The prophet scratched a note on his sleeve-fabric display: remember to dump a seeker on his tracks. The tracks of Colenam, the discoverer of the skeletons. He was sure the Shindam hid him somewhere, but he wanted him. He wanted him not to extract details—he already received them—but to set an example. He decided that all those involved in the story should be eliminated as quickly as possible.
The sleeve screen woke up with a beep, and a red triangle appeared in the upper-right corner. He knew the meaning: a new holoreport was ready to be rendered. His agents were out gathering information and untangling the threads of the complicated story for him. Let’s hope I finally get some good news. He felt his time had finally arrived.
Lounging in the pink fluff of a double nest, Alala changed the spectrum of the windows to an intense green. The mountains, the sky, and all the wild landscape around the dome took on the hues of a surreal world suffocated in a poisonous atmosphere.
She liked this color more than any other. The rays enveloped her body, giving the impression she was lying in the tall grasses of the Alixxoran plains. When she was a child she liked to hide in the grass and let her brothers seek her; it was one of their favorite games.
They lived a carefree life on a forage farm near Alixxor, playing “chase the smell” all day long in the fields. Then, one day, their mother got sick. She never agreed to send them to the temples, as their father wished. Her brothers… it seemed an eternity since she last saw them.
But it wasn’t a good moment to get overwhelmed by memories and become vulnerable again. Taking a deep breath, she banished the treacherous thoughts back into the little corner from where they had escaped for a moment.
Dusk was falling, and Gill still lay hidden in his nest, strangely uninterested in what was happening in Alixxor—even though the madness had “something to do” with his tail. His behavior puzzled Alala greatly. He definitely knew more than he revealed in the Tower. He had lied to her, and she sensed that. After all, she was a female. Well, she knew a couple of tricks to make him loosen up his tail, and soon she would use them without remorse. But for all her curiosity, she decided to allow him a few more breaths before going on the offensive.
She chased away the insidious feeling of drowsiness dripping in her bones. She rose to her feet and walked into the food quarter to prepare something to eat—namely, a handful of dubious leftovers forgotten on her last trip. If only she had learned how to cook.
After opening two cans and pouring water on the orange powder, she stirred the content to warm it with the help of a chemical reaction. She sniffed the result and happily decided that the job was done. She moved back into the main room, which was furnished with a large holotheater for the lazy evenings after a day of adventures in the frozen mountains.
She turned on the holoflux from the softness of the double nest, anxious to find out what was happening in the capital.
Everywhere, she saw the same images of turmoil and destruction. The tarjis were marching through the city to take over the Shindam’s Towers; long lines of refugees clogged the exit roadways. The chaos and fires spread like a deadly plague about to consume Alixxor in its poisonous claws. If Antyra’s star had risen above a prosperous, joyful capital in the middle of the largest holiday of the year, the sunset cast its shadows over a besieged city on the brink of a civil war.
All this time, Gill’s kyi had remained trapped in the terrible nightmare of the Sigian soldier. He knew he risked being discovered if Alala rushed into his room and found him unconscious with the bracelet on his arm. He could order the bracelet to disconnect, but the temptation to live the end of the story was too great.
Although the Sigians had left Ariga’s star system, the status quo didn’t change.
The owner of the bracelet anxiously gazed at the enemy vessels chasing them at close range, trying to guess how long they had to live. They had plenty of energy onboard, so everything hinged on their enemies’ desire to throw a planetoid in their path. And if the grays had already found out their mission, as he strongly suspected, they wouldn’t release them from their clutches until they were thoroughly dead.
With a whole fleet on their trail, it made no sense to fly on to Antyra. They would condemn the Rigulian ambassadors to certain death, that is, of course, if Kirk’an could find a way to stay alive for another two months—a pretty outlandish proposition. They had to open a tachyonic synchronization with Sigia and ask for help, even though their homeworld didn’t fare much better, either.
Fortunately—or rather, unfortunately—they could call them at will. The problem with transmissions was that the position of a ship talking to a base could be easily triangulated by the enemy probes in orbit around the Sigian worlds. But in their unenviable situation, followed by a whole enemy fleet, that was the least of their worries.
“Kirk’an, the new orders are to change course for Sigia,” said the young cadet as soon as he appeared on the screen.
“Sigia? But… isn’t it surrounded?” exclaimed Kirk’an, stunned by the order. “They have planetoids nearby! They’ll blow us to dust in one hit!” he added gloomily.
“We have a plan. You’ll get the next instructions when you’re close to orbit.”
The cadet tried to look assured, although they could easily read the fear in his eyes.
“Please keep the contact with us… err… the situation is volatile, and we don’t want to lose the link before telling you the next step.”
“Acknowledged the order!” said Kirk’an dryly, ending the conversation.
The bracelet bearer felt equally upset by the change. How could they protect their precious cargo in the midst of the enemy blockade? The fleet command was mad!
There was another pause. This time, when the memories came back, their ship arrived close to Sigia, and Gill saw the home planet on the display wall. A big yellow star was shining on the left, and a small, reddish one became visible in the upper-right corner, at a greater distance. The second star revolved around the first one just like a normal planet.
The ship’s bridge roared back to life. Some of the soldiers were surrounded by strange combat equipment whose purpose Gill didn’t know and couldn’t read in the common memory. The commander gazed worriedly at the myriads of stars close to the destination, then activated a golden bracelet on his arm—maybe the same one that killed Tadeo and was about to bury him alive, too, thought Gill with a cold shiver in his tail.
Around the central table, six cockpits emerged from the floor, and six Sigians jumped inside. The display walls opened, allowing him to see a number of coves. Each of them had a black chair made of an unidentified material and was closed by two independent semidoors. The upper one didn’t seem to be more than a head cushion to block possible impact shocks, while the lower one had several displays and even a gelatinous sphere, smaller in size but otherwise similar to the one on the navigation table in the middle of the bridge.
Several soldiers rushed into the coves and closed both doors after them. Fighting modules, he thought, finding the information in his shared memory. If they had to abandon the ship, they could easily run away with their flying battle cockpits.
The Sigian-Gill stepped into one of the empty recesses, but he didn’t close the doors. His anxiety grew when he realized he couldn’t recognize the star map. The grays must have messed up the space-time continuum around the Sigian worlds. No wonder he couldn’t find the known constellations. They faced such insidious and deceptive enemies that even the celestial bodies became their friends and allies.
In fact, the Sigian-Gill knew all too well the meaning of the new constellations. It quickly became obvious to the others that the new stars were not what they appeared to be because they all began to move to their left, splitting from the real ones. Kirk’an shouted an order, and a soldier pushed his arms inside the jelly sphere.