Dragon Horse

In the Air Force Station, Aroon supervises the food stall workers, holding her Mai Sok San straight at her sides.

For the sky's sake. Why spend all that time stacking the empty crates? They're empty! I could practice my kicks on them. Can I even break boards anymore? What am I doing here?

Her narrowed eyes lock in on the poster of General Chiyou on the wall across from her.

I should be out there on the battlefield, not watching workers stack crates, or teaching those scrawny students what an actual kick looks like.

She brushes her thumbs over the handles. As her glare lingers on the poster, her sclera begins to glisten.

I could show those subquates some real heat. You think your sun hurts? You think the sea will save you?

In the illumination of the fire, the tight knots of her furrowed brow deepen and darken. She looks older, almost like her mother.

I'll light all of you up for what you did to my mama and baba. Let me on the battlefield, and I'll end this war in a week–

A squadron of subquate soldiers smashes through the skylights above her. The blizzard blows in, knocking Aroon flat on her back, and tossing the crates about, and scattering the workers.

One subquate stalks towards her and draws her weapons: curved claws that she slips over her knuckles.

Looks like the sky has heard me at last.

Aroon's head swivels over to the soldier. Not her opponent. Her enemy. She won't perform the Wai Khru this time. She has no respect for these people. If they could even be called that.

She closes the distance before the subquate soldier gets her guard up. Aroon jabs at her with the clubs. The subquate ducks and slashes her claws across Aroon's chin. She staggers back, shaking the blood off her face, and flashing a grisly grin at the subquate.

"That's your best?"

The subquate’s claws snag onto the legs of her pants. Aroon pulls her in with that leg, punching her in the gut with her left club. Then, she sweeps up with the right and dislocates the enemy's jaw with a sickening crunch. The subquate stumbles, slipping and sliding in the snow that has spilled in from the skylights. Aroon spins around and slams her heel into her chest, sending her crashing into the crates.

"All that talk about turning the tide," she spits, "and now, it's turned against you." She drives her boot into the subquate's throat.

A strangled scream. The subquate scratches at the sealskin. Aroon grinds her sole into her skin. "When I'm through with you, your scientific name will be the next on the list of endangered species."

"Um, aren't we the same species as them?" Xolani blurts out from behind her.

Aroon grits her teeth and knocks out the subquate instead. Then, she socks Xolani in the shoulder.

"What are you doing here?"

"Helping my dad with the injured." He winces and clutches his tricep. "What are you doing here?"

"Brain hemorrhage, remember?"

"Right, sorry. Listen, I need your help–"

A squad of Arctolean soldiers sprints past them, Sergeant Wotan at the forefront. Aroon pivots to follow them, but Xolani grabs her by the elbow, yanks her around the corner, and puts his finger to his lips. He sets his satchel down and shows her the Polycarbos, encased in a titanium vial, the Kerberos logo emblazoned into the center of the tube. Aroon squints at it. "What in the sky's name is this?"

"This is what will save our comrades."

"A new weapon?"

"It’s the antidote to a bioweapon. Look, you're the top of your class. Could you, could you get me to the platform? I’m not much of a fighter and there are a lot of soldiers between me and that train."

"You're asking me to smuggle you into the south." Her grip tightens on her Mai Sok San. "And betray my general."

Xolani clutches the Polycarbos to his chest. "Uh, um, affirmative."

Aroon snatches him by his collar. He braces for imminent unconsciousness. And then, she snaps, "You couldn't have asked sooner?"

Another squad of Arctolean soldiers barricades the corridor. Lieutenant Sekhet leads them. She pulls out her khopesh.

"You’re not getting to the south without a card, Zeta, and we’re not giving you one. Hand over the antidote now and we won't have to send you to a farm."

Xolani's pupils contract into slits for a split second. When he speaks, his gums are torn apart by shearing teeth. "I don't answer to that name anymore."

He and Aroon try to turn around, but Sergeant Wotan and his squadron seal off their exit. Sergeant Wotan points his spear at them.

"Last warning, Zeta."

Xolani flinches from it. The six Smilodon whisper into his ears.

Aroon's shout slices through it all.

"He said that's not his name!" She lunges Lieutenant Sekhet and her soldiers, Mai Sok San swinging. When they leap out of the way, Aroon shoves Xolani through the opening.

"Do you have access to the titanium line?" she screams over their cries.

"Negative," Xolani coughs out, doubling over when Aroon socks him again.

"For the sky's sake, Xolani!"

"I'm sorry!"

While the other soldiers reel from the flurry of strikes, Lieutenant Sekhet secures her respirator and lunges at them.

Sergeant Wotan's squadron takes an alternate route through the tunnels. Together, he and Lieutenant Sekhet deploy a pincer tactic that surrounds Xolani and Aroon.

They're steps away from the platform when Lieutenant Sekhet's forearm locks around Xolani. She holds him fast to her armored chest plate. She braces her khopesh against his scarf.

Sergeant Wotan corners Aroon, his spear levelled between her eyes.

"Drop the clubs and put your hands behind your head!"

The clubs clatter to the concrete.

"That prototype is the property of the Arctolean Alliance." Lieutenant Sekhet presses her khopesh into Xolani's scarf, cutting through it, and nicking the skin under it. "For the sky's sake, kid, hand it over. I have enough blood on mine."

The silhouettes of the Smilodon solidify in his periphery. They transform into the six experiments before him. Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Epsilon, and Vau. They latch onto his arms, their faces similar to his own, but not identical.

Alpha: Do what we were programmed to do.

Beta: For your comrades' sake.

Delta: Elbow her, take the khopesh, and drive it into her jugular.

Gamma: Dispose of Sergeant Wotan next.

Epsilon: Kill them, Zeta!

Vau: Kill them, you coward!

Xolani squeezes his eyes shut. And he lets the satchel slip off his shoulder. It falls to the floor with a dull thud. Like Osiris collapsed onto the cot after his dad forced the sedative into him.

Aroon's face crumbles.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon let go of his arms. But Vau whispers into Xolani's ear one last time before he's reabsorbed into his cells.

Vau: This is why they should've left you in the womb.

Lieutenant Sekhet takes the vial from the satchel and tucks it into her pocket. Sergeant Wotan activates his radio.

"Radio check, come in." It crackles. The cold mechanical voice of a Cepheus official answers him.

"Read you loud and clear. Go ahead."

"We have secured the antidote, over."

"Roger that."

Aroon seizes Sergeant Wotan's spear, pulling him in and kneeing him in the solar plexus.

Xolani elbows Lieutenant Sekhet in the ribs, wrenches free from her forearm and retrieves the Polycarbos from her pocket. But then, it slips through his fingers and rolls towards the platform.

Xolani throws himself to the ground and catches it before it drops onto the rails. Aroon picks up her Mai Sok San and bolts ahead of Xolani, who scrambles to keep up with her.

She skids to a halt.

The Commandant strides out of the tunnel’s maw, the end of her dragon-headed staff thudding at the languid rhythm of waves lapping against the cliffside. She has the general's rifle strapped to her back.

All of Cetus, Mensa, and Fornax slither in with her as she steps onto the platform. They leave a serpentine trail of freshwater behind them, having found their way to the station through the damaged pipes of the irrigation system.

The Commandant salutes them.

"Salis et Sanguis."

Lieutenant Sekhet and Sergeant Wotan reach for Aroon and Xolani. They shift to put themselves between the Commandant and the young ones.

Hundreds of sentries set up their stands and machine guns, standing shoulder to shoulder in a phalanx before the other half of the Sub-Equatet army. They open fire. The two forces collide against each other in a hurricane of metal, screams of fury, screams of pain, and cries in the name of the sea and the sky.

Lieutenant Sekhet and Sergeant Wotan scan the Commandant. They nod to each other. Lieutenant Sekhet passes her access card to Sergeant Wotan. Then, she points her khopesh at the Commandant.

"O Óuranos Férei Mártyres."

Sergeant Wotan weaves and dodges through the stampede of Arctolean soldiers as they charge with their comrade. He holds out the card to Xolani.

"Where's Aroon?" he hollers over the din of the dying.

Xolani points at the soldiers. "She's with them!"

Aroon marches toward the Commandant, holding eye contact with the commander as she clubs down any Sub-Equatet that charges at her. She breaks a Cetus soldier's leg. "You killed my people." She dents a Mensa soldier's helmet. "You killed my parents." She swats aside Fornax soldier’s weapon and smashes their face in. "Now, you kill my grandfather."

Aroon raises one club to her face, and the other to chest-level. "And now, I kill you."

"How will you do that when I kill you first?" The Commandant unsheathes and spins her sword.

"I've trained sixteen years for this. Not to live. Just not to die before you do."

"Yet, you’ve spent none of those years on a battlefield."

"I'm on one now."

"Your grandfather fought for far longer than you." The Commandant wipes the blood off her blade and holds her stained finger to the searing sunlight reflecting off the snow outside and through the shattered skylights. "It stands to reason you will bleed out in this station, too."

Aroon's bottom lip trembles.

"I stabbed him in the abdomen, so it took some time before he went to be with the waves."

Aroon pictures her mother running into that land mine. Her father's body bag.

"He tried to die fighting, your dawn in the darkest hour, but he couldn't even stand."

She thinks of her grandfather, her bpuu, a cold corpse in the wreck of his office. The splatters of blood blooming into fully feathered wings under his arms because of how he thrashed during his last breaths. She remembers how he laughed when he aimed that camera at her in her mother's helmet and took that picture of their family. But there's a stain on his shirt.

"Hold still, little elephant, hold still!"

As he laughs, the stain on his belly darkens and darkens.

"Know this, Commandant." Aroon's tears shine like the line of that straight sword as they trail down. "When I'm through with you, you won't be able to stand either."

Aroon throws a hook at the Commandant. A cross. The Commandant deflects both. And the roundhouse kick. But Aroon lands a high shin kick to her chest.

The Commandant catches her sleeve with the dragon’s head. She rakes the single-edged sword down Aroon's arm, ripping open her entire limb down to the bone. Aroon's club drops out of her twitching hand. The Commandant brings the dragon’s head down and breaks Aroon's nose before batting her other club out of her hand.

"Seems you still haven't trained enough."

Aroon's ears ring, her vision blurred. She collapses to the concrete. The Commandant sheathes her sword and sinks into the mangled mass of fighting, injured, and dead Arctolean and subquate.

Xolani lifts Aroon's good arm around his shoulder and drags her towards the doors of the arriving train. He speaks to her, but his voice is muffled.

The doors of the train start to slide closed.

Nikolaos sticks a bayonet between them, holding it open for her and Xolani.

Her grandfather's bayonet.

The three of them clamber into the last compartment. The doors click shut, muting the cacophony of the battle outside.

Aroon flops onto the nearest chair and Xolani calls out to her.

Nikolaos holds her head up with one hand, the other white-knuckled around the hilt of the bayonet.

Aroon's bruised, broken reflection looks back at her in the steel. How is it that she can kill her sparring partner, but not the serpent that killed the very blood leaking out of her veins?

She blacks out.