Galactic Champion 2

by Dante King

  Then, the world began to spin.

  “What’s going on?” I called out to Nyna.

  “Two little ones,” she grunted, “rammed us! I didn’t see them coming.”

  Our ship spun and rolled. Everything was a blur, and it felt like my eyes were being sucked from my skull. Since I was certain there weren’t any friendly aircraft around, I kept my finger on my gun’s trigger. I imagined our ship looked like a spinning saw blade chewing through a cloud of nails, with sparks shooting in every direction. Two seconds later, the world righted itself, but the ship continued to rattle.

  We’d lost a lot of altitude and were smashing through trees as Nyna worked hard to bring the nose of our vessel up. There was a smashing noise before a cloud of smoke filled the cabin.

  “I’m okay!” Reaver called out. “But my gun’s down. Keep going!”

  We were down to half our firepower. The situation was getting desperate, but Nyna had pulled us from the trees. I found myself thanking Tortengar for not sparing expenses or effort building this fine ship. It was too bad the thing would be no more than a heap of rubble by the time we were done with it. Well, it would have served more than its purpose.

  “Re-engage!” I ordered Nyna.

  She did, pulling up hard on her controls so that we were headed straight at the belly of the control ship. The remaining vessels were swarming around it like a cloud, but as we drew closer, they coalesced in our path.

  “They will not let us attack their mother,” Beatrix said.

  “Attack ugly mother!” Skrew roared as he fired.

  I started firing as well and a moment later, Beatrix joined.

  “Everyone, shoot the same spot!” I roared, spurred on by Skrew’s enthusiasm. “We need to drill a hole through this bitch, ignore everything else! Nyna, keep us on course! It’ll be a rough ride, but we can do it. Don’t turn for anything!”

  Nyna didn’t answer, and I didn’t bother turning my head. I knew she was scared. I knew they were all scared, but our ship was tough, and I was certain she could take it. The people of Druma, this world, needed us to keep fighting, and they needed us to win. The Ish-Nul would likely become the focus of the Xeno’s wrath. They were now in charge of a city the bugs had once owned. They had helped to ruin the Xeno’s plans, and now, their slave-breeding planet was causing them no small measure of trouble.

  Time seemed to stretch out into infinity as I watched each individual energy bolt leave my gun. Two other guns were firing in the exact same spot as a shower of hot sparks began to rain down on us.

  One of the little ships broke off from the others and tried to ram us. When it crossed the path of our guns, it was partially vaporized. The other part didn’t veer from its course. We survived, but the impact was incredible, and my ears rang from the noise. Through sheer force of will, I kept my eyes wide open, locked on the target.

  The pressure of the ships was relieved a bit—they weren’t coming in as hard or as fast. We’d managed to create a gap, and it was one Nyna took advantage of as she dove toward the controller.

  We focused our fire on the main target. Every shot was weakening the controller ship’s structure. It was removing mass we didn’t have to punch through. It was causing internal damage, and, with any luck, its controller was panicking.

  I hoped the creature saw us coming and understood what we were about to do. I hoped it realized the mistake it had made fighting against me. I hoped it was afraid.

  A moment later, we drove our ship into the controller’s.

  I closed my eyes and held on to my trigger as we chewed our way through the enemy vessel until the yoke was ripped from my hands. Something hard hit my knee. Something else scratched my forearm’s entire length. Then I was struck in the middle of my chest and felt all the air leave my lungs in one hard woosh.

  Suddenly, I was weightless. I opened my eyes and found myself staring out into the stars. The sun was almost completely down. Only a hint of red touched the horizon. We’d busted through the controller ship and had saved Thaz’red, for now. It would be a burning heap hurtling toward the ground. There would be no survivors—not from the damage we’d dealt.

  I looked over my shoulder toward Nyna. She didn’t look harmed, but she was slumped over in the pilot’s seat. The impact had knocked her out cold. Then, we started moving again, drawn to the center of the planet by its gravity.

  “Wake up!” I yelled to Nyna, but she didn’t respond.

  I unhooked myself from my harness and made my way toward her, pushing broken, loose-hanging beams out of the way. A bundle of loose wires shocked me as I brushed past them, but I ignored the pain until I reached her.

  The controls were foreign to me. I didn’t know which did what. They looked like nothing more than a random collection of knobs, switches, buttons, and rods. I didn’t have time to think about it, so I touched one of the rods close to the middle of the control board and pushed it to the right. Nothing happened.

  I pushed all the buttons surrounding it. Some illuminated red, others green, and one blue, but nothing changed. I started flipping nearby switches and heard an explosion from somewhere at the rear of the spacecraft.

  “I got this!” Nyna said groggily as she jolted upright with blurry eyes. She reached out with an unsteady hand and began pressing buttons, flipping switches, and turning knobs. The wind began to slow, and I could feel her pulling the ship out of its dive.

  “We have almost no power,” she said. “It’s not the Fex; it’s everything else. We’re gonna land hard.”

  “Then land us hard,” I told her.

  “I’m not sure I can,” she said. “Not without killing us.”

  “I believe in you,” I told her.

  I took one of her hands and kissed it. She pressed her lips together hard and she set her jaw.

  “Hang on,” she said. “This is gonna be rough.”

  Several seconds of steady flight passed before it was interrupted by a high-pitched explosion. Our ship yawed violently to the left and rolled a few degrees before Nyna was able to right it.

  “Well, at least that part of the ship wasn’t important,” she laughed. “Ten seconds, everyone! Hold on!”

  I couldn’t see much of our approach, but I saw enough. The city was covered in a thick layer of fog that rose up in the center like an inverted tornado. The space elevator’s base was at the arena. I knew the place only too well. The place I reunited with Reaver. The place I’d met Beatrix.

  We hit the first building a moment after entering the fog. It spun us a few degrees to the right. The next impact spun us a little more, followed by another hit to the right, then a light spin to the left. Nyna worked the controls and corrected our course to keep us oriented the right way up. I’d never seen such piloting skills in my life and didn’t think I’d meet her equal if I lived to be a thousand years old.

  The impacts were joined by a hard vibration and the roar and screech of our skidding landing. A few seconds later, it was all over.

  “Status!” I yelled as I helped Nyna from her harness.

  “I’m good!” Reaver called back before coughing.

  The cabin was filling with smoke. The ship was on fire.

  “I am alive!” Beatrix said. “And I am thankful to Nyna! You are a good pilot!”

  “Skrew is pissed!” the vrak said. “Stupid, dumb bugs broke ship! Broke Skrew’s mech! Skrew is fire-pissed! Flaming-fire-pissed!”

  “Everyone out!” I ordered. “Grab what weapons are nearby, but evacuate quick! The ship is on fire!”

  The talking stopped as the scrambling began. I kicked my way out of the remnants of my weapon pod. I was out first, and I quickly scanned the area for threats. We’d landed on a street that should have been busy with pedestrians but was eerily empty.

  I helped Nyna, then Skrew, from the ship. He had a large gash across his forehead that was bleeding down his face.

  “Here!” Reaver said from the far side of the ship. She was pointing her rifle at a building and wavi
ng us over with her other hand. She’d found shelter, a place that would allow us to patch ourselves up before heading out. We didn’t need long, but taking a break out on the street would have been suicide. I carried Skrew under one arm, Nyna under the other, and sprinted to her. A moment later, we were inside with the heavy scrap-metal door closed behind us.

  I looked around the small room we found ourselves in. Whoever had occupied it before was gone, but some of their blood remained. Either they hadn’t gone willingly, or something had kicked the door in and murdered them. Judging by the amount of blood, I thought it safe to assume the latter.

  A single light—a desk lamp of sorts—sat on a shelf littered with scrolls, books, and fruit. The room was dim, but there was light enough for our purposes.

  “Did you see that?” Nyna said as Beatrix began going through Nyna’s colorful bag. “I’ve never flown one of those things in my life, but I knew I could do it. It was just, you know, once I touched the controls… Did you see the way we busted through that ship? I don’t want to do it again, you know, but it was awesome!”

  Skrew, meanwhile, was sitting quietly against a wall, looking at his hands. They were covered in blood, and more dripped from his forehead. He didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on around him.

  “Found it,” Beatrix said as she held up the short rod Nyna had used for healing.

  “Skrew first,” I told her.

  She nodded and turned toward the vrak, but Nyna took the rod from her.

  “I’ll do it,” Nyna said.

  She crawled close to the vrak, lifted his chin, and touched the rod to the wound on his forehead. He hissed and tried to bat her hands away.

  “Hold him!” Nyna ordered.

  I took one pair of Skrew’s arms while Beatrix held the other. After a few seconds of unsuccessful thrashing, Skrew relaxed.

  “Is supposed to make the ouch?” the vrak asked.

  Nyna laughed. “I guess so. I’ve never treated anything this bad before, so I don’t really know. The bleeding has stopped, though. And it looks like most of the skin has stitched itself back together. Just a few more seconds.”

  Next, Nyna touched the rod to her own neck, grunted, then sighed.

  “Who’s next?” she asked.

  As she began treating Beatrix, I quietly made my way back to the door. I felt bruised, especially in the center of my chest, but I needed to check outside to see if anyone was coming for us. I opened the door a little and waited. If there were any guards outside, I should be able to catch their movement as long as I stayed still.

  Just as I was preparing to close the door again, I thought I saw something. It was no more than a shadow against a black sky.

  I blinked to try to clear my vision and waited to see if the movement happened again. But after a few seconds, I gave up and closed the door. An uneasy feeling settled upon my shoulders as I turned back toward those in the room. Somehow, I could sense the creature, and not just its presence, but its feelings as well.

  It was the same kind of sensation I’d experienced when I first encountered the Lakunae. I knew what they wanted me to know, not by speech, and not quite by thought either. We were being watched—hunted—by a predator who knew what it was doing. It felt patient, hungry, and feral.

  An explosion outside knocked the heavy door off its hinges and forced me to catch it before it hit anyone else. For a split second, the light of our ship detonating highlighted a crouched figure on top of a tall building across the street. Though it appeared to have two arms and two legs, it was far from human. Its limbs were thin like those of a spider and were a lot longer than any species I’d seen before.

  The explosion had caused the building to buckle on one side, which made returning the door to its frame difficult. It also meant that by wedging the door in place, it wouldn’t fall down and expose any of us to the enemy watching from across the street.

  “Skrew is more pissed!” the vrak growled. “No can have the nice things! Slavers break! Xenoses break! Everything gets to broken!”

  He crossed his arms and stuck out his thin bottom lip. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “Not everything is broken,” I said to him as I grabbed a rifle from over my shoulder, one we’d taken from the Thaz’red armory.

  He looked over at the weapon and sat quietly for a few seconds. “Skrew is going to find Xenoses buttholes, fit whole pew inside, and pull trigger.”

  Nyna gasped, then laughed hard. We all joined in.

  Skrew looked from face to face, then back to me, and grinned widely. I’d never seen him look so proud. Whether he had really intended it or not, it was funny. I hoped he had intended it.

  “All right,” I said, “everyone calm down. We’re still in danger, and we’re still behind enemy lines. Here’s how this is going to work. I want Reaver to take point, then Skrew, Nyna, Beatrix, then me. For once I’m taking the rear.

  “I’m pretty sure I saw something out there across the street. There’s a lot of fog, so it was hard to know for sure until the ship exploded. Then, I saw it across the street. It’s got four limbs but definitely isn’t human. Not even close.”

  “I believe I sensed it,” Beatrix whispered. “I thought I was feeling fear, but I am not afraid. A dark shadow haunts us. I feel the weight of the beast. It is hungry, and it seems to come from all around us. It knows no fear. It has never felt pain. I do not know how I understand this to be, but I do.”

  “It must be Void-touched, like us,” I said. “I didn’t see any weapons on the creature—it was so skinny, I don’t know where it could have hid any—but treat it like it’s armed. If anyone spots it and has the shot, take it out.”

  When everyone was ready and lined up at the door, I kicked the door off its hinges. It flew across the street and into the building the creature had been crouched on. The fire from our ruined ship had already died out.

  We made our way out and turned right. Normally, we would occupy both sides of the street, each side covering each other, but there was only one other person on my team who was trained in urban warfare, and she was running point. So, I decided that keeping the team together would help prevent us from accidentally shooting each other or one of us getting lost, especially if the road widened.

  Reaver froze and held a fist near her shoulder. I froze too, but the others milled about, unsure of what to do. I regretted not having had the time to train them in hand and arm signals. But they soon got the idea and froze as well.

  Reaver pointed her rifle at something and held up one finger, to indicate the direction and the number of potential threats she’d spotted. I waited for Beatrix to look my way, pointed at her, and waggled my finger for her to come to me. When she did, I pointed to a spot on the ground next to me. She took the spot, and I snuck forward.

  Around the next corner, a pile of rubble lay half across the street. A building had been knocked down. Lying on top of the pile was a humanoid alien whose shoed feet were so large they reminded me of flippers. It groaned softly and held one hand to its left leg.

  We scanned the area around it and checked the nearby rooftops and dark places. Standard procedure was to approach cautiously. Bodies could be booby-trapped. Enemies sometimes pretended to be wounded to draw troops in closer before they attacked.

  I didn’t see any threats, and neither did Reaver, so we signaled the rest of the team to move forward.

  I took a position slightly to the left and behind Reaver so that I could assist in destroying threats in front of us or, more likely, to the sides, but we got to the creature with no problem.

  It groaned from a tiny orifice that must have been its mouth, no more than an inch wide. It opened two small, black eyes but didn’t try to escape, and it wasn’t one of the ones who was stalking my team. It was too injured to escape.

  “It’s not a Xeno,” Reaver said as she inspected the alien’s wound. “Looks like it got winged by one though. It’s burned pretty bad. What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s take it of
f the street,” I said. “Nyna can patch it up. Then, we can keep moving. But we aren’t taking anyone with us.”

  I beckoned Skrew and pointed to the alien, and Skrew picked it up by its huge feet while Reaver held it under its armpits.

  When we were under the remains of the second story of a nearby building, Nyna looked the alien over.

  “This is gonna hurt a little,” she said, “but you’ll be better real quick, okay?”

  The alien nodded wordlessly.

  Nyna retrieved her healing rod and waved it slowly over the wound. The creature hissed, stuck out a long, forked tongue that looked purple in the moonlight, and arched its back. A few seconds later, it sighed and opened its eyes.

  “Thank you,” it whispered. Then it turned to me. “You’re the Jacob?”

  “I am.”

  “We are in your debt. The resistance is fighting the Ssssitar.”

  It drew out the s-sound, and when it did, the purple tongue wagged out of its mouth. “We were winning, but there are many. They came from the ssssky. We fought them. We sssstole their weapons. We killed many, but we losssst. Many died.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Stay here and rest. You’ve done your part.”

  “I”ll have to. Thank you.”

  “Skrew is getting the spookers,” the vrak whispered.

  We regrouped and headed out again. It seemed that Graggle had actually obeyed my orders and formed somewhat of a resistance. They’d obviously been enough of a threat for the Xeno to send reinforcements. I hoped they managed to kill some before being routed.

  The sound of struggling and a scream froze the column again. We all took a knee to lower our profiles and searched for the threat.

  Three shadows emerged from the side of a building about 30 feet away. Two resembled praying mantises, stood at more than six feet tall, and walked on pointy feet.

  The Xeno had arrived.

  The third shadow was bipedal, shorter than the other two, and looked like some kind of humanoid. He was being held between the two others. One Xeno held its arms, the other its legs. Then, they yanked and pulled their victim in half, top from bottom. It was dead before its guts splattered on the ground.