ALIEN HUNTERS

by

Daniel Arenson

Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Arenson

All rights reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either
the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic
or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the
author.

Table of Contents

- CHAPTER ONE

- CHAPTER TWO

- CHAPTER THREE

- CHAPTER FOUR

- CHAPTER FIVE

- CHAPTER SIX

- CHAPTER SEVEN

- CHAPTER EIGHT

- CHAPTER NINE

- CHAPTER TEN

- CHAPTER ELEVEN

- CHAPTER TWELVE

- CHAPTER THIRTEEN

- CHAPTER FOURTEEN

- CHAPTER FIFTEEN

- CHAPTER SIXTEEN

- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

- CHAPTER NINETEEN

- CHAPTER TWENTY

- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

- CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

- CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

- CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

- CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

- CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

- CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

- CHAPTER THIRTY

- AFTERWORD

- NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

- KEEP IN TOUCH

CHAPTER ONE:
MIDNIGHT'S FLIGHT

They're after me. I have to escape.
They're going to catch me. They're going to break me.

Midnight grimaced and leaned
forward in her cockpit. Her small blue starjet buzzed across the vastness of
space. Behind her, the hulking warship roared in pursuit. The stars streamed
around them, and Midnight's heart pounded almost as loudly as the engines.

"Midnight!" The
voice boomed out of the speakers on her dashboard. "Midnight, surrender
yourself. You cannot escape us. Surrender now!"

Tears burned in Midnight's
eyes. She flipped switches madly, but they had seized control of her starjet's
communicator. The sound of their breathing filled the cockpit; she could almost
smell it. She cried out and pounded her fist against the speakers, trying to
shatter them, to silence them, but she only bloodied her fist.

"Midnight!" The
voice rose again, deep, grainy, lusting for blood. "Turn around now,
Midnight!"

Midnight ignored the voice.
She cursed, leaning forward in her seat, sneering. Sweat dampened her brow. She
shoved the throttle so far forward it banged against the dashboard. Her starjet
was small, only large enough for one person, not meant for the depths of open
space. The slick metal vessel felt more like a coffin than a true starship.

"Come on, faster!"
she shouted, shoving against the throttle as if her will alone could speed up
the starjet.

She had to make it to the
humans' planet.

Earth, the old man had
called it.

I have to get there. I have
to or the galaxy will fall.

She stared forward out of the
cockpit. Earth still lay light-years away. Even at this velocity, streaming
through hyperspace at many times the speed of light, she would not reach Earth
for days, maybe even weeks.

Is it hopeless?

The headlights of the warship
behind her blasted across her vessel. The light streamed into the cockpit, and
Midnight caught sight of her reflection in the glass. Her long imprisonment had
been cruel to her. Her indigo hair seemed thinner than before. Her yellow eyes
seemed huge in her gaunt, purple face. Across the galaxy, travelers called her
kind—the mysterious pirilians—beings of beauty. They had obviously never met
a pirilian who had just escaped both a burning planet and the most ruthless prison
in the known cosmos.

"Midnight, surrender
yourself now, or we will blast you apart!" The deep, rumbling voice roared
out from the speakers, deafening. "Your jet is low on fuel, Midnight. Turn
around now and we will spare your life."

Midnight shuddered. Yes. Yes,
they would spare her life. She knew that was true. But the fate they planned
for her was far, far worse than death.

Fear flooded her belly like
ice.

If they catch me, she thought,
they're going to harvest what's inside me. They're going to tear me apart,
dissect me, install me into their ships, turn me into a million cyborgs
screaming in anguish. She trembled. And they're going to use what's left
of my soul to conquer the cosmos.

She panted and bared her
teeth.

She would not let them.

She would escape.

Her starjet flitted onward,
buzzing madly, slicing through the darkness as stars streaked in white lines
around her.

And still the warship roared
behind.

Midnight glanced over her
shoulder. Her cockpit afforded a view in all directions, a view that right now
she regretted. She did not want to see this starship pursuing her. She could
not imagine a more terrifying sight. And yet she looked . . . and felt the
blood drain from her face.

The skelkrin vessel was
massive, a hundred times larger than her own. While her starjet was slender and
smooth, this ship was a mass of spikes, claws, and cannons. It looked like a
great crab from the dark depths of the sea. There was no elegance to its
design, but oh, there was cruelty. There was malice and bloodlust and ruthless
strength to this ship. As there was to those who lurked within its craggy metal
hull.

The skelkrins. Midnight
shivered. The most infamous predators in the galaxy. The beasts who had
destroyed her planet. The creatures who had captured her, tortured her, who
would rip her apart if they caught her.

And they were gaining on her.

"Surrender now, renegade
vessel!" rose the booming voice again. "You cannot escape."

No, Midnight realized. I
cannot.

A strange calmness filled her.

But I will not let you take
me alive.

She grabbed the starjet's joystick.
She yanked it left. She roared out her pain and fury as her ship spun in space,
turning to face the warship. Teeth bared and heart pounding, she thrust the
throttle forward again—as far as it would go. The engines roared as she
charged toward the towering skelkrin vessel.

If I cannot escape you, I
will take you head on.

She jabbed the two red buttons
on her joystick. Blasts of plasma roared out of her jet, streamed across the darkness,
and slammed into the skelkrin starship.

Fire blazed against the spiky iron
hull.

Midnight screamed, tugged the joystick
backward, and shot up in a straight line, skimming the edge of the skelkrin
warship. Its metal claws snapped, grazing her tail. Her ship rattled madly.
Sparks flew around the cockpit. She blasted upward, made it past the top of the
warship, then spun and swooped.

She was as small as a baby
attacking a giant. Yet she fired her weapons again, and again fire exploded
across the skelkrin hull.

For a moment Midnight dared to
hope. Dared to dream that she could defeat them, at least damage them enough to
escape.

And then the skelkrin vessel
fired back.

Midnight screamed.

Its weapons were a terror, a
nightmare of black fire and smoke and blazing white light. The skelkrin cannons
bellowed with the sound of shattering bones, collapsing planets, the cries of
dying races, dying suns. They screamed with the sound of Midnight's own people
blazing in the nuclear inferno. They roared with the sound her heart had made
when her planet had burned.

And those weapons slammed into
her starjet with the fury of gods.

The black fire blazed around
her. She could no longer see the streaming stars. Her jet tumbled. She tore
free from the seat, smashed against the cockpit glass, crashed against the
controls. Glass cracked around her. One of her jet's engines tore free; she saw
it whip through the smoke outside, still sputtering out flame.

With a scream and pop
and the smell of burnt metal, she crashed out of hyperspace.

The stars, previously white
lines streaming all around her, slammed into tiny dots.

Down in the
distance, perhaps only ten thousand kilometers away, a small green planet
slowly turned. A strange planet. Still light-years from Earth.

With a flash of light followed
by looming shadow, the skelkrin ship slammed out of hyperspace behind her. It
towered above Midnight's crippled jet, as large as an expanding sun spreading
toward a fragile moon.

The cockpit was cracked around
Midnight. Floating in the darkness, her body bruised, Midnight stared up at the
hulking warship. She had hoped that her weapons had crippled it, but the damage
seemed so minimal now; her blasters had left only a few pocks. The bulk of the warship—its
cannons, spikes, thrusting mandibles—remained untouched, glittering black.

A mouth yawned open in the
ship.

Midnight's jet shook as the
tractor beam grabbed her and began sucking her in.

She growled. With her jet's
last ounce of power, she managed to spin it around to face the enemy again. She
pressed her two red buttons, prepared to fire her plasma.

Only sparks left her jet's
guns.

Damn it! The weapon
systems, like her hyperdrive engine, were fried. The hatch opened wider on the
warship ahead, and the tractor beam kept tugging her closer and closer.

Fear flooded Midnight.

She closed her eyes,
struggling to breathe.

Again, in her mind, she saw it—her
planet burning, turning from a lush forested world into an inferno. Again she
felt it—the skelkrin knives cutting her, probing, trying to extract her power.
Again she screamed, thrashing against her bonds, trying to escape, to free
herself, and their needles driving into her, and—

She sucked in air.

She opened her eyes.

"Will this be my fate
again?" she whispered, eyes damp.

The human with the long white
beard had saved her. He had smuggled her out from the skelkrin prison. He had
given her this starjet, told her to seek the Earth, to find shelter there with
his son.

"You are important, my
child," he had whispered, helping her into the starjet. "Perhaps more
than you know. You cannot let the skelkrins catch you."

"Come with me!" she
had begged her savior, a man with many names in her people's lore. The
traveler. The wizard. Aminor.

He had only shaken his head. "There
are other tasks for me. Other battles to fight. Now fly! Fly to Earth. Find my
son. He will care for you."

She had flown away—by the
gods, it had been only yesterday.

And already the skelkrins were
reeling her back in.

Midnight growled and spun her
jet toward the planet. She shoved down on the throttle, engaging her thruster
engines. They roared out flame, and she blasted forward a few hundred meters. Within
an instant, her jet slammed to a halt, and Midnight flew forward and banged
against the cockpit glass. She cried out in pain. Her engines thrummed, but the
tractor beam was too powerful.

Shadows fell around her.

The skelkrin warship swallowed
her starjet like a whale swallowing a fish.

The hatch slammed shut,
sealing her within the belly of the warship. Her engines gave a last sputter
and died. The bottom of her jet slammed against the hangar floor.

For a moment, everything
seemed so silent.

Midnight shoved the cockpit
open and leaped outside into the hangar, her black cloak fluttering around her.
She found herself in a towering square cavern, feeling like a fly in the belly
of a behemoth. The walls, floor, and ceiling were black and craggy, carved of
iron. Red lights blinked, offering the only illumination. She saw nobody.

But they're here somewhere.
Midnight's heart tried to leap out of her throat. Her fingers trembled. The skelkrins.

She winced to remember them
strapping her down to their table, cutting, puncturing, studying, dissecting.

"Never again," she
whispered.

She looked deep into herself,
seeking her power, the source of power all pirilians had. The mystical energy
some called magic. The power the skelkrins wanted to harvest from her. The
power that might, just might, let her still fight.

A round door in the back of
the hangar dilated.

Three skelkrins entered.

Midnight hissed and raised her
fists.

They were towering creatures,
over eight feet tall—a good three feet taller than her. While her skin was purple,
theirs was crimson like old blood. While her eyes were golden and gleaming, theirs
were blazing white, smelters of molten steel within their faces. Their fangs jutted
out, wet with saliva. Their claws creaked as they flexed their long, knobby
fingers. They wore armor of charcoal iron, the plates sprouting spikes and
hooks. An acrid stench wafted from them, and they raised iron rods tipped with
crackling balls of electricity.

One among the three, a crimson
spiral painted on his helmet, stepped forward. His lips peeled back in a lurid
grin. Saliva dripped down his chin, and his white eyes burned.

"Hello again, Midnight."
His voice was a hiss, the scrape of metal on bone. "It's time to come
home."

Midnight stared at him, the
hatred flaring inside her. She knew him.

"Skrum," she
whispered.

The skelkrin lord who had
burned her planet. Who had murdered her family. Who had locked her in the
dreaded prison that floated above the charred remains of her home world.

The creature she would kill.

Midnight screamed and lashed
forth her hands. Blue balls of qi energy hurtled across the hangar,
lighting the shadows, and slammed into the skelkrins.

The power blazed across their
armor, cracking the iron. They roared and charged toward her, claws swinging.

Midnight raised her chin and
channeled a deeper, older power. The power they wanted from her. The power they
had tortured her for.

With a deep breath, she ported.

She snapped out of reality.

For an instant, she saw white
and blue lights, a foreign realm beyond existence.

She snapped back into the hangar,
appearing behind the charging skelkrins.

She blasted forth more qi
from her palms.

The skelkrins never even had
the time to spin around. Her power slammed into their backs, cracking armor.
One skelkrin fell facedown, blood gushing from him. The other two—the cruel Skrum
and a drooling female—had survived the attack. They turned and raised their
iron rods. They swung the weapons. Electricity crackled toward Midnight.

She ported again.

She vanished from reality a
split-second before the electricity could hit her. She reappeared behind her
charred blue starjet. She reached over the vessel and shot more qi
toward her enemy, a blast from each palm.

One blast hit the towering
female skelkrin. The creature wailed, clutched her chest, and crashed down to
the floor.

The second ball of qi
slammed into Skrum's shoulder, cracking a plate of armor, driving the creature
back a step. But Skrum kept standing. The skelkrin came walking toward her, his
grin widening, revealing many wet fangs.

Midnight raised her palm
again, struggling to summon more qi.

Skrum thrust his rod, and a
bolt of lightning slammed into Midnight's chest.

She cried out and fell,
writhing. Smoke and electricity rose across her black cloak.

"Yes, scream for me."
Skrum stepped forward, his boots thumping against the hangar floor. "You
will scream much more back in your prison." He licked his chops. "How
you will scream as we tear you apart, grow you into a million prisoners, suck
up your power like a glutton sucking marrow from a bone! Oh yes. Your screams
will be so sweet."

The lightning died across
Midnight. She lay, shuddering, smoke rising from her, then screamed and held
out her palms.

But she was too weak. Only a
soft flow of qi left her. It dispersed across Skrum's armor, no more
harmful than waves against a breakwater.

He stepped closer, rod raised.

"I will drag you back to
your prison myself," he said. "But first . . . first I will hurt you
some more."

He pointed his rod toward her.

Summoning every last bit of
power inside her, Midnight ported again.

She blinked out and back into
reality, appearing by a console at the hangar wall. She slammed her fist
against it, shattering the tractor beam controls.

She ported again, appearing by
the hangar's hatch. She tugged down a great lever. With a roar, the hatch began
to open, exposing a clear view of open space. Stars shone and the planet turned
in the distance. The air roared, streaming out into space.

Skrum roared too. He came
charging toward her, lashing his rod. Lightning slammed into Midnight, but she
ported once more.

She reappeared inside the
cockpit of her charred starjet.

"Please, stars and gods
and angels above," she whispered, "please let there be just a drop of
fuel left."

As the hatch kept opening,
Midnight shoved down her starjet's throttle.

Skrum raced toward her.

Her engines sputtered, then
blasted out flame.

She glanced behind her to see
the inferno crash into Skrum, shoving him back. He flew through the hangar and
slammed against the distant wall. Her starjet screeched across the floor,
raising sparks. She blasted out the hangar door, and then she was free—out in
open space.

She blazed across the
emptiness.

Her starjet was seared,
missing part of its tail, missing one engine. Its cockpit was cracked, its guns
shattered. It could barely fly. Midnight tugged madly at the joystick,
directing the little ship down . . . down toward the distant planet.

She did not know what world
this was. It was smaller than Earth, light-years away. It could be a land of
beasts or a land of lifeless emptiness.

Right now, it was a land of
hope.

Bolts of plasma shot around
her, lighting the darkness. She flew madly, darting like a bee. The skelkrin
ship was firing all its guns, and Midnight screamed as a blast hit her jet,
knocking her into a tailspin. She righted her jet. She kept racing forward. To
the planet. To hope. To a chance to live, to keep her power from the enemy.

The planet grew closer before her,
looming ahead, a great green sheet that covered her vision. Clouds appeared
below. Fire blazed around her. She entered the atmosphere with shrieking air, a
fountain of sparks, and fear that pounded against her chest.

She screamed, diving through
fire.

Blue skies opened up before
her.

Water and forested islands
spread below.

Bits of metal tore off her
vessel. Screws. Panes. Another engine. The cockpit finally shattered and
showered shards across her.

All Midnight knew was flame, roaring
air, blue water and blue sky. And then darkness.

CHAPTER TWO:
THE BLUE STRINGS

Raphael "Riff" Starfire,
blues musician extraordinaire, was playing his guitar onstage when the men who
had murdered his mother walked into the club.

At least, he considered
himself an extraordinary musician. Throughout the night, the crowd had seemed
to think otherwise, pelting him with beer bottles, chicken bones, and once even
a dwarf. But it was that kind of club. A place in the dregs of sprawling Cog
City. Many folks claimed that the entire planet Earth was now the dregs, that
the best of humanity had long since departed to the stars.

If Earth is
a stain of puke on a rug, Riff thought, the Blues Strings club is a
coughed-up fur ball in its center.

In addition
to his guitar prowess, he also thought himself quite good at metaphors.

All sorts
of sleaze filled the club most nights. Smugglers and bounty hunters sat at the
back tables, faces scruffy and hair greasier than the burgers the Blue Strings
served. Boozehounds hunched over the bar, their office clothes ruffled, their
faces flushed and their cups going from empty to full and back again. Old men in
corduroy sat closer to the stage, smoking and sipping rye, bobbing their heads
to the music. The old-timers—retired bootleggers and moonshiners—were usually
the only ones who appreciated Riff's playing. Something about the blues, shuffleboard,
and prune juice just seemed to appeal to the elderly.

But this
night it wasn't just the usual assortment of riffraff that filled the shadowy
club. This night, for the first time since Riff had begun playing here, Cosmians
stepped into the Blue Strings.

Riff's playing died with a
discordant note.

All across the club, men turned
toward the new arrivals and fell silent. The dwarf, only just recovering from
being tossed onstage, hid behind a chair.

"Cosmians," Riff
muttered. "I hate these guys."

There were five of them, all
clad in black robes and hoods. They could have passed for monks, if not for the
heavy guns they carried, nasty things larger than the exhaust pipes of most
starjets. The emblem of their order, a black planet with three moons, was embroidered
on their chests—the distant planet of Skelkra.

Bloody nutters, Riff
thought. The Cosmians were human, but they worshiped the skelkrins, ancient
aliens that were probably just a myth. Riff had never been a religious man. His
idea of a spiritual experience was hearing the music of his idols, legendary
blues duo Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid. The idea of worshipping bloody aliens
was downright disturbing.

His mother had thought the
same.

His mother was now dead.

"Carry on, everyone!"
said one of the Cosmians, his voice grainy. "We're only here to enjoy the
music."

The man who spoke walked ahead
of the other Cosmians, presumably their leader. With every step, metal clinked
and machinery buzzed. Riff squinted, peering through the haze of cigarette
smoke, and lost his breath.

Oh gods of blues, he
thought.

A mechanical arm, tipped with
steel claws, emerged from the Cosmian's sleeve. Within his black hood gleamed
one human eye, one red mechanical orb.

"Grotter," Riff
whispered.

He grimaced. The room spun around
him. Riff was there again, thirty years ago. Only a boy. Only a terrified
child. That mechanical claw was grabbing his mother, tugging her away. Riff
screamed—only he wasn't Riff then, only a boy named Raphael. He tried to
attack the Cosmian, to free his mother, yet that claw slammed against his face,
cutting him, knocking him down, and his mother cried out and tried to reach
him, but they dragged her back, and—

Riff clenched his fists.

But I'm no longer a child.

He touched the scar on his
cheek—the scar Grotter's metal claws had left thirty years ago—then let his
hand stray down toward Ethel, the gun he always kept on his hip.

Before he could draw, the ten Cosmians
raised their heavy blasters toward him.

Riff let both hands return to
his guitar.

"That's better," Grotter
said, smiling thinly. "Now, Mr. Starfire, how about I buy you a drink and
we talk?"

"Riff," he grunted.

Grotter took a step closer
toward the stage. The light fell into his hood, revealing his disaster of a
face. Half that face was missing, overlaid with metal, the eye a red lamp.

"Riff?"
said the cyborg, raising his one eyebrow.

"My name. It's Riff.
Nobody calls me anything else."

Riff doubted that Grotter
remembered him. Thirty years ago, Riff had been only a kid, barely old enough
to tie his own shoelaces. For decades now, Grotter and his goons had been
terrorizing the poor neighborhoods of Cog City, preaching their worship of the skelkrins
and, sometimes, visiting those who dared criticize their faith. Those people,
like his mother, tended to disappear. To Grotter, Riff would have been just
another pipsqueak kid.

But I never forgot you, Grotter.

Two Cosmians stepped forward,
guns still raised, and grabbed Riff's shoulders. They dragged him off the stage
to the sound of scattered applause. As the next performer stepped up—an old
saxophone player with one leg—the Cosmians manhandled Riff toward the bar and
sat him down on a stool. Grotter reached down and pulled Riff's gun—the
beloved old Ethel—out of its holster. The cyborg tucked the gun into his own belt.

"How
about I buy you a drink, Riff, and we talk?" Grotter said, sitting
down beside him.

Riff snorted. "They don't
serve engine oil here."

The cyborg's red eye narrowed
with clicking sounds like a camera's shutters. "Ah . . . a joke at the
expense of my handicap."

Riff pointed a thumb over his
shoulder toward where burly construction workers were tossing dwarves again,
this time at Velcro targets. "In case you haven't noticed, we're not
exactly politically correct at the Blue Strings. What do you want, Grotter? Don't
you and your goons have any rally to shout at or books to burn?"

Grotter gestured toward the
bartender, a blind old man in a rumpled suit and a fedora. Old Bat Brown had
been a blues bassist before his fingers had begun to shake too much; he now
poured drinks to the patrons. The nice thing about Bat Brown was that, with him
blind, you never quite knew what drink you were going to get. Bat's method
involved grabbing the first couple of bottles he could paw at. Tonight Riff
found himself drinking a Memory Killer, a cocktail of Earth's most powerful
spirits, which suited him fine. Memories were the last thing Riff needed now.

"You all right, Riff old
buddy?" Bat Brown asked, cigarette dangling from his lips.

Riff passed a hand through his
hair. "Yeah, Bat. Say, do me a favor, will you? Can you go make my bed for
me?"

Grotter leaned forward on his
stool, his mechanical parts creaking. "You have a blind bartender make
your bed?"

Riff nodded. "Better than
a maid, he is."

Bat Brown grinned, showing
only four yellow teeth. "Prettier too. Off I go." With that, the old
man grabbed his cane, left the bar, and made his way upstairs.

Grotter and the other Cosmians
moved in closer, surrounding Riff. One of their guns poked him in the back.
Riff felt a little like a stress ball in a cabbie's fist at rush hour—squeezed
beyond comfort.

"Now, Riff," said Grotter,
half his mouth smiling thinly; the other half was hiding behind metal. "It
would be quite easy for my associates here to put a ball of plasma the size of
my fist through your back. It would also be quite easy for you to walk out of
this alive and well, back to your life of booze, shadows, and bad jazz."

"Blues," Riff said. "I
play the blues."

"Quite." Grotter's
smile flickered just the slightest. "All you must do to return to your . .
. blues . . ." He spoke the word as if it were from a foreign
language. ". . . is hand over the woman. We don't want you. We want her."

Riff raised an eyebrow. He
looked over his shoulder, then back at Grotter. "Woman? Do you see
any ladies in this place? Bloody hell, we haven't had a woman walk in here in
twenty years. We even got that potpourri here on the bar—lovely jasmine scent,
smell it!—and we put on pants and everything, but still no women stop by.
Unless you mean Bubba over there." Riff pointed at a burly, bearded
trucker who sat nearby, wearing a polka dot dress; the man waved back
hopefully. "But I don't think he counts."

Grotter raised his mechanical
hand. Joints creaked as the metal fingers flexed; each looked less like a human
finger and more like the claw of a velociraptor. Riff winced, sure that Grotter
would drive those claws into his throat. Instead, the cyborg thrust the
mechanical hand down, closed his claws right around Riff's most sensitive bits,
and began to squeeze.

Riff's eyes widened. "Let
go! That's inappropriate, man!" He winced. "Though Bubba might
appreciate it."

"Do you know, I lost half
my face and my arm," Grotter said, squeezing tighter.

Riff winced. "Really? Haven't
noticed."

Grotter's claws tightened just
a smidgen further. Riff was starting to abandon any hope of ever producing
mini-Riffs.

"Yet I kept the parts
that make me a man," Grotter continued. "If you do not lead us to the
woman, you will not be as fortunate. I know that your father sent the woman
here."

"My father?" Riff
laughed bitterly. "I haven't seen my father in a year. And I told you,
there ain't no women here. I—ow!" His voice rose an octave. "The woman.
Right! Uhm . . . I'll lead you to her. If you could just . . ." He gently
pried the claws loose. "That's better. The woman. Follow me."

Riff rose from his barstool,
gently pushed his way between the Cosmians, and made his way through the dingy
club. Gristle Scotch was up on stage now, blundering his way through "Ain't
Got No Moonshine Left," while Rumple McNally sat at his usual table,
smoking ten cigarettes at once while tapping his feet to the beat. As Riff
walked between the tables, the Cosmians marched behind him, and Riff was keenly
aware of the guns pointing at his back.

His mind raced and cold sweat
trickled down his back. Who was this woman? What were the Cosmians doing here?
Those bastards mostly spent their time higher up in the city, bribing
politicians, preaching on street corners, and roughing up anyone who dared
criticize them. Riff had moved to this neighborhood to avoid this cult of
alien-worshippers. Not to have Grotter himself, the very Cosmian who had
dragged his mother to her death, show up on his turf.

I'm going to kill you
someday, Grotter, Riff swore, his fingers itching to snatch Ethel, his
beloved plasma gun, back from Grotter's belt.

They reached the back of the
room. Two life-sized dolls with white whiskers and fedoras, sewn of cloth
stuffed with straw, sat here at a chessboard. The two original players had died
long ago, halfway through their year-long game, and Old Bat Brown had sewn the
dolls himself as a tribute. Behind the frozen game, a staircase rose to the
second floor where lived Old Bat Brown, a dog who had once wandered in, and
Riff.

As Riff and the Cosmians began
climbing upstairs, Bat Brown came hobbling down the staircase, tapping his
cane.

"All right, Bat?"
Riff said.

The blind old man smiled and
nodded. "Bed's all made, Riff."

Riff and the Cosmians walked
around the old man, climbing higher upstairs. They reached a hallway and Riff opened
the doorway to his humble bedroom.

Most men Riff's age—he was
about halfway through his thirties now—lived in nice houses, a pretty wife and
pretty children at their side. Riff's only wife now hung across his back: Dora,
his beloved guitar, signed by Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid themselves. Riff's
only children now stood on his shelves: actual vinyl copies—real vinyl like in
the stone age!—of the legendary duo's recordings. As for a nice house . . .
well, his bedroom was small, and laundry covered the floor, but it was cozy,
and it was home.

Riff frowned to see an
envelope on his bedside table. The letter "A" was printed upon it in
an ancient rune. His father's signature. The old magician never signed his full
name, only that fanciful letter. When performing his magic tricks on street
corners, he'd even have the "A" embroidered on his robe. Riff hadn't
heard from the old man in over a year. Hurriedly, before the Cosmians could
see, Riff grabbed the letter and stuffed it into his jeans pocket.

"There's no woman in
here." Grotter sneered, entering the room behind Riff. "This
displeases me."

Riff nodded. "I speak the
exact same words whenever I step in here too."

With a sudden burst of speed,
Riff leaped forward, bounded across the room, and jumped onto his bed.

A thousand buzzing metallic
bedbugs blasted out from under the blanket, flying toward the Cosmians.

Old Bat Brown always kept a
few bedbugs around the Blue Strings. The old man used them as gags—slipping
one or two into Riff's bed when he was late on his rent, sometimes tossing a
handful at patrons who stiffed him on a bill. In small numbers, they were
harmless enough, just little metallic jaws snapping on springs.

A thousand flying at you was a
little more intimidating.

The little jaws slammed into
the Cosmians and began chomping.

Riff reached forward and yanked
Ethel out of Grotter's belt.

The monks roared and began to
fire their guns.

Plasma blasted through the
room, tearing into the walls, knocking down records. Cosmians screamed as the
bedbugs snapped at their robes, their hands, their faces. With a shout, the
plasma flying around him, Riff hurled himself through the window.

He tumbled
through the air and slammed down onto a pile of garbage bags outside.

He rose to his feet, fear
pulsing through him, Ethel in his hand. Had the plasma hit the guitar that
still hung across his back? Had the fall damaged it? It was signed by his
idols, and—

Grotter appeared at the
window, slung his gun over the sill, and began firing.

Riff shot a blast back at him,
rolled off the garbage bags, and ran.

His arms pumped as he raced
down the alley. Old bottles and cans rolled across the cracked asphalt, and
laundry flapped on strings that stretched between the windows overhead. Mandy
and Tammy, two young women who spent their nights here smoking cigarettes,
screamed as he ran by.

"There's goddamn Cosmians
after you, Riff!" cried Mandy, her pink hair standing on end. A blast of
plasma flew between them, slamming into a wall.

"I know!" Riff
shouted. "Little backup fire?"

The girls reached into their
bottomless purses, pulled out guns the size of their arms, and began blasting.

"Now you owe me five
bucks and your life!" Tammy shouted as he ran by.

Riff kept running, swerving to
race down another alley as blasts hit the walls around him. He hooked Ethel
over his shoulder and shot blindly while running; the plasma blasted out,
searing hot. He leaped onto a garbage bin, vaulted through the air, and crashed
through a string of laundry. He hit the ground running, found himself wearing a
brassier, and tore it off with a curse. He kept racing, blasts tearing into lamp
poles, walls, and fire hydrants around him.

He raced
through an old warehouse that stored decommissioned bots, flipped their
switches, and sent them racing behind him. He heard the Cosmians curse as they
tripped over the metallic critters. Riff kept running and burst out into
another alleyway, heading deep into the warren of the dregs.

Riff knew
these streets. His mother had died when he'd been only five. His father had
rarely been home, either performing his magic tricks on a street corner or,
more often than not, traveling the galaxy on some mysterious quest. For thirty
years now, Riff had been wandering these narrow streets, finding a home among
the gin-soaked blues clubs, the boozehounds, and the old bot shops. Every
corner, every doorway, every secret passage—Riff knew them, and soon he
vanished into the labyrinth, leaving his pursuers behind.

Finally he
barged out into a main boulevard. He leaned against a shop's wall, panting.
Skyscrapers soared around him, hundreds of stories tall, their glass walls
gleaming. Skyjets flitted among the towers, and a massive airship hovered above,
blocking the moon. People rushed back and forth, bustling like they always did
in Cog City, this hive of humanity that still lingered on the home planet while
the best of the race had long since departed to the stars.

Sweat
soaked Riff. The Cosmians were gone. Before checking himself for wounds, he
unslung the guitar case off his back. His breath caught when he opened it, and
his pulse quickened.

He blew out
a shaky sigh of relief.

"You're
all right, Dora, my sweetness," he whispered, caressing the guitar within.

It was a
red electric guitar, the kind humans had been playing for thousands of years.
An ancient, mystical instrument. A bringer of blues. And upon its surface, with
black ink, appeared its runes of power: the signatures of Bootstrap and the
Shoeshine Kid themselves, legendary heroes of music. Riff closed the guitar
case as if sealing a holy relic and slung it across his back.

He stood on
the street, head still reeling. A thousand questions raced through his head.
Why were the Cosmians, worshippers of aliens, after him? Who was this woman
they thought he was hiding? Where was his father?

The
immediate question was: Where did Riff go now? He certainly couldn't return to
the Blue Strings. With a sinking heart, Riff realized he might never be able to
return to that club, the place that had been his only home for years.

His heart
sank even deeper when he realized there was only one place he could go now.

"I'll
have to go see Nova."

He winced.
The Cosmians had scarred his cheek years ago. Nova had scarred his heart. Yet
right now, she was the only person who could help him. For the first time in two
years, he would have to seek her out . . . and hope that she helped. She was, Riff
thought, just as likely to rip out his throat.

He gulped
and nodded.

He would
seek out Nova, his ex-girlfriend . . . probably the most dangerous person on
the planet.

CHAPTER THREE:
ALIEN ARENA

Riff walked through the crowd of
roaring, pot-bellied drunkards toward the Alien Arena, the most blood-soaked
place on the planet.

Some factions on Earth, such
as Friends of Aliens, preached tolerance and acceptance of creatures from the
stars. Others, like the Cosmians, worshipped them as gods. Not here. People
came to the Alien Arena not to befriend, worship, or study aliens . . . but to
watch them bash one another's brains out.

Riff sighed. "And Nova
calls the Blue Strings a pit."

The arena rose ahead of him,
looking like some giant, steel bird's nest which had fallen from the sky. It was
all rusty beams, spikes, leaking water spouts, and blinding spotlights. Neon
lights blinked above the main doors, spelling out "Alien Are a",
missing the n.

Thousands of people clogged
the streets, heading toward the arena. Almost all were men, a sort so rough
they made even the Blue Strings' patrons seem gentlemanly. Riff had never seen
so many hairy shoulders, scruffy beards, and beer can hats in one place. The
smoke of cigarettes and cigars stung his eyes. The smell of cheap booze
infiltrated Riff's nostrils; at least half the men here were drinking home brew
from paper bags. There wasn't even any decent blues playing. The arena's
speakers were blasting out old rock 'n' roll, the sound so distorted Riff
couldn't make out the tune.

A few people had set up
soapboxes in the crowd. One woman lifted a "Friends of Aliens"
banner, shouting that aliens were to be loved and accepted, not gawked at. An
old man stood on another soapbox, crying out that "illegal aliens"
were an abomination, that only humans belonged on Earth. On a third box stood a
Cosmian monk, preaching about the "skelkrin masters." Riff grimaced
and made sure to steer clear of that last soapbox.

A voice roared out from the
arena's speakers, rising louder than the music and street preachers: "Tonight
only—Nova, the fiery Ashai Assassin, vs. Brog, the Behemoth of Belethor! The
battle of the ages at the Alien Arena! Only fifteen bucks a ticket!"

Riff reached into his jeans
pocket, rummaging for money. His hand brushed against the rumpled envelope he
had found in his room, the one from his father. Riff decided to keep it
unopened for now. It was too dark here to read, and besides, Riff wanted to be
alone when reading the first communication from his father in a year. Somehow,
that moment seemed too important to share with ten thousand roaring, overweight
drunkards in sweat-soaked wifebeaters. Riff pushed his hand deeper into his
pocket and fished out the last money he had in the world: a crumpled twenty-credit
note.

Riff approached a scalper—a
ratty little man with metal legs—and bought a ticket and a hot dog. The meat
tasted like it probably came from the arena's last loser, but Riff was hungry
enough that he ate the whole thing, ignoring his stomach's churning protests.
He walked with the crowd, entering the arena.

A few years ago, Riff had
owned an old car with a grungy engine that belched out smoke and constantly
leaked oil. He imagined that if he shrank in size and stepped into that engine,
he'd find a place that looked like the Alien Arena. The arena's insides made
the exterior look downright classy. Tiers of iron bleachers rose in a circle,
the metal stained with years of spit, gum, cigarette ash, and spat-up hot dogs.
Thousands of people filled the place, their shirts just as stained—at least
those who wore shirts.

Disk-shaped drones buzzed over
the bleachers, tasked with both selling refreshments and providing security. On
their flat tops, they carried bottles of beer, bags of popcorn, and dripping
cheeseburgers. From their bottom sides, like legs under crabs, stretched out
machine guns. One drunkard waved at a scuttling drone.

"You, drone!" the
fat man shouted, reached into his pocket, and pelted the flying machine with
spare change. "Cheeseburger!"

The flying drone spun toward
the drunkard, spilling popcorn off its top. "Attack detected! Attack
detected!"

The drone's machine guns
unfurled and sprayed bullets. The drunkard wailed and dived for cover. The
bullets slammed into the bleachers, blasting holes into the metal.

"Attacker
destroyed," the drone announced, then dived down to sell a lollipop to a
squealing little girl.

Riff walked along the
bleachers, looking for a seat. It was a busy night. Even a few aliens sat in
the crowd. A family of green, tentacled creatures with many eyestalks sat
nearby, drinking from buckets of glag—a thick brew made from the
fermented intestinal juices of Velurian rock spiders. Farther back sat a
hulking, translucent blob, the contents of its stomach—a few burgers, a whole
turkey, and a pair of sneakers—visible to all. Most humans seemed to give the
alien visitors a wide berth. People didn't come here to socialize with aliens
but to watch them fight on stage.

A round metal grill surrounded
that stage like glass around a snow globe, forming a great cage. A little man
stood within the enclosure, his hair bright yellow, his suit a garish
monstrosity of green and orange stripes. He spoke into his microphone, and
speakers blared across the arena.

"Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to tonight's match! We bring you another battle of the ages between two
of the galaxy's most ruthless alien killers!"

Riff wasn't sure any ladies or
gentlemen filled the place, but nobody seemed to mind. The crowd roared, and
Riff found a seat and sat down. The emcee continued.

"Now, in the blue corner—he
comes to us from the pits of Planet Belethor in the Vega constellation. The
Consumer of Worlds. The Crusher of Souls. The Behemoth of Bloodshed. Raise your
voices for Brog the Bonecruncher!"

The crowd roared as doors opened,
and the first alien trundled toward the stage.

"It's huge." Riff
gulped. "It's bloody huge. It's a mountain with eyes."

The living mountain trundled
forward on thick, clawed legs that made elephant feet seem dainty. Warty gray
hide covered its body, making rhinoceros armor seem as thin as the transparent
skin of a baby fish. The creature was so tall it would make giraffes seem
short, and it was just as wide. Its massive fists dragged along the floor, each
larger than a curled-up man. When the beast reached the stage, it opened its
mouth wide, revealing fangs longer than human arms. It roared, strings of
saliva quivering between its teeth.

"It's going to crush her."
Riff grimaced. "It's going to crumple Nova into a ball."

As the behemoth roared to the
sound of applause, the emcee spoke again into his microphone. "And now, in
the red corner! She comes to us from Planet Ashmar, the daughter of a warrior
king. The Princess of Pain. The Mistress of Mayhem. The Beauty of Bloodletting.
Welcome Nova the Ashai Assassin!"

Hard rock music blared out of
the speakers, deafeningly loud. Engines roared. The crowd roared just as loudly.
With a shower of sparks and smoke, a golden motorcycle, shaped as a scorpion,
raced up a ramp and onto the stage.

Nova straddled the bike. The
young woman wore a golden catsuit sewn from kaijia, an alien fabric that
was thin as silk but strong as armor. A black scorpion sigil raised its stinger
upon her chest. Her green eyes shone, and pointy ears thrust out from her long
blond hair like antennae. Her lips peeled back in a snarl, and she cracked a golden
whip that shot out sparks of electricity. She let out a roar that shook the
arena, and even the great behemoth, many times her size, took a step back.

"That's my girlfriend,"
Riff said to the man beside him, a slob sipping from two cans of beer attached
to his hat. The drunkard nodded appreciatively.

At least, she used to be my
girlfriend before I took my brother's side in their feud. Riff sighed.

Nova pushed down on the throttles,
and her bike roared and raced right up the rounded wire mesh that surrounded
the stage. She did a full loop, for an instant riding upside down along the
cage ceiling, then halted her bike before the behemoth. She cracked her whip
again. Sparks showered.

"I am
Nova of Ashmar!" she cried to the crowd. "I will tame this beast! For
fire and venom!"

Thousands of years ago, Riff
knew from the books, humanity had spread to the stars. Most of those starships had
been full of scientists, engineers, philosophers—peaceful colonists. But one
starship had been full of soldiers, and on the fiery planet of Ashmar, they had
formed a new nation. Since then, living in the harsh conditions of Ashmar, they
had evolved into a subspecies of humanity. The books now catalogued them as homo
sapiens ashai. They weren't technically aliens, but not quite human either,
not anymore—which was good enough for the Alien Arena. Across the galaxy, the ashais
were famous. Warriors of legend. Fighters of pride and bloodlust.

Just the
type you'd want on your side when chased by a maniacal cyborg monk and his
henchmen.

As the crowd roared, the behemoth
swung one of its massive fists; the thing was nearly as large as Nova's entire
motorbike. The ashai gladiator pushed down on the throttle, and her bike roared
forward and raced up the cage wall. As she drove overhead, upside down, she
lashed her whip. The thong slammed against the behemoth's head, and blood
sprayed. The beast wailed. Nova drove her bike back down onto the stage, swung
her whip again, and blasted out sparks that slammed into the towering alien.

The beast wailed.

"Down!" Nova shouted
and cracked her whip. "Down, behemoth!"

Her whip shot out more sparks,
slamming again into the alien, knocking it back against the cage wall.

Riff turned to the man at his
other side. "Did you hear? That's my girlfriend."

The fight didn't last long.
The behemoth kept swinging its fists, but Nova kept riding her bike within the
cage, driving up walls, along the ceiling, crisscrossing the floor. Her whip
lashed in a frenzy, its sparks slamming against the alien, cutting into its
skin. Finally, as her bike roared forward, Nova leaped right from her seat. She
soared a dozen feet into the air, cried out, and drove her whip down hard.

The lash slammed into the
behemoth's forehead.

The alien groaned and tilted
forward.

Nova landed back on her
motorcycle's seat and spun around in time to see her opponent crash down,
unconscious.

The crowd grumbled,
disappointed that the fight was so short. A few grumbled louder than others,
handing over sweaty wads of cash to gloaters. Another pair of aliens approached
the stage to fight—a slime devil with many eyestalks and a clattering isopod
with a bright purple exoskeleton. Ignoring this fight, Riff left his seat and elbowed
his way through the crowd, moving down the bleachers.

As the slimer and isopod faced
off, Riff walked down a ramp toward Nova's dressing room.

Her bodyguard stood outside
the door, a hulking alien who looked like a living granite boulder. Riff could
not begin to imagine what star system this creature came from. He was not a
short man, yet this stony brute dwarfed him.

"I'm here to see Nova."
Riff cleared his throat. "I'm her boyfriend. If you'll step aside, good
man—I mean, good . . . rock?—I shall much appreciate it."

The living boulder grabbed
Riff and yanked him off the ground. A crack in the stony countenance opened,
and words rumbled out. "Go away."

Riff coughed. "Lovely
breath. I detect mint, a hint of cherry wine, and possum carcass. Now please,
put me down, and—"

The bodyguard tossed Riff a
good ten feet, slamming him into several onlookers. Riff winced and struggled
back to his feet.

"Watch
it, buddy! Carrying a signed guitar here." Riff stepped back toward the
rocky brute and leaned around the creature. "Nova! Nova, you in there? It's
Riff. Call down your pet rock and talk to me."

The bodyguard turned toward
the door. Riff waited expectantly.

Nova's voice rose from behind
the door. "Voora, crush his skull."

The living boulder grinned and
took a step toward Riff, reaching out paws the size of dinner plates.

Riff gulped. "Nova, this
is important! I'm in trouble, all right? I need your help."

Her voice rose again from
behind the door. "Voora, after crushing his skull, tear off a limb or two.
You deserve a treat."

Riff scurried back as Voora
advanced. "Nova, this is serious! It's about the man who killed my mother,
all right? He's after me now, and—God!"

The massive, living boulder
lifted Riff right over its head. The stony fingers dug into him. The brute was
about to crush Riff, but Nova's door swung open.

"Voora, wait." Nova
stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed. "Put the bastard down. Let him in. I'll
crush his skull myself."

With a grumble like rolling
stones, the living boulder lowered Riff to the floor. Before Riff could regain
his balance, Nova grabbed his collar, yanked him into her chamber, and closed
the door.

Her dressing room could put most
armories to shame, Riff thought. Dozens of weapons hung on the walls: electric
rods, laser blasters, plasma spears, mechanical axes. A hundred guns or more
rose upon racks. The skulls of defeated enemies gazed from shelves. Her
motorbike stood in the center of the room, a great golden scorpion, its stinger
raised as if ready to strike.

Some women
collected decorative plates. Others collected cats. Nova collected pain and
death.

"Mind if I borrow a
couple of these?" Riff grabbed two plasma chargers from a shelf. "My
Ethel's low on ammo, and—"

Her whip lashed out and
wrapped around his wrist. She glared at him. "What do you want, Riff? I
told you never to speak to me again."

He winced and pulled the whip
off his wrist. It left an ugly mark, but luckily Nova hadn't turned on its
electricity. If she pressed the button on the handle, that whip would be more
than a lash; it would conduct enough electricity to knock out an elephant.

"Nova, I'm sorry. All
right?" He stuffed the plasma packs into his pocket, then held out his
open palms. "What else can I say?"

Riff had once read a very old
book of mythology titled The Lord of the Rings. The ashais reminded him
a little of the elves, at least in appearance: slender and beautiful with
almond eyes, flowing golden hair, and big pointy ears. But the resemblance ran
skin deep. Tolkien's elves had been creatures of grace, wisdom, and nobility,
while Nova was . . . well, about as graceful as an enraged wolverine with a
thorn in its backside. Facing him, Nova spat right on his face. She grabbed his
collar and sneered, a wild animal.

"No!" she shouted. "No,
you cannot do this to me, Riff. Gods damn you! After the shit you pulled, you do
not come back into my life like this, broke, thugs on your tail, smelling of
cheap booze."

"It's not my booze!"
Riff objected. "Some drunkard spilled it on me. Guy was drinking beer out
of his hat."

Nova growled and shoved him
against the wall. "It's always somebody else's fault with you, isn't it?
Always somebody else to blame." Suddenly tears filled her eyes, and her
voice rose louder. "I left my planet for you, Riff! I disobeyed my father—the
damn king of Ashmar. I disobeyed him to come to this stinking planet with you.
With a man whom I thought loved me."

"I do love you,"
Riff said, voice soft now. "I never stopped. I—"

She slapped him. Hard.

"I don't need to hear
your shit. Lies. Always lies with you. When are you going to grow up, Riff?
When are you going to take some responsibility for yourself? I haven't seen you
in two years." The tears were now flowing down her cheeks. "And this
is how you show up. When you need me. That's all you ever care about—what
others can do for you. Never what I want. Never what's important to me."
She laughed mirthlessly and turned away. "Same old Riff."

He stood, his back to the
wall, and lowered his head. The guilt filled him, and suddenly he felt about as
worthwhile as a sack of alien slime.

She's right, he
realized.

He stepped closer to her and
placed a hand on her shoulder. He didn't know if she could feel him through her
armor. The golden kaijia fabric was thin, clinging to her body, but Riff
knew it could stop bullets and plasma blasts. Even with his hand on her
shoulder, he felt as distant from her as if she wore armor of thick metal
plates.

"I'm sorry, Nova."
His voice was soft. "I feel like shit."

She spun around to face him. "That's
how you made me feel these whole past two years."

Ouch. That one hurt.

"Nova, the Cosmians are
after me. I think my dad's involved. And . . ." Riff's throat tightened. "One
of them killed my mother, Nov. You know that. And now the same guy, some
bastard cyborg named Grotter, is trying to kill me. He knows where I live. I
need a place to crash, at least until I can figure things out. I didn't know
where else to go. I haven't seen my dad for a year, and all my friends just
live at the Blue Strings or the alleys around them."

He was careful not to mention
his brother, Steel. Riff's last big fight with Nova—the one that had finally
shattered their fragile relationship—had been over Steel. If he mentioned his
brother now, Riff was likely to toss Nova into another rage.

He sighed. As angry as Nova
was, a meeting with Steel would be even worse. Best not to even think about his
brother now.

Nova sighed too. "I'll
let you crash on my couch for tonight. Just tonight! Tomorrow morning, I want
you gone."

He nodded. "Deal."
It was as good a deal as he was going to get, he knew.

She opened the back door,
revealing a tunnel, and tossed Riff a ring of keys. "You drive the bike.
You still remember where I live?"

He nodded. Of course he did.
He climbed onto the bike and let his guitar rest against his hip. Nova climbed
onto the seat behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. And by the
stars above, it felt good. Just at the touch of her body against him, memories
flooded Riff: him and her flying across the galaxy, heading back from her
planet to a new life on Earth; long days riding this very bike down highways, trees
rustling at their sides; and long nights making love in his bed at the Blue
Strings.

Riff sighed. But I could
never give her the life she needs.

Nova was a
princess of Ashmar, and he was just a bluesman who lived in a run-down club.
Their confrontation over Steel had been only the last straw. Was it any wonder
Nova had found a better life, a life without him? She lived in a fancy building
now, and she performed for crowds of thousands, while he was still stuck living
in the same dump, playing the same old tunes to the same old drunkards.

Her talking pet rock would
probably make a better boyfriend than I ever was, Riff thought.

He turned the keys, and the
motorbike roared to life. The golden scorpion shot forward, blasting out of the
dressing room and into the tunnel. Nova's arms tightened around Riff's waist.

The tunnel took them straight to
the 707, a highway outside the arena. Most folk flew their small, slick aerocars
above, but Nova had always preferred driving on the road. There were fewer
people down here, a chance to move faster, to feel the tarmac against the tires,
the jostle of every bump on the road. It was an old way to travel. It was
freedom.

They
streamed down the highway, skyscrapers rising alongside, aerocars zipping back
and forth above. The engine roared louder than any guitar Riff had ever played.
The wind whipped his face. The 707 was massive, twenty lanes wide, rising above
Cog City like a great concrete ribbon. Beneath the road, thousands of poor folk
lived in hovels of scrap metal and tarpaulin, a sub-city lurking in the shadows
like barnacles clinging to the bottom of ships. Alongside the road, electric
billboards cast out blinding lights, advertising Android Girlfriends for
You!, Happy Cow's Shawarma, and Cheap Bail Bonds, No
Credit Checks! One billboard made Riff shudder; it showed the Cosmian
sigil over the silhouette of a skelkrin, urging motorists to "Donate Now
for a Skelkrin Earth." Riff quickly looked away, breathing a sigh of
relief as they rode past the sign.

He took the exit off to Dune
Plaza, one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods. No shantytowns lurked under
the roads here, and the billboards advertised perfumes, jewelry, and pricey
cyborg implants guaranteed to enhance, invigorate, and tantalize. Here was a
place where rich businessmen, entertainers, and leaders lived in splendor. A
place of green parks, glass towers, statues, fountains. A far cry from the
dregs where Riff lived.

Finally he saw Serenity Tower
ahead, a great structure of white steel and glass that soared skyward, its
balconies topped with lush gardens. Nova's new home.

Sure beats the dump I made
her live in, Riff thought.

He slowed down the bike. He
was heading toward the parking lot when he saw the black starjets idling out
front.

Riff sucked in air. Most
people on Earth rode in aerocars, small flying vessels that couldn't breach the
atmosphere. But here were starjets—small, two-seater vessels that could fly in
both air and space. A dark planet with three moons, symbol of the Cosmians, was
emblazoned onto their hulls. Inside one of the starjet's cockpits, a red eye
blazed.

Grotter.

CHAPTER FOUR:
HOLES ON THE HIGHWAY

"Oh shenanigans!" Riff said,
spinning the motorbike around.

Before he could complete the
turn, the black starjets came blasting forward.

"What the frag?"
Nova shouted, clinging to him.

"Cosmians!" Riff
shouted, pushing down on the throttle. The golden scorpion roared down the
street, heading back to the highway. "Damn Grotter tracked us here."

"Riff, you son of a
bitch!" Nova clutched her whip. "I live here!"

"I know! They knew I'd
come here for you." They blasted down the road, swerving between cars. "They're
tenacious bastards. I—"

A blast of plasma roared and
slammed into the road beside them. Another blast shot overhead, nearly searing
Riff's hair.

"Fragging aardvarks!"
Nova twisted around in the seat and lashed her whip. When Riff looked in the mirror,
he saw the thong blast out electricity. The bolts slammed into one of the black
starjets chasing them, cracking its cockpit. Three other starjets roared down
the road in pursuit, hovering a foot above the tarmac, and three more flew
above, raining down their plasma.

One blast slammed down onto
the road ahead of Riff. With a curse, he swerved, nearly fell over, and kept
riding. Behind him in the seat, Nova swung her whip again. Lightning bolts
flashed out and slammed into a Cosmian starjet above. The vessel, several times
the size of the Golden Scorpion, crashed down onto the road before them. Riff
screamed, swerved madly, and managed to drive right onto the downed aircraft's
wing. He shot up the ramp, soared above the hull, and slammed back down onto
the road.

"Riff, some firepower
would be nice!" Nova shouted, swinging her whip again and again.

He cursed. Struggling to
control the motorbike with one hand, he drew Ethel from its holster. A starjet
streamed overhead, dipped in the sky, and came charging toward them. Riff
dodged a charge of plasma, fired his gun, and blasted a hole into the starjet.

He roared
up a ramp and onto the 707. All around him, the Cosmian starjets still
screamed. Plasma rained, shattering the road. Riff swerved around another hole,
nearly tipped over, and managed to keep charging forward. He fired his gun
again, aiming at the starjets' engines. Nova lashed her whip. Plasma, gunfire,
and lightning bolts lit the night. A few police cars raced forward, seemed to
notice the Cosmian sigils on the starjets, and quickly turned away; Grotter and
his gang owned too many politicians and police brass.

The
bastards are so well connected, Riff thought, they could nuke
half of Cog City without the police even clucking their tongues.

"Where'd you learn how to
fire that gun?" Nova demanded. "Aim, frag it!"

He spat and fired again,
missing another starjet. "I'm trying to drive your damn scorpion at the
same time!"

A starjet screeched overhead,
swerved ahead of them, and landed on the road. It came charging toward them.

"Press the golden button!"
Nova screamed.

"What?"

"Do it!"

Riff noticed a golden button
on the bike's controls; he had thought it just a decoration. Now he pressed
down with all his might.

In the mirror, he saw the
scorpion's golden tail rise.

It blasted out a sphere of
yellow energy.

The beam slammed into the
starjet ahead, splitting it in two. Riff screamed as the motorbike raced
through the wreckage. They drove through flame, flew into the air, and slammed
back down onto the highway.

"I need to get a bike
like this," Riff muttered, sweat dripping into his eyes.

Two more starjets still flew
behind them. Nova swung her whip, blasting out electricity, knocking one jet
down. It crashed onto the highway, veered offside, and slammed into a building.
A blast from Riff's gun sent the other crashing down.

The Golden Scorpion drove on, its
engine rattling. A scrap of loose metal scraped along the highway, raising
sparks. The Cosmians were gone.

"Nova, is my guitar all
right?" Riff said, twisting around to see. "Can you check?"

"Your guitar?"
Her face twisted with rage. "They blasted my bike full of holes, you
idiot! They were waiting outside my home. My home, Riff! What kind of trouble
did you get me into?"

I wish I knew, Riff
thought, driving onward down the highway.

He kept driving through the night.
The 707 led them past several more kilometers of skyscrapers, then finally out
of Cog City and into open country. Soon corn, wheat, and meat factories rose at
their sides—towering metal buildings where grains, steaks, and burgers grew in
boxes. The stars shone above. Riff looked skyward, wondering which star was Skelkra,
home of the skelkrins, that cursed place the Cosmians worshipped. He wondered
too which star Planet Ashmar orbited around—the place he had visited years
ago, the place where he had met Nova . . . the place they had left together in
better days. Yet driving here, all the stars seemed the same to him, distant
specks, out of reach.

When dawn began to rise, Riff
could no longer see the city behind him. He pulled over onto a dirt side road. Grass
and shrubs rose around them, rustling in the wind, as morning's light spread
across the sky.

Nova climbed off the bike too.
She stood for a long time, staring into the distance, silent.

Finally she spoke in a
strained voice, not turning to face Riff. "Why are they after you?"

"I don't know." He
took a deep breath. "Grotter—he's the gang leader—showed up at my club.
Was asking questions about a woman. What woman, I have no idea. Somebody he's
after, somebody he thinks I'm sheltering." He reached into his pocket and
felt the letter from his father, the letter he hadn't had a chance to open yet,
the letter he felt he should be alone to read. "Grotter's the bastard who
murdered my mother."

Was Grotter dead now? Had he
burned in the wreckage of a crashed starjet? Riff didn't know, but until he saw
a body, he would nurse his hatred, and he would stay on his toes.

Nova turned toward him. Soot
stained her golden, form-fitting armor and her long blond hair. She narrowed
her eyes. "Why? What happened back then?"

Riff sighed, the old pain
digging through him. The scar on his cheek suddenly hurt again. "You know
what the Cosmians believe, don't you?"

Nova spat. "Skelkrin
worshippers. My people fought the skelkrins once, years ago. They're nasty
buggers. As warlike as us ashais but without honor. Cruel. Murderous."

"And Grotter and his gang
worship them as gods. Call them superior beings. The Cosmians have a guy
leading them—they call him the Seer—who preaches that the skelkrins will
bring salvation to Earth. My mother spoke against them. She held rallies
protesting the Cosmians and their plan to bring the skelkrins here. One day,
when I was only five years old, Grotter showed up at our house. The Seer leads
the Cosmians from a hideout; Grotter leads the brutes on the street. He grabbed
my mother. When I tried to stop him, he gave me this." Riff touched the
scar on his cheek. "He dragged my mother off to a prison his goons run.
She came back to us a year later in a body bag."

Nova lowered her green eyes,
and her face softened. She stepped closer, embraced Riff, and laid her head
against his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Riff. You never told me."

He nodded. "And now Grotter's
back. Looking for somebody. And somehow I'm involved, and now you're involved,
and . . ."

He hesitated. He knew that
what he had to say would toss Nova right back into her rage. He rather liked
her embracing him. It was definitely nicer than the yelling, hitting Nova.

But his words, even if they
enraged her, had to be spoken.

He took a deep breath and braced
himself.

"Nova, they might be
after my brother too. We have to go see Steel. Now."

As expected, Nova stepped back
from him, and rage suffused her face. Her long, pointy ears reddened.

"No." She spat onto
the roadside and squared her shoulders. "Just no. Not Steel."

Riff took a deep breath. Two
years ago, Steel—always the man of stiff honor—had spent long moments
lecturing Nova, telling her that a proper lady wore gowns, never cussed, and
certainly did not spit. It had tossed Nova into a rage such as Riff had never
seen. The ashai had nearly torn out Steel's throat, cursing and spitting all
over his "antiquated" code of morality.

"Look." Riff reached
out to Nova as the grass rustled around them. "I know Steel is a bit old-fashioned,
but—"

"Old-fashioned!"
Nova shouted, scaring crows out of a nearby oak. "My motorbike is old-fashioned. Grandfather clocks are old-fashioned. Your brother is a fragging
dinosaur!" She laughed bitterly. "Who does he think he is, calling
himself a knight? Knights died off thousands of years ago. The code of honor he
speaks of was obsolete in the Stone Age. I'm not setting foot anywhere near
that old relic with his righteous, sanctimonious rubbish."

The words shot pain through
Riff's chest. He himself had often clashed with his brother. Many times, Steel
had lectured Riff too, railing against the blues and booze that filled Riff's
life. But damn it, Riff still loved the guy. Steel was his younger brother.
Only a year younger, but a baby brother nonetheless.

"Nova, he's still family."
He stepped closer to her. "And he might be in danger."

Nova raised her fist. "The
only danger he's in is of me pounding his brains out."

"Nova! Please listen. If
the Cosmians are going after the people close to me, they'll go after Steel
too. He might need our help. If the Cosmians fly to his castle, he's likely to
challenge them to a duel and die in their plasma fire. We drive up there. We
check on him. We figure out what's next from there. Will you go with me?"

She tugged her hair, tossed
back her head, and let out a roar. "Fine!" She glared at him. "But
if he lectures me again, I'm still pounding his brains out."

They climbed back onto the
scorpion motorbike. They roared down the highway through the dawn. As they
drove closer and closer toward Steel's home, the fear only grew inside Riff.

Where was his father? Who was
the woman the Cosmians wanted? And once he reached Steel's castle . . . would he
find his brother alive and well, or would he find a corpse?

CHAPTER FIVE:
STEEL AND RUST

Riding through the countryside,
Riff and Nova could see the castle from kilometers away. Like a Rigelian howler
beetle in a bowl of soup, it was hard to miss.

Growing up, Riff had heard of
castles. He had seen models of them in museums alongside spears, mammoth tusks,
dinosaur bones, and other relics of the ancient days. As far as he knew, Steel
Starfire, his little brother, was the only person left in the cosmos who still
lived in one.

Granted, this hilltop castle looked
a little different from the models Riff had seen. First of all, it wasn't much
larger than a typical city apartment, barely large enough to house one person,
let alone the army that most castles would contain. Secondly, the old castles
Riff had seen had been built of stone. This one was half metal, a mishmash of
bricks, iron plates, and spikes all bolted together. Steel had built it himself
a few years back, spending an entire summer on the task.

Sir Steel Starfire was many
things, but an architect he was not. The castle looked like it could barely
withstand a herd of charging sheep, let alone a charging army.

Or charging Cosmians,
Riff thought, stomach curdling.

The scorpion motorbike rattled
along the dirt road—there were no paved roads out here—leaving the factory
farms and heading up the grassy hill. Scattered elms and oaks rustled around
them. Birds flittered overhead and white clouds floated in a blue sky. If not
for the men out there trying to kill him, Riff might have almost felt at peace.

When he crested the hilltop,
his brief moment of serenity shattered.

A large Cosmian starjet,
several times the size of city jets, hovered outside the castle of iron and
stone. Several of the cult's goons, clad in black hoods and robes, stood
outside in the grass, guns raised.

Before them, protecting his
castle, stood Steel Starfire.

Steel was a year younger than
Riff, but he looked a decade older. His long years of solitude, of pain over
the corruption of his order, had left him with a lined face, with graying
temples, with sad-yet-hardened eyes. His long brown mustache, his pride and
joy, drooped all the way down to his chin.

Though
banished from the Knights of Sol for daring to speak against its lords, Steel
still wore his old armor: thick, bright plates of ancient steel. In his gloved
hands, he still held his old weapon, a massive antique sword named Solflare.
Since his banishment, Steel could no longer wear the sigil of the Knights of
Sol upon his breastplate, and he could no longer call himself "sir."
But standing outside his castle, facing his enemies with calm determination, he
seemed a knight through and through.

"Who
the frag still uses a sword these days?" Nova muttered as their motorbike screeched
to a halt outside the castle. "Swords are for crusty old dinosaurs."

The Cosmians
noticed the new arrivals. They spun back and forth between Steel, Riff, and
Nova, guns raised, as if uncertain who posed the greater threat.

If Steel
noticed his brother and the ashai gladiator arrive, he gave no sign of it. The
gaunt knight raised his sword, and he spoke in a deep voice, a voice yearning
for days of old.

"By my
honor as a Starfire, by my honor as a Knight of Sol, I challenge you to battle.
For Sol!"

Shouting
out those last words as a battle cry, Steel raced toward the enemy.

The Cosmian
monks all spun toward him, forgetting about Riff and Nova, and fired their
guns.

Steel swung
his massive sword, deflecting one blast of plasma. Another blast slammed into
the knight's chest, dispersing across his armor like waves around a tor.

Steel
thrust his sword forward. Light streamed across the blade and blasted out in a
great beam. The ray slammed into one monk, tearing a hole through his body.

Nova stared
with wide eyes. "I want a sword."

Riff raised
his gun and aimed at a monk. "For now use your whip!"

He fired.
His blast slammed into a monk, knocking the man down. At his side, Nova cracked
her whip. A lightning bolt flew from the tip, slamming into a second monk.

Three monks
knelt, turned toward Riff and Nova, and began blasting.

Riff
cursed, ducked behind the scorpion bike, and leaned over the seat. He fired his
gun, his blasts leaving trails of rippling air. He hit one monk. Another
Cosmian fired his gun, and the blast slammed into the motorbike, shoving it
against Riff. Sparks showered. Riff fired again and hit the man.

Nova
meanwhile stood in the open, flailing her whip. A bolt of plasma flew toward
her, and she ducked backward, letting it stream above her chest and head.
Another blast flew toward her feet, and she rolled sideways, leaped back up,
and swung her whip. Lightning flew from the golden lash, streamed through the
air, and slammed into another monk. The man cried out as his robes burst into
flame.

Closer to
the castle, Steel was swinging Solflare in wide arcs. The blade deflected one
plasma blast. Another slammed into Steel's armor and ricocheted, tearing a hole
into the grass. The knight refused to dodge for cover but advanced, taking the
monks head-on. He thrust his sword forward again, casting another beam of white
energy. The light slammed into a monk, tearing through him. The body thumped
onto the grass. Another monk, out of ammunition, charged forward, screaming. A
swing of Steel's sword cut him down.

The last two
monks cursed and leaped into their black, oversized starjet.

The vessel began to rise into
the air.

Its guns began to glow red,
aimed right at Steel and his castle.

Riff fired his gun.

His blasts shot out, slamming
into the starjet's engines.

Fire roared. The starjet
swirled madly in the air. Its guns fired, slamming into the castle. Bricks
rained. Metal sheets bent and crashed down.

Riff fired his gun again. Nova
swung her whip, casting out lightning.

The projectiles hit the starjet,
and it exploded into countless chunks of metal.

A hail of fire and scrap metal
pattered against the grass.

The last of the Cosmians was
dead.

Riff straightened from behind
the bike. The battle had burnt a hole in his jeans, and shrapnel had drawn an
ugly red line across his arm, but he was otherwise unharmed. Nova stood among
the wreckage, brushing burning scraps off her golden armor; the ashai material
showed not a scratch. Steel's armor was blackened and dented, but otherwise the
knight seemed no worse for the wear.

"Hello, little brother!"
Riff grinned and walked through the wreckage toward him. "Seems like I
popped by just in the nick of time."

The tall, gaunt knight
regarded him, eyes blank. He passed his fingers through his drooping mustache, brushing
out the ash; Steel loved that mustache like Riff loved his guitar and Nova
loved her motorbike. The knight turned toward his castle, and his jaw twitched.

A great hole, large enough to
ride a horse through, gaped open in the castle wall. Ash rained from its rims.
Fire burned inside, spreading across austere furniture.

Steel spoke in a low, haunted
voice. "The homestead burns. I have failed to defend my castle." He
tossed back his head and cried out in anguish. "What kind of knight am I,
a knight who could not even protect his fortress?"

Riff stepped closer and
cleared his throat. "Well, not a knight at all, really." He tapped
his brother's breastplate where the old symbol of his order, the Knights of
Sol, had been scratched off. "They banished you from the brotherhood,
remember?"

Steel turned those brown, sad
eyes toward him—those eyes that seemed so much older and wiser than his years.
The eyes of an old man. "The measure of a knight, my brother, lies not in
titles, not in sigils, but in his heart. In honor. In chivalry. In great deeds
upon the battlefield. My lords have fallen to corruption, and thus my sigil was
stripped away, yet the honor still pumps in my heart, and the pride of nobility
still flows through my veins. No man can take those from me."

Nova stepped forward, coiling
up her whip. "You're talking shite, Steel." She hawked noisily, spat,
and scratched her backside. "Still a bloody loony, you are."

The knight turned his hound dog
eyes upon her. "And I see that you are still a refined, delicate lady."

She snorted. "To hell
with that. I'm a warrior, Steel." She sneered. "A true warrior of Planet
Ashmar, not some relic."

He tilted his head. "And
yet, last I heard, Planet Ashmar exiled you, same as my order exiled me.
Perhaps we're both relics, my lady."

"I ain't a lady."
She glared.

He bowed his head toward her. "Perhaps
you spit, curse, and show me no respect, yet my honor demands that I treat you
as a lady. For I am a knight. And I'm sworn to defend all damsels in distress."

Nova gasped, rage blazing in
her eyes, and cracked her whip. Lightning bolts flared out. "A damsel in
distress? Do I look like I'm in distress to you, knight? I'm going to show you
who the damsel is. I—"

"Enough, both of you!"
Riff roared, stepping between them. "The Cosmians will know we destroyed
their starjet. More are probably flying over here as we speak—a hundred
starjets all armed with blasters, not just one vessel."

Steel raised his chin and
raised his sword. "I am prepared to defend the homestead. I shall fight
honorably and die to protect the—"

"Nobody is dying today!"
Riff grabbed his brother's arm. "Come on. We're getting out of here."
He righted the bike and climbed into the seat. "Steel, you got a ride?"

The knight nodded. "I
shall ride my noble steed."

Nova groaned. "He's got a
steed. Perfect."

"A noble steed,"
Riff said gently, as if that could make things any better.

A moment later, Riff and Nova
were riding their scorpion motorbike down a dirt road. At their side, Steel
Starfire, clad in armor and bearing his ancient sword, rode upon his horse.

CHAPTER SIX:
GREASE AND GRISTLE

An hour later, they approached The
Cracked Pot, a greasy roadside diner shaped like a huge coffeepot. Its metal
walls were rusting, and weeds grew in the yard. The only vehicle in the lot was
a dented old atmojet with a python coiled up in the back seat; it looked like neither
jet nor snake had moved in years.

"Classy joint," Nova
said as they rolled their motorbike to a stop.

Riff stepped off the seat and cracked
his neck. "No less classy than the Blue Strings or Alien Arena. And they'll
serve coffee here. Wonderful, hot, black, heavenly coffee. After fleeing Cosmians
all night, I'd welcome a cup of joe more than a harem of Orion hula dancers."

Nova glared at him. "Watch
it, big boy. I haven't forgiven you yet."

Steel dismounted his horse and
stared at the rusty, pot-shaped building. "An establishment of debauchery."

Riff rolled his eyes. "Steel,
I told you. Coffee isn't debauchery."

The knight stiffened. "Caffeine
is a drug. It is sinful. It is—"

"Shut it, tin can."
Nova slapped Steel's armor, shoved him aside, and made for the diner. "Now
come with us and drink water while we guzzle down caffeine."

They stepped inside and found
a booth. No living waiter could be seen, but a clunky robot made from scrap
metal took their orders. Soon Riff and Nova were downing mugs of piping hot
coffee, eating ridiculously greasy eggs and bacon, and sharing a slice of apple
pie topped with cheddar cheese. Steel ordered a cup of water and plain white
toast. The food tasted like something scraped off a starship's engines, but the
coffee was half decent, and the jukebox even had "Moonshine Blues" by
Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid. As caffeine filled his bloodstream, and as
Bootstrap's soulful notes filled the diner, Riff began to almost feel like his
old self.

For a long while, Riff spoke,
telling the others about everything that had happened since Grotter had stepped
into his club.

Steel listened with a stern
face, not moving, not speaking. Only when Riff mentioned the letter from their
father did the knight's eyes widen.

"What does the letter
say?" Steel asked.

Riff pulled the rumpled
envelope out of his pocket. "With Cosmians firing at me all night and day,
I haven't had a chance to read it yet." He tore the envelope open and
pulled out a letter. He read it silently first, then showed it to the others.

Riff, my boy!

I hope this letter finds you
well and safe. Yet things are not well and safe in the galaxy, Earth included.

I cannot say much now. Not in
a letter that might fall into the wrong hands. When we meet again, much will be
clarified.

A friend of mine, a young pirilian
named Midnight, needs your help. I've sent her to the Blue Strings, but you
must not keep her there. I fear that the Cosmians are gaining strength, that
all Earth is in danger. Take my friend off the planet. Find shelter in the
outposts. Hide. Wait to hear more from me. I will find you.

Do not let the Cosmians find
my friend. If they catch her, a greater danger than you can imagine will befall
us all. In the wrong hands, Midnight's power could destroy the very universe.

Sorry for being so grim, my
boy. Next time we meet, I'll rustle up your favorite walnut pancakes, and
hopefully we can laugh about this all, the danger far behind us.

Love,

Dad

Riff placed
the letter back into his pocket. "Well, that didn't tell us much, did it?
Aside from the fact that the universe is going to end."

"Midnight . . ." Steel
frowned at his toast. "There is a damsel in distress out there, and we
failed to find her."

Nova rolled her eyes. "Again
with your damsels! The whole universe is in danger, and you're worried
about your maiden to save."

"Pirilians," Riff
muttered. "The skelkrins destroyed their planet a while back. Was all over
the news—for a day or two, at least. The Cosmians celebrated it here on Earth.
I didn't think any pirilians still lived."

Steel brushed crumbs out of
his mustache. "Pirilians?"

Riff nodded. "Unique in
the galaxy. Got magic to them, some say. They can teleport themselves within
any space, crossing any distance instantly, so long as no walls stand between
them." He took a deep, wistful breath. "I used to date a pirilian
once. That's how I know. She used to port all over the place, vanishing one
instant, appearing the next . . ." He glanced at Nova, saw the fire in her
eyes, and quickly swallowed his words. "But I haven't seen one in years.
And I'd know. They stick out. Purple skin and yellow eyes. Hard to miss."

"Aliens or humanoids?"
Steel asked.

"Both, I think. Might be
human settlers mingling with aliens thousands of years ago. But what do we do
about this one?"

Steel rose to his feet,
pushing back his chair. "We seek her. We scour Cog City for her. A maiden
is in need, and we shall protect her."

"Except the city is
swarming with Cosmians," Riff said. "And they're after us like they're
after her. And they're after Dad too. Grotter knew that Dad's involved somehow.
The Blue Strings is too dangerous right now. I say we blast off this rock, head
to the space outposts, and check every one of Dad's regular haunts until we
find him. He might not even know Grotter's on to him. He might need our help."

Steel's face remained hard. "Flee
from battle? Abandon a damsel? A knight does no such things."

"Well, I'm not a knight.
I'm a bluesman." Riff stabbed at his eggs. "Look, I'll put the word
out on the street. I don't have the network Grotter has, but I have my people.
Old Bat Brown will wait for the girl in the Blue Strings. Mandy and Tammy, out
in the alley, will keep an eye on comings and goings. I got a dozen other guys
and girls all over the dregs. Musicians. Panhandlers. Shopkeeps. Friends. I'll
have them looking for a pirilian with purple skin and yellow eyes, and if they
find her, they'll shelter her until we get back. But us here? We're no longer
safe on Earth, not now. Not with Cosmians tracking us down. We need to blast
off this rock, sail to the space colonies, and find Dad. We need answers from
him." Riff smiled crookedly. "Hell, maybe leaving the planet will
even keep this mysterious girl safe. We can draw some Cosmians after us."

For the past few minutes, Nova
had remained silent. The ashai princess stared blankly at the wall, her face
hard.

"What do you think, Nova?"
Riff asked her, trying to keep his voice gentle.

"I think," she said
softly, "that I hear an engine outside." She turned her head toward
Riff. "I think I shouldn't have used my credit card in this place."

"Damn!" Riff leaped
to his feet. He heard the jets from outside now too. "Yeah, they're
tracking your card. God damn it! Come on, out the back door."

Steel rose to his feet and
drew his sword. "I will not flee from battle."

Riff groaned, grabbed his
brother, and whispered into his ear, "Steel, you have to protect Nova. A
damsel! You must lead her to safety."

"I'm not a—" Nova
began.

"Now move!" Riff
shouted.

Within a minute, they were
racing down the road—Riff and Nova on the motorbike, Steel on his horse. When
Riff looked over his shoulder, he saw a black atmojet, the Cosmian emblem upon
it, blast its guns toward The Cracked Pot. The diner shattered and collapsed.
Then the bike drove onto a dirt path in the forest, Steel riding close behind,
and they vanished into the cover of trees and brush.

They rode for a long time off road,
moving between the trees, until the sound of the atmojet faded in the distance.

Just in time, the Golden
Scorpion gave a few coughs and sputtered, then rolled to a stop. The motorbike
was out of fuel. Steel's horse seemed to run out of his own fuel; the animal
ambled toward a patch of grass and began to feed.

The companions stood in the
forest, covered in ash, mud, and bacon grease.

"See my point?" Riff
said. "Planet Earth bad. Not safe."

A voice inside him whispered
that perhaps no place was safe anymore, not even the most distant planets. His
dad was involved in something. Something dangerous. Sometimes that would
attract bad company even in the outposts, even in the distant stars. Riff had
to find the man. Had to keep him safe. Had to find answers. Were the skelkrins
heading closer to Earth? Could Midnight, this pirilian woman, hold a secret to
stop an invasion? Riff's head spun.

"Steel," he said, "is
that old used starship lot still around here? The one Dad used to take us to
when we asked to see real starships?"

The knight nodded. "The
town's about three kilometers north from here."

"Good." Riff began
to walk, pushing the scorpion bike at his side. "We ain't buying tickets
on a commercial starship. Too easy to track down. I bet we can buy our own ship
off the record—even if it's an old clunker—for ten grand. We blast off, and
we look for Dad."

"And what of the damsel?"
Steel walked at his side, leading his horse.

"I told you, I'm not a
damsel!" Nova began, raising her whip. Mud stained the gladiator's golden
armor.

"He means the pirilian,"
Riff said. "Oh shenanigans, let me make a few calls."

As they walked through the
forest, Riff hit dials on his wristwatch, calling up the Blue Strings. He spoke
to Old Bat Brown first, thanking him for the bedbugs. Mindful that the Cosmians
might be tracking his calls, he then asked Bat Brown to keep a look out for a "brain-scrambler-faced
jumper side-riffer, in trouble with some bass players." In old
blues-speak, "jumper" meant "teleporter," "side-riffer"
meant friend, and "bass players" meant trouble. Riff just hoped the
old man understood that by "brain-scrambler," a deep purple cocktail,
he meant "purple."

The old bartender, one of the
wisest men Riff knew, seemed to understand. Riff made a few more calls,
speaking to Rumple McNally who always sat by the stage, Gristle Scotch who was
playing that night, and Mandy and Tammy out in the alley.

"If our pirilian girl so
much as sets foot in Cog City," Riff told his companions, "my guys
will know. They'll look after her while we're looking for Dad."

Steel nodded. "Good.
Because we're here."

The knight pointed between the
trees, and Riff found himself staring at a giant, mechanical dragon.

CHAPTER SEVEN:
THE HMS DRAGON HUNTRESS

The town of Sprocket would have
been forgettable if not for the dragon that rose in its center.

Several kilometers out of Cog
City, this was barely a town at all. A couple of greasy spoons. A few barns. An
antique shop selling old android parts. And the used starship lot.

The lot took up a good ninety
percent of the town, a sprawling field full of all manner of ships. A few were
slick, two-seater starjets, capable of flying in city, country, and open space.
They looked expensive. Other starships were hulking, rusty boxes of metal, the
size of apartment buildings—great cargo transports that had seen better days,
meant for long hauls between planets. A couple of ships were even fine luxury vehicles,
old models but still decent-looking, built for pleasure cruises to the stars.

And among them rose the
dragon.

At least, Riff thought the
starship was meant to look like a dragon. It seemed to have been rusting here
for ages. It didn't even stand on the lot itself but in a backyard, vines and
brush climbing its facades. Riff thought it was a starship—it had wings and
engines—but it could just as well have been some giant piece of modern art. It
rose about the height of a house, its mouth pointing to the sky.

"What a bunch of junk!"
Nova said as they walked toward the lot, leaving the forest behind. "I've
seen better collections of starships in landfills."

Steel nodded. "Nova is
right. None of these are spaceworthy. They're more rust than metal."

Riff rolled his eyes. "Said
the man who lived in a self-made castle. These ships are fine! They just need a
coat of paint, some love, and they'll fly. That one isn't too bad." He
pointed at a white starjet, only for its wing to tilt and thump into the dirt.

When they entered the lot, a
man stepped forward to greet them, arms outstretched. His thinning hair was
greased back across his scalp, and he puffed on a cigar. His Hawaiian shirt was
unbuttoned, revealing a flabby belly, and many golden chains rested upon his
hairy chest. Jeweled rings gleamed upon the man's sausage fingers, and cheap
plastic sunglasses hid his eyes.

"Welcome, welcome!"
the used starship salesman said. "I'm Leroy, and I'm here to make you a
deal."

Nova rolled her eyes. "He's
greasier than the bacon we had for breakfast."

Riff walked closer to the
short, stubby man. "Leroy, we're here to—"

"Wait, let me guess!"
Leroy grinned, revealing a golden tooth. "You're here to buy a starship."

"The man's a mind reader,"
Nova muttered.

Leroy took the gladiator's
hand and kissed it, seemingly oblivious to her disgusted look. "My lady! I
would be glad to show you a wide variety of pleasure ships in pink, purple, and
baby blue, luxury vehicles that will have you exploring the galaxy of pretty
stars."

"Got any with guns on 'em?"
she asked.

Leroy's eyes widened. He
gulped and dabbed sweat off his brow, then turned toward Riff. "Ah, my
friend!" He placed hairy hands on Riff's shoulders. "I can see you
have a distinguishing eye for quality starships. A musician too, by the guitar
on your back. I can offer you a lovely ship that's as beautiful as any melody.
Fine speaker system too."

He led the companions toward a
green starjet which lay on the asphalt. It looked just large enough for the
three of them, if Nova sat on Riff's lap, which he very much hoped she'd do.

"Is it supposed to have
holes in it?" Riff asked.

Leroy cleared his throat. "Those
are asteroid-protection holes, my friend! See, when little asteroids fly your
way, they get sucked right into those holes, sparing your hull."

"I'll take one without
holes," Riff said.

Leroy nodded and barked a rather
fake-sounding laugh. "There's no pulling the wool over this one's eyes.
Here, my friends." He grew solemn. "The masterpiece of my lot. The
finest ship I sell. Behold—the Starship Galactica!"

Riff found himself staring at
a large, charcoal starship that didn't look too bad. There were no holes on
this one, and only minimal rust. He judged it to be about ten years old. "How
much for it?"

"One hundred thousand
credits, my friend."

Riff's eyes widened. "Are
you mad?"

Nova growled and cracked her
whip. "Are you trying to rob us?"

Steel frowned. "Theft is
against all codes of honor and chivalry."

Leroy stiffened, staring
between bluesman, gladiator, and knight. For an instant anger seemed to twitch
across his lips. But then those lips grinned again, revealing his golden tooth.
"Very well, very well, my friends! You seek something more affordable, I
see. How much can you spend?"

Riff cleared his throat and
rummaged through his pockets. He turned toward the others, and they huddled
together.

"I'm broke," Riff
said. "I had some cash stuffed into my mattress back home, but I ain't
going back there now, not with the Cosmians skulking about. Steel, what have
you got on you?"

The knight raised his chin. "A
knight seeks not monetary compensation."

Riff groaned. "In other
words, you're broke too." He turned toward Nova, then winced to see the
rage blazing in her green eyes.

"No," she said.

"What?" Riff raised
his hands.

"I know what you're going
to ask me, and no." Nova squared her shoulders. "First of all, I'm
not using my credit card again, not after the last purchase brought the Cosmians
down on us. And even if I did have cash on me, I'm not buying you a spaceship.
You want a ship? Barter for it."

Riff sighed. His shoulders
slumped, and he caressed the golden motorbike. "Very well. As much as I'd
hate to sell your bike, I—"

Nova grabbed his collar,
twisted it, and sneered at him. "Your guitar, your idiot!"

He bristled. "My Dora?"
He pulled the guitar to his chest and hugged it. "My baby? She's signed by
Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid! Legendary blues duo! You know what this guitar
is worth?"

Leroy stepped forth, joining
the huddle. "About ten thousand credits, I'd say." The greasy man
grinned. "Love me some B and the SK. Saw them play about ten years back.
Used to play some licks myself." He reached grubby fingers toward the
guitar. "Mind if I take a look?"

"Yes, I do mind!"
Riff stepped back, hugging the guitar close. "This . . . this guitar is .
. . is like a child to me." He turned toward Nova. "You don't
understand, Nova. After my mother died, I was in so much pain. So angry and
scared. But I still had blues music. When I was older, when I was drunk, when I
was alone and living in that piss-stain of a club . . . I still had music. No
matter what happened in my life, I could always listen to Bootstrap and the
Shoeshine Kid. No matter how alone I felt, how afraid I was, how dark life
seemed, I always had their music. When I finally got them to sign my guitar,
well . . . it felt like having a baby. It felt like something that could bring
me light and joy forever." He lowered his head. "Selling this guitar
would feel like selling a child."

They all stared at him,
silent.

Nova stepped forward.

She grabbed his ear, twisted
it, and shouted, "Riff, you are going to sell that guitar! Do you
understand me?"

"Ow! Let go! God!"
Riff pried her fingers loose. "Fine! I'll sell the damn thing. But you owe
me one. A big one. A trip to see Bootstrap the next place he plays, and
backstage tickets too."

She rolled her eyes. "Deal.
Now give the nice greasy man the guitar, and let's choose a spaceship."

Riff closed his eyes. He
clenched his jaw. He held out his guitar, eyes screwed shut, unable to even
look as Leroy took the precious treasure away.

"I'll . . . I'll give her
a good home," Leroy said, voice scratchy. For the first time, the man
seemed genuine. "I won't play her or nothing. Maybe someday you can buy
her back."

Riff opened his eyes and
nodded. It was hard to speak. "What starship can this buy us?"

Leroy cleared his throat and
scratched himself. "Well, see there . . . guitar like that, even with
those signatures, is worth ten thousand credits maybe. Not enough for most of
the larger starships. But that's all right!" The grin returned to his
face. "You don't want a ship that's too large anyway. Fuel guzzlers, they
are. I offer you: The HMS Dragon Huntress!" He pointed at the rusty
old dragon that rested in the yard.

Nova raised an eyebrow. "That's
a starship?"

Leroy shrugged. "Eh, kind
of. Used to be part of those Monster Ship shows up around the moon. You know the
ones? The dragon used to grab smaller starjets and roast them with fire. Crowd
loved it. A few years ago, some guy souped up her engines, ran a small alien
pest control business with her, flying around to catch critters on the
colonies. She's a good ship."

Nova growled and unfurled her
whip. "If she's a good ship, why are you swapping her for a damn guitar?
Why not charge a hundred thousand credits like your other ship?"

Leroy tapped ash off his
cigar. "Well, I'll be honest with you. There's some folks that claim the Dragon
Huntress is, well, possessed."

"Possessed?"
Nova repeated.

Leroy nodded. "By a
demon."

"A demon?"
Nova groaned and tugged her hair.

Leroy puffed on his cigar. "Well,
you know folks. They can be superstitious. Claim they hear clanking in the
loft. Probably just a family of possums, but rumors of demon possessions
spread, and well . . . nobody wants to buy her. Been sitting here on the lot
for a year now. But if you're sensible folks, and if you don't believe in
demons, she's a steal. A beauty too. Go on, take a look inside!" Leroy
patted his new guitar. "I'll go put this baby in a safe place."

Feeling like a part of him was
missing, Riff stepped toward the giant mechanical dragon. Flecks of paint hung
off its facades. The words "HMS Dragon Huntress" appeared on its
hull, and smaller letters underneath spelled, "Alien Hunters Inc."
The bridge seemed to be located in the dragon's head, but the glass panes were
too dusty to be sure.

"It's a piece of junk,"
Nova said.

Riff nodded. "It's a cool
piece of junk."

Steel tapped one of the ship's
wings. He frowned. "A knight should slay dragons, not fly within them."

Riff found a hatch, yanked a
lever, and tugged it open. A staircase unfolded, leading up into the shadowy
interior.

"Let's take a look,"
Riff said. He climbed up the stairs, entering the belly of the beast, little
knowing that it would be many days before he emerged.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

Riff climbed the last metal step, opened
a second door, and entered the belly of the HMS Dragon Huntress.

He found himself in the
strangest ship he'd ever seen.

The main deck was about the
size of a typical house's living room. Two couches stood against the walls,
topped with a few stuffed animals. A board of counter-squares stood on a table,
the pieces arranged in mid-game. A goldfish swam in a bowl, and a dartboard
hung on a wall. For a moment, Riff wasn't sure if he'd stepped into a starship
or somebody's home.

"It's . . . cozy,"
he said.

Nova entered the starship and
stood beside him. She frowned. "Where are the weapons? Starships need
weapons. Where are the racks of guns?"

Steel entered next and looked around.
His frown deepened, and he stroked his mustache. "A knight has no use for
stuffed animals or dartboards."

Footsteps thumped deep within
the ship. A voice rumbled. A hatch opened in the floor beside one of the
couches. Riff's eyes widened. One of the strangest creatures he had ever seen
climbed through the trapdoor and into the living quarters.

"Hello there!" said
the creature, voice deep and raspy. "Welcome, welcome to the HMS Dragon
Huntress! That's HMS for Humanoid Mercenary Starship, in case you were
wondering. We bow to no Her or His Majesty here."

Riff blinked.

"What is it?" Nova
whispered, leaning closer toward him.

"A gruffle!" he
whispered back from the corner of his mouth. "Don't stare."

Riff thought back to his
history lessons. Thousands of years ago, when humans first spread across the
stars, a group of miners had built a colony on the massive, rocky planet of Gruffstone,
far in the Tauros system. The planet was several times the size of Earth, its
gravity immense. Over the generations, the settlers had evolved to match the
harsh conditions. They got shorter, the gravity pulling them down, and far more
muscular than humans back on Earth. Their low stature, wide girth, and sheer
strength let them survive on a giant rock the size of several Earths. Like Nova's
people, the ashais, the gruffles evolved into a subspecies of humanity: Homo
sapiens gruffian.

This particular gruffle stood a
couple of inches shy of five feet, and he was almost as wide as tall. His arms
and legs were all thick muscle. His chest was like a truck. He wore brown
leather studded with iron bolts, and his skin was the same chestnut brown. A massive
hammer hung across his back, and a luxurious white beard flowed down to his
belt.

The gruffle looked, Riff
thought, like a square of muscles with eyes.

"My name is Piston
Bergelgruf!" the gruffle said, reaching out a hand that looked able to
crush granite. "Just call me Piston. No need for Mr. Bergelgruf here. I'm
the engineer on this ship."

Riff took the oversized hand
and shook it, then winced as Piston nearly crushed his finger bones in his
mighty grip.

"The engineer?" Riff
asked after introducing himself and his companions. "You . . . don't work
for Leroy?"

Piston's bushy white eyebrows
rose. "Work for a used starship lot? Laddie, I work for only one place.
Alien Hunters Inc. The little business we got going here on the HMS Dragon
Huntress. At least until the last owner sold it."

Riff looked around the main
deck. "Alien Hunters?"

Piston snorted and flopped
down onto a couch with a groan. "Aye, it's a small alien control business.
We mostly would handle little cosmic critters. Rigelian tunnel worms. Fuzzy Centaurian
rodents. That kind of stuff. You know, the sort of aliens that clog up a ship's
engines or a space station's plumbing. We had to trap a Taurian digger once,
and that was nasty business." The gruffle grumbled. "Not many people last
long in the alien hunting business, I can tell you. The previous owner only
lasted a year on this ship. So did the owner before him. And the one before
that . . . oh gods of granite, he only lasted about three months before selling
it all." Piston grinned. "Glad to have new owners on board! Hope you
fare better than the past seven."

"Wait a minute!"
Nova said, stepping toward the squat gruffle. "Listen here, Piston. We're
not buying any exterminator business here. We're only buying a starship."

Piston raised his eyebrows
again. "Lassie, the business comes with the starship. So do its employees."

"Its . . . employees?"
Riff asked. His heart sank.

Piston nodded and thumped his foot
against the floor. "Twig! Twig, damn you! Come up and say hello to our new
owners." His voice rose louder. "Twig! Damn it, get your little butt
up here."

A clanking ruckus sounded from
the lower deck. A voice cried out in dismay. Footsteps padded.

"Twig!" Piston
shouted again.

The voice cried up from below,
"Piston, I lost my wrench in the engine again! And there's cobwebs growing
in the cooling coils, and—" A head popped out of the hatch in the floor. "Oh!
Hello."

A second little person climbed
out of the hatch into the main deck.

Twig was even shorter than
Piston; she couldn't have stood taller than 3'5". While Piston was wide
and muscular, Twig was slender as a sapling. Her skin was pale, her hair long
and black, her eyes bright and blue. She wore cargo pants, a white shirt, and a
tool belt from which hung wrenches and screwdrivers. She grinned, displaying
bright teeth.

She's a halfling, Riff
realized. Long ago, her people had immigrated to a small, peaceful planet
called Haven. The gravity was weak, the land scarce, and slowly the people of Haven
had shrunk to diminutive size. Even fully grown, they were now no larger than
human children.

"Twiggle Jauntyfoot, at
your service!" The little woman reached out a small hand for Riff and the
others to shake. "Chief mechanic of the HMS Dragon Huntress."

"Assistant mechanic,"
Piston corrected her.

Twig placed her hands on her
hips. "You're the engineer. I'm the mechanic. And since I'm the only
mechanic here, that makes me the chief one. Got it?"

Piston growled. "Chief
mechanics don't keep dropping their wrenches into the engines! Now go unclog
them! I swear, it's a wonder this ship hasn't fallen apart with you messing
about down there."

Twig blew him a raspberry,
then hopped back into the hatch and vanished.

Steel stepped toward Piston
and spoke for the first time. "The used ship salesman told us the Dragon
Huntress has been idling on the lot for a year now. Have you and Twig been
living here for a year?"

Piston nodded, pulled out a
pipe, and began to smoke. "Aye, laddie. Best place to live, this ship. It's
comfortable once you get used to Twig dropping and breaking things."

Riff glanced up at the
ceiling. He could see another hatch there, leading toward an upper deck. A
heavy padlock secured that hatch shut. "Leroy told us the ship's possessed.
By a demon in the attic."

Piston snorted. "Oh, you
can ignore that one. Problem's under control." He leaped off the couch. "Come
on! Let me give you the grand tour."

The gruffle lolloped across
the main deck, boots thumping, and opened a doorway. He led them into a
corridor lined with other rooms.

"This here's the captain's
quarters. Nice bed and desk there, as you can see. Fancy stuff. And here's the
crew quarters." He pointed into a room containing three bunk beds. "Bit
more crowded but comfortable enough. Here's the washroom—decent enough shower
when it works—and here's my favorite room, the kitchen." He laughed and
patted his belly.

Walking through the ship,
Steel pointed at a doorway. Within lay a round chamber with two seats, its
windows gazing out upon the weedy yard. "What's this place?"

"Ah!" Piston grew
somber. "That there's the escape pod. If the ship's ever shot out of
space, this pod will take you to safety. Can survive a fall through the
atmosphere, if you need to make it down to a planet in a pinch. Hope we never
have to use it." The gruffle shuddered and closed the door. "Moving
right along . . ."

Piston hurried up a staircase—it
seemed to run up the dragon's neck—and into another chamber.

"And here, my friends, is
the bridge!" Piston announced. "The central hub of command. The
brains of the ship. The—" He cleared his throat and tugged down some
cobwebs. "Excuse the mess. We haven't been up here much in the past year."

Riff entered the bridge and looked
around.

He was standing inside the
dragon's head. Panes of glass afforded a very dusty view of the outside world;
Riff could make out little more than smudges. Three plush, suede armchairs stood
before a plethora of control panels. Buttons, joysticks, monitors, and
throttles covered the place, and a hula dancer bobblehead stood on the
dashboard.

In the center of the bridge
stood a woman.

"Konnichiwa!" she
said, pressed her hands together, and bowed.

Riff blinked.

The young woman wore a blue
kimono, and her smooth black hair fell down to her chin. Her accent and
appearance harkened back to Japan, one of the provinces of United Earth, once
an independent empire.

"This here is Giga."
Piston stepped toward the young Japanese woman and kicked her. "Useless
piece of junk."

"Hey, wait a minute!"
Riff said, racing forward. Steel drew his sword. Nova raised her whip. All
three growled at Piston, prepared to fight.

"Whoa, whoa, hold your
horses, lads!" Piston said, raising his hands. "She ain't real. Can't
feel a thing. An android, she is. Rather a useless one too." He kicked
Giga again. A metallic twang filled the bridge.

Giga smiled and bowed her head
again. "I am Giga. Happy to comply!"

Riff sighed and leaned against
the wall. "So the ship comes with an android."

Piston scratched his beard. "Well,
technically, Giga here is the ship. She's what they call an HI. Human
interface. They were a fad back when the Dragon Huntress was built. See
all these control panels?" Piston gestured at them. "Complicated
stuff. Too many buttons and gizmos and doohickeys. So they built Giga. You tell
her what the ship needs to do, and she'll make it happen. Think of her as a
sort of complicated mouse or keyboard."

Steel stepped closer, his
sword still drawn. "You will not refer to this damsel as a piece of
hardware."

Giga turned toward the knight,
still smiling sweetly. A scent of jasmine rose from her, and her silken kimono
rustled softly. "But I am hardware, sir! I am Giga. Happy to comply!"

Riff frowned. "I've heard
of human interfaces before." He turned toward Piston. "Most are
metallic butlers. Not very realistic looking. Giga, well . . . she looks so
human."

Piston nodded. "Aye,
laddie. Whoever built this ship thought she'd be a friendlier face than a metal
man. Thought she'd help reduce stress. If you ask me, she's as big a source of
stress as Twig down in the engine room. Always malfunctioning, our poor Giga
is."

Giga tilted her head. "Some
orders are . . . hard to compute."

Riff turned back toward the
android. "Giga, show me your stuff. Can you play any music?"

The android smiled again and
nodded. "Yes, sir! My databases contain a full library of the classics:
Mozart, Beethoven, Michael Bolton—"

"Do you have any blues?"
Riff asked.

She nodded again. "Yes,
sir! All the classic blues masters. Half Full Freddy. The Squeaky Newsboys. Old
Gin Jackson. Gristle G—"

"Got any Bootstrap and
the Shoeshine Kid?" Riff asked.

Giga frowned and tilted her
head. "Cannot compute."

Riff groaned. "Gods. You
got a cyberspace connection on this thing? Download some B and SK. Play me
something."

"Happy to comply!"
Giga closed her eyes and seemed to think for a moment. Metallic sounds rose
from within her. When she opened her eyes again, the sweet sounds of Bootstrap's
guitar filled the ship, accompanied by the Kid's ivory tickling.

Riff stepped toward one of the
suede chairs and slumped down. He closed his eyes.

For a night and day, he had
been escaping the Cosmians. He had lost his home, his guitar, his old life. All
he wanted to do now was listen to music and sleep.

Just as he began to drift off,
the roar of engines sounded from outside.

His eyes snapped open. He
leaped up.

"Giga, windshield wipers!"
he said.

Giga tilted her head.
"Cannot compute 'windshield.' There is no wind in space. Did you mean the
front fused silica viewport panes?"

"Yes, damn it, wipe
them!"

"Happy to comply!"
said the android, and wipers whirred across the panes.

Riff stared outside and his
heart sank. "Cosmians," he muttered. Several of their starjets were
flying toward the used ship lot.

A voice boomed out of a
megaphone. Metallic. Cruel.

Grotter's voice.

"We know you're in there,
Starfire!" One of the jets flew closer, the barrels of its guns turning
toward the Dragon Huntress. "Step out of the ship and surrender
yourself, or you and everyone inside that box of bolts will die."

CHAPTER NINE:
DRAGONFIRE AND HELLFIRE

"Giga, fly this thing!"
Riff shouted.

The android tilted her head. "Sir,
we are low on fuel, and we haven't flown in a year. I need regular maintenance,
an oil change, a thorough inspection, a hull wash, a paint job, a resupply of
water and toilet paper, a—"

"Just fly, Giga!" he
shouted, gripping the armrests of his chair.

Giga nodded. "Happy to
comply!"

Steel and Nova leaped into
their own seats. With a curse, Piston raced downstairs, muttering something
about priming the engines and Twig's wrenches clogging things up.

The HMS Dragon Huntress began
to rumble and shake.

A black starjet hovered before
them. Within its cockpit blazed Grotter's red eye. The cyborg grinned.

"In the name of the skelkrin
masters, shut down your engines, Riff! Or you will die."

"Giga, now!" Riff
shouted.

She nodded. "Happy to—"

"Just fly!"

With an ear-splitting roar,
the HMS Dragon Huntress blasted upward.

Smoke burst out, covering the
used ship lot. Fire raged. The ship rattled madly, and screws came loose from
panels and rolled across the floor.

"This thing is a death
trap!" Steel shouted, digging his fingers into his seat's armrests.

"The whole planet's a
death trap!" Riff shouted back. "Giga, get us higher! Out of the
atmosphere. Far as you can go!"

"Happy to comply!"

They kept soaring skyward.
Riff's seat shook so madly he thought it would collapse. The windshield panes rattled
so loudly he thought they'd shatter. Through the glass, he saw the Cosmian
starjets follow, slick black sharks chasing a lumbering whale. Blasts of plasma
shot out from the enemy ships. One slammed into the Dragon Huntress, and
the bridge rattled. Sparks flew.

"Giga, you got any
weapons on this ship?" Nova shouted, clinging to her seat.

Giga nodded, the smile never
leaving her face. "Yes, ma'am! Fully loaded stocks of plasma jets, ma'am."

"Then fire! Down the
enemy ships!"

Giga smiled sweetly. "Cannot
compute. HMS Dragon Huntress cannot fire its weapon while leaving the atmosphere."

More blasts of plasma rose
from the enemy ships. Another hit the Dragon Huntress, and more sparks
flew. Riff cursed. This might turn out to be the shortest business venture
in history, he thought.

"Giga, do something!
Evasive action! Dodge the enemy fire."

She nodded. "Happy to co—"

"Enough with that! Just
do it!"

The ship jerked madly in the
sky, swerving in another direction. Steel tumbled right out of his seat and
slammed against a wall. Nova flew into the air. Riff clutched his seat for dear
life. Enemy fire flew all around them, crisscrossing the sky. The enemy jets
roared, swarming upward. The ground was distant now; they were flying high
above the clouds. The dragon ship jerked again, flying left and right, dodging
the enemy plasma.

She's rusty and full of
misfits, Riff thought, but damn she's fast.

"Keep going higher, Giga,"
he said. "Get us into space and then engage those weapons of yours."

The android nodded, smiling
sweetly. "Happy to co— I mean, yes, sir."

The Dragon Huntress kept
soaring and the land grew more and more distant below. And then the sky
vanished. Riff saw the stars. They were in space.

And the Cosmians were still
following. Their black jets soared up, firing their weapons.

"Giga, that plasma cannon?"
Riff said.

"Ready to fire, sir."

"So fire!"

The Dragon Huntress
soared higher, then swerved in the air, positioning its head down toward the
Earth. Riff found himself staring right at the soaring Cosmian jets.

Then the dragon blasted out
its fire.

The plasma flowed from beneath
Riff's feet; he felt the floor thrumming. The energy flared out like fire from
a true dragon's mouth and slammed into an enemy jet.

The Cosmian vessel shattered
and rained down toward the Earth in pieces.

Riff gasped and leaped from
his seat. "Fire, again!"

Giga nodded. "Happy to
comply!"

The Dragon blasted out her
dragonfire, burning down the jets soaring from below. One by one, the enemy
vessels shattered and fell back down to the planet.

The Dragon Huntress
flew on, rising higher, traveling deeper into space, serene, still in one piece,
floating like a leaf on the wind.

For a long moment, they were
all silent, staring at the pieces of enemy jets still raining down.

Finally it was Nova who spoke.
"I like this ship."

Steel nodded. "So do I."

Riff collapsed back into his
seat. "I miss my guitar."

Nova leaned across her seat
and punched his shoulder.

"Giga, take us far out into
space." Riff's voice was weak. "Out into the emptiness. I . . . I'll
. . . I'll wake up later."

He closed
his eyes and he slept.

* * * * *

The Earth was but a speck in the
distance when Riff, suddenly captain of a starship, called a staff meeting.

They met in the main deck, a
motley crew. Riff stared at them one by one.

Nova, warrior-princess from Ashmar,
still wore her golden armor, and her whip hung at her side. Her pointy ears
thrust out from her blond hair, and her green eyes stared back at Riff, and he
saw the rage inside them. He had already taken her off one planet, her
homeland, where she could have risen to the throne. Now, after she had
struggled and fought to find a new home on Earth, he was yanking her away from that
world too, leaving her old life in tatters. The guilt still filled Riff's
stomach like a bad meal.

He turned to look at his
brother. Steel stared back solemnly, his expression inscrutable. His long brown
mustache drooped down to his raised chin. He had polished his armor, and his hand
rested on the pommel of his antique sword. He stood in the corner, refusing to
sit, forever the knight on his guard.

I shattered his life too,
Riff thought, even more guilt piling up.

He turned to look at his new
companions next. Piston sat on the couch, smoking a pipe and stroking his long
white beard. The gruffle stood shorter than Riff's shoulders but probably
weighed more, most of that weight in his muscles. His hammer hung across his
back, its head the size of a shoebox. If the battle had perturbed the gruffle,
he showed no sign of it. He stared down at the counter-squares board, studying
the pieces, seeming as relaxed as a drunken patron at the Blue Strings.

Beside Piston sat little
Twiggle Jauntyfoot. The halfling was a fraction of the gruffle's size, not much
larger than a toddler. Her legs didn't even reach the edge of the couch, let
alone the floor. She too was busy studying the counter-squares board, tapping
her cheek with her wrench and mumbling, deep in thought.

Finally, Giga stood behind the
couch, smiling and pleasant as ever. Not a wrinkle marred her blue kimono, not
a single hair lay out of place on her head. Her scent of jasmine tickled Riff's
nose. Riff wondered how much sentience filled Giga, whether she was aware of
herself as an android, or whether she was essentially just a clever keyboard.

He cleared his throat. "All
right, everyone. Listen up. First staff meeting. Giga's brought us far into the
depths of space, and she's cloaking our signals. We're safe from the Cosmians .
. . for now. But not for long. There's trouble going on in this corner of the
galaxy, and we've got to solve it."

Nova snorted. "Trouble in
the galaxy? Riff, more like you got into trouble in your life and
dragged us into it."

Riff tightened his jaw. "Nova
. . . not in front of my staff."

She laughed. "Your staff?
Riff, two days ago, you were playing guitar for spare change, too poor to even
get drunk. You're not some space captain."

"I am now, Nova. I gave
you a chance to buy this ship yourself. You refused. I swapped my guitar for
the Dragon Huntress, so I'm your captain now."

She growled, leaped to her
feet, and unfurled her whip. "Like hell! If you think I'm going to obey
your orders like some docile geisha, you've got a reality check coming."
She glanced over at Giga. "Sorry, sweetheart. No offense."

Giga only smiled and bowed her
head.

A large thump sounded above.
Riff stared up. On the ceiling, the padlocked hatch rattled.

"What was that?"
Nova whispered, clutching her whip.

"Ignore it." Piston
moved a piece on the counter-squares board. "Trust me. Ignore it."

At his side, little Twig
glanced up to the ceiling, then back down. "Listen to him."

A loud moan sounded above,
then died. Something scraped overhead, then fell silent. Riff frowned up at the
ceiling.

A ship possessed by a demon?
He shuddered. Utter nonsense. Impossible. No such things as demons existed.
Probably just a family of possums, just like Leroy had said.

Riff looked back at the
others. "All right, gang. How much fuel and food we got on this ship? How
far can we get?"

Twig sighed. "Not far.
Romy ate almost all the food and drank almost all the fuel. She—"

"Hush!" Piston said,
glaring at the halfling. "Get back to the engine room, you clod. They don't
need to know about that." He turned back toward Riff. "We've got
enough to reach Mars. Saturn maybe if we tighten our belts. We could have gone
farther on hyperdrive, but we're out of hyperfuel. If we coast to the nearest
colony, we can stock up on more supplies there."

"And this time keep Romy
locked up!" Twig said. "Or she'll just eat it all again."

"Hush you!" Piston
pointed at the hatch on the floor. "Get to the engines."

Riff blinked, looking back and
forth between gruffle and halfling. "Who's Romy?"

"Nobody!" Piston
insisted.

Twig opened her mouth,
prepared to speak again, then closed it when Piston glared at her.

The scratching sounded again
above. The padlock rattled. A new moan rose from the attic.

Riff frowned. "That does
it. What the hell is up there? Piston, you got the key to that padlock?"

The stocky gruffle grumbled
and twisted his fingers. "Aye, Captain. But . . . with all due respect,
sir. I've been engineer on this ship for years now, and I've learned a thing or
two about how the Dragon operates. You really do want to keep that hatch
locked."

"Especially if you don't
want somebody drinking more fuel," Twig added.

Riff held out his hand. "Key.
Now."

Piston took a deep, shaky
breath, and Twig curled up on the couch. Even Giga's smile faltered. With a
wince, Piston held out the key, and Riff snatched it.

"Nova, Steel, watch my
back." A ladder was attached to the wall, leading to the hatch above, and
Riff began to climb. "Whatever's up there, if it tries to bite my head
off, kill it."

"Maybe yes, maybe no,"
said Nova, lazily flicking around her whip.

Steel raised his sword. "By
my honor, brother, if any foul demon of the Abyss slays you, I shall avenge
your death."

Lovely, Riff thought.

He gulped, placed his key into
the padlock, and unlocked it.

The hatch swung open.

A voice wailed.

Wings beat and with a squeal,
something large and red and squirming fell down onto him.

"Fragging aardvarks!"
Nova shouted, leaping back.

Riff thrashed, heart pounding,
trying to free himself. Leathern wings beat. Claws flashed and fire crackled. The
creature wailed above him, crushing him.

"Oh shenanigans!"
Riff finally managed to shove the creature off. He rose to his feet and stared
down.

His eyes widened.

"Yep," Nova said, "it's
a demon all right."

"My bum hurts," the
demon said, sounding miserable. "I fell on my bum." Tears welled in
her eyes, and she began to suck her thumb.

Riff rubbed his eyes in
disbelief. In storybooks, demons were hideous creatures, all hooves and blazing
hatred. The demon who sat before him, sucking her thumb, looked anything but
intimidating. She was a young woman, it seemed, perhaps twenty years old. Her
skin was red, her fingers sprouted claws, and a long tail flicked behind her.
Bat wings grew from her back, and her hair seemed woven of flame, crackling
like a torch. She wore pajamas with little teddy bears printed on them, and she
held a real teddy bear in one hand.

Piston sighed. "Meet
Romy."

The demon pulled her thumb out
of her mouth, waved, and grinned. "Oh hai! Got any fuel around? I'm
parched."

"No drinking fuel!"
Piston roared.

Romy leaped to her feet and
wagged her tail. She turned toward Riff, thrust out her chest, and saluted. "Hi
there, Captain Riff, sir! I heard your name from up above. They usually keep me
locked up there. At least since the time I gnawed through the cooling coils
that day we flew by the sun. Bad timing. But I can hear everything!" She
grinned, revealing long fangs. "Cadet Romy, reporting to duty!"

"You're not a cadet!"
Piston rumbled. "And you're not part of this crew! You're a very bad demon
that's possessing this ship." The gruffle sighed and turned toward Riff. "I'm
sorry, sir. I did warn you, though. She'll be a right nightmare to lock back up
now. Last time she got loose, she hid in the engine room for a week."

Twig nodded. "And she ate
three of my wrenches! Ate them!"

Romy stuck her tongue out at
the little halfling. "Well it's your fault for leaving them in the
kitchen."

"They were on my tool belt!"

Romy snorted. "Tool belt,
kitchen, same difference." The demon turned back toward Riff. "Ignore
the little ones. I'm the most valuable crew member you have. Got any enemies
you need clawed to death? I'll claw 'em!" She lashed her claws. "Got
any nasty aliens you need bitten to death? I'll bite 'em!" She bared her
fangs. "Got any poodles?"

Riff frowned. "Why
poodles?"

"I like poodles."
Romy wagged her tail. "I was hoping you'd have one around. They're
delicious." She smacked her lips.

"Right." Riff turned
toward Piston. "Lock her back up."

Romy gasped, let out a wail,
and her eyes welled up with tears. "You can't make me go back! I won't go!
I won't I won't!" With a wail, the demon leaped forward, barreling between
the others. Her hair of flames crackled. Fast as wildfire, she leaped through
the trapdoor in the floor, racing down into the engine room.

"Great!" Twig said. "She'll
be guzzling down fuel again and eating more wrenches." The halfling
grumbled and raced downstairs after the demon. "It can take days to catch
this one, and we'd be lucky to have any bolts left without chew marks on them."

Riff sank into a couch and
clutched his head.

"Giga?" he
whispered.

The android nodded. "Music,
sir?"

"Yes please."

Soon the sounds of guitar and
keyboards filled the ship again.

Nova flopped down onto the
couch beside Riff, leaned against him, and patted his knee. "Not how you
imagined your week would go."

He sighed and leaned closer to
her. It felt nice. Oh gods, it felt nice. It had been so long since he'd sat
like this with Nova, seen her relaxed, felt her touching him.

He looked at her. His
ex-girlfriend. The fiery warrior he loved. Even now.

I still love you, Nova,
he thought, gazing at her freckled face, green eyes, pointy ears, hair like
molten gold.

"Nov, I'm sorry." He
held her hand. "Honestly. I'm sorry I dragged you into this mess. I know
that . . ." His throat felt tight. "I know that you found a better
life without me. Fame in the arena. A fancy motorbike. A luxury apartment at
Dune Plaza. A new life on Earth, better than the one I gave you. And I'm sorry."
He looked around him at the ship. "You deserve more than to be dragged
across the solar system inside a rusty dragon, a crazed cult in pursuit, and a
demon guzzling down fuel in the engine room."

Nova nodded. "I do. I was
a princess of Ashmar once, you know, until I followed you away from my home
down to that rock you call Earth. And I still follow you." Her eyes were
suddenly damp. "Damn you, Riff. Damn you."

Riff turned to look at Steel.
His brother stood, stiff as always, his hand clutching his sword. "Sit
down, Steel."

The knight raised his chin. "A
knight does not sit while defending his—"

"Sit."

Steel sat.

"Look, brother,"
Riff continued. "I want to apologize to you too. I didn't want to drag you
into this either. I know you were happy in your castle, with your horse, with—"

"I was not happy,"
Steel said.

Riff blinked. "But . . .
you had it all. A castle, a noble steed, the life of a knight."

Steel sighed and lowered his
head. "Brother, I'm a relic of an older time. I know this. A rusty old
relic, as Nova has called me. What's a knight without a battle to fight?
Without enemies to slay?" He looked around him and nodded. "But now .
. . now I'm a knight who found a dragon. Who found a quest." He squeezed
Riff's shoulder. "Who fights with a brother he loves. We'll find Father.
Our family will reunite, fighting together."

A great, sniveling sound rose
below. Romy's head thrust out from the basement, and she blew her nose into a
handkerchief. "That . . . that was beautiful." Tears streamed down
the demon's red cheeks. "Just beau—ow!" Romy glared down into the
engine room. "Stop tugging my tail, Twig!"

The demon vanished back into
the basement.

Riff sighed. He rose to his
feet and began walking toward the bridge. "Giga, come with me. We're
taking this hunk of junk to the nearest colony. We begin our search for my old
man there. And if any Cosmians show up on the way? Do that dragonfire thing
again."

The android grinned and
followed. "Happy to comply!"

The HMS Dragon Huntress
sailed onward through space. The music played on. Down in the basement,
wrenches clattered, Twig cursed, and Romy wailed.

CHAPTER TEN:
EMPEROR IN THE ALLEY

Grotter, Field Commander of the Cosmian
Order, walked into the alleyway, his metal claw ready to draw blood. With every
step, his body clanked and his anger grew.

Starfire almost killed me, he
thought, clenching his fist. He almost blasted my jet from the sky. If
Grotter hadn't swerved his jet around, the dragon's fire would have burned him.
Now fire seemed to blaze inside Grotter, an unquenchable rage.

The alley was a narrow, filthy
tunnel like the intestine of a Carinian stone-beast. Scraps of newspaper,
Styrofoam cups, and empty beer bottles rolled across the ground. Laundry hung
between the windows of the apartment towers that rose all around him. A
homeless man lay by a trash bin, drinking spirits from a bottle in a paper bag.
Muffled blues wafted from ahead, discordant wailing like dying cats.

Sickening, Grotter
thought.

Once the skelkrin masters
arrived on this planet, he knew, they would clean up the filth. They would burn
all the beggars, the musicians, the unwashed masses. They would tear down the
hovels and alleyways. They would erect great towers in their stead, massive
monuments of black iron. They would turn Earth into a world of might, of
ruthless efficiency. A great outpost of the Skelkrin Empire.

And I will rule this planet
for them, Grotter thought. His mouth watered with anticipation. For my
masters, I will turn the Earth into the greatest fortress the galaxy has ever
seen.

He sucked in air. Humans were
weak. Humans were pathetic. Humans could lose their arms to the fire, lose
their faces, lose half their insides. Grotter looked down at his body, a body
more machine than flesh now. Skin, muscle, veins, all fused with tubes, metal plates,
screws, gears, moving parts. A body both frail and strong. A clockwork worm.

He kicked an alley cat,
sending the vermin fleeing, and kept walking closer to the music. Bile filled
his mouth.

"But the skelkrins are
strong," he hissed into the shadows. "The skelkrins are superior
beings. And I, Grotter, am blessed to serve them."

Finally, with the guitar
wailing grown to intolerable volume, Grotter reached the backside of the Blue
Strings club. The two girls stood there in the alleyway, leaning against a wall
and chewing gum.

"Hey, mister!" said
one, a scrawny rat of a girl with frizzy yellow hair. "This here's our
alleyway. Skedaddle."

"Yeah!" said the
other, a lanky girl with garish makeup. "We ain't letting no strangers in
here, mister. Get lost!" She popped her bubble gum at him.

Grotter stepped closer. A gust
of wind blew back his cloak and hood, revealing his body and face, the flesh
fused with the metal. He raised his claws, gears clicked, and the fingers
flexed. The girls gasped and took a step back.

"Your names are . . .
Mandy and Tammy, yes?" Grotter stepped closer, a smile twisting what
remained of his mouth. "Friends to Raphael 'Riff' Starfire."

Mandy, the girl with frizzy
yellow hair, flipped him the finger. She was trembling but managed to glare at
him. "Who's our friend ain't none of your business, mister. What are you
anyway, some kinda freak or somethin'?"

"Yeah!" said Tammy,
the girl with garish makeup. "Ain't none of your beeswax who we's friends
with." She drew a gun and pointed it at him. "Now amscray!"

Grotter stepped even closer;
he now stood only two feet away from the girls. They backed up, pressing
against the back wall of the Blue Strings. The wailing of guitars still rose
from inside, and now they sounded to Grotter like screams of anguish. He
brought his claw closer to the girls, letting the gears click, the blades move
up and down. He fixed his red, dilating eye upon them.

"Yes, I remember you two,"
he whispered. "When my men chased Riff out of this cesspool you call a
club, you fired your guns at me. You let Riff escape. I will let you live . . .
but only if you tell me where Riff fled to. I know he left the Earth. Where is
he heading?"

Mandy snorted. She turned
toward her friend. "I've had enough of this bozo. You wanna go play some stickball?"

"Yeah!" said Tammy. "Boring
here anyways." She pointed her gun at Riff. "Now get lost, freak! Go
suck on a rusty pipe, you piece of scrap metal."

The girls tried to shove past
him.

Grotter thrust his claws.

He grabbed Tammy by the throat
and squeezed.

The girl screamed and fired
her gun. The bullets slammed against the metallic half of Grotter's face and ricocheted.
He tightened his claws, and her screams died. Blood sprayed him.

The second waif, that rat
named Mandy, screamed and tried to flee. Grotter opened his metal palm wide.
Light coalesced and blasted out, slamming into Mandy's back. She pitched
forward, hit the ground, and her blood pooled. Weeping, she began to crawl
away.

Grotter approached slowly and
knelt above the wounded vermin.

"You could have lived,"
he whispered. "You could have lived to see my skelkrin masters arrive
in all their glory, could have gazed upon their holy might . . . at least
before they burned you." He shook his head. "The folly of youth."

"Please, mister, I ain't
gonna hurt you, I—"

He thrust down his claws.

She gave a last scream, then
fell silent.

Grotter flicked blood off his
claw, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and patted his face dry. Killing
was such a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.

Two girls lay dead, but a
third girl still evaded him. A girl more important by far. A girl who could
change the fate of the Cosmos.

"Where are you, my precious
Midnight?" Grotter whispered.

He turned back toward the Blue
Strings. The old wizard had sent the pirilian here, yet she dallied. Perhaps
she hid in the shadows of a nearby alley. Perhaps she hid in the swamps or
forests of a distant world halfway across the galaxy.

"And perhaps . . .
perhaps you shelter her, Riff Starfire," Grotter whispered. His metal hand
clanked as his finger-blades flexed. "I will find you, Riff, and I will
kill you too . . . slowly. Lovingly. Bit by bit."

Deep inside his mechanical
head, his communicator beeped.

Grotter's heart seemed to sink
down to his pelvis with fear. An instant later, it soared in elation.

Yes. He feared his master. And
he loved his master. Grotter's body trembled, and sweat dripped down his
forehead.

He knelt in the blood, bowed
his head, and answered the call.

Light streamed out from his
mechanical eyeball, hit the ground several meters away, then rose into a
hologram of his master.

Grotter bowed deeper. "Master!"

Before him, a flickering
hologram in black and crimson, stood Emperor Lore himself.

The skelkrin master was a
massive, towering figure, eight feet tall and so wide he filled the alleyway.
The hologram needed no magnification; this was a life-sized representation of
the warrior-god. Spikes, hooks, and blades rose from the emperor's black armor.
His eyes, two white smelters, blazed with the fury of supernovas. His claws,
long and black and gleaming, made Grotter's own mechanical hand seem no more
intimidating than a butter knife.

Emperor Lore opened his
massive jaws, revealing rows of daggerlike fangs. He spoke in a deep, rumbling
voice that thudded against Grotter's eardrums and seemed to pound against his
very bones.

"Have you found the pirilian
girl, Grotter?"

Cold sweat dripped down Grotter's
back. "Not yet, my lord. Forgive me! Forgive my failure! I am but a human,
not a mighty skelkrin as you are." He glanced up, desperate to please. "I
will find her, master. I swear it! I will find her and—"

Grotter screamed.

Through their connection,
Emperor Lore had access to Grotter's internal mechanisms, the plethora of
wires, engines, and moving pieces that filled him. And now Lore twisted those
mechanisms like a fist crumpling a can. Metal dented. Electricity sparked out,
driving into what remained of Grotter's human flesh. Pain—horrible, white,
all-consuming—surged through him.

When finally the pain ended, Grotter
fell and shuddered. Smoke rose from his robes.

"You will find the girl
and bring her to me," said Emperor Lore. "Without her, my plan to
build a skelkrin utopia on Earth cannot commence. Do you not wish to see a Skelkrin
Earth?"

Grotter pushed himself to his
knees, still shaking. "I wish for it with all my heart, master! With every
breath!"

"Then find her. You have
one of your Earth weeks. The clock is ticking, Grotter. If you disappoint me,
you will not rule this planet as my servant. You will instead scream in my
dungeons, my slave to torment."

With that, the hologram
vanished.

Grotter remained kneeling for
a long time, allowing the pain to subside.

Finally he pushed himself to
his feet and began walking again.

His men would remain on this
planet, scouring the alleys and bars of Cog City. But he, Grotter, had farther
places to search.

"The girl is seeking you,
Riff," he whispered. "And so I will seek you too."

His small, fragile starjets
had failed to stop Riff's dragon. It was time to soar in a great beast of his
own.

CHAPTER ELEVEN:
GIGA'S LAMENT

Riff was sitting in the Dragon's
kitchen, drinking strong black coffee, when Piston lumbered in holding a sheaf
of papers. Shorter than Riff's shoulder but quite a bit wider, Piston lollopped
more than walked.

"Captain, I thought you
might like to take a look." The burly gruffle placed the papers down on the
table and smoothed his long white beard. "What with us being sat on the
lot for an Earth year, our projects have piled up."

They were several days from
Earth, coasting on thruster engines deeper into the solar system. It was slow
progress, and so far quiet progress too. No Cosmian ships. No other ships at
all, just the emptiness of space. Within a few days, they would reach the asteroid
belt and the human miner colonies. Riff was hoping to hear some news of his
father there.

Riff placed down his mug and
stared at the pile of papers. Over a hundred sheets rose there. "Projects?"

Piston nodded. "Aye, sir.
From our clients, sir. The year we sat on the lot, no captain around, our
clients kept calling. We've got a year's worth of work to catch up on. The
alien control business is a busy one."

Riff sighed and turned toward
the coffeepot, hoping for a refill, only to see Romy holding the pot up with
both hands, guzzling down the dark brew. The demon's throat bobbed, her tail
wagged, and her wings flapped with every gulp. Her hair of fire crackled,
casting its light upon her red skin and claws. Despite being an adult demon—if
she were a human, at least, Riff would have guessed her to be about twenty
years old—Romy wore dinosaur pajamas, and she held her beloved teddy bear
under her arm.

"Mmm, good." Romy
lowered the empty pot and licked her fangs. "Not as good as poodle soup.
And not as good as fuel. But better than licking the mildew off the cooling
pipes. Not that I . . . ever tried that. At all." She glanced around nervously.

Riff turned
back toward Piston.

"Piston, I'm a blues
player. I'm not in the alien control business."

"You are now, sir."
Piston nodded. "With all due respect, sir, you became an alien hunter when
you bought the ship. Alien Hunters Inc. is tied to the Dragon Huntress,
sir. And we're low on cash. Fact is we're dead broke. We need to get to work.
We've barely got enough fuel to reach the colonies, let alone leave the solar
system."

Romy held the empty coffeepot
over her mouth, shaking out the last drops. "I'm thirsty again! Being a
demon with fire for hair makes you thirsty. And I love drinking fuel. We need
to buy more."

Piston shook his fist at her. "Hush,
you, and return to the attic or I'll blast you out into space."

The demon blew him a raspberry,
then tugged up her pajama pants and began rummaging through bottles of juice in
the cupboard.

Riff moved the papers farther
away from the demon; with her flaming hair, he thought she might ignite the
pile. He sighed. Perhaps Piston was right. They needed cash, and a short gig
couldn't hurt. He began rifling through the papers, looking at their upcoming
jobs.

The first sheet showed a
request from a Martian colony. A family of Centaurian rodents, little furry
critters, had made it into their silos and was eating all the grain. They
needed a team to dive into the silos, fish out the pests, and save as much of
the grain as possible. The idea of swimming in wheat didn't appeal much to
Riff. He flipped to the next page.

This request came from a
station orbiting Jupiter. A cloud of nano-biters had infected one of their
quarters, little pests that bit into people's skin and laid eggs within. Riff
quickly turned to the next page.

This job was even worse.
Floating alien ghosts, origin unknown, had possessed the bodies of several
astronauts exploring solar flares. It sounded like they needed an exorcist more
than alien hunters.

"Is business always this
busy?" Riff asked, looking up at Piston.

"Not normally, sir."
The gruffle shook his head. "But what with the Skelkrin Empire expanding
across the galaxy, loads of cosmic critters are fleeing. Like animals from
wildfire, they are. Pushing deep into human territory, sir."

Riff shuddered. The skelkrins.
Grotter's favorite killers. Riff didn't want to even think about those
predators getting anywhere near the solar system.

He flipped to the next page
and gasped. "Bloody hell!"

This work order came from
light-years away, a planet called Cirona in the Vega system.

They were having trouble with
a pirilian.

"A pirilian." Riff
rose to his feet, clutching the paper. "They need a pirilian removed!"

Romy tossed down an empty
bottle of orange juice. She scratched her backside. "What's a pirilian? Is
that anything like a poodle?" The demon hiccupped. "I want some
poodle soup!"

Riff ignored her. He stared at
the paper, reading it again and again, getting more and more excited.

"It's her," he
whispered. "Midnight. It has to be her! Look at this, Piston. A pirilian
girl—purple skin, yellow eyes, able to teleport herself at will and blast qi
energy from her palms. Says here she showed up on Planet Cirona and has been
terrorizing the settlers. Stealing their sheep. Eating their crops. Scaring the
children. Says her starjet crash-landed and burned down a farm, and nobody's
been able to catch her." He slammed the paper down onto the tabletop. "How
many pirilians could be left since the skelkrins destroyed their planet? Not
many, I wager. This might be her. The girl the skelkrins are after. The girl
Dad tried to send to me."

Both Piston and Romy gaped at
him silently, eyes wide, mouths open. Crumbs fell from Romy's mouth, and she
dropped the box of cookies she held.

Finally Piston found the
ability to speak. "Captain, I don't know much about what sort of trouble
you're in, or what pirilian you've been looking for. I'm only an engineer, sir,
no more, no less. And what I can tell you is that we can't travel to Cirona."

Riff paced the kitchen. "Why
not?"

"Well, sir, Cirona lies
light-years away, all the way at the Vega system. We're traveling on thruster
power only, sir. Would take us decades to get there at this rate."

"We need to get our
hyperdrive engines working." Riff's fingertips tingled. Maybe Dad is there.

"Aye, sir. We've got the best
damn hyperdrive engines in the galaxy. But no juice to them. Somebody ate all
the hyperfuel packs." He gave Romy a dirty look.

The demon pouted. "I was
hungry!"

Riff groaned and tugged his
hair. "All right. We head to the nearest colony. We buy more hyperfuel."

Piston shifted his weight
around. "Sir, as I said, we're dead broke. Even a single hyperfuel coil
will cost at least a thousand credits, if we buy the lowest grade and haggle.
We need money. We need a gig in the solar system before we can buy enough juice
to blast out toward another star."

Riff groaned and paced the
kitchen, tugging at his hair. Empty bottles rolled around his feet. It was
infuriating. He wanted to fly over to Planet Cirona now, to find the girl, to
find answers, damn it. Not go to some blasted outpost to fish out alien pests
clogging up somebody's toilet.

Finally he sat down with a
sigh. "Fine! We do one gig. For quick cash. Then buy hyperfuel." Riff
turned to glare at Romy. "And you're not eating that one! So help me God,
I will blast you out into the vacuum of space if you cause any more damage to
my ship."

The demon pouted, hugged her
teddy bear close, and fled the kitchen.

Riff lifted another sheet of
paper from the pile. "This one here. It's from an asteroid nearby. We can
get there within a day, even on thruster power. Says here . . ." He
squinted. "Says they got a Denebian tardigrade in their pyrite mine."
He looked up at Piston. "That doesn't sound too bad. I've heard of
tardigrades. Tiny little critters, aren't they?"

"Aye, sir." Piston
nodded. "Wee little buggers. Shouldn't be a problem, sir. Probably could
fetch a thousand credits for the job too. Not a lot of money, but might just buy
enough fuel to get us to Cirona."

Riff nodded. "I'll have
Giga set a course." He was surprised to find a grin stretching his cheeks.
"We're off to hunt an alien."

* * * * *

Riff sat in the captain's chair,
watching the asteroid grow closer. To his left sat Nova, wearing as always her
armored golden catsuit, her whip at her side. To his right sat Steel, clad as
always in his armor.

"Giga, bring us in slowly,"
Riff said. He pointed. "See that landing pad? Set us down."

The Human Interface stood at
his side. She bowed, her kimono rustling. "Happy to comply, Captain."

The rest of the crew was off
the bridge. Piston and Twig were down in the engine room, keeping the Dragon
Huntress flying. They had given up on trapping Romy back in the attic,
instead keeping her busy in the crew quarters with a stack of comics. Riff was
finally able to relax, to feel a little bit like an actual captain.

He returned his eyes toward
the asteroid outside. It was a massive rock, the size of Cog City back home.
The sort of rock that had wiped out the dinosaurs. Only this rock, instead of
slamming a hole into Earth, had Earthlings digging holes into it. Mines gaped
open on its surface, pockmarks in the stony face. A city had sprung up around
the mines, its lights bright and parti-colored.

"Pyrite City," Steel
said softly, watching it approach. "A hive of gambling, flesh for hire,
and booze that flows like water."

Riff leaned back in his seat. "Sounds
like my kind of town." He ignored his brother's frown.

Just the place where a
traveling magician might perform, Riff thought. Dad might have been
here. Might be here now.

They were a hundred kilometers
away when a light began to ding on the control panels. Riff leaned toward a
monitor and groaned.

"Captain, we have now run
out of fuel," Giga said, chipper as always.

Riff groaned. "I can see
that. Can you still land this thing?"

Giga tilted her head. She
emitted mechanical hums and clinks like an overheated computer struggling to push
through its algorithms. "Uncertain."

"Uncertain!" Riff
leaped to his feet. "Giga! This is kind of important to know."

She smiled at him and bowed
her head. "Captain, I've calculated an accurate course to the landing pad.
But we need some fuel to slow our descent and engage our landing gear."

"God damn hunk of junk,"
Nova muttered. Riff wasn't sure if she was referring to the ship, to Giga, or
both.

The asteroid was getting a lot
closer now. Riff could no longer see space around it, just a massive city on a
massive rock, getting closer and closer.

He cursed and hit the
communicator he kept strapped across his wrist. "Piston! You hear me down
there?"

The gruffle's voice rose
through the speakers. "Aye, Captain. We're out of fuel, Captain!"

"I know!" Riff
winced seeing the asteroid approach. "Can you slow our flight and get out
our landing gear?"

"Aye, Captain,"
Piston said. "I can reroute battery power to the side thrusters, and I can
hack through to the landing gear. Shouldn't take more than an hour, sir."

Riff cursed and turned to
Giga. "Get us out of here! Fly away from this damn rock. Give Piston time
to work."

The android smiled sweetly. "Cannot
compute. No fuel left to change course."

Riff let out an enraged groan
and spoke back into his communicator. "Piston, you have thirty seconds."
He hung up and turned toward Steel and Nova. "Put your seatbelts on."

"There are none!"
Steel said, gripping his armrests.

Nova leaped right onto the
knight's lap. She began to tie her whip around them.

"What! Nova!" The
knight blustered. "Stop that, this is not the place nor the time for—"

"Shut up!" she
shouted. "I'm saving your life!"

"What about me?"
Riff cried as the asteroid zoomed up toward them.

"You can fly through the
windshield!" Nova shouted back. "Maybe it'll knock some sense into
your head."

"Cannot compute
'windshield.'" Giga tilted her head. "There is no wind in space. Did
you mean front fused silica viewport panes?"

"I meant
windshields!" Nova shouted. "That's what I call them. I—whoa!"

The ship jerked madly. Steam
blasted out into space. They veered through the vacuum. The lights of Pyrite
City streamed below upon the rock.

"Captain!" rose
Piston's voice from the communicator. "Captain, I had to blast air out
from the attic! Might want to avoid stepping up there, unless you enjoy time in
a vacuum. I have a clever way to bring out the landing gear too, sir. I just
got to divert the cooling vapor into—"

"Stop explaining, just do
it!" Riff shouted.

He could see the landing field
ahead. A hundred other starships stood there, clinging to the asteroid's microgravity.
Riff gritted his teeth and clung to his seat. At his side, Steel tightened his
arms around Nova, who sat in his lap; her whip wrapped around them both. Only
Giga seem unperturbed, standing in the open. Riff reached out and grabbed the
android's hand.

"Hold onto me, Gig,"
he said. "This might get bumpy."

"Happy to comply!"
Her hand tightened around his.

For another two seconds, they
streamed through space.

Then the universe seemed to
shatter.

Sparks flew in a great shower,
covering the windshield.

The impact bolted Riff out of
his seat. He clung to Giga with one hand, to his chair with the other. From
deep in the ship, he could hear Romy cry out in terror. Smoke blasted out.
Bolts rattled. The hula dancer bobblehead fell off the dashboard. The ship
jerked again, pushing Riff deep into his seat. Giga fell right onto his lap,
and he clung to her.

With a great screech, the HMS
Dragon Huntress ground to a halt on the landing pad.

"Yeah!" Nova
shouted, a huge grin on her face. "That was fun. I like this ship."

Steel's face looked green. "I
miss my horse."

Romy's voice rose from deep within
the ship, sounding miserable. "I fell on my bum again."

Riff had to sit for long,
quiet moments, holding Giga on his lap. He spat out a strand of her hair.

"Are we landed?" he
whispered.

Giga nodded. "Aye, sir."

"Good. Good." Riff
gulped. "Giga, do we carry any spare underwear on the ship?"

"Aye, sir."

"Fantastic." He
wiped his brow. "Wonderful thing to keep stocked, fresh underwear. Useful
when you have a bunch of morons flying your ship."

He groaned and rose to his
feet. His head spun. Outside the windshield, he saw the runway, several other
parked ships, and beyond them the bright glass buildings of the city. No
sirens. No enraged police. If anyone in Pyrite City had noticed the near-crash,
it seemed they had shrugged it off.

The door to the bridge opened.
Piston and Twig entered, badges with the words "Alien Hunters" pinned
to their chests. Piston held out several more badges in his massive palms.

"We have to wear badges?"
Steel asked, frowning. He placed his hand over his heart. His breastplate was
still scratched there; it was the place that had once displayed the sigil of
the Knights of Sol, a sigil he had been forced to efface.

"Aye, laddie."
Piston nodded. "It'll snap right onto your armor. Got to be professional
when dealing with the clients, you know."

"Is that why there's
mustard on your clothes?" little Twig asked, poking a stain on Piston's leather-clad
gut.

The gruffle raised his hammer;
its metal head was nearly larger than Twig. "Hush you!"

Twig thrust out her chin at
him and smoothed her own clothes—cargo pants and a white shirt—obviously
rather proud of how clean they were. Her collection of wrenches, her pride and
joy, hung from her tool belt.

Riff was still wearing the
jeans and T-shirt he had worn in the Blue Strings. He chose an Alien Hunters
badge from the pile and pinned it to his chest. At his side, Nova snapped a
badge onto her catsuit. Steel snapped a badge onto his breastplate, hiding the
old sigil that had once shone there.

"Great," Riff said. "Ready
to hunt a tardigrade and make some bucks?"

And look for Dad, he
added silently.

They all nodded.

Before they could leave the
bridge, Romy darted in through the doorway. She had finally changed out of her
pajamas. She now wore jeans shorts and a T-shirt with a purple dinosaur on the
chest. Holes were cut into the clothes for her tail and wings. An Alien Hunters
badge proudly shone upon her breast. She held a red pitchfork in one hand, her
teddy bear in the other.

"Oh hai, everyone!" The
demon wagged her tail. "I'm ready."

Piston glared at her. "Not
you! You stay on the ship, you clod."

Romy's tail hung low between
her legs. Her hair of living fire drooped. "I thought you wanted me off
the ship."

"I do!" Piston said.
"Oh gods of stone and metal, I do. But I don't want you roaming loose in
Pyrite City neither. You're likely to blast the whole asteroid to bits. Get
into your attic!"

"I can't!" Romy
stamped her feet. "You took all the air out, and it's a vacuum in there
now, and my hair needs air to live." She pointed at the fire on her head. "If
you haven't noticed, it's made of fire. And fire needs oxygen." She raised
her nose. "So I have to come with you. I have to or I'll die."

"No." Piston crossed
his arms.

Romy pouted. She turned toward
Riff. "Please, Captain! Oh please. I'll be ever so good. Piston never lets
me go anywhere. He keeps me cooped up in this ship all day long, and I never get
to hunt aliens. Please let me come along! I promise I'll catch the tardigrade
for you. I'm good at hunting tardigrades. Back in Hell, when I was only a
little demon, I always used to hunt them."

"There's no such thing as
Hell," Riff said. "That's just a myth."

She snorted. "Well, how
do you explain a demon? I ain't no alien. I hunt aliens!" She growled and
brandished her pitchfork.

Riff rolled his eyes. "Fine!
If I leave you here, you're likely to eat the furniture." He turned toward
Giga next; the android had not pinned a badge to her kimono. Riff's voice
softened. "Aren't you coming with us, Giga?"

Romy snorted. "She can't!"

Riff frowned and stepped
closer to the android. He held her hands. "You can't come with us, Giga?"

For the first time since he'd
known her, the android did not smile. She lowered her head, her eyes sad. "I
am a Human Interface, Captain. I'm part of this ship. I cannot ever leave it,
no more than a brain can leave a body." The android turned to stare out
the windshield, her expression almost wistful. "For many years, I've
dreamed of stepping out there, of seeing the wondrous worlds of the galaxy. Yet
should I leave this ship, my positronic network will lose its connection. I
would die."

Riff squeezed her hand. "I'm
sorry, Giga. I didn't know. How about I buy you a gift out there—bring a bit
of that outside world inside the ship? What would you like?"

The android's face brightened.
"A bobblehead." She pointed at the hula dancer who swayed on the
dashboard. "Our old captain bought me that once, when I was only a new
android, still fresh from my packaging. I would quite like another one."

"If I can find one, I'll
buy one." Riff nodded. "That's a promise." He turned to the others.
"Now let's go! While the cosmos is young."

Leaving Giga on the bridge,
the others stepped through the main deck, opened the airlock, and climbed
outside to hunt an alien.

CHAPTER TWELVE:
FOOL'S GOLD

Six Alien Hunters walked into
Pyrite City, their badges on their chests, hefting their weapons.

Riff Starfire, his gun in his
holster, his jeans torn but his head held high. Steel Starfire, clad in armor,
a massive mustache covering his lip and a massive sword at his waist. Nova the ashai
gladiator, swaying in her golden uniform, her electric whip crackling in her
hand. Piston, gruff and burly, a hunk of muscle with a beard and a hammer large
enough to shatter worlds. Twiggle Jauntyfoot, small and quick, a deadly
electric wrench in her hand, the pockets of her cargo pants jangling with
screws and bolts. Finally, struggling to keep up, Romy the demon, her hair a
living torch, her fangs gleaming, her wings wide, a pitchfork and teddy bear in
her hands.

Their badges all gleamed,
displaying their name: Alien Hunters.

Has anyone in the galaxy,
Riff wondered as they entered the city's main boulevard, ever seen a more
useless bunch of misfits?

Pyrite City, true to its name,
glittered like fool's gold. Halls of glass and metal rose upon the asteroid,
clutching the great rock in a garish embrace. Within shone a thousand bars,
clubs, brothels, and casinos. The miners who had first drilled here had grown
rich. They had brought their families. They had attracted thousands of other
businesses like a carcass attracts flies. Where money flowed from the rock,
places to spend that money grew in a forest of light.

Riff and his crew now walked
down the main boulevard which led from the spaceport deeper into the city.
Above, through a glass ceiling, Riff could barely see the stars. Too much light
shone from the buildings at his sides. Tourists played slot machines within
glittering dens. Animatronic animals roared and reared as children squealed on
their backs. Miner's wives shopped for jewels and gowns. Teenagers laughed as
they played minigolf in a field of robotic dinosaurs.

As they walked deeper into the
city, Steel's frown deepened too.

"What has happened to
humanity?" the knight muttered. "We've replaced honor with idols of
gold."

"Of pyrite," Riff
said. "We no longer live in the dark ages, brother. Gold is useless.
Pyrite holds the universe together. Can't enter hyperspace without it."

The knight snorted. "In
the old days, they called it fool's gold. Fools are what I still see."

While the knight glowered,
Romy looked around with huge eyes. Her jaw hung loose.

"Riff, Riff!" The
demon ran up to him, tail wagging. "Can I go play minigolf? Please please
please."

"No, Romy."

She whined and hopped around. "Can
I go ride the elephant?" She pointed at a pink animatronic elephant with a
top hat and swan wings. "Oh please!"

"Romy, no!" Riff
grabbed her hand and dragged her along. "We've got no time or money for
games. We have to catch a tardigrade."

The demon pouted. "But I
want to ride the elephant!" Her voice rose almost as loud as an elephant's
trumpeting. "I want to, I want to, I—"

"Romy, if you misbehave,
I'm going to lock you up in the spaceship again."

She groaned and stamped her
feet, but she shut her mouth and walked along with him. Her tail dragged
between her legs.

As they walked deeper into the
city, Riff moved to walk closer to Steel. He leaned over and spoke softly for
only his brother's ears.

"Steel, keep both eyes
open. I don't trust that Grotter's not still skulking about, or that he can't
reach us even here. See any sign of something off? Anything you suspect?"

The knight looked around, eyes
narrow. "I've seen evil here, but not the evil of the Cosmians." He
met Riff's eyes. "If they arrive here, you have my sword. We fought them
on Earth. We will fight them here if we must. I've got your back, brother.
Always."

Riff turned to his left and
saw Nova walking there. She moved closer to him. She held her whip with one
hand, and she placed her other hand on his shoulder.

"And you have my whip,
Riff." Her green eyes stared at him steadily.

He nodded. His throat suddenly
felt too tight for words. The past week had turned his life upside down and
shaken it more wildly than a crashing starship. He had killed men. He had lost
his home, lost all that was dear to him. And now he was here, so far from
Earth, poor, afraid, Cosmians behind him and an empire of predators ahead of
him.

But I have Steel and Nova,
he thought. I have my brother. I have the woman whom I love.

In a cosmos torn apart, they
were his anchors. Forever at his sides.

A high-pitched voice rose from
ahead. "Alien Hunters! Are you the Alien Hunters?"

Riff looked forward to see a
little, balding starling in a gray polyester suit rush toward them. Starlings
were what most folk called "mostly human." Over thousands of years in
the galaxy, a few humans had picked up some alien genes. Often the babes died,
horribly deformed. Sometimes they survived and passed on the starling genes to
future generations. The starling before Riff reminded him of a mole. The man
had long whiskers, buck teeth, and very large, very dark eyes that made sucking
sounds as they blinked.

"Alien Hunters, at your
service," Riff said. It still felt strange to think of himself as having
an actual job. Aside from his three days at age sixteen working at an egg whisk
factory, this would be his first day doing real work.

I never had a real job,
real money, a real life when I brought Nova to Earth. I'll show her that I can
be the man she has always needed me to be.

Riff
reached out his hand, and the starling shook it in his paw. The man had fingers
that ended with small, hard claws like halved coins. Sweat dripped down his
forehead.

"Thank
goodness you're here. You're three months late!" The starling wiped his
hand on a handkerchief. "I am Myron, chief of logistics here at Pyrite
Mines, and it's been a disaster, an absolute disaster."

Riff nodded
sympathetically. "I heard you have a tardigrade infestation. Cute little critters.
Shouldn't be too hard to remove. Lead the way. We'll take care of it."

I'll step
on the little bugger, then collect our thousand bucks and get off this rock, he
thought. He wanted to leave quickly. The casinos, pubs, rides—none of it
appealed to him. He needed to be back out in space. To blast off to Vega and
find the pirilian woman . . . and maybe his father.

Myron led
them through the city, his gait shuffling and nervous. The starling kept
rubbing his hands together, mumbling of lost revenue, of pyrite shipments late
to deliver, and of the ruin that would befall his little kingdom. He led them
away from the bars and neon lights and to a platform overlooking a track. A
tunnel drove deep into darkness.

"I'll
take you to see the mines." Myron wrung his hands. "Oh, by the golden
gods . . . it's tearing them apart."

The
starling pressed a button, and lights flared in the tunnel. A yellow train
emerged from the shadows, shrieking across the tracks, looking like a great
caterpillar that moved on many legs. When Riff looked closer, he saw that it was
a caterpillar—a massive, train-sized caterpillar that scuttled across the
tracks. The great beast skidded to a stop at the platform.

"It's
. . . a living train." Riff rubbed his eyes.

Myron
frowned. "Well, we wouldn't kill it!" He gestured. "Come on,
come on. Hurry up now."

He swung
open a door on the caterpillar's body, revealing a hollowed out interior. Riff
glanced at his fellow Alien Hunters. They seemed as shocked as he was.

"While
we're young!" Myron said, stepping into the cabin.

Riff
shrugged and stepped into the giant caterpillar. Clutching their weapons and
glancing around, his companions followed. On the inside, the caterpillar was
smooth and hard. Framed advertisements for lingerie, casinos, and Happy Cow's
Shawarma hung on the walls. Once the door was closed, the great caterpillar
burst into a run. Through windows, Riff saw the walls of the tunnel stream by.

Romy leaned
closer to Riff and whispered, "This is even better than an elephant ride!"

The
caterpillar kept scuttling down the tunnel, sloping downward into the asteroid.
Lights streamed alongside. Smooth jazz played within the cabin from hidden
speakers, officially known as the worst music in the universe. It made Riff more
queasy than the swaying floor did.

Finally,
blessedly, the living train slowed to a halt and the doors swung open. Myron
led the way, and the Alien Hunters stepped outside to find themselves gazing
upon the mines of Pyrite.

"Wow,"
Riff whispered.

"Wow,"
Nova agreed.

Piston tsked
his tongue. "Amateurs, you humans are. Amateurs. Back on my planet, dogs
dig better holes than this."

Riff had
never been to Piston's planet, the great mining world of Gruffstone, but he was
hard-pressed to imagine any mines more impressive than these.

Below the platform, a shaft
sank deep into the asteroid. It seemed to plunge down for kilometers, lined
with blinking lights. Hundreds of smaller tunnels branched off from it, leading
in every direction. Metal tracks rose along the walls, and wagons moved up and
down like elevators. When Riff tilted over the edge, he could see pyrite
glistening below; flecks of the precious metal covered the walls. The shaft
rose even higher than the platform, leading for another kilometer upward. Far
above, Riff could see the stars; a shimmering force field kept the air inside.

"Where are all the
miners?" Riff asked.

Myron wrung his hands. "Striking!
Most are at the casinos and bars. Some flew home to their planets. It's awful,
awful!"

Piston nodded. "I'd
strike too in a mine like this. Look at that! No symmetry to the side tunnels.
No system to the carts. Give me a platoon of gruffles, and I'd dig up all the
pyrite in this mine within a month, leaving a network of beautiful tunnels for
the ages to admire."

Myron gulped. "Sir Gruffle,
they don't strike because of the size or shape of tunnels. They strike because
. . ." A roar sounded below, and Myron squeaked. "Because of that!"

The mines shook.

Dust rained.

The bellow grew louder, and a
creature moved below.

"Fragging aardvarks!"
Nova cursed, unfurling her whip.

"Worse," said Myron.
"A Denebian tardigrade."

Riff stared down into the
shaft, queasy. The creature was climbing like a worm through a vein. It was
massive. It was bloody massive. It made the caterpillar train seem puny. Its
sluggish body undulated as it chomped on rocks flecked with fool's gold. Its
six legs, each larger than a man, stretched out, tipped with claws. It drove
higher and higher, snapping its jaws.

Steel drew his sword. "By
my honor, I shall slay this beast."

Piston hefted his hammer. "I'm
slaying it right with you, laddie."

Twig trembled, the smallest of
the bunch, but managed to raise her wrench. An electric charge crackled between
its prongs. "And I'm helping."

Romy, meanwhile, rubbed her
eyes and gaped down, nearly tilting over. "A giant elephant!" she
breathed. "Can I ride it? Can I, Riff, please?"

The beast in the mine rose
higher, increasing speed, and suddenly burst up toward the platform, jaws
opened wide enough to swallow them all.

Romy squealed and hid behind
Riff, dropping her pitchfork. The others leaped back too—even Steel. Towering
teeth snapped before them, and then the creature sank back into the mine,
grumbling.

Riff gasped for breath. He
reeled toward Piston. "You told me tardigrades are tiny! Wee little
buggers, you called them."

"They are!" Piston
insisted. "But this here is a Denebian tardigrade. Totally
different variety, sir. I thought you were asking about the kind you have back
on Earth."

Riff groaned and tugged his
hair. "Right. We blast the bastard to death. That force field up there?"
He pointed up the shaft to where a shield blocked the vacuum of space. "We
lower it. We fly the Dragon Huntress over the mine. And we blast this
place full of plasma. Dead tardigrade. Job's done."

"You can't!" Myron
said. "You'll destroy the mine."

Riff patted the starling's
shoulder. "We'll set the weapons to roast flesh, not rock. We won't damage
the mine much. But our friend here will roast."

"You don't understand!"
Myron wrung his hands so madly he seemed close to tearing them off. "We're
still governed by Earth laws out here. Laws protecting endemic wildlife. If we
kill this tardigrade, we'd be fined for millions. With the losses we've had
over these past few months, we can't take any more. We'd have to close down."
Tears filled the little man's eyes. "You have to remove it peacefully. To
draw it out of the mine and send it on its way."

Riff's eyes opened wide. "And
where do you expect us to take it?"

Twig approached him. The
halfling tugged at his pant leg. "Captain, sir!"

Riff turned to look down at
the diminutive mechanic. "Yes, Twig?"

She gulped. "We used to
get Denebian tardigrades back in Haven. The planet I'm from. Where all
halflings are from." She shuddered. "Horrible creatures! They used to
sometimes land on our planet and eat us. They love to eat halflings. We're
their favorite dish. A tardigrade once ate my uncle. It's all right. He passed
through alive. Wasn't too happy on the other end, though." She gulped. "Point
being, tardigrades are space farers. They travel through the sky like whales in
the ocean. They can survive in vacuum. That's how they get from planet to
planet. Probably how it got here—swam through space. We just need to do what
we did back in Haven. Fish it out!"

Piston nodded thoughtfully,
stroking his beard. "Aye, the lassie's right. Got a good idea or two in
that noggin of hers sometimes. We can fly the Dragon up there." The
gruffle pointed at the sky. "I can attach the iron cables we picked up a
couple of years back. Just like a fishing rod. We just need to find proper
bait."

Twig nodded and bounced
around, excited. "It'll work! We'll attach a nice meal for the tardigrade
to eat, something really delicious. What bait can we use?" She grinned, turning
from one Alien Hunter to another. "Any ideas?"

Riff tapped his foot. "You
did say they love eating halflings."

Twig nodded. "They do!
They love us! They . . ." She gasped. "Wait. No!"

Riff knelt before her and held
her shoulders. "It'll be safe. We'll give you helmet."

Twig wailed. "No! I won't
do it!" She pointed at Romy. "Let the demon be bait."

Romy snorted. "My hair's
made of fire. It would never eat me. Animals are scared of fire."

"And I'm too large a
meal," Piston said, patting his barrel chest. "It would just see me
as a choking hazard." He turned to look at Riff, Nova, and Steel. "And
surely you won't ask the new owners of our ship to do the dirty work."

Twig groaned and flopped down
onto her backside. She crossed her arms. "I always have to do the dirty
work! Whenever you clog up the toilet, Piston, it's me who has to fix it."

"That's because you drop
wrenches into the pipes!" the gruffle roared.

The halfling ignored him. "And
that time we cornered the snot-monster on Rigel Six, who had to climb into his
nostril to retrieve the diamonds? Me!"

Piston raised his hands
defensively. "You know I'm allergic to snot-monsters!"

Twig looked from one person to
another, seeking some support. They were all silent . . . other than Steel.

The knight stepped forth and
raised his chin. "I'll do it. Strap me up like a worm onto a hook. I'll be
your bait. Even if I die, it's for the good of our cause."

Twig rose to her feet and
groaned. "It's no use. Tardigrades won't even touch humans. Hate the stuff."
She heaved a long, deep sigh. "Fine! Fine, fine, fine! But I want a bonus,
mister." She poked Riff. "Fifty extra credits."

Riff nodded. "Done. Thank
you, Twig." He turned toward the others. "We came here for a hunt.
Turns out it's a fishing trip."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
GONE FISHING

The HMS Dragon Huntress hovered
above the asteroid, a spool of cable attached to the dragon's head.

"Easy now," Riff
muttered. He stood on the bridge, fiddling with controls. "Just got to
release a little . . . bit of . . . cable. Oh shenanigans."

Outside the windshield, the
spool spun madly. A great length of cable, a good twenty meters long, rolled
out. Attached to one end, Twig shouted. Her voice rose through the communicator
strapped to Riff's wrist.

"Captain! Slow down!"

Riff nodded. "Sorry,
sorry! Hang in there."

She groaned. "Do I have a
choice?"

Riff leaned toward the
windshield and looked down. About five hundred meters below shone the surface
of the asteroid. The mine gaped open like an eye socket leading deep into a
stony skull. All around the pit spread Pyrite City, its glittering halls and
neon signs bright. Twig dangled over the colony like a worm on a hook, dressed
in a space suit. Inside her helmet, her eyes nearly bugged out with fear. In
her gloved hand she held her precious electric wrench.

"Captain?" Twig's
voice rose again through the communicator. She gulped. "Captain, I'm
scared."

"You're all right, Twig."
Riff returned to the controls. "I've got you. I'm going to release just a
little bit more cable. Much slower this time. Stay cool, little buddy. All
right?"

Her voice shook. "All
right."

The others crowded around
Riff, silent and staring. Nova clutched her whip nervously, and her long,
pointy ears cocked toward the windshield. Steel stood sternly, chin raised,
sword in hand; only the knight's eyes showed the pain he felt over seeing a
damsel in distress. Piston anxiously tugged his beard, and even Giga seemed a
little concerned. Only Romy seemed delighted with the proceedings; the demon
bounced around and chewed her tail.

Riff pressed down lightly on
the controls. The cable continued to spool out, meter by meter. Twig descended
closer and closer to the mine.

Riff still saw no tardigrade
below. Only the shadowy pit leading into the depths of the asteroid.

"Twig, you see anything
down there?"

The halfling spun around on
her cable, turning to face the asteroid. She gazed down into the mine.

"Nothing, sir. Just
shadows and . . ." She gulped. "Oh, stars. I told you that a
tardigrade once ate my uncle, didn't I? I don't want to be eaten."

"You're not going to be
eaten, Twig." Riff tried to keep his voice calm and comforting. "We'll
pull you right back up as the tardigrade emerges. We just need to lure him out,
not actually let him bite you. Once he's out of the mine, we can ram into him.
Send him hurtling out into space."

He lowered Twig another few meters.

"Captain?" Her voice
trembled over the communicator, staticky. "Captain, I can see movement. I
. . ."

"Twig, your heart rate is
elevated. Stay calm, buddy. You're in good hands."

The sound of her gulping
filled the bridge. "Yes, sir. I . . . if something happens to me, tell
Piston that he can have my wrench collection."

The gruffle snorted. "Useless
bunch of junk! You better survive, Twig, because half of your wrenches are
still clogging up our engines, and I'm not reaching in there myself to pull
them out."

Riff kept loosening the cable,
lowering Twig closer and closer to the mine. Soon the halfling had reached the
shaft and was now descending into the darkness. Her heart rate increased
further.

"Stay calm, Twig,"
Riff said. "Tell me about something relaxing. Tell me about a beautiful
place on your home planet."

Twig suddenly sounded like she
was crying. "Haven is so beautiful, Captain. I haven't been there since I
was a girl. It's all rolling, grassy hills. Rustling trees. Beautiful farmlands
of wheat and barley. In autumn, all the leaves turn red, and the wheat and corn
turn gold, and we sit around the hearths, eating pumpkin pie, and . . ."
She whimpered. "Captain! Captain, I can see it!"

"All right, Twig. Wave
your arms around a bit. Lure it up."

Riff leaned toward the
windshield again. Several hundred meters of cable now stretched out from the HMS
Dragon Huntress—nearly its full length. Twig dangled about a hundred meters
deep in the pit, waving her little limbs about.

Below her, rising from the
mine like water gushing from a geyser, came the Denebian tardigrade.

"Reel me up, reel me up!"
Twig shouted.

Riff pressed down on the
controls, trying to tug Twig back up.

Instead, the spool released
its last few meters of cable.

Twig fell deeper into the pit.
The tardigrade leaped toward her, jaws snapping.

"Captain!" the
halfling screamed.

"Damn it," Riff muttered.
"What's wrong with this thing?" He hit controls madly. "Spool's
loose!"

"Fragging aardvarks,
Riff!" Nova shouted, banging against the windshield.

"Captain!" Twig
cried.

The tardigrade soared and
opened its jaws wide, and Twig fell down into its gullet.

"Giga, get us out of
here!" Riff shouted, turning toward the android. "Reverse, reverse!"

The android smiled sweetly. "Happy
to comply!"

The Dragon Huntress engaged
its front-thrusters. Blasting out gas, the ship pulled back, moving away from
the asteroid.

The tardigrade's jaws snapped
shut, sealing Twig inside its mouth.

The Dragon Huntress
kept reversing. The steel cable pulled taut like a fishing line, running from
the tardigrade's mouth to the starship's spool.

Twig was nowhere to be seen.

"Twig!" Riff shouted
into his communicator. "Twig, can you hear me?"

Her voice sounded muffled. "Captain,
it's eating me! Get me out, get me out!"

Riff wiped sweat off his brow.
"Hang in there, buddy. We won't let him swallow you." He turned
toward Giga. "Keep reversing. Tug that giant slug out of its hole."

"Captain, it's swallowing
me!" Twig cried.

"Hang in there! Giga,
damn it, more thruster power."

The android bowed, smiling. "Increasing
front thruster power, sir."

The Dragon Huntress
continued reversing. The engines groaned in protest. Metal parts creaked. Down
below, the tardigrade thrashed. The massive alien slug began retreating into
its burrow, Twig still in its mouth.

The Dragon Huntress
jerked forward, tugged toward the asteroid.

"The fragging thing is
fishing us!" Nova shouted.

"Giga, more power!"
Riff said.

"Cannot compute."
The android tilted her head. "Forward thrusters at maximum power, Captain."

"Then turn us around and
engage the back engines." Riff cursed as the Dragon Huntress was
yanked down again. The starship was now only three hundred meters from the
asteroid, and the tardigrade kept tugging. Twig's screams rose from Riff's communicator.

"Cannot compute,"
said Giga. "Cannot turn the Dragon Huntress around while cable
attached to spool. Cable would tangle in our wing and snap it, sir."

Riff cursed. "You have to
reverse somehow, Gig. Come on!" He clenched his fists, and suddenly his
eyes widened. "Blow our fire! Blow down dragonfire onto the asteroid! Newtonian
laws. It'll shove us back into space."

"And you'll burn Twig and
the tardigrade!" Piston shouted, running toward Riff. The gruffle's eyes
dampened. "The damn fool will burn, and . . . her wrenches, and . . ."
He wiped tears from his eyes and grabbed Riff. "We've got to save the little
clod, Captain."

Riff ignored the gruffle and
leaned against the windshield. The tardigrade kept tugging them down; in
seconds they would crash against the asteroid.

"Giga, can you turn us
around just a few degrees? Point our weapons there." He pointed a hill of
excavated rock. "Blast those rocks with dragonfire."

"Happy to comply!"

The ship tilted. The steel
cable creaked. The tardigrade gave a massive tug, and the Dragon Huntress
sank another hundred meters, nearly hitting the asteroid.

Its dragonfire blazed.

The blasts of plasma shot out
in a fury, slamming against the rocks just outside the mine. Stones cascaded
and melted. Twig screamed.

The force shoved the Dragon
Huntress backward.

They blasted away from the
asteroid, yanking the tardigrade clear out from its hole.

"Fragging hell,"
Nova whispered, pressing herself against the windshield. "It's huge."

Romy's eyes were so wide they
almost popped out. "It's even bigger than an elephant!"

Riff stared down. The
tardigrade kept rising from the tunnel until finally its tail emerged. The full
length of the beast flapped in space, a great wriggling blob. Its pudgy six
legs thrashed, and its jaws were still snapped shut, sealing Twig within. The
line of cable ran from its lips to the ship. The Dragon Huntress kept
retreating, pulling the creature farther away from the asteroid.

"Twig!" Piston tugged
Riff's wrist toward him and shouted into the communicator. "Twig, can you
hear me, you clod?" Tears streamed down the burly gruffle's brown cheeks
and dampened his white beard. "Talk to me, Twig! I'll never yell at you
again, I promise. I'll never make you climb into the septic tank, burrow into snot-monster
nostrils, or even sweep the engine room floor again. Please, Twig, just talk to
me." Piston was trembling now. "Please. I can't run this ship without
you. You're the best damn mechanic I know. You're . . ." He sank to his
knees. "You're my best friend."

Silence filled the bridge.

Outside the ship, the
tardigrade wiggled on the line, floating through space.

Only static came through the communicator.

Piston lowered his head, tears
falling, and Riff placed his hand on the gruffle's broad shoulder. Everyone
else stared in silence.

The communicator crackled with
static.

Twig's voice rose from the
speaker. "Well, go on, Piston! Tell me more about how wonderful I am."

Piston's eyes widened. The gruffle
leaped to his feet. For an instant, pure joy suffused his face. Then rage
overflowed it, and he shook his fist. "Why you little clod! How dare you
fool me! I'm going to . . . I'm going to . . ." He fell back to his knees.
"Aw, you wee lassie, I'm going to give you the world's biggest hug once
you're back."

Riff sighed with relief and
sank back into his chair. The ship moved farther and farther away from the
asteroid, pulling the tardigrade along.

"Giga, can you blast some
thruster power against it? Spray its head. Let's see if we can get it to sneeze
Twig out."

"Happy to comply!"

The forward thrusters,
normally used to steady and turn the ship, blasted out gas like smoke from a
dragon's nostrils. The streams hit the tardigrade's head. The giant alien
thrashed and mewled.

Its mouth, however, remained
closed.

"Twig, you hear me?"
Riff said. "You still have your electric wrench handy? Give the creature a
little shock. We just need it to open its mouth."

"It'll swallow me!"

Riff shook his head. "Not
with us holding you on the line. Go on. Give it a little bolt."

Through the communicator, they
heard electricity crackle as Twig turned on her electric wrench. "Shocking
it right on the gums, sir. I—whoa!"

Below the ship, the tardigrade
whimpered and twitched. Its nostrils flared. Its body wrinkled up.

Then, with the might of a
shattering star, the tardigrade sneezed.

"Captain!" Twig
shouted.

A blast of green mucus flew
through space and splattered against the Dragon Huntress's windshield.

"Gross!" Romy said,
wagging her tail in delight.

"Captain . . ." Twig
whimpered. The little, mucus-covered halfling clung to the outside of the
windshield, painted green. "Captain, I hate this job."

Riff wiped sweat off his brow.
"Twig, make for the airlock. Piston, go pull her into the ship." He
turned toward Giga. "On my signal, Gig, prepare to thrust the ship
forward."

Piston lolloped off the bridge.
Out in space, the tardigrade—the bait and line free from its mouth—began to
fly back toward the asteroid.

"Piston, you got her?"
Riff shouted over his shoulder.

The gruffle's voice rose from
the main deck below. "Got the little slimeball."

Riff clutched his armrests. "Giga,
now fly! Ram that thing! Knock it out into open space."

"Happy to comply!"
Giga smiled sweetly, and the sounds of processing CPUs rose from inside her.

The Dragon Huntress
changed course . . . and charged forward, engines roaring.

The tardigrade bellowed and
tried to escape, but it was too slow. The Dragon Huntress rammed into
the massive creature's soft body. The tardigrade wailed and thrashed . . . and
went tumbling deep into the darkness, flying far from the asteroid.

"Give it a warning shot,
Gig." Riff pointed. "Just enough fire to scare it away."

Plasma fire blasted out from
the Dragon Huntress. The flames reflected against the tardigrade. The
creature turned tail and began flying away, fleeing the asteroid until it
vanished into the distance.

Riff exhaled. It felt like he'd
been holding his breath for the past hour. Air had never tasted sweeter.

Actually, the air here
stinks. He sniffed and grimaced.

The stench came from behind
him. He turned around to see a tiny, slimy green monster pointing at him.

"You owe me, Captain!"
Twig said, dripping ooze. "Big time. I want a big, big bonus."

Romy covered her nose. "You
stink."

Twig's fists shook. She roared
out in fury, then spun around and marched off.

Hopefully
to the shower, Riff thought.

He nodded with satisfaction
and looked at the others. "Friends? The Alien Hunters are back in
business."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
THE HUNT

An iridescent beetle, green and
purple and mottled in gold, scurried across the grassy forest floor, one of
Planet Cirona's most beautiful and treasured forms of native life.

A massive boot, tipped with
iron claws, slammed down and crushed it.

The beetle died with a squeak.

Skrum, warrior of the Skelkrin
Empire, wiped the sole of his boot against a mossy boulder. He spat.

"This damn planet is
swarming with vermin." He looked around at the trees, ferns, and flying
birds of many colors. Bile rose in his throat. "Disgusting backwater. Just
the sort of planet the humans would settle. Just the sort of planet a filthy pirilian
would hide on."

Skrum did not know who he
hated more—the pathetic, sniveling humans, mere apes who dared venture to the
stars, or the pirilians with their purple skin, glowing yellow eyes, and magic.
It was like deciding what you hated more: bugs infesting your home or a wild
wolf pawing at your door. Luckily, like most skelkrins, Skrum had enough hatred
in him for more than one species.

"We should burn down the
forest." Hotak, a soldier with matted white hair, sneered and hefted her
flamethrower. "Burn down every damn tree and fern."

Skrum turned to stare at the
female. He didn't care much for females, especially not on field missions. Yet
even he had to admire Hotak's sheer strength. Muscles coiled across her long,
crimson limbs. Her white eyes blazed like molten stars. Her tongue reached out
from her jaws to lick her fangs. She stood eight feet tall, almost as tall as Skrum.
Like him, she wore a black breastplate studded with spikes. Like him, she
served Emperor Lore, the greatest of the skelkrin warriors.

But unlike me, she's a
fool.

He gripped her wrist, forcing
her flamethrower down. "Use that rotted piece of meat inside your skull!"
He huffed. "Midnight is hiding here. If you burn down the forest, you'll
burn her too."

Hotak snorted. Her drool
dripped down her chin and sizzled against the floor. "Good! Pirilians are
pathetic little wretches. I'll enjoy feasting on her charred flesh."

Skrum backhanded her. "You
fool! We need her alive. Emperor Lore demands it."

At the thought of his emperor,
Skrum felt a trickle of fear. The Emperor thought that Midnight was still on
her way to Earth, perhaps on Earth already. Skrum had dared not reveal that he
had captured the pirilian above Planet Cirona, only to let her slip from his
grasp.

If Emperor Lore learns that
we had her in our hangar, that she escaped us . . . Skrum clenched his
fists. He did not want to think about the torture he would endure. He would not
feel safe hailing Emperor Lore again until he had the pirilian back in his
grasp.

Skrum turned toward the other skelkrin
warriors he led. Twenty stood in the forest, beings of crimson skin, bulging
muscles, gleaming claws and fangs, cruel white eyes, black armor. Beings of
strength. Apex predators. All they needed was one girl, one more conquest . . .
and the galaxy would be theirs.

"We
will find her alive," Skrum said. "Every day that she's gone, I will
kill one of you. The first skelkrin to find her will become my second-in-command!
Now follow. We hunt."

Their
nostrils flared, sniffing the forest. They continued moving, trampling over the
ferns and the small animals that scurried underfoot. The air stank so badly of
life that Skrum could not smell the pirilian. But he knew she was here. He had
seen her starjet crash down. He would find her, bring her back to his emperor.

And then I
will command more than just a single warship. He licked the drool that
dripped down his chin. Then I will rise to command a great armada for my
master, an armada to conquer the Earth.

The skelkrins
kept tramping through the forest. The trees grew tall here, their leaves deep
green, their blossoms white. Blue and purple flowers spread across the floor in
a carpet. A bird of red, green, and yellow plumage flew overhead, cawing. Hotak
sneered and raised her blowtorch, but Skrum shoved her weapon down.

"No
burning."

They
traveled on, sniffing, leaving a wake of trampled plants, wilted flowers, and
sizzling drool.

As they
moved through the forest, Skrum thought back to his time as a hunter on Planet Skelkra.
Again in his mind, he was but a youth, thirsty for blood, hungry for raw meat.
Again he was hunting through the black, barren plains of Skelkra, climbing over
jagged boulders and the walls of canyons, howling at the black moon that hid
the stars. Again his pack moved with him, a hundred predators, their skin
crimson like the blood they drank, their fangs bright, sharp, ready to tear
into flesh. Again they raced across the wilderness, leaping onto the trundling
beasts that roamed in the darkness, ripping them apart, guzzling blood,
chomping bones, sucking marrow.

We were
savages, Skrum thought. Nothing but barbarians. But that is where I
learned the ways of the hunt.

It was on the black, rocky
plains of Skelkra that Skrum met his master.

The emperor had descended in
his warship, a jagged chunk of iron like a mountain ripped out of the earth. Lore
had come to the wild plains to seek warriors, to seek savages who had not gone
soft in the great cities of metal. Skrum had spat upon this lord, had swung his
claws at the towering warrior . . . only for the emperor to beat him down. To
shatter his crude armor with his mighty weapons. To break his body. To crush
him into obedience.

"Rise," Emperor Lore
had hissed that night. "Rise before me."

Skrum had only lain on the ground.
"My legs are shattered."

"Rise!" Emperor Lore
roared. "Rise and become a great warrior. Or lie down in the dust and die
as a worm."

Skrum had screamed, coughed up
blood . . . and risen.

Since then, he had always
obeyed his master. Emperor Lore had asked Skrum to slay his own parents to prove
his loyalty. And Skrum had obeyed, slashing his parents' throats. Emperor Lore
had asked Skrum to thrust a blade into his own belly, to prove his strength.
And Skrum had obeyed, wounding himself, nearly dying, screaming for days before
finally healing.

And now Emperor Lore, the
greatest warrior in the galaxy, had asked Skrum to find a girl. An escaped
prisoner. A pirilian who could win the war, who could bring the galaxy to its
knees before the Skelkrin Empire.

And I will not let you
down, my lord, Skrum swore. As always, I obey.

"Foul worm!" Hotak
said. Her screechy voice drew Skrum's attention back to the forest of Cirona.
He turned to see the burly warrior raising her flamethrower toward a
caterpillar that was climbing a tree trunk.

He grabbed the flamethrower
from her and hissed. "No burning!"

Hotak bared her fangs and
growled at him. Her eyes burned like stars, white, horrible. "Return my
weapon."

He howled and spat. She
snapped her teeth. The two circled each other as the other skelkrins leaned in,
staring, smiling, eager for blood.

"I will not." Skrum
slung the flamethrower across his back. "You disobeyed me for the last
time. You—"

She lunged toward him, claws
outstretched, screeching.

Skrum stepped back, dodging
her claws, and leaned in to bite. His fangs clanged against her armor. She
roared and grabbed his head, squeezing, trying to crush his skull. Around them,
the other skelkrins howled and thumped their chests.

"Kneel before me,"
he demanded.

She squealed, clawing at him. "I
will not!"

He grabbed a fistful of her
white hair and tugged her head down, banging it against a rock. "Kneel!"

She snapped her teeth again,
trying to bite off his face. "No!"

He punched her crimson cheek
again and again. "You will serve me. You will not disobey me again. You
will call me master."

She grinned as he beat her.
She laughed, gurgling on blood. She relaxed and reached out to stroke his cheek
with her claws.

"You would make a good
mate," she said.

He grunted and stepped back
from her. "Kneel now."

She knelt. Her blood dripped. "Master."

Skrum snorted. "Any other
day, I'd have slain you for your disobedience. Today I grant you mercy. I grant
you the mercy Emperor Lore granted me. Today I let you live, Hotak. And you
will serve me well. Forever."

She bowed before him, bringing
her bleeding face to the ground. "Forever, Master."

The other skelkrins grumbled
under their breath. They had hoped for death, Skrum knew. They had hoped to
feast upon Hotak's corpse. He would give them corpses, but not yet. Not here,
not now. Not while Midnight the pirilian still hid from him.

They walked on, predators on
the prowl.

The sun was low in the sky
when they reached the field.

Planet Skelkra had no use for
farming; not a single plant grew on that rocky planet, and the very idea of
feeding on plants disgusted Skrum. His people were predators, feasting upon the
flesh of weaker animals. The humans were weaker animals, and here on Cirona,
they plowed fields, grew crops, spread like a disease.

"They think this is a
farm for grains," Skrum said. "They are wrong. This is a farm for
human flesh. The farmers will be our meal."

Leaving the forest behind, the
twenty skelkrins walked through the field. The stalks rose high, but skelkrins
were towering predators, and they trampled over the crops like over the corpses
of so many enemies. A barn rose ahead, built of wood and painted red. Several
human farmers stood outside in a garden. The weaklings didn't even wear any
armor, so confident they were, so foolish, so weak.

"Skelkrins!" shouted
one of the farmers, a female pup. The vermin turned to flee.

"Skelkrins! Men, skelkrins
attack!" shouted another farmer.

Skrum kept approaching,
amused, as several of the human males rushed forth, holding their puny weapons—humble
guns that could barely kill a bug, let alone apex predators like the skelkrins.

"Stand back, strangers!"
cried one of the farmers, a man with a brown beard and straw hat. "This
planet belongs to the Sol Federation. This is human territory."

Skrum looked aside at his
fellow hunters, then back at the farmers. The skelkrins burst out laughing, a
sound of shattering boulders, of cracking bones. As the predators kept
approaching, Skrum raised his gun and fired a single shot.

The blast slammed into the
bearded farmer, tearing a hole right through him. The human was dead before he
hit the ground.

The other farmers fired their
guns. Bullets flew toward the skelkrins, harmlessly ricocheting off their
armor. Skrum fired his gun again, hitting another farmer.

"Lower your guns and
live!" Skrum cried. He shot down another farmer, then kept walking through
the hailstorm of bullets. "Kneel! Kneel before your new overlords!"

A few of the farmers dropped
their guns and turned to flee. Others knelt outside their barn. From inside a
farmhouse rose the wail of women and children, an appetizing sound that made Skrum's
mouth water. He shot his gun again and again, knocking down those humans who
fled, and kept walking until he stood above the kneelers.

The twenty skelkrins came to
stand around the humans, forming a ring of claws and fangs and sizzling drool.
The farmers were trembling.

"Please, sir," one
young man begged, his face tanned bronze, his eyes full of tears. "Please,
sir, spare us."

Skrum reached down his claws
to caress the young man's cheek. "I will spare you . . . if you hand over
the girl."

The farmer gulped. "The
girl? What girl?"

Skrum clutched the young man's
head and tore it off.

The other farmers screamed.

"I want the girl!" Skrum
howled. "A pirilian girl with purple skin, yellow eyes, a dark cloak. I
found her crashed starjet only kilometers away. Hand her to me."

The kneeling farmers tried to
flee, but it was too late. The skelkrins surrounded them, a wall of muscle and
iron. The humans fell back to their knees, begging.

"There's no pirilian
here!" said a woman.

"You lie!" Skrum
grabbed her throat. "Pirilians are weak. They feed on grains and fruit
like worms. She would have fled here. She would have sought sanctuary with
humans, another weak species. Hand her over now and I will spare your lives."

"Please, sir! No pirilian
is here. This is a human planet. A hu—"

He thrust his claws. The
farmer fell silent.

"These ones know nothing,"
said Hotak, her face still smeared with blood. The skelkrin grinned. "Let
me burn them. I like my meat burnt."

Skrum raised his head and
howled at the setting sun.

Where are you, Midnight?
Where do you hide, my precious prize?

"Burn them." He
spoke through gritted teeth. He handed back her flamethrower. "Burn them
all and we will feast. Our search continues in darkness."

Hotak wailed with joy, and her
fire blasted out, and they fed. They were skelkrins. They were predators. They
would find their quarry, and they would spread across the stars.

They continued walking in
darkness, bellies full. The hunt continued.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
HYPERSPACE

The HMS Dragon Huntress
stood back in Pyrite City, its mission completed, its payment collected.

Riff stood in the hangar,
staring up at his starship. A deep, satisfied sigh ran through him.

"She's looking good,
Captain." Nova came to stand beside him, her golden armor silent as she
moved. She gave him a crooked smile. "Proud of your new home?"

He nodded and slipped his hand
into hers. They stood together, watching as robots bustled across the ship,
scrubbing off the rust and applying a fresh coat of paint. At the engines,
Piston and Twig stood on ladders, installing new hyperfuel cubes.

"She's beautiful,"
Riff said softly.

With the tardigrade gone, Myron
had paid them the promised one thousand credits, even adding a three hundred
credit tip. Since then, Riff had been spending.

"A thousand credits for
hyperfuel," he said, watching as Twig dropped a wrench, incurring a stream
of curses from Piston. "A fifty credit bonus to Twig. Two hundred credits
for a wash and paint job." He hefted the little bobblehead bulldog in his
hand. "And ten credits for this, a little gift to our dear Giga."

And yet along with his pride,
a sense of deep disappointment filled him. Nova saw and leaned against him.

"I'm sorry we heard no
word of your dad here." She stroked his hair, and her green eyes were
soft. "Wherever the pirilian girl hides, I have a feeling we'll find him."

Riff nodded, a lump in his
throat. For long hours, he and Steel had walked through the bars and clubs of
Pyrite City, asking about a traveling magician with a long white beard and
wooden staff. None had seen Aminor Starfire here in years.

Riff stared
at the ship, watching the robots paint the hull. The ship, once a bucket of
rusty bolts, suddenly looked almost presentable.

I wish you were here with
me, Dad, Riff thought.

"Come on, Nov." He
squeezed her hand. "Looks like Piston's done installing the hyperfuel. It's
time to fly on. To Cirona. To find Midnight . . . and maybe answers."

The robot painters applied the
last few strokes, then bustled off to another ship in the hangar. Piston and
Twig climbed off their ladder and brushed their hands against their pants.

"Just hope Romy doesn't
drink this fuel," Piston said. "Expensive stuff, hyperfuel. Made with
pyrite, you know."

Twig nodded. "I like how
it smells." The halfling's nostrils flared. "Hyperfuel. Best smell in
the world."

They climbed back into the
ship together. Piston and Twig both climbed down into to the engine room. Romy
was pacing up in the attic; Steel had managed to draw the demon up there using
some chocolate milk as bait, and the knight now stood in the main deck, sword
in hand, guarding the loft's hatch.

"If the beast tries to
escape again," Steel said, "I shall slay her."

Riff patted his brother's
shoulder. "No slaying necessary. Just keep her locked up and away from the
fuel."

Steel nodded grimly. "By
my honor, I swear it shall be done."

Riff continued walking through
the ship. He climbed the stairs inside the dragon's neck, Nova walking behind
him, and they stepped back onto the bridge. Through the glass panels, he could
see several other starjets in the hangar; robots bustled across them, painting,
refueling, and scrubbing off space-barnacles.

Giga bowed to him, smiling
sweetly. She wore a new kimono today, he saw, one embroidered with stars and
moons.

"Welcome back to the bridge,
Captain! Hyperfuel is installed and we are ready for takeoff."

Riff approached the android
and held out his palm. The plastic bulldog sat there, bobbing its head. "For
you, Giga. A new dashboard toy. The gift I promised you."

He didn't know if androids had
feelings, but if not, Giga certainly gave a convincing show of joy. Her eyes widened
and she grinned. She took the toy gingerly, and her eyes even dampened. She
leaped onto Riff and embraced him.

"Arigato!" she
whispered. "I love it."

Her scent of jasmine tickled
his nostrils, and suddenly she seemed so human that Riff was sure Piston had
lied to him, that Giga was not an android after all. With a smile, she darted
toward the dashboard and placed the bulldog beside her second bobblehead, the
swaying hula dancer.

"They are friends,"
she said.

Riff glanced over to Nova. The
ashai gladiator stood at his side, clutching the handle of her whip. All the
softness was gone from her face, and her eyes narrowed, green and burning, as
they scrutinized Giga.

Was there something about Giga
they didn't know? Something Piston hid, something Nova suspected? Riff looked
at the android; she was leaning forward, tapping the bulldog's head, and
bobbing her own head with it.

Instead of a bob, Riff shook
his head to banish the thought. He had bigger things to worry about now. He sat
in his captain's seat, sinking into the plush suede.

"Giga," he said, "take
us off this rock."

The android turned toward him
and tilted her head. "Rock? Does not compute."

"Off this asteroid. Back
into space."

She nodded and a smile spread
across her face. "Happy to comply!"

Nova sat in another seat, and
Giga took the third chair. The android closed her eyes, and clicking sounds
rose from inside her. The HMS Dragon Huntress began to move.

The starship rolled across the
hangar, navigating between the other ships, heading toward the doors. Beyond
spread the stars. As Giga hummed and clicked, the Dragon Huntress rolled
out of the hangar, through a towering airlock, and out into the vacuum of
space.

"Take us a hundred kilometers
away from the asteroid," Riff said. "We'll make the jump to hyperspace
from there."

Giga nodded and Riff leaned
forward in his seat, watching the asteroid grow smaller in the distance. Soon
all Pyrite City was only a glimmer in the darkness.

"Ready to engage
hyperdrive, sir," said Giga.

Riff gulped. He had only flown
in hyperdrive twice before—once when heading to Planet Ashmar for his first
interplanetary blues show, then again when traveling back to Earth with Nova.
He had hated both trips.

Normal engines were too slow
to reach the stars, of course. They were good for traveling within the solar
system, but not for crossing the great distances between the stars. At least,
not unless you wanted to grow old on the journey. Traveling with normal engine
power, Riff would be an old geezer by the time they reached Planet Cirona in
the Vega system.

Hyperdrive worked a bit
differently. Its engines warped spacetime itself, forming a bubble of strange
physics around the ship, allowing you to travel far faster than the speed of
light. Riff didn't pretend to understand half of how it worked. He only knew
that the two times he had traveled through hyperspace, he had felt as queasy
as the time he'd eaten Old Bat Brown's clam stew.

But I need to reach Cirona.
I need to find answers. The Cosmians, the skelkrins, my dad . . . all want Midnight.
A woman who can destroy the universe. I have to find her.

He took a deep breath. "Giga,
we're ready. Engage hyperdrive engines."

Her smile and chipper "Happy
to comply!" denoted that androids, at least, did not get nauseous when
bending the laws of physics.

The Dragon Huntress
began to rumble.

New engines roared to life.

The hula dancer swayed, and
the bulldog vigorously bobbed his head.

With a flash of light and a whoosh,
the starship shot into hyperdrive.

The stars stretched out into
long, gleaming strands like the tails of comets. They streamed by across the
dashboard in a dizzying pattern of light. Globs of purple, pink, and deep blue
floated between the strands. A hum rose from outside, and the walls of the ship
rattled. The whole thing felt wrong somehow, as if Riff were somewhere
between wakefulness and a dream. He needed a drink, even one of Bat Brown's
concoctions.

"We are now fully in
hyperspace, sir." Giga smiled from her seat. "Estimated time of
arrival at the Vega system: four days, thirteen hours, and thirty-two seconds.
Would you like me to run a countdown?"

He shook his head. "Just
let me know a day before we get there so I can wash my hair."

Nova rose from her seat and
leaned against the windshield, staring outside at the lightshow. The lights
gleamed against her armor, pale skin, and bright hair, turning her into a
statue of gold. The ashai princess turned toward the android.

"Giga, do you ever sleep?"

Giga nodded. "Yes, ma'am.
I'm programmed to go into sleep mode when all is functioning properly."

Nova nodded. "Then take a
nap."

"Happy to comply!"
Giga's eyes closed and she slumped back in her seat.

Riff raised an eyebrow. "She's
an android, Nova. She was doing android stuff. You didn't have to put her to
sleep."

The ashai glowered at him,
hands on her hips. "An android who hugged you after you gave her a gift. An
android who has feelings for you."

Riff rolled his eyes. "Nova!
For pity's sake. She's a piece of hardware. She doesn't have feelings." He
tilted his head. "Wait a minute . . . are you jealous of a robot, Nova?"

She groaned. "First of
all, I'm not jealous. Second of all, being jealous would imply that I still
have feelings for you. The only thing I feel toward you is contempt." She
stepped toward him and jabbed a finger against his chest. "First you drag
me off Ashmar, my home planet. Then you drag me off Earth, the planet where you
dumped me."

"Hey, wait a moment!"
He rose from his seat. "You dumped me. I was happy living with you
on Earth."

She snorted. Suddenly her eyes
were damp. "Living in a dump. Living in a tiny bedroom above a blues bar.
Watching you squander your money on booze—the little money you did earn, which
wasn't much." She shoved him back into his seat. "I was a princess of
a planet! I could have ruled an entire world. And I left it, Riff. I left all
that for you. But you fooled me. You told me you were a famous musician."

He bristled. "I am!"

"Don't make me slap you."
Her voice shook with rage, and tears flowed down her cheeks. "You lied to
me. You promised me a good life on Earth. And look what happened." She
turned around and covered her eyes. "Frag this."

Riff sat in his chair,
watching her. Obviously, this had been boiling inside her for years.

He rose to his feet and
approached her. "I thought we did have a good life." He placed a hand
on her shoulder. "It was the perfect life for me, Nova. Playing my music.
Living with you. I was happy."

She spun back toward him. A
tear dangled off the tip of her nose. "You were happy. A perfect life for
you. But what about what I wanted? You never cared about that."

"I cared," he
whispered. "I just didn't know how to make you happy."

"That much is obvious."

A loose strand of her hair
fell across her face. Riff tucked it back behind one of those long, pointy ears
he used to love kissing. "I'm sorry, Nova. What else can I say? I messed
up. I know it. For two years since you left me, I was sorry, and I missed you,
and I prayed that we'd somehow get back together. I never stopped loving you.
Even now, after all this time, I love you."

She lowered her head, but she
did not push him away. "And I hate you," she whispered. "I hate
you so much. For what you did to my life. For what you still do to me."
She looked up at him, and her lips trembled. "For making me love you even
now."

He kissed her. The lights of
hyperspace streamed around them, and she kissed him back. Their bodies pressed
together, and he placed his arms around her waist. She slung her arms around
his shoulders. They kissed deeply, and it felt like old times. Like their first
kiss long ago on a distant world. And Riff had never loved her more.

He reached
his hands down and began to unbuckle her armor. Nova moaned into his kiss, and
her hands reached down to his belt.

"Cannot compute! Cannot
compute!"

Riff jumped and tore away from
Nova's kiss. He turned to see Giga standing beside him, staring at them.

"Damn it, Giga!"
Nova said. "I told you to go to sleep."

Giga bobbed her head. "Captain,
Captain! Cannot compute fridge cooling system. Fridge door open. Romy eating
supplies."

From across the ship, Riff
could just make out the sound of Romy feasting while Steel demanded that the
evil beast return to her lair.

Nova groaned and tugged her
hair. "I'll go take care of this." She blew out her breath, spun
around, and marched off the bridge. She slammed the door behind her.

Riff remained on the bridge,
alone with Giga.

The android smiled in relief. "Fridge
closed. Situation under control." She placed a hand on Riff's shoulder,
leaned forward, and kissed his cheek.

As the android returned to her
seat and closed her eyes, a small smile played on her lips. If Riff didn't know
any better, he could have sworn two things: Nova was jealous of the android . .
. and the android was jealous of Nova.

He really, really hated
hyperspace.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
METAL AND FIRE

Sir Steel Starfire stood in the
main deck of the HMS Dragon Huntress, staring out the porthole at the
streaming lights of hyperspace, and it seemed like the weight of the cosmos hung
across his shoulders.

I am farther from my home
than I've ever been, he thought as the lights flowed. A lone knight on a
quest to save a damsel. A lone man without a castle. Without a brotherhood.
He lowered his head and placed a hand on his breastplate. Without a coat of
arms.

He wanted to go lie down. He
was tired. He had hardly slept for days. The rest of the crew members were all
sleeping in their quarters. But how could Steel sleep while the others needed
him? He had vowed to defend this ship from the evil infesting it. He stared up
at the locked hatch in the ceiling. Beyond lay the demon of Hell, the creature
he had vowed to keep at bay.

"Why are you so sad, sir
knight?"

The voice rose from behind
him.

Steel spun around and gasped.
The demon stood there!

He drew Solflare, his ancient
blade. "Stand back, foul creature!"

Romy waved at him, and her
tail wagged. Her pitchfork gleamed. Her fangs and claws shone in the lights
from the window. Her hair was a pyre of hellfire. Her wings stretched out,
curtains of the abyss.

"I'm bored," she
said. "Do you want to play counter-squares? Do you want to wrestle? Do you
want to look for poodles? Do—"

He pointed his sword at her. "Do
not speak, evil one!" He glanced up at the hatch; it was still locked. He
returned his eyes to the demon. "How do you keep escaping?"

Romy grinned. "It's easy!
The ship is full of heating vents, cooling vents, pipes, shafts, sneaky
passageways. I can sometimes squeeze in them, when I haven't eaten too much."
She glanced over her shoulder at her backside. "It's getting a bit harder
to fit through. All that fatty fuel goes right into my bum. I really would
prefer to eat poodles, if Piston ever agreed to buy any."

Steel blinked. His voice
dropped to a shocked whisper. "Do not speak of such things!"

"What, of bums? Or of eating
poodles?" Her eyes softened. "Is that why you're sad? Because there
are no poodles here to eat?"

Steel spun away from her and
faced the porthole again. "I do not understand all these things of which
you speak."

Romy nodded thoughtfully. She
came to stand beside him and gazed out the window with him. "People say
that to me all the time." She leaned against the glass. "It's pretty
out there. I like how the lights get all flowy in hyperspace. They remind me of
fire, only softer."

Steel found himself agreeing.
His voice softened. "They are pretty."

Romy turned toward him. "You
didn't answer me, sir knight. Why are you so sad? Your eyes, they . . . they're
like a hound dog's eyes. Why?"

Steel turned away from her. He
stepped away from the window. "I would not share these things with a
creature of evil such as yourself."

Romy reached around him,
holding up her teddy bear. "You can tell Mister Floofie!" She moved
the puppet around, mimicking its voice. "Hello, sir knight! Tell me why—whoa!"

Steel shoved the doll aside. "I
am no child!"

"Neither am I." Romy
raised her chin. "I'm over five thousand years old, you know. I'm a big
girl!" She wagged her tail proudly.

"Yet you have the mind of
a child, it would seem."

Romy flopped down onto the
couch. "Fine, don't tell me. I know the answer anyway. I can see it on
your heart." She pointed at his breastplate. "There was a symbol
there once. It's all scratched out. You were part of a brotherhood once. A
knighthood! And . . . now you're not. Your coat of arms was scratched off."
She lowered her head. "They banished you. Why?"

Her words cut deep. Truly,
this was a creature of evil. A demon and mind reader. He wanted to slay her. He
knew it was his duty to slay demons.

Yet it's also my duty to
slay dragons, and now I fly within one's belly.

He sighed and sat down on the
couch beside her.

"Not all knights are
honorable," he said, staring at the wall.

"You are." Romy
reached out to touch his shoulder. "I can tell. I know these things."

He nodded. "I have
dedicated my life to honor, to chivalry, to righteousness. Thus, when I saw the
corruption within my order, I had to speak up. My honor demanded it. I
confronted the head of my order, Lord of the Knights of Sol. I told him that I
knew. That I knew of his dealings with the Cosmians, a band of skelkrin
worshippers who would see Earth destroyed." Steel squared his jaw, and his
eyes stung. "I gave him a chance to redeem himself. He repaid me with banishment."
He clenched his fist. "I don't know why I'm telling you this, demon."

Romy shrugged. "Maybe
because I'm the first person who's not afraid to ask." She lowered her
eyes. "I'm sorry you were banished, Steel. I was banished too once. Long
ago. From Hell. I was a torturer. Really! It was my job to torture the dead
souls of sinners. So I tortured them. I told them bad puns. I made them smell
my stinky socks. I even gave them wet willies." She sighed. "They
thought I was a horrible torturer, so they banished me from Hell, and I ended
up here."

Steel groaned. "You tell
fibs."

"Uh-uh!" She shook
her head wildly, spraying sparks. "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth." She patted his knee. "We're two outcasts. Two relics
of an older time."

Romy reached across the table
and picked up one of the ship's badges. The words "Alien Hunters"
appeared there, written in gold. She placed the badge upon Steel's chest; it
snapped onto the armor.

"You have new friends
now, Steel Starfire." Romy nodded. "A new group of heroes. The Alien
Hunters."

Steel smiled wanly. "A
group of heroes? More like a group of misfits."

Romy grinned. "Good. I
like misfits. Sometimes they're the most fun."

"Fun," Steel
whispered.

She tilted her head. "Haven't
you ever had fun?"

He stiffened. "A knight
cares for honor, for chivalry, for—"

Romy groaned. "Yeah,
yeah. But you need fun too!" She reached toward the table and pulled over
the counter-squares board. "Let's play a game. Look, there's even a knight
piece." She pointed. "You can play with that one. And there's a
dragon piece too, like our ship. Here, let me show you how they all move."

She spent long moments
speaking, moving pieces about, grinning and laughing at her jokes. Her tail
wagged. Steel understood little of it, but he found himself enjoying her
company, the light in her eyes, the brightness of her smile.

They began to play. Romy kept
laughing as she won round after round. And for the first time in many years,
Steel felt some of his old pain melt. For the first time in many years, he had
fun.

Finally Romy fell asleep on
the couch. She leaned against Steel, snoring, and drool dripped down her chin.
Her hair of fire crackled near Steel's head, but he found that it was only
slightly warm. When he dared reach his fingers toward the flames, they did not
burn him. He found himself stroking her hair as she slept against him.

"But mom!" Romy
mumbled in her sleep, leg twitching. "All the other kids have ponies. Can't
I eat one too?"

Steel sighed. A blanket lay
crumpled up at the corner of the couch. Gently, careful not to rouse her, Steel
pulled the blanket over Romy. He sat beside her as she slept, letting her lean
against him, letting her feel safe.

He was, after all, a knight.
And Romy was a damsel to protect.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
BARRACUDA

The SS Barracuda charged
through space like its namesake—a beast of teeth, scales, eternal hunger.

Inside the silvery starship,
Grotter sat alone at the bridge, gazing out into the darkness.

"You're out there, Starfire."
The cyborg's bionic eye narrowed, scanning the vastness of space. "You are
like me. A fighter. A man on a quest. But you will learn, Starfire, that this
is a game you cannot win."

Grotter had left his small,
weak starjets back on Earth. On his own, Riff—a slovenly ne'er-do-well—had
posed no threat. But now the sluggard flew with an ashai gladiator, with a
trained Knight of Sol, and with a horde of other unwashed mercenaries. Now Riff
Starfire flew in a dragon warship that could blast plasma like dragonfire. And
so Grotter too had upped his game. His Barracuda was massive, the
largest warship in the Cosmian fleet. The great fish charged across the solar
system, its metal teeth stretching out, its scales shimmering silver. It was a
ship to dwarf the Dragon Huntress, to crush Starfire, to crush anyone in
Grotter's way.

"I will find you,
Starfire. And then you will know true pain."

Grotter looked away from the
stars that shone outside the window. He turned toward the framed photograph
that stood at his side between the control panels. He took this picture frame
with him on every flight. He would take it to his grave. He reached out his
bionic hand, the clattering claw of metal, and caressed the picture frame's
glass.

"You are always with me, Kira,"
he whispered.

She smiled back at him from
the photograph. A beautiful woman, yet sad. Her smile full of light, yet
wistful. The only woman Grotter had ever loved. The woman who had married
another man. The woman who had spoken against him, had picketed against the
Cosmian Order.

The woman
he had killed.

"You chose to wed that
fool of a magician instead of me," Grotter whispered, caressing her framed
face. "You chose to fight me. But I will always love you, Kira. Even
though your blood stains my hands, I will forever love you." He turned
back to look into space. "And I will kill your sons. I will kill Riff and
Steel Starfire."

A smile stretched across what
remained of Grotter's mouth, twitching. How sweet it would be! Killing Kira had
not been enough, had not filled his cravings for vengeance, had not punished
her enough for spurning his love. But to kill her sons! To kill that fool of a
bluesman and that relic of a knight! And in the name of Emperor Lore of Skelkra,
no less!

A day of
great victory approached. A day of vengeance. A day of glory.

Finally
Grotter saw it ahead. The asteroid floated before him through space, a hundred kilometers
across. As the Barracuda flew closer, Grotter saw the glittering colony
clinging to the great rock—Pyrite City.

Grotter snorted. A city of
sin. A city of sleaze. Once he caught the pirilian girl, it was a city he and
his skelkrin masters would destroy.

He flew his starship closer to
the mining colony. The halls of Pyrite City clung to the asteroid like luminous
barnacles: brothels, opium dens, casinos, bars, a thousand hives of debauchery.
Grotter directed his ship toward a port, and the great Barracuda landed,
dwarfing the other starships that anchored here.

Grotter left the control
bridge, walked through the gleaming halls of the Barracuda, and exited
the warship. A hundred of his warriors exited the ship with him, Cosmians in
black robes and black hoods, their guns larger than human arms. Across the starship
lot, several robots saw the militia and fled, squeaking and clattering.

One Pyrite denizen, however,
was more brazen. A little man in a gray polyester suit rushed forth. He had a
timid, ratty look to him, his fingers tipped with small claws no larger than
coins, his nose sprouting whiskers.

Probably a
starling, Grotter thought. A human mixed with alien genes. A badge on his
suit named him "Myron."

"You cannot land
here!" Myron was whining, his voice high-pitched. "Your starship is
too large, too large!"

Grotter raised an eyebrow,
amused. He turned to stare at the Barracuda behind him. The massive
warship filled most of the lot. The crushed remains of several starjets lay
beneath it, flattened and showering sparks. His fellow Cosmians smirked, turning
between the wreckage and the wailing little bureaucrat in the gray suit.

"You must leave, must
leave!" Myron cried, waving his arms about, seemingly undaunted by the
sight of a hundred Cosmian warriors.

Grotter snickered, stepped
toward the little man, and reached out his metal claw. He grabbed Myron's
throat and lifted the thrashing creature off the floor.

"I'm looking for Riff
Starfire." Grotter's bionic eye narrowed. "A piece of space scum,
traveling in a dragon-shaped ship with a crew of miscreants. He was here. Do
not deny it. Where is Starfire now?"

Myron thrashed, gurgling,
pawing at the metal claw that squeezed his throat. The little creature was
trying to speak but only wheezing.

"Speak louder!"
Grotter demanded, squeezing his claws tighter. "I can't hear you."

"Starfire . . .
gone!" Myron managed. "Flew off! Release . . . me!"

Grotter tossed the sniveling rat
to the floor. Myron fell with a thud and tried to scurry away. Before he could
flee, Grotter slammed down his boot, pinning the starling to the floor. He
reached down his claws, pointing the sharp metal fingers at Myron's whiskered
face.

"Tell me
everything," Grotter said. "When did Starfire leave? Where was he
heading?"

"I don't know, sir!"
Myron said. "I—"

Grotter lashed his claws,
slicing off one of Myron's earlobes.

The starling screamed. Blood
spurted onto his polyester suit, only to slide off the shimmering fabric.

"You'll have to do better
than that," Grotter said, "unless you want to lose more body
parts."

Myron wept. "I don't
know, sir! He . . . he bought hyperfuel. Just one pack. Just enough for twenty
or thirty light-years, sir. Flew off only yesterday."

Grotter pressed his claws
against Myron's other ear. "Where was he heading?"

"I don't know, sir! I saw
him heading . . ." Myron gulped and pointed. "That way. To that star.
The bright one in the Lyra constellation."

Grotter snarled and looked up.
Above, through a transparent force field, shone the stars. Myron was pointing
toward Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky.

Yes, Grotter thought.
Vega was close, only twenty-five light-years away. Just close enough for a single
pack of hyperfuel. Humanity's newest colony lay there on a planet called
Cirona, a frontier backwater.

Grotter pulled his foot off Myron
and turned toward his men. "We go to Vega!"

The Cosmians bowed their hooded
heads and began filing back into the Barracuda.

Myron rose to his feet,
clutched his wounded ear, and began fleeing the starship lot.

"Myron!" Grotter
said.

The starling turned toward
him. Grotter raised his claw, opened his palm, and blasted out a ball of
plasma.

The red projectile slammed
into Myron. The starling screamed, fell, burned, twitched . . . then fell
still.

"You tried to hide
information from me," Grotter said to the corpse. He snorted. "Also,
your whining was annoying."

Grotter stepped back into his
shimmering, silver warship. With a blast of engine fire that roasted the other
starships on the lot, the SS Barracuda rose back into space, leaving the
asteroid behind.

As the ship blazed into
hyperspace, Grotter sat on the bridge, smiling thinly, and clutched the framed
photograph of his beloved.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
THE ENGINE GRINDERS

Piston paced across the engine
room, his nerves refusing to unwind.

"The coils are
overheating," he muttered, tapping them. "The hyperfuel is burning
too hot." He peered at the gauges. "Too much steam building up."
He twisted a valve, releasing a blast of heat. "Damn ship's falling to
pieces, and you keep getting underfoot."

Twig sat on a pipe. She glared
at him. "Me? I'm just sitting here."

"Sitting here being
useless!" Piston shook his fist at her. "We're flying far, Twig.
Farther than we've ever flown. Deep to the most distant of human outposts. Near
. . ." He gulped. "Near the Skelkrin Empire. And you're just sitting
there!"

The diminutive mechanic tossed
her long, black hair and rolled her eyes. "Well, what do you want me to
do? Summon the armada? Lead an army to war?"

"You could help me with
the damn tension coils." Piston knelt. His old knees ached whenever he
knelt. "Damn it, Twig, I'm too old for this. I need you."

She groaned, leaped off the
pipe, and knelt beside him. She reached under the panels and twisted at the
coils, setting them aright. "There. Better?"

He nodded and grumbled. "Better."

Twig playfully punched his
shoulder. "And I know you need me. You'd be so lonely without me. You love
me and I'm your best friend." She grinned and hopped away as he tried to
slap her. "I heard you say it! Back when I was inside the tardigrade. You
said it all, and you were crying. And—all right, all right!"

She scurried away as he roared
and tried to grab her. The damn little clod was so fast. He was a lumbering
hunk of muscle, slow and sturdy. He was built for the rocky, giant planet of Gruffstone,
a place of immense gravity. There his stocky body thrived. But this ship here
was set to Earth gravity, always leaving him feeling slow, cumbersome, a brute.
He couldn't catch Twig. He could barely catch a cold on this ship.

Finally he sat down on a box
and sighed. "I'm not meant for this business no more."

Twig was halfway across the
engine room. She peered around a bar. "What, fixing tension coils?"

He glowered at her. "I'm
fine at fixing coils! I mean traipsing across the galaxy like this. This is a
young gruffle's game." He tugged at his long white beard with his knobby
brown hands. "I'm old, Twig."

She rolled her eyes. "No
you're not."

"I am!" he insisted.
"I'm very old. Ancient. I'm far, far older than you."

"Well, I'm only nineteen.
You have crumbs in your beard older than that."

He glared, brushing that
beard. "Well, I'm far older even than this ship."

Twig raised an eyebrow. "The
Dragon Huntress is only sixteen. Even I'm older than it."

"Well, I'm very old!
Leave it at that. So old I've forgotten how old. So many years out here in space,
far from home. Far from Gruffstone."

There were
no proper windows down here in the engine room, only a small porthole. Piston
stepped toward it and stared outside at the streaming lights of hyperspace. He
wondered if Planet Gruffstone, home to the gruffles, was somewhere out there in
his field of vision, stretched into a streak of color as the hyperdrive engines
bent spacetime around them.

Twig came
to stand beside him. She stood on her tiptoes, hopped up and down, but still
couldn't reach the porthole. Standing more than a foot shorter than him, she
could never reach a damn thing.

"Here."
He knelt, grumbling. "Hop on my shoulders if you want a look outside. You'll
just keep hopping around otherwise and probably break something."

She climbed
onto his back, a fraction of his weight, and onto his shoulders. She gazed out
the porthole. "It's pretty out there."

Piston
nodded. "And it was pretty back home. On Gruffstone. Oh, the stars you
could see from there! The sky's not as murky as on Earth, you know. As a wee
lad, I used to climb the mountains and gaze up at the stars. They shone like
diamonds. Have I ever told you about the diamond mines we had back on Gruffstone?"

Of course
he had. He knew that he had told her. A million times or more.

"No,"
Twig said softly. "Tell me."

He inhaled
deeply, seeing them again. "So many diamonds shone there, Twig! And
rubies. And emeralds. And sapphires. And topaz and amethyst and tiger's eyes
and a thousand other gemstones. That's why we first moved to Gruffstone, you know.
To mine for precious jewels." He caressed his ring and the ruby that shone
there. Suddenly he felt older than ever. Suddenly the ache inside him seemed
too great. "She's still buried there, you know. My wife."

Twig hopped off his shoulders
and stood before him. Her brow furrowed. "You were married?"

"Aye,
lassie. To a beautiful woman, a living jewel. The greatest beauty in Gruffstone."
He sighed wistfully. "Her skin was smooth as a chestnut. Her eyes were
large and deep like the night sky. Her beard was long and flowing, and—"

"She had a beard?"
Twig's eyes widened.

He frowned. "All gruffle
women have beards! And they're proud of it, lassie."

Twig rubbed her very smooth
chin. "Hmm. I don't think I'd want one."

"That's because you're a
knuckle-brained little halfling! But gruffle women are proud of their beards
and weave them into many elaborate braids that shine with jewels. And I brought
my love many jewels." He lowered his head. "She fell ill. She was
still young. Still so beautiful, still so happy. Even until the end, she was
happy." He placed his hand against the porthole. "I miss her. After
she died, I couldn't stay. I left Gruffstone. Found myself in this floating hunk
of junk."

"You never told me,"
Twig whispered.

"You never asked!"
He shook his fist, then lowered his arm and lowered his head. "And I never
wanted to speak of it." He snorted. "Funny thing. You're the closest
thing I've come to a soul mate since she died. Never thought I'd end up being
friends with a knuckle-headed halfling."

Twig stuck out her tongue. "Well,
when I left home, I never thought I'd be stuck in an engine room with a grumpy
old gruffle. A gruffle who has crumbs in his beard, might I add." She
twirled her wrench. "You know, Piston old boy, maybe you like mines and gemstones
and pretty rocks. But not me. Not us halflings. I come from a planet of grassy
hills, swaying fields, rustling trees, sunlight, flowers. So many flowers.
There was true beauty there."

He snorted. "Flowers!
Hah. Allergy monsters. Why'd you ever leave if you love them so much?"

She shrugged. "Well,
everyone in my family has been a farmer. Farmer after farmer, going back for
generations. While they were all growing carrots and mushrooms, I was in the
shed with my tools, fiddling around and building robots. Junkbots, my old
gaffer would call them. They were simple things, just made from tin cans,
springs, gears, old batteries and wires and little motors. But they worked.
They really did!" She sighed. "I never had any friends back on Haven.
I'm small, even for a halfling, and weak, and . . . for a long time, I was very
sad. Melancholy, our village doctor called it."

Melancholy suddenly filled
Piston's own heart. "You suffered from depression, even among the flowers?"

Twig looked down at her feet
and shrugged. "Some call it depression, others anxiety, and . . . well, I
don't know. Even though it's beautiful in Haven, with flowers and forests, I
always felt like there was a gray cloud above me. For many years—Haven years
are short, but they seem long to us halflings. I didn't eat much as a
youngling. Maybe I was afraid of growing too big. Maybe I felt safer being so
small, able to hide, to disappear, to stay a child." Her eyes dampened.
"But when I worked in the shed with my tools, building robots, that cloud
went away. The robots I built became my friends. While everyone else talked
about turnips, mushrooms, and pumpkins, I talked about gears, bolts, screws. I
knew I wasn't meant to be a farmer. I knew I was meant to work on great
machines like starships. To work with huge, massive hyperdrive engines, not
just little motors I took out of lawnmowers. So I left Haven. Hitched a ride to
Earth. Saw a dragon starship and knew it was my home." She rubbed the
tears out of her eyes and grinned. "It's tough to beat life on a dragon
starship. Especially when there's a grumpy old gruffle inside."

Piston mussed her hair, and
suddenly he felt sadder than he had in many days, but also more joyous, a sort
of sweet sadness.

"Aye, lassie." He
patted her hand. "There's worse lots in life than this. There's worse than
flying through space in a dragon with a good friend."

She hopped back onto his
shoulder, and they stared out together at the stars.

CHAPTER NINETEEN:
THE PRINCESS OF ASHMAR

Nova lay in her bed in the crew quarters,
feeling like a maestro trapped in a room with tone-deaf, accordion-playing
monkeys. The noise was driving her crazy.

How could one sleep like this?
There were three bunk beds in the room, and from each bed rose a symphony.
Piston was the loudest, snoring like an engine; Nova was surprised the sound
wasn't knocking down the walls, exposing them to hyperspace. Steel's snoring
wasn't as gruff or grainy; the knight emitted a high-pitched wheeze that
billowed his mustache with every breath. Twig, barely larger than a toddler,
kept kicking her feet in her sleep like a dreaming dog, thumping the wall.

Romy was
the worst of the bunch. Riff had allowed the demon to sleep here tonight
instead of in the attic, and the demon now lay sprawled out across her bed,
drooling and talking in her sleep.

"Please,
mommy, can I have a puppy? I don't like my vegetables. I want a puppy!"

Nova rolled
over toward the wall, wrapped a pillow around her head, and tried to sleep. But
it was impossible.

She sighed.
She missed her home. Back on Earth, she had lived in one of Cog City's finest
buildings. Her penthouse had gazed out onto the cityscape—a dazzling view of
towers, parks, and countless starjets. Inside her apartment, her bed had been
large and soft and topped with satin sheets, not a hard bunk like this. After
leaving that useless scoundrel Riff, she had worked hard for her money, had
become a famous gladiator, then a rich gladiator. She had found wealth again,
the wealth she had lost leaving her planet.

"You're
breaking my heart!" Romy cried out in her sleep. "Put it back in the
jar."

Nova
screwed her eyes shut and thought of that lost planet. Of Ashmar. The great, red,
fiery world she came from, the homeland of all ashais. She had been born there,
had lived there for five Ashmari years—nineteen years as the planet Earth
turns. The daughter of Ashmar's king, Nova had grown up in a palace overlooking
a lake of fire. She had grown up a warrior, training with blades, with whips,
with guns, learning all the ways there were to kill a man. She had grown up a
princess, an heiress, destined to rule a world.

And then,
six Earth years ago . . . he showed up.

A scruffy
human, ten years her senior. He wore no armor like her people, only jeans and a
T-shirt. He carried no crackling whip, only a gun and a guitar. Scruff covered
his face, and he played for her people, played on stage, a human come to Ashmar
to share his music. He had met her eyes in the crowd, had winked at her, and
Nova—young, stupid Nova, only a youth—had fallen for him. For somebody who
didn't care that she was a princess. For somebody who wasn't just a grim, gruff
warrior, but somebody who could play music for her. Who could make her laugh.

So I loved you, Riff Starfire, she thought. I told my father I would marry you.
She winced. And he cast me out.

She grabbed
her blanket in her fists.

I gave up
two worlds for you. Ashmar. Earth. And now I end up here, in a bunk bed,
surrounded by an orchestra from hell. She opened her eyes and looked at
Romy. Literally, in this one's case.

Finally Nova
could take it no longer. She climbed out of her bed, stepped between the
others, and left the crew quarters.

She walked
down the dark hallway, wearing a long T-shirt that draped over her underpants.
Her feet were bare and the floor was cold. Up a flight of stairs, she could see
the doorway to the bridge. The door was open, and Giga stood beyond, staring
out into hyperspace. Nova wondered if the android slept like humans did, if she
too dreamed, if she too was full of fears, regrets, old pain.

Nova looked
away and kept walking down the corridor until she reached the captain's
quarters. She opened the door and tiptoed inside.

Whoever had
built the Dragon Huntress had obviously believed the captain first among
equals. This chamber was almost as large as the crew quarters, but built for
just one. That one—Captain Riff Starfire—lay sleeping in his bed.

Nova rolled
her eyes. Captain! He was only captain because of that damn guitar of his. Nova
should have just swapped her motorcycle for the Dragon Huntress and now
she would be the captain. Riff was no hero, just the man who had ruined her
life.

She tiptoed
closer and looked down at him. During the past six years, they had both grown.
Both changed. She wondered if she even still knew him. She saw that a white
hair grew from his temple now, that new lines of worries appeared on his brow,
and she realized that he wasn't young anymore. He was already a man halfway
through his thirties, a man who had never wanted to grow up, who now found
himself forced to.

But he's
still the same man I fell in love with.

Cursing
everything in the cosmos, including herself, Nova climbed into bed with him.

He moaned,
his eyes opened, and he looked at her. "Nova?"

"Hush.
I'm not here for anything that will make you happy, so calm down. Everyone else
is snoring, so I'm here."

He closed
his eyes again. "There's a couch in the main deck."

She
growled. "And you'll be sleeping there if you don't shut up."

Thankfully,
he shut up. Nova lay down beside him, her back to him, and closed her eyes.
Then she wriggled a little closer. Then closer. Then she pulled his arm around
her, and she held his hand to her breast. His breath tickled the back of her
neck, and finally Nova slept.

CHAPTER TWENTY:
MIDNIGHT

Midnight huddled in the dark forest,
shivering and cold, as the bluewolves howled around her.

"Please, gods of my forebears,"
she whispered. "Please protect me."

The trees rustled around her,
their leaves hiding the moon and stars. Insects buzzed, yellow eyes glowed
between the leaves, and the howls grew closer. The bluewolves had picked up her
scent, and they were drawing near. And they were thirsty for her blood.

Midnight let a small ball of qi
form in her hand. It glowed there like a lantern, woven of many dots of light flowing
together.

The bluewolves saw at once.
They yipped. They scuttled forward through the brush. In the light of her qi,
their fangs shone. Their eyes blazed. One leaped toward her, twice her size,
ready to feast.

Midnight tossed her light.

The ball of qi slammed
into the slick, blue creature, knocking it back. It thumped onto the forest
floor with a wail.

Another bluewolf leaped from
behind her; she heard it howl.

Midnight sucked in a breath
and ported.

In the forest, it was
dangerous to port. She could only move in open space. Here in the dark, she
could accidentally port through a tree trunk; she would reappear inside the
wood, crushed, dying.

But she ported still, blinking
out of existence, then back into reality behind the leaping bluewolf. She tossed
more qi. The animal yelped and fell down dead, the light coiling across
it.

A dozen other bluewolves
surrounded her, snarling among the trees. Midnight snarled back at them. She
raised both palms, displaying two balls of qi. She made to toss them.

The bluewolves whimpered,
turned their tails, and fled. The brush settled behind them.

Midnight shuddered and let her
qi fade away. Using this much energy drained her. She had not eaten in a
day and night. Not since stealing food at the last farm. Her head spun and she
wanted to lie down, to rest, to sleep. But she could not.

The skelkrins might have
heard the howls, she thought. They might have seen the light.

Midnight swallowed a lump in
her throat. She could still beat bluewolves, native predators of Cirona. But skelkrins
were far crueler, stronger predators, and she had seen their tracks on this
planet. Twenty or more had landed here, and they were hunting her. And if they found
her, she could not defeat them.

She had to move.

Leaving the dead bluewolves
behind, she pushed through the forest, traveling in the darkness, daring not
even summon any qi for light. She was too weak, and using more qi
would further drain her. She walked in blackness.

A root snagged her foot. She
stumbled and fell, banging her elbow against a rock. She pushed herself up. She
walked onward, more slowly this time, hands held before her. Her palms kept
hitting tree trunks she couldn't see, and tears stung her eyes.

I miss home, she
thought. I miss my family.

Her tears flowed. She thought
of Per, her home world—the forests that glowed with fireflies, the crystal
caves, the cities of glass and marble. She thought of her family, her kind
mother, her wise father. She remembered the song of her people, the taste of
sweet summer wine, the lights that glowed in the temple chandeliers.

Home. Peace. Beauty.

She lowered her head, her body
shaking.

Until they burned it.

It had been a night of fire. A
night of screams. Of death from the sky. As with so many other worlds, the skelkrins
had come to Per.

They had come to kill.

"I tried to fight,"
Midnight whispered. "I tried to stop them."

So had armies. So had millions
of her people, firing their qi, flying their fleets up to face the great
warships from the depth of space. And they had died. Their ships had rained
down like dying fireflies.

Only I survived.

Even worse memories now filled
her. Memories of the skelkrin masters strapping her down. Poking her with
needles. Cutting her with scalpels. Speaking of carving out her magic, of using
her in their ships, of cloning a million Midnights to break and torture and
harvest.

How she had screamed. How she
had begged to die.

Until he arrived. The
traveler.

"Aminor," Midnight
whispered in the darkness.

The old human with the long
white beard had saved her. Placed her in a blue starjet. Sent her off into
space, to find Earth, to find his son. To find Riff Starfire and safety.

"But I never made it to
Earth." Midnight sobbed. "I fell from the sky to a strange planet,
and I'm scared and alone now, Aminor. I'm so scared. They're hunting me and I
don't know what to do."

She fell to her knees in the
dark forest. The trees creaked around her and more wolves howled, or perhaps
they were the howls of the skelkrins hunting her.

You will live, spoke a
voice in her mind.

She raised her head, and her
heart thrashed. Who had spoken?

You will live, Midnight.
You will survive. I'm with you, my child.

It was his voice! The old
traveler! Aminor! Midnight whipped her head from side to side, seeking him, but
she saw only darkness. The voice had spoken inside her.

"You still watch over me,
traveler," she whispered.

A warmth filled her even in
the cold night, and she imagined that she saw his kindly old face again. For
him she would survive. She would keep moving. She would find shelter, find
food, find hope.

She pushed herself back to her
feet. She raised her chin. She kept walking.

And there she saw it ahead: a
field out in the moonlight. A barn. Shelter from the cold.

Midnight stumbled across the
moonlit field, and she crawled into the barn. Horses slept around her, flicking
their tails. Warm. Comforting. A basket of apples stood on a shelf, and she
ate. She curled up on the straw. She hugged herself.

"I'm alive," she
whispered. "I might be the last pirilian in the cosmos, but I'm alive. I
will stay alive."

At dawn she would move again.
For now, Midnight pulled her knees up to her chin and thought of home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
OUT OF THE BAG

Riff was lying in bed, dreaming of the Blue Strings, when the lights turned on and Giga stepped into his chamber.

"Captain!" The
android smiled and bowed. "We're nearing our destination, Captain."

He blinked, his dreams still
tugging at him. For a moment, he thought he was still back home in the Blue
Strings, that Giga was a fan approaching the stage. He looked around him and
groaned. Of course. He was on the HMS Dragon Huntress, trundling through
hyperspace. Specifically, he lay in the captain's quarters, a cozy room
containing his bed, a desk, and his holstered gun hanging on the wall.

"Thank you, Giga."
He rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed, only to realize he was naked. The cooling
coils were on the fritz again—though Romy had sworn she hadn't eaten them this
time—and Riff remembered kicking off his clothes before falling asleep. His
jeans, boxer shorts, and T-shirt now lay on the floor several feet away. He
clutched his blanket over his lap.

"You're welcome, Captain."
Giga smiled at him sweetly.

"Uhm . . . mind turning
around as I get dressed?"

Giga's smile didn't falter. "I'm
a Human Interface android, Captain. It's no different than getting dressed in
front of a keyboard or mouse." She didn't look away.

"Yes, well, I've seen a
lot of shifty keyboards in my day. Hand me over my clothes, will you?"

"Happy to comply."
She didn't sound very happy, but she handed the clothes over.

He pulled on the important
bits under the blanket, then stood up and tugged on the rest. Giga smiled at
him sweetly.

"Would you like me to brush
your hair, sir?"

"No!" He stared into
the mirror, saw his hair standing on end, and ran his fingers through it. "Gods
no. Giga, you just worry about keeping this boat in the sky. Come on. Let's hit
the bridge."

On their way, they stepped
into the main deck. Steel sat on the couch, clad as always in his armor. The
knight stared down at the table, where a game of counter-squares was in
progress. Steel's brow was furrowed, and he seemed so engrossed in the board game
he didn't even notice Riff and Giga entering the room. Across the table, Romy
lay on the floor, rolling around, flicking her tail, and moaning.

"Come on, Steel!"
The demon rolled her eyes. "You've been thinking for so long. Make a move!"

"Silent, foul beast of
the Abyss." Steel didn't even raise his eyes. "I'm planning a
brilliant strategy."

Romy snorted. "Is your
brilliant strategy to bore me to death? Because it's working. If you don't make
a move, I'm going to torture you. I learned how to torture people in Hell, and— Oh!"
She leaped up and her tail wagged. "Hi, Riff. Hi, Giga. Want to play counter-squares
too?"

Riff walked past her, heading
toward the bridge. "We're nearing Cirona. We're about to leap out of
hyperspace. Steel, join me at the bridge?"

The knight rose to his feet,
leaving the game. His face darkened. Romy too made to follow.

"I'll help too!" The
demon wagged her tail.

Riff shook his head. "Romy,
I need you to help by staying here and guarding the counter-squares board. I
heard there are evil aliens who like to rearrange the pieces when nobody's
looking."

Romy gasped and covered her
mouth. She moved to stand by the game, eyes darting and lips peeled back in a
snarl.

Riff climbed the stairs to the
bridge, where he found Nova sitting in one of the suede seats. The ashai was
nervously flicking her whip against the floor. Outside the windshield, the
lights of hyperspace were still streaming in a dizzying pattern of blue,
lavender, and white.

Riff sank into his captain's
chair. The suede creaked. "All right, Giga. Let us know when we're there."

The android nodded. "Approaching
Planet Cirona in thirty seconds . . . twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight . . ."

While Giga continued the
countdown, Riff felt a chill run down his spine. Out there on Cirona, light-years
away from Earth, was a pirilian girl—an alien with powerful magic. She might
be the same pirilian his father had tried to send him. The same pirilian the Cosmians
were after. The same pirilian the skelkrin masters wanted.

The same pirilian who just
might hold the fate of the universe itself in her hands.

". . . seventeen . . .
sixteen . . ."

Riff caressed Ethel, his old gun.
Who was he to try to save such a creature? Who was he to get involved in the
games of planets and empires? He was only a failed musician. That was all. A
scruffy refugee. Not a hero.

He looked to his right. Steel sat
there. His brother. A knight. A man Riff trusted with his life. A man Riff knew
would forever fight for his honor and his family.

He looked to his left. Nova
sat there, the woman he loved. The strongest woman he knew. He could feel her
kiss again, and he knew that, somewhere deep inside her, she loved him too.

I might not be a hero,
Riff thought. But for the people I love, I will become one.

"Three
. . ." said Giga. "Two . . . one . . . turning off hyperdrive
engines."

Across the ship, a rumble
rose, then faded. The streams of light outside shortened, rolled up, and formed
fixed stars. The dancing splotches of color faded. Riff's temples squeezed
inward as if trying to meet. He shook his head wildly and blinked a few times.

Giga spoke in a calm, pleasant
voice. "Spacetime curves straightened. We are back in normal three-dimensional
space, Captain."

Riff nodded. "Thank you,
Giga."

"Happy to comply, Captain."

Rubbing his
temples, Riff leaned forward in his seat. He found himself staring down at the
green planet of Cirona.

Twenty-five light-years away
from Earth, Cirona was one of several planets orbiting the star Vega. Riff
remembered hearing about it as a kid—one of the new planets humanity had only
just begun to settle, expanding Earth's sphere of influence deeper into the
Milky Way. Here was the frontier of the human empire. The planet reminded him a
lot of Earth—white clouds, green landscapes, and thousands of pale blue lakes.
The planet's star, the luminous Vega, was rising above Cirona's horizon, twice
the size of the sun back home and casting out white beams of light.

Riff had been to space before,
but no matter how many times he saw another planet, it still filled him with
wonder.

Here is a whole other
world, he thought. A world a hundred trillion kilometers from home.

A glint in the distance caught
his attention. He narrowed his eyes, rose from his seat, and stepped closer to
the windshield. The glint vanished, then rose again in the sunlight. Whatever
it was, it seemed to be orbiting the planet.

"Giga, see that glint?"
He pointed. "Magnify that. Put it on the HUD."

"Happy to comply!"

One pane of glass on the
windshield acted as a head-up display, able to magnify, shrink, or analyze the
view. Right now, an image of the glinting object appeared there, zooming
closer, taking form.

Riff inhaled sharply.

"What," he
whispered, "is that?"

At his side, Steel and Nova
stiffened. Both spat our curses.

Riff leaned closer to the HUD.
It was some kind of starship, he thought, but unlike anything he'd ever seen.
This was no human starship. Not even a ship built by humanoids such as gruffles,
halflings, ashais, or other subspecies that had evolved from humanity. Whatever
this was, aliens had built it.

The vessel was charcoal and
jagged. Iron spikes rose across its hull, and two great claws thrust out from
its flanks. The starship looked like some mutated crab, dipped in tar, that had
grown to monstrous size.

"How
large is that thing?" he asked Giga. "What's the scale on that zoom?"

"The
object is one thousand and fifteen meters long, Captain," said the
android.

Riff's
heart sank. "Are you telling me that ship is a kilometer long?"

"No, Captain."
Giga shook her head. "One kilometer and fifteen meters, sir. Counting the
claws."

"Counting
the claws," he muttered. "Lovely. Always count the claws." He
gulped. "And each one of those claws is large enough to grab the Dragon
Huntress and crush it like a grape."

"This
vessel is not human in origin," Steel muttered.

"Thank
you, Sir Obvious," said Riff. He paced the bridge. "Gig, run a scan
of all alien starship designs you have in your memory banks. See if you can
find a match."

"Already
complied, Captain," she said. "Enemy vessel matches description of skelkrin
warship, sir."

Riff felt
faint. He had to sit back down.

"Skelkrins,"
he whispered.

Giga
nodded. "If my translation of the letters on her hull is correct, sir, she's
called The Crab."

Steel and
Nova exchanged dark glances. Riff gripped his gun. As bad as Cosmians were,
they were only servants. The masters were the skelkrins, these deep space killers
who had been swarming across the galaxy. This was still human territory. What
were the bastards doing here?

"Wait
a minute, Giga," Nova said. She frowned at the android. "You call
this an enemy vessel. Why?"

The android
tilted her head. "This is a skelkrin ship, ma'am. All skelkrin ships are
enemies. They have only one mission: destroy all in their path." Giga
smiled sweetly. "Would you like me to engage them in battle, ma'am? Or
should I prepare the escape pod?"

"Wait.
Wait!" Riff rose back to his feet. "Before we flee or fight, let's
think. If they're skelkrins, and they're an enemy, why aren't they attacking?
If we can see them, they can see us." He frowned. "Why are they just idling?
Why aren't they blasting us out of the sky?"

Giga tilted
her head. "Cannot compute. Answer unknown." Her face brightened. "Would
you like me to hail them and ask, Captain?"

"No."
Riff shook his head. "No, we stay silent. We stay distant. We've stumbled
upon a sleeping wolf, and I don't think we should wake it." He licked his
dry lips. "Giga, there should be a town of settlers below. Are you still
picking up their signals?"

She nodded.
"Yes, Captain. Colony still showing up in scans, sir. Would you like me to
hail them?"

"No. I
want full communications silence." He frowned and pointed at the distant vessel.
"This might not be a warship after all. This might be a spy ship. They
might be monitoring the planet . . . or monitoring us. Giga, plot a landing
course. Take us down to the colony. Let's see what the skelkrins do."

"Happy
to comply, Captain."

The Dragon
Huntress veered and began to descend toward the planet.

The
skelkrin ship hovered in the distance, silent, still, dead.

Riff sat
back in his seat as they shot through space toward the atmosphere. Soon the Dragon
Huntress was rattling madly, and the first layer of ozone flared around
them. Fire blazed outside the windshields. The hula dancer swayed so madly her
hips almost dislocated, and the bulldog bobbed his head like a headbanger at a
metal concert.

"We
really need seat belts on this thing!" Riff shouted as the air roared
around them.

Steel and
Nova sank into their seats, gripping the arm rests, not even able to reply.
Giga swayed madly across the deck until Riff caught her, pulled her into his
lap, and held her close.

The fire
blazed.

The ship
roared.

From the
main deck, the sound of clattering counter-squares pieces rose along with Romy'
screams.

Then, with
streams of vapor, blue sky opened up below them. The fire died. They flew
within the atmosphere of Cirona, gazing down at forests, mountains, and lakes.

Sunlight,
soft and golden, fell upon them.

Riff
realized he was holding his breath and exhaled in relief. He also realized he
was clinging to Giga, nearly crushing her, and released her. The android walked
toward the windshield and pointed down.

"The
colony of Cirona City lies below us, Captain. Taking us down."

He nodded,
still shaken. "Good. Any sign of the skelkrin ship?"

"My
systems show them still in orbit, sir. They haven't moved."

"Keep
an eye on them."

Giga
frowned. "An eye, sir?" She blinked. "Cannot compute."

"Your
radar, Giga."

She
grinned. "Happy to comply, Captain." She turned back toward the
windshield. "Cirona City coming into view, sir."

Riff
stepped forward and stared down. He whistled softly. "Quite a bit nicer
than Cog City back home."

Steel and
Nova rose from their seats too, and they all stared down below. Cirona City was
in fact barely more than a town. A hundred or so buildings of stone rose here
along several streets. Back on Earth, most buildings were metal, glass,
concrete, or plastic. Here the colonists used actual bricks of real stone, and
smaller homes were built of wood. It reminded Riff of the old, historic
pictures of Earth from thousands of years ago.

Beyond the town spread fields
of crops—real fields, not just towering metal grain factories. Red barns and
farmhouses rose along dirt roads. And beyond them spread the virgin forests of
a new, untamed world.

Suddenly Riff understood the
appeal of settling distant worlds. Gone was the smog, squalor, and soot of
Earth. Here was a place of pristine beauty, of majestic wilderness, of wondrous
vistas still untouched by man, of—

"It looks boring,"
Romy said.

Riff spun
around to see the demon standing behind him. He groaned. "I thought I told
you to stay in the main deck and guard your board game!"

Romy
frowned, hands on hips. "I did! I guarded it while we flew in space. Then
I guarded it as we crashed through the atmosphere and the pieces fell over."
She gasped and pressed her face against the windshield. "Ooh, look, they
have birds!" She bit her lip. "Do you think they have poodles here? I'm
starving."

Nova
growled and cracked her whip. "Off the bridge!"

Romy pouted,
stuck out her tongue, and marched away in a huff.

The town
grew closer beneath them. A gravelly lot spread between several stone
buildings. A handful of starjets, smaller than the Dragon Huntress, parked
there.

"Giga,
bring us down. Right there." Riff pointed.

The Dragon
Huntress thrummed and shook as its thruster engines belched out smoke. The
dragon's wings spread wide, and it slowed its descent, gliding down toward the
field. With a puff of smoke and a cloud of dust, they thumped down onto Planet Cirona.

The bobblehead
bulldog finally had enough. It tilted over and rolled down to the floor.

"Good,"
Riff said. "Good, we didn't crash. Always nice. Still in one piece."
He wiped sweat off his brow. "Main deck, everyone." He spoke into his
communicator. "Piston, Twig! Main deck."

They all
gathered there, careful not to step on the fallen counter-squares pieces. Twig
walked back and forth, handing out "Alien Hunters" badges. Vega's
golden sunlight fell through the windows.

Riff pinned
his badge to his shirt and addressed the others. "All right, boys and
girls. Here's the situation. We're going to be working with the colonists to
find a missing pirilian woman named Midnight. For those who don't know, pirilians
can be extremely dangerous. Some call them magical. They can teleport at will,
reappearing behind you to stab you in the back. They can blast out energy from
their hands, tearing a hole right through your flesh. We don't know if the woman
we're seeking will be friendly or hostile. I want you all to be on your guard—constantly.
Understood?"

They all
nodded.

Riff nodded
back. "Good. And . . . we might be facing a threat even worse than a pirilian.
As some of you already know, we spotted a skelkrin warship in orbit around the
planet. The ship was idling and did not react to us. The skelkrins themselves
might be on the surface, hunting the same pirilian."

Twig gasped
and covered her mouth. Piston shuddered and his eyes widened.

"Captain!"
the gruffle blurted out. "Hunting a tardigrade or even a pirilian is one
thing." Sweat beaded on Piston's brow. "But skelkrins, sir . . . we've
got no business facing enemies like that. They're far beyond what we can
handle, sir."

Despite his
humble height, Piston was the heaviest among them. His mighty hands easily held
a hammer that Riff could never lift. Yet now the burly gruffle was trembling.
At his side, tiny Twig was shaking like a leaf. She scurried to hide behind her
gruffle companion. The bolts and screws in the halfling's pockets jangled.

"My
friends!" Riff said to the pair. "I've never seen you like this. You
don't need to be frightened. You're Alien Hunters! I mean . . . all those
aliens you hunted before I bought the ship. The snot-monster you tamed. The Carinian
stone-beast you crushed. The Altairian fire-hopper you blasted out of space.
All those aliens you told me about." Riff placed a hand on Piston's
shaking shoulder. "If you defeated all of them, you can defeat some
skelkrins with me."

Piston
licked his lips and glanced around nervously. "Well, Captain, you see . .
. the thing is . . ." The gruffle sighed. "Well, Captain, I suppose
with skelkrins outside, you need to know the truth." He pulled Twig out
from behind his legs. "Tell him, Twig."

The little mechanic
was pale and shaking. "Those were just stories!" she blurted out.

Riff's eyes
widened. Nova gasped. Steel took a step back, face darkening.

"Stories?"
Riff whispered.

Piston
lowered his head, and his hammer drooped. "Aye, Captain. Stories. Truth is
. . ." The gruffle gulped. "Truth is, we were never really Alien
Hunters."

Riff took a
step back. "But Piston! What do you mean? The ship. The 'Alien Hunters Inc.'
letters on the hull. The badges!"

Twig burst
into tears. "All fake, Captain! All pretend." She flopped down onto
the floor, crying bitterly. "Piston and I made it all up, sir."

Piston
dared not raise his eyes; he could only stare at his feet. "Aye, Captain,
that's the truth. See, Twig and I are no warriors. We're just two outcasts. Two
souls who ended up on Earth, far from our home planets. We were homeless before
we found a giant, metal dragon in a yard of weeds, and we sneaked inside. Truth
be told, sir, we didn't even know the Dragon Huntress could fly."
He sighed. "For a year, we lived in the used starship lot, and well, sir,
we pretended. To pass the time, you know. We painted "Alien Hunters"
on the hull. We made ourselves badges. We even built ourselves a cybersite. We
just pretended to be heroes. We never thought we'd actually blast into space
and hunt real aliens."

Riff stared
in silence. For a long moment, he could only stare, breathing, too shocked for
words. Finally he whispered, "But . . . the work orders that came in. All
those requests from clients."

"See,
that's the funny thing, sir," Piston said. "You know that cybersite Twig
and I uploaded? Completely fake, but people started sending us work orders.
They wanted us to really fight aliens. So we'd print out their requests, and we'd
make believe, running around the old lot, pretending to fight aliens. And well,
sir, now this is no game. Now we're really on a distant planet, and now there
are real aliens out there, mean ones too." His shoulders stooped. "And
we're not the heroes you need with you."

Riff turned
away, facing the window. Trees swayed outside, and colonists were already
gathering to point at the newly arrived vessel.

"I can't
believe this," Riff whispered. "I . . . I can't."

Steel
grumbled and clutched the hilt of his sword. "We've been betrayed."

Nova
snarled and bared her teeth. "This whole thing has been a sham." The
gladiator cracked her whip, raising sparks of electricity. "Just a sham!"

Piston and
Twig were staring at their feet. Romy curled up on the floor, crying silently.

"Giga,
you knew?" Riff whispered, turning toward her. "Even you knew and you
didn't tell me?"

The android
lowered her head. She spoke in a shaky whisper. "I . . . I'm sorry, Captain,
I . . ." Giga could say no more. She covered her face and fled back to the
bridge.

The deck
seemed to sway around Riff. His world seemed to crash around him. A skelkrin
ship hovered above. A pirilian girl who could possibly just save the universe
was hiding somewhere outside. The fate of the cosmos came down to here, to this
planet, and the rug was pulled out from under his feet.

What do I
do? Riff thought and closed his eyes. Oh, Dad, I wish you were here. What do I
do now?

In his
mind, he could see his father again—a kindly old magician with a white beard
and sad smile.

You were never
a hero, my son. His father seemed to speak in his mind. But you
can become one. So can they. The courage in your heart is true. So is the
courage of your friends.

The vision
vanished. Riff opened his eyes. He took a deep, shaky breath and turned back
toward the others.

"Piston."
Riff knelt before the gruffle and clutched his shoulder. "Piston, you
might have been pretending back on Earth. But you weren't pretending when you
rigged the spool and dragged out the tardigrade." He turned toward Twig. "Twig,
you were perhaps only daydreaming on Earth. But you were a real heroine when
you got into the space suit and let that beast nearly swallow you."

The diminutive
mechanic wiped away tears. "Really? A heroine?"

Riff
straightened and nodded. "Yes. You are all heroes and heroines today. I
need to go out there, and I need to face the skelkrins, and I need to find the
missing pirilian. And I need my friends. I need your wrench, Twig."

The
halfling bit her lip, raised her wrench, and let electricity crackle on its
head. "You've got it, Captain."

Riff turned
toward Piston. "Piston, I need your hammer."

The gruffle
blinked away tears, raised his chin, and hefted his massive hammer. "You've
got it, sir."

Next Riff
turned toward Romy; the demon was still curled up into a ball. "Romy, I
need your pitchfork."

Sniffling,
the demon rose to her feet, raised her pitchfork, and managed to snarl. "It's
yours." She handed it to him.

Riff rolled
his eyes. "Romy, I mean I need you to use it."

Her eyes
widened and she wagged her tail. "Okay!"

Next Riff
turned toward Steel. His brother stared back, eyes hard, and raised his sword.

"By my
honor," Steel said, "my sword is yours."

At last,
Riff turned toward Nova. The woman he loved. The woman he would always fight
for. Sunlight gleamed on her golden armor and golden hair.

"And I
need your whip, Nova," he whispered. "And I need you by my side."

She nodded,
green eyes soft. "My whip is yours."

Riff drew
his gun from his holster. He stared at them all, one by one. "I don't care
who we used to be. I don't care if we were failed musicians, gladiators,
outcast knights, outcast demons, refugees, or relics. Right now, here, today—we
are Alien Hunters."

They
nodded. They pinned on their badges.

"Alien
Hunters," they whispered, one by one, and their eyes gleamed.

Giga's head
appeared from around the doorway. Hesitantly, the android stepped back into the
main deck. "Am . . . am I one too?"

Riff couldn't
help but grin, a huge grin that hurt his cheeks. He took a badge from the
table, and he pinned it to Giga's kimono. "I know that you can't leave the
ship, Giga, no more than a heart can leave a body. You are the heart of this
ship. And you are the heart of the hunters. You are always one of us."

He hadn't
known androids could cry, but right now, tears flowed down Giga's cheeks. She
saluted him.

"Happy
to comply, Captain," she whispered. "Always."

The damn
tears were now stinging Riff's eyes too. He turned and walked toward the airlock.
"Now come on! We've got aliens to hunt."

"Yeah!"
Romy shouted and whooped.

Riff opened
the hatch and lowered the staircase. One by one, the Alien Hunters stepped off
their ship and onto a new world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
THE PURPLE ONE AND THE RED ONES

Skrum was moving through the forest,
sniffing for his prey, when his communicator buzzed.

He growled and snorted. Around
him, his fellow skelkrins hissed and snapped their teeth. They had been
following the trail for days now, traveling from farm to farm, leaving a wake
of destruction. Across the planet of Cirona, barns burned, livestock lay
slaughtered, and the bones of farmers lay in heaps. And still Midnight evaded
them. Still the purple-skinned vermin stayed always one step ahead, vanishing
whenever Skrum caught sight of her, porting from hilltop to hilltop, fading
into shadows.

The pirilians are sneaky
bastards, Skurm thought and licked his chops. And this one will scream
for decades, scream with a million tortured clones.

His communicator, a bulky
metal box, buzzed again upon his chest. Skrum howled in frustration and slammed
his fist against the red button that shone there.

"What?" he snarled.

A staticky voice came from the
speaker. "My lord Skrum!"

Skrum recognized that voice.
It was Kur-Ta speaking, pilot of The Crab, their warship. The fool was
useless in a fight. Skrum had left him in the vessel above the planet, his eye
in the dark.

"Why do you disturb my
hunt, Kur-Ta?" Skrum hissed into the communicator.

"My lord, a starship
approached the planet. A human starship. I did as you instructed. I did not
engage the enemy in battle. I let the ship land."

Skrum's lips peeled back in a
snarl. "What class human ship? A division-class destroyer? A dreadnaught?
A starwolf?"

Kur-Ta hesitated. "It . .
. it looks like a dragon, my lord. Not a military vessel. Barely spaceworthy,
my lord. It bore Earth letters on its hull. Couldn't hold more than a dozen
human vermin."

A small blue bird fluttered
toward Skrum. He crushed it in his palm, watched the blood leak, and
considered. A novelty ship. Human by design.

"Aminor," Skrum
whispered.

The old fool was known by many
names. The traveler. The wizard. Old Man Sky. To some in the galaxy he was a
hero, to others just a myth.

To Skrum, he was only the
human who had freed Midnight from his prison.

He spoke into his
communicator. "Feed me this ship's coordinates, Kur-Ta. Inform me if it
moves again. The humans are here to hunt the same prey." Skrum licked his
lips. "This will be more fun than I had imagined."

"Yes, my lord."

Once the coordinates were fed
through, Skrum slammed his fist against his communicator again, shutting it
off.

Some predators, Skrum knew,
hunted with brute strength, no cunning to them. Not him. Skrum was an
apex predator, and he hunted with guile, with deception, with slow stalking
before the pounce.

"It is time to stalk,"
he said to his fellow skelkrins. They gathered around him, tongues hanging low,
eyes burning bright. "Soon the girl will be ours. And then . . . then
every planet between here and Earth."

* * * * *

The Alien Hunters, toughest mercenaries
in the galaxy, stormed out of their dragon starship, weapons raised, snarling
and ready for battle.

A little girl gaped with wide
eyes and dropped her teddy bear. A duck quacked and waddled off.

Riff cleared his throat and
holstered his gun. He waved down his comrades' weapons.

So much for a skelkrin
ambush, he thought.

The town was small, its roads
unpaved. Several buildings rose ahead: a saloon, a barbershop, a funeral home,
and a large building with a clock tower that looked like town hall. Beyond the
buildings, Riff could see forests, distant mountains, and even fields—real
fields where crops grew from the soil, not inside boxes. Two moons hung in the
sky, one deep blue and the other pale white.

"Are you the Alien Hunters?"
the little girl asked. She leaned down and picked up her doll.

Romy's eyes widened. She
rushed forward, holding her own teddy bear. "Oh hai! You have a teddy too!
Maybe they can be friends."

The girl stared at the demon,
then at the others. "You're not strong enough."

Riff stepped forward and knelt
by the girl. "It's all right, child. You're safe with us here. We've come
to get rid of the alien."

The girl shook her head. "You
came here for the purple alien. But there are other ones. Bigger. Red aliens.
Aliens who will kill you. You should leave. You will die."

With that, the girl clutched
her doll to her chest, spun around, and fled into a home.

"Thank goodness you're
here!"

Riff turned to see a tall man
with a yellow beard hurry forward. He wore fine clothes of brown and tan
fabric, tall boots, and a cowboy hat.

Romy growled and raised her
pitchfork. "An alien!"

Nova had to grab the demon and
tug her back. "Human, Romy. Human!"

The bearded man hesitated,
then turned toward Riff and shook his hand. "Name's Efrom. Mayor Efrom. I
run this here town and, gosh, we're glad to have you here. Bunch of aliens come
to this planet, and they've gone to killing." Efrom lowered his head. "First
the purple one, then the red ones." He glanced up at the demon, gruffle,
halfling, and ashai. "And now all manner of 'em come to Cirona."

Romy wagged her tail. "I'm
a demon, not an alien."

Nova pulled her farther back. "Romy,
shut your mouth or it's to the attic with you again."

Riff looked around him,
waiting for the "red ones"—no doubt the skelkrins—to leap out at
any moment.

"Efrom, you called us
here for the purple one. The pirilian. Where is she?"

Efrom dabbed his forehead with
a handkerchief. "Come inside. Into the shade. So hot here in the light of
Vega, hotter than old Sol back on Earth. Let me pour you some cold sweet tea."

Nova slammed her palm over
Romy's mouth before the demon could ask about poodles.

They entered the large stone
building with the clock tower, and they sat at a long table covered with maps.
A butler served the tea, which was very cold and very sweet, and Efrom spent a
long while talking, pointing at the maps. Some locations were marked with a purple
dot: places where they had spotted the pirilian stealing food or sneaking into
barns. Other places were marked with red dots: places where the skelkrins had
attacked, killing settlers and burning down farmhouses.

"The last place we saw
the pirilian is here." Efrom pointed at a location on the map. "This
was just this morning, only 'bout five kilometers away. Old Farmer Grog called
in the report. Said the creature's skulking around, stealing his fruit. Tried
to call out to her, but she won't answer. He's scared to death now, Grog is.
Last few places the purple one showed up, the red ones showed up only hours
later." He shuddered. "And the red ones are worse."

Riff nodded. "We'll head
over there now. We'll take the Dragon Huntress."

Efrom tsked his tongue. "Farmer
Grog be mighty upset if you land on his fields. Treats his corn better than his
children. You can take the horses. Come with me."

They stepped back outside. Efrom
whistled, and six horses rode over, their manes long and flowing.

"Fine steeds," Steel
said, nodding with satisfaction.

Romy's mouth watered and she
licked her lips.

"Can I just take one
bite?" the demon begged, only for Nova to scowl and crack her whip.

They mounted the horses.
Little Twig nearly vanished into her saddle, while Piston nearly overflowed
his; the poor horse below the stocky gruffle whined in protest. Despite having
wings, even Romy rode a horse. The demon wore an oversized cowboy hat she had
found indoors, pushing it back whenever it slipped over her eyes.

"Just head down that
road." Efrom pointed. "And may Vega's light bless you."

Steel kneed his horse, leading
the group. Riff rode close behind, and the others followed. As the Alien
Hunters rode out, leaving the town behind, Riff looked over his shoulder and
stared back at the Dragon Huntress. Giga stood at the windshield,
looking out at them, standing still and sad.

Riff felt sadness fill him
too. They were six here on their horses, but they should be seven.

Giga is one of us, he
thought, yet she's trapped forever in the ship, a part of its hardware,
doomed to die if she ever leaves.

It somehow felt wrong to think
of Giga as hardware. She had become to him almost like a living woman. Already Riff
missed her. As the Dragon Huntress vanished from view behind him, he
felt a pain in his chest at being apart from her. Once more, he could feel her
falling into his lap, the warmth of her body, the softness of her lips kissing
his cheek—

He shook his head wildly.
Foolishness!

Giga is an
android, Riff, he told himself. A machine. Not a living woman.
Besides, you love Nova. You've always only loved her.

He turned to look at Nova and
felt some of his doubt fade. The warrior-princess rode on a white mare, and her
armor gleamed in the sun. She seemed a goddess of gold. Her hair flowed in the
wind, her eyes shone, and she smiled at him, a bright smile, a smile so rare
these days. She used to smile like this so often in the old days. She was
beautiful, strong, wise, a woman he had lost once, a woman he could not bear to
lose again.

She saw him staring, gave him
a nod and crooked smile, and mimicked tilting a hat. "Howdy, partner."

He nodded back. "Howdy, little
lady."

He added words he could not
bring to his lips, not here: I love you, Nova, always.

Nova, strong and proud. Giga,
shy and fragile. Life and machine. Fire and silk. The part of Riff that admired
women . . . and the part that wanted them to admire him.

He was so lost in his thoughts
he barely noticed that they were nearing Old Grog's farm.

Riff was used to the farms on
Earth. To him, a "farm" was a massive building of concrete and metal,
hundreds of stories tall, within whose walls meat, grain, and produce grew in
glass boxes. The farm before him looked like something out of a history book.
Fields of corn and wheat spread across the land—real fields of grain that grew
in the open. Cows, horses, and sheep grazed in a sward of grass. Farther back
rose a red barn, several silos, a few sheds, and a farmhouse.

The farmhouse windows and
doors were boarded up. A man Riff assumed to be Farmer Grog peeked between two
boards on a window, then quickly vanished from view.

Steel rode
up close to Riff. The knight stared around, frowning. "You reckon the pirilian
is still out there?"

Riff passed his gaze across
the farm from silo to barn to fields. "If Farmer Grog's hiding, he
obviously believes there are aliens about." He looked back at his motley
companions and sighed; Romy was busy whispering to her teddy bear, while Twig
was cleaning her ear with her wrench. "I don't think anyone in their right
mind would be scared of this lot."

Nova rode up to him too. The ashai
nodded and unfurled her whip. "We split up. We search every nook and
cranny of this place."

"No." Riff shook his
head. "We stay close together. We don't know if Midnight is hostile or
not. She's a pirilian. If she's hostile, she's powerful enough to kill us all."

He kneed his horse, riding
closer toward the farm. The others rode around him, and dust rose from the dirt
road. The fields rustled at their sides.

She could be anywhere,
Riff thought. Hiding in the fields, in the barn, in the farmhouse attic . .
. or maybe even long gone, fled to the mountains.

"Midnight!" he
called out. "Midnight, we're here to help you! If you can hear me, come
and talk to me!"

The fields rustled. A large
black bird, similar to a crow but beating eight wings, fled into the distance.

No pirilian.

No skelkrins.

Riff rode on, his gun raised
and loaded. His companions rode around him, weapons ready. Even Romy had
finally ceased her blabbering and raised her pitchfork.

"Midnight!" Riff
called. "I know you're here. Come and talk to me. Come—"

Stalks of corn creaked at his
right side.

The air popped.

A flash of purple appeared on
the barn's roof.

A ball of golden light hurled
down toward him.

Riff shouted. His horse reared
and neighed. The light missed them by inches, slamming into the dirt road,
digging a hole.

Nova shouted and lashed her
whip, sending sparks of electricity toward the barn. Steel shouted and pointed
his sword, and light blasted out from the blade.

"No!" Riff shouted. "We
want her alive, don't—"

The air popped again. The purple
figure vanished from the barn. Purple flashed again to Riff's left. She stood
in the field of wheat! He glimpsed yellow eyes, a lavender face, a black hood
and cloak. She raised her palm and more qi energy flew his way.

Riff winced. He tried to dodge
the blast of light, to ride away, knowing he was too slow, knowing the qi
would hit him.

A whip cracked.

Nova's lash swung through the
air, faster than the speed of sound, and slapped the ball of qi away.
The energy slammed into a rock on the road, shattering the stone.

Nova winked and gave him a
crooked smile. "Watch your back, pilgrim."

He groaned. "Cowboy talk
later. Catch her!"

Nova nodded. "Let's
rustle up that varmint."

"I said no cowboy talk!"

The air popped again as
Midnight ported, now appearing on top of the silo. Her qi blasted down,
screeching through the air. The blast hurtled toward Steel. The knight swung
his sword, parrying the blow.

Midnight vanished.

Riff heard her shout behind
him.

He spun around—too late. Her
light blasted forward, heading toward Nova.

And Nova was facing the wrong
way.

"Nova!" Riff
shouted. He rode his horse toward her, leaped from the saddle, and tried to
grab her, to pull her down.

He was too slow. Midnight's qi
slammed into Nova's golden armor, knocking the ashai from the saddle. She
slammed onto the ground, screaming in pain, her armor cracking.

Steel screamed too. Riff
turned his head to see Midnight appear a hundred meters above in the sky, her
light blasting down onto Steel. The knight's armor cracked, and he fell too.

Before Midnight could fall
down to her death, she ported again, now appearing upon the farmhouse roof, and
her light flared out.

Twig was screaming. Piston
leaped off his saddle, placed his hammer's head against his shoulder, and began
firing bullets through the hammer's shaft. The fire riddled the farmhouse.

"No firing!" Riff
shouted. "We need her alive!"

"She's killing us, Captain!"
Piston shouted back.

"There she is, in the sky
again!" Romy cried out. The demon snarled, leaped off her horse, and beat
her wings. She soared into the sky, claws stretched out, fangs bared. Before
the demon could reach Midnight, the pirilian vanished again.

This time, Midnight appeared
on the road only several feet away from Riff.

She raised her palms and
pointed her light at him.

"Wait!" Riff
shouted. "Midnight, wait!"

She shot her light toward him.

Riff grimaced and fired his
gun.

Blood splashed.

The air popped.

Midnight vanished.

Riff found himself lying on
the ground by his horse. He grimaced in pain; an ugly burn covered his thigh. Purple
blood speckled the road. He had hit Midnight. Stars damn it, he had hit her,
the very woman he needed alive, the very woman whose life might just save the
cosmos. Yet perhaps she still lived. He saw no corpse.

"Midnight!" he
shouted, struggling to his feet. His wound smoked and sizzled. "Midnight,
listen to me! Stop fighting us. I'm here to help you. My name is Riff Starfire.
My father, Aminor, sent me here. Can you hear me?"

The fields rustled. Nova
moaned on the road, still alive, her armor cracked. Twig was leaning over the
ashai, bandaging her wound. Steel struggled to his feet; his breastplate had
shattered, but it had saved his life.

No Midnight.

No more qi light.

Piston slowly lowered his
hammer. "She ported off to die, Captain." The gruffle spat. "Probably
lying dead in the fields."

Twig gazed around with wide
eyes, then covered her face and trembled. Romy flew back down to the ground,
stood beside her horse, and looked around with huge, haunted eyes. Groaning,
Nova struggled to her feet and came to stand beside Riff. She raised her whip;
the lash crackled with electricity.

"Midnight," Riff
said again, speaking softly now. "Midnight, we're putting down our
weapons." He knelt slowly and placed his gun down on the ground. "You're
safe."

He looked at the others,
gesturing for them to do the same. Romy put down her pitchfork, and Twig tossed
down her wrench. Piston grumbled but let his hammer drop with a thud. Nova
growled and clung to her whip, but at a glare from Riff, she spat and let it
fall to the ground; it coiled up like a snake, its electricity dying.

"Steel, you too,"
Riff said.

The knight stared back, sword
in hand. Riff knew that Solflare was a part of the knight as much as his arm,
heart, and soul. But finally Steel tightened his lips, put down the antique
sword, and took a step back.

"Midnight, our weapons
are down!" Riff stepped farther away from the pile of weapons. The others
joined him. "Now come out. Let us tend to your wound. Let us help you."

For a long moment he heard
only the rustling fields.

And then, slowly, Midnight
emerged from between the corn stalks.

Riff's plasma blast had grazed
her hip; her purple blood dripped. She gazed at him with huge, luminous eyes
like those of a cat. She pulled back her hood, revealing a purple face, indigo
hair, and long ears.

"Riff?" she
whispered, and those eyes flooded with tears. "Riff from Earth? Aminor's
son?"

He smiled tremulously and
reached out to her. "It's me. You're safe. We're here to help. We—"

Roars tore the air.

The earth shook.

Twenty creatures rose from the
field, towering giants of crimson skin, blazing white eyes, fangs and claws.

Skelkrins, Riff knew at
once.

"Midnight, behind you!"
he shouted, racing toward her, trying to grab her.

He was too slow.

One of the skelkrins, a beast
of horns and warty red skin, fired a massive iron gun the size of a man.

A black web blasted out,
tipped with metal shards, and wrapped around Midnight. The pirilian fell, screaming,
thrashing as the web tightened around her, constricting her, sealing her within
a cocoon.

"Kill them!" Riff
shouted to his companions. "Shoot them down!"

The other Alien Hunters raced
toward their pile of weapons. Riff clenched his jaw and ran forward instead,
trying to reach the trapped Midnight. She was still thrashing within her
cocoon, her screams muffled. A shining black membrane was growing along the
web, thickening into a shell, sealing Midnight until her screams died, until
she couldn't even thrash.

Riff reached the cocoon and
leaped forward, trying to grab the encased Midnight.

The skelkrin who shot her
stepped forward. He was a massive, towering creature. Easily over eight feet
tall. Easily a thousand pounds of muscle and jagged black armor. The creature's
fangs shone, longer than daggers. His white eyes swirled like exploding suns.
The beast swung his arm, and a fist the size of a frozen chicken slammed into
Riff's head.

Riff flew through the air.

He slammed against the ground,
seeing stars, tasting blood.

"Riff!" Nova
shouted.

He blinked, trying to see
through the haze. He managed to push himself up to his elbows. The world spun,
and he made out twenty skelkrins or more looming above him. One of them—the
brute that had hit him—lifted Midnight in her black encasing. He held the
bundle to his chest; Midnight seemed small as a baby in swaddling clothes
against him.

"Midnight!" Riff
shouted and pushed himself to his feet. His jaw screamed in agony.

The ground shook as the
skelkrins turned on their jet packs. Smoke rose in clouds. Fire raged across
the fields. The skelkrins blasted up into the sky, carrying Midnight with them.

At his side, Nova lashed her
whip again and again, sending up lightning bolts toward the fleeing skelkrins. Piston
growled, grabbed his hammer, and began blasting bullets out of its shaft. Steel
lifted his sword, pointed it skyward, and shot up beams of light.

"Wait!" Riff
shouted. "Stop! You'll hit Midnight."

One of the weapons—Riff wasn't
sure which one—hit a skelkrin above. The beast's jet tank exploded in the sky,
raining down sparks and bits of red flesh. The other skelkrins kept soaring.

"Stop!" Riff
shouted. "We can't hurt Midnight!"

He stared upward, wincing. The
skelkrins rose higher and higher, leaving trails of smoke and fire . . . until
they vanished.

Riff turned to stare at the
others. They looked back at him, some grim, others gasping. Romy shed tears.
Dust and blood covered them all.

"They're taking Midnight
back to their starship." Riff's heart banged against his ribs, his fingers
shook, and blood dripped down his leg. He gritted his teeth and leaped back
onto his horse. "Hurry! To the Dragon Huntress. Ride!"

They all leaped onto their
horses. They galloped down the road. Dust flew, stinging Riff's eyes, and he
could barely breathe, and fear colder and darker than the depths of space
flooded him.

* * * * *

Skrum blasted up through Cirona's
atmosphere, clutching the wriggling Midnight in his arms.

Fire and heat blazed around
them. Midnight screamed inside the fleshy membrane he had wrapped her in. The cocoon
would protect her frail body from the vacuum of space. As his jet pack roared,
thrusting him into the emptiness, he held her close to his chest.

"You are safe, precious."
He licked the cocoon, savoring its sticky sweetness. "You are safe inside
your shell. It is when I open your shell that you should scream."

They shot through the last
layers of atmosphere, twenty skelkrins and their prey. Of course, they needed
no space suits like humans, no sticky cocoons like the one that engulfed
Midnight. They were skelkrins. They were the galaxy's strongest predators.
Their hard skin could withstand even the vacuum of space. Their lungs could
last without air for hours, even days.

"We are the galaxy's most
evolved hunters," he said to the cocoon. Midnight still writhed inside. "And
soon you, Midnight, will lead us to every corner of the galaxy on our conquest.
Yes, precious. I'm going to break you into a million shards. I'm going to clone
each one into a new you. And I'm going to thrust you into a million starships.
You will become the engines of our fleet, porting us across the universe. As
our enemies still use fuel or hyperjets, we will use Midnight-engines." Skrum
licked his chops. "You, precious child, will bring about a skelkrin
cosmos."

She screamed. She wept. He
smiled.

The skelkrins kept blasting
upward, moving through open space now, leaving the planet far below. Skrum
looked up and saw his warship there, a massive crab with iron claws. He directed
his flight toward the ship.

The hangar doors opened above,
a mouth to swallow them. Skrum shot toward the entrance, flew through the hangar,
and finally landed on the hard metal floor. The others entered behind him and
the hangar doors slammed shut with a thud.

Skrum tossed Midnight down.
She clanged against the floor. The other skelkrins laughed, kicked her, spat on
her shell.

"Enough!" Skrum
shouted. "She's not to be harmed. Not yet. She must reach the emperor
alive."

He shoved the other skelkrins
aside. They hissed and snapped their teeth at him, but they withdrew. Skrum
stepped toward the hardened, black shell and knelt before it. He tore open a
rent with his claws, exposing Midnight's face.

She gasped for air. She
screamed.

Skrum spat on her face.

"You thought you could
escape me." He trailed a claw across her cheek, cutting a thin line. Purple
blood beaded. "My sweet Midnight, it's time to go home."

He rose to his feet. He turned
to face the others. "We go to the bridge. We bomb this planet into
desolation. And then we fly home in victory!"

Their roars shook the warship,
and Midnight screamed again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
THE CRAB'S CLAWS

"Giga, fire up the engines!"
Riff shouted into his communicator, riding his horse back into town. "We
got to fly!"

Dust rose around him in clouds
as he galloped. The skelkrins were gone into the sky. His fellow Alien Hunters
rode around him, eyes dark.

Riff tugged the reins, and his
horse reared and halted. He leaped from the saddle and ran, kicking up dust,
toward the HMS Dragon Huntress. The ship stood in the yard. Several
children had been coloring with chalk on its facade; they fled as Riff
approached. He yanked the airlock's outer door, raced upstairs, opened the
second door, and barged into the main deck. Steel ran close behind, and the
others soon leaped in too.

Riff made for the bridge,
shouting all the while. "Giga, fly! Fly into orbit!"

Her voice rose from the bridge
ahead. "Happy to comply!"

Smoke blasted out the windows.
The ship shook madly. They were soaring into the sky before Riff even reached
the bridge. He stumbled up the last few steps, falling and banging his knee.
The ship rattled madly, roaring as it ascended. Riff fell again, dragged
himself into the bridge, and somehow made it to his chair. Blood kept seeping
down his leg.

"Captain!" Giga
said. "You're hurt. Are—"

"Just keep flying! Find
the skelkrin ship. They have Midnight."

Giga gasped, shut her mouth,
and nodded. At his sides, Nova and Steel made it to their seats and sat down.
The ship kept shaking madly as it soared through the atmosphere. The bulldog
fell again. Finally they found themselves in open space, Vega shining in the
distance.

Ahead flew the skelkrin
warship.

Riff had seen the vessel on
his monitor before, but now it loomed before him. The massive ship dwarfed the Dragon
Huntress. Its metal claws reached out, each large enough to crush the Dragon
Huntress. Its spikes gleamed in the sunlight. And its guns were blasting
out plasma, raining death down onto the planet below.

"They're killing the
colonists," Nova whispered. Tears filled her eyes. "They're burning
them all."

Slowly the skelkrin ship began
turning toward the Dragon Huntress.

Its guns fired.

"Giga, dodge!" Riff
shouted.

The Dragon swerved in the
sky. Riff nearly fell from his seat. They dodged one blast of plasma, but
another blast slammed into them.

Sparks flew. Fire raged across
the bridge. A thousand lights blinked and warning sirens wailed.

"Fire back!" Nova
shouted, leaping to her feet.

"Wait, no!" Riff
said. "Giga, cancel that order. We can't hurt Midnight."

More enemy fire flew. Plasma
blasted all around them. The Dragon Huntress flew madly, dodging blast
after blast until another bolt hit them. The windshield cracked and nearly
shattered.

"Captain, we've lost an
engine!" Piston shouted through the communicator.

"Riff, we might have to
kill her!" Nova shouted. "We have to blast them out of space,
Midnight or no Midnight."

Giga turned toward Riff. She
stared, awaiting his orders. "Captain?" the android whispered.

Riff clenched his jaw. He
couldn't flee—not with Midnight aboard the enemy vessel. He couldn't fire back—not
without killing her.

"Giga," he said, "fire
at their cannons and engines. Not their main hull." He clenched his fist. "We're
going to cripple the bastards."

Giga's eyes flashed and her
lips peeled back into something almost like a snarl. "Happy to comply, Captain,"
she hissed . . . and fired.

Searing red plasma blasted
from the Dragon Huntress like dragonfire.

The inferno slammed into the
enemy ship's cannons.

Explosions filled space.

The skelkrin ship rocked
madly. Shards of metal flew out. Flames blasted through the escaping air. Riff
caught his breath, suddenly sure the entire warship would crash down to the planet,
taking Midnight with it.

But the great metal crab
remained flying. Its main plasma guns had shattered. The cannons thrust out in
broken shards, reminding Riff of those old cartoons where the villain fired a
shotgun with a rock in the barrel. But the Crab's smaller guns, a dozen
of them across its hull, had survived the assault. They now turned toward the Dragon
Huntress and shot out smaller bolts.

"Evasive action!"
Riff shouted. He was sure he had heard that term somewhere before. It seemed to
work. Happy to comply, Giga raised the Dragon Huntress higher. The blasts
shot beneath them.

The skelkrin vessel came
charging toward them.

"Giga, fly beneath the
bastard." Riff stood at the windshield, staring at the warship barreling
forward. "Fly under it, and we're going to cripple its engines. We can't
blast it apart, but we can make sure they're not getting away with Midnight."

Giga nodded and the Dragon
Huntress dipped in orbit, then charged forward. Enemy lasers flew above
them. Streaks of light filled the sky.

"Lower!" Riff
shouted. "We're going to slam together!"

The Crab came charging
forth. Soon the two ships were only a kilometer apart, then only meters apart.

Nova screamed.

Giga snarled.

The Dragon Huntress
dipped in space. Riff grimaced, grabbing onto the dashboard.

The Crab charged forth
above them. The two ships rubbed together. Sparks flew from the instruments.
Metal screeched and banged together.

"It'll open us like a tin
can!" Steel shouted.

"Giga, lower!"

The Dragon Huntress sank
deeper. They reached the end of the enemy ship.

"Blast their engines
apart!" Riff shouted.

The Dragon Huntress
flew deeper into space, then spun around to face the Crab.

The dragon blasted out its
fire. The plasma slammed into the enemy's backside, blazing across its rear
engines.

Those engines exploded with
heat and light that washed the Dragon Huntress's bridge.

The enemy ship kept flying.

Its hyperdrive engines were
shattered. They were in ruin. They were in shreds. Yet somehow, they were
lighting up. Coils of blue light flowed across them.

"Captain, the enemy vessel
is prepared to shoot into hyperdrive," Giga said.

"Fire again! Tear the
engines apart!"

"Cannot compute, Captain.
Their engines are heating up. A blast from us now will tear their entire ship
apart, Midnight included."

Riff clenched his fists. "Warm
up our own hyperdrive engines. We're going after them."

"Cannot compute, Captain.
Our fuel tank sustained damage and is leaking its contents." Giga turned
to stare at him. "We have barely enough fuel left to remain in orbit, Captain."

The enemy hyperdrive engines
were sputtering. One went dark, coughed, and reignited. The Crab's
engines were obviously struggling but getting brighter. Riff had a sudden
memory of his father's old lawnmower which always took several yanks on the cord
to kick-start.

The skelkrins are going to
escape with Midnight, Riff realized. And we can't stop them.

"Get them on speakers,
Gig." He returned to his seat. "Put them on."

"Happy to comply, Captain."
Giga nodded. "Hailing enemy vessel . . . hailing . . . hailing . . ."

With a crackle of electricity,
the head-on display in front of Riff sprang to life.

Onscreen leered the ugly,
fanged face of the brute that had kidnapped Midnight and struck Riff. The pain in
Riff's jaw flared again.

"Captain Raphael 'Riff' Starfire." The skelkrin grinned and licked his chops. Saliva dripped down
his chin. "Yes, I know your name. This is Captain Skrum of the Skelkrin
Empire. Called to say goodbye, Starfire?"

"I called to tell you
that you're a coward." Riff snorted. "Running from a fight?"

The skelkrin growled, then
laughed. His milky white eyes seemed to burn with inner fire. "There is no
more fight, Starfire. Your ship is leaking fuel. Your engines are shattered.
Your puny weapons could not cripple us."

"So why are you fleeing,
dog?" Riff balled up his fists. "I thought skelkrins were
apex predators. I thought you were the greatest hunters in the galaxy. And yet
you flee from me, a puny little human. If you leave now, I'm going to spread
the word across the galaxy. Everyone from Vega to Sol will know that Skrum the skelkrin
is a yellow-bellied coward who fled from me." Riff forced himself to grin.
"You want to prove your strength? Finish what you started. We're both
hunters. Come and hunt me."

Riff swiped his finger across
his throat. Giga understood the signal and cut off the connection.

"Riff," Nova
whispered. She was pale, and her hand clenched around her whip. "We can't
defeat them in a fight. What are you doing?"

Riff grinned savagely,
clutching his armrests. "I'm hunting aliens." He turned toward Giga. "Same
maneuver as before. We fly under them. Once their hyperdrive engines have
cooled off, can we blast them without making their whole ship explode?"

The android nodded. "Aye,
Captain."

"Good. We do that. Now.
Now!"

The Crab's hyperdrive
engines were going dark again, but its thrusters were blasting. The ship was
turning back toward them.

"Giga, under them!"
Riff said. "Blast those hyper engines!"

The Dragon Huntress
flew.

The Crab charged toward
them.

This time, the enemy vessel
did not fire its guns. Instead, one of its great, iron claws swung downward.

"Evasive ac—!" Riff
began.

Before he could complete the
word, the claw slammed into the Dragon Huntress.

They tumbled through space.
Sparks flew. A panel caught fire.

"Captain, we can't take
much more of this!" Piston's voice rose from the communicator.

"Giga, fire at their
engines!" Riff shouted. "Fire, fire! Point us up and fire!"

The Crab loomed above them.
The Dragon Huntress steadied itself below, raised its head . . . and
belched out smoke.

Riff cursed. "Why aren't
we firing? Blow our dragonfire!"

Giga tilted her head. "Cannot
compute, Captain. Weapon ignition requires fuel. Our tank has leaked out its
last drop."

Riff cursed every foul word he
knew. The Crab came swooping down toward them again, claws snapping.

"Pull back!" Riff
stared in horror at the approaching enemy. "Use thruster power!"

The Dragon Huntress
blasted out gas. They shot backward in space. The enemy vessel flew in pursuit.
The two ships streamed through orbit.

Riff spoke into his
communicator. "Piston, we need more fuel. Hook up the reserve tanks."

"I can't do it, Captain!"
The gruffle's voice rose through the speaker. "The damn demon drank our
spare tank. Drank every last drop, she did."

Gods, Riff thought. We
might die because of the damn demon.

"Piston, we have to fire
our plasma!"

"I cannot fire without
fuel, Captain!"

Giga turned toward him. "Captain,
thruster power is running low. We have only a few more minutes of flight left,
and then we'll be sitting ducks, sir."

No. Riff stumbled
toward the windshield. Gods, no, it can't end like this.

He stared out into space. The
skelkrin vessel came charging toward them, claws opening wide, ready to tear
them apart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:
OF WARRIORS AND WRENCHES

Steel stood on the bridge of the Dragon
Huntress, staring at the enemy vessel approaching. He raised his chin.

There is a damsel in
distress on that ship.

He took a deep breath.

Midnight needs me. She
needs a knight.

Riff was shouting at Giga to
fly, shouting at Piston to find more fuel, shouting at the enemy warship in a
rage. That enemy warship kept charging forth, claws clattering.

My brother is losing control,
Steel thought. But a knight remains calm. A knight always maintains his
honor, his duty, his chivalry, even in the face of death.

He stepped toward the side of
the bridge, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a space suit.

"Steel, what are you
doing?" Riff said, turning toward him.

Calmly, Steel began removing
his ancient knightly armor and pulling on the space suit. "I'm going after
the damsel, brother," he said calmly. "Midnight needs me."

As the Dragon Huntress
kept orbiting the planet on thruster power, and as the enemy approached, Riff
marched toward Steel and grabbed his arm.

"What are you talking
about?"

Steel gazed at his brother. He
reached out and clasped Riff's shoulder. "My honor demands it, brother.
There is a damsel in distress within their vessel. Our ship is crippled. I will
go fight for her with sword and chivalry."

Riff slapped his forehead. "Steel!
Damn it! This isn't a game anymore. You're not back on Earth in your fake
castle. You can't pretend to be some knight anymore like from the fairy tales.
This is real battle, Steel. And the fate of the cosmos itself hangs in the
balance."

Those words dug deep. They
twisted inside Steel.

A relic, some on Earth had
called him. A dinosaur. A madman. A modern Don Quixote.

No.

Steel squared his shoulders. "I
am a Knight of Sol, brother. You are right. This is no game." He zipped
his space suit shut, put on his helmet, and lifted his sword. "Yes, the
fate of the cosmos hangs in the balance. So does my honor. I pray we meet
again." Steel clasped Riff's arm. "I love you, my brother. Always."

Riff laughed mirthlessly and
turned toward Nova. "Can you believe this, Nova? Can you—Nova? Nova, what
the hell are you doing?"

The ashai princess too was
pulling on a space suit. She glared at Riff. "I'm going with your
lump-headed brother. I'm not letting him die in glory without me. The poor
bastard has no idea what he's doing." She flashed Steel a crooked smile. "Needs
a real warrior with him."

Steel wanted to object. To
tell Nova to stay. The woman was an abomination, not a true lady. She was
crude, rude, a woman who spat, who drank, who—

A woman I need with me,
he thought. A true warrior.

He lifted a jetpack from the
cabinet and handed it to her. He placed another across his back.

"So we fly together, Nova
of Ashmar. We fight together."

She spat into her palm and
slapped his shoulder. "We hunt aliens together."

They turned toward Riff—a
knight and a gladiator.

"You can't leave,"
Riff whispered. "You'll die."

Nova stepped toward him and
touched his cheek. "According to your dad, if the skelkrins get away with
Midnight, we'll all die." She leaned forward and kissed his lips.

Riff growled and stepped
toward the cabinet where a third space suit still hung. "Then I'm going
with you."

Steel reached out his arm and
stopped him. "No, Riff. You are captain of the Dragon Huntress. A
captain does not abandon his ship in battle. Besides—I will need this third
space suit." He lifted it, placed it under his arm, and smiled thinly. "How
else am I to bring Midnight back here?"

Riff stared back at the
windshield. The enemy vessel was flying forth, its engines sputtering, its
claws snapping. The Dragon Huntress raced along its orbit, down to
fumes, its weapon crippled. Riff turned back toward Steel, stepped closer, and
embraced him.

"Go kick their asses,
brother."

Steel groaned. "Do you
have to be so crude?" Then he tightened his lips, wrapped his arms around
Riff, and held him tight. "Goodbye, brother. I will see you again, in this
life or the next."

With that, Steel spun around.
He marched off the bridge, down the stairs, and into the main deck. Romy was
huddled in the corner, staring with wide eyes. Steel tilted his head toward
her.

"Guard the ship while I'm
away, my friend," he said.

Romy sniffled and her eyes
filled with tears. Trembling, she leaped to her feet and saluted him.

Steel stepped toward the
airlock. Nova walked with him.

They tugged the first door
open and closed it behind them.

They stepped down the stairs.

They opened the outer door, exposing
the vacuum.

Steel and Nova, knight and
gladiator, Alien Hunters, friends . . . shot into the emptiness of space.

* * * * *

"Twig, we've got to go faster!"
Piston said. "Gods old and new, lassie. We've got to do something or that
giant space crab will tear us apart."

The engine room was in
shambles. Pipes had cracked and blasted out steam. Electricity buzzed across
the switchboard. Part of the hull itself had cracked; Piston had sealed it just
in time before losing their air. Worst of all, the fuel was gone, leaked out
into space. Romy had drunk the spare tank. They were coasting along their
orbit; without fuel, they couldn't change course, couldn't speed up, and
couldn't ignite their plasma cannon.

"Oh, it's a right mess."
Piston leaped toward a cracking pipe and began to tape it shut. "We've got
to move faster! We've got to get away from those claws. We can't take another
hit."

Twig was busy climbing a
ladder, welding together shattered fuses. "Piston, the throttle engines
are down to fumes! We can't coast much longer. We're going to slip out of orbit
soon and crash down to the planet. That is, if the skelkrins don't catch us
first."

Piston stared out the porthole
at the skelkrin warship that was charging toward them, claws snapping. "There's
got to be some way to go faster."

Twig tightened her lips. "We
can compress the air from the attic. Blast it through the vents and out to the
thruster engines."

Piston groaned. "It'll
never be enough air! Will shoot us maybe a few meters forward before gravity or
skelkrin claws grab us. What we need is power. More engines!"

Twig hopped off the ladder. "We've
got a ship full of engines, Piston! The motor in the vacuum cleaner. The motor
in the fridge. The motor in the furnace and air conditioner. We can rig those
together."

Piston waved his hammer at
her. "Blast it, you clod! You'll never propel a starship with a vacuum
cleaner."

"I will!" She raised
her chin. "As a little girl back on Haven, I used to always tug motors out
of our vacuums, fridges, and other contraptions and build robots and rockets. Used
to drive my old gaffer crazy. I can do it."

Piston clutched his head. "I
must be going insane! Taking ideas from a damn halfling." He groaned. "Well,
all right! Off we go. Let's find some bloody motors."

They raced off, leaving the
engine room, and burst into the main deck. Romy was standing there, looking
helpless.

"Romy, help me dig for
motors!" Twig shouted.

The demon nodded. "All
right!"

They raced through the ship—gruffle,
halfling, and demon. Piston tore the motor out of the microwave. Romy ripped
out the motor from the fridge, pausing to grab a last slice of cake. Twig
plundered the attic for the vacuum cleaner. They rushed back down into the
engine room where Piston grabbed the motor out of the furnace.

"Going to get mighty cold
in here soon," he said as the heating systems died down.

They piled up the motors on
the floor, and Twig worked in a fury, mumbling to herself, welding.

"Piston, get me some
screws! And an Allen key!"

He was going insane for sure.
Taking orders from a halfling! Yet when he glanced out the porthole, the enemy vessel
was nearer. The claw reached out and grazed the Dragon's hull, and the
metal screamed.

"Hurry!" Twig
shouted.

"Piston, we need more
speed!" Riff shouted over the communicator.

Piston returned with the
supplies, and Twig worked at mad speed, forming a single great motor out of the
many smaller parts.

"Got it!" she said. "Piston,
help me attach it to the main engine thrust!"

They worked together while Romy
watched with wide eyes, icing on her face.

"Done!" Twig shouted
and flipped the switch.

Outside the porthole, the
skelkrin claw reached toward them.

Twig's motor sputtered, roared
to life, and blasted out sparks, feeding energy into the main engines.

With a great bolt that shook
the room and dropped Piston to the floor, the Dragon Huntress blasted
forward.

They streamed through space,
roaring around the planet, leaving the enemy vessel behind.

Riff's laughter sounded
through the speakers. "We're blasting like a bullet, Piston!" The
captain whooped. "You're a genius, man. A genius!"

Piston puffed out his chest
and spoke into his microphone. "Aye, Captain! Thank you, Captain. I—Well
. . ." He lowered his head. "Truth is, it was all Twig, sir. Little
beast is a maverick with the engines."

"Twig, I love you,"
Riff said. "I'm going to give you another bonus if we get out of this. We're
well out of skelkrin range now, and . . ."

Riff's voice faded.

"Captain?" Piston
said. "Captain, are you all right up there?"

For a moment, silence. Then a
whisper. "Another vessel."

"Another vessel, Captain?"
Piston raced toward the porthole. "What other—" He gasped. "Oh
no, sir. Oh no. This can't be. This can't be, sir!"

Piston sank to his knees. His
heart sank deeper.

Outside in space, roaring
toward them and firing its guns, came a great silver warship, its hull sporting
the Cosmian sigil.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
THE ENGINEER

Steel and Nova shot through open
space, jet packs roaring out flame.

The planet of Cirona spread
below, a great green ball. The Dragon Huntress flew away behind them.
Ahead loomed the Crab, the massive skelkrin warship.

Be with me, light of Sol,
Steel prayed silently. He clutched his sword in one hand, the spare space suit
in the other. By my honor, I cannot fail today.

"I'm coming for you,
Midnight," he whispered.

Nova flew at his side, her
whip coiling like a string of gold. The skelkrin warship tilted overhead. Its
guns pointed downward, and it blasted out its lasers.

Steel and Nova scattered and
soared. The beams shot between them. They rose higher.

"To the hangar!"
Steel said. "We'll blast through the hatch."

Nova's voice rose through the
speakers in his helmet. "Race you there, old boy."

More weapons blasted out from
the ship. One laser beam slammed into Steel's sword, bouncing off and down
toward the planet. He stormed forward, jet pack thrumming on his back. Nova
swung her whip before her as she flew, knocking back blasts of laser. They charged
toward the hangar doors, and Steel readied his blade.

Swing true, Solflare,
he whispered.

A meter away from the ship, he
swung his sword.

The blade slammed into the
hangar door with a shower of light, slicing through the iron. Nova laughed at
his side, swung her whip, and cracked open another chunk of metal. With another
swing of his blade, Steel tore the door open.

They blasted into the hangar,
shooting fire from their jet packs, and landed on a metal floor. They let their
engines die.

The hangar was vast, large
enough that the Dragon Huntress could have fit inside. Three skelkrins
stood here. The towering crimson beasts howled, baring their fangs. They
charged forward, swinging their claws.

"For Sol!" Steel
shouted and ran to meet them.

"For fire and venom!"
Nova cried—the words of her people—and ran forward.

The gladiator swung her whip.
The electric lash sliced through a skelkrin's arm, severing it. Steel reached
the beasts, swung his blade, and cut off another creature's leg.

The skelkrins screeched. One
roared, grabbed Steel, and leaned in to bite. The creature's fangs gleamed. His
eyes were smelters.

Steel drove his sword forward,
slamming the crossguard into the alien's face.

A fang snapped and fell.

The creature stepped back,
howling, and Steel swung his sword. Light flashed. The blade sliced through the
creature's torso, cleaving it in two, leaving a trail of smoke.

The skelkrin slammed down
dead.

Steel turned his head to see
Nova swing her whip, cutting through the last living skelkrin. The creature
fell down dead, black blood spurting across the floor. More blood pooled around
Steel's feet.

He frowned.

He knelt and pressed his
finger against a small, purple splotch. He examined the liquid.

"Purple blood."
Steel's heart twisted. "Midnight was here."

"There!" Nova pointed.
"A trail of purple blood. It leads deeper into the ship."

Steel straightened and began
walking. "We follow. We find her."

They left the hangar and
entered a long, black corridor. Scattered lights flickered on the ceiling.

Shadows stirred. White eyes
cracked open.

Four more skelkrins came
charging their way, howling.

Steel pointed his blade
forward, blasting out beams of light. Nova cracked her whip, sending forth
lightning bolts. The skelkrins roared and fell. Steel and Nova kept walking.
One skelkrin on the floor reached toward Steel, trying to grab him. A thrust
from Steel's sword cut through his heart.

"More purple blood."
Nova pointed to a splotch ahead. "This way."

They ran down another dark
corridor. The walls were jagged iron. The ceiling towered above them. Gears
spun in the walls. There were no windows. It felt to Steel like walking through
the dungeon of some ancient, medieval fortress of evil, seeking a princess to
save.

I will find Midnight. I will
find my princess.

They kept moving through the
iron labyrinth, following the trail of purple blood. A great archway rose
ahead, twenty feet tall; the trail led through it. A stench wafted from beyond,
acidic, rotted. A low growl sounded.

Steel paused and looked at
Nova. She stared back.

"There's something in
there," Steel whispered.

Nova raised her chin and gave
him a crooked smile. "Let's go kill it."

It felt like years since Steel
had smiled, but now he smiled with her.

They raised their weapons and stepped
through the archway.

They found themselves in a
great hall, large as a cathedral. Many gears and levers covered the walls,
floor, and ceiling, some of them larger than men. A narrow bridge spanned the
length of the chamber, stretching over a chasm toward another doorway. Steam
blasted out. Fires roared in pits. It was some sort of engine room, Steel
realized.

And below in the chasm lived
the engineer.

The creature was massive,
larger than Steel's old castle on Earth. Ten of its tentacles spread out,
turning gears, tugging levers, rearranging pipes, keeping the ship moving. Its
many eyes blinked, and its mouth opened wide in the pit, ringed with teeth,
screeching.

Nova's eyes widened. "Calamari!"

Steel grimaced. "Never
could abide the stuff." He pointed. "Midnight's blood trails along
the bridge. We pass."

He stepped onto the walkway.
Nova grabbed his arm and held him back. "Let me walk first. I need room to
swing my whip."

He stiffened. "I am a
Knight of Sol. I will not let a woman walk before me while I trail behind. I
will walk ahead, defending you."

Nova tugged him closer to her
and snarled. Her eyes flashed. "I am a princess of Ashmar, a planet of
proud warriors. I am a gladiator. I tamed a thousand beasts. I wield a whip of
pure energy. I will walk ahead." She tightened her grip on his arm. "We
are equal here, Steel Starfire."

He stared into those burning
green eyes. For many years, when Steel had looked at Nova, he had seen a
shameful sight. A woman who acted like a man, who cursed and spat, who confused
him. Who scared him.

Looking at her now, however,
he saw a proud warrior. He saw a partner. He saw a sister-in-arms.

He nodded and bowed his head. "Forgive
me, Nova." He looked back up at her. "Forgive me for everything. I've
been a fool."

For an instant something damp
and sad filled her eyes, but then she nodded. She smiled crookedly. "Let's
go save your princess, Steel. Together."

She stepped onto the bridge.
Steel walked behind her.

They had taken only ten steps
into the engine room when the creature below squealed. Its tentacles—each one
was as long as the Dragon Huntress—left the gears and levers they held.
Its suckers smacked, each one full of teeth. The creature's eyes glared up from
below, and the tentacles came flying toward Steel and Nova.

With a roar, Nova lashed her
whip. "Down, beast!" she cried and burst into a run. "Down!"

One tentacle came swinging
down above Steel. He ran, and the digit slammed into the walkway behind him,
denting the metal. Another tentacle swung ahead, and Steel thrust his sword,
lashing out light. The bolt slammed into the tentacle, knocking it aside, but
another swung from his other side. It crashed against him, knocking him
sideways.

Steel fell from the bridge.

He reached up and caught the ledge.

A tentacle grabbed his leg,
biting, squeezing. Below in the pit, the creature's mouth smacked, ready to
devour him.

Ahead on the bridge, Nova was
swinging her whip in circles, holding back several other tentacles. Steel
shouted in pain, kicked madly, and lashed down his sword. He cut through the
tentacle that grabbed his leg, tugged mightily, and pulled himself back onto
the bridge. He thrust his blade again, knocking back another of the creature's
arms.

"Nova, keep running!"
he shouted.

They raced along the bridge.
The creature bucked below, reaching out toward them. Nova sliced through one
tentacle with her whip; the severed digit slammed down, sank between two gears,
and spurted blood as the gears crushed it.

They were almost across the
bridge when a tentacle thrust up, grabbed Nova around her waist, and lifted her
into the air.

She screamed, kicking madly.
The creature pinned her arms to her sides; she could not swing her whip.

"Nova!" Steel cried.

He leaped toward her, sword
flashing. He was too late. The tentacle tossed Nova through the air, and she
went plunging down toward the great mouth below.

Steel gritted his teeth and
jumped off the bridge.

Nova fell.

The creature's mouth opened,
ready to swallow her.

As he plunged down, Steel thrust
his sword before him, blasting light into the alien's maw.

The creature squealed, the
light cutting through its palate, and closed its mouth an instant before Nova
hit it. She slammed against its closed lips and rolled to the floor.

Steel hit the floor an instant
later.

"Nova, I'm here." He
grabbed her. He lifted her. She wrapped her arms around him.

The creature's blobby head
rose ahead of them on the floor, massive, larger than both of them. Its mouth
turned toward them, snapping its teeth.

"Hold me tight!"
Nova said and swung her whip. The lash wrapped around the bridge above.

They leaped up, rising just
before the creature's jaws could snap around them. They climbed the whip and
tugged themselves back onto the bridge.

Blasting their weapons, they
ran the last few steps and leaped through the far doorway.

They landed in a shadowy
corridor.

Behind them, the great octopus
squealed. When Steel looked over his shoulder, he saw the beast stretch its
remaining tentacles toward the instruments. It continued its work, wounded and
hungry, its prey gone.

Steel and Nova paused for only
a moment, panting. The trail of purple blood stretched ahead. Steel raised his
sword and Nova raised her whip. They kept following.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
INTO THE FIRE

Riff stood on the Dragon
Huntress's bridge with Giga, staring out the windshield at the new starship
approaching.

Out of the frying pan and
into the fire, he thought as cold sweat trickled down his back.

With Twig's makeshift engine,
they had blasted out of the skelkrins' range. The massive, crablike warship was
now many kilometers away, Steel and Nova invading its bowels. But this new
warship that approached terrified Riff just as much.

The vessel was several times
the Dragon Huntress's size, built like a great barracuda. It stormed
forth through space, its jaws opening to reveal cannons. Its hull was
shimmering silver, smooth, fluid. Its headlights blazed like eyes. Upon its
hull appeared the words: "SS Barracuda, Holy Cosmian Order"

Riff grimaced and clutched his
gun as if he could fire through the windshield and blast the enemy ship apart.

"Captain, message coming
in from new vessel." Giga stepped toward him and held his hand.

"Put it on screen."

Giga nodded, suddenly not so
happy to comply. With crackling static, a hideous countenance appeared on the
HUD—a face half man, half metal.

"Grotter," Riff
whispered.

The cyborg smiled a twitching
smile. Gears clicked upon his face. "Riff Starfire. Did you think me dead?
You've run far, boy. But now your running days are over. I will kill you now—the
way I killed your mother thirty years ago." He raised his snapping claw of
metal. "Die like she did—squealing like a pig."

The transmission died.

The SS Barracuda fired
its guns.

Riff didn't even waste time
shouting for Giga's help. He grabbed the manual controls and yanked the ship
up. The clatter of counter-squares pieces, Twig's wrenches, and Romy's bottles
of juice rose from the decks below. The blasts of Grotter's fire blazed under
the ship. One grazed the hull, and the Dragon Huntress rattled madly.
Sparks flew across the bridge, and the crack on the windshield stretched
longer.

If that glass shatters, we'll
all be sucked out into space.

"Piston!" Riff
shouted into his communicator. "Piston, have you fixed our gun yet? We
have to fire. Now."

"No can do, Captain!"
rose the gruffle's voice through the speakers. "We can't fire without
fuel."

"Rig the motors up to the
gun! Come up with something, I don't care, but we need our dragonfire!"

"Aye, Captain!"

Riff yanked at the controls,
trying to steer away, to escape. The fuel lights beeped. Empty. Empty.

The Barracuda fired
again.

Riff yanked the Dragon
sideways, moving closer to the planet. He dodged a few blasts of Grotter's
fire. Another blast slammed into the Dragon's wing, tossing it into a spin.

Even Giga, always composed,
screamed and squeezed his hand.

"He's tearing us apart, Captain,"
the android whispered, turning toward him. Fear filled her eyes.

The Barracuda fired
again. Blasts pummeled the Dragon Huntress. Steam and fire blazed across
the ship.

Riff winced, pulled Giga into
his arms, and held her so close he almost crushed her.

* * * * *

"Twig, we've got to blow our
dragonfire!" Piston cried. "Can we connect your motors to the plasma
gun?"

Twig raced around the engine
room, leaping over shattered pipes, fallen engine coils, and tools that swept
across the swaying floor like jetsam. "It won't work! The gun needs fuel,
Piston! No motor will work."

Piston ducked and leaped aside
as wrenches and hammers fell from a shelf. Another blast of enemy fire hit the Dragon.
Alarms blared. The attic hull was breached. Romy screamed and raced to hide
behind Piston, tears in her eyes.

"What about your electric
wrench?" Piston said. "Can we rig that?"

Twig shook her head, her long
black hair in disarray. "It's no use, Piston. Without fuel, we can't fire
our gun. Period." She turned to look at her rigged engine made of many
smaller motors. "And this contraption is going to be out of battery power
any moment now." She paused from running around, stared at Piston with
wide eyes, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "We're done for."

Behind Piston, Romy wailed.

Piston spun around toward the
blubbering demon, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her. "This is all your
fault, you beast of Hell! If you hadn't drunk the fuel from the reserve tank,
we'd have a chance, damn it."

Romy's lips wobbled, and tears
poured down her red cheeks. "I was thirsty!" The fire on her head
crackled like a guttering torch. "It's not my fault."

More blasts shook the ship. The
alarms blared. A monitor displayed air blasting out of another breached room,
this one the ship's washroom.

"Of course it's your
fault!" Piston dug his fingers into Romy's arms. "You've doomed us
all. You've doomed us to death! You— You— Why are you dancing?"

Romy was leaping from foot to
foot, hands clasped between her thighs. She bit her lip. "Because I have
to go to the bathroom!"

Piston groaned and rolled his
eyes. "This isn't the time, Romy! You're not a toddler. The bathroom's
blasted to bits. Hold it in!"

She hopped around, hands
thrust between her thighs as if struggling to seal a dam. "But I drank too
much fuel! I have to goooo."

"You can't! Unless you
want to be sucked out of the bathroom hull into space, you—" Piston
froze. He spun toward Twig, then back to Romy. "The . . . the fuel's still
inside you?"

Romy whined. "So much it's
about to come out of my ears!"

Piston spun toward Twig. The
halfling stared back with wide eyes, her jaw hanging open.

"It might work,"
Piston whispered.

Twig covered her mouth. She
spoke between her fingers. "It can't . . ."

Piston tightened his lips. "Get
a funnel and a hose!"

They raced through the engine
room. As Romy hopped about, biting her lip, Twig ran a hose into the fuel pipe,
and Piston found a funnel and connected it to the other end.

"Piston, we need that
dragonfire!" Riff shouted through the speakers.

More enemy fire blasted
outside. The ship shook again.

Twig raced toward Romy and
held out the funnel. "All right, Romy. Time to go wee-wee."

The demon's eyes widened. "That's
not a bathroom."

"It is now, go!"
Piston shouted.

The demon whined. "I can't!
Not like this."

Piston rolled his eyes. He
grabbed a chair and slammed his fist into the seat, punching a hole through it.
Twig placed the funnel inside.

"There, it's a potty now,"
Piston said. "Sit down and go."

Romy sat on the seat. She
looked around. "I can't go when you're watching me!"

Piston rolled his eyes and
turned his back. Twig stood at his side, also turning her back to the demon.

Nothing happened.

"Romy?" Twig asked. "Are
you going?"

The demon sounded miserable. "I
can't go like this! You can still hear me. Play some music or something."

Piston trembled with rage and
fear. "Romy, hurry!"

"I need music!"

Piston's hands shook. He hit
the button on his wrist's communicator. "Giga, we need music! Play
something!"

The android's voice sounded
through the speakers. "Happy to comply!"

Electric blues filled the
engine room. A moment later, Romy sighed.

The blaring empty fuel lights
shut off.

Piston laughed and jumped
about. "We're in business, Captain! Dragonfire ready to blow!"

Romy stepped off her seat and
grinned. "That's better."

* * * * *

Riff stood on the bridge, leaned
against the windshield, and uttered one word: "Fire."

Giga snarled and clenched her
fists. "Very happy to comply."

The Dragon Huntress
turned in the sky, faced the SS Barracuda, and roared out its
dragonfire.

The plasma blasted out of the Dragon's
mouth, streaming toward the enemy vessel, a raging white, red, and yellow
inferno.

Grotter tried to dodge. The Barracuda
made an attempt to rise higher. It was too slow. The dragonfire slammed into
the enemy ship with the rage of a supernova.

The Barracuda cracked.
Its fuel and plasma tanks ignited.

"Fire again!" Riff
shouted. "Fire everything!"

The dragonfire blasted out.
The fuel gauges sank back to empty. The blaze slammed into the Barracuda,
shattering its hull. Explosions rocked the Cosmian ship. A fuel tank shattered
and blasted out flame. Then the explosions tore The Barracuda apart into
a million pieces.

Riff stared, holding his
breath.

A single escape pod, round and
hard like a bullet, flew out from the inferno and dived down toward Planet Cirona
below.

Riff dug his fingernails into
his palms.

"Grotter's in there."
He ground his teeth. "He escaped. Giga, chase that pod and bathe it with
more fire."

"Cannot compute, Captain.
Fuel tank is once more empty. We've barely got enough to stay afloat."

Riff stared down at the
capsule. The pod was now streaming into the atmosphere, wreathed in fire. Grotter
was in there. Riff knew it.

"I have to face him,"
he whispered. "I have to stop him." His fists shook, and he turned to
stare into Giga's eyes. "I have to go down there, to kill him, to put an
end to this. Or he'll always hunt me." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I
have to avenge my mother."

"We can't even land, Captain,"
Giga said. "We don't have the fuel. And . . . what about Steel and Nova?
We can't leave them."

Riff turned to stare toward
the skelkrin ship. It was still flying toward them, claws snapping, but with
its crippled engines, it couldn't catch up with the Dragon Huntress.
Steel and Nova were gone. A hole gaped open in the Crab; the knight and
gladiator had gone in there.

Riff looked back at Giga. "You're
right, Giga. The Dragon Huntress can't leave orbit. Not with Steel and
Nova there. They'll be flying back soon—with Midnight. I need you to take
command of this ship."

Her eyes widened. "Captain?"

He turned. He walked off the
bridge, climbed downstairs, and headed toward the Dragon's escape pod.

"Captain, wait!"
Giga said. She raced down the hallway and grabbed his arm. "You can't do
this. He'll kill you."

Riff stood with one foot in
the escape pod. He turned to face Giga. "If he does, you have to save
Steel, Nova, and Midnight. You have to take charge of this ship. And I have to
face Grotter. I have to do what I should have done years ago."

Footsteps padded up the
corridor. Twig came running toward them, her hair in disarray. Soot covered her
clothes and face, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Captain!" the
little halfling said. "I heard over the speakers. I . . ." She leaped
toward him and hugged his leg, clinging to him. "Please don't go."

He stroked her hair. "I
must do this, Twig. You'll be fine without me. Keep helping Piston."

Twig pulled back, sniffing. As
her tears fell, she drew her electric wrench from her tool belt and held it out
toward him. "Take this, Captain. My lucky wrench. The best one I have. It'll
help you."

Riff smiled and slung the
wrench into his belt. "Thank you, Twig. My little heroine."

She sniffed again, then turned
and fled back into the engine room.

Riff turned back toward Giga.
The android stared at him, face blank.

"Goodbye, Giga," he
whispered.

The android hesitated for a
moment, then pulled him into her embrace, and she kissed his lips—a deep kiss,
a kiss that tasted of lavender. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were
damp.

"I will wait for you, my
captain," Giga whispered. "Always."

He squeezed her palm, then
stepped into the escape pod.

The door whooshed shut.

Riff pressed a few controls,
and the capsule blasted out into space, leaving the Dragon Huntress and
streaming down toward the planet below, toward the man he must kill.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:
STEEL AND LIGHT

The trail of purple blood led their
way. Steel and Nova stepped down the dark corridor and through an archway. They
found themselves entering the Crab's command bridge.

The chamber was massive, as
large as the hangar. Floor-to-ceiling windows afforded an open view of space.
In the distance, still too far to reach, flew the Dragon Huntress; the
escape pod was streaming down from the starship toward the green planet below.
Vega's light gave a last flicker, then vanished behind the planet's horizon,
and shadows fell. Only the red lights of the bridge now cast their glow.

An oozing black cocoon hung
from the ceiling, swaying gently. A rent in the cocoon revealed a purple face
and gleaming yellow eyes—Midnight. Her eyes widened to see them, then filled
with tears.

Steel inhaled sharply and
raised his blade. Nova hissed and readied her whip.

Between them and Midnight rose
several seats of jagged spikes, each as large as a throne. Upon them sat the
skelkrins.

One of the beasts saw them
enter. The alien rose to his feet, pounded his chest, and roared. The creature stood
eight feet tall, covered in black armor, and his eyes burned white with hatred.
The other skelkrins heard the call, turned toward the door too, and bellowed in
rage. Their saliva dripped to the floor, and their fangs gleamed, long and
sharp as daggers.

Nova gave Steel a crooked
smile. "Bet I can kill more than you."

Steel raised his sword. "Good!
Kill them!"

The skelkrins ran toward them.

Steel snarled and thrust his
blade, casting out light. Nova swung her whip, blasting lightning. One skelkrin
fell. Then another.

The others reached them.

Steel was a tall man, taller
than most humans, but the skelkrins made him feel small as a child. Yet still
he fought. He fought in a fury. For his honor. For Midnight. For all Earth. His
blade swung, shedding the black blood of the beasts. He knocked aside claws. He
stabbed at their armor. He roared as he fought, and his light streamed from his
blade into their flesh.

A claw slammed against him,
knocking him down. Blood seeped down his side. Fangs bit into his leg, and he
roared but kept swinging his blade, cutting the enemy down. He rose to his
feet, blasting out more light, ignoring the pain.

I was banished from the
Knights of Sol, he thought as he fought. But I found a new order.

He roared out his cry, "I
am an Alien Hunter!"

Nova laughed at his side. "We
are Alien Hunters!"

The gladiator cracked her
whip, slicing through a skelkrin. Steel thrust his sword, knocking another
beast down. The corpses of the enemy piled up at their feet. With a swing of Solflare,
Steel cut the last creature down.

Steel and Nova stood panting.
Blood dripped down Steel's leg and arm, and his space suit was punctured. He
ignored the pain, ignored the fear, and took steps toward Midnight.

The pirilian stared at him,
eyes wide, and cried out, "Watch out!"

Steel froze.

Before he could take another
breath, one of the jagged iron thrones spun around.

A massive skelkrin sat there,
larger than the others, holding a gun larger than Steel's arm.

The creature fired.

Steel thrust his sword.

The enemy blast hit him, and
Steel fell.

He didn't even feel pain. For
a moment, he didn't even think he was hit, not until he saw the blood pooling
below him.

He shot me in the stomach,
Steel realized. Beneath his space suit, he was bleeding. His body was broken,
leaking out his lifeblood.

The skelkrin laughed. "Welcome,
Steel and Nova! I am Lord Skrum. I am your destroyer. I will feast upon your
flesh."

Nova screamed and charged
forward, whip lashing in a fury.

"Die, Skrum!" she
shouted. "I am Nova of Ashmar. Gladiator of the Alien Arena. Warrior-princess.
The woman who will kill you."

Her whip shot out bolt after
bolt of lightning, but the blasts ricocheted off Skrum's armor, doing the
skelkrin lord no harm. The alien stepped toward Nova, nearly twice her height,
and swung his fist.

The blow slammed into Nova,
tossing her into the air. She flew, hit a wall, and slumped down.

Trapped in her cocoon,
Midnight screamed.

Steel tried to rise. He tried
to cry out for Nova. The gladiator wasn't moving, only moaning on the floor.
Slowly, savoring every step, Skrum stepped toward the wounded Nova. His gun smoked.
He slammed his boot down, crushing Nova's wrist, pinning down her whip. Nova
screamed.

"Good," Skrum said. "I
like it when you pests die screaming."

The skelkrin lord pointed his
gun toward Nova's head.

His blood pouring, his head
swimming, Steel rose to his feet.

He thrust his sword.

A blast of light shot out,
slammed into Skrum's gun, and shattered its barrel.

Steel raised his blade again. "By
my honor, Skrum, I challenge you to a duel."

The skelkrin lord howled and
tossed aside his ruined gun. Strings of saliva dangled between his fangs. His
claws thrust out.

"I will slay you, worm."

Steel raised his chin. He held
his sword with one hand, and he kept his second hand pressed to his wound. "You
will fight me. But not here. Not among the wounded and dead." Steel
allowed himself a small, tight smile. "Let's take this outside."

He turned and left the command
bridge.

Skrum roared behind him. "Do
you flee from a fight, coward?"

Steel kept moving, heading
down the corridor. At first he limped. His blood dripped behind him—not a
light trickle like Midnight's blood but a thick trail. He was moments from
death, perhaps. He kept moving, soon running.

Skrum roared behind him and
followed.

I have to get him away from
Midnight and Nova. I have to protect them, to lure him off.

Steel raced through the dark
corridors of the skelkrin ship, the beast howling in pursuit.

He was dizzy, struggling for
every breath, when Steel made it back to the engine room.

The great alien octopus still
lurked below the overpass. Several of its tentacles were severed, but the
others were still turning dials and gears across the walls, keeping the starship
flying. As Steel limped onto the bridge, the creature below snapped its great
jaws and hissed, still hungering for his flesh.

Skrum's roars rose from the
corridor behind Steel.

The knight trudged onward,
weaker now, feeling close to death. Finally he could move no farther. He had
lost too much blood.

In the middle of the bridge
that spanned the chasm, Steel turned around, stood still, and waited.

With a roar, Skrum emerged
from the corridor and raced onto the bridge. The skelkrin snapped his teeth and
reached out his claws.

"Die now!" Skrum
cried. "Die now, filthy human. Die knowing that your race failed. That
humanity will perish. That the Earth will be mine."

The alien thundered onto the
bridge as the octopus roared below.

Steel stood calmly, bleeding,
and stared into the skelkrin's white eyes.

"Earth stands."
Steel raised his blade of light. "Humanity will not fall. Not so long as I
defend it. By my honor, skelkrin, I send you to the abyss!"

Skrum raced toward him,
howling.

Steel slammed his blade down onto
the bridge.

Light blasted out. Metal bent
and snapped. With a crack, with showering shards of iron, the bridge shattered.

As the walkway collapsed
around him, Skrum stared at Steel. For an instant, terror filled the skelkrin's
eyes.

Then Skrum fell.

Steel clung to his section of
the bridge, holding on with all his might. His feet dangled. Below him, Skrum
tumbled down toward the waiting octopus. The great beast opened its jaws wide,
caught Skrum in its mouth, and chomped down.

Black blood spurted. The
octopus chewed. Skrum roared . . . then fell silent. The massive jaws on the
floor closed. A great tongue slipped out, licked up the last skelkrin crumbs,
then slunk back in. The octopus closed its eyes, satisfied with its meal.

Steel's feet dangled over the
pit. His hand clung to the section of bridge that still stood, but the metal was
bending. His blood still dripped. Any moment now, he knew, he would fall into
the pit and join Skrum in the beast's belly.

He was too weak to hold on.

His grip loosened.

He fell through the air.

He saw something purple appear
at the corridor above. Midnight! With a pop, she vanished.

She reappeared in midair as
Steel fell. She wrapped her arms around him. She popped out of reality.

Steel, held in her arms, saw a
world of flashing, coiling purple lights.

They snapped back into
existence across the bridge, back in the corridor above the pit.

"Steel!" Midnight
cried. She laid him down on the floor, holding him. Her tears fell. "Steel,
can you hear me?"

"My lady," he
whispered. He could speak no louder. He reached up a shaky hand and caressed
her indigo hair. "You are safe, my lady."

Nova raced forward and knelt
above Steel too. "Steel, damn it! Don't you die here, you bastard."
She clutched his hand, and her tears fell. "Don't you leave me here."

Steel looked down at his
wounds. There was barely any blood left to spill. He would die here, he knew.
But he had saved Midnight. He had saved the world.

I can rest in peace. I
protected my honor.

He closed his eyes.

Warmth filled him, and through
his eyelids, he saw a soft light. It filled him with warmth, with healing, with
comforting joy. It was calling him home.

The light of the afterlife.

His eyelids flicked open.

He gasped.

It was no heavenly glow! The
light came from Midnight's palms. Like down on the planet, she had summoned
balls of luminous qi. But this light was not a weapon; it was soft,
golden, soothing him, healing him. Midnight placed her glowing hands upon him,
and her qi energy flowed through him, filling him with strength.

His wounds closed.

The light faded.

He was healed.

Midnight smiled softly.

"Thank you, Steel,"
she whispered.

She seemed exhausted. She fell
to the floor, smiling, her breath soft.

Tears in his eyes, Steel
lifted her in his arms. She weighed almost nothing.

"You gave me some of your
life's energy," he whispered.

Midnight smiled up at him,
eyelids fluttering. "Use my strength, Steel Starfire. Use my gift. Use it
to keep fighting."

"I will, my lady!"
Tears flowed down his cheeks. "Always."

Strobe lights flared across
the wall. A siren wailed. A deep, metallic voice boomed through the ship,
speaking in the skelkrin language.

Midnight gasped and covered
her mouth.

"What's the voice saying?"
Nova asked, staring around, whip raised.

"All skelkrins are dead
on the ship." Midnight's eyes widened. "It's going to self-destruct.
In sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight."

They ran.

The ship shook around them.
Pipes cracked and steam blasted out. Fire raged. A hunk of ceiling fell down,
slamming against the floor only a foot behind them. They ran on. The voice kept
booming.

"Thirty seconds!"
Midnight shouted.

They raced along cracking
corridors, through smoke, through flame, until they reached the hangar.

Nova shoved
the spare space suit at Midnight. "Put this on!"

Steel
cursed and looked down at his own suit. "There are holes in this."

Nova
groaned, reached into her pocket, and tossed him a roll of duct tape. "Never
go hunting aliens without duct tape. Tape yourself up!"

"Ten
seconds!" Midnight shouted, shoving herself into the suit. She placed her
helmet on. "Two! One!"

They ran
together.

They leaped
out the hangar door.

Fire raged
and the ship collapsed, metal shards blasting out.

Their jet
packs roared.

The silence
of vacuum fell.

Flames and
heat and metal blazed around them, and they charged forward, soaring through
the fire, emerging from the inferno, screaming, singed.

A second
explosion flared behind them, the light as bright as a sun. A shockwave blasted
out, hitting them. Steel, Nova, and Midnight tumbled through space. The planet
spun madly around them. The stars streaked.

When finally
they settled their flight, Steel looked behind him.

The skelkrin ship was gone.
Nothing but shrapnel remained.

They floated through the
silence, three souls—a knight, a gladiator, and a girl who would no longer
destroy the universe.

Steel closed his eyes and breathed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:
ELECTRICITY

The pod roared through Cirona's
atmosphere, engulfed in flame. Riff dug his fingers into his seat, gritted his
teeth, and prayed.

Let me live, old gods and
new. Let me live so I can kill.

He shot through the fire,
emerging into open sky. He breathed a shaky breath of relief, looked out the
porthole, and saw a vapor trail in the sky.

Grotter's capsule, he
knew.

Riff snarled and grabbed the
pod's controls. He curved his flight, heading toward that vapor trail. To the
man who had killed his mother. To Grotter. The man Riff would kill today.

The forests raced up toward
him. The vapor trail led to a patch of shattered trees. Riff shot forward,
deployed his parachute, and began to glide.

He was moments away from the
forest when the gunfire started.

Riff cursed.

The gunfire blasted up from
between the trees, slamming into Riff's pod. The bullets ricocheted off the
surface. The pod was built to withstand reentry and it could withstand bullets,
but the parachute was not as lucky. With holes in the chute, the pod plummeted.

Riff grimaced and prepared for
impact.

Branches snapped and
shattered. Trees collapsed. The pod shoved through the canopy and slammed
against the forest floor, rattling every tooth in Riff's mouth.

For a moment, silence.

Riff sat still in his seat.
Every part of him ached. No more gunfire sounded.

Slowly, he reached into his
holster and drew old Ethel.

Silence.

He looked toward the porthole.
Branches swayed there, thick with leaves. A bird with eight wings fluttered by.
The light of Vega fell in a warm, golden glow, rich with pollen.

Riff reached one hand toward
the door handle.

He leaned back.

He pulled the handle, letting
the door swing outward.

Gunfire roared, slamming into
the pod. Riff leaned back, wincing, and thrust his gun out the door. He fired.
Again. Again.

The gunfire outside died.

Riff caught his breath. He ripped
off his chair's armrest and held it out toward the door.

Gunfire blasted, tearing the
armrest apart.

Riff cursed.

I can't step out without Grotter
blasting me to bits.

The gunfire faded outside. Grotter's
laughter sounded across the forest, followed by his raspy, metallic voice.

"Are you bleeding to
death in there, Starfire? Come out when you want me to end your pain."

Riff cursed. He couldn't hit Grotter
from in here. He stared ahead at the control panel across from him.

Oh bloody hell.

He sucked in breath, fired a blast
of plasma out the doorway, and kicked.

A bullet grazed his leg.

Riff shouted and slammed his
foot against the controls.

The engines on the pod roared,
shoving him forward. The pod rolled. Riff screamed. He blasted across the
forest, slammed into a tree, and raised a shower of dirt and wooden chips.

He leaped out of the pod,
rolled across the ground, rose to a crouch, and fired his gun.

Grotter stood ahead between
the trees. One of Riff's plasma blasts slammed into the cyborg's metallic half,
shoving him back.

Riff fired again. He hit Grotter's
mechanical arm. The cyborg hissed, raised his machine gun, and began spraying more
bullets.

Riff rolled across the forest.
Bullets slammed into the soil and trees around him. He hid behind a tree as
bullets peppered the trunk.

Grotter laughed again. "You've
already lost, Riff Starfire! You cannot defeat me. Your plasma cannot hurt
metal. You will die here, far from home."

More bullets flew. Riff
cursed, reached around the tree, and fired again.

This time, he aimed for Grotter's
gun.

A bullet whistled and slammed
into Riff's shoulder. He grunted but kept firing, blast after blast. Grotter
screamed. The plasma washed over his human arm, wilting the skin, charring the
bone. Grotter's machine gun fell to the ground.

Riff stepped out from behind
the tree. His leg bled. His shoulder spurted blood. He limped forward, woozy,
losing more blood every step.

"You are only half metal,"
Riff said and raised his gun again.

He fired.

Ethel's blast of plasma
slammed into Grotter's head, melting skin.

Grotter screamed. A horrible
sound. The sound of a butchered animal. But the cyborg did not fall. The
creature charged forward, screeching, half his face burnt.

"I only need my metal!"
the cyborg shrieked. Riff grimaced to see that even beneath the charred flesh
of Grotter's human half, gears turned and clicked.

Before Riff could fire again,
the cyborg reached him and swung his claw.

The hand of metal slammed into
Riff's head, knocking him down.

He thudded onto the forest
floor and tasted blood. He saw stars. He raised his gun.

Grotter's claw swung again,
hitting Riff's hand. Riff yowled, his fingers crushed, and Ethel thumped to the
ground. Grotter kicked the gun away.

No. No! I can't die here.

Riff rose to his feet, blood
in his mouth. "You killed my mother, you bastard. Prepare to die."

Riff swung his fist.

Grotter grabbed his hand in
his claws, tightened his grip, and crushed Riff's fingers.

Pain shot through Riff. He
screamed. He fell to his knees. The claws kept tightening. Riff heard a finger bone
crack. He could barely breathe, barely cling to consciousness. His lifeblood
drained away, and all turned to haze.

"Yes," Grotter
hissed, further tightening his grip. "Die slowly. Bleed out here as I
crush you, bone by bone. Bleed out minute by long minute. I'm going to make it
last."

Still clutching Riff's hand,
the cyborg kicked, driving his boot into Riff's stomach.

All Riff knew was pain,
darkness, stars. All he saw was shadows and light.

It's like looking at space,
he thought, eyelids fluttering. It's like being up there again.

Before him, through the haze
of encroaching death, he saw them again. Steel, his brother, the only family
Riff had. Giga—sweet, gentle, loyal Giga, perhaps the dearest friend he had.
Nova—the woman he loved, the woman he had loved for years.

I can't die. I can't part
from you.

He would even miss Piston with
his grumblings, Romy with her silly board games, little Twig with her smiles
and wrenches and—

Riff's eyes snapped open.

He drew a shaky breath.

"Still alive?" Grotter
said. The cyborg glared at him. The human half of his face had melted away,
revealing the gears within. In the metallic half of his face, his bionic eye
blazed with red hatred. "This is taking longer than I thought. Good. Good."

The cyborg still crushed Riff's
right hand in his claw. With his shaking left hand, Riff reached to his belt
and drew Twig's electric wrench.

"What's that?" Grotter
asked. "Need to tighten a screw?"

Riff clicked the button on the
wrench. Electricity crackled to life between its prongs.

"Screw you," Riff whispered
hoarsely and drove the wrench forward.

He slammed the prongs against Grotter's
face.

Electricity crackled, racing
through the cyborg's gears and circuits.

Grotter screamed. His claw
loosened, releasing Riff. The electricity raced over the cyborg, driving down
his body, along his limbs, burning, blasting out smoke.

"What have you done?"
Grotter screeched, an inhuman sound, impossibly high-pitched.

Riff struggled to his feet. "Won
our little game. Avenged my mother. Rid the universe of scum. All the above,
really."

He drove the wrench forward
again.

Electricity crackled, and the
cyborg screamed . . . then fell silent.

Grotter thumped down onto the
ground. A few last gears turned, then stilled. Riff kicked the creature,
scattering bolts.

Between the rising smoke, a
light flickered.

Riff caught his breath.

A part of Grotter was still
working. Metal clicked. A lens shutter opened. The light intensified and
blasted out, forming a hologram in the forest.

Riff stumbled a few paces
back, fell to his knees, and stared.

A hologram of a towering
skelkrin stood before him, flickering, fading, appearing again. This was no
skelkrin warrior in armor. This creature wore a black cloak, and a dark crown
topped his crimson head.

"Emperor Lore," Riff
whispered, on his knees before the apparition.

The hologram stared at him
with white eyes. The emperor's face twisted with fury.

"Riff Starfire," the
creature hissed. "It is you. The human my slave told me of. I will
remember your name and your face, Starfire. When my hosts arrive at your world,
you will be the first to scream, the last to die. I will break you slowly. I—"

Riff rose to his feet and
slammed his heel into the hologram projector. The light died.

"Enough of that rubbish,"
Riff whispered. He could speak no louder.

He managed to take a few steps
away, then fell. His face hit the ground. Soil filled his mouth. He was tired.
The birds fluttered above, and sunlight fell upon him, warming him, and the
pain faded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:
HOMECOMING

Riff's eyes fluttered open.

He found himself staring into
yellow eyes set in a purple face.

He blinked.

"Hello,"
he whispered.

Midnight smiled down at him,
her teeth very white, her smile very warm. "Hello."

Riff moaned and looked around
him. He still lay on the forest floor. The trees rustled around him. Midnight
knelt above him, wearing one of the Dragon Huntress's space suits. Her
helmet rested in a patch of grass.

"I'm sorry I shot you,"
Riff said. "Just want to get that out of the way."

She laughed. "I'm sorry I
blasted you with qi. That makes us even."

He pushed himself onto his
elbows and looked down at his body. His wounds were gone; only scars remained.
He whistled softly. "I must be the world's fastest healer."

"No, but I might be."
Midnight raised her palms; they were glowing. "I saw the trail your
capsule left through the sky. I ported down here. I found you in the forest,
and I healed you with my energy, whatever energy I could muster." She
blinked and sat down heavily. "I'm a bit woozy. Healing two Starfires in
one day takes a lot out of a woman."

Riff's breath caught. "Steel!
Nova! Are they . . ."

"Back on the Dragon
Huntress." Midnight pointed to the sky. "They're still up there,
looking down at us. Ship's badly damaged. Holes all over. Can't even land."
She grinned. "You're lucky I know how to port. Within the blink of an eye,
I can travel anywhere that I can see. All pirilians can."

He nodded, feeling woozy too.
He pulled himself toward a tree and leaned against the trunk.

"That's why they wanted
you, isn't it?" he whispered. "The skelkrins. Not because of the
light you can blast from your hands. Not because of the healing. Because of the
teleporting." He swallowed. It hurt. "My father said something about
that in a letter to me, how if they caught you, they'd gain power to destroy
the cosmos."

Midnight lowered her head. She
wriggled closer to him and leaned against the same tree. She spoke softly, her
voice still afraid, still pained.

"The skelkrins attacked
my planet." A tear streamed down her lavender cheek. "For a long
year, we fought them. We fought them well, but they were too many, their
weapons too horrible. They burned our world from the sky. They bombed us until
they realized that we're worth more alive than dead, that we carry a magic
inside us they can use." She trembled. "By then only I was alive."

Riff reached out and held her
hand. She was trembling. "I'm sorry, Midnight."

She closed her eyes. She kept
speaking as if she hadn't heard him. "It was Skrum who caught me. He took
me to a skelkrin laboratory. And he cut me, experimented on me, trying to learn
how to use my magic." She took a shuddering breath, for a moment unable to
speak. "His scientists developed a plan. They were to clone me—a clone
for every ship in the skelkrin fleet. They were to place me into their engines.
They were to turn me into a creature half pirilian, half warship, to use the
power inside me to port their ships across the stars. Even in hyperspace, it
would take the skelkrins months to reach Earth. But with my clones inside their
ships . . . all they'd need is a line of sight. They could send their entire
armada to Earth in an instant, then to every other world in this galaxy. They
would have been unstoppable, appearing and disappearing, bombing worlds,
blinking out of reality, appearing again with more ammo, more troops. The
galaxy would have fallen to them, while I screamed inside a million of their
engines."

Riff felt the blood drain from
his face. "God," he whispered.

Midnight nodded, sobbing
softly. "It was the Traveler who saved me. An old man with a long white
beard. He is known in myths and legends in my world, known by many names. I
always thought him only that—a legend. Until he appeared in the skelkrin lab.
Until he freed me, placed me on a starjet, told me to fly and find his son."
She looked at Riff and touched his cheek. "To find you, Riff."

He blinked, then laughed. "My
father? Midnight, my father is nothing but a street corner magician, pulling
rabbits out of hats for the amusement of children. True, he often vanished on
long trips. It would sometimes be a year or two before he returned home. But .
. . he just traveled as part of his show. To perform as a magician in distant
worlds. He's not a legend."

Midnight stroked his hair. "He
is greater than you know, Riff Starfire. You are the child of a hero." She
kissed his cheek. "You are a hero."

He groaned and struggled to
stand up. "A hero who can barely stand. God, I feel like a tenderized
steak." He helped Midnight to her feet too. "I saw the town a few kilometers
north. From the air, it looked like the skelkrin fire hadn't hit it. What say
we mosey on in, head to the nearest saloon, and order an actual steak?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I
thought they hired you to remove me, not walk with me into their capital city."

He snorted. "Oh, they'll
see how lovely you are, and they'll feel even worse when they hand over my
payment. It'll make things all the sweeter."

They walked through the forest,
leaning against each other. The trees rustled. The birds sang. No explosions,
no qi, no bloodthirsty aliens, no killer cyborgs. For the first time in
long days, things felt all right.

* * * * *

The Cironan shuttle soared through
the atmosphere and out into space, carrying a team of mechanics, a dusty beat-up
captain, and a young pirilian.

As they flew toward the HMS
Dragon Huntress, Riff stared out the window and rubbed his eyes.

"Bloody hell," he
whispered.

The dragon ship looked awful.
A large hole, large enough to lead a horse through, gaped open on the roof,
exposing Romy's attic. One wing was torn to shreds, and the dragon's snout—right
below the bridge—was crumpled up. Soot and scratches covered the hull.

"It's amazing that the
damn boat's still afloat." Riff patted his wallet and looked at Midnight. "It's
going to cost me everything I earned to remove you to fix the ship."

The pirilian smiled. "Aren't
you glad you found me then?"

Of the two other vessels that had
orbited Planet Cirona—the skelkrin Crab and Grotter's Barracuda—not
a trace remained, only bad memories.

The Cironan shuttle slowed its
flight, approached the Dragon Huntress, and entered orbit beside it.

Riff, Midnight, and the
mechanics put on their helmets.

"All right, boys!"
Riff said. "You know what to do. Patch up the holes, smooth out the dents,
a new paint job would be nice . . . oh, and can you take a look at the left
hyperdrive engine? Makes a strange rattling noise."

The team headed out, floating
into space, their tools ready. They got to work at once, hovering around the Dragon
Huntress with welding tools, bolts, and wrenches that Twig would have
drooled over.

Riff remained for a moment in
the shuttle with Midnight, and sudden sadness seeped into him. He stared out at
the Dragon and sighed.

"She's a good ship."
He nodded. "She's home."

Riff cleared his throat; it
was suddenly scratchy. He rose to his feet and floated out into space, and
Midnight floated with him. They opened the Dragon Huntress's outer door,
floated inside onto the staircase, and closed the door behind them. Once the
air was repressurized, they climbed the steps, opened the inner door, and
stepped into the main deck.

Everyone was waiting there.

His shipmates. His friends. His
family. They all stood facing him, their Alien Hunters badges pinned to their
chests.

Romy gave a huge wail and
leaped forward. She wrapped her arms around Riff, squeezed him, and gave him
endless kisses. Her tears streamed.

"Oh, Riff! I was so
worried. So worried for you." She sniffled. "Welcome back."
Suddenly her eyes brightened. "Did you bring me any presents?"

He nodded, reached into his
pocket, and handed her a new counter-squares piece carved from wood. It was
shaped like a poodle. Romy squealed in delight and raced toward her board game.

Piston approached Riff next.
The gruffle cleared his throat, stared down at his feet, and mumbled something
about the engine coils and a job well done, but then a tear filled the engineer's
eye.

"Ah, curse it all!"
Piston said and tugged Riff into a crushing embrace, lifting him off his feet. "Welcome
back, laddie! I mean, Captain. I mean . . ." He had to put Riff down, pull
out a handkerchief, and blow his nose. "It's good to have you back, sir."

Twig leaped onto Riff next,
hugging him tightly. "Did my wrench help?" the halfling asked.

Riff laughed and handed it
back to her. "It's deadlier than my gun, little one. It saved my life. Keep
it handy."

She nodded, chin raised. "I
will!"

The halfling stepped back, and
Giga approached Riff next. The android stared at him hesitantly; she seemed
unsure of herself, awkward, embarrassed. Riff remembered their kiss, remembered
holding her close as fire burned around them.

He pulled her close again,
embracing the android. He whispered into her ear, "I'm back, Giga."

She held him tightly, and he
felt her android tears on his shoulder. "Welcome back, sir. I waited for
you." She sniffed and gave him a salute. "I'm yours, my captain.
Always."

Riff stepped deeper into the
main deck and came to stand before his brother.

Steel Starfire, the noble
knight, stared back at him, tall and strong and proud as always. The knight
stroked his drooping mustache, his pride and joy.

"Welcome back, brother,"
Steel said, chin raised. "You performed admirably. You—"

"Oh shut it, you big
tinman." He pulled Steel into his arms and squeezed him.

Steel stiffened for a moment,
then relaxed and hugged Riff back. "Welcome back, brother," the
knight said again, and this time his voice was soft and warm.

Finally Riff turned toward the
last member of his crew. To Nova.

"You look awful," the
ashai said.

He looked at her. As always,
she wore her golden gladiator suit, the material as strong as any armor. Her
whip hung at her side, coiled up. Her pointed ears thrust out from her mane of blond
hair, and her green eyes stared at him with humor, mockery, and love.

He pulled her into his arms
and he kissed her. He kissed her like he'd never kissed her before, not caring
that the others saw. He never wanted to let her go.

"I love you, Nova,"
he whispered. "I love you and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the man that I was."
He touched her cheek. "Do you forgive me?"

She sighed, rolled her eyes,
then grinned and pinched his cheek. "You did well today, Riff. Consider
yourself redeemed." She raised her fist. "For now! Don't you screw up
again, or I'm going to bash you more than an army of skelkrins and cyborgs."

Romy hopped up toward them,
grabbed Riff's arm, and tugged. "Riffff . . . come on and play with me! I
have the counter-squares pieces all set up. The poodle's right in the middle.
Come on!"

He sighed but let the demon
tug him over. She wagged her tail and made a move on the board. Her poodle
captured his dragon and she squealed with joy.

* * * * *

Steel stood in the Dragon's
crew quarters between the bunk beds. He stared out the porthole at the
mechanics floating around the ship, welding and patching and painting.

The other Alien Hunters were
on the main deck, laughing and hooting around a rousing game of counter-squares.
But Steel had never cared much for games, for social gatherings, for noise or
laughter or fun. He stared down at the planet below, thinking of the planet he
had left behind—of Earth, of the home he had vowed to defend. And he wondered
if he even still had a home there.

I saved the world, he
thought. I slew Skrum, the warlord who would have destroyed Earth like he
destroyed Midnight's home. Yet when I return to Earth, what awaits me there?

His throat tightened. The
Knights of Sol had banished him. The Cosmians had destroyed his castle. His
mother was dead, his father missing. He had no wife, no children, no friends
but for his horse and sword. He would return to Earth, its savior . . . only
for nobody to know, nobody to care, nobody to believe him. He would be like he
had been, a relic, an outcast.

He lowered his head.

A voice rose behind him.

"Howdy, partner."

He spun around. He saw Nova
standing in the doorway, smiling softly.

"Hello," he said.

She stepped into the chamber
and stood with him between the bunks. She looked through the porthole down at
Planet Cirona.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Nova said.

Steel nodded. "A pristine
world. A world like Earth was thousands of years ago. Perhaps . . . perhaps a
world more suited for a rusty old relic like me."

She turned back toward him. "You're
not a relic. I'm sorry, Steel. I'm sorry I always called you that."

He took her hand in his. She
was a proud warrior, a great gladiator, a slayer of many enemies, yet her hand
felt so soft, so small in his.

"And I'm sorry too."
He bowed his head. "I always scorned you. Belittled you. I am ashamed."

Nova bit her lip, then
squeezed his hand and grinned. "We sure killed a lot of skelkrins
together, didn't we?"

A smile tingled below his
mustache. "I believe we're more or less even."

"Even?" She gasped
and playfully slapped his chest. "I killed way more!"

"We killed them together."
Now his smile widened. It was a real smile, a good smile. And he felt young. "We
make a good pair of warriors."

She nodded. "We do,
Steel." Her voice softened. "We do. Stay with us here. Stay with me.
I need another warrior on this ship. I need another friend."

They stood together, staring
out the window at the green world below.

CHAPTER THIRTY:
THE TRAVELER

The mechanics' shuttle was heading
back to the planet, their work completed, when Riff saw a new vessel approach.

He still stood in the main
deck, gazing out the window. Romy was passed out on the couch, snoring. Piston
and Twig had returned to the engine room, where they were performing last
repairs and calibrations of their own. Giga and Nova were both on the bridge.
Only Steel and Midnight stood here with Riff when he saw the flying saucer outside.

"Look!" He pointed.

Steel and Midnight came to
stand at his side. They gazed out with wide eyes.

The vessel was unlike any Riff
had ever seen. It was deep blue, limned with light, spinning toward them. A
dome rose upon its crest like a cockpit, glowing golden.

Riff frowned and spoke into
his communicator. "Giga, can you hail the incoming vessel?"

Her voice rose through the
speaker. "Captain? The mechanic vessel is leaving, not incoming."

"The saucer," Riff
said. "The blue one."

"Cannot compute, Captain.
No other vessel is in range."

Riff rubbed his eyes and
stared outside again. He could definitely see the flying saucer there. When he
turned toward Steel and Midnight, he knew they saw it too; they were gaping as
if disbelieving.

A few meters away from the Dragon
Huntress, the saucer halted its flight. A covered walkway stretched out
from it, connecting with the Dragon.

The airlock on the main deck
began to open.

Riff hissed and drew his gun. "We're
being boarded."

Steel frowned and drew his
sword. Midnight let qi gather in her palms.

The airlock door swung open.

"Hello, hello!" rose
a voice. "Oh, nice place you've got here. A couch! I love couches. Counter-squares!
Love that game." Light flowed around the figure, revealing only a silhouette.
"What are you doing with your weapons drawn? Is that any way to welcome a
guest?"

Riff knew that voice. He
lowered his gun, barely able to breathe. Steel gasped and lowered his sword.

The figure closed the hatch,
sealing the light outside.

Riff gasped.

It was him.

"Dad!" he shouted.

"Father!" Steel
cried.

Midnight covered her mouth,
eyes wide.

The old man nodded and stepped
deeper into the main deck, holding a wooden walking staff. The magician wore
his long white robes, and his white beard was just as long and flowing. A
pointed hat rested on his head. He looked around, nodding. "Just needs a good
vacuuming. Too bad there's no motor in that vacuum cleaner over there."

Riff raced forward and
embraced the old man. "Dad! What are you doing here?"

Steel joined them, seeming
unable to speak, too overcome for words.

Old Aminor looked at them and
laughed. "I've come to visit my boys! So shocked that your old man should
stop by?" He snorted. "You two never learned any hospitality. Now
shove aside! Move!"

The magician elbowed his way
between them, approached Midnight, and turned solemn. The old man took her
lavender hand and lowered his head.

"Forgive me, Midnight,"
he said softly. "I should never have left you. I know how much you
suffered, my child." His eyes brightened. "But I see you found my
sons after all."

She hugged him, and tears
flowed from her eyes. "Dear Traveler. Thank you."

"Dad!" Riff said. "What
. . . what is this 'Traveler' talk? Where have you been all this time?"

Aminor squared his shoulders
and rapped Riff with his staff. "I was off on an adventure! Not that it's
any of your business. I was seeking a new home for our lovely lady here."
He turned back toward Midnight, and once more his voice softened. "It lies
very near, yet very far. Only a few kilometers away, yet many dimensions away.
A new world, Midnight. A world where others of your kind have sought shelter. A
world where the skelkrins can never reach you." He reached out his hand. "If
you take my hand, child, I will take you there."

She trembled, crying softly. "There
are . . . other pirilians? Others who survived?"

Aminor nodded. "A few,
child. I managed to save a few. They wait for you now. Wait for you beyond the
stars, beyond the dimensions, a place where no enemy can reach you. Will you
come with me now?" Suddenly the old man's eyes gleamed with his own tears.
"I'm sorry, Midnight, that I could not save your world. The pain of that
tragedy will forever fill me. But if you will travel with me, I will take you
to a new world. A new beginning."

She sniffed and nodded, unable
to speak. She took his hand. They walked together toward the airlock.

"Wait!" Steel said.
The knight's voice was hoarse. "Midnight! Wait."

He stepped toward her and
knelt.

Midnight gently released Aminor's
hand and turned toward the knight.

"My sweet knight,"
she whispered. "My savior. My hero."

Tears flowed down Steel's gaunt
cheeks and into his mustache. He took her hand in his and kissed it. "My
lady."

She kissed Steel's forehead,
smiled warmly, and needed to say no more.

"Goodbye,
Riff," she whispered, turning to look at him.

Riff stared, not sure what to
say, what to do, how to feel. He stepped toward her, and he too kissed her
hand. "Goodbye, Midnight. Will we ever see you again?"

She turned to look at Aminor,
her eyes questioning, then back at Riff. She nodded. "I'm sure of it."
She kissed his cheek. "Until we meet again."

Aminor smiled, wiped his eyes,
and escorted Midnight to the doorway. She stepped into the light, heading
toward the flying saucer, vanishing in its glow.

"Dad, wait!" Riff
said. "Don't . . . don't go. Not yet." His voice caught in his
throat. "There's so much I don't understand."

Aminor stood at the doorway
between the two vessels, between space and light. The old man looked around the
deck, looked at his sons, and nodded.

"I'm proud of you, my
sons. Last time I saw you, you were both languishing away. You were both lost.
I've seen you grow. I've seen you become heroes." He winked. "Keep
being heroes, my sons. This is where you belong. I will always be proud of you.
I will always love you."

The old man tipped his hat.

With that, Aminor turned and
left the Dragon Huntress, closing the door behind him.

"Dad!" Riff cried. "Wait!"

Yet before he could open the door
again, Riff heard the saucer detach. He turned toward the porthole to see the
strange, glowing vessel fly farther away, spin, and vanish with a gleam of
light.

Steel came to stand beside
him. He inhaled deeply. "He's off to another dimension, I suppose."

Riff nodded. "Off on
another adventure we'll probably never hear anything about."

"And Midnight goes with
him." Steel lowered his head. "I will miss her."

Riff stretched and yawned. "I
miss sleeping. And eating. And taking long showers. Did Piston fix the shower
yet?" He sighed. "I suppose our own adventure is over, brother. For
now. We saved Cirona. We saved Midnight. We probably saved Earth and the rest
of the cosmos."

Yet even as he spoke those
words, a chill filled him. He remembered Emperor Lore's hologram emerging from Grotter's
corpse, remembered the skelkrin threatening to attack again. There was still
evil out there. There were still aliens who wanted to hunt him.

There was still work to do.

He patted Steel's shoulder. "Come
on, brother. Let's go look for something to eat."

* * * * *

With a belly full of Cironan fruit
and bread, Riff left the kitchen and stepped back onto the bridge. Steel came
with him, clad as always in his armor, his sword at his side.

"Konnichiwa!" Giga
greeted Riff with a salute. "Welcome back to your bridge, Captain."

Nova was already in her seat,
facing the repaired windshield—or, as Giga would no doubt call it, the front
fused silica viewport pane. The bobbleheads were now bolted onto the dashboard,
ready to withstand any bump on the road. Riff sank into his captain's seat, and
Steel sat at his right-hand side. Planet Cirona rotated slowly below.

"Well," Riff said. "I
suppose we . . . have lives to get back to." He looked at Steel. "A
castle to rebuild." He glanced at Nova. "The Alien Arena to compete
in. The Blue Strings to play in."

Yet his words tasted stale in
his mouth. The others stared at him, silent, saying nothing. Steel bowed his
head.

Somehow, after everything they
had lived through, Earth itself seemed a little stale.

"Captain!" Twig's
voice rose from behind, and she raced onto the bridge, holding a sheaf of
papers. "Captain, a whole slew of work orders just came in! Turns out
worlds for light-years around heard about how we saved Cirona. They want to
hire us, Captain!" Twig's eyes shone. "What do we do? Where do we go
next?"

She paused, panting. Her trusted
wrench hung from her tool belt again.

Riff glanced at Steel, then at
Nova. "Or . . ." he said, ". . . we can take one more job. Or
two. Just to make enough money so I can buy my guitar back. And maybe then a
little more."

Steel nodded. "We are,
after all, the Alien Hunters."

Riff took a deep breath and
rose to his feet. He walked toward the windshield. "Twig, what's the
nearest star that needs us?"

The halfling shuffled through
the papers. "That would be . . . Alpha Draconis, sir. In the Draco
constellation. Says here they're having a devil of a time with a . . . oh
stars. Not a snot-monster!"

Riff smiled thinly and turned
toward Giga. "Giga, chart a course to Alpha Draconis please. Hyperdrive
engines should be back up and running. And . . . don't fly us there too fast. I
think we all need some time to relax on the way."

The android smiled and raised
her chin. "Happy to comply, Captain. Nice and easy pace."

The engines revved up, purring
like comfortable cats.

With a blast of light, the HMS
Dragon Huntress shot into deep space, heading toward the stars.

The story continues in . . .

ALIEN SKY

Alien Hunters, Book Two

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AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading Alien Hunters. I hope you enjoyed this book.

The sequel, Alien Sky, is now available on Amazon. Click here to grab your copy or search Amazon for "Alien Sky."

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Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.

Daniel

NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

THE MOTH SAGA

- Moth

- Empires of Moth

- Secrets of Moth

- Daughter of Moth

- Shadows of Moth

- Legacy of Moth

REQUIEM

- Dawn of Dragons

- Requiem's Song

- Requiem's Hope

- Requiem's Prayer

- The Complete Trilogy

- Song of Dragons

- Blood of Requiem

- Tears of Requiem

- Light of Requiem

- The Complete Trilogy

- Dragonlore

- A Dawn of Dragonfire

- A Day of Dragon Blood

- A Night of Dragon Wings

- The Complete Trilogy

- The Dragon War

- A Legacy of Light

- A Birthright of Blood

- A Memory of Fire

- The Complete Trilogy

- Requiem for Dragons

- Dragons Lost

- Dragons Reborn

- Dragons Rising

- The Complete Trilogy

OTHER WORLDS

- Eye of the Wizard

- Wand of the Witch

- Firefly Island

- The Gods of Dream

- Flaming Dove

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