Resurgent Prologue drabble

Prologue

Strader Ruins

Greenpeace

1270 Standard

Night had fallen: the sky was clear once more, but the air was cool and full of scents, and there was the sound of moving water everywhere, running along the ground, dripping from the tips of leaves, masking the sound of movement within the ruins. The brief rain storm had cooled everything off. A cloaked figure stepped delicately among the brambles and exposed rocks of the ancient ruins, the shadows concealing her like one of their own.

The rest of the natives and the hired Port diggers were lounging in the shadow of the Ruins’ outer stones farthest from the Cliff wall, yet with hailing distance of the smaller camp just to the left of the cliff wall face. Though the natives would be deaf tonight; this was the last night of the ringed moon—The Feast of the Dead was performed and no one ventured far from the safety of their hearth. Once a year one of the twin moons acquired a ring for three nights, and the priests preformed the Feast ceremony that they were so secretive about. No off-worlder had ever been invited--at least as far as the figure knew.

Upon reaching one of the larger rim rocks, the figure squatted and reached out an obviously-human hand to balance herself though she just as obviously didn’t need to; her balance, like her other reflexes, was flawless and came without conscious bidding. Her eyes settled on the shadows at the cliff wall’s base, but she followed the movements of the passing sentry through her peripheral vision, oddly unobstructed by her cloak’s hood. She knew the sentry made a pass of the cliff wall every two hours; she had spied on the archeology expedition before. He walked to the edge of the cliff wall, then came back and did a trip around the small off-worlder camp before entering the sentry tent. They didn’t go through the ruins at night.

The ruins were a desolated, legend-haunted place, shunned by most of the natives yet sought after by the scientists. Time spent in such a vast, still mostly unexplored tract was tantalizing in its sense of brooding mystery or so she had been told by one of the scientists a few years ago. Skeletons had been found where the intruders now crouched within the cliff wall’s shadow, and artifacts—crystal goblets and small statuettes, all bearing Laren characters and thus greatly valued—had been found both scattered about the ruins and buried within the cliff wall itself. Yet nothing of major value—nothing to explain what this place had been—had ever been found. The cliff wall also contained a half-concealed cave with a crumbling ledge. No significant artifacts had been found within, only a few Laren characters on the wall, and therefore was labeled valueless to the scientific world. Rare was the scientist who ventured inside.

Yet that cave appeared to be where the intruders were headed: one had begun to climb. The others waited, their eyes no doubt on the climber. When he was half-way up, another started the climb.

A sudden breeze stirred up, bringing her the climbers’ scent, and she gagged almost violently: they smelled of death as if they were the walking dead. To the sentry no doubt it seemed the natural smell of Greenpeace as he didn’t pause on his return trip, yet to her—and any whose senses were acclimated to the planet’s lush jungles/ forest—it was as clear as Terran glass. The sentry didn’t even look up.

In the five years that she had lived on Greenpeace, she had thought she had managed to forget her past, yet several times—five in this day alone—she had reverted, reacting with instincts long though dead. Those instincts, homed since she had been a child, had directed her movements from the first and only when she had entered the ruins had her mind fully returned, but as before, she was already committed to this course of action.

The last intruder hooked his leg over the ledge and disappeared into the darkness beyond, even as the figure straightened to remove the native cloak, knowing it would hamper her movements. As dark as the cloak, her coveralls fit her wiry figure like a second skin, vanishing into equally dark ankle-boots that contained more than feet: a sheath disappeared into her left boot, holding a slender, gleaming stick. Her glossy hair held a similar stick in a complex knot. They seemed to be her only weapons; they were not. She carried within her belt pouch, along with the passport which listed her as one Sara Littwin Connor of Terran Citizenship, a handful of darts coated in a lethal dose of STRYN which was the fruit-extract poison widely used by the native Clans she lived among and a small native blow tube on said belt. Not to mention her inherent weapons.

Removing the stick from her boot, she snapped it open to reveal a thin, deadly looking blade, wickedly serrated on both sides, holding it in the grip of one who had had to use the weapon many time, as the sentry passed out of sight. As fast as thought, she was up and moving, her pace eating the short distance rapidly. Making the cliff wall without notice, she relaxed her grip on the stick-knife and turned her attention to the problems at hand: the barely visible holds. In one liquid motion she returned the knife to its place and launched herself upwards, groping for the holds. Finding them she pulled herself upward and concentrated on her climbing.

Her mind was so occupied with climbing that when she reached the ledge, she was almost knocked from it by one of the men she had been following. But the sound of his swing had given her reflexes warning enough; she had twisted away from the blow and dangled from the finger grip of one hand, even as her stick-knife was snapped from its sheath and thrown to bury its blade in the man’s body. Retaining her two-handed grip, she swung her legs up and helped the falling man from the ledge. She watched in regret--regretting the loss of her blade—as the body hit the ground before pulling herself more firmly onto the ledge and entering the cave.

Sparks flickered unnoticed across the smooth-mesh bracer she wore on her left forearm as the torchlight blinded her, but instinct dropped her into a crouch, even as her hand groped for a weapon. Her fingers curled around a fair-sized stone just as her eyes recovered and the stone whistled through the air, dropping another man in mid-leap. Her skill, she noted with conflicting emotions, had not suffered from her lack of practice; the stone had struck him on the temple and hitting the stone floor had finished the job for her of knocking him completely unconscious.

Suddenly recalling the shine she had glimpsed, she raised the man’s right hand and grimaced at the metal claw thereby displayed. A glistening green liquid dripped to the floor from one of the razor-sharp nails, and she dropped the man’s arm as if burned, moving away with a snarl of disgust. Poison she had expected, but not—that. ECKE was deadly poison, but it was also an aphrodisiac; it ate one from the inside out, yet until the last few moments of life, one felt nothing but intense pleasure. Those of the Death-Cult—worshipers of Elgar—used it in sacrificial ceremonies of the greatest importance.

A flutter of wings in her face brought her back to life as she automatically raised her arm to receive the familiar weight. Though seemingly physically no different from the original strain, the hawk that perched on her bracer was of mutated stock. He had been a gift from Davad on her last birthday.

The hawk’s sharp beak gently caressed Sara’s cheek, even as emotions seeped into her mind. “Glad to see you too, Caer.” She murmured. She smiled grimly and ruffled Caer’s wing feathers absently as her eyes went to the large alter-like stone that dominated the cave.

A thought tugged at her, and she moved to the lit torch. A flexing of her arm caused Caer to take wing, and she carefully removed the torch from the sconce. Setting the torch on the stone altar’s surface, she ran her hands under its “table’ edge, then finding that for which she had been searching, tugged. Grinding, the stone moved, causing her to hastily grip the torch and eye the entrance the stone had revealed. A stone stairway led into the darkness. She had known of similar passages long ago, yet had never thought to find one here.

An inquiring noise brought her attention back to Caer. “You stay here, you silly bird,” she murmured as she set her foot on the first step.

Caer didn’t understand most of her words, but he did understand her tone, and gave a soft cry as he settled more comfortably on the sconce where he had been watching the unconscious man.

The stairway ended in ten steps at a short passage which vanished into darkness beyond the single torch burning in the passage. Advancing into the passage, Sara held her own torch high as her eyes surveyed the graphics that appeared between each to the unlit torches. Had she the time and was here for another reason, she would have stopped and studied them more carefully; they were Laren characters and would be able to tell her what this place was. Sparks flickered across her bracer, even as she came to the end of the short tunnel, freezing her in mid-step.

To her left was a ramp leading down and the cause of the warning stood at its foot. He seemed to be standing with his back to her and she carefully set the torch in the nearest sconce. The slight increase of light must have warned him for he turned just as she leaped at him, and they went rolling further into the subterranean chapel.

Her hand moved in a blur, its rigid edge striking perfectly at his shoulder, stunning that arm—and the hand that wore the claw. Rolling, she came to her feet, prepared to go at him again, but instinct made her whirl to confront the danger hurling itself at her. At the last possible second, her reflexes sent her hurling to her right, and the man’s knife missed her by inches.

But Cat-swift, he was back and attacking, giving her a nasty slash on her unprotected forearm before she could knock the knife from his hand. He went for the knife, but it was her hand that gripped the hilt and buried the blade in him, causing him to stagger back.

The other man slashed at her from behind but she had already been moving so the claw missed her. She grabbed his wrist and twisted the claw off, slashing him with it across his throat before he could react. As he gagged and fell to the ground, she dropped the claw.

Feet sounded on the stairway, but Sara’s attention was on the man she had stabbed. He had stumbled over to the small stone basin in the center of the chapel and was leaning over it, pulling out the knife. “Degar, spawn of Elgar, accept this humble sacrifice,” she heard him mutter in her native language as he fell forward over the basin.

Sara slid to the stone floor, holding her arm against her to slow the flow of blood as she awaited whoever was coming. Too bad he was sacrificing himself for nothing; The Laren believed in Science, not Mythology.

The last thing she remembered was of someone kneeling over her before darkness claimed her.