by Elin Wyn
I didn’t have much time—soon enough, the mountain would come crashing down around us.
The Puppet Master was locked in a vicious fight against the Gorgoxians, and there was no doubt in my mind that the two of them would stop at nothing to obliterate the other.
Doing it as carefully as I could, I slipped through the crack in the wall and took a deep breath as a cold breeze whipped at my skin.
Steadying myself against the outer wall of the mountain, I held onto Teisha as tightly as I could. We were standing on a tiny ledge, and the wrong movement would see us plunging to our deaths.
Thankfully, the Puppet Master had thought of that.
A vine as thick as a rope was hugging the mountain wall, and all I had to do was hold on to it as I navigated the ledge.
Taking my time, I ignored the violent sound of the battle taking place just a few feet away from me and followed the vine onto a little trail.
“Thank you, my friend,” I said, brushing my fingertips against the vine.
I didn’t know if the Puppet Master could hear me, but I hoped so. After what I had seen inside that chamber, I didn’t know if he’d survive the day.
As soon as we’d emerged from the mountain, my comms system burst with pings of previous notifications and demands for updates.
“Sa’lok reporting in,” I answered on the general channel, “we’re out, but can’t see what’s going on.”
“The battle is over,” Tu’ver answered through the clamor of responses. “Enemy forces have already been relocated, and other than you two, we’re all clear of the location. What took you two so long? Find anything interesting in there?”
“It’s a long story, but wherever you are, you may want to get farther away,” I replied, then focused on my footing.
“Where are we?” I heard a frail voice ask, and I looked down to see Teisha staring at me. Her weak arms regained some of her strength, and she laced one around my neck. The green in her eyes remained unchanged, and that was a huge relief.
The Gorgoxians were probably so focused on the Puppet Master that they had forgotten about Teisha. “What happened?”
“The Puppet Master saved us,” I told her, smiling at her look of surprise.
“He’s alive?”
“He is,” I nodded. “He’s fighting against that thing inside the mountain.”
At that, Teisha’s lips turned into a thin straight line. Just like me, she knew the Puppet Master’s odds weren’t that great.
“Come on, we have to get out of here before the entire mountain comes crashing down,” I continued, walking down the trail as fast as I could.
Judging from what I could see, we weren’t that far from the place where Teisha had landed her hovercraft.
If we could get there, maybe we’d have a chance at surviving this.
“Right there,” Teisha cried out, pointing toward the distance. I had to narrow my eyes, but I eventually saw what she was pointing at.
The fuselage of her hovercraft reflected the sunlight, just like a beacon, and I couldn’t help but think of it as the lighthouse that would guide us to safety.
Fifteen minutes later, I was opening the hovercraft’s back door. Still carrying Teisha, I entered through the cargo hold and made my way to the front.
“You’ll have to pilot it, Sa'lok,” she whispered, her fingernails digging into my biceps. “I’m too dizzy and weak to do it.”
“Alright,” I nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Don’t crash it, you hear me?” Her fingernails went deeper into my flesh, and I smiled as I realized she was giving me one of her usual warnings.
She was weak and disoriented, but she was the Teisha I had fallen in love with.
“I’ll do my best.”
Placing her in the co-pilot’s seat, I fastened her seatbelt and then took my own seat.
Only then did I realize the task in front of me wouldn’t be an easy one.
I didn’t mind piloting different aerial units, but the problem with Teisha’s hovercraft was that it had been fully customized by her, for her.
“Alright, what do I do?”
“Turn on the fuel pump first,” she instructed me, pointing at the lever to my right. The moment I pulled on it, a liquid sucking sound filled the entire cockpit. “Now divert power from the main unit to the engines. You’ll have to wait until it stabilizes and then—”
“I think I got it,” I said, flicking a bunch of switches in rapid succession. I was working on instinct alone, but after seeing Teisha pilot this ship countless times, I was up to the task.
It took me less than a minute to have the engines roaring at their loudest, and then it was only a matter of pushing ourselves off the ground.
The ship swayed left as it started its ascent, but I quickly fixed that by turning on the ancillary thrusters.
“I don’t want to pressure you,” Teisha said from behind me, “but if I were you, I’d be hurrying up now.”
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, finally hearing the loud rumble of boulders coming down the mountainside. I looked through the viewport just in time to see an avalanche of rocks tear down everything in their path, the gigantic mountain walls finally succumbing to their own weight.
Pulling the yoke against me, I gritted my teeth as I forced the hovercraft up. I did it just in time to avoid being swept up by the mountain’s collapse, colossal clouds of dust making it impossible to see anything around me.
Relying on the navigation instruments, I somehow managed to head us up into the blue skies and away from the battleground where the Puppet Master and Gorgoxians were fighting to the death.
“Do you see anything?” I asked Teisha.
She said something, but I didn’t even hear what it was. My question had already been answered by the violent flash of red that emerged from the dust below us.
The Gorgoxian orb had grown in size, and now it throbbed with rage, pushing the dust away.
For a moment, I thought the Gorgoxians had triumphed.
I was wrong.
Thick vines emerged from the rubble almost at the same time, all of them going higher than I thought could be possible.
They all reached for the crimson orb, trying to encase it and snuff it out, but the Gorgoxians weren’t going down without more fight.
The orb lashed out with red bolts of energy, forks of lighting hitting the green vines over and over again.
“That doesn’t look good,” I muttered. Carefully, I started heading us further away from what was now an open arena.
Despite my urgent curiosity about the result of the battle, I didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.
Two ancient and powerful aliens were going all out, and I didn’t want to end up as a mosquito on their windshield.
“What is he doing?” Teisha whispered, her face pressed against the window. By now, thousands of vines had emerged from the rubble, so many that it seemed like an entire jungle was flying up toward the Gorgoxian orb.
A thunderstorm of red bolts tried to keep the vines at bay, but there were too many of them.
Relentlessly, the Puppet Master encased the Gorgoxian light and started tightening itself around it.
Crimson flashes escaped from the openings in the Puppet Master’s trap, but they were growing weaker and weaker with each passing second.
“He won,” I blurted out, barely believing it. “I can’t believe it. The Puppet Master really did it, he—”
Suddenly, the red light coming from the Gorgoxians became so bright that the vines turned translucent, their green skin turning red for a moment. I stared at the scene with my jaw hanging, not sure what I was looking at.
When I finally realized what was about to happen, it was already too late.
The explosion was unlike anything I had ever seen, and the light coming from it blinded me almost immediately.
I fumbled awkwardly with the yoke, tilting it up and praying that some altitude would be enough to keep us safe, but it was useless.
&n
bsp; The shockwave came fast and hard, and the hovercraft was rocked by it in an instant.
“Hold tight,” I cried out, the seat belt digging into my flesh. We spun around like a piece of paper blown away by a tornado, and the hovercraft only slowed down after diving straight into the forest below us.
A thousand branches softened our crash landing, some of them swatting the viewport mercilessly, and I just hoped none of them would break through and impale us.
When we finally came to a stop, I had a hard time believing we were alive.
But we were.
Against all odds, we had survived.
Teisha
“Help me into the chair,” I begged Sa'lok.
“It may take a moment,” he replied. “To do that, I’d have to move my shoulder, which I can’t do.”
“You moved your shoulder just fine before breakfast,” I countered.
“And I’m paying the price for it now.” Sa'lok flopped gracelessly into his seat.
I had no choice but to follow suit.
Every inch of my body felt like one big bruise. Three of my ribs were fractured, my wrist was sprained, my right thigh was basically purple from where it was smashed against the side of my hovercraft, and I was covered in a colorful array of sores, scrapes, and tender spots.
Thankfully, I wasn’t concussed and other than my ribs, nothing was broken. Recovery wouldn’t take long. Hot baths were a must.
Sa'lok had dislocated his shoulder when the hovercraft crashed. It was still swollen and tender. Dr. Parr had to strap his arm down since he kept trying to move it before it was healed. There was a cut above his brow. I’m not sure what caused it, but it needed stitches.
Frankly, I thought he looked rather handsome with a scar. His ankle had been crushed by the side of the hovercraft smashing inward.
Unfortunately, it was broken, but K’ver bones healed quickly. I thought their augmented tech was only in their skin, but I was wrong. It was in their bones, as well.
He’d be walking around normally long before I could.
“Want to know something funny?” I leaned over and whispered in his ear. Twisting my body to face him was a difficult feat.
My ribs groaned in complaint. I couldn’t do anything without my ribs making their opinion and discomfort known.
“What?” Sa'lok’s eyes glinted with mischief.
“I’ve been hurt more times in the last two days than I have in my entire life,” I replied.
“How is that funny?” He tilted his head to one side, then immediately regretted the motion.
“I’ve spent more time with you in the last two days than we have over the course of our friendship,” I said. “Coincidence? I think not.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” he chuckled. “Blame me for your clumsiness.”
“Clumsiness?” I blurted.
“I’ve never been caught in so many rockslides and cave-ins before,” he went one. “You’re the common factor there.”
“You caught me,” I rolled my eyes, biting back laughter. “This was all just an elaborate ruse to drop a mountain on you.”
“I knew it!”
I chuckled then winced, placing a hand against my aching side.
“Don’t make me laugh,” I whimpered.
“Don’t make me smile.” He gestured to the stitches above his brow, which flexed and stretched every time he smiled.
“Don’t smile with your whole face,” I cautioned him.
In response, he gave me a bland smile that was more of a grimace.
“Like that?”
“General Rouhr’s almost here,” Tu’ver announced as he entered the room.
Sa'lok and I straightened up as best we could and tried to appear professional in our injured states.
Within a few seconds, I had to slump back down in my seat. It hurt too much to hold myself upright.
The general strode into the room. I was used to him always looking worn down, but this was a new extreme.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He must’ve just returned from the field. His hair was still covered in a fine layer of dust and his clothes were stained and tattered.
“I’ve just returned from the crater in the desert,” he explained. “Those of you who have been there know what it usually looks like. I’m here to report that the crater has changed considerably.”
“Is the Puppet Master alive?” A woman I didn’t know asked. She wore a lab coat and a worried expression. She must work with Mariella’s sister.
I knew I was surrounded by the best and brightest in General Rouhr’s company. I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that I was one of them now. Who knew?
“As far as we can tell, he’s alive,” the general nodded. “But he’s unresponsive. His condition is somewhat like a coma. Fighting the force of the Gorgoxians drained him. He’s retreated into himself to heal.”
“How badly was he hurt?” I asked.
“It’s difficult to say. It’s not as if we can examine the Puppet Master’s entire body,” he explained. “There’s no way to tell how much of the damage is physical and how much is mental. From the reports of the incident at the mountain, I’d wager most of the damage was to the Puppet Master’s mind.”
“Where does that leave us?” a burly Valorni asked.
“We haven’t seen any signs of Gorgo activity since the incident at the mountain,” General Rouhr explained. “We’ve all learned to think of the Puppet Master as the beating heart of this planet. The temple scribblings led us to consider the mountain as the home of thought, the brain. The only way I can explain what happened in terms even remotely understandable is that the Puppet Master poured his heart into eradicating the brain of the Gorgoxians.”
“That’s not at all confusing,” Sa'lok said under his breath.
Thankfully, the general didn’t hear him.
General Rouhr spoke in terms that were largely abstract, but I believed I understood what he meant.
“The Puppet Master fought that battle for us,” the general went on. “I believe he did it not only to save his own life, but to preserve the planet we all call home. His loyalty is to us and we’ll be forever grateful for that.”
“Do you think he’ll come out of the coma soon?” a redhead with a serious brow asked.
“There’s no way of knowing,” General Rouhr shrugged. “The Puppet Master was in a state of hibernation for centuries before the Xathi crash disturbed him. It’s possible we might never hear from him again in our lifetimes or even our children’s lifetime.”
“That’s sad,” another woman murmured. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend.”
“And an ally,” a Skotan added.
“We would’ve been lost long ago if it weren’t for the Puppet Master.”
“I don’t think we were ever meant to be involved,” Sa'lok spoke up. Everyone turned to look at him, perplexed.
“The Puppet Master made it no secret that he was of an ancient race,” Sa'lok continued. “He told us the Gorgoxians were even older than he was. We’ve been acting like we had any control in the situation. I think we lost what little control we might have had long ago.”
“So, you’re saying we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place,” a Valorni snapped.
“Not at all,” Sa'lok shook his head. “On the contrary, we needed to be involved for the sake of the people who are alive today. But I think we should stop pretending we were ever a fighting force on this planet. After the Xathi were dealt with, we became nothing more than potential collateral damage between two ancient forces we can never hope to understand.”
I reached out and took his hand.
“It was never about us,” I supplemented. “We just happened to stumble into their war.”
“Exactly.” The corners of Sa'lok’s mouth twitched up into a smile. “There’s no point in trying to understand everything that happened, because we aren’t capable of understanding it. We’re just lucky one of the key players had a big enough heart t
o consider our well-being.”
“If anything, the Puppet Master managed to cleverly weaponize us,” Tu’ver said. “He could’ve strong-armed us into being his mindless soldiers, but he didn’t. He worked with us so we’d work with him.”
“We’ll never know how deep the conflict between the Puppet Master’s race and the Gorgoxians ran,” I said. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we couldn’t handle it if we knew.”
“An interesting viewpoint,” General Rouhr nodded. “But that doesn’t mean our work is done.”
“Of course not,” Sa'lok agreed.
“With the Puppet Master in a state of deep hibernation,” the general continued, “we don’t know how much he’ll be able to do by way of maintaining the planet. That’s something we can do for him.”
“We owe him that much,” I murmured.
Everyone in the room seemed to be in agreement.
“Where do we start?” Sa'lok asked.
“We’ve already started,” General Rouhr said. “We’ve figured out how to sustain our population while doing as little damage as possible. Now, we will turn to the humans for guidance, as they have turned to us.”
“The humans?” Mariella asked softly.
“Yes.” The general awarded her with a rare smile. “Before we arrived, you humans knew exactly how to live as part of the ecosystem.”
“We were a far cry from the top of the food chain,” Leena pointed out. “Just about everything in the jungle can kill us.”
“That’s no matter,” he said dismissively. “We don’t need to dominate this planet. We need to integrate ourselves into it.”
“I don’t follow,” Leena said.
“We have to find a way to become part of this planet in the same way the Puppet Master has. We’re simply living on top of it. We don’t contribute to the way it survives, but we use it to ensure our survival.”
“So, what? Are we official Planet Keepers now?” a Valorni joked.
“Yes,” General Rouhr said brightly. “That’s exactly what we’ll be until the Puppet Master comes back to us.”
Sa'lok
“One more batch done,” Leena announced proudly, hands on her hips as she looked down at the container on the table. In it were close to one hundred vials, all of them filled with the synthetic serum I had devised.
