To Face the Day - Chapter 6

The battered, elderly form of a Stork Class freighter drifts through the murky, swirling emptiness of Dark Space. Within the ship two humans, a dog, and a zani are alleviating their boredom, sitting comfortably in their acceleration couches in the control room and watching Lance’s favorite form of time-killing: old nature documentaries. A human voice speaking a strange tongue in oddly soothing tones went on at length about the strange and fascinating animals being observed, while helpful Standard subtitles let the modern audience understand.

It was a somewhat surreal experience for Ti-Ro. The humans who had made these documentaries were long dead and buried, yet they had unknowingly done their descendants a great service. Nearly every fantastic organism on display was now extinct. Films like this were all that remained of Earth’s wondrous ecosystem.

It was a thought that filled Ti-Ro with a feeling that was difficult to describe. It was a crime that was difficult to process. The thought of all life on an entire planet being completely eradicated was absurd. Yet, that very thing had happened. As far as anyone knew, the only thing that remained of life on Earth was what the humans brought with them. The thought of Hent suffering the same fate was…sobering, to say the least.

The documentary eventually ended, and as the credits rolled Lance cracked his knuckles and checked the ship’s time.

“Well, that’s the last one for tonight.”

Janea stretched, and gave a snort. “I don’t know why you like these so much. All it does is make me wish I could go see it myself, and then I remember that I never, ever will. It’s depressing.”

The pilot shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just kind of…relaxing? It makes me feel…connected. To my heritage, I guess you could say.”

Janea gave a bitter laugh. “Yeah, and then I’m reminded of how my ‘heritage’ was completely destroyed, and it just makes me angry all over again.”

Lance shrugged. “I guess I can understand, but I can’t claim to feel the same anger about it. Just…sad, I suppose.”

Janea looked at her hands. “You weren’t old enough to remember the End when it happened, that’s why. I was just a little girl, but I remember it clear as day. I remember what they did to us. To me. One day, we’ll give them what they deserve.”

Lance held his tongue. He’d been hearing that his entire life, and it got old after a while. He stood up and gave a stretch of his own. “I’m off to grab a bite to eat. Try not to blow up the ship while I’m gone.”

Janea nodded to him as he left.

Ti-Ro wanted to ask Janea about what she had said, but it did not seem like the sort of topic the human would want to talk about. Ultimately, she decided to follow after Lance instead.

—

“What does she mean, when she says she’ll give the Ivos ‘what they deserve’”? Ti-Ro asked.

Lance snorted as he put his dinner in the microwave. “I figured that part was obvious. She wants their worlds to be glassed, their people to be exterminated.”

Ti-Ro tilted her head in confusion. “But…what purpose does that serve? It only results in more atrocities being committed. It creates more evil, not less.”

Lance shrugged. “It’s a pretty common sentiment back at the fleet.”

“Am I to assume that it is not a sentiment you share?”

He looked uncomfortable at that. “It’s a sore subject, for most people. There’s a bit of a generational gap, I suppose. I was too young to remember the war. Janea’s not much older than me, but she’s old enough to have memories of it. It’s more…personal for people like her, I think.”

“But, not for you?”

“Don’t get me wrong, it still hurts. I still think the Ivos are evil bastards, and what they did demands justice, but…how? Even if we could magically materialize a fleet and beat them into submission with it, what do we do? Round up their leadership and give them the noose, sure. But what then? When will it be ‘enough’?”

The microwave dinged, and Lance stared at it.

“I’m just some guy Ti-Ro, I don’t have all of the answers. My perspective is just one of many.”

He took the dinner out, and ripped off the top of the bag. He stabbed a morsel of food with his fork and took a bite.

“But, well… When I was a kid, my old man always told me ‘The best revenge is living well’. ”

—

The Albatross made a hard evasive burn as a pair of missiles streaked towards it from the ambushing pirate ship. Her two point defense cannons opened up on the incoming weapons, and shredded them into a mass of debris. Unfortunately for the ship, the missiles had been so close that the hull was peppered with the debris.

“Damn it!” Lance cursed. The ship accosting Albatross was a classic pirate boat. Some dinky little interplanetary shuttle that had been fitted with racks full of missiles and sent out to wait in ambush on likely transport routes.

Had he been flying Albatross in her prime, Lance wouldn’t have sweated getting battered by some debris. But this was the jury-rigged fission rocket version of Albatross.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“The foam should’ve sealed the tanks, but we need to check the holes. Get up there and confirm!” Lance ordered Janea.

The nuclear salt water that fueled the rocket was perfectly safe under normal circumstances, but damage to the tanks could potentially allow a critical mass of fissile materials to form somewhere. If that happened, then they’d all be cooked alive by radiation as the ship turned into the equivalent of a reactor in meltdown.

Janea sprang into action and went for the service ladder that led to the fuel tanks, Ti-Ro following after her. The pair squeezed through the emergency door and clipped themselves to the ladder’s safety rails as they climbed up it. Janea scanned the walls of the fuel tanks around her, finding clumps of foam that denoted a sealed breach. She applied tape to all of the breaches she could find, with Ti-Ro doing the same.

Suddenly, the pair of them were thrown against their restraints as the entire ship lurched. Just as abruptly as it began, it stopped. The main drive had gone out. With no acceleration to provide the illusion of gravity, the pair floated back down the ladder. They had to use the hand crank to get the service door open. As they entered the main deck of the ship, it was tinted red from emergency lights. It seemed the power had gone out as well.

Janea grimaced. “Damn, they’re almost certainly going to try to board us.”

Ti-Ro was trying not to panic. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been boarded by pirates before.”

As if to punctuate her statement, a loud clanking noise could be heard through the Albatross’s bulkheads.

Janea swore. “Ok, they’re definitely boarding us.”

“Shouldn’t we fight?” Ti-Ro asked, her tone making it clear she was not exactly thrilled about the idea.

“I don’t think it will do us any good. What happens if we win? They’ll just crack Allie’s hull open and call it a day.” Janea thought for a moment. “Well, whatever we end up doing, we should get to Lance first.”

The pair attempted to make their way back to the control room, using the hand cranks to open each door along the way due to the power failure. The human and zani were turning one particularly stubborn crank together, when the door suddenly swung open and revealed a massive alien on the other side.

The alien immediately smacked the two of them to the ground with one giant pincer, and trained a laser weapon on them with the other. It looked like an interpretation of a crab by an artist who had never actually seen one. It had four large, armored legs as thick as tree trunks, and three eye stocks sprouting out from the top of its…head? The unpleasant sight of its mouth grew even more unpleasant as it scratched out some sort of vocalizations from it. Obviously, it was saying something to the pair, judging from how it seemed to wait almost expectantly.

When it became clear that it wasn’t being understood, it motioned to something behind it. A pair of small tripedal aliens scurried past it, clutching handguns in their claws and peering at the human and zani with a single, highly complex eye. Their vocalizations were like rocks being ground together as they spoke to the larger alien.

Whatever was exchanged between the two parties apparently came to a conclusion, as the two smaller creatures clattered over to Janea and Ti-Ro. They gestured impatiently with their weapons, beckoning the two new captives to move ahead of them. Janea complied, and sized the three creatures up as she did so. Ti-Ro looked at them with a mixture of astonishment and fascination.

Oh, right. She wouldn’t know these species.

Janea quietly filled Ti-Ro in. “The little guys are Krrg. They’re a Diln client race. They’re tough little shits. They can eat damn near anything and they have low oxygen consumption compared to most species, so they make pretty good spacers. Diln like to use them as labor on civilian ships, but they apparently breed and mature at an unusually high rate for sapients, so they also use them as massed light infantry.”

She nodded towards the crab alien. “Big boy over there is a Strit. They’re one of those ‘irrelevant’ species I told you about that haven’t taken a side in the war. They mostly keep to themselves, but apparently they have some really cut-throat politics in their ruling class. People who end up on the wrong side of a power struggle flee into exile. They’re big and tough, so it’s easy for them to find work in the underworld or in a PMC. My guess is that our friend here has a story that more or less lines up with that.”

Ti-Ro was even paler than usual. “This would be fascinating if I wasn’t terrified right now.”

Janea gave a half smile. “Yeah, me too. Running my mouth helps me keep my mind off of it.”

The strit swiveled one of its eyestalks to look at them, and then warbled something in its language. Janea assumed it was an equivalent of “Shut up!”, so she held her tongue. The three pirates and their captive pushed their way down the hall, and came to a stop at the control room. Janea felt a cold knife of pure terror stab into her heart when she saw the unfortunately familiar form of a Diln in front of the control room door.

Like all Diln, he stood on a pair of digitigrade legs with elongated, hoof-like feet. He was covered in a shaggy mane of hair, though he did wear clothing (specifically, he wore the uniform of a Diln privateer, to Janea’s dread). Instead of fingers or other digits, he had six long, almost sloth-like claws attached to single, complex joints that allowed them to serve essentially the same purpose as fingers (with four as ‘normal’ fingers, and two serving as ‘thumbs’). He was about the size of a human man, and his torso had a vaguely similar appearance, with broad shoulders and arms of a roughly similar length, though the musculature of his chest and abdomen were quite different.

One of the more unusual features of the Diln anatomy, however, was the neck. The Diln demonstrated this when he turned his head one hundred and eighty degrees to look at the oncoming entourage, as he was facing the door. It was perhaps fitting that his eyes would have a vague resemblance to that of an owl, all things considered. He had a stubby snout with a large maw full of razor sharp teeth. He had no nose, instead he just had four nostrils lodged at the point where his snout met with the rest of his face.

One similarity between Diln and humans was their tendency to bare their teeth as an expression of pleasure or approval, rather than the more threatening meaning it took with most other species that had teeth.

Needless to say, a Diln smile was not a pleasant sight.

The Diln turned his body around to match the direction of his head, and sauntered over to them. He stood for a moment, taking them in. He crackled out something in the Strit’s tongue. To Janea’s surprise, it wasn’t a translation speaker that was saying it, the alien sounds were coming from the Diln’s own maw. She’d heard of the incredible capacity for vocalizations Diln had, but she’d never actually seen it demonstrated like this. It might have been interesting if she wasn’t too busy trying not to wet herself.

The Diln gestured at his own head, miming the removal of a helmet. With little other choice, the human and zani obeyed. With their helmets removed, the Diln took them in once again for a moment. Then, it let out a sound that sounded like a pile of gravel attempting to laugh. Then, to her surprise and horror, it began speaking Standard.

“Just when I thought that there would be nothing of value on this relic, one of the Arm’s endangered species comes to greet me.” He sounded distressingly human when he talked, like a fluent speaker with a very, very strange accent.

He turned to reveal the doorway behind him, and Janea felt a light go out inside her as she saw inside.

“And the best part: You’re actually alive!” the Diln crooned.

Lance drifted lifelessly, spinning around slowly. Eventually, his helmet visor came into view. It was drenched in blood.

Janea was completely numb, so numb she couldn’t even feel the steady stream of tears that had come pouring out of her eyes. It just wasn’t right. Why, of all people, did it have to be Lance? She choked down sobs, and Ti-Ro seemed to be crying in the drier zani manner beside her. The alien unconsciously wrapped a tale around the shuddering woman beside her.

The Diln gave an exaggerated frown. “Yes, it’s such a terrible loss, isn’t it? There are so few of you left. And think of how much more money I could’ve made with two of you!”

He eyed Ti-Ro. “I suppose I’ll have to settle for one of your mutant cousins…”

He paced slowly. “I’m told that our beloved Supreme Commander has some sort of vague respect for you lot. Supposedly, it’s why we leave you alone. Mostly.”

He turned to the pair again and grinned. “As you can probably tell, it is not a sentiment I share. If you stubborn, pebble-brained monkeys had a shred of common sense, and bowed before your betters, then maybe you’d still have a planet.”

He paced again. “You only ‘won’ your little contest with us because of the idotic so-called ‘Warlord’ who was ruling our periphery at the time. His head is now mounted on a spike, with all of the other fools who dared to stand in the way of our Supreme Commander as he leads us to our destiny.”

He stood in front of Janea and leaned down. “Of course, there are still some rich idiot periphery nobles who have a grudge against your kind. Believe me, they will pay handsomely to take their revenge on you.”

He suddenly seized her head and slammed it against the bulkhead. Ti-Ro ran to help, but was seized by the guards. Janea saw stars and struggled to think through the pain.

“Unfortunately for you, I want some revenge too. Fear not, I’m a professional. I know how to avoid permanently damaging the merchandise. I can give you a bruise for every shipmate I lost in the war, without doing any actual damage.” As Janea was struggling to her feet, he seized her hair and forced her to look up at him.

“What is it you primates say?” He belted her in the face, and Janea could feel her eye begin to swell up.

“Ah, yes. ‘An eye for an eye.’ Very poetic.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wait, no. I have a much more appropriate idiom…”

He slammed his bony club of a fist into her gut. Janea doubled over in pain. The Diln leaned down and whispered into her ear.

“Welcome to Hell.”