Page 4 of Warrior Rescued

Excitement filled him and he eagerly hurried forward.

“Payim quo Desero.”

He climbed into the big chair, his tail wrapping around the armrest to help pull him up. Seated, he could barely see over the controls and yet sitting in the seat felt right.

“Found among the lost.” Agister cocked one brow at the meaning of his name. “Did the caregivers give you that name?” The giant warrior fiddled with the console doing something that looked very official.

“Aye.” Payim nodded then hung his head. “I lost my clan in the battle of Oa.”

Everyone said it was a miracle that he, a small babe, had been found amidst the rubble. Except it didn’t feel like a miracle being without a clan that cared for him, being beat up every other day, or being raised and trained by warriors for a never-ending war.

“Some of us are meant for bigger things than family,” he repeated the words Agister said that day they first met, the words that had shaped his life.

The civil war on Cadi was over but warriors like him were still needed. If the intel was true, a Miran Sona colony vessel had crashed on Gienah, marooning hundreds of humans. To make matters worse, the Jurou Biljana were scavenging the remnants of the crash. If the blasted reptiles were allowed to build their fleet using the Miran Sona’s advanced technology, the vile race would have the capability to traverse wormholes and spread across the cosmos, ravaging unsuspecting worlds like Earth.

“That is the truth,” Scala solemnly agreed. “Be careful, my friend.”

“Of course.”

Payim ended the transmission, switching the main feed to display Gienah, and maneuvered the cruiser toward the swirling atmosphere.

Elena

She huffed, out of breath, as she reached the canyon ridge. She’d had to climb faster than she was used to, to get away from the incoming tide filling the ravine below.

That’s what I get for daydreaming rather than focusing.

She gripped her knees and pulled in several breaths.

“Dammit!” she growled, tugging off the homemade mask that kept getting sucked into her mouth.

It wasn’t like the mask was filtering out any toxins at the moment anyway. The stronger scent of rotten eggs said it was time to replace the charcoal. It seemed counterintuitive that burning plants into crispy nubbins then lining her mask with the bits would protect her against the sulfurous fumes belched by the volcanos, but it did. Though the charcoal did have a shelf life, a point where it basically got full and had to be renewed.

She’d be all right for a few days, before her lungs started burning from the irritant. Elena unfolded the swath of fabric and poured the used charcoal into her fire-starting kit then tucked it back into her bag.

“Time to get supplies.” She nodded and started hiking toward the coast.

Most of the vegetation on Hell grew mainly along the coast and she needed more potatoes as well as wasp bombs. It would be a long tiring day, but that was the routine, and the routine kept her going.

Elena started jogging now that she’d caught her breath. The rocky plain turned into moss and lichen and then scrub brush the farther she went. She didn’t slow until she reached the tall flowering growth. Elena skirted the field until she spotted several clumps of the blue flowers with heart-shaped leaves that reminded her of overgrown impatiens. She smiled when her gaze landed on the seed pods she called wasp bombs.

“There you are.” Thankfully the plant was constantly blooming, except for in the coldest months.

She’d removed her mask prematurely. The fabric still trapped solid particles like pollen, after all. As she hunted a flowering copse that was just the right size, she again pulled out the swath of fabric and tied it over her mouth and nose. When she located a bunch of growth that was small enough for her to reach around, she fetched the odd alien material similar to a mylar balloon and unfurled the metallicized plastic sheet. It was surprisingly big, given how little space it took up in her pack.

“Easy,” she warned herself as she wafted the mylar up and over the thicket, like a parachute catching on the wind. There was a reason every creature, including the wasps, avoided the plant even though its roots were edible.

Swiftly she tugged the corners, bringing the sheet down over the plant. As the seed pods exploded, she turned her head, in case the seeds or pollen escaped. It was crazy how the pods burst with the slightest touch. They’d learned that the hard way when they first started hunting for viable food. She and Sidi were both nearly blinded by the seeds, their nose and throat swelling up almost instantly from the spray of pollen. Thankfully they had what she called the band-aid wand, one of the few functioning pieces of tech they’d salvaged, or they’d be dead.

She cinched the mylar sheet around the base of the plants, careful to not let any of the good stuff escape, then started to tug the flowers out by their roots. A sound made her jump. It wasn’t the last of the pods bursting. This was something else. Her gaze darted toward the sky, except she didn’t see anything. Then she spotted a flickering streak, a place where the greenish yellow clouds were distorted.

“What the…” Her head tilted as she tried to make out what it was.

Something inside said to follow it, so hastily she bundled up the wasp bombs, stuffed them into her bag and started jogging, following the bizarre streak. It looked like it was touching down where the geyser flats and the swamp met.

Avoiding the other wasp bombs, the ground burrows that could break an ankle, and fly-fishing spider strands slowed her down, until she reached the edge of the field. She climbed the hill leading to the geyser flats and spied the cloud hovering above the ground maybe a mile away. Anyone else might have mistaken it for steam following one of the boiling eruptions, but this was different.

“I was right.” She pushed on.

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