Aldebaran Divided
Page 20
“Maybe you should take a chance with Squish,” the cybrid suggested.
Grabbing the object held out by the Dva, she nodded. “I tried once or twice. The Dva don’t want to be approached.”
Torg grabbed the jufinol sitting on his shoulders and handed him to the pilot. She raised her free arm and he wrapped himself around it. After a glance at the puny alien, Torg said, “I don’t have all my strength, but I might be able to pin him for long enough. You just have to distract him so I can get behind him.”
Mallory didn’t hesitate for a second. With an abrupt movement, she threw the stick to the other end of the room. Gesticulating and shouting, she ran toward the portal that had brought them there. The Dva approached her and tried to get her to go back to work. Its tiny hands tried in vain to block the human. She stepped around him and reached the dark door in two strides, which she pretended to step through. The Dva leapt to its paws and came in pursuit.
Six fingers encircled his body, stopping him. The Dva began to shake frantically while yelping its incomprehensible sounds. Without too much force, Torg lifted him and shook him into silence. “It’s okay! Calm down, it’s for your own good. I’m not going to eat you.”
The giant hesitated as he heard what he had said. Mallory could almost hear him thinking: this alien looks like a licorice stick, after all, so maybe it wouldn’t be bad to chew on.
She saw the cybrid’s shackles glow more brightly and stifled a sudden urge to make a joke.
She approached the Dva, which was dangling pitifully in Torg’s hand.
“Hurry, Mallory. These freaking supergravs are already wearing me out.”
She held out the arm where the jufinol clung toward the Dva and whispered, “There, there.”
When the small animal touched him, the Dva twitched, and then they could communicate.
Within a few seconds, Mallory understood who the Dva were and what their relationship with the Saharj was.
Both species were artificial, but one was designed for war, while the other maintained the asteroid belt’s portal network. Centuries earlier, the Saharj had crashed in this system as they fled. They found the habitat hidden in the asteroids: they were only the most recent occupants, unlike the Dva, who had been designed millennia ago to maintain the portals that connected the hollow rocks.
Once they had discovered the portals, the Saharj had taken possession of the disjointed world, easily subjugating the Dva. The warriors despised the frail creatures, but they knew they were also useful. They trapped them in the secondary portals, where they continued to ensure the upkeep of the belt in accordance with the role assigned by their original masters.
As for the latter, even the Dva had forgotten their name and appearance.
Mallory sent a thought towards the Dva: Soon, friends will come looking for us. They will help free you from the Saharj.
The little alien stirred again. The mere idea of opposing the Saharj seemed to plunge it into deep confusion. The human shifted her approach and tried to summarize recent events on Solicor and the reason for her arrival in the Jaris system.
In this way, she managed to calm the Dva. The images she shared with him fascinated him: he had never left the belt. The city-planet and its ring-shaped spaceport impressed him, but not as much as the jungle where Mallory and Laorcq had pursued the Vohrn ambassador.
The Dva tried in turn to communicate. “I am Rupoyalemao-chupingrusuey-gashoulinama-tokimyhwa of the Dva. I would love to visit the moon covered with plants…”
Mallory said, “That can be arranged. Help us fight the Saharj.”
Rupo’s (Mallory decided to shorten his name) thirty-two fingers twisted and untwisted several times. He was uncomfortable.
“The Saharj are invincible. They are designed for war. We are made to care for the habitat and its ecosystem.”
The answer didn’t surprise the human, but it was absolutely not what she wanted to hear. With their freedom of movement and their knowledge of the belt, the Dva could sow a fairly substantial amount of chaos that would throw the Saharj off-balance. Then, when the Urkein’Naak arrived, it would be up to the Vohrn to finish the job.
Mallory had to convince the Dva to face the Saharj. She had a very simple plan for achieving this goal: she’d give them a demonstration.
His pace slowed by his shackles, Torg walked slightly behind Mallory, who followed Rupo. They were crossing through a tunnel wide enough for ten men to walk abreast. The walls were covered with a kind of phosphorescent ivy, and large buzzing clouds of fireflies as big as a fist swarmed near the more than sixteen-foot high ceiling.
Behind her, the cybrid grumbled, “Admit it: you’re only happy when you’re risking your life – if possible, by taking on an opponent who’s twice as strong as you!”
“You’re exaggerating a little. If you were in a position to fight, I’d have gladly left it to you. But we can’t just stand around and twiddle our thumbs, you know. The Saharj are more numerous and better equipped than we thought. Taking over this system won’t be a walk in the park, even for a Vohrn cruiser. If the Dva rebel, it will make a big difference!”
Torg snorted, reluctantly agreeing with his captain’s arguments. “How did you manage to convince the Dva to help you?”
“I promised to take him sightseeing.”
In front of them, Rupo froze. His companions felt silent immediately. The small group was facing one of the dark portals. The Dva removed an array of objects, fine and complex tools worthy of a watchmaker, from the case he was still dragging behind him. He extended his tiny fingers toward a bulge on the wall. The bump seemed to recede, and a four-inch wide hatch opened. Behind it were a number of channels caught in crisscrossed force fields.
Curious, Mallory examined the strange system: it reminded her of a 3D electronic circuit with wires thinner than human hair made of raw energy instead of metal. The light it gave off was hard to bear.
Turning to the Dva, she noted that some of his eyes remained closed for a while before opening again. She speculated that each of the small eyeballs could see in a different spectrum. The alien had to close some to filter out certain wavelengths.
Apparently satisfied with his observations, Rupo picked up one of the instruments and plunged it in the bright framework. Three threads disappeared. He switched tools and resumed his work, making the lines jump this time. Finally, he packed up his equipment and went to the other end of the long tunnel.
“Quick! We have to go. The Saharj will be here soon!” Mallory said, grabbing Torg’s hand and urging him to follow.
As she and the Dva had agreed, the latter had diverted a portal used by the biogenic soldiers. Mallory gave the jufinol to the cybrid again and prepared to fight a creature about which she knew almost nothing. Worse, if it took too long to defeat her opponent, it might be able to warn its colleagues by communicating with the Saharj gestalt. Squish would try to prevent this, but the small animal wouldn’t be able to hold on indefinitely.
Standing in the middle of the gallery, bathed by the strange light emanating from the ivy on the walls, Mallory tried to empty her mind: if she couldn’t concentrate, she had already lost. She focused on regulating her breathing, but the respirator was still a bother.
In front of her, at the end of the tunnel, the black void of the portal sparkled, and a Saharj emerged. The imposing creature stood more than eight feet tall. The muscles under its thick skin looked like metal cables. The pilot felt a ball of fear form in her stomach: Torg was right. She had bitten off more than she could chew.
The warrior’s long limbs surely gave it a long reach, and it was carrying a selection of knives to boot.
Once again, she dismissed these disturbing thoughts. She had already fought and beaten vastly superior opponents.
One thing was sure: if she didn’t hurt it very quickly, it would cut her into tiny pieces with its blades. About to throw herself at the alien to gain the initiative, Mallory paused. A movement to her right caught her attention.
The pilot suddenly realized that he was not really after the Saharj: Rupo had just hopped toward an object the Saharj carried, hanging among the blades on his harness. Rupo managed to seize the item, more thanks to his master’s surprise than to skill. The Saharj immediately rewarded him with a bony backhand. The strength of the blow threw the unfortunate Dva to the ground, where he rolled and came to rest against the phosphorescent ivy-covered wall.
Hoping that Rupo was still alive, Mallory rushed at the warrior. Her fighter’s instinct urged her to take advantage of the momentary distraction caused by the Dva’s suicidal actions.
With obvious disdain, the Saharj turned as the Earth woman lunged at it. It stepped aside and threw a punch toward her head. Its knuckles barely skimmed Mallory’s skull.
Thanks to years of training with a robot instructor, the human’s reflexes had just saved her life. While dodging the Saharj’s deadly strikes, she leaned back and kicked her right foot at the warrior’s knee. When her heavy leather boot connected with its target, Mallory thought she had hit a reinforced concrete column.
After such a blow, most creatures she had faced to date would have come up lame. The Saharj was merely thrown off balance. Despite her despair, she leveraged this slight advantage and threw herself at it.
The impact ripped a groan of pain from her. It was like fighting a living statue. Still, the Saharj stumbled backwards, fell on its rear and hit its head against the wall behind it.
Torg’s voice rang out suddenly. “Dodge!”
Mallory followed his advice and rocked backward, willing to risk injury: bruises were better than being crushed by the Saharj’s arms.
The artificial warrior spat a series of words at the human, its red eyes blazing with rage. The disgraceful fall must have humiliated it. It jumped up, quicker than a feline. Apparently determined to finish her off, it put its hands on its harness and drew two blades.
Mallory stood before the alien, ready for battle… with one of its own knives. She had taken it during their brief hand-to-hand exchange. She saw it pause for a second and attributed the hesitation to the sight of its own weapon in its opponent’s hands.
She could not know the degree to which she had provoked the warrior’s rage. The Saharj’s body reacted to the rush of hormones that primed its body for the kill. With frightening speed, it rushed at the Earth woman.
XX
EVASION
MALLORY watched the alien coming toward her. With morbid fascination, she noted the fluidity of his movements and the reflections of the glowing plants on the edges of his blades.
She had been congratulating herself for stealing one of the Saharj’s daggers, but it wouldn’t actually help her much: she had never trained with bladed weapons. The knife was heavy and the handle didn’t sit comfortably in her hand. She fell back on a proven if not elegant technique: dodge, strike, and evade.
Unfortunately, when fighting a Saharj, dodging only saved her from being deeply wounded.
The alien had succeeded in slicing open the human’s flesh on its first attack, plunging the tip of one of its daggers into her shoulder. If she had been a fraction of a second slower, it would have stabbed her in the chest. She felt like an insect that someone was trying to pin down.
On the second attack, it gashed Mallory in the abdomen.
She heard Torg scream with frustration. His imposing mass and exoskeleton made him an opponent worthy of the Saharj, but the supergravs on his wrists and ankles almost completely neutralized him. His protective instincts prompted him to try anyway, ready to sacrifice himself. With every step, the shackles shone with intensity, opposing his Herculean strength.
Mallory saw him approaching and called out, “Torg! No! He’ll kill you!”
The Saharj turned away from her briefly to glance at the cybrid.
The respirator prevented Mallory from breathing steadily, and she was slightly dizzy from blood loss. If she didn’t defeat him quickly, she would continue to weaken, and the Saharj would be able to finish her off.
While the tall, lanky alien looked at Torg, she took the opportunity to stab it with the tip of his blade at approximately where the liver was located in a human. She did her best, wielding the long knife awkwardly. She thought at first that her blow had landed: the steel pierced the Saharj’s dark skin and sank in… only to strike a surface as hard as stone. Fulfilling its protective function, her opponent’s skeletal structure had stopped the blade cold.
It whipped its left hand around in a violent, arcing riposte. With a whistle, the dagger flew within a whisker of Mallory’s throat. If she had not anticipated the movement and jumped backward, the blade would have cut her head off.
The Saharj reassessed the situation. Despite its small size, the creature—a human female, apparently—presented a danger. It tried to connect to the gestalt in order to learn more about the unfamiliar species. Without taking its eyes off his opponent, it sent some of his thoughts toward his people’s ever-present collective consciousness, which it could perceive clearly.
It felt as if his mind had plunged through a curtain of liquid helium. Intense cold paralyzed its cognitive faculties. Briefly disconcerted, it searched for a way to adapt his combat strategy. Its scarlet eyes scanned the tunnel, taking in the human, the cybrid, and the Dva, who was still lying on the ground. It returned to the cybrid. On the giant’s furry black and red shoulders, a multicolored animal stared at it, a thin muzzle pointed in its direction.
The warrior realized that this tiny being was blocking its attempts to access the collective consciousness. The Saharj was alone, isolated for the first time since it had awakened in a growth tank. It would have to confront and defeat its opponents without any help.
A twinge at the top of its right leg interrupted its thoughts. The human had just taken advantage of its second moment of distraction. Filled with a feeling close to humiliation, the Saharj rushed at her and performed a series of movements, punctuated by the angry sound of its blades slicing through the air.
With each assault, Mallory acquired another wound. The filter on her face felt like a gag. Her already elevated heart rate rose again, accompanied by cold sweat: she had lost too much blood and wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer.
She decided to take a chance. The alien’s skeleton formed a sort of archaic armor under its skin. Okay, then. The rigid parts were bound to have some space between them so that the Saharj could move.
After yet another stab, instead of continuing the deadly dance with the Saharj and its glowing red eyes, she dove under its arm and pushed the tip of its knife into the alien’s armpit. If she was wrong, a slight movement by her opponent would be enough to skewer her.
Once again, the steel pierced the Saharj’s skin and sank in. This time, the blade seemed to find a path to a vulnerable part of the Saharj’s anatomy. Mallory pushed with all her might.
Without effect.
Her opponent retracted its arm while pivoting on its own axis. The weapon she had struggled to hold slipped away, remaining stuck in the Saharj’s body. She was once again at the alien’s mercy.
The latter raised the dagger, ready to split her skull open.
Mallory gazed at the Saharj who was about to kill her. It looked more like an animated corpse than ever, a kind of mummy with fiery eyes twisted with rage. Its sharp-tooth mouth produced sounds that were incomprehensible to the human.
A hand with six thick fingers and steel claws smashed with unprecedented force into the left side of the horrible face. The Saharj was torn from the ground and thrown against the wall of the tunnel.
Freed from the supergravs, Torg approached the Saharj, who was trying to stand. The cybrid didn’t give the creature the chance. He took three steps, accelerated, and kicked the Saharj’s torso with his heavy reinforced steel leg. The alien crashed against the rock wall again, while the cybri
d’s heel sank into its body with a series of crunches.
The Saharj collapsed when Torg pulled his foot away. He leaned over, grabbed his victim’s head with both hands, and squeezed. To the alien, he growled, “What an ugly face. Here—let me take care of that for you!”
Torg’s arms trembled under the effort. Between his fingers, the terrifying face deformed and then burst like an overripe fruit, splashing bluish phosphorescent hemoglobin onto the ivy and the floor of the tunnel.
Dropping the Saharj, Torg turned to Mallory. She lay on the ground, evidently very weak. With a light patter on his four paws, Rupo also approached. He looked at the human, who was covered in gashes, then went immediately in search of his cart, which he had left a little further down the tunnel.
Mallory saw her bodyguard standing over her, with some kind of bright cloud behind his hemispherical head and big blue eyes. Her vision adjusted and she made out the large fireflies. Disturbed by the fighting, they were flitting around in every direction, bumping into the walls and the ceiling.
A long black cylinder came into her field of vision: Rupo. The thread-like alien held a pot filled with a light brown material, like honey, between his fingers. He began to generously coat Mallory’s wounds.
“Hey!” she protested. “It burns…”
“Ouiiiik noh gaaah,” answered the Dva.
She sighed through her mask. Communication remained a problem. Without moving an inch to avoid aggravating her injuries, she addressed Torg. “The supergravs… How’d you get them off?”
“It wasn’t me. It was the Dva. The object he took from the Saharj allowed him to disable them. Don’t talk, okay? Save your strength. You lost too much blood!”
Mallory couldn’t hear him: she had just sunk into unconsciousness.