35
Naero went to the loading docks to help s
hip out their cargo.
Put everything else in the back of her mind. Focus on the mission.
In and out and move on.
She, Gallan, Tarim,
Ellis, and an Irith took a large order of sensor gear, heavy machine parts, and medical supplies to a high-level Triaxian mining manager. She didn’t look forward to that, but at least it would get them out of the ship for a while.
Where were the rest of her Clan, her fleet, her friends? She tried to stay focused and not fret, but Spacers and Triax teetered on the brink of open war.
Triax could still blast Fleet Maeris out of existence for no reason. They might do so out of spite.
In their space, they made the rules a
nd broke them when they felt like it.
Naero popped their
bright orange, obsolete gravhauler up out of the docks and vectored an approach to their destination: what looked to be a massive mining fortress nestled within a vast, shattered mountain range at the outskirts of the starport.
She
scanned other transports and a few local patrol craft flitting around, but the sky remained relatively clear.
A
big blue Cumi space barge lurched skyward from the mining station. It lumbered up out of the atmosphere–probably loaded with ore and precious raw materials. Their bulbous bulk vessels always looked clownish and comical to her, but she had long since learned that the ancient Cumi were aggressive explorers, opportunistic traders, and profiteers in their own right.
The mining station
functioned much like a secondary starport on its own–actually larger than many regular merchanting starports, due to the huge orelifters that came and went on a regular basis. Mining survey and collection teams returned and set out on their own regular schedules, both onworld and off.
“
Freight-hauler
Lobo-3F
, you are clear on approach,” Station Control cut in. “Defensive shield window opening per these coordinates.”
Gallan
uploaded them.
They
adjusted their approach, the shield window opening highlighted on Naero’s piloting display in violet. “Thank you, Station Control,” she said. “We’re coming in on approach.”
“
Use loading bay 8-7-8-Gamma,
Lobo
. You’re in the pipe.”
They came in low over a wide swath of
squatter towns that miners and their families had erected out of Triax’s trash. Even while focused on piloting, Naero easily spotted the signs of past transport crashes, gouged right through the kilometers of settlement huts, tents, and lean-to’s.
A huge, yawning
waste pit lay just beyond the camps, sprinkled with dead bodies tossed in around the rim–hundreds of corpses. Burn teams busy at one section, using plasma cutters to incinerate some of the carcasses right along with the refuse.
To Triax, people were just garbage.
She could only imagine the stench down at ground level.
They
flew through the thick gray and black belching smoke, as if descending right down into one of the Nine Hells.
At the energized gates of the facility itself, waves of people threw themselves against the stunfields only to collapse and be dragged off or trampled by those behind them.
Naero checked her spotting cameras, revealing a rippling sea of human, near-human, and alien slaves: Besh, Ramor, Silesians, Zotchans, dwarflike Piettos, avian Quess and Moh-Karran, catlike Mndar, leopard-spotted Mahri, even a few Naivatch, wrapped only in rags against the frigid winds.
The
protestors threw rocks. They chanted. They rushed the gates. They carried banners painted on planks, on blankets, on strips of cloth. Naero looked at their sea of angry, crazed, and desperate faces.
She struggled not to weep
with rage.
She couldn’t look back, but she heard Tarim sigh and clear his throat several times.
Landing sirens went off.
Lobo-3F
approached. Most of the miners drew back. Those that didn’t or couldn’t were staggered, driven off, or sluiced away to drown in the rushing spew from high-pressure mining water cannons and the flash floods they produced.
Naero shut th
e cameras off.
She couldn’t watch
the sea of human misery anymore.
They docked in the assigned cargo bay. Irith remained at the controls while
Naero, Tarim, Ellis, and Gallan unloaded their shipment with the old-fashioned lifters.
Naero
noticed Ejjai guards, close-up–brutal hyena-like humanoids.
She
’d studied their vicious society and behavior a bit more after seeing the one on Drianne’s yacht.
Reports claimed them to
be one of the most avaricious and opportunistic species in the known universe.
Right. Next to humans
.
Only the low numbers of Ejjai and their lack of
tek kept them from becoming a threat to the other races.
That might change one day
, if enough of them got off somewhere on their own, or they obtained enough ships and teks.
Until then, the Corps found Ejjai useful in a variety of
nasty roles: bodyguards, mercenaries, assassins, bounty-hunters, torturers. And, of course, guards at prisons, mines, and other facilities.
They worked for carrion. Anything that was meat, fresh or rancid. But they especially prized devouring the young of any species, even their own. Alive if possible.
About four dozen Ejjai guards drove and directed hundreds of slaves before them throughout the dock area with shock batons. That docking bay just one of many throughout the complex.
Battered slaves, ragged people in torn miner coveralls with control collars
, gritted their teeth and silently performed various tasks. If they remained idle too long or tried to say anything, the collars glowed and sent them writhing on the ground in pain.
Naero looked on as one of the Ejjai walked over to a convulsing woman. Suddenly the collar stopped glowing and the woman we
nt still, denoting either coma or death.
The Ejjai guard beat and kicked her until the woman
awoke and struggled weakly, trying to rise.
When she couldn
’t, the guard split her head wide open.
Naero noticed Tarim’s hand go to his holstered side arm. The look on his face. Furious.
Naero pulled his hand away and held it, cautioning him with her eyes. They couldn’t do anything. Especially not in their situation.
As if that weren
’t bad enough, three Ejjai, cannibals even among their own kind, got down on all fours and began to devour the woman’s corpse.
First
they scooped up steaming brains in the cold air with both clawed hands, crunching through the shards of skull with their powerful teeth.
Then
they snapped and ripped open the torso to get at the hot entrails. Fighting and working gobbling jaws, nuzzling deep into the warm gore that smoked with tendrils of heat vapor up into the cold air.
One stopped
and snarled up at Naero and her friends.
“
You got a problem, skinners? You like to watch? Maybe you want some, heh?”
The
n the Ejjai laughed, a horrid odd wheezing, giggling sound.
Naero remained expressionless
. She glanced up at Gallan and the others. Gallan looked back.
Now it was her
hand that strayed absently to her own hidden blaster.
Gallan, Ellis, and Tarim blocked them further from anyone’s sight.
“Let it go this time,” Tarim said. “You were right to stop me. Now I’m stopping you.”
“Tarim’s right,” Gallan said. “We can’t get involved.”
“Naero,” Ellis whispered, “don’t do or say anything. You know we can’t afford any trouble.”
Naero
let out a deep breath of her own, and nodded.
They
kept walking.
More Ejjai
snarled and snapped at them as they walked over to the supervisor’s station with their manifest chip.
Close-up, most
Ejjai stood short–most of them stocky, muscular females, of course. A few smaller males, but in subordinate roles–of course. Ejjai remained militantly matriarchal. Only dominant females and their favorites could breed. Not many males needed for that. Most male Ejjai got devoured at birth.
At the station Naero felt the heat pouring out from the open counter. A tall
, lanky human female pecked at a handcomp. The Station Manager, surrounded by eight huge Sterodan bodyguards.
Corps
Sterodans, fighters and gladiators pumped up on genetic muscle enhancers. Anywhere from two to three meters tall. Enormous torsos, arms, and necks rippling with muscles that made their heads look puny.
Not
particularly cunning or fast, but incredibly strong. Strength that even Naero feared.
Naero
’s father had referred to them as “pukk-heads” from his fighting days: a Spacer term referring to a nasty boil or infection. Rumor held that Sterodans were so stupid because they had very little brains left, just pus-like pukk in their skulls.
Then the supe
rvisor’s throat bag swelled.
Naero corrected her assessment to
the Station Manager being a Silesian female, arguably the most annoying of all sentient, near-human humanoids.
“
You there, dummy,” the supervisor shouted. “Stop your fucking staring and give me your fucking manifest chip. We don’t have time for fucking sightseers.”
One of the Sterodans held out a
gigantic, passive hand.
Naero ignored him and tossed the manifest chip onto the
Station Manager’s desk in front of her.
The supervisor glared at Naero and snarled
. “You stinking, little gash. Dump your fucking load and get your stinking, fucked-up crew off of my dock. Your ship is on report.”
Another freight shuttle settled down to the left of theirs.
“Are you finished?” Naero shouted back, not intimidated in the least. Silesians were masters of intimidation, and only respected the same in kind. “You listen to me, you putrid heap of rotting filth. Me and my crew came here to finish our deal. I don’t want any grief from you, or your freaks and goons.”
“
Is that so?” the Station Manager responded with a smile. She hurled the chip back at Naero. Naero caught it.
“
Lucky for you this all checks out. Now listen up runt, because I’m only gonna say this once. Get your draining holes out of my sight. And if you don’t like it, you and your boss can suck the shit out of my ass.” The Silesian burst out laughing until she choked. “Hah-hah. I love using that one. It just makes my day.”
Naero laughed
with her. She and her friends backed away.
“That’s a good
one. I’m gonna have to remember it,” Naero said.
The crew
from the other transport began to unload.
A twinge raced through Naero.
Her old intuition, like before Om awoke in her mind.
Had that been him all along, trying to warn her?
Naero, I’m sensing a large number of military grade weapons nearby.
She scanned the area.
A Joshua Tech transport that just landed didn’t seem to hold any cargo.
Just packed with m
iners.
All of them
heavily armed.
36
“What the hell?” the Silesian manager yelled. She pointed at Naero and her crew, caught right in the middle. “It’s an attack. They’re in on it. Blast them all!”
The miners charged forward
, screaming.
Naero and
her friends scrambled to reach their craft in the confusion, but quickly found themselves cut off.
“
Hold it,” the apparent, rebel leader’s voice boomed through a voice amplifier. “Nobody move!”
Everyone
moved.
Weapons barked and pulsed
.
An intense fire
fight erupted.
The alpha female of the Ejjai sprang
through the air at Naero and her people.
She
shot Gallan in the back point-blank.
Ellis and Tarim tried to defend him and got swatted to either side.
The slug opened up a ragged flesh wound in Gallan’s side.
He sw
ept up with a kick, knocking the slug-pistol from the Ejjai’s hands, flinging her into the rushing mob.
Gallan
grunted in pain and went down.
The outer energy barrier protecting the mining compound collapsed
across its entire length.
The r
ebels swept most of the battle toward the objective of the manager’s station.
Naero rolled free and came up fighting,
blaster pistol in one hand, battle blade in the other.
The Station Manager
backed up behind the Ejjai and her Sterodans, pale and frantic, shrieking into her com, her throatbag quivering in terror.
“
They’ve broken through across all sectors. Send gunships. Troops. Cut them all down. Just get me the fuck out of here!”
An Ejjai fell back on top of the Silesian, its legs blasted off by an explosive round to the groin.
The manager pushed the dying creature off her and scrambled for its weapon.
Miners swept over her, beating her senseless.
Naero had a moment’s respite in the chaos.
S
he checked Gallan. Ellis and Tarim tended the wound. With treatment, he might survive.
Then a
nother Ejjai sprang at her.
T
he alpha female rose up from a knot of bodies and slew its way toward their position to get at them again. It scooped up a fallen pulse rifle, murder burning in its eyes.
Naero activated her concealed gravwing and flew
over her friends. She fired a pulse blast right into the bared teeth of the foremost Ejjai. The back of the creature’s head exploded into pink shards and brain vapor.
She
wheeled in the air, booted the corpse aside, and met the charge of the prime female. It sprang up to bring her down.
With the added weight, they spun toward the ground and slammed into the crowd.
A stray stun blast hit Naero’s gun hand, knocking her pistol away.
She
kicked the Alpha Ejjai square in the jaw, breaking its charge. She shattered half of the creature’s teeth with a rocking impact, snapping its thick neck back.
Naero grabbed the hot bore of the Ejjai
’s pulse rifle with her gloved hand, slashed the creature’s other claw around the pistol grip and trigger.
The flesh of her
own hand sizzled, scorched badly. Yet she wrenched the rifle away and flung it off to one side.
The
Alpha Ejjai roared in pain and body-blocked her. One claw grazed her arm and ribs.
They separated
into fighting stances.
The Ejjai drew a short stabbing sword and a punch dagger. Naero drew another battle blade. She snapped the extended spike handle open to make it into a short stabbing spear.
They charged again.
“Going to gut you,”
the alpha snarled.
Naero ducked a vicious
angle cut from the short sword.
“
Going to eat your heart and liver while you’re still screaming!”
Naero slashed her snout, then jabbed the spear into her lungs.
“I don’t think so,” Naero said. This creature would kill her friends, just like the slave woman she saw murdered.
She couldn’t allow that.
The alpha Ejjai staggered back, then attacked again.
B
oth stood their ground, fighting close in.
S
lices, cuts, and stabs pelted her. Naero blocked and parried and gave back better.
Now she
understood the Ejjai rep for toughness.
For
several moments she fought the alpha toe-to-toe, dealing serious and deadly blows and wounds that would have dropped most other opponents.
The Ejjai grunted and bled, but kept at her.
Naero slipped her battle blade under the alpha’s ribs. Knifed deep into the creature’s lungs and finally its heart. The Ejjai gasped and vomited blood, still ripping at her.
Naero flipped them up into the air and dragged her foe down, r
amming her short spear through one eye and into the brain.
A
t last the alpha female went limp, reduced to a mutilated pile of steaming meat.
Naero looked up and saw
several more Ejjai leaping toward them.
Shots rang out behind her, rapid-fire.
Well-placed hits nailed the first six Ejjai, snapping them down with careful precision.
A tsunami
of rebel bodies and concentrated fire swept away the rest.
Rebels
had the Station Manager completely stunned and trussed up by then.
Naero
rushed back to her friends.
“Good shootin’, Tarim. How’s Gallan doing?”
Tarim shook his head, slinging his collapsible scoped carbine over his back. “Not so good. He needs more help than we can give him. I think there’s internal bleeding.”
What she wouldn’t give for a medbed.
No chance of that here.
“Come on, guys
. We have to get him back on the transport and try to get out of here. Don’t attract any attention.”
Together they
dragged Gallan back toward their transport.
“
Irith,” she said quietly over her com. “Open the loading doors just enough for us to get in. We’ve got Gallan, but he’s hurt.”
No one paid much attention to them yet.
“I see you,” Irith said. “I’ve alerted the ship. Signal as soon as you’re secure, and I’ll blast us out of here.”
“
Hurry, load up as much as you can,” a commanding voice shouted nearby.
She looked over at a short, nondescript man of medium build, perhaps in his late thirties. He w
ore the emitter, broadcasting his reverberating voice all over the area. He wore his receding black hair plastered to his skull as if oiled. His skin had a reddish tint to it.
“
The gunships will be on us shortly,” he announced calmly. He pointed in the direction of
Lobo-3F
.
“Commandeer that craft and any others. Load up.
Keep families together if possible. Tell the rest of our people to scatter into the wilds where others will attempt to pick them up or hide them. We’ll blast a way through the defenses on our way out.”
Naero suddenly
realized that the craft the rebels rushed to commandeer was hers.
Haisha
. This could not be happening.
“Hey you,”
she shouted at the rebel leader.
In an instant,
more than forty guns were trained on her.
The
rebel leader and his small motley entourage came toward her and her friends.
No way they could sneak back into their ship now.
The man had fierce gray eyes, hard as steel, but a soft fleshy red face that made him look almost childlike. But his nose curved like a hawk’s beak. He resembled a predator.
“
That’s my craft,” Naero said. “My friend’s injured. He needs help back up on our ship.”
The
leader turned away from her, glancing at the dozens of dead and wounded lying about from that brief battle alone.
Then he looked back at her.
“Trader, I need that craft to save as many of my people as I can. Triaxian gunships will soon strafe this entire area, killing anything that remains. We cannot take them all; we don’t have enough ships as it is. I am sorry for you and your friend.”
He turned back to his people. “Take their vehicle. Leave them and their cargo behind unharmed.”
He
strode forward a few steps more, and then turned back to her.
“Wait.
I saw your duel with that Ejjai alpha. Very impressive. My compliments, young lady. I’ve never seen anyone fight like that in years. Your style of combat. I’ve seen it somewhere before.”
He actually bowed to her.
“My friend’s badly hurt,” Naero said. “Please. Help us.”
Naero’s flesh tingled like it might catch fire.
Warnings buzzed in her mind.
A Cosmic power approaches.
Om, what are you–
The mob of fighters parted. Something glowed among their ranks.
Some of the warriors even knelt and bowed their heads in reverence.
A small female miner
girl of about fifteen emerged and walked right up to the rebel leader.
As if she’d been invisible before and now appeared among them suddenly.
The girl’s eyes began to glow.
Ah, the rogue psyon Triax warned everyone about
.
The girl
leaned over and whispered to the rebel leader, but Naero still picked it up with her acute hearing.
The girl pointed back at Naero.
“This one is very, very special, father. She could help us and our people, but we cannot hinder her for long. She has destinies all her own, even more important than ours. Encourage her to journey with us for a time. I wish to get to know her and her friends–especially the young dark-haired boy. He is one of us.”
The leader
turned to Naero once more. “I will aid you and your friend, if you will agree to pilot your craft to a destination of our choosing. Keep any supplies on board that might help us. Dump the rest. You can save us many precious minutes overriding your security codes. Tell the authorities we forced you to do these things. When we are safely away, we will release you, unharmed.”
In the distance, the high
-pitched whine of approaching gunships grew in intensity.
Naero looked down at
Gallan, then back up at the leader. “I agree to your terms.”
She glanced at the
girl, who smiled a deep, knowing look back at her, through eerie eyes that somehow seemed ancient.
T
he leader’s bodyguards lifted Gallan up and loaded him into the cargo hold of the transport. Refugees packed themselves in where the useless sensor cargo had been shoved out.
The rebels sent the rest of the refugees away
, fleeing from the camp and into caves and the rocky wilds.
Naero signaled to Irith over her com
.
“You get all that? We’re going to travel with these folks for a while.”
The Intel
agent had monitored the situation the entire time.
“We can’t do much else. Get up here. Bogeys coming in hot.”
Back in the cockpit, Naero jumped into the co-pilot’s chair and hurried to launch the craft. The other vessels had already lifted off.
The leader and the
girl joined them in the cockpit, along with a few guards, making for tight quarters.
“
We can’t outrun those gunships,” Irith said. “They’re too close, and they already have long-range locks on us. We’re dangerously overloaded.”
Naero
glanced at the leader.
“
If you don’t have some backup, this is suicide,” she said.
The leader strapped himself in behind Irith and helped with the attitude adjustments for the extra weight
. “Just get us up and out of here, pilots. I’ll tell you where to go. Skim the tree lines and mountain tops.”
“Several of them
just fired!” Naero said. “Incoming missiles. We have no way to stop them.”
“
They’ll be stopped,” the leader said with a smile. He didn’t bother looking over at his daughter.
The girl
closed her glowing eyes to concentrate. “None of them will reach us, or do any harm.”
Irith flew. Naero
helped stabilize, watching the scanners in amazement.