by Tim Marquitz
The lizards had largely given up the fight.
That didn’t sit well with Taj.
“Something is wrong,” she muttered.
“Why?” Torbon asked. “Because things are going so well.”
Taj chuckled. “That’s part of it, yeah.”
Although she felt that it was stupid to fret about success, she couldn’t help but think that their victory had been too easy.
Her stomach churned with apprehension.
“Could we have walked into a trap?” she asked.
“If so, why haven’t they sprung it yet?” Dent replied.
Taj shrugged. That was part of the problem. Nothing made sense to her. She simply couldn’t picture them having won so easily.
“They couldn’t have known what we planned,” Lina added. “Maybe we just keep surprising them? Keeping them on their heels, off-guard?”
“Maybe,” Taj agreed, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the hammer was waiting to fall on their heads.
“We’ve got movement across the killing field,” Dent called. “Four Wyyvan soldiers waving a flag of truce.” One of his eyebrows rose in surprise. “They’re carrying a device with them.”
“A weapon?” Cabe asked.
The AI shook his head. “Looks like a loudspeaker,” he replied. “An archaic communications device, nothing more.”
“Cease fire,” Taj ordered the artillery units to keep them from blowing the approaching soldiers away. “Let them approach.”
“You sure about that?” Torbon asked.
She sighed at the question. “What are four soldiers going to do that the fleet hovering over our head can’t?” she asked him.
Taj knew she should be worried about the Wyyvans’ sudden capitulation, but she was more curious than anything. She wanted to know what they were up to, and the way to find out was to let things play out for now.
A few moments later, the Wyyvan soldiers had set up their device and began broadcasting.
“This is Grand Admiral Galforin of the Wyyvan fleet, overseer of planet KI1047-32,” a voice called over the loudspeaker. Taj grated at hearing him so callously claim control of her home world, but she bit back her anger to hear him out. “I wish to speak with the commander of the invaders who dared usurp my mining operation.”
The admiral went on, offering them a private communication channel Taj could use to reach him on his dreadnought before cutting the connection.
Taj looked at Dent, who shrugged.
“Maybe he wants to surrender?” Torbon suggested.
Taj looked at the sky one last time and snarled. “He’s buying time,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “Let’s see what he has to say, Dent. Open a channel.”
Galforin was playing at something, and she wanted to know what.
Chapter Thirteen
Dent patched the private communication through the small device built into his wrist. It had a narrow screen, and the AI held it up to face Taj.
After being assured that Galforin couldn’t trace the transmission back to the source, using it to target them, she stood in front of a blank wall with no identifying marks to make it even harder for the admiral to determine where in the outpost they were.
Galforin’s green countenance appeared on the screen, looking sour. He licked his lips in distaste as he saw who was on the other side of the connection.
Taj had removed her helmet to look the lizard in the eyes. She’d waited a long time for this moment.
“Ah,” Galforin said, nodding. “It all makes sense now. You’re Furlorian.”
“We gacking well are!” she told him. “Did you think we were gonna just let you have our planet?” she fired back, letting her anger get the best of her.
“I did, actually,” he told her, smirking. “Especially after you ran away so quickly, abandoning it with your tails between your legs.”
Taj wanted to reach through the screen and scratch his eyes out.
“We’ve got your outpost under our control,” she said, trying not to let the lizard’s smugness get to her. “Your whole purpose for being here is shut down, so why don’t you just call it a loss and move on? You won’t get a second chance to take it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, rodent. In fact, I’ve reached out to you to demand your surrender,” he stated. “Give up now, and I’ll spare the lives of you and your people and the slaves on the planet. Choose to continue in this foolish effort to take KI1047-32 from me, and I’ll punish you on every front.”
“You mean like how you did when we sent your fleet and soldiers running with their tails between their legs?” she shot back.
Galforin snarled at her before reining his anger in. She was getting under his skin, and she liked it.
“Believe what you will, Furlorian, but you and I both know you don’t have the upper hand. You barely have enough forces to put up a token show of effort, let alone win back your planet,” he told her. “It’s only a matter of time before we overwhelm you and add you to the slaves mining Toradium-42 for us. Give in to the inevitable and surrender. It will save your people torment.”
Taj laughed at his offer. “Why not just blow the compound and take us out?” she pressed. “The fact that you haven’t tells me you’re not as confident about the outcome as you’d like me to believe.”
“I’m nothing if not generous, rodent,” he returned, grinning, but Taj could see the forced nature of it.
He was hiding something.
Taj wanted to know what.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it’s all about, Galforin,” she told him. “I mean, you were clearly very generous to Vort, raining down all that extra firepower to help him out when you first arrived.”
“I’m not the one who tossed him into space to die,” the admiral countered.
Taj grinned. “I shot him in the head first if that makes you feel better,” she explained. “Maybe you and I should sit down and talk in person and see which of us can negotiate the better deal.”
“Tempting,” Galforin told her, “but you only have the two options I’ve offered you: Surrender and live or fight and die. Your choice, but make up your mind quickly.” He leaned into the screen, his already sizable face growing even larger, looming across the distance. “I’ll be in touch soon, Furlorian. Choose wisely.”
The Wyyvan admiral cut the connection and Dent pulled his arm back.
“That told us nothing,” Torbon complained.
“Actually, it told us quite a bit,” Dent replied.
“He doesn’t think he can kill us,” Taj stated, glancing at the sky again, imagining she could see the admiral stewing in his ship. “He’s worried about something, or he’d simply blow us up and get back to work, especially now that he knows how few of us there really are.”
“What could he be worried about?” Cabe asked.
“That’s what we need to find out,” Taj told him.
Static filled the comm then and Jak’s voice came through, chaos distorting the call.
“They’ve found our tunnels!” he screamed over the link. “The Wyyvans are blowing them up, collapsing them ahead of us. We’re pulling back.”
Taj snarled. “Gack!”
“Could this be what he was waiting for?” Lina asked.
“I don’t know.” Taj shrugged. “Maybe he was buying time to get his people in place.”
“If that’s the case, we only have a short while before everyone is back in the compound, allowing Galforin to take us all out at once.”
“Have the armada keep an eye on his weapons systems, Dent,” Taj told the AI. “If he turns anything our way, we need to know as soon as possible.”
She paced in a tight circle, wondering if she’d made a mistake by corralling all of them in one place.
The walls of the compound had been compromised so it would be difficult to hold them against a concentrated effort by the Wyyvans, but they’d have to make it across the killing field first. With access to the arti
llery units now, that would make a push on the outpost difficult no matter how many Wyyvans Galforin had at his disposal.
Unfortunately, she’d shown the aliens that Toradium-42 could be weaponized and turned against her and the crew, but that would take time.
“What do you want to do?” Cabe asked. “If he was looking to get us all in here together, it won’t be long before something bad happens.”
Taj nodded, head whirling with thoughts. Although she had no idea what the gack Galforin had planned, she understood the first thing she needed to do was find a safe way out of the outpost.
“Come in, Rat!” she called.
The young woman’s voice came back a moment later. “Here!”
“How far are you from the outpost?”
“Haven’t left,” she answered. “Was overseeing the retreat with Malcolm.”
Taj grunted. That was a good thing, at least.
“Then I need you to do something,” Taj told her. “Get some people and get back on those mining devices and dig us new tunnels out of here. To the west would probably be our best bet to avoid further interference by the lizards. Can you do that?”
There was a momentary pause, and Taj assumed the girl was conferring with Malcolm. Taj waited impatiently as the seconds ticked by, then Rat came back.
“We’re on it, Taj,” the girl answered.
“The sooner, the better,” Taj suggested.
“You got it,” Rat said, and the comm went silent.
“You think there’s time for that?” Lina asked.
Taj shrugged. “The devices are quick. If we can get them up and running again right away, it gives us a chance.”
“My main concern is what is keeping Galforin from destroying the outpost,” Dent stated, glancing around.
“Could he simply not want to waste his time rebuilding?” Cabe asked.
“I don’t know,” Taj answered. “It could be. He’s kept the tech at low levels to avoid drawing attention to his efforts here, so maybe that’s all it is. A round of heavy fire on the planet, and the resultant effort to rebuild might be more than he wants to advertise his operation.”
“If that were the case, our battle above and the explosions would have far exceeded that threshold for emitting energy signals,” Dent explained. “Which makes me think it’s something else.”
“Well, we didn’t want to destroy the place from orbit because of the workers trapped here,” Lina said, “so what’s here that he doesn’t want to risk blowing up?”
Taj turned to stare at the engineer, eyes narrow. “There’s nothing here,” she mused. “Dent has scanned the area, and he’s found nothing but low-tech mechanical devices. There’s nothing he can’t replace, including the workers. I wouldn’t put it past him to put his soldiers to work if he needed them to, like Vort did.”
Lina shrugged. “Nothing else makes sense, though,” she argued.
“Maybe he’s just on so tight a schedule that he can’t afford to start over,” Cabe offered.
“We’re wasting our time speculating,” Taj told them. “Our priority is to get out of the complex and then get off-planet. Let’s join Rat and Malcolm and see if we can help dig an exit we can use.”
Taj didn’t give them the opportunity to argue. She started off, stomping off toward where Rat would be setting up the devices.
Something was going on that she didn’t understand, and she hated it.
It felt like the world was ready to come crashing down on their heads at any moment.
But Taj hadn’t come all this way to lose her home again.
She’d figured out a way to get them off the Plains and into the complex against all odds. She sure as gack wouldn’t fail at finding a way out.
It had been a couple of hours since Taj had spoken to Galforin, and she was hot and dirty and hated the taste of the grit that had settled between her teeth.
While Dent kept an eye on the fleet above, ready to warn of imminent destruction, she and the others had jumped in to help Rat and Malcolm drill new tunnels out of the compound.
Although she still wasn’t sure what she was going to do once they emerged, seeing as how the rebel hideout had been compromised, she felt more comfortable being out in the open. At least there they could run and hide; split up and vanish from the enemy fleet in the desert or Everon’s Canyon.
From there, they could take the remaining shuttles back to the fleet and wreak havoc on Galforin’s operations on the planet.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had.
One problem at a time, she told herself.
She wondered if Mama Merr and Gran Beaux had ever felt this way.
Of course they had, she thought. There was no way they could rule over all of the surviving Furlorians and not feel as if their mistakes would bring down ruin.
At least with the majority of her people still on Corzant and a secret backup of Dent’s Dandrinite knowledge left behind just in case, Taj felt as if all wouldn’t be lost should she fail to retake Krawlas.
“I guess this is good practice for when the lizards recapture us,” Rat joked, nudging Taj from her sour reverie.
The young female had worked alongside Taj ever since they’d joined her and she hadn’t complained once.
“An optimist, I see,” Torbon muttered.
“We’re all going to end up in the dirt one day anyway, so what difference does when make?” she asked.
“A whole lot,” Taj countered. She still had a whole bunch of living left to do. “And none of us are gonna end up dying in here.”
“How can you be so sure?” Rat asked.
“Because we’re not done fighting,” Taj told the girl. “As long as we keep standing up again every time we get knocked down, we’ll win.”
“Now who’s the optimist?” Torbon teased.
“It’s that or curl up and die,” Taj shot back. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m sure not ready to die at the hands of some lizard who thinks he has the right to invade our home and take it away from our people.”
“Hear, hear!” Cabe called. “Gack that lizard.”
“Besides, General Reynolds wants a new pair of boots,” Lina added. “I bet he’d appreciate a nice new belt, too.”
Rat chuckled and turned back to her work as the tunneling device began to rumble. She adjusted the controls, but the sound grew louder and louder.
“What is that?” Taj asked.
“It’s acting like we’re about to break through the surface, but that can’t be right,” Rat explained.
“Could there be something there we didn’t know about?” Lina wondered.
Rat nodded and eased back on the throttle, slowing the device. “Who knows what the Wyyvans did before we arrived? There could be all sorts of tunnels under here.” She fought with the device. “I’m redirecting us away from this softer patch to see if—”
She didn’t get the last of her statement out before there was a loud crack and the wall gave way in front of the tunneling machine.
Dust rose up in a cloud, and the whole front of the machine was buried in an avalanche of dirt and debris as it punched a hole into an adjoining chamber.
Rat leaped back, waving at the dust so she could get a better look at what happened.
With her advanced optics, Taj had a clear view of what had transpired. Her heart sputtered in her chest at the sight.
She clambered over and peered through the hole. A massive cavern loomed before her, filled nearly to the ceiling with piles of Toradium-42. The mineral stretched into the distance as far as she could see.
“Oh…gack!” she mumbled, stepping back out of instinct. “I think I know why Galforin hasn’t fired on us.”
Chapter Fourteen
Grand Admiral Galforin paced his bridge. It had become a ritual he hated.
“Those worthless rodents,” he growled.
He’d underestimated their tenacity, much as he imagined Captain Vort had. That had landed the captain dead in space, and Galf
orin had no desire to join him.
But there was little he could do at the moment, and that fed his fury.
“The soldiers are in place,” XO Volg informed him. “They’ll siphon as much of the Toradium-42 from the storage chambers as possible while the Furlorians wait for you to contact them again.”
Galforin chuckled. “Do you really think they’re passively waiting around for me to reach out, XO?” he asked. “Would you?”
Volg shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Exactly,” Galforin barked. “They know we’re holding back for a reason, even if they don’t know what that reason is. It will only be a matter of time before they find another way out or they stumble across our cache of Toradium-42.”
“Why not just let them go, sir?” Volg asked. “Wouldn’t it be best to have them away from the ore and off-planet?”
“If I believed they would stay away, I’d agree with you, Volg. But these rodents have shown themselves to be quite persistent,” he said. “I can’t foresee any circumstance where we are able to strip the planet and get away with our prize before either the Furlorians return again to re-engage us or Command learns what we are doing out here. With such limited resources, we can’t afford any more delays, Volg.”
“But if we return to Belor Prime with the ore we already have mined, won’t that be enough for you to buy your seat on the Council?” the XO wondered.
Galforin nodded. “It would be—until the Council determined that haul was the barest drop in a bucket of the resources this planet has to offer. They would steal it from us without hesitation.” Galforin grunted. “Then what do you think would happen to us, Volg?”
The XO sneered. “No need to ask, Admiral,” he replied. “Command would have us executed.”
“Exactly,” Galforin shot back and made his way to his seat. He dropped down with a huff. “How long before the ore is removed from the chamber and we can safely fire upon the outpost?”
“Days,” Volg answered. “A week possibly, as long as we are not delayed by the Furlorians.”
Galforin growled low in his throat. He’d made a mistake storing all the Toradium-42 in a single location, but he had wanted it where he could best control it. There hadn’t been so much as an inkling in his mind that the Furlorians would return to reclaim their planet, let alone that they would manage to take the outpost from under him. He’d been so careful not to draw any outside interest into his operation on the planet.
