Skylar Mars and the Crystal Claw

by Drew Seren

  “I’m not really asleep,” Filzbalm muttered groggily.

  “Sure you are,” Skylar said as he started toward the stairs.

  “He’s trying to tell you he’s not sleepy, isn’t he?” Solaria rubbed Filzbalm’s head with the back of her hand. She always said her fur there was softer than the pads on her hands.

  “I’m not. I don’t need as much sleep as you do.” Filzbalm sounded slightly more awake.

  “But we’re all going to get some sleep.” Skylar continued down the curving stairs. He didn’t bother trying to explain to Filzbalm that the Solar Drake slept more than most humans.

  “Yeah.” Solaria yawned. “We’ve got to be ready to go as soon as Mom says we need to.”

  Skylar remembered getting to his room, and Filzbalm flying onto the bed, but he fell asleep almost as fast as he lay down.

  “THANKS FOR the tip on using the thermal cameras,” Felonia said as they sped across the icy landscape heading north. “We haven’t been able to get a lock on her position, but we think she’s traveling via subterranean passageways, or possibly moving through the planet’s crust on her own.” She shuddered. “I’ve never heard of anything powerful enough to do that. It takes massive equipment to tunnel through a planet.”

  “What if she’s using some kind of psychic power to do it?” Skylar asked. After their discussion the previous night, he’d begun to wonder if some unknown psychic ability was letting the unknown being move about without being spotted. The basic psychic skills were well documented, but what if there were others that weren’t? Would that give someone the power they needed to pull off what they were suggesting?

  “It’s possible there are gifts we haven’t discovered,” Felonia said as she made a course correction.

  “Or something that’s been forgotten,” Solaria added. “Mom, we have to ask what the government has been hiding from us. I doubt it stops with the fact that a lot of us are from engineered human stock.”

  Felonia nodded. “I agree, and we have to be very careful how we let that information out. To tell the truth, I was amazed O’Byrne was so forthcoming with his confirmation last night. That’s not how his kind normally operate, unless that’s the root of our problem.”

  “What do you mean?” Skylar leaned slightly over the seat, but his seatbelt prevented him from going too far.

  “Maybe what we’re facing is one of the original inhabitants of either Pantheria or some nearby planet,” Felonia suggested. “We’ve got at least two other planets in this system that show signs of previous civilizations. We’ve been assuming they died out before we evolved, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe when the humans came, they weren’t able to find a peaceful way to co-exist with the natives and just killed them.”

  “Then why isn’t she dead?” It didn’t make sense to Skylar that the humans would keep one representative of a species alive when they were slaughtering the rest of them.

  Felonia sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe when we catch up to her, we’ll have the opportunity to ask.”

  “If she isn’t killed first,” Solaria said.

  “Our tech hasn’t changed much in the last thousand or so years,” Felonia said. “We’ve been so busy expanding the empire…sorry, the Galactic Council’s reach, we haven’t worried much about improving tech. If they couldn’t kill her then, it’s doubtful we could kill her now.”

  “But they appeared to have imprisoned her,” Skylar said. “We have no idea how that would work, do we?”

  “No.” Felonia rubbed her chin. “We have no idea what really happened. For all we know she went into some kind of hibernation and the symbols on the wall are mean to be a warning to not disturb—”

  Skylar’s com beeped before Felonia could finish what she was going to say. He glanced at his wrist. Del’s info was on the holoscreen there. “It’s Del.” He tapped the com to connect. “Hey, Del. What have you got for me?”

  Del’s image popped up for a second, then the image of a cat’s paw print replaced it. “Does this mean anything to anyone?”

  Solaria laughed. “Del, we’re on a planet of cats. It’s all over the place.”

  “Yeah, Del. We need something more than that.” Skylar added. No matter how smart Del was, there were times he was good at asking obvious questions.

  “Okay.” Del sighed like they were missing something very obvious. “This symbol—which if you look closely—is a bit more than a cat’s paw, is repeated several times in the last round of images Solaria’s mother sent last night. It’s not in any database I can search. Melody’s digging into some of those ancient records her mother has. I think it might be important, particularly the way there’s a bit of a starburst and lines going out from the paw.”

  Felonia turned from the landscape and stared at the image rotating in the hologram just above Skylar’s wrist. “I’ve seen something else with that on it recently, but it’s slipping my mind right now.”

  “If you find it, it might be a key to something. Let me know what it is.” Del sounded impatient, which wasn’t like him when he was getting to dig up new information.

  “We will,” Skylar promised.

  “Anything else, Del?” Felonia asked.

  The paw print disappeared and Del reappeared. “Not at the moment. I just hoped you might know something about that.”

  “Okay. Well, we’re approaching Wegascu. It doesn’t look good.” Felonia pointed out the hover car’s windshield.

  Across the horizon, smoke rose from the ice. Somehow the damage looked more raw and brutal than Glacier City had been.

  “Del, we need to go. Call back when you’ve got something more.” Skylar hated rushing Del off like that, but he figured they were going to be needed quickly.

  “Will do. If you find out anything, let me know.” He tapped his wrist and broke the connection.

  Skylar’s heart sank as they zipped closer to the damage. Where the worst destruction in Glacier City had seemed confined to the city center, in Wegascu it looked like the whole town had been razed to the ground. He wondered if there would be any survivors at all.

  18

  Cave-in

  INTERGAL RESCUE seemed to be on top of things again. They already had their white tents set up, and Felonia pulled the hover car over by them. Once they were parked and glanced around, it was obvious nobody was there.

  “This is odd,” Felonia said as she opened her door and got out. “Even if they have parties out searching for survivors, Phil says there’s always personnel at a base camp.”

  “Maybe with everything that’s going on, they’re stretched really thin,” Solaria suggested as she and Skylar followed her mother toward the closest tent.

  A strange mental buzzing nagged at Skylar as they walked the short distance. It made him nervous. He felt jumpy, ready to run at the least little thing.

  “This is coming from somewhere close by,” Filzbalm said, sounding like he was trying to explain the feeling Skylar had.

  “But what is it?” Skylar muttered.

  “What’s what?” Solaria asked.

  “That buzzing,” Skylar said. “Filzbalm says it’s coming from somewhere nearby.”

  Felonia paused just feet from the closest tent. “You’re right. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s like some kind of psychic static.”

  “Right.” Skylar nodded. “Have you ever felt anything like it before?” He was new enough to being psychic that there was a lot he didn’t know about.

  “No. It’s like something’s trying to reach out to us, but it’s not on the right frequency.” She sighed. “This is making me wish I’d left you three at home.”

  Solaria rolled her eyes. “Ah, come on, Mom. Now is not the time to get all motherly on us. You said it yourself before we left: we need every viable sense on this hunt. We’ll be fine. Having us along gives you three extra sets of senses. If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it.”

  “That’s part of what I’m afraid of,” Felonia said as she turned and resumed clo
sing the distance to the tent. “We need to help the survivors. What we don’t need to do is actually find what’s doing this. We need to leave that to the people who are more powerful. Like Phil or O’Byrne.”

  “Do we even know how powerful O’Byrne is?” Skylar asked as they entered the tent.

  “No.” Felonia shook her head. “The O’Byrne family is very hush-hush about what they can do, but the fact they control most of the Galactic Council tells us a lot about them. I’d just watch yourself around him, or anyone else from that family.”

  “They’ve probably got their genes hacked to the max,” Solaria said.

  “But that’s not legal.” As soon as he spoke, Skylar knew he was sounding stupid.

  Solaria shot him a glance over her shoulder. “And when someone has money, what does legal have to do with anything? Come on, Skylar, you should know better than that.”

  He hung his head. “Yeah.”

  Felonia held up her hand, signaling them to stop. The tent was empty of life. It looked like it had been set up to receive people, but there was no one there. The cots still had unused pillows and blankets on them. There was a small desk right next to the tent flap and an unlit stove midway down the tent.

  “This isn’t right.” Solaria started to walk past her mother, but Felonia stopped her.

  “Wait.”

  A weak telepathic probe brushed Skylar’s mind, then went on. Felonia’s eyes were closed as she searched.

  Skylar stayed still. In class, they always said to do as little as possible if someone nearby was doing a psychic probe. It was considered polite, and helped prevent their scan from failing.

  Felonia shook her head as she opened her eyes. “Nothing. Nothing except the buzzing.”

  Solaria gasped. “Then what happened to Dad and Uncle Phil?”

  “I don’t know,” Felonia said. “We need to get back to the hover car and get out of here. Call in more help.”

  “They’re nearby,” Filzbalm said, sticking his head out from Skylar’s hood and staring at the tent floor. “Underground, I think.”

  “Filzbalm says they’re—” Skylar’s words were cut off as a massive quake hit. The tent pole nearest him broke, letting the heavy cloth fall. As he scrambled to keep his footing, the ice below the tent gave way. Skylar found himself falling as the tent, cots, and desk tumbled into a shadowy abyss.

  The ice smashed down around him. He instinctively put his arms over his head as he fell.

  “Mom!” Solaria screamed. “Skylar!”

  Then Skylar stopped falling. Something had hold of him. The ice and debris showered down around him, but he’d stopped moving.

  “Help me help Solaria,” Filzbalm said. “We need to join together.”

  “Like we’ve done before.” Skylar thrust his mind out to Solaria, lending her his strength as he realized her mover powers were what was keeping him from falling farther down the hole.

  “Solaria, lower us down,” Felonia said, sounding more than a little out of breath. A light came on in the direction of her voice.

  Skylar turned toward the light. She was floating a few feet from him, and Solaria was between them, her eyes closed in concentration. Having a visual on Solaria helped him push more energy toward her.

  They slowly resumed their downward trajectory, but most of the ice, snow and items from the tent had already passed them, so Skylar stopped covering his head. He wasn’t a mover. Other than lending Solaria power, there wasn’t much he could do to help her out.

  “We’re almost there,” Felonia said, sounding encouraging. “You can do it, Solaria.”

  “She’s drawing a lot of power.” Flizbalm sounded tired.

  “If we don’t keep giving it to her, we’re all going to drop, unless you can get your wings free of my hood in time,” Skylar said, trying to look and see what Felonia was seeing of the ground beneath them. He was getting lightheaded from the energy draining out of him, but it was the only thing he could do to help the situation, so he stayed quiet as she slowly lowered them down.

  When his feet finally touched ground, Skylar breathed a sigh of relief. Then Solaria sagged against him. He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Hang on.”

  Felonia was there, taking some of her weight off him. “You did good, Solaria.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” She grinned slightly. “Movers gotta move.”

  “Relax. You really exerted yourself there,” Felonia said. She handed the light to Skylar. “Look around, see if you can spot anyway for us to get back up.” Once he had the palm light, she took all of Solaria’s weight off him and gently settled her on a spot on the ground where there wasn’t a ton of ice shards poking up, or broken pieces of metal from the debris fall.

  Skylar did as she suggested, but he couldn’t spot any close walls, or anything beyond the debris. He wandered farther away from Felonia and Solaria, trying to find a way out of the cavern they’d fallen into.

  “We’re a long way down,” Filzbalm said. “I can feel the wind from the surface, but only barely. There is also a breeze from somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean, somewhere else?” Skylar panned the light around, hoping to get a better clue as to what Filzbalm was talking about.

  “It’s a stale breeze, but moving air has to come from somewhere.” Filzbalm eased out of Skylar’s hood and perched on his shoulder. “Maybe I can get a better feel for it out here.”

  “Does Filzbalm have any ideas?” Felonia asked.

  “He says there’s a stale breeze blowing,” Skylar relayed as he continued to look for the walls. “But we can’t find any obvious openings.”

  “Then maybe we should follow his stale breeze. See where it leads.” She sighed. “I wish we’d brought more lights with us.”

  “Maybe some fell down with the tent,” Solaria suggested weakly from where she lay on the ground.

  “Let me see if I can find the desk,” Skylar said. “If there would be any kind of light or useful things, they would be in the desk, right?” It made sense to him.

  “Sounds good.” Felonia knelt next to Solaria. “If you can find a med kit, that might be useful too. I’m not getting anything on my com, even with it rerouted to the spaceport system. We’re probably too deep for them to work.”

  Skylar tried to remember where the desk had been in relation to some of the cots he spotted strewn about the cavern floor. He stopped and then turned to the right. The palm light shone on a crumpled lump of metal that lay under several large chunks of ice. He hurried over to it.

  Two drawers were partially open and within reach. He pulled on the first one. It wouldn’t open farther. He tried the second one. It was the same. He started to put his hand in the first one when Filzbalm ran down his arm.

  “Here, let me.” The Solar Drake folded his wings tight against his back and slipped into the drawer. A second later he reappeared. “Nothing useful in there.” He flowed over the edge of the top drawer and into the one beneath it. Something thudded. Then he came out pulling a palm light in his muzzle. “There’s a large dent in the back of this drawer. I might be able to get into the one below it.”

  Skylar took the light from him. “Be careful. Do you need me to shine the light in there for you?”

  Filzbalm shook his head. “My vision works differently than yours. I’ll be fine.” Then he turned and disappeared again.

  Seconds later there was more banging around. “Skylar, I think I found something else useful. It’s a med kit. But I don’t know if I can get it out. I might be able to get it open, though.”

  “Try that.” Skylar started to push on the large chunk of ice in front of the desk, then stopped. If he caused anything to shift before Filzbalm got out of the desk, he might trap him in there and not be able to get him back out, or worse, crush him if things moved the wrong way.

  “It’s tight. The kit is nearly as big as the drawer. I can reach a few things inside though. Do you want me to bring it all out?”

  Skylar didn’t instantly know the answer to
that. He glanced over to where Felonia still sat with Solaria. “Filzbalm found a med kit, but we can’t get it out of the desk intact. Should he bring everything out piece by piece, or just some of it?” He raised his voice slightly, and it sounded strange as it bounced around the cavern.

  “As much as he can get,” Felonia replied, her voice just slightly softer than Skylar’s had been.

  Somewhere nearby, something shifted and groaned. A chill of danger went through Skylar. He didn’t want to do anything to cause another cave in. Something told him it wouldn’t be hard for him to be trapped in the cavern if any of them made the wrong sound, or moved incorrectly.

  “This will take several trips.” Filzbalm said, then there was more banging around and the Solar Drake appeared with a couple of med patches in his claws. “I think these might be stimulants.” He handed them to Skylar.

  “Thanks.” Skylar took the small wrapped packages and held the light over them as Filzbalm scurried back into the desk. They were stimpatches. Just the thing to give Solaria a boost of energy and maybe help her get back on her feet until they could find a way out.

  Filzbalm brought out four more stimpatches and some antiseptic pads. Skylar didn’t think any of them had been injured, but since they were in a strange place, he decided to keep the antiseptic pads too, slipping them into the front pocket of his coat.

  The last thing Filzbalm dragged out of the drawer was a small medical multi tool—part laser, part forceps, part clamp. He gave it to Skylar, then unfolded his wings and flew up to his shoulder. “There are a couple other things in the kit, but I can’t get the lid open enough to get them out. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, no worries. This stuff will help.” Skylar put the tool in the pocket next to the antiseptic pads and hoped they wouldn’t need any of them. Then he rushed across the cavern with the stimpatches for Solaria. He just hoped they would be enough to keep her going until they found a way out of the cavern.

  19

  Defining The Problem

  SKYLAR WASN’T sure how far they’d walked, but his feet hurt and he wanted desperately to stop. He also didn’t want to sound weak around Solaria and her mom, so he kept his mouth shut and trudged along in Felonia’s wake.