Lost Stars (Thunderstrike Book 2), page 20
All the guards yelled, veered to overtake him, and charged to run him down, but he was long gone. He swerved around one corner after another, stumbled over a water trough, somersaulted on the hard-packed dirt, and blundered to his feet to run on.
Footsteps and yelling voices followed him everywhere he turned. Gunshots erupted from somewhere in the distance, but they were nowhere near him. The guards must have mistaken him for someone else.
He ran until his lungs burst and no one chased him here, but now he faced a completely different problem. He was the only alien of a different species in a colony inhabited entirely by Dromia. Anyone could recognize him as the one person the guards were searching for.
Every single person he passed stared at him in open-mouthed, wide-eyed shock. Children pointed at him, and mothers pulled their families out of Wolf’s path. He had to find a place to hide—but where?
He scrambled from one neighborhood to another, and finally darted into an alley behind a warehouse. He glued his spine to the wall, rasping for breath. He had to think. He needed to evade the guards just long enough to find an unguarded ship. Then he could fly away.
That thought barely crossed his mind when a Raider streaked skyward from another part of town. The ship looked almost new, and it rocketed into space at incredible speed. Good old Leshan. He knew a lot more than anyone gave him credit for.
More shouts echoed through the colony, and a few cruisers and more Raiders took off, but not fast enough to catch up with the two fleeing Yeliri. They would make it back to their own planet just fine.
That left Wolf alone. Good. He didn’t want those two hanging around, not even Leshan.
Wolf tiptoed to the end of the building, and immediately retreated out of sight when guards trooped past in the street outside. A few minutes later, a different group crossed in the opposite direction, so the Dromia didn’t know where Wolf was. That was a mercy.
He snuck to the other end of the building and surveyed the neighborhood. He couldn’t be sure where exactly he was. Based on what he and Leshan saw from the hilltop, Wolf should be able to find a ship just about anywhere. The Dromia parked them all over town.
He dashed to the next building, hid again, and crept eastward one block at a time. More than once he had to conceal himself from passing guards, but pretty soon, the civilian townsfolk went back to what they were doing. They no longer paid attention to anything other than their own business.
He made it five blocks before he spotted a bunch of cruisers parked on a stretch of tarmac. They appeared to be in good shape, too. The Dromia took much better care of their spacecraft than the Yeliri did.
Then again, the Dromia needed these ships to invade Yekigawa. The Dromia needed these ships for war, so they kept them maintained.
Wolf would have preferred to take a Raider, but he could live with a cruiser. He measured the area and selected which ship he wanted. It wasn’t the nearest, but it sat with its rear end pointed away from town. Wolf could get the ramp open without anyone seeing him. No one would figure out what he was doing until he fired the engines.
He shouldered his rifle and inched to the end of the building behind which he was hiding, but he didn’t see anyone. He could run across the tarmac, hide behind the ship, and he would be home free.
He stuck his head out to look back and forth. He still didn’t see anyone, but at that moment, an EM pulse shot belched past his ear and smashed something behind Wolf.
He spun around, first to see where the shot came from, and second, to see what someone with a pulse rifle was shooting at. Then he remembered that everyone on this planet had pulse rifles. The Dromia used stolen Earth Galactic Military weapons.
He wheeled backward in time for the shot to explode the corner of a different building. A dozen armed Dromia had been sneaking up on Wolf’s position. They would have leveled him if that shot didn’t take them out first.
The building’s corner disintegrated in their faces, and flying debris knocked them away, but only half of them fell. The others scrambled to take cover, and they opened fire.
They shot at Wolf and whoever hit them first. Wolf whipped around, bringing up his weapon. He unloaded laser shots into the same corner and carved three of the Dromia in half, but he couldn’t stop the others from hitting him.
A pulse cracked him in the leg as he backed away toward the cruiser he wanted to steal. His knee buckled and he slammed down hard on his back, still spouting lasers at the Dromia behind him.
The last three made it to a concrete wall across the street. It protected them from his lasers, but it couldn’t withstand more pulse shots. They cracked over his head and pulverized the wall. The guards had to retreat, but Wolf still didn’t see who was helping him out.
Shouts rang through the streets, coming from his left. He tried to scoot out of sight, but he couldn’t move fast enough with one leg in tatters.
He struggled to keep his rifle up with one arm and crawl with his other arm and his one remaining good leg. He made it ten feet before someone stalked out of nowhere and stormed over to him.
He almost didn’t believe what he was seeing when Onir Wylder straddled Wolf’s wounded leg, unloaded a dozen pulses into the Dromia hiding around the corner, and then seized Wolf by the collar.
Onir dropped onto six of his jointed legs, while his two forelimbs kept working his weapon. Onir grabbed Wolf with one of his side appendages and dragged him onto the tarmac.
Onir made for the same cruiser Wolf had been planning to steal, but before they could get very far, another group of Dromia charged out of the nearby streets. The noise of gunfire brought dozens of guards running to the spot.
Wolf twisted over in Onir’s grasp and trained his laser rifle on the approaching Dromia. He sprayed lasers into their group and left a trail of bodies across the tarmac, but Onir had to divert when another bunch of Dromia showed up.
They raced across the tarmac, running between the cruisers. The Dromia bombarded Onir, and their pulses glanced off his armored exoskeleton, but he couldn’t fight them all with only one rifle.
He made one last dive for the cruiser before a third posse of Dromia appeared from the other end of town. They closed on the cruiser. Onir couldn’t get near it.
“Hold on, Wolf!” Onir yelled, and yanked him off the ground. Onir lifted him with one jointed arm and took off for the colony.
Onir covered the ground at lightning speed and outdistanced the Dromia in seconds. He reached the buildings at the edge of the tarmac, launched himself upward, and landed on the side of a building fifty feet off the ground. He scuttled up it incredibly fast, gained the top, and sprang to the next building while all the Dromia on the ground raced around trying to follow him.
Onir vaulted from one rooftop to the next, landed on his springy legs, and leapt again without waiting more than a split second between jumps.
He reached the edge of town in an instant, hurtled to the ground, and scurried across the open ground to the trees. He plunged into the forest and vanished out of sight, taking Wolf with him.
CHAPTER 30
Onir put Wolf down next to a giant rock deep in the forest. Wolf kicked himself over to it, propped his back against the stone, and got busy pulling off his belt. “Man, am I glad to see you! Where the hell have you been? We all thought we’d lost you.”
Onir sprang on top of the rock, took a quick look around, and then dropped down to the ground next to Wolf. He scooted against the rock, straightened himself out, and leaned back.
He cracked one of his wickedest grins. “Don’t you know by now you can’t kill me? Seriously, though, I thought I was dead, too.”
“What happened? What did the Alvai do with you after they took you? We’ve got to get you back to the crew, Olphet was out of his mind after we lost you.”
Onir laughed. “Is that so? I’ll have to give him a hard time about that.”
“You know he loves you more than anything. He wanted to go back and mount a rescue mission to steal you from the Alvai. He even wanted to turn himself over to them to find you.”
Onir gazed off into the forest with a beautiful smile on his face. “He’s really nothing but a softie under that tough exterior.” He shot Wolf another grin. “Don’t tell him I said that. He’d kick my ass.”
“He’ll kick my ass if I don’t bring you back.”
“Not yet. Stay put for now.” Onir glanced over the rock once more before he relaxed. “We’ll have to find another way off this planet. The colonies will be on high alert now.”
Wolf turned back to his leg and tightened his belt around the wound in his knee. “This isn’t bleeding too badly, but that pulse smashed the joint. I won’t be walking anywhere on this.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll carry you.”
“Wonderful,” Wolf muttered.
Onir laughed at him. “It’s great that you’re here! I’ve been on my own all this time.”
Wolf studied him. “You didn’t tell me what happened after the Alvai took you. How did you get here?”
“I really don’t know. That’s the truth, Wolf. I was flying around in my Wing fighting the Alvai, and then one of their battleships captured me. I was in the dark for a while, and then they dropped me off on this planet.”
Wolf waited for him to say something else. “That’s it? They just…”
“Yeah. I don’t get it. I don’t even know where this damn planet is. Are we on the frontier? It doesn’t look like anything I recognize from the Earth galaxy.”
Wolf’s eyes bugged out. “You don’t even know where we are?”
“No. Where are we?”
“We’re directly over the line in the frontier. We can’t be more than a few hundred parsecs beyond Earth-controlled space. If you’re telling the truth, the Alvai brought you over the line and dropped you off on the first planet where the Military couldn’t get you. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Onir shrugged. “It sounds like it, but I really don’t know. I wish I could tell you more. Why? What happened to Joram?”
Wolf rubbed his head. “This makes no sense.”
“Tell me Joram is all right. He’s my friend. If anything happens to him…”
“He’s fine. He’s back with the crew now.”
“Phew! I was so worried about him!”
Wolf blinked at his friend and then shook his head. “I don’t understand this at all.”
“What happened to Joram?” Onir asked. “Did the Alvai drop him off beyond the frontier, too?”
“They must have. He was on the next planet from here in a different alien colony. They said they found him alone, which explains why he wasn’t with you. Olphet freaked out when they couldn’t tell us where you were.”
Onir’s face split in another glowing grin. “That’s my brother, the teddy bear.”
Wolf snorted. “That isn’t the term I’d use to describe him.”
“That’s because you don’t know him.”
“I know him,” Wolf growled. “I’ve known him for almost fifteen years, and I’ll be damned if I’ve seen him smile once in all that time. What’s the matter with him, anyway? Why is he so bad-tempered when you’re such a jokester?”
Onir shut his mouth and turned away. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t understand because neither of you ever talks about it. It’s bad enough he can’t enjoy himself, but he doesn’t want you to enjoy yourself, either. He can tolerate the rest of us joking around, but not you. Why not?”
“I can’t tell you that. He’d kill me if I told you. Forget about getting your ass kicked. He would tear my head off if I told anyone.”
“So something did happen, didn’t it? I knew it.” Wolf bent over his leg. “You can move a lot faster than I can. I’ll only slow you down. You should work on getting a ship by yourself. Then you can come back for me.”
Onir didn’t answer for a second. Wolf let the subject of Olphet drop. He had enough to worry about. He had to come up with a different strategy to get himself and Onir off this planet.
“The Dromia will send out search parties to try to find us,” Wolf went on. “We can hijack one of their ships. That way we don’t have to go back to the colony.”
Onir looked over the rock again and settled back down. He didn’t answer for a second, and then blurted out, “Would you believe we used to be the other way around?”
Wolf’s head shot up. “What do you mean?”
“Me and Olphet. I used to be super serious, and he was light-hearted and happy-go-lucky. He’d let any problem roll right off him. He was always joking around to make me laugh. He said it was his job as my older brother to teach me not to take life so seriously all the time.”
Wolf stared at him. “Really? I can’t imagine him like that.”
“Don’t you dare tell him I told you, Wolf. I mean it. You can never tell him I told you any of this.”
“Okay,” Wolf replied. “I won’t tell him. I won’t tell anyone.”
Onir looked away, and then locked his many eyes on Wolf’s. “He was married…before the Military invaded our homeworld. He had three children, and they all got wiped out in the invasion—his wife, his children—our family and his wife’s family—everyone. That’s what happened. He just…went blank. He didn’t talk at all for three years. I tried to take care of him, and then, when he did start talking again, he never laughed or smiled or reacted to anything. He turned into this…this wooden robot. I started joking around to take his mind off things…and it just kind of flipped our whole relationship. Maybe that’s why he can’t stand me having fun. He thinks I’m making light of his troubles.”
Wolf didn’t answer. What could someone say to that? There was nothing to say.
“Anyway, don’t tell him I told you,” Onir finished.
“I won’t,” Wolf replied.
Both he and Onir fell silent for a long time. Wolf shut his eyes and rested his head against the rock, trying to block out the pain in his leg.
At least Onir was here. If Wolf could have wished for one person better than Leshan to get stranded with, it would be Onir. He really had an innate talent for making the worst situation not seem so bad. He was pure walking sunshine. Wolf found it impossible to imagine Olphet and Onir with opposite personalities, but tragedy would do that to anyone.
Everyone on the Thunderstrike crew had a story of tragedy and loss. Wolf had never known Olphet’s or Onir’s—until now.
Learning their story didn’t change Wolf’s opinion of them. It didn’t change anything, except that now he knew. He knew something about the two brothers that he didn’t know before—something no one else in the world knew.
Wolf didn’t really even worry about Olphet finding out that he knew. Something told him that Olphet wouldn’t mind. They’d been brothers-in-arms for decades. Olphet and Onir knew everything about Wolf. It only made sense that he should know their story, too.
Wolf and Onir sat quietly for at least two hours before Wolf broke the silence. “It will be getting dark soon.”
“Yeah,” Onir murmured. “What do you want to do about that? What’s the plan, Sergeant?”
Wolf chuckled. “It looks like you’re in charge of this mission, Private. You’re the only one who can move, and I’m your wounded.”
“How did you get here?” Onir asked. “Did you crash in a ship or something? I suppose it’s asking too much to hope that the Upheaval and the rest of the crew are here.”
“They aren’t here, but they know I’m down here. I crashed, but the ship I crashed in is no good and it doesn’t have any other weapons or supplies. Sorry, boy.”
Onir only grinned at him. He would grin at a bleak scenario like this. “There’s always the colony. We can get whatever we need from there.”
“What are you thinking?” Wolf asked.
“I’m thinking I can sneak back into the colony in the dark, steal a ship, and come back to pick you up. Simple.”
Wolf laughed. “Quit joking around.”
“I’m not joking. I can move in the dark without being seen, and the Dromia are afraid of me.”
Wolf couldn’t stop laughing. “I bet they are. You’re a big, hairy, scary monster.”
“Do you want me to carry you to the edge of the trees so you can watch me do it? You think I’m joking. I can have us off this planet before morning. I mean it, Wolf.”
“All right. I believe you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Aw, come on, boy!” Wolf chided. “If you think you can do it, go do it. I won’t be able to stop you.”
“But you think it’s a bad idea.”
Wolf did his best to get serious, but he couldn’t stop beaming at his friend. He couldn’t think of anything better than getting Onir back. “Look, boy. You’re the only one doing anything here. Go on with your bad self and do it. I believe in you. You’re in charge. I’m just collateral at this point.”
Onir studied him. “Seriously? You really think I can do it?”
“Of course. Don’t you? You just said you could.”
“I didn’t think you’d go along with it.”
“Look at you! You come from one of the most feared species in the galaxy. Of course the Dromia are scared of you. I’d be scared of you, too, if you weren’t one of my closest friends. Go get your ship and put that fear into those bastards. Make them wet themselves when they see you.”
Onir burst out laughing. “That would be funny.”
“I’d definitely like to be there to see that.”
“You won’t be able to see, because it’ll be too dark.”
“Too bad,” Wolf returned. “So that’s it? We’re going?”
“Yep.” Onir stood up. “Come on. You can ride down there on my back.”
“I can’t wait.” Wolf shifted onto his hands and one good knee. Then he used the rock to propel himself to his feet.
He stood there shuddering in pain, and almost said something about getting back to Nasia to fix his leg.
All at once, Onir grabbed him and yanked Wolf down to the ground. “Get down!” he hissed. “Someone’s coming!”
