“Wait!” I tried to rush him. “We don’t know what’s out there!” Leaking miner did not listen of course. Instead we were all knocked down flat when the blast took off the hull and a cloud of air and sand rushed back in. Ohre calmly stood all the while until it passed. I did not see him disassemble his tool before he reached to help me up.
While Arvex aided the others, I glared at my protector and coughed up dust. “Suppose we should thank you for that?”
He smiled. “Come on. Nightfall soon.”
“How does he know?” Bruv asked.
Ohre merely tapped his head from ahead of the group, surprising the royals. “Smarter than I look.”
Pushing my way to the front I crossed my arms over my chest. “No really, how do you know? How did you know opening the hull wasn’t going to expose us to toxic air? How do we know we can trust you?” I hated the quavering fear I was unable to hide in the end. I may owe this miner my life, but I wasn’t sure if when the time came he wasn’t going to abandon us too.
Now he looked at me as if I should already know the answer, annoyance drawing his tattooed brow together. “We’ve been exploring worlds a lot longer than your people, Qeya. Trust me when I say I just know.” Once again he tapped his head and grinned.
Taking charge for the first time in his life, my tall brother spoke over everyone. “Well that’s enough of that sister dear. Save your interrogation for later, yeah? Keep close and watch your step, everyone. This is solid ground. Takes time to adjust.”
Ohre took my hand in his before I could protest so we walked first together onto a shifting floor of sand. Avoiding the fresh wreckage around us it took us some distance before I had an inkling of our surroundings. Once I did, I could not stop the effects of sensory overload, like my fingers holding tightly to his, or the feel of my inner translucent eyelids rapidly sliding open and shut.
The beach spanned on into a forever distance, as far as the horizon, and was the only intermediary between the chopping waves of a massive ocean and the highest steep range of mountains. Everything seemed brighter here; the lack of color on the beach and mountains seemed off, while the ocean shone liquid silver. Above, only one sun softly gleamed overhead. And the air made us feel lighter, stronger than we had been before. But when we turned back to look at what was left of Datura 3 all I felt was a bottomless pit of weakness.
“Where are we?” Jymee cried out through his tears. His golden sister wrapped her arms round him even tighter.
Arvex found my eyes, mirroring my own concerns, laughing so suddenly Hanea jumped beneath his arm. “Why we’re on a new world, Jymee! Stepping foot on a world where no Hunan has stepped before!”
“That’s great, Arvex. Way to boost our spirits.” I rolled my eyes and held the scanner up with my free hand and studied it. My brother had always had a penchant for being overdramatic. His coping mechanism may have been fine on the ship, but I was in no mood for it today. We had just lost everything but each other.
“Well, I don’t care if you insist on squashing our fun, sister. Not everyone can just flip a switch and turn our emotions off.” I could hear the frustration in his voice and knew the mood swing would pass soon enough. Lovable and boiling as Arvex was, he was just as aware of his failings as I was. Our parents had made certain we did after all, so we could fix them.
I tried not to show his words truly bothered me. Was he right? Had I just become some artificial being, incapable of feeling? Watching the others lean on my brother for support made me wonder.
Jymee picked his head up a bit more as Arvex’s buoyant temperament rubbed off on them. “You think we’ll find any aliens?” Kahne was busy brushing the tears and grime from his face, trying not to show she was hanging on my brothers’ words too. Bruv shoved his hands in his scythe training armor sleeves, scowling at his feet.
Arvex made sure I was aware he had won this argument by a casual gesture of his fingers before gathering the others to him. “Sure as the tide! You just wait and see what adventures we have. They’ll write stories about us one day, Jymee.”
“Stories?” Bruv questioned with a kick at the sand beneath his feet.
I shook my head as Arvex carried on, each tale more wildly exciting than the last. Ohre followed my trail away from our small band and to the mountainside. I couldn’t listen to Arvex ramble on about how glorious our adventures were going to be, not this soon. I also could not look too long at the deck I knew so well, half-buried in the sand and jutting out awkwardly behind us. Or think of the dozens left behind who would never come out to feel the fresh air.
“Do you see them?” My heart clenched when I thought he meant our lost family, but I breathed again when I realized his eyes were fixed onto the scanner in my hands.
“The signal is so faint. I can’t tell if it’s picking up pieces of our ship or the Pioneer. Looks like there’s something out there, through these mountains… I just don’t know how we’re supposed to get through them.”
“Leave that to me.” Ohre smirked and pulled out another tool, beginning to make his own scans.
We wandered the beach for what felt like days, stopping every now and again so Ohre could check for weaknesses in the mountains. My scanners never picked up anything along our path, only further back behind the mountain wall we could not penetrate. Behind us, Arvex led the children with stories of home world, Hanea at his arm.
The skies were fading, the sun sinking lower and lower towards the sea and more brightly garish colors pierced our sensitive eyes. I was too numb inside to appreciate the beauty, even though I would dream of that sunset for years to come.
Ohre said nothing along the way, for which I was grateful. In fact, I was starting to feel as if we had known one another as well as my own blood and water. I sensed, though he would never admit it, his need for me beside him was just as necessary. We formed an unlikely pair. Already I could anticipate his actions.
“Wait…” His fingers squeezed mine and the foreign device pulsed faster. He smiled at me and in the dying sunlight I was amazed how beautifully strange he was with his bald tattooed head and glowing eyes. “You aren’t going to like this.”
“Like what?” Inner lids blinking I followed his gaze to the sea, then the ground beneath us with a gaping jaw. “No way. Not a chance! You can’t even breathe underwater!”
He raised a brow. “Is that so? Care to share anything else about my kind, Qeya?” I tried to pull my fist out of his hand to slap him for his insolence. No one ever spoke to us that way. It both frustrated and excited me when he caught my wrists and smiled. “Just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Below the sandbar, deep under the waves, we found the cave Ohre had scented out. And just as he suspected, it led us beneath the earth and deep into the mountains. Where it would take us beyond this was a mystery. The water was thick with minerals, not like our ancient world, and we could hear the abundant life swimming in the distance. Yet nothing came through these caves and not for the first time I wondered why. Why did this world seem so barren and dead when its star was obviously so young and alive?
Once we had breached beneath the waves, our inner lids protected our eyes. The deeper we dove, the brighter our skin glowed. Swimming, even on a hostile alien world, was easy for us. How the miner managed I did not know, but it was a beautiful release the moment our gills opened to capture the air we needed.
Our oldest stories say the sea is where we came from. After Arvex’s first initiation, he took me deep through the nearby ocean to see the ancient palaces and the great city. The reason why we came on land is lost to us as surely as how we built the underwater cities in the first place. And though most of us prefer land now, water is like a warm embrace that we are always happy to return to.
I was sorry to leave the fresh mineral thick waters behind when Ohre found the hole to the surface above the tunnels. The cave was large and the river followed deeper through the mountain. Ohre lifted me easily out of the water, brushed tendrils of my fiery hair from my
eyes and I grinned when one shorter lock resisted his efforts. His smile lit up my vision, eyes glowing so I saw there were dozens of colors floating around inside those inscrutable green orbs.
Gem and Menai appeared from nowhere on either side of us, glow spheres in their hands. “Ooh! Qeya, what you doing with the miner? Better not let the King catch you slipping on his sister, miner.”
I popped both on the backs of their heads. “Go help the babies and be grateful I don’t hook you.” They scampered off to obey and pulling out my own moonstone, I caught Ohre’s lingering stare. “What? You got something to say?”
“Was just thinking it might be fun to grind gears with you sometime.”
Our bodies still functioned easily in dark places, when we needed them to. Unfortunately my fair skin glowed faintly red in the black underworld, even in shadow. I was out of practice in this aspect of my training. Blaming it on childish emotions, I shoved Ohre and growled when instead of budging, his arm was immovable and rock-like.
“Did that hurt, Qeya?” he asked after me as I marched abruptly to the others. His low laughter was harder to ignore.
Arvex teased me with a rub of my wet hair. “Well mark me! You look terrible.” His grin was affectionate enough that I didn’t punish him for that comment. Kahne, Bruv and Jymee purposely flung excess water from their clothes and hair at one another. Their smiles and laughter were infectious once Arvex joined in. Even Hanea’s eyes filled with something other than terror.
Holding up the scanner, I checked our position and reluctantly turned to face the miner. “We need to move if we can hope to make it before this signal burns out.” My brother was the first to sober up, knowing more of the mechanics behind our technology than I did. Without fresh plasma, the gears would crust over and eventually sizzle out.
Ohre slipped his fingers through mine, the gesture oddly possessive, yet he was waiting calmly when I at last met his eye.
“Can you smell us out of here?”
“Certain as the giants breathe their poison.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
IV: LOST
Unlike the journey above ground, here with the earth closed in around us, the air was stale and we trod on in silence. With a goal in mind, it was easier to think of anything but what we had just experienced.
We must have traveled those caves the entire night, because a bright light greeted us on the other side. It was impossible for any of us to stop. Somehow I think we knew that if we did stop, our grief would get the better of us. Until we were safe again we must keep going no matter how badly our heaven legs trembled.
“I think I see something,” Kahne breathed.
In his usual sarcastic drawl Bruv groaned, “That’s what you said last time. You’re always seeing things.”
Gem and Menai preyed on Bruv’s short temper, an unwise thing to do to the prodigal blade user. Bruv may have been younger than the twins by two years but he was much stronger than they were and they knew it.
“Hear that sound, brother?”
“Shiver me aching bones, it’s the bloody kraken!”
“Calm your waters!” I hissed back at them with a threatening glare.
“Better listen to her, boys.” Arvex spoke sarcasm as his first tongue. “She’s a dangerous Hunan if I ever saw—”
Jymee had been lagging behind until Arvex set him on his shoulders. Now he squirmed to get back down. “Look! Kahne, I see something too!”
“Shut your traps,” Ohre growled once the bright hole appeared before us, shoveling us all behind several teeth like rocks. Me, of course, he had already dragged back against his chest while he fastened another tool to his gauntlet. The soft-spoken miner’s warning had the desired effect. Even Arvex sank until not a sliver of light reflected from his golden head.
Tilting back my neck I glanced up and met Ohre’s strong jaw above me, wondering how his skin could still smell like the essence of other planets. “What is it?” I whispered.
Eyes never ceasing their constant scan of the cave entrance, his words rumbled through his chest and into me. “Something’s out there…something big.” No shadow eclipsed us, no creature jumped out of the shadows or into light. But shivers prickled up my spine when I too sensed something else was watching. He spoke into my hair then, just above my ear. “You have weapons?”
Clutching my retractable scythe, I did not mention the fact it was nearly impossible to catch us in a fight. Only our own kind could nick us with a blade given the chance. Ohre felt the movement, my arm edging deeper into his chest.
“Good,” was all he said before slipping away and walking into the light.
“What is he doing?” Hissed Arvex, blade already held out in front of him.
I shook my head. I had no reaction to this other than the fleeting thought that we were as good as dead if the miner was killed. I blinked and his silhouette disappeared before our eyes. During those tense moments of silence, I found my eyes wandering the floor of the cave. A foul stench hung on the air that only now blasted our faces with the draft. The twins wrinkled their noses, shared a glance.
Kahne’s yelp was strangled by Bruv’s strong hand. I turned to find her eyes widely fixed on something before us, at the other side of the cave. And that was how we found the source of the bad smell. A pile of rotting meat and bones waited for us in the monster’s lair.
A strange blood-curdling screech pierced through the air of the cave, followed by the flash of a shadow and blur of something clawing straight for us. Arvex edged around me to face the brunt of the attack. Fear wafted off of him like a permanent stench.
“Stay back!” he warned, scythe held up in defensive attack.
The beast ran on all fours, its front two feet shorter than its hind legs, spikes growing from a spine sharp as its leaking teeth. My eyes desperately searched for Ohre and gasped when a tall shadow stepped from behind the rocks.
With the dying sun behind him, the lights of his gauntlet recharged with a high-pitched squeal. Before our scythes could cut the beast, a silent disc of concentrated energy sliced through the air and severed the head from the alien’s body.
Kahne muffled her screams into Bruv’s shoulder when the head rolled up against her feet.
Hissing ooze dripped from the creature’s exposed neck and I ran to the flailing corpse and sank the end of my blade through where I estimated its beating heart to be. My own heart pounding, I waited for the memories to fade, the ones that recalled battle and even found satisfaction in the blood at my feet. Shivering, I pulled my scythe free and moved to stand.
When I looked up, Ohre was finishing off two smaller versions of the monster. He turned to meet my eye once he untwisted the device and stashed the tool back on his belt. My gills flared, gulping down extra air. The intense focus of his gaze didn’t help to settle my breathing any.
“Gully! What a kill!” Gem kicked the head back into the cave passage, Menai laughing with him. Now that the beasts were dead, the twins acted as if they had been the ones to kill it.
“Greasy! Yuck! How can you even touch that thing?” Kahne gasped, jerking out of Bruv’s arms now that the moment had passed.
Bruv brushed past them, muttering under his breath. “Water-clogged ears…”
Arvex led the others into the light. “Wrecked if I ever dash miners again! This is one royal who won’t wipe their boots on our cousins anymore.” His grin made the carnage seem trivial.
Sometimes I wondered if I had been given all the worst memories and Arvex only the best. I not only remembered the triumphs of the long line of Daturan royalty, but the dark periods as well. When we were no longer children and given our titles after eight star years, our parents gave us a gleaned portion of the memories that had been passed to them. To prepare us for the future and keep us from repeating history, we were forced to harness those ancient thoughts without forgetting our own voices.
From the dark looks in the rest of our crew’s eyes I wondered which memories their parents had chos
en for them to remember. When our elders passed on, they could choose how much of their legacy they wanted to give us. Usually it was just enough for us to retain the lessons they had learned and those who came before them. Their hardest and deepest experiences were tenderly given as a last embrace of the mind. But when the death was sudden and violent, the elders had little time to prepare their thoughts or us.
I could feel Father’s presence at the edge of my mind and his regret, his horror as the ship blew to bits around him. He had been thinking of me those last moments, but I hadn’t felt a thing from my mother. Father’s last parting gift to me had given me a glimpse of the truth. There was no turning back, no reclaiming of our thrones or triumphant return. He had known for years now that we wouldn’t make it back, but he had been too ashamed to admit it. This was his regret and the burden he placed on me. Because now I knew he wasn’t incapable of fighting back and liberating our people. He had been afraid.
Blinking back tears induced by my father’s lingering emotions, I remembered the beast Ohre had killed and where we were. The twins laughed and snatched off long claws to keep as souvenirs. Bruv looked on with cold fascination. But Kahne, Jymee and Hanea cried silent tears. It was for them my heart bled, because I knew they weren’t just thinking of the blood spilled here today.
Ohre grounded the rest of them with his words. “I couldn’t leave them alive. It would be cruel. This was their home. Pups can’t live without the mother…” His features pinched into something weary and sad. And I wondered if he was right. Could we survive without our parents? Or were we meant to die too, picked off by some other predator or starvation?
As an afterthought, I unhooked my scanner, tapped it and waited for it to recharge and show us the next step. We had not gone this long without food and rest before. Even though I knew we were capable and the mineral-rich water had revived us, we wouldn’t last much longer like this.
The blinking pulse of Pioneer’s location had moved again. I frowned as I studied it. They were closer now, but how could that be? For a moment I felt despair and grief and loss spill over my inner walls. My legs trembled, unsteady on solid ground.
Qeya (Heaven's Edge Novellas Book 1) Page 4