Authors: Rob May
‘What is it?’ Kat said, but Brandon was already running along the branch to meet the zelfs. Hewson and Kat followed on his heels.
The leader of the band of zelfs was a middle-aged woman dressed in plain outdoor clothing and leather boots. Like all zelfs, though, she was tall and beautiful, and made the clothes look a lot more stylish than they actually were. She had a familiar look in her eyes.
‘Hello Brandon,’ she said.
‘Who
are
you?’ he said, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it spoken out loud.
‘We are the Perazim Resistance. We are your friends.’
Well, that was encouraging news, but it wasn’t what Brandon had sensed when he briefly invaded her thoughts. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, who are
you
?’
The woman smiled at him affectionately. ‘I’m the leader of the resistance. It’s an organisation I founded over twenty years ago with my sister when we both worked as lawyers fighting for zelf freedom from religious authority. My sister was Paran Karkor.
‘My name is Rana, Brandon; I am your aunt.’
Brandon didn’t know what to say or do. He stood, mouth agape, for a moment before decided that the best course of action right now would be to hug his aunt.
Kat decided to hug Hewson, who in turn tried to ignore her and clap Brandon on the shoulder instead. Brug and Bunk, who had now caught up, scratched their heads at what was going on, then decided to hug each other.
Brandon’s aunt held him close. She had a tear in her eye despite her cool exterior.
‘You … knew my parents,’ Brandon said. ‘I never did. Not properly. There’s so much I need to know about them … and about you, of course!’
‘And you will,’ Rana said. ‘In time. But first, let us get out of this jungle. We are extremely glad we ran into you guys. We’re idealists, not fighters, not even survivalists. And we are pretty sure that there are some creatures prowling around.’
‘Catrons,’ Brug confirmed, sniffing the air. ‘Not to worry now, though, now you are with us. They won’t attack a big group of balaks.’
‘How did you even get this far into the jungle?’ Brandon asked his aunt. ‘Not even the zelf
soldiers
dare leave the city.’
One of Rana’s young accomplices stepped forward and showed Brandon a tablet displaying something that looked like a map of the London Underground.
Except it was, of course, a map of the
Perazim
Underground.
‘There are tunnels under the city?’ Brandon said. ‘That spread out into the jungle?’
‘That’s right,’ Rana said. ‘They once were connected to the old temple, long before the city was built. The temple is now raised on top of the Tower of the Moons, and the tunnels were filled in. Well, they were supposed to have been filled in. But even thousands of years ago, there was a resistance movement!’
Rana’s group led the way, down the trunk of the lightning tree, and then into a thicket of dense undergrowth. They were following what looked suspiciously like a game trail; Brandon almost stepped in a large steaming pile of catron crap at one point. Eventually, they stopped at a rocky tor that jutted out of the ground. A dark cave entrance loomed in front of them, and the ground all around was scattered with bones.
‘I’ve been here before,’ Brug said. ‘We call it Fat Rock. And that cave is a catron lair. Me and Bunk raided it last year, looking for catron teeth. Pretty sure there’s no tunnel to Perazim back there.’
‘Maybe you just didn’t look hard enough,’ Rana said. ‘Come on in.’
Brug ordered the rest of the balak army to wait outside with Bunk, while he and the humans and zelfs had a look inside the cave. Everyone was on edge, fearing a trap, but Brandon was calm. He had confirmed, through the bionoids, that Rana was indeed a blood relation, and he could sense that the rest of her crew were as apprehensive as they were—the zelfs were frightened of the balaks, the jungle and the creepy cave full of bones.
He bent down and picked up a small curved bone. It was the tip of a catron’s claw; Brandon could see the channel where the deadly poison once ran. The claw was viciously sharp, and it bit into his skin like a hot needle into a ripe zit. He cursed under his breath, healed himself with the bionoids, then carefully tucked the claw away in his jeans pocket.
Rana had reached the back of the cave. She waved a hand and the rocky surface flickered like a fluorescent strip light, the cave wall changing from natural rock to machine-tooled metal. They were now all looking at a pair of double doors.
‘Adaptive texture camouflage,’ Brandon said. He had seen this technology before, when they first discovered his father’s spaceship,
Discord
, back on Earth. ‘The surface molecules reconfigure to match the crystalline structure of surrounding natural elements. The bionoids do the same thing when taking on a solid shape.’
‘Your father actually developed this technology at the behest of the Arch Predicant, to use in his spy network,’ Brandon’s aunt told him. ‘But the resistance managed to acquire some prototypes to use down here.’
She pushed the doors open and led everyone into a dark corridor that sloped downwards until it was about fifty metres underground. The walls were bare rock, but carved with geometric, tribal designs.
‘The balak temple had similar carvings,’ Kat noticed. ‘But this is part of a zelf temple, isn’t it?’
‘The zelfs and the balaks weren’t that different thousands of years ago,’ Rana said was they walked. ‘They even looked fairly similar. Centuries of easy living have softened the zelfs, whereas the hard jungle continues to toughen the balaks.’
‘And I’ll bet before that, thousands more years ago, the zelfs and the balaks were all one tribe,’ Brandon said. ‘Some great cataclysm might have torn them apart, forcing them to evolve independently.’
Bunk was scratching his head. ‘Wait a minute. Are you saying that Zaal created balaks and zelfs at the same time?’
‘No!’ Brandon laughed. ‘I’m saying that Zaal didn’t—’
Kat put a hand over his mouth. ‘Let’s not go there right now,’ she said sweetly.
Brandon shut up. There was no point in starting an argument when, for the first time in years, zelfs and balaks were engaged in a joint enterprise. He decided instead, since they were still some distance from Perazim, to ask his aunt about their family.
‘Did you know my parents well?’
‘No,’ she said, as they walked side by side at the head of the column. ‘I barely knew your father. I knew Dravid better. He and my sister were very happy together for the first years of their marriage. Neither of them cared much about religion at first, but as he rose in rank Dravid discovered that his power and status were dependent on the whims of the Arch Predicant. Paran hated the things he had to do—hunt balaks, enforce religious law—but Dravid’s ambition and violent streak outweighed his conscience.’
‘So my mother turned to Talem Tarsus,’ Brandon said. ‘My father.’
‘Yes. They became close when Talem approached Paran with some secret documents relating to the Thanamorph project. Between them, they tried to get it shut down. The Arch Predicant wanted to create an army of monsters he could unleash in the jungle to destroy the balaks. Legally, it was immoral, and scientifically it was dangerous and untested. Between them, Paran and Talem fought to shut down the project.’
‘They failed,’ Brandon said, thinking of his home planet that was overrun with the lab-created biological horrors.
‘They found each other, though,’ Rana said. She clapped Brandon on the shoulder. ‘So something good came out of it, at least. They never wanted to hurt Dravid; if she could, Paran would have divorced her first husband. But in Perazim, marriage is for life. Zaal doesn’t approve of those who break his ancient laws.’
‘Was that when you and my parents rebooted the resistance?’ Brandon asked.
‘Not your father. Just us. Talem was a university professor and an influential scientist. Paran didn’t want to involve him and put his life in danger. Well, as it turned out, danger found him anyway; he wound up in the dungeons awaiting execution after his bionoid weapon went horribly wrong. But before Paran fled Corroza with him, all those years ago, she promised me one thing: that the resistance wouldn’t die, and that the bionoids would one day return to us.’
The tunnel ended in another double door. Rana tapped out a message on her handheld communicator, and they waited.
‘In the last twenty years, the resistance has grown. We have agents in many prominent positions now. One of us spent a decade infiltrating the city guard, and now has responsibility for operating the defensive force field. And since the balaks have been taken into slavery, we have been able to recruit a great many of them, to work against their zelf masters right under their noses!’
The door opened, and a balak in shabby dungarees beckoned them inside.
‘This is Bugga,’ Rana said. ‘As far as anyone else is concerned, his only responsibility is refilling the food cube dispensers in the dungeons underneath the Tower of the Moons. But we gave him the all-important task of being gatekeeper of the secret tunnels.’
Bugga gave Brandon a typical twisted balak grin.
‘So come on in,’ Rana said. ‘This is your hometown, after all. The resistance has been building to this day for twenty years. Tonight, the Arch Predicant will fall. Everything is in place, and all we are waiting for, Brandon, is you.’
* * *
The resistance headquarters was an old abandoned factory in the city’s manufacturing ring, about half a kilometre above ground level. The city’s rings were a cross-sectional levels, dividing Perazim from top to bottom. The residential and leisure rings were higher up, with the government and temple rings at the very top of the city.
Rana showed Brandon and the others around their base. Young freedom fighters, most of them not that much older than Brandon, were checking and cleaning guns and rifles. A group of older, academic-looking men and women were poring over blueprints of the city, discussing strategy and tactics.
‘They used to build robots here,’ Rana said, pointing out a conveyor belt loaded with artificial pelvises. ‘Another of the Arch Predicant’s crazy schemes: to build an artificial army bound to his will. Unfortunately for him, the plans went awry. The artificial intelligence proved unpredictable, and some of the robots decided they didn’t want to be ordered around, and went rogue.’
‘Saorise!’ Kat said. Rana looked at her in confusion.
‘One of the robots made it to Earth,’ Brandon explained. ‘We dealt with it … eventually. Let’s not talk about that now though; it was a dark time. I want to hear your plans for this
revolution
.’
Rana introduced Brandon, Kat, Hewson and the balak brothers to the group gathered around the maps. An elderly zelf with a long white beard introduced himself as Doctor Wisto, a former philosophy professor at the university.
‘They fired me, though,’ he lamented, ‘when word reached the Arch Predicant that I was teaching my students to question the meaning of free will.’
The professor droned on, but Brandon ignored him and examined the map of the city. It was rolled out on paper, but drawn from an isometric perspective, so he could visualise the layout of the city on all levels. Some chunks of scrap metal had been placed on the map, like counters, at twelve different points, and one large rusted piston was positioned one the temple atop the Tower of the Moons. Brandon could guess who that one represented. ‘What are all these?’ he asked, pointing at the others.
Doctor Wisto cut his waffle short, and cleared his throat. ‘The twelve predicants,’ he said. ‘They rank directly below the Arch Predicant. And they are our targets tonight!’
‘We have people in place to capture them all at the same time,’ Rana explained. ‘Once we have them, we will force the Arch Predicant to step down. Then, our man who infiltrated the guard will shut down the force field for long enough for the balak slaves in the city to escape. It will be a swift, and bloodless, coup! If anyone does get injured, you will be on hand to help them, Brandon.’
Everyone at the table looked to him, for a reaction. Brandon himself looked to Hewson. The lieutenant gave a very slight shake of his head.
Brandon sighed and looked around the table of zelfs. ‘Do you think this is all a game?’ he asked them. ‘Do you think this is like chess, where you win if you checkmate the king, or the Arch Predicant in this case? Are you so sure that he will play by your rules?’
Doctor Wisto held up his hands. ‘He will have no choice. We will have his entire church held hostage.’
Brandon shook his head. ‘No. The Arch Predicant ordered
my father
to be sacrificed to his bloody god, in order to negotiate a peace with the balaks. A peace he then shattered after the death of the balak king, by turning the balaks into slaves. You can’t predict what someone like that will do if you simply capture his priests. He might happily make martyrs of them all. We need to scrub your plan and make a new one.’
Taking this as his cue, Brug leaned in and swept all the scrap off the table, leaving only the largest standing. ‘When Princess Doo and Human Jason get here, we are going after the Arch Predicant. No messing around with silly plans and games.’
The zelfs shrank back from the table in fear and awe. Brandon put his hand on Brug’s massive forearm and tried to give the zelfs an apologetic smile.
‘You’ve been waiting for me for twenty years,’ he said, ‘but the balaks have been waiting for a hero like my friend Jason to save them. If we want to help them, we have to do things their way.’
Rana shook her head. ‘The Arch Predicant has a whole army protecting him. Even if we join forces and fight, we are still just a few zelfs and a gang of balaks armed with big sticks.’
She glanced at Brug and Bunk. ‘No offence.’
Brug shrugged. His brother Bunk smiled, stroking his big stick.
‘We can combine our skills,’ Brandon said. ‘We can use your knowledge of the city to put things in motion; to put the Arch Predicant off his guard and lay the groundwork for a surprise attack. Yes, it will be dangerous and violent, and there’s a pretty good chance people will get hurt and killed on both sides, but this is the only way to make sure we stop the Arch Predicant for good. If we want to build a safe future for zelfs, humans and balaks, we have to tear down the old system first and start anew.’