Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology

by Rhett C. Bruno

She plotted a course back to her ship that would keep her well away from the poachers and started down the slope, letting gravity lengthen her strides. She found a wide game trail and stuck to the center. It was mostly bare except for a broad patch of grass and leaves covering the path. Ziva pushed ahead, eager to be away from this place.

  Then the ground opened up and she was falling.

  * * *

  The wretched smell was so overpowering, it forced her awake. Ziva gasped for a clean breath in the oppressive darkness.

  “Lola, where am I?”

  “My sensors show you are in the poacher’s camp.”

  Ziva sat up, realizing her ranger belt was gone. Protection, weapons, food … all gone. Her fingers probed the inky space. Smooth wooden bars all around her. She was in a cage.

  “Help!” she called out.

  There was a shifting in the shadows, and a sliver of light appeared in front of her. Ziva rushed to the side of the cage. “Please, help me.”

  The crack of light disappeared. She poked at the narrow space between the bars. Rough cloth met her finger tips. She parted the material. “Who’s there?” she called.

  A gruesome face filled the space. “Shhhh!” it said. Ziva fell back in horror. A flattened nose, a single large brown eye on one side of the face and a livid scar bisecting an empty eye socket on the other side. Her brain tried to process the image.

  “Lola,” she whispered. “What are the indigenous primate species?” A row of images ran across her vision; her eye selected the closest match. A lascar monkey, the readout said. Also called the singing primate for their love of music. Ten kilos, bipedal, with short russet-colored fur.

  Ziva hummed a soft tune—the only one she could think of was Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—and used her finger to part the cloth covering her cage.

  At first, she thought the monkey had fled the room, but then she heard a sound. Someone was humming along … in harmony. Slowly, the primate came into her field of view, the humming getting louder, head bent. Ziva let the song end after the third time through. The monkey clapped his hands and looked up at her.

  Ziva kept her face still, despite the revulsion she felt. The lascar monkeys in the data stream had round, soulful faces with features that drooped. This individual had a wicked scar like a lightning bolt of red that ran from the center of its forehead across an eye and slashing through the cheek muscle. A wound from an axe or a knife. He covered the damaged side of his face and hooted softly as if apologizing.

  Ziva wormed her hand between the bars, pulling the monkey’s palm from its face.

  “It’s okay—” She stopped in shock.

  His touch electrified her, stilled her breath. The ranger name for the feeling was kinship, the sensation of mutual awareness with another being. Ziva had felt it before. Once, when she’d met Felix and they’d selected each other as familiars.

  The monkey screeched and backpedaled to cower against the far wall. Before Ziva could ease the animal’s terror, the door to the room burst open and two men strode in.

  They were barely Ziva’s height, heavily muscled and dressed in a mixture of roughspun cloth and leather. One unlatched the cage door while the other stood by to grab her. She had hand-to-hand combat skills, but this matchup was not in her favor. Ziva let them bind her hands and drag her out the door.

  It was dark outside, save for the flickering light of a roaring campfire. The moon had set, leaving a vast carpet of stars overhead—where she should be right now.

  “Lola,” she subvocalized, “engage the translation program.”

  The pair dumped her inside the ring of people gathered around the fire. Half of her face roasted while the cheek facing away from the flame was chilled.

  “You.” The voice was low and husky, like ice crunching under the heel of a boot. “Who are you?”

  Ziva raised her head. The man was taller and leaner than the two who had brought her out, with eyes like shiny black marbles and a shaved head. Despite the chill, he was shirtless. A necklace hung across his bare chest, strung with what looked like dried fruit.

  Her eyes shifted past him. Just outside the firelight, she saw the outline of the monkey, watching. The man’s eyes followed her gaze. “Gar,” he roared. “Get over here!”

  The animal slunk forward, his nose practically touching the dirt, holding a carved wooden mug over his head like an offering. The man took the mug and drank. Gar’s good eye found Ziva.

  Without warning, the man launched a kick that sent the monkey sprawling. He was on the animal in a flash, a long machete gleaming in his hand like a shard of ice. Gar squealed, cowering. He touched the tip of the knife to the monkey’s scarred face. “You lookin’ at her? Did I say you could look at her?” Gar’s head cycled back and forth slowly, wary of the blade against his flesh. “Maybe I should cut the other side of your face, so it’s even-like, eh?”

  A chorus of laughs sounded around Ziva.

  “Or maybe you want a new eye?” The man plucked at the necklace. “I’ve got dozens right here. Just add water.” He gave the monkey a final kick and bawled out a laugh. As Gar scampered away, the man stalked back to Ziva.

  “My men say you’re a ghost,” he said, drinking deeply from his mug.

  “You tell her, Max,” someone called out.

  “Your men are drunk,” Ziva shot back in his language.

  “Ziva,” Lola began, “I think it’s best not to—”

  The kick made her see stars. She blinked, cursing at herself. The blow had severed her connection to Lola.

  Max said something and strutted back to his chair. He waited for Ziva to sit up.

  He threw her ranger belt into the dirt. With her connection to Lola gone, she couldn’t understand him, but his question was pretty clear.

  Ziva eyed the distance to the belt. It was keyed to her DNA, a precaution for exactly this kind of scenario, but she judged it just out of reach. She’d seen Max move and she’d probably lose an arm before she could get out her weapon.

  Her brain raced. She could really use Lola right now. “Broosers,” she said. That was the only word in their language she could remember.

  Silence reigned around the campfire. Then Max laughed, a booming roar that echoed off the shanties of the camp.

  It turned out Max didn’t really care where she was from or why she was there at all. He was more concerned about making sure he maintained discipline among his men.

  “Haji,” he roared. A man with a black eye stumbled forward. Ziva thought he might have been the one she’d punched in the face. Max spoke again, and she recognized their word for ghost.

  Haji shrugged and stared at the ground.

  Max spat in the dirt and said something that had the sound of a challenge.

  The crowd migrated into a tight ring around her and Haji. Ziva got to her feet. She didn’t need Lola to recognize her bad situation had just gotten worse. Max barked out an order, and to her surprise, someone cut her free.

  Well, Ziva reflected as she rubbed some circulation back into her wrists, fighting was the best worst option.

  * * *

  Ziva woke up again in the cage. At least they’d left the tarp off this time so she could breathe.

  She tried to sit up and groaned in pain. Bruised ribs, and her face felt like someone had walked on it. Probably had.

  Her combat training had gotten her through two contenders and the betting had gotten pretty fierce when the crowd started chanting “Sabo, Sabo, Sabo…”

  Sabo turned out to be a squat mound of muscle with a center of gravity like a brick of depleted uranium. He wasn’t a boxer, he was a wrestler and once he got hold of her, Ziva knew it was all over. The last thing she remembered was the ground rushing up to meet her face.

  The door slid open and Gar entered. He seemed upset, slapping his face with his long fingers and humming Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in a rushed way, over and over again. Ziva wanted to give him a reassuring smile, but her face felt like it might split open if she tri
ed. She settled for joining him in a group hum.

  The monkey shut the door behind him and made his way across the room with a rolling gait. Ziva let him touch her bruised cheek. The animal teared up and made a whimpering sound. He stepped back, shaking his head, slapping his face with both hands.

  “It’s okay,” Ziva mumbled. “It doesn’t hurt that much.” She stuck her fingers through the bars. “I’ve had worse.”

  Slowly, Gar calmed down. He interlaced her fingers with his own. Despite her pain-muddled mind, she felt the kinship connection again. This time, Gar didn’t back away. He pursed his lips and started humming again.

  Ziva moved close to the bars. “Gar,” she whispered, “can you get me out of here?”

  She braced herself for the expected frantic outburst. It was obvious the animal had been abused, his spirit broken. She was asking him to go against the man he feared more than anything.

  For a long moment, Gar didn’t react; he just kept humming. Ziva was tempted to make the request again, when the monkey loped across the room and cracked open the door. Standing stock-still, he pressed his good eye to the slit. Ziva held her breath.

  Finally, Gar slid the door shut, scrambled back, and busied himself with the side of her cage. He hooted softly as the door swung open. Ziva climbed out, her limbs bruised and stiff. When she started for the door, Gar gave a little shriek and jumped in her path. Taking her hand, he led her to the back of the room where a pink snake as thick as her thigh was coiled in its cage. The snake’s spade-shaped head rose, swaying back and forth, watching them.

  Gar ignored the snake and slid its cage aside to reveal a gap between the wall and floor just large enough for Ziva to squeeze through. She knelt down. It smelled like a refuse pile on the other side.

  She took the monkey’s hand. “Come with me, Gar.” The Ranger Handbook forbade removing indigenous life from a planet, but she’d be damned if she’d leave him here. Max would kill him once he’d figured out what Gar had done.

  “Please,” she tried again.

  The monkey stepped back, shaking his head violently. He pointed to the gap and hooted.

  “Gar…”

  His finger didn’t waver.

  Ziva wriggled through the gap. She was right about the refuse pile. With filth smeared across the front of her uniform, she stood. The night was silent and cold, but it felt clean after the fetid atmosphere of the kennel. Behind her, she could hear Gar moving the snake’s cage back in front of the gap.

  She took her bearings from the stars and started walking back to her ship.

  * * *

  Ziva had stumbled through the grassland for more than an hour. She was safe now. If she stayed on this bearing, she’d find her ship.

  Technically, the intervention was a success. Once she got reconnected to Lola, she could send a self-destruct signal to her belt. That would erase any positive proof of her interaction with the natives. The story of the fighting woman in strange clothes would eventually fade into an old man’s campfire story.

  Try as she might, Ziva could not shake Gar from her thoughts. The disfigured monkey had connected with her in a way she hadn’t felt since … Felix. Was it possible? Many rangers who lost their partner never found another familiar. After all these months of living with the loss of Felix, Ziva assumed that was her path as well.

  But she had felt the kinship—and Gar had felt it, too. She was sure of it. It had terrified him, but he’d felt it.

  She shook her head until her brain hurt, anger and guilt contributing in equal measure to the violent motion. It was over. Whatever connection she thought she’d experienced was behind her. It was time to get the hell off this world.

  The ground trembled under her feet, silencing the maelstrom in her mind.

  Earthquake?

  The flesh of her bruised belly quivered with the vibration filling the air around her.

  She knew that sound, that full-body sensation. The giant bull hathosaur loomed in front of her, blotting out the stars. Behind him, she saw many more beasts gathered. His head lowered until his eyes were level with hers, and his heavy breath washed over her aching face. The dark eyeball glimmered with intent.

  The hathosaurs had a plan. No translation needed.

  He knelt in the dust and turned his horns away from her so she could climb onto his back.

  * * *

  What had taken her an hour to walk they covered in minutes. The wind whistled in her ears as the herd thundered down the valley toward the poacher’s camp.

  Ziva saw the flicker of a bonfire on the horizon. Surely the poachers would hear them coming. As if in answer to her thought, she heard the boom of rifles, but the herd did not falter. The mass of bodies swept through the camp like a living wave, smashing buildings, cracking open cages, tossing poachers aside like rag dolls.

  Ziva looked for any sign of Gar as they thundered through the camp. Nothing. She pounded on the old bull’s crown, tugged on his horns. “Go back,” she cried.

  Like an ocean liner, the animal steered a wide, looping turn back to the flattened village. The remains of the huts had caught fire, casting the area in flickering yellow.

  Not completely flattened, Ziva saw. The back wall of the kennel, including the cage where she’d been imprisoned, was still standing. Max was there, bare-chested with his necklace of withered eyeballs. His machete shone in the firelight as he brandished it over his head.

  He held Gar upside down by one foot.

  Ziva kicked her heels into the old bull’s neck, and she felt him pick up speed. She stood, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Max!” she screamed.

  The man’s head snapped up, his lips curled into a snarl.

  Ziva leapt from the bull’s back into open space.

  She could read Max’s mind—he had time to use the machete on the monkey or on Ziva, but not both. The glowing sword quivered with indecision.

  That was when Gar bit him in the leg.

  Max screamed, his mind made up. But his split second of indecision was all it took to change the calculus of the fight. Just as the machete started its downward swing toward Gar’s head, Ziva’s body hit Max square in the chest.

  The long blade bit into her back, but the blow had lost much of its power. The momentum of her collision smashed Max back against the heavy cage, and she felt the wind rush out of his lungs. The machete spiraled away. Gar, unharmed, fell to the ground with a squeak.

  Ziva pressed her advantage, landing blow after blow on the larger man. Blood covered his stunned face. He managed to jam a knee into Ziva’s bruised ribs and she staggered back, clutching her side. Her boot connected with the machete. She picked it up, advancing on Max again.

  He was on his hands and knees, lips peeled away from blood-stained teeth. “Do it!” he screamed at her.

  Ziva raised the long knife, fully ready to grant the man his wish, when a body bowled her over. She lost her grip on the machete. Gar stood over her, shaking his head violently, slapping his face with both hands. Ziva writhed in the dirt from the fresh wave of pain radiating from her ribs.

  A long chuckle danced in the air. Max stood over them, machete in hand, laughing.

  Gar stepped in front of her, baring his teeth. The muscles of his shoulders bunched as the monkey prepared to defend her. Max raised the long machete.

  In the darkness behind the poacher, a familiar shape loomed. Two enormous ebony horns, so long the ends nearly overlapped, scooped up Max. His screams disappeared into the darkness.

  * * *

  “Incoming transmission,” Lola said.

  They were in transit to the nearest ranger station, recalled from the field for a formal inquiry. Ziva made one last check of her immaculate uniform. “Accept the transmission, Lola.”

  The WISPR logo was replaced by Brigadier General Taylor’s square features.

  “Good morning, sir,” Ziva said. Most of the swelling in her face had gone down so she could speak clearly, but she knew she looked a sight: two black eyes, a split
lip, and a brilliant purple-green line along her jaw.

  Taylor’s eyebrow twitched. “I’d make a lighthearted comment about how the other guy looks, but I know from your report that it’s very likely he didn’t make it.”

  Ziva settled for a simple, “Yes, sir.”

  “There’ll be an investigation, of course.”

  Ziva nodded. First-contact violations with a humanoid population triggered an automatic investigation.

  “That said,” Taylor continued, “I’m reasonably confident you will be cleared … on that charge.” His gaze shifted to the seat on Ziva’s right. “This is the candidate for your new familiar?” Gar nodded back, his eyes large and solemn.

  “His vocal module is not installed yet, sir. But Gar is very pleased to meet you.” The monkey nodded again.

  “Likewise, Gar.” He looked back at Ziva. “I assume you’ve been candid with him about what he can expect from training?”

  Gar hooted a response before Ziva could answer.

  The general hesitated. “You know, Ziva, I don’t have to tell you that what we do is hard. On every mission, a ranger walks a fine line between serving the greater good and disturbing the natural development of a culture. We make judgment calls and we hope they’re right. But we both know it’s a lot easier with a trusted partner by your side. I wish you the very best, Ranger Hansworth—and you, too, Gar.”

  Ziva gripped Gar’s hand. “Thank you, sir.”

  After the call ended, she leaned back in the pilot’s chair, watching the stars in silence.

  Gar began to hum. Ziva joined in.

  About David Bruns

  David Bruns is a former officer on a nuclear-powered submarine turned high-tech executive turned science fiction writer. He is the creator of the sci-fi/fantasy series, The Dream Guild Chronicles, and the bestselling military sci-fi novel Invincible, based on Nick Webb’s Legacy Fleet series. His short fiction has appeared in such speculative fiction anthologies as The Future Chronicles and Beyond the Stars and well as online magazines like Compelling Sci-Fi. David is also a 2017 graduate of the prestigious Clarion West workshop. In his spare time, he co-writes contemporary thrillers with a retired naval intelligence officer. Find out more at www.davidbruns.com.