A Flight of Broken Wings, page 7
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
The terseness of Ruban’s tone seemed to dissuade his colleagues from pursuing the matter any further. Instead, the man named Faiz merely grinned at Shwaan with a glint in his eye. “Hello my lord. I’m Faiz,” he said, pointing his thumb at himself rather redundantly. “This,” he pointed at the woman with the cat. “Is Hema and that fluffy monstrosity on her desk is Kitty. Very original, I know. And that,” he said, indicating a grizzled old man who had so far been sitting quietly at his desk at the opposite end of the room. “Is Dai. He’s really old and really fast, so you don’t wanna mess with him unless you want your teeth knocked in. Believe me,” he said, his tone sagacious. “I speak from experience. Bitter experience. Rinku!” he called, leaning back into his chair and raising his voice. As if on cue, a slim, round-faced young woman with shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail poked her head out of one of the doors at the end of the hall.
“Yes?” she asked, looking expectantly at Faiz.
“That’s Rinku, our office assistant,” he told Shwaan matter-of-factly, pointing at the woman half-obscured by the door she was leaning out of. “Rinku, this is the boss’ new…ah…companion. Lord Ashwin Kwan. Come say hi.”
“Oh,” said Shwaan, rather overwhelmed by the unexpected deluge of information even as Ruban glared daggers at Faiz. “Please call me Ashwin. And it’s very nice to meet all of you.” He smiled as sweetly as he could manage.
Faiz dismissed this pleasantry with an unconcerned wave of his hand. “Anyhow, don’t let the bossman intimidate you Ashwin. The surliness is just his default setting. It’s nothing personal. You’ll get used to it. Do come in and take a seat. Don’t just stand there,” he said, indicating one of the two empty chairs across from his own desk.
“Well,” said the man named Dai, once everyone had settled down somewhat. “Whatever the Senior Secretary wanted to say to you, Ruban, it would seem we have a more immediate problem.”
“And what’s that?”
“There have recently been some Aeriel attacks at the mines in Ghorib. Nothing very serious, but the local Hunters are reluctant to engage because of the volatile nature of the terrain; a blast in the mines could pose a major logistical problem, if nothing else. They have asked for our help, and we’ll have to move quickly if we want to prevent the next one.”
“What kind of a suicidal Aeriel willingly enters a goddamn sif mine?” asked Faiz with a bewildered frown. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“Well, Aeriels seem to be entering all kinds of places these days,” Ruban muttered grimly. “Hema, find me a blueprint of the Ghorib mines, please. Dai, I’ll need some more details on these attacks before we can move in. When exactly did each one happen, how many have there been? Talk to the locals and find out everything they know. Faiz, go help Rinku find whatever records we have on Aeriel activity in or near Ghorib in the past decade, and see if any of those Aeriels are currently in the system. We could do with some additional info on the matter. What the hell are Aeriels doing in a sif mine?”
“Hey,” the girl called Rinku greeted him with a smile. She walked up to Shwaan as he stood near the back of the office, looking at a bulletin board filled with newspaper clippings and grainy photographs which he assumed were of some significance to previous cases worked by the Hunters of the South Ragah Division. He had drifted from the main group when the conversation had shifted from the Ghorib case to the details of one of the cases the Hunters had wrapped up recently. He figured he might as well try and explore the place while he was there. If he was lucky, he might find something that would be of interest to Safaa.
“Hi,” Shwaan said with a smile of his own, turning to face the girl. As he spoke, he could see a harried-looking Faiz coming up behind her with a large stack of old, faded files in his hands. Shwaan moved towards the other man. “Here, let me help.”
Handing off half of his pile to Shwaan with a sigh of relief, Faiz grumbled: “I’ll never understand why we can’t just have all this stuff on the goddamn computers like everybody else. Dai’s paranoia is gonna be the death of me one day.”
“He’s only being careful,” Rinku said, her tone chiding. “What if the Aeriels got their hands on our records? Who knows what they could do with it.” Her dark eyes widened with imagined horror.
“Aeriels ain’t magicians Rinku,” Faiz said with a snort. “They can’t do anything with words on a screen that a human can’t. Hell, us puny mortals could probably do it much better than those medieval bastards. All they’re really good for is blowing things up. That’s why there’s so few of ’em left. Comes with the territory when you never fucking die, I suppose. You never really end up learning anything new either. Dumb as bricks, most of ’em are.”
“But they’re Aeriels,” insisted Rinku, as if that simple fact superseded any argument that Faiz could present in favour of digitalising their records. “They can do anything!”
“Well we wouldn’t be here if that were true, would we?” said Faiz. “We here are the living, breathing testaments to the fact that Aeriels can’t, in fact, do anything. Sure they’re strong. But we’re stronger. The Founding Fathers did not free the earth of Aeriel tyranny just so that we could live in fear and show our bellies at the first sign of danger. The fight against those bastards is not just physical, it is psychological,” he declared.
Entertaining as it was, Shwaan thought he should stop the matter from escalating into a full-blown fight. “That is very true Faiz,” he nodded at the young man, trying his best to look impressed. Then, turning to Rinku with a bright smile, he asked in the most charming, heavily accented voice he could muster: “Would you mind showing me around the office, Miss Rinku? Really, it is a most fascinating place. I have never seen anything like it,” he widened his eyes dramatically for emphasis. “I’m sure my countrymen would be very impressed with everything the Vandrans have achieved in our never-ending battle against the Aeriels.”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “Of course, my lord! Our armours are the strongest there are and our sifblades are the sharpest in the world, not just the country,” she said proudly. “You’ve never seen anything like them!”
In that moment, Shwaan was rather fiercely grateful that he hadn’t.
“And this one,” Faiz said, holding up a long blade slightly curved at one end, his eyes shining with righteous pride. “Is used to pin the bastards to one place so that they can’t just fly off and throw one last energy-shell at you before they fall over dead. I mean, not many people realise this, but there are different kinds of Aeriels; some easier to kill than others. The stronger ones – those are the ones with the red markings on their wings, y’know – they can survive a couple of stabbings easy. Don’t really go down until you’ve really driven the sif into their system nice and full, sucking every last drop of energy out of their body,” he explained with evident satisfaction at the thought of scoring just such a glorious kill. Shwaan, physically incapable of feeling cold, was sure he felt a sudden chill down his spine.
They were standing in one of the smaller cabins built as an extension to the main red-brick structure, close to the backyard. It was full of ominously glinting blades in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of peculiar quirks and designs that Shwaan would have been perfectly happy never knowing the exact uses of. As it was, he was feeling vaguely nauseated (at least that’s what he thought he was feeling. Never having been sick in his life didn’t give him much of a frame of reference). He wasn’t sure, though, if it was from being surrounded by so much sif or from imagining the various scenarios that Faiz explained in graphic detail, with obvious relish. Beside him, Rinku looked on with wide, awestruck eyes, nodding along to Faiz’s explanations with undisguised adoration in her gaze.
Shwaan was trying to think of an excuse to escape the armoury without seeming rude or suspicious, when he was saved the trouble by an emphatic, demanding ‘meow’ somewhere near his feet. He looked down, surprised, only to see Kitty looking up at him with an expression of annoyed exasperation that would have done his sister proud. “Meow,” she elucidated again, with more emotion this time.
“Ah, she likes you,” Rinku said, taking her eyes off the blade-wielding Faiz with some reluctance, to focus on the cat.
Shwaan knelt on one knee to pick the animal up into his arms. “Well, at least she has good taste.”
Rinku laughed, as did Faiz, seeming to realise that they had been cooped up in the armoury for a long time. “We should head back now,” Faiz said, replacing the curved blade on the shelf he had picked it out of.
“Yeah,” agreed Rinku, her voice tinged with mild regret. She glanced at the cat curled up happily in Shwaan’s arms. “It’s time for her lunch anyway.”
“Yeah. Besides, I thought I heard Simani come in,” Shwaan said, turning back towards the main building with an armful of cat before they could ask him how he knew.
Ghorib had, at one time, been a farming village. Although those days were long past, the place retained some vestiges of its agricultural past in the form of quite a few large open fields and a deep aversion to apartment buildings.
The arrival of the mines had brought with it prosperity and pollution; and while the streets and the single-storey houses dotting the expansive landscape were better maintained than those in his hometown of Surai, Ruban could almost feel the dust and grime in the air. It made the air of Ragah feel fresh and clean by comparison.
As the jeep approached the main marketplace, bustling with the last of the Emancipation Day shoppers from Ghorib and the surrounding villages, Simani pressed down lightly on the brakes, slowing the momentum of the vehicle. “Well, we’re here. Where to now?” she asked, glancing sideways at Ruban. Behind them, Ashwin sat sprawled on the backseat with a bored expression. Ruban would have left the Zainian behind at the Quarter, but he didn’t trust his idiot colleagues not to sit the foreigner down and inundate him with state secrets, just for the heck of it. That idiot Faiz had apparently already given him a guided tour of the goddamn armoury.
“Well, we should go to the local Hunter Quarters first, I suppose,” said Ruban. “We can think about where to take it from there, once we have the whole picture.”
“The first attack happened last week, y’know. All of a sudden like,” Bhagat was saying, eyes wide, as he scratched absently at his protruding potbelly. He and his old partner Kash made up the entire staff of the Ghorib Hunter Quarters, a dilapidated little red-brick building tucked behind the main marketplace, looking as though it could collapse at any moment. Well, Ruban supposed a backwater sif-mining village did not often receive visitors of the Aeriel variety. “Right early in the morning, thank the Lord, before work had started for the day. But Aeriels in a goddamn sif mine? Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”
“Who indeed,” Simani said, nodding sympathetically. “Where did they attack, exactly? What were they trying to get at, do you know?”
“Not the faintest clue ma’am, none.” Bhagat shook his head emphatically. “First couple o’ times they didn’ enter, I don’t think. We just found charred rocks and earth near the mines, like the sorts you get after one of their energy blasts, you understand. But yesterday, well, we found Aeriel feathers inside the mines, ma’am. Right in the bowels of a goddamned sif mine! There weren’t no signs of a blast or nothing inside, thank the Gods above,” he touched his forehead and then his chest in quick succession. “But that’s when I said to Kash, y’know. I said to him, man, we’ve gotta call in the big guns from the capital. ‘Cause we’d never seen anything like it, you understand. We don’t get Aeriels in these parts. Never seen hide nor hair of one in the six years I’ve been posted here. And now this. Aeriels in the mines. It’s all bloody fishy, I’ll tell you that.”
“Do you know how many of these Aeriels there are?” asked Ruban.
Bhagat shook his head once again. “Just the one, from what we could tell, sir. But I couldn’t say for sure, of course. We never got to see the actual creature, you understand. It all happened way early in the morning, every time. All we saw was what it…uh…left behind.”
“Well, why didn’t you just post guards around the mines after the first attack?” asked Simani.
Bhagat’s eyes widened, as if in disbelief that such an incredible thing should be expected of him. “Why, ain’t no guards here as would’ve gone to the mines in the wee hours to fight demonic sif-eatin’ Aeriels, ma’am. The normal things are bad enough. But no Aeriel in its right fuckin’ mind would go within a hundred yards of a sif mine. Who knows what we’re dealin’ with here? Ain’t no guard like to risk his soul with somethin’ like that.”
Ruban looked at his partner. Well, there wasn’t much one could say to that. “Could you give us a detailed blueprint of the mines, at least? And also a map of the village itself, if that’s not too much trouble,” he said, turning to Bhagat. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Yes, yes of course,” said the Hunter, bustling around the single filing cabinet in the Quarter, disturbing ancient-looking documents and folders. “Much obliged we are for your help, sir. Much obliged, I’m sure.”
The jeep was parked in a small clearing a little ways off the entrance to the mine. The clearing they had chosen was surrounded by tall bushes and shrubbery, obscuring the vehicle from view, especially in the dim light of the early morning, with the sun just breaking shyly out of the horizon. Beside him, Simani sat on the passenger seat, looking out towards the mines through a pair of binoculars. It was around four in the morning and his partner had determinedly ignored any suggestions that she drive them from the motel where they had put up for the night, to the location of the anticipated crime.
Ruban rubbed his eyes tiredly. He needed more sleep and a lot more caffeine. And the universe seemed determined to deprive him of both.
“But you did this the last time as well,” Ashwin whined from the backseat, making Ruban want to bang his own head against the steering wheel. “You can’t just keep leaving me behind all the time!”
“In fact, my lord,” said Ruban, his teeth gritted against the urge to punch some sense into the younger man. “I plan to do just that. It was hard enough to get information from that half-wit Bhagat anyway. The last thing we needed was for him to see you and freak the hell out even more. He’d probably have mistaken you for the king of Zaini and thrown you an impromptu party.”
“While that is far from an unpleasant prospect,” said Ashwin in a put-upon voice that made Ruban’s blood boil. “I don’t see why that means I can’t go with you now. After all, it is part of my mission to help you apprehend these evil Aeriels. So why can’t I go with you?”
“Because,” enunciated Ruban, in a voice full of patience he did not feel. “While you dying a bloody and painful death in the bowels of a mine in a backwater Vandran village would make little difference to me personally, it might cause some minor embarrassment to my superiors. Hence, I would rather we avoid that eventuality as long as possible.”
“I see it,” said Simani, interrupting their discourse, her voice urgent. “I see its wings. Ruban, the Aeriel’s here.” She was already stepping out of the jeep before Ruban could properly register her words.
“Stay here,” Ruban growled at Ashwin, before slamming his door shut and running to catch up with his partner.
A shot rang out, echoing in the near-complete silence of the overgrown fields. Simani holstered her gun and began to move closer to the mines, Ruban in tow.
Not that a gunshot would make much of a difference to an Aeriel, but it had distracted the thing from entering the mines, drawing its attention to the approaching Hunters. Ruban counted that as a win. They would have a much easier time dodging the energy-attacks out in the open than within the claustrophobic confines of the mine.
Simani cleared the shrubbery moments before Ruban, drawing her sifblade into her right hand and clutching the gun in her left. Ruban saw the exact moment the Aeriel caught sight of her. Its hellish eyes flashed silver in the reflected light of the rising sun, its gigantic silver wings pulling back into a high arc, readying for attack. Ruban took a moment to thank whoever was listening that this one didn’t have the dreaded crimson markings on its wings. It was not that he didn’t relish a good fight as much as the next Hunter, but he wasn’t comfortable fighting an X-class in an area surrounded by civilians. The stakes were too high to risk it.
In the next moment, the Aeriel was charging at Simani with an enraged snarl. Her bullet had hit it in one of the wings. It wouldn’t cause any lasting damage; nothing would, except for sif. But Aeriels didn’t like to have their wings messed with.
Simani dodged the charging Aeriel easily with a smooth leap off to the right, giving Ruban the opening he needed to bring his sifblade down in a forceful arc to slash at the creature’s face. The Aeriel drew back, taken by surprise. The blade connected, tearing at the creature’s skin and causing a blinding sliver of light to flash out of the injured skin like blood pouring from a wound. A moment later, the light subsided, leaving just the ear-splitting howl of the Aeriel as evidence of their small victory.
It didn’t last long. The Aeriel lashed out blindly, angrily at Ruban, its flailing hand connecting with his chest. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back a few feet from where he had just been standing. His abdomen felt as though it were on fire.
Civilians often believed that the deadly energy-attacks were the most dangerous thing about an Aeriel. And perhaps they were, when it came to largescale terrorist attacks on mass targets. But in close combat, far more problematic than an energy blast was the sheer physical strength of an Aeriel, their agility and endurance. Most Aeriels – apart from the rare X-class – couldn’t throw more than a couple energy-shells in a day anyway, and it wasn’t the most precise of weapons, making it easy to dodge if one kept one’s wits in the face of a massive fireball flying towards them.
