by M. G. Herron
Hideous, savage, and poisonous they might be, but stupid the Kryl were certainly not. Enough ground had been lost in the Kryl War when humanity underestimated them that these sorts of procedures had been developed in the first place.
Elya had read his manuals front to back, more than once. He’d been in the same SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—training as every Imperial pilot. He knew exactly what to do. But the hull of the starfighter had warped upon impact and, try as he might, Elya couldn’t reach the area behind his seat where the flight data cube was located. He’d have to climb out and go around to get it.
Shedding his helmet and oxygen mask, Elya climbed outside. He inhaled smoke and coughed. Apart from the smoke, the air was heavy and thick with moisture, something he wasn’t used to breathing on the destroyer. Onboard, the dry air was filtered and recycled. Down here, it took extra labor from his lungs just to draw a normal breath.
Tucking his blaster into his waistband and hefting the hatchet, Elya made his way quickly around the back of the starfighter.
Once again using the butt end of the hatchet, he began to work his way around the edge of a rectangular panel designed for just such a situation. The panel had been crushed inward like the thumb of a giant had pressed down on the hull.
After a few minutes attacking the mangled metal, he managed to pry enough of it up to fit his arm inside. He disconnected the metal cube and hauled it out. Hedgebot stood on its hind legs and sniffed at it, then turned away, disinterested.
The black box was small enough to fit in his palm. Not only did this encrypted little computer contain the video footage of his last flight, the coordinates of his crash landing, and any information the AI had picked up from his fight with the unusual Kryl drone… but the shipboard AI was even now analyzing it for additional insight. It was supposed to activate automatically, but for some reason it hadn’t. Elya found the button to activate the emergency tightbeam manually on one side of the cube, pressed it in and held it, then waited for the telltale blinking. The indicator was supposed to go solid when it had made contact with the Paladin of Abniss, but it was taking its sweet time. He had no doubt that once the connection was established the Search and Rescue team would be able to find him, if they hadn’t located him already. Now, he could evade the enemy and go into hiding until they came for him.
He clipped the hatchet onto his belt on the opposite side of his blaster and knelt on the ground. Before he could move on, there was one more thing he had to do. He reached back into the compartment where he’d found the cube and located the timed charge. After activating it, he’d only have ten minutes to get clear. Elya paused, took a deep breath, and activated it.
Hedgebot scurried up to his feet and beeped sadly. Picking up the bot, Elya examined it and noticed that one of its feet had come clean off in the crash. Fortunately, it could walk on three feet for the time being, until he found parts to repair it.
Actually, he remembered he had put some spare parts in the medkit for this very possibility. Reaching back into the starfighter, he located the medkit, which he’d never had to use before. Lifting the medkit out, he turned back and saw a flash of red from Hedgebot. Before he had a chance to register the danger, something heavy and hard struck Elya broadside and slammed him against the Sabre’s hull. Vicious claws tore at his left leg. Elya kicked away and struggled to free himself. A nauseous gust of breath blew over him as a wild animal roared in his face.
Elya inhaled sharply, eyes widening in fear—this was no wild animal, it was a Kryl groundling. Hunched back, scaly sides, long double-jointed forelimbs and knife-sharp talons. It must have been dropped by the Kryl drones he’d seen attack the spaceport. No wonder there were people screaming in the distance. These creatures were savage as rabid wolves and twice as fast, with claws that could eviscerate a person with a single swipe.
He went for his hatchet at the same moment the groundling launched itself into the air, stretched out its forelimbs, and came down on top of Elya, pinning him to the ground. His flight suit was reinforced nanofiber and doubled as body armor, so while the Kryl’s talons ripped away some of the cloth around his belly, they didn’t penetrate the material. He grabbed the creature by the neck with both hands and, twisting, slammed its head into the hull of the starfighter, dazing it. He held its face hard against the hot metal until it whined. The groundling wriggled free and backed several paces away along the body of the Sabre, growling and dripping saliva.
Elya took advantage of the distance and drew his blaster. He put a hole in the creature’s head, leaving a black plasma scar along the Sabre’s length as the groundling’s brains splattered across the hull and the trunks of broken trees behind it. The creature shivered violently and, even in death, swung its talons out at Elya. He leaned out of range and shot two more blasts into the xeno’s torso.
That did the trick. The xeno collapsed in a smoking heap, with laser burns in its head and its side, its ribcage partially exposed. Soft greenish-yellow guts oozed out the holes his blaster had made. It bubbled and sizzled where it came into contact with the red dirt.
“Ugh,” Elya said, holding his nose. “Disgusting. They never said anything about the smell in training.” He took a couple shaky steps, gorge rising in his throat, and then retched into the torn earth. Afterward, he straightened again, wiped his mouth, and kicked some soil over the puke.
Hedgebot beeped and ran about in circles. Its warning sensors were still flashing red, reminding Elya that he’d set the scuttling charge. The fight with the groundling had taken place in less than thirty seconds, so he still had time to get clear.
Elya took a deep drag of the heavy air and looked around, for the first time focusing clearly on his surroundings. He was, indeed, in a small clearing, but up against the treeline, where several broken tree trunks had halted the starfighter’s skid across the ground. He saw now how the Kryl had managed to sneak up on him, using the tangle of wood and the starfighter itself as cover.
Through the forest, at the farthest edge of his vision, Elya could see the outbuildings of a small village. People were sprinting between them. That’s where the screaming he’d heard earlier was coming from. The groundling must have approached from that direction.
He quickly stuffed the medkit back into his backpack, along with the cube, and began to make his way toward the village. Hedgebot ran ahead of him.
He hadn’t taken a dozen steps when a woman’s high-pitched scream pierced through the forest. He broke into a run, weaving between the tall, thin trees. A handful of strange birds with four wings flitted through the canopy above him.
Ratatatat. Gunfire cut through the screaming as somebody fought back against the snarling pack of groundlings.
Thirst parched his throat, his whole whole body ached, but Elya managed to make it through the strip of woods to the edge of the village unmolested.
Smoke was whipped away on the wind as it rose from simple log cabins, constructed of the same trees that made up the forest he’d just run through. Dozens of bodies lay strewn haphazardly between the houses—women, men, children, some of them still writhing, their stomachs opened with jagged slashes, eyes blank and staring, blood soaking into the rich red dirt. It was surreal, like he’d crash landed in the kind of xeno slasher film that had become popular on Ariadne after the end of the Kryl War. For a moment his mind couldn’t process it, throwing him once again back to his childhood.
His family had managed to get out of Yuzosix in time, but he’d always imagined that the people who got left behind in the chaos of that evacuation must have suffered a similar fate. He heaved at the sight of the carnage but, in a small stroke of good luck, his stomach was empty and nothing came up.
A deafening BOOOOM shook him from his paralysis. The scuttling charge had slagged his Sabre. A plume of greasy black smoke rose from the crash site.
Another round of gunfire drew his attention back to his immediate surroundings. It came from the other side of a small cabin to his left. He ran t
wenty meters, drew his blaster and peeked around the corner. He saw three groundlings circling a trio of men.
Before he could react, one of the groundlings leaped forward, sneaking under the gunfire coming from the rifle of a man facing in its direction. The groundling took out the man’s leg, severing his hamstring behind his right kneecap, and then reached deftly around and cut his throat. The two surviving defenders gunned that groundling down, turning their backs long enough for the other groundlings to leap forward and knock them over.
As the remaining two men fought the two groundlings, their rifles caught uselessly between them, and their arms getting sliced by groundling talons, one of the men spotted Elya and cried out. “Save the woman and the boy! Get them out of here!”
Elya was confused. What woman? What boy? Then he remembered the screams and realized it was probably the woman’s voice he’d heard. While these thoughts passed through his head, the talon of one of the groundlings emerged from the mouth of the man who had shouted the instructions. The groundling jerked its leg back, removing its talon from the man's mouth and leaving a hole the size of a fist in his skull.
The groundling spotted Elya then and, with the three men finished, began to advance on him.
“No, no!” came a woman's voice from Elya’s left.
Stepping in front of the cabin, he saw the woman and a young boy who must have been ten, maybe eleven years old, clutching each other and cowering against the wall of the cabin. The door of the cabin had been torn off its hinges, and they had propped it up, using it like a feeble shield. The woman held a kitchen knife in front of her while the boy clung to her dress.
They won’t last two minutes against those groundlings.
Drawing his blaster, he shot at the scuttling aliens. They dodged and sprinted at him. He continued to fire at them as rapidly as he could, but they were too quick. He was trained as a starfighter pilot, not an infantry soldier or sharpshooter. His aim just wasn’t good enough.
The groundlings split, drawing his aim in two different directions. One came straight at him, while the other went for the woman and the boy.
Rising to her knees and coming to a crouch behind the door, the woman left the boy and stepped out with the big kitchen knife outstretched, determined to meet the groundling head on.
Though he saw the one coming straight for him, Elya took a deep breath, steadied both hands on the gun, and waited until the other groundling leaped at the woman, aiming just in front of it. His blaster caught the groundling in a back leg, sending it spinning straight onto the blade of the woman’s knife.
He nearly whooped in triumph—and then the other groundling smashed into him, knocking Elya backwards. His gun went clattering to the ground behind him. The groundling’s talons swept at his face, slicing his cheek. Another of the knife-like blades cut at his gloved hands, shredding the leather.
Hedgebot scurried around, flashing and beeping to distract the Kryl. The xeno turned from Elya and went after Hedgebot, stabbing several times into the ground in quick succession as it tried to impale the bot. But Hedgebot was quick, could change directions on a dime, and the groundling missed each strike by centimeters. Frustrated, the groundling stabbed hard into the soft, red earth, getting its claw stuck in the wet soil.
Elya took advantage of the momentary distraction to draw his hatchet. He brought it down on top of the Kryl, breaching its exoskeleton.
“Eat aluminite, you ugly bug!” Elya shouted as he drew the hatchet back and slammed it into the creature's neck a second time.
The xeno separated its double rows of fangs and bellowed in pain. Lifting its body backwards, it shook to dislodge the hatchet from between two sections of its chitinous armor. The hatchet flew back and landed at the foot of the woman, who was covered in yellow blood. She kicked the groundling, causing the injured creature to rush after her with a show of death-defying strength and speed. Elya scrabbled back on his hands and knees, found his blaster and raised it in front of him.
He lined up the shot. Three red bolts buried themselves in the Kryl. It collapsed atop the woman.
Had he killed it? Had he killed her?
Elya hurried forward and hauled the groundling’s body off her. The woman groaned. Elya sighed in relief. She was scratched and bloody, covered in stinking Kryl guts, but did not seem to be mortally wounded.
“Are you okay?”
“I—” she gagged. Elya could relate. “Ugh, ah, I think so.” She spoke in heavily accented galactic standard. He didn't know what language they spoke primarily on Robichar, but most people spoke a little bit of galactic standard.
“The boy?” Elya asked.
Her eyes widened as she stumbled to her feet and rushed around the corner of the cabin, hauling the door aside with the superhuman strength only a threatened mama bear could muster. She found the boy cowering, holding his arms over his head. He bared his teeth when the woman tried to pick him up and she had to spend a couple minutes calming him down and reassuring him that the threat had passed.
Elya looked around him. His eyes passed over the three men tangled up together, dead, with the corpses of half a dozen Kryl groundlings surrounding them.
“Is that all of them?” Elya asked. “The groundlings, are there more? They travel in packs. Did you see any others come through here?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “There were so many. We killed two before they got any of us, but they were too fast… we…” She trailed off.
“How many people were in the village when they got here?”
“Maybe a dozen? Most had already left. We were on our way to the spaceport when a drone flew overhead and dropped them on us.” She pointed at a slimy pad, like six fleshy tongues stitched together, that lay on the ground between the log cabins, about thirty meters from where they stood. It was open like a giant flower on the ground—the Kryl delivery system for the pack of groundlings.
“Come on,” Elya said, “we’ve gotta get out of here before another pack of them finds us. We should head to the spaceport.” If his cube wouldn’t transmit, his best bet for making contact with the Paladin would be there. He hoped the comms equipment had survived the attack.
“No! That’s the direction the drone went.”
“It’s our best bet. If another pack of groundlings find us alone, we’re done for. I only have a little bit of power left in my blaster, and you don’t have a weapon at all.”
“Take the rifles,” the woman said.
Of course. What was he thinking? That crash landing and the subsequent fighting had shaken him.
“Good idea. We’ll try the spaceport first, it’s our best bet,” Elya said, hauling the woman to her feet. “Which direction?” She pointed. “Come on.”
Holstering his blaster, Elya picked up one of the rifles for himself and handed another to her. Together, with the dazed boy between them, they began to make their way toward the spaceport. They found a skimmer abandoned at the edge of the village and climbed into it. The vehicle, a topless four-seater with maglev thrusters instead of wheels, hummed to life when he pushed the power button.
Elya began to drive overground along a path through the woods. “How far away is the spaceport?”
“Just a few kilometers in that direction,” she said. “Follow the road.”
Some road, Elya thought. Amazing they even have a spaceport nearby. Most colonies started like this: a scattering of small villages connected by dirt trails. This one wasn’t very far along in terms of infrastructure development.
They crossed over a small field of tilled soil, an acreage that had just been planted, and drove through another couple sections of thick woods before they came out at the top of a hill.
The ground rolled down toward the spaceport and the runway he’d wanted to land on before. Smoke rose from the outbuildings in great, thick columns. The half-dozen vehicles they saw were all moving away from the spaceport, and a few hundred people milled about on the opposite end by a shuttle that was tilting upward, pre
pping for takeoff.
Elya directed the skimmer down the slope at the same time that the shuttle lifted on rocket boosters from the pad. Its engine roared and its body surged skyward as the crowd of people at the end of the spaceport jumped and hollered, raising their hands in the air in desperation.
A cold dread settled in his stomach. He’d seen that sort of thing before. It had been years, but he knew with an uncanny certainty that those people had been fighting to board the shuttle. It was amazing they had even managed to get the people to step back far enough not to hurt anyone in the blast of the takeoff.
The spaceport where he’d escaped Yuzosix as a child had been similar. People panicking, desperate to get off planet. A shuttle that couldn’t fit them all. The shuttle would come back, he thought, but now that the Kryl had landed in force, sending everybody into a panic, there was more urgency to the evacuation.
They should have listened to the Empire’s orders to evacuate.
Some part of him, perhaps drilled into him from Imperial training, caused him to shake his head, irritated at the thought. These people knew they had to evacuate. Why hadn't they done it sooner? The other half of him, the part that came from his childhood and had been raised as a refugee, felt nothing but empathy. His heart ached for these people. Uprooting their whole lives, running to the spaceport, flying out to a fleet of Mammoths in orbit, where they would spend the next weeks or months of their lives as they were taken to a new colony where they could start over. Not an appealing idea. These people had invested everything to come to Robichar, and now they had to leave it all behind. These thoughts rolled up and lodged themselves in his throat. He was so angry he saw nothing but the curve of the dirt road as the skimmer sped over the field toward the spaceport.
A screaming noise ripped the air as three Kryl drones dove into view. The woman beside him gasped as a torpedo dropped out of the belly of the leading craft and shot toward the launching shuttle, which ruptured and exploded upon impact.
