by Aer-ki Jyr
Prologue
The sound of the truck rolling up outside his domicile perked Yammar’s attention, for it’d been loaned to a friend and shouldn’t have been back for several hours. The Calavari stretched his four arms across his chest then pried himself up out of the comfortable chair he’d graciously sunk into after a long morning in the fields. When he walked to the door he placed a giant four-fingered hand on the frame and pulled it open, seeing the truck jerk to a stop with his friend falling out the door and crumpling to the ground.
“Donovan!” he called out, running towards him with plodding footsteps as his nose picked up the scent of burnt flesh even before he saw the hole in the chest plate of the full body armor the man wore. Whatever race he was his blood flowed a sickly red, a fact that he’d prefer to not have known as he leaned over and gripped the man’s shoulders, prying him up into a sitting position.
“What happened?”
A shaking hand rose up to the neck of his armor, fumbling for the latch that Yammar finally helped him with. The helmet cracked opened with a hiss and the Calavari helped him pull it off, revealing the pale skin beneath that had alarmingly become even more so, now nearly white.
“Gladers,” he said, wincing horribly as he half bent over. “Jumped me from behind. I got two of them, but the third…”
“Where’s the latch for the chest piece?” Yammar asked, pulling back the cloak that covered most of the hard plates as he looked, but the man took a death grip on his lower arm and locked eyes with him.
“My children. In the ship. You have to…please. I’m all they’ve got. They’re dead without you.”
“Where’s the latch?” he repeated, searching around with his other three hands and finally finding something that looked promising. He pressed and turned the small button, being rewarded with another hiss as a crack formed along the side beneath the man’s left arm, but suddenly that arm went straight to Yammar’s giant head and gripped it tightly, forcing him to look into the dying man’s eyes.
“Promise me. Promise me…” he said, wincing again.
“I don’t know anything about your race,” Yammar said, feeling helpless.
“Good…” the man spat in a cough but no blood came out of his mouth, though it was continuing to pour out of his chest and seep down over his waistband plates in spurts every time he jerked in pain. “Good. Don’t ask questions…just…make sure they wear armor…in public. Promise me.”
“I promise. I promise,” Yammar repeated quickly, then the death grip on his arm and head relaxed and the Calavari was able to pull the torso armor completely off, seeing the hole in the man’s abdomen when the blood-soaked, charred clothing lined up. It was a lachar blast, pure and simple, and one delivered at fairly close range by the looks of it. Probably several to get through that armor, but the last one must have hit with nearly full force. He didn’t know how his friend had survived this long, but then again he had no idea what internal organs he had or even where they were located.
“Keep them safe…” Donovan said, eyes flickering. “Keep them…away…from…people.”
“I will,” the big Calavari said, realizing it was too late to do anything to help him. “What do you want me to tell them?”
Yammar never got an answer. Donovan was unconsciously limp in his arms for the next minute, then his heart stopped beating and Yammar’s business associate/closest friend was dead.
“Oh no,” a voice said from behind him a few minutes later. Yammar hadn’t moved a muscle other than to clench them in a fury he hadn’t known in a long time.
“Gladers,” he growled as his broodmate approached cautiously on his right.
“Here?” she said in a panic, looking around at the well-lit perimeter of their farm and seeing nothing but pasture and crop fields that had yet to be planted.
“No. Not here. But I think I know where.”
“No…” she pleaded with him. “Please don’t. Please don’t go.”
“I need to…but I made a promise.”
“He made you promise not to avenge him?”
“No,” Yammar said, even angrier that he couldn’t do just that. “There’s something on his ship that I have to protect.”
“His ship,” she said, turning to look back behind their domicile to where the top of the spacecraft was visible, parked on the far side where it had sat for several weeks, as was typical whenever Donovan visited.
“Stay with the body,” he said in a tone that left no room for discussion as he stood up and slowly walked away. “I’ll be back.”
As his mate knelt next to the body and he heard her sobbing, the larger Calavari kept his emotions locked down so much they might have been buried within rock. He dreaded what he was about to do, but there was no way around it. Promise or not, something had to be done.
When he got on the other side of his domicile he walked up to the ship that he’d assumed was empty. In all the time that Donovan had come here he’d never mentioned children, nor had he ever talked of having a mate himself. With one large finger he pressed the boarding ramp release and the big door pivoted down out of the underside of the ship far too slowly, yet he still wasn’t ready to go up. He’d never been inside the ship before out of respect for the man’s privacy but now, even without his promise to keep, the ship belonged to him if only through salvage rights, though at the moment he wanted nothing of it, despite the obvious value.
He strode up into the worn but tidy interior space, passing by stacks of cargo crates that Donovan had been here to trade to the locals. A few he recognized as planetary produce, but the rest he assumed were from offworld. Passing into the forward compartment he saw that the ship was smaller on the inside than it looked, with only a handful of rooms that made it even less spacious than his domicile.
All of the rooms were open, including the cockpit, save for one. It was locked, so he summoned up the courage to knock on the door four times, but there was no response. He didn’t feel like shouting, or talking at all for that matter, so he grabbed a nearby toolset and began to take off the wall housing that held the locking mechanism. It wasn’t too dissimilar from the tech used on the planet, just a basic slide latch that he was able to pull back.
When it clicked open he pushed in the swinging door a few inches then set the tools aside, steeling himself for what was to come…but even his worst fears weren’t up to the task of what was before him. Sitting in the corner and huddled together were two tiny people, far smaller than Donovan had been, and both were staring up at him curiously, but not afraid.
“Do you understand my words?”
Both their little heads nodded, but otherwise they didn’t move.
“Your father told me to come to you…” he said, barely getting the sentence out. “I need you to come with me.”
“He told us to stay here,” one of them said, with a voice so high pitched that Yammar cringed, realizing just how young they were. They weren’t Calavari, so he couldn’t be certain, but the scrawny little pale things looked young even for children.
“Something has happened little ones. Something bad. You must face it now and…make sure it doesn’t get more bad. I need your help with that. To make it not get more bad. You are going to be very sad, but you will survive this. I promised your father I would protect you, and I will.”
“From what?” the same one asked.
Yammar knew there was no good way to do this, so rather than drag it on any longer he just told them.
“Your father has been killed. Before he died he made me promise to take care of you, and that is exactly what I am going to do…”
1
16 years later
…
Esna rappelled down and through a narrow crevice, her helmet producing the only light in the dark underground caverns for her to see by as the mix of dirt, rock, and old structure flashed past her at a dizzying rate. The cloak covering her armor snagged on an outcropping and got pulled up over her head with the 22 year old grabbing the rope tight and skidding to a halt. She climbed back up half a meter and held on with one hand while she dislodged the durable fabric from the snag before sliding down the line the rest of the way to the bottom where a set of footprints waited for her in the darkness.
Turning her head around, the lights on her helmet splayed over the ovoid hallway that had a major structural support punching down through it like a violent knife. A slight opening next to that knife had allowed her access to what would hopefully be another successful scavenging run before they had to get back to the farm to help load up the Brendilin.
Esna looked around with her helmet lights and felt the odd sensation she always did when finding a partially intact structure such as this. Even buried several hundred meters beneath the surface this empty, desolate place felt more alive than the rest of the planet. The architecture was smooth in the places where it was undamaged, harkening back to a time before she could remember, before anyone could remember. The ancient cataclysm that had destroyed this planet was mere myth now, save for the scattering of ruins that had been interpreted to mean any number of things.
She didn’t know the truth but right now she felt a connection to the architecture, and dead as it was, it was more alive than anything else on this planet.
Following the footprints she eventually caught up to her brother, Teren, who was already head deep inside a pile of debris with nothing but his cloak and his armored butt visible in her headlights.
“Find something?” she asked, her voice altered into a mechanical monstrosity that was clear enough for others to understand but so different from her normal voice that no one would ever be able to identify her…not that it mattered. No one on this planet aside from Yammar and Innit had ever seen her or her brother outside their armor.
“No, I’m just upside down for the…fun of it,” Teren grumbled as he reached in as far as he could, grabbing hold of a fiber and yanking it loose. That undid the component he had been trying to pry loose and he was finally able to climb back out of the hole with it in hand. He held it up for Esna to see with both their helmet lights hitting it in a wash of brightness.
“No clue,” Esna said. “What is it?”
“What the…” Teren said, turning it over in his hands multiple times. “There was a light on it.”
“Doesn’t look like it now.”
“That cord…I had to pry it loose. I thought this had a power pack, but it must have been hooked up to something else with power. There may be a large unit down here somewhere that still works.”
“Unless you know where it is, better not start after it. We’ll end up late.”
“We’ve got a few hours.”
“Yeah, but I wanna get some air first.”
“Or water?” Teren suggested.
“Hmmn…maybe. We’ll have to go now if we want to take that detour.”
“You’re right. Hunting for a power unit down here could take forever. We can come back later. Just need to mark our trail,” he said, pulling out a small piece of junk from a narrow pack on his belt. It was painted with a thin film that responded to their helmet lights with an unnatural green glow. He placed one next to the pile of debris where he’d found the component as he stashed the salvage in a sack along with a few other bits and pieces they’d collected over the past two hours.
Both of them made their way back to the rope, leaving little coated trinkets to mark the trail through the broken and often confusing labyrinth in the rubble. Esna didn’t know what this place used to be, but aside from a few sections of it there wasn’t much left to look at. Even if it had been unscarred it probably would have been confusing to get around in, but with all the little nooks and crannies they had to crawl through, or make, the marker chips were a must if they wanted to get back here without wasting a lot of valuable time. Each of their excursions was limited, with them always having to be back at the farm before night.
Today’s trek was limited, but they’d found a few items of interest. When they got back they’d take them apart, then see if there was anything salvageable for their own use or to sell. At the very least the basic components should be able to be scrapped for their materials, making these scavenging runs more than just a reason to get away and off on their own. Farm duties aside, this planet was dull as baju, but their adoptive parents didn’t need to know that and the bits and pieces that they brought back added some additional income that gave them a perfect excuse to explore.
Using nothing but the power of their muscles, both slowly climbed back up the rope to the surface level then meandered their way back to the severed hallway where they’d entered, but even that had been buried under mounds of dirt. A wind washout had exposed a fist-sized opening in the arid surface of the planet that they’d discovered and expanded upon, making their discovery here a private one. No one else had been in these ruins before and they wanted to keep it that way.
There wasn’t a lot of traffic in this area, but when Teren and Esna got back to the entrance they climbed out into the windy, dry atmosphere of a barren planet trying to recover from whatever had blasted it to rubble in the past. There was scrub brush in places, but most of the ground was rocky, rough, and decidedly dead. Picking up some larger pieces of rock, the siblings leveraged them over the hole to cover it, then kicked out their footprints as they walked back to their bike where it rested in a crevice that was out of sight of the giant plain that stretched out across the landscape before them.
Teren hopped on in the driver’s position, attaching his sack of salvage to the right rear as Esna slid on behind him, their armor clicking against each other but the sound was dampened by Teren’s cloak. When he turned the bike on it levitated on some rare anti-grav tech the pair had recovered and rebuilt with other parts they’d traded for. The technology wasn’t typical on this planet, but not unheard of either, though most transport was accomplished via wheels.
Teren accelerated the bike slowly, for it couldn’t gain speed rapidly…definitely not as fast as a wheeled bike, but the advantage was it didn’t care what kind of terrain there was and could fly over ground anywhere they liked, even over their fields without harming the crops. It had an altitude limiter on it that they hadn’t been able to rework, keeping their maximum height at 7 meters. That was more than enough to enable a smooth ride over ground, but it didn’t let them become an aircraft like some of the Gladers used.
Fortunately they were far from here, all the way over the mountain range where the scrub brush changed into full trees. It was better land and thus fought over, with the Gladers being a mix of Calavari and thugs from offworld or wherever they came from. It was said this world had belonged to the Calavari before the cataclysm, but there were so many other races here that Esna wondered. About one in two were Calavari, as far as common knowledge went, but there were pockets that varied. This area was uninhabited, but further to the north where their farm was it was a loose cluster of Calavari that made their living servicing the city to the east where they were due to deliver their livestock today.
Hopefully the Gladers wouldn’t come out this far, but if they did she and her brother knew what to do. Their armor was designed for more than just hiding their skin and had been tinkered with since they were little by Yammar, but in recent years Esna and Teren had taken over the customization duties. Now they could fight half a dozen Gladers and come out on top, and unless someone was stupid enough to go into the glade they rarely showed themselves in greater numbers.
Three months ago Esna had killed her third, and her brother had 8 to date. In each instance they hadn’t sought out the fight. The bandits had come after them, but they’d gained enough of a reputation by now that a lot of t
he time they were left alone. Sooner or later another would get brave enough to try and rob them, but other than a few trips in town to sell livestock, pick up supplies, or barter their salvage, they stayed away from other people and very few had reason to come out to this area.
As the hover bike accelerated they came out of the little hills and onto the flat plain that stretched out before them down to a dry wash that would see water only two months out of the year. It was often used as a road but there were no fresh tracks on it this morning and there would be none as they passed over it, floating on their anti-grav engine and humming along with no one and nothing else in sight aside from dirt, sand, and a few sprouts of brush.
They angled across the wash and over to the small spur that ran off the mountains to the north. Their smaller cousin separated the plain from the farmland as it cut across at an angle, but the pair didn’t head straight back. Instead they followed it southwest down to an outcropping that was familiar. After that they slowed, coasting another 1000 meters until they saw the cracks in the rocks with some clumps of dry brush around them.
Teren used the very bad brakes to slow them, then Esna slid off and used her feet to grind them the rest of the way to a halt, digging out two furrows that Teren went about smoothing out as his sister disconnected her helmet’s faceplate. She got a blast of hot, dry air on her slightly damp face and breathed it in with no filter numbing out the feel of the planet.
“Looks clear,” Teren said. “Ten minutes.”
“Fifteen,” she insisted, disconnecting the neck piece and pulling the rest of her helmet off and laying it on her bundled up cloak. She proceeded to disassemble her armor piece by piece, feeling relieved as she let her skin breath in the air. When she got it all off she sat down next to it and undid her boots, pulling her pale feet out and wiggling her toes in the air.
With her brother on lookout, she took off her slightly sweaty clothes and stood on the plain completely nude, soaking in the dangerous sunlight for a few seconds and letting her body breath the air before she walked over to the crack in the rocks and slid down between them dropping out of view. Teren stayed up top, waiting for his turn afterward when she would watch his back. That was always the arrangement, for neither of them could risk being seen, let alone being caught by Gladers or someone else outside their armor and without their weapons. If Yammar and Innit knew they were doing this they’d be furious…which was why nobody knew about this place and they intended to keep it that way.
