For the Love of Gelo! (15 page)

Eyf landed nearby. She looked like she'd escaped the worst of it. “The edge of the Glass Desert is that way!” she said, pointing, “I saw it! Not far! Not far at all!”

Two dark shapes stumbled toward us through the settling dust. Taius was trying to spit, but his mouth was too dry. Becky's hair looked like some sort of deranged animal clinging to her head. She was refolding her own thermal blanket. Luckily she'd had the same idea.

“Wait,” said Little Gus, doing some quick mental math. “You two only had one blanket.”

Neither one of them spoke.

“We only have five blankets,” said Little Gus quietly. “Did you two share a blanket . . . through the whole storm?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” said Becky.

Taius didn't either. He pulled out the zowul, no longer disrupted by the weather. Thank Jalasu Jhuk I heard the telltale chime once more.

O
n the far side of the desert, we followed the beacon into a mountain range that had no Aeaki name that Eyf knew. The trees became smaller and farther between as we climbed up into the scrubby hills.

I caught Little Gus staring back the way we'd come. The lifeless green of the Glass Desert spread out behind us.

“Do you think he'll be able to follow our scent across
that
?” he asked. He was talking about Pizza.

“Yes,” I lied. In fact, I worried that the dust storm had scoured away all trace of our passing.

We made camp on a high ledge deemed inaccessible to most “beastly things” by Eyf. She felt reasonably sure we were out of rahk country for now. The big predators on Kyral were forest dwellers.

Our Oru provisions had run low, so Eyf helped forage for more edible things. This meant seeds and grasses and herbs, mostly. Once, she flipped a rock and found dozens of squealing yellow grubs underneath. She offered to share, but the rest of us politely declined. So she ate them herself.

“Can you imagine eating something like that?” asked Hollins as he watched Eyf peck the little grubs out of the dirt.

“Yuck,” I said. “I wish we had some normal food, like a freeze-dried ice cream bar or a nice fried cave slug.”

Eyf even deemed it safe for us to make a fire. We were beneath a rocky overhang, so the flames would be hidden from any Aeaki who might be flying overhead.

With a heat source and some fresh ingredients, Little Gus resumed his long-standing role as the group's cook. He really outdid himself, too. He used several red tubers to make a delicious savory soup. The only unappetizing aspect was that it was exactly the color of human blood. Slurping it down, I felt a bit like one of the
Vampire Band Camp
undead.

“What do you call this stuff?” I asked him, finishing my second bowl.

“Oh, I think you know,” said Little Gus.

I sighed. “Little Gus Soup?”

“What? No,” he said, scratching his head. “It's actually called borscht. But ‘Little Gus Soup' does have a nice ring to it. Plus, nobody on this planet can argue.”

“It tastes like wryv,” said Taius, unbidden. We all turned to stare at him.

“The Vorem one said a not-mad thing!” whispered Eyf. Taius turned away.

“What's ‘wryv'?” I asked.

“Nothing. It's just a dish we have on my world,” he said. “But usually it has meat in it. Raw meat.”

The humans and I looked at one another. Taius had been less hostile in the recent days, but he'd been far from forthcoming. This was the first bit of personal information that he'd offered up. Only Little Gus rolled his eyes. Since the dust storm, he'd been quite rude to Taius at every turn. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that he'd shared Becky's blanket.

“What's it like on your world?” I asked.

Taius hesitated. “Voryx Prime is a harsh, barren planet. We live in fortified cities, always ready for attack.”

“Sounds really nice,” said Little Gus. “Very welcoming. How are the beaches?”

“You're all making fun of me,” he said.

“No, we're not,” I said. “Do you miss it?”

Taius squinted at me. “What do you mean, ‘miss it'?” he asked with a hint of his old sneer.

“Chorkle means: Is it fun? Or interesting?” said Nicki. “Are there people there you'd like to see again? TV shows you need to catch up on?”

“
Fun?
” he said as though he'd never heard the word before. “No, it's not fun. . . . I suppose Voryx Prime is interesting. Our culture is very . . . complicated.”

“How?” asked Hollins.

“Well,” said Taius, “Vorem society is divided into castes. Lowest are the alien slaves. Then the Vorem slaves. Then the plebeians and the soldiers. And above all are the patricians. The patricians are the great houses that built the Vorem Dominion.”

“Huh. You sure the
slaves
didn't do some of that?” asked Becky.

Taius opened his mouth to respond, but then he closed it. Perhaps he hadn't considered the idea before. “Well . . . you might have a point,” he said at last. “But those with power are all patricians.”

“So I guess we can assume you're one too, huh?” asked Little Gus.

“Yes,” said Taius proudly. “Ridian is an ancient house. We have imperial blood. In fact, my grandfather could have been imperator. But he was betrayed and executed. The current imperator is my cousin.”

“Wow,” said Little Gus. “I knew you were a fancypants, but I didn't know we had actual
royalty
here with us. A real ‘Prince Charming'!”

Taius stared at him blankly.

“It's from a fairy tale we have on Earth,” cried Little Gus in exasperation. “Read a book once in a while!”

Taius shrugged. “I do read books. Military history, mostly.”

“Of course you do,” said Little Gus.

“Speaking of the military,” I said, “you're a patrician, but you're also a legate in the Vorem legion, right? Which is sort of like a general or something?”

“Legate is an officer's rank that is lower than a general,” said Taius. “My father's a general.”

“But you can't be much older than us,” I said. “Aren't you a little young to be leading troops into battle?”

Here, he tensed. “Vorem war training begins early. When we are children.”

“Yeah, well. Seems like you could have used a little more training,” said Little Gus.

Taius's eyes flashed. “What?” he cried, suddenly as enraged as I'd ever seen him. “How dare you—I should've—I mean, the battle on Gelo was not a foregone conclusion! If we'd done more reconnaissance, I wouldn't have failed! The legion I was given, they were a pack of cowards! And even Imperator Rhado lost a battle. It's not . . . It wasn't my . . . I should have won!”

The rest of us stared at him in silence. Taius was panting. A strand of spittle hung from his lips.

“Well, it's a good thing you didn't,” said Becky simply, and she stood to leave. The rest of the humans followed her—Little Gus with a click of his tongue. Even Eyf, who loved conversation more than anyone, walk-hopped away to her own bedroll.

And so I sat alone by the dying fire with Taius. Both of us were quiet for a long time.

“My father is not the forgiving type,” he said, startling me. “If I ever return to General Ridian, he may well put me to death.”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“For losing the battle,” he said. “He's always believed I am weak and foolish and incompetent. He gave me command of the Gelo invasion to prove myself. But all I proved was that he was right about me.”

I was torn. I was obviously glad that we'd beaten back the Vorem legion and kept the Q-sik from General Ridian. At the same time, death seemed a harsh penalty for anyone, even Taius. And deep down, some part of me remembered the times when I felt I couldn't measure up to Kalac's standards.

“There was no way to know we had starfighters,” I said, shrugging. It was an odd position to be comforting someone who had tried to conquer your civilization.

“Forget the space battle; I should have won in the tunnels!” he said. “By the formulas of the Dominion War College, I had more than enough troops and firepower to beat a bunch of untrained cave dwellers.”

I frowned at him. “No offense,” he added halfheartedly. “I just . . . I don't know what happened. I lost.”

This brought us to something I'd been wondering about for a while. “How
did
you survive the battle?” I asked him. “We thought we buried you.”

“There was a legionary about my size who'd been killed in the fighting,” said Taius. “I dressed his body in my armor. I even left my blaster with his corpse, though I realize now how useful it would have been in the months that followed. I didn't want to leave any clues of my existence.”

“Perhaps only one in a million could survive in the Unclaimed Tunnels for that long,” I said. “It would have been almost impossible, even for a Xotonian.”

“I've had survival training,” said Taius. “But it wasn't easy. I practically starved. Once, I was so hungry, I ate this glowing red slime I found under a rock. Just shoved it down my throat by the handful, even though it tasted awful. After that, I started smelling colors. I thought my legs were lasers for a full week.” And he laughed.

Taius Ridian actually laughed! It wasn't a sinister muah-ha-ha-ha cackle either. It was just a wry, lighthearted chuckle. I laughed along with him.

“After weeks, maybe months of stumbling around in the caverns,” he continued, “I heard a group of Xotonians, and I followed them all the way to your hangar. I hid nearby and observed. And little by little, I took tools and small quantities of food, undetected.”

“Not totally undetected,” I said, thinking of the missing phui-chips.

“I realized that you occasionally sent your starfighters out for test flights.”

“Yes,” I said. “The humans were training Xotonians to fly them.” Taius cocked his head. I realized that I'd let it slip that, by and large, my people didn't know how to fly our own starships. “I mean the humans were training young Xotonians, like me, to fly them,” I said, trying to cover. “Because the elders had no time to do it themselves.”

He nodded. “In fact, when I decided to stow away aboard your starfighter, I assumed it was one of those short training flights, with only one or two Xotonians aboard. I hadn't counted on trying to overpower five of you, plus whatever you call that blue predator.”

“Thyss-cat,” I said. “‘Pizza' to his friends.”

“I don't think I'm among those,” he said. “Anyway, my improvised static gun wasn't up to the task. So the great Taius Ridian failed once more.” He laughed again. This time there was no joy in it.

Something Hudka once said sprang to mind. “Well, if things always worked out,” I quoted, “just imagine how boring life would be.”

He considered this for a while. “I have a question for you,” he said.

“I know what you're going to ask,” I said somberly.

“You do?”

I nodded. “You want to know what it's like to be the best Xenostryfe III player, perhaps of all time,” I said. “All I can say is that it feels good. Really good.”

“What?” Taius asked, staring at me like I'd gone completely insane. I grinned. And he laughed for a third time.

“That's not what I was going to ask,” he said. “You think I'm too young for the responsibility I was given—commanding the invasion—but I could say the same for you. Why did the Xotonians send a group of children to save their stranded leader?”

I sighed. Part of me didn't want to tell him. But another part of me felt empathy for Taius. “Well, Kalac is my originator,” I said. “It's like a mother or a father, but we only have one. That's why I'm here.”

“So rescuing Kalac would increase your respect and prestige in its eyes?”

“I guess,” I said, shrugging. “But more than that, I don't want my originator to come to any harm. I love Kalac.”

“Does Kalac love you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then Kalac is not like my father,” he said.

I wanted to comfort him somehow. I wanted to assure him that he was wrong and that even though it might not feel like it sometimes, his father loved him. But I'd spoken to General Ridian. I remembered the casual way he'd threatened to destroy Gelo and everyone on it. It made my blood run cold just to think of his voice when he'd said it. Ridian was a monster. Why would someone like that love their own offspring? Why would they love anyone? For all I knew, Taius was right.

So I didn't try to comfort him. Instead I said, “I'm sorry.”

Taius nodded. Then he turned away and spoke no more.

I rolled over too, suddenly struck by how much more comfortable the hard rocky ground was than a tree limb.

On the edge of the darkness, I saw a figure silhouetted against the sky. It was Becky. She hadn't left after all. Had she heard the whole conversation? I opened my gul'orp to say something. Before I could, she was gone.