by Tim Marquitz
Wave after wave of energy assailed the Wyyvan fleet, and another of their ships broke apart and exploded. Debris and vented atmosphere flashed silver in the gleam of weapons fire, then vanished as if it had never existed.
Torbon whooped in the background, and although Taj wanted to join him, she needed to keep her focus. No matter how well they were doing, the fight was a long way from being over.
It had only just begun.
“Keep pressing,” she called, her knuckles aching from how tight she’d been holding the console. “Don’t let up. If we can put them down now, let’s do it.”
She understood that was unlikely, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
Taj forced her hands to let go and dropped into the captain’s seat behind her, feeling the tightness in her legs. She made herself relax, a herculean task, and drew in a deep breath to temper her excitement and counter the adrenaline raging through her.
She knew the rest of the crew were doing the same. They’d all wanted this so badly.
Fortunately, regardless of how excited or desperate the crew might be, Taj knew Dent would hold it together.
Being an AI, he had no emotional attachment that would affect the fight or its outcome. Still, he wanted the victory as much as they did, even if his reasoning was more logic-based and rationally determined.
Taj had promised Dent that he could resurrect his people, the Dandrinites, on Krawlas, and they could live side by side with the Furlorians and make a new life for all of them. Their two peoples could start over together.
Dent had loved the idea, and he had given the mission his all from the start. His perseverance paid off.
“Look!” Kal cried out. “They’re breaking already.”
Taj watched as another Wyyvan destroyer exploded beside the command ship, reveling in seeing it fly into pieces that battered the shields of its companions with brilliant sparks that died as soon as they were born.
“The dreadnought is pulling back,” Dent reported, confirming what Kal had seen, “and taking cover behind the other ships. Looks like we’ve wounded it, though not seriously.”
“What are the chances we can end it now?” Taj asked, although she already knew the answer.
“Not likely,” Dent replied, not bothering to pretend they had more of an opportunity than they did. “All we can do is keep hammering it and hope its captain continues to blink.”
“We’re still outnumbered,” Cabe reported, “and we’ve just lost our first ship, but I don’t think all that’s sunk into their lizard brains yet. They just know they’re being shot at.”
“He’s right,” Dent replied. “Their fleet is moving into a defensive posture, adjusting to protect the dreadnought at the expense of the other ships. It looks as though they’re retreating, looking to regroup. They weren’t ready for us, and don’t want to risk further losses, from what I can assess.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Taj asked.
“Could be.” Dent shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it,” he explained. “Any reasonable commander would judge what’s happened here as a temporary setback, nothing more. We surprised them, got in a good first punch, and bloodied their nose before they saw it coming, but they’re going to step back and reassess, then come at us in a way that makes the most of their advantages.”
“Which includes way more ships and a gacking metric ton of firepower,” Lina announced.
“And they’ll have eliminated our initial surprise,” Dent finished.
Taj watched the Wyyvan fleet pulling back on the screen, her jaw clenched. It was a pleasure to watch the Wyyvan scum retreat, but she understood that this was hardly a victory to celebrate.
While the Furlorian armada continued to pound the Wyyvan ships, the lizards fought back. Another of the automated ships under Dent’s control was damaged and began to list out of control. Dent let it go and Taj followed its spinning passage into space on her scanners, simply glad there was no one alive aboard it.
Although she understood its importance, in her mind, she couldn’t help but picture the ship as a game piece that had been swept off the board. It carried no emotional resonance, and she wondered for a second if that was how Dent felt.
Once the ship had flared out, she turned her attention back to the retreating Wyyvan ships and growled at them.
They were something she could get worked up about.
For all her dreams of riding in and obliterating the enemy in a single decisive blow, she’d known that wasn’t how it was going to go down. That hadn’t stopped her from hoping, however.
But she wouldn’t let that get in the way of the job she had come to do.
As the first engagement waned, the Wyyvans pulling away, Taj knew what she had to do.
“Scan the planet and pinpoint all those gackball lizards,” she commanded. “I want to rain fire down on them like they did us not too long ago. Show them what it feels like.”
A few seconds later, Lina groaned at her station. “Hate to say it, but it’s not gonna be that easy,” she told Taj.
“What do you mean?” Taj asked.
“The Wyyvans aren’t alone on the planet,” Lina reported.
“What?” Taj shouted, spinning around in her seat to glare at the engineer.
Dent came over to stand beside Lina. A sneer twisted his handsome face into something sinister as he confirmed her assessment.
“She’s right,” the AI proclaimed. “I’m picking up a wide range of non-Wyyvan lifeforms below. Hundreds of them, and a number of different species.”
“Slave labor,” Jadie said, her voice little more than a whisper. The words, however, pressed down upon the crew like a heavy blanket.
“Captain Vort was using his own people to dig for the Toradium-42,” Taj mused, her mind whirling. “Why would he—”
“This isn’t Vort we’re dealing with,” Cabe explained, shaking his shaggy head. His tail whipped back and forth with a menacing flick. “Vort was desperate to steal as much of the mineral as he could before his superiors arrived and realized it, remember? He was using his soldiers out of necessity and convenience.”
“Which doesn’t make sense in the long-term,” Lina finished, gesturing to the console and her readings. “Why run your troops down when you can enslave people and make them do the work for you?”
“So, we can’t just blow these gacks away from up here,” Taj said, realization sinking in and forming a strangling knot in her guts. “Bloody Rowl!”
So much for everything being perfect.
What’s that saying? “No plan survives the first engagement?”
“That’s not our only problem,” Dent told them, offering them more bad news. He brought an image up on the screen, focusing on an area of space behind the retreating Wyyvan fleet. “You see that?”
A metallic ring floated in the blackness, only the barest of lights on its surface defining it against the deeper darkness that surrounded it. It loomed ominously; it wasn’t quite the size of the Corzant space station, but it was monstrous.
Two destroyers sat alongside it, giving context to its size.
“What the gack is that thing?” Torbon asked.
“A temporary Gate,” the AI replied.
“Wait, you mean they have their own Gate?” Taj asked.
Dent nodded. “That’s exactly the case.”
“Which means they can supplement their already-superior force while we can’t.” Cabe groaned.
“We are so—” Torbon started, but Taj cut him off.
“You finish that statement, and I dump you with the trash and push you at the Wyyvans,” Taj warned with a growl. “We didn’t come here to lose, and I’ll be gacked if we’re giving up this early into the fight, no matter what kind of toys the Wyyvans have to play with.”
She jumped out of her seat and motioned for the crew to follow her as she started off the bridge.
“Looks like we’ll have to take the fight to the planet before the enemy fleet wraps their head around getting their asses
kicked and calls home for backup,” she announced. “Any way to block their communications while we do this?”
“I might be able to scramble them a little and slow them down,” Dent answered, but he didn’t look optimistic. “But transmissions started flying all over as soon as we hit the fleet. I’ve no doubt they’ve already sent a message home if they intended to.”
“So, nothing we can do about it then,” Taj griped. “Oh, well. Ready the shuttles. We’ve got a planet to free before anyone else shows up.”
Chapter Two
Just like the armada of ships they’d left in space, the fleet of shuttles that streaked toward Krawlas were automated, controlled by Dent.
The living crew piled into a couple of them and about forty service bots joined them, spread out across the different shuttles to avoid crowding.
Taj gritted her teeth as they broke orbit and entered the atmosphere of Krawlas. She fiddled with the armor on her forearm that hid the foot-long blade. She wondered if she’d have to use it soon.
While she hadn’t planned on fighting a ground battle, she hadn’t been so ignorant as to think it couldn’t happen, so they’d prepared for it. The shuttles were equipped with far more firepower than they normally would be, Dent having readied them to be used for air support while the Furlorian crew made the most of their armored suits.
Taj had had the Furlorians join them, training night and day ever since General Reynolds had agreed to let them go off on their own. The difficulty of the android Wyyvan practice dummies had been ramped up by Dent to simulate a more difficult fight, but even then, the Furlorians were worth five or more of the scaly lizard gacks.
We have to be, Taj thought, considering just how few of them there were on this mission compared to the Wyyvan soldiers they knew would be there. The lizards outnumbered them ten to one by Dent’s calculations, although they had no solid intel at this point.
Regardless, Taj and the crew needed every advantage they could get, considering that the numbers were never going to be on their side.
Especially not if the dreadnought had called for help.
The ground approached rapidly as she stared the view screen, seeing her home world up close for the first time in what felt like ages, although it had only been a year.
It had changed dramatically—and not for the better.
While she and the others had only flown the ancient cruiser into space a couple of times while they were training, Taj remembered the view of her home as a stark panorama of reds and browns that had stolen her breath.
It did so again, but for entirely different reasons this time around.
Culvert City, the small town where she and her littermates had been born and raised—an oasis in the desert scrubland that surrounded it— had once sat at the end of Everon’s Canyon, but all that had been wiped from the face of Krawlas.
In its place was a cold, walled outpost that sprawled across the stripped land where balborans and Furlorians alike once roamed. The Maladorian Plains that had been home to a host of peaceful creatures now looked like a monstrous beast had dug its claw into the ground and ripped deep, jagged wounds.
It appeared to be ready to expire.
All the balborans were gone, nothing remaining to show that they had ever been there. Taj’s stomach churned.
“That’s…ugly as all gack,” Lina muttered, staring at the Wyyvan mining compound that had replaced their town.
Taj couldn’t help but agree.
Long, squat buildings of gray sat where the once rustic brown and reds of the Furlorian barns and homes used to be. There was a regimented rigidity to the buildings that Krawlas had never before hosted. Hard lines replaced the curving dirt roads and winding paths that had run wild through Culvert City.
Black smoke rose from the compound as ground vehicles flitted back and forth, driving through the maze, trailers at their backs, hauling off what Taj could only presume was Toradium-42. Great trenches surrounded the compound in every direction, dusty crevices littered with mining equipment. They were barren of life.
“Where are all the people?” Taj asked.
Her answer came in the form of anti-aircraft fire.
A great wall of energy streaked toward the descending shuttles, and Taj was grateful Dent had made modifications to the shields on the ships, making them more durable and capable.
Anti-aircraft blasts rattled the crew’s shuttle as the shields took the brunt of the damage, but there was no mistaking the severity of the attack upon them.
“AA fire is lighting up all across the outpost,” Cabe reported, grimacing, whiskers pinned to his cheeks. “These gacks are ready to fight.”
“Can we take them out?” Taj asked.
He shook his head. “They’re set up in the population centers, alongside what look like artillery units,” he explained. “That’s where all the gacking people have gone. Scanners are picking up too many lifeforms stationed nearby to risk it.”
“Blast the guns, kill the slaves. Fantastic,” Taj growled.
She had known that the Wyyvans were ruthless—Vort and Dard had been perfect examples of that—but she hadn’t given the lizards much credit for being intelligent. Taj had underestimated them.
“Lost a shuttle,” Cabe called out. “Gack, there goes another one. We’re getting shot to pieces hanging out up here above the outpost.”
“Target the guns along the perimeter and bring us about toward the Maladorian Plains so we’re not dropping down right on top of them. Evasive maneuvers,” Taj ordered.
Dent wasted no time responding.
The shuttles veered to the east of the outpost, dodging and weaving and returning fire. Taj’s stomach flipped as the ship made sharp, steep maneuvers, the atmosphere of her home planet beating her up with its not-so-welcoming embrace.
Their return shots hit the walls of the outpost, a number of cannons going up in fiery gouts, but it did little to stop the barrage of fire streaking toward them.
“They’re firmly entrenched,” Dent reported, reading the scanners. “While I’m sure they didn’t expect you to come back to reclaim your home, they most certainly planned to hold it should anyone else show up.”
“Any way to cloak us?” Taj asked.
The AI shook his head. “The camouflage units on the shuttles are the same as those on your suits, albeit a bit weaker due to the size,” he explained. “They work best in crowded terrain where the refractors can latch onto and imitate their surroundings. In open sky like this, moving at the speeds we are, we’d simply look like vessels with gaudy blue and white paint jobs.”
“We’ve lost two more shuttles!” Cabe reported. “Another is taking damage. It’s dropping off.”
“Spread out and get us on the ground out of range as quickly as you can,” Taj commanded. “We can’t have these guys picking us off before we get a chance to set foot on-planet.”
Once again, the shuttle fleet reacted to Dent’s whims. The ships flitted back and forth like a host of gralflies atop a dead balboran, zipping off at odd angles and adjusting their speed to make themselves difficult targets.
It worked.
Taj tasted bile in her throat from the assault of vertigo upon her senses and swallowed it back. She’d be damned if she showed any weakness to the crew right now.
She needed to be strong, to show no fear. They were in it deep, and she’d been the one to talk them into the plan. There was no way she would let them down.
Her teeth clenched as the shuttle leveled off and spun about, giving her a clear view of the outpost in the distance. Anti-aircraft blasts lit the air between them and the gray monstrosity that had been erected in Culvert City’s place, but none came near to hitting them.
“We’re out of their firing arc now,” Dent reported.
“Finally,” Torbon moaned.
The barrage began to waver, the onslaught slowing as the enemy realized they were wasting their efforts. It stopped completely a few moments later.
“We lose anyon
e?” Taj asked.
“Five shuttles and about that many bots,” Cabe replied, “but all of our people made it through.”
Taj’s head lolled back against the headrest and she sighed. “That’s good news, at least.”
“We do any substantive damage to their weapons?” Taj followed up, straightening in her seat. Now wasn’t the time to relax.
“No, not really,” Cabe answered, fingers flying over the console. “Took a couple of their anti-aircraft guns out here and there, but there were simply too many of the non-Wyyvan lifeforms around the weapons as cover.”
“How’d they know we wouldn’t blast them too?” Lina asked.
“They couldn’t know,” Taj replied.
“Most likely a standard defensive maneuver for the Wyyvans,” Dent stated. “The fact that we didn’t immediately bombard the planet from space made it a wise choice, though. Had we been looking to raze the outpost, we could have done it as soon as we engaged the Wyyvan fleet. That tells them we want something down here.”
“So they already know our tactics?” Taj groaned. “Gacking wonderful.”
“We’re definitely not dealing with someone like Captain Vort, then,” Torbon muttered. “His lizard-ass would have left his fleet behind to battle it out with us, regardless of the cost.”
“Which means this commander is smarter than Vort,” Cabe suggested.
“Doesn’t take much to earn that honor,” Lina joked.
“Maybe not, but what does that make us if we walked right into the middle of it?” Taj asked.
Torbon chuckled. “It makes us—”
“Rhetorical question, Torbon,” Lina told him, shutting Torbon up before he could put his foot in his mouth. “Doesn’t really need an answer.”
“Maybe not, but we need to take a look at our circumstances and come up with something quick or the lizards are gonna make us look like gacking idiots compared to Vort. We might not have walked into a Wyyvan trap, but we sure didn’t do ourselves any favors by coming down right on top of them like we did.”
Taj grunted. “He’s right. I made a lot of presumptions before coming here—”
“We all did,” Cabe corrected. “We thought we could show up, guns blazing, and take back our world in an afternoon and be lazing in the sun by evening, but that clearly isn’t gonna happen. We need a new plan.”