Sons of Man
Part Two: Ruins
Jaga awoke to find himself lying half-in,
half-out of a broad subterranean lake. He lay still for several minutes,
straining his hearing for threatening sounds, then slowly raised his head and
looked around. He was in a large cavern, dimly lit by glowing blue crystal
formations growing out of the walls and ceiling. The water he lay in was cool
but not uncomfortable. The pebbles on the shore were worn smooth and round,
pleasant to touch. It would be so good to simply lie back down, rest a little
while longer...
He pushed the thought out of his mind.
Tawn-Ya was nowhere nearby. He had to find her. He also needed a weapon of some
sort. The rumble in his stomach reminded him he'd not eaten in over sixteen
hours. At least sixteen hours that he was aware of.
He moved to sit up, then cried out in pain,
falling back to the stoney beach. Wincing in pain, he examined his right arm,
and discovered a plasma burn along the outside, running from shoulder to wrist.
The dense, short fur that covered his body was burnt off the injured area,
along with a generous portion of skin. While there was no bleeding, the pain
was sufficient to make him swoon, and infection would be inevitable without
treatment.
Even so, he knew he'd been fortunate. A burn
was the result of a near miss; a direct hit would have blown his arm off. He
got up more carefully and moved off, away from the water. The blue luminescence
of the crystal was dim but sufficient, and better than the glow-globe he'd
lost.
He had gone only a few meters when he came
upon a broken, eroded stretch of paved stone. The thick layer of undisturbed
dust led him to believe it unused for decades, maybe centuries. He continued
down the dim path for several minutes before he came upon a set of low
buildings.
The structures were covered with the same
dust that lay upon the road, but as he carefully approached, he could hear
sounds from one of the nearer huts. He looked around and spotted a rock that
fit nicely into his left palm. Thus armed, he slid to the open door of the hut
and looked carefully inside. Tawn-Ya was there, next to a wall-mounted shelf.
The shelf was half-full of sealed stoneware jars. The rest of the jars lay
opened and empty on the floor by her feet. She was busily chewing on her latest
discovery.
"Save some for me?" he asked.
Tawn-Ya hissed and sprang straight up. Her head struck the stone ceiling with
an audible thud. She landed hard on her behind, the wind knocked out of her.
Jaga chuckled. Tawn-Ya
whipped the jar she'd been holding at his head with a snarl. He leaned his head
out of the way and caught the jar with his left hand.
"You should be careful what you eat
here," he said. "Sure, it might taste alright, but it might have been
someone's dish detergent, too."
"It's pickled mushrooms," she said
sulkily, standing up. "My mother makes it the same way. My father raises
them in the cellar. He...Gods, your arm!"
"No, really, it's..." he took a
hasty step backwards but it was no use. She grabbed the seared flesh with both
hands, turning his arm this way and that as she inspected it.
"Does it hurt much?" she asked.
A whimper through clenched teeth was all he
could muster.
"Oh!" Tawn-Ya yelped as she
realized what she was doing. She let go, but Jaga was not ready and his arm
fell limp, striking his side. He moaned and sat down hard as his knees gave
way, jarring it yet again. His head swam, making him struggle not to vomit.
Through the pain-induced haze filling his mind, he percieved Tawn-Ya breaking
the seals and sniffing the contents of the remaining pots.
"Maybe one of these is a poltice of some
kind," she said. Jaga's head cleared and he leaned back against the wall
of the shed. He watched Tawn-Ya open the last jar, sniff, then put it back. She
came back and knelt before him.
"There was nothing we could use in the
rest of them," she said.
"Except food," Jaga growled.
"Now it will spoil and we won't be able to take it with us."
Awareness dawned in her eyes. Her face
crumpled and she covered it with her hands. Her shoulders began to shake from
stifled crying.
I am a complete ass, Jaga thought. Here she
was, lost in a cavern, her entire family dead or worse, no formal training for
survival. The only person she can rely on has one useless arm and no weapons.
And I'm yelling at her.
"Tawn," he said softly. "Tawn,
come sit down beside me for a minute."
She waited a moment to regain some of her
composure then slid over the floor, sitting a little to his left, facing the
opposite wall. She rubbed her eyes harshly, plainly embarrassed by the
outburst. "What?" she asked in a thick voice.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you," he
said. "That was wrong of me..."
Tawn-Ya cut him off by shaking her head.
"You have every right to hate me," she said. As he began to protest,
she continued. "You're in this whole mess because of me. You got hurt trying
to protect me, the apes are after you because of me. So I hurt your arm worse,
then I spoil all our food, and I blamed you for Meena..."
Her voice began to choke up. Jaga ignored his
arm and shifted towards her. He stretched out his left arm and put it across
her shoulders, drawing her close as the tears began to flow again. He stroked
her hair and whispered soothingly until it had passed. As she calmed down, she
began to draw away from him, but he refused to let her go. "Look at
me," he said gently, and waited until she looked him in the eye.
"I saved you because I chose to. I could
have left you to Vertok and gone on my way, but I didn't. Anything that falls
my way because of that is my reponsibility, not yours. And since then, you've
done more than I to keep us alive. You piloted the nosediver through the
canyon, and discovered the cave, and then the passage at the end of it. Knowing
what I know now, after everything we've gone through tonight, if I had the
chance to do it over again, I would still have come."
Tawn-Ya looked deep into his eyes, judging
what she saw there. "I believe you," she said. "I only wish I
could have done more to help you."
"Well," Jaga said with a grin.
"You could feed me some mushrooms."
********
Fifteen minutes later they moved off deeper
into the abandoned village. They did not speak but each knew where the other's
mind lay: Vertok. Had the gorilla ceased his pursuit when they fell through the
cave wall and into the underground lake? Or had he pressed on, seeking
vengeance on the warrior who had thwarted him and the female who had injured
him?
Food had helped their condition, but it was
not enough; they needed rest as well. Jaga caught himself sleepwalking at one
point, while Tawn-Ya was having trouble matching even his sonambulant pace.
Ahead in the gloom, Jaga saw another structure, larger than the primitive stone
huts that composed the bulk of the village. As they drew nearer, he guessed it
to be a temple or some other gathering place for the long-dead villagers. They
stopped by the massive wooden doors, remarkable alone in their presence, but
also by their sturdiness. One was ajar, and together they walked inside.
The temple was large, nearly thiry feet tall.
The floor was covered by ranks of heavy wooden pews to within a few meters of a
large raised altar. The altar was fashioned of the same hard stone as the rest
of the temple, with brass rings affixed to the corners of it. Engraved on the
front, towards the faithful who would have asembled here, was a bas-relief
emblem, a circle around a stylized cat's-head, the mouth open as if roaring
down upon the guilty.
What lay beyond the altar was a wonder of
design and execution. Seated upon an ornate throne was a female with the body
of a Thundercat, yet a head which was wholly feline, resembling a lioness. She
was completely nude, yet such was the beauty of her that she banished sexual
thought from the mind, replacing it with a pure awe at her magnificence.
Tawn-Ya heard a scraping sound behind her, startling
her from her reverie. She turned to find Jaga dragging a pew towards the door.
Catching the idea, she moved quickly to help him, and shortly they had all six
wooden pews piled against the door. They surveyed the rest of the temple,
discovering a priest's alcove next to the feline statue, concealed by a false
wall. There were no other exits.
Jaga outlined a plan of action. "If
Vertok's men find us, I want you to take cover in the hidden room. I'll ambush
them and see if I can stop them here. Whatever else you do, do not come out of
that alcove. I'd rather die than see you fall into those Mutants' hands."
"You'll need this then," she said,
and handed him his throwing knife.
Jaga's face lit up. "You wonderful
woman!" he exclaimed. He slid the knife into it's ankle sheath, then
walked to the wall of the temple and leaned his back against it heavily. He
slid slowly down to a sitting position, wincing as the movement made his arm
flare up.
Tawn-Ya sat down on the other end of the
room, facing him. She contemplated the temple, dimly lit by the glowing blue
crystals set in it's ceiling. It was a tranquil place, a feeling of peace to it
under the watchful eye of the cat goddess. What kind of people worshipped
here? she wondered. Were they anything like us?
"Do you believe in Man?" she asked.
Jaga was quiet a moment before he spoke.
"I was raised in the church, like everyone," he said.
"That's not what I asked," she
said. "I want to know if you beleive what the church teaches us about
Man."
Jaga shrugged, then winced as his shoulder
twanged his nerves again. "Do I believe Man existed? Yes, of course. Most
of our technology is from relics humans left behind. But do you mean, did Man
create the Mutants, then make us to battle them after they rebelled? Or is Man
gone looking for Paradise among the stars, and coming back someday to take us
there?" Jaga shrugged again, this time only in his left shoulder.
"Perhaps."
"What do you think happens to us when we
die?" she asked.
"The church teaches we go to be with Man
on his great adventure through the stars," Jaga said.
Now it was Tawn-Ya's turn to be silent a
moment. "You don't like to talk about this, do you?"
Jaga closed his eyes, shaking his head, a
grim smile playing across his lips. "When I joined the corps, I had a brother
who went in with me. He died within a month. Both my parents were taken in
Mutant raids. For a while, I fought for vengeance. Then I fought to preserve
our people. Now...I don't know why I fight."
"What do you mean, 'preserve our
people'?" she asked.
Jaga opened his eyes and looked directly at
her. She saw in those emerald depths a well of sorrow that would have drowned a
lesser spirit.
"We're losing."
Tawn-Ya's mouth fell open. "How...how
can we be losing?" she stammered. "We're the chosen people! We can't
be losing!"
Jaga shook his head sadly. "The ones who
chose us, have not chosen to send reinforcements. Every year, another of our
worlds falls to the Mutants, more of our people are enslaved in the thunderium
mines on Plun-Darr and more of our young people die fighting."
"The Clannad, as the Mutants call
themselves, include a dozen different species. In our most optomistic
estimates, they outnumber us by three to one. It could be as high as ten to
one. If it keeps up the way it has, all our people will be wiped out in another
two or three generations."
As he finished his sentence, he seemed to
delfate, his head falling forward, his voice growing weaker. "Jaga?"
Tawn-Ya asked. When he did not reply, she moved quickly to his side.
"Jaga, are you alright?" she said, feeling his face with her hands.
"I'm alright, just tired," he
mumbled, but she could see it wasn't true. The burnt arm had visibly swollen,
and she was certain he had a fever. She stretched him out along the wall and
tried to make him comfortable. He protested weakly, but whether from exhaustion
or infection, she could not say. After a few moments he began to shiver
violently. She lay down beside him, put her arms around his shoulders and held
him, trying to keep him warm.
In moments, they were both asleep.
********
His father had taken him hunting in the
forest north of their holdings in the upper peninsula. It was early morning and
he did not want to wake up. He could smell the fire from his sleeping bag, hear
his father saying, "Get up, son, it's time." He rolled over, trying
to ignore the old man. Still , he could smell the fire, hear it's crackle as it
ate at the wood...
Jaga sat bolt upright, shocking Tawn-Ya awake
beside him. His head was stuffed with cobwebs, but even so, the memory of
danger returned full-force. The large doors of the temple were being burnt. He
could here the repeated hissing of multiple plasma rifles outside. As he
listened, he saw the interior surface of the nearer door begin to degrade.
"Go!" he hissed at Tawn-Ya. She
sprang up and turned, then stopped and turned back.
"What about you?" she whispered.
Jaga got to his feet, the world tilting
wildly and threatening to spin out completely as he did. From the door came a
loud crash as the spiked ball of a mace burst through into sight. Jaga looked
again into her eyes. With as much certitude as he could manage he said, "I
won't let them get you." He shoved Tawn-Ya towards the alcove and moved
weakly to his position.
He climbed to the high top of the statue, struggling
against pain and weakness. Twice conciousness nearly failed him as he climbed,
but ultimately he reached a place atop the shoulders of the goddess, crouched
out of view behind her head. As he settled in, he could hear the primates smash
through the doors and begin to throw aside the pews that blocked their way.
From concealment, he could here the grunts and hoots of the two monkians, as
well as the carefully modulated voice of Vertok the Gorilla.
"Search every corner," the ape
said. "Find anything worth finding. But remember, I want them alive."
Jaga peered around the head of the statue and
saw Vertok standing in the middle of the room as the monkian troopers began to
check the perimiter. He drew his knife and waited. When one monkian passed
below him, the other at the opposite corner of the room, Jaga dropped from the
statue, knife raised to stab.
********
She could here the noise from outside, the
crashing of wood against stone, the voices of the gorilla commander and his
troops. She was afraid, but not for herself. Her fear was for Jaga, wounded and
sick, armed only with a knife, facing three healthy and well-armed primates. He
was willing to give his life for hers, while she cowered in this hole like a
frightened kitten. For herself she felt only disgust.
Tears of frustration matted the short, dense
fur that covered her face. Was she going to lose everything she loved? Her
family, her home, her sister, even her people, and now the bravest male she'd
ever known, were all lost to her. There was no guarantee the apes would not
find her anyway; if she and Jaga could find this alcove, surely the primates
could.
The dim blue light of the alcove echoed the
darkness in her heart. She could feel hope dying inside her like an animal
starving inside a cage. She sank down to her knees, hands over her face, to
muffle her sobs of despair.
Something seeped into her awareness, a sense
that something had changed. She moved her hands from her tear-stained face and
looked up, her eyes going wide with wonder. She was again in the main chamber
of the temple, but it was no longer the decrepit ruin she and Jaga had
discovered. The blue crystals in the ceiling now glowed a soft bluish white,
illuminating walls painted a comfortable cream. The wooden pews were fresh and
brightly polished. The floor she knelt on was covered in a broad red carpet,
the roaring-cat logo drawn large in black. As she looked at it, it struck her
that the image of the cat was not of wrath, roaring down fury upon sinners. It
was an image of power, of guardianship, the emblem of a defender.
She looked towards the front of the temple,
saw the altar decked with cloth, flowers, bottles of fragrances and wines, all
the pure offerings of a peaceful people. Beyond she saw the goddess statue,
painted in a life-like mein. The image was more beautiful than she remembered,
tawny gold and cream, a lush feminine form of exquisite loveliness. The feline
head looked regal, it's closed eyes and tranquil features radiating a
peacefulness the Thundercat female had never known, but longed for all her
life.
The statue opened it's eyes, brilliantly
luminescent crimson eyes that focused on the petrified girl. Tawn-Ya stared
back into those eyes, and from them she received a sense satisfaction, even
pleasure.
My children, came the words forming in her mind. How you have
grown...
********
He'd dropped ten feet when he knew he'd
miscalculated. The primate was past Jaga's target point; when the Thundercat
landed, the monkian spun and seized Jaga's left hand, taking the knife out of
play. The trooper bore him backwards, into the view of the others. He tried to
twist free, but the second monkian was already upon him. Swinging his mace high
and wide, the primate buried the weapon in Jaga's midsection. His knees gave
out, and he fell, the knife clattering from nerveless fingers. The primates
stood over him, smiling as he choked air back into his lungs.
"Where is the girl?" Vertok
demanded. When Jaga did not answer, the mace wielder delivered a vicious kick
to his injured arm. Barely conscious, Jaga attempted to crawl away, but the
other trooper siezed him by the back of his uniform and hauled him to his feet.
"Girl!" Vertok bellowed. "Come
out where I can see you, or your hero dies!" He listened to the room for a
moment, he nodded to his men.
The one holding Jaga locked the Thundercat’s
arms behind him, while the mace weilder drew back and delivered a powerful blow
to Jaga's defenseless midsection. Jaga emitted a barking gasp of pain,
eliciting laughter from the monkians. The mace weilder delivered a shot to his
knee, breaking it. Jaga thrashed, but did not cry out.
Vertok waved to the monkians to be still,
then yelled to the room, "Come out girl, and I swear he will die quickly.
My men can drag this out for hours if I choose."
Jaga emitted an unintellible croak. Vertok
heard the noise and came near, putting his face near Jaga's. "What was
that?" Jaga raised his head and looked into the face of the primate
commander. He could see the plastiflesh packing the clawmarks Tawn-Ya had left
on the ape.
"She's dead," he said raspily.
"She drowned in the lake. I heard her go down." A trickle of blood
ran down his chin as he spoke.
Vertok gazed levelly into Jaga's eyes. When
he spoke, it was in a whisper, "It doesn't matter. I'm going to kill you
very slowly in any case. If you are telling me the truth, it won't change that.
But if you are lying, perhaps I can flush her out in the process." The ape
extended a finger, touched the stream of blood on Jaga's chin, then rubbed
thumb and finger together. The sadistic, sexual expression he'd worn when Jaga
had first been at his mercy was in his eyes again.
The ape was quiet a moment, thoughtful. He
looked over Jaga's head and bellowed, "Girl! Surrender yourself and I will
spare his life. On my honor as a soldier, neither I nor my men will kill
him."
Jaga grinned humorlessly. It was a pointless
guarantee; he was dying slowly already. The maceman had broken something inside
his belly, something that was emptying warmly into the rest of his abdomen.
Then he heard the scrape of stone, and his grin disappeared. Walking around the
statue came Tawn-Ya, her face blank, her eyes serene.
Vertok faced the young female and his grin
broadened. "My dear darling," he said. "I was beginning to fear
we'd not be able to conclude our date."
Tawn-Ya's expression did not change. When she
wa close enough, her arm flashed out, a dagger reached for Vertok's throat. Had
she been a half-second faster, or the ape a half-second slower, she might have
killed him. Instead Vertok ,
with the trained reflexes of a soldier, leaned out of reach of the stroke. When
the blade had passed, he whipped his own knife from it's sheath and stepped
near, blocking Jaga's view. But nothing could keep him from hearing the girl's
agonized scream as the ape's blade tore open her belly. Vertok stepped away,
letting Tawn-Ya fall forward to the ground, blood spilling across the stone
temple floor.
The ape swore and stood looking at the dead
girl. Her knife was gone; had he imagined it? Finally, Vertok turned away and
stormed towards the door. The monkians looked at each other, then their
commander.
"What about this one?" the mace
weilder asked.
"Leave him," Vertok said over his
shoulder. "He's dead already."
The monkians looked at Jaga, lying bloody and
broken on the ground, struggling to breathe. They considered finishing him,
then decided against it. They feared their commander's wrath more than any
merciful impulse towards the enemy.
Jaga heard them leave and opened his eyes. He
tried to crawl to Tawn-Ya, to tell her he was sorry, even if she could not
hear. When he tried though, the world drifted away, replaced by inky darkness.
Consciousness returned. How long had it been?
He was cold, colder than he'd ever been. The pain was unreal. But he knew it
would not be much longer before his suffering stopped, for delerium had already
arrived. As he lay unable to move, he saw the dead girl push herself up to her
knees, shake her head, and look his way.
She smiled.
To be continued...
Back
to Fanfic
Archive