Panting, he knelt down and rubbed his aching limbs. Beneath his groping fingers, he felt numerous new scratches across his scaly armor: none of them as deep as the already half-healed insect larvae craters, but it would still be a frightening sight to any civilized Teladi. Along with the diffuse light of day, the cacophony of the jungle also fell silent. The dreadful trumpet, which only occasionally rang out, now multiplied and sounded far among the trees as fluorescent sparks rose from the ground and the the branches of the thicket: luminous insects, tiny relatives of the jungle beasts, the night vigil of the ancient forest. Nopileos shuddered. Under no circumstances did he want to sleep at night. He remembered all too clearly the vile larvae that had tried to burrow through his armor during his unconsciousness. No, don’t sleep, better to continue despite the increasing exhaustion! Nopileos carefully continue on his way.
After a short while, his clawed feet, plowing through the leaves, bumped painfully against something that he thought was another root for a moment. He stifled a scream and paused again. Strange, the sound of the crash hadn’t sounded dull and earthy, but reverberated like metal! The object was only half-buried under the layer of leaves, so it could not have been here very long. Nopileos bent down, felt around, and brushed away the leaves. Outraged, a small cloud of fireflies rose and struck off in all directions; the Teladi didn’t let himself be distracted until he found what had just given him a sore claw: it was smooth, about twelve fists long, two high, and only a few claw-widths thick. Nopileos dragged the object out of the rustling leaves and straightened up. At that moment, the moonlight faded; now he could only dimly recognize the find. It was an elongated object whose upper edge was quite smooth; but the bottom edge had sharp corners, as if it had been broken out of something else by force. When he held it up to his nostrils, he noticed the smell of burned neomers. Here, in the middle of Nif-Nakh’s deepest jungle, lay a piece of scorched, artificial metal! Nopileos guessed what that meant. Almost hectically, he dropped the elongated discovery and began to work his way through the darkness, which was only broken by the scattered light of insects. A quazura later, the moons went up again. Nopileos’s nervous movements, driven by growing inner restlessness, kept him from running into whipping branches, or bruising his entire body in collisions with tree stumps and aerial roots. They hardly bothered him. When he saw out of the corner of his eye a strange, rectangular silhouette that lay just a few lengths ahead and slightly to the side, slightly inclined on its side in the jungle floor like a torn out hangar door, he changed his direction for the first time in many stazuras. Nopileos gasped in shock as he realized the find didn’t just look like a hangar door. It was a hangar door! He spread his arms to learn his entire body against the bulkhead that was longer than Teladi height. The artificial metal was smooth and hard; the soothing coldness diffused through his scaly armor, making him sigh like a hatchling seeing its squawk box for the first time. The door rocked slightly back and forth from his weight; when Nopileos took a surprised step back, it tipped over and fell flat on the jungle floor, whirling up a small fountain of foliage and topsoil. The Teladi’s hearts started to rush fast and heavily; by daylight one could have seen how his forehead ridges became visibly paler.
“No, no!” Nopileos snarled, feeling his innards freeze from the inside out. Staggering, he groped his way farther through the woods, hectically, trembling, and without the vigor he showed a mizura ago.
About a stazura went by, at which he stumbled in ever shorter intervals on more, mostly smaller pieces of debris, until he finally discovered a recently fallen tree. No redwood, but a huge specimen that had apparently just fallen over, and its fragmented trunk thrust between the sturdier, still standing trees. From here on Nopileos was forced to look for detours frequently, because the further he worked his way forward, the fewer trees were left. As the moons rose again, he saw that the trunks had been whirled around each other like giant jackstraws. They lay around criss-cross, defoliated, scorched, and dried out. Something had caught them and uprooted or broken them. The violence of this event must’ve been enormous! It was getting harder and harder to get through. More and more debris lay around: small, medium, large, burned black, sharply serrated, melted round, splintered. The foliage that had covered the jungle floor had been transformed into black, now-damp ashes. The closer Nopileos approached the epicenter, the fewer leaves covered the dark ground, and gradually the jungle thinned. Soon only charred tree stumps stuck out of the ground. Nopileos circled around the trunk of one last root that had been raised aloft and shattered by giant hands, and then stepped out into the open.
What he saw made his breath falter for several sezuras and his hearts stopped: amidst an immense, pitch-black, scorched clearing covered by a dense debris field of bent artificial metal parts, supports, shattered steel-glass, and many other fragments, lay the Nyana’s Fortune.
“Ohg—ohg!” Nopileos whispered, deeply shaken by the sight. Almost unconsciously, he dropped to his needs and looked upon the twisted and sides of his once so beautiful yacht. The Nyana’s Fortune had been a custom build from the best Teladi shipyard, ordered only for the CEO. Now she lay there on her stomach, undignified and broken like an unloved toy. Her egg-shaped fuselage, once a noble Teladi green with silver highlights, was dull and was marked with flames all around. The ship usually landed using the lift of its five ion engines and proudly raised its metal-glass dome towards the sky; but three of the big engines were simply missing; the ship had collided off-center and fallen without power. Given the enormous mass of the yacht and its high speed, this hadn’t been without devastating consequences under the local gravity conditions: the original perfectly ovoid shape was compressed and crushed like an empty drink can. The dirty, dull skin folded and creased in many places like thin sheet metal; it was a miracle that the structure of the ship’s fuselage hadn’t broken up completely.
A rattle seized Nopileos’s throat as his gaze caught the pilot’s dome of the ship. What had once been a large dome window with the control center underneath was now shattered. With dilated pupils, the Teladi remembered the countless stazuras under the transparent dome where he had been closer to the stars than never before. Now, ugly cracks tore through the dome, white sharp edges marked fractures where pieces were missing, as if they’d never existed.
Finally, Nopileos scrambled to his claws, staggering toward the wreck that had once been the Nyana’s Fortune with trembling knees. The shattered body of the spacecraft towered high above his head; when he knocked his knuckles against the soot-covered outer hull, there was only a short, dull sound that instantly ceased. Without a clear thought, he wiped the soot with the pad of his claw until a little of the original Teladi green appeared.
“Nooooo!” he howled, as the familiar hue awoke painful memories. He rubbed his claws over the black film, as if that would be enough to free the yacht from the flames’ blackness, to resurrect it. After half a mizura, something in him registered the futility of this endeavor and he let it go. The spot where he’d wiped now shone bright green and silver metallic; claw prints smeared and frayed the edges of the stain. Nopileos’s legs gave way; he sank to the ground and cushioned his fall weakly with his claws. Then the unfortunate saurian descendant curled up close under the shadow of the spaceship wreck. He hissed softly on the inhales and growled on the exhales. He sure had found her, his Nyana’s Fortune. The ship, he had tracked it, oh yes. And yet all hope had been in vain. The thought of the future terrified him. Later, grief and exhaustion overcame him and he sank into a restless, nightmarish half-sleep.
Chapter 23
Honor is for those who can afford it!
Kyo t’Nnt,
Closing argument before the
Eleventh Court of the Punshiment Tribunal
Elena had the alarming sensation that she was entering the lion’s den, and bars rose from the ground behind her to block the way out. The name of the lion was Chin t’Thhg, his title, Patriarch. Nothing had changed since their last visit: not the rough-he
wn stone blocks or the flicking light of the torches nor the low ceiling and the chunky thrown carved out a single, large block of granite. But the simple stone bench to the right of the ruling seat was empty: this was usually the appropriate place for the thrall consort of the Patriarch of all Split.
Why Chin did not use the past mazuras to name a new thrall was unclear to Ghinn t’Whht. The tall Split woman strode to the throne without outward signs of unease. Actual, Tchil t’Ggt, the First Warrior of Family Honh’s daughter, had long been destined to become the eighth consort to the Patriarch. Tchil was very young, beautiful, and had been brought up by her father to be absolutely subservient, a trait that Ghinn once would have attributed to herself. But humility had vanished quickly, just as it often did when a young woman was turned over by her family to a ruler’s thralldom.
Uchan t’Scct felt the prickling of the ray-gun muzzles in his back; two throne guards armed with heavy blasters were following him and the others. The pilot had seldom felt better, at least recently. An elation vibrated in him. He hated the Patriarch. Chin had let the people of the Split languish, sent them on a spinning, spiraling course back to the dried up traditions of the long forgotten past. His government might still hold its own against the other peoples in the Community of Planets, but it would soon be over! Uchan’s fingers wanted to shape the gesture for “victory to the patient,” but the pilot controlled himself.
When the Patriarch saw the small procession approach, he spoke a harsh command word. The large video and data panel, which projected invisible devices into the air a foot before the throne, went out. Chin looked old and frail, his long, whitish-gray beard tottered under his chin, and his yellow complexion looked unhealthy. But Chin was not old, nor sick. Cognition flashed behind his grim eyes.
“Uchan t’Scct, my faithful vassal! I am glad that he is still among the living—even if I had not expected him here and now. He will again enter my service.
Uchan raised his hand to give the sign of approval. The Patriarch’s eyes continued to roam. “Elena t’Kho, the stranger from the Earth sector. How brave of her to step in front of me again. Does she believe in all seriousness that I will once again let her go?”
“Hai, she believes it,” Elena replied, but she was not so sure anymore. She did not expect such a direct advance from the Patriarch.
Chin grinned. “And Ghinn t’Whht, my consort. She will immediately take her vested place.” The Split woman silently obeyed and strode over to the foot of the throne. As she sat down, she saw the shiny, silver jewel case laying on the right arm of the ruling seat. She registered with surprised that this was the jewel case in which she had handed Chin a provocative farewell message. For a moment, she was unsure: had her lord ever read the message? Or might he have overlooked the jewel case in all the wozuras that has passed since then? No, unthinkable. And even if: it made no more difference. A quick glance from under half-closed eyelids revealed that Uchan was ready.
“Well, t’Kho. She will come closer.” In front of Elena, he raised himself from the throne to the surrounding podium. “So, she also thinks that I will let her go and thank her in the form of—” The Patriarch stopped suddenly. His eyes widened and bulged out; he grabbed his chest. Elena, only an arm’s length away, saw the Patriarch gasp, stagger, and slowly sink to his knees while he croaked incoherent word fragments and syllables. For a moment, Elena was going to try to help him, but then she quickly stepped aside. What was going on here? The two soldiers who had ushered Elena in looked at each other in horror: the right one hurriedly shoved his blaster into its holster and jumped forward to assist his ruler; the second called for help over a comm device while he tried to keep an eye on the situation.
When the Patriarch of Chin finally fell forward lifelessly, straight into the soldier’s arms, Elena heard a mumble: “Yadmanthrat!”
In the same moment, the Split woman jumped up, a a dazzling ray hissed through the throne room and the Split standing watch fell to the ground, pierced by a flaming spear. The other soldier, still holding Chin in his arms, tried to hurriedly lay the Patriarch’s body down to reach the ray gun in his holster, but he wasn’t fast enough. Uchan aimed a finger-sized energy weapon, which she had apparently smuggled through the scanner somehow, and squeezed. The Split collapsed with a rattle.
Elena didn’t know how it all happened and what it all meant. The scattered thought ran through her head that this—clearly planned—action must have been the reason why Ghinn had decided to take part in the expedition to Nif-Nakh. She remembered Ghinn’s and Uchan’s unhappy faces during the last leg of the journey. Anger rose up in her. Even if she felt no sympathy for the Patriarch, she hated bloodshed in any form. The worst, of course, was that Ghinn and Uchan seriously endangered the whole purpose of staying on this planet. Whether it would still be possible to save Nopileos was more than questionable. “Damn you, you idiots!” she yelled out, enraged. It didn’t happy very often that the Asian spacefarer lost control of her emotions. Ghinn hissed back something unintelligible, and Uchan’s face revealed a dangerous grin.
“Back to the ship,” cried the Split. Elena swallowed her anger. If there was anything left of their plan to save, then they had to get out of here before reinforcements arrived! She stooped and drew the beam weapon from the lifeless hand of one of the two soldiers; he wouldn’t need it again in this life. Ghinn took the other weapon. Elena ran after Uchan, who was already a long way ahead. When she realized that Ghinn was not progressing very fast due to her pregnancy, she slowed her pace and turned around. At exactly the right moment, because through the arched passageway far behind the throne, some Split stormed into the hall. They needed some sezuras to grasp the situation; Ghinn used this time to fire a few shots at the men. The Split ran from each other and sought cover, so that Elena and Ghinn were able to reach the main portal, still open from their arrival, unchallenged. Uchan was already waiting impatiently for the two, dissimilar women.
“Quickly now!” he cried and released a burst of fire upon one of the columns in hall, behind which he suspected a Split. He wanted to fire again, but the tiny ray gun failed its task. The limited energy supply was exhausted. Elena hurriedly scanned the wall for the portal controls, but she couldn’t find a switch or something similar anywhere. Uchan snapped something in the language of the Split, whereupon the two high wings of the gate rumbled and crunched into motion until they had completely closed. A heavy beam of black wood automatically crashed into the brackets and barred the gate. Of course, it wouldn’t seriously stop anyone, but for the moment it would have to do.
It was not very far through the dark corridors to the forecourt of the palace, and from there, the three refugees arrived unhindered at the airfield on which, barely two hundred lengths away, the FL Raindragon perched. The ship was much more imposing here, on the surface of a planet, than in space.
When they had covered half the distance to the spacecraft, the first laser bolt hissed through the late afternoon.
“They will not shoot at me,” Ghinn gasped, reading the exertion in Elena’s face. “Come closer to me! You, too, t’Kho!”
Uchan and Elena responded to the request and moved closer to the Patriarch’s wife. The Split, now pouring out of the palace, threatened with their speed to wipe out the advantage Elena and the others had won so far. And yet they hesitated noticeably. Only a few shots were fired, and most of those were thrown so wide that they never came close to the refugees. If the Split had known that Ghinn was responsible for the attack on the Patriarch and had not been kidnapped again, they certainly wouldn’t have hesitated to make serious use of their weapons.
Ghinn, panting with exhaustion, pushed them ahead, Elena finally reached the spaceship a few sezuras later. The onboard computer opened the passenger lock when he saw Uchan approaching. It was tight and stuffy in the lock, but as the bulkhead rattled and slammed into its interlock, Elena took a deep breath.
“Uchan, you will never get another assignment when this becomes known,” Elena sa
id, who now, with the immediate tension over, realized she was seething with rage.
The pilot let go of the inner bulkhead and threw the captured blaster on a shelf on which all sorts of technological scrap rusted by themselves. For the answer, he took a long while, while he leveled a tool on the discharged miniature laser and stuck a charging device on the lower part. “I could kill you, too, Kho,” he said between his teeth without looking at Elena. Then he turned around and looked the astronaut from Earth straight in the eye. “Or do you think that would be difficult for me?”
“No, you’re excellent at killing, Uchan. Really fabulous. You assassinated the Patriarch of Chin!”
The gesture that the pilot formed made no sense for Elena. Ghinn t’Whht silently turned away without another word and stalked toward the cargo hold.
“Stay here, damn it!” Elena shouted as Uchan followed Ghinn. The pilot stopped and turned around.
“Kho, your mission was never endangered.” With that, he left Elena standing there without a care.
It took a while for Elena to calm down enough that she could follow Uchan back to the control center without immediately starting a fight with him. Above the main console hovered the image of a yellow-skinned soldier, his expression radiating unaffected ice-cold calm. In the name of the Patriarch, we demand the immediate release of the thrall Ghinn t’Whht,” he snarled.
“What Patriarch?” Ghinn giggled hoarsely from the background.
Elena had a good notion to comply with the request, but of course that would make little sense: If the Split had Ghinn back in their hands, there would be no reason for them not to destroy the FL Raindragon. Besides, it was a dead giveaway that they only demanded Ghinn, but not Uchan.
Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series) Page 19