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CHAPTERONE
KALLA
It’sdifficult to report on an incident that has no evidence to assess.
My planet soaked our enemies into its core like a feeding monster. A folk tale come to life, except it’s more gruesome than the stories make it seem. If Kar’Kal doesn’t accept you as its own kin, the lava from beneath will eat you alive.
I stand at the site of the most recent incident and hope that my brother’s body has not been taken to theKali’Kaalong with our enemies.
The soil is ash dark. When I crouch down to press my palm to it, it’s soft like clay and coats my skin. In Archaic times, they would paint themselves with it until they looked like they were cloaked in shadow. I resist the urge to swipe it over my face. I have better things to do than play in the dirt.
If only warpaints could hide us from those that hunt us now.
The hot stench of the boiling creek wafts toward me. Lava still bubbles here, even though the majority of the flow has cooled into thick black rock formations across this area of the valley. The remains of a structure poke out from the earth, twisted metal frames that once supported walls.
Past reports from the intel team had suggested what was going on. They were secondhand accounts, torn from Alliance intelligence correspondence. The first time I heard of it, the damages incurred were even worse than this. The Azza soldiers attempted to land three ships at the airfield nearby. That airfield is gone. I flew low over it on my way here, and the heat coming off the lava flow nearly seared the underside of my ship. Not one soldier survived.
Teal blue rivers have formed a pattern over the landscape, trickling like water over gray ground and swallowing plant life in its wake. Most magma is red like fire. Not the core of Kar’Kal, though. Our planet pumps blue blood like it’s unmated.
If my brother is below my feet now, the only sliver of comfort I could find would be the knowledge that he rests on our home planet, Kar’Kal. Neither of us were born here, but it is where we belong. How bittersweet that my first time setting foot on this ground was the same time I lost my brother forever. I’ll never forget the way he glared at me with so much hatred, calling me a Deviant coward. My own flesh and blood was turned against me by the regime that once controlled this land. Back then, I wasn’t sure this planet could ever be home. Now there is a chance to reclaim it, but the place still feels strange to me. It is haunted by the many corpses that litter the populated areas. An entire world of people, snuffed out in moments by the Azza’s poison clouds. The attack was the second time I mourned my brother, certain he could not have survived it because of the chip they put into his head. That abominable invention was a weakness they did not anticipate could destroy their entire army. Not even the Azza expected the tactic to be so successful.
Up above, a blinking light in the sky shows the location of the Azza battle station that circles the atmosphere. A skeleton crew resides there, trying desperately to craft a new plan to secure the planet. Technically, Mak didn’t ask me to land on the side of their station, infiltrate their systems, and kill every soldier on board. He actually asked me to report on the status of their current attempts to land, but both of us assumed they would be further along by now. We were sure that we would need the support of a proper army to take control of Kar’Kal, but there is barely enough Azza here to defend anything.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to execute what remains of their team.
I could call Mak and ask him whether he agrees that this would be a strategic victory. I could tell him there’s a unique opportunity to slip right into our home planet and secure it with nothing but our little armada.
But then, there would be the chance he would disagree with me…
I leave behind the failed Azza landing site and walk across the valley, back to my ship.
I’ve stopped off in other places, and my steps have never stirred any resistance from the core. It accepts me. I’m no expert in geological phenomena, but something happened the day so many of my species died. There are black rock formations all over the cities and in fallow fields of untended crops. I captured as many images as I could. When I return, there’ll be someone with a mind for science to assess what it all means. I have every reason to simply get in my craft, slip out of the atmosphere undetected by the Azza battle station, and fly home with the information.
But I’m not going to do that.
All the disturbing scenery across this abandoned planet really puts me in the mood to smash someone’s head in.
When I sit down in the pilot’s seat of my craft, I think it over, checking my comm reports to distract myself from the mounting bloodlust.
He’s alive,the message says.We’re having a mating dance before he disappears on us again.
“Thank the rutting spirit,” I mutter, flexing my fingers over the steering controls. Because of my position, it will have been anywhere between a day or two since this message was sent.
A male I care about more than anything, stabbed nearly to death on my account. I stare at the blinking light through the tinted roof of my tiny pilot’s booth. If I leave now, I might return home in time to see the mating dance.
But it won’t take me long to exterminate the vermin inhabiting that battle station.
The choice is obvious. I take my ship around the planet’s surface until I break into the atmosphere opposite the battle station. Then I creep up on them and find a place to cling to the side of their vessel like a bug. The difficult part is finding a place to enter without setting off alarms. I’m forced to climb around the side of the station with my breather on until I feel an exhaust port.
And as I have done countless times, I slither inside, pocket my breather, and pull up the hood of my cloak. It closes over my face until all of me is covered.
My cloak allows me to move undetected by the station’s security sensors. It cost me cycles of bounty work. The highest rates are given for near-impossible tasks, and I try to forget the uglier moments of that phase in my life. It was worth it — worth pissing Mak off with my unavailability, worth killing an innocent male, worth days spent in a prison, worth stealing the father of young children from them. I did many terrible things to acquire this technological marvel. And I will do many terrible things now that I have it. It’s beautiful when the micro screens are inactive — they look like a million sequins catching the light. When they are activated, they shift to mirror the images around your body, masking you from color and movement-based sensors. The lining masks my heat signature, and unless one stands right in front of me and stares hard, I am invisible.
Amazing tech comes at amazing prices. At my height, they charged me rutting extra for it, too.
The Alliance closely monitors everyone who acquires the tech, and only one is produced each passing by the leading military tech corp based in the Rathe System. Somehow, the Alliance lobbied them not to sell to the Azza, to which the neutral state replied that they would not sell to the Alliance either. I suspect that they will one day be able to produce this on the exterior of entire ships — a frightening prospect.
I slip through the halls and slaughter whomever I find until each and every corner of this station stinks of death. Soldiers, mostly. Some of the others are scientists and station technicians. They all die, preferably without too much screaming. The smell of dead Azza is worse than any other species’ corpses. They immediately release their ink and whatever other foul fluids reside within their bodies, filling the air with the scent of rot.
