by S. E. Smith
His ship shook violently and began to roll to the starboard. He jerked the control lever to port side. When he was level, he restarted the port engine and simultaneously fired the thrusters on the starboard side to keep from flipping. The ground was rushing up faster than he’d anticipated. He may have miscalculated and waited too long before firing the engine.
The bottom of the fighter clipped the tops of over a dozen trees before the ship sank beneath the canopy. An alarm still faintly buzzed like an agitated insect through the earpiece in his helmet. Gril pulled the control lever back and to the left when he saw a tree almost as wide as his fighter looming ahead of him.
He braced for impact, but only the tip of the wing brushed the thick branches. He hissed out a breath in relief.
Ahead, he could see an opening through the trees, and hope soared inside him. If he could just… have… a… little more… thrust, he thought as he pushed the struggling engine to its max.
The fighter sheared the tips of the branches off the trees, snapping and shattering them before descending low enough to skim across the glassy lake like a thrown stone, skipping across the water with a bone jarring hop before it slid across the soft sand of the beach and came to a sudden stop.
Gril was violently thrust forward in his seat, and his helmet-clad head hit the panel in front of him. Thankfully, his harness kept him from becoming a squashed bug on the inside of the front window.
He sat back, shakily exhaling another long litany of curses, and automatically began to shut down the thrusters and the port engine. Small electrical fires popped up on the consoles surrounding him, but the automatic fire retardant system put them out. He sat back in his seat and reached up to remove his helmet.
“Lan…d….ing… has been… been… been completed,” the computer stuttered.
Gril raised his fist to slam it into the screen in front of him before he thought better of it. Curling his fingers, he counted to thirty before he tilted his head back and stared up at the forest towering above him.
“Goddess, but I hate trees,” he muttered with a sigh of resignation.
Madas launched herself head-first toward a log, then briefly supported her weight with one hand against the rough, soggy wood as she pushed herself up and over the thick trunk in a practiced flip. Her booted feet hit the soft forest bed without making a sound.
She kept glancing at the sky as she ran. The streak of the contrail was still visible. Given the way it angled downward, she was getting close to where the object should have crashed.
“This is it, L’eon. I just know it. This is our chance to get off world,” she said to the pet lizard clinging to her shoulder.
Her mind swirled with all the things she would need to do to make that happen. Her mother, Queen Tima, had expressly ordered everyone to make sure Madas remained confined to the royal quarters whenever traders were here. That didn’t pose much of a problem since she could easily slip by her numerous brothers, sisters, and their mates. What did cause a problem was the fact that the merchants had also been told to avoid her.
Madas sighed. For the last six months, her mother had done everything in her considerable power to break Madas’s will. Tima wanted her to mate with Cardin Tre, the son of the second most powerful member of their clan, and there would be no evading this arrangement if Madas stayed here, that was for sure.
Queen Tima reveled in her power, and using her children for alliances was a significant part of how she ruled the clan. Madas swore that her mother popped out eggs like she was a fowl sitting on a nest! Madas had nineteen siblings. Their mother had carefully arranged all their matings. Each sibling was now allied with influential merchants and every council member that had an unmated family member.
Madas truly cared about a couple of her siblings, but she’d suspected for a long time that not all of Tima’s eggs had been fathered by Matteu, her mate. Madas’s father had been a gentle soul, loving the forest and the creatures that lived in it. He spent every moment he could exploring the vast regions between the edge of the deep water in the south and the desert north of the far mountains. Madas supposed it was possible that all her brothers and sisters were fathered by Matteu, but there were certainly a huge range of physical characteristics and personalities among the siblings, and there were a few males that Tima liked to have meetings with—in her private quarters.
Madas had always relished the fact that her father frequently took her with him when he traveled and explored. As far as she knew, she was the only one that he had taken—and the only one who had ever wanted to go with him. By the time she was able to walk until his death, she had absorbed everything she could learn from him. It was because of his carefully passed down knowledge of plants that Madas had been able to help the healers in the village during times of sickness.
Madas’s knowledge of herbal medicine and the additional food from saved harvests and rare forest finds were the reasons many people ostensibly followed the Queen’s orders regarding her youngest daughter, but continued to deal with Madas under the table. She didn’t blame them for shunning her in public. They had to obey her mother’s law. Madas knew firsthand how petty and vengeful Tima could be when she felt slighted.
That will soon be in the past, Madas thought as she followed the fading contrail. She hoped whatever had fallen would be worth enough credits to bribe the right trader to take her off world. The bribe would have to be large enough to compensate for the fact that once her mother found out, they would never be able to return to the village for fear of death.
Her steps slowed as she neared the tree line. There was a small lake on the other side. She had journeyed here many times with her father and camped along its banks. She took in a deep breath.
“What if it went in the lake? What if it disintegrated before it made contact? What if… what if it is nothing?” she worried, afraid of being disappointed yet again.
She turned her head when she felt L’eon nuzzle her in comfort. The small green lizard pointed to the clearing beyond the trees. She chuckled when he gave her a pointed look.
“I know, I know. Quit being such a pessimist. I don’t do it often,” she said with a grimace. She closed her eyes and made a wish. “Be positive, Madas. It will be a huge meteorite filled with precious gems.”
Opening her eyes, she placed her hand on the trunk of a tree and peered around it. Her lips parted in shock. Instead of a huge crater—or even one as small as the one created when L’eon’s meteorite fell to the planet, there was a large spaceship on the beach with its nose buried in the sand.
Spirals of smoke rose upward from the back while steam created a light fog around the ship, making it appear almost mystical, though it was clearly a military machine. This ship was smaller and sleeker than the boxy transport ships she had spied from a distance. The merchants aboard the ships occasionally brought supplies which the Forest clan could not produce.
As she studied the ship, Madas realized that she recognized it from the traders’ gossip about the Sand Tearnats—a hostile clan that killed or enslaved those they caught. They never came to the forests.
Madas warily tilted her head. Whatever this meant for her village would depend on whether the crew was dead or alive. Madas carefully crept forward to find out.
Chapter Two
Madas paused when she felt L’eon tug on her long hair. The little lizard shook his head and jerked his head back the way they came. She made a face at him and silently waved her hand in dismissal. Running her hand along the tree trunk to steady herself, she knelt, keeping a wary eye on the spaceship.
Her heart was pounding, and she had to consciously keep her breathing quiet. She had heard rumors about the Sand Tearnats since the moment she could understand, every story had been a terrifying tale that was probably true.
The oldest stories told of how the whole planet was once lush and green. There was only a single clan of Tearnats then, but they fractured over the use of the resources. One group had cut all the nearby forests to advance
their technology. Soon, the sun scorched the soil until it dried up and nothing but sand remained.
Her clan—those that believed in preserving the forests—fled. It is said the Goddess, hearing her clan’s pleas for help, separated the sands from the last remaining forests by creating the great ocean. She then lifted the earth up so that a ring of mountains rose high enough to touch the clouds—and to this day, she personally protected the Forest clan within the great curtain of trees.
All this time, Madas’s people had been safe here, visited by only a few off-world traders because the Sand Tearnats prowled the skies. Those that the Sand Tearnats did not enslave were killed, their flesh used as food, their blood as drink because there was no water to quench their thirst.
The traders also said that the Sand Tearnats were like the walking dead—mutated creatures whose skin was dry and scaly and unnaturally pale. Their eyes were said to be sunk deep in their skulls, glowing with a blood-red insanity as they searched farther and farther to find sustenance that would keep their marauding band of death walkers alive.
Madas tightened her grip on her spear when the top of the fighter opened. She felt L’eon scurry down her back and onto the tree trunk she hid behind. Her heart pounded with fear and adrenaline when she saw movement through the rising steam.
The large Tearnat slowly emerged, clad in a uniform that resembled sand in texture and color. Madas shivered uneasily. He had his back to her and was bent over partially inside the spaceship.
When he straightened and jumped down off the ladder that had extended from the side, she pulled back into the shadows. Seeing his silhouette against the fighter made her realize just how tall he was—and massively built. He made even the largest male in her village look like a stripling.
It must be from all of the captives he has eaten, she decided with dismay.
She almost fell backwards when he suddenly turned and stared in her direction. She couldn’t see his features clearly through the steam, but his upper lip was curled back and she could see his sharp teeth. His eyes didn’t glow a fiery red, but her breath still caught in her throat at the sight of him.
He took several steps across the sandy beach toward her before he stopped. She remained frozen. There was no way that he could see her. Her skin and clothing blended perfectly with the colors of the forest and she was shielded by the trunk of the tree and the broad leaves of the smaller ferns.
His gaze slowly moved along the tree line before he glanced back at his ship when it emitted a staticky hum. Her lips twitched when he muttered a long stream of creative curses. There were a few that she hadn’t heard before and would have to try to remember.
Biting her lip to hide her amused smile, she looked at L’eon who had crawled down until he was at eye level with her. He snorted disdainfully. She briefly widened her eyes in acknowledgement, shook her head, and they both inched around the trunk just enough to see the Sand Tearnat as he slowly circled his ship. She swallowed a laugh when he kicked at the hard shell of the ship, then hopped around, hissing out even more colorful expletives.
“Come on. Let’s find a more comfortable place to watch him,” she whispered.
L’eon rolled his eyes at her—in two different directions, his signal that he thought she was doing something crazy—again.
She grinned and looked at him with an affectionate expression as she scratched him under his chin. He pointed up the tree with his tail. She looked up and nodded. There was a good place to observe the Sand warrior up there without being seen.
Rising to her feet, she followed L’eon up the tree. While she was as quiet as she could be as she gripped the branches and worked her way up, she soon realized that she needn’t have worried. The warrior below her was growling none too quietly.
She laid down on the branch and propped her chin on her hand. Her amusement grew when he bumped his head on the wing, then dropped a part on his foot. This was way better than watching anything going on at the village. All she needed was a snack to go with it.
As if reading her thoughts, L’eon suddenly appeared with an armful of ripe fruit. She twisted around until her back was against the trunk and held her hand out. L’eon dumped the fruit into her hand and climbed up her arm to sit on her shoulder. She lifted a piece of the fruit up to him when he had settled down.
“It doesn’t look like it’d be that difficult to kill him,” she observed before popping a piece of fruit into her mouth and slowly chewing on the juicy meat.
L’eon looked down at the warrior and snorted. Madas chuckled when the little lizard lifted his right foot and spread his toes, showing off the tiny electrical charges between them. She rolled her spear around in her palm before she placed it between her legs.
She looked down at the spaceship with a thoughtful expression for a moment before a smile curved her lips.
“Maybe we won’t kill him yet.”
L’eon tapped her cheek with his tail and gave her an inquisitive look. She glanced at him and handed him another piece of fruit.
“You know we needed something of considerable value to barter our way off the planet.” She nodded at the spaceship. “What if we didn’t have to? Let him fix his spaceship, then we take it from under his nose—or over his dead body. I can fly it. I have been practicing on the simulator Joren purchased several years ago. Once we get off world, we can sell it and use the credits,” she reasoned.
L’eon gave her a doubtful look. She wasn’t sure if it was because he doubted her ability to fly the fighter or their ability to take it from the Sand warrior currently having a rather undignified meltdown. The part he’d just thrown into the water made an impressive splash for something so small.
“I really hope he doesn’t need that,” she softly chuckled, raising one knee to rest her arm on it.
L’eon crawled down on her arm and gripped her chin between his front feet. He looked at her with a fierce scowl. She tried not to laugh, but it was impossible.
“What?” she asked with an innocent expression.
L’eon pointed at the warrior below, then at her, putting his little hand on his heart and miming her fluttering her lashes with saccharine goo-goo eyes, then he was stern again and shook his head. She parted her lips in surprised outrage, then reached up and scratched him behind the ear in his favorite spot. His leg thumped against her arm.
“You don’t have to worry. He has to be the most hideous male I have ever seen!” She sat forward and her gaze moved back to the man who was now sitting on the beach staring out at the water. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for him. “I could never find someone like him attractive. He is all… muscles and temper and….”
Her voice faded when he picked up a stone and tossed it across the water. It skipped almost a dozen times before it sank. She looked up at the sky. It would be dark soon. She shooed L’eon back to her shoulder and leaned back again.
“Mother is already going to be furious when she realizes that I haven’t returned. I’m doing this for the good of our people. If the Sand warrior is here to attack us, then someone will have to stop him. It is my responsibility to keep our people safe,” she reasoned.
L’eon released another low snort before he circled several times and settled down with his tail over his nose. That was his sign that he was ready to ignore her and take a nap. She would do the same later while L’eon kept an eye on their visitor.
Twilight lit the sky in a kaleidoscope of soft pastels before darkness covered the forests. She loved this time of the day. Her gaze moved to the sky.
The stars were brilliant tonight, each one a pinpoint of light that cast enough illumination that no fire would be needed. There would only be a sliver of a moon for the next few nights, nothing that would take away from the beauty of the vastness of the galaxy. The view always took her breath away.
“One day, L’eon. One day I’m going to travel to the stars and see what is out there,” she murmured.
L’eon’s soft snore answered her. She smiled and stroked his h
ead with her fingers before turning her attention to the warrior below her. He had risen to his feet while she was daydreaming. Her breath caught when she saw that he had removed the outer cover of his flight suit. Now he was clad only in a pair of form-fitting dark brown trousers and a light tan shirt.
He was pulling out several boxes from a compartment under the ship. He paused to roll up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing muscular forearms. Madas blinked and shook her head when she felt… drawn to him. She wanted to run her hands along his arms to see if they were as firm as they looked.
“I’m sure he’d get a surprise out of that,” she muttered with a tinge of self-disgust. “He’s old, Madas. He has to be at least two hundred years if he is a day! Way too old for you.”
She pursed her lips at her crazy thoughts. She needed to stay focused—on the ship, not the man. A plan began to form in her mind. Once he fixed the ship, she could lead him deep into the forest where he was bound to get lost, and then she could circle back and take his ship. She and L’eon would be long gone by the time he found his way back—if he was able to. There were plenty of wild animals in the forest that would be happy to have such a tasty meal.
The thought of him ending up as dinner for any number of wild animals didn’t sit well with her for some reason. Pushing the thought out of her mind, she decided she had better get some sleep. Nudging L’eon, she waited until he climbed down on the branch before she stretched out and folded her arms under her head to act as a pillow.
She continued watching him as the minutes ticked by, but soon her eyelids began to droop and she fell into a light sleep. A soft smile graced her lips when she felt L’eon climb up onto her back and settle down between her shoulder blades. Before long, dreams of a Sand-colored warrior filled her mind, much to her discomfort—and her delight.