Future Winds (5 page)

The city was impressive and diverse in its intricate sharp architecture. Large holes reside on all sides of the greater edges, highways interconnected other cities and stretched to cover over an eighth of planet Flare’s entirety.

The Vai-Zik empire stretched as far as it could build its cities within the earth. Spanning from the farthest reaches of the western border of the empire lay underground lava streams that flowed to the southernmost section. To the north: worms, golems, and rebel outcast clans claimed barren wasteland. This left expansion to the east as the only option for growth. Though since falling into the malfeasance grasp of the overlords, queens had halted all expansion. More land wasn’t needed with a declining populous. Nonetheless, the Vai-Zik empire was vast and what they owned they owned in plenty.

Ahead stood the great colosseum. It towered over all other buildings within the city. Lai-Kai and Kio-Kai took flight to enter the arena from above and avoid the massive lines that spilled out the structure’s many entrances: where gamblers placed bids on fights to come.

The two found some seats high up in the stands of the east most side. The lower level was filling up quickly as the fights were to begin shortly.

Kio-Kai surveyed the ground floor of the arena. Two main gates on both ends served as the entrance points for combatants.

“So, who is fighting that makes this so special?” Kio-Kai asked.

“Well, remember when Brutalius got injured winning that fight against the hydra worm?” Lai-Kai reminisced.

“Yea, both were undefeated crowd favorites,” Kio-Kai answered.

“Sure were. Brutalius ripped off each of the worm’s five relentless heads one by one. It was the craziest, longest fight I have ever seen and not once did the level of excitement drop. Anyway this is Brutalius’s debut return to the arena,” she excitedly explained.

Brutalius once belonged to a civilization of stone golems called Anolems. Not to be confused with a Rock Giant: a nomadic four legged behemoth of stone who grew plant life along its enormous body and who actually fed upon the Anolems. The Anolems were a much smaller two legged race of purely jagged, molten rock. Despite being bulky, mighty, and boulderous warriors they were mostly considered to be a neutral faction when left alone. It was rumored that these stone lava golems were born from volcanoes and built up their thick outer coat shells from the consumption of nutrient rich rocks.

Brutalius was captured by the Vai-Zik, as per demand, for the overlords. A champion within the arena, his wins were countless and it had reached a point where the overlords deemed it unfair for him to fight any outlaw or slave sentenced to the arena alone one-on-one. So teams were formed, some even given weapons or tools if they behaved well in captivity.

Today’s match-up was a squad of four rebels to the Vai-Zik empire versus Brutalius. The four rebels belonged to a small clan that broke away in a resistance movement many years ago in response to the overlords that enslaved and killed their respective queen. Their will was entirely their own and today they would pay the price for such ownership.

Vai-Zik entering the arena always had their wings smashed and broken: eliminating the risk of their escape but done in such a way that they could still flutter--a tactical necessity.

The crowd, of roughly sixty-five thousand Vai-Zik, erupted into cheers as the four rebels entered the arena. It was not so much that anyone really wanted outlaws to win but rather it was a custom to honor their distant brothers and sisters, especially when facing their imminent death.

“Who doesn’t love an underdog in a battle to the death?” Lai-Kai laughed.

All four were hunters and despite their broken wings, all but one appeared pretty healthy and strong. Certainly any other than the single, sickly looking runt could serve as a formidable matchup against Kio-Kai.

The sickly looking hunter was thinner and stood behind the other three. He was hunched over as he walked out at a slower pace than the others. Even facing their demise, the four radiated a sense of integrity and conviviality. Today the overlords were going to break that honor and spit in the face of the camaraderie the four held for one another.

“We gather in the great coliseum to watch a sacred blood tribute of four insurgents for their crimes against the hive. Because our lord beith so graceful and merciful, these four radicals will be given the opportunity to earn a life of servitude if they can be victorious in three matches in the arena!” A cold voice echoed through a sea of Vai-Zik. Only this voice was not one of a drone, nor one of a hunter, and certainly not the voice of a queen. This was a voice of an overlord. It spoke the language of the Vai-Zik fluently but he was not born of the hive nor did he belong to any clan.

“If anyone could manage to defeat Brutalius in combat, they should be granted freedom and awarded eternal prominence,” Lai-Kai snickered. “But no, if they manage to beat the champion, they still would then have to win twice more against other opponents.”

She was amused and why shouldn’t she be? This was after all a spectacle of amusement for Vai-Zik. Tear the clans apart and run down and belittle the ones that oppose the overlords.

Kio-Kai squinted, trying to find the speaker in the crowd across the arena.

“Who is that?” he asked Lai-Kai as he searched for the announcer.

“It’s an overlord. I do not remember his name but he is in charge of overseeing the colosseum,” she answered.

Kio-Kai had heard stories as a child of the overlords. They were rumored to be a plague that had hold of the queens of the empire. For far too long, the overlords leached from the Vai-Zik. This was the driving factors to many clans rebelling, and being executed, when Kio-Kai was just a larva.

Kio Kai found him in the crowd and quickly became uneasy. He couldn’t believe it. He thought this was his first time ever laying eyes on an overlord but it was not. There was another time he had witnessed one of these soft sacks of meat and flesh. It was only a few hours ago, when he had found one in the wreckage of the silver craft that fell from the sky. Not only had he captured, and killed it, but he also fed it to a grinder for processing.

The alarms of New Horizon sounded off a high pitch squeal and Ness jumped up smashing his face on the bunk above. Blue lights flashed, filling the corridors.

“Blue lights. Red means fire, white means lockdown, green is a breach in the haul, and blue is buckle your damn seat belts we are about to enter accelerated warp,” a much younger voice from below recited.

Ness lay back in his bunk clutching his face in pain as blood dripped from his nose. He reached for his seat belt and strapped himself in.

The pioneers were expected to make landfall this week. If they had reached a hospitable planet, could they have constructed a warp gate already? Ness knew for weeks aboard the carrier named New Horizon, that he would soon be on a desolate new planet called Flare. He knew for months that most all of humanity were going to board these carriers and set sail off into the future, but it was only now that it all seemed to sink in.

“I thought they were going to announce when the pioneer squad landed?” Ness called out.

Now buckled in, he again attended to his bleeding nose.

“Were going to do a lot of things,” Lucas complained from below. “We were supposed to have chicken and biscuits for dinner last night but had slop like the day before and the day before that. We were supposed to be on the same ship as mom but we are going ahead because we are ‘young and fit’, we are supposed to be on a ‘carrier fit to transport over a million people comfortably’ but we have been living in three by ten bunks stacked five high for weeks!”

Lucas was a talker, skinny and awkward in his demeanor. The messy brown hair, brown eyed boy of fourteen had gotten through life on his words over his looks or ability to do much manual work.

Ness, eighteen, was a little taller than his younger brother. His hair, also brown, was much shorter and his eyes mostly observed rather than wondered. He had more muscle about him--broader shoulders and a face not quite as long and slender as his younger brothers. 

After a few minutes of verbal silence, amidst the blue eerie lights that flashed brightly in all directions, Lucas called up to his older sibling, “Hey Ness?”

“Yea, buddy?”

“Do you think that we are slaves?” The younger boy questioned in a prepubescent squeak.

It was probably the most debated subject since the creation of artificial intelligence. The fear was that anyone who could not afford a ticket off of earth had to meet the requirements to sign up for a worker placement program thus; essentially, selling themselves into a life of slavery.

Ness wasn’t sure of the correct answer, so he lied. Way he saw it, he had a fifty/fifty shot of getting it right anyway. “Na, we aren’t slaves Lucas. You think Ma would have let us get on this ship if that were the case?”

The younger boy began to quietly weep. “I miss mom,” he reminded his older brother, just as he had the day before and the day before that.

“Yea me too buddy, but we will see her soon,” Ness lied once more.

The last time Ness saw his mother she hugged them: squeezing them ever so tight as she cried just moments before they left for the carrier ship. She promised she would be on a flight down the line, but she did not meet the requirements of worker placement and living in poverty meant she would never in a million years be able to afford a ticket.

Either you paid for your ticket, you were in the military, a political leader, or fit the requirements of the current controversial worker placement ticket program. One of the baseline requirements was being under the age forty-five. Their mother had celebrated her forty sixth birthday just three weeks prior to phase one ships launching off into orbit and thus she was left behind.

The government promised that the next wave of flights to leave earth would have less strict requirements for worker placement: being that jobs will have, by then, been established in the new world.

Recent grumblings amongst civilians planted the idea in Ness’ head that there was no phase two planned. He refused to believe it, but the point was raised-- if all the rich, political elite, members of the military, and young fit civilians capable of doing immense strenuous labor, all the AI drones, warp drives, and advanced tech had been rushed off of earth, then who was left behind to build more transport ships?

The flaw in that cynical assumption is not all members of military, AI tech, and warp drive tech were within the fleet. Some did indeed stay behind, but comparatively, the numbers were minimal.

The two boys shared their small living quarters with a couple hundred other people. Labeled block sixty-five, it was one of a couple hundred thousand that resided within the ship. Block sixty-five were assigned to construction labor like most other blocks aboard New Horizon. Their first task when they arrive would be to lay the foundation for the first future city, Liberty.

Four navy security guards, wearing white and green armor, were assigned to their block. They strapped themselves into the walls near the exit. A sharp squeal overtook the living quarters the two boys shared with all the other civilians as space began to bend, hiss and cry around them.

This was no drill we are actually warping
, Ness thought,
I mean, technically, we have been warping since shortly after departing earth, but the gate on the other end is active and pulling us at a much faster rate now.

Lucas began to vomit and cry below, but the noise the small boy emitted was seemingly silent, overshadowed by the squeal the ship made as it accelerated at unimaginable speeds through the galaxy.

***

Aisha sprinted ahead of the two men, partly from excitement and partly from desire to beat them to reach the large carrier that had landed ahead. Her drone, Pisces, orbited around her as she ran and this forced a smile on her face.

If this were indeed a race, Tyler and Aries would be in second place at a steady but light jog, and the large brute Abram would come in last, panting, as he struggled to keep up.

She stopped short at one of the carrier's main doors. The thing was massive, one of the biggest structures Aisha had ever seen in her life. Behind multiple feet of solid steel were a little over two million lives packed into a vessel manufactured originally to transport half that amount.

“Hey, open up,” Aisha yelled with no response.

She picked up a rock and tossed it. The rock slammed against the hull of the ship but the sound was mostly insignificant. Like a pebble being thrown at a passing train. It would be impossible for anyone inside to hear her. What she did was mostly out of amusement for herself.

“Don’t go scaring them off now,” Tyler said with a chuckle, joining her from behind.

“Maybe they realize this hot desert is no place to call home,” Abram panted out as he approached, sweat beading down his face.

As if on cue the large, broad blast door began to open: hydraulics sprayed air and dust in all directions. This time the three of them were wise enough to cover their faces. The dust settled and down the platform walked a woman. Her armor was colored blue which meant she was a high ranking commander of some sort. Her stripes and badge coated along her chest confirmed as such. She was of grave importance. Two men escorted her down the platform. Equipped with high powered energy rifles their armor was colored blue and white, meaning they were only a single rank below Aisha, Abram, and Tyler.

Aisha dropped her smile and joined the other two with a clean emotionless face that reflect obedience. Together they formed a horizontal line, straightening their backs, and saluted. All three drones dropped to the ground to the rightmost side of the soldiers they were assigned to, for this was a custom.

“At ease, soldiers,” the woman consoled in a thick British accent.

She took a long, heavy breath of the fresh air and exhaled as her eyes thoroughly scanned the distant horizon. Something about the skew of reddish color this planet gave off awarded the barren desert of rock and dust a certain sense of beauty.

The woman then squatted down to the ground to grasp some of the soil in her hands. She watched it spread between her fingers and fall to the ground.

She began to smirk “So here we are, the edge of the galaxy on a prayer, to grow beans in the desert.”

“I am no farmer ma’am but I am willing to bet you got all kinds of advanced gadgets on that ship that could grow fish in a tube,” Abram conveyed.

This turned her smirk into a full smile on her awkwardly thin face. “That we do. Though I admit, I too know very little of farming. We have some great scientist aboard eager to come out and play, but first we must rendezvous on what we know of our new found world.”

She rose to her feet and brushed her hands free of the dirt she held just a moment ago.

“My name is Vice Admiral Natalia Fox. Until Admiral Vetrov arrives on his carrier, I will be leading commander of the Project Salvations naval defense fleet. Now please, tell me everything you have gathered thus far.”

That’s right, we shook hands with this woman once during our training
, Aisha thought.
Figures she wouldn’t actually remember any of us by name.

“Not much-” Abram began to answer, but was cut off.

“In absence of officer Leon Fleisher, I am commanding officer Tyler Flynn. This is specialist Aisha Sayegh and specialist Abram Orlov,” Tyler trumpeted out, interrupting Abram.

Wow,
Aisha thought,
that came off rude as hell. That was very much unlike Tyler but in the presence of such a high ranking commander it was important to follow the edict in chain of command.

“And what happened to officer Fleisher?” asked the admiral.

Her eyes darted about the three of them looking for any sort of discontent.

The friendly welcoming party Aisha had hoped for, perhaps with balloons and cake, had been squashed before it had even started.

“As I am sure you are aware, there were six pioneers total, everyone made landfall clustered relatively close to one another but one ship containing Valerie Fournier went astray landing a little further from the rest, off to the east. Failed attempts in communication resulted in Fleisher and Kaito Shimizu venturing off to bring her back to the group.”

“I see. And you have yet to hear back from the other half of your squad?” She continued with her interrogation. “How long have they been gone?”

“Well, they left soon after we landed this morning.”

“Wait,” she frowned, “you guys made landfall this morning and constructed the warp gate in a single afternoon? Then continued to pull in a vessel packed full of civilians to your location? Did you even follow through with inspections to be sure the gate was constructed correctly?!” Her tone now elevated to a level reflecting her annoyance in the three.

“Well-” Tyler tried to defend.

She was quick to cut him off, snapping her fingers to one of her escorts. “Bring me two chief mechanics. Abram will escort them to the warp gate to thoroughly inspect it for malfunction before we even consider pulling in another carrier.” Her eyes jumped back over to Tyler. “Pardon my lack of compassion, but when there is zero communication from you and your squad up until my ship and I, with millions of lives aboard, lives I am directly responsible for, were ripped from one end of the galaxy to the other using super advanced technology, you three, half the number of your actual squad, hastily constructed in one afternoon,” she paused, “I just cannot help but feel a little uneasy with that.”

“That was the plan though, no?” Tyler faltered.

“If your mission is to escort a lady to the prom, do you go to her bedroom early in the wee hours of the a.m. unannounced and drag her out by her hair like some caveman with a club?” she questioned with intimidation.

Tyler rallied a dash of courage. “Ma’am our mission was not to escort a lady to the prom, it was to land on a scorching, hot planet, establish a warp gate, and begin pulling in ships to establish a new world to call home. Now we tried to send outbound communications but the anomalies that be would not allow it to be done with success.”

Her frown turned to a very awkward smile, “Well, as long as you gave it the ole college try.” Then her smile returned back to a serious scowl, “Go find the other half of your squad, Tyler Flynn.”

Were all the captains of these space carriers bipolar sociopaths?
Aisha wondered.

***

Leon and Kaito walked back towards the original landing site at a much slower pace than the one from when they left. Not only had they engaged in conflict that was debatably avoidable but they also had not found or retrieved their comrade. 

“So you wanna talk about that cave?” Kaito suggested.

“What’s there to talk about?” Leon responded coldly.

I was afraid he would say that,
Kaito thought, “Well, what was that bug thing?”

Leon stopped--turning to face Kaito while Scorpio continued ahead not noticing. “It was just that, a big nasty bug that I squished. I had a moment of fear for both my life and yours and acted on my instinct to survive. Was it the right thing to do? I have no idea but given the scenario again, I would have shot it in the fucking face, ten out of ten times. Any more questions?”