74. A sickening fall from grace

Piling into the vehicle, Fureva-Yung revved the engine and dropped the handbrake. The truck shot out of the ship like a bullet from a gun, landed on its all-terrain wheels and headed south and Tiltspire, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Just as suddenly, Fureva-Yung spun the wheel and pulled the handbrake, sending the truck spinning until it stopped, facing the derelict freighter.
“What was all that for?” Jaden complained as she and Nox disentangled from each other in the back seat.
“I forgot something. I won’t be long,” Fureva-Yung replied, climbing back out of the truck and jogging over to the freighter.
 
Once free, Nox flitted after her, curious at what would be so important to her big friend. Marius, equally curious, scrabbled afterwards, sniffing out a chance for shinies. Silently, Fureva-Yung led them through the freighter, past the two holds up to the cockpit. She helped the door open and revealed a smallish space meant for two crew in front of several panels of darkened controls. The right seat was empty, but above the headrest of the left, the dome of a space helmet was clearly visible.
 
Marius clambered in beside the spacesuit slumped in the seat as Fureva-Yung searched for the box of the flight recorder.
“Hello, anyone at home?” He knocked on the helmet. There was no reply, but neither did the knock sound exactly hollow. Squirming around in the tight confines, Marius looked into the helmet’s visor and was greeted with the grinning face of a skeleton, skin slothing off at the cheeks and brow. They had been a humanoid of some sort, but time and desert heat had made that identification almost impossible. The suit itself was flat and shrunken away in the body, with decidedly disturbing bulges in the legs and boots.
 
Without much warning, Marius unclipped the glove from the suit and twisted it free. The hand, what was left of it, crumbled away to sludge. Nox made a preemptive face.
“I’m just giving him a hand,” Marius joked before the stench of hundreds of years baking in an airtight suit escaped its confines. It was unfortunate that it was the exact moment Marius took a breath in…and gagged on the invisible cloud of death and decay. Instantly, his body responded by purging itself of anything that could make him ill. The darkened control surfaces were suddenly covered in slick, warm, yellow, semi-digested breakfast. He pressed two hands to his mouth to stifle the flow, but the noxious ejecta found other ways out, through his nostrils, between his fingers and very nearly his ears…at least it felt like it.
 
He gagged, retched and dry heaved until his head spun, and his world started greying around the edge. He was sure if he didn’t sit himself down, he’d fall into a puddle of his own vomit. Heavily, he fell back into the pilot’s seat. He didn’t remember it was already occupied until he sunk back into the space suit’s lap, and something popped underneath his legs.
 
Black-grey ooze splattered the cabin, and a concentrated version of the stench rose with force. Nox and Fureva-Yung were assailed by the weapon-grade pong erupting in the small space. The stench, though eye-watering, did little to Fureva-Yung’s digestive system. Nox, on the other hand, was blasted backwards down the corridor by a jet of vomitus forcing its way up her throat and through her mouth.
Stinky… filthy…dirty…sickening…fleshbags…urgh!
Some of it landed on Fureva-Yung’s slicked-back fur of her forearm. She sniffed it, found it unoffensive and contemplated eating it but thought better of it.
If it were meant to be in, surely it would have stayed in.
 
“Oh God! Oh God!” Marius exclaimed and found nowhere he could put himself without colliding with or stepping into vomit or…people juice. Fureva-Yung ignored his antics and continued to search for the box, finding it conveniently tucked under the console. Using what power was left in the freighter’s system, she listened to the last few entries. The captain reported having received a transmission that they were unable to identify or read. They discarded it, but the next entry was a garbled mess. It was also the last. As Marius snorted water from his canteen through his nose, Fureva-Yung was concerned that the freighter might have been infected by a shard, resulting in the crash. What would happen if she took this flight recorded back to Nexion? She’d have to ask Nox and Jaden.
 
The next question was, if there was a shard, should she destroy the vessel? Every Ferrian ship had a self-destructive protocol in the chance the enemy ever took control. The only thing was, the freighter was a valuable commodity to more than just Tiltspire. Besides destroying a resource, the explosion would leave Quattro dead or without a home.
 
By now, Marius had nothing else left to vomit and had extracted himself from the death embrace of the space suit. Determined to get something good out of the ordeal, he grabbed the suit’s arms and pulled it out of the seat. A grey-green slick followed him as he dragged the suit down the corridor of the freighter and out into the bright desert sun. High above, Nox spat and cursed like a feral cat at Marius and the gore sack he’d retrieved.
Disgusting flesh bag…and flesh bag juice! She complained, still trying to clean her mouth of bile.
“Don’t be like that. There could be some good shinies in there,” Marius said determinedly and tore the space suit open in his search. To his credit, after a few minutes of sorting through the filth, he held aloft three cyphers, “Here, tell me what these are.”
“I’m not touching them!” Nox exclaimed and bamfed a hundred metres away out into the clean desert air. With a sigh, Marius put the cyphers down next to the suit and turned to implore Nox to come back.
“I can’t carry any more.”
“And you want me to?!”
“Well, if you can’t do that, can you take me somewhere I can get cleaned up? Let’s face it, you could do with a little cleaning yourself.” He pointed back at Nox, who looked down her outfit and wailed. It was covered in vomit.
She bamfed back an arm's length from Marius and grudgingly held out a finger, “Don’t touch me,” She warmed as Marius met her finger with his outstretched digit.
Bamf!
 
Suddenly, they were hundreds of kilometres away, within sight of Tiltspire and ten metres above the choppy surface of the lake. Marius fell, splashing into the deep, cold waters. With a smirk of satisfaction, Nox flitted away to clean up.
 
Back at the freighter, Fureva-Yung rolled her eyes at the ridiculous behaviour of her companions and pulled out the flight box before returning to the truck. Jaden was now outside, following her nose to the open spaces suit and three cyphers. She did a mental headcount and thought Nox and Marius were present on the link, they were nowhere in sight.
 
“What have you been eating?” she asked Fureva-Yung, sure the flayed suit had to be her work.
“Your species is pathetic,” Fureva-Yung replied in a rare example of bigotry.
Jaden shrugged in agreement, pegged her nose with a scrap from Bellyache and picked up the three cyphers.
“Huh, these will come in handy,” she said to Fureva-Yung, who had an idea.
“If I were to clean up the cockpit, could you find a way of destroying the ship’s computer systems without blowing up the ship?” She shared her thoughts about the shard, Quattro, and the destruction of such a valuable asset.
“I should think so. But why does the cockpit need cleaning? Oh, and dibs not cleaning it.”
 
Jaden followed the grey smears back into the ship and to the cockpit. The concentrated nature in the airless cockpit had her stomach lurching, and soon she added her mess to…the mess. Jaden, a woman who prided herself on her mental fortitude and resilience, held out against the smell for as long as she could but was soon outside, gasping for fresh air.
“We just need to move the air a bit. We’ll use one of those cyphers to clean up a little, and then we can get stuck in this destruct protocol.”Jaden pulled out a cypher of flesh-eating bugs, while under her supervision, Fureva-Yung pulled the spacesuit back into the general area of the cockpit and set off the cypher.
 
Leaving it to do its job, they were soon joined by a cleaner, Nox and Marius. Regardless of how much he scrubbed, Marius' clothes required the sort of airing only days in the sun could provide. He’d finally persuaded Nox to teleport them both to Tiltspire for a clean set of clothes. Nox was wet, having just dived into the lake to clean herself. She lay on top of the freighter as the others checked on what the cypher had done. Down the corridor, the grey streak still persisted until it didn’t. From that point onwards, every surface was clean and free of dust and debris. It was cleaner than clean in some places where the bugs had scoured the surface of the upholstery. Even the space suit was clean, and Jaden was glad to snatch it up as valuable airtight material. There was only a hint of a stench left, and Jaden soon had that moving around and dispersing through the powered ventilation system.
 
Getting in under the control panel, Jaden found the connection between the computer and the string of high explosives set up all around the freighter. Disconnecting the explosives was a simple task, and soon, she stood up and gestured to Fureva-Yung so that she could push the big red button. There was a spark, the smell of burning electricals and the freighter’s computer system was dead.
 
They returned to the truck, this time with Jaden driving. She headed the truck south directly for the invisible Spire over the horizon. They knew the trip back would take them days. Bamfing over thousands of kilometres in a thought may have become routine, but teleporting the immensely complicated crystal safely was beyond Nox’s abilities. Instead, they set themselves the task of travelling back by land, the slow way. The benefit of this slow was the scenery. After a few hours of desert travel, a smudge on the eastern horizon became the lip of a massive crater. Beyond it, higher than the crater’s edge, a ziggurat pointed to the sky.
 
“I’ll go and scout it out,” Nox said after much speculation as to what it was and the fact that it was not on their chosen path.
“Okay, but be careful and…” Jaden said, only to be cut short by Nox disappearing from her seat, “...keep in touch.” A few moments later, the group lost their telepathic connection, and Jaden spun the truck to the east and put her foot flat on the floor.
 
Nox appeared only a few metres from the top of the ziggurat. It was massive, a construction of many layers of giant stone slabs, all rising to a point hundreds of metres above the sandy floor of the crater. Each level seemed to have an entrance into the dark interior, with a central staircase giving access from the desert floor to three-quarters the way up the structure. Nox was buzzing around the structure, seeing it from all angles, when a particularly unpleasant vibration pierced her mind. She remembered reaching up to snap down her helmet and block out the signal when everything went dark.
 
She was conscious of the pain in her back and wings first, then as she moved, a piercing stab lanced through her head, making her feel ill. She started to triage her complaints: knock on the head, possible concussion, neck, no sign of trauma, back and wings, possible bruising and abrasions, arms and legs, bruised but functioning. She opened her eyes and saw the clump of rocks she’d landed near double and triple in her vision. She shut them again and lay still for a moment, contemplating how much trouble she was in this time.

Stupid flesh bag…wouldn’t have this trouble if I was made of electricity and flying through the datasphere…, she inwardly moaned to herself and realised…she wasn’t connected to the others. She tried reaching out and discovered the source of the lancing pain came from a dark patch in her mind.
Injured…alone, and no one knows where I am…yeah, this is pretty bad.
 
Voices and the tread of large, soft feet on the desert sand focused her attention away from her aches and pains. The two voices were definitely speaking in some sort of language she’d never heard before. Without her telepathic abilities, however, she could not decipher what they were saying. By the sound of their voices, they were coming closer. Obviously, they were coming to see what had fallen from the sky. Camoflaguing herself against the desert sand, Nox made herself as still as possible and waited.
 
Two individuals, tall humanoids with humps on their shoulders and long necks, walked to where she was lying and looked around. Their feet were wide and round, soft, so they spread out against the hard desert ground. Their skin was covered in yellow-orange fur all over. Over that, they wore loose garments of light cloth that moved up in the smallest breeze. In the hand of one was a metal wand that emitted the shrieking-hurting-head-jamming signal. It was these creatures that were responsible for her falling out of the sky. She continued to lay still, trusting in her camouflage and unknown shape to protect her from their gaze. As she watched, their large brown eyes, protected by long, thick eyelashes, scanned the ground right where she was lying and saw nothing out of the ordinary. One of them pointed to another clump of rocks, and the two of them moved away. The pressure of the signal lightened and eventually released. Her telepathic and teleportation were still out, but it seemed all other bodily functions worked sufficiently well.
 
With a groan that had nothing to do with her, she stood, everything protesting. Her wings were not working, and she feared what that might mean in the long term. She would have to walk, something her legs and back told her was a very bad idea. Looking at the shadows around her, she worked out west and lamented that it was the same direction as her attackers had gone.
Well, at least they're walking with their backs towards me, she thought, and she started a slow shuffling limp following the tracks of the two strangers.
 
The truck sped across the desert, a huge cockscomb of dust flying out behind it that could be seen for miles around. Jaden’s eyes were fixed on the east and the boulder-strewn desert floor. The other two were focused on the skies, hoping to see, at any moment, the tiny figure of Nox zip into view. All any could see was the lip of the crater ahead growing larger and more distinct. It now was clear that every few hundred metres or so towers of reclaimed metal lined the crater, with small platforms on top. What their purpose was wasn’t clear until first one and then a second began smoking.
 
“Have they shot at us?” Marius asked as the black plumes of smoke continued to snake up into the still air.
“No, signal fires,” Jaden pointed out as four small flying things flew into the air and headed in their direction, “Here come the monkeys!”
 
They continued heading east, and soon the tiny constructs resolved themselves into four one-person gyrocopters buzzing towards them.
“Should we stop?” Fureva-Yung asked. The only reply she received was Jaden planting her foot on the accelerator. Marius activated a cypher he’d only recently embedded. It listened into a chatter of radio conversation in a language he didn’t understand. They seemed calm and assured, their voices rising only to question what they were seeing.
“Jaden, please stop,” Fureva-Yung said.
“No, you know she’d be in contact if she could. She’s in trouble,” Jaden turned the wheel to avoid an encroaching bolder.
“Yes, and we can’t help if we’re also in trouble.”
 
Marius knew what he had to do, but he had to get the newcomer's attention to do it. Climbing out the sunroof of the truck, he stood, his torso and arms and head free, and waved to the oncoming flying vehicles. The three circled the truck as it sped across the sands. With a burst of communication over the radio waves, one pulled away and headed down closer to the truck. Now, the truck’s occupants could see the tan and orange figure with a very long neck waving at them, yelling in jibberish.
“Jaden. Stop,” Fureva-Yung said again, a large, steady hand on Jaden’s shoulder.
“Yeah, I don’t want to fight these guys,” Marius added through the sunroof.
Jaden, seeing the logic, grumbled and took her foot off the accelerator, “Fine, but I’m leaving the engine on.”
 
A second gyrocopter left the circling formation and joined the first, landing a hundred metres away. Once the truck had stopped, Marius was the first out, all smiles and open, friendly hand gestures. He made surprised and delighted gestures at the flying gyrocopters, getting a closer look at their workings. Made of scrap, they were a basic framework on three wheels, a pusher prop behind and long slender rotors that hung above. One of the pilots moved defensively between Marius and the gyrocopters.
 
Why here? The other pilot signed after it was clear they had no common language.
Furvea-Yung climbed out of the truck and focused on her Fureva identity. She crouched down and started drawing a stick figure in the sand. It was a humanoid with wings. She pointed east to show they were looking for this being in that direction. The pilot nodded and spoke into a radio mounted on his gyrocopter.
 

Nox blindly put one foot in front of the other as she continued her trek across the desert. Things weren’t going well. Her vision was still doubled, and even the smallest rock threatened to trip her up. Her head no longer throbbed. She was aware of the dark patch in her mind and poked at it like a tongue poking at a hole where a tooth wasn’t. She wondered for a little while if this was what it felt like to be normal, but soon gave up all thought to just moving her feet forward.
 
Though the two humanoids had disappeared, ahead, a long way in the distance, two thin, black, clouds of smoke rose into the still desert sky.
That would be them, She thought to herself after noting they were both due west. She tried not to think how far away those fires must be.
Too far for her on foot.
 
To her left, a small boulder resolved itself into a medium-sized vehicle made mostly of a metal framework and four oversized tyres. It was propped up, so one large wheel was up in the air, as an individual, much like the first two, worked underneath it.
You can’t fight him the way you are now, Nox said to herself, slowing to a stop, watching the individual tinker with something in the vehicle’s suspension, You should hide.
I’m hurt, I need water and shelter, and I can’t find either alone, She argued with herself, Look, I know we’ve met a lot of bad things in our travels, but how many of those we really made an effort to talk turned out to be bad?
The margr, the creatures in the crystal tunnels, the whirlwind dataphere creature today…
Fureva-Yung was scary when we first met her. How about Mamma, and the blue people and Valma, and all the Deep Craven and Sharavellan and…everyone…
 
It seemed to Nox’s bruised and sun-baked mind that the more friends they’d made, the further they’d come on their adventurers. How could they have ever found Trask if not for the kind people of the Patchwork Dream? They would have never found the crystal if it hadn’t been for Indomion, the metal bird.
Maybe this one is kind too, She thought and slowly got her feet moving again towards the vehicle.
 
The being under the buggy hadn’t noticed her arrival. She tapped gently on the metal fender over the wheel it was working on and waited for a response. The being looked up, startled and scrambled out from under the vehicle.
Please….drink…., Nox mimed, and the individual leaned into his buggy and pulled out a water skin. Grateful, not just for the water but that the person in front of her was one of the kind ones, Nox took and sip and handed back the water skin, gesturing her thanks.
She pointed at herself…, “Nox.”
The buggy’s owner wiped greasy brown hands on a rag and repeated her gesture, “Kagauro.”
She nodded, repeating the name, communicating she understood. She gestured to the west, to the two columns of smoke and pointed to herself.
Kagauro asked something unintelligible, then pointed at Nox, then at the vehicle and finally to the west. With a relieved smile, Nox nodded. Even without her telepathy and mind reading she could still make herself understood.
 
Now Kagauro knew what the weird but seemingly harmless creature wanted, he wasted no time getting his buggy back on four wheels. He gestured for her to climb in, which Nox did gratefully and within minutes, they were zooming across the desert plain, making a cockscomb of dust all their own.
 
It wasn’t long before a small flying something could be seen through the dusty windscreen of the buggy. It grew larger revealing itself to be a flying vehicle much like the one Jaden had made into a hovering vehicle from the upside down pyramid or the margr.
Inverted and right way round pyramids have brought us flying vehicles, Nox thought as she let Kagauro take her west. The flying craft zipped past and circled around, losing altitude and coming alongside. Soon, the gyrocoper was zipping along, ten metres above the ground, yelling out to Kagauro. Kagauro yelled back, and side by side, the two vehicles raced to the rim of the crater.
 
Back at the truck, a burst of static over the radio had the two pilots on the ground turn to the east, where a brown dust cloud was clear between the two signals. One of the two gyrocopters still in the air flew out to the dust cloud, circled and started heading back. Soon, a small land vehicle with oversized tyres and a skeletal metal frame was clearly visible against the empty desert. In silence, the group waited as the buggy zipped along the desert and finally slowed before its bigger cousin, the truck. Inside, on the passenger’s seat was Nox, a little worse for wear. She was a mess of scraps, bruises and dust. Her wings were rumpled, and she held herself stiffly, but worst of all, there was silence in their minds, the lack of Nox, and the connection they shared.
 
Gingerly, Nox climbed out of the buggy and bowed low to Kagauro.
“Thank you for being kind and helping a stranger, “She said out loud, and dug into her small satchel, pulling out a crystal with tiny cogs suspended inside. She handed it to Kagauro as a gift before limping over to the truck, Fureva and Marius.
“It is good to see you well,” Fureva said quietly to Nox as she laid a gentle hand on Nox's shoulder. Nox did not feel well, but she was very glad to have been seen.
“I’m a mess, but I love you too.”
 
Jaden hadn’t got out of the driver’s seat. Her fingers were white on the wheel and she seemed to have a fixed manic expression on her face.
“Jaden, Kagauro was trying to fix his buggy when I found him. Maybe you can help him with it?” Nox said, and the statement snapped Jaden out of the panic she’d been in since the connection went down.
“What seemed to be the problem?” She left the truck and, to the surprise of the others, called Bellyache from the back.
“Something to do with the front left wheel?” Nox shrugged, then winced. Marius was quick to provide healing, and soon, the darkness inside Nox’s head started to recede.
 
Jaden, using her trading experience to open communications with Kagauro and the pilots quickly worked out how she could help. Kagauro was pleased to have the help, but even the pilots were astounded at the travelling workshop that was Bellyache. While Jaden forgot her anxiety, Kagauro circled Bellyache, trying to make sense of the walking contraption.
“Bellyache is my good boy!” Jaden patted his possessively and with affection.
 
By the time Jaden had finished repairs to Kagauro’s buggy, Nox’s telepathic abilities were back, and she reestablished the network using it to speak clearly to the pilots for the first time.
I am sorry for causing so much chaos. Can you please thank Kagauro properly for helping me, She said, and after a little prompting from Marius, she asked, You live here in the desert?
Yes, One of the pilots replied, surprised and with telepathic speech.
We live, She projected an image of Tiltspire and its small, growing cluster of houses amongst the rolling green fields to the south. She pointed in the same direction and got the impression that these people were open to friendly relations in the future.
 
Back into the truck, they all loaded once more. The crystal was checked and found to be secure, and Bellyache was returned to the back, where the tailgate was raised and locked in place. They were off again, waving goodbye to the friends from the crater and ziggurat and heading back south in the direction of Tiltspire. This road trip had already been more than all of them had bargained for. They rotated their drivers and travelled through the night, all in the hope of making it back home just that little faster.