Insurrection Read online

  PHOOM.

  Instead of the bolt of plasma that the Device had fired, this time, the Device fired a jet of searing blue-white flame that flared around them as Eliard swung his arm, his other hand seizing Irie as he threw himself to the floor. The wall of flame flared in the air in a crazy half-circle, and for their efforts, they heard an agonizing shriek of pain.

  Irie’s lizard jumped back from its attack run at the last moment, clearly spooked by the sudden introduction of fire to what was to be its preferred kill.

  Irie and Eliard rolled, seeing that the lizard that had been attacking him was now lying on the floor, a blackened and smoking ruin, leaving just one left. “Get behind me!” he hissed, waving the cannon-like Device in front of him, between them and the last creature as Irie jumped to her feet behind the captain.

  “Come on, you ugly, oversized chicken…” Eliard hissed at the thing, small plumes of flame bursting out of the Device and punctuating his words.

  The creature appeared unsure, bobbing from side to side as he tried to find a way to get around the captain to the Irie.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Eliard snarled ferociously, recklessly. It was the euphoria that using the Device always brought out in him. The same savage battle-lust that he had seen in Val on more than one occasion. “If Pathok Ma wanted to see us fight, then he’ll see us fight!” The captain started to laugh, raising the Device toward the bobbing, weaving lizard-bird.

  “Hgurgh.” A great groan resounded across the amphitheater.

  “It’s Val! He’s waking up!” Irie said happily, as the pair started to step backwards toward their comrade. The lizard-bird, on seeing the movement of the distant Duergar, reacted instinctively, millennia-old hunting drives and lessons telling it that the drugged, shaky form of the gunner would be a far easier target than either of these tricky humans.

  “No!” Irie shouted, as the lizard broke away from them and sprinted across the dirt on a murderous course toward Val, sending up clouds of sand behind it as it ran.

  The captain fired the Device, but the creature was once again too fast, and the flames barely reached it before it was leaping toward the stumbling Val, one hand holding his head to shake off whatever drug they had pumped him full of.

  BAM!

  But what the bird-lizard monster might not have been aware of in its primitive mind was that the Duergar themselves were once dedicated predators. They had the same primal instincts encoded into their DNA, and Val Pathok, the Hero of the Chenga Pass, reacted, one mighty clawed fist slapping the creature around the head as fast as a striking snake.

  The crowd fell silent as the lizard-bird staggered backwards, stumbled on its two legs, and fell to the floor, dead.

  The crowd roared their approval, cheers and shouts from all around them. “CHENGA! CHENGA! CHENGA!”

  “Is that it? Have we passed the test?” Eliard let his shoulders slump in exhaustion, his heart still thumping but the Device reacting and shrinking, once again returning to its strange form.

  “Ah, I don’t think it’s over yet, Cap’.” Irie was pulling on Eliard’s shoulder, forcing him to look at what was happening to Val.

  The gunner was still shaking his head as if bothered by something, and the pair could see that his shoulders were shaking.

  “Val? What’s happening? What have they done to you!” Irie called, starting toward him.

  “Grargh!” Val suddenly pounded the floor with his fists, and the pair of humans could swear that they actually felt the impact through the ground. Then Val lifted from his crouch to glare at them, and he roared.

  “I, uh, I don’t think he’s very happy…” Irie stopped, her eyes wide. Neither of them had ever seen Val like this before. His entire face was twisted into one of feral fury as he bared his tusks and shouted at them, his eyes just two sparks of hate.

  “HADOO ROOT,” the hidden speaker announced, earning cheers from the crowd. “ALL OUR CLAN WARRIORS WILL RECOGNIZE ITS EFFECTS. WE FEED IT TO OUR BRAVEST BEFORE BATTLE, AND VAL PATHOK USED TO BE VERY BRAVE INDEED…”

  “No…” Irie was backing away, but the perverse entertainment for the Duergar wasn’t over yet. There was the sudden snap of taut wires and spiraling into the arena on all sides of them, to land with heavy thumps, were large bladed and non-bladed weapons. Eliard recognized one of the pikes, a two-handed axe, and an iron-shod club.

  “Captain…” Irie was saying, backing away from the snarling and roaring Val.

  “Get a weapon,” he advised.

  Val started to charge toward them, seizing the two-handed axe in a smooth move before sprinting, hopping, and jumping.

  The captain reacted, bringing the Device up even as it changed, turning into its own blade of shining blue-scale.

  CLANG! The gunner’s overhead strike still threw Eliard backwards, but it hadn’t sheared through the Device—or his arm.

  “Cap’n, no! That’s Val!” Irie was shouting as she ran for the nearest of the thrown weapons—the iron-shod club.

  “Right now, that’s not Val Pathok,” Eliard snarled, leveling his own blade at his advancing gunner. The captain could feel the savage joy rising in him as the Device tried to take control over his instincts and his metabolism, flooding him with adrenaline and testosterone, reknitting his muscles and lacing his bones.

  “Ragh!” Val’s next sweep almost tore Eliard’s arm clean off, but he managed to turn it just in time, before Val jumped back to circle the man who had been his superior.

  “Come on, big guy. You got something to work out?” Eliard murmured, and even at the sound of another being’s voice, the Duergar roared and charged, once again striking out with the axe—

  Clang! Eliard hit it broadside, knocking it out of the way before darting in with the Device raised high—

  “Captain, no!” Irie’s last minute shout was the only thing that managed to reach the captain’s mind as, at the very last moment, he ordered the Device to change the blade to a club, and he pummeled Val Pathok with it.

  “Ugh!” A grunt of pain, but Val was quick, batting with his fist in the same gesture that had killed the lizard-bird. The blow hit Eliard across the shoulder and sent him flying through the air to the oohs and ahhs of the crowd.

  “Captain…?” Irie looked at his stilled body and wondered if their gunner had just killed their captain. Before she had a chance to run to him, Val was already breaking into motion, charging across the sand to get to her, raising the axe in one meaty claw.

  “Val, no! Please! It’s me!” Irie begged as she held out the iron-shod club uselessly. She knew that he was too big, too quick, for her like this, and she couldn’t run.

  Clang! The blow that Val threw sent the club spiraling out of her hands to cartwheel across the sand.

  “CHENGA! CHENGA!” The crowd was roaring, urging their frenzied hero on as he slammed one hand into Irie to push her to the ground, roaring into her face as he lifted the axe in one hand over his head—

  “Val!” Irie screamed at him, and, for a moment, the gunner’s eyes flickered. His whole body shook as he looked down at the human mechanic. Some small voice inside of him was saying that he knew her, was shouting that he spare her…

  But the necessities of evolution were a hard taskmistress, as the gunner’s green blood clamored for absolute, complete victory.

  “Val, it’s me. Your friend!” Irie begged, and in return, Val twitched, leaning forward with his shovel-like head to sniff at the puny human he held underneath him.

  THWAP. “No pay raise for you!” the captain shouted as he hit his gunner, hard, over the back of the head with the Device that had now transformed into a hardened fist like a boulder. Val Pathok made a small, startled noise before half-turning to look at who would dare to attack him, before collapsing on top of Irie.

  “Ugh. Captain?” the mechanic managed to say. “Can you get this guy off me, please?”

  “Very good, Captain.” Amidst the silence of the amphitheater, there was the sound of a slow clap as one lone D
uergar stood up.

  It was Pathok Ma, the captain was sure of it. The crowds around the pair of humans had fallen to just a low murmur of whispering noise. The two did not have cheers or the roars of encouragement that the lizard-birds or Val Pathok had.

  “I guess they don’t like us.” Eliard flicked his arm and pointed it in the direction of the singular standing Duergar. “I can probably take him out,” he said, the battle-lust still strong in his system.

  “No, Captain. Remember why we’re here. We need them,” Irie said, holding her injured hand.

  In fact, the weapon had done little to threaten or deter the Duergar war chief, as the captain heard a dry, rasping laugh rise across the arena toward him.

  “Oh, go on, just one little shot…” Eliard hissed.

  “Cap’n, no!” Irie appeared adamant, before considering. “Only if they really do want to kill us…”

  “Deal.” The captain put his hand down. “What now, Pathok? Have we passed your test?” he shouted.

  “Yes, Captain, you have!” the war chief roared at them, and to this, at least, the crowd appeared appreciative, stamping their feet and clapping in agreement. “But as to your other offer? The answer to that is still, I am afraid, a no.”

  What? The captain seethed with anger. “Then just what the was the point of all this?” he hissed at Irie.

  “They’re Duergar. Do they need a reason to fight?” Irie suggested.

  The war chief bellowed at them once again. “You have shown yourselves worthy to be here, on Duric. You are strong enough to walk these streets. You are free to go.” There was a clap, and one of the gates that held back the lizard monsters slid open.

  “Wow. Such gratitude.” The captain sneered, reaching down to try and haul on Val’s arm to drag his gunner along with him. “We’ll just have to find some other army to enlist again Alpha,” he muttered to his mechanic.

  “STOP!” the war chief shouted. “I said you two have proven yourselves strong enough to walk on Duric. Not Val Pathok.” The Duergar’s voice was cold and strong, and there was a grumble of noise from the amphitheater—shouts both for and against.

  “What, are you crazy? Val is one of my crew!” Eliard shouted back. “You can’t seriously think that he isn’t strong enough to meet your standards.”

  “Val Pathok lost his battle. Against two humans,” the chief shouted back, and the captain saw that it wasn’t just for his benefit. The war chief was declaring something to the crowds. This is all a performance. This is a show for them, not for us, he realized.

  “Val Pathok, my very own son, may have once been the Hero of the Chenga Pass, but the same rules apply to him as it does to me and to all of us,” the chief called. “He failed his test. He lost the right to walk amongst us as an equal. I claim him as my thrall.”

  “No!” Irie shouted back. “How dare you!”

  “My decision is final, human, and in case you forget, I am a war chief. This is my city, and the capital city of Dur. I suggest that you take my generous offer of your lives and leave.”

  “But—” Irie began to say, but Eliard hissed at her and pulled her back.

  “Leave it, Irie. This is a con. It’s a rigged game. He was always going to win, and one of us was always going to lose.” He turned, hauling his struggling mechanic behind him across the arena to the somewhat appreciative claps of his audience, and into the darks of the arched gate.

  “Wise choice, Captain Eliard!” the words of the war chief followed them into the tunnel.

  The tunnel was made of stone, and it smelled faintly of lizard. A strip of LED lights was set at sporadic intervals overhead, providing pools of a dim glow and revealing a wide tunnel that led slowly upwards.

  “Captain, how could you leave Val back there like that!?” Irie shook herself free from him, frustration and anger written in every line of her body. For a moment, the captain thought that she was going to turn around and run straight back down the tunnel to where the circle of floodlights off the arena still shone, but if she had intended to, the heavy clang of the gates stopped her.

  “He’s one of us. One of the Blade!” she almost shouted at him.

  “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that, Irie,” Eliard said heavily. “Come on, we need to get out of here before the war chief decides he can’t allow us to live.” He started to walk up the tunnel, to where some fresher, cooler night air was eddying toward them.

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” Irie stopped in her tracks. “You’re really going to run away? To let that oaf beat us?”

  Eliard spun on his heel, a bit of that old savage anger sparking again in his dark eyes. “No, Irie, I am not! But neither do I have a death wish!” he hissed, looking up and down the tunnel suspiciously. “Now listen up and listen good, because neither of us have the time to go over this again. What I said back there in the arena was true. It was a rigged game, from the moment we opened our eyes. I should know, because I’m about as crooked as they come, and I can tell a scam when I see one.”

  “What are you talking about, Captain? How did the war chief know we wouldn’t die? Or his son die instead?” Irie said.

  “Because he didn’t have to know,” Eliard said quickly. “All of that up there, that wasn’t to test anything. That wasn’t even to punish Val. It was a show. I realized as soon as I heard the crowd react to him claiming Val as a slave. Think about it. Pathok Ma—Val’s very own dad—hated his son, but he couldn’t do anything about it because Val was the Hero of the Chenga Pass. Now that he has proved that his son is a failure—at least, according to his standards—he gets to claim him as a thrall, and never have to worry about handing over the war chiefship, or however it works here, to Val.”

  “But what if Val had killed us, or those bloodthirsty lizard-things had?” Irie pointed out.

  “Then he gets rid of two humans that he doesn’t want to deal with anyway, and he has proven to Val that he really is a bloodthirsty psychopath,” Eliard said, before sighing heavily and squeezing the bridge of his nose. “As strange as this is to say, our gunner, Val Pathok, is the only person who can convince the Duergar people to fight with Ponos against Valyien. And Val is now a slave.”

  “So, what are we going to do about it?” Irie said, looking back to the arena behind them.

  “We’re going to do what we always do when one of our own is threatened,” Eliard said. “We’re going to sneak in and start busting some heads until they give him back. But first, we’re going to get out of this crazy place and work out where they’re going to be keeping him.” Eliard seized his mechanic’s hand (the uninjured one) and they ran up the tunnel.

  Ahead of them, the tunnel opened out into a night-lit courtyard of stone. Some kind of staging area for slaves or beasts to be driven to the fighting arena, the captain thought. They had barely crossed into this space when shadows detached themselves from the walls, and blades glinted in the dark.

  6

  Cycles and Seasons

  Cassandra awoke to brightness. Funny, somehow, she had never expected to go to heaven when she died, she thought for a moment, before a shadow moved across her vision and she realized that no, this wasn’t heaven.

  The shadow was Argyle Trent, or the monster that the scientist Argyle Trent had become. He still wore his faded scientist’s suit, but his head had sunk as his shoulders and neck had expanded. His skin was now a sickly white-blue, deeper in color than the Duergar, and not scaled. The most gruesome change was what had happened to his arms, two large pincers like a praying mantis ripped from the sleeves of the suit where his elbows and forearms should have been, and he stood to one side of her, making odd little wavering movements. They were both in a room that was a pristine white, lying on a bench that was also white, but it wasn’t made of metal. It felt oddly porous underneath her, as she pushed herself up to examine where she was. The table looked like a medical bench, but it wasn’t. It was a perfectly-grown white rock, or coral, she thought as she picked at it with a nail.
/>   The room was round and made of the same white porous rock as her resting place, and there appeared to be no seams anywhere. No panels, no joins. This room had been grown, she thought, and suddenly everything came flooding back to her. The Adiba Research Station. The blue-scale virus that she had been infected by.

  The Q’Lot.

  She sat bolt upright when she realized where she must be. In her last conscious moments on board the station—after the others had thought she was dead and left—the Q’Lot had arrived, and they had appeared to be attacking the Armcore research facility. But they weren’t, were they?

  She slipped off the table, pleased to see that at least she was still wearing her own clothes and that all sign of the blue-scale virus had vanished from her skin. She checked her pulse to find it elevated, but then again, she thought that was probably normal, given the situation.

  Hostage of the Q’Lot. It was the sort of thing that you might hear in the lower reaches of Date Space. A pulp fiction story, perhaps. The Q’Lot were an ancient alien race which had so far had very little to do with the Imperial Coalition. They were as old as the Valyien—because from Duergar records, the two races had been at war, although no one remembered why.

  The Q’Lot were a quixotic species. They were regarded as myths and scare stories by most of the Imperial Coalition citizens, but Cassandra Milan, a well-trained and highly-placed agent of House Archival, knew better. She knew to listen to the chance reports of the odd deep-space hauler, as they described encounters with glowing, impossible structures like stars or anemones in the middle of the deep.

  The Q’Lot would sometimes attack, and sometimes they would do nothing at all. Most of the time, they would disappear, performing warp jumps that didn’t look like anything that the Imperial Coalition could pull off. But then again, everything about the Q’Lot looked like things that the Imperial Coalition couldn’t pull off. From their ships that looked more like living coral reef structures to how they moved or attacked, they were alien in every sense of the word.