by Peter David
His vessel shuddered ever so slightly, and before he knew it, blaster fire discharged from the front of the ship and smashed into the far wall of the warehouse. Montosians went running as debris rained down, dust and smoke rising from the impact. When it cleared, there was a large hole in the wall.
“You might want to consider the blue switch to the left of that one,” Kebron suggested without a trace of irony.
“I believe I have a solid grasp of the learning procedure, Ambassador,” Soleta said, constrastingly making no effort whatsoever to keep irony out of her voice. “I shall watch what you do, and then do the opposite.”
Si Cwan let the remark pass without comment as he flipped the suggested switch and the cowling settled in around him. He had not even bothered to ask if any of the Montosians there were going to join them in their battle to save their own damned planet—considering that there were ships to spare. The odds were that they would be far more of a hindrance than a help anyway.
He found the controls that he hoped would actually cause the ship's engines to come on line, and result in the vessel lifting off. He breathed a silent prayer, partly hoping that he wouldn't further embarrass himself— and partly hoping that he didn't inadvertently incinerate everyone else in the warehouse. He activated them and, to his relief, the engines came on line. The thrusters snapped to life and the ship hovered several feet off the ground. He looked right and left and saw that Kebron's and Soleta's ships were following suit. He couldn't help but notice that Soleta did not look the slightest bit out of her element. If he hadn't known that she'd never operated such a vessel before, he would have thought she had been flying for years.
Fr'Col had scuttled over to one end of the warehouse and flipped open a panel on the wall and hit a switch. There was a grinding of gears and one end of the warehouse slid open, providing them a means of exiting. There were shouts of “Good luck!” and similar best wishes, and the three vessels blasted towards the exit and out.
The moment they were out of the warehouse, Si Cwan opened up the vessel's engines to see what the ship was capable of doing. He had only seconds to fully master the ship's specs, he knew, before he was going to find himself in a combat situation. He rocked the ship back and forth slightly, getting a feel for how fast and maneuverable it was.
“Kebron to Cwan,” Kebron's voice came over the combadge that Si Cwan wore. His sporting of one had been a matter of some small debate, considering that he was not a member of Starfleet, and so it wasn't exactly in keeping with regs for him to wear one. But Captain Calhoun had insisted, stating, “I want to know where my people are at any given time, and I'll be damned if I let regulations stand in the way of common sense.” That had been that, and Cwan was rather glad at this particular point that Calhoun had been so insistent.
“Cwan here. Go ahead.”
“Are you all right? I saw your ship moving in an erratic pattern.”
“Just getting a feel for her.”
The ground hurtled past beneath them. Their ships skimmed the tops of the buildings as they flew towards the area of the Dogs' attack. It was not difficult to spot; several miles to the east, smoke was rising from half a dozen areas and buildings that were in a state of ruin.
Then there was a sudden, warning beep from the console. He immediately checked the systems to make sure that there wasn't something wrong with the functioning of the ship itself. Instead, his perimeter alarms were informing him of something that, seconds later, Kebron did as well.
“Incoming,” was all Kebron said.
It was all he had to say. Dog fighters were approaching from the other direction, and Zak Kebron, Soleta, and Si Cwan had been noticed.
There were six of them, coming in fast. Si Cwan wasn't thrilled; he was operating an unfamiliar vessel, backed up by two individuals, one of whom had never flown before, and they were outnumbered two to one. It wasn't the sort of odds he would have preferred.
“They're going to split. Three and three formation,” Kebron's voice came over the combadge. And sure enough, he was absolutely right. The approaching Dog ships moved off left and right, coming in fast and endeavoring to outflank their attackers.
“I'll take the three on the right. You and Soleta, the three on the left,” said Cwan.
“I can handle the three on the left. You and Soleta deal with the three on the right.”
“I can take them. Soleta, stick with Kebron.”
The Dog fighters were almost within firing range.
“That will not be necessary,” Kebron said firmly. “Soleta, perhaps you should hang back as our—”
Soleta's voice crackled over the comm links. “Mr. Ambassador. Lieutenant. The two of you are beginning to annoy me.”
Si Cwan gasped as Soleta's ship suddenly slammed forward, outstripping the both of them. Her blasters roared to life, firing at the approaching ships and missing them clean.
Instead, the blasts ricocheted off one of the partly demolished structures, spun off in trajectories that paralleled each other, caromed off two more piles of debris, crisscrossed one another and took out attacking vessels on either side. The two ships spiraled to the ground, chewing up huge troughs of dirt and debris as they skidded and then went up in huge balls of flame.
Si Cwan blinked in surprise, not quite certain that he had just seen what he thought he'd seen. Just like that, two of the six attacking ships had been taken out.
Quickly adjusting to the situation, however, the remaining four angled around and came in from all directions. Within seconds there was so much blaster fire around him that Si Cwan was having trouble seeing. Switching entirely to instruments, he maneuvered the ship as deftly as he could, dodging between the blasts. His ship shuddered under the impact as one or two of them glanced off him, but there were no direct hits. He was just in the process of congratulating himself when he heard Kebron's alarmed voice call, “Cwan! Pull up, now!”
He did as he was told without hesitation, and a Dog ship passed directly under him. The upper portion of the Dog ship literally scraped against the bottom of Cwan's; he could hear the ear-splitting sound of metal on metal. Then his ship peeled away and angled back around.
His proximity alarms were shrieking at him. He'd been targeted. There was a ship right behind him, possibly the same one that he'd just managed to avoid. It would have required formidable piloting skills for the Dog to have made that quick a recovery, but anything was possible. He looked to see if there were any weapons that fired to cover his rear, and saw that there were none. That was something of a design flaw, which he would have loved to take up with the Boragi should he actually survive this insane adventure.
He gunned the ship forward, angled off sharply, and then saw another Dog ship on the tail of one of the other fighters. He banked right, left, barely avoiding the explosions around him, and then to his horror he saw the rear of the other fighter go up in a burst of flame. “Kebron! Soleta!” He shouted both names, because he wasn't sure who it was whose ship had been mortally wounded.
No response came back to either name; suddenly he saw the injured ship, miraculously, pull out of its death dive. But there was no hope for it, just none. Two more of the Dog ships were coming at it from the rear, moving in for the kill.
Unexpectedly the aft thrusters of the Boragi flared to life, but only the aft thrusters, causing the ship to whip around sideways. It was no longer flying in any proper pattern but for an instant was simply hanging there in the air, a huge roadblock.
The Dog ships weren't able to correct course fast enough to allow for the demented maneuver, and as a consequence smashed into the crippled fighter. All three of them erupted in a blinding ball of fire and light, the explosion so powerful that Si Cwan's ship was carried by the force of the shock wave, skewing almost entirely out of his control. He slammed forward against the weapons console, slamming his chest so hard that he felt as if he'd nearly broken a rib.
As he fought off the waves of pain from the impact, he caught sight of one of the two
remaining Dog ships, and opened fire. He struck the Dog ship broadside, sending it spiraling. He fired again, striking it clean with full force, and the ship blew apart. He then looked around for the sixth Dog ship.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, the Dog ship seemed disinclined to get involved. It reversed course and tore at full speed across the war-torn city. In the distance, Si Cwan saw other Dog ships, a handful of them, reconnoitering with the fleeing one. They were out of firing range, but he was still able to track them on long-distance scanners. He braced himself, waiting to see if the battle was going to continue. Just to add potential impetus, he flipped on a ship-to-ship communications beam, a broader channel than the narrow cast that filtered through the combadges he and the others wore. “All ships,” he said, “we have the Dogs targeted in the eastern sector of Montos City. Converge on this point, with full weapon array on line.”
He had no idea whether they were eavesdropping or not, no clue as to whether they actually heard him. For whatever reason—whether they'd had enough, or were running true to form and simply ducking out when a fight became too lopsided, or even too fair, or perhaps they had accomplished what they'd wanted to accomplish (whatever that was)—the Dog ships, as a single pack, moved off.
All except one.
There was one ship, a bit larger than the rest. Not necessarily a fighter, but more of a transport. It was on the ground, and Si Cwan flew towards it at full speed. If he was going to have the opportunity to dispose of one more of their ships, even if it was on the ground instead of in a more sporting combat mode, he was going to seize the chance.
It was situated near the shattered remains of one of the houses, a bit set apart from the others. As Si Cwan closed in, he saw several of the Dogs charge out of the house . . .
. . . and they were dragging someone.
He was astounded by what he saw, for even from that distance, he could make out that it was a Thallonian. The skin color was unmistakable.
Had the Dogs been by themselves, he would simply have opened fire. But as it was, he had to be more judicious. Targeting the area, he placed carefully selected shots, bracketing the fleeing Dogs without striking them directly. But still he came too close as the ground around them exploded from the impact of the blasts. He saw the Thallonian hurled in one direction, back towards the house, the Dogs in the other. Seeing the rapidly approaching ship, the Dogs lost no time in scrambling into their own vessel, apparently deciding that the Thallonian they'd been dragging with them was simply not worth the effort. Moments later the Dog ship was airborne and, like the others, hurtling away from the scene of their crimes.
“Si Cwan to Soleta. Si Cwan to Kebron. Are you there? Is either of you there?” he called over his combadge. But no response came from either. Were they both dead? Was that it? Had this misbegotten rescue mission gone that awry? All this just to try and gain some sort of alliance with this idiotic little world?
He tried to put his own scrambled thoughts in order. As cold and unfeeling as it might sound, even to Si Cwan himself, he simply couldn't dwell on the fate of the others right now. There was a fellow Thallonian down there, one who might very well need him. There was a clear area nearby where he could land his ship. This he did as soon as his long-range sensors assured him that the Dog fighters were indeed gone rather than simply staging a false retreat to try and lure him in.
When he opened the cowling of his cockpit, the first thing to hit him was the stench of burning. The entire area around him was charred, with ruined buildings and smoking corpses, blackened and scorched by the Dog weapons. From the distance he could hear the moans, the cries of “help me” from people he couldn't even see. Then he spotted one poor bastard, his legs gone, pulling himself forward pathetically hand over hand, leaving a twisted trail of blood behind him. He managed to crane his neck around and look at Si Cwan. Cwan wasn't sure the dying Montosian was actually seeing him, though, particularly because there was only a large socket where his right eye had been. He gurgled something low in his throat, then his head flopped down and he stopped moving.
Si Cwan had seen worse in his life. Much worse. Particularly when he was quite young and his father had felt it would be instructive to apprentice the young prince to the royal torturer for a time. Si Cwan had watched as the torturer had plied his trade and had taken very careful mental notes, for he found that working on intellectualizing what he was seeing was, indeed, the only way that he could actually deal with it. The last thing he wanted to admit to his father was that watching such activities was repulsive to him. His father would not have approved of such a soft attitude.
Although Si Cwan had seen worse . . . he could not recall when he had seen anything more pathetic.
He turned away, and hauled himself out of the fighter. He dropped to the ground a short distance below and made his way toward the Thallonian. The Thallonian was, happily, conscious, and Si Cwan (amusingly) felt a bit of pride about that. It took a great deal to put a Thallonian down for the count, that much was sure.
“Are you all right? Did they hurt you?” he called to the Thallonian.
The Thallonian was just standing up fully . . . then his head whipped around in response to Si Cwan's voice.
Si Cwan felt his next inquiry as to the general health and welfare of the newly rescued Thallonian dying in his throat as a familiar face gaped back at him.
Once . . .
Once upon a time . . .
Once upon a time, Si Cwan had had a young friend. An ally, who was by his side in all things and was utterly devoted to him. But the young ally had slowly come to believe that Si Cwan was weak and sympathetic . . . too sympathetic to the lesser beings who infested not only the lower strata of Thallonian society, but the Thallonian Empire as a whole. They had had a number of spirited debates about it as the young Mend had tried to realign the noble Si Cwan's thinking. But the debates had become over the years more edged, and then angry. Si Cwan had never understood his friend's change in attitude. Perhaps it was because Si Cwan had, at his core, such an annoying streak of compassion, he was unable to comprehend how someone else could be so lacking in the same element. But that was definitely the case, and he had watched helplessly as his friendship with his erstwhile ally had fallen completely apart. There is no deadlier enemy than someone who was once loved.
The last time he had seen that individual, he'd been a target of an elaborate death trap that Si Cwan had escaped only by the slimmest and most fortunate of margins. He had wondered, in the time since that incident, when they would encounter each other once again. Curiously, he had never wondered if such a meeting would occur. It was as if they were destined to be at each other's throats, to meet repeatedly until only one of them was left alive. No, “when” had been the only thing open to speculation. In his imaginings, he had always figured that it would be in some great, dramatic context, possibly with the fate of entire worlds hinging on the outcome of the meeting. Somehow it had never occured to him that it would happen on some note specially-important planet with nothing major at stake.
“Zoran,” he whispered. He wasn't expecting to whisper. It just somehow came out that way. “Zoran Si Verdin.”
Zoran wasn't saying anything, apparently even more stunned than Si Cwan that they were suddenly finding themselves face to face.
In the silence of the moment, a soft click was all the more commanding of their attention.
They turned as one and looked in the direction of the noise. There was a small globe lying on the ground barely ten feet away from them. It had a small pair of snarling jaws painted on it, jaws that were the symbol of the Dogs of War. A present left behind in a hurried departure that might not have been so panicked as it appeared.
Si Cwan knew it instantly for what it was. The only question was how much time he had before the thing went off. And considering that he surmised the click noise was the timing device having counted down to its triggering point, he could only surmise that the answer was: in no t
ime at all . . .
. . . no time to consider Zoran. Without hesitation, he leaped towards a pile of debris that he could only hope was going to serve as some sort of shelter. The vault carried him to just within reach of the debris, then the bomb went off. The concussive waves carried him over the shelter, sent him tumbling, and he felt as if he were being carried high, high into the sky. The sun shone down upon him, and for a delirious second he thought he was going to be sent spiraling straight into its superheated heart, there to incinerate instantly.
Then he crashed. He hit the ground with such force that it shook every bone in his body, and he lay there, unable to move, unable even to breathe—that was when he lost consciousness. The last thing he thought before passing out was that he hoped—whatever happened to him, had happened to Zoran first.
“Cwan. Si Cwan.”
There was something large shaking his shoulder. He had no idea what it was, for his thoughts and attention were so scrambled. He felt wetness down the side of his face and wondered if he'd been crying. Then he realized that it was partly dried blood from a huge gash. He realized this by touching it, which was a serious mistake as it caused a bolt of pain to race through his entire head. But the pain, in turn, was something of a help to him since it brought him to full wakefulness that much faster, even though it left him with a headache lethal enough to split neutronium.
Through his bleary eyes, he found that he was looking at Zak Kebron. It would have been nice to say that Kebron looked concerned, but truthfully he looked about as blasé about the present circumstance as he did about most things. “Cwan. Are you all right?”
“I did not know . . . you cared.” Each word was an effort, although a progressively easier effort with each one.
“I don't,” Kebron replied. “But your quarters are nicer than mine. If you die, the captain promised them to me.”
