by Michael Ryan
“We should have thought of these possibilities before they tried,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s going to be two on seven,” she said, “if we attack alone.”
“We have superior hardware,” he said. “I’m not worried.”
“I wasn’t worried about Avery and Callie crossing a little river.”
“Touché.”
They crossed the river in the rocky shallows, being careful to stay on a solid path. They reached the other side without incident and descended into the compound, which was still quiet. The two Dreki corpses hadn’t been discovered. Abrel took point and entered the first guard quarters with his JFUA standard-issue ACG-39 coil-gun at the ready.
There was no door, only several partitions that required zigzagging to get past. The main room was unoccupied, and he motioned for Mallsin to move down the right wall.
He took the left.
The first opening he reached appeared to be the entrance to a lizard barracks. It contained a round, nest-like piece of furniture that he assumed was the reptilian version of a bunk.
The walls had posters tacked to them as if the room belonged to a university student on Purvas. There were strange symbols on the posters, which were created with a variety of odd-looking fonts. Abrel realized that what looked odd to him was probably perfectly normal to the Drekis, although he reminded himself as he took pictures for Command that it was entirely possible that the lizards had hundreds, or even thousands, of languages.
Perhaps to other races of sentient reptiles the posters would be just as unreadable as they were to him.
One of the artistic-looking pieces contained an image of a massive dragon-bat-like creature similar to the ones they’d seen. The beast was depicted blowing a stream of orange-red fire at tanks and heli-jets. Just below the rampaging monster, under a group of Drekis being trampled under its clawed feet, were five symbols shaped into a crude pentagon. Three and a half of them were filled in with a golden color, while the remaining space inside the outlines was black.
There was another piece of furniture that approximated a desk. On its surface, a machine with a dark screen might have been a computer. There were stacks of a leatherlike material covered with symbols similar to the posters, but with what seemed to be maps and diagrams.
“Shouldn’t we document all this?” Mallsin asked.
“After we kill them,” he answered. “Follow me; there’s got to be one in the next room.”
“Unless they have an underground exit.”
“Okay, except for that. Or an entrance to a parallel universe.”
“Shut up.”
“You know I’m teasing. Let’s get this over with.”
“Love you, even though you’re an ass.”
“I’m nicer than Avery,” Abrel said. “He led Callie straight into that river to be eaten by giant crabs with armor-crushing pincers.”
“I hope they’re okay,” Mallsin said.
“Best thing we can do to help them is to accomplish our mission.”
“Roger that,” she agreed.
Abrel took point into the next room.
A large Dreki with horns was mounting a smaller hornless one.
“I guess the horns are an indication of gender,” Abrel said as he triggered his weapon on full auto and moved the steady stream of coil-gun bolts from the beast’s head down to its chest.
Mallsin stepped into the room after Abrel. She didn’t stop firing her coil-gun until after she was confident both lizards had been ground like sausages. The oozing blood and gore, accompanied by the lack of movement, indicated they’d brought the number of total enemies down to five.
“Quick,” Abrel said as they exited the barracks of the dead lovers. Two new arrivals attacked them and knocked Abrel to the ground.
Claws scraped viciously at his armor, and a mouthful of teeth filled his display screen as the creature attempted to bite his head off. He was unable to bring his coil-gun into position to fire, so he used his free arm to retrieve an EPL blade. He jabbed the glowing electric-plasma weapon into the belly of the lizard. It exploded like a bomb. Gaseous, rotten food, blood, and viscous fluid blew everywhere.
Abrel attempted to wipe the mess from his cameras, but he only spread the gore around, making the problem worse.
“Mallsin, I’ve been blinded by lizard guts,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I put my sidearm under the fucker’s chin and put two hundred rounds into its brain pan. It finally stopped clawing and biting me a few seconds after I was sure it was dead.”
“I need you to see if you can find something to clean my front cameras.” He stood and turned his back toward Mallsin. “I can see out the rear cameras, but we need to find water or something before the other three show up and–”
“Too late,” she said.
Abrel was blown backward by an unidentified heavy round that hit him square in the chest.
His rear cameras showed the distant wall approaching at high speed until he struck it. He landed on the floor after bouncing off the wall. He stood and turned, only to be hit again.
“Versus! Mallsin, what’s that?” he asked.
“They’ve got a cannon,” she said.
“What kind of cannon?” he asked as he spun around to see if he could get a visual.
“A big one,” she said.
He was struck again. The force blew him through the outer wall of the structure. His rear camera faced upward, and all he saw was the sky.
“Mal?” he managed to ask.
“Hold one sec, Abrel. I’ve killed another…but…shit.”
“Mal?”
No answer.
He stood so that his rear camera faced the building. He activated a missile. Once he managed to get the firing program to recognize that he wanted to aim from the rear camera, the reticule appeared.
“Fire, dammit,” he typed. It was his shortcode for times when he was frustrated.
The HE launched once the solution was green-lighted by the internal firing control system, and bits and pieces of reptile rained down in a fifty-meter diameter from the result of its power.
A second explosion from inside the building reminded him he wasn’t finished killing. He walked backward into the building in time to see Mallsin launch three successive grenades at the final guard. It rushed her, but she fired her jet assist and successfully jumped away from its attack.
Her grenades ended the life of the final reptile with explosive finality.
Abrel surveyed the damaged. “SDI scores nine. The ugly lizard people, zero.”
“Look,” Mallsin said. She pointed through the hole in the wall. Humanoids had left their quarters and were cautiously approaching.
“Time to see if anyone here speaks Common English,” he said.
“What about Avery and Callie?” Mallsin asked. She hated acting like someone who wanted to be in the center of attention.
“They’re either fine,” he pronounced, “or another few minutes won’t change anything.”
“Glory hog,” she said coldly.
“Aren’t you curious whether the slaves are from the tri-planets?”
“Of course,” she admitted. “I’m as curious as you are. Any bets?”
“My money says they come from all three of the tri-planets.”
“I’m not going to bet against that,” she said. “Come on, if we take too long, Avery is going to be pissed.”
Abrel was pragmatic. “Avery shouldn’t have gotten lost.” He activated his exterior speaker and tested it. “I come in peace.”
“Yeah, it works,” Mallsin acknowledged. “Let’s find water and clean your cameras. You look like an idiot walking backward.”
“I come in peace,” he said again.
Hindsight is always perfect.
In my haste to cross, I failed to account for all the potential hidden dangers in the waterway, like a treacherous bottom, swift currents, or what kind of aquatic beasts might live beneath the s
urface.
Around the halfway point the bottom dropped suddenly. I’d struggled to free myself from the muddy clay only to find the current strong enough to knock me over. I locked down my suit and tried to reach Callie over a comm. Of course, none of our communication systems were designed to work underwater. I knew this, but sometimes mindless habit takes over.
We should have locked hands before crossing, but as I said, it’s only hindsight that’s perfect. I couldn’t see anything; even the swift-moving water was dirty. Staying locked down wasn’t an option, so I freed myself and tumbled downriver. In spite of my continuous movement away from the Dreki mine, I was able to get an occasional foothold, which allowed me to move closer to the opposite riverbank. At one point, my boot landed on solid bedrock. I thrust with all my strength toward the shore, but the current sucked me into a whirlpool.
I attempted fruitlessly to avoid being drawn into its vortex, but I was unsuccessful.
As I spun in circles, a monstrous gaping mouth inhaled me whole, as if I were an insect.
I turned on my exterior lights, but they did me little good. The creature that had swallowed me constricted its throat. My display screen filled with a whitish pink wall of flesh for a brief moment, then went black as water rushed past me. After the beast forced all the excess water out of its throat, it finished swallowing me.
I churned in its stomach like Noah – or perhaps it was Jonah?
Then, after trying and failing to grasp onto anything substantial, I slammed into a metallic mass.
Callie.
She’d also been swirling around in the monster’s stomach, but once we’d grasped each other, we managed to interconnect our suits.
“This is fun,” she said.
“Was it Noah or Jonah?” I asked.
“What?”
“I can’t remember the fable,” I complained, “and it’s bugging me.”
“Jesus, Avery. You get bothered by the dumbest shit.”
“Well, it wasn’t Jesus,” I declared. “He could float. I think he multiplied fish and mined coins from their stomachs, but he never ended up inside one. I wonder what this thing is?”
“A giant eel?”
“Maybe, but to be honest, I couldn’t see much,” I admitted.
“Abrel and Mallsin are probably worried,” Callie said. “We should figure out how to get out of this mess. Should we kill it?”
“Let’s try something else first.” I fired an antimissile flare. “Let’s see what happens,” I said hopefully.
It only took a moment for a result.
As the flare burned in the lining of its belly, the fish’s muscles convulsed. We were vomited out of the creature, along with half-digested food, in a gush. We were once again in the whirlpool, but we’d been expelled with such force we ended up getting sucked downstream.
The bright side was that we were together this time.
“If I recall correctly, Jonah was expelled onto the shore,” Callie said.
“So it wasn’t Noah?”
“No, that’s the guy who defeated an Egyptian king and built pyramids.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I was in an ancient literature class, but still…I just don’t think that sounds correct.”
“Does it really matter, Avery? Seriously?”
I clutched a rock projecting from the bottom and was able to stop our downstream travel. “No, I guess not. History was never my strong suit, but I think it’s important to remember the past so we don’t repeat it.”
“Okay, we’ll make it a point not to get eaten by a giant fish again. And don’t let go of my arm,” Callie instructed. “I still need to get ahold of something solid.”
Together we moved along exposed bedrock until our helmets broke the surface of the river. The current diminished as we closed the distance to the shore. After slogging through another patch of sticky mud, we found ourselves on a sandy bank under a grove of banyan-like trees that were bathed in an eerie light.
Across the river, over a distant ridge, the planet’s moon had finally made an appearance.
It was half full and greenish blue. I wondered if it had an atmosphere and water…perhaps even oceans, considering the color. “The moon is beautiful.”
“It reminds me of Earth,” Callie said.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“You ever miss it?” she asked.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We both had such bitter memories of our home planet that speaking of it was something we avoided. I looked around to see if there was a gap in the thick foliage we could use as a trail to leave the bank of the river. There was no apparent route, so I suggested we walk along the bank for a while.
“I hope there aren’t any dino-lizards or crocodiles,” Callie said.
“I think the Drekis are the planet’s dominant reptile,” I said. “That’s enough, anyway, to keep us busy.”
“Should we try comm?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Let’s get closer. I’m sure they’re fine, and we’re too far away.”
Command had put two satellites in orbit over Drekiland on our arrival to the system, but the Drekis quickly destroyed them. Without satellites, or the Kuznetsov in orbit, we couldn’t triangulate our position on the planet, and no maps existed except those we created as we explored.
Callie and I estimated we’d traveled downriver at least five kilometers, but that was an approximation.
We found a small knoll that got us higher than the surrounding trees, and we attempted to ping Abrel and Mallsin. We received no answer from our highly advanced comm system, but a low-tech device – a rock – slammed into my faceplate. While not as elegant as radio or IR-comm, the low-tech ping got my attention the same as a sat-comm burst.
I looked in the direction of the projectile’s travel and saw four scantily clad humanoids. They peered at us from behind the trunk of a large tree, and I said to Callie, “We have new friends.”
“Let’s go meet them,” she said. “Maybe they’re nice.”
“Maybe they have a spaceship and can rescue us…”
Callie took the lead in walking toward them. “Maybe they know a good place to get a burger.”
“Maybe they can sell us a map.”
“When you want a friend,” she said, “you’ve got to be a friend.”
“I’ll let you do the talking,” I said.
“Smart man.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
All of morality and ethics is decided by those who have first committed genocide.
~ Malforn Vooberntz
Abrel washed the sticky mess from his suit in the river and could see again.
The slaves had gathered around him and Mallsin.
The first question in Abrel’s mind was answered: they spoke Common English. The second question required a show of hands. He turned the volume up to max on his external speaker and made a request. “Raise your hand if you’re from Purvas.”
Roughly a third of the group put their hands up.
“Okay, how about Earth?” he asked next.
Another third showed their hands.
He asked about the third of the tri-planets. “Talamz?”
No hands went up. Surprised, he asked, “Nobody here is a talarrstan?”
A tall member of the group stepped forward. “There were some, but a group escaped a year ago. And the others were taken.”
“Taken where?” he asked.
“We don’t know, but there are other mines.”
“Okay,” Abrel said. “Who are the other people here?”
“There are some from another planet, and a handful have learned basic Common English, but without comps or paper, it’s hard to get beyond rudimentary conversation. I’m Lieutenant Volsonjer, Guritain Armed Forces. I was taken from the Biragon.”
“Versus,” Mallsin said over her external speaker. “This explains a lot.”
“We’re glad to see you,”
the officer said. “But where’s the rest of the rescue party? Command only sent two of you?”
“It’s a long story,” Abrel said. “There’s four of us, but our partners tried crossing there” – he pointed to the river – “and they’re stuck or got swept downstream, or–”
“Or the jegulje ate them,” Volsonjer said. “But I doubt it can digest a suit.”
“What’s a jegulje?” Mallsin asked.
“What we call the enormous eel-fish that lives in a hole downstream. In our indoctrination to this camp, the lizards showed us a slave being fed to the creature. It’s one of their most effective threats to keep us working.”
“Christ,” Mallsin cursed. She pointed downstream. “We need to help them.”
“The lizards have tools,” he said. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”
They followed him to an equipment room that contained rows of low-tech implements. Abrel found a pile of chain and a spool of rope. “If they’re stuck, we can pull them out after securing ourselves to a tree.”
“What if new Drekis show up?” Mallsin asked.
“You call them Drekis?” the lieutenant asked.
“Yes. There’s been a lot of changes back home.” Abrel wished he had more time. “We’ll explain it all eventually. The lizards are called Dreki-Nakahi on all three planets, and believe it or not, there’s a coalition. The discovery of the reptilian army forced the Gurts and Teds to put aside their differences. An interplanetary alliance between all the major countries from the tri-planets eventually formed into a unified army to fight the lizards.”
“And so here you are,” the lieutenant said. “Finally.”
“Yeah, and so here we are.” Abrel took the chain and searched for a stable tree.
“You haven’t explained where the rest of your–”
Mallsin interrupted, “We were stranded.”
“But I’m sure they’ll come back for the suits,” Abrel said. “At the very least.”
“What happened?” the officer asked.
“We don’t know. They did, however, give us the coordinates to this place. So all’s not lost. They obviously know about the existence of the mining operation.”
