by Lizzy Bequin
She can be quite stealthy when she wants to be.
When she finally woke up, she pushed herself away, and I let her go. Her face turned that lovely pink color that signals she is embarrassed or excited—I’m not sure which.
She muttered something about keeping warm. But that didn’t make much sense to me. What warmth could my cold-blooded body have offered the little human during the night?
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” she asks now. Her voice is low, as if she expects someone might be listening.
I hack through a particularly dense network of vines.
“Yes, I’m certain,” I reassure her. “There is a beacon on the ship. It runs off a neutronium battery, so it was unaffected by the power outage. It is synced up with my helmet, so I know exactly where the ship is at all times.”
“Oh,” she says thoughtfully.
She looks especially pretty now. She took advantage of the light shower this morning to rinse her hair, untying her long braid, which had become messy with yesterday’s adventures.
Now her hair is hanging down her back. It is gold on the outside where it has begun to dry, but underneath it is still dark with rain. A few curving tendrils stick wetly to her shoulders.
“How long will it take to get back?” she asks.
I gesture off to our left, where the dark wall of the rocky cliff is visible between the trees.
“That cliff is too steep for us to climb,” I tell her. “We’ll have to go around. I don’t know how long that will take.”
She nods and walks along beside me quietly, her soft arm bumping against mine.
The truth is, I could easily scale that wall on my own. Perhaps I could even do it with the girl clinging to my shoulders. However, that seems too dangerous. She is far too precious to risk. More so than I think she realizes.
She has been quiet all morning, and I find myself continually wondering what is going through her head. Is she thinking about what we did together last night?
I, for one, can’t stop thinking about it.
The gentle tang of her skin against my tongue. The warmth of her flesh and the tick of her pulse in her veins. Those tiny hairs, almost invisible, that tickled so deliciously against my lips.
I keep telling myself that I can’t become attached to her. However, these feelings for her are just like jungle vines. The more I struggle against them, the more tangled I seem to become.
But I can’t forget my duty to my brother. He is my blood, and that comes first, before everything else.
My mind flashes back to those dark days when the Oggryn raiders came to our homeworld. One on one, the pirates were no match for our Mezentine warriors, but there were simply too many of them—a seemingly never-ending tide of hard-shelled insectoid brutes laying waste to our cities.
Kozar was still not of age to fight, but he was full of youthful fire and his courage and thirst for battle was boundless. Eventually, his tenacious pestering got the better of me, and I helped him lie about his age so that he could join the infantry.
I should have known better.
At the disastrous battle of Kukirjain, he was captured. Sold into slavery. And it was all my fault.
Since that day, I have shown my face to no living being.
Despite working my ass off chasing down as many bounties as I possibly can, I’ve still only amassed a fraction of the exorbitant price required to purchase Kozar’s freedom. But now, finally, I have a real chance to free my brother from bondage.
That’s what makes this job so special. There isn’t the usual monetary fee involved. Instead, Putrude has bought my brother from the neutronium mines, and now he is holding him as my prize upon delivery of Clare.
I can’t help but wonder if Putrude has done that as insurance, to make sure I don’t try to keep his lovely bride-to-be for myself.
“Rogar, look,” Clare gasps, tugging at my arm.
She points at the soft, dark soil still curling with plumes of pale steam after the rain.
Shit. I was so deep in my reverie that I didn’t even notice.
Footprints.
These tracks are not from that predator we encountered yesterday. These are much smaller, and they clearly belong to a bipedal creature like me or the human.
“Quiet,” I say in a soft voice. “Stay close. Eyes open.”
As if I need to tell her that. She’s the one who noticed the tracks in the first place while I was daydreaming.
Whatever the creature is, it appears to be alone. I decide to follow its trail.
After a few minutes, the jungle gives way to an open region of gently rolling hills. Here and there in the distance more tall, narrow buttes like the ones we saw yesterday rise against the backdrop of billowy white clouds. The bases of these plateaus are surrounded by more small patches of dense jungle like the one we’re emerging from. In between these cylindrical mountains is a sea of grass. The green blades undulate in the breeze like waves of water. The creature’s trail is easy to follow where it has tamped down the long, rain-speckled leaves.
Soon the rocky cliff beside us begins to level out too. When we finally reach the end of that stony wall, I discover that the solitary tracks veer off toward the left at a sharp angle.
“It’s heading in the direction of the ship,” I whisper to Clare.
Her eyes widen and dart around as we crouch low in the tall grasses.
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” The tremble in her voice betrays her doubt.
“Maybe. Or maybe not. We have to be careful. It could be stalking us, whatever it is.”
The thought occurs to me that these tracks might have been made by whatever being shot us down when we were trying to land, assuming that is what actually happened.
“Rogar, do you think it’s a person?” She makes a sweeping gesture between me and herself. “Like us?”
I nod.
“It’s definitely bipedal. The shape of the foot and the weight distribution indicate an upright spinal posture. Based on the stride, I would estimate it’s about my height.”
As we continue on, Clare studies the tracks with a furrowed brow.
“Rogar,” she says in a low voice. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but yesterday, when that thing attacked me, there were ruins.”
I stop.
“Ruins? What do you mean?”
“You know,” she says impatiently. “Like old Greek or Roman ruins.” When I don’t respond, she shakes her head. “Oh, right, you wouldn’t know what that is…I mean there were broken stone columns and stairs carved into the river, and engraved blocks. They looked like they must have been ancient.”
When we were flying in for our landing yesterday, I saw signs of settlements, but those appeared to be primitive. What Clare is describing sounds much more advanced than that. Maybe this planet has a history of civilization going back farther than I realized.
We continue on, staying low in the grass. I scan around the area, keeping an eye out for danger in case we are being led into an ambush.
That’s when I notice it. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.
“What?” Clare whispers, noticing that something has my attention. “Is somebody out there?”
I shake my head, partly to answer Clare’s question, and partly because I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
“Clare, look at those rock formations.”
She squints off in the direction that I’m pointing. After a moment, she shrugs.
“Yeah, I saw something like that yesterday but I don’t—“
“Look how they’re arranged,” I hiss at her. “The spacing isn’t random. They have crumbled with time, and their shape has been worn by the wind and rain, but look how perfect they are around the base.”
Now it’s her turn to shake her head.
“No way,” she says quietly. “It can’t be.”
“It can’t be, but it is,” I insist. “Those are columns, Clare. Something built them a long time ago. This whole are
a is one big ruin.”
Goddess, it’s possible the whole planet is actually one big mega-structure.
Clare’s eyes tilt upward like she’s trying to imagine the gigantic architecture that those columns would have once supported.
“It would have been enormous,” she gasps.
Our moment of awe-struck wonder is cut short by a sound from over the next rise in the landscape—a shrill, ululating scream, that could only mean one thing—someone, or something, is in trouble.
“What was that?” Clare’s eyes are wide and focused in the direction of the scream.
I gesture for her to be silent and stay low. I ready my spear, and we creep forward to the top of the hill until we can see what’s on the other side.
Not far off is the plateau where we crash landed yesterday. The jungle surrounding its lower slopes is gashed with a long vertical scar where the trees were flattened by my tumbling ship, the hull of which is winking in the light.
But my attention instantly shifts on what is happening in the low valley between us and the ship.
About a hundred yards away, a flash of orange spines catches my eye. Clare gasps and instinctively ducks behind me. Using my helmet’s built-in optics, I zoom in on the creature. The black streak of charred skin on its head reveals that it’s the same one we encountered yesterday.
Luckily, it hasn’t seen us yet. Its attention is focused on something else.
The creature that it is attacking must be the same one that made the tracks we’ve been following. Just as I guessed, it is roughly the same height as me, with two arms and two legs. Its body, however, is extraordinarily slender, its head elongated and ovoid, and its limbs flexible and seemingly jointless.
But the strangest part of all is the being’s skin, which is transparent, revealing the inner workings of its body—tangled braids of fibers and veins pulsing with light instead of blood.
“It’s in trouble,” Clare whispers from where she’s hiding behind me. “That monster is going to kill it.”
She’s right. The translucent being is in trouble. Its movements are swift and agile, and as we watch, it manages to leap out of the way of the orange predator’s deadly tongue, which has fully recovered from getting stunned yesterday. But it is clear that the being is also weary, and with no apparent means of defending itself, it’s not going to last much longer.
“We have to do something,” Clare says. “We have to help.”
“We?” I turn toward her incredulously. “What do you mean we?”
In the valley below, the head of the predator’s long, evil tongue darts out again, snapping its teeth. The slender being springs out of the way just in time.
“But we can’t just leave it,” Clare cries, coming around from behind me now. There are tears in her voice. “It’s going to die.”
“Listen,” I hiss at her. “We don’t even know who or what that thing is. As far as we know, they could have been stalking us. Or at the very least they’re planning on plundering our ship.” I catch myself. “My ship, I mean. Whoever they are, they’re on their own.”
Below, the slender, translucent being yowls as it dodges another attack. Its skinny limbs are wobbling with exhaustion.
“Anyway,” I add, “pretty soon this little debate is going to be moot.”
Clare just glares at me.
“Don’t you have any sympathy?” Her voice is cracking. “That could have been us yesterday.”
When I don’t move, Clare huffs angrily.
“Fine, well if you’re not going to do anything about it, I will.”
Her small delicate fingers wrap around the pole of my spear, and she tries to yank it away from me without much success. I keep the spear gripped tightly in my gauntlet, and it doesn’t budge. But the human refuses to give up. She keeps fighting.
She is courageous and strong-minded.
Those are desirable qualities in a mate.
A mate? What am I even thinking?
At last her fingers slip, and she tumbles backward onto her butt with tears edging her eyes. Almost at the same moment, the slender figure collapses too, seemingly giving itself in to its fate.
The orange, spiny predator opens its jaws, and its moveable ears focus in on its prey.
“No,” Clare whimpers and looks away.
“Fuck it,” I mutter.
At the last moment, I level my spear and fire off a fully charged blast of energy.
The bolt flies true and strikes the head of the monster’s tongue just as it is springing out. It erupts in an explosion of gore, leaving only the bloody root hanging limply out of the creature’s wide maw.
The monster steps back, shaking its head in pain and confusion as it lets out an angry bellow.
The beast turns toward us. Its jaws open and dripping with saliva and syrupy blood. Its eyes are churning with hatred.
It has forgotten all about its prey now. All it wants is revenge.
“Run away,” I snarl at Clare.
“No,” she says, standing up beside me. “I’m not going to leave you.”
Like I said, courageous and strong minded. And perhaps a little stupid.
While I admire the female’s loyalty, she’s not going to be able to help me in this fight.
The beast paws at the ground, preparing to charge.
“Now,” I shout. “Get out of here, human.”
“But—“
I shove her roughly aside and she tumbles over the grass, away from me, and more important, away from the monster.
“Now!” I roar.
The beast charges. The pounding of its feet vibrate the ground like a miniature earthquake. I level my spear and brace myself for the impact.
“Shoot it!” Clare shouts behind me.
The beast is frighteningly fast. Within seconds, it has climbed the slope of the hill. It’s nearly on me. My spear hums as it finally recharges from the blast that wrecked the creature’s tongue.
Another blast to its exterior would be useless. I learned that yesterday. It’s armor is too thick. Instead, I aim the tip of my weapon straight at that gaping mouth.
“Rogar!” a voice calls from somewhere off behind me, but I barely hear it. All of my attention is focused on one thing. I dig in my heals.
The spear penetrates, tearing into the beast’s gullet. Metal scrapes on bone as it plunges deep. There is resistance as the blade slices into the creature’s tough heart. I fire, letting the spear’s energy blaze through the creature’s innards.
A heavy impact seems to pulverize my bones. The world spins around me—sky, then ground, then sky again as I’m tossed head over heels through the air.
Another impact, and everything goes black. Someone is calling my name over and over, faint and echoing like a voice at the end of a long tunnel.
***
“Rogar…Rogar…”
I wake with a start. That beast hit me so hard that I’m literally seeing stars. A whole sky full of them. My head throbs with a deep, dull ache.
Clare is leaning over me with a worried expression on her face.
All I am certain of is that I need to protect her. I need to make sure that monster is dead.
“Where is the beast?” I manage to choke out of my dry throat.
Clare says something that my addled brain is unable to process.
My arms are weary, but I to prop myself so I can at least get my bearings. I scan my eyes over the fields of rippling grass.
They are dark. Everything is dark.
Those stars I’m seeing aren’t from being knocked out by the monster. They are real. Somehow it is already night. How long have I been unconscious?
Clare says something else that I fail to comprehend. She gestures to something nearby. A large dark lump jagged with spines.
It’s the beast, lying several yards away, collapsed on its side with my spear plunged deep into its face.
I try to do a scan to check if it is still alive, but my helmet doesn’t respond. I struggle to get to my f
eet. I collapse. Clare places her warm little hand against my chest, trying to still me.
She speaks once again, but I still don’t understand. The translator in my helmet must have sustained damage during the impact.
The wind picks up, stirring my mane. My temple tingles with a pins and needles sensation. As a reflex, I bring my hand to the side of my head, and my fingers touch fabric that is wound like a bandage over a lump.
That’s when I finally see it lying on the ground by Clare’s knees.
My helmet. By the Goddess, it’s not broken. It’s off.
Clare has seen my face.
I have broken the Creed.
CHAPTER 16: CLARE
I scream as the monster charges Rogar. Its massive jaws are wide open, white fangs gleaming, ruined tongue dribbling slobber and blood.
Rogar is fearless. He stands his ground like an unflinching statue.
What happens next only takes a matter of seconds, but it seems to play out in slow motion.
The spear tip penetrates the beast’s mouth with a sickening thunk. Rogar leans into it, and the shaft disappears as he drives the weapon deep into his opponent. Instantly, the creature’s muscles shudder and spasm. Limp paws drag on the grass as it stumbles and collapses. The predator is already dead on its feet.
But its momentum carries it forward. The beast’s spiny orange shoulder slams into Rogar, sending the alien warrior sailing through the air, cartwheeling head over heels.
“Rogar!” I shriek.
My feet are already carrying me toward him before he even touches down. His head slams against the ground, and there is an awful crunching sound that turns my blood into sleet inside my veins.
“No,” I say through clenched teeth as I rush toward his body. “No, no, no.”
Dropping to my knees, I slide to a stop on the wet grass, kneeling over Rogar’s sprawled out body. The steel dome of his helmet is dented, and a thin crack has split the tinted visor.
Please let that crunch I heard just have been his helmet. Please, please, please…
I’m not sure what to do here. I know that you should never move an injured person since you could risk causing further injury. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing.