Race to Crashpoint Tower

by Daniel José Older

  Zeen shook her head, still chuckling through gritted teeth. “No idea, man.”

  “MEAT!” a voice like curdled milk came from below.

  Ram lit his saber. Zeen pulled out two blasters. “This is why I prefer machines,” he said with a scowl. “They don’t try to eat you.”

  “MEAT MEAT MEAT!” The vines and branches, which had been creeping and crawling toward Ram and Zeen at a gradual rate, suddenly lurched closer. Huge, razor-sharp spines poked out of the thick stalks as they stretched upward, wrapping tightly around the metal legs of the tower.

  “We don’t want to hurt you!” Ram yelled, edging lower stair by stair. The control panel was half a level down, only a few more steps. “We’re just trying to get to that comms box, that’s all!”

  “This meat is talkative!” one Drengir commented.

  “Talkative meat is often quite chewy, I find,” another noted.

  “Has fancy light sword, mm?” said a third.

  “Ahh, those meats are especially testy.”

  “But also succulent, I have heard!”

  A collective “Mmmmmm!” rose up.

  Ram took a few more steps and heard Zeen close behind him, felt her shivery breaths and the bristling of her fear as it rippled through the Force and mixed with his own. “Hello? Are you even listening to us? I’m talking to you! I don’t want to use this light sword, okay? We’re not trying to hurt you!”

  The Drengir rose all around them, their wooden, leafy tendrils clasping and creaking as they stretched and twined ever upward, blocking out the treetops and sky.

  “Do you speak meat?” one hissed.

  “Of course, we are speaking it now! I find it dull, though. Try to ignore, mostly.”

  “I, too. A useless skill, really.”

  “Ram…” Zeen said.

  “I know, I know.” They’d reached the box. The front casing had been popped open, and a thick vine snaked through the middle. “Drat.”

  “How bad is it?” Zeen had her back to Ram, facing the swarming plant creatures around them.

  “It’s bad,” Ram said. “I might still be able to fix it though. I just need time….”

  “Is time to eat, then?” a Drengir whispered.

  “MEAT!” they all cried at once. Rustling erupted from everywhere.

  “I don’t think we have that!” Zeen said, and laser fire burst from both her blasters, shredding through the plants closing in on them. The charred stumps recoiled, revealing a brief glimpse of the blue sky, a group of approaching starfighters, clouds. Flaming leaves and twigs rained down around them as Ram pulled out the damaged wires from inside the box and clipped off their twisted ends. Zeen stopped shooting, her breath heavy.

  “Wow! Meats with an audacious and ferocious desire to remain uneaten,” a Drengir mused. “It is interesting!”

  Ram secured the fixed wires in the remaining slots, slid a shattered pulse node out of the way, and clicked the outlying modulator bracket back into place.

  “Back!” Zeen yelled. The Drengir had already begun regenerating; a cruel chuckle rang out over the rustle of leaves. “Stay back!”

  Ram scowled. Those blasters weren’t going to hold the Drengir off for much longer. He ignited his saber and sliced away the chunk of vine still sticking out of the comms box. Then he deactivated the blade and reached over his shoulder to tap Zeen with the hilt. “We’re not really supposed to share them,” he said, “but we don’t have much choice. You may not be an official Jedi, but I know you have my back, and anyway, I need your help!”

  Zeen blinked, eyes wide, then beamed at him. She holstered her blasters and took the lightsaber. “Thank you.”

  “Meats share bright weapons!”

  “Hold them off,” Ram said, turning back to the box. “We’ll need all the help we can get.”

  Drengir were crowding in from the far side of the platform, chuckling and chatting rudely with each other as they went. Ram extended his hands, palm out, and used the Force to push them away, then got back to it. Zeen grunted as she cleaved a vicious swath of open space around them.

  “Ayeeeee! Feisty meats!”

  “Meats and meats!”

  More sizzling branches and leaves collapsed around them.

  Ram had cleared all the debris from the box, fixed the wiring, and gotten the sensor systems up and running. All that was left was to connect the main transmission vortices, but those were closeted away in the rear area of the system…. He popped open the little door protecting them and groaned. The main vortex was shattered, and all the smaller ones were dangling out in a tangled mess.

  “Bad news,” he called over the swoosh-swoosh of his own lightsaber chopping back and forth.

  “I got some of that, too,” Zeen said. “You first.”

  “We’re missing a crucial piece of this comms unit. What about you?”

  “These plants seem to grow back faster and faster every time you chop them.”

  Ram spun around. Zeen had been keeping a good stretch of open space around them, but already the sky was blotted out again by rising branches. “Yikes.”

  “Also, I think their spines are getting bigger.”

  “Meats!”

  “Prepare to eat meats!”

  “What do we do?” Zeen asked, her wide eyes finding Ram’s.

  Ram shook his head. He had no idea. “Keep fighting.”

  Lula slammed down on the roof of a single-pilot craft with a thud. She landed in a squat, making sure the impact didn’t reverberate all the way up her spine, both hands out for balance. The ship swerved suddenly to one side and Lula threw herself down and grabbed a gun turret to keep from flying off.

  Her lightsaber flew free from its holster and into her hand, and in seconds it was lit and burning a bright gash into the starboard thruster engine. That ought to do it. Lula pulled herself up, one hand still clutching the cannons, braced herself, then leapt away just as it nose-dived toward the treetops, smoke pouring out of it.

  She landed on a passing pocket cruiser. The long, fast ship had been modified so its main-cabin canopy could roll back when it wasn’t in deep space, making it look more like an elaborate speeder. Four Nihil raiders were crammed inside—one driving, two with their blasters out, and the fourth behind a rear double-laser cannon. Lula scurried up the long nose cone, dodging from one side to the other as blaster shots zinged by. She leapt over the windscreen, came down solidly on top of the pilot’s helmeted head, threw an extra knee drop in for good measure, and then sprang forward, flipping over the other raiders, and slashed the double cannon down the middle as she slid to a stop on the rear ion accelerator.

  The Nihil behind the cannon tilted his masked head at her for a second, bewildered, before they all turned and screamed. A small fighter blitzed toward them, lasers blazing. Up ahead of Lula, a single Nihil raised the top hatch of what looked like an ancient escape pod that had come to a hover. He pulled out a shoulder-mounted torpedo launcher. A barrage of fire from the fighter, an R-wing, slammed into the mini cruiser, sending it listing to the side as a few of the raiders dove for cover.

  Lula jumped.

  The trees were a blur below, the wind a furious shriek in her ears.

  She was one with the Force and the Force was with her. She felt it rise inside her.

  But she wasn’t going to make it. The escape pod was too far. She’d already hit the highest point of her bound and was starting to descend.

  With all her might, she used the Force to pull the pod sharply downward, even as a torpedo surged toward her. She swatted the missile away with her lightsaber and grabbed the bottom rung of an exterior ladder on the pod, swinging up fast so she wouldn’t get singed by the low sizzle of thruster fire.

  “Hey!” the Nihil on top yelled, glancing around for her. “Where—”

  But Lula had already scrambled up the side and pulled herself onto the lip of the opening. It just took a small shove with the Force to slam the top hatch shut on the raider, who dropped his launcher with a yelp
and collapsed inside.

  Lula stood and surveyed the battlefield around her.

  The empty mini cruiser sank in a flaming, smoky dive toward the treetops, felled by the fighter’s attempt to blast Lula off it. The first ship she’d landed on had already crashed, and the pod she stood on was out of commission.

  The three remaining ships circled above, reassessing who they were up against, no doubt. They let off a few shots, which Lula easily batted away. Out in the sky toward Lonisa City, the sanval had sent a few fliers careening toward the ground, but she was chasing a larger vessel that had made a break for the main battleground.

  The other raiders had already turned their ships back toward Lula and were approaching quickly.

  How much longer could she hold out? She glanced down, saw flashes of blaster fire and the shine of Ram’s yellow lightsaber swinging amid the tangled Drengir, but she couldn’t make out anything else.

  Up ahead, the Nihil ships were already launching a fusillade of laser fire and torpedoes as they hurtled over the treetops toward her. She adjusted her stance on the escape pod—feet apart, knees slightly bent—and raised her lightsaber.

  “AHEEEEEEEEE!” a familiar voice screeched across the sky. Lula looked up just in time to see a winged shape blast down from the clouds and careen directly into the cluster of approaching Nihil ships amid a tangle of explosions.

  “Vee-Eighteen?” Lula gasped. The enemy fire was already on her, though, and there was no time to stare. She slanted her lightsaber upward and swung away the first fusillade of laser fire, sending it directly into the approaching torpedo.

  Ka-BLAAM! It exploded above her.

  Up ahead, the newly modified V-18 had already smashed up two ships and was chasing down a third. The two Bonbraks sat on top, squeaking and cheering him on as they made small repairs and adjustments.

  Five raiders were still speeding toward Lula, though.

  It wasn’t over yet.

  “A living thing is very much like a machine,” Master Kunpar once said when Ram complained about having to do anything besides his repair work. “The Force flows through organics, yes, and that is different, but we also have engines that keep us running, hm? We have central processing units, and when something is leaking, it slows us down, sometimes stops us entirely.”

  It had frustrated Ram at the time. He knew it was true in a way, but the problem wasn’t all those moving parts and how they connected. The problem was organics—sentient ones, anyway—had opinions and judgments, and ways of doing things, and ways of not doing things, and opinions and judgments about those ways of doing and not doing things, and, and, and…It was all too much, really. And no theory or metaphor was going to change that.

  But now…spine-covered branches sprang toward Ram and Zeen, who were both bleeding from various scratches as they blasted and slashed away. The control panel needed transmission vortices, and there was barely any sky to be seen beyond the attacking Drengir.

  The Drengir were organic, though, and Master Kunpar said organics weren’t so different from machines in certain ways. If Ram could fix or break mechanical things with the Force and if he could (more or less) mess with the minds of organics, he should be able to do at least something with these angry plant jerks.

  “Cover me a sec. I’m going to try something,” he said, and Zeen nodded, still cutting and hacking at each approaching branch.

  Ram closed his eyes and reached out with the Force. Immediately, a thick, bristling wall of heaviness reared up to meet him. The Drengir’s own Force use swamped the air. Whatever it was, Ram thought, it was something very far from the light.

  He picked one squirming strand and felt its essential life force pulsing, the movement of nutrients through cells, the flow of the Force. It lurched and seethed in sudden bursts, but Ram finally got a lock on it.

  Then he squeezed.

  The Drengir’s Force ability seemed to rush forward, partially blocking Ram’s own, but he kept his hold, even as the rustling around them rose to a fever pitch.

  “WHAT IS THIS, MEATS?” a Drengir demanded.

  They were still calling him meat, but it was the first time they’d addressed him directly.

  Ram opened his eyes. The attacks had stopped. Zeen glanced at him, bewildered.

  “Why are you attacking us?” Ram said.

  “You attacked us, meats!”

  Ram had to suppress the wave of anger rising inside him. “We are just here to fix our communication tower,” he said, “because we were attacked by the same raiders that brought you to this planet!”

  There was a rustle and whisper as the Drengir seemed to consult with each other. “The Nihil?” one asked.

  “Yes,” Ram said. “They dropped you off last night, right? As seedpods.”

  “Well-informed meats.”

  “What did they promise you?”

  “Promise?” The Drengir sounded aghast.

  Ram wasn’t fooled. “You didn’t just allow yourselves to be planted on a faraway planet for fun. They promised you something in return for helping them out, didn’t they?”

  There was some more conferring. Zeen took a step closer to Ram, her eyes zeroing in on the shivering creatures around them. Ram had noticed it, too. Even though the attack had stopped, the Drengir still crept closer and closer in that chilling, slow plant crawl.

  Explosions and laser fire had been erupting steadily in the sky around them. Ram could only hope it was Lula and the sanval laying waste to the Nihil.

  “The raider meats promised if we took over this tower and held it off from anyone trying to fix it, we could have this whole planet full of supple pliant meats just for us.”

  Ram had to suppress the chill that slid through him. “They told you the meats would be easy pickings, didn’t they?”

  “Mmmm, served right up on a platter and ready for devouring, yes,” the Drengir agreed, and Ram noticed little shimmers of wetness on all the leaves—they were salivating.

  “Live meats, they said?” Ram tried to make his voice sound skeptical.

  “Drengir only eat meats that are alive. What is the point otherwise?”

  “They lied to you,” Zeen said, and Ram was glad she’d caught on to where all this was going.

  The whole tower shook with the Drengir’s incredulous roar. “WHAT?”

  A rumble of engines grew suddenly louder, and Ram spotted a familiar flash of bright purple between the Drengir’s branches and leaves. “Vee-Eighteen?”

  “Master Ram Jomaram!” the droid called. Breebak and Tip yelped excitedly.

  “What is this?” the Drengir said, opening up a wide breach to reveal a newly modified V-18 floating in the air. “This is not meat!”

  “Vee-Eighteen,” Ram said. “What…what did you guys do?” The droid had definitely made some adjustments in the short time they’d been separated. It looked like he’d somehow gotten his hands on a small craft and appropriated some of its parts, with the help of the Bonbraks. An impressive new auxiliary thruster stretched back beneath a sleek vectoring fin. And he had wings—bulky, retrofitted orange ones complete with external shields and a whole rack of missiles peeking out.

  “Long story,” the droid mumbled evasively. “Do you want me to blast away all these ugly weeds, though? We did add a flamethrower unit to my frontal core processor.” Tip fiddled with a control panel, and a little burst of flame spouted out.

  “Small furry meats with fire!” the Drengir hollered. Spine-covered branches swung out, poised to strike. “Must destroy!”

  “Wait wait wait!” Ram yelled. “No fire! No fire! Hold on!”

  “The weeds are talking,” V-18 said. The Bonbraks only had rude, untranslatable comments to add.

  “Everyone calm down!” Ram said. “Drengir, we’re not going to burn you down. Stay focused. The Nihil meats lied to you. That’s what matters.”

  “Drengir hate liar meats most of all.”

  “Vee-Eighteen, did you happen to swipe a comms system off any of the starships yo
u were stripping?”

  “Why, sir! I reject the very—”

  “Bon-bala,” Breebak and Tip both confirmed.

  “Perfect!” Ram said. “Does it have transmission vortices?”

  “Why, Master Ram,” V-18 objected. “My newly enhanced class-A starship transmission vortices are directly wired to my vocalizer. If you take them out, I won’t be able to speak!”

  For a brief moment, everyone just stared at the droid.

  “Wow,” he said. “I see.”

  “We’ll get you new ones as soon as we’re out of this mess, Vee-Eighteen, I promise. Now get in here!”

  FwaZZshoooom! A laser blast hurtled past Lula, close enough to singe her sleeve and…She glanced down, then gasped. A small patch of skin on her arm had been burned clean off—there was just bright tissue there. The pain hadn’t even reached her yet, only the utter terror of having been grazed. Shock.

  She looked up just in time to see another series of shots blasting toward her. She sprinted up the wing of a Grus-class shuttle toward the cockpit. The part she’d been standing on erupted into flames, and the ship veered dangerously toward the ground. And then the pain hit, like someone was slapping her arm over and over with a spiny whip.

  Lula skittered over the bulkhead, ducked beneath the dorsal wing, and then slid down to the far side and threw herself against the engine compartment to catch her breath.

  The droid had taken out a good handful of Nihil ships before she’d even had a chance to catch up with him. She’d downed her fair share, too, so it made sense to send V-18 to check on Ram and Zeen. She figured she could handle the remaining half dozen attackers.

  Badly burnt and tired to her core, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Her hands shook as she extended her saber and stood. The sky and treetops seemed to whirl around her. Had she pushed herself too far? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop. Ram and Zeen needed her help. Valo and the whole galaxy did, too. She shoved her saber directly into the narrow strip of metal connecting the dorsal wing to the hull of the shuttle. She felt it bristle and burn all the way through. Then she ran toward the tail end, dragging her saber along beside her. The wing shook and then began to tilt toward her. She used the Force to shove it the other direction and then threw herself forward just in time to let a new barrage of cannon fire shriek over her head. The shuttle rocked sideways, taking blast after blast—these raiders really had no aim whatsoever—and then tilted toward the ground.