by A. R. Knight
Not that it’s going to help them here.
Six Flaum, all armed with miners and wearing light vests glittering with reflective coatings meant to disperse laser fire. Better equipped than a casual inspection, yet still hopeless.
Sax flicks his eyes towards the shuttle, then down to the Flaum. Bas makes a slight gesture with her foreclaw towards the sky. Sax grins. His pair always prefers the more interesting challenges. Then again, Sax has gone a while without a good bit of gristle between his teeth.
The sign comes from behind them; chittering shouts and screams as Plake, Agra-Red, Nobaa and Engee get to work blazing away at their team. The noise puts Sax’s targets into a frenzy, reaching for various communication devices and then raising their miners in the direction of the noise.
Where they don’t look, though, is up.
Sax descends, a hissing missile. All claws, teeth, and talons. The Flaum squad is already in disarray; their encircling of the evac mod disrupted by the chaos with their sister squad. Thus it’s not a formation that Sax tears into, but rather a scattered group of furry soldiers that likely haven’t seen a real fight in their entire lives.
This, too, doesn’t check that box; Sax takes out his first two targets, the only pair near each other, in an opening leap that manages to dedicate a fore-and midclaw to each Flaum, driving them down to the ground with enough of a stab to make sure Sax’s victims are more focused on survival than counterattacking.
Using his talons, which get a luxurious grip in the soft, crash-churned ground, Sax bursts to his right, leading the way with his toothy maw to the next Flaum in line. His angle of attack keeps the bulk of the evac mod between Sax and the Flaum he’s not ripping into, meaning the first shot that comes his way is courtesy of the fourth Flaum, who’s just seen a third comrade tackled and driven into the earth.
As shots go, Sax has seen better. It’s a spray of bluish bolts - meaning these forces really were intent on stunning whomever they found - and the shots nail the ground in front of Sax as the Oratus leaps off his latest casualty into the air. He gets high enough for the Flaum’s eyes to go wide as they track Sax going up and then, in an unfortunate turn for the soldier, directly down on his reflective vest.
The Flaum’s armor offers good protection against an energy assault. It offers nothing more than paper against Sax’s claws.
Still, Sax is taking care to avoid mortal wounds. Slaughtering the very forces you want to bring to your cause is a poor way of getting their support. So Sax goes for a light maiming instead, enough to prove that the Flaum’s best interests lie in staying down.
Four taken care of still leaves a pair of targets with miners aiming his way, and Sax manages to get his eyes on them as they get around the evac mod. As they raise their weapons, Sax angles to the one for the right, and braces himself to absorb a blast or two.
The blast that comes, though, isn’t from a miner. Instead, it’s a rain of broken metal and burning terminals pouring from above. A sharp whine cuts between the shouts and shots from both this clearing and where Plake’s band is playing its murderous tune as the shuttle’s engines struggle with a cockpit that is now nothing more than a shredded, sparking victim of Bas’ tearing talons and claws.
Bas leaps clear as the shuttle settles on a crash course into the top of the evac mod, prompting Sax and the two Flaum to perform frantic dives to get clear. Twisting metal shrieks and the gurgling slow-burn of batteries unleashing their pent up energy in fiery gouts works in the background as Sax scrambles along the outer edge of the clearing towards the nearest, still-armed Flaum.
This one’s barely recovered from its dive by the time Sax hits, and the Oratus tears away the miner with his foreclaws, takes a soft bite out of the Flaum’s leg to ensure it won’t be moving anywhere fast, then clinches the fight with a head-side smack from Sax’s tail as he wheels towards the last one.
Only, when Sax gets around the wreckage, the Flaum’s already taken care of. Bas stands over her prize, breaking the miner into fragments while her right talon presses the Flaum further into the dirt. Sax comes up beside her, gives Bas a quick tail tap acknowledging an assault well-performed, and then they burst off back towards Plake’s clearing.
If Sax and Bas fought with some intent on keeping the Flaum alive - Bas even mentions the shuttle she brought down was holding its place on auto-pilot - Plake and the rest of her crew blitzed their enemies with more final means. Sax doesn’t need to look more closely at the burned out Flaum to know they won’t be getting up again.
“They’re never going to join us,” Plake says when Bas asks why they didn’t go for stuns. “Better to make a statement than play cute with them.”
“That’s a way to make friends,” Sax hisses.
“We’re not here for friends,” Plake says, then points her miner up towards the second hovering shuttle. “Mind giving me a lift?”
Sax takes the Vyphen in his foreclaws and, with a burst from his legs, gives her a boost up towards the open shuttle. It’s a good ten-meter toss, and it gets Plake up to the lip of the open cargo door, which is enough for her to grip and pull herself in.
“Don’t start feeling sympathy for these things now,” Agra-Red says, slithering up next to Sax and Bas. “If they’d taken us, we’d be stunned then skinned alive in front of the entire galaxy. Guess how many would feel any pity for us.”
Zero’s a good answer to that question. Sax, though, thinks about Rav and the rest of the Vincere forces back over Solis. If he’d hit those ships like a raging whirlwind and torn as far as he could through their ranks, Sax would never have made it to Bas, would’ve been gunned down by soldiers who are now allies.
“It’s not that simple,” the Oratus manages to say.
“For you, maybe not,” Agra-Red says.
Any further deep dives into the pros and cons of keeping your enemies alive vanishes as the pair of eager Teven hit the ground from their vines and make their spindly way over to Sax. Nobaa, whose carapace is littered with pegs and hooks holding all manner of small gadgets, is chattering at Engee, whose own lighter carapace is equally adorned with nicks and knacks.
“The plates, see, transmit the neuro-signals through fiber lines I wove into them,” Nobaa’s saying, and Sax notices the Teven poking at one of the several breaks in the Oratus’ scales now occupied by a layered metal seal. “There’s no nerve interruption.”
The Teven’s limbs slip in and out of holes dotting their carapace, eyes on little stalks included, and Nobaa reaches towards a metal plate dotting the back of Sax’s leg, the Oratus jerks it away from the fidgety creature.
“Hands-off,” Sax says.
“I only want to show Engee how they work!” Nobaa cries, excitement bubbling out. “You’re my creation!”
“He’s what?” Bas says.
Sax’s pink-gold pair stands tall over Nobaa, whom Sax realizes she’s never really met. Going by the look on Bas’s face, which sits somewhere between amusement and I’m going to carve this thing up for dinner, the first real meeting between the two could be going better.
“The Teven saved my life on the frigate,” Sax says. He’s already told Bas all about the mirrored Oratus, about barely surviving with the help of Nobaa’s metal grafts. “He’s more useful than annoying. Barely.”
“Hey,” Nobaa manages to say, but in the face of eight sets of claws, doesn’t push the issue.
“Did they work though?” Engee asks this question. “If they do, that would open a whole new world of—”
Engee’s revelations are blessedly cut off by the harsh wind of microjet air as Plake brings the shuttle down. She can’t land it - the clearing made by the evac mod doesn’t have the room - but the Vyphen brings the craft low enough for the five on land to climb into it. Sax and Bas take turns helping the less-mobile creatures inside, then clamber up themselves.
It’s a tight fit - Sax and Bas adopt a permanent hunch, the backs of their necks pressing against the ceiling - and the shuttle is too bare to offer muc
h in the way of other comforts. Instead, Plake takes the narrow cockpit to herself and the rest of them squeeze together in a back bay that gets even more cramped when Plake shuts the sliding exits.
Agra-Red’s gooey self is stuck on Sax’s right leg, while Engee and Nobaa stake out a central spot in the shelter of the Oratus’ large forms, conveniently making it easy for the two Teven to go on about Sax’s metallic additions.
“Evva, or someone working with her, dished us the coordinates to a small village,” Plake says over intercom. “We aren’t exactly close, so get comfortable.”
“How long till the Chorus realizes this ship isn’t their’s anymore?” Sax asks as the shuttle lurches up and forward, gliding out over a sea of swirling vines beneath a very light blue sky.
“I’ve been ignoring their calls since I took the controls.” Plake doesn’t seem concerned about it - she’s had a fatal bent to her words ever since they leapt out here, as if this whole thing is destined to flame out into disaster and she knows it.
Plake’s worries don’t play out right away, and they surf the lower skies over Aspicis for what feels like a long time without the slightest alarm. While they’re zipping along, Sax notices the daylight staying constant, and so Plake pulls up Aspicis’ record on the shuttle’s computer. The words spill out on the cockpit terminal, and, with the Vyphen pushing another button, a monotone rendition of the text plays over the shuttle’s speakers.
Aspicis turns slow on its axis, but the nearby star is cool, so the side getting drenched in light for such long periods doesn’t wind up burning away. The opposite, darker half of the planet gets incredibly cold, which is a process that winds up helping those vines turn their insides to the nutritious jelly feeding the galaxy.
As for the Chorus, their Meridia sits on the planet’s northern pole, jutting up and out of the atmosphere as it spins.
Plake isn’t taking them anywhere near the day/night border, so when she starts hitting the shuttle’s microjet brakes, they’re still in as bright a world as the one they landed on. Sax can’t see where they’re setting down; he only gets a picture of vines as they descend, and he thinks they’ve found a random jungle hideaway until he notices colored lights shining between the big green tendrils.
“Opening in three,” Plake says. “Not picking up any welcome, but let’s be ready for one.”
After her countdown hits zero, the shuttle’s side doors slide open and Sax bursts out, his midclaws reaching around his mask to pull off the pair of miners he’s carrying. What he earns for his trouble is one very scared, and very young, Flaum. The small furball scurries back from the shuttle, with what looks like some sort of snack bar in its right hand.
Beyond the child, Sax picks up plenty of eyes looking back at him, and soon enough one of those blinking pairs resolves itself into a frantic parent, wearing not a Chorus uniform but standard dirty, tan civilian robes, dashing out and swooping up the child in her claws.
There’s no miners, though. No barked orders to surrender or commands to shoot the new arrivals.
“Clear,” Sax hisses, and a moment later Bas does the same.
The Teven, along with Agra-Red and Plake, shift out of the shuttle. They form up around Sax - Bas included - and stand, weapons ready.
“This is all I’ve got,” Plake says as they keep their eyes crawling over the shapes hidden behind the vines around their landing zone. “Evva’s supposed to meet us here.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know we’ve arrived,” Sax says, then he sucks in a deep breath through his vents. “Evva?”
The roar carries, though Sax isn’t worried about others overhearing. Anyone loyal to the Chorus probably already knows they’re here, and with the stolen shuttle being plenty trackable, this is only going to be a quick stopping point anyway.
“Very subtle,” Plake manages to say, but Sax isn’t listening to her.
What he’s listening for, and not getting, is any sounds of welcome. Any recognition or invitation. Even hostility would show they’ve at least made it somewhere Evva’s known. Instead, there’s nothing. At least, not till the the same frazzled parent, her child wrapped tight in her arms, comes back out to the clearing.
“You aren’t coming to kill us, then?” she says.
“That’s not the plan,” Plake replies as the whole group levels stares at the only Flaum brave enough to talk to them.
“Everyone says that, and we died anyway,” the Flaum sniffs. “There’s only one left for you here, and he’s not well.”
“He?” Plake’s keeping her captain role going.
“If it means you’ll leave, I’ll show you where he is.” The Flaum turns around, walks back towards the vines she came from.
Plake glances at the rest of them, gets no opposition, and they start to follow.
“The Chorus will track that shuttle,” Bas says what Sax is already thinking.
“Let them,” Plake replies. “We’ll just have to be quick. Besides, what can we do about it?”
Bas hisses a laugh. “Wait a moment.”
She clambers back into the shuttle, which restarts its microjets a moment later. The craft hovers up and out of the clearing, though its bay doors stay open. Bas reappears, hangs down, then drops right into Sax’s arms. A moment later, the shuttle blasts off, rocketing away through the sky.
“It’ll keep flying until it runs dry,” Bas says.
“They’ll just trace it back here,” Plake replies. “The last spot it stopped.”
“After it goes down, yes, but that won’t be for a long time.”
Plake nods at last, giving Bas the point. Sax finds the whole thing tedious - Bas shouldn’t have to explain herself, especially not to a Vyphen. Instead, he plunges forward past Plake, into the vines and to the village itself.
Beyond the landing zone, it’s dim. The white light from the star is blocked by the thick vegetation, but the remedy from the village strikes Sax as beautiful; tear-drop lanterns, painted in arrays of purples, blues, and greens are strung up along the vines. The colors shine together, and give view to the damp streets of a real town beneath the growth.
Single-story buildings rise out of mounds in the earth, or look to be carved from hardened skins of older vines. Doors exist as cotton curtains, which makes Sax wonder how these places survive the long cold that no doubt comes as Aspicis rotates through its slow seasons.
Scurrying through the whole ensemble are families of Flaum. It’s been so long since Sax has visited somewhere that’s made for actual living and not a military vessel or a place for society’s desperate castoffs to find work or refuge that he spends more time than he probably should staring at species just having fun chasing each other, throwing round things back and forth, or playing with various toy figures.
Aside from the lanterns, there’s a decided lack of technology here. Sax can’t hear the whines of generators, though the smell of cooking fires lingers. Metal seems absent, with some Flaum carrying clay-formed cups and crates made from the rough skin of dead vines.
“This is different,” Sax manages to say as they walk.
“It’s weird,” Agra-Red grumbles. “Not my kind of place.”
The two Teven, though, seem to enjoy it. Now that the threat of immediate death has departed, Nobaa and Engee devolve into jabbering scientists, racing from place to place and asking to poke this, taste that or get some explanation as to what a Flaum’s doing.
“Are there only Flaum here?” Bas asks their guide, who pauses long enough to turn back towards them.
“Then you’re not with the Chorus?” the Flaum says, and must get her answer from the looks they give her. “The Amigga don’t allow other species on the planet without strict permission. Not on the surface, at least.”
“Why?”
“Because they think you’re dangerous. All of you.”
The Flaum doesn’t sound like she’s joking as she says this, and Sax learns why when they round a particularly large, knotted mound covered in red lanterns. On the ot
her side, nestled against a cluster of vines, is what was another home. Now, though, all that’s left are shattered lights, broken chunks of vine and split rock. At the center of it, with a pair of Flaum spreading some purplish gel over his wounds, is a traitor Sax never expected to see again.
Avan both is and is not the Oratus he appears to be. Inside the black-scaled head, covered with more scars and scratches than the last time Sax saw it, is a Sevora. At least, Sax assumes the parasite is still there, still leaching off the life of a Vincere soldier.
Sax realizes he’s hissing low and soft when he catches Plake and Agra-Red staring at him. Bas touches his tail with her own, and together the two of them walk past their teammates and have a closer look at the traitor they once rescued from a Sevora seed ship. At the time, Avan had promised he had valuable information, and not long after sending him back to Evva, her resistance had started.
In a way, Sax realizes, the decision to let Avan live, to send him to Evva, is the whole reason they’re standing here right now.
He’s not sure whether he regrets that move.
Avan, though, probably does; the Oratus is in bad shape, bearing a vibrant assortment of cuts and laser burns. The loser in a fight that started at range, then progressed to get close and deadly. A quick look at the destruction around them confirms the soil and stone building crumpled inward, no doubt succumbing to an onslaught of energy that boiled away its integrity.
“He lives?” Sax asks the pair of Flaum taking nominal care of Avan.
They glance up at Sax, freeze for a moment before one nods and they both make a break for it. Sax doesn’t chase - the caretakers aren’t the target, and it’s not worth trying to thank creatures too afraid to handle an Oratus’ direct look. So he turns his attention to the traitor.
Avan’s eyes are shut, but they open quick when Sax dabs a bit of Stim - a heady mix of adrenaline and other drugs the two Oratus keep in small vials - into the traitor’s mouth.
“Where’s Evva?” Sax doesn’t bother with niceties. Eventually the Chorus is going to find them again, and when that happens, Avan’s opinion of Sax isn’t going to matter. “Who did this?”