Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I take the risk of moving and sneak back, following the leads through the forest to find a great big humming power bank on wheels. I didn’t see this until now because this is the direction the saurians came from after I had already arrived, and I was trying to avoid being caught so I allowed them to surround me. Big mistake. Huge.
“Lettie to Mare,” I whisper into my communicator. “They can see you, and they intend to shoot you down. Ascend into orbit immediately.”
There’s a brief crackle, then a tinny little voice comes back through my earpiece.
“You won’t be able to transport back to the ship if we do that.”
I’m not entirely sure who it is behind the comms, because the connection is rough and I have a hard time distinguishing voices sometimes. That means I don’t really know who I am about to yell at. Well, whisper-yell at.
“They have a fucking energy weapon aimed at you. Move NOW!”
I’ve never given an order before. It feels quite interesting. It also feels very hopeless, because there’s no way for me to tell if it has been followed. Now that I’m no longer looking at that tablet I can’t see the ship. One good sign is that comms dropped with a snap, crackle, pop, which does suggest they’ve moved.
The bank behind me starts to hum even more intensely. Lights start to cycle up the side of it, a series of orange blinking LEDs culminating in two bright green bulbs.
“AIM! FIRE!… FUCK!”
There are shouts of disappointment in the mid-distance, followed by what I hope is a belated discharge of the weapon. I see a dozen flashes of light go up from the forest and into the sky, joining together as they rise upward. Singly, those bolts wouldn’t do much damage to the Mare’s shielding, but together their force is exponentially multiplied. These saurians are trying to shoot the ship down, caring not at all what damage they do to it, or to the crew. I get the impression they’d drag us out broken and on fire in order to use us.
I watch that ball of power flash through the heavens, hoping I don’t see it hit something unseen and spread out into a true explosion. I know how that will look. At first there will just be an oddly shaped light, but very quickly the ship will blink into visual range as the cloaking devices fail. Then burning bits will start to rain downward like a super low meteor shower.
Fortunately, none of that happens. The ball shoots upward, then starts to dissipate as it loses charge and finds no solid object. I breathe a sigh of relief. That was a close call. If that had hit, these saurians would have killed a lot of the crew or captured them. The latter is probably worse than the former given the conversation I overheard.
“How did they know to move? How did they do that? It’s like they overheard us!?”
There is an outraged cacophony of indignant male saurians as they try to work out what just happened.
I hold my breath and sink deeper into the shadows, moving away from the power bank as much as I dare. They’ve already guessed at the truth of the matter. This is not a good time to be rustling bushes and making an obvious escape. Sometimes you have to follow your instincts, and other times you have to deny them. Knowing when to do what is most of the battle.
I need to lie low and make it to the next rendezvous point. I suspect that the outlaws are going to have a much harder time detecting the ship during the day, and I know the ship won’t leave me behind. As soon as they come back into range, I will be able to transport back up there. My suit will tell me when that is. It’s just a matter of waiting. Fortunately, unlike the captains, I am still free.
I am not panicking too much about being unable to return to the ship. What I really want to do is get down into the city. We know that the captain and, well, the other captain are both being held inside the city proper. At first, we waited for them to free themselves, but it quickly became apparent that getting anywhere near a saurian is practically asking to be abducted. They don’t seem to recognize the fact that we own ourselves. They see us, and they instantly mistake us for one of their own possessions.
The crew is unanimous: we’re not leaving anybody behind. But we’re also not going to take insane risks in order to rescue the captain and… the other captain. We’re going to bide our time, wait for the best opportunity, and take it when the time is right. My mission is a reconnaissance one, officially, at least. Because we’re not only going to get our captains back — we’re going to get paid for the time we’ve wasted being stuck in orbit around this backward planet. We’re going to fill the ship’s coffers with saurian wealth, and we’re going to make damn sure these aliens know they made a mistake when they thought we were ripe for the taking.