Exerpt: First Chapter, Day of the Devourer
Chapter 1: The Wreck
A freezing wind whistled across the drifts of snow that covered rolling hills. Huge shards of rock broke through the icy blanket of the alien wasteland in all directions. Two nomads leading pack animals left deep tracks in the snowdrifts as they approached the gigantic wreck of a starship, half-buried in snow. The shipwreck slept restlessly, with its front half hanging precariously over a deep, frozen canyon.
Anyone passing by would have only seen primitive local herders in furry coats stopping to consider the wreck. It would make sense. The mammoth-men of Norgdor had little contact with Outworlders. Their planet’s location in the galaxy at the edge of the Unexplored Expanse meant hardly anyone ventured to this system. The fact that its climate remained below zero year-round meant the only traders who visited came here in small freighters for the dribble of hydrocarbon fuels it managed to produce for export. Anyone watching them would have assumed these primitive nomads probably stared at the metal hulk in wonder—having never seen a starcraft up close before. Of course, there would be no one passing by to see them in this remote land on such a sparsely populated world. There would be no one to notice that these were not just ordinary nomads. That was perfectly fine with one of them. The fewer people who knew where he was, the better.
One of the nomads lumbered like a native mammoth-man, but the other stood taller and thinner—a human. The man’s curly mop of blond and brown hair whipped around in the gusts. His snow goggles hugged his tanned and chapped face and his stubble-shadowed mouth turned up in a smile at the sight of the wreck. Their big, woolly, armadillo-like pack animals—called dushhuks—began to settle in. The creatures used their giant shovel-like paws to burrow into the snow, looking for fungus to eat under the permafrost.
The human walked toward the wreck, but his partner’s hairy, three-fingered hand reached out and held him back for a moment.
“Rej, there is something you need to know,” said the being from beneath his trunk-like nose.
Rej Antares looked into the creature’s slit-like visor, waiting to hear what his local guide had to say.
“What kind of ship is it?”
“It’s a Bargeerian cargo freighter,” Rej said. “Got hijacked by pirates that wanted something on board. The crew put up a good fight and the ship went down here.”
“And you are here to get that something on board?”
“Yeah.” Rej took in his companion’s face, from the protruding tusks to the woolly patch of hair on his head, and back to the visor’s slot-like lens. “Alright. What is it? What’s bugging you?”
“A group of local villagers went into this wreck a few months ago to try to salvage anything they could sell. Only one made it out alive to tell about it.”
“Did he say what killed them?”
“He said it was a jeejee.”
“Okay. What the hell is a jeejee?”
“It’s like a… it’s a kind of a monster. It’s a local legend. Huge beast. Eats people.”
“Legend? Look, Gurrok, I’ve got too much money riding on this job to get scared off by a fairy tale. I’m goin’ in. Turn on your wrist-com. Lemme know if anything happens out here. And if I’m not out in five minutes, come in and get me.”
Rej turned back to look toward the wreck, considering it again. He reassured himself, “Shouldn’t take that long.”
He lifted his legs high as he trudged through the deep snow. He noticed an escape hatch open in the middle of the ship about thirty meters away from the canyon edge. He held his laser rifle against his chest as he drew closer. Judging by the burn marks on the metal, the hatch must have been blasted open by laser fire from the inside. He crouched in the opening, poking his head in first to assess the situation.
He peered into a dark corridor that seemed to go between the ship’s bridge and cargo hold. The control panels, pipes and conduit that adorned the walls glistened with frost and icicles. On the floor, a thick layer of snow partially hid several piles of ice-covered bones. Only the Bargeerian crew would have arms so thick and long. A few feet away lay the corpse of one of Gurrok’s kind. A deep indentation in its chest told Rej it had been crushed by something.
He ducked inside. On the wall above the corpse hung a control panel with a single switch. He pressed it. Just as he thought, a thick, metal sliding door came crashing down from the ceiling, cutting the body in half. Disgusted, he switched it open again. This unfortunate mammoth-man probably belonged to the group of villagers from Gurrock’s story. No mythical beast killed him. He just stood in the wrong place when this cargo door came down.
The crust of ice crunched beneath his feet as he walked through the doorway, deeper into the corridor. A thick, grey tapestry of icicles hung from the wall, making the narrow passage feel even more restricted. The howling wind outside sounded so much more sinister inside this metal box. Another big metal door stared back at him from the end of the passage. This would be the entrance to the hold. Against the opposite wall lay another corpse. Something else killed this one. Rej looked past the yellowish tusks and trunk-like snout that gave humans reason to call these snow-dwelling residents of this planet mammoth-men. Several fatal laser burns on his woolly torso told a tale. Rej crouched and stared through the clouds of his own breath. Did someone shoot this one? Maybe a disagreement between these primitives about the money they would get from salvaged parts could have given one of them a motive. No. The burns streaked across his body like grill-marks. Several laser blasts hit this creature at once.
Behind him in the frost of the floor lay a meter-long piece of metal paneling that must have become dislodged during the crash. He pulled it up and held it out in midair, pointing toward the cargo door. Just as he suspected, about twelve deadly laser beams came blasting out from both sides of the corridor. Sparks flew from the metal, and he dropped it to the ground. The Bargeerians set some sort of cruel security system to protect the cargo. After the ship crashed, it armed itself. He’d need to hack the ship’s computer. He couldn’t let anything stop him from getting his prize.
He needed to finish this job. He needed the money. He had left his previous employment without a plan more than a year ago. He could do this same kind of work on his own, but it had proven a lot harder to find paying clients than he ever thought.
He had mooched off friends for the past six Earth months. Aldo, an old friend from his days in the Galactic Fleet, had given him a place to stay in a leaky warehouse on Timku. Aldo had gotten himself into a dubious business venture, moving stolen spacecraft from Durgon V to local chop shops and resellers on various worlds. He used this warehouse as part of that operation. Rej had a broken-down cryosleep unit with torn leather upholstery to sleep in, an outdated kitchenette and a drafty, musty-smelling bathroom with giant mushroom-like fungus growing out from a crack between the wall and the floor. He cut the fungus down and removed as much of it as he could, but it grew back. He tried it again at least five times, but it always grew back, so he stopped trying. He found a big bag full of dehydrated military ration bricks in a corner of the place. Who knew how long those rations had been there, but it meant he didn’t have to buy food for a while.
At first, he enjoyed the warehouse. He had never lived in such a spacious place. It felt like a palace at first. No one bothered him there, and he could be alone with his thoughts. After a month of it, it felt lonely. A chill hung in the air, and he felt he could never get warm. He took walks around the warehouse. He couldn’t take walks outside. Timku had suffered a chemical plant explosion decades ago and immense clouds of poison gases still hung in the air and blew around the planet.
On his walks, he would hear the same echoes of his footsteps on the same grey concrete floors below the same grey corrugated metal ceilings and rafters. He’d smell the same oily, burnt, and metallic smells from the same old spaceship parts stored on metal shelving and he’d say hello to the same dusty, broken-down bots. He had plenty of time and no distractions, so he could finally take the time to figure things out. He hadn’t figured anything out.
After about eight months of living like this and having no prospects for paying work, he realized his decision to leave his job may have been rash. He kicked himself and told himself how foolish he had been. He thought many times about going back, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He felt the stress and guilt from that job had been slowly killing him. Even after a year, nightmares still kept him awake at night.
He had come down to the last three ration bricks when he finally got a break. Aldo returned to the warehouse to hide a recently stolen racing ship. Rej sat on a rust-speckled metal cabinet, watching his friend jump out of the cockpit of an interceptor model that radiated in bright sunny yellow with airbrushed red flames on the side. Aldo’s amber beard popped out and expanded into shape after having been compressed inside a pilot’s helmet for several hours.
“That’s a nice ride,” Rej said.
“Here’s the food and stuff you asked for,” Aldo said, handing him an ice-cold toolbox-sized cargo container. “I sent you the receipt. You can just transfer the credits to me.”
Rej didn’t respond, but the concern and shame on his face said enough. He didn’t have the money to pay his friend back.
Aldo’s brown eyes probed into Rej’s heart. He thought for a moment, then said, “You know, I ran into Kagga Jín on Durgon V. He’s looking for somebody with detective skills to help him recover something. When I told him I had a buddy who used to be a spy, he said I should introduce you.”
“The infamous Kagga Jín. Isn’t he a contraband smuggler? What does he run, like, drugs or something? Or is it something less illegal like exotic alien booze?”
“Among other things.”
“Is he safe? Have you done business with him before?”
“Man, you gotta start trusting people,” Aldo said. “I wouldn’t give you anything I didn’t think you could handle.”
Rej used his last few credits paying a transport to get to Durgon V, Kagga Jín’s homeworld. Once he’d made contact, Jín requested to meet him in the basement level of a notorious tavern, called The Fortune. Aliens and humans of all shapes and sizes packed a dark, concrete arena where steel bleachers had been set up around a square pit for an event. Two cages had been placed in opposite corners of the pit. Inside the cages, Rej could hear what sounded like animals scuffling about. He had heard about events like this. This was a thingfight—a prize fight where two animals from different worlds were placed in a pit and forced to fight to the death. Spectators placed bets on which animal would win. He assumed Jín wanted to meet here because the noise of the crowd would impede any prying ears that might try to listen to their conversation.
After so much time in a lonely warehouse with nothing but echoes to keep him company, he found it difficult to focus on the task of locating his contact. The whole place assaulted his senses. The overwhelming smell of spiced outworld liquors and eye-stinging smoke filled the hot, sticky air. He ducked and squeezed through the shouting and laughing crowd of aliens.
Rej finally noticed a prominent Bargeerian surrounded by obvious bodyguards at the top of one of the bleachers. He figured this must be Jín and approached. He introduced himself and stated his purpose to one of the bodyguards and soon found himself sitting next to Kagga Jín for the match, but Jín sat in silence, averting his eyes. He only acknowledged Rej with a nod.
After a few minutes, a fat, sweaty human with red eyes stood on a bottom bleacher and made an announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the fight is about to begin! Hailing from its jungle hive in the Zandruga system, on the right side of the pit is the deadly and poisonous Skrallaxite!”
The door to one of the cages slid open quickly and a long, bright red millipede-like creature with deep red variegations on its back crawled out of the cage and explored the floor of the pit. It measured about two meters long and as wide as a human leg. The crowd laughed, cheered and hooted with excitement.
“And from the desert wastelands of Vohar, on the left side of the pit is the powerful and vicious Ungarioon!” the fat man announced as the second cage opened and a meter-wide, black beast came lumbering out, covered in thick armor plates, long horns protruding from its head and with a fearsome set of mandibles covered in thorny spikes that it clacked together to frighten its opponent. The Skrallaxite’s front half suddenly raised up, revealing two sets of huge, bright red, pincer claws that it opened wide. Its small, black insectoid head emitted a buzzing hiss, and from its back end, it extended a sharp, hooked appendage that dripped with a poisonous blue secretion. The crowd stomped and hollered.
This was when the alien smuggler chose to begin engaging Rej in conversation. He remembered Jín’s dark eyes staring out at him from behind the leathery wrinkles in his bald, grey-brown, binocular-shaped head and his ape-like mouth saying, “Your friend Aldo say you used to be intelligence agent, no?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“And you look for work doing the same kind of thing, no?”
Even without his stylish, shiny blue, ribbed leather jacket with its tall collar, Jín’s thick accent and bad grammar showed his pride. He had learned to speak the human language and refused to use a translator device. Rej would never dare to point out his mistakes. He didn’t seem the type to forgive an insult.
“Yeah. I’m in the intelligence business,” Rej responded. “If you need to find someone or something, I can help with that.”
“Good. You know Elib-Óm?”
Rej wondered if he should laugh at this joke. “The famous freighter that went missing? I know about the legend, sure.”
“You can find the Elib-Óm, I give you one million credits. The plans for that engine will be good business for me.”
Rej’s heart sank. The Elib-Óm had disappeared without a trace fifty years before. Since then, hundreds of treasure hunters had been searching for it without any results.
“Okay, and if I don’t find it? It’s a rumor, as you know. How ‘bout half up front and an advance for my expenses?”
“It is real. I know. I have sources. Now you know it’s real, you just need to find it and bring it to me. Okay? I give you fifty thousand advance. No more until you find it, okay?”
Jín wanted to find the legendary ship for a very good reason. Rumors had spread long ago that the Voharians had invented an ultra-hyperdrive engine that could go twice as fast as the hyperdrive engines of today. The Voharians sent a set of the plans to be manufactured at a shipbuilding operation on Durgon I. The plans never made it. Oltharian pirates hijacked the ship and the crew of the Bargeerian freighter blew up the Oltharians’ ship. The hijackers, without a ship, fought the crew for control of their vessel. None of the pirates or the crew survived the fight and the ship drifted aimlessly in space until it eventually crashed. Several recovery missions never found a trace of it. Opportunistic treasure hunters later searched for it on several nearby planets. Some thought the hull of the ship could still be found drifting somewhere in the Unexplored Expanse. Rej realized he stood slim chance of finding a shipwreck that may or may not exist, but he realized he could make out pretty well with fifty thousand credits for a while.
“Okay. I’ll give it a shot,” he agreed. Rej remembered shaking Jín’s hairy, webbed hand.
Kagga Jín laughed and asked, “You have money on which one?”
“Oh, I don’t have money to gamble today.”
“This one is my pet,” Jín announced with a grin, pointing to the Skrallaxite’s red, segmented back as it circled the growling Ungarioon.
“You own it?”
“Yes. She is gorgeous, no? This other thing is owned by Yayadóo over there,” he nodded toward another, younger, desperate-looking Bargeerian in the opposite bleachers. “You watch. When the black thing attacks, my pet will sting its underside. It will be poisoned, but my pet will still attack the black one until it drops dead. She is positively evil, I tell you,” he laughed.
“Adorable,” Rej said.
Kagga Jín put his hairy hands behind his bald head and leaned back against the concrete wall. He started again, “You know, I hire a good thief a while back. The best! He try to find the Elib-Óm before you. A year later, I had to track him down. Can you believe he try to run off and disappear with my money?”
Rej felt like cold eyes had peered inside his soul. “No way. That’s unbelievable.”
“Yes. My pet have a good time with him. She likes to play for a long time. It took him fourteen days to finally die while she poison him, then eat a little bit of him. Then poison again, then a little nibble. She really enjoyed that,” he said, observing Rej’s reaction with wide eyes, while one of his bodyguards nodded to him. “Yes. Anyway, you have already your advance. Check your wrist-com.”
Rej looked at his bracelet and saw an alert: 50,000 credits deposited. He didn’t like hearing about the fate of the previous employee in his position. He wondered if it was too late to decline, or if that would just anger his new employer.
The thingfight ended in half an hour after the Skrallaxite flipped the Ungarioon over on its back and ripped out its milky white internal organs. Rej took his leave and got to work. He tried contacting his friend Espinoza who still worked for the Galactic Intelligence Agency but couldn’t reach him. He assumed his friend must be on assignment somewhere. So, he contacted some old friends in the GIA’s analytics division to dig up what they could on the Elib-Óm. With supercomputer-generated probabilities on its whereabouts, he decided to try his luck on the planets Ryxx and Norgdor.
He searched the damp, fungus-covered surface of Ryxx for months, fighting off intestinal parasites and an itchy rash. He spent a large amount renting a submersible to explore the bottom of a massive crater lake, where he found three other space wrecks, but no sign of any Bargeerian craft.
He gave up, then he tried begging another one of his old war buddies, Shady, to pick him up and give him a lift. Unfortunately, Shady had an assignment on the other side of the galaxy. With a small part of the remaining advance, he paid the captain of a corroded old hydrocarbon freighter for a ride to this ice cube.
Now he had hired this local mammoth-man, Gurrock, as a guide based on advice from the keeper of the rundown boarding house where he’d been staying, and now found himself here—on the cusp of securing one of the most sought-after treasures in the galaxy.
He glanced around the icy corridor. He produced a tiny insect-like robotic drone from one of the pockets of his woolly nomad coat and threw it into the air. A tap on his wrist-com to activate it and he had a new friend.
“Infiltrate the ship’s computer. Alert when you’ve tapped the main processor,” he commanded. Some agents had cranial implants that allowed them to control drones and other devices with their thoughts, but Rej didn’t have enough trust in the GIA to allow them to alter his body like that. He preferred keeping his cranium in its natural state, as his DNA intended.
The drone hovered for a moment, analyzing its surroundings and checking its connection to Rej’s bracelet. Then it zipped through the air, down the corridor, toward the ship’s bridge. A moment later, Rej’s wrist-com lit up with a row of characters.
“All right. Disable any defense systems. Open all cargo doors,” Rej said.
In a moment, the cargo door slid up and into the ceiling, followed by two more metal doors directly behind it, leading to the cargo hold. Rej picked up the steaming sheet of metal again and held it out as he had done before. Nothing. The lasers had been disabled.
“Man, this thing is secure. Great work. Thanks a lot.”
After the cargo doors, he emerged into a cavernous room. On either side lay stacks of frost-covered grey crates of varying sizes. To his right, the hull had sustained a huge breach on impact. Freezing air blew in from outside, carrying flurries of snow. In the drift that gathered near the rip, a set of tracks showed that some large animal frequently came in and out of the hold. A heap of gnawed, bloody animal bones lay on the opposite side of the hull. A musky smell lingered around it. Rej considered the heap for a moment or two. A shiver seized him. He didn’t feel safe here. He fought an urge to run back out the way he came. He felt a sudden sense of urgency to get this job done and get out of here.
“Okay, little guy. Locate a data canister for me in the hold,” he called to the drone. “Should be in the ship’s manifest coming from the origin port of Axa 12.”
“Hold 871. The shelves behind you,” came an electronic voice from his wrist-com.
Luckily the numbers were still legible on the shelves. He took down the canister, typed a memorized code into a glowing keypad that appeared on the top. With a crackling pop, a hologram hovered above the canister. It showed a destroyer-class starship. Rej gestured in a pulling motion, causing the hologram to zoom in, showing schematics of the ship’s interior. Motioning sideways, he panned across the holographic plans, muttering under his breath, “This thing is unreal.”
He could see why his client would pay such a large amount to get the plans for this type of ship. He popped the canister into his small leather shoulder bag when he felt a shower of tiny ice crystals falling on him from above. In his peripheral vision, he sensed something white climbing down from the ceiling behind him. He turned around slowly, to find some kind of massive, muscular predatory animal with four red eyes fixed on him, baring its glistening, sword-sized teeth. It arched its back, ready to pounce.
Rej bolted for the corridor. The creature leapt after him. He passed the three cargo doors, slamming a fist on the switch. The doors smashed into the creature’s ribs and trapped it. It screeched as Rej backed up, his eyes fixed on the thing. He shouted as he ran toward the hatch, “Activate defense systems!”
The thing maneuvered one of its thick paws and flexed its sinewy body to push the doors apart and squeeze itself out of the trap and pursue its prey. Rej dropped to the floor and rolled when he reached the wall of laser blasters. The creature pounced, only to be struck by the burning lasers. It screamed in pain, but it didn’t stop. The burns just made it angry.
Rej jumped up, slapping at the next door switch, but not fast enough. The thing rushed at him again. He flattened himself against the wall behind a steel girder. The monster missed him, just barely. Its momentum kept its body going, sliding past him and into the far end of the corridor, into the part of the ship that hung over the canyon. Rej felt the floor shift with the weight of the beast.
The creature made ready to jump again. Rej saw the open hatch where he came in just a couple of meters away. He aimed his rifle and ran for it, blasting at the creature the whole way. Wounded, the creature recoiled, backing further and further into the suspended part of the hull. Sounds of metal cracking and rivets popping off like bullets filled the air. Just before Rej made it to the hatch, the ground shifted beneath him, and gravity pulled him toward the animal. He felt the front end of the ship breaking off and falling into the canyon.
Cold wind whipped his face as the ceiling ripped away above him and his feet slid. With all his mental might, he turned and leapt toward the hatch, but felt the floor give way—falling into the canyon. A piece of conduit snapped from the disintegrating floor and hit him right in the crotch, but he grabbed it and held on with all his might, dropping his weapon.
Rej found himself dangling on that strand of conduit, above an immense chasm. The front of the ship fell into the mist far below with the screeching beast still in it. He heard an enormous, thundering clash as the metal hulk shattered into the frozen river far below.
He pulled himself back into the remains of the corridor with his last few ounces of energy, hand over hand. Then he crawled out of the open hatch and back onto the snowy ground, collapsing into his own frozen footprints. After a moment, just knowing that he had survived gave him the strength to rise to his feet again and stumble triumphantly toward his friend, Gurrock, who stared at him, mouth gaping.
“Did you get it?” his guide shouted.
He panted, then answered, “You’re damn right I did!”
“Well, then I have some bad news for you.”
Rej stopped in his tracks and stared, confused. Then, from behind the snow dune where Gurrock stood, fifteen or sixteen mammoth-men appeared, brandishing laser rifles and electro-lances.
“Ah, crap!” Rej said as he dropped to his knees and put his hands in the air. He had been set up.
