I came to after only a minute. Falling debris woke me, although I couldn’t tell what was happening at first. I was looking up at a black cloud while rocks fell all around me. The heavy armor suit had saved my life, I realized after a moment. Trix’s voice was in my ear, pleading with me to get up.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“We hit the explosive charge,” Trix said. “I saw the sun glint on the brass bullet, just like you said.”
It was all coming back to me: the butte, the Orrkasi camp, the storm, the Polytrots fleeing, and the troopers coming for me. Panic got me moving. I was a sitting duck and feared that the troopers would catch up to me. My heart was suddenly pounding as I rolled over onto my good side and pushed myself up onto one knee. The precautions weren’t necessary, as the blast wave had wrecked their ships and torn through their unprotected bodies. The Orrkasi troopers were tough and hard to kill, but the shockwave from the explosion of their cannon’s power supply would have been powerful. I saw bodies lying facedown as the dust began to settle.
“Barker?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” he replied. “Are you hurt?”
“Negative,” I said, although my entire body ached. I didn’t think my discomfort was strictly from the blast. Memory of my fatigue was lingering in my mind, and I could feel the strain in my muscles as I reached for the spear. My fingers closed on the shaft, and I lifted it up. The carbon fiber was undamaged by the storm and the blast. I leaned on it while I picked up the battery I had dropped. It was covered in dirt and would need to be cleaned before I used it. My left hand fumbled in my satchel to pull out the only other battery I had.
“What happened to the Polytrots?” I asked over the com-link.
“They’re here,” Trix said.
“Not ours,” I replied. “The ones we rescued.”
“Hard to say,” Barker replied. “There’s too much dust and smoke. Who knew that power reactor would blow like that?”
“I had a hunch,” I said.
“Most of the force was above you,” Trix said. “If it had gone off on the ground, you wouldn’t have survived.”
It was another lucky break, one of many I’d experienced since crash-landing on Leonis B. Given my condition, I didn’t feel very lucky. Pulling myself upright was a strain, and I was shaky at first, my head swimming. My helmet filtered out the dust and smoke from the blast. As the air and my head cleared, I looked for signs of life. Nothing was moving as far as I could see. Most of the Orrkasi ships were damaged, some flipped onto their sides or upside down. The alien sleep domes were gone. Whatever the little shelters were made of, they hadn’t survived the blast. Neither had the butte—the towering rock formation was reduced to a pile of rubble.
“Send out the Polytrots to look for survivors,” I said. “Trix, stay on overwatch. You see anything moving besides us, say something immediately.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” she replied.
“Barker, get back over here. We need to make sure the Orcs are dead.”
“On my way,” Barker confirmed.
I checked my rifle, which was down to just ten percent of its battery life. Pressing the release lever with my left hand was a struggle. Since I had to catch the spent battery with my right hand, there was no way around using my injured hand. After dropping the old power pack into my satchel, I took the fresh one with my right hand and slipped it into the pistol grip. I checked the fire indicator, making sure it was on semi-automatic fire.
By the time Barker reached my location, the dust had settled enough that it was no longer an impediment to our vision. Some of the Orcs were still alive, but none had gotten to their feet or lifted a weapon. I used the spear to dispatch the wounded. While it was physically much harder, it saved our precious power supplies.
“Scout 2 is back at the summit,” Trix reported.
It seemed strange that everything had settled so quickly. Between the storm, the attack, and finally the explosion, everything had seemed to be chaos for a long time. Now, the sun was out, the dust was dissipating, and the enemy was dead.
“We should have a little time,” Barker said. “They can’t have sent a signal for help. The explosion took them out too suddenly.”
“Maybe, but that smoke cloud will be visible for a long distance,” I said, pointing up at the dark miasma hovering over the rubble of the butte. “It’s bound to draw interest.”
“It’s got to be visible from space,” Trix said. “We know they have more people up there.”
“We need to gather supplies and get moving,” I said. “Let’s see what ships can still be flown. Trix, grab our supplies and start your descent. Take it slow.”
“Roger that, Staff Sergeant,” she replied.
In the time it took for her to make it down the mountain with my backpack and Barker’s gear, we located a capsized cargo hauler that worked, despite some superficial damage, and a transport ship that was in much better shape. Rocks and dirt had fallen on it, but it hadn’t toppled over. There were no major dents in the fuselage, and when I pressed the activation button, the systems all came directly online.
After Barker picked up Trix on the cargo hauler, we got it settled in the back of the transport ship. There was plenty of room inside the large cabin. Soon, the Polytrots joined us, along with one of the recently freed aliens. The newcomer was wounded and could barely walk. After Trix had helped get it inside, we lifted off.
“Keep the drone right on top of us,” I said, working the controls of the ship. “I want to be able to see what’s around us.”
“I’ve got it,” Barker said, as he settled into the co-pilot’s seat. “What’s our next move?”
“Let’s get some height and see what we can find,” I said. It would be well worth going out of our way and extending our expedition to do some extra recon from the air.
Over the course of the next week, we found ourselves retreading familiar territory. We passed the old mining site where I had freed Mook and his companions, now abandoned. Likewise, the site of the former Orrkasi encampment was a ghost town. The Orcs hadn’t bothered to try to rebuild the weapon I had sabotaged. The only structures left standing were cages, trash heaps, and the building where I had been tortured by the savage Orrkasi. We landed near the top of the hill and did a quick inspection. I wanted to be sure that none of our people were still in the building. The memories of Master Sergeant Carney still haunted me. I remembered seeing him trapped in the tiny cage, unable to move, his naked body covered with cuts and bruises. He had died in that cage, and I had left him behind when I made my escape. Not that I’d had a choice—I’d been lucky to be walking myself and had no way to get to him. This time around, I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to give my old compatriot a proper burial.
“They’re gone,” I said.
The door to the structure was open. The Orcs had stripped everything of use from the small building. We found the interior, where the power source had been, empty of the machinery that had filled it. If only I had known to blow up that power supply, perhaps events on Leonis B would have transpired differently. Then again, we might have never found Havvar. Looking at the empty room, I supposed that things had transpired just the way they should.
“What do you figure they did to the dead?” Barker asked.
“Yaak!” Mook yipped, followed by a mournful whine.
“What does that mean?” Barker asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I replied grimly. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here we need.”
From the abandoned camp, we went north. The terrain shifted: the wide desert plains were replaced by gently rolling hills. We saw large bodies of water and rivers lined with trees. What we didn’t see were more Orrkasi ships, not even on the radar.
That evening, the transport ship began to beep a warning that we couldn’t decipher, but it was a safe bet that the vessel was running out of fuel. We had no way of knowing how the Orrkasi powered their ships or recharged their batteries, or even if they used electrical power the way we did. The cargo hauler never ran out of power; it was also a much simpler machine. The power supplies for their laser weapons were highly unstable, and the last thing I wanted was to do something that would result in another explosion. We landed the ship and decided to camp outside. It was a barebones affair, as no one wanted to risk a fire and chance being seen or attacked, especially since we were farther away from the other survivors than we had ever been and the Orrkasi transport was no longer a reliable vehicle.
“What’s that?” Trix asked, pointing up at the sky.
The three of us were lined up on our backs, chewing smoked meat and staring up at the stars. The scout drone charged while we rested and ate our dinner, with the Polytrots snuggled close to us. I could feel with my bare hands that it was cooler in the grassy hills than out on the desert. Our heavy armor suits would keep us warm, even in the devastating cold of hard vacuum in outer space. The Polytrots, on the other hand, had no protection from the elements besides the fur that lined their backs, which I wasn’t sure offered much insulation.
“What?” Barker asked.
“That,” Trix said. “Look, it’s moving.”
There were a thousand stars in the sky, their faint light paling in comparison to Leonis B’s twin moons, one huge and, it seemed, impossibly close and the other smaller. Both were thick crescents of bright white light. In the fabric of the cosmos, something moved.
“I see it,” I said. “Looks like a satellite.”
“There aren’t any,” Trix said.
“We don’t have any,” I said. “Doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“You think the Orcs are still up there?” Barker asked.
For a moment, no one spoke. We were thinking of the possibility that perhaps the Orrkasi had left the system. It was such a fragile hope that no one wanted to speak for fear that it might slip away from us.
“Polt!” Mook yipped suddenly, leaping to his feet.
The other Polytrots followed suit, except for the injured alien who lay trembling beside Trix.
“What is it?” Barker asked.
“Whovat!” Sorj barked at us as he dashed back to the Orrkasi transport ship.
Barker stuck out a hand to me. I despised my weakness but couldn’t let pride keep me from accepting his offer of help. I took his hand, and he pulled me up quickly in one smooth motion. Trix was up too, the wounded Polytrot in her arms.
“They want us to follow them,” I said.
No one needed any more encouragement to take shelter in the ship. We were on an alien planet, and while the moons were bright, it was still too dark to see more than a few meters in any direction.
“What do you think is out there?” Barker asked.
I shook my head as the rear hatch slowly closed. “No idea.”
“Can we send out the drone?” Trix asked.
“It’s still charging,” I said.
With the rear hatch closed, it was completely dark inside the alien ship. I felt safe enough inside to use the LEDs on my helmet to give us some light.
“Might as well try to get some rest,” I said. “We’re safe enough for the night.”
“As far as you know,” Barker said. “There could be an animal out there with the size and strength to crack this ship open like an egg.”
“We haven’t seen any indication of that,” I said.
“True, but we’ve been down in the desert,” Barker countered.
“Maybe they don’t roam that far,” Trix suggested.
“Or maybe they don’t exist,” I insisted.
As soon as I said it, a deep, reverberating growl sounded. I was sitting on a seat with my back against the bulkhead and felt the growl as much as I heard it.
“Holy shit,” Barker said, his voice barely a whisper.
I moved away from the wall, hating myself for letting fear get the best of me. As soon as the growl died away, we heard a different sound, the harsh noise of something rough scraping against the side of the ship.
“That does it,” Trix said. “I’m not sleeping.”
It sounded like the scraping was moving from the rear of the ship toward its front. I felt like an idiot for not thinking of an obvious solution sooner and started toward the cockpit.
“Maybe we can see what’s out there through the canopy,” I said.
“And maybe it’ll see you,” Barker yelped.
“Let’s all calm down,” I ordered. “Stay here if you want—I’m going to have a look.”
I sounded confident, but my hands were on the pistol grips of my LAR as I moved up toward the cockpit. Mook stayed with me faithfully, making frightened sounds all the while. We entered the cockpit after I shut off the LEDs on my helmet. It was darker inside the ship than out, and with my helmet’s low-light magnification, I could see for several meters outside the ship.
After a few moments, a large head appeared beside the front of the ship. It belonged to something that looked like a cat crossed with a traditional Chinese dragon. There were flaps of skin stretched on stiff spines that extended from either side of the creature’s face, and long whiskers drooped down on either side of its mouth. The eyes were big, with diamond-shaped golden irises. The creature was moving slowly, smelling the ship and searching for any sign of life.
Mook and I stood frozen in place, staring up at the creature as it moved slowly around the front of the ship. It was bigger than an elephant and covered with what appeared to be grass. It was, I knew, more likely to be some type of fur that would blend in with the grass on the rolling hills of the planet. The creature had a thick chest and a narrow rear; all four legs were bulky with muscle. When it was nearly around the cockpit and to the other side of the ship, the creature growled again, flashing its teeth. The fangs were as long as my arm from elbow to fingertip. From the way it looked at the canopy of transparent material, I felt certain it could see me. As it moved past, I saw that the beast had a long, thin tail that forked at the end and swished back and forth as it stalked back toward the rear of the ship.
My knees were shaking, and I felt sick. If not for Mook and his companions, we would have been easy prey for the creature. There was no doubt in my mind that it was a carnivore, and I suspected that even our heavy armor suits wouldn’t have survived being chewed by those massive teeth.
“What was it?” Trix asked when Mook and I returned to the cargo bay.
“Some type of animal,” I said. “It was huge.”
“I hate this planet,” Barker said.
“It’s lucky for us we landed in the desert,” I said. “That thing was covered in some type of camouflaging fur that looked exactly like the grass on the hills. I can’t be certain about the color, but my guess is you wouldn’t see it until you were right on top of it.”
“Or it was on top of you,” Barker said.
“Cho!” Sorj agreed.
“Fortunately for us, we’re not alone,” I said, rubbing Mook’s back. “Our friends gave us plenty of warning. Thank you, Mook.”
“Cho!” the Polytrot yipped in reply.
“So tomorrow...” Trix asked.
“We load up the cargo hauler and head south at first light,” I said. “Let’s get some sleep while we can. In the morning, we are going home.”