He could say no more, only spray spittle and reach out to grab Romy. The demon squealed and ran, tripping over Twig. The halfling cried out, and Steel intervened, placing his armored body between the combatants, and soon Nova was shouting at everyone, and Giga was fleeing, and the whole ship seemed likely to crash down.
"Silence!" Riff roared. "For pity's sake, stop it, everyone! We're professionals."
They froze and stared at him, blinking.
Riff sighed. "All right, so we're a bunch of rude, crude miscreants. But let's be professional for once. This is Twig's home. We're here to face a threat we don't understand." He pointed at the demon. "Romy, you're to stay here and guard the ship."
"What? No!" The demon growled. "I want shore leave."
"Too bad. This isn't a wild jungle. We're landing in the town of Acorngrove. In civilization. If the halflings see a demon—specifically, the most annoying demon this side of Hell—they're likely to send us away and just keep the chainsaw robot." Riff turned toward the others. "The rest of you, I want you all on your best behavior. No fighting. No cussing. And no grenades, Nova."
The gladiator groaned and tossed aside the grenades she was carrying, making everyone wince. "And maybe you, Riff Starfire, should wear proper pants."
"Jeans are proper pants."
"Not when there's a hole in them I could stick my fist into!"
Riff stared down at the tear in his jeans, struggling to remember which enemy had ripped it. Finally he sighed and turned toward Giga.
"Gigs, take us down to Acorngrove. We'll go take care of this robot, then come back and Nova can learn how to sew my jeans."
"What?" It was Nova's turn to bluster. "You piece of— whoa!"
The gladiator fell to the floor. Everyone jolted madly. Romy wailed. Sparks blazed across the bridge and alarms wailed.
"Giga, what's going on?" Riff shouted.
"Enemy vessel attacking, Captain!" said the android.
"Where? I don't see any—" Riff gasped. "Oh shenanigans."
Outside the windshield, space wavered. A starship appeared out of nowhere, flickered, and solidified. It wasn't a large ship, no larger than the Dragon Huntress, but a nasty piece of metal. Mandibles stretched out from it, ending with whirring saw blades. The ship's cannons lit up, and photon blasts slammed into the Dragon Huntress again.
The bridge rattled madly.
"Giga, fire!" Riff shouted.
The Dragon Huntress turned toward the enemy vessel, rose in space, and blasted out its dragonfire.
Streams of plasma blazed forward and washed over the enemy ship. The heat bent the metal. Panels on the enemy ship melted. Holes tore into the vessel.
Yet it kept charging forth, blades whirring.
"Damn it!" Riff cried. "Giga, fire again!"
More plasma blasted out of the Dragon, slamming into the enemy starship. Holes tore open in its flank, exposing its innards, yet still it flew toward them.
"How can they keep flying?" Riff said. "They're breached! How are they breathing?"
Giga tilted her head. "Scans show no life forms on board, sir." She turned toward him, eyes wide. "A robot ship."
"Fire again."
More plasma blasted out, tearing into the enemy vessel, but it kept charging, too fast. Its spinning saw blades reached out toward the Dragon Huntress.
"Giga, get us out of here!"
The android complied, raising the starship higher, but one of those spinning blades scraped along the hull. Metal screeched.
"Crew quarters are breached, Captain!" Giga said. "Air escaping from our hull!"
"Seal it off and fire again! Fire everything!"
"Happy to comply! Emptying all plasma reserves, Captain."
An inferno blazed out from the Dragon Huntress, blue in its center, casting out flares of white and yellow. The flames slammed into the enemy vessel, melting its hull. A wing tore free. The engines shattered and exploded. With a great shower of metal, the enemy warship went plunging down toward the planet.
As it collapsed, a hundred fragments came flying toward the Dragon Huntress.
At first, Riff mistook them for debris, mere wreckage. Then he saw that each fragment was bowl-shaped, lined with legs, and blinking red lights.
"Drones," he muttered. "Robot drones. Giga, burn them down!"
"Cannot compute, Captain. All plasma is spent." The android tilted her head. "You told me before to fire everything, sir. So I fired everything."
"Good job, Captain Starfire," Nova interjected with a groan.
The little drones—they reminded Riff of horseshoe crabs, round critters he used to see on Earth's beaches—flew toward the Dragon Huntress. The walls clattered as the drones hit them. The metal dented.
"Damn leeches are latching onto us!" Nova cried. "None of this would have happened if you had approved my grenade cannon idea."
"No grenades!" Riff said, watching a wall dent to his left with the marks of clinging little legs. He turned toward Giga. "We'll burn 'em off in entry. Gig, charge through the atmosphere. Fast as you can without us shattering. Let's rip those bastards off our hull."
The android smiled. "Happy to comply, Captain!"
The Dragon Huntress turned and began charging toward the planet. Below them, Riff could see the fragments of the enemy ship burning up as they entered the atmosphere. And then the fire engulfed the Dragon Huntress, roaring, streaming across the windshield, thrumming along the walls. Along with the shrieks of air, he heard little thuds which, he hoped, were the drones breaking off.
Across the deck, the Alien Hunters swayed and fell as the ship rocked. Nova landed in her seat and clutched the armrests. Riff sat down too, his belly rising into his throat. Romy wailed and fell to the floor, and Giga fell right into Riff's lap again, as she seemed to do every time they flew toward a planet; he was beginning to suspect the android's falls were less than accidental. He held her tight as the ship roared through the air.
Finally blue skies opened up around them. Clouds floated like sheep. Golden fields, autumn forests, and silver rivers spread below.
The ship leveled off.
The roars died down.
Riff exhaled, realizing he had been holding his breath.
He rose to his shaky feet. "What the hell was that thing up there?"
Giga tilted her head. "Cannot compute, Captain. Enemy vessel does not match any designs in my data banks."
Trembling, Twig walked up to them. The halfling was pale, and she wrung her hands. "I'll tell you what it was. The ship that brought the chainsaw robot here. Did you see the blades on that ship?" She shuddered. "Same blades as the robot down below has. The robot that's destroying my homeland." She allowed herself a shaky smile. "It was good to blow it out of the sky, wasn't it, Captain?"
He mussed the little mechanic's hair. "Very good. Now we just need to find our guy below and blast him apart too."
Twig walked toward the windshield and placed her hands against the glass. "Haven." Her voice was wistful, her eyes damp. "Home."
As they kept descending, a town came into view. At first Riff didn't even realize it was a town; he saw only a few fields, a few barns, and many trees. Yet as the Dragon Huntress glided closer, he noticed that chimneys rose from the canopy, and that rope bridges stretched from tree to tree, and he glimpsed treehouses among the branches.
"A town in the trees!" he said.
Twig nodded. "Acorngrove. My hometown." The halfling pointed toward a grassy yard. Several small green starjets stood there, their hulls painted with acorns, sigil of Haven. "Can you land there, Giga?"
The android nodded. "Happy to comply!"
As the Dragon Huntress continued descending toward the yard, Riff saw that several trees had been cut down near the town. The trunks lay scattered and burnt. A treehouse lay on the ground, shattered. A few fresh graves rose beside it. Before he could take a closer look, the Dragon Huntress slowed to a hover above the yard, then thumped down with a cloud of dust.
Riff took a deep
breath. "Every damn planet we arrive at, something tries to blast us away before we can land." He shook his head. "Every damn planet."
He left the bridge, walked through the ship, and opened the airlock. He stepped out onto a planet of lush trees, golden fields, and a robot that, Riff did not doubt, would very soon try to kill him.
CHAPTER FOUR:
GRUFFLES AND GANGS
Piston couldn't believe it. Not only had he somehow, against all odds, befriended a halfling, now he was on a whole damn planet full of them.
"I'd be the joke of Gruffstone," he grumbled as he climbed the ladder, reaching toward the hull of the Dragon Huntress. "Me, a proud gruffle, surrounded by clod-brained halflings!"
He looked behind him, wobbling on the ladder. Several of the halflings were rushing forth from the town. Tiny critters. Barely more than three feet tall, clad in brown trousers, yellow vests with brass buttons, and green cloaks. Their skin ranged in tone from pale, like Twig's, to deep brown like his own. A few of them raced toward Twig, and others crowded around Captain Riff, half his height, and shook his hand.
"Clod-brains, all of them," Piston muttered, turning back toward the ship.
It wasn't that he hated halflings. Not truly. And it wasn't that any halflings had hurt him personally. But . . . for pity's sake, the damn things just made gruffles look bad. Piston thought back to his father, letting the memories fill him.
"Piston, my boy!" the old gruffle had said. "This time we're going to make it. We're going to become full-fledged, Top Tier members of the Humanoid Alliance. No longer junior members, but true allies to Earth and Ashmar."
The old ambassador had blasted off to Mars, clad in fineries, and Piston—only a youth then—had joined him. There, in the glittering halls of the Humanoid Alliance Headquarters, they had walked among humans—tall, noble humans, the parent race, the race that had spawned all humanoids. In those halls, Piston had seen ashais too—proud warriors, as tall as humans, clad in golden catsuits, electric whips at their sides, their hair long and blond, their eyes green and bright.
Walking among these tall and slender folk, Piston had felt clumsy as an oaf. His father, a great lord back on Gruffstone, barely reached the shoulders of these humans and ashais. Neither did Piston who stood even shorter. Their stocky bodies, used to the gravity of Gruffstone, wobbled here in the lighter gravity the humans and ashais favored. Their gruffle garments—fine leather studded with iron bolts—suddenly seemed crude to Piston, mere rags compared to what the humans and ashais wore.
And in those glittering halls, the ushers had sat Piston and his father down . . . right at the back. Right by the halflings.
Oh by the gods of rock and stone! The little halflings, even shorter than gruffles and much thinner, had laughed, sung songs, and chattered away, delighted to even be invited to this conference with the nobler, taller races. The halflings had no ambitions. They had never even considered applying to become Top Tier members. It seemed the little clods had only shown up here to enjoy the buffet.
Piston sat among them, stewing.
"They placed us at the children's table!" he said.
His father said nothing, only stared with dark eyes.
"Why hello, little halfling!" one human woman said to Piston that day, patting him on the head.
"I'm not a halfling!" he blurted out. "Don't you see my beard? I'm a gruffle. A proud gruffle. Just as proud as humans and ashais. I—"
But everyone just laughed. And so Piston and his father returned home to Gruffstone shamefaced, rejected, one of the lesser races.
It's because they sat us with the halflings, Piston thought. Just because we gruffles are short too doesn't mean we're meek farmers, that we lack ambition or strength or courage.
Piston shook his head wildly, returning his thoughts to the present day. He would bear this stay on Haven. He would suffer the shame for his friends—and yes, even Twig, a halfling, was his friend. But once he was off this forsaken planet, Piston would breathe a sigh of relief and never return.
He stared back at the starship hull. One of the damn gizmos, those bowl-shaped drones the enemy vessel had blasted out, clung to the Dragon Huntress like a tick. Piston raised his screwdriver and scraped it off. The doohickey fell into his hand, and he stared at it. Damn thing was fried. Entering the atmosphere had cracked the metal casing and burned the insides. Piston could make out some wires, a few processing chips, and claws. What the damn thing was for he had no idea. He tossed it to the ground in disgust.
"Hey!" Romy said, walking below the ladder. "You almost hit me."
"Damn." Piston climbed a few more rungs and reached toward another one of the clinging drones. "I was aiming for you. Will you fly up and help me scrape off these barnacles?"
Romy placed her hands on her hips. "They're not barnacles. They're too big. They look more like robot isopods." She tapped her chin. "Or maybe robot dessert bowls. Do you think they have dessert in them?" She gasped. "Do you think there's poodle custard in them?"
"Will you shut up and help?"
She sighed, beat her bat wings, and flew up. Piston kept working with his screwdriver, and Romy worked with her claws. Dozens of the metallic parasites still covered the hull, all burnt and cracked, their machinery fried. Piston and the demon kept tossing them down onto the ground until they were all removed. The things had left ugly marks on the hull. It would take Piston hours to smooth out the dents and patch up the holes.
When he climbed down the ladder and placed his feet on the ground—the damn surface of Halfling-world, no less!—Captain Riff came to meet him.
"What are they?" the human said, gazing down at the charred gizmos.
Piston grunted. "Not sure yet, sir. I'll bring 'em on board and try to analyze them. I'll need to see if I can salvage any of their internal mechanisms, run a few scans, see what I find. Might be a weapon of some sort, maybe probes." He glanced around uneasily at the landscape of trees, fields, and halflings. "Mind if I sit this one out, sir? I could use the time for my work, and, well . . . I'm not really one for trees and fields."
Riff shook his head. "I need you with me. I need your hammer. I need your strength." He placed a hand on Piston's shoulder. "Trees never hurt no one, but robots might, and I need you to help me fight one. Place the drones on board, and leave Romy to guard them." Riff turned toward the demon. "Romy, back on the ship! I told you not to step outside."
Romy was busy chasing a poodle around a tree, trying to stuff it into a pot. When she turned toward Riff, the pup managed to run off. The demon groaned.
"I almost got him!" She stamped her feet. "We could have dined on poodle soup tonight if you hadn't distracted me, Captain."
Riff pointed to the airlock. "Romy, ship. Now."
The demon rolled her eyes. "Fine! I have things to do on the ship anyway." A guilty look crossed her face, and she glanced up toward the attic porthole. "I'll be in my attic if anyone needs me."
With that, the demon darted through the airlock, and an instant later, her red face peeked out the attic porthole.
Riff gently tugged Piston's shoulder, guiding him away from the ship. "Come on, old boy. Romy and Giga will hold down the fort. Let's get to work."
Piston hesitated, feet planted firmly on the ground. "I . . . Captain, I . . ." He glanced around nervously. "They're not going to think I'm a halfling too, are they?"
Riff's eyes widened. "Bloody hell, man. You look like you eat halflings for breakfast. I've driven sports cars with less muscle than you. Come on, Piston, let's go. Twig's taking us to see her father. Her old gaffer, she calls him. He's mayor around here and can tell us about this bot that's been causing trouble."
Grumbling and tugging his beard, Piston followed, vowing to burst into an old gruffle war song if anyone dared mistake him for a halfling again.
Damn, clod-brained little critters, he thought. Always smiling and laughing and singing. Even with a damn robot cutting down their damn allergy-inducing trees.
As he walked away from
the starship, the only home Piston had known for over a year now, the halflings rushed toward him. Several children gaped at him. Others danced around him, tugging at his beard and calling out, "Uncle Gruffle, Uncle Gruffle!"
"Be gone with you!" Piston said, shaking his fist, but they wouldn't scatter. A few halfling women stepped forward with garlands of flowers and placed them on his head. Piston grumbled, but as soon as he tore one wreath off, another halfling placed more flowers on his head.
"I'm allergic!" he said. "Can't abide any flowers."
He missed Gruffstone. Back on that great rocky world, there were no damn flowers, no damn grass, no damn trees. Just lovely rock to mine into, beautiful gemstones that shone with every color, pure diamonds, and great halls of silver and gold. Nobody there danced around like a fool. Back on Gruffstone, they toiled. Theirs was a life of hard work, of digging, of cutting gems, of polishing, of building great halls. He sneezed, scattering roses.
"Uncle Gwuffle, do you have the sniffles?" a halfling child asked.
"Yes, because of your flowers! Now be gone!" He shook his fist, but the child only laughed and skipped around him.
They've never had any enemies here, Piston realized, heart sinking. No wars. No predators. Nothing until this robot had arrived on their planet. No wonder they feared nothing, not even a grumbling old gruffle whose sneezes could knock down trees.
The other Alien Hunters walked ahead, bedecked in flowers. A crown of tiger lilies adorned Nova's head. Roses hung across Sir Steel's shoulders. A necklace of dandelions hung around Riff's neck, and bluebells lay strewn through Twig's long black hair. Piston sneezed so loudly he blew half the flowers off his friends.
Damn flowers. Damn planet.
He glanced behind him, looking at the starship in the distance. For the first time, he envied Romy.
* * * * *
As Twig walked through the town of Acorngrove, she felt that old, cold demon fill her again.
She balled her hands into fists.
No. I won't let you return, old friend.
Alien Sky Page 4