Ronin collapsed in a boneless heap beside the bisected body of the hive’s queen. He heaved for breath, completely exhausted after several hours of fighting his way through the wasp hive. He couldn’t believe how devastating Leo Dawson was in melee combat, the man was like a machine. He’d never stopped moving the entire time. Each step, each swing of his claws, regardless of what limb they were on, resulted in a dead or disemboweled enemy combatant.
With the last foe down, the absence of the helicopter thudding of wasp wings was deafening. All he could hear was his own ragged breathing, and the pounding of his heart… He could also hear Leo and his pride… celebrating, the victory, but he did his best to ignore those sounds. So, when he heard the beating of wings, he forced his tired body into a standing position, kanabo held in both hands, but with the tip resting on the ground, since he was too tired to raise it until he saw the foe. Who was flying directly for him at full speed, faster than he was going to be able to react.
Elyria slammed into Ronin’s chest with full force, sending the pair of them crashing to the sturdy, if pliable, floor of wasp spit bonded wood pulp. Ronin wasn’t sure if she was attacking him or not, for a few frantic seconds as she grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head to one side, then the other. He realized she was checking him for injury when she ran her fingers over his armor and checked both his arms. Satisfied he wasn’t hurt, and still sitting on his chest, she swung her arm back and delivered a resounding smack to the side of his face that left him seeing double.
“What the hell were you thinking?” She practically screamed the words into his face. “Walking right into the hive like that, you’re lucky no one was killed. Without Leo, you at the very least would be dead. Probably the rest of your people too as they tried to save you. Really Ronin, what were you thinking? Even when the wasps are the size of your thumb, you never go poking their nest, because if enough of them swarm, they can kill you. I mean, it’s like you’ve never seen a wasp before, you…”
“He hasn’t.” Leo said, cutting into the conversation. “Look around you girl. This is the world he grew up in. Do you see any normal sized… anything? There’s rainbow grass around these enormous, size defying trees, aphids, ladybugs, and wasps…that’s it. That’s everything that’s still alive on the entire planet, at least on the surface anyway… He’s been crystallized for a week, regardless of time dilation, that’s just not enough time to overcome a lifetime worth of deficient knowledge… But I had to save you, so that means you lost kid. Better luck next time, yea.” Having finished speaking, Leo joined his pride in looting the bodies of their cores. Ronin really wanted to ask about those, but Elyria wasn’t done with him yet, it seemed.
“Ok, fine.” She said, “Use that excuse again. That still doesn't explain why you didn’t put on a comm before you left the ship. If I’d have been able to talk to you, I could have told you not to walk into a hornet’s nest like a damned idiot.” Ronin blinked in surprise at that revelation.
“I… didn’t even know we had comms.” He said after a while, the excuse sounded lame even to his own ears.
“Of course, you didn’t, because once again, you left all the thinking up to that manipulative tin can. Who does his absolute best at every turn, to usurp control of your organization away from you, and you do nothing to stop him. This is the reason you needed Five around. With her here, she’d have forced the radio down your throat before letting you run off on your own like that… For the life of me, why did you leave her behind, and why did she agree to stay? Do you know what would have happened to our world if you died, to your people, to me?” She spoke the last with exasperation, at least she didn’t sound as angry anymore, Ronin thought as he replied.
“Look, Elyria, I’m sorry ok. I didn’t know we had comms, but you’re right, I should have. I do tend to let Owl Two do all the thinking for me. I just get so overwhelmed. I haven’t found my rhythm yet; it’s been one crisis after another since my world ended.” He took a deep breath, not sure how she was going to react to the next bit. “And, as for Brie… Well, not being able to control her feelings, or urges, for me was getting in the way of her work. Besides, with Hunter the new queen of undercity… Well, she told me once, when we first discovered undercity, that she wished for a city completely ruled by goblins, where her kind could live safe… Once we’d secured that, I didn’t want to take it away from her.”
“Understandable,” Elyria said with a frown. “But that still doesn't explain why she agreed to stay behind.” Ronin wasn’t sure what to say, and he was starting to get a little uncomfortable with her straddling his chest, so he cleared his throat and spoke.
“Do you mind, if we finish this conversation on our feet?” Elyria blinked, looking down at how she was sitting, and her face went red. She’d eased up the pressure on him, when her face filled with resolve, and she settled back down.
“Oh no, White flame.” She said with a defiant shake of her head. “You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve answered all my questions.” Ronin looked to K3 for help, but the giant seemed fascinated with something on the other side of the room from where they lay and wouldn’t meet his gaze. With a sigh, Ronin gave up and explained.
“Look, she was making me uncomfortable, ok. I… thought I had feelings for her, well, I did have feelings for her, but when I realized that she couldn’t control her feelings, it… weirded me out. I’ve never been around many girls, alright. Growing up in the caves was, well we’re going there soon, you’ll see. Anyway, then we met Lily and Vasylia and the political marriage happened, and I felt even weirder… So, when I noticed how close She was with Guts… Well, I had Owl Two shut off their sexual inhibitor, but only where the other one was concerned. They can feel desire for the other now, and… since it’s been the better part of a decade, now…” His voice choked up at the last, and he had to clear his throat. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a whole family by now. With the undercity being goblin ruled, it would be great if they did.”
After he’d finished speaking, Ronin just lay on his back, looking up at Elyria. She sat on his chest, staring down at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. It seemed to be equal parts exasperation, disbelief, and… approval. Her mouth moved, opening, and closing several times as she searched for words before she finally spoke.
“You know, White flame… When I swore that oath, to follow you tell my last day… I was sure you’d prove yourself to be a villain. I was in such a bad mental space back then, that all I wanted to do was die. I made you my ticket to the grave. A coward’s way to die without compromising my honor. I goaded you at every turn, even going so far as to attack you, in such a way that you or your people would have little choice but to kill me… When you didn’t, I realized I’d made a mistake. That I might end up spending the rest of my life having to follow you around… I hated you for that. But, in the months since then, and after coming to this place with you… I can see that, despite being a hopeless dimwitted moron, your heart is in the right place. I can’t fault what you did for Five, doubly so when I see what it cost you to do it… I still miss my husband, terribly so, but seeing what you are fighting for, makes me not mind being stuck at your side, quite so much.” Ronin stared up at her, as she stared back down at him. He supposed he should be grateful that she was coming around, but her delivery was just…
“I mean, wow.” Leo said as he plunged his hand through the queen’s eye socket in search of her core. “I’ve seen some awkward courtships in my time, but this really takes the prize.” As he spoke, he was busy ripping a basketball sized core, in a pink so deep it looked like blood, from the queen’s eye. “Would you two mind saving the rest of us the agony of watching this disaster, and just get a room already?” The words ‘get a room,’ had barely left his mouth before Elyria was up and off Ronin. Her wings buzzed angrily as she shot across the chamber, hovering right in front of the lionid.
“Listen, I do not…” A growl from the gore splattered murder monster shut her up, and she flew backwards a few feet from reflex before she was able to stop herself.
“I don’t care,” Leo said hefting the giant crystal and tossing it to a member of his pride. “I get it, you are quite a bit older than he is, and have had some stuff happen to you. He’s fresh from the caves and a bit of an idiot about life. If you don’t want to move forward, again, I don’t care. But don’t come at me like that girl... We’ve got important things to do, so try and focus on that instead.” Ronin could see the effort Leo was putting into restraining himself. It looked like getting in his face was a terrible idea. A fact that should have been clear to anyone who’d watched him butcher the airliner sized wasp queen with his bare hands ought to have realized. Then again, Elyria hadn’t been in here for much of the fighting. Still, it was a little hurtful that everyone around him thought he was stupid.
“Can we just finish collecting the crystal cores and get back to the ship?” Ronin asked, not really in the mood to be here anymore, not when no one respected his intelligence, and his own bodyguard didn’t stand up for him. “What are they for anyway?” He added, not being able to help his curiosity, despite the situation. It looked like both Leo and Elyria were happy enough with the topic change since they exchanged a glance and a nod before moving apart.
“The ‘crystal cores’ are the main ingredient to the enhanced nutrient fluid that is used to grow new bodies. It also is used in the biological engines on the ship and, well all over the place.” Leo said, pulling another core from a regular wasp’s head. “Nearly everything runs from stuff produced by the crystal trees. Even these bodies, we’ll be drinking the tree sap to sustain ourselves going forward. Well, these cores are a… refining organ, I guess. Listen, it’s all rather technical and doesn’t matter all that much for us right now. Long story short, the beetles engineered the bugs this way, to help them process the tree sap into something stronger… like making syrup from sap I suppose. We’ve got machines on the drop ship that will do the same thing, at a 1,000 to 1 gallon ratio of sap to enhanced nutrient fluid.” He’d clearly lost his patience with the conversation.
“Now, let’s get these things harvested. We’ve pretty much cleared out the tree, so we should be able to connect the sap collector and processing unit up to start resource collection. We’ll leave most of our men out here to keep an eye on it while we go check out our old home.” Ronin, along with K3 and Elyria both nodded, and they set about the seemingly endless chore of crystal core collection.
* * *
Clearing the wasp hive of cores took the rest of the night. Even then it was only possible because the gryphons acted as porters, to ferry up empty bags and take full ones back down with them. Apparently, there was a whole list of… parts, that they wanted to rebuild the human ship on the moon. Ronin wasn’t sure when they’d covered that, but he just chalked it up to him not paying attention. As he helped his and Leo’s people harvest all kinds of body parts from the wasps along with their cores. They also collected sections of heart wood from deep inside the tree’s core. They’d gotten lucky, in a way, by taking out the hive, because the queen’s chambers were near the center of the tree. They were able to gather several hard to come by resources from that alone.
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“It’s really not that hard to gather this stuff,” Ronin said while he helped Leo hook a sap gathering machine to a fresh shoot. They’d have to move it daily, once it sucked up all the nearby sap, to keep production high. “Why aren’t people down here all the time, gathering this stuff? Seems like there would be enough built up already if we’d done that.” He said as he finished hooking up the hoses to the huge container. It looked like transparent plastic but was probably something they’d grown in the ship.
“Tell me boy,” Leo said, pulling back the huge drill he’d just run into the shoot and stabbing the end of a hose into the hole that was already willing up with green sap. “Why would anyone want to be down here in this dead world, when they could be a king in their own private world-spanning kingdom? Sure, there are a few hundred people who got crystallized, earned enough credits to get a body and then came down here to try and live. Some become leaders to human settlements, those are the few places on the planet where people live halfway decently. Others go exploring old human ruins, to try and keep the past alive… but most people who come down here, give up on whatever foolish notion that brought them here to begin with, and they go back up to live in their personal realms.”
Ronin pondered at the tone and the cynical way Leo had given the explanation. He wondered if Leo might have been one of those who’d come down, only to give up and head back to the ship. He would never ask that question though, not with the way the older man was glaring at the machine, already filling the clear container with sap.
“I think our people can finish up from here,” he said, turning back to ronin after a tense minute of silence. “What do you say we head back home? Grab your bodyguard and your girlfriend and let’s go.” Knowing it wouldn’t do any good to refute the accusation, Ronin only sighed and nodded. A brief time later, Ronin, Leo, Gnash, K3 and Elyria set off towards the flooded cave entrance. Four of them on gryphon back, Elyria flying along beside them.
“This the spot?” She asked, after they’d landed at the small pool that butted up against the boulder.
“It is,” Ronin said. He had seen this pond a thousand times. Yet somehow it looked different to him through his new perspective. It looked small, and inconsequential, when before it had been the bulwark that kept out the toxic atmosphere brought by the crystal trees.
“The water level looks low,” Leo commented. Ronin checked the fill line they’d added to the rock. It was just an inconspicuous scratch, but it was enough to let them know when they needed to bring up more water from the underground spring. That was a time-consuming effort, but without doing it, their air would escape, and they’d all die.
“It does.” Ronin said, wondering how bad things had to have gotten for them to not fill the pond. Worry had already started to gnaw at him. “Come on, let’s go check on them.” He Slipped on a slim air mask, since ironically, the air inside the cave that had kept him alive his whole life, would now kill him if he breathed too much of it. Before nodding to K3 and diving into the pond. Swimming to the bottom, he ignored the lead rope he’d once used to haul himself through the tunnel and instead, relied on his own power to swim the gap. He was through in only a few strokes, leading him to marvel once again at his new body.
When his head broke the surface, the first thing Ronin did was look towards the ancient chair that had been Markus’s guard post for so many years. It was empty, and the small LED that had illuminated the area was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, Ronin still had his night vision, even though the telescoping and mapping functions didn’t work outside his pocket world. He stared at that empty chair, until he felt K3 nudge his leg from below and knew he needed to climb out of the pool.
Waiting by the small pool, Ronin looked at the dingy, wet, mold and mildew covered walls as he drip-dried and waited for the rest of the team to immerge. For some reason, he couldn’t keep his eyes away from that rickety old chair. His eyes kept getting drawn back to it, and he couldn’t help but see his old friend Markus, reclining there with his old rifle, grey hair tied back as he smiled up at Ronin.
‘Hey kid, find anything good out there this time?’ The words drifted to his ears from the past, and he jumped a little when Elyria touched his arm.
“You good?” She asked, looking at him with concern. “We’re all here, if you wanted to lead the way.”
“Yea, I’m fine. It’s just that this was Markus’s seat, and I was taken back for a while.” He said with a wan grin. “Come on, it’s this way.” Ronin led them along the winding and twisted paths into the cave. Passed the ponds that grew their algae, only a few of which still had functioning lights. Passed the bathroom cave, where Ronin was grateful, he was wearing a breath mask. Even passed the bathing area, there was no one to be found.
Until they reached the communal area where the cave’s people congregated. There were a few people gathered around a small LED light, huddled together for warmth. It wasn’t hard to see why either, they didn’t have any of the heat retention blankets they’d once owned. None of the solar powered water heaters, or the drying machine that made the algae bars possible. They were also thin, even more so than Ronin remembered when he had been here last. Was it only a week ago, a handful of days or half a year? He honestly couldn’t remember anymore.
The people were in such poor shape that Ronin, Leo, and their escorts were almost upon them before someone noticed. To Ronin’s horror, it was Penny, Markus’s wife, who looked up through sunken, hollow eyes and saw them first. She had never been a large woman, but now she was downright skeletal. She opened parched lips that split and bled as she spoke.
“Am I going crazy from hunger, or is our little Robert come home again?” Penny made a few false starts as she tried to stand, a few of the others sitting around the light looking up at Ronin and his group, but several more not having the energy to bother. Once on her feet, Penny stumbled over to Ronin, who met her halfway in a careful embrace. He was afraid to squeeze too hard because he didn’t want to hurt the emaciated woman. She looked so small and frail in his arms that Ronin was having flashbacks of another malnourished woman with green skin, that he’d shot in the chest not so long ago.
“Penny, what happened, it can’t have been that long since I left.” Ronin asked, doing his best to remove the dead goblin from his mind.
“It really is you…” Penny said, her voice trailing off, having tired herself out from the short walk. “Not much to tell really,” she said with a feeble shrug. “When Alexander took all our things to the teleportation pad, Markus tried to stop them. Then you boys had a shootout, and you disappeared with all our stuff.” Penny said helplessly, “what were we supposed to do after that? We’ve been slowly starving and freezing to death since that day. I’m just so grateful you were able to get Markus out before he died. Thank you for that, Robert.”
She motioned for him to set her back down in the circle of her fellows, none of whom had the desire or the energy to interact with the newcomers, beyond a few inquiries for food, before they realized they were crystallized and wouldn’t have human food. What little life that had been in their eyes, died after that. It was all Ronin could do to stop himself weeping for these people he’d left behind. Left behind, and spent the money earned from their suffering to bring evil and suffering into his own world. He felt sick at what he’d done. What made it all so much worse was that he saw no way to help them. Turning away from the small group, Ronin moved further into the cave.
He walked, aimlessly for some time, before finally coming to a stop in front of his own small cave. His door was gone, as were all his treasures. Still, a few traces of him remained, in the smooth patch he’d worn into the rock with countless hours of rubbing sand against the stone. In the rock drawings he’d made by scraping stone against stone. He looked at the drawing of the prince with his ten followers and couldn’t help but laugh bitterly. Getting on his knees, Ronin crawled inside the tiny alcove. He barely fit, thanks to his greater bulk and the carapace armor he’d equipped himself with. Finally settling down into his old position, the one he spent so many years in, pumping up his air tanks and reading crazy stories of adventure, Ronin started to cry. Great wracking sobs that he couldn’t stop.
For a long time, Ronin sat, huddled up in the cave he’d spent the first thirty-five years of his life in, and cried. He cried for himself, for everything he’d been forced to endure. For the mistakes he’d made and the friends it had cost him. For the parents who’d abandoned him at the age of ten. For the baby he’d abandoned without even realizing it. For the woman who’d born that baby, a woman he might have come to love, given enough time. For the half goblin that he was almost sure he had started to love, and the friend he’d let her go to after he’d realized how close they were.
Ronin cried and cried. Once the flood gates had opened, he couldn’t stop them. He cried for earth, the planet, and her people, who’d been destroyed by accident, by a careless race of alien beetles. He cried for the beetles, who’s carelessness had relegated them into slavery to the people they’d almost killed. He cried because after everything they’d been through, their planet was going to be invaded again soon. This time, by aliens who wouldn’t destroy them by accident, they’d do it on purpose. He cried because, no matter what he did, Penny and everyone he’d ever known for his entire life, were going to die.
Eventually, Ronin’s sobs slowed down, and he was able to breathe again. The inside of his mask had been completely fogged over, and he had long lost the ability to see beyond it. As he calmed down, however, an anti-fog fan of some kind turned on, and cleared his view. To his shock, Ronin found that he wasn’t alone in the tiny alcove. He wasn’t sure when she’d come in, or how she’d even fit, But Elyria had curled up beside him. The moon elf had her head on his shoulder, and both hands wrapped tightly around his arm. Ronin could tell she’d been crying as well, from the tracks that covered her cheeks. Though, she now had her eyes closed, and Ronin wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Until he shifted, and she spoke.
“I’m now surer than ever, that I didn’t make a mistake when I swore my life to you, White flame.” She said, not letting him go, only clutching him tighter. “I spoke with Leo and Penny for a moment before I came to find you.” She continued, in a quiet voice. “I never understood, I couldn't understand… when you said you lived in caves… I understand now, White flame, and I have nothing but respect for you. Going forward, we’ll work together to correct some of your intellectual deficiencies, perhaps make it so you’re not a complete moron in a few decades… perhaps a century.” Ronin just looked at the determined moon elf, her silver hair draping loosely over his black armor, and her deep blue eyes piercing into his own. Ronin was unsure how to feel, or what had brought on this sudden change in Elyria.
“Now, have you got it all out?” She asked, giving him a thump on the shoulder. “Because we have a lot of work to do if we are going to save these people, and you can’t do it sulking in your bedroom.” She added with a smirk, backing out of the alcove and offering Ronin her hand. Ronin just stared at it for a moment before looking at her.
“It won’t matter though,” he said at last. “Even if we save them now, the lizards are coming. There’s no guarantee we’ll even be allowed to leave on the ship, and even if we are there’s no way we’d be able to bring them along.”
“So?” Elyria asked, her hand still extended to him. “The locusts were knocking at the gates of the honeycomb, your people, and me, told you to ignore them and focus on your own settlement. You ignored them then, fought an unbeatable foe off for days and saved hundreds of lives. How is now any different, other than you have Xerox working on contingencies now? You’ve got the ability to make a difference to these people, the White flame I know wouldn’t hesitate to lend a hand to people in need.” Ronin thought about her words for a long time, before finally responding.
“Ok,” he said at last. “You’re right, whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll help who we can today.” Mind made up, he reached out and clasped Elyria’s still outstretched hand in his own.