This chapter was written prior to Goodbye Blue Sky
And I had to surf a ton of Satellite Data and spend a few yours walking around on Google Earth/Maps to get the lay of the land of this place just so that I could place Conte and his pals in this environment with some detail.
Chapter 4: Conte of the Ekaru Kome, "Cress Blades" of the Defiant Few
Irisa had spent the last half-hour tracking down Sukar after the mess he caused with Nariah. The image of Sukar being disconcerted about losing his head had put him in his place until she was able to calm Nariah down and at least make sure the young child wouldn't run off in fear after he called her Little Wolf. Irisa needed to learn why and how far this little title of Little Wolf had traveled among the Irathient community before it turned into something dangerous for her and Nolan.
After tracking down several members of the Spirit Riders, Irisa had been able to get a lead on their leader as he traded for information on the going rate on pieces Ark Salvage and the tech that went with it. Irisa was still bitter that it was her and Nolan's Ark find Sukar was selling, but in a way she had begun to understand the leader of the Spirit Riders of why he had done the claim jump. Mostly it was to put food on the table for children like Nariah so that they could have a future.
Between looking through the corners of the NeedWant, Irisa had found Sukar looking down at his drink while chewing over his words and actions from earlier that day. Sukar took Irisa's visions seriously and looked like someone had shot his dog and had it for dinner.
"Sukar... We need to talk." Irisa said in her native tongue.
The elder Irathient turned to look at Irisa.
"Little Wolf... I..." Sukar spoke realizing that he didn't know what to say given that may have messed up a vision that might cost him his very life. Irisa decided to take it from there.
"Sukar... I know that you want me to embrace my heritage." there was a long pause from Irisa. "But let me find my way there. I have questions, and you may not have all of the answers I seek." Irisa said that part in Human English. "Being called Little Wolf, is a bit disconcerting for me. But the younger children of our people think I am some sort of monster. Something to be feared. An image that might cause more harm than good for our people." Irisa said in native Irathain. "I am part of our people, yet I am an individual. My powers: My Gift, My Curse. They are part of me but not all who I am. I got a glimpse of Rynn's life before her parents were killed. She nearly used her gifts to destroy innocents... I have seen her find her path in the land where she now lives and she is happy. The pain is there, but she can start fresh. Use those gifts for good. I know her life got turned to shtako by some greedy humans. But during her youth, I saw the love her family had for her and how happy she was." Irisa got quiet. "My powers were nearly used when I was a child by others for evil. Those who tried to use them for that were punished for their actions, but the damage they did still remains and I struggle with it every day." Sukar moved towards her and caressed the side of her face. "I am overcoming the pain of my past. To gain some happiness in my life." Irisa started to blush. "I met a boy... he like me... has overcome some of the demons in his past and has given me hope in my own battle with my demons... and I have to discovery my roots to be an Irathient so that I can find my own happiness. That girl you scared is one of the individuals that will help me reclaim my heritage as she goes and shapes our future." Irisa stopped. Sukar nodded at her.
"Little Wolf is making her way through the currents of her own trials." Irisa knew what the reference meant given all of the forest and river references her people used in her culture.
"Listen I am sorry about the threats I made earlier." Sukar took his prayer beads and offered them to her and Irisa smelled the wood that had come from her people's homeworld and felt them across her cheek.
"You were doing what you thought was best to ensure the little one could navigate her path through the stream of her life." Sukar said understanding. "Little Wolf... If you wish, I can introduce you some of the Irathient farmers that live in the area. If the Spirit Riders are not to your liking?" Irisa nodded.
"You were close to Ket and Julluh Grisu when they were alive; they were decent people who sought to live in harmony with the land." Sukar grinned.
"Yes and came here on the same Ark. Julluh loved science and Bugs, but for me, I loved running free on this new world." With that Sukar finished his drink and paid his tab at the bar and motioned for Irisa to follow him.
"A little too free, you need to bathe a little more for my taste." Irisa said as the wind shifted and she got a blast of Sukar's body order.
"Is that one of the reasons that you won't ride with us, or is it something more?" Irisa's silence spoke volumes as her eyes began to water from the scent of the larger Irath's body worked its way through her nasal passages.
Irisa walked with Sukar for a little while through the streets of Defiance. That was when they met up with a woman and a child who Sukar seemed interested in introducing Irisa to.
"Ah... Aren... It is good to see you." the Irathient woman reached out and caressed the side of his face.
"Same to you Sukar..." the woman grinned." So... still getting into trouble as much you did when we were children?"
"Yes... But the type of trouble that can get us ahead." Sukar said speaking to this woman who reached over and grabbed her child by the shirt and shot him a look that stated that she was putting her foot down one some of his mischievous behaviors.
"Yes, and it hard to believe that both of our mothers were sisters." Aren said as she saw Irisa.
"So who is this? Not some young one that you are trying to convince to be another Spirit Rider?"
"Irisa!" Irisa looked over to see Nariah running to her at full speed. Now the only thing that prevented this young girl from exceeding the speed of light was the laws of physics around a planetary mass and her how little legs. "Wow... Soareyouonpatrolrightnow? DidSukardosomethingbad? Didmybrothergetintoandstartcausingtrouble... Again?" Irisa wondered how that girl was able to compress so many words a series of short breaths... and in Irathient it was quite a feat without shredding one's tongue.
"Yes, No, No..." Irisa said. As Aren looked down at Nariah who looked up to Irisa and back down to her child. Conte's daughter.
"Nariah, how do you know Irisa here?" Aren said looking down at her little one.
"She saved my life after I got cornered by some Castithans who wanted to cut me with a knife." Aren looked up her husband.
"Where were you during this time?" The woman earned Irisa's respect just with how she spoke. But to Conte, Irisa felt that in a way given how her life was going she might take some pointers in dealing with Nolan.
"Trying to track her down after she ran off to give some child their ball back." Conte said as Irisa looked at at the mother to state the situation where she and Nariah had met.
"She had a run in with some children who wanted to vent their anger on her because she was smaller than them and because of my dealing with an incident that took place in the Hollows." Irisa said looking towards the girl.
"What was the incident that got my daughter pulled into that might have gotten her hurt?" Aren said with concern.
"It was me breaking up a Castithan purification ritual by cutting down a man that was being pulled apart on a rack. He was only guilty of wanting to live after the Volge attacked Defiance" Conte winced.
"Flashbacks of what happened to you in Denver." Conte said looking at Irisa who nodded. Sukar looked back and forth between Conte and Irisa wondering what had gone down between the two that was unspoken yet both understood by both. "That is one battle the Defiant Few rarely talk about it shaped how they live their lives." Conte said pausing for a second as he looked towards his own children. "And I am one of them."
"The battle the Defiant Few fought in Denver?" Sukar looked over at the statue in front of the Mayor's office then back to Conte.
"That was after I met Nolan... Irisa's adoptive father in the San Francisco bay area." Conte looked at Sukar. "You said: did I know a man name Nolan. I say yes, there were several that bore that name both personal and family during the war. The Nolan that is Irisa's father, that is his family name... and he is also a member of the Defiant Few." Sukar's jaw hit the ground.
"You are... You were chosen by Irzu to..." Irisa knew of Sukar's religious beliefs and to some Irathients the Defiant Few were seen as those warriors that had been chosen by Irzu himself to protect sacredness of life.
"Irzu put us there... It wasn't glory. It wasn't pride. We were chosen as guardians to protect those who would shape this world to be... In those days we learned of the worse we could be and the best that we could inspire to be." Conte reached over and touched the side of his daughter's and son's faces and started his tale. "That statue there is a Lie. But it also represents the truth of what forged us together and made us help guide those who would become the great leaders of this new world." This had Sukar and Irisa's attention.
Conte felt like Shtako. In the months since Arkfall, the planet had been so changed. It was as if the planet was screaming in pain from being so wounded both in the soul of the land and of its native people.
The humans had done so much to harm their planet, but they were trying to learn.
But... This...
Conte looked at the Votan and Terran landscape before him and felt sick.
Five Thousand years ago after the Irath clan wars, had his people seen the damage that a single explosion on one of those Ark ships that would bring their people here would do to this world... would they have fought those battles to prove what clans were the strongest to survive? Those same wars that wiped out large portions of their own people, taking many of the greatest thinkers of their time with them.
Conte felt sick thinking about that.
The Indogene choose the brightest thinkers among them.
The Castithans choose the privileged.
The Liberata and the Sensoth well at least they went with the luck of the draw as the humans said.
But seeing the cities, the towns the villages that had been destroyed by the Arkfall and the war.
Were the five key races of the Votans any better... fleeing one world to another and in the process destroying it.
They were just as bad as the humans with their cities and heavy industry.
There were few human sects that cared for the planet and it hurt him seeing the damage done to this once beautiful world.
Part of this city looked like it had been blasted right off Casti, but the forests nearby up in the north near what had been Oregon and Washington had mostly avoided the teraform blast. There were stories that several Irathient tribes and clans that had started to homestead near the old Mississippi river.
Mississippi - a word forged by natives of one land and bastardized by another for the name meaning "Great River". Conte grinned at the joke. What would the river be called the Irathients? Some further bastardized name saying Messipi, or Great River. Conte looked down and saw a child's doll on the ground in the heavy urban area they were running recon on. From the marking on it someone had done their best to reshape a human doll with red hair into something that looked to be Irathan. Conte leaned down and picked up the doll and held it in his hand. Most of the doll's white cloth had been colored Red only leaving the crescent shape mark and the nose bridge dot uncolored.
That was when he thought back to his youth when the Votan Arks got their first visual contact with humans. One of the Arks had a mixed crew of Indogenes, Irathients, Sensoths, Liberatas and a few Castithans who got dumped on board because of politics. The real reason the Castithans that got dumped on board one of the ships from Irath was to make sure that "the savages had something to tear apart." In truth, most of them were low level politicians that were too old, or had just enough secrets that scored them a seat for passage for their families when they lived on Irath.
Honestly, the twenty or so that were on the ship had fought beside some of the clans and were considered clanmates. Conte didn't mind the lower Iro Castithans. They at least knew what work was and had the cuts and injuries to prove it. That was only when they accepted that the level of one's Iro meant nothing, but it was the strength that one gained through proving oneself to their "true" friends that would bring them honor and respect among their "peers".
It was individuals who were above the politics that helped make the first inroads tolerable. But the one's tied to the old ways... that caused many of the problems that created this war.
But during those first days of contact, when the ships had entered above the cities of Earth. Some of the Votans wondered why the ships hadn't landed. Almost a week later and some hovering transports appeared by one of the ship's windows to look in. Well the Arks had obeyed their commands to protect Votan life. Just that no one knew that the planet they had head to was already inhabited. All it took was for some young Irathain girl whose ball bounced down one of the hallways while playing with several of the children on board to catch the attention of those outside as she raced by one of the windows to retrieve her ball.
It was weird as the young child waved at the crew on board their small craft when she looked out of the window to wave "Hi." A moment later as her friends came over to see why she hadn't returned to their game is what caught her attention. It was from those children who had gathered around seeing the craft hovering outside that forced them to get an adult's attention.
The Indogene maintenance officer who was tending to some relay that had shorted out had been practically dragged from his post by those children and when the shock of seeing the craft outside forced him to nearly defecate himself realizing that the indigenous locals were outside of the ship.
After that and several craft rotating refueling trips and a crude markup board on both sides. Someone had figured out how to get someone on board one of the Votan ships in a pressure suit.
Conte was just in his teens at the time, but remembered seeing some of the personnel come on board. At first the suits were designed for maximum containment, but later on the suits started to go away. Ranging from full atmosphere containment at first when the humans came onto the ships fearing that any transmission of any infectious agent might wipe out the species on the ships or on the planet below. Then the humans then started to use heavy bio-hazard suits then afterwards to the medium bio-hazard attire when they started to get a study of the microbes onboard of the vessels and realized that other than a case of the sniffles in some cases the beings onboard were not a threat. After that the humans started to use simple contaminate the masks to prevent any bugs from being transmitted to the individuals onboard the ships until the "eggheads" gave the thumbs up that it was safe, then just the people as they realized that the environment wasn't toxic to them the masks finally went away.
It took awhile for the languages and the broadcasts to be deciphered, but images of that little girl and her friends had been burned into the images of this species collective consciousness as being the people that established contact between these two civilizations.
Looking down at the doll, he still remembered the girl's name... Salemme. Salemme Lisette. She was one of the children who had been the first batch of Votan children to be enrolled in a human school around Southeast Texas. Mostly because of the forests around that area the last he heard from his friends was that she had fled around the river to one of the Irath settlements with her family when the war started.
That was when his clanmate Nali came up beside him.
"Conte what is it?" Nali's native Irathient tongue was tinted with some of the "Queens English" as the humans called it. Given the linguist that had cracked several of the Voton Languages had been from some island nation called England.
"Nothing, just this..." Conte held up the doll to her.
"Oh..." Nali said touching the doll.
"Looks like we are nearing a settlement of Votans that we heard intel on."
"Yes, and given that this doll looks to have been recently dropped within the last day or so given that it is fairly dry and that we had rain earlier in the week." That was when Torc their resident Senoth came walking over. The seasoned warrior knew when to be cautious and started to sniff their air.
"Wind is shifting..." Torc said as Nali and Conte closed their eyes and started to sniff the air. Now the Cryogenic fluid that the Indogenes had used left several side effects to the various Votan races. For the Irathients it had affected the mucus lining of their nasal passages and their taste buds. So the faintest of smells was overwhelming to some degree to some Irathients. So the body odor of some races stuck out very harshly. And even if you hadn't bathed for a few days as some of the refugees had, well you could find them. But it was the smell of a Castithan female and her baby's dirty diaper that caught their attention.
"Castithan Female with child..." Conte said focusing on the scent. "One of the middle Iro... I think a house servant." Nali focused on the smell.
"Bath House servant... I smell the hair oils on her skin." Nali said opening her eyes.
Blythe their resident Liberata came down the path with his weapon. "Well I have been listening and Looks like the Servant girl sprinted this way couple of minutes ago, I'm still hearing foot echoes. Wait there is shouting... Votan, Human..." One thing you could say about the Liberata was that though they were small, they had excellent hearing for their species.
"Okay. Blythe take point in one of the buildings. See if you can trace the echoes of those two." Torc said. "I'll take point." Torc said hefting his large rifle with the rocket propelled grenade on the front of it. "Keep your eyes peeled, the Iron Demons are in the area." Torc said as he hefted his large weapon before him.
That was when a shot rang out. Blythe stopped in his tracks as he shifted his head around waiting for the secondary pop to take place counting out the delay to figure out the direction of the shot as well as the position of the sniper.
"Torc... We smell blood." Nali said leveling her weapon. "Castithan Blood."
"Shtako..." Torc said as he started to point out commands. "Blythe can you hear where the mother and child went?" Blythe closed his eyes and focused his hearing to search for the mother.
"I hear the child crying." Blythe said turning his head and sorting through the echoes of the landscape. "Give me a second..." The entire curved paths and roads in this area made for spots ripe for ambush and the trees in the area also muffled the sound. Then Blythe got a lock on the position. "She is off to the east... I can still hear the child crying."
"Okay..." Torc pulled out his map of the area that showed some of the landscape. Given that it was pre-Arkfall didn't matter. The surviving buildings and roads that were around were the main concern. "Looks like we are approaching some Place structure mentioned here on the map. Looks like that was probably where she was running to. Everyone keep your senses alert and don't shoot until you have to." With that the Irath based members headed out following the trail through the flooded, smashed, and destroyed remains of the once great Bay Area.
"I don't remember I have ever huffed that fast over that much of a distance in my life." Conte said looking around at his family and at Sukar and Irisa. "What we found had us all stop cold in our tracks."
Conte was covering the positions making sure that they didn't fall victim to any snipers in the area. If a member of the Damn Dark Matter unit had showed up, then they might have a huge mess on their hands. The members of the Dark Matter were indiscriminate as the Damn Volge. It was not their right to claim what wasn't their's. There had to be balance." That was when Nali sprinted up next to him. The Combat cut hairstyle she wore bobbed as she ran making her look like a savage lioness. That was when the scent of blood became overwhelming with the scent of stomach bile. Coming to a stop Torc motioned for them to circle the location and move in when ready. After a long moment, Torc whistled for them to approach with the clear sign. What they saw was two human soldiers and a human civilian female standing over a fallen Casti woman who had been shot. The female human looked to be more worried scared of the fact that they would hurt her. But the two soldiers looked to be more concerned about tending to the woman's injuries. With that Torc motioned for Conte, Nali, and Blythe to help one of the soldiers tend to the injured woman while Torc helped the human woman up to her feet and another human soldier took up carrying the baby.
Realizing that they needed to get this woman medical attention they headed with the human soldiers back to the large structure that the humans had come from after using Torc's large weapon and a piece of wood and the human soldier's poncho to construct a stretcher
For Conte walking next to this human was strange but it wasn't until they got close to the large palace structure that had been shown on the map they had of the area. As they approached, the people inside pulled back the boards that had been used to provide cover and protection from the outside and they were let in.
Inside they all saw the various individuals both Human and Votan in the structure. As a makeshift table was made from a cleared raised section of the floor so that they could set down the woman down. The mass amount of blood from her stomach wound shown through her traditional white Castithan robes spoke volumes.
Conte saw that the woman had passed during their journey here to this place of safety.
The soft cry of the child who had been handed to the human female was doing her best to calm the child down, but in a way somehow in Irzu's good name the child had latched onto this woman and started to feel calm.
So much loss to save one innocent life.
Conte looked around to see several children hiding but one a human girl who had a scared half out his wits Castithan boy latched onto her spoke volumes as she walked with him around the soldiers to an Irathient elder who ushered them away from this sight.
"How many are here?" Torc said seeing the faces that would haunt them to their last days.
One of the soldiers that had helped Conte bring the woman in said. "A Lot... Most we can't move because of injury, illness, or because one of their family members is the above."
"Shtako..." Conte took a few steps and fell to his knees.
That was when a girl threw something at him as an explosion took place outside. And she threw another handful of whatever was on the ground at one of the human soldiers.
"Why doesn't this war stop!" Conte looked up to see a child...a Irathain... No half-Irathient girl with pain in her eyes. "Isn't it enough you took my parents from me you Assholes..." With that she ran off.
Conte felt sick to his stomach.
Conte was crying at this time.
"It took a while to compose myself but... seeing the look in that girl's eyes still haunts me to this day. We all, the soldiers there took a silent unspoken oath to protect these people."
"It wasn't until Blythe found a symbol of the floor plan to the building that we took it as a sign that a greater power was guiding us." With that Conte knelt to the ground and traced the curved structure of the building followed by a small circle inside of the arch.
"Irzu's Shadow... that is..."
"Yes the base form of the stripe markings that every child of Irathient blood has on their skin. The scary thing is that the building was constructed nearly a century before the Votans even arrived on this planet. Makes you think about whose hand was involved in bringing the eight races together in that one place."
Next: The battle begins
Note: Do a Google Search for an satellite image of the Place of Fine Arts in San Francisco and rotate it till West is facing the top of the screen and you get to see what Conte saw.
I apologize for the major piles of Shtako in folks pants and the major freak outs that will take place after you see this.
Hearns
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