on Ikthe,” I said, maneuvering my ship for atmospheric reentry for Ikshe. It had been a silent flight with all five of us brooding in our thoughts.
“Good,” Hivelt said with a grunt. “I won’t need it in dealing with the Ikma Scabmal Kama.”
“I hope the BoKama has found her,” Natheka said. “Why would the Queen slink around the fortress like a spy? Even at the worst of her madness, she strode the halls with pride.”
“BoKama sent me a sight-capture which may explain,” Naraxthel said. It played on the wide monitor on my console.
Focusing on my flight, I listened to the heated words exchanged between my Sister-Queens. When the BoKama revealed their conversation was on sight-capture, I suddenly understood how the Tribunal had been effected in so short a time. The Ikma’s unmistakable corruption was laid bare for all to see.
“One wonders if concessions will be made for her insanity,” Raxkarax said.
“Is it insanity or is it cruelty?” Naraxthel said. “Nevertheless, I believe her reign is short-lived. Our people will be invigorated to welcome a new Younger Sister as BoKama steps into the role of Ikma Scabmal Kama.”
“Does anyone know what manner of enemy IGMC is?” Natheka asked. “Do we know if there is a single ship or perhaps many small ships? Is it a military force?”
“Esra described some of the capabilities of its mining operation,” Naraxthel said. “She described a fleet of ships, one of them being a massive construct capable of drilling into the heart of a planet in a matter of days.”
“They are not a military force,” Hivelt said. “But Pattee described a cadre of hunters beholden to the governors of IGMC who are former military warriors. She suggested they may be utilized to extract our women forcibly from Ikthe.”
“Imagine these hunters attempting to make any of our women do something forcibly,” Raxkarax replied in a dry tone.
We laughed and shook our heads.
“This “hostile” group had better prepare for many hostilities,” Hivelt said. “The rokhural will be as the harmless nonsense fly compared to the ferocity of our mates.”
Recalling the ease with which CeCe fought the agothe-faxl, I grunted in agreement.
“As we speak of harmless things such as the rokhural, why keep you a dirt-crust snake in your medicinal pouch, Hivelt?” Natheka said. “I saw you place it there before we left but forgot to ask.”
“Ah, because my rucksack is filled with woaiquovelt,” he said without further explanation.
My ship shuddered as we breached Ikthe’s mesosphere, and within jotiks we hovered above the hangar, the steward opening the bay where I would land my ship. Two ships had landed and were unloading their meat bounty when we landed in my designated spot.
As promised, the market courtyard was decked with celebratory pennants, lights and flowers, and countless people milling about the stalls from what we could see through one of the bay doors.
It would be a day of memories for the fortress city of Iksherax.
I hailed BoKama who insisted we wait for an appointed escort, so I powered down my ship and we waited within.
“We did not receive the lilies, but we receive a hunter’s welcome,” Raxkarax said with folded arms. “What I desire above all things is the freedom to bring Joan here, that she might sit upon one of the benches and stare into the decorative waterfalls. I would surround her with peace.”
“The walkways are serene,” Natheka agreed. “Amity wants to meet my little hunters and their dams.”
“The dirt-crust snake is for my Afarax,” Hivelt said, a solemn expression belying the trace of emotion I heard in his voice. “If she would have it. She may not forgive a sire who once was dead but now returns. I do not know.”
While my brothers talked of their loved ones, I could not identify the reason for my own unease. While I missed CeCe, that was not it. Disgruntled, I folded my arms and listened with half an ear, attuned to what, I did not know.
“I would bring Esra to my home and lands, though I venture to say Esra is my home, now,” Naraxthel said. “I desire her ever by my side. This separation, though necessary, pains me. To think I yearn to return to the place that flows in rivers of blood, but it is as Raxthezana has said,” he said and looked at me. “I left my heart on Ikthe. I see now why the heart leaves the heart home. It knows its home no longer resides inside my body, but elsewhere.”
A chorus of rumbling “iks” lifted inside my ship, and then the BoKama’s escort arrived.
WarGuards stood with spears crossed over their right shoulders and stared straight ahead while we disembarked with our heavy packs and clinking glass vials. They marched beside us as we entered the market courtyard via a bay door instead of entering the great hall of the fortress.
Shouts rang out and the din of a thousand voices rose to follow us as we walked toward the dais that the BoKama had had erected in our honor. There were no thrones on it, but the BoKama stood alone, regal in her victory braids and a shimmering dark gray gown. She wore the hunter armbands, those metal circlets sealed about her biceps with the heating tool until they branded into her skin, just as the hunters did when returning from a successful hunt.
The WarGuard stopped at the steps to the dais, and we walked up to stand beside the BoKama and turned to face the gathering crowd. The roar deafened, but we waited, unsure what would come next.
“My people,” BoKama said, and the noise stilled at once. “Death Bringers, we are called. With our strong hungry bodies, we require strong food to sustain us. Hunters travel to Certain Death and enter its hungry maw. They take life—that in doing so, they may bring life to us.”
Cheering erupted again, and BoKama smiled, waiting.
“Even now, hunters collect meat for the coffers,” she said. “You may see their sight-captures on these screens throughout the courtyard. But as you know, some time ago the Ikma Scabmal Kama ordered the Lottery Five to journey to Certain Death and bring back a different bounty. The Holy Waters. Woaiquovelt. With these precious gifts from Certain Death, we may sustain the hunt that feeds our bellies. The Holy Waters preserve the lives of our hunters struck down by the agothe-faxl. And the woaiquovelt serves to craft our weapons and our fuels. As you know— “she paused—“our way of life cannot continue without it.”
Looking out at the crowd, I saw some familiar faces. Those who frequented the archives. The shop owner to whom I brought fresh white bark tree leaves so he could dry and cure them for my tea. One of the hangar stewards. I knew these people.
“In times past, those hunters who would quest for us were honored with lilies and song, but our Ikma Scabmal Kama, for reasons unknown, commanded the Lottery Five to leave at once. Forfeiting their blessings from the Goddesses, she demanded haste and closed the hunt until our hunter brothers returned.”
The faces in the crowd were grim. They knew this tale too well.
“As the sight-captures faded, so too did our hope,” she said. “Rumors of the Ikma Scabmal Kama’s erratic behavior were whispered behind the tapestries and in the alleys of the marketplace. Requests for aid from distant Enclaves went unheeded. Neither of your Sister-Queens could be troubled to help. And the coffers dwindled.
“Now the Lottery Five have returned,” she paused, and a raucous cheer went up. “And I am told they found a drop or two of the Holy Waters and a pebble of woaiquovelt.” More cheers. “May we see it?” She turned to us and asked, and the throng swelled.
With careful hands, we unpacked the chunks of woaiquovelt until it formed a pile a half-veltik tall, a veltik wide and two veltiks long, and a reverent hush stole over the population. When I glanced at the screens, a sight-capture feed now displayed the ore to advantage, its purple gleam shining under the light of the sister suns.
We gathered the vials and vessels that contained the Holy Waters and placed them on the dais in front of the ore.
“Do you have anything you wish to say?” the BoKama asked Naraxthel. He stepped forward.
“As you see with your own eyes, there is enough and to spare of the precious bounty provided by Ikthe,” he said. “We are but simple hunters and never sought the glory of a quest, but only to hunt and bring meat for our offspring, our honored sisters and dams, and all of you.
“The tales that you have been told of the beauty of the Holy Waters of Shegoshel are all true, and yet they weaken at every telling. Its beauty cannot be described with words.” Naraxthel paused and looked at us on the dais with him. “Now that we have witnessed Ikthe’s most treasured place, we return with a hope. As we partake of Ikthe’s bounty, we must never forget that the Theraxl’s greatest treasure lies not on this planet or that one, but in its very people and the bonds that tie us together.”
He gestured to the four of us and to the BoKama.
“The armor I wear was honed and polished by the armorer,” he said. “The jeweler crafted the bottle in which I carry the life-saving doses of the Holy Waters. My brothers and I feasted on sister-bread throughout our time on Ikthe, the gift from your good farms of precious grains. Let us not forget the fire oil for dipping.” A random brother from the crowd shouted, and everyone laughed.
“It is my hope that you good people see the good you do for each other,” he said. “We might be called Death Bringers but let us consider the ways in which we bring Life.”
He stood back, and their voices rose in celebratory singing, and the BoKama smiled and nodded, clapping her hands in time to the song.
I did not feel to smile; it was just as well we yet wore our helmets. The swelling noise, the chaotic atmosphere, the unfinished business with the Ikma Scabmal Kama … all threatened to distract me from whatever subtle clue I had missed that caused my discomfort.
Glancing at the sky, I saw the suns had moved. In several rotiks, they would hit Sky Flank, when Ikshe sat directly beneath the bright space between the sister suns, and the Tribunal would begin.
The Tribunal would occur with or without the Ikma Scabmal Kama, but it stood to reason and justice that she should face the crimes with which she was charged.
When BoKama raised her hands once more, the singing faded, and she drew everyone’s attention to the nearest screen where an iktheka’s sight-capture showed an engaging battle with the imposing black tree thief of the southern hemisphere.
The sight-capture blinked out, and it was replaced with one of the Enclave Governesses, Rowoa from Fruited Valley, I thought.
“We, the Enclave Governesses of Ikshe, call the Ancient One, even the Ikma Scabmal Kama, to the Tribunal,” she said. “Is she present?”
“She is not,” BoKama said. “I don’t know where she is.”
My gaze drifted across the crowd who stared at the screens with rapt attention while the Governess reviewed the protocols of a Tribunal and introduced the four other Enclave leaders.
My mind drifted over the conversation between the humans when they uncovered the horrible truth that the IGMC faction would follow them to our star system. Amity had been devastated to learn their rescue vehicles triggered the excursion. CeCe had been crushed to realize their trails led IGMC straight to us.
Cocking my head, the BoKama’s phrase echoed in my mind. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where she is. An eternity ago, before CeCe was mine, she once suffered a terror-dream in which she shouted, “I don’t know where it is.”
The Ikma Scabmal Kama had led a brutal raxfathe campaign against CeCe for interminable weeks and months. Using the maikshel to bring her back to health while she recuperated in the dungeons, the Ikma brutalized her again and again—but without the public sight-capture to prove she was following the Writs and Ways, she had free reign to conduct the raxfathe as she pleased.
Why would the Ikma ask CeCe the location of something? The raxfathe was not a tool of interrogation but a weapon of intimidation and an exercise of subjugation and terror.
I could only think of one thing that others sought to the exclusion of all else. One thing that would inspire a brutish interrogation by a heartless individual, one thing that fools held value over the life of my CeCe. I had once held it in my very hands.
Clenching them into fists, I thought of the tiny chip containing the neural network known as VELMA-X and the great lengths CeCe had gone to keep it from the greedy and grasping hands of her IGMC superiors.
It was unthinkable. Untenable. Unimaginable.
Could the Ikma Scabmal Kama have agreed to torture CeCe for the location of the chip? If she had done so, how was it accomplished?
“In light of this evidence, we will now proceed with a public recitation of the Ikma Scabmal Kama’s crimes,” Zama, the Enclave Governess of the Southern Edge proclaimed.
“VELMA,” I called from the privacy of my helmet. “Can you search the lightning pathways of the fortress and the sight-capture mechanisms? Would you recognize if someone from the IGMC mother ship had communicated privately with the Ikma Scabmal Kama?”
“I will look into it now, Raxthezana,” she said.
Zama’s voice droned on. “For the death of Fakana Ashe, Guard of the Internal Chambers.”
“Raxthezana,” VELMA said. “I was able to trace a subtle connection routed through the deep space scanners via the communications tower. Disguised as radiation noise, it was cleverly hidden. Transmissions started three days after sightings were reported of a meteor racing across the sky to the south of Iksherax and were received by an unregistered personal device.”
“Can you locate that device?” I asked.
“Certainly,” she said. “It is transmitting from the communications tower as we speak.”
“VELMA, will you do all in your power to corrupt that transmission?” I said, my heart in my throat. I leaped from the dais and sprinted toward the hangar, shouting as I did so.
“The Ikma broadcasts to IGMC from the comms tower! Get you to your ships!”
My brothers leaped after me and we raced.
“What would cripple us the most?” I asked.
“The loss of our ships,” Natheka answered. “The loss of our hunters.”
“Raxthezana!” a throaty scream caught my attention, and I saw the BoKama keeping pace with us as we neared the hangar bay door.
“Get you to the comms tower!” I said. “The Ikma acts in concert with IGMC. Evacuate the tower and the hangar. Evacuate the market!”
“I already did,” she said and raced ahead of us, her gown tailored to allow ease of running. Perhaps the BoKama had suffered unease as well on this day.
The hangar flooded with armor of every hue, and we boarded our ships, firing our engines and following the wartime regimen: assigned launches in a specific order to reduce wait times and risk of accidental collisions.
When my ship cleared the upper bay doors, I veered to the right and circled over the fortress, Naraxthel navigating as my co-pilot in the absence of a ship of his own.
“VELMA, alert the evacuating citizens to use the path between the fortress and the grain fields,” he said.
“I’m on it, Raxthezana,” she said.
As I rose ever higher above the fortress city, I pinged my companions. “Report.”
“BoKama reached the tower, but she is locked out,” Natheka said.
“The courtyard is almost empty,” Raxkarax said.
“Pattee tells me the Lucidity does have a long-range weapon,” Hivelt said. “We need pilots to find and disable their ship.”
“Lottery Five,” BoKama announced in our comms. “I’ve called up our Black Wing Patrol. Go to Ikthe. Protect the humans. Your service to the Theraxl is fulfilled.”
“As you command,” I said, glancing at the sight-capture feed on my console.
“We appoint the BoKama as acting Ikthekama Scabmal,” said Zama. “Until we may review certain actions of omission. And declare the former Ikma Scabmal Kama shall now be known as kavelt, exiled and stripped of authorities, titles and possessions. Anyone found giving her safe harbor will be imprisoned.”
“As you command, Ikthekama Scabmal,” I said, grim satisfaction coloring my voice. “It is well.”