"I think your translators need a bit of work, they're pretty crap." Tusker entered the bridge and walked over to where Crater was working at one of the consoles and held up the little device to the science officer who grunted and took it off him and looked it over.
"That's a version 1.0" he said, tossing it back to the warrior. Opening one of the many pockets in his work-vest with one of his other hands, Crater pulled out a data-pad and handed it to the warrior while continuing to tap away at the console. "Give that a go, I've upgraded the language databases now that we've had the opportunity to study them a bit longer. Should work a treat. Now bugger off and leave me alone, I'm busy."
"Thanks!" Tusker turned to leave but was stopped by Predator.
"I've told the other two warriors, but thought I'd tell you too. We're a couple of hours away from our sling-shot around the human's planet and I'm pretty sure they know we're here by now. If they are going to try anything then that's when it will happen so I want you to be ready." Tusker nodded while Predator continued, "I will not let this ship fall into their hands, no matter what the cost. If it looks likely that there are going to be any problems I want the captives and any evidence of their presence here eliminated. Completely. Understood?"
"Understood."
Predator nodded and went back to his data-pad, waiting until the Tusker had left the bridge. When he was gone, Predator turned to Slash. He had watched the argument that Two-Talon had with the young warrior on one of the security screens earlier. He wasn't happy.
"Watch him." The older warrior snapped his jaws in aquiescence and left the bridge.
Heading back down the corridor to the storage area, Tusker was disturbed. Eliminated completely? What was going to happen to the aliens when they no longer served any useful purpose once they were back home. Was Two-Talon right? Bah, they were aliens, what did he care. If he didn't care then why was he even having this conversation with himself...
He shook his head and continued down the corridor, but a nagging uncertainty was gnawing at the back of his mind and had been for some time. This wasn't the first time they had argued about fundamental differences in the way they looked at the world. Arrrgh! That damned Two-Talon has infected me with his crazy ideals! I'm a warrior, I've fought hard to get where I am now, I shouldn't be second guessing myself. I follow my pack-leader, others follow me. It's the way of things, it's always been this way for good reason. I should end things with that crazy medic, hell, we're on rocky terms at the moment, what would it matter - and how dare he question the leader! I should march right in there and execute him for sedition!
Changing direction and increasing his pace he ground his teeth together in irritation. As he neared the med bay images from past experiences flashed through his mind. That first time they had gone hunting together as teens in the mist-shouded forests of home... In the end it was he who had ended up being hunted that day - the sex had been hard, fast and intense, no quarter given or asked for - the day he became a man. Going as Two-Talon's partner to the medical guild graduation, the envious looks from some of the other graduates and their partners as the two of them walked arm-in-arm into the hall - Two-Talon had been so proud of him.
"No more!" he roared out loud in frustration and smashed his fists against a bulkhead, his extended talons sending sparks jumping across the metal. Thankfully there didn't appear to be anyone else around and the door to the med bay further down the corridor was closed. Get a grip Tusker, you're an elite warrior for ancestor's sake! Be a man! Do it now, end it! One way or another, you need to end it!
Unbidden, images of the time he had taken Two-Talon to his brood-clan gathering flashed through his mind - the validation he had felt when the clan-elders had smiled their approval. While their union would never provide for offspring, it would still bring great honor to his clan... Half blind from tears of anger and confusion he thundered past the med bay door towards the storage area, conflicting feelings tearing him apart.
Tainui and Troy broke their embrace as the alien returned, storming through the door without bothering to close it this time. Sharing an apprehensive look, the boys could see the creature was clearly quite agitated. Hissing and rumbling away at a new device it clutched in one of it's hands it hunkered down again - a lot closer to them this time around, wide-eyed they both tried to shrink futher back into the corner.
"Do you love?" it asked simply in a clipped monotone.
"Yes, we do." Troy hesitantly answered. The new translator flashed the response back to the alien which immediately started rumbling away again, stopping and staring intently at the two, waiting for their response. The translator spoke again:
"Why does it hurt?"
Tainui looked quizzically at Troy with a raised eyebrow. This current line of questioning was nothing like the earlier interrogation.
"Love shouldn't hurt, if it does then there is something wrong." he said quietly. The alien briefly studied his response in silence then remained motionless for a couple of minutes, the only movement being the rapid blinking of its eyelids as it stared at them. Finally it snapped its jaws together in the movement they associated to the word 'yes' and it puffed and hissed for a few moments before the translator responded.
"Duty or love?" it asked.
"Love!" they both responded in unison. It seemed to accept this response without needing to refer to the translator. Standing up and moving towards the door it hesitated, turned around and looked back at them hissing softly. The translator spoke one last time.
"Soon things will happen quickly. Be ready." Turning it left, closing the door behind itself and disappearing back down the corridor.
Shortly after the first alien left another one of the aliens passed by the door and briefly glared at them as it lumbered past. This one was slightly bigger and dressed differently, carrying a couple of what looked like heavy-duty weapons in two of it's talons.
"What was that all about?" Troy asked in an uneasy voice. Tainui shook his head, he had no idea.
Slash strode onto the bridge and saw that Fleet-of-Foot was already there, standing beside Predator who was looking none too happy. Holstering his assault-rifles he approached the two others. Spanners and Crater were busy at their various consoles, keeping their heads low and avoiding eye contact.
"I'm guessing you're going to confirm my suspicions, am I right?" The old warrior nodded once and briefly met Fleet-of-Foot's gaze - they both knew what was coming. "Arrest Two-Talon, but if he gives you any trouble don't hesitate to kill him. While I think that Tusker has been corrupted he's probably not completely beyond re-education. Disarm him and confine him to his quarters." So it came down to this... "Go now."
Two-Talon was just wading out of his cleaning-pool when Tusker came loping through the door with both of his assault-rifles drawn and stopped when he saw the medic.
"Get dressed quickly, there isn't much time. Gather some basic supplies and equipment and get to the shuttle. The two humans will be there shortly and I wont be far behind. Hurry!"
Startled, but doing as he was instructed, Two-Talon slipped into his body-suit then grabbed a backpack and started stuffing it with equipment and clothing. Casting the odd nervous glance at the agitated warrior he finished packing and made for the door, stopping beside it and turning to face Tusker.
"What's going on?"
"We're both in trouble - serious trouble. Damn you, what have you done to me, my lover?" He put up a hand and tenderly stroked the medic's face with an outstretched talon and whispered, tears welling in his eyes. "You've turned me against my pack-leader. I'm a traitor to our entire race... Ancestors forgive me." He dropped his hand and looked nervously back down the corridor leading to the room.
"Hurry! Get to the shuttle and wait for me - now go!" When Two-talon hesitated, Tusker swore and pushed the medic out the door. "If you love me, just go!" he roared, and took off towards the storage area at a fast sprint, not looking back. When he reached the storage room holding the humans he opened the door and spoke rapidly into his translator.
"Leave this room, down corridor opposite direction from me. Turn right at end, follow other corridor. Find black door, go inside. Wait for me. Move now, move fast. No questions." He stepped aside and gestured at the hesitant aliens to move. Once they were both in the corridor, he pushed both of them in the right direction, waited for them to reach then end of the corridor then he turned and went in the opposite direction. He was under no illusions that his actions had gone unnoticed and needed to ensure they faced no interference.
Reaching the junction Tusker skidded to a halt when he saw Fleet-of-Foot approaching from the bridge access passage, bearing twin assault rifles in two of his talons.
"Tusker, this has gone far enough. You're not thinking right, this needs to end now. Put down your weapons and come with me."
"I don't know what you're talking about, everything is fine, you lower your weapons! I'm finally thinking clearly for the first time in ages." he started slowly backing towards the weapons bay door, keeping his weapons aimed at the other warrior.
"Don't make this any harder than it has to be! Lower your weapons and stand down. Don't make me shoot you, young-one."
Tusker fired a couple of shots at the wall beside the other warrior and ducked into the weapons bay as Fleet-of-Foot fired back, sending showers of sparks spraying from the door-frame. Carefully squeezing off a shot he took out the lighting equipment, plunging the room into darkness. There was a disused maintenance passageway between the weapons bay and the shuttle bay area, behind a stack of storage boxes against the far wall. He just had to move them out of the way and he'd be set. Pushing the stack out of the way was heavy and slow work, so he wasn't surprised when several shots peppered the area around him. Vanguard eyesight wasn't too disadvantaged by darkness, but it threw the other warrior's aim off just enough to save him. Grunting with effort the boxes moved just enough to allow him enough room to squeeze into the passage, ducking and narrowly missing another volley of shots.
"Dammit," Fleet-of-Foot muttered. "He's making his way down the maintenance shaft to the shuttle bay," he informed Slash via the intercom beside the door.
"On it."
When he arrived at the shuttle bay, Slash smiled grimly in satisfaction. He was the first to turn up. One of the nearby bulkheads would provide a good spot for cover, so he went over and hunkered down behind it out of sight from the airlock door and waited. From his vantage point he watched first as the doctor turned up, quickly followed by the two small aliens, eyeing each other up warily as they waited for something to happen.
Although he admitted it to no-one but himself, Slash acknowledged that he had a mean-streak running through him. It had been many months since he last saw action and he was just itching for a fight. He would wait until the warrior turned up and kill him first, the aliens next. Not yet beyond redemption? Hah! Beyond saving, more like - he had never liked colonials, the fact that the buck-toothed warrior-boy had been chosen for this mission ahead of many other, more highly decorated warriors just didn't sit right either. But he wouldn't kill Two-Talon - that traitor would face justice for his treason back home - a very public execution would send a strong message to any other young idealists who thought to question the Vanguard way of life.
When he killed the young warrior he was going to enjoy watching the upstart medic suffer.
He watched as the big-toothed warrior emerged from the normally disused maintenance hatch and embraced his lover. Slash nodded to himself as Tusker closed the doorway leading to the corridor and then blew the lock, blocking Fleet-of-Foot from being able to stop them. Wise move, young-one, not that it's going to save you. He continued to watch as the young warrior activated the shuttle airlock and made to disconnect the fuel lines. That'll do, he thought to himself and raised his assault rifle, took aim... And fired.
Not sure what was going on, Tainui had pulled Troy to his feet, wrapped the blanket around the boy and had followed the terse instructions the creature had given them. Once he got to a large black door, he looked around for a control. "This might be it?" Troy pointed to a square backlit panel beside the door. Tainui shrugged.
"Worth a go!" he said and pushed at the panel and was rewarded with a rumble as the door slowly rose up into a recess in the ceiling. They nervously entered the dimly lit cavernous space revealed and looked around. In the dimness they could make out a large boxy shape which on closer inspection looked to be some sort of small space-ship, surrounded by various bulky machinery and large articulated hoses.
"Now what?" Tainui asked.
"We wait, I guess... Man, I've got to get me some pants," Troy replied, tightening the blanket self-conciously around himself. Looking around he spotted movement, and saw another one of the hulking creatures loom towards them out of the darkness.
"Oh shit, Tai!" He whispered urgently pointing.
The roadie spun around and saw one of the creatures standing a couple of metres to one side of the smaller ship looking at them in the dim light. It didn't move any closer, but stood there regarding them with it's four black eyes, blinking occasionally.
"It's not the same one, is it?" Troy asked quietly, backing slowly away. Tainui shook his head.
"Don't think so, different clothing, and look at its hands." The creature they had been dealing with earlier had four talons roughly equally sized on each of its hands. This one only had two longer and thinner talons on each hand, the other digits looking more like normal fingers. It was also dressed differently, wearing a pale blue skin-tight uniform rather than the black that the other had worn. The protruding teeth on the front of it's snout were also considerably smaller - not that it was any less intimidating than the first.
A loud creaking made all three of them turn and look towards the far wall where a hatch had opened. One of the large alien weapons was thrust through the opening first, then another one of the creatures awkwardly clambered out of the opening and got to its feet. It picked up the weapon and looked around, once spotting them it lumbered over hissing and grunting at the other one which seemed happy to see it - the creatures embracing each other once they got close enough. One of the things was bad enough - having two of them together was almost too much for Troy who had his back against some internal bracing, preventing any further retreat. Tainui stood resolutely beside him, warily watching the two creatures' happy reunion.
"Creepy, very very creepy," he muttered quietly, recognising the second one as their earlier visitor.
The two parted and the one they recognised as 'Karak' went over to where the large black door was and activated one of the touch-pads. With a grinding noise, the door came back down out of the recess and closed with a reassuringly solid thump. Pointing his weapon at the panel, the creature shot it, sending gouts of smoke and flame flying out of the wreckage. That door wasn't going to be opening again in a hurry, Troy thought to himself. Something strange was going on here with all this clandestine mucking around - not that any of this was particularly normal anyway.
Karak went over to the ship and opened a hatch in the side, gesturing at them to get inside, then started disconnecting the various hoses and pipes from the nearby machinery. After helping Troy into the ship, Tainui thought he heard something on the far side of the room over near what looked like some blast-shields. He turned to look and saw another one of the creatures coming out from the shadows behind one of the shields and raising one of the large weapons similar to the ones carried by Karak.
"Hey, watch out there's another one!" he yelled reflexively, pointing at the new-comer as it lined up the weapon it was carrying. The creature in blue swung around and bellowed loudly, the other dropped the hoses it was carrying and surprisingly quickly for something so large, dived for its weapon, grabbing it and launching quickly back onto its feet.
Things then started happening very quickly from Tainui's perspective - the first shot from the interloper missed, sending a small plume of dust and sparks flying up next to the Karak as it grabbed for its weapon. The second and third shots however found their mark with small gouts of black blood shooting out of the alien's back as the projectiles passed through its body - the creature let out a small grunt and dropped to the ground onto its knees, the unfired weapon fell from it's talons and clattered to the floor. Karak then slowly collapsed forward onto the ground and didn't move.
As quickly as it started, it was over. Tainui watched in shock as the one in blue fell to its knees, not making a sound as it turned the unmoving body onto its back and then bent over, holding the head of its motionless comrade with all four hands. A loud rumbling noise came from the interloper as it calmly lumbered over to them, pulling another weapon from its belt and pointing it at his face, the other pointed at the kneeling creature. It starting hissing and grunting at the one in blue, then looked up as Troy poked his head out of the hatch.
"What's going on, I thought I heard gunfire..." Troy's voice trailed off as he registered what was going on. "Oh shit."
Slash stopped beside Tusker's fallen body.
"You know, that's quite a good shot if I do say so myself, don't you think? Looks like he's beyond even your ability to fix, you traitorous filth. And as for your little pets here," He pointed a smaller weapon at the human standing by the shuttle and smirked as the other human appeared at in the hatch entrance. "I'll make it quick, they wont suffer. You, however, will. And you know something else? I'm going to enjoy watching you die slowly when we get back home."
Two-Talon slowly got to his feet, not looking up from the body of his fallen lover. He was aware that the older warrior hadn't let down his guard at all, the larger weapon was still aimed squarely at his head so he knew he had to be quick - he had one chance and one chance only.
"There are winds of change blowing..." Two-Talon said in a very quiet, sad voice. Although Slash was alert he didn't see the medic tense his talons slightly - long razor-sharp talons used to making surgically precise incisions - he did however notice that Two-Talon's shoulders had slumped slightly and took it as a sign of defeat. Raising his head slightly, he was about to make another gloating remark when there was a blur of motion in front of him and suddenly he found he couldn't speak - all that came out was a horrid gurgling noise, and an awareness that the front of his body was getting wet with something dark and cloying with an oddly familiar smell. It was starting to get quite dark in the shuttle bay, things were fading out in a rather disturbing manner. This wasn't supposed to be happening! He was in charge here! Collapsing to the ground he felt a dull panic, and managed to look up at the medic standing above him with stained and dripping talons.
"...And those winds are blowing your kind away."
Tainui and Troy managed with a lot of difficulty to get Karak's blood-soaked body into the shuttle while the one in blue finished off disconnecting the various lines and tethers and powered up all the various systems. It hadn't said anything since ripping the throat out of the interloper a few minutes earlier, just pointing and nodding at various things that needed to be moved or turned on which the boys did in silence.
They carefully stayed as far away from those bloody talons as possible. Never before had either of them seen anything move as fast as the creature in blue did - one minute the interloper was standing there pointing weapons at them, the next it was lying on the ground in a spreading pool of thick, black blood, its head almost completely severed from its body. Tainui had been raised on a farm so he was used to animals being slaughtered, but Troy was a different matter. He tried to keep the boy busy so he wouldn't lapse into shock from the recent events. A couple of minutes later the shuttle had been launched and they were slowly drifting further away from the larger ship that they had been imprisoned in, drifting back towards the blue and white planet below them.
"See if you can find some clothing or something in those lockers behind you," He suggested to Troy in order to keep him busy and his mind occupied with other things. Turning he looked at the creature in blue which had finished with the controls and was now sitting on the floor of the shuttle, cradling the head of its partner in its lap, rumbling in a very deep mournful tone.
He was alarmed to see thin black trails making their way down the side of it's craggy face and it took him a few seconds to realize that the alien wasn't injured - it was crying. Troy came back and sat beside him, quietly watching the creature sing to it's fallen mate. Despite everything that had happened, his heart went out to this creature - some things are universal, no matter what planet you call home.
EPILOGUE
Standing quietly on either side of him, the humans watched as the smoke and flames of the pyre swept Tusker's ashes up into the frigid starry night. Two-Talon silently wept tears of blood as he contemplated the black emptyness echoing inside his soul - wept for the bitter loss of innocence - wept for the part of himself that also died in the brief battle.
Although Tusker's chapter of the story had come to an end, the story itself was far from over: Another couple of shooting stars sailed past overhead - last of the wreckage of the Victorious Hunting disappearing from existance, if not from memory. Predator had completely misjudged the human military machine, as the ship had reached perigee it had found several hunter-killer missiles waiting for it. Although built by a civilisation far ahead in technological ability, the old vessel's structure was never designed to cope with that sort of abuse. The shields had catastrophically failed in the attack, leaving the weakened ship to the mercy of gravitational stresses it was not designed to cope with.
There would be follow-up missions but now humans were at least able to prepare... They would be in charge of their own destiny.
There was a tale told - an old tale of a Vanguard colony settled by disillusioned young outcasts. A colony where reason and not tradition prevailed. The journey would take many years in the small shuttle he now possessed, but it was a dream worth following and his race were long-lived. More would eventually follow and be free - times were changing. He owed it to his young warrior who had instinctively sacrificed himself for his mate. Word would spread, Tusker's tale would also be told - would be honored.
The cold wind blew...
END
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