Lex blinked… she was back in the warmth of a tropical climate. Birds and insects squeaked and clattered in the airless swelter. A memory replaying, transmuted into the form of a dream.
Scar stood in front of her, holding out his hand to her, taloned fingers beckoning. His jaws were moving but she couldn't hear him.
"What did you say?" She shook her head.
"I said, come with me. I have something to... show you."
She looked up; a cliff face reared high above them, "Up there?"
"Yes. It should be no... challenge to you, climber of mountains."
She looked around her. They were on Py'Are {Pron: Py-YAR-Eh}, a world characterised by tropical heat, luscious rainforest and large, blue lakes. The shuttle sat on a spur of land that pushed out a little into one of the biggest of these lakes. Looming over that, a giant wall of black, volcanic rock. Down the side of this huge edifice, the hissing, white snake of a waterfall, falling down and down forever.
"What about the children?"
"They are… sleeping and anyway we can... control the shuttle." He flourished his wristcom.
As they approached the falls, the spray billowed in great clouds, softening the heat of the afternoon.
"It is called the Tears of the Goddess," Scar said, in his own language.
"Why?"
He put his head on one side, trying to remember, "After a legend... I think. A goddess who was lamenting some betrayal, I forget by whom. The story is nonsense, anyway."
"Why nonsense? You worship a goddess, do you not?"
"I do, always." He spread his jaws at her, "But my Goddess sheds blood for betrayal, not tears."
The climb was hot but not too difficult. The fading sun still had the power to make her sweat and she had to make sure her hands didn't become too slick to grip the rock, but it was an enjoyable test of her abilities. She was aware of the sounds of birds and creatures beneath them and the roar of the falls.
The sun was beginning to set as they pulled themselves onto a plateau, not the top of the falls by any means, but she guessed it was still about a hundred metres up.
"This is far enough." He said.
She looked at him in surprise, "Far enough for what?"
He didn't answer, but walked across the plateau towards the falls. Sitting down at the edge of the drop, he looked back at her, clearly expecting her to do the same. She followed and sat down next to him, a little irritated now by this uncharacteristically cryptic behaviour.
Then she glanced up and her breath caught.
The spray of the waterfall glistened in the light of the setting sun, splitting into a thousand rainbow shards of colour, constantly reflected and refracted as the torrents of water poured down the mountainside. The water itself glowed golden and orange and red, a stream of liquid fire. She couldn't think of anything to say, so for a long while she just sat in silence, not able to do anything but stare.
The sun had turned a deep, blood red when she glanced over and found him watching her, "You... like it, then?"
"Like it?" She shook her head, "Scar, it's beautiful."
He purred with satisfaction, "I knew it would... please you. Colours, light, visual phenomena: humans like to look… at these things."
"So, you don't enjoy looking at it?"
"I prefer to look at you... when you are pleased."
She chuckled, "How come you know it, then?"
"R'Zuul brought... me here, once."
"That does not sound like him…"
"Not to see this place!" His brows warped incredulously and he began to laugh, "Can you imagine… him bringing me to see this?"
"Not really!" She laughed as well, tickled by the thought of the squad leader taking him sightseeing.
"No! I mean that we... came to this planet to do some boring task. I escaped him for a while... and I found this. I remembered it when we arrived and I... thought you would like to look at it."
"You were right. Thank you." She smiled at him, partly because she was touched by the gesture but also because she secretly suspected that he was more moved by 'visual phenomena' than he liked to admit.
The sun had set now, but the spectacle wasn't over. Now, the planet's moons were rising, huge and flushed with the afterglow of the sun They cast their reflections in the water so that there appeared to be four moons instead of two. It was night, but barely dark. The moonlight bathed everything in shades of pink and purple. Lex looked down. Below them, the huge surface of the lake glittered, the ripples on its surface just tiny wrinkles, reflecting the moonlight like sequins.
She pulled out from her pack some of the sweet, sugary fruits that grew on this planet. It was the only food she had brought, as she hadn't been expecting to come up here. She took a bite of one of the fruits and held another one out to him but, as usual, he refused; "Eating vegetation is for prey, human. I only eat meat… and you."
"Promises, promises."
He put one arm around her waist, pulling her towards him, "You need only ask."
As she felt his teeth and his tongue in the hollow of her throat, her eyes were drawn down to the ground, far beneath them. Of course, she couldn't see the cloaked shuttle but the thought of the three sleeping children inside it gave her a little chill of anxiety as he leaned over her, tilting her backwards.
"Scar," She said, "I don't like leaving the children alone such a long time."
"They are... quite safe." He said indistinctly, jaws moving against her skin.
"I mean it!"
"Soon you will… change your mind."
"I think we should go back now."
"Cease … talking!"
She pushed at him "I'm serious, we should climb down."
He stopped what he was doing and looked up at her, jaws spread in mock exasperation, "If we do… will you stop interrupting me while I am… devouring you?"
"I swear!"
He gave a long suffering sigh and stood up, but to her surprise he did not start the climb back down the rock face. Instead, he began to remove his armour.
"What exactly are you doing?"
He didn't answer right away, but let a wrist guard drop on the floor.
She took the last bite of the fruit she still had in her hand and watched him, puzzled and amused, despite herself. "Is this striptease meant to be getting me to change my mind?"
"Striptease?" He looked at her, "I do not know... this word."
"It is… um… when you 'strip' your clothes off in front of someone, slowly," She searched for the best yautja words to explain such a weird concept, "To 'tease' them to, uh…. for the purpose of making them… sexually excited."
He gave a burst of snarling laughter, "And is it serving this purpose for you?"
She raised an eyebrow at him, one hand on her hip, still chewing, "Keep going and I'll let you know."
"That was not my intention, but if you feel unable to control yourself – "
She threw the fruit stone at him and he caught it, catlike-eyes always attracted to rapid movement. Then he paused and studied her.
"You should probably take off your boots."
"Why?"
"Because they will become waterlogged."
She stared at him for a moment, then realisation dawned on her and she looked over the edge again at the water. It seemed quite a long way down.
She looked back at him "You are not serious?!"
"It is too hot," He stretched lazily, "I want to cool off and I cannot be troubled to make that climb again."
"It's a pretty long drop!"
"You want to get down… quickly."
"What about all your gear?"
He made a dismissive gesture, shrugging off another armour plate "I can bring the ship up to get this stuff tomorrow but... if it is too high for you..."
Her eyes narrowed in challenge and she began pulling off her boots. He had already taken off most of the armour plating from the top half of his body. Now he finished removing all but the dah'kte and a few other essential pieces and stretched again, rolling his shoulders and giving her a diabolical grin.
"Scar! Don't you dare!" But she was smiling as she said it.
"Let us see which one of us reaches the lake first."
"That's not fair, you cheating son-of-a-"
He dipped his head in a typically ironical bow "See you in the water."
And with that he was gone, diving from the plateau with a physical ease that was both enviable and infuriating to her, dropping towards the water like a dart.
Cursing him for being so competitive, and herself for not being able to resist it, she ripped off her other boot and went after him, leaping headfirst from the edge without a second thought. The exhilaration was the only thing in her mind as she plunged towards the lake.
The roaring of the water in her ears and the cold shocked her, a cold at odds with the humid, tropical climate. She was sinking, deep into indigo depths. She kicked and tried to swim, to push herself upwards, but her hands suddenly met a cold white ceiling. She pushed against it, confused, but it was thick and jagged and unyielding. Bewildered and panicking now she began to beat her fists upon it, lashing out as hard as she could, hurting her hands and her head as she battled against the icy roof that was keeping her under.
Then, as sometimes happens in dreams, the ice miraculously broke and she burst through onto the surface, gulping air into her lungs, heart pounding. The lush greenery of Py'Are had vanished. In its place, the cold, snowbound pine forests of Earth. The calm, blue lake was frozen over, covered with a thick sheet of ice.
Scar and the shuttle were gone and she was alone, shivering as the storm swirled around her. It was a snow storm, an ice-storm, howling like a wolf that tore into her flesh with frozen teeth. Her vision turned slowly to white as she was entombed under a bitter shroud of frost.
Dr James Ambrose sighed and turned the wipers on and the heat up as the snow fall got heavier. He was currently on his way to his holiday home in the mountains. He'd closed the practice the previous day, finally managing to take his leave of a particularly clingy patient, and this morning he had begun the long drive to Colorado. It had been bright daylight then but now the night had come and with it the snow. Although he knew he really should stop at a motel or, at least put the snow chains on, he pressed on, just wanting to get there now.
In deference to the need to stay alert, he had bought himself an extra-large espresso and (here he cursed himself and pulled ruefully at his waistband) a chocolate Danish. "At least the sugar will act as a stimulant… probably, anyway." He thought, blinking back the tiredness.
He had bought the place out in the mountains a few years ago and he dearly loved being able to get away and be surrounded by all this wintery beauty, but the drive was always murder. It didn't do anything for his attempts to limit his caffeine and sugar intake, either.
He was driving through the woods now, thinking how enchanting this part of the country looked in winter. The snow was pressing in on both sides as it piled slowly higher and higher. The whiteness gave the forest a dreamlike quality, magical and unreal, like a forest in a fairy story he used to read as a child. The branches of the trees sparkled and the snow fell like clouds of swansdown.
Suddenly the smooth yellow beam of his headlights reflected off a tall shape, it appeared up on his right and he hardly had time to realise there was something in the road before he hit it. His heart lurched and he let out an involuntary cry of shock but even over that he heard the thump of the impact as his bumper glanced off whatever it was. Ambrose slammed his foot down on the brakes, feeling his SUV slide ever so slightly on the icy concrete. Brain now reeling with alarm, he threw open the door of his car and looked back. There was a shape lying on the road.
Quickly he pulled himself out of the car and hurried over.
To his utter dismay, as he approached, he could see the thing he had hit was not a deer – as he had hoped – but most definitely human. As he moved closer, he saw that a woman lay there. Her eyes were closed, dark lashes resting on her cheeks, as if she were sleeping. Her long, dark hair was spread out around her head like a black halo and on the ground underneath her, standing out like crimson rose petals against the purity of the snow, spatters of dark, red blood.
Scar had reached the vent at the end of the landing bay, away from the shuttles. He knew he would have to keep his distance from his former clan sisters or risk detection. The Bad Bloods' camouflage would cloak both himself and Spyrro from unfriendly eyes, as long as he kept a tight hold of her, but there was still the Rough Skulls' superior sense of smell to contend with. As a male, his scent would be different to that of the female yautja and very noticeable if he came too near them.
He was directly above the console and the main control centre, which regulated everything in the bay: including lights and life support. Only one operative sat there, monitoring the different shuttle bays via a bank of screens. He watched through the vent grille, hardly breathing as two Rough Skull guards approached. The guards were wearing masks, but the operative was not. He only hoped that he was far enough above them that she would not notice him.
"Kyto," One of the guards said to the operative, "We have had reports that there is some sort of intruder onboard, have you noticed anything unusual?"
"Nothing," The operative shrugged. She did not look particularly alert, Scar noted. Until the guards had arrived, she had been resting her feet on the console. He grinned to himself "Unfortunate, that watching screens is such a boring task!"
"Which of the clans do they think the intruder is from this time?" The operative continued "I am sick of everybody imagining Bad Bloods in every shadow!"
"Nobody tells us anything," One of the guards said testily "We just get our orders: come down here and check for intruders."
"Now, you have checked," The operative stretched, "You can go back to the GhaRan-S'iKa {Trans: Annihilator. Pron: GA-ran-SEE-Kar} and tell her we can stop peering into the shadows."
The two guards laughed, "I would prefer to watch you tell her!" Said one "Then she can strike off your head, instead of mine!"
"Come on," The other guard turned to go, "We must finish our search of the bay."
Scar watched them go, "The Annihilator? What female commander dares call herself that?" He frowned to himself inside the void helmet, "Probably best if we get far away from such a creature before we are forced into closer acquaintance with her!"
Depositing Spyrro inside the vent for a moment, he pulled out a clutch of limpet mines, small magnetised explosive devices - another pirate's weapon. Ordinarily, Scar used them for breaching the hulls of enemy ships when he was too pressed for time to bother with cutting or forcing the airlock. He touched the delay button on each mine once, twice, and then again. Soundlessly sliding open the vent cover, he stretched, hanging upside down out of the vent from the waist so that he could use his long arms to reach the top of the control centre. Then, with infinite care, he used the magnets in the bombs to attach them to the console and pressed the button to arm them, knowing that the corresponding timer on his wrist-com would also start a countdown.
Hastily, he pulled himself back into the vent, scooping up Spyrro and scrambling through the tunnel back towards the shuttles, knowing he had only a short amount of time before the mines activated. His daughter clung to him mutely, sensing his urgency. He could feel her talons digging into his shoulders even through the thick void suit.
He opened another vent cover and dropped silently to the floor. As they crossed the hangar, he saw another pair of female guards patrolling in their direction and dodged behind a shuttle, putting its bulk between himself and them.
"This ship looks as good as any," He thought, "It is on the far side of the hangar, away from the console and near to a set of bay doors - perfect for what I have in mind." He set about breaching the airlock, using another deadener to deactivate the outer and then the inner lock so that he could wrench the doors open, working silently. Nobody challenged him. Once onboard he sprinted to the cockpit and pressed the control to seal it. There was no way of knowing if the hatch doors of the airlock would reactivate in time, but he couldn't afford to wait.
He strapped Spyrro into the co-pilot seat in readiness. Then he flipped open his wrist-com, visible now that the bombs had once more deactivated his cloaking device, and looked at the timer that he had synced with the mines. In the brief few minutes that remained he hastily checked the weapons systems and the turbines. He could only hope to the bitch goddess that they were operational and he had not accidentally stolen a defective craft. To his great relief, all systems whirred into life faultlessly, so he flipped the control that would bring up the view of the landing bay outside the shuttle.
"Father," Spyrro said beside him "What are we waiting for? Why do we not leave at once?"
"Patience, my youngest," He kept his gaze on his wrist com countdown as he fastened himself into the pilot seat. "It is about to happen."
"What is about to happen?" She looked from him to the screen.
Scar grinned again inside the helmet "This."
They both saw the flash of the explosion on the viewscreen, heard the boom and Scar hit the controls to start the engines a fraction of a second before the lights in the hangar flickered off. The landing bay was plunged into darkness as the main console died. The craft began to lift off, and he pressed the weapons control to arm the shuttle's guns, just as the green emergency lighting in the hangar flickered on. Some of the guards were already running towards the console, not yet noticing the ship taking off in the chaos of noise and darkness.
He pulled on the steering column, turning the shuttle so he could fire the huge plasma cannons at the main doors of the landing bay, then he suddenly noticed: this craft had guided explosives! The Chameleon had run out of these devices but this ship had a full stock of them. Scar did a quick mental calculation; they should be far enough away. He targeted the doors and fired.
The explosives screamed across the short space and smashed into the doors with a deafening concussion, the impact from the blast rocking the cockpit of the shuttle. The yautja in the hangar were struck by a silent hurricane as the door seal was breached and the air inside the landing bay began to escape. Rough Skulls were being dragged down the aisles of waiting ships, trying and failing to find purchase on smooth metal surfaces as they were sucked towards the breach in the doors by the depressurising gale.
From this distance he could see one or two figures struggling towards the rising ship, but he knew they would not reach it. Already, another huge set of doors were sliding across as he had known they would, automatically sealing off the section where the breach had been made, protecting the yautja and the other craft in the hangar.
Scar growled to himself and fired the shuttle's giant plasma cannons, blasting away yet more of the ravaged doors, making the rupture bigger. Then he engaged the thrust so the ship shot forward, bursting through the gap left by the explosives and the plasma cannons in a shower of molten sparks, breaking off yet more fragments of the damaged and melted metal in the process.
Beside him in the co-pilot seat he heard Spyrro give a howl of triumph as they cleared the hangar, leaving the Vortex behind. He pushed the engines harder, seeing the warship dwindle faster and faster on their viewscreen as the shuttle picked up speed. Scar turned to look at his daughter as she pounded her small fists excitedly on the arms of the co-pilot seat, laughing with exhilaration whilst his pulse was still hammering in his veins.
"I have her, she is safe!" He told himself, "Thank the Nameless Goddess!"
Then, he looked down at the wrist com again. He was about to press the button that would hail the Chameleon, when he noticed a red light blinking in the corner of the screen. Several enemy craft were coming up on them at high speed.
Happy Wednesday everyone. I have the week off so have been doing some writing, obviously. If you enjoy follow, fave, review etc.
LovyDovy7, glad you find it realistic. In my mind, an interspecies relationship was never going to be trouble free! I do still like writing the when they're together as well.
Kassandra, yes Scar is showing more compassion (which he feels guilty about) and Lex has taken on some inhuman traits as well, although she's backed into a corner so doesn't really have much choice! Both of them are off balance and not acting their usual selves. Wonder why that is.
Love n hugs ScifiTrash xx