*
Nearly bored out of his mind, Vandoraa sat on the ship and read computer readouts while his “personal escort” watched every move he made. There was nothing on the readouts, of course. What Drevi patrol would find them all the way out here? Capturing the western American States had been somewhat difficult due to the low population density. The people in this region had gotten word of the invasion before the Drevi got there, and they had been better prepared to fight. In the end they were no match for his people but it was hard to patrol every piece of ground the Drevi had captured.
The guards weren’t exactly the best company either, for neither of them said so much as a word to him. When he attempted to make any modifications to the computer, he felt one of their guns tap at his back in warning, so he gave up on that too. Staring at nothing, doing nothing. That had become his life.
Ted and the others had been gone for over half an hour, and it was then that Vandoraa noticed an oddity on the screen. A small blip on the scanners. He got no comments from behind him, so either the guards were both asleep or the blip wasn’t anything meaningful to them. But Vandoraa recognized it. Against his better judgment, he raised his voice. “Hey, are you two seeing this?”
“What?” one of the guards asked, leaning over his shoulder. Vandoraa thought his name was Hunan, and the look in his eyes told Vandoraa that he had indeed been sleeping on the job.
“That blip,” Vandoraa reached out with a long skinny finger to indicate it. “What is it?” He wasn’t entirely sure, but it almost looked like a...
“Damn it,” the guard said, turning to his companion. “Oosni, look at this. We’ve got a Drevi ship on scanners.”
The other guard, Oosni, looked up from studying his feathers, startled. “All the way out here?”
“They seem to have spotted us,” Vandoraa said, as the blip appeared to be closing in fast.
“We need to call Teinn and...” But he never finished speaking. Faster than any of them could react, the blip was on top of them, and the grinding sound of the hatch being broken open filled the cabin.
Oosni took up his gun and pointed it at the door while Vandoraa, unarmed and not wanting to get himself killed, took cover in a small square crevice that looked as though it had been built to offer protection in case of a shootout. Hunan joined his colleague, tense and expectant. Vandoraa knew enough about these ships to know there was little defense the ship itself could offer them against the likes of a Drevi harving saw.
When the saw stopped whirring, dead silence settled over the cabin. Vandoraa was sure everyone within a mile radius could hear his panicked heartbeat as he lay curled there, hoping he wouldn’t be shot. Anticipation and anxiety held in the air like thick water vapor before a single shot rang out. And with that, the gunfire crescendoed into a thunderous symphony of sound as the Drevi soldiers stormed the ship. Within mere seconds, the air was so filled with smoke that Vandoraa struggled not to cough. He didn’t dare chance a peek from his hiding place, so he had no idea how many of his people had boarded the ship.
In a matter of seconds there was silence, but Vandoraa didn’t move for well over a minute to make absolutely sure it was over. The fact that neither of the guards came to get him forced him to assume the worst fate for them. Finally working up the courage to emerge, Vandoraa crawled out from his safe place to survey the damage. Four bodies lay on the floor of the Kolean ship, the two Kolean guards and two Drevi soldiers. They had evidently killed each other in the point blank shootout. It looked like Oosni had managed to live several more seconds, as he had tried to drag himself towards the computer to get a message out, but he had never made it.
The Drevi were dead and the Kolean guards were dead. Vandoraa was all alone. His eyes teared from both the trapped smoke and the loss of life. He had signed up for the military because that was the proper thing for the son of a House Head to do when the Queen commanded it. But now, after seeing Ted’s pain firsthand and witnessing these needless deaths, he wasn’t sure what to think anymore. He reached over to the computer and opened the air vents to expel the smoke from the cabin. I should just wait here for Ted and Alana. I shouldn’t run away.
But as the situation crashed down on him and fear and despair took control, there was only one thing the Drevi prisoner of war could do. He knew he wouldn’t be able to access the Drevi ship without the appropriate codes, so before he even knew what he was doing, he had started the Kolean ship up and steered it towards Washington DC.
December Page 28