Hyleesh roared in frustration, thirstier than before. What had he done to himself? He had a good life, captain of one of the best trained corps in the Yaxee army. He was a young promise in his fleet, bound to quickly climb to high military ranks, just like his father...
His father.
His father was a rapist and killer.
Once banned from the galaxy for destroying their mother planet, the Yaxees had become powerful again thanks to Quarium fusion. They rebuilt their military fleet and expanded their domain. Cities on Aplaya flourished and doubled in size. But they wanted more. And when the neighboring planet Yulia threatened to use Quarium too, panic spread through the Royal Council. Quarium was too powerful to let other planets use it.
Yulia was ruled by anarchists, the land marred by a history of political instability.
Hyleesh’s father was one of the members of the Royal Council who’d voted for war. “Three billion people, three major oceans, enough Quarium to destroy the entire planetary system,” he’d said in front of His Majesty, the Kraal. “We will attempt to resolve this peacefully by demanding that they surrender the Quarium. If they refuse, they will face the consequences.”
The Kraal signed off the Council’s decision and gave the order. Zika and his fleet were deployed. The inhabitants of Yulia refused to let the Yaxees land on their beautiful shores. The planet was exterminated.
And now they’ll learn that there’s no Quarium.
Yulia was too cold for that, too old of a planet. Only Andrameis planets had Quarium, but Yulia was older than Andrameis, older than any other world in the two-star system. The planet had originated from Salis, the smaller star. A handful of academics pointed it out. They were shunned, ridiculed and disbelieved. One was found assassinated inside his home.
Hyleesh’s father was a rapist and killer. And now a mass murderer.
When Hyleesh learned the truth, the propulsion bombs were already on their way to Yulia. By the time he made it to Yulia, his ship’s instruments didn’t detect a single heartbeat on the entire planet. Not a soul had survived the massive extermination.
And now he was going to die of thirst on a brittle dry planet.
He kicked the sink, cursed, and slammed the pipe against the wall. It dented the cement then bounced off the floor with a clang.
The clang echoed.
Hyleesh sighed and dropped his head to his wide palms.
His ship was his only hope. He had to conserve enough energy to get back to his ship.
The clang echoed again. And again.
Hyleesh held his breath.
Echoes don’t last that long.
He stormed out of the bathroom and scanned the area with his flashlight. It wasn’t an echo. It was a squeak, recurrent, from somewhere down a dark hallway studded with broken beams and fallen furniture.
His lips were parched, his throat so dry it hurt. The last effort in the bathroom had left him drained of energy and dizzy.
Yet the squeak kept calling. There was no air moving, no draft. Hyleesh held the flashlight like a poised rifle and started down the hallway. All doors had shattered, all rooms looked the same—collapsed ceiling, smashed furniture, wreckage everywhere.
The squeak got louder. Whinier, in a way. More demanding.
You’re imagining things. They’re all dead. Nobody survived.
He got to the last doorway, the last hole in the wall. He flattened against the wall, an old instinct from his military training, then pointed his flashlight. In the unyielding darkness, two red dots bounced off the light. And they blinked.
Sacred Kraal.
Hyleesh clipped the flashlight back to his jacket and entered the room. It had been a moan, not a squeak. A dog, of all living things, trapped under a slab of concrete that had pinned the poor animal’s hind legs. Despite all odds he’d survived. His eyes were crusted with pus, his nose split in the middle and caked with blood. And yet there was still life in him. Hyleesh crouched by his side and the dog barked and licked his hands, his tongue rough and as dry as Hyleesh’s own lips.
“I’m not sure what I’m saving you from, buddy,” Hyleesh mumbled, clearing the debris accumulated around the animal. “I think right now the chances are slim for both of us.”
He lifted one of the beams that had dropped from the ceiling and used it to lever the slab of concrete. As soon as it yielded a few inches from the ground, he kicked a metal shelf underneath to keep it off the dog’s legs.
The dog didn’t move.
“Come on buddy, you can do this.”
Hyleesh pulled gently on his forepaws, dragging him out of the trap, and then assessed the damage. The dog’s hind legs were gone, clamped under the weight of the concrete. Ironically, it had also prevented the limbs from bleeding, saving his life. How he’d survived the massive radiation and explosion, though, was a complete mystery.
The dog licked Hyleesh’s hand and moaned. Something clinked from his collar—a small, round medal with a plastic keycard attached to it. The medal said”Argos” followed by a call number.
“Argos,” Hyleesh said. He patted him behind the ears. “What a trooper.”
He removed the keycard from the dog’s collar and examined it. It had a magnetic strip and a barcode printed on the back. He stood up and swept his flashlight around. No standing doors left. Whatever the keycard had given access to, it was useless now.
Argos scraped the ground with his front paws and licked the tip of Hyleesh’s boot.
Hyleesh stooped down again. “What does this—”
And then he saw it, right as he leaned forward and the beam from his clipped flashlight fell on it—a trapdoor. The concrete slab had fallen on it (and on Argos), hiding it. Hyleesh moved the dog and shone his light on it. The keycard lock had been smashed and the door had caved in.
Hyleesh tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry.
He could still make it to his ship. How far into the city had he come with the mosquito? Maybe in half a day he’d get back to the shore. Maybe he still had it in him, enough energy to make it. But he had to leave now.
Argos let out a soft cry.
Hyleesh nodded. “You have friends down there, don’t you?”
His ship’s instruments hadn’t detected any survivors. But then again, they hadn’t detected Argos’s heartbeat either.
Hyleesh set the flashlight on the ground, beam pointed underneath the slab of concrete, and removed his jacket. He retrieved the beam, stuck it under the concrete, and then heaved and pushed until the slab inched backward. Satisfied that there was enough room for him to access the trapdoor, he crawled under the slab.
Crushed by the heavy weight, the cardkey pad was jammed. Luckily, the locking mechanism had failed and it took Hyleesh only a little pushing and prodding for the door to yield.
As soon as he pulled it open, the odor wafting out of the door killed his last hope of finding anyone alive. It was so strong it brought tears to his eyes. He took a deep breath, and leaning through the hole, shone the flashlight down below. It was a five-by-five bunker, no more than six feet deep. A coffin. The light swept through a rack of shelves brimming with canned food and water bottles that had been miraculously undamaged. He was about to relate the good news to Argos when the light caught something that made him freeze.
A hand.
Hyleesh stuck the butt of the flashlight in his mouth and lowered himself inside the hole. Underneath blue covers, he found a mother and child huddled together against the wall. Their faces were bloated, their skin green and purulent. And yet that gesture—the child embraced by her mother’s arms—frozen in the moment of death, carried such tenderness, such humanity, it made Hyleesh rewind back to his own childhood back on Aplaya, back when the world was a big playground and his dad the hero of his dreams. Back when he still believed in his people, his origins, himself. Back before one woman opened his eyes and made his world crumble.