by Justin Sloan
“Come on. We’ll talk on the way.” Osh started walking, having to bend slightly in this tunnel. It was the right size for the humans, though. “There are two types of Lavkins here. Mine, the worshipers of Eran, and theirs, those who would live above. The Glorocks.”
“And your city…it’s where Lolack was last seen, to your knowledge?”
Osh glanced back, licked his lips, and squinted. “You’re asking the wrong Lavkin. But yes, my city has the right person to be asking, if that’s what you need to know. Just ahead here.”
They went through a straight tunnel. It wasn’t a short journey, but Osh wouldn’t give them any more answers other than that the Glorocks were their enemies, a group that had gone out on their own, refusing to worship the great Eran. He seemed bitter about the whole thing, so Valerie did her best to change the subject.
“This Eran…is he one of you?”
Osh glanced back again, looking even more annoyed now and muttering as he continued walking. Fine, maybe talking about their god was off-limits.
“You’re not the most open, are you?” Robin cut in, not even bothering to hide the irritation in her voice.
“Sorry?” He spun on them.
“What, it’s part of your culture or something? Two beautiful women show up and this is how you treat them?”
Osh laughed. “Beautiful? This…” He scanned them, then made a disgusted face. “You couldn’t be further from beauty, no offense.”
“Much offense taken,” Robin said, stepping up to him. “The point is that you’re being a bit of a dick, while—”
“And you’re being a vagina!” He looked utterly confused in addition to being angry, and Valerie couldn’t help but laugh.
“Translation issue again,” Valerie said, then held a hand up to tell Robin to back off. “Listen, Osh, we got off on the wrong foot. All we’re doing is trying to find our friend. If you want us to continue in silence, fine…as long as we get some answers in your city.”
The Lavkin took a moment to compose himself, then glanced between Robin and Valerie and sighed. “I understand, but look at this from my position, okay? Two crazy-looking aliens show up while I’m running for my life, and for all I know you’re with them. I have a family, okay? Ten little ones waiting back there for me, and I could be leading these ugly-as-elivites aliens into our city when they’re actually flesh-eating parasites. How do I know you aren’t going to try and take them from me and kill us all?”
Valerie blinked, caught off-guard. Everything he had said made sense, in a weird, messed-up way. The number of times she had worried about her loved ones was beyond comprehension so she certainly understood, though in all fairness, she had never had aliens show up on her doorstep.
Vampires and Weres, yes, but not aliens. And those vampires had taken everything from her. A hollow feeling crept into her chest, then expanded into her throat. She had no idea how to answer this Lavkin.
Osh wiped his eyes, and she realized he was crying.
Robin turned to Valerie with a horrified expression, then stepped back in a “You deal with this” way.
“We...we come in peace,” she said, quoting one of the movies they’d watched very recently. It felt right, but his teary-eyed look of confusion showed her that it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Oosh, we—”
“It’s ‘Osh.’” He wiped an eye again, then stood up straight; he was trying to be brave, it seemed. “Not ‘Oosh.’”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Osh.” Valerie tried not to let that distract her from what she was about to say, but it took a moment to find the words. “All I can do is tell you the truth, right? We’re part of a war out there, and this Lolack character used to lead a great fleet with the power to defeat an evil artificial intelligence that is trying to form an alliance of evil-doers and take over. That’s all we’re here for—to do our part against this force.”
He squinted, still not sure, but slowly nodded. “Go on.”
“Go on?” She shook her head, not sure what else there was to say, but then shrugged. “We come from Earth, and we did our part there too. But listen…Robin,” she gestured to the woman, “left her mother and father on Earth to come out here and help fight evil, to fight for justice where the weak couldn’t defend themselves. And me? I lost what really mattered to me long ago, but recently a friend—a very close friend—gave birth to a beautiful child. I’m not going to be able to see that child grow up because I’m out here fighting for justice too. So... All we can ask is for your trust and cooperation, but please know that we don’t mean you or yours harm.”
Osh considered this, eyes still narrowed, but they slowly returned to normal. He took a deep breath before saying, “Very well.”
And then he turned back around and continued walking. Simple as that.
Valerie and Robin shared a very baffled look, then went after him.
“That’s all you have to say?” Robin asked.
Osh smiled at her. “Hey, your friend asked for trust and help, so I’m giving you both. Deep conversation wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“Are all Lavkins like you?”
“Hardly. Most aren’t as tall or attractive as I am. Or as good at stealing Elrocks.”
“You stole that?” Valerie asked, figuring he was referring to the glowing rock in his bundle.
He nodded. “Of course. That’s how we do it. Without the rocks, we have no way of lighting the city. They steal them on raids and we set up better defenses, then send people like me out to retrieve them. It’s incredibly dangerous, and I’m extremely brave.”
“Clearly,” Robin said with a roll of her eyes.
They cleared the main tunnel and turned left, and soon reached a round door that opened from top to bottom in two halves at a touch from the Lavkin. He gestured them forward, and they went first. After a few stairs, they emerged into a city that, though surrounded by the murky skies, was actually quite clear. A breeze flowed around them, and Valerie imagined the air quality had to do with that.
Massive stone pillars supported a stone ceiling far above, so that the city looked like it was in a large temple. The buildings had stone and metal barricades, and it was clear that a metal wall half the height of the pillars had been pulled back.
“This is home,” Osh said, beaming, and then bowed to something on the other side of the city.
Valerie and Robin observed that he was bowing to several large shapes; shadows in the murky sky outside the city.
“More...walking city?” Valerie asked.
“No, no.” He straightened from his bow and pointed. “Watch.”
As they watched the sky around one of the shadows cleared, and it was revealed to be nothing like the ones they’d encountered before they met Osh. It was a tall image of a Lavkin warrior, staring away from the city with its head bowed. Now that they were paying closer attention, it was clear that these statues were evenly spaced around the city, as evidenced by more shadows, though the far side was dark. Straining her eyes now, Valerie saw that it wasn’t darkness, it was rock. The whole city was built right into the side of a mountain. Carved into it, perhaps.
“These are your gods?” Valerie asked cautiously.
Osh chuckled. “Of course not. They represent us to Eran when she shows herself. They keep her from exacting her wrath upon us, so that in their worship of her, she is appeased and might turn away.
So this god was some sort of large being, one who “exacted its wrath” upon the Lavkins at times—or had at some point. She didn’t believe in aliens’ gods, even if she didn’t know what she did believe in, so Valerie found herself wracking her mind for what this so-called god might be. She didn’t see any other signs that might be clues as Osh led them into the city.
At an angular building not far from the outskirts of the city, Osh paused to speak with three well-armed Lavkin guards. They glanced at the women more than once, argued, then laughed, then argued some more.
Finally they nodded and walked off.
&nbs
p; “What was that?” Valerie asked when they had finished conversing.
“I vouched for you, meaning that you have nothing to worry about. One even offered up one of the city’s recently vacated rooms for you two to stay in.”
“Stay?” Robin turned to Valerie. “I don’t think we’re staying, right?”
“Well, you can’t leave with what’s coming,” Osh said with a confused frown. “Oh, right—you don’t know how this place works. Well, the guards have promised to get you an audience with the one Lavkin who will have your answers, but not until the storm has passed…and then she might still be asleep.”
“So tomorrow,” Valerie said, internally groaning.
“Tomorrow. In the meantime, please don’t do anything that would make me regret vouching for you. Your story convinced me, and I’d hate to be proven wrong. Come, I’ll show you to your room. If you watch closely tonight, you might even catch a glimpse of our god. She likes to come out during the storms.”
Valerie nodded, and thanked him for vouching for them. As they followed him to their room, she found herself quite curious. She had never seen a god before. A Dark Messiah, sure, but never a god.
CHAPTER TEN
The observation deck on Flamebird was quickly becoming one of Kalan’s favorite places, especially in the morning. As someone who’d lived most of his life aboard a spaceship, it was oddly quaint to wake up to the same view every morning, and it helped that it was a beautiful one.
He loved looking out over the water that stretched to the horizon, and the sunrise was a burst of different combinations of vibrant colors every morning. Today the horizon glowed a minty green, with streaks of red shooting out from the rising sun like a lizard bursting forth from its egg.
Kalan enjoyed the silence of the morning and the tranquil serenity of the view before him. He sipped his tea, a pungent and slightly bitter beverage brewed from a particular type of seaweed that grew in the shallows near the island. At first sip he’d almost spat it out, but day by day he was acquiring a taste for the stuff. He’d heard that there was a potent liquor some families made from the same seaweed. He hadn’t tried it yet—Lien’s family abstained from consuming alcohol—but maybe tonight he would go looking. He imagined that the bitter flavor would taste especially nice with an alcoholic kick.
“Can you believe this is our mission?” Bob asked.
Kalan jerked his head around, surprised to see the human. That was unusual. A childhood spent watching his back in prison had made him very difficult to catch off-guard, so maybe the island lifestyle was making him soft. “I suppose it beats trying to break a political prisoner out of SEDE,” Kalan allowed.
“Or fighting a crazy cyborg on a moon of Tol,” Bob added.
Kalan couldn’t disagree. “Seems like you’re adjusting well to life on Rewot. Did I see you chatting with Harlo yesterday?”
Bob grimaced. “Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it.”
A smile crept onto Kalan’s face. “You know, there are few better ways to pique my interest in something than saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Now you have to tell me.”
Bob sighed. “Fine. I was asking about his sister Dran. You know her?”
Kalan almost choked on his tea. “Wait, you’re trying to date a Lavkin girl?”
“I was trying,” he grumbled. “Turns out it’s quite the process. I can’t just go on a date with her. Her entire family has to come along, and I’m expected to bring my family along.”
“Did you mention that you don’t have any family in this star system?”
“I did, to which Harlo replied that I was welcome to bring you and Jilla instead. He said that since I lived and worked with you, you were basically my family.”
“Ha.” Kalan had to admit he saw the Lavkin’s point. The way they lived, worked, and fought with their families was not that different than the way Valerie lived, worked, and fought with her Elites.
“Totally not worth the effort. It’s a shame, though. Dran is pretty hot.”
“Did I ever mention you have very strange taste in females?”
Bob cracked a smile. “Yeah. I even liked your mom.”
Kalan opened his mouth to tell Bob what he thought of people talking about his mother like that, but before he could something near the horizon caught his eye. For a moment, he thought it was nothing—a handful of specks in an otherwise unmarred morning sky. Maybe a flock of birds, or whatever flying creatures they had here on Rewot. But as he stared at them the specks grew to the size of dots, then became dark shadows on the sky. And they didn’t move like any birds Kalan had ever seen.
“Holy shit,” Kalan muttered. “It’s the Pallicons.”
Bob’s head snapped in the direction Kalan was looking. He stared in silence for a moment, then said, “My God, you’re right. We need to tell somebody.”
Kalan nodded slowly, transfixed as he stared at the approaching fighters. He tore his gaze away from them. “Let’s find Lien.”
They’d only taken a few steps when the alarms began to blare. Kalan and Bob immediately took off, heading for the artillery command center. They’d been assigned to some of the ship’s many railguns in the event of an attack.
“I guess we weren’t the only ones who got up early,” Bob said as they trotted toward their artillery stations.
“You know they have people on watch, right?” Kalan asked. “It wasn’t someone who just happened to wake up early and see it.”
“Yeah,” he answered in an unconvinced tone. “Of course. I’m not stupid.”
They met Jilla heading down the long corridor that led to Artillery. “Morning, boys. Ready to blow some of my fellow Pallicons out of the sky?”
“You know it,” Kalan said with a grin.
They entered the artillery room, and Lien’s nephew Larence, the commander of the ship, pointed them toward their stations.
They squeezed into their seats and grasped the railguns’ controls.
“This is super-uncomfortable,” Bob muttered as he squirmed in the Lavkin-designed seat. It was both too tall and too narrow for him.
Kalan was struggling to get comfortable as well. The narrow rounded back of the chair didn’t accommodate his broad muscular shoulders well. “You’re telling me.”
“I don’t know what you guys are complaining about,” Jilla said with a smile as she shifted her form. A moment later she looked like a Lavkin, and fit into the chair fine.
Commander Larence ran over to them and touched each of their controls. Like most Lavkin technology, the railguns needed to be activated by a Lavkin’s touch.
His controls active, Kalan gazed intently at the monitor and the now-very-close fighter ships on it. He picked one on the far-left side of the squadron and opened fire. He was surprised to see how quickly the fighter began evasive maneuvers and dodged his fire.
“Let me take the controls,” Wearl said in his ear.
“What?” Kalan whispered. “No! I’m doing fine.”
“Then ask Larence to give me control of another gun.”
Kalan aim and fired again, and this time he was rewarded with a burst of smoke from one of the fighter’s engines. A moment later it spiraled toward the ground. “Ha! Pretty good shooting, huh?”
“Kalan,” Wearl pleaded, “can’t you just—”
“Wearl, now’s not exactly the best time to explain I have an invisible companion. Please sit this one out!”
There was a long pause, then Wearl said, “You called me your companion!”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
More fighters were appearing on Kalan’s monitors; they seemed to come from every direction at once. The Lavkin fleet had a brutal capacity for firepower, but against these numbers it was still going to be a fight. Kalan could only imagine how overwhelming it would be when the Wandarby cultists focused on one ship.
Now that he thought of it, he noticed a lot of the Pallicons’ fire was focused on Flamebird.
“It’s us!” Larence ca
lled. “Flamebird is their target. Let’s get in position!”
Around them, Lavkins stood up and started filing out of the control room.
“Uh, what’s this now?” Bob asked, confusion clear in his voice.
“Shit,” Larence muttered, frowning when he saw them still seated. “We didn’t cover the protocol for an attack on Flamebird with you, did we?”
“Nope,” Jilla said.
The commander rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, here’s the short version. The Pallicons have recently been attempting to board their target ship after wearing it down a little with a barrage of attacks from the air. In that instance, the target ship is supposed to trust the other ships’ gunners to keep the fighters off us and fight off any attackers who manage to board. Just grab a weapon and follow me. We’ll find a place for you.”
“Wait,” Wearl said excitedly. “We get to fight them up close?”
Having given his explanation, the commander hustled out the door after his troops.
Kalan, Bob, and Jilla followed him back to Kalan’s favorite place: the observation deck.
“They land a transport on top of us and try to board. If and when that happens, we’ll take care of them.”
“Yeah we will.” Kalan drew his trusty Tralen-14. Valerie had given him a whole crate of the things as a gift, because he kept losing his or having it taken away by enemies. He always carried one, and now he was glad he did.
As good as the prospect of defending the ship by fighting the enemy up close and personal sounded, it was frustrating to watch the battle from the observation deck. The ship rocked with each hit from the Wandarby fighters, but so far the hull was intact. When they started taking on water, they’d know they were in trouble.
Kalan glanced at Jilla, and was surprised to see she was still in the shape of a Lavkin.
When he asked her about it, she grinned sheepishly. “I thought it might raise too many questions if they saw one of their own kind fighting for the enemy. I’d rather they don’t think too hard about us and why we’re here.”