DATE POINT: 5Y 2M 1D AV
ARK STATION, SANCTUARY SYSTEM, ILRAYEN BAND
JENNIFER DELANEY
It was technically sunrise when Jen returned to the orbital hab-station, but the weak light of Sanctuary’s sun struggled to cut through the thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere of the single life-bearing world in the system. It was, at first glance, an extremely inviting world, with a broad expanse of ocean that covered nearly ninety-seven percent of its surface, and a surface temperature that bordered on balmy, but it was definitely not the kind of place you wanted to visit. Nearly twice the mass of Earth with an atmosphere four times as thick, the ocean planet was definitely better looking from a distance. These faults notwithstanding, it had proven an incredibly valuable source of atmosphere and water for the ancient hab-station, once they’d restored basic power, and it was self-evident why the Yarmyek had selected it as their preferred build site.
Less evident was why they’d never gotten around to using it; by derelict standards, the place had been practically pristine when they had arrived, as though it had spent all those years waiting just for them. Jen and, to a lesser extent, Darragh had both found this somewhat creepy, and reminiscent of a horror movie, although even their most thorough investigations had yet to turn up any monsters.
Delighted that something was going right for once, Chir had immediately claimed the station as his new base of operations, but Jen was unable to shake the sense of vague, cinematic peril, and had soon opted to return to her mission. Keffa had already finished docking the Devastator by the time Jen entered orbit, and was physically checking over the outer hull when Jen exited their newest acquisition, a light-blue freighter styled as the Broken Blue.
“Never thought I’d see any of us flying a freighter of all things,” Keffa remarked as Jen walked towards her. “The exchange was as bloodless as you hoped?”
“They were very compliant,” Jen replied, turning back to consider the freighter from a distance. “Once they realised I was a human, anyway.”
Jen had been looking forward to a life without piracy or high crimes, but the world was more complicated than that, and did not make things easy for those with no money. Unfortunately she had already learned that crime paid very well, and so it was only natural that the group returned to theft as a means of ship acquisition. It was not ideal, and yet it had allowed them to expand their fleet to six fully functioning starships in a matter of months.
“What about it then?” Keffa asked, trusting Jen to know what she was talking about.
“About what?” Jen asked, feigning ignorance.
Keffa rolled her eyes. “Agwar. You must have scanned it on your way back, yeah? Any change?”
Jen sighed. “Only what we predicted. Space is still completely bonkers out that way, but the weirdness is receding and the whole system is slowly moving out of that bad patch. I think we’ll see it clear on schedule.”
“Pity,” said Keffa. One of the reasons they’d adopted Sanctuary was the proximity to Agwar. Aside from the possibility that Adrian was alive in here, Jen still felt she needed to try and save the place. “Darragh’s back as well.”
Jen nodded. “On time, that’s good.”
Given ownership of a light, one-man scout, Darragh had been tasked with collecting data on the other Deathworlds in the area, and returning with all the information that could be gathered from orbit. Thus far he’d uncovered eight Deathworlder civilisations capable of being detected from space, and had determined that only two of them were compatible with the galactic community. The others, intelligent though they might be, had far more in common with their V’Straki engineer and were thus more likely to cause serious problems. Askit had remarked that maybe the Hierarchy had some kind of point, and Jen found herself unable to disagree; the galaxy would simply be a better place if some of those species never made it into space. “No more psycho-pandas to haunt us?”
Keffa shook her head. “He already talked to Chir, but I was listening in: more primitives, and still no sign of the fucking Hierarchy.”
Jen spat on the deck at the mention of their name, giving a less-than-subtle indicator of how she felt about the invisible galactic menace. She knew that hoping to find them was foolish, but after that mess on Agwar, and the news about San Diego, she was itching for another fight, and their continued absence left her angry and confused. That was the weirdest part; in her opinion they should be everywhere, shutting down Deathworlder civilisation with deadly force, but it seemed as though they’d almost entirely withdrawn from the ‘Band. Whether or not that had anything to do with the San Diegan crater was yet to be determined, but Jen guessed they’d redeployed their forces to focus on Earth.
“So what’s the next step?” Keffa asked after a lengthy silence, breaking it only as the two of them entered the administrative hub at the end of the central promenade. They had been surprised to discover the station was built with a strong sense of natural aesthetics in mind, and the streets were filled with places clearly intended for gardens of some variety, rather than the patches of bone-dry dirt that currently filled them. One day, if they stuck around, the vision of a gardened hab-station might come to fruition, but until then it only increased the austerity of the place.
Xayn happened to be entering the building at the same time, weighed down under a coil of power conduit, but stopped to answer the question as though it had been directed at him. “I will run this conduit from the ships to a power junction to help boost the energy stores. Then we should be able to re-activate the fabricator.”
Keffa stared at him long enough that it made Jen feel uncomfortable on Xayn’s behalf, although it clearly didn’t have the same effect on the Saurian, who gave her the V’Straki rendition of a thumbs-up. Jen was fairly sure that Askit had taught him that move, and only because he’d found it terribly amusing to watch other people suffer through.
“I was talking about the Deathworlds,” Keffa informed Xayn once they’d reached peak-thumb. “Jen’s mission was to map them out for human occupation, but it seems like they’re all either occupied or a total fucking mess.”
The V’Straki cocked his head, an expression that indicated considered thought, and appeared to purr. They had eventually learned that this is what it looked like when he was having an idea he liked. “Given time, the Hierarchy would destroy these Deathworlds. Why not take these creatures and press them into willing service against their would-be slaughterers? The Hierarchy would never expect it… our victory would be glorious!”
Xayn burst out laughing with the ‘kah kah kah’ sound that was about as full-bellied as he could manage. Keffa raised an eyebrow as she traded glances with Jen, and shrugged. “It’s got a certain poetry to it.”
“Poetic, maybe,” Jen conceded, “but we’d surely develop a certain fame if they heard about it back on Earth. Do you have any idea how many people would be jumping up and down about ‘cultural contamination’, or ‘Western Imperialism’ if we started in on that? Christ… just thinking about it does my head in.”
Keffa shrugged again. “We can just tell ‘em to go fuck themselves. What would Adrian do?”
Jen rolled her eyes. “Doing whatever the fuck we feel like isn’t a good way forward, Keffa. Agwar is still totally inaccessible to us, and I’ve not a doubt in my mind where the blame for that can be placed.”
“So we’re not assembling a hodge-podge, mixed-species team of questionable characters?” asked Darragh, stepping in from the stairwell. “Shame… I was looking forward to calling myself Starlord.”
Xayn regarded him and nodded. “It would fit.”
“You were eavesdropping?” Jen asked, before gesturing towards Xayn. “And why does he know it fits?”
“First of all, you’re both being very mean,” Darragh replied, looking pointedly at the two of them, “and I got him some ‘top shelf human entertainment’ on my last trip to a proper station.”
“It was mostly mating videos,” Xayn noted. “I have learned that females receive many favours in exchange for such rights, along with many other useful things.”
Darragh reddened slightly at the looks he received from his fellow humans. “Yes, well, they didn’t have a table of contents, and I was too stupid to check it first. Anyway, I don’t see how I’m eavesdropping when you’ve all got the volume dialled up. I was just having a chat with the boss about how lonely it is around here.”
Jen frowned. It was hard to know whether Darragh was talking about the general sense of isolation—the hab-station was clearly intended for more than the six of them—or Chir’s emotional state after they’d returned time-cloned Layla back to where she’d called home. It had been there that he’d discovered the version he knew and cared about had never survived the return journey. He hadn’t taken it well, and Layla had taken it even worse, and things had just settled into a simmering pot of emotional turmoil ever since. Yet another reason to keep going out and exploring.
“And?” Keffa prompted. “I assume you’re going somewhere with this story?”
“And he agreed that we should be looking at allowing settlers,” Darragh finished. “We’ve got a lot of space, and a lot of work to do, but there’s a lot of money to be had out here if you know how to get it, and opportunity to put the screws on the Hierarchy if we’re careful.”
“And you happen to know how to make a lot of money?” Keffa asked sceptically. The judgement was reasonable; it was painfully clear that Darragh had never made a lot of money.
“No, but I know somebody who does,” Darragh replied.
“Yes,” Xayn said, bobbing his head in agreement. “Human males will often pay in exchange for mating rights.”
Keffa looked like she was about to hit the Saurian, and Jen felt much the same way. Darragh had the good sense to take a step back, and picked the right side. “Xayn!” he exclaimed. “You can’t say that sort of thing to women! They’re not prostitutes!”
Somehow Darragh’s defence actually made Jen even more annoyed. “And we’re not going to be, either!” she added sharply. “I’m fairly sure he’s talking about the Corti.”
“Yes,” Darragh confirmed, looking relieved. “I mean… obviously he’s a notorious criminal, but so is everyone else here. He’s also a notorious criminal who can make our station legitimate.”
Jen had trouble seeing that happening. “And the Dominion will just forget about all our crimes? It seems unlikely. As does the chance that people will actually come to live here.”
“That was my view as well,” said Chir, emerging from behind Darragh and startling him in the process. “But there is an opportunity here as well.”
“Which is?” Jen asked.
Chir gestured to… well, everything. “Ark may be difficult to get to, and it may be remote, but we do have unfettered access to Deathworlds and a large number of other locations that do not officially exist. You named this place, I recall, after a mythological water-vessel tasked with preserving the existence of life on Earth, just as you want to preserve these Deathworlders against the Hierarchy. The six of us can’t manage that alone, and I’m not inclined to start abducting primitive specimens of… whatever. We need to look at other options. I think I’ve found some.”
They waited, allowing Chir his moment of dramatic pause. He eventually broke into a cunning grin, bringing to mind a black-furred fox, and continued. “It may not be quite what you’re proposing—bringing primitive creatures into our group could only end in disaster—but it does fall in line with your intent. This station was built by the Yarmyek League in the days of their decline, far out of their claimed space. It is my belief—although it is merely an educated guess—that they had intended this place as a safeguard against their final collapse. They never had the opportunity to use it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see out their purpose. There are no fewer than four species in late-stage decline in the galaxy, and it is my intention that we should save them, by force if necessary.”
“You think the Hierarchy is behind that as well?” Keffa asked, arching an eyebrow. “Have we seen evidence of that?”
“We know that they can control people through implants,” said Chir, “and these species lean heavily on them. I am tasking you, Keffa and Darragh, with getting us a breeding population of each.”
“What about their implants?” Keffa asked. “If the Hierarchy gets wind of what we’re up to…”
“Askit will be joining you,” he revealed. “He has almost completed his anti-Hierarchy cyber-solution, so you’ll leave once he’s got it working across the entire station. He can install a local copy on the ship while you’re travelling.”
“So ideally, they won’t know a thing,” Darragh concluded. “That’s a good plan. Simple, and workable, and these colonists are unlikely to want to run off somewhere else when they realise what’s actually been happening.”
Jen nodded along. “And what about me? I’ve got work to do with my surveys. That’s got to be done if I’m to remain in the good books with Earth… especially with what happened on Agwar.”
Chir shook his head. “You’ll need to delay that. I’m aware that Xayn and I are an unstoppable force, but it’s a big station and we could use another set of hands in getting it ready. There’ll be a need for more water, more food, and more raw materials. I think you can get most of that down on the planet, but you may need to go further afield.”
It would all be further afield. Jen had been down to the planet exactly once, and had decided against ever going back. A human could survive there, but they would be far from happy with the combination of heavy, humid air, blasting winds, and mountainous, crashing waves. Going elsewhere would be less convenient in the short term, but there was plenty of water-ice floating around if you knew where to look.
“Easy done,” she replied. It was likely to be laborious, unforgiving work even with the help of technology, although those tools were the only thing that made it a one-person job in the first place. Even so, it seemed like it was more suitable for someone with Adrian’s build, and not a slip of an Irish girl, even if she did figure herself strong for her size. Yet another reason to wish he was still amongst them, rather than stuck in some kind of persistent spatial anomaly. The best she could hope for was that, instead of getting into his usual amount of trouble—or being killed in an exploding ship—he’d been able to find a group of Agwarens and convince them he was some kind of deity. After her own turn at it, there was a circularity to the concept that seemed to fit nicely, and made the fact that they’d abandoned him seem a little less terrible.
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THE DASTASJI, UPPER TROPOSPHERE OF UNNAMED TERRESTRIAL PLANET
Kama
Shift change was always welcome, provided it was your shift that was ending. That was not the case for Kama and his team, who’d spent the last day-cycle preparing for their deployment to the planet, so that the costly mistakes of others could be learned from. There was a reason that they’d established a ground camp and kept the Dastasji drifting amongst the clouds, and it had nothing to do with tactics; Kama had grown up in the jungled southlands of the continent, and life had been harsh, but there’d never been anything like what he’d seen in this place. With its aggressive vegetation, and psychotic giant fauna, the planet was nightmare enough, but the enemy had raised an army of bizarre creatures that were well adapted to the environment, and that didn’t even cover the primitives whose tactics were sufficient to warrant wariness. Then there was the other thing, the predator, and that alone was reason to employ the nuclear option from orbit. Unfortunately, without the systematic annihilation of the whole planet, they could never be sure the problem was solved. Drones, along with boots on the ground, was the only solution likely to yield results.
He looked around at his team of red-chips as they checked their equipment one last time before the ‘drop. It was how they kept their focus on the job, and off the awful dread of what was to come. As the sole survivor of his previous expedition, Kama had been selected as guide for his next, under the direct command of Squad Leader Razen, but there was no distracting himself from the memories of his last journey to the planet. He was therefore the first to stand to attention when Razen stepped into the excursion chamber.
Razen nodded to him before taking his place at the front of the room. “We have been given the go-ahead,” he announced. “Drop is in [five minutes]. Everything is loaded into the pod?”
He received the affirmation from all twelve members of his expeditionary force, and indicated that this was as he expected. “We are to receive our briefing on the surface. Get locked into your seats.”
He stepped aside to allow Kama and the others the room needed to file into the drop pod and take up a position on one of the troop stations. Kama took his seat and drew the belts into place—mostly unnecessary unless the kinetics failed—before connecting the weapons-feed to his visor. Sensing that the connection had been made, the visor automatically switched from augmented reality to full immersion, giving Kama the sensory input provided by his designated cannon. The weapons systems were, for the most part, fully-automatic, and the drop-pod was heavily gunned so that when it made its descent the enemy would suffer an unrelenting cannonade. With the typical V’Straki mistrust of automated technology, each member of the crew could take over any number of the guns at any time. It wasn’t something that Kama had ever needed to do, outside of training, so for the most part he treated the experience as a particularly vivid overview of the situation below.
If not for this system, he would never have noticed the drop pod beginning to fall away from the Dastasji. In line with standard practice he tested taking control of his designated turret and returning it to automatic operation, after which he settled in for the rest of the drop. For a long while the clouds formed an unbroken floor of white below them, followed by a few moments of opaque grey, and then the familiar viridian landscape burst into view. The thick forest swept outwards in every direction, deceptively peaceful from above, while Threshold—the name of their operational base—lay directly below, surrounded by a circle of blackened terrain. It was the second such base; the original had been a hasty construction intended for fact-finding missions, and had been utterly overwhelmed by the rapidly growing vegetation. Threshold was a permanent structure, an elevated, heavily fortified construction that overlooked the burned wasteland. Expendable drones, armed with burner-beams, roamed the designated area, ensuring that nothing—flora, fauna, or enemy combatant—could cross. Thus far it had been greatly successful, but it remained the only success for the operation.
The rapid drop slowed only at the last moment as kinetics fired off, raising a whirl of dust from the open ground inside the compound. The drop-pod for the previous team shot upwards at the exact same moment, thereby completing the exchange.
“We are down,” Razen reported. It wasn’t strictly necessary—the computers could communicate without issue—but it was an extra precaution against alien interference with the computer systems.
The visor feed cut out, and Kama unplugged along with everyone else, proceeding in single-file out of the drop-pod and heading towards the briefing room; there’d be no rest for them until they’d finished their first day mission.
Razen was last into the room, and entered in the company of Ground Commander Ekkel, who looked them over appraisingly as he took up position at the lectern.
“Welcome to Strife,” Ekkel began, as he had when he’d greeted Kama’s first team; someone had come up with the name on the first deployment, and it had stuck. “For some of you this will be your first deployment. For others”—he looked at Kama—“it will be a return to a nightmare. You will all have heard stories… they do not do justice to the reality. It is vitally important that you all remain on high alert when outside these walls, and keep your atmo-filters engaged—the whole planet has been infected by some sort of extreme bio-weapon, and everything you meet will be as aggressive as it is big and hungry.”
He turned to Razen, who proceeded with the briefing from there. “We have been tasked with a sweep of Sector Six. We know the area is inhabited by two tribes of primitive sapients, but they have also been infected, and are to be exterminated on sight. There are several major crash-sites in sector six, none of which have yet been mapped, let alone cleared. Our objective is to clear the nearest crash site at Point Aleph.”
“Other known hostiles in the area include the forces of the Artificial Intelligence,” Ekkel continued, switching the vid-screen to display multiple images of a large, bug-like creature that reminded Kama strongly of the Igraens. “You are the first force to know of this, as Medician Takkid has only just given us the confirmation, but there is a clear genetic link to the Igraens. We believe this may indicate a relationship between our quarry and the Igraen Alliance, so be careful.”
“They are heavily armed, and are modified with advanced weaponry of unknown design,” Razen resumed. “Autopsies back up theories formed from their observed behaviour: they function as though they are a hive mind.”
Kama raised his hand, and waited for Razen to acknowledge him before speaking. “Can that be used against them? If they are in communication, it must be possible to disrupt that communication.”
Razen and Ekkel traded a glance.
“That is our hope,” Razen confirmed. “We are still waiting on the engineers to produce a working dampener.”
The image switched to another, this time an autopsy of some kind of beast, with a particular focus on the skull. Where there should have been a brain, there was something else, and the sense of revulsion ran through all present.
“These are also derived from the Igraen gene-pool,” Razen continued with undisguised disgust. “A parasite. It consumes the brain to control the body.”
The picture switched once more, this time to the autopsy of a V’Straki trooper. Kama recognised the face of Rekt, who’d gone missing on the first day of his previous expedition. Once again there was no brain, only the same hideous creature. Razen waited for the murmurings to settle before he continued. “We are not immune to their predations. This trooper was identified as Rekt, son of Vadin, and the parasite was able to trick the guards into believing it was still our trooper. Thankfully our genetic scanners made up for their error, or the infiltration would have gone unnoticed. All of us undertake daily blood-scans while on-base, as well as when we check-in.”
“No exceptions,” Ekkel added, although Kama couldn’t imagine anybody refusing after what they’d just seen. Making it explicit, however, meant that he had just given himself the authority to immediately execute anyone who disobeyed.
“Some of you will have heard about another creature,” Razen continued. “Let me assure you that you have enough to worry about without giving credence to rumours. There is no reason to suspect that there is any such thing as a ‘predator’ in the area. Remember that we V’Straki are the strongest species to evolve on a high-threat world, and that we alone have access to advanced tactical equipment. Our enemy is a rampaging eco-system and the desperate remains of an Artificial Intelligence, and provided we remain vigilant we have nothing to fear.”
Ekkel nodded, switching the vid-screen off. “Assemble in the yard. Except you, Trooper Kama. You remain with us for a moment longer.”
Kama hissed out a sigh as he watched his fellow expeditionary troops exit the briefing room, many of them casting suspicious glances back at him as they left. When he turned back he found Razen and Ekkel far closer, and Razen gripped him by the shoulder with a vice-like grip.
“I am aware of your… encounter on your last visit,” Ekkel said. “You met it… the predator creature.”
“I did,” Kama confirmed, unsure what this was about. He’d been given a full debriefing upon his return, and hadn’t held anything back. “Briefly.”
Ekkel looked down at his data-pad. “You said it threw a piece of metal at you, then told you ‘the next one would be coming a lot faster’?”
“Ah, yes,” Kama said, clearing his throat. The retelling of the encounter had seemed ridiculous, especially when the creature hadn’t even looked physically formidable, but the fact was that it had also just killed two of his fellow red-chips with a sharp rock, and Kama had dropped his gun. “I took it as a request to leave.”
“It spoke in V’Straki?” Razen asked for verification. “Without the use of a communicator?”
“Yes,” said Kama, “but with mushy pronunciation.”
“It didn’t give you its name?” Ekkel pressed.
Kama shook his head. “We did not converse further. May I know what this is about?”
Razen looked to Ekkel, who briefly hesitated, then nodded his approval. Razen paused a moment, as though trying to find the words. “The most recent Expeditionary force eliminated a group of primitives. The primitives had a universal translator with them, and were able to talk to them.”
Kama cocked his head to the side; that was advanced technology, far beyond what a backwater world was capable of producing, and there was no good reason that it should have recognised V’Straki. “Was there an explanation?”
“They claimed it was a trade-good from a strange, white-skinned creature,” Ekkel told him. “The description matched yours, but they were able to give a name: Adrian Saunders.”
Kama shook his head in ignorance; the name meant nothing to him.
“The Artificial Intelligence mentioned the name to our illustrious Shiplord,” Ekkel explained. “It implied that our escape from the anomaly was somehow the intention of that individual, although we had no further knowledge at that time. Currently we believe it is an alien of immense power, responsible for freeing us and then causing the enduring spatial disruption that traps us here, though we do not know the nature of its association with the Artificial Intelligence.”
A feeling of dread crept over Kama, and not merely because the explanation suggested he’d escaped some kind of insane, god-level entity. The mere fact that it was being explained to him did not bode well. “Why tell me all this?”
“Because in the event that we encounter him, you are going to be in command,” Razen replied. “It will be your task to try and convince him to help us slay the Artificial Intelligence. We think it might feel kindly towards the natives, so perhaps you can arrange an understanding that they will be safest if our work is completed quickly.”
“I thought you just said the predator was not in Sector Six?” Kama noted, glancing between his two superiors.
“That was a lie,” Ekkel replied flatly. “Morale would be destroyed if they expected the predator. Ignorance is better.”
Previously, Kama would not have agreed to that. He would have protested, stating that it was always better for troopers to know what they were up against, so that they could pick their tactics ahead of time. This time, however, he understood the point: that in this world full of nightmares, the most terrifying thing knew who and what they were. Conversely, the most they knew about it was its name; somehow that didn’t seem like a fair match.
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The Shelter, Sector Six, Agwar Crash Zone
LAPHOR METMIN
It was easy to hear the Deathworlder return along the corridors; his gait was readily recognisable, and he moved through the dark ruins with an understanding of where he was going, so Laphor was ready with lantern and decontaminant when he arrived in the room set aside for that purpose. Like the rest of her mercenaries, she’d retained her vacuum suit—albeit with several patches that made it unsuitable for actual hard vacuum—to protect her against micro-organisms whenever they needed to interact with the outside world, or with the one of their number actually capable of both going out into it and coming back. The crashed Hunter cruiser, burned and broken, provided substantial protection for everyday purposes, and Adrian had even gotten some of the lights and doors working on a separate circuit, thereby creating ‘the Shelter’, but they still needed food, water, and a way off this shitty, void-damned planet.
“You’re later than you said,” was Laphor’s greeting as the human stepped into the room. “Thought you might be dead.”
He grinned at her like a wild thing, and she wondered if perhaps this planet’s madness was rubbing off on him. Rather than a retort, he pulled out a bag weighed down with vegetable matter—enough for eight local days amongst the mercenaries—and dropped it on the floor between them. Then he stripped down, stood there, and presented himself for decontamination.
Laphor acted without hesitation, activating the gas device that scrubbed everything it touched of dangerous bacteria. It wasn’t supposed to be used on living beings, but Adrian hadn’t known that when he’d used it the first time, and although it turned his exposed skin pink it apparently only made him tingle. That may have had more to do with the deadening of his nerves than actual Deathworlder resilience, but either way it didn’t seem capable of doing him lasting harm, and it needed to be done if the rest of them wanted to keep on living.
The mist cleared quickly, after which the Human Disaster re-clothed himself in the tattered remnants of his hardened vacuum suit and scratched at his hairy neck. “I tell you what, I need a fucking shave and then some.”
“I’ve never understood that about you,” Laphor replied. “Why remove hair that’s naturally there?”
He shrugged. “One of life’s great mysteries, I guess.”
Grabbing up the food supplies, he followed her into the interior of the Shelter where hungry mercenaries sat waiting. They eyed Adrian briefly, but their eyes were destined for the hefty bundle he was carrying.
“Finally,” grumbled Clor. “We thought you might be dead.”
“You’d be surprised how often I get that,” Adrian replied, putting the pile in between them all and grinning as they snatched up everything they could stuff in their mouths. “Rarely turns out well for those who say it.”
Clor paused mid-bite, taking his meaning. “Sorry… just, it gets to you, being cooped up in here. We’re thankful.”
“Why are you late?” Laphor asked. “Run into more trouble with the natives, or was it more Hunters?”
“I was keeping an eye on some V’Straki jackboots,” he replied grimly. “They hit an Agwaren village south-west of here, and executed them all.”
“They’re savages,” Laphor reminded him. “Not like the ones you’ve met previously.”
“They’re sick,” Adrian corrected. “They didn’t used to be like this, and they’re not monsters. When I met Xayn I had the feeling that maybe the great V’Straki empire might not be the friendliest lot, but this has confirmed that in spades.”
Laphor knew that, for whatever strange reason, the Deathworlder took extreme exception to people killing other people based on species, especially to the point of wiping out groups of them. In the wider galaxy, that was often a factor of war, but Adrian had such specific words for it—genocide and xenocide—that Laphor wondered if maybe humanity had dealt with the matters in its past. Either way it pissed him off, and it was a good thing that he only stayed with them for brief intervals between supply runs and reconnaissance.
“I’m surprised you didn’t try and kill them all,” Laphor replied simply. Armed with primitive weapons in addition to his fusion blades, Adrian was an extremely formidable force, but she hadn’t been sure how he’d fare against a properly armed group of Deathworlders. The answer had proven to be ‘extremely effectively’, and there’d been no more V’Straki groups trekking through their area for a while.
He grimaced. “Needed to get back to you.”
“Thank you for that,” she replied, genuinely grateful; she wasn’t ignorant that they’d be long dead without his help. “Are you going out again to hunt them down?”
“No,” he said, surprising her. “It’d be rough-going to catch up with them, and their base is a fucking fortress like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’re still going out though?” she inferred; the better part of an orbital cycle had taught her to spot his nuances, and that understanding had made things a lot easier.
He nodded as she’d known he would. “There’s probably some survivors… even if they’re only a few hunters who were out when the rest of the tribe was getting murdered. They’ll want to know what happened, and who to blame.”
“They won’t attack you again?” Laphor asked. She’d not seen one of these creatures personally, but Adrian’s descriptions had her picturing a massive, lumbering beast twice as large as him in every way. They’d taken him for a monster at first sight, and had tried to kill him—by his own admission, they were considerably stronger than him—but what they had in muscle they’d lacked in speed, agility, and tenacity. Adrian had come back bruised and bloody, but somehow alive, and until today the natives had decided against further attacks. “They might think it was you!”
He shook his head. “It’s pretty fucking clear whose work it is, and they’re not dumb enough to miss those clues.”
“Still…” Laphor began.
“Still,” he continued, patting the hilt of his fusion sword, “I’ll be ready if they try anything stupid.”
Laphor recognised the futility of further argument, and that would have to be good enough. She took up one of the leaves, a thick and succulent type that grew like plates jutting from the trunks of larger trees. Sweet, nutritious, and full of water, they made an excellent snack, and Adrian had even assembled a contraption intended to transform the natural sugars into cleaning product. What he used it for she was uncertain, but when asked how well it worked he’d replied ‘fucking great’, and that had been the end of it.
With her own hunger satisfied, she turned to the terminal they’d assembled from parts found around the crashed cruiser, and scavenged by Adrian from other vessels nearby. It ran on a stripped-down computer core, powered by the most basic of generators, and the vid-screen was suspended by loops of power conduit. Laphor suspected that they couldn’t have done better if they’d purposefully built it to resemble how she felt about her life.
“So,” she said, bringing up the map of the area, “give us an idea of what you saw.”
Salvaged from the cruiser’s records, the map was wildly out of date, showing the forest and field that had existed just prior to the crash. They’d marked in the locations of crashed ships, where the native tribes were settled, and where Adrian had encountered V’Straki and Hunter alike. To nobody’s surprise he pointed at the southern settlement, tapping the screen so that it swung gently back and forth until he stopped it.
“There,” he said, then moved his finger further south. “The V’Straki moved off directly towards their base after finishing the job.”
“What did they have with them?” Laphor asked. “Standard drones and equipment?”
They’d already established that the creatures were well-resourced, possessing access to surveillance and hunter-seeker drones in addition to their own lightweight outfits. Adrian had killed a pair of them, proving that the outfits were not intended to protect against a heavy rock being slammed into the skull, but had forgone claiming any of it. He had reasoned that they might be able to track it—a concern that Laphor had not even considered until he’d mentioned it—and had considered secrecy a better defence than a handful of weapons. That argument, combined with how easily he’d overpowered the two V’Straki soldiers, led her to agree.
“You should rest before you leave,” she suggested. “Or at least have something to eat.”
He shook his head at the pile of food. “That’s for you… I ate before I got here. Rest, though…”
He looked towards the corridor that led into the area they’d claimed for residence, seemed to suck on his teeth, and nodded. He’d looked half-dead ever since they’d arrived, but somehow he’d kept on going—part of that Deathworlder tenacity, no doubt—but there were limits for even the Human Disaster, and the signs were all there. “Yeah… that’d be for the best. It’ll be night soon anyway.”
He’d never explained that in full, but it was enough to know that he didn’t like his chances at night any more than the rest of them did. She imagined that even when he was away for days at a time, he would always find a place to hide in until sunrise. Hide only, though, because it seemed like he saved sleeping for the safety of the shelter.
Watching him slouch off towards his sleeping chamber, Laphor wondered how much longer they could all go on this way. Not long, she thought; one way or another it would all inevitably come to an end.
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