Chapter 579: Stock Car Race (1/2)
Whatever horror stalks thy dream, and shattered vision clouds thy day, reach not into the well of darkness for solace. Rage against the dying light, seek the hand of hope. Do not go quietly into that final night.
The Creed of the Silent Warrior ~ Pre-Glassing, Author Unknown
”It was a small thing, that the Mad Lemurs of Terra passed to each of us who met them. A small spark, a fluttering fragile thing. It was a tiny thing that quickly grew into a conflagration with the smallest tinder. That grew into a raging inferno that consumed whole species and filled the mind and ignited the dormant vestigial soul of my people.
”A scream of 'We will not yield!' shrieked in the face of a malevolent universe.
”The universe, it seemed, just smiled as it set about forging its weapon in the forges of wrath, on the anvils of hate, with the hammers of rage.” - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
Vuxten sat nervously on the couch. His hand itched strangely and he kept reaching down to touch a pistol that wasn't at his belt, reaching across his lap to touch the hilt of a chainsword that was locked in the armory, opening his mouth to try to crack a joke to 471 before remembering that the little greenie was surfing on the coast.
He'd gotten a picture of a dozen russet mantids in a pyramid, the bottom five of them on water-skis, the rest of the shoulders of the ones below. Another picture of the mantids roasting a turkey over a fire pit in the sand.
Part of Vuxten wished he'd gone along with the mantids.
Or rented a big pink car.
Or rented a Chrysler ground car the size of a whale.
Or gone with Casey and Peel to go rock climbing.
Or... anything else.
Vuxten rubbed his hands on his pants, seeing the sweat glimmer for a moment. His pawpads made a rasping sound and one of his nails scraped slightly, but it was still better than the feel of thick sweat between the pads.
Synthal'la leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. ”is all right”
”I know,” Vuxten said, rubbing the side of his head against hers. ”Just nervous.”
The door took that moment to open and several Telkan came into the richly appointed living room, stopping by the door and staring. Vuxten saw Brentili'ik move between them all, taking the hand of one of the female Telkan.
The fact that they looked so much alike yet so different took his breath away.
She'islos had introduced Vuxten to Brentili'ik while they were still in the mandatory schooling, before they had gone much further than identifying shapes and colors. Before he'd even been tested and the test had ended up with Vuxten being assigned as a janitorial services crew member and Brentili'ik had been assigned as a domestic services worker. She'islos had been assigned to be public transit janitorial services.
Two years later, She'islos had vanished after a birthday party in the park.
A day after that Vuxten had stood and watched, in his paper uniform, as they carried She'islos's body from the cell then had gone in to clean the interrogation cell of the blood and tissue.
Now she was standing there, holding Brentili'ik's hand. Her fur pattern was close to Brentili'ik's, making them 'twins' of the pod of five their parents had been gifted with. However, the resemblance ended there, as Vuxten could see mute evidence of hard years on his sister-in-law's face. The tip of her triangular nose, normally pinkish white, had been replaced by a warsteel prosthetic that swept up the left side of her muzzle, covered the left side of her face to almost her ear, and, like Vuxten, she had a prosthetic warsteel casing cybereye. He could see on her throat she had exposed black warsteel cybertendons and a mechanical voice implant.
He was suddenly very aware of his own cybereye and cyberear.
Two others stepped forward, all undeniably his sister-in-law.
Then a mature Telkan matron he barely recognized it had been so long.
His mother-in-law.
”You're alive. You're really alive,” Vuxten heard a male's voice say.
The Telkan who moved forward was an adult, not the barely out of podling child he had been when an Overseer had drunkenly driven through the park running over children. His patterning looked a lot like Vuxten's patterning. His face was scarred and one eye was cybernetic, but that little notch in his left ear, the swirls around his eyes, there was only one Telkan that Vuxten had ever met that had those markings together.
”Brother,” Vuxten choked, standing up just in time for his brother Nizruk to throw his arms around Vuxten and hug tightly. ”Oh, Digital Omnimessiah, you're alive.”
They both held onto one another for a long moment, Synthal'la getting up and hugging them, using her tail to shield them from his in-laws and wife watching as Nizruk sobbed.
After a long moment the embrace broke and Vuxten sat down, his brother sitting next to him.
One of the versions of She'islos moved up and touched his shoulder. ”You look so different now,” she said softly. ”I can still feel the rage, the fury, but it's tempered now, not the rage that cracks planets.”
Vuxten swallowed as a suddenly image of himself laughing as he deployed weapons like Casey clad in his Ringbreaker armor had used to pound massive craters into a planet.
”Alive,” his mother-in-law said. ”You survived the Devourer.”
Vuxten nodded, swallowing thickly as his mother-in-law touched his face. ”The last time I saw you was on a Tri-Vid documentary when you left with Enraged Phillip to try to stop the Devourer from consuming the heart of the planet.”
Vuxten swallowed, remembering, for a split second, that desperate fight beneath the mountain.
Brentili'ik watched as her family all touched her husband, talking to him.
She realized that it had to be hard on him to hear that he'd either been killed during that war or had become a figure of myth and legend.
The Enraged Telkan, Vuxten the Undying, brother to Enraged Phillip and Vat Grown Luke.
After about a half hour of her family asking the same things, over and over, which basically summed up with 'how did you survive?' to Vuxten, Brentili'ik broke in and suggested that everyone go to dinner.
Everyone, including her mother, agreed that now might be a good time to go to a restaurant and have something to eat.
While everyone was moving around Vuxten stopped and put his hand on his datalink.
”Captain Vuxten, go ahead,” he said.
Brentili'ik tensed.
”All right, I'll be right in. No, you don't need to send a car, I've got a ride,” Vuxten said. ”Vuxten, out.”
Brentili'ik moved over next to her husband, touching his arm. ”Is everything all right?”
Vuxten nodded. ”Kind of. One of my men got hit by a ground car.”
”Oh,” Brentili'ik said. ”Do you want us to wait?”
Vuxten shook his head. ”No, no, it's OK. This might take a while.”
”Is he all right?” Brentili'ik's mother asked.
Vuxten nodded. ”Should be. The emergency services are still figuring out what happened.”
Everyone nodded and murmured while Brentili'ik pinged her security chief to get a car to take Vuxten to the base.
Vuxten watched as everyone bustled out, holding podlings, some three and four years old, and packed into a limo. He walked out onto the porch of the mansion and watched the limo pull away.
//lights off// Vuxten sent with his implant.
The porch lights turned off and Vuxten stood there, staring at where everyone had gone.
A Telkan clearing his throat let him one of the secmen was behind him. ”Do you really need the car, sir?” the secman asked.
Vuxten nodded. ”Yeah. I'm not worried through. The car probably has more damage than the person it hit.”
”I'll have it brought around,” the secman said.
Vuxten just nodded and stood there, staring out at the darkness.
you don't belong here any more, he heard in his own mind. you do not fit in here.
Vuxten closed his eyes and swallowed, bringing to mind memories of his wife and broodcarriers.
when you touch them you make them unclean, the voice whispered. the blood on your hands smears their fur.
Vuxten slowly inhaled and exhaled. He clenched his hands as tight as he could and then let himself slowly relax, finger by finger, before wiggling them and repeating the action.