“A few,” Adrian confirmed. “It’s actually what I’m counting on. If we erase Agwar from existence then we were never here. If we were never here then we never fucked up space in the first place and we can finally get the hell out of here. We’re free, the planet’s gone—not bad for a day’s work.”
“Shiplord, I’d like to request some time to consider what this means,” Artiz asked without much hope. It seemed like the Shiplord had already made up his mind to end the entire universe. He was more than a little surprised when Adrian agreed.
“You can have until the end of the evacuation effort,” Adrian agreed. “That’s why I asked you to take a look, in case there was anything I’d missed. I’m an engineer, not a physicist, so I’m aware that you’re the expert in these things.”
Once again it was a pleasant surprise to be given the benefit of the doubt, and was a refreshing change from Jrasic’s obstinance. The fact that he was far crazier than the previous Shiplord was a point against the human, but at the same time he was willing to listen to the experts around him. Artiz wasn’t sure whether it was an improvement, but it was certainly nice to be appreciated. “May I ask how long that will be?”
“How long’s a piece of string?” Adrian replied with a shrug. “Not as long as you’d like, I’m pretty sure, so best work hard and fast.”
Artiz agreed with the statement. He believed the human had experienced *something*, but there was almost no chance it matched what had been described. Part of the wormhole project had involved an investigation into whether it was possible to travel into the past, but the conclusions had been entirely negative. A very large explosion wouldn’t change the way the universe worked, and it certainly couldn’t erase an entire planet from the timeline. He was already forming several theories, and they were all deeply undesirable. “Shiplord, I would like to fabricate a prototype and examine it. It will make running the simulations much easier.”
Adrian nodded. “Just use the one we’ve already built. Will save you a bit of time.”
It didn’t surprise Artiz that the device had already been built, if anything it was just the sort of thing this mammal had a tendency to do, and he was already too exhausted to be surprised by anything else. From here on in he resolved to simply accept whatever madness followed in the human’s wake. He was more alarmed by the fact that it was just lying around somewhere on the ship while unknown savages scurried about. It was almost enough to make him wish for a professional security team, though he had to admit he would benefit from having the extra time—it was certainly in short supply.
++++
++++
DATE POINT: 5Y 2M 3W 2D AV
City Outskirts, Gamlis
Darragh
The environment on Gamlis was in steady decay, with a progressive deterioration in climate and air quality with each day that passed. It would normally be entering into the colder season, but the thick clouds of smoke were making it worse. The sky was always dark, the air tasted acrid and stang at the eyes, and the ground was covered in a thin layer of ash. It was simply unpleasant for Darragh and Keffa, but Askit was beset with coughs and shivers that did not bode well. That the Corti had come with them in their search was more of a testament to their shared desperation than courage—he knew he was dead if nothing changed for the better, and if they wanted to survive they could only rely on themselves.
They had waited by the edge of an ancient mausoleum while Askit finished his latest bout of coughing. He wiped the drool from his mouth and returned the cloth to its position. It was a fairly rudimentary excuse for an air filter, but it was the only thing at hand. “I am strongly regretting my decision to join you on this mission,” he told them as he recovered, speaking in clipped English. “Adrian is not here, yet somehow I’m caught up in world-ending shit once again.”
“Somehow,” Keffa repeated icily. Darragh knew she was well and truly done listening to the Corti’s complaining. “There’s no way to explain it at all.”
“Enough,” Darragh said, intervening before the bickering could begin again. “Maybe this one will have what we want.”
“One can only hope,” said Askit gloomily.
It had been a long time since the locals had disposed of their dead using tombs, having progressed to a reclamation process that removed all implants before returning the organic material to more productive use. The tombs themselves had been abandoned rather than redeveloped, and civilisation had simply ignored them. Time had not been kind to the structures and many had simply collapsed, while most of the others had been designed for paupers and no functional technology had survived. The five exceptions so far had failed to yield anything of use, and the whole concept would have been abandoned if they weren’t all so desperate. No better ideas had presented themselves.
“At least the air inside will just be stale,” Keffa added. “And at least the door on this one looks sturdy.”
Darragh examined the door. Many of the tombs made use of simple bars to prevent trespassers, or a solid door for more affluent tombs. On first inspection this had looked to be the latter, but it did not hold up to a closer examination. “What the feck…”
“What is it?” Keffa asked. “Forgotten how to open a door?”
“Piss off,” Darragh returned with a snarl. “No, this isn’t the kind of door I was expecting. Look, there’s no hinge.”
Keffa pushed in and took a closer look, trying to push the door from both sides. “Okay… false door?”
“No way,” refuted Darragh. “Look, check this design. Runs from top to bottom… you can’t tell me there’s not a concealed split behind it.”
“Then it’s not a manual door!” Askit added, practically shouting in spite of his health. “How do we get it open?”
Keffa looked around. “Maybe there’s a hidden switch?”
A quick glance around confirmed that either no switch existed, or that it was so well hidden that they weren’t going to find it. Darragh’s patience had run out either way. “Hidden switch my arse. I’m done feckin’ around with that when I’ve got a skeleton key.”
He was referring to the piece of rebar he’d been using as a crowbar, and began smashing it into the ancient door with the kind of force that only an enraged deathworlder could muster. At first the results were limited, and Keffa had just observed him scornfully. It wasn’t until bits of the façade began falling off that she decided to lend a hand. “Nice of you to help.”
The door had been well made at the time, and was still heavy enough to repel most invaders. But it was rusted and had not been built to withstand the kind of damage currently being inflicted on it. The outer plates fell away after several minutes of the siege and the inner plates fell to pieces shortly thereafter.
The two humans stood there bathed in their own sweat and laughing at their own handiwork. Darragh raised his rebar into the air and shouted a victory cry—it was nice to actually succeed at something for once, even if it didn’t end up mattering.
Askit slipped past them and stepped inside. He was quiet for a moment while he looked around, growing obviously more puzzled with every aspect he examined.
“What’s wrong?” Keffa asked, watching him.
“This place is wrong,” he replied, waving his hand vaguely. “Look at it… there’s no dust at all. Why is there no dust?”
It was true that the other mausoleums had been far dirtier. Darragh shrugged. “Owner was a germophobe?”
Askit scowled at him, and pointed at a coffin. Most of the tombs were just open slabs containing the bodies, but the affluent had usually had their corpses sealed into such receptacles. “Go ahead and break that open.”
“Why not just open the lid?” Keffa asked, grunting as she gave it a try. “What the fuck?”
“Because it isn’t one,” Askit replied. “That isn’t real. This place isn’t a real mausoleum, it’s just built to look like one.”
“Let’s get it open,” Darragh said, his interest fully piqued, and started hitting it with his rebar. It wasn’t long before the casing crumbled away, revealing a hidden stasis pod.
Darragh stared at it a moment before pulling more of the debris away from it. The lights were still on!
“Working technology!” Askit exclaimed. “We can pull it apart and rebuild a working computer!”
Keffa was more interest in the contents. “What’s inside?”
“Only one way to find out,” Darragh said with a shrug, and deactivated the stasis pod. It opened to reveal a considerable stockpile of nutrient spheres.
“Food!” Keffa cried happily, instantly shoving one into her mouth. The things were disgusting but anything tasted good if you were hungry enough.
Darragh passed one to Askit and bit into one himself while he considered what they’d found. “This is enough to last for a long time.”
“Good!” replied Keffa with a full mouth. “We need it!”
“How long has this thing been on?” he asked Askit, right before the Corti could start disassembling it.
Askit frowned and poked at the console for a while. “From memory this roughly matches up to when the Gamel became a part of the Dominion. Someone probably didn’t like the idea.”
“They didn’t like it so much the decided to build a mausoleum full of supplies?” Darragh asked, his eyebrow raised. “Or should I call it an off-the-grid bunker full of supplies?”
Keffa swallowed the remains of the nutrient sphere and pondered the rest of the coffins. “We should check the rest of these.”
“Surely this is enough food, even for the pair of you?” Askit asked in surprise. “You won’t be able to get all this back to the house, let alone more.”
“If this is a bunker,” Keffa replied, “they won’t just be storing food. Let’s find out what else they left behind.”
It didn’t take long for them to uncover the rest of what the bunker was hiding. The standard supplies were present, clearly expecting that civilisation would collapse and that the survivors would be forced to rebuild from nothing. There were seeds and all manner of farming equipment, basic land reclamation and water filtering equipment, and a functional micro-reactor. A handful of kinetic pistols hinted that the apocalypse was expected to be unkind to the survivors. Most important, of course, was the library containing absolutely everything the survivors would need to know about rebuilding civilisation, and it all fit inside a single data-tab.
“Well, this is very convenient!” Askit snarled as he tapped through it, checking the system version and associated files. “Would have been nice to stumble upon this place a lot earlier!”
“I take it you can use it?” Darragh asked.
“With this and the data cores from the stasis pods I have everything I need to redeploy an operating system onto a starship,” the Corti replied. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the drives working, but we can at least call for help.”
“Better than nothing,” Darragh agreed.
Askit frowned. “And this… hm. Is a warning to the expected survivors. It says the Dominion can’t be trusted. That the implanted can’t be trusted. Seeing what they’re talking about here, I think someone must have stumbled across the Hierarchy a long time ago.”
“Since they clearly didn’t end up in their own tomb, I can’t imagine things turned out how they expected,” Keffa observed. “Not that I think they got to live a long and productive life if they were spreading those sorts of stories.”
“Unlucky for them,” Darragh noted.
Keffa nodded. “Lucky for us, though. Got everything you came for, little man?”
“Everything I need and more,” Askit replied, shoving it all into a bag along with a generous helping of nutrient spheres. “Let’s go crack open the nearest intact starship and see what else I can do.”
++++
++++
Dastasji, Skies of Agwar
Adrian Saunders
The evacuation had been proceeding quickly, with most of the communities altogether enthusiastic about the idea of abandoning their increasingly hostile homeworld, especially once the wonders of the skyship had been fully conveyed to them. By now they had mostly guessed that the Change wasn’t stopping, and that the world was not getting any better. The remains of their civilisation had already been destroyed, and nobody expected it to last another generation. The elders mostly judged that the best case scenario was a total regression to stone-age living, but they had never been that optimistic. Adrian’s offer was treated with suspicion, if only because a third option seemed too good to be true. They had relented more quickly than those of the first village when a handful of visitors had been allowed aboard to test the waters, and now the Dastasji was nearly at capacity.
“Everything seems to be going according to plan,” said Adrian as he chatted with Trix. He pressed the console and moved the weird diamond icon into a different square, producing a small fanfare for some reason he couldn’t fathom.
“You don’t sound happy,” she replied, shifting a cross-shaped icon to an adjacent square, resulting in the total destruction of his diamond. “Are you expecting something bad to happen again?”
“There’s a saying on my planet,” Adrian told her as he considered the game board. “If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don’t know what the hell is going on.”
Trix sighed. “I suppose that mentality can’t be helped for Deathworlders. All my projections are positive, though I think Artiz has something more pressing than our game to discuss.”
The V’Straki had been standing there for several moments awaiting a chance to interrupt them without being impolite, and had seemed even gloomier than he usually did. Adrian had him pegged as the kind of smart and talented scientist who’d found himself crushed beneath an uncaring military bureaucracy, which was why he’d given him a chance to prove his worth. The scientist’s attitude had improved when he’d first had the chance, though the near-total extinction of his species was still getting to him. There was no question he was a valuable mind, but if he wasn’t given the chance to contribute to a better future then he was likely to cause problems. “Artiz, mate, if you go around looking like that you’re going to bring my mood down even lower.”
“What are you doing, Shiplord?” the scientist asked, staring at the console without comprehension.
“It’s a game,” Adrian replied, stating the obvious. It was better for the V’Straki to think he was a bit of meat-head, just in case he got any ideas about trying something clever. “I think it’s called Soz. Trix tells me it’s supposed to be a game of strategy, but I’m not sure it’s very good.”
“He’s randomly moving pieces without knowing any rules,” Trix said, adding the unnecessary details to help complete the picture. “It’s an excruciating experience for both of us, so why don’t you distract us with whatever’s bothering you?”
Holding his data tab tight, Artiz looked at Adrian as though he was trying to assess what was going on. He did not appear to come to any decision before he remembered why he was here and turned the image to face them. “This is your device.”
Adrian nodded. “Yes, we know.”
“The Cradle technology is supposed to work by producing a micro-universe inside multi-layered warp space,” Artiz informed them, although they were both already aware of this much. “The Zhadersil continually repeated the process and extracted the energy it needed. Your hypothesis is that this device just releases all the energy out at the same time, as with any other kind of explosion. Yes?”
“More or less,” Adrian confirmed, though he’d never thought of it as just another kind of explosion.
“If that were true there would be no way to change the timeline as you have described,” Artiz explained. “In fact, I am willing to state that you did not erase that planet from time, and you did not escape the explosion into a changed timeline.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow; this was not how he’d expected this conversation to go. “I know what happened to me, Artiz. Trix was there, so were Laphor and her crew, so I didn’t just imagine it.”
“I was not suggesting you imagined anything,” Artiz replied, “only that you misinterpreted what you experienced. There was no change to the timeline because that is impossible. Your original device defaulted to match the quantum field around you, and simply created a new version of everything that was already there. You were just lucky to survive the transit.”
Adrian frowned. “Run that past me again…”
“He’s saying you copied the universe,” Trix replied, boiling it down all the way, “albeit not perfectly. No offence intended, Adrian, but I prefer my universes to be created by a huge explosion that doesn’t involve you in any way.”
Adrian’s frown only deepened. “You’re saying I’m a god?”
“He is definitely not saying that,” Trix replied sharply. “He only said you created the universe… this universe.”
“I do not know how many universes he has created,” Artiz interrupted. “Any number is possible. The universe may be a never-ending cascade of timelines producing an Adrian Saunders responsible for generating a slightly different universe each time.”
“Well, I’ve lost *my* appetite,” Trix answered wryly. “What I don’t see is how he can be the only one doing this.”
“I never said he was,” Artiz replied. “This is all just a theory, and let me assure you that it is *not* my desired version of reality. My educated guess is that the universes will only interact during a matching set of spatial and temporal coordinates. That is how your other crew managed to follow you through.”
“So long story short, we shouldn’t use the bomb to blow up this planet as well,” Adrian surmised.
“No,” Artiz agreed, “we should not use an exploding universe as a weapon. The entire concept is suicidal, and the outcome is unpredictable. The good news is that simulating this weapon has allowed me to come up with a workable concept!”
“Go on,” prompted Adrian, hiding his smile. In truth he had never wanted to use the bomb, but he hadn’t had any other options. Nor had he had the slightest inkling about what had actually happened the last time, and it was hard to know what to feel about this theory that he was to blame for the universe existing in the first place.
Artiz puffed himself up, obviously pleased with how things were progressing so far. “Well… your device can still be used. A recalibration will be required to produce the desired result. Instead of an explosion, we will release a wave of hyper-charged exotic particles that will interact with the quantum field around us.”
“Fixing it?” Trix guessed.
“Only temporarily,” Artiz conceded. “It will not be perfect, but it will persist for long enough to escape. I have run several practical tests to prove the concept.”
“Good work,” said Adrian with a nod, being sure to acknowledge the V’Straki’s success in spite of the bizarre theory. It would be nice to be able to resolve a problem without anything blowing up. “My only question is: what do we do about the planet?”
“That is a far less delicate solution,” Artiz replied. “I would suggest we simply point a very large piece of space debris at the planet and let gravity do the rest. It is honestly not that difficult to destroy all life on a world. If anything it is a challenge to keep it alive.”
“Right then,” Adrian said, finally rising from his seat. “There are two jobs: you re-spec that bomb to blast out that exotic wave, and we’ll find a rock to kill the planet.”
“We could just leave that to drones,” Artiz suggested. “There is no need for us to wait—”
Adrian stopped him with a look. “There is no way I’m going to risk any of those things getting off-world. It isn’t just the machine, do you know we’ve had to put down some of those brain-eaters who’d managed to slip into a village? I am not letting them escape.”
The V’Straki scientist paused and then nodded. Leaving with only a mild grumble, he seemed a lot happier than when he’d entered, even if he hadn’t gotten everything he’d wanted.
“Another game?” asked Trix as Adrian returned to his seat.
“Sure,” agreed Adrian, moving his first piece absently. Several moves were traded in silence before he spoke again. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“I don’t want it to be,” Trix replied bluntly as she made the final move that won her the game. “Remember that he admitted it was just a theory. That aside, he *is* a physicist, and we are not.”
“It’s not like we didn’t know that blowing holes in the universe was a bad idea in the first place,” Adrian added. “I’m glad he managed to come up with another option.”
“I admit that you were right to share the details with him,” Trix replied. “I still don’t know why you did that if you don’t trust him. You even went so far as to give him a bomb that could definitely kill us all.”
Adrian explained. “Some of it was relying on his self-interest, but that was only part. The V’Straki were full-on military, and their entire civilisation was based on personal merit. You already *know* how he felt about the last Shiplord.”
Trix was the one who’d broken into the scientist’s private journals, although she’d done so at Adrian’s request. He hadn’t trusted the V’Straki scientist, and the journals confirmed that the sentiment was returned, but there were countless prior complaints about how the former Shiplord had ignored advice, overruled suggestions, and generally humiliated Artiz. “Were you always this cunning?”
“I only do it to help us survive,” Adrian replied with a frown. He did not enjoy playing these kinds of games, particularly as he’d been manipulated by others in the past. “There are times when being too honest is a good way to end up dead.”
++++
++++
Transport Ship, Skies of Gamlis
Jennifer Delaney
Gamlis was the homeworld of the Gamel civilisation, and was fully developed by the standards of the galactic community. The cities were vast and interconnected, and the wilderness was tied up in curated preserves and was practically non-existent. The expansive rural areas were the closest it came to uncivilised. The situation here was so much worse than it had been on the colony world, and Jen’s first thought was that the planet was dead.
“The haze is too thick for visual sensors to be much use,” Xayn reported, “but I am detecting large fires burning through all cities and their surroundings. The air quality is abysmal, and I would not expect survivors.”
The report was effectively what Jen had expected to hear. Gamlis was supposed to possess a somewhat difficult climate by galactic standards, as the axial tilt and slight eccentricity gave it unpredictable seasons. Right now the northern hemisphere was entering its winter period, which occurred while the planet was at its most distant from its star. Global temperatures would normally drop during this time of year, but the thick clouds of smoke had caused them to plummet. Between the cold and the toxins it was unlikely that civilisation would ever return to the world. Ash-falls had covered practically everything giving the whole landscape an unbelievably bleak appearance.
“I’m bringing us in closer to the starport they were supposed to land at,” Chir advised from the pilot’s console. “These clouds are pretty thick. Running on sensors only.”
The haze was thick even when they broke through the bottom of the cloud layer, and it took a few minutes to fully orient themselves. With the exception of the layout of the streets and landing pads, there was little that matched the navigation guide.
“Found them,” Xayn announced, bringing their attention to the vessel they were looking for. Unlike the starport itself, most of the ships were mostly undamaged by the fire. This vessel, however, had clearly been attacked by the surrounding pile of broken robots, and was not fit for habitation let alone space travel.
“Not good,” Chir mused, sharing a glance with Jen. “I don’t want to be the one to say it, but there’s no way they could have stayed there, and I’m not sure we’ll be able to find them if they’ve gone somewhere else.”
Jen was inclined to agree, although she wasn’t willing to give up without spending at least one day searching. “We know where they landed. We know the ship has been attacked, and it looks like everything fell apart while that was still happening. In fact—”
“I have detected something unusual,” Xayn interrupted. “Please take us over the entrance to this facility.”
Chir complied, slowly guiding the ship over the area Xayn had indicated. There was a surprising amount of debris covering the street and the entrance to the starport, although the building itself was little more than a burned-out shell.
“What are we looking at?” Jen asked.
“Robots,” Xayn replied. “Thousands of them, all armed in some way. By the way they are laid out, I would say this was some form of siege.”
“No need to guess who they were aiming at,” said Jen. “Any of them still active?”
Xayn shook his head. “Both the sensors and my eyeballs confirm they are inactive.”
“Nothing on the comms, either,” Chir added. “The airwaves are clear of any activity apart from our own, but there’s also some interference from all the ash. Looks like it’s slightly radioactive.”
“How bad is it exactly?” Jen asked. Their companions would have no way of knowing how dangerous the ash was.
“The radiation is mild by our standards,” Xayn replied. “It would likely be more severe for other species. The toxins are far more dangerous, and even we would wish to avoid prolonged exposure. The Corti will be struggling if he has been breathing it.”
Jen nodded her understanding. That was about what she’d been expecting, and much better than she’d feared. At any rate it was still next-level shite outside, so they’d be stuck wearing suits if they needed to make an excursion. “If that’s the case we’ll only go outside if we really have to.”
“So, what’s our next move?” Chir asked, staring at her expectantly. “What would a human do in a situation like this?”
On one hand that seemed a little speciesist, but on the other she was the only one capable of thinking like a human. “Well,” she said, “I think they should be around here somewhere. I know if I were them I’d just stick around until I got rescued.”
Chir raised an eyebrow sceptically. “That does not sound like something you would do. You certainly didn’t do it on Agwar.”
Jen’s cheeks reddened. “Yes… well… I did say if I were *them*. Clearly *I* would just fuck off on some adventure.”
“Wonderful,” Chir answered drily. “Now we only need to search the entire city and countryside. Let me tell you that we’re only giving them three—”
He was interrupted by a beep, and gravity shifted hard as he rolled the ship on pure instinct. Lacking the protection of a seat, Jen and Xayn found themselves thrown against the nearest wall.
“What the fuck, Chir?!” Jen shouted as gravity returned to normal. “The hell was—”
Her words broke off as an explosion tossed the ship skyward, knocking her to the floor before the inertial dampeners could compensate for the change.
“Get to a seat!” Chir growled back. “Something just tried to kill us. It got the starport instead.”
Jen glanced at the display where the ruins of the starport had been reduced to a smoking crater. Movement flitted across the site as the vessels were systematically targeted and destroyed by the same force. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Don’t know,” Chir replied. “It looks a lot like we have company, and they’re really pissed off. They definitely have better sensors than we do, though, so we’re at a serious disadvantage.”
“The cloud layer blinded our sensors,” Xayn suggested. “Maybe it can blind theirs as well?”
“Good thinking,” Chir replied as he pushed the ship into a sharp climb. The ground fell away, fading behind the haze, and suddenly vanished. “I guess this either saves us or gets us killed.”
“We can’t just fly around in the clouds, hoping they go away,” Jen said, turning to her own console. “We need to figure out where they are.”
“Based on the trajectories of the projectiles, they were firing from just below the clouds,” said Xayn. “It is likely they were using advanced cloaking technology.”
The conclusion was grim; only one enemy came to mind, and the little ship was not equipped for a pitched battle with anything the Hierarchy had to throw at them.
“Why would the Hierarchy be here of all places?” Jen wondered. “The whole place is wrecked, and two random humans aren’t worth doing all this.”
“Maybe there’s more to it than that,” Chir suggested. “Perhaps they created this entire situation. How better to tighten their grip than to create absolute chaos? Nobody will be in any condition to resist them.”
That made sense, but it didn’t make their current situation any easier—the ship wasn’t ideal for combat in the best conditions, and these were far from the best.
“Keep us moving,” Xayn said. “Our kinetic cannons should not be as easy to trace as their missiles, though we will be firing blind.”
Chir complied, shifting speed and direction at random intervals while the kinetic cannons fired off an endless barrage in the general direction of the enemy ship.
It wasn’t something Jen thought would be particularly helpful, but she couldn’t come up with any better ideas either. “I would feel better about this if we knew we hit—”
The shockwave rocked the ship hard, and sent a thunderous boom through its metal bones. The sudden lurch had been bad enough to make Jen glad she’d grabbed a seat when she was told to, and the noise left a ringing in her ears.
Chir looked like he’d enjoyed it even less. “That… was very close. Maybe we should just stop firing for a while…”
Xayn had already deactivated the cannons. “That was more than just one blast. They tried hitting us with six at the same time, we were just very lucky that they missed.”
Jen didn’t feel lucky. “So, that didn’t work. What do we do next?”
“I think,” said Chir, “we stay up here and hide.”
++++
++++
City Outskirts, Gamlis
Askit
The Corti hacker was in a very bad mood, although this had been the case ever since he’d been stranded without technology on a dying world. Finding the data tab had been like a miracle, but his failing health was making everything far harder than it should have been. He pretended he was fine pushing on, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before his body gave up. That time felt close.
“What the feck is going on?” Darragh asked, staring at the outline of the distant starport. Between the haze and the falling ash it was impossible to make anything out in detail, but explosions were always easy to identify. Flashes of light in the sky gave them enough of the story to figure it out. “Looks like we’ve got company after all.”
“Do you think they’re friendly?” Keffa asked hopefully. “Not that I doubt Askit’s abilities, but…”
“They’re not friendly,” Askit told her. “The only times I’ve seen those kinds of weapons is when the Hierarchy has been turning them on us. Yet another problem.”
“Christ, not another one,” Darragh groaned. “They’re probably here looking for the source of the chaos. Life just keeps getting better and better.”
Keffa kicked a rock, sending it flying at a nearby tree and knocking ash from its branches. “I hate this fucking planet!”
Askit smiled thinly; at least everyone else was miserable as well. He was just hoping that he’d have some kind of opportunity for catharsis. “They attacked the starport. That means we will need to find a ship somewhere else.”
“Not a lot of those lying around,” Darragh noted. “And I don’t think you have the kind of time needed to find one.”
Askit’s smile spread. “Oh, I’ve already found one. We just need to get closer to the starport.”
Keffa looked worried. “Sounds dangerous. If they keep firing missiles… well, we might be deathworlders but we’re not built to stand up against that kind of thing.”
“It will be fine,” Askit lied. At this point the risk just seemed worth it, especially because the only other options were dying in an explosion or dying in slow, drawn-out agony. “We just need to be quick and careful. You carry my bag, Darragh can carry me. We do not have a lot of time.”
Darragh shared a look with Keffa and dropped his extra baggage. “Sure… but I’m only doing this because nothing else is working. Keffa, we’re going to move double-time.”
Despite her initial grumbling, Keffa followed the instructions and ditched her own baggage in favour of the items Askit had accumulated. The result was more than a simple doubling of their previous speed, as even a weakened deathworlder still possessed far more strength and stamina than was found in other galactic species. Askit didn’t find it surprising, but it was a little annoying to see how much he’d been slowing them down.
“Sounds like they’re still hammering the starport,” Darragh said between breaths. “Haven’t seen any more blasts in the sky, though.”
“Maybe they hit whatever they were aiming at,” said Askit. “Or maybe it got away. It doesn’t really help us in either case.”
Darragh grunted as he leapt over a ditch, stopping only long enough to make sure Keffa made the distance. “Mind sharing the details of your plan?”
“Adrian was with me the last time we got hit by those missiles,” Askit told him. “We nearly died, but this time I know what we’re up against.”
The towers adjacent to the starport had grown closer while they talked, and they were entering the clouds of dust flowing from the blast sites. Askit uncovered his mouth only long enough to instruct Darragh to find some shelter within the buildings. “I need to be able to breathe if I’m going to work. Do you see the ship?”
Darragh grunted in the negative. “Gotta be nearby, though.”
Askit wasn’t surprised, he’d already guessed that the ship was probably cloaked using the technology available to the Hierarchy. The most he’d been hoping for was some kind of outline against the dust and haze, but it was hard to notice details when your eyes stung and watered.