Page 23 of Taken to Nobu
I take off running as hard as my suit will allow, stumbling every third step on the tremors the thumping creates. Exhaustion is forgotten. So is Miari, Svera, the colony, the differences between human and alien. All I feel is a fire across my chest and a desperation to live claw at me…and then the splintering crack of the hard cold beneath my feet.
A deafening shriek scrambles my brain waves. I slip and slide to my knees, but I only stay grounded for the length of a blink. Everything lurches. The cold hard gives way and I go flying as something huge — huger than aliens, huger than khrui, huger than homes on our colony, huger than ships to take me away — breaks free of the cold prison that had kept it at bay.
A singeing sort of heat sears my entire right leg as soon as I stand and I come down hard on my knees. I glance at my suit to see it shredded by some strange colorless goop. Steam rises from it and judging by the sudden inflexibility and immobility in my entire right side, I know it can mean nothing good.
Another screech blasts through the white and sends me flying over the hard cold, propelled by nothing but the wind it creates. I land on my stomach and when I look up, I see it, and seeing it, I pray to the universe for a quick death.
The mammoth of theHard Cold Belowhas three limbs and is clawing it’s way out of the water with strange smooth tentacles, bringing forth one giant body that’s completely eyeless. All that sits in its round gelatinous center is one enormous maw.
The size I can fathom, but that maw is what makes me shudder. Round and wet, it has no teeth. It’s only a gaping white and pink, inside of which I can see organs and flesh and the stuff of nightmares.And I’m going to be inside of that.The only question is how long it will take to kill me and how.Will I suffocate? Or will whatever stomach acid this creature contains eat me alive?
I stagger up to standing as the tentacles jolt forward, latching onto the hard cold and, with impossible strength, pulling the creature towards me. It moves slowly, which is the only advantage I’ve got at the moment.
Lurching in ungainly steps, I run for my life and as I run I scream, “Okkari!”
The word shocks me because it sounds so right that the thread in my chest settles, calm. As if in acceptance of something greater. And as I run for my life, this strange calm settling in my chest in spite of my terrifying and impending death, it’s with the thought that funny enough, Svera may have been right all along.
I’m starting to think that there is a Tri-God, a divine force who rules the cosmos, and that the Tri-God has a bitter sense of irony and a funny sense of humor. Because right now as I imagine being chewed alive by a beast with no teeth, devoured for eternities, I prefer the Hunt. And all I wish, is that I’d stayed in the oasis.
9
Okkari
This is not my Xiveri mate.
The knowledge blankets me even before I wake. The body attempting to slide into my nest is not my Xiveri mate, she is not Kiki, she does not smell of miaba or zxhoa or crova. She smells of something foul. Worse than overripe fruit or rank meat, she smells like corpses rotting on a battlefield. My Xanaxana reels and my body begins revolving against the zyth fur, coming to life. The warrior in me flares.
“What have you done with my Xiveri mate? Where is your Xhea?” The female is one I recognize in the glow of the ioni.Kuaku.And she is as naked as her name-day.
“Okkari…” she says and there is a seductive lilt to the female’s tone.
With neither mercy nor warning, I snatch her up by the throat. “Kuaku, you have lost your senses!”
She claws at my hand and I release her with a shove, sending her stumbling backwards until she hits the wall. Fear eliminates the pleasure expression that she had worn on her face. “Okkari, I did not mean to…”
“You did not mean to defile these furs, disrespect my Xiveri union, and dishonor me, my Xhea and yourself,” I seethe, “Nox, you could not possibly have meant to do these things. But you will tell me now what youdidmean to do, and you will tell me where my Xiveri mate has gone and why you appear to me now in her place.”
She falls to her knees and places her ridges to the floor — an ultimate sign of humilation. “Heffa, Okarri, heffa…”
“You must know that begging will not save you now. Tell me what you have done here. Tell me what has become of the Xhea.”Kiki, where are you?
“I did nothing, Okkari! The Xhea…it was her. She asked me to help her escape. She asked me to take her place in the furs. She had no desire to be bred by you and wished to return to her people. I did not want to, but she is my Xhea. What other choice did I have, Okkari?”
My whole body turns to stone. Weakness assaults me and it is a crippling, alien sensation. I cannot believe it. I cannot dare to believe it. Not after what we shared. The previous lunar tore me apart. I am not the male I was when we began and and after our last breeding, I have never felt closer to another living soul. Her Xaneru speaks to mine as if they were, at some single, infinitesimal point in the creation of the universe, one whole. Is it possible that what Kuaku says is true? Did she truly mean to leave me? Or is Kuaku up to something much more sinister, just as she was before?
“This is not the first time you have lied to your Okkari on this solar. You will tell me where my Xiveri mate is now and you will speak the truth or I will not hesitate to banish you to the endless ice ocean where you may live out your few remaining days alone with the frost,” I tell her in an even tone, colder than the first icefall.
“She just wanted out, my Okkari. I advised her that east was too dangerous, so I believe she may have gone west.”
I hiss, “You are lying. Had she gone west, she would have stumbled into the village. The icefall has already begun. You know as well as anyone that the village is busy preparing and battening down. She would have been seen and I would have been alerted immediately.”
Pink fear colors her face then before the emotion is extinguished. By her own ridges, she is betrayed. I lift Kuaku from the ground by her shoulders and shake her flaccid form. “Tell me where she is!”
Pink flares again, the brightest I’ve ever seen, followed by a sickly shade.Regret. It will not save her. “East,” she says, “she went east.”
I drop her and she hits the stones below with a squeal. “And what of Kuana? Where was she in this?” I ask, already activating my life drive and sending a message to four of my nearest warriors and three of my best trackers to prepare my dreya and meet me at my home’s east entrance. If she has gone out onto the eastern tundra, then we have few moments to waste.
Kuaku rocks back and forth and shakes her head, genuflecting before me like the coward that she is. “I…” She shakes her head. “She’s in her quarters. I locked her in.”
