Worthy

Science fiction short story

“Desert Watch” by Jens Kuczwara - all rights reserved and respected

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It was the first evening of summer, and Hapi was already sweating.

“Truck incoming, two leagues.” The radio bead in his ear whispered with Psam’s voice, and Hapi shifted sideways to look down the long road. Karachabad Province was a flat and dry place, and the only thing separating them from Akolapur was a sprawl of huts, sandy fields and old colony pods, stretching in a messy wave all the way to the distant city. Here, at the edge of the province, the foothills of the Tamaar mountains began in slow, grinding waves of naked rock, and it was amongst these sun-blasted crests that the Amath-Ra team was waiting. The evening’s heat was a hazy blanket over it all, curdling the air and making distant observations near impossible.

The moons were rising to the east, two fat orange discs following each other into the blue dusk sky, and the road leading to the north-east disappeared into the horizon beneath their radiance. Smoke and dust clouded the sky in the same direction, staining the moons with jaundice. Yellow dots of light were approaching along the ground, curving and bouncing and swaying from side to side as the vehicle followed the road towards them.

“Keb, Amun - get the scanners ready,” Hapi whispered to the two commandos next to him, and they nodded assent before sliding in behind their aura sensors. The men were grey-tan shapes amongst the rocks, barely visible even at touching distances. Thoth’s ibis beak, engraved into the side of the sensors, aimed at the distant trucks, and Hapi could see the faint thermal blooms around the devices as they began to study the approaching vehicle. Hapi moved himself sideways, away from them, and into the rocky nook where his beam rifle lay. They had set it up during the day, under thermal wraps to hide it from the sun and the remaining watcher satellites, and the crosshairs were pointed up the road - waiting for the truck. The stock was cool and rough under his hands when he slid into position behind it. It had managed to weather the brutal heat better than he did.

“Two in the cab, about ten or eleven in the back.” Keb’s voice was quiet as he studied the output from the aura sensor. “No - ten in the back, one child.”

Hapi frowned at the thought of a child riding with the rebels. It was not their style at all.

“Weapons?” The beam rifle’s scope focused on the magnetic profile of the truck, but aside from the heat bloom of the front-mounted engine, it could not detect any energy concentrations. Hapi felt a frown flit across his face. “My rifle shows nothing concentrated.”

“Nothing on our scopes either.” Keb and Amun conferred between their various sensors, talking in low voices for a few moments, before Keb returned his attention to Hapi. “There is something in the back of the truck that looks chemical, but it could just be extra fuel. The Gandheeri militia stow their fuel the same way.”

No weapons, extra fuel, children - Hapi mulled it over, and wondered if they were perhaps just refugees. Sweat trickled down his left temple as he considered the matter. The fleet in orbit had been pounding Karachabad for days now, and the last update that Hapi and his squad received had reported heavy fighting to the north, where Karachabad Province terminated at the crooked line of the Na-Indus river. Anhur divisions, under the blue and gold banner of Marshal Khefretep and with support from orbit, had landed to the north of the river in the uninhabited Pakhaal desert, and were hammering the river defenders to reach Akolapur. The rebels were dug in tight though, and there was only so much the orbiting fleet could do in support - the Anhur divisions needed to capture Akolapur to occupy it, and destroying the city in the process would be a hollow victory.

“Psam, anything from your position?” Hapi looked sideways and down, to the lower cluster of rocks where he knew their fourth man was, but between the fading light and the careful camouflage he could make out nothing.

“Nothing on scopes, just that engine.” Psam was dug in like a sand-lion waiting for its prey, and the fat, camouflaged barrel of his repeater cannon was just another lumpy outcrop of rock and dust to any watching observer. “Shall we stop them at the contact line?”

“Wait until they reach it, then take out their engine. We’ll see if they run after that.” Hapi shifted back behind his own scope and reacquired the distant truck. He could also take the shot to stop the truck, and at a much greater range than the lurking Psam - but the beam rifles had been designed to take out mechanized Gheshkar battle suits, and would punch through the truck from nose to tail without even losing a percent of its wattage. Whoever was inside would be flash-boiled into pink steam, which was not a great way to treat fleeing refugees.

The Gheshkar had not shown up in the south yet, but Hapi knew it was only a matter of time. The battle suits were vicious things, fast and well-armoured for their size, and had been giving the Anhur divisions a bloody nose for days now. Most of the refugees had started fleeing out of Akolapur even before the first orbital strikes, and fat rivers of sweating, panicking flesh had flown to the west and the coastal flats there. Here to the south, in the foothills of the Tamaar, the land was rough, and the Tamaar itself was inhospitable. Hapi’s team, and others like them, had dropped in to secure strategic passes, and now they had to wait and keep the river of refugees moving to the west. Marshal Khefretep did not want guerilla bands setting up in the mountains once Akolapur fell. Especially not bands armed with functional battle suits.

“They’re not slowing down.” Keb’s voice was a quiet murmur. “They’ll be on the line in five.”

Hapi counted the seconds, watching the battered blue paint on the vehicle as it swayed and jolted over the rocky road, and on the sixth count Psam’s weapon stuttered somewhere below them. A necklace of lights flashed out, crossing the intervening distance in two heartbeats before stitching across the nose of the truck with a rapid one-two-three punch. Sparks and molten metal enveloped the head of the vehicle, and it immediately began to lose speed.

They watched the vehicle coasting forward for the last few metres, dust churning around its balloon tires, until eventually it ground to a halt halfway up one of the slight inclines that took the road towards their position. A few seconds later, and the truck slowly rolled backwards again, until it eventually came to a final halt at the base of the incline. Dust swirled, and Hapi felt more sweat trickling down the side of his face. Nothing was moving at the truck.

“They seem very calm about this all.” Psam voiced what the rest of them were thinking, and Hapi slid his scope over the length of the vehicle. There was no sign of movement, no doors banging open, no panicked crew or passengers trying to leave. A crack had appeared in the front window, but between the dark glass and the encroaching dusk it was impossible to see what was happening inside the cab.

“Too calm. Amun, send the eagle.” Hapi chewed the inside of his one cheek, wondering if there was something they had missed, but when he swept his scope to the rear of the truck, where the dust of its passage still lingered along the winding road, there was nothing. “Keb, keep that sensor on them. We need to know if anything shifts.”

“One of the crew signs is fading. Passenger, our right.” Keb had his eyes glued to the back of the aura sensor again. “Might be an injury from the engine hit.”

Psam coughed, but said nothing. Hapi shook his head, and caught a shadow of a smile on Keb’s face behind the sensor.

Repeater cannons were fickle that way.

Amun’s eagle drone whispered into the air behind them moments later, its pale blue belly matching the dusk sky’s hue within seconds, and then it was lost to sight. Hapi waited a few seconds before activating the drone’s feed, and the streamed signal dropped in over his left eye to show the eagle-eye perspective of the scene ahead of them. His right eye still showed the beam rifle’s scope view, and it took but a moment of concentration to switch between the two.

The truck was a blue-and-tan dot below him, dust settling slowly as the drone floated over it - and the truck was a slab-sided block ahead of him through the rifle scope at the same time, the images overlaid and filtering into his brain via his Amath-Ra implants. The drone swooped lower, circling around the rear of the truck, and Hapi saw it in the rifle scope too, a blue-black shadow that lowered itself behind the truck before gliding in. There were crude tarpaulin flaps covering the rear of the truck, and the eagle drone paused for a moment behind them before extending an optical probe from its beak. Hapi’s one eye watched the drone moving up behind the truck, disappearing from view behind the vehicle’s bulk, while his other eye saw the probe extending and pushing through the tarpaulin flaps - and then there was white from the probe, and its feed was gone.

“The eagle is down. No link.” Amun hissed, part surprise, part disappointment. “Something cut it off just after the optical probe cleared the rear flap.”

“Are you sure about that?” Hapi watched the truck with both eyes now, and saw the drone wobble back into view again as it retreated from the rear of the vehicle. “I can see it still in the air. Looks like it’s pulling back.”

“Energy spike in the back. Something’s happening.” Keb frowned into his sensor, adjusted some dials, and kept frowning. “Electro-magnetic pattern, it looks like a data carrier wave.”

“No link to the eagle. Whoever is controlling it is outside of my link.” Amun manipulated his control pack, then raised a frown matching that of Keb. “No response to the kill-switch either. It’s out of my control.”

Hapi watched the drone lift into the sky and swing back towards them, and knew that something was starting to go wrong.

The drone swooped through the sky in a loop, seemingly retracing the path that had initially taken it to the rear of the truck, and Keb and Amun both scattered sideways, scrambling for their net cannons. Hapi, frozen over his rifle, saw movement at the back of the truck, dark shapes boiling out from beneath the tarps, and the next moment someone at the truck was firing in their direction. Rounds flew overhead, some ricochetting off the surrounding rocks with jackal howls as they tumbled off into the hillside, and Hapi spotted what looked like two groups developing as the truck occupants spread out.

The first group was armed, men and women in loose peasant clothing clutching kinetic rifles, and they dove for rocks and gullies around the truck before firing up at where Hapi and his team crouched. Psam muttered something unintelligible through their radio link, and then his repeater cannon was stuttering back at the shapes, cutting figures apart and crumbling rock with each hit. Hapi kept watch through his rifle scope, and only looked away when he heard the hum overhead.

The errant eagle drone was almost on them before Keb’s net cannon burped out its spiderweb of nano-wires and tiny weights. A spinning disc of expanding silvery strands blurred through the shrinking distance between them and clipped the drone’s one wing, sending it wobbling to the side. Amun’s follow-up shot entangled the drone entirely, gumming up its servos with wire, and it clattered down to the rocks below them somewhere. Its suicide charge detonated, throwing up dust and pebbles and fragments of carbon fuselage, and Hapi huddled down next to the beam rifle with his head down and his one hand over the scope as the debris pattered down around them.

When he raised his head again, the first group from the truck had been cut in half, and the second group was running to the west.

There were four of them, in bulky saffron robes, huddled around a smaller figure in their midst. Dust trailed them as they scampered over the low dunes, their shapes disappearing into the dune gulleys one moment before reappearing the next. Hapi thought he saw a heat haze around them as they ran, and when he hauled the beam rifle around and focused on them, the scope confirmed it: energy shields.

“Runners to the west. Amun, hit them with the electro gun.” Hapi tried to focus on the small shape in their midst, but could not discern any details. Below them, Psam’s cannon was mopping up the last of the shooters around the truck, and a line of smoke was starting to climb into the sky from the truck’s ruined engine. Someone had tried to take cover behind the stalled machine, and not lived to regret it when Psam’s weapon stitched through the thin metals.

“They stole my eagle, damn mud-eaters,” Amun muttered while bringing up the emitter gun, and a moment later he had the long-barreled device pointing off at the distant shapes. Blue coils shifted and spun along the length of the barrel, arcane electromagnetic energies cycling up between the focused arrays, and the next moment the gun whistled - sharp, piercing, an eagle cry at noon - and Hapi saw his own scope display turn into white noise from the backblast.

In the distance, the running group stumbled - every single one of them - and went down in a pile of dust. Sparks danced in the air above them as their energy shields burned off, static electricity overloading the bubble fields, and the airborne dust around them spiked out into strange fractal shapes for a moment before collapsing back into loose powder.

Nothing moved.

“Did anyone else see that?” Hapi could feel the after-image of the fractal dust skittering along the back of his eyeballs. His scope was busy resetting, electromagnetic buffers dissipating, and when it cleared up again he immediately had his eye glued to the device.

Nothing.

The distant figures had gone down just as they crested a dune, tumbling down the far side when the electromagnetic blast hit them. Only dust hung in the air to mark their passage.

“Truck’s clean. I count seven down.” Psam sounded bored. “There’s another one in the cab, for eight total.”

“I saw it,” Keb replied, and shared a concerned look with Hapi when he glanced over. His mouth was set in a grim line. “It looked like black market shielding. Definitely not normal gear for the Akolapur garrison.”

Hapi watched the distant dust settling, and came to a decision after a few moments.

“Amun, stay here with the beam rifle. If something moves on that dune, melt it. Keb, Psam - weapon up, let’s go see.”

They took up carbines and belt shields, clipping the fat emitters around their waists as they scrambled down the rocks, and met Psam where he waited at the foot of the rocky hill with his cannon over his shoulder. The support specialist was a boulder of a man, and made the cannon look tiny in his hands.

The road was a dusty strip alongside them when they moved out, and after skirting past the shot-up truck to ensure there were no survivors - there were none, not after Psam’s deadly work - they set off along the scuffed trail that the running group had left over the dunes. The fractal patterns looped in Hapi’s mind, overlapping the image of the broken, bloodied bodies around the truck where the flies were already thronging. The fallen bodies had smiles on their faces, even in death, and the grin of yellowed teeth in dead faces would not fade from his mind’s eye no matter how hard he concentrated on the trail ahead.

Something was wrong.

Something was very, very wrong here.

The moons were still climbing overhead, casting shadows on the sand around them, and the smell of the land enveloped them as it began to cool after the heat of the day. From atop the rocky hillsite position they had been spared the worst of it during the day, when the sun baked the stones around them into dry dustiness, but now, in the lowlands, there was no escaping it. Karachabad Province smelled of dry land, the coarse tang of hydrocarbon fuels, and the stink of too many people in too small a space. Not even the native plant life was able to disperse or dilute it. Even out here, at the outskirts of where the masses thronged, the very air still reeked of their presence. Everything was tainted by the rank over-population that was endemic to almost every single one of the Japhoori planets. That fecal tang, mixed with the smell of blood from the truck, trailed them like a hungry dog as they stalked closer to their destination, and only when they finally swung around the base of the dune where the runners had fallen did a new smell penetrate the haze around them.

Hapi felt his own throat spasm into an involuntary gag, and heard Keb retch beside him as the odour washed over them. Only Psam seemed unaffected, and he was the first to drop to one knee and take aim at the figure waiting ahead of them.

The four figures who had run from the truck, shielding the fifth, were pulled into a rough circle at the base of the dune. None of them moved. Their saffron robes were tangled and matted with dust and viscera, and Hapi spotted the blackened, carbonized scorches on their flesh where belt-mounted shield generators had overloaded and burnt away fabric and tissue alike. They were limp in death, limbs tangled around them, and their robes were soaked where the torsos had been ripped open. Tangled black cables, streaked with viscera, ran from each body along the ground towards the figure sitting in the middle of the circle, and Hapi became aware of a faint hum rising from the scene as his eyes swept over the details before finally locking onto the figure.

It was a child - or something child-sized, with fat cheeks and short-cropped black hair and a voluminous saffron robe not dissimilar in cut and colour to that of the butchered figures around it. It sat cross-legged in the middle of the circle, the bloodied cables running up to it and slipping under its robe from all directions, with its hands on its knees and its eyes closed. Hapi saw the blood covering its hands and arms, soaking into the robe that covered it, and wondered at the strength that had been needed to perform whatever defilement it had done to the bodies around it.

There was not a blade or weapon in sight that could have made those cuts.

The smell was the worst of it. It was a stench of spoiled milk and rotting blood and human faeces all rolled together, and seemed to waft in thick waves from the torn-open bodies. Hapi had smelled death on the battlefield before, but nothing like this. The stench was an almost physical force that battered them as they slowed spread out to surround the sitting figure, and even Psam had to eventually turn sideways and hawk up a ball of spit at one point.

Hapi had just stopped at one of the bodies, facing the seated figure, when its eyes opened. Bluest of blue gazed out at him, shockingly vivid in the brown face with its Jahpoori features, and the face creased into a smile before it spoke.

“I knew you would come.” The voice was soft, child-like, and enunciated the Holy Language perfectly. Hapi felt a frisson of ice run down his spine at the sound of his own tongue coming from the figure. “Please - sit, join me.”

The words were inside his head, piercing and undeniable, and Hapi found himself on one knee already before the realisation kicked in. Around him, Psam and Keb were already down. He staggered backwards with a curse, forcing himself upright against ground that seemed to suck at his limbs, and swung his carbine up to fire a short burst over the seated figure’s head. The sound dispelled the echoing swirl in his head, each roar like a slap to his face, and from the corner of his eyes he noticed the other commandos stagger back to their feet as well.

“Do that again, and the next rounds are going into your face.” Hapi’s carbine barrel snapped down and centered on the forehead in front of him. Serene eyes looked back, unflinching even as the last gunshots faded away over the dunes. “What are you?”

The body at Hapi’s feet hummed and twitched for a moment, and then it was still again. Hapi forced himself to ignore it and keep his weapon aimed at the smiling face. Below him, a slow rictus grin was spreading over the bloodied face, lips peeling back to reveal stained yellow teeth under glassy, dead eyes.

“I am Deva Satra.” The voice sounded the same, but the piercing tone was gone. “Do not mind my servant. He is sustaining me now, even after you have struck him down.”

“We didn’t butcher your people. What did you do to him?” Hapi could feel his Amath-Ra implant struggling, fighting against something that was trying to press into it from the data-sphere. It felt like a weighted blanket trying to smother him from every side. “And stop messing with my implants, or I’m going to put holes in you and see what comes out.”

The pressure around him lessened, but did not disappear completely. The strange stench was intensifying, and Hapi looked down at the torn-open chest below him and realized that it was coming from the bloodied corpse at his feet.

“I did nothing to him. Shatesh was a good man. He offered himself to me freely.” One small hand rose from a bloodied knee and lazily indicated the other bodies in the dust. “All of them did. They were devoted in life, and hallowed in death now. They will be remembered.”

“Answer my question. What happened to them?” Hapi could feel every inch of his skin as his implants ramped up, trying to fight back against the invisible presence. His perception rating was climbing well past human norm, on a trajectory that he knew was not sustainable for long.

“Your weapon disabled their shields, and caused them to fall. Even I was momentarily dazzled by the attack.” The blue eyes in front of him were sorrowful, and almost unnaturally large. “Shatesh was the first to volunteer himself to restore me. The others did as well. Now, I am being replenished. My vitality will soon be where it was before, and then I shall continue my journey.”

“Amun, are you hearing this?” Hapi waited for the tone on the radio, but nothing came back. “Amun, talk to me. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“There’s no use calling your friends. You are safe here.” The creature - Hapi could not find it in himself to think of it as a boy, or even as Deva Satra, whatever that meant - smiled again.

It seemed to do that a lot.

Hapi glanced up at the other commandos, but got head-shakes in return. Their radios were also down.

“Where are you going? Are you also fleeing from Akolapur?”

“Somewhere safe is where I am going. I have work to do.” The figure turned and looked at the body that lay closest to Keb, before closing its eyes and sighing. A frantic shiver ran through the bloodied body at the commando’s feet, and Keb had just scampered backwards and lowered his aim to the thrashing body before it suddenly stilled again.

“Khiva has given his last. I shall remember him.” A pudgy, bloodied hand reached under the creature’s saffron robes - Hapi feeling his trigger finger tensing in response - and withdrew a cable end moments later. It dropped the bloodied end on the sand beside it, and sighed.

Psam, standing over one of the other bodies, knelt down on one knee while keeping his repeater cannon aimed at the seated figure’s back. He turned his head to bark at Amun, using their battle language which every squad was taught on the training fields of the Wadi lands. It was a language for war, short and crude, and wholly distinct from the Holy Language. It was never used or shared outside of the Amath-Ra, and only its members even knew of its existence.

WTF - Danger - Terminate - Urgent

Wait - Security - Valuable - Prisoner - Intelligence, Hapi barked back, and watched the creature in front of him furrow its brow.

Good. The battle language was a mystery to it - for now.

“You are afraid of me. I can sense it.” The figure’s face relaxed again, and the beatific expression returned. The frown was gone, like it had never been. “Do not be afraid. Even though you are not of my people, you can still help me.”

“No-one here is helping you.” Hapi glanced up at the moons overhead, and wondered if they would be able to get a signal out to orbit. “You are going to get up, slowly, and then you are going to turn around so that I can tie your hands behind your back. You will become our prisoner, and we will leave here with you. Do you understand me?”

Hapi could smell the ozone leaking out of his carbine as he faced off with the blue-eyed creature. It was entirely unconcerned with the weapons pointed at it, and that smile…

“I understand you, but I must insist on another plan.” Another of the fallen bodies drummed its heels on the sand before falling still. The sigh that escaped the pudgy face was longer and deeper this time. “I think you will like my plan better.”

Hapi twitched his barrel to the side and pulled the trigger once.

Light strobed in the darkness between them, a lightning strike in the desert.

The flash of the muzzle and the jerk of saffron fabric twitched at the same time, and there was suddenly a piece of yellow missing on top of the creature’s left shoulder. Dark skin, black in the moonlight, showed itself before the robe settled back again.

“Stop testing my patience,” Hapi hissed back at the smile, and this time the creature’s smile slipped away too. A blankness came over it, a stillness of body that immediately sent alarm bells ringing in Hapi’s mind, and only the eyes remained animated.

Animated - and totally inhuman.

One blue eye turned to the left, looking in Keb’s direction - and the other eye simultaneously turned to the right, towards Psam. Hapi was left facing two white eyeballs that rolled away and saw only the gods knew what inside that small skull.

Danger - Danger - Now

“Get up and turn around,” was as far as Hapi got in the Holy Language before the two remaining bodies also began to twitch, and then the saffron creature was suddenly airborne and lunging at him with two outstretched, bloodied hands.

His rifle spat fire, lighting up the scene, but the saffron shape was already past the muzzle with bloodied hands reaching for his throat even as Hapi kicked back and threw himself sideways. He caught a glimpse of a bloodied, disemboweled figure lurching off the sands and tackling Psam from the side, and then he himself was down and rolling in the sand, frantically batting away at the hands that were still reaching for him. Nails, black and bloodied, had sprouted from the pudgy digits at some point in its flight, and they raked through his combat outerwear with effortless ease before scratching off his sub-dermal armour layers. He lashed out with a leg, catching the creature on its hip, and then it was sprinting off over the sand, dragging a cable behind it as it advanced on Psam.

The big commando, wielding his repeater cannon like a club, succeeded in crushing the neck of the bloodied figure grappling with his legs just as the saffron creature was upon it. Something cracked as the two figures impacted, and then they were both down, kicking and scrabbling in the dust.

Hapi, still on the ground and feeling the stinging burn of his own skin from where the claws had gouged him, raised his rifle to fire at the creature - and was distracted by a half-choked curse from Keb’s direction. The commando was also on the ground, grappling with one of the animated carcasses - but where Psam was laying out vicious blows and keeping the darting saffron creature at bay, the smaller Keb was struggling. The bloodied carcass had him pinned down, looping guts tangled around the commando’s one arm, and was busy choking the cursing Keb with both hands.

Hapi swore to himself, twisted at the waist, and put two rounds into the back of the heaving figure atop Keb. It shuddered - and kept going, and only when Hapi levered himself up and put another round into the base of its neck did it finally go limp. Keb, suddenly crushed under the listless weight, huffed out an expletive before rolling the ruined body off himself and throwing Hapi a hand signal to show he was okay.

Hapi twisted back towards where Psam was fighting, and the saffron creature was right in front of him, reaching down to touch his forehead with a blood-soaked hand–

Pain.

Crippling, soul-crushing, thought-destroying pain filled every neuron of Hapi’s racing mind.

SUBMIT.

The voice was fire and steel in his mind, and had the stink of Karachabad upon it. Hapi thrashed, trying to get away from it, but a part of him recognized the mindscape they were in even as his mind fought the pain. He was in the simulation space of his Amath-Ra implant, deep in the buried training area which they could normally only access with the simulator machines.

Black starlit sky above, green reeds around him, brown-black earth underfoot as he curled into a foetal ball and shook from the pain.

SUBMIT.

He knew it was not real, and it did not help. The simulation space, once activated, overrode everything else that the body could perceive, and even the awakened mind could not leave it.

A form stood beside him, vague and undefined through his tears, and roared down at him again for a third time as it grew more solid.

SUBMIT!

It was the saffron creature, the boy - except it was a boy no more. It was a man now, angular and sharp and etched with light, and a single golden eye filled its entire face where it loomed above him. The green reeds around them shivered every time it spoke - even though Hapi could see no mouth in its smooth, featureless face - and it reached down for him with a hand that had more fingers than he could count. Fire blossomed around his throat as the fingers latched on, and Hapi felt himself being lifted and dragged closer to the one-eyed face.

Up close there was a fierce heat emanating from the creature, sharp and piercing, and Hapi struggled to push away - but the heat was relentless, and his skin was starting to turn black where the furnace blast was cooking him. The golden eye bored into his face, drawing closer and larger with every passing moment, and Hapi saw teeth along the inside of the eye, countless teeth in lamprey rings that milled and churned as he was drawn in.

SUBMIT!

Hapi saw his own nose catch fire, and his fingers darkening and falling off as he battered against the form that held him, and in the distance he heard a jackal howl.

It howled, again, and Hapi sensed another presence in the field of reeds.

Lord Inpu, watch over me.

Hapi thrashed, balling his remaining fingers into fists and slamming them into the eye in front of him.

Lord Inpu, guide my steps.

He kicked out, raising his feet and hammering them against the giant chest in front of him, feeling stone and raw glass tearing into his soles with every impact.

Lord Inpu, listen to my cries.

Hapi could no longer breathe, and screamed through a throat that was being inexorably crushed.

Lord Inpu, save your servant!

Something snarled beside Hapi, and he was falling, hitting the brown earth moments later. He looked up, eyes seared, eyelids flaking, hands reduced to stumps, and saw the black jackal tearing into the golden-eyed giant.

Black claws raked and tore open skin that had seared Hapi moments before, and obsidian fangs buried themselves into the neck of the one-eyed giant. The giant staggered, howling, and tried to hit back at the jackal - but every blow passed through it, balled fists punching through smoke and finding nothing. Feet kicked and stamped through the reeds around Hapi, destroyed metres-long swathes with every stomp, and suddenly–

Hapi was rolling away from the figure in front of him, and the saffron-robed boy was staggering back as well, clutching at its head and howling. Dust scuffed around them, Hapi feeling the returning sensation in his limbs, and Psam was cursing somewhere to the side, accompanied with wet, smacking sounds.

The saffron creature’s howls stopped, abruptly cut off, and when Hapi looked up at it again he saw two blue eyes that were streaming blood. Something had ruptured inside the creature’s skull, and blood was dribbling from every orifice on its face as it glared down at the commando it had touched mere moments before.

“Submit!” it screamed, pudgy jowls wobbling, and something hit it in the face and took its entire lower jaw off. Blood and something that sparked with splinters of light went flying off into the darkness, even as Hapi recognized the bark of Keb’s pistol.

Hapi got his own carbine up just as the creature turned, and his first two rounds went wide as the boy-shape sprinted with inhuman speed for the dune-top opposite them. It was heading for the Tamaar ridge, moving impossibly fast, and was halfway up the dune before Hapi got another bearing on it. His shots chased it up the last few metres in plumes of fire and sand, and when it crested the dune-top it was silhouetted, momentarily, against dark sky and the stars above it. Hapi thought he saw another figure next to it, tall, with a long snout and sharp ears, and then the entire top of the dune lit up in a searing blast of blue-white light.

The wet sounds from Psam stopped, and the dunes slowly faded back into darkness. Hapi felt his eyes watering, and it took a while for his sight to return.

“Hapi, come in.” Amun’s voice was crisp in his ear a few moments later. “I need an update, please advise.”

Hapi looked around him, at the battered carcasses that had somehow reanimated and fought them, and saw both Psam and Keb standing. In the darkness it was difficult to be certain, but both men were dark with blood, and Psam had his baton out and dripping at his side.

“This is Hapi. We’re still standing, I think.” Hapi slowly pushed himself back to his feet again, feeling the coarse sand under his fingers. The pain and heat from the simulation lingered, even as he felt his own hands to confirm the presence of all of his digits.

“I lost the last target.” Amun sounded glum. “I got the one in yellow, but the other one is gone.”

“Can you describe the second target?” Hapi felt his heart skip a beat.

“Tall, dark, looked like a black skinsuit with a mask. He didn’t register on the scope.”

Hapi breathed out slowly. He heard the jackal howling in the distance, fading away into the darkness of the night.

“Let him go. He’s not a threat.”

Over the darkness of Karachabad Province, a jackal howled that night, and Akolapur fell at sunrise.

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