Reaper's Prize: A Science Fiction Romance

Chapter 1

Kalchuk

Bodies litter the banks of the crimson pond. Victims of war. So many it makes my  heart weep, whether their bodies have blue fur, or red scales, or the smooth bare skin of humans.

And I fear before this day is done, there will be many more victims.

Rellik’s cry of anguish rises above the dull roar of flames and the distant crackle of artillery fire. He clutches my voluminous sleeve, dragging my robes off my left shoulder and baring me to the waist. His wings hump and fold tight against his body, a protective instinct.

“This used to be…the Well of…Pure Souls!”

As if my heart didn’t ache enough, it virtually bleeds for my friend. The golden skin of his beautiful face glistens with blue tears. They turn into crystals as they dry, falling off his cheeks to land on the golden grass below.

The crystals burrow into the ground, and would take root under any other circumstances, becoming the seed for a Bitterfruit plant. These are far from normal circumstances.

“Look at what they have done.”

He grabs my jaw and turns my face away from him and toward the Well. It used to be a beautiful natural spring, feeding a merrily bubbling stream of pure blue water. Now the waters have turned crimson, the grass blackened and torn by weapons fire and the boots of soldiers.

One of the bodies floating in the water has golden skin and feathered wings. An Ishani. I close my eyes against the horror before us.

“No, don’t close your eyes. See what their war has wrought? This is  your doing, Kalchuk. You allowed the outsiders onto our planet and corrupted the Ishani.”

He lets go of my face and collapses to his knees, head drooping toward the ground.

“A score of us are all that remain, though not for much longer. All of the knowledge we have preserved since the time of the Precursors, is now forever lost.”

Something flares in my chest. I won’t call it hope. Defiance is a better word for it. It’s true that I invited the Ataxians and the Trident Alliance to the negotiating table. I thought our world, blessed by never having known the scourge of war, would be the ideal place to forge a lasting peace.

My hubris now lies spread out before me, in the form of the desecrated Well, the twisted dead bodies, and the blackened skies.

“No, it can’t end here. I won’t let it.”

“Does your arrogance know no bounds, Kalchuk?” He rises to his feet once more. The others, eighteen in all, look away from his angry tirade. It is not the Ishani way to be so aggressive. I fear Rellik has been tainted himself.

I hadn’t counted on Ishani factionalizing and taking sides. Our society couldn’t handle the discord. We no longer sang with one voice. We had already lost much long before the first bombs fell…and never stopped falling.

“The Alliance’s experimental bomb has melted its way into our planet core. It’s only a matter of time until our world tears itself asunder. Already our magnetic field has weakened to the point our entire northern hemisphere is hopelessly irradiated. Nothing survived, not even microbes...”

“Enough, Rellik. While at least one Ishani survives, the knowledge of the Precursors and the Path of Peace are not lost.”

I turn to address the lot of them.

“My friends, we must sing the Song of Creation, and forge a ship to take us into the stars.”

Some of their wings perk up, gazes looking less gray and despondent. Others, like Rellik, seem to have given up already.

“And go where? There is no part of this galaxy untouched by the war. It has even begun to bleed into League space.” Rellik shakes his head. “Better we all accept our fate.”

“No, Rellik.” I take his hand and lift him to his feet again. “I will not accept that dying is our fate. I accept that survival is our fate. We can rebuild. Hope remains.”

I look out over the rest of my fellow ishani, all that remain of our once glorious race.

“Hope remains!”

I sing the words this time. I roll right into the Song of Creation. Normally hundreds, if not thousands, of Ishani would perform this feat.

The score of us will have to be enough. The song is not just sung or heard. It is felt. It reverberates through the physical and the spiritual, touching realms we can’t even guess at. Our minds link, and for a moment all thoughts of the terror of war or the fears of extinction melt away.

Our Gestalt is complete. With many mouths but only one voice we sing, creating a crystal starship from the essence of our planet itself. Technologies we haven’t used in some time spring back to memory like old friends.

What would take any other sapient species in the galaxy weeks or even months to create, we do in minutes. The song trails off and we stand looking at a ship with curved wings like a raptor in flight. It appears as metal, but closer inspection reveals it’s actually composed of fused crystals.

The ‘beak’ of the raptor opens and a gangplank silently extends outward. I start herding my folk onto the ship.

“Come,” I say. “There is not much time.”

The ground has been shaking so much I have neglected to even think about it. Now, it’s begun to violently tremble and lurch to the point it’s hard to keep my balance. I shove the last of them, Rellik, up the gangplank and then board the ship myself.

I sit down in the pilot’s seat on the tiny bridge. More of a cockpit, really. There are only twenty of us, and we did not have the time to create something larger.

I engage the anti gravity drive and we rise into the air. The trembling ceases, but the aerial view shows us just how little time our world has left.

Cracks and fissures run like spider webs through land and sea. Fire and smoke spew out of the, blackening the sky in large swaths. I see the flares of thousands of ataxian and Alliance ships hitting their afterburners as they struggle to escape the horror they have wrought.

I engage our thrusters, pointing the nose to the sky. The ship shakes terribly. It’s not turbulence. It’s the first of many shockwaves rising up from our soon to be annihilated home planet.

My heart breaks to think I will never see the rainbow cove, or the Well of Pure Souls, or the Majestic Mountains ever again. Tears stream down my face. The sound of breaking crystal signals that the others weep as well.

Our home world gives up at last. A massive crack furrows through its axis. A catastrophic shockwave overtakes the ship. Inertial dampeners absorb the worst of it, otherwise we would be a red paste on the inside of the hull.

As it is, we careen through the remnants of the atmosphere and into open space. The ship rattles and pings as debris from our planet strikes the hull.

We’ve lost maneuvering thrusters on the starboard side, but life support looks good. Long range comms are down, but we made it. We’re out.

A light flashes on the display. My eyes widen when I see a rad meter shooting up into the red zone.

“What’s wrong?” Rellik, having recovered some of his senses, settles into the co-pilot's chair beside me.

“The debris hitting our hull…it’s radioactive.”

“Don’t we have radiation shielding?”

“The last shockwave took it out.” Rellik stares at the console and shakes his head.

“Then we are dead. Look at how high the levels are. We are already dead!”

“Not if we sing the song of Healing.”

“It won’t stop the radiation from killing us; it will only slow it down.”

My mind flashes over a dozen different scenarios, and in all of them, we all die. Then it hits me, a way to save us all, though it’s a long shot.

“If we merge the songs of Healing and Transformation, we can change ourselves to be immune to the radiation.”

“That has never been done before…”

His words belie the cautious optimism in his tone. I’ve given him a glimmer of hope.

I stand up and organize the remaining Ishani. Half will sing the song of Healing, half the song of Transformation.

Just when we are about to begin, Rellik pulls me aside.

“We have another problem. The Phage sickness that the Ataxians unleashed on the Alliance troops…” 

I shudder. “I remember the horribly maimed bodies. What of it?”

“I checked the ship’s bio metrics, and we’re all infected.”

“What about the song of healing?”

“It will only make the cancerous tumors grow more quickly.”

“Then we will split the Chorus of Transformation in half. Five will sing to make us resist the radiation, and five will sing to fight the disease.”

“Five is not enough!” The despair in his voice is palpable. I take his face in my hands.

“Listen to me, Rellik. I’m going to keep us all alive. You hear me? I’m going to keep us all alive.”

We begin the chorus. I already feel weakness setting in, whether from the radiation or from the sickness. I burn on the inside, like I’m immersed in boiling oil.

“It hurts!” Rellik cries.

“Sing!” I bellow. “Keep singing, no matter what!”

I add my voice back to the chorus. The pain claws at every fiber of my being. I never knew anything could hurt this much. The healing song only keeps us alive; it does not stop the pain. It does not even lessen it.

Worse, the song of Transformation can be painful all on its own. The angelic chorus of Ishani voices turns into a harsh, primal, and horrid sound. My throat feels cracked and dry, blood trickling into my lungs, but I can’t stop singing. If I do, we all die.

I scream the high notes of the song of Healing as a terrible agony seizes my back. It abates ever so slightly, and something falls to the floor behind my seat.

I look over at Rellik, whose singing has faltered. His eyes stare at me in shock. I realize why a moment later when I see one of my wings twitching on the floor. It rotted right off my back.

Rellik’s wings fall off as well, eliciting a scream from his throat.

“Sing, Rellik!” I cry. “Everyone, sing!”

Our voices are no longer the silken, harmonious things they were. The songs sound like the guttural screams of men dying in agony. Yet, we do not die. I feel as if, perhaps, the burning pain of radiation poisoning is lessened a bit.

“It’s working,” I cry. “Keep singing!”

A tumor erupts out of Rellik’s shoulder. He screams, golden face now veined with spiderwebs of black. His face twists into a grotesque mask as he turns to stare at me.

The song of Transformation changes the tumorous growth, turning it into healthy tissue—bone, from the looks of it. I cry out as tumors erupt all over my own body, but the song soon changes them to bone as well.

The song dies out little by little, until I am the only one singing. My voice sounds brittle and weak, the sound of rusty nails rolling over sandpaper. Eventually I give up as well, and silence reigns in the cabin, but for the constant radiation alarm.

I fall into a deep slumber. If there are dreams, I blessedly don’t remember them when I awaken. My body feels…strange. Heavier, harder. Moving takes more effort, as if I’ve donned one of the human’s suits of thick armor.

I rise from my seat, and find that it’s been lacerated and punctured. I poke a finger into one of the holes and recoil from the sight of my own hand. My golden skin has turned black, like deeply tanned leather. Bone spurs just out of my knuckles, and my nails resemble the claws of a predator.

“What has become of us?”

I look to see Rellik, or what used to be Rellik. Now he looks like a monster, something hatched out of a nightmare.

“I don’t know,” I gasp. “The song of Transformation must have changed us into this form to protect us from the radiation and the Phage.”

“We’re monstrous!”

The other Ishani awaken and wallow in the horror of their new bodies. I try to calm them down, but it’s so hard to think.

“Listen,” I cry. Then I grow impatient, angry. “I said listen!”

My angry bellow gets their attention.

“We can just use the song to change us back, now that the radiation cleaners have had time to kick in.”

Nods go around the cabin. I feel pleased that they are listening to me. No, more than pleased. It makes me feel…powerful to lead them. I’ve never felt powerful before. I’ve never reveled in controlling others, but now I find it intoxicating.

“Kalchuk,” Rellik says, his new face a mask of terror. “I cannot…I cannot remember the song of Transformation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rellik. Ishani never forget a song. It’s…it goes like…”

Blank stares go around the cabin. We don’t remember. None of us remember a single Ishani song.

“What are we going to do?” Rellik cries. “Help. Someone must help us, the Ataxians or the Alliance. This is their fault. They can help us, can’t they?”

I stagger to the cockpit and check our heading. We’ve drifted into Alliance space since we were unconscious. To my relief I detect another ship in comms range. Its transponder says it’s a private luxury craft from Earth.

I open a comm channel and wait desperately for a response. I nearly faint with relief when the viewscreen displays the image of an older human male. His pallid face contorts in shock upon seeing me over the comm channel.

“Human vessel,” I rasp in my terrible voice “we need help…we’ve been, we’ve been injured—”

His face twists into a mask of disgust.

“I don’t know what species you are, pal, and I don’t care. We’re not stopping. I know how raiders like to set traps for good Samaritans, and I’m not falling into one.”

“Please, we’re not raiders,” I gasp. “We are…Ishani. We need  your help.”

“The Ishani are all dead, pal. They died a year ago.”

“A  year?” I gasp. How long were we unconscious? I’m shocked to find that he’s right. The chronometer says we drifted for over a year while our bodies changed into their current form.

“Yeah, so I’m not falling for your scam. Ishani were beautiful, and you look like the Grim fucking Reaper. If you come anywhere near me, I’ll fire on you. I’m packing dual batteries of ion cannon, pal.”

The screen goes dark.

“No, wait…”

My hand reaches for the screen as if for succor. Then a wall of anger springs up inside of me. I’d never felt it so intensely before. It feels…good. My fingers rasp into a fist and I bang a dent on the console.

“They refuse us aid, after their damn war turned us into monsters?” I sputter.

“What are we going to do?” Rellik leans on the co-pilot chair, his blood red eyes filled with fear. “We have no supplies, and not enough power to reach superluminal speed. We’ll either freeze or starve.”

“No, we won’t,” I growl. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. The human called us Raiders…Reapers. Then I say that’s what we’ll be. If our ship is a wreck, we’ll just take his!”

My fellow Ishani must be feeling the aggression as much as I. They all thrust their spurred fists into the air and give a shout, gleeful at the idea of violence.

“What if they resist us?” Rellik asks.

“Then, we will slaughter them, as they slaughtered our brethren. And we won’t stop until the scales are balanced, or the stars lose their shine.”

I glare out of the cockpit and growl.

“Whichever comes first. Arm yourselves! This time, we will set the ambush!”