Cosmic Savior: (A Space Opera Adventure) (Interstellar Gunrunner Book 3), page 12
“So you claim,” Tanu growled. “Remain in position with your engines disabled. Our vessels will guide you into our sanctum.”
You know you’re in deep when the blindfolds come out. Said blindfolds are only applied for two reasons: one, to mimic the slaughterhouse effect of preventing mass panic prior to a killing; or two, to disorient a captive while they’re being led to some grisly dungeon.
In our own case, I wasn’t sure which option was on the table. All I knew was that Tanu Halnok ordering Stream Dancer to shut off all cameras, disable all scanners, and seal all shutters was the deep-space equivalent of blindfolding us. Insisting that we all herd ourselves into the staging bay for “processing” only affirmed my conclusion.
“Nobody fires unless I give the order,” Chaska shouted from atop a stack of crates, attempting to hush the clamor of the insurgent crowd below.
I, meanwhile, was content to keep my distance at the back of the bay with Amodari. My positioning away from Chaska and the rest of the crew was equal parts silent protest and disdain for the insurgent rabble who had gripped my ship.
Said it once, and I’ll say it a dozen times: insurgents are like a tar pit. Dip one toe in, and you’ll be up to your neck in no time.
“It’s a good thing I am an honorable woman,” Amodari told me as Chaska continued hollering. “My mother would have loved to drain the minds of these louses.”
“I’m starting to see the virtue of that plan.”
“Tell me, Bodhi—how do you stand them?”
“I don’t.”
“Yet you were pulled into Chaska’s tangled web. How did that come about?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to go down that road. “Let’s just say I took a job and got more than I bargained for.”
“Riches, then. A common enough siren song to lure merchants to their demise…” Suddenly, Amodari’s eyes narrowed to discerning slits. “Do you feel it?”
I did not. “What exactly should I be feeling?”
“The psychic field of my people.” She pulled in a long, shuddering breath as though the air contained aerosol amphetamines. “Alone, our influence is negligible… but en masse, it is intoxicating.”
“Uh-huh. What’s it do, exactly?”
“Whatever we will. With concerted effort, we could make you humans hallucinate anything we desired. Faces, memories, mountains.” She smiled. “Remember, Bodhi—we were created by Kruthara’s own hand. Our power may not be as potent as it once was, but the inustrazan blood does not die quietly.”
Sure enough, I began to feel something. Whether it was a placebo or the real deal, I can’t quite say. All I know is that I sensed a tingling along my scalp that persisted for the entirety of my time aboard the hive-world. Which now raises the existential question of the day—did I ever really experience that place? Was it all an inustrazan dream? Was the hive-world even real? Was I real?
Spoiler alert: the universe will never know.
Thankfully, my short-lived paranoia was cut even shorter by the sound of the staging bay’s ramp deploying.
A veritable battalion of inustrazan troops waited for us, but I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected was the shimmering oil-soap bubble that encompassed the entire hangar, or wherever we were. It slid around in iridescent strands, waxing and waning, ensuring me beyond any doubt that we were, in fact, contained within some kind of psychic prison.
Amodari touched my arm, startling me. “Don’t fret, dear. It’s just a containment field, of sorts. My people are very wary of outsiders.”
“You don’t say.”
The head inustrazan, marked by gleaming ruby armor, stepped forward and addressed the crowd. “Where is Lady Halnok?”
Amodari’s face brightened, and she quickly looped my arm through hers and began escorting me to the front of the gathering. All eyes were on us—especially Chaska’s.
After an ear-rending greeting in her native tongue, Amodari gestured vaguely to the insurgent crowd and told the commander, “Keep a close eye on these ones. I’ll be taking a precious few of their lot to convene with my mother.”
The commander nodded.
Turning with a dainty flourish, Amodari said, “Chaska, come along. I’m feeling generous… I’ll do you the honor of letting you hold onto your book.”
Chaska hopped off her crate, carefully guarding the satchel slung over her shoulder. The book-containing satchel, I gathered. “I’m not going anywhere without my unit.”
“Very well. Take whatever forces you need to feel ‘secure.’” Amodari then surveyed the others with a shrewd, contemplative gaze. “Where is that most magnificent specimen? Tusky, I do believe?”
A massive paw shot up amid the crowd, followed by perky ursine ears.
“Yes, you,” she called. “As a descendant of our shared creator, I believe you deserve the honor of witnessing his chosen people’s glory.”
Tusky gingerly navigated through the crowd, excusing himself here and tiptoeing there. He hurried to Chaska’s side with a giddy smile. “Such an honor! I’ve heard so much about the inustrazan people, but through purely academic means. I suppose—”
“That’s quite enough,” Amodari said. She looked at the three of us—and Chaska’s tagalong group of five or six soldiers—seriously. “Now, I don’t need to remind any of you of this, but we will not tolerate shenanigans of any kind in this divine abode. Am I understood?”
We nodded, of course. An easy choice when surrounded by dozens of mind-sucking troops.
“What about me?” a young, shrill voice called out.
Amodari squinted into the crowd. “Is that young Gadra I hear?”
“Yeah!”
“Oh.” Without any further commentary, Amodari led us down the ramp and into the folds of her battalion.
Once we’d been thoroughly surrounded, the majestic bubble-slash-prison constricted around us. Within seconds, the bubble was so narrow that it eclipsed any view of the ship. Indeed, even the unified grumbling of the crew and the latent hum of our onboard power systems fell away. Deaf and blind—just how the inustrazans wanted us.
The troops marched forward without preamble, and the bubble followed. Not quite sure what would happen to us outsiders if we met the bubble’s perimeter, and not much wanting to know, we scrambled to keep pace. Underfoot were pristine marble slabs, each inscribed with intricate runes that gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“Such a vibrant city,” Amodari commented several minutes into our walk. “So full of energy… of vitality.”
Tusky scratched his chin. “Are you saying that you can perceive objects beyond this malleable field?”
“But of course.” She gave Chaska a dark look. “Only in the land of true vision do the sightless realize their deficiency.”
When you’re a loquacious fellow such as myself, it is difficult to endure bouts of prolonged silence. Especially when your “host” is remaining mum to spare the majesty of her secret city, your insurgent on-off romantic partner is giving you the silent treatment, and your bipedal sloth-scientist is just plain bamboozled by everything around him. Nevertheless, I played along with the mute charades as I walked those endless kilometers.
Along the way, the ground shifted from marble to turquoise to jade, always unblemished and free of errant shoeprints. Inustrazans were either clean freaks or averse to walking that they relied upon more advanced means to get around. This latter theory was bolstered by the constant changes in elevation, which always brought us further up, never down. Stairs, ramps, swaying bridges… the ascent was relentless. I felt as though I’d scaled two Eudarian mountain ranges by the time the battalion commander ordered a halt.
And then, just like that, the inustrazan bubble vanished. Not popped, but vanished.
Ahead of us was a colossal throne hewn from cloudy amethyst, its narrow steps alone rising somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty meters. I craned my neck to inspect the jagged, imposing chair atop the crystal rise, only to find that I couldn’t. It was backlit by some radiant and amorphous version of stained glass, which constantly warped between scenes that were beautiful yet also impossible to describe—not because the content was too alien, but because each time I looked at a particular image, it melded into some new tableau. An impressive optical illusion, if nothing else.
Then I worked up the nerve to look around me. We were—fittingly—in a throne room of some kind, surrounded by more legions of cultist-looking inustrazans and long rows of glittering pillars. The ceiling stretched up to a transparent dome that displayed the full splendor of some distant nebula.
“So this is the infamous Bodhi Drezek himself.” One whiff of that echoey, bone-aching voice assured me that Tanu Halnok was the one atop the throne. I squinted up at the light show around her as she continued. “I am strangely disappointed by your aura.”
Amodari stepped forward, bowing slightly. “Please mind your tongue, Mother. Humans are sensitive to our manner of expression.”
“And why should I censor myself? These humans brought about the death of our warriors. They may yet bring more death to our world.”
“Not a chance,” I called up. “We’re clean! We got scanned!”
“I’m aware,” Tanu said. “Do you think we’d have allowed your sullied heels to tread upon our world without reading your minds? We have felt that the taint of Kruthara is not within you.”
I shot Amodari a probing glance. “You can feel Kruthara?”
“Bereft of my kin, no,” she said quietly. “Together, as I’ve said, my people can do almost anything. Now hush.”
“Tell me, Daughter,” Tanu said, “why have you brought these outsiders to our abode?”
Chaska advanced to my side, a hand resting on her satchel. “Because we have something worth translating.”
“Oh?” Tanu asked in amusement. “And what would that be?”
Before Chaska could answer, one of her esteemed guards shouldered his way past us. He was an older man, scraggly-bearded and wild-eyed. “It’s her,” he hissed to Chaska.
“Not now,” Chaska said, her voice quiet yet firm, eyes fixed up at Tanu.
“This… this bitch.” The insurgent’s rifle shifted in his arms. “How can we just sit here and—”
“Not. Now.”
“Chaska?” Amodari said. “Have you lost control of your hounds?”
“Stand down,” Chaska urged him.
But the man just kept walking on ahead, undaunted by the sounds of a hundred inustrazan proton rifles humming in tandem.
“You killed my wife,” the insurgent said through huffing breaths. “You killed my son…”
Tanu barked out a laugh. “Who is this fool?”
“You killed my friends,” the insurgent went on.
“Ah, wait,” Tanu said. “I do believe I know you now. I can feel your mind… see it, even. Your name is Jaru, is it not?”
The insurgent nodded stiffly. “That’s right.”
“Now I recall it,” Tanu replied. “Your kin fought at Manasi, just outside the fission barges. Isn’t that right? Their faces are still etched in my memory.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Yes, well, these individuals were guilty of sedition against the Halcius Hegemony. They deserved what fates they received.”
“You goddamn monster. You—”
“Think well before you act, human. You are not the hero your mind assures you that you are.”
“Jaru,” Chaska said through clenched teeth, “stand down this instant.”
But Jaru, being your garden-variety insurgent, wasn’t so inclined to taking commands. He lifted his rifle, shouted some vague war cry, and—
Splat.
There was hardly a sound as the inustrazan rifles vaporized him. Other than a few freckles of blood and tattered cloth flitting about in the air, there was no sign he’d ever existed. Even as my mind struggled to process this surreal sight, however, another chain of near-silent rifle discharges whished behind me.
I spun around to discover that all of Chaska’s “unit” had been annihilated right where they stood, leaving a misshapen row of red and still-glowing metal shards. Tusky stood in the center of it all, quaking, unmoving aside from eyes that swished about in terror.
Chaska’s jaw dropped. “I—you—”
“We saw the intent in their minds,” Tanu interjected. “Well, now that we’ve dealt with that unpleasantness, why don’t you go on about this translation of yours?”
Despite a few grunts and words that bobbed around in her throat, Chaska was incapable of any expression. Her eyes grew wet and bulbous.
“Humans,” Amodari said, repulsed. “So thoroughly sentimental.”
I looked at Tusky, confirming the two of us were in similar states of mute unease. We were, as you might say, well and truly “shook.” At the very least, however, the fact that he hadn’t been Jaru-ized proved that Chaska’s little club hadn’t brainwashed him to the point of rash violence. Then again, he had no concept of kin to start with, no fuel for his radicalism. I suppose this made it easy to avoid half-baked revenge schemes.
“What Chaska is trying to say,” Amodari continued, “is that she’s in possession of the material we dispatched our forces to acquire last month.”
Tanu was silent for a long while, then asked, “The decree on the Maker’s obelisk?”
“The very same, Mother. I assured her that no harm would come to their faction while we worked cooperatively with this information.” Amodari glanced at the bloody mess around her with clear distaste. “I should very much like to respect the rest of our arrangement with them.”
“How are you so certain that their information is authentic?”
“I have seen glimpses, Mother. Glimpses of decrees we have yet to archive.”
“Interesting. Even so, outsiders are not allowed contact with the Knower.”
“They needn’t have it.”
“I am not letting it out of my hands,” Chaska shouted, her fury so sudden that even Amodari flinched. “We know about your chitta. And we came here to see it.”
Tanu’s fingertips danced on her throne with low, rhythmic thudding. “Daughter?”
“I had to tell them about it, Mother,” Amodari said sheepishly. “It was the only way to ensure them of our agreement.”
“We will discuss such transgressions later,” Tanu said. “For now, I must reiterate our tradition: I will not permit outsiders into its dwelling. They have already been humored overmuch by setting foot in this hall.”
“Then you’ll have to take it from my dead hands,” Chaska seethed.
Tanu cackled at that. “It could be so easily arranged.”
I tugged at Chaska’s sleeve. “Listen, maybe we should—”
“Shut up, Bodhi,” she snapped. “Just shut. Up.”
Sensing no other option, I took a presumptuous step forward and mimicked Amodari’s bow. “I believe I may have a solution.”
All eyes swiveled toward me. The pressure was on.
“Well, uh, you stated that outsiders aren’t allowed in,” I said. “In a very, very, very brief time, I’ll be part of Amodari’s… harem?” When Tanu didn’t object to my guesstimate of the term, I fumbled on. “If I understand correctly, that will make me an insider, not an outsider. So… why don’t I carry out this translation business?”
Glancing back, I found Chaska still clinging to her satchel like a newborn.
“Most unusual,” Tanu purred, “but I am not averse to it. I trust that my daughter’s accompaniment would be sufficient to keep your mind in check.”
“No,” Chaska said. “It’s not happening. It belongs to my crew.”
“It belongs to the Maker.”
“He’s dead, and we’re here. It’s ours.”
“Guards?”
Tanu’s prompt set the rifles buzzing again.
“P-Perhaps I could accompany him as a representative, Chaska,” Tusky ventured, doing his best to tiptoe over the blood as he approached with his head low. He stared up at Tanu’s throne like a worshipper. “Hello, Miss Halnok. Lady Halnok. I’m—”
“A fellow product of our creator,” Tanu cut in. “Yes, I’ve heard. And with sentience, too…”
Tusky regarded Chaska. “Bodhi and I can ensure that things are handled with the utmost care.”
“There,” Amodari said, looking between Chaska and her mother expectantly. “Is this acceptable to all parties? A member of our world, a member of yours, and one who is in between?”
“I knew this would happen, Bodhi,” Chaska said weakly. “I should’ve listened to myself.”
Again, I met her eyes. She was on the verge of total meltdown. And just behind her were a slew of inustrazan rifles, all ready to turn her to Chaska-dust at the flick of Tanu’s mental command.
“Please,” I whispered.
“It’s for the best, dear,” Amodari told her with a surprising degree of… feeling. “Give him the book and live another day.”
Still holding my gaze, Chaska unslung the satchel and held it against her chest. “It’s always about you, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “You have to be the one. The first, the best, the survivor.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she held the satchel out. “Just take the fucking thing.”
In that moment, there was just the two of us. No Tusky, no Amodari, no Tanu, no guns or crystals or light. Her grip on the satchel was practically that of rigor mortis. As soon as her reluctant offering was in my hand, Tanu’s guards surrounded her in an airtight formation.
“Ensure that she’s comfortable aboard her ship with the others,” Tanu commanded. “Your property and… crew… will be returned to you at the earliest convenience.”
I wanted to say more, to dash through that crowd and embrace Chaska, but there was just too much in the way. Literally. Even now, there were tens of armed and armored inustrazans leading my Chaska back the way we’d come. Seconds later, yet another psychic bubble enveloped them.
And I knew right then that I’d damned myself. Not only to being Amodari’s harem, but to a lifetime of future dreams populated by that last dreadful sight of Chaska’s heartbreak. It didn’t matter what came of the book or the war or the universe itself. I’d destroyed the very thing I spent my time in the Contrition yearning to love.
