Call of the Watch Crow, Part-6

Recap: The Consortium and Black Sun Empire continued their battle across the V’Lusian world. Governments fell in the insuing chaos, and a mysterious message had gone out alerting the world to vast change. This message was called The Call of the Watch Crow.

 Kall-Ku found himself trapped in a derelict Black Sun Imperial assault hovercraft. Piranha women clamored to get in from the outside while a Consortium Skip Fighter was inbound to destroy the vehicle. A blast of maser energy was fired from the main cannon, discharged by the vehicle’s alien gunner, barely alive and sealed in the gunnery turret. Before being destroyed, the Skip-Fighter launched two fell-hound rockets. With no remaining choices the Mercenary-Slave pulled himself through a breech in the assault craft’s hull, and drug himself into the thick mud below.

Wake up. The thought was persistent and seemed to repeat again and again inside Kall-Ku’s mind. Wake Up. His muscles burned with pain and a terrible buzzing filled the inside of his skull, painfully crowding out his brain. Wake Up.

[WAKE UP.] The voice was insistent and not his, but rather the subdermal chiming of a computer chip, demanding his attention.

Slowly he began to rise from his unconscious mire. The foul stench of the swamp assailed his senses and a mild and persistent breeze pushed against him from one direction. His face was pressed against a metallic deck while an unbroken hum vibrated up from beneath. It was the sound of an engine. The last thing he remembered was pulling himself into the mud beneath a gigantic hulk of a dead hovercraft.

[SITUATIONAL AWARENESS UPDATE: THE FELL-HOUND ROCKETS STRUCK THE VEHICLE AS YOU DRUG YOURSELF INTO THE MUD. THOUGH THE NATURAL BARRIER PROVIDED YOU WITH SOME PROTECTION THE CONCUSSIVE SHOCK WAVE STILL RENDERED YOU UNCONCIOUS. THE EXPLOSION LIKELY BLEW YOU FREE BEFORE YOU DROWNED.]

His eye slowly opened, painfully permitting in the scantest sliver of light which seemed brighter than was normal in the toxic swamp. There was someone crouched nearby with their back to him, working intently with a motorized instrument. The sound was the unmistakable whirring of a surgical saw, and the sounds of splintering bone and ripping fabric. Kall-Ku glanced around rolling his head to the sides on the tip of his chin, straining to get a better view. He couldn’t make sense of the things he was seeing, just blurry fields of color, some more clear than others. He realized his movement was inhibited. His powerful arms were secured behind his back.

[OPTOMIZING] Came the voice of the nameless chip. Kall-Ku’s vision began to clear almost instantly. The chip somehow allowed his senses to refocus more quickly. [SITUATIONAL AWARENESS UPDATE: YOU ARE IN AN ANIMAL CAGE ON THE DECK OF A 12 BY 14 FOOT HOVER PLATFORM. THE PLATFORM IS MOVING JUST ABOVE THE TREE LINE AT APPROXIMATLY 32 MPH. THE DESTINATION IS UNKNOWN. THERE IS EVIDENCE OF SURGICAL PROCEDURES BEING PERFORMED ON HUMANOIDS. TROPHIES APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN EXTRACTED.]

Situational awareness update?  This was new, but made a kind of sense. The cybernetic chip was seeing what he saw, but able to identify things more quickly. Where he saw only blurry fields and heard incomprehensible sounds the chip could order and identify more clearly the identity of each. It was also able to clarify what happened before because it was there when the rockets hit.

At that moment, the strange surgeon stood up, a row of sharp teeth still attached to a jaw bone held triumphantly in a powerful and uncaring hand. In the same moment, he kicked the still body of a Piranha Woman unceremoniously over the edge of the platform, into the depths of the swamp below. He stepped to a small utility table, placing the row of teeth into a large bowl which hissed and sizzled. He was tall and with a sinewy frame. His hair was long and fell in twisted ringlets down the sides of his narrow face, blowing in the wind, framing his wild, dark eyes, which seemed to stare out of the tangles like a predator hiding in the darkness.  He wore a sleeveless mail shirt, and jungle fatigue pants. Disquieting trophies hung from armbands and a thick jungle belt by knotted hair and leather ties. A large, service patch on his thigh read Scalp hunter 441.  

Kall-Ku didn’t know who this man was, but did know what this man was—he was a Skin-Jacker.  These bloodthirsty lurkers made their living by combing lonely places like the deep wilderness, isolated battle fields, cantinas, and refugee camps for anybody they can cut up and sell piecemeal to private collectors as exotic curiosities. These morbid profiteers were the worst of the worst. With all of the upheaval of V’Lusia and the escaping slaves, it must be too good of an opportunity for these recluses to pass by.  

  
Just then, Kall-Ku noticed his weapons dangling by their chains from the table swaying with the movement of the platform. He was in a cage and there was a barred door between him and his weapons.

The Skin-Jacker moved to the cages to the left of Kall-Ku and opened one of the doors, stepping out of sight. The inhuman moaning from some poor creature drifted out from the invisible doorway.

This was Kall-Ku’s chance, he had to make the best of it. He rolled painfully to his side. His muscles still suffering painfully from the impact of the rocket’s concussive wave. Though he couldn’t move his arms, his hands were free. He snapped his head a few times side to side, until the bladed cusp of his battle-braid fell into his upturned palms. Carefully and quickly he worked the bladed barb against the leather ties that held him.

A grunt of exertion, and sliding sound came from the other cage as the Skin-Jacker returned pulling the injured and dazed War-Shuck by its tale towards the table.

Kall-Ku freed his hands, and moved quickly to the cage door. Though the hover platform and surgical saw reflected advanced technology, the cage door was held by a simple, heavy lock. Kall-Ku reached through the bars, working at the lock with the bladed cusp of his long braid. He glanced up and caught the eyes of the injured War-Shuck. It was catastrophically stunned and unable to move to defend itself. It was a slave like he was; an expendable weapon to be left on a battlefield, not worthy of remembrance or ceremony. As the lock clicked and opened Kall-Ku finally realized what the war beast must have already understood back in the swamp; no matter what else they were, they were brothers in the same force—soldiers in a pointless war.

The Skin-Jacker placed the War-Shuck’s tail on the table and fastened it down with a vice. He then picked up the surgical saw, activating the sinister blade, bringing it steadily down toward the aculeus and venom-swolen telson. The whirring sound of the saw blotted out the metallic screech of the cage door opening behind him and the stealthy approach of the Mercenary-Slave. As he brought the saw blade down, his wrist was caught in the powerful hand of  Kall-Ku. He spun to face his attacker.

“I should have left you lying in the swamp.” Spat the Skin-Jacker, swinging the high speed surgical saw at his attacker’s face, narrowly missing the fast moving Mercenary-Slave.   

“No. You should have left both of us lying in the swamp.” Planting his foot, and spinning, Kall-Ku whipped his Battle-Braid in an even arc, slashing the Skin-Jacker across the throat, leaving the bloodthirsty predator horrified and speechless.

The Skin-Jacker dropped the whining saw and gripped his throat with both hands. In that moment the powerful mercenary’s foot caught him squarly in the chest and sent him plummeting over the edge of the platform, adding his bones to those of his victims.

Kall-Ku watched for a moment, to insure that the fight was over and the Skin-Jacker was dead, and then turned back to the War-Shuck. He looked down at the creature’s face and eyes as he turned the crank to open the vice.  The War-Shuck moaned faintly, its eyes locked on Kall-Ku’s—a moment shared brother to brother.

 [SITUATIONAL AWARENESS UPDATE: THIS HOVER PLATFORM IS LOCKED ON A PREPROGRAMMED COURSE. IT IS UNCLEAR AT THIS TIME WHERE OUR DESTINATION IS. I DETECT SADNESS AND MOURNING IN YOU. NEITHER OF THESE EMOTIONS ARE NECESSARY AT THIS TIME. A WAR-SHUCK IS A BIO-ENGINEERED CREATURE, AND IS DESIGNED TO SURVIVE BATTLES. IT WILL RECOVER.]

Bewildered by the unreal stamina of the War-Shuck, as it slowly rose by his side, Kall-Ku looked out into the distance. Beyond the edge of the swamp, he could see a village now visible as it drew slowly closer.



   [End of part six…look for part seven, next week]