The atmosphere in Mendax-12 felt thicker than on any other planet they’d been in. The air resisted the Black Fang’s descent like a viscious bowl of soup, and the ship’s energy shield normally subdued ember-like glow now flared bright red. Scorched and uneven panels quavered under pressure, save for the sleek Republic-graded plating.

  Hua Fang was now practically screaming over comms, “Hunter! Can you tweak the shield’s frequency?” To which she responded, “On it.”

  Hunter was deep in the bowels of the Black Fang, shuffling over the wires snaking across the floor. Meanwhile, Priest was stationed in the main power hub, flipping switches and pulling levers to divert energy from non-essential systems. The long-range sensors went dark first, then came the weapons system.

  Hunter’s console beeped, and she glanced at the readout. “Shield’s stabilizing . . . for now. But we’re running on fumes, Fang. If we hit another pocket of turbulence, we’re done for.”

  “Seems like that old hag of yours needs a bit of an upgrade,” Xaxx’s voice blasted on comms just as Gravel walked into the cockpit, holo-projector in hand.

  “We were going to,” said Gravel. “If we weren’t chased around galaxies like criminals and were able to dock on a half-decent planet. Certainly not one with this kind of atmosphere.”

  Their ship didn’t hit another pocket of turbulence.

  The violent shuddering eased, and Fang’s hands sprawled over the consoles, cheek against the heating glass panel, “Good girl.” Her voice was barely audible to Gravel. “You’ve done it.”

  “This kid can make love to a steel pole.” He raised a brow.

  “Congrats, crew.” Xaxx was on comms again. “Enjoy the view. I’ll meet you at Karakoia Anchorage. Don’t mistake it with Kakoira Anchorage. That’s on the other side of the ocean.”

  Where the upper layers had been a chaotic, suffocating maelstrom, the world below was a serene, glistening paradise. Soft light emanated from the clouds, and the gentle buoyancy cradled in Black Fang in its arms. A sky of orange and gold.

  Dancing around the vessel were countless tiny organisms—sky plankton. These microscopic creatures moved in swirling schools and glowed with a soft, luminous light; a living sea of shimmering particles.

  Fang propped back up, rested her hands on the controls, and let out a slow breath. “Well,” she said, her voice tinged with both exhaustion and wonder, “that Xaxx guy meant it when he told us to enjoy the view.”

  Then they saw them.

  Colossal beings twice the size of their vessel moved with a grace that belied their size. They swam through the air, their enormous fins undulating in slow, deliberate motions, sending ripples across the clouds.

  “What in the void are those?” Fang asked.

  “Different names for different races,” Xaxx said. “Humans call them skywhales. We call them—” He then proceeded to pronounce an intelligible word with an entirely different tone and cadence.

  “Whales don’t belong in the sky, pal. This stuff is even weirder than a diamond-skinned sabertooth tiger,” Gravel muttered.

  As the leading great whale opened its cavernous mouth, the glowing light in front of it was promptly sucked into its maw, swallowed whole.

  “We might wanna divert our course.” Gravel tapped on Fang’s shoulder. “I did not have being swallowed by a whale on my AstroBingo card, and I’m not about to add it in now.”

  “Aye aye Boss,” Fang replied.

  As the vessel descended further, the city of Bor’tho came to view. Bor’tho was a city born from necessity rather than innovation, its streets a maze of recycled tech and rusted metal walls. Not every place could house the kind of diversity one would find in Bor’tho, where species from all over the galaxy come to barter, hide, or escape. Orderly, contrary to Sloan’s belief.

  Heck, local settlers didn’t even eradicate the local flora and fauna when they first set foot here.

  “You’re gonna need this.” Priest came into the cockpit, inside his palm some miniscule, gel-coated capsules.“The atmosphere here is thick, so we’ll have trouble breathing if we don’t live here. That’s what enabled those whales to fly in the first place.” Hunter soon followed his steps.

  There were many versions of such pills on the market, but they worked more or less the same: nanobiotics would travel to the lungs, forming a temporary, microscopic filtration layer over the air sacs.

  “How long will this last again?” Gravel asked as he picked up one from Priest’s hand.

  “You should take one every twelve hours, eighteen hours max. We should have more than enough for two days here.”

  “I’m not taking them,” Fang waved.

  “Are you going to stay on the ship?” Priest asked.

  Fang replied, “That. And I hate those things. They always make my mouth taste like I’ve been licking a bitterberry.” Hunter laughed uncontrollably upon hearing that for some reason.

  Her laughter vanished as soon as Fang spoke, “Don’t forget to wear air filtration masks, guys!” She rummaged the custom storage compartment underneath the cockpit and pulled out for masks, handing three to the others.

  Hunter scrunched her face. “These are hideous, man. They’re made of polymer, and have these weird exhaust pipe-thing plugged on the sides. You couldn’t have bought a worse-looking mask if you tried.”

  “Gravel told me to buy these specifically.”

  “They were on sale!” Gravel shrugged, raised arms and flat hands. “30% off. Too good to resist.”

  “There was a reason they were on sale, Captain.” Hunter pouted. “Can I not put it on?”

  “Unless you wanna breathe in methane and ammonia then you’re gonna have to bear with it, lady,” Priest replied.

  Gravel said, “Put it on, Hunter. I’ll go get the corpo now. She’s gonna die of starvation in there if I don’t pull her out of that shithole she’s in.” Then he left the cockpit.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  ***

  The Black Fang’s hull juddered as it landed on Karakoia Anchorage, one of the many docking stations on Mendax-12. Floating a hundred feet from the sea, the docking bay was a rowdy mess of ships from all corners of the galaxy—state-of-the-art model, an entire Republic ship stripped of the Republic logo, and rusted ancient beasts held together by little more than duct tape. Skiffs and cargo drones wove between suspended walkways, leaving behind trails of ionized mist that dissipated into the thick, sulfur-tinged atmosphere.

  It was really only missing the neon lights and some officers in suits to become another Orkash.

  Dockworkers kept shouting over each other over everything but work-related matter, and a pair of traders were throwing a gliding e-disc to one another near the edge; Bor’tho’s favorite pastime.

  Security here was . . . lax, to say the least. A couple of bored-looking guards in mismatched armor greeted the Black Fang as it landed, and waved them away as soon as they shelled out some landing fees.

  “Welcome to Karakoia,” a guard told them as they walked out from the ramp. “No trouble on your end, then no problem on ours.” He was a head higher than Gravel, and twice as bulky, as with many other guards here who didn’t have an air filtration mask on. Instead, they had gliding membranes connecting their arms to their thighs. When they moved, the membranes flexed and tensed like living fabric.

  That would be how one tells the natives of Mendax-12 from others.

  The moment Gravel stepped off the ramp, he launched himself into the sky. His boots barely grazed the ground before he bounced up again, practically floating midair. He took another step; rising above others, waving his hand at Hunter until she looked at him with a deeply troubled stare.

  “What are you doing?” She asked.

  “I’m moonwalking. Get it? Like walking toward the moon?” His grin was in sync with her sigh.

  Hunter said, “It’s like this guy’s dead set on being the pinnacle of the clown archetype.”

  “Put more artificial weight in your boots.” Priest said as his mechanical arm sizzled with the extra weight just added to them.

  “Absolutely not.” He kicked off another surface, flipping midair before landing—only to rebound again.

  “You’re gonna get stuck in a no-fly zone.” Hunter said.

  “Fang’s gonna be there with me. She would’ve loved this feeling.” Gravel turned on his holo-projector, dialing Fang. “Kid, you sure you wanna miss this? Come.”

  “Nuh-uh. Got things to do. But it does sound fun,” Fang replied with half-enthusiasm.

  The exhaust pipes on the sides of Hunter’s mask hissed as they filtered the thick air, and she adjusted the straps with a grimace. “I look like I’m about to weld some ships.”

  “C’mon, even Fang didn’t complain this much. It suits you well,” Gravel shot back. “Very industrial chic. Might even get a few grease-stained dockies to hit on you.”

  Hunter rolled her eyes. “I’m only complaining specifically because you bought them.”

  “Say, where’s the tool pouch you always bring with you? Would’ve nailed the mechanic look.”

  Hunter sighed, but didn’t reply.

  With a lazy, deliberate gait, a figure strode toward them from the far end of the docking bay, followed by a slightly smaller silhouette. Even from a distance, Xaxx was hard to miss—long, shiny black hair, tall and lanky, his elongated frame draped in layered fabrics that caught the golden light in uneven folds. His deep cerulean coat, dusted with shimmering crushed minerals, billowed as he walked, and a high-collared tunic in rust-red clung to his wiry form, fastened with irregular clasps that ran diagonally across his torso.

  Of course, he was still wearing that mask.

  “You running a fashion show now, huh? That why you want to land on Mendax in the first place?” Gravel asked.

  “Oh, I’ve tons of outfits like this,” Xaxx broke into a self-assured laugh.

  “Where did you dock?” Gravel asked.

  Xaxx replied, “A couple hundred feet from here. They probably wanted us to stretch our legs about.”

  Hunter looked up at him and let out a breath through her mask’s exhaust. “You’re taller than I thought.”

  “And you’re shorter.” The slight tilt of his head suggested he was grinning behind the mask. “But for a human, I’d say you’re average-height.”

  “You’re also pretty flashy.”

  “I wear my mood on my sleeve,” he revealed the inside of his sleeve, and the color of the minerals inside shifted from teal to gold under the sunlight.

  Hunter raised a brow. “What, your mood is ‘expensive’?”

  Xaxx’s chuckle was slightly distorted by his mask’s modulator. “Expensive? No. Expressive? Yes.” He extended his hand, standard courtesy on both Rellan Verge and Earth. “You must be Hunter.”

  “Flattered you know my name.” Hunter returned his handshake.

  “I’ve been acquainted with your reputation back when you two were a duo.”

  “So you’ve known us for quite some time.”

  “Where’s my handshake then?” Asked Gravel with a hint of tease in his voice. He’d finally decided that it was better to put more artificial weight into his boots and undershirt.

  Hunter extended her hand to him. “Here. Take it or leave it.” Gravel slapped her hand away.

  Xaxx squinted his eyes in amusement.

  The woman beside Xaxx moved like liquid shadow. Without the filter of a mask, her high cheekbones and sharp jawline were basked under the golden sunlight, a stark contrast to her black, bottomless irises that swallowed the light whole. A deep burgundy wrap clung to her frame, cinched at the waist with intricate metallic fastenings that gleamed like embedded gemstones. Her gaze flicked past each of them in quiet assessment, the way a gambler might study a table before deciding where to place their bets.

  “Holy shit,” Gravel studied her up and down. “Do they deduct your social credits if you don’t dress up in Rellan Verge or something?”

  The woman’s smirk lingered as she dragged her gaze over him once more, before turning to Xaxx. “You didn’t tell me your friends were so adorable.” She spoke with an elegance to her voice, contradicting the pronounced accent that she shared with Xaxx.

  Gravel didn’t miss the tease in her tone, nor did he particularly know what to do with it. At least not at the moment when everyone else was around.

  “Adorable, huh?” Priest’s voice dipped into an unusually deep baritone as he spoke behind Gravel. “That is novel.”

  “Your friend here has yet to introduce themselves. And mine as well. Behind me, Priest, and . . .” Gravel turned back to see Sloan standing a distance from them. She could be easily mistaken as unaccompanied if not for the filtration mask she was also wearing. “Corpo. Corpo!”

  Sloan didn’t respond, her gaze instead fixed on the floating cityscape beyond the docking bay.

  Gravel walked towards her. “Sloan. That mask doesn’t cover your ears!”

  Sloan finally turned, tilting her head. “I heard you the first time.”

  “And you ignored me.”

  “I was looking.”

  “At what?”

  She shrugged ever-so-slightly. “City planning. This city is held together by inertia.”

  “Yeah, because that’s what I came to Mendax-12 for—an urban development seminar,” Gravel scoffed. “Let’s get going. You’re like a shadow, corpo. If I don’t keep an eye on you, you’re gonna be off to who-knows-where in a moment.”

  The others had already started walking, and Gravel gestured for Sloan to catch up.

  Gravel grabbed Hunter by the shoulder and asked, “Where we going?”

  “To a bar. Xaxx said it’s on him.”

  “And you left me behind?”

  “He said it would be funnier if you turned around and realized we were just up and left without you. That I agree.”

  Gravel shook his head. “I think Xaxx is a terrible person. Be aware; he’s the type to overhear your favorite bottled drink while in queue and order all of them.”

  “That reminds me of that time you stole my favorite soda can and dropped it onto an acid pool . . .”

  “Actually, let’s stop this topic here.” He kept his grin plastered on him as they walked out of the dock. “What’s that woman’s name again? One’s walking beside Xaxx?”

  “Nastija. Don’t do anything that Xaxx can use to blackmail you.”

  “I would never. I know how to cover my tracks.”