Raven Tide

Shit!

Fucking drugs!

I pushed and slid back across the tiled floor while releasing a small detonation disk from my gauntlet and flicking it at the soldier’s boots.

“Chyani!” I pulled our bodies together with a sharp spasm and took cover behind the exam table.

BLAM

Everything shook and in an instant, the soldier’s heartbeats were gone.

“Do you know the path to the exit?” I didn’t wait for the dust to settle and lifted Chyani up to her feet while tightening the clamp on my belt.

“Yes, there’s also a map in your gauntlet,” Chyani led the way through the ragged hole in the wall and into an observation chamber with a dead body untouched by the explosion.

The man in the lab coat was missing his hand, had been castrated, and was pierced in the brain.

Did she do this?

Sirens were blaring and the white lights had eclipsed in flashing red. It was the last thing my throbbing headache needed.

“Your stuff is in here!” Chyani pulled a severed hand from her coat pocket and used it to unlock the door at the end of the narrow hallway.

’Wait,” I stopped her from pulling the handle. “I hear soldiers gathering on the other side.”

“Good ears,” Chyani let go of the door. “What do we do?”

I opened my gauntlet and found the map of the compound. Venom Heart was streaming up-to-date scans of the entire facility.

How did she sync this?

I shook my quills and shifted to another holographic window.

All my tech items contained locators. They were scattered in the next chamber as the human had stated.

I activated my cannon blaster and tapped into my bio-mask’s targeting system to launch a few pulses into the ceiling.

We heard the crash and the men shouting for cover followed by silence.

“It’s clear, but stay low,” I opened the door and we sprinted in. My muscles still felt squishy and it helped that Chyani stuck close to help me keep my balance.

She pried loose a metal bar from the wreckage and began smashing the encased tables.

It was bewildering that someone so small and soft contained the potential for such precision violence. I supposed that’s why humans persisted in being one of our favored prey.

Piece by piece I redressed while keeping vigilant of any incoming or surviving soldiers. My vision stabilized and the effects of the tranquilizers were fading from my system.

“Is that everything?” Chyani hopped between the rubble from the collapsed ceiling. “We need to get to an elevator. We’re really far underground.”

I pulled up my map, “There are five shafts, they may quarantine this level.”

We peeked out into the hall. It was empty and my map highlighted the quickest route to our left.

“Not that way!” Chyani grabbed my arm pointing to the signs posted above the colorful lines striating the corridor walls. “There’ll be more guards and turrets.”

“Can you read this?”

“No,” she backpedaled and waved her arms for me to follow. “But look at it. All big and extra pointy. I saw them above posted on the yellow doors guarded by armed soldiers.”

“My layout says it’s quicker,” I closed my map. “But I will concede to your first-hand experience.”

She led me down a winding path and into a cramped utility junction. Then the passageway split off into a labyrinth of dark passages.

She was correct, there were no obstructions but how was she navigating all of this on memory?

“Umm..” Chyani raised her hand, activating a little flashlight built into her synthetic palm, and traced it along an orange pipe printed with distressed serial numbers. Then she tugged me to the left again. “This way!”

“The little round squiggles on the cold orange pipes will take us to the elevator I used to get down here.”

“Why did you come alone?” I whispered while ducking under a series of low-coiling pipes.

“I...” Chyani nibbled at her lip. “I sent your message, I think. But there was a timer, at least it ticked down like one. It was going really slow and I didn’t know how much time you had left. If I hadn’t figured out Venom Heart’s menus I wouldn’t have even bothered trying to take off.”

I froze momentarily. “How did you access Venom Heart’s system?”

“Your gauntlet,” Chyani laughed. “Like you said, I swiped it and she let me in.”

“She?”

“Oh, uh...” Chyani spun back at me with a shy glance. “Sometimes I anthropomorphize things when I’m alone.”

“The emergency switch on my gauntlet didn’t work?”

“It was on the gauntlet?!” Chyani stopped. “Where? Show me.”

I flipped up a big flap on the underside and revealed a giant red X-shaped button.

“Are you kidding! Why couldn’t you have hit it yourself?”

“Because it would have locked you out of my ship,” I lowered my head and shut the flap. “Sorry, I wasn’t clear... I didnt-”

“No, it’s not your fault,” Chyani settled her breath. “People were shooting at you, it’s a miracle you managed to explain as much as you did.”

I was glad to be alive and free of my keepers but having Chyani be my rescuer only compounded my guilt and dishonor. I had failed both her and my clan by being captured and when I left her alone with those abbreviated commands I did so with the expectation of meeting my end.

The beacon was meant to summon a burn crew to wipe all traces of my body and yautja existence from this facility. I left her with my gear in the hopes that it would be enough to aid her in returning to the ship. If she succeeded my clan would have found her and reviewed Venom Heart’s log entries detailing why I believed she should be studied.

Hopefully... they would agree with me.

“Here we go,” Chyani rounded an inconspicuous corner and presented me with a tiny dilapidated service elevator.

The lights on the external panel confirmed that it was still functioning and it was too hazardous and time-consuming to attempt to climb all the way up the shaft with Chyani on my back.

“I didn’t really plan an exit,” Chyani stepped inside. “Do you think it will hold the two of us?”

The small compartment creaked when I squeezed in but it held firm as the door closed.

“It appears so,” I chuckled with my head hunched over her and against the roof while trying not to step on her toes.

Chyani pressed the top button and the elevator took off.

We stood there smushed together in awkward silence until she said, “What’s a razkur?”

“It is one of three species that are members of the Nexus. Yautja, Razkur, and the Abura,” I decided it was only fair that she fully understood why my presence put her in danger while we were in this sector. “Razkurs are formerly subterranean, have long white rabbit-like ears, and live in a world filled with sound and harmony. Their species also share a symbiotic relationship with the Abura. It is what my mother is and why my DNA triggered the Iddril to attack us. I resemble my fathers more but I inherited her scale color. Most yautja are not white.”

“Fathers... as in plural?”

“Three are necessary to procreate for razkurs,” I explained. “One of many excuses the Iddril have for hating razkurs.”

“That’s...” Chyani darted her eyes away. “Kinda cool. Not the hating part!”

Chyani flung her hands up and tangled her fingers in my long quills. She bumped into the wall while batting the tendrils away. “That’s terrible, but the extra family thing, that’s neat. I’ve never met any other species before. Galactic Headquarters is pretty strict about what information trickles down to the public. They always bombard the news streams with gloom and doom beyond the safe zone which doesn’t seem statistically possible.”

“We are different and we are not.”

“Yeah,” the side of Chyani’s mouth curled up.

Her scent shifted into a rousing sweet aroma, like cherry blossoms and cotton and her cheeks flushed pink when her external temperature cranked up two degrees warmer.

I held my breath trying to redirect my concentration on the countless Iddril above, undoubtedly converging and preparing to kill us. I knew humans were incapable of consciously modulating their pheromone production but I was still two decades away from being physically capable of dominating my own hormones.

“I need to inject a virus,” I stated when the elevator dinged.

“What?” Chyani hung back while I inspected the surrounding area.

“Before we leave, I need to access their network and upload a program to wipe the data that they’ve harvested.”

“Ooh,” Chyani stuck close behind me as we crept into a secluded hallway. “Can I see your map?”

I kept watch while she surveyed the building’s schematic.

“This is how I got into the building,” she pointed to the scale miniature of the southern wall. “But I had to cross a major checkpoint. There were a lot of scientists headed this way when I first entered.” Her hand drifted north. “I bet they need lots of integrated tech to do their work.”

“Then we go there, if we are able.”

It was shocking that we had encountered no resistance in our departure. Chyani’s route may have been obscure and rambling but we moved quickly and concealed until we arrived at a yellow wall made of goo.

“Don’t touch it,” I flipped through various spectrums on my bio-mask to identify its composition.

“I didn’t plan to.”

“It will kill anything that isn’t Iddril,” I read off the intel fed into my bio-mask monitor.

“These guys really don’t like anything that’s other.”

"No,” I ran my hand over the side metal panes framing the wall of goo. “According to our records, they don’t view your species as a threat and often trade with unsavory human smugglers, but they’ve perfected eliminating undesirable genetics.”

“Not to mention rampant sexual harassment.”

My eyes went wide and shot down at her then I punched my wrist blades deep into the side panels and raked the metal open, all the while picturing that castrated dead man in the observation chamber.

Chyani didn’t have a violent temperament, far from it. But she had proven to be highly adept when pushed into life-and-death situations. Whatever loathsome violation that man had committed to provoke her I am certain he deserved her retribution.

“Holy crap!” Chyani jolted back as I tore a fresh yautja-sized hole into the wall beside the gelatin barrier.

The sparking hole exposed a room full of screaming technicians. They scrambled out a sliding door across the wide laboratory and set off alarms as they fled.

“Don’t let anyone say you’re not a problem solver,” Chyani snickered as she climbed through the gap. “Here, this computer has a lot of tubes and wires. It’s gotta be hooked up to the network.”

I growled in concurrence and plugged in a wire from my wristcomm then gave the command to upload the program.

In seconds, soldiers and armed androids filled the laboratory. I yanked out the plug and leaped up on the table, firing short controlled bursts from my plasma blaster to scatter them while I bounded straight at them.

One of the soldiers tried to skirt past me and take down Chyani but I snagged him with a well-aimed launch of my wire-mesh net. He collapsed and crumpled into a rapidly shrinking caterpillar.

Chyani screamed when his blood splattered on her face but she was otherwise unscathed.

Focused on her long-term safety, I ignored her and pushed forward, shredding through the androids with my wrist blades and then twirling my combistick out to full length.

The soldiers attempted to corner me by the wall but I could smell their fear, they didn’t want to get near me.

I roared, declaring that their pitiful projectile weapons were futile. They were unworthy. I closed my eyes and exhaled, bracing my reflexes to dispense the consequences for sullying my blades.

The first went up on the tip of my combstick then flew across the room. The second had his throat slit by the pike at the back end of my staff. The third got his head crushed in half by my claws and the fourth never saw my blades sink in and rip his head and spine clean off.

Then the others ran.

I knew better this time not to chase after them.

“How fortified was the checkpoint you entered through?” I called out to Chyani.

“There were half a dozen raised turrets and about twenty guards.”

“I suppose it’s as good a direction as any,” I turned and helped the delicate human navigate around the dismembered bodies.

“Did you upload your virus?”

“Yes,” I led the way back through the hole in the wall and pushed aside a curtain of sparking wires. “A burn team will still come to finalize the cleanup.”

“What will they do to the people?” Chyani crouched through the opening.

“All witnesses will be neutralized.”

Chyani was silent but then she nodded.

“It is not our preference,” I knew an explanation was pointless. “But it is protocol. Great effort is made to minimize suffering.”

“Is that why you kill them so quickly?” Chyani stared up at me in earnest. “That thing you do with their heads?”

“Yes,” I looked her in the eye. “Killing is for claiming honor, trophies, and power, but never for the satisfaction of inflicting pain.”

“Even after what they did to you?”

“A pure hunt must be earned.”

Chyani touched my blood-stained hand and squeezed it. “I’m glad they didn’t hurt you.”

“As am I,” I smiled behind my bio-mask and wagged my head for us to continue moving. “But you should be aware they have a weapon that can stop me. In the jungle, did you hear a loud sound?”

“The gunfire and the screaming?”

“No, it must be beyond your hearing range.” I took point as we traveled through the empty corridors. “Razkurs have sensitive ears and so do I. The source was a big metal box that opened and released a sound that incapacitated me instantly. If they use it again I will try and fight but willpower may not suffice.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Should I fall,” I stopped and leveled my face to hers. “You must run and not attempt another rescue.”

“Ooh, ok.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” she nodded with her soft brown eyes holding firm to her word.

We arrived at the junction leading to Chyani’s exit but a nest of mobile turrets cut off our route.

“There’s only one other way,” Chyani kept her voice low and hid behind the corner.

I took her hand and pulled her back the way we came. The mobile turrets behind us were restless and marching toward our location.

“They are prepared and so are we. We each know what we must do Chyani.”

“They’ll kill you...”

“I will give you time to escape and live,” I marched us into what was unquestionably an ambush. “My failure will go no further.”

“No,” Chyani raised her voice and tugged her hand away. “You only fail when you make up your mind to. Ok, you got captured. Big woop! Suck it up. Everyone gets their butt kicked. I came here to rescue you and I’m not going to let you fuck it up!”

I spun and recoiled my head at her sudden outburst. It was bizarre to hear Chyani curse.

“I was...”

“I, I, I...!!” Chyani sharpened her eyes. “You said this was about protecting me, so stop prioritizing yourself and listen to me. I’m the expert when it comes to keeping myself alive!”

How was this possible? This little human had every reason to cower in fear but the awareness of imminent defeat only made her stronger.

“What do you propose?”

“You said there was a weapon that can hurt you,” Chyani stepped out in front. “We take it out then you can kill them and we can escape, right?”

“Yes...” I trailed behind her. “But they’re blocking all the other exits except this route. This is a trap.”

“I know,” Chyani snapped. “Except you missed out on chatting one-on-one with the creepos they put in charge. They’re expecting you, not me. To them, women are playthings. As you say, it’s a weakness.”

My chest thrummed in anticipation.

She was right.

I had no idea how to wield such a weapon but I didn’t need to. I only needed to listen. This was Chyani’s specialty.

We sat crouched off to the side of a wide entrance lobby. More goo walls were blocking every other hallway and a small army awaited us outside.

“That’s a lot,” Chyani knelt over the map hovering above my gauntlet.

Three dozen mobile turrets, four heavily armored invader-class rovers armed to the teeth, more than a hundred soldiers and battle-augmented androids, and behind them all sat the box. Sealed and lying in wait for my arrival, like a malicious jack-in-the-box primed to paralyze me in pain.

“The box is here,” I showed Chyani.

“Do you think they’ll buy that I’m your prisoner?” She quirked her eyebrow and an impish smile.

“Doubtful.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“I’m detecting additional overlaying sensors,” I tinked my claw on my bio-mask. “My cloak’s utility may be limited.”

“Any chance I could use it?”

“No,” I chittered and thumbed to the armory attached to my back. “The power source is built into my harness.”

“Then you’ll have to go first and get their attention,” Chyani sat tucked on her knees while removing her lab coat. “Can you make yourself into a major distraction?”

“Yes, but the box...?”

“You leave that one to me,” she stood up and shook out her hands.

“Very well,” I sighed.

“Promise me, Raven Tide,” Chyani touched my arm. “No matter what happens, even to me, you keep fighting.”

I growled begrudgingly, “I promise.”

I activated my cloak and clicked my tusks into the lobby, letting the sound echo to put my enemies on edge.

The soldiers and androids had their gun barrels trained on the glass doors. A razor disk would be ideal for this gambit but I hadn’t yet earned one.

Grenades were a classic but Chyani’s participation inspired me to pioneer a fresh line of havoc on these arrogant assholes.

I retrieved the remote speaker drone gifted from my mother on the day of my successful Blooding. She claimed one day it could prove to be my most powerful weapon.

I will live and tell her the tale of this victory!

I released my wrist blades once again and cut out a wide modular panel from the wall.

“You will know when it is time to move,” I bellowed, raising the massive hunk of metal over my head.

Chyani nodded with her little heart trembling at the sight of me. Then I twisted my torso and flung the slab like a discus out the front door.

I dispatched the little floating speaker orb into the cloud of destruction then discreetly crawled above the hail of gunfire along the ceiling.

The speaker orb had recently been upgraded to include its own camouflage and drifted unseen out into the courtyard.

The small army ebbed their gunfire and searched the area frantically for any sign of movement.

This is where being a third razkur has its advantages. When incensed or hunting, we could instantly silence our organs and cool the outer layer of our scales, but with training, it is a skill we summon at will.

Even with the Iddril’s additional sensors I could prowl slowly through their ranks and take refuge on the underside of a mounted turret.

“Be ready to blast him!” A boastful Commander shouted from the back. He ordered his men to move forward while he sat safely hunkered inside an armored rover.

I clicked into the microphone built into my bio-mask, amplifying the sound out of the tiny orb speaker.

The soldiers jumped and turned their fire away from my hiding spot, giving me the opportunity to move and attach small-time delayed explosives with each new position.

I manipulated their onslaught only briefly, diverting their attention and keeping their nerves off balance by creating the illusion of a roaring monster stalking them from every angle.

Their hearts were frantic.

“You are unworthy,” I spoke in the Iddril tongue.

The soldier reduced their response shots to sporadic busts but huddled in tight because they had no idea where I was.

“I will paint this compound in your blood,” I made my way toward the cowardly Commander. “There will be no pleasure.”

Quietly, I dispatched the guards posted around the commander’s vehicle. Then I tore off the rover door.

“Only inescapable death!”

The timers on my explosives cycled down to zero and unleashed a devastating cascade of fire.

I took the foolish Commander by the throat and slammed him face down into the dirt.

He yowled for only a fraction of a second before I separated his spine and skull from his flesh, coccyx bone first.

I leaped onto the rover and howled with their leader’s skull on full display then chucked the useless remains into the mass of soldiers.

Amid the smoke and chaos reaped by the bright busts from my plasma cannon, I heard Chyani’s feet take off across the courtyard. Bullets whizzed by her head too close for comfort but she kept on running.

Chyani!

Fuck! I knew this was the plan but agreeing to put her in harm’s way went against the grain.

I shook my head and long quills and turned my concentration on the enemy. I would keep my word, no matter what.

Still cloaked, I dove into the black swirling clouds and put my blades to work.

The soldiers, even the androids, were disheveled and poorly organized. It was despicable engaging with these miserable creatures but it was necessary. There was no escape otherwise.

Suddenly, a precursor snap triggered my stomach to tighten.

The box!

The metal folds of the giant box flexed open and with it came that excruciating sound. I tried swinging my combistick but my vision was spinning.

“No!” I roared and gutted another soldier where he stood but I was slow and staggered.

The soldiers opened fire with close-range shotguns, puncturing my chest with green gaping holes. My camouflage flickered intermittently.

I continued slashing, hacking off shotgun barrels and the limbs that were holding them steady. I told myself there was no pain, only Chyani.

Blood loss and that agonizing sound was wearing me down.

Then, abruptly as it had started, the sound stopped and all I heard was the faint crunch of synthetic flesh.

“Chyani!”

The gears in my brain down-shifted into something feral.

I thrust my combstick to its furthest, my hand clamped at the back just in front tail-end pike, and twirled the pointed polearm high in a circle, blinding the soldiers around me all at once. Then I disemboweled them on the second rotation.

My weeping wounds were irrelevant. I sent pulses of plasm into the turrets and made them go pop in a blaze of shrapnel.

“Chyani,” I ran toward her heartbeat and found her bent over behind a burnt-out rover. Half of her synthetic arm was missing, pinched off at the elbow, and leaking white liquid.

I scooped her up and sprinted for Venom Heart.

“I got it,” Chyani squeaked next to my chest.

“Yes, you did,” I chittered at her, disregarding the swarm of bullets piercing my backside and disabling my cloak. “We will be free of this place soon.”

It wasn’t good that the pain had dissipated but I let the adrenaline carry my legs out of the compound and through the rows of parked aircraft.

In the distance, I saw an empty section of grass and the warm light of Venom Heart’s aft door opening.

Armed rovers chased after us. My lungs burned in the cold night air. I couldn’t let them catch up!

“Go!” I stumbled into Venom Heart’s cargo hold and sealed the door behind us as I rolled to the ground and passed her my gauntlet.

Chyani darted for the bridge and I exhaled when the ship’s engines rumbled to life.

“Raven Tide,” Chyani returned and cupped my head, kneeling over me in a pool of my green blood. “I clicked a random planet far away from here.”

She didn’t know where to begin or how to stop the blood flow.

“My gauntlet,” I held my hand out.

She handed it to me and I corrected our flight path.

Then I pulled my bio-mask off, “I did not stop.”

Chyani nodded and smiled with her tears landing on my face. “Not ever for a second.”