The soldier’s war cry ended in sudden silence. Tyger skidded to a halt at the hangar entrance and reared back with his machete, ready to cleave any waiting uglies in half. With a hard swallow and quick prayer, he slowed his pace to inches at a time as he ventured into the vulnerable open.
A pair of hands clasped his wrists, nearly causing him to jump out of his skin. From seemingly out of nowhere, the soldier appeared, and yanked him forward, fully out into the open. Her fingers wrapped securely around his hands, holding his weapon in place.
“Move!” She spoke in a harsh whisper as she thrust him before her. Tyger stumbled forward and his mate ran ahead, hurrying him along at a brisk pace. “Quickly, go!”
“Go? Where?” Tyger’s voice shook as he found his balance; his staggering steps at last gained a rhythm as he followed her, confused and just a little annoyed in spite of the danger. “What’s going on?”
“Something is happening,” the soldier explained. “The creatures, they disappeared. Moments ago, they had me surrounded, and I was on the verge of defeat when they just melted into puddles of goo. Then they just vanished into the ground.”
Tyger stumbled but she caught him and pulled him back to his feet.
“You must have felt it furry fighter, like an earthquake. But moving, shaking its way towards the hangar.”
Tyger had been about to turn around in spite of her insistent tugging, or at least to ask her to be less vague, but all his questions and protests were silenced by the sound of something like a muffled explosion. Both he and the soldier stopped in their tracks, well over fifty yards away from the hangar as the sound was followed by several cracking noises, and then a scraping rumble. The ground shook, and they looked back the way they came.
“By the Creator ...!”
Tyger felt his mate’s hand slip into his own. His fur stood on end on nearly every inch of his body as instantly, he was captivated with combined awe and horror.
It at first looked like a line of trees sprouting rapidly from the ground. The blackness of the mass was unmistakable, the growth hardly random. Like the bars of a prison, the barricade rose from the ground higher and higher, surrounding the hangar in a wall as impenetrable as the one that ensconced the clearing, ebon and putrid, with a strange oily sheen that reminded him of the slime that covered the factories on the docks in the polluted oceans of Xiao. Even the breeze took on a smell that could only be described as ... wrong. It wasn’t a stench, but it was worse than stale, not at all healthy. There was now no mistaking it. This eldritch horror had to be intelligent. Its interference with their every decision could not have possibly been random. It was almost certainly, by fathomless means, deducing their moves, and responding in kind, like a chess game.
Though the entire event lasted less than twenty seconds, its effect was profound and indelible. Tyger, afterwards, stood there, his gaze fixed upon the impenetrable dome-like canopy now erected over the entirety of the hangar. His heart sank into the soles of his feet. These creatures, whatever they were, and wherever they’d come from, might as well have blown the El Tigre apart with what they had done. The finality to this act hung heavily in the once again silent air. What could his friends even do now? Sure the Shadow Star had firepower that could take out an Imperial frigate, but what kind of force could penetrate this?
“You said you shot at these things before, right?” Tyger said in a hollow voice.
“Shot with standard MAG and AP rounds,” the soldier replied. “They were either absorbed or ricocheted.”
“Shit,” he said, whispering the oath in an exhale. “So for all we know, this thing could withstand even what the Captain could dish out. Or, worst case scenario …”
“I assume, Paige, wasn’t it? Is she above irradiating an entire region to assure victory?”
“Kinda,” Tyger said, “But let’s hope she doesn’t consider that just yet. I just wish she’d hurry the hell up and get here. Or else there won’t be anyone to rescue.”
“So morbid, furry fighter?” the soldier said.
“Well, it’s not exactly like it’s unwarranted,” Tyger remarked testily. “Fuckin’ thing’s been getting smarter ever since I arrived. It’s like I’m a curse.”
The soldier said nothing, only frowned. But there was no look of accusation in her eyes.
“You believe I’m not worried,” she said. And before Tyger could protest, she continued. “I am capable of knowing when we’re fighting a losing battle. But our mission is to survive until extraction. And that is what I will do.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” Tyger said … and then winced from a most decidedly uncomfortable sensation. It was the distant pain at his tail’s reflexive curl around the soldier’s waist. He yanked gingerly at the uninjured part of the appendage, gritting his teeth. The soldier’s eyes widened when she noticed the gauze on the wound for the first time.
“You’re hurt.” She reached out to touch the bloodied fur that surrounded the area the creature’s bludgeon had crushed.
“I’ll be okay,” Tyger said, feigning confidence while suppressing the urge to react to the tenderness of the area that the soldier’s fingers stroked. His voice croaked, despite his efforts to sound in better spirits than he felt. “One if the creatures snuck up on me and crushed my tail. Nanomeds should help for now. But I need the doc to look at it back on the Shadow Star, when they finally get here.”
“It must have known what you were doing,” the Soldier said redundantly. “Can it hear us, I wonder?”
“Possibly. If it’s as widespread as we think it is, then it could have heard us discussing our plans the whole time.” Tyger frowned even more deeply as he mulled over the exact nature of the creature. “The creature stayed hidden until I boarded the ship, and then attacked after I tried to leave. Maybe it knew what I’d done.” He turned back towards the soldier with a warm smile. “At least you came back for me.”
“You thought I wouldn’t?” There was equal warmth to the soldier’s voice that Tyger had never heard before. “I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened if you had still been in there when it walled the place off.”
“Me neither,” Tyger said as his mate leaned against his side.
“I am sorry. I do not understand your attachment to that ship, but I know it meant a great deal to you.”
“Well, being alive is worth much more than being dead aboard an old ship your dad left here.” Again, Tyger feigned emotions that were the complete opposite of how he felt. But at the moment, he was at a loss for what to do.
“One can’t help but wonder why it didn’t choose to eat the ship until now,” the soldier remarked.
Tyger shook his head as he considered this. And his conclusion made him feel some glimmer of hope.
“I think it needs it,” he said. “If it wanted to eat the ship, it could’ve done that a long time ago, long before we found it, or while we were still in it.”
Tyger rubbed his chin, playing with the hairs of his goatee. “If it can grow this fast, and it’s been around for at least two weeks, Solace ought to have been fighting off swarms of those monsters by now. You shouldn’t have stood a chance. But until now, it hasn’t grown any farther than the place where it landed, and it’s been discreet, only affecting these few acres of land. It could’ve easily infiltrated every system in that ship but its efforts were focussed on the astronav,”
Again, the soldier was silent, and remained that way for several heartbeats before speaking again.
“How long until your friends arrive?” she at last asked, quietly. Tyger studied her eyes. The soldier looked off into the distance but her eyes betrayed an unspoken fear.
“They weren’t far away, I suppose it depends on whether Paige thought it was urgent enough to disregard the local sublight speed limits,” Tyger responded. He kept his voice even, realising the soldier had just let her guard down in a major way. To mention it would likely cause her to suddenly shut him out completely, showing vulnerability to someone that was considered inferior could bring great shame.
Well, at least I now have a good idea of what I am to her, Tyger thought as he turned back towards the forest. “Do you think it absorbed all the creatures to build that dome?” he asked.
“We ... ought to search,” the solider said, slipping back into her normal stoic persona. But Tyger could detect a hint of gratitude in her voice nevertheless. She extended one end of her vajra until it was about the length of a short sword. “I believe they are all linked, as though a single intelligence controls them all.”
T yger nodded thoughtfully. “Like a puppeteer, just with deadlier puppets.”
“What’s a puppet?” The soldier asked.
Tyger chuckled. For all her tactical experience, the soldier had little to no idea of the more esoteric pastimes that occupied those she was born to protect.
He explained as they searched the woods, making widening circles for a distance of two kilometers, their conversations evolving after that to their lives and adventures, though Tyger quickly realized that he, having lived longer and gone through far more than most tanks, had done the lion’s share of the talking.
“You tell stories well,” the soldier commented after he finished describing how he’d once assisted a fellow Gestalt Pilot named Artemis humiliate another particularly arrogant Gestalt Pilot named Radic at the G1 tournament on Siberna during his rookie year.
“Well, I’m something of a renowned storyteller where I come from,” he explained. “At some spaceports, they even call me a legend.”
“Maybe after all this is done,” she said. “We could tell some stories of our own, in a more personal setting.”
Tyger smiled and the soldier gave him a playful grin. If nothing else it helped their morale.
True to the soldier’s guess, the creatures were nowhere to be found. And this was something that Tyger found both refreshing and just a little bit eerie. He sighed and stared up at the sky through a gap in the canopy. Come on Paige where the fuck are you?
“We’re out of options, out of weapons, and out of a safe place to hide,” Tyger said at last.
“There’s always the lean-to.” Tyger could detect the attempt at confidence in the soldier’s voice, and he grinned.
Tyger felt a sudden chill. “Just how many more creatures were there when they surrounded you?”
“A lot more.”
The grimness of his mate’s answer caused him to again wrap his tail about her waist, ignoring the pain. Doubt crept into his mind once more.
What was he even doing here?
Suddenly, retrieving some old modified transport his dad owned seemed the shittiest idea he’d had. Thus far, the only good thing to have come out of this adventure was his fling with a wayward soldier. And she was almost as much a mystery as she was when she’d first rescued him from being a meal for the uglies.
Well, they were most likely going to be dead before long. And all of Blair would most likely be a feast for monsters in a matter of weeks. But he and the soldier were now committed to this fight, and, in the very strange circumstances of this adventure, committed to each other for now.
They would die together.
At least he would see his father soon.
So ... nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“What are we?” he asked, breaking what he discovered had been a rather long silence between them.
“Pardon?” the soldier appeared as though his question had awakened her from a light slumber.
“What are we?” Tyger asked again, and gave a light tug with his tail, still curled about her waist. He winced against the uncomfortable sting of pain, the worst of it blessedly subdued by the nanomeds. “I mean, what am I to you? I’m sorry if this is right out of the blue, but it’s been bugging the hell out of me since we were inside the ship.”
“Ah.” The soldier nodded, but her expression was unreadable. “That’s the question, now, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m certain the answer for either of us is not easy,” the soldier said. “Let me ask this first. What am I to you?”
Tyger opened his mouth to answer, but the response he thought would so easily come was wedged in his mouth more securely than bonding resin between ship hull plates. He could have easily said that she was a fling, but his Felyan side treated her like far more.
“I ... see your point,” Tyger said hesitantly.
“And I see yours,” his mate replied. “What would I be to you on your home world?”
“Maybe a mate,” he said after a pensive moment, “but maybe not a lifemate. Then again ... Well, I really can’t say.” A sly grin then appeared on his face as an idea came to mind. “What would you want to be?”
For the first time, Tyger saw a blush come to the soldier’s face. For nearly half a minute, she stared at him, her pale eyes wide with something that appeared to be a cross between surprise and uncertainty. And in that moment that she stared like a doe in headlights, she appeared even more beautiful.
“Why do you ask me that?” She said at last, in a voice that was subdued and almost wistful. Then, her demeanor quickly shifting yet again, the soldier turned away brusquely, her look of surprise fading into a grimace of anger.
“This ... line of conversation is irrelevant,” she said, turning away. She grabbed his tail –thankfully not by the injured part, and unwound it from her waist as she turned around and stood up. “We’ve found no more hostiles, so I recommend we find food and try to get some rest.”
Tyger swallowed back the hurt he felt from this reaction, even though on an intellectual level, he knew what was going on. Imperial tanks lived short, controlled, regimented lives, quite different from the unlimited one he’d led. The unprecedented freedom being with the Shadow Star’s crew had provided, meant he had travelled the civilized galaxy from An’Re’Hara to Hana IV, while the only galaxy the soldier had probably ever seen was through the portholes in an Imperial shuttle or the grounds of a garrison. Intentionally or otherwise, he had just offered her the promise of another life: a life she felt she could not have, or at least thought she could not have without feeling the sting of betrayal forever branded on her conscience.
He followed his mate to several fruit trees and helped her to gather a generous handful. They then sat and ate at the base of the massive tree where the lean-to stood, safely on its expansive boughs, safe from the creatures, at least for the time being. Saying nothing, they finished eating and climbed up the set of vines, crawling into their cramped home and settled into the pungent pile of leaves that made up their mutual bed.
The soldier did not immediately fall asleep; of course, it was still somewhat early, even after the searching and gathering they’d done. Rather, she remained in a state of what seemed like introspection, while sleep evaded Tyger for the simple reasons of remaining fear, in spite of his tiredness. For hours, it remained that way: a mutual, awkward silence between them both, until on the verge of long-denied rest, he at last heard her voice.
“I have a duty, furry fighter.”
“I know you do,” he replied.
“I wish that ...” she began to say, but her voice trailed off. Tyger sighed, understanding her reluctance. But before he drifted off to sleep, he felt the soldier’s arm wrap about his waist. He smiled, though his back was turned to her, hiding his expression. Still, his tail found its purchase about her waist once again. What she wanted was clear, even though she would perhaps never act on it. But then again, how many things did he think he wanted in his travels, when his wanderlust took him from place to place? For once in his life, what he was certain he wanted, turned out to be two things he probably could never have.
Combined with their situation, life really did suck right now.
***
The sound that fully and unpleasantly woke Tyger and his mate was absolutely thunderous. The subsequent deafening, explosive cacophony, and corresponding shudder that ran through the tree, destroyed any sleepiness that remained in their bodies. Parts of the lean-to collapsed covering them in dust and leaves. Momentary terror forced the notion into Tyger’s head that the tree had been struck by some kind of meteor and was about to fall and crush them into a shallow, horrifying grave ... or even worse, that the main body of that horror in the clearing had moved from its place of mooring to seek them out. But no sooner than the explosion echoed its cacophonous din across what could have been miles, it stopped. Tyger felt a small pang of relief in the ensuing silence.
Well, almost silent.
“Is that ... music?” The soldier squinted with her pale eyes, frowning in the direction from where the new, quieter sound was coming: a raucous tune that, after a moment of regaining his composure, Tyger realized he knew extremely well.
“Old Earth music,” he said, feeling a surge of hope as he brushed off the leaves from the pile they’d fallen asleep in. “Heavy metal, it’s called. A group called AC/DC, or something? No, wait; Iron Maiden.”
“Sounds like racket to me,” his mate groaned as she rose to her knees, then crawled out of the shelter. “I should kill whoever created that ... music.”
“Tyger cast a surreptitious grin as he followed behind. “You’re about a millennium too late for that,” he said as they made the long climb back down to the forest floor. “Pip, you sexy pint sized bitch, I knew you’d come through!”
“I didn’t hear a ship,” the soldier said, “It sounded like a re-entry and crash landing, a probe, perhaps?”
“If it isn’t, then that music is a hell of a coincidence,” Tyger remarked as he absently checked the strap that held his machete.
The smell of burning grass quickly greeted Tyger’s senses as they moved in the direction of the music, which became louder and, judging from the look on the soldier’s face, more annoying to at least one of them. Now, more familiar with what they would encounter, he took the point while the soldier kept behind. He paused as they reached a two meter wide section of masticated trees and upturned earth. The air still retained the heat of a recent re-entry event, and Tyger followed the path to its end, where a football-shaped object about his height was lodged in the ground, still smoking amidst small fires that had yet to burn out. The song blared in an almost deafening dirge of driving guitar and drums:
Withered hands, withered bodies
Begging for salvation
Deserted by the hand of Gods of their own creation
Nations cry underneath decaying skies above
You are guilty
The punishment is death for all who live
The punishment is death for all who live
Out of the silent planet
Dreams of desolation
Out of the silent planet
Come the Demons of creation
Out of the silent planet
Dreams of desolation
Out of the silent planet
Come the Demons of creation
Tyger had been wondering how he would reach the most likely still searing hot probe when the music shut off abruptly. The surface of the probe then split open, and two antenna-like projections extended from it. Both of them sprayed a fluid on both ends of the probe’s surface, and a hissing noise, combined with a sultry cloud of steam filled the air. It was short-lived, vanishing quickly in the slight breeze. When the cloud had fully dissipated, the two projections sank back into the probe, and another, third one rose. A scanning beam brushed across him, bright blue and narrow. He glanced back towards his mate, who still stood at a safe distance. Pip tended to be proactive when building these probes, but he wasn’t sure if she had programmed some kind of defensive add-ons into that thing.
“Hey, stripes!” a high-pitched voice boomed loud and clear from an unseen speaker on the probe’s surface, full of the bravado and energy that could only come from the Shadow Star’s pilot. Sun’s up; this is your lucky day! Survival’s the game, and you’ve hit the jackpot!”
