Reignor Read online

  Something out here could sense it.

  The Reignor continued moving as the scent began to increase. Something was approaching, but he still couldn’t sense it yet. The winds must have been carrying it far, and he didn’t want to actively search using his Essence to enhance him telepathy, so he waited and kept moving in little bits so he wasn’t a stationary target to be honed in on, and eventually he sensed a faint mental presence.

  It was one of the hunters. A small hexped that could run fast and far, massing only half of what the Neofan did, but it had enough muscle and jaw power to rip apart one of his legs if he let it get close enough…again. He’d healed up from many such injuries taken in battle against so many of the creatures he had lost track of some while dealing with the others. But a lone hunter wouldn’t do anything to him unless it caught him while asleep. No, the danger was that it could alert the others to his presence, so he needed to take it out quickly.

  Plausious moved towards it, wanting to deal with this now rather than later. Tree to tree he moved until he came near the edge of the desert where his large body would be painfully visible. The hunter was coming across the sands, from where he did not know. There shouldn’t have been any settlements out there, and he hadn’t sensed any of the aerial craft, who had such large Cores that they were visible at great range. So where had this one come from?

  The Reignor moved back away from the edge, getting more trees in between him and the sands, and chose his ambush point. He knew the best way to deal with the hunters was to use his Essence and take them out quickly, but that would reveal him to whatever else was tracking him from afar. So he would have to use either telepathy, a short range telekinetic grapple, or brute force to kill it when it attacked.

  Prudence said to take it out before it saw him, which was unlikely given that it probably already had his scent, and the closer it got the more alert it would be. Even if it couldn’t see him, it could smell him…despite his efforts at concealment. He hadn’t been out in the sands in a very long time, and the wind was with him, so how did it know where he was?

  He hadn’t used Essence in days, weeks? The rotation of this planet was so slow he couldn’t use night/day cycles to measure time, and he’d given up trying long ago when his data module had broken. He’d thought about making marks on a stone or tree, but he couldn’t stay in the same place, so he’d just abandoned any idea of record keeping. But he knew it had been too long for him to be tracked here by Essence use. Something else had to have already spotted him and diverted the hunter here…which meant it might not know his exact location.

  He could still ambush it, but Plausious had decided long ago against fighting that way. The anti-code practically begged him to, for it was the most secure way of keeping himself safe, but the Neofan would not attack the hunter unless it attacked him first. That was one small distinction he held firmly to now, despite the end result being the same, for the hunters always attacked. It was what they were designed to do. But if this one did not have his scent, it might pass by…and that meant he would have to avoid it for a long time, hoping it moved on, or move on himself first and leave his caches behind.

  If he killed it quickly, before it could alert the others, he would be in the clear until it was missed. And even then they wouldn’t know where exactly it had gone missing. They didn’t stay in that close of telepathic communication, to know where each were at every moment. They reported in when needed, using intermediaries when spread out to relay the telepathy, but unless they were actively searching for one to talk to, this hunter would be invisible to them until it reported that it had found something.

  But no, he wouldn’t ambush and kill it if it wasn’t coming directly to him. That would be against the code, for it had the same right to live as him, despite him having been in existence for far longer. It was his enemy, but it was also a victim of the instincts bred into it, and victim of where and into what body it had been born. He would not hesitate to kill it if it attacked him, but he was no longer under the illusion that the enemy was the enemy by choice.

  He could sense it easily now, crossing the last bits of sand and darting into the blue/green brush along the edge of the half dead trees that were getting too little water on the edge of the desert. It slowed down slightly, now no longer able to run a straight course, and the Reignor could see that it was going to pass by him closely, but it was not taking the quickest route to him, meaning it did not know he was here.

  When it came the closest he reached out gently with his telepathy, knowing a firmer intrusion would be detected and reported, but a light touch could get some information and he’d had opportunity to practice such things many times in the past. As the hunter ran by, it’s gruff face sniffing air and ground in rhythm as it moved, Plausious realized it was on the scent, but not his.

  There was no one out here except some primitive wildlife, and if it was going after one of them then he had cause to kill it first, so he began following it, hunting the hunter as he ran as quietly as he could across the ground, having abandoned the tree branches, trying to keep up with its fast movements…but it had no notion of slowing down, nor turning around to see what was behind it, so the Neofan had to abandon stealth and run at full speed without using Essence to try and stay with it, gradually losing ground but keeping it in telepathic tracking range as they moved deeper and deeper into the forest.

  He sensed many native wildlife nearby that the hunter ignored, and he was beginning to grow tired as his legs burned. He hadn’t run this much in a long time, cursing himself for allowing himself to grow unaware of his own stagnation, but avoiding pursuit and conserving what Essence he could had been his priorities. Apparently he had been doing better than he thought, for this hunter was wearing him out and he dare not use his Essence to boost his speed…let alone fly.

  He almost let it go, but then its mental silhouette changed and he knew it had picked up a fresh scent, probably having been sent to this area to search, and now it had a target to hone in on…so Plausious continued on, eeking out a little more energy to get close enough that he could maybe stop it before it got to whatever its target was…but he ended up being too late as the hunter jumped at something up in the trees ahead, and he could both hear and feel its target getting ripped apart.

  That infuriated the Neofan, with the anti-code in it tasting repulsive to his telepathy. He was too far away to grasp it without Essence, but he didn’t care and was about to use it anyway…but then he felt enough proximity to use a trick to buy him some time, sending a telepathic pulse into the hunter that made its vision go out momentarily, along with its body going numb, knowing that in its kill mode it would not be reporting anything this minor as an attack against it. If it registered at all it would assume it was its target doing something, and the momentary lapse allowed its prey to break loose and try to fly away up into the tree branches.

  But it couldn’t. A wing was torn up, and the hunter got its bearings quickly with a shake of its body as it reset to a standing position, then it lunged to the left and up, angling for the wounded flyer…

  And froze in place.

  Plausious had gotten close enough to use his telekinesis, extending an energy field out to grab the hunter and hold it aloft, but only barely. He had to run much closer as it struggled to get free, and he didn’t have the strength left to kill it by the same method, so he blacked out its vision again as he let go, then he sprinted towards it and punched down hard, hitting it in the back of the neck before it could see him coming, and broke it in one blow.

  Scurrying to the side got his attention as the flyer was thrashing about, trying to climb into the air but unable to on its right side. Plausious stood still in shock, realizing it was another Hadarak…but one he had never been this close to before. It was an elusive control unit, or rather one that relayed commands across great distances. He had tried to kill one before, but had never been allowed close, for they always stayed far back from the fighting, and the few times he had managed to sn
eak closer other units would come in and sacrifice themselves as distractions so these Ren’mak could get away.

  He had wanted to kill one so he could absorb its ability to receive and relay the Hadarak telepathic commands. If he could, then he would effectively be able to listen in to the orders going out to his pursuers, knowing where they were told to go, what to do, and whether or not they had located him or he was still effectively hidden.

  Plausious had tried so hard so many times to catch one, and now this one was here, wounded so it could not fly away, as easy a target as he had ever had.

  Something about that made him uneasy. Was this some sort of ruse to draw him in? Why had this one gotten so close, and furthermore why was a hunter trying to kill it? He knew they would sacrifice their own without hesitation to accomplish a mission. What if this was bait?

  And what if it was not, and he had just lucked into what had been denied to him so many times before? This and many other thoughts ran through his mind as he telepathically looked into the Ren’mak’s thoughts to see if it had reported him yet, feeling its fear and panic, as well as its pain as its attempts to escape were further tearing its wing apart.

  It would be so easy to kill it, then sink his Gorvaj into its corpse and extract the tissue he wanted to mimic. It’s not something he could do while it was alive, not without killing it in the process. He literally had to rip out the pieces on a microscopic level and absorb them, or at least part of them, for the process to work. The Ren’mak was bleeding heavily, so if he waited it would probably die soon anyway. Then he could absorb its ability without having to kill it, for it was not attacking him.

  Yet the urge was there to just kill it before something could happen to deny him this opportunity. The anti-code demanded it, and this was the greatest test he’d yet encountered. He would gain so much from it, and if he waited to let it die on its own he would have played no part in its death. Win/win.

  Except it was not. It was not right, standing here and watching it thrash itself to death, so he raised a hand and extended his grapple fields out around it, gently squeezing in the right areas to pin it so it could not move much. All he had to do was clench and it would be dead, but the defiance in him would not allow it. The Neofan culture he had previously lived in would not understand his hesitation, for they were apathetic and blind, and luckily for the Ren’mak, he was no longer one of them. Plausious was something else now, though he didn’t have a name for it. He lived by the code, and would die by it if necessary. After all, he was long overdue to die as it was, so the threat of it didn’t hold the same leverage as it would have long ago before his exile.

  Plausious walked up to the Ren’mak, then telepathically tried to settle it down and look into its thoughts to see if this was in fact a trap, but it’s fear and instinct to run was so great he couldn’t see much of anything in that mental maelstrom. He sent a soothing aura into it, but that still was not enough, for the damage to its wing was screaming so loudly it demanded the Ren’mak do something.

  It’s small head stared at him in horror, unable to twist much at all, and Plausious slowly moved his hand towards its wing, sensing it panic even more the closer he got, but when he touched one of the seven gashes in the thin membrane, he numbed out the pain in a way that made it theatrically obvious that his touch was having a positive effect and was not an attack.

  He moved his hand across each of the gashes, repeating the process as the Ren’mak was held still, floating above the ground and unable to touch it or the tree branches above. Plausious couldn’t heal most of the wounds, for the creature was near starvation and did not have the biomass to replace what had been lost, so he melded the tears back together lightly and kept them numb as the Ren’mak’s panic eased, but it was still on the verge of bolting as he slowly eased up the pressure keeping it pinned in its invisible cage.

  He let its feet hit the ground, and when it did it tried to jump back into the air. Plausious caught it and repeated the process 9 times before it finally stayed on the ground of its own choosing, looking up at him and locking eyes as he tried to speak to it mind to mind.

  The Reignor had learned much of their telepathic communications prior to this, but only by eavesdropping. He’d never encountered a Hadarak this close that wasn’t trying to kill him, and as the Ren’mak’s mind slowed down faster than its beating heart did, he finally was able to see into its recent memories…and when he did, he took a knee beside it and gently stroked its angular head as he did not allow it to move away.

  “So some of you do disobey orders,” he said in the Star Force language. He did not care to speak Neofan anymore, and it was even more odd to hear his own voice after such a long time of not using it.

  How long had it been since he last spoke aloud?

  “Easy little one. I will not hurt you. You and I are alike. We were both betrayed by our brethren. And I doubt you know anything of survival on your own. You won’t make it much further without me, and I can use your help, so let’s see to getting you some food and healing those injuries,” he said, picking it up and carrying it over his shoulder in his invisible grip as it kept trying to get free, but with far less effort than before. It did not trust him, but it was not being attacked, and it could not move, so eventually it decided to just wait and see what happened.

  And what happened was Plausious took it to one of his caches that had captured Hadarak food. Both the ‘soup’ and the ‘fruits’ that he had stolen from them. As soon as the storage pod was cracked open and the smell became evident, the Ren’mak abandoned any attempts to fly away and instead tried to fly towards the food as it was nearing death from starvation in addition to the blood loss.

  Plausious released his hold after setting it on the ground and fashioning an invisible bowl using the same grappling energy, into which the soup was poured. The stunted, stone-like beak dove into it and he could see the gulps it was taking visible as they ran down its neck, for this variant of Hadarak could not be heavily armored and still fly on wings alone. Others had anti-grav organs, but these did not, and this one was far smaller than the others he had pursued.

  “I would guess those of you who do not obey never live long enough to get that big,” he said as the Ren’mak ignored him and kept eating. “And why did you disobey?”

  Plausious looked deeper into its memories, finding it didn’t retain much, but not too long ago it had deviated from an assignment momentarily to explore a canyon nearby…simply for the sake of seeing what was there.

  But in doing so, it had chosen to temporarily disobey the current, and apparently that was unforgiveable within the Hadarak. Hunters had been sent after it even as it returned to its mission, but it had known they were coming due to its purpose as a relayer of telepathic commands that communicated the current’s will.

  That forewarning had scared it enough to get it to flee before it could be killed…and it had flown out into the desert where nothing lived, and flown and flown until it came to this forest only last night cycle.

  “You’re so small I didn’t notice you,” he said as the Ren’mak burped when it got so full it could hold no more, and he realized his refusal to use Essence to scan had somehow made him less aware of his surroundings than he realized. “Now that you have the biomass, let’s fix that wing…”

  3

  Plausious ran, jabbing his arms left, right, and sometimes behind him as he fired disintegration attacks at the Hadarak hunters pursuing him. Each exploded into an orb of dust that obscured the vision of those behind him, and would have interfered with his vision as well if he hadn’t been continuously running forward.

  More jumped through the aerial ashes, trying to catch him and slow him down for the larger I’reo to engage. The Reignor knew better than to allow that to happen, so he kept moving through the forest, keenly aware of this area whereas the Hadarak were new to it. He reached out with his grapple energy and yanked several rocks the size of his head out of the ground, levitating them for a moment only to physicall
y pick them up as he ran by.

  He carried them a ways more as his friend flew above and slightly ahead of him, but below the treetops where Dupla waited for them both to emerge. The larger Hadarak fliers were firing acid down towards Plausious whenever they had an opening, but he was moving too fast to give them an easy shot, with the foliage momentarily stopping the acid from getting through. By the time it tore apart the leaves enough to drop to the ground, the Neofan was long gone.

  He stopped suddenly, throwing an Essence wave backwards and knocking three hunters in the completely opposite direction they were running, with two of them not to get back up again as their bodies were crushed by the sudden reversal…but that’s not why he did it. Plausious needed a steady moment, and the Essence wave had given it to him as he threw one of his rocks up into the treetops, then accelerated it more as he guided it like a missile beyond his natural vision, but the closest Dupla were easy for him to locate.

  He sent the rock straight for its glowing Core and made contact, feeling the flyer move up higher for a moment, then it came crashing down through the branches as more rocks flew up, taking down two more, but they did not make it to the ground, getting caught in the higher branches that would now be their grave.

  Plausious took off again, with the sky overhead momentarily clear as he headed towards a deep ravine he had explored in the past. Some orbital damage from long ago had carved it out, and in the bottom was a series of waterfalls that led to an even deeper crater that housed a small lake that kept the surrounding forest wet despite the dry air wafting in from the distant desert.

  When the Neofan came to the edge he didn’t stop, leaping off it and falling down towards the thin stream of water below as his Ren’mak chased after him, flying with more grace than the Neofan fell, but near the bottom he too took flight and angled his fall into lateral movement, skimming over the rapids between waterfalls as he summoned up a large Essence attack while simultaneously locating every living thing within 2 hipcaps.