Chapter 2
"Oh…ssss-shiiit…teh…."
Axle looked over to the humanoid insect who stared nervously at the engineering screen in the navigation room. His glittering compound eyes and clicking mandibles showed all the signs of sudden anxiety, not to mention the eerie pitch of his dual-toned voice.
Agh, hell…
"What'd ya do, Sprocket?" she asked, not liking his lack of composure at all. They were about to enter Namek's atmosphere, and the last two words you wanted the ship's engineer to say during a planet drop were 'Oh shit'.
He ignored her as he clicked away, blipping up different angles of the ship, each gesture more frantic…more twitchy.
"Sprocket?"
"It'ss the Atmoss Ssshield," he hissed. "It'ss malfunctioning."
She choked. "WHAT?" Axle unlatched her chair strap, despite the proximity to Namek's atmosphere, and ran over to look at the screen. Sure enough, blitzing in bright red warning signs were the components of the Atmos Shield. "Has to be a system glitch," she stammered, "Gauge had the shield serviced back on Rameumptum. They regenerated it…"
A feint, sickly moan resounded from the chair behind them, and they turned to face the fur coated, eight-legged swatheswrap. Gauge's black oily eyes were already locked on them with the most unsettling expression of 'Oops' that Axle had ever seen.
"Gauge…" she managed, fighting the expression on his face with sickened denial. "I gave you the money…"
Guiltily, Gauge looked away, his appendages shrinking around his body in some dim remnant of self-preservation, as though he could protect himself against what was coming.
"You didnnn…teh!" Sprocket squeaked in morbid dread beside her. Gauge said nothing, but Axle knew the look on his visage all too well. It was the one associated with his worst vice.
She choked. "YOU GAMBLED AWAY OUR REPAIR MONEY?" Suddenly the ship jolted, and Axle grasped the back of Sprocket's chair as they began to enter Namek's atmosphere. "Of all the-" the words frothed on her tongue as another jerk cut her invective short. "You scatterbrained, hair-covered slug!"
"What the hell's going on!" came Two Stroke's voice behind them. She spun to see the rubber-skinned captain rigidly running towards them. He gaped at the screen just as the ship shook violently, throwing Axle to the floor. The sound of popping bolts and screaming metal thundered on the deck, deafening in its protest. In answer to the captain's question, the screen showed with horrific detail the eastern hull as it literally delaminated and peeled off into space.
As they all struggled to keep a hold, Two Stroke gaped at the screen, mouthing the words 'My ship…'. Then he found his voice. "My ship!" His white-knuckled grip on the back of Sprocket's chair snapped off the headrest, and his voice went up an octave and cracked.
"MY SHIP!"
"Strap in!" Axle pushed at him, accepting the fact that they were probably going to die, her fury at Gauge the only thing giving her the rationale to move. His eyes glistening in a crazed stupefaction, Two Stroke ambled over to his seat, and Axle crawled back up into hers and buckled in.
As the gravity of Namek latched onto their unprotected ship with a force, the temperature increased unbearably, and the roar of tortured steel rattled in her head. Feeling her fangs bite into her lip from the rickety death plunge, Axle cursed Gauge. She'd waited her whole life for a chance to set foot down on Namekian soil - not to be buried under it.
Both terrified and belligerent, she took one last moment to glare murderously over at her gambling comrade, toying with ideas of what she'd do to him if by some miracle they survived.
"You'd better…pray for death…swatheswrap!"
.
Nail sliced through the air at his top speed, his heart thumping against his ribs in anticipation. Guru had sensed the alien ship when it entered the atmosphere - or more accurately, sensed the distress of its inhabitants. Nail had been meditating at the time when his father's command pierced through his concentration with spine-straightening poignancy.
Nail!
His eyes had flung open at the urgency of the tone. Guru…?
A ship is going to crash on the mesa, and you are the fastest, my son. You won't be able to stop it, but you might arrive in time to salvage some of their lives. I'm sending Bok the Healer after you.
It was reflex to obey Guru's command, and he powered up without hesitation and burst into the air towards the mesa. As he curled over the globe, a fluttering twinkle caught his eye as the suns' rays reflected off the metal vessel that was plummeting to the ground.
He gaped at its speed. There won't be anything left to salvage…
Brief anxiety-ridden kis flickered off and on, as though battling consciousness. The ship's thrusters were spitting against the descent, and Nail realized that if it didn't angle out soon, there would be nothing he could do.
Pull up! He screamed silently. Pull up!
As though in response to his plea, it broke off at a sharp bend, and skidded across the green landscape when it hit, leaving a hideous scar in its wake. The thunderous sound of its impact filled his ears and reverberated all the way to his toes.
Unprepared for the noise, Nail grunted and crumpled like a winged bird. He fell several yards before he was able to regain his flight. But when he did, he was doubly panicked. The thing had burst into flames.
Porunga…
Touching down by the sizzling hunk of metal, he tried first to put it out with a non-explosive ki blast. But the fire was fed from within, and encompassed the ship anew, despite his efforts to extinguish it.
Sweating profusely, he scouted out what looked to be an entrance. Knowing next to nothing about the vehicle's design, Nail only hoped that the inhabitants weren't directly behind it.
Because he blew it to hell.
His blast sent it peeling inward, and he ducked through the flames into the smoldering ship. The burning interior scorched his skin and singed his clothes as a putrid smoke assaulted his senses, giving him the impression that things were going to get worse, real fast. He ran blindly through the heated passageways, until he came to an open room.
Four alien creatures lolled their heads in unconsciousness, strapped securely in their rooted chairs. Not having the time to assess anything besides their rapidly dimming life forces, Nail proceeded to sear their strappings with his ki, loosening the cooked, swollen bodies. Then, taking two at a time he rescued them from the collapsing structure just moments before it caved in on itself in a melted, polluted heap of metal.
"Hurry, Bok," he muttered under his breath as he worried over the soon-to-be corpses. Each seemed to be a different species. One looked like a giant insect, while another resembled a fur-covered sea creature. Then there was an ambiguously featured, rubber-skinned individual, while next to that was a gray humanoid, not unlike his own kind.
Nail deduced by the bruising and swelling that the impact had liquefied their bones against the strappings of their chairs, and nearly stretched their heads right off their necks. Their skin looked and smelled as though it had been held over a fire. It was a gruesome sight, and Nail bit back a sudden wave of nausea. He could sense nearly nothing from them by now, realizing that one, if not more, had already died.
So engrossed was he in their visually unsettling state, that it caught him off guard when Bok touched down next to him. "Do they still live?" he asked somberly.
Nail cleared the lump in his throat, and met his eyes. "You tell me."
Bok leaned over the multi-appendaged alien and grimaced as he spread his hands over its torso. "This one's dead." Without hesitation, he then moved to the insectoid, and then the rubber-skin. After a moment of concentration, he shook his head. "And so are these two."
Nail stepped back as Bok then hovered over the gray creature. Perhaps it was the feint resemblance it had to his own people, but he found himself holding his breath and giving a quick prayer to Porunga that they might save this last alien.
Bok's brow quirked, a sign that he'd found a spark of life. Nail breathed a sigh of relief as the aura encompassed the Healer, and then watched in wonderment as the stranger's features regained their shape.
More learned than most of his brethren, Nail took note of the curvy figure and realized that this one was a female, no doubt belonging to one of those species that required two genders to procreate. Her deep black-burgundy hair was braided back behind her pointed ears in a practical fashion - as practical as the green pants, black boots and sleeveless, mid-riff top she wore. Heavily-muscled, but not obscene, her body showed a smattering of scars that gave him the impression that she'd been in a handful of fights.
A gold hoop earring out of one ear offset a brilliant yellow star-shaped birthmark around her left eye - something that contrasted violently with the smooth gray hue of her skin. Her appearance intrigued him, naturally. It was the first alien he'd ever seen, and he found himself curious to see how she'd interact with them.
The aura dissipated, and her fierce green eyes fluttered open, as confused and panicked as a grass rodent clutched in the talons of a morning bird. But before Bok could remove his hands, she'd snatched a barrel-shaped weapon from a holster on her thigh, and jammed it under his chin.
Bok stiffened and held his breath as her other hand curled in his neck wrap. Misinterpreting his intentions, she hissed at him, her fangs glistening white in the sunlight.
Nail took a step towards them and she snarled a him. Her aggression startled him, but he was no fool. Aware that any sudden movement might cause her to harm the Healer, he held his hands out in a placating gesture. "We're here to help you," he coaxed uneasily, hoping that she'd hear the peace in his words if not understand them.
The female studied their faces warily, intrigue gradually replacing suspicion. With a forceful shove, she released Bok and raised herself up on her elbows, frowning.
Nail watched in quiet sympathy as her gaze fell on the steaming pile that used to be their space ship. Her face opened in stunned comprehension, and she shakily stood to her feet, taking three mindless steps towards it.
Her shoulders tensed all the way up to her ears, and a whimper escaped her lips as she slapped a black-gloved hand to her forehead. After several seconds of stupefied silence, she clenched her fists. To Nail's surprise, she started pacing back and forth, flinging her arms in furious gestures, yelling…at the ship. Though he didn't understand her language, the tone of her voice and spittle on her lips gave him a strong impression that the words were obscenities.
On one of her about-faces, she noticed the corpses of her comrades, and he braced himself for all that belligerent energy to transform into misery.
Her brows drew tight in the middle and she ran up to them, each one, and felt for a pulse, a look of pained disgust on her face at their misshapen appearances. The hair-covered, multi-appendaged creature was the last one she hovered over. After deducing that it was also dead, she gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut. Nail anticipated weeping or wailing. But the strange female did neither.
To his muted surprise, she stood and kicked her shipmate's corpse. Three times. Then she began a tirade of what Nail assumed was invective, making her earlier tantrum look like a prayer.
He could only watch in horrified fascination as she ranted and raved until her voice was hoarse. Then, in a blur, she unsheathed her weapon and pointed it at the body.
Nail locked wide-eyed stares with Bok, who shrugged, also stunned at her odd behavior.
He thought she meant to shoot her dead comrade, but instead the female straightened her back, braced her legs and blew a hole in the terrain beside them. Nail and Bok jumped as enough dirt to fill a small pond was displaced all around them. In its wake was a gaping hole that pocked the once-beautiful landscape.
Bok whimpered, his anxiety almost palpable. That very weapon had been shoved in his throat just moments earlier.
Then the alien female dropped to one knee, and heaved the fur-covered body up in her arms. Taking a brief moment to finally acknowledge the Namekians through a slit-eyed glance, she addressed them haughtily.
"Are you going to stand there, useless?" she asked in a thick guttural accent. "Or are you going to help me bury them?"
Nail gawked.
She knew their language.
