Itzel's Flight (5 minute read)

Itzel stepped forward and let Quetzal enfold the command couch around her body. The nictitating membrane of the canopy snicked closed as she grasped the controls and shuffled the big bird off of the ledge. For a moment, her sensations were confused, latent human body image merging with the biomechanical ornithopter as it fell towards the jungle canopy.

She had done this hundreds of times before though, and even through the conflicting signals she was able to spread her wings and arrest her flight before it became terminal.

She felt the hot thermals coming up off the jungle as they buoyed her wings, lofting her upwards. Men had once built a city down there, and the ruins were still to be seen. You couldn’t survive for long without a suit or body modification now though if you wanted to slog through that jungle.

“Get back here sister! You won’t beat me this time!”

Akna’s voice intruded in to her inner monologue, broadcast from her own ornithopter, several hundred meters up and falling. The words dropped in to her mind as clear as if her younger sister were standing at her shoulder.

“Try to follow me down sister. I’ll show you what I found. Don’t fall behind!”

Itzel swiveled the great head of her ornithopter around from side to side, trying to get her bearings. Past the great wheel of crumbling apartments that ringed the lake, beyond the shattered domes of the archology and near the foot of base camp, the ruined luxury hotel that had once housed prospective tourists, come to try and climb the tallest waterfall in the world.

There it was! A disturbance in the canopy. Something was going on down there that shouldn’t be.

“What is it sister? I see something moving down below.”

The great birds circled the new clearing, necks extended and canopies pointed down, so the two girls could see what was happening.

Some men in crude suits were dragging caged animals towards a big machine. Itzel took a moment to recognize it from her studies of the history books.

A helicopter. Such a brutish and ugly thing.

“Be careful Akna, those men are up to no good.”

As she overflew the clearing the men pointed up and started waving their arms. A couple pointed metal sticks in to the air which spat flame. Quetzal responded instantly to her thoughts, quickly avoiding the clumsy projectiles that climbed lazily in to the air on streams of smoke.

She dived towards the clearing, extending her talons towards the metal beast parked below. The animals had not been loaded yet, and if she could cripple their transportation, they would be trapped. Capture these ones and no more would come.

She felt the rotors of the machine come apart in her claws as she tugged the great metal beast over on to its side. Some of the men were firing smaller weapons now, and she felt sharp impacts against her skin.

“It’ll take more than that to wound me, little men.”

The ornithopters were vat grown from materials strong enough to withstand the powerful thermals that swept up Angel Falls. They could survive a high speed crash on the jungle floor and the protective cocoon of the command couch would save her from anything short of a direct hit with a rock wall at full speed.

Something burst in the downed chopper and an oily, smoky fireball erupted behind her. The men fell down and tried to burrow in to the rich jungle soil. She felt lacerations all across Quetzal’s back as debris from the explosion peppered its rear flanks. Tough as the ornithopter was, it couldn’t handle much more of this.

Suddenly her sister cried out. “Careful Itzel, there’s another one coming in from the East!”

This was trouble, a helicopter on the ground posed little threat, but in the air it could be a real problem.

She beat her wings to gain height, Akna right behind her.

The dull gunmetal of the second chopper stood out stark against the rich green of the jungle canopy. Smoke bloomed from its stubby wings and two burning arrows shot out towards them.

Itzel dodged her projectile, but Akna was a little slower. The thing burst right next to her left wing and she folded and fell down towards the ground.

“Akna!”

She pulled around in a tight spiral and dived, her talons sweeping Akna’s wounded bird from the sky. She supported it as she glided down towards the canopy, putting the bulk of the ruined hotel between her and the metal beast which hunted them.

“Akna! Are you alright?”

There was no reply.

Itzel didn’t have time to wait. She lowered the damaged form of Akna’s ornithopter down to the ground and immediately started to climb. She had to get above the helicopter first and assess her options.

Her great wings beat again and again, the shimmering pearlescent coating which absorbed the powerful rays of the sun glittered in the bright sunshine. She climbed upwards until the chopper was far below.

As she had guessed, the machine couldn’t tilt up to bring its guns to bear on her while she lofted above, and its own flight was slow and graceless. It was ignoring Akna’s downed bird and was heading towards the clearing.

A knot of worry burned in her chest. Itzel hoped that her sister was unhurt. She meant much more than the world to her. The canopy had looked undamaged but the great bird wings had been ragged and torn.

How to deal with the threat?

If one of those things hit her, she would do no better than her sister had.

If she attacked from above, the spinning blades might tear her apart as they shattered. She had no weapons of her own. The Ornithopters were not war machines; they were simply tools for shepherding the renewal of the jungles.

Itzel thought of the caged animals and the cruel men who had come again to plunder the jungle. There were none of her own people close enough to lend a hand. The duty of care of the falls was for the two sisters alone. She had to do something fast. Akna couldn’t survive the heat of the jungle long if her canopy was breached, neither of them had that adaptation. If the men got away, they would bring more and more to plunder the wild creatures the sisters had reintroduced to the jungle eco-system. They probably hoped to learn their genecode and reverse engineer their secrets for their own twisted ends as they had during the bad times; a new generation of genebeasts to terrorize and hunt the sisters through dark jungle trails. She couldn’t let it happen.

Itzel/Quetzal dived as one, not a shred of difference between the two beings as the SQuID cap relayed sensorium data to the girl’s mind and back to the muscles and sinews of the great artificial beast. She aimed a few hundred meters short of the deadly metal machine as it hovered over the clearing looking for a place to set down. It seemed to notice her as she sped earthwards, turning to bring its guns to bear. Flames and smoke shot from its weapons, streaking around her, flashing to the trees and rocks, a few stray rounds scoring her false flesh. An explosion behind her, a burst of rocky rubble spurting up from below. She was now much lower than the chopper, but swooping low over the trees.

Suddenly she jack-knifed. She put out her broad wings and spasmed in the air. Rolling over and raking her talons on the underside of her enemy. Time seemed to slow to a stop and she saw the shocked O’s of the crew’s open mouths through the canopy as she ripped away the bottom of the ugly machine. Their plastic faces and shining artificial eyes betrayed their inhuman appearance and their machine origins. 

She kept pulling and the tail came completely away, sending the helicopter in to a tight spin. She didn’t look back to see it crash to earth. She was already winging her way quickly to her fallen sister.

Later she would patrol for other men and machines. The ones on the ground wouldn’t last long without their vehicles. For now she had more important things to deal with.

“Don’t worry Akna, I’m coming as quickly as I can!”

“Don’t worry sister, I’m OK. I just blacked out for a second. Hey, there’s a jaguar down here and she’s got cubs. Can you believe it? It looks like we got the code right this time. The new animals are thriving just like we hoped.”

“That’s great news sister! Are your wings healed yet? We need to get up and do some patrols. The council will want to know all about this latest incursion. It was a breach of the PostHuman Treaty and there will be consequences.”

“That’s right, let’s get back to the aerie right away. The other sisters must be told, and something needs to be done. We can’t let them come back and undo all our work again.”

Itzel watched her sister’s Ornithopter as it struggled up from the top of the canopy. Its wings looked almost pristine already, the self repairing materials drawing from onboard feedstocks to fuel their healing processes.

“Don’t worry. Let them come. We’ll be ready for them.”