Welcome to another issue of Tight Beam, We’re still making steady progress with the edits of book III Knowledge of the Gods. In this volume of Tight Beam, we have a special double feature. As a teaser for those just finding Nerd Smith Consolidated and The Descendant Saga, we’re giving you the first chapter of the first book, Altar of Scales, for free to tease the palette.
We also have the regularly schedule installment of the serial novel Pending Receipt for the returning fans. If you’re new, go to Tight Beam Volume 26 for the beginning of Pending Receipt, after you’ve read the opening to Altar of Scales.
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Altar of Scales
CHAPTER I
Hot Nights
Screams, high-pitched terror-filled screams, echoed down a dark tunnel stirring ZostaMax, who stood from the boulder he sat upon inside the tunnel’s depths. Taking his spear from where it leaned on the rocky wall behind him, he ran blindly through the unlit tunnel toward the light at the end. In the dark, his bare feet thudded unafraid upon the naked rock as it sloped gently upward—a path worn smooth from centuries of feet like his. The air grew warmer nearer the tunnel’s mouth. Not a good sign.
This late in the year, it shouldn’t still be this warm so late at night. ZostaMax pushed those thoughts from his head. He didn’t need the weather distracting him from whatever horrors awaited. He paused at the end of the tunnel to ready himself, sacrificing a second to suck a deep breath into his broad, tanned chest. Then the screams came again, weaker, more strained this time.
ZostaMax got poked in the eyes as he stepped from the mouth of the dark tunnel. His eyes had adjusted to the blackness of the tunnel. His eyes worked painfully hard to readjust to the firelight. He saw only shapes and silhouettes at first. Dark pinpoints against the wall of orange light. He identified the problem by the noise before his eyesight adjusted. The shrieking stopped, and the roaring began.
The other two watchmen from the shift had remained outside, weapons already at hand. A shorter man, a fire builder, named IbenNex with his tinderbox still under one arm, led the two scouts toward the safety of the tunnel, waving the two lanky women into the safety of the tunnel. A Balaur commanded ZostaMax’s attention.
Balauri were big, mean, cold-blooded semi bipedal lizards, with wings. They varied in size, colors, and patterns. They were smart enough to make plans, work together, and make probing attacks. When there was one, there was always more. The reptilian beasts never traveled alone. They flew and hunted in packs.
ZostaMax only saw the one, and that unsettled him even more. It was a blood-red monstrosity with black stripes starting at its snout that trailed over its head and spiny body to the tip of its tail. The bright firelight shone blood spatter over the ruby scales, a shimmering mist smeared against the reptile’s dull red. The Balaur had gotten ahold of one of the scouts, a severed arm clamped in its jaws and the torso pinned beneath its body.
ZostaMax made eye contact with the fiend. He measured only about thirty paces of sandstone keeping between them. Its eyes had a hateful look, as if the creature was trying to rip out his soul with its slotted pupils. The Balaur’s jaw slackened, and the shredded appendage fell to the ground. Its attention diverted from the fallen victim to the ones it wanted to maul next.
The other two Watchmen backed towards the tunnel entrance, standing shoulder to shoulder with ZostaMax as the fire builder made it inside with the two surviving scouts, huddled in the darkness, just deep enough to hide in the tunnel’s shadows. The three lean, long-haired men, their skin tanned to a golden mahogany by the sunset, their jaws, and planted their heels in the entrance.
It growled and slowly crept forward, keeping its head low, its jaw nearly scraping the ground. Its scaly red neck coiled like a snake, snugging its head up against its shoulders before unfurling its wings. The leathery membrane cast a dark shadow that oozed over the rock. The firelight behind the Balaur made its wings glow, and the shadow it cast the same red as its scales. Light filtered through the crimson skin, showering the walls on either side of the tunnel opening with blood light.
ZostaMax didn’t turn to look, not daring to remove his eyes from the reptile. Instead, he relied on his ears, listening to the scout’s footsteps as they fled, scampering deeper into the tunnel. At the end of the maze-like warren, resting on top of the excavation, was a solid metal fortress known as Lingrad. A fortress called down from the sky by the ancestors to protect humanity from these savage animals and their ilk, now half buried by the sands of time.
The fire builder didn’t leave with the scouts, instead producing a finely crafted, deeply curved knife, holding his ground behind the other three. ZostaMax held his trusty spear and his fellow watchmen both held axes. The group of men stood bare-chested, jaws set as the Balaur loomed. Standing resolute, they were the only thing standing between the cold-blooded monster and the dark, twisting recesses of Lingrad’s bowels.
Descending from above, drifting out of the gloom into the circle of firelight, two more reptiles alighted upon the stones, the wind whispering under their wings as they landed. They didn’t crawl like the red one. They looked older, prouder, standing upright on their hind legs, tucking their wings neatly behind themselves while holding their smaller forelimbs up against their thick barrel chests. Both were a soft green color like delicate, fresh foliage, with broad, flat scales on their bellies that were gray like sun-bleached wood. They differed from each other only in the pattern of the tan freckles that spangled them.
Their brows furrowed as they strutted closer. They stood head and shoulders above the tallest of the men. They appeared composed and dignified, almost civilized. ZostaMax had never been in such proximity to the Balaur before. They appeared coherent and intelligent, not animals like their smaller red counterpart. The pair came forward, flanking the other. With heads bowed, each dropped to a knee beside the red one. They had to lean forward as they reached with their short forelimbs, resting a three-fingered hand on each of the red Balaur’s shoulders.
The red menace drooped, setting its chin on the stone, upper lip no longer vibrating with rage. Its horizontal pupils narrowed, pulling into focus again. The flare in its nostrils shrank and its wings flopped to the ground, the grotesque shadows disappearing as they deflated, looking lean and desperate. The green Balauri led it away. It stayed on all fours, head low, tail dragging across the stones as it gently repacked its wings, rolling and folding them to fit atop its back.
The Balauri shuffled past the fire and stood on the far side of the dancing flames. The red one stayed on all fours, looking from one to the other of its escorts. Expressions on its inhuman face changing, its thick scaly hide struggling and contorting with multiple emotions, perhaps shame or embarrassment. ZostaMax watched intensely now that his eyes had adjusted to the light. The Balaur looked back with longing and hunger at the four men who stood blocking the opening of the tunnel with weapons still in hand. Restless hisses and rumbles from the green pair, along with fidgety rolls of their shoulders, and snaps of their jaws that made audible claps, pulled the red one’s gaze away.
The watchmen stood resolute, guarding the tunnel entrance as the animals deliberated. Sweating nervously, they watched on, one of the Balauri stamping a foot and growling, while the other gave a low, guttural hiss. They could Feel some of the low-frequency conversation through the stones with their bare feet.
The man to ZostaMax’s left leaned in and whispered through the side of his mouth. “We should attack while they’re distracted, doing whatever it is they’re doing.”
ZostaMax, with brow furrowed, shook his head without taking his eyes off the scaly beasts. He didn’t speak, afraid to attract their adversaries’ attention. He couldn’t be sure if these two green ones would lead the slender red one away or if they were coming to help it. Balauri would commonly make false probing attacks. With so many massive winged beasts on their doorstep, no one was comfortable. One human had already died violently.
The man on the left continued, “Why not? They killed her. Is it not our duty to defend our people? To avenge her? They’re distracted with each other, and who knows what they’re doing? They could be planning anything, might come back and eat the rest of us, too. We should attack now while they aren’t paying attention, and we still have the limbs on our bodies to do so.”
The other watchmen, on his right, said what ZostaMax was thinking. “They’re three of them and three of us. They’re bigger and stronger than any human. They have pointy bits on more ends than we do. Here, their advantage is diminished because of the tunnel. We can fight them here. But with them out there, we would have to cover all that open ground. Without the cover of the shadows, we’d be in the firelight. We wouldn’t have the element of surprise, and our small, soft bodies would be at a disadvantage without the limbs attached to them.”
He trailed off as the first man interrupted with, “Here they come, get ready, this is it.”
One of the giant green beasts had stayed on the far side of the fire, stretching its neck, looking even more massive as it inflated itself. The other green one led the now defeated-looking red one back towards the men with a clawed forepaw on its shoulder.
ZostaMax spoke, “Don’t start something we can’t finish. They vastly outweigh us, despite our equality of numbers. If it was just the red one, then I would have us hack it to bits. Not with these other ones here. They know what they’re doing. I don’t know what they intended, but they prevented more bloodshed. I’m not sure if they mean to cause more violence or not. Let’s not provoke them, maybe we’ll live another night. These ones seem … reasonable.”
The man on the right eyes bulged, “Reasonable?!”
The pair stopped no closer than the red one had come to the tunnel entrance earlier. A long moment of silence let the tension creep to a palpable level. The silence drug on, only interrupted by the fire crackling of the in the night, its flickering light pushing the monster’s shadows this way and that, undulating and twisting inky phantoms of Balauri smeared on the rocks around the tunnel entrance.
The second watchman shouted to the creatures, as if yelling would make his words more understandable. “WHAT NOW, YOU FILTHY LIZARDS?”
Both Men and Balauri winced at the broken silence. The Baulari’s heads recoiled on their long necks. The green one stamped a foot, red one, still on all fours, sighed, making a long, deep, hollow noise, revealing how massive and powerful the creature’s lungs were. After a sharp inhale to refill its lungs, it made a single low noise, almost a whine, sorrowful and depressed. The noise drug on for several seconds as it held the whimper while making sustained eye contact with each of the watchmen. It took all of ZostaMax’s will not to look away from the narrow-silted pupils in its amber eyes.
The green one closed its eyes, the armored eyelids making an audible snap as it drooped its head. It straightened while the smaller red one turned. The men watched them walk back past the fire. They got a short running start, galloping on all fours, until each with a hop, the three took off in rapid succession.
The powerful beat of their wings churned the flames around and made the air waft back into the opening of the tunnel. The gust carried the stench of fire and blood. Three powerful wing strokes carried them up, out of the fire’s circle of light, and far enough away that the sound of their wings stirring the air was inaudible. Carrying them away into the night as if they had never existed.
The other watchmen rushed back into the light around the fire pit. Their axes at the ready, the fire builder lunged out of the tunnel’s mouth, passed the watchmen, and crossed the space to the fallen scout, sheathing his curved knife along the way.
ZostaMax approached the scene gingerly, following the fire builder, now recognizing the man’s hairy shoulders as belonging to IbenNex. ZostaMax didn’t get too close to the mess, not daring to step in the woman’s blood. That felt too personal, too intimate. He didn’t even know her name. It didn’t feel right to walk in her blood. He kept his distance.
IbenNex had no qualms about it, going through the puddle and straight to her side. He knelt and lifted her torso into his lap. Even without her arms, and with so little blood left, she still clung to life. The woman’s resilience impressed ZostaMax. She spoke, whispering, while IbenNex held her and cried. After a few words, she gave up. She passed the last breath like a breeze through the curtains of her lips. ZostaMax wasn’t sure if she had formed words or only made incoherent, shock-stricken mumblings. IbenNex stayed with her and wept.
ZostaMax left, leaving IbenNex cradling the body. The scout was beyond his help, beyond anyone’s help now. ZostaMax grew awkward standing around, doing nothing next to the sadness of his comrade. He went back down the tunnel, into Lingrad, to get the healers or the shaman or whoever to take care of that mess out there. He had been awake for far too long. Exhaustion caught up to him as his adrenaline wore off. All he wanted was to go back to his bunk amidst the warren inside the fortress and sleep.
ZostaMax spent a lot of time searching before he found anyone still awake. It was the darkest hours of the night, the quiet time before the sunrise when the planet itself slept. There was no noise, no people about, no activity at all.
ZostaMax eventually found ThulVox. Though that wasn’t who Max wanted to find, he was certainly the authority figure to take charge of the situation. ThulVox was the captain of the watchmen. He wasn’t as tall as most, just shoulder-high to ZostaMax, but his shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and his arms massive. He was one of the strongest men this ancient place had ever known. His broad form bared the hallway, a lit torch in one hand, coloring the ceiling with another layer of soot from its oily smoke and a crude club—fashioned from the femur of a Balaur in the other. He growled deeply at ZostaMax, making no attempt to hide his distaste for the younger man.
“I heard from a couple of scouts that you let a Balaur into the fire pit, that the monster would have gotten in and killed everyone if it wasn’t for IbenNex. He’s not even a watchman, he’s just a fire builder! Yet he did your job!”
ZostaMax knew he couldn’t explain himself to this man, who had already decided his worth long ago. ZostaMax had found many times in the past that once ThulVox made up his mind, there was no room for further interpretation. ThulVox could never be wrong. He was the resident and most mighty Balaur slayer. ZostaMax knew it wasn’t worth his time or effort to get the story straight with his superior. Instead, he told ThulVox a half-truth, closer to what he expected to hear, just to get to the other side of the conversation faster, choosing the short painful route over the long arduous one.
“The Balauri left. IbenNex is out there with the scout who got mauled. She gave in to her injuries after the Balauri left. Two others are still on guard out there. They’ll see the night through until the sunrise brings the heat again.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that IbenNex would be able to drive the beasts off. He is the oldest son of one of our greatest leaders. I shall fetch his mother. ZasTava will know what to do. Now you, you are useless. Get out of my sight.” He pointed with the head of his bone club, his words dripping with vehemence.
ZostaMax departed for his bunk, glad to be away from the belligerent leader, wondering why ThulVox had pointed out who IbenNex’s mother was. ZostaMax was well aware of their political and familial ties.
Due to the community’s general distaste for ZostaMax, they didn’t let him stay in the chambers that served as the barracks for all the other watchmen. Leaving him to bunk with the hopefuls, the young boys who wanted to be watchmen, just as he had once been. These kids had the heart but weren’t big or strong enough to fight Balauri yet. Most of them hero-worshiped ThulVox and because of the commander’s open aversion for ZostaMax, they too gave him a wide berth, buttressed with suspicion.
He slipped in through the open door, past the sleeping boys, some hardly old enough to be away from their mothers, not that they all still had mothers. He slunk back into his corner, past the hopefuls. ZostaMax feared that sleep wouldn’t come. He sat on his cot, thinking of the scout, of the Balauri, and the noises they had made. Were they speaking to each other? Had they come back for a final ‘word’ before leaving?
ZostaMax’s mind was too stirred up to let his body sleep. It kept wandering. He pondered the place where he lived—this metallic city of Lingrad and its many winding tunnels. Even if the shaman said they were hallways, they were still tunnels to him. He despised it sometimes. He never fit in, never belonged, even if it was the only place he had ever known. Despite his punctuality, his dignified service, his honesty, and his persistent consistency, the community still shunned him. He could never be good enough for them, and he took that personally.
Politics weren’t as black and white as fighting reptiles and were a battle he’d rather not fight. He had survived the encounter for this day. He pushed the thoughts aside and finally laid down. The aches and the stiffness caught up with him and soon he succumbed to sleep, struggling with mixed results to keep the night’s gore out of his slumber.
Pending Receipt
03 Unplugged
The smoke burned her eyes, she wasn’t breathing, but the chemicals burned her sinuses anyway. The dense fog of melted electronics muffled her flashlight as she rummaged inside the panel, some components glowing a dull red inside. Her hands moved on autopilot, pulling the multi tool from her belt, flipping out the screwdriver and setting about disconnecting the wires from the terminal blocks. While her hands worked the physical problem, her mind worked the mental problem. What did this panel power? What was powering it? Why hadn’t a fuse or a circuit breaker opened to prevent this from happening?
She had only gotten two of the twisted wires pulled free from the terminal, the charred insulation crumbling in her hands, filling the compartment with more particles in the weightlessness. Her lungs burning for multiple reasons, she kicked off from the wall, launching herself across the compartment back into the passageway. Her diving in and out of the room had disturbed the air currents enough that the smoke swirled out into the hall, caustic tendrils grasping for her. Still holding her breath, her chest screaming for relief, she pushed further down the hall, further away from the compartment.
She exhaled in desperation even as she retreated, like a diver blowing the air from their lungs on ascent. Her eyes watering, her body demanded she breathe, her now empty lungs begged even louder. Waving her hands in front of her face to try to help clear the smoke, she could feel her body getting weaker. She counted down five more seconds as she drifted down the access shaft.
When she reached zero, she let herself breathe, sucking air into her lungs, the fresh air soothed her tongue, the saliva in her mouth somehow felt thicker. Even with fresh air, her lungs still burned. She let herself drift, her body pleased, the panic slipping from her mind, the animal part of her retreating back to the depths of the human psyche, letting her think in systems again.
That smoke has drifted too far. I can’t hold my breath long enough. By the time I get in there and find the panel, it’ll be time to come back out again. I can’t get any work done.
She gasped for air as she clung to the hatch at the far end of the shaft, looking back at the swirling gray tendrils reaching out into the hall. Her flashlight doing little to dispel their looming.
I can’t go back in there. It could kill me. But if I don’t, if I can’t get power back on, the ship will kill everyone. How long will the hydroponics last on their battery backups?
Marina set her jaw, breathing hard through her nose several more times, trying to get every molecule of oxygen she could into her blood. As she steadied herself to make another go of it, more lights danced in the passage as Lev and Sofiya arrived. Marina smiled at them weakly. “I almost didn’t recognize you in the pressure suits.”
The clear plastic helmet around Lev’s head bobbed wildly as he nodded. “Chief wouldn’t let us forget our training. Reactor’s back up, but we spooled it up with no load, and then reconnected only the shipboard computers and diagnostics. Life-support, engines, everything else is still offline.”
Sofiya’s high-pitched voice echoed inside her helmet. “Sensor logs said there was a huge temperature spike just before shutdown in that compartment.”
Finding herself out of breath again, Marina nodded and waved her hand toward the swirling smoke. “Total meltdown of the secondary relay panel and its inverters. I started disconnecting stuff, but there were too many fumes I couldn’t…” Marina was wracked with a coughing fit, flecking the wall of the tunnel with a mist of her blood. Sofiya came to her, but Marina pushed her away, wiping her mouth with the back of her jumpsuit’s sleeve. “I can wait, the Stalingrad cannot.”
It hurt more than she expected to talk. She waved them off again, and eventually Sofiya and Lev left, their suited forms disappearing into the smoke. Marina, guided by her flashlight, headed further aft, away from the fumes. She struggled not to cough again, she didn’t want to, something felt loose inside her chest, and coughing would probably make it worse. At the next intersection, Marina turned to the hatch for the reactor control room. As she reached to open the hatch, she saw just how much blood was on the sleeve of her jumpsuit.
There can’t be that much blood, I don’t feel that bad, do I? I was holding my breath, it can’t be that bad, can it?
She spun the wheel on the hatch and started to haul it open, but her vision got gray, and the door felt very heavy. Chief Engineer Konstantin came out, shoving the hatch open the rest of the way. “Marina, by God, what’s happened, you… Is that blood?”
He spoke too fast for her to answer, and it sounded like he was getting further and further away. Her mind didn’t want to make a whole thought anymore. “Infirmary?” she mumbled a single word in place of an entire sentence.
***
She was cold, and her head throbbed, but the lights were on again. Her body felt heavy, but there was something on her face. She had to get it off, but her hands fumbled and struggled with her urgency. She felt trapped, like when rushing to get out of a pair of pants when you’re most desperate to pee. A shadow distracted her, and she looked up. “Lev?” She tried to address her shipmate, but her voice didn’t work, her tiny squeak hurt all the way down, pricking her eyes with unshed tears.
Lev had a pained look in his eyes, a worry she had never seen from him before, he was normally a very happy-go-lucky guy. She had often envied his ability to never fret, his self-assurance that everything would work out in the end. His lips smiled, but his eyes did not. He gently pulled her hands away from her face.
“Hey, we’ve got you on an oxygen mask. The fumes in that compartment really did a number on your lungs. You’ve been in an induced coma more than a week. They had to intubate you because your oxygen levels were too low.” He looked away, his eyes shining with unspilled tears.
The flywheel of her mind was trying to spin up. She tried to speak again, this time grunting instead of speaking. “Hush, don’t speak.” He’s normally very boisterous, full of jokes. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get him to take even simple tasks seriously. If he was being so grave now, is the ship really that badly off?
“We got the problem isolated. A cooling fan failed, some of the relays melted down, and that cascaded. Some of the debris got into the next panel over, where the main bus is. Made a small short, caused the lights to flicker until the whole thing melted down, blew a bank of capacitors with uncontrolled voltage. It’s mostly fixed.”
Rather than try to speak again, she nodded along, but regretted it as she was slammed with a pounding headache and a new burning in her chest. Her mouth felt as if she had been licking nine-volt batteries all day. Lev tried to casually wipe his face before he continued. “The fumes from those capacitors got you pretty good. Doc did X-rays and a bunch of other stuff. You passed out in front of Chief Konstantin. Seeing the reports, I’m amazed you had made it to the control room. We moved you here to the bunks about eighteen hours ago, with the O-two mask. I was just coming by to check on you. Let me get you some water, I’m sure you need a drink. Just be careful. Nurse said you shouldn’t suck too hard.”
He produced a small plastic water pouch, straw already inserted…
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The Descendant Saga 