Crash stepped out of the rover’s side door to stare at the billowing cloud of dust and debris rolling up from the base they had just fled. Sergeant Debbins was standing on the other side of the vehicle, his mouth likewise open. He had veered off the main road to park them under a big oak tree to get a better look at the explosion behind them.

Amidst the flames, a silvery ship rose from the ashes like some legendary phoenix. It spun slowly and a new wave of fire and explosions spread across the base in a tide. Then, for seemingly no reason, it stopped moving and simply hovered there for several moments, doing nothing, going nowhere.

“It’s looking for us,” Sergeant Debbins said, ducking back into the rover. Crash got further under the tree, but didn’t join him back in the vehicle. The spaceship almost looked like it was malfunctioning somehow, just…hanging…there.

Then, without another blast, the ship just lifted into the sky and sped off to the West, leaving much of the base utterly destroyed in its wake.

“Holy shit,” Segeant Debbins whispered, stepping back out to stare out at the devastation again. He had his gun out in one hand and pulled the radio unit from the rover with his other. Gingerly, he punched in the radio band and said, “Anyone alive down there?”

Crash swallowed hard. She had been watching the Pharaoh give Gregory Watershed a dissertation on geology when Sergeant Debbins and Lionne had kicked open her door, dragged her out of bed, and, wrapped in nothing but her underwear and old clothes she had clutched to her body, shoved her down the hall and towards the back of the base, Trebuchet bouncing along beside them, mouth open and lolling as if it were a game.

Crash, groggy and stumbling in her bare feet, had been about to complain when she saw the first man torn in half and thrown to the floor in front of her.

Then she’d looked up, met the eyes of that liver-eating monster, and had dropped her spray bottle and old clothes as Debbins bodily hurled her around and down the opposite corridor, leaving Lionne between them.

She’d heard Lionne fire a taser, heard the monster scream, then heard Lionne die. She’d heard Quad screaming and yelling, too, but it had been a secondary sound, like background noise as her entire world narrowed to the slaps of her own running feet on linoleum as Debbins dragged her faster than her legs wanted to go and suddenly pulled her abruptly to the side and locked them both in a closet on the way out the door. He had yanked her body close to his in the darkness and slapped his hand over her mouth and stood there, barely breathing, as they heard chains jingle as something walked past. She watched the shadows move under the door, her breathing quickening over Debbins’ grease-smelling hand.

Then the monster was moving on, clearly hunting them.

After a couple more minutes of silence, followed by explosions further on, Debbins bent down to whisper in her ear, “Listen.” He was scared. Really scared. The timbre and cadence of his voice was completely unnatural, something usually witnessed only in the heat of the most death-defying moments, rarely captured aside from a couple grainy videos from Vietnam and Desert Storm… It delighted her to hear it now, and she was able to compare the actual fear response to ones she had heard second-hand and make adjustments to her modifying accentuations. “I think that thing’s after you, Miss Crash. It already had the Engineer.”

After her? Crash felt her eyes widen and she reached up to yank Debbin’s hand from her mouth to demand why the creature would want her, but he kept it there, as firm as iron.

“Just listen,” he said again. “That thing killed Lionne in less than three seconds. I know you’re a bit…touched…but you gotta pay real close attention to me right now okay?”

Crash frowned because it was clear he wasn’t going to let her talk.

“I’m gonna get us out to the Commandant’s parking lot,” Sergeant Debbins said. “I’ve got the key to one of the rovers out there, in case we needed to go get you feminine supplies or something. It’s on the other side of the compound, though, and that thing’s out there, and you need to just be quiet, okay? We gotta run, and you gotta be quiet. Please just be quiet.” It was a plea from the soul.

And, because seeing a man’s intestines sliding across the tiles to come to a rest against her bare toes was an excellent motivator, Crash had done just that.

And now, it appeared, she and Debbins were two of the only survivors of the savage’s quick, but brutal, massacre.

Debbins had found someone on the comm and they were exchanging information. On the road beside them, civilians were stopping to stare at the collapsed buildings and fiery rubble.

One of the men who had gotten out of their truck on the road turned and, upon seeing Crash standing there in her underwear, had his mouth fall open and his eyes go wide. “Hey,” he cried, pointing a finger like a kid in a freak show. “You’re the Scholar!”

“You got a shirt?” Crash asked, trying not to shiver. “Pants, maybe?”

She had four different people offer the clothes literally off her backs, and she was still standing beside the road under the protection of the tree hours later, as more stone-faced grunts showed up with Hummers and grenades and automatic weapons to cluster around her like a reunion party.

Other survivors had found the Commandant and dragged him from the rubble. He was missing an eye and a good portion of his right hand. He wasn’t, however, unconscious. And, even as the surgeons stumbled along beside him, trying to stop the bleeding, he ordered the group with Crash to board the only other surviving ship with him, and they headed West after Quad.

Later, after the missing fingers had been stitched and stopped bleeding, Crash found herself sitting beside the Commandant in a moment of calm in between the big man hurling mobilization orders to troops across the country, activating the twelve ships they had left aside from the Commandant’s new flagship.

Crash, who was now sitting on the Commandant’s couch in his room—he hadn’t, she noticed, allowed her out of his sight since storming up the hill where they huddled under a tree and shaking Debbin’s hand and promoting him right there on the spot, in front of his miniature surviving army—nervously cleared her throat. “Um.” She fidgeted with a string unraveling from the hem of her shirt. “Was this my fault?”

She knew that a lot of things she didn’t see coming were her fault, and she wasn’t sure if this was one of those times or not.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Travis’s face—which had been rigid with tense exhaustion and a big, darkened bruise where he now wore a bandage—had immediately softened. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “I’m guessing it was Quad…” His face immediately tightened again. “Fuck. It was my fault. I should’ve told him.” He dropped his head into his hands and stared at the floor between his knees as the ship hummed around them, headed to the Rim. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Are you kidding?” Crash demanded. “You did tell him. And he ignored you, like he always does. That little shit doesn’t listen to anyone. Did you know he popped into my shower when I was lathering myself up to the beat of old First Nations prayer chants after I told him my me times were between one and three in the afternoon on Mondays and Thursdays? Broke the glass door and knocked all my pads and bath bombs into the toilet as he scrambled to get himself undone. Then doesn’t clean it up—just gets one good look at me and screams and flashes away again, doesn’t even bother telling me what he was gonna say. So then you know what I have to do? I have to finish my shower on glass, Travis, because that little shit doesn’t respect ‘me’ time. I even flat-out told him I would most likely be masturbating during those times. Has that stopped him? Even once? No. You really think he’d have listened if you told him the guy was dangerous? Fuck no, he’d probably take it as a challenge and go engineer up some sort of gizmo to put his toenails into headlocks or something.”

Travis just kept cursing under his breath, ignoring her.

“So where’s Marks?” Crash asked, once he’d gone silent again. He had been responsible for taking most of the notes, and her mind was sliding back to volcano god roots and she wanted to write down a couple things to explore later.

“They couldn’t find him before we had to board the ship to go after Quad,” Travis said. “Assumed dead.”

“Why are we going after Quad?” Crash asked. “He can just jump wherever he wants.” She didn’t understand why this was such a big deal to Travis. Well, aside from losing body parts. That part had to be inconvenient…

Travis didn’t lift his head. “Sabbaht disabled his BounceBack. They found it crushed in what was left of the prison cell.” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “In thirty-six years, we went from pushing carts and milling lumber with donkeys to atmo-bound air vessels and nuclear-powered farm combines,” Travis said to the floor. He lifted his head, and when he did, his remaining brown eyes was filled with the weight of the world. “And they’re taking him to that bitch who killed my dad.”

“Doubt it,” Crash said. She sighed and flicked the thread aside.

Travis’s black brows came together and he scowled at her. “Why?”

“Because Sabbaht wasn’t lying about how much he hates the Pharaoh. He’s an ambitious fuck—he told me last night he’s jealous of the Pharaoh’s slaves and wants to rule a kingdom of his own with his own harem. I think he’s gonna try to use Quad to stake his own claim out there somewhere, maybe gather up some hunter-gatherer types and force them under his rule.”

Travis gave her a really long look. “Was this in the interview or in your sandbox?”

Crash made a face. “I hate it when you refer to it as my ‘sandbox.’ Makes me sound immature, like a kid making sand castles with a plastic shovel. It’s my dreamspace, Travis.”

“So in your sandbox, you heard Sabbaht say he wanted to take Quad and start his own country, rather than return to the Pharaoh?”

“Yeah.”

For a long minute, Travis held her gaze, then he reluctantly said, “All right. I’ll hold off nuking her until you can prove it to me one way or another. Right now, I have to operate under the assumption that he took that ship straight to New Cairo—”

“He didn’t,” Crash interrupted.

“—and handed Quad over to the Pharaoh.” Travis squinted at her. “How are you so sure?”

“Because he was lazing on his back in a room surrounded by naked women, watching them dance as another woman fed him tidbits of delicacies and fruit. He only bothered talking to me because he thought I was one of the servants and he wanted some fresh mead.”

“Okay, so he likes power,” Travis said. “Why wouldn’t he go straight to the Pharaoh to earn her favor?”

“Because the Pharaoh doesn’t have a ship, and he recognizes how much power that gives him over her. He’s going to use it to build his own country, and he’s going to force Quad to help.”

Travis looked like he wanted to say something else, but the comm buzzed and he hastily took the call. Crash was close enough to hear what was said on the other end, and it immediately made her perk up.

“Commandant, we found him. He turned himself in rather than fight. We’ve got him chained and suppressed—want us to throw him over the Edge?”

“No!” Crash shouted, jumping up to grab the receiver from Travis. “You better not kill him. I haven’t filled out my lexicon of New Californian transitive verbs!”

Holding her gaze in warning, Travis took the receiver back from her and said, “Has he shown any resistance?”

“No sir,” the panting man said. “But we’ve kept him chained to an engine block just in case.”

Travis gave Crash a long, considering look. In horror, Crash could see it in his eye—the Commandant was considering killing him anyway. “Your lexicon of New Californian transitive verbs, huh?” he finally said.

“I need those verbs,” Crash said. “They’re essential, Travis.”

The Commandant let out a breath between his teeth, then, still watching her, said, “Rendezvous with the flagship,” Travis said. “Have the engine block transferred to my ship.” Then, seeing Crash’s slight frown, he added belatedly, “And the captive too.”

“Thank you!” Crash squealed, grabbing him by the shoulders and kissing him right on his bruised and cracked lips. “You’re amazing.”

“And you,” Travis muttered, “are going to get me an alliance with that Pharaoh bitch so I can hunt this fucker down and bring Quad back before she realizes what she’s got on her hands over there and decides to keep him.”

“You got it,” Crash said.

“And Crash?” Travis asked.

“Yeah?”

Travis looked like he wanted to say something else, but he settled with, “I’m glad you didn’t get murdered back there.” He hesitated. “Think you could…uh…date a guy with a patch?”

“What kind of patch?” Crash said, immediately envisioning a thick mat of chest hair. She hated chest hair. She made a face and stared off into space, seeing it. Like running her fingers through thin, oily carpet. Or maybe he meant some sort of military patch…

“An eye patch, you twit,” Travis muttered.

Crash blinked, jerking her head back to face him, confused. “An eye patch?”

He inclined his head at her and tapped the side of his head.

It took her a moment to realize he had touched the black piece of cloth now bandaging his bruised eye socket. She started to flush with understanding. “Uh, I uh… I don’t know, I find patches to be an obsolete reminder of the old sailing ships of pre-ancient America. Did you know that they used them to travel back and forth between above and belowdecks so they didn’t blind themselves going from blazing sun to total black? Their vocabularies were rife with words about water, wind, and rope, which I kinda find boring except for the rope.”

Travis was scowling at her with her one good eye.

“Yeah, I think a patch is kinda old-fashioned, to be honest,” she mused. “Have you considered glass? They could probably make you a white marble, if nothing else, and then you’d look like a mysterious badass and you wouldn’t look like a inbred islander because the glass eye didn’t move around with your real one.”

“Oh just come here,” Travis muttered, getting up and grabbing her for a kiss that left her giddy and giggling. Eventually, he pulled away, squinting down at her with suspicion clear in his deep brown eye. “Why are you giggling?”

“You said his BounceBack was disabled?

Travis squinted down at her. “Yeah?”

Grinning, she said, “Then he can’t interrupt us this time.” As Travis’s eye widened with understanding, Crash reached up, grabbed the blood-crusted back of his skull with both hands, and dragged his head back down to finish what he’s started.

Eventually, just as they were starting to get to the good stuff, Travis pushed her breathlessly to arm’s length and said, “I can’t—I just got dug out of an exploded building, lost a crapton of blood, pretty sure I cracked some ribs they haven’t noticed yet, and I’ve got that rendezvous with an engine block in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes is enough!” Crash cried.

Travis blinked at her, then gave a grunt of surprise as she dragged him over to the sofa and started tearing off his clothes.