Stars Gods Wolves by Dan Kirshtein (best classic books .txt) 📕

his administrator, and greeted her in Wackan. “Spaddip, Eila!” He meant it as hello, but he’d actually told her he was hungry. Either way, he would find the people of the Wackano immensely hospitable.

Eila happily placated him. “Spadduhp, Kackla,” she replied, not quite getting the hang of something she learned from someone who hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it either.

She handed him his day’s checklist, and he bounced as he filled it out. Before he could finally stamp it, however, an explosion rocked the building. It was not the type of explosion one hears in military scenarios: a nice clean boom, some debris falls, and everything’s over quickly. This was the kind of messy and noisy explosion that was made by a passionate, albeit slightly unstable, independent contractor.

Eila screamed and jumped off her chair to go fill out her emergency procedure paperwork. Kackla’s audio device fell to the floor as he retrieved his gun from his back, racing toward the sound of the explosion before an alarm bellowed through the halls.

When he arrived at the site of the explosion, there was shrapnel and debris everywhere. Heru’s sandy and windy atmosphere surged into the man-made hole, making it difficult to see. Purple bolts of plasma dashed through the red winds and gray smoke. Had this been any experienced invader, it would not have been a fair fight. Kackla’s co-workers—the other underpaid guards turned militia-grade soldiers—fired blindly and almost aimlessly into what Kackla surmised to be a dozen armed men on the other side of the gaping wall. Next to the guards, huddled on one end of the hole, two Herulean bodies lay on the floor, wounded from the explosion. When Kackla looked up, he noticed that the purple bolts were not really hitting anything; they were random and aimless. The shots were either not fired by anyone intending to hit a target, or they were not fired by anyone at all. Something beyond the smoke caught his eye: had he more experience in the military, he would have identified it as an unmanned turret.

“Kackla!” A shout from his commanding officer drew his attention to the far side of the gap. “Take those men. Secure your prisoner. Right now.” Kackla had never heard his commanding officer shout in this way before. This was not the usual ‘prisoner-facing’ voice to which Kackla had grown accustomed. This sounded almost frightened. Kackla quickly patted three of the guards on the back, which was enough to get the attention of the rest of the guards on his side to depart with him.

They ran as fast as they could. Kackla’s long, never-seen-a-fight-in-his-life legs quaked as he approached the only cell in this entire compound worth a damn.

Little did he know, the prisoner on the opposite side of the cell door was equally frightened. Martin Collier watched through his massive window with terror and disbelief as a sturdy, albeit small vessel descended into view. As the side hatch slid open, Martin identified the large brown creature leaping out as a Waykind. Considering how unlikely that was, he wondered if he was hallucinating all of this.

The large brown creature wore an oxygen mask and carried a staff, which was placed against the glass wall that Martin was standing behind. The glass hummed and vibrated. Had Martin not been in such shock, he would have stepped back as it shattered in front of him. Martin had suddenly been exposed to Heru’s harsh environment. The sands tore at his skin, the oxygen was ripped from his lungs, and his eyes were filled with the familiar red winds he had watched for so long. Though he could barely see, breathe, or flee, he embraced the atmosphere wreaking havoc upon his body, raising his arms to shoulder height and smiling.

It was the best feeling he’d ever known.

His ecstasy was interrupted when he felt a bungie-like cord being tied around his waist. He opened his eyes as best he could, given the environment, to see a salt-and-pepper-haired Human male wearing a captain’s insignia, tying the cord tightly around him. The captain also wore an oxygen mask, and he seemed to be in quite a hurry. Martin decided it was for good reason, as he heard his cell door slide open. Before he could turn to look, his head jostled as someone quickly slid an oxygen mask and goggles over his face. The doctor’s lungs rushed to fill themselves with air as his eyes blinked away the sand. He glanced at the person who’d put the mask on him: a bald female Human.

Her hands moved faster than anyone he’d ever seen, and the purple light flashing from her plasma pistols, striking every guard that stood behind him, reminded him of a renaissance painting. A peaceful smile arrived on his face, only to be replaced by panic as the bungee cord around his waist went taut.

The man he was before would have understood these things happening to him. He would have understood what a prison break was, and he would have been calmer as he watched himself be reeled in to a strange ship like a fish on a line. But five years in a Herulean isolation camp had made him a very different man.

He did not recognize the animalistic voice that screamed as he clawed at nothing before reaching the ship. Through his mask, he watched the prison shrink into the distance. And while some part of him was certain it was all he ever wanted, the rest of him felt he was going to his death.

Upon landing within the ship’s open bay door, Martin squirmed and hollered. The bungee cord finally lowered him to the floor, and he found a corner to crawl into and tear at the mask. When he had finally removed it, he felt what was left of his muscles constrict. He was still panting and trying to assess his new environment. He remembered his days in college, observing an experiment regarding sensory overload and what it does to the