Chapter Fifty of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated
Please note: The Final Episode
The cross-drumming had disconnected the Techs from their psi-sphere source. Weakened, and confused by the never-before-known rebellion and escape of the harvesters, they’d paid no attention to the flier, all focused on rounding up those escapees. Jess doubted they even knew that he and his crew were there. But now the drummers must stop to allow the flier to take off. The Techs very shortly would be back in action.
Yet…despite the noise and confusion around him, Jess laughed. Three Banmakka led by two crouching Monzas, all laden with supplies and his drums – his drums, he was so pleased to see whosever the forethought – zipping their way from the flier to the lander that Jess had selected. Jess, Kookka and Joel arrived at that lander mere tics before the Banmakka and drums. In time to see one of the Banmakka slump to the ground. Anak-tu, the one who claimed himself deaf to the god-source.
Canipse turned, stun-gun raised.
After all these years as an observer for the GM Programme, Jess still didn’t know how many stuns those guns packed. Canipse had already downed ten pursuing Techs; quick off the mark before they could stun him.
“In,” Kookka said.
But Jess held back. “No, there could be Techs inside.”
“I’ll check it.” Fast-footed, Canipse was already into the lander’s outer ring.
“Hold them off as long as you can,” Jess called back as he followed Canipse, slamming and sealing the perimeter doors he passed. He was almost to the far side when he found Canipse struggling to haul three stunned Techs to an open door. Jess put his shoulder to it. Techs really didn’t weigh much.
“Safe,” he reported. “Get in here fast. And up.” He pointed to the dodecahedral control hive that topped the circular lander.
The lander was at least ten times the size of a flier. Did the four of them together have psi-strength enough to lift the craft from the port? These giants were usually flown by a community of Techs. Yet before Jess had even taken a seat, the Banmakka were straight into drumming.
“Remember what the Fire-keepers said,” Kookka said. “Trust to hope and not to fears.”
Jess, Shelek and Joel together said, “Then we hope this lander lifts up.” Jess added, “Now.”
More Techs were crowding, drawn by their stunned associates. But the lander’s doors were closed, sealed, the Techs could do nothing now to stop them.
Heads, thoughts, and hopes united, the lander wobbled, lifted. But settled again.
“And again. Come on, we can do this.”
Jess, Kookka, Joel and Shelek, heads, thoughts, and hopes united, the Banmakka spirit-men adding their empowering drums and doubtless their own frantic hopes, the lander lifted.
Up. Up. Though a little unsteady, a sway to the left, to the right.
“Fools.” A Tech voice filled the cabin. “Fools, you could have had life with us. Now you have certain death, alone.”
Jess risked a distraction from the psi-power-loop to flick the broadcast switch. “But we would rather have a few days of freedom than live an eternity as your slaves.”
He left that broadcast facility open while the Banmakka played the sweetest psi-assisting beats on Jess’s precious drums.
*
They were two days into the flight. No stopping. Jess didn’t know how long they had to reach their former base and gather into the lander any Banmakka and Itamakku who wanted to join them. And to find Cela-Byi and Joel’s woman Segul too. They were taking it in shifts now, less power required to cover horizontal distance. But that take-off had proven something to him. “We can’t escape the planet.”
“How’d the Techs do it?” asked Shelek. “They whizz across the universe.”
“Yea,” Kookka said, “but while we sleep. We don’t know at what speed.”
“Ah, I can answer you that.” Then in response to the quizzical looks thrown at him by the other Monzas, Joel said, “I was a trusted liaison, and I kept my ears and mind open.”
Canipse harrumphed. “Yea, but he didn’t speak in the wrong place and get roasted.”
“So what is the answer?” Jess asked.
“They use the psi-sphere to link to distant Tech-groupings. And as we know, there are clusters of Techs throughout the universe.”
Kookka looked round from his tight psi-link. “No good us trying that then.”
“But there are Monza elsewhere,” Shelek said.
“And everywhere enslaved to the Techs. A shame we couldn’t have taken them out. Every last one. Worse than Pendoling Demons.”
“Be satisfied, Jess.” Kookka hugged him. “Once they leave here they’ll never be back.”
Shelek cut in. “That’s cos there’ll be no here to be back to.”
“We can hope,” Jess said.
“As the Fire-keepers say.”
Jess glanced back at Canipse. “I’m indebted to you. For someone who hated me, you’ve been the greatest help.”
Canipse groaned and gestured him away. “Don’t get mushy on me.”
“We all owe you,” Kookka added his thanks.
“Shut it,” Canipse growled in return. “Let’s go get those women.”
*
Their former base was thickly speckled with Banmakka, though they’d seen the lander and had edged away. The golden hair of a red clad Monza stood out amongst the darker colours of the Banmakka. Who? Whoever it was, he must have been away from the base when the Techs arrived. His flier was grounded next to the one Jess had used and left behind. But those two fliers now were a nuisance.
“Move the fliers,” Jess spoke through the broadcaster. And when nothing happened, “Tumble them down the hill, you’re not going to need them.”
Ah, result. The Monza, ably assisted by the Banmakka, pushed and toppled, dragged and tipped the two fliers down the steep slope of the god-hill.
Canipse asked if that was Dorsin. “By all the Pendoling Demons, it is.”
But Jess hadn’t eyes for the Monza op. He was scanning the crowd, looking for Cela-Byi. Paler skinned than the Banmakka, he easily sighted her, her and Segul. The lander safely landed, he was out the nearest perimeter door and pulling her to him.
Behind him, Kookka rolled his eyes, but wasted no more time on it. Kookka, Shelek and Canipse coaxed and encouraged the Banmakka to enter the lander, to settle in the abundant seats, Joel explaining what was to happen.
“I knew you’d return,” Dorsin said when Jess returned to the dodecahedral control hive atop the circle, Cela-Byi held tight beside him. “I knew you wouldn’t leave the woman behind.”
“But where have you been?” Canipse asked him.
“Out at Hive Eight. I was returning from there when the Techs in that lander arrived. I returned to the farm but kept a check on the sky. It was the Banmakka told me what had happened here and said that they had the women safe. Like I just said, I knew Jess wouldn’t leave his woman behind.”
“And now I have to explain what’s happening,” Jess said.
“I’ve told them,” Joel butted in.
“No need anyway,” Kookka said. “Just look at that sky.”
*
Cela-Byi looked to where Kookka had pointed. It wasn’t yet night, the sky was still bright, but a falling star-spirit was visible. “We make wish.”
“I wish we could have had longer,” Jess told her, and fished in his pocket. “Our baby’s spirit-carrier. This child won’t rob you of life.”
She didn’t understand why that look on his face, but she took the proffered idol and clutched it tight to her chest.
“You’d better strap in.” Jess guided her to the softly padded seat. But she didn’t want to sit, she wanted to be in Jess’s arms.
Joel had strapped his woman Segul beside Cela-Byi. Then the Monza star-men too were sitting and fastening straps.
“Let’s go.” But nothing happened at Jess’s words.
Instead, the sky to the west blazed with a blinding brightness like a thousand god-thrown lightning spears. Cela-Byi felt her jaw drop.
Kookka groaned. “That impact…lost connection.”
Jess nodded. “Cut from the psi-sphere.” Tight lines cut his face, like she’d not seen on him before.
“It come back.” Cela-Byi tried to reassure him. “Star-spirits speak to our eyes with their light. No need to echo in heads.”
A crack and a boom sounded, ten-thousand times louder than the gods throwing hammers. And again, and again, it seemed never to stop. The lander rocked. There were screams from the Banmakka children and their mothers.
Shelek nudged Jess to look to the north. Cela-Byi’s eyes followed though she had to twist and crane to see it. Then as the ground slipped from beneath the lander, the gods of that northern place belched out great brown-black fire-rented smoke. Cela-Byi covered her face not to see more.
From the lander’s carrier-compartment beneath her feet, where the Banmakka were safely stowed, came the sound of drums, Banmakka drums. Hopeful drums. Drums to dance to.
Her beautiful star-man Jess punched the air in the space above him. “Cannection resumed.”
Cela-Byi had experience of rising into the sky in a flier. She wasn’t scared. But Segul was. Cela-Byi held her hand. “You’ll be all right now. You’ll be fine. We fly with the star-men.”
They were high above the land when Jess nodded to her and gestured that she could release the straps, that she could join him where he stood by one of the view-screens. It took no second telling. She was into his arms. Could he feel how she trembled? She wasn’t anywhere near as brave as she seemed. And she cursed herself for a naïve child, that she had wanted to be above the people of her dow. But she hadn’t meant it to be like this.
“What’s to happen to us?”
“I’d like to say we’ll escape this place, that all will be well in the end. But even if we could break away from the planet’s pull, we’ve nowhere to go. All we can do is to wait and hope that when this chaos settles there’ll still be land somewhere for us. For you, for me, for our child.”
Above them was a darkness foul with the breath of the northern volcano. Ahead too, the sky was black but here streaked red from raging fires. Beneath them the sea was turbulent, angry, tossing and rising, sweeping across the coastal plain.
“We trust in our hopes,” he told her.
“And hope we survive so we can again die?”
He held her tighter than ever he had. She bit her lip, not wanting to cry.
“And the sons of God saw the daughters of man and took them as wives… And God saw the abomination and sent a great flood…”
Inspired by Book of Enoch
The End
I thank you for reading, and for your comments
Author’s note: In case you didn’t catch it, the Techs and the Monza had once been one species. But able to replicate without need of the male, they had anciently evolved into another species. Thereafter they raised the Monza… for food and as workers
crispina kemp 