Starfighter Down

by M. G. Herron

  One: Survive.

  Two: Evade.

  Three: Resist.

  Four: Escape.

  These were his orders. Survive the crash, evade capture, resist if necessary, and escape if possible. He didn’t intend to let any Kryl take him hostage, but there was always the chance. That’s why every pilot went through the SERE class. But he may have taken the evade too far by following Heidi up here. If he evaded too well, he’d also evade being rescued and that would be a disaster. The kind you didn’t come back from. They had wall-mounted brass plaques in the halls of the Paladin for soldiers like that.

  “What?” Heidi snapped.

  Elya forced himself to remain calm. Hedgebot circled him and came to rest between his feet. He was working up a response when there was a groan and a rumble from the scree-covered slope to their right.

  The boy leaped behind him, wrapping his arms around Elya’s leg. Heidi staggered back while gravel and stone skittered down the slope in a rush.

  “Probably just an animal,” Elya said as the cacophony receded, echoing in the night. Hedgebot darted forward and raised itself up, poised and sensing… but it remained soft blue. There was no danger—at least none it could sense yet.

  “There are mountain goats up here,” Heidi said. “The governor had them imported once the charter was approved.”

  “Mountain goats? What the hell’d they bring mountain goats all the way out here for?”

  She glared at him. “To balance the ecology.”

  Elya snorted. “Well, I guess if they need creatures to crop the grass, mountain goats are probably pretty useful.”

  Heidi’s glare softened. Her eyes glittered in the fading light as a sly smirk formed on her lips. “You’re funny.”

  The echo of the rock slide faded and the whispering silence of nature returned. The sound of birds chirping in the distance, bright stars twinkling overhead, a fresh crisp smell like it might rain overnight. If Elya wasn’t so worried about reconnecting with the Paladin and getting this woman and her young son to safety, he might have enjoyed being outdoors; after being stuck on the ship for weeks, the fresh air in his lungs felt glorious.

  Heidi seemed to come to a decision. “This way.” She took the left fork, marching toward the ravine.

  The trail descended as the walls climbed and the ravine turned into a canyon. The trail narrowed and widened and narrowed again. They climbed over two-meter-wide boulders, using handholds in the craggy red rock walls to haul themselves up and over. Hedrick tripped and fell, once. Then again. On the third time, he scraped his palms raw against the gravel.

  “Maybe we should stop for the night,” Elya suggested.

  There was a wide area on a ledge in front of them. If they climbed up, he thought he might be able to find a cave or an overhang sheltered from the wind. They’d passed many such outcroppings, and any one of them would do. They would be high enough, away from the trail, sheltered from any rain that might blow in overnight. They might even be able to start a fire if they managed to find enough wood. Regardless, the blanket in his pack would keep them warm for the night. Sleep seemed very appealing.

  “It’s just the end of this ravine,” Heidi insisted.

  But Elya no longer believed she knew where she was going. She didn’t know where this priest of Animus and his followers were hiding. She had been told to follow this trail, but had never been here herself, didn’t know any of the specifics, had no clue—

  Hedgebot darted forward, raised its bristles and shimmered ruby red, revealing malformed shadow shapes.

  Whatever argument Elya was preparing to make trickled out of his mind. He heard the scuffle of rocks and the crunch of gravel ahead. Heidi, breathing heavily, turned toward it. Two eyes glowed out of the darkness. “Oh, Animus protect us,” she whispered.

  “Behind me,” Elya said, drawing his blaster and flicking off the safety.

  The creature stepped down the slope, swaying as it sauntered toward them. How much Elya would have given for it to be a goat… or even a native beast, something hairy with claws and teeth that evolved on the moon of Robichar or had been brought here by the colonists to “balance the ecology.” But there was no mistaking it. That humped back, the way the light glistened off its scales, the creature’s eyes glowing a contaminated, sickly yellow-orange, like a demon possessed. It was another Kryl groundling. The pack had managed to follow them. And now it had them cornered.

  Elya had been trained on the vicious, strategic intelligence of these creatures—not to mention years of stories he’d heard passed down from refugees, from survivors. The groundlings had no doubt waited until the three travelers entered the canyon to make their appearance.

  Two more revealed themselves, padding softly up from the other direction. Their jaws hung open, saliva dripping from their double rows of savage teeth as they leered at the travelers they had cornered.

  Elya lifted his blaster and fired at the pair of groundlings behind them, then twisted and shot at the lone one coming from the front. The bolts ricocheted off the stone, throwing shards of rock and sand into the face of the groundlings when the shots fell short.

  The creatures bounded toward them as Heidi unhooked the hatchet from Elya’s belt and swung. The first groundling to reach them saw the blade coming and put on the brakes, hissing, growling.

  The boy, trapped between them, began to wail. Hedgebot scurried up a rock behind them and uttered a series of high-pitched, pleading tones, trying to get the boy to follow him to safety. Hedrick was too panicked to recognize what the bot was trying to get him to do.

  They backed up against the canyon wall as the trio of groundlings converged.

  Elya let loose with his blaster, firing five more shots before the trigger lost pressure, the weapon’s charge depleted.

  He reached down with his free hand, making sure the kid was fully protected behind him, feeling his shaking hands clutching his uniform.

  “You’ll have to go through me first, you xeno scum,” Elya growled.

  The groundlings had slowed. Several of his shots had burned or sent them reeling, but their slimy carapace was tough. None of the wild shots had hit a vulnerable spot. Somehow recognizing that Elya’s blaster was out of power and that, as brave a face as Heidi put on with a hatchet in her hand, she was not trained to hack anything to pieces, the Kryl beasts slowly stepped forward…

  And froze.

  The three groundlings, as if they were the same organism, glanced up the trail in the direction the trio of travelers had been heading. A dark figure swathed in flowing robes stood at the top of the incline, silhouetted against the starry sky.

  “Begone!” the man yelled. “In the name of Animus, I command you. Begone, creatures of darkness!”

  The man held up an object that flared bright green in his hand. It warped Elya’s vision and made him feel like he was staring into a shimmering heatwave.

  In unison, the groundlings backed away from Elya, Heidi, and Hedrick. They bared their teeth in the direction of the cloaked figure, then broke and loped off into the darkness, moving away in the direction the travelers had come.

  The green light winked out and the man descended the opposite slope, staggering downward with his right leg forward, as if the back one couldn’t be trusted, and using a gnarled wooden walking stick for balance. “Are you all right?” the man asked. His voice was breathless and thin. Elya immediately had a picture of a fragile, older man, though he couldn’t make out the face hooded in the robe’s cowl. As he drew closer, Elya looked for the glowing green object. He thought the object had been rounder, more like a lantern. Instead, the man held a normal flashlight. Maybe it had some kind of filter mechanism that could change the light’s color? He wasn’t sure. He’d only glanced at it for a moment. Mostly, he’d been focused on the groundlings and his own terror.

  Hedrick clutched Elya’s uniform tighter. Heidi, eyes wide, stared at the old man, slowly cocking her head to one side. As he approached, recognition softened her features.
“It’s you.”

  “Do I know you?”

  Heidi took a step toward the man. Hedrick leaped from Elya and hauled back on his mother’s arm. “Mom, no!”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s safe.”

  She gently detached the boy’s hands and went to meet the robed man.

  “Ahh, yes, I remember you now. From the village near the spaceport. I’m glad you came. Though I must say, you have terrible timing. You’re lucky we set a watch tonight.”

  He turned the flashlight back on—now a softer, more natural whitish-yellow beam of light—upward. Elya’s eyes followed it to the rim of the canyon where he found a stationary SecBot’s cylindrical torso and multi-hinged camera arm pointed downward.

  He didn’t know where the green filter went, but by the beam of the flashlight, Elya was finally able to make out the man’s features. He did, indeed, wear the robes of a priest of Animus, earth brown with rich green trim that would have been considered understated yet luxurious once, and now simply looked worn.

  “How did you do that?” Elya asked. “How did you scare off the groundlings?”

  The behavior of the Kryl was the opposite of what he had been taught to expect in such a situation. The footage he’d seen showed groundlings giving no quarter, fighting tooth and claw even as they were ripped to pieces by larger, more powerful mechs and infantry grenadiers. He had been told they didn’t understand human concepts like fear or mercy. Yet this priest had somehow managed to scare them off without lifting a hand. Had it been the green filter on the flashlight? Some way to send subconscious signals to their brains, to scare them into fleeing? Or perhaps the SecBot had been modded, equipped with psionic tech that would imitate the psychic connection of an Overmind and order them to retreat? Elya had heard rumors of such innovations coming out of the Fleet’s experimental divisions. If this priest had developed something on his own, the admiral would want to hear about it.

  He expected a more detailed explanation, but all the priest said was, “Animus protects the faithful.”

  Elya blinked dumbly, taken aback at the man’s unwavering certainty, his audacious arrogance.

  Elya’s mother had been a believer in the “One True God.” He remembered the long nights in the Mammoth longhauler, after they fled Yuzosix, when she clutched her beads and prayed for Animus to deliver them to safety. When he had asked her why she prayed, she said, “So Animus protects us like he protected the million souls who embarked on the Great Migration.”

  Elya had always believed that the crew of the Mammoth had saved them from being devoured by the Kryl horde that destroyed Yuzosix… but his mother had attributed their deliverance to her god. Elya had a much harder time believing that a divine spirit was watching over them. The Spirit of Old Earth hadn’t filled his belly with food; the crew of the Mammoth had done that. And, of course, the Empire was not a religious institution. Their galactic government served to protect humanity from an invasive alien species. Religion had nothing to do with it.

  Oh, the Empire tolerated religion well enough. Pagan rituals in the Outer Rim, holy days observed by followers of Animus, they were all the same to the Empire.

  Heidi must have sensed the animosity building between the priest and Elya. She stepped forward and put herself in between them.

  “We came, as you suggested,” Heidi said. “Is your offer still open?”

  The priest looked them over. “For you and the boy, of course. For the Imperial soldier...? I am not so sure.”

  “My mother still makes offerings to the Spirit of Old Earth,” Elya said. “I may not have her unwavering faith in Animus, but I can follow orders.”

  “Please,” Heidi added. “He saved our lives. We wouldn’t be here at all were it not for him. My friends…”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” The priest squeezed Heidi’s shoulder with his free hand. Once again his eyes skipped over the three of them—boring into Elya, resting for a beat on Hedrick. This made the boy edge several inches back behind Elya, skittish after their close encounter. Elya rested his hand on the boy’s head as he felt something swell in his chest—an inkling of what his mother must have felt when she prayed so fervently, responsible for shepherding not one but three young charges to safety.

  “If the boy has taken a liking to you,” the priest said, “I suppose I can house you for the night.”

  Elya felt his body droop as tension was released. He was exhausted by this point and wanted only to rest a moment, to look at his cube to see if he could fix whatever was wrong with it.

  A quiet part of him, the part who had pledged fealty to the Emperor when he signed on to the Solaran Defense Forces, thought it might prove useful to know the location of the enclave of this priest and his cult of followers. So that when he was rescued, he could tell Admiral Miyaru where these people were hiding and get them escorted to safety before the inevitable tragedy struck. The priest might have been able to scare off a few groundlings, but no way could he intimidate an Overmind and her entire murderous, devouring hive with a simple light show.

  Elya shot the priest his best, most cooperative smile, the same one he’d given Osprey earlier that day. The priest spun, his robes fanning out, and struck the walking stick firmly into the earth. He handed the flashlight to Heidi, who shone the beam of light up the ravine.

  “It’s not far. Follow me.”

  Nine

  When Kira entered the war room, Captain Casey Osprey had her hands planted on the octagonal table, head bowed, greasy blonde locks hanging over her face like a curtain. A hologram of the forest moon of Robichar hung in the air over the table, slowly spinning between them.

  Osprey straightened and gave a sharp salute.

  “At ease, Captain.”

  Osprey relaxed, but only slightly. Her cheeks were red, like she was embarrassed to have been caught sulking. The captain stared right at her and yet somehow managed to avoid meeting Kira’s eyes. Her father must have been a brute when it came to discipline. Osprey looked like she was steeling herself to take thirty lashes.

  “I’ll not defend my actions.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  Osprey blinked and did her best to contain a relieved sigh. She looked everywhere in the war room except at her commander’s face.

  Kira supposed this was only natural. Most of her junior officers had trouble meeting her eyes. Not just because of her imposing two-meter height, but because they couldn’t separate the person standing in front of them from the infamous Kryl War hero they had heard about in stories.

  Of course, those who were the subject of such stories knew the way people told them rarely reflected the reality of the situation. Kira never bothered to correct anyone’s mistellings. Not the ones where they left her out and made Captain Ruidiaz into the sole hero. And not the ones that portrayed her as brave and glorious when she had been nothing of the sort, either. The stories did a great job building her reputation—she had risen to the rank of admiral on their power—and it wasn’t her responsibility to litigate history. She had more pressing duties.

  Kira set a black cube on the table. “You know what this is?”

  Captain Osprey peered at the object through slitted eyes. “Looks like a cube from a Sabre.”

  “Not just any Sabre,” Kira said. “Your Sabre. I had to send two starfighters and an astrobot out to retrieve it.” Osprey’s jaw muscles bulged. “This is not meant to be a criticism, Captain.”

  “Why else do you have my cube but to examine my flight patterns and point out my mistakes?” She scowled, then added, “Sir.”

  Kira chose to ignore the slight. “Because what your starfighter captured may be vital to our mission here on Robichar. And, potentially, critical to the continued survival of all humanity.”

  “Sir, I’ll be honest, I thought you brought me here to talk about what happened in the hangar.”

  “First, I’d like to know what you saw before Captain Nevers’ Sabre got shot down by that drone.”

  Kir
a placed the cube in the middle of the table next to the holoprojector. A cone of light shimmered forth, replacing the 3D model of Robichar with a first-person view from the nose of Osprey’s Sabre. The surface of the moon, the brown curve of the gas giant beyond, and the stars arrayed above jerked and spun as the captain dogged her pilot and the Kryl drone.

  A string of curses emanated from the speakers. Osprey reddened at the sound of her own voice.

  Kira hadn’t meant to make the girl uncomfortable—at least not yet. But she did not offer any words of comfort, either. She’d heard and said much worse things in her time in the cockpit. Besides, she wanted to see how the captain would react.

  “I couldn't catch them,” Casey blurted out. “The drone was flying erratically and he was pushing his limits just to keep up.”

  “Captain Nevers is a good pilot.”

  Osprey’s eyes snapped up and locked on her face, truly seeing the admiral for the first time since she entered the room. Kira watched her squirm. She tossed back her short blonde hair with a shake of her head. “Fancypants can fly, that’s for sure. Didn’t keep him from getting shot down though.”

  “Did you see him get out-maneuvered?”

  Their eyes both returned to the footage as it played out. Osprey’s starfighter arced over the last Mammoth and shot towards Robichar in the direction the Kryl drone had gone, sticking close to Nevers’ tail. The teardrop-shaped enemy ship bobbed and weaved, trying to shake them, but Captain Nevers stayed true, matching each hairpin turn with precision as he tried to get a lock on the Kryl. The few shots he did fire went wide or skipped off the drone’s shields. The two ships came together, then drifted apart. The drone pulled up and looped back to its original trajectory. Suddenly the Kryl drone was behind Captain Nevers. Captain Osprey’s voice came through thin and frantic: “Nevers, pull up! Pull up!” His engines exploded, first the left and then the right, in bright flashes followed by an ominous absence of light. Antimatter engines shone white-hot from the rear and, though it had been years since she’d sat in the cockpit of a Sabre, to see them darken made Kira’s stomach turn.