by Tim Marquitz
He glanced at the console again and ground his teeth. A spark fluttered as the crewman worked, but there was nothing to do but trust the intel to be correct until proven otherwise. His men would have the equipment working soon enough for confirmation.
Or, at least, they’d better.
Until then, he’d secure the crash site and weigh his options.
“Status report,” he called out, not even bothering to turn around as he heard the clatter of Commander Dard’s sullen boot steps behind him.
“Sir.”
The thump of the man’s fist striking his chest told Vort the commander had followed protocol and saluted despite not having his captain’s full attention. Vort smiled at that. It was what made Dard so useful as his second in command. He could be trusted to do what was expected of him.
“We stumbled across a small number of locals outside the ship. They appear to be Furlorians at first glance, though none have been seen in decades. I’ve dispatched a squad to hunt them down and set an example to the rest of the inhabitants,” the commander reported.
Captain Vort only then turned to face the officer. He shook his head. “No. Call the troops back,” he ordered. “The natives are no threat to us, and I’d rather the men do damage assessments of the hull than waste time chasing the local fauna.”
“Right away, sir.” Dard complied instantly, speaking into a silenced comm channel, which allowed him to pass the order along without the captain hearing so much as a word.
“Keep an eye out, of course,” Vort continued. “If they gather en masse and head our way, you’ve free rein to shut them down by whatever means necessary. Until then—”
“Sir!” the crewman at his back called out, interrupting him. “Displays are back online.”
Captain Vort grunted and waved Dard back to his station, spinning about to face the damaged console without another thought for the commander, certain his order would be carried out. Flickering screens wavered and skreeeed a moment before settling. The ship’s data rolled wave-like across the displays before stabilizing. His gaze darted back and forth, taking it all in.
“Make sure the initial life readings are accurate, specifically the population, then scan for any subterranean energy sources that might indicate hidden pockets of locals that might be troublesome or can provide us with supplies.” Vort surveyed the consoles, finding reasons to remain on the bridge. “What are the conditions of the engines and flight control?”
“Flight controls remain stable, and we’re working on the engines, sir,” the crewman answered, swallowing hard afterward. “We’re able to lift off and move the ship terrestrially, short distances, but there is too much damage, and we don’t have the parts to ever hope we’ll be able to escape the atmosphere or reach orbit.”
The captain drew in a deep breath and let it out slow, nodding to the man, motioning him to get back to work. Vort had expected as much, but hearing it stated plainly did nothing to better his mood. He was stuck on this damnable planet after his failure, and there wasn’t any delaying the inevitable any longer.
“Ready a secure channel to Command, routing it through to my quarters.” He didn’t want any of the crew to witness the conversation between him and Grand Admiral Galforin, especially considering it would be anything but a conversation.
“Captain, you need to see this right away,” Dard called out, waving Vort to his duty station as the captain resigned himself to informing Command of their current situation. And while Dard’s brusque summons crossed the line into insubordination, Vort understood the man well enough to know he wouldn’t have discarded protocol without good reason.
Vort stomped down from the command dais and sidled alongside the commander. Instinctively, he lowered his voice as he asked, “What is it?”
Dard tapped the screen before him, manipulating the display so it cut away sections of information, leaving a single report remaining. Green, glowing numbers and text scrolled before Captain Vort.
“What am I looking at?”
“Toradium-42 deposits, sir.” The captain looked closer at the information, seeing now what had the commander so excited.
“Those numbers can’t possibly be correct.” Vort stiffened, mind reeling.
Commander Dard nodded. “They are. And this is only a surface scan.” He glanced about, almost suspiciously, before returning his attention to the captain. “The entire planet is rich with the mineral, sir. The Monger’s landing—” Vort ignored his subordinates poor choice of words “—dug up a trench filled with enough to power half of Belor Prime for a turn, at least. Deposits begin less than two meters below the surface, and the density of the Toradium-42 makes it impossible to push deeper without inserting a probe for closer inspection.”
Captain Vort reached out and squeezed Dard’s shoulder as he realized exactly what all this meant. He offered up a wry grin. “Excellent work, Commander.” Vort gestured toward the screen with his chin. “Keep this information locked down until I say otherwise. I’ve a call to make.” He spun on his heels, then paused. “Oh, and while I’m doing that, prepare a tactical group. The locals might end up being more of an inconvenience than I’d originally thought given this turn of events.” He chuckled and spun about on his heel.
Unlike his first attempt, Captain Vort smiled as he made the walk to his chambers, his steps lighter than they had been in months. He was suddenly far more excited about reaching out to Wyyvan Command than he had been.
While he still had to report his failure to bring down the Archangel II and that damned scourge they called an empress, he’d stumbled across something that even the most cynical of Wyyvan Command couldn’t deny was a victory.
The means to take the fight to the Etheric Federation on a scale never before imagined.
Chapter Four
Taj hissed as a bolt of energy ripped a hole in the windrider’s hull a handspan from where she clung to Torbon in the one-remaining harness as they fled, the ship rocketing into the air. Char and scorched metal stung her nose, forced into her face by the wind, and she snarled, the scent making her eyes water.
There hadn’t been time to slip her goggles or mask back on as they ran from the soldiers, and she was paying for it as Cabe throttled the Thorn into a whine and did his best to put distance between the ship and the aggressive aliens.
It wasn’t enough.
“Holy Rowl!” Lina screeched, not even the distortion of the comm muffling the worry in her voice. “They clipped the stabilizer core with that last shot,” she shouted. “It’s blown.”
“I’m guessing that’s not a good thing,” Torbon said between clenched teeth.
“No, it’s really not,” Cabe howled, the Thorn juddering as if to emphasize his words.
The windrider shook as if it were ready to fall apart, then it began to roll sideways. Taj’s stomach climbed into her throat, a hairball of epic proportions. “Dog balls,” she mumbled under her breath and sank her claws into the strap, desperately trying to keep from slipping loose.
“Hold on!” she screamed.
“What the gack do you think I’m doing?” Torbon screamed as the windrider continued its roll, dangling the pair over the desert floor, the sand and scrub shrieking past below.
Another energy blast hurtled by as the Thorn spun, scoring a piece of Torbon’s boot heel. He didn’t even have time to complain before the two Furlorians were upside-down. Taj saw his face redden as the blood rushed to it and knew hers appeared pretty much the same way…minus the stupid look.
The muscles in her shoulder and back groaned, her fingers aching, as she held on for dear life as the ship continued to spin. A moment later, they thumped onto the hull as they reached the apex of the roll.
“We’re so gonna die!” Torbon shouted over the wind.
“You said that the last time, too.” Taj growled, her gaze darting about, looking for a better way to secure them to the ship before Torbon’s oft-stated prediction came true.
“I really mean it this time,” he
told her as gravity took hold once more, and they started sliding down the hull again.
“We’re not dying,” she shouted back. “At least, I’m not.”
“Wait! What?” Torbon’s eyes slammed into the sides of his wide sockets, staring at her.
Taj grinned and punched her arm through the hole in the hull, grateful for the sleeves of her uniform, which kept the heated metal from burning skin, as she sunk up to her elbow before hitting resistance.
“What are you doing?” Torbon shouted.
“Hoping Rowl has some love for a runt and an ugly Tom,” she said.
She bent her arm and locked it in place as best she could. Her fingers clasped the inside frame as the windrider dropped out from under them once more, leaving them hanging in empty space, legs flailing.
Taj bit back a scream as the muscles in her arm twanged, catching the whole of their combined weights. Bones creaked in her elbow, and she nearly released the strap to grab her injured limb. Only some deep-seated sense of self-preservation kept her from doing so, reminding her it was a long, long way to the unwelcoming dirt hurtling by below.
Then the Thorn shifted again, wrenching her shoulder and nearly ripping it from its socket. This time she did scream, unable to hold back.
Torbon twisted and pulled her in tighter as the windrider leveled a bit, taking enough of the weight off her arm to keep it in place. “We can’t do this much longer,” he screamed into the comm. “Taj’s gonna lose an arm…or worse.”
“Stabilizer’s on the fritz,” Lina called out. “We go down now, here, we go down hard.”
Cabe growled. “We don’t go down now, we’ll go down even harder,” he countered. “We don’t have a choice. Hold tight.”
The ship rolled to where the swinging pair were once again atop it, only the fury of the wind tearing at them, and Cabe killed the engines. The nose of the Thorn dipped, and the cockpit windscreen popped open to the right of Taj. There was a sharp crack, then a thud, as the screen slammed into the hull and tore loose as it was ripped away from the windrider.
“Take the stick,” Cabe shouted to Lina as he peeled himself free of his seat and stood upright.
“What the gack are you doing?” Taj screamed, but she knew exactly what the instant the words split her lips. “No! Don’t you dare!”
Her warning fell on deaf ears as Cabe raised his arms, letting the howling wind catch hold of the material hanging loosely from under his arms, from where he’d unzipped his suit to create makeshift wings.
There was a loud snap as the material caught the frenzied air, and Cabe was torn from the cockpit. He yowled and tucked tight an instant later, spinning in midair and spreading his arms again, catching the wind once more.
Unable to look away, Taj thought she’d be sick watching his aerial acrobatics, certain he would be flung past, tumbling to his death. But Rowl favors the bold.
And the stupid, it seemed.
Cabe collided with the wing, letting out a wounded grunt. His arms snapped around it like serpentine vices, hands slamming together on the opposite side and locking tight. He hissed through bared teeth, but his clasp held, and he locked his legs around the wing to secure his position.
Taj’s breath froze in her lungs as she was certain all he’d done was expose himself to the same danger she and Torbon faced, and soon, all three of them would be little more than smears of fur against the earth. Lina would build robot-caskets for them all, but only if she managed to clamber into the cockpit and grab the stick before the Thorn rolled upside-down again and spit her out before she got a chance.
Then Cabe’s laughter whipped past Taj, driven by the wind.
“Are you insane?” she shrieked.
“An insane genius,” he shouted back, matching her scowl with a feral grin.
And that’s when Taj realized the craft had stopped spinning, suddenly comprehending that his weight hanging beneath the Thorn was keeping it from swinging around again. As she caught her breath, she dared lift her head to see Lina climb into the cockpit seat and strap herself in with one hand while snatching control of the stick with her other.
“I lost a life watching you do that, Cabe,” Lina shrieked from beneath her mask, which she’d somehow managed to slip back on, along with her goggles before taking over piloting duties. “I’m not liking you much right now.”
“Get us low and slow enough for us to drop off safely, then eject right after,” he told her.
Taj could see the strain beginning to take hold of him. His grin wavered and fell away, and he wormed lower on the wing, his hands inching up the opposite forearm as he sought a better grip to keep himself from falling.
“Quickly,” Taj ordered Lina.
As fearless and heroic as Cabe had been, he wasn’t going to last much longer while clinging to the wing the way he was. Even with the Thorn slowing, there was simply too much wind and gravity to fight, and that discounted how hard Cabe had struck the wing.
Though he hadn’t appeared to have been hurt in the collision, she could now see red spilling from between his pursed lips, trailing out behind him as if he were flying a crimson banner from his teeth.
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath, unable to peel her eyes off him. “Get us down, Lina!”
“Working on it.”
Torbon groaned as the Thorn shuddered again, Lina having triggered the thrust reversers and slowing the windrider even more. Then the craft dipped hard and fast, the ground hurtling toward them.
“Not that fast!” Taj screamed, but if the engineer-turned-unexpected-pilot heard her, she didn’t show it.
Brown scruff filled Taj’s vision, and she swallowed hard, a knot forming in her throat that kept her from screaming. Still, that didn’t stop her skin from crawling with terror as the ground kept coming at them. She hugged Torbon tighter, hearing him mutter underneath her, and closed her eyes.
Then a sudden, snapping whiplash ripped her eyelids open.
“Now!” Lina shouted. “Jump now!”
With nothing more than faith in her friend—and a liberal dose of prayers muttered under her breath to Rowl—Taj did exactly what she was told.
Well, she tried, at least.
She let loose of the strap and kicked away from the hull, feeling Torbon slip out from under her and be taken by the wind. Cabe let go, too, spinning away in her peripheral vision until he disappeared.
Unfortunately, pulling her arm free from inside the hull was impossible. The sleeve, which had kept her from being burned earlier, had decided it didn’t have her courage. The melted material had fused to the edges of the hole punched in the side of the windrider, holding her in place.
“You have got to be gacking kidding me! Now you want to keep me on you, you damn piece of—”
“I said jump!” Lina shouted.
“Heard you the first time,” Taj answered, wildly gesticulating toward her arm. “Bit stuck here.”
“Oh…”
“Yeah, oh…” Taj mumbled, peering over her shoulder at the ground, which couldn’t have been more than a meter beneath her, hurtling by so quickly that it was a gray blur punctuated with splotches of jagged brown.
She was getting pretty sick of imagining herself splattered across the dirt today.
That thought in her head, she hissed and yanked her arm, hearing the material of her suit tearing but still not giving way.
“You might…uh, want to hurry,” Lina warned, drawing Taj’s gaze forward.
Ahead, a scruffy dune appeared, it’s rocky cluster appearing as if it were shooting up from the ground, rising before them as if it were a monstrous hand, desperate to swat them from the sky.
The hull rumbled beneath her as Lina throttled the engines up, but they refused to engage, a black puff of smoke spewing out the back as confirmation of their failure. Lina growled, the sound reverberating through the comm.
“Roll over, damn you!”
Taj stiffened, a thought besides her imminent death popping into her skull. “Tha
t’s it!”
“What’s it?” Lina asked.
Taj didn’t bother to respond. She twisted, sliding against the hull, and positioned herself so that her feet were beneath her. Her arm twinged with agony, muscles and tendons pulled tight and stretched to their limits.
“I’m about to tip the cradle,” Taj shouted. “Pop your belt and get ready.”
Lina mumbled something across the comm that Taj didn’t hear, but she had to hope her friend had heard and, even more importantly, listened. Without time to question what she planned, Taj shimmied her butt off the hull, in the same direction as the wing Cabe had been clinging to.
Lina gasped, and Taj thought she heard the faint click of the seat restraints coming loose. Agony then tore all sense from her except that of pain. Blackness gnawed at the edges of her vision, drawing it into a tunnel, and she felt something tear at her elbow. Blood splattered across her face, warm and gritty, and the darkness took her, a metallic crunch echoing all around her.
To her regret, the reprieve lasted all of a heartbeat.
She came to as she hit the earth, rolling into an uncontrolled tangle of limbs and fur. Sand and scrub filled her mouth, and dust burned her eyes as she tumbled, head over tail for what seemed an eternity. She came to a stop, a jarring collision doing little more than jarring her skeleton about inside her body—which had been to her surprise and delight.
Taj slumped into the dirt, hazy consciousness picking out her surroundings as her head slowly stopped spinning. She glanced about, blinking sand from her eyes, and realized she’d slid into the base of the sand dune, its slope bringing her to a halt.
A blurry glance at her arm told her the wound there was superficial, a layer of skin peeled back and oozing blood, dirt already helping it to clot. She moved her elbow, and, despite a deep ache and the sear of a bad scrape, it seemed fine. It’d be sore for a while, but considering the circumstances, it could have been far worse.
She groaned and pried her eyes open wider and spotted Lina lying in the scrub a few meters in front of her. Her friend stared with wide eyes as she clambered to her feet, wobbling at the effort. Taj groaned at seeing her friend, alive and moving, though she hardly looked stable.