Humanity Rising

by A. R. Knight

  “You made it.” Avan’s harsh rasp cuts a flash of memory, a bad one where the traitor tricked Sax out of his mask deep in enemy territory.

  The Sax of that day might have taken a talon to Avan’s throat as he lies there, but this one, the newer one, holds back. Decides to play a longer game. Besides, there’ll be plenty of chances to kill Avan later, when the Sevora’s no longer useful.

  “Answer the question,” Sax says.

  Avan blinks. Takes a breath, the pain of it evident in the sudden tightening of the Oratus’ razor mouth.

  “The Chorus tracked us here, or someone sold us out,” Avan says. “An Amigga actually came, along with a pair of mirrored Oratus. They took Evva, probably thought they’d killed me.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “You think I was still standing when they left?” Avan tries to laugh - it’s a hopeless croak. “Ask them. They’ll know.”

  Sax has a thousand more questions for the traitor, but he holds them back. Evva’s the priority. So instead he turns and rifles the questions at the Flaum who brought them here, who’s still standing with them, like she’s waiting for something.

  “They’re gone,” the Flaum replies.

  “Where?” Sax says.

  “Before I show you,” the Flaum says. “I need you to make a promise. The other did, Evva, but in case she does not survive, I want you to make the same one.”

  “Promises?” Plake interrupts. “You’ll tell us where they took Evva, or we’ll—”

  “Stop,” Sax hisses at the Vyphen. “What do you want?”

  The Flaum flicks her eyes at the village around them, then down at the child still in her arms. “Promise that you won’t destroy this world. Evva said she would not, that destruction was not her goal. If I help you, promise that you will not ruin what we have.”

  The Amigga run the galaxy, have run it for so long most species can’t recall a time when the Chorus wasn’t dictating what could and could not happen. Sax isn’t so blind to see there isn’t a comfort in that, even if the result isn’t always good for a species, a city or a planet. Plake, when they first meant, spoke of how the Oratus coming had ruined her life, had forced the Vyphen out of the Vincere and distorted their purpose.

  Change is devastating. Sax only has to look at his own claws to see that. Not changing, however, can be equally so. Plake would be dead if she hadn’t adapted. Sax would be dead without Nobaa’s metal plates holding him together.

  “I cannot make that promise,” Sax says. “But I can promise that we will try. That whatever change comes when the Amigga no longer control our fates will not be made without thinking of what you have.”

  Bas touches his tail. It’s all the acknowledgment he needs, and the Flaum’s resigned nod is all the reward.

  The Flaum leads their small band through the rest of the village, to another landing site. The fight clearly came this way; numerous buildings, vines, and even people bear scorch marks, holes and worse. Piled robes and sheets cover what Sax assumes are bodies, though none seem large enough to be an Oratus.

  “How many?” Sax asks as they walk.

  “They killed them all. A dozen maybe,” the Flaum says. “They only took Evva. She told us to hide, and the Chorus ignored us.”

  The second landing site is smaller than the first, and bears the signs of at least one small victory for Evva’s force: a wrecked shuttle coats the mossy undergrowth, broken and still smoking from one of the microjets.

  “So the Chorus didn’t fly away,” Agra-Red says.

  “They’re running,” the Flaum replies, and points across the clearing.

  There, some of the vines are cut, creating a narrow path.

  “Why didn’t they just call for help?” it’s Engee’s voice this time, going for the logical question. “We’re on the Chorus’ world?”

  The Flaum shakes her head. “I don’t know. Once they had Evva, they took her, and left.”

  Which means every second they stand here talking, Evva’s getting further away. Sax issues a sharp hiss, cutting off Engee’s next question.

  “Bas and I are going after her,” Sax says. “The rest of you follow if you want.”

  With a quick touch of their tails, and ignoring Plake’s command to wait, the Oratus pair break into a run, barging through the undergrowth in pursuit of their commander, and their friend.

  9 Rough Landing

  The planning goes quick. Despite Kolas saying no Vincere lives would be risked, Lan volunteers to pilot a shuttle down to Vimelia for us. Because the Sevora are holing up within their own atmosphere, the journey down is going to be a dangerous one, and as such, we’re stuck with a small, swift craft.

  Our crew is five: Lan, her pair Gar, T’Oli, Viera and myself.

  The Ooblot, when I tell T’Oli that it doesn’t need to come, simply laughs and suggests Viera and I would be dead in a moment without it there to save our hides. I don’t bother telling T’Oli that I think the Ooblot’s right.

  What I do have time for, as we slip on our masks, as we gather up miners and small laser-edged swords to bring down with us, is wondering how Malo survived. I never reached him during our flight out of Vimelia’s spaceport. I can see him there, still, lying on the ground by the rock wall, burned, cut and unmoving.

  I tried to get to him and failed, and assumed he was dead.

  Now I know he’s been alive all these weeks I’ve spent fighting the Sevora, traveling through tunnels, and trying to keep humanity from extinction.

  “I don’t know,” I say when Viera asks me how I’m taking it, as we sit in the shuttle while Lan runs through the pre-flight tests. “I should feel guilty for leaving him here, but what if I had tried to get him and failed?”

  “Everyone would be dead.” Viera is, as ever, not one to mince words. “You made the right choice, Kaishi. I’m sure Malo would say the same.”

  “I hope we get to ask him.”

  Not even the most optimistic of us believes we can simply fly down to Vimelia and, with Viera, T’Oli and I, burn our way into where Jel’s keeping Malo and rescue him by ourselves. Kolas has the Vincere establishing a blockade around the planet, content to let the Sevora keep their own atmosphere under control until Kolas decides to smash Vimelia’s moon against its surface, something the Sevora apparently don’t know the Vincere can do.

  I pitched Kolas, there on the bridge, to make a distraction. Just like my Solare tribe would do - keep the boar’s attention focused on one hunter while the others prepared the fatal strike. A Vincere raid or bombardment would disguise their coming annihilation attempt, and would give our little shuttle a chance to sneak down to the surface.

  Which is why Lan is hissing curses as our shuttle breaks into the atmosphere. Even though Viera and I are strapped in back in the main hold, Lan has the wall screens making it seem like our shuttle is translucent, and Viera and I get a full shot at what a Vincere assault looks like:

  Kolas’ cruiser is the star of the dozens and dozens of ships, ranging in size from smaller than the shuttle to twice as large as Nunilite - a hulking behemoth Lan calls a carrier - and all of them seem to sparkle at once as they unleash their devastation against Vimelia’s surface.

  Normally a miner’s blast comes only as a flash, a moment that passes with deadly results in less than a blink of an eye. The distance these beams travel, and their sheer size, traps the shuttle in what look like long waves of blue, red, and yellow light. Space is washed out by the brightness, and the fringes of the screens glow as the heat from the lasers brushes against the shuttle’s shielding.

  “We’re going to die now, aren’t we?” Viera says, and there’s a tight fear in her voice I’ve not heard before.

  “They know what they’re doing,” I reply. “They won’t hit us.”

  “Always thought I’d die in a fight, or exploring somewhere new,” Viera says, and she’s not really talking to me anymore, her eyes staring straight out at the cascading shots of light. “Never expected I’d go wi
thout control, stuck in something I don’t even understand.”

  “Try to believe you’ll survive because of something you don’t understand,” I say.

  I realize I’m not afraid, and it’s because Ignos, while it took up space inside my head, placed my life, for a long time, on the line of things I didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. After a while, I learned to simply let go and trust that I’d make it out the other side. And thus far, more or less, I have.

  Vimelia’s atmosphere envelopes the shuttle, clear air replacing the black void, the reflected beige of the surface catching the laser light and making the space-black walls of our survival corridor fade. Now those bolts look like glinting flashes, harmless in the cheery daylight. Death all around us and I can’t even see it.

  Lan, though, who banks the shuttle hard to the left and out of the fiery rain, can. Jel’s communication included coordinates for a meeting, and that’s where we’re going, hoping that it’s where the prisoners are being kept. Until we know for sure, Kolas said their bombardment would avoid any buildings matching the profile in the video.

  That leaves plenty of targets, though, and the devastation is evident as we swing around, giving Viera and I clear looks through the shuttle’s side down towards the planet’s surface.

  The great cityscape burns. Buildings crumple and fall as laser strikes burrow deep within their sides, while other beams slice through tube transports or hit Sevora ships still buzzing through the skies, erasing them in fiery pops. Black smoke erupts in plumes, as more and more blasts torch the city.

  “It’s... awful,” I say. “I don’t like the Sevora, but this is wanton. They’re not targeting—”

  “They’re going to erase all of this with the moon anyway,” T’Oli interrupts. “All of it will be gone, sooner or later. It’s not worth feeling bad about it - the Sevora would have done the same to Marilo and your cities if they had the time.”

  Not worth feeling bad about the demise of an entire civilization? Then again, the Sevora may have obliterated all of the remaining Solare villages back on Earth. The Charre too. An existential threat uniting all of humanity, just in time for me to pledge it to a greater, deadlier force. One that apparently won’t hesitate to squash an uprising with extinction-level assaults.

  “You can’t fight this one,” Viera whispers to me. “We’re not strong enough. Yet.”

  Yet. I suppose there’s comfort in the idea that, if we’re left alive, we might grow strong enough to avoid the Sevora’s fate.

  It’s something to aim for, anyway.

  “Get yourselves tightened up,” Gar, Lan’s pair and the other Oratus on the shuttle, hisses from the cockpit. “We’ve got some attention.”

  The Oratus’ warning barely comes in time for me to grab onto the netting before Lan throws the shuttle into a spiraling dive. Outside, I can see we’re nearing one of the city’s gaps, where the constant carpet of buildings gives way to wider, sparser spaces of sand and the occasional garden. Mountains rise in the distance too, and it looks like Lan’s trying to take us closer to their deep brown peaks. Trying, here, being the key; to my right, I can see a trio of black wedges coming straight for us. We’re away from the flashing stream of Vincere bombardment now, so the Sevora are free to glide in. At least, they are until red laser bursts from the top of the shuttle, sending burning bolts after our pursuit.

  The Sevora pilots begin a weird dance, their ships jerking and swirling around, yet always maintaining their same approach towards us. The fight resembles the clawing, grasping struggle I’ve seen between jungle birds, where each side swings up and down, trying to get in a strike.

  Here, though, we’re outnumbered. The Sevora split their trio as they close into the shuttle, breaking up, down, and straight on. Gar, manning the shuttle’s defense, unleashes a mighty stream of hissing curses, frantically sending bolts everywhere.

  The Sevora, finally, decide to attack.

  From three angles, hot energy pours into the shuttle. At first, with blue-white fizzles, the lasers appear to dissipate before striking the hull, though the sudden cascade of bright alarms says the assault wasn’t without impact.

  “That’s just letting us know our shields are gone,” T’Oli says. “Every hit takes some energy, and before you know it, you’re out.”

  “I’m guessing that’s not a good thing?” I manage to say.

  “Not if you’re a fan of being alive.”

  “Told you we’re going to die up here,” Viera adds.

  This time, I can’t really deny her. The Sevora fighters swing back around for another blitz, and suddenly the shuttle lurches and I feel my stomach try to fly up and out of my mouth. We’re weightless, free-falling, the rapidly approaching ground flowing up to us outside the shuttle.

  I’m screaming too, along with Viera, but our voices disappear into a grand clashing of other alarms.

  Just before the shuttle strikes the ground, though, it bounces. The netting strains as it catches us, and when my stomach slams back into position, I let loose the remnants of my nutrient goop breakfast.

  I don’t get a chance to recover, as Lan drives the shuttle forward fast, pressing me away from the nets and pushing out what little air’s left in my lungs. Bolts pepper the ground around us, super-heating the sand and bursting trees, hedges and other greenery into flame. There’s a flash-pop from above and I hear Gar roar, and see why when the cinder wreck of a Sevora ship slams down to our left, breaking into a thousand pieces.

  The other two, though, find their zone. It’s easy to tell because the hull above us literally burns away as the Sevora lasers pound into it. First the metal glows orange, then it peels back and a single shot gets through, slices the netting between Viera and I. Without the netting’s support, we both fall to the shuttle’s floor as more shots stitch the interior.

  “Take us down!” I shout up ahead, though with smoke filling the shuttle’s body, I’m not sure Lan has any other choice.

  “Get close together,” T’Oli says, the Ooblot sliding off the nets over to us.

  Viera and I, as the shuttle rocks towards a swift crash, slip close. T’Oli thins itself out, moves over us and, like a blanket, wraps its cool cream skin around our legs. A moment later the Ooblot hardens, giving us some protection as the shuttle begins crashing through gardens and low walls.

  If we’d still been in the city, we would have smashed and burned through a building by now.

  As it is, I watch through the cockpit, mouth open in an endless scream, as the shuttle buries itself into dirty ground. Sand and stones spray up around the craft, around us, with plenty falling inside, into my hair and sliding off the mask Kolas gave each of us before we left.

  Then silence. Loud, terrible silence.

  I run a quick check of my body - I’m breathing, so there’s that. My eyes can see the broken and sparking cockpit ahead, though the increasing smoke makes it difficult to know whether Lan and Gar are still alive. A couple twitches confirm my arms and legs made it through the crash intact.

  “You all right?” I ask Viera.

  “Oh yeah. Completely fine.” Viera’s brushing dirt off her face, her hand moving automatically. “Let’s do that again.”

  “I’d say our odds of surviving another crash like this are very, very low,” T’Oli adds.

  “Joking, T’Oli,” I say. “She’s joking. Can you get off of us now?”

  The Ooblot complies, softening and sliding off. “What a strange time to tell a joke.”

  I stand slow, my muscles still freaking out. “Humans are strange, T’Oli.” I try to wave away some of the smoke, realizing we probably don’t want to stay in the downed shuttle any longer than necessary. “Lan? Gar?”

  There’s a soft hiss, and then Gar bursts through the smoke, Lan held in his four claws. Lan’s emerald skin is burned black all over the place, but I see her vents still open and close.

  “Leave, now,” Gar hisses, and then he clomps over to the shuttle’s side and slaps at the wall panel.r />
  The door doesn’t open.

  “Of course,” Viera says as she stands next to me. “That’d mean something would have to go right on this mission.”

  T’Oli flows up my side, along my arm and to the edge of my hand. I feel part of the Ooblot harden to latch itself to my wrist, its eye stalks poking out to the sides. The rest of its body extends out from my hand, adjusting its shape to have very fine, very sharp edge.

  Guess we’re getting out of here the messy way.

  “Move,” I tell Gar, and the big, deep blue Oratus steps aside as I make for the door. “Hope you’re sharp enough for this.”

  “Easily,” T’Oli replies.

  I swing the Ooblot, slashing into the side of the shuttle. Every cut peels apart the metal like I’m cutting grass, and in moments we have a makeshift exit. Which is good, because small fires are springing up - at least our attackers did us the favor of burning an exit for the smoke - and I feel another minute inside would leave us burned and baked.

  Instead we make it out into a burning field of what looks like some form of stalk-grown crop. Thanks to our laser-filled crash, though, I’m in the middle of an array of candles. Gar, with Lan, and Viera follow me out, and gradually our eyes are drawn to the approaching whistle of the two Sevora ships.

  “They’re lining up a run,” Gar says. “We have to leave now.”

  Both of the black shapes look like slivers against the sky as they curl around towards us, and for a moment I wonder if I can pull the miner from my mask and start shooting.

  “Don’t bother,” Viera says to me. “You won’t hit them.”

  I don’t get a chance to reply, because Viera pulls me, with T’Oli’s now-dulled self still wrapped around my wrist, away from the burning shuttle and after Gar’s loping form. The Oratus, even carrying another of his kind, outruns us easily, dashing away into the thicker plants.

  “Isn’t he going to wait?” Viera huffs as we move.