Chapter Two

Reven:

Fans whirled as the shuttle vented the acrid smoke billowing from the damaged drive, pumping fresh air into the cabin.

Earth.

It had to be. No other place had air with quite that scent. The nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide mix that comprised the atmosphere went to his head. Actually, he always suspected the argon affected him so.

He breathed in, deeply. Real air, not the canister oxygen from the ship or the recycled air generated at the Shackleton Crater Lunar Base. Real air, which meant he had a serious problem.

He was going to be late for Mara’s birthday party.

Reven forced his eyes open.

There was no way real air could breach his shuttle, short of a gash in the hull. At best, it meant he faced some difficult work. At worst, he was stuck.

At least he could enjoy the fresh air.

“Computer, where are we?” Raw and dry, his throat burned with the effort to speak. Water. Then a scan to make sure the teleporter reassembled all his bits-and-bobs in the correct order. He was rather fond of his bits-and-bobs.

“Error. Unable to connect to satellite,” the computer responded.

Great. Communications had been damaged, rendering the shuttle blind and mute as well as grounded.

Reven unstrapped himself and found the first problem. A piece of shrapnel pierced through his armor and bit into his shoulder. With teeth clenched, he grabbed the jagged metal and pulled it out. Blood gushed but not alarmingly so. Mahdfel healed quick. Even if he did more damage removing the metal, he had enough strength to stagger to the examination table; that was one of the benefits of using a medical shuttle, after all.

Carefully, he rose to his feet, his knees and back aching in protest. He clutched the back of the seat as a wave of dizziness swept over him, followed by nausea. Teleporting sucked. He stumbled to the cabinets, searching for a med kit. If he could get something to settle his stomach, he might not disgrace his armor. The bleeding from the shoulder wound had already slowed.

He tore into a pack and swallowed the anti-nausea pill dry. Ginger or mint candies also worked, but he found the pill first.

As the shuttle ran a diagnostic, he chugged a sphere of water. Everything hurt, more than a normal teleport. Hauling himself onto the examination bed, he scanned himself, searching for anomalies. The drive had been damaged, after all. His heart could be in the wrong place or put in backward.

He stared at the soot-covered ceiling of the shuttle, fighting the impulse to turn his head to glare at the damaged drive and, instead, tried to hold still as the device did its thing. Rather than fidget, he compiled a list in his head, falling back to his favorite acronym. Assess, plan, enact: APE.

Michael always laughed at that. When Reven asked for an explanation, Michael responded with a frustratingly vague, “Monkey see, monkey do.”

Terrans. If Michael wasn’t his oldest friend, Reven might have punched him in the face. Still might, actually, when he got back to the lunar base. Not in front of Mara, though. Three years old, the young female might not understand why “Uncle Reven” would be upset with her father or that, occasionally, males expressed comradery and loyalty with the exchange of blows. It was a complex and rich relationship.

The device chimed with the examination’s results. The damaged drive had assembled him correctly and the shrapnel damaged nothing vital. The wound had already closed on its own. Breathing a sigh of relief, he went back to the control panel at the front of the shuttle.

Assess.

He needed information and fast. First, damage report. Second, his current location. Third, determine if he had a hope of salvaging the teleport drive. Fourth, how quickly he could return to the Mahdfel base on Earth’s moon, which depended on the damage report.

The shuttle’s computer completed the scan almost instantly. The hull had been breached, which Reven already knew. Sizable gashes, too, that needed to be repaired before the shuttle would be ready to leave the atmosphere. The list grew, scrolling quickly down the screen. About the only thing not damaged was the communication systems. Reven ignored the minor issues related to the shuttle’s age and focused on the big problems. The communications worked but couldn’t connect to the satellite, which meant either the shuttle’s computer had malfunctioned, or the Suhlik took out the Mahdfel communication arrays.

He wouldn’t put it past the lizards. Striking fast to cripple the flow of information was exactly their style.

Fans continued to pump out smoke. He should probably do something about that. Using a powder extinguisher, he snuffed out a small fire in the engine compartment. Visually, he determined the damage to be minimal but removed the paneling to get better access. He brought out his own toolset, not trusting the aging shuttle to have the necessary equipment for repairs.

A quick diagnostic confirmed that the engine remained operational. Barely. A few couplings needed to be cleaned before the shuttle could take to the air again, but he knew a little fire wouldn’t keep the shuttle out of the sky. Mahdfel over-engineered their equipment. The shuttle’s engine wouldn’t haul him across the star system, but it could get him to the moon.

Well, once he did something about the hull breach.

The teleport drive, however, did not fare as well as the engine. Completely dead, the last—and only—trip it made overloaded the circuits.

Interesting. He’d have to take it apart to get a better idea about what went wrong. An energy surge might have done the trick, or something as simple as it overheated could have easily done it in.

Assessment: stranded on a planet with a breathable atmosphere, which was probably Earth, in a shuttle that was more holes than ship, with a dead prototype teleport drive, unable to send a distress signal, and most likely in the midst of an ongoing Suhlik attack.

Lost and alone, basically.

Reven sank down to the floor, his tools spread around him. The air in the cabin grew colder, reminding him of the many camping trips he took with his father to the arctic regions of his home planet. His father was from Alva, a planet locked in the grip of an ice age, and built for frigid temperatures. Reven didn’t particularly care for the snow and ice, but he delighted in his family’s company.

They didn’t agree on much. His mother always said their personalities were too much alike. Despite the Mahdfel reputation for crushing problems with brute force, a fair number of the warriors were also medics, scientists, and engineers. Someone had to design the weapons and build ships, after all. Brute force could only take a male so far.

Reven, like his father, attacked problems first in his mind, then with his fists. However, Reven felt his father took too long to reach conclusions and even longer to act. A young male’s impatience, Rahm would scold, before launching into a long, meandering story meant to illustrate some virtue. He suspected his father enjoyed the sound of his voice and had lost the patience for sitting still for the older male’s lectures.

Physically, they varied wildly. Born of an Alva mother, Rahm had shaggy white fur on his head and shoulders. Reven took after his Sangrin mother, with a dark plum complexion and curling horns on his brows.

Despite their differences, they worked well together on their camping excursions. Rahm taught Reven survival skills and the males were too busy with the basics to have time for lectures.

He’d sit next to the fire while Rahm spun stories about his own childhood on a faraway planet or his own victories in battle. As they were entertainment and not meant to teach a lesson, young Reven had the patience to still and listen. Michael sometimes attended these trips, both young males enraptured by Rahm’s stories.

Sleeping underneath the stars, Rahm once had a sudden philosophical fit and advised Reven to look up and find his place in the universe.

At the time, he believed it was meant to remind him he was small, just one warrior who comprised the larger whole. His wants were as insignificant as his place in the universe. He was Mahdfel. He was born with a single purpose: to fight Suhlik, as had his father and his father before him. His sons would share the same fate. He would go where his Warlord commanded, and he would surrender his life to protect his mate and sons.

Reven rubbed his chest. He didn’t even have a mate or children, and he still felt the pull to protect them at all cost. That was the legacy of the Suhlik and their genetic engineering. The Mahdfel had broken free long ago from their former masters and spanned star systems, but they still remained bound in so many ways.

Engineered to sire only male offspring, the Suhlik gave their Mahdfel slaves an overwhelming desire to claim a mate and protect them at all costs. Subservient, obedient warriors were rewarded with mates. If they displeased their Suhlik masters, the females suffered the consequences.

Warriors who spoke about rebelling would find their mate and sons eradicated. Access to their mates had been strictly controlled and their safety used as leverage.

Reven could not imagine the pain. Even now, generations free, the Suhlik still targeted females and children as a warrior’s most vulnerable point.

They weren’t wrong. Reven had no mate waiting for him back at the lunar base, and still, he worried about being so far from home. Other warriors’ families lived there—Michael, his mate Shauna, and Mara lived there—and the community relied on every warrior to protect them.

Some days, he thought it would be better to not take a mate. His parents had been matched using a genetic test to maximize compatibility. Biologically, they were ideal. In every other sense, they were discordant. Their personalities clashed. The calm, patience of his father took on a stodgy, inflexible spirit when confronted with his mother’s carefree heart. Rahm left often for special missions and his mother never complained. They tolerated each other.

Reven never wanted that for himself, to have no love or shared affection with his mate. One day a genetic test would match him with a biologically perfect female but they could have little else in common. They could detest the sight of each other. To make it worse, Reven would still be devoted to the female. Instinct, the same instinct the Suhlik bred into all Mahdfel, would compel him to care and protect the female, even if they loathed one another.

They would be stuck together, like his parents.

He burned with a need to find his true mate before the genetic testing matched him with an inadequate female. He longed to share the joy and satisfaction of building a family together, with love, but the constant agony and worry of what-ifs and various scenarios troubled him. If he could not shut his brain off now, how bad would it be if he did have a female to protect and love?

On days when he worried about everything beyond his control, he ran his body to exhaustion. Only then could he sleep. He was like his father in that regard. He thought best when he moved, and often, he could not stop thinking. Rahm paced. Floorboards in their home creaked at all hours of the night as his father made endless patrols. Rahm would never admit that worry kept him up, but Reven suspected that the same concerns kept their feet moving until their minds worked through the problem.

Reven picked up a wrench and twirled it in one hand. His father was as philosophical as the wrench in his hand and would laugh at Reven’s musing about his place in the universe.

Reven could have slapped himself in the forehead with the wrench. He was an idiot. His father wasn’t being philosophical all those years ago. He had been literal.

Ancient navigators used the stars to sail across the oceans. His father’s words could have been literal advice, but he was too caught up in himself to realize.

He rushed to the console. The ship’s computer systems worked fine. He ran a program to compare the night sky with astro-navigations charts, starting with Earth.

If the drive worked as intended, he wasn’t far off his target. He’d walk to the nearest settlement—house, town, fueling station—and contact the nearest military base. Earth’s military had an alliance with the Mahdfel for several decades now. They would provide the materials he needed to get the shuttle back to the moon base. He couldn’t leave the drive behind, despite the damage. He and the other engineers would need to inspect it, to figure out how to protect it better. Components that failed at the first sign of battle were useless.

The computer finished. Yes, he was on Earth.

Excellent. He requested the computer calculate how much time had passed since he engaged the teleport drive. It was probably only minutes but felt longer. Weirder.

The computer worked slowly.

Reven frowned. It was taking much longer than normal. While the computer worked, he grabbed a flashlight and visually inspected the external damage.

Cold, brisk air slapped him in the face. His boots crunched on frozen grass. His flex armor would keep him warm, but his exposed skin felt the cold. He slipped on his gloves. He’d have to take them off when he started the repairs, but at the moment, he did not require fine motor control.

The damage was as extensive as he feared. Gashes large enough he could stick his fist through them decorated the shuttle like confetti. The shield generator at the back of the shuttle had suffered a direct hit. The parts had melted and fused together in a mass of useless slag. The shuttle took the most damage where the front and back shield overlapped. Under normal circumstances, the slight seam in the shield was inconsequential. They had been far from normal and small holes perforated the outer hull.

His stomach sank as he realized that on the other side of that inconsequential seam sat his prototype. Another strong blast at the vulnerable point would have destroyed the teleport drive and possibly blown up the shuttle.

Note to self: put the next prototype in a different location.

Preferably one not under a vulnerable point.

He could mend the smaller tears. Constructed of a material that wanted to knit together, he should be able to apply enough heat from his torch to convince the old shuttle to seal. That required more time than skill, but he wasn’t going anywhere soon.

The larger holes would take more creativity.

He’d definitely be late for Mara’s birthday party. The little female would have to forgive him. Sugar and a brightly wrapped gift should do the trick.

He initiated the camouflage for the shuttle. Using tiny mirror particles to reflect light, the camouflage created a crude but effective cloak. The technology wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but it rendered the shuttle invisible from a distance. Until he knew what was happening with the Suhlik attack, he would keep his head down and work on shuttle repairs.

He’d have to turn the camouflage off to repair the hull but one problem at a time. Normally he’d limp the shuttle under some trees for cover. He needed cover.

The moon provided enough light, with his enhanced night vision, for him to survey the empty landscape. No lights dotted the horizon or glowed in the distance. Where he was, it was open and empty. A few scrawny trees skirted the edges of a water source but provided no cover. Nowhere to hide his ship. He needs a structure, then. Perhaps in the morning, he could locate an abandoned structure or someplace suitable.

Reven went back inside, eyeballing what he could use. The interior paneling could be cannibalized to make a sloppy patch. The panels wouldn’t hold up to leaving the atmosphere, but the flooring might. He’d need to tear up the flooring and take a look to see what he could use. The end result wouldn’t be pretty, or spaceworthy, but it might hold together long enough to reach the lunar base. He might not be the best pilot—case in point, his current predicament—but even he could figure out how to go to the moon.

Speaking of, the moon had moved past its zenith. An hour or two had passed, and he barely noticed.

He frowned. The computer was taking way too long for a simple calculation. The system must have been damaged, which meant he could trust nothing it told him. A simple reboot might work but doing so risked losing all his data and the system dying for good.

He’d call that the last resort.

“Computer, how much time has elapsed since the teleport drive was initiated?” he asked.

“Error. Cannot calculate a negative value.”

He rubbed at the base of his horns, thinking. Sometimes it wasn’t that the information was unknown; it was that he asked the wrong question.

“Computer, are we on Earth?”

“Confirmed.” The computer then rattled off the latitude and longitude, based off the star chart. Earth. Somewhere in the northern hemisphere.

Okay, that was something.

He took the blow torch and started on the smaller tears, working through the night.