Planatae

Hostage

There was a dull, incessant pounding in Aurrum's skull as he came to. Very slowly, he realized he was no longer standing upright. He'd been thrown, tossed across the hold like a rag doll.

His first thought was, I should be dead.

His second was for his crew, and as the shrieks of pain and terror slowly filtered into his ears, he knew that there were some who hadn't been as lucky.

He tested his limbs, which although battered and sore, all seemed to be working. His vision cleared as well, and colors coalesced themselves into pearly white smoke and dark silhouettes whirling through the haze.

He pulled himself to his feet, fighting against his dizziness and nausea. No doubt he'd suffered a concussion, but it was the stench in the air that almost sent him to the floor again, heaving. The air was tinged with the smell of sulfur and spent ammunition, and layered below that was a sharp, coppery tang that he could almost taste on his tongue.

He stumbled forward, and the metal taint only grew stronger. As the smoke parted for him like a set of curtains, he was able to make out more details.

Lying prone, only a few feet from where he stood, was the broken body of one of his technicians. Torn and pockmarked, the body had been shredded by shrapnel. A part of him wanted to roll them over, to try and identify who's hidden face it was, but instead he kept moving.

He passed people who ran, wailing, their bodies marred with damage. Some clutched stumps, their limbs torn off by the blast. Others sat on the ground, dazed or in shock. Names were called out, friends or relatives desperately looking for one another. Amidst the chaos was scattered the worst of the casualties, those who were too far gone to move, or had already succumbed to their wounds.

Aurrum reached out to those who could react, offered words to those who would listen. This wasn't his first experience with death, or violence; before anything else, he had to be an anchor for his crew, a figure they could find solace in. But in practice there was little he could do. The horror of it all threatened to overwhelm him, and much of his effort was directed towards just putting one foot in front of the other.

Going towards the blast zone was the last thing he wanted, but he needed to know what happened. The smoke was clearing now, and he could finally make out the far end of the cargo hold.

What had once been a solid wall was now a huge, jagged hole in the ship. Aurrum squinted, trying to make sense of the hulking shape that stood in the path of the sunlight that should have been streaming into the space.

Aurrum pushed his battered body as fast as it would go. As his vision grew clearer, and the emergency lights burned the smoke away, he recognized the intruder for what it was: the last remaining fighter.

The craft had made an impressive landing, threading through the hole it had made. Now, it rested upon the edge of the hold, on a section of floor that was still structurally intact.

A few paces away from it was a rough, pitted lump of metal. Interspersed around it were smaller ridges. They were panels that had been lifted up from the floor.

As he watched, the lump of metal shrieked, its layers grinding open like the petals of a deformed flower.

Within the cavity huddled Lukas, Erin and that woman, Ricardia and the doctor. They were haggard, and disheveled, but alive.

For a moment, Aurrum was hit by a pang of anger. Why didn't Lukas protect him, like he had the others? Then he looked at the surrounding ridges, and considered how close he'd been to the blast. The boy had likely done what he could - grabbed the closest people to him, and tried to protect everyone else with bulwarks. It was probably the only reason Aurrum was still standing.