Starfighter Down

by M. G. Herron

  After a minute of this, the Kryl gave a kind of satisfied moan that was half bug and half human. Then he reached into a cocoon-like growth and lifted out a many-legged worm no thicker around than a piece of string.

  Father Pohl’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Don’t forget what you promised me.”

  The Kryl inclined his head ever so politely. “You have my word. Your followers will not be harmed.”

  “Nor will you come to our territory or poison our water supply, or attack any of our people.”

  “I know the terms of the agreement,” the Kryl growled. “Do you dare question the Overmind?”

  “I’m just being clear,” Father Pohl said. “That was the deal: I bring you a human child, and you let us live in peace.”

  “Yes,” the Kryl said, “that was the deal.”

  The xeno lowered the worm toward Hedrick’s head. The tiny creature began to squirm the closer it was brought to his face. It reached out toward him.

  Hedrick began to hyperventilate then. Apparently he wasn't completely paralyzed because the panic set in and his chest heaved as he gasped for breath.

  There was a flash of blue at the corner of his vision. Was this the last thing he would see before he died?

  Sparks flashed from the corner above and behind the computer monitor. Something electronic popped in the computers, and the machine released a plume of smoke that smelled like burning hair.

  The strands at his temples went limp and fell away. The goop that had climbed over his feet lost its shape and spilled away like water. The xeno, still holding the worm, turned, growling angrily.

  The building went black. Hedrick lurched forward, throwing himself to his knees and landing with a splash.

  A small creature pulsed red and blue between his hands. Hope flared in his heart as Hedgebot scurried forward several feet, then paused and looked back at him. The bot went dark.

  He crawled forward toward where it had been a moment ago. Something strong grabbed his arm—the priest, most likely—but with all the gooey crap on his hands, he was able to squirm out of the man’s grasp.

  Hedrick stumbled to his feet, slashed at the sticky strands that glommed onto his face, and ran for his life.

  Twenty-Three

  When Elya first encountered the requirements for astrobots in the Fleet manual, they seemed like complete overkill. Why would any unit need that many capabilities? He came to learn that astrobots were essential for completing minor repairs on long missions. They were even helpful as a second set of eyes. The high tech ones could be used to aid in navigation or take aerial photographs on recon missions or even fly a Sabre as a backup to the autopilot system—although Hedgebot was too small for that skill and didn’t have the memory needed for such software.

  But never in a million years did Elya imagine Hedgebot’s abilities would be used in a situation like this.

  Hedgebot painstakingly sliced through the Kryl excretions which had been used to patch the hole in the fence made by Thom earlier, although it took a lot longer to accomplish the same task due to the stickiness of the substance. Elya kept having to scrape the bot’s underside with a stick to get the gunk off. They had to make sure the hole was big enough for all of them. It would do no good to squeeze the bot through if they couldn’t get the boy out.

  Heidi kept a vigilant lookout while the bot worked. All of the groundlings had gathered on the opposite side of the compound near the gate, to observe the priest and Hedrick’s arrival, so none stumbled upon them as Hedgebot worked. A minor stroke of luck.

  Hedgebot’s miniature laser cutter had been a particularly difficult piece of equipment to install. According to the Fleet manual, all astrobots were required to have one, in order to carve the pilot out of a cockpit that had been damaged in a bad landing. This had crossed his mind as Elya fell to the surface of Robichar yesterday—it was, in fact, an aspect of the same tool that Hedgebot had used to repair the Sabre during the fall, rerouting power back to his control column.

  “Come on, buddy,” Elya muttered. He felt exposed without his sidearm. If one of the groundlings did happen upon them, what would he do? Strangle it to death?

  Hedgebot finished his work and Heidi and Elya slipped through the fence, wiping stray strands of webbing from their faces as they hurried to the back of the building the sentinels were guarding, and into which Hedrick, the priest, and the other Kryl had disappeared.

  They hid themselves in between the two buildings, sticking to the shadows cast by the setting sun. They were still weaponless, but perhaps they wouldn’t need weapons if they could just grab the boy and run. That wild hope didn’t keep Elya from picking up a dusty piece of metal piping from a pile of unused materials stacked behind the building. It chimed softly as he lifted it. Heidi chewed her lower lip and peered around nervously while Hedgebot went to work on the back corner of the prefab.

  While they waited for the bot to cut through the 3D-printed siding, a dread curiosity filled him. What was in this building that was worth guarding so closely? The Kryl must be protecting something… but what? And then to force the boy and the priest inside?

  Whatever was in there was valuable to them. Valuable and, in all likelihood, exceedingly dangerous.

  It made him mad enough that the priest would betray Elya and kidnap the boy, but to drag Hedrick like some kind of prize to the Kryl’s doorstep? What an absolute betrayal of his humanity. Before, Elya had been keen to help the priest and his followers, if he could. It was lower down on his priority list—after “connect with the Fleet” and “don’t get gutted by a groundling”—but he wouldn’t wish on anyone the experience of those poor, lost souls who had been left behind on his homeworld. After all, the priest and his followers just wanted to live their lives in peace, without interference from the Empire. He couldn’t blame them for that. But to give a child to the Kryl to achieve it?

  That crossed the line.

  Holding the pipe, Elya examined a few other pieces of machinery at the back of the building: a condenser and fan for an air conditioning unit, and a standalone battery wired up to solar panels on the roof. While Hedgebot cut the hole in the back wall of the prefab, Elya palmed a wire cutter he’d taken from the toolkit in the skimmer bike and searched for the main power line.

  The fan from the A/C unit was whining loudly, which was probably the main reason the groundlings and sentinels hadn’t noticed them yet. The small hiss of Hedgebot’s laser cutter was drowned in the noise of the fan. Whatever was drawing electricity in the building, it took a lot of power. As he searched the tangle of wires, Elya noticed that the panels from several of the other prefab buildings had had their power rerouted to this one. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that cutting the power would piss the Kryl off. It would also cast the inside of the building in darkness and, while it was a risk to Hedrick, he thought the darkness would give the boy a chance to slip out of his captor’s grasp.

  It was the best plan he’d been able to devise. The only plan. He had to try it.

  Hedgebot finished cutting a small square in the bottom corner of the prefab. “Okay, pal,” Elya said to his bot. “You go in and find the boy, but stay out of sight and keep your light off. I’ll count to thirty then cut the power. And when I do, you find Hedrick and lead him back out to us.”

  The bot beeped an affirmative tone and crawled inside.

  “Counting down from thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”

  Elya hadn’t reached the teens before Heidi gasped and clutched her mouth. She reached out with her other hand and hauled Elya behind the air conditioning unit.

  “What?”

  She clamped her hand over his mouth.

  “Groundlings,” she whispered.

  Elya’s breath caught in his throat when he spotted the pair. Two groundlings were sniffing the ragged strands of Kryl webbing hanging from the fence where they’d come through.

  Elya adjusted his grip on the metal pipe.

  The lead groundling hopped nimbly th
rough the hole and raised its face in the air. The three slits of its nose contracted minutely. It cocked its head, the slope of its body showing like a hunchback in silhouette.

  Elya handed Heidi the pipe and lifted the wire cutters, very quietly fitting the first of the power cables—one of the small extension cords—into the cutter’s sharpened nose.

  He severed the line with a snip.

  The Kryl jerked its head. Elya snipped the second line.

  The second creature mimicked the movements of the first.

  Ka chowm, ka chowm. Vvvooooott. Ka-CHOWM!

  Elya recognized the telltale percussion of an unsilenced gauss rifle firing in the distance. Two shots, reload, two more shots. A real pro on the trigger.

  Charlie.

  Did he realize Elya had escaped his underground prison? Or was he coming after Heidi, once he realized she stole the skimmer bike?

  One of the groundlings snapped its head in the direction of the new noise, then slunk back through the fence, trotting away as it gained speed. The other stayed put in the compound, its body held frozen like an ambush hunter afraid of startling its prey.

  Two on one, Elya thought. Better odds.

  He severed the last of the smaller power lines then gripped the rubber handles of the wire cutter in one hand. Wrapping his other hand over his closed fist for support, he jammed the cutters down into the rubber housing protecting the central line which fed into the prefab building.

  The fan next to him slowed, clicking as it came to a stop. The groundling nearby finally spotted them and chortled an aggressive warning. As the creature sprinted in their direction, Heidi stepped out from behind the air conditioning unit wielding the pipe and swung it underhand. Bullseye, Elya thought as the pipe connected with the groundling’s jaw.

  Instead of sweeping it clean off its feet like he’d hoped, it stumbled back and then recovered. But Heidi was there again with another clean strike, this time from overhead. Elya cringed at the sound of the xeno’s skull cracking as its legs gave out. Normally he wouldn’t have thought the woman capable of such force, but fear for her son and survival-induced desperation had momentarily imbued this mother with a hideous strength.

  And Elya helped, too. He jumped on the struggling creature’s back and used his weight to hold it down. The xeno scrabbled at the ground, mewling and whining as the pipe rained down on its head.

  “Die you… twisted… monster!” she snarled in time with her blows.

  When the xeno was still, Heidi stepped out of the slanted shadow cast by the roof and into the sunlight, breathing heavily. Yellow blood and pale bits of brain splattered her shirt and face.

  Elya looked up as a sentinel stepped into the mouth of the alley, blocking the sun. It hinged open its massive, slavering jaw and waved its tongues in the air, as if by doing so it could taste their location.

  Elya felt its roar deep in his belly. A wet sensation of fear sprang from the seat of his stomach and spread through his body.

  A skimmer bike zipped by along the fence, kicking up a cloud of leaves and dirt as the driver hit the reverse thrusters and spun about.

  “Heidi! Elya!” It was Thom, yelling at them from the skimmer. Not the one they had left in the woods, but a different bike. The priest’s?

  “This way, hurry, while they’re distracted!”

  Elya blinked. “Hedrick’s in there. We can’t leave him!”

  Thom went pale—even in the sunlight—the blood draining from his face. His eyes focused over Elya’s head to the sentinel as it lumbered into the alley.

  A groundling leaped out from behind a tree trunk and knocked Thom to the ground. The machinist gave a strangled, breathless shout. A blaster discharged, and the sound was followed by the clatter of metal as the groundling kicked the gun out of Thom’s hands. Elya and Heidi looked at the sentinel, then at Thom, then back at each other.

  “You help Thom,” Elya said. “I’ll lead this big bastard away.”

  “What about Hendrick?”

  “Hedgebot’s got him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We don’t have a choice!”

  The sentinel fell to all fours—or rather, to all threes, since this was the sentinel that had lost an arm earlier. It shook the ground as it landed.

  “Go!” Elya shouted, shoving Heidi toward Thom. “Get the gun.”

  Heidi sprinted around the corner without another word, heading straight for the opening in the fence. Elya followed her to the corner, but turned the opposite direction. He paused just long enough to pick up another metal pipe and toss it at the sentinel.

  The creature let the pipe bounce off its head and roared, enraged. The ruse worked almost too well. He stumbled into the fence as he fled.

  The sentinel gave chase.

  Elya passed the last alley and turned down the outside of the prefab building at the end of the row. There was more ground here between the building and the fence. He sprinted across the clearing.

  Behind him, on three legs, the sentinel ran with an awkward, loping gait. As Elya moved away from the building, he realized the xeno didn’t really mean to catch him, but rather to force him into the open.

  The other sentinel had left its post at the door and was already charging, bearing down on him at a frightening pace. Their psychic link allowed them to coordinate without speaking or even seeing each other.

  Elya veered out away from them both, trying to use the angle to his advantage. The talons of the second sentinel caught his flight suit and ripped the fabric, scraping across his ribs, as he twisted by. He ground his teeth against the pain and made a beeline for the relative safety of the pre-fab buildings again, this time aiming for the front.

  As he sucked air and stretched his legs, a familiar robed man stumbled out of the doorway clutching his left eye. Blood streamed between his fingers.

  Father Pohl looked up, something about the view causing his face to drop. Perhaps it was the sight of Elya. Perhaps it was the two massive xenos closing in behind him. Who could really be sure?

  Elya had such a fierce hatred of the priest by now that he was able to reach down into some deep well of energy inside himself and haul out an extra burst of speed. He sprinted at the priest. Instead of running, as Elya would have expected any sane person to do, Father Pohl stood his ground while using his free hand to fumble inside his robe.

  Out came a geometric stone large enough to hold in two hands. It had a U-shaped handle for gripping on one side, like a handheld lantern. Clutching the object between his elbow and his body, the priest turned the handle, exposing three triangular apertures that emitted a bright green light.

  “Back,” he shouted, holding the object aloft.

  Panicked screeches from the sentinels behind him were followed by the scrape and scrabble of clawed feet in dirt.

  Elya didn’t slow down, just lowered his shoulder and drove it into the priest’s solar plexus, nailing him to the wall of the prefab beside the half-open door.

  He fumbled for the geode and managed to tear it out of Father Pohl’s weakened grasp.

  “No!” the priest cried, gasping for air. “You can’t! That’s mine. Mine, I tell you.”

  But the priest was injured. The wounded eye was obviously causing the man a great deal of pain. Elya slipped his fingers through the sphere’s handle and used it to shove the priest to the ground.

  To his shock, the sentinels remained at a distance of about thirty meters, puffing and panting. Their heads were strangely tiny compared to their bodies, with those deeply inset, beady eyes. From here, he could see that the carapace of the one which had had its arm blown off in the raid earlier was patchy and bubbly around the missing limb, like it had been dipped in a vat of boiling grease.

  But they didn’t come any closer.

  Father Pohl scratched at Elya’s ankle with his free hand. “Please,” he said, “you don’t understand what you’re dealing with.”

  Elya stepped out of the priest’s reach and watched the man struggle to h
is feet.

  As he did so, Elya took two steps towards the sentinels. Their faces changed in what he could only suspect was fright. The slits of their nose and eyes closed over with semi-transparent flaps and they squealed and scurried back.

  What he’d mistaken for a flashlight in the canyon was no such thing. This incandescent artifact was what the priest had used to scare off those groundlings. It seemed to be made of stone, but it had a kind of thin, metallic quality. It was surprisingly light and airy. The mechanics around the lid where it spun were finely crafted, if somewhat stiff. The stone resembled marble, but truly, it was like no material Elya had ever seen. The green glow seemed to come not from a power cell or battery, as he’d expected, but from the hollow center of the stone itself. And no matter how he angled it, he couldn’t see into the bright core, which shone forth like a tireless emerald star—without giving off any heat.

  “Well, isn't that interesting,” Elya said. “This is why you think the Kryl can’t hurt you? This… what is this thing?”

  “A blessing from Animus himself,” the priest growled.

  Elya blinked dumbly at the man. The situation was so improbable, so unlikely, that Elya no longer registered belief or disbelief. He felt as if his awareness had separated from his body, like he was watching himself in some kind of bizarre holovid. Scene: Brown-skinned Solaran male, breathing heavily, bearing an object of alien design, facing off against a one-eyed priest of Animus and two cowering Kryl sentinels.

  “Turn off the relic.”

  Elya turned to look down the barrel of an Imperial blaster. It was an older model, the barrel wider than he was used to, the sight thicker, the handle longer. However, the hand holding the sidearm didn’t belong to Charlie or Thom, as he would have expected. His eyes tracked down the arm to a mutated torso and patchwork face straight out of his worst nightmare.

  The disfigured creature who had met Father Pohl at the gate.

  “I’m impressed, kid. Didn’t think you’d survive the landing, let alone the surprise I sent after you.”

  Elya felt his body tremble and his grip on the object go slack. He clutched it to his stomach and staggered back half a step as dozens of groundlings swarmed into the compound and spread out around them. They remained at the same distance as the two sentinels, pacing. The xeno holding the blaster, though, didn’t seem as affected as the others were. A bead of sweat tracked down the human portion of its forehead, alongside a seam that sealed the rest of its skull with a carapace-like growth. The arm pointing the blaster at Elya was rock steady.