RP [Thunder Lizards] {JP#02} A Skronk Of Malice And Fury

[Primitive Polygon]

RP Date

Late YE 45

RP Location

Planet Dynatt (Galactic Northwest of UX-5)

((OOC; A very long JP with @Hollander !))

Late YE 45,
Planet Dynatt (Galactic Northwest of UX-5)

The sandblasted dunes of the Enfron plateau were a desolate place, coloured bone white beneath a leaden gray sky. Only small red shrubs marked the place as capable of sustaining any life, and the plant life was too strange and hardy to act as a marker for decent water supplies even then.

Fruit did not grow. Bones did not completely decay.

Rickidi had received only simple orders, since they were unceremoniously defrosted and dumped on the ground several months ago. Mostly along the lines of ‘crank that gear shaft lever exactly six hundred times’, or ‘go to the ground and overt your eyes when your Kuvexian superiors are here’. Or simply handed a rusty pickaxe near the entrance of a makeshift freight elevator shaft, and told not to come back without ‘two wagons of the yellowish rocks’.

Forced into a sweltering environment like this, Silanbar could be easily forced to work, for access to the singular shared water source on the entire northern hemisphere.

It didn’t matter that the Kuvexian war was pretty much lost. They didn’t know where they were. And from overheard conversations, the governor in the stone palace of the mountains above, well… They came here to get away from that civilization in the first place.

Blinding day… scale-splitting work, dust, heat… ample beatings with shock rods, or withdrawn food rations, for talk or complacency… cold nights with farm animal hay or tarps as bedding…

Everything was meticulous and hard-edged. It was like a finely tuned orchestra, and Rickidi was one of the drums.

How long had it been? How far even was this from Skorlamech?

Today he’d awoken with the thrashing of a stick to the face. Was it a dream- no?

The high arches of the dull place heated up as the light crawled in… Sound of grunting and bustle… but no throat-warble of the Silanbar at all…

His shoes were gone…

Dry-throated, Rickidi gasped into the lifeless air. “Ghegh!? Whargh!?” he asked, as though the ever-present floating clouds of dust would answer him. Blindly, he felt his body, worried that with his shoes, someone had also stolen his feet, or something even more valuable. The Silanbar desperately tried to blink away the eye-gunk of sleep, but this damned dry land seemed to sap all the moisture he had and turn all his liquids into awful, sticky solids. He sat up, wobbly, and tried to identify the source of the bustling and grunting.

Cut stone and stray pebbles kicked by a multitude of tired and disgruntled claws, the bigger creatures of the compound took their fill of the ration food bars from the containers, then left the more conventionally sized monsters to stare each other down for the rest. There was also the daily stress of who was going to be first to access the water tub, too, before it got too rotten to be worth using…

Rickidi could do nothing but sigh. It was another defeat in a long line of defeats that had begun back when… Well, it wasn’t worth thinking about. Frustrated, he dropped his long-necked head back onto the pile of shredded cloth and junk that was his ‘nest’. He ground his teeth, or at least those which he still had, and he slapped his tail fretfully onto the floor. The fins of his tail, once elegantly shaped and actually one of his nicer features as a youth, had gone ragged. He looked like he was waving a tattered flag… The flag of a failed soldier. Of a deserter. Of a Silanbar who had killed a superior officer.

Another morose sigh rose up from his lungs, and he scratched idly at the scales of his chest. “Ugh.” he announced. He knew he needed to eat, but eating meant living longer. Rickidi tried holding his breath. Maybe he could just quit breathing, and go to the dark place you went to when you slept. He gave up on that too, exhaling once again. Finally, slowly, he roused himself, seeing that at least the ragged shirt and one-sleeved jacket were still on his person. A pair of shorts remained wrapped around his waist, and he still had bits of bone and handfuls of sand in his pockets. A meager collection. He stretched, opening his triangular maw in a yawn as he headed toward the water tub. The damned thing stank from here… Rickidi felt limbered up enough for a fight, unless there were Skrumpos in line. Skrumpos were too damned big to fight. Strong too.

Some small measure of luck, but it seemed he’d gotten to the tub chamber right as a massive and fearsome brute called Karagad was just leaving, which meant his many subjects of ire were nowhere to be seen. The water did still stink and was dusted with a froth around the edges that it was best not to think about, though. Same went for why it was warm.

A strange blurting from a distant intercom echoed… Couldn’t recognise the language. Weird time in the morning for it, though.

Water was soothing if you didn’t think about it too hard. Stone basin was a bit arcane too, now he thought about it. Advanced star-folk like the blue bastards… carving something like this?...

A sudden, sharp pain in their foot, endangering their webbing further.

A pocket knife?... No, the end of one of Karagad’s claws had come off…

…The heck did that giant animal eat, to keep himself going?...


Rickidi suppressed a groan at the frothy, and very likely ‘flavor-enhanced’ water. Not for the first time, he imagined killing that wretched Karagad and sparing all of them his cheap bullying. It was the sort of act that had got him sent here in the first place… Why not make it a habit? With a wince, he dipped his forepaws in the water, figuring a little water and ammonia would help more than it would hurt. His ears heard, but his mind failed to understand, the babbling over the intercom. As Rickidi shuffled restlessly, his foot found the claw. “Airgh! Spike-thing!” he hooted, hopping briefly on one ungainly, un-shoed foot before spotting the offending item.

Thoroughly flustered, he nearly kicked the detached claw before his other instincts kicked in. There could be a use for this discarded thing… Maybe even a use like sticking it in Karagad’s big stupid neck. Rickidi leaned down and fetched it, finding that it could end up having a bit of use. He was about to place it in his pocket before he realized that was a risky place to store something sharp, so he stuck it through one of the many holes in his shorts instead.

Thoughts of enemies and dust and desperation got Rickidi thinking. He was alone here, had been alone since he’d been dumped on the planet to mine yellowish rocks until his body failed him. If he really did want to make things better, perhaps by killing Karagad, he’d need a team. Or at least a couple temporary allies. Shuffling away from the contaminated water, Rickidi looked toward the food line, wondering if there were any gullible goons queuing up that might be susceptible to a little persuasion.

The situation he walked in on was more than a little tense. A sandy red creature with one eye called Yrid was butting heads with a lizard he knew as Thakron- Jet black and much too fast with a knife. Neither was even saying or emoting anything, just increasingly posturing towards the inevitable conclusion of somebody getting their head kicked in.

Almost camouflaged against the gloomy sandstone, it took an extra moment for Rickidi to detect a third creature through the damp steam rising from their own body. White and gray striped, this lizard was smaller, trying to sneak around and get to the food crate whilst the other two were distracted.

A little sneaky one probably had their own plots and schemes, Rickidi figured. Tricking a tricky person meant being even trickier which. Would be a challenge. There might be a use for that one though... First, Rickidi headed over to the head-butters, slapping his tail on the ground to get their attention and ducking his head down conspiratorially. “Hey! You! Two youse!” he said, waggling his limbs as he addressed them both. He held up the talon. “See this-y. Being a… foot-spike offa Karagad. The big-dumb.” That part was true. Now came the lie. “I gotta give-back, but not uhh… No good give-back when… People around. Karagad big-shame, loss his foot-spike. Fell off.” He waggled his triangular head, sending his ruddy-brown hair a-shaking. “Two youse… Ever see Karagad alone-time? Nobody with? So I can give-back with no shame.”

“He-he is weaaakkennned~” Thakron rasped in his distinct nasally tone, as if this news was some great stroke of luck. “Yes we should stab and kill and eat!”

“Yes yes, kill kill!~” Yrid agreed with distinct amusement, though their trade-tongue was worse and more hissy, requiring Silanbar-language body moves so they could remember the words in their head.

Either way, the both of them had immediately stopped staring each other down, and were very much more interested in this story about the ‘crippling advantage’ they now had over the biggest, worst lizard in the complex. Just because the red and black silanbar were trying to kill each other before, didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends now, after all. Any additional story about Rickidi trying to help the big guy kinda got lost in the mix… probably for the best.

<Tis only one toe.> The shorter, bone-white, rather portly creature thumped their feet and snapped their fingers, already on their second ration bar whilst body-signaling. <He is still nine times stronger than that.>

Thakron jumped with a start, only just realizing the pale thing was there, and seemed to smolder in their head for a moment whilst they thought about why they should be pissed off at the diminutive thing… Yrid just started eating some bars themselves, whilst the oily onyx one was distracted.

There were about four left in the container, each not much bigger than a brick… Pasty white and flavorless… but, hunger was the best spice...

Rickidi waggled his serpentine body in unison with theirs, joining the body language dance. He kept Thakron and Yrid’s attention as he snagged a tasteless food-bar with each clawed hand. Handing one to each of them as he spoke.
“One toe, nine times, good count, good math.” Rickidi said, referencing the point that the smaller Silanbar had made. “But but but… We gots more toes than nine, we four.” While the sandy-red and onyx-black fellows were hopefully chewing, Rickidi took the remaining two bars for himself. He’d eat one now, and save the other as another bargaining chip. Gifts could be so useful….

He extended a foot, waggling it in the air as if to show that he had all of HIS toes, and so did they… Since toes had somehow become a measure of strength at the moment. “So… Karagad alone… We in a team. Stab and kill and eat a big one. No more piss-piss in the drink-pot.” He shuddered, remembering he’d bathed his own paws and claws in that same fluid, and had then picked up food too. Gross…

Trying to distract himself, he repeated his question, hoping he’d formed these disparate, desperate Silanbar into a murderous confederation. “So… Where he go? Alone-time means alone-guy.”

“Alone? We all alone. We Silanbar.” Thakron hissed, unamused about the concept of being so weak that they’d need a team to defeat Karagad. “Win with many, means nothing. Win with self, you are the strongest.”

Not exactly philosophy, but very conventional lizard thinking.

One-eyed Yrid seemed to deliberate sullenly, visually quite intent on remaining the intimidating void-creature’s friend… But maybe not so thick-headed as to realize their own personal survival in this place might be a priority.

“...You could keeps it… Or you could gives nail-claw to Igniy.” The short, pale creature changed their tune, expressing a befangled, dangerous little grin. Despite their stubby horns and long fluffy ears, this cream-coloured creature did have the Kuvexian-letter imprints on their neck and gut-belly, suggesting a pit fighter… or at least such a dedicated heretic consigned to such a fate, at some point. “You gives to Igniy, she gives you special brain-knowledge only they know!...”

A distant, rolling kalaxon… followed by the familiar static blurt and bored alien-tongue commands. It was nearly time for their shift to start. And it was never really a good idea to leave the blue bloods waiting…

Rickidi bowed his head as Thakron hissed; sometimes a ploy flopped. Silanbar valued personal strength; implications that they weren’t strong earned displeased reactions like that hissed response. Rickidi pawed at one of the scars on his neck, feeling one of the many lessons he’d learned ‘experimenting’ with his unusual propensity for lying and manipulating.

Yrid seemed close to following Rickidi’s guidance…

But then the pale one surprised Rickidi with some suggestions of their own. Igniy… Igniy… Rickdi twisted his head around, looking side to side as he tried to remember. He ended up looking at the pit-fighter-marked Silanbar with just one half of his face. He didn’t know any Igniy, but she had brain-knowledge? Brain-knowledge could be as useful as muscle-pow-strong, as big-jaws. He wanted to question the pale one more…

But the klaxon was rolling off, whining and squealing into the dry, dry wind. Start of the shift. There’d be no more plotting at the moment, no more time to recruit these creatures into a murderous campaign. The other chunk of ‘food’ was still hidden away on his person, a token, perhaps, that might be useful later.

Mechanically, robotically, he started moving off toward the workplace, his body still feeling tired despite the sleep he’d tried to steal earlier. His shoe-less feet already hurt.. Webbing was dried out, mermaid-like tail felt crusty and awful. Rickidi found himself trying to keep pace with the pale one, as he’d already planted seeds with Yrid and Thakron. He hadn’t quite gotten any ‘hooks’ into the white-and-gray-striped lizard. Maybe he had a chance as they walked?

“What’s Igniy?” he asked moving at a slithery pace. “Got a look a-some kind? Big head? Bad teeth?”

He hadn’t picked up on the fact that Igniy was, in fact, the white-gray Silanbar themselves.

“Dun’ say mean thing! I goin’ get angree!~” The shorter one made an annoyed, high pitched grunt, at the same time as their neck autotranslation implant projected the words verbally… Probably not a great time to get into a straight up fight with somebody, but they still had time to scowl and hook their shoulders forward, webbed claws arranged menacingly. “Igniy is very smart! Their brain is very good! I only not want fight Karagad, because nobody helps us if we bleeds!”

A short look around, twisting their head 360, to see if the other two ‘food fighters’ were still following them. The bustle was growing, with many other dinosaurs of different agitations and physical disfigurements emerging from the stonework.

“Red one maybe considering he let you fight big one, and kill who wins! Even you think?-” Body-signaled, just in case. “Igniy not trust!~ Igniy not trust you either!~”

Another flub! Rickidi winced, the pale one’s response definitely seemed to indicate that THEY were Igniy. He patted his paws together as they walked, making his own apologetic noises; it wasn’t his style to play the tough guy role when he had made a mistake. He’d prefer to dissemble and distract and fib. “I dun know what a Igniy is! Hush, hush, didn’t mean a fight-start.” He played like the bunny-eared Silanbar had successfully menaced him, to placate their feelings.

‘Igniy’ then revealed something they’d observed; a plan within a plan. A kill after a kill. Rickidi sighed… Yes, that tracked. Why couldn’t his kind just do what he told them to, and nothing more? They always seemed to have their own goals and motivations after the fact. Very messy. When Igniy declared that they didn’t trust Rickidi, Rickidi believed them.

“Igniy is a very good brain.” he said solemnly, confirming that the grey-striped dinosaur was right not to trust the red one, or Rickidi himself. As they shuffled along, he felt for the claw where he’d stashed it, moving slowly so that Igniy wouldn’t think this was some kind of attack. He handed it to them, making a gift of it. “Do a thing with it.” he suggested. “As a sorry. You-keep.”

The long-eared creature still looked bristled, perhaps suspecting some kind of trick. Perhaps just trying to keep up the ‘act’ that they were tough, and had somehow intimidated this rather nervous, stringy-taller fellow…

A paw wafted, as if indicating he should bring his head closer, though her hooded eyes feigned disinterest, completely overting themselves now. Trying not to draw attention.

“Sometimes, they tell Igniy fix wires... Sometimes she knows things the bluebloods not knows I knows.” The small whispers were encapsulated into Rickidi’s ears, as if a hazardous liquid that could leak out. “Them doors not use keys. They take photo of hand- Look for blueblood hand, I think?... It…”

Another look, getting into the real meat of the concept, now-

“Problem, some small break?- For when you put your hands on picture box- Any of the box in that house- All take same picture, I think?-” A new, insidious little gremlin smile. “One door is open, they all be open, you see? You put your claw-hand on box same time... You see? You see how smart Igniy is!?~”

The fenced-off elevator in the middle of the courtyard was becoming visible now. Orders and quotas audible, though it was in Kuvie-speak and not necessarily understandable to the Silanbar.

A que formed, as it did every day. The fence opened, closed one lizard in- a box on the side automatically dispensed a shoddy looking pick-axe- and then the metal floor lowered noisily down into the gloom…

Only so much time left for Rickidi to figure out what this weird little lizard was trying to tell them.

Rickidi readily leaned in, though doing so was risky. A good chomp to the next could bust his airway or rip open an important artery, and if long-ears was indeed a pit-fighter, that kind of maneuver was very likely in their repertoire. Still, Rickidi dipped in anyway; trust had to be given AND received, right? An exposed neck meant ‘yeah, you could kill me. I’m hoping you won’t, and trusting that you don’t’.
Igniy whispered carefully; it was a little weird, but strangely kind of fun. He felt like a super-spy, conspiring. It made him want to tell Igniy something important to, make something up, tell a false tale about how useful he was! Igniy was smart, Rickidi wanted to have something too, to be unique and special too. He opened his mouth, wanting to weave some story about what HE knew… This compulsion almost distracted him from the important facts Igniy was attempting to convey-

And the fence was ahead. The line was forming. The pick-axe was looking particularly pick-axe-y. And Rickidi was being shuffled and elbowed away from the source of interesting and useful knowledge. He grumbled, hoping he’d have the chance to confer with that clever one further. Smart and sly ones could be tough to puppeteer, but if they were on your side of their own choice… Maybe that was even better? Tricking Yrid would’ve very likely led to a bloody death. The former Silanbar slave-soldier thought this over, twisting and writhing around the thoughts in his brain like a worm wiggling through juicy mud.

Rickidi did make a note, however, about the ‘picture boxes’. Hadn’t he seen something similar on Kuvexian space stations? From a distance, of course. From the pens, where he and other fighters had been kept. Or in even worse places…

Igniy didn’t try too hard to stay attached, allowing themselves to be separated into the crowd. Upon closer inspection, the elevator fence had a little rotating camera-node on top, and it probably wasn’t a good look to conspire and scheme right in front of them… It was also about five minutes before an utterly grueling work day began, so it was possible the pale lizard was taking their lofty dreams of freedom and mentally pocketing them away for safe keeping, too.

The camera shifted, watching each lizard individually as they moved into the hungry maw of the lift pad. It didn’t really speak to them or anything, it just made a beeping noise when the lift was up again, and ready to be boarded once more.

Not a Kuvexian soul in sight. Not that Rickidi had seen one outside of that golden power armor in months… And when they did turn up like that, it was big groups, seconds before they started opening fire.

Beep… shuffle shuffle… ca-clunk… whiirrrr-

Beep… shuffle shuffle… ca-clunk… whiirrrr-

Beep… shuffle shuffle… ca-clunk… whiirrrr-

Rickidi was inside the fence now. The doors were sliding closed. The riveted, two-piece rock smashing tool popped up on a pair of pressurized pegs, and clattered loudly in front of him.

A wobbly shudder under their feet… Some distant sounds of commotion?... That was a little strange-

Then, suddenly- WHOOOSH- A rush of air- something pod-like and silver? Overhead? Was that gunfire he could hear?-

Lower and lower, his body sank into the ground, swallowing him in pitch black, the fence-wiring at waist height, now- The horizontal hatch doors began to lazily slide closed-

Was… finding out what was happening, and trying to climb out, worth getting in trouble for?

Yes… Yes it was. For better or for worse, Rickidi would always have that strange desire to be more than he was. He’d grown up with it, developed it in his hum-drum origins of Skorlamech’s Fat Worm Swamp. The miserable soldier’s life had stamped his spirit down, but strangely, he was springing back up, uncoiling like a snake tucked into a can and finally let out. With a hiss, he grabbed the smashing tool and hustled toward that closing door, thrusting the tool into its open space and dashing through. He’d leave that tool there, perhaps for others to try and use as well.

There was fighting up there! Shooting! There was nothing to shoot on this planet-whose-name-he-did-not-know, unless the Bosses were finally just using them for shooting practice. No, something else was going on. He trained his ears, wondering if he might recognize whose weapons were doing the shooting! And was anyone else around?

For a moment, there was a very strange, discordian silence- The garden of dragon heads all turned towards a glimmering sight in the distance, like sunflowers following the sun.

Something like a silver missile darted around in the distance- No… It had a pair of windows at the front?- Maybe a small space ship? Using two little sidelong pods, it opened fire on the tiny golden specs darting and weaving around it- Together creating a blue-green latticework of laser fire that crawled across the horizon at a ridiculously fast pace.

Just a moment later, the booming calamity of the airborne firefight finally reached them, and pandemonium began in earnest. The camera and the pole-mounted bullhorns started making a long, repeated shrieking sound. Silanbar and the rare unknown gribbly alien slave darted about in all directions- Yelling, growling- Looking for answers, for weapons, for places to hide-

Could this strange craft actually defeat their captors? What would it do to the dinosaurs if it won? Why here and now?

“All workers return to habitation. All workers return to habitation.” Somebody in the control room finally had the presence of mind to press the right language button, today of all days. “Any dissidents will be shot. You will comply immediately. Your Kuvexian masters demand obedience. This will be the only warning!”

The repeating din went on and on over the rage and terror of the crowd. How long would this last?

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Rickidi cackled, unafraid of the very real danger of being executed. Return to habitation? In a worm’s dream! He wondered, then, where that voice was coming from. He couldn’t do much to help the silver missile above, but perhaps he could cause a little chaos down below… With a surge of anger, Rickidi started picking up anything he could grab, and he hurled it all at the stupid cameras with their stupid glass eyes. The less they could see, the less they could try to control. Them and their blasted orders, and all the stupid, terrifying things they demanded people do, far away from home, far away from anything wet and safe.

The first thing that met their grasp was just a stray piece of metal rebar, about the length of their forearm… Though that was his oversized, scaly silanbar forearm, with all the strength that his general size entailed. The metal fragment easily dented the camera quite severely, breaking the glass cover and making little flecks of light shoot out for a moment.

Without pause, that damned wail of demands just kept repeating and repeating, though. He couldn’t destroy all of those wooden posts… Well, he could, but it would take way too long.

Surrounding the courtyard and the mine shaft were four large habitation blocks, massive but single-storey, made out of some kind of ancient yellow stone. The bath and food building was the only other compound within the much higher perimeter fences, though there were a bunch of extra cameras and a large mobile gate at the back. It was how the supplies, and new lizards, came in.

Beyond that was a jumble of much cleaner, gold-clad buildings, looking like jewelry encrusted pods, with multiple green bubble windows and sharp wire-bits of unknown usage. Beyond that, just a formidable backdrop of leaden gray mountains, looming over in all directions except the east- Rickidi could guess at the location of the Kuvexian’s actual home fortress, due to some distant thing gleaming up there- But there was no road, and his eyes weren’t good enough to see what was actually going on in detail.

Every now and then, there was just the little flick, a spark- and then a bright blue stray beam, scorching the air overhead, and making this cursed place somehow even more unbearably hot for a short torturous space.

Quite a few of the other Silanbar were behaving themselves, already having had enough of the sun, and perhaps seeing this as a welcome day off. But there were about fifteen or twenty others up and about, scheming, scoping out weaknesses, talking about who the attacker could be…

Rickidi scratched at his cut-short horn on the left, proud of his victory over the single camera… among many. In his head, he’d slain a dozen cameras, each with automated laser turrets attached to the top. He’d bobbed and weaved, dodging their blasts as he whipped the heads off the cameras with his bladed tail… Yeah, that was a much better story of how things went.
Filing the false story away for a later telling, Rickidi tried to think amidst the chaos. If the Kuvexians won their fight, they’d come down and make them all keep digging the yellow rocks. Forever… and Ever… If the other people won… Maybe they’d want slaves of their own? The Kuvexians had told them that the other side was bad, very bad. Stripped scales off of Silanbar, plucked their horns. Awful awful. So what should he do? He thought… and realized...

Igniy had been a thinker… He suddenly wished he had her smart-brain to pick for ideas. She knew about wires. About picture-box-hands. Rickidi slithered in place, wringing his body around subconsciously as he scanned the nearby Silanbar for hints of her presence. She’d been… white, right? Not a big fat head. Ears! She had ears. They were floppy. He’d thought about biting them, if they’d ended up fighting. Could he see her ears anywhere?

For now, the short creature evaded their sight. Karagad himself more immediately gained his attention, his huge, dark grey, burly form slipping out of the gloom. He had to duck considerably to fit out of the ten foot tall doorway, and the rippling fire of his crimson red mane seemed to follow him like an ill-omened comet.

He was heading towards the main gate. Almost certainly to bash it in by hand. And probably anything else that threatened his person… A good distraction, maybe, but… Not exactly the team player that Rickidi was looking for.

Just below the bellow of the sirens and Karagad’s intimidating footfalls, though, there was another, more obscure sound. A kind of rapid, repeated scratching, coming from behind the habitation shed, in the direction of those golden buildings outside the fence.

Maybe someone was digging, Rickidi thought. He’d been a good digger once… Though it had been in far softer soil than this unhealthy earth below his sore, uncovered feet. He’d seen Karagad re-entering his story, but ultimately, the big goon was going to be a brief and violent footnote. Thinking himself the protagonist, Rickidi headed toward the scratching, wondering if somebody had a clever-clever idea to dig under the fence, maybe.

As they rapidly turned the corner, the brown-teal lizard immediately fumbled along a disarranged pile of loose bricks, tossed about with aggravated dirt clumps. Similar to his victory, there was a smashed camera mounted further up on the brick wall, with a long thick loom of wires jiggling mid-air over a recent, smashed-in hole in the stone blocks.

Just the top of a head jutted back out, sneering at his presence- A pair of long moss-green ears hanging down, and long dislodged claw wielded in smaller, beaten up hands.

“...Do not standing there.” A grunt. Then Igniy, Silanbar of wires, jammed themselves back inside, deeper into some kind of hollow area inside the wall.

It looked just as ancient as the rest of the building. But was being used to protect the electronics and the plumbing, apparently.

Could Rickidi fit inside?... Well, even a Kuvexian would have to crawl, but… Silanbar were thin and long and just designed better for this sort of thing… right?...

The ivory-coloured lizard was about twenty foot to the right, scratching the white-casty-stuff out from between even more bricks, frantically using the worn-down claw with great effort… Trying to get to another place that only the machine bits were supposed to go…

He thought about sneaking up on the other Silanbar, just to show them he could… Sometimes that meant demonstrating your skills, showing that you could take them on with one tactic or another. It was a classic line of Silanbar thought, to push and prod at others to establish dominance. But it wasn’t his style. He’d been born with a messed-up head, and it thought different things from what it was supposed to.

“Good-brain!” he called out, so he wouldn’t startle the gray-striped one working away at the wall. “Very-smart!” He waggled his way on over, body language open, helpful. “Lookie at the sorry-thing. You like it!” Rickidi turned and bit at the air, snapping his jaws; one of his many odd little habits. “Not a big count-brain, me…” he said, though hadn’t he been counting perfectly fine when he had been trying to manipulate the two bigger Silanbar back at the food-station? “But two Silanbar scratch-a-wall faster, eh? Eh?” He opened his claws, offering to join her in her frantic work, maybe even giving her a break for a second. Maybe he should’ve kept that bar of rebar…

With them both on their bellies, they could just about squeeze into the old, dusty space. Needless to say they could both smell the rapid build up of body-smells.

“...You… bigger… can head-head, claw-claw?” Igniy had made good progress, but was starting to look light headed, pushing themselves to their limits before the situation changed. It would only take a third silanbar to find them, and this situation could get really bad. “Igniy… Igniy is paying you… I thinks of something… later?...”

Repeated gusts of wind, and rapid booming could be heard outside. The battle with that strange ship seemed to be coming closer.

“Yeh.” was Rickidi’s answer. The mutual desire to not be gunned down like living garbage spurred them both on together, it seemed. He put his body to work… But it was hot. And dry. He hadn’t had any water, and only one bar of… whatever that junk was. He had the other still, but it was too late for it to do any good now. But Rickidi scraped and dug at Igniy’s direction. They’d mentioned paying, and he nodded his brown-maned head. “I accept, but later. Live, so you payback.” He grinned at her, despite his exhaustion and discomfort. “Dead can’t pay debts. Don’t be a welcher.”

He stepped back, breathing, wincing at the pain in his feet, in his now-bloody paws. His eyes were dry, crusted with dust. His throat felt like it was full of crystals. But even this, he could survive. He’d crawled belly-down through horrible spiky plants, had run through corridors fleeing knife-handed maniacs, had shot back and forth with soldiers far braver than he. Grenades. Rockets. Lasers. Gnashing teeth. A little wall, a little hole… He could defeat this.

He looked at her, needing to know if she thought they could do it. Did she believe? Was this hole big enough?

The look in the she-creatures eyes was determined but drawn out, feeling betrayed by their own lack of strength, and the omnipresent spirit-crushing nature of this pathetic planet.

This brick just wasn’t coming away as easily as the ones outside, though. The more they dug things out, the more they broke off chunks of it, the more it seemed like some kind of hard metal carapace was underneath. The wires lead to the back of some kind of machine-box. It was being held into the framework by the rubber head-things, even if they broke off the rear-side screw-spike bits.

Angry, sweating, frustrated, scratched up. The pale silanbar was just staring right at the thick coil of cables in between them now.

They could probably bite though… But were these cables live?

Rickidi glowered at the machine-box underneath. Was this thing a key to… escape? To survival? He trusted in the smart stranger… but how far? Did HE believe that she had a plan that was sane?
He kinda had to, at this point.

They reached a moment where she was staring, her odd red eyes fixed on the bundle of cabling. Rickidi leaned down, and putting his curious face between her and the cabling. “You… need me to bite?” he asked, indicating the cables. He had no clue about her conundrum, didn’t know enough about techie-things or wire-things to know that there might be a thousand-volt death buried inside those wires. He’d joined Igniy on this plot, had dug away with her without question, and he saw this as just one more step. “Got good teethies still. No rottens. I can bite, if you not up-up on your chomps.”

Igniy squirmed and looked agitated, catching themselves gazing at this naive, much too helpful stranger. It would be really easy just to lie, and remove all the risk from the situation. She was pretty good at stuff like that. But at this level of intimacy, it felt especially bad. Especially long since they’d been this close with another warm body, without both of them trying to tear each other limb from limb.

Speaking of- Her arms were too damn short to reach her head. Couldn’t hide their face or look away in this stupid cramped pit. Did somebody do this to their breed?... Like… on purpose?

Not willing to be as pathetic as a creature that would kill by tricks- at least that’s the justification she finally convinced herself of- Igniy began slowly grasping her jaws around the rubber cladding, just as the battle-noise outside reached fever pitch-

A sudden, shuddering bomb-blast- The floor itself felt like it was jumping up and down, throwing dust everywhere- Brave or not, the pale creature was basically forced to bite down-

And-

Nothing. She didn’t spark or die. Just sat there in shock of a more metaphorical kind, for a moment.

Then looked at Rickidi, got uncomfortable with the closeness again, and started headbutting the metal thing in front of them.

Slowly, agonizingly, it started to shift away from the wall.


How odd! What odd little signs this pale Silanbar was giving. Rickidi’s trustful, naive face squinted at Igniy further, utterly clueless about what was going on inside their far cleverer mind.
He didn’t have time to investigate further. When Igniy leaned down, he backed up to give them room, watching as they grasped the rubber. Something she did (he assumed) caused the whole blasted terrible world to shake! No, that didn’t make sense, Igniy didn’t have that kind of power. Right? She’d chomped though, and when the shaking seemed to calm, something Rickidi didn’t understand had been accomplished.

Rickidi scratched at the rotten-egg-colored scales of his stomach, and sniffed at the air that was getting pretty fragrant with smells of dust and dirt and Silanbar sweat. His partner in escape seemed.. Well, he couldn’t tell what was normal for this one, he hardly knew them. But the headbutting was starting, wham wham wham, and Rickidi had to step in.

“Whoah! Gonna shake the smart-brain. Need yours working.” He reached out for the other Silanbar’s shoulders, intending to pull them back. “Lemme. Your head do the thinking. My head do the bashing.” Again, he was trusting her that this wasn’t some exercise in futility. What Igniy had said earlier about the hand-panels had tracked with what little Rickidi understood about Kuvexian tech. Further, she’d quite cleverly put his gift of a talon to use. That was 2 out of 2, a 100% track record of success. That meant that 100% of everything else she would ever do would be smart! Right?

Igniy writhed in anger, not wanting to accept that they needed help- but too rapidly giving themselves a headache, that they could not reach their cranium to sooth. This nice-talking blue-fleck dinosaur had long arms. Why did he get them?

“...Just… push… push…” A dour glance, eyes stinging. “Need to.. Go… g-get out…”

Rickidi whacked away with his skull. He was useful! He was capable! He was a living battering ram! He paused, mostly to try to stop the ringing in his head, and he felt like his eyes were spinning around. He turned, focused on Igniy, hearing her words. “Huh? Oh, yeah?” He heard that she needed to get out, so he looked, reaching out again to help her out of the pit that they’d dug. He sympathized; the conditions were awful, they were poorly fed, poorly hydrated, panicked, under threat. Rickidi reached out to touch her, then stopped.

“W-wait… If we go out, might get seen? Shot! You better stay. Just breathe. You okay.” He didn’t know if she really was okay… But sometimes being a liar was a good thing? “You look good! You fine.” She did not look good or fine. But again, a lie was a lie.

Somewhere in the confusion of trust and desperation, Igniy just chose to remain still for a minute, grumpy and projecting a series of pissed off groans.

Kind of hard to hear over the thunk-thunk-thunk of Rickidi smacking into the metal machine unit… Which itself was helpfully disguised by an active gunbattle continuing outside.

No way of telling the passing time even if they had watches, but the sheer monotony of this bloody-headed task began to remind him a little bit too much of being down the actual mine, clanging away pointlessly at those shiny dead rocks…

However, his reward today, it was slightly more than simply being spared the lash. As the box came away from the screwed-in moorings, just a little glint of light poked through, never quite reaching what one would call ‘room lighting’...

But it did move. It fell forward, creating a long reverberating racket, that seemed to coil and repeat back on itself.

His reward was… more stones. But like, bricks in a wider line. A tunnel. Big enough for even them to stand up inside. The chill of fresh air alone was enough to bustle just a bit more liveliness back into both of them.

Some kind of groove down the middle of the floor. And a mess of those wires, bolted all the way down the side.

Way off in the distance, a light- Steady and cold, artificial.

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Metal versus bone. In due time, Rickidi’s bone won out against Kuvexian metal, and a hopeful light shone though! “Igniy!” he called out, his raspy voice exultant. “Igniy!” he knew she could see it, but damned if it wasn’t exciting just the same! When it fell forward and made an awful noise, Rickidi covered his ears, but he grinned anyway. He peered down, inside, his paws lowering slowly.
“Oooh...” he cooed, blinking into the tunnel. He looked back to his comrade, checking on her health. He held a paw out to her. “Big brain.” he said, apparently trying to make that a compliment.

Igniy huffed whilst still on their belly, drawing out twin miniature dust clouds, though the expression in their weary eyes was one of grim pleasure and well-earned victory. Turns out it had been right to make a deal with this slippery, strange-worded one-horn, afterall.

Dragging themselves out into the concealed tunnel, the pale trash dragon felt like saying something, continuing to beam that same look in random glances within Rickidi’s personal proximity.

But what was there to say? They still didn’t know where they were. They had no food or water. The main pleasure was sticking it to the bastards that had caged them, abused them in this evil place…

“Let’s go to light. Before them is come and look hole.” A raspy tone, grasping one of his claws and trying to lead him towards the flickering beam in the distance. “If they not kill, they know Igniy and… Igniy and…?”

A disgruntling bit of logic. They’d only known each other for like half an hour. She had no idea what his name was.

“...And… this big pretty brownie bluey Silansbar… that Igniy does know know what is called.”

Was that mean? She wanted to get to know him now. Most lizards immediately told you theirs, right before they tried to fight you. This guy did neither. That was weird.

Either way, it was not like there were zero other options in this maze. There were plenty of branching tunnels, but they hadn’t encountered any others with a light source, or other signs of life, yet.

Just cobwebs, bugs, dust, dryness, cold… all around…

At Igniy’s suggestion to approach the light, Rickidi acknowledged the idea. Following her lead continued to work out well! She spoke further, seeming to pose a question. He tried to waggle out the Silanbar body language in response, but it wasn’t easy. “Ri-ki-dee” he said slowly. “Rickidi.” He had more names, some of which he even remembered, but that one was the main one. “Pretty brownie bluey?” he repeated mysteriously. “Pretty pretty.” he said again. Just a weird critter all round. He hushed for a moment, his thoughts unknown.

But the depths and the quiet had a way of forcing even the strangest of species to try to fill the silence.

“You got any scare? Got worry-worry?” he asked. No mockery, no sign that it was an attempt to shame her. A genuine question. Rickidi would sometimes try to ask the same question of the myriad slave-soldiers he’d be partnered with on a mission. Their pale, drawn faces, helmeted, lit by the dropship’s low lights. The sounds of fighting outside, and the smell of fear inside. Of course they were afraid, who wouldn’t be? But sometimes, talking about it… made the fear back down just a little.

“Ryeekeedee~” The creature parroted, pronounced it totally wrong, but it was a start.
The other part of the conversation required a little more thought. A little more pragmatism towards how long the two might actually survive, or stick together even if they did. Still wasn’t like they knew all that much about one another.

“Igniy dun’ wanna go back, Ryekidi.” Apprehensive, judging by the way she licked her teeth and refused to look directly at him, now. “Dun’ want to say here till’ they don’ feel like fixin’ us, dun’ feel like feedin’ us…”

Too much experience in the tone of that last bit, running extra spiteful and cold.

Actually, it was a bit too quiet in general. Were they so deep underground that they couldn’t hear the explosions?... The dust wasn’t jumping up and down anymore… Maybe since that last big kaboom?...

He harumbled at her answer; a harumble being something in between a ‘harumph’ and a ‘grumble’. “Yeh.” he said, thoughtful. “Notta nice thing.”

He reached out with a free paw, feeling the wall as they walked. “Wassa shooter for them. Soldier-things. Fight’n’die kinda life. Get fed, yes. Getta quick-patch, maybe, but…” Many had been hurt in ways that a quick fix couldn’t heal. Lost limbs on a slave-soldier meant a suicide mission, or a battlefield execution in some cases. Getting someone fitted for a prosthetic took time and money, and the Kuvexians liked to invest as little as possible into their bullet-catchers and cheapest shock troops.

“Bosses do that. Ask lots, give little, eh? Take-take. Someday not care no more, or forget and leave.” He shrugged. “You ahh… fight?” he asked, gesturing toward his neck, to where her pit-fighter markings began on her own body.

Igniy made a sort of squeak of sudden self-consciousness with their nose, flexing it, whilst unsuccessfully trying to pull their tattered gray crew short down further over their girthy belly. It was almost certainly made for a smaller sort of species.

“Ah… erm… it was… it was…” A stuttering tone, which sounded kind of glitchy and weird coming through the auto-translator box. She ended up body signaling one-handed, whilst the other clung onto his shoulder in the dark underground alley. <”Igniy was trained for bit in machine. But say bad word-things about bluebloods. They put me… Place where Silanbar fight Silanbar for… Well, them own money I guess…”>

Now, this was the bit where they’d normally lie and say they were an amazing fighter, that killed like twenty other big, scary lizards.

<“But… It not like normal fighting. For us kinds. Not like you see. They want… Igniy put machine in Silanbar, see?... Want me to keep alive, to be better at fight… for cheat… So… Igniy brain is reason why not fight so often, but…”>

Of course, they’d been thrown into some pretty bad things for disobedience on occasion. But at some point, it would seem she’d had ‘money worth’ of some kind… And the way that Rickidi was talking about his own experiences, well… She really didn’t know if he or the pit fighters had it worse. She didn’t know why she felt guilty about all of it, their personal involvement.

<“You must be really good and strong, you alive? Rickidi not so bad?... Bluebloods not give you healer-person, that don’t mean Rickidi have no worth…”>

‘Real’ worth? What did she want to say here? Wasn’t money a worth? It was confusing. It felt bad to think about.

 

[Hollander]

The source of the light was getting closer now. It looked like some kind of modern metal hatch, with a ladder that came down. It was completely open. There was no noise coming from anywhere, except their own foot-claws rapidly scratching against the old dirt-stone.

‘Machine in Silanbar’ she had said… Rickidi had seen cybernetics before. Metal and body fusing, wires and veins and cables and arteries. Rarely on their side though, usually on the enemies they’d been sent to fight. Rickidi didn’t know them by name, but when they’d faced Nepleslians, he’d seen their body modifications; eyes, legs, arms. So Igniy had done such work in the past? Helping the blue-bloods with their games.

He was trying to imagine what that must’ve been like, for her, for the Silanbar she modified, when the topic returned to him. Ahh, his favorite topic of discussion… Right? Wasn’t it, normally, precisely the kind of thing he wanted to discuss? A great hero, a brilliant fighter, a teller of tales of success and glory… But he hesitated. That great hero and brilliant fighter was here, on this horrible dry world, after having shot a blue-blood officer. Not even a BIG officer either, just some Lieutenant. Was he alive because he was good and strong?

Or was he alive because he’d avoided getting hurt badly enough to be left on the battlefield to bleed out the rest of the way? How many times had Rickidi survived because he’d ducked behind someone else who was too scared and too slow to get out of the line of fire… Lying about himself should’ve been easy, but, right then, in that dry and dusty and strangely quiet tunnel, he couldn’t do it.

<”Alive.”> he confirmed, at least, switching to signaling as well. He couldn’t confirm the rest.

The sniffed as they neared the hatch, coiling and uncoiling his long neck as he neared it. <“Lemme sneak-a-peek.”> he signed, taking the lead and moving to look through the hatchway, left and right, up and down.

The concept of what his eyes were being met with took a moment to get used to. After months of being overheated, caked in dirt and scratching himself on old rocks, the simple sight of a clean, furnished room was a dream-like experience to Rickidi’s dinosaur brain.

It was just a supply room of sorts, judging by the myriad machine parts mounted on green metal shelves- But it was clearly crewed by Kuvexians personally, judging from the polished white-metal cladding of the walls, embossed in fancy squares and hexagon patterns- White fluffy rugs on the floors- Mere door handles and lighting buttons festooned with small gemstones and glittering instructional script.

Blueblood house, then- But no bluebloods to be seen or heard.

Perhaps they rallied somewhere else, to deal with the commotion?

Igniy rubbed up against him, willing to wait for neither caution or euphoria. Stood with their tail on the floor and their legs against the underground walls, so she could push her head out into the open alongside his.

“Why’d they leave the hatch open?...”

<”Buncha you-stuff. Machine stuff.”> Rickidi signaled back to his teammate. <”People-free, notta nobody.”> He slithered in, tucking his tail in toward his body for a moment. He paused in before stepping on the white fluffy rug, looking down at it with wide eyes. “Pretty.” he said aloud. Gingerly, he extended a sore foot, pressing it down on the welcoming softness. It wasn’t immediately soothing, but it was FAR nicer than tromping around shoe-less on hard and unyielding earth. “Give-a-feel, this nicey-nice.” he said aloud to Igniy.

If it weren’t for the strange events that happened outside to precede this impromptu escape attempt, Rickidi would’ve been tempted to just lay down on the fluffy carpet and rest for a while. The desire was still there, but they had a mission to accomplish!

Igniy was less restrained and actually did flop down, doing a half-roll and threatening to take more than a thirty second rest. A natural, lingering suspicion still kept them from totally committing to that, though. Who knew when the actual owners were going to come back.

 

[Hollander]

Making a ‘ha-ruff’ sort of noise, the pale lizard worked themselves back into a low-standing hunch, and sniffed around for themselves.

To the left, they jutted at a well armored door with their nose-horn. “That box means no open. We need card of key-ness.”

The other entryway to the room was similarly sealed, and had a card-thing not too dissimilar… But it was on heavy reinforced hinges, on their side. The machine-brained silanbar got to work, scouting out the shelves for ways to abuse that.

It was noisy. A series of clattering thuds, dislodged drill bits and auto-hammers. Not enough energy left to be quick and stealthy, at the same time, probably.

And then… a knock.

Just a polite little tap, on the outside…

Igniy froze on the spot, eyes whaling in their sockets.

Rickidi was standing a bit closer, and could smell a faint gust of something aromatic, mixed in with… a foody kind of sweetness, maybe?...

“Heheh.” Rickidi chuckled, seeing Igniy surrender to the temptations of the snuggly carpet. She looked comfy down there, enjoying her half roll. She looked happy. His smile faded a bit as he considered joining her. Well… That’s an odd line of thought. Lie down with another Silanbar on a fluffy carpet? Weird. Too weird.
Igniy rose up into a hunch then, sniffing around. She spoke about a box, and a card, and a key. “Don’t gotta that.” Rickidi muttered, briefly checking his pockets just to make sure. “I-”


He halted at the sound of the knock, but only for a moment. The carpet made for a perfect stealth-mat, muffling his steps as he moved toward the door that had sounded the startling little tap. Body language waggled out in motions of head and claw and body. <”What that? Wanna whack? Thwack? Hit-head?”> Rickidi figured he’d go for a grapple, try to entwine a foe like he was wrapping up a fat-worm back home. He headed next to the door, listening… Would they come in? What did Igniy think they should do?

A second knock came just a pace later, just a tiny bit harder than the first time.

Igniy blinked, found a power drill, and started slotting a rather large bit into the mouth of it.

A third knock.

“Master?...” Just a small peeping tone.


Rickidi also blinked. That… didn’t sound like a voice modulated through Kuvexian Power armor. He reviewed the situation… The door couldn’t open for them, because they had no key-card-key-thing. But… Outside? Maybe that speaker could get INSIDE?

Taking a chance, Rickidi reached over and knocked a nearby metal thing off of the shelf, sending it tumbling into the center of the carpet. That might prompt this person to come inside and investigate, and earn themselves a wrasslin’!

He heard a rattle, and some distant mutterings, and then silence again. Just a bit of heavy breathing, somebody unsettled and nervous, standing on the other side.

Igniy was approaching with their drill, secretly imagining some rather sick and nasty things they’d love to do to one of those bastard bluebloods, right here on their stupid fancy carpet. That’s what happened when you gave somebody literal decades to get real creative with their daydreams.

<”Ma-by I dr-ll, yo- chase?”> The body movement thing didn’t work too great with occupied hands… But she was pretty obviously lining it up to make short work of the hinges, and hoping that Rickidi would spring out?

They didn’t exactly have an infinite amount of time to hang around.

The thumpy thumps of something falling on the carpet hadn’t convinced the outsider to come in… Igniy’s idea seemed to be to use the tool she had to open the door. That made sense! Rickidi figured that maybe stalling the person on the outside would be a wise move, lest they alert guards or… something. He tried to remember some words in the Kuvexian tongue. He’d heard it more than a few times, barked out on loudspeakers in space stations while he and his kin waiting in shipping containers. There were things they’d say to each other over their comms systems too, orders to the low-ranking Kuvexian commanders who oversaw the cannon fodder from a sneering distance.

Doing his best, Rickidi croaked out a couple words he was pretty sure he remembered.

“Over! Send. Attack-send.” he managed, giving Igniy a sign that he was quite proud of himself. He braced, ready for Igniy to start her work on the door, or for the one outside who had said ‘Master’ to open it themselves.

More grumbling outside. Quite possibly a sign of nervous confusion.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Igniy jiggled the tops of their ears as if he was making some kind of weird, alien noise, but quickly occupied themselves with doing something sensible. They took the drill bit out, and replaced it with a screwdriver head, so they could low-power start removing the screws without any more sharp, concerning noises.

The person on the other side hadn’t set an alarm off already, and that was a good sign, right? Perhaps they were the kind of rank where they weren’t allowed to? Bluebloods were kinda like that.

“You’re not my master…” The unknown voice decided, more firmly. “...Who are you?”

More words. More words! Maybe different ones this time? What else would the Kuvexians say… “Sssslave?” Rickidi said, again in that tongue he half-remembered. They’d said that plenty of times. And what else… “Bodies.” Yeah, that was good, whatever that was.

Oh! He thought of something else he could do. Sometimes, people liked it when you did the same things they did. He reached out and tapped on the door, just like the person outside had done. <”Let’s see what they make of that!”> Rickdidi signaled to his partner. His eyes followed her work for a second, seeing that she was removing the screw-things. She was good! These were neat things! He couldn’t have done what she was doing. Wow!

Igniy was very confused about what Rickidi was trying to do, in turn. Most lizards could lie about how strong they were of course, so she kind of got it conceptually- But to use words like you were trying to pick a lock, trying to fish for the correct words to make another person’s brain work wrong… That was really strange. Could it actually work?

The door was starting to creak, as the number of screws holding the big metal brackets on were reduced. The top of it was starting to sway inwards slightly, and the top hinge hung in the empty air.

“You’re… not one of those gross Silanbar things, are y-you?” The voice questioned. “If… if you’re one of those, I’m not supposed to let you out…”

Oh, Rickidi didn’t like the sound of that… Yet another someone who was supposed to keep them locked away? Granted, they’d correctly identified him as ‘gross’, but, still… <”Gonna rip it!”> Rickdidi signalled. He placed one hand on one side, and another on the other. Rather than just try to heft the thing as though he were Karagad, he called on his old worm-tangler muscles, trying to twist the thing away, using the natural wiggly-squirminess of his draconic form rather than just raw power. He could, at least, try to open it enough so Igniy could rush out there, and maybe do… some big-brain thing!

It worked uniquely well. The tension of pushing the door sideways was enough to break the screws using the object’s own weight, immediately pelting the two of them with a sudden return to hot, warm daylight.

The thing on the other side of the door shrieked loudly, almost falling over themselves in shock- A spindly wee brown thing, hairy all over, three eyes, horns. It had very fancy clothes, some kind of white frilly jacket-bow and a long set of ‘leg curtains’ rather than practical pants.

Their hands bore a tray of silver cups with a viscous red liquid threatening to fly everywhere.

Igniy obliged, jumping over the ruined door, and immediately headbutting the diminutive creature square in the face. She did indeed use the brain for something.

“No look in eye!” The stockier dinosaur held the smaller thing up. One webbed claw covering it’s entire face, the other lifting up both legs sideways, like she was carrying a prized worm-catch. “It looks fancy, but it does brain-sting!”

An odd look, eyes narrowing, teeth just slightly parting, gathering their attentions towards their dusty, looming compatriot. She’d actually beat something up! Did he see? How powerful and strong she was!?

“...W-what… what do I do with it now, Reekeedee?...”

One of them! She-deers. Yes, he’d seen them many times before… Had been led by some, served alongside others. Lean, long-limbed ungulates, three-eyed servants of the Kuvexians. Not quite slaves, like the Silanbar and the Skrumpos and the four-armed things and the… too many others. But these deer ones, he remembered their power armor, too, sneaky, allowing them to quite nearly disappear on a battlefield, shrouding them from the enemy until it was too late for them. And their eye, and the stink they could let out that dig things to your brain. Freaky.

Holding the door off to the side, Rickidi inclined his head into the room they’d come out off. “In there.” he suggested. If they put her in the room, they could drop the door back in place. He doubted the spindly little critter could lift the door like he was doing.

Assuming Igniy played along, he let the door slide closed, grinning at his partner. “You didda good! Glad we saved you-head for im-por-tant. She say ‘Eeep!’ You say BAP!” With the last bit of onomatopoeia, he thrust his head forward into the air, mimicking what Igniy had done. He leaned down and retrieved the drill where Igniy had dropped it during her attacking rush, and he turned to her, figuring she’d be able to make use of it again. He took a look around, blinking against the return of the light. Where the hell were they now?

Igniy wasn’t sure what they thought about keeping a suspicious fur-skin alive, one that might be loyal to the Kuvexians… But they’d never really seen them do one of the more horrifying jobs of the empire, which made them wonder what exactly had happened to earn the species the special prestige.

It was true that they made an ideal hostage, too, though.

“Fine. It is mine frein’s choice that you stay alive.” The pale lizard squawked through their automatic throat-box. “Dun’ make Igniy angry again. Stay in this room ‘till we says no. Undastan?”

The creature was vibrating, sweating, making strange smells. Heck knew it if actually understood.

Haruff-ing, Igniy chose to just roll it into the room, and then help Rickidi prop the heavy door back into place. If it somehow died by itself, well, not much she could do about it. She wasn’t even a good Silanbar docto-healer.

There was a small curving deck around them now, with an open terrace looking out into the desert. The blistering sun was getting just a bit lower. Orange crags spread out in all directions, more jagged and unruly than the plain white sands of their captive compound and former home.

That place was visible deeper down into the valley- Suspiciously quiet, with a single long smoke plume rising upwards. It looked like there were a bunch of extra black oblong shapes, but the glare and heat haze made specifics hard to make out.

Upwards, higher in the cliffs, away from the sun, the rocks became grayer, but no less dry. A strange glimmer seemed to catch in the space between three of the larger peaks, but it was difficult to tell if it was buildings, or just some kind of reflective rocks.
Rickidi was disturbed from this examination of the world by a sudden, repeated scraping sound.

Igniy was licking the red liquid beverage off the stones of the patio, going between each of the fallen, cracked glasses and sticking their long pink tongue inside. Took a minute to figure out that the metal cylinder was the real motherlode.

Messily, she took the glasses and poured Rickidi a drink. A simple pleasure, far too long a mere daydream.

<”It is good. Reekeedee should hydrate hims bodymeats too.~”>

It smelled very sweet and cloy. Some fruit from a far off planet.

To the one side, some really fancy looking habitation blocks. To the other, a hab-pod with a purely metallic interior, smelling strongly of food.

No sign of other living things. Or a vehicle that they’d need to get to, or from, a little pocket oasis like this…

“Oooh.” he said, which was a form of thanks, if one were imaginative. He took the poured glass, holding up the left side of his face to it, then the right. He stared at Igniy through it, and the red liquid within the translucent glass transformed her. She was big and bloated now, and her white-and gray became pink-and-maroon. Rickidi chuckled, not knowing that from Igniy’s perspective, the glass made his eye look huge and pink in turn. He took a messy slurp of it, licking his chops afterward.

<”Oh that’s a nice-nice. Goes down wiggly.”> he agreed, taking another drink.

He was finally feeling a moment of some kind of peace, up here on the deck. There was no schedule to keep. No rocks to break or pick up. No claxons blaring and no speakers issuing demands. Even the bright and evaporative sunlight seemed less oppressive. He had company, too. Company that didn’t, at least the moment, plan on killing him or stealing his footwear!

<”You a good one, Igniy.”> he decided to tell her. Lie, truth, who could tell? <”We good. Was a… attack-in-the-sky. Shooty war, you heard. Now quiet… Don’t know what to do-do next.”> He leaned against the wall, trying to rest for a moment, thinking. <”Gotta get away-way. Dun wanna keep rock-getting. You neither wanna, Rickidi think.”>

Igniy made a clack-clacking sound, both feeling out the aftertaste, and controlling their hidden agitations. Still kind of found Rickidi both cute and weird, and that made them suspicious that this could still all be part of some long game. Too easy to slip into daydreams.

Maybe, at the end of the day, Silanbar were simply tempered to accept that only brutal monsters were really honest? The only ones you could trust to tell you they were going to kill you?

<”Too bad no-stay here. It’s hot, but stuff… Thingies Igniy would like make her thingies…”> Another long slurp, distracting themselves from thoughts of trust and violence. <”Make some of them Reekeedee’s stuff too, Igniy thinks?...”>
Between both huge dinosaurs, the nice liquid didn’t last long.

<”Dun… Dun wanna see Reekeedee get dry climbin’ up that big rock.”> Narrowed those hooded, cynical red eyes, looking right into his wild brown peepers now, light tail-slaps against the concrete offering short snaps of brooding emotion. <”Igniy not want to hurt Reekeedee. Not want see die… But things still bad… Undastan?... You… Igniy… We… Either us… Just get out if you can, no matters, huh?...”>

Had to be realistic about both of their chances. That was just life at this point.

<”...Us… should grab stuff…”>

////////

For an hour they lounged, eating fresh meat and fine sauce packets from the kitchen storage units. Kuvexian military rations were extravagant compared to most races, but for a pair of prisoner-slaves used to eating five time reprocessed filth, it was an exquisite period of time that felt totally detached from reality.

The furniture was comfortable. The air conditioning was automatic and pleasant. Even the Elfrin servant remained meek and unwilling to cause trouble.

Only problem was, the few computer apparatus the outpost had… Well, the technology rather remained beyond either Rickidi’s or Igniy’s mental ability to hack or unlock. Which meant they were trapped in this paradise, as much as the prison.

Was it time to chance a trek across the superheated wasteland, as the sun was finally reclining down into a more tolerable level?... Or perhaps they should see how far those dark, twisting labyrinths under the dirt went?...

As distant and cut off as the terminal seemed, it only took an instant for that reality to be shattered.

A gold-hulled shuttle swept in on throbbing gravity plating, making a rapid landing and spewing forth a half platoon of armored Kuvexian troopers into the courtyard. At least six looked injured to the point of needing to be stretchered out. There was a massive argument raging between the two commanding officers, audible as muffled yelling through their opaque angular helms, presumably carrying to each other chiefly via radio transmission.

After a bunch of furious pointing, four soldiers eventually went back into the interior and retrieved a metal palette, containing a highly restrained, whip-thin, viscous looking white Silanbar. Fastened into a heavy metal A-frame that forced them into a kneeling position, the androgynous creature was unconscious and bearing a burnt orange uniform, looking and smelling like they had seen recent severe combat. Though they were covered in scars and had only one functioning arm, in the form of a baroque metal talon, the soldiers seemed uniquely afraid of them and backed off the millisecond the palette was dropped down onto the earth.

Helmets ripped free, Rickidi and Igniy got just a moment’s worth of context and conversation, from their hiding place in the ransacked living room-
“We should just kill this thing now! It sliced Harudan’s neck clean through!” He barked in severe anger, Kuvexian-tongue sounding uniquely petty and offensive in this form. “Revenge is revenge!”

“For the last time, we don’t know where it came from.” The slightly older, more grizzled looking one responded. “That means we need to send it for physical examination. That’s protocol.”

“Fuck protocol! What are we even doing here!? We all know how things are going, an!-”

Just as the first of the soldiers were about to storm back into their own abode, and notice the mess that had been made inside… There was a noise that made them stop in their tracks.

A low, brooding roar, leading up into a skronk of malice and fury. Not coming from the strange imprisoned Silanbar, but, no… Just to the east of the compound… Thudding footsteps audible even over the continuous pulse of the shuttle motors…

Smashing through a gold paneled corner and letting off a bellowing shriek, it’s fire-red hair rippled along with a breath that seemed to melt air in it’s wake… Karagad, that huge, monstrous bastard!- Strode into a storm of panicked, spattering fire- Despite numerous apparent pre-existing injuries, carrying the corpses of two decimated soldiers like ragdolls.

For all the looming threat that the patrol had offered, their morale went to hell- And suddenly it was an open range, a scene of complete pandemonium where things could really go either way-

There was the power of technology… and then there were primordial, savage things, simply too angry to die when logic ordered them to do so.

Oh, but those sauce packets had been heavenly compared to the reconstituted sawdust that had been their regular fare… Rickidi wondered whether he’d dream dreams of giant sauce-filled worms, squirming around, their guts full of blood-red ketchup or salty, salty soy sauce. He’d spent the hour feasting, of course, but he’d also spent it ruminating on Igniy’s words. Gettin’ dry was bad for both of them. Being hurt and dying was, too. Together, they were still in deep trouble, but… Being alone and in deep trouble felt far, far worse. Alone, who could Rickidi tell tall tales to?

With the arrival of the gold-hulled shuttle, Rickidi felt his heart drop deep into his guts, sinking into a cold sea of fear. Again… they’d take him in again… Maybe finally killing him this time, realizing he was more trouble than he was worth, even if he did haul in his weight in weird yellow rocks every day! Watching Rickidi with slanted eyes, he tried to listen in on their speech, but despite his years of service he only knew a few words in their tongue.

It didn’t take a polyglot to understand they’d brought another captured Silanbar down. He could see it, could see a fellow of creature of Skorlamech down there, bound like they were a deadly weapon. Rickidi squinted at them briefly, then ducked back into hiding again; he didn’t recognize them. Whoever they were, they had failed. They had been defeated and captured. For just a moment, Rickidi found himself discarding that person… Incompetence or weakness or some other problem had led to the Kuvexians commanding them as they did so many others. That Silanbar down there was…

Rickidi blinked.

They’d gotten themselves defeated and captured… but then, so had he. So had Igniy. So had every other being on this wretched, dry rock. Were they worth less, or even worthless, because of that failure, that loss? Was he?

Big questions sometimes had a tendency to be dashed away by an unexpected turn of events, and today, that turn took the furious form of Karagad! Karagad the killer! Karagad the crusher! Rickidi almost wanted to cheer the monstrous bastard who, not long ago, he’d plotted to assassinate. The scene got Rickidi’s heart pounding, and the blood and the food and the hydration fueled a strange sense of something indescribable. Obligation? Motivation? “Urg… Drat!” he growled, slapping his tail on the floor and balling his webbed paws up into angry fists. “Gotta… Gotta thing! Do thing! Igniy!!”

Unable to express himself (a rarity), he stood, uncaring for whether he’d be spotted or not. Dammit, he was feeling something, realizing something. He’d hated Karagad for pissing in the water trough, but that huge monster was fighting. He’d thought Igniy was a weird, little sneaky one probably with plots and schemes, but she had been brave and careful and smart. And for a moment, Rickidi had judged this captive down there as a failure worthy of disdain, but they had all been made failures by the Kuvexians, time and time again. They still were alive. They still were real. “Igniy!” he said again. “Gotta save!”

With a mad snarl, he leapt into the fray!

 

[Hollander]

Similarly overtaken by a ferocious appetite for liberation and revenge, Igniy leapt into action alongside him. Clutching their power drill to their chest, they lopped and bounded on three short limbs, huffing and snarling like the prehistoric monster they were.

Ten of the gold-armoured figures were busy trying to get a good angle on Karagad, darting into the compound or firing blindly from behind the extravagant pots of garden plants- Two more were officers parking orders into their coms, trying desperately to ask for backup- But that still left four of the quad eared, cobalt goblin-men rapidly dragging crates as defenses in front of their well-contained prisoner.

Yellow-green bolts flew in Rickidi’s direction from beetle-shelled bullpup rifles, energizing the air with a smell of ozone. The bearers were clearly panicked and confused, but still wearing some respectable second-line equipment, spiked golden shoulder pads with a kind of beige padded undersuit.

Igniy didn’t make the charge across the patio. One bolt struck them in the right knee, then another in the chest, and then another in the head- Causing the pale, rotund thing to roll forwards like a wrecking ball of lizard meat, before finally collapsing into a quivering, agonized mess…

She wasn’t blown to bits, though. Which logically said these overpaid and under experienced bluebloods had changed their weapons to a stun setting at some point, and had been too caught off guard to think of changing back to killing force.

The bleached bone wyvern in the stockade was unblinking, silent, furious. Pit fighter markings, just like Rickidi’s short compatriot. Their singular red eye seemed to flash with mixed humiliation, but also patient, calculating calm. They weren’t going to beg Rickidi to free them, even if their elongated muzzle was not sealed behind a cage of hardened space-metal… Wasn’t that a little overkill, for creatures that did not use their mouth to speak?

Didn’t look like anyone familiar from the compound… That many scars implied continuous medical treatment, and nobody around here was liable to spend that kind of money on a dirty, half-amputated swamp creature…

Sickening as it might be for beings with a different life and a different set of morals, Igniy taking the hits meant this: if they were shooting at Igniy, they weren’t shooting at Rickidi. Instincts too well-ingrained to ignore bore him forward even as he left Igniy behind, and hours later he’d remember this moment with guilt. He’d urged her onward, hyped her up to join him. How many times had he done that? Taken a shaking fellow slave by the shoulder and whispered words of encouragement so they’d join him out there. “You gonna make it! You fine. I protect you.”, he’d lied. And when the fighting had started, they had caught the bullets or the energy bolts or the gouts of fire and died, and he had survived. Every time. He’d keep surviving until he didn’t.

Karagad had burst through a wall, carrying two slain soldiers with him, and he’d hurled one of them near enough to where Rickidi was dashing, even as bolts struck the lifeless dust around him. The soldier’s body inside the suit was… messy, to say the least, given that Karagad had probably just grabbed him and swung him into things until he stopped moving. Any weaponry he’d been holding was surely long gone, flung out of his grasp, but some of the golden suits had scabbards and holsters. Their suits sometimes had swords made of light, but these could be built-in to the suit, impossible to remove… Or it could have a battery, and Rickidi could get a weapon! Or a backup pistol, still strapped in at the hip or in the center of the back.

‘Try not-think.’ he was telling himself. ‘No-think Igniy. No-think.’

If there was one thing this planet had, it was caustic, overwhelming dust. Gouts of it exploded around Rickidi in the wake of the sporadic gunfire, covering momentarily whilst he rifled through the golden soldier’s jostled and dented equipment. Igniy disappeared from view, last seen crawling on all fours with a look of desperate sickness…

The soldier was still alive, too- Conscious, squirming, yelling- But compacted and broken enough so that they could only flail feebly at the wiry amber-teal speckled lizard.

Objects in the front pockets were useless. Some little plastic card with numbers and gold squares on it... Little box-battery things, presumably for the beetle-rifle this blueblood no longer had on his person… A little glass box thing with a crack in it, just a fuzzy little screen…

Ah, yes- On his back, some kind of glossy oblong handgun. It was oversized and possibly a war trophy, with a big rotating cylinder that loaded solid slugs. More importantly, it looked easy to use, and would fit in Rickidi’s scaly, webbed hands!

Not much time to play with it, though.

Just below the cacophony of gunfire and constant roaring within the maintenance pods, the sound of approaching boots echoed into the ex war-lizard’s befouled triangular ears- Two of the soldiers, their visors gleaming in infra-red mode, bearing rifles with intent to finish Rickidi off!

Muffled yelling, rapid examination of the situation… The one in the rear was punching his gun for some reason, the side-computer making a weird dysfunctional clunk sound…
The one in front though- No time- He would be on Rickidi any second!-

“Come come, give give…” Rickidi was muttering, easily batting away the dazed soldier’s weakened defenses. This wasn’t a moment to feel squeamish about disarming the wounded and dying… With a throaty cry of success, Rickidi pulled free the war trophy, his eyes flickering over it as he got a general idea of its operation. On the battlefield, the cheap weapons and equipment he’d originally been issued hadn’t lasted long. A slave-soldier who wanted to survive learned to scavenge and collect, and keep backups of backups of backups… And when it came to guns, most of them had a shooty end that was pretty easy to discover, if you knew how.

Little time was available for discovery though, as the soldier in front was rushing forward! Rickidi slung himself into a curling roll, unfurling around the advancing enemy’s legs like a coiling trap. He wouldn’t try to muscle the Kuvexian; in power armor, that would probably be a losing battle, despite the fact that Rickidi was a prehistoric dinosaur and decently strong, to boot. Instead, he just wanted to shove the soldier’s feet along the dust and send them hurtling onto their back. If he could get them down, he could jam the revolver up under their jaw and… try to make it a quick end. Taking him captive wouldn’t be possible, and trying to knock him out… There was little chance he’d be able to, little chance he could guarantee it, and you couldn’t easily disarm someone in power armor. No, he’d have to kill him. Have to, have to, have to…

As well engineered as the blocky weapon was, the explosive potential of something so physical had a hell of a kick- It flashed more than he’d expected, saving his eyes from the grotesque spraying wetness of the blow he had dealt. It didn’t seem like the golden armour itself had been breached at all, but the seals ruptured from overpressure, and there was only a few moments of spasm before the alien went totally solid.

Felt like an eternity, but was only a split second- The other aggressor had given up on their rifle, drawing both a gleaming pistol, and some kind of vibrating, blurring dagger, which made a shrill keening noise.

The Kuvexian yelled something muffled in anger- Almost certainly swearing over their dead comrade- Before moving to line up a shot-

 

[Hollander]

The report from the revolver had left Rickidi half-blind and mostly deaf, but reptilian instincts could wave big signs and shout with the best of them; an enemy was approaching! Rickidi writhed like his life depended on it, twisting his now-dead armor-clad victim on top of himself like a gruesome kind of cover. A Silanbar was taller and larger than any scrawny, blueberry-skinned Kuvexian, but the power armor often doubled their physical size; the corpse-shield might block one shot, maybe two… Rickidi would have to aim for another headshot?

Rickidi had decent aim, but too many factors were working against him. Clouds of dust, a stinging pain in the paw that had held the revolver, a damned heavy armored corpse, stress, the lurking horror and sorrow at the apparent death of Igniy, weeks of dehydration and misery, decades of uncertainty and self-doubt… Through all that, could he really hit a moving, living target at an uncertain distance with an unfamiliar weapon? Probably not…

But an unmoving target… Such as the metal stilts of an a-frame… THAT he could hit! And from this odd angle, if he lined up his shot right, the tremendously powerful mass-’driven’ bullet might even knock out two of the metal stilts. Was that enough to get that Silanbar, a clear threat to these Kuvexians, free? Would that be enough of a distraction, equalling the clear and present living disaster that was Karagad?

Placing his bets, Rickidi aimed, trying to make sure the captive’s tail wasn’t in the way... And fired!

The entire situation was a cacophony of angry noises and screaming direct threats. The booming rage of Karagad might have been slowing down a little- Was he running out of targets? Or were they actually doing damage to him?

In the more immediate, furious and intimate scale, the standing enemy soldier was confused and stalled by Rickidi’s gambit, unwilling to risk hitting their possibly still living comrade- But the dinosaur was still having a gun waved at him, on the other hand, which was a pretty massive distraction.

The shot… hit… well, it directly impacted the captured pit fighter in a shower of sparks, who made a sudden shriek of confusion and juddering panic. The frame somewhat moved with them, allowing them to rise from their kneel- Had the bullet collided with the monster’s metal hand, and then weakened the restraints by ricochet?-

There were still two guards standing watch over him, raising their rifles, whilst they jolted upright further, and threatened to snap the singular bolt still holding the Silanbar down to the palette… Even a primitive space dinosaur could read the body language, and the expression of ‘Is following orders, and keeping this thing alive, worth dying over?’

Eager to eliminate the number of variables in this problem, the soldier closest to Rickidi shook themselves back out of hesitation. Their gun was primed, and had the more vibrant, energized green of a weapon several layers higher than stun mode…

Like a sea creature rising from an orange squall, Karagad was suddenly looming. His massive webbed hands casually grasped both the golden armored one’s torso and arms, crumble-shredding the man with an effortless, horrifying brutality. It was almost comedic, the way he ripped the holy, angelic blueblood into bits like a doll made of tin foil.

A volley of fire came from the guards, blowing a fleshy chunk from the behemoth’s shoulder, and showing the glint of wet metal underneath- Not just a huge freak of nature then, but a modified, cyborgized weapon.

He roared so hard it made the inanimate broken pavement tiles seem to jump up and flee.

The pale one finally broke their restraints, just in time to dodge the lobbed return salvo of corpse parts- Disappearing into the surrounding ash clouds as the carnage around Rickidi reached an all new fever pitch.

The golden ones kept firing and firing. But Karagad just would not die.

Not yet, anyway… In time, all things died, and so too would Karagad, no matter how much metal someone had stuck inside him.

The thought of surgically-embedded circuits helped the panicked, blue-gore-encrusted Rickidi remember his initial ally, Igniy. The lop-eared creature had shared hints of their past work putting machines into Silanbar… With the immediate threat ‘dis-armed’ by Karagad, Rickidi squirmed out from underneath the heavy body, pistol still in paw. He’d used the same hand to fire it twice, and that last shot had really wrenched something in his wrist muscles, and tore one of the already-dessicated webbings between his fingers.

The scene remained familiar. A mad, messy battlefield, screams and groans and shouts of anger, reports of weapons fire and the sounds of heavy booted feet stomping on the ground. Yes, he’d been here before, hadn’t he? Many times. The sun was sometimes a different color, or there were orbital station walls or starship corridors or just a vast, open field of void-black space pinpricked with starlight… But it was the same cacophony of noise and death.

Rickidi found himself doing something different this time around, once again. Crawling low, like the horrifying serpentine beast that he was, he made his way through the carnage and the dust, trying to find where Igniy had fallen early in the fight. He couldn’t see them; there was too much junk in the air, and even their distinctive form seemed to blend in with every other dust-covered object now strewn about the place. He couldn’t hear them; even if they weren’t dead or unconscious, how could one voice carry above the racket? But he could smell them! They’d been close to each other, awkwardly so, in dirt-puts and tunnels and Kuvexian storage rooms, and the scent of the white-and-gray big-brain remained fixed in his olfactory memory.

Following that, he’d try to find them, to see if they were dead or alive, and if the latter, get them to safety. He might rush back into this melee afterward, join the formerly-bound one in the chaos, but… He felt he had a responsibility to Igniy.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

The faint lingering pheromones of Igniy’s presence first led to a low brick wall with disarranged metal containers of garbage, then around the side of the complex and under the framework of some massive, metallic drums on rigid stilts. They were odorless, maybe containing liquid? Dusk was setting in, and the dust wasn’t entirely omnipresent, so it made sense as a hiding place.

On the other side of the masonry, Rickidi could hear the radio-squawk of hunkered down bluebloods yelling at each other… And beyond that, the savage groan and crack of metal as Karagad began systematically tearing the sky-vehicle apart…

Perhaps the insane brute thought he could stop the Kuvexians from running away to get reinforcements? Perhaps they were so lost to rage and revenge that anything gold was simply a target to them now?

Either way, the pandemonium settled into a temporary stalemate, with both sides apparently making preparations to finish the other off…

The smell of Igniy’s body pores led to a rather pitiful indentation of fear, just a sidewinder’s rolling, feeble crawl of tracks…

But then a new smell overpowered Rickidi’s nose, panging his prehensile nostrils like a noxious gas. It was a sweet honey perfume, but overpowered into something disarming, brain-rendering, nose-blinding-

The source was a long, lithe Silanbar form clinging to the side of a tank above him.

Cloud-coloured, a dangerous ribbon of sinew and malice, with an attractively sweeping muzzle, but just one baroque, twisted metal claw in the place of real fleshy arms. The plumage of hair was fine and miraculous, gifting the wraith with a formless, ghostly quality. They had pit fighter skin idents like Igniy, but were polar opposite in flavor. Blue bands of plastic belting held a tattered black bodyglove to a muscular arcing torso. A swelling in the chest combined with an impolite bump above the leg region made any guess at a natural gender completely hopeless.

<”...This one is Soronza…”> They sign-talked, red eye predatory and unblinking. It was hard to tell if their limbs had an accent, or if it was just innate awkwardness from the missing arm. <”You smart break out… But we leave now… This ship not swim to space… We find… another way…”>

Rickidi couldn’t help but recoil when he finally noticed the lurking danger above him, holding on the side of the tank above. It took him a pair of seconds to recognize that they were the previously-captive Silanbar, but in that brief blink of time, what he saw was not Soronza. He saw a vision of some strange Silanbar spirit… A poltergeist that was said to once stalk the Fat Worm Swamp and drain the blood of lone Silanbar. It was a terrible phantasm, haunting and wild, and its victims were left soulless and pale in the muck, too weak to fight off the hungry beasts of the bog.

But this was no ghost. It was Soronza, as their sign-talk shortly revealed. Their… look was… Distressing. An eye that failed to nictitate, that remained open, watchful. Could he be sure this thing that had been bound wasn’t a spirit?

Rickidi wiggled and danced back. <”Yes, Karagad…”> he gestured with a pistol-holding paw toward the cyber-demon in the midst of its rampage… <”He gonna smash until he dies.”> Rickidi sniffed. <”Rickidi is this one. Gotta friend, Igniy. Like a… stretched rabbit gator.”> His effort to pantomime the Silanbar ‘words’ for rabbit and gator might be humorous in safer circumstances. <”Gotta see if they… alive.”> He sniffed again, meaning to try to spot his lost ally.

Soronza rapped their claw against the iron support, and repressed a noise like a chemical engine trying to start, whilst their toothy maw extended into a menacing smile.

<”Secret of Silanbars, big ones not need learn to hide…”> Despite the mirth, the singular eye was cold in expression. <”That means, real dangerous one is us, gem-speckled one.”>

The rustle of movement beyond the wall stole a bit of attention, but the ethereal snake didn’t dismount, merely jolted their head upwards and flexed their nostrils. It seemed like the soldiers were repositioning, trying to creep slowly despite their cumbersome tech-armor… Perhaps they were trying to flee? Or surround Karagad? Did anyone who could have reported Rickidi’s existence actually survive?

A flowing wave of razor-silk, Soronza moved behind and on top of one of the liquid tanks, flattening themselves so they’d be invisible to anyone approaching around the far corner…

He found he’d really prefer it if Soronza would never smile like that again. A more naive Silanbar might’ve been glad this creature was dangerous and terrifying, for they were on the same side, right? But Igniy had sagely pointed out… An ally in one moment could backstab in the next, waiting for the moment of weakness. Rickidi, a liar in his core, tried to ‘lie’ about how this Soronza made him feel. He braced himself a bit, stamping his two sore feet on the dirt, and he meant to reply before…

Movement beyond the wall, and a reaction from Soronza. Something was coming around the corner? Rickidi had his pistol, and now this ethereal ally, but he hadn’t yet found Igniy and… they couldn’t take on an organized resistance. Soronza had been right. A ship… They needed a working ship… And someone with brains to make it go!

He sniffed again… Dammit, where was that goober?

Two gold-plated soldiers strode out of the gloom, weapons already raised and expecting an enemy of the scale-skinned variety… Though maybe not quite so soon.

A bounding blur, a glint of metal talons- Soronza was lashing out at the forward aggressor in a heart beat- Though their claw made no mark on the frame of the beetle-shelled rifle, it got them in close- A gurgling wheeze sound, accompanied by a wet spray of some steaming, transparent liquid- It smelled like pungent candy until the exact moment it shifted to burning metal, and the Kuvexian’s glossy faceplate blackened into a messy landscape of hot blisters.

It probably didn’t penetrate, but it didn’t need to- The first soldier screamed in panic and flailed randomly, whilst the second soldier completely flinched with shock-

Soronza hit the dirt just as the random, uncoordinated shots began flying-

Rickidi snarled, having no choice but to join in. He slithered sideways, looking like a slippery eel pulled out of the water and into the sunlight, as he swapped the pistol over to his non-dominant paw. These power-armored rent-a-soldiers weren’t going to be struck down by the shots of this cylinder-fed firearm, but they could at least be distracted or knocked off-balance. He fired an uncoordinated shot of his own as he moved, wanting to give himself time.

What it actually gave him time to do was register whatever the hell Soronza had just done. What was that?! Some kind of… killing vomit? A weird spit? Rickidi, recovering from having fired the third shot from the revolver, suddenly figured his ‘distraction shot’ hadn’t been necessary at all; acid spit was enough of a distraction. Reacting to the changes of the battlefield was essential for a good soldier, and though Rickidi was only a mediocre one, he had the instincts to do something.

With the idea of ‘focusing fire’ chief in his mind, he waggled forward toward the duo, wanting to rush the blinded Kuvexian during the confusion. He didn’t think he could kill him, but what he could do… Again summoning his old skillset, he applied his grappling strength to this Kuvexian’s leading leg, meaning to lift and twist the blinded one into his comrade. It might not topple either of them over, but if he could knock them into each other, it could give Soronza an opening, or it could give his own pistol an opening into a weak spot!

A frenetic dance, all four figures rapidly shifted weight and standing- Rickidi managed to stagger the soldier in front, causing them to fall backwards and fire his gun into the air, letting of a crackling chom-choom-chooomm sound- Then a thudding crack, their shoulder clattering into their comrade behind them, who was trying to reach around to get a bead on Soronza-

The pale lizard elbow dropped the extended arm, trying to break the elbow at the awkward angle, but couldn’t quite bust the advanced, space metal servos- In fact earning themselves a magnetically driven punch to the face, a left hook that couldn’t be blocked by the cyborg lizard.

Biting, kicking, thrashing, ungainly, that soldier and the ghost-snake struggled and wrestled at a stalemate, whilst the one with the burnt faceplate dropped, and tried to roll away…

As Rickidi’s grappled victim dropped to the ground, he let him go; he was blind and scrambling away, and in that exact moment it was better to let that foe retreat and deal with the more aggressive danger. Power armor or no, humanoid joints worked in the same ways. They bent, rotated, twisted, but they had their limits. When that soldier had flung their punch into Soronza, they had to move with it, leading with their fist, their forearm and elbow following, then their shoulder. All this momentum led into Soronza’s face, but Rickidi could do a little more with it. He leapt, jumping into the back of the punching arm and bringing the soldier around in a spin using the force of his own strike. If he could twist him just enough, he could tangle up his legs and send him down too!

In the rush, his revolver clattered to the dust, a Kuvexian boot kicking it away in a spinning cloud of dust!

The thing about power armor was, for all the advanced technology and refinement, it was still a vehicle, an unfeeling extension of the fleshy interior. Rickidi’s move exploited this by forcing the soldier to shift their weight much too far forwards, stumbling and tumbling over like a rigid statue.

Soronza used this like a lever to back themselves away a bit, then pounced on the blueblood’s back. Using their weight to pin the golden one down, it freed up their hands and teeth to pry and gnaw at the seals on the helmet.

A pop-squeeze- Then a bouncing, closing noise, spinning with arcs of some kind of liquid.

Took a moment for the ghostly Silanbar to realize they’d overdone it a bit, through their bruised, wheezing expression… Yeah, there was nobody left to make a noise inside the armor.

No pauses today. No time to rest or gather composure.

There was a bleating, pained squeak-skronking noise- Familiar?

Rickidi turned to find the backlit forms of four half-armored soldiers, just outside the back of an open garage, about thirty paces away.

They were wrestling and pinning down a long, sandy coloured form. Long ears. A cagey metal frame over the face, but short arms and legs that were proving very difficult to extend behind their rotund, thick-tailed back…

The sight and the sound couldn’t quicken Rickidi’s heart any faster; if it did, the organ would’ve likely vibrated out of his chest cavity… But damned if it didn’t piss him off even more! In their brief moment to plan, he rummaged through the easily-accessible gear of the two soldiers, finding… A long winch cable, a handsaw, and a strange metal loop-thing. Maybe an earring? This last thing he tossed aside with a grunt. None of them seemed like they’d help in this situation any more than his own teeth and brawn and… If only he had Igniy’s smart-brain. He could at least try to think like her while trying to save her life, couldn’t he?

He looked between what he had, and the four soldiers in the garage, and their immediate surroundings. What about above, where the sneaky ghost-snake had been? Rickidi wasn’t as much of a climber… But he didn’t have to be, did he? Trying to ‘think like Igniy’, Rickidi lashed the grappling hook with the hacksaw, making it even more ‘grabby’. That done, he kicked the power-armored body over to look at the winch system, seeing that there was a way to let it all pull out loose, and then a button to make it start rolling back up. Rickidi loosened it, and then started swinging the hacksaw-hook around in his hand. This was just like lasso-ing worms; it wasn’t easy, and you had to get the loop around one of their ends, but there was a part of the tank-thing up above where…

First swing, it worked! It hooked! “I’m a hooker!” Rickidi cried, hissing with laughter as he stood on top of the power armor. <”Soronza…”> he waggled to the living phantasm with the one red eye. <”Gonna save Igniy. You… do what you wanna. Iffa you help… Igniy got goodsmarts. She can swim a ship. I can’t. Can you?”>

Leaving Soronza with that thought, and with the lie that Igniy could fly (Could she? Rickidi had no way of knowing), he kicked at the winch to make it pull…. And pull the damned thing did! He had to hold on, cackling as he rode the body up to the tank, the winch hefting the body and him until they were up against the tank, dangling and wobbling as they went up, up, up… And now Rickidi scrambled off it, on the top of the thing! There would’ve been no way he could’ve replicated Soronza’s artful ascent of this structure, but here he was!

Now above, he looked down to the bastard soldiers outside their bastard garage, hurting his friend Igniy. He growled, looking for just the right moment to leap down and wreak toothy, pissed-off havoc!

Soronza watched Rickidi as they figured out and worked the mechanism with mild disgruntled interest, shifting on their heels and not quite getting it. They didn’t seem massively willing to charge headfirst into combat again, so soon after getting a nosebleed and mild concussion from a metal gauntlet punch- But there had to be some reason the ghost-lizard chose to personally attack this sterile, useless waste-planet, right?

Maybe there was some nobility in there?... Then again, they didn’t help Karagad, either…

From his vantage point on the top of the polished, conjoined chrome habitation units, Rickidi could both see and hear the escalating commotion back in the courtyard. About eight or ten Kuvexian soldiers were crawling around, lugging large boxy objects of some sort up to their former barricades, whilst Karagad was just about visible on the other side of the now-demolished skimmer transport…

On the garage exit side, where Igniy lay restrained in the dirt, the four tired looking technicians seemed to be arguing about something in their own tongue. Only two had rifles- All had missmatched shoulder and knee pads, rapidly replaced- Just one was still wearing their helmet.
Just bits and pieces of their language made it through to Rickidi’s experienced ear. “Planet”... “out”... “accomplice”... “more”?... Given the timing of the attack, it seemed like they thought all of the dinosaur’s actions were linked somehow.

Soronza’s enthralling musk told the teal speckled lizard that he’d been followed, likely because there was little cover on either side of the garage, down on the floor. Being coloured white wasn’t much help in the encroaching gloom, even if it made them look scarier.

<“Think you can kill-stab no helmet with gun?”> Sign-talk. <”I take helmet one?... We fast, they scare… Though if not scare, they hit will be cause hurting…”>

Bristling with agitation and bloodlust, fluid tail wisping tensely.

Rickidi naturally scented the wraithlike Silanbar before seeing or hearing them, but their presence still made his scales crawl in strange and… strange ways. Just strange. Not in any other ways.

Rickidi turned, deciding that rather than address whatever he was thinking about Soronza, it was better to engage in a bestial staring contest, of source. He observed them, now that they were near enough and not moving and striking like a living ‘death roll’. They were slender, but not weak in build. What he could see spoke of lean muscle, whip-fast, bound with killer instinct. The scars told of lessons learned, and fights survived, despite the loss of an eye, an arm, who knew what else. They had long, thin ears, a bit more noble to Rickidi’s eye than Igniy’s floppy-sloppy-lops. Their hair seemed wispy, like a fading idea, a forgotten memory.

He dared to lock eyes to eye with them, a brief attempt at a challenge. <”Know I can.”> he replied; it was a lie, he did not know that he could, but he certainly hoped he could. He would have to… <”Igniy will a-help, if we ‘gettemoffa’ her back-back.”> he added. If Soronza didn’t believe Igniy was important, this ethereal killer might abandon them both.

The standoff between two snakes was no uncommon thing, and Soronza apparently used the opportunity to examine Rickidi in turn. He was certainly heavier in the torso and more hard worn by the ashy particles of this place, but the duo-tone umber basilisk still had that spark of will and intelligence in his eyes. The ghost liked his little flecks of gemstone scales… though needed some shoes and a good comb to bring out the smug, looming terror that Soronza really liked to see in other Silanbar.

Hurm… Was this still about trying to kill each other? Soronza felt funny inside, but chose to just project that with their narrow-eyed, sinister smile.

<”We find out, hah? If she brain?”> The slashing claw gleamed. <”Either way, Soronza kill bluebloods.”>

The movement was fluid, but the shifting weight of the roof’s metal cladding was bound to make a noise when one of the dragons leapt from it. Soronza pounced artfully, landing directly on top of the helmeted one with the rifle, as they said- Claws digging into the overly complex greebles of the golden armor, bringing both bodies crashing down with the combined weight. Then once more came the horrifying acid breath, the smell, the terror of the unknown that it dragged out of the hapless surrounding technicians-

That damned smile… Rickidi broke the gaze, just as Soronza slipped away. He hoped they hadn’t noticed…

His own pounce was less artful. It was more of a controlled fall, and about as artful as the portrait made by a can of paint being hurled full-force at a brick wall. His drop was a second or two behind Soronza’s, and the angle of his fall sent Rickidi and the hapless, helmetless Kuvexian careening into the edge fo the garage’s doorframe. The structure and the Kuvexian’s clavicle met at hard angles, and only one of those two objects remained intact. Rickidi’s momentum had been transferred to his victim only in part, and he too crashed into the wall after the Kuvexian, but he was made of slither and writhe, and he bent sidelong like a pool noodle thwacking into a lightpole. It hurt… Damn did it hurt… But it hurt less than dying, and he was up and flinging himself at one of the other standing foes, calling out in his croaking voice.

“Igniy! Igniy!”

 

[Hollander]

The fact that the two they had directly attacked were immediately killed or disabled was certainly a good lesson in physics- Even if they couldn’t penetrate the armor, the sheer size and weight of the monsters could be used to break the pitiful bluebloods inside-bones. Out of the two remaining, one Kuvexian shrieked, and raised a glowing cutting torch of some kind- Soronza grappled them with mouth-and-claw, freeze framing the two into a battle of endurance and willpower.

The remaining technician did a rather more miraculous magic trick, turning invisible on the spot… Or, in actuality, ditching their ‘friends’ immediately and booking it inside the garage. The first either of the two Silanbar heard, was the mechanical whine of the shutters grinding closed.

Igniy was wide-eyed but totally immobile in the dirt, turning a sick shade of gray in the face and arms. Painfully twisted as they were, it wasn’t even really possible to snake forward with just their body. There was a glint of surprise and hope upon seeing Rickidi- But also confusion and terror upon witnessing the unnatural acts of Soronza.

She was alive, and that was a good enough start. Rickidi staggered forward, adrenaline only doing so much to keep the pain in bay. He had a rifle in his paws, and the back of the Kuvexian’s knees was a target too tempting to ignore. With a vicious snarl, he swung the weapon into the back of the joint like a bat, meaning to drive the grappled technician down, giving Soronza an edge in height and power. He’d swing again if he needed to, but he had a feeling the pit-fighter wouldn’t need much more assistance than that.

Rifle still in-paw, he saw that the garage door was shutting, so he patiently held the rifle longways up against the frame, figuring a durable Kuvexian weapon would hold up against the machinery of a simple door. It wasn’t an emergency door, after all… He’d had enough of those closed on him to tell…

That done, he’d move over to Igniy. It wouldn’t be right to help her up immediately, not for the Silanbar, who constantly were driven to prove themselves and be strong and be tough so that-

Nope. He bent over, breathing hard, wincing. <”You do-a stand-up.”> he told her. <”Gonna lift, get you on-legs.”> Without waiting for permission, he grasped her, snagging clothes or armpits or even belly, as long as it meant getting her up off the ground. She couldn’t be allowed to stay down; being down meant being weak, meant being left behind, meant being discarded. ‘“Igniy dun’ wanna go back’ she had said. ‘Dun’ want to say here till’ they don’ feel like fixin’ us, dun’ feel like feedin’ us…’

He couldn’t leave her. This all had to work… They had to get out of there!

The notion of Silanbar mentally punishing themselves with severe anguish over personal weakness certainly held true here, but being both bound in hands and muzzled around their wide stubby jaws, Igniy couldn’t really do much but stand there and make an uncomfortable throaty whine-knocking noise. She was super happy to not be dead or captured, but also too embarrassed at being manhandled like that.

As for the soldier that Rickidi and Soronza had brought down between the two of them, their combined moves had floored him, and the pale lizard was successfully keeping the plasma torch pointed outwards… But lacking enough limbs to fully control the situation, Soronza couldn’t do what they really wanted to do, which was spray acid in the grunting Kuvexian’s ugly, blue, flat little monkey face.

Shoving the gun in the door worked, and it was jammed open by about a meter, exposing the bottom half of some kind of vehicle inside. Apparently the last technician went down the side, up the back ramp and into the silver-hewed oblong themselves, because there was the buzz of an anti-grav engine starting up…

Annoyingly, the gap between the wall and the skimmer was rather too small for an imposingly scaled, man-eating dinosaur-person.

Hauling Igniy up, Rickidi moved around to her back, trying to figure out how to free her twisted arms. There was too much happening all at once. Too damned much! He had no idea how Igniy felt about being manhandled, or lizard-handled, or whatever-handled, but ideas of prosperity and the sanctity of one’s cute poochy belly had no place on the battlefield. With some clawing and biting, Igniy was freed! <”Helpa Soronza do a kill!”> Rickidi told her. It was not the most pleasant thing to ask her to do after she’d been stunned, accosted, possibly beaten, and then roughly bound, but attacking the Kuvexian and helping Soronza would get Igniy’s esteem up in the eyes of the cloud-like killer, and perhaps in her own eyes as well.

Trusting them to figure it out, Rickidi hustled over to the door. He heard the engine starting, saw that there was a vehicle inside the garage… Was that surviving Kuvexian about to try to blast through the door and bowl them all over? He angled his head down, pointing the side with the broken horn in first so he could see with a wildly glancing eye. It was a tight fit in there, too tight for him… Too squeezy for Igniy, too, no offense to the squishy one. But that slithery, scythelike slip, Soronza… they could get in there quite nicely.

<”Soronza! Gotta driver needs a dying! Squeezy in there, need you right-quick!”>

There was a few moments of just awkward ambient noise. An evening wind blew down the dunes through warm brambles. The engine in the garage buzzed through several alternating stages of idle. Soronza’s teeth ground against metal it couldn’t quite penetrate, whilst the soldier grunted their defiance, arrogant and wild-eyed to the end.

Igniy, looking immensely tired and haggard once more, pulled the muzzle off of their face and clicked their throat-implant back into life, but still didn’t say anything.

It was only when the shorter lizard calmly picked up a wrench from one of the downed technicians, did the final technician’s expression change into a desperate, pleading, bargaining tone. There was a dull thud, and then that noise became silent, too.

A look was shared between Igniy and Soronza, both of them pale and befangled, but opposite in all other regards. A bristle of agitation and defensiveness was met with that sharp-eyed, penetrating smile… And then the two broke away, gandering over to the situation with the hover-van and Rickidi’s awkwardness trying to squeeze inside.

Their assessment was correct- A flowing ribbon of infinite flexibility, the ghost was perfectly shaped to basically flatten out and crawl along the side of the vehicle, making a ‘chonk-chonk-chonk~’ noise as their nails grasped at the hull. Then there was a sound of spraying acid, and the thud of the windshield falling inwards, followed by screaming.

Soronza apparently knew how to fly a skimmer, but not how to open garage doors. They bushed the throttle to maximum and made the metalwork slowly bulge outwards, straining into ribbons-

Meekly, Igniy grasped Rickidi’s claw in her own, suggesting that they remove themselves from getting run over when it inevitably burst out.

A creak, a bustling cracking noise, and finally a satisfying tear. The vehicle burst out and then skidded, barely stopping before sideswiping a nearby dead tree.

Then Soronza just stopped and stared at them out of the flank window.

<”...Become the inside of the box.”> They signed. Presumably not knowing how to open the rear door, either.

Briefly mesmerized by Soronza’s slithering, and also quite thoroughly exhausted, Rickidi was easy to pull away from the door, standing near to her as the vehicle was birthed from its metal womb. He approached, paw still grasping Igniy’s to help her along if she needed it. Hell, HE needed it. He approached the driver’s side window, which was nearest, and made to clamber inside.

“Gonna figure door from inside.” he said to Igniy, even as he unceremoniously started unfurling himself into Soronza’s lap, up against their chest, and then toward the back of the vehicle. There was a paw here, a chin there, before he was able to get into the back and jimmy the door open, allowing Igniy a somewhat easier entry.

Because of the stupidly cramped, elevated position of the cabin, Soronza was basically squashed in there as it was. Somewhere within the plume of gray hair that immediately consumed Rickidi’s vision, they caught a guttural hissing noise. Their left claw-hand pressed against stony abs, then torso-to-torso contact gave a squishy sensation. Rickidi then had to blindly squeeze over the top of the seat, and earned a three-horned headbutt into the side of his guts for the effort.

Timidly watching this but eagerly wanting to not be left behind, Igniy just lowered their ears and looked nervous.

The back of the air-truck was a pretty spartan extended hexagon shape, with (to Rickidi) small troop benches along each side. The door release was helpfully color coded with a green light, and simple enough to claw at until it wheezed the door open.

The lop-eared one wasted no more time, and neither did the scowling driver- They sped off with the back door still open, sending a rush of air all the way through the already perforated vehicle.

Just big enough for both of them stooped a hunch, Igniy’s eyes regarded Rickidi at close range, examining all the added scratches and rips in their clothes. The stun-weapon impacts had welted up on the sandy lizard’s chest and thighs, a tender pink. But their expression was improving.

“...So… This one is… The one who does swim for space?” Prehensile lips gestured. “...Ree-kee-dee think this one… not kills us?... Helps us get outs?...”

Rickidi was aware of the hiss, but was there some other way to go about this? A press here, a touch there, then a good headbutt in the gut which he growled back at, naturally. All quite normal. After a moment, he was able to flop down in the back seat like a wilting flower, every part of him seeming to melt. Even his surviving right horn and his nose-horn seemed to delapidated.

At Igniy’s communication, Rickidi turned to her, acknowledging her question. <“Hopes, Igniy. When you gotta stun-down, I did a fight or two. Got Soronza outta chains. Soronza did a damn lotta fights, phew.”> Rickidi pantomimed breathing something foul and scary, and with his paws, he made the hand-sign for something ‘melting’. But Igniy had also talked about space-swimming. This little drive-time moment provided them with the opportunity to talk for a bit.

Rickidi leaned forward, bringing his face quite close to Soronza’s as they drove. “Soronza…” he addressed them. “You did a good fight. You-a know me, this one Rickidi. Bunny-ear Igniy. You did a big-save, doing the fights. Me, Igniy both. Pretty cool.”

He paused, letting the ‘setup’ lie. It was his hope that Soronza would acknowledge that yes, they had indeed saved Rickidi and Igniy, but Rickidi had saved Soronza too. That without Rickidi’s efforts, Sorona might’ve been executed after all as the rent-a-soldiers had been proposing, or possibly even smashed by Karagad in his mad rage. Rickidi watched the ghostly beauty’s elegantly-shaped face to try to gauge their reaction.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

It was fortunate that their method of speech didn’t completely rely on noise, as the whistle of wind through the giant hole in the front window was really quite loud. Igniy had apparently left the rear ramp open on purpose, because the cabin would have turned into a miniature sandstorm even at this gentle cruising speed.

Soronza didn’t give any particular expression at first, merely a lilting snarl of agitation, perhaps more tired in general rather than annoyed at Rickidi in particular. If he looked forward, he’d realize that the ghost actually was looking back at him, in the reflection of the ruined windshield.

“...This one will remember, Reekeedee.” Licking dry lips. The bruise on the right side of their brow seemed pretty bad, a dark red-purple- But they were lucky, since the eye on that side was already demurely shut, permanently. “But… have think… this…”

A small glance, Soronza grasped Rickidi’s hair with their mouth, guiding his long snout towards a little box with blinking lights on the console. The brown ripples kinda looked like a cake he’d seen once, but there were glowing squares on top. Letters. Little arrows. One of them was going pretty near to them, and Soronza was apparently arcing the skim-van quite a bit to avoid it.

“...This… Gun-swim… Rocket? Rocket vehicle. Understan’?” That smooth, lethal tone. Their breath in close proximity made that weird sweet smell even stronger. “If… that Karagad not kill us, that Karagad still kill us… Soronza choose Rickidi because they thinking you smart-brain, hurm?... Don’t think Soronza owes life. We both needs. Understand? We can decide who boss, who strong, later, hurm?~”

In the middle of this weird failure to explain themselves, there was a loud clunk and a wet splashing noise- Then Igniy made a throaty skronk of surprise.

“M-m-machine in pipe! It makes water, does!”

Both of the pale ones glanced at each other, and then at Rickidi.

Telepathically, the thought of ‘If we stop and drink/bathe in this, will it break the vehicle?’ couldn’t have failed to get across.

The mouth grab was quite normal. Silanbar paws were far from dexterous, and fine motor manipulation was sometimes better performed by lips and teeth and tongues. Still… Still… When that death wraith of Rickidi’s swamp memories, grasped his hair with their lips, it thrummed the strings of his heart like a guitar of fear and excitement. He did indeed look though, and it took him a moment to recognize what he was looking at.

“Map-thing.” he said, identifying it, and shifting his torso a bit so Igniy in the rear could get a peek. He listened as Soronza explained the threat, and he got the picture pretty quickly. They further proposed that they didn’t owe lives, and that they all needed each other. The idea of delaying the dominance bouts sounded perfectly reasonable to Rickidi, who wasn’t a terribly traditional creature to begin with.

At the realization that there was water, Rickidi smacked his already-parched-again lips. The desire to immerse was a strong one, to mire around in muck and get his scales moist again, to wet his webbing, to wrestle around… Ahh, that sounded like a Silanbar kind of heaven to him.

He groaned with frustration, laying his head against the edge of Soronza’s seat, still leaning forward in the cab. “We shoulda not stop.” he posited, remorseful. “Sippy sounds nice, bitta bath-time, but rock-et ve-hicle prolly notta friend-friend.” He huffed. “Needa steal a ship… That not chock-full gun-shooty blue-heads.” He slumped back into the seat next to Igniy, defeated and rubbing at his sore paws. That revolver had done a number on them…

He took a second to reflect. Not long ago, he’d woken up a victim of theft, his shoes taken by someone, somewhere. Since that time, he’d gained a sharp talon, and gave that way. Formed an alliance with Igniy. Found a storage room, got some food and drink. They’d got a drill, but lost that. Found a revolver, lost that. Encountered a number of Kuvexian weapons, kept none of them. But the people remained… Igniy, and now Soronza. They might not have any stuff, but they head each other. They were living through the mission, longer than most slave soldiers. Wasn’t that something?

He tried to return to the issue at hand. Three Silanbar couldn’t safely take on a full unit of soldiers on a combat ship. No way. Too many weapons, too much armor… But some ramshackle technicians with more anxiety than weaponry… “Maybe… grabba fuel ship? Food ship?” he suggested, remembering the Lady-Deer with her plate of food. “Blueby-woobies gotta eat. No farmin onna dry-dust place. Ship in. Maybe… we find a… box-ship?” He gestured to the map-thing that Soronza had indicated. “Map gotta… idea?”

Igniy resisted the idea of resisting, and downed a mouth full of water directly from the pipe, still looking famished when Soronza glanced back at them aggressively. But no bad-noises came from the machine boxes in front of them, so it wasn’t the right time to get really angry just yet…

“...Bluebloods still eatin’ like big empire, but… box ships not have much on… gun ships does go a sneakin’...” The white wispy thing gulped their displeasure and looked ahead again, constant violent thoughts redirected at their mutual great enemy instead. “Thinkin’ they… does a grab-and-steal like we does now. That how they stay fed… Not sure what kind ship to go after… Soronza know where city is, though.”

A few moments of additional clunking and tampering later, Igniy was rifling through the under-seat storage bins, looking for anything useful. Somebody had left a backpack, with little silver pots and pans in it. A picture of… Kuvexians?... Didn’t care, let it fly out the back window.

Cold and fresh, a cook-bowl full of transparent and lovely water was placed into Rickidi’s aching paws. Then Igniy pushed their rotund lizard waist through the overly thin cockpit door gap, wriggly-fluffy tail pandering against the one-horn dragon’s chest as they forced themselves inside.

Sorozona bristled and hissed again. Igniy blinked and held up another pot of water. Soronza hissed third time, lacking the free limbs to actually reach over. So she held it out, and the ghost-snake angry-drank from their hands, without removing their steel claw from the point-fly-stick.

One big gross well hydrated triad, a moment of calm settled back in, giving them a silent moment to think about nice foods that would go with it.

Controls. Lots and lots of controls.

“Machine.” Igniy said, still kind of baffled.

Rickidi hmm’d with understanding. So… they were doing so poorly now that they stole what they needed. Took it from weak people even weaker than they were. How far the old masters had fallen…

The rattle and rustle of pans caught his attention, and he watched as Igniy sorted through a sack of stuff. “Ooh, good-find.” he complimented her, eyeballing the silver cookery. She used one of the things to gather up some water, handing it to him as he croaked a thanks. He started to take a drink, pausing as a fluffy tail flaffed about in his way. He puffed air at it as though it were a bug, smiling despite himself, and he watched as Igniy shared water with Soronza too, helping them drink up. It was… nice. Silanbar did serve each other, usually the bullied served the bullies, giving them the choicest cuts and so on. But this felt just a big different. None of them had fought each other, YET, and there was no established hierarchy.

Wait, what had Soronza said about a city?

“Soronza…” Rickidi intoned, slithering forward once more. “You-say you know city… City here? On dry-place?” He waggled his skull around eyeballing them from the side. “You-a been here before-time?”

“No… Soronza was going explode it.” A stony expression, the memory of a good plan gone wrong. “Had bomb for big fire. But too many fly-armor. Not get to explode. But that why Soronza here.”

It was still the most logical place to return to, literally the only speck of civilization. But it hurt to be relying on it’s continued existence to get off of this dull rock.

Not to hard to figure out, explanation or not, since the map-box seemed to have some pretty specific arrows and… invisible roads… on it. The lizard-box was just following them.

Click, click, clatter, click. Igniy was pressing buttons.

One of them made the blueblood mouth-noises come out. Two of them talking to each other. Weird.

In time, thanks to Soronza’s driving and the guidance (and occasional disruption) of one or both of the Silanbar in the back seat, the trio reached the city, keeping to the periphery to reach the spaceport. The spaceport followed the same architectural themes of the city at large; prefabricated buildings of a vague egg-shape, silver in color, dust-covered despite the near-constant efforts of drones and robots to keep the area clean. But there were signs of the Kuvexian decline here, too. The floating drones and rolling robots were in various states of disrepair, funding having been drastically cut to their maintenance programs. The concrete that covered every possible inch of soil veritable baked in the sun, with fractures seeming as common as funk on a Silanbar. Crack-fill was expensive, and the two worlds that had slave-factories churning out the stuff had been liberated by some alien force or another.

A vast stockyard was littered with broken-down vessels and discarded parts, as well as repossessed personal vehicles seized by City authorities for failed loan payments. The owners couldn’t afford to pay to get the vehicles back, but the City also couldn’t budget for the effort to auction off the vehicles.

An airstrip stretched out toward the hazy horizon, several of its running lights nonfunctioning. More than a few tumbleweeds rolled along its length, and one might imagine that they thought themselves spaceships, spinning up for takeoff. The whole area felt desolate and empty, despite being within a city. The disrepair and the dryness left the very sense of life feeling desiccated. Chapped lips on a mummified city…

“Bluebloods think smart, putting it dumb place on purpose. Now look.” Igniy sneered, pressing their face against the window so they could look down at an awkward angle.

Defense guns were dotted about, squat little towers with ball-guns pointed skyward. But none of them turned to face the approaching skimmer-bus, and as it was apparently not either foreign or a space craft, nobody bothered to yell at them over the face-yell-talk-electric-window.

This gave Soronza adequate time to fly low and slow, examining the various space-boxes rotting on the vast concrete concourse. Quite a few looked too damaged or stripped for parts to be reliable. A few more were those oblong shaped ‘dumpsters’, which were horribly made auxiliary craft not worth stealing in the first place.

Igniy whale-eyed and arced their head towards a particular craft, then back at Rickidi. Soronza grumbled and raised their ears, not wanting to take orders.

The thing they were observing was very long, constructed like three conjoined, oblate spheroid hulls, clad in a dull copper metal. It had stubby little engine-wings at the back, just a single double-gunned turret on the central hull, and quite a large hangar door on the front ‘bubble’.

“Blueblood tech. Hard steal.” The ribbon-thin ghost grumbled more.

“Look look, them walk about, them work. That mean it work!” Igniy responded, their three inch fangs only looking adorable considering the monster sitting in the other seat. “Igniy break in. Igniy think she know how break in.”

After all the pain and despair they had dealt with, followed by a day of screaming firefights and bloody encounters, silently landing the craft away from prying eyes and slipping in between the shipping containers felt perversely simple.

The three Silanbar slipped up one of the great metal feet of the run-down goliath, and meandered upside down in the breezy gap where the landing foot was supposed to retract up into. Using a thinky-box taken from the skimmer, Igniy hooked it up to a hatch, and started pushing little glow-bits on the tiny screen. It didn’t react to her claws, so she used her tongue.

Then, they waited.

It was the exact plan that she had told Rickidi about when they first met- An old version of the machine-think that unlocked all the doors at once, if any of the keypads were accessed. The next time a maintenance worker casually strolled up the ramp and went inside, that was all they needed to open the hatch and get into the guts of the giant ship for themselves.
Then, they simply found the cockpit and took off. It was too sudden and confusing for the port to react, beyond a warning shot.

And then, euphorically, the three-domed brass ship was just… out there, in the big black, a dull orb of brown and gray slowly becoming smaller behind them.

Free and clear, the lizards took a moment to shake off the feeling of something going wrong, their luck suddenly turning bad… But it just didn’t. Not today.

(FIN)