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Chapter 3

"Commander!" came an urgent voice over the intercom. "The buffer's going critical! The energy is feeding back into the ship's systems and I can't redirect the reaction without causing an overload or a burnout."

Electronics were smoldering. The air was getting thick with a blue-grey smoke that stung eyes and nostrils. The armor-plating readout beside Nathanial exploded, showering him with sparks. The flight controls were fighting him as the twin ion impulse drives bucked with sporadic surges of power. A bright orange planet was quickly filling the forward viewer. A massage flashed across the young wolf's forward viewer.

'Warning: Maximum decent trajectory surpassed. Reentry disintegration imminent.'

"Damnit!" he hissed between gritted teeth.

"Pull it up, Nate!"

"I'm trying, sir, but the automatic compensators are not engaging. I think they've been damaged."

"Don't try, ensign. Do it! Manually, if you have to, but land this bird in one piece. Do you hear me, ensign!"

"Aye, sir!"

Nathaniel's fight with the controls was almost painful. The slightest acceleration or deceleration sent a violent jolt through the ship that was virtually impossible to soften by paw. The planet's gravitational pull was increasing exponentially with distance. A thousand computer readouts flashed before his eyes. The young pilot pushed the forward drives to level the decent but the ship shuddered violently with an abrupt gain in velocity that pressed Nate into his chair. Hard.

That should not have happened.

"Hendrix, report," growled Commander Howard into the ship's intercom. "What happened to my dampeners?"

"I'm sorry, sir. The inertial dampeners are not reacting...They're fried, sir."

The old wolf cursed something through a vicious snarl. "Keep her smooth, ensign, or you'll shake us apart," he said.

Nathaniel could barely hear what his commander said as the navigations computer screamed stats and warnings into the headpiece wrapped around his ears and forehead. The visor he wore over his eyes mapped lines and trajectories as overlays to the forward screen, and he was having difficulty keeping the ship on its ideal track. Without the dampeners to counteract the force of inertia, any abrupt change in velocity would throw a grown wolf across the ship like a doll. He had to be extremely careful in controlling their fall.

Sergeant Hendrix's frantic bark broke the tense silence. "Commander, the core has reached critical. I need to purge it now!"

Commander Howard tapped a claw to the terminal beside him, then pounded the controls with an angry growl. "Nate, my controls aren't accepting authorization. I'm going back there." The old wolf unclasped his harness and struggled against the shuddering of the Nuara.

"Understood, sir."

Nathaniel gritted his teeth, his attention split between the fast-approaching ground and the computer readout telling him the exact elevation he should fire the retro-drives to slow their fall. If they fired too early they could bounce off the atmosphere and the force would rip the weakened hull apart. If he fired too late, they would not decelerate fast enough and they'd crash into the ground.

A proximity warning flashed across his eyes moments before the planet's atmosphere hit the ship like a wave of water. The hull temperature rose from near zero to six thousand degrees almost instantly. The friction helped slow the Nuara's decent, but her titanium plating would reach critical temperatures if he couldn't keep her declination at the proper angle.

His paw hovered over the controls, his eyes fixed on the readouts. Twenty seconds. Fifteen, ten...

A powerful concussion shook the cockpit, thrashing the wolf's body violently in his harness. His head snapped right, his headpiece flying free and his vision flashing a brilliant white. When his vision cleared a moment later he looked around himself, suddenly confused and disoriented. The cockpit was bathed in a red pulsing strobe and an urgent mechanical voice that sounded distant and unfamiliar rang through the confusion "Brace for impact" just before everything went black...

***

My lungs heaved with a choking gasp of air that sent a nauseous wave of pain up and down the right side of my body. For a moment I couldn't move, couldn't think straight, and couldn't remember what I was doing lying on a cold slab of metal. I couldn't see a thing in front of me and when I tried turning my head to the side the pain made me howl in shock and fear. I started to panic, my heart starting to race and my breathing becoming quick and labored. Where the hell was I? Why couldn't I see anything? Where was everyone! A sudden impulse overtook me and I felt my arms pushing my body upright, seemingly by their own mind. An unbearable pressure exploded in my head and I blacked-out.

When I awoke again, sweat was rolling down my face and muzzle. I was lying on my side, my right cheek pressed to the corrugated metal surface of the Nuara's deck. It took me a minute to remember where I was, and when I did I moaned, half in pain, half in hope that whoever had attacked me was gone. The flashlight was lying discarded on the floor a meter from my face, still alight, its soft white playing off the polished steel walls. Slowly, carefully, I slid my left paw across the floor and raised it to my temple. My leathery pawpads felt crusted blood in my fur. The pressure hurt quite a bit. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, slowly taking stock of my situation. I could feel my toes, could wag my tail, and could move both my arms and neck. My entire body ached tremendously with each motion, each breath, but I decided that must have been a good thing. I wasn't paralyzed, thank the gods, and I didn't think anything was broken. I just hoped there wouldn't be any lasting damage.

But by all the gods of Lupus, my head hurt!

I imagine I must have lain there on my back, half dozing, for over an hour. Or so it felt. When I felt confident enough I tried slowly sitting up. I was still a bit dizzy and it was difficult keeping myself upright. Grabbing the flashlight and crawling on all fours into the store room I pulled a medic bag down from a shelf and loaded a hypodermic spray with a mild steroid. The effect was almost immediate. The nausea subsided and my breathing became a little less labored. Still, I took it slow and steady, staying seated on the floor, my back resting against the wall. The Nuara seemed so calm all of a sudden. So safe and protective. It made me angry.

How could I have let this happen? How had I let my guard down enough to be taken by surprise? I knew better than that, damn it all! I had become complacent over a couple weeks of loneliness and monotony, and it had nearly killed me. Maybe the first rule of survival was not as easy to follow as I had led myself to believe.

I hadn't gotten a good look of who had hit me. Nothing more than a vague outline, really. It was two-legged. It could have been another wolf, for all I knew. But its eyes...they had stood out against the darkness, like tiny glowing yellow-green embers hanging in space. They were hateful. Evil.

They were not lupine.

I shivered. Was my imagination getting the better of me? I couldn't be sure there was anybody here at all. I could have slipped and hit my head, the dark figure nothing more than a figment of a demented mind driven mad by trauma. Post traumatic stress disorder creating visions to reason out the unreasonable. Or a concussion.

But what if I wasn't alone?

I climbed to my footpaws and, using the wall for support, stumbled from the storage compartment and to the cockpit to check the ship's logs. It read nothing from any ships, not that a pirate or other marauder would attempt to make contact before descending on its prey. Still, without a sensor array an entire expeditionary force could have passed within a kilometer and I'd be none the wiser.

There wasn't much indication that someone had been here. It didn't look like anything in storage was missing. I had already moved all the food and water rations out of the Nuara when I set up my camp on the hillside above. Medical supplies were untouched, except for what I had taken after waking. I hesitated outside the second storage compartment before entering. Commander Howard, Campbell, and Laura were exactly where they should have been, which relieved me somehow. I was about to leave when the weapons locker in the corner caught my eye. It was opened. And there was a pistol and rifle missing.

At that point I knew: I wasn't alone. And whoever this enemy was, he was armed.

***

13 December 2357 Evening

The Nuara was empty. I made certain of that, saying "To hell!" with the power reservoir and turning on every light on the ship to search every cubic centimeter. Twice, in fact. Whoever or whatever it was had fled after knocking me out. I really didn't want to go outside, fearing I'd be shot down in the open. At about midnight I strapped a pistol to my belt, donned a combat helmet, and took a rifle out into the desert. The helmet's night-vision helped, though I was sure the moonlight would have been sufficient without it. It was so bright, in fact, I was worried I couldn't conceal my movement.

But I refused to cower in my metal box forever.

I crept slowly along the bottom of the ravine, staying in the shadows of the terrain and using what vegetation there was as concealment as best I could. I stopped frequently, taking a knee to listen and look. I climbed my camp's hillside from the back until I was up above my shelter. I couldn't see into the lean-two from above it, but I waited quietly, patiently for some time, expecting to catch some sign of movement. After about twenty minutes I started to move, creeping down the loose shale and soil on all four paws.

Nobody was home. But my stuff had clearly been tampered with. My gear was scattered around, all the water cans gone, and most of the food rations with them. Most importantly, his scent was still here. I followed his scent trail across the hill and down around a few bends in a long draw guarded on both sides by steep grades. It wasn't difficult. My attacker had used the same path several times, probably making several trips to carry off my supplies. There was even a discolored trail in the dirt cut by his steps that I followed for at least half a kilometer, before I started smelling smoke. There was a fire burning ahead, around a turn in the draw. I'll give my helmet credit for this: I would not have seen the faint orange glow of dying embers without it.

I stepped lightly. There were a few wolf-made things lying around. A box of rations. A shipping crate I didn't open. There was a pile of cloth next to the fading fire. I could hear shallow breathing. The pile was rising and falling slowly. He was asleep.

There was no way I could be this lucky.

I crept closer, leveling the rifle at my enemy. He still didn't move. One of my rifles was lying in the dirt beside him. Slowly, quietly I managed to grab it and toss it out of reach. A pair of furry ears were poking out from under the blankets. I leveled the muzzle of my weapon right at his head. With my free paw I reached for the bottom of the covering and jerked it firmly, drawing it completely off of the sleeping form in one sweep. I staggered back a pace, completely caught off guard by what I saw.

It was a little fox.

A female fox!

At first, she only stirred a little, her eyes blinked open, and she looked around in confusion. She saw my footpaws and paused for only a moment before her eyes snapped to mine. In the low light, her eyes shined with a deep yellow-green in the moonlight from above. This little creature was my attacker? I couldn't believe it. It hardly seemed possible.

She moved first, her paw flying to where the rifle had been. She grasped only dirt.

"Don't move," I growled, asserting my demand with the muzzle of my weapon and a quick step toward the little creature. "I will kill you if I have to."

The terror in her eyes and the way she trembled stunned me. This was not exactly what I had expected, and now that I was here I didn't really know what to do next. In all honesty this wasn't the scenario I had played out in my mind.

She made the next move, pushing herself up onto her arms and crawling backward in the dirt.

"Stop!" I barked. "I said don't move!"

She didn't take her eyes off of mine, but their terror had faded. There was still fear there, but it was being overcome by hatred.

"Please...don't kill me." Her voice was soft, just above a whisper.

"Don't make me."

Her right paw was slowly moving behind her. She was trying to disguise it from me. I barked menacingly and she froze.

"What do you have," I demanded.

She snarled in reply, giving me a view of sharp little teeth. This time I didn't hesitate and stepped in to grab her wrist, pulling her paw from behind her back. One of my missing pistols fell to the ground.

I growled angrily. "You think you can kill me, fox?"

"I almost did, wolf," she hissed into my face. "But it looks like I failed. Too bed."

My fangs flashed in fury at this slave bitch's insolence. Didn't she realize I was holding all the cards here? "You will shut your mouth, slave, or I will shut it myself."

She snarled and spit in my face.

I lost control. Howling in rage I swung my fist around, connecting solidly with the side of her face below the eye. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.