I awoke to whistling wail overhead and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the scorching sunlight. Then the ground shook and the dust around me rippled in the wake of an enormous explosion, followed by a searing heat and a blinding light. I squinted against the shards of rocks and sand that pelted my face and saw the village was burning. From where I lay hidden on my belly in the mouth of the mine I could see three shuttles overhead and now I was awake I could hear the hum of their engines. Another explosion rocked the small valley and stones and dust shook loose from the stone above me. Would they try to bomb the mine? Would they have to? I risked a glance above me and saw a jagged crack expand across the rock face like a line being drawn on a map. Why had we chosen this place? It was so fragile and we were too close to the village. I crawled low on my stomach to the very edge of my shelter in the darkness and strained to see more of the sky. Four shuttles. That I could see. They were targeting the immediate area. Fuck, fuck, oh bloody fuck, what now? I could hear the rock above me now, hear the sharp groan as the split widened, weakened. There was no way this thing would last another firebomb from the village. It was too frail, too dry and weatherworn. Maybe over-excavated. And there was no way I could outrun four shuttles. They were trying to kill me or smoke me out into the open and so far I'd say they were doing a bang up job.
I felt the wind pick up as the fire engulfing the village burned white hot. It was time to make some decisions. I reached down to touch the small swelling in my belly.
"Hey, if I get us killed, I told you so," I said, though I doubted it could hear me and even if it could, it was in no position to help.
I climbed into a crouch position and sighted the four shuttles. They were circling the village. I don't know why; if I'd been hiding there I'd be dead by now. I took a deep, ragged breath and sprinted out of the mine and away from the village as fast as I could, afraid to look back, terrified of seeing the shuttles taking aim. Behind me I heard a fire bomb that shook the earth hard and I heard the mine collapse in on itself behind me. The ground felt like it was coated in shrapnel as it sliced the pads of my feet and cauterized them with the heat of the sand all at once. I felt my heart propelling my body over the hill on the other side of the valley and down again. The space in front of me in every direction was flat and barren. There was hardly any cover, no neighboring mine shafts or dense tree lines on the horizon.
Then my eyes focused on what looked like a huge cotton ball, filmy and white through the heat waves. From all I could guess it was more than a kilometer away and I felt my gut clench and twist as I heard the hum from the shuttles over the roar of the burning village in my wake. I couldn't look back; I kept running. I didn't care what it was and I didn't care why it was there. It was better than being bombed and it was better than dying at in prison, if that was even an option anymore.
I felt the blistering air cut across my skin and felt my naked thighs chafe and burn as my feet tore across the desert sand. I couldn't even feel them anymore. My eyes watered and my throat stung with dehydration. The hum grew louder overhead and I closed my eyes and let my body carry me. I felt my feet hurl me sideways as something hotter than sunlight, hotter than the burning village kicked up the dirt where I had been only moments before. Zig zag, I remembered as the red laser they had aimed at me burned itself out momentarily. I'd be harder to hit but not by much. They had a planetary shuttle and I was naked and without cover. Or even shoes. I scrambled to my feet and felt my body hurl itself towards the big white ball on the horizon. The only possibility of cover, the only possibility for respite. I charged forward and fell back suddenly, avoiding another ray. Either they were out of fire bombs or they were supposed to bring me back alive. The threat of death by rape and torture propelled me faster still. Their laser must be charging. Hah, more money into fortifying the prison than updating the ancient shuttles. I was almost there. The strange puffball loomed above me as tall as a radio tower and almost perfectly circular. I saw an opening in it too, big enough to land a personal cruiser in but not big enough for the shuttles. They'd come anyway. I didn't want to trap myself but there was only so long I could run around the perimeter to avoid them. I sprinted hard and fast through the entrance to the big white ball and stepped inside.
It was cool and dim and the floor and walls were hard and shiny and smooth. The entrance seemed to extend into a passageway spiraling towards the interior. Some kind of animal had lived here once and maybe still did. I braced myself too for the force of the laser blasting or even penetrating my sanctuary but though I strained to hear the whir and hum on the shuttle engines, I heard nothing but the cool rush of air from deeper inside the lair.
I frowned and padded as softly as I could towards the entrance, straining as my eyes tried to adjust to the noon sun as I searched the skies for the shuttles. I counted four little blots on the dusty horizon heading back towards the village and I suppose to the prison.
Oh, fuck me. What the hell would make
airborne
ships turn around and leave without recovering me and Perikos? What in the name of holy motherfuck would inspire four shuttles to firebomb somewhere they thought I was hiding and to retreat when they had me corned? What did they know that I didn't?
I felt a panic set in, worse than the one I felt in the quarry yard and I felt even more desperate now than I did waiting for the cave to collapse on my head. If I ran away now they could easily come back to get me and Stars alone knew the next time I would find some cover, some shade. Maybe this thing I was standing in was abandoned, empty, just a used husk from some long-dead critter.
Or maybe it was only a matter of minutes before it came back and fucking ate me whole. I should have stayed in prison.
After pacing back and forth for twenty horrible minutes I decided to walk around the perimeter of the ball to see if I could gain any obvious clues as to what I'd gotten myself into. The ball was close to perfectly round, perfectly white and perfectly hard and even. There was no molted skin by the entrance or trail of ooze and I couldn't see any creature roughly the size of the capture shuttles plodding its way towards me from any direction. I also couldn't see any other shelter. The land was wide and scorching. I could see craggy hills far in the distance. From what I remembered we were supposed to be heading north and Kragosa rotated east to west around the sun. That would mean I had ran too far west but not by a lot. The craggy hills were highest in the west. No forests or rivers to speak of and no plants or animals that I could see. I'd die of thirst or heatstroke if I started out from here without knowing if we were to continue North. The days were longer than I was used to and Perikos didn't leave me with directions. In its version of events I would just lay low in the shade and remain peacefully unperturbed till nightfall. So much for that. I looked up at the sun, high and hot in the sky. We were almost halfway through. What did that mean? Eight more hours till sunset? Eight more hours until it wasn't my job to keep us alive anymore?
I climbed back inside the cool white ball and waited just at the lip, poised to scram if I heard or felt anything. I needed to rest. I'd spent over six months in the dark. I looked at my torn and bleeding feet and tried not to think about the gash in my head or how thirsty I was. Only eight more hours and Perikos would help me. I looked down at my belly and felt something flip flop though I don't think it was Perikos. I felt myself moisten at thought of it feeding on me, needing my arousal. My eyes got heavy. I wondered vaguely if involuntarily lubricating would dehydrate me even more…
I awoke to feel the ground shaking beneath me though from within or without the white ball I couldn't tell. I jumped to my feet and dashed from the ball into the open sunlight and saw it. It was as big as my house on Ferox 4. It looked like a frilled lizard with two clawed, muscular legs and a scaled, serpentine back half. It was iridescent white and its face and neck seemed to be covered in strange orange hairs that bristled as it twisted its enormous head to look at me. I froze in place.
The thing let out a screeching, feral roar and its face seemed to expand and the orange hairs bristled, obscuring its eyes and mouth. I turned to run and felt a gust of hot air behind me, feeling its footfall. I ran hard, gasping air into my lungs and I felt the ground shake as it chased me from its home, screeching as I struggled to stay ahead of it. I felt a sharp, keen puncturing pain in the meat of my ass and I think I heard myself scream but I didn't slow. I ran as hard and fast as I could, until I couldn't feel it follow or hear its cries anymore.
I turned to see the white ball, as distant from me now as it was from the mine. I couldn't make out the creature; it must have retreated back inside. It hadn't meant to eat me, just to scare me away. It worked I thought, as I staggered forwards onto my knees and reached behind me to inspect the burning puncture wound in my ass.
I felt something long and thin like a wire protruding from the wound like an antenna. I grit my teeth and pulled but rather than coming lose I felt the wire snap off near the wound. I reached with my other hand and felt something like a stinger the size and thickness of a toothpick poking out from the wound. I tried to clutch it between my fingernails and pull but it hurt so much I couldn't touch it without aggravating the burning puncture mark. I inspected the piece that had broken off and it was long and stiff and orange like the bristles around the creature's face. I pursed my lips. Terrific. Best case scenario, gangrene sets in. Worst case, I have a couple more minutes of consciousness before I die from some sort of neurotoxin. I contemplated punching the hell out of my stomach but I figured all told that would hurt me more than Perikos. I was out on my ass in the middle of a godforsaken desert planet armpit of the universe at high bloody noon and I had better pick a direction and start walking because otherwise the shuttles or the sun or some huge fucking alien monster would come finish me off before I could die from the venom.
North, I decided and began moving that way, feeling a strange internal heat flowing through my arms and legs as I walked. Probably I was making it much worse, spreading the poison through my body much faster by walking. Probably I was screwed anyway unless I lasted till nightfall and Perikos happened to be a sightless tentacle doctor.
I felt like I'd been walking for hours and my feet were worn and properly bloody now. My joints ached badly as I walked and I kept thinking I was hearing the shuttles hum overhead but when I looked it was just a wide, cloudless sky. I wasn't sure I was going to right way anymore, if the right way was north. Maybe Kragosa didn't rotate evenly east to west because I'd changed course a few hours ago, realizing I'd been wrong about which direction was north but now I didn't know anymore. Was it three hours till nightfall or four? Maybe only one. Maybe I'd been walking for longer than I realized. The sun kept speeding up and slowing down. The land in front of me stretched out wide and unremarkable. The craggy hills were only a few kilometers away now. No streams or rivers. My head throbbed inside and out and it felt foggy and heavy. I wasn't hot anymore. Everything below my ankles and a large portion of my backside was very cold and I kept imagining I was walking on fields of snow rather than sand.
"You've probably never seen snow," I told the Perikos. It occurred to me now that it was foolish not to talk to it, rude even, and at any rate the conversation kept me thinking. "I mean, of course you've never
seen
it, I mean you probably don't know what it is, which is a pity. It's frozen water crystals, you see?" I began to giggle as I imagined the Perikos stretched out in the snow, wriggling its many tentacles to make freakish angel. "It's white and fluffy and very cold – well, you probably figured that out when I said 'frozen', but snow is great. You'd really like it, it's hardly ever sunny when it snows."
It felt harder to breath and the air I took in felt colder, sharper. My fingertips felt like wool and the craggy hills ahead of me looked just like the J.D. Wharton Music Hall in Blythwood on Ferox 4. I had heard the symphony play there twice growing up. They had four hundred different instruments, the Blythwood Symphony Orchestra. My father was right, it was worth the price of admission.
I heard something crackling and felt the fire a few feet from me rather than seeing it. My eyelids seemed to be stuck closed. Something wide and thick and cool was wrapped tightly around my torso and it held me in place as I tried to roll towards the fire to warm myself. Something tickled at my neck and then my earlobe and then it pressed inside. I groaned and reached to swat it away.
"
Shh. Please hold still
