by Tim Marquitz
“Hey,” Taj said, inching forward to put a hand on his shoulder. “I know nothing we say matters right now, but like when I wanted to race up top and kill those soldiers for what they did to Beaux, I’m grateful all of you stopped me. It was stupid, an emotional outburst that would have cost me my life, and likely a whole bunch of others. The aliens would have seen the hatch and realized the tunnels are here. But you didn’t let me. What was it you told me then?”
Torbon shrugged, his teeth gleaming as his upper lip peeled back in a tremble. He remembered well enough, but he simply didn’t want to admit it since it didn’t serve his cause then.
“You told me he was dead, that Mama needed us more, and—”
“I also said I needed to find Jadie,” he interrupted. “I still feel that needs to be a priority. I should be out there—”
“I know,” she told him, easing in closer, “but you also understood we had bigger things to worry about then. We still do, horrible as that is to say.” Taj sighed, pushing on, even though she felt as if she were arguing the wrong side of the argument. “We need to rescue Jadie like we need to rescue everyone else, but we can’t do that by hurling ourselves at the enemy as if we can take them head on. We can’t, plain and simple, even with as much as we want to.”
Taj hated to admit that, but she knew it was true. They had no more windriders to throw at the aliens, no way to even the odds. “We have to trick them, set traps, and lure them out into the open so we can whittle their numbers down to a manageable level. Then we can contemplate a real assault.”
“And if we can’t cut them down and weaken them?” Torbon asked.
Taj swallowed, letting the knot in her throat sink far enough for her to get her answer out. “Then we go down fighting.”
Torbon sniffed. “They’re gonna kill her, Taj!”
She nodded. “Given the chance, they’ll kill all of us.” She waved a hand over her head, in the general direction of the town. “There’s no way that captain is gonna let any of us live, Torbon. We’re in his way. He wants to claim them firing on us was some miscommunication, some protective instinct by his men.”
Taj shook her head. “The reality is, they want something here badly enough to march out in force and take it, no matter who is in their way. They aren’t going to simply take what they want and leave us be. Whatever it is they found, it’s important to them. Important enough to kill us for it to keep us from interfering with their plans.”
She grabbed Torbon under the chin and made him meet her eyes as a thought struck her, a way to say what she was trying to get across. “Right now, we, the free Furlorians, the ones they can’t control, have the leverage.”
“Yeah, right! How do you figure that?”
“We do,” she argued. “Think about it.” He clearly didn’t look willing to, so she laid it out for him. In reality, she wanted to say what she was thinking and see if it sounded as crazy out loud as it did inside her head. “As long as we hold fast and keep interfering in their plans, our people have value to the enemy. They will keep them alive in order to try and lure us out of hiding.”
“They’ll keep killing them, too.”
Taj nodded. “You’re right, but only one or two if—”
“And that makes it all right?” Cabe asked, jumping in.
“No, of course it doesn’t.” She shook her head. “That’s not what I’m saying, but you have to understand. This is much like what Beaux and Mama went through when they fled Felinus 4. People died because of the choices they made. It was never something they were proud of, or something they liked doing, but it was something they felt they had to do. People died for their choices. And like then, a few lives, however hurtful the losses might be, are better than all of us dying.”
“You saying you’re willing to die to get the rest out? You’re willing to sacrifice all of us, too?” Torbon asked.
Taj drew in a slow, deep breath, giving herself a moment to answer. At long last, she gave a curt nod. “I am, Torbon,” she told him. “If it means Jadie and the others get to live, get to survive and go on with their lives, then yes, I am willing to die. I’m also willing to risk all your lives—” she glanced at each in turn, lingering a moment on Cabe before ending on Torbon “—if doing so ensures our people survive. It’s what Beaux and Mama would do. It’s what’s right.”
Torbon sighed. “You and I have a different definition of right, too.”
“Probably. But at the end of the day, I’ll do whatever is necessary to rescue our people and see them safe. It’s probably something I’ll die for, and if I don’t, it will be something even worse. It’ll be something I’ll have to live with.” She sighed. “Trust me, this isn’t something I’m deciding lightly. It isn’t some heroic gack to make you or me feel better about all this.”
“Good, because if it was, you suck at it,” Lina said, shaking her head. “I’m still not sure I agree with any of this. It all sounds so crazy, so stupid.”
Cabe stepped forward, his chest puffed out. “I know I’m gonna regret this, seeing how I agree with Lina, but I’m in. We need to do something.”
“Me, too, I guess,” Lina agreed, offering a crooked smirk that didn’t inspire much faith in her commitment. “Not like we’re spoiled with choices.”
At last, after several moments of silence, all eyes on him, Torbon nodded. “I’m in if it means we rescue Jadie. I’ll do anything to get her away from these sadistic freaks.” He stumbled back and dropped to his butt, the wall against his back, signaling his acquiescence, however reluctantly.
Taj mustered a half-grin, offering it to each of them in hopes of gaining their confidence.
“So, what’s the plan?” Cabe asked. “I mean, there has to be something bouncing around inside that skull of yours, right?”
That’s an understatement, she thought. The problem was, she had too much bouncing around in her head to make much sense of it all. She had a skeleton of an idea, a direction to head in, but there was no plan, no concrete course of action.
“Well, since we know they are holding our people as bait to draw us to them in hopes of capturing or killing us all, we have to avoid doing that.” Torbon started to argue, but Taj silenced him with a wave of her hand. “I’m not saying we don’t try, but we have to be smart about it. We can’t just storm the place or try to sneak in. They’re expecting us, expecting that, and there’s no way we’ll make it work. We have to do something they aren’t expecting.”
“Then what do you propose?” Lina put her hands on her hips, ears wiggling with impatience.
“We need to scout the area better, to see if there is some opening we can exploit, some way in they haven’t thought of.”
“And if there isn’t?” Lina pressed.
“We figure out what we’re up against, and then we make an opening and go from there.”
Cabe grunted. “You know, you make this all sound so nice and neat, like we have some secret weapon we can deploy against them when the time is right.”
She shook her head. “I’m not trying to make it sound easy,” she answered. “I know we don’t have much in our favor. The two freighters we have access to are hidden in the sand bunkers out of reach, not that they’d do us much good against a destroyer; not even a grounded one. And I know we don’t have a ton of weapons or people to confront these aliens. But all that works in our favor.”
“We’re smaller, weaker, outnumbered and outgunned, and yet that’s a checkmark in the positive column?” Torbon said.
“Not when you say it like that, Torbon,” she replied, sighing. “No, what I mean is, we know this town, we know the tunnels, and we know the surrounding area. We’ve all played and worked in it our whole lives. Between the four of us, we know every place to hide, every ferion spider pit, every trrilac mating route, and every watering hole there is for kilometers around.”
“How does that help us?” Torbon asked.
“It helps us because we can plot and plan and lure them into traps as they give
chase. Plus, it helps keep us alive longer.”
“You thinking we can aim a trrilac herd this way or something?” Torbon asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe, but that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking. Mainly, we need to figure out what it is they want from Krawlas. We need to know what’s keeping them here, besides a damaged ship, and make sure we screw up their operations every step of the way.”
“And if we make enough of a nuisance of ourselves, why won’t they kill everyone to teach us a lesson?”
“Because then we have even more of a reason to keep doing what we’re doing, Torbon. Think about it,” she started. “If we disrupt their plans, and they kill all our people, they lose what little leverage they have.”
“I thought you said they were leverage for us?” Lina raised an eyebrow, whiskers wiggling.
Cabe laughed. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a secret stash of nip you’re holding out on.”
“Leverage works both ways,” Taj admitted. “As long as our people are alive, there’s a chance we will give in to the pressure. And if we encourage that train of thought, let the aliens think we are being worn down by the threat to our people, then maybe we can accomplish our mission before they realize they don’t hold the upper hand.”
“But they do,” Torbon told her, throwing his hands in the air. “They have Jadie. They have almost everyone!”
“But they don’t have everyone,” she replied, “and that’s their problem. They have to weigh the value of their captives against what they’ll lose if they kill them all.”
“So, how do we convince them it’s better to keep them alive while we do whatever it is we’re gonna do?” Torbon asked.
“That brings us back to the plan,” she countered. “We scout the area, see what we’re facing in detail, not abstract, and examine everything. Then we make a decision based on that knowledge. Right now, we’re guessing at everything, making presumptions we can’t be certain are correct. We need to know more about our enemy, more about what they want from us, how important it is, and how we can minimize its value to buy time. Until we do all that, we’re peeing into a sparkstorm.”
“Fine!” Torbon said, almost spitting the word out. “How do you propose we start?”
“Not we; me,” she answered. “You three stay down here and take care of Mama and get the people ready for whatever happens, but don’t let them know our plans.”
Torbon chuckled. “Like we know what they are.”
Taj shrugged. “The vaguer we are, the better, I think. We know the aliens have our people, and they have to be asking them about the rest of us, about—”
“You mean torturing them for our whereabouts, right?” Torbon sneered as he asked the question.
Taj swallowed hard and nodded. “Probably, and that makes all this only more important. We have to do whatever it is we’re gonna do quickly because we have no idea if, or when, someone is gonna give up the tunnels. As soon as that happens, we’re all dead, and anything we do is for naught.”
“You really think someone would do that?” Lina asked. “Sell us all out?”
“If someone started ripping your claws out one by one, how long do you think you could keep your mouth shut?” Taj asked, eyes boring into hers.
Lina gulped.
“Exactly,” Taj said. “The longer our people are held by the aliens, the more likely someone’s gonna give in to the pain and tell them everything they know. When that time comes, we need to be packed up and gone.”
“As if the destroyer’s scanners won’t notice half the town running away,” Cabe argued.
“Which is why we need to be ready and do this right,” she replied. “While I’m off scouting, you three need to round up the remaining Grans and elders. Figure out where we can safely relocate them before everything goes south on us. There’s a greater chance they’ll survive all this and recover once the aliens eventually leave if we can get the folks in the tunnels to scatter across the planet. We can sneak out of here in twos and threes, joining up once they are out of scanner range.”
“So, we’re back to running away?” Cabe asked.
“Not all of us, and you can think of it more as a tactical retreat in the best interest of our people. We convince some of the younger ones to stick around and fight alongside us, to help us even the odds a little. Otherwise, we get as many of the others out as possible,” Taj told Cabe. “Ultimately, survival is our goal. The more of us who live on the better, right?”
It took a moment, but he finally offered up a reluctant nod.
She understood his hesitance. “Victory takes many forms, Cabe. It isn’t always about a route or a crushed enemy lying dead on the battlefield. Sometimes, it’s something as little as getting out alive, living to fight another day, but mostly just living. That thinking is what led our people to Krawlas, remember?”
He grunted. “And here we are, on the verge of extinction yet again. Seems our past tactics have worked out so well for us.”
Taj let his point hang in the air, the stink of it making her nose twitch. She didn’t want to give in to his pessimism, but she understood it. Sneaking around and fighting a guerilla war wasn’t exactly what any of them had trained for.
It all seemed…cowardly, nothing at all like the brave heroics she’d grown up watching on the holos. What they were planning didn’t feel like battle. It felt like murder, assassination. Yet, that was what the enemy had planned for them as a race.
She sighed. In the end, did it really matter how the enemy was defeated or how her people were saved? No, she thought, it doesn’t. Victory, by whatever means, meant her people lived on.
If ever the ends justified the means, this was it.
“Stay here and prep our people to head out,” she said at last, breaking the oppressive silence that had settled over the group. “I’ll be back soon, and we’ll know better what to do then.”
She started off without a glance back., By the time she reached one of the secret hatches leading out of the tunnels and up into the nearby desert, she’d even begun to believe they had a chance.
Chapter Sixteen
The trip back to town was exhausting.
Taj rubbed at her eyes and tapped herself on the forehead, fighting the natural decay of adrenaline. Up to now, she’d had some life or death situation to keep her veins firing, driving her on.
Out there in the dark, the quiet of night settled in over Culvert City, and the twin moons had slipped into the distance, taking their glowing orange light with them. Taj was beginning to feel the effects of the long, hard push to stay moving ever since they’d stumbled across the hostile alien forces, not even counting the trrilac catastrophe.
Over the course of the night, she’d slithered from shadow to shadow, rooftop to rooftop, and had, at long last, come to rest a few buildings away from the barns where her people were still being held. The guards around the perimeter were much the same in number as they had been the last time she’d been there, but there was a seriousness to their tone now; a deathly one.
Gone was the relaxed swagger of bored men who’d drawn the shortest straw duty of watching captives. Now, the men stood at rigid attention, their short, pacing steps crisp and attentive, heads on swivels as they held to formation and kept the barn under complete surveillance.
Taj bit back a groan. This was all because of her. She’d been the one to convince the crew to launch the Thorn at the shuttles, to escalate the fight. The aliens had been lackadaisical early on, thinking the Furlorians were no threat. But that was no longer.
Now, they were on their toes, not because she’d taken some of them out, but because she’d pissed off their captain with her stunt. His soldiers were paying for her attack, and she, in turn, had only made her job harder.
She thumped the side of her skull with a paw. Idiot! What now?
Keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll figure it out, she answered, smirking as she realized she was carrying on a conversation with herself.
; “Now’s not the time to go crazy, Taj,” she whispered, shaking her head.
When better?
She chuckled, ignoring herself. Yes, her idea to wreck the shuttles might have been a bit impulsive given that she hadn’t anything to follow the move up with, but she really couldn’t regret it.
She’d made it harder for the enemy to flit back and forth between their ship and Culvert City. And if nothing else, she’d cost them some men and equipment. Anything she could do to frustrate and keep them from accomplishing their goal here was a good thing.
She stared out over the building, looking through the gazefinders, wishing she’d thought to bring one of the small radios that had been stored in the tunnels. While their signal was weak and limited in range, it would probably transmit beneath any frequency the aliens would use, so they probably wouldn’t even know anyone was broadcasting.
And while there wasn’t much to report, and the last thing she wanted to do was disappoint the crew given how much effort she’d put into getting them to agree with her, she could use a voice in her ear to keep her awake and aware.
Her head was heavy, and her mind was getting cloudy. Though she’d been knocked unconscious along the way, it was hardly anything considered rest. They’d been going nonstop ever since the trrilacs had been sighted. It was getting to her, frustration only adding to the weight that threatened to drag her eyelids closed.
Taj rubbed her eyes again, stifling a yawn, then slammed the gazefinders back against her face hard enough to elicit a quiet grunt. She surveilled the area again—twenty-fifth time’s the charm, huh?—and fought against her drooping lids.
Then, as she convinced herself there was nothing to see and readied to give up and return to the tunnel, she caught a glimmer of motion at the barn nearest her. Soldiers were approaching it. She hunkered down lower in response, ignoring the puff of dust stirred up at her movement, and pressed the gazefinders to her face even harder.
There was a quiet knock, and the doors to the barn eased open a few moments later, squealing the entire way. Voices drifted into the night.
