. Vin, keep taking her blood pressure.”

  Both moved to their new assignments and shuffled around each other as they swapped positions. As soon as Ami had left, Tani opened the new container. The thin slivers of hard red crystal reflected against the steel container. Delilah sucked in her breath next to her, but Tani ignored it. Tani motioned for Delilah to make room and carefully placed the slivers of Blight crystal around the diamond, like a shell, as they continued to place the sutures to close Mrs. Tatlock back up.

  Vin continued to read out her blood pressure, which was slowly going back up.

  As they finished, Tani turned to Delilah, “We are going to have to push back our next surgery and test Mrs. Tatlock thoroughly before proceeding. If we need to do this for every patient to stabilize them, I’ll do it, but I want to make sure its necessary and safe.”

  Delilah nodded and said nothing.

  “Tani, if you think we’ll need to keep doing this—we may have to make a few staff changes. To keep the secret.” He waved to the door, “Sending Ami out was a smart call. But, we can’t have me in here for every surgery.”

  “Can you make me a list of who you completely trust will be on board, in case we need it?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get it done.”

  “We’re also going to have a supply problem—we’ll need more crystals. And, I need a better way to look at the implants as they heal. Any chance we can get laparoscopic equipment?”

  Vin shook his head, “I’ll poke around with our contacts, but no one has anything like that outside the Topside hospital. They only have a few machines.”

  Tani sighed, “Well, we’ll have to figure out something. We’ll work on the staff issue first.”

  28

  Shara

  Shara had watched the men all move in
to position at the sound of Hafi’s whistle. She expected the Xenai to crumble beneath the volume of bullets and source that the troop of Pact soldiers tossed at them. She nearly yelped when they lurched backward to the south, not from being hit, but from being pulled with Source. They were yanked into the air and pulled backwards, away from harm, then floated backward towards the cliff side across from Shara.

  There are more!

  She leaned down and forward on the edge of the rocks, peering across the field. She could just barely make out a dark form on the far side, directly across from her. There had to be at least six more Xenai on the cliff for them to pull all six of their Xenai away from the projectiles that had been sent at them. She closed her eyes and tuned herself to the Xenai as well as she could from so far away. She expected they were being dragged by their implants, but was surprised to sense some larger volume of source resonating from each of them. It felt like something wrapped around them.

  They’ve made themselves some kind of source infused harnesses.

  She tried to get a better feeling for what they made the harnesses from and see if she could take control of them, but the distance between her and the Xenai had expanded quickly. There was nothing she could do but watch them float away, still in formation with the center Xenai holding a large glass jar that held Blight crystals in it.

  She let her anger flare and reached for the crystal. At least she knew what it was and had manipulated it before, unlike the harnesses they wore. It responded to her call, shattering the jar that the Xenai had placed it in and moving towards her. She heard a grating yell as he waved his hands, trying to grab it, still being dragged the opposite way by his harness. They lowered the Xenai to the ground and the casters on the cliff stepped forward. There were eight of them. Shara felt resistance in the Blight crystal. It slowed and came to a stop, suspended in the center of the field as the Xenai casters fought her control over it.

  The six Xenai soldiers ran for the edge of the cliff beneath her. Another volley of shot and source flew toward them from behind Shara before they even began the climb up to her. They fell, vanishing into the pools of blood that were already there. Their darker, near-black blood spread into the red swamp around them. Shara held onto the Blight crystal, but the longer they fought her, the harder it was getting not to lose control of it.

  She could hear the men moving around her and knew that Hafi was moving groups, likely setting some up to protect her and the rest to go after the casters. It would take a long time for them to skirt the cliffs all the way around the field, but perhaps not so long to get within range to distract a few with ranged attacks. She let her eyes close again and focused everything on the crystal now suspended and at a stop in the air in the center of the field. Her awareness of the world dimmed so that the shuffle of men taking up defensive positions around her was barely a ripple in her mind. The world was empty around her, with only the crystal at the edges of her grasp. The pull she felt on it from the Xenai made the world behind it distort. In her mind, she could see the spherical force around it begin to elongate toward the Xenai.

  I’m going to lose control of it soon.

  She waited, hoping for the burst of gunfire to break the concentration of the Xenai, but it didn’t come. She opened her eyes and glanced to the right. The men were nearly into position for a ranged attack, another minute and they would be ready. She didn’t have that long. By then, the Xenai would have the crystal and be making an escape. She sighed and thought of how hard Hafi was going to scold her, if she lived through the only option left to her.

  She diverted enough power to manipulate the air and push herself off the ground, keeping the pull on the crystal, but allowing the Xenai’s pull to drag both the crystal and her across the Blight field. She felt them try to find something on her to manipulate, to force her to let go and fall to the field. They only found her amulet, and she had anticipated it and was already holding it in place. The crystal reached them and she began to shorten the lead between her and the crystal, pulling herself closer to them.

  She was a short jump away from the edge of the cliff where they stood, watching four of the Xenai work to step backwards in unison, pulling the crystal and Shara farther from her supporting troops. The other two launched whatever rocks and logs they found nearby at her. She smiled as she tuned herself to the rocks at the edge of the cliff, pushing herself off of them while pulling harder on the thread to the Blight crystal, launching herself higher into the air and flipping around so she was angled near upside down as the source manipulated objected rushed past her below. She pulled on her tether to the Blight crystal again, pulling her forward, so she hovered nearly above the edge of the cliff, and lowered her force against the rocks so she fell toward the ground. Two of the Xenai unsheathed their strange black metal swords.

  She smiled and shoved as hard as she could against both the rocks and the Blight crystal, launching herself further up into the air and away from the charging Xenai. They scrambled to slow their charge and reorient. Once she got more height in the air, she changed her force on the Blight crystal from a push to a focused pull. She focused on the hum and the voices she knew were beneath that hum. It burst open, tendrils of blood and screams pouring out of it. She used the cliff rocks to continue to balance herself as she started spinning and whirling; the tendrils coming off the crystal, catching as many of the Xenai in them as she could. The two closest had their hands caught by it and one that had turned to run had his foot caught. She pushed again; the crystal snapping shut again, pulling the tendrils inside of it and severing the Xenai limbs as it went.

  The pull on the crystal from the Xenai casters vanished. She yanked it toward her while pushing against the rocks beneath her and the boulder behind the Xenai and went flying backward over the cliff and into the air above the Blight field. Her hard earned Blight crystal came zipping over the edge, a few feet in front of her face as she fell, facing the sky as the field rushed up to meet her. Shots began to ring out from the Pact soldiers. She frantically searched beneath her for a crystal in the field beneath her to slow her descent. She couldn’t feel anything.

  Shit!

  An object, then a robed figure launched off the cliff above her, the dark robes catching the wind and shooting back behind it as the Xenai fell after her. She felt resistance in the crystal again. She pulled hard against it, but found her descent had not slowed, but the Xenai’s had sped up. The object falling ahead of him sped up as it seemed the Xenai pushed it down faster with Source. She felt a slow in his descent and hers.

  He threw his harness!

  She felt beneath her the best she could to see if she could also use it, but the element wasn’t anything she had ever seen before. She focused on pulling as hard as she could on the Blight crystal suspended between her and her enemy, indirectly slowing her descent through the Xenai’s own pushing against the harness. Against just one Xenai, she was winning the fight. She started a second cast to pull the crystal from another angle until she was in an upright position.

  Shara landed in the field, using the crystal to steady herself as she let her legs crumple without fighting the ground before she got to her knees and was able to land on them with a painful jolt. She watched the Xenai pushing and pulling above her. She tapped her foot around the ground and reached into the muck until she felt a heavy pile of fabric, soaked in the fluid from the field. She bent down and wrapped her hand around it firmly, then jerked it up over her head even as she felt the tear of pain down her arm from the stress of moving it with all the force being pushed into it. The movement threw off the Xenai’s angle, sending him crashing into the ground as the vest flew out of her hands into the blood behind her.

  It was enough for him to relax his hold on the crystal. She pulled it next to her then pushed on his implant, sending him flying toward the rocks at the edge of the field. He hit with a crash and she heard the report of what sounded like every gun they had going off. Before the rifle bolts hit him, the crystals in the field around him
burst open, the screams filling the air as the crystals expanded into giant spheres of blood and pulsed. The volley of energy and source hit this strange shield the Xenai had created and vanished. He launched the six spheres out towards the edges of the small cliff where the riflemen had shot from. As they approached the gunners, strands of blood whipped out from the surface and grabbed onto them, yanking multiple men into each of the spheres. A new spray of blood launched out of the crystals and fresh, vibrant screams. The spheres fell to the ground, the crystal at the center of each contracted, leaving only a pile of dismembered and reconnected bodies. An arm protruded from what had been a neck. Legs came out of spines. The bodies held themselves up, intertwined, and then the piles convulsed as if giving up its last bit of life before collapsing to the ground.

  The Xenai looked at her and she could feel its hatred as its smoke barrier pulsed with flat lines that twisted into points. The smoke seemed to grow larger, hovering over the Xenai like a storm cloud. Shara stood stunned as another shot filled the air. Instinct kicked in from her training and she pulled the broken Blight crystal fragments toward her and pushed them high into the air away from the Xenai. The Xenai tried to fight her for them, but didn’t wrestle any out of her control before the rifle bolt hit. His head burst open as the rifleman made his mark. She dropped all the fragments except the sample that started this entire disaster. They splashed into the blood as she glanced over her shoulder to the edge of the cliff and met eyes with Hafi, who stood with his rifle balanced on his arm, glowering down at her. She didn’t even bother faking a smile.