Disappointing Reactions

"I can make no promises, Far-Cousin." said Squaheb Furthtail, the robust young Keldon we had picked up in the shadow of the preywinder. He continued, "Our forces have never recovered from the losses we took in the Insurrection. The Emperor's stare is harsh upon us. Our every move is catalogued. We don't know who to trust anymore. Clutch-Brothers have been taken and turned. It is indeed dire."

I looked down at the small table we shared. "So you will not rise?"

"We would be martyred for very little gain. The garrisons on Urlafa now include some of the Emperor's best shock troops. We might be able to disrupt Urlafa and the surrounding sectors for a day or two but we would be wiped out quickly and the reprisals on our families would be harsh."

"What will my cousins in Ska'ari owned Keldon space do when the Emperor paints two-thirds of the Galactic map red?" I asked. "What hope will there be in an uprising then? It may be dangerous now but it will be impossible later. If the Emperor is successful in crushing the Union there will be no hope of outside help. How long do you think the Federation will last against the Emperor bringing two-thirds of the galaxies resources to bare? As if they would aid you anyway."

He sighed, "I know this far-cousin. I do. But we are weak and the leadership is afraid to act... Perhaps if you came.."

I cut him off, "Empire space? Perhaps I should just fly through the passes and tell the Ska'ari and their slaves that I meet that I am merely going through to rouse the rabble on Urlafa and Keldon and they shouldn't bother shooting me down. No... you will return to your clutch and take the leaders of the... resistance this message." The word resistance was laced with contempt.

Furthtail stood to leave the ready room and board his stealth ship.

"Oh, far-cousin, one more thing. See to it that this gets to the Fuwuyothi clutch on Urlafa. Tell them their clutchling served me and the resistance well." I handed him a small box that contained a few pieces of Luna's personal affects that I had taken from her dormitory on Phao. Furthtail bowed and left me alone with the silence.

Old Friends

I could feel Ilyurier Vrus staring at me from her station on the Luna Fuwuyothi's command deck. I attracted the same sort of crew where ever I went. Young, idealistic Keldons. Usually they have lineage that goes back to Urlafa or one of the other worlds were Keldons suffered in the abortive war for independence years ago. They seek me out, fresh from their clutch-mothers, because they believe I can lead them to some sort of revenge against the Ska'ari for what they did to their friends and family.

They don't often realize that the road to revenge doesn't lead straight to Ska. Which is why I suspect Ilyurier was staring at me. We were near the border to Empire space cloaked in a nebula and within optics range of a preywinder. How could she have known when she was a clutchling on Zaniah that the road to revenge led to the spot under the shadow of the business end of a preywinder?

She asked me with trepidation, "How long will we wait here clutch-brother?"

"The appointed time approaches young one. Have faith in our far-cousins."

Ilyurier looked down at her terminal and said nothing else. I decided to reassure her.

"Listen to the songs in the nebula. They will tell you where the preywinder wishes to go."

I had recently ignored the songs the galaxy sang to me in my rush to hunt down an enemy. That mistake ended, once again, in a trip to Phao in an escape pod courtesy of a different preywinder. I always try to make a habit of learning from my mistakes. Here I was trying my hardest to make another.

To my relief Aceeas Muriten, my second mate, excitedly reported a contact transmitting priority codes.

"Very good young-ones, let's get our guests aboard and get out from the shadow of this blasted preywinder."

Old Familiar Feeling

I sit in uncomfortably in my command chair. I spit blood on the deck.

"Status?" I inquire of my painfully overpaid first mate.

"The hull is breached clutch-brother. The control systems are fused and the back ups are non-responsive. We are in a rapidly decaying orbit over Diphda. She'll fly apart in a few minutes."

"Do we have any sensors?"

"Exterior optics only, I'll put it on the main screen."

Sparks fly and the display comes back to life. Unmagnified against the pitch-black of the Diphda system the Mooncrusher that had just smashed the Luna Fuwuyothi aside was bearing down on the Crazy Missile Foodie, curiously named and commanded by Godfather Q Roger.

I turn to my second mate with another question, "Mnaryii, did we even scratch the evil bastard?"

"Clutch-Brother, we scored three missile hits and several cannon shots. We stripped nearly half their armor before the weapons systems were disabled."

I look back at the view screen in time to see the Mooncrusher explode brilliantly under the withering fire of the Godfather's guns.

I smile wide, showing bloody teeth.

"To the escape pod then?" I look around the bridge one last time and say to myself, "This is becoming far to easy."

Lessons Learned.

"Stupid, stupid, ska-spit STUPID!" I was shouting as the recovery crew on Phao opened up the hatch to the escape pod. My crew followed behind me sullen as we briskly walked from the scorched pod across the hangar deck to the ramp underneath a brand new Scorpion. I swiped the bill from the hands of the human female insurance adjuster, pressing my palm on the smart-flimsy without even looking at the total.

"Clutch-brother you should not be so hard on yourself, we had to fight."

I wheeled around in a fury and pointed my clawed finger into Anthraceyt Muritens face and said calmly, "I am hard on myself because I should know better. A one to one attack on that Mooncrusher was suicide, especially without a shield. I put us all at risk... for what? To say I fought at the first battle of Cor Caroli? No, little clutch-brother discretion is the better part of valor. It seems that for all of my battles I have not yet learned that."

Anthraceyt lowered his gaze and followed silently into the turbo lift that led to the bridge of the new Luna Fuwuyothi. When we all reached our stations, strangely similar to the ones on the destroyed Scorpion, I said softly to Anthraceyt, "Please take us into orbit and set a course for Kitalpha, maximum speed."

"As you command-clutch brother."

Within moments we were across the cluster and I saw from the news feed that Eronime had been destroyed. I gritted my teeth. "Take us into Etamin."

From Etamin we came to Cebece where a long wall of military outposts bisected the sector. As we came to the wormhole to Gomesia one of my other navigators shouted "Clutch-brother, Imperial signatures in the mouth of the wormhole!"

Through the view port the large imperial ships were visible as blackness in front of the near blinding glare of the spacial anomaly. I noticed the recognition codes on a Behemoth in the formation and my eyes widened.

"We have to be quick, target that Behemoth's engines and fire forward EM batteries."

The battle was quick and one sided. The Behemoth did not have any weapons. From the safety of the mouth of the wormhole we watched as the Mooncrushers from moved back in forth in space blinking their indicator lights at us.

"They are taunting us aren't they clutch-brother?" Anthraceyt asked.

"Most likely young-one. However, we are done for the day. Remember, discretion is the better part of valor." I said with a smile.

Real-War

I hate close combat. I hate the smell of ozone from laser fire passing through recycled star base atmosphere. I hate the cries of fallen comrades in my headpiece. I hate the blood that splatters on my ebidium chest plate. As I led my squad through the outer areas of the Horizon Mining Outpost's command center I thought to myself that we pilots, the privileged few, are too insulated from warfare. We command our warships. We fire our missiles. We direct our missile batteries. Our victims are blips on a sensor display. Their death-cries are oxygen burning out in vacuum.

There I was. Crouched behind a bulkhead as the valiant defenders fired lasers and slug-throwers over my head. I nodded to the Union Marine Sergeant in my squad. He led two agile Keldons around the bulkhead as the rest of us lay down covering fire. Once they reached their advanced position the Sergeant lobbed a plasma grenade into the mob of defenders. There was a piercing shriek and a flash of light. The resistance at this part of the command center was over.

Using hand signals I directed my squad to form a defensive line on our new position. I radioed Son Dagobert that we had cleared the way to section three. I traded a knowing glance with my clutch-brother as he led his Keldons on toward victory.

I scraped a bit of blood off my armor with a talon as i listened to the laser fire echo down the promenade.

Waiting

The command deck of the Luna Fuwuyothi is silent and I am alone in its center. I have brought aboard three new crew mates to help me with day to day operations. They are asleep. I have not slept in a few days. Hate keeps me awake. Caff and candy keep me functional. I look out of the transparent-ebidium view port. Friendly indicators on the HUD overlay mark the locations of the invisible Scorpions of my compatriots. Old friends and new, side by side. Warriors, finally.

Mission

I have been spent the past few days on border patrol duty. My warship, along with warships from half a dozen Union alliances, was on the frontier enforcing the border closure. The worst part about border patrol is the quiet. I have been alone on the Luna Fuwuyothi since the death of her namesake and fellow crew mates. I have not yet been ready to accept the responsibility that comes with holding the life of another in my claws. My life is meaningless. My body is a genetically engineered husk. My soul is binary code. It is backed up every cycle and beamed through subspace to a cloneing facility on Phao.

Luna and Thaeophyan and Holdorn were real. There was no back up for them. No second, third, fourth, or fifth chance.

My enemies took their lives with a hired assasin. They could not face the real death. So they kept their hands and their consciences clean. Because what happened to me? Dying is painful but not permanant. It is merely an inconveniance.

Luna is dead. I am not. I will never die until I choose to.

But I have found meaning for my safe endless life.

I will bring my enemies real-death.

God of War

I did not enjoy leaving the Luna Fuwuyothi docked for so long without my supervision. But I knew that I could not transport my cargo flying her. Such was the nature of my business that I could not even fly myself at all. I had gotten the cargo from some shady figures that my comrade Stryfe had put me in touch with on Phao. After that I hired a Ska'ari who owned a Harrier-class freighter and could muster some top class counterfit transponder codes. From there it was only a matter of hitting the X-hole to the West Pardus Rim.

I had disguised myself as a crew member of the Ska'ari captain. I mostly sat in the cargo area among a hundred or so tons of rad cells. Once an hour I checked my cargo with a hand scanner to make sure it was not leaking. The seals were good. It would have been totally undetectable, especially behind the masking signatures of all of the rad cells.

The little Ska'ari informed me through the ship's comm that we had arrived in the sector of our destination. I came to the front to give him the final coordinates. We veered away from the wormhole away from the most travelled space lanes. I could see the lights of a hundred ships following one another to a pale blue dot at the end of my vision. We flew at a fraction of light speed for a time. Finally we made orbit over a red planet that had been beaten into what could barely be called Class M status.

We landed in a tiny space port in a region of the world called Argyre. I pushed my cargo down the loading ramp on a light-duty grav cart and walked out into the thin, cold air. A group of humans were waiting for me on the ground. They looked comfortable in the sub-zero air. They were more tall and akward looking than other humans I had encountered.

"I am here to meet Eddie Pearl of the Nergal Underground." I said in my best Human Basic. A bearded Human male stepped out from the group and extended a hand in that oh-so human greeting.

I accomodated his hand shake as he spoke.
"Welcome to Crater Town. You must be the Keldon known as Dex."
"I am." I replied, "and I have your device. It is small enough that you should be able to move it through orbital customs undetected but it is powerful enough for you to make quite an impression."
"Nergal thanks you, Keldon."
I stood by as his comrades took posession of the device. They began to go their separate ways. Before he could leave I asked Eddie one last question.
"Sir, If i may? Why would you be willing to do this to your own people?"
"They aren't my people any more, Keldon. This world has made us different, right down to our DNA. Many of my brothers here are not ready to accept that we are a different species. But you can't hide from the truth."
I looked up into the pink dusty sky at the primary star.
"Very well then, Eddie. Good luck in your endeavor. Do not attempt to contact me again."
I turned and headed for the Harrier. Leaving Mr. Pearl in the cold wind behind me. Before I climbed the entry ramp I bent down to the ground an scooped up a handful of the permafrost. I shoved my nose into it. It smelled like blood on my nostrils. I dropped the handful into the pocket of my coveralls and boarded the ship.

Gone.

I awoke to acrid smoke stinging my nostrils. I was half deaf and could barely hear the klaxons warning anyone left aboard the Keldana that it was time to leave her. I squinted through one remaining eye, searching for signs of life. I gagged on blood. I closed my eye and tried to remember.

"We've hit some kind of gravity well generator. The engines can't compensate!"
Thaeophyan Longlan's voice was shrill. The wormhole was so close but we were not going to make it. I turned to Luna, "How long?"
"A minute at the most far-cousin." she hissed through gritted teeth.
As we spoke a shadow descended over the bridge. Something big was between us and Daaze Primary.
"Contact! Right on top of us. Signature reads as a Doomstar. Five Viral Glands coming in hot." The fear was evident in Holdorn's voice. He was barely eighteen cycles. Barely been out of upper-Sirion orbit before I picked him up.
"Do we have maneuvering thrusters Thaeophyan?" I asked cautiously.
"Yes clutch-brother." he replied.
"Bring our guns to bear."
The Keldana's shields withstood the first pass. The Ebidium held until the fourth pass. A shot lanced through the bridge exposing us to vacuum. From the command chair I could see Thaeophyan gripping his control station. His hands gave way and the sound of his voice was inaudible against the howl of mother-galaxy. With a hiss the containment fields snapped into place. The sounds of combat became audible again. The shadow decended upon us one last time.

An explosion.

And here I was. Half-blind, half-deaf and bleeding to death internally. My one good eye found Holdorn slumped over his station. He had shrapnel injuries all over his back. I dragged myself across the deck to him. He was dead. Massive trauma to the head and torso. I sighed and looked up toward the ceiling. To my suprise all I saw was stars. Most of the bridge was gone. There must have been a containment field running on the emergency power systems. I pulled myself up to Holdorn's station. From his screen I could see that the Keldana was adrift.
A countless number of miles from anywhere. The matter anti-matter containment field was at critical.

My eye found the deck, and the green pulsing light that glowed through the smoke, leading me to the Keldana's escape pod. I began to drag myself there. Maybe Luna was already there. I didn't see her anywhere. I got to the escape hatch and I found her. Curled into a ball with her tail hiding her face. There was a centimeter of blood on the deck of the escape pod. I crawled to her and touched her head. She coughed and spoke softly so I could barely hear her.
"Dex? Dex. I'm sorry. I should have seen it on the sensors. I've failed you."
"Stop it Luna. You've done well for me these past months. Not just me. You might have saved our entire species."
"Dex... your face..."
"It's not important. We need to get you stable so we can launch this escape pod."
"Don't worry about me Dex..."
She was gone. I pushed up off the deck from her side. My claws were slick with her blood. I crawled out of the escape pod and sealed it shut behind me. I pounded the launch button with a closed fist. She was gone. I forced myself to my feet and walked to my command chair. As I sat down I keyed a few commands into the data center. I sighed at the pain of the interface lancing into the port at the base of my skull.

Backup complete. Transmitting....

The interface let go. I began to wonder what was taking the anti-matter so long to breach.

The Rashkiri medical technician in the Cloning Facility on Phao looked at me quizically and I got dressed and prepared to leave in my new self. He looked back down at his clip board and spoke, "Our records indicate that your ship was equipped with an escape pod. Escape pod technology is nearly 100% successful."
I looked at him through two good eyes. Then I looked away. "Is my new ship ready?"

And I was gone.