He heaved a sigh. He was right. The craft had suffered some malfunction, but this incident told him one important thing. Humans could activate the Krakzid fighter craft. If the vessel had been working, it would have responded to his presence. It tried and failed to switch on at his arrival. He didn’t need to be Krakzid to make it work.

  That thought gave Jackson hope, but these craft were useless to him as they were. He stole a peek outside, and when he saw the coast was clear, he left. He put as much distance between himself and the craft as he could.

  He skirted the boulevard in no particular hurry to get anywhere. He had nowhere to get. All his leads had evaporated.

  The Urvals mentioned someone named Vurgus. They thought this Vurgus could rally the other Urvals to join the offensive. They said he lived on the capital outskirts to the north, but they never told Jackson where to find him.

  He covered a few blocks when he heard pounding and roaring in the background. He scrambled onto a mound of broken rubble and spotted the Grocit heading north, beyond where the boulevard ended. He definitely didn’t want to go near them, so he headed south.

  That way inevitably brought him to the opposite end of the boulevard. Intractable neighborhoods spread in all directions, all of them populated by more ruins, scavenging Urvals, and very little else.

  He made up his mind to go around the palace. Its rear porticos used to open onto a small park of flowering trees, crystal streams, and shady benches. He would go there and try to put together some plan for what to do next.

  He walked around the shattered glass of the palace’s spires. To his relief, the Krakzid bombardment had left the park relatively intact. Its quiet corners had escaped the worst. Jackson picked up his pace to get lost in it.

  He had to climb over a spray of shards to reach the path running parallel to the stream. He could already hear the water’s music. It soothed his exhausted brain.

  He put out his foot to take the last step. He put his weight on a block to traverse the last debris, but when he pushed off, the block rotated under him. He corrected his balance and landed straight on the footpath when something happened.

  When he thought about it afterward, he remembered only a split second of disorientation. One moment, he was walking behind the palace looking at the peaceful park bathed in sunshine.

  The next instant, he found himself in an underground cavern big enough to hold the entire Urval capital, with all its towers, turrets, and tall buildings.

  The second he materialized there, a deafening explosion rent the air. A flash erupted to his left, and the shockwave belted him in the side of the head.

  He reeled, tried to right himself, and toppled in vertigo. His brain swam, but as he went down, he recognized a dozen geometric black shapes whizzing out of nowhere. They twirled over and around each other through the air, and sprayed lasers from every surface.

  Jackson hit the ground hard, and splitting pain shot through his head. He winced, but before he could move, the Krakzid fighter craft rocketed over him. Their lasers scattered all over the walls and floor. A handful of shots ricocheted off the stone underneath him.

  He hauled his eyes into focus and willed himself to push himself up. He wobbled on hands and knees, trying desperately to take stock of the situation. Krakzid fighters clouded the cavern, but Jackson couldn’t make out what they were shooting at.

  Booming crashes shook the stone under his hands. He heard another sound that reminded him of falling water, but he couldn’t identify it.

  The Krakzid came spinning back for another pass. Lasers bounced off the floor and Jackson sprang to his feet. He took off running for the only place he thought might save him. He headed for the nearest wall, but it was more than fifty yards away.

  The fighter craft tumbled and whizzed past him, still spraying fire at something else. He dove sideways to their trajectory, but they paid no attention and didn’t follow him.

  He locked his eyes on his destination and poured all his energy into running. If he could get away from the fighters, he could only hope they might forget all about him.

  His strategy succeeded until he got within sight of the wall. He almost stopped running when he noticed the solid stone moving. It seethed with motion as though it was alive.

  While he floundered to figure out what he was seeing, the Krakzid wheeled and plunged over his head again. They barreled straight at the wall and plastered the surface with laser fire.

  In front of Jackson’s shocked eyes, individual specks dropped from the wall under the Krakzid assault. They plummeted to the floor below. Some got up and started climbing again.

  Jackson’s blood turned to water when he recognized the Grocit. What in the holy hell were they doing down here? How could they be here and in the capital at the same time? It made no sense.

  He couldn’t go near the wall with the Krakzid assaulting the Grocit like this. Even as he wavered in the middle of the floor, more fighter craft circled the cavern. They made another sweep across the wall, peppering the Grocit with deadly fire.

  They knocked dozens of Grocit off their perches, and then the fighter craft streaked away to circle again. Jackson started to turn back, even though he had nowhere else in the world to go. He didn’t even understand how he’d gotten here.

  The fighter craft skimmed parallel to the opposite walls. They unleashed their lasers on all the walls, surrounding the entire cavern. Jackson couldn’t see that far, but the Grocit must be climbing the walls over there, too. If they were, there must be thousands of them in here.

  He’d pivoted to find another hiding place when a devastating explosion blasted out of the wall near him. Rock and bodies hurtled through the air. Grocit pinwheeled over Jackson’s head and then smashed into the floor.

  He ducked the flying monsters, but the explosions just kept coming. They thundered along the wall to its farthest curve and then, without warning, they pounded into the floor right on top of Jackson.

  The first blast ripped the stone apart a few feet from Jackson’s left foot. He dove aside to avoid it and almost ran straight into another three charges blowing to his right. The impact flung him backward, and he slammed down hard on his side.

  He huddled in a ball, trying to hold himself together. Bellows, screams, and the groans of dying Grocit drifted to his ears. He had to do something. He had to get up. He had to find a way out of here.

  Jackson struggled to open his eyes. Flames flickered near him, and more laser blasts went off somewhere. The battle sounded dangerously close, but he could be wrong about that.

  He pried his head off the floor and spotted more Krakzid fighter craft making straight for him. They carpeted the floor in lasers, and mowed down stricken Grocit all around him. They would cut him to pieces any second.

  At that moment, something landed on top of him with an impossible weight. It suffocated him with a stifling smell. The next second, it ripped him off the floor and rocketed across the cavern.

  Jackson tried to figure out what was happening. He managed to open his eyes long enough to realize he was soaring across the cavern, about thirty feet above the floor. He sailed past the fighter craft, going in the opposite direction.

  Something shaggy held him in a crushing grip. He didn’t see what it was until it hit the farthest wall and stuck there. It released him, and he tumbled onto a tiny shelf. He crashed into a corner and sprang up, ready to fight for his life.

  Roy Rawles charged him from nowhere. “Captain! What are you doing here?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Jackson spluttered. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re assaulting the Krakzid like you told us to.” Roy glanced over his shoulder toward the battle going on across the cavern. “They’re giving as good as they get, as usual.”

  Beyond his friend’s soot-smeared face, the Krakzid fighters cartwheeled around and around the cavern. They hammered the walls and the floor, but their lasers didn’t work too well to clear the place of so many Grocit. The enemy could only hit one or two at a time.

  Siege guns boomed from out of sight and pounded the farthest wall. Even from this distance, Jackson recognized the place where he’d first landed…or appeared, whichever it was.

  Something bumped Jackson’s leg, and he looked down. Two large, moist eyes blinked up at him out of a furry brown ball. Then the creature bowled to Roy’s side. It bounced against Roy’s ankle, but it didn’t attach itself to him the way it had before.

  Roy bent down and scratched the thing. “Good boy! You did real good. I’m proud of you.”

  “Benedict!” Jackson gasped. “He—”

  “He grabbed you. I didn’t see you, but he did. He brought you up here, and it’s a damn good thing. Look!”

  Jackson accompanied Roy to the lip of the shelf. Only then did he truly appreciate the magnitude of the battle raging through this massive cavern. He originally thought there must be thousands of Grocit in here. Now he adjusted that estimate to millions.

  They swarmed over the walls, and some even clung to the ceiling. Thirty Krakzid fighter craft rotated around and around the cavern, trying everything to keep up with the hordes.

  What had first appeared to be a catastrophic rout of the Grocit now became clear to Jackson as the opposite. The Krakzid only managed to dislodge a few dozen Grocit from their positions.

  The siege guns smashed into the Grocit, but even those monsters who fell to the floor mostly got up and raced to the walls again. Only a few lay still and didn’t rise.

  “What are they doing?” Jackson rasped.

  “Don’t you get it?” Roy yelled over the noise. “The Krakzid used this place as a communications center. The numbskulls thought the rock formations would hide them—the idiots. The Grocit found out about this place, but they could never penetrate it without the numbers to overcome the Krakzid defenders. Now they’ve done it.”

  He grabbed onto a spine of rock and leaned all the way out over the void. “Here comes another one! Look out! Turn the turret hard to the left!”

  Jackson didn’t understand what Roy was talking about until the fighter craft came barreling past a second time. As soon as they barreled into range, one of the siege guns ripped out of position and swiveled at a dangerous angle.

  The gun belched lasers straight into the oncoming fighters. Four of them detonated. Roy pumped his fist and bellowed in triumph. “Yeah! That’s the way! Get the other guns unseated. Give ‘em all you’ve got.”

  Jackson craned his neck over the side and watched, stunned. Countless Grocit clambered all over the siege guns on the wall beneath him. They ripped the weapons off their mooring clamps and turned them on the Krakzid.

  The fighter craft whirled around to attack, but with more siege guns falling into Grocit hands, the Krakzid had to turn tail and run. They skirted the cavern to the other wall, only to meet the same fate there. All over the place, the siege guns assaulted the fighter craft instead of the Grocit they were originally intended to kill.

  “Did you do this?” Jackson asked Roy.

  “Me? Hell, no! Are you kidding me? These Grocit are a lot better organized than you think. They knew about this place for years.”

  “Where did they all come from?” Jackson asked. “They were in the capital, too. We didn’t drop this many.”

  “The Krakzid imprisoned them on a base across the eastern continent. We liberated them, and when they heard about our mission, they decided to launch an offensive of their own.” Roy whirled to yell over the side again. “Watch out down there! Take out the power coupling and they’re finished.”

  A bone-shaking roar answered him as a dozen enormous Grocit sprang off the wall. They landed on the floor, each grappling a siege gun in their hairy arms. They charged across the cavern, heading for the top end.

  “Give ‘em some cover!” Roy roared. “Here come the fighters.”

  Half the big Grocit on the floor paused to turn their guns upward. They shot off bouquets of lasers to defend their comrades racing for the cavern’s end. The Krakzid tried to shoot in front of the Grocit to cut them off, but with the defenders covering them, the fighter craft had to divert.

  As soon as the craft broke off, the Grocit wheeled and kept on running. “They’re going for the power coupling down in the crevice,” Roy told Jackson. “That was their objective all along.”

  The Grocit squad covered the distance as quick as they could, but it took way too long. The fighters twirled around the cavern’s other end, and when they came back for another assault, they didn’t come anywhere near enough for the defenders’ siege guns to reach them.

  The fighter craft skirted the perimeter well out of range. They curved around the cavern, trying to cut off the Grocit from the front. They almost succeeded.

  They tumbled and rotated past Jackson’s eyes, and his chest clenched. He hated standing on the sidelines watching the Grocit take all the risk, but besides yelling suggestions and warnings, Roy didn’t venture into the line of fire, either. No one but the Grocit could stand this kind of heat.

  The Krakzid angled downward for the final strike when, without warning, five Grocit dislodged from the wall. They vaulted straight out horizontal to the floor and lunged for the fighter craft. Three of them missed their target, but the other two landed square on the ships’ round exteriors.

  The Grocits’ weight smashed the craft to the floor. The Grocit grappled the modules underneath them and landed hard, with the fighter craft trapped beneath them.

  They flattened the modules on impact. The remaining three Grocit landed nearby, and the airborne fighters spun around to retaliate. In seconds, more Grocit launched from the walls. They pounced on the fighter craft and brought them down.

  The surviving craft went into a confused dance, trying to escape their own sanctuary. The sight of their comrades’ victory sent the watching Grocit into a frenzy. Their roars spiraled to a deafening pitch.

  The Grocit peeled off the walls by the hundreds. They flooded the floor, lugging the captured siege guns from their positions.

  The Krakzid ships darted to and fro in the air above them, but anyone could see they were trapped. The Grocit set up shop in the middle of the floor. They planted their gargantuan weapons and trained the siege guns on the enemy.

  The Krakzid went nuts, veering and skimming in all directions. The Grocit launched shot after shot, but the Krakzid kept evading. The blasts punctured the ceiling and rained rubble on the Grocit, but the Grocit paid no attention.

  Jackson didn’t see how the Grocit guns could hit such fast-moving targets, but the Grocit didn’t think of that. They kept it up for the sheer lust to revenge themselves on their captors.

  Jackson almost said something to Roy about changing strategy when, without warning, the Krakzid fighter craft halted in midair. They froze and hung suspended above the Grocit hordes. Then, just as suddenly, they plummeted.

  The Grocit on the ground barely had time to scuttle out of the way before the Krakzid fighters smashed down at their feet. The modules detonated in flames, and the Grocit erupted in bellowing cheers. They jumped up and down, hugged and bumped each other, and nearly smacked each other off their feet with their powerful back thumps.

  Jackson stared at the scene, too astounded to think straight. What the hell had just happened? He didn’t see how the Grocit brought the Krakzid ships down when they’d never touched them.

  Roy grabbed Jackson and yelled in his ear above the noise. “Come on! Let’s get down there! This is so great! They did it! I wasn’t sure if they could pull it off, but they did it!”

  He whirled away and scooped up Benedict in his arms. Roy hugged the little Grocit and bounced it up and down, laughing fit to burst. He hurried away somewhere and left Jackson to catch up.

  Roy rushed down a narrow causeway winding down the sidewall. So many Grocit had swarmed the cavern a few minutes ago that Jackson didn’t notice the path before. Roy lowered Benedict back to the ground, and the baby Grocit rolled along at his heel like a pet.

  Benedict seemed to have gained weight since the pair left the Vurlax freighter. Benedict kept his eyes exposed most of the time now, and he didn’t seem so fixated on clinging to Roy.

  The affection between the two startled Jackson more than anything. Roy didn’t even try to hide his attachment to the little creature. He hugged, scratched, praised, and cuddled the baby Grocit without inhibition. Roy never would have done that before—not without at least pretending to be annoyed.

  Jackson kept as close to Roy as possible, despite the adult Grocit jostling and roaring on every side. Roy didn’t shrink from them, either. He clapped them on their shaggy sides and even hugged a few of them. He kept saying, “Good job!” or “You did it!” and “I’m proud of you,” to all of them.

  Jackson couldn’t tell if the Grocit understood a word that Roy said, but the implication was only too clear. Roy was part of this crew now. He congratulated the Grocit as heartily as he would have cheered any human comrades.

  Roy shouldered his way through the mob to where the Grocit still surrounded the siege guns. Instead of abandoning the weapons after their victory, the Grocit focused on the guns even more intently now that they’d brought down the fighter craft.

  The Grocit tinkered with the weapons, checked the ammunition magazines, and adjusted the sights. Jackson watched them, too amazed to speak, but Roy snapped him out of his trance.

  “The Krakzid are mobilizing a major offensive against another system. They’re manufacturing fighter craft and synthesizing energy sources to power their ships. It’s all going down here on Apra. Once they assemble a large enough force, they plan to launch a massive strike against this other system.”

  “They already have Zenith on the ropes,” Jackson countered. “Why do they need a massive strike force to attack us again?”

  “Not Zenith. This other system is something else. I don’t know yet what it is, or even where it is. I only know about it because the Grocit told me about it.”

  “They told you about it? How did they do that?”

  Roy waved that away. “They didn’t tell me exactly. They showed me. We found these Grocit—Benedict and the others from the freighter.”

 

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