Death Mark Read online

  The air here was bad. Too many people scrunched into areas never designed for this number. The lowest levels of the building were the farthest from the weaponry, so this is where everyone had gone when it began. The naval battle had been brief, with the J’gar fleet winning out after a slugfest. Altogether there were 27 ships involved the battle, 18 of which belonged to the enemy. They were down to 12 now, and the remaining two Zen’zat ships had fled the planet, leaving this dozen to assault the city shields and blow through them in less than half an hour despite the heavy damage some of the ships were carrying.

  The anti-orbital defenses had gotten in a few licks, but the heaviest batteries had been assaulted on the ground in other cities. Ikan’s had nothing other than some light beam cannons and those were the first sites targeted after the shields were breached. What happened after that Ikan didn’t know, for as soon as the shields went down everyone was directed to the lower levels. It would take a lot of pounding to break through all the layers above them, and if the J’gar were not going to be that thorough some Ter’nat might survive around the foundations when the rest of the building fell on top of them.

  It was Ikan’s only chance, and he sat shoulder to shoulder with the others as they squeezed together to make room for more filtering in from above or outside. The compression waves from vaporized structures were pulsing through the city streets like wind gusts, some strong enough to throw a Ter’nat off his feet…which was enough to kill them if they hit something hard. Being inside was their slim chance of survival, and everyone was clinging to it with whatever hope they could manage.

  The thuds outside of weapon impacts gradually diminished, as if the ships were moving further off, perhaps to another city, but just as he began to hope an explosion so loud it made his ears ring came from directly overhead, followed by several more thumps before the roar of what had to be falling building silenced everything else.

  The ceiling cracked and pieces of it fell, killing the Ter’nat below who had no room to run. Screeches of twisting, bending metal competed with the lurches of the side walls, one of which blew inward, killing hundreds in an instant, then the thumps returned, over and over again as the dusty air grew painfully hot.

  But no more pieces of the ceiling fell. The emergency lights remained on, eerily obscured by the dust, and suddenly the thumps stopped.

  No one moved. No one could if they had wanted to. Ikan was pinned between others that were still alive, and there he sat, as did the rest. Even those right next to the dead.

  They waited hours as the faint tremors continued, then hours more after they stopped completely. No one came for them to tell them what to do. Not the Zen’zat. Not the Overlords. Not even the enemy. After more than 10 hours of sitting in silence, the first few brave Ter’nat stood up and began probing the holes in the rubble and the few doors that were still operational.

  Ikan did not, and could not move, but a long time later the others did enough that he could stand up. Slowly they filed out, through where he didn’t know until he followed the rest and had to climb through a hole in the rubble. By the time he saw the nighttime exterior his hands were bloodied and bruised beyond measure, but the air was no longer hot…yet it was still covered in dust. Dust so large that he couldn’t see far into the darkness, nor could he see the stars above. All that was visible were a few emergency lights set up by someone, and it was to those lights that he and the others went.

  His lungs hurt. His eyes hurt. His head was wobbling enough that he almost tripped and fell over nothing multiple times, though others did, hurting themselves in the fall. Ikan walked like a zombie with the others towards the lights, then stood amongst them not knowing what to do.

  They stood there until a morning breeze preceded the sunrise and pushed the dust out of the city, at which point the stars could finally be seen. No ships were visible up there, which was a blessing. Ikan was still alive, and maybe the J’gar would leave them behind thinking they were dead…but what was he to do? He needed water, and food. Where were the emergency supplies? Somebody had to have something somewhere for them.

  A few people with lights moved off trying to look around, but most stayed put. Ikan went with one of the other groups, knowing that if they didn’t get the food flowing soon the survivors would start to die from their wounds and malnourishment. At the very least they had to find a working water dispenser, but as Ikan walked oh so slowly with the others venturing out and having to zigzag their way around debris not knowing where exactly they were heading, the sun began to rise and show them what it was they had just survived.

  The skyline of the city was gone. Not a single tall building remained to be seen over the rubble piles. The ones with the lights were roaming wherever they could walk, but it became clear that they were going to have to climb to get to the agro storage units. Ikan knew he had to get there, even if the others didn’t, so as soon as he could see well enough he quietly walked off from the others, not sure if his raw throat could even speak if he wanted it to.

  He meandered through several dead ends until he found an incline that he thought he could manage, then ever so slowly he climbed until he was high enough that he could see out over most of the rubble piles.

  Ikan made himself sit on the incline, afraid his legs would melt and he would fall to his death.

  Everything was gone. There was no city left. There were no intact buildings. There were barely any streets visible. It was a wasteland, and he immediately knew everyone here was going to starve to death. If they managed to find some crumbs hidden in the rubble it would prolong them, but there was no hope here. And if he couldn’t find some water soon, he might as well lay down and let the end come.

  But if he did that then he’d definitely never be worthy to become a Zen’zat.

  It was an odd thought to think now, yet it popped up in his mind to batter away at the hopelessness. He was alive while so many others were not. The enemy had failed to kill him, so now what should he do? What would a Zen’zat do?

  A Zen’zat would stay alive. But how could he do that here?

  He couldn’t unless there was a partially intact building underneath the rubble. Ikan couldn’t search long enough to find one, and even if the others did it wouldn’t have enough resources to sustain them. The agro complex would be his best hope, but the smell of char in the air suggested that he wouldn’t find much there, though a few mouthfuls would be worth the effort.

  But what he needed right now the most was water.

  Nothing in sight could provide it, so he made himself climb higher. His arms and legs were scrawny, but he didn’t weigh as much as a Zen’zat either, so Ikan wasn’t so bad at climbing. His hands hurt though, and there were patches where his skin was gone and he was using his sleeves to try and cover the bloody spots. But he kept going, not wanting to even think of returning to the others and watching them die like those he’d seen from other worlds. It was happening here, now, with the survivors, and he wanted to be as far away from it as he could possibly get. If he was going to die, he wanted it to be in solitude.

  Ikan kept climbing until he was at the top of one rubble heap and teetering on falling off the other side, but his slow Ter’nat movements proved useful in navigating the debris and he held his footing as he looked out in all directions, trying to visualize where the buildings should be and get his bearings. The rising sun helped, but when he saw where the agro complex had been all that was left were craters. The grain bins had no real mass to them, so the bombardment hadn’t created rubble so much as plowed right through them and dug into the ground, vaporizing the grain inside or setting it on fire, Ikan didn’t know which. But there was nothing there to find.

  What he did see along the agro complex grounds was a clear road, more or less. The craters hadn’t crushed any buildings to fall onto it, and that road led to the north…and to the grain fields.

  Would they have bombarded open farm fields? And would they have destroyed every small building and automated unit out there?
Suddenly Ikan had a sliver of hope, and that hope meant he had to get out of the city and into the farm lands that he knew intimately. He’d worked them in his youth, and had since come into a position to oversee most of them. There had to be something left out there.

  But getting to that road was going to be perilous, and he had to make use of his vantage point now to plot a path. With his bleery eyes he had to blink multiple times to get them clear enough to see where he was going to attempt to go…after which he backtracked down the incline a bit and began working his way around the top of this heap, hoping that there was some way he could at least reach the road.

  If he couldn’t do that, then he hoped he had the fortune to slip and fall to a quick death.

  Everything was a blur to his memory, as if he was trying to live in the moment and forget the past even existed. Somehow he found his way over to the road, and when he did he knelt down and kissed the bare pavement that had little more than a heavy coating of grain dust on it.

  As soon as he realized that he began scooping up small piles of it and putting it in his pockets. It was food, but if he put it in his mouth now it would only dehydrate him further and he’d probably choke to death on it for lack of saliva. But later, if he could find water, he could try swallowing it.

  Ikan filled his pockets as full as he could, then made himself keep walking. He was here. On the road. Something he had felt was impossible until it had just happened. He wanted to stop. His body wanted him to stop. But the little part of him that still desired to be a Zen’zat told him he had to keep moving. That if he stopped he would never start again. So Ikan kept walking, leaving long tracks in the grain dust as his feet didn’t even lift high enough to clear the top of it.

  As he walked he came to several dunes of the foodstuff, half wishing he could tell the others where it was, but without water it would kill them too. Maybe they’d find it. Maybe someone would find his tracks and follow him. But right now he had to get water, and the partially destroyed buildings along the right side of the road looked promising.

  He checked each one he came to, finding most were clogged with debris or had the rear side blown out by the compression wave that resulted from the grain bins exploding. But no explosion was uniform. There were always spots of higher and lower pressure…and what seemed like a very long way down the road he came to a building that had its windows blown out, but the front wall and door were still intact.

  They were dented heavily, so much so the door would not open, but Ikan would not be stopped by that. He found a window and broke off the remaining glass enough that he wouldn’t cut himself. He had to use a rock…which was actually part of another building that had flown here…to saw back and forth and smooth out the window frame, then he crawled over it ever so gently until he was hanging with one half in and one half out with the frame bisecting his body.

  He got his inside leg on something firm below him and slithered into the building, finding himself on a tabletop in a room that had been wrecked. He carefully got down to the floor and realized the table was actually a ledge attached to the front wall below the windows that visitors could sit on, and he immediately recognized this as a transit station.

  Ikan grew excited, looking for a water pillar, but the one in the main area had been knocked away with the rest of the stuff in the room that wasn’t firmly bolted down, yet on the floor where it had been was a wet spot. He put his hand down on it, feeling the blessed liquid on his skin and not caring how much it hurt. It was less than a finger width deep, but that was enough for now.

  He looked around for the water pipe that had created the puddle, finding it along the base of the wall and totally without pressure. Ikan dipped his finger into it, finding only a standing puddle that wouldn’t last out the day, but it would keep him alive at least that long.

  The Constublar knelt down, then lay down on the floor beyond the water, not wanting to waste any of it soaking into his clothing. Then he crawled up to it and put his lips down, very gently sucking it in and making sure not to choke on it. At first he just let it creep into his mouth and wet his tongue before working up to taking sips. He stayed there for what seemed like a lifetime as the slightly dusty water rejuvenated his dehydrated body.

  When he had drank as much as his body would tolerate, he rolled over and crawled to a clear section of wall beyond the water and rested his back against it. He didn’t need to sleep as much as he did to stop moving and let the water do its magic on his body. He closed his eyes and just held still, knowing he had bought himself some more time. And once his parched flesh processed the water enough to return some saliva to his mouth he’d experiment with a handful of the grain dust.

  Until then he just had to wait…and try not to think of what was happening to all the others he’d left behind.

  5

  Ikan found himself walking the road again, feeling better and worse than before. His hands throbbed, and the blood soaked sleeves attested to the reason why, but his mouth was no longer dry and his stomach had an ample amount of grain dust in it. Perhaps a little too much, for he was feeling food sick now but he had to keep moving to find more water. The puddle in the transit station was probably dry by now, for he hadn’t left much there after sucking up his fill.

  His pockets were full of grain dust again, for there was so much around it was making it hard to walk. It was piled like sand, but fortunately no obstructions were on the road other than the occasional piece of building that he could walk around out into the crater field. It was night again, but the twin moons were high enough in the sky to give him light as he pressed on.

  Ikan didn’t want to think about what was behind him, so he kept trying to calculate how much of the fields would have been spared. The growth facilities had probably been targeted and destroyed, along with the collection and processing centers, but would all of the smaller structures have been hit? Especially the way stations in the fields for the workers that were overseeing the mostly automated harvesters. Those had supplies in them, and their own well water supply. He was counting on at least one of them remaining, but he had to get to the edge of the city first before he could begin to look.

  And the problem with that was the road. The agro complex didn’t run all the way to the city limits, and up ahead he could already see small mountains of destroyed buildings. But there weren’t that many, according to his memory which seemed to be crystal clear in such details, so if he had to climb again he could make himself do it knowing there was a nearby finish line to get to.

  But until then he walked, slowly with small steps sometimes trudging through grain dust dunes, and tried to glimpse anything ahead in the dark to help plot his course. He thought there was a valley in the debris, but he wasn’t sure until he got much closer and the moonlight showed a small crater with a crack of charred black beyond. Ikan wanted to think that was the fields, but there was no way to be sure at night. Everything looked black unless it reflected the moonlight.

  He started heading for the crater amongst the building piles before he got to them, cutting across a blast zone and keeping out of a jagged trench that had been dug into the ground by the weaponsfire. It went down probably 20 feet or more, and if he fell in it he doubted he would be coming back out again, so he kept his distance as much as he could up to what had once been a fuel station. It was gone now, but he could see the road branch that had led to it, now just a stub off the main street. When it had blown it hadn’t crumbled in, but pushed out, giving him a walking path through the blast zone.

  Ikan was elated that he wasn’t going to have to crawl over the rubble, but he was careful not to cut himself on the small, jagged pieces of debris sticking up everywhere. He could see over them all, but some required a little climbing, for his legs wouldn’t reach high enough to step over without a handhold or two…which hurt horribly even with his sleeves being used as cushioning.

  But he pressed on, setting himself to do whatever was necessary…then suddenly the darkness became less dim as h
e stepped into what had once been a grain field, but was now just a long black burnt mess with chunks of debris thrown everywhere nearby.

  “Finally,” he said hoarsely. The first word he’d spoken since coming out of the remains of the Dovora complex.

  He didn’t stop moving to study the view, instead getting his feet on the ashes and making sure not to trip and fall into the smoldering remains. Everything was tolerably warm, but there was a little smoke here and there. Ikan cut across the field at an angle until he found the road again, with it being mostly unmolested past the city. It was one of many such roads that gave the grain transports regular access to the agro complexes, all of which spurred off from the city to the processing centers that the fields fed.

  Ikan didn’t want to go there, at least not first, for he assumed they too would have been destroyed, so he headed up the road for several hours until his shoes and legs were covered in ash, then he finally cut off to the right across one of the fields down a small gravel path. He could barely see it in all the ash, but the bits of visible stone reflected the moonlight well and caught his attention.

  He walked and walked across the fields that were not meant to be traveled without transport. A Zen’zat could have ran them easily, but not a Ter’nat. Even his walk was slow compared to those legends, and his stomach pains had shifted from discontent to emptiness again. The ash seemed to make his mouth even drier than in the city, but stopping would be of no avail. Any water in the fields had been vaporized in the fires, so stopping now was tantamount to accepting his death.

  So he walked until daylight, plus another three hours, before he came to a small side path that was even narrower than the one he was on. Ikan turned down it, his throat hurting so bad that it overwhelmed his other pains, but another hour or so later he finally saw it.