The Starchasers and the Sanctum of Ktheron

The gas giant Tasiliset VII should have loomed in the sky of its sixth moon, but the air was thick with yellow dust and ash, shrouding them in twilight. The Bronco bucked at an errant gust from the roiling, whirling storm, and Captain Goose tightened his grip on the bridge console. The indicators that read “engine” flashed red for a moment before returning to their dead gray. He decided to count that as a victory, nothing else about this landing was going right.

“Just a bit more,” Kulirik ordered the bridge. “We're close, I can feel it.”

The leopard-patterned Srassen shot Goose an apologetic look. Among the crew’s many issues with the Star Sage was the way he seemed to think he was in charge. He certainly lived up to the snooty reputation the scholars from Astrent had earned. His long ears drooped where they poked out from his long straight orange hair. Goose was always surprised the Srassen was only as tall as his nose. Probably a psionic trick.

On the starboard side of the bridge, a spindly, six-limbed Sudaorn buzzed along with her flashing green light on a mosaiced wall of screens. They’d had to remove the crew chair there to fit her large insectoid carapace, but it was more than worth it. There wasn’t a computer system in Constellara she couldn’t hack, including the Bronco’s. Goose had first brought Sarah on because ol’ Grandpa Starchaser forgot to write down his ship’s password.

“He’z right, captian!” Sarah said, pressing her mandibles together in a facsimile of lips. “The singal iz faint, but I’m definitely getting readingz. There's a pathway on this moon.”

After six month’s chasing “psionic sensations” there had better be. They’d had to defer too much maintenance at Kulirik’s insistence he’d only pay them once they found the phantom gateway between worlds. Goose’s list of problems was growing long. First there was the engine panel, then the fuel injector, then the aft cargo airlock, then the stuck vent in Gill’s bunk, then- he was getting ahead of himself.

“Your reliance on your sensors and not your senses is why your crew of path hunters have yet to find this path,” Kulirik said beside Goose. He had that same annoyed voice he used in their heads, as if the presence of their thoughts were a constant interruption of his important sitting around.

“Remember when we talked about inside thoughts?” Goose snapped at the sage.

Kulirik gave him an affronted look. “It is rude to project my thoughts into others’ heads. That’s why I spoke aloud.”

A gust of wind slammed into the windshield of the bridge bringing with it a cloud of dust and debris. The Bronco’s engines strained and slipped again. Silence came upon them first. Then the darkness as all but the core systems panels winked out.

Goose, the bridge, and everything else on the ship rocked back and to the right. Chitin screeched against the metal floor as Sarah slid several feet before her straps went tense. The rest of the crew hadn’t shared the same foresight, and from the front of the bridge there was a sharp yowl and a hard slam and the ship’s weapons officer, Ma’as was thrown from the gunner seat. Pain spiked through Goose’s forehead.

“Come on!” he shouted. His voice sounded distant in his own ears, but that was a later problem. Goose slammed his open hand into the side of the console of Grandpa’s old ship. Grandpa was a firm believer in percussive maintenance. “Don’t you die on me.”

The Bronco shivered as the engines spun back to life. He knew Gill would be hitting a few things of his own down in the engine room.

Goose let out a breath he had been holding. He felt a small trickle of blood from where his forehead had smacked into his command console. With his left thumb, he pressed down the red switch that activated the whole ship comm. “Everybody strap in,” he said, his voice thin and distant in his ears. He saw the lights from engineering blaze blue, a waiting message, but ignored it.

“Captain, you’re bleeding,” Kulirik said, standing there calmly rather than strapping himself into the comms chair on the port side of the bridge opposite Sarah, not a single hair out of place on his pointy-eared head. “Doctor Quays should see to that at once.”

“Later”, he snapped like the belts to the well-worn captain’s chair he was strapping himself into. The Bronco’s bovine medical officer would just throw some gauze at him and tell him to get out while he tamed the sudden disorder caused by the forced reorientation before knocking himself out. Goose added yet another item to his mental checklist; maglocks for medbay stowage.

“What’s the heading?” he ordered, grabbing the ship's manual controls. With storms like this he didn’t trust the autopilot. There was something to what Kulirik had said about using your senses.

The Bronco lagged. It was maybe a millisecond or two, but he felt the delay as he engaged the port thrusters to right the ship.

It was Sarah, not the telepathic Srassen, who responded first, despite her systems still rebooting. “Three hundred degreez, captain, fifty kilometers.”

Every gale and every jolt of the ship was mirrored in his hands, beating them to a pulp. Maybe he would need that trip down to Quays after all.

“Ma’as?” Goose called. “You okay down there?”

“Do I have to be?” Ma’as warbled back, his voice echoing off the clear curved plexi of the windshield at the Bronco’s nose. His gunner seat was lower than the rest of the bridge, near the “top” of its egg shape and barely visible from the captain’s chair. “If it’s all the same, I’d like to nap it off.”

To his right, proximity sensors began to flash bright warning signs. Goose pulled a hard left, banking the Bronco way from a skyscraper that had emerged from the dust storm. Ma’as yowled as he was tossed to the other side of nose.

“Dammit Goose, learn to fly!”

Kulirik, who was still visibly unaffected by the chaos around him, disappeared. If Goose’s ear’s hadn’t already been ringing, he knew from first hand experience they would have been now. Damn Star Sage.

“You will take fewer injuries if you harness your- What are you doing?” the Srassen’s voice echoed from the Bronco’s gunner pit. Outside, they soared past the tower’s skeletal metal frame, its specific origin difficult to place. Nearly every species throughout the Constellara cluster converged upon the same basic design for a skyscraper.

“Get the fuck away from me!” the felid Meseag weapons officer screeched. Ma’as had taken an instant dislike to the Star Sage when they’d picked him up. Ever since the failed heist on Ginvaris that sent him and Sarah fleeing the Octarchy, he’d believed the only good psionic was a dead one. “DIE!”

There was sputtering and yowling and a smacking sound of someone landing a hit. A mess of disheveled carrot hair appeared beside Goose, eyes wide and with a cut bleeding too-red blood down his leopard-spotted cheek. Kulirik spun looking behind him for a follow up attack, but only cackles came from the gunner’s seat.

“Come near me again I’ll get me one of those ears!” Ma’as shouted up from the gunner seat.

“You read minds,” Goose said, shaking his head, grin genuine. “You know he hates you, right?”

Kulirik only glowered.

Passing the first tower, he had prepared himself for gusts of wind through the canyons of an ancient abandoned metropolis. But despite the dust clouding the sensors, there were hardly any buildings at all, merely the occasional high-rise tower growing up from the dirt every mile or so. He wondered if the storm had blown away all the smaller structures, or if this is all these ancient’s had managed to build.

A spotlight flared to life in one of the buildings as they passed, looking out a floor somewhere in the mid-thirties to bathe the ship in a stark white light. A silhouette moved behind the light, too large to be human and too square to be any of the bigger pathfaring aliens.

“Stay sharp,” Goose ordered. It was probably just a household service robot operating in deep power saving mode, knowing it was unlikely to ever see a charge again. “We might not be alone.”

The light watched them go, reaching out after them in the storm long after they’d lost sight of the building. He heard the clicks of Ma’as strapping himself in, likely excited at the prospect of something to shoot.

They should have been getting now, Goose’s instincts said, but there had been no towers for the last few miles. Instead, it looked like they had flown past the settlement entirely.

“Kul-” Goose was interrupted as a beacon lit up the storm in front of them in a clean, white light. In an instant, they were spot lit from several small installations digging themselves from beneath the yellow dirt below. “Sarah?”

“Long range sensorz aren’t giving me anything,” she tapped furiously at her several keyboards, eyes zipping between screens. “No attemptz to hail.”

“Nothing to shoot neither,” called Ma’as.

The spotlights tracked the Bronco as Goose throttled them forward. More lights came on just as they passed out of the range of the furthest set.

“It is here,” Kulirik said quietly. He'd fixed his hair and somehow healed the cut on his cheek, looking no worse for wear as he stood marveling out the front view of the Bronco's bridge. “The Way to the Sanctum....”

“I’m getting antimatter readingz all over the place,” Sarah put in. “It’s lucky we came when we did.”

Antimatter. Residual signs of an operational Pathway, a gateway to another world or star system left behind by the Ancients. It was one of the only detectable traces of Ancient tech. He suspected they could never have found this place were the portal not active, or nearly so.

“Captain?” came Ma’as voice, hesitant. “I see motion.”

Goose squinted out the viewport, and sure enough he saw several of the spotlights drawing closer, flying up to intercept them.

“Weapons ready,” he commanded, “but hold fire. We don’t-”

Sarah erupted in swears as her sensors began to flash a warning red, then the bridge’s own proximity sensors went wild as well. Something almost as large as the Bronco had gotten underneath them and was coming up to their altitude fast.

It was hard to see at first swirling, shifting dust storm outside, but the approaching craft looked like a battered and rusted metal cube with two large arms breaking free from its body. As it rose into view of the bridge, everyone but the Star Sage let out a groan to see the two thin vertical lines above upturned crescent in green light on the craft’s front.

Evolution is not creative. Time and time again, planet after planet in the cluster, the same body plans emerge. For example, mosquitos, or something like them, exist on nearly every world where creatures have blood to suck. Another is the facial plan of two banks of eyes and a mouth beneath. Or that nearly every species in the known galaxy uses a nearly identical symbol to mean “Hi I’m friendly!”

“Should I shoot it?” Ma’as called from the gunner seat.

The drone raised one of its arms, its “hand” held up to them, five fingers on top with two thumbs resting on its palm. He didn’t recognize any species with a hand-plan like that. It began to pulse, and a moment later they could all hear the clear vibrations of the drone’s attempt at audio communication.

“...UP KALA BREAAN KRAE CERE KRU,” the drone bellowed over the roaring winds when Sarah flipped the bridge’s audio over to “local proximity”. “ZEBFLIBORAN RASALUP KALA BREAAN KRAE CERE KRU.”

“What do we do?” Goose asked Kulirik sideways, afraid to take his eyes off the flying construct. “Is it, you know, Ancient?”

They both knew he wasn’t asking about its age. Nobody knew who the people who built the Stellar Pathways had been or what they’d looked like, so most just called them The Ancients.

Kulirik wiggled his ears then shook his head, the Srassen, then the human gestures for no. He motioned to the drone. “No work of the Ancient’s uses such mundane propulsion.”

Nothing about the blue and purple licks of plasma jetting from the craft’s thrusters seemed odd to Goose, but he supposed that was the Star Sage’s point.

“Push on,” Kulirik’s voice was tense, insistent.

Before he could engage the thrusters, the drone flashed again. Goose reached for the button to call down to engineering.

“ZAP”

“OH NOW YOU ANSWER!” Gill howled. “I’ve been wondering what the fuck has been going on for the past fifteen minutes! I’d march up there myself except...”

They could all hear the repeated whacking of metal on metal.

“Damn thing is falling apart. I’m literally keeping us afloat by sheer force of will down here.”

“Captain, I urge you to push on,” Kulirik said.

“ZORP”

“I know Gill,” Goose said over the comm. “Sorry. This storm is nasty and now we’ve run into some company.”

“Captain?” Ma’as called. “I hate to agree with the tourist, but we should probably put some distance between ourselves and Smiley here.”

“Company?” Gill commed back. “No no no. Goose, we're not ready for company.”

“ZAAM”

The other lights were drawing close, tens of flying blocks suspended by blue-violet plasma thrusters. Before them, the drone’s smiling face was steadily drooping to a more neutral expression.

“Gooz!” Sarah trilled.

“No hospitality left?” he asked. “Can you give me something?”

The comm was silent for a long moment.

“Gill?” he asked.

“ZONG”

The comm fuzzing on was the most glorious sound he had ever heard.

“You’re so lucky you have me Goose.”

He wondered what Grandpa would think about what he planned to do to the old ship. But then again, the old man hadn’t earned the name ‘Starchaser’ running away every time something kept him from a Path.

“Sorry,” Goose said, closing the comm and punching the Bronco’s throttle.

It felt like trying to fly the ship through water, their acceleration sluggish and floating. Until it wasn’t. All at once, the Bronco’s engines surged, lurching them forward and past the now frowning drone.

“MALBR KAL WAA POLBARE!” it bellowed after them. Sarah, thankfully, cut the feed from the proximity sensors before he needed to tell her. It was hard to turn his head with the acceleration holding him firmly into his seat, but he could see the drone’s spotlights shining on the storm. And through it all Kulirik looked as though he were bored even as the bridge rattled around him. Sparks flew from the comms station, panels burst from their hinges in the bridge’s ceiling letting cables and conduits hang, and Kulirik could have been in a lift on his way home after work.

The stationary lights, however, began to cross their path, at first high above them like a vault of light. Each pair crossed lower and lower, a steepled roof of light leading them toward the ground. The Bronco zipped past them in a blur, a swarm of abandoned drones chasing behind.

The clouds turned a deep fiery orange behind them, then flashed. The Bronco tilted to port and something snapped. The controls in Goose’s hands went limp.

“Fuck.”

With the guidance system disengaged and the controls broken, the Bronco was little better than a metal firework, its trajectory at the mercy of the shape of the air. They began to tilt downwards. First he lifted from his seat, then he slammed back into it. Releasing the useless controls, Goose knew there had to be something he could do. He fumbled at the harness holding him to his seat. If he could get down to one of the service halls, maybe he could manually engage one of the stabilizers and keep the ship from crashing into the planet’s dusty yellow surface.

He froze as the entire bridge bent inward on itself, distorting like pinched film. For a moment he floated, the chaotic bridge of his grandfather’s ship was somewhere else, crashing into the surface of an alien moon was happening to someone else. Warmth washed over him, then the pins and needles of a waking limb as he was shoved back into his seat. Familiar pains for anyone who traveled the Pathways.

The storm and its dust were gone. Outside the spiraling view of the Bronco, Goose saw blue skies then green trees then blue skies again as they toppled end over end.

“Brace yourselves!” He shouted over the comm. The shifting canopy of the forest was rising up to meet them, and Goose could only hope they crashed onto their bottom side first. If they went bridge first they were dead. Engine first and Gill was dead instead.

Upright it is.

There came a sound like the pealing of a Kulirik-sized bell deep and pure. The sound of it overtook the rest of the noise and chaos and klaxons of the bridge to bore into his skull. They all turned to see the Srassen standing with his arm outstretched, his bright orange hair blown back by some extra dimensional wind. The air itself burned violet-blue near his skin.

Their motion changed, as if the Bronco had been snatched from the brand new sky by a giant’s hand. They were carried, spun around, and set down in place where the trees cleared to make room for a cluster of old, stone buildings. A tear in the fabric of space and time hung in the sky above the complex, a furious storm of yellow dust raging on the other side.

Kulirik still stood in that pose, though his hair had finally fallen back to its normal sheet down his back. “Behold the Sanctum of Ktheron,” he announced to the bridge, sweeping his arms out before him, wisps of violet-blue trailing his skin. Then, like a switch had been flipped, the light winked out and the Srassen collapsed to the floor.

⟢⟡⟣

“OH SWEET HOLY DIRT YOU BASTARD!” Goose screamed as the six inch needle pieced his spine. Every nerve ending was consumed in fire. All that was left of him on the examination table of the Bronco’s medical bay was a numb husk, naked to his briefs, for the half-ton bespectacled bovine Doctor Quays to prod at. Or at least that was how it felt.

The Doc themselves was hardly any worse for wear despite knocking himself unconscious with a finely-tuned cocktail of chemicals during their flight through the atmosphere of Tasiliset VIIε. The same dose would have killed the rest of the crew twice. Fortunately, Quisquan Quays was a consummate professional and had the proper dosage of adrenaline and other drugs to rouse him safely secured, along with himself, to the medbay wall. Goose had come to appreciate that level of practicality from the only surgeon he’d ever met with a bounty on his head.

The bovine Lioshi’s eyes flicked across the scrolling feed on his datapad with an occasional “hmm” while sipping at a steaming too-small mug of coffee. Several spindly robotic limbs rose out of the bed and began stitching and wrapping Goose’s cuts.

After a moment Doctor Quays finally addressed his patient. “No breaks, no hemorrhaging, only a few lacerations and a minor fracture of your wrist. The ship crashed and the whole crew sustained only minor injuries.” Another long sip from the tiny mug. “We should probably thank our guest, when they wake.”

Goose grunted in agreement, unable to move his jaw after the liberal application of numbing agent. He could only barely see the unconscious Srassen where he lay on the medbay’s second table. The Bronco might be a wreck that never flies again on the surface of an uncharted planet, but at least they were alive thanks to the Star Sage. Not that they’d be a wreck if the Star Sage hadn’t been withholding payment.

There was a soft hiss as the medbay’s gray metal door slid open for Gill, who entered in all his tanned, muscled, and grease-smeared glory, his shirt likely used to jury rig a pipe joint in the engine room or something. Gill was always doing things like that to keep the Bronco going.

“He lucid?” the engineer asked.

Doctor Quay finished his coffee with a large sip and lumbered across the room. It was a bit like seeing a human man in a kindergarten, the bovine Lioshi nearly too large for his surroundings, yet the doctor managed to even dodge the low hanging lights with his horns with nimble dignity.

“He is,” the Doctor said, filling his mug with more coffee from a waiting carafe. Coffee was part of his post-coma regimine. “Though he should be numbed for a few more minutes while his bones are resetting.”

“Thanks Doc,” Gill said with a nod. “Good news and bad news. Which do you want first? One grunt for good, two for bad.”

Goose groaned. If he could have, he’d have told Gill to save it for the bedroom.

“Good news is that the engines are only ‘mostly shot’. The bad news is everything else is gone. Stabilizers snapped and the life support system went in the crash. We’re lucky this planet’s atmosphere is only one deviation from standard.

“You went outside?” Doc interrupted.

Gill gave him a look that questioned the doctor’s intelligence over the flurry of robotic arms poking and prodding at Goose’s numbbed and mostly naked body. “Of course not. But we’re still breathing. Ma’as tells me he’s been attacked by the local fauna three times while scouting out there. He loves it. Anyway Goose, while we have power I can’t push the engines any harder or....” He imitated the sounds of a violent explosion, then implosion.

Quays sipped at the coffee and pulled away quickly from the steaming mug. “I vote we don’t do that.”

Captain. He was going to ignore that.

The surgical bed wrapped up its final stitches. He heard, rather than felt the giant needle removed from his back just in time for the fire to return to finish the job. His body screamed in agony as the numbing agent was flushed from his system. The guttural scream that escaped him as his throat reawoke surprised even him.

“The... drones?” Goose croaked.

Gill rushed up to help him sit while the doctor continued to sip at his coffee and peruse the datapad. “They followed us through the path but they’ve just been hovering around the gate. One passed while you were out. We thought we were screwed, but it just scanned us and flew off before Ma’as could shoot it. I think they’re only supposed to guard the pathway.”

Captain. Kulirik’s phantom voice was insistent. Your crew must bring me inside the ruins. I must reach the sanctum before the pathway closes.

“Fuck off!” Goose spat at the unconscious Srassen. He felt the room go cold, both the doctor and Gill freezing, eyes wide. “The only thing my crew must do is figure out how to get the ship back through that fucking portal before it closes.”

And the ancient star sage’s sanctum is your best hope, Kulirik countered, no signs of motion from his body on the other table. You won’t find a way to repair your ship here.

“Whoa!” Gill said, drawing out the sound and putting a firm, calloused hand on Goose’s pale, blaster-scarred chest. “What’s going on? Hate to say it, Goose, but we’re not getting off this rock any time soon.”

He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t even going to think it and give the stupid space-elf the satisfaction.

“Get our passenger ready, doc,” Goose said. “He wants to go planetside."

⟢⟡⟣

He wore a tight, long sleeved black shirt and his thermaltec overalls, four handguns, one rifle, and an omni-tool strapped in various, easily reachable places when he went into a dangerous situation. Grandpa Starchaser had always said the best days were the ones you didn’t have to fire a gun. As Goose stepped out of the Bronco’s cargo bay onto the world Ma’as had started calling “Hunter’s Paradise”, he knew today was not going to be one of those days.

The Bronco’s ‘ground team’ composed of himself and the Ginvaran thieves, Ma’as and Sarah. Despite his disagreements with the Elders of the Exodus Fleet, Gill still wouldn’t leave the ship, unwilling to touch soil not descended from Mother Earth’s. The doctor was, frankly, a liability in combat. Neither were necessary though. The Meseag hunter was preferring his modified Templar X9 heavy-repeating plasma rifle which would have looked comically large in his diminutive paws, and was practically armored in ammunition. His Sudaorn counterpart was similarly armed, with much of the space on her back given over to Ma’as overflow weapons.

Kulirik’s unconscious body floated down the ramp behind him, strapped to one of the dolly drones they used for cargo. A little stream of drool trickled down his spotted chin, dripping into the grass. The sage insisted he’d be waking soon, but until then, Goose would take pleasure at the Kulirik’s every indignity.

Birds were chirping, the breeze through the trees was warm and heavy with the scents of a brand-new forest. Back home they would have called it a glorious day. Indeed, it was hard to hate the warm sunshine on his space-paled skin. Even the rippling swirls of the Pathway and its swarm of protective drones seemed peaceful.

A five-limbed thing launched itself from the trees to his left with a screech that chilled his bones, heading right for his face. He ripped a blaster from its pace on his right side, trained it on the flying shar-shaped thing heading right for his face, and fired. Blue-violet plasma launched from the end of the pistol, leaving a searing hole clean through the alien’s puckered pink flesh where it hit. Two more holes caught the thing half an instant later, dropping it to the ground in a trail of black smoke and singed flesh. It looked like some sort of arboreal starfish.

“Damn,” Ma’as hissed. “Captain got that one. 6-3-1, right?”

“5-4-1,” Sarah corrected. “Stop cheating.”

“Stop messing around,” Goose cut in. “We need to get moving. Sarah, you getting clear readings on the Pathway?”

“Still strong, Captain,” she nodded. “It’s waning, but we’ve got time.”

Goose checked his blaster, ensuring it was charged and ready to unleash a full salvo on the next thing to launch out of a tree at him. “Then let’s go.” The drone driving Kulirik was already putting its way toward the ruins before he’d commanded it.

These ruins were old. Moss and vines covered nearly every one of the massive granite blocks that made up the walls and floors. But even their arrangement was simple, lacking the architectural flourish of even the earliest space faring civilizations. They passed rows of what appeared to be simple homes and shops toward what he could only think of as a temple to some time-forgotten god. And if Goose didn’t figure something out, this place would be the Bronco’s tomb.

This way, Kulirik said in his head as his drone floated into the temple’s open mouth, paying no mind to the red-furred ape-like creature with a scorpion tail charging right at him from inside.

“10-7-6,” Ma’as called as he put plasma through the thing’s right eye, dropping it, then rushing ahead. He let out several more blasts from the Templar. “Captain, tell this thing to slow down!”

Tell your crew to move faster, Kulrik retorted from ahead. We should be there by now.

“Fucking asshole,” Goose grumbled, scanning behind them for anything following. He thought he saw motion flitting between two of the houses, but shouting and blaster fire from inside drew his attention away, into the temple.

They left a wake of bodies and broken walls following the unconscious Star Sage deeper and deeper into the temple’s bowels. Goose’s heart was pounding in his chest and he screamed, dropping his spent pistols and ripping his own rifle from his back. The fully automatic plasma rifle was firing even before he had it trained on the giant feline’s chest, the impact of repeated plasma halting its momentum mid-air. In the passageway, everything around him smelled like dust and burnt hair and shit and charred meat.

The small hallway opened to a large, circular room with several openings. There had once been a dome, but that had long collapsed away, its yellow bricks littering floor. A faint blue luminescence glowed in lines beneath the fallen bricks, creating a radiating pattern that stretched toward the edges of the room. Goose fired several blasts down his passageway, as creatures tried to climb over the tiger-thing, contributing to his growing body-barricade. He turned to yell for Ma’as and Sarah to cover any other entrances when he noticed a section of the new chamber’s wall was missing.

Missing was perhaps the wrong word. Gone. Instead of mossy, overgrown granite that made up every wall around here was clean and polished stone, like the place was brand new. Fires burned in coal-filled braziers in the circular room beyond, and along the walls were tables and shelves lined with... Junk? With a shot for safety down the hall, Goose rushed over to accompany Kulirik’s drone as it hovered him into the strange workshop, the others following to cover their backs.

“This must be the sanctum,” Goose said, eyes scanning for anything that looked like it could help them repair the ship. He saw papers, tools, half finished projects. He walked toward one that seemed active, a crystal suspended in a lattice that glowed with an ethereal rose color. It felt like Gill when he touched it, strong and warm and... “Kulirik, what is this place?”

The Sanctum of Ktheron, the star sage answered. The dolly had brought him to the center of the domed room, toward a contraption made of glass lenses and brass barrels tubes and frames that Goose took for a telescope. The straps holding him to the dolly flew away, and he stood inspecting the contraption.

“Ingenious,” the star sage marveled aloud, running a spotted finger along one of the brass barrels “Grandfather you were so close.”

“Grandfather?” Goose asked. “Kulirik, I don’t see anything here that’s going to get the ship flying again.” When he didn’t respond, Goose pried again. “Kulirik?”

“You may go, captain,” Kulirik said absently. He began adjusting a dial, lengthening the focus between two of the lenses. The air around the telescope began to shine with a hazy pearlescence. “Your part in this is done. I won’t be needing your ship to leave this place now that I have the power of a Pathway.”

“You won’t-” Goose couldn’t believe how stupid he was. All those months stringing them along, all those promises.

Kulirik smirked. “You know, Starchaser visited here once.”

Goose froze. That wasn’t impossible, they hadn’t called his grandfather that for nothing. He’d found more pathways than anybody had since the Ancients themselves. The stories about him were true. Grandpa was never clear on which were the true ones though.

“It’s the reason I hired you all,” Kulirik continued. “I needed a junk ship, with a crew stupid enough not to ask any questions. Imagine my surprise finding the Bronco in that space port. I thought it would be symbolic, reclaiming this place and sacrificing the ship that returned my grandfather’s corpse to Astrent.”

“Captain?” Sarah called behind them.

“Fuck y-” Goose started, but he was cut off by a sudden crushing grip around his neck. His own hand was on the barrel of his fourth pistol, a long-barreled blaster that could put a hole in the side of a ship. He saved it for special occasions. He found he couldn’t move it under Kulirik’s grip, however.

Had the Star Sage always had fangs? Kulirik’s eyes had narrowed to feline slits, angry and fixated upon Goose. Bastard psionic was messing with his head. A little concentration and he was back to his normal long, angular features.

“Enough of that,” the Star Sage spat, throwing Goose across the room. I’ve had enough of you and your crew.

Violet-turquoise wisps trailed from the Srassen’s skin as he turned toward the odd couple from Ginvaris, their attention focused at something going on in the ruins behind them, something in the sky?

“Behind you!” Goose shouted, letting three blasts of plasma rip through the space in a triangle around his target’s head.

Ma’as’ tufted ear twitched and, thankfully, spun on the glowing Star Sage coming right at him. He started shooting. Blast after blast of plasma had Kulirik on the back foot, blinking away with the tolling of a psionic bell only to be met with more hot ions from the barrel of Sarah’s two rifles. Together, the three of them made a triangle around Kulrik, blasting at him every time he reappeared.

Goose grinned. Night’s spent in the kitchen over bland rehydrated rations, listening to Ma’as enthusiastically plan how to take out all kinds of Octarchy authorities finally paid off. And after seeing just how much power Kulirik could wield before his psionics overwhelmed him, Goose knew all they had to do was keep him jumping and eventually that violet-blue glow would overwhelm him.

Only, the next time the Star Sage appeared near him, the violet-blue of ionizing atmosphere was lightening, warping around him. Goose dodged out of the way of his strike with a roll, and saw the same glow gathering around the telescope.

“Not that I’m complaining,” asked Ma’as with a burst of blaster fire chasing Kulirik away, “but why are we killing him?”

“The cheap bastard was never going to pay us,” Goose explained, shouting over the psionic sound of Kulirik’s jumps. He took aim right where he thought the sage would appear, only for his shot to score the stonework while his target materialized right in front of him. Shooting a mind reading psionic was hard.

Kulirik’s face was one of frustration and disbelief. “You stand here, using your last moments to witness a god being born, and that is what consumes you? Payment? You sad, desperate man.”

Goose grabbed him by the lapel of his robes with his right hand and felt an intense warmth, then pins and needles all over his body as he was shoved back into it on the other side of the Sanctum from where he'd started. His left made a fist and slammed it into Kulirik’s annoyed face. He drew back for another punch. Warmth. Needles again. The Srassen’s sharp nose crunched beneath his fist. They jumped again.

“This has been fun,” Kulirik teased, breaking his grip and tossing Goose into one of the workbenches. Lightning flashed down his spine and junk scattered everywhere. Desperate was right. If Goose and the Bronco were going to fly again, he was going to have to do something desperate. And probably stupid.

He imagined chasing the Star Sage down to continue his assault, knowing he would have to be quick if he was going to grab Kulirik again. The mind-reading star sage wore a malevolent grin as he turned, fists at the ready to fend Goose off. Instead, he caught a bolt of plasma from Goose’s gun right between the eyes. It might have been the luckiest hip shot of his life for the effort it took not to think about shooting Kulirik.

“Fuck yeah captain!” Ma’as shouted. “That makes it 48-47-43!”

Goose limped to the center of the room where the telescope was wreathed in opalescent swirling radiance. His fingers burned as he twisted the same knob he'd seen Kulirik turn to activate the machine.

“47-48-43,” Sarah corrected. A pad hanging from her waist beeped. “Whatever he did, it accelerated the Pathway’s closing.”

The captain looked between them in shock at what had just happened. The Sanctum was a disaster, shelves and workbenches destroyed by baster fire. Unfinished ancient wonders reduced to ash before anyone could learn their mysteries. Good company for the Bronco. “He has to count for at least ten.”

“If he'z ten,” Sarah said, gesturing over her shoulder. “How much iz that worth?”

In the ruins behind them was a familiar boxy shape looking in the space where the dome had once been. The drone, Smiley, or one like it, wore a frustrated frown drawn in red light, spotlight shining right on them.

“ZEBFLIBORAN RASALUP KALA BREAAN KRAE CERE KRU,” it bellowed down at them. “ZEBFLIBORAN RASALUP KALA BREAAN KRAE CERE KRU.”

A wave of blaster fire from Ma’as’ Templar splashed ineffectively off the drone's worn and rusted shell.

“What doez it want?” Sarah asked. “It said the same thing on Tasiliset VII.”

High above, Smiley began that same alien countdown as before, the only person Goose knew who had any chance of understanding laying dead on the floor behind them. A plasma bolt was probably a cleaner death than the laser that had taken out the Bronco's steering would be. He just wished he could tell Gill and the doc how sorry he was too.

“It's been nice knowing you both,” Goose said.

“ZUUM”, the drone thundered, spotlight shifting red and focusing.

Something shifted in the shadows. The three of them spun, guns at the ready, only to find a small creature standing before them, a thin paw outstretched before itself. Looking past its little snout, Goose met its eyes and saw none of the crazed rage of the rest of this world's natives. It looked to him like a big rust-colored raccoon wearing green overalls. Its yellow eyes had a question, and Goose nodded.

The creature turned to face the drone and shouted, “Zvere kul ikat Rown.”

At once, Smiley’s red frown was replaced with a green smile and its light shifted back to benign white.

“KURKRI ALSA TOOSANE ROWN”

“Is it listening to that little thing?” Ma’as asked. He was barely a foot larger than the raccoon-creature. “Is this thing a star sage?”

The pointed ears on the top of the creature's head tweaked.

“What's that?” it asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Goose said, giving the little thing a nod. “You've just saved our lives. How did you get it to stop?”

The little creature shrugged his small shoulders. “The box has a funny accent, but it was asking you to identify yourselves. I told it my name. What is that metal thing outside the ruins? Some kind of house?”

Goose chuckled. “It's our ship. It is made to fly through the space between stars. But we're stuck unless Smiley here can help.”

“Let me ask,” the raccoon said. “Jela jer Kal kriu?”

“OIS. BRUD KALLA STIIN”

“He'd be happy to, but we must be quick. A window is closing.”

Goose exchanged a look of disbelief with his crew.

“Captain!” Sarah pointed to where several drones flew past in the late afternoon sky behind Smiley toward the ship. “What do we do?”

“We go,” Goose said, leading them away from the Sanctum toward their path in.

“Not that way,” the raccoon called, gesturing toward the opposite passage. “This way is faster. Follow me.”

Another of the raccoon creatures was hiding in the halls, and clasped Rown’s paw as they ran. Sure enough, the strange little alien was able to guide them through several twisting, turning passages and out of the ruins in a fraction of the time it had taken them following Kulirik’s blind senses. How much time and senseless blood had they wasted?

Smiley and its horde of smaller drones were hovering just above the Bronco where it sat outside the ruins. Even before they could see the ship itself, they could hear Gill’s voice calling over the ship’s loudspeaker, “Fuck of you rusty fucks!”

“Open the hold Gill!” Goose called over the comm. “Ground crew coming in hot.”

“Oh thank fuck, captain,” Gill said back “I guess the drones weren’t done with us after all. They keep trying to mess with the ship.”

“Good,” Goose said. “Open the hold, I’ll try to explain when we’re back. Two minutes.”

Smiley and the drones had donned worried expressions as Goose and crew were running into the hold. Its seven fingered ‘hands’ were open, ready to grab hold of the Bronco. “KRAZA TBA KLA RAAM.”

Rown stopped just before the ramp to the cargo hold and called “Grruzu!” to them with a wave. Then scampered up the ramp after them.

The whole crew aboard, Goose slammed the button to seal the cargo hold, and pressed the comm next to it.

“Hold on folks!”

The Bronco groaned and shook as it was lifted, the branches of nearby trees scraping against the hull. At first their flight was unsteady but it smoothed quickly as they went. Goose rushed through spare metal corridors lit by pale diode lamps toward the Bronco’s bridge, the rest of the ground crew behind him. They found Gill in the captain’s chair with a grin on his face.

“They’re carrying us? How?” he asked, spinning in the chair and standing to greet them. The warping shimmering Pathway still loomed in the sky before them like the whirlpool of a draining tub. It was going to be close, but with the drones’ help, they’d make it. “Even if we can’t fly, it’s a matter of weeks, at most, before someone catches our s.o.s. We can last that long.”

Goose welcomed the warmth, then the pins-and-needles as the Bronco was shoved across the galaxy, back into the still-raging storm on the yellow moon of Taliset VII. Gill was right, it might take a few weeks for a rescue crew to come, and Taliset II had a serviceable shipyard. They could make it.

“So, new passengers?” Gill asked, finally noticing the two toddler-sized aliens on the bridge.

The taller one in green overalls stepped up and offered up a paw.

“I’m Rown,” he said with a bow. Then gesturing to the other, who curtsied in her dress. “And this is Tris.”

“I’m Goose,” he said, shaking the small paw. Two more people on the Bronco who he owned his life. Two more who could never go home. “I’m the captain of the Bronco. You’ve saved my crew twice now. I don’t know how we can repay you.”

“Home?” the smaller one, Tris, said. “Can we go home?”

Goose winced. “I’m sorry. Even once we get the Bronco flying again, with the Pathway closed it will be at least a year before it opens again.”

“A whole year on another world....” Rown mused, ears twitching and tail swishing as he thought. He went to his companion and took her hand.

“Not just one world,” Goose said with a grin. “There’s thousands of them out there.”

Rown whispered something, she nodded, and he gave her a wide wolfy grin as they looked out the bridge windows, where they could see the sun, Tasiliset, shining dimly through the dust.

“Can we see them?”

THE END