Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
Thrynn Frigate Jussru

"Helm: hard larboard roll, zulu down 45!" said Captain Rssa, bracing against his stomach's reaction to the execution just over a second later. He flipped a switch on his handset and looked back to the main viewer. "Commander Hilsfar--we have aboard our vessel a boarding launch and a squad of Royal Marines." A glance at the tactical console. "Employment demands our closure to within three kilometers. We require escort or diversion."

“Tough nut to crack,” came the response from Belfast Windfall. Tough, but the solution, if unpalatable, was apparent, and this Human was clever enough to grasp it. Windfall would block for Jussru on a dice-roll run to the G’Nunk ship, and when they got close enough, if they weren’t a pair of phosphorescent plasma embers, the Thrynn would hurl their Marines at Regepple. “Follow us in,” said Biggs.

The screen went blank for a split second and the Human’s visage was replaced by the real-time tactical display. Captain Rssa turned to issue his order, but paused, noticing the absence of Colonel Venn’Bk. It was to be expected.

“Follow them closely astern," said Rssa in his raspy voice, "and keep low on the zulu axis. Shielding abaft seventy-five/twenty-five.” The XO echoed the order and the navigator leaned heavily into Jussru’s rudder grip, bringing the cutter into trace of the heftier Belfast Windfall.

Below Decks

Colonel Venn'Bk slid down the ladder, clanked on the grated metal deck and spun around to see his squad of Marines pulling on their gear. He waved off one of the younger Marines, who was about to call the cramped bay to attention.

Then he approached the squad's leader and said, "Corporal Rasssyth, lisssten closely: my mission is at an end, and it isss a failed one." Venn'Bk unclasped his high, rank-laden collar and cast his dark red cloak to the deck. "As such, I remand my colonelcy and join your squad as a private on its mission to save the Jussru. Furnish me with a reverberation rifle."

Corporal Rasssyth did as he was ordered and Colonel Venn'Bk melted anonymously into the stoic squad. They drew their weapons, loaded their ammunition, strapped themselves into their claustrophobic breacher, battened its hatch, then slaved its navigational controls to Jussru's bridge. They were now the ordnance carried by what was little more than a glorified torpedo.

Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall

"Biggs, they've fallen in just astern," said Arella, the blinking lights at her control array reflecting on her face. Hedging our bets, are we? She lifted her headset and looked back at the skipper with a knowing frown. "Twenty-five percent of their shielding is still oriented forward."

"Bums," announced Biggs, bracing his bottomless coffee mug against the inertia bleeding through the compensators. Commander Grx'bzz'gah was pulling Windfall through a brutal evasion pattern, and the g-forces on the caravel's spaceframe were enormous. "Get us in there, Grix..."

The bug spun his antennae, then pushed two levers forward, throttling the twenty-odd-year-old carrack toward the G'Nunk warship. Boz and Mack, chipping in at the tactical station, trained Windfall's weapons on the most threatening pair of Uhlek ships. On command, Windfall shuddered as a dense swarm of missiles left the nacelle launchers.

Medical Bay

Doc Biss was sweating, not from physical exertion, but from wracked nerves. The Leghk Guardians, pallid and grey, lay comatose on her examination beds, victims of the twisted mind ganglion aboard the G'Nunk warship. She was frantically tracking what she believed to be Leghk biological vital signs, but had no real frame of reference. Only one thing was certain: the numbers she was tracking, whatever they meant, were spiraling downward.

Doctor Biss carried an ID card declaring in dozens of languages that she was an Arthenean and the simple fact of planetary citizenship was easy enough for an offworlder to accept. More difficult, and often overlooked, was the profound notion that 'Arthenean' truly described her as an individual.

However exotic the fact, the markings were still there: the hue of her sentiment; the trim of her reasoning; the learned assignment to place in her mind of honor and treachery, justice and injury, good and evil. Like a plant grown up from the soil of Arth, she was a being grown up from the civilization of Arth, and in everything of station, in everything of the mind, she was of Arth.

But everything of the body--the sum of its animal sensations--produced in her a twinkling recognition that she was Thrynn and thus saddled her with the debts of kinship. So she was compelled by instinct to answer the cry from her impossibly distant, heartbeat-close cousins on the jungle world. It was a plea for salvation from the ancient tyranny hanging over the Thrynn like a humid malarial fog. The Thrynn were begging for a light to burn through that fog. Bring us the Leghk. She could think of nothing else.

Another drop in vitals. Biss smacked the intercom: "Biggs! ...we're losing them!"
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Next: “Heartbeat Close”

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