by Troy Osgood
The nice thing about a starship in atmosphere was that it didn’t need a specific direction to fly in order to get off the planet. Get into the air and point it anywhere. But this direction I was facing towards the city and put the Wind’s aft towards the other ships. That was where the strongest shields were.
With a little bumping the Wind settled down on the ground. I shifted the engines to standby and unbuckled from the seat. Kaylia stood up, setting the tablet down on the console.
“Come on kiddo.”
She tried to smile but it faded. She was nervous. I put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into me, squeezing. We walked out of the bridge and she ran her hand along the smooth metal wall of the bunk hall. I took the spiral stairs first, walking down into the galley. Kaylia was slow, somewhat reluctant.
The hold was empty, it seemed giant and our footsteps on the metal seemed to echo through the space. We got to the aft mounted door and I stopped and turned, pointing Kaylia to the side where she was out of sightline from the door.
“Wait here.”
She looked up at me questioningly. I shrugged. There was no real reason why she couldn’t come out with me. I was probably being paranoid. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to hand her over yet?
Either way she was staying right there for now.
“Wait here and I’ll call for you,” I said and added. “Don’t come out for anyone else okay?”
Kaylia nodded. She was a smart kid, I think she got it.
I checked to make sure my blaster was on stun. A good rule of thumb when dealing with different cultures is to not kill. There have been plenty of misunderstandings that usually can be talked around if you only stun someone. Killing tends to end negotiations and encounters.
Keying in the code, the door slid open and I stepped out onto Turesa.
The air was thick, humid. I hadn’t realized that it was a jungle world. The sun was bright in the sky and I reached a hand up to shield my eyes.
In a small group in front of me were half a dozen Thesans. Two looking official, one of them I recognized as Yoterra and a male that was probably her assistant. The other four were military, dressed in uniforms I recognized from my time in service, and all armed. None looked on alert so that was a good sign.
I took a couple steps forward, hands hanging loosely at my side.
“You are Arek Lancer, Captain of the Nomad’s Wind and former Captain in the Earth Expeditionary Forces,” Yoterra said, a statement. She looked exactly like she had in the news article but the film had not captured her commanding presence. She stood straight, hands clasped behind her back. If she was nervous or excited or anything at all, she didn’t show it.
Attractive but stark. There was no softness to her.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You said you have something that I’m missing,” she prompted. This was not a woman that had a lot of patience. From the tone of voice, I could tell she knew what my message had meant.
I glanced at the others around her.
“You can trust them.”
Nodding I studied her. She was a Planetary Governor, she had power and she had to be somewhat ruthless to get to that position. She had been in the Thesan War Applications Division, which told me another thing about her. Willing to do what needed to be done for her people. I searched harder and there it was. In her eyes. She held her body rigid, controlled, but the eyes. There was hope there. Worry and caring.
“Kaylia,” I called and watched Yoterra’s eyes.
I could hear Kaylia behind me, stepping down out of the Wind. Yoterra’s facade cracked. She smiled, her eyes lighting up. I glanced behind me and saw a similar smile on Kaylia’s face. Kaylia was about level with me when I saw a motion out of the corner of my eye. One of the guards.
“Down,” I yelled and dove at Kaylia.
I grabbed her, twisting so we fell onto my back and heard the sizzle of an energy blast hit the side of the ship. The sparks flew, falling around us, as the bolt dissipated into a fury of energy.
“For A New Thesa,” a voice rang out.
Standing up, pushing Kaylia behind me, I drew my blaster and switched it from stun to kill.
I pointed it at a shocked looking Yoterra. She was looking at me or Kaylia but at one of the guards, who was now surrounded by the others. His weapon was on the ground and he was being forced to his knees. The other official looking Thesan looked like he wanted to run away and hide.
“What the hell was that,” I said angrily weapon pointed at Yoterra.
The guards now saw my weapon and pointed theirs at me.
A stand-off.
I could feel Kaylia behind me. Her body was shaking against mine. The girl was crying silently.
Someone was going to hurt for this.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I kept my blaster pointed at Yoterra while two others were pointed at me. The guard that had shot at us was down on his knees, the last guard’s blaster at his head.
Yoterra took a couple steps forward, putting herself between me and her guards. She turned from one to the other, hands up.
“Lower your weapons,” she ordered her guards. They hesitated and finally did at a commanding look from her. She turned to me, hands still raised. “Please Captain Lancer, lower your weapon.”
I didn’t.
The guards moved away from Yoterra, so now I was back in their sightlines and she wasn’t. They didn’t raise their weapons but they held them ready. I pushed Kaylia tighter behind me and moved us towards the still open hatch to the Wind.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just board my ship and leave,” I said the point of my weapon never wavering.
There was a long pause, Yoterra studying me as I inched us closer to the hatch. She turned and nodded at the guard with the weapon pointed at the prisoner.
The shot of a blaster was the only sound. Followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground.
Smoke drifted out of the hole in the dead guard’s head, the one that had shot at us was now laying on the ground.
I didn’t lower my weapon but stopped moving us.
“Please,” Yoterra said, almost pleading.
“Who was he,” I asked motioning at the dead body.
With the prisoner dead, the last guard was now able to point his weapon at me. I hated having blasters pointed at me and now there were three of them.
“A fanatic,” Yoterra replied staring down at the body. “I do not know how he got into my personal guard.”
“What kind of fanatic?” I didn’t care how he had gotten into her guard, just that he was there. Was he the only one?
“The kind that believes in a pure Thesan culture,” Yoterra explained. “He and his kind want to erase the sins of our past, not learn and grow from them. They do not like that we expanded beyond our own solar system and they do not like what we did during the war to protect those expansions.”
We had folks like that on Earth. They hated the Earth Expeditionary Force and our ‘expansionist’ ways. They wanted to keep us on earth and not out into the stars, or if we did go out to not take territory. They saw the Third Galactic War as our fault and we should atone for all those lives lost. On one hand they were right, we shouldn’t take territory from others and that was what started the war. But on the other hand, if the 2Es hadn’t fought the war then we’d all be speaking Tiat right now.
I know which side of that argument I fell on.
“That’s great. What does it have to do with Kaylia?”
Her head poked out around my body. I could see streaks of tears down her cheeks. She looked at the dead body and quickly buried her head in my side. She was clutching me tightly. The wind blew the last of the smoke from the wound away.
Yoterra was facing me, but not looking at me, she was looking at Kaylia. Lots of emotions flew across the Governors face. Regret being a big one.
“The Third Galactic War was a terrible one,” she began. “You were in the Terran forces, and while it was before your tim
e, I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. The Tiat were winning and so we started looking into alternative weapons. They outnumbered us and we needed something to even the odds. I oversaw many of those projects.”
She paused, shaking her head and looked off towards the city. Her gaze drifted back to me.
“Tell me Captain, have you ever heard of the Thesan Wilders?”
I thought back through all the war stories I had heard or been told. I’d met lots of vets from those days as well as what was told during my classes in basic training. I was a kid for the later part of it, so there was even some stories I had heard when a kid. There had been some stuff on the Thesans and their tactics. What they had done that was different from how we fought a war.
And there was something about a group called the Wilders.
The way I had heard it from an old sergeant was that there were some Thesan special forces. Scary and lethal. If they got dropped into a fight, it was going to be bloody and the Thesans would win.
“A little,” I told her. “Thesan special forces. Really black ops, wetworks kind of stuff.”
“Yes but not just any special forces.” She paused again, taking a deep breath. The words were being forced out of her, like it was something she had not talked or thought about for a long time. “Like you Terrans, we have evolved through the ages. Early Thesans were more primal, animalistic and savage. We had claws, senses that were sharper. Stronger and faster. We were the apex predators and supreme hunters of the jungles.”
Claws? Early Thesans had claws? I thought about Kaylia’s fingernails and how they seemed to grow into claws. I was afraid of where this was going.
“What if we could somehow get back that savagery but with the intelligence our species had now,” Yoterra continued. “It took years but we made it happen. We were able to genetically alter some members of our species. They retained all the knowledge and abilities they had but gained the traits of our ancestors.”
I glanced down at Kaylia, she was focused on Yoterra, listening to every word.
“We unleashed them on the Tiat,” Yoterra said and there was a touch of pride in her voice. “The Wilders inflicted substantial damage to the Tiat war machine, killing many high ranking officers and government officials. After the war they were retired to live out the rest of their days in peace or so we thought and hoped.”
“The Tiat started killing them off,” I reasoned.
It wasn’t a hard assumption to make. The Tiat were unforgiving and even though the war was over, there had been rumors of hit squads roaming the galaxy. A couple of old Terran generals had been killed and these hit squads were rumored to have done it. There was no proof and so no one could do anything. Legally in the galactic sense, the Planetary Council washed their hands of it. But that was okay, we had our own hit squads that got our revenge.
Or so I heard. Wasn’t like I was on one of those squads.
I could see the Tiat doing the same to the Thesans.
“We put the last surviving Wilders into hiding,” Yoterra said continuing the story. She was looking at the dead body now. “Not just from the Tiat but some of our own people. They were ashamed of what we had done, what had needed to be done.”
“Kaylia’s parents?”
I felt the kid stiffen as I asked. Her hands grabbed hold of me tighter. I could feel her trying not to shake.
“They were the last,” Yoterra said and her eyes returned to Kaylia. “Except for their children.”
*****
I had lowered my blaster but kept it in hand, out of the holster. The guards lowered theirs but kept them ready. I concentrated on Yoterra but glanced at the others to make sure there were no sudden moves.
“And Kaylia has the genetic code of these wilders?” I asked though I already knew the answer.
Kaylia let go of me long enough to look at her hand and fingernails. I put my free arm around her shoulder, giving her a reassuring squeeze.
Yoterra saw the two gestures and raised her eyebrows, questioning me. I ignored it.
“We believe so,” came the reply but it was Yoterra’s assistant who answered. “There has been no evidence of it.” He pause and added quietly well looking at Kaylia, “that we know of.”
Silence grew as Yoterra let the information sink in. I glanced down at Kaylia, she looked scared. Very scared. She’d just learned that her parents had been genetically engineered and that changed DNA had been passed down to her. That explained a lot. She was at that age, like Terrans, when the body went through changes. Her’s would be even more severe with this cocktail of crazy DNA inside her.
I sighed. Time for the big question. I squeezed Kaylia tighter.
“Why didn’t the Tiat kill her?”
Again it was the assistant that answered. He was the same height as Yoterra, younger, with brown fur and darker patches. He wore a tailored suit and carried a tablet. He had looked frightened when the shooting had happened but was now composed again.
“We believe they think they can reverse engineer her,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, like he wasn’t talking about dissecting a kid. I didn’t like him. “So they can find out how the DNA was altered and possibly use that knowledge on themselves.”
The thought of mutant Tiat was pretty damn scary. Terrifying really.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said and held Kaylia tighter. The idea of someone experimenting on her; Thesan, Tiat or Terran; made me very angry.
“No it will not,” Yoterra said, steel in her voice.
Was she concerned with Kaylia or concerned with someone experimenting on Thesans?
I looked down at the body of the Thesan fanatic and then up at Yoterra. She understood what I was getting at.
“I kept her and her family safe and hidden for almost twenty years,” Yoterra began, the steel breaking. “I failed them. I will not fail again.”
I could tell she took it personally. Kaylia’s family had essentially been under Yoterra’s protection and had died. I’d take it personally as well.
“Captain Lancer,” Yoterra said looking directly at me. “Please.”
I holstered my blaster and looked down at Kaylia. She had loosened her grip on me, still holding on with one hand, and had taken a couple steps out from behind me. She was studying Yoterra.
“What’s your history with her,” I asked. “Kaylia said you were her mother’s littermate?”
Yoterra smiled and chuckled. The sound reminded me of a Terran cat’s purr.
“Uhunia was not my littermate in truth,” Yoterra said but looked at Kaylia like family, like an aunt would. “I was responsible for their safety and we became friends over the years, close enough to be littermates. I’ve known Kaylia since she was born.”
I felt Kaylia grab me tighter at the mention of her mother’s name.
“What do you think,” I asked Kaylia looking down at her.
She looked from me to Yoterra and back, slowly nodding. Her hand released me and she took a couple steps forward and then some more. I watched her go and went through a lot of different emotions. This was why I had come to Turesa, to hand her off. But part of me wasn’t sure that I wanted her to go. I’d grown attached to the kid and liked having her onboard the Wind. But this was better. She belonged here and not flying around the galaxy.
Kaylia reached Yoterra and the older woman enveloped her in a hug. That cemented the deal. That was a hug of love. Yoterra really did care for the girl.
With reluctance Yoterra pulled Kaylia out of the hug. She held the girl by the shoulders and smiled.
“It’s good to have you home,” Yoterra said. She turned to the assistant and the guards. “Please take Kaylia inside and summon a medic to check her over.” The Governor was all business again. The assistant walked away, holding an arm around Kaylia to lead her but not touching. One of the guards turned to go with them.
They had gone maybe ten feet when Kaylia turned and ran back. She slammed into me and wrapped her arms around me tightly. I hugged her just as t
ight. She stepped back and brushed at some tear streaks down her cheeks. I held her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead.
“Take care of yourself kiddo.”
You too.
She turned and ran back to join the assistant and guard. They continued walking towards a building further down.
“Thank you,” Yoterra said, turning back to me.
I stared beyond her, watching Kaylia and the other Thesans turn a corner and go behind a hanger. Why were they going that way? The building Yoterra had indicated was further down and completely in my line of sight?
“Please tell me where you found her? We know approximately when the Tiat kidnappers arrived here but have not been able to figure out how they got on planet.”
“She ran into me on CU145792, an asteroid in the Callic Cluster,” I said and paused, taking a step forward. Something was wrong.
“What was..,” Yoterra began and turned to look behind her, hearing the same thing I was now.
Blasters.
CHAPTER NINE
I ran. Fast. I reacted quickly, quicker than the Thesan guards. I was past Yoterra before she finished her question. I drew my blaster as I went.
One of the guards finally reacted and kept pace alongside me.
We pounded across the metal surface of the ground, booted feet clanging and thumping. I didn’t hear any more blasters which wasn’t good.
The guard got a couple steps on me. He was in shape. I was not. I don’t do much running nowadays. I thought I had managed to give it up since my military days. The hangar building drew closer. There were other Thesans, along with some assorted other beings, stepping out of the hangar and looking confused. They had heard the blasters. They gave us strange looks as we passed. I could see others running towards us, more guards and officials.
Slowing as he rounded the corner, the Thesan held his weapon ready. He disappeared around the corner of the building, between two hangars where I had seen Kaylia go with Yoterra’s assistant and guard. Blaster in hand I turned the corner and stopped.
There was a body on the ground, dark in the shadows of the walls. I thought the worse but forced myself to calm and examine the scene, my spec ops instincts taking over. The body was too long for Kaylia and as I walked closer I could make out the uniform of the guard. The other guard was already down at the far end of the hangar, looking at another body. That one was out in the sun and I could tell instantly that it was not Kaylia.