Airith- the Kentilan War Read online

  Isabel Rae stumbled as she skipped happily towards him. He barely saw her coming until a soldier pointed at her.

  “Get me that child!” he ordered, and two soldiers sprang to obey.

  Isabel Rae giggled wildly as she continued in their direction.

  “Trust me, you don’t want that! Now, I will let you hear me,” Floop said.

  Isabel Rae stopped abruptly to raise one finger to her mask, where her mouth should be.

  “Oh shit,” Rapha breathed. “If you have the ability to cancel out hearing, do it now. The sound you’re about to hear is nothing compared to Mother’s wail.” Just as he finished, ear pods from his cybernetics fit into his ears. Phara scooped a blob of indigo from the walls and stuffed it into hers. Airith, being of better design, sent inhibitory signals to shut off sensory translations in the auditory part of her brain.

  “Well, how cute!” Vidmantas chuckled in between each heavy step he took toward Isabel Rae. He stopped before her and tossed his head to each side, running wild, mocking eyes over her. The child did not move, but her Fellas stayed a distance back, jittering in mid-air.

  “What are you going to do?” He leaned in with a derisive grin, so his face blocked everything else and filled her view.

  “You’ll hear.” Ploop laughed in a drawn, unexpressive tone. Floop displayed a smirking emoji and then an angry emoji followed by a middle finger outline.

  Vidmantas shook his head sadly and almost regained his full height when the child moved. Her scrawny, bandaged hand moved slowly to the bottom of her mask and gradually lifted it off, inch by inch. Vidmantas watched closely, feeding off the sight of moldy bandages, seeping with yellow pus. The stench made his eyes water. He clasped his nose. Isabel Rae smiled with scabbed lips, stretching healing wounds that began to bleed again.

  Remic and Martus were the only ones close enough to see it. But Remic was distracted, his wistful gaze lingered on the trio trapped in Mother’s embrace; why had they covered their ears? What was so unique about the child? He returned his gaze to the child. She had taken a stance, shoulders raised, fists clenched. And then, she drew a deep breath…

  “Brothers, blast shields now!” Remic screamed.

  In sync, the three dropped to their knees, smashing their swords to the ground. A plasmid blast formed a small dome over them. And yet, nothing happened. They looked up. The child was retching up volumes of soundless air. Behind her, her Fellas had dropped into compacted, deactivated balls. Vidmantas raised a curious brow at her, disbelieving the ridiculousness of the sight in front of him.

  Raging laughter swept across the ruins. The soldiers roared their hearts out at the little girl screaming her lungs out and yet, producing no sound.

  “Buffoons,” Rapha remarked, watching from the dome that was quietly being eaten away by Mother’s sadness.

  A piercing scream sliced through the roar of laughter, ushering a panicked silence. A soldier rushed forward, staggering and faltering, clasping both ears as he scrambled toward the Three. Blood splattered the insides of his helmet, trailing from his ears. The helmet’s glass began to crack, wide fissures spreading across its screen until it exploded in shards of glass and bits of human face. One by one, the phenomenon spread. Helmets exploded in bits of shrapnel and human parts. The soldiers screamed and began to scramble away.

  “Shoot her down!” Vidmantas ordered, and the few soldiers that dared aimed their guns. Their missiles denigrated feet from Isabel Rae as her sonic scream swept in invisible killer waves across the army, leaving parts and blood in its wake. The waves hit Mother’s sadness. The tentacles froze in shock as a discordance rippled through them, causing them to flicker out of form and recede into the cracks from which they had risen.

  Isabel Rae shut her mouth just as the indigo dome finally cracked open like an egg. She swayed just a little bit, before collapsing to the ground, covered from head to toe in her pus and the blood of others. Airith, Rapha, and Phara rushed to her. Behind them, Floop and Ploop came back to life and flew to her.

  “That was amazing. How many did I kill, please tell me so I can write it in my diary,” Floop mumbled as Airith lifted Isabel Rae’s head up.

  A loud whirring caught all their attention. A smaller craft dropped from the clouds and hovered a few feet above their heads. Latching cables shot out from pods that lined the sides of the craft and latched on to the Three. They watched haplessly as the cable strung them up and hovered into the horizon.

  “Well, that’s that,” Rapha sighed.

  BOOM BOOM.

  The trio all gazed in the direction of the sound. In the distance, just on the other side of Homecity’s firmament, a thick cloud of smoke snaked its way to the skies. Just below it, an onslaught of turret fire concentrated on a massive warship, the size of half the Kentilan Palace. It was the Creator’s ship.

  “What in the freak is going on now?” Rapha yelled.

  The key necklace around Airith’s neck began to glow a sky blue and a static transmission synced to their cerebral output, translated into words. It was the Creator.

  “Airith, you need to dispatch immediately! Emperor Kentila has attacked me and all open Imperial comms have direct orders to close down Homecity’s firmament!”

  Airith and Rapha shared a frantic look.

  “I’m going to signal Katalina and Penelope. We should be out of here in no time,” Rapha said, and immediately, out of the skies, two automated hover cars descended. They were Rapha’s prized wavers; Katalina and Penelope.

  “I’m picking up all Imperial transmissions and they are preparing to engage in a full-scale invasion of Homecity. They will be targeting your location to keep Mother from awakening! They believe I tried an attempt on the Empire’s life with some sort of bombing within the royal hall and they think it was you and Rapha behind it, which would tie me in as the one who ordered the attack,” he Creator stated matter-of-factly.

  He tried a maneuver to bank his ship further away from the guns’ range, but the barrage was too much and the main hull took heavy damage. A fiery explosion erupted from one of the main engines and The Protege 3000, once the envy of the royal fleet, began to lose its altitude, plummeting in flames.

  “We need more power to the shields to brace for impact,” the Creator commanded over the ship’s intercom. “Brace for mass casualty impact.”

  “That's impossible. We’ve literally been here this whole time,” Airith responded defensively.

  “There is nothing I can do, Airith. I suggest you leave your location now!” the Creator said with an absurd coolness, even though he was aboard a falling ship.

  “But that is breaking the Wall Treaty!” Airith yanked at her hair.

  “Airith, I will not survive this crash. I can only get out of this if I upload my consciousness to the Glitch and I will need you and Rapha to complete the transmission by reactivating the main reactor inside it. Can you do that for me?”

  “You’re going to do what and want us to do huh?”

  “Transfer my conscious… Ah, never mind, I have not the time to explain, just do what I have asked. The key on your necklace will grant you full access to the Glitch.”

  “Airith, it’s fine. We can enter from the south, from Sector Four, cutting through Sierra Ave and entering the Eastern Districts in Sector Three. We need to leave Isabel Rae with Toddboy, who can keep her safe.” Rapha sputtered.

  *

  “Until then.” The Creator cut off. He was hunched a behind wide dashboard of flickering emergency signals. His added arm, a hulking mechanical contraption, held him in place as everything and everyone else around him were tossed around. The screams from his crew members were distracting and yet he focused solely on the streams of alphanumeric on the holo-screen before him. His fingers typed away at a simulated keyboard, programming a virus into the failing system—one that he was about to embody. His other added arm, a slender prosthetic with a USB connection kept him synced to the system.

  A warning message flickered across the
screen. Do you want to proceed?

  He punched in his approval and a zap of electric lanced through his whole body, exciting every atom in his being. The transfer had begun; his transition to immortality. His eyes grew large, as he struggled to pay attention to the screen. The percentage of countdown was slower than he had expected. He wasn’t sure there would be enough time, and if the process was cut short…he would forever be gone.

  *

  Airith propped Isabel Rae up against the seat and hopped in behind the driver’s wheel. In Penelope, Rapha and Phara were also settling in. A loud explosion in the distance made them all gaze at the fireball that puffed hundreds of feet into the sky before descending into dark, serpentine smoke. The Creator’s ship was gone.

  “Let’s just hope he was able to transfer himself in time,” Rapha sulked.

  “Or not.” There was a sad worry in Airith’s tone.

  “Hey! Don’t pout. We still have my babies,” Rapha said gleefully, gesturing at his two old wavers. The Katalina and the Penelope; these two old junkers were older than Rapha and Airith combined, from the early centuries of technological enlightenment, but Rapha loved them just fine.

  The Katalina was modified for the Sierra Ave racing event: an underworld race mostly attended by weathered landers and retro enthusiasts. The Katalina was sprayed in multiple colors and had more patches on it than anyone could count. The Katalina’s trademark was the number 52 painted in bright yellow. The Penelope was a newer 3000GT model but neglected in the visual upkeep department. The Penelope was Rapha’s favorite for racing and had his signature number, 143, painted in pink.

  “I’m partly shocked no one stole these,” Rapha chuckled, igniting the engines.

  “Rapha, sorry to break it to you, but no one, I mean no one, will EVER want to steal these...things.” Airith shook her head.

  “Okay, well if you hate them so much, why not let her just drive,” Rapha scoffed, pointing to Isabel Rae.

  The offer roused the child. Isabel Rae responded with a gasp and a thumbs-up, and from her hands a small pulp of human brains spattered his side-mirror.

  “Ewww!” Rapha grimaced at it. “I’m joking,” he groaned, and Ploop displayed a sad face.

  “So where are we going?” Phara asked pointedly.

  “Sector Three, to the Springs, to drop Isabel Rae off before heading to the Glitch,” Rapha answered as the engine hummed to life.

  “You mean where the self-proclaimed ‘King of the Springs’ Toddboy illegal rules.” Phara shook her head.

  “Hey, he single-handedly beat the crap out of every local government official and crowned himself king of that sub-sector,” Rapha said in reverence.

  “Never met him, but he sounds amazing,” Phara scoffed.

  “He actually is pretty amazing and a great shit talker. Just don’t yawn around him. He does a weird thing when people yawn.” Rapha gestured oddly.

  Inside the Katalina, Isabel Rae was slumped over, leaning against Airith's shoulder in the front seat while her Fellas sat in the small back seat. “Where did you get that scar?” Floop floated to the front seat as Isabel Rae poked at a diamond-shaped scar in Airith’s right cheek.

  “It is a symbol from Mother branding me as her personal assassin the night that I escaped. It is so everyone who sees me knows what I am. It’s a curse. I may be able to run away from Mother, but this scar is forever with me.” Airith idly traced the scar, letting her thoughts wander from her as she recalled a dark place.

  She turned to the child when Isabel Rae offered no response and found her fast asleep.

  Airith scoffed under her breath at the rudeness. She pressed the ignition button, nothing happened. She raised a brow and pressed it again, this time holding it down as the engine tried to kick. It chattered intermittently but refused to rev.

  “Piece of junk!” Airith slammed the dash. The nuclear engines fired and the whole dash lit a neon blue. Loud metal music blared from the radio. Airith clasped her head and shot a glare at Rapha, unable to believe he left the radio on or listened to this kind of music.

  “This is Bradley Ryan from Mix….100.5, the Desert’s now only radio station, and I'm here with, and I still can't believe it, the one and only Kathleen Turner or as I like to say Katah leeeeeeen Turner. So excited to have you on, but I wanted to start by asking if you've ever seen the adult remake of your famous movie? It was called Romancing the Bone.”

  Airith quickly turned it off. “Ugh, I hate Earth radio.”

  AWAKE

  A quilope slithered across the sand. It was a small primate creature and inhabitant to the desert ruins surrounding Mother’s chambers. A humming overhead frightened it. It burrowed into the shelter of the sweltering sand until the threat had passed. When the silence returned, it poked its snout back to the surface, and listened for signals. The chemical sensors in its nostrils tried to sift out the nearest location of food. Something moved in the distance. In a flash, the quilope leaped to the surface, its small legs paddling the sand with light speed, hurrying it to its next meal.

  A large arianite boot came down hard on the creature. It squished and squashed. Then stomped and stomped until the quilope’s snout had shriveled up and its small mass was reduced to an unrecognizable pulp. Vidmantas grimaced angrily over the creature’s remains. His eyes had narrowed to slits and his mouth curled into a deathly snarl. Behind him, black smoke curled to the skies. It was coming from the craft that had picked him and his brothers up. It went down when he fired an angry round of blasts into the engine. His rage came in sudden, uncontrolled waves, swelling until he had at least crushed or stomped a few lives.

  His brothers watched idly from the wreckage, standing next to the remains of their pilot. He had snapped that one’s neck in his fury. Calming breaths, Vidmantas. His eyes darted like Ping-Pong balls in their sockets as he tried to suck in air. But he couldn’t shut out the thoughts in his head. He had been defeated. What news would he bring back to Mother?

  His chest tightened. He choked for air. A legion of voices spoke all at once in his head, snickering and mocking, scolding and screaming.

  “Where is she? I expect your return.”

  It was Mother. She was calling to him, tugging by an invisible string tied tightly to his heart. He couldn’t breathe. He dropped to his knees.

  “Mother!” he cried. “You will have your daughter.”

  The hold on his chest slacked and life returned to his limbs. He sucked in air and his lungs filled. “She was just within my grasp,” Vidmantas said, grimacing into the horizon at the two receding dots that were Rapha’s wavers.

  “You speak of your bride!” Mother’s scream tore at the nerves in his head. He clasped his head and rolled in the dirt.

  “She was promised to me.” Vidmantas groaned.

  “And you will have her” was Mother’s reply before relief returned to him. “Come to me.” Her last words echoed before the disconnect.

  Vidmantas dragged himself back onto his feet, drawing labored breaths.

  “Well then. Should we go after them?” Remic sighed next to him, taking him by surprise. He hadn’t heard him walk over but he followed Remic’s gaze out into the blinding horizon.

  “Are we supposed to go after them on foot, you daft cretin,” Vidmantas snarled. “We return to Mother. My bride can wait a little longer.” A sly smile darkened his face.

  *

  He led the return to Mother’s chambers; three towering humanoids trudging through the sand, casting long, sweltering shadows in their two-mile walk back to the old ruins. The tall entrance was a beckoning darkness, that swallowed them whole. Vidmantas shuddered as he stepped into the pitch black, unable to see anything before him except the zap of electricity that ran from the side of his vision and disappeared further into the darkness. The cold was crisp against his armor, sending a numbing cold down to his bones. He listened and only heard the tired breaths of his brothers on either side. They looked to him to continue leading, and he could feel their fear. There was
a fear whenever Mother summoned them; a despair they couldn’t shake. Had they failed her? Yes. And she would punish them mercilessly.

  “Come.” The hollow whisperings of Mother’s voice made his heart pang. He let her lead him down the winding channels until the temperature dropped a little further and he could no longer flex his fingers. The darkness peeled away to reveal towering stretches of quantum computers, and the background humming of a trillion electrons. The floors glowed a neon blue with crisscrossing circuit impulses, all originating and returning to the center of the room, where two inanimate figures stood on either side of a lustrous spherical platform. They were Cyborg Valdovas—fierce killing machines that only saw the light of the sun during the awakening.

  An impulse from the floors zapped through him. The shock made him falter but he caught himself. They were recognition impulses which allowed Mother to see and feel her visitors. She had recognized him. The Valdovan Death Guards simultaneously raised their heads and stepped briskly aside, as the platform slowly hummed to life, illuminated with an intense white light. The three stepped onto it and the loud clicking of moving cogs filled the room as the disc descended to the sub-chambers. The temperature dropped another few degrees as the vault opened, a familiar, eerie green light pouring in to wash over them, burning at their eyes. Vidmantas shut his, and only opened them when the disc landed on solid ground.