Beyond the Sky: Chapter 30
Gates of Salvation
Velli found Commander Udan climbing from the tunnel. “We must leave, now!”
He answered, “What’s it look like we’re doing?”
“You don’t understand!” She held up the communicator, Udan and Dobok stared with eyes wide. “Mespreth is sending an airstrike, we’ve got to—”
“Sir!” Naaca shouted, pointing to the horizon. A black dot approached at speed.
“Mespreth? Teliv followed her gaze.
Velli stared. “No.”
It approached, an alien design like an elongated arrowhead, colored maroon and white, with antenna-spines and glowing panels protruding from its rear and sides. Vanes along its flanks shone dull orange with heat, some sort of radiators. Velli hadn’t seen this before.
“No, wait!” she shouted to Teliv, before he grabbed a rocket launcher. The human vessel slowed, Velli’s comrades standing transfixed with weapons half-raised. It descended, amid cracking branches and the whirr of landing jacks extending, and grounded with a thump, left side facing the assembled fighters.
“What is it?” someone asked.
“Listen to me,” Velli shouted, turned to Udan “Listen! We have to get in that ship now! Now, if we want to live!”
A cover folded down, metal ramp extending before segmenting into stairs. At the top, a hatch-door slid aside.
“Spirits help us,” Udan whispered. A human stood in the opening, no helmet. Others of the unit echoed his sentiment. “So this is the Triangle Masters?”
The human ran down the steps. Velli recognized him, if only by the pattern of symbols on his suit. “Abdul!” she shouted.
“You know this thing?” Teliv exchanged his rocket launcher for a rifle, pointed at the human’s head. It wouldn’t work, his suit had deflectors.
“He’s one of the people I met when the Triangle took me!” Velli said to Udan.
“When they told you about the bombs?” he replied.
“And right now,” Abdul said in accented Jepsei, “You’ve got two minutes to get in that scout ship, before Mespreth wipes this place off the map!”
Velli looked to Udan, her eyes pleading.
“Do it!” he shouted.
“Everybody in, in!” Velli ushered them up the steps. “Don’t go back! Leave that, it’s too heavy!”
She was second-to-last in, dashing through the hatch and finding herself in a narrow vestibule. To left was the cockpit, another human in the right-hand seat, and at right an open space like a cargo compartment. Everyone just barely fit.
Abdul shouted in human-speech, the scout ship began to ascend as the hatch closed. “Hang on!”
The craft shook, sliding sideways and rocking until it stabilized. Velli found a side window in the cockpit, catching a glimpse of a dirty explosion rising from the camp’s former site, splitting where it met a wedge of deflector fields. Ground moved below, faster as the ship picked up speed, yet she felt no acceleration.
Abdul tapped a screen. “We’re clear. No one’s chasing us.” He stood and looked to Velli. “Where to?”
She replied, “Ghanat-Tahj.”
“No!” Udan said. “We have to get to another camp, continue the fight!”
“Nowhere will be safe for us here, now! The Slavers will stop at nothing.”
“Far be it from me to give up!”
“Then don’t. Start again in Ghanat-Tahj, strike at the Slavers from there.” She watched Udan stare out the curving front window, sky above fading to black.
Abdul said, “We’ve reached apogee. Beginning our descent.”
Velli looked aft. Teliv stood mystified in the narrow hallway, staring up at the lightpanels and running his fingers down the wall. Dobok, the huge Trinn, monopolized a window. And Naaca, sitting on the floor, met Velli’s eyes and grinned.
“Over here, please,” Abdul said. “We need a place to land.”
He brought up a space-high view of Ghanat-Tahj, various spots highlighting with names of settlements and landmarks. Udan marveled at it, but whether he expected Velli to explain everything in due time or didn’t know where to start asking, she didn’t know.
“There.” Velli pointed. “The Great Gates.” Everyone in Jepsei who feared slavery—everyone, that was, save for the rich or Shadowstalkers, knew the story, admired the pictures of those ancient gates, now little more than pillars with a stone between.
“We’ll set down in this forest, just outside the Forsaken Lands.”
A road entered view as they continued descending, a few groups of travelers visible along it. The Forsaken Lands in this area were overgrown and forested, meeting the mountains of Ghanat-Tahj amid their foothills. She’d didn’t manage a glimpse of the Gates. Blue-leaved trees rose past, and the ship landed with a jolt.
“We’re here,” Velli said, as people filed out. “Ghanat-Tahj. Go north out of the forest and you’ll find the road.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Naaca asked as she reached the ground after Velli.
“I have to go with—” she jabbed her thumb back at Abdul. “But you made it. You’re free.” She leaned in closer, hugging her.
Naaca smiled. “Have fun in your spaceship. And thank you, for everything.” She walked off to join Teliv and Udan.
“I will carve a statue in your name, Little One,” Jasam said.
“I’m honored.”
Only Dobok remained. “I must return to my clan.”
“All right.” She followed him up the stairs. Naaca waited by the treeline, giving her a final wave as the ramp retracted, hatch slid shut, and the craft began to ascend. She’d done it. One girl, forever freed from slavery.
That left her family—and everyone else. She turned back to the cockpit, to talk to Abdul, and saw his eyes go wide.
From behind came a click, and the metallic sound of a pistol slide racking.
Standing in the scout ship’s corridor, Dobok leveled a gun.
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