The Fractured World 5

by David Aries

  Faris squeezed my hand and pulled me onward. “Quickly!”

  I darted behind her before coming to a hard halt.

  DD was doing her darndest to keep up, but she was still floundering. If anything, the turbulence born of the leviathan’s presence was stopping her from going anywhere.

  Even though she wasn’t my mate, I couldn’t leave her.

  “Go on ahead,” I ordered.

  “Brandon!” Faris squeaked, grasping my hand with both of hers.

  I added number four to the party. “You can do it. I believe in you. It’s just swimming. Compared to sparring against Vay, it’s a piece of piss.”

  It took two months for Faris to finally score a win over Vay in the training area, but it happened all the same. If she was capable of that, she could handle this.

  Faris bit her bottom lip and took several composing breaths. With each, the unease in her eyes diminished, replaced with stubborn determination.

  “I’ll go,” she announced.

  “Good luck!” I replied as we parted ways, with me rushing toward DD.

  The nearby laser-filled battle had trapped her in a faux-vortex, treating her like clothes in a washing machine.

  I dragged her from the mess and took off toward the ship.

  “Thank you for the kind assistance, Master Brandon,” DD said.

  “It wasn’t like I could just leave you,” I replied, keeping an eye on Akko.

  She seemed to be holding the leviathan off for the time being. It looked bigger than before, but Akko had a pistol to play with on top of her improved endurance from all the traveling we’d done. There was no reason she couldn’t do as she’d said.

  Don’t worry, Akko. I’ll make this quick.

  It’s not far away now.

  I wasn’t a cephra, but my swimming speed was pretty ridiculous for a human—Phelps could eat his heart out. Even carrying DD, it wouldn’t take me more than a minute to reach the ship.

  On paper.

  Familiar yet alien growls echoed from the bottom of the lake.

  It was so unexpected I stopped still.

  Am I hearing things? That sounded like more levia—

  From the darkness emerged a trio of hungry mouths, each as big as a smart TV—the mouth part, rather than the overall size. If you’re talking length, each had to be over ten feet long.

  I leaped out of my skin.

  Are you for real?!

  Nobody warned me to expect pint-sized backups.

  What are they? Babies?

  Was our King of the Lake actually a queen?

  I couldn’t say the leviathan’s sex meant anything to me; I was more interested in escaping from its incoming brood. Holding DD tight, I swam toward the ship as quickly as I could.

  The baby leviathans gave chase, moving through the water like a trio of torpedoes.

  My cephra-gifted swimming instincts were good, but not enough so to outpace a group of natural-born aquatic predators. There was no way I was going to make it.

  Then I don’t have a choice.

  I stopped moving, pulled my axe from its slot, and prepared to fight.

  It was a challenge the leviathans eagerly accepted.

  The first I dodged away from, pushing me into the path of the second that I struck with my axe.

  It was a blow I would have expected to devastate on the surface. Underwater, it was just enough to knock the leviathan off-course.

  I’d gotten stronger, but the water’s resistance remained a pain to overcome. Even getting my axe over fast enough to counter leviathan three was tricky. All I managed to do was throw up a guard that bounced off the edge of the creature’s maw, bumping me out of its way.

  And further from my target.

  I tried to make up the lost ground, and more, why I had the chance, but the leviathans came in fast.

  Their smaller size made turning sharply an easier affair than for their momma.

  Going anywhere could wait. The most I could do was dance from side to side while using my axe to stop myself and DD from becoming fish food.

  She clung to me for dear life as I swung like a lunatic.

  My blows connected over and over, but they were hardly leaving a scratch.

  Stupid water!

  Stupid-er leviathans!

  I had to hurry and shake them, quick. There was no telling how long Akko would keep Her Highness busy.

  But how am I supposed to escape three hungry kiddies who eclipse me in both speed and agility?

  Dammit, I should have brought some crystals…

  As if reading my mind, flashes of light came to my aid, slamming into the trio. However, quartzes they were not.

  Faris floated nearby, unloading her pistol into the group. “Leave them alone!”

  My heart leapt.

  Where did she come from?!

  She must have come back for us. The woman who was scared of water must have returned to help.

  Her lasers had no problem punching through the lake’s depths, but dealing with the leviathans was a different story. The blows damaged the crying beasts, piercing through their flesh, but didn’t do enough to kill them.

  What it did do was draw their ire. The monsters changed targets, switching their order from a main of man and android to free-range herix.

  My adrenaline levels surged to new heights as the closest two leviathans twisted around and charged for my mate. “Faris!”

  That she managed to push herself away from their initial attacks did little to calm me down.

  Leviathan number three wasn’t content to watch; it surged past me without so much as a glance.

  At least, it tried. It had another thing coming if it thought I’d let it attack my Faris.

  I threw myself toward the beast with a cry of, “DD, grab on!” Without letting go of her, I sunk my fingers into the leviathan’s scales. Next came my axe which I delivered with all the force I could.

  This time, the blade pierced through.

  The leviathan howled. It lurched, losing its momentum.

  That was a good start, but I wasn’t satisfied. I pulled my axe free and delivered another hit, then another.

  At least for one monster, Faris was off the menu. The leviathan focused on trying to shake me off.

  I wasn’t going anywhere. Again and again, I drove my axe and deepened the gash exposing the leviathan’s innards. Blood oozed out, staining the lake which was filthy enough without me adding to the mess.

  We’d see how fast the leviathans were without their tails.

  It didn’t matter how hard my victim tried to stop me, I wasn’t going anywhere. All it could do was screech.

  The other leviathans had seen enough. They left my valiant Faris alone and came charging my way.

  “Master Brandon,” DD squeaked.

  “Patience,” I said as I held my ground and eyed up the incoming water-bulls.

  Wait for it. Wait for it… now!

  Just before they wiped us out, I twisted my body around with all the force I could muster, dragging the weakened leviathan with me.

  And in the way of its siblings.

  The incoming twosome crashed into the leviathan they’d come to help with all the grace of a high-speed collision on an icy December day. It transformed them into a giant aquatic pretzel that was flung away by the force of the hit.

  That same blow left us spinning, but I soon righted us without any harm done.

  “Bullsey—”

  Cloudy water rushed down my throat.

  Okay, perhaps no harm was a small exaggeration. It turned out my bubble had been a casualty of the battle… and that I’d been right about the lake’s flavor.

  I kept my trap shut and put faith in my enhanced lung capacity. With the leviathan’s occupied, there was no reason I couldn’t make it to the ship before—

  “Sweetie!” Akko’s approaching voice squealed.

  She rushed our way with the face of a woman with a fifty-foot-plus predator on her heels.

  Probably be
cause she was.

  Of course…

  I did what any logical person would do; I turned and bolted toward the ship like my life depended on it.

  Because my life depended on it.

  While pinning DD to my front, I kicked and spun those arms of mine harder than I ever had before.

  The leviathan gained distance with every second, but the ship was just ahead. Faris floated in the entranceway, sniping the leviathan.

  Her shots didn’t slow the monster down, but they did lead the way like lights on a runway. I zoned in on the flash of her pistol as the suction of the leviathan’s hungry mouth started tugging on the tips of my toes.

  Don’t even think about it!

  I’d come too far to die; the ship was mere meters away. I was that close I could see my predicament reflecting in Faris’s quivering eyes.

  The leviathan was on top of me!

  “Sweetie!” Akko yelled as she surged past me and grabbed my waist as well as Faris’s. She tackled us into the ship and to the side, away from the entrance hole.

  Less than a second later, the leviathan arrived and smashed straight through the cruiser’s hull. It slammed its mouth into the interior wall, causing a dent that would make my axe blush.

  My heart churned away with so much speed I was positive it was about to explode. To say that had been close underplayed how near we’d come to getting caught.

  The leviathan didn’t seem to accept that; it screeched as it tried to force its way after us. However, its massive body couldn’t hope to fit down a corridor even its kids would struggle with.

  For a moment, I refused to believe we’d made it. I waited for the leviathan to squeeze in anyway or reveal a new power it had been hiding all along.

  Maybe a tentacle tongue?

  Yet the leviathan had nothing. It talked the talk, but there was no bite to back up its bark.

  Akko exhaled as she held us all close. “W-we made it…”

  Only when she said that did I let my guard down… and gag, as I remembered I was bubbleless.

  “Sweetie!” she said before rushing me a new one.

  I greedily slurped down the new reserve.

  “Ohh, sweetie,” Akko continued. “I’m sorry, I should have realized sooner. A-and I should never have let the leviathan go. I’m not sure what happened. All of a sudden, it lost interest in me and—”

  I silenced her with a kiss through the bubble’s membrane. “Stop apologizing, Miss Hero. You saved us.”

  “I must concur, Lady Akko,” DD said. “By my estimates, we were a sixth of a second from destruction before your timely intervention.”

  “Exactly. You did amazing. Both of you.”

  “I just did what I had to,” Faris said, as cool as they come.

  “And I couldn’t be prouder,” I replied, pecking her on her breathing mask.

  A hint of red shattered her icy mystique.

  I grinned, all ready to hit her with my next killer line, before I jolted from another of the leviathan’s ship-thudding butts.

  It sure was persistent…

  “Anyone else think we should get out of here and start looking for our shuttle?” I asked.

  The girls raised their hands.

  “The motion carries. Let’s go.”

  As hard as it was to believe after all the shit we’d just gone through, we still hadn’t completed our objective.

  It was time to hunt down the shuttle that would get us off this fractured dump.

  Chapter 20

  The cruiser’s lights illuminated the submerged metal maze we were in the midst of exploring.

  “This place looks so different with the power on,” Akko said as we swam through the ship’s waterlogged corridors with DD hanging from her arms.

  “How long until we reach our mark?” I asked, following close behind.

  “We shall be there in but a moment,” DD replied.

  “And you’re sure we’ll find a shuttle?” Faris said, now content to brave beneath the surface alone.

  “If the ship’s scanners are to be believed. They indicate the presence of four shuttles within the hangar.”

  That’s right, not one but four shuttles.

  Forget setting off on a wild goose chase. We’re about to be drowning in waterfowl.

  I couldn’t wait to see them. I felt like a giddy child rushing downstairs on Christmas morning… who didn’t care his house was suddenly underwater.

  A few moments later, we reached the big metal door hiding my gifts.

  It opened with a simple tap on its panel, allowing us access to a large overturned chamber that hadn’t escaped the lake’s influence. If anything, it had been hit particularly hard. The room looked less like a submerged portion of a ship and closer to some oversized rusty aquarium. A compendium’s worth of aquatic plant life had set up shop within, spreading over the area like an alien fungus.

  “This… isn’t what I expected,” I said, eyes following a few fish I prayed were harmless rather than unassuming slaughterers.

  “There must be a breach nearby,” DD said.

  “Forget the fish,” Faris replied. “Where’re the shuttles?”

  The answer was obvious, wasn’t it? They were buried somewhere in the middle of the fishy art exhibition.

  As promised, there were four shuttles located in the capsized hangar, but they’d seen better days. The plant life besieged the vessels, fusing them to their frames and turning them into dens for the room’s residents.

  “Crap, look at the state of this,” I said as I ripped the tendrils ensnaring one of the ships. “It looks like it's grown into the engine.”

  “Same here,” Faris said from the shuttle over.

  I tried tapping away the fungus joining the shuttle to the surrounding framework, but the stuff refused to budge until I put my boot through it. “Stone me. How did this place become a disaster so quickly?”

  “Don’t tell me we’re dealing with some fast-growing monster plant,” Akko said, swiveling back and forth.

  “That seems unlikely, Lady Akko,” DD replied. “My search of the ship’s computer suggests this vessel arrived here over four years ago. In an environment of this nature, that is more than enough time to create a scene such as this.”

  “Four years?!” I said. Vay was the person I knew who’d been here longest, and she’d yet to hit two. “Just how long has this shit been going on?”

  “Six years, three months, and seventeen days.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. It was somehow both ridiculously short and long at the same time, for very different reasons.

  The fact we’ve never met anyone who’s been here for close to half that time is telling.

  Perhaps they were out there somewhere? This was a big planet; there were plenty of places we’d never explored. For all we knew, there was a colony of long lasters hiding a few biomes away.

  I shook my head. Who cared about potential survivors? What about these ships?

  Once I’d unclogged the door, I rushed inside the upended shuttle and pressed every button I could find.

  Nothing happened.

  “Dammit,” I mumbled under my breath before sticking my head out of the door. “Faris, what about yours?!”

  “Dead!” she replied.

  I growled and rushed toward the next shuttle along before stopping in my tracks.

  The ship’s windows had been smashed open from the inside. Its cockpit had turned into an underwater flower bed abundant with purple seaweed.

  We could repair metal, but glass was outside our area of expertise.

  Damn, damn, damn!

  This seriously can’t be happening.

  We came all this way. Are you telling me these ships are out of commission because of a little alga—”

  A spotlight jabbed me in the eye, forcing me to look away.

  “S-sweetie!” Akko said from the final shuttle, which shone from beneath a sheet of plant life.

  Unlike the other ships, which had remained f
irmly in their parking spots and been taken over by the lake’s influence, the fourth shuttle had been knocked out of kilter and trapped beneath twisted debris. That same wreckage acted as a shield, protecting the vessel below from the full force of the underwater flora that had conquered everywhere else.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said once I was done freeing the shuttle from its metal and plant tortilla.

  The bodywork was battered, the inside was filled with water, and its size left a bit to be desired, but it was a ship.

  We’d found what we’d been looking for.

  I exhaled while clutching my chest. And just when I thought our journey had been for nothing…

  “It’s no herix shuttle, but it’ll do,” Faris said as she studied the boxy green vessel around the size of a van.

  “As long as it’ll fly, I don’t care who made it,” I replied. “How’s she looking, Akko?”

  The ship purred like a kitten… with a rather nasty cough.

  Suddenly, my heart felt a little heavier. “That doesn’t sound good…”

  “Do not fear, Master Brandon,” DD said. “Such a thing is to be expected. That is why I am here.” She grabbed the edges of her floating dress and gave her best effort of a curtsy. “I shall do my best to make this shuttle operational in Lady Trez’s stead. Please, be patient.”

  That was a hard request to fulfil. For the time being, the best I could do was swallow any grumbles in place of saying, “We’re counting on you.”

  We had to; she was the only one who had any idea what she was doing.

  Earlier, DD’s life had been in my hands. Now, all our lives were in hers.

  ***

  DD insisted she could handle the repairs alone. However, she couldn’t say how long they would take. She discouraged us from lurking around to find out when we’d be better off heading elsewhere and resting after the day we’d had.

  Eventually, she got her way, and I went with Akko and Faris to a location familiar to two of us.

  “Well, well, well,” I said as I entered the overturned room that had once served as my prison cell—where I’d first met Akko. “I never thought I’d come back here.”

  “Me neither,” Akko replied.

  “You used to live here?” Faris asked as she looked over the awkwardly laid out space.

  All the furniture was where we’d left it, although the flower lights had wilted.