Lost and Alone

One foot in front of the other, keep moving. It was cold, his skin burned from the chill.

(It hasn't always been like this before. He had once had a home, had a family, and had a future to call his own. But it was all gone now. Burned to glass in the fires that had fallen from heaven.)

Another few steps, the clink of shattered glass under his bare clawed feet, the slight pain of a cut quickly forgotten as the cold numbed his limbs.

(He could remember when he had no worries, life had been carefree, joyous even. He had used to romp in the front garden of his childhood home, the sun beaming in the sky, the light flowing through the trees. But it had never been meant to be.)

A small pile of rubble, the collapsed remains of some distant structure. He might have once been curious as to its original purpose, but now he felt nothing but hollowness.

(He had never known hunger back then. His belly always full, his eyes bright and his smiles a kilometer wide. He used to play by the river with his sister, she had been so nice. They shared everything, did everything together. She had been his best friend, his only real friend.)

He stumbled, front foot catching something buried in the dust. As he glanced he caught the sight of hollow eye sockets and a grinning skull. The remains of a body forgotten by all but him now.

(The weather had been warm. Clouds in the sky could cover the sun for a time, but never enough to make it cold. The fields of Frubble trees laden with their golden fruit covered the entire planet. A garden world of unsurpassed beauty and sweet delights.)

A sob escaped his lips as a sharp thorn pierced his side, the twisting thorny creeper clinging desperately to a crumbling brick facade, he battled through the pain and squeezed through the gap in the wall.

(He could remember the look on his father’s face as they plucked the fruit from the low branches. The smile, his chin sparkling with the juice of the fruit he had just tasted. His father’s approval and love filling him like the sun's warm rays upon his back.)

Another barrier, this one cruel and twisted. Its blasted form topped with razored wire and warnings. They meant little, all that had once been held was now destroyed. Just like everything else.

(He could picture the skies. Bluer than anything he could remember and stretching into forever. Only the tops of distant farmhouses broke the unending fields of fruit trees and waving seas of corn.)

He had to hop across a stream of filthy water. Taking a moment to sup some of the brackish liquid, he continued onwards. His never ending journey unfinished.

(Stemmins. The name of his home that once was. The home that had been. A shining green jewel in the deep void from whence the destroyers came. They had come in ships, impossibly large ships.)

His belly groaned, hunger his constant companion. Seeking to sate it he scrabbled at a nearby wall. A small layer of slimy algae came away and he licked it from his fingers. The taste of death evident.

(Ships had appeared overhead, ships like he had never seen before. His sister had screamed, her voice lost in the roar of wind as something fell from them. Dark shapes like stones but far larger.)

He attempted to duck under a low hanging beam and lost his footing. Sliding on the slurry of ash and mud, he fell into a sunken pit alongside the building with the collapsed roof. He scrambled in the mud for a minute, panic overtaking him.

(The ships had been overhead for hours, then a strange thing happened. They seemed to break apart. Dark shapes falling from them, screams like he had never heard echoing in the wind, then light. Bright lights in the distance, lights that burned to look at and hurt his ears.)

He had managed to escape the pit, had even caught a znot for his troubles, the small fuzzy creature joining the algae in his stomach. His hunger sated for a moment, he relished the rare feeling.

(Explosions, that is what his father had screamed to them as he galloped towards them. He had told them it was danger, his father’s face wild with an emotion that he had never shown before. He and his sister were bundled into the root cellar like a potato harvest. But their father did not follow, he went to find mother.)

A wire crossed his path. He stopped, danger senses tingling. It might be nothing, but it could be a trap. Not another trap. He shivered, hunched down and wrapped the scrap of cloth around himself tighter.

(The ground shook and dirt streamed down from the ceiling. Where had father gone? Why were these things happening to him. He couldn't know, and did not dare to try. Another loud noise, an explosion. This one closer than any before. Soon the screaming wind was back, the doors to the cellar flew open.)

It hadn't been a trap, at least not a very good one. There were others, like him. But not like him.

(In the door, it was father. Before he could call out to him another flash. And the roof collapsed, he was buried alone in the crushing darkness.)

He had met another like him once. They had called themself an administrator, not sure what it meant. It sounded nice though and so was she. Old like mother but nice like sister. He had liked her, but then they had found others.

(Coughing, darkness, constricting pain on all sides. He flailed and tried to scream, but to no avail. Kicking hard he pushed up, and broke through the surface. He had immediately been burned by the heat. The air shimmered and the ground was painful to touch. Father was gone, everything was gone.)

The mean ones had beaten him, put him in a box. He watched as they hurt administrator. They beat her and asked her questions, but she wouldn't answer, their dark clothing made him shiver. They kept hitting her till she was still. They said to be quiet, that he was next.

(He had wandered, looking for father, for mother, for anyone. But everywhere he looked it was ash and fires. The trees no longer green and soft, but hard, burned, dead. He had seen death, but this was different. He fell to his knees in pain and sorrow. He was alone.)

The box had been small, but he was stronger than the mean ones had thought. He had escaped and run. Run and run till his legs no longer worked. Then he had crawled as far as he could go. If they found him, he would die.

(He realised that there were still places with green, but all was turning dark, the skies once clear and blue were now grey and black. Angry lights made deep angry noises across the sky, the lights like veins of fire. White flakes fell from the darkness sometimes, bitterly cold to the touch.)

He awoke, alone again. With nothing to do he had walked onwards. The area he had come to was different, more buildings and less trees. Although all were burned, they seemed less so.

(He wandered. Alone and afraid for a long time. But he was not a quitter, father had always told him that quitting was bad. He would keep going, he would find father.)

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He stumbled along, his strength all but spent, his eyes heavy. Suddenly, something different. A noise, like the wind that no longer blew soft and gentle. He looked up and gasped in surprise, there was a ship. Not like the ones that had destroyed his home, but like the ones that had used to come. It was wide and fat, reminding him of dreegrubs that sometimes liked to eat the fruits from the trees.

He stopped thinking about the past, this was good. Maybe they would help him.

He began to run, the ship sending a smaller ship towards the distance. If he could just make it there, then he could ask the nice ship for help. They could make the bad things go away, they could fix everything and help him find father.

So he ran, as fast and far as he could, but he was still too far away. His hope began to fade and his tired muscles gave out, he sprawled across the muddy street. All his energy spent and his vision swimming. Why had he even tried? They would never waste their time on something as small and pitifully weak as he.

He crawled to the side of the road, under a small dead bush. For the first time in his life, he felt nothing, no pain or hope or love. He felt truly empty, he had given up. His eyes closed slowly as he realized it was time, he would not get to see the nice ones again, he would be like sister, quiet forever.

Something woke him from his sleep. He jerked awake and tried to stand, but found he had no strength. Voices, voices in the distance. Voices coming closer!

He panicked a little, were they the nice ones coming for him? Or had the mean ones finally found him again. He didn't know what to do for a short time, but decided it was worth the risk. A spark of hope flared once more in his small chest as he mustered all of his strength and called out.

“Please help me.”

**********

Trisha was crying, tears falling from her black eyes and running down her scaled cheeks. She had never seen such devastation, the entire planet of Stemmins had burned. Those Hegemony monsters had attacked unprovoked.

This had been a simple agricultural world, yes it supplied the military but only a beast would think that made it a viable military target. The world hadn't even had defenses.

She stopped and turned to her secondary pilot, Hervast. “This is appalling. Get it all on tape, we need to show everyone that will listen what happened here.”

Hervast nodded, their sharp teeth bared in anger at the sight of the burned buildings and cars. The dead trees and icy puddles of filth on the ground. The world had been burned, and the people too it seemed. Trisha had found more than one body, the remains horribly burned.

Suddenly she heard a small voice, she looked around but saw nothing. Turing to Hervast she asked “Did you hear something?”

Harvest looked around and gurgled “It sounded like someone said help I think.”

Trisha spun around slowly, they had been walking through the bombed out remains of some semi-industrial town center. Nothing but burned buildings and the bleached remains of corpses exposed to weeks of wind and rain. They had not been the first to arrive at the scene of the slaughter, but they looked to have been the first to arrive since the Hegemony had left. At least two wrecks had been detected in orbit of the planet, small independent freighters by the looks of the remains.

She stopped, something had caught her eye. Movement near a small blackened scrub bush. She motioned for Hervast to follow and walked slowly towards the small pile of ragged cloth she saw.

The pile stirred fitfully as she approached and she realised with a start that it was a small Gre’vahn child. Painfully thin and wrapped in rotting cloths, its eyes were closed and its chest hardly moving.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as her pupiless black eyes opened wide. She took off her thick coat, the freezing air causing a shock to run through her cold blooded body. She rushed to the small form and wrapped the thick jacket around them. It was a young boy, likely not more than six or seven years old at the most. How had they come to be here, where were their parents? She had a sinking feeling in her heart that she knew the answers to both questions.

As she crouched over the small, wasted form, she saw his eyes open slightly. His eyes a beautiful silver on black. She smiled but the boy closed his eyes shut tightly and began to shiver, a low moaning whimper issuing from deep inside their little chest.

“Oh.. no no no. I'm not going to hurt you. Here, you must be starving. Take this.” she said quickly and pulled a small, dried ration bar out of her pocket. It was made from dried wish and nuts and quite tasty in her mind. She knew that the Gre’vahn were omnivores and should have no trouble with the foreign proteins. Their constitutions hardier than most.

The young boy’s eyes shot open at the smell of food and he reached for it but hesitated. He gave her a look with those beautiful silver eyes and she understood.

She took a small bit off the protein bar to show it was safe and then held it closer to the boy who snatched it like she might change her mind.

She smiled as he ate, he was making small rumbling noises that she hadn't ever heard a Gre’vahn make before. She knew what it was though, he was purring.

Hervast made a small noise and said “Oh, that's interesting.”

As the boy finished his mean he looked up into her face again, she shivered slightly as her body adjusted to the chill. It wouldn't hurt her but she wouldn't be very quick. “What happened to you?” she asked as softly as she could, the slight gurgle of her accent coming through.

The boy seemed to gain courage and he said in a slightly raspy voice “Father said there was danger. But then he was gone, I was trying to find him. Can you help me?”

Her heart broke. This little boy had witnessed hell in all likelihood. He was shocked, didn't know what had happened to him or his world. Immediately anger flowed through her, white hot and banishing the chill that seeped through her. “I don't know if we will be able to find him, but if you come with me, I will do everything I can to help you okay?”

The young boy nodded and tried to stand but fell to the ground once more. His eyes teared and he sniffed but she was undeterred. She reached down and scooped him up off the ground, jacket and all. He was a little heavier than she had been expecting, cursing herself for a fool she remembered, the Gre’vahn had quartz skeletons. Of course he was heavier than his scrawny appearance would have suggested.

Huffing slightly from the weight, she cradled the boy as best she could. In response, the young boy wrapped his arms around her neck. “What is your name, mine is Trisha.” she asked him.

He pressed his small, furred head into her neck and responded quietly “My name. My name is Gavin.”

She smiled and told him “Gavin is a very nice name. I'm going to take you somewhere safe and warm, okay Gavin? You will be safe there. I won't let anything hurt you ever okay?”

Gavin seemed to sob quietly as he hugged his little arms around her tighter. Motioning to Hervast she carried the young child along the burned streets of Stemmins. The planet had been destroyed, but amongst all the death she had found a spark of hope. Gavin was a miracle to her. That the young boy had survived was incredible in itself, but for her to have stumbled across him in such a manner. It rang of grand design. She knew that she had to take the evidence of what she had seen here back to someone in the Union. Someone who could do something. She was just a cargo hauler captain, basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.

She felt her charge shift slightly and heard a faint noise. Listening closer she realised it was a snore, he had fallen asleep in her arms.

“This… This is a crime against life.” she seethed softly.

Hervast nodded and said “I agree. There was never any need for this. This goes beyond callous.” she could practically feel the anger coming off of him. It seems that the plight of their newest little friend had caused his blood to heat in anger as well.

They turned a corner and she saw her ship, the simple bulk hauler was capable of atmospheric entry and takeoff. Very handy when visiting low tech systems like this one. For once she stopped and looked at the small symbol of the Union pasted on the side of the ship. On any other day she would not have looked twice, but today it meant something new. It stood for everything that was good and right, for the opposite of what had happened here. The small, winged eagle of the union with its starbursts filled her soul with a righteous fury. She would see the perpetrators of this horror laid low. They would answer for their crimes at the end of it all.

This she swore in her mind. Gavin had never deserved this, the precious little boy’s home had been destroyed by a heinous blow.

She stepped up to the ship, its ramp lowering automatically. Gavin stirred at the noise and gave a small cry of alarm that she quickly silenced with a grumbling coo. “It's okay Gavin, it's me. Trisha. You are safe now, I have got you.”

He looked around, his eyes lighting on the ship as its ramp lowered to them. “Where are we going Trisha?”

She gave him a smile and he smiled back, his wide mouth full of tiny teeth. “We are going to the stars Gavin, the stars will keep us safe.”