Rinn's Run: Chapter 28 - The Legend of Ankala (Patreon)

The next morning, Kalan had gone to check on Petronan only to find the man’s cabin empty. He checked the galley and medsuite. No Petronan. He finally made his way down to Engineering and found the man sitting at one of the workstations. Kalan cleared his throat. The engineer glanced over and shot to his feet. That was followed by a wince and the engineer pressing his hand against obviously tender ribs. He gave Kalan a rueful look.

“Guess I’m not quite healed up, yet,” said Petronan.

Kalan snorted. “And after a whole twelve hours of rest. Engineers these days.”

Petronan gave Kalan a smile that was made a little grotesque by the still-fading bruises. At least the blood is gone, Kalan thought.

“I think I’m getting old,” said Petronan.

“Everyone is,” said Kalan. “Honestly, though, what are you doing here? Em isn’t an engineer, but I think he can handle things for a day or two.”

“I don’t do well just lying around. I have to keep busy.”

Kalan rolled that thought over in his head. He supposed it wasn’t an issue if the chief wanted to be in engineering instead of his cabin.

“Alright. If you get tired or start hurting too much, though, you’ll go back to your cabin. The last thing I need is for you to pass out onto one of these consoles.”

“Aye, sir,” said Petronan, before he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, sir. I failed you.”

The oddity of that statement made Kalan shake his head a little. “What? I don’t follow, chief.”

“Fresia. I was supposed to look out for her. Damn near got her kidnapped.”

“The way she tells it, you saved her. Took on three men and told her to run.”

“It never should have happened. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

Kalan shook his head firmly. “You weren’t her bodyguard or prison warden, just a chaperone. I didn’t ask you to watch her every second. She’s inexperienced. She made a bad call. You got her out when she needed it. That’s the part that I care about.”

“Maybe so,” admitted Petronan with some reluctance. “Still, it was a close thing. Too close. Guess she’s taking to what you’re teaching, though.”

“Oh?”

“When I got there, one of them was on the ground. Didn’t look like he was getting up anytime soon. I’ll tell you what, sir. I’m of a mind to go back there. Finish what she started.”

“You and me both, chief,” admitted Kalan. “But that’d just be for us. Give it a year. We’ll go back with Fresia when she’s ready. She’s the one that really needs it.”

Petronan gave Kalan a vicious smile. “I like the cut of your thinking, sir. Assuming I’m still here then, I’d be happy to come along.”

Kalan thought back to their earlier conversation and Petronan’s desire to stay. “Keep on the way you have been recently, chief, you’ll be here.”

Petronan burst into a broad grin and fired off what Kalan thought was probably a textbook salute. “Aye, sir.”

Kalan left Petronan to his duties and made his way to the cargo bay. He was only mildly surprised to find Fresia already there and hard at work. A brush with disaster like the one she’d had tended to focus one’s priorities. Kalan didn’t say anything when she noticed him, just gestured that she should continue. Kalan kept half an eye on her as she pushed herself through one of the harder exercise routines he’d set out for her. It was a tougher workout than the one he would have chosen for her the day after a fight, but she didn’t falter for a second. While she did that, he went through one of the compressed routines he’d worked out over the years.

He’d weighed the pros and cons of working out at the time same as her. He’d come down on the side that there were more benefits to it than pitfalls. Back at the Great Temple, the trainers hadn’t done the exercises with the students, but the situation was different. The entire place had revolved around training. The trainers worked out and trained together. They did it where the students could see. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that the trainers were exactly as hardened and skilled as they claimed they were. Things on the ship were different. Fresia needed to see that he could and would do the things he asked her to do.

After the exercises were done, Kalan started walking Fresia through the rudiments of one of the essential fighting forms. It was a series of punches, basic kicks, and blocks. Once he thought that she had the basic pattern down, they drilled that form relentlessly for hours. Fresia never balked or complained, even when Kalan could see that it was everything she could do to keep her hands up. Once the tiredness caught up enough that her punches and kicks were getting sloppy, Kalan called it a day. As exhausting as Fresia had no doubt found the exercise, it gave Kalan a deep contentment to share it with her. He’d guarded the knowledge for years, reflexively, unthinkingly, and only now did he begin to understand why his parents had patiently and willingly taught him things that were, for them, beyond simplistic.

In the back of his mind, though, Kalan kept worrying about that data crystal. He’d spoken with Kala that morning and asked her to see if she could access the files. After a quick pass, she’d told him that the files were encrypted. That bit of information had made him grind his teeth. You don’t encrypt innocuous files. After more thought than the matter probably warranted, he’d asked her if she could break the encryption. She’d told him that she’d have to study the encryption and would let him know. He’d assumed that the studying wouldn’t take long. Yet, there was total silence from the ship. He hoped that she was just waiting until he was alone to update him. If not, it likely meant that the files weren’t just encrypted, but were encased in the kind of encryption you use if you’re working directly for some hostile government or trying to avoid catching the attention of one. The longer that the ship took with that encryption, the more certain Kalan became that Tessan had screwed him over. The part he couldn’t figure out was why. Kalan had poked at the problem from every angle he could think of and gotten nowhere. The uncertainty of it made the back of Kalan’s neck itch.

He dismissed Fresia to get cleaned up and head for the galley. He took his own advice. Despite his repeated admonitions to himself to wait until he knew something before he worried about the data crystal, it kept creeping into his thoughts. It was so distracting that he ended up standing in his little shower for nearly twenty minutes, twice as long as he normally allowed himself. When he arrived at the galley to get something to eat, he only asked Fresia a few perfunctory questions about her previous night’s reading. It was just enough to know she’d actually done it but lacked his usual incisive probing. He couldn’t concentrate. After a good five minutes of silence and his hand mechanically moving food from his plate to his mouth, Fresia let out an exasperated noise. He blinked at her a few times and realized he’d been lost deep in unhappy thoughts.

“What is wrong with you?” Fresia demanded.

Kalan let a touch of a smile cross his lips as he raised an eyebrow at her.

Fresia rolled her eyes and said, “Captain.”

“I’m just preoccupied today. There’s something I think I’ll have to do when we get back to Cobalt 7. I’m not looking forward to it.”

Alarm crossed Fresia’s face. “What kind of thing?”

The reaction left Kalan a little perplexed. He wondered why she cared. It took longer than Kalan would care to admit before he realized that she was probably worried that he meant something to do with her. She’s probably worried that I mean to leave her there, he thought.

“Just an awkward conversation with a friend. I won’t like it. He’ll like it even less.”

Fresia visibly relaxed and nodded. Kalan was drifting back into his own thoughts when Fresia piped up again.

“You never told me about Ankala.”

“What about her?”

“You said you’d tell me the story about the ship’s name. You never did.”

There was a part of Kalan that just wanted to sit there in silence, but that kind of brooding had never done him much good. Besides, she was right. He’d told her to ask him about it when they didn’t have something else to do, and he’d kept her working furiously very nearly since day one on the ship. This was probably the first time she’d really had the opportunity or mental bandwidth to ask about it. He nodded, finished off the last of his food, and fetched another glass of water. He settled back down at the table and tried to organize his thoughts. He wasn’t much of a storyteller, but he’d heard this story often enough that he thought he could do a passable job of it.

“Do you know anything about the planet Nirren?” He asked.

Fresia got a look of concentration but shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any reason you would. It’s not an important world as those things are judged. It is an old world, though. The current government and society there can trace their history back continuously for five thousand years. Of course, there were societies before that. Nations, factions, and political systems that fought the usual kinds of wars you see when a world is divided. The history from those times is fragmented and incomplete. It’s more a time of legend than history. One of the oldest stories from that time traces back approximately twelve to fifteen thousand years.”

“They don’t know for sure?”

“The story shows up in a bunch of places, but they’re all secondhand accounts. Stories that were copied from earlier texts that don’t exist anymore,” said Kalan, pausing to give Fresia a chance to ask questions.

She nodded but kept any more questions to herself.

“So, there was a war. It’s not clear who started it or why, but it dragged on for generations. By the end, it was less of a war than a blood feud. Every soldier had a parent or grandparent who had died. Everyone had a score to settle. It seemed like nothing could end the war. Slowly, though, one side started to get the upper hand. There was some kind of new technology at work. The historians think it was firearms, but it’s just a guess. It became a war of attrition that looked like it was going to become a genocide. Then, Ankala appeared.”

“Appeared?” Fresia asked.

“That’s the word they always use. She just appeared out of nowhere one day to help the losing side. She took control of their military. Taught them new ways to fight. She personally trained an elite corp to fight by her side. It changed the face of the war. Under her leadership, the enemy’s advance ground to a halt. Then, they began to retreat. Eventually, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire.”

Fresia frowned at him. “That’s it?”

Kalan smiled. “No. The ceasefire was a trick, a way to lure Ankala, the other key military leaders, and important politicians into a trap. The sides agreed to meet for a formal treaty signing. Once everyone was there, though-,” he said, leaving the unfinished sentence hanging.

“The bad guys sprang the trap,” Fresia finished. “They had troops waiting?”

“They did. Except, Ankala wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t sure it was a trap, but she planned as though it was. She’d dressed a bunch of her elite corp up as assistants and had them go in with the military leadership and politicians. The records don’t say exactly how they pulled it off, but Ankala and those elite fighters of hers managed to get the political and military leadership away. They fought a running battle all the way back to their own lines.”

“They went back to war, didn’t they?” Fresia said, a little sadness marring her expression.

Kalan nodded. “They did. It was all they could do. The war raged on for another five years with Ankala’s forces taking more and more ground. By the end, the war seemed all but won. As the story goes, Ankala had grown wearier and wearier of the killing. She’d go off by herself for days, even weeks at a time, only taking a handful of her most trusted fighters with her. The rest of the army thought she was gathering her holy power for the final assault.”

“Wait, what? What holy power?”

Kalan shrugged. “No one knows. There were wild stories of her performing miraculous deeds in the middle of combat, but no one gives those tales much credit. The accepted wisdom is that the rank-and-file soldiers simply thought she was some kind of messiah, sent from the gods to deliver them salvation.”

Fresia eyed him. “What do you think?”

“I think the universe is a complicated place. I think there’s a lot that no one knows about how it works. I also think that what I’m teaching you would look magical to people who had never seen it before. I think it’s possible that Ankala came from some other world and brought training with her that no one had seen before. Of course, that begs the questions of why she came and why she intervened.”

Fresia gave him a strange look. “Maybe she was just kind.”

Kalan inclined his head in her direction. “Maybe she was. Then again, I also think it’s possible that she really did have holy power of some kind. Either way, it’s not a question that anyone will get an answer to. Unless you have a lead on where we can dig up a fifteen-thousand-year-old person from Nirren.”

Fresia snorted a little laugh. “I don’t think I do.”

“That’s too bad,” offered Kalan, gathering his thoughts again. “So, a few days before the battle to take the last enemy stronghold was supposed to happen, Ankala goes off with a dozen of her elite fighters. No one gave it much thought. It turned out that the enemy had a spy in the camp, though. The spy sent word to the enemy that Ankala had left the camp and which direction she went. The enemy dispatched a small force under cover of darkness, perhaps a hundred soldiers or so.

“It’s not clear if they were sent to capture Ankala or kill her. When Ankala didn’t return to the camp, though, the other generals sent people to investigate. They found the scene of a terrible fight. All of Ankala’s fighters were dead. They fought those impossible odds, nearly ten-to-one. If any of the enemy survived, though, it wasn’t many. Ankala and her fighters cut them down without mercy until they were cut down in turn.”

Fresia digested that in silence for several minutes before she spoke again. “What about Ankala? Did she die there, too?”

“That’s the mystery of it all. They didn’t find her among the dead. The generals kept expecting the enemy to try to ransom her to try to buy some kind of reprieve. Except, it never happened. Eventually, they did launch their final assault. The soldiers were so enraged by the apparent death of Ankala that, after they captured the stronghold, they burned it to the ground. There were stories, though, of a shining figure fighting among the soldiers. A ghost of terrible vengeance who killed with a touch or a look. A ghost who bore more than a little resemblance to Ankala. That’s where the phrase Ankala rising comes from. It means facing impossible odds and prevailing, even if you must rise from the beyond to do it. These days, though, most people just use it to mean doing something very difficult in the face of hard opposition.”

Fresia’s eyes were far away when she asked, “Do you think she really did it? Do you think she came back from the Temerian Plains just to take her revenge?”

Kalan was a little surprised by Fresia’s reference to a religious afterlife until he remembered that he’d never actually asked her about what she believed. He wouldn’t have thought of her as one of Temer’s Children, but he reasoned that she probably wasn’t that devout. There was a fanatical air about the ultra-devout members of that religion that was wholly absent in the girl. He thought that her mother had just a tiny sprinkling of that fanatical edge in her personality, but that might just be her personality. Kalan gave a moment of serious consideration to Fresia’s question.

“I’d like to believe it,” he said. “There are those who say she’ll rise again when the need is great enough. I’d like to believe that, as well.”

Fresia gave a wistful little sigh. “Me too. I’d have liked to have met her. At least she wasn’t forgotten.”

“She wasn’t. It’s still a popular name for girls on Nirren. It’s even where my name comes from,” noted Kalan with an absent acknowledgment.

He realized his mistake almost immediately but was relieved that Fresia hadn’t seemed to pick up on it. Her eyes still had that far-off look in them. After a lazy moment, she came back into focus.

“What happened to the rest of those elite fighters? The ones who didn’t go with Ankala that day?”

Kalan gave a nonchalant shrug. “The war was over. They went home.”

They went home and founded the Great Temple, he didn’t add out loud.