by Jake Bible
“I don’t know Egthak all that well,” Sno said. “This a bad storm?”
“Bad enough,” Trel’ali replied. He formed an arm and held it out. A holo appeared showing the corpses of Sno’s backup team. They’d been brutally hacked to death. “I’m calling this a local issue. I think they got word of your operation somehow and decided to blow that transport station as a message to the Egthak authorities. The state of the bodies is consistent with other local murders claimed by an upstart terrorist cell.”
“Upstart terrorist cell?” Sno scoffed. “These aren’t preschoolers here. There’s no upstart to it when they end up killing three FIS operatives.”
“Of course. My apologies for the flippant term,” Trel’ali replied, his putty head bowing to physically emphasize his verbal apology. “But, I do believe these killings and the attack on the station are local, not galactic. Bad coincidence.”
“How’d you get involved? Gerber contact you directly? I’d think it’d have to be Gerber and not Crush. Considering.”
“Yes. Considering…”
Sno waited, but Trel’ali didn’t elaborate. He left their troubled history untouched between them for a minute before he said, “You going to tell me what’s next or do I have to guess?”
“Here,” Trel’ali said, all business. He stretched his arm towards Sno and a new holo appeared. “Safe house. One hundred percent clean. Go there and hunker down. When the storm is almost past then make your way to the docking ports. Port Eleven will have your ship waiting and ready.”
“I didn’t land my ship at Port Eleven,” Sno said.
“I had it moved and scanned,” Trel’ali said. “It’s being watched closely, so no need to scan it again when you get there. Take off and do not look back at Egthak. I will handle the terrorist cell and make sure your colleagues are avenged.”
“Avenged? This personal for you, Trel’ali?”
“It always is, Sno,” Trel’ali replied as he waved his arm at Sno. “Take the holo and coordinates. Get to the safe house. Hunker down then—”
“Get to the docking ports,” Sno interrupted. He waved his wrist through the holo and the image was transferred with a soft bleep. “Anything else I need to know?”
“If there was, I would tell you,” Trel’ali said with a quick nod. He turned and walked off without another word.
Sno watched him go, the Dornopheous disappearing into one of the sports field’s entrance tunnels. Sno counted to sixty, scanned the area with his eyes then left the sports field through a different entrance tunnel.
Once away from the primary school, Sno brought up the holo, memorized the coordinates of the safe house and the map to get there then deleted the holo permanently. If he was killed and his wrist implant was hacked, no one would know about the safe house. That was for Trel’ali’s benefit. No need to burn a good hiding place.
It took Sno a good hour to walk the streets of Egthak City before he reached the safe house. He’d taken a convoluted, circuitous route to ensure that he wasn’t being tailed. By the time he slid in through the house’s back door, the storm had hit the city full on and the sky had become nearly pitch black with dark clouds.
Sno didn’t bother turning on any lights in the house. He did a quick scan of the place then found a chair in the front room and sat down. He sat there stock still and listened to the storm grow and growl around the house. Soon it was louder than a battalion of heavy rollers.
Sno stood, picked up his chair, and moved it to a corner of the room that gave him a view of every entrance. Hearing was gone, even with enhanced listening through his implant. The storm was too loud. So he sat back down and watched and waited. If anyone came for him, he may not hear them, but he’d see them.
The storm raged on.
5.
The storm didn’t let up for most of the evening and far into the night. By the time it began to slack enough that Sno thought he could handle walking through it towards the docking ports, it was the early hours of the next morning.
Sno had been awake for thirty-four hours straight. He was exhausted, but that exhaustion was only background noise. His real mission was dead and his new mission was to make sure he didn’t end up the same way. Mortal survival tended to trump exhaustion. Sno’s field training and years of experience kicked in. Time to go.
Finding a towel in a dusty closet, Sno made another covering for his mouth and nose, wrapped and tied the towel around his head, and left the safe house, eyes checking every direction at once to find the attack. No attack came. Sno moved quickly away from the safe house, his shoulders up to his ears and head down to minimize the discomfort of the blowing dust that swirled hard around him.
Street lights glowed dimly as their halogens fought against the end of the storm. The light gave the street, and the next, and the next, an eerie feel. The world was a dim orange-pink haze of half-obscured solid objects and shadows that stretched on for eternity.
Sno kept walking, once again taking as indirect a route as he could without getting completely lost himself. Even with the cover of the storm haze, Sno would have spotted a tail if someone had been following him. He brought up a scan holo from his wrist and checked for snooping tech that may have been tracking him, but the display was clear. No drones or follow bots anywhere around.
The wind slowly began to ease up as Sno grew closer to the docking ports. Lights were coming on in the buildings around him and a few faces appeared at windows as storm shutters irised open. Sno picked up his pace so he could reach Port Eleven without being hassled by any curious locals. Egthak wasn’t exactly a bustling tourist destination, but it did a good business amongst galactic travelers. Even still, a man out walking the dark streets while an active storm was still blowing about would eventually raise a few eyebrows.
The docking ports were only a couple blocks away, but Sno stopped dead in his tracks as he watched a very large shadow appear under the street light at the corner ahead of him. The shadow had to be over ten feet tall and almost as wide. There were very few races in the galaxy that had those proportions while still looking as solid as that shadow did.
Chassfornian.
“Damn,” Sno muttered as he quickly looked for an escape route.
Dealing with a Chassfornian would not be a good thing. They were massive creatures. Built like giant mastiffs, but bipedal. Once used as shock troops in the War, none of the other races would deal with them anymore due to their intense need to kill anything they came in contact with, even supposed allies. They were usually with a handler to keep them in check since their default personality was pure, homicidal rage. Sno did not see a handler around.
A lone Chassfornian, off leash and waiting for him. Certainly not a good thing.
The space between the two buildings on his right was just wide enough for Sno to fit through. He ducked into the narrow corridor and sprinted as fast as the width between the buildings would allow. By the time he reached the end, his shoulders, hands, and elbows were scraped and shredded. So much for the shirt the swift ship pilot had given him.
Sno paused at the end of the space, ducked his head around, saw no sign of trouble, especially not a waiting Chassfornian, then burst from cover, his legs moving as fast as they could. The exhaustion was creeping from background to foreground, and Sno had to will his legs to move one in front of the other in order to keep from stumbling. Every rapid step was a deeply intentional action.
He was down the street and only a block from a side entrance to the docking ports when Sno felt more than saw a hunk of the closest building come part and rush him side on. Before Sno could react, he was hit so hard that he nearly bent completely over sideways, his cheek close to touching his ankle. Pain radiated up his leg, his side, and through his ribs.
But Sno didn’t have time to worry about the pain. He was flying through the air and about to collide with an ancient-looking roller. Sno tried to twist his body into as small a projectile as possible, but there was no time. From collision with the huge form t
o flight to collision with the roller was a second at the most.
Sno’s other side exploded with pain as he slid down the surface of the roller and crumpled onto the street.
He forced himself to get his hands and feet underneath him. Then he forced himself to breathe and haul his ass up onto his feet. Just in time to be sandwiched up against the roller.
The Chassfornian laughed, actually laughed at Sno as the man cried out in pain.
“You mine,” the Chassfornian said, his voice a timbre that was almost inaudible due to the low register. There had to be some races that couldn’t hear the being at all. “Mine for the bounty.”
Bounty? Sno couldn’t figure out what the being was talking about. What bounty? On who? Him? A bounty? Hits had been called out and paid for on SSD agents before, but no one had ever offered a bounty. A bounty was too public, too out in the open, too known. A bounty meant someone was sending someone else a message.
Sno was lifted several feet into the air, his body clutched in the Chassfornian’s claws like a child’s rag doll.
“You Sno?” the Chassfornian asked.
Sno wasn’t going to reply and make the being’s life easier. Not that he could reply since he could barely take in enough air for breath let alone for words.
The Chassfornian’s eyes blinked several times and a holo erupted from the being’s right wrist. It was a holo of Sno. The image spun three hundred and sixty degrees then blinked away.
“You Sno,” the Chassfornian confirmed for himself. “I get more you live.”
The only thought Sno could muster that didn’t have to do with the intense pain he was in was that he’d never heard a Chassfornian talk before. He knew they had speech skills, but not once in his career with the FIS and SSD, or his time with the Galactic Fleet military, had he ever heard a Chassfornian utter any sound that wasn’t a murderous war cry.
“Wrong…guy,” Sno finally managed to utter.
“No,” the Chassfornian said and hoisted Sno up over his shoulder like a sack of vegetables.
Sno grunted with pain, his ribs protesting the rough treatment loud enough that he saw specks and stars in his blurred vision.
Sno was carried towards the docking ports. There was a slit in the metal alloy fence just large enough for the Chassfornian to fit through. The storm hadn’t quite passed fully, so there was plenty of gloom for the being to take advantage of to get across the several meters of open ground from the fence to the first docking port.
“Who…?” Sno asked, unable to get out more than the one word. His ribs felt like splinters and each splinter was jabbing deep into his body, causing him to shudder and shiver with agony.
“No talk,” the Chassfornian said as they passed the first then a second then a third docking port before coming to a fourth.
Docking Port Eight read the sign to the side of the port’s entrance. There was no building, no hangar, just a wide-open landing circle ringed by a barely perceptible energy shield. The Chassfornian walked right through the energy shield to the ship waiting in the landing circle. There was a hiss and spark of static electricity that tickled at Sno’s skin, but no debilitating shock like there would have been if the Chassfornian’s biometrics hadn’t been keyed in properly.
Sno was able to get a look at the ship and that’s when the real panic set in. Skrang tech. The ship was not GF and was not part of any GF allied contractor or manufacturer line. It was Skrang Alliance all the way and the day’s events began to click into place.
“No,” Sno grunted and started to squirm in the Chassfornian’s unbreakable grip.
“Shut it,” the Chassfornian barked, ignoring Sno’s feeble attempts to get free.
Sno went still. Not because of the Chassfornian, but because he’d found what he’d been squirming around to see. There was a raw spot on the back of the Chassfornian’s neck where the kill charge had been removed. That told Sno that the Chassfornian had been one of the elite shock troops back in the War, part of a squad that had been sent out with full autonomy to murder everything in sight. The kill charge was simply a failsafe in case the Chassfornian decided he didn’t want to go back to base and get caged up again. Press of a button and the being lost its head. Literally.
Even though the kill charge was gone, that spot still held value to Sno. There was a nerve cluster under the skin that was as sensitive as the being’s gonads. All Sno needed to do was hit that spot with enough force and the Chassfornian would drop. Hopefully.
Sno threw an elbow into the spot and the Chassfornian slowed then stopped walking. It dropped Sno onto the ground and took a couple of steps back. The being’s huge eyes studied Sno as it rubbed at the back of its neck.
“Ow,” the Chassfornian said. It took a few more steps back, rubbed even harder. Then a few more steps as it rolled its head on its neck. “Ow.”
Sno watched from where he’d been dropped. He had no choice. The fall from shoulder to ground had been nearly ten feet. All of Sno’s concentration was on keeping his lungs pumping as his ribs insisted that they try to tear through and out of his body. Sno would have welcomed a ribless bit of relief, but that was wishful thinking.
The Chassfornian shook its head back and forth then let its hand drop away from its neck.
“Stupid,” the Chassfornian said.
The being took one step towards Sno. That was the last step it took.
Chassfornian pulp exploded everywhere as the docking port’s energy shield evaporated and a swift ship dropped from the sky directly on the being. Hair and blood and bits of bone coated Sno like a gory wave.
“Come on!” the swift ship pilot shouted as the cockpit shot open. “Get your ass up and in!”
Sno opened his mouth to let the pilot know that getting up of his own accord was not in the cards. Instead of words coming out of his mouth, a hunk of Chassfornian cheek rolled inside and Sno struggled not to vomit as he spat the grisly morsel out onto the ground.
The swift ship pilot cursed and swore as she jumped out of her ship and hurried over to Sno. She grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. Sno was not too proud to scream. He let loose with a cry so loud that the pilot nearly let him go to jump away.
“Hells,” the pilot said as she half-walked, half-dragged Sno to her ship.
She shoved him against the side of the swift ship and short, powerful clamps took hold of Sno, keeping him from falling onto his face. The pilot climbed up into the cockpit then waved her wrist over her control console and the clamps began to move, pulling Sno up into the ship. Sno screamed for the first couple of seconds then his voice gave out and he only grunted the last couple of feet before he was tossed into the jump seat.
Before Sno could do more than pull his legs inside the cockpit, the swift ship was already lifting off. Sno somehow managed to get upright and the emergency seat restraints automatically strapped themselves around his body. Sno would have screamed again, but his breath was taken away as he saw three Chassfornians racing towards the swift ship.
“Hold on!” the pilot yelled as she angled the nose of the ship upward and shoved the throttle to full.
The swift ship shot up into the sky then began to shake violently.
“You have got to be kidding,” the pilot snapped.
Sno didn’t have to ask what the issue was. He could see it plainly.
A Chassfornian was snarling and slamming its forehead against the top of the cockpit over and over and over again. The plastiglass began to crack under the cranial assault.
6.
Barrel rolls.
Simple fix when faced with a raging Chassfornian slamming its forehead against the cockpit hatch. Simple, but not easy.
The Chassfornian gripped that swift ship with all of its strength. Sno thought he could actually hear the hull crumpling from the power behind the being’s massive claws. The forehead kept ramming over and over, even as the pilot spun the ship with enough force that it should have thrown the being far and wide.
“Hells,
” the pilot said again as she tried every maneuver in her arsenal to shake the Chassfornian loose. Nothing worked.
“Hold tight!” the pilot yelled as she sent the swift ship into a nose dive.
Sno couldn’t hold tight to anything. His body had pretty much given up obeying, so he sat there, slumped in the jump seat, and prayed the restraints would hold.
The pilot yanked hard on the flight stick and brought the swift ship rocketing back up into the sky. The Chassfornian scrabbled to hang on, but even that large of a being couldn’t maintain its grip against the G forces that were shoving at it. With a final roar of rage and bitterness, the Chassfornian was shaken loose and sent falling to the landing dock far, far below.
Sno let out a breath he’d been holding and winced as his ribs protested yet again at even that slight movement of his chest.
“My ship,” Sno gasped.
“Gone,” the swift ship pilot said.
“What?” Sno asked.
“During the storm,” the pilot said and a holo appeared in front of Sno.
The holo was of Docking Port Eleven and Sno’s ship. It was a custom-made TL-33 Raven scoop-wing speeder. Four seat bridge with two sleeping cabins, a small mess, a single med pod bay, and a small cargo hold. Four plasma cannons were its only armaments, but the defensive shielding was next-gen tech that almost no one in the galaxy had. The ship wasn’t meant for battle, but for fast travel. If it did get into a fight, it could take a hell of beating while it used its natural speed and agility to get as far away from the attacker as possible.
There was a flash and the ship was no longer there. The holo of the docking port was still running, but the ship was barely more than scrap. Smoking, smoldering pieces and parts littered the docking port’s landing circle.
“I was leaving, getting ahead of the rush out of the docking ports when the storm finally passed,” the pilot said. “I saw it go up. Obviously, since I caught the holo of it happening.”
