by Ste Sharp
But something had changed.
Praahs couldn’t see or taste it but the entrance to the canyon was different to when she had exited it. She slowed and drifted. A shadow moved and, as quick as her reflexes allowed, Praahs shot off in the opposite direction, zigzagging away. The light sensors on her tail-tip registered shadows and shapes, so Praahs swam for her life. Now she knew what her prey felt like, she thought, as she used every ounce of energy to dart back around and make a last effort to speed down the canyon.
But she didn’t make it.
She felt nothing, but her speed slowed and her muscles tightened. She readied herself, storing up what energy she had left, but, as a shape loomed from the darkness, Praahs was drawn to it through no effort of her own. She fought hard, but her body was numb. None of her weapons were any use.
Then a dazzling, multicoloured eye appeared from the gloom, bisected by a line of midnight black, and Praahs knew she wouldn’t escape.
Praahs shook off the cold sensation her memories had given her and focussed on the land ahead.
Her array of sensors, now adapted to catching airborne scents rather than aquatic ones, had picked up a group of soldiers over the next ridge. Scores of them. Several species. All armed.
Without slowing, Praahs told her Cirratus officers to split into three groups. She would have fun with this kill, she thought. The tiny Tathon needed to feed as much as she did after travelling so far. Out of respect for any enemy soldiers that managed to survive the onslaught, she decided she would let five individuals live to join the ranks of the Tathon army. They would have earned the honour.
*
Praahs monitored the range of clicks and whistles coming from her horde of Cirratus fighters as they excitedly chatted amongst themselves, sharing tales of glorious battle. None overexaggerated and all gleefully embellished their war stories with graphic descriptions of how their enemies had been disembowelled or beheaded. It had been a quick victory with no losses and the enemy had died quickly. Plenty to be proud of, but after hearing the fifth mention of the taste of one of the species’ innards, Praahs stopped listening. She was full to bursting having gorged herself on the warriors.
She allowed the Cirratus the pleasure of released chatter and social behaviour only after victory. The rest of the time, they were stoical and obedient. Maybe this was their natural way? she wondered. Before the Tathon leaders mutated and hyper-evolved their clan. Did they remember life before they’d had adaptations thrust upon them, as she did, or did their memories only go back as far as the tortuous pain of the forced changes?
After being captured by the Tathon, Praahs had regained consciousness in the oxygen-poor waters of the shallows, where her lake lapped against marshland. She’d never ventured this far from deep water and despised the taste of the almost-dry land which the creatures crossing the lake were always desperate to get to. The stench of mud and dead plants filled her gills and the edges of her scales itched as the thick water washed over her, coating her skin and sensors with a dirty film.
Praahs remembered trying to summon energy to her aching muscles and managing to cough out her gills and pull her dorsal fins out of the poisonous air. With a flick of her tail, she’d jolted off the mud and glided into deeper water where she could feel her way around, using the bell-bones in her snout to get her bearings. She was in a channel parallel to the coast, she’d found, blocked in by a solid bank of mud. She’d panicked. The water was barely three times as deep as her body’s thickness and the pool was only wide enough for her to turn around.
A shape arrived in the water beside her. Instinctively, she attacked, firing barbed scales from her flank and a bolt of blue stun-energy from her mouth, but the shape was impervious to the attack and Praahs’ energy was drained in an instant. She couldn’t move. Scores of tubes had wrapped around her, holding her tight, and she’d felt the odd sensation of something reaching under her scales and into her flesh. For an instant she felt pity for those she had killed, powerless and overwhelmed by a larger beast. This was what they would have felt, along with searing pain when her formidable teeth had torn them limb from limb.
Warm flushes had run through Praahs and her internal organs had twitched in response. Her sonar had given off bizarre readings and her eyes had been almost useless as dark shapes moved around her, in and out of the water… tentacles and clouds. Then the eye again. A thousand colours. Staring. Hours of torture until Praahs felt the tug of the tubes and the sting of the air as she was raised out of the water.
Praahs had struggled and screamed for help, but it had been useless. Her body felt weak here in the unsupporting gas. Was this what death felt like? Her gills had clamped tight inside her to give her an extra minute of life in the poisonous air as she stared at her captor, fixing the image of her killer in her mind: an immense, octopus-like cephalopod, twice her size, which held her in two of its numerous tentacles, while the other sinuous limbs dexterously manipulated jars of liquids and powders.
The Tathon’s skin was constantly changing with writhing colours, like its eyes, which focussed on her as it produced a long tube and poured a thick liquid over her head. Burning oil enveloped every crease of her face and head, running down her long neck and body. It scorched as it ran, finding every nook and breathing hole as the wave of pure pain shocked her body. Seconds felt like minutes, until a cooling sensation ran down her, from nose to tail. She was exhausted and fell limp when the concoction and burns had finally completed their tour of her entire body. Her gills flopped out, free from her control, and started to swell in the oxygen-rich air. Nitrogen tingled every square centimetre and her vision blurred. She waited for the sharp knives of death or the crush of jaws to kill her, but neither came.
With a body-shaking crash, the creature let go, discarding her on the moist mudflats, where she shivered and twitched. Waves of electricity flickered across her body and limbs as she counted down her last seconds, feeling the air slowly poison her. She stuck a forelimb into the mud to pull her body back to the lake, but the creature was there, blocking her path. It raised a tentacle, which splayed out to reveal a fan of thousands of tiny white lines, and aimed it at her.
‘Struggle less. Let the changes occur,’ a voice spoke inside her head.
‘Changes?’ She thought back but received no reply.
A calming sensation washed through her mind and body. Was this the ecstasy before death? Images flashed in her tired mind: her first kill; the sensation of being chased and escaping; her love. How could she forget her love? The hunts they had enjoyed together and their offspring, the joy of leaving them behind to fend for themselves, never knowing what would happen to them.
Praahs had rolled over and opened her eyes, ready for death.
Strange, she’d thought, she had been out of water for far longer than she thought possible. Her gills had withdrawn to their internal cavities and no longer ached with pain. With great effort, she’d rolled onto her belly, pushed herself up and looked at the creature, who studied her with equal measure.
‘You are welcome,’ the Tathon voice had said in her head.
Praahs looked now at the four captives as they bobbed and shook, tied to the backs of the broadest Cirratus. She’d said the same words to them when she had let them live at the end of the battle. There would have been five, but one had an energy-freezing mutation which allowed it to break out of its bonds, so Praahs had let the Cirratus kill it. The look of terror in their eyes was similar to what Praahs had felt when she’d been captured. Wait until you ascend, she thought. Then you will know true fear. And when the pain subsides and your strength returns threefold, you will know the meaning of power and of redemption. Praahs felt that power in her legs as they ran, and the energy deep within her chest, and knew she had been saved.
*
After a post-battle rest, Praahs and her unit of Cirratus crossed the parched prairie, returning to the Tathon army with their spoils of weapons and soldiers, who were ready to be enhanced. Praahs’ unit wasn’t
the only team scouring the land for new recruits and materials. The army was growing by the hour, consuming all resources in their path as it marched on like a relentless machine, absorbing every living thing as a soldier or as food.
In the days since Praahs had left the water – her moment of rebirth – she’d learned a great deal about the Tathon, who had raised her up and who now marched forth to master this land and its peoples. They were generous with their knowledge and skills, enhancing new recruits with powers just as they had done with her. Weedy bipeds and hunched white beings now walked tall and broad amongst the ranks.
The more she learned about the Tathon, the less she feared them. Praahs had spent hours watching the huge, bulbous bodies of the three leaders, shining and reflecting the evening fires as they talked for any open mind to hear. The echo in their voices was due to their symbiotic nature – half-cephalopod, half-fungi – but both had evolved in water. Maybe that was why Praahs felt drawn to them? That and their triumph against the odds. Despite being waterborne, they had adapted to thrive in another beast’s environment.
Praahs had also learned a lot about herself. Whoever had snatched her from her home ocean all those years ago had selected her to be a hazard for their chosen soldiers to face. She was nothing more than a danger to scare and test the land-crawlers who fell into her sea. But she could be so much more! She was far more dangerous than the puny warriors who fought here. The Tathon had showed her that. Praahs would take every opportunity to grow, adapt and learn. She would show everyone she was more than just a wild, dangerous creature.
Now, they crossed the mighty battle plain. Praahs had been surprised to find so much land here – and she’d never realised how many had made it across the sea successfully. One of her Cirratus scouts sent her a message, and she slowed her troops, so she could take in her surroundings. They were just a few hours from returning to the Tathon fold and it was tempting to ignore her scout, but her instincts told her not to ignore any opportunity. The tiny Tathon had sensed a presence near the debris of a recent battle, in the shadows of a stone-tower forest, which she was told was a ruined fortress.
‘Corral the prisoners,’ she ordered her unit, who tightened their formation around the myriad warriors they had harvested from this dead land.
Praahs unfurled her sonar gills and opened all enhanced light sensors. She sensed movement deep in the shadows of the stone pillars. With a nimble bounce she leaped and twisted through the air, clearing a wide trench from a previous battle. Rotting biped bodies and empty blue shells tried to distract her, but her senses remained fixed on her quarry as she closed in. More information came to her: the creature was bulkier than her, as broad as ’Kno-lib, but not as long as she was. Probably less well armed too. The sonar reply told her it was covered in an external carapace, tinted dark blue. Looking at the shells around her she could see it was a survivor of the battle.
Praahs paused, surprised by the shape’s change of direction and pace. It had left the shadows and was coming towards her. She pulled in her gills and unhitched the new claws which had proven so useful on this dry land.
The creature advanced and charged, leaping from the shadows.
Praahs raised her front limbs and prepared to defend herself, but the creature landed way short, scattering broken stones under its claws. She weighed the newcomer up: her predator mind searching for weak spots where she could tear the dark shell off and feed on its innards. But she also felt an affinity with this large, solitary soldier. Another loner lost in this world. They could fight, she thought, and test her new adaptations, but could she risk injury?
She remained silent and motionless, unsure of which course to take and, in the end, her opponent decided for her.
‘If my shell had regrown to its full thickness I would have killed you and sucked your guts through your eye sockets,’ the blue creature snarled, then crouched in submission and lowered its head.
Chapter 10
‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,’ Joe’s sweet voice sang.
John pictured his son on the side of the old horse cart, swinging his legs as he sang.
‘Goodbye, Piccadi-lly! Fare-well, Leicester Square!’
John wanted to join in – he wanted to rush over and give Joe a big hug and tell the boy everything was going to be alright – but his feet were stuck and a mist was rolling in.
Joe’s voice faded. ‘But my heart’s right there…’
John’s temples pounded. He slowly became aware of his surroundings. He didn’t have the energy to prise his eyes open yet, but he could tell it was dark and recognised the damp smell of mould. He’d been awake here before, but it was like the memories were on the end of wires dipped in water and he needed energy to raise each one up.
His cheek pressed against the rough bed he had slept on and drool had dried in the corner of his mouth. As had happened so many times in this bizarre world, people from John’s home flashed through his weary mind: Joe; Rosie; his parents; his grandfather. With a deep intake of breath, John wiped his mouth and raised his head, followed by the rest of his aching body. He shuffled to lean against a cold, damp wall and slowly prised open his eyelids.
Light dripped from a grey rectangle high on John’s left, coating the small room in a muddy brown. His mind raced back to Panzicosta’s torture cell and a rush of adrenaline shot through his veins, popping his eyes completely open, hunting for signs of danger… weapons, torture implements, aliens. But there was nothing else here apart from the large sack in the opposite corner.
The shape shuffled and spoke. ‘It’s no better than the last time you woke up,’ the voice croaked.
A hundred thoughts and swear words ran through John’s mind, but his lips remained sealed.
‘There’s water in the trough,’ the voice said.
John searched the empty corners of the dim room until he saw a clay bowl of water. He squinted and shunted his body across the wooden pallet, leaning down to dip his fingers. Coolness tingled his fingertips as he brought them to his dry lips. It was far from sweet, but his body needed more, so he dipped and scooped until he felt his head clearing.
John coughed, then asked, ‘How long have I been here?’
‘That’s what you asked last time,’ the voice replied with a throaty hack that John took for a laugh. ‘Two days… but it took longer to get you here.’
Images of tall circles on sticks, bent silhouettes in red fields, grasping hands and staring eyes came to John, but he couldn’t hold onto each memory and they slipped back into the dark water of the past.
John asked, ‘What about everyone else?’
‘I have no idea.’ The shadow in the corner clicked as it moved its long arms or legs. ‘There are many possibilities: working on the farms or in the mines. If they’re lucky they’ll join a scouting party, but if they fight back, they’ll be thrown into the arena. Or worse… they’ll be eaten.’
‘Eaten?’ John almost screeched and felt his stomach tense.
‘There are many mouths to feed and not much to go around.’
John squinted, trying to make sense of the shape that was speaking to him. The voice clicked and trembled, so was clearly alien, but his brain’s translation gave him no idea of whether it was female or male, large or small; he just had a sense in the shadows of long limbs and a small head.
‘You may have noticed it’s a desert out there,’ the voice continued and John pictured the red fields again.
He tried to remember what had happened after the Lutamek’s blue mesh had descended on them. He remembered a line of carts pulled by tocka – who wore hoods – and the domes… bigger domes. He remembered the tower too, like a giant needle pointing at the sky. But nothing else.
‘Those bastards betrayed us,’ he whispered.
The creature shifted its weight, rustling the dark sheet, which slipped over its body. ‘I could count the number of soldiers here who haven’t been betrayed on one hand,’ it said, as an elongated, three-fingered hand slipped out to
grip the pallet. ‘Everyone is out for themselves. Even you if you are honest, human.’
‘How do you know I’m human?’ John asked, feeling a surge of panic rush through him.
‘They told me when they dropped you in,’ it replied.
‘So why am I here?’ John asked, looking up at the grey window.
‘Same reason as me.’
‘Which is?’
‘They have a plan for us. The Ascent don’t want us dead yet, or we’d be fighting in the arena or on someone’s plate… so there must be some adaptation or mutation they think could help them with their quest.’
‘Their quest?’ John asked.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ the voice replied as its body shifted again and the sheet revealed four long legs hanging over the pallet edge, glistening in the light like metal, or a Brakari shell.
‘Who are you?’ John asked, trying to hide any panic in his voice.
‘Falen,’ the voice replied. ‘I am Drauw… a species you may not have seen before.’
John shook his head, not remembering the name from any obelisks in the dome. ‘We met a few different species in the dome, but–’
‘I meant before coming here,’ Falen said. ‘Despite being in the same region of the galaxy I doubt our species met.’
John laughed at the thought. ‘We hadn’t met any aliens at all before I came here!’ He thought of Delta-Six and was pretty sure he’d never met other species before either.
Falen clicked and sighed. ‘Well, we Drauw were a young species but traded with scores of other sentient species – mostly closer to the core thanks to a convenient SJ point.’
‘I see,’ John said, as ever not understanding everything. He wondered how different London would have been with aliens wandering around. How different life would have been with the new technologies he’d seen here, he thought, and pictured Rosie’s dead body on the bloody sheets.