Frontier of Fear

Chapter 12: Across the Dommak

Kabra was idle with indecision. She stared at the void between her two new companions. She would glance at the Tangean for a few moments, then at the Parrani boy. To her surprise, Ranger Nova was asleep within minutes. Or appeared to be.

Earlier, Kabra had laid the G-470 blaster rifle against the wall of the little grotto. Now she picked it up. After examining it for a few moments, she stood up and drew a new ammunition cartridge from the pile of salvaged survival gear. She replaced the spent ammo cartridge in the rifle with the new one. Her mind wandered several directions. She knew she would much rather be in her bunk aboard the Bloodwing, enjoying the spoils of a successful raid—or even sulking after a failed one.

Kabra glared at Ranger Nova, who breathed softly as she slept. Raised a princess, now living high on the hog as a space ranger. Kabra was prepared to bet that Mira would wake up with a sore back and a crick in her neck. Space Ranger training couldn't have been so thorough as to prepare its students for this kind of depravation.

Kabra was tempted to nudge Mira or make some sort of loud noise, just to see if she stirred.

But she thought better of it. She had seen Mira put up a good fight against the Ornuthagg, and before that she had beaten Kabra into submission not once but twice. Kabra had to respect Ranger Nova for her tenacity.

There were smarter ways, Kabra reckoned, to get around this naïve princess and back onto the Bloodwing.

Kabra patted the earth beneath her. This here is probably an inch or two of hard-packed soil on top of bedrock, she guessed. I've slept ON rocks. This is cake. At least if I'm taking first watch then I don't have to deal with the dirt just yet.

She sat with the blaster rifle on her lap. She stared over the rim of the little rock grotto at the stars. So far, the night was silent, apart from the whistle of the breeze outside. There were no insect noises she could detect.

Kabra tried not to commit to any particular train of thought. She especially avoided thinking about Ranger Nova's offer. She had plenty of other options—or did she? She could run away and, take the blaster rifle with her. It wasn't that far south to Brendan's village. Let herself get captured again by whoever Star Command had left behind, then escape? Not a bad idea. Or continue further south from Ballor, find a spaceport, and hijack a ship.

There was no question of her striking out on her own and staying in this harsher country—the Dommak, Brendan had called it. Wild foraging and subsistence had never been her forte.

The Bloodwing was being pursued by Star Command: if Scrail could escape he would get offworld as soon as he could if he hadn't done so already. And he wasn't going to come back to Parran to look for a single crewman. Other times she had been marooned, Kabra had been with other crew members, including ship's officers. And she had only waited a day or two before rescue. Now she was on her own—the space ranger and the Parrani boy didn't count.

Kabra stood up. She climbed up the sloped end of the grotto to look over the rock wall, finding roughly the same spot where Mira had greeted her from earlier that evening. Ranger Nova must have been joking when she told Kabra to keep track of time by watching the stars: it was partly cloudy. Kabra wasn't sure how to track the movement of the few stars visible between drifting clouds. She could make out, in some places, the more distant cloud of stars and gas that marked the center of the galaxy. Perhaps that would rotate as the night changed.

She glanced down at the two sleeping forms on the floor of the grotto, barely visible in the single flame of their improvised lantern. You two are idiots, Kabra said to them silently. Any sane person would go back to the nearest civilization and face off with the monster there, not run deeper into the wilderness after some legend.