The LLRC Winds of Fury entered the orbit of Grimmak near the north pole, as per Nehuasta’s direction, along with the contingent of smaller ships that accompanied it. Skinner watched from one of the large windows as the planet lazily circled beneath him, its orbit compounded by the retrograde motions the ship was keeping. “Scan the surface,” Nehuasta barked, pointing at Aksak without moving away from her position in the center of the bridge. “I want to know what’s going on down there. While the scans run, prep Nassit, Sihd and Ekkin Teams for launch. I want fighters on the planet’s surface as soon as that data comes back clean.”

“Affirmative!” two Scain leapt into action, bolting from the bridge at her command. Nehuasta turned to another pair of soldiers—an Erythian and a Taeski—and pointed at Grimmak through the window. “You two send word down to the hangars. I want civilian evacs following behind the fighters. If there are people down there, we’re getting them out.”

“Vechits!” the Taeski said, saluting sharply before making his exit with the Erythian on his heels.

Aksak chimed in a moment later. “Scans are coming back in. The planet’s biosphere is showing a ten percent decline over census data. There is some kind of interference in the atmosphere – our radio signals aren’t penetrating. The distress beacons stopped just before we entered the system. I don’t know if they’re still broadcasting below that haze, but we can’t make contact.”

“Understood,” Nehuasta said. “Prep my personal fighter, I’ll be joining the squads on their descent.” She turned to Skinner and fixed him with a long, pointed stare. It meant nothing through the mirrored visor. Skinner could only see himself looking back at her, reflected in the curvature of her face. “You are staying here. Aksak will debrief you.”

Skinner didn’t say a word. He swallowed nervously, nodding quickly. Whatever was going on down there, he knew it was linked to both the Gaither Key and the events on Schunston. The sooner he could debrief with Aksak, the better. Perhaps after that they’d let him get back to skimming the bottom of the barrel of existence and leave him alone.

Nehuasta marched off, her fists clenched tightly as she strode through the bridge doors. They sealed shut behind her, leaving Skinner standing on the bridge with Aksak and the rest of the command staff. The moment she was gone, he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

“You must learn to relax, human,” Aksak said calmly from her place at one of the command kiosks.

“That’s really easy for you to say,” Skinner said, turning to face her. “You work with her on a daily basis and you’re both Senate Hunters. I’m… I’m a nobody who plumbs broken ships for a living. There’s a huge skill gap there.”

Aksak laughed, turning away and walking towards him. “There is also a skill gap between Nehuasta and myself,” she said, grinning predatorily at him. “There is a very good reason I serve as her second-in-command and not her superior.”

“Then you’re just proving my point!” Skinner said, waving his arms in exasperation. “She was about to kill me on my own ship!”

“No, she was about to grab you and shake you forcefully,” Aksak corrected. “I simply advised her not to and she played it off.”

Skinner paused, looking at Aksak in confusion. “That was you?” he said. “But… why?”

Aksak shrugged noncommittally. “You were already terrified – I was reading your vitals through her helmet. I daresay you were a few scant moments from soiling your suit. Seeing as you are classified as a Tier One resource because of your firsthand experience on Schunston, I couldn’t just let her give you a heart attack. We need to know what you know.”

Skinner leaned back against the large, sweeping window. “I’ve already told her everything I know,” he said helplessly. “I swear, I’m not holding anything back…”

“You said you spoke with a researcher,” Aksak said. “What all did he tell you?”

“Not much that I understood,” he said. “He told me they uncovered some weird things on Schunston, and that they more or less started making colonies disappear. And then the biosphere began to decay, and he said they all just kind of went dormant or were waiting or something.”

“And the creatures on that distress call? What are they?”

Skinner shook his head, looking down at his hands. The new polyform suit Aksak had requisitioned fit him perfectly, but the armor didn’t look right on him. The Senate-issued equipment looked fit for a soldier, with dense padding and thick armor. It was a far cry from the makeshift, kit-bashed suit he was used to. “The ones in the video are different,” he said. “They’re not like the one I got away from.”

“Different how?” Aksak said. Skinner suddenly realized that she was standing in front of him with one hand on her hip. The other was holding the Data Pad with a semi-enhanced image of one of the pale creatures.

Skinner forced himself to look at it, trying to keep his heartbeat still. “It’s smaller,” he said. “But it’s just as terrifying. The skin tone is the same, but the proportions are off… the image isn’t clear, so I can’t see the face either, but the one I met is gonna give me nightmares for years.”

“You are not a warrior,” she observed. “A survivor, yes, but not a warrior.”

“No, of course I’m not!” Skinner said, exasperation seeping into his voice. “I’m a salvage operator.”

Aksak regarded him with her pale, semi-luminous eyes. “And yet you lost your arm. Did that happen in combat?”

Skinner flexed the prosthetic reflexively. “No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Aksak’s invisible eyebrows furrowed, but she didn’t push the issue. “You fought this creature, though… the one on Schunston?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice. Cutlep told me the holding tank he was keeping it in would hold. It didn’t. It came into the room and jumped on me. I managed to kick it off and shoot it until it quit moving and then ran for it.” He shivered, folding his arms across his chest. “If I never have to see one of those things again, I’m perfectly fine with it. I just want to go back to skimming wrecks.”

Aksak nodded. “Indeed, and I can sympathize with that. But we must all understand there are times we cannot take the easy path. Right now, people are dying down there. Do you know anything else about that creature, or the ovoid objects?”

“No. I’ve told your captain that, and I’m telling you. I’m not a scientist. I’m not a warrior. I’m friggin’ Unlucky McNobody that picked up a shiny rock because I thought I could make a buck!” he unfolded his arms, a momentary surge of anger flowing through his chest.

“I believe you,” Aksak said after a moment, putting away the Data Pad. “I am going to be joining Nehuasta on the planet’s surface. You are free to take the Dangerous and depart. I can have one of our escorts lead you to your ship.”

“Wait… just like that?” Skinner asked. “I’m free to go?”

Aksak nodded. “Yes. What use are you to us if you have no further information? You said it yourself – you aren’t mixed up in this by choice. Go back to your life of picking clean the corpses of ships, if that is what you choose. Unless you’d prefer another option?”

“That depends on the option and I don’t like this already…” Skinner said warily.

“Hear me out, at least?”

“I’m listening… shoot.”

Aksak gestured to his polyform. “We spent at least twenty-five thousand credits requisitioning that suit for you,” she said. “That isn’t a small amount of money. We are extremely well-equipped to pay you handsomely for your assistance. You have experience in picking through wrecks for valuables. Nehuasta is currently examining an empty colony. We can offer you twice the value of your polyform if you go down there and assist her in looking for clues about what happened.”

“Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen,” Skinner said. “I’ve been screwed by the Senate before. Nope, nuh-uh. Besides, you’ll just use me as bait the minute one of those things shows up.”

“Alright then,” Aksak said, consulting her Data Pad for a moment. “One hundred thousand credits to go down and pick through the debris and another hundred thousand when you make it back.”

Skinner chewed his lip for a moment, weighing the offer. That was quite a lot of cash no matter how he looked at it. Even his best haul had barely been ten thousand, and she was offering twenty times that. His mind ran through all the things he could afford with that much money. “Counteroffer,” he said at last. “I’ll go down for the hundred thousand. You have your techies fix up the Dangerous and I’ll take the other hundred thousand when I get back. But I’m reserving the right to bail if everything goes sideways.”

Aksak’s predatory, shark-like grin suddenly made Skinner feel like his offer had been too low. “I accept your offer,” she said. “Every man has their price. Yours just happens to be higher than some. Still, I knew you’d come around.” She handed him a credit chit without losing her smile. “Here’s your first hundred thousand. Stekiens is waiting for you in the hallway. She will escort you down to the departure bay.”

Skinner hesitantly took the chip from her. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked warily, his heart pounding in his chest. “This seems too easy. I don’t like that.”

Aksak’s smile diminished somewhat. “Nehuasta has been feeding me information about the colony below. Nassit Team went north, and is finding much the same. Sihd and Ekkin are both reporting decreases in wildlife and biosphere, but with only three teams in the air we can’t effectively tell what’s going on. Nehuasta is on the ground waiting for you in the remnants of a colony called Vriik. Heil-owned and operated. It wouldn’t be the easiest target for hostile forces, and yet something swept through and picked it clean.”

“I’m starting to think I should’ve asked for more,” Skinner said, clenching his teeth as he turned the credit chit over and over in his palm.

“Nehuasta will protect you from any real danger,” Aksak said confidently. “I have faith in her – she protects all members of her crew.”

Skinner picked up his helmet from next to his foot and slipped it over his head. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not really part of her crew.”

“You are now – we have a contract. Welcome aboard, human.”

Skinner resisted the urge to say something sarcastic out of reflex as he stalked towards the doors. The moment they opened, he jumped back with a scream. Filling the hallway was one of the most massive creatures he’d ever seen. He stumbled back, landing hard on his tailbone as he crawled away from the monster in the door.

The hallways were roughly circular, and easily ten feet in diameter. This beast had to hulk its body down to fit comfortably within that space. The gigantic creature was armored from head to toe in what looked like organic, chitinous plating that bristled with short, spiny nubs. Although it walked upright on two legs, its four muscular limbs were what drew Skinner’s attention. Two were folded across the giant’s chest while the other two hung down at its sides. Adding to the initial of horror, Skinner realized that it was looking at him with a set of four eyes, arranged in a cross on the monster’s face. Below them, a writhing mass of tentacles obscured anything in the way of a mouth.

The creature stepped through the door and straightened up, topping out at over twelve feet. It was almost three times his height, and Skinner realized that it could have picked him up with little to no difficulty. He barely reached its hips. It looked down at him for a moment before letting out a huff. “Is this the human we picked up?” it asked, the voice deep and guttural. The tentacles around the mouth squirmed as it spoke. “He’s smaller than most.”

Aksak was trying her hardest to contain her laughter. “At ease, Skinner,” she told him. “This is Stekiens; she acts as one of our escorts and guards here on the Wings of Fury. She’s here to take you down to the shuttle bay.”

“Thanks for the friggin’ warning!!” Skinner yelled as he picked himself up, brushing off his suit with as much dignity as he could muster.

Stekiens looked at him in confusion. “Have you never seen an Iharsh-Daraz before? You seem unprepared.”

“I’ve seen them,” Skinner said as he turned to face her. “Just not normally on spaceships and I can usually see them coming from a mile away.”

“Ah, I simply scared you,” she said with a sage nod. “Come – we have a ship waiting for you.”

Skinner frowned; glad the helmet hid his features. “That was fast…” he muttered before turning to Aksak, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You! You knew you could bribe me, didn’t you?”

She shrugged, a semi-sheepish grin on her face. “Guilty as charged,” she said. “But you know… I didn’t end up a Senate Hunter because of my good looks.”

Skinner almost retorted, but Stekiens grabbed him around the waist and picked him up. “We are needed on the surface. You will be flying with me.” He could only nod his head mutely, shocked but not surprised at the ease Stekiens had lifted him. He’d known Iharsh-Daraz were stupidly strong – capable of lifting vehicles and even small spacecraft with relative ease – but he’d never been on the receiving end of it.

“Well then, let’s be off…” he said with a shrug, relaxing his body in her grip and folding his arms crossly. “I don’t really have much of a choice anyway.”