Wings of Retribution (58 page)

Ragnar sat at the window, watching the panic on the docks when the empty canister was discovered.  Older Strangers began to issue orders, barking commands for more nets and crew.  People scrambled over the ships and dropped nets into the water, trying to fish the floaters back out. 

Then something very interesting began to happen.

One by one, the men manning the nets collapsed.  Panicked men retreated from the edges of the dock, staring at the water in horror.  Three Priestesses were lead to the center of the dock, their scarlet robes fluttering in the breeze.  They began chanting in the off-pitch tone of the deaf, then they, too, collapsed.

The three Warriors leading the Priestesses dragged their fallen charges back to the entrance to the wall and began shouting at the Merchant who had delivered the floaters.  He began shouting back and several more Warriors had to come out to restrain them.

This was turning out even better than he hoped.

Odd, that a few round blobs could cause so much havoc.

Ragnar walked to the opposite side of the wall and looked down.  He was about twenty stories up, staring down at the complex array of ponds and agriculture covering the inside of the walled landmass.  His father and brother were trapped in the walled enclosure on the other side of the island.  Ragnar had not returned to check on them since the day he escaped.  Too risky. 

He glanced up.  At the top of the wall, almost precisely above the enclosure where his family was imprisoned, a spaceship sat squatting out over the ledge like a quiet sentry.  He guessed that the landing pad was there, near the same area as the Emperor’s gardens.  Around the ship, he could see twenty Warriors stationed on the ramparts, watching the ship.

It’s going to take a miracle to get out of here.

Sighing, Ragnar crossed back to the window overlooking the dock and looked back down upon the chaos he had created.  Tattooed men were pouring huge canisters of colorless fluid into the ocean, though few of them finished delivering their product before they collapsed.  Did the floaters produce some sort of poisonous fumes?  One that was toxic to humans, but not his own biology?  Highly unlikely.  After all, Ragnar had hefted them through the air like footballs.  He frowned, trying to puzzle it out.

Suddenly, a Warrior rushed down the dock with a burning spear and lobbed it into the water.  As he retreated, the ocean exploded in a wave of heat.  Ragnar pulled back as the plume of fire shot upward, billowing like rocket fuel.

As the ocean burned, the same high-pitched keening from earlier began again.  The sound intensified until it was all Ragnar could do just to stay upright, feeling as if the alien shriek was piercing his eardrums.  Ragnar backed away, pressing his hands to his ears.

Very slowly, the howl died away, leaving heart-pounding silence broken only by the crashing of the waves below.  More timidly, this time, Ragnar returned to the window and glanced down.

Blue-white floaters were bobbing on the surface, the flames eating at their bulbous, fluid-filled bodies.  The men on the docks were spearing them with long poles, dragging the basketball-sized organisms through the burning waters and up onto the sunbleached planks.

As Ragnar watched, the Strangers punctured the bulbs and drained the clear fluid into ornate containers.  Then they tossed the deflated bodies back into the burning ocean.

He frowned.

Below, the Strangers were kneeling before six Priestesses, who were accepting the ornate containers filled with floater liquid.  Was this some sort of victory rite?

He did not have a chance to find out.  A familiar voice blasted over the island-wide intercom, making him flinch.

Ragnar Reeve of the Second House, it is the Emperor’s Will that you return to your holding area immediately.  If you do not, we will kill one of your kind for every day you wait.  You have until dawn tomorrow to show yourself.

So.  The game had come to an end.

Frustrated, Ragnar started walking.  He had no doubt, if their mysterious benefactor was what they thought she was, that she would prove to be as brutally efficient as Athenais in forcing them to capitulate to her demands.  Which left him to do…what?  As far as he could tell, there
was
no way off the planet.  The government had no enemies to work with.  The entire planet was one global government, powered by brainwashed fanatics.  Which meant, as much as he hated it, he had to go back.

And soon.  He knew that she would kill to bring him back—the last thing she would tolerate would be a shifter running loose on her perfect little world.  Unfortunately, he’d been wandering for days, and he wasn’t sure he could find the place again if he tried.  Debating this, Ragnar finally stopped a Merchant in the hall, grabbing him by the jacket to slow him when the man tried to simply sidestep him and brush past.

The Merchant gave him a horrified look and tore his ornate blue-and-gold coat off as if Ragnar had contaminated it with his touch.

“I’ll report you, you disgusting creature,” the Merchant said, throwing the garment to the floor.  “You ruined a good coat!”

“I’m the shifter,” Ragnar said, once again thinking that humans were stupid, easily manipulated lunatics.  “I need to get back to the Emperor.”

The Merchant’s eyes widened and he glanced at his coat as if he were re-assessing its value.  “You are?  Prove it.”

“I’d rather not.  It takes too much energy.  Just get the Emperor.”

Yet the infuriating human simply peered at him.  “How do I know you’re not a Stranger trying to get out of execution?”

Ragnar realized he was going to have to shift sooner or later to prove himself, so he shifted back to his normal human form.  He went slow to save energy, but he was still exhausted when he was finished.

The Merchant stared at him.

“Now that you’ve seen, I need some food,” Ragnar said, feeling dizzy.  “It was too soon after my last
yeit
.”

“Of course,” the Merchant babbled, his outrage gone.  “Come.  My cook makes a very good floater tart.  You can rest in my room while I get the Warriors.”

“Thank you,” Ragnar said.  He followed the man down several flights of stairs until he could hear the surf crashing on the walls of rock outside the windows.

“Here,” the Merchant said, indicating a door.  Inside, a small, sparse bed with a utilitarian trunk at the end were the only furnishings.  It looked more like a prison than a domicile.   For a moment, Ragnar felt sorry for the man.

“Please stay here while I tell the others.  My cook will be here in a few minutes with your food.”

“Not floaters,” Ragnar said.  “Fish is fine, but not floaters.”

The Merchant gave him an odd look, then nodded.  “Of course.”  Then he departed.

Ragnar reclined on the bed, feeling frustrated and helpless.  He should have known they would use his family against him.  Their captor must have known it too, that’s why she wasn’t too worried about him escaping. 

He had only been lying in bed a few minutes before a graying woman appeared with a platter of steaming pink fish.  The succulent aroma preceded her and Ragnar winced as spikes of pain laced through his body in response to the sight of food.

“That was fast,” Ragnar said appreciatively.  “Thank you.”

She smiled and nodded to him, set the steaming platter on the bed beside him, then departed.

Ragnar breathed in the savory smells and sighed.  Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a guest here, after all.  Hell, all the Emperor wanted was for him to
breed
.  That wasn’t so bad, right?

He was halfway through his meal when he blacked out.

Athenais awoke on the beach to the stench of blood and a horrible burning in her chest.  She sat up with a start and her lungs convulsed.  Saltwater spewed forth, making a divot in the sand as she coughed it from her lungs.  Shaking, exhausted, she didn’t realize she was not alone until Taal spoke.

“You were dead, human.  I heard your heart stop.”

The alien had a red gash down his side, the source of the blood.  It was oozing down into the water, staining the surf red.

Athenais looked down at her leg.  The bitten limb was pink and inflamed, but the bite wound was gone.  She eyed the slash along his side.  Not a slash, she realized, upon closer inspection.  A bite.  Scales all along his underside were missing, and she could see holes in the flesh in a semicircle, where his belly had almost been ripped out.  “You all right?” she asked tentatively.

“Sharks,” he said, looking out at the surf with a snarl.  “The Intruders brought them to wipe us out.”

“You scare them that much?”  Athenais got up slowly so as to not alarm him.

“The elders do,” he said, watching her warily.  “We grow throughout our lives.  The old ones can sink their big ships.”

That would do it. 
Slowly as not to scare him, Athenais straightened and padded to the surf.  Squatting, she cupped her hands in the saltwater.  Then she started walking back toward the alien.

“What are you doing?”  His words came out as a snarl.

“I’m gonna help you clean that up,” Athenais said, not slowing.  “You’ve got sand in it.”

Taal bristled.  “I only need to swim, human.”

“Well, right now, you can’t swim because that blood’s going to attract more sharks, isn’t it?”  She gestured at the crimson waves.

Taal glanced at the red surf and made a lupine scowl, showing sharp, needle-like teeth.  When he turned back to her, his alien face was filled with mistrust…and fear.

Athenais ignored the look he was giving her and dumped the water over his wound.  This she repeated until the sand around the alien was soaked with red and the gash was clean.  Taal watched her through the entire process, silver eyes sharp, clawed hand half-curled like he was about to bury his fingers in her chest and be done with it.

When she finished, Athenais went to sit down on a dry patch of sand and stared out at the waves.  That was just like Juno—bring in one hostile population to kill off another.  And, now that she thought about it, there was
another
thing that she’d never done… 

In all of her years, she hadn’t 1) bred humans as science projects, 2) sold or otherwise dealt in sentient flesh, 3) satisfied her ego by making billions worship her as a god, 4) pretended spiritual enlightenment to wide-eyed students while simultaneously heading an entire planetary criminal organization, nor 5) introduced an invasive species with the intent to destroy native wildlife.  She might’ve planted chamomile in her garden that spread over a hillside or two, but that was an accident.  Besides, it was pretty.  And it didn’t have teeth.

“You were dead, human,” Taal said again.

“If only,” Athenais snorted.  She glanced over at him.  The wound appeared to be doing better.  “You gonna be okay?  You need me to get you something to eat?”

Taal snorted.  “So you can get stranded again?  No thanks, human.”

“The name is Athenais, not ‘human.’” Athenais growled.

He gave her a flat, fishy stare.  “You are a human to me until you prove otherwise.”

“Oh mercy.”  Athenais rolled her eyes and got to her feet.  She walked up to him, ignoring the way his entire muscular length stiffened.  She squatted beside the wound to get a better look.  “This might need to be bandaged.  You got anything suitable?”  Upon closer inspection, something white poking from the pink caught her attention and Athenais realized there was a shark tooth stuck in the gash.  She reached out to remove it.

She was rewarded with a six-foot length of scale and muscle slamming into her face, knocking her completely off of her feet in a starburst of lights and broken bone.  She rolled backwards, stunned, and stared at the sky as she felt the bones in her skull knitting back together. 

He just tried to kill me,
she realized, a little stunned.

When she had regained enough of her senses to sit up, she scooted backwards and gave him an irritated look.  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, you harebrained squid.  We’re in the same damned boat!”

Taal had been staring at her, obviously surprised she’d sat up.  He hid it well, however, with a casual, seal-like snort.  “I’m not afraid of you, human.  I just don’t like to be touched by a disgusting land animal.”