《Terror Tide》


 00 - Those Without.

    It was of sanguine, hinting of mud and wanting of salt and fire.


    I could hear and smell it.


    It was a snap unheard, and a taste untasted.


    The craving.


    One for the marrow of bone.


    The wanting for what lies below the flesh of unwanted foe.


    Hatred, coalesced towards the one most unloved.


    It was a mind designed to do nothing else but harm.


    And that mind was mine - molded by the hands of me, and many of them.


    And I needed another.


    I knew that far below there lurked an answer to a question.


    One I did not have.


    But I know.


    And I knew.


    ¡°Am I so lost?!¡±


    00 - Those without.


    There came a scream.


    ¡°Jkl''hrai-na kjrt?!¡±


    Out of fright in the cold of the night ¨C far under sundered, benighted skies of thunder ¨C he stirred from slumber. A horrid voice resonated within his slowly waking mind, but mattered little.


    Alreno found himself trapped and buried by mounds of rubble lying deep within depths beyond darkness. Several sunderous sounds above came down like waves, flooding his prison of debris as the resonance rang.


    Despite the weight keeping him stuck in place, he mused over the mess of noises breaking his short ¨C albeit unintended ¨C respite. Eyes agog, darting across an unbroken view of the unseen, his memory cleared through a tired haze of confusion wishing to catch even the faintest glimmers from outside his holdings.


    Clanks and clacks there then encroached. Muffled dissonances became clearer, coarser... those of digging.


    What he found strangest was how all his expectations were skipped in the surrounding soundscape. Every brattle fell to a silence where a loud metal-on-stone creak of heavy tools should have been. Yet no mechanical noise recurred nor could a single voice be heard. He thus inferred the effort unbecoming of his fellow lowly soldiers of the Sol.


    Who''d dare deign to entertain the venture? he wondered, staring blankly into shadows, listening as what sought him sifted through the tunnel''s rubble. Following stronger rumbles, several heavier rocks displaced, shaking his core harder than before.


    The digger lurched above, quickly causing concrete clashes, scratching at the pile with a rising ferocity. Sudden shifts sent smaller segments skating across fallen metal columns, skipping off of stone debris as the aggregate fell away. Weight alleviated. He could feel his armor entering a more responsive state, evermore unburdened.


    By way of no coincidence, tiny rays of flickering light cast through and into the mound weakening around him.


    In a flash, shines pierced the black with a force so strong that he had to squint at the brightness breaking the dark. His eyes winced and watered, adjusting to what at first seemed some kind of incandescence reflecting from the surface of a distant pond. The false image conjured by his muddied vision quickly cleared, giving way to reality.


    Certes, a fool is I to have expected more, he thought.


    Dancing far away in an elegant blaze was a tall and tempestuous orange-red fire, rising and falling in erose flames, coiling through a massive skyscraper seated on a city tier high above; flanked with refractions through crystal carvings, shattering shafts of light to a hundred flickering beams. The conflagration burned a savage hue, taking the majority of his view, but his focus was forced elsewhere.


    A dark, hunched figure strode past his narrow field of vision, moving in ways too horrid to ignore. It showed itself ¨C at first ¨C as nothing more than a phantasmagorical silhouette; ghost-like, shrouded by shaded, swarthy, oscillating, ever-decaying mist.


    Like static, the dark gilings shivered in chaos, fading back to where they seemed to appear: Nowhere.


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    Oh shit, he thought.


    The weight entrapping his armor attenuated, allowing him to move ever so slightly. The creature crawled and clawed and tore all along his left flank, knowing what to lift, ensuring Alreno would not be crushed below.


    He shimmied his arms in all directions, finding less resistance towards his right. Protected and strengthened, he shook through rocks and pulled upwards, no longer tombed to the tonnage, climbing to the top.


    With a loud crash, a large column reacted to his struggles, bringing a cascade of rocks and dust upon him once again.


    Why me? he wondered in willing vain.


    Though buried in the mound from the waist down, being merely half-trapped was progress.


    After surveying his surroundings to see where he was ¨C as if it mattered or as if he''d even know ¨C all he saw was rubble spilled onto a ratty road, populated with corpses, craters and scattered pieces of other damaged structures.


    ¡°Hello?!¡± He loudly yelled and wildly waved, his eyes fluttering towards even the faintest of movements in the darkness. Though in his mind he knew what had saved him, his inner coward longed to be wrong.


    ¡°Whoever it is you are, I''m of RB1¨C3, A.E division, Private Alreno Vo-...¡±


    With one sudden sight, he found his heart wading through a terror-tide, only to be then swept within and spread thin by its sharp maw, wide.


    He wasn''t wrong.


    Twenty feet away, just ahead of the shattered crystal bricks and broken dark-stone remnants his savior''s silhouette rose to lounge in shadow as would a mirage on asphalt. Captivating, haunting, horridly large and broadly-spaced, bright-red eyes shone like molten rubies through the night, and on him, its gaze became fixed.


    In the abyssal silence, it stared at Alreno for a moment without motion; the creature''s predatory eyes assaying the armor he wore, opting then to regard the machinery a few moments more. The fiendish being looked long and hard at the suit protecting him; an impressive piece far beyond this world ¨C to it ¨C it seemed. A thick contraption of plated blue and teal-painted steel and osmium robotics, withholding the wearer from atmospheric exposure. Nothing sat in the palms of Alreno''s heavyset gloves, weapons least of all. With that fact noted, it made its move, lunging forward on all fours, crawling low.


    Rocks small and large cascaded as the alien stopped just short of his reach ¨C not that he would have tried to touch it first.


    It loomed and lurked uncomfortably close. Its raptorish head bobbed as would a bird''s, confused, with nix evincing the cause of quandary. In fear, Alreno stared back blankly at a long and snakeish face draped with quilted, unkempt cloth furls, his eyes locking into those of the lizard. Minutes passed them by, the creature moving again only when Alreno began to fidget; his focus straying to the penumbric field of shadows the alien''s body seemed to shed with elated undulations.


    A long neck reined in all movements of its head, and slowly, two limbs pronged with three outstretched, spidery fingers ¨C each drenched with blood and concrete ¨C tarried in his view. It was clear to him that the alien meant to mitigate any misconceptions. Past the patency, its attempt was failing.


    Then, acting on what little courage Alreno had reserved behind his mind''s infandous cloud ¨C one barring a break in senses to fits of screams and punches ¨C he reached out timidly to the claws on offer.


    With a sudden speed like none he''d ever seen, the creature quailed away the robe-wrapped arm in a loud snap of air and fabric, concurrently coiling the other around his gauntlet, clutching him by the wrist. Onyx-like claws raked across the paint of his armor, his muscles twitching beneath as though he felt incisions.


    Sickly gray and tinged with sallow, to Alreno, its disturbingly coriaceous skin and scales were a sight made more vile by what few unblood-soused sinews strayed outside the robe''s concealment, briefly betraying the alien''s hidden frame.


    Scratching with a foot nigh-indiscernible from the hand upon his armor, the lizard loosed rocks where the mound met Alreno''s waist. Dust and shadows were becoming hard to tell apart the more it dug.


    The alien pulled as Alreno wiggled and climbed, lacking anything remotely resembling coordination; both sharing a compulsion to move away from one another. Eventually, their work paid off and from the pile, the alien set Alreno free.


    The rubble under them gave way as he left it, and upon dislodge they each fell, tumbling down from the weight and momentum, rolling at the mercy of the mound. Alreno remained safe within his armor, but on the creature, one sharp pain struck after another whilst sliding, spinning and whirling across the jagged cement rocks. Its robe negated little, leaving naught but its scales to take the brunt of sharp and blunt strikes against crystal and stone.


    The lizard landed upon the flats of the street, and Alreno came falling right behind, the whole of his suit''s weight bouncing off of his savior.


    Onto its side the creature writhed in an Ouroborosian fashion, clutching different parts of itself through a silent fit. Alreno rushed to his feet, clamoring to the creature''s aid. As he got barely a step away however, it stood, facing him with fingers parted and arms held wide. He took the hostile hint.


    For a time, all he could do was look, feeling guilt for the pain he had caused. The alien met his stare, yet in its eyes was nothing but a lifeless, unchanging gaze; accompanied by occasional bobbings of its head and unending quivering beneath its robe. He stared for a time longer, until it became clear that his savior seldom blinked. Meekly, Alreno looked away, knowing to not approach.


    ¡°I''d''ve never opined you a fount of favors,¡± Alreno said, wearily wasting his breath.


    Nary a drop of gratitude in his tone was apparent, or present, but he was thankful nonetheless. Before another word could escape his mouth though, the lizard swiftly stepped further away, as if all interest had left.


    He receded as well, walking back to the mound of rubble in search of his belongings. From over his shoulder he briefly glanced at the alien, only to see its head beginning to bob once again.


    For reasons unknown to him, the alien lingered nearby, waiting, and from regular turns... still watching. With time seemingly on his side, he dug through the rubble, searching for what he had lost.


    Minutes passed.


    When he spotted the alien from over his shoulder again, it had taken to walking on all fours, piquing his interest and pausing his venture. His attention honed in on how it took large, disgusting, gormandizing bites from bullet-riddled corpses lying in the street.


    The creature tore at muscles and eviscerated abdomens, taking in whatever it could with every loud snap of its jaw; its mouth lined with strange, jagged fangs. The width at which it opened seemed impossible as it clamped onto a corpse, shaking its head from side to side, ripping flesh apart, lapping at the exposed tissue and drinking the blood.


    ¡°Ugh... urg!¡± Alreno gagged at the sight. His savior tore into a dead man''s face, licked an eye and forced it out. Not vomiting became an active effort as he watched both prongs of its tongue slowly entrap the cord of the optic nerve, snipping at it like rusty scissors and almost erotically curling around the eye until it popped. He could stand to look no longer.


    With a few minutes more of his nervous digging, he at last placed his hands around both his and another''s most damning possession.


    ¡°Sys-check?¡± he whispered, pulling it from the mound and wiping dust from its reflective armor.


    ¡°All systems operational,¡± the drone replied.


    Alreno let it go, allowing the machine to hover freely. He then turned around and was surprised ¨C for whatever reason ¨C to see that the space once occupied by the gray creature had been filled by ash, burnt skin and grains of dust blowing in the wind.


    It was neither there nor gone.


    In view ¨C far off ¨C there walked a robed and scaled silhouette shrouded in speckled shadows.


    Without a moment of thought, he ran after it...


    Leaving his rifle behind.

 01 - A Name

    If, down in darkness daylight dies,


    To a fated serenade we''d not abide,


    We are to be the few who dare survive.


    Neither for either thanks, nor blame,


    Will you ever learn...


    01 - A Name


    Through the city of shimmering cinders and across shattered streets of scattered crystal splinters, a deep silence swept them for an hour steady; Alreno ever keeping at the lizard''s heels. He followed closely, keeping it in view, though doing all he could to eschew direct eye contact whenever it looked back.


    What little blas¨¦ sang-froid in him that yet remained slowly fell apart with sights of copious corpses breaking through his psyche. The dead littered their way, the city tier being no more than a sundered field of fallen souls.


    Were I more brave and less a knave, our fates''d be shared, Alreno mused, stepping over a soldier''s remains.


    To the lip of the platform and to the edge of the tier they walked, until the alien stopped.


    In slow deliberation, its head bobbed.


    Alreno, taking in their surroundings, made a guess of the motion''s general purpose: A signal of curiosity, confusion and thought. Though as he, too, looked off of the tier, confusion was the last thing he began to feel. Like a maze made to torture the mind, the city spanned across and far beyond what he could see.


    There was no ground nor sky. Their horizon was of crystal, stone and metal; with plumes of smoke standing substitute for clouds.


    ¡°To where''s it now we go?¡± he asked.


    The alien seemed to give Alreno''s existence and words the same amount of attention: Nearly none.


    Sharp pains seared all throughout the lizard''s skull as tethered shadows curled and frayed its mind, throwing thoughts into a madness imposed as opposed to one possessed, sending sullen, unsung imaginings and undone deeds to burn within the flames of another braneworld. There were things that it knew, had known and could still know. Yet all-in-all, it knew enough to not know now.


    Steeped in anguish, it ran towards the nearest building, clawing through long-burnt walls and disappearing from Alreno''s sight.


    With hopes for the end of walking war-torn streets, Alreno ran to keep pace. Just as he''d wished, the creature felt it was time to stop for the night; though with the dark spanning far beneath all the city''s tiers, it could still have been daylight for all Alreno could tell.


    Once he was inside, he noticed something strange. The alien''s eyes were a deep red, but as it happened, they were not reflecting light from the fires in the city''s streets as he had once thought.


    In the total darkness, they remained radiant.


    They reflected nothing.


    Its eyes themselves were bright and fulgid bioluminous lanthorns, permanently left aglow with an oxidized luciferin scintillation all their own.


    ¡°Enable forward lights,¡± Alreno commanded, turning to the drone hovering behind him.


    In a flash of yellow and white, three wide bulbs lit the dreary room they''d entered. Then, like a startled sea of microscopic insects, the field of black dust around the alien quickly shrank and vanished, as if signaled to retreat.


    ¡°Wha-¡± No, he stopped himself to rethink his words.


    ¡°Verbal recount. Past ten seconds...¡± he said to the drone.


    ¡°Observations of note: Activation of light source,¡± replied the drone before beeping softly to signify the end of recorded events.


    Alreno began to wonder what he''d seen, but disregarded it just as fast. He was tired, leaving open the possibility of having imagined the sight. If it had been real, however, it didn''t appear to bother the lizard.


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    He set aside his thoughts, wasting no time on the shadows.


    Trying to regain some bearing on normalcy, he looked around the room. There wasn''t anything overly interesting.


    All the walls were of a sabulous white, saturated with filth and bullet holes. Once a store, or perhaps a home for those fond of shelves and broken devices, but he couldn''t be sure. For all his days within the city, Alreno had never seen an obvious alien abode. Every structure he had ever entered appeared to be suited more for business, manufacture, storage or entertainment.


    The damage to the room in which they stood made it hard to tell, but looting of one kind or another had occurred. As well as being suggestive of panicking civilians, the floors and walls were charred by thermite, which left no openings for any kind of whodunit. Some small troop of soldiers from the Sol Conglomerate had undoubtedly arrived, shot the place up for whatever reason, and then moved on. There was very little of the first room intact, but strangely, there were no corpses.


    Doubtful shots remotely akin to strays could these have been, he thought as he touched the bullet holes, wondering who the intended targets were.


    Behind him, the creature croaked like a dying frog.


    ¡°G?r''?t s?lgo''?l,¡± it said, slowly lowering its head towards the ground.


    Alreno spun around, his eyes widened, and his chest throbbed as if it had suddenly swelled with blood too thick for his heart to pump.


    The alien hadn''t spoken to him before, and from thereafter, never in his life would he forget the voice, nor its hauntingly ethereal echo.


    ¡°Vrat''U?a''lo?...¡± It continued. ¡°S¨©?i??. V?¨¬??ie ¨­''??je''jao... N¨¾ia¨¨lk? g?as''k¨¡ls ijija''ga''j¨ªas.¡±


    It seemed as if two creatures spoke in unison; one of a low and shrill sonority, the other infused with barking bloodlust.


    Run... he told himself. His instincts implored the same, yet his legs did no more than shake within his armor.


    The pain.


    The lights.


    The noises.


    The overwhelming senselessness of it all burrowed in the alien''s head and twisted its mind. Alreno''s graceless stomping caused it nothing but an obscene amount of aural grief, and the drone''s bright distortions of the light were disorienting; annoying to a point it hoped to never know again.


    Without any consideration for ¨C or sense of ¨C its temperament, Alreno suppressed his fears and decided to pursue the small chance of opening an effective discourse, aware at last that verbal communication with it was more than a fool''s dream.


    To disturb it was not his goal, but risks had to be taken. Something ¨C anything ¨C had to be done to reach whatever friendly terms were possible between it and himself. If nothing else, a single step towards civility had to be made.


    Alreno''s whole train of thought derailed in a single moment as he caught a glimpse of himself in his drone''s hull. Reflecting back at him in the silvery mirror-like polish was the distorted shape of a walking robot; a humanoid tank carrying belts of ammo and a large military pack - albeit mostly empty. Between the three animate beings in the room, only the alien seemed to be alive. Not one patch of Alreno''s skin was visible through the mechanized metal and glass engulfing him.


    He was ¨C to it ¨C a blueish bipedal machine. The alien stood as would a mere adolescent, but he, like all Sol soldiers in such armor, amounted to a miniature mech.


    Seeking to remedy a cold and steely appearance, he resolved to show his face. Others in the past had noted how his looks were far from calming, but regardless, it would be a gesture to seem more friendly in his mind.


    A scant chance, he admitted.


    With two flicks of his thumbs, Alreno opened the dome shielding around his head and undid the clamps connecting his helmet to the rest of his armor, pulling it off and slowly turning from the drone''s reflective surface to face the alien eye-to-eye.


    He knew that the air was safe, for the most part, so he took a deep breath and steadied his expression.


    ¡°Fuck!¡± he yelled and coughed, gagging violently at the smell of the city.


    All the alien did was watch him, unperturbed by sudden motions, though bothered with the noises. Alreno quickly unhooked his emergency oxygen filter from his side and secured it over his face, trying to recover.


    That foul, unfiltered inhalation he had taken tasted like death and toxic fumes, burning with blood and carrion detritus.


    Then, for the first time, Alreno noticed a clear change within his savior''s countenance. It looked at him in a way he didn''t like, not one that brought him fear, but anger and incumbrance.


    The beast''s red, soulless eyes locked onto him with a kind of wonder-without-awe; a blank stare over-laced with confusion ensnared by studious musings over what he ¨C the ''alien'' ¨C could be.


    What he could not read, however, was that had the trait of laughter evolved within its species, the deathly quiet room would sound very different.


    Alreno sported a pair of soft-orange eyes, a head adorned with silver hair tied into dreadlocks and skin shaded a pale albino as white as snow. And he was male; a fact unobvious to it.


    They shared nary a word nor phrase nor gesture, and Alreno was far from sure that it could even hear in the way that he did. To its strange and massive ears a basic ''hello'' could be perceived as a distorted gargling for all he ¨C quite rightly ¨C knew.


    Scrambling from one part of the room to another, he could only mumble to himself for a time as he searched and dug through the staserian garbage for anything he could find. One by one, he touched and meticulously tinkered with everything littering the floor, hopelessly scrying into alien wonders for any shred of usefulness.


    There was nothing except for rubble, bits of paper-like curiosities, pieces of the walls and ceiling, an odd array of unserviceable alien technologies, and enough ash to fill a morgue furnace.


    Oh...


    Alreno did not think much of his first idea, but it was appropriately simple.


    He grabbed the drone and swung it around, pointing its lights to the cleanest wall before reaching down and smearing his gauntlet across a pile of thick, black ash. The only living member in his audience kept to the darkest corner of the room, a healthy distance away from him, but watched attentively as he scribbled six symbols on the least damaged surface of the wall.


    After promptly finishing, Alreno apprehensively exhaled and stood directly under what he had messily written. Uncertainty crept onto his face, and as simply as he could, he pointed at the wall, then his head, uttering three simple syllables.


    ¡°Alreno.¡±

 02 - Fear Few.

    02 ¨C Fear few.


    Lispy and vile with a vafrous flair, it''s voice dared out to blare ¡°Halratu.¡±


    The seemingly sickly and scared pasty pongid there then stared unawares of the knifes its tongue spat towards her ears.


    A horrid hand of a palm too wide containing fingers numbering far too many directed but a single one to the narrow bridge of its tiny nose.


    ¡°Halratu,¡± it said once more. A name. As if she at all should care. This new, mundane hunk of weak and pale, ersatz flesh and torpid steel held enough gall to announce itself. And of all times, it chose then.


    Fangs twitching, her eyes squinted. She swallowed venom.


    Honor the promise to spite the premise...


    Irrespective of the torments scratched across once-polished scales, she felt restraint was to be maintained. She vowed to herself that ¨C at least for now ¨C this worth-aught beast ought not be slaughtered; her problems being hers and hers alone, none to make known nor to be shared with the alien.


    Onto her tongue she snapped and swallowed, mixing blood with far more venom for the needed spur to decamp the corner ¨C into wretched rays casting from the machine looming equidistant all the walls.


    Each set of her inner eyelids were forced to fall low as numerous luminous ails assailed her; wishing once more to be covered in a sheet of shadowed, brane-blurred black. Within such unfocused light there fired photons in foul colors; dancing like raindrops, flickering and glimmering as would dying cinders in the wind. However, the blinding and pessimal effulgence remained far from the worst sensation.


    Dilatory steps brought her closer, and again the alien said, ¡°Hal...ra...tu.¡±


    ¡°Halratu,¡± she echoed, unsure of what else to do.


    The creature pestiferously grinned from behind the mask, seeming to signal that her response met its expectation. But that mouth. That grin. That joy-filled, pearl-toothed, derisory, melena-fressing grin... She nary liked the look, having nothing for it but unbridled scunner and odium.


    Desires in blinder''s ires, she thought, staring into the armored creature''s eyes.


    Her ghoulish hands tensed more than normal, and with talons at the ready a savagery implored her for crazed lashings. The talkative alien had a strange softness to its skin, one which seemed particularly edible. To cut into its cheeks and tear the jaw from its skull, or to pry out its teeth one by one, knowing that to hear and feel the gums rending would rouse that special something. The thought alone was nympholeptic.


    To feel her cold fingers warmed with a fresh body''s blood, to pull skin from muscle and muscle from bone, breaking to sieges on imaginings held by the shackles of her mind came like incursive cravings. But that was her problem, and not one to share with the alien.


    All her urges abided their barrings, and in silence, cogitations swarmed the ''Halratu'' standing before her.


    From the sight of its coughs and the apparatus used to end them, she supposed the air was unfavorable to its kind. But therein merited few thoughts of worth. Above all, it seemed to call for solidarity. Alas, the symbols scribbled on the wall had no meaning to her. At all.


    ¡°A L R E N O.¡±


    She forced herself to commit each letter to memory, whilst being sure that what ''Halratu'' wanted was perfectly pellucid.


    To all fours she fell low and crawled close, dragging her scarred palms across the floor, lathering ash upon them. She then scrawled beside Halratu''s name, and mirroring the alien in as many respects worth the effort, she pulled her robe further back to show her head entirely. The last display of ''lizard-see, lizard-do'' was her mimicking of its gesture and a brief oratory with a talon drifting queerly around her eyes.


    ¡°Rh?t Y¨°h¨¦lm''O?ci Xi''fat?¨ªr,¡± she said, returning the introduction.


    ¡°... Pardon?¡± Alreno raised an eyebrow, scratched his head and panned around the room, beginning to slowly process what he''d heard. All of the joy from his expression had drained, and thankfully, the grin was gone.


    ¡°Rat?¡± Alreno asked. ¡°Raat? Reet?¡±


    Thrice hearing verbal stumblings and butchered barks, she opted to repeat, ¡°Rh?t Y¨°h¨¦lm''O?ci Xi''fat?¨ªr.¡±


    ¡°Rot? Wrote..? Reat? Raet?¡± Four more noises, all short, all confused. Over and over he attempted to say it, but each time he tried he felt a need to try again, doubting himself to the fullest.


    ¡°Rh?t,¡± she said again with infinite patience, regretting the choice and wondering how well she''d pronounced the armored alien''s name herself.


    ¡°Rheet? Rhot? Rot? Wrote? Whret? Rat? Ret? Rrrhet? Raat?¡±


    The aesthesis of sesquipedalian-induced confusion in ''Halratu'' was all that Rh?t gave any attention to. The armored alien made no attempts at wagging its tongue to anything beyond the first piece of her name, so that the longer assibilations went unspoken. For the best, perhaps, what with having drastically different perceptions of sound. To reach any understanding, there were bridges to cross that seemed too far, if yet built at all.


    Words bilked him as he looked upon the lizard''s uncovered head, every small detail seeming stranger each moment his mentation gripped what few commonalities they had. Each of their species evolved a form of eye, surmising neither hailed from worlds destitute of light; but hers were large and red with blacks instead of whites, glowing brightly whilst his were small, orange and non-emissive. His teeth were square. Hers were daggers. His tongue was silver. Hers was forked.


    Whatever environment wrought Rh?t''s ilk favored the predacious. Unlike the thick, dark-gray majority of her skin and scales, the rough and leathery black skin surrounding her eye sockets reminded Alreno of a dog''s nose, and her face was filthy all over ¨C powdered with dust, splashed with blood and dirt.


    He took a special interest in her cranium, trying to guess if she had a large brain for complex thinking or a thick skull for headbutting, or perhaps to withstand tremors and shocks from biting large prey.


    Alreno then noticed the alien had started inspecting him as well. Though unsure why, the look felt... wrong. So he broke the silence yet again.


    ¡°Raat?¡± he asked with a very slow, very clear voice.


    ¡°?lr?no,¡± she replied; although to her ears, his pale face would forever be Halratu.


    Though Alreno became relieved and gratified that they were officially introduced to one another, she thought nearly nothing of it. Nevertheless, by efforts and ashes, there now stood a basal system of communication. Having first names exchanged between beings theretofore unknown to each other was no small feat, both met amidst a war sited far from the embrace of their connatural spiral arms.


    Complicated questions ran through him in abundance, but that twisted, long, forlorn, lizardish face looking back at him brought forth a number of basic queries. He began to wonder things he could not once recall having to ask any other alien in his life. Most non-humans he''d come in contact with spoke some language already known, and he had never met a creature that he hadn''t read about beforehand.


    What raison d''¨ºtre beckoned? he wondered. Why domicile the city? Why remain in wake of war? Why save me..? He hadn''t the scintilla of a clue.


    Alreno viewed Rh?t''s blinks as unbearably slow, maybe three every five minutes, if not less. The pauses between them were so long that his own eyes watered watching, whilst hers always returned to a thousand-Au stare. Such an empty gaze on neither corpse nor soldier could have been so affecting, but with his savior''s head now in better view, she looked like a child to him ¨C one far from good condition. Scars speckled her scales like stars in the night. Some were far too severe for anyone with a sense of conscious to inflict upon the young.


    It took him a moment longer to then notice that what he''d previously thought of as ratty black hair sitting atop her head wasn''t even hair. Black spindles with sharp ends protruded from her skull like curved spikes. He gathered that they could be moved at will, and he was right; having then witnessed flexes from them.


    Alreno wished to wait and watch the alien''s actions in the hope of learning more, but he could only liken speculations to determining the features, age and sex of an animal without asking the owner or looking under its tail; an obviously bad idea if ever he''d had one.


    ¡°Rot... Raat...¡± he mumbled.


    Keeping the exchange as simple as possible, Alreno grabbed another handful of ash and scratched and scrawled and wiped and smeared it across the wall until announcing, ¡°There we are!¡± with a loud and misplaced enthusiasm. He stepped aside to give Rh?t a view of what he had made. Something about trying to teach her made him happy, and he wasn''t sure why.


    She looked upon the two drawings for a moment, but then back to Alreno for elaboration. It seemed all he would give were more gestures towards the scribbles though, so she looked at the wall again, unsure if they were really what they appeared to be. Oddly enough... they were.


    For reasons she could not readily grasp, the tall, silver-haired, pastel-skinned pongid had crudely drawn two sets of legs, and between them were different genitalia. They were of ugly and misshapen make, those prone to animals; but that was the alien''s problem, and not one she would have liked him to have shared with her.


    Rh?t took her time to think of what the reply ought to be, and it was time well spent. Among social mistakes she''d made, the worst often sprang from acts of misjudgment, leading to slips of her senses involving premature impartations of a non sequitur.


    She let the silence linger, and with it there crept worries all throughout Alreno''s mind. He was made to ponder over what customs, formalities and depictions were deemed acceptable to the alien, and he got nowhere, being without a point of reference. His biggest concern regarding the question''s clarity struck last and hardest: The idea of the alien taking his inquiry as a sexual statement or proposition.


    Yet some luck remained with him. The lizard''s mind had no room for conclusions predicated on any series of unconnected guesses like the maladroit, hypothetical horrors he had mulled. Rh?t lethargically looked at him and his drawings, studying them for their meanings. Nothing came to mind. Not until Alreno panicked and pointed to his male scribble and then to the armor over his own crotch, that is.


    Among mattering matters...


    Once Rh?t understood what the snow-skinned man was doing she couldn''t help but think herself a fool for not figuring it out sooner, or rather, immediately. She alleviated his ignorance with another mimicking of his gesture, pointing to the twisted scribbling of a woman''s legs; which she thought (and hoped) didn''t do her or anything justice.


    Nodding like a madman, Alreno stepped closer and pointed at the female sketch as well, all the while pointing a finger directly at Rh?t and looking at her inquisitively. To him, she did not look manly, womanly, boyish or girly in any way. Try as he might, his eyes saw no more than fauna, much more genderless than androgynous; not that he''d be found as some svelte swain to swoon over in anyone''s sane sweven.


    Incredulity meant nothing to her, though. Offense was there to take, not to give, and Alreno''s thoughts were hardly worth reaching towards. They were different species, but even she knew that it was her flag and hers alone that fluttered atop the highest peak of Mount Epicene. Hoping to remove all doubt, Rh?t lowered her right hand and pointed at the drawing again with her left. He sighed in minor relief, knowing he''d no longer make the impersonal mistake of mentally referring to her as an it, but still, his other thoughts remained in jumbles.


    He didn''t bother making any age guesses, since he had a more important question: What is she?


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    It was so simple a thing to ask that he didn''t really know how to do it. By no means was Rh?t dressed, armed or armored as soldiers were, but death was near her like a close friend who did ofttimes beg favors as insane as they were inane; though still it seemed she granted them.


    Creepily ¨C as far as humans could be ¨C he stared at her in silence, trying to wrap his head around what she was. Even as Rh?t lay down to relax, he tried to take note of how she moved, unaware that her pain screeched a constant tune.


    Not a solitary nociceptor sat quiet within her, screaming out the anguish of wounds both recent and long-endured. The only sleep to come was involuntary unconsciousness; an inevitable mental burnout. She felt it in her bones, but continuing as she''d done for months, she fought off slumber''s call with a physical fear for what an absence of waking would let occur, and for fear of what future memories could slip back through and mingle with nightmare.


    Alreno was pacing around the room, thinking of what to draw next. He had to hold whatever interest Rh?t seemed to have for his crude, kindergarten methods for as long as possible, but he had to inquire about her health however he could. Something was obviously wrong with the little alien, but he couldn''t know what. Not without seeing a tear shed, a sorrow frowned, a scream let out or a grimace made. All she did was quiver like an animal in the cold.


    More, he thought. There''s to be more.


    Rh?t''s fatigue was execrable, draining her of life and purpose. Small trickles of dark-black blood seeped from her eyes, and from beneath several scales all across her body. Her limbs all shaking, skin bleating agony, body colder than should be and senses slowed to crawls far lower than even bugs could manage. But she was far from uninterested, contrary to Alreno''s worries and observations.


    Once not too long ago, she''d thought that he and his little machine were somehow one in the same. Perhaps both part of a robotic scouting team responding to one set of orders or procedurally generated actions. That theory was shot down when she saw his face, though. There were different types of armor that the invaders used, and there was no shortage of robots, but to distinguish between suit and automation amidst the variations couldn''t be done. Not by her. It was that which brought about a more-than-mild surprise once she''d placed her eyes upon a pasty primate encased within the armor. To yet more surprise, Alreno''s pursuit of knowledge went straight from names to genitals. Along with his own doubts, he did indeed hold her attention.


    Once ceasing the gait that drove his roving thoughts, he was able to decide his next course, turning to the wall to scribble again. He made not merely one or two or six, but over twenty little limnings. At first glance Rh?t did not know what to think of them, since the next question was not about her. Not directly, as it were.


    He further smirched and defaced the ashen wall with partially detailed ships and stick-figure people, knowing even whilst he drew them that more detail would be needed to convey their meaning. With a change here and an extra circle there it all eventually started to become clear.


    Quasi-qabalistic drawings of giant ships and armored bipeds with round ears near the top of the wall could have only signified Alreno''s own species, while the people drawn lower all had rodent-esque physiques, pointed ears, slanted eyes and rugged waves near their hairlines; the staserian.


    ¡°Hu... man.¡± Alreno pointed towards the higher group of people and their little ships. ¡°Human,¡± he said again, pointing at himself.


    Understanding him was easier once he''d made the changes, but from his words and kinesics, Rh?t syllogized that this would be a language near-impossible to learn. Picking herself up from the floor and awkwardly mimicking his pointing movement ¨C unaccustomed to the gesture as she was ¨C Rh?t intelligibly croaked, ¡°U??t ''Hum?n'', ?lr?no.¡±


    She wasn''t stupid. She could tell that he was slowing his pronunciation needlessly; her ears, after all, were far better than his. He gestured at the aliens drawn lower, and on his face was a simple curiosity.


    The Sol Conglomerate bestowed their newest enemies with the title of ''staserian,'' named for the largest nebula ever discovered where their cultures first clashed. All his drawings were to ask was by what name they called themselves. Behind it, however, he also hoped that ''Raat'' would speak the name of her own species; but he didn''t want to ask directly and risk undoing the ''casual'' nature he imagined their exchanges to be.


    Solid reasoning stood. This was not her home. She was not a staserian. She was something else, something out of place; familiar to the planet whilst most likely not a civilian nor native wildlife.


    Sporadic visitor? Ambassador ensnared in crossfire? Lone alien tourist? He could only wonder.


    In response, Rh?t stood and approached the wall once more, crouching to slide and sink her talons into the ash. Alreno remained unaware of it, but his shoddy drawings doubled as questions and answers.


    He had to ask the name of his own enemies, showing just how little his people knew, how little they cared, and how ready they were to engage in warfare. An admirable trait, but a question was still a question, so she drew three ''staserian'' of her own.


    He watched agog as she practically painted the same person three different times with different sets of highly detailed features. The first one she drew, as Alreno had correctly guessed before, was a depiction of the most common breed among the species. Pointed ears, a nose somehow both long and pug, a wrinkled and ridged forehead with a far receded hairline.


    He had seen ¨C and shot ¨C the second breed as well. Shorter, yet still pointed ears, skin adorned with dots, pocks, birthmarks and milium, a more humanoid nose and eyes spaced further apart. The third, however, he had never seen. Rh?t had drawn it with slightly rounder ears and a short nose with wide nostrils. From first to last, she tried to make herself accustom to pointing as she once again awkwardly mimicked him.


    ¡°Wuaqua... Sahpvata... Velra...¡±


    One by one she named the main breeds; of which sub-variations branched.


    ¡°Wu-aqua, Shop-vata, and Vel-ra... Wu-aqua, Shop-vata, Vel-ra... Wu-aqua...¡± Alreno got the names by rote. She did not draw her own species, however, and the names were easier to repeat. They were clearly not of the same language in which she''d spoken to him before.


    She then rudely ruined Alreno''s impromptu art class by hitting the floor with a disturbingly loud ''thud,'' her whole body falling limp. Alreno let out a pathetic yelp from the sound of her head striking the ground.


    ¡°What happened?¡± he asked, surveying the surroundings with a sense of panic.


    ¡°Abrupt horizontality,¡± the drone plainly stated.


    ¡°Move,¡± he demanded, simultaneously pushing the machine aside.


    Alreno knelt in front of Rh?t and looked her over, doing what little he could to make medical observations. He was no doctor, but he was a soldier of the Sol, meaning that a full year of his training had been dedicated to learning insectoid, avianoid, and of course, humanoid emergency first-aid. Yet there was nothing the Sol had to teach of reptiles... or whatever she was.


    He started where he had to: At the basics. Following procedure, he watched her and waited for her to exhale, and as soon as she did Alreno counted both the passing seconds and the breaths she took. When he reached thirty seconds, he multiplied Rh?t''s breaths by two... and got a grand total of two breaths per minute.


    ¡°Not a fuckin'' chance...¡± he mumbled.


    Thinking that he had to have made some mistake, Alreno counted again, only to get the same result.


    The robe, he thought.


    As slowly and non-threatening as possible, he raised a hand and waved it back and forth, keeping his arm from going out-stretched, staying much closer to his face than to hers. It was well within her field of vision, so she didn''t care to directly follow it with her eyes, seeing as how she had no reason to; not without knowing what it would mean to him.


    ¡°Raat...?¡± Alreno kept whispering to her. ¡°Raat?¡± he asked again. To his dismay, she did not (bother to) respond. Her eyes were open, but apart from her occasional blink, she did not move.


    ¡°Okay...¡± he whispered. ¡°Raat? Raaaaat? Help''s needed for the helping. Where''s the pain? Here?¡±


    Alreno pointed all over his own body, asking, ¡°Here?¡± over and over again, wishing for any kind of answer; but he only succeeded in confusing her.


    She thought he was naming body parts at first, but then she came to realize one of two things were true. Either she hadn''t the faintest clue as to what he was doing, or his race was so stupid that they called everything on their bodies by the same name for the sake of simplicity. After all, not every species has braincells to devote towards the subject of anatomy.


    In her short time knowing him, Alreno did not come across as intrinsically violent, so she didn''t spend the energy to move away from him, even though he reeked like an aromatic plant. The very thought of standing hurt, and parts of her danced between being completely numb and in a haze of total agony.


    He wanted to help, but not to prematurely put his hands on an alien. It was dangerous just being near her without his helmet on. The multitude of antibiotics and immunization stimulators running through his blood could fend off the known staserian pathogens, but the chances of her cells having been sampled for anti-infection purposes were exactly zero. There could be no telling how one affected the other, and for all he knew, Rh?t was sick from being near him when he removed his helmet and coughed out some random microbe. The inference was soul-shearing.


    In a haste as purposeful as it was panicked, he left the building and stripped the first corpse he came across, taking a full haversack for the supplies. After returning to her side he opened a medical kit, taking out cleaning wipes and a few rolls of bandages along with a bottle of water, lying them in front of her so she could see them. To keep from creating any more problems for himself, he made a special effort to leave all the stitches, alcoholic sprays, needles and ointments from straying into Rh?t''s sight; not wanting to alarm her with odd colored chemicals and sharp objects.


    ¡°Move or make a noise and this''ll end,¡± Alreno whispered in a soft, oddly caring tone.


    He edgily reached down and grabbed her robe, ready to pull away at the first sign of trouble. With one hand gently touching the thick fabric, he fought off more of his fears. It was with great restraint that he managed to apply no pressure to her body directly as he started taking the robe off of her. Fold by fold he pulled it back and figured out half-way that it wasn''t a robe at all. She wore a heavy and quite dirty blanket, one that was supposed to be brown, but had become too stained with filth and blood to retain much of the original color. How thick it was surprised him. He slowly undid the last wrap and lifted it like a tarp.


    ¡°Daaa...! Shit!¡± he exclaimed, completely failing to contain himself.


    As much as he didn''t want to make any sudden movements or loud noises, Alreno couldn''t help but to flinch away. He stood up while instinctively trying to clasp a hand over his face, but he only smacked and dislocated his mask, breathing in more of the foul air.


    Against delirium, his senses reengaged, and Alreno mustered what he could and collected himself to return to her side yet again, hoping that his eyes were lying ¨C whilst knowing they were not.


    ¡°How ar-... arghh!¡± He tried to expel his anger and adjust his tone. ¡°How are you alive?¡±


    If there was anything else to say, it didn''t come to him, and only three plausible options were open. He could try to focus on helping her, leave her alone, or succumb to tears. All seemed impossible. She was nothing but a display of thin muscles with her bones outlined by the curving of her scales, and all she wore beneath the blanket were pieces of alien clothing, torn and tied together. These ''undergarments'' were wrapped not to conceal her body, but to stop her bleeding.


    If someone somewhere at sometime had told him that she''d clawed her way out of a mass grave, there would be no means to disbelieve it.


    Even considering her horrifying state, she was somewhat lucky. If the fall from the rubble pile had landed her onto her back instead of her side, she would have suffered fatal spinal damage.


    Alreno couldn''t quite tell what they were made of, but running down her spine and tail were numerous black spikes; all thick and sharp, with the hook at the tip of her tail being the most intimidating. Anatomically, it would be impossible for her to lie supine or even sit down, in the human sense. Even her elbows had long, black, hook-like ends clearly attached to the pronounced bones.


    He could hardly believe how many times she''d been cut and bruised. In his mind, Alreno was sure that Rh?t couldn''t weigh much more than a fourth of his armor. She looked broken. He wanted to ask her what happened, but he lacked the means to do so.


    Alreno slowly poured water onto a cloth rag and squeezed it out over Rh?t''s neck, probing her for a reaction. She still didn''t move much more than her eyes, but was certainly more confused than before. After the first pusillanimous dabs, cleaning her came across as being safe enough, but he had no recollection of having to be so consciously gentle. He could make a circle with his thumb and middle finger and fit any part of her arms inside of the loop, except for her elbows and wrists. Fearing that he could fracture a bone with one blunt move, he took his time.


    Upon her back was a particularly gruesome wound encrusted with blood and scab-like growths that had sprouted from where a scale had been fully removed, reinforcing her hardened skin until it could grow back.


    Alreno squinted, looked her over and then raised a silver eyebrow. A confusion caught hold of him. He hadn''t seen it before; having been distracted by her appearance. There was an alien rifle that she''d been keeping concealed within the blanket, and for all the damage he knew this creature could do, he wasn''t aware that she was armed.


    Sedated and immersed within the numbing pain, Rh?t remained motionless throughout her unsolicited rag-bath. She knew he was being as soft as he was able, but every cut he cleaned burned with such pain that old wounds felt new again. It was obvious that he wanted to help her get through the agony, but it was even more obvious that her body made him uneasy.


    Alreno was fine cleaning her arms and shoulders, but he moved slowly and even began to shake when he wiped her face, talons, spindles, legs and chest; and he entirely avoided her hips, thighs and the base of her tail.


    The more he wiped her down the more he thought of her skin as one large scale, broken in places with purple-black muscles and jet-black blood underneath it. She looked like a corpse.


    When he''d finished mending what he deemed decent to mend on a stranger, Alreno grasped a white roll of meshed cloth and started to apply the bandages. As he did, Rh?t began to move. She grabbed the damp rag, cleaning the wounds on her thighs and tail that he would not.


    Alreno lowered his head and looked away, but he continued wrapping her arms, then her shoulders, then her chest and abdomen. When it donned on him that he gave far more thought of her being nude than she did, he chose to finish the job and continued wrapping her as completely as he could, hoping the bandages could hold down her scales long enough to halt the bleeding beneath them.


    Rh?t looked the part of a demonic mummy when he had finished; a somber, sharp-clawed, twig-limbed mess of fragile bones. He had tried, but he could not get any bandages around her face or ears. She didn''t let him subvert her hearing in the slightest, and the thick black spindles were as unwieldy as they looked, shredding through the bandages that covered her back. She wasn''t as tightly wrapped as he''d have liked, but it would have to do.


    The look''s suiting, Alreno thought with mild amusement, gazing into the burning reds of her eyes and thinking of pictures and paintings he''d seen depicting mythical beings. As much as he hated ancient myths, he couldn''t deny that she looked like a demon, or the shell of a once-living thing forced to linger long past her time.


    No noticeable shame, embarrassment, care, fear or awareness to pain showed on her face. It seemed that only her ears could be bothered, and if her eyes had no red glow and if she did not shake from grievous nerve damage, Alreno would see nothing more than a dead body. The sights of many war victims plagued his thoughts like waking nightmares, but even most of them looked more lively than did the quivering lizard.


    She went from standing on her ''feet'' to down on all fours, slowly walking around the room to grow accustom to the bandages. Afterwords, she got on her stomach and lie down upon the blanket with her eyes still open.


    Alreno sat down across from her, digging through the new haversack until he found a ration.


    ¡°Raat...¡± he mumbled, as if to remember a name he''d never forget.

 03 - The Savior.

    03 - The Savior.


    ¡°Fire!¡±


    A single order rose to rifles roaring in their airting of sparks into hailstorms on flesh. Sharp snaps impacted, rung and ruptured, drowning all sounds but blasts and blazes, tearing bodies and walls.


    ¡°Bound up!¡± the squad leader screamed. ¡°Full overwatch on flanks, L.O.C scan and street level visuals!¡±


    On darkened roads athwart them, writhing in large pools of violet blood lay what few surviving staserian remained. Inhuman wailings echoed in the pains left behind by shredded shrapnel and magmatic iron liquid.


    ¡°Down left,¡± one man reported, peaking yonside the site of engagement, covered at all angles by his drone.


    ¡°Down right,¡± another said, sprinting till he slammed behind steel columns, shaking rubbled rocks flecked in auriferous dust from nooks high above, taking aim once more at their targets.


    ¡°Jjike, Iuyjel,¡± came another command. ¡°Advance to down our diehards, every scream''s a problem. And Koal! L.O.C scan, now!¡±


    Under his breath in that high-pitched voice with a snide and bantering tone, Private Koal said, ¡°Yes sir, Mr. Ed...¡±


    Private Jackie dashed again, across from the columns to behind a xanthous staserian jitney. Every pole and track it had once traversed were long defaced and cratered. His drone hovered near the others, confirming a state of overwatch, and as sorely ordered, Jjike and Iuyjel broke cover to the carnage.


    All there was to give them greetings were screaming rodent creatures and grievous wounds caked in powdered concrete. Half of the enemy group were unarmed; helpless ab initio.


    The two gave no hesitations in their imparting of what little mercy there was to give. For many of the staserian, large, green-eyed, armor-clad, ant-like insects standing atop them with jittery antennae would be their final sight. The insectoid soldiers skittered all around, shooting the survivors in their heads.


    ¡°Scan''s clear, Squadlead,¡± said Koal. ¡°Nothing''s near to us on this platform. Besides what we''ve got here and recon tank unit F...D8¨C0, we''re alone for a good ways. But it does look like there''s a few stragglers five tiers up and seven over. The one past all the jagged sparkly shit at three o'' clock. Most likely civies, and they should run into GV5¨C2 for capture.¡±


    ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± Edith scoffed. ¡°There should be a sign of him, some-damn-where. Run another in a wider area.¡±


    ¡°Ed... it''s been nearly two days,¡± Jackie said, butting in where he wasn''t needed, as was his wont. ¡°We would have found him by now if there was someone still to find. Face it, Snowball got thawed. Shit happens.¡±


    Dark blue eyes behind her helmet''s tinted visor and her suit''s protective glass-like face shield narrowed. Edith was almost at a loss for words as she stared at Jackie; he was precisely the insufferable idiot his voice implied.


    ¡°Not his armor or his drone reported a flat-line,¡± she explained as simply as she could. ¡°All it did was freeze. Without a corpse or blood where he landed he won''t be regarded as dead until a KIA is fully confirmed.¡±


    ¡°From where I''m standing, he came down with a pretty bad case of the DUSTWUNs. No one can keep up with bodies in war... Look,¡± Jackie grumbled with growing annoyance. ¡°Every S.R.L.S can detect anything, from a robot to toxic clots of bird shit. Anything and everything! Everything except that goddam ghost... And lets see...¡± Jackie shouldered his rifle and continued by counting people on his fingers. ¡°It fucked up Keith, it fucked up Terry, it fucked up Hike, and it fucked up Al! If he somehow survived that Olympic nose-dive it means that whatever knocked his ass down survived too; ''cuz we didn''t find that either. You saw as well as we did what it had done to the others, so scratch ''em off your list, jot his name down in the fucking-dead book and do whatever you need to do to understa-¡±


    Edith cut off the soldier''s rambling. ¡°Oh!? Well then... Your speculations are noted, Private, and this is an order: Close your cock-sucker until you get a customer... Koal!¡± she ordered, shouting to another soldier. ¡°Call a drop. Get everything refueled and rearmed. We need to get off of this tier before another fuckin'' stray helicoid takes a pass at us.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Eddy, understood,¡± mumbled Koal.


    The tan and chitinous corilu twins, Jjike and Iuyjel, concluded sweeping up the survivors. When the all-clear was given they went skittering back to the humans, purposefully walking through whatever rubble they could to mar their armor with spots, just so they could pass time cleaning their suits later on; to occupy them for the anticipated stretches of boredom to come.


    With an unusual trepidation, Iuyjel butted her head against Jjike''s so that the protective areas around their antennae were touching, passing brainwaves across bio-electric currents.


    ¡°Staserian look very much like humans, do they not?¡± Iuyjel projected to her brother.


    ¡°Indeed?¡± Jjike replied, adding, ¡°Have you noticed the shapes of their mandibles, os frontales and auricles? Tell me, do they seem as ugly as well?¡±


    ¡°What but a similar race could be as ugly as humans?¡± Iuyjel replied.


    ¡°Cut the goddamn thunder!¡± Edith ordered. She could not stand to hear them converse. To human ears, corilu speech came as naught but clicking, like an idle stun-gun or an irksome noise akin to radio static.


    Cor To Hum, Iuyjel thought. The detector around her small head picked up the brainwave command and sent it straight to her drone. It hummed and beeped softly before speaking the received signals.


    ¡°Apologies, Dragoon, but are we so loud?¡± the machine asked with a simulated unisex voice, translating Iuyjel''s thoughts.


    ¡°Hushed noise is noise all the same,¡± Edith said. ¡°Solidify this position and sit tight for the drop.¡±


    And with that, she walked away from her squad, believably pretending to speak with Command. It fooled them all, save for Djhuen, who kept her in his sights.


    Edith simply no longer wanted to be around them, not to see nor to hear them. Quite frankly, she always had issues tolerating her fellow soldiers, but her squad had two exceptions, one of which was missing.


    Where are you, Al? Edith wondered.


    She moved on and on, down the streets and alleyways, beyond the corpses and the rubble. She passed their previous victims and navigated through holes they''d knocked in the walls. Soon enough, Edith stood at the edge of the tier, faced with the city''s ill-assorted, spellbinding nature. All to hear were sounds of bombs... and the hums of the wind. Massive skyscrapers incapable of touching the clouds filled her view, all maculated with the makings of war.


    Thinking of those she''d killed brought no sadness, but what did were her thoughts of a single man. One she couldn''t save. Every thought she had of him made her smile somehow, all except when he was last seen: Falling as he flailed at a creature clawing at his head, descending into the city''s darkness.


    With him fell Edith''s faith in Sol technology. Their eyes showed them what their scanners failed to acknowledge. The enemy, the creature, the thing that stole him away after killing three others. Nothing could track it, not even by motion. They never saw it coming, and could do nothing when it left but remember its deep, red eyes. Like a ghost to the scanners, it came from nowhere, and left much the same.


    Your drone broke, Edith hoped, You''re just out of contact. Maybe it captured you... or better yet, you stole the scan-blocker it has and are sneaking behind the lines. You''re not dead...


    ¡°Dragoon,¡± Koal said into his radio, ¡°The ship''s here... but it''s damn sure not the one you''d want. Pilot says we''re scheduled for a briefing Arche-side. Command confirms it, so we''re outta here for a while.¡±


    ¡°Fuck... Rodger that,¡± Edith begrudgingly complied. She didn''t want to go back. Somewhere deep down she knew Alreno was alive, waiting for her to find him; but she was only half right.


    Edith gathered herself and hurried to her squad, compiling one plan after another. She wanted little more than to convince a commanding officer to green-light a search for Alreno. Plus, new additions to the unit would be mandatory.


    Their most grievous encounter left what was once a ten-man squad as only Koal, Jackie, Jjike, Djhuen, Iuyjel, and herself. Edith constantly forgot that Djhuen was even there, but without Alreno, he became her new favorite soldier. He always stayed far behind, relying on his sniper while his drone did the assault work. His focus, tactical advice and competence were unmatched. Djhuen could manually control his assault drone and snipe at optimum efficiency at the same time with unparalleled reactions. She and others had joked that he was a squad all his own, and was suspiciously low-ranking for what he could do and what he knew.


    Edith had never been a fan of non-humans, not even the Sol''s primary allies and especially not the creepy corilu bugs. However, Djhuen had a cool reserve and a clear mindset that revolved around war and the waging thereof. Nobody tried, did, or even could correct the little insect on any of his actions, as he was also the only experienced soldier they had. Though none of them knew it.


    For Edith and the others, this was their first combat deployment, but it was Djhuen''s eighty-eighth in a career spanning over a century and across twenty-six other conflicts.


    He was a combat veteran nearly ninety times over, and would have been drafted back into service when the war started, had Djhuen not called first. He had jumped at the chance to engage a new species, but had since regretted it.


    Monkeys... Djhuen thought as he came down from his sniping position, joining everyone else at the transport vessel that had come for them. He was a quiet bug, partially dwarfed and shorter than other corilu, making him just a little larger than a Saint Bernard. The others in the squad, except for Edith and himself, had already gotten into the transport. She was on her way back, but Djhuen remained reluctant to enter.


    Ever since he begun his tour of surface warfare, Djhuen had sensed misgivings at every turn; the sort of bad feelings with causes constantly rearing. There was something strange about their enemies. He thought that simply because staserian were close to humans, warring against them would be similar. How wrong he was, though. He''d never seen an enemy be so careless with radiation weapons nor a populous so unprepared.


    Without a care for protecting anyone in particular he keenly watched the windows and rooftops around them, as having come in contact with an undetectable creature had put him on his highest level of awareness. The alien that stunted their squad was a kind all its own, and Djhuen could tell that the mazes of the city still held secrets none were yet privy to. Even given all the military technologies and Sol casualties the staserian had, the civilians themselves seemed somehow... primitive.


    ¡°You gonna get in, or what?¡± Koal asked him.


    Is there a shape human stupidity shan¡¯t select? Djhuen wondered. Questions filled his head, extrospective musings of humanity and its inherent faults. Why are Earth''s children nescient of things they''ve been taught? Djhuen thought it, but he''d not dare to let his drone translate out of fear for having to engage the anthropoids in inutile conversation.


    ¡°Hey!¡± From the front of the ship, the pilot bellowed to the back with a deep and booming voice, ¡°Where the hell''s Al?¡±


    ¡°Dead as the dark age''s dykes,¡± Jackie answered.


    ¡°He means missing,¡± Edith walked up to the ship and said, ¡°He fell, but we never found the body, and it''s impossible for him to have landed anywhere other than where we looked... So he''s got to be on the move somewhere.¡±


    ¡°...I''m... sure he''ll turn up,¡± the pilot lied, shaking his head and scratching his scalp, knocking his dreadlocks around. ¡°You look like shit, Ed.¡±


    ¡°Good to know,¡± she grumbled.


    ¡°You''re a pilot,¡± Koal stated abrasively, catching practically everyone off guard.


    ¡°Oh? No shit?¡± Fendon spun his head around, oozing with sarcasm, nearly unable to believe what he''d just heard. ¡°That changes a whole lot... Here I was under the impression that all I had to do was keep the seat warm.¡±


    ¡°What I mean is... how do you know Al?¡± Koal asked.


    ¡°Why? What did he tell you?¡± Fendon asked defensively.


    ¡°Nothing...¡± said Koal, ¡°I just didn''t know he new any pilots... and you''ve got the same hair as him.¡±


    ¡°Glad you like it,¡± Fendon threw his head back, blinking quickly and stroking his head gracefully as he tried to end the conversation. ¡°Al showed me how to do it, but I think I prefer pigtails... now be quiet. Is this everyone who''s alive and present?¡±


    ¡°Djhuen, com''on!¡± Edith called out.


    He took slow steps backwards, hesitantly obeying her. The old sniper kept his eyes on the rooftops. All too many times had he seen missiles strike transports as passengers entered them, and in his opinion, one capable soldier and an automated defense drone should always be left behind to protect the ship when it was most susceptible to an attack; military intelligence, however, was doomed to forever be an oxymoron ¨C and capable soldiers were few and far between.


    Edith punched the door controls as soon as Djhuen was aboard with everyone else, and with a hiss and a clank the locks tightly sealed them within the ship. A strip of yellow lights above their chairs dimmed, giving the metal''s blue a more orange tint. Fendon had powered up the engines and set navigations with the brainwave-operated circlet over his head to control the ship''s systems. Slowly, they lifted away.


    With a grunt, Edith threw her helmet off after accidentally sneezing into it. ¡°Fendon,¡± she called to him, wiping her face and walking up the small stairs from the seats alow and into the back of the cockpit.


    ¡°What?¡± asked the pilot. His attention was divided between not diving into a tier and trying to speak with her.


    ¡°I called for a rearm drop, not a pick up. Who ordered this?¡± she asked.


    ¡°A captain, or someone special. I dunno.¡±


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    ¡°Don''t fuckin'' bullshit me, Fen,¡± Edith grumbled. ¡°Tell me...¡± She knew why he was lying, so she turned off the camera of the helmet in her hand. Fendon raised an eyebrow, looked past her shoulder to see if any of the others were eavesdropping or looking their way. When he was absolutely sure he''d be safe, Fendon beckoned for Edith to step closer. She leaned towards him.


    ¡°There''s a classified file about this squad now,¡± Fendon explained in a whisper. ¡°You reported an attack from a new kind of alien, and somebody got really, really interested when they heard it couldn''t be scanned. Didn''t mention Al''s demise in the docs. That''s all I had time to find out... Now, sit your brawny, ginger ass down and stop asking me shit I shouldn''t know.¡±


    Edith didn''t say another word to him. The pilot was rude, and he was a thieving bastard, but for the most part, so was Alreno. He and Fendon had their share of dismal fun at the Sol''s expense during the months the fleet approached the planet, stealing things and getting into places they didn''t belong. She hated that solitudinarians got along so well with other solitudinarians, but no one else.


    Edith had been so caught up in killing the staserian on the streets and in her search for Alreno that she had not bothered to consider what attacked them, or how serious of a problem a real scanner-ghost posed to the field and to the Sol.


    She sat down with the rest of the squad in the back of the ship, feeling uneasy of things to come. Few officers would pull an entire squad from the surface without telling them why, and for all she knew, Fendon hadn''t told her everything he had learned.


    Their transport was taking them to the commanding headquarters, the base where all of the ground soldiers came and where all of the military leadership resided, a massive ship known as the Archetype Engine. Edith looked out of the thick, reinforced window and stared at the massive ship looming in and above the gray clouds.


    It was by far the largest human vessel ever constructed, rivaling the size of small moons; but dense enough to keep gravity from tearing it apart. Smaller attack ships swarmed around it like an insect hive, scurrying from surface to orbit, all carrying out different tasks on different parts of the planet.


    ¡°SCL¨C8 incoming on dock 6562,¡± Fendon said into the communications system, ¡°Confirm permission.¡±


    ¡°SCL¨C8,¡± an operator replied, ¡°you have standing imprimaturs to dock, and the security detail is currently awaiting your cargo''s arrival. Proceed with compliance to quarantine protocol.¡±


    ¡°Understood, SCL¨C8 inbound. Listen everyone,¡± Fendon said to Edith and her squad, ¡°quarantine protocol changed a few days ago ''cause a khamosa medibird caught some kinda kidney infection. Give the hazmat team all the water and food you''ve got.¡±


    They set all of their canteens, bottles, ration packs, and sealed pods of nectar down on the floor in an assorted pile. It rattled around as they drew closer to the Archetype Engine and fell within its gravity. Their transport slowly flew them in and with a loud metallic slam the docking clamps took hold. Behind his ship the airlock shut and the docking bay began to pressurize.


    ¡°Thank you for flying AirFendon, the non-profit transportation service in your local area... Any donation of booze or womanly pleasure is greatly appreciated and will be put to a worthy cause. Be sure to leave any and all liquors and lulus upfront wit''ya humble aviator...¡±


    ¡°Fendon, open the fuckin'' door...¡± Edith groaned.


    ¡°My complements to that stern ice-bitchery of yours. As far as you need to know, we gotta wait for the lights,¡± he explained. ¡°Deep-scan, which is also part of new protocol. They decide when all the doors open now.¡±


    ¡°Ice bitch? Either I''m humorless or your idea of ''funny'' just fuckin'' sucks.¡± Edith said.


    ¡°Vae tibi, stultissima... res ipsa loquitur,¡± Fendon replied. ¡°Scan clear. Opening in ten seconds.¡±


    A small, red light flashed above the pilot''s monitor, and in moments the doors hissed and opened. They shielded their eyes from the docking bay''s bright-white lights breaking through to them.


    ¡°Scram,¡± Fendon said. ¡°I got others on their way.¡±


    After they gathered their food and water RB1¨C3 left the ship in single file down long, grated metal ramps where three men awaited them. They wore large purple hazmat space suits, holding bins marked ''BioHazard'' in seven different languages.


    ¡°Is that all of the consumable materials you''ve brought back?¡± asked a hazmat worker with his voice muffled behind the suit.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Edith said.


    ¡°Good,¡± he told her, ¡°Dump it and take your squad to the medical decontamination room at the end of this hall. It''s the only unlocked door.¡±


    ¡°My favorite part...¡± Koal sarcastically groaned.


    ¡°Quit ''ya bitchin'',¡± Jackie said.


    They walked down the bright hallway, still armed with their rifles, and with their drones following each of them. Aboard the A.E, however, all deployment drones become defaulted, and the soldiers lose the majority of their control. Defaulting the drones was a measure to ensure that somebody who happened to get a ''mild case'' of shellshock wouldn''t start thinking the wrong thoughts and shooting thermite rounds all over the ship. Their guns were all inoperable whilst aboard the A.E as well.


    They entered the decontamination chamber through pristine silver doors, both so polished they appeared as mirrors. All of their drones either hovered or rolled away from the squad and automatically latched themselves into an armament receiver, and beside those were empty lockers and other containers.


    An intercom clicked on and a voice hoarsely squalled and echoed through the room.


    ¡°Plaaace all riiifleees in weapon looockers!¡± it said, rolling the sounds of every R and L into any vowels that followed them.


    ¡°Ugh... I bet anyone who teaches a khamosa to whisper will get rewarded their own planet,¡± Koal said.


    ¡°Heard that! Asshole!¡± the voice replied. ¡°Disarrrm!


    They all complied, and when the last of their weapons and grenades were secured, the doors on the far side of the room whisked open, and in stepped the medical inspector who''d been assigned to see them. He towered over the squad of apes and insects, standing a little over twelve feet tall and looking down at them with four beady black eyes. He was a large avian, vulture-esque with jet-black feathers; a khamosa.


    Each group he''d seen had been more pathetic than the last, and RB1¨C3 was no different. They looked haggard from combat and stressed with the loss of squad members. He strode up to them taking stork-like steps, bobbing his head back and forth and staring down his beak. He spread his enormous wings before them, revealing an entire medical scanning system.


    ¡°Stand!¡± cawed the colossal bird.


    They crowded around him, forming a semicircle and letting the scanners do their jobs. The inspector took note of their postures, number of coughs and breaths per minute ¨C with respect to human and corilu health standards before concluding their conditions.


    ¡°Riiight!¡± he cawed, ¡°Suits off! Body underrr suits onllly! Despite the dirrrt and blooood, you are all cleeeeean!¡±


    ¡°Where do we put our armor?¡± asked Jackie.


    ¡°Floooor!¡± The inspector squalled while using the hand-like extremities at the end of his wing-bones to reset his scanners.


    ¡°And where do we go after that?¡± asked Koal.


    ¡°Bwaaa! Idiot! Twooo! Two doors!¡± The inspector quickly became irate, and managed to raise his already high-volume voice. ¡°Leeeeave the way you didn''t enter! Liittleee-braaained jat!¡±


    ¡°Jat?¡± Koal asked.


    ¡°It''s a primate from Sagansia,¡± Edith said, ¡°He''s pretty much just calling you a monkey.¡±


    ¡°Get... OUT! More on way! Piss off!¡± It seemed impossible, but the medical inspector managed to yell at them even louder. He''d seen better days as well, it seemed.


    They all rushed out like a pack of frightened mice, flinching as the door shut and locked behind them. Left alone in the hall wearing nothing but tight, cotton-white untersuits that revealed much more than they would have liked, they were greeted with silence. Black detection rings built over the fabric separated their necks from their torsos, their torsos from their arms and legs and their fingers and toes from their hands and feet to regulate blood flow and monitor pulse and respiration. They were among the most uncomfortable of things to wear; and worst of all, they were mandatory.


    The squad all wanted to get a change of clothes, but they only made it a few steps before a detail approached them.


    ¡°You RB1¨C3?¡± asked the chief security officer. He was a gruff-looking man, his skin pocked with freckles, dark-red dots and brown blemishes.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Edith said as all the others nodded their heads.


    ¡°Right...¡± The chief grumbled and looked at the list on the display screen of his drone. ¡°I need Edith, Jjike, Iuyjel and Djhuen to come with me.¡±


    ¡°...What about Koal and Jackie?¡± Edith asked.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Jackie chimed in, ¡°What about us?¡±


    The security chief looked them up and down and bluntly said, ¡°I''ve been working for thirty hours straight without any stimulants, and I''m in no mood to question orders or ask for any more of them. Try to believe me when I say that I couldn''t give any less of a fuck where you go... Now if I mentioned your name, follow me.¡±


    Edith and the three corilu followed the security officer down several large concourses and elevators, and they all got the same relieved feeling. Something told them that they would never see or have to work with Koal and Jackie ever again. They were right.


    Edith, Jjike and Iuyjel were escorted to the last door that they would have expected, and the last door Djhuen wanted to see. Deck fifty-three, section four. The Admiral''s tactical front.


    ¡°They''re waiting for you,¡± the chief said.


    He opened the door for them and walked away. The room was large and mostly empty, nowhere near as grand as the rumors circulating amongst the soldiers had suggested. There was a single display table in the middle of the room with a complex, but incomplete holographic map of the staserian city. Other than that, there were no chairs and no desks. The only other person in the room wasn''t even an admiral, but a captain.


    ¡°At ease,¡± he said, ¡°I''d offer you seats, but the Grand Admiral hates all forms of comfort among low-ranks. Any of you know why you''re here?¡±


    ¡°The scanner-ghost,¡± Edith said.


    ¡°Yes,¡± the captain replied, ¡°an alien now known to be present on the planet, but not consanguineal to the staserian... and there''s the matter of Private Alreno, of course.¡±


    ¡°We still haven''t found him, sir. The rest of my squad are KIA, he''s our only MIA, sir,¡± Edith said.


    ¡°It''s obvious that you want to search for him. I''ve been forced to watch all of the footage from your drone''s camera''s,¡± the captain told her. ¡°Alreno is a particular point of interest for you, I''ve noticed, so you''ll be glad to know that he''s your new objective.¡±


    What Edith wanted to do and what she was always ordered to do had never quite matched up. She was ecstatic to hear it, but the captain was keeping a few choice details to himself.


    ¡°Before I forget to tell you,¡± he said, ¡°I''m Captain Morteamire Mortalus, and I''m in command of the support carrier Exemplar ¨C right hand of Grand Admiral Roko.¡±


    ¡°Lt. Dragoon Edith Melcini Mulguart,¡± she introduced herself and added, ¡°Why allow a search and rescue now? I asked once before, but was denied.¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± Morteamire explained, clicking his fingers against the table, ¡°for the last few hours we''ve been getting broken messages that frankly didn''t seem legit. They were all poorly transmitted and were dismissed as more bullshit from bored engineers, but we cleared them up and one of them seems important. Would you like to hear it?¡±


    ¡°By all means, yes,¡± she said.


    The captain cleared the three dimensional map from the display table and input his security password. He then navigated the file system to a recording, where he then had to input his password a second time and remain still for an identity scan before he was able to play it.


    ¡°All of our systems tell us this is a false message,¡± he said, ¡°but if there is a blocker of some kind corrupting it, your mission could save his life.¡±


    He began the message.


    ¡°This is Private Alreno Voleavonvernoski of the Sol assault squad RB1¨C3. I''m unarmed, and have become the prisoner of a hostile alien life form. It is not native, and it possesses the means to block numerous methods of detection. Most communications are hindered as well. I don''t know if this will reach anyone, or even where I am, but a tank and PF unit recently passed here... help me.¡±


    The message ended.


    ¡°That''s all that clearly came through, but that''s pretty much all we need to bother with,¡± the captain said. ¡°There are only three tank units in the general location where we think this was transmitted from. Finding him could take a long time, but shouldn''t be too much of a problem since we suspect he''s somewhere that''s already been purged of staserian rats.¡±


    Edith''s eyes were widened with both hope and disbelief. She had never heard Alreno sound so scared before, nor had she ever heard him ask for help or use so simple a form of language at such length. It was atypical, and worrying.


    ¡°You won''t lead the mission, Ms. Mulguart, but I''m putting the four of you in the squad with its undertaking.¡±


    ¡°What about the other two? Where are you sending Jackie Yeneen and Koal Benenci?¡± Edith asked.


    Captain Mortalus pinched the bridge of his nose. ¡°Do you really care where we unload a couple of whining earthers?¡± he asked. ¡°Those dirt-dwellers passed all of their training by the narrowest margins possible.¡±


    The door behind Edith, Jjike, Djhuen and Iuyjel opened, and suddenly, the Grand Admiral of the fleet stepped into the room. Standing with a body of two hundred and seventy pounds of pure and disturbingly toned muscle, her face was wrinkled with age and she wore a pearly-white suit decorated with three pounds of ribbons and seven pounds of medals. She was a monster, and clearly the tallest human in the room at six feet and ten inches.


    Her long, oily black hair matched her black eyes, which matched her black eye shadow and lipstick; which matched her black nail polish, black boots, and a black tattoo of a winged eye on her forehead.


    ¡°Got the pissants marching in line?¡± asked the Grand Admiral. She addressed the captain and didn''t bother to even look at Edith or the others.


    ¡°Indeed I do,¡± Captain Mortalus casually said.


    ¡°Good, scram.¡± She waved them all away.


    Edith met eyes with Roko as she was walking out, and felt a shudder run down her spine. Roko''s stare seemed wide and pretty; of Martian-Asian descent, but sociopathic, cold and empty - a gaze beholden of war heroes yet to die.


    As Edith and the others reached the door, however, Roko tauntingly and almost playfully said, ¡°No, no, no... You should be so lucky. Not you, little June-bug... stay a while.¡±


    The doors closed and locked with a creaking, metallic noise, leaving Edith, Jjike and Iuyjel on one side, and Captain Mortalus, Grand Admiral Roko and ''Private'' Djhuen on the other.


    Roko had a sudden urge to pet the little bug, but she knew how much he hated to be touched, especially by her. After she nodded at the captain, Mortalus reached into one of his pockets and threw Djhuen a small translator. He caught it with his front legs, and after some fiddling he attached the small device to one of his antennae, lighting it up with electricity.


    ¡°Such shit from you seldom spuriously spews,¡± said the translator''s mechanized voice. ¡°What do you want you bothersome, belliferous, boisterous, barbigerous, body-building, ball-busting, bitch of a bathykolpian buffarilla?¡± There was a stark, facinorous lack of remorse in his eyes; but not one that a human could notice.


    ¡°Good to see you too, Djhuen,¡± she replied. ¡°Are you enjoying the war so far? Haven''t lost too many of those good friends of yours yet, have you?¡±


    Djhuen''s head dipped down slightly in the corilu equivalent of a squinting glare.


    ¡°Aww... I''ve missed you, too.¡± Her tone oozed with sarcasm as she gave him a few pats on the head to be annoying on purpose. Just like she had expected ¨C and hoped ¨C he batted and scratched her hand off of him like a cricket with an itch.


    ¡°No patience for an old friend? No undue respect for a CO? Here I was assuming that you''d changed for the worse, but alright, be that way... Simply put, I want you back, because I need something dealt with.¡±


    ¡°Well oh gee-golly, gosh, gooseberries and fiddlesticks... Your woes and worries concern me as deeply as always, don''t they?¡± Djhuen''s translator slowly asked. ¡°I resigned from you and yours years ago, remember? Have you ever asked for me to do anything legal on your behalf, or for my own benefit? ''No'' should be the answer to that, and trusting you''ll stay in the spirit of brevity, I will ask a final time before cutting all concern for the matter... what do you want, Ulumia?¡±


    ¡°You''re impossible to talk to,¡± the Admiral grumbled. ¡°I''ll sum it up before you get too irate. I wouldn''t want you to accidentally shed in here, after all. To be clear, I don''t trust... uh...¡±


    Admiral Roko looked towards Captain Mortalus.


    ¡°Her name is Edith Mulguart,¡± he said.


    ¡°Yeah, her. She''s set on saving her sorry-ass army crush, which is why she''s only in the new squad, and not leading the damn thing. That, and we don''t need too many new people finding out about this. She''ll fight to find it, but if left unsupervised she might incinerate the target. Basically, Djhuen, you''ll be in the squad, but your orders will come from me, and any other commands that conflict with them are to be completely ignored. You, either alone or with SER¨C22 will locate, obtain and secure the alien causing the scanner anomaly. Make sure you leave it intact; I couldn''t give a shit if it''s alive or not when you throw it on my table, just don''t give me a combusted corpse. It has to be in a suitable condition for study with all its possessions operational.¡±


    Grand Admiral Roko crossed her arms and looked down at him intently. ¡°Can you do that?¡± she asked, ¡°Or do I have to play resolution roulette with that freckle-faced fuckwit?¡±


    ¡°Will I be allowed access to any weapon for use with sorting your problem?¡± Djhuen asked.


    ¡°You can have anything short of a nuke,¡± Roko replied with a wave of her hand, ¡°just find the alien and break a setaceous foot off in its ass. And June-bug... this is an executive priority mission. Reports of this are filtered through me... you can kill anything down there that gets in the way. Is that clear?¡±


    Djhuen nodded, turned away and left the room. He knew that ¡°anything¡± was really ¡°anyone.¡±


    As soon as the little corilu sniper was gone, Captain Mortalus turned to Admiral Roko.


    ¡°Why are you so keen on him?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Have you ever tried to make small talk with his stupid fucking race?¡± Roko asked in her signature tone of political incorrectness.


    Mortalus cleared his throat and said, ¡°Yes, infuriating.¡±


    Roko went on, however. ¡°I love corilu, and not in an insectophilic way,¡± she said, ¡°but I like how they think, the way their brains just... naturally operate. Questions, questions. Always questions. Corilu rarely make statements. They ask, and get answers only in questions. ''How do you... blank? Where did you learn this? How was it tested, and when?''¡±


    ¡°Sounds pointless to me,¡± Mortalus said. ¡°And besides, wasn''t that one making statements? Crass ones, I might add.¡±


    ¡°Sort of,¡± Roko explained. ¡°he''s different... and though bitter, also better. A mantis among mites if ever there was one. Usually his statements are masked in questions, but like I said, he''s different. He''s known us long enough to speak as we do. That som''bitch is nearly two hundred. Generally, though, a corilu''s nature is investigation. They look, they think, they ask, they try, and then they ask again. Humans can''t do that without lots of time and a rigid scientific process. And even then not for very long with any consistency. Neither can khamosa. None of the low-tech trash races can do it, either. It''s annoying to us, rouses hatred and contempt. ''Why? Why? Why? Why?'' Human adults don''t do that. We can''t investigate without making statements, without saying what we know is right from the start. That''s why they''re better than us...¡±


    ¡°Better? They''re better?¡± Mortalus asked with indignation. ¡°If that were the case, why are humans the active line of Sol defense? Why do humans hold the major monopolies? Why do humans have higher populations? Why are we more powerful in both trade and military?¡±


    Roko gave a hard, egotistically derisive laugh. ¡°You''re starting to sound like one, but to answer your questions... just look at their history. Humans knew about evolution a little under four hundred years before any corilu discovered it... but they were in space before Archimedes could count his toes. Now, before I forget... Go find Sinclare...¡±

 04 - Minds against Matter.

    04 - Minds against Matter.


    Hundreds of thousands of the dark and winding, sand-like shadow specks had returned, shaking as they emanated from Rh?t''s frail frame like a cloud that devoured light. He knew now that they were real, and no mere manifestation of his imagination. He had also come to suspect that she''d once been a prisoner of the staserian. Her wounds seemed not of war, but of torture.


    To flout slightly nagging inner cries that made his brain continue demanding to return to human company, Alreno downed a mouthful of much-untouted dried ration bread, then looked to Rh?t.


    No sound, he thought, focusing only on the pain he now knew her to be suffering. Do horrors have nisus for silence, or were they dealt to quell it?


    Lying down across from him with her talons spaced apart and her body heavily wrapped in bandages, Rh?t was almost motionless, as if asleep, and yet her eyes shone as bright as ever, meeting his stare once he begun to vocalize his curiosity.


    ¡°Do victims without screams make sadists of interrogators?¡±


    As he''d suspected, the lizard neither moved nor replied.


    Alreno then tried to grab a handful of the motes as they floated close to him, but they rolled across his gauntlets and out of his grip like water droplets across oiled plastic. Minutes later he had managed to catch a slightly larger mote between his fingers for a moment, squeezing to see how it would react. To his surprise, it split into ever smaller motes to slip and glide away before they all joined back together, continuing to float on in the original size. Rh?t either did not see the phenomenon, or she simply did not care for it. His drone, on the other hand, couldn''t detect a thing about them. Alreno''s suspicions mounted as he pondered the black specks. They did not move like dust, as he had tried to blow a few off course to no avail. If it was a field being generated by some machine, he''d have seen the alien technology when dressing Rh?t''s wounds. Without a more nuanced form to communicate, he couldn''t ask, but he could guess. Whatever the little things were, their source was the alien herself. Hazarding to guess further, the motes had to be keeping them undetectable, unreadable, and invisible to scanning. Or perhaps they were just a byproduct of the phenomenon?


    Curious, he thought, slowly shutting his eyes.


    ¡°H?r?k!¡±


    Immediately he looked back up with a slight jump, startled by the noise. He didn''t see when she''d moved ¨C and couldn''t imagine the speed required ¨C but Rh?t had stood and leaned through the wall''s opening to spit and vomit up the blood she''d drank earlier. When the puking ceased, she climbed out. Alreno leapt to his feet and peered through the hole to see the gleaming rubies of her eyes and her body''s dark silhouette moving from corpse to corpse, poking and prodding at them and their belongings, salvaging the trash and gore, wading into immense pools of carnage. He silently waited and watched her fill her arms ''till she could carry no more, ultimately returning to the building. Slinking out of her way he stepped aside and she threw it all onto the floor, sending the dust and ashes spiraling through the room and speckling the lights that his drone cast with tiny particles; though far more natural ones.


    And I''d nerve enough to think myself desperate... He looked at the alien and the junk she''d pulled from the dead, amazed and saddened both by how she lacked the simplest things. She was crouched by the pile inspecting shirts, skirts, pants, belts, real robes, purse-like bags, bottles, canteens and the like. She tossed nearly all of it back out onto the streets, leaving herself covered more in bandages than in clothes.


    She settled on a belt, a satchel, a bottle ¨C the only one she''d found without a hole in it ¨C and a pair of pants. Having short legs and a large tail, and no buttocks comparable to a human ¨C or staserian ¨C she could not wear the pants, so she tore the leggings off and wrap them around her forelimbs, padding her hands and feet while leaving her talons exposed and unhindered. She tied the satchel to her belt and took the bottle in hand, crawling out of the window again. When Alreno saw what she was doing with it, he could not keep watching her. Rh?t went meandering from corpse to corpse, piercing them with a single talon and twisting it clockwise, bleeding the bodies for enough blood to fill her little bottle. Once done, she lie down again upon the blanket in the darkest corner of the room, slipping the sealed canteen of blood behind her belt. With a slow deliberation and a head seething with painful incursions, Rh?t pensively begun to whisper in her rough and brooding voice. She did not speak in her intrinsic language, however. No one could speak like her, so it was her burden to speak as others did. Though sharp and steered to the crux, the one word she said came as blunt as it was extemporaneous. ¡°?lr?no,¡± she said. ¡°?lr?no. ?lr?no.¡± Practice with sounds unnatural to her voices. Even Alreno could hear her suppressing one of the two voices she''d spoken with before. It had been far too long since anybody had bothered to speak to her. It was a chore to even try. So long a time had passed, in fact, that she''d a gravid need to make the effort. But not for very long. Something else sought to draw her attention.


    In high-pitched beeps, the drone had started making sounds outside of Alreno''s hearing range, and although the lights were pointed to the walls and floor, its cameras were aimed towards her ears. She pegged the motive right away. It was a test. One beep, then another and another, every time monitoring the twitchings of her ears. Rh?t regarded it as a challenge, but who from, she did not know. Tauntingly, she exaggerated the movements of her ears with every sound, reacting to every change in pitch. There was no confusion. Rh?t was sure to let whoever truly controlled that little construct know she was aware.


    For Alreno, there was only silence. For the operator of the drone, there came an opportunity. A fragmented signal in radio waves began to transmit from the machine, the same it had made just a few hours ago. She stared into radio color, allowing her pupils to dilate. Rainbows were hardly half the story her eyes made of the electromagnetic spectrum. She knew that it was doing something, though all she saw were emissions of color. For a moment, however brief, both Rh?t and the drone''s operator both understood the exact same thing.


    One of us needs to die.


    Outside was still mostly a pitch black haze, with nearly all of the fires that had dimly lit the streets having burnt out or fallen to cinders. Alreno soon fell asleep against the wall. Unwanting to awaken the snow-skinned, silver-haired man ¨C as animals were often unpredictable when unexpectedly roused from slumber ¨C she too lay still.


    Instead of trying to come up with another test, the drone''s operator simply waited for Rh?t to fall asleep. And so it waited, and waited, and waited a stretch of time that seemed to not end. Rh?t''s condition didn''t change. She was clearly exhausted and in a morbid state of health, but she did not rest anything more than her limbs. Tenaciously, she watched the drone, studying it, looking for any faults in its making or clues to how it functioned. There were none that she could see, but still she continued to look.


    The night inched away devoid of any occurrence, the atmosphere similar of derelict gravestone, and with the dark dawn, the operator of the drone required action and action alone. If not, nothing would change. The break of day would mean that the sun would shine for six hours before falling into another thirty-nine hour cycle of sunlessness, but for them and their place in the city, daybreak meant next to nothing. It was raining, storming even. So the sun still had thick black clouds of the tempests to blot out light. But for the three of them, they were too far below the crest tiers to see the sky. All they knew of the storms was moisture in the wild winds. Not a drop of rain nor a ray of skylight touched them.


    The drone floated towards the sleeping albino and nudged him in his sides several times, making his dreadlocks fall over his face. Waking slowly, his gaze lay upon the first sight of the morning, which was the last sight of last night. Rh?t hadn''t moved, and her eyes were still open. Alreno scrambled up to his feet and threw the bag that he was using as a pillow back over his shoulder, almost immediately on alert.


    ¡°Sit-check?¡± he asked.


    The drone floated in front of him and explained, ¡°You have been asleep for five hours, twenty-two minutes. No significant events occurred.¡±


    ¡°Good...¡± Alreno looked down at Rh?t, his eyes heavy with waning sleep. There was still a bit of blood around her mouth, which suited her appearance: Half dead and mummified.


    ¡°Raat..?¡± he asked. Alreno took a nervous step closer to her, dragging his boots so not to trip or stumble. In her typical whispering hiss of a croak she answered, ¡°...?lr?no. Grh...¡± in a melancholic growl. However, on top of that, she unintentionally retched and drooled out a bit of red blood after she''d spoken his name. It was cold, but still liquid, flooding the bottom of her reptilian mouth and leaking between her massive, jagged teeth. Alreno stepped closer, and quicker, too.


    Her head slowly tilted and rose towards him, and he froze.


    The motion reminded Alreno of what he knew of reptiles, and in his heart could see a rising cobra, or a crocodile gaining interest. Blood ran down her neck and chest, falling like a clogged gargoyle spilling across her bandages.


    ¡°Easy... easy,¡± said Alreno.


    An armored hand and an open palm reached down to grab her, but slowly, calmly; unassumingly. Rh?t agnized the intent, but looked at him with an unshown apprehensiveness. Kindness had always been met with an instinct of suspicion, but she took his hand with one set of talons; while she readied all the others. Each claw tapped against the gauntlet, and his grip softly closed around the thin bones of her spidery fingers as he gently helped stand. Once she was on her freakish feet she slouched and staggered, still without a change in her expression.


    Her figure resembled a bare skeleton''s, or perhaps a twisted hourglass with a distinct lack of sand. As unfamiliar with Rh?t''s species as he was, even he could tell she was too underweight to be called ''scrawny.'' Sustained sight of her made his eyes water, but he shook it off. Tears added nothing, emotions were ablative and down-right destructive. He went through the rations he''d found from dead soldiers, scouring it for any bit of food he could deem safe to give to her.


    One who eats the dead, he thought, will doubtless not be picky. He found an oat bar containing raisins, honey and strawberries. Normally he wouldn''t recommend Earth-grown crops to anyone unless it''d been turned to a true bread, but it was better than nothing. His grip nearly broke it when he ripped off the wrapper.


    ¡°Raat...¡± he said, displaying the small bit of food to her, ¡°Take this... eat it.¡± Alreno''s paler than pale face went steady, but his voice went cold with the sorrow he felt for her... and Rh?t hadn''t a clue. She stood in place, scratching and licking her face of the blood she''d retched, as well as that which had crusted and dried during the night. Alreno stepped closer, and the corners of his mouth twitched as he again said, ¡°Raat...¡± Keeping his face straight wasn''t easy, not as she picked and licked at red clots with talons and a forked tongue.


    It was obvious to her that he wanted attention for some reason, but by the look of the poorly-hidden watering of his eyes she assumed that ash had gotten into them.


    ¡°Take this,¡± he said again slowly. Alreno pointed at the fruit bar and then to one of Rh?t''s hands. And then he stepped closer, reaching out with it in hand. Easy enough. She looked him eye-to-eye to be sure she understood his gesture, then her devilish talons scraped the processed oatcake from his palm before promptly stepping away from him.


    As Alreno might have expected, she inspected it closely. Mucilaginous... densened, the creature thought. She gave the sweet-smelling clump of ''something'' a long whiff and a quick jab of the tongue before concluding its unimpressiveness as a feat of alien design. Whatever it was it was not a machine or a tool. With that, Rh?t gave it back to him and turned around, picked up her rifle and crawled out of the hole in the wall. Alreno followed her back onto the tier''s corpse-strewn streets. However, he neglected to retrieve his helmet from the floor of the room. The drone operator noticed immediately, but saw it as a boon from nowhere ¨C a blessing meant to be unmentioned. And on they went. After an hour of walking the warzone, two odd voices came from just slightly behind him. ¡°?lr?no...¡±


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    He turned immediately when he heard Rh?t speak his name, and saw the barrel of a gun pointed only just slightly lower than his feet. In her boney, outstretched arms, Rh?t incorrectly held a Sol rifle by nothing but the buttstock; clearly aware and overly cautious of the trigger. Off all the things she could have found, it was a Fous 54. Long-range, semi-automatic, sensor-guided, high-velocity, scoped and designed for reduced kick. The ammunition receiver was wider than what came standard to such rifles, meaning it could only take explosive capsules. It was practically a small grenade-launcher. Rh?t mimicked Alreno''s pointing gestures, indicating to him that he was to take it. She felt it was best to remind him of where they were.


    Alreno wiped his watery eyes and, though he knew not why, accepted the weapon from her. It didn''t seem like she could have held on to it for much longer, either way. Her arms were shaking from its weight, so he took it and watched Rh?t pick her little staserian gun back up. Establishing a method of exchanging objects, or expressing a willingness to fight? Probably both, he thought. With a loud snap he forced the targeting system off of it. Having her around made the scanner obsolete. Again ¨C in vain ¨C he tried to give Rh?t the snack of grain and fruit in exchange for the rifle. She took it, but only held onto it for a moment before handing it back to him, less fond of whatever it was than the first time he tried. Alreno then got another idea. The one he should have had the first time. That was beyond moronic, he told himself.


    He shouldered the weapon, stuffed the fruit bar in his mouth and then rummaged through his packs and belt-bags until he came upon a packet of dried meat.He broke the seal and knew at once that Rh?t would eat it, though how well it matched a sanguisugent taste remained to be seen. He even spotted the moment when she caught the sent of saliferous flesh, one of the few smells she assigned to edibility. Alreno made his elaborate pointing gestures again, and was overjoyed to see her accept it. She reached into the plastic packet and dug out handfuls at a time. Rh?t didn''t even chew. She wolfed it down with a hellhound''s hunger.


    The taste was more enjoyable to her than Alreno knew. But knowing would have only made his sadness more saturnine. She had to have lived on almost nothing to even begin to reach her cadaverous condition, and thinking for how long that may have been made him dizzy with dysphoria. He stood still and silent, statuesque, watching her eat. Up and down her body his eyes wandered, and every second he looked at her he felt a stronger and more infelicitous pull on the inside of his chest. Each bone rippled beneath her scales and bandages, and each glimpse haunted him. Alreno felt as though he''d fed a starving animal too emaciated to comport herself sensibly.


    Something else still eluded him, though. How did she find means to release herself... from... whatever had her? he wondered.


    The Sol military forces had only been on the surface of the planet for just over three weeks. And three weeks was not enough time for famine to severely strike, not for an industrialized race. With supplies available ¨C which their enemies proved they were ¨C it was not enough time for a healthy being to become so starved. He hated to even think it, but doubting whether or not Rh?t had been imprisoned, tortured and deprived didn''t matter. The evidence was all one way.


    But where was she being kept? Why? And how did she get out...?


    He was sure that her captors wouldn''t be so desperate as to set her free on purpose in some panic of the war as a chance at redemption; or a practical joke. She wasn''t exactly something to just let loose on the populace - not in his experience. Then, in a mental flash of horror, Alreno found the answer to his most burning question.


    Why save me from the collapsed tunnel? Why, in such a ragged state, would you bother to help free an alien... after we tried to kill each other?


    A few good hours of sleep made it all too clear.


    She knows, he thought. Slow death by entrapment... suffocation, starvation... She knows.


    It hurt him to the core. He was so afraid of connecting dots to circles that he hadn''t connected all of the dots. Her teeth were all fangs, her talons were razor sharp, the only substances she had eaten ¨C and vomited ¨C was the flesh and blood of others far unlike herself. Ah, Certes, of course the staserians would do this to her. What thinking creature would show mercy to their own devourer? She''s either a criminal here, or a pariah to these people. In front of him, Rh?t had ravened down all of the jerky and held out the small bag it came in, waiting for him to take it back. She didn''t know that such things were discarded and recycled when collected later, but there wasn''t really anything she knew about humans; other than what they were called, thanks to him.


    Alreno was caught a little off guard by it, but he instinctively accepted the empty plastic bag, not wanting her to see him throw it away for fear of seeming rude. It was a foolish notion, but nevertheless he placed it in the smaller pouch of his main equipment sack where he kept military field-repair documents, lists of the rules of engagement and a cultural sensitivity booklet with tips for getting along with corilu and khamosa soldiers. It somehow fit in seamlessly with all of the other useless shit he''d been carrying.


    He was happy that she ate something that wasn''t freshly, or even worse unfreshly, shot to death, but Rh?t didn''t seem any better for it. Her red eyes looked just as dead as before, and her sickly stick of a figure was made no better a sight to behold.


    ¡°Let it be a start of better times,¡± he said, making a wasted toast to her health. Rh?t was going to set off again, but had to wait as the human checked his new weapon. He dug around the corpses for more ammo, looked for any problems with it, then adjusted the sight.


    Alreno then took a single grenade capsule and disarmed it, pulling out the center and making it a dud. He still loaded it though, and took aim at a window across the road. His breathing lessened, his eyes focused and his finger squeezed the trigger. It launched far and fast, slamming into the crystal, ricocheting.


    He checked the weapon''s condition once more to be sure that it was without fault. After all, he didn''t want to suffer whatever fate befell the previous owner. The rifle seemed to be alright, so he set it to its safety mode and slung it over his shoulder. They both were armed and ready to move, but to where, he did not know.


    Rh?t, on the other hand, was perfectly aware of where she was going. She also knew that if the Banneret was still alive, then she was expected. And that was no good. A counter-attack to the invasion was inevitable, and if she did not reach her goal in time, well... she didn''t want to think of what the reaction would be.


    Alreno stepped towards her and nodded in the same direction that they had been walking last night. She eyed him for a moment, then turned her back on him, reluctantly continuing down the street with the tall, snow-skinned alien man following behind her. For Alreno there was an air of mistrust around Rh?t, one that he couldn''t ignore. But the ''staserian'' were his people''s enemies, not her. At the very least she no longer seemed to suspect there was a need to kill him yet; especially since he abandoned his helmet and left his head so nicely exposed for ease of gray matter extraction. More than that, of course, he had cleaned her wounds, bandaged the wretchedness she called a ''body'' and then fed her the first bit of cooked food she''d tasted in years.


    Her guard had not been let down though. Rh?t was still highly suspicious, even if Alreno seemed passive and almost friendly. The problem was that Alreno was alone, and his robot was doing something that involved radio. Rh?t couldn''t help wondering whether or not he would turn as hostile as before should they encounter any more of his kind. Humans, as she''d experienced them, weren''t very pleasant in groups. Alreno was making every effort to be her friend, but in Rh?t''s recent memory there was no such thing as a kindness towards her. There had never been a friend to have. With or without him, she would reach her destination, and she would see the right blood on her talons. She made a promise ¨C one her very soul would seek to fulfill.


    ¡°...Halt," said the drone.


    ¡°Specify,¡± commanded Alreno, reaching for his rifle, eyeing rooftops and windows. There was a long, almost defiant pause.


    "Specify," he again commanded.


    ¡°Private Voleavonvernoski, you are a deserter." The drone responded as though it required time to think, rather than process data. "By my estimations, your odds of survival are dropping by the hour. You should kill the alien and turn yourself in.¡±


    Alreno looked at the machine at once, and aimed his rifle towards it. ¡°Sys-check?¡± he commanded.


    ¡°My systems are fine. So... let''s both agree that we have passed that point,¡± replied the drone. "Consider this an out. Kill it and rendezvous with the nearest friendlies."


    ¡°State your name, your rank, your purpose and method of gaining remote access to my drone,¡± he demanded, taking aim and stepping closer. ¡°How are you getting a signal through?¡±


    ¡°I do not answer to deserters. Kill the creature. It doesn''t understand us. Come back to the Sol''s forces,¡± said the drone.


    Like a tightly stretched rubber band, Alreno snapped. "I believe people when they tell me who they are. You refused. That makes you no one."


    ¡°Open your eyes. This will be the Sol''s first foothold and largest victory over the staserian,¡± the drone rambled. ¡°You appear to be depressed, but you are a part of history. This is glory in the making. Be grateful that you, of all else who could have been, are fighting in this conflict... and still could.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Alreno said, ¡°us glorious sacks of Solian shit must have killed two million children by now.¡± He took a deep, sarcastic breath of freshly filtered air. ¡°I''m reveling in the felicity.¡±


    ¡°A child is indeed innocent,¡± the drone replied, making great efforts to manipulate him. ¡°But this alien is not innocent. You should kill it, instead of children.¡±


    ¡°She is a child, yo-¡±


    ¡°You don''t even know that. You don''t know what ''she'' even is. You are delirious,¡± the drone argued. ¡°You are alone, cut-off and you need to reestablish contact with friendly forces.¡±


    Alreno knew what he had to do, and so did the machine. Traveling with the little alien would end in tragedy - he understood that - and there was no point on prolonging the suffering of two on account of only one. The choice was made, but not the choice that Alreno thought he was making. Rh?t simply stood in place, watching his body language change as he conversed with the robot; intrigued as he became more and more threatening.


    ¡°...Who are you?¡± He asked.¡°Just kill it,¡± urged the drone.


    He squinted. "No more appropriate time has ever permitted me to utter the phrase ''Fuck you.'' So, with that said, fuck you."


    In an instant, the drone''s propulsion system kicked into full speed, and it rushed towards Alreno''s head. He couldn''t use the Fous 54 ¨C it was too close ¨C so with a desperate burst of adrenaline Alreno threw himself to the ground and grabbed the nearest firearm from the hands of the nearest corpse. A single shot echoed between the towering buildings, and then faded away into the dark of the morning. Afterwords, there came a screech.


    ¡°You mis...mis... misaligned bastard.¡± The drone''s engine burned out in a loud flare that fell to the ground in a ball of electric fire.


    He turned as fast as he was able and began to sprint away, trying to catch up with Rh?t. He ran and ran nearly half a block, but she wasn''t there.


    She was gone.


    Alreno stood there like a deer in headlights.


    ¡°Raat?¡± Alreno called out in confusion.


    There was no answer.


    ¡°Raat? Oh... shit! ...Where!? Raat!¡± Alreno quickly dissolved down into a panicked state of mind. I shot it. What could she conclude?


    ¡°Raat!?¡± he yelled. ¡°Raaat!?¡± There was still no answer. He thought that perhaps she hadn''t seen it make a dash for him, and believed him to be a dangerously vagarious person; which was only half right. Were that the case, random violence was all it could have seemed, and enough dismay to rouse suspicions that she may be next. Suddenly, however, Alreno''s loose thoughts collected and he got a mixed surge of emotions. He first felt regret, then self-loathing anger, but then came the fear. Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as if something was wrong, and everything got darker. He turned slowly. And there she was, standing behind him with her hands resting on her rifle. That alone was fine, but being forced within her shadows felt like nothing should. He hadn''t stepped or reached into the anomalous dark like this before. The dark reached into him. They locked eyes, and like Rh?t, he did a quick analysis. She obviously hadn''t gone anywhere, she''d only lifted her toes ¨C to keep her talons from clicking against the ground ¨C and she stayed directly behind him, just outside of his field of vision. A little gray skeleton standing quietly would have scared anyone, but the darkening... Everything in his primate brain told him to run away. All he did was make a cough-like scream, though. ¡°Shit,¡± he said, momentarily covering his face and springing in place. When he looked back at her everything seemed immediately brighter, less obscured and more normalized. The feeling was gone, as was the dimming of light.


    Little did he know, scaring him was exactly what Rh?t wanted to do. Alreno and his machine''s sudden conflict had put her on edge, but she wasn''t going to miss the same machine that she herself had decided to dispose of. What she wanted was to test him. When Alreno''s body tensed up in the shock of suddenly seeing her, she was watching his hands, looking for whether or not he would raise his weapon at the sight of her. When no such thing occurred her mind was put at ease. He wouldn''t just shoot her for nothing. He was no enemy. The machine, however, still was.


    ¡°Raat?¡± Alreno asked, panting slightly. ¡°Why''d you do that?¡±


    ¡°?lr?no,¡± she replied, rendered clueless by every word.


    ¡°I''ve got to either learn more, or teach more.¡± As he expected, she didn''t answer him verbally. She pointed down the street to another tier where smoke was rising in many thin, constant clouds. He listened for a moment, hearing the drone''s engine burning, but faintly, off in the distance, he could hear explosions. Someone was fighting nearby. Maybe four miles, or five.


    ¡°Is that where we''re going, Raat? Is that why you gave me this?¡±


    She didn''t even acknowledge him. All she did was silently walk towards the sounds, looking for a way off of the tier. Alreno felt uneasy, but he followed her with an eye more interested in the speckled shadows. She took one more glance back to the burning robot. There were no radio waves emitting from it anymore.


    Just as it had planned.


    The drone won, and savored the thought.


    Little victories ¨C constant gain. Finality.

 05 - Regal Rodents.

    05 - Regal Rodents


    Civir''s cackles were madder than laughs in an asylum. The soldiers down below, engaged in wicked combat, fighting to win, and to give no ground. And fiercely did the fight, and deliberately did they kill these... new, bizarre creatures who''d come to invade. Those soldiers ¨C his soldiers ¨C moved with purpose and precision.


    Civir observed every moment of the firefight, waiting for the moment to arrive. It wasn''t long until it did.


    ¡°And lo!¡± he yelled, ¡°Paradise, eyes closed!¡± With both thumbs, he pressed the eighth switch. ¡°Behold! All their dreams ¨C untold!¡±


    Five hundred feet away the wire of his detonator sparked a bomb in an alleyway down below him, triggering a blinding blast that spread twice the width of a normal road. In the press of a single switch nine soldiers'' lives ended in a blaze of inglorious fire and radiation. But, as war would have it, their lives mattered little to the ender. They were enemy soldiers of the worst kind: Alien soldiers ¨C intelligent animals.


    ¡°Memories, buried deep ¨C unfold... and so into nightmare, go...¡± Civir prayed, softer than a whisper to himself.


    The shockwave rattled his boots upon the balcony, displaced his other detonators and knocked off an entire portion of a wall from some nearby shop; under which another bomb had been hidden. It was not the force of the impact that killed his enemies, though. Their suits were far too strong for that, and he was a quick learner.


    When the invasion began, Civir quickly figured out that very few of the enemy''s more dangerous machines were automatic, and that it was the aliens themselves who somehow controlled them. Which targets to engage first became clear as time went on, as did which types of the machines to bring down the fastest. He even learned how to identify the leader of an enemy group.


    What killed them was far more delighting to him. It was the heat. It was the fire. The searing white flames reached temperatures beyond that needed to burn alive whatever creatures sat inside those suits. In the interest of good measure, though, Civir clenched his fist, tightening his grip on the handle of his gauntlet-mounted emitter and he fired beams of microwaves down at them. He did not stop until he was absolutely sure that they were all thoroughly dead.


    ¡°I''ve suffered enough of your kind. Now suffer mine,¡± he mumbled.


    It was not the first time the assortment of creatures attacked his convoy by ''sneaking'' into an alleyway on their ''open'' flank. And it wouldn''t be the last. There was no finer tactic, in his view, nor one as amusing. Leaving one side open on purpose, but laced with basic, non-computerized explosives that took more time to detect than scanners and combat allowed. Their preparations and scouting may have slowed their journey, but very much increased the amount of aliens he and his solders killed.


    ¡°Baron!¡± One of his subordinates on the streets below him screamed, ¡°Bombers, on high!¡±


    ¡°Good!¡± Civir yelled back, ¡°The avian are lighter and poorly protected! Their ground forces'' shots are loud, but that''s! About! It!¡± He punched down three more switches, sending explosions and dust across their twisted battleground; safe from his troops, but not from theirs.


    Most of the tanks in Civir''s convoy aimed their barrels upwards, directing waves of heat at a legion in the air. Wings with plumes from black to gold approached and flapped through clouds of smoke. Exoskeletal armor covered them, armed them, left them light enough to still fly. Robots split away from the formation to flank. Everyone was under fire, and most all were returning it.


    On the ground as well his soldiers flooded the streets with lethal amounts of radiation, burning whatever enemies they could, and further deterring them with heat, sparks and the fires thereof.


    They are an odd breed of invaders, he thought. All geared-up and ready for ballistics, chemicals and bio-weapons, but little else.


    Civir stood pretty much in plain sight upon half a broken balcony overlooking the street. He fired the microwave cannon mounted on his gauntlet into the air, burning targets one after another. He also kept an eye on the streets and alleys, always ready to press another switch and detonate another bomb wherever he needed an explosion. Civir had twelve tanks and nearly fifty soldiers under his command, but most of his own soldiers were preoccupied with the protection of the civilians.


    Civir couldn''t simply hide and hope that nobody would die, that was no solution. He had to make sure that they did not. That was his main reason for choosing the narrower tiers, where no ships of any formidable size could maneuver. The open areas along his path were minimal, and even the birds had troubles flying. He, the tanks, and a few other soldiers all fired at the aliens, effectively committing avicide. One by one they dropped from the sky, some flailing and flapping in insane spasms, trading flight for the fall. Death came to too many too quick. Orders to scatter, retreat and regroup had to be issued, and soon were. Each side realized that there would be no retaliation, nor another attack. Civir wasn''t going to assault anything, not with what he had. But he and his forces had every advantage along his desired path. They could hold any position with the ferocity of a last stand, and had done so many times. But again, neither side needed that. Attacking his convoy led to more deaths than his group was worth.


    Off and away the remaining birds vanished behind the tiers, and the stray projectiles and bomblets came less and less. Soon, they stopped altogether. Civir wouldn''t be forced into a bad situation. Those under his command won the streets and cleared the buildings of enemy forces, but only a handful felt it a worthy time to rejoice.


    The birds could not cope in the confines of the tier they were on, nor the ones nearby ¨C not with their tanks to contend with as well.


    ¡°Flittering to litted tallow towers burns the wings of lesser beings,¡± he laughed, clicking the communicator on his chest. ¡°Keep leery,¡± he ordered, ¡°Check the tanks and expect another attack. Bombing us will not work ¨C they know that now, so expect a full ground assault or an ambush. And keep from any long views. The last thing you need to see now are distant tiers.¡±


    He looked down from the balcony, past the dirt, blood and miscellaneous grime. On the streets below him were all of his soldiers, all of the tanks and a handful of military cargo carriers. They had seen better days. Some of the infantry were too scared to do anything other than cower behind the hard steel of the tanks, trying to console themselves with memories of better times. He couldn''t blame them, but was thankful they were a minority. Civir hadn''t seen so bloodthirsty a force, or such planned brutality against civilians. Not in over forty years. Ironic, he thought, to be on the receiving end.


    There were so few people left alive under his rule compared from when he started, which was both a boon and a burden. During the last attack he''d lost another five soldiers, four tanks, and nearly twenty civilians ¨C idiots all. The untrained, unwashed, unoathed, uncouth mob had made attempts to flee from the combat, unperturbed by what happened to everyone else who''d tried to run. Still somehow there were those convinced that it was a good idea. There were still around a hundred unarmed people under his protection, most of whom were in the transports. The people were nothing but useless cargo, valueless, purposeless. More would certainly die, seeing how urban warfare and tier-to-tier combat was not Civir''s forte, and some of the civilians were losing faith in his ability to protect them. They were beginning to act even dumber than usual. ¡°More will run...¡±


    Due to the sheer number of the men, women and children Civir''s convoy had to protect, they were forced to stop all too often to make sure they all had food and that they had proper wound treatment. The haltings were a constant hassle to him and a strain on his soldiers, especially with their dwindling supplies and the constant complaining from the very same benighted, ungrateful hoi polloi he was duty-bound to defend.


    Civir sat down upon the grime and hung his legs over the side of the tall balcony and combed through his dark-green hair with his swirly-patterned, blue-tattooed fingers. He sighed, thought briefly of their rather unlikely odds to escape the planet, and then pressed his communicator.


    ¡°Oben? Plon? Do you still live?¡± Civir asked, sniffing the air with his ratty nose as his ears twitched in expectation. His communicator chirped as the replies came.


    ¡°Oben here,¡± said a voice, young and frightened.


    ¡°Plon here,¡± said another. He was older, stern, but tired and almost bored with manning the defenses.


    ¡°Meet me abaft,¡± Civir ordered. ¡°The tunnels must be mine-laden. We don''t want them using the roads to sneak tanks behind us. And we''ve to see about getting the water running. I''ll not hear the mewling of small folk.¡±


    ¡°By our oath, Baron, we''re on our way,¡± Oben replied.


    Civir shook his head and scratched the tips of his ears, flustered from what his own oath brought. The motion gave him a headache, however, only sending his thoughts into a more painful flurry. ¡°Stop it!¡± he demanded.


    Once Civir got a bearing on himself he pulled his legs from over the ledge, dusted himself off and neutralized all the triggers of his bombs. After contending with the wires he carried himself down the balcony stairs and onto the street. The dust had mostly cleared, but the air still tasted of blood, smoke and powdered rock.


    Tanks of red rolled past him with soldiers walking beside them, each saluting in respect or at least recognition of his position. But whenever civilians caught his eye they would lower their heads or look away, pretending not to see him. They were afraid, but not of him. They seemed to treat him as an annoyance to be avoided.


    ¡°Thankless, oxygen-thieving mouth-breathers,¡± he mumbled. Every single non-combatant among them owed their lives to Civir and his soldiers, but they were hardly ever thanked for their protection, as if safety (in whatever degree) was simply owed them. Never mind that it was for them that the soldiers were even still there. Never mind that without Civir and his men they would all be dead.


    No, to the ignorant citizenship, those with power plot and never do enough, do we? But the fact that they themselves do not think and do not do much of anything means nothing to them!


    The very thought of what they were burned an angry headache right in the front of his skull. By military-aristocratic law Civir had the power to choose the daughter, or daughters of any man who''s life he''d saved via military intervention. The reasons he had for never exploiting that power were many. He was older now, and never even cared when he was younger. But overall it was a tie between how much time it would waste, and because he''d seen more interesting and attractive organisms swimming in the city''s sewage systems. He pondered it for a moment, though, and found one above all: The thought of his own wanton lust helping to spread their sense-starved genes to new generations was sickening. He had to protect them out of nothing but his position. Were he anyone else, Civir would gladly send them all to die, or gather them in one spot and leave them with a bomb.


    As he walked down the alleyways he passed many of his soldiers ¨C with a few civilians ¨C who were ripping alien novelties off the suites of dead invaders.


    ¡°Leave anything that resembles a can or a bottle!¡± he knew he had to shout. ¡°Some of them are explosives. Make sure everyone is aware of that, least a fool''ll fall dead.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Baron,¡± a soldier acknowledged. Whoever he was, Civir had no doubts that the message would get passed on. Even his newly loyal-oathed quickly learned to fear the bombs of Civir, and all would heed such a warning from him. He continued past the rear guard where he was met by Oben and Plon. As ordered, they had been waiting for him at the end of the derelict street.


    The two of them were rather unremarkable wua''qua soldiers, both wearing armor as basic as could be. The only reason Civir asked for them in particular was because he could recall their names from having overheard a painfully boring conversation. They, like most under Civir''s command, were each wearing two weaponized gauntlets instead of the standard and ''safer'' singular. Plon''s mounted cannons were different, one shot directed bolts of electricity ¨C only good against the invader''s machines and birds ¨C while the other was mounted with a standard high-power microwave cannon. Oben''s armor was slightly more advanced, and entirely heat-proof. His gauntlets were both flamethrowers. Oben needed to be well protected from his own weapons, because they, like Civir''s bombs, burned with a white flame, making direct exposure to them instantly fatal. Even with his helmet he could never look directly at the flames for very long.


    Between Oben and Plon there sat a large crate marked with the official crest of Civir''s house, depicting a lit candle in the shape of a tower; the flame of the wick sparking as would a fuse. And in the crate were a large number of high-quality, but entirely improvised explosive mines based on designs created by the baron himself.


    ¡°That''s more than enough,¡± Civir said, ¡°You two keep me covered, I''ll drag the box. Set your visors for organics and automatons only, and stay sharp regardless.¡±


    All of their enemies looked like machines at first glance, except...


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Civir shuddered thinking about those creepy fucking birds.


    Most all were just armored creatures, but every fight made use of smaller automatons. Civir grabbed the crate by its handle and began to drag it down the road towards the tunnel. He didn''t want to completely destroy the long underpass in case other survivors decided to pass onto or off of the tier. He did, however, want to make sure that nothing big would get through.


    With Oben and Plon as his escorts, Civir brought the crate all the way to the entrance of the tunnel, a considerable distance from the convoy. Before he could even grab a mine, Plon shouted, ¡°There!¡±


    Like the rats they were they scattered from the open and took cover behind a large, bombed-off section of the nearest building.


    ¡°What''s there?!¡± Oben yelled.


    ¡°It was short,¡± Plon explained, ¡°it-¡±


    A red burst of light shattered through their cover, and struck Plon in the head. His skull exploded, sending what was left of his tongue, eyes, brain, hair and teeth onto Civir and Oben.


    ¡°Blind them, and run!¡± Civir yelled.


    Oben sprayed white flames into the air to keep the enemy from seeing them flee, which failed. Two more shots came from far down the road. One perfectly landed in Oben''s heart, and just after that, another hit Civir in one of his knees, crippled in one shot. As anyone would, he still tried to get away, crawling ever forward, but knowing that there wasn''t any point. His enemy obviously knew what it was doing. It was just outside of the range of their scanners. It could have easily killed him, too, but the bullet in his knee was clearly smaller than what had killed his men, seeing that he still had two legs.


    He looked behind him as he tried to escape, and then he saw it.


    An invader.


    It was a horrifying sight for him to behold. A short insect completely covered in mechanical armor. If he didn''t know any better he''d have assumed that it was just another machine, like the one floating beside it. Civir knew that he would be unable to point his microwave-cannon at either the bug or the robot before being killed, and if he called for help, it would be able to kill him and leave before anyone arrived. Civir had been in enough battles to know the face of death. He stopped crawling and gasped in pain, just before rolling over to face the bug.


    It slowly approached him, and Civir kept his arms down in the hopes of buying himself some more time amongst the living. The urge to try to shoot it was a hard one to ignore, but his senses prevailed. That would mean immediate death. It skittered up to him and stuck the barrel of its weapon in his face. Civir shut his eyes, awaiting the end of all things. It didn''t come, however.


    The bug held the gun in his face with its two front legs, stood up on its two back legs and untied Civir''s gauntlet-cannon with its middle set of legs. Civir opened his eyes again, facing the beetle-like creature.


    ¡°Alone, are we?¡± Civir asked. The bug lowered its gun, and Civir slowly leaned forward, taking off his belt and tying it around the wound on his knee to stop the bleeding. He did not know why, but he knew that he''d just become a prisoner of war. A good talking-to beforehand...


    ¡°What do you want?¡± he asked.


    * * *


    All that Djhuen heard was a rather musical mixing of sounds: ¡°Be''io b''oni ya''i?¡±


    This was exactly what he''d wanted. Djhuen had deployed five hours earlier than Edith''s doomed mix of RB1-3 and the new SER-22 to make his first bit of progress. He wanted to enjoy some unregulated time on the battlefield, and he wanted to actually get something done without anyone getting in the way. Once Edith and her new squadmates land his job would be to scout ahead for them. But they weren''t yet deployed. Without a squad to impede him, Djhuen got as close as he could to a staserian, a living one, and he''d made sure that it was one of relative importance. Importance would equal knowledge, usually.


    During the firefight that he''d been watching unfold, Djhuen constantly had this one in his scopes, observing him as the battle went on. At first, he assumed that the staserian was just a fancy-dressed bomb expert, but when this particular staserian would speak, he discovered that he was the conductor of the battle. How lucky he was to have found one with an obvious high-rank.


    ¡°Be''io b''oni ya''i...?¡± the rodent-like alien asked him again. Djhuen tilted his head to one side, causing the creaking sound of chitin-against-chitin. How eerily the staserian resembled humans still amazed him. He could see why humans would call them ''rats,'' but this was... eerie.


    Why do they look so much alike? he wondered.


    He didn''t have the time to wonder about the alien too much, though. Djhuen made his combat drone fly in front of the staserian, and then play a recording in front of him. As per his preference, Djheun had always kept recording devices active for both his helmet and his drone. Not for the military, but for himself. He often wants people to know who and what he kills, because to him, war is a bloodsport. But he knew Sol tech inside and out, and didn''t always share his footage with all parties concerned.


    The recordings he showed to the staserian, however, were not of his past kills. It was something that Djhuen kept as his own little secret, a clear recording of his objective. He''d hidden the footage from everybody; it was too good to show anyone else, he had thought.


    * * *


    Civir watched the video play out, his face agape at what his eyes were seeing. It was a battle between the invaders and Baron Gokl''s personal contingent. In the chaos of it all, there was an odd, wingless, bat-like, lizard creature with red eyes. It killed not only the invaders, but it gunned down many wua''qua as well.


    Civir watched all of it from the beginning of the engagement to the very end where it tackled one of the taller aliens, clawing at its head before falling with it, down a full tier.


    It escaped.


    It''s loose in the city.


    No...


    * * *


    Nobody really noticed since they were all panicking, but Djhuen kept a cool head, and had been right there when it happened. If he wanted to, he could have tried to shoot the scanner-ghost on several occasions during the first encounter with it. But he didn''t want to; and it wouldn''t have worked. The creature was new, it was interesting and much like himself, it did not seem to care about being on either side of the conflict.


    Djhuen had seen everything, and so he showed the staserian everything. When the recording was over he played it back and paused when the red-eyed monstrosity was in frame. The staserian''s face blinked a few times, and it looked beyond frightened.


    * * *


    Civir considered the possibility that maybe he was hallucinating from the pain in his knee and the fear of the bug, because this couldn''t truly be happening.


    No... But... That has to be real, he thought. That''s Baron Gokl''s ceremonial rifle it has, and that building...


    The insect suddenly moved the drone closer to Civir''s face, hoping to prompt a response. He flinched back a little and then dipped his finger in his blood. On the ground in front of him he drew a little symbol.


    * * *


    At first, Djhuen thought that the staserian was making the letter ''F,'' but instead he drew what looked like two long, twisted and elegant F''s, one upside-down over the other.


    * * *


    Civir looked up at the alien, hoping that it was satisfied. It wasn''t, though. It snapped its pincers at him, cuing for Civir to say something.


    * * *


    The staserian man nodded towards the symbol and hissed a rather unusual word. ¡°Rhet...¡±


    Djhuen knew that it was a name, but a name wasn''t good enough for him. Was it the name of this creature or this type of creature? He snapped his pincers again, but in a more threatening way. He needed to know more. The alien winced from Djhuen again, but not quite so much.


    * * *


    ¡°If information is what you want,¡± Civir said, ¡°I''ll give you a disk. Would you like that, you verminous twit?¡±


    * * *


    After yammering some more, it slowly reached into its pocket and carefully pulled out a flat, disk-like object. It pressed a button and activated the device, making it hum on and display holographic letters over it. Djhuen was ready to shoot at the first sign of malicious behavior, but he was fairly confident that the staserian wouldn''t do anything stupid. And he was right.


    It touched the letters and rearranged them until the device showed a large, red ball floating over it. The wounded human-mouse-thing handed over the device and waited.


    Djhuen took the device ¨C mysterious though it was ¨C and waved one of his hands through the holographic red ball. It whisked away like a puff of smoke and turned into what seemed a small gallery. Be it painting or a digital creation, the detail of the images were interesting, but none were actual pictures. One by one he looked them over, every time being completely taken by surprise. The styles varied from childish drawings to tasteful paintings. Every image had the same format. Above the picture was a set of four alien letters, and below it was a single alien letter. And under that was a blurb of alien text either short or long.


    ¡°Rhet!¡± the alien yelled as though Dhjuen only was one of many things harrying him.


    It wasn''t hard for Djhuen to figure out the meaning of the images, or of the staserian''s word. The date came first, then the image, followed by one symbol, and then a brief description. That same symbol which it had drawn in its own blood was the title of every image, and every image was of one thing: A monster, depicted always near a place of death, either hooded or armored. If the creature wasn''t shown killing, it was shown feasting on the dead.


    Djhuen''s antennae twitched, and his drone translated his projected thought.


    * * *


    ¡°Rat?¡± the machine''s voice said.


    Hearing the drone speak for the insect was another surprise to Civir. Still he accepted it with little culture shock and nodded towards the device he''d given to this horrifying insect.


    ¡°Rhet,¡± he confirmed.


    The large bug put the device in one of its bags, and then raised its weapon towards Civir. Civir shut his eyes, and heard five shots. Slowly, he dared to opening them again. All of the staserian guns had been destroyed. Civir looked at the bug with astonishment.


    ¡°You really are alone,¡± he said, ¡°and you''re really going to leave me alive?¡±


    The bug mimicked his nodding gesture as best it could, pointing Civir in the direction of his convoy. With that, it turned around and walked away. The insect''s drone still had its guns fixed on Civir, but only as a precaution, it seemed.


    ¡°That''s it?¡± Civir silently asked, ¡°Is that why they''re invading us? Is that all they''ve come to our space for? Ahhh... To an end with it all! Gone is the house Gokl, long-deserved... I pray the tales of the pain that thing can cause are true, for that folly-finder''s sake.¡±


    He lied on his back, thinking of how strange his encounter had just been. That bug knew where his convoy was, so he knew it must have been watching him during the fighting. There seemed to be something more than just xenocide going on here, something that required special attention from professional warriors. The invaders ¨C or maybe only a few of them? ¨C were after a living, breathing, waking nightmare. It was remarkable to him that it had any basis in reality, beyond rumors and hushed conspiracies floated among nobles. But clearly it existed. And of course, Gokl had to have been involved, of all people.


    He tapped his communicator.


    ¡°I need help,¡± he said on his convoy''s open channel, ¡°I''m down the road, behind the mall and at the south tunnel. You''ll need at least two people to carry me...¡±


    There were several replies, but he ignored them all, and simply waited to be taken back, pondering what must be happening. Baron Gokl had something to do with it, and it had something to do with the prison that was reserved for breakers, oath-heathens and rebels; the bug''s video proved that.


    However, far as he and nearly everyone else knew... that prison was empty.


    He didn''t have to wait long until twelve soldiers arrived to help him. Two of them picked him up, and the other ten swept the area, checking for the enemy and verifying that Oben and Plon were as dead as they looked.


    ¡°I took care of the shooter,¡± Civir said, ¡°Leave their corpses, get that crate, and fall back. The area is already breached.¡± They did as he commanded and returned their Baron and his bombs all the way back to the convoy. They carried him Into a cargo transport, plopping him down on a medical cot.


    Civir tapped his communicator. ¡°Rear guard, fall back to the convoy. Have all the civies get back into the cargo holders and prepare to move out. We''ve four tiers to go, and we aren''t going to stop until we''ve reached the fort.¡±


    ¡°Yes, Baron,¡± replied a random soldier.


    Civir tapped his communicator again, but twisted his fingers slightly to change its channel.


    ¡°This is Civir, calling to anyone in Lord Jaiti''s stronghold.


    ¡°Baron!¡± a loud, boisterous voice yelled over the channel, ¡°I''d surely thought you''d be groveling at my doors by now!¡±


    ¡°My Lord..¡± Civir said, ¡°we''ve encountered some rather special trouble.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± Lord Jaiti asked, ¡°And what might that be? You know I cannot risk sending anyone in that direction to help you. These freaks are pressing further and further down the platforms every day, and they''re not looking for peace or conversation!¡±


    ¡°I''m sure that you''d ¨C ghe!¡± One of Civir''s soldiers inserted a grabbing utensil into his knee to pull out the bullet. ¡°...I''m sure that you recall the prison you had erected some years ago?¡±


    ¡°Really...?¡± Lord Jaiti asked, ¡°Really? Really...? You called to discuss my old zoning policy? I''ll save you the breath and just admit that it was a mistake on my part, a costly, useless mistake.¡±


    ¡°Haha!¡± Civir laughed a fake laugh, ¡°I''d agree. All of the time, all of the expense and all of that labor building that miniature fortress. You even appointed Baron Gokl to oversee the inmates.¡±


    ¡°Yes...¡± sighed Lord Jaiti, ¡°It was a crying shame that he never had a prisoner.¡±


    ¡°Oh yes,¡± Civir agreed, ¡°No prisoners... other than Rhet.¡±


    For three full minutes, Lord Jaiti did not respond. Civir knew that he was running people out of the room to speak in private, or demanding immediate oaths of silence.


    ¡°Have you... found that little bitch?¡± Jaiti finally responded, his voice laced with ire.


    ¡°Bitch?¡± asked Civir, ¡°Rhet''s a female?¡±


    ¡°*It* is an immoral catastrophe! A rancorous leech that sucks the blood from all things founded upon reason! Where did you see it!?¡±


    ¡°I was shown a video of her, my Lord, by an insect ¨C one of the invaders... It was looking for her.¡±


    ¡°It!¡± Lord Jaiti yelled, ¡°It was looking for it! Never call that thing a ''her.'' It is a fucking monster! Pernicious to the most callous of hellions!¡±


    ¡°Lord Jaiti, why... and how was there a-¡±


    ¡°Get here!¡± Jaiti roared over Civir. ¡°Then we''ll talk about it. Until you''re here you''d best not dare to even whisper its name!¡±


    Lord Jaiti turned off his communicator.


    ¡°Banneret!¡± he yelled to the door, ¡°Send Baron Civir a task force! Speed their arrival!¡±