by Scott Baron
“I think there are––”
The Váli abruptly jerked free from its spin, the centrifugal force tearing free another half-dozen pods, sending them flying in all directions.
“Shit!” Freya blurted as she took instantaneous evasive maneuvers.
The pods narrowly missed her, scattered in the sky and falling to the planet below.
The Váli, free of not just the weight of the pods, but also the drag they were producing in the atmosphere, quickly changed course, pulling up hard and pushing fast for the relative safety of outer space.
Her accompanying ship ran interference behind her, deftly maneuvering to drive the Ra’az pursuers off in a way Daisy found vaguely familiar.
“Daisy, I couldn’t get a proper scan of the pods,” Freya informed her, “But most of their automatic emergency landing jets seem to have been functional. They will land hard, but they should be intact.”
“Great. Now we just have to find out who was on board them.”
Mal, for her part, had a very good idea who was in those pods, and as soon as she hit the welcome embrace of outer space, quickly deployed her small hopper craft remotely to retrieve as many of her crew as possible.
The little ship had only just steered toward the atmosphere when it was torn to shreds by Ra’az pulse fire.
“Captain,” she said, “it appears we are going to need to acquire a new hopper. Ours was just destroyed.”
“Shit,” Harkaway growled. “What about the others? Are they alive, Mal?”
“My last readings before we broke atmosphere said yes.”
Harkaway allowed himself the slightest sigh of relief.
“Well, then, let’s hope that assessment is still accurate.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
A pair of damaged and blast-scorched pods that had plummeted to the planet still linked together rested at awkward angles where they had partially sunk into the fecund soil of Taangaar’s surface where they had impacted.
Their emergency landing jets had done their job––namely keeping the pod from crushing into a pancake upon impact––but that was about the extent of it. A comfortable landing was not what they were designed for.
The access doors to both of the pods popped off as their explosive retaining bolts were triggered from the inside. Dazed and shaken, but very much alive, Sarah and Finn crawled out and fell to the ground, breathing hard as they recovered from the ordeal.
From the other pod, Sergeant Franklin emerged, standing tall, his gear already strapped in place and ready for action. He looked down on his dizzy comrades and smiled.
“Helluva ride, huh?” he said with a chuckle.
Sarah rolled over and vomited.
“Guess not,” he said.
“Dude, how can you just stand there and not feel the world spinning?” Finn asked as he tried to gingerly press himself up to a seated position.
“Ah, that,” George said, tapping his head. “Gyroscopic stabilizers. Cyborgs don’t get motion sickness.”
He looked at the finger that had just tapped his head. A small smear of blood decorated it like a tiny red exclamation point.
“Aww, hell,” he lamented. “Already?”
“What?” Finn asked.
“This,” George replied, pointing at the tiny cut on his forehead.
“It’s just a little cut, man. And you’re a cyborg commando, so what do you care?”
“I don’t, it’s just that I just got this,” he said, gesturing to his recently acquired physique. “And it even still has that new body smell.”
“Don’t sweat it. Chicks dig scars,” Finn managed to joke as the world slowly stopped spinning. “Isn’t that right, Sarah?”
“Yeah, we do,” Sarah agreed, wiping her lips and sitting upright. “At least, sometimes.”
Sarah had only just tracked Finn down aboard the ship when they warped and all hell broke loose, so she hadn’t had a chance to talk with him yet. Things, as a result, were still painfully uncomfortable between them. Something George, with his highly sensitive scanning array, had quickly noticed.
“Well, we seem to be intact, at least,” he said. “But there’ll be time for chatting later. We need to gather whatever supplies we can and bug out of here, and fast. There’s no telling when the Ra’az will send ships down to look for us.”
“I think we’re safe for a while,” Sarah said, looking up at the battle raging in the skies above. “They’re a little preoccupied at the moment.”
George surveyed the battle, then turned his attention back to his teammates.
“Yeah, possibly. But Murphy loves to fuck with our plans, and I don’t have any intention of laying out a welcome mat for him, so get off your duffs and gather up our gear. We’re in a tough spot, and we need to hide until we can better assess the situation.”
“Shouldn’t we stay nearby? I mean, what if they send a rescue party?” Finn inquired.
“I wouldn’t count on anyone coming to get us just yet,” George replied. “And there’s no way we can blend in down here, so hiding is our number one option.”
“But what about Shelly and Omar? They were on board. And Vince? And the Chithiid soldiers?” Sarah asked as the reality of their situation began to sink in.
“If the Váli survived, then Vince did. He would have been in engineering, and that’s an integral part of the ship’s superstructure,” Finn said. “The others, I don’t know about.”
“Other pods tore free,” George said. “I heard them when we were cut loose.”
“You heard that?”
“Cyborg hearing,” he replied with a grin.
“Jeez. I’m beginning to think being human ain’t all it’s cut out to be. You get all the cool toys,” Finn said, climbing to his feet.
“Yeah, and there are a few more toys left,” George replied.
Finn reached down, offering to help Sarah to her feet. She took his hand uncomfortably, quickly releasing it once she was standing. George noticed the exchange but kept his comments to himself.
“We need to make for cover,” he said, scanning the terrain. “I think those trees over there should suffice for our immediate needs. We can reassess from there.”
The area they had landed––or more aptly, crashed––in was what appeared to be an undeveloped patch of wilderness. Shrubs and a low-growing grass of some sort covered the gently rolling hills, while small thickets of dense trees with long trunks rising up to an interwoven canopy of deep purple leaves spotted the landscape.
There was no water anywhere near that they could see, but given the lush nature of the vegetation, George didn’t think sourcing hydration for his human charges would be too great of a task.
“Help me cover the pods as best we can with some branches from those bushes we crushed on the way in. It’ll be quick and not terribly efficient, but it may buy us a little protection from the most basic of Ra’az searches.”
George was a dynamo, working at full speed to camouflage the crashed pods, at least somewhat. Finn and Sarah weren’t too much help, but he didn’t really expect them to be. In fact, he would have been perfectly happy to do the job himself, but he thought having a task might take their minds off of whatever was going on between them and ease the tension somewhat.
Ten minutes later they had done all they could and had taken shelter under a nearby group of trees.
“Okay, now let’s see what’s going on around here,” George said, taking a small brown ball from his pocket.
“Cyborg turds?” Finn joked.
“Oh, you’d know if I dumped one on you,” George shot back with a grin. “No, this is a tactical field survey drone. Good for up to twenty clicks or so.”
He tossed the ball into the air, where it sprang open, revealing tiny stabilizer wings and an even tinier camera array. The device hovered in front of them a moment, while George stared at it intently.
“Uh, George? What are you doing?”
“Systems check. Standby.”
“Oh, I f
orgot for a minute,” Finn said.
“Forgot what?”
“That you’re a cyborg.”
George didn’t break his gaze, but a little smile flashed across his lips.
“And that, my friend, is why it’s so nice to have a flesh body again. It just makes life that much easier, ya know?”
The tiny drone abruptly shot off into the sky and was gone from sight.
“I assume you did that,” Sarah said.
“Yeah,” George replied, taking a seat with his companions. “I’ve got a wireless link connecting me to the drone. It’s a secure line, and something of a spec-ops trade secret, so the odds of the Ra’az stumbling upon it are slim to none.”
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Well, I’m having it run a series of search patterns, first from altitude, then lower. It looks like a fair amount of pods came down relatively near here.”
“Shit, so Mal lost a bunch of them,” Finn moaned. “I hope she made it out okay.”
“Knowing that ship––and that crew, I might add––I have high hopes for them.”
George paused, focusing on the signal feeding into his head.
“Ah, so it looks like a couple of pods lost their emergency landing thrusters and pancaked into the turf.”
“Can you tell if anyone was in them?” Finn asked.
“Negative, but I don’t see any of the telltale fluid leakage one would expect if there were live personnel aboard at the time of impact. Odds are it was just equipment and supplies.”
“Speaking of which, we have some very basic gear, but there were no rations in our pods,” Finn said. “We’ve got whatever’s in our pockets to eat. After that, we’re on our own.”
“Come on, man. This should be exciting for you,” George cajoled him. “You’re Mister I Love to Cook, right? So this should be right up your alley.”
“In a kitchen, sure. But I’m not much for hunting.”
“I’ve seen you with those knives, Finn. You’re more than a chef.”
“It’s just a hobby,” he replied. “And anyway, I cook with replicated proteins. I’m not a fan of killing my food.”
“Then you’re in luck,” George said, flashing a toothy grin.
“Again, you’ve lost me.”
“Am I the only one who reads the mission briefs?”
“Probably,” Sarah said, cracking a faint smile.
George was glad to see her lightening up. She’d need to if they were going to operate as an effective unit.
“According to the Chithiid, almost everything that grows on this planet is edible. And on top of that, from what we were able to discern, it’s also non-toxic to humans.”
“I’ve tasted Chithiid food. It’s not all that,” Finn griped.
“You tasted what the Ra’az made for them,” George replied. “And that was just to cover basic nutritional needs, not things like flavor and texture.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, did you know the Chithiid are an almost entirely herbivorous species?”
“Actually, that’s news to me,” Finn said. “Seems counterintuitive, given how evolved they are. It’s usually complex amino acids found in meats that spark evolutionary development of the brain. At least among humans, anyway.”
“And it was that way with the Chithiid as well. But they had a different evolutionary trigger. You see, a very good amount of the plants on Taangaar are extremely high in complete proteins. In fact, I’d wager you could probably squeeze more protein per ounce out of some of these plants than you could from many of your fabricated animal proteins.”
“Seriously?” Finn said, his mood perking up as he began to realize the culinary playground he was standing in the middle of.
“Yeah,” George replied. “I suppose being herbivores was probably what also made them a target for the Ra’az to enslave when their initial plague attempts failed.”
“Why’s that?” Sarah asked as she scanned the horizon for any sign of hostiles.
“Because it’s easier to feed a workforce if you don’t have to source complex foods for them. For the Chithiid, it was easy to gather the most prolific crop plants and utilize them to feed the conscripted workforce and soldiers.”
“What about predators, though?” Sarah said, as an animal’s movement in the far distance caught her eye.
“From what our Chithiid partners said during mission prep, the fauna on the planet are nearly entirely herbivorous as well. There are a few predators, of course, but the odds of running into one are slim. Most live far from populated areas.”
“Far from populated areas, kind of like where we are right now?” Finn asked.
“Uh... I see your point,” George said. “But we should be fine. If it makes you feel any better, though, I’m heavily armed, heavily armored, and don’t need to sleep.”
“Well––”
“And my drone shows nothing of any significant size within a dozen kilometers of here. I’ll keep watch tonight regardless, of course.”
“Thanks, dude.”
“My pleasure,” George said. “Hang on.”
“What is it?”
“My drone is seeing something, but it’s outside my range and it can barely pick up the readings.”
George, despite being a cyborg and not needing to move at all, furrowed his brow a little as he strained to read his distant device. A holdover habit from years of blending in with humans.
“The ejected pods seem to have landed following a trajectory that way,” he said, pointing off into the distance. “We’re close to the far end of the crashed pods. Almost all of the rest of them landed in that direction.”
“Is that a good thing?” Finn asked.
“Lights in the distance lead me to believe there’s a populated area way out the same direction. Could be a problem for our people. I’m not sure. Hang on.”
He stared into nothing a while longer as he read the distant scans from his drone.
“Okay, it looks like at least one of the pods had some Chithiid in it, and from what I can tell, they survived. But the images are at the edge of what I can accurately see, so I can’t say for sure. The rest of the pods are that way, but too far to pick up.”
“If they did survive, then they should be able to blend in. Mal was carrying young Chithiid with the plan to insert them close to large population centers so they could blend in, either as males too young to be sent to work yet, or for the more feminine ones, they could covertly sneak into the female work camps disguised as women.”
“That could be awkward,” Sarah mused, allowing herself a faint mischievous grin.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Finn asked, sharing the grin.
Sarah looked up, finally making and holding eye contact in their moment of shared amusement.
“Pubescent boys surrounded by women? Oh yeah,” she said. “I bet I am.”
Inside a nearby camp, a very feminine male indeed was making the best of his more delicate features, blending in with the vast multitude of women as they went through their daily labors. The work was monotonous, and he found himself drifting off into thought when their shift ended and they were marched back to their quarters.
As the females brushed against him as they passed, many in various states of undress within the comfort of their lodgings, the young and inexperienced male found himself in an increasingly awkward and difficult situation as he tried to control not only his blush reflex, but also other involuntary bodily functions as well.
Had he been a bit older, perhaps he would have had more control over them, but for a young male, it was almost too much to bear. He was doing all he could, even intentionally stubbing his toe on a bunk, hoping the pain would distract him, but he was very near to being found out.
“Hello, friend,” a young female said as she approached him. She was, he thankfully noticed, fully covered in modest attire.
“Hello to you,” he replied, not quite sure what to say next.
The
young female smiled and looked him over, pausing at the decorative sweatband material tied above one of his elbows.
“And how are you finding your lodgings?” she asked. “Are they satisfactory?”
“Uh, yes, they are quite fine,” he stammered.
“You and I should become friends,” the young female abruptly said. “Come, let us get sustenance. We have much to talk about.”
“I don’t know if I can––”
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close.
“I said, we have much to talk about,” she said once more, taking his hand and placing it on the sweatband tied to her arm.
The young Chithiid’s eyes went wide with recognition.
“Yes, I see,” he said, his spirits rising as other body parts, gratefully, were falling. “Lead the way, friend.”
The two exited the facility together, casually walking toward the food preparation area. No one would have noted anything unusual about two young females walking together. Even their matching armbands would have seemed a normal occurrence among friends.
Matching armbands, both of which contained the same very subtle symbol woven into the fabric. The mark of the rebellion.
The two dined casually, the embedded spy bringing him up to speed on the goings-on within the camp. There were other young males already hidden within the ranks when he arrived, it seemed, and the females were all party to keeping them hidden from detection.
There was a rebellion, of sorts, already brewing long before the allied rebels had even shown up. All they required was the right spark to ignite the already-primed kindling.
Misfortune had seen him crash onto the planet unexpectedly. Now it seemed his fortunes were swinging the other direction. Suddenly, things were looking decidedly better.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The skies above had shifted to a deep indigo as day on the Chithiid world of Taangaar gently transitioned into night. High above the seeming serenity of the planet’s surface, a deadly conflict was still very much underway, and it was only a matter of time before it spilled down to the surface.
