by Tim Marquitz
Torbon squawked and ducked his head behind the cover of the hull as the herd closed.
“Yeah, like that’s gonna save you,” Taj muttered, tearing the flashcannon from his stiff fingers. She was surprised he’d managed to hold onto it despite everything.
She spun the barely-charged flashcannon around, using the top of his helmet like a brace to steady the barrel. With only a sideways glance at the dusty gauge that gleamed an ugly yellow, she squeezed the trigger as if her life depended on it.
Because it did.
And not just hers.
The cannon whirred, and an agonizingly long second later, it spit a ball of light. Too close to worry about aiming, the shot struck the first trrilac and exploded against its wide face, blinding it despite its weakened charge.
The beast roared, vibrating Taj’s skull, and hurled itself away from the burning ball of illumination. It slammed into its neighbors, knocking them aside and setting the herd to stampeding. Their wails drowned out everything else as the creatures bumped and jostled one another, veering every which way to escape the glittering spark that burned the face of the beast in front of them.
A moment later, the windrider was past, the trrilac herd scattered in their wake. The creatures desperately flapped their wings, millipede legs kicking underneath. They skirted the canyon walls and shot upward in a panic, disappearing over the peaks on either side.
Taj slumped against Torbon, the harness groaning with both of their weights. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder and spied Culvert City in the near distance, the end of the canyon a short distance away. She sighed at how close they’d come to disaster.
“Put us down,” Torbon whined.
The Thorn hummed and eased toward the ground, landing gear creaking as it deployed. The windrider settled on the sand a moment later with a dull, but satisfying, thump.
“Oh, blessed earth,” Torbon muttered as he unbuckled his harness. He and Taj tumbled to the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust. “I’ll never leave you again.” He caressed the solidness beneath them. “Never.”
The cockpit shield buzzed and peeled back, and Cabe clambered out of the ship. He’d already peeled his helmet loose, and wild strands of his dark hair stuck out everywhere. He looked feral, the light bracing of fur dark on his cheeks as he raced over to the pair, spitting out nip juice in a dark stream.
Lina scrambled out a few seconds later, her pale fur smeared with grease. Her uniform was no better, black stains appearing in random stripes across its brown covering where she’d wiped her hands or an errant tool, or twelve. She was shorter than everyone by a head or more, which was exaggerated by her hunched posture from many hours squeezed in the pit of the Thorn.
Taj shoved Torbon off her, then climbed to her feet. She dusted her uniform off with shaking hands and chuckled at the worried expressions on her crews’ faces.
“All’s well that ends well?”
“If you consider almost dying a good thing.” Cabe shook his head, examining Taj for wounds. Lina hovered behind, doing the same.
“Almost being the key word in that sentence,” Taj replied with a grin.
“No, I’m perfectly fine,” Torbon muttered. “Taj likely gave me a hernia while I kept her from falling to her doom, but I’ll be okay. Probably. Don’t you worry `bout me. I might die, but that’s cool.”
Cabe held a hand out to Torbon and helped him up, patting him on his back to shake the dust loose. “I’ll save up for flowers for your funeral. How’s that?”
“Oooh, I can make the casket,” Lina said, rubbing her hands together. “A mechanoid one that will walk to the hole and crawl inside and bury itself.”
“Yes!” Taj shouted, pumping a fist. “That would be so cool. We wouldn’t even have to show up if you did that. We could watch his burial on the holo-screens.”
Torbon sighed.
“Maybe Jadie will bake a casserole.” Cabe licked his lips.
“You know I hate her casseroles,” Torbon mumbled.
Cabe smiled. “Good thing you’ll be laid up in your own personal hole and won’t be eating any, huh?”
The crew chuckled, and Torbon pulled his helmet off. Taj ran her fingers through the tawny fur on his head, which was pulled back so tight it looked like his tail.
“Aw, don’t go gettin’ your feelings in a tangle. You did good out there,” she told him. “Thanks for the save.”
He grunted, but there was a slight flicker of a smile peeling his whiskers back.
Then she caught sight of her flashcannon, lying bent and broken in a heap a distance away, the sun reflecting off its wreckage. “Sweet Rowl, Beaux’s gonna swat my ears,” Taj said, motioning to the weapon. No amount of adjusting or polishing would make it okay. “Still, could be worse, I guess.”
“No doubt about that,” Torbon muttered, shaking the dirt from his uniform. “It can always be worse.”
“Uh,” Cabe started, reaching back and tapping Torbon on the arm a half-dozen times in rapid succession, “I’m thinking you two might be prophetic.”
“What are you going on about?” Torbon asked.
Taj, Lina, and Torbon spun around as one and followed Cabe’s upward gaze. Taj’s heart sputtered in her chest.
High above the Plains, breaking through the lower atmosphere, was a great, burning mass. Reddish-orange flames colored the sky as if dawn had come `round a second time today. Clouds billowed as the massive fireball cut through them and plunged toward the planet. Thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the ground while sparks of electrical current set the crew’s fur to standing on end.
“What the gack is that?” Lina asked, voice wavering. The lack of comm static and her excitement made each syllable unusually sharp.
Taj shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said,” but whatever it is, it’s coming down right outside of town! We need to get there.”
“Need?” Torbon asked.
“Need,” Taj confirmed, darting toward the windrider without waiting any longer.
Torbon sighed loud enough to be heard and followed the others, who had already shot off after her. “I clearly have no idea what the word need means,” he muttered.
Chapter Two
“Not to sound like Torbon or anything, but are you sure this is smart?” Cabe asked as they hunkered behind a rise.
They stared out at the metallic gray monstrosity that skidded to a halt just on the other side of the Maladorian Plains. It tore a great trough through the dirt and shrubbery for kilometers. Reddish brown clouds lingered in the air, swirling and obscuring their view. Daylight dimmed in its wake.
The balborans mewed uncomfortably somewhere nearby, the herd lost in the artificial dusk. The Thorn sat in artificial dusk, hidden out of sight in the tall grass, its engine tinking eerily as it cooled.
“Smart? Maybe not. But the right thing to do? Yeah, I think so,” Taj answered. Though she’d never seen a starship like the one before them, hissing and groaning as it settled, she knew well enough to understand there’d been nothing controlled about its landing. “Someone could be hurt. They came down hard, and only managed to get the nose up at the last second to keep from snapping the thing in half.”
“That’s no frigate,” Lina warned, her hand cupped over her eyes as she examined the crashed star craft. “I’m seeing what look like turrets poking out of the sand there near the aft of the hull. Maybe some along the starboard side, too, though can’t see what’s at the foredeck with all the bluster it kicked up. That’d tell me for sure what we were looking at. I’m guessing it’s a destroyer.”
“And what would you know about destroyers?” Torbon asked.
“Hey! I spent my three turns defense service under Old One-eye. He saw action over Felinus 4 during the Tab Offensive.”
Torbon chuckled. “That old Tom ain’t seen any action since before Mama Merr squeezed Gran Beaux’s litter out in a puff of dust.”
Lina stiffened and slapped her arms across her chest. Taj muffled a chuckle. “Maybe not, but he’s
got a vid-libe of old holos from the war I got to study.” Lina bared her teeth and hissed at Torbon. “Those are blast cannons juttin’ out from under that wreck, I’m tellin’ you.” With that, she turned to snarl at Taj, who whipped her hand away from her face, forcing her grin into a neutral expression. “We need to be careful.”
“We will be,” Taj promised as she inched forward over the rise, prowling closer to the crashed starship. “Just need to be sure.”
“There’s that word again,” Torbon mumbled. “Need.”
“I agree with Lina. Maybe we should wait for Beaux and the regulators before we go sticking our noses in burrs.” Cabe shook his head. “Plus, I saw some scorch across the hull before it hit. I don’t think it was an accident that brought that ship down.”
“Of course, you saw scorch,” Taj called back. “That tub hit the atmosphere flat on its belly like you did that time Jadie pushed you into the pond. A ship like this hasn’t got the deflectors to shunt that kind of burn. For gack’s sake, it shouldn’t even have broken orbit without a tow-ship guiding it in and an aerial berth to settle in. I’d be more surprised if it didn’t have scorch.”
Torbon went to raise a finger, and Taj spun on him, shutting him up with a glare of her amber eyes.
“And before you ask how I know anything about anything, Lina wasn’t the only one who studied the holos during her service turns. Maybe if you and Cabe hadn’t been so busy playing with the flight sims or your ships’ blasters, blowing up dunes, you’d have learned something useful. Besides, by the time Gran Beaux and the others muster and find their weapons, any survivors on that ship will have curled feet up and gone to Rowl.” Taj started forward again, waving the rest on. “Come on, unless you’re `fraid you’ll wet your fur.”
Cabe sighed and trailed after her with a shrug. Lina followed, shaking her head. Torbon brought up the rear, muttering under his breath about a steel bladder. Taj grinned, front teeth jutting past her lips where the others couldn’t see them.
Whatever they thought about the strange ship lying in the scrubland before them, each and every one of them wanted to know who or what was inside as badly as she did. They just weren’t as willing to admit it.
Eight insufferably long turns had come and gone since the quartet had served their mandatory tour of duty with the defense forces tasked with protecting their planet, Krawlas, from any and all invaders, a holdover requirement from the old world Gran Beaux demanded of the people. Taj chuckled under her breath. As if anyone cares about raiding a dirt-poor wasteland like Krawlas.
Still, it had been the last bit of excitement the group had had, practicing their skills in the three remaining antique freighters that had brought the original survivors of Felinus 4 to the planet, where they’d settled and created the small community of Culvert City.
Outside of their seasonal efforts at redirecting the migration of the trrilac, the last interesting thing Taj could remember happening on Krawlas was when a sparkstorm rolled through unexpectedly, erupting over the fields and sending the balborans scattering, tongues of twisted lightning crackling and setting fire to their tails.
She pushed on with a grin on her face, remembering the panicked herd, as they closed in on the downed ship. At first, she’d thought she’d misjudged the distance, the trip taking longer than expected, only then realizing the scope of what she was looking at as they neared, the ship farther out than she’d realized because of its deceptive size.
It was huge.
Stark gray, with only lighter patches on the hull—and the scorch marks—to delineate one section of the craft from another, Taj realized Lina had been right. This wasn’t any kind of passenger or supply ship as she’d hoped.
In a few places where the atmospheric burn, or the crash itself, had pried plates of armor loose, the width of it was exposed, showing it to be as thick as her skull. There was no way the ship was simply some modified freighter, weapons tacked on for show. No, this was definitely a destroyer, a star craft designed for one purpose: war.
That realization brought her up short. The shuffled feet of the others sounded behind her, but she thought she’d caught a faint sound in the background, one she couldn’t immediately identify.
“What’s wrong?” Cabe asked over her shoulder.
She shushed him with a raised hand. Her eyes trailed the lower half of the ship, steam spilling serpentine from unseen ducts. A deep, rumbling groan rose in her ears, and the ground vibrated under her feet. There was no mistaking the sound this time.
“Oh, gack,” Lina muttered, pointing at the hull. The barest of lines appeared along what had been seamless steel. Light trickled out as a great slab of the ship pushed forward, separating from the rest and easing toward the ground. A second sound drifted to their ears.
“Wait! What is that? Are those…?”
Stomping boots! Taj finished for him inside her head. Soldiers. Her heart fluttered against her ribs as the gravity of their situation fell over her. “We need to go. Now!”
Spurred on by the sharp edge of her voice, the group spun about and ran, kicking up sand and whirls of dust in their wake. But it hadn’t been fast enough.
The ship’s gangway dropped to the ground with a hiss and a menacing thump. Yellow lights split the haze, and Taj knew they’d been spotted right away as a sharp, crisp beam of illumination tickled her scruff, circling around to highlight them in the gloom. A symphony of hums resounded at their backs, triggering a deep-seated memory of something she’d seen in one of the old holo-vids. It wasn’t a pleasant recollection.
“Incoming! Scatter!” she screamed, shoving Torbon to the side as she veered opposite.
A greenish bolt of energy tore up the earth between them, peppering the two with shards of rock and charred pieces of twisted scrub. A second blast scorched the air right above Taj’s head as they crested a rise and tumbled down the short decline on the other side. Taj caught a shuddering breath and braved a furtive glance to see who chased them. She regretted it instantly.
A dozen aliens stomped toward them, garbed in some strange form of powered armor Taj had never seen the likes of before. A cold chill cascaded down her spine in sharp contrast to the heat of the blast weapons searing the air.
Elongated, bulbous, black-helmeted skulls rose above strange apparatuses that protruded from their faces like snarling wolf muzzles. Hoses ran from both sides, and steam burbled in the tubes with their every breath.
Oblong eyeholes glared back at Taj, green flutters in the glass warning of sight enhancers as the aliens charged across the scrubland, headed directly toward them. Broad pauldrons protruded from their shoulders, exaggerating the width of the tall, gangly creatures. Long, slashing armored tails swung behind them, but it was the gaping abyss of the blaster barrels pointed her way that resonated most with Taj.
These soldiers—these creatures—whoever or whatever they were, had no intention of capturing her and her friends. They meant to kill them.
“Go, go, go, go, go! Get to the Thorn.”
Lina bolted but stumbled as the ground leveled a few meters later. Just before her hands touched the dirt, Cabe had her by the collar and yanked her forward, keeping her on her feet. A half-dozen more blasts shrieked overhead as the soldiers squeezed off shots without even bothering to aim. Lina grunted and tore loose, bolting ahead.
“Would now be a bad time to say I told you so?” Lina shouted over her shoulder. “Because, I have to say,” she sputtered between gasped breaths, “I really did tell you.”
“Run now, be right later,” Taj shouted back. Much as she didn’t want to listen to Lina’s mrowling about it, she hoped there would be a later.
With the energy bursts exploding all around them, she really wasn’t sure there would be.
Chapter Three
Captain Relius Vort stared at the smoking console. His eyes traced the black char where fire had marred the pristine gleam of the equipment and warped the frame and shattered several of the monitors. He fought the urge to lash out,
to kick the console until it gave way in a flurry of pieces.
Instead, he stepped back and gave the crewman working on it more space, sucking in a deep breath to settle his nerves. Vort ran a hand across the dome of his skull and immediately pulled it away, hating the clammy, bald flesh he found there. His anger wasn’t yet under control.
He’d had his crew hold the Monger together with pure fury and willpower after that slag Bethany Anne and her Archangel II punched a hole in the port engine core, sending them listing, out of control. They’d made it as far as some off-the-grid gate before the other engine flared from the effort and died, sending them tumbling through the portal without anything resembling control.
Now they were stranded on some backwater planet that had barely registered on their scanners before the Monger broke the atmosphere and slammed into the surface.
Vort had delayed sending a distress call to command, dreading the fallout from having failed to bring down the Archangel II, despite having stumbled across the ship totally unaware outside an asteroid field.
Worse still, Vort had to report that the Etheric Federation craft hadn’t even felt the Monger worthy of being finished in battle, choosing instead to swat it as though it were an annoying insect, leaving the ship to flare out and drift off to die in empty space as the Archangel II continued on its way as if nothing had happened.
That was the worst part, he thought.
Wyyvan Command would agree, and the longer he could avoid relaying his request for assistance, the better. Even if that meant spending a few extra days on a dirt planet in the middle of nowhere while trying not to break anything else.
He’d sent troops to secure the perimeter of the ship as soon as it had settled, though he didn’t expect trouble. KI1047-32—or Krawlas as the local designation stated in the star registry—was a barren, low-tech outpost of a planet. If his ship’s orbital scans were correct, the planet was occupied by little more than two hundred souls that were congregated in a tight, geographic location on the small globe.
