Author's note:
Guess who is (hopefully) baaaack!
Sorry this has taken WAY too long. I had the worst writer's block/burn out I have ever had. I couldn't write a thing no matter how hard I tried, the best I'd get out would be a word or two on ANYTHING and even those were terrible words. I've immersed myself in books trying to get back into the groove and slowly it has been coming back to me. For the second time in my life, it's been a video game that's really broken through and opened the floodgates. The first video game, as you may know, was Mass Effect. That not only sparked my fanfiction writing into full throttle it made me some amazing friends AND directly lead to meeting my wife (five years in December!) It's astonishing how much my life has changed for the better with writing these stories, so when I hit my block you can imagine I was a bit distressed. No longer.
What's the second game, you ask? Believe it or not, it was Star Wars: Squadrons. Gamers here will probably know that was only released this month and is VR compatible. I have always had a weakness for space combat pilots; seeing the first Star Wars as a kid and then of course the Wing Commander series nurtured that seed. It's the entire reason I started to write this story to begin with. We have a VR headset, and the first day I got Squadrons I spent all of it immersed in VR, actually sitting in the cockpit of X-Wings, A-Wings, and TIE fighters, flying missions and blowing up baddies and when I took the headset off again at the end of that day, besides being incredibly sore, the final few barriers holding back my writing seemed to shatter. Of course, being a combat space game, this story was the first one that rushed to the forefront of my brain. I just had to write about Parry and Ray and Hammer and the rest again.
That being said, no, I will likely *not* be writing a Star Wars fic. Here is where my space combat need is fulfilled and all my energies in that direction will be going here. I have enough ideas suddenly rushing around that I have decided all cannot be contained in this one fic, and so Human Heart will be getting a sequel: as of now, hesitantly titled Human Soul.
I have started to write on my DA fic as well but the juices for the moment seem to be a bit hotter here so here is where I will first post. Expect the next chapters of my DA story to be up soon…in the next few weeks I would expect. I want to get enough material up for a tidy few chapters before I post that one so updates are less thin on the ground in case this flood doesn't last. I also want to get back to my Destiny fic but right now I'm just going to ride this particular creative wave until I'm sure it's not going to vanish on me again, so fans of Destiny…stand by and finger's crossed.
I'm also slowly starting work again on my original fics, so hopefully that momentum will keep up as well.
Sorry to everyone, let's not ever leave each other again! Now where did I leave off…oh yes. *evil grin*. Now I remember…
From what would have been an outsider's perspective, Karfa had become quite stoic once the transport had departed, saying nary a word and merely staring at his human prisoner with a studious, somewhat hungry expression. Ray, tattered and small compared to the Kilrathi male, looked into the distance with what most soldiers and combat vets would recognize instantly as a thousand-yard stare. She suspected she looked broken, tired, and resigned.
Never assume.
How often had Malibu drilled those words into them? In truth quite a lot was going on. Ray's 'thousand-yard stare' was not a result of her exhaustion, pain, starvation, or trauma; though she was definitely feeling them. In that dark room of her mind she had stepped back from her eyes again. She was fighting a battle in which both a ship and a full complement of Grizzlies would not help, and so it was one she was not entirely sure she had the skills to win.
She had shut the doors on Karfa before, but with little to occupy him on their journey he seemed to delight in prodding at the edges of those doors. He could easily break them, she knew. He had been trained, and he had been doing this a long time. To his efforts, her doors may have been made of nothing but cardboard or plywood.
He seemed to be more interested in seeing how she would react to his prodding, his taunting, however, then truly breaking through…at least for now. Ray was focusing her effort on keeping those doors shut, keeping him out, and doing her best to ignore the disturbing images that slipped through despite her efforts.
Or she hoped that's how it would seem to Karfa. In truth, while she was expending a great deal of effort to keep him out, she was letting some things slip through on purpose. What had they also drilled into them? Give them nothing, they said, but also 'learn everything'. She had reminded Parry of that time and again during her incarceration on the Muhs OhDann while Parry was undergoing physical torture, but it was true here as well. She wanted to keep Karfa out, oh yes, but she also wanted to learn.
He was like she was, and if his words earlier had been true, they would soon see others like she was as well. Other Kilrathi who had fallen through those fissures in the wormholes formed by jump gates and been retrieved, experimented on by their own people and put to work as spies for the effort when their unique 'talents' had been realized.
So far, the few tidbits that were slipping past her defenses held little in the way of immediate and useful information. Karfa had a cruel streak in him it did not take special perceptions to know was there. The images were of Rafe choking around that club until he died uselessly in the dirt for no other crime than being human and trying to get to her; Blade not only getting one hit to knock her aside but being beat to death, several other guards joining in the fun as rubies of blood flew off the ends of their own clubs.
When these images did not seem to get the reaction Karfa wanted, they changed. Now they were images of her, in the Emperor's Hall, being shot in the head while Surc looked on in pleasure. Now she was led into a sort of amphitheater, stands packed with bellowing and cheering Kilrathi as they set slavering beasts to tear her apart. In some she tried to run but the awkward prosthetic they had given her slowed her enough that she was caught and torn into easily, her own screams ringing through her ears as they tore into her belly and fought over her guts.
In some she didn't even have the prosthetic, and tried to crawl away over the dirt before the beasts were upon her, to the same end.
She was not horrified as he seemed to want, did not recoil or curl up or beg or plead or anything else his cruel streak seemed to demand she do. Holding the thin and pitifully weak doors of her mind shut against him she instead examined these images in as close detail as she could, learning more of the one that produced them then she suspected he was learning of her. Watching her own death come over and over again a new thought replaced Malibu's instructions, the same thought she had such a long time before, when she'd been standing outside of her ruined plane and contemplating her own slumped and battered body with clinical detachment.
It's just meat.
She had watched her death, this time in an acid bath, for the umpteenth time when suddenly Karfa stopped his toying and she distantly felt a grip on her arm. Reluctantly, she moved back forward to her eyes, still holding the doors shut but fully settling back into awareness once more.
"Too bad, little Mouse," he said to her as she refocused and looked up to him. He was unfastening her cuffs, pulling her up to her feet. The transport doors were standing open and warm fresh air was pouring through. "Too bad we won't be able to continue."
He led her down the ramp of the transport, patient with her slow moving with the awkward prosthetic. The garrulous side of his nature seemed to return and as they stepped onto cobblestones, he swept a hand around.
"Welcome, Mouse, to the Imperial Palace. You should be honored; you are one of the very first Apes to ever set foot here."
They were in an enormous courtyard, a landing station for a variety of ships that supplied the palace, she suspected. Huge banners and tapestries hung from battlements, bearing the Royal family's sigil. Ray had seen that same sigil before, on the uniforms of the Imperial guards that had accompanied Ara Chaz, and in some of their Kilrathi culture and language training back on Houston. Above them, the towers and keeps of the massive Palace itself were a series of sharp iron points and angles, drawing together into one final large spear that seemed to stab at the heavens themselves. Those heavens were currently blood red with a setting sun, and the shadow of the great tower swallowed her.
The courtyard was lively with activity, as it nearly always must be, but what drew her attention the most was a set of guards who seemed to be in the process of tearing part of one of the tapestries. They used cutting tools that looked like hand-held scythes, and were alternating slashing and physically pulling at the cloth in great rips, determined it seemed to remove part of the image that had been sewn on it. Many of the banners and tapestries near them hung in semi-shreds with a huge hole in the right portion of the sigil, others had yet to be touched.
She watched them closely, trying as well to take care that she didn't flub a step with the wooden leg and fall. Karfa caught where she was staring and gave her a slight tug, nearly pulling her off balance. "Going to pretend you know nothing about that as well?" he asked her. She merely turned her head away from the banners and ignored him.
Then his affable mood seemed to darken. At first, she thought it was because she had ignored him, but no…he saw her naiveté and her weak defiance as a game, something amusing a pet might do that was really of little import beyond his own entertainment. This was something else.
Others, he'd said. He had mentioned that she'd be meeting others here, but as they moved into the palace and then through it's halls, and his mood slowly grew blacker (she could feel it like a gathering shadow), no others came to greet him. She slowly, gingerly eased off her hold on the doors she'd been holding shut, and tentatively peeked through them instead. Peeked at him.
She could discern nothing of the substance of it but her lightest touch told her that he was in the middle of an internal conversation, possibly with these Others, and was not pleased with what he was being told. A faint sensation of rejection, of obstacle, came through. Then his focus shifted and she quickly slammed the door again. If he had noticed her spying upon him, even in such a superficial manner, he said nothing about it. The conversation was over, but the black shadow of his mood did not lift.
Then they were entering the room in which he had shown her dying over and over again. A room even more elegantly appointed than the one the elder princess had brought Parry to, all those eons ago. Dark wood walls held burgundy silk that draped in veils in every direction. Spears and swords seemed the décor of choice, and a plush carpet of a deep maroon shifted under her tired foot. Gold glinted from scrollwork etched into columns and moldings, and where the maroon carpet ended was marble the red of blood not quite yet dry.
Chandeliers of some stone that appeared close to crystal cast a fire-like light in pools throughout this room, but the huge floor to ceiling windows still had enough daylight of their own to wash this light out in great, red-golden beams.
The maroon carpet led a path through these pools and beams of light to a dais upon which stood a wooden throne so ancient it seemed to have transformed into bone. In keeping with the outside walls and turrets, the back of the throne bristled upward in great iron spikes and blades that joined into a tall and wicked looking single point at the apex. The seat of the throne was unsoftened by cushion or cloth and the wood here had worn smooth in odd ways, given it a rippled and wavelike effect. It looked to Ray to be incredibly uncomfortable.
As they entered, no one was seated upon this chair. It did not appear as if anyone had sat upon it in some time.
There was a small gathering around a table to the side, in one of the bloody shafts of light pouring in the windows from the evening sky. A few Cats gathered around this table, others- servants of some description- bustled back and forth with jugs of drink or plates of meat or even the odd data post. A few of the same Imperial Guards she had seen with Ara Chaz stood here and there are parade rest, faceless and nameless behind their blank helmets.
As distracted as this cluster of Kilrathi were, when Karfa and Ray entered the drone of their voices and occasional laughter cut off as the group first glanced at them, then did a double-take.
"What is this?" one of the Cats, a grizzled gray and black monster, demanded. He spoke in Kilrah, of course, a language that Ray was only slightly more proficient in understanding than Parry was. Given that Karfa was distracted, Ray focused far less on holding the doors in her mind shut, and instead peeked out again. She did so with little conscious thought, using a combination of her intuitions, their feelings, and body language to better understand what they were saying to each other.
Karfa gave a slight bow, his hand on Ray's shoulder. His claws were barely pricking through the cloth of her filthy uniform, insuring she knew that any attempt to pull away from him would be painful.
"His Majesty asked- "
"His Majesty what?" Another, louder voice rang out. The grizzled Cat and others shifted a bit and Ray could see the man who had spoken bent at the head of the table. Of all the Kilrathi she had seen, this man looked most as Earth lions did, with a great broad face and head, and a thick golden mane. Like Zuhn, his chin had been shaved and dyed in intricate designs, but his head had not been. More than one ring of gold and bronze looped his ears. He wore a split scarlet silk tunic over what looked like hand-beaten armor. The 'beard' of his mane that grew at his throat had been gathered and bound by a ring of what looked like old carved ivory that rested on his broad chest.
Beside him stood a female Kilrathi of a dark honey coloring, faint lines of almost red making faded tigerlike stripes through her hair. Her uniform was so similar to what Ara Chaz had worn that Ray had no doubt who she was- Sela Sevahrass Aitken, Duchess High Court of the Mekhol and Tuve'k territories and the youngest of the royal siblings. The ceremonial dagger on her hip was smaller and bore fewer tassels than Ara's had, and the sash crossing her chest was emerald green rather than the deep purple of her sister's.
If she was Sela, the man in the red tunic had to be her brother, Surc. He stood as he spoke and Ray could see the blade at his hip was neither ceremonial nor small- it looked like a giant version of a butcher's cleaver and from the knicks and scars upon the metal, it wasn't left idle often.
Karfa bowed again, far more deeply than he had before, as Surc pushed past his sister and the grizzled one and scowled at him. He pointed a claw in Ray's direction. "What is that doing here?"
"Your Majesty, this is the one that we spoke about, the one you wanted to have brought- "
"The only Apes I wanted to have brought to me are dead," Surc said, his displeasure at this clear in his bristling mane, his toothy scowl. He glared at the grizzled male when he said it, and that one tensed.
There is some blame there, Ray thought. He holds the grizzled one responsible.
Karfa paused and blinked once at this, and Ray realized this took him by surprise. Given his abilities, almost nothing should have surprised him. Ray made a note of this silently.
"I saw no transmission regarding-" Karfa started to say, his mouth closing in a click when Surc all but roared and looked back at him.
"No transmission! No transmission, no sport, no justice!" Foam flecked in tiny specks on his lips. "My family, my people demanded blood for the loss of my sister- denied! Because I am surrounded by suckling fools and lickspittles who cannot even manage to hold weak, stinking Apes-!"
"Surc," the soft voice came from Sela, and her expression was of appeasement. Ray would not have been surprised if she had started purring, though the Kilrathi did not seem to share that ability with Earth felines. "We have discussed this. You cannot be surprised. The Angel of Death outwitted our sister- is it all that surprising that she and her two equally dangerous companions managed to escape their bonds? It is a testament to the Kilrathi's superior honor that their escape was foiled and our brother's life spared the same fate as our sister."
The corner of Surc's mouth curled in a sneer at this, and he glanced at Sela from the side of his eye. "'Outwitted our sister'," he repeated disdainfully. "As if any Ape could ever have done so. If I have learned nothing else in my life, I have learned this."
He now fixed Ray with his gold colored gaze and she suddenly felt very much like the mouse that Karfa insisted on calling her.
"Apes are stupid," he finished with a rumble. His nostrils were working as he took in Ray's scent, and he grimaced again. "And filthy."
"It is fortunate that they died," Karfa started to say, then changed trajectory when Surc's head snapped back to him. "I only mean, I am deeply sorry His Majesty was robbed of his sport, of the chance to execute them himself, but their deaths do bring justice to the loss of Her Grand Lady- "
"Stop simpering, Karfa," Surc said disdainfully, then gestured with a disgusted look at Ray. "What is this poor substitute you have brought me?"
"This is the one I have been discussing with Intelligence," Karfa said. "The Ape spy that was captured after the retreat of the First. Elie Kaan said that she would inform- "
"Elie Kaan is dead," Surc said flatly. "With all your magic tricks should you not know this? She detonated an explosive, killing herself along with the Angel and her companions as they tried to escape."
Off track and apparently unsure of his footing, Karfa said "Then she died a hero- "
"She died without telling me about your stinking rat here," Surc said impatiently. "She's a spy?"
"Yes, Your Majesty, one of…our kind," he said.
"Magic tricks," Surc said with a flap of his hand, as if brushing away a pesky fly. "Very soon we shall have no more need for 'your kind', Karfa."
"Your Majest-?"
"We have won the war," Sela said, drawing herself up and squaring her shoulders proudly. "We have broken the First Fleet. The Apes are fleeing to their home system, abandoning all Fronts."
"Do not be too hasty," the grizzled male cautioned, speaking up for the first time since Surc stood. "This war is not yet won."
"It is won," she said, her voice ringing with far more strength and authority that it had before. "All that remains is mopping up the last of the refuse."
"They destroyed their jump gates as they retreated," Surc said, looking at his sister. "It will take quite some time for us to 'mop up the last of the refuse' as you say, and reach Earth. This war will not be won until that Ape mudball is turned into a cinder and every single one of these things is wiped from my sight."
He gestured again at Ray as he said 'things', then snuffed and wrinkled his nose. "This Ape is offensive to civilized sight and smell. Get rid of it."
"Sire, if I may-" Karfa began, but Grizzled spoke as if Karfa hadn't said a word.
"I will arrange for a public execution," he said.
"No," Surc said. "A public execution of this sad and miserable ragdoll will do nothing to assuage the appetite my people have for vengeance over the loss of my sister. I would be embarrassed to take the time or the effort. We have plenty of prisoners to execute to appease them, and when we reach Earth there will be executions enough to feed even the most rampant bloodlust, to fulfill justice in Ara's name tenfold."
"Sire, if I may," Karfa said again hurriedly. "B-Biologically-…I mean her brain- we have very little information on the- "
Surc again ignored him and started to step away back to the table, glancing at Grizzled as he passed.
"I don't want it's stink here any longer. It's going to take a week to get the smell out as it is. Drag it outside and shoot it."
