Star Warrior

by Isaac Hooke

  More shots erupted from his other side: Jed. The Bander promptly vanished, thanks to his armor. The only reason Tane knew he was still there was because of the indicator on the overhead map, and the plasma bursts that erupted from Jed’s position.

  Lyra meanwhile was wielding some kind of energy sword beside the Bander. She held it at a horizontal angle behind her head, and from the tip emerged bolts of white light that ripped into the incoming creatures.

  “I’m too weak to keep this up for long!” Lyra said. “We have to make a rush for the ship!”

  “There’s too many of them!” Tane said.

  As he spoke, the kraals swarmed onto the platform from both sides of the shipyard, thoroughly cutting off any approach to the ship. The enemy numbers were starting to outflank the four of them.

  “Nebb, could use some help here!” Sinive said.

  Tane’s weapon was taking too long to reload. As were the weapons of his comrades. The kraals were almost on them.

  Lyra swept forward with her energy sword and took the battle to the enemy, cutting through their ranks. A moment later Jed joined her, visible by the blade that flashed into existence when he carved a path through the enemy ranks.

  “We’re cutting a path through!” Lyra said. “Follow us!”

  Tane got up, but before he and Sinive could follow, the shipyard caved in front of him, falling into the floor just below and separating Tane and Sinive from Jed and Lyra. More kraals began to emerge from the collapse.

  Tane and Sinive quickly backed away, retreating toward the Camel Transport. Tane paused underneath the vessel and turned back to aim at the incoming kraals. He unleashed several quick shots in rapid succession, draining the weapon’s current charge. Sinive did the same.

  In the ensuing downtime, with the enemies still rushing toward him and Sinive, Tane decided to retrieve the two rifles from his storage sack and set them down on the deck beside him. He intended to alternate between them, using an active rifle while the other weapons recharged, ensuring the least amount of downtime as possible.

  He swapped his S4 for one of the others, and as he aimed, for a moment he worried the rifle might be bioencoded to a different owner already; when he squeezed the trigger it thankfully fired. The second rifle from the Camel Transport also fired without issue.

  Tane kept switching weapons like that, but the kraals relentlessly emerged from the cave-in. Jed blinked into view. The Bander was running toward the gap as if intending to leap across to Tane, but the rooftop shook and the fissure enlarged even wider, forcing Jed to abandon his attempt before he reached the edge. The breakage spread across almost the entire shipyard now, and Tane could see well into the floor below, which seemed to be a warehouse level of some kind, full of stacked crates swarming with kraals.

  “I’m opening fire with the dragons,” Grizz announced over the comm.

  Several kraals dropped in a long line as the powerful lasers passed through several creatures at once.

  But it wasn’t enough. The kraals kept flowing onto the shipyard from the cave-in. For every one that fell, four others replaced it.

  “We can’t stay here!” Tane said.

  He pulled Sinive to her feet and, abandoning the two rifles he had set down on the landing pad beside him, he raced away from the incoming creatures. He kept his main S4, of course, and headed toward the far side of the rooftop.

  “Tane!” Sinive said. “They’re too close!”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Behind him, the creatures were swarming, coming in too fast.

  “Go!” He swung around and quickly brought his rifle to bear, letting off several plasma bolts.

  Sinive ignored his command. She abandoned her plasma rifle and withdrew her pistol, joining him to fight at his side. She shot into the fray with the skill of a trained pistoleer.

  Another dragon blast came from Grizz, tearing into the lead kraals, buying Tane and Sinive some time.

  A kraal unexpectedly plowed into Sinive from the side and she crashed into a goose neck exhaust vent behind her.

  Tane spun around. The creature was alone. Apparently it had broken away from the others to attack in stealth.

  Tane aimed his rifle at the kraal and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. He had to wait for the recharge.

  The kraal was tearing into Sinive’s shoulder region, and her screams told him the razor sharp teeth had penetrated the suit to the flesh underneath.

  Tane hesitated. He knew he had no chance of overpowering the creature.

  Meanwhile, other kraals were quickly bearing down from behind. The reprieve Grizz had granted was quickly coming to an end.

  If I stay, I’m going to die.

  Sinive screamed again.

  Tane hardened his resolve.

  If I die, so be it.

  He hurled himself at the kraal that was on her.

  Before impact, he jacked up the power settings of his servos to full, and purposely spiked his ephedrine output. As he struck, he rammed the stock of his rifle into the creature’s elongated head, and it released Sinive. The momentum of his impact succeeded in tearing the kraal off her and he landed on top of it.

  The stunned beast recovered quickly and swung its snout toward him. Tane shoved the tip of his rifle into its mouth and squeezed the trigger. A message appeared on his HUD.

  Awaiting recharge.

  Damn it.

  Sinive was sitting up beside him and firing into the incoming kraals with her pistol. She could only let off one shot at a time, with a recharge interval of about a second between each. It wasn’t fast enough. The kraals were almost on them.

  Tane’s kraal bit down hard on the muzzle in its mouth, but just then the recharge indicator on his HUD turned green.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The head blew up, splattering Tane’s suit in black blood and gore.

  The creature went limp underneath him and Tane spun around to face the incoming kraals. The beasts would reach them in seconds.

  He was starting to wish he had a sword, or some other weapon, because his rifle wasn’t going to cut it.

  He shifted his grip on the rifle, intending to use it as a club. Sinive, having abandoned her rifle, had no such luxury. She would have to continue firing her pistol for as long as she could.

  Before the creatures reached them, from nowhere a glowing blue sword appeared, slashing through the incoming kraals and scattering them.

  “Go!” Jed’s voice.

  But there was nowhere to go but backward, away from the kraals. And the Red Grizzly…

  Tane scrambled to his feet, grabbed Lyra by the hand, and ran toward the far side of the shipyard.

  As they got close to the edge of the rooftop, Tane was starting to regret not taking that jumpjet unit from the closet.

  Because they were essentially trapped.

  “The taxi!” Sinive said.

  At first Tane didn’t know what she was talking about, but then he spotted a small shuttle taxi sitting in the loading zone a short distance to their right, near the skyscraper’s edge.

  Tane and Sinive swerved toward it.

  “Will it even start in this universe?” Tane said.

  “The Red Grizzly works just fine…” Sinive said.

  “Yeah, but we brought the ship here from our own universe!” Tane said.

  “Well, guess we’ll find out,” Sinive said.

  “Lyra, what do you think?” Tane asked.

  “Kind of busy now,” came Lyra’s reply.

  Tane glanced over his shoulder and picked out the characteristic white beam of Lyra’s energy sword in the middle of the swarm, where it hewed down the enemies as if they were paper. Somehow the Volur had found the stamina to fight on. She had to, if she wanted to survive.

  Jed’s blue sword meanwhile flashed into existence nearby, closer to Tane, carving an equally deadly path. However many of the kraals simply flowed around the Bander, racing toward the easier targets of Tane and Sinive. Tane counted at least fifty kraals bearing
down on his location past Jed.

  The shuttle’s door was open and Sinive and Tane piled inside. He barely fit in the seat with his bulky suit.

  Sinive ripped open a panel above the twin controllers that were meant for emergency use—in case the AI malfunctioned during flight. Ordinarily the passenger had to contact the control tower to obtain access to those twin sticks, but Sinive fiddled with something inside the panel, then placed her gloved hands onto the sticks and slid them down toward each other.

  The four rotors on the taxi activated. Seat buckles tightened around Tane and Sinive, securing them in place despite their unwieldy suits.

  “Guess it works!” she said.

  “You have to teach me that sometime,” Tane said.

  “Buy the nanotech pack,” Sinive said. “It’s easier.”

  Sinive applied thrust and the craft took off.

  Just in time—the wave of kraals arrived. Tane fired off a burst from his rifle into the front ranks and picked off some of them. The lead beasts tried to stop, but were pushed off the edge of the skyscraper by the kraals coming in from behind. They formed a grim waterfall of flailing bodies falling to their doom.

  Sinive manipulated the controls with her thumbs; it was obvious the twin sticks weren’t designed to be used while wearing the bulky gloves of a spacesuit, and her thumbs sometimes abutted each other, but she managed nonetheless.

  She started to turn the taxi toward the Red Grizzly. The kraals had stopped forcing themselves off the building by then, and some of those nearby began to crawl on top of each other, forming a living ladder.

  A kraal near the top of the ladder abruptly leaped toward the shuttle.

  “Watch it!” Tane said.

  Sinive didn’t react in time. The kraal crashed into the rotor, killing itself and destroying the blade in the process. The vehicle pitched precariously off the rooftop and careened toward the city below.

  The blurry buildings spun around him. There were only weak inertial dampeners aboard the craft, and he could really feel the G forces.

  Finally Sinive was able to stop the spinning, but the craft still pitched precariously to the left, almost upside-side down.

  He spotted one of the Red Grizzly’s spherical scouts, following the taxi’s descent. Good to know that Nebb didn’t plan on losing them. Assuming Tane and Sinive survived the crash.

  And then before Tane knew what was happening a loud crash filled the air and he was jolted so hard that his teeth, ribcage, and skull rattled sickeningly.

  Body-hugging air bags activated at the same time, enclosing his spacesuit and the chair he sat upon within three hundred and sixty degrees of cushioning.

  He found the release switch and the bags emptied. He opened his restraining belt and pulled himself up. Beside him, Sinive was slipping out of her own deflated air bags.

  “I like the hardening foam safeties better than the bags,” Sinive commented.

  Tane stepped away from the remains of the taxi and paused to examine the wreckage. There wasn’t much left. The cockpit area had survived, barely, but all the rotor mounts had broken away.

  “But you have to admit,” Tane said, “those bags saved our life.”

  He glanced back toward the building, which was still visible a block away. He craned his neck, but there was no sign of the kraals on the rooftop, at least not from this angle. Nor any signs of Jed and Lyra. They did show up on the overhead map however, and their positions seemed to be updating, moving closer to the Red Grizzly. The pair were surrounded by a swarm of red dots representing the kraals.

  “Lyra, do you read?” Tane tried.

  “Yes,” Lyra said. Her voice cut in and out.

  “We’re all right,” Tane said.

  “We’ll get to you when we can,” Lyra said.

  He was surprised he still had a signal. There were no adhoc networks from other chips and AR goggles to link with. If they were in their own universe, in theory they should be able to link with any nodes of the city, but with the Galnet not working, it was obvious that wasn’t the case here.

  Tane spotted the small spherical scout hovering in the air about ten meters above him and he suddenly understood why he still had a signal.

  Motion drew his gaze to the base of the skyscraper: more kraals were flowing out from the main entrance.

  “Time to go!” Tane said.

  He and Sinive sprinted away from the building. He was on the look-out for another vehicle, but apparently this was a pedestrian district as there weren’t any.

  “Lyra,” Tane said. “I don’t know if you can see what we have on our tail, but we could use that pickup sooner rather than later.”

  “We’re trying…” Lyra said.

  “And Nebb, see what you can do about pulling that scout higher,” Sinive said. “It’s acting like a beacon… broadcasting to the kraals exactly where we are.”

  The scout rocketed skyward.

  “Sorry about that,” Nebb said over the comm.

  Tane used the overhead map to guide him away from the building. He hoped the city data in his chip was up to date—in theory it would have updated over the Galnet when they first entered the Dhoulan system before passing through the rift.

  The scout flagged different vehicles they could use on that map, but the closest was several blocks away. He and Sinive wouldn’t make it, not at the rate the kraal swarm was closing behind them.

  “There’s an underground pedway system here,” Tane said. “It looks it’s connected to one of the high-rises a couple of streets away. We can enter there and hopefully lose the kraals.”

  “Yeah well, better pick up the pace!” Sinive said. “They’re outrunning us! And Nebb, can you send the scout forward a little ways? We can use it to track any kraals that might be trying to head us off.”

  Nebb’s response came, but the digital distortion was really bad. Tane heard: “I… that… eventually.”

  Sinive glanced at him. “I hope that was a yes.”

  On the overhead map, the green dot representing the scout accelerated forward.

  “Must have been a yes,” Tane said.

  The scout abruptly winked out. Tane glanced skyward in time to see the debris of the scout plummeting to the street.

  “What—” He began.

  And then a humungous, pincer-shaped ship flew out from behind the cover of the buildings just ahead. It was about ten times as big as the Red Grizzly. Its hull pulsed with dark energy; several large mounts protruded from the underside, and tentacles hung down from them. Tane guessed those were weapons turrets. It all seemed so substantial. So real.

  “The dwellers!” Sinive said.

  “Lyra, do you read?” Tane tried. “Lyra?”

  There was no answer. With the scout gone, they had lost their connection. They were just too far from the Red Grizzly.

  “Where’s a vehicle when you need one?” Sinive said.

  “I don’t think a vehicle would help us now!” Tane said. “We’d be too easy a target. Our best bet is to stick close to the buildings, I think!”

  And they did so, hugging the glass walls of the skyscrapers.

  They had no choice but to run underneath the giant ship, because the kraals were herding them that way.

  Black pods shot from the underside of the ship and flew into the street, where they hovered five meters from the surface.

  Tane opened fire at the closet with his plasma rifle, as did Sinive with her pistol, but their shots seemed to have no effect. The pair kept running, staying close to the buildings.

  The undersides of the pods opened up and tentacled creatures fell out. Tane was reminded of a cluster of mollusks emerging from an egg sac. Some of those long legs or tentacles or whatever they were got caught on the edge as the underside doors released, and the creatures hung for a few moments before their slimy limbs released.

  Like the kraals and crillia before them, and the huge ship overhead, the creatures seemed substantial and distinct, more real than Tane, Sinive, and the bu
ildings around them. Some of them issued a series of clicks and pops.

  The aliens all had those sideways-opening maws lined with serrated teeth—big old Tholan fly traps. And they all held big, menacing weapons in their tentacled arms: variants of the energy launchers Tane had seen on the farm.

  These creatures were identical to the ones he had faced at his farm, he was sure of it, except this time they weren’t wearing protective suits, and he got to see them in their full, gruesome glory.

  Dwellers.

  17

  Tane was wondering what dwellers looked like without those environmental suits of theirs. They weren’t much prettier. He hadn’t been sure whether those eight crab-like legs emerging from the carapace were actually part of their bodies or some mech suit, but it turned out the legs indeed an integral part, as were the tentacles emerging from the stalks below the head. Their carapaces were dark and slightly iridescent, reminding him of Labradorite stones.

  The skyscraper was to his and Sinive’s left, while the creatures blocked off escape on all remaining sides. He noted that some of the dwellers positioned on the far right side of that circle were firing their energy weapons into the kraals, sending black bolts that tore clusters of the incoming horde apart.

  Interesting.

  “This way!” Tane told Sinive. He dashed up the stairs of the nearby building and dove into the revolving doors that composed the main entrance.

  “But this building doesn’t lead to the pedway system!” Sinive said from behind him.

  “Well we can’t stay out there!” Tane said.

  The pair entered a spacious concourse lit by light globes hanging from the far ceiling. They hurried across to a gravalator; it was still working and lifted them to the second floor, which overlooked the first via a walkway lined with glass railings. Tane and Sinive ducked behind a metallic pillar next to the gravalator and aimed down at the revolving doors.

  The glass entryway shattered inward and two dwellers tore inside, tentacles waving.

  Tane unloaded a full twelve rounds at the lead dweller. The plasma bolts were stopped by translucent black circles that materialized in front of the dweller a half meter from its body. It was a slightly different dispersion pattern to the ripple effect he had seen when unleashing a plasma rifle against the alien shielding before, and he wasn’t sure if that was because the shields were different, or his weapon.