Acronyms Used: TAS (Terran Alliance ship), TADS (Terran Alliance Diplomatic Ship), TMMS (Terran Merchant Marine Ship), TAAV (Terran Alliance Auxiliary Vessel), and ERT (Emergency Response Technician).
The fledgling Terran Alliance sent four ships to the newly connected Askran System. Two freshly commissioned Meurtrière-class battleships, their sharp radar-scattering lines and dozens of pod-launchers lending them a predatory air, served as guards. The sleek TADS Pandora and the massive TMMS Trucker carried billions of dollars worth of uplift materials and supplies. And the utilitarian TAAV Lifeline brought its complement of doctors, engineers, and first responders along for the ride.
The humans spared no expense when they prepared for their first trade war with the Galactics, but they needn’t have bothered. When they jumped through to the Askran system, the Compact was in full retreat. They had good reason, too.
The Askran sun was collapsing.
Even as the Galactic ships fled, the Terrans advanced. Heedless of the massive gouts of plasma ejecting out from the star, they surged forward. The TAAV Lifeline led the way.
Eldest-of-Fields was terrified. He’d taken his three fosterlings to the surface at sunset, expecting to spend a few hours delighting in Kyla’s squeals of joy as his eldest charge took her first steps outside the warrens. She’d barely managed two stumbling steps before something massive fell from the sky a scant hundred metres away.
After scooping up his frightened toddler and making sure her two younger siblings were latched firmly onto his back, he’d crept forward towards where the thing had landed. As an Eldest, he had to investigate.
What he’d seen shocked him. His keen night vision had easily made out the armoured figure crouched over a metal capsule, pulling out strange tools and snapping them onto his suit. It was massive.
Askran were squat burrowing mammals, their shovel-like faces dominated by two huge eyes and an elongated snout. Their bipedal arms and legs were thick with muscle, their bones were dense, and their hands and feet were tipped with blunt claws well-suited for tunnelling through the dense rock and dirt of Askra.
Alongside the visitor from the sky, they looked downright fragile.
Eldest-of-Field’s comparison was cut short when the human turned towards the hiding Askran and spoke in a clear and unaccented voice.
“I’m Corporal Slater of the Terran Alliance Auxiliary Vessel Lifeline. Your world’s about to go up in flames.”
The next few hours had been chaotic. Eldest-of-Fields had quickly ushered him below ground, where the human had pleaded with the local elders to heed his warning and evacuate. They hadn’t listened. Even their remote warren, halfway around the planet from the capital, had heard tales on the semaphores of the dangerous and deceptive visitors from the sky.
“But we’re not like them,” the human had pleaded. “We’re different.”
“Yet you both come from on high,” Eldest-of-Warren had noted serenely. “You can draw only poison from a tainted well.”
The council had let him finish his case, then had asked Eldest-of-Fields to escort him back to his drop pod. On the walk back, the human soldier had tossed the Askran a translator, disengaged his helmet, and continued his argument. Kyla had watched him suspiciously from her hiding spot behind Eldest-of-Fields leg as he spoke.
“We’re not part of the Compact. Those rat guys you’ve been bargaining with? They’re backstabbing, spineless scum. They took one look at what your sun was doing and scampered off. We’re gong to stay.”
Eldest-of-Fields had twitched his long snout sympathetically. “How can we know what is true? Anything you show us could easily be part of some ruse.”
“Its not.” the human had stated flatly. He stopped trying to argue after that, and they’d walked on in silence.
Eldest-of-Field’s two youngest charges had just begun to climb about on the human’s body, earning a gruff laugh from the soldier, when the planet died.
A wave of superheated air surged down the tunnel, ripping the carefully cultivated lichens from the wall and tearing at the wooden support structures. It bowled over Kyla and Eldest-of-Fields, leaving them stunned on the ground. It barely touched the human.
The emergency response technician had reacted to the gale with preternatural speed. He’d plucked his two tiny passengers off his back, clutched them to his chest to hide them from the tempest, and crouched down to shield the two remaining Askra in the span of half a second. He stayed there while the heat wave subsided.
A small cannon deployed on his right shoulder and started to launch bursts of fire-suppressant at dozens of small blazes. The oxygen-rich atmosphere of Askra made any flame burn violently; the thousands of slow-burning glow-mould and breath-fungus clumps torn free by the gust gave it fuel and an easy way to spread. Around them, the warren burned.
The ERT pressed breath masks, fire-resistant cloaks, and a small beacon into Eldest-of-Field’s hands. “Remember that atrium we passed when we came in? Take your kids there. Help’s going to check there first.”
The Askran stared up at him. It didn’t take an expert to see that the superheated air and dozens of debris strikes had left the human’s armour damaged. “You’re coming with us?”
“Hell no. I’m needed,” he said, hooking his thumb back towards where the tunnels were slowly catching alight. Embers floated through the air like spores as they passed the blaze between support beams. Only the human’s small fire-suppression turret kept the fledling blaze from enveloping their small group.
It was the Askran’s turn to plead. “You’ll never make it out!”
The human shrugged as he started into the inferno. “Today’s as good a day as any. Now get those kids out.”
Eldest-of-Fields wasted a few seconds staring at the human in disbelief. Then he forced his panicked brain into action. The Askran started off down the tunnel, cowering beneath his cloak as the air above them burned. His two youngest whimpered softly into their masks as they clung to his back, and Kyla hurried along at his side, wrapped in a covering of her own: when she’d scampered up onto his back alongside her siblings, a spasm of pain had forced Eldest-of-Fields to the ground. He’d almost dropped the cloak that shielded his two youngest from the clouds of flaming mould.
Even the breath masks couldn’t hide the thick scent of ash and burnt flesh that choked the air. The fire consumed all.
Kyla soon began to falter. Eldest-of-Fields tried to shield her eyes away from the charred corpses of two Askran and their fosterlings, dragging her forward as the tunnel began to collapse around them. Clumps of burnt earth and smouldering wood fell around them.
Then a large piece of the roof struck Eldest-of-Fields and he collapsed to the ground, his legs buried. Kyla panicked and dashed into a side tunnel.
“Kyla,” Eldest-of-Fields croaked weakly. His breath mask must have come loose when he’d fallen, because any further words were drowned out by a coughing fit. The small, vulnerable figure was soon lost in the blaze.
Eldest-of-Fields checked his two remaining charges mechanically, barely noticing his youngest’s broken arm. He couldn’t free his legs, so he gathered his surviving fosterlings under their protective cloak and waited to die.
With no breath mask, he drifted in and out of consciousness and his fevered brain hallucinated. He dreamed he was being rescued, that metal-clad saviours stormed through the fire to his side. He watched absently as they calmly faced the flames, shoring up the tunnel even as it burned around them. One of them blocked a second bundle of earth from crushing Eldest-of-Fields and his two remaining fosterlings by throwing himself over them. The Askran felt a small measure of surprise that the collapsing tunnels and raging inferno didn’t seem to faze them, but it made sense that his figments would be fearless. They weren’t real, after all.
Then someone slipped a breath mask over Eldest-of-Field’s snout and he realized that they were. He tried to gesture at the small side passage where Kyla had fled, tried to beg for them to look for his little girl, but his strength deserted him. He barely managed to lift a hand.
One of the humans, seeing his feeble gesture, crouched down. “We’ll get everyone out, don’t worry. Just lie still.”
A rescuer soon freed Eldest-of-Field’s legs and carried him and his two fosterlings out of the warrens. The carefully tended surface crops were gone, scorched away by the massive surge of heat, and powerful winds gusted across the surface of the dead planet, and lightning flashed in the distance. Three human shuttles sat amidst the destruction like bright beacons of hope.
Eldest-of-Fields, overwhelmed, slipped into unconsciousness.
Continued in comments. I tried to make it fit in 10,000 chars. I really did.
The Askran elder woke to the sound of his translator.
“He’s the only council member we’ve got. We need him.”
“He should be placed on the next flight up, not dragged off to the command centre.”
Eldest-of-Field opened his eyes. His two surviving fosterlings clung to his chest, fast asleep. “I’ll stay. Where do you need me?”
One of the two humans laughed. “Looks like I win, Doc. We’re getting our tunnel expert after all.”
The doctor sighed and handed over the controls for Eldest-of-Fields’ bed. The other human introduced himself as he steered the Askran out of the sickbay.
“Lieutenant Alex Geary, Terran Naval Intelligence. We’re trying to help the 3rd Rapid Response Company aim their rescue efforts a bit better: we need you to highlight areas where survivors are likely to congregate.”
A holographic projection of the warren popped into existence before Eldest-of-Fields as the intelligence officer continued.
“First five levels were wiped out completely when the flare hit – you and your kids are the only survivors we pulled from them. The blaze is hovering around the either and ninth levels right now; we’ve got a route cleared through to the eleventh, but we’re not sure how long it’ll hold.”
The elder nodded and started hollowly marking regions of the map. The water reservoirs probably held survivors, so he flagged it. Then he did the same for the nursery creche, the assembly hall, and a few of the larger mushroom farms. Geary nodded approvingly.
“Thanks, we’ll try and shift efforts towards there. Mind if we hang on to you? Might need you later.”
Eldest-of-Fields agreed. Anything to keep busy. Anything to forget Kyla.
Geary deposited the hospital bed in the operations bay and headed off to make a report. The Askran stroked the small, soft heads of his remaining fosterlings and looked around.
The centre of the deck was dominated by a massive projection of the tunnels, the human responders shown as small blinking dots. One route down was highlighted in blue, the rest in various shades of red. There was a lot of red.
The left-hand side of the room was home to about a dozen ERT’s reading themselves for another trip back into the warrens. The right-hand side was dominated by almost a hundred small screens showing the helmet cameras of those already below ground. A mournful tune played out over the speakers, its notes distinctly avian.
Eldest-of-Fields soon lost himself in the screens. Humans charging through collapsing tunnels to drag stunned Askrans to safety. Humans digging buried Askrans free even as their heat screens overloaded them and their skin blistered and burned. And humans shielding trapped Askrans with their bodies. A hundred screens showed humans risking life and limb in the burning warrens.
Some of them didn’t make it back to the ship.
Screens went black one by one as humans died. Some were crushed as the tunnels collapsed around them. Some roasted alive when their overworked suits failed. And some were trapped by falling rocks, left to watch their air supply dwindle. All of them met their end bravely.
An hour later, nearly a third of the screens were dark. Eldest-of-Fields was watching two rescuers break through into the water reservoirs when a familiar voice spoke off to his side.
“Glad you made it out,” said Slater. It seemed like days since the corporal had tried to warn the council of what was coming. “Where’s the third little one?”
Eldest-of-Field’s voice felt thick. “She didn’t make it. Got separated.”
Slater’s entire demeanour shifted. A brisk, professional alertness replaced his former weariness. “Where’d you lose track of her?”
“She ran off into one of the side passages near where I was found, I was pinned and couldn’t follow. Doesn’t matter, though, you’ll–wait, what’re you doing?”
The corporal had engaged his helmet and turned back towards the exit. He wasn’t listening.
A supply tech confronted him and spoke loud enough for Eldest-of-Fields to hear. “Recharge cells are running on empty and the sappers say the whole warren’s about to go. You’re not going back out.”
“I’ve got thirty-five minutes active. Gotta get that anteater’s little girl.”
“Doctrine say nobody goes in with less than two hours.”
“Fuck the regs. That kid was my responsibility, and I’m going back for her.”
Any further protests form the tech went unheard as Slater shoved past him. Eldest-of-Fields turned back to the screens to watch.
Nobody stopped Slater as he marched back through the warrens. When he reached the spot where Eldest-of-Fields had been rescued, he paused. The screens on the ship showed him access video from the recovery, and a brief moment later he headed off into a side tunnel.
In the side passages, the burning mould had settled to the ground and formed a thick carpet of coals. Slater marched through them, ignoring his suit’s protesting heat alarms. When fallen rubble blocked his path, he shifted it aside. When the passage abruptly ended in a cave-in, he pulled a tool from his belt and blasted through it. When the ceiling rumbled and threatened to bury him, he pushed forward regardless.
Slater’s remaining power dropped below half and the image on his screen paused for an almost imperceptible second. Then it kept going moving forward.
The corporal found Kyla with eleven minutes of power to spare. The tiny Askran was curled into a ball under her cloak, still breathing through her mask. Slater bundled her up, drew her to his chest, and started back through the tunnel. Back on the ship, Eldest-of-Fields felt himself start to hope.
Then the suit’s power gave out and it fell to the ground. It cracked open and Slater crawled out, grabbed a mask, and started running forward with Kyla cradled in his arms. The ERT soon vanished from the helmet cam’s field of view.
He hadn’t wrapped himself in a fire-cloak. There weren’t any left.
The coxswain back on the shuttle, a Nedji, spoke out. “Warren’s starting to go. We’re done here.”
Several armoured men and women, all about to head back into the tunnels, turned to protest. The Nedji’s angry shout cut them off.
“The tunnel’s are collapsing. You can’t do anything more but die.”
Eldest-of-Fields clutched his two fosterlings to him and stared at the projection, horrified, as dozens of tunnels turned from red to black. Nine blinking dots were trapped in the lower levels, cut off as the human’s only route to the depths crumbled. Only one dot raced ahead of the rapidly advancing black. Its screen showed a human moving forward with a somewhat hobbled sprint.
Eldest-of-Fields didn’t watch the last survivor emerge from the tunnel, and he barely heard the cheer that went up as the figure limped into the bay. He never noticed that the one survivor was in fact two, an armoured figure supporting a battered human dressed only in a charred skinsuit. The Askran didn’t even see the unarmoured human limp forward, dragging a broken leg behind him, and place his small furry bundle at the foot of his bed. Eldest-of-Fields was somewhere else.
It surprised him, then, when Kyla let out a delighted squeal and dived into his arms. As the tiny Askran buried her face into her guardian’s fur, Eldest-of-Fields jolted back to the presence and tried desperately to thank the brave human corporal.
He couldn’t. As the humans cheered again, Eldest-of-Fields wept tears of joy.
Epilogue
Deep in a bunker on Earth, the seven members of the Terran High Council sat in silence. A report, written and copied by hand to keep its contents secret, lay before them.
An elderly, white-haired human spoke. “So the Compact did it after all.”
“Not directly,” said the Nedji seated next to him. “A Daan pirate crew fit it, getting the bomb and the funds from a suspected Compact front corporation. We can’t actually prove anything.”
“And even if we could,” added a young human women, “I’m not sure we want to. Fleet could use another few years to get the second wave of new ships out. Our offensive capabilities are going to be limited until then.”
“We still know damn well that they did it,” grumbled the white-haired man. “Feels wrong to not strike back at them.”
“Oh, we’ll strike back,” said the newest member of the council. “But we’ll do it when we know we can win, when we know we can crush them. And we’ll make sure they never see it coming.”
The gathered humans and Nedji loudly voiced their assent. From his newly earned seat at the table, Eldest-of-Fields curled his trunk with cold satisfaction. Askra would not be forgotten. Askra would be avenged.