Teidar Pallan Fireblade was the first to awaken.
Minimal pain… a good sign. No injuries significant enough to impact her combat readiness.
Her helmet reported breathable atmosphere in the shuttle. Also good.
She glanced down at the Tenoin Narrat held closely in her lap. There had not been time to secure her properly in the last available seat, not before the sudden maneuvers. The girl still breathed, although she remained unconscious. Perhaps a mercy, given the way one knee was bent back the wrong way.
Unbuckling herself from the seat, Fireblade stood and laid the young girl across both vacant spots, careful not to jolt the injured leg. Looking around the cabin, she eyed the passengers aboard. Most of Tempest's senior officers, who had insisted — in some cases quite forcefully — not to leave their ship until the very last.
Brave and honorable, perhaps, but now it meant that Strike Group 51 was deprived of far too many experienced officers. And unless a truly improbable amount of luck came their way, none of them would ever return to Union service.
Fireblade directed a mental pulse — as gently as she could manage, which she acknowledged was… not especially gentle — at the doranzer mazil-toza who lay slumped against one wall. The older loroi jolted awake, blinking rapidly. She coughed once before sending back to Fireblade. {Injuries?}
{One known.} the teidar indicated the prone Tenoin. {Rouse the others and check them. I will examine our surroundings.} Fireblade knew well enough that her own methods of 'waking' the others would not be as gentle as the doranzer's finer touch. And besides, it was likely that the Shells would soon arrive to search the debris field left by Tempest's crash. Better for her to patrol the outside.
She entered the airlock, checking the flickering display as it reported the outside atmosphere. Also breathable, surprisingly enough. But then, what exactly should one expect from a well-preserved Soia artifact?
The inner hatch had only just started to close when a thin loroi form dashed inside through the narrowing gap, joining Fireblade in the small chamber.
Exactly the person she had expected, too.
{Isn't this exciting!?} sent Beryl, her verbal thoughts burning with emotion. {A Soia habitat, world-sized, and in nearly perfect condition!}
{It is also likely to be crawling with Shells.} noted Fireblade, waiting for the air to be pumped out from the compartment. Even if it was breathable outside, actually exposing any loroi to it would have to wait until the doranzer had tested it and declared it to be safe.
{Then it is a great day for each of us! I will find artifacts to document, and you will find enemies to fight!}
Fireblade let her appreciation for her friend shine through the sanzai link. She had been… doubtful when the bubbly Listel had first been rotated onto Tempest's crew, replacing the much-older Tozet that had worked from the bridge position next to Fireblade for many battles. But the white-haired girl had soon proven herself not only as a more-than-competent sensor officer, but also as a friendly soul.
And so very, very much a Listel.
{Indeed so.} The airlock hatch opened, and the two loroi each took a step back as a brief wave of dirt fell in alongside the rushing air.
Once the minor avalanche was finished, only a narrow sliver of light shone at the top of the earth-filled hatch to show where the surface lay. A pulse of telekinesis forced open a crude ramp, linking the near-buried shuttle to the ground above. The two of them climbed up, Fireblade adding a few more telekinetic shoves to harden the sides of the ditch. It looked stable to her, now, but she closed the hatch anyways.
They arrived at the surface to find that the shuttle had managed to bury itself stern-first into the base of a rocky cliff and at a nose-up angle, with only the forward half of the cockpit extending above ground.
Around them, a narrow valley was bisected by a thin stream, sparse but tall green tree-like plants growing throughout. Really, if it hadn't been for the blackened groove carved into the soil by the shuttle's crash — and the smoldering, leaf-stripped trees near that track — the place would have looked quite beautiful.
{Do you think that this environment was chosen by the Soia to mimic their homeworld?} asked Beryl.
After a moment, Fireblade answered {Possibly. It is similar to some parts of Deinar, and appears to be comfortably habitable for loroi.} While it was unknown exactly where in the galaxy the Soia had came from — except that it was outside of known space — presumably they had chosen each of the Sister Worlds for some reason; resemblance to some aspect of their distant homeworld was a likely candidate.
The Tozet made to take off her helmet, and Fireblade cautioned {Keep your suit sealed. We cannot know for certain that this air is safe and free of micro-organisms.}
{The doranzer will have to pick someone to be the lab-miros to test it eventually, though.} But Beryl followed Fireblade as they walked around the perimeter of the crash site, scanning for any more visible dangers.
There came a loud clang behind them. The cockpit's emergency exit hatch slammed back against the hull, and a Tenoin Narrat clawed her way up, heaving her body out onto the hull amidst a plume of electrical-device smoke. Sitting upright, she snatched her helmet off and drew in deep, coughing breaths.
Fireblade and Beryl glanced at each other. {Or someone might volunteer herself, it seems.} Beryl sent with a flicker of humor.
The Tenoin stared around with her one eye at the scene surrounding them, before sagging back against the hull. {Not the worst landing I've been in, but close!} she sent to anyone that would receive.
To her credit, the growing number of minds that joined the buzzing sanzai network centered on the crashed shuttle showed that all aboard had survived the impact. Several were injured, yes, but alive. Not a bad outcome, under the circumstances.
Which meant that they had a whole fifty loroi… against a planet-sized Soia artifact crawling with who-knew-how-many soldiers of the Hierarchy.
Poor Shells wouldn't know what hit them.
Stillstorm clambered up after the pilot, looking around the beautiful landscape with a faint scowl. {This is a surprising development. The Soia appear to have spent more effort on decoration than expected.} She turned to Fireblade. {Have you loca—}
The Lashret's train of thought cut off sharply as a distant sound hit the ears of all the loroi outside the shuttle. Fireblade and Beryl quickly pressed themselves into a nearby tree-bush, while the pilot sprinted over to join them. Stillstorm merely ducked low back into the hatch, eyes scanning the sky.
A few thousand paces above them, a single atmospheric craft flew lazily past.
Umiak.
{It is one of their robotic craft.} sent Fireblade, peering through the branches that hid her — hopefully — from the robotic craft's sensors. {Atmospheric craft. They must have a significant presence aboard this Ring already, and nearby.}
They tracked the vehicle until it disappeared out of sight, over the lip of the canyon. It could not have possibly missed the half-buried shuttle; but hopefully the Enemy would think that all aboard had perished in the crash. That would buy the loroi perhaps a cycle or so until the Shells sent a patrol to clean up the site.
Time enough to plan their next moves.
Stillstorm sent again {Have you located any signs of Soia structures, something that we can move to? The Enemy will eventually notice this shuttle, and we must evacuate the area before that happens.}
{I have seen no such structures yet, Lashret.} Fireblade sent back. {I will organize search parties from the soroin aboard and explore the surroundings properly.}
{Do so, and search thoroughly. The Soia seem to have a preference for natural formations rather than clearly-artificial ones. We must be vigilant.}
{What about this?} Beryl's sanzai was muted by distance. Fireblade turned to see that the Listel had left her side, and was now some two hundred paces upstream along the narrow brook, pointing to something hidden by the curve of the valley. {It is not a natural formation!}
The hazy image sent by sanzai certainly confirmed that — a rectangular tunnel, with lights set in at regular intervals.
A tunnel which, as it turned out later once the shuttle survivors evacuated themselves and all the supplies they could carry, simply dumped them out into another valley.
But this one had a very interesting sight right in the middle of it.
{What do you think that is?} asked one of the soroin guards, eyes following the pulse of energy which raced skyward from the tall, metal structure in the valley below.
Her squad leader grumbled {I don't care if it's the Soia's own kick-a-bitch machine or a giant hair-comb.} She indicated the Shell troopers climbing all over it, visible at this distance only as yellow-black smudges. {The Shells want it, which is reason enough not to let them have it!}
{Indeed.} Stillstorm sent. {Fireblade, your lead.}
And so, barely a thousand solon later, Fireblade found herself carefully inching closer to the enemy perimeter. No hardtroops here, only 'normal' Shells, carrying supplies out of one of their own shuttles and setting up some sort of prefabricated structure next to the Soia building. An archaeological team, perhaps, not soldiers. It wouldn't matter.
They would all die just the same.
The cargo ramp on the Shell dropship raised, and its engines flared as the heavy craft lurched skywards, presumably empty.
{Now.} sent Fireblade.
Hidden behind a row of the trees a few paces away, Tempest's former diplomatic officer raised her gaze towards the shuttle, peering up at the ship.
Its engines cut out, and several hundred tons of metal abruptly stopped being 'mechanical' and became 'ballistic.'
An impressive trick. Fireblade knew that that Tempo had been untruthful all that time ago, when she had claimed to have been a ship-board officer for all her career. Such easy sabotage was the act of an experienced operative, nothing less.
Panicked clacking rose from the umiak encampment, just as Fireblade whirled around her tree and gazed down at the frenzied enemy. Oh, this would be fun!
One Shell, sprinting for its life even as the shadow of the shuttle grew larger, suddenly slammed sideways, bowling over three more and knocking them to the ground. A tree uprooted, falling upon another pair and pinning them. One umiak spun on its four legs, frantically looking left and right before spotting Fireblade and freezing.
Her lip curled. Congratulations, you found me.
The Umiak's reward came in the form of a blaster bolt lengthwise through its skull, as the Soroin team added their part to the ambush. Five more panicking Shells were cut down by the sudden fusillade.
A gentler end than they merited, as far as Fireblade was concerned.
That left some two dozen Shells still alive by the time their own shuttle slammed down upon them, lending the crash a heartwarming crackling sound as exoskeletons burst under the impact.
Even while the dust still choked the air, the loroi stormed forwards, scanning for any survivors. A handful of laser shots rang out, as twitching umiak were granted a final mercy which they did not deserve.
{Ably done.} commented Stillstorm, striding confidently through the haze and wreckage of the obliterated encampment. She peered up through the thinning dust at the Soia structure, gesturing for the two gallen of their complement to come forwards. {Your thoughts?}
Fireblade tuned out the technical discussion, merely following Stillstorm and the two gallen as they walked up the ramp. Footsteps echoed over ancient metal, reverberating, clacking…
Clacking?
Fireblade hurled herself forwards and spun around the corner.
As soon as she rounded the boundary, the terror-lit mind of a single Shell blazed into view, frantically clacking out a message into what could only be a radio held in its claws.
With a thought, Fireblade crumpled the device and wrenched it aside, relishing in the spike of agony illuminating the Shell's mind as its fingers snapped. She pinned the creature against the wall and made to twist its neck, both to relieve the alien of its existence and her of the burden of looking at its ugly face… and paused.
She had only felt its presence once she had line-of-sight to the Shell. Behind the Soia metal, it had been… hidden.
Stillstorm rounded the corner behind her at a run. Fireblade rapidly sent {This metal blocks mind-sight. Tell the others to search everywhere near the structure. Every corner, every crevice.}
She felt her commanding officer relaying the warning, but Fireblade did not receive the others' acknowledgments.
Stillstorm's mind-signature disappeared for a moment, before reappearing again as she stepped back and forth around the corner. {I see. It had a radio?}
{Affirmative, Lashret.} Fireblade sent, still focusing on keeping the Shell pinned against the wall. {It sent a message. I cannot say to whom.}
The Shell was still clattering away in its clicky-clack mockery of a language, only intensifying as Tempo stepped nimbly past Fireblade. {I thank you for your forbearance, Teidar. This one may have much to tell...}
She laid one hand against the side of the frozen Umiak's head, and concentrated for several solon. And then heaved a sigh, stepping back and turning away. {Or not.}
Fireblade made to finish off the alien, before realizing that its mind was already blank in death. Hmmph. Well, a dead Shell was a dead Shell, no matter whose hands had had the pleasure of making it so.
Still, she bent one of its mandibles all the way back the wrong direction, just to make a point. {Nothing useful?}
{As we feared: it contacted the shell aircraft controllers who have been patrolling near our shuttle.} Mizol Parat Tempo looked at Fireblade. Past her, to the other end of the valley. {Two of their pilot-less craft will be here within fifty solon. They are gathering a reaction force that will arrive in less than two thousand solon.}
That was… not a lot of time for a team of loroi to make themselves scarce on foot. Perhaps they shouldn't have destroyed that Shell shuttle, as satisfying as it had been…
Stillstorm sent her orders to the rest of the team, while Fireblade stayed atop the upper floor of the Soia structure, eyes sharp, watching the ridge-tops for movements.
And there it came.
Two umiak drones climbed into view, reacting almost instantly to bank towards the loroi.
Fireblade reached out and hurled one from the sky, only narrowly missing its sister before it slammed into the ground in a fireball. The other let off a railgun round which Fireblade deflected, the projectile echoing off of the Soia metal with a loud clang before disappearing into the distance. As the second drone streaked overhead, she crumpled the rear of the engine thruster shut. The metal held for a brief heartbeat, burning exhaust forced back deep inside the machine.
It exploded mid-air, smoking parts raining down onto the ground below and starting a few small fires.
{Ably handled, Teidar.} Stillstorm approved, before broadcasting {We leave now, and make for the Soia tunnel on the opposite end of the valley. It should shield us from the enemy's scans, and—}
Fifty pairs of eyes cranked skywards as another booming roar echoed overhead. But this time, it was a much larger craft that soared into view.
A Hydra dropship.
A Loroi craft!
"Hydra-One to any ground survivors: is that you making things hard for the Shells down there? I have a hold full of supplies for those who need it!" a voice called over the emergency radio frequency as the Hydra banked into a tight descent, engines flaring for landing.
Fireblade noted the spikes of emotion radiating from their own shuttle pilot. First shock, then surprise, fading into elation… tinged with worry? "Talon! I was not knowing that fighter-drivers made food-delivering trips, now!"
"You know our motto: 'Any Mission!'"
The Hydra touched down next to the demolished Umiak encampment, and now Fireblade could finally place that voice. The Tenoin Arrir in charge of Tempest's fighter wing.
But why was—?
Now that they were all close enough, the conversation shifted to the more comfortable sanzai. Stillstorm sent first. {Pilot. Your presence here?} Her side-channels showed the thrust of her question.
{The rest of the Strike Group is withdrawing as ordered, Lashret. But they didn't need all of us to come along with them.} The pilot sent back.
{Us?}
The protective panels on the sides of the Hydra's troop bays rose upwards, showing a team of eight soroin squeezed in among pallets of supplies, blasters held at the low ready. {Torrai Mazeit Moonglow sent that any Soia Ring that the Shells wanted was enough to dispatch a team to investigate. We are ready to deny the Enemy anything they've found here.} Her sanzai was accompanied by a mental image of one large pallet, taking up fully half of the space in the Hydra's troop bay.
The crate which was stacked high with enough Type-A fuel canisters to make a very appreciable crater.
And on a Hydra shuttle, which could make no more than four gravities of acceleration… this was a one-way mission.
Stillstorm had clearly made the same realization. Pride and anger both lined her sanzai, {And she sent you back here.}
{We volunteered, Lashret.} chorused the dropship pilot and each of the Soroin aboard.
The anger in Stillstorm's sending faded away into subdued waves of pride that spread throughout the group. {You do the Union proud.} She turned aside, fixing her gaze on the watch-sentry that the Emperor had pinned to her crew. {Mizol Parat, was there any information in that Shell's mind to indicate where their focus of operations on this Ring may lie?}
{Affirmative.} answered Tempo, as the warriors clambered aboard the Hydra. Between sixty loroi and the cargo, there was barely any room left. Soroin veterans of a dozen battles pressed up against long-eared senior doranzer like children on their diral huddling together for warmth. For her part, Fireblade only found a near-comfortable amount of space by pressing herself up against the Taimat fuel canisters. With a thin, knowing smile, she reached up one hand and caressed the containers of volatile fuel like one would a treasured male.
The others backed up and gave her room.
In the small vessel, Fireblade could still clearly receive the conversation even as it moved to the cockpit. Tempo continued {That Shell was a common laborer, uninformed as to their larger goal and operations. However, it was aware that their main base is located some distance from us. Centered around a Soia 'Weapons Platform' or perhaps 'Weapons Cache.' No more than three thousand solon at this dropship's full acceleration. But with how many warships must certainly now be crowded around this Ring...}
The pilot added {There were at two whole divisions just within eight light-solon of this artifact when I slipped in. I pulsed the engines and drifted in so they did not see us, but a powered flight too far above the terrain now would make us too visible. However, the Soia have left us a great gift in this broken, steep-valleys-and-cliffs terrain that they seem to love so much. We can fly at low altitude, and be lost to sensors in the background clutter.}
{Very well.} Stillstorm sent. {You two work together to get us towards their center of operation.}
After a brief private conversation, the Tenoin Arrir sent again with great amusement {That will not be so hard to find, I think. It is right next to where Tempest went smack right into the landscape. There was so much smoke rising from fires, we can probably see it by eyes in no more than a few hundred solon.}
{Was Tempest destroyed by the impact?} Stillstorm asked.
{Not entirely, Lashret. That Shell weapon kept firing right up to the last solon, blasting his front to vapor. It slowed the ship and pushed him aside; the rear of the ship was still recognizable to my sensors when I drifted past.}
{Then we may yet give Tempest his complete send-off and cripple the Shell operation here.} Stillstorm sent, indicating the fuel canisters that Fireblade leaned against.
The Teidar nodded her agreement. That was a fitting objective. With the main fleet still many days away and the Enemy so numerous in this system, there was no way that any of Tempest's survivors here would live long. All that remained was to do as much damage as possible to the Shells.
There was a muted sanzai wave of concern as the other loroi came to the same realization, but it was buried underneath the heartening rush of determination that swept through the assembled warriors.
They were Loroi. They were the inheritors of the Soia, standing now with their own two feet atop an artifact of the Soia. One currently defiled by the Enemy's tread upon its ancient soil.
They would honor their ancestors' creation with a fitting tribute of victory.
And explosive annihilation.