Starchild- Exile, page 8
He took a deep breath.
He noticed the texture of the prism in his hand.
His two terrible emotions faded into the distance, like constellations.
The first attack came quickly.
With his eyes glowing, Dray’s skin burned hot, and a deep magnetic sound rung through the space. He pushed against the air, and strength beyond his own lifted the redhelms and threw them back out of the pipe.
They tumbled back haphazardly.
With the first wave knocked down, it revealed the second wave behind them.
It was lead by General Venette.
The man who directed Building 13.
A man who deserved to be interred here.
In Dray’s first life, he would’ve outranked this man, and he still felt a stark sense of superiority, given to him by justice. Justice required a balance due, a recompense owed and unpaid. This feeling did not burn within him. Instead, it was absolute zero. It was ice, an absence of motion and energy, and it demanded that all around him become still too.
Shouts came from up ahead followed by laserfire.
They’d decided to use deadly force on him.
That was for the best.
He didn’t want to survive and risk becoming a prisoner here again.
He faced his enemies, blade ignited, eyes glowing white.
High time he showed General Venette what a zhan was really capable of.
6. Unmasked
“Uh oh.”
Nak sat in the cockpit of The Spirit, which lay in a crevice high on a black cliff. His first instinct was to check the instrument panel—make sure his ship was all right. He didn’t see anything to worry about. “What?”
“There’s something going on at the Strand,” came Cupcake’s feminine voice.
Nak looked up through the glass screen and out across the dark gray horizon. The sun was rapidly sinking and still no word from the clients. Below stretched some of the strangest terrain he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a lot. Massive rock pillars, many times taller than his ship, were strewn across the ground, made of black sandstone. Some looked like fingers, others like mushrooms, and still others more like giant Slaghkian slugs, and all of them seemed to be defying nature in one way or another. They seemed too tall and too thin for this much gravity. He couldn’t imagine what would’ve shaped them like this. Maybe they were grown.
Beyond that, Nak saw what looked like three people descending a distant slope: two dressed in gray and the other in red. One of the grays was down near the ground, probably on all sixes, probably a miin, probably Liink. The other upright gray seemed to have a bald head—the girl. And the red had his helmet off, but it was too distant to tell whether it was Benton or Dray.
Nak leaned back against his chair. It stood just high enough for him to sit or stand without hardly changing his vantage. The dashboard sat at a matching height, within perfect reach of his hands. With his feet on the footstool, he leaned back into the seat, frowning. Where the ████ had their transport gone?
“Nak, what are you thinking?” Her voice was so tiny and yet it was the biggest thing about her.
“What do you think I’m thinking?” He held up his hand and tried to hide the red planet Sible from view, but his hand was not quite big enough.
Cup’s tiny voice came again: “That if they don’t arrive at the rendezvous in point two five, we sail away from Toar forever, keeping the ship and ourselves safe.”
“Huh.”
Cup hung magnetically against the ceiling. “What do you mean huh? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“That thought did cross my mind.” He reached into a side compartment and pulled out a pair of oculars. He found the right point on the slope, but the people had slipped down out of sight behind the next ridge.
“But…?”
“But I was thinking I’d only wait point one.” He pulled the oculars against the ridge of his eyebrows. On a crest beyond the clients, a lone figure appeared, dressed in a red helmet and silhouetted by the last rays of twilight. That must’ve been either Dray or Benton, whoever had fallen behind.
Then a similar shape appeared. And then another and another. They raised their rifles and started shooting at the three figures fleeing ahead.
That first one had been a platoon leader, not whoever’d fallen behind.
And with that realization, a strange feeling hit Nak.
But he wasn’t the type to sort out the shades of whatever the feeling was. He thought it might be related to friendship. Or maybe the lack of friendship.
Cup clacked a few of her paces, affixed directly above the dashboard, pausing again with her surprised face pointed down at Nak. “And that’s still the plan, right?”
He set down the oculars and started punching keys. The Spirit’s atmosdrive began to hum. The clients were making a getaway across hilly terrain. That meant they were protected every time they started on a downhill but were exposed again when they headed up. Their luck might not last much longer.
Now Cup rolled to frowny. “I think you should consult me before you do anything rash.”
“Why’s that?”
“Uh… I’m the smartest person on this ship?”
“You’re not a person.”
“Yes I am. Don’t say that.”
“Just keeping you humble.” She was, after all, just another piece of hardware. He checked the gauges, tapping through various stats. “What do the scanners pick up on that third ridge up there?”
“I read eight lifeforms. That’s all I’ve got.”
“Believe me, Cup, nobody is more concerned about keeping my ship safe than me.” Nak felt a moment of upward pressure against his boots, which vanished as the vessel began to steadily hover in place.
The Spirit was airborne.
“Nak, what are you doing?”
“I’m just thinking.”
“You don’t have to think with the whole ship!”
He picked up the oculars. “I saw them down there, and I don’t think they’re going to make it.”
“You don’t have to risk the ship for them. That’s outside the contract. There are plague turrets if you get closer.”
The last rays of twilight were now fading across the charcoal landscape.
He pulled up the oculars, and laser fire flashed in the eyepieces, red lasers stabbing from the redhelms and vanishing below the ridge. “I know. But… if the clients don’t survive, we don’t get paid.”
“It’s not like we’re desperate for money.”
“No, but we are desperate.”
“No we’re not.”
Nak strummed the fingers of his left hand across the dashboard, three sets of five rolling taps, and for some reason he thought of that mysterious bald head. “Shogram says there are two kinds of people: the ones who read history and the ones who write it.” He set the oculars on the seat next to him. “Well, Cup. I’m a writer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He grabbed the steering yoke. “It means I’m going for it.”
The Spirit’s purple engines glowed in the twilight as she lunged forward into a steep dive. For a moment, everything inside the ship became weightless, including Nak, who still hadn’t buckled in. Instead, he hooked his heel under the chair’s footrest.
The thrusters engaged like a parent catching a child from the air, pushing upward and forward. The Spirit’s fall gently diminished as she neared the ground, almost touched, and then launched forward, weaving between the massive formations.
Clack.
As the ship neared the battle, Cup released her magnetic grip, just enough to begin falling, then snapped herself back into place: Clack. The closer they got, the more anxiously she did it. Clack, clack, clack, clack.
“Cup—” Nak’s tone held both the warning and the thing warned of. He stood, pinched her firmly between his thumb and forefinger, and peeled her magnet off the ceiling.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Too late.” He smacked her down onto the leather seat next to him, by the oculars and his dread mask.
Without a metal surface, she couldn’t clack and also couldn’t move. “Ohhhh.” It came out as a depressed whine. And she’d landed with her happy side up, which she wouldn’t be happy about.
“You know the rules.”
She sulked in silence for only a moment before saying, “We’re well within range of those plague turrets now. I do not feel good about this.”
“If I keep behind these slug things, their cannons can’t touch us.”
“Yeah, IF…”
“Better sorry than safe, huh, Cup?”
“That’s not how it goes.”
As The Spirit creeped forward, three violet streaks flashed: the first high overhead, the second lower—the third crashed into the hull, rattling the floor and everything attached to it, including Nak’s seat. The oculars twirled off the other chair and went spinning.
Cup, however, hit the floor—the metal floor—with a clack, her grin-side up. She knew better than to give any victory shouts, though, opting instead to clack across the floor quietly.
Nak dropped the ship and slowed her almost to a halt as more lasers blasted overhead. One panel now flashed the update “SHIELDS AT 92%” a few times before returning to its stasis. He eyed the landscape ahead of him. His task was nearly that of a footsoldier: to run from cover to cover and take ground. Only he had to do it in a ship.
He accelerated toward the next ridge, and The Spirit leaped over it as if going off a jump. Immediately he turned the sticks of the yoke down. As the ship crested and then ducked out of sight on the far side, his feet came off the deck again, his hair flying straight up for a moment. The oculars jumped and then smacked into a corner.
As more massive bolts of violet shot overhead, Nak punched the throttle, skimming the ground and weaving. He finally slowed to a stop behind one massive, slug-shaped tower. The lifters kicked up black dust as they kept the ship hovering just above the ground, her wings spread wide.
He felt that prodding feeling again somewhere in the vicinity of his chest the moment that he located the clients: The long, dark form of Liink crawling across the ground, followed closely by Benton, now close enough to identify. He clung tightly to a small human dressed in gray, her bald head distinct in the low light.
So Dray had fallen behind.
The small figures moved across a patch of open ground.
As Nak eased The Spirit into the open, a flash of violet struck hard, and the metal frame groaned. Like the ship was his own arm, Nak jerked her back, out of sight, not even thinking as he engaged and then disengaged the zentisal drive—doing all this in the time it took to blink.
The ridge ahead was, apparently, just enough to shield the clients on foot, but not enough to protect a ship a few times that height, so this was as close as he could get to them in the ship.
“Crap.” The sensors beeped, telling him the grooves in the terrain were too rugged for the ship to touch down. Worse, the clients were now on the other side of the rock formation, meaning he couldn’t use the guns to help them. Still, better them than The Spirit.
He locked her into a steady hover, punched one key, then grabbed his dread mask.
“Cup, take the starboard gun. And don’t let her drift.”
“Sure.” She didn’t move from her position: Through the phantomlink she could control the ship from anywhere.
“This isn’t one of our shoot-anything-that-moves drills. Just those redhelms if they come into sight. And don’t shoot Benton either, okay? He’s dressed like one.”
“Got it. Hey, Nak?”
As he raced to the engine room, he heard her voice through the overhead speakers.
“When they come aboard, can I talk to them?”
“Of course not,” he shouted as he pulled his illegal rifle from the wall.
He wasn’t trying to be mean to her. He just had to be wary. It might’ve been only rumor, but he’d heard a story about a CP unit that stole a Bloody Wing from her master. Whether it was true or not, most people considered CP units too unstable to actually use. And that risk increased if she connected to outside influences, especially if they got to her, if they convinced her to listen to them instead of him. For now, Nak trusted Cup, at least to a degree. Maybe that was foolish. Maybe it was only a matter of time till she broke down.
But she was really all he had.
He pulled on his dread mask and jumped from the gangplank onto the hard, ashy ground. It felt like this whole moon had been burned as a sacrifice to some fierce god. The rock pillar towered overhead. He breathed in Toar’s atmosphere through his mask and felt slightly light headed.
When a single red bolt kicked up dust next to him, he lunged for the cover of a nearby rock. He checked the magazine on his rifle. More shots flew overhead and pelted the ground beyond him. Fortunately, he was stationary and they weren’t.
Plus their audacious red armor stood out against the black surface.
He leaned out just far enough to expose one eye and took a few shots as the redhelms darted down the open slope. He didn’t need to hit them, just slow them and hinder their accuracy. He held his ground, laying suppressing fire as the clients approached.
When they finally got close enough, he shouted, “No Dray?” Probably wasn’t a good sign.
Benton just shook his head and kept moving.
Nak squeezed the trigger on his rifle again and again, sending blasts of hot light at the redhelms. He hit one square in the chest, and the soldier tumbled lifelessly down the slope.
The clients finally passed him and approached The Spirit. Nothing so far on this mission had bothered him as much as letting them board before him—it required a little too much trust. But it seemed prudent and very unlikely they’d have time for mischief. As soon as they were aboard, he’d run for it.
The bald woman boarded first, struggling to pull herself up the gangplank which hovered a meter in the air, so Benton gave her a lift. The other two climbed up after her.
Nak put one redhelm in his sights and steadily squeezed the trigger several times. Without waiting to analyze the damage, he turned and ran for the ship.
In that exact moment, a massive, violet laserbolt flew through the air and impacted with the rock pillar overhead. Chunks of stone, which appeared tiny so high up, broke free, shooting out in every direction. Several much larger chunks split off and tumbled downward.
Dropping toward The Spirit.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nak ran toward his ship.
If he’d pondered, he might have realized how foolish this was. But instinct spurred him, and it told him to save his ship.
He aimed for the back corner, beneath the swooping wing, where the foot of the gangplank hovered in the air. His boots pounded into the ground, one giant step after another.
He realized the falling boulders would reach the ship a split sequel before him, and so he slid, a dodge that saved his life.
Stones poured from above, bouncing violently into the wing.
As Nak slid forward, he twisted back and away, just a moment too late. Rock fragments splashed off the wing and hit him in the face, knocking his head back and spinning his body further around.
As more rocks fell, the noise roared at magnificent volume—a jarring crash. The ship’s metal frame shook under the force, losing its stability and tilting toward him. One of The Spirit’s circular wings rose into the air while the other dug into the ground. Because of the curve, only one point touched down, leaving the part above Nak’s neck in the clear, a fact that saved his life, but he was too dazed to notice.
The world rung loudly in silence.
Cup’s tiny voice had become even tinier, as if she were now kilometers away. He could barely hear her say, “Nak? Nak?”
All urgency somehow vanished from his mind. The pain in his face, his head, his scraped up hands, and his shoulder all took precedence over his former objective. For a moment, he didn’t even think about his ship either.
As the dust cleared, his shoulder throbbed worst of all. He was lying on his face. The wing rested just above his skull.
He touched his face and felt a thick layer of dry powder and a warm liquid. His dread mask was lying in pieces next to him, with nothing between him and the putrid air.
Cup’s voice came from the tiny earpiece that was no longer in his ear. “Nak! Come in!” She gave a whistle.
He pushed off the ground and took a few stumbling steps. If he entered his ship now, they would all know what he looked like, but he had to. His Spirit was on the line. He pulled himself like a drunkard onto the gangplank, but when he stood and strode aboard his ship, he walked with the steadiness of his adamantine will.
Benton was helping the woman get back to her feet. The miin—what was his name again?—was further up the hallway, looking unsure whether to abandon ship or not.
Nak gazed for a moment, waiting for his head to stop spinning. They all three looked back at him, perhaps expecting an explanation from their captain. Actually, their stares seemed to signify more than that. Maybe they were surprised to finally see his face.
Although that wouldn’t be the case for the woman. Her bald head with a gray hint of stubble lent an air of frailty, but her hazel eyes shone with might. And with those mighty eyes, she stared at him, perhaps because of the damage to his face, but it didn’t hurt bad enough for him to believe that. Only why else would she be looking at him so—what was the word?
Didn’t matter.
He walked straight up to her and held out his hand. “I’m the pilot. Welcome aboard.” Before she accepted his greeting, he dropped his hands to dust himself off, suddenly conscious of his appearance.
The woman paused then took his wrist instead of his hand, a less common gesture. It was the formal greeting in some places but familiar in others. He couldn’t read her meaning in the nod she gave him.
Rather than ask, he played it cool and clasped her wrist back, a little distracted by her slender arms. They didn’t have time for a conversation anyway. “No Dray then?” He knew Cup was watching him too, and she knew he had a thing for bald girls.
