by Hana Starr
“I saw one ship. Incredibly large. It was barely even over the horizon but obviously heading in this direction. They probably saw the rocket.”
Sorlo nodded. “That’s about what I’m thinking, too. Shit. Could you tell what it looked like?”
He bit his lip and waited breathlessly. Everything seemed to be clinging to this moment as he waited for her to describe exactly what he knew she would. All of the scattered memories of his broken childhood were connecting now as she spoke, creating an image of a blimp-like monstrosity with jointed appendages. Stark black, it went against everything his people had known and stood for his entire life. However, there was a difference. Where there had been a great hatch in the bottom from which monstrous lifeforms descended, that had been replied by a mechanism that looked rather like an immense charge gun.
“That’s it,” he sighed. “Our technology. They took it and made it theirs. Our labs…desecrated.”
Jade looked at him with saddened eyes but there was no time for a bonding moment, as one of the young warriors interrupted them both. “What are we going to do, then?” he demanded.
“We can’t run,” Jade said quickly. “That thing moves much too quickly for that, and I don’t know how many more there are. Perhaps it’s alone.”
“I doubt it,” Sorlo said grimly, remembering with cold hate the way the sun had been blotted out by shadow and how cold the world had grown beneath them. “That’s not their way. They crush.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And I don’t like the looks of that thing’s gun. That much energy…”
They would be vaporized in an instant was the part she left out, the reality of it so cruel even an assassin couldn’t say it. To simply cease existing…
The only answer was to hide in the wreckage, though that was no answer at all. There was no way of knowing exactly if the enemy had seen them or knew there were survivors to kill, but even if it passed over them and headed straight for the rocket that had just survived…
They would all be dead anyway.
The ship lay mostly flat, so it was easy enough to find places to perch. Jade receded to a spot in the shadows while the ten survivors of the crash huddled up together with a newfound closeness that Sorlo doubted they had known before all this. Tragedy had a way of bringing people together like that, which he knew very well. Unfortunately well.
He could not be still. His body felt like elastic pulled to its breaking point, like soon something would give and he would be sent out far to some distant and extreme direction. An uncontrollable action, he would be completely at the mercy of his instincts.
Already he was feeling the pull. He couldn’t sit still, tugged this way and then that by emotions and fear. His senses were strained to pick up any of the sounds which haunted his sleep, the whirring of gigantic engine the gathering static of an energy beam…He could hear nothing through the low, hushed mutter of warriors, could not know anything beyond these fortified walls, but he listened anyway because it was the only thing left for him to do.
It was the only thing anyone could do, now. Jade seemed to be doing the same, though half of her face was lit up with a blue glow. Analyzing what, he had no idea.
Pacing back and forth down the hall, he quickly grew tired of the blank sight and wandered into the cockpit at the one end. His elastic was stretching, guiding his momentum now. Standing there, he looked around.
From the splashes of blood and uniform shreds, it was easy enough to tell where deaths had occurred. A monitor screen was cracked with a skull-shaped impression still in the center. Sorlo winced and looked away from it, but every single other screen was also cracked in some fashion. Equipment had been knocked loose, laying broken and scattered on the floor.
Standing there, Sorlo looked down at his feet. Flexing his fingers habitually, he began to play with a bit of light just to give his fingers something to do. Rolling the little ball of dim energy between his fingertips, he pondered on the situation for a great deal longer than he should have before actually realizing what he was doing.
“Jade!” he shouted.
There came a series of light, hurried footsteps as the assassin flung herself down the hallway, charge gun drawn. When she saw he was just standing there, she dropped her defensive stance and just scowled at her. “Are you serious, Sorlo? What do you think you’re doing, scaring me like that?”
“Look at this!” he blustered, and shoved the little bit of light in her direction.
Her dark eyes were full of disdain as she stared at it. “Okay, and? I happen to already know that you’re an Illurian so if this is all that you wanted to show me…”
“No!” he shouted, bouncing on his toes. He was so excited that he let the light go but he was hyper aware of it now, able to feel it passing through the ship in little fits and bursts. “I think I know what we can do. I think I know how to get us out of this.”
“Share.”
“They said there is still some power in here, right?”
“But it’s faulty,” Jade pointed out, though she didn’t reject what he’d said. “It doesn’t seem to be getting all the way through to the source, so it isn’t sustained enough for anything.”
“But what if it could be?”
“The engine is still dead,” she countered. “And if you didn’t notice the busted outside, this thing isn’t exactly flight-ready anymore.”
“We don’t need flight.” Even as he spoke, he knew that this was it. It was the only answer and he had found it. He just needed somehow to convince her that this was the way. “You said it yourself. I’m an Illurian. I am made for this.”
Slowly, her eyes widened with comprehension. “You think you can be a conduit, don’t you? You can sustain the power flow.”
“Exactly!” he crowed, pushing hair out of his face from where it had fallen with his bouncing. “Something in here still has to work, doesn’t it?”
“Were any guns still attached?” she pondered.
In answer, Sorlo stepped up to the consoles and studied them. After a bit, he found the one with the least extensive cracking, planted his feet firmly on the floor, and then held his hand against the console. Closing his eyes, he reached for the weakened and sporadic flow of power which could be felt just beneath the surface. As it began to rush to him, he started to slowly redirect it through his body and into the monitor. It was a tricky thing to split his thoughts like that, and even worse to have to try and get the connection to the console exactly right, but then the screen lit up. The pent-up breath he’d been holding burst from between his lips.
An arm hooked itself in his. The warmth of Jade’s body pressed against his from the side. “Damn good work, partner,” she said softly, watching as the screen ran through a quick load-up before coming to a halt on a neutral page. “Let’s have a look.”
Obediently, Sorlo used his free hand to flip to diagnostics.
Every single system was in-operational but for one: the weaponry. And according to this monitor, it was up on top of the Peace Bearer. The position varied based on model, and so he closed his eyes and thanked his lucky stars that these hadn’t been on the bottom.
“So, that’s it. We shoot them down.”
“Wait,” Jade said.
Sorlo released his grip on the power and turned to her, tilting his head slightly as he regarded her. He knew what he had to do, but he could tell that she didn’t know what he was planning yet.
“This doesn’t help us.”
“It does,” he said softly. “Only I can man the guns, and so I will. I will distract those fiends while you get to the rocket and…”
“No!” Jade burst out. Her assassin’s mask cracked in two right in front of his eyes, and he found himself staring straight into the soul of a terrified and sorrowful woman. She had never looked so beautiful as in this moment when all her true emotions were on full display. For all her darkness, and this was, in a way, the darkest it had been yet, he thought she held just enough light to see by. She was stars in the
abyss of space, cold and unfathomable but ever-present.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that!” she said, and smacked his shoulder with her fist. It was a clumsy movement and didn’t hurt, although it did when she tried again. Her breasts heaved with her breath. “That’s stupid and suicidal. Have you that much of a death wish?”
“It is not suicidal,” he replied, feeling very calm. Actually, it was more of a numbness. He was riding on an unfeeling wave, almost like they had swapped places. Or more like they had rubbed off on each other.
“Then it’s altruism,” she snapped. “And that’s stupid as hell!”
“I am a warrior,” he replied. “I believe in the greater good. If I must die to save eleven other people…”
“What good is it if you’re dead?” she replied, still angry. But, now he could see the sparkling in her eyes and knew tears were close to spilling. “That greater good junk is bullshit. We’ll think of something else. We have to. We’ll just…make a run for it…Or…”
“Or what?” he said softly. “Or go and hide in the shadowed ruins of a civilization, pretending that we are alive but knowing we aren’t? I would rather be dead than that.”
The tears spilled now. His chest ached to see this.
Jade whispered, “You’re completely insane for this. You’ve gone completely mad.”
He couldn’t bear to hear the pain in her voice anymore. He held out his arms, and the strong and capable woman went into them. Her face pressed against his chest, and her dark hair spilled all over his arms as he hugged her body tight to his. She was so warm and alive and so beautiful…
Her shoulders shook. There weren’t enough tears there for him to feel their wetness, though he did feel the heat of her burning face. And then she pulled away from him, crying softly and with difficulty as she was so out of practice.
But he couldn’t let her go without a goodbye, although she didn’t know yet that this was what it was. Leaning in, he kissed her in a far sweeter manner than he had been able to before. Her lips were still beneath his, motionless with unhappiness.
“You’re an assassin,” he reminded her gently. “You can’t let your feelings get in the way of something which needs doing.”
Wiping her eyes, she gave a wavering smile. “It seems like you’re the exception to the rule though, aren’t you? Ever since I met you, I’ve always been doing the opposite of what I need to.”
“Then, it stops now,” Sorlo said.
I could have fallen in love with you.
Jade turned her dark face away. “You win this time.”
Both of them knew there wouldn’t be a next time, but he didn’t say anything for fear of pushing this past the point where she would agree. “So, gather the others. You should leave immediately before that ship –and any others- get any closer. They’ll notice you and I will hold them off.”
Jade stood in the doorway of the cockpit, slowly backing away. It was as though she couldn’t bear to turn away, as if she thought there was something which needed saying, but there were no more words of that sort on her lips. He had kissed them all away and the taste would linger on his lips into the end of his existence.
Slowly, she turned and went down the hall.
He waited, still feeling nothing.
There came a sound of voices, and then he heard footsteps. They were headed outside.
Satisfied and grimly determined, Sorlo planted his feet again and began to conduct the bits and pieces of power on their path, guiding them and gathering them into the monitor, and from there to the guns. Readying them, feeling their energy begin to grow, he thought that perhaps this was the best sort of way to end things.
After all, if everything had gone as planned, they would have both returned to Red Riser. Then, he would be assigned to a new group and Jade would go on her way as a member of Dark Peace. She was meant to be alone, and this seemed a more fitting way to achieve it than to simply fade away.
Sorlo looked out the screen and watched the shape on the horizon approach.
Chapter Eleven
Her heart felt like it was dying on the impossibly long walk back down the hallway, but there was nothing she could do. Sorlo had appealed to her logic, which had somehow managed to find its way through her clouded thoughts.
I can’t do this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
But then she was standing in front of the ground of shell-shocked young warriors, all of them looking up at her with their futures before them waiting in their eyes, and she knew that she really did.
“Get up, all of you,” she said. Her voice cracked. She was aware that there might still be tear tracks on her face, or that her hair was messier than it had been; she could have cared less about any of that, because they were all remnants of her last moments with that stupid, foolish alien. How dare he…
“What are we doing?” Tulk asked as he rose onto his thin, gangly legs. For just a moment, Jade analyzed him. He seemed to have somehow become the leader of this group despite typically being the weakling in other settings. It didn’t make much sense but he was still the first one to stand, and the others followed suit. In order to make this work, she supposed she’d have to get his approval. Not that she thought that would be very hard, really.
“We’re leaving,” she said, her heart aching. “We have to go, head back to the rocket and escape.”
“But we can’t!” another alien piped up. His language was very rough but understandable enough. “Those…That thing…”
Jade shook her head. “It’s okay. Sorlo has got the weapons on this thing working again. We don’t know how long it will last though, so we need to get moving. We’ll get him once the rest of us are safe. And then…And then all of you can go home. I’ll take you all back home.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” Tulk said suspiciously. “You’re Dark Peace! You don’t follow rules or anything.”
“If I wanted to harm you, you would already be dead. And if I wasn’t on the same side as you, Sorlo would never have gotten here. I saved his life, and now it’s my turn to save yours.”
She was lying badly, mixing up her “I” and “we” to the point where she feared one of them would catch onto the fact that she wasn’t telling the whole story, but as she walked out of the ship and into the sands, they followed her in a trail.
Standing there, she pointed off in the distance to where the rocket was. “Run in that direction. As fast as you can, all of you. I’ll be bringing up the rear but don’t look back at me. No matter what you see or hear, just go and keep going. Do we understanding?”
And then she heard it: the whirring of a large engine. A bit of shadow appeared to the left of her, angled from the sun.
“Yes,” came a reluctant chorus.
“Then go!” she said, and ran forward.
The various young aliens also began to run, and she adjusted her pace to a mere jog so that she was behind even the slowest of them. Drawing her charge gun, she brought it up to the highest setting and readied it to fire at a moment’s notice.
A hideous sound like the interior groaning of a ship, the deep belly where metal stressed against metal, split the sky like thunder. The shadow grew rapidly larger, and the sound changed in pitch.
Spinning around, running backwards, Jade brought her charge gun snapping around and fired off an aimless shot. Readying the next one immediately, she watched as the pulse of energy slammed right into the thick hull of the vast alien ship –and dissipated on contact.
She had expected nothing less, of course.
Still running backwards, she brought up her gun again and then her back slammed into something.
“Shit!” she cried, and fell backwards over the stocky, immobile alien who had made the mistake of turning around while being instructed to do exactly the opposite.
Both of them prone, the gigantic ship moved through the sky much faster than she would have thought. Its gun was shining with pulses of light, sparks crackling around the muzzle.
/> Jade covered her eyes with one hand, the other firing burst after burst of miniature pulses from her gun. They were nothing compared to that behemoth, and she prepared to die as the gun angled down, aiming. Behind the screen, she thought she could see something gigantic shifting around…
Crack!
A quick, high note broke the sky now.
Sorlo!
A small round punctured the front screen of the gigantic vessel up above, and a hideous scream came from within. Very slowly, the gigantic ship began to turn in the direction the shot had come from.
Leaping to her feet, Jade grabbed the alien beneath her and practically carried it the rest of the way back to the rocket. Several more small fast rounds of gunshot were fired, followed by a deep thrum of energy. Every sound made her wince and her heart jump, but then she was in the rocket, frantically shutting the door, and launching off into space.