The Index -|-

Zara quickly sliced her bonds and clambered off the table. A smallish pile of silica dust with a subtle green tint lay where Mangas had stood only moments ago. She glanced toward the brown-robed Xi, and though its body was intact, it did not move.

Viinox had sunk to its knees and clutched its arm in what appeared to be a futile attempt to stem the blood flow. Gray blood oozed from between its fingers. Its face was still and emotionless, but Zara thought that its eyes carried a hint of suffering.

“Do you feel pain?” asked Zara quietly.

Its three-fingered hands clenched tighter. “I will become riaat soon.”

Zara noticed that Viinox avoided the question about pain, and she remembered what Mangas had told her. The silica dust, riaat, was the next stage of a Xi’s life, after their body was ended.

“If you promise to serve me, I will stop your bleeding.” She eyed Viinox and then – without waiting for a response – cloaked the end of its arm in a hot, yellow field of aji.

It must have immediately felt the change as its eyes widened slightly. “Why would you allow me to stay?”

“I need you to explain why I am here. I have many questions.” Zara shrugged.” Also, I will require your services. Trust me,” she smiled coldly, “your services will pay for what you’ve done to me and my family.”

There was only a short pause, before Viinox answered, and Zara could not know what bizarre thoughts must have ricocheted through its mind.

Vinnox lifted its chin. “I will stay and serve.”

“Great. Stay here for a moment.” Zara rose and walked toward the dark-robed Xi that had used the painy-brain staff on her. “Hello there. Are you becoming riaat soon?”

Its eyes twitched, and then its head jerked to bring her into better view. After a moment, its lips moved slightly as it spoke in a quiet silvery voice that was eerily similar to that of Mangas. “It was correct. You do not know what you are nor what the aji-ko has in store for you. I will watch you die”

“Who was correct?”

“Mangas the Overseer as you have called it.”

“Mangas the dead, you mean. Right? Mangas the pile of riaat.” Zara pointed toward the other side of the room. “Mangas the not-gonna-work-here-anymore anyway.”

The Xi was impassive and silent in the face of her taunts.

“Well, that’s fine. Just remember as you riaat yourself into a little pile that I will ruin your kind for what you have done.” Zara raised her index finger, and though only she could see it, a pencil-thick rod of green aji extended from her finger onto the Xi’s forehead. She smiled malevolently down at the Xi.

Viinox approached her from the left and stood near her side.

Zara twitched her finger in a swirly shape and poked downward. The brown-robed Xi shuddered, and its eyes rolled to the side. Its neck-slits fluttered erratically for a few moments and then stopped. Within a short time, a green-tinted pile of riaat shaped something like a bipedal being lay on the floor where its body had been.

Zara looked around the room. Of the seven Xi at her table plus the one that was robed in brown, only Viinox remained. She turned to Viinox. “How many Xi are left on the Hsstak?”

“Two. One was here and escaped when you attacked. The other is Oiitr.”

“Only two?”

Viinox lifted its chin. “Tiirw has certainly contacted the monocratic relay by now and will be informing the First Terminal of your escape.”

Zara nodded. “Take me to it, and bring Oiitr.”

Viinox approached the wall and a door sized hole silently appeared. A doorless corridor of sorts stretched ahead of the opening for at least 20 paces. Its ceiling was curved in a wave-form, having varying surfaces on all three dimensions. Viinox continued to the end of the corridor without stopping, and as it approached, a similar door-sized hole appeared.

Zara noticed that her perception of aji expanded significantly as soon we she stepped through the door. A colored web expanded in all directions, and there were other colors that she had never seen. When she reached the end of the corridor, Zara looked back in the direction they had come. The door at the other end was gone. [I’m definitely going to need a few of lessons here.]

Before Zara stepped through the opening, she brandished a shield of Qon and waited for some kind of attack. The room was only partially lit, and two Xi sat in slings near the far wall. The entire angular perimeter of the room was lined with red devices, some touching the next device and some separated by gaps. The flows of aji between the devices were so many that she had never imagined the scope of what she saw.

“I have informed First Terminal of the situation here,” said one of the Xi.

Zara wrapped both of the seated Xi in cords of aji instantly and approached. “Stop all communications outside this vessel immediately.” She would have done it herself, but she was unsure which of the flows she needed to cut or how much damage she might cause to the ship.

Oiitr spoke up. “There are no communications active this time.”

Zara looked at Viinox for confirmation.

“It speaks truth.”

Zara stared at each of the Xi deliberately for a handful of long moments. [Even Viinox could be only telling me what I want to hear. Can I really trust any of them? … Do I have a choice?]

“Viinox, sit” Zara motioned to one of the empty slings.

It did not hesitate.

“Viinox has agreed to stay and serve me. You may join us. If you betray me at any time, I will kill you. Make your choice.”

There was no response for many moments, and Zara knew they had to consider and debate. After what seemed like a reasonable time, she spoke again.

“I know you can speak telepathically. You may even believe that you can plot against me and win. You know that I am Ixant, and perhaps what I am capable of.”

“What happens if I do not choose to stay and serve?”

Zara looked at Oiitr with a surprise that quickly hardened into steel. “If you refuse, I will kill you now, and eject your riaat into the void.”

Eyes widened and neck-slits fluttered on each of the Xi, including Viinox.

You three are the only Xi left on the Hsstak, am I right?”

Viinox raised its chin and with its remaining arm gestured toward a data cloud hovering above a red box. The data had nine globs of light and three of those pulsed a deep orange.

“I will stay and serve,” said Tiirw with a slight raising of its chin.

“And you, Oiitr?”

“Yes, I agree to your terms,” Oiitr said.

Zara was unsure about Oiitr’s response, but she has no means of proving or disproving its loyalties. “Good. Now I need some information. First. will your First Terminal find us soon?”

Tiirw lifted its chin. “The Hsstak has a beacon. They will come for us, but it will take time.”

“Unless they can use another Xih craft like Hsstak,” said Viinox.

“Can we disable this beacon?” Zara understood the concept, but had no frame of reference for how it might work.

“I do not believe we can,” said Oiitr.

“You are Ixant. Perhaps you can disable it,” said Tiirw. “I will show you the schematic.”

Its arms twitched, and Zara remembered her bindings. She loosed them, and Tiirw reached for a nearby panel.

“Viinox, why did you help me kill Mangas?”

Viinox shifted in the sling and its eyes slid left to look at the other Xi. “Iqw Okrat, or Mangas as you call it, is the overseer on Hsstak.”

“Was,” said Zara. “Unless it can remain the overseer as a pile of riaat.”

Tiirw lowered its chin. “I believe you are the overseer of Hsstak now.”

“Mangas was a cruel and terrible Xih. We are among the most skilled scientists, and it treated us as slaves.”

“Why? What is the purpose?”

“Mangas is Xih. The purpose of Hsstak is to research indigenous life such as yourself.”

“You are all Xi. This does not explain why Mangas treats you terribly.”

Viinox tilted its head and then after a moment, it spoke again. “I understand. Mangas is Xih.” It accentuated the word with a subtle trailing hiss. “I- we are Xi. The Xih are different, surely you have noticed. They speak differently and they are taller among other traits. They are a culture in and of themselves. We are just Xi.”

Zara nodded and thought that she understood, at least a little.

“Overseer,” said Tiirw with a raised hand, “I can show you the beacon.”

“Show me.”

An incredibly complex exploded diagram appeared in the air before Zara. On the diagram, a small part pulsed. “Can you orient this so I can tell where I am in relation?”

“Yes.” The diagram spun and flickered as an outline of the room appeared.

Zara turned her head and looked at where the beacon should be. There were no aji flows in the diagram, but with her ability to see the invisible forces, she saw that three small, green flows ended where the beacon should be.

“I will disable the beacon.”

“Wait-!” Viinox spoke too late

Zara snipped the three green lines.

The Index -|-

Zara watched Viinox shuffle to the red-tiered device and stand next to Oiitr. It moved efficiently but without urgency. Outwardly the two Xi ignored each other, but the glow above the device increased when Viinox approached. The air twinkled with shimmers of colors and speckles of data points.

She had watched them for days and days, and it was much of the same. It never seemed to change in any significant way. After a few moments, Oiitr swiveled and left the room. [Shift change.] The yellow glow of the aji pathway that led to the door flickered as it opened.

Above the device, a wavy plane rotated slowly, points on its surface changed colors quickly. The aji lines leading from the device to the ceiling flickered erratically, and then settled into a pulsating, repeating pattern.

[This is new… but familiar?]

She focused her senses and saw the individual lines of aji began to become distinguishable from each other. The primary colors separated, and then blue split into shades just before the blue cluster spasmed. In that moment, between the shades of blue, Zara saw a fragment of gold. Then the aji collapsed into a muddled brown pipe only slightly thicker than their individual lines.

[What is going on?]

“Viinox, wha ith…?” Her eyelid twitched.

With a slight jerk, Zara broke the plane from a dream state to awakened. She raised her head and saw Viinox standing before the red-tiered device. Nothing at all was out of place.

She shook her head and grimaced. [Stupid dream. If only it were possible to reach Qon. These regular aji are useless to me, especially falsified as they are.]

She reached out and jabbed at the flows of aji that exited the device. Many times, she had done so, testing and prodding at the Xi systems that were presented to her. The aji pulsed as the pressed, and she pressed with more force. It was as if a glowing rubber hose had been stretched over the tail of a comet. Just then, the colored split, and in the space between them, more aji were visible. One line in particular appeared to be solid red with a thread of gold interlaced through it.

[Qon?]

She poked gently at the multi-colored bundle, and all of the aji became slightly transparent. Behind each one, a string of faint purple fog appeared to ricochet from the line into the distance. Curious, she followed one of the purple strings. It was so faint that she lost it and started over twice before finally arriving at a stopping point.

[This is so strange.]

Zara blinked and focused with her eyes. Viinox stood unmoving. The data representations above the device ebbed and flowed as usual. With a sigh, she returned to her senses to renew her search of the aji. To her surprise, nothing was the same, or rather, everything was the same as before. The aji flowed up and away from the device in a glowing multi-colored pipe. The pipe faded away as soon as it was a certain distance from the device.

She poked again, and pressed. in a few more moments, she had again found the purple strings and had followed one of them to its stopping point. She followed another one and another. Each of them stopped at a similar distance as if the strings were broken by a vertical plane. With a little more focus, she was able to see that behind each stopping point, there was a tiny, black cluster of three spheres.

[All purple ends at a sphere on one end and at the aji at the other end. All of the end points are resting on some kind of plane.]

She imagined the plane in her mind. Tall and flat, it stretched upward, downward, and to each side. [Like a wall? But where?]

The plane did not match the location of the wall of her cell. There were no black spheres on the walls of her cell.

Zara nudged one of the purple strings. It appeared as fog, but its edges were hard and slick. She sharpened her Qon to the finest tip she could imagine, knowing that it was also falsified. Carefully, she thrust its point into one of the purple strings and twisted. Finally, after some moments, the point lodged between purple crystalline wisps. The string blinked away and with it, the aji that it was connected to. When she pulled back on her point, it reappeared instantly.

She stuck the Qon point into the same string until it disappeared, and then immediately, did the same to a handful of adjacent strings. With each one that disappeared, a surprising side-affect occurred. The space around the purple strings became clearer.

Zara smiled to herself. [Each purple string has an aura of sorts around it that I can’t see. When they combine with each other, they obscure their surroundings. With each purple line broken, the falsified aji that it supports disappears. So… these clusters are what, projectors of the falsified? But I still can’t see the real aji, which means, they are not the cloaking mechanism.]

She could see the tiny, black sphere-clusters far more clearly now. There must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of the clusters, but she could only really see the dozen or so that had been unearthed by her breaking of the purple strings.

One of the black sphere-clusters faintly glinted with gold, and her senses adjusted. With utmost care, she made a sheath of false Qon and encircled that cluster. For a moment, the space around the cluster cleared in a radius that extended halfway to the next nearest cluster. She smiled when she saw that behind the blocked cluster was a cornucopia of aji of all colors and types, including Qon.

After a second, the space disappeared and everything became cloaked again.

Zara reached out tentatively to where she had seen the Qon. It had been right there, only a short distance beyond the black sphere-cluster. Only slight below it.

Her senses glided over its surface and quickly beyond. With a moment of panic, she retracted her senses until it brushed Qon’s silky texture again.

[Ah ha! I’ve got you now!]