Embers: The Galaxy On Fire Series, Book 1

by Craig Robertson

  “So I’ve been told.” I winked at her and left.

  The next morning, we were off to find the Mother Stones. While Mirraya was getting ready, I went looking for a vehicle to borrow. Cars on Locinar were almost exclusively tiny electric ones. Disgusting. Picture, if you will, the gutless Prius of the twentieth century. Now shrink it down but about a third and slow it down by half. Yeah, they were just wrong. But beggars not being choosers, I had limited options. At least they were easy to hot wire. I didn’t even need my probes to do it, which was fun.

  We left early so the traffic would be light, but there was enough that we didn’t stand out. Nearly every car I passed, and believe me, I passed a lot of them, was driven by an LGM, a little green man. I suppose they could have been LGWs since I couldn’t tell the sexes apart, if there were sexes. Maybe LGMs were clones. Then something occurred to me.

  “Hey, could any of these LGMs be Deft hiding like you are?”

  “No,” she said immediately.

  “Why not. You sure look like one of them.”

  “To you, yes. To another Deft, hardly. We can always tell when we’re looking at the real thing versus a copy.” She turned to face me. “It’s in the eyes.”

  “Your eyes look like the LGM’s eyes.”

  “No, it’s in the eyes. It’s just obvious.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering if any of the guys we see are hiding Deft.”

  She stared out the windshield. “Aside from Avval, I haven’t seen another Deft yet.”

  “If you do, let me know, okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll wiggle my ears.” She rolled her eyes. Even though she looked a LGM outwardly, that maneuver was pure teenage girl.

  We pulled off the road a few klicks out of town. So far, so good. The dirt road to our objective was tolerable, and the spot wasn’t far in. Mirraya pointed to some rocks and announced we’d arrived. I was under-impressed. A monumental spiritual icon these rocks were not. They looked more like a pile up of construction rubble. But hey, to each his or her own.

  We stepped out of the car and walked to the rocks. “These are what your family made a special trip to visit?”

  “Yes, we very much enjoyed it here. Is there a problem, UJ?”

  Uh oh, she rarely called me that, and it was exclusively when she was pissed at me. “I mean … I assumed they were, you know,” I lifted my palm as high as I could, “a little bigger maybe.”

  “We always found them impressive.”

  “Me too, don’t get me wrong. Those … those are really big …”

  “I think I have you perfectly correctly. Follow me, Uncle Culturally Insensitive,” she said as she walked around the pebble pile.

  She strode toward an adjacent clearing where benches and tables were located. The place looked like your standard campground in Anywhere USA, little raised barbecues and all. Then, because nothing could possibly be easy, a fantastic beast rumbled out of the bushes and charged us. It wasn’t that large, but what it lacked in heft it more than made up for in bad attitude and spikes. It was a mini-triceratops with eight legs, over-sized wings, and lethal talons or claws.

  I reflexively backed up and raised my right hand. I took the time to aim right between its eyes.

  Mirraya’s hand grabbed my arm and pulled it down. “Hang on. That won’t be necessary,” She said, starting to melt into naked Mirraya. Somehow during the process, she was able to yell, “That’ll just about do it.”

  The creature slammed on all eight brakes and skidded to a stop a few meters away. Then it started melting too. I a few seconds there stood a naked boy, maybe Mirraya’s age or a tad younger. Great, now I had two naked teens. What possible mischief could follow?

  “I’m Mirraya La-Dor-Fell,” she said formally. “This is Jon Ryan. We are traveling together.”

  The boy bowed slightly and responded. “My name’s Slapgren Vel-Ol-Torp. Please to meet you both.”

  “Do you have your clothes nearby, Slapgren?” I quickly asked.

  “Yes, of course. Why do you ask?” he replied.

  “Uncle Jon is an alien.” Man it was hard to hear that. They were the aliens. “His species is very shy.”

  “Ah,” he said with a wisdom beyond his years. “Provincials.”

  “And then some,” she stepped toward him. “Let’s go get your clothes before he has a seizure. I’ll change back into one of those LGMs.”

  “What’s an LGM?” he said quite confused.

  “We’ll talk as we walk,” she responded, taking his elbow and leading him away.

  A couple minutes later, a clothed Slapgren along with an LGM reappeared. They joined me where I was seated at a picnic table. He slipped into the opposite bench, but Mirraya was finding the LGM’s anatomy didn’t match the furniture very well.

  “You can switch back to you if you want. I’ll run back to the car and get your clothes,” I said, gesturing over my shoulder.

  “That would be nice, Uncle Jon. I don’t want any splinters where you’d be reluctant to pull them out.” She giggled to Slapgren, who followed in kind. Teens.

  I threw the bundle in Mirraya’s face when I returned to make the point that she was being a pill. Guess what? She giggled some more, as did Slapgren. I was tired of him already.

  “So, what’s your story, boy,” I said roughly.

  “What do you mean?” he said looking hurt.

  “What the big, scary man is asking is how did you get here, and are you alone?” She regarded me like I was aging dog poop on a hot sidewalk and added, “I’m sure he was just about to ask if you were all right or needed anything.”

  “Yeah,” I tossed my head in her direction, “What she said.”

  “I … I could do with some food. I’ve been here a week and haven’t found much.”

  That was back in the car too. Without a word, I trudged over and retrieved the cooler. I set it on the table. “There, now it’s officially a picnic. Dig in, both of you.”

  “Mirraya pulled off the top and dove in. Slapgren was reluctant. “Are you going to have some too, sir?” he asked me.

  “He doesn’t eat much,” Mirraya said almost unintelligibly due to the truckload of grub in her mouth. “Dig in.”

  He then did so with earnest. Starving teenage boy earnest. I was careful to keep my hands and arms out of the cooler. Didn’t want to lose any parts or pieces.

  Within ten minutes, he was slowing to a believable pace. Mirraya had told me shapeshifting required a lot of energy. She said one never saw a fat Deft. If someone put on a few pounds, they simply changed and changed until they were back to their high school weight.

  “Is your family here?” Mirraya asked gently. She probably suspected the answer.

  “No, just me so far.” He beamed a smile so bright it could be seen from low orbit. “But now there’s you.” He devoured another something and looked to me. “And Uncle Jon, too, of course,” he amended without any real enthusiasm.

  She giggled, because she knew I was irritated.

  “How did you get here safely?”

  “When the Adamant came, there was a lot of confusion.” He swung his arms in the air. “Explosions, pushing, people running. It was crazy. Anyway, I hid at my house. My parents weren’t home, and my brothers were in school. After the parade of soldiers passed by, I ran straight into the forest and ran for the entire day.”

  He furrowed his brow. “It was weird. I guess I was too scared to change. I tried to become a scappy and fly or a botswat and run faster, but I stayed me.”

  “They had some stasis field deployed that prohibited us from changing.”

  “It must be off now, because I have been able to, and so can you.”

  Mirraya looked to me. “Maybe the field has a harmful effect on any living creatures if exposure is sustained. Maybe they just figure they got you all,” I responded.

  “Have you seen any other Deft since that day?” Mirraya asked with forebodi
ng.

  He shook his head. “You’re the first … the only.”

  “Well it’s going to be fine,” she patted the back of his hand. “We’re here, so you’ll be just fine. Won’t he, Uncle Jon?” she actually kicked my shin under the table, out of Slapgren’s view.

  “Yes. As long as we’re around, you’ll be okay.”

  “But what will we do? If everyone’s dead, we’re …” Slapgren couldn’t finish his thought.

  “For one thing, we are going to find any remaining Deft,” Mirraya said with organized confidence. “And for another, we’re going to punish the Adamant for what they did to us.”

  Slapgren looked back up from his hand resting on the table. “Revenge against an unstoppable force. Good luck with that flight of imagination.”

  Everyone was a critic out here in the future. Not that they weren’t back in my time, but nothing changed.

  “How long have you been at this rock place?” I asked. That won me another kick in the shins.

  “I got here two days after the attack. So, I’ve been her maybe three weeks.”

  “How did you survive?” asked a concerned Mirraya.

  He pointed to the right. “Oh, there’s lots of water in the stream. Once I could change, I did a little hunting.” He got an ill look on his face. “Mostly bugs and other disgusting things. Hardly worth the energy to transform.”

  “Here,” she said handing him yet another sandwich, “eat this, you poor boy.”

  He took the sandwich, but as he unwrapped it, he remarked, “I’m twelve, you’re what, thirteen? Please don’t call me boy like you’re a grown up.”

  “I’m almost fourteen,” she responded.

  “And I’m almost annoyed. Please, can we just be who we are?”

  “Yes,” she said with a smile.

  Alright Slapgren. My kind of macho. Maybe he was going to be okay after all.

  “So, in three weeks here, no sigh of friend or foe. Is that correct?” I pressed.

  “Yes, Uncle Jon. You are the first two sentients I’ve seen since I began running.”

  “That’s good. It means we’re relatively safe here. For whatever reason, the puppy dogs aren’t interested in this place.” I tented my fingers over my mouth a few seconds. “Maybe for their plan of domination to work, they simply need to debulk to native population. In time, the locals will either show themselves, starve, or be discovered by the drone species.”

  “Uncle Jon, what’s a drone species and what’s a puppy dog.”

  Mirraya fielded the queries. “The LGM are drones. Very little intelligence and even less ambition. They are a slave species the Adamant use to feed their empire.”

  “And the puppies?”

  “Uncle Jon has this notion that the horrible, world-devouring Adamant look like the cute household pets of his native planet.” She looked at me like I smelled bad.

  He looked at me like I smelled bad and was insane. Ah, to have such fans. What a blessing.

  “Wait, I never said any such thing. I said they look like border collies. I happen to not find them cute. They’re too neurotic and energetic for my taste. Now, a Rottweiler or a saluki, now those were cute dogs.”

  “I think the time-shock has been a terrible blow. Please excuse him,” Mirraya said privately to Slapgren.

  “When was there a time shock? I didn’t feel it.”

  “No, he only woke up just after the Adamant attack. He’d been sleep for two billion years.”

  “Ah…” He raised a finger. “Ah, er…”

  She patted his hand again. “We’ll talk later. Best not to tax UJ.”

  “Who’s UJ?” asked an ever more confused Slapgren.

  Mirraya meanly bobbed her angled head toward me silently. Such a tactful scamp.

  “On that note, let’s get moving,” I said, standing.

  “Why?” asked Mirraya. “I thought you said we’d be safe here.”

  “Not with a hot car. It has a homing beacon. Once it’s reported as stolen, this place’ll be swarming with dogs. They know none of the LGM would steal a look at a pretty girl, let alone someone else’s vehicle.

  “Where will we go?” Mirraya pressed.

  “Not here and not your cousin’s house.”

  “That leaves a lot of options,” she observed coolly.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? I’ll drive the car into the stream. Maybe that’ll slow the search. Then we’ll walk to the next town.”

  “Wait, you said you’d be more careful with the ride this time.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I was overconfident.”

  “Why are you going to drive someone else’s perfectly good car into the water?” asked Slapgren.

  “Because, in the first place, they stole it from the Deft, and in the second place, the car has a homing beacon.”

  “How do you know it does?”

  “It told me.”

  “The car talks?”

  “To me it does,” I winked at Mirraya.

  “We’ll talk later, sweetie,” she said, patting him on the back.

  They followed me to the stream and watched me ditch the car there. The water was deep enough to swallow the whole tiny, underpowered piece of junk. It was less of a car and more of a lawnmower, with slightly larger wheels and zero leg room.

  Both teens agreed the next town over was much smaller. It sounded like a suburb of the larger city we’d come from. It supported the farms farther out, so it was unlikely to have a spaceship we could … appropriate. Unless the Adamant had some there. How hard could it be to steal one of their ships? Yeah, what a dumb idea. But in the idea desert, bad ones were the only ones I could reasonable expect.

  I concluded that there couldn’t be too many Deft left, considering how calm the city was. Slapgren’s observations supported that theory. It also made finding a sizeable number of free-living Deft most unlikely. I would have liked to have had more information, but if the opportunity to get off Locinar presented itself, I was ready to take it. Sooner or later, the dogs’d track us down. A stolen car dumped in water wouldn’t reveal to them I was present, but any criminal activity was going to be met with force. If they somehow suspected I was the culprit, all hell’d break loose, and we’d get caught for sure. I knew, however, that if they debriefed Avval aggressively, which was the only way they knew how, they'd likely suspect I was on Locinar.

  The walk was uneventful. Operating way behind enemy lines, uneventful was as nice as it was unexpected. I contacted Al and Stingray, but neither had any detailed information on the town. The teens knew a little about it, having both been through it many times. But they’d never stopped there. So, we walked the perimeter as I scanned for insights. I saw a few LGM wandering around, but it was a few hours after dark, so most were probably in bed. One couldn’t serve the master race if they didn’t get a good night’s rest, it would seem.

  I didn't see any Adamant out to pee on a bush or anything, but that didn’t surprise me. I figured they didn’t get out much. Very few cars drove the streets, and none of them looked like police or military vehicles. That probably meant there wasn’t much crime, since all potential criminals were dead. An efficient, if not a welcoming society. I debated stealing another car and moving on to a larger town but realized we were such a hopeless situation that a change of venue wouldn’t help. We needed a ship or to find a PEMTU. The problem, with using a PEMTU was that Locinar was unlikely to explode behind us, so we’d be easy to follow. Also, once they pieced together how I’d co-opted one, security was likely to be much tighter.

  I headed into town and had the kids turn into nocturnal animals. That way they’d be less visible, and their heightened senses might alert us to trouble. I didn’t tell them, but I also figured that if I was captured, maybe they’d escape unnoticed. Yeah. One was an oversized rat with particularly sharp fangs and the other a lumpy-bumpy furry blob. Who in the right or wrong mind would apprehend either of them? I knew who they were, and they were freaking me out.

  I passed mostly
unoccupied houses and abandoned stores. A few lights were on here and there where LGMs were quieting down for the night. Toward the center of town, off a square, I located an official building with a lot of lights on. It was worth checking out. I had the kids cover the entrance and rear exit, and I went in alone. The front doors were unlocked. Again, no locks needed in a society purged of evil doers. I couldn’t hear any sounds of activity, and no one seemed to be in the building. I swept the first floor and confirmed it was empty. The second and third floors were equally vacant. One more to go.

  The stairs opened to the northwest corner of the building. The floor plan was offices on either side of a boring hallway in a square. A typical work-a-day design. I opened every door where light shone through underneath. It was always the last door. Note to self. Never open the last door. I should have known something was up. As I put my hand on the door knob, I caught a whiff of burning plant material.

  “Good evening, General Ryan. What a pleasant surprise. Thank you for allowing me to be the one so fortunate as to begin your interrogation.” It was a border collie sitting in a chair smoking a cigar. Any other time or place, and I’d have sworn off alcohol permanently, knowing it had damaged my brain. A fucking dog in a chair smoking a stogie and threatening me. Perfect.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Please, General Ryan, sit,” my host gestured toward a chair. “Oh, I forget, you’re nothing more than grinding cogs and whirring gears. Why would you desire to sit?”

  “Which would you prefer?” I asked blandly.

  He thought a second and then said, “Standing. I should not want you to provide the illusion of humanity.”

  I sat down demonstrable and crossed my arms and legs. Then I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “How very human. Perhaps you are more than a collection of electronic impulses.” He puffed luxuriantly at his cigar. “Not that it matters in the slightest. Oh, I am Wedge Leader Garustfulous.”

  “Big name for a little pup,” I snarled back.

  He picked up a small stick from in front of him and pressed it. An electric bolt jumped from it to my left eye. If it had been the genuine article, it would have been fried. I made a show if it hurting. In my day, back in school, I was in drama class, however briefly. I noticed as a frosh with lust that all the knock out girls were attracted to that class like moths to a flame. I soon discovered that they turned only the coldest of shoulders to a jock like me. Monkey in human clothing, I believe, was the term applied to me. In any case, I could act.