Bright green energy bolts lanced across the reddish-orange backdrop of Rigor Strand, popping against the hull plates of the bulk freighter Darkwinder. The pursuer, a B'hiri ship shaped like a hand with four digits extended, fired from the fingertips while a tractor beam generator began to pulse in the palm.
Inside the cockpit of the Darkwinder, a Lotorian with grizzled black and gray fur clenched yellowed fangs in frustration. "So close," he growled.
"I said we should have dropped out of OtherSpace closer to the Strand," chided the female Lotorian, sitting at a console to his left. "But did you listen to me? Do you ever?"
Razzak Aazzal furrowed his brow, swiveling his snout to glare at his mate of forty-eight seasons. "No time for gloating, Eelamez." The freighter shuddered as the tractor beam took hold. He switched off thrusters - no sense inflicting more damage to the Darkwinder. "Get Zazal. We negotiate."
Eelamez rolled her eyes, unfastened the trajectory harness, and then bounced out of her seat as the main generators shifted power from the usual blue-white lighting to a softer amber. Auxiliary systems taking over. She stopped at the hatch leading to the central access corridor before turning to ask Razzak. "Did you remember the timer?" Her mate bobbed his snout in the affirmative. "Good," she said, without sounding too relieved. If main power wasn't back on within twenty minutes, the Darkwinder's self-destruct process would begin.
She plodded down the corridor, prehensile tail thrashing back and forth in agitation. She stopped to check the status of the freighter's single escape pod. It took a few quick keyed sequences to bring up a general diagnostic report. If all else failed, Eelamez reasoned, it would be best not to suffer one last nasty surprise. The pod appeared to be fully functional, however. Down a brief set of metal steps, her path took her into the crew commons, where she found their only surviving offspring, a white and gray Lotorian called Zazal, sitting at a holoterminal. He was closing on his twenty-fifth season, but in so many ways he had proven to be no different than he was in his fifth. Eelamez and Razzak both had hoped that he would someday take their place as the leader of Darkwinder Freight. However, he had demonstrated time and again that he lacked the drive, the aptitude, and the interest to throw himself into such a career. Rather than invest himself in a reality that could reap dependable profits, Zazal instead opted to squander his time and talent on works of fantasy - holographic creations from a vivid imagination that could be blamed on neither Eelamez or Razak.
The youngling brightened upon seeing his mother enter the chamber. "The latest installment is almost ready! Do you want to see?"
"Not now, Zazal," Eelamez replied. "B'hiri want to talk. Father needs a translator."
His shoulders slumped as he lowered his snout, tapping absently at the controls on his holoterm. "It's about us," Zazal muttered, glittering black eyes reflecting the blank blue glow of the vacant vidspace.
"Soon," his mother said. "Not now. Go."
Zazal nodded. He turned off the holoterm, wriggled out of his harness, and then lumbered toward the access corridor with Eelamez close behind. At five and a half feet tall, he easily outmatched his mother by a foot. His father only stood five feet, fully erect. He seemed to notice the amber lights for the first time as they passed the pod hatch. "What do the B'hiri want?"
"The war didn't go well for them, you know," Eelamez said.
"I liked that B'hiri we met on Comorro that time."
"They needed our help then," she said. "Now they want our cargo. Desperation drives nice people to do terrible things sometimes."
Zazal ducked to avoid clanging his white-furred skull against the upper arch of the hatchway leading into the cockpit. Razzak now crouched over the holoterm, staring at the three-dimensional image of a black, chitinous spider-like being with compound eyes. "Translate come!" the freighter captain said, jabbing a finger toward Zazal. "See? Not stalling! Just need B'hiri talker."
The younger Lotorian wandered over to the holoterm and waved tentatively at the alien on the viewer. Zazal shifted to speaking the language of the B'hiri, which was no small feat from a Lotorian, given that it involved clicking noises, limb contortions, and twisting of antennae. In Zazal's case, fingers served to represent antennae. "How we help?"
"Give cargo," the pirate answered. "Give ship."
"Cargo for Llivori client," Zazal said. "Contract. Bad for business if not deliver. Ship home. B'hiri not give up their home. Why we do so?"
"Hungry," the pirate said.
"Yes," Zazal said. "Cargo not food. Cargo medical supplies. Have food on rock base in Strand. I talk to others. We share?"
A lengthy pause as the B'hiri considered Zazal's offer. Eventually, he twisted antennae in assent. "You take us safe to rock base. Give food. We leave cargo and ship."
Zazal bobbed his snout. He turned to beam at Razzak and Eelamez, shifting back to the Lotorese tongue. "They'll leave us alone if we give them food from our base in the Strand."
Razzak's mouth fell open. Eelamez grabbed Zazal by the shoulders. "You told him about our base? What were you thinking? What part of 'secret hideout' has eluded your senses?"
"They're just hungry," Zazal protested.
"It's not our job to feed all the hungry strays in the galaxy, Zazal!" his father said. "You had no right to do this. If you had half the brains of your siblings, you'd be a wonder to behold. Now, you're nothing but an utter disappoint--" The tirade ended as the B'hiri holovid transmission deteriorated in a flash of static. Razzak and Eelamez both loped to the sensor display in time to see that three wedge-shaped vessels had emerged from OtherSpace to pounce on the B'hiri pirate.
"Medlidikke," Eelamez hissed as she watched the B'hiri ship disappear in a burst of shrapnel, superheated particles, and frozen mist. Then the wedges were closing on the Darkwinder. Her eyes narrowed. She looked at Razzak. He met her gaze, whiskers drooping and angular ears flicking nervously. She turned toward Zazal. "Go to the commons. Prepare that holovid you wanted to show us."
Zazal's eyes lifted from the deck, where they had fallen after the upbraiding from his father. "Really? But the Medlidikke are here. Shouldn't I talk to them?"
"I'm sure they would much rather watch your program," Eelamez said. "Don't disappoint us again, Zazal. Prepare it for transmission!"
"Yes, of course," the younger Lotorian blurted, shuffling awkwardly toward the corridor. He ducked again, passing under the hatchway arch, and returned to the crew commons. He settled back down into the chair at the holoterm. Zazal had just switched on the main holographic array to prepare the playback sequence when he heard the CH-KUNG! noise coming from down the corridor.
He jumped to his feet, scampered up the stairs, and lunged toward the sealed escape pod hatch. The sign above the hatch glowed red with the words "LAUNCH IMMINENT." He pounded on the hatch, peering through the thick glass of the porthole at his parents. They were harnessed into their gravity couch, doing an excellent job of not looking in Zazal's direction.
"Don't leave me!" Zazal cried helplessly. "I'll do better! I promise!"
They wouldn't look at him. If they heard him, he was ignored. The pod roared out of its chute in the belly of the Darkwinder and into the starry darkness beyond. He slumped with his back against the hatch, curling tail around waist as he lifted his snout to let loose a chittering howl of grief.
He stifled the cry when he felt the deck shake as one of the Medlidikke vessels latched a coupling tube to the Darkwinder's airlock. Zazal trembled as he locked his eyes on the airlock hatch, recessed into the ceiling directly above him. From a young age, Zazal had learned about the atrocities of these Hekayti outcasts, the worst of the worst from the misfits known as the Verdikke - the unbelonging. The unwelcome. The unwanted. Among those criminals and miscreants, the Medlidikke reigned supreme with their reputation for brutality and bloodthirst. Now, it seemed, he would learn about those horrors first-hand.
The hatch dropped open. Zazal shuffled left to avoid the fluffy maned Lyiri that landed gracefully in his place next to the escape pod hatch. She peered at the Lotorian, ears rotating as she sought to perceive other members of the crew in critical locations. Reaching over her shoulder, she tugged a plasma rifle from its scabbard and kept it locked on Zazal as she spoke into a commlink pip affixed to the top of her left hand. "Clear."
Down from the hatch dropped a long-legged, flop-eared Gankri with a bushy coat of orange-yellow fur. He pulled two zig-zag blades from sheathes on his hips, stepping toward the cockpit to glance inside. "Confirmed," the Gankri reported into his own commlink pip.
Finally, the leader's boots thunked on the deckplates. The Hekayti stood about nine-feet-tall. He could barely stand in the access corridor without hunching over. He held a plasma pistol in his right hand, while the left hand was gone, replaced instead by a blunt steel trident that sparked with live electricity. He had dark green skin, blotched here and there with streaks of teal. Sharp protrusions of well-polished black bone rose in a circle around his hairless scalp, with two larger horns swept back above his ears. He wore a tunic of ragged gray leather and brown fur, which revealed a muscular chest that had been scorched and scarred over the years. His legs, which ended in cloven hooves, wore pants from the uniform of a Hekayti warrior of the Ledelkrig cast - black cloth with red and gray piping. "Secure the cargo," he told his subordinates before turning his attention to the last remaining member of the Darkwinder's crew. He aimed the barrel of the pistol at Zazal's head as the Gankri moved toward the Lyiri, muttering, "Kill him now." At first, Zazal thought they intended to kill HIM. But then he saw their eyes focus on the Hekayti.
"Friends want to kill you," the Lotorian informed the Hekayti pirate, matter-of-factly.
He turned just in time to see the Lyiri raising the plasma rifle, ready to pull the trigger and turn the Medlidikke commander's innards into a blackened mess of fused muscle and scorched organs. The pirate leader squeezed off two shots from his pistol, decapitating the Lyiri with the first shot and searing the neck shut with the second. She tumbled onto the deck in a twitching heap as the Gankri leaped through the air, intent on paddling the Hekayti with his feet before ramming those daggers into the commander's neck. The Hekayti jabbed the spiked metal cap on his left arm into the crotch of the Gankri, unleashing a half-powered blast that rendered the attacker senseless. The would-be assassin flopped like a sack of feed onto the floor. The commander moved to stand over the fallen Gankri, then fired two shots to obliterate kneecaps. Agonized, the Gankri shrieked and thrashed on the floor. The looming Hekayti knelt beside the Gankri, whipping at the alien's face with the barrel of the pistol until he calmed or, at the very least, nearly lost consciousness. "Who hired you?" the Hekayti demanded.
The Gankri shook his head. He wouldn't answer. Another plasma shot sizzled just over his head, burning into the hull next to the airlock. He shouted gibberish that the commander couldn't understand. The Hekayti turned to glower at Zazal. "You understand him?"
Zazal couldn't quite bring himself to speak yet. He had actually taken some comfort in the time during which he had seemed to cease to exist in the eyes and minds of these pirates. Ultimately, he was able to bob his snout in affirmative response to the Hekayti.
"What's he saying, then?" the commander hissed through clenched teeth, venting patience that he didn't have in large supply to begin with.
"Your father hired them to kill you," Zazal replied in Hekayan.
"Father," grunted the pirate commander. He fired a killing shot into the Gankri's head and then sighed, holstering the pistol. Standing slowly, he turned to look down at the Lotorian. "He's never gotten that close before." The Hekayti rubbed absently at a scar on his chin. "Why did you warn..." He didn't get to finish asking the question just then, however. A klaxon started wailing in the corridor. The ship's AI announced that the self-destruct sequence had initiated. The Darkwinder would explode in ten minutes. The commander's eyes narrowed. "How many languages can you speak?" He had to shout to be heard above the klaxon.
"Sixteen," Zazal shouted back.
"Come, then," the Hekayti replied as he started pulling himself up into the airlock hatch. "Turns out I need a new translator." He waggled a dangling foot at the twitching corpse of the Gankri before disappearing into the airlock.
Zazal tilted his snout, dark eyes shifting left and right as he considered the ease with which the Hekayti commander had slaughtered his minions. Not one to be displeased, Zazal recognized. He'd had trouble enough making his parents happy - and, considering how that worked out, he didn't like his chances of success as translator for the Medlidikke. Of course, the wailing klaxon reminded him that he'd be dead one way or another if he didn't get off the Darkwinder. Tomorrow, he reasoned, would take care of itself.
"Be right there!" Zazal called up into the airlock. Then he hurried down the steps into the crew commons. He ejected the data shard from the holoterm, tucked it into one of the many pockets of his gray jumpsuit, and then walked back toward the steps.
He stopped, eyes widening. "Almost forgot!" He crossed the commons chamber to a hatch that led to the bunk cubicle where he'd slept fitfully for the last decade. Zazal laid on the floor next to the cot, rummaging through dusty old jumpsuits, mismatched boots, and discarded foil wrappers from insta-meals until he found what he wanted: A dark blue cloth shroud wrapped around something about a foot long and cylindrical. He got to this feet and unfolded the shroud enough to reveal black stone marked with engraved runes. A smile crept across his face as he remembered how his sibling, Azzar, had given him this gift so long ago. He could not abandon such a treasure to destruction.
"Let's go, Lotorian!" boomed the Medlidikke's voice. It echoed, shouted down the airlock tube into the empty chambers of the Darkwinder.
Zazal wrapped the shroud around the cylinder, then cradled it in one arm as he loped from the bunk, across the commons, up the steps, and into the access corridor. He flipped a forward somersault, arcing up so that his tail could grab a rung of the airlock tube ladder, and then he swung himself up into the chamber to settle onto the ladder below the Hekayti. Zazal slapped a palm against the hatch controls, sealing the door and equalizing the vault pressure so that it matched what waited on the Medlidikke side. The commander nodded, then opened the hatch into his ship's airlock. "Move," he growled, leading the way.
Moments later, the Medlidikke stomped out of the airlock and into the main corridor of his own vessel. It was a hexagonal tunnel, illuminated with blood red light strips recessed into the bulkheads, providing access to the cargo bay, crew quarters, gun turrets, and primary cockpit. Two Hekayti, one more scarred than the commander, bowed spiked heads to their leader. "Commander Bokren," the less scarred one said. Both raised their eyes to see the Lotorian emerging from the airlock. They looked quizzically toward Bokren.
"New translator," the commander said in response to the unspoken question. He shut the airlock, then yelled down the corridor toward the cockpit, "Get the ships clear of the Darkwinder! It's set to blow!" The ship shifted as attitude thrusters fired and cut loose the connection with the doomed Lotorian vessel. Bokren turned once more to the guards by the hatch. "Yish and Zorael are dead. Once we're clear of the Strand, send Subcommander Yurok to my chambers."
Zazal moved from one porthole to another until he found one that offered a view of the Darkwinder. The ship erupted in a puff of light, shattered metal, and venting gasses. Then it was gone. "What about him?" the more scarred warrior asked Bokren, jerking a thumb toward the Lotorian.
"Give him Zorael's bunk," the pirate commander answered. The guards nodded, then observed quietly as Bokren stalked off toward the crew quarters bay.