by Mirren Hogan
“Kaia, please, I love you, and I need you to live. I don't care anymore. I don't care about anything but you.” I felt her sink those fangs into my skin, and I knew that we would both live to see another dawn.
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About the Author
Beginning as a way to cull her boredom and express her emotions, Rae turned to poetry and short stories at an early age and found that she loved to weave new worlds with her words. Creative Writing, Theatre, and English educators only added to her love for writing, and she found herself winning many contests as a teen and knew for sure that being an author was somewhere in her future.
When she is not writing, Rae wears many hats; business owner, editor, mother, teacher, and wife. In her free time, she loves to let loose to rock or hip hop, read the latest YA and romantic suspense books, visit the beach, and browse the Internet for the funniest memes.
Copyright © 2019 by Lee French
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Under Attack, As Usual
Lee French
“Contact!” Sharyi rushed past the open doorway to the library in a blur of brown fur, headed for the weapons locker. Her boots clacked on the metal floor at high speed.
The lights dimmed as the captain diverted power to our shields.
I swore and scrambled to my feet, dropping my work tablet on my chair. Setivar High Command had found our ship. Again. We needed an upgrade for our scramblers. Tarmgr, our engineer, could only do so much with the materials at hand, and we didn’t dare take them offline for tinkering. They still worked against long-range scans.
As I dashed into the narrow corridor to pick up a weapon for myself, other members of our crew joined the rush. We moved as a team, everyone so used to this drill we could keep from bumping into each other despite the incoming enemy.
When I reached the armory, Sharyi passed me a rifle. “Don’t screw up,” she growled.
I rolled my eyes at her as I slung the strap across my body. Just because I’d made a few mistakes didn’t mean I needed special reminders. Everybody made mistakes.
Like the rest of the crew, I sprinted for my post.
Setivars never attacked us themselves. They lacked the numbers. Instead, they used aliens from a dozen different worlds to fight for them.
Like they used my people on our homeworld. Someday, I’d see it. All of us would. No one I knew, not even Captain Kadak, had ever even entered its system. We’d all been born and raised on ships of the scattered, leaderless lepiku fleet.
Captain Kadak’s calm, firm voice echoed from the wall speakers. “Prepare for impact.”
I lunged for the nearest door handle and wrapped my cybernetic arm through it. The ship rocked. Hard. My boots slipped. Only my grip on the wheel-shaped handle kept me from falling and sliding down the corridor.
Our outer shielding had hopefully prevented damage. It wouldn’t stop the aliens from opening an airlock, though. Setivar tech could do that no matter what Tarmgr changed in the protocols. We could barely survive, let alone scrape together the resources to thrive.
Meegan slid past me, scrabbling with both hands to find purchase on the floor. I stuck out my leg. She snapped her jaws around it. My boot protected me from the sharp teeth of her muzzle. Between straining my leg muscles to pull her closer and getting a grip on her hand, I helped her to her feet.
“Thanks, Toryo,” she gasped.
The tips of my pointed, furry ears warmed. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I nodded to her. Anyone would’ve done that, right?
We shared the handle to ride out the evasion. I couldn't help smelling her musk, the warm scent of a friend I trusted and wanted more from. For some reason, we could only find these moments during enemy attacks.
This life sucked. Sometimes, I wanted to jump out of an airlock. Everybody felt that way once in a while, or so Captain Kadak had told me. She always said to focus on the good things, the bright spots. We had each other, after all. The captain led her crew like the mother I’d lost years ago to a raiding party of otari scum.
Ship maneuvers kept us holding on, unable to accomplish anything else. We rolled and sliced to the side a dozen times. Inertial dampening couldn’t compensate fast enough.
The ship rocked with another impact. Metal groaned. We both kept our feet on the floor this time. The lights flickered and died. Emergency green lights warmed to life. The gentle whir of life support continued.
They’d hit our propulsion system. Tarmgr would figure out what they’d damaged and fix it as soon as he could.
“Prepare to repel,” Captain Kadak said from the cockpit. As our best, most experienced pilot, she had the most chance of evading enemy ships. The best chance, though, doesn’t mean it always works. Like, for example, this time.
At this point, the ship would stay stable. Meegan and I let go of the handle and hurried through a section door to reach our posts. Others scrambled into position around me, facing the airlock.
They never tried to kill us. They wanted us alive. Dead lepiku can’t do anything. Live lepiku can serve as slaves.
Though we all wanted to see our homeworld, we didn’t want to see it that way.
Knowing their goal, we knew they would only ever board through the airlock. Our ship would remain intact. They didn’t target life support or try to blow holes in the side.
We always tried to kill them. Our weapons had varying degrees of success against the different kinds of aliens. The rifles used bursts of focused light calibrated to prevent damage to the ship. If we changed the settings to damage organics more, we risked destroying our home to save ourselves.
I took a knee behind a bulkhead near the airlock and braced my rifle. As the youngest member of the crew, no one would let me get closer to the airlock. Not that I wanted to. Sometimes, the aliens managed to drag off one or two from the corridor.
Twelve crew members, including Meegan, flanked the corridor in front of me. They stood in pairs. One of each pair held a large, transparent shield of rippling energy to protect them both. The others braced on one knee with their rifle tips resting in shield cutouts designed for the purpose.
The waiting was always the worst part.
Would the aliens destroy the ship this time for some reason? Maybe they’d kill us all instead of taking prisoners. We might face some unstoppable new type of alien, unaffected by our weapons.
Clanks reverberated through the ship. Minor vibrations announced the alien craft connecting to our airlock.
At the same time, Tarmgr raced to restore power to the engines. We had no hope of destroying the other ship. Our only option was to repel the boarders, force their ship off our airlock, and flee.
If we could flee, why hadn’t we done so immediately? Only the captain knew for sure. As navigator in training, I knew we always had an escape course plotted. When we sat for a while, though, the course had to get updated. Things moved.
A star moving into our course would be bad.
We’d parked next to a dead moon to give Tarmgr a chance to take systems offline for repairs. If he’d taken down navigation or an essential grav drive system, that would explain 0ur situation.
“Steady,” Captain Kadak said over the speakers.
The airlock whooshed open. Beyond it, the dim red glow of a setivar assault craft revealed nothing.
We waited.
Two aliens, unlike any I’d seen before, peered through the doorway. They had two arms and legs, like us, with hands and feet. Each wore a uniform covering their full body except for their heads. The uniform featured shades of b
eige and tan in an odd pattern, with solid tan gloves, boots, and helmet.
Their faces were flat, with a small protruding nose between two eyes and above a horizontal slit for a mouth. As far as I could tell, they had no fur at all. The two specimens we could see had differing skin tones, one beige with pink undertones and the other dark brown.
They each crouched on one knee with their rifles pointed at us, not firing. The brown one said something in their alien language, directing it into their own craft. They sounded uncertain.
In that moment, I realized we had a first contact situation. We’d never seen their kind before, and they’d never seen our kind. Even more, these aliens hadn’t fought for the setivars yet, and didn’t know what to do.
We had a chance to make them allies instead of enemies.
Captain Kadak would kill me when she heard what I did. If I failed.
I lowered my rifle and stood with one hand held up. “We are not your enemy,” I said.
The aliens snapped their attention to me. They spoke in their gibberish language.
“Shut up, Toryo,” Sharyi hissed.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” I continued, raising my voice and ignoring Sharyi.
“Toryo, what are you doing?” Meegan begged, her eyes wide with fear.
Alien chatter turned to alien shouting.
“This is all a mistake,” I said. “We don’t have to fight.”
“Shut him up!” Sharyi ordered.
My nearest crewmate smacked me in the muzzle like I was a misbehaving pup. The impact knocked my skull against the bulkhead and made my nose sting. Voices shouted louder. Rifles fired in every direction. The beams sizzled and crackled.
I couldn’t gather my wits enough to do anything. Stumbling to the side with my eyes watering, I dropped my rifle. It clattered and discharged, somehow hitting me in the gut. The thump churned my stomach and made me crumple to the floor, vomiting watery bile.
Thankfully, I blacked out. When I opened my eyes, I discovered the flat black ceiling of the dimly lit medbay. I lay on one of the least comfortable beds on the whole ship. The two flat slabs helped us heal faster through stuff I didn’t have to know to become a navigator.
“Welcome back, Toryo,” my big brother, our ship’s doctor, said. He stood with his back to me, working at a console on the wall of the small room.
Nothing hurt anymore, so he must’ve tended me already. I sat up with care and saw no one else in the medbay. My stomach growled. “Did they take anyone?”
“Not this time, no. You had the worst injuries.” Iteyo stood and crossed the room in two steps to offer me a hand. “One of theirs was killed. They took the body with them. You’re to report to the captain immediately.”
I groaned as I stood with his help. We’d killed one of the aliens, which meant we had no hope of ever convincing them to work with us. “Is she mad?”
Iteyo smirked. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I just--”
He raised a hand to cut me off. “I know. It’s who you are.”
Hanging my head, I sighed. “I hate the fighting.”
Iteyo wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pushed his cheek against mine. His musk smelled like home. “I’d like us all to live a good, long time, Toryo. Please remember that.”
When I let go, he patted me on the back, giving me a gentle nudge out of the medbay.
The aroma of meat and herbs wafted from the food room. My stomach goaded me to head in that direction first. Captain Kadak would understand.
When I reached the open doorway of the food room, everyone stopped their meal to glare at me. Everyone except Meegan. She glanced at me and dropped her gaze to her food again.
They all hated me for what I’d done.
I lost my appetite and headed for the cockpit instead. If I had to hide and skulk for a week or two, I could live with that. Iteyo would share meals with me no matter what. Eventually, the crew would forgive me. They always did.
The cockpit had a recessed seat for the pilot with a narrow passage to reach it. Consoles and screens lined the passage walls, filling it with competing blue, green, and red glows. Machine hum, soft and steady, kept silence at bay. It always smelled like sweaty socks for some reason.
Someday, when Kadak deemed me worthy, I’d strap into a harness and use all this equipment to plot our courses. Our current navigator wasn’t on duty when I arrived.
Captain Kadak sat in the pilot seat, a cushioned chair surrounded by screens, buttons, knobs, dials, switches, and levers. During evasive maneuvers, she used a special stick to control the ship’s direction. The rest of the time, she tapped on screens to make adjustments.
Old enough to be my mother, Kadak had gray fur and tiny silver rings dangling from her ears. She tapped on a screen, and I wondered why she didn’t eat with the rest of the crew at a time like this.
“Toryo reporting for...” What did I report for? A beating? I didn’t know what to expect. “...as ordered.”
“Interesting alien contact we had today.”
I gulped. She hadn’t gone to eat because she’d expected me to turn up and wanted to do this without an audience. Which meant anything could happen. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you feel your judgment is superior to Sharyi’s?”
Rather than try to deny or explain, I plunged headfirst into this thing to get it over with as fast as possible. “No, ma’am.”
“And yet, you disobeyed her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You understand that’s how people get killed?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you want to die?”
“No, ma’am.”
She climbed out of her chair to face me, anger curling her muzzle enough to reveal her teeth. “Then why did you lower your weapon and try to talk to them?”
I hesitated, not sure what Sharyi had reported about the incident. She wouldn’t have lied, at least.
“They didn’t shoot first.”
“Not until after you provoked them. We had a real chance at a positive first contact, Toryo.” Kadak poked my chest with a finger. “You ruined it. Now we have another race of aliens against us.”
“I...what?” I blinked at her.
She flicked my nose, like anyone did to express annoyance with someone. I recoiled from the tiny sting and covered it.
“Do you think you’re the only one who can see anything? The only one who can save us all from this?” She raised her voice and waved both hands, gesturing at the ship. “Do you think you’re the savior who will free our homeworld by yourself? This isn’t the first time you’ve done something idiotic to put people in danger, Toryo.”
My brain didn’t work, and my mouth went dry. I ducked my head, cringing from her. Instead of bringing peace, I’d destroyed our chance for it.
“Who is the captain of this ship?”
“You are, ma’am,” I whimpered.
“Who is our battle commander?”
“Sharyi, ma’am.”
“I’m glad you can remember that!” Kadak wrapped her hands around my neck.
I didn’t resist. My bungling had made everything worse. Whatever she decided to do to me, I deserved.
She didn’t choke me, she only held me in place with a firm grip. “You are hereby stripped of all adult privileges until such time as I feel you’ve earned them again.” Something clicked at the base of my neck and she let go of me.
At that moment, I realized she’d taken me by the neck to attach a pup collar. The collar, which I couldn't remove on my own, had a loop so anyone could tether me in place for my own safety. It also shouted to the rest of the crew that I couldn't handle weapons or be trusted alone.
Six years ago, I’d graduated out of my original pup collar. I remembered bursting with pride.
Shame pressed from all sides. I couldn’t stop my ears from drooping. I could, however, stay on my feet. With effort, I forced myself to stand up straight.
“Yes, ma’am.” I wan
ted to sound firm and grown up. Instead, I fumbled the words and sounded like a child.
“Dismissed.”
I plodded out of the cockpit with my eyes stinging and ears tingling.
“Toryo?”
The sound of Meegan’s voice, thick with question and confusion, crushed me. I ran for my cabin and hid.
Until I had a plan for how to get the collar off, I would not leave my cabin. Ever.
The End
If you liked this story from Lee French, you can read more from her in Rogue Skies. Preorder for 99c.
About the Author
Lee French lives in Olympia, WA with two kids, two bicycles, and too much stuff. She is an avid gamer and member of the Myth-Weavers online RPG community, where she is known for her fondness for Angry Ninja Squirrels of Doom. In addition to spending too much time there, she also trains in taekwondo, has a nice flower garden with one dragon and absolutely no lawn gnomes, and tries in vain every year to grow vegetables that don't get devoured by neighborhood wildlife.
She is an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), the Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA) and a Municipal Liaison for her NaNoWriMo region.
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© 2017 Bill Hargenrader
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Mars Journey: Call to Action is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.