The Index -|-
Breathing heavily, Kpleeb ducked behind a thick, bushy evergreen on the low slope of the Yak-ridge foothills. Just as he disappeared into the brush, a gravelly, stuttering whine ripped through the air over his head. The sound was followed by a wave of hot wind that buffeted the shrubbery. He rested his rump on a somewhat mossy stone there and waited for a few seconds as the sound of the fast moving Xi lutu faded.
With a sigh, he picked at a small cut on his knee and scanned the night sky for signs of any other incoming lutu.
He shoved his arm through the branches and pulled them slightly aside. In the near distance, not more than a ten second run from his position, the village sat smoldering. The nearest hut wall had been smashed and its reed roof was burning. Smoke billowed from various fires around the small village, and Kpleeb could see a number of bodies lying in the dirt.
[Where is Zara?]
He eyed the sky cautiously before stepping out of cover. Clutching his lightning spear, he ran with all of his might. In a few seconds, he crouched at the base of a hut wall. When he peered around the corner, flashes of lightning crackled and shimmered beyond the trees that bordered the far edge of the village. He ducked as another Xi lutu careened over his head with the telltale whine. Kpleeb noticed that the back of the ship had three small, glowing tri-clusters of faint purple light.
As the lutu approached the lightning on the far side of the village, it ejected a fast-moving teardrop of muddy, purple light toward the ground. The ordinance struck with a boom and a flash of light, but lightning flashed in return and the ship wobbled and shook. The purple features on the ship flickered, and within another two seconds, the whole lutu plummeted toward the tree line.
Kpleeb nodded with satisfaction. “That has to be Zara,” he muttered proudly.
There was a series of muffled pops followed by a rush of flame that temporarily lit up the branches of those nearby trees.
Kpleeb jogged between the huts; some standing, some demolished. He had no idea how many lutu had been brought down, though he suspected that there had been two felled so far. [But it doesn’t matter if we don’t know how many there are to begin with.]
It was clear that losing three lutu had caused the Xi to bring a much larger force. Kpleeb wondered if Kiipo’s stories were really true.
[Do they really have billions of Xi? How many planets like Phaedro have they encountered resistance from? How far did these lutu come to kill us?]
It struck him that perhaps his family was an oddity in the universe. He looked up into the night sky, trying to spot more lights or any sign of additional attackers.
[Maybe we are the only resistance.]
Kpleeb shoved the thoughts aside and refocused. [It doesn’t matter. We have to stay alive.]
He crept toward the tree line where he had heard the commotion and seen the fire. It only took him a few minutes of sneaking carefully before he could finally see. Two lutu were down. One lay burning on its belly with the its door open, and next to the ship he could see a small pile of silica dust. A huddle of Ganix warriors were examining the ship. The other lutu was stranded in the upper branches of a tree, and the branches swayed and cracked under its weight.
Kpleeb stood and approached the scene. When he was noticed by the warriors, one of them spoke.
“Builder,” he addressed Kpleeb and pointed upward, “Xi.”
Kpleeb nodded and ignored the increasingly common reference to the Xinti prophecy. “Maybe the Jariit is alive still. We should bring it down and be sure.” He looked around. “Where is Zara?”
A warrior named Xor answered with a pointed knuckle. “Zara that way with Xir and warriors.”
Kpleeb looked in the direction Xor had pointed and saw only the darkness night. That direction was away from the cave and closer to the wide spot in the river that the Ganix cave-women commonly used for washing. He grunted and looked back up at the tree-bound lutu.
“Take this lutu down, and make sure its Jariit is dead,” Kpleeb said. “I’ll go find Zara.”
Without waiting for a response, he jogged toward the river. He knew the path well and had walked it many times, even in the dark. It only took him a couple of minutes to reach the riverbank, and there in the moonlight, he could see a small group of Ganix warriors huddled near a large boulder. They saw him immediately and used their fingers to wave him over.
“Lutu,” said Xir pointing upward.
At first, Kpleeb could not see what the warriors were looking at, but then something moved in the near-distant sky. It was a dark shape that moved slowly. “Is it hiding?”
“Waiting,” Xir said. “More lutu come.” He pointed away to the left.
Kpleeb eyed the shapes that were so difficult to make out in the dark sky. “Maybe we should attack it first, before it has time to prepare and be ready.”
Xir looked up and him and tilted his head. “Good idea.” He stood at once and raised his lightning spear. He put his right hand near the end of the spear and used his left hand to brace the upper, leather-wrapped shaft. Without a warning, the lightning spear bucked in his grip and a bolt of energy burst out of the spear’s tip with a loud, crackling whine. The lightning’s energy left a thin, glowing line in the sky toward the lutu.
Kpleeb blinked and saw the shape of that line etched on his vision. “Well, that will get their attention. All warriors prepare to attack!”
Within a second, the lutu’s lights began to brighten as it rapidly approached. Kpleeb grasped his lightning spear tightly, nervous energy tingling in his veins. “Attack!” he bellowed as the lutu loomed ahead of them. There was a frazzle of bolts and a burst of hairsplitting crackles. The lutu veered and then fired as well, only a second after the warrior’s bolts were loosed. Its weapon released a purple, wavering orb that pummeled the ground on the other side of the large rock. In his peripheral vision, Kpleeb saw a warrior fall noiselessly.
Kplee’s head swiveled to watch the ship pass overhead and beyond the group. Then he saw the other lutu approaching.
“Behind us! Attack!”
Believing that he was too late, Kpleeb swung his spear around and released a careless bolt at the lutu that was almost upon them. The bolt whined and fizzled where it hit the lutu’s skin. Behind his lightning bolt, a half dozen scattered shots followed. To Kpleeb’s eye, it seemed that all of them were dissipated.
“We have to all attack at the same time. Line up and prepare!” Ahead of the group, the first lutu was coming back around.
The warriors knew how to respond. They lined up and aimed their spears as a unit.
“Attack!” yelled Kpleeb again.
The first lutu returned, this time releasing its weapon earlier and further away from the warriors. The purple orb zipped toward the group, and Kpleeb hollered again. “Now!”
The lightning spears thundered in unison just before the orb struck the large boulder. Kpleeb was thrown backward and landed with a spine-jarring thud. His ears rang and his vision swam. Dirt, rocks, and a Ganix warrior rained down upon him. He covered his face with his forearms and gulped breath into his lungs, but in the back of his mind, he knew that now was not the time to stay down.
With a croaking gasp he raised his head and shouted. “Get up! Prepare to attack!”
It took another second for him to clamber to his feet on shaky legs. With a sweep of his head, he searched for his spear. In the near distance, he saw a furrow in the dirt, and a hundred paces away, a lutu lay smoldering. Kpleeb picked up a spear that lay near him, and then reached down to help the warrior that had partially landed on him.
The warrior did not move. His face and chest were still, and blood dripped continuously down from a deep wound in his forehead. The whole scene registered in a mere second as Kpleeb’s adrenaline reminded him that there was at least one more lutu.
Through his ringing ears, Kpleeb heard a shout.
“Attack!”
He swung around and saw Xir and a handful of warriors simultaneously blast the next approaching lutu. The skin sizzled and smoked where the lightning struck, and the lutu wobbled, firing its own weapon just afterward. The purple orb flew high and took out a rather large tree nearby with a splintering crunch.
Kpleeb and the warriors fired at the lutu as it passed, and he noticed that each bolt of lightning struck home. The skin of lutu no longer dissipated the energy as it had before. The lutu swerved hard to the left, possibly to dodge the lightning attacks. Instead of accelerating into the sky, the craft slid and plummeted from tree-height and crashed into the ground.
“We have to make sure the Xi inside are dead!” Kpleeb bellowed through the smoke and haze. He saw warriors leap toward the second lutu, and he followed the deep gash toward the first.
Within seconds he was there with three other warriors. The grey lutu lay smoking on its belly. The small tri-clusters of purple light flickered erratically, and the entrance did not open. He knew from experience that the lutu would only open for Zara or for the Xi.
Kpleeb pondered the problem [It could be inside sending a message for more support! We have to be able to open these without Zara and without the Xi.] After a moment, an idea came to him.
Kpleeb took off his yellowstone ring and held it in his hand. He then covered his mouth with that hand so that the warriors could not see him speaking. Then he whispered.
“Make a flat point the size of my finger.” He felt the ring morph, and he took the new shape between his forefinger and thumb. The opening to the lutu was almost invisible, but he had seen Kiipo’s lutu open and close. Kpleeb placed the razer edge of the yellow-stone on the line that was barely visible to him. Leaning close, he again covered his mouth with his hands.
“Press into the gaps and expand to the thickness of my arm.”
Kpleeb remembered how Thoka had convinced him that they needed keep the yellow-stone’s control mechanism a secret and use it sparingly. As he waited for the stone to morph, he watched the Ganix and looked for any sign of interested on their emotionless faces. Unless assigned a task, they had never asked for more information or attempted to pick up or use the yellow-stone objects.
In a few seconds, he felt the yellow-stone move slightly, and when he removed his hands, the wedge stayed attached to the lutu. Over the course of the next few minutes, the yellow-stone wormed its way into the miniscule gap between the lutu and its door and expanded. The gap grew slowly.
After a few minutes, Kpleeb knelt and looked through the gap in its side. The interior of the lutu was lit with a dim glow. The Jariit inside silently stared at him through the gap. Kpleeb could only imagine what it was thinking, but he knew that the danger from this Xi was real. As he watched, the lighting inside of the lutu began to pulse slowly, and he remembered what Kiipo had tried to do to Zara.
“Get away from the lutu!” he cried out as he rose to his feet. The other warriors scattered, and Kpleeb’s legs had only carried him a dozen paces or more before he was thrust violently forward by a blinding light.
