by Aer-ki Jyr
“The rabbits went back out on another run, just to show off,” a Star Force regular by the name of Larry Ibsig said. “They upped their high score by 23.”
“Damn,” Kara whispered, tearing open the packaging on the niktat, which was a chewy dough that was on the ‘ok alien food’ list. It tasted like cookie dough to her, which was why she usually picked up some whenever she was in the lounge.
Peter-523 leaned over and pointed up at the main scoreboard. “Have a look who’s in the basement.”
Kara looked down at the bottom half of the list, running through the usual subpar races, of which Star Force was usually one, until one name jumped out in particular.
“No way,” she said at seeing the Protovic not only in the bottom half, but the bottom quarter on the round 1 score list. “Do they have any more runs?”
“Just one…coming up in a few minutes.”
“I’m glad I didn’t miss this,” she said, leaning back a touch and pinching off a glob of niktat that she downed in a slow gulp. “Who else has to go?”
“The Gnar, of course,” Peter said, knowing that there was little chance that they were going to make it given the strength of the scores having been posted, but then again anything was possible with so many elite pilots around. Even those who were at the bottom of the basement were considered top notch just about anywhere else in the galaxy. “But the Irondel are just on the good side of the bubble, and they’re hanging onto their last 2 runs in case they need them.”
Kara glanced up to the top name on the list, the Urik’kadel or ‘rabbits,’ then her eyes slid down to the second name, written in the trade language, the Humans, which was just above the Calavari…wait, no it wasn’t. They’d slipped down to 4th. The Bsidd had moved up to 3rd, which was a total shock. As advanced as their technology was, their pilots had always been subpar, relatively speaking.
“This is turning out to be a very interesting tournament,” she commented to no one in particular before washing down the niktat with a healthy swig of water.
10
December 20, 2399
Jartul System
Daka
Mark heard noise behind him in the hallway then flinched as two Nestafar flew past over top of him as he ran. He wasn’t used to people being able to catch up to him, and very rarely did he ever see any of the Nestafar flying around, though the hallways were plenty high to accommodate their wide, muscular wings. They kept their legs, arms, and tail tucked up to their torso and pumped their wings furiously to get up the incline that Mark was running.
The Archon shook off the surprise, reminding himself to remember that sound in case it happened again…then he twisted to his left and peeked back over his shoulder to see if any more were coming…but the hallway was clear, as it usually was. While it was possible to walk from pilot complex to complex through the ceiling passages most people used the elevator system to get them close, then huffed it over the short distances with very few venturing out into the long ovoid tunnels…save for the Humans when they were running workouts.
They’d never established a proper sanctum in the base, but had made accommodations where they could within the local structure. The hallways offered plenty of room to run and had been mapped out for their precise distance the first week after arrival. Addition chambers within the Human complex had been renovated with various pieces of training equipment, sufficient to cover their core workouts and the specialties of those Archons on site, but they only built what they needed inside the base, given that they were working out of someone else’s infrastructure.
The newly finished seda in orbit did have a full range of training equipment and chambers that they could use, but most of the time Mark and the other Archons weren’t up there, so they just made sure they got in what workouts they needed to maintain and slightly grow their skills while focusing the rest of their time on flying.
The 1st round of the annual tournament, which was measured in Calavari years, was completed with Mark and the others notching the 3rd overall spot with the Kvash bumping them out of second by three points. Those positions were immaterial, for the next round was not seeded in any way. Starting in two days the top half of the field would be running through support tests, assaulting the lizards’ larger craft and bases, which Mark felt their skeets were better equipped for than dogfighting compared to the Valeries, so he held out some hope that they might qualify through to the round robin, where the remaining races would go head to head.
As it was, they were the only qualifying race that wasn’t flying a Valerie. The rabbits had gotten their modified version worked out with the Calavari, which had made them even more of an obstacle to the other pilots. They’d solidified their dominance over the atmospheric competition and were thought to be contending for the space title as well this year, which would occur a few weeks later.
As Mark ran up the incline he accelerated enough to maintain pace, then leveled back out when he hit the peak, keeping close attention on his cadence so he didn’t screw up this lap segment. Each 500 meter section had to be run in under 100 seconds to keep him below 5:20 mile pace and the Archons had put small tracking markers on the corridor walls across the entire base for measurement purposes that would synch with his wristwatch…and it didn’t matter whether there was an incline, flat, or decline in the sections, they still had to be run under minimum pace.
When Mark got a few meters in from the top of the incline and back onto the flat he saw the Nestafar land and walk into one of the pilot dens. They’d gotten so far ahead of him that it took a couple minutes for him to catch up and pass by the entrance…where he skidded to a halt. Inside the open doorway there were sounds of a commotion so he stepped in to see what was going on.
The interior was a labyrinth of narrow hallways leading to pocket-like rooms. He’d been invited to these hangouts several times before so he had an idea of what took place inside and what didn’t, and the sounds he was hearing were very atypical…given that and the fact that the Calavari and Nestafar didn’t like each other, he could tell there was trouble.
After making a right/left/right through the pathetically short halls he almost tripped over a Calavari laying on the floor with orange blood seeping from multiple cuts on his body. Mark glanced ahead and behind to make sure he was clear, then knelt down next to the unfamiliar alien and tried to rouse him, but a loud screech from further in drew his attention and the Archon jumped up from his crouch across the downed Calavari and zigzagged his way towards the sound.
He came out into an alcove and saw three Nestafar flying half a meter off the ground around a Calavari, along with two other winged aliens lying on the ground with misshapen limbs. The three in the air were punching and kicking at the four-armed alien as it wildly jerked about, trying to knock the flyers down.
Mark didn’t hesitate and jumped up behind the nearest Nestafar and let gravity pull him back down a few inches as he hammered his left elbow into its back right between its wing stalks. It went slack, taken completely off guard, and hit the ground underneath the Archon’s body as he somersaulted over it and back up onto his feet where he punched another in the lower abdominal cavity, forcing it to fly backwards a few meters and away from the bleeding Calavari.
That was when Mark noticed the bladed weapons the Nestafar had in their hands and on their feet. The handheld slicers wrapped around their fists in wicked looking circular blades while the foot straps had a claw-like blade sticking up at a nasty angle…and from the look of Gonstan they’d been doing a considerable amount of damage with them.
The Calavari pilot grabbed the last of the Nestafar attacking him by the throat and threw it to the ground as it sliced both hand blades into his thick upper arm. His lower arm grabbed one and pulled it away, but the other carved out a deep trench in his skin, gushing out a river of orange just before his foot came up and stomped down on the creature’s neck, after which it dropped both blades as its arms fell lifeless.
The other one left in flight ignored
the Calavari and went straight at Mark, but the Archon was too fast. Even as it swung its blades at his exposed skin he caught it by the wrists and walked up its chest, making the pair too heavy to stay in the air. They both came crashing down to the floor, whereupon Mark delivered a heavy punch to its ribcage while sliding in between its legs so it couldn’t gut him with the foot blades.
It tried to swing a right cross that would have cut through his face, but he caught its forearm with his elbow, then drove his stiffened fingers into its throat with a strike quick as a scorpion, then his arm was back up in defense while the Nestafar choked to get air. Meanwhile Mark grabbed one of its wrists and pried the blade out of its hand, tossing it aside while working on the other…then a huge foot came down on its head and the alien went limp.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sliding back out from under Gonstan’s blood drips.
“I don’t know,” he said, walking out of the room towards the sound of other combat.
Mark left the dead/incapacitated Nestafar where they lay and followed the Calavari through the narrow hallways and into another room where more fighting was going on, but before he could jump in to help he heard sounds behind him and turned just in time to duck a blade swiping for his throat.
The Archon pulled down into a crouch then exploded forward, running on hunched knees into the midsection of the first Nestafar and driving it back football style into the two behind it, then he stopped suddenly and kicked into its midsection before grabbing one of its wrists and twisting hard. The ugly alien’s grip slackened and he pulled the blade free as he backed up a step.
Mark glanced over his shoulder into the room to make sure he wasn’t about to get ambushed from behind then held his ground in the hallway, not letting any of the reinforcements get through to the Calavari as he struck a pose with the curved blade wrapping around his fingers like the scariest set of brass knuckles every conceived. He held it out in front of him in warning with one shoulder turned backwards so he could have a bit of peripheral vision to the inside as the three Nestafar clawed their way to their feet.
None of them could fly, given the width of the halls, but Mark could see and hear more coming up behind them, probably flying in as the two had done prior to his arrival.
“Stand aside!” he heard a voice bellow from behind.
Mark took a step backward to clear the entrance then ducked behind the wall to his left just before a table came flying through the air to smash into the attackers. Following it another Calavari charged in, this one not so bloody, and Mark could hear all kinds of screeches and screams as the four-armed giant busted his way through the pinned flyers. Unable to amass or surround, the Nestafar had no chance one on one, hand to hand with a Calavari and they knew it.
Mark turned his back to the wall and looked for more enemies, but the small room had only 3 Calavari on their feet, with another one lying dead on the ground along with a host of Nestafar. He reached up to his ear to make sure his earpiece wasn’t there, then turned the corner and followed the Calavari all the way out to the entrance after the attackers, spotting at least one that had taken a side detour.
As the four-armed behemoth closed and sealed the tri-door Mark turned and chased the Nestafar through a series of twists and turns until it came out into yet another small chamber, this one with two attackers and one wounded Calavari trying to shield itself from the swinging blades with its already cut up arms and legs as the flyers tried to go for its throat.
Angry as hell, Mark ran up and drove his own blade into the back of one, eliciting a horrible screech as it imbedded in the cartilage and the Human was able to physically pull it away from the Calavari using the handhold.
He yanked it back and away, twisting it to the side before running up and clobbering the other in the back of the head with his fist and instantly regretting it as his knuckles took the brunt of the hit. The wing flaps paused in a moment of shock, bringing the Nestafar down to Mark’s height, upon which he swung his right arm around and leaned into the blow, bypassing its face with his fist and instead landing his much stronger elbow on target.
That knocked it out and Mark pulled it off the wounded Calavari before turning around to see another come in and finish off the one squirming around on the floor with the blade still buried in its back. As he heard the neck snap the Archon turned around and frowned, looking down at the pile of blood that the Calavari was still lying in, unable or unwilling to stand.
“Where are your medics?” he asked the other.
“Elsewhere,” was all the pilot said, heaving with exertion. “If they too aren’t under attack.”
“Are there any more in here?”
“We will handle it. Thank you for your help. You fight stronger than you look.”
“So what, they just jumped you?”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Gonstan said as he charged in, looked around, then began to leave to search other compartments. Mark followed him.
“Are you injured?” the alien asked back over his shoulder.
“No, but several of your men are. They’re going to bleed out if they don’t get help.”
“Combat first, medicine second,” Gonstan said, ducking into and checking another section. Mark waited in the hallway for him to come back out, not wanting to get in the way.
“Why blades?” he asked as Gonstan came back out and moved on.
“We didn’t permit them to bring firearms onto base, given their history,” he said, ducking through more hallways. “They are a treacherous lot.”
“What’s their aim?”
“Depends how widespread this is,” he said, meeting up with another Calavari.
“All clear,” he reported.
Gonstan turned around and pointed behind Mark. “Back.”
More nimble than the giants, the Archon backtracked and headed out to the closed door where they waited for the remaining Calavari to gather, some of which were quite bloody.
“Go with him,” Gonstan ordered one of his kin, referring to Mark. “See to it that he gets back to his enclave safely.”
Mark held up a hand. “No, I can move faster alone. Once I…” he said, suddenly cut off by a base-wide alarm that sounded like something off a techno dance track.
Gonstan swore something in his native language. “This is happening everywhere. Prepare yourself, Human. And good luck.”
Mark nodded and let the Calavari move up in front of him before they unlocked and opened the door. It parted in 3 pieces, revealing an open hallway for a moment, then a Nestafar flew down and landed in front of it, uttering something not in the trade language to the others outside.
Gonstan charged out and punched it into the far wall, ignoring the nasty cut he got on his lower right arm, then another pair swooped in to attack, but the other Calavari got to them first, yanking them down to the ground by their hanging legs and pounding them mercilessly. As ferocious as they were a few minutes ago, the base-wide alarmed seemed to have upped their adrenaline to a lethal level…and Mark’s as well.
The other two Calavari blew through the door after them, immediately engaging other Nestafar and giving Mark an opening. He cut left behind one of them, taking the opportunity to punch a flyer in the gut and drag it to the ground as he sprinted off, leaving the Calavari to deal with the 8 or so nearby. Further down the hallway, though, he could see individuals or pairs flying about, all of which immediately redirected towards the fighting.
One of them came down at Mark, but it missed in its swoop attack as he evaded with a fake to the left then a run/bump against the right wall to scoot by, after which he sprinted off downhill, reaching into his body’s upper gears and hitting 33 mph as he raced towards the last elevator cupola that he remembered seeing on his run. He could hear wing flaps behind him, but he kept pushing his sprint until the sound became ominously close, then he leaned forward, curled up into a ball, and hit the ground hard rolling across his right shoulder and upper back in a sideways somersault as the Nestafar and
its buddy shot by.
Ignoring the numb pain in his right elbow’s funny bone, he jumped back up onto his feet and sprinted forward, now running behind the Nestafar as they arced up into a braking maneuver and turned around just as he was passing underneath them, causing a moment of confusion before they flapped furiously to match his acceleration.
Mark beat them to the elevator terminal and slid to a stop, punching the open button twice and staring back at the winged vermin as they closed on him, ready to make a jump attack when they got within range.
Unexpectedly there was already an elevator car waiting, so the doors opened with only a momentary delay. Mark jumped inside and hit the close button, pressing himself up against the left wall, ready for them to jump in after him. He held the button down so that it would override the motion sensor and caught the first Nestafar as it tried to squeeze through, pinching its wings against its sides along with one arm.
Mark grabbed the other and pulled it wide, then kicked as hard as he could into its torso, popping it back out into the hallway. He reached over and jabbed at the close button, this time with the doors coming together with a few inch gap by the time the second one reached in with one arm coming through up to the elbow.
He brought his leg up high at the knee then extended his foot even further up with a slight pause, then brought his leg down on the thing’s wrist, knocking the bladed weapon loose and causing the Nestafar to recoil and pull its arm out. The doors slid shut with a click and mark hit the button for the location nearest the Human complex.
When he felt it start to move he released the button and kicked aside the blade…a disgusting weapon meant for a butcher, not a warrior.
During the ride through the more solid sections of the base ceiling Mark tried to think of what the Nestafar were up to…but he couldn’t come up with any reasonable scenarios. They were the Calavari’s nemesis, not Star Force’s, and the Humans knew very little about them, let alone their motivations or their history with the Calavari. He knew it wasn’t pleasant, but the fact that they’d agreed to tolerate each other within the Alliance had, he thought, meant they weren’t outright enemies.