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Chapter 9: Water Swallows
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2021-07-14 07:57:18At a mere twenty-four years old, Tulugaak’s thick eyebrows gave his brown eyes the look of a bushy entrance into a cold dark void of wrath and anger. Yet kindness and meekness abounded in his heart, especially for his younger brothers and sisters. However, when necessity demanded action, Tulugaak had instant access to the mean side of life.
But he had never experienced a swamp. Not that he was a stranger to dark waters. A pale, ragged scar traced across his brown cheek and lower lip testified to an early and violent encounter with an aggressive leopard seal.
Before the quakes and lava arrived, the ice had extended above the ocean. Now the heat had turned ice into rivers, lakes, and muddy wetland. But nothing compared to this foul-smelling black water. Stifling heat hovered like a sweaty fur overcoat, and tangled vegetation, roots, and stumps cluttered every footstep. Dark shadowy trees choked out the sky, dripped with strings of green and gray grasses, and sucked up
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As Jamison, from the winged branch of the hanuman tribe, approached the gathering of strangers, the swamp water barely rippled. He thought, don’t trigger an incident, but he didn’t know what to expect or how these people might interpret his actions—no one in his life had ever encountered a single original, much less a family or tribe.But he kept easing forward until almost within striking range, then stopped and held both hands out palm up. “My name is Jamison.” Although inefficient, he used the old language. “I’m a field medic. Perhaps I can help the fallen one.”“Help him?” The original’s apparent leader stood two heads over Jamison, but his shoulders drooped like he carried full five-gallon pails in each hand, and his face lacked color; heartache had him down, if only for the moment. “My son, Tulugaak, is gone. The life no longer shines in his eyes, and his blood has stilled.”&ldq
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Two seasons after the bad experience on Below, Bjorn boarded an airship bound for Ulou, the capital city. He planned to pursue higher education.On a few occasions after the happenings on the surface world, he had tried to hash out the incident with his father, but the Captain had hushed him without words. Three times the Captain had returned to the surface world, and three times Bjorn had been left behind. He no longer had a future in trading. One incident had closed all doors for future experience Below.After pondering the problem, Bjorn had requested permission to study techistory at Academia. Anything to keep his mind away from memories of his failure.—Earlier this morning, the Captain had accompanied Bjorn to the harbor for departure. “Your aunt Sumia will be glad to see you,” he said. “She has long wanted to deliver you from my authority.” No humor had laced the words, and the Captain’s eyes had reflected a gaz
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At near dusk, on day two, Bjorn encountered an odd phenomenon; an Ancient perched alone in Center Square of the Pacer’s marketplace. Hunched over and dried out as processed eel skin, the old fellow’s wrinkles folded into his face like wedges of crusted tree bark. He spanned thirty feet plus from tip to tip of his pectorals, his sunken veins coal-black beneath his flesh.He was naked save for a thin cloth covering his clasper, and whether too poor or too stubborn, he wore no HB mantle. His gills sagged down one over the next, heaving in and out like dog-eared bellows in a damaged ship’s bilge. It was a wonder that the Old One could draw sufficient air for life, much less voice.Bjorn searched for Crystellia, but his success rate remained zip. He had even engaged in a few games of Fins’Feet, hoping she would pass through. No luck.The Old One spoke in a mumble, his dry eyes active in a gaze that swept from passenger to passenger. T
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The following day Bjorn awoke to the long rumbling bellows of the ship’s horns as a smaller vessel moored to the Pacer.He rushed out half-fit for public attendance, planning to catch Crystellia before she went on her way. But when he reached the lowered loading ramps, she was not in the line. Either she had already crossed to the other vessel or was still making ready to leave. He lifted high and flew through the ramp tunnel, passing above several families but knowing none of them. The switchover involved too many people.He decided to search the other vessel, but an angry ship's officer compelled him to land as he exited the tunnel. He explained himself, and when the officer lifted his boarding list and offered to check names, Bjorn faltered. He had forgotten Crystellia’s last name.“Sorry, young lord,” the officer said. “Without more details, I can’t help you. Neither can I permit you to ramble over here.”
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Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 30: Two as One
Adlartok stood on a hill overlooking the graveyard where Meriwa said goodbye to mom and dad. Both had passed away several years back. The sun glared from a blue sky as Airborne ships came and went, many of them now used by Walkers and their associates. Cupun and his mate reaped the benefits of a home-raising bee in the fields near the worm farms. But once they completed the house, he and Roxanne would join Adlartok and Jamison on another rescue mission. Ever since the merging of the races, reports of stranded humans came in often. Someone had to help. Tulugaak had journeyed back down south. Although he favored the cold weather, he said the ice wasn’t yet the same as it had once been on several return visits. But he wasn’t alone. A few of the original clan had survived. — Meriwa didn’t believe her parents lived in the ground. Neither had they ascended with the angels into the heavens, for angels, like other mutants, were merely genetically altered huma
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The Walkers showed no fear of the massive beast, so Bjorn and Nalura stood their ground, staying still, quiet and hopeful. Perhaps someone had restraints on this ancient junkyard guard-grizzly. In the distance, the waterfall roared. From far, far away, the surface world rumbled. Time ran thin.An older female Walker came near. She carried a staff and a mouthful of hand-sharpened teeth. Seductively beautiful in a grimy sort of way, she reminded Bjorn of some of the subterranean fish species common on Cloud.“Why are you here?” she said.Nalura nodded to Bjorn, urging him to respond.“We came seeking my mother,” he said. “She is an Airborne, as are we.”The old Walker grinned, her ears twitching as though in joy. “Then come, young Bjorn. Sira has waited long to see you.”—As soon as Bjorn and Nalura followed the Walker into the hedges near the waterfall, Crystellia stripped a harnes
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Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 27: A Battle In The Sky
Bjorn yelped as a three-prong grappling hook slammed across the deck, snagged on a bulwark, snapped tight, and pinned one crew member to a guardrail. A second barb scrapped Kurg’s pelvic fin before bouncing off the deck and whizzing past the Rand Solar balloon system. A musky blood scent splattered through the air. “They want us alive,” Nalura shouted while rushing to the pinned sailor and slicing the anchor rope with a single swipe of her caudal fin. “Fight to kill.” More hooks came down, and an immense shadow crossed over the stern and kept growing. An imperial battleship was upon them. Two imperial guards armed with tasers landed on the shrouds of the main topmast and slid down on the mainstay. More clambered over the battleship’s railing. “Mom,” screamed Crystellia while ducking beneath one rope that had wrapped around the mizzenmast. The sails tightened, billowed, then compressed again, and the schooner lurched hard to port with Nalura body-hugging the n
Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 26: Nests Come Down
Cupun’s friendship with Jamison felt second nature, so much so that Cupun wondered why his father still sometimes spoke of hanumans as abominations. Maybe old expressions die slowly, he thought, or perhaps such words merely linger in the mind long after the history behind the link is no longer relevant. Whatever the cause, Nukilik never used the word in the presence of Jamison. His sister’s husband was family and friend.While Adlartok trained Kallik in the methods of various weapons, Cupun and Jamison traveled beneath a prickly canopy of musty-smelling grayish-green rope-foliage growing on trees taller and thicker than any Cupun had encountered. Three grown men with arms extended and hands touching could not wrap the circumference of the sharp-barked hardwood trunks.During the journey from Jamison’s homeland, many new races had joined their group, all working to help one another. But Cupun and Jamison made too great a team to split apart. So from hu
Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 25: Walkers
Bjorn’s party tracked upriver, above the treetops, while seeking the source of the river. The quakes and fire no longer advanced, and even the rain drifted away and toward the southwest slopes. No more worms appeared, sick or healthy. As the rise in terrain reached higher and further northward, they passed above groups of Walkers and newly established shelters on the hillsides and in other areas that remained above the core of damage and flooded zones. In the highest ranges of flatland, the Walkers lived on productive farms.“Someone warned them,” Crystellia said. “These shelters and farms are old and established. The beings down there aren’t refugees; they’re immigrant evacuees."Bjorn barely absorbed her words. He was putting things together in his mind, remembering events at old Perd Van’s worm farm and in the marsh near the Kabutar ship docks, including the yellow ooze beneath Mother Tree during the sun-dipping with aunt Su
Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 24: Mother Below
Even from high above the surface, Below was not the same land Bjorn remembered. In many areas, surface quakes gutted the ground as trees burned even while still standing. In one direction, torrents of wind-driven rain blinded the eyes, and from a different view, ice and snow ravaged the hillsides. Lakes and rivers overflowed their banks. Valleys flooded. And throughout the air, a wave of flaming, foul-smelling muck twisted in, around, and under, advancing a destructive ecological change. All across the open areas, worms surfaced by the tens and tens of thousands, all squirming amid yellow-tinted ooze and many spewing the seepage twenty to thirty feet from the core of each grouping. A complete disaster had overtaken the land of Walkers. Surface burned, and nasty rainfall consumed all else. Bjorn feared rescue had arrived too late. “So, it’s not a myth,” said Nalura, her brown eyes glassy with tears. “For many seasons, we knew the vines were leaking oil. We just never
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Less than an hour after the spy was out of the way, a small but fast double topsail schooner, piloted by none other than Nalura, the OOD officer from Amera, docked on the underside of Mother Tree at the same place Bjorn and Aunt Sumia had sun-dipped for their first private meeting. Kurg, Crystellia, and Bjorn boarded. Everyone wore HB protection, but Bjorn was still glad the connection took place beneath Mother Tree. All above, rain fell in endless torrents. Sinkholes, rivers, and currents of mud ripped through Mother Tree’s root system. Only the mentally blind Cloud officials could honestly deny the reality of Clouds cry.A collection of climbing gear topped a heap near the starboard rails of the schooner and twin retractable cable rigs extended over the hull. A sense of urgency moved through the crew and the pilot. Yet things came to a bit of a halt when Bjorn saw Crystellia engage in an unexpected, for him, reunion.“Mother,” she shouted e
Airbornes: Bjorn and the Floating Nest Chapter 22: A Spy in The Midst
As soon as Bjorn accepted the concept of Suppressed Infectious Memory, his education expanded in leaps and bounds. The more information he took in, the more his dreams opened up. By the close of the third education cycle, he had written notations, formulas, and calculations directly out of memory. His mind was a living document of his mother’s memoirs.Then active, officious interference began, and Kurg discovered a spy lurked among them. He told Bjorn as they hovered in a secluded branch near the of the same cluster of cattails where Bjorn and Crystellia had meet on that day she shared her mystery and her mission. The wind whisked moisture through the airways, and odor of spores was stronger than ever. The end looked nearer than ever.“Who is it?” Bjorn said, his face twisting into a near human sneer. “I’ll slice him into shreds quicker than sunlight sucks moisture.”“No, no,” Kurg said, his flaps arching. “
