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Seated next to Ruze, Tyrk's fingers danced across the command console. “We should save the kript and use tellic to hyper-jump. It will take us days to reach Gorka if we only burn rillium.”
“We don’t have any tellic—” Ruze’s words abruptly cut off as Tyrk flashed him a white chip. “Where did you get that?”
“Found it,” Tyrk rose from his seat and headed to the back of the command deck. “The Zibeck had it hidden under his pillow. Set a course for Gorka and lift us off this rock. I’ll be in the engine room depositing the tellic into the energy converter.”
Nara resumed her seat as the ship hummed to life. The spacecraft ascended without a whisper as if gently buoyed by an invisible sea. A sense of relief washed over me as Tirius and its seedy trading port receded into the distance. Yet, despite my eagerness to leave and rescue my brethren, I remained a firm believer that a warrior’s feet were meant to stay on the ground.
“Tellic’s in the chamber.” Tyrk came barreling back, resumed his seat, and strapped in. “Let’s go.”
Through the viewport, the stars stretched into streaks of light as we were thrust into what Tyrk called a hyper-jump. I was pressed back into my seat, my hands curling around the edges as I hung onto my ass. It wasn’t quite the same rush as the wormhole but unsettling all the same.
We came out of the hyper-jump within secs. Outside the viewport, a large dusty planet loomed. My spine straightened and my blood pounded in my ears, knowing my brethren were down there slaving in an alien mine.
“Scanners on.” Tyrk’s clawed hands dance over the console.
I unbuckled the restraints that held me in my seat and leaned forward as the holographic projection of the planet sprang up from the console. The three-dimensional map was a swirling mass of fiery reds and deep oranges. Mountain ranges rose like jagged teeth across its surface.
“Those are the mine shafts.” Ruze somehow switched the view of the planet, so it became transparent and pointed out the veins snaking beneath the surface inside a condensed region. “With the ship cloaked, we can set down near the main entrance.”
“Thanks to Zaku for removing all the trackers,” Nara murmured as she moved in for a closer look at the map. “Who would have ever guessed the Valosians had a Moktain ally living among them?”
Not I. Despite the fleeting time I felt had passed since escaping the giant’s cage, the world I had returned to had been irrevocably altered, a place unfamiliar yet hauntingly reminiscent of what it once was. The memory of my escape from the giant's cage still lingered vividly in my mind, each detail etched with clarity as if it had just unfolded.
“Ruze, can you tease out the lifeforms readings according to species?” Nara squinted at the scores of pulsing dots.
“The energy from the ore must be interfering with the scanner,” Ruze growled, tapping on the sleek panel before him. “It’s glitchy, but it appears the red are the Gorkens. Yellow and blue are humans and Valosians. There appears to be only one Mayran.” Ruze indicated the only white dot in a cluster of blue.
Nara sagged where she stood. I leaped forward, catching her in my arms before she hit the floor. Her lithe frame wilted in my arms as I carried her back to her seat.
“It has to be him,” I stated. “Like Ruze said, your mate is a warrior among your people. Who else could have survived, if not him?”
Nara bobbed her narrow chin. The bright yellow of her otherworldly gaze glistened with the trembling of her lower lip. “All those villagers, gone. Worked to death in that dirty mine.”
"I’m so sorry." It was a weak response, but it was the only thing I could think to say.
“Strap in,” Tyrk called out. “Prepare for landing.”
The atmosphere inside the spacecraft was palpably charged with anticipation. The weight of our mission bore down on me, but I was resolute. It might be too late for Nara’s people, but it wasn’t for mine or the humans. Failure was not an option. I was bringing my people home.
Cloaked, our ship descended, slicing through the thick, dusty atmosphere of the Gorken home world, the rocky terrain below rose to meet us in a desolate embrace. The mouth of the cave yawned before us like a gaping maw, its jagged edges casting eerie shadows in the murky light.
I scanned the entrance, taking in the sight of the towering Gorken guards stationed at the threshold. I don’t know what I had expected, but a fusion between insectoids and a scaly rexose wasn’t it.
The Gorken appeared similar to the Nuttaki, my natural enemy on Valose as they had some characteristics of an insectoid, except they stood on two legs and not eight. Much like the nocturnal creatures that roamed the Huren jungle, they were heavily scaled. Their bodies glistened in the intense sunlight as their cold, lifeless eyes reflected nothing.
Sinuous limbs extended from under their armored exoskeletons, moving with eerie jerks and twitches. Instead of typical mouths, like the Nuttaki, jagged slits punctuated their hard carapaces, opening and closing as they conversed among themselves.
“We are only going inside to recon the situation.” Ruze followed the blue veins of the mine projecting on the map with a claw-tipped finger. “Then we return here and figure out the best plan to extract all the captives. There’s a secondary entrance just beyond this ridge. It’s small, maybe too small to get through. Probably an air shaft. We need a visual of the interior of the mine, get a look at the condition of the people first before we try and make any plans.”
I couldn’t argue with his sound reasoning. Like a Trisess scout, Ruze meticulously plotted our next moves, his keen eyes scanning the map for any potential risks or advantages that could aid in our mission to rescue the captives from the twisting network of mineshafts.
After much debate between Nara and Tyrk, the Nomadican relinquished his cloaking device to the red-maned Mayran. She was as determined to set eyes on her mate as I was the Valosian males toiling inside. It made logical sense one of our only two pilots remain with the ship.
“We might be invisible, but we still leave footprints, and we can still be heard, so move with caution and whatever you do, don’t talk or bump into anyone,” Ruze warned.“Comms off and plasma blasters stay holstered unless we have no other option but to shoot our way out.”
Each of us clipped the boxy comm to our belts and slung a holster weapon across our torsos. With cloaking devices strapped to our wrists, Tyrk lowered the ramp and we emerged from the ship. The planet's unforgiving sun beat down on us, scorching our skin as we stepped onto its arid and dusty surface. The terrain was littered with decaying rock formations, towering like stoic guardians in this foreign world, their sharp edges casting ominous shadows against the desolate horizon.
The heat was oppressive, bearing down on us like a relentless weight, suffocating and unyielding. Waves of shimmering distortion rippled around our bodies; a mesmerizing dance of camouflage provided by the Moktian cloaking devices. The air wavered around us, bending light in a surreal display as we approached the yawning mouth of the mine.
