by Elin Wyn
“I was just a pilot back then,” Taryn agreed. “I became a captain after three years, and no offense Lyra, but I’m not going to survive this just to get demoted for breaking practice. Not on my last tour.”
Lyra gave her a look. “If I go in there,” she pointed over her shoulder. “And I go into torpor hibernation, then I’m useless to you. We all are.”
“Yes,” Taryn agreed. “And it’s where I’ll let you all out again once we’ve reached a relatively safe place, and then you can be useful again.”
Lyra scowled. “You really—”
“Lyra,” Taryn stopped her, never even turning to meet her eyes. “As your captain, please, enter the silent safety of your pod and let me concentrate.”
It took a moment, but soon the retreating scuffs of Lyra’s boots mixed with the groans of the ship, and before Taryn could say another word Lyra was through the doors to the emergency pods.
“Well, that was easy,” she grumbled to herself. Removing her right hand slowly so as not to confuse the ship, she typed another series of numbers into the keypad on her armrest, relieved when a voice sounded over the speakers.
“State your purpose,” the robotic female voice prompted.
“Search for a nearby planet,” Taryn called out to it. “One with oxygen, if you don’t mind.”
“Scanning… Scanning…”
“C’mon,” Taryn muttered.
“Planet found. Analysis—”
“Doesn’t matter,” she rolled her eyes. Then, louder, “Coordinates!” The voice coldly recited, and she typed it into her keyboard. Immediately, a spot of red appeared on the control panel. Taryn smiled – she might not have any eyes on the outside, but blindly steering with the panel would put them in the right direction. She waved a hand, and sent them towards it.
Kanthi
Kanthi B’Halli was, for the first time in his life, exactly where he needed to be. Hard to believe that he’d had to travel into enemy territory just to get there.
As a door opened, Kanthi withdrew into the shadows. He was hiding in the rafters, just out of view and safely out of range of the creatures beneath him. As they stepped into the room, lights snapped on, illuminating the room laid out under his feet.
Thagzars, half-lizard men he’d only ever seen before in his nightmares, circled below. They walked on two legs, their green scales glinting in the artificial light while their yellow eyes glowed. From what Kanthi’s people knew of them, Thagzars were mainly descended from two types of creatures, resulting in a very basic (but exaggerated) differentiation in the snout. Depending on their ancestry, they either had an elongated snout full of uneven rows of sharp teeth, or a flat face with two poisonous fangs.
There had always been endless speculation about which Thagzar was worse to meet, but as far as Kanthi was concerned, both were equally dangerous. They’d all earned the name of ‘snakes’ from his people. And he currently had ten in the same room with him, six flat-faced and four with prominent snouts.
They seemed to be moving with purpose, approaching various tables and hissing at each other in calm tones. It was creepy – almost conversational.
Kanthi watched them, memorizing everything. He knew the room to be a laboratory, one that he had searched long and hard for because of what it housed.
Suddenly, the door opened, bursting with such force that it banged into the wall, bouncing off of it. A single Thagzar stood there, heaving with his arms outspread as the other creatures looked up at his entrance. Kanthi tensed, silently drawing out one of the knives sheathed in his armband, straining unsuccessfully to hear their words.
He wasn’t going down without taking a few of the demons with him.
Finally, the creature spoke, his hisses wheezy and out of breath. The other snakes chimed in with strangled hisses of their own, and Kanthi watched as they became increasingly agitated. Rather than keep up the easygoing pace they’d all exhibited minutes before, the snakes were rushing now, haphazardly placing jars and files all over the place. They were scared, which only worried Kanthi more.
Did they know that he had infiltrated their base? Had they found his camp? As the dozens of possible scenarios (all of them bad) buzzed around in his brain, he forced himself to sit quietly in the ceiling, and wait.
Within minutes, the reptilians were leaving the room, some at a run. They slammed the door, making Kanthi jump as he had half-expected them to throw grenades back inside at him. But, as the silence remained and no one was sent inside to find him, he breathed easier.
If the commotion just now hadn’t been about him, then he had to assume that some other poor bastard had just gotten their full attention, which meant that he may very well have a distraction on his hands while he raided their lab. In which case, he knew that he’d better act fast.
Kanthi left the ceiling much more easily than he’d hidden in it, taking off at a run to swoop down and literally hang from a rafter, using the acceleration to swing his feet and let go so as to land in a tight roll, protecting himself from injury. In the end, he finished on his feet, crouched with his fists out and his eyes open.
Still, no one came in.
Keeping his guard up, Kanthi stayed low, sweeping the room with precision and detail. He may not know how to read their language, but he knew the Thagzar sign for what he was searching for: two harsh slashes inside a circle, something his people had come to associate with death.
As familiar as he was with it, he still almost missed it. It was in a small vial that was shadowed by far more impressive ones, hidden in the back of a test tube rack on a high shelf with a yellowed label. It seemed to Kanthi that it had been deliberately hidden; not much of a surprise as Kanthi’s people had been hunting for that single formula for decades.
It was a biological weapon, the best the Thagzars had ever created and the worst Kanthi’s people, the Eiztar, had ever been cursed with. It was an airborne toxin, designed to target embryos and inhibit them from taking hold and, ultimately, result in miscarriages.
It was a tragic thing, to watch mothers and sisters become pregnant, only to know that they would wake up one morning and lose the child, becoming forever scarred from the experience. It was a loss that touched not only the victims but everyone around them, a reoccurring tragedy that had been plunging his people into a planet-wide depression for decades.
Not to mention, now that it had been going on for over twenty years and his generation was old enough to see it, they were finding that the initial loss of life was only a small price in the toxin’s overall process. By targeting their women like this, the reptilians were ensuring the extinction of the Eiztar’s species, once and for all.
The reason for the toxin’s invention was, in Kanthi’s opinion, even more sinister. It had been less than thirty years ago – a generation – that his people had still been completely and totally under the rule of the snakes. They were aliens that had overtaken his own planet and four others long ago, too long to remember a life without them. Using their advanced weaponry and technology, they’d brought the five planets to their knees, ensuring a complete and total takeover in order to steal their natural resources.
But one generation ago, the natives – Kanthi’s people – had finally risen up from the shackles and managed to take back their proper place as master of their own world, killing and banishing every last Thagzar that had dared to ever control them. Kanthi knew that, at least on his planet, they’d acted quickly and carefully to steal as much of the alien technology as they could, advancing themselves leaps and bounds with war ships and space travel. Soon, they were even creating their own technology, specifically weapons and defenses that protected against Thagzar attacks.
Which was when their old enemy took the initiative and started dabbling in bio-warfare.
The council that ruled over the five planets’ alliance believed that it was the reptilian’s way of weakening them, and ultimately paving a way to reconquer them. It was why they were holding out hope for a cure – it would be fa
r too great a loss to lose a slave force, so an antidote had to be available or, at the very least, possible. It was why the alliance had started sending out teams to hunt down Thagzar bases and seek out the formula, and why Kanthi, the leader of his squad, was stealing a vial of the weapon now.
He just hoped the alliance was right.
Taking an apron from a nearby table, Kanthi used it like a towel to pick up the vial. He was debating how best to transport it (pocket or boot) when a bang erupted outside.
Alarms suddenly burst through the speakers in the lab, leaving Kanthi stunned for a moment before he regained his wits. His main objective was the formula. He couldn’t lose it now that he finally had it, not when the fate of his people rested on it.
First, he locked the lab door, buying himself some more time. He couldn’t scramble back up to the ceiling, not before someone came in – besides, now that they were on alert, some snake might notice him up there and shoot him down. No, Kanthi would have to get caught if he wanted to make it out alive with the vial. Not that he could let them discover it on him. Then they’d lock it away somewhere that he’d never be able to find and throw away the key.
A crash sounded, and then something hit the door. The Thagzars were trying to get in.
Kanthi made a hasty decision and stuck the vial in a separate test tube rack, hidden even better than it had been, hopefully away from the scientists themselves, too. Just until Kanthi could get back in and steal it properly.
A second crash, and the lock busted, the door finally giving way and falling to the floor with a loud thud as metal met metal. Kanthi put his hands up, his eyes on the ground, while the guards hesitated a moment at the unexpected Eiztar on their lab floor. They recovered quickly enough, though, and pushed him flat to the ground.
So much for being in the right place.
Taryn
Taryn had to physically unscrew the lock mechanism on the ship’s door to get it open. Not the easiest task in the world with Willovitch’s tools strewn all over the place, courtesy of Taryn’s botched landing. Apparently, the crash had done more than simply alert an alien planet that she had just flown in unannounced through their atmosphere – it’d also destroyed her ship.
“It’s fucking planet parked,” Taryn grumbled to herself, kicking a pipe out of her way. She had to pull herself up and out of the doorway, what with how the ship had landed, and she was reminded of building a bridge in gymnastics as she struggled with it.
What sounded like human fire alarms were going off all around her, though none of them sounded particularly close. She was just glad that she hadn’t crashed into any buildings (talk about a bad first impression). Instead, the ship had landed in a stretch of open land, no casualties to speak of. “A good landing is any landing you can walk away from,” she remembered from her pilot instructor, muttering to herself.
She checked the pods next. They were all safe and accounted for, appearing like part of the ship’s decoration due to how they were attached. She’d leave them for the moment, just in case the citizens of this planet were less than hospitable.
If it weren’t for those alarms though, Taryn might have had half a mind to think that the planet was uninhabited. It was a boring looking place, full of dirt and empty canyons. Even the spot she’d crashed into, a flat and level spot that would’ve been perfect for construction, wasn’t developed.
“Maybe they’re nature freaks…?” she wondered aloud, leaning up against her ship while she kept an eye out. “Hear that, Sherre?” The girl was a self-proclaimed vegan, all about her Earth’s environment. Taryn, being from Mars, had never put much stock in it. “I found your people,” she told the girl, knocking on her pod. And hell, even if they weren’t green beans, they’d still love Sherre – it was hard not to.
Taryn waited out there for a few minutes. She had half a mind to go back inside the ship when finally, she saw movement. A weird glint of green under the hot sun, and then it was gone. “Wha…?” Taryn uncrossed her arms, taking a step forward as she narrowed her eyes to try and get a better look.
That’s when she felt the cool metal of a gun on her neck and the click of the safety being turned off.
She immediately put her hands up, her eyes downcast as she’d been taught in training. She didn’t resist when they put her in chains, nor did she struggle when they cinched them up tight, tugging for good measure. When they were satisfied, the alien behind her pushed her down to her knees by the shoulder, and it was then that she saw just what she was dealing with.
The thing she’d seen – the alien – was walking in plain sight now, coming up the way straight towards her. It had green skin, reflecting the sun’s light like an old tin can, and bright yellow eyes that she knew were looking straight at her. Funny, then, that what unnerved her most about the alien was its nose – it didn’t have one. Its face was flat, with slits just above its pale mouth and holes for ears. It looked like a snake.
When it got close enough, it even started hissing. For a moment, Taryn thought it was doing it at her, but then the one standing behind her responded, and she realized it must be how they communicate. She wondered if they knew any other languages – like hers, for example.
After a moment the one behind Taryn grabbed her elbow and jerked her up, forcing her to her feet. It hissed in her ear, and shoved her forward. The other alien didn’t catch her, but merely made a face and started walking, leading the way. Oh, so they wanted her to stay in the middle. She wondered, idly, if they thought she looked as unnerving to them as they were to her. Maybe they didn’t want to touch her because of it, as if she had a whole new kind of cooties or something. No complaints there.
As they marched, Taryn kept her eyes wide and her ears open, searching the barren landscape for anything that could be useful. She didn’t expect them to march her up to a rusted box, type in a code that she could obviously see (and proceeded to memorize), and suddenly find herself standing before a giant metal wall that appeared out of nowhere. Other snake men were guarding it, the guns on their sides sleek but no doubt dangerous as they waved them through.
Just past the gate was a huge, circular building, and they led her right to it. The snake guy hissed at her, sending her stumbling as he pushed, and she rolled her eyes. Seriously, impatient much? She glanced at the other guy, the one who had put a gun to her back, and did a double-take. Unlike the snake man to her right, this guy had a giant nose – a snout, really, and hundreds of little teeth peeking out over the edge of his lips. He looked like the scariest form of crocodile she’d ever seen.
With a few more pushes and shoves (though not from croc-man, she wasn’t letting him near her) she found herself in front of a metallic door, one that required the same six digit pin to get in.
As they urged her through, more hissing erupted as a dozen or so snake and crocodile men surrounded her in the doorway. After a few hisses between them and her captors, they dragged her inside the room, the doors sliding closed behind her (and in front of the men who’d captured her, keeping them outside). She glanced at the snake men in the room, checking for weapons, but was surprised to see that not one of them had a gun. She’d have to keep an eye open for possible escape routes.
She went along with them as they crowded her into a chair, all the while poking and prodding her bare arms and face. She had half a mind to close her eyes and ignore them, but that could mean her death, and even she wasn’t that stupid.
A hiss, and one of them was reaching between the others, unzipping her suit as if it was the most normal thing in the world to undress a captive. Hell, maybe to them it was. Taryn tensed up, forcing herself to stay still as it gently tugged at her clothes and removed her captain’s shirt and pants. It left her tank top and undershorts untouched, which was probably the only reason why she didn’t flip shit on them, especially as they urged her to the bed in the corner.
It seemed normal enough, but the crappy white paper down the middle of the plastic mattress wasn’t fooling her. She was in some sort
of hospital bay, and she was the patient – or, more likely, the test subject. Her chains clanked as she moved onto the bed.
As she lay down, one of them switched on a light. It blinded her, making their faces seem like shadows in the distance, so she considered it a win-win. It also just meant that she couldn’t see what the sudden electronic whirr was that filled the room. At least, not until it was touching her forehead.
Oh. They were giving her a brain scan.
It was really similar to the scans on Mars, actually, and she allowed them to ghost it over her crown, confident in the knowledge that it was simply checking for injuries and abnormalities. At least, she hoped so. All human attempts to make a device that could read minds had ended up with the test subjects in terrible pain, most of them mad. After about a minute they removed it, turning it and the light off to pull her back up to a sitting position.
They seemed to be doing a lot of hissing amongst themselves as they calmly put her clothes back on her, as if redressing a doll. Taryn wasn’t about to complain though, so she very obediently went along with it, even raising her arms for the jacket.
Finally, the snakes added an accessory that she didn’t have before: an earpiece, cold to the touch. Static betrayed it as a piece of technology, and – as the hissing grew around her – she realized that it was translating their words to English.
“Hiiiiiisssss – odd, never seen an Eiztar quite like this.”
“No sign of any contamination with the toxin. Do you thin-sssssssss!”
And so it went, back and forth like a bad radio station as it constantly cut in and out to hisses and words. It was a communication tab, she realized, though probably the worst one she’d ever used. Typically, a comm translated unknown languages with ease, commonly leading a person to forget that they were even wearing one. Yet the one she had now was faulty, at best, and incredibly primitive compared to those that she had used before for work.
