Daeva

Edur Iñaki was reading quietly on the shuttle, on his way home after a long and exhausting business trip.  After the Calvera stop, a man made his way down the narrow aisle and sat down heavily in front of him.  He took one look at Edur and made to get up again.  Edur glanced up from his display and smiled reassuringly.

“You don’t mind if I sit here?” the man asked.

“Not at all.”  Edur did look forbidding.  He was simply enormous.  He didn’t immediately seem large; he was fit and well proportioned.  He just seemed to diminish his surroundings somehow.  His face and hands were rough and weather beaten, making it difficult to guess his age.  He could have been anywhere between forty and sixty.  He was dressed as if he’d just stepped away from a goat herd on some mountain pasture, like he belonged on some frontier planet, not on an interstellar shuttle.  His hand-woven sleeved tunic was died a light orange and green, nothing like the metallic thread patterned clothing in vogue on the core worlds. 

Edur pushed a plate piled with thick slices of bread and rough chunks of spiced sausage across the table.  “Help yourself.  It’s fresh.”

“That’s kind of you.”

Edur nodded and checked the time.  Not long to go.  He had managed to get the cases past customs on Comgan Ash, that was the tricky part.  Now he only had to wait out the ride as the shuttle flitted from system to system.

The man picked up a piece of bread and sniffed at it, then took a tentative bite. His eyebrows rose.  The bread was feather light, with a delicate, slightly crunchy crust, like pastry. He quickly finished off the slice and bit into another.  “That’s very tasty.  Where’d you get that?”

“I’m coming from the Kapteyn's system, but it’s a Hamistagan recipe.”

“Hamistagan?”  The man stopped chewing.  “There’s a name to frighten the children with.”

“It’s an Avestan moon in the Gliese 674 system.”

The man laughed sharply.  “I think everyone’s heard of Hamistagan.  Surely, no one’s living there now, are they?”

Edur shrugged.  “It’s habitable.  Avesta, the planet it orbits, has an eccentric orbit itself, so there are sharp seasonal fluctuations in the year, but there’s been a human presence on Hamistagan for over a hundred Standard years.”

“Eccentric, that sums it up.  What kind of people would live there after the Ascension massacre?  I thought the system had been abandoned.  It should have been.”

“It wasn’t abandoned, not permanently.  I don’t think the people who live there now would ever willingly give up their homes, or their way of life.” 

“The people who live there now must be crazy.  I mean, it’s not like there were any survivors of the massacre.  They never even found out what happened, did they?”

Edur shook his head.  “No, not for certain.”

“You wouldn’t catch me within a dozen light years of that place.”

Edur nodded politely and went back to his reading.  After forty five minutes or so, the shuttle stopped on Lambda Boötis and the man got off, thanking him for sharing his meal and wishing him well.  About an hour later Edur’s stop was called.

Hamistagan.



The shuttle dropped out of FTL, materialising on a landing pad next to the single wide, open platform of Yazata central station.  The platform, neatly split and contained by a chain link fence with automatic gates, handled both arrivals and departures.  Each side had its own foot tunnel to the station building. 

Edur was the only one to get off.  Even so, the station seemed unusually quiet.  The sprawling station also serviced the transcontinental Mag-Lev lines as well as the local light rail.  There was usually something moving around.  He checked the clock on the wall; it was late, 26:50 local time, almost midnight. 

While his cases got out of the luggage compartment, Edur stretched and looked up at the sky, his heart warmed by the familiar constellations.  The sulphur tinted moon, Chinvat Bridge, was almost at its closest approach in ninety Standard years.  A richly scented breeze was blowing from the mountains.    Edur sighed contentedly, glad to be on his home world, the birthplace of his children, his father and his father’s father.  He heard footsteps coming quickly up the tunnel to the departure side of the platform. 

A woman burst out of the departure tunnel, running for the shuttle, wearing traditional clothing and a heavy backpack.  He didn’t see how she was going to make it on to the shuttle.  The high pitched whine of the main drive was already building up in preparation for the next leg of the shuttle’s route.  The chain link gate was swinging automatically shut.  It closed right in the woman’s face.

The woman grabbed the gate and rattled it fiercely.

Edur sympathised with her.  The next shuttle wasn’t until after six am.  It wasn’t as though Hamistagan was a popular destination. 

Still, the woman still seemed intent on getting on that shuttle.  Awkwardly, she slid her foot on the gate.  She got a purchase and tried with the other foot, lifting herself up, climbing the gate.

“Careful there,” he called out, but she ignored him and kept climbing. 

“Ma’am!  It’s too late!  The doors won’t open.”  The woman scrambled over the top of the gate and flung herself to the platform.  She landed badly.  Edur was sure she had broken something.  She staggered to her feet, lurched forward and started scrabbling at the shuttle’s sealed doors.

“Get away from there, it’s about to launch!” Edur shouted frantically, waving her back.  The shuttle drive hit a steady peak.  There was a snap of static discharge, an electric blue flash, and the shuttle was gone. 

The woman teetered on the platform.  Bright red arterial blood sprayed from the stumps of her arms, raining on the empty landing pad in a hissing patter.  Her hands and wrists were gone, cleanly whisked away to the next star system.  She tipped forward off the platform.  She lay on the pad, completely still, except for her backpack. 

It was moving, jiggling. 

That was when Edur understood.  It was happening again. The terrible wounds, the inexplicable behaviour.  It was the Ascension massacre all over again.

What he was looking at wasn’t a backpack at all.  It was a large, dull pink sack.  It was a body.  It was alive. 

The thing was fixed to the woman like a huge, soft tick.  He could make out a small head with too many eyes pressed against her back.  Tentacles the width of garden hoses splayed out from its abdomen.  They flexed as it pulled smaller tentacles out of the woman’s flesh.  It detached itself from the woman’s body and crouched, lapping at the blood pouring from her across the floor in a widening sheet. 

Edur rattled the fence sharply and the thing’s eyes swivelled towards him.  They held a glittering, cold intelligence. Edur had dealt with enough predators in his life, human and non-human, to be certain that it was calculating, sizing him up. 

“You bastard!” he shouted.  “Come over here, try that with me!”

Edur heard more footsteps coming his way.  He looked down the arrivals tunnel and saw shadows heading towards him.  He looked back at the thing, but it was gone.

He stepped to the fence and peered over the edge of the platform.  It must have crawled to shelter like a cockroach when the lights were turned on.  He turned around again and there it was!  It was leaping towards him, in mid air, tentacles flailing.  It looked bigger and even more malevolent close up.

Edur’s body reacted for him.  His shoulder cocked and his arm went back.  He stepped forward with his left foot, planting it solidly.  As he pushed off with his right foot, the power of his massive body rose up from the ground, up his leg, through his hips, shoulders, arm and into his clenched fist. The entire energy of his punch was transferred straight into the thing’s face as it tried to grapple with him.  He rammed the two knuckles closest to his thumb, the toughest bones in his hand, square into its eyes.

The thing shot backwards as if he’d flung it with a xistera.  It smacked into the wall next to the tunnel with a splat, splitting open like a ripe tomato.  Bright red blood gushed out if it, as well as a sickly yellow fluid.

A crowd of humans spilled out of the arrival tunnel, all of them armed, none of them weighed down by any kind of backpack.

“Turn around!” they shouted at him.

“Take your shirt off!” 

Edur slipped out of his tunic, his broad back thick with dark hair.

“It’s ok.”  A woman at the back of the crowd pushed through the others.  “I know him.  He’s with the militia.”

“Irune!”  Edur shrugged his shirt on and clasped the woman’s shoulders.  She was tall and wore a long skirt, but still he dwarfed her.  “It’s good to see you.”

“Did you bring the weapons?”

“Yes, but only samples.  I had no idea we were already under attack.  What happened?”

“They came suddenly, only a few hours ago.  Hundreds of them.  Beñat was right, the Daeva attacks do match the approach of Chinvat Bridge.”  Daeva, Edur thought, how appropriate.  False gods.

“Where’s your family?” he asked her.

“They’re manning the station perimeter.  We’re still getting stragglers in, mostly other militia members.”

“What about Euria?  Is there any word of my family?” 

Irune looked at him, hard.

“No word, but most communications are down.  The Daeva took out the power and command and control centres first.  If they got to the shelter, they might be alive.  Might be.”

“Where did these things… the Daeva… come from?”

“We have no idea.  They just started pouring out of the forest.  They’re wicked fast, and smart. Very smart.  They have an armoured beak that can punch right through your spine and nerve bundles in their tentacles that take over your somatic nervous system.  They can control of all of your voluntary muscular systems.  You feel and see everything, but you can’t do anything about it.  It’s terrible, Edur.”

“I need transport.  I need to get home to Spenta Ameraiti.”

Irune shook her head.  “None of the vehicles are working.  The Daeva set off an EMP device.”

“What, like the one Julen was keeping?”

“It must have been his.  It went off ten minutes after they hijacked him.  All our electronics are fried.  We’re stuck here, deaf and blind.”

“I’m not.  I still have my senses.  I don’t need any of your technology to save my family.  I’m going.”

“You’re leaving us here?”  Irune asked with a face like a brick.  Edur stared right back down at her.  She could see that arguing with him was futile, like asking the wind not to blow.  “Oh, Edur.  The next shuttle is at 6:40.  Be back before then.”

“I’ll head for…”

“No, don’t tell me.  Just in case. And please, suit up before you go.”

“I only brought ten suits.  You’ll need them.”  The crowd with Irune had that hollow eyed, shell shocked look of people who had seen too much combat too quickly.  He didn’t see how they could hold another hour, never mind until morning.

“Edur, you’ll be by yourself.  The suit will protect your back.  You don’t stand a chance otherwise.” 

Edur acquiesced reluctantly.  Hamistagan may have bred a lot of crazy people, but it hadn’t bred many stupid ones.  He opened up one of his cases and pulled out what looked like a grey, one piece wetsuit.  He slipped into it, and then put on a helmet.  When he sealed it, a heads up display lit the inside of the visor.

Edur opened another case and saw some hope come back to the crowd’s eyes.  The case held two dozen gleaming, late model, fully charged plasma cannons.  Pure military grade contraband. 

“Hold the station until I get back,” he said. He lifted up a plasma cannon like it was a walking stick and looked up to the mountains.  They were softly lit by the yellow glow of the moon.  He looked towards his land, his rustic home, towards his armoured, reinforced concrete cellar, the booby traps, trip wires and autonomous fire systems that protected it, and prayed that his beloved family had made it to shelter, because no matter what, Edur was coming for them.



Word count: 2081