Page 3 of Captured
Chapter Two
Rakir
No emotion is allowed to enter my mind as I deftly negotiate the landing of my cruise ship in the middle of a large clearing next to an open body of water. This isn’t the ideal location for my landing, but I have little choice. My engines are overheating and the breach in the hull on the side of my ship has only enlarged the damaged area during my entry into the atmosphere.
Those two last torpedoes took me by surprise, but I still managed to move my cruiser in time. If that shot had landed where it was supposed to, I would have been blasted into a trillion pieces in the endless void of space. Whoever he was, the human pilot was a good shot and had nerves of steel.
It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead, I’m sure of it.
A pang of regret pierces the cold veil inside my mind at the thought of the human’s fate, but I push it down under the surface where it belongs. This is no time for emotions. Humans chose their fate long ago when they dragged half the sentient species in the Galaxy into a devastating war, all because of their endless greed for power and riches. Five decades later, the Galactic War still rages on, devastating worlds, destroying civilization after civilization in a pointless string of battles that border on butchery.
All for the profit of a few.
Not for long. Drakians are slowly winning the war, determined to return the Galaxy to the peace it was starved of for too long. At long last, I have the one piece of the puzzle we need to put a stop once and for all to those who call themselves the Senators.
Only I have to get this evidence in the right hands, or it won’t do much good. So many lives have already been lost just to secure it. If mine joins them, then they all died for nothing.
No. Not on the Silent God’s name.
The cold veil of my training falls down like a curtain and I concentrate on landing the ship. A few moments later, my cruiser lands in a great burst of steam and dust, temporarily blinding me to its surroundings. I stand in the control room, waiting for the cloud of dust to settle. This is it. My cruise ship is not going to fly again, not without extensive repairs.
I’m on an uncharted planet and the only thing I know for sure is that the air should be breathable, or my ship’s alarms systems would have warned me. Still, no point in taking unnecessary chances.
Lights blink and alarms sound all over the control panels. A quick scan shows me the reason: the oxygen levels inside the ship are failing, probably thanks to the breach in the hull and the auto-reseal. The numbers fall as the air becomes thinner and thinner. I have no choice; I cannot wait any longer.
I press on the aeration command and the next second, the vents open, breaching the last of the seals that isolate me from what lies outside. In the next few seconds, a great wind blows inside the control room. I breathe deeply, filling my lungs with oxygen.
There is no point in waiting, so I go to the landing and activate the door. I need to see this world, need to assess its dangers. Before it can fully open, I activate my exoskeleton and watch as the tiny black scales cover my entire body, turning my skin into impenetrable armor.
Then it’s there, sprawling in front of me. An uncharted planet, full of unknown dangers.
The air smells of water and salt, iodine and living things. My ship has landed on the shore of a wide inland sea, so large I can’t see the other side. The water is soft, its smell sweet in my nostrils. I can see animals moving under its reflective surface, slippery and fast. The lifeforms don’t stop at the water, as a sprawling forest stretches beyond the shore and into the distance. Vegetation grows, furious and wild, trees tall and wide, entangled with lower growing species. My keen hearing notices movement there, in the deep shadows under the canopy. Whatever lives in there is small and poses no great threat to me, but I must be vigilant.
Life is plenty on this planet. Where life grows freely, there is always more life ready to reap it. If there are prey, like the small things I can hear moving around, then there is bigger life as well. Predators.
I don’t hesitate as I step on the wet rocks of the shore, turning around to stare at twin suns, one large and so bright it’s almost white, the other smaller and a burning red. Their heat spreads on my scales like a warm embrace as I scan the horizons.
This is where I will have to wait until my energy cells are replete enough to send a signal to my brothers. The fate of the Galactic War depends on it, along with countless lives.
As I walk in a semi-circle on the rocky shore of the sea, I see it. A column of smoke rises up in the distance at the foot of a rocky mountain, black and angry.
Nothing but the crash-landing of a spaceship could generate that amount of foul smoke.
My lips purse in an involuntary snarl. The human pilot landed on the same planet I did, then. I move in the direction of the rising smoke.
I have to know if my enemy is still alive. I hope for him he’s not. I will stop at nothing to extract information from him, even torture. The time for mercy is long past.
Walking in the strange forest of the uncharted planet is slow and frustrating, the vegetation growing madly, making progress arduous, reducing the bright sunlight to a dim twilight on the ground. The smell of life and decay is strong down here and I can feel countless eyes settling on me. I am a stranger in a strange world.
It doesn’t matter, not really. No matter where I stand, I am the biggest threat there is. No teeth or claw can pierce my exoskeleton, no poison can enter my bloodstream.
Drakians are the most powerful warrior species in the Galaxy for a reason. We have been warriors since before humans took to the stars and spread their greed to the Galaxy. The only reason humans are such a threat is the ease with which they adapted, reproducing quickly everywhere they landed. Drakians are not so lucky and our numbers remain low, each warrior precious in itself, his bloodline a resource impossible to replace.
A few hours later, I crouch behind the leaves of a plant so large it covers my body entirely.
There it is, the human ship. Only it’s not a ship but a polymeric escape pod, its black surface shining softly under the blazing sunlight, perched on a rocky outcrop of the mountainside. After a few moments of intense listening, there is still no sound or movement coming from the pod.
I move slowly out in the open, my exoskeleton instinctively rearranging itself into long daggers at my fingertips. The scales covering my body move, following my conscious and unconscious commands, stronger than any metal and yet moldable like soft silk. My exoskeleton is a marvel of evolution, making Drakians feared as warriors throughout the Galaxy. It’s also going to be the undoing of the human who managed to shoot down my royal cruiser.
