While Tyger dressed himself, a million thoughts ran through his head. Between his own experience and the story of the soldier it seemed that they were in an insane amount of danger. But looking around the shelter, it appeared that the soldier wasn’t nearly as concerned as he was. There was a decent amount of food, he noticed: mostly fruits, nuts, tubers, and the flesh of a few game animals scavenged or hunted from the surrounding area. He was certain, however, that the increasing number of the creatures had caused the stampede, meaning the supply of meat had just become extremely limited.

            This is ridiculous, he thought as he created a makeshift sling for his machete’s scabbard out of his now-useless bandolier. I ought to just sneak off and head back to Solace for help. No, that’s no good. It’s a day and a half away with a vehicle. Creator only knows how this soldier chick will take my abandoning her. And I don’t have a long range comm to get in touch with the Shadow Star. I guess the only chance I have is to find the hangar and hope dad’s ship is still in one piece.

            He cast a sideways glance at his apparent companion. She eyed him in a way that reminded him of a scientist looking at bacteria in a petri dish. It was impossible to figure out what she was thinking; only moments ago, she was a few well-placed moves away from raping him; now she seemed all business. He found it strangely attractive.

            “God, I can’t do this,” he murmured as he finished slipping into his sandals. “How am I going to work with her when the first thing I want to do is bend her over a table and–”

            “Who are you talking to?” The soldier asked, her sudden intrusion causing Tyger to put a hard brake on his train of thought. Grateful that she couldn’t see him blush under his fur, Tyger shook his head. “just talking to myself. Bad habit.”

            “That behavior can get you executed in the ranks,” the soldier replied, “or subject to reconditioning at least.”

            “Then I’m glad I wasn’t born a tank,” Tyger said, then quickly added, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

            “Why should I think there is?” The soldier asked, further confusing Tyger as to the state of her thoughts. As soon as he’d finished adjusting his gear, she gestured to the flap at her end of the lean-to.

             “The next wave shouldn’t come until tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll show you where they landed.”

            Tyger nodded as he followed her outside. The dim evening sun flooded the shelter as the soldier opened the flap, after a moment in the reduced light his eyes adjusted. Squinting as he crawled outside, and with stretch stood up–

            –and staggered backwards, tumbling back into the structure, the floor covered by several layers of leaves sewn together, made for a soft landing luckily. Still, this did not assuage his fear at seeing their purchase. The lean-to had been set up on a massive branch of a very ancient-looking tree, about thirty feet above the forest floor.

            “Shit!” He shrieked, regaining his composure as best he could. “You didn’t tell me we were this high up!”

            “It bothers you?” The soldier asked with that selfsame puzzling innocence. She clearly hadn’t seen him climb the tree during the stampede, but of course, fear of being trampled was a more powerful motivator than what seized him now.

            “I …” Tyger righted himself, gathering together the remnants of his pride. “It’s nothing. I’m just a little nervous about heights.”

            “Heaven forbid you ever have to fly a starship,” the Soldier remarked, raising her eyebrow in a manner that was akin to scorn.

            “No, it’s just when my feet are on the ground,” Tyger explained, controlling his voice from stammering until he was able to find a purchase against the tree’s massive trunk. “I actually can fly a starship just fine. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”

            “You have a ship?” The soldier asked.

            “Yes, and no,” Tyger said. “Well it’s my dad’s ship, you see. You said there was a hangar around here, right? Next to the clearing? That’s probably where it is.” Tyger cast a furtive gaze down the length of the branch where the lean-to sat securely propped against the trunk beside him.  “By the way, how do you get down from here? My claws can only stand so much stress in a day.” 

            The soldier gestured towards a makeshift ladder that was connected to the branch, woven from a mass of vines and wooden pegs forced into the tree bark. Trying to keep his mind from freezing him against the tree’s vast trunk Tyger continued with the conversation about his father’s ship.

            “The ship’s called the El Tigre,” Tyger explained, testing the sturdiness of the vines. Satisfied they would hold his weight, he began an uneasy descent to the ground level. “It can help our situation, that’s for sure … at least if it still has pow-” He paused, mid-climb. “Wait. Those things munch pretty much anything, organic or not right? They didn’t eat the hangar, did they?”

            “Not yet,” the soldier said. “But they have tried. Apparently, it is made of a material they found as offensive as my sisters. And good luck getting into it yourself.”

            Once they reached the ground level, Tyger scanned his surroundings thoroughly, half expecting monsters to pop out from under every bush. His hand went absently to his sheathed machete, but the soldier, joining him on the forest floor, placed a hand over his.

            “I assure you there are none left,” she said, and turned to take the lead. Somewhat mollified, Tyger followed behind as she guided him towards what looked like an impassible wall of roots and vines. The soldier lifted a heavy, low-hanging branch blocking their way, tossing it aside as though it were a mere twig, revealing a tunnel of vegetation where the tangles of roots and webs of vines curved a somewhat clear space tall enough to walk through. She stepped through and Tyger followed more closely, trying to keep his eyes off of her backside as it undulated like a bell in front of him. The eerie silence still plagued the forest, and his former fixation was replaced with a litany of concerns. How bad was their situation? Could it potentially get worse? And how long would the animals avoid this place? Perhaps it was just as well, though; he would hate to fend off a pack of jackal apes while fighting those mismatched nightmares at the same time.

            “If the place you’re leading me to is what I’ve been looking for, then I should be able to get inside just fine,” Tyger said, thankful for having confidence in this at least.

            The soldier paused and flashed him a sideways glance, pursing her lips. “Indeed, such confidence. It is an attractive trait, furry fighter; you should display it more often.” 

            And just like that, Tyger’s thoughts were steered back to the soldier. Downwind as he was from her, the air was filled with her fragrance. Imperial tanks were known for their aggressive nature in battle; he could only suppose that for those awakened to sexuality as she was, it was also matched in their libido. And that was just a little bit frightening. “Did I say something that … ah … interested you?” He asked.

            “You interest me, no matter what,” the soldier replied, casting a blatantly seductive grin his way. Tyger could feel the hairs on his spine and tail stand on end.

            Okay, note to self: Be careful not to give even implied invitations to horny Imperial soldiers, he thought, frantically swishing his tail in order to shake off the uncharacteristic fluffiness it had gained.  After a minute or two, they emerged from the other end of the tunnel. The canopy above was thinner, and shafts of the late afternoon light shone through. Verdant rays touched the gray corrugated steel of the massive hangar that loomed before them. Half-covered with vines and leaves, it first appeared as a huge rock to Tyger. A thrill surged through him at the find. He wanted to run towards it like a giddy child, but fear of the creatures returning, despite the soldier’s reassurance, kept his movements cautious.

            Above the entrance door was the sigil of the Knife of Solace: a double-edged blade in front of a chalice. The double doors were, as expected, tightly shut, with a numeric lock next to them, hidden beneath a box-shaped protective panel made of the same material as the hangar’s facade.

            “Energized nanofibers,” Tyger said aloud, tapping on the surface of the lock box. It briefly came alive with veins of light that coursed through its otherwise dull surface. “It makes a stasis field inside the hangar in order to stave off corrosion. If the ship’s in there, it’ll be just as good as the day it was put inside ... I hope.”

            “What kind of ship was it?” The soldier asked.

            “A modified Mallethead,” Tyger explained. He licked his lips with anticipation as he opened the box. “El Tigre was the name dad gave it, after his pet name for my mom.” Slowly, he input the code that the hiltbearer had given him, and after a thunderous sound of several locks falling open, the doors slid ajar.

            Inside the hangar, the lights flicked on and a fine mist from the previously stasis locked air rose from the ground fading quickly as a gentle breeze blew in from outside. Before them stood the sleek form of the TC-110 RDX Hyper-Mallethead that was the El Tigre. Tyger stepped inside, his tail twitching unabashedly and a crescent moon grin plastered on his face. Reaching out to touch it, he very nearly forgot the horrors of the past few hours.

            Galem had obviously taken good care of it before putting it into storage; the craft seemed to lack any nicks or scoring, or any sign that it had ever even flown through space. His mother had explained that the El Tigre was as close to a child as Cole had at the time, and it showed.

            He passed over the ship’s port side and paused, as a sight he never expected paralyzed him with shock and an acute feeling of awkwardness. Gracing the orange and yellow bordered left vane of its gunmetal hull, just below the graceful curve of its bow was the image of a very shapely, blond-haired Re’Kya Felyan, dressed in filmy purple attire that barely hung onto her body: an image that Tyger recognized as a somewhat younger portrayal of his mother, lying supine in a seductive pose similar to ‘bombshell’ artwork painted on the nose of alliance bombers: a tradition they themselves had carried forward from ancient Earth bomber pilots. He’d seen very few pictures of her from her days as a pleasure girl on Xiao, and most of those, taken by his father, were “private,” as she’d stated, and hidden safely away in her bedroom. If they were even half as risqué as this image, he was glad that he never did search out the others back home.

            “Whoa, mom! You never told me about this,” Tyger muttered, thankful that his companion couldn’t see the blush developing beneath the fur that covered his face.

            “She’s your mother?” the soldier asked, coming up beside him.

            “Yeah,” Tyger answered. “I mean, if it’s not, it looks a hell of a lot like her. But I’d never seen images of her so ... vivacious. I shouldn’t really be surprised, though. I wonder if she knew?”

            “Knew what?”

            “That dad had her painted on the side of his ship.”

            “So it seems you found what you were looking for,” the soldier observed.

            “Pretty much,” Tyger said. “Galem, the hiltbearer of Solace, he was a friend of my dad’s. It was left behind when he went into the woods beyond Solace and never came back. Space on the ‘port tarmac is at a premium. Rather than let it get turned into scrap, Galem paid its salvage costs and had it brought out here to his hangar.”

            “Such a secluded spot is a good place for pirates to hide items of value,” the soldier added. Tyger cast a wry grin her way, amused at her practicality, so incongruous from her sexuality.

            “Maybe.” He pressed a switch panel upon the hull that extended the walkway from the wing of the craft. He then climbed to the top and located the side entrance hatch where he lifted the hood off of the locking panel. The code keys lit up. “They’d never have gotten in here, though. Sweet! Looks like we still have power.”

            “It works?” The soldier asked.

            “Let’s hope.” He punched in the code from memory, his mother’s innumerable tales and recollection of his father’s journals that she’d kept for him running through his mind. “I’m thinking couple of decades in a stasis field might have helped, and she was top of the line when dad flew her.”

            “That doesn’t sound very comforting,” the solider replied.

            “Well, humans have a saying about that,” Tyger replied as the seam of the entrance hatch, a stretched rectangular octagon, fell inward with a hiss and moved aside on hydraulics that had not been used in over two decades. “Nothing in the world is certain, except death and taxes.”

            He reached into the utility satchel at his waist –one of the effects on his person that the creatures hadn’t managed to eat– and removed his mini maglite. “I’m going in,” he called down to the soldier before he switched the maglite on and stepped inside. “Keep an eye out below.”

            He turned left through the door to the cockpit, everything was dark. Locating the main power switch, he lifted the cover and flipped the toggle. Fans and tiny motors whined to life from within the consoles and bulkheads, and the internal lights blinked on.

            The pilot’s smart leather chair faced him, sliding out along the groove that housed its hydraulics. He sat down and the chair, after adjusting itself to the body contours and height of its new occupant it swivelled back towards the control console and brought him within arm’s reach of the controls.

            Tyger relaxed himself as he breathed in the faint scent that still permeated the cockpit. He caught traces of the hiltbearer, but more strongly was the scent that he’d only remembered as faint hints from that old journal, now much more powerful: the scent of Cole, his father, so similar to his own, yet distinctly different, and suffusing nearly every surface.

            How many nights have I dreamed of actually finding this ship? Tyger thought as he scanned the console, almost afraid to touch it. I never thought I’d ever actually see myself sitting here, not in a million years.

            “Why did you come here, dad? Why did you leave her again? Did you know it would be the last?” he wondered aloud as his fingers flipped toggles and buttons to bring the main systems online. He smiled as holographic screens flickered awake and initiated a system check. It was all there: weapons, sensors, system stats ... and then a conspicuously flashing comm icon, with the words, “UNREAD MESSAGES” above it in neon red. Tyger’s eyes widened with fascination as he gazed at the timestamps for the two messages: a date as far back as he was old. Licking his lips once again, he swiped over the icon.

            The icon vanished, replaced by the image of an official-looking man with gray hair and ice blue eyes. He wore an Imperial uniform, not unlike the one he’d seen his father wear, albeit a bit more formal-looking, sporting tapered shoulders and a white cravat about his neck. The dark blue and black Imperial symbol, Ouroboros-like, with two planets: one within reach of its open mouth, the other beside its tail, was pinned proudly upon his left breast, polished to an absurdly perfect sheen.

            “Agent Cole Sanchez, this is Holtz. You are two weeks overdue. We request your status and whereabouts. We have activated your ship’s beacon and are headed to its last known location. We will rendezvous within one Icona standard day from this transmission. I am required by Imperial law to warn you, should we find evidence that you have abandoned your mission without proper authorization, you will be subject to termination and possible execution.”

            Though he didn’t find this message exactly surprising, Tyger shuddered at its tone. The Second Imperium certainly didn’t mess around when its agents went AWOL. He then selected the next message, and the image of Holtz reappeared, his hardened image from the previous recording having softened somewhat.

            “Off the record, Cole, I sent that transmission as per regulations. You’ve never let me down in the past. I just fear the worst. I hope you receive this message. Just answer me if you can.”

            Tyger frowned. Aside from the scant bit his mother had mentioned about him, this Holtz person was someone he’d only known by name. His father had spoken about him to his mother only in passing, and the only thing she’d known about him was that he was his boss: not exactly a friend, but someone he’d trusted. Cole clearly kept many secrets, even from his mother.

            A flickering light drew Tyger’s attention away from his reverie. One of the screens linked to the stellar positioning system was blinking intermittently, as though the imager was faulty. The starchart image distorted and flickered away, then flickered back into visibility, only to flicker away again about a second or two later. He tapped the emitter, checking to see if it was a loose wire, but the glitch remained. Tyger made a grimace. He supposed that he would have to reboot the ship’s systems and hope that the holo-projector unit wasn’t damaged. He didn’t have the proper tools to do a full-on system diagnostic if it was a major fault, but this was small beans, to be honest. Aside from that system, everything thankfully appeared to be in good working order. All he would need to do was use the ship’s comm to get on the horn with the Shadow Star, and they could–

            Tyger nearly jumped out of his skin as aloud shriek pierced the quiet of the cockpit. He spun around in the console chair, and nearly spilled out of it trying to stand before it had stopped moving. At first, he thought it was a scream of fright, but when he heard it again, he realized that it was the soldier releasing a battle cry. Imperial soldiers weren’t known to show fear in the face of an enemy.

            He didn’t wait for the chair to slide back out as he leaped across its back. The console switched off as he landed on all fours before sprinting towards the entrance hatch.

            “Shit!” he hissed in Felyan as he saw the soldier down below in the hangar, inexplicably locked in combat with one of the creatures, the split corpse of another close by in a puddle of its own malodorous fluid. She stepped in circles while the monster, brandishing what looked like a vicious pair of shearing scissors, tracked her movements just like the one he’d encountered in the beginning. She stabbed at it with her extended vajra like a pike, the creature deftly avoiding the attempted blows as it slashed her way with its shears. They made a staccato clacking sound as they flexed and struck ferociously at her like an enraged serpent.  With blinding swiftness, the soldier shifted from offense to defense, deflecting its lunging attacks, the shears ringing off of the energized surface of the vajra blade. This dance continued for about ten seconds more, until the soldier, exploiting a faltering in the creature’s rhythm, made a downward sledgehammer blow with her weapon, screeching with that blood-curdling war cry as she cleaved the creature in two. Its weapon collapsed to the ground as the vajra sliced through its body, and the rest of the corpse shuddered in death spasms joining its broken comrade on the floor.

            “Where’d they come from?” He shouted to the soldier. The danger appeared to have subsided for now. Seeming to not have noticed him prior to the fight, she shifted her gaze towards him.

            “Behind you!” she shouted, shoving her arms out in a warning gesture.

            On reflex, Tyger tucked and rolled out of the way, feeling the hissing whirr of a saw blade swing by closer than he’d care to imagine. Popping back into a wide-legged stance, he crouched down, facing back in the opposite direction towards the creature that had almost divested him of his ear. It clung to the edge of the entrance hatch, and stared at him, like a demonic cockroach climbing on the kitchen wall.

            “Come get some,” Tyger said, letting loose a guttural growl that only his mother’s people could make. With a bloodlust he hadn’t felt since his last title match in the G1 finals, he reached for the handle of the machete that he’d strapped to his back. He recalled he soldier’s warning that these creatures grew smarter with every attack, and decided he would have to do something it would not expect. Pre-empting him the creature leaped his way the moment he drew his blade, instead of swinging wildly Tyger simply directed the blade into the creature’s path, instantly bisecting it showering him with rancid ichor.

He reached for the saw blade and yanked it out by the creature’s now-lifeless appendage. Tossing it over the edge he called out to the soldier.

            “Are there any more?”

            “No, they took me by surprise,” the soldier’s voice came from what seemed to be directly below him.

            “I thought you said you got rid of them all.” He said. Tyger didn’t mean to sound annoyed but the way these things were able to get the jump on him was starting to take a toll.

            “I thought you said that they couldn’t get in here.” Came the equally terse reply.

            Touché, Tyger thought.

            “Did they come in through the door?” Tyger asked, seeing the soldier go to the entrance and close it securely behind her. She then climbed atop the wing of the craft to join him. He extended his hand but was made abundantly aware of how redundant it was as she pulled herself up with deceptive ease.

            “No. They appeared shortly after you went into the craft. The floor is merely concrete, could they have burrowed in?”

            “Possibly,” Tyger said, and tapped the El Tigre’s hull. “But if that’s the case, why didn’t they eat the ship?”

            “That is indeed a mystery, furry fighter.” The soldier frowned as she ran her hand along the smoothness of the ship’s hull. “And I draw no comfort from such things.”

            “That makes two of us.”