Hidden in Predator Planet, page 4
“What is my sentence?” I asked. “I return to Ikshe empty-handed and alone.”
“That you do,” she said, her voice thick with mucus. Her cough gurgled, and she spat into a folded cloth she kept in her lap. “Not a drop of the Holy Waters,” she said. “Not a pebble of woaiquovelt. The Quest is unfulfilled. What am I to do with you, Iktheka?”
“Consign me to the archives for the remainder of my natural life,” I said. “While you sew burial cloth,”—I indicated the neat stack of folded white cloths—“I could be researching to find the cause and the cure for the infant burial disease.”
The Ikma raised a brow at me and pursed her lips. Her claws ticked on the arm of the chair with an irregular rhythm.
“Perhaps the quest was unjustly commanded,” she said and glanced at the BoKama. Her features softened just as BoKama’s had done earlier in her ship when thinking of her Sister-Queen. They shared a bond I did not understand. “But you could have sent word at any time. Yet you remained on Ikthe and allowed your Queen to imagine the worst.” She stared at me until I bowed my head. “Furthermore, you harbored a trespasser on our sacred hunting grounds, and judging by her command of our language and the ferocity with which she strove to protect you, you formed an attachment to her.”
I didn’t correct her assumption. A few nights ago, the human Joan had commanded BoKama to unhand “Rax” in BoKama’s attempt to snatch a hunter brother under the Queen’s direction. We hadn’t realized the BoKama had plotted with VELMA to orchestrate a failed abduction in an attempt to leave a ship for those of us trapped on the hunting grounds. BoKama took Raxkarax, Joan’s heart mate, and Joan took exception to it—threatening both the BoKama and the Ikma Scabmal Kama with death. As expected, the exchange had been sight-captured, and doubtless, the Ikma had viewed it.
The “Rax” wasn’t myself, nor did I refute her other deductions. She would scent that I felt no remorse for my actions, nor pity for her weakened state. I’d been astonished to witness her slack skin and hollow eyes. Ikthe may pit its children against death every day, but in the many moons’ time we’d been exiled, the Queen had wasted to a shadow of herself in her own private battle against a mysterious illness.
BoKama coughed, and I looked up to see the Ikma frowning at her sister before turning her attention back to me.
“I puzzle what to do with you,” she said. “For now, the dungeon will suffice. BoKama, take him. We will discuss the alien privately. And do avoid the tower passageway; your cough worsens, and the winds blow cold and fierce from the tower.”
“Ikma,” BoKama said with the bow of her head. Gathering my chains, she led the way to the Lower Stair, the wide passage leading to the catacombs and dungeons. Guards stood on every landing on the way down and at the entrance to the Dungeon Hall.
BoKama and I had no words between us. The stone walls had ears; every guard was a spy, and BoKama didn’t know who would ally themselves to her should she defy the Queen. Opening a cell with her palm, she tossed my helmet into the dank area fit only for insects and rodents, and gestured I should walk in. I held my wrists out, and she touched the release to the shackles, its mechanism activated by her unique energy signature.
“Be well,” she said without looking back, and I watched her tall, slender form disappear down the hall, taking the only light with her.
I’d expected to be accompanied by hordes of prisoners, but the cells to either side and across from me were empty. A steady drip sounded from farther down the corridor, and a brief scurry of rodent paws echoed against the stone floor.
Picking up my helmet, I put it on.
“VELMA?”
“I’m here, Raxthezana,” she said. “I’ve duplicated the BoKama’s electromagnetic resonance. You may leave the cell at any time.”
“Thank you,” I said and opened the cell. It swung on well-oiled hinges, and I smirked at BoKama’s foresight. With the run of the dungeons, I could search here first for the human CeCe. There hadn’t been the slightest thread of a whisper to suggest that an alien had been captured by the Queen of the Theraxl, and yet my gut insisted CeCe’s danger lay at her feet, nonetheless.
Sprinting with quiet treads, I ran the length of the hall and saw cell after empty cell. I wasn’t familiar with all of the dungeons, only those nearest the archives where I’d had occasion to interview their occupants. With an ear tuned to the corridor leading to the Lower Stairs, I chose another hall and explored it as well.
The startling lack of prisoners piqued my confusion. BoKama insisted the Ikma had changed. Had she indeed released all of the prisoners? Might I be better served to sit patiently in my cell and wait for the Queen’s pardon? Mayhap she would assign me the archives. But that left CeCe unfound, and my mind twisted with possibilities.
Distant steps alerted me to someone on the Lower Stairs, and I hastened back to my cell, sliding in and curling up in the corner with a rotik to spare.
No one approached, and my mind retreated to the dream from before as it was wont to do.
The cracked, orange dirt expanse stretched endlessly toward the horizon where it met the hazy pale sky. Puzzling out the location, I marched forward, my boots pounding without sound. When I turned to mark my path, no prints indicated I’d passed. The stillness, isolation, and unfamiliar sky lent a dismal pall to my mood. Looking forward, a dark gray spike shimmered at the horizon where I focused my gaze. The longer I walked, the more the spike wavered in the heat of the coming day. Reality wavered; perhaps I was in a dream? The thought disappeared.
When I searched the sky for the sister suns, I did not see them.
A sense of urgency overcame me, and I found myself running toward the spike. Its shape widened. After running several veltiks, I could see the outline now; it was a ship belonging to a soft traveler. I stopped dead in my tracks.
Heat suffocated me; I tore my helmet off and tossed it to land with a bounce on the scorched ground. I dismantled my armor, letting the pieces fall. When I stood naked before the gaze of the absent suns, I searched the expanse for signs of any life.
Perhaps the ikadax, or a pack of pazathel-nax would come to slay me.
Silence pressed from all sides.
And though I stopped walking, the ship loomed closer.
A gray slash against the dried orange lakebed, mocking me with its passenger.
I knew now, where I was.
Turning in a circle, I studied the splitting angles of dried orange mud. The bones of Lake Wazakashe’s previous inhabitants lay scattered and gnawed.
What happened here?
Why did this cursed ship call to me?
But it did not. I heard nothing.
The tiniest crumb of curiosity bade me walk closer and look into the porthole.
But I would not.
Esra, Naraxthel’s heart mate and the first human we had met, had woken me for my night shift at that juncture, and though I’d spent many a watch pondering its meaning since, I was no closer to it.
My heart, transitioned long years past in my early childhood, did not suffer the pangs and torments that my brethren’s had upon finding their heart mates. But I felt something. An invisible tether? Or more accurately, a weak signal as if from a sight-capture during a thunderstorm. An indescribable connection led me to believe CeCe lay in torment on the other side of it.
When silence pervaded the hall for rotiks more, I determined to explore the next section. How came there to be not a single prisoner?
Tasking VELMA to monitor the area, I traveled through the dark catacombs and found no one.
Returning to my cell, I sat against the wall, head bowed, and rested my fist against my chest panel. Why did my heart stutter so? I knew why. CeCe’s time was running out. I had miscalculated. But if the Ikma Scabmal Kama didn’t have her, then where on Ikshe was she?
7
CeCe
79 Day Cycles Ago
Employing the dead man’s float for the third time since the second sun had sunk beneath the horizon, I rested my exhausted muscles. In spite of the fatigue, I thanked my lucky stars, as my mom used to say, for my blessings.
Stranded in fresh water, I wouldn’t dehydrate.
Local fauna had left me alone so far.
And I had all my faculties.
Rolling onto my back, I floated and looked up at the incredible night sky from this alien planet. Unfamiliar constellations winked back at me, but one stood out from the rest in its similarity to the Big Dipper on Earth. Instead of the boxy shape of the ladle, a cluster of stars in a curved shape more closely resembled a spoon. And if I squinted, I could almost imagine the hazy spill of light from its bowl as soup instead of the galaxy or nebula it probably was. I was thankful to be alive.
Taking a deep breath, I rolled to my stomach again and found my landmark. As fate would have it, a distant jut of land had appeared moments before the second sun set, and by the light of an early moon, I’d kept it in sight as I swam. Now in the pitch black, the jut rose higher and blocked the spray of stars erupting from the black water’s surface.
I was going to make it.
Stroke after stroke, I swam, and when I couldn’t push myself any harder, I floated, careful to orient myself to my landmark.
Heat and light warmed my back and gilded the craggy land I swam towards. The first sun had risen. My strokes were mechanical; my breaths timed. And my thoughts were singular: get to land.
When a sandy shore rose up out of nowhere, I let the tears flow as I paddled closer until my feet touched bottom. The sand sucked at my boots, but the shallow water felt like a brick wall when I swam in it, my body was so fried.
When the water reached a foot deep, I crawled with difficulty as far up the dark brown sand beach as I could manage, unsure how far the tide would stretch.
Where the sand met crumbling tree bark and tangles of scrubby bushes, I collapsed on the ground. Sleep captured me in its grip, and I surrendered.
Groaning, a massive body cramp woke me, and I blinked in the low light. I’d slept the greater part of the day, or possibly longer. The orbiter was designed to function as a giant helmet. Leaving the orbiter meant leaving access to SCOOBE, as well. My suit’s wrist unit was limited to basic calculating functions and telling time, but without calibrating it to this planet’s cycles, it wouldn’t help yet.
Another cramp seized me, and I curled up, feeling the agony of lactic acid in every muscle group as well as the tight gnaw of hunger in my gut. I crawled back to the water’s edge and drank until I was full, then pulled myself up to a sit.
Letting my fingers sink into the warm sand, I breathed deep and studied the beach.
Beach was too generous of a word. The dark brown sand rose from the shore about three meters and was only five meters long before the surrounding forest encroached.
A break in the trees suggested a path, but the sand was undisturbed and free of prints. SCOOBE had reported this planet was inhabited and developed, but I’d seen no indications.
Fatigue and hunger battled it out until I caved in and crawled toward the bushes and tree trunks. I unzipped my thigh pocket and pulled out a rations bar, then watched for signs of wildlife. The odds were good I’d end up getting sick trying alien produce, but if I could see what the local animals ate, it gave me a better chance of at least finding the least dangerous options.
Dozing in the shade, I heard rustling in the underbrush nearby, and it startled me awake. My right hand drifted to my sidearm, a sturdy piece unaffected by my long swim or the stint in space, out of habit, but that instinct wasn’t out of place in an alien world.
Resting my hand on the grip, I mulled over the fact my fellow humans were without firearms. Their EEPs were equipped with excellent survival provisions as well as ordnance that would protect the vehicle itself. Repeating rotator rounds, LASER scattershot capability once the nosecones were in orbit, hell, even the fractionated quark bombs, which were serious overkill. But the miners themselves? They weren’t issued weapons at all. Machetes for clearing brush and the ever-present multi-tool.
I wondered how they were doing and if they had landed yet. Esra, an exogeologist, didn’t have much of a bio or a social life on the Lucidity so I knew next to nothing about her. I’d learned that Pattee Crow Flies, the EEP X215 designer and an engineer, was close with Amity Diaz, one of only a handful of exobiologists, so naturally I put them together. Of course, I would put myself with my best friend Joan Wu, and I figured geologists should stick together, hence Esra’s inclusion. But damn, all that careful planning, and the debris field had screwed it up. Following VELMA’s programming and trajectory, their pods would all land on the same planet as the P-MIV, and here I was, on the other planet, alone with no pod.
A little brown head peeked out from a bush. With dark brown eyes and a quivering nose, it appeared to be a rodent. It crawled out further, keeping one eye trained on me while its nose pushed into the sandy soil. Its front legs followed the path made by its nose, and it closed its eyes, pulling bulbous tubers out of the ground and shoving them into its mouth. When its cheeks bulged, it snuffled and sneezed, spewing sand every which way. Startling itself, it darted back into the trees, and I laughed.
Digging my own fingers into the soil, I found the same tubers and gathered a large handful.
I rinsed them in the water and inspected them the best I could before popping a small one in my mouth. It could be the last thing I did here, I thought before biting down into it.
8
Raxthezana
Present Day
Waking at the sound of metal scraping across stone, I saw a guard rise after having slid a tray through the slot designated for such. When I tried to make eye contact, he averted his gaze and marched away.
“Agoshe,” I said, and my bead light lit the dim space. My food consisted of flat breads, both black and brown, bean paste with fire oil, and a dish of water. Eating with gratitude, I wondered how my brethren and their mates fared on Ikthe. I’d left my treasured book of maps and hunters’ tales with Naraxthel, tasking him to care for it as if it was a child, and assuring him my own mate and I would join their group as soon as possible.
I just needed to find her.
Pushing the tray back out onto the corridor floor, dust kicked up in my face and I coughed. The Sister-Queens had coughed yesterday. Now that I reflected, BoKama’s cough did sound like it was worsening. What had the Queen said to her?
“Avoid the tower passageway; your cough worsens, and the winds blow cold and fierce from the tower.”
The tower passageway was a separate entrance into the dungeons. It was as far from my current location as possible, and inaccessible unless from the tower.
Feeling imbecilic at my oversight, I cowered in the corner, waiting with growing impatience for the guard to remove my tray. Keeping my helmet close to hand, I listened for footsteps or for VELMA’s subtle chime.
After what seemed like a zatik but was probably only a quarter zatik, the thudding steps of a bored guard echoed from the corridor.
I pretended to be nodding off but watched as the guard stooped to pick up the tray, gave my form a passing glance, and turned his back without a care.
I activated stealth mode. On silent feet, I opened the cell gate and padded behind the guard, grasping him around the neck with one arm while snatching the metal tray with my other hand to avoid the clatter. Squeezing tight, I waited for the guard to collapse in my arms, and I laid him down, placing my tray with a quiet plink.
Unlike the Iktheka or the WarGuard, the fortress guards wore common armor, not the formidable armor enlivened by shel. He would remain unconscious for zatiks.
Taking the stairs several at a time, I paused before each landing. It wouldn’t do to leave a trail of unconscious guards, nor to start a battle within the castle walls, so I remained in stealth and managed to sneak past them all save for the last one.
He squinted and stepped toward me when I tried to pass, and I knocked him flat with a single smite of my fist. Looking around at the empty great hall, I propped him on a bench, and sprinted across the smooth polished floor to the largest doorway.
I had to cross the feasting hall, slide through the tapestry entryway, pass the Eunuchs’ preparation chambers, and several private rooms before I would reach the tower passageway. Frowning, I thought that a prayer to the goddesses would be logical at this juncture if it were my habit, but it was not. CeCe needed action, not belief.
Resolved, I slipped into the feast hall, gratified to see it was empty. My mind echoed with the memory of sounds of clanking goblets and murmured discussions, the deep roll of the Lottery Drum as the stone tablets rolled down its slope, and the Queen’s strident voice calling my name.
Shaking off the shadow, I parted the tapestry and peeked into the dim, secret hall and spied no one.
My heart raced with anxiety mixed with hope. I felt certain I was on the path to finding CeCe. Let it be in time.
9
Ikma Scabmal Kama
Just like a gutter kaza returning to its own filth, I revisited the sight-capture of the other night, transfixed and repulsed.
The sight of another alien of the same race as my Goddess-given prize had given me pause, and then it had spoken Theraxl.
“Unhand Rax,” it demanded, its cold voice holding no emotion save rage. Leaning closer to the screen, I had tried to make out its features in the dim light of Ikthe’s darkening hour. With lighter skin than my prize possessed, it still had the same configuration of eyes, nose and mouth. It had frowned and taken a step toward my BoKama, wielding a flimsy weapon. “Drop him, and I won’t kill you.”
I paused the recorded sight-capture, rewound it a moment, and played it again.
A laugh caught in my throat. Something about its eyes spoke of a familiarity with death. A fearless acceptance of its embrace. I’d seen similar in the deep brown skin of the prize bound and waiting for me in the war room. I’d been feeling poorly and hadn’t visited in many days, counting on my devoted maikshe to keep it alive in my absence. But the little upstart in this sight-capture had dared to threaten my BoKama, and it lit the embers of my seething curiosity. I knew then I would visit my prize within the zatik.
