crispina kemp

Chapter Eighteen of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is now a weekly post

Canipse cricked his neck the better to watch the fliers lift up from the fly-port, his hands on his knees as he grabbed at replacement breaths, so fast he had run. Disappointment threatened to rob his muscles of strength. But breath recovered, he forced himself up.

South? Why were the fliers heading south? This was the most southerly base and there were no farms south of it. And why didn’t the fliers blink out of visibility? They must still be flying within the endosphere. Something wasn’t right here. He went in search of Zem Jess. That Tech-defying clutch-dictator claimed to know everything.

Despite how early the morning, the zem wasn’t in his hive. But his deputy, Armar, was. Canipse nodded – in satisfaction and in greeting; Armar wasn’t as up himself as the zem – and asked, “Where’s the zem?”

“You’ve a problem?” Armar asked in return. “If you tell me and it’s urgent, I’ll sort it. Otherwise, we expect Jess to be back before day’s end.”

Canipse held his hands high on his chest, left hand rubbing the right, his lips twisted. Ought he to raise the query or not? Was it important? What could it mean for the Techs to fly southward where there were no hives? What did it mean for them to remain in the endosphere? But maybe it was just a play of the light this morning that allowed him to track the fliers into the southern sky.

Decision made, he said. “I need to visit our farm. Hive Eight. We’ve a harvest waiting for transportation, but all three fliers are out.”

“It happens,” Armar said with a disinterested shrug. “They’re not assigned to cater exclusively to your needs, important though your catering services are.”

“But where have they gone that’s more important than food?” Canipse allowed his rising annoyance to escape his control. “I watched them, they headed out south.”

Armar’s usually pleasant face distorted as his right eyebrow rose. “Then I’d say they’ve gone south. Now excuse me, but your op had just brought me a plate of scrambled eggs when you disturbed me and they are best eaten warm, you’ll agree.” He turned with clear intent to retreat into the hive he shared with the zem.

“Wait!” Canipse called.

Armar halted, but didn’t turn.

“Why would they be flying south?”

Armar spun on the ball of his foot to face Canipse. That was better.

“You might as well know,” Armar said, though clearly with reluctance. “We’ve discovered an archipelago off the southern shore. We alerted the Techs, and now they’re inspecting the islands. Does that answer all your questions?”

“And the zem’s gone with them?”

“Of course. So now you know you’ll realise your harvest must wait another day for transportation. Now, I’m feasting on eggs – my thanks to your ops. Though you might like to tell them not to overcook them in future. Some days it’s like eating leather! Oh, and tell them to lay off the salt – it’s not healthy and even less palatable.”

Canipse tried not to sag as, dismissed and disappointed, he turned away. Islands discovered off the southern shore, nothing untoward about that. He couldn’t even complain that the zem had gone with them. Though all three Techs? Leaving the base with no fliers? That was very poor planning. Canipse returned to the hive he shared with Guul and Azal, the textiles and domestics overseers, and the healer Dov, to write his report. He would lodge it with the Techs, to be uploaded to the Nexus when the STC-Transporter eventually returned.

*

Unable to arrange the transportation and storage of the farm’s first harvest, after writing his report Canipse casually sauntered to the rocks north of the camp – in search of stones. That’s where he was when the fleeting sun-flares from the fliers’ multiple sharp edges caught his eyes. He was straight to the fly-port, the stones he’d collected rasping and rattling in his backpack.

He waited for the Techs to emerge from the fliers. He waited while first Zem Jess, then Kookka and Joel stepped out. He waited. But no Techs followed them. Like the lesser dragons that skittered about the base, he tilted his head this way and that in utter puzzlement. He couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing. Or more correctly, what he wasn’t seeing. Zem Jess with his observers were straight to the Techs’ hive at the edge of the port. It took Canipse a chaotic internal debate to lift his feet from where they’d apparently stuck, and to follow them.

“Where are the Techs?” he demanded – shouted.

The zem turned from the log he was completing. “They’re not with us. They won’t be returning.”

“What have you done to them? You’ve killed them.” Horror hollowed Canipse’s voice.

The zem slowly shook his head. “Although there have been many times when I’ve wanted to do that, no I’ve not killed them. As you and I know, what you’ve just said is entirely impossible.”

“Then…?”

“The sea has taken them. Swept off the rock by a towering wave. And we –” Zem Jess spread his arms, his hands, “– we cannot swim. With great sadness we must leave them to their fate.”

And Canipse had to admit, the zem did sound genuinely sad to report this news. Yet as the fullness of this news sank in, so a tsunami of questions and concerns flooded Canipse. “But…but…but…”

The zem answered the most pressing one. “My observers will operate the fliers until we receive replacement Techs. If replacements there will be. But not today. Please allow us a day to digest this desolation.”

“Gone? Gone?” Canipse repeated several more times on his way back to his hive where he’d write another report. “Taken by the sea.” And though he tended never to trust a word that Zem Jess said, he could not see the lie in it.

Chapter Seventeen of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is now a weekly post

Jess woke in a sweat, heart pounding. He wanted to run, to hide, to undo what he had done. Guilty, guilty. He had touched her. GUILTY. The Techs were sure to know and would remove him. Skin him. A most brutal way to die, he couldn’t imagine the pain – didn’t want to imagine it. Rather would he yield to her and thus in her die. But no, he’d no intention of allowing such weakness; he wanted to remain alive.

Again, the memory of yesterday surged through him, his body and mind, to arouse the forbidden in him.

Was she the same female? She wasn’t clad the same, hung about instead with dragon skins. But the eyes and enticing fragrance, they were the same.

She shouldn’t have been there, not that close to the textile farm at Hive Seven. It had been Jess’s last visit of the day, checking out the holos. He had seen her before he landed the flier; he had watched her. So now he knew that holo was working – she had triggered it. Yet, though she’d backed away some paces, she hadn’t fled in fear.

He ought to have remained in the flier, he ought to have waited and watched what she’d do. But nothing as wise as that for Jess, not his style. When would he learn? But this time there would be no restorative refuge with the Fire-keepers on Colabri.

Even before he held her his skin had been deliciously aware of her, as if to a warm pleasing breeze on a cold day. And his hands, he couldn’t control them, seeking flesh beneath those dragon skins, pulling her close and closer still. His body wanted nothing between them, wanted to be surrounded and held in captivity by her alien body. His mind ecstatic, wanted only to die within her and in that moment feel utterly alive. He tried to brush that image away. Yet the memory remained.

She had allowed his touch, yielded to it. At first. Then of a sudden she became as evasive as those legless dragons whose skins she wore, and she was out of his arms and fleeing. He watched her throwing up heels in her haste.

He wanted to follow and would have followed but for a call from behind him. So ensorcelled by the Itamakki Jess had forgotten Eulal and Niapse, the textile operatives that worked the farm. Eulal’s call rescued him from the folly of chasing her.

And now…now he must face the consequences of his heedless stupidity. Removal. Death.

Death, slow and agonising at the hands of the Techs? Or death, rapturous death, enveloped within her? Yet how he could set such an example that his clutch might follow? That would be wrong, more wrong than his touching her, wanting her. But by Pendle’s Dark Staff, he did want to be enfolded within her.

He shook himself out of his self-concerned mood. The problem was no longer his, or not his alone. The problem had ramped to red alert, and he didn’t trust the Techs to deal with it. Was this what had happened on Urgula Teth? He suspected it was. He called Kookka and Joel to his hive. Armar, already there, raised a censorious brow at him.

“We need to talk. As a matter of high priority. Away from ears, eyes, and minds.”

Kookka’s eyes barely squinted, but it was enough for Jess to know what he was thinking. “Another trip out to the islands?”

*

Jess landed the flier on that same black rock, finding a spot away from the breaking waves. As soon as out of the flier he said, “We need to move on that action we postponed, to close the watchers’ eyes.”

“What’s this about?” Joel asked. He’d not previously been party to this.

“Jess has proposed we show our inquisitive Techs these islands,” Armar said. “Three Techs. Three fliers. Three of us. But, Jess, we agreed not to move on that yet.”

“I fear I’ve…set things in motion,” Jess stuttered the words. “It’s too late, I can’t stop it, I can’t refuse it. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but I know it will be. I’ll submit and—you know it’s not what I want. But this, here, now, this isn’t about me. This concerns all of us. Everyone here. The entire clutch. The holos no longer protect us.”

He picked at his nails as he walked away, unsure what else to say.

“This relates to something yesterday?” Armar asked. “While you were checking the holos around the farms?”

Jess turned back to his companions, an exasperated roll of his eyes. He clasped his hands, high over his chest, almost to his mouth – then whipped them away as again he registered the fresh growth of facial hair. With a deep intake of breath, he exploded, “A Pendoling female walked right through it. That shouldn’t happen. She should have stopped, vomited, turned, ran. And what does that vision say? Wretched useless Techs.”

“You mean an Itamakku female?” Armar said.

“Yea, an Itamakki. Though for all the problems this will cause us, she could have been an evil Pendol spirit.” His hand was back to his mouth, gnawing now on his knuckle. He was aware of how Kookka watched him. Doubtless he thought Jess had regressed to the nursery, suckling at the milk-mother’s teats. But he couldn’t help it, his hands had taken a will of their own.

With determined effort he pulled his hand away. And cursed his head for conjuring visions of the Itamakki, again feeling the weight of her breasts found beneath her dragon skins. His body responded. He walked away so his companions wouldn’t guess what was happening beneath his clothes; not yet triggered they wouldn’t understand. He wanted her, wanted to die in the bliss of her. His face was afire, betraying those desires that he could not, must not, would not admit to them. Yet surely he’d said enough that they must already know

“And she walked straight through the holo-vision as if it wasn’t there?” Armar asked. “Maybe it wasn’t working, and she didn’t see it.”

Jess turned back. “No, she saw it. She hesitated, spoke some words, then walked directly to me as if…as if that vision was nothing to her.”

“Or meeting you was more important?” Joel suggested.

“Joel has a point,” Kookka agreed. “What did she suppose you to be? Not an Itamakki.”

“A god?” Joel suggested.

Armar scoffed at that. “Like, these Itamakku know about the Animosphere? That’s the stuff of Techs.”

“And?” Joel answered. “Do we know what the Techs have done to them? What they might have given them with their modifications? Though we can’t see the gods, maybe like the Techs these Itamakku can.”

Again, Kookka agreed with Joel.

“Does it matter? I touched her,” Jess uttered in horror. “If I succumb to this, then I’m destined to mate and to die. But that’s mine to deal with. And so too is the other problem. Don’t you see what I’m saying? The holos don’t hold the Itamakku away. Everyone – every one of us – is at risk. To be within distance is to effect the change. Is this what happened on Urgula Teth? And did the Techs eradicate the entire breeding pool? We can’t allow that to happen here. The Techs must not know about this…this…this potential breach.”

Kookka nodded. “Put like that, I can see that you’re right. Whatever’s the truth of the Techs’ real scheme—”

“The GM programme is only a cover,” Joel said.

“But what are they doing that they need such a cover?” Armar asked.

“Beyond me,” Kookka said. “As Joel says, they harvest Monza Imms from Adamzal to work the mineral mines of Kreegirn.”

“Only from Adamzal?” Armar said.

Kookka shrugged. “I’m supposing with the demise of our breeding females, there are no more Monza births.”

“That’s it!” Jess exclaimed. “It’s obvious. Their GM Programme isn’t to benefit us. It’s purely to ensure a continuous supply of Imms for their mines. Hybrid Imms.”

“But Adamzal—”

“No, Joel,” Jess cut in. “Because Adamzal can’t supply enough. And there’s something else.” Jess raised a hand as if that helped him order his thoughts. “I’ve now sat through six briefings as a zem, and I should have noticed this but…not thinking. I know the Techs chose those planets for the indigenous species, their fitness for the Programme, but it’s odd, very odd, that they all have oceans. Wide-spreading oceans.”

He remembered then his visit to the Nexus Yeho, his blue-hued room, the walls that showed an ever-rolling seascape beneath a blue cloudless sky. The very air in that room smelled and tasted of the sea.

“I think this Programme’s true purpose has something to do with the sea.” He shivered, a tell that he’d hit on a truth. “Yea, and that’s all very well, but knowing their purpose doesn’t help with our problem. The holos no longer protect our clutch. The Itamakku can walk straight through them. Which means sooner or later we’re all going to change – to become mature Monzas, not only able to breed with those Itamakku, but desperately wanting to.” Overwhelmingly driven, but he didn’t add that. “Then what?”

“But the Techs will skin any trespassers.” Armar’s disapproval of that act both deepened and flattened his voice.

“And us,” Jess added. “We’ve already said it, the Techs will be in control of the…the mixing of genes. They’ll not take kindly to mature Monzas openly mating with the Itamakku. I’m sure that’s what happened on Urgula Teth and that’s why they abandoned their Programme there. We can’t have that happening here. We have to stop them.”

“Yea,” Kookka said. “But how?”

“As I’ve already proposed,” Jess said. “We bring them here, take the fliers and leave them stranded.”

“For how long?” Armar asked the obvious, but no one answered,

“We must have no thought in our heads of this,” Jess said. “The Techs will find it and negate us. But here’s my idea, our cover story. We’ve found an anomaly which needs their inspection. That’s what we’ve been doing here, our several trips out. Now, unable to explain the anomaly, we’ll refer it to them.”

“What sort of an anomaly?” Armar could always be trusted to look deeper. “Flora, fauna? Geological?”

“Water,” the answer zoomed into Jess’s head. “Maybe something to do with the sea?”

“Fine. But what?” Armar pushed.

Jess pointed to where the sea was crashing over the rocks. “You see how the waves send spouts of water through those fissures? What if the incoming waves were salty – which we know they are – but that splash was fresh drinkable water? Would that be anomaly enough to fetch their interest?”

To be continued
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