Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge

YULIA WAS DEAD. Gone were the rolling green hills and the steep cliffs overlooking the black ocean, the blue mountains that turned purple at night, and the deep craters that in the warm season filled with crimson blossoms.

Zakahryans, the locals called them‌—‌pools of blood.

Their name was no longer a metaphor.

Ashes rained on Hyleesh’s military uniform, gently tapping on his helmet. He wiped them off the visor and stared at the red sky, the distant sun a pale disk obfuscated by smoke.

Thick, yellow mist draped the horizon, heavy with the stench of death. Waves silently lapped at the skeleton of a collapsed wharf. Bodies knotted with kelp rolled along the tideline, forming one long cordon of rotten flesh.

Everything on Yulia was dead. Not even flies came out to feast on the cadavers.

A dull, persistent ringing filled the air, as though the voices of the millions that had died on Yulia had joined in one relentless cry.

The city of Sunan had been the last to fall. The plasma artillery the locals had hidden deep in the forest had done very little against the Yaxees’ PPBs‌—‌pulse propulsion bombs. Wrapped in a thin shell of titanium and suspended in a perfectly spherical magnetic field, one microgram of Quarium had vaporized the whole city in a matter of seconds.

It had taken less than 48 hours and nineteen PPBs to wipe out the whole planet. One week later, flames still marred the crests and pinnacles of the mountain peaks, and black plumes of smoke drifted off the cliffs and over the ocean.

Sunan had crumbled to dust. The holes of cracked open buildings gaped into nothingness, torn steel cables strummed in the breeze.

Hyleesh’s boots left deep prints in the dry soil. His heart was heavy, yet his soul empty. He’d come searching for survivors but he’d found none.

Yulia wasn’t his planet, the dead weren’t his people.

So why was he here?

A deep, low rumble resonated from the north side of the shore. Hyleesh squeezed his weapon and gaped at the trail of dust and black smoke rising in the distance. The rumble grew closer until it became the distinct roar of half a dozen SATVs‌—‌special armored tactical vehicles.

They’re here.

The realization that he wasn’t alone on this stranded planet left him strangely indifferent. He poised his weapon, planted his boots, and stared at the wreckage of Sunan as the wake of black smoke grew bigger.

Five-foot tall tires tore through the collapsed structure of the wharf, squashing bloated bodies and digging out sand as they propelled forward. Hyleesh counted five fully armed vehicles and three mosquitos‌—‌small, air-land tanks that came equipped with all-terrain crawler legs and rotor blades for rapid take off. A sixth SATV lagged behind. It was much larger‌—‌a twenty seater at least, Hyleesh reckoned, and, unlike its tan companions, this one was completely black.

Black, like the Yaxee death.

They detected Hyleesh at about twelve hundred feet away. The black SATV slowed down while the rest of the vehicles veered in his direction and picked up speed until he was completely surrounded.

Hyleesh looked up at the darkened cockpits and didn’t move.

Eventually, the engines died, and the wind blew away the last whiff of exhaust.

“Soldier,” a metallic voice called from one of the SATVs. “Identify yourself.”

He was wearing a plain soldier uniform. He’d forgotten about that. He stuck the butt of his rifle in the sand and removed his helmet.

The wind howled from the smoking cliffs. The voices of the dead rang in his ears. Hot air blew sand and ashes in his face, the salt on his lips making his skin prickle.

The cockpits of the five smaller SATVs popped open. Rope ladders dropped out of the top, and soldiers climbed down the vehicles carrying weapons, drills, pipes, and other pieces of equipment.

The black SATV at the back whirred. A lateral door lifted, and a platform lowered to the ground. The face remained in shadow, but the uniform Hyleesh recognized immediately‌—‌black with red insignia on the shoulders and sleeves, as official missions mandated.

General Zika, a.k.a., the Yaxee death.

Sleek ankle boots walked down from the platform and into the sand. A silk cape whispered in the charged air. The face came out of the shadow. It was a scarred face, hard, with a crooked nose and skin so thin you could trace blue capillaries pulsing beneath it. The eyes were as clear as ice.

“Captain Weber,” General Zika said. “What a surprise to find you here on Yulia.”

“I would say so,” Hyleesh replied, watching the soldiers form a ring around the two of them. “Quite unexpected to find any presence at all here on Yulia after the last deadly raids.”

A proud sneer twisted Zika’s thin lips. He waved a gloved hand at the devastation around them‌—‌the bodies washed to shore, the ruins of Sunan, the burning cliffs. “Indeed. I’d say the disinfestation was successful.”

A foul aftertaste filled Hyleesh’s mouth. Bastard.

Zika’s eyes narrowed. “Still. What’s the infamous Captain Weber, son of the pluri-medaled Colonel Weber, doing here? I believe your father is in Sarai right now. Weren’t you supposed to be with him, leading your own battalion?”

Hyleesh hooked the helmet under his arm and picked up his rifle from the sand. “I’m headed back there,” he lied. “I had to come in person to let you know that you made a mistake, General. There’s no Quarium on Yulia.”

Zika’s eyes widened, the ice in them hardened. One of the soldiers came out of the lines. “General‌—‌”

Zika flicked a hand in the air. “Go start testing the water. Now!”

The troops scrambled off, their gear clanging on their backs. They set the tools down on the sand a few yards away and started shoveling. Two men waded into the water and collected samples.

“I don’t know where you get your information, Weber,” Zika said, watching them. “I trust my intelligence. We had information that pointed to a Quarium reservoir here on Yulia big enough to destroy the entire Old System. We tried to negotiate with them. They refused.” He waved a hand at the ruins of Sunan looming in the distance and shrugged. To him, what happened next was the natural consequence the people of Yulia brought upon themselves.

“If they had that much Quarium,” Hyleesh interjected, “how come they never used it to defend themselves?”

Zika squinted, one of the blue capillaries in his temple bulged. “It was a matter of time. We were faster.” He gave Hyleesh a long, hard look and then added, “I suggest you stay out of this, Captain. Sarai will be a hard enough nut to crack for you and your father. May I get you an escort to your ship?”

Hyleesh sent one last glance to the men working on their Quarium quest and shook his head. He could get to his ship all right. The problem was that Zika’s men were in the way. He swung the rifle over his shoulder, shook the sand off his boots, and walked away.

“Good luck with the Quarium quest, General,” he called. “What planet are you going to destroy unneccesarily next?”

He spotted a shadow peeking at him from the open door of the black SATV. It waited for him to pass, then slid out of the vehicle and ran to the general. Hyleesh turned and recognized Egon, Zika’s closest counselor, a skull face that never left his patron’s side. His black gown and aquiline nose made him look like a crow. He probably made love to the General, too, when slaves weren’t around to provide such services.

Egon cupped a hand around his ashen face and whispered something in the General’s ear. Whatever news he delivered, it didn’t look good. Zika’s eyes darted to Hyleesh.

“Come back, Weber!” he called.

He heard it in the general’s voice. Word’s out. Hyleesh flashed a nonchalant smile while quickly assessing his options. The General didn’t buy the smile. Egon had already turned to the soldiers, probably mouthing orders in his radio mic.

Hyleesh dropped his helmet, ran to one of the mosquitos, and climbed into the small cockpit.

“Traitor!” yelled Egon. “He committed mutiny!”

The soldiers dropped their equipment, grabbed their weapons, and ran back. Hyleesh worked the mosquito’s controls until the engine whirred and the aircraft took off, its robotic legs retracting under the fuselage.

Hyleesh had never flown these gadgets. The aircraft was so light compared to his sturdy ship he could feel the wind rocking him right and left. He pulled the collective and steered back toward the city. A flurry of HPNs‌—‌high power neutrino beams‌—‌skidded against the fuselage, causing all sorts of emergency diodes on the dashboard to flash.

Hyleesh pushed the throttle and increased the velocity. The aircraft rattled and swung forward. Two other mosquitos flanked him, closing in on both sides. Hyleesh saw them coming, jerked the collective, and dipped the aircraft down and forward. The two mosquitos slammed one against the other, and pieces of metal ricoched off Hyleesh’s windshield, denting it. One of the colliding aircraft lost two rotors, tilted, and flew off sideways. The other one continued its pursuit.

The SATVs followed from the ground, black wakes of exhaust trailing behind them. As soon as Hyleesh entered the space above Sunan, though, the big vehicles slowed down as they painfully crawled over piles of rubble.

Hyleesh dropped in altitude and begin to zigzag through the crooked skyline of the city. The other mosquito was relentless. Hyleesh dipped under a partially fallen overpass and squeezed between its broken pillars, but his pursuer was just as agile.

Some of the buildings that had survived the bombings started crumbling as the two mosquitos flew by. Hyleesh zipped through a narrow alley and debris from the facing towers started raining down on them. Something hit one of the rotors, making the aircraft spin. The other mosquito flew over him and pried at the rest of the rotors with its robotic legs. Hyleesh plummeted. He popped the windshield, unbuckled, and moments before the mosquito touched ground, he jumped out of the cockpit and through one of the open windows of the closest building.

The aircraft shattered in a cloud of fragments. The engine exploded, flames shot high up between the two facing towers. Hyleesh never knew what happened to the other mosquito. The heat wave blasted through the broken windows, lifted him up, and slammed him several feet away. He rolled on debris, shards piercing through his skin and heat lapping at his feet. A rumble shook the walls around him. He felt the quiver from the ground and ran, right as the ceiling collapsed and a thick cloud of dust and debris enveloped him.

Quarium. The word echoed in his head like a bitter medicine. Quarium was energy, power, wealth. Death. This unique molecule only existed in remotest parts of the galaxy, in the seabed detritus of icy cold oceans. That’s where the Yaxees had first found it on Aplaya‌—‌their home planet. No, not home. The one they conquered and settled on after destroying their own.

Because that’s what the Yaxees were.

Destruction.

Something hard pressed against Hyleesh’s ribs. His throat was dry, his tongue chalky. He rolled over and coughed until it felt like his lungs were turning inside out. Then he closed his eyes and collapsed again.

Warmth awakened him. A pencil of light brushed his face, dust motes dancing in it as though they had a life of their own.

They didn’t. Nothing on Yulia had life anymore.

He ran a hand over his cheek and his fingers came back white with dust. He was lying under a slab of concrete that had fallen on a metal cabinet and shielded him from the rubble that had followed. With some labor, he managed to roll to his side. The pencil of light was fanning through a small hole. He grabbed a piece of brick and scooped out dirt until the hole was wide enough for him to crawl through.

The sudden light made him wince. He stood up, dusted off his clothes, and cupped a hand around his eyes.

In broad daylight, his view of what had become of Sunan was dismal.

The city skyline was gone, replaced by dune after dune of rubble. The wreckage was visible all the way back to the ocean, where a yellow smear of fog draped the horizon. The two buildings he’d flown into had vanished, replaced by the hill he was standing on. Peaks spiked out of the debris here and there, like solitary soldiers left standing in the desert.

He wondered how much radiation still lingered in the dust, how much was getting into his bones, his lungs, his flesh. The sun was harsh on his dry skin. He longed for water, for a shower, for his ship.

His ship.

The thought pumped adrenaline back into his veins. He scrambled down the pile of rubble and back into what was left of a street. He found the jammed rotors of the mosquito on the ground a few feet away, stuck into a lump of twisted and charred metal. There was nothing left to salvage. One thing did grab his attention, though.

Tire tracks. Everywhere.

There was no way to mistake them. At least two feet in width, these were tracks left by the SATVs.

They came looking for me.

How long have I been out?

The sun scorched his eyes, still he craned his neck up, shaded his forehead with his hand, and scrutinized the sky. No white wakes marring the orange-tinted ether, only whiffs of sickly clouds blown away by the wind. Were they gone? They wouldn’t have found any trace of Quarium on this shore, Hyleesh was sure of that. But would they have left Yulia completely?

Unlikely.

There were three major oceans on Yulia, all black in color and icy cold‌—‌the telltales for Quarium deposits. Zika wasn’t going to give up until he’d drilled holes in all the shores on Yulia.

Unless during the testing they’d found his ship, in which case they’d still be at the shore ripping it apart.

Damn it.

He had to get back there fast. He started down the street walled by crumbled slabs of cement when a wave of dizziness caught him. He doubled over, fighting the nausea. He’d gone too many hours‌—‌maybe days?‌—‌without food or water. His vision blurred. Ghosts of heat swirling up from the debris made him jump.

Just a mirage.

Have to find water. Have to.

He stumbled inside a building. The top floors had shattered, but the ground ones were still standing. Holes gaped where once had been doors and windows.

The reek of rotten flesh negated the respite from the cooking temperature outside. Walls were missing, beams had fallen from the ceiling and scattered on the ground, together with shoes, torn fabric, and other clothing items‌—‌some with their original owners still attached to them.

His brain didn’t even register the horror. He moved on automatic, desperately searching for water. He stumbled on broken desks, chairs, torn cables, shattered pieces of electronics, and tripped on a hard object, crushing it under his boots.

An empty plastic bottle.

There was a metal cabinet lying on its side nearby; he opened it. Its contents had been completely pulverized. Bits of broken plastic, electronics, and office supplies‌—‌everything had reduced to fine dust. The massive radiation released by the Quarium propulsion bombs had completely wrecked everything, bodies and objects alike.

He banged the cabinet door. It had once contained water bottles and now all there was left was a small plastic cap that quietly rolled to his feet.

Hyleesh sighed.

There has to be something drinkable. Any kind of drinkable.

He waded deeper into the building. The inner rooms were windowless, no ambient light from outside. He dipped a hand in his pocket, fished out a flashlight, and clipped it to his uniform lapel.

Primitive but good enough.

After deserting his own troops, he’d gotten rid of all the electronic paraphernalia that could make him traceable. As much as he missed his flexible-screen SmartComm and all the useful apps it came with, his fellow Yaxees would’ve already found him and killed him if he still wore one of those around his wrist. He found the bathroom stalls, and for a short moment the unmistakable reek of urine covered the stench of rotten flesh. He tried the sinks, his boots crunching on a layer of mirror shards. Without electricity, the photovoltaic cells that controlled the faucets were useless. He grabbed a broken pipe and banged against the taps until he knocked them all off the wall. Not a single drop of water came out of the pipes.

Hyleesh roared in frustration, thirstier than before. What had he done to himself? He had a good life, captain of one of the best trained corps in the Yaxee army. He was a young promise in his fleet, bound to quickly climb to high military ranks, just like his father...

His father.

His father was a rapist and killer.

Once banned from the galaxy for destroying their mother planet, the Yaxees had become powerful again thanks to Quarium fusion. They rebuilt their military fleet and expanded their domain. Cities on Aplaya flourished and doubled in size. But they wanted more. And when the neighboring planet Yulia threatened to use Quarium too, panic spread through the Royal Council. Quarium was too powerful to let other planets use it.

Yulia was ruled by anarchists, the land marred by a history of political instability.

Hyleesh’s father was one of the members of the Royal Council who’d voted for war. “Three billion people, three major oceans, enough Quarium to destroy the entire planetary system,” he’d said in front of His Majesty, the Kraal. “We will attempt to resolve this peacefully by demanding that they surrender the Quarium. If they refuse, they will face the consequences.”

The Kraal signed off the Council’s decision and gave the order. Zika and his fleet were deployed. The inhabitants of Yulia refused to let the Yaxees land on their beautiful shores. The planet was exterminated.

And now they’ll learn that there’s no Quarium.

Yulia was too cold for that, too old of a planet. Only Andrameis planets had Quarium, but Yulia was older than Andrameis, older than any other world in the two-star system. The planet had originated from Salis, the smaller star. A handful of academics pointed it out. They were shunned, ridiculed and disbelieved. One was found assassinated inside his home.

Hyleesh’s father was a rapist and killer. And now a mass murderer.

When Hyleesh learned the truth, the propulsion bombs were already on their way to Yulia. By the time he made it to Yulia, his ship’s instruments didn’t detect a single heartbeat on the entire planet. Not a soul had survived the massive extermination.

And now he was going to die of thirst on a brittle dry planet.

He kicked the sink, cursed, and slammed the pipe against the wall. It dented the cement then bounced off the floor with a clang.

The clang echoed.

Hyleesh sighed and dropped his head to his wide palms.

His ship was his only hope. He had to conserve enough energy to get back to his ship.

The clang echoed again. And again.

Hyleesh held his breath.

Echoes don’t last that long.

He stormed out of the bathroom and scanned the area with his flashlight. It wasn’t an echo. It was a squeak, recurrent, from somewhere down a dark hallway studded with broken beams and fallen furniture.

His lips were parched, his throat so dry it hurt. The last effort in the bathroom had left him drained of energy and dizzy.

Yet the squeak kept calling. There was no air moving, no draft. Hyleesh held the flashlight like a poised rifle and started down the hallway. All doors had shattered, all rooms looked the same‌—‌collapsed ceiling, smashed furniture, wreckage everywhere.

The squeak got louder. Whinier, in a way. More demanding.

You’re imagining things. They’re all dead. Nobody survived.

He got to the last doorway, the last hole in the wall. He flattened against the wall, an old instinct from his military training, then pointed his flashlight. In the unyielding darkness, two red dots bounced off the light. And they blinked.

Sacred Kraal.

Hyleesh clipped the flashlight back to his jacket and entered the room. It had been a moan, not a squeak. A dog, of all living things, trapped under a slab of concrete that had pinned the poor animal’s hind legs. Despite all odds he’d survived. His eyes were crusted with pus, his nose split in the middle and caked with blood. And yet there was still life in him. Hyleesh crouched by his side and the dog barked and licked his hands, his tongue rough and as dry as Hyleesh’s own lips.

“I’m not sure what I’m saving you from, buddy,” Hyleesh mumbled, clearing the debris accumulated around the animal. “I think right now the chances are slim for both of us.”

He lifted one of the beams that had dropped from the ceiling and used it to lever the slab of concrete. As soon as it yielded a few inches from the ground, he kicked a metal shelf underneath to keep it off the dog’s legs.

The dog didn’t move.

“Come on buddy, you can do this.”

Hyleesh pulled gently on his forepaws, dragging him out of the trap, and then assessed the damage. The dog’s hind legs were gone, clamped under the weight of the concrete. Ironically, it had also prevented the limbs from bleeding, saving his life. How he’d survived the massive radiation and explosion, though, was a complete mystery.

The dog licked Hyleesh’s hand and moaned. Something clinked from his collar‌—‌a small, round medal with a plastic keycard attached to it. The medal said”Argos” followed by a call number.

“Argos,” Hyleesh said. He patted him behind the ears. “What a trooper.”

He removed the keycard from the dog’s collar and examined it. It had a magnetic strip and a barcode printed on the back. He stood up and swept his flashlight around. No standing doors left. Whatever the keycard had given access to, it was useless now.

Argos scraped the ground with his front paws and licked the tip of Hyleesh’s boot.

Hyleesh stooped down again. “What does this‌—‌”

And then he saw it, right as he leaned forward and the beam from his clipped flashlight fell on it‌—‌a trapdoor. The concrete slab had fallen on it (and on Argos), hiding it. Hyleesh moved the dog and shone his light on it. The keycard lock had been smashed and the door had caved in.

Hyleesh tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry.

He could still make it to his ship. How far into the city had he come with the mosquito? Maybe in half a day he’d get back to the shore. Maybe he still had it in him, enough energy to make it. But he had to leave now.

Argos let out a soft cry.

Hyleesh nodded. “You have friends down there, don’t you?”

His ship’s instruments hadn’t detected any survivors. But then again, they hadn’t detected Argos’s heartbeat either.

Hyleesh set the flashlight on the ground, beam pointed underneath the slab of concrete, and removed his jacket. He retrieved the beam, stuck it under the concrete, and then heaved and pushed until the slab inched backward. Satisfied that there was enough room for him to access the trapdoor, he crawled under the slab.

Crushed by the heavy weight, the cardkey pad was jammed. Luckily, the locking mechanism had failed and it took Hyleesh only a little pushing and prodding for the door to yield.

As soon as he pulled it open, the odor wafting out of the door killed his last hope of finding anyone alive. It was so strong it brought tears to his eyes. He took a deep breath, and leaning through the hole, shone the flashlight down below. It was a five-by-five bunker, no more than six feet deep. A coffin. The light swept through a rack of shelves brimming with canned food and water bottles that had been miraculously undamaged. He was about to relate the good news to Argos when the light caught something that made him freeze.

A hand.

Hyleesh stuck the butt of the flashlight in his mouth and lowered himself inside the hole. Underneath blue covers, he found a mother and child huddled together against the wall. Their faces were bloated, their skin green and purulent. And yet that gesture‌—‌the child embraced by her mother’s arms‌—‌frozen in the moment of death, carried such tenderness, such humanity, it made Hyleesh rewind back to his own childhood back on Aplaya, back when the world was a big playground and his dad the hero of his dreams. Back when he still believed in his people, his origins, himself. Back before one woman opened his eyes and made his world crumble.

He spotted the air vent above mother and child. He waved a hand in front of it but no air was circulating. They had been spared death by the bombs only to die asphyxiated in the very place that had saved their lives.

He sighed and dropped the blue cover back over the bodies.

Argos yelped. A slight tremor made the bunker walls vibrate. The cans on the metal rack rattled.

Fuck. The place is going to collapse soon.

Nothing he could do about the mother and child, but Argos, back on ground level, was still alive. And so am I, he thought, grabbing as many water bottles as he could hold. He crawled back out of the hole, uncapped the first bottle and poured it in Argos’ mouth. The second one he gulped down in huge mouthfuls, splashing the last of it on his dust-caked face. He put the rest of the bottles on his jacket, knotted the sleeves together, and swung it over his shoulder.

He then inhaled, gazed back at Argos, and bobbed his head. “This is going to hurt, buddy,” he said, leaning over to pick up the dog. “But believe me, you don’t want to be left here either.”

Argos yelped as Hyleesh snuggled him against his chest, careful to tuck the stumps of his injured legs underneath. He moaned, then leaned his face against Hyleesh’s chest and closed his eyes. For the rest of the hike back out of the building, the dog didn’t make another sound.

“Your job is done, buddy,” Hyleesh said, patting him. “You didn’t save their lives but you saved mine. Your job is done.”

The shore was deserted. Tire tracks and trenches of sand were still visible where the men had set their portable labs to test the water.

Hyleesh set Argos on the sand and uncapped the last bottle of water for the two of them to share. He squinted at the sky, still orange and overcast with smoke from the cliffs. If he was right, Zika had moved his men to the opposite coast, eight thousand miles away. If he was wrong, he and Argos were dead. He swished lukewarm water in his mouth and considered the odds.

Even if Zika and his men were indeed eight thousand miles away, the moment Hyleesh pulled his ship out of her hiding spot, it would take seconds‌—‌minutes at most‌—‌for the soldiers to pick up the new signal in Yulia’s atmosphere.

No chance if they were closer than that, still on this side of the ocean.

On the other hand, sitting here waiting for death to come wasn’t going to help much either. He watched Argos’s ribcage steadily rise and lower with labored breathing, his auburn coat tight over his bones. The poor thing needed food and medication. Hyleesh’s stomach growled. Hell, he needed food too!

He stuck the empty water bottle in the sand, smacked his lips and said, “Ready to roll, pup?”

Argos flicked an ear but didn’t reply. Hyleesh didn’t think he would, he was just happy to finally have somebody he could talk to. And even without words, the dog’s eyes alone told a million tales.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hyleesh said, pulling his left boot off. He’d been wearing them for so long, for a moment the mildew smell of his dirty socks covered the fishy stink of the kelp and the bodies rotting on the shore.

“Don’t complain, buddy,” he told Argos. “It’s part of my infallible plan to keep this secret. And unreachable.” He pushed a hand inside the boot and pressed his finger pads against the inner sole. A light blinked to the side of the boot. “Recognition successful,” an electronic voice said. “Initiating request.”

Hyleesh grinned. “That’s how I talk to the Orion. Through my boot. And I have to be close enough, it wouldn’t hear me back there in the city. Short-range radio waves. Primitive, I know, but safe. Had I kept the signal going throughout we wouldn’t be here to tell the story, buddy.”

Argos agreed with a soft bark. He would’ve wagged his tail if he’d still had one. Hyleesh patted him then stared eagerly at the horizon, his jaw tense. It was always a gamble. This exact moment of waiting, of nothing happening and yet about to happen, the notion that something could go wrong and he’d be stranded on a dead planet waiting for his own death.

A black wave swelled, making the horizon curve up. Half a smile tugged at Hyleesh’s lips. And then it happened. The wave burst open and the ship surged out of the sea, streams of water washing down its hull and back into the ocean. She turned her sleek, pointed bow to the shore and lowered her lateral pylons. A small impulse and she was drifting elegantly over the surface of the water.

“Ha!” Hyleesh shouted. “There she is!” He slid his left boot back on, scooped Argos into his arms, and sprang to his feet. “Argos, meet Orion,” he said as the ship glided to shore. “She can be quite stubborn at times, but she’s undoubtedly the most beautiful ship you’ll ever board.”

A flash at the horizon caught his eye, bringing him back to the urgency of the moment. As soon as the ship reached them, he prompted the bridge to lower, jumped, and activated the lift.

“Emergency take off,” Hyleesh shouted, cutting off the AI navigator’s automated greeting. He set Argos in the cot closest the cockpit, hastily promised to take care of his wounds once out in space, and then slumped in the pilot’s seat. “We have exactly eight minutes to leave Yulia’s atmosphere unharmed.” He engaged the drive and flipped it to max. “I want you to reach flank speed in sixty seconds,” he told the navigator.

“This will cause a significant use of fuel and‌—‌”

“Just do it!”

“Yes, Captain. Calculating fastest route...”

The 3D rendition of the surface of Yulia assembled itself over the dashboard. A sound blared and a red dot started flashing behind the ship’s avatar inside the hologram.

“A tracker,” Hyleesh said. A metal shell equipped with tracking software installed and designed to explode once it reached its destination. “Damn it. How fast is it moving?”

“Approaching the sound barrier,” the navigator replied.

“Then be faster!” Hyleesh snapped. He grabbed the helm and slewed the ship around. The red dot on the screen replicated the Orion’s movements almost to the inch. The navigator calculated the new route.

“Keep it second guessing our direction until we have a better plan,” he told the navigator. No chance to lose the sucker, the only way was to destroy it.

Think quickly! Trackers were not only incredibly fast, but they were able to fool self-aiming software, too. As tempting as it was to try the Orion’s sophisticated artillery, right now it was more important to use his ammunition wisely.

He pulled up a new screen, rotated the 3D image, and assessed the planet’s surface.

“About to break the sound barrier,” the navigator warned. “Requesting permission to go over four g’s.”

“Permission granted,” Hyleesh replied. Back in his cot, Argos yelped.

“I’m sorry buddy, hang in there!” Hyleesh called.

The tracker was still at their heels. He had to lose the sucker and get out of Yulia’s atmosphere before the signal reached Zika’s men.

He spotted something on the 3D screen and tapped it. The image enlarged. “What am I looking at?” he asked, the rattling of the ship under the high g’s making his voice shake.

“Haimai volcano,” the navigator replied. “Active. Last week’s Quarium bombs caused a new eruption.”

A new eruption, Hyleesh thought. Perfect.

He balled his fists around the helm and pulled, overriding the current route. “That’s where we’re going.” Hyleesh highlighted the coordinates of the volcano’s mouth and copied them into the new route.

“New route is discouraged,” the navigator protested. “Volcanoes on Yulia release high concentrations of bromine chloride, which could damage‌—‌”

“Override.”

The rattling of the cockpit got louder. The ship stopped swerving, locked the route in, and started a nosedive into the volcano’s mouth. The tracker closed the gap. It was a bet Hyleesh was willing to make. Those little machines were resilient and virtually indestructible, but they had limits, too.

The bridge windows darkened as they got covered in ashes.

“Pull out of current route in thirty seconds,” Hyleesh ordered.

“Calculating,” the navigator replied. “In twenty-eight seconds the ship will be too far deep‌—‌”

“Override.”

He swallowed hard and watched the tracker on the screen, now only a few hundred feet from the stern of the Orion.

Twenty more seconds. Eighteen. Lights started flashing on the console.

“Temperature reaching maximum tolerance,” the navigator said. The Orion screeched deep from its engine. “Temperature over maximum tolerance.”

Ten seconds. Hyleesh patted the console. You can do this, baby. I know you can.

Five.

Four.

The rattling got louder. Then the ship swerved back up, the g’s greying Hyleesh’s vision. He fought to keep his eyes open, his knuckles white at the controls. The pixels in the 3D screen flickered and for a moment he lost the connection. His eyes strayed back to the bridge windows, tears of condensation etching through the layer of soot.

Then the image came back, the ship’s avatar fast shooting out of the volcano’s mouth.

“Where’s the tracker?” Hyleesh mumbled. He tried to draw a deep breath, his lungs squashed by the pounding g’s. He couldn’t hear Argos anymore‌—‌the dog would’ve likely passed out by now.

“Tracker not found,” the navigator replied. “Metal residues detected around the volcano’s mouth.”

Hyleesh exhaled a sigh of relief and grinned. “Excellent. There’s your tracker. Too dumb to change its course in time.” He slowed the acceleration by two g’s.

“Hey buddy, how you doing?” he called to Argos. Five more minutes and he’d be able to unstrap from his seat and attend to the poor lad.

“Reroute to outer space,” he ordered.

“Request denied.”

“What? Why?”

“Not enough fuel to break Yulia’s gravitational field.”

Hyleesh set the ship back into cruise and slumped in his seat. He could always land and search for fuel on Yulia. With all the stranded ships he’d seen around Sunan’s spaceport he was sure to find one with a still intact tank. But that would take‌—‌how much longer? Two hours if he acted quickly. Plenty of time for Zika’s troops to find him.

“New alert detected,” the navigator chimed in, interrupting his train of thought.

“What now?”

He saw it on the screen before the computer replied. He tapped open a new window and selected the Orion’s tail view.

Forget two hours. They were here now, already visible on the horizon.

Tinted in orange by the setting sun, a row of five shiny objects glimmered above the clouds.

Stingrays.

Five fast approaching Stingrays and not enough fuel to break out of Yulia’s grav field.

“Damn it.” Hyleesh rapped his fingers on the console and considered his options. A tracker was a piece of cake compared to a fleet of five Stingrays.

“What do you say, Argos?” he called. “Any tricks up your sleeve against Stingrays?”

Dogs don’t have sleeves.

The console bleeped. “Incoming message. Source: YX3RTZ.”

Hyleesh recognized the code. “Play message,” he said.

Zika’s voice came into the cockpit loud and clear. “Why, hello, Captain Weber.” A chuckle. “My men kept saying you were dead. But I knew better. I recognize talent when I see it. Too bad it’s all wasted on you. Sooner or later the rabbit has to come out of his hole. So, what do you say? Shall we settle this argument civilly? The Kraal reassures me it’s your last chance.”

The Kraal, the Royal Commander in Chief. The word must’ve reached Hyleesh’s father too at this point. He wondered what he was thinking, betrayed by his own son.

No. He betrayed me. No turning back now.

It was the last resort. But he had no other choice.

He pressed a button.

“Recording message,” the computer said.

Hyleesh leaned into the mic. “Charming to hear your voice, General Zika,” he said. “Always puts me in a good mood. Would love to have more time to chat with such a refined being as you are, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand half the things I’d have to say. Like, why there cannot be any Quarium on a planet like Yulia. But by now I’m sure you’ve seen the evidence yourself. Too bad, isn’t it? Because you see, you just wasted thirty thousand tons of Quarium to destroy a planet that, alas, has none. And now you’re going to have to wait another twelve months before you can make enough pulse propulsion bombs to destroy your next target. That’s sort of ironic, isn’t it? Well, let me help you out and send some your way.”

Hyleesh released the recording button. “Send now.”

He gripped the impulse lever and then tapped the weapon console.

“How much recoil do we need to exit the grav field?” he asked.

“Calculating. At our current altitude of sixty thousand feet, the Orion would need an escape velocity of seventy thousand miles per second.”

Hyleesh smiled. “That’s plenty. Reroute to outer space.” He pulled the impulse lever and tapped on his screen. A whir echoed from the back of the ship.

“We are currently en route,” the navigator chimed in. “Are you sure you want to open the cargo bay?”

He sent a last look at the images streaming from the tail view. “Positive.”

By now Zika would’ve received his response. The Stingrays were closer, their unmistakable silhouettes framed by a blood red sun.

“Here we go, baby,” he said, confirming the last order. “With love from your favorite captain.”

The cargo bay door opened. He watched it from the indoor camera, then switched back to the tail view. The missile dropped and then, as soon as its propeller fired, picked up speed and aimed toward the Stingrays.

Hyleesh watched. “Damn, it doesn’t have a tracker,” he realized. And then a smile surfaced his lips. It don’t need no tracker.

Sure enough, as soon as the Stingrays saw the incoming object, a row of artillery barrels flipped up along their wide-span wings.

Hyleesh’s smile evaporated. “Shit.”

He pulled the impulse lever all the way down. He wanted them to fire, he just didn’t want to be near by when they did.

“Not enough fuel to‌—‌”

“Override!” he yelled, then slumped back and let the acceleration wave do the rest.

The explosion came seconds later.

They shot it, he barely had time to think before the cloud of energy engulfed the ship. The digits on the accelerometer spiked to eight, then ten g’s, and after that he barely had the strength to mumble, “Keep. Trajectory.” Before everything went black.

A yelp. Then another one. He opened his eyes. The cockpit was bathed in a dim, milky light. Everything was quiet. Except for the yelp.

“Damn!”

He flipped the lights on and checked his coordinates. The 3D screen reassembled above the dashboard. Yulia was but a small dot in a sea of stars.

Outer space. We made it.

Another yelp, quieter this time.

He unbuckled and sprang to his feet.

“Argos!” he called. “I’m coming, my friend!”

The dog was barely moving. Weak, and even thinner than he remembered, but still alive. Hyleesh unlatched the first aid cabinet, grabbed a handful of energy bars and walked back to the cot. He unwrapped the bars and had to feed the first one into Argos’s mouth before the pup recognized them as edible. But once he did, the rest were gone within seconds.

Hyleesh stroked the dog’s auburn coat. “We made it, buddy. Wanna know how? The Yaxees had enough Quarium to make twenty propulsion bombs per year. And they’d just used them all on Yulia.”

All but one.

The one he’d stolen before leaving for Sarai. He’d hoped to get more, enough to limit the damage to the planet, but things hadn’t turned out as planned.

Good thing he had the one, though, securely stored in Orion’s cargo bay, or he would have never gotten away from the Stingrays. His only fear was that the bomb would fly past the Stingrays and fail to detonate until impacted the ground, but the Stingrays had risen to the bait. They shot the missile carrying the bomb, thus triggering the fusion explosion that signed their own death sentence and bestowed enough recoil to propel the Orion back into outer space.

Now he was the most wanted man in the galaxy, with a handsome reward on his head and no troops to command. But he had the ship of his dreams and a companion to travel with. Hyleesh opened the first aid box, tore a pair of latex gloves out of their sterile package and smiled to himself.

He no longer was Captain Weber.

From now on, he was just Hyleesh.

The luckiest man in the galaxy.

Q&A with E.E. Giorgi

E.E. Giorgi is a scientist, a writer, and a photographer. She spends her days analyzing genetic data, her evenings chasing sunsets, and her nights pretending she’s somebody else.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in the U.K. but grew up in Tuscany, Italy. As the daughter of a biologist, the highlights of my childhood were collecting toads after the rain, growing newts and tadpoles in the old bathtub outside, and traveling abroad every summer.

Did you study biology in college?

No. I ended up studying math because it was beautiful and perfect. Except one day I realized that “beautiful and perfect” does not apply to real life problems, so now I still do math but I apply it to biology. Which is the coolest thing, because I get to do biology on a computer instead of in a wet lab.

Do you still live in Tuscany?

No. After I graduated from college, I moved every other year for ten years (twice across continents) before settling in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. It’s the most beautiful place on Earth. After Tuscany, of course.

What inspired The Quarium Wars?

The inspiration for this short story came while I was writing the first book in a new space opera series. The character of Hyleesh came to me halfway through the story when I realized I needed some backstory for Argos, his companion dog. This also gave me the opportunity to explain some of the political background behind the quest for Quarium, which is a basic element in the series. I’m planning to release the first book, Anarchy, in the fall. Join my newsletter if you would like to be notified the day of the book release, and you will receive a free story as a thank you: http://eegiorgi.thirdscribe.com/newsletter/

What other books have you written?

My genres are mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi, and YA dystopian. You can find all my books here: http://eegiorgi.thirdscribe.com/my-books/