Chapter 36 Callie #3
I slowed, pulling my nose up and rotating my ship around and brought it down so the ramp was facing the waiting group.
I cut the belly jets the second my landing gear touched the ground and powered down the ship.
Rathal was already unstrapped and standing, a kind of nervous excited energy radiating off of him.
He bounced on his toes like he wanted to hurry me up.
Unhooking my restraints, I stood and stepped out of the cockpit, coming to stand next to Rathal to look up at him.
“Nervous?” I asked. He hadn’t seen his kin in over five thousand years. He’d been all alone out in the universe. Sure, he’d made his own family on Erral, but it truly wasn’t the same.
Rathal swallowed, humming a little before clearing his throat and pulling down his shirt before smoothing nonexistent wrinkles in the sheer material.
Finally, he sighed, chuckling dryly. “Yes. Holy Mother, yes. But I am also piteously excited. I feel as if I might burst into tears at any moment, Callie. Is that normal?”
I hugged him, squeezing tightly. “I think you’d be crazy not to be having this reaction. You’re about to be reunited with your family after damn near longer than recorded history. I’d say you’ve earned a little emotional turmoil.”
Rathal chuckled, his voice cracking a little, and held me out by my shoulders before placing a sweet kiss on my lips. “Thank you, my darling wife.” He ran the tips of his fingers down my cheek and kissed me again. “My greatest prize.”
I patted his furry cheek. “Flattery will get you laid, but stalling will probably get you killed by that hulking brute Jack calls Mother.”
Rathal straightened with a put out sigh and straightened his clothes with nervous hands. “Caught me. Though I meant every word.”
I know,” I said, pushing him through the ship and down the ramp. “Now get your butt out there and say hello to your cousins.”
We stepped out onto the grass and into the sunlight.
Real sunlight, not artificial garbage. The primary star to this purple hued planet had a blueish tint to it.
I held my hand over my eyes as I squinted up at it.
The heat felt wonderful after so long on a space station and it didn’t smell like recycled air out here.
Granted, the cooling breeze carried with it the scent of smoke, chemicals, and death but hey, it wasn’t the stale slightly bitter air I’d been breathing the last few days and I’d take it.
Rathal’s sudden grasp of my hand had me looking up at him but his gaze was fixed ahead of him.
I turned, saw what he was looking at, and grinned madly at the big goofy smile Jack was shooting my way.
She was still in her human form with Ohem looking dashing in his Rijitera armor just behind her, his many tentacles and tails seemingly caught in the breeze and waving gently behind him.
They were surrounded by a dozen golden armored Rijitera of various shades and in the center, wearing a stern look on her terrifying furred face, was Hella.
I tugged Rathal along with me. Jack and Ohem met us halfway.
I let go of Rathal’s hand to do something completely out of character for me.
Or it used to be. The new me didn’t care about appearances anymore.
I threw myself into Jack’s arm with a girlish squeal and laughed as she bearhugged me back, twirling me around in a circle before setting me on my feet again, though she didn’t let me go entirely, her grip holding me firmly by the forearms.
“I missed your cranky face,” she said, grinning. “Though it doesn’t look so cranky now. You’re practically glowing, girl.”
I shrugged, flicking my gaze at Rathal who stood frozen staring at Hella.
“I found a little fun I guess.”
Jack’s eyes looked Rathal up and down before returning to me with a lascivious grin.
“I’ll say.”
Hella stepping forward halted my retort.
Good god she was huge. Over the holovid she’d been scary but in person she was like a living god of death just out here gracing us with her presence.
Well over seven feet tall with brown fur darker than her daughters, Hella’s Rijiteran form was heavily muscled and wide.
She stopped a foot away from Rathal and they stared at each other for several long moments and then, wordlessly, Hella opened her arms and Rathal stepped into them.
They held each other while the rest of the Rijitera gathered in close, laying hands on shoulders until they were all connected by touch.
Tears burned in my eyes as I watched.
An explosion broke the solemn moment, close enough I ducked instinctively.
Hella sighed audibly. “Alright my clan. It seems a more thorough reunion will have to wait until after we deal with the vermin.”
The others—I was assuming they were Jack’s many aunts—stepped back so that I caught sight of Rathal and Hella again.
They were still hugging each other tightly, heads tucked down like they never wanted to let go.
That pesky knot reformed in my throat and I had to swallow several times to get it to go away.
Finally, Rathal stepped away, wiping at his cheeks. “It is good to see you again, cousin. So incredibly good to see you.”
Hella stroked his head and ears, her face soft and loving. “And I, you, Pá. You should have stayed on Earth with us, where you belonged.”
Rathal’s ears flicked backwards and he snorted. “And take on a human guise? Absolutely not. Besides, you needed someone to keep an eye on things while Anu worked on the cure. Also, I would like to point out, for the millionth time, that I hate that nickname.”
“You always were vain and stubborn, Rathal. It has long been one of my favorite traits of yours,” she told him, flicking one of his earrings with her claw before her smile turned a little mean.
“And like I’ve told you a million times, if you don’t like being called a sprout, you should grow bigger.”
I knew the sound of an old argument when I heard it. I had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep the laugh in when Rathal scowled at her blackly.
“Not everyone can be freakishly large, Hella. I am elegance whereas you—well you are brutish. Should I begin to call you Giantess? Behemoth?”
Hella’s smile bloomed into a grin, all those sharp teeth on full display. “I have always liked Leviathan, myself.”
“And you call me vain,” Rathal scoffed, grinning back at her.
Another explosion had me instinctively ducking for cover. The rapid fire of plasma shots could be heard following the explosion. The newly familiar smell of electrified ozone drifted to us on the breeze. Hella sighed again, rolling her eyes.
“Alright. Let’s get this done quickly. Anu has news waiting for us on Korsal and I’d like to be on the planet before supper.” She turned to me, motioning me over before laying a hand on my shoulder. It was heavy like a boulder and hot enough to feel through my armor.
She grabbed Rathal’s shoulder as well and brought him over to me, looking between the two of us with a warm smile. “Congratulations on your marriage.”
I winced at Jack’s shocked gasp.
“Now, what I want you two to do is get back on Callie’s ship and record us on the ground and Rathal? Broadcast it.”
I thought I’d seen every facial expression Rathal had to offer, but the growing evil on his face was new and kinda worrying.
“With. Pleasure,” Rathal said, his voice filled with giddy cruelness.
Hella nodded her head once. “Good. Now go. We have work to do. Jack, don’t pester them. You will have time later. Let’s go.”
Jack grumbled, stabbing two fingers at her eyes and then at me. “You and I are going to catch up about this whole marriage thing later, woman.”
I stuck my tongue out at her and you’d have thought I’d shot her. “Looking forward to it.”
“Alright, who are you and what have you done with Callie?”
I laughed, waving her off. “Good dick changes a woman.”
“Wow. Just wow. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Jack was still shaking her head as she walked off. Ohem’s deep laughter warned me a half a second before he laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and leaned down over me. “I think you’ve broken her.”
I tiptoed to kiss his hard cheek. “Missed you. And yeah, I think I did.”
Ohem’s tails brushed against my leg as he passed. “I missed you as well, Callie. I look forward to the whole family being together again. I have missed you human’s wild antics.”
I watched his wide back as he marched with the group of Rijiteran’s with a goofy smile on my face. We really were a family. A weird family, to be sure, but a good one. I couldn't wait to introduce my mom and dad to this wild group. My father, especially, was going to love them.
“Ready, love?” Rathal asked, his hand touching mine.
I looked at him. “Yep. Let's record our propaganda video. Or maybe this is more like a horror movie?”
He shrugged, pulling me along towards my ship. “More like a very graphic birds eye view of the Unity’s future. One that is a long time coming.”
I took my seat in the cockpit and strapped in, closing the ramp when Rathal signaled he was ready.
“How are you going to record this?” I asked, powering up the engines and hitting the belly jets to lift us off the ground.
“I’ve tapped into your ship's external cameras, the same ones that give you the viewscreen to see with. Just take it low and slow over the battle and it will record.”
“Got it… So, how do you feel?”
Rathal’s laugh was soft and disbelieving. “Like I am in a dream. I have thought about this moment for years, ever since I left Earth.”
I rotated once I reached about three hundred feet and started forward in the direction where my HUD indicated there was the largest gathering of dots.
“Why didn’t you just visit?”
With his Transition drive it didn’t make sense why he didn’t just go back to Earth every now and again to see his family.
“We didn’t want to chance the Unity somehow following me, even with me using my own transitional gates. It just wasn’t worth the risk with the Rijitera still weak and vulnerable to the Red Plague. So, once I left, I stayed gone.”
Below us, what had to be about thirty Rijitera were jogging down a wide central road, going around or jumping over downed aircraft and still burning pieces of fallen buildings.
Neldre were watching from inside some of the building's ground levels, or peeking out from blown out windows from above.
Some of the more able-bodied Neldre fell into the moving pack.
I checked my HUD for Insects, but all was clear. The Fangs and Som’ae’s people must have finished the last of them off. The skies were ours.
The Unity’s red dots on my HUD were swarming about ten clicks ahead of the Rijitera before they organized themselves into orderly columns and started moving towards their own doom.
The Rijitera picked up speed, going from a light jog, faster and faster until they were sprinting.
It didn’t take long for the two groups to meet.
In the center of a four way, where a large silver statue of the Neldre Queen and her mate stood back to back with their wings spread over a circular patch of scorched flowers, the two opposing forces smashed together.
I hissed through my teeth when Hella picked up a Unity soldier and ripped him apart with no more effort than it would take me to open a bag of chips.
She and her sisters had formed the first line, with Jack, Ohem, and other unknown Rijitera bringing up the following rows, and the carnage the older Rijitera in Jack’s family inflicted had me closing my eyes.
I blew a breath out of my nose, took a moment, and opened them again.
The street ran with blood. What remained of the Unity ground forces were littering the road in chunks and spatters.
Hella looked up, dead center at me, with so much victorious, anticipatory malice on her blood covered face that though I knew she was really looking at the camera and not at me, my blood still ran cold and I had to use every ounce of willpower I possessed not to shoot her with everything this ship had.
“She’s fucking terrifying,” I whispered to Rathal.
“Yes. Yes, she is. But she will love you, Callie, like her own daughter. When she looks at you like that? It is like the sun warming you. She has never harmed one of her own, and despite all the misgivings I see running through your mind, Hella would never turn on us. She puts every single clan member before herself. Hella will never be a tyrant. Cold? Hard? Unforgiving? Yes. But unfair? World conquering? Never. We are safe. I promise.”
I hoped he was right, because there was no way in hell even Jack could stop her mother if she turned bad. No way. We’d have to nuke her. Just to be sure.
“Callie, you can go and get that little troublemaker now,” Jack said. I looked for her ìn the group, but they were all so bloody there was no telling them apart. I had to search for Ohem and then just guess at which Rijitera around him was Jack.
“Copy that. One psychopath, coming right up.”