Chapter Twenty-Eight: Surface

It was like being hit by the bulk of the universe come together in a single strike. She had no time to see the body of the ship she was no longer apart of, and the Queen may as well have stopped existing altogether. There was nothing in her world but the sudden churning of space and the colors that streaked it. She was a font of pure energy, a falling meteor, hurtling towards the atmosphere that would destruct it.

But she was still alive in the suit that was a space vessel unto itself. It kept her breathing, even in those many moments when her brain blacked out and thought itself dead. And it was the suit, with its many reflective plates, which withstood the immense temperature brought about by the friction of her passage through the atmosphere. Where any other body or space trash would be incinerated immediately, she merely burned as bright as an eager young star. Had she been awake to feel any discomfort, she would have merely felt feverish.

The ship's deceleration had brought it within seven hundred miles of the planet's surface — had it not been moving at such a high speed, its orbit would have immediately decayed to a point which would have sent it hurtling towards the surface. Instead, the ship merely whipped around in a wide ellipse and kept going, daring to touch the skin of the planet's air but never quite letting it catch hold.

Nasira, no longer aboard this ship, was acted upon by the forces of gravity and inertia in other ways. When the airlock had depressurized, she'd been struck with cubic tonnes of air pressure which had launched her from the airlock like a cork from a bottle. Unlike the ship, she was "falling" towards the planet at a speed that ensured she would break its atmosphere in less than two minutes.

She was unconscious for that full duration. It was not until the sky was blue around her that she awoke, and she saw what she never again expected to see: a distant and fuzzy horizon encircling her, thousands and thousands of feet below. But only for a moment, before she spun around again and saw a flash of the night sky.

She was deadlocked in a flat spin — such a maneuver would have sucked the thin air from her lungs if she hadn't had the suit to sustain her. There was no hope of correcting her orientation, but her speed had been reduced considerably as the new atmosphere buffeted her.

The only thing she could do now was pull her first chute, and pray that there would be another after it.

The distance of the horizon grew with every passing second, and no longer would the surface of the earth fit in the palm of her hand if she tried to cradle it. It expanded to envelope her like she was falling drunkenly into bed, a blanket-clad mattress rising to meet her. But their eventual union would not be one of comfort.

Nasira felt her waist for her belt and caught the chord that would deploy her chute.

The sudden change in velocity was far less severe than all she'd undergone in her last moments aboard the ship, but still she yelled aloud as her broken leg flapped wildly in protest as her body jerked upright. Gritting her teeth but now no longer spinning, she managed to look up to check the status of her chute.

It was in tatters. She was lucky it had deployed at all. The Queen's last attacks had nearly torn it from her back. She didn't know how fast she was moving on this planet, or with what amount of force she would hit the ground, but she did know it was not possible to survive any landing with such a chute.

It felt like abandoning a last lifeline. She was the delusional man who clung to the sinking ship that would not save him. But some rational part of her brain took over and forced her to detach from the useless chute.

She was falling again, but her orientation was more controlled now — she could not slip into a spin again, or else it would spell doom for her landing.

She pulled her reserve chute and felt herself slow once more. She looked up.

One long, sullen rip down its center. It split the canvas wide open like a macabre grin, the Queen's last laugh.

Her heart dropped out of her body, plummeted the remaining thousands of miles to the surface, and struck the ground with a splatter.

Gravity, speed, and an immovable object. That would be her end, after all her struggles.

She couldn't stop staring up at the useless chute, glowing yellow in the sunlight above.

The sun was very bright on this planet. Almost as though it were nearer than even a neighborly moon. And it moved very fast, almost as though it were speeding through the planet's low orbit.

Nasira's eyes widened as, in the heavens above, the Cavalier streaked through orbit. It blazed brighter than tens of suns as it lit the sky. It was too bright to look at, but she couldn't look away. Death was coming for her soon, but for the Cavalier it would come sooner. And she would watch.

The Cavalier erupted in a crashing of light. It bloomed across the sky like an autumnal flower set ablaze, and every one of the Queen's offspring with it. Edmund's crumpled body. The husks of the passengers whose bodies had been hosts for the Queen's brood. Every surface upon which she'd stood or leaned or laid prostrate in agony.

Gone.

So absorbed was she in drinking in the ship's demise, she did not see the large form on the newly fattened horizon grow as it approached, and through her reverie she could not hear the monstrous buffeting of air made by its wingbeats. It was a massive bird, a roc, a vulture the size of a hurricane. Its eyes were full of the bright rays of light from the Cavalier, bounced from her suit to the gaze of the predator-bird into whose territory she had fallen.

Its talons tangled in the canvas of the chute and she was yanked back into a spin, dangling from its clutches. Her hands automatically went up to seize the tethers that attached to the chute as though she could quiet the erratic motions that tossed her to and fro in the air. Her brain was too scattered to form a coherent thought, but her mouth had dropped open and attempted to shape sounds of shock.

Above her, the sky had become the underside of the bird's enormous wingspan as it dragged her towards a spine of craggy rocks shooting up from a grey sea.

It navigated the sharp fissures deftly despite its enormous size, and now with nothing to look at but her new fate, Nasira saw the nest-lair a few seconds before the roc dropped her.

What felt like the rest of her bones snapped like delicate slate fracturing. Agony was a physical force upon her brain — it stampeded through her skull and bruised behind her eyes and made an utter fiend of itself. Nasira choked on blood from a bitten tongue as she cried, as beaten as her broken bones.

The roc landed on the rocks which framed the gigantic nest, and she got a clear look at it even through her haze of pain.

It was, by all accounts, an typical specimen of organic avian life, though hundreds of times larger. Nothing remarkable, and yet Nasira had technically discovered life outside the known universe. But she had done that already aboard the Cavalier.

The roc had delivered sustenance to its nest of young, which rolled around in novice play-throes as they realized mother had returned.

A mother and her young. No different from the foes Nasira had faced aboard the Cavalier.

She rolled onto her side, a pained whimpering leaving her, and drew out the last weapon she had upon her person.

The first headstrong juvenile approached, nudged at one half of a shattered clavicle. Nasira flicked the spear's catch so that it extended, impaling it through the bottom of its chin and spiking through its undeveloped birdbrain.

A hideous screech issued from the mother, who hopped down from her perch with an earth-shaking rumble that sent the trash littering the nest skittering away.

Nasira's face was stone. She let the spear collapse again, and the dead juvenile toppled with grey brains leaking from its chin.

The mother hovered over her, talons caging in her body. Nasira ignored these and hefted the spear so the barb was up, spending a moment lining up her aim. She loosed the spear with all of the remaining strength in her body, thumb flicking the spear's catch as it left her grip. It extended in midair, giving it the force it needed to spear straight through the folds of the mother's throat and lodge there.

The mother's indignant screech died with her. She swayed, then fell so her massive body draped sideways over the side of the nest and lay limply against the black cliffs that cradled it.

The other juveniles rocked back and forth on their taloned toes, their bird posture ever so tentative. But still they approached.

Nasira seized the first rock within arms length and bashed the first one's brain in. The other leaned down to nuzzle its ruffled body. Nasira brought the rock down upon the base of its skull as well. It dropped.

And then she was alone, and it was quiet but for the crashing of waves at the base of the stone cliffs.

The charms that Runite had given her — the ones that he had fashioned for her, and that she'd worn nestled in her headscarf — were wrapped around the spear which stuck out from the mother's throat. Nasira's one good arm had strained in that direction for over an hour before it became clear she did not possess the faculties to reach it. And then the tears had come.

They rolled down her temples, tickled the hair above her ears, and gradually the salt of her saliva ceased to mingle with the blood from her tongue. Her body had stopped expending energy for these useless practices of bleeding and crying and instead flooded her arm with the strength it took to drag her limp form six inches away from where it had previously rested. But still the spear was out of reach.

She collapsed again, her head thumping the floor of the nest with a damp sound. She lay there looking up at the sky, watching the contrail that the Cavalier had left seep into the blue of the sky. The ship had dipped low enough into the atmosphere to leave a mark upon the planet, but she contented herself in knowing that nothing remained of it. There would be no ruins, no debris.

But still there was something in that sky.

The lifeboat descended until it was hovering some fifty feet over her, swaying from side to side as if taking into account its surroundings. It deemed the nest, and her in it, of no further interest as it it moved away once more, dipping behind one of the larger rocks framing the nest. The cuff on Nasira's suit was beeping. She hadn't concerned herself with it since long before the Cavalier had erupted, but apparently it still functioned. Her arm was still outstretched, and she did not have the energy to move her head, so she had no choice but to look at what the little cuff was telling her.

The lifeboat that she had commissioned to abandon the Cavalier had tracked her cuff's signal and landed on the shore below the nest.

Nasira looked between the dead roc mother and its children, then down in the direction of the cliff face. She lifted herself onto an elbow, staring at where the spear disappeared into the mother's feathery throat. She reached out as though, from this distance, she could pluck Runite's token from the spear and re-affix it to her brow. She imagined she could feel the trophies he wore on his breast sift through her fingers. She pressed her lips to the back of her knuckles and tasted dried blood.

Then she started to drag herself towards the lifeboat that awaited her.

The End of ALKALINE

I'll make the afterword as brief as possible. All the obligatory thanks to people for reading, and to Colorful Crayola for continuing to beta for me despite it taking 3 entire freaKING years! She made this a polished draft, even if I now see changes I want to make, and she eliminated all of my lazy shortcuts like changing the "got"s to more interesting verbs! YAY WE DID IT. It's been a long time, but I finally finished.

Once upon a time, there was a sequel planned, but I cannot realistically commit to that at this point in my life. School is too much and I have plans to re-write ALKALINE as an original fiction piece, which is honestly how it started out before my brain was like "What if...they were predators tho..." If you care to know what happens with no-frills, shoot me a PM and I'll work up a lil tell-all for you. It's lazy of me, but I couldn't change the ending of my HEART to match the fact I wouldn't be able to do a sequel. Any other interaction you want to have with me, Blizzard-games or what have you, let me know that as well, as my presence on this site will probably stop existing short of post-ALKALINE interactions.