by Tim Marquitz
“And the equipment?” Vort asked, wondering how much time the Furlorians’ little stunt had cost him. The loss of the shuttles was bad enough, reducing how much Toradium-42 they could transport back to the Monger, but if the drill equipment itself was compromised, it would ruin all his plans entirely.
“Fortunately, most of the drills and bits were salvaged, having been withdrawn for maintenance and cooling operations,” Dard answered, and Vort let his head loll inside his helmet, grateful for a piece of good news, at last. “We lost a few rigs, the machinery flattened in the rush, but our total impact is hardly affected. I’m more worried about delivery. Without our shuttles, we’ve little means of carting the mineral to the Monger.”
Captain Vort nodded. He pictured making the little aliens suffer, making them ferry the Toradium-42 to the ship by hand, but that presented a logistical nightmare. It would take far too many of his resources to cover the Furlorians to ensure they didn’t escape or do something untoward regarding the mineral. It also left the captives exposed, giving the remaining rebel element opportunities to free them. Vort certainly didn’t want that.
“Bring the Monger closer,” he decided.
“In its condition, sir?”
Vort chuckled. “The ship is hardly air-worthy, I’ll admit, but a short distance move shouldn’t impact the integrity of the craft too much. Build thrust slow and stay close to the ground, and I don’t imagine there will be any issues we can’t overcome.” He glanced out the wind screen, off into the desert where the Monger sat. “As long as life support and general functions remain intact, then our quality of life here will not be affected. That’s all that matters.”
Dard nodded. Vort knew the commander understood their position. With the Monger unable to return to space, they were dependent upon Grand Admiral Galforin’s assistance. Until they were provided with a backup crew and better drilling equipment, Vort’s goal was to subjugate and control the local population and obtain as much Toradium-42 as possible, given the circumstances.
He didn’t need the Monger for much more than shelter and storage. Realistically, he thought, keeping his amusement to himself, as long as my quarters remain intact, I’m happy.
The rest of the forces can sleep in town, if need be, until Galforin sends reinforcements. By then, Vort would have a substantial private cache of Toradium-42 and could live out his days in comfort no matter the outcome.
He grinned and waved Commander Dard on. “Get me back to the Monger so we can get the ship moved closer,” he told him. “And tell Kabal to be prepared for more fodder. Too many of the creatures still elude us, obviously. I want them carved to the bone until they give up the others, no mercy.” Vort paused, letting his thoughts wash over him. “And gather a number of the hostages together. I think it’s time for another demonstration.”
Commander Dard offered a sharp nod, clearly passing along the order already through the private comm network.
Vort grinned. Though the locals had caught him off guard with their ingenuity, he blamed himself for their success. Up to now, he’d thought of them as little more than vermin to be exterminated at his leisure. Now that they’d shown him their true colors, he knew better.
He wouldn’t underestimate them again. No, he’d spread their blood across the dirt from city border to border if he had to, but he couldn’t afford to let the little rats make a fool of him again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Stop it, Taj,” Cabe argued, his voice raw, and his words harsh. “If Torbon was in that shuttle, he’s dead, plain and simple.”
No matter how right she thought he was, she didn’t want to believe it. “He can’t be. H-he—”
A cold chill seemed to freeze her in place, goosebumps prickling the fur along her arms, and thumped her fists against his arms without energy. She didn’t have it in her. Too many losses in too short a time, and Taj was feeling the effects of all of them.
Tears stung her eyes and matted the fur on her cheek, and no amount of wiping would clear them. But she wasn’t alone in her grief. Though Cabe held her in place, doing his best to appear strong, his eyes glistened in the sunlight. He sniffed several times, trying to rein his emotions in, but there was little he could do.
Of all of them, Lina was the most composed, and Taj thought that was more due to shock than actual restraint. She stared into the distance, the column of smoke from Torbon’s crashed shuttle reflected in her wide eyes.
She stood without movement, only the barest flutter of her chest giving away that she still breathed. Taj was tempted to go over and shake the engineer to see if she was okay, but she couldn’t bring herself to break free of Cabe. Though he barely held her, it was as if his hand were steel clamps.
Rather than continue to struggle, she pushed in closer and wrapped her arms around him, sinking her head into his warm chest. “H-he can’t be…dead. He can’t.”
“You have to hope,” Cabe told her, but she could tell he didn’t believe what he was saying and was only trying to pacify her.
It didn’t make her feel any better, but she appreciated the effort, nonetheless. Still, she couldn’t get Torbon out of her head.
“What if he’s hurt, trapped inside the shuttle?” She felt him go limp in her arms.
“What if he isn’t?”
Taj groaned. She hated when he turned things around on her. She pulled away, huffed, and raised a claw his direction, but he cut her off before she got a chance to say anything.
“I’ll go check,” he said, “but there’s no way we can all go.” Cabe waved a hand in the general direction of the routed stampede, soldiers milling about and redirecting the balborans back the way they came. “Won’t be long before they have things back under control, and we can’t all be sneaking around seeing how they’re gonna be on high alert, especially now. We’ll be caught.”
Taj sighed. She’d had grand plans of using Torbon’s distraction to free the captives, but despite it all, nothing had really changed all that much. There were still too many soldiers guarding her people, too little opportunity to get something done that made sense. Right now, they were sitting out in the open, arguing about what to do. If it weren’t for the chaos still being tamped down, the aliens would have spotted them already.
They would soon enough, Taj knew. She let out a loud sigh and agreed with Cabe, much as she wanted to kick, scream, and argue. There wasn’t any point in it all.
“Yeah, please, check on him, just in case.” She hated thinking Torbon was dead, but she had seen how the shuttle had been piloted. He must have been inside, and if he was, it was highly unlikely he’d made it through the crash. She couldn’t bring herself to admit it out loud. It simply hurt too much after all they’d been through.
Cabe nodded. “Go back to the tunnels,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a while to let you know what I find.” He darted off without another word, disappearing into the dusty city, weaving his way between alleys.
After he’d gone, Taj stood there, staring in the direction he’d gone, doing her best to ignore the black column of smoke that was his destination. After a few long moments, Lina came over beside her. Taj turned to the engineer.
“You see that?”
Taj shook her head and stared off in the direction Lina pointed. At first, she could see nothing but the haze of dust kicked up by the balborans, but then a loud rumble helped draw her focus. The clouds swelled, and then were blown aside, a great orange fire clearing them away in a rush.
“Oh…gack!”
Taj’s heart rose to form a knot in her throat as she watched the alien destroyer fire its engines and rise slowly into the air. The sleek beast of a spacecraft crept upward in defiance of gravity. Taj thrilled at seeing it, realizing her hopelessness against the monstrosity built for war.
“Are they going to—?” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question as the Monger shifted slowly and turned toward Culvert City.
“I don’t know,” Lina answered, seeming to understand what
Taj had meant to ask.
Would they turn their guns on Culvert City? had been the question Taj was too afraid to ask.
She could see it happening, especially after her brilliant plan to attack the shuttles, followed by Torbon loosing a stampede and wrecking the last of the shuttles. Nothing to lose by raining down fire on the city. Taj imagined Captain Vort scorching Culvert City into ash with his destroyer’s weapons.
“Can they hit the tunnels?” Taj asked.
Lina nodded in her peripheral vision. “At this range, they’d blast holes a hundred meters deep or more. There’d be nothing left of Culvert City and the tunnels but a smoldering crater.”
“You’re not making me feel any better about this,” Taj muttered. The massive ship grew larger and larger as it moved in their direction, blocking out the sun. “We’ve got to warn everyone.”
Lina clamped a hand on her arm. “It’s too late,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying past the roar of the destroyer’s fluttering engines. “We’d never make it to the tunnels in time, let alone inside.” Lina pulled Taj aside, drawing them deeper into the shadows of the alley they hid within. “This is the end, Taj.”
Taj pulled her friend into her side, clasping her tight as the warship drew closer and closer. She hadn’t realized how quickly the thing moved until she noticed it was nearly above them. It had been only moments, and she knew Lina was right.
Even if they had made it to the catacombs, there was no way they’d have ushered all its inhabitants to the western hatch and out of the tunnels before the ship let loose its destructive energies.
Taj sobbed and pulled her friend even closer. “I love you, Lina.”
“I love you, too,” the engineer answered and, finally, she, too, let out a quiet sob, muffling the sound with the back of her hand. “It’s probably better for them this way,” she managed to say, nearly choking on the words. “Fast, painless…”
Right then, a great bark erupted from one of the ship’s engines, and Taj watched as it flickered and failed, staining the sky with blackened fumes. The ship groaned, steel creaking, and dropped in a graceful fall toward the earth. Taj clasped Lina even tighter, and the pair watched as the destroyer changed its angle and thumped heavily in the open plain outside of town.
The ground jumped beneath their feet and nearly knocked them apart, but they clung to each other until the earth stopped rattling. Wreckage already damaged by the invasion and the stampede clattered from buildings and toppled to the ground. Bits of debris showered down like wooden rain, but with the streets empty, it did little harm.
Taj sucked a deep breath into her stinging lungs and let it out loudly. Her knees trembled, and only her tight hold of Lina kept her from falling over. “Bloody Rowl,” she muttered, staring at the giant destroyer now parked on the other side of town, her legs wobbling under her. “I thought we were done for.”
Lina nodded her agreement, her ear tickling Taj’s nose as she slipped free of her friend’s grasp. She inched forward, peering around the corner of the alleyway, clearly assessing the alien ship.
“Why do you think they didn’t raze the town?” Taj asked.
“I don’t think they can.” Lina spun, a grin splitting her lips, teeth sparkling. “I bet their guns are out.” She gestured toward the Monger. “While I can understand them holding back initially, not being certain as to what they were getting into, why would they hold back now?”
“They wouldn’t.”
“Exactly,” Lina confirmed. “We’ve been nothing but trouble to them since they arrived, and they’ve shown they’re more than willing to kill our people without hesitation. So, that makes me think the guns on their ship don’t work, or they would have used them on us already.” Lina sighed. “Well, at least they’re likely not working for now. They could be busy repairing them.”
“Yeah, just what I wanted to hear,” Taj muttered, staring at the destroyer as it settled into the dirt. “Maybe they don’t want to destroy any of that weird mineral they’ve been mining,” she countered. “Could it be worth that much to them? More than our lives?”
Lina shrugged. “They’re throwing more of their people and resources into it rather than trying to capture us, so yeah, seems to make sense that it is. Gack, for all I know, it could be explosive, and they don’t want to blow the entire region up, especially since they are stranded here.”
“Also, not something I wanted to hear,” Taj told her friend. The idea that they were sitting on a field of minerals that could explode made her blood run cold. “Maybe we should—”
A loud, metallic clank drew their attention back to the ship. Like when they’d first encountered it, they watched as the loading hatch hummed and eased open. Taj clambered up the side of the building to get a better view.
She hadn’t so much as settled in when she spied the alien captain exit the ship. Alongside him walked his commander and a small army of soldiers, the group forming a tight circle around a cluster of captive Furlorians.
As before, they strode with their heads down, shoulders slumped. The whole group made a slow, steady march toward the town square, as they had the last time the captain had done this.
Taj hissed and dropped back to the ground beside Lina, landing heavily.
“What is it?” the engineer asked.
“He’s getting ready to kill more of our people,” she answered, her fists so tight her claws dug into her palms. “I can’t watch this, not again.”
Lina glanced around the corner, off toward the destroyer. After a quiet moment, she sighed and turned back to face Taj. “I’ve an idea.”
“Am I gonna like it?”
Lina shook her head. “Probably not.”
Taj grunted, hearing the group of aliens and their captives moving ever closer to the town square, to their inevitable death. “Gack it. I’m in.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I knew I wasn’t gonna like this,” Taj whispered, letting out a slow, quiet breath.
She and Lina inched around the massive steel plates of armor that blocked them from view of the two guards patrolling the Monger’s gangplank. The aliens stood there at lazy inattention, neither looking as if he took his duty all that seriously. Taj could understand why.
Who in their right mind would dare try to break into the destroyer, not knowing how many soldiers or crew remained aboard?
She caught herself raising her hand and dragged it back to her side. Taj was clearly not in her right mind, and of all the crazy things she’d done since the invaders set foot on Krawlas, this was, by far, the most insane, and she had Lina to thank for it.
Taj wasn’t even sure what they hoped to accomplish by it, anyway. It wasn’t as if the two of them could take over and secure the ship, even if they found it empty, which Taj was sure it wasn’t.
Captain Vort and his commander might have left, and S’thlor might have told them the Monger was being manned by a skeleton crew most times since the mineral had been uncovered, but how long would the captain be gone? How much of what the captive alien had told them was truth?
She didn’t have the answer to either question. That made her nervous.
“Seriously, Lina, what are we doing here?”
“We need to know what we’re up against, don’t we? Why the ship didn’t blow us all to Rowl, what kind of time we have before the alien cavalry shows up, and the answers to a million questions we haven’t even begun to think of yet.” Lina tapped a quiet palm against the ship’s hull. “All that’s in here, in the databanks and system memory.”
“And if we get caught?”
“Then we get caught.” Lina shrugged. “Outside of us sneaking off in the dark and leaving everyone behind, do you see anything resembling a happy ending here?”
Taj grunted. “And here I thought Torbon was the pessimist.”
“We’ve gotta do something, Taj. No matter what happens, we’re running out of time.”
Offering a shallow nod, Taj agreed without saying a word. Though she
would have preferred to do this a different way and spend a little more time doing recon to know what they were walking in on, Lina’s statement echoed Taj’s thoughts. There was no time to waste. It was now or never.
Taj waited until the soldiers turned their back to the two Furlorians, the men chatting casually and doing their best to pass the time, and she darted out from the concealing hull and bolted for the lowered gangplank. Lina was hot on her heels.
As soon as Taj slipped beneath the steel walkway, she cast a furtive glance in the soldiers’ direction. Once she was sure they were still occupied, caught up in the mundane boredom of service, she clambered up the bottom of the gangplank. She used her claws to hold her fast to the aerated steel, allowing her to climb the walkway on the backside of it, out of view. Lina followed close behind.
These aliens have never encountered a race like us, Taj thought with a chuckle. Not to mention they’d likely never had to wage a guerilla-style fight before either.
With the Furlorians stealth and grace, the pair were able to scamper along the supports of the gangplank, only climbing onto the upper side at the top, where they slipped inside the ship without notice.
It didn’t hurt that the destroyer’s scanners were even more finite than those of the shuttles. While they could most certainly pick out life forms from orbit, there was no way for them to identify singular targets parked as they were on a planet. They were effectively blind, only aiding the pair’s sneaky entry into the craft.
Once inside, Taj took a split-second to catch her breath, the air hitching anxiously in her lungs, but Lina was a burst of activity.
