Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
AIRIK
General Vorn stepped up to him, emerging from a crowd of shield soldiers Airik had paid no attention to.
He was dressed in black robes, marking him as one of the Six Generals of the Ourex, the governing body of the Veynari.
Vorn, with his feathered hide and crested head, was ilandi.
One of the true sapient species, a group of related species with similar features that were interbreedable.
Noting the small group of soldiers, Airik stilled. They didn’t belong in the hall of the drozekar.
“Music is forbidden,” one of the soldiers huddled behind Vorn said, careful not to look either Airik or Torren in the eye.
“It is,” the general confirmed, brushing a clawed hand across the tattooed bridge of his nose, considering both Torren and Airik.
New tagion marks—Airik hadn’t seen them three days ago when Vorn had come to him in the starfield infirmary.
The same swirling pattern adorned the shield soldiers.
They all shared the same tagion code, meaning they were all Vorn’s progeny.
The Veynari engineers, keepers of the sacred Algorithm that controlled most aspects of life, from breed partners to how one would serve the Veynari’s mission toward progress, must have changed the neural engines again, allowing for more than one progeny.
Suppressing a scowl, Airik stared at the too-small craft in the bay, an offensive striker, over Vorn’s shoulder.
“Morazir are unconquered in pleasures of the mind and flesh,” Vorn continued, making a motion so that his progeny fell into a neat line beside him. “Music is a pleasure of the mind. You, Osian, are a morazir, and so the only reasonable conclusion is that my aging ears must’ve misheard.”
Torren stepped back, his jaw rippling with tension.
Vorn’s attention turned to Airik, his gaze catching on his bandaged right arm. “It was you speaking. What did you say, illicit one?”
Airik gripped the medical clearance record in his pocket. The relative quiet of the launch way meant the portals remained stalled. “I was told this mission is a decommissioning,” he answered evenly.
Airik obeyed the Ourex as a whole, never yielding to a single general. Faced with Vorn’s vague expression of disgust, Airik sucked in a deep breath, focusing on the tip of his nose, which cooled and warmed with each exhale and inhale. Just as Aelior had taught him.
“This craft is a striker—not a drozekar like the order states.” He forced his eyes to remain on Vorn and not dart to his progeny that shifted nervously about. “How am I meant to complete my task without a gravity engine?”
Something unknowable glimmered in Vorn’s large, round eyes. A flash of surprise, or was it maybe doubt?
That heavy pressure again built at the back of Airik’s neck as he waited for a proper response. One of Vorn’s progeny, a species he couldn’t recognize with his hide shaved clean and covered in tagion tattoos, poked at the craft’s underbelly. Was he…torjarin?
Vorn let out a short laugh. “That’s why I’m here—to notify you of the change.
This one has been fitted with a new system.
Experimental, but we can’t spare another drozekar at the moment, especially not after the disaster that was the Lemides.
” He gave Airik a pointed look that burned deep in Airik’s belly.
“Don’t worry—all’s forgiven. Now, come.” Vorn motioned for him to follow up the striker’s ramp.
“Other than size and a few relics showing her age, she’s not much different from a drozekar. ”
Torren grunted beside Airik, catching his sleeve to stop him.
“This isn’t right,” he said in a hushed voice.
The hundreds of craft engines circling them kept their conversation private.
“You were nearly killed, and he calls it a disaster. You beat six insurgents to death. By Ulliel’s light, you were debladed.
Is Ed’un’s decommissioning so important that they’d send an injured morazir to complete it?
Why not someone else? Or why at all? Why—”
“Because of the kudra,” Airik gritted out.
How could Torren have forgotten the energy crystals that once powered Ed’un?
They had transformed into a deadly form, killing half of Ed’un’s inhabitants within hours years before.
How could he have forgotten that reapers had used them to slay his progenitors?
Torren narrowed his odd-colored eyes, one light, the other dark. “But kudra on an abandoned planet already equipped with a plasma shield doesn’t pose an immediate threat—”
“It does serve as a threat.” Airik tore himself free from Torren’s grasp.
“It will be a threat if reapers find a way past the shield and harvest it. I don’t need to tell you what they plan to use it for.
” Before he stepped up the ramp, he turned to speak over his shoulder.
“Or do you not remember what kudra has done to those you find so fortunate?”
Torren stiffened, his expression closing.
He glanced up at Vorn, who leaned toward them as if trying to hear.
“Don’t let the Veynari martyr you,” he said, his words still quiet enough to stay between them.
“If you must die, do it alongside your books, drowning in the languages of Urrthen people you’ll never meet—”
“Is there a problem?” Vorn asked from the top of the ramp, the sparse feathers on his throat ruffling impatiently.
“What about Aelior?” Torren asked, a hopeless attempt to appeal to the parts of Airik that refused to die and were, unfortunately, still reachable.
He clenched his fists, a violent surge of anger spiking through him. “Why would I do that? You still cling to her, not me.”
The words were out before he could stop them. Guilt flushed over Airik, overly hot. Aelior had once been their only ally in a world that considered their existence a mistake.
He didn’t need to turn to know Torren had finally left him, and so, with nowhere to go but forward, Airik met Vorn, and they both entered the craft.
“The two of you test me,” the general said, stepping aside to let Airik perform his initial checks and hang his suit by the weapons’ vault. “But for you, our wild morazir who seems impossible to kill—a trait that must be studied, I’m sure—I will forgive the infraction.”
The striker had wings, filling Airik with dread.
A design element so old that he was surprised to see one still in space-worthy condition.
But inside the tiny craft, a fraction the size of a drozekar, it had everything he needed.
A small hygiene facility, a dorm, a nutritional-gel dispenser, and an appropriately stocked weapons cabinet.
“Once you get to Ed’un,” Vorn said, “you’ll need to wait for our systems to activate the surface disrupters in Buriji, but the engineers assured me that it will get the job done.
It may take a few days for confirmation to arrive, but I trust you’ll appreciate the extra reprieve.
” He kept talking, oddly repeating the exact words of Airik’s orders.
Since when did a general have time to review individual missions in such detail?
Brushing it aside, Airik moved to the command deck.
He sighed quietly in relief, recognizing the neural engine controls, though a steering mechanism was still in place.
Morazir weren’t pilots, only warriors. Every mission for him had the same end—to destroy something.
The previous generation of morazir had been the last to be taught how to fly.
“Satisfied?” Vorn asked, going to the ramp to leave. “Or shall I send a technician to confirm everything to your standards?”
Before Airik could respond, another chime rang—another general had arrived.
Airik’s heart pounded, intuition telling him that it was Aelior.
She will never let you leave the ground.
The roar of engines shot over them, penetrating the thick hull of the striker.
The portals were operational again. If he could just make it past the gates, he could simply exist. Not as a Jortag.
Not of wild constitution. Not even a man.
He could be just a morazir with the simple purpose of decommissioning a planet.
Airik gave a tight nod. “I will manage.”
Vorn made his way down the ramp to the ground to his progeny, his feathers gleaming in the flare of propulsion engines. Fingers twitching, Airik reached for the panel to retract the ramp.
“Wait.” Vorn turned. His orb-like eyes were pinched into an insincere look of concern.
Airik froze, hand hovering over the control.
“I hope you believe me when I say I want you well again.” Vorn waved off his progeny, and all but the clean-shaven one continued on.
He stood beside Vorn, arms crossed, eyes locked with Airik’s.
“You might find this mission cathartic, a chance to obliterate what killed your progenitors. Perhaps enough to calm your nerves so the lock on the Jortag Vault will be appeased. The Ourex is eager to attempt contact with Urrth again. It’s time for us to be unified. ”
Airik snapped his gaze from the man to Vorn’s. This explained why Vorn was here. He wished to drag him back to the ancient estate, where he’d undoubtedly fail to unlock the vault, as he had dozens of times before.
Though the Veynari had previously deemed the vault’s contents useless, interest had been growing, most notably from Vorn.
Airik had insisted that he remembered only books, recordings, and some tools of no use to modern society.
The Ourex—save Aelior—disagreed. But unwilling to face a brand he was sure he wouldn’t survive, he was forced to return to the estate, a miserable ritual in which memories overwhelmed him and the lock’s mechanism denied him access.
Each time he’d returned, the walls had crumbled a little more than the time before. The gardens he’d played in as a child had long been dead and left in a tangled mess.
If he had to go there again, the little sleep he managed to steal with sedative serums would evaporate.
“I don’t think the outcome will be any different than previous attempts. The lock requires emotional compliance.” Airik glanced down the launch way. No Aelior. “As I’ve said before, it might never unlock for me, which is why I’ve granted permission to the engineers to break the lock.”
“And risk damaging what’s inside?” Vorn clicked his hard lips together, clasping his hands in front of his robes. “We don’t want to risk that. You will heal on this mission. That is its design and the True Father’s will. When you come back, the lock will respond. I’m sure of it.”
Airik’s fist, concealed in his jacket pocket, shook with tension.
Why are you angry? This is what you want. Behave for a few more moments and get out.
Vorn turned with his progeny, then stopped to look back. “And I give you another gift,” he said. He waved toward the striker craft and smiled. “She isn’t fitted with a Watcher. A secret between you and me. No one will know what you say, hear, or do. You might as well disappear for a little while.”