Ma'Dri'An

It was going to be too far. Ma’Dri’An had miscalculated—wishful thinking. He could see the lines of the old beach below––the water was that clear. Its sweetness filled his gills. He swam just below the floating mats of cat weed. A veil fish dropped a curtain of tentacled eyes in his path, sampling possibilities for a meal. It inverted its stomach momentarily tasting the water, then thought better of the matter and rose into a mat pocket, bargaining against becoming a meal itself.

Scarcely a ripple marked his passage through the narrows. This was not the final challenge. It would not even be the hardest.

The silvery punishment amulet glittered against the glossy black plates of his exoskeleton. The site would have marked his throat, had he been at all human. At any second the triggering signal might find him. That it had not been sent yet only meant that he hadn’t yet been taken seriously.

The twin grayish spires warded the mouth of the narrows. Beyond those lay the open seas and the sea-mount strongholds of the People––his people. At least that was what his mother had told him before she died.

_____________________________________

A watch officer in one of those spires answered a call from the shore command center. "Yo Clyde, I got him in view on the southerly view now."

"My name is not Clyde you mossback clown," the voice snarled. "I am Rector Dire Harbinger, and you address me as sire...and as seldom as possible, if you please."

"Uh hun, oh my, sure and whatever," the watch answered. "What’s the matter, you boys can’t hang onto your pets?"

"Ah...you...." The voice sputtered, and then reconsidered.

The ranger turned to someone off-screen. "Esmerelda, splash a shark. The man here says we gotta go fishing again."

The ranger turned back to face the screen. "Don’t you worry, Clyde. We’ll find your little Cuddles real soon."

The image of bulging eyeballs froze as the screen flared off, and Esmerelda looked up from the under deck. "Now that was unkind," she said.

He smiled, a bit grimly. "Oh, and I want you to know that I feel so dirty and all...and don’t you know," he said.

She chuckled merrily and dropped down through the floor into the boat lock.

The hydroplane sealed its ports and fired up the impeller. There really wasn't anything on the planet that could catch the things. The sonic drivers could boost at speeds greater than fifty knots

_____________________________________

A hundred meters down Ma’Dri’An drifted along the cliff wall, which marked the edge of the dry slab the invaders lived on. He had not been this far out to sea since the day of his capture. He had been a silver furred cub then, and his mother an armored rainbow at his side.

The slave collar’s first sting nearly doubled him in two. It came with an intense nausea. This was just a recall to remind him that his handlers were impatiently expecting him to bring his harvest to the surface. It was just a feather’s touch compared to what would come when they discovered he wasn’t returning.

Ma’Dri’An slid to the surface, the gill slits along his ventral aspect slammed shut sealing a supply of oxygen rich water around the aureole chambers that supplied his hearts. It would be enough for several hours, perhaps enough till moonrise if he wasn’t stressed.

Tomaso had driven him through this hulking garden of fumaroles several times––Cemetery Hole. The place was filled with the weed the humans sought, and it killed their Dri’An harvesters by hundreds. Swimmers went down, driven by the geas of the collars they wore. Far too often not even their charred bones were found. Some came back up, too damaged to live. Their bodies were broken down to spare parts used to repair the Dri’An less damaged. Those were driven down again until they too became just spare parts.

But there were a few who had simply disappeared here and none had floated back up. It had to be here.

The main caldera bellowed below him, blazing with colors far outside the spectrum humans could ever have understood. 600 degrees blasted against his scales with thermoclines well above 700.

Ma’Dri’An can carry molten lead in his hands, or flippers for the technically minded. It isn’t a comfortable thing to be doing, and there will be sub dermal damage if it goes on for very long, but a Dri’An heals fast. Above this range the damage is harder to deal with. Ma’Dri’An was sustaining that damage now.

His mind raged against the stupidity as his fins drove him down into his death. At least the humans would never be able to collect his parts to repair the other slaves.

And then the pain was gone. Well, not quite. The transition through the superheated water to normal was a pain in itself.

His mind was slipping away; it would all be over soon. His mother had given him the passage words for the Land of Death. So he was not so amazed to see the Gatekeeper rising from the cooler green depths far below.

R’relda fired from depths below, a brilliant silvery and yellow arrow armored in the mail of Hest fish scales Ma’Dri’An had made for her. She gained striking speed, closing on her quarry.

His gill fringes shivered in the Ma’Dri’An version of amused pride. He had taught her that attack. R’relda. never missed with this maneuver. Though he did wonder some why the Gatekeeper should come for him in the form of Tomaso’s daughter.

_____________________________________

Dri’An did not use air, and since that was the way humans communicate, things had been interesting. They had thought humans to be a mute species on their first encounters. The Dri’An had a sonic generator adapted they used in the water. The spectrum was far wider than humans could hear, and under water the humans had translators, which allowed them to match the Dri’An frequencies.

Communication in air was a little more complicated. It involved sending a thin film of water back and forth over the gills and vibrating the delicate fronds. The effect was a little like the electronic autoharp Tomaso played. Ma’Dri’An liked to listen to him play. Tomaso dropped a hydro transmitter in Ma’Dri’An’s tank cage.

His gills feathered in wry humor. It was pretty unlikely he would have such luck. Tomaso Rio, his human handler had told him a joke once––it was a curse Thomas had said: "may you live an interesting life." Life was just getting fascinating of late.

Actually Tomaso was someone Ma’Dri’An quite liked. He wasn’t treated much better by the humans than Ma’Dri’An––worse sometimes. Tomaso didn’t wear a collar. The humans had put one on his daughter, Esmerelda.

_____________________________________

The air shimmered slightly off the starboard as a large wave stood up from the surface of the water. An image wavered indistinctly inside the waveform then cleared into the wavering form of a dark faced man with a black wiry beard.

"Ah, Tomaso. I see you have received the package we sent through the vent passage."

Tomaso had not seen the sea make its change and jumped slightly in surprise. His eyes narrowed as he glanced over at the wavering image.

"Akoda! Yes, Esmeralda brought him through a few minutes ago. Burned palps but he comes from a tough folk. We thank you for guarding his passage."

"You are most welcome my friend. I wish I could send you more. His people deserve far better from our kind.

"There will trouble for you over this?" Tomaso asked.

The dark man nodded thoughtfully. "I suspect it will be time to do some fishing in the deep reefs, at least for awhile. You should keep Esmerelda on your side for some time. Apparently your friend there was pretty good at the job they set him to. But they will have other distractions to deal with. Our masters over here seem more concerned with their economic losses this season."

"I am afraid that they have no idea what they have lost this time."

Akoda was grinning as the wave collapsed. "Fortune and honor to you and your house Tomaso."