The stars… Millions of them blinked down on the boy as he crouched on the rocky outcropping of a foreign planet. An alien planet. As he turned his hazel eyes upwards to the infinite dots of light, he thought of his home and his family. Places and people he’d never see again. But so many of those tiny lights represented more people and places he might one day visit.

The galaxy felt so vast that at moments like this the hugeness threatened to overwhelm him. Who was he? Why was he here? His soul yearned for answers beyond what a crewmate might say or even what the occasional religious text offered. He wanted to know himself more than anything. For a reason he couldn’t explain, there seemed to be something missing from his life. Something… great. Greater even than–

“Lusac,” Yrqw’s heavy voice crackled in the communicator he wore on his ear, pulling the boy from his musings. “Enough daydreaming. We have a job to do.”

Lus looked to the large, green Kremel standing on the ledge across the thin ravine they watched. He stood at nearly six and a half feet tall, with arms as big around as Lus’s entire torso. His over-sized ears came to a point at the ends. Though the black uniform he wore would offer little protection against the elements, his skin was tough enough, he didn’t need anything more.

The Kremel motioned to the canyon below. Lus gestured back, a little embarrassed he’d been caught at such a vulnerable moment. Who ever actually thought about those things anyway?

He just couldn’t remember the last time he saw the nighttime sky so clearly from a planet’s surface. Treft sure didn’t have views like that with all the mining pollution. Back there it was a good night if you could see the moons. Not that he’d ever see them again. Returning to Treft was a death sentence since he defected from the Corporate Military two years ago.

“Distraction is underway. Alpha team has safely lured the parents away. Beta team, you have a go for the nest,” Nippy’s broken voice jittered through the comm. The strange magnetic field of this planet disrupted most long range communication so several relayers were placed in between the various teams to keep everything organized.

With a sigh, Lus pulled his anchor from his belt and positioned it to be several feet back from the edge, right in the middle of one of the largest, most secure rocks. The lower half was a glass cylinder which protected the wickedly barbed nail. Grimacing as he considered the damage that point could do to a person’s body, he held it firmly in place as he pressed down the safety trigger along the grip and pushed the button on top.

A faint thump hit his feet as the device used several thousand Newtons of force to shoot the hook into the rock and create a nearly unbreakable anchor. Lus clipped his mission suit’s harness to the anchor before starting a quick rappelling journey to the floor of the ravine below.

He landed softly on the ground, the sturdy rubber sole of his boots quiet against the desert stones. After unclipping himself from the cable and ensuring it wasn’t going to shoot back up without him, Lus crept along the rocks near the wall of the canyon leading towards the foreboding black crack a hundred yards away.

The stench of rotten food floated to his nostrils as he arrived at a secret entrance to the wranntil nest. Wranntil’s were so large they could never fit in something like this, and most of the other animals on this planet wouldn’t dare enter such a dangerous place, making it the only safe way to enter the nest. At least as safe as entering the home of a ten-ton monster could be.

Of course Becky ‘suddenly’ came down with the flu today, Lus glumly thought to himself as he attempted to steel his nerves against the next phase of the mission. Becky was the only other Human on the ship who was fast enough for this type of assignment, and within an hour of her hearing she was on the crew, she mysteriously developed a severe digestive issue, leaving Lus to take the hit.

Again.

He couldn’t recall the last time Becky actually went off ship for something that wasn’t drinking or shopping. And given that all the other Human crewmates were too high of rank or simply too inept for something like cave crawling, that left this distinctly undesirable assignment to Lus.

Truthfully it wasn’t really that bad–or so he told himself as he put on his headlamp and tested the light. A perfectly round white spot appeared on the stone wall before him. With a swing of his head, that light attempted to project into the crack, but the fit was tight enough that there wasn’t much to see deeper in.

It could be worse. I could be shooting Federal troops in the name of a CEO I don’t even like, he reminded himself as he turned sideways and lined up with the thin entrance. He was lucky to be a Runner instead of a soldier. As terribly smelly or uncomfortable some tasks were, the freedom he bore instead more than made up for the occasional discomfort.

Lus took one last breath of mostly fresh air and then slid all the way into the crevice. His headlamp provided little help with all the various outcroppings and twists he had to avoid, and the rock scraped hard enough against his chest and back that it would have ripped regular clothing to shreds and still taken a good chunk of skin with it except for the flexible alunitanium woven into his mission suit. The fibers gave off a faint metallic glow with the headlamp, the reflection of which did help illuminate the tight space slightly more.

After more time stuck worming his way through the almost suffocating passage than any sane person would enjoy, the walls finally parted, and Lus found himself peering into a huge cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites. Without the stone crushing his chest, it became significantly easier to breathe, and before he could think twice about the action, he inhaled deeply through his nose.

Big mistake.

It took all he had to not immediately vomit every meal he’d had in the past three days back up.

Suns, how could something smell this bad? Breathing through his mouth as silently as he could, Lus slid along one wall of the room, slowly using his headlamp to scan for his target and the exit.

The real exit. The huge, wide hole kind he could run through. He mentally cursed as he realized he forgot to stretch. He prayed to Treft’s Watcher that he wouldn’t pull a muscle and then die a painful death being ripped apart by an alien monster, but with how far away he was from home, he didn’t have a lot of faith that the Watcher heard it.

Loose rocks shook down from the overhang above him as something moved around in a different part of the cave system. Lus waited a few moments in an attempt to calm his racing heart, and once he no longer thought it was going to thump out of his chest, he started towards the far tunnel.

His footfalls were nearly silent, but somehow each step sounded deafening to his ears, even with the noise of a beast coming from the room next door. If the wranntil saw him before he got a clear shot at the exit…

Well that was a rather nasty picture he’d prefer to avoid. He sort of liked having his brain inside his skull and his bones not on the floor with wranntil dung. Rumors claimed that wranntil could eat a Human or Nemarian in a single gulp, and Lus was eager to not put that one to the test.

Sulking through the tunnel that was more than double his height and nearly five times his width, Lus came to a cavern that made the first one seem like a closet. He dashed to cover his headlamp as he entered and noted the snoring gray lump curled up in a rock pile at the center of the massive room. A solid fifty yards away from him was the exit, streaming in faint moonlight to the red tinged stone.

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“Right. Just gotta wake the sleeping monster and then sprint through a narrow, boulder ladened canyon back to my rope. Easy peasy,” he breathed in hopes of drumming up a little more courage.

Lus remained pressed against the wall behind him as he shuffled around the outskirts of the cavern, begging the beast to remain asleep for a few more minutes. Once he had a clear line to the door, that would be enough. Then the wranntil could wake up and the chase could begin.

A sudden snore from the hulking monster startled Lus, and before he could stop himself, his foot kicked up one of the rocks on the ground, sending it flying deeper into the room. He winced at the faint echo back through, but the creature didn’t stir.

Releasing his caught breath, Lus resumed his journey. He confirmed there were no more loose stones before glancing back up at his target. The air fled from his lungs as he noted yellow eyes staring back at him.

One pair of vertical eyelids closed, and then a horizontal set followed suit. Lus remained frozen in place, not daring to breathe as he begged the wranntil to go back to sleep. He forced himself to count to thirty and then took one small step.

The instant his boot hit the ground, those yellow eyes shot open and an angry growl escaped the beast.

“Blast it,” Lus cursed. He didn’t bother waiting for the creature to get up as he sprinted towards the exit only a hundred feet away. The wailing of the wranntil encouraged his feet to fly against the uneven stones, and as he reached the cave entrance, he risked a glance back to see his enemy had fully risen from its bed.

It stood over ten feet tall with arms that reached well past its stubby knees. The wranntil’s face was uncomfortably wide, and its mouth spanned the entirety of it, giving the creature an eerie appearance as jagged teeth protruded awkwardly from both the upper and lower parts. The leather gray skin was marked by strange dull yellow stripes that ran across its neck, arms, legs, and back. Taut muscles signaled bad news for Lus as the beast lowered close to the ground, putting itself in a clear starting position for a chase.

Blast me,” he cursed again. This was definitely not according to the plan. He didn’t stand a chance at outracing the wranntil with this little of a head start, even if it was a child.

Somehow Lus found more speed as the sound of the creature charging after him echoed out of the cavern. The canyon was far wider at this part than where his rope waited, which gave him a ton of space to maneuver but also doubled to give the wranntil plenty of area to do the same.

The red and tan walls of the ravine blurred past as Lus moved faster than he’d ever run in his life. He eyed several off-shoots that were far too small for his opponent, but unfortunately the plan required Lus to draw the creature much farther from the cave before he sought safety. Another short glimpse over his shoulder showed the wranntil on all fours, already starting to close the distance between them.

That peek cost Lus dearly as his feet caught a lip on the ground and he went tumbling to the rocky floor. He was back to his feet in a second, but the roar behind him was far too loud. This was it. Lus’s time had come. It was a good twenty-two years, but alas…

He continued to pump his feet as his ears warned him of the incoming wranntil, but just as he turned to see a knobbly, clawed hand reaching for him, a small rocket launched into the monster’s face and exploded in an array of colorful fireworks.

“That’s the third time in two months, Lus. How many life debts are you trying to rack up?” Cewi-Bano’s voice chided in his ear through a buzz of static.

“I’ll give you five more if I make it out of this one alive,” Lus promised the Nemarian. The sound of blaster fire gave him a small sense of relief that he might find that rope before those claws found him again. Thank the Watcher for Cewi and her guns. He didn’t even have the time to vocally express his gratitude as the enraged scream of the wranntil pushed him into an ever faster sprint.

He took a sharp turn into one of the thinner parts of the canyon and confirmed that the target followed him into the trap. Only a few yards ahead waited his salvation, the braided metal rope that would haul him to safety if he could reach it before the wranntil caught him. The annoyance of energy bolts could only do so much to give him an edge.

Lus half-tripped against one of the larger stones, but the adrenaline pounding through his system kept him upright as he came within arm’s reach of the cable. His hands shook as he latched it onto the hook of the harness sewn into his mission suit, and immediately he started to scale the rock, hardly noticing the blood and dirt stuck to his palms from his earlier spill.

“Use the emergency pulley, Lus,” Yrqw warned him.

Before he could take the advice, a set of sharp fingers grabbed his waist and pulled him from the wall.

Lus cried out against the crushing grip, and half a dozen blue bolts exploded against the wranntil, but it had its prey and nothing was going to stop it from completing the hunt. Lusac continued to scream and struggled against the hand, but he found himself staring into a void lined with half a dozen rows of pointy teeth.

This was definitely not the ending he pictured for himself, and for a moment, he wondered if shooting government soldiers would have been a safer choice. His life started to flash before his eyes just as another explosion of rainbow sparks rained down on him. The flare caused the wranntil to stumble, and Lus used the opportunity to kick his way out of the grip and turn on his anchor’s emergency pulley system.

He first shot in a diagonal direction, heading both upwards and sideways, but once he slammed into the rocky shelf, his trajectory became strictly vertical. Lus did his best to protect his head as he was hastily dragged upwards along the wall, his suit protecting his skin from tearing, until at last he was back to the safety of his starting point.

A scaly, purple face appeared above him, the huge black oval eyes staring down at him in concern. The Nemarian had faintly indigo fins running in several rows from the top of her head down to her back, with gills protruding from her lower chin on either side.

“I believe with the two flares I used to save you and the five you promised me, I now own you nineteen times over,” Cewi said. She wore a complex necklace that gently shot a type of mist known as frezon out to dose her face and as she leaned over Lus, a few drops fell onto him, reminding him how blasted thirsty he was.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said between gasps as he accepted a hand up. Her gloves were awkwardly wide, with only tiny fingertips to allow for comfortable wearing with webbed hands–at least that’s what she and the other Nemarian crewmates claimed.

Lus still believed there had to be a better design out that allowed for a little more functionality, but then again, what did Nemarians care? They never really got into the dirty work anyway. “Look, I’ll give you my children too if I ever get around to that. Deal?”

“Please. I’ll own your posterity for the next five generations if you make a deal like that,” Cewi replied.

Once Lus unhooked himself from the anchor, she worked on getting the anchor’s hook retracted. The angry roars of the wranntil intensified as they finished, and Lus stepped closer to the edge to look down at their prize. Yrqw and several other Kremel were approaching the creature which was now mostly contained by a gravity net that forced it almost completely flat against the ground.

Just as one of the crewmates shot the tranquilizer dart into the weak, soft part of the lower throat, the wranntil got a sudden burst of anger-induced strength and threw its hand back which tossed Yrqw against the canyon wall with a sickening slap.

Lus grimaced as the Kremel stood, small bloody cuts lacing his back. Even with their toughened hides, the Kremel weren’t invincible. Yet all of them refused the protection of mission suits, sticking instead with their black uniforms. He supposed it could be because mission suits weren’t typically made in large enough sizes to fit the enormous aliens. Even the women were over six feet tall and typically three times as wide as the standard Human.

The wranntil continued to jerk against the net’s stronger gravity, but the effects of the tranquilizer became more and more clear as the motions slowed. Eventually the orange eyes closed, and the beast’s breathing evened out.

“Suns, I had no idea wranntil young were so tough,” Cewi said with a whistle.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lus agreed. “Do you think our sponsor will be able to safely contain it?”

Cewi shrugged. “That’s not really our problem. As long as we deliver it safely, we get paid. That’s all I care about.”

Lus smiled. “Suns know I need the cryptin.”

“So Oaty can take it all in poker?” the Nemarian mused, her side gills twitching in amusement.

“So I can drink enough to forget this whole thing.” He laughed and clapped Cewi on the shoulder. “Thanks again for the rescue. I owe you one.”

“Nineteen actually,” she reminded him. She jerked her head back. “Come on. Let’s head to the shuttle and get home. I’ve had enough of this dust bowl.”

Lusac followed behind her, rubbing at the bruises forming across his back and chest as the Kremel shouted at each other in their ear-grating tongue while attempting to secure the load. He’d had enough of this dust bowl too.