[Haret, Epsilon Eridani] – Year 2737

  Rhyan Fagioli had never seen a woman constricted by a giant boa before in his life, and his first time just so happened to be on the one planet trying to murder him.

  The woman wasn’t screaming, even as she was wrapped in the thick, crushing coils of a reptile that could have swallowed a grown man. That was the first thing that struck him as odd. Most people in her position would be yelling, begging, making desperate promises to gods that didn’t listen.

  But she was fighting.

  The reptile had dragged her and seized her against a gnarled root of a giant tree, then immobilized one of her hands around its body. However, her other hand kept trying to force a blade between its overlapping scales. Her movement was getting more lethargic, and it was clear to him that she was losing the fight.

  For a while, he only watched. The boa’s movements were more sluggish than those on Earth, and its slow coils tightened in increments. It wasn’t a reactionary predator.

  He curled his fingers as the inky Morkanium slithered through the veins on the back of his hand. The metal responded in erratic bursts, spreading unevenly along his wrist and rushing toward his elbow. Not where he’d wanted. He clenched his fist and shook. The liquid metal dithered, as though unsure of his command, and then finally began to flow more evenly, though not without resistance. He sighed.

  The boa’s coils tightened, and with every constriction, she gasped for breath. But it seemed as though the oxygen wouldn’t go anywhere near her lungs judging from the way no breath and no sound escaped her when her mouth gaped open. She slammed her knee into the creature’s underbelly. It was a weak, desperate move, but it made the boa recoil. Her fingers trembled as she clawed at the beast’s body with her free hand, scraping at the scales, creating grating skreeek sounds. The slight delay in the creature’s movements was enough to help her gasp in a few ragged breaths.

  She was buying time. She must have seen him.

  Rhyan steadied his breathing.

  After a second of struggle, Morkanium seeped through his skin, then through his clothes, crawled up his arm in liquid threads before hardening into a serrated blade that extended from his forearm to his fingertips. It threaded through his ribs with a slow, uncomfortable drag, weaving an unseen lattice of protection, wrapped around his throat in a sheath as thin as breath yet dense as iron, and pooled over his abdomen like a second layer of hide.

  Protection. He wouldn’t be reckless twice in a single day.

  Rhyan stepped closer. “You need a hand, or you just testing your pain tolerance?”

  She didn’t look at him, gritting her teeth while grunting out words, “Unless . . . you’re cutting . . . the head off, you’re in my way.”

  That was the moment he decided to help. Not out of kindness, nor because it was the right thing to do. Just because she had the audacity to mouth off while half-crushed by a reptile the size of a city bus.

  One step. Then two.

  The beast didn’t notice him. Its focus was entirely on the woman.

  Rhyan drove his Morkanium-coated hand straight into the reptile’s skull.

  The blade sunk past bone and into the soft matter beneath. The boa seized. Its coils shuddered, the pressure around the woman’s body loosening. She wasted no time—shoving free, gasping for air as the creature spasmed and collapsed with a wet thud.

  The woman took a moment to recover. Still partially ensnarled in the slackening coils, she turned her head toward him and gave him the most scrutinizing squint despite the breathlessness in her voice. She then turned to his inky, blackened arm.

  “Thanks. But . . . what kind of magic was that?” she demanded.

  He flexed his fingers, and the Morkanium retracted from his hand like ink sliding backward, disappearing into his veins. He exhaled, brushing his arm off like he could wipe away the sensation.

  “Wish I knew,” he replied. “They said I’d find answers on this planet.”

  Rhyan got a good look at the woman. Her copper-red hair was short, neat, and practical, as was the utility belt running across her chest and her scuffed gloves. She was lean and tall, possibly half a head taller than many women on Earth, and nearly as tall as Rhyan. However, the freckles which dotted the bridge of her nose alongside her round, almost doll-like eyes morphed her into something of a walking juxtaposition. Like a caricature, but a pretty good-looking one.

  His gaze drifted to the bulky contraption strapped to her back, something he had never seen before. At first glance, it resembled a standard backpack, but the rigid, segmented plating said otherwise. It lacked the usual buckles and zippers, and its smooth surface was interrupted only by a few barely visible seams. Vents designed to blend into the background lined the sides, yet no sound emanated from within.

  She coughed, rolling onto her side, one hand pressed to her ribs. “And what did you find?”

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Rhyan glanced at the dead reptile, then up at the thicket of trees swaying overhead. In the distance, the dreaded sound of approaching drones buzzed through the trees. His lips curled into almost amusement. “Arrest warrants.”

  She let out a humorless chuckle. “Well, bad news for you then.” She pushed herself up with a wince, dragging air back into her lungs. “They’re after me too.” ‘They’ referred to the local military of Tenoctlan, the country they were in.

  Rhyan looked her up and down. “If I’m not mistaken, they wear exactly the outfit you’re wearing.”

  She dusted herself off, glancing down at her frayed uniform. The fabric was torn at the shoulder where the reptile had coiled too tightly, and a dark smear of mud ran along the insignia at her chest. Another tear, near the upper side of her left arm, exposed a glimpse of ink. The design was striking: a swirling, interwoven pattern of dark lines and luminous silver accents. At its center lay a diamond-like shape, split down the middle by a thin, branching fissure, almost like veins in cracked glass. Surrounding it were arcs and sharp points that gave it a sense of movement—like a star mid-explosion, or a bird frozen in the instant of taking flight.

  It didn’t look like any ink job he’d seen before, and something about it sent a warning through his gut. A gang mark? A mercenary crest? Whatever it was, she didn’t seem eager to explain.

  Rhyan raised an eyebrow. “Deserter?”

  “Something like that. They don’t like it when you walk away from the wrong mission.”

  Rhyan had wondered why she seemed so casual, even now. Maybe that was the answer.

  Maybe she’d already made peace with dying.

  The buzz of drones grew sharpened into an electric hum, the type that told Rhyan they were likely small quadcopters. He didn’t think they were locked on yet, but that wouldn’t last. Judging from her uniform, she seemed like she knew her way around, and he was, on the other hand, completely lost.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered, already moving. “I came here for answers, and now I’m getting dragged into treason.”

  She huffed as she fell in step beside him. “Nobody dragged you anywhere. You should’ve just let me die.”

  He let out a sharp exhale. “Maybe, but it would’ve been a pain to listen to you complain while you were suffocating.”

  She almost let out a chuckle, but her legs were already pushing forward. “They’ll send ground forces soon. We need to move.”

  “You have an exit from Manua?”

  “I do.”

  “I know a way off-world.”

  That made her glance at him. “You’re saying you got a bird waiting, right?”

  “Something like that.” She must have noticed that he just mirrored her exact words from earlier, judging from the furrow of her brow.

  Before she could reply, the distant drone hum, for a split second, had become distorted. Rhyan deduced it was a frequency drop. They had lowered their altitude.

  The woman let out a prolonged hiss. “Advance team’s likely on the ground. If they’ve got bio-scanners, we’re burning time.” She crouched low, adjusting her weight before gesturing ahead. “We move north. Old ceramic panels are there. They scatter infrared.” As she spoke, the strange pack on her back shifted. Segmented plates clicked apart, unfolding like the limbs of an insect. A slender antenna extended upward, and immediately the air around it felt different—like the atmosphere before an impending storm.

  “What does that do?” Now it was his turn to ask.

  “It jams their standard signal,” she replied. The military was using old-fashioned infrared, and she had that? It got him thinking about whether she had stolen some classified tech, if that tech was capable of disrupting the signal of the very military she served in.

  Manua, Haret’s biggest jungle, was nothing like the Earth’s Amazon. Not anymore. Humanity’s old rainforest had been reduced to flattened land for the most colossal megastructure the planet had ever seen, only for the contractor—The South America Confed— to plant a simulated forest atop the 48th floor of that very structure.

  Rhyan pushed aside a broad, waxy leaf, only to feel a stream of collected water spill down his forearm, soaking the sleeve of his jacket. He exhaled through his nose but kept moving, shaking off the droplets as best he could.

  The woman wasn’t as lucky. As she stepped past a low-hanging vine, one of the curling thorns hidden beneath the foliage lashed out, jabbed through the fabric of her sleeve, and sliced a shallow line across her exposed wrist. She hissed, jerking her arm back as a single bead of blood welled at the cut.

  Those were the flora Rhyan would never have seen back in his hometown.

  “Watch yourself,” Rhyan muttered, swiping the vine aside with the back of his Morkanium-coated hand. The thick vine was promptly slashed in half, and the thorn next to it recoiled at the touch, snapping back into its curled position like it had never moved in the first place.

  “Your magic is a killer,” she said. It wasn’t magic, though. Just science. Magic didn’t exist, as far as Gravel was concerned.

  “It is.” Sometimes, it was too good at killing. The last time he tried to pet a wild beast, he hadn’t intended to kill it right after. His Morkanium claws had acted on their own, and the beast had, in fact, died. Turned out that beast wasn’t a wild beast, but a local billionaire’s pet. That incident accounted for one of his arrest warrants.

  After a few minutes of silent running, she shot him a sideways glance. “You never said why you’re in this jungle. People don’t simply end up in Manua.”

  Rhyan didn’t look at her as he leapt over a fallen branch. “You never said why the military’s after you.”

  She pursed her lips, then pouted, then clicked her tongue. “Guess we’re both keeping secrets, then. Can I have a name, at least? What do people call you?”

  A narrow stream trickled through the underbrush ahead, barely deep enough to wet his fingers. He took a good look around. Along its edge, small pebbles glistened under the dim jungle light, their surfaces smooth from years of water erosion.

  “Gravel,” he announced. He couldn’t call himself Pebble.

  She raised an eyebrow as she turned back. “Gravel?”

  He nodded once.

  She studied him for a second, then let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “Alright, Gravel.” She stopped for a few seconds. “I’m Felicia.”

  That was the most Earthling-sounding name he had heard from a Haretian, which was not that strange, but was also strange enough considering the Earthlings hadn’t moved to Haret until 300 years ago.

  She didn’t offer a last name. He didn’t ask.

  “Where are you from, Gravel? Nobody on Haret speaks ISL*. Nobody names themselves in ISL, neither.” She scrunched her nose as she took in a deep breath. “Which planet spat you out?”

  He kept walking. “You’re a curious one. Maybe we save our ice-breaker for after we’ve booked ourselves tickets on our next inter-galaxy launch?”

  “Leaving this planet? I—” A shrill sound cut through her words, possibly from a recon drone, followed by the crackling murmur of ground team comms and the snapping of twigs and branches.

  Felicia’s posture shifted. “They’re sweeping left. Cutting off our exit.”

  Rhyan released a breath, adjusting his stance as his other arm hardened into a Morkanium projectile shooter. He tested the weight. “Well, fellow criminal. I reckon we’re quite short of options.”

  They ran.

  Patreon Subscriptions - 3 Bonus Chapters

  Discord Members - 1 Bonus Chapter

  Daniel Newwyn