Sunrider Veniczar: Chapter 3 "Raid" (Indefinite Hiatus Project) (Patreon)

Chapter 1 "Alice"

Chapter 2 "Gestalt"

The next morning, Alice awoke, shivering unexpectedly. A place of extremes, Gestalt's deserts cooled almost as unforgivingly overnight as they heated during the day. Everything was covered in a thin, cool layer of dew, including her face, hair, and borrowed bedroll. Wiping the dew from her eyes, she sat up, seeing that Obarin and Jemhyr were already bustling around, checking their portable water condensers and packing up the camp.

“Finally awake recruit?” asked Jemhyr with a dismissive tone.

“Be nice Jemhyr,” admonished Obarin with a gracious grin as Alice gritted her teeth in embarrassment and humiliation. “It's her first day on the job.” Drawing off some water from his condenser's reservoir, Obarin offered her his canteen once again and pulled a small, foil wrapped package the size of a candy bar out of another pocket, offering it to her. “Drink and eat up, we've got a long day's ride ahead of us before we get back to base.”

Alice pulled the foil off the offered rations, revealing a dense, stiff and chewy, brown substrate. She bit into it dubiously.

“Grade C foodstuffs mixed with all the vitamins and minerals a body needs and nothing the soul craves,” laughs Obarin, watching her chew the tough, almost leathery meal replacement. “Sorry, we're stretched a bit thin for fancy rations or food that you might be used to. I'll buy you a proper welcoming dinner once we're in calmer waters.”

“It's been over a year and I'm still waiting for mine,” Jemhyr said coolly, rolling up her bedding.

“We owe a lot of people a lot of money,” muttered Obarin with an embarrassed grin.

Alice couldn't help but snort with a little laughter, the first time in days, Obarin's irrepressible cheer proving to be contagious. “I was eating emergency rations so old they'd crumbled to dust and drinking my own badly filtered urine for eight days before I crashed here and started lapping up worm saliva,” she said bluntly. “This is fantastic.” She lifted the canteen and ration up in a sign of thanks as Obarin shook his head, snorting with laughter and turned back to his own gear.

As soon as she was finished with the food and water, Alice rolled up the borrowed bedding and gave a hand wherever it seemed appropriate as Obarin and Jemhyr finished stowing the last of their sparse camp's belongings. Nearly everything the two owned seemed third or fourth handed, battered, discarded, refurbished, and battered again before falling into their hands.

Parked by the side of the camp were two hover bikes of seemingly ancient make, on which Obarin and Jemhyr loaded their few belongings with the practiced ease of having done so a hundred times previously. The bikes were a used vehicle salesperson's worse nightmares; hardly any of the bike's rusting plating remained unscratched or dented in some way, revealing multiple layers of paint in varying shades of browns and reds, probably chronicling well over five decades of various ownership. With intakes and engines clogged with over a decade of built up and solidified dust and sand, Alice was surprised the machines even still carried passengers instead of simply blowing up when activated.

Alice walked around the machine with wide eyes; whether the thing belonged in a museum or a scrapheap, she wasn't sure, but it most certainly should not have been still carrying around passengers who planned on arriving to their destinations in one piece.

“Don't worry about it,” said Obarin, patting the bike's sleek, hornet-like body and seeing Alice's stare of horror. “The Compact cell on Gestalt isn't the best funded, but they know their stuff and don't mess around when it comes to traveling the desert. It's perfectly safe.”

Alice deftly caught a pair of goggles Obarin tossed to her, cleaning some of the dust off their lenses and adjusting the strap before setting it on her forehead and lowering it over her eyes.

“Come on,” Obarin swung a long leg over his vehicle and indicated the spot behind him where she was evidently supposed to sit.

Struggling, Alice put one foot up on the bike and somehow managed to swing her leg over without toppling the gear strapped to the bike behind her, blushing a little as she all but straddled Obarin's waist from behind. “W-where do I hold on?” she asked tentatively, unsure where to put her hands.

“Ah, anywhere,” Obarin said carelessly, hitting the ignition.

With an ailing cough followed by a throaty roar, the vehicle blasted hot air, sand, and dust out from beneath it as its repulsors came to life. Beside them, Jemhyr's bike did the same.

Hair whipping in the sudden squall, Alice screamed in surprise, throwing her arms around Obarin and clinging to his chest for dear life as she dissolved into a coughing fit from inhaling the dust cloud that rose from underneath.

“W-wait a-” Alice's words were drowned by a thunderous roar as Obarin jammed the bike's throttle open, and shoved back into her throat as the hover bike came to life.

Ignoring the small woman wailing incoherently into his ear and digging her nails painfully into the fabric of his clothes and his chest, Obarin's face split into a wild grin as his hair ruffled rebelliously in the wind, streaking off towards the rising sun like a racehorse out of the gate.

******

It was a curious thing. For someone who'd traveled halfway across the galaxy in eight days, thousands of times the speed of light, the current speed of the hover bike was almost laughable in comparison, barely a snail's crawl in relativistic terms. And yet, Alice had never experienced speed like this. The rough ripple of wind through the fabric of her clothes and hair, the lurching and twisting of her stomach as the bike rose and fell with the slope of the desert's sand dunes, the frightening blur of landscape racing past them; it was all too much and Alice spent the first fifteen minutes of the ride with her face firmly buried in Obarin's back, knuckles white as she expected death to swoop down upon them at any instant.

Eventually, however, her heartbeat settled enough that she began peeking out hesitantly. Before long, even her vice grip on Obarin’s chest lightened as she straightened her back to peer at the desert with curiosity. Once she got over the fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach from the bike’s undulations, the experience became almost pleasant, the primeval thrill wind through her hair and the open expanse of desert before them appealing to some long-forgotten evolutionary drive to fly into the unknown.

“Still hanging on?” teased Obarin, shouting over the thrumming of the bike’s repulsors to be heard.

“How far are we going?” asked Alice, also shouting.

“Just the other side of the desert, back to our base at Balzac, largest Denari settlement on this hemisphere. It’s the better half of a day’s ride… unless…” Obarin’s voice took on a musing quality that somehow made Alice’s stomach squirm in discomfort once again. “Jemhyr!”

Jemhyr’s bike roared up to theirs. “What?” she shouted, barely audible.

“Shortcut through the salt stacks?” Obarin asked, eyes gleaming.

“Your funeral,” Jemhyr smiled grimly as she pulled away, both bikes banking gently towards the north

.

Not sure she liked the expression on Jemhyr’s face, Alice rapped Obarin on the shoulder again, “What are the salt stacks?”

“You’ll see,” Obarin crouched lower over the bike, fiddling with a switch or two on an ancient, dust-encrusted control panel.

Alice looked around and ahead of the bike with a frown; nothing but brown and yellow sand and rock stretched to the infinite horizon. Slowly a small line, barely a wrinkle in the landscape seemed to approach them. Alice squinted in the harsh light, trying to make it out.

“You might want to hang on now,” Obarin’s voice was almost shaking with laughter as the wrinkle got closer.

“I don’t-” Alice’s eyes widened and her speech died in her throat as the odd formation in front of them seemed to grow a little, realization hitting her.

It wasn’t so much as a wrinkle in the flat of the desert as a gaping chasm, so low to the ground and even to the other side that it had appeared as continuous ground until they came within several hundred meters of the formation.

“OBARIN!” Alice shrieked as the man drove suicidally fast towards the impending cliff, seizing fistfuls of his clothes once again.

Laughing and whooping freely, Obarin threw his bike straight off the cliff, plummeting into its depths below.

The entire world dropping out from under her, Alice felt a surge of utter panic and mind-rending fear as they fell. “AAAAHHHH!” Alice shrieked uncontrollably as tears poured out from her eyes, snatched away to the wind of the fall before they could even roll down her face.

Cranking the left throttle, Obarin overloaded the port repulsor, knocking the bike off course and onto a lateral heading with the canyon’s path. “Hang on!!” he shouted as the far wall of the canyon grew monstrously close in the blink of an eye.

Pitching slightly the bike angled to aim its repulsors against the far wall, arresting its now lateral velocity component and momentarily skating along the canyon sideways before continuing its descent.

Flipping a switch, Obarin flared the vehicle’s repulsors again, cushioning them as the bike reached the bottom of the canyon, roaring with power as it fought to prevent itself from dashing into the ground into a thousand pieces.

Through it all, Alice could do nothing but wail and clutch at Obarin, regretting her survival to the surface of Gestalt a hundred times over. Compared to her botched re-entry, the current experience, being open to air and with the bowel-loosening sensation of reckless speed, was an order of magnitude more terrifying.

As the bike settled back out into an even trajectory, Alice regained enough wits to begin piecing herself back together, her stomach flipping end over end, her breath coming in short gasps and wheezes, and her entire body feeling weak and trembling on the verge of collapse.

“I HATE YOU, IHATEYOU IHATEYOU!” she screamed, pounding at Obarin’s back with her tiny fists.

“Oh come on!” Obarin laughed, trying to fight off her flurry of punches with one arm while turning halfway around to look back at her. “That was fun, right!? Plus we’ve got a tiny lead on Jemhyr now.”

Alice continued her attack mercilessly, past caring about Obarin and Jemhyr’s pointless race. As he shifted his weight and body to turn around, however, another bizarre sight of Gestalt’s geology came into view. Pillars of salt, gleaming white and sparkling in the sun rose up like sentinels on a plain in front of them as the canyon spilled out into open land. Each individual column was a small distance away from its neighbor, but their arrangement was haphazard and random. With a whimper, Alice realized Obarin likely intended to drive straight into the forest of salt, weaving between each pillar like a needle threading some bizarre patterning.

“Obarin…” she said weakly, wondering how much more her heart could take before simply exploding from the stress and fear.

“I know,” Obarin’s voice was grim, still looking back over his shoulder into the distance. “Jemhyr’s catching up.”

“SHUT UP AND WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING!” screeched Alice, pointing towards the rising salt pillars and practically grabbing Obarin’s ear and twisting his head to face forward.

“Ow! Alright, alright!”

******

Balzac was visible from the flat desert dozens of kilometers away, its skyline dominated by complexes of domes, two-story flats, and communication arrays, the entire city surrounded on all sides by kilometer after kilometer of solar collectors and dew condensers, giving the impression that the city center floated in a sea of iridescent dark paneling. Like many desert-adapted colonial developments, large swaths of the city were actually underground where the heat of the sun was easier to protect against. Aside from the domes and other surface installations, there were also a variety of surface transports and vehicles ranging from monolithic repurposed ore crawlers to tiny hover bikes like the ones they rode parked in open lots under the watchful eye of local security. A large spaceport also graced the surface of the city, taking up more than half of the surface sprawl, although Alice could see from afar that not even a single orbital shuttle was parked there and there was virtually no sign of trade activity, giving her the likely accurate impression that external supply runs to the city were irregular occurrences at best.

Still stunned and traumatized by the ride to Balzac, Alice was barely coherent enough to make out what Obarin had to say about the city, but a few points stuck. The spaceport was apparently a relic of the Holy Ryuvian Empire’s occupation, back when Gestalt was still an important mining planet, having once handled dozens of surface to orbital ore shipments with cargo shuttles touching down and taking off around the clock. Having exhausted every major ore body on the surface during their centuries of occupation, however, the Ryuvians eventually moved on to greener pastures, abandoning the local industry and infrastructure to its present state.

As Obarin pulled his bike into a vacant lot and deactivated the vehicle, Alice staggered off, her wobbly legs grateful for solid, unmoving ground to stand on. Breathing shakily, she closed her eyes for a moment, head reeling.

“You alright?” asked Obarin, dismounting as well with his signature grin.

“Yeah…” Alice said unsteadily. “I think so… Actually, I feel good.”

And, in fact, she felt great; alive again. The speed, the terror, the swooping sensation in her stomach, all of it was a reminder that she still lived and breathed, that her experience, no matter what had happened before, was still valid. A feeling of exhilaration stole over her as she felt her heart pounding furiously. Straightening, she smiled into Obarin’s face… and the promptly vomited.

“Definitely not from around here,” laughed Obarin, watching Alice double over retching.

******

Obarin, Jemhyr, and Alice walked down one of Balzac’s innumerable twisting, winding alleyways. Virtually everybody in the city wore the same kind of cloak with faded patterning as the ones Obarin and Jemhyr sported, although the garments underneath the cloaks seemed to vary from loose-fitting, one piece smocks to the more widely recognized modern galactic fashion such as the clothes Obarin and Jemhyr sported. Clad in her researcher’s uniform from Diode, Alice would have stuck out like a sore, pale-white thumb in the crowd even if she weren’t covered in obvious and extensive rust-colored blood stains.

Obarin seemed to pick up on this as well, giving her a roguish wink and suggesting that they find her some more suitable garb. Jemhyr sighed, but seemed to agree as well, leading the two to the city’s open air markets. Here, dozens of peddlers hawked goods ranging from local foodstuffs, primarily a strange, longish gourd with alternating yellow and green stripes down its length and various insectoid and reptilian livestock animals, to refurbished and salvaged technology and trinkets. As the three passed by, the peddlers cried out in the local tongue, speaking with the same musical and fluid accents that flavored Jemhyr’s Standard, apparently taking Obarin and Alice’s pale complexions and unusual hair colors as a sign of, at least potential, wealth.

Fighting her way past the salesmen, holding out a number of screaming animals and other local oddities for her inspection, Alice kept her head down and scurried after Obarin and Jemhyr until they reached large stall filled with rolls of fabric and dozens of garments for sale. What took place next was too rapid for Alice to even attempt keeping up with, but it seemed like Jemhyr and the shops proprietor were both speaking at exactly the same time, apparently negotiating the price of the goods they intended to trade. Without warning, Jemhyr grabbed Alice’s arm, pulling the smaller woman forward with a squeal. Not a single break in their fluid conversation, Jemhyr pulled on and rubbed the fabric of Alice’s sleeve, inviting the proprietor to do so as well.

Giving Obarin a pleading look, Alice appealed for his intervention, feeling a ripple of discomfort at being shown off like an inanimate object, but Obarin only shook his head, a smile playing at his lips. Sighing, Alice let herself be poked and prodded nearly half a dozen more times before Jemhyr and the shopkeeper slapped the table between them simultaneously, causing Alice to jump in surprise, and broke into smiles, the deal apparently struck.

Quickly, the proprietor drew a curtain around Alice, dropping her into semi-darkness.

“Take off your clothes,” instructed Jemhyr from outside.

“M-my clothes?!” Alice nervously pulled the curtain closer together, sealing a microscopic crack between the two ends of the fabric.

“Yes, your clothes.”

Alice could practically hear the last remaining reserves of Jemhyr’s patience fizzling away.

“The tailor’s quite interested in whatever fabric that’s made of; he’s willing to barter an outfit in exchange for it,” explained Jemhyr tersely.

“Oh, OK…” Alice struggled out of her clothes, peeling their tight fit from her body, again reminded of just how long it had been since she last showered or cleaned. Shuddering in revulsion, she stripped down, ultimately standing almost nude save for the boots she wore, their light, off white color now the same uniform yellow-brown of Gestalt’s surface. Handing the sodden and stinking garment through the slit of the makeshift changing area, she felt a bundle of clothes being pressed into her hand in return.

Dressing quickly, Alice buttoned up a light, loose fitting and formerly white blouse. Although a little tattered, it served its function well enough, surprisingly cool and well ventilated in the desert breeze. A pair of shorts followed it, barely coming down to where her fingertips met her thighs. The amount of skin showing made her somewhat self-conscious, especially since the Denari cloak given to her also ended roughly at that level.

Stepping out from behind the curtain, Alice heard Obarin whistle good-naturedly.

“Looks good on you,” he commented wryly before ducking out of the shopkeeper’s stall.

The native shopkeeper apparently thought so as well, ogling her pale, slender legs and thighs shamelessly while grinning and clucking something to Jemhyr in Denari.

Turning red, Alice hurried after Obarin, refusing to meet the shopkeeper’s gaze while Jemhyr tossed him her old clothes and left as well.

******

The three looped through the city, Alice becoming hopelessly lost amidst the seemingly random turns and segues down narrow alleys and back streets.

“Just in case,” said Obarin, winking as he drew his silver mask out of the folds of his cloak, pressing it to his face as the three came up to their apparent destination, an unremarkable metal door set in the warrens of a residential neighborhood in the city.

“Ob-” Alice started, intending to ask a question.

“It’s Arcadius now,” said Jemhyr sternly. “When we are among our own, we can afford Arcadius the respect of his face and name. Obarin is the disguise, this is the man we follow.”

Obarin only shrugged, his amused features hidden, but radiating their message by some undisclosed means all the same. “Lighten up Jemhyr, I’m not like the last Arcadius. Plus it seems a little hypocritical to be enforcing honorifics when we’re all fighting for common treatment.”

“No, she’s right,” Alice swallowed her pride and accepted the pointer from Jemhyr. Clearly she had a lot to learn about the Compact and its internal culture. “I said I’d join the Compact, I should start acting the part.”

Obarin rubbed his hands into his mask’s face in mock frustration. “What’s the use of being a leader if nobody listens to you?” his shoulder shook with laughter. “Fine, fine, how about you call me Arcadius if I’m wearing the mask, but Obarin if not, deal?”

Alice smiled, “Fair enough, Arcadius.”

“Alright, let’s not dawdle and get spotted by an Imperial informant,” joked Obarin, rapping on the door with a particular series of long and short knocks.

As soon as he finished, the door unlocked with a clang, swinging open to admit the trio into a dark antechamber.

Stepping in after the other two, Alice felt wind by her side as the outer door slammed shut as soon as she entered, whispering a millimeter close to her elbow as it swung as though determined to close with as little delay as physically possible. As her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness of the room, she found herself looking at two heavily armed sentries, also off-worlders judging from their pale skin and red hair, pointing large, wide-bore laser rifles in their direction with casual hostility.

“Arcadius!” One of the sentries immediately powered down his weapon and struck an altogether more relaxed stance. “It’s good to see you again Sir!” Although he was a good deal larger than his partner, towering over Alice like a wall of bulging muscle, she sensed a gentle nature to the man, as though he didn’t really have the heart to aim or use the weapon he’d been assigned to guard the door with.

“Who’s the new one?” asked the other, keeping her gun trained on Alice, her voice suspicious with a face to match. Her emerald eyes were narrowed into slits of wariness, her face severe as she blew a stray strand of blood-red hair out of her face, hands clutching her rifle tightly.

“New recruit Thala,” answered Obarin soothingly. “It’s fine, she’s one of us now.”

“Says who?” Thala demanded. “How do we know she's not a spy!?”

“Says me.” Obarin's voice was even and calming.

Thala shook her head and lowered her gun with a sigh. “That big heart of yours is going to get you killed one day Arcadius.”

“Hey, did anyone greet you like this when I first recruited you?” demanded Obarin in mock exasperation.

“As a matter of fact…”

“This is Thala and her brother, Serge, they’ve been with me for three years now,” said Obarin, introducing the pair. “Thala, Serge, this is Alice. Picked her up out in worm country.”

Thala, clearly the dominant personality between her and her brother stepped forward first, grasping Alice’s forearm as Obarin had done when first accepting her to the Compact’s ranks. “Well met then. If Arcadius vouches for you, then I have no further objections.”

Alice nodded, somewhat surprised at the clout Obarin’s word carried. He might have seemed harmless and clumsy on the surface, but she suspected there was a reason why these revolutionaries held such stock in his word and judgment.

“Nice to meet you,” Serge took Alice’s arm next, surprisingly gentle for a man of his size, smiling kindly. “Don’t worry about it, you’ll learn the ropes soon enough.”

Alice gave him a weak smile in return.

“Alright, well let’s head down,” said Obarin, gesturing as he descended down a dark flight of stairs, leading Jemhyr and Alice onwards as Thala and Serge continued their watch on the base’s entrance. As they walked down and through the stone corridors deeper and deeper, Obarin narrated for Alice’s benefit. “The Compact is broken up into dozens, maybe hundreds of individual cells across the Empire. Even I don’t know how many cells we have in operation. Each cell ranges in its own size and focus, but the idea is for each one to be autonomous and independent; even if one gets destroyed, the overall resiliency of the Compact is unaffected. There are trade-offs, of course. Being fragmented means organization on a larger scale is difficult and dangerous.”

“We can’t rely entirely upon the independent action of single cells, however, so there are a number of interplanetary Compact elements, like mine, which you can think of as one of several overseeing Compact branches which can take command over any individual Compact chapter on a planet. We travel from planet to planet, establishing presence where we’re needed most, reinforcing and coordinating local assets to stage larger operations consistent with our overall strategy. Gestalt’s technically an independent world, but it’s close enough to the Imperial border that we use it as a staging ground for some hit-and-run operations in Imperial space, hijacking Imperial cargo ships, disrupting communications, that sort of thing.”

“So you’re pirates?” asked Alice, not bothering to hide her disappointment.

Obarin laughed out loud. “Piss poor pirates at that,” he threw an arm over Alice. “You’ve never met an actual pirate have you?”

“N-no…”

“Well, let me tell you something. Pirates are in it for the money. They hijack goods and cargo and move it to whatever fence offers them the most credits. When we make a score, we sell it off to whatever local black market there is, usually below value on the condition that our buyers pass the savings onto their customers. Half of the manufactured and processed goods and tech bought and sold on Gestalt these last six months have been cargos my team’s ‘liberated’ from Imperial military supply transports. It’s made life around here a little easier, just ask any of the city’s inhabitants if you don’t believe me.” Obarin drew back and put his hands on his hips with a measure of satisfaction.

“What about the Imperials, why don’t they hit back?” asked Alice.

“I’m sure they’d love to,” said Obarin seriously, leading her and Jemhyr into a larger command room filled with maps and communications equipment. A variety of other Compact members, mostly Denari, but with a few other fair-skinned individuals from Obarin’s team, milled around with their various duties. “But like I said, Gestalt’s an independent world. The Empire has no jurisdiction once we’ve fled back here, cargo or no cargo.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that Arcadius,” a Denari man walked up to Obarin, grasping his arm and speaking with a deep, sonorous voice that Alice found immediately reassuring and calming despite his serious tone and expression. It didn’t take a genius to tell from the deference the other members of the room treated him with that this man was the leader of the local Compact cell.

“Why, what happened Hayder?” asked Obarin, detaching himself from Alice and Jemhyr to grasp the other man’s arm briefly before he accepted a holo Hayder offered.

“Imperials,” Hayder answered in his rumbling voice. “A Landen-class cargo ship and two marine shuttles touched down one hundred kilometers from Balzac last night. They're setting up camp as we speak.”

“Ah.” Turning to Alice and Jemhyr, Obarin's embarrassment was palpable through the expressionless mask. “Well, talk about putting your foot in your mouth…” Turning back to Hayder, his tone got more serious. “Do we have eyes on the ground?”

Hayder gestured for something from one of his subordinates, taking and unrolling a number of thermal prints taken from afar by the Compact's scouts.

Obarin frowned as he studied the images. “Liro's been looking for an excuse to annex Gestalt into his little fiefdom for a while now. All our hit and run operations against his supply lines probably finally convinced his higher ups to lend him some firepower...” Tapping the scans, Obarin sighed deeply. “This cargo ship's being gutted and deployed. See here? They've already set up a perimeter with the ship's hull plating. Soon, the whole thing will be converted into a pre-fabricated Imperial supply base with a garrison of several hundred marines. Before long, they'll be sprouting up across the planet and Gestalt becomes Liro's backyard stomping ground.”

“What about the Alliance?” asked Jemhyr, blunt as always. “This is a sovereign planet, they can't just ignore us.”

Hayder snorted. “No response from the local senator's office. And I doubt we'll ever get one. They're probably editing the official stellar charts and nav databases as we speak. We're too far from Solaris, too poor, and too annoying for anyone from the Alliance to bother with.”

“Hmph,” Jemhyr made an unhappy, but equally unsurprised sound.

“If we don't nip this in the bud, it'll become a problem,” muttered Obarin. “Once a successful supply base is established, Liro's men can begin surface operations in earnest. More ships will land, fighting back becomes exponentially more difficult.”

“You call that still a bud?” Hayder arched his eyebrow. “Meaning no disrespect Arcadius, but there are at least two thousand heavily armed marines protecting a defensible location. Our people are willing to fight and heed the call to defend their homes, but the casualties would be grave. The desert will run red with the blood of our sons and daughters. How many families will be torn asunder by this battle alone?”

Obarin sighed with a lifetime of bitterness. “Fewer families than if we let the Empire seize control of Gestalt; that I can guarantee you. The sacrifice of your warriors will never be forgotten. It's now or never Hayder. If Liro sets up shop here, the Compact might as well dust off and clear out.”

“I shall put the word out then,” Hayder said gravely. “What of weapons? Able-bodied men and women I can find. Military-grade firearms are a different story on Gestalt, however.”

Arcadius gestured generally behind him. “The crates I brought down when we first set up here? That’s what we have to work with.”

Hayder only shook his head, his long dreadlocks swinging dejectedly as he walked away to organize his end of the logistics.

Alice let the breath she’d been holding out, waiting for Obarin to say something.

“Sometimes, I really hate this,” Obarin’s hands clenched into fists on the table. “It’s always like this. We’re always out-gunned, out-spent, out-classed by the Empire.” He pointed to a simple red swathe of tattered fabric she’d initially mistaken as some kind of curtain or wall drape. “The Crimson Banner. Our symbol. A reminder of the blood sacrifice our brothers and sisters paid so that the Revolution would continue.”

Looking at the weight on Obarin’s shoulders, Alice felt something click inside her. She knew she had no personal stake in joining the Compact. She neither knew, nor cared about the Empire or its politics, even the Compact’s history was almost trivial to her. But what she had found in the Compact was this man. At that moment, she knew she would do anything to lift the burden on his back if only temporarily and see that carefree smile he’d worn while biking across the desert, liberated from any worldly concern or encumbrance.

“Show me your guns.”

“Hm?” Obarin seemed to come out of his personal daze.

“I said show me your guns.” Alice pulled off her cloak and tossed it over a free chair, rolling up her sleeves. “And get me any tools or spare parts that are laying around this place.”

Something about the hard, sure quality her voice took on seemed to speak to Obarin and the other Compact members and before long, Alice found herself staring at a case of laser rifles, several standard toolkits, and a crate filled with all variety of wiring, circuitry, and parts salvaged from an indeterminate number of sources spread across decades of technological progress.

As soon as she hefted a rifle from the case, Alice could immediately tell that Obarin was not exaggerating when he suggested the Compact’s equipment was severely outstripped by whatever the Empire employed. The gun’s casing was every bit as damaged and beat up as the hover bike they’d came to Balzac on, chronicling decades of violent and bloody history over its use. Heavy and bulky, Alice wondered if the gun was one of the first mass produced personal military laser armaments; certainly it pre-dated any modern miniaturization or ergonomic efforts.

Although Alice knew precious little about firearms in general, but machines and technology all possessed common underlying principles. She swallowed some of her nervousness and forced herself to think of the heavy, matte gun as nothing more than a laboratory apparatus she needed jury rigged for an experiment. Cracking open the casing, she dived into its internal components, feeling her worries slip away. Compared to the pulsar-graviton recorder she’d slaved away on for the last two years, working on the gun was akin to a master painter deigning to finger-paint.

With a grim smile, Alice wondered what her deceased “colleagues” would have made of her transformation. From the galaxy’s leading mind on high-energy particle physics to firearm technician in the span of a single week… Slicking back a strand of sweaty hair, Alice smudged oil and grease over her face inadvertently.

“Phase crystals are out of alignment,” she narrated for the benefit of her curious audience. “You’re losing almost half of your laser energy to non-coherence. And there’s only one working power feedline from the battery to the cycler.” Thin wisps of smoke curled upwards as Alice manipulated a solder with her dainty fingers and adjusted the gun’s internal components with a fine grasping tool. “There, try this.” Alice closed the gun’s casing back up and gestured for someone to take the weapon away for a trial.

Hayder scooped up the gun with a critical eye before shouldering it and pointing it at the far wall as his people scattered nervously to clear the line of fire. Squeezing the trigger, a bright blue flash momentarily blinded the onlookers as the gun discharged. As the onlookers blinked the ghostly trail the laser discharge had etched on their retinas, their looks of disbelief turned to wonder. Across the room, a glowing crater about the size of a large watermelon bore straight into the rock and concrete wall, molten mineral dripping and flash-freezing again in a rock-replica of a waterfall.

Stunned silence fell over the Compact base of operations.

“Bring the guns. All of them,” Obarin said, his voice quiet but bristling with excitement.

Cheers and laughter broke out and Alice felt hand after hand clapping on her shoulders as her new brothers and sisters welcomed her with enthusiasm and heart, but her eyes, whenever they flickered up from whatever weapon she was refurbishing next, were only for Obarin, fixed on the silver surface of his mask, wishing she could see his grin once more.

******

Alice drifted in and out of consciousness with the bouncing of the surface crawler as it rumbled across the desert. After nearly forty eight hours of continuous refurbishing and retrofitting of the Compact’s weaponry, stripping out burned out parts, realigning focusing crystals, replacing spent fuel cells, Alice’s stamina had finally run out, although she estimated she’d more than doubled the fighting effectiveness of the motley militia Obarin and Hayder managed to cobble together in the meantime.

Although she’d been more or less engaged during the process, Alice had kept an open ear while Obarin and Hayder worked out their plan and tactics for storming the Imperial supply camp. The primary obstacle now, with their improved weaponry, were the four Imperial cruisers holding low orbit over the supply camp. Even if the Compact forces managed to take the base, they were sitting ducks on the open plains of the desert for the cruisers and their orbital bombardment ordinance. As it was, the surface crawlers that the Compact forces planned to use to travel to the Imperial supply camp would have registered a dust cloud and heat signature clear from orbit, practically inviting the Imperials to use their orbital advantage and pummel their forces before they could even drive within range of the camp.

To counter the strategy, Obarin had made plans to divide the Compact forces into several strike groups, each taking a different route to the Imperial base through the network of narrow fault lines and canyons that ran through the desert. Given the depth of the fissures, the Imperial cruisers from above would be unable to directly target the strike teams as they approached the base, virtually all firing angles blocked by the sheer cliffs of the canyons, protecting the strike teams until they were ready for a coordinated rush at the base.

Which was how Alice found herself in the back of one of several dozen surface crawlers that had set out from Balzac to capture the Imperial supply camp. Although Obarin had half-heartedly tried to convince her to stay at the base in Balzac, citing her already enormous contribution, Alice had hopped into the back of an open crawler as soon as Obarin declared his intention to join the assault as well.

The massive vehicle had once been used to haul raw ore from the mines in the badlands to the smelters of the city. With their cavernous holds empty save for the dozens of fighters they now transported, the large behemoths trundled along with surprising speed, their heavy, industrial hulls reassuring armor against the impending orbital bombardment. Wobbling side to side as it crunched over the broken terrain of the badlands, the truck rocked Alice gently as she dozed, slumping over onto Obarin’s shoulder.

Beep Beep

A bulky device fashioned into a crude back-pack began chirping from between Obarin’s legs, waking Alice from her drowsy slumber. Blearily, she rubbed sleep from her eyes and sat up, pushing off Obarin as she looked at him apologetically; his focus, however, was on the portable FTL transponder.

“Unknown signal origin,” he said with anticipation in his voice. “Probably our Imperial Magister.” Tweaking a few controls, he set up the FTL transponder to display the incoming call to the rest of the Compact forces in the crawler, although only he would be visible to the Magister.

The man who appeared was portly with a cherubic face, flustered and indignant as he twirled a black handlebar moustache between his sausage-like fingers. He wore the bright yellow robes of the Imperium, signifying his importance as a member of the governing aristocracy, with a diagonal sash across his chest and burgeoning gut emblazoned with colorful ribbons and medals.

One look at the man and Alice could already see why he was unpopular among the natives of Gestalt. Clad in fine fabrics and obviously indulgent in lifestyle, the man had almost nothing in common with the hardy, self-reliant Denari of Gestalt.

“The Honorable and Righteous Bertram Liro VIII, the Eternally Puissant,” introduced a toneless assistant off-camera as the large magister puffed his chest out in self-importance.

“You may refer to me as your Eminence,” Liro added in a tone that suggested a man accustomed to getting things exactly his way as he ran his thick fingers through his slicked back black hair and receding hairline.

“Arcadius,” said Obarin, his voice cool, hardened with real dislike and revulsion of what he saw.

“I don’t rightly care who in Ryuvia you think you are,” said the magister with the wave of a hand as though he were being bothered by a particularly irksome fly. “But you are the little dune-rat that’s been hijacking my cargo and bringing it down to this forsaken hole of a planet. Well it’s high time my ‘investment’ into this planet’s development yielded fruit. I declare Gestalt under the protection of my dominion and hereby order its people to stand down and pay taxes like any other territory of the Empire.”

Obarin scoffed softly. “If you knew anything of the people of Gestalt, you’d know they won’t just roll over and submit to a claim made in pure avarice and arrogance.”

“Indeed,” Liro said with supreme smugness. “Clearly you savages wouldn’t understand the privilege of being Imperial citizens. It falls upon me to lead with a strong hand. I am tracking from orbit your,” Liro coughed derisively, “forgive me, army, approaching my supply camp. If you do not desist immediately, I will begin orbital bombardment.”

“From up there?” Obarin chuckled. “You’re pissing in the wind Liro. Your ships don’t stand a chance of hitting us from anywhere up there.”

Liro flushed angrily, snapping to his bridge crew before snapping off the FTL communication line. “Begin atmospheric descent as fast as you can! And start the bombardment! Show these savages the might of the Imperium!”

“Base is confirming,” announced a Compact member operating a short-wave radio in a worried voice. “Four Imperial cruisers have begun emergency descent into the atmosphere!”

“What time is it?” asked Obarin, throwing Alice off foot, sounding distant like his head was in the clouds again.

“Uh… oh twenty hundred, standard ship time,” answered the Compact soldier, equally wrong-footed.

A sound like distant thunder rippled through the hold and the crawler shook marginally more vigorously than before. A sound almost like rain came from the crawler’s hull for a few moments before stopping; a shower of rocks dislodged from the cliff walls bouncing off its armored shell. The orbital bombardment had started.

“Five minutes to target staging area!” called out the driver over the crawler’s internal PA system.

Once there, the crawler would be confirm that the other teams had reached their objectives before simultaneously charging the Imperial base from all sides to prevent the orbital cruisers from focusing their bombardment on any one particular location.

The thunder grew louder and the crawler began to rock in earnest, crumbling rock from the top of the canyon showering down on them as ship-based laser and rocket weapons hammered down on their coordinates. A resounding crunch came from outside as a large boulder dislodged from the canyon lip, smashing down on them and denting the roof of the crawler through almost half a meter of solid metal. The crawler groaned unhappily, but kept rolling, shrugging off the rock on its sloped sides.

Alice did her best to breath evenly; there was nothing she could do except sit and ride out the storm, hoping for the best. Although the other Compact teams were likely coming under orbital fire as well, she suspected they were likely experiencing the worse of it, Obarin having, likely intentionally, remained in communication long enough to triangulate their signal origin.

“Arcadius!” The Compact soldier with the radio called out once again. “Confirming arrival of teams two, four, five, and six.”

“What about three?” asked Obarin as Alice felt a pit form in her belly.

The soldier merely shook his head grimly. “Bombardment cut off their approach. Two crawlers buried under a landslide.”

“Have the rest of three dig them out,” ordered Obarin. “All other teams, break for the base!”

As Obarin’s orders were relayed to the other teams, Alice felt their crawler’s motor rev and roar into high gear, the vehicle lurching forward and picking up speed as it charged out of the ravine’s cover and barreled towards the Imperial base. From behind, other crawlers also broke cover, driving just as furiously and spreading out to avoid offering a concentrated target to the magister’s four cruisers. Additional dust clouds rose from the horizon as the other teams joined in as well. From orbit, it must have looked like a hive of angry insects, each an individual surface crawler filled with dozens of Compact fighters, converging on the ovoid Imperial supply camp.

Alice’s breath caught in terror as their crawler dived into the rising dust cloud while bright blue laser light strobed around them from the cruisers and explosions rocked their sides, rockets blowing gaping craters into the desert. Lurching over the lip of a fresh, glassy crater, their crawler dipped and bounced back up, jostling its human cargo like beads in a box. The crawler next to them was not as lucky, a missile smashing into its hull and blowing its driver compartment to pieces, sending the vehicle flipping over end for end.

“Sustaining losses!” shouted the Compact fighter. “Those cruisers have entered the mesosphere, they’re starting to lock onto individual targets!”

Looking up, Alice saw four bright, flaring dots drawing fiery lines across the sky; the magister’s ships burning in from orbit. Bright blue light, too harsh to look at directly, knifed downwards from the ships, burning glassy lines into the desert sand and spearing any crawler too slow to dodge the incoming fire.

“Come on, come on,” muttered Obarin, fiddling with the FTL transponder as their crawler swerved suddenly to avoid crashing as the vehicle right in front of them exploded in flame. Looking up at the ships, he seemed to come to an executive decision. “Gotcha! This is Obarin; you’re clear, they’ve just dropped to the bottom of the gravity well,” he said to an unknown receiver.

“Roger that Arcadius,” came the reply, female. “Spool up our drives! Prepare for short-range, close-gravity jump!”

Eyes wide, Alice saw a brilliant blue flash erupt near the four orange streaks as the ship Obarin was communicating with dropped out of warp into low orbit. Almost immediately, the orbital bombardment seemed to slacken as the four Imperial cruisers were momentarily thrown off balance by the interloper. Alice waited with bated breath for additional ships to arrive from warp to complete Obarin’s strategy of trapping the Imperial cruisers in Gestalt’s gravity well, making them easy prey for his fleet.

“Wait… you only have one ship?” she asked, incredulously.

“The Akane.” Obarin said with pride. “She’s a stolen Imperial fast cruiser.”

“And it’s outclassed too!?” demanded Alice.

“Hey, it’s always like this, relax,” Obarin did his best to sound confident. “The Akane and Ren haven’t failed me yet, you’ll see. Those cruisers will have to break off the bombardment to engage the Akane, but they’ll never catch her by the time we take the base.”

Alice raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes, looking out the small, scratched window to watch the battle for Gestalt’s skies.

The Akane’s blade thin profile came into view, a splinter of black coal against the blue of the sky, engines bright as it raced towards the four Imperial cruisers, deck guns flashing and scoring a trail of explosions along the lagging Imperial cruiser’s aft hull. Alice watched as the thinly armored rear of the ship blasted to pieces, tearing the main engine boosters off the Imperial cruiser, sending it plummeting from the sky in a pillar of black smoke as it attempted to pancake in for a hard landing.

In response, the remaining three cruisers began their bombardment anew, focusing on targeting the crawlers from Obarin’s attack group.

“Crazy bastard,” muttered Obarin as the crawler punched through walls of flame and smoke, wildly swerving to avoid being targeted from above. “He’s ordering his fleet to continue the bombardment while we’re trying to sink them?” He grabbed the FTL transponder. “Ren, target the lead ship!”

The Akane banked gracefully, its slim hull far more suited to atmospheric flight than the ponderous Imperial cruisers, retrothrusters bright as she fought against her momentum to realign on a pursuit course. Dozens of white vapor trails erupted from the ship’s lateral flanks, streaking towards the remaining three Imperial cruisers as the Akane’s lasers licked forward, burning into the rear of the lead ship.

Alice watched eyes wide as the missiles punched through the cruisers’ flak fields and impacted on the lead vessel, drilling into the ship’s hull before detonating viciously. The front cruiser cleaved in half as the Akane’s missiles detonated their payloads in the ship interior, falling out of the sky and burning up with uncontrolled reentry.

“T-they’ve stopped!” Alice shouted, seeing the remaining two cruisers abort their descent, desperately racing to break Gestalt’s atmosphere and take the fight to the Akane in space.

“They’re in too deep, they’ll never make it,” Obarin declared smugly as the Akane continued raining fire on the struggling Imperial cruisers.

Sure enough, Obarin’s prophecy came true as one of the Imperial cruiser’s engines began to stutter unevenly. With a skip in her heart, Alice realized the two remaining cruiser captains were probably pushing their reactors to dangerous levels in an attempt to break orbit before the Akane pummeled them as she’d done to the other two ships. A moment later, one of the remaining cruisers flashed away into a miniature nova, its reactor breaking containment and consuming the entire ship in an instant.

“The skies are ours,” Obarin rapped on the window separating the cargo area of the crawler from the pilot’s cabin. “Floor it.”

No longer held back by the orbital bombardment, the surviving Compact crawlers roared towards the Imperial supply camp and its ramparts, building up to frightening speeds as their drivers accelerated madly on the flat desert plains straight towards the barricade perimeter.

Laser light stuttered out from gun embankments and insta-crete pillboxes that the Imperial garrison had hastily set up, but the heavily armored crawlers shrugged aside the weapons fire like any other piece of falling rock, barreling unstoppably towards the camp walls as the Imperial garrison began to scatter.

“Brace for impact!” shouted the driver.

Alice gripped her crash harness with both hands, closing her eyes and trying not to whimper.

With an almighty crash and the shrieking sound of rending metal, the mining crawler crunched past the barricade comprised of the repurposed starship hull as though it were made of tin-foil, tearing and warping the armored plates before crashing through. Shaking wildly and bouncing with all manner of crunching and crushing sounds, the crawler continued into the base proper, pancaking an insta-crete bunker before coming to a rest. All around them, the other surviving crawlers from the combined Compact forces made similarly dramatic entries, one particularly impressive case smashing through the base’s generator reserve, bouncing out of the ensuing explosion on fire like an avenging animal spirit before smashing headfirst into the central command post.

“GO! GO! GO!” Obarin barked as the rear hatch of the crawler burst open in a breath of hot air and dazzling sunlight.

With the thunder of boots and a rising, terrifyingly loud Denari war cry, the Compact fighters leapt into the fray, putting their newly refurbished laser weapons to deadly use. The ensuing pandemonium worked to the Compact’s advantage as Compact fighters unloaded from the crawlers, cutting down the panicked and disorganized Imperial marine garrison in a stream of laser fire, denying them the opportunity for any kind of coordinated resistance.

“WE SURRENDER!” A wild, borderline hysteric voice blubbered over the base’s PA system. “All Imperial forces, lay down your arms unconditionally!”

Obarin held up a hand, his cloak billowing in the dusty wind as both sides stopped firing with uneasy cease-fire.

Slowly, the Imperial marines threw their rifles forward, holding their armored gauntlets above their helmets in a universal sign of surrender.

“W-who are you guys?” called out one of the Imperials, incredulous.

A general smattering of nervous laughter rippled out among the Compact fighters and Imperials alike, defusing the tension by a margin as the remainder of the garrison dropped their guns, the will to fight lost.

“We’re the Compact.” Obarin yelled back. “Nice to meet cha’.”

******