by Tim Marquitz
“Come on,” the engineer whispered. “We can’t sit around here. There’s no telling how many patrols they have on duty inside. We need to get in and out fast.”
Taj couldn’t agree more. “Lead the way.”
Lina did, despite the fact that she’d never before been on a ship like this. Still, Taj trusted the tiny engineer’s instincts. With her hand on the wall, Lina jotted down corridor after corridor, as if she were being led by the ship itself. Taj grinned. That might well be true. But even if it weren’t, she still had to know better than Taj. To her, every gray hallway looked the same.
She sniffed along the path, drawing in the various smells and aromas of the alien ship, dragging a paw here and there to mark it, doing her best to keep the scents straight so she could find her way out if need be, but there was simply no way it would happen if she had to rely on sight alone. The ship was simply too uniform, too rigid in appearance to allow her to grasp her location well.
It was as she scrambled to unravel the labyrinth of the Monger that the shuffle of booted feet caught her off guard. Her heart sparked into a gallop, and she spun about as shadows darkened the converging corridor, voices muttering.
Then there was a hiss, and a hand clasped her biceps and yanked her backward through a door she hadn’t even realized had been there. A second hiss sounded right after, and Taj gasped as she was pressed against the cold steel wall, Lina’s paw over her mouth. Narrow eyes demanded silence. The two stood there, locked together, until Lina eased back, at last, letting Taj go.
“You need to keep it together, Taj,” Lina whispered. “There might not be much in the way of patrols, but if you walk right into one…” She let her warning hang, and Taj nodded.
“Sorry. Got a little distracted by all this.” She waved her arms about to encompass the whole of the ship.
“I understand,” Lina replied, this time not putting as much effort into keeping her voice muted. “Good thing we’re here already.”
Taj straightened and glanced about, the tiny room they were in as uniform and samey as the previous corridors, only smaller. “What is this place?”
Lina grinned. “For lack of a better name, the command core.”
“This?” Taj glanced around again, shaking her head, unimpressed. “Not gonna lie, but this looks more like a janitorial closet than any technological ship hub.”
“Which is why I’m the engineer and you’re the officer-in-training.” Lina grinned wide, teeth gleaming.
“Probably true,” Taj admitted. “So, what is it you want here?”
Lina shrugged. “Not sure yet. I’m hoping to plug into the database and see what intel I can download, give us a better idea as to what this ship’s current capabilities are and anything else we can about the aliens.”
“So, you’re pretty much digging through their belongings in hope of stumbling across something?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Taj chuckled. The fact that they had sneaked aboard the alien spaceship was crazy enough, but now that they were rummaging about in search of Rowl knows what, Taj couldn’t wrap her head around the lunacy of what they were doing.
“I don’t know about this,” she said, watching as Lina wasted no time and began fiddling with various panels. “How long is this gonna take you?”
“Minutes…hours.” Lina raised a furred eyebrow. “I really don’t know. All of this is, forgive the pun, alien to me.”
Taj groaned. “Had to go there, huh?”
Lina grinned and kept working, peeling back panel after panel and examining the electronics behind them. Not more than a moment later, she was absorbed in her task.
After watching without any comprehension of what the engineer was attempting to accomplish, Taj grew antsy, her brain wandering off of its own accord. She realized they’d made this opportunity for themselves and would likely never be able to take advantage of it again.
“I’ll meet you back here in a bit,” she muttered and slipped out the door and back into the hallway before Lina could argue.
Already aboard, risking being caught and killed every second they were there, it only made sense to make the most of it. The door hissed behind her, and Taj darted off down the hallway in the direction they were headed before they stumbled across the patrol.
As before, she marked her passage and trailed that of the alien soldiers, their musky scents a strong tether toward keeping her focused and headed in what she presumed would be a good direction to be moving.
The task of the soldiers was to guard the ship, and it only made sense they would patrol the most important areas. They’d already traipsed past the engineering section, where Lina played happily, so Taj figured the next area in line would be the bridge or the armory or something similarly important. It wasn’t logical that the aliens would guard the kitchens or sleeping areas, so she chased the scent of the aliens, trailing them in their arc around the ship.
It was only when the coppery stink of blood intruded that she stumbled to a halt.
A door with a small porthole in its face stood open a crack, and Taj realized that was where the smell emanated. Another door hung open a short distance farther, both set in a dead-end corridor. A quiet murmur sounded from the far room, and Taj pressed herself against the wall, drawing quick breaths through lips that were peeled back.
She could hear the shuffle of feet and a muttered voice echoing down the hallway, and though it was quiet and seemed content to remain in place, if anyone stepped out right then, there was nowhere she could run or hide. She’d be spotted in an instant.
Her mind begged for her to flee, and her feet nearly complied, but the thick scent of Furlorian held her in place. Whatever was going on there involved her people, and no amount of fear could spur her into flight until she found out what was going on.
Though the logical side of her brain did its best to convince her that she knew exactly what was happening there and what she would find, it did nothing to stop her feet from pressing forward.
She clasped her bolt pistol and moved to the cracked door. She drew in a deep breath and peeled the door open wide enough for her, and she slipped inside the dark chamber.
She regretted her decision instantly.
The stink of death and decay struck as she entered the room, which she immediately recognized as a prison of sorts. She choked back a retch, and pushed on, staying close to the wall to keep her away from the row of small cages and allow her as much room to maneuver as possible, given the narrow confines. Were anyone to walk inside, it would take them a moment to see her, and she might be able to slip free before they even noticed she was there.
At least that was what she’d thought until she spied who occupied the cells.
Her stomach churned as she caught sight of several Furlorians, people she knew from town, hunched over and locked inside the cells. They looked battered and bruised and, in the case of several, ready to curl up and let Rowl take them. None that she could tell were awake or conscious, each lying in a pool of their own blood and filth.
“What are you doing here?” a raspy voice asked from the center-most cage.
Taj stiffened and caught a blur of movement as one of the Furlorians opened her eyes and stared out at Taj. It took a few seconds, the swollen wreckage of the woman’s face distorting her features, but Taj realized who it was: Gran Lee, an elder who’d been friends with Mama Merr since the flight from Felinus 4.
Taj raced to the cage, clasping the bars as though she might rip them loose from their moorings. “I need to get you out of here.”
The old Gran shook her head, though the movement was barely noticeable given her obvious weakness. “No, child, there’ll be none of that,” she said, her raspy voice a barren desert long devoid of moisture. “We’re already dead.”
Taj choked on a sob, her eyes wandering the cages of their own accord, confirming the Gran’s statement. None of the other Furlorians did much more than shudder or twitch. This close to them, Taj could smell the end upon
them, each clinging to life more out of habit than desire. They had been broken, each and every one of them.
The thought set fire to Taj’s tears, sending them steaming away from her eyes. She wanted to rip Captain Vort’s throat out, make him pay for what he’d done to her people, make him suffer. Her mind filled with a million ideas of torment and torture, how she’d make Vort suffer, but all that was derailed as Gran Lee eased a hand through the bars and clasped Taj’s leg.
“Now is not the time for revenge, child,” she managed to say, startling Taj back to the present.
“Then when is?”
Lee forced the barest of smiles at that but shook her head. “Those of us here will not surrender anything to these invaders,” she said, “but their torturer is crafty. It’s only a matter of time before someone gives in to his wiles and reveals where our people hide away, child.”
She gestured toward the room farther down the hall with a limp wave. “You must get our people and flee before they stumble upon that person and more of us suffer. Find Mama and Beaux, get them to safety, then worry about putting a hole in this captain’s chest.”
The mention of Mama and Gran Beaux snuffed the fury Taj felt, filling her eyes with tears once more. Still, she held her tongue and said nothing to the old Gran. If she didn’t know Beaux and Mama were dead, Taj sure as gack wouldn’t let that be her last memory. She simply nodded.
“I can’t leave you here, though,” Taj muttered, letting her hands examine the bars in search of a way to open them. But before she managed that, she heard voices in the hall outside.
“Go, child,” Gran Lee told her. “I’m done, but you have a mission before you, which must be fulfilled. Do not let foolishness land you here with me.” She drew a deep, trembling breath and waved. “Go.”
As if on instinct, Taj turned her back on the old Gran, though it sent waves of fire arcing through her heart, and she ran to the cracked door. She peered outside as two alien soldiers stalked past. Taj stiffened, pinning herself against the wall, her bolt pistol clasped so tight in her hands that her knuckles ached. She held her breath, crouched low, ready to pounce.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to.
The complaining soldiers kept on, marching down the hall, and then turning into the room at the end of the corridor before vanishing from sight. Taj let the stale air gush from her lungs and turned to face the old Gran one last time.
“I’ll be back for you,” she told her, though they both knew that was likely a white lie, spoken more for comfort than anything else. Gran Lee offered a somber nod, relieving Taj of her obligation without a word, and let her head drop the floor once more.
Taj swallowed a sob and bolted from the room before the soldiers emerged from the other to spot her. She wiped her nose on the back of her paw, clearing it to better scent her way back the way she’d come.
Ears flickering, on alert, she raced back toward where she’d left Lina. She came across the engineer as Lina left the command core room, the two hissing as they nearly collided. Taj took a second to catch her breath, then asked, “Get what you needed?”
Lina grinned and nodded, patting a small, metallic cube tucked under her arm. “You?”
“Way more,” Taj answered, unwilling to elaborate even when Lina pressed her. “Let’s get out of here. We can catch up afterward.”
Lina didn’t argue, and the pair darted for the exit, slipping free of the Monger as easily as they’d boarded her because the two soldiers outside were still as distracted as ever.
It was a quiet journey back to the tunnels, and no matter how many times Lina nudged her for information, Taj couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She couldn’t get the image of Gran Lee and the others out of her mind, and she feared that, once she started talking, the tears would spill free and never stop.
So, instead, she held her tongue and made her way home, doing her best to ignore the alien Captain’s voice that blared ominously through town over his loudspeaker. She twitched as blaster fire emphasized his every word, and she did her best to ignore the sound of her people dying and kept moving.
She could break down once she was there, she promised herself. If only for a little while.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“If I have not made it clear, the games are over,” Captain Vort shouted, letting his voice carry across the square.
He reached out and grabbed a Furlorian by its scruff, reveling in its hissing and moaning, and pressed the barrel of blaster pistol against the back of the creature’s skull. He tapped the trigger without remorse, blowing a hole in the alien’s head.
Blood splattered Vort’s visor, dotting his vision, but that didn’t deter the captain. In fact, it only motivated him. He let the dead alien drop and snatched another, doing the same and tossing the Furlorian’s body into the dirt beside its brethren.
“I’ve no more patience for this,” he said, turning about to ensure the entire city heard him, hidden or otherwise. “My torturer is working relentlessly at breaking the will of your people. It will not be long before these poor, broken souls surrender.” He waved to Commander Dard, who stepped forward with a large, plastic bag.
Dard raised the bag and showed it about before untying the clasp. He held the bag over his head and dumped the contents out. Severed Furlorian fingers rained down, splattering as they hit the dirt. He moved back behind the captain once he was finished.
“This is your last warning,” Vort called out, gesturing to the fingers. “Come sundown, I will offer no more mercy. Surrender or die.”
Vort kicked the pile of fingers aside, scattering them over the street like gory party gifts, and then he spun about on his heel. His visor sealed, he stared grim at the alien town that surrounded him, hoping the locals would, at last, heed to his orders and give up.
Another unexpected move like the stampede and Vort would have too few men to take advantage of the lull before Grand Admiral Galforin’s forces arrived and took control over Vort’s Toradium-42 find.
After everything he’d been through, there was no way he would let that happen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Taj did her best to ignore the nagging voice in her head that told her the alien captain had killed people while she ran, purposely avoiding town square as it happened. She’d enough guilt weighing her down already. Soon, she wouldn’t have the strength to put one foot in front of the other for all the torment piled atop her shoulders.
To have witnessed who had been murdered, to see their faces and know who they were, would have broken her. Taj was against the wall, and she knew it. Wouldn’t take much more to shatter her completely.
In the tunnels, at last, she found a quiet place to sit away from the hubbub of the rest of her people. She was unable to face them yet. Dropping to her butt with a sigh, her tail swished behind her as Lina plopped down beside her. She clutched the box she’d taken from the alien ship, her eyes never leaving it.
Rather than dwell on everything, her mind a tangle of briars, she motioned her chin toward the box. “What is that thing?”
“This…this is a control cube,” Lina answered. “I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, the thing is alien, you know? I’m pretty sure, but it’s gonna take some tinkering for me to get the hang of it.”
“What does it do?” Taj asked. “You know that, at least?”
Lina chuckled. “Well, if I didn’t mistakenly pick up a trash incinerator instead, this thing should allow me to remotely access some of the destroyer’s basic functions once I make some adjustments.”
“Should?”
“Alien tech, remember?” Lina fiddled with the box, turning it over in her hands. “If it works the way I think it does, it’s basically a step down from an EI system. There’s no sentience to it, fortunately, but it allows for a small crew to more effectively pilot and control the ship while freeing up people to do other things.”
“Rampage and destroy, obviously.”
“Sounds abo
ut right,” Lina agreed. “But yeah, this thing is basically the operating system of the Monger, the computer that runs the computer.”
“Can you fix the guns and use them through that?” Taj pointed at the box.
Lina shook her head. “Nope. Were the guns being used against us, I might be able to draw power from them, redirect it elsewhere, but fire control isn’t integrated into the cube from what I can tell. That’s a separate process, intentional redundancies in case something happens to this thing.”
“Like nerdy little engineers getting their hands on it?”
“You know it.” Lina chuckled, but her laughter was cut off by a shuffle of feet. Her eyes shot wide, and Taj spun about to see what had spooked her.
Cabe came around the corner, shadows flanking him. His grin was so bright it illuminated the tunnel with its gleam. “Look what I found.” He stepped to the side and let the dark figures approach. Taj nearly choked as she scrambled to her feet.
There, whole and apparently healthy, stood Torbon, his grin twice as wide as Cabe’s.
“What the gack!” Taj leapt at him, slamming him into the wall as she embraced him. “You’re okay?”
Torbon chuckled. “I am,” he answered, clearly enjoying the attention.
“But…we thought…”
Lina crashed into the pair, wrapping her arms around both Taj and Torbon, squeezing them for all she was worth.
“I was dead?” Torbon asked. “I thought maybe I was for a little while, too. I damn near didn’t get out of the shuttle fast enough, but no, I made it.” He reached up and touched a spot on his forehead where his fur had been scorched. “It was close, though, have to admit,” he said with a grin.
“You scared the gack out of us,” Taj screamed at him, pulling away and punching him in the arm. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
Torbon grunted and raised his hands in supplication. “Hey, that hurts. Is that how you treat a conquering hero?”
