The Teristaque Chronicles Read online

  A Teristaque with much more adornment and many tattoos walked toward the crowd. The soldiers made way for him and looked as if they treated him with reverence. He was probably their leader. He stopped at the front of the crowd and lifted the face of a quivering Earth sister.

  “So beautiful,” The leader began. “I really don’t like destroying things of beauty.”

  A dagger ejected from his forearm, and he stabbed her through the heart. The crowd gasped, and children screamed. Some covered their faces. Two of the Teristaque soldiers dragged the body away. The leader turned back to the crowd.

  “But I will destroy anything beautiful, and every last one of you unless you tell me where you are hiding the fugitive,” the leader barked.

  The village elder, Kan’Uj’Tar, came forward. He smiled deeply and exuded a sense of peace. The elder had studied the great teachings of inner peace and always remained calm. He needed to remain focused because the teachings said that the best decisions were made with logic and benefit to all. Kan often cleared his mind, so he would never put his personal desires over the desires of the village. Now Kan had clearly set his sense of self-preservation aside as he addressed the Teristaque directly.

  “There is no one else in the village aside from those you see,” Kan said to the creature before him.

  “That is a lie. And you know what? I hate it when Nigs lie.”

  There was no direct translation for the word Nig, but Sarge said Nig was a term star species used for people from Kal’s planet. He said that her home star system was named Nigramoto after the first human to explore the system and that the star species that first made it to a system got to name it. The people living on her planet were named Nigramotoians, but the term got shortened to Nig. When Kal asked him why the natives didn’t get to name their own planets, Sarge would laugh, as he often would, and say, “You clearly don’t know a lick about how the universe works.”

  The word Nig rolled off the Teristaque’s tongue with hatred. It had to be more than just a term to identify the people living on this planet. Kal wondered if there were other connotations of the word Nig that she didn’t know about. Her attention was drawn back as she felt the growling speech of the Teristaques grow more intense with every word.

  “I’m not lying. You may search the village if you’d like,” Kan said humbly.

  “Trust me; we will, but I’d rather not waste the time. I’d rather have you tell me where he is.”

  “I cannot produce what we are not hiding.”

  “That’s too bad.” The leader’s dagger extended into a sword. He brought it high towards the sky and with one swoop, the elder’s head popped off. It rolled into a group of villagers who screamed in horror. The body of the elder crashed to the grass, staining it purple with blood. As the entire village began to panic, the soldiers pointed their thunder clubs, ready in case the group should bolt.

  “Calm down! Calm down!” The leader bellowed. He lifted his sword and grabbed a small child, not yet old enough to lift stones. “No one else needs to die. I merely want you to produce the prisoner.”

  Kal thought about the stone Sarge gave her. Could he have known about the impending Teristaque attack? Did he intend for Kal to bribe her way out of it? Kal grew up on stories of the legendary greed of the Teristaque. Their nobles dined in large, luxurious towers. They would throw their bones from the top of the tower and watch the lower classes fight each other for the scraps. They were ruthless and greedy, and Kal had money. She stepped forward. “I can help.”

  Kal’s mother yelled, “No! Kal, don’t!”

  She could see the tears forming in her mother’s eyes. She knew that mother thought of her as fragile, and the Teristaque would snap her in half, but now was Kal’s chance to prove herself. She could prove that she was a valuable member of her village like her earth brothers and sisters who could lift the largest stones, or drag the biggest trees. Kal pushed her mother aside, aware that her mom had broken down into tears.

  “A brave one,” the leader said and let the child go. Squealing in terror, the child ran back to his mother. The leader walked a circle around Kal. His gaping black eyes drank in her form. “I like bravery. Tell me, where is the prisoner?”

  “I need to go to my house,” Kal said. She knew the leader would not believe a mere villager would have such a valuable stone, and decided she needed to show it to him.

  “To get me the prisoner?” asked the leader.

  “I have something at my home! It will help you!”

  “Show me,” the leader’s voice lightened, but it was still a growl by comparison to the villagers. The leader nodded, and two soldiers grabbed Kal, dragging her towards her home.

  Her mom screamed, “Kal, no!”

  A soldier hit her mother with the butt of his thunder club. Kal winced when she saw her in pain. She almost cried out, and she wanted to save her mom but knew she had to be strong. She let the soldiers drag her away and left her mother heaving in the grass.

  _______

  The soldiers tossed Kal into her family home where the house was torn apart and left in shambles. The couches were shredded, the kitchen cabinets ajar. Her entire life and everything her family held dear were strewn about like a refuse pile. More and more Kal understood why her father left to fight the Teristaques. Even though the members of her village hated violence, the Teristaques were a menace. There had to be situations where violence was warranted. Kal vowed that if she made it out alive, she would join her father’s fight against the Teristaques.

  “You have two minutes,” one of the soldiers said as he pointed his thunder club toward Kal.

  She scrambled into the kitchen and pried open the loose floorboard. The board came up with ease, and Kal reached in for the stone. The Teristaques aimed their weapons at her. She pulled out the stone and displayed it to the soldiers. The soldiers glanced at each other, and one moved in to swipe the stone. Kal was quick and yanked the stone away. “I will only give it to your leader.”

  “Why don’t we kill you now and take it for ourselves?” One soldier retorted.

  “How will you explain that to your leader?”

  The soldiers seemed to consider what she said. Without another word, they dragged her from the home. She held tightly to the stone, knowing it would be her salvation. Sarge would never let her down.

  _______

  The two soldiers pushed Kal down at the leader’s feet. She ate a face full of grass but still managed to clutch the stone to her breast. The leader looked down wordlessly as she lifted the stone up. The leader’s head cocked at the sight of the stone, and he tore it from Kal’s hand.

  “Where did you get this?” he barked.

  “You can have the stone, but you must leave my village and never return,” Kal said.

  Her mother broke free from the crowd. “Kal, don’t! You don’t know what you are saying. Don’t listen to her.”

  “I don’t like to repeat myself. Where did you get this?” The leader lowered his voice to a deep, terrible growl.

  “You have the stone. There are no others like it! Leave us,” Kal said. She knew it was time for courage. The beast was greedy just like the Teristaque legends. She had to be firm.

  The Teristaque leader pointed his thunder club at her mother and pulled the trigger. Kal screamed as the lightning tore through her mother’s head. Falling to her knees as her mom’s smoldering form dropped to the grass, Kal cradled the charred corpse that had been her mother. The crowd of villagers gasped and screamed.

  Kal’s head turned towards the leader. Her eyes narrowed. The two soldiers held Kal back as she struggled towards him bellowing with rage. Perhaps it was the part of her father that dwelled within her; most of the village cowered with fear, while a bloodlust filled Kal’s heart.

  The leader turned the thunder club toward Kal when one of her earth brothers, Per’Ee’Tal, stepped forward. “I know where she got it. She got it from the man in the woods. I followed her one day after hearth story and saw the man. T
he man is a star species!”

  “Can you take me to this man?” The leader asked.

  “Yes, Kal made a cabin for him. I know where it is!”

  “Excellent, let this be a lesson to anyone who attempts to defy our orders. Things go smoothly when you listen; Nigs die when you don’t. Bring the bitch. Watch the others. No one leaves the town square until I get back.”

  A few soldiers grabbed Per and Kal. They placed a box on Kal’s wrist that produced beams of light that bound her wrists together; another box was put on Per. The soldiers pushed Kal and Per forward, and the leader brought up the rear. Kal began to formulate a plan to warn Sarge.

  _______

  The group approached the hill which hid the cabin from view. Kal learned a few things about her enemy on the journey through the woods. They didn’t seem to be as flexible or as fast. Their hulking bodies slowed them down, but they didn’t seem to tire, fatigue, or even get winded. Kal also knew they possessed amazing strength. If she were to break away from the group, she would have to use speed, smarts, and the cover of the dense foliage. She thought of a patch of foliage that would be too dense for the Teristaques as even Per would struggle through it. Cutting through the patch would be a shortcut to the cabin as Kal could cross the side of the hill rather than climb to the top like the Teristaques would be forced to do.

  Once she was close to the bushes, she darted from the group.

  “After her!” The leader screamed. Two blasts of the thunder clubs exploded trees around her before she slid into the foliage. The Teristaques stopped pursuing after they discovered they couldn’t hack through the foliage as fast as she could run through it. For once, her “fragile” form was an advantage.

  Kal ran toward the cabin, her hands still bound by the beams of light. She stumbled through the trees and made it to the cabin door in no time. Even if the Teristaques started running up the hill as soon as she bolted, she would have a few minutes to warn Sarge.

  “Sarge! Sarge!” Kal yelled as she burst through the cabin door. The main room was empty. Sarge picked a lousy time to go on a hunting trip. “Sarge!”

  She looked through the cabin, inside and out, and there was no sign of Sarge. Furthermore, there was no evidence that Sarge had ever lived in the cabin. All of his possessions were gone. There was no evidence of human occupation other than some ashes in the cooking fire and human-sized furniture. Kal had no time to contemplate his disappearance as the leader, and his troops burst through the door.

  Upon seeing the empty cabin, the leader screamed with rage and shattered the table and the chairs. He kicked the cooking pot from the fireplace, pointed his thunder club at the bed and fired. After he had taken out his rage on the bed, he dragged Kal outside by her hair. She attempted to kick and punch, but the Teristaque’s skin was cold to the touch and as tough as tree bark.

  He threw Kal into the dirt outside the cabin, and as she choked in the dust, she noticed Per’s body at the top of the hill. They must have shot him in the back as soon as they saw the cabin. Kal’s anger boiled as the image of her mother replayed in her mind. She hated the Teristaques and was powerless to stop them. She wished her father would return; she wanted to learn the ways of the warrior. Instead, she would die face down in the dirt, crying over her dead mother. When her mother had offered to comfort her, Kal regretted not accepting.

  She heard the giant lumbering clomp of the Teristaque’s feet behind her. Kal knew she would be struck down by lightning just like Per, but nothing happened. She was slumped over with her back to the Teristaque. She trembled for the longest time as the leader circled and lifted her head, forcing her to gaze into the deep abyss the Teristaques called eyes.

  “Do you know what this is?” The leader showed Kal the stone.

  “It’s money,” Kal sputtered.

  “No. It’s a tracking device. It is surgically implanted into all prisoners.”

  “But… Sarge…”

  “Sarge lied to you. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll go easy on you because I bet it’s the first time anyone has ever lied to you. Besides, I don’t like destroying beauty.”

  The leader lifted Kal to her feet and pushed her toward the hill.

  “Torch it,” The leader said, and one soldier pulled a stone from his belt. He pulled a pin from the stone and lobbed it into the cabin. Seconds later, the cabin exploded in a brilliant blaze. Kal felt the heat of the flames on her back as the leader dragged her forward.

  _______

  When they reached the outskirts of the village, Kal could see all the people huddled in the town square. Most of them were sitting and waiting. The earlier panic had transformed into a kind of nervous unrest. The soldiers were no longer pointing their thunder clubs. The leader turned to them, giving an order in a language Kal couldn’t understand, and the translator wouldn’t translate.

  As the soldiers moved to comply with the orders, he said, “I like your bravery and tenacity. You stepped up in a way that most Nigs don’t. I’ve been on this rock for three years now, and every Nig I meet is a push-over. You could rape their daughter in front of them, and they’ll forgive you for it. Not that I condone rape. There have to be limits or your men won’t respect you.”

  Kal’s blood began to boil. She wanted nothing more than to slit this Teristaque’s throat, but she was powerless. She doubted a mere knife would pierce his tough skin, and wrestling the thunder club out of his hands wouldn’t work either.

  “You’re unlike your Nig friends,” the leader continued. “You have got the spark. I saw it in your eye, so I’m going to give you a chance.”

  The soldiers spread the leader’s orders to the rest of the group. They turned toward the gathered crowd and opened fire. The thunder clubs blazed with fury as lightning bolts made no distinction between, old, sick, weak, man, woman, or child. Kal rushed forward, but the leader held her back. The villagers screamed in terror as they dropped one by one from the barrage of lightning until no one was left standing. Kal wailed and fought, attempting to struggle free. She had to save the villagers.

  “Most Nigs fear death, yet you run towards it,” the leader pondered.

  Kal collapsed on the ground, choking on her own tears.

  “You can’t do anything for them,” he continued. “They harbored a fugitive of the law, and the penalty for harboring a fugitive is death.”

  The massacre was followed by fire stones being thrown into the houses and onto the pile of bodies. Explosions rocked the houses. Debris tore through the village. The skin of the Teristaques seemed to protect them. The flames devoured everything. Soon, the whole village was an inferno. Kal had no more tears. She mourned for her mother, and her earth brothers and sisters. She forced the image of every villager into her mind. She wanted to remember their faces.

  “I told you that I would do you a favor,” the leader said. “Since you were helpful and cooperated, I’m going to have your sentence commuted. You will serve out a natural life term in prison. And think about it this way: when I catch Sarge, and I will catch Sarge, he’ll join you in prison, and you will get your chance at revenge.”

  Heat from her burning village caused sweat to pour from her brow. Kal vowed to herself that she would get her revenge, but it wasn’t Sarge she was after. A Teristaque soldier placed its fist on her neck. A needle slid from its forearm and injected her with a burning liquid. She felt woozy and tumbled into a deep sleep where she would relive the tragedy again and again.

  Part II

  Kal’s Truth

  1

  Kal laid in a metal prison cell gasping for air, the sound of her people dying and the village burning still fresh in her mind. Her eyelids were heavy, and her body felt like it was buried in the sand. The first thing she could remember upon awakening was a human male with gold and silver teeth, and black rot infesting his mouth. He wore a white coat and had a bright instrument that blinded her. Unlike Sarge, his hair was gray, and his skin creased like the wrinkles that came with age. But unlike her people, this man
had spots. Only later would she learn that humans developed a condition called liver spots.

  The man in the coat turned and said something to a Teristaque in the background. Her memory was incomplete, like the patchwork of one of her mother’s quilts. Every moment was a snapshot. Two Teristaques dragged her through a hallway. Her possessions were locked in a box. Her body stripped and sprayed with a burning liquid. More dragging. Another exam from the human with the rotting gold and silver teeth. Finally, she woke up in a prison cell.

  While Kal’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she heard a low grunt from the corner of the room. The grunt sounded like a krikshek beast back home. They were a fierce beast with a dire disposition and two large horns that could impale a villager. Kal attempted to scramble to her feet, but her muscles felt like she was trying to move through a thick goo, and she fell back down.

  A creature slid from the shadows. It had a large bug-like body and three spiny appendages. It dragged the lower part of its body on the ground. There were stubs where other limbs should have been, and its body was a shade of brown. The eyes were hideous, large, and clouded gray. It sent shivers down Kal’s spine. She scrambled backward, but she was unable to get very far and hit her head on a metal cot. The bang would have hurt if her systems weren’t suppressed.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the bug said in a deep voice. “You are recovering from sedation.”

  “You speak Village Tongue!” Kal said, looking for the universal translator on what she thought would be a wrist.