· · · · · · ·
December 15, 2577
Location : Planet Kyasumeni
· · · · · · ·
Odygos lingered in the canopy, hidden to observe the wonderful warrior creatures he had found. Agile, with long tails and sharp, crescent claws at the end of powerful limbs. There were about fifteen of them close around their kill, he could capture one if he ambushed them.
The carrier got off his back, on standby, and he quietly descended his tree. It took more time than it should, considering that frost and bad travel accommodations had left him a wee bit internally fried. His muscles didn't obey as perfect as he wanted and it was difficult to focus.
He made it down the tree without little enough sound, but misplaced his right arm on a slippery patch of moss, which sent him rolling down the hill. After a marvelous failure of biomechanic grace, he slammed down before the flock.
Fifteen curious faces turned to him, accompanied with high alert and profound confusion at why a rock acted like an animal.
One of them stepped towards him, ready to kill if he was a threat but curious for now. The others started to circle him, but kept their distance and chattered.
They were intelligent, more so than the other creatures he had encountered. That was a benefit, he knew somehow.
How did he know that anyway? He usually got information from learning it or from Mother's sleep drunken ramblings.
The creature now sniffed him, hissing a low threat.
Right, don't get distracted. He had to disable a host.
He collected spit in his throat, raised up and spat at the nearest host. It sidestepped easily and backed away, looking at the acid melting through the sand.
Its hiss turned to a growl, sending the entire pack on an aggressive crouch. They attacked as one.
And there were the claws in his neck and between his ribs. They didn't scratch through the tougher underskin, but it was another distraction. His brain didn't really know what to do with this, because he shouldn't even have skin.
He grabbed the nearest and drove his tongue through its skull, then pushed the next to the ground and broke its neck.
That sent a quick and efficient message of danger, and they backed off. Within seconds they communicated in their odd language, then they shifted method.
Three of them sprang forward, two high into the air and one from the side. A fourth dodged for his tail. That one he managed to slash clear across the chest, but the one coming from his side rammed against him while the another landed on his back. Another snapped at his neck. Odygos let it bite and get a mouth full of acid. Before it could move off, he grabbed it and pinned it to the ground, cracking its legs.
Two attackers from the side rammed him and while he reared, they pushed him on his back. Under the combined weight, the four protrusions in his back sunk into the humus. This dinosaurs tried to slash his stomach open, but found more tough skin.
Odygos had a bigger problem, namely getting up. Far away, Kirindi experienced an emotion she called joy. Its subset of amusement in particular. Sharing this feeling, he both got it and despised it, because he was the reason.
The dinosaurs backed off now, chattering with each other again. They must've concluded he wasn't worth fighting, because they took off. By the time Odygos figured out he could pull himself free with his tail, after digging into the humus a bit, they were all gone.
Well, except the one with broken legs and acid-scorched mouth. He called over the orincubix.
The beast kept its mouth shut firmly, but Odygos pried it open and let the incubation begin. Then he waited for his ally to exist.
· · · · · · ·
"We'll come for you later," said the android as he closed the door.
"See, not a prison room!" Shadhahvar bounced around the room, which was a barren but spacey room with a little kitchen and separate bedroom and bathroom. There even was a balcony.
Jake shook his head at Shadhahvar. "No, not a cell, but he still locked the door."
He sat on one of the chairs and slumped his head into his hands.
"You okay, Jake?" Shadhahvar asked, running a hand through his hair.
"I don't know what they sprayed in me, but it probably doesn't work well with your drink, girl."
"Yeah, you're going kinda blueish. Hey, come look at the pretty view! Did you know we're like, hundreds of feet above the ground?"
She pulled at his arm, he didn't have the energy to argue and let himself be pulled onto the balcony.
Holy heaven or whatever might exist.
For a few seconds Jake couldn't place the location. There was rock above, but the sheer size couldn't possible be a cave. Nothing this vast could support all the rock above, right?
Pillars so thick that small towns might fit in them supported a ceiling that had to be at least half a kilometer above the ground. Filling several square kilometers between these was a vast city carved from the redbrown rock or made from silvery architecture he couldn't place to any human culture. Mismatched ships flew as tiny dots around, several larger ones were docked at the pillars.
The late day and rock rock put a warm veil over the place, which contrasted sharply with the cool brightness of the jungle beyond. Their current location was at the opposite end of the wide entrance, in the solid wall.
"We're inside that plateau. Isn't it pretty?"
He bucked forward and emptied his stomach. Whether it was the height, or the sinking realization he was stuck on an alien world, he didn't know. Probably both. He wasn't trained for this.
"Jake...someone is here."
What, the Auton were back already? He looked at the door and waited; sometimes Shadhahvar knew people would arrive soon. Nobody came in.
He was about to ask her what was up, but she pressed against the sidewall of the balcony, wide eyes fixed on the opposite corner.
"Jake, there's a ghost."
"Ghosts don't exist, Shadey," he muttered.
She pointed at the corner of the balustrade. "It's still now but I saw it when it moved.
"Nonsense, there isn't ..."
How voice trailed off as he looked at the area, on the surface only dark distant rock wall with some lights on it, but ... the air actually did look very wrong there. It had a outline ...
Hunter.
Jake, the robots took my knives. Do you have any weapons?" Shadhahvar squeaked.
"No, don't fight it. Never fight them," he muttered.
The cloak sizzled off, punctuating that. Jake wouldn't fight that even with a gun, if given the choice. It had a humanoid build, but taller and more muscular than any human. They were said to be faster too, despite their bulk. Even if he shot it, he bet it would just keeping going long enough to be a problem. And that face. They really did have mandibles. Nothing really deserved to be called human about it.
And then it rolled its eyes in a most human way.
"Is the fish mouth your only trick or did Kirindi have another reason to keep you around?" it said in garbled human tongue.
Jake shut his mouth.
The hunter crossed its arms and leaned against the wall. "Who are you two?"
"It came to make chit-chat?" Shadhahvar had spoken Jake's thoughts.
"Uhm...I'm Jake, that's Shadhahvar, and you are?"
Tilting its head, the hunter said, "Take a guess. I'm pretty noticeable around here."
It had mentioned Kirindi ...
Now he had a moment to mull things over, something was off about the hunter. The thick hide faded from yellow to brown with dark stripes, and the dreadlocks were dark brown rather than black. No mask, and the armor looked peculiar. Similar to Kirindi's, rather than the typical hunter style.
He didn't know whether any of that related, but he was pretty sure he was looking at Karga'te.
"You're not here to hunt anything, are you?" Shadhahvar asked.
"You tell me. Any food in this compound?"
"Us?"
The hunter made a disgusted face. "I tried humans once. It was vile."
"If you tried that, you're a badblood or something? Like hunters only do trophies, so you gotta be badblood," Shadhahvar said.
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Oh, we had files at my old base, lots of them. It was an awesome base, the cyberdämmerungs never touched it. Hell knows stuff."
"Great. How about sharing some? Who are you to Kirindi?"
"Really bad ass mercenaries, that's why those creeps wanted us for hosts! So we like agreed they were creeps and so did Kirindi. Duh. Who are you anyway?"
He growled, irritated. "Karga'te, who wants to know why Kirindi kicked you out of her hivemind."
"Why don't you ask them? I mean, you're still in, right?" Jake said, with a voice less steady than he liked.
After a pause, Karga'te said, "I can't pry in them. You, on the other hands ..."
"Look, I don't know, but it's not a bad thing for kids to have secrets. Privacy's something everyone likes, right?" It felt like a risk to say, and was probably the wrong thing, but he knew when he was threatened.
"They are hardmeat. I will have to kill them if their nature shows through. I don't know what happens now that Kirindi has her sister and the last thing I need is the machines learning Kirindi to lie right now."
Jake looked away, scratching the back of his head. "Maybe I'm just not worthy? We were just useful to her, she drew some other people in too. Now she's got what she wanted."
The hunter clattered his mandibles. Impatience? Amusement?
"Kirindi is willing to love everyone who is nice to her. She doesn't have rules about worthiness and honor and crap like that. No, she rejects you because if she let you in, I could get in your mind as well and for some reason she doesn't want that."
He only needed one quick step forward to grab Jake and pushed him half over the balcony's edge. A ship passed below and ever deeper was a jutted wall where someone sold flying monsters, further down, a squashy death.
"Your friend's right, I am bad blood," the hunter said. "I'm not gonna give you a fair fight, I'm just gonna see whether you hit the ground in one piece."
"There's nothing to hide!" he said, if only because his trained reflex for interrogation was denial. Typical interrogations involved sterile rooms, bright lights and psychological warfare. Things he could predict. Not this.
The nails dug through his skin as he pushed Jake deeper down.
"Kirindi's sister, she seethes like that human she'd been bonded to. It's getting into Kirindi's head. What's the secret? Did it take over mind or something?"
Jake braced against the balustrade, but the yautja was far stronger than him, keeping him in his unbalanced position with a single hand.
"Hey, let him go!" Shadhahvar jerked at the Karga'te's arm, to no effect. "Come on. They didn't like me! I've got fuzz in my head and it made them nuts and the big one got angry and—come on don't kill Jake."
The grip on his neck loosened a little and the hunter leaned back, probably to look at Shadhahvar.
A few long moments passed, then Jake was abruptly dropped. He nearly toppled ahead, but someone grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled. He stumbled back on the balcony, colliding with one of the chairs.
The hunter leaned against the balustrade, face half behind a hand and mandibles twitching at an odd angle. "What is wrong with her mind?"
Jake scrambled to his feet. "Ehm, don't know. She's been weird since I found her."
"I know raving children with more mental coherency than this."
"I bet," Jake said. "And she keeps contacting me while in the hive mind thingy. She wanted to show me everything."
The yautja lost some of his tension at this, but not all.
"Wait, you wanted out? And this ... human here is always like this? ... Why didn't you just say so?"
"You didn't look like the kind of guy to take my word for it and I didn't know you could mindread without Kirindi."
He grumbled something about limits, but relaxed. After taking a deep breath and glaring at Shadhahvar, he hopped onto the balustrade, ready to leave.
"Why are you here with Kirindi anyway?" Shadhahvar asked.
"Where is here?" Jake muttered to himself.
Karga'te didn't get off the balustrade, but did lean aside to look at them.
"I think market's the word in your language."
This. The grand, epic scenery no doubt built by amazing technology beyond any human understanding. A market.
Karga'te had to be good at reading human expression, because with a wry thrill he explained.
"There's three dozen sapient species in this galaxy who have space flight, and a few come in from other galaxies. Stuff and violence, that's the two things all cultures exchange. Those gooey machines don't plant bombs to save humankind, they do it for the rest that's less of a plague. You're the only humans in this city, you know."
He hardly sounded the same. Jake suspected he already spoke with Kirindi right now and would have asked how she was doing, but the hunter jumped up to a nearby sky anchor and vanished behind his cloaking.
Shadhahvar peered over the edge and waved after him. "Wow. That so totally changed my world-view thing."
Jake threw up his hands. "Yes. Yes it did. Over thirty other civilizations and I'm part of the plague species. So we're told by a defector of the other plague species. Wonderful. I'm going to try sleeping, maybe then I'll wake up."
He rubbed the back of his painful neck and drew back a bloody hand. "Or maybe just see whether that bathroom has band aids."
· · · · · · ·
Kirindi pressed her face against the aircraft's window and peered down at the thriving city, drinking in the sight and grasping at the loosest traces of mind. She'd never been allowed within the city and Karga'te didn't want her to bring any of them into their shared mind, so this was all new despite having lived on the planet for years. Now she saw them, she wanted to even more; so many weird and funny creatures.
At first her sister didn't share her interest, but eventually got a prickle of it when she realized it made Kirindi happy to share. Ti'chai-di had seen dying swamp and death riddled prison, the idea that the environment might be fun was so novel to her.
On clunky legs, Ti'chai-di stood up and bumped her head against the window aside of Kirindi's. Her eyes were far worse, she didn't make out the same details, but her echolocation and range was much, much wider. When she focused, she could see the outlines within the houses even without picking up details from those inside. They placed their sight together to complete the picture, and found another thing to be in concord over.
Then the window Ti'chai-di leaned against popped out. Air pressure sucked her face outside, getting her stuck. Kirindi almost panicked, but it didn't hurt her sister like it would have hurt her. Ti'chai-di's top skin layer didn't feel much of anything, and her exoskeleton hadn't been broken.
Karga'te just sighed, but Anudjan stood up at once. "Oh my! Karga'te, shouldn't you help her?"
He had more interesting in struggling with his seat, which was way too small for him. "She's fine. She's wanted to look out and she's looking out and now she's happy."
Almost ecstatic actually; she had just discovered that things (other than family) could smell nice.
"She's going to unbalance the ship, we already had to lose the ballast to even allow her on. She needs to be in the center," Anudjan said to Karga'te. "She should have stayed behind."
Karga'te ripped off the armrests and leaned back. "Why don't you try asking them and leave me alone, machine?"
When asked, Kirindi ignored it because Anudjan wasn't Karga'te and her sister was having fun for the first time in her life.
They'd been forced to take Ti'chai-di along because she wouldn't go back inside the Auton headquarters once she realized outside was nice and dry and not laboratory-like. Kirindi could have stayed, but she didn't want to. Karga'te responded to sad faces and feelings, so he'd let them. The Auton did not like to argue with him.
The landing into the central column's hangar was all but smoothly. The aircraft halted slid twenty meters into of the mega-catwalks and knocked a few workers off another ship in the process. Maybe Anudjan had a point about the balance thing.
Karga'te kicked the door open, jumped out and found Ti'chai-di's head. He pushed her back in, which was easier now since acid blood had eaten away at the edges.
Karga'te stared at the damage for a few seconds, as it started to sink in what kind of a life he was leading now. The kind where he casually popped hardmeat queens out of aircrafts and proceeded to not have to flee for his life nor contemplate the madness of his actions.
Others were doing that for him. The moment Ti'chai-di stumbled out of the back hatch, every creature in the hang reached the unanimous decision that this was a marvelous time for blind panic. While they fled for their unthreatened lives, Karga'te shit Anudjan a murderous glare.
"This is not going to work," he snarled.
"I assure you, Karga'te, all we need to do it a little negotiation and explain she's harmless. Once the Supervisor understands her use, he will surely relent," Anudjan said in his cozy uncle tone.
"I don't control them, or Kirindi wouldn't have worked with you behind my back."
"Might you perhaps say that a little louder?" Anudjan said. "Some people here understand English and we wouldn't like our dear hosts to know that."
Ti'chai-di stomped down the dock, sending small shockwaves all over the places. Kirindi told her there would be an elevator somewhere, which she didn't like. She wanted to go up from the outside.
"Get back here!" Karga'te yelled. He sent along the idea of getting making the assholes who controlled this shitty place do what they want, which appealed to Ti'chai-di's dislike for people who ran laboratories. She turned around.
"I can find common ground, though," Karga'te said.
Anudjan sighed. "It'll have to do."
Kirindi got the sense it wouldn't do, judging be thoughts in the people around, which she had an easier time deciphering with Ti'chai-di's help.
Ti'chai-di didn't fit the elevator, so they had to wait down here. Kirindi stayed with her, but Karga'te let her watch along through his senses. Karga'te was one of those yautja who consciously processed colors now, which her sister drank in.
Through sandy halls and up a few more elevators, then some more corridors. They met with the secretary, a single armed but multi-lingual alien from a backwater planet who could handle most communication, who told them to wait. Ti'chai-di wasn't as curious to the secretary as Kirindi, but could be entertained with details like its scent and colors.
When someone of rank came, they were told the position was no longer open and given an earful about the monster at the docks.
Around now, said docks became livelier again, if not by workers. The city guard was a group of smaller aliens in metallic suits in various sizes, adept for various circumstances. They were here to apprehend Ti'chai-di. Kirindi didn't even bother with her weapons. She might be able to handle them while in poor shape, especially with her sister at her side, but why do that when she could persuade?
They were driven by minds, so she pushed in and convinced them to like her. She told Karga'te there was some opposition, but nothing to make him rush down here. With Ti'chai-di at her side, she was sure it wouldn't be a problem.
While Anudjan argued on, Karga'te got fed up and slipped out, quietly asking Kirindi for directions.
Kirindi pulled the layout of the area from the minds of the workers surrounding them and told Karga'te that yes, the Supervisor had a room with a window that could be accessed from the outside.
Karga'te had a long standing habit of not walking through any doors that belonged to anything that he might have eaten in another situation. This included the city's supervisor, which could best be described as a beige and green worm with one eye on each end, about a meter long. Worms either killed you or you ate them, where Karga'te came from, so he barged in, grabbed it and held it out of the window.
He let it wriggle for a bit, and Kirindi had to try hard not to think too hard about Odygos doing the same.
"~What do you mean, I can't have the job?~"
Hguthreeit made a surface show of pleading to be let in, but mostly just boiled with rage at the mistreatment.
"~ Sure. They're decent, but Kirindi doesn't even need to fight them with Ti'chai-di at her side. I'll take the suckers as my subordinates, and you can keep paying them if you want to.~"
The doors flung over and in came the secretary, Anudjan and that other one.
"Karga'te, is that necessary?" Anudjan said in that unfit calm voice.
"Yes," Karga'te said.
"You seem quite eager to threaten people to fall down, I don't like that."
Karga'te shrugged.
Hguthreeit sent a telepathic message to his secretary, who translated for Anudjan.
"~ The Respected Supervisor Hguthreeit would very much prefer that hostilities are ceased at once and to have an explanation for why you brought them here, despite the outcome of our prior negotiations. ~"
Anudjan gave an apologetic smile. "I am so sorry for all this, I assure you this was not intended as a hostile move. I merely wanted to help Karga'te apply for the position as Order Maintainer."
"He doesn't quite seem to encourage a safe environment," said the secretary.
Anudjan shook his head. "The chimera girls are harmless, they are children by mind and they obey Karga'te, and once Karga'te settles he will be more calm and—"
"According to the yautja himself, he is not yet in control of the larger one. She arrived mere hours ago from one of your ridiculous missions against the human species."
Anudjan opened his mouth, but Karga'te just threw the worm. Leaning out the window, he watched him tumble down, then turned to see whether Anudjan bothered with an expression. He was pleased to find horror.
"I wasn't just threatening to throw people down. I was quite intend on doing it for real," he said with clattering mandibles, his kind of laughter.
"You murdered him!"
But the secretary just tapped him on the shoulder and said, "A trial period will be best. We would not want her to run in the wild and attract hunter attention. For now, there is an empty storage hall in the utrhtid-uouoo column. If Karga'te can demonstrate a certain degree of ... common ground with the queen, we may consider a permanent position. Anudjan, we thank you for your futile attempts at dealing with the asshole and would like to assure you that our respect supervisor has fallen into the manure deposit. The amount of damage allows survival. Vengeance shall be delivered at the appropriate address."
The secretary then led them out and slammed the door behind them.
"Well, that was...somewhat positive." said Anudjan. "Just a few minutes, and you already made new enemies."
Karga'te shrugged it off. "This is not what I call an enemy. I'm curious what the worm will come up with, he has more guts than slime."
At the docks, he started plucking Kirindi's newly adoring low key hive off her, and told her to detach from their minds.
Anudjan looked on with grave concern, but said nothing.
"Kirindi, take your sister to that hall, I'm going with the Auton to fetch some of their alkaline bandage stuff and some other things," he said.
She nodded. "Will do."
· · · · · · ·
Ti'chai-di did not like the empty hall, but accepted it. Typically Karga'te and Kirindi lived in the forest, traveling around and sleeping where they could build in the trees. Ti'chai-di couldn't do that; the trees weren't big enough for her and there were predators all around. Sometimes hunters even came. She had to hide.
They curled up in a corner on a dock near the ceiling. Once settled, Kirindi let Ti'chai-di give her some mental space to process the mess of her own mind. The guards had needed a lot of forceful control to not outright attack her sister; they had their own little mind to work against hers.
Thankfully, Hguthreeit hadn't told Anudjan she could even do that. The Auton weren't too keen on hiveminds used with force. She wasn't either.
She preferred the softer persuasion, as it hurt nobody, but she could do more. Her sister operated on this level by default, simply shouting her wants into a mind. She lacked the focus to exert true control, however. Her benefit instead lay in the vast amount of processing space she possessed in her vastly bigger brain. Kirindi had sought her sister to fill a hole, but she turned out to be an addition. Something that Kirindi wasn't at all averse to.
When Karga'te contacted her with the news, she told him about this.
"~ I'm starting to get Jake's fear of the hivemind. ~"
Oh, that was new. Well, if it meant he wouldn't pry about her refusing them, she'd roll with it. He still found it a bit odd she'd reject hivemembers, but shrugged it off with her sister being enough now. A little bit of hope came with that. He wasn't too keen on big hiveminds. She was, sadly enough.
"~ Even if they're not in with us, do you still want to have those humans? ~"
"~ Sure. They're funny, thought Shadey's a little confusing. ~"
"~ Oh, I noticed. ~"
Not too long after that, the doors opened and closed.
"Woah, this is very...empty and cold. Gotta complement that supervisor guy on his interior choices," Jake said.
"Idiot. Half the city heard by now there is a demon queen and they're are ready to kill her. They can't get in here and it's got space. That's all that matters," snarled Karga'te, already annoyed with his guests.
"Good thing we got sleeping bags," said Shadhahvar as she bounced ahead, way too happy for the gloomy place they were in.
"She can't break anything in here, right?" Jake asked Karga'te. He just got a grumble in reply.
He let them wander off and climbed up to the sisters. Ti'chai-di was too cold and not all to aware of her body, so he nearly tripped over her tail.
Irritated, he took out a flashlight and glared at Ti'chai-di, who showed a ghost of a smile, but pulled her tail back.
Sitting down at Kirindi's side, he dropped a bag in her lap. In it were various dolls she'd made in the past, all of temporary hive members. Karga'te was the only regular. "Got any new ones?"
"Yes," she said, and pulled them out of her backpack. When she handed the new ones to him, she said their names. Jake. Shadhahvar. Ti'chai-di. Sarah.
When she handed the black drone doll, she stayed silent.
"Why?" he asked simply.
"Many of them. In pain there, at the station. Some were different. Like Ti'chai-di. I remember them."
He didn't like that answer at all. Sympathy for hardmeat, bah. He tried to understand it, though.
Putting the dolls into the bag, he handed it back to her and said, "Those two are here because like the machines, I'm curious whether or not you have a secret. Since you're silent, I'm going to see whether I can pick up anything on my own. Jake can handle money for us in the meantime."
She grew a little sad. "I don't lie to you."
"You can lie by not telling stuff too," he said.
Ti'chai-di had been cold to him, now she almost felt like he was a threat. It struck her that Karga'te maybe, perhaps, didn't push harder for the truth because he understood she'd be dangerous.
In a way, Karga'te had accepted her more easily than she did him, or he wouldn't have bothered getting the job. He could have just helped them lock her up.
She curled her arms around his and leaned her cheek against him. For a moment he remembered something that unsettled him. Kirindi couldn't tell the details, but was pretty sure that he'd known chimeras before. He pushed it away quickly, and focused on the present. To him, his best guess was that Ti'chai-di had done something that would spook him, and had already spooked the humans. She'd let it that way, for now, until and if she found an answer.
This would be the first time they dreamed with Ti'chai-di within their hivemind. Karga'te braced for pain, to Kirindi's surprise. He told her that people, especially children, didn't just stop hurting once they got out of their nightmare life. Something about that had to do with why he was both terrified and accepting there was a secret at all.
· · · · · · ·
