Star Force: Lost Destiny (Wayward Trilogy Book 1)
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 2016-05-01T06:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Archon Lore

Prologue

The sound of the truck rolling up outside his domicile perked Yammar’s attention, for it’d been loaned to a friend and shouldn’t have been back for several hours. The Calavari stretched his four arms across his chest then pried himself up out of the comfortable chair he’d graciously sunk into after a long morning in the fields. When he walked to the door he placed a giant four-fingered hand on the frame and pulled it open, seeing the truck jerk to a stop with his friend falling out the door and crumpling to the ground.

“Donovan!” he called out, running towards him with plodding footsteps as his nose picked up the scent of burnt flesh even before he saw the hole in the chest plate of the full body armor the man wore. Whatever race he was his blood flowed a sickly red, a fact that he’d prefer to not have known as he leaned over and gripped the man’s shoulders, prying him up into a sitting position.

“What happened?”

A shaking hand rose up to the neck of his armor, fumbling for the latch that Yammar finally helped him with. The helmet cracked opened with a hiss and the Calavari helped him pull it off, revealing the pale skin beneath that had alarmingly become even more so, now nearly white.

“Gladers,” he said, wincing horribly as he half bent over. “Jumped me from behind. I got two of them, but the third…”

“Where’s the latch for the chest piece?” Yammar asked, pulling back the cloak that covered most of the hard plates as he looked, but the man took a death grip on his lower arm and locked eyes with him.

“My children. In the ship. You have to…please. I’m all they’ve got. They’re dead without you.”

“Where’s the latch?” he repeated, searching around with his other three hands and finally finding something that looked promising. He pressed and turned the small button, being rewarded with another hiss as a crack formed along the side beneath the man’s left arm, but suddenly that arm went straight to Yammar’s giant head and gripped it tightly, forcing him to look into the dying man’s eyes.

“Promise me. Promise me…” he said, wincing again.

“I don’t know anything about your race,” Yammar said, feeling helpless.

“Good…” the man spat in a cough but no blood came out of his mouth, though it was continuing to pour out of his chest and seep down over his waistband plates in spurts every time he jerked in pain. “Good. Don’t ask questions…just…make sure they wear armor…in public. Promise me.”

“I promise. I promise,” Yammar repeated quickly, then the death grip on his arm and head relaxed and the Calavari was able to pull the torso armor completely off, seeing the hole in the man’s abdomen when the blood-soaked, charred clothing lined up. It was a lachar blast, pure and simple, and one delivered at fairly close range by the looks of it. Probably several to get through that armor, but the last one must have hit with nearly full force. He didn’t know how his friend had survived this long, but then again he had no idea what internal organs he had or even where they were located.

“Keep them safe…” Donovan said, eyes flickering. “Keep them…away…from…people.”

“I will,” the big Calavari said, realizing it was too late to do anything to help him. “What do you want me to tell them?”

Yammar never got an answer. Donovan was unconsciously limp in his arms for the next minute, then his heart stopped beating and Yammar’s business associate/closest friend was dead.

“Oh no,” a voice said from behind him a few minutes later. Yammar hadn’t moved a muscle other than to clench them in a fury he hadn’t known in a long time.

“Gladers,” he growled as his broodmate approached cautiously on his right.

“Here?” she said in a panic, looking around at the well-lit perimeter of their farm and seeing nothing but pasture and crop fields that had yet to be planted.

“No. Not here. But I think I know where.”

“No…” she pleaded with him. “Please don’t. Please don’t go.”

“I need to…but I made a promise.”

“He made you promise not to avenge him?”

“No,” Yammar said, even angrier that he couldn’t do just that. “There’s something on his ship that I have to protect.”

“His ship,” she said, turning to look back behind their domicile to where the top of the spacecraft was visible, parked on the far side where it had sat for several weeks, as was typical whenever Donovan visited.

“Stay with the body,” he said in a tone that left no room for discussion as he stood up and slowly walked away. “I’ll be back.”

As his mate knelt next to the body and he heard her sobbing, the larger Calavari kept his emotions locked down so much they might have been buried within rock. He dreaded what he was about to do, but there was no way around it. Promise or not, something had to be done.

When he got on the other side of his domicile he walked up to the ship that he’d assumed was empty. In all the time that Donovan had come here he’d never mentioned children, nor had he ever talked of having a mate himself. With one large finger he pressed the boarding ramp release and the big door pivoted down out of the underside of the ship far too slowly, yet he still wasn’t ready to go up. He’d never been inside the ship before out of respect for the man’s privacy but now, even without his promise to keep, the ship belonged to him if only through salvage rights, though at the moment he wanted nothing of it, despite the obvious value.

He strode up into the worn but tidy interior space, passing by stacks of cargo crates that Donovan had been here to trade to the locals. A few he recognized as planetary produce, but the rest he assumed were from offworld. Passing into the forward compartment he saw that the ship was smaller on the inside than it looked, with only a handful of rooms that made it even less spacious than his domicile.

All of the rooms were open, including the cockpit, save for one. It was locked, so he summoned up the courage to knock on the door four times, but there was no response. He didn’t feel like shouting, or talking at all for that matter, so he grabbed a nearby toolset and began to take off the wall housing that held the locking mechanism. It wasn’t too dissimilar from the tech used on the planet, just a basic slide latch that he was able to pull back.

When it clicked open he pushed in the swinging door a few inches then set the tools aside, steeling himself for what was to come…but even his worst fears weren’t up to the task of what was before him. Sitting in the corner and huddled together were two tiny people, far smaller than Donovan had been, and both were staring up at him curiously, but not afraid.

“Do you understand my words?”

Both their little heads nodded, but otherwise they didn’t move.

“Your father told me to come to you…” he said, barely getting the sentence out. “I need you to come with me.”

“He told us to stay here,” one of them said, with a voice so high pitched that Yammar cringed, realizing just how young they were. They weren’t Calavari, so he couldn’t be certain, but the scrawny little pale things looked young even for children.

“Something has happened little ones. Something bad. You must face it now and…make sure it doesn’t get more bad. I need your help with that. To make it not get more bad. You are going to be very sad, but you will survive this. I promised your father I would protect you, and I will.”

“From what?” the same one asked.

Yammar knew there was no good way to do this, so rather than drag it on any longer he just told them.

“Your father has been killed. Before he died he made me promise to take care of you, and that is exactly what I am going to do…”

1

16 years later…

Esna rappelled down and through a narrow crevice, her helmet producing the only light in the dark underground caverns for her to see by as the mix of dirt, rock, and old structure flashed past her at a dizzying rate. The cloak covering her armor snagged on an outcropping and got pulled up over her head with the 22 year old grabbing the rope tight and skidding to a halt. She climbed back up half a meter and held on with one hand while she dislodged the durable fabric from the snag before sliding down the line the rest of the way to the bottom where a set of footprints waited for her in the darkness.

Turning her head around, the lights on her helmet splayed over the ovoid hallway that had a major structural support punching down through it like a violent knife. A slight opening next to that knife had allowed her access to what would hopefully be another successful scavenging run before they had to get back to the farm to help load up the Brendilin.

Esna looked around with her helmet lights and felt the odd sensation she always did when finding a partially intact structure such as this. Even buried several hundred meters beneath the surface this empty, desolate place felt more alive than the rest of the planet. The architecture was smooth in the places where it was undamaged, harkening back to a time before she could remember, before anyone could remember. The ancient cataclysm that had destroyed this planet was mere myth now, save for the scattering of ruins that had been interpreted to mean any number of things.

She didn’t know the truth but right now she felt a connection to the architecture, and dead as it was, it was more alive than anything else on this planet.

Following the footprints she eventually caught up to her brother, Teren, who was already head deep inside a pile of debris with nothing but his cloak and his armored butt visible in her headlights.

“Find something?” she asked, her voice altered into a mechanical monstrosity that was clear enough for others to understand but so different from her normal voice that no one would ever be able to identify her…not that it mattered. No one on this planet aside from Yammar and Innit had ever seen her or her brother outside their armor.

“No, I’m just upside down for the…fun of it,” Teren grumbled as he reached in as far as he could, grabbing hold of a fiber and yanking it loose. That undid the component he had been trying to pry loose and he was finally able to climb back out of the hole with it in hand. He held it up for Esna to see with both their helmet lights hitting it in a wash of brightness.

“No clue,” Esna said. “What is it?”

“What the…” Teren said, turning it over in his hands multiple times. “There was a light on it.”

“Doesn’t look like it now.”

“That cord…I had to pry it loose. I thought this had a power pack, but it must have been hooked up to something else with power. There may be a large unit down here somewhere that still works.”

“Unless you know where it is, better not start after it. We’ll end up late.”

“We’ve got a few hours.”

“Yeah, but I wanna get some air first.”

“Or water?” Teren suggested.

“Hmmn…maybe. We’ll have to go now if we want to take that detour.”

“You’re right. Hunting for a power unit down here could take forever. We can come back later. Just need to mark our trail,” he said, pulling out a small piece of junk from a narrow pack on his belt. It was painted with a thin film that responded to their helmet lights with an unnatural green glow. He placed one next to the pile of debris where he’d found the component as he stashed the salvage in a sack along with a few other bits and pieces they’d collected over the past two hours.

Both of them made their way back to the rope, leaving little coated trinkets to mark the trail through the broken and often confusing labyrinth in the rubble. Esna didn’t know what this place used to be, but aside from a few sections of it there wasn’t much left to look at. Even if it had been unscarred it probably would have been confusing to get around in, but with all the little nooks and crannies they had to crawl through, or make, the marker chips were a must if they wanted to get back here without wasting a lot of valuable time. Each of their excursions was limited, with them always having to be back at the farm before night.

Today’s trek was limited, but they’d found a few items of interest. When they got back they’d take them apart, then see if there was anything salvageable for their own use or to sell. At the very least the basic components should be able to be scrapped for their materials, making these scavenging runs more than just a reason to get away and off on their own. Farm duties aside, this planet was dull as baju, but their adoptive parents didn’t need to know that and the bits and pieces that they brought back added some additional income that gave them a perfect excuse to explore.

Using nothing but the power of their muscles, both slowly climbed back up the rope to the surface level then meandered their way back to the severed hallway where they’d entered, but even that had been buried under mounds of dirt. A wind washout had exposed a fist-sized opening in the arid surface of the planet that they’d discovered and expanded upon, making their discovery here a private one. No one else had been in these ruins before and they wanted to keep it that way.

There wasn’t a lot of traffic in this area, but when Teren and Esna got back to the entrance they climbed out into the windy, dry atmosphere of a barren planet trying to recover from whatever had blasted it to rubble in the past. There was scrub brush in places, but most of the ground was rocky, rough, and decidedly dead. Picking up some larger pieces of rock, the siblings leveraged them over the hole to cover it, then kicked out their footprints as they walked back to their bike where it rested in a crevice that was out of sight of the giant plain that stretched out across the landscape before them.

Teren hopped on in the driver’s position, attaching his sack of salvage to the right rear as Esna slid on behind him, their armor clicking against each other but the sound was dampened by Teren’s cloak. When he turned the bike on it levitated on some rare anti-grav tech the pair had recovered and rebuilt with other parts they’d traded for. The technology wasn’t typical on this planet, but not unheard of either, though most transport was accomplished via wheels.

Teren accelerated the bike slowly, for it couldn’t gain speed rapidly…definitely not as fast as a wheeled bike, but the advantage was it didn’t care what kind of terrain there was and could fly over ground anywhere they liked, even over their fields without harming the crops. It had an altitude limiter on it that they hadn’t been able to rework, keeping their maximum height at 7 meters. That was more than enough to enable a smooth ride over ground, but it didn’t let them become an aircraft like some of the Gladers used.

Fortunately they were far from here, all the way over the mountain range where the scrub brush changed into full trees. It was better land and thus fought over, with the Gladers being a mix of Calavari and thugs from offworld or wherever they came from. It was said this world had belonged to the Calavari before the cataclysm, but there were so many other races here that Esna wondered. About one in two were Calavari, as far as common knowledge went, but there were pockets that varied. This area was uninhabited, but further to the north where their farm was it was a loose cluster of Calavari that made their living servicing the city to the east where they were due to deliver their livestock today.

Hopefully the Gladers wouldn’t come out this far, but if they did she and her brother knew what to do. Their armor was designed for more than just hiding their skin and had been tinkered with since they were little by Yammar, but in recent years Esna and Teren had taken over the customization duties. Now they could fight half a dozen Gladers and come out on top, and unless someone was stupid enough to go into the glade they rarely showed themselves in greater numbers.

Three months ago Esna had killed her third, and her brother had 8 to date. In each instance they hadn’t sought out the fight. The bandits had come after them, but they’d gained enough of a reputation by now that a lot of the time they were left alone. Sooner or later another would get brave enough to try and rob them, but other than a few trips in town to sell livestock, pick up supplies, or barter their salvage, they stayed away from other people and very few had reason to come out to this area.

As the hover bike accelerated they came out of the little hills and onto the flat plain that stretched out before them down to a dry wash that would see water only two months out of the year. It was often used as a road but there were no fresh tracks on it this morning and there would be none as they passed over it, floating on their anti-grav engine and humming along with no one and nothing else in sight aside from dirt, sand, and a few sprouts of brush.

They angled across the wash and over to the small spur that ran off the mountains to the north. Their smaller cousin separated the plain from the farmland as it cut across at an angle, but the pair didn’t head straight back. Instead they followed it southwest down to an outcropping that was familiar. After that they slowed, coasting another 1000 meters until they saw the cracks in the rocks with some clumps of dry brush around them.

Teren used the very bad brakes to slow them, then Esna slid off and used her feet to grind them the rest of the way to a halt, digging out two furrows that Teren went about smoothing out as his sister disconnected her helmet’s faceplate. She got a blast of hot, dry air on her slightly damp face and breathed it in with no filter numbing out the feel of the planet.

“Looks clear,” Teren said. “Ten minutes.”

“Fifteen,” she insisted, disconnecting the neck piece and pulling the rest of her helmet off and laying it on her bundled up cloak. She proceeded to disassemble her armor piece by piece, feeling relieved as she let her skin breath in the air. When she got it all off she sat down next to it and undid her boots, pulling her pale feet out and wiggling her toes in the air.

With her brother on lookout, she took off her slightly sweaty clothes and stood on the plain completely nude, soaking in the dangerous sunlight for a few seconds and letting her body breath the air before she walked over to the crack in the rocks and slid down between them dropping out of view. Teren stayed up top, waiting for his turn afterward when she would watch his back. That was always the arrangement, for neither of them could risk being seen, let alone being caught by Gladers or someone else outside their armor and without their weapons. If Yammar and Innit knew they were doing this they’d be furious…which was why nobody knew about this place and they intended to keep it that way.

Esna carefully crawled down through some rough, dirty rocks making sure not to cut her soft, vulnerable skin until her feet hit a damp ledge with soft moss growing on it. The feeling of it beneath her feet was glorious, but she didn’t have time to relish it. She was on the clock with only a small respite here before returning to the dry, dead world above.

There was no light save for what was coming in the crevice at the top, but Esna had been here enough times to know the rocks by feel. She crawled through a small opening feet first and dipped them into a hidden pool, sliding all the way in as she took a deep breath. Her head went underwater and her short red hair slicked back as she traveled half a meter under a ledge and came up in the near dark on the other side in a pocket of air.

Inside were several glow sticks they’d deposited earlier. She groped around and found one attached to the wall, pulled it off and shook it. A purple glow manifested itself and the dimensions of the secret chamber became visible. It was smaller than her room back at the domicile, but deep enough that her feet couldn’t touch the bottom…which was good, because the rocks down there were jagged and there were gaps where the water flow connected to the underground chamber that fed it. Esna saw the water line on the wall was a couple of fingers lower than normal, but it was still more than deep enough for her to soak in, with her body thoroughly relishing the chilly water.

She ducked her head down and sucked in a gulp, not caring if a minute amount of sweat or dirt came with it. Life on this planet was hard, and a good mouthful of fresh ground water was more valuable than a lot of the crops they planted. Had she and her brother wanted to lay claim to this place and mine the water to sell they could have made a fair amount of money…assuming no one came and killed them to take it.

Which was why it was their personal secret and an oasis amongst the desert-like landscape to escape into, as well as one of the main reasons they could remain sane. Having to wear their armor almost round the clock was claustrophobic, but it had been their father’s dying wish and Yammar wouldn’t take any chances with them coming to harm, so he had two reasons to make them wear it. Whatever race they were there were no others like them on this world, but Yammar had told them they would be in danger if anyone ever saw that they were different, and they had never had reason to distrust him.

There were plenty of reasons, or lack of reasons, that people got killed for in town or elsewhere and both Esna and Teren knew not to give anyone a reason to take interest in them. Plenty of others wore armor, so they weren’t unique in that, and if the town and Gladers thought they were Gonash or Crishen or Haph then so be it. They obviously weren’t Calavari with only two arms, but there were enough other races around that looked similar in body for them to be mistaken for.

But here, in their private space, Esna could be…whatever it was she was. Her skin felt in contact with the planet and the coolness ate away at the concerns of the outside world, thanks in large part to the trust she had in her brother. So long as he didn’t call out an alarm she had nothing to worry about outside and could mentally disconnect in here.

That was, until her brother called out to her that her time was up. Reluctantly she dipped her head under the water and swam back out under the outcropping and climbed up into the harsh light and dry wind, dripping precious droplets down into the thirsty dirt as her feet picked up grime walking back to her clothes.

“Better,” she announced as she got dressed, regretting not being able to stay down there permanently. Teren waited until she was fully clothed and had her armor back on before he started to peel his off, then when he went below Esna took a seat on a rock a little higher up and looked out over the plain as the first two of three suns were making their way up towards midday. The third was out of view and kept the planet lit almost round the clock, giving only a few hours of true darkness most of the year and none for about a month and a half when the planet passed between it and the pair at the middle of the ‘system,’ as Yammar described it, though she knew little of that other than the lessons he insisted that they learn.

She dreamed of being away from this world someday, but she had no real hope of ever achieving that. There were traders that came and went, and her father was supposed to have been one of them, but she remembered almost nothing from the time when Yammar said she traveled with him. Esna couldn’t even remember his face.

Teren could, and she hated him for that. At least he had something to hold onto beyond this burnt over wasteland…which was odd, because she couldn’t remember ever knowing anything beyond this place, save for the ruins and their little oasis below, but she felt like there should be more.

What that more could be she didn’t know, but there had been something here long ago. Blasted into rubble and now just dust and forgotten memories.

And this planet didn’t even belong to her according to Yammar. She was from another world entirely, as unbelievable as that sounded.

But none of that mattered, really. She was here with her brother and that was the extent of her life. She lived in today, not dreams of the past or hopes of tomorrow. Today…and today they had to get back to help move the livestock into town for sale.

When her brother came back up she let him dress in silence then the pair got back on their bike and took off across the plain after smoothing out their footprints to leave no sign to draw attention to their little slice of paradise.

2

Their speeder slowed to a gradual halt next to one of the pair of water spires with Esna sliding off while Teren lowered it down and used his legs to walk it into one of the 14 sheds on the family property. She walked over to one of the small spigots on the southernmost spire and popped her helmet off, tipping over and putting her mouth underneath as she twisted the nozzle and got a mouthful of the lukewarm water directly rather than walking into the house.

Both spires gradually pulled water vapor out of the air, condensing it down into liquid and storing it in two massive tanks that were used to supply the four of them with as well as the crops and livestock, the former of which could almost survive without it. They were a mix of julai and renni, spread out into separate fields, and were both a form of cactus that the livestock ate. They soaked up water in even trace amounts so Yammar didn’t have to do much watering, thankfully. The two water spires were expensive enough as it was and building a third would have been a major pain in the ass.

The pair was enough to supply the farm with all the water it needed and the Calavari had a backup tank underground that slowly filled up with excess. As kids Esna and Teren had been told not to drink from the tap because they would spill and waste water in the process, but the siblings had long ago perfected sneaking drinks without leaving a drop of evidence behind and now that they were adults it was no longer an issue to their two Calavari parents.

Esna gulped down the water and put her helmet back on with a snap/click, then headed over to the western pasture where Yammar was already loading up the holding pens, though his bulk made it difficult for him to do more than shoo the Brendilin in the direction he wanted. They were small and fast, but not very smart. He’d already tricked 8 of them into the little fence rows that would lead them onto the transport, but they needed to take at least 50 in today, maybe upwards of 100 depending on how many he felt like selling off. The finances of the farm were something the siblings left to Yammar and Innit while Esna and Teren helped out with a lot of the physical duties, then chipped in here and there with their scavenging while maintaining as much in the way of roaming privileges as possible.

Esna put one hand on the synthetic fence rail and hopped over, her half cape flapping behind her in a brief lived flourish, then she ran after the nearest of the Brendilin and started shooing them in the proper direction. Her brother came out and helped her run down enough and drive them in to where Yammar was collecting them. The Calavari could pick one up with a single hand if he got close enough, and long ago they’d learned how to scare the little things close enough to him.

With their help it didn’t take long for him to snag some 60 of the hairy little critters and place them into the queue-like holding pens, then Yammar brought the larger of the two livestock transports that they owned around and docked it to the boarding ramp. Teren jumped up and climbed around the side of the big truck to lift the door open, then Esna shooed the first of the Brendilin inside. Most of them went in easy enough, but one got defiant and dug its six little hooves into the ground so hard that Esna couldn’t get him to move until Yammar came along and reached in over the railing, grabbing the brown-haired rascal by the back of the neck and pulling him loose.

He tossed it further up the chute and Esna was able to keep it moving with a hard leaning shoulder until it got past the doorway and into the transport that had slats in the walls letting in horizontal rays of light to illuminate the otherwise closed and claustrophobic compartment…or at least it would be once all 60 got onboard. It could hold up to 115 if they packed them in hard, but even sixty wasn’t going to leave them much room to move around…which was a good thing when they hit bumps. They’d knock into each other without having room to fall over, and the road into town was little more than a dirty, uneven trail across the countryside.

When they got finished loading Teren sealed the hatch and jumped down, landing on the ground in a crouch as Yammar pointed to him.

“You’ve got driving duty.”

Teren reversed direction, circling around to the driver’s side ladder and climbing up to get into the tall box on the front of the transport as Yammar and Esna climbed into a personal transport that was a fraction of the size. Yammar took the driver’s seat while she climbed into the back of the one-seater and perched in the cargo compartment next to their salvage bundle. She could have rode with Teren, but she preferred the open air and the ability to stand up and stretch her legs as needed. There was a roll bar over the top of the small four-wheeled craft that she grabbed and stood up behind as Yammar started them moving.

Innit waved at them with her upper right hand from the doorway to the main house as she usually did. Esna waved back, then jolted as they hit a hole and the right rear tire bounced a few inches as Yammar made a turn that brought them out in front of the transport that began rolling behind them. The two vehicle convoy drove out from the cluster of buildings and down a path between fields heading for the nearest settlement with her surfing on the back for a good ten minutes before finally deciding to sit down on the hard ridges of the cargo bed, though she couldn’t feel them through her armor anyway so it didn’t really matter. Had Yammar sat back here it would have been different, for he wore nothing but his usual loose clothing.

That and a sidearm holster. She and her brother were also both armed, which was needed for these trips else they risked getting ambushed. If word got around that you didn’t carry you’d find yourself with a lot of negative attention focused your way, and even if you did you still had to defend yourself on occasion, which was why all three of them needed to go, and sometimes Innit, but there hadn’t been much trouble in this area for some time now and the threesome was almost unnecessary. Two could have handled it, but Yammar had to see to the payment and Teren and Esna never liked to go anywhere without the other.

Two and a half hours of riding later, they approached the settlement of Habren, haphazardly built and nothing like the smooth, crisp architecture that Esna and her brother had found in the ruins. Most of the buildings here were mud-based with various adhesives mixed in while the few that held wealthier individuals were of synthetic design, their materials having been shipping in from either the distant city of Dargoon or from offworld.

Before they got into the city itself Yammar pulled off on a side road that led to the holding pens in the settlement market. There were dozens of different holding areas for the various livestock that people raised and either ate themselves or traded in here. The meat market was a lucrative one and had kept Yammar and Innit well stocked in the various supplies they needed to survive, having had to overcome numerous setbacks that would have doomed others. The grain production was secondary, as far as income was concerned, and they made their primary living off the sale of Brendilin.

The personal transport pulled up next to an administrative building while Teren spun the much larger transport around and began the process of backing it up to one of the offloading docks. Esna hopped off and ran over to help guide him as Yammar walked over to the door and let himself in.

“Nerret,” he greeted as he pulled the door shut behind him.

“Yammar,” the other Calavari said, rising from his desk and stretching all four of his giant yellow arms behind his back. “How many this trip?”

“60.”

“Runts like the last time?” Nerret said with a huff as he pounded a fist on his desk to get the attention of the only other person in the room. The tall, lanky Critel jerked his attention away from the dirty datapad he was reading and frowned.

“What?”

“Get outside.”

The Critel blew a puff of frustrated air out through its X-shaped lips but offer no other dissent as he passed by Yammar and opened the door. Nerret gave him a moment to get out before he walked over and extended his lower left hand to Yammar. The two Calavari exchanged a friendly shake, with Nerret adding a pat on the shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Yammar asked.

“Ah…we lost a herd last week. Not too bad, but I’m not made of burgos.”

“Raiders?”

“No. We don’t think so anyway. Constable thinks it wasn’t. Hit a transport truck coming in from the north. Lost my driver too, so he couldn’t identify them. They took the livestock but left the truck, tires punctured.”

“That’s odd.”

“Very. But 60 Brendilin will go a ways to replenishing my holdings. Assuming you’re still raising the dirt bitters?”

“I am,” Yammar said, ignoring the derisive comment. Brendilin farmers weren’t held in high esteem, yet everyone liked the taste of the food he provided.

“Well enough. Assuming they’re not underweight, I can offer you 23 burgos a piece.”

“I got 29 a month ago.”

“Yeah, well, I gotta make up for that lost shipment.”

“Not my problem, Nerret.”

The yellow Calavari sighed. “No, it isn’t. But business is business.”

“And I can take mine to Shastafeen if I want.”

“And risk a run through Raider territory?”

“I’ve got two very good assistants.”

“So I’ve heard. They gunned down some poor bastard a couple years ago, didn’t they? Tried to poach one of your dirt bitters?”

“Tried a bit more than that. My people are a good shot.”

“Hmmph. Make it 24.”

“Considering you’re in a bind and we’re friends and all, I’ll go 28. No, make it 27 if you do us the honor of refilling our truck with fuel.”

Nerret threw his arms wide. “I don’t have the burgos for that.”

“How many do you have the burgos for?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. I have to make a living too, you know. And the grain alone that these things eat ain’t cheap.”

“You grow it.”

“And I can’t sell it when they eat it. 27, deal or no?”

“So much for me getting rich. It’s a deal at 27.”

“You’re welcome,” Yammar said, raised an eye ridge at his sometimes friend.

“Don’t suppose I could hire out your pair of bodyguards for some of my runs?”

“You’re free to ask, but they’ll say no.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I’ve made a point not to give them orders outside my own business.”

“Pay them that well?”

“We have an amicable arrangement.”

“I’m sure. How did you come by them anyway?”

“A mutual acquaintance. Shall we settle up?”

“As soon as Haffa checks back. Business and all. I can’t just take your word for it.”

“Nor would I take yours,” Yammar said without offense. “About the fuel.”

“Right,” Nerret said, walking over to the wall behind his desk and pulling out a mobile jabber that he held up to his giant bald head. “Procca, I need fuel for a customer’s truck as soon as possible…and make sure it’s full this time.”

Yammar looked around the box-like room that Nerret ran his business out of. “Still haven’t found a mate?”

“Don’t need one with the Freegol Emporium.”

“It’s not the same thing and you know it. You need someone to look after you because they have your best interests in mind.”

“Not all of us are as lucky as you.”

“You have to actively look,” Yammar lectured him.

“So that’s where I’ve gone wrong all these years…” Nerret said sarcastically.

Outside Teren held up the gate on the back of the truck as Esna hopped up over the railing and slid inside.

“Alright you guys, time to go,” she said, shooing one of the Brendilin out and into the chute that led down to a holding pen.

“Seven,” Haffa said, checking off the size on his datapad.

Esna scared another one out in front of him, then had to use her boot to get it down the ramp.

“Six.”

“Seven,” she countered.

“Six,” the Critel said firmly.

“Your eyes say six, my foot says seven.”

Haffa gave it a second look. “Six.”

Teren all but growled in disgust, though the Critel held firm. Yammar had told them to leave single errors alone, but if they tried to downgrade them more than one to hold out until he got there. That didn’t mean they weren’t going to object to the downgrades, for they’d learned in the past if they didn’t vocally offer opposition Haffa would be emboldened to go even lower.

“Eight,” he said as Esna sent another one down, then repeated the process for all of them.

“That’s it,” she said, walking out and letting Teren’s tired arms release the gate. It slid down with a thump as it sealed off the carrying compartment from the ramp.

“Count of 60.”

“Confirmed,” Teren agreed as he and Esna hopped off the elevated ramp and landed on the dusty ground beside one of the transports big wheels that stood nearly as tall as they were.

The Critel sealed the ramp off so the Brendilin couldn’t run back out, then unceremoniously turned and headed back to the administrative building.

“Nice to see you too,” Teren said just loud enough for Esna to hear, with both of their voices being modulated to sound mechanical and a bit menacing.

“Always a pleasure,” Esna added as they followed him toward the building but didn’t go in, knowing not to leave their transports unguarded in the settlement. All it would take was 2 minutes for someone to sneak over and rip a component or two off…yet another reason why salvagers were so common and the market for such goods were so lucrative. Often people had to pay to get back their own property or replacements if they got sloppy and left their equipment unguarded.

Eventually Yammar came back out, a stack of burgo coins in hand, of which he gave both of them four.

“Take care of business then meet me back here. I got a refill out of the deal, so we’ll be a while knowing how slow Nerret’s people move.”

“How much?”

“27.”

“Ugh,” Teren complained as he grabbed the sack of their salvage and wrapped the strap over his right shoulder.

“We deserve at least 30 for this lot.”

Yammar shook his head. “Buyers and sellers. It’s a two way street…and when he loses shipments to bandits and they resell the meat to others, the price comes down.”

“How is that our problem?”

“Shastafeen is too far away,” he said regretfully, “but don’t ever let him know that. Now off with you.”

“Going,” Esna said as she and her brother turned and walked out of the livestock area and onto one of the three main city streets that ran north to south.

3

Pale, Palo, and Pal were what they were called, though what the names meant Esna had no idea. Each street had clusters of buildings on either side and was wide enough for three lanes of vehicular traffic, though it was rarely ever busy enough for that. There was no pavement, but the hard packed dirt functioned just about the same with the overhead sun keeping it dry as a bone and the few nearby water spires sucking up any vapor that crept in from the environment or came out of the buildings.

A few heads turned when Esna and Teren walked by, but no one bothered them. Pale was fairly calm and made up of a lot of residential buildings and warehouses. At night those could get dicey, as did every part of the settlement, but most of the daylight angst took place on Palo…which was where they were headed.

After heading down a third of Pale they caught a pedestrian cross street and moved single file past a pair of orange-skinned Calavari sitting in the shadows. One was drinking a bottle of raska and the other looked like he’d just had a case of nabbleir. Fortunately they were both dizzy drunks and not belligerent, but both Esna and Teren kept their hands near their holstered weapons just in case.

When they came out onto Palo there was a lot more foot traffic, almost to the point of being crowds but they weren’t at risk of actually bumping into people. They both walked side by side with a bit of a practiced swagger that they knew would cause others to give them some space as they headed up the long street to one of three junk dealers in the settlement…or at least the ones that actually bothered to make an up front and somewhat legitimate business out of salvage peddling.

Esna pushed in a rickety door on a likewise decrepit building and looked around silently until a reddish-toned Calavari came out of the back room with some bit of tubing and wires clutched in three of his hands. He waved casually with his fourth and walked over to her through the racks of dirty equipment that he kept up front for the thieves to grab while he kept his best stuff in the back under lock and key.

“Welcome back, scavengers. What have you brought me today?”

Teren walked over to a nearby table and pushed aside a few things to make a clear space, then he unslung their sack and began to pull out items one at a time, laying them on the table for the shop keep to inspect. The Calavari immediately took interest in the small piece of curious pipe that Esna had found a week ago.

“Well now,” he said, picking it up and flicking a few loose components inside. “I haven’t seen one of these in years. You two always bring me something interesting. I really wish I knew where you dug up these trinkets, because I’d be rich…or dead. As it is I still make a good profit even with your fees, and this one will get you 80.”

“Agreed,” Teren said, knowing to keep their conversation to a minimum. Whenever there was a lot of talk, somehow the Calavari wound up offering lower prices.

“5 for these two,” he said, picking up some basic sheeting panels. “No clue what this is, but I’ll give you 7.”

“Harker…” Esna growled, and with her voice enhancement it sounded quite menacing.

He raised his two lower arms wide in apology as he continued to inspect items with his upper two. “Sorry, old habits. I meant 15.”

“Agreed…on both,” she added, then remained silent as he sorted through the rest of their stash, buying all but two pieces of it. He gave them their burgos, which they recounted to make sure he hadn’t forgot a few in his clumsiness, then they put the lot in the sack that Teren slung back over his armored shoulder as they left, with Esna’s half cape twirling behind her as a gust of wind puffed in through the door when Teren pulled it open.

Another puff hit her when she walked outside, but it wasn’t wind. It was a body, knocking her backwards into the shop as she spotted at least one other person outside.

She kicked the Gnar off her and scrambled to her feet, running outside into a fistfight between three other people that was obviously a ruse, because a small and very fast Nargool was running down the street with their sack of burgos in hand and Teren was scrambling to his feet on the other side of the scuffle.

“Es!” he yelled, taking off after it.

She tried to run after him, but the fighters conveniently got in the way again until she pulled out her pistol and fired a couple of shots into the dirt. When she did they broke off and ran, clearing her path as she took after her brother, but Esna was so far behind Teren now that she barely caught sight of him as he took a left turn and went down one of the pedestrian streets.

Sprinting past people who didn’t have a clue what was going on involved a lot of weaving and impolite brush offs, but it was the lack of sight that was the problem. She could barely see through the crowds and had to fight just to stay in sight of her brother after making the turn…and she had no idea where the Nargool was now.

Teren was as fast as her, so even at best she wasn’t going to gain any ground on him until he stopped or slowed, so Esna just tried to keep in contact as he ran a zig-zaggy course through the city, making so many turns she lost count. Then all of a sudden he was in front of her and kicking the Nargool in the ass as it ran off.

Breathing heavily she dodged a few more people and skidded to a halt as Teren pulled out their coins and began counting them.

“How’d you…catch him?” she asked between breaths.

“He tripped. Damn it, we’re short. He didn’t have anything on him…” Teren said, looking around. “He must have dropped some off on the way. Backtrack and we might get lucky.”

“You just hold onto those,” Esna insisted, heading back the way she’d come but at a slow jog through traffic. The odds of them finding the Nargool were slim, but it was worth a shot. If he was working alone he’d be coming back to his stash on his own. If he had friends…

“There,” she said angrily, pointing down a side street and sprinting off after him again. The rat-like Nargool reversed direction as soon as it saw them, but Esna had a few steps head start and closed half the distance before it got up to speed. Its movements were quicker than hers, but she had longer legs. Assuming Teren was following without looking, she poured her full attention into the pursuit and rounded the next corner coming out onto Pal and nearly running into a passing truck, but she made it around with a stiff forearm to the metallic hull and gained another 2 meters on the Nargool as it had to step around a tanky Calavari that was as much fat as muscle.

Behind her Teren followed a pair of seconds later, but when he came out onto Pal a beefy arm swung out and clipped him in the helmet, knocking him backwards and half unconscious. Suddenly he was on the ground and someone was pulling on his sack. Fortunately it didn’t slip out of his grasp, but he was dragged half a meter across the hard dirt with his armor scraping the surface.

When he got his head clear he grabbed the arm pulling him and swung his hips around, kicking the big whatever it was as someone else’s leg came in and knocked him to the side. The sack ripped when he didn’t let it go, spilling burgos out that numerous people dived on trying to grab. Someone punched him in the head three times as another landed on his legs, pinning him down, then a kick to his helmet knocked him out cold.

The swarm on the street fought each other briefly, then the assailants and nearby opportunists ran off to keep whatever they’d grabbed before anyone else could take it from them. A pair of Nargool scurried out through their legs and looked around the area for lost coins, poking Teren to make sure he wasn’t awake, then rolled him over to find a burgo trapped underneath his leg.

One of them grabbed it greedily and ran off. The other rolled the armored figure over the other way, finding nothing underneath, so he grabbed his pistol and made off with it. As Teren lay there a few other seedy individuals looked around, finding nothing of value, but a lanky Critel came out and fumbled around Teren’s neck, finding the release on his helmet then tried to pry it off.

As it snapped free and pulled up a few inches Teren’s hand came up and locked onto the Critel’s twin boned forearm. He dug his fingers into the gap between them and yanked, with the thief letting go of his helmet and punching him instead. After two hits Teren let go and the Critel ran off.

“Ahh,” he moaned, rolling over and looking face down at the ground through his off center faceplate.

“Es?” he asked, standing up and reaching for his gun…that wasn’t there.

Between the empty feeling on his hip and his throbbing head, his balance was lost as he stepped onto the stone-like curb in front of one of the more respectable establishments and he fell out into busy vehicular traffic on Pal. A light personnel transport hit and knocked him forward at an angle that sent him rolling back onto the walkway and bowling two other people over. His body flung into a third, but the mass of the Calavari stopped him cold as his helmet ricocheted off down the street.

Esna chased the Nargool for two more turns, then frustratingly lost him entirely. Not knowing which way to go at the next intersection she stopped, desperately wanting something to punch when Teren’s absence dawned on her. She turned around and didn’t see him coming, immediately getting worried as she started backtracking.

When she got over to Pal there was a large crowd frozen in a wide circle, keeping their distance from something. She gently pushed her way through looking for another fight, then the crowd suddenly backed away from her as well, giving her a good view of her crawling brother with a line of blood coming down his nose…and no helmet in sight.

“Human,” someone hissed, then a few others began to repeat the word.

Esna pulled out her pistol and held it at the ready, getting a deadly vibe from the crowd as she ran over to her brother and knelt beside him, keeping her eyes peeled for trouble.

“How bad are you?” her mechanical voice asked.

“I’m seeing double,” he said in his natural voice, and the sound of it only seemed to reinforce the fear and hate coming from the crowd.

Looking around she also scanned the area for his helmet, but it was nowhere in sight. She checked his hip, but his weapon was gone as well, leaving her pistol as their only defense.

“Stand if you can, and keep close to me.”

Teren put an armored hand on her shoulder and slowly rose, wobbling heavily, then a lachar blast came out of the crowd and hit him in the chest, knocking him back to the ground.

Esna stepped in front of him and raised her pistol, looking for a target and seeing half a dozen people scrambled away from a Calavari who was aiming a rifle at her, held between its two right arms. She shot the big red target twice as another shot from him missed her shoulder by a few inches, then suddenly there was lachar fire coming from multiple directions. Esna got hit twice, her armor absorbing most of the damage, but the energy/gaseous impacts spun her around a bit as she dropped to a knee and returned fire with a flurry of shots going towards anything that looked even remotely hostile.

A few more intense seconds persisted, then there was a moment of silence as four injured/dead bodies lay in the street around her.

Esna twisted her head left and right, spinning around on her crouching feet looking for other threats before taking a step to the side and standing over her brother.

“We have to get out of here,” she said, seeing him cringing but still alive as three different spots on his armor were smoking. “Come on.”

Teren took her hand and rolled onto his feet. His head was still throbbing, but his eyes were focused enough for him to take a step without falling over…barely.

“I can’t move fast.”

“Give me what you’ve got,” she said, helping him with one hand and brandishing her pistol with the other while giving intimidating helmet glares at everyone around them as she helped her brother off Pal and into a pedestrian side street. The walls gave them a bit of cover, but the reluctant crowds were growing. They weren’t coming close, but they weren’t letting them get out of sight either. Esna could have easily ran where she liked, for the pedestrian street ahead of them was clearing out in a hurry, but Teren was in bad shape and his head was fully exposed. He was fortunate one of those shots hadn’t hit him there, but by the way people were staring at them she knew they were in trouble.

The warnings about showing their skin weren’t just a thing of myth after all. She didn’t know what ‘Human’ meant, but it couldn’t be good and the look in the crowd’s eyes was one that she’d seen before, only never this intense. They were out for blood and she didn’t know why. Even passersby suddenly lit up with either fear or revulsion when they stumbled out into their path, then they ran off to safety…either to escape them or track them along with the others from a distance.

“Keep moving. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You hit?” Teren asked, his eyes on his feet as he leaned on her heavily.

“We’re being followed…by everyone.”

“My helmet…” he said as the reality of the situation dawned on his confused mind.

“I think so.”

“Get away from the buildings. Edge of town,” Teren said, spitting some blood after the last word as his nose continued to bleed down onto his lips.

Another lachar blast hit Esna in the back, causing her to stumble forward as they both fell…but it was intentional. She let her brother drop as she spun around, firing three quick shots into the Nargool at the other end of the street. One hit it in the head, killing it instantly as the crowd backed away. One of them got hit by her other shots, but whoever it was scrambled out of sight and the street cleared off save for a few brave idiots poking their heads into view briefly to see what was going on.

“Damn that’s hot,” she said, cringing as the light burn mark in her back slowly subsided, but a trail of smoke was rising from the hole in her short cape as it simmered from the destructive bolt that had melted through it, but the material didn’t catch fire, thankfully.

“Move,” she insisted, pulling Teren to his feet and trying to get the both of them into a slow jog as they came around a corner and headed down a narrower street, staying away from both Pal and Palo.

4

They didn’t make it to the edge of the city. They were a good 200 meters from getting out of the bigger buildings and into the scattered ones around the perimeter when a group of armed people ambushed them at an intersection. Esna saw it coming, thankfully, when one stepped a little too far out of cover and showed the tip of his Calavari-sized boot.

She threw her brother to the side, pinning him up against the wall as she proactively fired into the ground ahead of them near to the foot, missing it but drawing the ambushers out. There were so many of them she couldn’t count, so she just pulled the trigger as fast as she could, throwing herself to the other side of the street to draw fire away from her brother and taking a shot to her right leg.

Esna kept her torso level, dropping to a knee for a few shots then juking back into the middle of the narrow street as she continued to fire. Those attackers without armor went down quickly, for with even a little preparation she was a very a good shot, but at least two of them were wearing vests and another non-Calavari was wearing full armor, including an opaque faceplate that made it impossible to know what was underneath.

They ducked and dodged, not wanting to just stand there and take hits, but they did have more guns than her and had to keep them firing in order to take advantage of their numbers. Others didn’t think so tactically, firing a single shot then running for fear of getting hit like this was a game rather than a fight while leaving others to die with no cover. Esna mowed down as many as she could, sensing her ammo running low and whisking out a replacement cartridge from her belt as soon as she clicked an empty shot.

She rolled to her left as she reloaded, taking a couple more hits that burnt her skin through the armor but adrenaline and fear for her brother kept her moving. Esna came up firing again and charged forward yelling, scaring several attackers out of view and making her taking down the others easier, but she was still outgunned. All she could do was dodge side to side and keep shooting, hoping that they’d get lucky and somehow survive this.

But when a pair of shots came in from behind her she realized they were as good as dead. Ducking down and letting some crossfire hopefully hit her attackers, she scrambled for a few steps towards the nearest dead body. She shot two more unarmored ones, forcing the group back as she grabbed one of the loose weapons then retreated as she took a hit in the head from behind. The thickness of her helmet soaked it up, saving her for the next few seconds at least, as she spun around and ran a few steps, throwing the short rifle towards where her brother lay…but it skidded across the ground into his body, bouncing off it without a reaction.

A horrible feeling wracked her, but sheer will kept her firing at everyone in sight. The next few moments were a blur of emotions and pain until one of the silent attackers let out a bellowing Calavari roar that drew her ire and her weaponsfire to her left.

But rather than turning face on into more lachar fire, she saw two of the attackers fly through the air towards her. Esna shot one of them before his feet hit the dirt, then she pumped two shots into the armored torso of the other as he rolled towards her. A third shot hit flesh through an opening in the chest plate and the attacker flopped out of his roll while the Calavari that had thrown him came into full view. He was a whirling mess of brown robes and flying orange fists that broke bones on contact and pulled the weapons away from others with his four hands.

She shot another Calavari in the leg then threw the weapon aside with disdain as he drove his injured brethren into the wall as if he weighed less than Esna, dropping him stunned to the ground as the other attackers nearby scrambled away and those down the street suddenly stopped firing.

“They’re Humans!” one of them cried in protest, but an angry growl as loud as the engine of a truck silenced any reply as the big Calavari walked up and past Esna, imposing his bulk between her and those still holding guns.

“No trouble,” another Calavari said, lowering his weapon and backtracking quickly along with the others.

The robed Calavari spun around, glaring at those down the other end of the street…and they vanished as well.

Esna was breathing so hard it took her a moment to even feel her rapid, adrenaline-fueled pulse, then she realized she was pointing her pistol at the Calavari. Her nerves told her to shoot, but the logical part of her mind that was still operating told her not to. Before she could make a decision an orange hand shot out and grabbed the barrel, twisting it aside but not tearing it from her grasp.

“Can you walk?” the Calavari asked in a remarkably youthful voice, though still deep in tone compared to her own.

She didn’t answer him, unable to work her vocal chords as grief and fear locked her down. Seeing the state she was in the Calavari let go of the weapon and knelt over Teren, pulling his body towards him and putting a pair of fingers on his head, turning it to the side and revealing a charred entry wound.

Esna involuntarily took a step back as she realized her brother was dead, but before she could completely fall apart the big Calavari picked up her brother’s body and tucked it between his two left arms, then looked at her.

“We have to leave, now. I will protect you as long as I can, but there will be more coming. Too many to fight. They know what you are now and they will not rest until you’re dead.”

When her emotions locked her down again, a big orange hand came out and gently smacked her in the arm, propelling her a few steps down the street.

“Move now, think later. I do not want to lose you too,” the unknown Calavari said, carrying her brother as if he was no more than a paperweight.

Esna was in pain beyond words and the burns in her body were the least of it, but something in his voice compelled her to move. Time swirled and before she knew it they were crossing Palo as the crowds continued to swell, but they all pulled back hard when they saw the Calavari. Whoever he was they did not want to mess with him, but the murderous look in their eyes told Esna they were coming after her as soon as he left her side, and that fear kept her moving with him until she finally croaked out her first word since her brother died.

“Who… are you?”

“A friend,” he said simply. “Can you move faster?”

Her body hurt, but at this point neither that nor anything else really mattered.

“Yes.”

“Keep close,” he said, then suddenly they were running through empty, narrow streets with an unlimited number of eyes tracking them at every turn with weapon barrels poking out beneath them. When one of them finally dared to fire, the shot missed Esna and hit the Calavari, but it didn’t seem to faze him. Esna spun and fired back, but a big hand on her other arm yanked her forward after two shots, making her keep pace as a small flame marked the impact point in the Calavari’s robes.

When he let go of her his hand patted it out quickly, then they turned another corner and ran on. Another hundred meters more and they came to a stop next to a nook in the wall that contained a ladder.

“Up,” he said, climbing ahead of her with two arms as he carried her brother in the others and wasn’t wasting any time. He was halfway up the building before she could even get on the first rung, and she fired a quick shot into the dirt down the street to push back the crowd before climbing up as fast as she could, afraid that she was going to get hit on the way up.

But no return shots came. Whoever this Calavari was these people were deathly afraid of him.

When Esna got near the top he grabbed her and hauled her up the last few rungs, dropping her on her feet beside him as he pointed to a hoverbike parked on the roof.

“Get on,” he said, rushing ahead of her and half jumping onto the wide seat while still holding her brother in a vice grip between his two side arms. When she hesitated he turned his head and glared at her. Most of his body was covered in swaths of dull material, but his face and neck were exposed. They looked as if they were chiseled from gleaming orange rock, and his expression was no less intense.

“Get…on…” he repeated.

Esna moved, but it was almost as if her body were carrying her along, for her will was dead. She climbed up and straddled the too wide seat, having to lean back to get her legs spread wide enough. Fortunately there was an equipment rack on the back that she could brace against, for as soon as her butt hit the squishy seat they rocketed across the roof.

She wasn’t ready for the drop when they got to the edge and her already overstressed emotions felt a spike of shock when the building disappeared beside her…but the fall didn’t occur and they continued on straight, passing over Palo and another building as they accelerated towards the edge of the settlement. When they got to the last building they shot out under the harsh sunlight in midair, not dropping down to the ground but flying some 20 meters up for more than a minute before suddenly dipping down and hugging the terrain as they moved through a large curve and put a low rise between them and the settlement.

“Yammar,” Esna suddenly said, remembering. “I have to get to Yammar,” she yelled over the wind.

“Who is Yammar?”

“Our…” she said, emotionally clamming up again before biting her lip to steady her nerve. “Our father. He’s waiting on the other side of town.”

“Then that is the last place we want to go. We’re being followed.”

“What?” she asked, gripping a low handlebar as she turned around so not to be peeled off by the fierce wind. “I don’t see anyone.”

“They’re coming. And they’re not going to stop until they kill you.”

“Why!” she yelled, her frustration and anger coming out like a cannon in that single word.

“Many reasons. But primarily they fear those who destroyed this world coming back to get you, so they will try and kill you first.”

“What?” she yelled, barely caring and vexed by this insanity.

“You are being hunted, and I promise I will do all I can to keep you safe for as long as I can.”

“Why?” she asked as they rose up again to pass over a cliff wall where other hoverbikes of lesser tech couldn’t go, then they dropped back down and made a sharp right turn, hugging a bolder field close enough that Esna’s dangling left foot clipped a rock and half dragged her off the bike.

“I am a Commando.”

“What does that mean?” she asked after righting herself

The Calavari half turned his head. “You truly have no idea what you are?”

“They called me a Human.”

“They do not know what you are. It is a term they’ve heard and repeated and twisted with tales over time. None of them have ever seen your likeness before.”

“Then what am I?”

“You are Human. They accidentally got that right. Now word will spread and many hunters will come from you. Some for sport, some out of fear, but it is those that are not from this world that are the primary threat. We have some time and must make use of it. Tuck in behind me. We’re going to accelerate soon and I don’t want you thrown off.”

Esna didn’t know what he was talking about, and with her heart literally torn out of her body she leaned forward and rested her helmet on the back of the Calavari’s cloak as she fiercely held on to the sidebars. For a moment her faceplate was staring directly at her brother’s body, inches away from his legs. Tears and grief welled up so much that she had to turn her head the other way, and she hated herself for having to do it.

She hung there behind the Calavari, belatedly realizing that her head was resting against something hard underneath his cloak, but not caring as the wind whipped up and the landscape passed by in a blur as the speeder accelerated to a speed hers never could have…nor any other that she’d ever seen.

Esna rode in a ball of grief behind her mysterious rescuer not knowing how much time had passed until the sun suddenly went out and darkness fell around them. A moment later she was pushed into his back as they quickly decelerated. When she was able to pry her face loose she saw cave walls flashing past at dizzying speed, then a tight turn brought them around a giant rock formation and they ground to a halt with the bike hovering a meter off the ground…or rather where ground would have been. Instead there was nothing but blackness beneath her.

The Calavari dropped their altitude and a small light appeared in the wall ahead of them. Two more also became visible as small green dots as they lowered further, and with her helmet’s limited nightvision she saw rough rock formations approaching below them that he steered around following the guide lights until they landed on a broken bit of platform that led into a partially lit tunnel.

“Get off,” he said, waiting for Esna to pry her cramped legs free before he hefted himself and Teren’s body over to the other side. “We can’t stay here long, but there are some things we’ll need.”

“I have to get back to Yammar.”

The Calavari’s head sagged. “You fear for his safety?”

“Should…should I?” she said, not having thought of that. “What are they going to do to him?”

“Most likely they will kill him as well, along with anyone else associated with you.”

“Take me back now!” she said firmly, but the Calavari only looked more sad.

“They are coming to kill you. If you go to him, you will only draw them to him and ensure his death. If you run as far from him as you can, then there is the small chance they might ignore him.”

“How likely is that?”

“Not very. The fear in their eyes was one of madness. And madness will strike at anything and everything they feel is contaminated.”

“Then I have to go back and fight.”

“You will die. As will he. The most you can do is give him this small chance. If you go back he has none.”

“I can die fighting alongside him.”

“I would expect nothing less from a Human, but you do not know who it is that pursues you. Or will, once word spreads of your sighting. I intend to deny you to them for as long as possible.”

“And leave Yammar to die alone,” she said, already feeling dead herself and not able to bear him and Innit…

“It is not an easy choice to make, but we must do what we can. We cannot prevent their deaths by going back. But we can deny their killers what they seek…and that is you. It is not enough. I do not expect you to feel good about it. But we must take every moment of time we have and use it to disappear, for those who hunt you are very good at what they do…and I do not refer to the rabble in town.”

“You haven’t told me who’s after me, or why.”

“Those who are stronger than me. I cannot defeat them in combat, so my only avenue to best them is by running and denying them their prize. I cannot and will not squander what little advantage we have. I know you are hurting, but come with me. We can take no more time talking here,” he said, turning around and carrying her brother into the tunnel and out of the shadows.

“Where are we?” she asked, following him for no other reason than wanting to stay near her brother’s body. She wasn’t going to let him get out of sight with it.

“Ruins from long ago. Forgotten by many, but not those who will soon be hunting you. We must stay on the move.”

“What is a Human?” she asked meekly, the fire in her quickly turning into despair. “We were told never to show our face or skin to others. Why are we hunted? And by who?”

“A discussion for another time…when we have time,” he said, pushing aside a partially open door that had no power. “What I must do now concerns your brother, and I do not expect you to understand.”

“No,” she said, not knowing what he was going to do but fearing something awful, but once she got inside the room she saw that it was of the same construction as the ruins they had been scavenging before, except this room was immaculate. The Calavari walked over to a bed platform and laid the body down, releasing Teren from the iron grip that had been carrying him protectively ever since they’d fled the settlement streets, then the Calavari’s hands began to move over it, disassembling the armor and revealing multiple burn marks beneath.

“Stop,” she said, but one of his four hands reached back and held her firm.

“I assure you I have great respect for Humans. They saved my people long ago, and there is a debt there that has never been fully repaid. We cannot take his body with us, but our pursuers from the settlement will not find it here. The others that will hunt us might, but if they come here then he will draw them further away from us,” the Calavari said as he continued to pull off pieces of armor and reveal the burned clothing beneath, which he then began to strip off him as well.

“Stop,” she repeated, punching his muscled arm to no avail, with which he gently but firmly shoved her back a full meter away from him.

Soon her brother’s bloody body was naked and carried over to the other side of the room and put into a vertical cylinder. Esna wanted to scream, but didn’t have the energy left in her so she stood still and watched in protest as Teren was drenched with water. The blood and grime came off, then the big orange arms pulled him out and took him aside to a storage compartment from which the most beautiful clothing Esna had ever seen was stored.

The four hands quickly dressed Teren in deep blue garments that nearly matched his body’s dimensions…not the oversized robes that most people in the desert wore or the wrap-like under garments that she had beneath her armor. Next came equally smooth and blue socks, followed by the Calavari choosing from a rack of shoes until he found a size that would fit. He slipped them on then carried the body in all four arms before him.

“Come with me.”

“What is this?” Esna asked, following him out of the room and back into the corridor.

“Are there any more of you? Yammar is a Calavari name.”

“Like us…no.”

“No other Humans.”

“No,” she repeated.

“How did you get here?”

“Our father brought us…then died to a Glader attack. Yammar and Innit raised us, but they never told us we were Human. Only that we couldn’t show ourselves to anyone.”

“Wise of them. What is your name?”

“Esna.”

“And this one?”

“Teren. He’s my…brother,” she said, welling up again.

“Teren,” the Calavari repeated. “I am sorry I could not save you. After all this time it is cruel irony that I was moments too late.”

“He can’t hear you,” she said angrily, as if he was mocking her brother.

“I know. In fact I know a great many things it appears you do not. We will have to discuss that later, but right now I need to know how you came to this world. Tell me of your father.”

“He brought us here by ship. He was a trader.”

“And what happened to his ship?”

“Sold.”

“Where was it from?”

“I don’t know. He died when we were young. We barely remember him.”

“Was there anyone else on your ship?”

“No. Just the three of us.”

“And you two have lived here unnoticed ever since?”

“Yes, but unnoticed by who? You still haven’t told me who is coming after us…or even your own name.”

“I am Rammak.”

“Where are you taking my brother, Rammak,” she said, still following him down corridors that were mostly intact, though there was a collapsed beam every now and then to navigate around.

“Here,” he said, opening and walking through another door, this one with power that whooshed aside at the press of a button. “This is where we must leave him.”

“No.”

Rammak ignored her and laid Teren’s body down on a flat and smooth tabletop, then a colorful lightshow lit up all around him with tiny glowing dots. Esna’s eyes went wide beneath her helmet that still bore the melted blast mark where she’d been hit.

“What is all this?”

“Your legacy…and mine.”

“Meaning what?”

“This is a starmap from before the fall, and it is the most appropriate place to leave him I can think of. Neither of you belong on this world. You belong in the past, and I can at least return him to it here and now. Beyond that there is nothing more I can do for your brother, but there is a great deal I can do for you. Stay here for a moment. I will return.”

Esna didn’t say anything as he left, then took off her helmet showing red eyes and a pained face now lit by the glowing blue and grey dots that were surrounding her brother in a beautiful burial mount. She didn’t know what a starmap was, but it was the most awe inspiring sight she had ever seen…though it could barely put a dent in the emptiness that was consuming her.

“Teren,” she whispered, suddenly pulling her gloves off in a panicked rush so she could touch his face.

“Teren,” she repeated, sobbing and leaning over him not knowing what to do, but having no intention of ever moving from this spot.

“To lose you both would be unbearable,” Rammak finally said softly from behind her a few minutes later.

“I don’t care,” she mumbled, still clinging to her brother.

“I do.”

She didn’t answer, but a large soft hand slowly wrapped itself around her head, cupping her choppy hair in a caring gesture, but not pulling her away.

“Take a moment more, then we must go.”

5

When Rammak finally nudged her aside she twisted out of his grip and latched onto her brother’s body.

“No…” she said desperately.

But the big Calavari didn’t rip her away as he easily could have. Instead he pointed at Teren.

“What do you do with your dead on this planet?”

“Bury them. Burn them.”

“Eat them,” Rammak said, with Esna’s teary face whipping around to sneer at him.

“Some do,” he said regretfully. “What would you have done?”

“I’m not leaving him,” she said, but the futility of the words burned in her.

Rammak stepped up beside her and sat down on the ground, bringing his massive head about level with hers as she leaned over Teren.

“When you and I and Teren began, where did we come from?”

“What?”

“Where did we come from? Where does a person come from?”

“Their parents.”

“No. Our bodies do. Our minds do. But where does the person come from?”

“What do you mean?” she said, just glad to be talking rather than being ripped away from her brother.

“Do you know what a computer is?”

She frowned. “I’m not a child.”

“You are…in many ways. If your body is your physical parts, then your mind is a computer. Very complicated, but like any machine it can only do what it is programmed to do. It can’t think. It can’t make choices. It may look like it does, but everything in it is just a predetermined reaction. A machine can’t be stupid. How then can people be?”

“I don’t understand.”

“If a person were just a mind and body they would not be stupid. They would follow their programming as a machine only can. The ability to choose, the ability to be stupid, to go beyond your programming is a sign of something else. Your body heals itself by design, but some people puncture their bodies for fashion. Surely you’ve seen at least a few in town.”

“We…don’t get into town a lot, but I have seen some.”

“Your body does not like the damage, simple as it is, because it’s against its programming. It is programmed to heal, yet the person chooses to cause the damage because they think it looks good or for as many other reasons as you could imagine. The body tries to heal, the mind says not to poke or cut via pain and fear, but something else inside chooses to dispute those things and make the alterations anyway. That something else is what we refer to as the ‘Core’ of a person.”

“And?”

“Your core is the part of you that makes you a person. The part of you that is you. Where does it come from?”

“Your parents.”

“Does it? No one can say for sure, for no device ever made could identify the core. It’s still a mystery for the galaxy, even those that are far wiser than you can believe. They know the core exists because they can spot the interactions it has with the mind and body. Stupidity is one of those interactions. Bravery is another. So while no one can touch or see a person’s core, you can know when it is there by watching for its ripples. This is how we know you have a core but a plant does not. A plant has a body and a limited mind that will adjust to temperature and light. It can change and react, but all according to programming. It cannot choose. Cannot be stupid. It is alive, yet not alive. It is a biological machine.”

“So too is your body,” Rammak continued, “but your core is inside it. We do not know how it got there, or even what it is. Also, we do not know what happens to it when you die, but we know it does not leave the body immediately after death.”

“What!” she asked, a part of her wondering if there was a way her brother was still here.

“We know this because people have been dead and brought back to life after a short span of time. Sadly the equipment necessary to do so in these ruins has been far too damaged to function or I would have attempted to bring Teren back.”

“There’s a machine that can bring the dead back to life?” she asked, a mix of disbelief and cruel hope.

“It simply repairs the damage to the body. It cannot touch the core, but if someone is dead and then is repaired and they are still there afterwards, it means we know the person’s core doesn’t leave the body when the heart stops beating. At least not immediately. The sorry thing is, we can only learn about the core through observing a person act, and when they’re not functioning there is nothing to observe. So is your brother still in his body or has he gone from it?”

Esna looked down at his motionless frame, her emotions so confused now she almost couldn’t get any words out.

“What are you saying to me?”

“The device I speak of is called a Regenerator. I have seen it used to bring back those dead for hours, and have heard stories of it working after days in some rare cases…but in others it could not save those who were dead for only minutes. The bodies were repaired but they were inactive. The mind was functional, but there was no sign of a core’s presence. It’s like they were empty, though without being able to track a core we can’t say for sure. We don’t know how a core begins and we do not know how it ends, and out of respect for that fact we do not destroy the dead immediately. We lay them out like this, in safety if possible, to allow whatever transpires with their core to pass.”

“You’re saying my brother could still be inside his body?”

“No one can know for sure, and the only Regenerators I have found on this planet have been fragments, so there is no way to see if he is still there or not. Does he transition elsewhere or simply cease to exist? Those that say either are merely guessing, for no one knows that which they can’t see or study, but to say a core itself dies requires one to determine how it first began, and there are no answers there either. The core of a person is a mystery that we can only glimpse it when alive through its interactions with the body and the mind. If your mind is a computer, your core is the person sitting at the controls of that computer giving it instructions. Do you understand?”

“You’re saying Teren could still be in here,” she said, cupping her hand around the part of his head that didn’t have a hole in it.”

“We cannot know anything for certain, other than he is beyond our ability to help. Whatever his journey from here, whether it continues in another fashion or ends abruptly, is something we cannot affect once his core leaves his body. How long that takes is the question, thus we will leave your brother here in solitude so that such unseen things may pass of their own accord. Normally we would burn the body after a given time to prevent it from rotting, but we cannot wait here through that lengthy delay and I do not want to destroy his body now.”

“Because he might still be inside it…” Esna said, biting her lip as the thought of those implications horrified her.

“His brain is not functioning, so bodily pain cannot register, but what occurs with the core is unknown. There are savages that claim they gain strength by eating their kill while the blood is still warm, and while I do not believe they know anything of consequence, such ramifications of what occurs to a person’s core are not something that should be ignored…thus we respect the dead by giving them a time of rest to transition, if possible. In war there is not always time, and as I said, it is better to destroy the bodies than to let them rot. The equipment is here to destroy Teren’s body if we chose to, but I would prefer to give him solitude during whatever transition his core is making, and there is no way to determine whether that has happened yet or not.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Look around,” Rammak said. “These ruins have been on this planet for a long time, but to me they are not ruins. They are my past. I was here before they became ruins.”

Esna’s face twisted up even more than her grief had done. “You’re lying. The cataclysm was too long ago.”

“People don’t have to die as quickly as they do here and now, Esna. You can live forever.”

Esna shook her head. “No. Everyone…dies,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut again as she looked at her brother.

“Everyone can die,” Rammak corrected, “but not everyone has to. I very much want to keep you alive, but in order to do that we must move on and take advantage of what head start we have on our inevitable pursuit. I can destroy Teren’s body before then, but I would prefer to leave him here for the transition period.”

“And then to rot?” she pointed out.

“We are at war and do not have the luxury of remaining. If his core does leave his body then it will rot without him in it. That is distasteful, but I would rather err on the side of caution than disrespect the fact that he might still be in his body now. We need to leave him here, alone, and move on.”

Esna didn’t say anything this time, merely bowing her head until it rested on Teren’s unmoving chest.

“I would prefer this remain a moment in your memory that was respectful of your brother, but if I have to carry you out of here kicking and clawing to stay behind I will. He is dead, you are not. Would he want you to survive or to die with him?”

“I’m already dead without him,” she said between gasps of air that seemed reluctant to enter her lungs.

“No. You still live, pained as you are. But not all of your pain is grief. You are injured, and we must attend to that now, Regenerator or no. Come with me…please. But know that I will save your life even if you no longer care for it. I will carry you out of this room as baggage if need be, and you will not be able to stop me.”

“No?” Esna snarled, pulling her pistol out and aiming it at him, but the Calavari did not react. He just stared at her patiently for a moment, then the fire within Esna disappeared along with the strength in her arm. It dropped along with the pistol, clattering on the floor as she sagged down into a puddle beneath the table on which her brother lay.

“I’m sorry,” she said, balling up in a mess of grief until one of the giant four-fingered orange hands came within her vision and gently grabbed her own tiny hand.

“Come. All you need do is follow. Set your mind to that and I will help you survive. You are parted from your brother now whether you wish it or not. He will traverse whatever lies next, so bid him farewell and continue on with your journey. There is nothing left for you to do here.”

Esna let the Calavari pull her to her feet, then she turned around and looked at Teren’s body one last time. The beautiful clothing and the serenity of the place was something he deserved, rather than the hole in the ground that their father had been placed into so long ago. And Rammak was right. There was nothing else she could do for him now.

“You said he’ll be safe here?”

“Most cannot come the way we did. And those that can, if they find this place, will not be here until after the transition period. Your brother will have his time to lay in peace regardless of what transpires from here on out. There is no need to guard him.”

Esna looked around the room, seeing all the stuff in here that wouldn’t have survived even a single scavenger, and she knew he was right. No one knew about this place.

“I’ll follow,” she said meekly.

Rather than add further discussion, the Calavari reached down and picked up her helmet before walking to the door.

“We have to attend to your wounds,” he said from the corridor as he waited for her to come.

Esna moved slowly, but she did move. Not knowing if this was the right thing to do or not, for a part of her still didn’t want to leave her brother, damn the logic of it all. But her mind settled on following the Calavari while it curled up into a pain-ridden ball and checked out of everything else.

She walked in a daze following his big mass, not knowing or caring where they were going, lost in the grief and futility of the moment.

6

“Take your armor off,” he said when they’d finally reached another intact room, this one filled with piles of what looked like salvage taken from the rest of the facility. None of it was broken, however, and Rammak began pulling out something in tiny packages from a box.

Esna did as told, automatically disconnecting the various latches that held her protection and camouflage together. As she pulled off each piece she began to feel more and more exposed. The only people who had ever seen her outside her armor were Teren, Yammar, and Innit…and it felt very odd to be taking it off somewhere other than their home or in the wild with no one around.

She winced several times, and it wasn’t because of the exposure. Between the adrenaline of the fight and the heart wrenching emotions she’d numbed up against the physical pain of the burns, but peeling the armor off and rubbing them was reigniting the pain as well as tearing away the cauterized scabs. Her blood ran fresh, soaking into an already burnt, red, and sweaty clothing wrap underneath. Esna didn’t stop though, and soon was standing with her armor pieces in a pile as a cool draft sent a chill through her despite the clothing she still wore.

In fact it went all the way through her and to the bone. Esna began shivering and wouldn’t stop, eventually having to sit down on the ground else she fall down due to lack of coordination.

“Aftershock,” Rammak said, kneeling down next to her. “I need to take your clothes off to apply these.”

“Wha…t…are…the..y?” she asking through chattering teeth.

“Healing patches. They’re very old, but the ones I’ve used still work. I assume these will as well. May I?”

“You…wi..ll…an…yway.”

The Calavari smiled. “True. I will not let you come to harm out of misguided humility,” he said, standing up and grabbing something else. He returned with a cutting tool and slid it along her sleeve.

“He…y…”

“I have other clothes for you,” he said, cutting it all the way up to her neck and repeating on the other arm before peeling her shirt off and exposing her breasts, but it was the burn marks that he was interested in. They were spilling out more blood now, and he had to get that stopped before she lost much more.

He took one patch and opened it, applying a certain side to her skin and smoothing the edges around it as he covered the burn, then used a piece of her shirt to wipe away the surrounding blood, none of which adhered to the patch itself.

“Ah…wha…t?”

“There is a pain numbing chemical in the patch. It won’t do anything for your emotional state or shock, but the burns…” he said, trailing off as he saw another one near the small of her back. A deep one. “I am surprised you are still able to walk. You must have taken two hits to the same location. Most of a shot must have gotten through.”

“How…ba..d?”

“Stay still…as much as you can manage,” Rammak said as he began rummaging through the boxes.

Esna couldn’t, for she was shaking more now than ever as it dawned on her that it wasn’t the temperature. She was more messed up than she realized, not to mention helpless had the Calavari not been here. He returned several long moments later holding a small device. With two of his big hands he gently gripped her body and flipped her over face down. She grimaced as a burn on her leg complained, but the spot of pain in her back suddenly disappeared.

“This gel will hold the place of the missing tissue and spur its regeneration. I have not had cause to use it, so let us hope it still works. Lie still and I will attend to the rest.”

Esna didn’t try to speak, for it was all she could do to keep from banging her head on the floor as she shivered. Her sweaty body got colder as he cut away the rest of her clothing save for her underwear and socks. Soon the other painful spots on her body disappeared from her mental view, replaced by a sharp sting on her neck.

“Ow,” she complained, but suddenly her teeth stopped chattering and her body suddenly flushed with warmth…that disappeared a few seconds later with a wave of goosebumps starting at her head and traveling all the way down to her toes. “What was that?”

“Anti-shock medication.”

“Did you test that on yourself too?” she asked, rolling over onto her leg carefully and looking at the patches on her body that were visible to her eyes. They were made of a smooth, almost magical material that clung to her skin despite it being wet with sweat that was quickly evaporating in the now very chilly room.

“No, but I learned how to use it long ago.”

“Instruction manual?”

“I was taught to use them. Now, put these on. If they are not your size I have found others that may fit better.”

Esna was handed a stack of white clothing which she took cautiously. It was like the ones her brother was dressed in, except brilliant white. No, it wasn’t completely white. When she unfolded the shirt she saw a narrow brown line running down the sleeve. The pants as well had a matching marking, and as Esna pulled them on first she got a very odd feeling…like she was in some dream. It might have been the drugs he’d just given her, but the feel of the material on her battered, exhausted legs seemed to revitalize her a bit.

She stood up in bare feet to put the shirt on, with it coming all the way down to her wrists. It was loose but trim, though it didn’t offer any support for her breasts like her body wrap had. Still, that didn’t feel like a problem, and she could adjust herself accordingly when she put her armor back on, as she’d had to do before in some cases.

The memory of that brought another flush of tears, linking back to her brother, but this time very little fluid came out. She had cried herself dry.

“They appear to fit,” Rammak said, looking her over with a steady, almost staring gaze.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Am I hurt that bad?”

“Yes, but you will live. I have not seen a Human wearing that clothing in a painfully long time.”

“They feel good,” was all she could think to say.

“You have not earned them, but given the circumstances I believe they belong on you rather than sitting entombed in this place.”

Esna frowned. “Earned?”

“The white clothing with a single stripe down the side. It is a rank you have not earned, but no matter. They are yours now. There are shoes if you want them, but I do not think your armor’s boots will accommodate them. Still, find yourself a matching pair and we will take them with us.”

“Where?”

“Away from here, and the further the better before the eyes in the sky begin watching. Come here.”

Esna walked on bare feet across the room feeling horrible inside and pristine on the outside as Rammak led her to a sealed container that he opened revealing a pile of equally white shoes. They weren’t boots and didn’t look durable at all, but she couldn’t help but reach in and feel them. Her mind zoned out into a haze, but a hand on her shoulder brought her back from wherever she’d been.

“Are you disoriented?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Focus on the task at hand. Your body will heal itself given time.”

“If you say so,” she said, pulling out a shoe and reaching it down to her foot and lining it up. It was too long so she tried another and another until she found one that looked like it would fit. Sliding it on felt beyond weird, so smooth and soft, but it was too small. She regretted taking her foot out, but when she did find one that fit she didn’t ever want to wear boots again.

“This one.”

“Find its pair. Here are socks,” he said, handing her some tiny scraps of cloth.

“These won’t fit.”

“They will. Pull them on and they’ll expand.”

She looked at them oddly, then her mind began to wander again into a blizzard of noise and emotion that kept trying to suck her in.

“Focus on what you’re doing,” Rammak’s voice boomed, bringing her back to reality. “Put them on, then the shoes,” he said, moving to collect her armor.

She didn’t know what was going on, what to do, or what to feel, so she just did as he told her and tried to get the tiny finger-sized piece of clothing on her foot…and to her shock it did expand, covering her toes and then her entire foot up to the ankle. And it didn’t have any holes in it. How the material did that was remarkable.

Esna put the other one on then pulled the shoes over top and suddenly ended up on her knees crying out a few wisps of tears and looking down at her slightly quivering hands.

Rammak appeared before her again, tilting her chin up so she had to look at him.

“There is no time to explain. You have been hurt badly in two different ways. You will adapt given time, but you will suffer now and there is no way to avoid that. I will keep you moving whether you want to or not so you will avoid the worst of it, because the last thing you want to do is stop and end up in a thought loop. You need new experiences to get your balance back. Memories of the past will only draw you off course. You care for your brother, but for your own sake put all thought of him in a box within your mind and close it for now. You can open it later…much later…but for now there is nothing to be gained from thinking on him. We have done what we can, now we must focus on you and you alone.”

“Who…are you?”

“The person who is going to make sure you stay alive to see tomorrow. Now come with me. I have your armor and everything we need to repair it, but we cannot stay here. We must go now before word spreads and more hunters come after us.”

“Tell me who wants to kill me. Please.”

“Aside from the rabble back in town? It’s a long story, but if you want a name you may call them the Viks.”

“The…Viks?”

“And they are so powerful that I can’t fight them and win. The only way I can defeat them is by keeping you on the move and ahead of them. Can you understand that concept, even if the rest is confusing?”

“Where can we go that is safe?”

“There is nowhere safe, except where they’re not, and they can go anywhere. But if they search a place and do not find us there, we can hide there later. We have to move and keep moving, and we’ve already taken a considerable amount of time here. I do not know how much surveillance they have, so there is a place we must get to before they catch up with us. Once there we will at least temporarily lose their pursuit and have a chance to disappear, but it will be a race to get there.”

“Viks…” she repeated, losing her focus again.

“Very well,” he said, picking Esna up in one arm as she squealed in surprise, “there is no more time for talk. We are leaving.”

A bag full of her armor suddenly appeared to her right as she was held aloft in his left lower arm like another bag.

“I can walk.”

“Later. I must get you moving now.”

With those words the world around her suddenly began to thunder and blur as the Calavari took off running. Her body flopped up and down but his arm held firm, which was good because her head went completely blurry up until she felt solid ground beneath her feet…then she slumped down again for a moment, but a pair of hands picked her up again at the waist and her legs split. Next thing she knew her butt hit something hard and a rope was strung across her legs. It wasn’t too tight, but it held her in place as Rammak’s bulk suddenly was before her.

It took her a moment to realize she was back on the speeder, then the walls blurred again and she was thrown back against something large behind her. Holding onto the rope she twisted around and saw a bundle of sacks and supplies latched on.

“Where…” she muttered, then decided not to speak as the wind picked up. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus her vision when she opened them but there was nothing aside from darkness for quite a while. When the light returned it was sudden and blinding…then they were back on the surface and hurrying along across the barren landscape at dizzying speed.

Time swirled around Esna as they flew across far too much terrain with her mind lost in thought, exhaustion, and emotion. Eventually everything seemed to numb out to a graciously silent calm with the sound of the wind whipping by nearly putting her to sleep. When there was a sudden deceleration it roused her slightly, then the big mass in front of her slid off the seat and she fell forward, caught at the waist by the rope tying her down.

They’d stopped without her realizing and the suns were just dipping below the horizon. Everything was dark save for a sliver of sky on the western edge and that darkness would remain that way for a few hours only, but for now the boulders surrounding them were eerily defying her ability to see without her helmet.

“We will rest here,” Rammak said, untying Esna and helping her off. “You need to sleep.”

“Where are we?”

“Well to the south. I spotted two other vehicles, but neither were pursuing us. I think we’ve lost those looking for us in the settlement, but word will spread and other will be watching for us. It’s best if we stay ahead of that news, but we can spare a few hours here.”

“Do you have a light?” she asked, suddenly realizing her bladder was full. “I need to pee.”

Rammak dug into the stash of supplies on the speeder and pulled out a tiny rod that snapped into a bright blue glow.

“Thanks,” she said, holding the cool rod between thumb and forefinger as she stumbled away from the bike on cramped legs, disappearing behind several boulders with only the glow over their peaks marking her position. When she eventually came back out she saw Rammak moving smaller rocks aside creating a relatively flat position around a cylinder the size of her leg from knee to hip and about the same thickness.

She held out her hand, returning the glow rod that he reached back and took with his lower left as he continued picking up and tossing aside stones.

“Stand clear,” he said, getting up and chucking one last rock back over the speeder. Rammak touched a button on top of the cylinder and walked away, with it beginning to unfurl a few seconds later. Esna watched in surprise as it expanded out into a small building with a flat top and hard halls, which she confirmed with a poke of her finger as Rammak opened the door.

“How?”

“This planet used to be far more advanced than it is now.”

“We’ve…never found anything like this in the ruins.”

“I’ve had a lot more years to look. I’ll get you a bedroll and some food, then sleep as much as you can. We’ll be moving not long after sunup.”

Esna stood by and watched as he pulled some more equipment out of the stash and installed it inside the building. Eventually he waved her inside and she saw both a light and two beds laid out along with some other equipment, including a separate compartment.

“If you want to take a quick shower you can use this,” he said, pointing inside. “I’ll show you how to use it, and this is the more civilized way of relieving yourself.”

Esna looked as he pressed a button and a stool rose up from a panel of equipment on the floor.

“Take this outside and eat as much as you want while I use the equipment, then I’ll switch with you.”

Esna took the flat box into her no longer shaking hands and opened it, finding a variety of food cubes and rods that looked pathetically small.

“They’re condensed, so you’ll get a lot more food out of one than you might think. Two red ones should be enough for a full stomach for a Human.”

“Did you make these?”

“Yes. I salvaged some foodstuff production equipment. These wouldn’t have lasted since the bombardment like the rest of this stuff did.”

“Is this meat?” she asked, picking up a black cube.

“No,” he said gravely. “It’s made for Calavari. Your stomach probably won’t like it. You eat meat?”

“I grew up on a farm. We raised Brendilin.”

“You killed them?”

“Only a couple times. Usually Yammar did when we ate them, but most we sold,” she said, taking a step backwards as the look on Rammak’s face turned into a snarl. His fist balled up, then flexed open and shut several times.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, suddenly afraid.

“Humans eating meat…is abhorrent.”

“Why?”

Rammak just shook his head. “I expected better of you, but I assumed wrong. The fall has corrupted you as well.”

“What are you talking about?”

The Calavari calmed himself, then held up a reassuring hand. “Later. Right now you need to eat and rest. We can talk while we move, so save your questions.”

Rammak gave her the glow rod back and pointed at the door, which she left and he sealed behind her. She didn’t know what that had been about, but she really didn’t like the look that had crossed his face. Suddenly she realized just how much she needed him, and the thought of him turning on her made her lose most of her appetite.

She walked over to the speeder and sat sideways on the seat, picking one of the red cubes and nibbling on it experimentally. It thick and chewy, very dense like he’d said, but it tasted special…just like all this crazy equipment and her clothes felt. Esna popped the full cube in her mouth and chewed a lot, finding it incredibly difficult to work through and swallow, but her taste buds said it was worth it.

Her stomach did too as her hunger finally started to register. She picked up another red and was halfway chewing through it when Rammak came back out of the building and pulled a pair of bottles out of the stash to her left, handing one to her.

“Water.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking it and trying to avoid his eyes.

“I’m not going to strike you, but what you did was wrong. This planet is full of wrong, and I had assumed a Human would be immune to it.”

“Did you know other Humans?”

“Many.”

“Where?”

“Here and other worlds.”

Esna frowned. “You’ve been offworld?”

“Not for a very long time, but I was born on our capitol, Varasiss. I was fighting here when the planet fell and was left for dead. I’ve been here ever since.”

“How is that possible?”

“If I’m not killed I will live forever.”

“How?”

“Training,” Rammak said simply.

“Training?”

“There is a great deal you do not know, and if we survive long enough I will teach you, but for now finish eating, drink, and use the facilities inside to clean up. We don’t have much time to rest, and you look like you need every minute you can get.”

“The healing patches are working.”

“Not what I meant. You’ve been through a lot, body and mind.”

“I…”

“Don’t think, don’t speak, just rest. There will be time for both later,” Rammak said, taking a long drink from his own bottle.

Esna chose to let her questions go and did the same, tasting the purest water she had ever put to her lips. She wanted to ask where it came from, but let that question go as she gulped down more and more until the bottle was empty.

“Come. I will show you how to work the equipment, then give you some privacy.”

Esna gave him back the food tray and bottle, then he took her inside and did as promised. When he came out he shut the door and dug three small spheres out of the cargo stash, turning each of the little sentries on and releasing them to float in the air. He commanded them via a small band he put on his wrist and they flew off in different directions, giving him a heads up if anyone approached or any comm signals were picked up, for Esna wasn’t the only one who needed sleep and as soon as she was finished they were both going to grab a few hours before flying on further to the south and the canyons in the Peshvagma Belt.

7

“How old are you?” Esna asked, using her helmet’s audio amplification to shout past the wind whipping past them as Rammak’s extremely fast speeder dragged them further and further south. The Calavari had patched up her armor prior to waking her, so now she wore her gifted clothes underneath it while her sunburned skin from the previous day got a much needed break from the intense stellar radiation.

“This planet’s years are not true years. They’re slightly longer than standard, but in the proper units I am 1204 years old.”

“There’s no way that’s possible,” she yelled back far more than necessary.

“I am not the eldest, and those who hunt you will be older. Some are rumored to be over a million years old.”

“You’re not being serious. I’m not a child. Don’t play games with me.”

“This is no game,” Rammak said, almost in a growl. “The V’kit’no’sat have been around for well over a million years.”

“But the same ones?”

“Advanced races do not die unless killed in combat or accident. And when you are as powerful as them you have little competition capable of killing you. It’s part of the reason they hate you so much.”

“What did I do?”

“Humans can kill them,” he said simply.

“There’s a lot you’re not telling me,” she said, getting more frustrated. “Why can’t you just say whatever is needed plainly? Why the riddles?”

Rammak hesitated, then slightly turned his head back as they powered on across a plain full of rocks and scrub brush. “My apologies. It is hard to remember being ignorant. I don’t know all that you don’t know.”

“Just assume I know nothing.”

“It’s not that simple. There are things one must assume. Like the meaning of words. If you don’t know them, then explanations become pointless. I’m trying to keep my answers simple, but since I don’t know what it is that you do not understand I can’t navigate around it. Just keep asking questions.”

“I’m ignorant?”

“Do you know what that word means?”

Esna frowned beneath her helmet. “Not exactly.”

“Then you are ignorant about ignorance,” the Calavari quipped. “Ignorant means you don’t know something.”

“Really? That’s all?”

“That’s all. You thought it was an insult?”

“Sort of. What’s a normal year?”

“Different worlds spin at different rates, so a day is either based on the sun in the sky or by a set amount of time. Ours was based off the main capitol world’s, and a year was the same way. That kept everyone in the empire using the same measurements.”

“What empire?”

“The one whose ruins we were just in. This planet belonged to a very large empire before it was attacked and bombarded into oblivion. It was part of the Calavari faction. That’s why so many of the current residents are Calavari. They’re the descendants of the few survivors.”

“Forso was part of a Calavari empire?”

“This planet’s name isn’t Forso, it’s Mace. Part of the Mordekaiser System. Do you understand what a star system is?”

“Kind of.”

“There are three suns in the sky, but two are at the gravitational center of this star system. Everything else moves around them in a circle, more or less. Every star you see in the sky during the night is another sun far away marking another star system, most of which have a few planets. Some have many, some have none. This system has seven, but the other six do not have people living on them anymore. I haven’t gone there to check, but from what I’ve learned there is nothing there. They do not have breathable atmospheres, so when they were attacked I assume everyone died.”

“Do you have a spaceship?”

“No.”

“Have you traveled on one?”

“Not since the bombardment.”

“Why not if you know so much about what’s out there? Why didn’t you try to find your empire’s people or…wherever they went? You made it sound like some of them survived.”

“I hope they did, but this world is not unwatched. I could leave, but I would be vulnerable if I did. I have not lived this long to risk myself on such a gambit. If our people are still out there they will come back for me. If they’re not out there, then I have no one to leave to find. Either way it is best if I stay here and stay hidden.”

“If they haven’t come back after all this time, doesn’t that mean they’re dead?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t put credits on it.”

“What if they just forgot to look for you?”

“They wouldn’t.”

“How could you know?”

“Because Star Force doesn’t abandon anyone…ever,” he said with obvious anger in his voice.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not angry with you, little one. I’m angry with our enemy and with fate.”

“What’s Star Force?”

“It’s the empire the Humans founded and brought the Calavari into. And it’s the only known enemy of the V’kit’no’sat that has successfully killed some of them…around here anyway. They own most of the core of the galaxy, so there’s probably someone else out there that can do it…if they haven’t already been taken out.”

“Is that the same thing as the Viks?”

“Yes. Viks is just a shorter way of saying it.”

“Who started the war?”

“There is no war. This is an extermination. Humans belong to the Viks, and those that founded Star Force were accidentally abandoned on a forgotten colony. They forgot who they were over multiple generations until one Human discovered the single structure left behind that hadn’t been destroyed. Did you notice how none of the ruins on Mace are above ground?”

“Yeah.”

“When the Viks eradicate a planet they don’t want any evidence left behind. They have specialized weapons that will vaporize and sweep away buildings, trees, mountains…everything. That’s why this world has very few plants.”

“Why are some buildings buried then?”

“Those ruins are the old foundations where the sweepers couldn’t reach without more effort. Rather than dig them all the way out they just skimmed off the top and the vaporized bits buried the rest.”

Esna looked down at the ground that was zipping past them.

“You mean all this dirt and sand is…”

“Yes. Knowing that makes you look at it differently now, doesn’t it.”

“This entire world is a…a corpse?”

“Not just this world. The Viks did it to many others before they got here.”

“If they’re that powerful how did you kill any of them?”

“Remember when I said that Humans were from a lost colony?”

Esna’s eyes widened. “You have their weapons?”

“Star Force was built on V’kit’no’sat knowledge recovered from that one remaining building. We’ve worked hard to catch up to their level, but when they returned they still had an advantage. We could kill them, but we were still outmatched.”

“Returned?”

“The Humans were marked for death because they were unsanctioned offspring. When it was discovered that they existed an eradication force was sent and defeated. Then a much larger one came and the war began.”

“Unsanctioned offspring?”

“The Viks are made up of a group of different races, but those races are not allowed to leave. When they found out that there were rogue Humans that had founded their own empire, there was no negotiation or warning. The Archons knew they would come back eventually and prepared us, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from doing this to Mace and other worlds.”

“Who are the Archons?”

“The most elite of Human warriors. They lead the military while the Monarchs grow our worlds, and the Archons are the ones that figured out how to kill some of the Viks.”

“Are there other Humans fighting you, fighting for the Viks?”

“Yes, and I’m pretty sure that at least one is here on Mace.”

That caused an icy chill to run down Esna’s spine. “He’s the one we’re running from then?”

“I don’t know for sure. I spotted him from a long ways off a few hundred years ago and ran. They can read minds, and if I get close enough for him to take notice he will find me even if he can’t see me. My mind will look different, as will yours. Yours because you’re Human, and me because I’m so old and…not ignorant.”

“Read minds? How is that possible?”

“A great many things are possible that you do not know about. Just know that I think he and maybe others are here to track down survivors or to look for scouts returning.”

“Your people coming back to look for you…” Esna said, starting to put it together.

“There is no other reason for them to be here that I can think of. They do not want this world or they would have claimed it and eradicated everyone here. The only reason there are people at all is because the Viks do not think of them as anything more than vermin. They know nothing of those they descend from or their association with Star Force. The Calavari here are not important, but a Human such as you, who knows nothing, still has to be destroyed. The Calavari were killed because we were part of Star Force and we wielded the technology derived from the Viks, but it was the Humans they were truly after.”

“So you’re risking exposing yourself to save me?” she asked, feeling even more indebted to him than before.

“Humans are worth saving. They gave us everything and rescued us from certain death.”

“I didn’t do any of that.”

“And if nothing else, saving you spites the Viks…and that is worth doing.”

“You really hate them?”

“Yes,” Rammak said pithily, but that single word carried a weight behind it that Esna could not fully fathom.

They spent the next 4 days traveling away from settlements and trade routes, trying to stay out of sight and leaving those that they did come across in their dust...literally. As they headed for the location where Rammak said they’d disappear, Esna continued asking questions and the Calavari answered them. Questions regarding what Star Force was, who the Viks were, and what had happened since the destruction of this world.

It was still hard for her to imagine. An entire world of people erased in such a complete fashion, and even more surprising was that some people managed to survive that hiding in the rubble or regions without cities. And how could they forget? Why did only Rammak remember? Why did the other Calavari not tell their children what had happened? You’d think something as important as Star Force and the Viks would be worth mentioning, but all she’d ever heard were distorted rumors of the cataclysm that destroyed the world…and almost none of it was true.

Rammak told her that a few others had survived with him, but that in those first few years after they had been killed. The Viks could sense their minds and hunted them down while they were busy cleansing the planet of everything and everyone in sight. The four of them had split up when they’d gotten caught, knowing that the two Zen’zat that came after them couldn’t chase them all at the same time. He managed to get away, but he’d never seen the others since that day, though he’d looked tirelessly from a safe distance.

Rammak told her he’d been roaming the entire planet looking for survivors and refurbishing bits of buried buildings where he could find them. That meant he now had a network of safe houses spread out across the planet that they could run to and from, and they were headed to another one now. He said that the Viks could watch them from the air if they were looking and that it was possible that their entire route from the settlement had been traced or waiting in some database to be discovered later, hence they had to get underground and transition that way in order to lose the pursuit that he didn’t even know for sure was coming.

Rammak obviously had no doubts, but he’d been running for so long that he never even thought about sticking around to try and find out if someone was on his tail or not. He’d gained a reputation in the various settlements that he visited as a ghost warrior. One who would come and go and could not be bested in a fight. He went by several different names in different places, but people learned not to mess with him quick enough when they observed someone trying to rob or kill him and failing.

He also explained to her what a Commando was. He was part of the Star Force military tasked with ground combat, specifically hand to hand, which was why he’d been able to so easily rescue her. Not only was he a Calavari, which was muscle on top of muscle anyways, but it turned out that when one attained ‘self-sufficiency’ that was the key to gaining super strength…but that strength was gained from simple training exercises repeated over and over again for hundreds of years. The strength built slowly, but since you didn’t grow old you had unlimited time and compared to Calavari that were only 30 years old his 1,204 years of experience made it no contest.

He admitted he hadn’t been able to train as much as he once had, and because of that he hadn’t gained much strength since the fall of this world, which had happened a little over 800 years ago, but that meant he’d had 400 years before that to train to learn how to fight…and that blew Esna’s mind away.

And she was really glad that he was on her side rather than on one of the hunting teams that were promised to be pursuing them. They’d been traveling so fast there was no way for them to catch up, but Rammak assured her that if they lingered long enough word of a Human being sighting would catch up to them and people would be on the lookout, meaning that even if those in the settlement didn’t find them others would. They had to stay ahead of the news to keep from being spotted and trailed, but that was a minor threat compared to who Rammak was afraid would hear of their presence and come after them.

Zen’zat was the word, and whenever he said it there was an extra layer of contempt in his voice. They were Humans sent to kill the Humans that had created the Star Force empire to which he belonged, and she guessed that reserved an extra level of hatred from him. As big as the Vik empire was, which she couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around, he said that Star Force had owned thousands of star systems like this one that spread out around their capitol. He called it ‘Sol’ and whenever he said the world there was something special about it. Like it was sacred or something. He didn’t say much, but Esna knew it was the first one the Viks hit and took from them.

They’d hit Star Force at their strongest and defeated them, though they’d paid a very high price to do it. After that the war front moved outward as the Viks went about attacking and cleaning out system after system until they got here. Where they had gone afterward and how much of the Star Force empire was left was something Rammak couldn’t know, for the information systems they used to send messages from one star to another were long destroyed, leaving only gossip traveling on the few ships that bothered to visit this world as his only source of information…and none of them had spoken of Star Force or the war against the Viks for a very long time.

Esna had just lost her brother, probably her adoptive parents too, and it was killing her. She was a walking zombie, but a zombie that was not falling any further. Rammak kept her going with stories and a firm hand whenever needed, but he had lost far more than her. An empire full of thousands of trillions of people. He’d told her the word for that but she didn’t remember. Even the word ‘trillion’ was one she’d only learned in lessons as a kid from her father. It was too large to visualize in her head, and to think there were thousands of them in people that might very well all be dead now was...beyond sad.

He’d lost everything and everyone, but was still carrying out his mission as best he could. He’d never stopped fighting, and she got the feeling he never would no matter how bad things got. He was like a force of nature…and one that was committed to keeping her alive because she looked like his former masters, or teachers, or whatever the Humans actually were. She might have the same body but she knew nothing of them, though she wanted to. That tiny part of her was the only light left in her empty ‘core’ as Rammak explained it, and the more they traveled and talked the more it began to replace the pain that was numbing up so much she had trouble even remembering what her brother looked like at times.

She hated feeling like that. Dead to the pain but also dead to Teren. More than once she’d found herself crying as his memories seemed to lose their color and fade away until something jarring brought both back with a vengeance. The duality of it was exhausting, but Rammak always kept her going and Esna knew he’d drag her on whether she liked it or not, so the only thing she had to worry about was doing what he told her and what new questions to ask.

That was a small relief, but it felt like she’d already lost the war inside of her. This new Esna was but a shadow of her former self, though at least it wasn’t an ignorant shadow. The more Rammak told her the more she learned and the more dots she was able to put together concerning her past, this planet, and the phantom threat that was promised to be pursuing them.

This wasn’t where she wanted to be, and a part of her still wished she’d died alongside her brother, but that part was now a minority and for the first time since Teren’s death she genuinely wanted to live.

Esna didn’t know why. Maybe it was Rammak’s relentlessness wearing off on her, but she did want to see tomorrow. And to do that they had to stay on the move and ahead of whatever might be chasing after them now or in the days to come.

8

Esna was napping while she rode on the back of the speeder behind Rammak when his lower left arm shifted and suddenly there was the loud screeches of pistol fire right next to her head. She woke from her half sleep and nearly jumped off the seat, then saw that it was her guardian Calavari that was doing the firing as they continued flying forward through a canyon at dizzying speeds.

His shots were headed towards another hovering craft, larger than theirs but also slower, that was pacing them and angling to block their path. Several individuals were on it and a few wild shots came back their way but missed…then they were past and angling around a bend with a big monolith of rock that blocked their view of those waiting on the other side.

Rammak flew them right through their camp, dodging and weaving at too high a speed. Esna didn’t know how they didn’t crash, but the breakneck approached meant they didn’t stick around for long and after running a gauntlet for about 10 seconds they were through and continuing to zigzag through canyons before they emerged into a large, gently sweeping valley that was mostly sand and wind with no one and nothing visible between two low mountain ranges.

“What was that!” Esna yelled.

“Pass privateers. Only those who pay their fees are allowed through, and we don’t have time to try and go around. Don’t worry, we’re too fast for them to catch now that we’re by them.”

“What if they have friends that they warned?”

“Then we deal with them. If we slow down and think, they can too. Our best defense is to not let people have a chance to react and remain as much of a rumor as possible.”

“Why not just fly up over the mountains?”

“Sensors. If there are any in orbit overhead they can still track us, but staying low will mean we disappear from lateral scans. The mountains protect us,” he summed up in lieu of a more detailed explanation.

“This is pretty open,” Esna pointed out as their speed seemed to disappear entirely as they crossed the featureless gap.

“The mountains still block for us unless someone is here…and if they are I don’t see them. When we’re across we’ll disappear in the rocks. Our destination isn’t far, just on the other side of those three low peaks to the left.”

“What’s there?”

“More leftovers that the Viks didn’t completely destroy. If there are orbital scanners tracking us, they’ll lose contact when we go inside.”

“And then?”

“We move underground. There’s a network hub here.”

“Network?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to explore the wreckage, and several locations I’ve lived in can be accessed through underground routes.”

“So they see us go in, but not go out?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re sure someone is watching,” she said, glancing at the bright sky above that showed no trace of any ships.

“I’d prefer if they weren’t, but I’m not counting on us being that lucky.”

“Is there fuel there for the bike? We have to be getting low.”

“There is.”

“And food? We’re running low on that too.”

“I’ve survived here a long time, young one. I know how to leave myself caches of supplies.”

“Enough for two?”

“You don’t eat much compared to me. We’ll be fine. Just don’t fall off before we get there.”

Esna straightened her butt on the seat and snugged up against his back, using it to break the wind so she didn’t have to lean into it constantly. She decided not to ask any more questions and just rode in silence for the next hour or so that it took to get across the barren sandy divide and into the foothills of the distant mountains.

Rammak slowed them to a halt at the base of the first foothills, swinging the speeder halfway to the left before getting off and walking to the back where he pulled out a piece of equipment from the dwindling supply pack. He put the small box up to his face and Esna realized it was a microbox, with him looking back the way they’d come. The Calavari twisted ever so slightly as he panned left, then he stopped and held steady.

“Persistent.”

“They’re following us?”

“Yes. Several vehicles. I’d guess at least 10 minutes back.”

“Why are they chasing if we’re faster?”

“Either they’re very insistent that no one passes alive or word of us has spread further than I hoped. If our general direction was commed ahead, these passkeepers might think they can collect on a bounty or they might work for someone else that does.”

“Commed?”

“Sent a signal ahead. Communication. ‘Comm’ for short.”

“You mean a jabber?”

“Yes, but that’s just local slang that developed after the fall. Comm is the proper term.”

“So you think someone comm..ed ahead?”

“Either way they’re coming and I doubt they’ll be the last,” Rammak said, putting the microbox back into the pack before hopping up on the speeder.

“What’s that device called?”

“Binoculars,” the Calavari said, spinning them back to the right and getting them moving around a mound of ground that cut their line of sight with their pursuers and started them on a weaving path between hills that continued to grow larger until they slowed and turned a sharp corner at an upthrust column of rock. On the other side of it was a crack the width of two speeders that they floated through, then they sped back up on the other side through rougher and rougher terrain.

Eventually they dropped down into a giant crater seemingly carved into the mountainside, with the speeder floating them down into the shadows where no wheeled craft could go. Esna could see little trails of dust or sand spilling over the edge in places and falling in streams down into the darkness.

“Are we here?”

“Almost. There’s a crack in the bedrock that’s accessible here. It’ll take us a few miles to a better access point, but there are some small crawlspaces nearby you could get into the ruins through. Unless you know your way around or can see through walls you’re going to get lost, so don’t worry about our pursuit. We’re about to become ghosts.”

“Yeah,” she said as the darkness increased enough that she adjusted her helmet and the bottom of the crater started to become visible. Before they reached it Rammak eased them over to one of the steeply inclined walls and the crack he’d promised materialized. It was narrow but tall and looked like someone had just pulled the rock walls apart and ripped them in half.

She saw him reach up to his head underneath his robed hood, then they slid inside and very slowly moved through the irregular pathway. It wasn’t quite straight, but every little twist and turn had them moving in approximately the same direction. On and on they went seemingly forever with Esna just riding and waiting until another glowing green light spilled onto the wall to her left. When they got around the next bend the source was revealed, marking a crude platform hacked out of rock that led to a cave entrance.

“This is where we get off,” Rammak said as he extended the landing gear on the speeder and parked it, fully powering it down as he pulled a small object off his eyes and hid it from view while drawing an odd look from Esna.

“I thought we were refueling?”

“If we were going back the way we’d come we could. I’ve got enough stashed nearby, but the bike won’t fit where we’re going. We’re running for now.”

“Running?”

“Unless your wounds will only allow a walk. How are you feeling?”

“Alright, I think,” she said as Rammak began pulling a few items out of their stash and putting them into a smaller pack that he slipped over his back before abandoning the speeder and walking a few steps into the dark cave and flipping a switch. Suddenly the tunnel ahead, crisscrossed with debris, lit up with a string of tiny lights that failed in terms of brightness, but they gave just enough that you could move without tripping on rocks or hitting your head on overhangs.

“Just focus on keeping pace with me and stepping where I step, otherwise this will take forever.”

“Do you need me to carry anything?”

“No. I need you light and moving. Even with this pack I can move faster than you, so you’re going to determine how much of a head start we’ll have.”

“You think they’ll find this place?”

“Probably not anytime soon, but if someone is watching us from the sky they will know where we entered. A search team could end up here eventually, and I don’t want to wait on them.”

“Won’t they steal the speeder?”

“It’s expendable. You are not. Let’s move.”

“Ok,” Esna said uncertainly as she got behind and followed the big Calavari as he began jogging forward and dancing around outcroppings. She was surprised by how fast he moved, but like he said all she focused on was watching where he went and matching his speed. It felt a little crazy, for she could ram into anything in the dark spots moving this fast even with her helmet enhancement, but so long as Rammak didn’t hit anything and she mimicked him, they were able to literally run through the cave as promised…though turning her helmet light on was a mistake, with all the flickering shadows nearly tripping her up before she quickly shut it off and resigned herself to the limited nightvision.

Every now and then he’d get ahead of her and start to get out of view, but as soon as she said something to him he’d reappear and start moving slower for a while…then his speed would start creeping up again. Either Esna was getting more tired than she thought or he was just used to running faster than any Calavari she’d ever seen and he was easing back into a normal pace without thinking about it.

“Wait!” she said, stumbling to a stop and putting her hands on her knees for a moment as Rammak spun around and came back to her. Esna pulled her helmet off and sucked in heavy breaths as his bulk eclipsed one of the small, widely spaced lights in front of her. “How much farther?”

“Hard to say, but I’d guess we’re about a fourth of the way through.”

“What?” she said in dismay.

“At the end of this run is another speeder at a hideaway with additional supplies. We’ll rest there and begin moving through a series of tunnels and caves that stretch out in many different directions. Even if someone follows us this far, they won’t know which way we’ve gone and orbital scans can’t penetrate down this far without some serious equipment.”

“Like the Viks…have?” she asked between breaths.

“Yes, but we’re so small it’s almost impossible to find us from range. They can scan the passageways but finding us will be difficult.”

“‘Almost impossible’ means possible,” Esna pointed out.

“I know. There is some equipment I have that could camouflage us but not the speeder, and it’s too long a journey to take on foot. We have to keep moving fast in case they aren’t pinpoint tracking us. It could be they don’t know where we are or don’t have the equipment in place to follow us here. If we stay put we give them the chance to bring it in.”

“I get it. Moving is safety. Can we walk a bit before running again?”

“Tell me when you feel up to it,” he said, moving off again at a brisk walk. Esna stood and followed, almost having to jog to keep up, but her lungs and legs thanked her for the lesser challenge. Her mind told her that it couldn’t last if they were going to get to their next destination anytime soon, so after a few minutes of recovery she told Rammak to speed up and the pair started running again, albeit slower than last time.

9

Back in the settlement, now much calmer given the days that had passed since the Humans were discovered, an alarm went up and sent people running inside buildings or out into the streets to see what was happening. A ship had flown in and was hovering over the western edge of town. It stayed for only a brief moment, dropping a person out of the sky before flying off. It remained visible in the distance, lazily flying an erratic course further north, but it wasn’t what was bringing armed denizens out into the streets.

There was no organization here, just another mob with murderous intent, for the individual that had dropped out of the ship through a 40 meter fall landed lightly on the ground and was walking into town. He had no armor on, making the pale skin of a Human was easily visible now that the settlement knew what to look for.

The armed men waited in the street as the Human passed by a few outlying buildings, casually walking forward and not seeming to care that they were there. They waited until he got close enough to see that he was much bigger than the other ones had been…nearly as tall as the Calavari…then they opened fire with dozens of shots coming from directly ahead while others emerged from concealed locations. The Human didn’t run, or dodge, or even blink. He just kept walking…and the lachar blasts disappeared when they got within a few inches of his body.

Those firing couldn’t see that, given the heat of the moment, so they kept shooting until it became clear that they weren’t damaging the Human. The weaponsfire died out and the Human kept calmly walking towards them with the crowd parting in a frenzy as they retreated to building doorways and parked vehicles. Some of them continued shooting at him but nothing would hit. The blasts would either miss him and blow up stuff on the other side of the street or they’d disappear when the gunners’ aim was better and they should have hit him.

Vexed with extreme fear and the implications of a Human being here with the rumored doom that it would bring to them, one of the Calavari roared with rage and rushed the Human from behind, intending to pound him to death with his four fists, but event that didn’t cause the Human to react until he was within two meters and the Calavari had begun the first of its punches.

With a speed that was too fast for the observers’ eyes to register, the Human spun around in a twirl, landed a hand on the Calavari’s throat, and pulled him to the ground all in one smooth motion. His hand pinned the much larger body to the ground, and when the Calavari tried to struggle his entire body went slack, arms falling to the ground as the Human stared into his eyes for a long moment.

Then with disdain he stood up, releasing the Calavari as he continued to walk on just as he had been a moment ago.

It took a few seconds before the Calavari’s limp body woke up and he staggered to his feet enraged, but not so reckless as to try and attack again. He just stood there in a mix of anger and shame, trying to figure out what to do when the Human suddenly stopped and spun around.

The Calavari involuntarily took a step backward, but the Human’s eyes weren’t on him. Instead he was panning the area, looking for something…and right now no one wanted to be that something. Most people brave enough to have been close were now backtracking, wanting to put more distance between themselves and the Human but not wanting to do it so fast that they attracted his attention.

The simple black body suit that he wore had ornate forearm gauntlets that stretched up past the elbow, making them look like partial armor save for the numerous holes in them. Then without warning those two gauntlets jerked…exploding but staying pressed against his body as the tiny pieces flowed across his chest and down his legs, expanding as they went and covering his entire body head to toe within 3 seconds with a black/green body armor that also concealed his face with a ridged helmet that had no faceplate nor any other way to see out of it.

The Human spun to his right just as a blurry figure appeared out of nowhere and shot him with a blue orb. The Human spun back the other way, having been knocked off target as his attacker came out of its camouflage and revealed that it was also a biped of a similar form save for the size. It was a good half meter shorter and covered with hard, almost shiny armor emblazoned with red and black panels. Another blue orb was shot from a boxy addition to its forearm, but the Human dodged it and stepped back in close enough to fight hand to hand.

Everyone else on the street left immediately as the two figures were fighting so fast that it was hard to watch and see anything other than a combined blur that was shooting blue and green energy orbs in random directions when they missed their target…one of which hit the building to the north and blew apart half the wall on contact, not to mention the four people that had been standing inside and looking out the window.

The two combatants continued to trade blows with the smaller attacker getting in several good hits, both with his weapons and his body blows, but he was losing to the larger Human up until another blur manifested itself on the street and an equally well-armored quadruped emerged in identical red/black armor and rammed the two of them…

The Human was knocked aside and had two blue blasts hammer into what now revealed themselves to be shields covering his body, visible only for a moment as the highly powerful weaponsfire hit but the quadruped did not relent, continuing to fire from two chin mounted boxes similar to what the biped had on his arms as his companion raised a hand and threw a light-bending distortion towards the Human as it stood up.

The almost invisible energy hit and knocked the green/black armored figure into another building, straight through the stone wall with the quadruped quickly diving in after him. The biped followed and when it got inside fired another almost invisible blast into the Human that had turned the tables and was on top of the quadruped and firing directly underneath his chin…with those blasts also being absorbed by shields.

After the Human was knocked off and through another wall into a pedestrian street, the pair of attackers pursued him and sparred, wrecking a significant portion of the town that quickly emptied as people ran for their lives. They fled in vehicles or just scattered on foot and headed out across the surrounding plains as a visual halo around the settlement, marking it as a place you did not want to be.

The 2v1 continued for several minutes with all three armored warriors’ shields protecting them from the attacks until the Human’s finally gave out. After that each energy orb that hit…and many didn’t thanks to his skillful dodging…chewed into and melted a bit of his green/black armor. One of his forearm weapons also was hit and damaged, knocking it out and leaving him with only one in addition to his body blows…which managed to take down the quadruped’s shields with a double-legged kick into its belly when it mistimed a jump and left itself vulnerable.

But when the Human tried to get a shot in the biped hammered him in the head with an elbow ram, sending him tumbling to the ground where the quadruped got on top of him and blasted into his chest armor at pointblank range. He tried to knock him off but couldn’t, thanks to the help of the biped that flattened the Human’s head into the ground with another almost invisible blast of energy before adding some destructive blue orbs of his own. The Human finally managed to scramble out from the grasp of the quadruped, but only got a couple meters before he was jumped on again and his armor finally gave out.

The next blasts to his chest went through and hit flesh, tearing him apart over the next few seconds as his body went limp…but the attackers didn’t stop there. They started shooting his mostly intact helmet, trying to breach it as the ceiling of the partial building they were standing in collapsed. Another Human in green/black armor, having dropped from the ship now hovering above, punched the biped off his fallen kin and yanked the quadruped off with nothing more than a thought. His powerful telekinesis threw the heavy thing into the wall but it didn’t break, nor was that the intent, for as soon as it was clear he let it go and used his telekinesis to pull the body of the fallen Human to him, dragging it across the rubble strewn floor to where he stood his ground over it protectively.

But the newly arrived Human wasn’t going to wait to get attacked. Rather, he fired off both his forearm weapons with a flurry of green orbs at both of the attackers, doing armor damage to the quadruped that seemed to convince the pair to break off after a diversionary wave of rippling energy from the biped. It moved Human a few inches back as he braced against it and held the other firm beneath his feet.

Both of the attackers disappeared into blurry streaks of motion heading away from the Humans before they vanished entirely, engaging their camouflaging energy fields that would make it virtually impossible for the ship above to target them as they ran.

The Human stood his ground, defending against a possible reengagement from a different angle while the bloody mess of the dead Human’s chest below got a lot less bloody. In fact the skin began to slowly regrow, as did the blasted organs inside. The tiny pieces of shredded and cauterized tissue disappeared, having been ‘digested’ by the healing mechanism built into the armor as it slowly repaired the Human and brought him back to life…but with a much smaller, now deformed chest. There had been enough mass left in his body to regrow the vital organs by scavenging what was left of the originals and cannibalizing other non-essential parts of his body, but there wasn’t enough to fully heal him.

None the less he drew breath again shortly and sat up, his shields regenerating a moment later and covering his entire body in a brief bit of static, including the gigantic hole in his chest armor. He looked down and felt his new skin, pulling back the armor on his hand so he could do so. He traced a pair of fingers across the newly made crater, noting that there were no longer any cuts on his skin, but half his hand nearly disappeared inside the concave structure where several ribs used to have been.

He stood up with the other Human staying alert beside him and throwing a blue orb into what was left of the ceiling. It fragmented and blew out, with a few pieces raining down on both of them and harmlessly bouncing off their shields. The stronger Human used his telekinesis to lift the other upwards through a jump that returned him to the open access port on the ship above, then once his companion was safe there he moved off through the broken settlement in search of the now scattered people to search their memories and find any trace of the other Humans rumored to have been discovered here within the past few weeks.

10

Esna sat beside Rammak on the platform-like speeder they’d been riding on for several weeks now, passing through long, straight, underground roadways that gave her a chance to nap and then zigzagging through broken buildings and caves that didn’t. They’d stopped at two of his supply caches already, finding a wealth of scavenged goods and interesting tech that the Calavari had started to explain to her, but it was one of his ‘camps’ that they were approaching that held her interest.

It was at the end of another long straight shot with the speeder gliding along so smoothly it would have felt like they’d been standing still if not for her helmet’s nightvision, for there was a windscreen on the front of this speeder and an optional cab enclosure that Rammak never used. Esna immediately knew when they were approaching his camp because there were little guide lights popping up. He’d told her that such things were not normal and that he’d individually placed all of them over the years at all of his hideaways to catch his attention and make sure he didn’t fly past his destination on accident…as had happened a few times before.

Right now he was navigating using a pair of nightvision goggles that were far more advanced than Esna’s helmet, though when he’d let her inspect them she could only get one eye in. The Calavari’s head was so wide both lenses were too far apart for the Human to use, but even with the one she could see as well as if it was daylight, which was fortunate, otherwise they surely would have crashed by now, flying at speed through these pitch black remnants of a time long past.

She still couldn’t believe that Rammak was from that age, though there was nothing she’d seen yet to contradict his story. How could someone live to be 1204 years old?

He’d explained the reasons why, citing a bunch of training stuff she didn’t understand, though the basic idea was that if your body healed faster than it took damage you could live forever and that ‘old age’ was just a myth. Rammak had said it was just microdamage…stuff you couldn’t see with your eyes, like getting tired or thirsty or sore. Nothing so big as an injury, but little stuff that supposedly did damage and accumulated over time…hence the young ones didn’t have it because they hadn’t been around long enough to rack up enough for it to begin to show as ‘age.’

It sounded too good to be true, but Rammak did look like a young Calavari. He had no age spots, no sagging skin, no flapping nose. His muscles were taught, trim, and huge. He was in better shape than any Calavari she’d ever seen, and had he not told her he was 1204 she would have sworn Yammar was way older.

The thought of Yammar and Innit made her cringe…both at the thought of leaving them behind and because it felt like she was beginning to forget about them. The memories of them and even Teren were starting to feel faded, and a part of her was glad for that. She wasn’t tearing up every other minute and her heart had calmed down. Numbed up was probably more accurate, but she wasn’t in constant agony like she was when Rammak found her.

But at the same time she felt guilty for not still feeling that way. Her brother was gone and there was nothing she could do to help him, so she ran it through her head for probably the 200th time thinking about how she could get back to Yammar and Innit, if they were still alive, but now that she’d actually seen their pursuit she knew that if they turned around they’d be bringing trouble back with them on top of whatever they already had to deal with.

If they were already dead because of her…

Esna didn’t want to think about that, so she focused on the possibility that they were alive and what she could do to help them. As the guide lights flicked by on the walls the same conclusion worked its way into her brain.

Stay away and draw attention as far from the farm as you can.

That was all she could do and she was doing it, so Esna guiltily pushed thoughts of them and Teren back into a quiet corner of her mind and looked ahead, trying to see where the lights were leading them.

A few minutes later it turned out to be nothing more than a simple doorway on the side of the road-like tunnel. Everything was still dark save for a pair of tiny lights above the doorway, but when Rammak stopped them and walked inside he apparently found the light switch, for the doorway lit up casting a wide swath of illumination back out into the tunnel and onto her and the speeder.

“Park it,” Rammak said, letting Esna lower the landing gear and power it down before she joined him inside. They walked through a short hallway then her breath caught in her throat as the chamber beyond opened up into a huge chasm filled with plants in huge pods.

“I had to move a lot of these here one at a time, but this and a few other facilities like it across the planet are what keep me fed without having to rely on others.”

“Why do you still go into the settlements then?” she asked, but her eyes were on the clear, squarish domes, each of which was lit internally.

“I didn’t want to give my identity away, so most of what I’m wearing I acquired from others. Now though, that’s going to change for the both of us. We’re going to camp out here for a few days, but before you get to sleep I want to show you something.”

“I’m not tired,” she said, still in awe at the motley assembly of the plant pods. They were stashed everywhere in the lumpy room. “What did this used to be?”

“A civilian theatre. There were seats on those tiers that I pulled to make room.”

“Why not just use the original bilo…thingies.”

“Bioharvests,” he corrected her. “I would have, except there were only pieces left and no available power. It takes a lot of light and heat and automated maintenance to get these plants to grow this big this fast.”

“How long has it been since you were here?”

“Over a year. I’ve got one auto harvest chamber working, but the rest I have to farm personally. That’s going to take some time, but the food cube production is pretty quick.”

“You have those machines here too?”

“Yes.”

“How come they survived?”

“This planet used to have a population of over 400 billion. It takes a lot of bioharvest facilities to feed that many, but none of those I found were intact. I’m just glad enough was left for me to repurpose.”

“400 billion?” she said, jaw dropping. “On just this one planet?”

“Star Force’s population in total was measured in the quadrillions.”

“What’s a quad…illon?”

“A trillion is 1000 billions, and a quadrillion is 1000 trillions.”

“No, you are making fun of me,” she said sternly. “There’s no way there could be that many people.”

“Some planets have over a trillion people of their own. Not Calavari, we’re too big, but some of the smaller races can. Fully established Kiritak colonies ranged from 1 to 7 trillion, based on the size of the planet and available surface area. Oceans are harder to populate than land, but get a big planet that’s all land and you could see 7 trillion Kiritak on it. I know of at least five that were like that.”

“What’s a Kiritak?”

“Their race is actually called Kiritas, and they’re about as tall as your leg. Very good, very fast builders. The Kiritak were a subfaction within Star Force that had no civilian population. They were all workers that built colonies to mine, grow, and produce supplies to export to other worlds and they knew how to build compact, efficient cities that could hold so many Kiritak that they’d be filling up thousands of jumpships per day with cargo on a regular basis.”

“Jumpship?”

“You said your father brought you here on a ship?”

“Yes.”

“Did it fly between stars on its own?”

“Yeah. What ship doesn’t?”

“A jumpship is a big ship that carries other ships, and it moves a whole lot faster. Cargo jumpships don’t carry other ships, just supplies, though they do have their own fleet of dropships and transports to unload it all once they reach a planet.”

“How big?”

“Ours looked like long tubes and ranged in size, but 20 miles long was typical.”

“Miles?” she asked, aghast.

“I said they were big.”

“You also said they were fast.”

“A good portion of their size is engines.”

“If you say so…”

“Some things you have to see to understand.”

“Do you have any pictures?”

Rammak raised an eye ridge, for there was no hair anywhere on his head, or body for that matter. His skin was nothing but tough and smooth orange that got shiny when wet with sweat, though it did wrinkle up a bit when he gave her that curious look.

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried to access any computer systems in a long time. It’s possible there are some records left, but I didn’t salvage anything intentionally.”

“Why not?”

“It’s stuff I already know.”

“Oh, right. I guess you wouldn’t. I…what the hell?” she said, walking over to the clear wall of one of the pods and putting her armored hands up against it as she looked inside. “That’s huge!”

“They’re called apples. That tree is probably at least a century old by now.”

Esna looked up to the top and saw that it was curled over where it hit the ceiling of the pod where the lights were just above, but everywhere below on the branches were huge red pieces of something edible.

“Can we eat one?” she asked, looking at him.

“They’re used as a component in some of the foodstuffs, but you can eat them raw.”

“How do we get inside?”

“You don’t. There’s no oxygen in there.”

“How? Don’t plants make oxygen?”

“The pods pull it out and put carbon dioxide back in at higher levels than normal and at a higher pressure. The plants like both and grow larger because of it. I have to vent the chamber before going in, but when I harvest some of these I’ll let you get a bite of one.”

“Why are there some on the ground?”

“I don’t get here often enough to harvest them all, so some fall off on their own and decay.”

“Gross.”

“Cutting up a living being and eating its body is gross,” Rammak countered.

“Why do you have a problem with that? Everything has to eat something.”

“Yeah, and they’re called plants…not people.”

“If they don’t talk, they’re not people.”

“Can you talk with your mind?”

“What?”

“There are some races that say if you can’t talk with your mind, you’re not people. In which case they’d have no problem killing and eating you.”

“I can talk.”

“With your mouth. Some races can speak mind to mind. Just because you can do something that others cannot doesn’t mean they aren’t people.”

“So none of the food cubes you’ve ever eaten have been meat?”

“No. Star Force doesn’t kill to eat. We protect against people who do.”

“Meaning me?”

“A sad irony there.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

“So why’d you save me? Or would you have saved me if you’d known?”

“You’ve grown up on a messed up world. As long as you don’t try to kill something from here on out we’re not going to have a problem.”

“And if I do?”

“I’ll stop you, little one.”

Esna frowned. “This is that important to you.”

“Death before dishonor.”

“What’s the point of living if you have to be bad to do it?” she asked, guessing his meaning.

“And killing others to eat them is bad,” Rammak finished as they started to walk on. “Not to mention inefficient.”

“Crops are harder to grow,” she said, following him. “The animals store them up in their bodies over time, far more than we can keep in the fields.”

“As you can see,” the Calavari said, pointing all four arms at the surrounding pods as they walked through the narrow spaces between them, “we’ve solved that problem.”

“How many people could all this feed?”

“Far more than me, but I’ve never had anyone to share it with.”

“Do you sell it?”

“I’ve given it away at times, traded on occasion, but I didn’t want to attract the attention that a vendor gets.”

“Where do you get the water from,” she said, looking inside and seeing mist falling down on some of the plants. “These must gobble it up.”

“This location had intact water tanks and recycling facilities. I added atmospheric generators and I’ve never had too little. Keeping the air contained means you don’t lose water except to the plants.”

“How do you know so much about farming if you were a soldier?”

“This is simple stuff we all learn in the maturia.”

“That was your teaching family?”

“Yes.”

“And they taught you how to farm and be a soldier?”

“We learned the basics of everything, then chose what we wanted to learn more about later.”

“What if you didn’t want to learn?”

“Then you went civilian and did whatever you want.”

“What kind of jobs did they have? The civilians, I mean.”

“Nobody had to work to live, Esna. People worked if they wanted upgrades, but everyone had food, clothing, and a home when they graduated from the maturia. Nobody was forced to work in order to eat.”

Esna put a hand on his arm to stop him walking, then looked up at him as he turned back.

“What do you mean?”

“Star Force is an empire built on skill. Those who want to work carry the responsibility, those who don’t are supported by them.”

“Why tolerate the freeloaders?”

“Because we know that the best workers are those that choose to be.”

“But if everyone can just be lazy, why would anyone work?”

“I’ve never wanted to be lazy, but I assume that people would get bored after a while.”

“Bored is a luxury as far as I’ve known.”

“What you’ve known comes from a messed up planet. You didn’t grow up in civilization, you grew up in barely constrained chaos. When we have places like this that can grow as much food as we want, why would we make people pay money for it?”

“To get rich.”

“Other than some civilians, we don’t have rich people. Our credits are only used for luxuries. The power of the empire comes from its resources, and those responsible enough to maintain them share. As a Commando, I never got paid. All the advanced positions don’t get paid either. We don’t need credits.”

“You work for free?”

“Yes.”

“And you like it that way?”

“We earn our position and skills. That is far more valuable than credits.”

“Credits are your burgos?”

“Yes.”

“So who decides how much people get to eat?”

“Our food is served in big rooms that are open all day. You come in and eat as much as you want.”

“Can you take it with you?”

“Some of it. Or you can buy special foods if you do have credits from working a job. Some people made special foods as their job, buying ingredients like these,” Rammak said, pointing at the pods around them, “and selling the foodstuffs for a profit. Nobody had to eat them, but if they liked them better than the regular foodstuffs they would.”

“So the regular stuff didn’t taste so good?”

“No. It always tasted good. But the number of items never changed. If you wanted something new you’d have to go to the private vendors.”

“But nobody ever starved with the free food?”

“No. Never.”

“That’d be nice. Did you feed the livest…people who didn’t talk too?”

“In a lot of cases, yes.”

“Didn’t they grow out of control? Population I mean.”

“It’s a simple matter of separating males from females for most races. You can control the population numbers without killing any of them.”

“That’s a lot of fences to put up.”

“This planet was mostly city, and Star Force doesn’t have a problem with largescale building projects. They looked at such things as a challenge. They also would have laughed at you saying ‘fences.’”

“Sometimes you say ‘they’ and sometimes you say ‘us.’ Which is it?”

“I’m a Commando. I train and fight. Others build. So sometimes I speak of them and sometimes I say us. We’re different and yet still all Star Force…and that’s where I need to get to work.”

Esna saw the direction he was pointing and followed him around the corner of a large, rectangular pod that had short grasses in it, then up a staircase to a blocky room that she could not see into.

“This is the auto harvester and it keeps harvesting and resetting this pod on its own, then storing the grain in here,” he said, opening a door and walking in. When Esna followed she saw huge clear bins filled with tiny white specs.

“Looks like they’re about to run over.”

“We need to move some of this to the processing center,” Rammak said, grabbing a nearby cart and hitting a button that activated the anti-grav. “I’ll fill three, then you push one behind me.”

“What about the third?”

“I can handle two.”

“Right. More arms,” she said as he opened a chute and the grain began to spill into one of the deep carts that came all the way up level to Esna’s face. She stared at it, realizing how much time it would have taken Yammar and Innit to grow the same amount of julai and wanting to stick her hand out into the stream, but she didn’t. She just watched as the cart filled up and barely made a dent in the huge container that it was coming from, then the next two brought it down about a third before Rammak took off with one cart in front of him and another behind.

“Follow.”

Esna gripped the handle of hers and pushed…then pushed harder. It may have been floating, but it was still heavy. She followed the Calavari’s head, barely seeing over her own cart and making sure not to get moving too fast else she’d bump into something. When they got to a corner she had to dig her heels into the floor grating to drag it to a stop, then do a lot of shoving to get it around the corner. By the time she eventually got to the processing center Rammak had already dumped the first crate into a trough, with Esna sitting down on a nearby box and rested her tired arms.

“Those carts were built for Calavari, weren’t they?”

“Too heavy?”

“A bit.”

“I keep forgetting you’re a weak Human. Don’t worry, I’ll get the rest. I’ll empty these then show you where you can get some sleep.”

“And after that?”

“After that there’s some other things I want to show you, then we’re going to get you properly outfitted before we leave.”

“Meaning what?”

“New armor.”

Esna glanced down at her arms and the armor covering them that she’d been modifying since she was a child. “What’s wrong with what I’ve got…aside from the holes, but you patched them?”

Rammak laughed. “You’ll see, and I promise you’ll like it.”

“What about keeping a low profile?”

“There’s no point now. We’re already being chased.”

“Is it stronger than this?” she asked, tapping on her chest plate.

“Much, young one,” he said with a smile. “It is much stronger.”

11

Rammak eventually took Esna into another room that looked like it had been repurposed into a makeshift storage closet. There were stacks of boxes everywhere filled with all sorts of things that she couldn’t recognize, but spread out onto tables at the far end were dozens of suits of armor. Some had two arms, most four, and most of them were orange. Broken into pieces and laid out accordingly, each was given its adequate space so that none of the parts would get mismatched.

“Where did you find all of these?”

“I have more hidden elsewhere,” he confided. “The orange armor is what Calavari Commandos wear, but the white suits are for Human Commandos. They were rare on this world, but all Star Force factions had Human armor in storage and I found multiple spares.”

“Wait, is that a red one?” she said, seeing it on the far end.

“That one is damaged, but it is almost the same dimensions as Human armor.”

“It’s not Calavari,” she noted, seeing only two arms.

“It’s Protovic. You don’t see any of them on this world now, and I do not know why this one was here during the fighting, but he died in that armor. I recovered it afterwards.”

“Why keep it?” she said, a little grossed out at knowing it had held a dead body inside.

“So much of this planet has been wiped away and forgotten. These are remnants of the true Mace, as am I. I may masquerade as a local but I prefer to keep as much of the old ways around as I can.”

“You must be lonely.”

“I’m trained to operate independently, so I don’t get lonely by being alone. I have been severed from my purpose, and that is an unbearable fate that gnaws on you over time.”

“Do you think they’re all dead? I mean everywhere. In the other star systems?”

“A part of me fears they are, another says that some will have run and survived. I have had no contact with them and I have no orders, so I’ve preserved myself and looked for our enemies. I know they are watching, so I can’t leave this world. I’ve been tempted to do so, but I haven’t lived this long to throw away my life in desperation. I am lonely, Esna, but not in a way that you can understand. Though I will admit I am much relieved to have found you. Now I have a purpose again, and in order to keep you alive we both need proper armor. I will show you how to put it on.”

“What if it’s not my size?”

“These are not custom fitted suits, save for the Protovic. They are spares, thus made to fit a range of sizes. There is one that will scale down to fit you.”

“Down? I’m not that short for a Human, am I?”

“For a Commando, not much. But for a Knight you are. Those Humans were as tall as us.”

“Wait, there were different types of Humans?”

“No, but there are growth enhancements that the Knights took. It made them scale up to a larger body size, not just in height. The Zen’zat are the same size.”

“What about the Archons?”

“They are your size.”

“Knights outrank Archons?”

“No. Not even close. Archons are our war leaders and the strongest of us all. Do not let size fool you. Mass matters, but so does speed and agility.”

“Then why did the Knights want to get bigger?”

“Why copy the Archons? If you can’t do what they do, then do something they can’t and the team grows stronger.”

“Multiple fighting options.”

“Exactly. The smallest suit of Commando armor will fit you. Take yours off and set it aside. It has served you well, but you need greater protection than it can afford.”

“If you say so,” she said, pulling off her helmet and setting it on the ground, for there was no room on the tables. Piece by piece she stripped down until she was standing in the clothes that Rammak had given her that first day, though technically these were the third of three pairs that she’d been rotating through, all of which were the same bright white with a brown stripe. The others having been cleaned in a machine on the far side of this huge underground complex Rammak had salvaged and rebuilt to his own purpose.

“There are many varieties of Star Force armor. This dull white coloration marks this set as Human Commando, but it is also the heaviest variety. Heavy in thickness, but not in weight. Custom models carry more armor that is denser, but standard backups are default thickness and light weight, though you may have difficulty moving in it.”

“How heavy can it be?” she asked as he handed her a boot and it nearly dropped to the ground through her hands. “No, I can’t wear that.”

“We’re trained to move in the armor despite the weight. You don’t have the luxury of the time needed to acclimate yourself to it, but there is a secondary function that uses power to mimic your movements. You’ll be able to run as if you didn’t have armor on.”

“So it moves itself?”

“Takes cues off your own movement, yes.”

“Why not use that all the time?”

“We save it for when we need a boost.”

“Isn’t it heavy though, like just when you’re sitting around?”

“That’s the point. It’s extra training outside of workouts.”

“You really like training, don’t you?”

“It’s the lifeblood of Star Force.”

“If it keeps you alive forever I can understand why, but isn’t it tiring?”

“You have a lot to learn, Esna, and there are some things that simply cannot be explained. You have to experience them for yourself. Slide your foot in.”

Esna propped the boot up on the ground and slid her sock-clad foot inside. Her knee disappeared inside the length of it and her toes barely touched the bottom, but Rammak touched something on the side and the solid armor plates moved. Her leg sank down and her foot hit the bottom of the boot, which then contracted around her toes slightly. Looking down at it the whole thing shrank to mimic the dimensions of her leg, but all of the pieces seemed to be the same size, just repositioned.

“How did it do that?”

“We’ve had a very long time to learn how to make armor,” he said, handing her the other boot. As soon as she stepped inside it auto-adjusted, with both pieces coming up to just below her knees.

“Stand still,” Rammak said, bringing the thigh pieces over and connecting them to the boots, then a pelvic plate and torso. He finished up with the arms but held off on the helmet as all the various pieces locked into one another and Esna felt the weight of the entire assembly on her when she tried to move her arms.

“This is way too heavy,” she said, managing to take a few stuttering steps. “How do you stand it?”

“Time and training, young one. Inside the helmet are a lot of controls that you will have to learn, and I will guide you through them using my own. When I put the helmet on speak the word ‘access’ then say ‘spectator.’”

“It responds to my voice?”

“For some things, yes. Your mind too, but you won’t be able to use those functions and I’ll shut them off. Without training…”

“I get it. Make it as simple as possible.”

“I will interface with yours in a moment,” he said, setting her helmet aside as he pulled chunks of orange armor from another table and peeled off the robes he was wearing at the same time. Two of his arms removed the clothing, hidden armored plates, and technology beneath while the other two arms strapped on the new armor in a fluid motion that defied belief. It took him only 20 seconds or so to get it all on, with various pops and clicks sounding as the pieces locked together, then he stood with his own giant helmet in one hand and picked up hers in another.

He put it on her head, then it too scaled down to match and sealed against her neck piece. The faceplate that allowed her to look out through a narrow band of transparent material suddenly glowed to life and the entire helmet before her eyes disappeared.

“It’s a holographic display,” Rammak’s voice said into her ears from behind his own helmet, one that had no eye visor at all. It was just a solid mask that he couldn’t see out of. “It shows you via cameras what your eyes would normally see if you weren’t wearing a helmet. Speak the words now.”

“Access,” she said as clearly as she could. “Spectator.”

Suddenly little floating icons popped up in the corners of her vision, then a slew of numbers and symbols activated that she had no idea about.

“Are you doing that?”

“Yes. I’m disabling most options so you don’t accidentally use them. There will be a menu bottom right for you to use. Speak the word ‘menu’ then the words to activate them. When you want to remove your armor you can tell it to disassemble, but right now use the power function.”

“You want me to say it now?”

“Yes.”

“Menu...” she said, reading the short list, “power on.”

Suddenly there was a twitch and her arms swung free. She took a step forward so easily she thought she was dreaming, then she spun around and punched in the air a few times.

“This is incredible.”

“Leave it on permanently. The power supply will recharge from the environment where able, and the reserve power will last a long time as is. Now, I’m creating a comm link directly to me in the upper left. Say the word ‘Hud’ and either ‘show’ or ‘off’ to toggle it on or off. Sometimes it gets in the way and you don’t want to see it.

“Hud off,” she said, with the new icons vanishing. “Hud show.”

The icons came back just as they were before.

“That is so cool. I had to use a tongue switch in my other helmet.”

“The icon for the comm will connect you to me even if we’re a long ways apart. It won’t reach forever, but we won’t be getting separated far enough to worry about that. Do you see the ‘exterior?’”

“Yes.”

“That allows you to talk outside your helmet. Right now it’s on, but turn it off and you can talk on the comm without other people standing beside you hearing what you say.”

“Handy.”

“Now, follow me,” the Calavari said, walking with even louder thuds across the floor now that he was wearing what must have been extremely heavy armor. Esna walked behind him, feeling as light as if she was naked but without the draft. There was soft, but firm padding inside the armor that didn’t feel warm or cool, but just right. It almost felt like a gel, but the sensation was something she’d never experienced before so she didn’t know how to categorize it.

Rammak led her to another of his storage rooms not far away, but this one didn’t have any crates. What it did have were weapons.

Lots of weapons.

“All these survived?” Esna asked.

“I picked up them up all over the place,” Rammak said coldly.

“From the dead?”

“Some of them. A lot of them. But I also found untouched caches. These racks,” he said, pointing to frame-like rectangles stacked in a corner, “will fit onto your back and allow you to carry gear and weapons. I’m going to size one up for you, then we’ll load it up later.”

“I can’t keep my pistol either?”

“These are better.”

“What do they shoot?”

“Most of them are condensed plasma. It’s superior to lachars and projectiles.”

“What is plasma?”

“Fire.”

“Fire? They’re flamethrowers?”

“No,” he said, picking up an orange pistol that was a few shades darker than his gleaming armor. He pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger. A glowing blue streak shot out, connecting weapon to wall for a split second, then a shower of sparks flew out from where it hit. Esna flinched, then saw a melted and charred hole in the wall about the size of her thumb.

“It shoots light?”

“Ionized gas…that glows, same as fire, only far more condensed. Look upper right,” he said as another icon lit up on her helmet.

Esna saw two little figures of people emblazoned there, both of which glowed blue.

“These are your shields. I’ve set them to activate under duress, but they’re in standby mode now. Physical objects won’t proc them, but plasma and other forms of energy will,” he said, suddenly twisting around in a blur and putting a shot into her chest.

Esna nearly fell backwards, but not from the impact. It only moved her slightly, but her surprise and shock did the rest. She stumbled a few steps, but didn’t feel any pain or see any damage on her chest when she looked down…though the icon on the right figure had a green chest now instead of blue.

“Don’t…do…that…” she said coldly.

“I am well aware of the damage level of our weapons. One shot will not penetrate your shields,” he said, tossing the pistol to her. “Catch.”

Esna moved her hands forward and cupped the huge weapon, finding it light enough when she grabbed it, but that was probably her armor doing the work for her fingers. The barrel and trigger were huge, but she was able to wrap her hands around it when she used both of them.

“Shoot me…once,” the Calavari said, tapping on his chest and impacting a clear barrier that wouldn’t let his finger come within an inch of his armor.

“Serious?”

“Yes. Just once.”

Esna pointed the weapon carefully and squeezed the trigger. It depressed easily and a blue streak shot out and hit the orange armor. There was a hiss on impact, but afterwards she saw no damage whatsoever.

“How do these suits have enough power for this? I thought shielding required a generator the size of a building?”

“Crude units built by people that do not know what they’re doing. They’re weaker than what we can produce in a power cell the size of one of your teeth.”

“What about my feet?” she asked, thinking quickly.

“If you put up your shields in physical protection mode, you’ll slip easily. I usually keep them off the bottom of my boots when I do that, but it’s something you have to learn to manage. Unless there’s a reason, never turn that bit on. Your current mode will block a plasma shot to your boot treads as is.”

“Good to know. What about air?”

“Short backup lasting a few minutes. After that you suffocate.”

“Rechargeable?”

“Yes.”

Esna smiled. “You’re right. This is better.”

“Last one for today,” he said as another icon popped up along the top of her vision. “There is a mode that creates interference with sensors. It won’t make you invisible, but it will keep above ground sensors from tracking us while we stay down here. It won’t work on vehicles or equipment though, but if we move on foot they can’t track us from the air.”

“What about if they come inside?”

“If they get close enough they still can. This isn’t scout armor.”

“My people really built all this?”

“Yes they did,” Rammak said evenly.

“Thank you,” Esna said hesitantly, “for everything.”

“You’re my mission now, Human. However this turns out, I’m glad to have found you.”

“Even if you end up dead when you could have kept hiding?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’m Star Force. And you’re supposed to be. Bringing you back, even if just for a day, is worth it. Until recently I haven’t had anything worth doing beyond survival. Now I do.”

“How long do you think we’ll stay alive?”

“Depends who comes after us. We’re going to get lost and make them look. It’s a big planet, and if they don’t have the necessary equipment in place we might already be out of sight.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I’m not counting on it.”

“So we keep moving, even if they can track our speeder?”

“We have to play against an opponent without seeing their moves, and that means focusing on what they might be able to do. If they’re on our trail, we have to keep changing our location.”

“Do we take extra armor with us?”

“No. These suits are very durable and I’ve got others stashed away in various places. If we lose a speeder we’re in trouble, but we’re going to pack up enough supplies to cover that possibility. If we have to go on foot we’ll be able to hide better, but we really need the speed of vehicles to traverse this planet. Even if you were capable of really running it’s quite far between my camps, and we can’t risk being seen in any towns.”

“Ok. So what else do we need to take care of here before we move on?”

“You need to get used to your armor while I take care of some things, and you can practice with it by moving the carts. We need to make as many food cubes as we can carry with us, but before that you and I are going to get a quick sparring lesson in, then I’m going to get you your apple.”

“You want me to fight you?”

“Practice. Start by setting my pistol aside and hitting me with your arm.”

“Alright,” Esna said, putting the fat pistol on a nearby crate and stepping up in front of the huge mass of orange armor. She reached out with her right arm and punched it lightning fast thanks to the powered parts, but her hand bounced off and didn’t move him at all.

Esna flexed her hand. That had hurt a little, despite the padding.

“Rule number 1. Do not punch with your knuckles.”

“What? How else do you punch?”

“Sometimes you do, but your knuckles break easily, so use them only when it’s a good idea or you have no choice. If you do have a choice, try a part of your arm that won’t damage easily.”

“Such as?”

“The side of your hand or the palm. Try your palm and make contact at the base. You’ll need to aim upwards slightly.”

“Ok,” Esna said uncertainly, stepping forward and pushing hard. Her hand made contact, but it didn’t move him either.

Rammak sighed. “I can see we have a lot of work to do.”

“That bad?” Esna asked, cringing.

“Yes. Try your elbow this time. Take a step back and run it forward into me. Snap it up at the last moment and twist at the waist.”

“You want me to ram you?”

“Try.”

Esna walked back a bit then ran into him leading with her elbow. She felt his big body move a little, but he only took a half step back as she bounced to the side. Rammak reached out and caught her before she could fall and stood her back up as easy as if she were a life size toy.

“Better. Do you know how to fight at all?”

“Someone my own size, sure.”

“Those who hunt us will be my size. The ones that matter anyway, though you have no chance against them.”

“If I’m just a package you’re protecting why practice at all?”

“A Human that can’t fight is…insulting.”

“To you?”

“To Star Force. Everyone, Human and otherwise, is taught to fight in the maturia. Someone that doesn’t know how is…unusual. We’ll work as we travel, and maybe if we meet up with some local hunters you’ll eventually be able to handle yourself without a weapon.”

“I already know how to shoot. I am going to be carrying a weapon, right?”

“Several.”

“So I just need to learn to shoot with your equipment.”

“Yes, but later. Right now let’s just focus on throwing a punch that doesn’t land you off balance. We’ll start with palm strikes for now. Hit me again, but more slowly. You need to learn the proper motion before you put power behind it.”

Esna didn’t say anything, focusing on what she was doing and lightly tapped Rammak’s chest plate again. He gave her corrections and she repeated her strikes, gradually gaining power until she was landing with enough force that her hand started to get sore. She still couldn’t budge him, but at least she knew what he wanted her to do when the Commando made her switch hands and repeat, telling her that having a right or left bias was unacceptable. All warriors were ambidextrous, and if they didn’t start out that way naturally they had to train themselves into the balanced state.

At least she was equally awkward with both arms, so balance wasn’t something she was going to have to worry about. Totally sucking with both was actually an achievement of sorts and allowed Esna to practice evenly as Rammak played punching bag for a bit, but he didn’t keep her at it for too long, eventually taking her over to the apple trees and retrieving one for her.

She learned how to take her helmet off, then picked the apple up in both hands and dropped it onto her knee, splitting it in half as he’d instructed her to do then taking one of the pieces that was the width of her chest and breaking off a bit of the rim. Esna took a bite and found it tart, but juicy. It was a weird taste but so full of water that she instantly liked it, for it was nothing like the dried up crops that grew in the fields.

There was so much to the apple that she couldn’t eat a tenth of it now, but Rammak took the rest and put it into a processor that chopped it up and did whatever else was necessary to turn it into a powdery substance that got mixed with other ingredients in several different machines that each turned out tiny, dense cubes in racks similar to what she’d been eating along with the Calavari ever since they’d met.

It was good food, but eating the raw apple was something she was going to miss once they hit the road again…and she really hoped that whoever might be following them didn’t find and loot this place. If they ever came back here, she was going to want another one.

12

“We leave the speeder here,” Rammak said as they stopped several weeks later at an unremarkable crack in the wall of the cave network they’d been traveling through.

“Where are we?” Esna asked, getting out and looking around. There was nothing here that looked technological, and the fact that there had been no guide lights was telling.

“We go on foot from here.”

“How far?” she asked, grabbing for one of the gear satchels in the cargo bed.

“No,” the Calavari said, raising an armored hand. “We can only carry what will fit on our armor.”

“We’re leaving all this stuff here?”

“Our armor will shield us from ranged detection, but not the gear. It’s harder to spot than the speeder, but we need to be invisible.”

“Can they really see through all this rock?”

“Possibly.”

“Shouldn’t we leave the speeder somewhere else then walk back here? It kind of marks exactly where we went.”

Rammak pointed a finger at her. “Now you’re thinking.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, digging into one bag of supplies and trying to figure out what to take with them.

“Back to the surface.”

Esna stopped and looked at him. “Won’t that give us away?”

“We’ll be in terrain.”

“What about their sensors?”

“Sensors work by picking up something special about you. Our armor hides our heat signature and other things. If they looked closely enough at where we were they could see us, but that would defeat the point of searching. They have to cast a wide signal across regions of the planet looking for whatever return pings they can get that are different than the environment.”

“And metal is different?”

“Sometimes, but it’s more about moving metal. A parked speeder is better hidden than a traveling one.”

“And us walking won’t do the same?”

“No. Not unless some is looking specifically at us.”

“How do you hide in plain sight?”

“Lack of a return signal. Have you ever noticed blind spots in your eyes?”

Esna frowned beneath her helmet. “No.”

“Humans have them. It’s structural, not damage, and they’re symmetrical. One in either eye. You won’t see them, but if you’re watching a light with one eye only you might notice it disappearing.”

“I don’t have anything like that.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Positive.”

“That’s why it’s called a ‘blind’ spot. You don’t even realize it’s there.”

“If I couldn’t see something I’d know,” Esna said stubbornly.

“If you knew how eyes work you wouldn’t be so sure. Your mind has to interpret what you’re seeing, and if there’s no signal it fills in the gap.”

“My mind lies to me?”

“It guesses…and does it on lots of things. That’s how a lot of impressive abilities work.”

“You lost me.”

“When you do something a lot you get used to every little piece of it, like running. After a while you can run with your eyes closed because your mind can guess where the ground is without you actually seeing it. Do you know how?”

“Feet?”

Rammak nodded his giant orange helmet. “Your mind connects one to the other, so if one is missing it guesses based on the information you have. Your eyes do the same to cover for the blind spots, and if you have both eyes open the information from one fills in the blank on the other.”

“Why would eyes have blind spots?”

“Why would eyes see upside down?”

“Upside down?”

“The image coming through the tiny dot on your eyes gets flipped, so what gets absorbed and send to your mind is upside down. Your mind flips it back in processing the same way a computer would. A lot of stuff with your mind can get messed with, on accident or purpose.”

“The Viks can do more than read minds?”

“A lot more. It’s why the helmet you’re wearing is built to block their abilities.”

“Wait, then why didn’t you wear one of these…oh, never mind. They’d see a body without a mind.”

“Or just recognize the helmet.”

“You could disguise it with a bunch of other stuff on top.”

The Calavari put one of his four hands on her armored shoulder. “For an ignorant youngling, you’re clever.”

“Can you turn the…block off?”

“No. It’s hardware and blocks the Archons’ abilities too.”

“What could they do?”

“Talk to us, guide us, see through our eyes, help us do things we didn’t know how to. If they wanted, they could take control of our bodies away from us, and the Viks can do the same thing. We can’t fight them and win even in our armor, but without it we can’t even get a shot off and they could make me shoot you.”

Esna’s jaw dropped. “How can they be that powerful?”

“A very good question that I do not know the full answer to, but they’ve been around a very long time.”

“They could take control of my mind and make me shoot you?”

“Not you. But they could do it to me if they caught me without my helmet on.”

“Wait. What do you mean, not me? Why am I different?”

“You’re Human.”

“So…”

“You have a natural block against some of their powers. They can’t read your mind or take control of it, but they can disrupt it. Make you lose your balance, get dizzy, stuff like that. Your helmet will block those abilities too.”

“Why do Humans…wait. We are Zen’zat, right? It’s a protection they built for themselves?”

“Exactly. Which is yet another reason why they hunt you. No one can have their powers without permission.”

“What do I have to do to use my block?”

“Nothing. It’s automatic.”

“Well that’s good. But you don’t have one?”

“Humans came from the V’kit’no’sat, Calavari did not. Humans found and rescued us, then incorporated us into their empire along with a lot of other races. We became brothers, but Calavari do not have your powers.”

“I’ve only got the one, right?”

“You have the potential for the others buried inside of you.”

“And they don’t want me to figure out how to use them?”

“The Viks want all of you dead, and the sooner the better.”

“Which why you know they’ll be chasing us if they caught our trail?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“Ok,” Esna said, turning back to their mass of supplies. “Let’s get going then. What should I pack?”

“Food, weapons, and anything else you can fit. I’ll carry the big stuff.”

“Yeah, your pack is huge. How much does your armor weigh?”

“About four times your body weight…so not much.”

“Funny,” she said, digging into their allotment of food cubes and sticks. “Can I take these out of their packages to save space?”

“Yes, though they may smash together.”

“Smashed is better than less,” she said, pulling out a pouch of canisters and dumping them out, then using the empty bag as a catch-all as she emptied the neat racks isolating each item and piled them up inside. Esna filled it up as much as she could, then pulled her pack off her back and wiggled it around to make it fit inside, then pushed in some ammo packs on top, feeling the cubes smash as predicted.

“We’re not going to run out,” Rammak noted, being less forceful as he loaded up his pack.

“Better safe than sorry.”

“There will be more when we get to the next location.”

“How far?”

“3 or 4 weeks, depending on how fast you run.”

Esna groaned. “The whole way?”

“Not unless you want to take several months walking.”

“If all we need to do is keep moving, what does our speed matter? Or is there some place we’re eventually going to get to that we’re going to hide out at?”

“We’re going to keep moving until it is unlikely that someone is following us. If we make it that long then we’ll spend some time in one location training, but we need to disappear before that happens and that starts now. I’ll drive the speeder further down the cave then run back here. Stay put until I return.”

“Will do. How did you find this spot without guide lights?”

“I carved markings along the way. There’s no local power source here to run the lights off of.”

“True,” she said, walking over to the cave wall and sitting down next to it. She leaned gently back on her pack with a rack of weapons overtop touching the rock, though with their attachment points she knew they wouldn’t be dislodged. “I’ll just rest up here for a bit. Do I have long enough to nap?”

“I’ll give you 20 minutes.”

“I’ll take it,” she said, leaning her head back until it touched a rocky outcropping, then she closed her eyes and got very still as she heard Rammak leave. The cave was completely dark, but with her helmet she could see well enough. None the less, this was the first time that the Calavari had left her alone since he’d pulled her out of certain death on that street.

She was alone…and that felt weird and wrong at the same time. Teren wasn’t here and that still burned her, but it had become a familiar burn. Where she had always had him by her side she now had the Calavari, different as that was, but for this moment she was completely alone. That had rarely happened throughout her life, with only a handful of situations where she’d been off the farm by herself.

Yammar and Innit…

Damn it, she wished she knew how they were. Were they dead too or alive and wondering where she and Teren were? How crazed had the people in town been after they left? If it was Humans that made them go nuts, would they have taken that out on Yammar in town then gone back to kill Innit too?

She hoped not, but once again she reminded herself that if they were being trailed…or even not at this point…going back would only endanger them if they’d survived. Esna hated that with a passion, thinking there should be some other solution that wasn’t so…wrong…but it was what it was. Yammar and Innit deserved better, but she couldn’t do anything for them. And it was too painful to imagine what might have happened to them because of her and Teren.

What had happened to her brother wasn’t a matter of imagination, so at least she could deal with it. If only Rammak had been a little bit faster…

But no, she was fortunate enough he had even been in that settlement. In fact, given the entire planet that he seemed to roam, it was too much of a coincidence.

When the sound of his footfalls broke her out of her not quite nap she stood and watched him run up, then held up a hand for him to stop as he headed towards the crack in the wall.

“Were you watching us? Did you suspect we were Humans?”

He looked down at her. “You are questioning why I happened to be there at that moment.”

“Yes I am. Tell me the truth. There’s an entire planet you could have been on, why there?”

“My being there had nothing to do with you. With all the time I spend alone I need to mingle and listen. Rumors travel fast and far, and if there are people on this planet that shouldn’t be I want to hear about it. I had no knowledge of Humans anywhere on Mace, and as fortuitous as it sounds, it was just that. Had I been watching you I would have been close enough to save your brother. As it was, I heard shooting and went to investigate, then arrived too late to save him.”

“You normally head towards the sound of weaponsfire?”

“I’m a warrior.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yes.”

“Not a good way to stay hidden.”

“Sometimes it’s best to hide in the open, and a complete stranger will draw more questions than a familiar nomad.”

“You got bored, didn’t you?”

“That too. And you’re stalling.”

“Ugh,” Esna said, wondering how he could see through her so easily. “What is it with you and running anyway?”

“It’s the basis of Star Force training, young one. Get used to it. In fact, dial down your armor’s power to…40% for the first 5 minutes, then you can put it back up to full.”

“Whaaaat?” she moaned, frowning heavily. When she didn’t act quickly enough Rammak used his interlink and lowered it for her. Suddenly everything felt heavier and she wasn’t even moving yet.

“Oh come on,” she complained. “Is this what I get for asking questions?”

“Questions are good. This is training. Or would you prefer we start with no power at all?”

“Fine,” she groaned, “but you better have yours completely off.”

“It’s always off,” he said, walking past her and into the crack in the wall.

Esna followed him, feeling very sluggish but finding that there was no room to run just yet. The crack wasn’t straight and they spent several minutes before she saw her first peak of light. They eventually emerged back onto the surface in a very deep canyon that had almost no angle to it at all and rose up some 50 or more meters above them with only a 2 or 3 meter width at the top and half a meter at the base which was full of rocks and other stuff you couldn’t step on easily.

“It’s been 5 minutes,” she said, looking for the control on her HUD.

“We’re not running yet.”

“You didn’t say running.”

“I am now.”

“How long do we have to walk and climb until we get to the running part?” she asked three steps prior to hitting solid, but dusty ground on a weaving path before them between the sheer cliff walls.

“Here,” he said, with a timer popping up on Esna’s HUD. “Follow as best you can.”

Rammak started running and disappeared around the first turn with her slowly accelerating into a stumbling jog. She’d never tried this without full power before and was now scared of turning it off entirely. It was so heavy, but at least she could still move forward. It was a pathetic run, made all the more difficult by the constant turns every three or four steps, but it counted. She watched the timer move all too slowly and found Rammak again after 1:13 when there was a split in the canyon. He led her on the right fork then disappeared as she moved slower than he was willing to go.

When 5:00 appeared she switched the power back on, having already figured out how to do it and not waiting on the Calavari. Her legs suddenly came back alive and her heavy armor felt as light as clothing with her breathing heavily as she continued to jog forward.

“Feels lighter than normal now, doesn’t it?” he asked her over the comm, though he was still out of sight somewhere ahead.

“I hate you, but yeah, it does.”

“A lesson learned, with many more to come. Now pick up the pace as soon as your breathing recovers. We have a lot of ground to cover and these canyons go on for a very long way before we reach the wash.”

“Why…are these so twisty?” she said, getting a bit dizzy with the constant redirections. It felt more like a maze than any canyons she’d ever known of.

“Erosion.”

“Wind blows straight.”

“Not if it follows tunnels.”

“What tunnels?”

“Burrowing creatures that didn’t move in straight lines. Natural miners that went where they smelled their next meal. Those tunnels were weak points and the rock above fractured along those lines. The wind did the rest.”

“Rock eaters? I thought those were a myth?”

“They might be now. I haven’t seen evidence of any in a long time.”

“Were they here with the cities?” Esna asked, tripping on an outcropping but catching herself with her left hand on a sidewall and pushing off to maintain her pace.

“No. They were brought in afterward.”

“By the Viks?”

“No, by others. This planet has a long history after the fall of not so nice people coming to salvage the ruins and do a lot of other stuff. That’s why you see a lot of races here that didn’t live on the planet.”

“What happened to them?”

“A lot of fighting. The Viks haven’t obviously been back since they obliterated the planet’s surface, probably thinking anything worth killing was already dead. They wouldn’t leave any Humans alive, but some Calavari and others weren’t important. Especially when you had opportunists coming in to repopulate whatever they found useable. It helped hide those of us that survived.”

“How long were you here before they came?”

“Not long. Once the warfleets left the scavengers came, following in their footsteps. And with them the Vik infiltrators hunted for us. They let us expose ourselves…”

“They’re patient?”

“When they want to be.”

“And you think they’re still hunting you?”

“No, but I think they have people watching the planet just the same. There are a decent amount of ships coming and going that even if someone didn’t survive here they could flee here to hide. That’s why no world is safe.”

“If I haven’t said it enough before, I hate you…but I’m really glad you found me.”

“Same here.”

“You hate me?” Esna asked as Rammak became visible again and she almost ran into him before he started running with an annoyingly easy gait.

“I hate how slow you are. You can do a little better though.”

“Not without running into the walls,” she complained, following his pack from two meters behind.

“Use your hands as buffers and just go with the flow. If you trip and fall just get up and keep moving, but don’t feel embarrassed and not push your limits because of it. Your armor will keep you from getting hurt.”

“Fine,” she said, speeding up and trying to hang the next turn faster with a hand extended out to her left. She pushed against the rock and tried to bounce herself, but she bounced too far and her shoulder hit the far side. Esna stumbled but kept running and made it four more turns before finally getting so loopy that her foot tripped on a loose rock and she rammed head first into the next bend.

She bounced back a few inches and landed on her shoulder, but Rammak didn’t say anything. He was still ahead of her and maybe he hadn’t noticed, so she got back on her feet and started again, this time a bit slower but still using her hands a little bit as she headed towards wherever Rammak was taking her, for she was completely lost at this point and had no idea how he was navigating, let alone moving as fast as he did in these small confines with his wide shoulders.

13

Esna woke up sleeping in her armor underneath an overhang in the canyons that had nothing but a sand wash underneath to rest on, yet she wasn’t too stiff. The Star Force armor Rammak had given her was way better than what she’d had before, and the internal padding even made it almost comfortable to sleep in. Add in a bit of soft sand beneath her and she’d fallen into a deep sleep a few minutes after she’d laid down. Rammak had done the same, but he was nowhere to be seen now.

It was daylight, as usual, but she didn’t get an idea of what time it was until she noticed the chronometer on her HUD. Esna was supposed to be woken up by her internal alarm nearly four hours ago but had apparently slept right through it. Considering how much running they’d been doing she wasn’t surprised, but Rammak should have woken her when it was time to move on and he hadn’t done so.

Her mind was groggy, so it took her a while as she sat up and leaned against the rocky wall to notice the little flashing icon on upper left area of her HUD that Rammak had told her was the comm area.

“Menu,” she said, with a list of options popping up. “Comm.”

A sub menu came up, and sure enough, there was a new addition.

“Message. Open.”

The little icon disappeared as a map appeared covering the lower right portion of her HUD. On it there was a single pulsating dot…which she thought meant it was interactive…but the three words emblazoned above the map drew her attention away from experimenting with it.

YOU’RE BEING TRACKED.

Had someone contacted her using her armor? Or was it Rammak and he was trying to warn her, because he wasn’t here.

“Battlemap,” she said, but where the message map should have been covered up with a new one, it instead materialized on the left side of her HUD. Between the two of them she’d lost at least a third of her vision out through her helmet, but it did allow her to compare them if she’d wanted, though they weren’t covering the same area.

“Message. Off,” she said slowly, firing off each word like a lachar blast in order to keep from slurring them. Her local accent and the armor weren’t all that friendly, so she had to concentrate to get her words right.

The message map disappeared and the battlemap slid back over to the right side showing the surrounding 10 meters. The canyon dimensions had been mapped out just by her being here, but Rammak wasn’t showing on it.

“Battlemap. Expand. Two.”

The range of the map doubled, showing a bit more canyon ahead as it should have due to the fact that…

The map behind her was filled in, because that’s the way they’d come, but ahead it should have been blank when out of view. That meant either she’d sleepwalked down there or Rammak had gone on ahead.

“Battlemap. Expand. Four.”

The map quadrupled in size and she saw a zigzagging line ahead that marked where not one, but three tendrils extended. Apparently Rammak had been doing some scouting and his marker was now shown at the end of one of the tendrils. A dead end, according to the map.

“Comm. Rammak.”

A little icon in the upper left that was only a ghost fully materialized and that meant she could speak to him. If not, it wouldn’t have lit up.

“Rammak, did you send me a message?”

There was a short pause, then the Calavari’s reassuringly deep voice answered.

“No, I did not. But do not worry, we are safe here.”

Esna froze for two seconds, trying to figure out what that meant. If he hadn’t sent the message, who had?

“Did I pick up someone else’s message by accident?”

“No. It was sent to us.”

“You got it too? What’s it mean?”

“It means that whoever is looking for us can’t find us.”

Esna’s throat suddenly constricted, and her gut didn’t feel too good either. “The Viks sent it?”

“Possibly.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“There are a set of coordinates for us to travel to, far from here.”

“Why would we go where the Viks wanted us?

“It wasn’t sent on a Vik frequency. It was Star Force.”

“Your people are here?”

“Our people might be here…or it could be a trap. I honestly do not know which. There are codes used to prevent unauthorized access to our comm systems. Very good codes. But this armor is hundreds of years old.”

“Meaning they could have hacked it by now?”

“Yes.”

“So what do we do?”

“At the moment our destination doesn’t change. We still need to get through these canyons.”

“And then?”

“I do not know.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Why didn’t your alarm wake you?”

“I guess I was too tired.”

“Then make it louder. Sound levels are a suboption in the menu. Find it and adjust as needed. There’s a scaling option so it won’t go loud on the first beat and freak you out. Probably want to use that one.”

“Why aren’t you here?” she asked, sensing something wrong with his voice now.

“I’ve been scouting ahead a bit.”

“You’re just sitting on the map.”

“I’ve been thinking. I’ll join up with you here.”

A waypoint flashed on her battlemap and Esna knew she had to click on it to get a path shown, else she might take a wrong turn if she wasn’t careful. Navigating by map wasn’t so easy for her, but Rammak had been making her practice. Navigating to a waypoint on an existing map was way easier, which she’d found out by exploring the menu options.

“I’m on my way. Comm. Off.”

Her link to Rammak went out, then she looked down at her menu list.

“Nav. Waypoint. Route.”

Suddenly there was a line on her battlemap tracking through all the twists and turns between her and her destination, but it was also floating in the air about a meter above the ground and heading off down the canyon.

“Menu. Off. Battlemap. Off. Message. Off.”

Her HUD cleared of all the clutter save for the yellow circular bar that tracked in the direction she needed to go. Esna stood up and waved a hand through it, still marveling at how her armor was able to do that. It looked totally real save for the fact that it was glowing.

She needed to get going, but her bladder was arguing for priority after having slept for the past 10 hours…far more than Rammak had been giving her previously. Her muscles were stiff, but they began to loosen up as she walked over to a more discrete spot and looked around, not wanting to get ambushed by anything.

“Armor. Disassemble.”

The various connections of the dull white pieces cracked apart and she started to pull the heavy pieces off one at a time, dropping them onto the small rocks on the ground until she was standing in the fresh air in just her bright white uniform. She found a spot in the rocks and relieved herself, then practiced putting the armor back on as fast as she could.

Esna tripped when she tried to dive her right foot into the boot and only a thrust hand kept her from face planting on a sharp rock, though her hand didn’t fare so well. When she stood up with one and a half boots on she saw and felt a cut across her palm beginning to ooze a bit of blood.

“Damn it,” she said, sucking it off and spitting to the right before she reached down and more slowly got her other boot on, followed by the rest of her armor. She sucked at the wound one more time before putting the arm piece on, then finished up with her helmet after grabbing a couple food cubes and some gulps of water from her supply pack.

Now that breakfast was done she followed the virtual guide line off through the canyons to meet up with Rammak and figure out what they were going to do about this mysterious message.

Three days later they finally arrived at their destination. The canyons led into another crack in a rocky mountain cliff that showed signs of having been enlarged with explosives. Rammak admitted to that as he barely was able to slide through sideways after removing his pack. Esna carried it for him as she followed, easily moving through the gap until a natural tunnel widened and led them a few meters into a cave offshoot.

“Thank you,” he said, taking his pack back and reattaching it to the nodules in his armor, then he pointed to the right. “Not far this way is a makeshift camp. I had to haul everything in here, for there are no ruins. There’s nothing here for anyone to look for, but it is a nexus point for four different trails I use and there’s a speeder if we want to take to the sky.”

“Do we?” she asked as they jogged off, with Rammak thankfully going very slow this time.

“It’s a gamble,” he reiterated from previous conversations on the subject that had led them to no conclusions. “My job is to keep you alive, and right now they don’t know where we are.”

“Best guess?”

“I find my sudden possible connection to my brothers and sisters clouding my judgement on that.”

“Do you think they’ll send another message?”

“That wasn’t a direct comm link. They’d have to know where we were to beam it straight to us. No, that was sent to a large area and anyone with the proper equipment could get it.”

“Meaning the local hunters?”

“Not unless they have Star Force equipment, which they don’t. I’ve made sure of that over the years.”

Esna frowned. “You mean you stole it back from them?”

“I made sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands, and when it did I took action.”

“You killed them?”

“Some.”

“Did they deserve it?”

Rammak stopped suddenly and Esna almost ran into him as she skidded to a halt. He turned around to face her, visible only through the enhanced HUD on her armor, for the cave was pitch black as usual.

“I never kill those who don’t deserve it. Never on purpose, anyway. Those I did were using bits of recovered tech to exploit others. They didn’t really know how to use it, but I took it back from them and some didn’t like that. Others, I bartered for it and helped them in exchange. I didn’t kill people just because they took our stuff.”

“Sorry.”

“You still have a lot to learn about Star Force. That question never would have even formed in your mind had you been born among us, and I intend to give you the chance to learn what you’ve been denied by fate. That’s why we can’t follow those coordinates,” Rammak said, finally making the decision.

“But if it is yo…our people, we’ll miss our opportunity to find them.”

“If it is Star Force and they know we’re here, they won’t leave.”

“But if we keep hiding, how are they going to find us?”

“I don’t know, but if they can’t find us then neither can the Viks.”

Esna frowned, then a stupid question formed in her mind. “Is there some way we can send them a message?”

“It would reveal our posi…” Rammak said dismissively, then cut himself off.

“What?”

“It might be possible.”

“How?”

“We can’t transmit from where we are, but I might be able to construct a delayed message. It would have to be sent after we’re away, but it’d still help the Viks narrow down our location.”

“What could we say to find out if it really is Star Force or an imposter?”

“It’s not that simple. The signal we got had to be strong and it had to be airborne. That means from a ship, and whoever set it would have given away their position. If it is Star Force, then the Viks probably know they’re here too.”

“And if it was the Viks?”

“Then we know they’ve got a ship here.”

“Meaning?”

“If they can narrow down our location, we’re as good as dead if we’re above ground.”

“Oh,” Esna said grimly.

“Sending a message makes that more likely.”

“Can we stay below ground?”

“No. Not unless we want to camp out in the same region. We’ll have to travel above ground to get from point to point in order to stay on the move.”

“Isn’t that more risky than staying put and moving around in places like this?”

“It’s a risk either way, but if they’re not actively tracking us then they can’t be sure if we’re hiding here or have moved on. If they assume moved on, they could go right past us.”

“Meaning they have to search every bit of cave?”

“It causes them to have to make choices, and the further ahead we can get the more choices there are between us and them.”

“How long of a delayed signal can you send?”

“I can’t do it with the equipment up ahead. We’ll have to move on and gather what I need. If and when we do, I can set the timer for as much of a delay as we want.”

“So, like a month to make sure we get good and lost again?”

“Something like that.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The Viks aren’t just going to sit and wait for us to show ourselves. They’re going to be up to something, and that message confirms they’re after us, one way or another.”

“And you said we can’t fight them?”

“No. We can’t. It’s an automatic loss, but surrender isn’t an option either. They’ll kill us both on the spot unless they think we can supply them with information.”

“And if they do?”

“They get the information, then kill us.”

“If Star Force is here and they can get us off this planet, that’s the only way we’re going to be truly safe…right?”

“If…” Rammak emphasized. “But if it’s a trap, the only way to avoid it is by staying away.”

“As much as I want to live, I don’t want to live like this forever unless it’s the last option. And don’t mistake that as ingratitude. When Teren died I didn’t want to live at all. You got me this far, and thank you very much for that, but if there’s a way out of this mess we need to try to find it. Cautiously, but we can’t pass this up, can we?”

“The Viks are the better hunters,” Rammak sadly said.

“Meaning we can’t hope that Star Force will find us before them?”

“We could hope, but it would be a foolish one. We have to tip the scales in our favor and I agree that a message sent is the only way to cautiously do that. Come, we can discuss this more in the light,” he said, unceremoniously turning around and jogging again.

“How close are we?”

“A few minutes.”

“No guide lights?” Esna asked just as the first glowing orb appeared ahead of them. “Oh, there.”

“This cave is a fractured slab that has eroded. There are many places to get lost and I do not usually wear armor with a battlemap in it.”

“How do you get through the canyons then?”

“Small trail markings and memory.”

“And you get lost a lot?” she guessed.

“On occasion, but time is something I’ve had an abundance of on this planet.”

“So you usually walk?” she asked darkly.

“No, I usually run faster than this for workout purposes,” he said as they came to a flattened part of cave that had obviously had work done on it. Rammak hit a switch and a beam of light burst out from a framed doorway. “We’re here.”

“Figured that,” she said, noting his rare use of humor. “Safe to strip?”

“Yes. Thermal sensors will do no good here unless they’re in the caves…at which point we’re already dead.”

“Armor. Disassemble,” she said, beginning to pull off various pieces to reveal damp, but not too horribly sweaty clothing. The armor had some form of internal air circulation that she didn’t understand beyond the fact that Esna never got drenched like she used to in her old armor.

“There is a full shower tube here,” Rammak said. “Indulge yourself while I attend to supplies.”

“If you insist,” she said sarcastically, wandering around the few rooms that were a mix of carved rock and artificial structural supports. It didn’t take her long to find the chamber that held a big vertical cylinder with a platform on top. Unfortunately it was empty, but she quickly found the topside controls and a small waterfall spilled out of three ports and began to slowly fill the big pond that the Calavari used. She could make it rain inside instead, but right now she preferred total immersion.

While it filled she looked around for replacement clothes but found none that would fit her, so she dug into her pack and pulled out her spares. All of them were dirty, so she looked for and found a clothing refreshing unit and stuck them in, then stripped down and threw her current clothes inside. She walked naked back to the shower tube to find it filled halfway up.

She walked up top and slid over the edge, dropping down into the water and blissfully soaking in the warm liquid up to her armpits. The tube would continue to fill up above her head, but she found the internal controls and stopped it just short of her chin before dunking her head and twirling her dirty hair around underneath the water and coming back up to the surface feeling thoroughly renewed.

Rammak walked in and looked at her through the clear side of the tube, but at this point she no longer cared. She’d lived in her old armor so long that just wearing clothing alone had left her feeling naked, and she knew her protector would be the last person to ever harm her so she didn’t fear for her safety here, nor did she have any sense of embarrassment when Rammak stared at her. He seemed to worship Humans a bit, and she didn’t mind him looking when her body was fully there to see. Yammar and Innit had always suppressed their curiosity with her and her brother’s bodies, but she saw no need for it.

Vanity was one of those things that her isolation on this planet had shielded her from, and her only concerns about ‘exposure’ revolved around having armor between her skin and a lachar bolt.

“Did you need something?” she asked after a minute, running her fingers through her hair.

“We’re missing some supplies.”

Esna’s eyes widened and her sense of exposure spiked with the implied danger. “What?”

“I do not think it was scavengers because they did not take everything, but I do think some indigenous critter found its way in here.”

“Do we have enough to get to our next camp?”

“Yes, but not by a wide margin. I had hoped to stay here for a week or so, but we need to leave tomorrow.”

“Ahh…” she said, emotionally clinging to her bath water as she said the word. “Is that critter still around?”

“If it is, I’ll make sure it doesn’t get in here. Enjoy the water while you have it. I’ll bring you your clothes when they’re ready.”

“Thank you, Rammak,” she said as he left, then Esna hit a button on the curved wall that closed the cap on the tube and caused it to rain inside, but pulled out enough water simultaneously so the level wouldn’t increase.

Esna felt it hit her hair and run through it, as well as little droplets hitting her face and seeming to wall her in from the harsh, cruel exterior world.

“One day,” she said with disgust. “And I bet he says we have to run the whole way.”

14

‘The whole way’ turned out to be 9 days through pitch black caves, but fortunately these weren’t burrow made and therefore more or less straight with annoying wiggles. The worst of it was the footing, for there was very little flat space to step down on. Esna was always turning her ankles on the angled rocks, but her armor kept her from getting injured for the most part. A couple of times she managed to really tweak her left despite the protection, but Rammak just told her to look at it as training and learn to how move over the rocks…meaning they weren’t going to slow down and walk.

When they got to the end of this segment of their journey the broken floors disappeared into chunks of debris laying down on flat, artificial ones. They’d broken through into another set of ruins, though at this point she wasn’t sure where on the planet they were. Far beyond anywhere she had ever traveled with Yammar, and her armor’s map didn’t extend beyond where she or Rammak had traveled. Apparently the set he was wearing now hadn’t gone anywhere she hadn’t yet, for the ruins weren’t mapped on her HUD and he’d told her that the two sets shared data regularly over short range hidden signals.

Esna wasn’t sure what a ‘hidden’ signal was, but he’d told her it was meant to be useful without giving away their position. Apparently their comm signals to one another could give them away if they were more powerful, but were set to a very short range to avoid that. The hidden signals were somehow even more…hidden?

She didn’t understand most of the technology he’d salvaged, but she was learning how to use it. Every stop they made he’d show her whatever was new and she tried to learn as much as she could. When they got into these ruins and followed a line of lights into a cleaned up area she spotted the power switch before he did, then the darkness disappeared and the clean, artificial light snapped on from strips that ran along the edges of the ceiling and floor.

“Is there comm gear here to use?”

“Possibly. There’s equipment here that can be salvaged. If I don’t get enough parts we’ll have to take what we have with us and combine them later.”

“How big?”

“I need a transmitter bigger than a suit of armor, or we’ll have to go to the surface to make sure it gets the range we need.”

“How can I help?”

“Restock your pack with foodstuffs and see if there’s any Human clothing here that fits you.”

“Alright,” she said, a little disappointed not to be helping with the salvage work…which was as close to an area of expertise that she had. “How many Humans were on this planet before it got…blasted?” she asked, realizing that it was personal to him and she might want to pick her words better. To her it was stories, but he’d been here and known these people.

“I don’t know for sure, but there would have been some that lived here to assist the Calavari and then some that came in to fight and help with the evacuation, as did many others.”

“How many different races were in Star Force?”

“Hundreds…thousands if you count individuals in Axius.”

“Axius means what again?”

“Alliance Xeno Interstellar Unified Sanctuary.”

“So it was a refugee area?”

“No, but it’s where a lot ended up after they passed through indoctrination…which was a process to teach them what they needed to know in order to join Star Force.”

“A test?”

“Training,” the Calavari said, taking the moment for another lesson. Rather than telling her things on his own, he usually waited for her to ask questions. She’d asked him about that too, and he said that curiosity was an essential part of being an individual. Those who didn’t think and wonder never got very far and had a hard time achieving self-sufficiency because it required a lot of adjustments made off internal biofeedback that no one else could access.

Basically, no one could make you live forever. You had to earn it…then get lucky enough to avoid accidents and assassins.

“How long did that take?”

“For some it took years.”

“And me? If the message is real and they’re coming for us?”

“Your indoctrination has already begun. The more you learn from me, the faster the transition.”

“What do I have to end up doing?”

“Become one of us. Nothing more than that.”

“How?”

“Learn what it means to be Star Force.”

“And everyone in Axius had to do the same?”

“Most people in Axius were born there, but when someone came from the outside that was probably where they would end up. If they were Calavari they could go to Axius or our faction, and if you earned enough marks you could live and work about wherever you liked. That’s why some Humans were living here.”

“Did you let anyone in?”

“Pretty much, but we also had contacts with races and individuals that weren’t part of Star Force. They were free to travel and visit a lot of places, but to live with us you had to be one of us.”

“What were their names? The other…powers besides the Viks?”

“There were large ones and small. The biggest near us was the independent Protovic. The Critel, some of which are on this planet, had numerous worlds of their own spread out amongst Star Force territory. They were mostly businessmen and interacted with Star Force on that level, though few actually joined Star Force if there wasn’t profit to be made from it.”

“Wait. I thought you said there was no currency?”

“For people like me there was none, but if you were a civilian you could earn credits doing a variety of things. You didn’t have to in order to survive. Credits were for luxuries, but many people ran businesses within Star Force and acquired a great deal of semi-independent power. I’m guessing that you might have been descended from them.”

“Me? Why?”

“I wonder why your ancestors survived as long as they did. You said you came here on your father’s ship. Do you know where he got it?”

“From his father.”

“Perhaps you are descended from traders who weren’t on a planet when it was attacked. Those that were would either end up dead or evacuated. I doubt your lineage was accidental. I have been able to survive here amongst the other Calavari because the Viks don’t care about them. They’re not Star Force anymore. But for Humans it doesn’t matter. You all have to die. So how did you get here?”

“I’ve been wondering that most of my life.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have more to offer, but I am Star Force, and as long as you’re with me then so are you.”

“Thank you. For everything…which is quite a lot compared to what I had before.”

“It’s very little to me.”

“I suppose it would be if you lived here before all this got trashed.”

“Not all of it. Go find some intact pieces. You can keep whatever is here that fits you or in your pack.”

“Does that mean we’re running out of here again?”

“One more segment, yes. Then we’ll get to another underground transit with a speeder.”

“How far?”

“We’ll stay here a few days, then it’ll take at least 3 weeks.”

“Ugh,” Esna said, “but I’ll take the few days.”

“During which we’ll work on your fighting skills.”

“Better than running,” she said, turning and heading off to explore the new camp.

“Faster,” Rammak prodded as he watched her punching a variety of targets space around an otherwise empty room, “but never go as fast as you can. Always leave your mind a little bit of a head start over your body or you’ll end up making mistakes and that will slow you down far more.”

Esna didn’t say anything, punching one floating bin with the side of her fist then running three hasty steps to the left and hitting another one with her elbow. Rammak had a circuit set up for her but she could barely move the targets. She didn’t know what was holding them in place, but had it been anti-grav like in her old speeder than even a little tap should have moved it.

Whatever he had rigged up here, it had been meant for his strength level…which was why she couldn’t even budge them.

“Let yourself fall into a rhythm and flow from one to another. Accept inefficiency as the price you must pay now to develop that rhythm, but always be looking for it. Strike, move, strike, move. Live it. Breathe it. Become it. When a Commando acts he does not think or plan. That is for times of calm. A Commando pulls on previous planning and thinking so that he can act and react. In the future you will be able to think when you have even a gap of 2 seconds to spare, but for now don’t try. You have targets and you are to hit them. Let that soak into you then disconnect the analysis part of your mind and put everything into the physicality.”

Esna hit one up high then had to turn and duck down low to hit another. She wasn’t allowed to kick them yet, everything had to be arm strikes. When she went for it somehow she ended up in a skid without realizing it, feeling her arm come within range and exploiting the opportunity. She straight punched it, not having any other good options, then she moved up with her mind to the next target…with her legs somehow figuring out how to get her there on their own.

She swung her elbow at it from the side, getting very close to the target in order to do it and feeling a personal connection with the target. Even though it was just a stationary target she had felt uneasy about getting so close before, but apparently that was starting to wear off. If this had been a person that probably wouldn’t have been the case, but right now she wasn’t thinking about that and taking Rammak at his word…just going with the flow and seeing where it led.

“Enough,” he said, startling her.

She half hit one, ending with a tiny little tap as she turned and looked at him, breathing hard.

“Why?”

“You’re finished.”

“What? I can’t be. I just got started.”

“That’s 1000 strikes.”

“No way.”

“I counted and have the visual replay if you want to confirm that.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“I could have sworn I was only at 400.”

“When you get in a rhythm, losing count is normal. That’s why you have someone or something else counting for you so you can disconnect and pour your full focus into what you’re doing.”

“Our armor makes recordings?”

“Whenever it is on, yes.”

Esna was shocked. “You mean everything I’ve done and said since I put this on is stored inside it somewhere?”

“Not what you said unless you were on the comm. It records exterior sounds though.”

“Why?”

“So when we fight a battle analysts can study our enemy after the fact, or even during. With the battlemap signals being transmitted constantly we can have an analyst in a safe place…say a ship in orbit…and they can be studying what is happening from as many vantage points as there are suits of armor, either live or on as short a delay as they need.”

“Can I turn it off?”

“Yours is off, along with most of the rest of the functionality. Mine is recording though, so we can review your training or anything else we need.”

“What about which tunnels we take?”

“Exactly.”

“So that’s why you don’t get lost twice.”

“A lot of effort, time, and experimentation has gone into the development of this armor. It’s a very important tool that takes decades to full understand how to use.”

“I’ve got time,” she said, finally getting her breathing under control.

“Hopefully.”

“You still think they’re following us?”

“I know it. I just don’t know how small a region they’ve narrowed us down to.”

“Are there any recorders in your camps?”

“Not that I set up, but public hallways always had recorders and they’re probably still functional.”

“But not in here?” Esna asked, looking at the ceiling.

“Maybe. There were never any in personal quarters, but I don’t know what this room was used for. It had been vandalized before I got here.”

“Where did all this stuff come from then?”

“I didn’t say scavenged. I said ‘vandalized.’”

“The Viks?”

“Look there,” Rammak said, pointing to a spot on the ceiling.

“What am I looking for?”

“A tiny depression.”

“I see it…them,” she amended. Now that she paid close attention, the ceiling and even the walls had tiny chips out of them. Melted chips. “Weapons damage?”

“Yes.”

“I thought your weapons would have blown out the walls.”

“We build our infrastructure as solid as our weapons.”

Esna looked around, thinking of all the damage in the areas around where he had cleaned up.

“Whatever hit this place must have been really powerful.”

“More than you can imagine.”

“How do you defend against something like that?”

“The shields that protected the planet held for a long time, but if you don’t have a fleet to keep the enemy from pounding on them indefinitely, or the ground batteries to do the same, eventually they’ll get through unless you have stronger shields than they have weapons. The Viks have stronger tech than us. Not a lot, but enough that in an even fight they have an advantage. When the shields go down, the ground game is over. A single warship can destroy just about anything given enough time.”

“Was there fighting here before the shields went down? On the ground, I mean.”

“Yes. If one shield goes down a region will be exposed. You can land ground troops and try to take out the others over land rather than beat your way through them from orbit. And if you lower the shields to the ground and give the land troops physical access to them, they can bring in equipment that will destabilize a point large enough to get people through. Given enough time they can even help destabilize the entire shield and make it easier for the warships to punch through. That’s why you don’t put the shields down all the way to the ground. You keep them in a raised dome or a flat shield to protect against orbital bombardment. It’s the biggest threat there is, and though it sounds counter intuitive, you will let the enemy assault you on the ground rather than let them bring the entire shield down and destroy everything from orbit.”

“That sounds…horrible. Can’t you build bigger shields, or more of them?”

“We did. They had to bring a huge fleet to counter those shields, which was why Star Force worlds didn’t fall quickly.”

“Is that why there might be some left out there?”

“Yes. Plus the people were being evacuated somewhere. Even I don’t know where it was.”

“Are they going to lose eventually?”

Rammak shrugged his huge shoulders. “I’ve been out of the loop for so long I don’t know, but if the Viks are still hunting Humans here then that means they haven’t finished and gone back to the core.”

“Go back?”

“They don’t want our worlds, they just want us dead. That’s why they didn’t keep this one or any of the others that we know of aside from Earth. That one used to be a colony of theirs, so I think it was a matter of pride that they took it back.”

“That’s where Humans came from?”

“Yes, and it’s where they hit first because of it.”

“They really want us dead that bad?”

“They are extremely determined to make it happen.”

“Then I better get some more practice in,” Esna said, turning back towards the targets, but Rammak put a hand on her shoulder.

“Patience. You’re no match for them and you’re not going to become one anytime soon. You’ve got enough in today, now let your body and mind absorb the workout and make upgrades. Pushing too hard for too long prevents that and forces you into emergency overrides. You can upgrade from them, but not as well. And usually you take damage in the process too.”

“Funny, you never said that about the running.”

“I haven’t been pushing you that hard.”

“Feels like it.”

“Strikes are more energetic and jarring. Running is a constant drain. When you get more acclimated to the strikes you can add more, but that’ll take time. If you remember, your first days of running weren’t all that long.”

“I can’t remember. It’s all a blur.”

“I can. It’s supposed to be difficult to spur your adaptation, but not too much so. I’ve been training far longer than you’ve been alive. I know what I’m doing. Trust me on the running and the strikes, but if you’re eager we can work on other things?”

“Like what?”

“Stability holds to work on your strength and balance.”

“What are those?”

Rammak stepped aside then tilted forward, placing all four arms on the ground and kicking his feet up in the air until they were pointed to the ceiling and unwavering.

“Uh…not sure if I’m ready for that yet. And I’ve only got two arms.”

Rammak shifted position and lifted himself up with only his top pair.

“Show off,” Esna muttered. “Is that really training?”

“Yes it is.”

“Alright, then show me how to learn…because I know I can’t do that right now.”

Rammak flipped over and stood back up. “We’ll start without your armor. Take it off and I’ll run you through some simpler ones first.”

“That sounds better. But be warned, my balance when I’m upside down is really bad. Cave climbing experience talking.”

15

Back to traveling through dark caves and in a decent running rhythm, Rammak suddenly pulled up so fast that Esna, locked into a zombie-like following mode, bounced off the back of his pack and fell onto her butt.

“What the…” she complained, blinking away the sudden daze.

“Stop here.”

“What, you couldn’t slow down first?” she said, sitting on a couple of small rocks but not deigning to stand up, for she was tired as hell.

“It was you that wasn’t paying attention.”

“What did I miss?”

“Me slowing down.”

Esna glared at him through her faceplate. “Stupid Calavari. You’re lucky I like you.”

Rammak snorted a brief laugh, then walked off to the right through a huge crack in the wall that ran straight up high enough that there was a bit of light coming down through it. There wasn’t much, but even a touch stood out amongst the pitch black caves that had become the norm over the course of their journey.

Rammak’s orange armor passed beneath the haze, brightening his plates back to their impressive sheen after having existed in the dark and navigating by nothing more than their helmets’ nightvision. He disappeared just as quickly through the crack, leaving Esna where she sat.

“Ahh,” she said blissfully, leaning back and laying on the rocks for a moment and enjoying just sitting still. When she felt like she was about to fall asleep she stopped herself and rolled sideways onto her feet, slowly standing up and looking around.

“He did say stop,” Esna reminded herself as she began walking over more rocks until she was underneath the tiny ray of light. Looking up she couldn’t see any sky, for the crack wasn’t a straight shot, but there was enough ambient light coming down to mark the location. It almost felt deliberate to Esna and she hated to leave the light behind, but she was curious to where Rammak had gone as his tracking marker on her HUD was a fair distance away by now.

Walking back into the darkness she moved through the crack and found a left facing shaft that descended at a fairly steep angle. Walking carefully so she didn’t trip and tumble down, Esna worked her way through more of the sharp rocks, glad to have her armor that seemed to defy even scuffing. Had she been in her old armor she was sure that her boots would have been trashed by now, but her current ones still looked brand new aside from the dusty grime covering them.

Halfway down she smelled dampness, which was confirmed when she hit the bottom and her foot slipped. Esna caught herself, then looked around at the mass of plants covering a hollow, dome-like chamber that had lazy drips falling randomly from the ceiling. There was no light here at all but the plants were still growing, confusing Esna thoroughly.

Didn’t all plants need light?

On the far right there was a narrowing of the ceiling but it never fully turned into a wall, leaving a low gap that had Rammak’s marker on the other side somewhere. Careful not to slip again, Esna walked through the soggy, mossy plants and knelt down beside the gap. It was big enough to go through, but must have been a tight squeeze for the Calavari.

Esna laid down and crawled sideways rather than rolling underneath several meters of low ceiling before the other side opened up and a smaller, more jagged cave had yet another crack on the far side…out of which she could hear faint sounds.

“My fault for not keeping up,” she knew he’d say, so she didn’t bother to complain, even to herself, and hopped over a small puddle on her way to the new crack. When she got there the sound was more defined and she could have swore it was running water. A few dozen meters more and her suspicion was proven correct as she ducked under another low overhang and walked out beside an underground creek less than a meter wide but flowing quite fast over numerous rocks. That created the sound, but it was the sight of some Star Force equipment on the other side near Rammak that perked her up.

“Where are we?”

“Even I can’t run the whole way without taking a break. This is a camp I used previously, leaving a few items behind each time.”

Esna glanced over the stash, realizing he must have come through here numerous times.

“Why did you keep roaming so much?”

“It’s a big planet. I didn’t want to get tied down to one location, but I needed to establish a resource circuit in case some of my camps were lost. I couldn’t take the chance of running out and having to live like everyone else, so I moved around, recovering and building up as much infrastructure as I could. It gave me something to do and allowed me to sample rumors from around the planet as I tried to figure out what was going on.”

“You’ve been looking for the Viks the whole time?”

“And other things,” he said, activating a glow orb that bathed the nearby channel in a deep blue that made the water look shiny and dark at the same time. “We’ll take an extended break here. Double rest.”

“Thank you,” she said earnestly, disconnecting her helmet and sniffing at the unfiltered air. “It’s cold in here.”

“The water flows from subsurface ice.”

“Ice?” Esna asked, never having seen any herself aside from what was manufactured for drinks, and that was a rarity.

“There are buried glaciers in this region underneath the debris.”

“Glaciers?”

“Miles of ice.”

“Miles?” she asked, aghast. “Where did that come from? This planet is so hot.”

“Not all of it,” Rammak said, pulling his helmet off as well but keeping the rest of his armor on. “The poles still have some surface ice in a few places, but most of it got buried.”

“We’re not at the poles.”

“But we are getting further from the equator.”

“How can there be ice anywhere with three suns to melt it?”

“This planet has no axial tilt, so the sunlight doesn’t hit the poles with much intensity, but most of the ice near here was manufactured.”

“For what?” Esna thought, not having a clue what ice was for other than drinks and still not over the fact that somewhere on this hot planet was some out in the open and not melted. Even as Rammak said it she still didn’t totally believe him.

“Recreation. There was a large park built here and contained within a shield dome to keep it from melting. A lot of it was vaporized in the bombardment, but the lower levels survived and were covered with debris that kept the sun off it. Most of it is gone now, but some still remains and seeps water out through this river that leads to an underground lake.”

“A lake?”

“We’re not going there,” Rammak said, drawing a frown of disappointment from her, “but I’ve been there. It’s a dead end.”

“What happens to the water?”

“It runs off through cracks and seeps out into hotter ground.”

“I found something like that near our farm. Me and Teren used to sneak dips there. I didn’t know it came from ice.”

“Back there, probably not. There’s water beneath the surface in many places across the planet, just not much on the surface or in the air. What did you do with the spring you found?”

“It wasn’t a spring, just a…deep pool. We didn’t do anything with it because we didn’t want anyone else to know, or they’d take it and sell it.”

“The water would have evaporated if it wasn’t being replaced, therefore it was a spring of some sort. Why didn’t you sell it? Water is rare enough that natural sources are a delicacy, despite the stupidity of that.”

“We wanted to keep it a secret between us…” Esna said, unpleasant memories rising that she stuffed back into the corner of her mind that she usually kept them penned up in. “Why is that stupid?”

“Water taken out of the air is more pure than what comes from underground, therefore better in most cases. People think ‘rare’ means ‘good’ and in this case that isn’t so.”

Esna looked at the swiftly moving creek. “So this isn’t good to drink?”

Rammak pointed to a piece of equipment sitting on the ground nearby.

“We could drink it, but there’s no way of knowing what’s in it. It could make us sick. I’ll put it through a vaporizer and purify it, then we can restock our packs before we move on.”

“I thought we were getting low and wondered why you weren’t using a water spire when we slept.”

“This is much faster,” he said, grabbing a tiny object and tossing it to her. “Fill it up.”

Esna looked at it under the blue light, finding only one button on the mashed up folds of something. She hit it and the material unfolded into a bucket…a hard bucket without so much as a seam showing. Esna tapped her armored fist on it, hearing a solid knock.

“That’s handy,” she said, walking over and dipping the edge into the creek. It didn’t go all the way to the bottom and she wasn’t able to wiggle it around to fill it up all the way, but she managed to get it about half full then gave up and walked over to what Rammak had called a ‘vaporizer.’

“Pour,” he said, pointing to an inlet a little larger than her fist.

Esna held the bucket in two hands and tipped it over, slowly spilling the water in.

“How much?”

“It’ll take it all.”

“How?”

“Watch.”

Esna did as told and slowly the water passed inside and she heard a faint hum. It continued to gobble it up until a small pod on the side began to enlarge.

“Oh. That’s fast,” she said as the bucket emptied.

“Get another.”

“How many do we need?”

“I think 5 would do for your pack. I’ll get my own.”

“Four more then,” she said, walking back over to the creek to refill the magic bucket.

4 weeks later…

“Alright, that’s it,” Rammak said, closing a panel on the side of the mechanical monstrosity that he’d built that stood slightly taller than Esna. “It’s ready to transmit.”

“After we leave?” she asked, just to make sure.

“After. Five weeks after, to be exact. Starting now.”

“Are we leaving now?”

“Tomorrow. I want you to get one more good workout in, then we’ll be traveling via speeder for several days.”

“Finally,” she said with obvious relief.

“Rest is good, but too much becomes stagnation. Regardless, the only routes out of here that are to our advantage are overland, and the ones on foot don’t take us very far. If we head southwest through the valley it’ll protect us from lateral scans and we can cover a great distance before our message is sent. Unless they’re looking in this area they won’t see the speeder.”

“And if they are?”

“We won’t be the only speeder on this planet and we’ll have robes on over our armor just in case anyone takes a look. If the Viks know we’re here, it’ll give us away. But if they don’t know where this base is it’ll be too late before they figure it out later.”

“What do you mean by later? They either see us or they don’t.”

“Not if they’re recording all orbital sensor records. If they detect our signal then replay previous data from this area they will see our speeder leave and know which way we went.”

Esna was silent for a moment, not having even considered that.

“It is a risk,” Rammak added, “but we can get underground again before the message is sent. It will put them on our trail, possibly closer than they are now, but it won’t lead them directly to us. We’ll have a chance to get lost again.”

“They record everything?”

“Best way to track someone down is to scan everywhere and review the data later. The question is how many orbital assets do they have and are they overhead. They might not be, but I’m not making assumptions regarding our luck on that.”

“No,” Esna agreed, biting her lip. “What did you decide to put in the message?”

“My identity.”

Esna frowned. That wasn’t something they’d discussed.

“What for?”

“If Star Force is here, they need to know who to talk to. We can’t risk giving clues, Esna. I’m sorry. But if I tell them who I am, they might give us a clue.”

“You’re worried that whatever we tell them the Viks will be able to figure out?”

“I have no idea what has transpired over the past centuries and how much they’ve learned of us. But Star Force will know of me and what I know…and there’s a chance they could construct a message that the Viks won’t be able to understand.”

“And if not, they still know you’re here…for sure.”

“Yes.”

“But not me?”

“There may come a time when I have to lead the Viks away from you. Best not to confirm the fact that you’re with me.”

Esna grew angry and pointed a tiny finger at the Calavari’s big head.

“No seppin way. I don’t care if you buy me another week. I can’t make it without you and you know it. If we die, we die together.”

“If we’re together you die for sure. If we split there’s a small chance you could make it. I’ll take a small chance over your certain death if it comes to it.”

“I won’t.”

“You have to be a survivor, Esna. It’s part of my training, but even I had to learn and adapt when the moment came. You’re already learning from me and…” Rammak paused, then suddenly Esna’s HUD lit up. “There. I updated your battlemap with every hideout I have on this planet. If we get separated, find your way to them and survive. I’ll set mine to delete if I should die so the Viks won’t have it, and hopefully they’ll kill me before they can pull it from my mind…”

“Stop it!” Esna yelled, then disconnected and pulled her helmet off, tossing it to the side not wanting the information it now contained. “I am not leaving you. If you take off without me I’ll follow, I promise you.”

Rammak pulled his own helmet off and locked eyes with her under the bright white lights of the camp they were in.

“I don’t like it either, but if I’m going to die I’d rather be accomplishing something in the process. I hate the idea of a no-win scenario.”

“Why can’t the Viks be beaten? Why are you so scared of them? If they had a ship shooting at us that’s one thing, but why can’t you fight them? You’re huge and stronger than I could ever imagine being. And you said they’re Human, right? The Zen’zat. Why can’t you at least hold your own?”

“They are smaller in mass, but just as tall. And most of them are far older than me. Do you understand what that means?”

“No,” she said, but as the word was coming out the understanding of his statement hit her. “Wait, you mean training time?”

“Yes. They’ve had centuries, even millennia to grow stronger day after day. And don’t think they sent their weak ones here to fight Star Force.”

“But you have four arms…”

“A small advantage. They will also be wearing armor newer than mine, and who knows how much more advanced it’s gotten. I can slow them down at best, but unless they sent an inferior Zen’zat to hunt us there is no hope.”

“Even if I fight with you?”

“You will be of no help.”

Esna put her hands on her hips, clacking armor against armor.

“I’m not as weak as I was when you found me. I’ve made progress. And I’ve always been able to shoot straight.”

“Yes you have, and I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished, but it won’t be enough. The only way we stay alive is to stay hidden. I know you don’t understand this, but there is no chance of victory, Esna. None. I may be strong compared to you, but I am one of the weakest fighters in Star Force.”

“You? I don’t believe that.”

“Archons are the strongest, though some of them I could defeat when they are young. If we are of the same training age, they are the stronger. Next are the Mavericks. Then the Knights. After that comes the Commandos, and there are many forms of us. Protovic have powers of their own, weaker than the Archons, but it gives them advantages that I don’t have. But they are small, like you, and I have a muscle advantage over them. The same goes for every other faction within Star Force. We have advantages and weaknesses, but when we fight together we cover for one another and become stronger for it. We are a team, but on that team I am the least capable unit.”

“But you can still beat an Archon?”

“Many races fight wars using expendable units barely able to do more than carry and fire a weapon. You already are better trained than most of them. Star Force doesn’t view people as expendable. Machines yes, but not people, so the weakest warriors they will send into battle have to be far better than everyone else. I was very proud to have achieved the rank of Commando. It took a lot of training, failure, and repetition until I grew strong enough and skilled enough to earn that title and this armor. But even then I wasn’t ready to fight. I had to keep training and improving until I wasn’t so weak, then I was put into battle and I continued to grow stronger year after year…but so does everyone else, because we all train. Even civilians train to some extent.”

“So you’re saying you’re all supersoldiers?”

“The term ‘soldier’ has mixed meanings within Star Force, but yours is correct. I’m amongst the weakest of the supersoldiers, and we only use supersoldiers in battle, though we’re all trained to fight in the maturia.”

“Everyone knows how to fight…and you still lost,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“The Viks do not send weak units into battle either, and they have an enormous empire to recruit from. Their hatred of us insures they send their best.”

Esna looked at the ground, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“If they kill us, how will they do it? Weapons or hand to hand?”

“Weapons are needed to get through our armor, but they can have weapons built into their armor as well as carry them free as we do. So a punch could contain a shot as well as a fist.”

“What else?”

“Their psionics. You being a Human means you’re immune to Ikrid, their mind control, but the rest you are not. Your armor is designed to block most of them, but it requires a lot of power and isn’t left on all the time. When we go into battle we turn it on and it gives us a chance to survive.”

“If you can’t beat them, what did you fight?”

“Three Commandos could kill a Zen’zat under the right conditions. Put 10 of us together supporting a Knight and they won’t engage at all. It’s about strength and numbers, as well as terrain, weaponry, surprise, and a lot of other things learned over centuries of training. Things I can’t do with you, meaning it would be a 1v1 that I would lose.”

“You mean team tactics?”

“Yes.”

“Teren and I were good at that, and we didn’t even have to practice.”

“You did practice, you just didn’t think you were. Living together counts.”

“But it’s not training, right? Otherwise I could just hang out with you and get better?” she said, lightening the mood a bit.

“Everything you do, no matter how small, has an effect on you. Being around someone else and observing them gives you information on how they think, react, what their habits are. Those things help you fight alongside someone. For Commandos, we’re all trained to fight in a similar way so we can engage in battle side by side with another we’ve never met before. But knowing someone, such as your brother, is a skill even if you didn’t intend for it to be.”

“That means we’re learning each other too, doesn’t it?”

“We are, but you can’t keep up with me in any way in combat, so it is of little use in a fight.”

“I could still shoot him once or twice.”

“Their armor shields are strong. It will take more than that, but if they should catch up to us and I can’t distract them away from you, put as many shots into them as you can.”

“So there is a chance?”

“Sometimes blind luck does occur. I’m living proof of that. If you’re going to die, might as well play those astronomical odds.”

“You just don’t like going down without a fight.”

“Why make it easy for them?”

“We won’t,” she said, reinforcing the fact that she wasn’t going to let him send her away.

“Hopefully we won’t have to face that situation.”

“Time for sparring?” Esna suggested.

“Sleep first, then hard training right before we leave. Best if you can sleep some of the way on the speeder.”

“Makes sense,” she said, picking up her helmet.

“Esna.”

She turned back and looked at him.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“For?”

“You may not be able to help me in a fight, but it’s been a long time since anyone has wanted to.”

“Did you have a brother?”

“I had 99 brothers and sisters in the maturia. They aren’t of the same lineage, but Star Force doesn’t record such things. Everyone in the maturia grows up in a group of 100, then you split up upon graduation and go your separate ways…or stay together. Whatever you prefer.”

“And you?”

“I wanted to be a Commando. None of the others did.”

“Did they die?”

“I know of 3 that did. They didn’t make it out with the evacuation ships when the worlds they were on were attacked. How they died I don’t know. Their names were simply listed as not having made it off, so they were probably killed in the fighting. When the shields go down…”

“Yeah,” she agreed, wincing at what she thought that must have been like.

“Sleep,” he reminded her.

“Sleeping,” she said, walking off to find the basic bunk that he’d let her use while he camped out on the equipment room floor that was still a vast improvement over cave rock.

16

“We’re here,” Rammak said, jostling Esna as she sat on the back of the bike.

“Wha… What?” she said, her mind trying to figure out where she was as she came out of the grogginess of sleep.

“We’re stopping here,” the Calavari said, sliding off the bike.

“Why so soon?” she asked, sliding off the side and missing her foot plant, which dumped her straight to the ground and drew a look from Rammak.

“You were sleeping well.”

Esna belated looked at the time on her HUD.

“Wait, it’s too soon. We were supposed to keep going for another 7 hours.”

“That was the plan.”

“What changed?” she asked, pulling herself to her feet as her head cleared and she saw that they were parked under an overhang of rock up inside the hillside where wind erosion had eaten out a crack in the ground.

He pointed back out into the valley. “We have company.”

Esna fully snapped awake and pulled her pistol from her back rack.

“They haven’t seen us,” Rammak said, waving her off, “but I saw them. There’s an encampment ahead that wasn’t there the last time I passed this way. We’ll stay here until night, then try and slip by in the lesser light.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Ragtag equipment, clunky vehicles, lots of weaponry. Hunters of some sort.”

“Hunting what? Us?”

“I doubt it.”

“How many?”

“I only saw a bit with my zoom, but they have lookouts with anti-air batteries. You don’t see those casually built, and that means an organization of some sort.”

“Who flies?”

“More than you’re probably aware of. I made certain they hadn’t spotted us, so you can grab some more sleep here if you’re able.”

“They’re going to give away our position, won’t they?”

“If we have to go through them, probably. I’m going to have a look around and see if there are other options. Stay here, stay down. I won’t go out of comm range.”

“If they have anti-air, they might have something that flies too.”

“I know what to look for. Stay under the ledge just in case. Get something to eat, but don’t set up any equipment. Keep everything ready to move.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Our battlemap is linked, if either one of us spots something the other will know. Stay here.”

“Alright. Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” the big Calavari said as he ran off faster than Esna had ever seen him move, disappearing further into the cut in the hillside and around a bend.

“Wonderful,” she cursed, kicking a small rock out of her way. “We come all this way undetected only to get spotted again. What a waste.”

Esna sat down on the ground and stretched out her legs, thinking hard and getting no answers. They could turn around and go back, but if someone was following they’d run right into them. If they left the valley they’d be more visible to sensors, but wouldn’t that be better than actually being seen by someone? And if they had to fight their way through, or just caused a noisy pursuit, that’d attract enough attention that the Viks could pick up on.

Rammak took his time, long enough that Esna started to drift back towards sleep. The workout he’d put her through before leaving had exhausted her and she hadn’t recovered from it yet. Her lips wanted water, but she was too blissfully comfortable laying down on the rocky ground to get up and pull some off the speeder. She just lay there half-conscious while her mind spun through different ways this could all go wrong.

Rammak’s dot on her battlemap caught her attention when he came up on her faster than she’d expected. Had she fallen asleep again? Last she’d checked he’d been more than 1000 meters away.

The dot was on the other side of the speeder when she sat up, with Esna wondering how he’d gotten past her.

“Find anything?” she asked as a shorter figure wearing red and black armor walked around the speeder and into view.

“Ahhhhh!” she shrieked, scrambling backwards and onto her feet with her hand fumbling around her rack for a weapon that flew out of her grasp as soon as she disconnected it. The yank pulled her off balance and she stumbled forward as her pistol floated slowly across the air and into the person’s outstretched hand.

“Be silent,” Rammak’s voice said in her helmet. “Don’t move or do anything until I get there.”

Esna froze up, not reaching for her other weapons, and just stared at the individual who turned his back on her and looked out into the valley. On her battlemap Rammak’s actual dot was much further away, but running back here so fast it could have been a speeder.

It still took far too long, with her watching the figure ahead of her and the dot on the battlemap at the same time. When the armored figure suddenly turned around she jerked out of reflex, then Rammak’s dark brown cloak came flying into view and stopped beside her, his eyes fixed on the Vik, but neither one of them moved for several seconds.

During that awkward moment Esna realized there was a comm channel flashing on her HUD. Using her eye line activation, she clicked it on and suddenly heard Rammak’s voice.

“…not for some time.”

“Are either of you wounded?” another voice said, and suddenly she realized the other person was talking to him and she’d been missing out on the conversation.

“She was, but her injuries have fully healed. Her brother was killed, but not by the V’kit’no’sat. The locals attacked them out of fear of Humans.”

“Rumors that they would bring calamity or some bullshit like that?”

“Yes,” Rammak said, and she could hear the reverence in his voice.

“Those up ahead have been arranged to draw you into the open. Your approximate area has been pinned down, but it’s so large they’re having to organize a huge net. This is one point on the perimeter. If there’s even so much as a sniff of your presence they’ll report it to the Zen’zat. There are at least two here. We hurt one, but couldn’t finish him before the other intervened. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more, and with our presence here they may very well have called for additional support.”

“Hello,” Esna finally managed to say, drawing looks from both Rammak and the mystery individual.

“Hello,” the smaller of the two said back.

“Esna, he’s not V’kit’no’sat. He is Star Force.”

Her shoulders slumped with relief, but her heart didn’t stop beating a like a machine gun.

“You’re Human?”

“No, I’m not,” he said softly as his faceplate disassembled itself into tiny pieces that disappeared behind his glowing head. “I’m Protovic. My name is Javvin, and I have been looking for the two of you for a very long time.”

Esna couldn’t say anything, so transfixed on his glowing blue eyes that bathed her dull cloak in the same tint as the shadows under the overhang along with the mix of blues on his face. One matched his eyes while the other was a paler aqua, with both arranged in a mash of tattoo-like patterns. There wasn’t a bit of skin on his face that wasn’t glowing as bright as a floodlight, though the top of his head was pure black.

“He is a Maverick,” Rammak said into the silence.

“How did you find us?”

“You didn’t make it easy,” he said, his helmet reforming over his face, returning the surrounding rock to its normal lifeless hues. “I had to guess and this was the first time I was right.”

“How close are they?” Rammak asked.

“Last one I saw was 50 miles to the south, but they’re moving around a lot on foot and by ship. It’s currently parked 210 miles east of here. I think they’re trying to draw us out to ambush the lone one, but we won’t try that again. We took an opportunity and missed. Our mission is to find you and get you off planet before they can kill you. Finding survivors is rare and I think they take it as a personal insult if any are recovered.”

“How much is left?” Rammak asked.

“Plenty,” the Maverick said, “but the heart of our territory has been gutted. We’ve had to adapt, and right now they’re hard pressed to take any more worlds. We’re losing a few, but their advance has pretty much ground to a standstill. Most combat is happening out here where we can find a fleet to ambush, but it’s common rumor that another big push is coming. We can all feel it, but so far there’s been no sign. How are you doing?”

“Much better now,” Rammak said, his voice odd.

“You’ve done well, my friend. Can you fight?”

“I’ve maintained most of my strength, but I haven’t had a true test in a long time.”

“You’re still alive…that’s test enough. The rest we can fix if we can get out of here, though they’re not going to make it easy.”

“Do they have a ship in orbit?”

“Not an obvious one.”

“Have they started using stealth tech?”

“No more than usual. They’re still obstinate as hell, but they make use of it in special occasions. I expect they’ve got at least some hidden probes up there, and I’m not sure if we can outrun their ship on the surface. We’ll need a good head start to get out of the atmosphere and cloaked. They can pulse at shorter ranges now and pick us up, so we have to be careful sneaking around,” he said, looking over at Esna. “Are there any other Humans here?”

“I didn’t even know I was Human until he told me,” Esna admitted, pointing to Rammak. “All I know of is me and my brother.”

“And your father? Do you know where he came from?”

“Our ship. That’s all I can remember, I swear.”

“May I check?”

“What?”

“Take off your helmet and I will look inside your mind.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s alright, Esna,” Rammak interrupted. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

“I want to search your memories in case there is something buried there that you’ve forgotten. If there are other Human survivors on other planets, you may have a clue to their whereabouts that you aren’t aware of.”

“Ok, just hold up, both of you,” she said, breathing heavily. “This is all happening a little too fast. Who are you? What are you? I…”

“Easy,” Rammak said, walking over and putting his upper arms on her shoulders and holding her steady. “Remember when I said I was trained to fight with others even if I’d never met them before?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’re not fighting right now but we are working together. If you think this is a shock for you, how do you think I feel after all this time?”

“You’re taking it well.”

“The painful memories are back, fresher than ever, but I can still do what is required. I don’t expect the same of you, so just try to go along and help out as much as you can even if you don’t understand what’s happening. We’re still being hunted and the Viks are closer than we thought. We don’t have time to spare bringing you up to speed.”

“My helmet?”

“Good,” Rammak said approvingly as he released her and she removed it, but Javvin didn’t say anything. He walked over revealing a glowing hand and placing two fingers on her forehead, then he just stood there staring at her from behind his solid faceplate.

“What now?” she asked.

“Try to remember when you were onboard the ship,” Rammak prompted. “Anything and everything. Tell me what it looked like.”

“Not very big. There was a bridge, a central compartment that held cargo, and four small rear compartments. Me and my brother had one we slept in. Our father had another.”

“What of your mother?”

“I don’t remember her. She died.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. He never told us. I can never remember anyone else. Whenever we put into port he had us stay inside when he took care of business. I’ve never seen another Human. I never even knew the word.”

“Thank you,” Javvin finally said.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Actually I did. Your memories are blurry, as one would expect given the circumstances, but the ship design is familiar. One that was sold by a competitor of Star Force long ago and a favorite of independent traders. They lived on their ships and rumor had it they also had offspring that were never turned over to a maturia. I think you may be one of their descendants and that they’ve been running ever since the invasion began. How you’ve managed to survive this long is mind boggling. He has training,” the Maverick said, pointing a thumb at Rammak, “but the traders have none. I’d be very interested in knowing your full story, and while you may have a few more fragments to find with a more in depth scan, I’m positive that you don’t know any more than I do.”

“As for you,” he said, looking at Rammak again. “These camps you mentioned. How close is the nearest one?”

“Back the way we came, half a day’s travel. The next is far ahead past the blockade. Getting around it will require gaining elevation.”

“No,” Javvin said firmly. “I’m taking you through.”

“What?” Esna asked, not believing what she’d just heard.

“I’ll have to scout it out thoroughly, maybe make a few alterations in setup, but I’m pretty sure I can get your speeder through. After that, how far?”

“5 days.”

“Is it underground?”

“No, but it leads to a cave network nearby. It’s not visible from the air.”

“How did you know they were underground?” Esna asked.

“We found one near the settlement in the direction you were seen leaving.”

Esna gulped. “You found my brother’s body?”

“No, I didn’t. The Zen’zat got there first. I went in after they were gone and looked around. They must have destroyed the body.”

“We left him on the map. The glowing map,” she said insistently with the pain of his death coming back fresh to her mind just like Rammak had said his was.

“There was no map room. Not one intact, at least. There was fresh explosive damage. I assumed you left some sort of trap behind?”

Esna’s head twisted towards Rammak.

“No, I didn’t,” he said, a promise in his words. “I left your brother lay in peace.”

“Then they must have destroyed his body and the room it was in out of spite. I’ve seen similar things before. They left everything else alone, as far as I could guess, which is why I thought that one area had been mined. You’ve done a lot work here over the years.”

“Keeping busy,” Rammak admitted. “And I needed supply caches. This world has become barbaric.”

“So I’ve noticed. Did anyone else survive the attack?”

“A few. They’ve been long gone now. I was lucky twice.”

“Let’s make it a triple then. Stay here and I’ll scout ahead. I don’t think they heard her scream, but I’ll find out for sure,” he said, looking her way. “You need to be mindful of when you’re mic is on.”

“Sorry.”

“It takes time to learn and you’ve had far too little to be wearing that armor. Take this mistake and remember it. Use it so it doesn’t happen again. If you feel like screaming, turn it off and no one on the outside will hear you. The armor is sound proof.”

“How can I hear then?”

“External mics relay the sounds to your ear mounts. I’ll leave you in his care,” Javvin said.

“Wait. How are you going to not be seen? Can you make them see things with your mind powers?”

“I can, but there’s an easier way,” he said, turning to Rammak. “Commando.”

“Maverick,” the Calavari replied respectfully, then Javvin took a step and disappeared into a shimmer of light that moved off and Esna quickly lost it amongst the rocks.

“He can turn invisible?”

Rammak didn’t answer her for a moment, and she saw him looking in the direction he’d gone, noticing that his dot had also disappeared from the battlemap.

“I’m sure he’ll be back,” she said reassuringly.

“812 years. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen another…” he said, suddenly choking up a bit. “He’ll be back. I’m not worried about that.”

“You ok?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“No.”

“You’ll adapt,” Rammak said offhand.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”

“Didn’t you hear him…” he said, finally realizing. “You didn’t open the comm.”

“Not until you were both here. He scared me half to death.”

“They’re supposed to be sneaky, which was why he contacted us and showed up on our battlemap. Didn’t you see the second dot?”

“I was sleepy. I thought he was you.”

“That’s not our fault.”

“Like hell it isn’t. It was your workout that did it to me.”

“Partially true.”

Esna sighed…then stifled a yawn that followed as her adrenaline began to bleed off and she started feeling more tired than even before. “What now?”

“We follow his lead,” Rammak said, sitting down beside her as she stood, with his head barely below hers given his enormous size.

Esna sat down as well, then leaned back in a pose that suggested leisure, though it was forced.

“Can you take a Zen’zat with his help?”

“Maybe.”

“So we’re not dead if they find us now? Not for sure?”

“We have a fighting chance now, but our best chance is to remain hidden until we can get to his ship.”

“Is it invisible too?”

“I would imagine so.”

“Then why can’t it fly to us? He mentioned another, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what the situation is. I think we’re still on our own for now and he’s going to tag along until he can arrange a pickup.”

“He’s smaller than I thought. I got used to you being so big.”

“He could beat me fairly easy in a fight,” Rammak admitted with no shame.

“So now I’m really just breathing baggage?”

“Baggage that the Viks want to destroy. You’ve valuable to them, and valuable enough for Star Force to send them out searching for you. And you’re valuable to me, despite your lack of skills.”

Esna rolled her eyes. “I guess that makes me feel a little better.”

“If I run with him, I’d be slowing him down.”

Esna cracked a smile. “Ok. Now that does makes me feel better, slowpoke.”

“I have an extra set of arms to carry,” he joked, then grew serious. “We have a chance now, Esna. And however this goes down, we won’t be left here. One way or another.”

“Dead or free?”

“Yes.”

“I can accept that. Just tell me what I need to do…or not do.”

“Start with making a habit of turning your mic off when you’re trying to hide.”

“I didn’t expect to scream, otherwise I would have had it off.”

“You have to learn to prepare for the unexpected.”

She was about to argue that, but something about it range true.

“I suppose so. I’ll make sure I stay quiet if we try to go through those guys up ahead. How does he plan to do that anyway?”

“I could make a guess, but how they work is a mystery to a lot of us. They get the job done though. You can count on that.”

“I’ll take your word for it. If he’s going to be gone a while, is there anything we can do here? I’m tired, but I don’t think I can sleep right now.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Nope,” she said, standing up and walking over to the speeder’s supply bundle.

17

Esna sat behind Rammak on the speeder being as still and quiet as she could. There was faint humming coming from the engine, but other than that they were whisper quiet as they drifted forward through the dark at slow speed with Javvin giving directions to Rammak over the comm. They were already past the scouts on the edge of the camp and had just made a left turn that was bringing them past a group out in the open between two large vehicles entertaining themselves with what looked like drinks and a little roughhousing. Their speeder was barely 20 meters away from them and even in the dark they should have easy enough to see, but as Esna held her breath they slid on by them without anyone taking notice.

Another turn and they were headed back in the direction they wanted to go…right into a half armored Critel crossing their path.

“Slow by half,” Javvin’s voice said, with Rammak reducing their speed to a crawl.

To Esna’s amazement the Critel just kept walking, going right in front of them and almost getting hit. He passed to their left and was so close she could have reached out and touched him on the back as they slipped through, but he didn’t show any sign of noticing them.

“Sloping right turn then stop at the wall and hold there.”

Esna watched what she could sitting behind Rammak’s bulk as they turned and headed sideways again between a big rock cliff and several stacks of crates, then they came to a stop in front of a wall with a passage visible heading left that they weren’t taking for some reason. They just sat there for several seconds that stretched into minutes. Esna wanted to ask what was going on but didn’t dare, even if her helmet truly did block exterior sounds, for she didn’t want to risk accidentally turning on her mic again.

More time passed until she heard footsteps approaching from the right, with her skin tingling in response as they just continued to sit there in plain sight as a short Calavari came into view.

“Back up and let him pass, then follow three meters behind.”

Rammak reversed course and drifted back, then the unwitting dupe walked right in front of them. Esna had no idea what was going on beside the aforementioned mind control, but what did that really mean? Could Javvin make them invisible to people who were looking directly at them?

Their speeder moved back up near the wall when he’d passed, then spun to the left and followed. About 50 meters further the rock walls on both sides fanned out and another encampment of 20 or so people were sitting around a flood-lid square made up of makeshift seats. A few of them turned to look at the newcomer, belting out a string of curses that the Calavari returned as he walked over to join them…all the while Esna and Rammak were right behind him and moving unnoticed despite all the eyes looking in their direction.

“Two more then you’re in the clear. Keep it slow and veer left at the next truck.”

A large wheeled transport was parked ahead and to their left. Esna didn’t know if ‘veer left’ meant before or after it, but Rammak took them to the far side and turned with Esna shifting her weight on the bike every so carefully so she could look to the right…where she saw another scouting post on an elevated rock outcropping. Up top was one person lounging in such a way that he might be asleep, but only one. She didn’t know where the other one was that the glowstick for a face Protovic had mentioned earlier and hoped his mind was messed with as well, whatever that actually meant.

A minute later the rocky walls fell off completely and a small plain appeared before them stretching out for a mile or two between the shorter ridges that diverged just past the camp. With only a few small mounts in the distance to break up the plain there wasn’t much to see and those were only visible with her helmet’s nightvision, otherwise it would have just looked like a sea of blackness beneath the stars. But rather than heading out into it Javvin told them to stop, so right on the edge of getting away they decided to sit and wait…and wait…and wait.

This was even longer than before and she wondered if Javvin was working his way up to them to hop onboard, but a startling single word much later ended that train of thought.

“Go,” the Protovic said, with Rammak accelerating them hard and throwing Esna back in her seat. The sound of the engine increased ever so slightly, but otherwise they were nothing but a shadow slipping out further into the darkness as they were sliding over the scattering of ankle-sized rocks thanks to the bike’s anti-grav…and within a few seconds they were zipping away from the ambush encampment and on their way to the next hideout.

Esna waited until they were at least a minute out before chancing to speak, very grateful to be past that potential disaster but equally confused.

“Isn’t Javvin coming with us?”

“He’ll catch up on his own.”

“Does he have a speeder?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Why didn’t he ride with us? He could have sat on the supplies or something.”

“He knows what he’s doing.”

“So we’re just supposed to wait for him at the next camp, or somewhere closer?”

“He’ll catch up to us, so we just keep moving.”

“Then he has to have a speeder.”

“He can run faster than me, Esna.”

“As fast as a speeder?”

“Probably not this one, but don’t think he can’t cover ground quickly enough. Out here on the flat, 200 miles in ten hours is doable.”

“On foot?”

“Yes, and I’ve seen Archons do much better than that. Speeder or not, he’ll catch up. We just have to avoid being noticed.”

“We’re out in the open again.”

“But no one knows to look here.”

“Hopefully,” Esna added.

“Best we can do, I’m afraid. But we’ve got help now.”

“Yeah. What’s up with his face anyway?”

“The glow?”

“Yeah. He couldn’t sneak up on anyone without that armor or a mask.”

“His entire body is like that.”

“Everything?”

“He has patches that are exoskeleton that don’t glow, but all his skin does.”

“That is freaky weird.”

“That’s what Protovic are, Esna. And they’re not as weird as other races in Star Force. Wait till you see a Bsidd.”

“What’s a Bsidd?”

“Something that can’t be explained in words.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You’ll understand when you see one. They look more like a bush than a Human.”

“Plants?”

“No. More like insects.”

“Insects that look like plants?”

Rammak laughed. “As crazy as that sounds, yes. And you still won’t be able to guess what they look like. And they made up the largest faction within Star Force, population wise.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned them before?”

“There’s a lot I haven’t mentioned.”

“Ok. Anything else weird I should know about?”

“Protovic hatch from fleshy eggs.”

“Eww,” Esna said, trying to imagine that as they got further and further away from the ambushers. “What did he do back there, exactly?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think he used that one as a decoy. Focusing their attention on him so much they didn’t notice anything else.”

“Can people really have that much power over others?”

“The universe isn’t an even playing field. Yes they can, and some are even more powerful. Both good and bad.”

“And he can’t do anything to me with my helmet on?”

“He can’t control yours even with it off, but mine he could. That’s why he had to touch you. He can also do some stuff without the countermeasures on to both of us.”

“Like what?”

“The Mavericks are said to have some of the powers of the Archons, but it’s not public knowledge as to which. We don’t even know for sure what the Archons have except what we’ve seen in battle or asked them about. They don’t technically hide their abilities, but there’s nowhere they’re publically identified. They have one I know of called Fornax that interferes with your body’s control signals. They throw a wave of invisible energy at you and suddenly you can’t control your own body. If you’re standing you’ll fall twitching until it wears off a moment or two later. Your helmet won’t protect against that unless the countermeasures are on.”

“It stuns you?”

“No. It doesn’t knock you unconscious. It’s kind of like getting really dizzy.”

“Does it work on the Zen’zat, or do they have countermeasures too?”

“I don’t know. I only know what weapons I can use do to them.”

“And do you have any of those?”

“Not the really effective ones, but what I have can get through their shields eventually. Though they won’t give us that much time before they kill us.”

“But they can be killed?”

“They can be killed.”

“Good to know,” she said, turning around and looking behind them. The lights from the encampment were barely visible now, giving her the feeling that they were actually safe, but then her gaze drifted up to the stars and she remembered what Rammak had said about eyes in the sky looking for them.

She hoped they weren’t looking here right now.

Two days later they were stopped and resting next to one of the rocky mounts that had been smoothed into nearly vertical walls thanks to erosion, and Rammak had managed to find one with a bit of an overhang to park the speeder under. Esna had been sleeping for a few hours and had gotten up to relieve her bladder thanks to the oversized gulps she’d taken along with her food cubes, then when she was walking back over to where Rammak was laying Javvin suddenly popped into view beside her.

“Baju!” she cursed, jumping a meter to the left as he startled her.

Rammak woke immediately, jumping to his feet at the sound of her voice. He came up a bit wobbly with his arms curled into punching position until he saw the Maverick, then he relaxed and walked over to Esna.

“Your mic is on again.”

“I didn’t know he was going to pop up in front of me,” she complained, knowing she’d made the same mistake again, but what would be the harm of him doing that a little farther away and just walking up into view like a normal person?

“If you have a tendency to yell unexpectedly, keep it off and only use comm channels,” the Protovic advised. “I’m not sensing any minds nearby, but that shout will carry far in this calm air.”

“Sorry,” Esna said, looking at this black and red faceplate in lieu of the glowing face that it hid. “Where have you been?”

“Making sure you weren’t seen and that no one was following.”

She glanced around. “Where’s your speeder?”

“What speeder?”

“How did you catch up with us?”

“I used the power augments in my armor,” he explained while glancing at Rammak. “Does she know nothing?”

“Very little, but she needed the armor to survive. I have been teaching her as we go while restricting some functions.”

“You’re worried about surveillance?”

“I wanted to make sure we could move underground without being tracked from above.”

“I’m not sure what they’re using, but I’ve seen only one ship. I doubt that’s all they have in play though. Your caution was wise, even if she doesn’t deserve to wear that.”

“You want me to take it off?” Esna asked a bit snarkily.

“No, I want you to learn how to use it properly,” Javvin replied in kind. “Now set your comm to minimal range so it won’t give you away, and lock out your mic. Select open cast to me and Rammak, then you can talk to us just the same without anyone else being able to hear you. Can you do that without his help?”

“Yeah, I can do it. Give me a sec.”

“You can have as many as you like. You’re on a rest period?” he asked the Commando.

“We were going stay another hour and a half before moving on. What do you wish us to do?”

“For now, stay here. I’ve been running nonstop and need a nap. After that we have to get you to our ship without tipping off its location. Without stealth armor that’s going to be difficult. I’ve signaled for my partner to catch up to us at your camp, so we’ll continue heading there and wait for him to arrive. Then we’ll see if they’re following us or not.”

“We set an automated comm at a previous camp to signal you 28 days from now.”

“Oh?”

“We didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when it went off, but we didn’t want you to think we weren’t here.”

“No chance of that happening. The Zen’zat are after something, so unless they gave up we wouldn’t. Plus we saw you in the memories of the people in the town you were attacked in. We were never going to leave without you.”

“I had hoped with knowledge of who I was you could have devised another message to coordinate a rendezvous without the V’kit’no’sat understanding.”

“I wish you’d set it sooner, because we could use the distraction. We’re not going to be waiting 28 days for them to jump us.”

“Are they concealed?”

“Not visually, but don’t expect your battlemap to pick them up save for extreme close range. They’re not hiding, but they’re here to hunt. The question is how many.”

“Where is their ship currently at?”

“600 miles southeast,” he said, pointing back at an angle from the way they’d come. “I don’t expect they’re there. A distraction of their own, but they can recall it easy enough if they spot you.”

“Can you call your ship?” Esna asked, this time over the comm channel.

“Yes, but we don’t want to have to fight their ship. If we took even a little damage we’d lose because they could track us.”

“Is it bigger?”

“No, it’s a little smaller. But it does has a level 2 Dre’mo’don cannon. Ours has a pair of level 1s. Do you know what a Dre’mo’don is?”

“It’s not one of the weapons he showed me, so no.”

“It’s more power hungry than the plasma weapons we have made an art out of building,” he said, holding up his right arm sideways. The thick material on it suddenly shifted around as if it was alive and a nub formed just above his wrist. “This is a Dre’mo’don, variable yield, and allows me to deliver far more damage than plasma ever would.”

“Why don’t Commandos use those?”

“We do,” Rammak added, “in our bigger weapons.”

“These are meant for dueling,” Javvin explained. “I don’t have the luxury of putting a lot of shots into an opponent. I have to strike quickly and deliver a massive blow, because the capacitors will take a while to recharge if I overtap them. The plasma weapons are much more efficient, but they get their kill power from stream damage that you have to hold on target for a split second. Dre’mo’dons deliver a single orb allowing for more precision shots.”

Esna frowned and pulled her pistol off her pack, but Rammak grabbed her wrist in the process.

“I’m not going to shoot it,” she said, then he let go. “When I practiced with this it didn’t stream. Just one quick zap.”

“Quick to you because you’re a newb. That means a rookie.”

“He taught me that already.”

“To my eyes it’s a stream and would require me to stand still while firing. If I’m going to use a streamer, I’m going to get something more powerful than plasma. But the power requirements would make it a heavier weapon, and I have to move fast in stealth armor. Hence I have tiny Dre’mo’dons.”

“Makes sense…sort of. You can see faster than me?”

“Training holds many mysteries for the uninitiated.”

“He’s already started me training. Lots and lots of running, mostly.”

“Good,” Javvin said. “Show me.”

“What?”

Rammak took a step back and Javvin shifted to the side to face her squarely.

“Hit me. Or at least try.”

“Now?”

“I’ll sleep soon, but first I want to know how slow you really are.”

“Are you going to hit back?”

“No. If I touch you it’ll be a deflection only. You can’t beat me, so there’s no point in my hitting back. I want to see what you can do. Take your pack off first.”

“Alright,” Esna said, releasing it and her weapons rack and laying them down on the ground before stretching herself out a bit. “Can I lose the cloak?”

“Yes, though in your armor you should barely feel it.”

“What if someone is watching from the sky?”

“Then they saw you arrive here already. The armor will dampen long range scans, even if the white coloration clashes with the rocks. Now try and hit me.”

Esna blew out a breath and punched her palms, right first then left.

“Here goes,” she said, lunging forward and moving as quick as she could, hoping to catch him a little off guard.

Her fist went straight to his chest…and hit nothing but air.

She staggered forward, seeing him standing beside her but not having seen him move.

“What was that?”

“You have slow eyes. Try again.”

Esna spun back and tried an Archon punch, but her elbow never got close as he spun around and out of her strike zone. She twisted back and threw a straight knuckle punch for range sake, but had her wrist slapped away by his hand. Two more punches missed as he stayed put and dipped to the side leaving nothing but air for her to hit, then she tried to kick him in the leg, forcing him to step back at least.

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve done. A point for that. Keep going, don’t take breaks, and see if you can get lucky.”

Esna moaned angrily and swung at him again, expecting to miss and cutting it short so she didn’t off balance herself, then she threw several more rapid fire that he continued to dodge, but she didn’t let him stand still and mock her.

“Footwork,” Rammak reminded her.

As soon as he said it her movement improved. Short steps, the more the better and constantly adjusting for improved balance and readiness…but it still wasn’t enough.

Esna stopped and just looked at the dark armor of the Protovic, then she lunged again, this time much faster, and Javvin barely dodged, slapping her on the back of the head and tossing her off balance to the ground.

“Where did that come from?” he asked as she rolled to her feet, unhurt by the rocks thanks to her armor.

“I turned my armor on full.”

“You’ve been holding it down for training?” he asked as she attacked again.

“We have,” Rammak answered as Esna tore after him, whiffing with every attempt but putting a good effort into it until the Protovic jumped back several steps and got out of range, then held up his hand.

“Enough. You’re pathetic, but not completely helpless. You might stand a chance against the inhabitants of this planet on your own, but unfortunately they’re not the real threat hunting you.”

Esna stood still, breathing heavily, which both of the Star Forcers could hear over the comm though her outward appearance didn’t betray any fatigue.

“It takes time,” Javvin said, a bit more empathetic. “Time that you’ve not had. Focus on improving and leave the fighting to us if it happens.”

“What do you want me to do? Stand still and watch?”

“Do what we tell you the instant we tell you to do it. If we tell you to shoot, don’t hesitate. If we tell you to run, duck, or anything else you do it. Don’t think about why, just obey…or you’ll weaken us as we try to protect you.”

“Are they going to catch us before we get to your ship?”

“There’s no way of knowing what all they’ve got in play, and vice versa. If it happens, it will happen fast. Prepare your mind now so you can react then without having to think it through. Now, Rammak, if you don’t mind standing watch, I’ll borrow your cloak and get some air while I sleep.”

“How long do you need to sleep?” he asked, pulling the mass of cloth off his orange armor.

“Six hours will do, then I’ll ride with you assuming your speeder can handle the weight.”

“I’ve had time to assemble the best junk this planet has to offer,” Rammak said sarcastically. “It’ll hold the three of us and our supplies.”

“About that,” Javvin said as he walked over a ways and knelt down, then suddenly his pack revealed itself on the ground where he’d laid it before showing himself. He brought it back over and opened it up, pulling out a box that looked magically smooth to Esna’s eyes, inside of which was what she recognized as food cubes but a bit different than what she and Rammak had been eating. “How long has it been since you had real food?”

“I make my own with Star Force bioharvest equipment I’ve salvaged.”

“Good to hear, though you’re welcome to a few of these. I’ve got more than enough to last me until we get back to the ship. They’re density level 9.”

Rammak picked up one very blue cube in one hand while he took off his helmet with another, then he gently put the cube in his mouth and chewed slowly, over and over again, and Esna could tell he liked it.

“Better?”

“Yes,” Rammak said in between chomps. “Thank you.”

“What is it?” Esna asked.

“Warrior food,” the Protovic explained. “If you eat it you might get sick.”

“Why?”

“It’s very intense. If your stomach isn’t used to it…by the way,” Javvin said, turning back to Rammak. “How long has it been since you had any ambrosia?”

“Too long.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any Calavari with me.”

“I’ve learned to do without.”

“Lesson time?” Esna asked him, but it was Javvin that responded as Rammak continued chewing.

“It’s a special liquid that gives you a boost of energy in addition to a lot of other complicated things. I take a Protovic version and it makes me stronger and faster than normal, and your body gets used to it. So much so that if you stop taking it you have some trouble adjusting. Think of it as super food.”

“You drink it?”

“It’s very intense.”

“Like the food cubes? What’s so special about intense food? Is it some measuring stick for how much pain you can tolerate?”

“No,” Rammak answered. “Not intense like that. It is compact in order to save space. Very dense with no unwanted material. Extremely potent. Ambrosia is even more so, and if someone overdoses it could possibly kill them.”

“Or make you wish you were dead,” Javvin added. “Over time your body adjusts and you can take more of it, so everyone is on their own doses. Those with low levels don’t drink it, they eat food with it in it because the liquid drop would be so small that it would be hard to measure,” he said, pulling out a small vial from his pack. “This is mine.”

Esna looked at it, but it was just a clear flask the size of her middle finger. Inside of it was a light red liquid that seemed to fight the light trying to pass through it.

“The color tells you which race it’s meant for. Light red is for Protovic. Deep red is for Humans and orange is for Calavari.”

“What about Bsidd?”

“Deep purple. Have you seen any on this world?”

“No. He just told me stories. I’ve never seen one.”

“One last lesson then,” Javvin said, producing a hologram in his palm of a bizarre alien that had no body. It looked like a bundle of sticks twisting into one another, part plant and part insect like Rammak had said…and he was right. She never would have guessed this based on his description.

“That’s a person?”

“They can kick your ass easily. Don’t underestimate what they can do with all those mandibles,” he said, making the image disappear a moment before his armor suddenly cracked apart all along his body and Javvin stepped out of it, casting a bright blue light on her, Rammak, and the shadows under the overhang. He wore a sleeveless shirt and pants that came down to just below his knees, both of which were colored black/red similar to his armor, but the rest of his body glowed save for some ornate patches of pure black that looked rough to the touch.

But the smell was as glaring as the light, which quickly diminished as Rammak gave him his robe and Javvin pulled it around himself, leaving only his face exposed. The scent was pleasant and offensive at the same time, and she realized it was the stench of alien sweat. Not like Calavari or anything else she’d encountered on this planet, but something new to her nose. He must have been inside that armor for a long time, hence the ‘air’ that he’d referenced getting.

The Protovic put the box and ambrosia back into his pack and set it beside his armor, which stood like a weird statue where he’d left it, splayed open and airing out as well. It didn’t come apart like hers and Rammak did and looked like one giant piece pulled apart in some mathematically brilliant way that made it beautiful and intimidating at the same time. Inside was the same thin padding that hers had, but it had a slightly different vibe. Probably a lot newer, considering hers and Rammak’s were antiques by now.

“Rest,” Rammak said, walking to the edge of the overhang and putting himself between Javvin and the sunlight. “You too Esna. But keep your armor on.”

“Let me guess. He puts it on way faster than me too?”

A laugh came from the mass of cloth that eclipsed the light coming from the Protovic as Javvin laid down next to the wall and faced it, casting a small glow but otherwise hiding his bioluminosity from the pair of them and the outside world. “You’re observant, at least.”

“Can’t they scan you if you’re outside your armor?”

“If they know to focus scans on this location then they already know we’re here. A general scan won’t make it through the rock.”

“I can see sky.”

“A sliver. They’d have to have a craft in orbit on a line for that slice and know where to look.”

“That’s why you’re wearing the robe?”

“Yes. And because the ground is rough.”

“Sleep, Esna,” Rammak said without turning around to look at her, for his eyes were focused outward as he took his standing watch seriously. “There’s no guarantee when you’ll get another chance.”

“Happy to,” she said, curious to ask more questions but knowing better than to turn down extra hours of blissful regeneration. She walked a couple meters away from Javvin and laid down next to the wall as well, but kept her comm on so she could hear if they said anything else. As much as she wanted sleep, she wanted information about Javvin and his part in Star Force even more. He was beyond impressive, and his bodily glow made him look like something this planet could never hold. Something better than the wastelands. Something pure and hopeful.

If that was what Star Force was like she wanted to get there even more now, and she began to realize just how much it had to have hurt Rammak to lose it all. He’d survived, but she’d probably been underestimating how much the loss still weighed on him. And from the way he was standing sentry just short of the sunlight/shadow line, she could tell he’d come more alive since Javvin had found them.

And if ambrosia made you stronger and faster, that meant Rammak was an even bigger badass, crazy as that sounded, for she’d only seen him in his ‘weakened’ state.

Geez, I am a newb, she thought as she closed her eyes and surrendered to the lingering fatigue that dragged her away to a happy warm place in her stillness.

18

When they finally arrived at the camp it wasn’t what Esna expected. They were traveling through a deep and narrow canyon with sheer walls when Rammak suddenly brought the speeder to a stop, then before Esna could ask him or Javvin…who was riding behind her on the equipment pack all but invisible…what was going on the speeder began to rise up along the rightside wall.

“Where are we going? Can’t they see us up high?”

“We’re not going all the way up,” Rammak said, pointing above them. “Look.”

Esna craned her armored neck up and saw a little lip above that gradually resolved into a hole in the rock 10-15 meters ahead. When they got up even with it she saw that it wasn’t a hole, but rather a hollowed out cave with a flat and somewhat wide landing platform that Rammak eased the speeder into. There wasn’t a lot of extra room, but he set it down a couple meters from the edge and extended the physical landing struts, jostling them as they made contact with the rock as he powered down the engine.

Javvin hopped off the back, materializing as he hit the ground in his red/black armor and stepping over to the edge as he looked out at the view of the opposite cliff wall and the route they’d come up. It was a decent view but restricted to the canyon to the east, for on the right there was a bit of an angle with the rock jutting out and giving Rammak’s camp cover from anyone approaching the other direction…if they bothered to look up this high at all.

Esna slid off the speeder to the right and away from the exposed drop off as Rammak went the other way and walked around to the back where he began unpacking their gear.

“Feel free to use the shower first,” he told her, with Esna perking up immediately.

“You’ve got one here?” she asked, seeing only a small hole in the wall with some equipment on the other side.

“There’s three more chambers I widened out beyond that doorway. Go straight through then hang a left. We’ll get to workouts after you’ve had a good sleep.”

“What, up here?”

“There’s plenty of room outside,” Javvin pointed out.

“Is there a ladder or are we going to take the speeder up and down?”

The Protovic answered her by jumping up slightly and touching the rough rock ceiling, sticking his hands there and pulling his feet up until he was hanging upside down.

“Can my armor do that?”

“There are grip pads at various points in the armor to let you climb,” Javvin said as he let go and lithely flipped over as he fell.

“I deactivated them,” Rammak added, pulling out a sack of foodstuffs and tossing it near the doorway next to where Esna stood. “I don’t want you trying to climb down on your own. It takes some skill or the rock will pull away from the wall on your fingertips. And your armor won’t protect you from falls as much as you think.”

Esna looked over the speeder at the drop off. “How bad will it hurt me if I fall from here?”

“Don’t find out,” Javvin said as he walked back to the edge. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Without waiting for a reply he sprinted a step and a half, jumping off the edge and flying across to the far wall as he fell down several meters, sticking to the rock then climbing towards the top and disappearing a few meters from the summit. Where he went after that Esna didn’t know, but having him prowling around out there made her feel better about any potential pursuit.

The next day Esna was at the bottom of the canyon in one of the flatter spots going through sparring drills with Rammak when Javvin suddenly came into view beside them, startling her enough to make her jump, but this time she kept her mouth shut.

“Get into cover. There’s someone coming.”

“Who?” Esna asked as Rammak suddenly wrapped an arm around her and picked her up.

“What are you doing?” she protested as he ran over to the wall, then began climbing with his other three hands.

Esna didn’t say anything else, realizing that he wanted to get her up top as fast as possible and not offering any resistance as she became a piece of cargo. When he got to the lip of the cave entrance she found herself thrown up over his shoulder and onto the flat, then Esna scrambled out of the way as his big Calavari bulk climbed up. Javvin appeared beside him a moment later and stayed on the edge, going invisible as his helmet cam suddenly transmitted into Esna’s. She could see from his point of view in a small popup window that she had to move into an upper corner so she didn’t trip on anything with it blocking her view, and that took her several seconds working the HUD controls.

“Is your mic off?” Rammak asked through the comm.

Esna did a quick check. “Yes.”

“They aren’t Viks.”

“Who then?”

“Cargo haulers,” Javvin answered.

“This is a sparsely used trade route,” Rammak pointed out, “but there is traffic on occasion.”

“I checked their minds. They’re not looking for us. Just stay out of sight and I’ll make sure they don’t see the cave. The less I have to hide from them the better, but given this height I don’t think they’ll notice. They’re tired and bored, barely staying awake enough to navigate the turns.”

“Tired from what?” Esna asked, still amazed at the information he could pull from people’s minds without them even knowing it.

“Long trips, and they’re behind schedule now,” he said as Esna caught her first glimpse of their vehicle. It was wheeled and moving slowly, and she could tell from the visible bumps how much of a pain a long ride in that thing through this terrain had to be.

It took forever for it to get close to them, creeping forward methodically as Esna kept reminding herself not to hold her breath. She was out of view and they couldn’t hear it anyway, with her standing next to the wall and well back from the edge as she watched on her helmet’s HUD, seeing a large tank on the back of the sled-like vehicle that had 8 wheels and two drivers.

“What are they hauling?” she asked, seeing a seeping leak along one of the tank seams.

“Bioslurry,” Javvin said with a tightness to his voice.

“What’s that?”

“Liquefied internal organs,” Rammak answered.

Esna gulped with a wash of guilt flowing over her as she suddenly understood. “Oh…”

“I’d like to take them out,” Javvin said, still invisible on the ledge, “but I don’t want to give away our position with their absence.”

“Take them out?”

“They killed and cut up hundreds of living beings to fill that tank and they’re off to sell their produce further north as food, then they’ll head back and slaughter more that friends of theirs are rounding up on hunting missions. They capture them and bring them back to camp so they can secure all the necessary fluids in the most efficient method,” Javvin all but spat. “I hate letting bastards like that go.”

“You’d kill them?”

“Yes,” Javvin said sternly. “You have a problem with that?”

“I grew up on a farm,” she said hesitantly, wondering how he’d react. “I killed some livestock too.”

“And now?” Rammak asked.

“I know better now, but I still did it.”

“You’re not a threat then,” Javvin said neutrally as the vehicle passed beneath them and began making the turn around the outcropping and into the western half of the canyon out of view. “These two will do it again, for they do not respect life. They’re not misguided, they’re evil. Some people are drawn into situations not of their own making and go along with it. That is despicable, but there is a difference between those that do so because they are leveraged to and those that choose to freely. Which is she?”

“The former,” Rammak answered as the vehicle slid out of view, but neither of the two warriors moved, knowing they had to let it get further ahead before they relaxed.

“And that makes it ok?” Esna asked, conflicted over being happy that Javvin didn’t punch her and yet still feeling responsible.

“Never,” the Protovic said, with his point of view cutting out now that there wasn’t anything to see besides empty canyon. He shimmered into view and walked a few steps towards her, hopping over the parked speeder opposite from where Rammak was standing.

“So what does that make me?”

“Have you learned?”

“I know what I did was wrong, if that’s what you mean.”

“Will you do it again, perhaps if you run out of other…food?”

“No. I don’t think I could now, even if it meant starving. Someone else shouldn’t have to die so I can eat their body.”

“Then I have no quarrel with you, youngling,” Javvin said, his voice easing a bit but it wasn’t exactly warm.

“How can you just let it go at that? I mean, I don’t want you to kick my ass or kill me, but just letting it go doesn’t feel right.”

“It shouldn’t feel right,” Javvin said, sitting back on the side of the speeder.

“Then what should I be feeling?”

“You need to self-analyze.”

“About why I did it? I lived on a farm. That’s what they did and sometimes I had to. I didn’t kill very many of them, but I did help deliver them to people that would kill them.”

“And you don’t like that now?”

“I hate it now.”

“That’s why I don’t have an issue with you, other than your questionable judgement. But you’re a newb anyway, so that’s not really anything unexpected.”

“But you would kill them if we didn’t have to hide?”

“In order to prevent them from killing more in a few weeks from now, yes.”

“Just like that?”

“If I don’t, others will die. And those two aren’t going to have a change of heart.”

“But I’ve got blood on my hands too. How am I different from them?”

“Because you are.”

“How?”

“Why did I bring you with me?” Rammak asked her as the cargo hauler continued to get further and further away.

“Because I was Human.”

“That’s the first reason, but after I learned you lived on a farm with livestock why didn’t I do anything?”

“I honestly don’t know. If I could go back in time and stop myself I would, but there’s nothing I can do to undo it now. I’m tainted, just like those two,” she said, pointing out of the cave. “And I can’t ever not be again.”

“But you want to be untainted?” Javvin asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s why you’re different,” Rammak said with finality. “You’ve changed.”

“But I still did it.”

“And you’re not letting yourself forget it?”

“How can I? If I do it’s like…it didn’t really matter.”

“Do you know what your mistake was?”

“No. I don’t know what I was thinking back then. You’ve shown me so much I can’t understand how I was that ignorant. I keep asking myself why I did it, but I don’t know. I should have realized it was wrong, but I didn’t. Not enough to stop, at least.”

“But you did sense something was wrong?”

“Maybe a little, but that’s no excuse.”

“There are no such thing as excuses, Esna,” Javvin said. “But there are explanations. Which version of you is the true you. The now or the then?”

“I want to say now, but if that was how I react without someone telling me it’s wrong I don’t know.”

“This has been bothering you for a while?”

“Yeah.”

“The fact that it does is a good sign. You are trying to right yourself but don’t see how. Remember that you do not live in the past or future, you live in the present. So if there is any taint remaining in you now, then remove it. Once you make sure that it won’t happen again, you can let your past actions go. You don’t forget them, they just become irrelevant.”

“How? I’ll never have a clean slate again.”

“A clean slate?” Rammak asked.

“I did something wrong, and more than once. I can’t bring them back to life, and if I can’t change what I’ve done I can never have a clean slate. I feel like I need one. I want one, but I don’t deserve one. My head is bouncing all over the place.”

“Obviously,” Javvin agreed, “but you’re trying to sort things out. The issue here isn’t what you did, it’s that you don’t trust yourself. If I fire a weapon and hit a target I didn’t intend and kill a friend, I am not going to be happy about that. It will be my fault because I pulled the trigger, because I missed my intended target. I screwed up, and I can’t undo what I did. Should I punish myself for that for the rest of my life?”

“But that would be an accident. What I did was intentional.”

“Someone dies either way, and when you’re young you don’t always understand what you are doing. That doesn’t excuse it, but in your case I’m guessing that your previous actions don’t attest to your true colors. If they did Rammak would have left you behind at minimum, and I trust his judgement. You should have known what you were doing was wrong, but for some reason you did not. You are feeling guilty now because you are correcting the error in your senses. Guilt is an emotional red flag that tells you something is wrong but you don’t understand what. Once you figure out where the error lies and correct it the guilt will go away.”

“But that’s like them being dead doesn’t matter. If I just go on without some punishment or something…”

“Will that bring them back? Will that undo what you’ve done? No. If you could help them you would now, but you can’t. Do not confuse them and you. They are beyond help now, you are not. Are you still their enemy? If they were before you now, would you kill them again?”

“No.”

“You have corrected the error even if you don’t fully understand why it happened.”

“Don’t I need to know why?”

“You don’t always get to know, Esna,” Rammak added. “The past gets washed away in the present, and some things you just have to accept not knowing about. But the present you is here in full and you can analyze yourself. If you would not do those things now, then the problem has been eliminated. If you are still feeling guilty that is because you are holding onto the emotion. Let it go.”

“They’re dead and I’m alive. That’s not right.”

“No, it’s not,” Javvin said. “But you dying isn’t going to help. That would be another loss. This entire planet is an abomination. You didn’t make it that way, the V’kit’no’sat did when they destroyed it and those that remained created this place out of a combination of ignorance and ill will. You came to live here without knowing what we know, and while what you did was wrong, it happened. Not because you are a bad person but because you didn’t know yourself. You were living as other people directed, not charting your own course. Star Force is based on the individual, and while we have a lot to offer we never force it on anyone. Truth cannot be shoved into, it has to be discovered. You are learning now and seeing your past actions in a new light, and it disgusts you. That is good. Now understand why it disgusts you.”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“And you were tricked into doing it by this retched place.”

“I still made the choice.”

“What’s changed then?”

“I…know more now.”

“You aren’t continuing the barbarism. You are pulling yourself together and becoming an individual. It can be a sloppy process, and given the condition of this planet you’re even feeling guilty is a credit to your persistence.”

“How can I stop feeling guilty if I don’t have a clean slate? Shouldn’t I always feel guilty?”

“Clean slate again,” Javvin said, glancing at Rammak. “I don’t think we can explain this in words. She has to learn through experience. Their minds are beyond my reach now, so it should be safe to resume training.”

“Very well,” the Calavari said, reaching a hand out to Esna so he could carry her back down again. “Come.”

“I don’t feel like training, Rammak. I need to get my head straightened out.”

“Training is often the best way to do that.”

Esna sighed, then walked over to him and let the Calavari pick her up in one of his giant arms.

“Maybe if you drop me I’ll feel better.”

“That would not be advantageous, but if it is pain you seek there will be plenty to come. Though you will inflict it yourself…if you are strong enough.”

“I thought you said punishment wasn’t the answer.”

“This isn’t punishment, it’s training. Training has a positive purpose.”

“And the pain?”

“A side effect of you pressing your limits,” he said, taking a knee and getting his handholds before sliding his boots over the edge. “No more questions for now. Follow instructions, and if you can complete the challenge you will understand.”

“Challenge?”

“A part of training essential to Star Force,” Javvin said, hopping off the edge and falling past them. He landed in a crouch at the bottom and waited for Rammak to come down and set Esna back on her feet, then he exchanged a glance with the Calavari. “Obstacle course?”

“Good choice. We have adequate room. Wait here,” he told Esna, then he and Javvin started walking around the canyon talking to each other on a private comm channel while she dug her boot toe into the sandy dirt as she tried to make sense of what they were saying and the unrelenting guilt that had her heart in a vice.

19

Rammak and Javvin spent several minutes setting up a course for Esna to run, then they took her over it via her HUD with her walking through the various waypoints once so she knew what to expect. When she got back to the start line, which was little more than a long scratch in the sandy dirt near the wall that led to the cave entrance, Rammak activated a countdown clock on her HUD.

“Complete the course in under 3:45.”

“How fast do I need to go?”

“Fast. This will not be easy.”

“Ok,” she said, stepping up to the line that was both start and finish with a glowing virtual marker above it at head height. “Start me off.”

Rammak triggered a series of countdown tones and on the fourth the sound changed slightly, starting the clock with Esna rushing off. She ran down a more or less straight section of the canyon, then took a sharp turn that had her feet skidding a bit as she redirected to cross the width over to the far wall, then she turned and ran along it, hopping over a low boulder and climbing up two more with some large strides. Additional twists and turns had her crisscrossing the approximate same area without mimicking her previous steps. In the end the course had her running back towards the cave and crossing the finish line with the clock in her helmet stopping at 3:22.

“Good,” Rammak said as Esna sucked air. “Now you know what is expected of you. Completing a segment under time earns you 60 seconds rest. Not making it under time gives you 30. To complete the challenge you must have 20 successful completions without pause.”

“Twenty!” Esna said in disbelief.

“You have one completed. Now you need 19 more. Watch the countdown in your helmet and be ready to go. If you don’t start on time you will lose the completions you already have and have to start over again.”

“I can’t do 20 of those.”

“One doesn’t know their limits,” Javvin said from his position leaning against the rock wall behind them, “until they probe them. Don’t think ahead, just focus on what you need to do right now. There aren’t 19 ahead of you, just the next one. Do what is necessary to get it even if it leaves you without energy to do the rest.”

“I can’t do 20,” she repeated, walking back to the line as her precious seconds of rest ticked off. As the last few came up the four tones repeated, with the last one ending on 0 and sending her off again. Her legs were tired, but at least she could compare landmarks to the clock from last time and she handled the first turn better, not sliding so much this time, but her breathing hadn’t fully recovered and she was feeling a little burn already.

Esna finished up this run in 3:39, coming in under time but now even more tired than before and getting only another 60 seconds rest.

“No way…I can…do this,” she said between breaths.

“You’ve done 2, now try for a third,” Javvin suggested.

“Is this really training…or are you just…messing with me?”

“Challenges are the fundamental element of Star Force training, and this one in particular is something you need to complete in order for you to progress. Wall off any concerns of not making it and just live in the moment.”

“If I run out of energy it won’t matter.”

“See how far you get before that happens.”

“I should have kept my mouth shut,” Esna muttered as she saw only a handful of seconds left. Those 60 had disappeared far faster than they should, but she wasn’t going to quit this. She’d give it whatever effort she had, but there was no way she was going to make 20 of these.

With her legs protesting more this time she upped her effort and dragged herself through in 3:42, watching the landmarks closely to know just how fast she had to go in order to get in under time. After that she made the 4th run in 3:41, the 5th in 3:44, and the 6th in 3:42...but that was all she had in her, for when the 7th came around she tried to squeeze out as much energy as she could, but missed in 3:48.

“Thirty seconds rest, then you go again,” Rammak said casually.

“I…can’t…make…it,” she said, barely able to breathe.

“Live in the moment,” Javvin said, “and think deviously.”

Esna stood back up from her forward leaning crouch as the seconds disappeared so fast it felt like she’d just stopped. Knowing that she couldn’t do another, she toed the line and took off when the tones sounded, but her legs were so dead she didn’t stand a chance. She finished it out, but came across in 4:12…meaning another no-count.

“Thirty seconds rest,” Rammak repeated, saying nothing more.

Esna didn’t have the air to complain, but there was no point in this. How could she complete even one more if she didn’t have the strength? And with even less rest after a failure it was practically insuring that she’d run even slower on the next one.

Think deviously, Javvin had said. What did that mean?

Esna’s brain wasn’t in the thinking mode right now, but the one thought in her mind was that this next was one was going to be even slower than before and there was nothing she could…

Then an epiphany hit her just before she had to step up to the line. Rammak had said she had to complete 20 without pausing and only the ones under time counted…but he didn’t say there was a minimum speed on the misses.

When the tones sounded Esna took off again, but this time at an easy jog. Her legs complained, but since she wasn’t trying to beat the clock on this one…just the opposite actually, stretching this out longer to give her more time…her legs lost a bit of their heaviness and even her breathing recovered partially by the time she finished, coming across the line in 8:35.

“Thirty seconds rest,” Rammak said, without a word of complaint about her lack of effort.

Even stopping from the jogging was a relief, but the rest was far too brief. When Esna started the next one she went slow again, trying to store up as much energy as she could, then after finishing and grabbing another 30 seconds of pure rest she tried to get the following one under time, coming in at 3:42 and dropping to her knees afterward.

“7 completions,” Rammak noted, standing there and watching while she was in agony…but Esna knew she now had a way to keep going. She might have to run a lot of segments at a jog to recover enough energy, but so long as she didn’t miss a start or quit during a segment she wasn’t going to lose the 7 she already had. She needed 13 more, which seemed impossible, but she took Javvin at his word and just focused on getting number 8 after another jogging circuit.

She missed it by 3 seconds, then took three jogging segments after to make sure that didn’t happen again. Esna came through in 3:44, watching her landmarks closely so she didn’t use any more energy than she actually needed, and completed number 8.

After that it was a grinding effort, with her running 3 or 4 failures just to get enough energy for a single completion, and each time she did her legs started to hurt worse. With the moving rest she had enough energy to take off again, but it felt like her wobbly legs were being ground apart at a microscopic level…though somehow she was able to keep going so long as she let herself go slow in between her hard efforts.

“19 completions,” Rammak said as she came across the line again, this time knowing better than to drop to the ground for a handful of seconds, because she’d just have to climb up again and waste more energy doing that. Huffing and puffing and aching all over, Esna walked back to the line and waited there, knowing she just had to get one more in. Her entire body cried out that it wasn’t possible and that she should just collapse right here and now in to a ball and not move for 3 days, but there was no way she was going to quit now and waste the 19 she had. All it would take was delaying one second on the start and it’d all be wasted, so there was no way she was going down to her knees this time and risk not being able to get back up again.

When the tones sounded she took off running as slow as she possibly could. Walking wouldn’t count…she knew that even without having to ask Rammak about it. This was running training and walking wasn’t running, but she was pretty sure she could have walked faster than she was jogging now, taking such short and slow steps it was probably pathetic to watch but it was all she could manage. Getting over the rocks was even worse, but she managed to do it without pausing and gradually her legs started to return enough strength to them that when she finished and took off on the next one it didn’t feel like she was dragging her feet.

Not knowing how she was holding on, she didn’t want to take chances and miss her next hard attempt. That had happened 5 times already, but she’d clawed her way back each time and got them eventually, though at this point she couldn’t even count how many times she’d run this course. Everything was a painful blur, but the end was so close that it was what she focused her mind on as she jogged another circuit, then took another 30 seconds rest as she tried to size up her energy reserves.

She had nothing left, but she’d been feeling that way for the past 4 and somehow she’d been able to drag herself through it. Esna decided another 3 ‘rest’ runs would do it, but when she got there she decided to take one more just to be sure…then she waited out what would hopefully be the last 30 seconds trying to summon up as much adrenaline as she could so she didn’t lose time on the acceleration like she’d done before. Every second was precious and she couldn’t waste them at the start by being sluggish.

A few seconds prior to the tones she forced herself to jump up and down three times, barely getting an inch off the ground on the first one, but her legs came back to life a touch on the others…and then the tones sounded and she was off, putting as much effort into the first segment as she could and racing to hit the turn at time mark 0:21.

She hit it exactly, feeling like she couldn’t keep going but forcing her legs to move and not fall behind on the next bit. One stretch after another she held her marks, but not by much. She’d lagged off a little on past tries and ended up missing by a second or two because she couldn’t sprint in at the end, so Esna knew she had to stay on it or gain an extra second, but it was all she could do just to keep up until she hit a longer stretch in the middle and forced her legs up into a higher gear. Fortunately for this challenge she was able to use her armor at full power, and she could have sworn that it helped her out right now, for her legs somehow hit a higher gear than she’d been getting before and gained her an extra half second at the next turn.

Fighting to maintain that slim lead was all she could manage over the rest of the course, and she had to dig down for every last bit of strength she had focusing every step because she knew if her mind wandered even a bit she’d start losing huge chunks of time. When she came to the final straightaway she launched into a tiny sprint, pegging out her legs on their remaining energy and fearing she was going to fall over before she got there, but her wobbling steps carried her across the line in 3:44, just sliding in under time, and Esna let herself fall to the ground in a tumble that she rolled over into a kneeling position on all fours as she tried to suck in more air than Humanly possible.

“20 completions,” Rammak said, standing stoically by as she suffered. “Challenge completed.”

She hurt so bad she didn’t want to move, but the feeling of crossing the line under time and hearing those words were such a joy that her pain didn’t matter. Esna had just done the impossible, and as her mind drifted back to what she’d just been through she realized she didn’t even want to know. It was literally impossible, yet she’d come through it somehow…and she felt changed by it. Her body was shaking with fatigue and she was even getting chills inside her armor, but Esna had done it. She’d pushed herself far farther than ever before and she felt…

She didn’t know how to describe it, but she was different now.

“Now that your mind and body are a bit clearer,” Javvin said as he walked over to her where she was crumpled on the ground, not even bothering to support herself with her arms and just lying in victorious agony. “How’s the guilt now?”

“Gone,” she gasped, for the truth was she couldn’t feel anything other than the ache of her body and the tingling of accomplishment that accompanied it.

“Sometimes you need a physical purge to clear your mind,” Rammak added. “Remember that in the future when your mind becomes clouded.”

“What did you learn?” Javvin asked.

It took Esna several seconds before her mind got around to thinking…then several more before she could speak.

“You two…are bastards.”

“Besides that,” Javvin pressed.

“I can…barely think…right now.”

“Then let me explain what you just learned. The challenge was to complete 20 circuits under time, not to complete 20 in a row. You didn’t have a clean slate, you failed multiple times, and while you probably wish you could have done them all in a row that wasn’t the point. The point was to complete 20 and pass the challenge, which you did. You struggled through it, but you were 100% victorious in the end. In Star Force we don’t count the failures, only the successes. You can try over and over and over again until you get it right, and when you do that’s all that matters. You can feel it now, can’t you? The feel of victory? The feel of screwing up over and over again but finally making it?”

“Yes.”

“Life is no different. You failed in the past when you did all manner of things that were wrong or stupid, and while those things have consequences, just like the failures here cost you more energy and made this challenge harder, at the end it doesn’t matter. You came through victorious, and it is not a tainted victory. You had to complete 20, and you completed 20. The same is true about being a good person. It doesn’t matter what transpired in the past to get you here, what matters is that you have been victorious over the barbarism of this planet. Are you free of it now? If you are then you are no longer tainted. While we want to go through training and life with a clean slate, we don’t. Especially in training.”

“Understatement of the millennia,” Rammak added.

“You are not a record of past failures, Esna. You are the result of your victories. If you are victorious over the barbarism then you are free of it, so there is no reason to doubt yourself. And if those that you hurt are gone and you’re unable to help them now, then there is nothing left to do. They are gone, a failure just like your runs here that you tried to get under time and missed. They hurt, they’re not a good thing, and they’re not something that needs to be forgotten. They simply don’t matter now because you succeeded when you got your head straightened out, so if there is no error remaining in your judgement and no way to undo what you’ve done, then there is no reason for your mind to give you a warning message. So no more guilt unless you force yourself to feel it, essentially triggering a false alarm…and you can’t respond to a false alarm because there is nothing to act upon. You’ll be chasing it forever. The effort of this workout has turned it off and balanced your mind. Don’t force it back on again.”

“That…actually makes…sense,” Esna said, still breathing hard. “But right now…I don’t care. My head hurts…too much to think.”

“Then remember my words for later, and congratulations. That was not a challenge that most people could have passed. You’ve transitioned into a different level through a rite of passage for warriors. A true test of strength is not in suffering pain inflicted by another, but by pushing yourself to such efforts that you inflict it upon yourself in a beneficial way.”

“Beneficial?” Esna asked.

“Your body will respond to this by making you stronger,” Rammak explained. “Training effect far more intense than you’ve experienced before. The downside is you can’t go through things like this very often, because they also cause some damage.”

“Enjoy the soreness you’ll feel in a few hours,” Javvin said sarcastically as he placed his armored hand on her helmet. “We’re proud of you. Now get some rest.”

Before Esna could say anything she felt Rammak pick her up again. She didn’t complain, letting him carry her back up into the cave as her body continued to suck up the precious seconds of rest she was getting…for it was still expecting another run, and just sitting and doing nothing next to the shower tube that she was too tired to drag herself into for nearly an hour was the most blissful thing she’d ever felt.

20

The next day was free of training for Esna as Rammak insisted that she needed to further rest even after getting a long sleep. She wasn’t going to argue for her body hurt everywhere, and while parts of her had improved the soreness had set in and even simple movements had become painful. That said, she was still feeling good. Better than good, actually, and as the suns went down for the planet’s brief night she sat a couple meters in from the edge of the drop off with her back leaned against the speeder. Her armor was off and as the cooling breeze hit her exposed face and bare feet it made her body feel as serene as her mind was.

The guilt hadn’t returned, burnt out of her by the challenge and Javvin’s words had stuck with her. Once she stopped mentally kicking herself the internal conflict had ceased and she’d realized the difference between forgetting and moving on. You didn’t have to be alright with something to move on, you just had to have your business with it finished. She couldn’t go back and save those Brendilin she had killed, so there was nothing left for her to do aside from making sure she never found herself in that situation again.

And she wouldn’t, despite who was around her. She knew the truth now and could never go back to being ignorant. Her heart and head were now squared away, but as she sat soaking in the cooling breeze while Rammak was in one of the back rooms and Javvin was out doing whatever it was he did when roaming, Esna realized something else in her had changed.

Javvin had said she’d gone through a rite of passage, and while a lot of that challenge was a blur she knew that she’d pressed herself beyond any previous effort levels, breaking through an invisible wall that now seemed to open up a future of possibilities to her. She no longer knew what her limits were, and that thrilled Esna. She did not want to try that challenge again, but she wasn’t going to have to. It was over, she’d succeeded, and now she was resting before moving on to the next one, whatever it would end up being.

But something was missing, and it took her a while sitting there and thinking before she realized what it was.

The pain of Teren’s death was gone. She’d been carrying it with her like a constant companion ever since she’d joined Rammak on this crazy journey across the planet, but along with her guilt it seemed the challenge had burned it out of her as well and she took a moment to try and understand why.

The memory of his death was still unpleasant and plenty vivid, but the anger it usually instilled couldn’t overcome the coolness of the breeze and her tranquility wasn’t disturbed. Esna ran through many memories that had previously caused her to burn inside…memories that she’d tried to avoid…but even they were lacking the ability to infuriate her. When she got to the bittersweet memories of her years with Teren prior to his death that usually tugged at her heart, she realized that they were now empty.

That surprised her, but before she could worry about losing her emotional connection to her brother Esna realized it was already gone.

No, not gone, just dormant. He would always be her brother, but for the first time she didn’t miss him or her time spent with him. That was in her past now and, honestly, she didn’t want to go back.

Her next thought was that she was somehow betraying him by even thinking that, but what Rammak had said about not knowing where a person came from or where they went when they died came back into mind and stuck there. It took several minutes of mulling it over until she realized her time with her brother was done. He was heading a different direction now, whatever it was, and she couldn’t go with him. The lingering wish to have died in that same attack was long gone as well. She didn’t want to die, nor did she want to go back to Yammar and Innit and her life there. That was her past, and after everything Rammak had shown and taught her she knew she’d never fit in there again.

She didn’t belong on this planet anymore. Esna wasn’t Star Force like Rammak was, but she wasn’t a ‘local’ either. She was something else right now, but it was what she would become in the future that now drove her. Teren was behind her, and while going through that challenge her link to him, this planet, and her previous life had been permanently cut.

Now Esna was just herself. This body sitting on the edge of a drop off as the planet shifted into night, not knowing if she’d live to see tomorrow and in constant pain from the running she’d done yesterday…but there was nowhere else she would rather be. She felt alive, as if her mind had been closed before and was slowly opening the longer she spent time with Rammak, and now Javvin too.

Even if she could go back and avoid the Viks, she couldn’t now. It wasn’t that she’d just put it behind her. Her growth had made her incompatible with this world. Teren and her had never liked it here, but the thought of going back actually scared her a little bit. She didn’t want to lose everything that she’d gained, and for the first time she understood why Rammak had lived by himself. He didn’t belong with the people on this planet because he was better than them…and now she was too, at least enough to make her feel completely disconnected from them.

Them and her brother. Esna didn’t dislike her brother, but as she had grown she’d been leaving him behind bit by bit and now she was out of his league. Teren could have made it this far too, she thought, but there was no way for him to do that now…so she had a choice. Keep him in her mind and preserve their bond as it was, not growing or changing and just trying to keep things the same, or she could let him go and see how far she could make it.

And after that challenge there was no question what she would do, because she knew this was where she belonged. Whatever little part of Star Force was here with Rammak, it was enough for her and she couldn’t imagine living without it now.

“Goodbye, Teren,” she whispered to the stars that were now showing in the sliver of night sky visible through the dark rocks. “Wish me luck.”

Esna leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the breeze slowly lull her into a numb sleep until Javvin’s voice sounded in her mind.

Be still. We are coming up. Do not shout.

Esna frowned as she sat up, a little perturbed at her reputation as a shrieker but appreciating the heads up before he the Protovic popped into view again. She listened closely and heard the faint sounds of someone climbing the rock wall up to her position, but the red/black armor that appeared a moment later wasn’t Javvin’s. The head was huge and pointed straight up off the shoulders, making her flinch backwards but fortunately she was able to hold her tongue as the quadruped climbed up to her left, followed a moment later as Javvin came up right in front of her feet.

Rammak came out of the back as Esna stood up and slid over the speeder to the other side to make more room, for with the four of them standing there it was quite cramped with the huge new addition to the trio. Whatever he was, he stood almost as tall as Rammak’s shoulder, but the bulk of his body came from his horizontal back and thick legs that stretched out so far he could barely fit on the rocky platform beyond the speeder.

“This is Nor’far, my Maverick partner for this mission and many others,” Javvin explained, then seeing the perplexed look on Esna’s faced added, “He’s Scionate.”

The armor over the quadruped’s face peeled back revealing the yellowish/gold skin surrounding the snout and teeth of a giant hairless tiger.

“They know your approximate heading,” the Scionate said in a peculiar accent, but still in words Esna could understand. “There is a Zen’zat 60 miles southeast of here and another further north. Their ship is currently far to the south over the mountains, so they may be following multiple leads, but the Zen’zat near here is too close to be a coincidence. We need to leave immediately,” he said, looking at Esna’s white Archon uniform. “Are you injured, Human?”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“You move stiffly.”

“Training,” she said with a sarcastic smirk as she marveled at the huge Maverick, for she’d never seen a race even close to this Scionate before.

“She’s too slow anyway,” Javvin said, glancing at the other two. “If we are being tracked in some rudimentary form we can’t risk bringing you to our ship. It’s the only way off this planet, so I will go to it and bring it to you, but I must leave now.”

“Why didn’t he bring it?” Esna asked, sensing a problem.

“Because you two have to keep moving and the speeder is no longer an option.”

“The entrance to the caves is only a few kilometers ahead,” Rammak pointed out.

“No,” Nor’far said firmly. “We need distance, and for that we need speed. When Javvin arrives with the ship we will be vulnerable and have to race to orbit. The further away the Zen’zat and their ship are the more chance we have of escaping.”

“I assume it’s cloaked?” Rammak asked.

“It is,” the Scionate answered, “but the V’kit’no’sat have gotten very good at monitoring atmospheric displacement to track us in atmosphere. We have to get to space to get clear, and even then we need distance or they will be able to pick us up at short range.”

“When you bring it to us?”

“If your location is under enhanced scrutiny they might discover us prior to arriving, so we need to rendezvous far from here but your vehicle is too easy to track. We have to go on foot.”

“Which is why I have to go and he will travel with you,” Javvin said. “We’ve arranged a location to the southwest that we think will be a mutual intersection point. It’ll take me four or five days to get to our ship, then I’ll fly it there and wait for you. Hopefully you’ll be there within a day of that, if you can move quickly enough…and that will be determined by how fast Rammak can move.”

“I understand,” the Calavari said. “Go.”

Javvin nodded at him and lightly punched Nor’far in his armored shoulder, then he turned and jumped out of the cave entrance and fell into the night, disappearing from view and off the battlemap.

“You have done well to survive this long, Commando. What is your current condition?”

“Adequate. How far must we go?”

“1472 miles, not taking into account terrain variations, but the bulk of our travel will be on the plains.”

“Will our armor be sufficient to avoid detection?”

“Anything but a close scan, assuming hers if the same model as yours. If they know our location and take a focused look they will find us, but if not we should be able to run in the open and defeat their widespread scans, though we will have to avoid population centers and trade routes. Many of them have spies actively hunting for you.”

“How are you set for food?” Rammak asked.

“Adequate. Carry only what you need for this mission and travel as light as possible. We need to leave now.”

“Esna,” Rammak said, looking over at her. “Ten minutes to pack, and I’m going to need you to carry some of my gear.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to be the slowest and the faster I can move the more ground we can cover.”

“I’m the slowest,” she reminded him, wondering how he could overlook that.

“Which is why I am here and not Javvin,” Nor’far explained. “I will carry you.”

“He can run far faster than me, even with you on his back. I will be the slow one, therefore I must be as light as possible. Pack only foodstuffs and water. Leave all other gear behind. We need to survive a handful of days, so carry nothing for beyond that. We either get off the planet now or we don’t get off it at all.”

Esna gulped, but she nodded her understanding. “How will you carry me?”

“On my back,” the Scionate said with a hint of sarcasm.

“How do I keep from falling off?”

“Use your adhesive panels on your legs and lock them in place. You won’t fall off.”

“I don’t know how to use those.”

“I’ll show you, but we need to get moving quickly. The longer we stay the greater the chance of the Zen’zat detecting us before we get beyond their search corridor.”

“Packing…right,” Esna said, walking through the doorway and into the backroom that held the shower tube with her armor pieces piled beside it. She got it back on a bit slowly, for she was really stiff and sore, but at least she wouldn’t be the one running now.

Once Esna got her helmet locked in place she got her pack and started emptying things out of it and stuffing in more supplies, knowing that if Rammak had to run the whole way he was going to need a lot of food…and especially water. The more she could carry the better, but she didn’t know about the Maverick. He had a pack stretched across his back too, but how much could he carry in addition to her?

Rammak came back to meet her and handed her a single rifle and box of spare ammunition.

“That’s all?”

“Speed is our weapon now. Leave all of yours behind save for a pistol. If we have to fight, we’ve already lost.”

“So why take them at all?”

“In case we run into something other than Zen’zat.”

“Right,” Esna said, pulling the rest of her weapons off the rack that rode over her pack. She kept her pistol and added Rammak’s rifle, leaving the rest of the attachment spots empty and lighter than normal…meaning she could carry some more water if she could find a way to fit it inside her pack.

“I will carry your food and water,” Nor’far said, squeezing through the doorway easily enough. His width wasn’t any greater than the Calavari whom these chambers had been hollowed out for, but he wasn’t going to be able to turn around very quickly. “Travel in nothing but your armor.”

“I’m not exactly light,” Esna warned.

“I will be running slowly to keep pace with the Calavari. It will not be a concern.”

“Give him everything you can’t fit, Esna. And I apologize for the timing.”

“What?”

“Your soreness is going to increase.”

She frowned heavily, not wanting to hear that, then realized what he meant when she looked at the Scionate. If he was running then she was going to get bounced around with every stride.

“I’ll manage. You’ve got the hard part,” she said, continuing to pack. When hers was full to the brim she slung it behind her back and attached it to her armor, using the powered setting to help her stand up straight, then she began fishing out items for Nor’far…who grabbed them telekinetically and flew them into an opening on his pack.

Esna blinked in surprise, but didn’t waste time with further questions. She filled up as many containers of water as she could, then held up a small water spire.

“No,” Rammak said. “We won’t be stopping long enough to need it.”

“You have to sleep at some point.”

“No more than a few hours.”

“I have one if we need it,” Nor’far said, “but we won’t. I’ll carry enough for both of us.”

“Alright,” she said, putting it down on the table as she grabbed some more food cubes and pushed them Nor’far’s way.

“Sufficient,” Rammak finally said. “If you need to relieve yourself do so now. We won’t be stopping for a long time.”

“Ok,” she said, seeing him heading there first, which made sense considering he’d be the one running. She took her turn next then said a silent goodbye to the shower tube as she passed it. She was missing the warm water already, but if sitting through a painful ride was what it took to get off this planet then so be it. Between the three of them she had it easiest by far.

“Ready?” Rammak asked when she came out to the platform next to the speeder.

“Yes,” she said, carrying the slightly heavier than normal pack on her back.

“Come,” Nor’far said, with Esna suddenly being lifted off the ground by an invisible force and dragged through the air near the ceiling top until she was over the Scionate, then he dropped her on top of his pack. “Connect to the side of my armor with your feet only. You will need your joints free to absorb the movement.”

Rammak accessed Esna’s HUD and showed her the proper commands, with her armored boots sticking to the side of the red/black armor on command so strongly it felt like they were glued on. She experimented with the release, having them come off easy enough, then resecured them and bounced up and down a bit as she sat on top of Nor’far’s stiff but not totally hard pack.

“What about my hands?”

“Leave them free, but brace yourself against my back when needed.”

“What if I fall backwards?”

“Use your legs to right yourself and lean forward when going uphill to avoid that, though right now just grab onto the underside of your own legs to steady your torso.”

Esna slid her hands underneath her thighs and found that helped quite a bit. “Ok.”

“Are you ready?” Nor’far asked Rammak.

“I am,” he said, standing in his armor without a weapon rack or a pack, which meant he should be at his fastest.

Suddenly a set of coordinates and waypoints to get there flashed onto his and Esna’s HUD.

“You set the pace and I will follow,” Nor’far said, with Rammak immediately disappearing over the edge of the drop off and beginning to climb down. The Scionate let him get partway before suddenly jumping out into the darkness and falling past him.

Esna couldn’t help yelling, but fortunately her external mic was still off so no one other than her two companions heard it. On the way down their fall slowed, letting the Scionate land only moderately hard, though that still bounced her heavily with her butt punching into his pack a touch. She rebounded off it and was left startled and hurting from the sudden movement on her sore body, watching from below as Rammak finished his descent and took off running back the way they’d come.

Without a word Nor’far ran after him, bouncing Esna around in a rhythm that she soon got used to, though it was a very odd feeling. Both riding on the Scionate and seeing Rammak moving so fast ahead of her…not to mention looking down on the top of his head, which had never happened before aside from when he was sleeping.

It became quickly apparent how much Rammak had been holding back on their own runs cross country, for now he was all but sprinting back through the canyon and as promised Nor’far kept pace with him all the way to a break in the terrain several miles back where they turned and ran up a shallow part of the canyon wall. They eventually came up to the peak as Esna saw the golden aura of the first sun rising starting to eclipse the stars to the east…then they were on the descent again, crossing into an adjacent canyon and moving the hard way across them in order to head south towards the plains where their distant rendezvous point was marked on her battlemap.

21

It was 21 hours later when Rammak finally stopped running. They’d made three quick breaks to grab some food and water, but this time they were stopping in the shallow foothills southwest of the canyons they had put far behind them. They’d traveled 394 miles according to Esna’s battlemap since they’d left and she didn’t know how either one of them was still moving, especially Nor’far who had been carrying her and a lot of gear on his back the entire way.

They stopped alongside a hill that was partially washed out, giving it a bit of a wall and a depression at the bottom that should make sensor or visual spotting of them more difficult. Nor’far lifted her off him with his telekinesis again and deposited her on the ground…where her legs were so stiff and sore she could barely move.

Following her came some water and foodstuffs out of the Scionate’s pack that drifted up to his helmet as it peeled back as well as over to Rammak, who lifted up his helmet but did not take it completely off his head.

“From now on,” he said in between bites, “do not fully remove your armor. Keep as much of it on at all times as you can to diminish the possibility of getting spotted.”

“And my full bladder?” she asked, taking tiny wobbling steps and wincing with each one.

“Find some cover and remove as few pieces as you can. Remember that the most likely detection will come from straight above.”

“What about our foodstuffs and water canisters?”

“They do not give off body heat,” Nor’far added before he walked off around the hill to find some privacy.

“How are you doing?” she asked Rammak once he was gone.

“I will manage. In a few minutes I will be deep asleep, but I have a task for you before you do.”

“What?”

“Take a short run.”

Esna half choked taking in her next breath. “I can barely walk.”

“Exactly. Loosen yourself up before you rest.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“How far?”

“10 minutes will do, but stay close and run in loops. When you finish, eat and drink what you need then get to sleep. We won’t be here for more than 4 hours.”

“How can you keep going on four hours?”

“Tapping into reserves. We have a goal to reach, so I am stretching out my strength to cover it and nothing more. If they find us before then, how much strength I have to fight will not matter.”

“What about Nor’far? Can he fight?”

“Of course he can.”

“With your help, can you beat a Zen’zat?”

“Maybe, but there are at least 3 on this planet. If they locate us more will come. Our best hope is to move undetected, and to do that we need to get away from their focused sensors. Our armor will protect us from widespread detection.”

“Until we take it off,” she said, understanding.

“Go. I will be asleep by the time you finish. Leave your pack and weapons here.”

“Ugh,” she said, disconnecting them from her armor and feeling a bit lighter, but that didn’t help her soreness. She walked away from Rammak a few steps, but when she tried to run all she could manage was a bit of a hobble. It took her more than 2 minutes before she felt she was moving enough to count as running then started her helmet clock, wincing against the pain all the way up until the end.

When she stopped back at their impromptu camp her legs quit complaining and her walk was now almost normal. Apparently Rammak was right, but he wasn’t awake for her to tell him that. He was laying down along the base of the hill in his full armor about a meter behind Nor’far, who was curled up in a ball with his armored tail nearly touching his helmet. It looked like an oddly restful pose, which only made her more sleepy at seeing it. She hadn’t done anything all day but ride, but she was exhausted and the run had pulled it out of her even more.

Esna rounded a nearby hill and relieved herself as cautiously as possible, keeping her torso and helmet on as well as her leg pieces, removing only the pelvic section and learning how to maneuver in such a state on the spot. She didn’t take too much time, wanting to limit her expose to any potential sensors, then when she got back to camp she tipped her helmet up a bit like Rammak had done so she could eat and drink. When she was finished she secured it again and found a spot against the same hill beside the Calavari with her head half a meter from his.

When she laid down her muscles complained again, but not nearly as much as before. The painful run had indeed helped, but she forgot it and everything else within a couple minutes as sleep dragged her into its blissful embrace.

Rammak made another 16 hours before the next stop, at which point they were on the edge of the plains. Gone were the hills and deeper canyons beyond that had provided them with their anonymity. Nor’far was confident that so long as the Viks didn’t think they were here they wouldn’t be focusing any close scans on them that could defeat their sensor resistance, citing that the further they got out onto the plains the better chance they’d have of avoiding detection…for who would look out in the middle of nowhere for people trying to hide?

That made some sense, but as Esna rode for the third day on top of the Scionate she felt so exposed on the flatlands, for there was literally nothing to see. Aside from a little dip here and there everything was a repetitive mess of scrub brush, sand, and small rocks that you could see over for miles. The horizon was a flat line now everywhere but behind them, though soon even those distant hills would disappear over the curve of the planet leaving them in a sea of visual emptiness…with Rammak and Nor’far suddenly stopping after only 7 hours into their run.

Esna would have thought they were taking an early rest, save for the fact that the quadruped literally skidded to a halt.

“What’s wrong?”

“Vehicles crossing out path. Get off and stay beside me,” Nor’far said as he knelt down and pressed his belly to the ground. “Motion will make us show.”

Esna slid off his back and dropped her sore and battered legs to the ground with them buckling, but she was going to sit down anyway so it didn’t matter. She painfully scrambled around until she was lying next to Nor’far’s armor and inside a bit of the shade he produced as Rammak moved off a few meters and laid down flat on the ground.

“Where are they?”

“18 miles northeast. They will pass within 7 ahead of our current position. We will wait here, unmoving, until they are gone. Catch a brief nap if you wish.”

“Who are they?”

“Highlanders taking the pervia trail,” Rammak said, citing denizens of the planet she wasn’t even familiar with. “They’re probably heading for Acatia.”

“Did they see us?”

“Unlikely,” Nor’far stated. “My passive sensors picked them up only moments ago, and they’re not emitting any active signals. They have not seen us, and if we stay here they should not come close enough to notice. We will continue once they are sufficiently past.”

“What if more are following them?”

“Then we wait until we get a sufficient gap,” he said as a swirl of dust kicked up nearby Rammak. “Both of you stay still, your armor needs camouflaging.”

Esna watched as the dust kept accumulating, being swept up from around them until it covered Rammak in a thin layer that hid most of his orange armor, then the little whirlwind came her way.

“How are you doing that?”

“Lachka,” Nor’far said, using the proper word for telekinesis. “Lie still or it will be disturbed.”

“Alright,” Esna said, wondering about the wind. “What if it blows off on its own?”

“There is no wind and it is unlikely that they will see you regardless, but I do not want to take chances,” he said as her helmet became covered and she had to shift to an auxiliary view to see the ground in front of her.

“Go make sure,” Rammak insisted.

Esna heard Nor’far huff, apparently not too keen on leaving them alone, but he didn’t voice any opposition.

“Very well. Do not move until I return.”

The outline of the Scionate on Esna’s tracking schematic vanished, leaving only the flat ground her head was laying on visible ahead of her, though with the dust covering her faceplate she couldn’t actually see it.

“Get some sleep if you can,” Rammak suggested. “We will not know how long the delay will be until it’s over.”

“How vulnerable are we?”

“At this range, not much. We’re just not taking chances. Nor’far will get within mental range and check to make sure that we are not spotted, then scout the area ahead for more traffic. When it is clear he will return.”

“How are you doing?”

“I was in a rhythm that will be difficult to resume, especially if I sleep now, but I can’t waste the minutes. I’ll get what rest I can then work through the sluggishness until I get back up to speed.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“I will make it, Esna. Do not worry about that.”

“We still have a long way to go.”

“Compared to the time I’ve spent trapped on this world, it is a very short distance to me. My strength and speed will hold.”

“If we make it, what happens to you and me?”

“Do not worry about that. We will be among friends and allies, and you will discover a home you have been long denied.”

“Will we be split up?”

“I do not know what the state of the empire is, but eventually our training will take us different ways. You will not need me to look after you, and there are trainers far more skilled in instruction than me.”

“I like the one I’ve got now.”

“Because you’ve known no other. Here you need me to survive. In Star Force things will be drastically different even if all that is left is one planet, and from what the Mavericks have said there are many left.”

“I want to stay with you if possible.”

“To do that you will have to become a Commando. Do that, and I will welcome you as a sister into any unit I serve in.”

Esna frowned. “Why is it always the hard way with you…yet you leave a glimmer of hope as motivation?”

“There are things you need to learn that I cannot teach you. Things in isolation. And this conversation is premature. We are not safe yet.”

“But when we are…if we are?”

“Then I will stay with you long enough for you to get acclimated unless battle calls me away, though I imagine I will need considerable training myself before I am suitable for deployment. I have lost too much of my strength here.”

“It’d be scary to see how fast you run normally. You’re doing the impossible already.”

“You are just ignorant of the ways of the galaxy. Nor’far’s speed surpasses all Calavari and most Humans. If you saw him run at full speed you would not think me fast.”

“You need to sleep, don’t you?”

“It will take me a few minutes to transition, so if you have questions now is a good time to ask.”

“Do you think we’ll make it to the ship?”

“There is a good chance.”

“And after?”

“I do not know enough about current designs to answer that. Once we get into space we will be hard to catch, though we might be followed. Leaving this planet may not mean we’re free of the Viks, but you can trust the Mavericks. They have been operating in this region for some time, so they know how to move about without getting caught.”

“Have they found others?”

“I had a long conversation with Javvin that you were not privy to. He said there are many leads but few finds. Many that surface are killed before they can be retrieved, which was why they came straight here as soon as there was rumor of our existence on this world.”

“How did they hear about us if they were not on Mace?”

“They said they’ve put devices on passing ships that carry information for them without knowing. They carried word of us out to other star systems.”

“But where did those devices get the news? Someone had to upload to them, right?”

Rammak all but growled. “They have been on the surface before looking for survivors. Not Javvin and Nor’far, but others. They did not find me and I did not find them because I was hiding too well.”

The pit of Esna’ stomach sank, knowing how bad that must have made him feel.

“But if they had found me I would not have found you, so I have no regrets,” he said soothingly. “They have found us now and we are about to be free of this world. That is what matters.”

“Thank you.”

“It is I who should be thanking you. News of Humans is what drew them here. One more Calavari on a planet full of them doesn’t attract attention.”

“Still, I owe you.”

“Star Force is a team. We don’t keep debts to one another.”

“I’m not Star Force.”

“No? Then why did they come for you?”

“Because I’m Human.”

“Same thing at this point. At least as far as the Viks are concerned. But you’ve already proven yourself enough to earn that title. You are Star Force. Just a youngling at this point, but a Star Force youngling, and that challenge you completed proved it. You’re part of the team, so just say thank you and move on. We live in the present, not the past.”

“Thank you, then. Now get your sleep. I still don’t know how you can keep going like this.”

“I’d be going ever farther and faster with ambrosia…but that is something for you to learn later. How are your legs doing?”

“They hurt, but I’ve got it easy compared to you.”

“Pain isn’t relative and you holding still now will help, but only if you can relax your body. If you stay stiff it will make it worse.”

“There are no bumps right now, so I’m good. Get to sleep, Rammak. You need it.”

“As do you,” he said, with both of them not uttering another word as they tried to calm their bodies and minds enough to slip back into that blissful rest while remembering not to so much as twitch a muscle and move the dust blanket covering them.

22

When Nor’far returned they got underway again, never coming in sight of the convoy or anyone else for the remaining days as they crossed the plains with remarkable speed. On the flat Rammak was able to move even faster than before, but each segment that he ran got shorter by a few hours. He managed to hold approximately the same speed, but Esna could tell he was getting really tired. Like her challenge before, he was digging in deep to complete the task and was moving faster with each step than Esna could sprint at max speed.

And Nor’far kept pace with him the entire way, running slightly behind and giving Esna a good view of the emptiness around them. The terrain was flatter than flat now that they were out in the center of the plains without even a single mount visible on the horizon. Esna could spin her head all the way around if she wanted and see nothing but a single, perfect line separating ground from sky. It was disconcerting, and aside from the sporadic ankle-sized rocks they were passing it would have been hard to sense how fast they were going if not for the measurements on her HUD.

Right now they were holding at a steady 23 miles per hour, and Rammak would dip no lower than 21 up until they made camp again. It was full daylight when they did and with no cover available they gave each other some space to take care of bodily issues with Esna trying to reveal as little skin as possible as she did so. Her body was moist from sweat and having lived in her armor for 4 straight days, but the fresh air on her was more alarming than refreshing. With nothing out here to hide behind every square inch of her body was a potential reflector for orbital sensors, so she relieved herself as quickly and efficiently as possible using an energy cleanser that she wished she’d had back on Yammar’s farm, then reconnected her armor and buttoned it up tight, resisting the urge to hunch down.

So long as there was no one nearby it was actually better for her to stand straight up, for it created smaller profile from straight above, but when she got back to the others and tipped her helmet up a few inches to eat and drink a decent amount of water, trying to save as much as possible for Rammak, they talked for a few minutes to wind down then both of her companions laid out flat on the ground and fell asleep within seconds.

Esna stayed awake a little bit longer, looking up at the bright sky and hoping no one was up there watching. If they were they hadn’t found them yet, for no ship or vehicle had come flying at them, but being out in the open like this still unnerved her so she crawled over next to Nor’far and laid down in a bit of the shade his larger body provided. She tried to put all concerns aside and clear her mind so she could rest her continually sore body for the few hours available, for after that the two juggernauts would be back running again and Esna would have to stay awake to balance on the Scionate’s back…otherwise she’d be thrown around so much she’d end up hurting herself even more.

It wasn’t until day 7 that their destination point came within view. They’d passed across the center of the plains and were just transitioning into a little bit of terrain that was now visible on the horizon. The waypoint marker on Esna’s HUD put their destination on this side of a small ridge a few dozen miles ahead. She couldn’t see any ship there, even with her helmet zoom, but if it was invisible that wouldn’t matter. Still, not being able to see it worried her as much as the sight of the fake holographic marker caused a streak of adrenaline to shoot through her weary body.

She also saw Rammak’s speed ticked up a bit. Not so much that it was noticeable in his gait, but the speed readings had him at 1.7 mph faster than an hour before and she knew that he was more eager than she was to get off this planet. He’d been surviving here for 800 years waiting for this moment, so even with him being extremely tired Esna expected him to be able to sprint the last few miles if needed.

He didn’t, showing more composure than she would and maintaining approximately the same pace as they covered ground up until they got a short range confirmation ping that put the invisible ship’s location 1.3 miles to the east of the waypoint and tucked up next to the ridge. Rammak altered his direction slightly and headed towards it with Nor’far staying on his heels and neither one of them speaking. Esna tried to keep quiet, following their example, but when they were a few miles out she couldn’t keep silent anymore.

“The ship is invisible, right?”

“Nearly,” Nor’far said. “Reproducing light exactly as impacted is tricky and even the best cloaks have some degree of error. Operating in atmosphere is even harder, but unless you know what to look for you won’t see it until you run face first into the field.”

“Can you see it from here?”

“No. We are following the coordinates that Javvin has provided. He is inside and waiting for us.”

“Why doesn’t he fly over to us?”

“He will keep the cloak up across the top of the ship and allow us to run underneath to further hide our location. The more seconds head start we have on the V’kit’no’sat the better our chance of escaping orbit undetected. There will be a race for distance as soon as we are on board.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“We’re running straight in. As soon as we’re inside just find a seat and sit tight. Our fate will be in the ship’s speed and stealth.”

“Are theirs faster?”

“Depends what type they have. I do not think their Shav’rei is the only one they have here. It is the only one they want us to see.”

“Why isn’t it cloaked?”

“Most of their ships are not equipped with such stealthing, though they are hard to track at distance anyway unless you have proper sensors. The V’kit’no’sat prefer to be seen and scare away anyone who would challenge them. They only use stealth when necessary to accomplish a mission. They usually prefer to fight in the open, strength against strength.”

“They have better weapons?”

“Yes, but fighting isn’t the point here. Running is, so it’s a matter of engines and time. If we get even a little of the latter we will be alright.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then there will be a chase as we try to evade them.”

“Thank you. Regardless of how this turns out.”

“We don’t willingly leave people behind, and if we’re forced to we come back to get them when we can. And even their offspring, in your case.”

“What about the rest of the people here? Aren’t they offspring of survivors?”

“They might be, or more likely they are migrants having come in from other systems. If the V’kit’no’sat aren’t bothering them that means they’re not Star Force and they’re not Human. We don’t know who they are, but they’re not our people and this isn’t our planet anymore. We’d help them if we could, but bringing in evacuation ships wouldn’t be subtle and would draw the V’kit’no’sat into a fight that might see them killed anyway. If we value them, they die out of spite.”

“So they’re better off if you ignore them too?”

“Sadly yes, but if we find any of our people we risk a fight to get them out, so you do not need to thank us. We are a team and you have been lost for too long. For that we apologize.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“No, it’s the V’kit’no’sat’s fault, but we missed you on this planet when we searched before and that failure does not sit well with us.”

“It’s a planet,” Esna pointed out as she lightly bounced with each Scionate stride. “If it was easy to search the Zen’zat would have found us already.”

“True, but you should never have been forced to endure this.”

“Not your fault,” Esna repeated. “Live in the present, not the past.”

“We do. I am simply explaining there is no need for your gratitude. This is an injustice that we are belatedly righting. You belong with us, not here.”

“Thank you. I’ve been starting to feel that way too.”

“Good. The remainder of your reclamation will occur quickly once you are safely in our territory.”

“How far away is it?”

“We cannot go there directly, but we have hidden bases in the Devastation Zone. We will be at one within days if not pursued.”

“And if we are?”

“We’ll have to take a longer route.”

“I can wait,” Esna said sarcastically, then let Nor’far continue to run without having to talk more. She kept looking ahead trying to make out the nearly invisible ship but couldn’t. All that was there was the angled ridge covered with rocks and some tufts of brush. Staring at it didn’t change anything, but the closer they got the better chance she should have of seeing something so she didn’t pay attention to anything else.

When they were within a mile she still couldn’t see anything until a black spot appeared over the ridge. It was hard to make out, even in the daylight, for the shade seemed to defy recognition. The light around it bled inward so much that she didn’t know what she was seeing, but it was moving and that caught her eye more than anything. It appeared over the peak of the ridge and started drifting downward…which was when the Star Force ship further below suddenly became fully visible and fired on the black spot.

Blue orbs shot into it and the black smear suddenly grew much larger, resolving into red armor covering a huge biped body that was angled forward, extending up from a large tail and ending in a massive head with two small arms along the underside of the body. The orbs hit what Esna recognized as shields as the ship began to lift off and gain altitude…then the Tyrannosaurus Rex jumped high off the ridge and landed on top of the elongated Star Force ship and stuck there as the thing fired a huge green pulse into the shields it now stood on.

“Ambush!” Nor’far yelled as he skidded to a halt and watched helplessly as the ship gained more altitude, then rotated around on its axis trying to dump off what Esna now recognized as a Vik Era’tran from the images Rammak had showed her weeks ago. It was one of the senior races within the V’kit’no’sat empire, meaning they were the boss of the Zen’zat and many others, and looking at it right now scared Esna more than anything she’d ever seen before in her life.

The huge armored monster clung to the underside of the ship as it spun upside down, with the Era’tran slowly firing its huge weapon into the ship that suffered through three hits before the shields went down. The fourth shot hit and blew apart the upper hull, but then Javvin flew the ship down and scraped the Era’tran against the ridge, eventually prying him off as the damaged vessel got further into the sky.

But the Era’tran rolled to its feet and fired another green pulse of energy so bright it almost hurt Esna’s eyes to look at it. It shot up and blasted into the side of the ship as the Era’tran ran after it so fast that Esna couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It jumped a second time and came up short, falling back down to the ground where it fired again, but the Star Force ship took the blow and continued to rise as it returned fire with multiple blue orbs …then another ship appeared above it, a Zen’zat ship, and it opened fire into its unshielded hull at close range.

Javvin tried to run, but didn’t get more than a few miles before his ship came crashing down onto the plains, digging a huge furrow in the ground as it appeared to be softer than the ship, for the craft didn’t disintegrate on impact and even continued to shoot back at the Zen’zat ship for a while as it flew over and continued to pound their only way off this planet.

Rammak, who was standing a little ahead of Nor’far, knew they were all dead at this point, but he was Star Force and Star Force didn’t just lay down and die. They fought to the bitter end, but no amount of weapons was going to defeat that ship or that Era’tran, so he turned to Nor’far and pointed away from the crashed ship and back out onto the plains.

“Take her and go!” he yelled, heading for the ridgeline and running parallel to it, taking him towards the west while the ship was southeast and he’d pointed Nor’far to the north.

“What? No!” Esna yelled, disconnecting her grips on Nor’far and trying to jump off to follow Rammak, but an invisible grasp pinned her to the Scionate’s back as he turned and took off running away from Javvin and the Calavari.

“Lock on,” Nor’far said angrily as he repositioned her legs where they needed to be while running harder than he’d gone the entire time with Rammak and bouncing her even more than before. “I can’t go fast enough with you loose.”

“Don’t leave him!”

“The only hope we have is splitting. If we stay together we are dead for sure. This way we have a tiny chance of either him or us getting away, now lock on so I can run!” Nor’far said angrily.

The anger snapped Esna out of her horror and she activated the locks, cementing her feet to his sides and feeling his telekinesis evaporate with her body being thrown up and down wildly until she caught her balance as his legs stopped operating individually and he started reaching out with his two forward paws simultaneously and kicking hard.

That resulted in a huge burst of speed, so much so that Esna couldn’t even believe it as she was whipping across the ground as fast as her old speeder, if not a few ticks faster. It was all she could do to balance with her tired legs and Esna couldn’t even turn around to look at where Rammak or the Viks were, but she could see him on her battlemap running off at a right angle to their direction.

She could also see the two ships occupying the same spot and the dot that was the Era’tran…but it wasn’t chasing the slower Rammak. It was coming after them.

“Nor’far,” she said as she saw it closing the distance slowly.

“It will hurt, but seal your hands to my back. The more you move…the less speed I have.”

“Do what you can,” she said, tears in her eyes from both the pain and the doom soon to fall on them. She reached down and tried to steady her hands on his pack, slipping several times until she just locked them wherever they laid…which yanked her arms hard and stretched her joints now that her upper body couldn’t get shock absorption from her legs, but her speed rating displayed in her helmet continued to climb until it pegged out at 118 mph.

Nor’far was flying across the plains, but as she watched it wasn’t enough. The lead they had was dropping continuously and unless the Era’tran got tired it was going to catch them. Maybe if Nor’far hadn’t been so tired he could have outran it, but even when her reading ticked up to 121 it wasn’t enough. The precious meters behind them counted down with lethal condemnation for several minutes until a green energy blast crossed the distance between them and hit the ground to Nor’far’s left…blasting him and Esna off their feet.

The Scionate rolled over, flicking his head up so Esna didn’t take his full weight, then got back on his feet and accelerated again, but the Era’tran was much closer now with Esna’s shields having dropped by 38%...and that shot hadn’t even hit them!

Based on the time gaps she’d seen when it was shooting the ship, she guessed they had only a few more seconds until the next one fired, with her thoughts going to Rammak and hoping that somehow he could get to cover and hide…but knowing in her heart that it just wasn’t going to happen.

The next shot missed as Nor’far dodged it, somehow knowing when it’d come, but it blew up a huge chunk of ground and covered Esna with debris and a compression wave that chewed another 13% off her shields.

Then a weird sound popped into her helmet, like a gong, then a voice she didn’t recognize said ‘Choose your Destiny,’ with music playing in the background.

She didn’t know what was going on, but suddenly Nor’far turned to the left in a big sweeping arc as the words ‘Flawless Victory’ followed from what she belatedly realized was an incoming comm. He skidded to a halt and turned around, freaking Esna out, but then she saw that the Era’tran had stopped and turned as well with two new contacts on the battlemap heading towards them at incredible speed.

“Choose your Destiny,” repeated over the comm as she was able to visually spot two tiny things flying in from the southwest, then when ‘Flawless Victory’ sounded again her zoom was able to pick out the tiny Star Force armor suits…that were flying towards them!

“Archons,” Nor’far said as the Era’tran fired its main cannon at them, but they easily twirled out of the shot and dove towards him with other weapons on the big red mass of armor opening fire a few seconds before the Archons got to him.

“Mortal Kombat!” a different voice yelled over the comm, then the music jacked up in intensity as the two flying Archons nearly collided with the Era’tran and began zipping around it in circles while the big monster fired back, tripping over its own feet as it spun to shoot at them.

22

“Unlock!” Nor’far yelled. “I need to fight!”

Esna didn’t know what was going on, but she did as he said and released the grip points on her feet and hands…then suddenly found herself picked up and dumped onto the ground as the Scionate ran towards the Era’tran as the two Archons flew around in what looked like a dance, save for the fact that they were firing green beams out of their hands and the Era’tran kept tripping and falling, making it hard to land a shot even with its more accurate smaller weapons.

Nor’far ran up to and fired on it with a flurry of blue orbs coming from the underside of his helmet and the Era’tran switched targets to him, firing its main belly cannon, but the Scionate jumped to the side, now moving much faster without Esna or his pack on him, the latter of which he’d dropped a few meters away from her. He kept jumping and running around the huge monster, firing into its shields along with the two Archons that had some kind of green/purple armor on that almost matched the brilliant color of their weapons, but they were taking hits too. Not as many, but they couldn’t avoid the pinpoint targeting of tiny green orbs flying off multiple points on the Era’tran’s body.

On its two small arms it had larger weapons, but it had yet to land a shot with them on the Archons. Both weapons fired a ring-like beam that hit an area rather than a precise point and it was using them to shoot Nor’far, who took several near hits as he pranced around with crazy speed and agility, all the while the two Archons continued to hammer the Era’tran until it suddenly started running towards Esna.

“Baju!” she cursed, turning and running away knowing there was no way she could move faster than it, but a few seconds later Nor’far zipped up alongside her and she felt herself picked up and placed onto his back…only then to be yanked up higher into the air and away from him as an energy blast hit her in the back, burning through half her shields only to be followed by another that got through and melted a bit of armor.

The next thing she knew she was falling to the ground…along with the Era’tran that had done a faceplant behind her with an Archon on either side doing something to it, then she was picked up again and put on Nor’far’s back as he ran off with her.

“Turn on your countermeasures, Esna, or he will pick you up again!”

“Sorry,” she said, feeling like an idiot and scared out of her mind at the same time as she tried to remember what Rammak had taught her, pulling up the command menu and finding the appropriate button. When she hit it her grip on Nor’far’s back slipped and she nearly fell off, realizing he had been holding her in place and her countermeasures now worked against him too, so she got a foot glued back on again as he kept running.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you out of here.”

“Don’t they need your help?”

“They said they didn’t and we’ve got trouble coming.”

Esna didn’t ask what, fixing her other foot in place as she looked at her battlemap instead of trying to twist around and use her eyes. The Era’tran was behind them and not chasing, thankfully, and the two small Archon blips were buzzing around it…but the ship was moving towards it and suddenly dropped off two more dots before accelerating out towards her and Nor’far.

“The ship…”

“They’re going for us to try to distract the Archons. Hang on,” he said, accelerating harder and pulling her through a tight turn that cut back south and almost ran towards the ship, but at an angle that caused them to zip beneath it as  Nor’far’s shields extended up around her and caught…nothing, for it didn’t’ fire on them, then they were past and the ship was slowly turning around to follow, but it couldn’t change direction as fast as the Scionate.

But as it turned into a slow reversal it dropped another contact down to the ground and that dot on her map started running a different direction. She zoomed out her battlemap and saw it headed towards a Star Force dot far away but coming back towards them.

“It’s going after Rammak!”

“I see him. Javvin must have damaged the ship’s weapons. Stay on me until I tell you otherwise,” Nor’far said as they turned sharply and sprinted towards Rammak in order to get to him before the Zen’zat did. When the ship saw them turn and head towards him it stopped in midair, holding position as another dot dropped out of it and followed the other…meaning two Zen’zat were after Rammak now, but at least the ship wasn’t following anymore.

“They will fight…on the ground,” he said between heavy breaths as his paws pounded the hard ground in a machinegun-like rhythm.

“Get to Rammak first.”

“I will,” Nor’far promised as he blazed across the distance Rammak had put between himself and the fight prior to the Archons arriving…with their battle song was still playing over the comm channel and infusing Nor’far with a little extra adrenaline, for whenever you heard them play one it meant they intended to drop the heavy end of the hammer on the enemy, and if they said they could handle the Era’tran then he believed them. Not to mention the fact that their armor colors indicated they were Piccolo-level ranked Archons…meaning the most powerful that Star Force had next to the trailblazers.

“When we get there…give Rammak his weapon…then run away from us…I can’t fight them with…you on me…and they will use you to…our disadvantage.”

“I have my pistol.”

“Do not use it…just run…and don’t…stop running.”

“Drop me off now then.”

“We need your help…by distracting them…if they chase you…”

“I get it. Run but stay close enough for them to think about me. And if they hit me it leaves them open to you. I’ll do my part, just beat them.”

“Thank you…”

“Forget it. If they kill you they’ll come kill me right afterward anyway. If I can help even a little by playing bait I will.”

Nor’far didn’t say anything after that, instead pushing his tired muscles for enough speed to beat the Zen’zat to Rammak, but Esna noticed he wasn’t going full speed. Probably to try and save up some energy for the upcoming fight, which was badass smart.

As they got close to Rammak Esna reached back and pulled his rifle off her rack and looked at it, seeing it was partially melted from the hit she took through her shields. Bouncing around as she was, she checked the power charge and as many components as she could and it looked to still be functional. She pointed it to the left and fired a shot into the ground, glad that it still worked, then Nor’far slid to a stop next to the Calavari as they met up.

“Here,” Esna said, tossing the rifle to him before she slid off Nor’far’s back and took off running, but pulling out her pistol so she could test it too…and thankfully the Star Force design had held up to the energy attack, though its outer shell was melted as well.

“Can you take two?” Rammak asked in the few seconds they had before the first Zen’zat caught up to them, though the second was still another 20 or so seconds back.

“Doubtful. I will need your arms to pin them in place so I can kill them. Use your rifle on the first, then go hand to hand. I will provide the firepower.”

“Gladly,” Rammak said, punching both his upper right fist into his left palm.

“Let us hope these are the weaker two,” Nor’far said as the Zen’zat came within firing range and he and Rammak started shooting the Zen’zat as it sprinted towards them, firing back a few shots with its forearm gauntlets but not slowing down. When it came up on them it dodged to the right and avoided contact, passing them both and absorbing the close range shots as it headed straight for their weakest link…which was Esna.

Nor’far took after it instantly, running it down in only a handful of strides and jumping on its back…with the Zen’zat suddenly reversing direction and punching him in the chest as the Scionate delivered a blast directly into the Zen’zat’s helmet…but it wasn’t enough to get through his shields.

When Nor’far landed on the ground he was on his back, but he rolled over quickly and smoothly without his pack getting in the way and launched himself back at the Zen’zat as it dove him, intent on doing some damage while he had him isolated. Nor’far headbutted him even as he took several punches to the body that ended with a green energy blast that drained his own shields…then the Zen’zat was off him and running towards Esna again as Rammak caught up to them.

Nor’far ran him down again, but this time circled around in front and knocked him backward, playing with him rather than trying to do damage and preventing him from slipping past until Rammak caught back up, then the Zen’zat turned on him and delivered some heavy blows to the weakened Commando…but took a hit to the back from Nor’far as he rammed him and forced him down on top of Rammak.

The Calavari slipped one of his four arms around the waist of the Zen’zat and latched onto anything else he could grab even as he was taking shots at pointblank range. With the second Zen’zat only seconds away now, Nor’far unloaded into the pinned Zen’zat with shot after shot as Rammak pried the weapon-bearing arm away from his now penetrated shields, forcing it to fire into the dirt with two of his arms fighting against the single one of the Zen’zat that was much stronger, but two were always better than one and the Calavari’s biology gave him an advantage he used to keep his own armor from penetrating while holding the Zen’zat in place long enough for Nor’far to get through it.

Rammak felt the resistance against him slacken just prior to the other Zen’zat knocking Nor’far off the top of the pile, so he threw his Zen’zat off to the side but held onto one arm, yanking him back and rolling over on top of him as he pinned his arms to the ground, but that left the Calavari with two free ones he used to land multiple punches against the Zen’zat’s helmet.

Meanwhile Nor’far was not doing so well, with the Zen’zat grappling with him and keeping him from running and dodging as a Scionate needed. Nor’far bucked and kicked, as well as firing shots into the Zen’zat whenever he got in front of his face, but the Vik eventually got around on his back and held him down while putting a few shots into his side, punching through his shields and starting to melt armor.

Which was when a few pistol shots passed over the Zen’zat coming from Esna. More came and a few hit him, draining a little shield strength and distracting him just enough for Nor’far to twist him over and pin his arm against the ground where he couldn’t shoot the Scionate anymore.

Needing to extricate himself from that, the Zen’zat kicked himself off and rolled to his feet, taking another hit from a distant Esna amidst a flurry of misses, then he sprinted towards her again.

Esna turned and ran, but she was too close and he was too fast…with her getting caught within 6 seconds as Nor’far tried to catch up, but he was too late.

The Zen’zat shot the back of Esna’s feet and punched her forward so that she landed on her face…then a series of shots hit her back, punching through her feebly regenerated shields and blasting into what was left of her weapons rack and pack, burning through them quickly and then into her armor.

She felt the heat and tried to scramble away, but the next thing she knew there was a body blow that smashed her down into the ground again with a burning pain followed by the Zen’zat tumbling off in front of her with Nor’far on its back, firing into it and…

Esna couldn’t watch anymore, for her eyes were tearing up against the pain and she couldn’t move her legs without making it far worse. Her pistol was somewhere nearby but she couldn’t find it. A few moments later the pain reduced a bit and she tried to move again, biting her teeth together so she didn’t cut her tongue as she dragged herself to her feet where she saw Nor’far jump up off the Zen’zat and backtrack while facing him, shooting him constantly while taking a few return shots. Both of their armor was taking hits, meaning their shields were gone, and Esna looked around for her pistol, finding it a few meters to her left.

She walked over and tried to grab it, but when she bent over the pain shot through her so bad she fell, then dragged herself to it and picked it up, laying on the ground as she aimed and fired a shot when she was sure that she wasn’t going to hit Nor’far.

Whether it was her additional shots that followed or just the Scionate’s skill she didn’t know, but the Zen’zat eventually fell to the ground and didn’t get back up. Nor’far kept shooting it for a few seconds, then turned and ran towards Esna…jumping over her and continuing past.

“Rammak,” she groaned, trying to roll over so she could see what had happened to him, but she just couldn’t. The numbing gel inside her armor wasn’t enough to keep her going and Esna collapsed onto the dirt with her face scrunched up in pain and her just trying to hold still and survive the next few seconds.

When Nor’far got back to Rammak he was standing and swinging with all four arms against the Zen’zat as it fired into him, having already melted through his armor in so many places he was surprised the Calavari was still alive. Yet somehow he had managed to tear off several pieces of the Zen’zat’s damaged armor, including a large chunk over the left shoulder that Nor’far dove towards, firing a shot at pointblank range just before impact and tearing the Zen’zat away from Rammak in a collision that sent both of them tumbling to the side.

Nor’far righted himself quickly and took to the Zen’zat again as it ignored him, firing both arm weapons at Rammak and hitting him in an exposed part of the chest while his arms tried to block other holes in his armor. The Calavari finally fell with the hits and the Zen’zat ran a few steps away, getting his balance as he turned his attention back on the Scionate…but not before Nor’far jumped up on top of him and pushed the biped to the ground with his two armored front paws, firing another blast from his chin as they fell that was followed by many more in rapid succession as he fought to keep the Zen’zat in prime range beneath him.

He managed for a few seconds, then it broke free only to turn and run…which doomed him, for the Zen’zat’s only hope was a grappling fight. Nor’far chased after him leisurely, firing into his back while keeping a short distance in an exchange that would have killed the Zen’zat if not for the dying Era’tran coming his way with the two Archons still buzzing around it firing green streaks into its badly torn up armor. The monster fired every weapon it had at Nor’far, with the Scionate dodging to the side and missing the biggest hits, but some of the smaller, more accurate shots landed and blasted through what was left of his armor.

As Nor’far fell, one of the Archons flew down and took out the fleeing Zen’zat with a series of punches and a single green beam into his exposed shoulder, then the Human flew back up and kept going after the Era’tran for the few remaining minutes it took until they finally dropped the T-rex. It slammed down onto the rocky dirt as small smoke trails rose from the holes in its armor and purple blood flowed out of several cracks in its flesh…that slowly began to heal over.

The two Archons didn’t stop firing, knowing that its armor would bring it back to life if left alone, so they continued to pour damage into it until the regeneration stopped and the Era’tran was truly no longer a threat.

23

Esna heard the sounds of fighting stop, but she couldn’t turn her head to look, let alone move anything else on her body for a long time until one of the Archon dots eventually made its way over to her position on the battlemap and a purple boot that looked a lot like her own but with a slightly different design stepped in front of the crack of her helmet that wasn’t facing into the dirt.

“Hit your armor release,” she heard a voice say through her helmet comm as a soothing numbness penetrated her back, prompting a cough of sudden relief as she fumbled through the command list on her HUD until she found the override that she’d triggered along with the countermeasures. Once she undid that the Archon used the external release and pulled off her helmet, letting Esna feel the fresh air on her sweaty, contorted face as she fought against the remaining pain.

“Be still, you’ve got a nasty wound in your back.”

“The others?”

“All the V’kit’no’sat are dead, but there are more on the planet that will come soon enough. The Scionate is badly hurt and the Calavari was dead, but Karen revived him.”

“Dead?”

“He’ll make it. Relax, Esna. You’re safe now.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Aside from it being written on your armor designator, I can read your mind. You’ve got a lot to learn, but for now just hold still while I heal you.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” she said, feeling the mix of numbness and pain coursing up and down her back as the Archon pulled off additional pieces of her torso armor.

“Don’t worry, you’re not my type. I like girls who actually know how to fight.”

“What?”

“Relax,” he repeated. “I’m using my Haemra to partially heal you, but you’ll need some quality time with a regenerator before you’ll be back to normal.”

“Can you heal them too?”

“Already got the Scionate patched up enough to walk…and you should be good to go right…about…now,” he said, releasing his touch on her back as some of the pain returned, but not nearly as much before.

Esna sat up as he saw the armored Archon step back with an exposed hand, dropping the ragged piece of her armor that had been on her back. It was as pale and Human as hers, something she’d never seen before aside from on Teren…and her father long ago.

“What did you do?”

“Healing touch requires skin contact. You can learn about that later. Right now I have a ship to blow up.”

“Wait…please,” she said as the Archon jumped into the air a meter before reversing direction and landing again. “Can I see your face?”

The Archon walked up to and knelt beside Esna with his helmet pulling apart into tiny pieces that all but disappeared behind his neck, much like Nor’far’s had…and Javvin.

“Better?” he asked, with her looking on the first new Human face she’d seen since her father had died. “Handsome, I know. But you’ll get used to being around me.”

“Javvin,” she said, remembering. “He was in the ship that crashed.”

The Archon looked up and pointed behind her. Esna rolled over and saw Rammak lying on the ground a fair ways away with the other Archon kneeling over him, but behind them was Nor’far laying on the ground with Javvin’s suit of armor standing beside him.

“He caught up and helped us until he got tail whipped. He’s hurt too, but will make it. Now you see that big floating ship over there,” the Archon said sarcastically. “I’m going to go wreck it. You just stay here and rest. I’ll be back,” he said with a wink before he stood up and flew off.

Esna watched him go, then put her helmet back on and pulled up the information on his dot on the battlemap, trying to find out what his name was.

Travis-189377.

The other one was Karen-189376…with them having almost the same numbers. Rammak had told her that Archon numbers told you how old they were, and that the lowest numbers meant they’d been around the longest, with the trailblazers holding 000-099. That meant these two weren’t the highest ranking ones, but they were still fairly high placed considering there had been millions of them as of 800 years ago.

Esna tried to get on her feet and surprisingly succeeded, then started to put back on the armor pieces that the Archon had taken off her…save for the one that covered her back, for it rubbing against whatever was left of her wound wasn’t going to work. She carried it with her, looking at the huge melted hold in it, as she headed over to where Rammak was still lying on the ground where the other Archon was kneeling over him with a bare hand on his equally bare chest, for what little armor was left there had been pulled off revealing numerous holes in his body that were visibly shrinking.

“Rammak,” Esna whispered, kneeling down next to his big head despite the pain it caused in her back.

“He’s unconscious,” the Archon said, looking at Esna through her opaque faceplate, “but he’ll live.”

“How are you doing that?”

“Pulling material from other parts of his body and using it to fuel the cellular flash growth. There’s not enough here to fully heal him, but he’ll be patched up enough to move under his own power until we can get him to a med bay.”

Esna sat down on the ground, easing some of the pain in her back as well as just being relieved that Rammak was going to live. The sight of him lying on the ground with so much blood and gore across his chest made her sick to her stomach, but as she watched even the blood was starting to disappear, being pulled back inside his body somehow.

“Where did you come from?”

Esna blinked, not fully understanding the question.

“How did you get on this planet?” the Archon rephrased.

“My father brought me and my brother here with him on a business trip. He was killed and we were raised by a couple of Calavari that were his friends.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Dead.”

“Where before you came here?”

“We lived on a ship. I don’t remember anything more than that.”

“You’re not Star Force.”

“No. I never heard of you until I met Rammak.”

“She is now,” the Calavari said, waking with a very distressed tone to his voice.

“Be still, Commando. I am not finished with your wounds. You did well in that fight. I did not expect you two to take them.”

“Barely,” Nor’far said as he slowly walked over and joined them, with Javvin limping a bit beside him. “Do not mistake my words for ingratitude, but why are you here?”

The Archon flipped her head in the direction of the dead Era’tran.

“Hunting him. They’ve been hitting our scout teams too regularly, enough that we think they may have a way of tracking us that we haven’t determined. Me and my brother figured if we shadowed you two we might catch them trying to ambush you…which we did.”

“Thank you,” Javvin added with a hint of irony in his voice.

“What do you mean by ‘hunting?’” Esna asked.

“The V’kit’no’sat…those are the bad guys…are tracking down and killing us wherever they can find us here while the major fighting is happening out on the border. They really don’t like us operating behind it, so they have hunter teams out to try and find our scout teams. We hunt the hunters. This Era’tran is our 19th solo kill…and no, we’re not counting the few shots you put into him, but thanks all the same.”

“Negligible,” Nor’far agreed. “I did not expect you to be able to defeat him,” he said just as the floating, pilotless V’kit’no’sat ship suffered an internal explosion, puffing out a tiny bit of debris and falling down to gently bump into the ground followed by more internal explosions.

“Do you see the harness I’m wearing,” the Archon said as she finally released Rammak and stood.

“I do not recognize it.”

“It’s a power source and a couple of tiny Bra’hems. Without it we’d have been fighting him all day. It helps to come prepared for the big ones.”

“Do you know how many more are here?” Javvin asked as Rammak carefully rolled onto his feet and stood up, testing the incomplete healing of his body that still showed shallow holes that were now covered with new skin a few shades lighter than his normal orange hue.

“Better?” the Archon asked him.

“Much,” Rammak said, wincing as he rotated his arms around.

“Our dropship is on the way. Once we get to orbit we’ll get you all fully healed. As for their ships, they have another small one and big one. Not sure what class, but he didn’t come in that toy my brother just blew up.”

“It’s not visible in orbit?” Javvin asked.

“No. They’re being sneaky about it, which isn’t like them. I think they’re starting to freak out that they’re not able to push the border any further, so they’re starting to adapt their tactics.”

“Which isn’t a good thing,” Travis said, landing beside his sister and removing his helmet again. Karen did likewise, revealing her equally Human visage as Esna copied them and took hers off as well.

“You haven’t seen very many Humans, have you?” Karen asked her.

“No.”

“Well you’re not going to see any more in orbit. Our Ma’kri is Calavari crewed,” she said, looking up at Rammak. “How long?”

“8 centuries.”

The Human closed her eyes, wincing. “Ouch.”

“I knew you would come if able, but I did not know if the war had been lost.”

“Not by a long shot. We’re holding our own, but they’re getting more devious in finding ways to hit us. We need every Commando we can get. Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Archon.”

“As for you,” Travis said, looking at Esna.

“She is learning,” Rammak interrupted, “but she needs a proper indoctrination.”

“That can be arranged. We’ll drop you four off in Orlero on our way out, but you’ll have to wait there until they can find a ship going beyond the border. We’ve got more Vik to hunt.”

“Is she going civie,” Karen asked Rammak as he looked at Esna, “or is she going to try and earn that armor?”

“I think she could.”

“That’s up to her,” Travis said, looking at Esna with an eerie semblance to his sister. “If you want to kick back and relax you can, but if you want to learn how to fight we could make use of you in a few hundred years.”

Esna frowned. “Will it take me that long to learn?”

“To earn that armor? No. To be able to fight Zen’zat and survive, yes.”

“How old are you?”

“2394.”

Esna’s jaw dropped, then she looked at Karen.

“Same,” she said, then both the Archons turned and looked to the east.

“What is it?” Rammak asked, with Esna noticing that his helmet had several hits in it and was probably broken along with the other half of his armor that was laying on the ground next to his feet.

“Their other Shav’rei is headed this way,” Nor’far said as both Archons flew up into the air and headed in that direction. “They are going to stall it while the dropship gets here. There is going to be a 4 minute overlap that we have to survive.”

“Isn’t an Era’tran stronger than a Shav’rei?” Rammak asked. “I thought they were just transports.”

“The Archons used most of their weaponry on the Era’tran,” Javvin added, “but it’s no threat to them. They do not want it getting to us.”

“What do we need to do?” Esna asked.

“Not stand in a group,” Nor’far said as he turned and began walking off. “Stay away from one another, but do not go too far. If the ship gets by them, run back and forth unpredictably and you might get one of their shots to miss.”

“That’s it?” she asked, both disappointed and worried.

“Their weapons are accurate,” Javvin said, walking off a different direction, “and you’re slow. We’ll try and draw their fire away from you.”

“Lay down, Esna,” Rammak said, putting a hand on her shoulder as he looked off to the horizon. Wherever the V’kit’no’sat ship was it was still too far away to see. “If they think you’re dead they might not shoot you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll do the same, but over there,” he said, pointing to the dead Zen’zat.

“You sure?”

“Better that they don’t shoot both of us at the same time,” he said, not seeming to be too worried.

“Can the Archons stop it?”

“Probably. And if not, they’ll keep its attention. Let’s not give them anything else to look at.”

“If you say so,” she said, taking a slow knee and dropping to all fours as Rammak walked off. She proceeded to lay down, but did so facing the direction the Archons had flown off so she could watch. Her helmet wasn’t on and when her head hit on a rock she thought about crawling back and getting it, then figured that if she got shot by a ship’s guns it wouldn’t matter. Plus it would look better if she didn’t have it on, for what living person wouldn’t want a helmet on in a fight?

Almost as soon as she moved the rock and her red hair hit the dirt her vision got hazy as her head began to swirl. She got very tired all of a sudden and realized that she was both starving and insanely thirsty…but her pack had been destroyed and with it probably all her supplies.

But that didn’t matter right now. If the Archons had a ship coming then staying alive long enough to get on it was all that mattered, so she just laid still and tried to stay awake, looking at the horizon from the side…

“Esna,” Rammak said, with her blinking her eyes open and realizing he was standing over her.

“Wha…where?”

“You passed out,” he said, grasping her with two big hands and hauling her to her feet. “It’s time to go, youngling.”

“Go?” she asked, still not totally with it, then she saw the gleaming chrome ship sitting on the ground a few hundred meters behind them. “What happened?”

“We survived,” he said, a bit of emotion seeping into his words. “Now it’s time to leave this planet and rejoin Star Force. Can you walk or do I need to carry you?”

“I can…walk,” she said, taking her first step and nearly falling as her legs seemed to be made of goo, but with Rammak’s help she steadied herself and was able to move mostly under her own power. Evidently there wasn’t a rush, because it took her forever to get over to the landing ramp that was extended down, with the others already inside and only one of the Archons standing on the edge waiting for them. Esna couldn’t tell which one, for the helmet was on and their armor looked identical, but it was Travis’s voice that she heard when she stepped onto the ramp and struggled to walk up it, needing a big hand from Rammak pressing on her butt to move her up.

“The regeneration process saps strength from the rest of your body to heal the damaged tissue,” he explained. “Just find a seat and veg out. We’ll get you something to drink on the way up.”

Esna didn’t respond, finding her mouth so dry now and her steps so unsteady that she couldn’t think about anything other than walking…but the feel of the ship ramp beneath her feet brought back very old memories of the days with her father onboard his vessel, only now magnified beyond all scope at the look and smell of the pristine equipment. Esna had seen scraps of Star Force technology as she traveled with Rammak across the planet, but this ship was something far different. It was undamaged and seemed to glow with an emotional recognition of something being badly missing from her life, so much so she didn’t even realize it until now.

Star Force was her home, she could feel it now, though that didn’t make any sense. She’d never been on a ship or in a city of theirs before but walking into this ship now, Esna knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. This was where she belonged, and it was so much more awe inspiring than she had even imagined from Rammak’s stories.

Overwhelmed with emotion and dizziness, she didn’t make it far past the ramp before she fell, but Rammak picked her up easily enough and carried her to a seat, beside which he kept her standing long enough to strip away the rest of her armor, then he laid her down across the soft bench face down so her bare, mangled back wouldn’t rub.

“Lie still for now and sip on this,” Travis’s voice said as something appeared before her face.

Esna eventually recognized the straw and took it in her mouth, then she sucked in something that tasted so good she almost choked on it, but after the shock she gulped it down as fast as the straw would allow.

“What is that?” she asked after it was empty.

“A drink we call Red. It will help start refueling you,” Travis said.

“Got anymore?”

“Can you sit up?”

Esna got her elbows under her and tried to twist herself around, but it wasn’t until Rammak pried her up a bit did she succeed, getting her butt on the soft padding and her feet on the ground.

“Don’t lean back,” Rammak said, handing her another bottle as he sat down next to her.

Esna made sure to keep leaning forward as she greedily sucked out the contents of the second bottle, then she tilted her head up and looked around, seeing Nor’far laying on the ground a few meters away in front of another bench where Javvin sat with his helmet off leaning his glowing head back against the wall, but neither Archon was visible.

To her right was what looked like a cargo hold, but to the left was an open doorway that led elsewhere.

“It’s a dropship,” Rammak explained.

“How long will it take to move from star to star?”

“It doesn’t. It’s taking us up to the Ma’kri. That ship will take us where we’re going and it’ll have a full med bay to heal your injuries.”

“Yours too?”

“Yes. It is a large ship and very fast. It also has a cloaking shield.”

“So we can disappear?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll be nice,” she said, looking at the ceiling, walls, and anything else that was visible.

“It will take you some time to adjust to everything,” he warned. “Be patient. Where we’re going is unlike the planet we’ve been living on.”

“Just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it.”

“Sit and rest for now. We’re just passengers.”

“Are they ok?” she asked, gesturing to the two Mavericks.

“They are hurt, but even when their injuries heal they will not return to full strength. Newly grown tissue is weaker than what it replaces, so it will take years of training to catch up to where they were. It is a very good thing to be alive, but to lose years of training is not something that sits well with you.”

“What about you? You’re hurt worse, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I will lose a lot, but I do not care. I will have plenty of time to train and recover my strength now that I have proper facilities to use.”

“Still…that’s gotta suck. I don’t have much to lose, but you’re so strong.”

“It is worth the tradeoff of being rescued. Do not concern yourself with it. You will have enough of a challenge regaining your own strength.”

“This is a lot faster than healing normally. I should be dead now, shouldn’t I?”

“Possibly. I did not see your wound before it was attended to.”

“They said you were dead.”

“The Archons have the power of a regenerator, in that they can trigger massive healing cascades. If you are dead that is because something in your body broke, and if they can cause it to heal soon enough they can bring you back. I don’t remember how I fell. Did Nor’far finish the Zen’zat?”

“I did not,” the Scionate said. “He ran and drew me back to the Era’tran. I did not dodge soon enough.”

“Travis finished him,” Javvin said, opening his glowing eyes and looking at Esna. “We were lucky. I don’t know how long they were tracking us, but that Era’tran was patient enough to get us all. If the Archons hadn’t been there we would have quickly died…and I’m still surprised they beat it. Era’tran versus even three Archons usually means a loss. These two are not typical.”

“They are the twins,” Nor’far said respectfully, drawing an odd look from Javvin.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I recognize their names.”

“Twins?” Esna asked.

“A legend within Star Force,” Rammak answered. “I did not know their names either.”

“It is them,” Nor’far said quietly as his head laid back down on the floor. “They are the strongest pairing and always fight together, but they have no Clan and are rarely seen. We are fortunate they were hunting our ambushers. I too am disturbed at how easily we were manipulated.”

“We made it,” Esna reminded them. “Thank you for coming for us.”

Javvin nodded, but neither of the Mavericks wanted to discuss it further and remained silent.

24

Esna didn’t say anything for several more minutes, then Rammak slid a flat screen onto her lap.

“What’s this?”

“Datapad. Turn it on,” he said, pointing to the upper right corner.

Esna found the button and it lit up with multiple little windows, one of which she recognized as a battlemap, and most of the others were exterior views from the ship. On the battlemap she could see their dot rising up above the planet, but off in the distance there was another dot coming towards them.

“Rammak,” she said, pointing at it. “Are they chasing us?”

Before he could answer another datapad flew out of a wall bin and over into Javvin’s hands so he could take a look, with the Calavari allowing him to make an assessment.

“It’s a Na’shor on an intercept course. We’re almost to the edge of the atmosphere but not accelerating too hard. I think we’re going to have a low orbit pickup.”

“From what?” Esna asked. “There are no more ships…” she cut off as another dot suddenly appeared much nearer traveling very fast down towards them.

“The Ma’kri will get to us first,” the Protovic said with confidence, though he kept watching the display.

“What’s a Ma’kri?”

Rammak reached over and hit one of the tiny screens, bringing it up full view then doing something to highlight a tiny object in it…then it zoomed in and autofocused to keep it center screen even as it was moving.

“Whoa,” Esna said, seeing a long, dark knife blade of a ship that looked unlike anything she had ever seen before. “How big is that?”

“Several miles long,” Rammak answered, not knowing exactly what model it was. “We can fly inside it.”

“Miles?”

“The Na’shor is bigger,” he said, taking the panel from her and making adjustments to bring up a tiny spec on one screen to show the tuning fork shaped ship that was a heavy red in color compared to the nearly black Ma’kri. “Unless they have changed their designs, it is 26 miles long.”

Esna’s jaw dropped. That was bigger than any city she’d ever seen on the planet. So big that she couldn’t even imagine how a ship could be that big, let alone fly through space that fast. The ship her father had owned was tiny in comparison, though she’d thought it was huge back when she was a child…or youngling, as Rammak often said, though he still called her that even with her being fully grown.

“Is it better armed?”

“Far better,” Javvin answered, “but fortunately not faster. If we get there first we will not have to fight. The question is, how far away do we have to get before they can’t track us. I have doubts now as to the conventional ranges.”

Esna almost held her breath as she watched the three dots on the battlemap in the upper left corner, staring at the Vik ship and trying to imagine how large it was, for in the little picture it didn’t have anything but stars behind it, though they were moving as their relative positions changed. Before she figured out how to switch back to the Ma’kri the view of the Na’shor was eclipsed by something else. She thought the camera had broken for a moment, then saw the blackness slow and resolve into the hull of the Ma’kri, seen up close.

She switched back to all the tiny little camera views, seeing the ship and the planet behind them in small scope, but on three of the screens there was a bright spot on the hull that they were moving toward rapidly. It expanded into a giant rectangle that they flew through…then all the cameras changed to the inside of the ship with white/grey walls and a lot of glossy sheen similar to the ruins she’d found on the planet, only much more vibrant.

“We made it,” Javvin said as Nor’far stood up and headed aft, then the Archons came out through the doorway in their identical purple/green armor.

“Let’s get you to the med bay,” Travis said, talking to Esna and Rammak as the Mavericks were already on their way out as the ramp lowered again. “Then you can take a very long nap.”

“Can you walk?” Rammak asked her.

“The drink helped,” she said, standing up wobbily for a few seconds before Karen just walked over to her and picked Esna up at the waist, then threw her over her armored shoulder.

“Hey!” Esna protested as her head got dizzy again.

“This is faster,” the Archon said as Rammak followed the pair out, walking stiffly but keeping up as they came down the ramp and onto the hangar floor. Esna wanted to look around, but her head was upside down and her eyes didn’t want to focus on much, but she saw bits and pieces of ships around them then heard crew in the hallways that sounded like Rammak. She saw bits of Calavari of multiple colors inside Star Force uniforms, but by the time she was set down later her head was so wobbly she fell onto the table where Karen dropped her and couldn’t get her balance enough to even sit up.

“Be still, Human,” another Calavari voice said warmly. “You are safe. Hold your hands here.”

Esna’s head was still throbbing and her eyes were just starting to adjust as she felt giant hands pulling both of hers onto something above her. She held onto the ball-like thing, seeing it was a shiny silver as the Calavari hands pulled away…then hers stuck to it.

“What’s going on?”

“You are about to fully healed,” Rammak’s voice said, but he wasn’t visible and Esna found she couldn’t move her head to look to the side now.

“I can’t move.”

“Don’t try to speak either. The machine is working on you. It is numbing your body while it regrows tissue so you don’t feel it. You won’t be able to move until it’s done. Do not worry, just let it work.”

Esna was a little freaked out, but after what she’d just been through with the Era’tran and Zen’zat, sitting still wasn’t too much to ask. She forced herself to relax and just went with the flow, then before she realized it her body came back under her control and her hands unstuck from the orb that she could now see with crystal clarity. In fact, her eyes were clearer than they’d been since that sandstorm her and Teren had been caught in a couple years after their father died. Her face had been rubbed so badly it’d taken weeks before her eyes stopped hurting.

“Better?” the other Calavari asked as Esna sat up and looked around, seeing Rammak standing next to the Calavari in aqua-colored clothes. She reached a hand behind her and touched her back…feeling nothing but painless smooth skin.

“How?” she asked, in awe.

“Magic,” the Calavari answered as he looked at Rammak. “Satisfied?”

“Yes.”

“Step aside, Human. This one needs more repair than you.”

“Sorry,” Esna said, rolling off the table and finding her legs a bit weak, but steady underneath her. She retreated out a few steps before the Calavari put one big hand on her shoulder.

“Just stand right here for now, then we’ll get someone to take you to quarters.”

“Alright,” she said, looking around in wonder as Rammak laid down and a cage-like apparatus surrounded him on the table. She hadn’t seen that before, but the same orb was in the center that he placed his upper hands on…then he laid still for several minutes as Esna watched the craters in his chest slowly disappear until it was back to its normal muscular sheen.

“You took a hell of a beating,” the medic said when he released Rammak. “What did you get into down there?”

“Zen’zat,” Rammak said as the cage withdrew and he slid his legs off the table while flexing his arms, testing their strength levels and seeming to be satisfied.

“Where did you find her?” the medic asked, gesturing to Esna.

“I am not assigned to this ship,” Rammak explained, placing a hand on the medic’s upper left arm. “I was recovered from the planet along with her, but it is very good to see another brother.”

The medic frowned. “How long have you been down there?”

“Since the fall of the planet.”

The medic stepped back a fraction of an inch in shock. “No.”

“Yes,” Rammak said sadly as several other Calavari medics stopped what they were doing and walked over to him.

“Her too?”

“She is recently born, but not of Star Force. The Viks were hunting her, but I found her first. The attention drew a pair of Mavericks to us, then your Archons intervened just as we were ambushed by an Era’tran. I need her with me constantly. She does not know her way around a Star Force ship.”

“I see no problem with that,” a Calavari in a different uniform said, walking up behind Esna as the medics parted. “You’re not fit for duty yet, are you?”

“I am not at my previous level, but I am not helpless.”

“We just jumped away from the planet, so I don’t think your combat skills will be needed anytime soon. Rest, train, and recover, but most importantly…welcome back brother. I do not know how you survived so long out here.”

The Calavari came forward and gave Rammak a big, long hug then looked down at Esna. “You are beyond lucky, little one.”

“I know,” she said, looking up at the roomful of giants.

“No, you do not. There are V’kit’no’sat hunters all over the Devastation Zone hunting our units and looking for any hint of our presence. You being allowed to be born out here to rogue Humans is insanely lucky. How is it possible?” he asked, but he looked at Rammak.

“That is still a mystery. She does not know much of her past and was abandoned here when her father was killed by locals.”

The Calavari shook his head in disbelief. “So it seems even the V’kit’no’sat miss some things. I am glad for you both. Your recovery is a welcome victory and I’m sure it’s a mark of shame they will want to eradicate, but they will not catch us. We are well stealthed and have the best gravity drives in Star Force. You need not fear here.”

“They have ways of tracking us,” Esna said, feeling the need to speak, then suddenly regretting her words.

“Something new,” Rammak agreed. “The Mavericks said as much.”

“Curious, but something that others will deal with. Right now you two need to come with me,” he said, pointing a hand towards the far door across the med bay that had very few beds but a lot of workstations.

“Thank you,” Esna all but whispered, looking back at the medic as Rammak walked with a hand on her shoulder, directing her where she needed to go as he picked up on her bewilderment. Moving about in the wastelands of the planet was one thing, but she was really feeling overwhelmed with so many Calavari around that had a very different vibe to them than those on the planet had…plus they were all crazy fit, without even one that didn’t ripple with muscles.

When they got into the corridors that didn’t change, and by the time they got to a set of quarters and walked in Esna was so star struck she was almost numb. Rammak left her there while he had a lengthy discussion with the other Calavari a few steps away. She looked around the room, then began cautiously walking around and peering at everything but not daring to touch it for fear of doing something she wasn’t supposed to do.

Eventually the other Calavari left them and suddenly it was back to just her and Rammak when the door closed and her anxiety settled a chunk.

“You look pale,” Rammak said, taking a step towards her as they both stood inside the Calavari-sized quarters in the tatters of their clothes, with all pieces of their former armor having been shed and left behind. “Take a long breath and center yourself. This place may be new to you but it is home to me and you belong here too. It will just take a while for you to get used to it. How does your wound feel?”

“Completely gone,” Esna said, feeling her bare back again to make sure. “It’s like it never even happened.”

“When you start to run you will feel the weakness, for your repaired muscles will not be as strong. Nor will mine. But before we start training, I think you could use a long shower.”

“Maybe,” she said, still feeling nervous. “Right now I don’t know what to think…or feel.”

“I feel strangely too. It’s like all those years on Mace never happened. Everything here is the same as before, except you. We’re going to share these quarters if you don’t mind. They assigned us separate ones, but I thought you wouldn’t want to be left alone.”

“No I don’t. Thank you.”

“Not a problem. I’ve gotten used to having you around anyway. Get those clothes off and soak up some warm water for as long you want. When you get out there will be new clothing for you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to grab some food and bring it back here for you. I don’t think you want to eat with the crew just yet.”

Esna shook her head in agreement, then Rammak flicked his chin at the doorway on the other end of the room.

“Go lose yourself in the water, then we’ll take things one at a time until you get your footing.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“No one will bother you here, and if you take your time I’ll be back before you get out. I promise.”

“I can do that,” Esna said, turning around and making herself walk into the other room. She’d peeked in before, but hadn’t walked all the way in. Immediately to her left was an open section of floor that had a clear wall, on the other side of which was a giant shower tube that immediately gave her a little bit of familiarity. There was a set of steep steps on the left that led up to the entrance on the top, which she started to take, then stepped back down.

Esna walked back to the doorway and looked out, seeing that Rammak had already left. That didn’t make her feel good, but then again this place didn’t make her feel bad either. Everything was just an overload, and the longer she stood in place looking around the more the idea of warm water eroded her hesitancy. Eventually she stripped down, tossing the dirty, charred, bloody clothing in a pile on the clean floor and walked up the stairs nude. She sat down on the edge of the tube and slid her legs over the side, catching her hands on the edge as she dropped down into the empty shower.

Esna reached up and touched the high controls, finding the design virtually identical to what Rammak had recovered on the planet and she found that familiarity reassuring as the warm rain started to fall on her sweaty, dirty hair and run down her body.

“Ahh…” she moaned in relief, leaning against the side of the shower tube and letting her mind drift into familiar surroundings. After a few minutes the water was up to her knees and everything outside the shower seemed to phase away, letting her truly relax to the point where the stress of her injuries and seeing Rammak laying dead on the ground and everything else finally broke through to the surface and her tears began to add to the water as more emotions than she knew she had began to drain out of her…yet at the same time she was happier than she’d ever been.

Esna knew she was a mess, but Rammak had given her a simple mission and she was going to complete it.

Stay in the shower and soak up the warm water for a long time.

And that was something she didn’t have to work hard at. By the time the water got up to her shoulders and she set the height marker so it wouldn’t raise any higher while still maintaining the warm rain on her, the emotional maelstrom was over and she was wrapped up in a state of growing bliss that she soon felt like never abandoning.

The shower was now her entire world, a familiar one, and she wasn’t in a rush to expand that world. Rammak had said take a long time and that wasn’t something she was going to squander now…because as her mind settled she realized more running would be in her immediate future and there was no reason not to camp out in here until she got tired of the water.

As if that would ever happen…

25

January 30, 4812

Mordekaiser System (Devastation Zone)

Stellar Orbit

Esna walked through the ship corridors following Rammak to the training area as she looked at every crewmember they passed. They were all Calavari, and she hadn’t seen the Archons since they’d dropped her off in the medbay. Esna had gotten used to being smaller than Rammak, but with so many others here she kept feeling like she was going to get run over.

That didn’t happen, for everyone gave her adequate space to move around. She hadn’t done any exploring yet, being holed up in their quarters for the past day and a half sleeping, eating, and going through lessons with Rammak. Their quarters had a comm terminal that had a lot of information about the ship and Star Force. He’d been catching up on what had happened over the past 8 centuries while schooling her in what she needed to know now that she was amongst them in order to function, though he’d promised he wasn’t going to leave her alone.

They’d gotten breakfast in the cafeteria for the first time this morning, with her nervously eating under so many Calavari eyes around her. She guessed they didn’t see Humans much either, at least untrained ones anyway, but that hadn’t helped her get over her jitters. She’d made it through that little test then they’d come back to the quarters for more lessons… but now it was time to get back to training.

Oddly, her body was no longer sore. Between her challenge and all that riding onboard Nor’far…who she’d also not seen since they’d boarded the ship…her body had been aching so bad, but after leaving the medbay it had disappeared along with her injury. Esna wasn’t complaining about that, but it just felt odd to not have to weather the gradual healing process, so much so that wonderful machine almost felt like cheating.

When they got to the training area onboard the ship Rammak took her to the track and Esna was surprised to see such a large open area. It was true the corridors were giant to accommodate the Calavari, but this was by far the biggest room she’d been in yet, stretching for several hundred meters in either direction with dozens of Calavari running around small paths that crisscross the area. Some went up and down crossing over others while some were flat and sweeping with Calavari sprinting through them.

“You will find this is better than running through canyons,” Rammak said as they walked toward one of the pathways.

“Not wearing armor feels weird. And so do these shoes.”

“They are meant for running while the others you had were casual ones. You will find a great difference here, though be cautious with your pace until you find out how much strength you’ve lost from your injuries.”

“Is that the start button?” she asked, pointing to a pedestal with an orb on top beside the pathway.

“Yes. Press your hand on it,” he said as another Calavari ran by. Esna hopped over the track as he passed and off the far side to get to the pedestal while Rammak simply took a position on the path that was twice as wide as he was. “They will not run you over. Step out with me.”

Esna did so as a green triangle appeared in hologram above the sphere.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“You staying with me?”

“For the first lap or two. You’ll adjust quickly enough. Tap it and go. It will remember your genetics and give you distance markers as you pass them by.”

“How fast do you want me to go?”

“Begin easy and feel your body out, then accelerate as you wish. This is to get you adjusted and bleed out your unfamiliarity. You know running, and doing so now will ground you. You do not realize it, but you are home now. They all know it,” he said, pointing to the other Calavari. “It is only your mind that must come to that realization. Run, adjust, relax, and start rebuilding your body.”

“Alright, here goes,” she said, tapping the hologram and finding it to be solid. A countdown tone sounded similar to what she’d heard in her Challenge and a bit of adrenaline spiked before she reminded herself this wasn’t going to be as bad as that…though a part of her mind didn’t totally believe her.

When the fourth and final tone sounded she took off running, immediately feeling sluggish and fast at the same time as her feet seemed to float over the smooth but grippy ground faster than they should have. Her legs, arms, and especially her back seemed to lag behind and she had to slow down to a jog, but before she got to the first left hand turn a little bit of her old rhythm started to come back.

Esna followed the path through straight sections connected by various turns that had her zigzagging across the giant room but not going up or down any inclines. A few minutes later Rammak suddenly passed her by…except it wasn’t Rammak, but another Calavari. When she realized that it spooked her so much she half jumped to the edge of the path and stumbled in her unfamiliar shoes as she caught herself.

“You have no enemies here, Esna. Relax,” Rammak said from behind her as they came to another turn.

“I’m trying,” she said, looking back at him over her right shoulder and seeing no more Calavari near them, though there were others meters away on other paths and that proximity still made her feel uneasy.

“On your farm, you were mostly alone?”

“No. There was my brother, Yammar, and Innit.”

“But you’re not using to being in larger groups?”

“Only when we went into town to trade or…deliver.”

“Your time with me didn’t help then. Focus on your run as much as you can. It will take time for you to get acclimated to having others working out around you. How is your back?”

“Stiff, but not hurting,” she said, seeing them coming around to their starting point next to one of the doorways. “I can work through the jitters on my own. Just don’t leave the room without me, okay?”

“You’re telling me to run ahead?”

“Yeah. Get in the workout you need. I know I’m slowing you down.”

“Your bravery is noted. Try to get in at least 3 miles. Preferably 5.”

“Ok,” she said as he passed her by and accelerated up to a pace that came closer to what the other Calavari were running, but still slower than most of them. Esna hoped he hadn’t lost too much from his injuries, but he did look a little stiff to her as well…but maybe that was just from seeing him out of armor.

She saw a distance marker pop up about 30 seconds before she hit the one lap mark and it told her she was at .5 miles, meaning the track wasn’t an even distance, but then again it didn’t have to be if the holograms told you whenever you got however far you wanted, much like her armor had.

Ok, five more laps then, she said, focusing her mind on the minimum she needed to accomplish this training mission. Now that Rammak had given her something tangible to do old habits started to come into play as she rationed out her effort, but as the laps flew by she started to feel better and increased her speed out of the slow jog she’d been in.

The next few laps were ok, but then an unusual fatigue started to set in and she had to fight to hold her new pace despite the lightness she felt in her feet. The rest of her body was hot and slow, but her steps were almost magical. Between the shoes and this track she was beginning to feel sorry for Rammak having missed this all these years, for this place was unbelievable.

Her awe dimmed a bit as Esna’s strength quickly left her, but she forced herself to grind out the 5 miles and then some, finishing the last bit of extra lap and touching the finish pedestal at the end so it would stop her count, flashing her final 5.07 miles for a while before disappearing as she sat beside the track and tried to get her breathing under control as she looked for Rammak and watched him run a few more laps. When he finished his said 10 miles and change, then to her surprise he walked off the pathway and sat down next to her.

“Hard?” she asked.

“Yes, but it feels good to be back on a track.”

“How much did you lose?”

“A lot, but I will recover it in time. How about you?”

“Not as bad when you started with me.”

“That’s good. But even with what your body has lost, your mind still retains the memory and lessons gained. That will help you level up faster than the first time.”

“You’re right,” Esna said, leaning back on her arms and looking around at the other Calavari training. “I don’t feel nervous anymore. Too tired.”

“When you are lost, running is one of the best ways to find yourself again.”

“I’ll remember that. Can we go to the cafeteria from here or do they want us to shower first?”

Rammak laughed. “This is Star Force. We all train, so none of us are concerned with sweat. We can go there now or to a nearby area where we can spar a bit, if you feel up to it.”

“No, but I’m willing to try.”

“Tomorrow then. It’s best not to rush after recovery from an injury. Let the new tissue adapt a bit before you start hitting it too hard. Are you ready to eat now or do you want to sit here a bit and soak it all in?”

Esna looked up at his big orange, hairless head. “You read my mind.”

“I was a newb once, Esna. I can remember a bit of what it was like when I left the maturia and entered more advanced training programs. I was so happy to be there I would sit and watch others train after my workouts were done, partly to learn from them, but it also just felt good to be in their presence, as it does now. I’ve missed this.”

“It’s new to me, but I’ve missed it too…somehow. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Actually it does. It means you’ve belonged here all along, even if you didn’t know this existed with your mind, deep down in the core of your being you longed for more. Correct?”

“I guess I did. I just never imagined this. I assume they have a track wherever they’re taking us, or is it going to be a small town or something?”

“They will have a track and more, for all our colonies do, but I have no knowledge of where we are going. All our worlds in this region have been destroyed and there was nothing on the map. Wherever we are going must be a hidden outpost. They will have training facilities, I can assure you. If they didn’t Star Force wouldn’t send people there.”

“Do all your ships have these?”

“The ones you plan to spend more than a day on, yes. The smaller dropships and transports do not, but they are merely to take you from orbit to the surface, or perhaps planet to planet within a system. Anything that travels between stars will have a Sanctum, and with it training facilities for the non-Archons. The Sanctums are reserved just for them.”

“Is that where the Archons are now?”

“Probably. When they’re not fighting they’re usually training.”

“And the Mavericks?”

“I don’t know for sure. They may be with them. I know Commandos and Knights cannot go in there.”

“What happens if you do?”

“We don’t have the access codes to enter, and if we found a way an Archon would deal with the situation.”

“They’d beat you up?”

“They’d do whatever was required, but no Commando is going to intrude on them while they’re training. And no one here will interfere with yours either. It’s an unwritten rule in Star Force. Training is too important to mess with, and even in the civilian areas they respect this.”

“Is that where I’ll be going?”

“Not at first. You’ll have indoctrination to go through to get you caught up with everyone else, but first we have to get out of the Devastation Zone. Whatever colonies they have here will not have maturia or younglings. They will be warriors and techs only. Until then I’ll stay with you.”

“I don’t want you to leave at all.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t be soon. I doubt there are regular flights moving through V’kit’no’sat-controlled territory.”

After a long talk on the floor of the track chamber Esna and Rammak headed back to the cafeteria to fill up on foodstuffs that weren’t all cubes and a lot of it was hot food that Esna just inhaled, along with drinking 3 full glasses of red that were designed to replace stuff workouts drained from your body.

After that Rammak took her on a brief tour of the ship while staying away from the crew, including a quick visit with the few Commandos that were onboard. They were curious about her but focused on talking to Rammak when they started to get the whole story of what had happened to him. For them it was like someone they’d lost coming back from the dead, though he admitted to Esna afterwards that he’d never met anyone on this ship before. But to Commandos, all others were brothers and sisters, though female Calavari Commandos were rare given their much smaller size.

When they got back to their quarters Esna was tired, but not too tired to skip the shower, though she was going to insist that Rammak go first so she didn’t have to hurry. Before she could bring it up he pointed over at the comm panel.

“We’ve left the system,” he said, with Esna seeing the live hologram they’d left up that showed the star and planets in the system along with their location, but now it had changed to a local starmap and their dot was just leaving one star along a line headed for another.

“Where to?”

“The Yaeren System, but we could just be passing through it to another. There’s no way to know for sure.”

“Why not ask?”

“Because if it’s not in the database then it’s a secret location.”

“Won’t we know when we get there?”

“Yes we will, but if the crew doesn’t know then we’d have to find the Captain or the Archons, and I do not want to bother them with questions unless we have to know.”

“Not supposed to talk to them unless they talk to you?”

“Not at all. You can ask anyone anything, but you learn not to bother busy people unless it’s important. If I’m not around and you need something, feel free to ask anyone you pass and they’ll help you. There’s no need to be shy.”

“We just can’t ask about secrets?”

“You can try, but they probably won’t know or won’t answer. Where we’re going doesn’t really matter, because neither of us will know anything about it.”

“I guess that’s true. I’m just curious to know.”

“We’ll find out when we get there. Until then we either get to work…which we have none…we catch up on sleep, or we train. Unless you’re lazy, life in Star Force is never boring.”

“Are there lazy people here?”

“Not on this ship, but there are in the civilian areas. They usually don’t live very long, unfortunately, because self-sufficiency isn’t something you can train for part-time, so the lazy weed themselves out of the population eventually.”

“Can’t that machine fix them?”

“Yes, and it allows even the lazy to live longer, but every time you use it your tissue gets weaker. If you’re not strong to begin with, what do you think happens?”

“Your body breaks?”

“Something like that. And the medics won’t let you use it if you refuse to train. If you’re not going to even try to take care of your body they’ll get to the point where they force you to either change your ways and they help you recover or they just leave you to do whatever you want.”

“They let you die?”

“They know that you’ll get so weak eventually with subsequent uses that you’re a goner anyway. Original tissue, even as it gets weaker, retains more memory of strength than new tissue. So if you change your mind you have more of a chance of recovery.”

“It sounds…”

“Cruel?”

“A little.”

“Star Force doesn’t give up on anyone, ever, but we don’t coddle those who don’t try. We don’t kick them out or penalize them, we just give them their space and let them do their own thing while reminding them that we’re here to help if they ever change their mind. Those that do not eventually die out and the fit ones survive…unless killed.”

“What about getting sick?”

“The machine they used on us is a last resort, and if you heal naturally you’re stronger for it afterwards, so there is a lot of other stuff they use, but the regenerator can fix just about anything aside from brain damage.”

“Why not your brain?”

“It can regrow it, but if there is knowledge lost with the damage it can’t replace that. Your body may be whole, but your mind will be blank.”

“Does that happen?”

“Rarely.”

“What does a person with a blank mind look like?”

“Like they were just born, for all they have is genetic memory. Partial losses can be worked around, but full loss usually mean your head got blown off, and if that happens there usually isn’t a person left in it to heal.”

Esna frowned, her mood still buoyant but a little less so now. “You know someone that happened to?”

“No, but I’ve heard stories. The point is, if there’s a way to save you and you’re willing to work at it, the medics can bring you back from just about anything.”

“What about the dead Zen’zat we left behind?”

“The Archons probably put head shots into them so they couldn’t be recovered. The Era’tran had a regenerator in its armor so it would automatically heal. The Zen’zat armor has one too, but it’s weaker and once you take one down they may live, but they’re not going to get back up and in the fight. The Era’tran could have if left alone long enough.”

“Ours doesn’t have that?”

“No, but as you experienced, the Archons can do part of the job with just a touch of their skin against yours. Most of the Zen’zat cannot. It’s an advantage we have. One of the few.”

“Are they part machines?”

“The Zen’zat? No.”

“The Archons.”

“No. It’s an ability called a psionic. Zen’zat have less than Archons because Archons don’t follow the rules they do. We found a way to cheat the genetic protocols. It’s another reason why they want your race dead.”

“Wait, you mean I can do that too?”

“Not unless you become an Archon. But the Viks aren’t going to take chances. They’re going to kill you all on sight…though they’re not going to get you here and we’re gone from that now. Neither of us will probably ever see it again.”

“I still don’t like having left Yammar and Innit. If they’re still alive…”

“Could they have kept up with us?”

Esna snorted at the absurdity of that question. “Not a chance. They make me look fast.”

“If they lived, their path is headed in a different direction than yours now. If they died, then there was nothing that could have been done.”

“I know, but I still don’t like leaving like we did. If they’re still alive, they don’t even know Star Force exists. None of those people do.”

“If they did, they’d be killed for sure.”

“So they just have to live and hope the Viks don’t decide to kill them?”

“Yes, but most of them don’t even know the Viks exist.”

“That’s a sucky way to live, Rammak.”

“I can guarantee that if Star Force could retake the planet they would, until then we just need to be glad that we got out of there.”

“I am. I am,” she said, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Even all the jerks in town. Those Zen’zat, and especially the Era’tran…”

“Very powerful,” Rammak finished.

“Too powerful. How do you fight something like that? How did the Archons win?”

“There are a lot of things about Archons that even I do not know, but they are of your race and have guided and protected us for longer than I have been alive. They lead, and we do our best to keep up and not let them down. They’re what kept the Viks from destroying us. Without them we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Without them, Star Force wouldn’t exist at all.”

“That Era’tran was soooo big.”

“There are larger ones,” Rammak said, seeing her eyes go wide, “but you can learn of our enemies later. Now it is time for you to learn about Star Force and the potential of your race. Focus on that and let the Archons deal with the V’kit’no’sat. When there is something you can do to assist them, they will ask. Until then focus on yourself and I will do the same. We have a lot of catching up to do, and we’re no use to Star Force in our current condition.”

“I believe that about me, but not you. You kicked ass back there.”

“I also died.”

“Point,” Esna conceded. “You’ve got first shower.”

“Are you sure you don’t want your own quarters?”

“No. I’m happy on the floor. Its way softer than what we’ve been sleeping on. Actually, it’s softer than my old bed used to be.”

“Very well. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, but someday you may want a shower that is built Human size.”

Esna frowned. “You mean they get smaller?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want a smaller one. I like it big like this one.”

Rammak smiled and headed back to the other room, pulling his shirt off as he walked. “Water rat.”

Esna didn’t argue with the term, for she really did like the water. Probably because she had so little back on Mace…which was even now becoming a fading memory. She sat down at the comm panel and pulled up the information database again, this time searching for the V’kit’no’sat. Regardless of what Rammak said, she wanted to know how much bigger they got and what the worst they had to face was.

By the time Esna finished she wished she’d listened to Rammak, entering the shower with a chill running down her spine that took more than a half hour for the warm water to wash away.

26

February 17, 4812

Orlero System (Devastation Zone)

Tauntaun

As it turned out, the Ma’kri didn’t stop in the next system. They ended up making 4 jumps between stars before they ended up in a system that had only one, but it was a huge white one that put out more energy than the three back in Mace’s sky ever could combined. When they arrived Esna watched as they traveled far out into the system, bypassing the inner planets that were lifeless balls of rock or swirls of gas until they got to a tiny little world covered in snow from top to bottom.

It looked as white as the star, but there was no one here. No ships, no cities, nothing…then Rammak came to get her and they were hurried to the hangar without even a set of armor on. Esna just had a full length casual uniform and shoes, all of which were pale orange with white starbursts that had no meaning of rank. The clothes she’d previously worn she hadn’t earned, but these were available to everyone in Star Force and Esna felt fully comfortable in them now…not to mention glad they had extra Human clothing onboard a Calavari ship.

But she thought they would have given her a set of armor before she left, though Rammak didn’t have any on either, just his casual clothing that was a dark black that showed off his pure orange skin. He led her to another ship like the one that had picked them up off the surface before, known as a ‘dropship,’ but when she got onboard they weren’t alone. Nor’far and Javvin were already there, though they both wore their armor with the helmets retracted.

“Hi,” she said, sitting down opposite them with Rammak as the doors closed.

“We will be traveling down with you,” Javvin said, his face glowing with two shades of light, “then we will be heading elsewhere. Once we acquire a new ship we will be off on another mission.”

“Looking for more people like me?”

“If they are there to be found,” Nor’far answered. “Yes.”

“That’s not all we do,” Javvin added. “How are you feeling?”

“Fully healed.”

“That’s not what I asked. You haven’t been off that planet for most of your life. How are you feeling?”

“I just got used to this ship, now I’m jittery again. Where are we going?”

“A hidden base where you will stay until transport is available rimward. I don’t know how long you will be here, but expect to get bounced around from system to system for a while. The safe zone is far from here.”

“Where will I get to eventually?” Esna asked. “Or is it a secret?”

“You will go to an intact colony that isn’t currently involved in the fighting, and all of those are secret. The ones the V’kit’no’sat know of they target in one form or another, but there are many that they dare not touch with reinforcements so close. You will be taken beyond that region entirely to somewhere you can train and learn in peace. Whether you return here someday is up to you, but if you do it will not be soon. The threats here are too great from newbs to contend with.”

“I know,” Esna said, all but a whisper as Rammak handed her a datapad and saw them exit the ship, but on the reverse camera angles there was no Ma’kri visible, only the open hangar and it quickly disappeared.

“Are the V’kit’no’sat watching?” she asked, suddenly worried.

“Not that we know of,” Javvin explained, “but no one knows this base is here and the less visible we are in arriving the better, so the Ma’kri will stay hidden while it is in the system.”

“Can they see this ship?”

“It is much smaller, but yes. If they are here and near, they could. We would not be going down if we thought so.”

“They have invisible ships too, right?”

“Some, but arriving in a system can give away even a hidden ship, for the impact velocities of stellar radiation are difficult to fully absorb. There are many tricks to hide and find ships in space, but if the V’kit’no’sat knew of this place it would have already been destroyed. And we are careful to keep its existence a secret.”

Esna changed views on the datapad, watching them head down towards the atmosphere and the totally white planet beneath her grow in size.

“So this is goodbye?”

“It is,” Nor’far said warmly, but it still made Esna feel sad. Especially knowing that someday Rammak would leave her too. She didn’t know how she could stand that, for he was her only center of calm in this new world. “You have a great opportunity before you, Esna. Take your time to adjust, but make use of it and we may see each other again someday.”

“By becoming a Commando?”

“Those who fight and do not fight are usually separated from one another out of necessity, and with trillions of people in Star Force the odds of us meeting again either way are slim.”

“Trillions? That many have survived?”

“Yes. Trillions out of what used to be far more. The galaxy is a very large place, Esna, and fortunately it is not hard to hide trillions.”

She looked back at the datapad as the black sky disappeared and a lightening blue replaced it as they dipped down into the atmosphere.

“How many are here?”

“Not many. This base and others service those of us who travel the Devastation Zone, but there are more than on this ship. Watch, listen, and learn as you travel. Embrace the opportunity and choose to set aside your jitters. You belong with us, so don’t fear what you find down here.”

Nothing more was said as Esna watched their approach. Setting aside her jitters was impossible right now, so she just tried to enjoy the excitement. The Ma’kri had been a huge change, but this was an entirely different planet!

Esna focused on that and pushed all other worrying thoughts aside, though they kept pace on the fringes of her mind as she saw the first bits of surface features pop up. Those tiny specs soon expanded into huge mountains of ice, most of which were flat on the top, and by the wind speeds noted she guessed the depressions around them had been eroded away and the camera wobble attested to the strength of the winds outside, though she felt none of it from where she sat.

They flew along at about level with the highest mounts for several minutes before dropping down into a narrow ice canyon network where they traveled through a labyrinth of twists, turns, and caverns before the sky spread again and they came out into a wide valley bracketed by huge ice walls miles off in the distance. Rather than flying out onto the plain, the dropship turned and hugged the side of the wall behind them, with Esna now realizing it was more than a mile high as she messed with the scaling on the camera views.

Following the ground and passing over snow dunes, the ship eventually came to another crack in the wall that led to a cavern that swallowed them up as they entered. They traveled a couple more miles with the walls getting darker and darker until a source of artificial light appeared in the form of a long rectangle, inside of which her eyes finally recognized as a hangar bay that got bigger and bigger as they closed in, becoming so huge Esna couldn’t believe it as their tiny sliver of a ship slid inside, passing through an energy shield that kept the cold and winds out, for the status readouts immediately shifted, as did the gravity reading. The .4 outside switched over to 1.0 as soon as they were inside the field, but Esna barely noticed the numbers as she saw all manner of ships inside…including something that looked like giant metal monsters standing in rows along one wall, as well as set back inside nooks that may have led to elsewhere.

“Welcome to Tauntaun,” Javvin said, seeing her wide eyes. He stood up and his helmet reformed, holding in his bioluminescence, and Nor’far followed suit beside him with them both becoming hidden behind their black/red armor that no longer showed any signs of battle damage.

“Good luck, Esna,” Nor’far said as they walked past her, heading to the lowering boarding ramp. “Commando.”

“Maverick,” Rammak replied with a respectful nod, but he didn’t rise until they were halfway to the ramp. Esna turned off the datapad and put it back in its slot on the wall then stood beside the Calavari’s huge leg awkwardly, not wanting to get even a few steps away from him.

“I won’t leave you. So try and relax and just go with the flow. All you have to do is walk beside me. No running this time.”

Esna cracked a smile, but her jitters were still there. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Rammak said as he started to walk out.

Esna followed behind him, then took a few quick steps going down the ramp to come up beside him as they walked across the huge deck toward where she didn’t know, but it wasn’t the same direction the Mavericks were going. They were headed somewhere to the left between the parked ships while Rammak was taking her…

Esna turned around suddenly, stagger stepping to keep pace with Rammak as she saw their dropship take off again, spinning its big wings around almost overtop their heads and heading back for the rectangular energy field separating them from the ice.

“They’re going back to the ship?”

“The Ma’kri only came here to drop the four of us off, and that dropship is assigned to it.”

Esna watched it disappear from view into the semi-darkness beyond the hangar entrance, then she turned around and stayed in step beside Rammak, her jaw hanging low as she took in everything around her. It was big, stationary, and just oozing with superiority…totally unlike the ruins on Mace she and Rammak had been living in as they fled across the planet.

Eventually she started to spot people moving in various points around the hangar. Some near the ships, but most were along the far walls and in the nooks that got larger and larger as they walked, eventually turning into docking bays of some kind. Esna had no idea where they were going, but thankfully Rammak did as he took them towards one particular doorway, passing by not just Calavari but a whole slew of other races…including what she recognized as Bsidd.

They were insanely weird, with no central body and just an interconnecting network of what looked like tubes that led to so many arm/leg things that she couldn’t count. Even their heads weren’t one solid piece, and many of them were of different sizes and shapes, though all had some type of uniform covering their various parts, though how you would put one on a body like that was beyond her.

“Do they talk?”

“Everyone here speaks the Star Force language, though each race pronounces it a bit differently. There are a few races that physically can’t, but they have computerized translators to do it for them,” he said as they were getting near the tall doorway, but before they reached it a person in a dark blue uniform walked out and looked right at her, smiling widely and waiting for them.

And he was Human.

“You are the two recovered from Mace, I assume?” he asked as Rammak walked up to him and looked down on his black hair, for he stood almost the exact same height as Esna, who couldn’t take her eyes off him. The Archons had been in their armor for the brief time she’d seen them, but this one was in a soft uniform somewhat similar to what she wore, though his meant he was an ‘Attendant.’ That wasn’t a warrior, but an assistant that helped other personnel…or at least that was what the brief description Esna had read earlier said.

“We are,” the Calavari said. “I am a Commando and she is a rogue Human, origin unknown. I am taking responsibility for her until we can reach a proper maturia.”

“As you wish. There is none here, as you are probably aware, and we don’t get many ships in that come from beyond the front, but both of you are welcome to wait here as long as needed. Are you alright?”

It took Esna a moment to realize he was talking to her, then she blinked herself away from the swirling emotions running through body and mind.

“I…yes. I’m ok. I just…haven’t seen other Humans for…”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his face saddening. “The report I read said you had been recovered, but it didn’t detail your history. Who have you been living among?”

“Calavari and a mix of others. Besides my brother there were no other Humans. The Archons that saved us were the first I’ve seen since my father died, and I was hurting so bad I don’t remember much of them. You’re the first I’ve really had a chance to look at.”

“You’ll be seeing a lot of Humans here,” he said, throwing a ‘that’s bad’ glance at Rammak, but in a way that Esna didn’t pick up on. “But let me be the first to welcome you properly, little sister,” he said, taking a couple steps forward and wrapping her up in a big hug.

She didn’t hug back at first, shocked at the feel of the physical contact, but when he didn’t relent she wrapped her arms around him and felt his face pressed against the side of hers…and it was the best feeling she’d ever had, so much so it brought tears to her eyes. She swiped them away when he let go, surprised at the sudden swell of emotion. He was like Teren, but different, and for a moment her head swirled in conflicting memories until Rammak put a big hand on her shoulder.

“How old are you, Esna?”

“21…no, 22 of your years. Star Force years,” she corrected.

“Very young then,” he said, but in a way that wasn’t rude. “Well, let’s see to getting you two quarters…”

“We’ll be sharing quarters,” Rammak interjected.

The attendant looked at Esna again. “I understand. I’ll get a second bed and a suitable stack of clothing and maintenance items for you. As always, the equipment rooms are open to you, Commando. I trust you can find your way around?”

“Unless you have made drastic alterations, I will be fine.”

“800 years? Is that correct?”

“It is.”

“On behalf of everyone on this base, we are honored to welcome you back. For us it’s like bringing back one of the long dead and spiting the V’kit’no’sat at the same time. There are many people here who would like to meet you. Both of you,” he added, looking at Esna. “How a Human managed to survive alone out here is unbelievable. If it is alright, I can take you to them now…or after you get settled in, if there’s too much to process.”

The attendant looked at Rammak when he said that, but Esna knew he was referring to her.

“It’s ok. I’ll get used to it.”

“You sure?” he asked, concern on his face.

“Are there more Humans?”

He nodded. “Yes, quite a few.”

“Then I want to see them. Please.”

The attendant nodded politely and smiled. “Follow me.”

Rammak gently shoved her ahead of him and Esna followed the Human through the giant doorway and into a corridor that connected to many others, eventually leading them to a lift car they stepped inside with the doors closing in front of them. The back wall was clear and she could see it start moving against the surrounding walls until they were flying through the building…then the walls suddenly disappeared and her breath caught in her throat.

“A bit of green in the middle of the snow,” the attendant noted as the 3 mile wide interior park visible outside their car was covered with tall, thick trees with so many leaves you couldn’t see the ground underneath. Esna had never seen anything like it before as they dropped lower and lower with the green mass coming up towards them. They passed through it in a flash and back into a mechanical tunnel, but the speed of their passage slowed and they eventually came to a stop…then started moving sideways for nearly a minute until the walls disappeared again and they were looking down on a sea of people walking through an open air city as the lift came to a final stop.

The doors behind them opened, but Esna didn’t turn around. Her eyes were glued to the crowds of people, seeing a lot of scattered Humans amongst them, until the attendant’s small hand pressed against her shoulder.

“You can see them in person this way.”

Esna blinked out of her trance and looked at him, then the open doorway and the people passing by outside. She walked out first, seeing walls on the far side but no ceiling above them…at least not for several hundred meters, then it was flat and hard to see, for there were glowing holograms covering it in a haze that gave light to everything beneath.

“Big?”

“Very,” she said, seeing another Bsidd walk by, standing as tall as Rammak.

“This way,” he said, leading them to the right and letting Esna take the middle, bracketed by the attendant ahead and the reassuring presence of Rammak behind her. They walked down the corridor then down a wide set of stairs, bringing them out on a promenade that gradually curved against a drop off down to a lower level some 10-15 meters below. They walked along the railing with Esna looking down at the people on the lower level moving on various paths and coming in and out of kiosks.

“I thought everyone here was a fighter?”

“Everyone here is involved in the war, but we’re not all Commandos. There are no civilians here, though. Everyone is part of Clan Ninja Monkey or Clan Mantle, with me being the latter. We’re the best of the best and had to earn our way here, but do not think you’re out of place. After what you’ve survived, you’ve more than earned your stay here, no matter how long it may be.”

“Thank you,” Rammak said as Esna continued to stare at everything and everyone around them, with her eyes gravitating to a much larger crowd down below, and it wasn’t until they came to another stairwell that she realized that was where they were heading.

“That’s for us?” she said, seeing too many people to count.

“Too much?” the attendant asked, stopping walking and making it evident that they could turn around now if they wanted.

“I didn’t expect…they all want to see Rammak?”

“And you.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Nothing. Anything. They just want to meet you and hear your story, which I’m sure the Commando can handle if you don’t feel like talking.”

“Is our survival that uncommon?” Rammak asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. The V’kit’no’sat have been incredibly…thorough. A few others have been recovered, but none from as far back as you.”

“Esna?”

She reached out and grabbed Rammak’s lower hand. “Ok, let’s go.”

“Come with me and meet your new family,” the attendant said friendly, leading them down and out into the empty space on the very full courtyard at the base of the stairs with Esna seeing many races, but there were several Humans, both male and female, waiting for her. All of them were full grown and wearing various Star Force uniforms, not to mention displaying welcoming smiles that melted her heart and her hesitancy the moment Esna saw them.

She squeezed Rammak’s hand when they got within a few steps of the crowd, letting him know that she’d be ok but that she wanted him to stay close, then she stepped over to the Humans and one of the women wrapped her up in a big hug followed by the others. Her tears returned as others swarmed around Rammak, but he made sure to stay within a few steps of her as the brotherhood he’d always told her was Star Force suddenly became real and smothered her with a kindship she’d never known before.

Esna didn’t try to swipe away the tears this time, simply letting them run as people talked to her and she answered a few questions while accepting many hugs and congratulations, finding she had many more brothers and sisters…and that was a feeling that made everything she’d gone through in the past weeks worth it.

Esna didn’t understand much of what was going on around her, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was finally home.

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