Chapter 71 #2
Airik dragged in a deep breath. He thrust his knife into the field, pushing through the mask the reaper wore.
He sliced through their throat, using all his strength to make it quick.
There was no spray of blood—gravity drew their blood into the ground, finishing the task. There would be no suffering.
Since when do you care about that?
Repeating the action twice more for the other two, Airik turned back. All three reapers were dead, and once again he had made a field of the dead—this time in less than a minute.
Still gripping his knife, he rose, that thickness gathering in his throat as he counted the bodies around him. A hot pulse of air shot past his hand. He turned.
Xallix stood before him at the foot of the freighter’s ramp.
The stolen gravity suit hung awkwardly on him because it had been molded to Torren’s more muscular frame.
He raised his left arm to aim his gun—there hadn’t been time for the regeneration chamber to heal the right stump.
He fired. The plasma charge hissed past Airik’s shoulder, and then he heard a section of wall behind him explode.
A bloodthirsty sense of satisfaction swept through Airik’s body, electrified with the knowledge that he had taken Xallix’s dominant arm.
The center of the suit gaped open as Xallix aimed the gun again, baring the tagion code tattoos on his chest.
Airik narrowed his eyes. His sword was nowhere in sight, but that was only a passing observation. He had seen those swirling tagion patterns before—they were distinctive, looking like two codes layered on top of one another. The lineages from which they’d been derived.
Recognition crashed into him.
Vorn. Those were Vorn’s tagion codes.
Airik’s heart kicked against his ribs. He gripped the handle of his knife.
Vorn. Who had sought out Airik in a starbound hospital and torn him out of the forced sleep, a primitive attempt to help his mind heal.
Who had used his position as a general to order Airik to the vault at regular intervals to open it, always with a pinched look when Airik’s blood was denied, as if insulted by the failure.
Who had hand-selected Airik for Ed’un’s decommissioning and presented it as a blessing. Who had arranged medical clearance for a man who clearly shouldn’t have earned it.
Who had isolated Airik in a space-unworthy craft and made him wait for confirmation—a procedure no other decommissioning mission had required.
Airik swallowed, feral rage blasting through him. Xallix was Vorn’s, and Vorn had kept him close. The same progenitor relationship that Vorn had openly condemned in Airik’s mother and father just hours after their deaths.
Unfortunate.
Airik tightened his grip on the knife. Yes, this would be cathartic—far more than Vorn could have ever anticipated.
“You don’t learn very well,” Airik said, moving toward Xallix, much more slowly than he wanted because the gravity field kept pulling him sideways. “I would have expected better from the progeny of a general.”
Unmoving, Xallix’s eyes widened, black-and-white fury spinning in them. He looked past Airik at the three dead reapers, then let out a low growl and fired again.
Airik ducked out of the charge’s path, but the gravity field shifted and caught him. He hit the ground hard, his ears ringing. He roared, trying to relieve the pressure in his head—it felt like he were being ripped in half.
Instantly, the gravity field collapsed, and Airik’s head snapped up. Torren had released the field. The carrier’s metal frame groaned like a waking beast, springing back to its original shape. “Get up!” Torren shouted, his heavy footsteps following as he ran toward them.
Dizziness blurred Airik’s vision as blood rushed back to where it was supposed to be.
Screams and shouts erupted all around them. Too many crawling forms at the periphery.
He tried to stand, but his legs would not work.
Nora. Nora. Nora.
Using Airik’s disoriented state to his advantage, Xallix stepped over him and struck him once in the side of the head with the handle of the gun.
Stars exploded across Airik’s vision, and he felt his skin split over his temple.
As blood trickled down, Xallix aimed the gun at his head. “And I wouldn’t have expected any better from the wild progeny of a mad morazir.”
Airik gritted his teeth as he pushed himself up. He grabbed his knife, willing his arms to work harder.
Unkillable. He had to be—Nora was waiting for him. He had promised his life to her.
Xallix clicked the trigger, and the gun lit as the charge released.
A purple-and-blue blur collided with Xallix, knocking him to the ground. The charge grazed Airik’s ear.
Lucky.
Airik stood, taking deep breaths to steady himself. He wiped the blood from his head. The kudra had remained stuck to the ground. He’d be all right. He pushed his head up, adjusting his grip on the knife, watching Lucky tangle up Xallix’s limbs with his tail.
An odd sensation came over him, his brain still reeling from the strike.
This creature was not Lucky. Not the playful ooshi who warmed them with his tail or caught eel for them from the river.
This creature was a weapon, with long metal teeth and curved metal claws, tearing at Xallix’s face and body.
And something had opened the drozekar’s door, letting him out.
Between attacks, Lucky turned his head toward Airik, yelping two short barks, again and again.
Airik’s heart dropped, recognizing the word he tried to say.
No-ra. No-ra. No-ra.
“Airik!” Torren called. Over two dozen terrified bodies had encircled him. Using the sword to immobilize them again would strain their organs too much, killing them all, so he had no choice but to try to push through them.
Lucky yelped again, and Airik listened. It had to be the Madness, but the sounds unraveled into words he could understand: Help your friend. I will be okay.
Needing to make a choice and still without his sword, Airik pulled the slaves off Torren one by one, shouting for them to calm down in all the languages he could remember.
Crying. So much of it. Some prayed for a savior. Others thanked the sky that the saviors had finally arrived. Some of their eyes had no shine, a trait unique to only one true sapient species.
Airik’s chest felt too tight to breathe.
Humans. Why were humans here?
Torren shoved through the crowd that kept reforming around them into a screaming, amorphous shape of desperation.
“Go to your human,” he yelled over the crowd.
He glanced at Lucky, whose tail was wrapped around Xallix’s neck.
“Leave your strange little friend—it’s clear he’s seen combat. We will manage together.”
Airik stood frozen, overwhelmed as hands pushed and shoved him from all sides. People wept for him, calling him a hero. An angel. Other human words.
“Airik!” Torren plucked a slave off his leg, throwing them down to the ground. “Leave. I’m unkillable. She is not. Don’t worry for your sword—you can get it back once I take the rest of Xallix’s limbs.”
Lucky’s growls and the torjarin’s pained grunts pressed on Airik’s awareness.
“Go,” Torren said again, no longer smiling. “Xallix was my mistake. Let me fix it.”
Airik’s fist tightened around his knife as he stepped out of the crowd. Some had already collapsed from exhaustion, dropping where they stood. The rest would likely follow within a few minutes.
Xallix would be a challenge because Torren couldn’t wield the sword to its full extent, and the suit protected him from physical blows. But as Airik looked at his forgemate, a man destined to bleed and suffer, he couldn’t deny him the chance to feed the raging fire that drove him.
Nora had reminded him of the word for this relationship: someone who was a first friend, a chosen family.
He called out a command to Lucky, telling him to be the good boy Nora said he was and to help Torren. That Torren would protect him. Lucky managed a cheerful bark in reply before sinking his teeth into Xallix’s armored neck.
“I’ll come back to you, brother,” Airik told Torren. “As soon as I make sure my cheranna is safe.”
“More strange words?” Torren made a face—something between mild disgust and confusion—and pushed another slave aside, clearly losing patience. “At least tell me the human word for breeding. That would be useful information.”
Before Airik could answer, Torren broke free from the last of the crowd, running full speed toward Xallix.
“I will tell you when we meet again,” Airik shouted, a strange hope beating again that it wouldn’t be long before they could all rest together.