by Jack Archer
He hadn’t spoken to a single being in over a year.
A crack behind him split the air, and he whipped around, holding out the Chosenia branch with both hands like a staff.
“Whoa, friend, we’re not going to hurt you.” It was a group of several humans dressed in what looked to be military attire, but it was strange. They were dirty, rough around the edges.
“What do you want?” Na’gya stuttered, backing away as best as he could in the snow with his freezing toes.
“Calm down, buddy. What’s your name?” the man in front asked. He had short brown hair and striking blue eyes, and there was a patch on his jacket that read Sanderson.
Na’gya took a moment before speaking, weighing his options as he noticed the guns on the humans’ belts. “Na’gya Vasilev. Son of the Jurat Prime of Tavantis.”
“Tavantis?” the man in the back said, straightening up and hooking his hands in his belt. “Isn’t that on Chantakor?”
“Yes,” Na’gya affirmed.
“That’s a whole system away,” he said. “What’s a hybrid like you doing all the way out here?”
“Marsters!” Sanderson snapped, looking back at his outfit for a moment before turning back to Na’gya.
“What are you doing out here in the cold at Orlovsky?” Marsters pushed past his partner and fixed Na’gya with steely eyes.
“Orlovsky?” Na’gya asked before turning around to look at the burned-down village behind him.
“This place,” Marsters said, indicating the village by sweeping his hand.
“What happened here?” Na’gya asked.
“Too many of you,” Marsters sneered. Na’gya turned around, brow furrowed, to see unbridled hate in the human’s eyes.
“Too many…” Na’gya said, shaking his head but not getting rid of the high-pitched tone in his ears.
“No wonder the Terran Government is trying to get rid of all of you idiots,” Marsters laughed, taking his gun from his belt. “Can’t string more than two god damn words together.”
“Marsters!”
“Stand down, Sanderson,” Marsters hissed, turning to face Sanderson and holding out a hand as if to slap him. “This place is crawling with those fucking things, and it’s our job to wipe them out, just like we did with Orlovsky.”
A bolt of fear ripped through Na’gya’s chest, and in one swift movement, he brought his staff up to whack Marsters in the head, sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Hey!” Sanderson shrieked, fumbling for his side arm, but Na’gya had already begun to bolt away through the burned-down buildings, using his wings to propel him more quickly down the alleys and around corners.
He heard the sound of gunshots behind him, pinging off the walls, and yelling from both Sanderson, Marsters, and their companion whom Na’gya hadn’t had the pleasure of formally meeting during their brief time together.
The Horoths could fly, the Ya’ados could not. It made escape that much more difficult on feet that refused to run faster and wings that couldn’t hold his weight in the air longer than 10 seconds. Gliding was fun, but it wasn’t enough to outrun the Terran military.
Radios cackled behind him, and Na’gya felt the familiar stitch in his side. Running always exerted him, and even after a year in the wilderness, he was still unable to keep a steady pace in front of the humans. His bones were not hollow the way the Horoth’s were. He was forever cursed with dense bones and a thick body the way humans were. His useless wings fanned out on either side of him, more of a nuisance than anything.
Na’gya looked behind him to check his pursuers and saw none. He slowed down the slightest bit before turning around and seeing another Ya’ados fly out in front of him and push him out of the way. The Ya’ados pulled up a gun and began to shoot at the oncoming Terran soldiers while another Ya’ados beckoned for Na’gya to follow him down a side alley and towards a large building that remained standing.
Once inside, the Ya’ados took out a flashlight and began to move further into the building, creeping around corners until finally they reached a staircase and climbed four floors up. Down the hall, they took a left, a right, another left, and passed through a set of doors before stopping in front of another with multiple locks and chains. The Ya’ados knocked several times in quick succession before a voice came from the other side.
“When the King comes crashing—” they began, muffled from the other side of the door.
“—all sin will be revealed,” the Ya’ados finished. Several clicks sounded, and Na’gya looked up at his savior. Their face was covered by a grayish-brown scarf, and their eyes sported a pair of goggles that they took off as the door opened. Wings pushed back, they entered the room, and Na’gya followed, hearing the door slam behind him. Several voices began to murmur in the darkness around him.
“Pull the lights up,” the Ya’ados in front of him announced. Suddenly the room was filled with light, casting its glow on ten or twelve Ya’ados, packed into the large room with their great wingspans.
“What… what are you all doing here?” Na’gya murmured, adjusting his pack and moving to the center of the room. He looked around at all of them, their scared faces and shivering wings. His heart hurt, both at the terrified faces of his brethren and the secret code. He knew his father and parent helped do this. His own parents, who repeatedly told Na’gya of their love for him, continually forcing others like him into the shadows, into burning villages, and into the hands of the Terran government for slaughter.
“My name is Na’gya Vasilev, son of the Jurat Prime of Tavantis,” he announced to the room at large, “and I’m here to help you and all Ya’ados to be free everywhere.”
Chapter 3
Rystar Umara : Tavantis, Chantakor, Lalande System
The smell of coffee wafted into Rystar’s nose, and she snapped awake, blearily eyeing the cup of liquid gold in front of her face.
“Good morning.”
Shea passed her the cup and sat down on a chair across from her, pulling out his comms tablet and swiping through it. Rystar pulled herself up and groaned, the stiffness in her back not doing her any favors. The coffee warmed her veins, and she took several deep breaths before attempting to make conversation.
“What time is it?” she grumbled.
“Just past seven,” Shea responded, picking up his own cup from the table to sip on it.
“Woke me up so damn early,” Rystar muttered, taking another drink and waking up a little more.
“Jorge said he wanted to speak with us first thing,” Shea said, still scrolling through his feed. “Figured you might want to be awake for that.”
“Do I?” Rystar grumbled.
“He made it sound like something big was happening,” Shea said with a shrug, turning back to his tablet.
“Something big is always happening with Jorge,” Rystar said, waving a hand and taking another drink of coffee. “He thought that maintenance fee we did yesterday was the biggest thing that happened since my first bounty here.”
“I doubt that,” Shea said absentmindedly, flicking through his comms tablet. Rystar snapped a finger and waved a hand.
“Am I invisible?” she said haughtily. “Whatever, let’s just go get this over with.”
The trip to Jorge’s office was a short but strange one. They didn’t speak to each other and certainly didn’t look at one another. Rystar felt a weird attraction to him. That stupid side glance he did everyone once in a while, playing with his lip ring and flicking his hair from his face, didn’t help.
Knocking at the door, Rystar waited a moment for Jorge to allow them in before opening the door and stepping across the threshold. Shea followed her and shut the door, standing behind her and just to the right, still as a statue.
“You’re going to Chantakor,” Jorge announced without fanfare.
“I’m sorry, what?” Rystar said, blinking incredulously at her boss.
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Jorge said warningly, pointing a finger at her be
fore going back to his paperwork.
“Why the hell?” Rystar asked. “That’s well outside federal jurisdiction. That’s Space Force shit.”
Jorge looked up at her over the tops of his glasses and sighed, lowering his voice. “I got wind of this bounty through Space Force channels. An old friend from the Force owes me a favor, and I intend to take it because it pays a lot. And you’re the best tracker we have.”
Rystar’s chest puffed out in spite of herself, and she pursed her lips. “Fine. When do we need to leave?”
“Immediately, if you can,” Jorge said, turning back to his computer.
“Are you going to give me any more information, or…?” Rystar tilted her head and tried.
“That’s all you get for now, tracker,” Jorge said abruptly, not looking up from his computer. “But I’ll have you know if we do this, our department will be set for the next sixty years, and if not, they’ll surely shut us down. So, you better not mess it up.”
Rystar raised her eyebrows and tossed a look at Shea before deciding Jorge wasn’t going to say anything more and turned on a heel to leave.
It wasn’t the jumps that were bad. It was the damn lines.
The ancient woman was still punching in the numbers on Rystar’s license. “How’s that nice boy down there? What was his name?”
“Shea, ma’am,” Shea said, leaning over Rystar to answer. She was glad the visors on her LASSO were down so the sweet old lady couldn’t see Rystar banging her head against the dash. Shea chuckled silently in his seat.
“When is he coming back up here to see me?” The sound of a mechanical keyboard in the background was still going.
“Whenever I can rip him away from his tablet,” she replied before Shea could say anything else.
“And where are you going today, Mx. Umara?” the attendant had finally stopped typing and sent Rystar’s license back through the tube next to the dashboard, where it tumbled into her lap.
“I am going to…” Rystar swiped around on her dash screen until the bounty window came up, “Chantakor, city of Tavantis.”
Another five minutes while that unfortunate name was punched into the console.
The woman’s voice came after an eternity, “Three jumps. The credits will be taken from your account.”
“Christ,” Rystar grumbled, not happy about the prospect of three jumps in a row.
“Fly safe, Mx. Umara!”
Rystar sat up straighter as the portal ahead of them turned bright-hot purple, her engines unlocking and firing up once more. The comms channel cut on immediately like it couldn’t wait another five goddamn minutes.
“Rystar!” Came the sharp buzz.
“Yes, old man?”
“Are you there yet?”
“Yep,” she replied, pushing up on the throttle and sending the LASSO through the first portal. The comms cut out momentarily, but that was to be expected when you were jumping through space beyond light speed.
The LASSO stopped suddenly as they passed through the first jump, and she pulled up and to the left on the stick, aligning herself with the second portal.
“You said you were there.” Jorge had cut back in.
Rystar settled back into her seat and shrugged, speeding up and pressing the hyperspace button. “And I lied. You better get to your point before I hit the next one.”
“I just wanted to say—”
No matter how many times she made these jumps, they never got better. Stars and time swirled around her, turning blue-black with streaks of yellow gas contorting violently until they punched out again in front of a massive, magenta sun. She pushed down quickly to face the next portal.
“You know, Umara, you’re a real piece of sh—”
The final jump had her head spinning. Usually, Rystar hated the bureaucratic red tape, but the four jump rule had been necessary. Too many pilots had flown into suns after their fifth or sixth jump, and four jump trips were reserved for the military class. She looked over at Shea, who had turned a delicate shade of green. It was only his third time in the LASSO during ‘space’ mode.
“I’m at Chantakor now, Jorge.” Rystar powered down the jump engines and unfolded the secondary wings. Most of the Mark III LASSO’s had been phased out by the sleeker Mark IVs, but this one had been passed down to Rystar by her mother, and she couldn’t bear to part with it.
She slowed down as Chantakor came into her view. It was a mighty fine sight to behold.
“Holy shit,” Shea breathed, drawing a small smile from Rystar.
Because of its royal status in the galactic system, Chantakor was only accessible by the military class and those on official royal business. Suffice it to say, lowly bounty hunters like Rystar Umara and Shea Hendi had never actually been. As she approached the orbit, she peered out of the windshield and saw hundreds, if not thousands, of Mark IV LASSOs, swarming around Chantakorian ships that dwarfed the largest human transport carriers. They gleamed in the light of the system’s binary stars, making them shimmer like waves.
“Are you done being an asshole?” Jorge was speaking again. She could almost hear his arms crossing.
“Yes, I’m done,” she replied while she fiddled with knobs to allow the Chantakorian fields to pull her in carefully.
“Well listen,” he buzzed, “the King, or Queen, or whatever of Tavantis is expecting you any minute now, all you—”
Rystar blanched. “Hold on, the who?”
“—all you have to do is get in there,” Jorge continued unsympathetically, “get the information on where his child is, and get the hell out of there.”
“His what?”
“Were you really not listening?” Jorge huffed into the receiver.
“I am listening,” Rystar sputtered and stopped in front of the heavily guarded gate that would lead her to the continent of Tavantis, “you never said this was a kidnapping. Of the King’s child!”
“You’re right,” Jorge apologized dryly, “I should have told you that your bounty hunting mission would include finding someone.”
“Alright,” Rystar said and folded her arms tightly, “who’s the asshole now?”
“Listen, I’m sorry,” he said with more sympathy, “but I told you this is a big job. It could get most of our systems back online. They wouldn’t have to cut our agency’s funding.”
Yes, the fabled systems that their team had been working on since the dawn of time. Rystar’s LASSO shot through the atmosphere easily and turned on its own to face the runway in front of the stupidly ornate building she could only assume was the Ruler’s palace.
Chantakorians.
She slammed a button, and the landing wheels came out from underneath the LASSO, touching down light as a feather before it rolled the last little ways and stopped in front of a hangar.
“I am taking the longest vacation when I’m through,” Rystar declared as the engines powered down, and she stood up to pull on a worn jacket that bustled around her midriff. Another relic from her mother.
“I’d expect nothing less from my top tracker.” Jorge was beaming through the comms. She grumbled to herself and slapped them off. Once the engines had cooled to an acceptable temperature, Rystar yanked on a pair of black boots and tied them up, stomping a couple times before grabbing her comms pad and heading out of the airlock and beckoning for Shea to follow her.
As they stepped out into the dim light, Rystar couldn’t help but notice how goddamn tall he was. He always sported a boyish grin, his deep brown eyes taking in everything like he was seeing it for the first time. It pained her to say, but after their stint in Odessa, Shea had begun to grow on her. Maybe he was right, and they could be friends.
Outside, they were greeted by two armed Horoths and a nice temperate breeze, a dull sort of weather if Rystar hadn’t been acclimated to the dramatic patterns of Earth. She looked up at the yellow-grey sky and squinted, vaguely recalling that Chantakor was a partially tidally-locked planet. It created three “zones,” one mostly day, one mostly night
, and another in constant twilight. If she had to guess, she was in the twilight zone now.
“You come with us now,” the Horoth on the left said in a clipped English accent, flicking their head to indicate they should get moving. In true, human fashion, Rystar stuck her thumb up. Perhaps it was a universal sign of affirmation.
The Horoths were never a race Rystar had to deal with, and she was glad of it. The stories she had heard painted them to be majestic pillars of biblical proportion, a fearsome race that squashed all in their path on the road to domination.
Whatever.
She and Shea followed the pair, and Rystar studied them surreptitiously. Sure, they were tall, but they were also incredibly feathery and wiry, like a couple of goofy-looking birds that had no business walking like people. Their wings were folded and stretched a couple feet over their heads, the ends of them trailing the ground. They wore robes similar to togas over their multi-colored feathers and bulky, leather-looking books over their clawed feet.
The humans called Horoths ‘angels’ for good reason, it seemed.
Walking took forever, and Rystar pulled out her smoking case at one point to take a puff of her Cortijet while the angels in front of her ignored her thoroughly. The medicine helped her lungs with the exerted pressure of walking but only a little bit. She was glad when the doors came into view.
They were finally led through the set of large, intricately carved doors that opened to a bright foyer, laden with white and black swirled marble. The ceiling was thirty feet high, painstakingly carved with tiny Horoths and painted with a huge mural depicting some ancient war the humans, thankfully, had no part in.
She wiped her nose and was unimpressed by all of it. Shea, on the other hand, looked up at it with bright eyes, and she sincerely hoped the wonder would never be squashed from him. She rolled her eyes and pushed the Cortijet in her pocket, chastising herself for being so drawn to the guy.
The Horoths spoke in their native tongue that sounded like trills and whistles through short beaks before turning to her.