Skinner barely had time to back up before Nehuasta’s blade hummed to life and carved a deep gouge in the heavy metal door. She swung again and again, hacking vehemently at the door until it collapsed off its hinges in with a loud clang. Skinner jumped over the pile before it had stopped moving, entering the slave pen ahead of the Senate Hunter. The chamber wasn’t large, six feet wide and maybe nine long at best, and was made all the more cramped by the four hanging cots lining the sides. At the far end, curled up on the floor in the fetal position, was their biosignature. She had a set of magnetic manacles around her wrists and ankles which kept them pinned together and an inactive one around her neck. Apart from her shackles and a scrap of brown cloth tied around her waist, she was completely naked.

“How stable is she?” Nehuasta asked, looming over Skinner as he let Lumos scan her vitals. Up close like this, she could get a better reading than from halfway across the colony.

“She’s alive, but malnourished and dehydrated. She’s been here a while – three, maybe four days,” Skinner said, his jaw tightening. “Whatever swept the colony didn’t find her, but it probably found whoever’s been using her.” He examined her cuffs, scowling. “And these won’t come off without a key – they’re Type-IVb heavy restraints. She must’ve put up one heck of a fight to earn this.”

Nehuasta put a hand on Skinner’s shoulder and pulled him backwards away from the prone figure. “Let me be the judge of that,” she said, kneeling down. Skinner sat on one of the slave cots, resting his elbows on his knees and flexing the fingers of his prosthetic. It wasn’t his first brush with slavery—he’d seen his fair share of it on the Frontier—but finding it on a Senate world, even this close to the Frontier itself, made him sick.

The Senate Hunter sighed, examining the cuffs for herself before gripping the one around the Heil slave’s neck in both hands. “Step back a bit. I don’t want pieces killing you.”

“Pieces?” Skinner asked, hopping off the bunk and stepping back. “Pieces of wha—”

The collar around the Heil’s neck exploded, fragments scattering off the walls of the cell. Skinner instinctively threw his arms up over his head, his polyform suit’s shields flared up around him for a moment, glowing violet in the dim light of the cell. Nehuasta grunted in satisfaction. “From the collar,” she said matter-of-factly. “That one was not only keeping her tethered, but also sedated. She should come around soon.”

Nehuasta didn’t waste any more time, picking up the comatose Heil and turning towards the door. “Let’s go. We can debrief her when we get back on board the ship.”

“Captain, I have bad news,” Lumos interjected.

He paused near the door. “Go ahead,” he said, hesitation tinging his voice.

Lumos never got the chance to relay her news. Stekiens’ voice suddenly filled his helmet as well as Nehuasta’s, overriding his CI. “Captain! I’m tracking movement everywhere! Hundreds of contacts coming down the mountain and quickly.”

Nehuasta swore in a language unfamiliar to Skinner. “We need to move. Now.”

“That was my bad news,” Lumos said, almost sounding bitter that Stekiens had beaten her to it. “I recommend immediate evacuation.”

“Understood,” Skinner said.

“For the record: I told you this was a trap,” Nehuasta said as she heaved the Heil over her shoulder and began to run back the way they had come.

“Never doubted you,” Skinner said as he bolted down the spillway behind her. Nehuasta unslung her rifle and threw it behind her towards him. “I’ve got my saber – if we’re engaged, let them have it.”

“Oh sure, now you let me have a weapon,” Skinner said, disengaging the safety as they hit the bottom of the metal stairwell. Nehuasta only huffed in response, her saber already burning brightly in one hand as she stabilized her passenger with the other.

The two of them burst out into the light of the colony a minute later. Stekiens was aiming both of her guns upwards at the mountain. “I can’t see them yet, but they’re on all our scanners. Hundreds of them.”

“What are they?” Nehuasta snapped, setting the Heil down against the wall.

“Captain, some of them have the same biosignature as the Human-Creatures we encountered on Schunston,” Lumos said. “Strangely, the others all read as Erythians.”

Skinner hesitated. “It’s more of those white things,” he said to Nehuasta. “A lot of them – but two different types.”

Nehuasta snarled, her Ion Saber burning brighter as if responding to her temper. “I need whatever scans your CI has,” she said.

“I’ll have her create a data packet for you,” he said. “You can have it if we get out of here alive.” He turned the next question to Lumos. “How long until they’re in visual range?”

“Five minutes at most,” she said. “I recommend returning to the landing shuttle and evacuating before then.”

Skinner turned back to Nehuasta. “We don’t have long, but we can make it to the shuttle if we—”

“Do not take me for a coward,” the Hunter said, an edge of steel in her voice. “I came here to protect this planet and rid it of hazards. That is why I answered the distress beacon. I am not going to flee.”

“Okay then,” Skinner said. “But I will. I’m not sticking around to get killed by these things.”

“Captain, you should remind her that there are easily five thousand contacts coming down the mountainside. Even for a Senate Hunter, those are not good odds.”

“You know there’s like five thousand of them, right?” Skinner said, trying not to let his voice shake. “I mean… that’s a lot.”

Stekiens laughed. “Against Nehuasta? Then it might be a fair fight.” She disengaged the safeties on both of her guns. “Take your new friend to the dropship.”

“She’s not my… oh, why do I bother,” Skinner moaned, bending down and hoisting the Heil up onto his shoulder. He wasn’t as strong as someone like Nehuasta – he was going to have to half-drag the unconscious slave into the dropship. He couldn’t just toss her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing. “You two be safe,” he called over his shoulder as he began to stumble awkwardly towards the landing pad.

“We will be victorious,” Nehuasta responded. “You be safe.”

Skinner muttered something snide under his breath, hoping neither of them heard it as he dragged the unconscious Heil up the stairs towards the dropship. He almost toppled through the door, propping her up in one of the seats and dropping the restraint harness to hold her in place. 

“Captain, you were correct in your assessment of her restraints. They are Type IV-b heavy restraints. Without the proper tools they will be difficult to remove.”

“Unless you overload the microchips governing the electromagnets,” Skinner said. “You got me out of Dutralk that way, remember? All we need is some insidite wire.”

“I was going to suggest something very similar,” Lumos said with the faintest hint of a smile.

“The only problem,” Skinner grumbled to himself, “is where to find insidite wire…”

“Your suit utilizes insidite wires in its transition fields as well as the shielding capacitors for its servos,” Lumos informed him. “While cannibalizing your own suit is risky, I would recommend removing the insidite wires from the back of the left forearm if you must. This will disable your transition fields, but otherwise will have no main effect on your suit’s performance.”

Transition fields were something Skinner had done without for years. Although they were one of the many things found standard on Senate tech, in the Frontier it wasn’t as common. Transition fields were an invisible layer around his polyform which allowed his suit to recycle cosmic radiation, turning it into additional cycles for shielding. This meant that when he was crawling around on the exterior of his ship, his shields were boosted – useful when working in asteroid fields, Jovian rings or debris fields. Skinner had long ago learned to make do without them. Sacrificing the transition fields of his suit to free this Heil seemed like a decent trade off.

He pulled a knife out of its sheath on his boot, using it to pry the casing off his armor. Once he managed to breach the seam, it came free with little fuss and clattered to the floor of the dropship. Lumos, ever the helpful one, immediately lit up the insidite wires he needed. “Please use caution – they do carry a charge.”

“The suit should be insulated,” he said, using the tip of his knife to lift one of the wires, separating it from the rest of the cluster. He cut it as close to its juncture point as possible, greeted with an immediate alert in his helmet that his transition field was offline. Lumos silenced it so as not to distract him. He snapped the wire free and looped it around two of his fingers. “This is a lot easier when I’m not the one wearing the cuffs,” he observed. With as much care and delicacy as he could muster, he sawed the wire between the shackles on the Heil’s ankles. Carved along the side of each cuff was a name – SYYLA. Given how Heil names worked, he suspected that was hers.

Sparks flew as the metal encountered the electromagnetic field that held them together, but insidite was known for its properties. The field reversed, feeding back into the cuffs and short-circuiting the emitters in seconds. Unconscious as she was, the Heil’s legs immediately relaxed and pulled the cuffs the rest of the way apart. Skinner breathed a sigh of relief, reaching up towards her wrists.

“Captain, Nehuasta and Stekiens are currently being overwhelmed,” Lumos announced. “They have engaged hostile contacts, and are outnumbered by approximately 2500-to-1.”

“Ah beans,” Skinner said, trying not to let his voice shake as he began to seesaw the wire between the Heil’s wrists. “Can we take flight?”

“The door to the cockpit is sealed, and I do not possess the runtime cycles to hack it,” she said. “Unless Nehuasta issues the command, or one comes from orbit, this dropship will not fly. Furthermore, it is an automatic ship – there is no pilot for us to convince.”

Skinner was about to say something when something grabbed his helmet roughly. He let out a panicked yell, reaching for his knife, until he found himself staring into the eyes of Syyla, or whatever her name was. She was panicked and frightened, her grip on his helmet hard enough to set off the pressure sensors. “Wa kiks su!!” she said, the fear tightening her throat. “Traae’ra cukems!”

Skinner jerked his head away from her hands as Lumos fed the translation to him. “Captain, she said ‘we must go’ and ‘they are coming’.”

“Turn on the translation software,” he said as he reached forward and tried to calm the panicked Heil. “Hey! It’s okay, we’re here to—”

She slapped his hands away, picking up the utility knife he’d dropped and forcing herself to stand. She looked emaciated and weak, but her eyes glowed brightly. “They are upon us, dekkarams uma!” she said. “I will not die cowering – I will die fighting!”

Something slammed into the exterior of the dropship with enough force to shake it. Skinner turned to the porthole in a panic, his eyes meeting eyes of another white-skinned monster. It looked like the one he’d seen on Schunston, but far smaller and leaner. Unlike the first one, it possessed eyes that looked almost normal. He could’ve mistaken it for an albino Erythian, but for the razor-sharp teeth and claw-like hands. It was joined by another, and then several more.

“Nehuasta, can you hear me?!” he yelled into his radio. “The landing pad is compromised!”

Her voice came back instantly. “We know! We’re on our way!”

“Beans… oh beans,” Skinner said, looking around for the rifle Nehuasta had given him. He couldn't find it, and cursed his luck as he raced to one of the foot lockers and tore it open, looking for something to defend himself with. His surprising ally was doing the same, rooting through supplies and medical kits for any kind of weapon.

“Use this!” she barked, tearing an overhead bar free from its moorings and throwing the piece of metal at him. Skinner fumbled it before getting a grip, having momentarily forgotten how strong Heil could be. There was no way in Heaven he could’ve even moved that bar, let alone torn it free.

“What are we going to do?” he yelled. “We don’t have a prayer of—”

He could see Nehuasta outside the windows, her red saber slicing a path of destruction through hundreds of the white creatures. He could also feel the dropship trying to lift into the air, but the sheer weight of the creatures was keeping it down. Syyla advanced on the door, preparing to open it and face their enemies. Everything around him was happening in slow motion, as if in a dream. As if something was very, very wrong.

And then he heard it… the creaking and groaning of metal. With no warning, everything tilted sideways, slamming him back against the seats as the dropship tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. The Heil shrieked in rage and fear as she struck the wall next to him. Skinner looked up and out of the porthole, his face paling as sweat streaked down his face.

Nehuasta was standing on the edge of the cliff, red light streaming from both of her hands. One arm was moving in slow, concentric circles and creating some kind of energy barrier that was keeping the creatures at bay. The other was closed into a fist, and the energy emitted from it was wrapped around the dropship to keep it from falling. The landing pad was giving way. The weight of the creatures was too much for it. Stekiens was inside her barrier, both guns sparking fire and spitting death as the Senate Hunter tried to drag the pad and the ship upright, all the while maintaining an energy barrier and pinning the monsters on the outside of the dropship against it to prevent them from attacking.

Skinner couldn’t breathe. Fear gripped him as he stared in awe at the Senate Hunter outside. He understood why her crew followed her – the raw power she was displaying was almost divine. It reminded him of the Constellation commander they’d faced earlier, but a thousand times more terrifying. As if Nehuasta could move mountains and split moons with her power. He could feel it flowing through the ship, humming in the metal.

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before trying to push himself upright while keeping his eyes on Nehuasta. He watched the creatures throwing themselves against the shield, the red energy sparking with each hit as she pushed them back… and then watched the shield falter and break as one of the monsters broke through it. It tackled the Hunter around the waist, throwing her to the ground. The energy tether connecting her to the dropship snapped like a piece of brittle string…

…and then the pad tore free off the cliffside, crashing down the rocky face of the mountain and taking the dropship with it.