by Aer-ki Jyr
“Enough for two?”
“You don’t eat much compared to me. We’ll be fine. Just don’t fall off before we get there.”
Esna straightened her butt on the seat and snugged up against his back, using it to break the wind so she didn’t have to lean into it constantly. She decided not to ask any more questions and just rode in silence for the next hour or so that it took to get across the barren sandy divide and into the foothills of the distant mountains.
Rammak slowed them to a halt at the base of the first foothills, swinging the speeder halfway to the left before getting off and walking to the back where he pulled out a piece of equipment from the dwindling supply pack. He put the small box up to his face and Esna realized it was a microbox, with him looking back the way they’d come. The Calavari twisted ever so slightly as he panned left, then he stopped and held steady.
“Persistent.”
“They’re following us?”
“Yes. Several vehicles. I’d guess at least 10 minutes back.”
“Why are they chasing if we’re faster?”
“Either they’re very insistent that no one passes alive or word of us has spread further than I hoped. If our general direction was commed ahead, these passkeepers might think they can collect on a bounty or they might work for someone else that does.”
“Commed?”
“Sent a signal ahead. Communication. ‘Comm’ for short.”
“You mean a jabber?”
“Yes, but that’s just local slang that developed after the fall. Comm is the proper term.”
“So you think someone comm..ed ahead?”
“Either way they’re coming and I doubt they’ll be the last,” Rammak said, putting the microbox back into the pack before hopping up on the speeder.
“What’s that device called?”
“Binoculars,” the Calavari said, spinning them back to the right and getting them moving around a mound of ground that cut their line of sight with their pursuers and started them on a weaving path between hills that continued to grow larger until they slowed and turned a sharp corner at an upthrust column of rock. On the other side of it was a crack the width of two speeders that they floated through, then they sped back up on the other side through rougher and rougher terrain.
Eventually they dropped down into a giant crater seemingly carved into the mountainside, with the speeder floating them down into the shadows where no wheeled craft could go. Esna could see little trails of dust or sand spilling over the edge in places and falling in streams down into the darkness.
“Are we here?”
“Almost. There’s a crack in the bedrock that’s accessible here. It’ll take us a few miles to a better access point, but there are some small crawlspaces nearby you could get into the ruins through. Unless you know your way around or can see through walls you’re going to get lost, so don’t worry about our pursuit. We’re about to become ghosts.”
“Yeah,” she said as the darkness increased enough that she adjusted her helmet and the bottom of the crater started to become visible. Before they reached it Rammak eased them over to one of the steeply inclined walls and the crack he’d promised materialized. It was narrow but tall and looked like someone had just pulled the rock walls apart and ripped them in half.
She saw him reach up to his head underneath his robed hood, then they slid inside and very slowly moved through the irregular pathway. It wasn’t quite straight, but every little twist and turn had them moving in approximately the same direction. On and on they went seemingly forever with Esna just riding and waiting until another glowing green light spilled onto the wall to her left. When they got around the next bend the source was revealed, marking a crude platform hacked out of rock that led to a cave entrance.
“This is where we get off,” Rammak said as he extended the landing gear on the speeder and parked it, fully powering it down as he pulled a small object off his eyes and hid it from view while drawing an odd look from Esna.
“I thought we were refueling?”
“If we were going back the way we’d come we could. I’ve got enough stashed nearby, but the bike won’t fit where we’re going. We’re running for now.”
“Running?”
“Unless your wounds will only allow a walk. How are you feeling?”
“Alright, I think,” she said as Rammak began pulling a few items out of their stash and putting them into a smaller pack that he slipped over his back before abandoning the speeder and walking a few steps into the dark cave and flipping a switch. Suddenly the tunnel ahead, crisscrossed with debris, lit up with a string of tiny lights that failed in terms of brightness, but they gave just enough that you could move without tripping on rocks or hitting your head on overhangs.
“Just focus on keeping pace with me and stepping where I step, otherwise this will take forever.”
“Do you need me to carry anything?”
“No. I need you light and moving. Even with this pack I can move faster than you, so you’re going to determine how much of a head start we’ll have.”
“You think they’ll find this place?”
“Probably not anytime soon, but if someone is watching us from the sky they will know where we entered. A search team could end up here eventually, and I don’t want to wait on them.”
“Won’t they steal the speeder?”
“It’s expendable. You are not. Let’s move.”
“Ok,” Esna said uncertainly as she got behind and followed the big Calavari as he began jogging forward and dancing around outcroppings. She was surprised by how fast he moved, but like he said all she focused on was watching where he went and matching his speed. It felt a little crazy, for she could ram into anything in the dark spots moving this fast even with her helmet enhancement, but so long as Rammak didn’t hit anything and she mimicked him, they were able to literally run through the cave as promised…though turning her helmet light on was a mistake, with all the flickering shadows nearly tripping her up before she quickly shut it off and resigned herself to the limited nightvision.
Every now and then he’d get ahead of her and start to get out of view, but as soon as she said something to him he’d reappear and start moving slower for a while…then his speed would start creeping up again. Either Esna was getting more tired than she thought or he was just used to running faster than any Calavari she’d ever seen and he was easing back into a normal pace without thinking about it.
“Wait!” she said, stumbling to a stop and putting her hands on her knees for a moment as Rammak spun around and came back to her. Esna pulled her helmet off and sucked in heavy breaths as his bulk eclipsed one of the small, widely spaced lights in front of her. “How much farther?”
“Hard to say, but I’d guess we’re about a fourth of the way through.”
“What?” she said in dismay.
“At the end of this run is another speeder at a hideaway with additional supplies. We’ll rest there and begin moving through a series of tunnels and caves that stretch out in many different directions. Even if someone follows us this far, they won’t know which way we’ve gone and orbital scans can’t penetrate down this far without some serious equipment.”
“Like the Viks…have?” she asked between breaths.
“Yes, but we’re so small it’s almost impossible to find us from range. They can scan the passageways but finding us will be difficult.”
“‘Almost impossible’ means possible,” Esna pointed out.
“I know. There is some equipment I have that could camouflage us but not the speeder, and it’s too long a journey to take on foot. We have to keep moving fast in case they aren’t pinpoint tracking us. It could be they don’t know where we are or don’t have the equipment in place to follow us here. If we stay put we give them the chance to bring it in.”
“I get it. Moving is safety. Can we walk a bit before running again?”
“Tell me when you feel up to it,” he said, moving off again at a brisk walk. Esna sto
od and followed, almost having to jog to keep up, but her lungs and legs thanked her for the lesser challenge. Her mind told her that it couldn’t last if they were going to get to their next destination anytime soon, so after a few minutes of recovery she told Rammak to speed up and the pair started running again, albeit slower than last time.
9
Back in the settlement, now much calmer given the days that had passed since the Humans were discovered, an alarm went up and sent people running inside buildings or out into the streets to see what was happening. A ship had flown in and was hovering over the western edge of town. It stayed for only a brief moment, dropping a person out of the sky before flying off. It remained visible in the distance, lazily flying an erratic course further north, but it wasn’t what was bringing armed denizens out into the streets.
There was no organization here, just another mob with murderous intent, for the individual that had dropped out of the ship through a 40 meter fall landed lightly on the ground and was walking into town. He had no armor on, making the pale skin of a Human was easily visible now that the settlement knew what to look for.
The armed men waited in the street as the Human passed by a few outlying buildings, casually walking forward and not seeming to care that they were there. They waited until he got close enough to see that he was much bigger than the other ones had been…nearly as tall as the Calavari…then they opened fire with dozens of shots coming from directly ahead while others emerged from concealed locations. The Human didn’t run, or dodge, or even blink. He just kept walking…and the lachar blasts disappeared when they got within a few inches of his body.
Those firing couldn’t see that, given the heat of the moment, so they kept shooting until it became clear that they weren’t damaging the Human. The weaponsfire died out and the Human kept calmly walking towards them with the crowd parting in a frenzy as they retreated to building doorways and parked vehicles. Some of them continued shooting at him but nothing would hit. The blasts would either miss him and blow up stuff on the other side of the street or they’d disappear when the gunners’ aim was better and they should have hit him.
Vexed with extreme fear and the implications of a Human being here with the rumored doom that it would bring to them, one of the Calavari roared with rage and rushed the Human from behind, intending to pound him to death with his four fists, but event that didn’t cause the Human to react until he was within two meters and the Calavari had begun the first of its punches.
With a speed that was too fast for the observers’ eyes to register, the Human spun around in a twirl, landed a hand on the Calavari’s throat, and pulled him to the ground all in one smooth motion. His hand pinned the much larger body to the ground, and when the Calavari tried to struggle his entire body went slack, arms falling to the ground as the Human stared into his eyes for a long moment.
Then with disdain he stood up, releasing the Calavari as he continued to walk on just as he had been a moment ago.
It took a few seconds before the Calavari’s limp body woke up and he staggered to his feet enraged, but not so reckless as to try and attack again. He just stood there in a mix of anger and shame, trying to figure out what to do when the Human suddenly stopped and spun around.
The Calavari involuntarily took a step backward, but the Human’s eyes weren’t on him. Instead he was panning the area, looking for something…and right now no one wanted to be that something. Most people brave enough to have been close were now backtracking, wanting to put more distance between themselves and the Human but not wanting to do it so fast that they attracted his attention.
The simple black body suit that he wore had ornate forearm gauntlets that stretched up past the elbow, making them look like partial armor save for the numerous holes in them. Then without warning those two gauntlets jerked…exploding but staying pressed against his body as the tiny pieces flowed across his chest and down his legs, expanding as they went and covering his entire body head to toe within 3 seconds with a black/green body armor that also concealed his face with a ridged helmet that had no faceplate nor any other way to see out of it.
The Human spun to his right just as a blurry figure appeared out of nowhere and shot him with a blue orb. The Human spun back the other way, having been knocked off target as his attacker came out of its camouflage and revealed that it was also a biped of a similar form save for the size. It was a good half meter shorter and covered with hard, almost shiny armor emblazoned with red and black panels. Another blue orb was shot from a boxy addition to its forearm, but the Human dodged it and stepped back in close enough to fight hand to hand.
Everyone else on the street left immediately as the two figures were fighting so fast that it was hard to watch and see anything other than a combined blur that was shooting blue and green energy orbs in random directions when they missed their target…one of which hit the building to the north and blew apart half the wall on contact, not to mention the four people that had been standing inside and looking out the window.
The two combatants continued to trade blows with the smaller attacker getting in several good hits, both with his weapons and his body blows, but he was losing to the larger Human up until another blur manifested itself on the street and an equally well-armored quadruped emerged in identical red/black armor and rammed the two of them…
The Human was knocked aside and had two blue blasts hammer into what now revealed themselves to be shields covering his body, visible only for a moment as the highly powerful weaponsfire hit but the quadruped did not relent, continuing to fire from two chin mounted boxes similar to what the biped had on his arms as his companion raised a hand and threw a light-bending distortion towards the Human as it stood up.
The almost invisible energy hit and knocked the green/black armored figure into another building, straight through the stone wall with the quadruped quickly diving in after him. The biped followed and when it got inside fired another almost invisible blast into the Human that had turned the tables and was on top of the quadruped and firing directly underneath his chin…with those blasts also being absorbed by shields.
After the Human was knocked off and through another wall into a pedestrian street, the pair of attackers pursued him and sparred, wrecking a significant portion of the town that quickly emptied as people ran for their lives. They fled in vehicles or just scattered on foot and headed out across the surrounding plains as a visual halo around the settlement, marking it as a place you did not want to be.
The 2v1 continued for several minutes with all three armored warriors’ shields protecting them from the attacks until the Human’s finally gave out. After that each energy orb that hit…and many didn’t thanks to his skillful dodging…chewed into and melted a bit of his green/black armor. One of his forearm weapons also was hit and damaged, knocking it out and leaving him with only one in addition to his body blows…which managed to take down the quadruped’s shields with a double-legged kick into its belly when it mistimed a jump and left itself vulnerable.
But when the Human tried to get a shot in the biped hammered him in the head with an elbow ram, sending him tumbling to the ground where the quadruped got on top of him and blasted into his chest armor at pointblank range. He tried to knock him off but couldn’t, thanks to the help of the biped that flattened the Human’s head into the ground with another almost invisible blast of energy before adding some destructive blue orbs of his own. The Human finally managed to scramble out from the grasp of the quadruped, but only got a couple meters before he was jumped on again and his armor finally gave out.
The next blasts to his chest went through and hit flesh, tearing him apart over the next few seconds as his body went limp…but the attackers didn’t stop there. They started shooting his mostly intact helmet, trying to breach it as the ceiling of the partial building they were standing in collapsed. Another Human in green/black armor, having dropped from the ship now hovering above, punched the biped off his fallen kin and yanked the quadruped off with
nothing more than a thought. His powerful telekinesis threw the heavy thing into the wall but it didn’t break, nor was that the intent, for as soon as it was clear he let it go and used his telekinesis to pull the body of the fallen Human to him, dragging it across the rubble strewn floor to where he stood his ground over it protectively.
But the newly arrived Human wasn’t going to wait to get attacked. Rather, he fired off both his forearm weapons with a flurry of green orbs at both of the attackers, doing armor damage to the quadruped that seemed to convince the pair to break off after a diversionary wave of rippling energy from the biped. It moved Human a few inches back as he braced against it and held the other firm beneath his feet.
Both of the attackers disappeared into blurry streaks of motion heading away from the Humans before they vanished entirely, engaging their camouflaging energy fields that would make it virtually impossible for the ship above to target them as they ran.
The Human stood his ground, defending against a possible reengagement from a different angle while the bloody mess of the dead Human’s chest below got a lot less bloody. In fact the skin began to slowly regrow, as did the blasted organs inside. The tiny pieces of shredded and cauterized tissue disappeared, having been ‘digested’ by the healing mechanism built into the armor as it slowly repaired the Human and brought him back to life…but with a much smaller, now deformed chest. There had been enough mass left in his body to regrow the vital organs by scavenging what was left of the originals and cannibalizing other non-essential parts of his body, but there wasn’t enough to fully heal him.
None the less he drew breath again shortly and sat up, his shields regenerating a moment later and covering his entire body in a brief bit of static, including the gigantic hole in his chest armor. He looked down and felt his new skin, pulling back the armor on his hand so he could do so. He traced a pair of fingers across the newly made crater, noting that there were no longer any cuts on his skin, but half his hand nearly disappeared inside the concave structure where several ribs used to have been.