It was too late. Both missiles impacted, and she heard a sickening crunch as something tore away from her hull.
As soon as Alara’s ears cleared enough from the booming roars of the missiles exploding against her fighter, she heard—“Starboard shields critical! Forward shields depleted! Severe hull damage detected!”—followed by a low hiss of air escaping from her cockpit. The sound grew softer and softer, and then another hiss started up, close beside her ears. Both noises ceased, and Ethan said, “Your suit has been isolated from the cockpit’s air supply. Keep your helmet on until the cockpit is re-pressurized.”
Alara scowled and pressed the button below the hat switch on her flight stick which was assigned to target nearest enemy. A red arrow appeared at the top of her HUD, indicating the direction she’d need to turn in order to find her target. A quick look at the rear scope indicated the target was directly behind her. A moment later she heard something hissing off her aft shields, accompanied by bright flashes of light. Some kind of laser cannons? she wondered. A quick glance at the shield gauge showed her shields dropping fast. They went from 42% to down below 30% in just a few seconds.
I’m frekked, she thought, still pulling through a tight turn to get on the enemy’s tail. The hissing sound stopped, her cockpit’s air now fully depleted, and then Alara saw the big, reflective dome of a shell fighter appear just above her canopy. She boosted to tighten her turn, and the enemy came under her targeting reticle just long enough for her to fire off a laser blast at point-blank range. Three red beams collided with the enemy fighter, hitting the shell’s pair of glowing orange thrusters and punching through to the reactor. The fighter exploded instantly, and she soared through the roaring cloud of flaming debris and out the other side. “Ruh-kah!” she screamed over the comms. “I got another one! Take that you dumb frek!”
“Forward shields critical,” Ethan commented.
But Alara’s AI was the only one to say anything. Alara frowned and triggered the comms again. “Hello? Anyone need some help?” She took a quick look at her star map to find the nearest friendly, but she couldn’t see any green amongst the red. “Ethan, target the nearest friendly! I can’t see anyone on the grid.”
“Alara. . . .” The AI sounded unusually subdued.
“What is it?” she said. Enemy missile lock tones swarmed through her helmet speakers, and she gritted her teeth as she broke into a sudden evasive pattern.
“You are the last surviving member of your squadron.”
Alara blinked. “I’m the last . . .” She couldn’t find the words to speak, let alone the clarity of mind to tell Ethan what to do next. She felt numb as the reality sunk in—everyone else is dead. And then the beeping of enemy missile locks turned to multiple alarms as the missiles locked on to her. She heard the first one explode before she could even react, and then everything turned as bright as the inside of a sun.
* * *
—THE YEAR 0 AE—
Destra patched up the man they’d rescued as best she could from the medkit aboard the hover, but he was still in bad shape. Now that the layer of white dust had fallen away from his clothes, she could see that he wore the tattered remnants of the signature black with white trim uniform of the fleet; there was no insignia left, but a few of the badges on his left breast pocket remained, marking him as an officer of distinction. He was obviously a survivor from the defense of Roka.
Lessie finished packing food into the back of the hover, and now she walked up to see how the man was doing. When she noticed the fleet uniform, she scowled. “Hoi, he’s ISSF?”
“Seems to have been. He must have escaped in a pod. He’s lucky to be alive.”
“Well frek him!”
Destra looked up with a frown.
“They left us here, Destra! To die.” She gestured to the man, and he groaned softly as if in reply. “I say we return the favor. He’ll just be one more mouth to feed, anyway.”
“He’ll also be able to help us scavenge food and supplies when he’s better.”
“And attract more attention from the skull faces while he’s at it. Just leave him, Destra. We need to get out of here.”
The man groaned again and his eyelids fluttered. Destra began nodding, as if she’d acquiesced. “All right, shoot him then and we can go.”
Lessie’s brow furrowed and she took half a step back from the wounded officer.
“What’s wrong? If we leave him here, he’ll die, either from his wounds, or from Sythians finding and eating him, so the kind thing to do would be to put him out of his misery.”
“I . . .” Lessie shook her head. “You do it. It’s your idea.”
Destra snorted. “No, it’s yours. You just don’t have the guts to call it what it is. Leaving him here is murder, and I’m not going to have his death on my conscience.” With that, she turned back to dressing the man’s wounds.
“Fine!” Lessie hissed, and turned away with a scrunch of gravel grinding underfoot.
Destra finished binding the man’s wounds and administered a sedative to keep him quiet. That done, she moved him onto a hover gurney she’d found for transporting cargo in the back of the transport. She had to lift his feet onto the gurney first and then his torso, since Lessie was sitting in the transport with her arms crossed, refusing to help. As soon as she was done, she triggered the gurney’s controls, causing it to rise off the ground, and then she pushed it into the back of the transport.
All the way back from Covena they heard the man moaning deliriously. Every time he did Lessie shot her a scathing look. Destra ignored her.
“Don’t you think Digger will mind us bringing him back?” Lessie asked.
“It doesn’t matter. We didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s no room for him.”
“We’ll find a space, even if he has to sleep on the gurney or the couch.”
“Digger might kick us out. . . .”
“Hoi! We’re done talking about this. You let me deal with Digger.”
“Fine.” Lessie crossed her arms once more. “But if he asks it was your idea.”
Destra turned to glare at the blond-haired woman sitting beside her. What was it about disaster which brought out the worst in people? This was hardly a time for humanity to be sabotaging the collective survival of the species with an it’s-either-me-or-you, survival-of-the-fittest attitude.
When they drew near Digger’s hideout, Destra drove down off the road to the forest and parked by the trees again, but this time she found holo sheets in the back of the hover and spread them out over the transport to camouflage it. The sheets made the hover completely invisible to the naked eye, so Destra took a moment to turn in a slow circle to get her bearings and make sure she could find her way back to the spot. Satisfied that she knew where she was, Destra turned to Lessie. She stood by the hover gurney, covering the trees with the ripper rifle as her eyes darted among the shadows between the trees. Lessie had managed to tie up all of the food they’d scavenged below the gurney using some netting they’d found in the back of the hover.
“Are you finally done?” Lessie asked. “I feel like someone’s watching us . . .” she said, glancing around nervously.
“Let’s go,” Destra said. She didn’t bother to offer any trite reassurances. They both knew that a whole army of Sythians could be standing right behind them, and the only sign of them would be the wind they’d feel from the aliens breathing down their necks.
Destra moved to take charge of the gurney and then they started into the forest. Lessie went ahead while Destra brought up the rear, pushing the gurney along. They moved as quietly as they could, but every crunch of needles and leaves underfoot sounded like an earthquake to their ears. Destra’s foot caught on a root and she stumbled, reaching for the gurney for support. She accidentally grabbed the man’s injured side, and he screamed.
Lessie shot Destra a horrified look, and they both abruptly stopped to listen to the fading echoes of that scream—and to the response it might have pr
ovoked.
When no other sounds came from the forest, Destra allowed herself a sigh of relief. The man on the gurney moaned softly as he fell back to sleep.
“Frek, Destra!” Lessie whispered as she gave a shuddering sigh of her own. “You’re going to get us killed like that! Let’s try to keep it down.”
And that was when they heard a distant roar of engines starting up. Lessie’s eyes met Destra’s once more, but this time there was no mistaking the fear in them. “Run!” she screamed, and both of them snapped into action. Lessie began running through the forest at top speed, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under low branches. She didn’t bother to cover the trees with her rifle anymore, and she didn’t look back to make sure that Destra was still with her.
Destra struggled to keep up while pushing the gurney along in front of her. They kept glancing at the sky as they went, and the sound of engines roaring grew closer and closer until Destra felt sure the enemy ship was right above them, but there was no sign of it. Could it be cloaked? she wondered.
They reached the growing-together of two oakal trees which marked Digger’s hideout, and Lessie hurried to trigger the camouflaged hatch in the ground. It opened with a groan of rusty gears grinding together. Peering into the hatch, Destra quickly realized it was too small for the hover gurney to fit.
“Help me get him in!” Destra said, struggling to lift the man off the gurney by herself.
Lessie turned to look with a kind of childish shock written on her face. Her features were slack with horror. She appeared to consider helping for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Destra,” she said, and with that she jumped into the hole.
Destra gritted her teeth and scowled. She keyed the hover gurney to settle to the ground, and then she dragged the man off and rolled him over to the open hatch, ignoring his feeble moans and flailing protests. Just as she was about to push him inside, a whir of motors started up, and the hatch began to close. Destra couldn’t believe her eyes. She lunged over the injured man’s body and grabbed the hatch, trying to force it back open, but the motors connected to it were surprisingly strong, and even fighting them with all of her strength, she was barely slowing them down.
“Frek you, Lessie!” Destra roared into the rapidly closing hole. Destra jumped back as the hatch cover shut, almost taking her fingers with it. The corner of her shirt snagged in the hatch and tore, leaving a ragged piece of red cloth to mark the ground. Destra glared at it and cursed Lessie and Digger once more. She bent down and felt around for the hatch release, but it wouldn’t respond to her touch. Somehow, while Destra had been struggling to get the man off the gurney, Lessie had rushed to the control panel below, and then she’d closed and locked the hatch.
Fuming, Destra thought about alternative ways she could get inside, but the ground-level exit which they’d used to leave the stim lab earlier that morning was all the way on the other side of the escarpment, and even if she could get to it before the Sythians found her, it would just be locked, too. She could dig her way in over here, but that would take time, and without the grav field activated, she’d fall some twenty meters to the ground and break her neck. Even then, there was still the matter of getting through the concealed doors and into the lab itself, and she had no weapons to confront Digger and Lessie besides the pistol at her hip. It would be no match for ripper rifles.
She was stuck. Destra couldn’t imagine what had prompted Lessie to lock her out, except maybe her selfish fear that bringing another mouth to feed would get them kicked out of Digger’s hideout. Whatever the woman’s motivation, Destra was on her own now. She stood listening to the roar of engines drawing near, her eyes on the sky. She couldn’t see anything, but whatever it was, it was close. Then the sound abruptly changed in pitch and volume.
It’s landing!
She didn’t have much time. Destra turned in a quick half circle under the cover of Digger’s tree, searching the sky for the source of the sound, but she didn’t see anything; Sythian ships were cloaked. I guess this is it, she thought, glancing down at the man lying at her feet on a bed of crunchy brown needles and red oakal leaves. It’s just you and me—whoever you are. No weapons, nowhere to go, and no time to get there. Survival of the fittest at its best—
Or survival of the most ruthless, she thought, eyeing the sealed hatchway and thinking about Lessie, safely ensconced in the stim lab by now. Would they watch her die on the cameras the way that they had with the unfortunate group of survivors they’d seen fleeing through the forest last night?
Destra had just one chance. She had to get back to the hover and hide under the holo sheets. Eyeing the man at her feet speculatively, she quickly thought about ways to bring him with her, but there was no way to do that without slowing herself down and attracting more attention than she wanted.
Destra frowned. She couldn’t leave him. That would make her as bad as Lessie. Casting about quickly, she spied a nearby pile of leaves at the bottom of a short hill leading away from Digger’s tree. It’ll have to do, she thought.
Rolling the man back onto the gurney and shushing him every time he moaned, Destra powered up the gurney once more and rushed down the hill to the leaves. She lowered the gurney into them and then worked quickly to cover it up. The pile was deeper than it looked, and Destra had no trouble shoveling enough leaves, dirt, and needles over both the man and his gurney so that his shallow breathing couldn’t be detected beneath the mountain of leaves. The sound of engines dwindled from a roar to a whistle and then to terrifying silence. Destra’s head snapped up, and she quickly scanned the trees, her heart pounding, her eyes wide. There was no time to get away.
Glancing down, Destra frowned at the pile of leaves. Hope you don’t mind the company.
Less than a minute later she was completely buried and working hard to quieten the too-loud rasping of her breathe and the steady drum beat of her racing heart. She could see a fractured glimpse of the outside world through the leaves, and she hoped that didn’t mean she could be seen from the outside, too.
Destra listened intently but there were no sounds besides the ones she was making. Gradually her breathing and her heart rate slowed. Minutes passed, turning into what seemed like hours.
And then abruptly, she heard rustling leaves and her eyes flicked toward the sound. It was coming from Digger’s tree. As she watched, a pair of tall, broad-shouldered bipeds appeared out of nowhere. They were covered in shiny black exoskeletons and their eyes were glowing red orbs.
Sythians.
Destra’s heart pounded. If they had life form scanners that were anywhere near as good as human ones, then her hiding place was already uncovered.
One of the Sythians looked around, while the other bent down to pick something up. He held out a ragged piece of red cloth to the other, who took it and studied it.
My shirt! Destra thought. Frek! I’ve given them away!
Both aliens stared down at the hidden hatch as though they could see straight through it to the chamber below. One of them gestured to the ground where the hatchway was, while the second went down on his haunches for a closer look.
The man beside Destra groaned, and she shushed him once more, but the two Sythians didn’t react. They were too focused on what they’d found.
Destra was torn between leaping out of her hiding place with her pistol blazing, and just leaving Digger and Lessie to the Sythians. She was more inclined to do the latter until she remembered—
Dean.
The little blond-haired boy hadn’t done anything to deserve that fate. The Sythians will eat them, she reminded herself, trying to spur her frozen limbs into action. But what about her responsibility to the man lying helpless beside her? And how would she be able to help Dean anyway? All she had was a plasma pistol that likely wouldn’t even breach the Sythians’ armor. She’d have a better chance with it set to stun, and who knew if what stunned a human would stun a Sythian? At least Lessie and Digger have rifles. . . . and by now they’ve already
spotted the Sythians on the cameras, so at least they’ll have some warning.
Destra chewed her bottom lip, unable to decide what to do.
Then one of the Sythians straightened and held out his arm with an open palm. A bright purple pulse of light shot out from his palm, sounding impossibly loud in the stillness of the forest. Destra saw black smoke and orange flames rising from the ground at the Sythians’ feet. The flames grew up quickly into a raging fire that engulfed them, but they didn’t react to it. She watched through the leaves and flickering flames as one of the Sythians dropped out of sight, and she realized he’d just jumped into the hole below the tree.
They’re in, she thought.
The second one dropped away, and then all that was left was the crackling fire, racing along the ground to chew up the dry leaves and needles lying on the forest floor. Destra saw the flames racing her way, and she realized that she was about to be burned alive.
She had just a moment to debate a course of action before bursting out of her hiding place. She had no way of knowing if there were more Sythians watching and waiting nearby, but she tried to ignore that possibility as she swept leaves and needles off the hover gurney to find the controls. Destra keyed the gurney to rise out of the leaves, and she started running in the opposite direction from the racing flames, pushing the gurney along in front of her. Destra wasn’t sure what lay in this direction, but she was certain that it was taking her further and further from the hover transport she’d left camouflaged by the side of the road. That transport was her only hope. If she didn’t get to it. . . .
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