The Rask Rebellion

"Maybe we can make things better," Mizi said.

Lozka soon emerged from the pool, striding up onto the beach gracefully, her sinewy body dripping with water. Ben wondered if she was going to dry herself off in the sun, but he was amused to see her shake herself like a wet cat before picking up her clothing. She wasn't entirely dry, her fur still looked damp, and her shorts and sling were still soaked through. It seemed that being dry wasn't the goal. She had mentioned not wanting her fur to dry out earlier, so perhaps there was a reason to keep it moist.

She made her way back over to them, her newly decorated cloak slung over her shoulder, and Ben took that as their cue to leave.

"Alright, time to get back to work," he said as he struggled to his feet in the high gravity. "Don't leave any trash behind, you'll upset Mizi's sensibilities, as well as alerting anyone who stops here to our presence."

They collected up what was left of their respective meals, then headed back to the Timberwolf. Ben tossed his gear inside, then emerged again, stopping in front of Lozka as she cocked her head at him curiously.

"You adapt your cape to whatever environment you happen to be in, right?" he asked.

Lozka seemed confused as to why she was being asked about it right now, but she nodded her head.

"My people use foliage and plant matter to blend our camouflage with our surroundings. It helps us remain hidden while we stalk our enemies."

"There aren't many oases in the desert, though," he added. "What would you do if you got caught out in the open?" She didn't reply, so he gestured for her to wait, returning to the vehicle. When he emerged again, he was carrying a bundle of fabric in his arms. It was camouflaged in desert tones, made up of interwoven strips of fabric not unlike her cloak.

"This is the camouflaged netting that we throw over the vehicles and tents when we make camp," he explained, unfurling some of it to show her. "It's the same logic as your cape, basically, makes us harder to spot from a distance. If you wanted, you could cut off a cloak-sized piece and wear it, we don't need all of it. Hell, Mizi's tent would be so small that we probably won't even use half of this piece.

Lozka took it from him, turning it over in her hands. Her ears twitched, her tail starting to whip back and forth. Was that a sign of happiness?

"Thank you, Commander."

"No problem," he replied.

***

Nightfall had arrived, the stars just starting to twinkle in the moonless sky, and the temperature had begun to plummet like a rock. They had turned the heating up in the Timberwolf enough to keep them warm, but Ben was starting to worry about the fuel cells. Since leaving the oasis, they had encountered nothing of interest, just more miles of rolling dunes.

He was beginning to get tired, his eyes drooping as he watched the readout from his sensor suite. As he glanced at the feed from the drone that was hovering overhead, he noticed something strange. There were tracks in the sand, a furrow that almost looked like an object had been dragged along, winding its way between the dunes. Could it be another native animal? A giant snake to go with the horrible spiders?

"What do you make of this, Lozka?" he asked as he swiped the window to her monitor. She examined it, her ears twitching.

"Those are tracks," she replied, her eyes narrowing. "Not from an animal, likely a sand skiff."

"Evidence of Rask?" he asked, concern creeping into his voice.

"Not necessarily," she said, "but we should be wary."

"What are the capabilities of a sand skiff?" Ben continued, angling the drone's camera as he searched the horizon. "Does it pose a threat?"

"It is a small one or two-man craft usually used for scouting," Lozka explained. "They are powered by wind, very fast, but lightly armed."

"Not faster than a Timberwolf," Mizi chuckled.

"Get on the FLIR, Lozka," Ben added. "The sand is cooling quickly, if there's anything warm out there, it should stand out like a sore thumb. Do not engage until we can ascertain who the skiff belongs to."

"Yes, Commander," she replied as she began to manipulate the turret.

"Hold up, hold up," Ben exclaimed. "I got something on the drone. Check this out."

His two companions switched to the drone's view, watching as a small object blazed towards them, seen from too high an altitude to make out much detail. It did indeed look like a little vehicle with a sail. It crested a dune effortlessly, using the incline to gain more speed as it raced down the slope.

"It's coming this way," Ben muttered. "Don't panic. If it's Rask, they don't have any weapons that can scratch a Wolf."

"I cannot see it yet," Lozka grumbled, returning her view to the turret's cameras.

"Whoa!' Ben gasped. "What the fuck? I just lost the feed from the drone, it's gone dark. Connection is shot."

"Is it a malfunction?" Mizi asked, her eyes focused on the path ahead.

"The systems all read normal a second ago," he replied, scratching his head.

"Could they have shot it down?" Lozka suggested.

"From that altitude, while moving that fast?" Ben scoffed. "Doesn't seem likely."

"Do not underestimate the Rask," Lozka hissed, "violence is their way of life."

"Whoever it is, they'll be coming up on us soon," Ben said as he adjusted his weight in his seat. He checked his harness, making sure that it was secure. "Battle stations. Be ready. Mizi, get us higher, I want to get a good view of this thing before it's on top of us."

"Engaging six-wheel drive," she replied, shifting gears and making a left turn. The thick tires dug into the soft sand, dragging the twenty-five-ton vehicle up one of the larger dunes. As they reached the crest, she locked the wheels, Lozka swiveling the turret as she searched for their target.

"There!" she snarled, her camera sighting the approaching craft. She zoomed in, switching from FLIR to video, revealing the alien vehicle. It looked much like a canoe, its wooden hull swooping, and aerodynamic. It had a trio of wheels, one at the front that was situated beneath the angular prow, and two at the rear. They seemed to be retractable, the alien vessel currently sliding on its belly. It had a large sail that was tall enough to rise over some of the dunes, like a cutter's, and clinging to the rigging was a Borealan figure. They were leaning like a boat racer, changing their direction as the wind filled the sand-colored fabric.

With another level of magnification, the pilot was revealed to be dressed in a leather getup, his face obscured by a scarf and goggles. There was a second Borealan behind him who was sat in a recess, what was unmistakably an XMR resting on the narrow deck. In another second, they were gone, a dune rising up to block the view as they descended.

"Mizi!" Ben barked, "pursue that skiff! Lozka, fire at will! Those are definitely Rask, probably scouts. If we let them get a look at us, they could take that information back to the Matriarchy!"

Mizi kicked the Wolf into gear, the engine revving as she spun the wheel, sending them racing down the far side of the dune. Ben wanted to pop another drone, but they had already lost one, and he didn't want to risk a second. That gunner was a crack shot with a rifle.

As they neared the foot of the dune, the skiff crested the one ahead of them, going fast enough to get a couple of feet of air before landing in the sand. It slid down the slope towards them, practically frictionless, its pilot angling the sail to catch the wind. He veered away, Mizi locking the rear wheels to send them into a handbrake turn, putting her foot down as she began to pursue. The little sailing craft was moving like lightning, but the Timberwolf could reach a hundred and twenty K under the right conditions. Its wheels kicked up the sand behind them as it struggled to gain traction, its engine making Ben's seat vibrate as it roared. They gave chase, Ben switching to the turret view as Lozka trained the crosshair on the skiff.

The alien with the rifle had turned to face them, keeping his profile low, shouldering his XMR. There was a flash as the air around the barrel turned to plasma, the magnetic coils glowing with heat. An alarming thud made the hull ring like a bell, a tungsten slug hammering the armor on the front of the vehicle.

The thing was pulling away from them quickly, it was going faster than they were. The dunes were slowing the Wolf, stopping it from reaching top speed.

"Take it out, Lozka!" Ben yelled as he bounced in his seat. She gripped the joystick on her console, the crack of the thirty-millimeter railgun audible through the hull. The skiff was weaving back and forth, the Wolf bouncing on its suspension, the stabilizer struggling to keep pace. A burst of fire tore through the fabric of their sail, leaving charred holes in the material, but it wasn't enough to slow it. In a flash, they had crested another dune, falling out of sight.

Mizi kicked the Wolf into six-wheel drive again, climbing after them, Ben's stomach dropping as they sped over the top. The skiff was once again in sight, Lozka waiting for the turret to stabilize before loosing another salvo. The target swung out of the way at the last second, it was incredibly agile, the slugs creating splashes in the sand where it had just been. Lozka cursed in her native language, spitting like a cat, tracking them with the scope.

The skiff's gunner returned fire, another thud echoing through the hull.

"Bring it home, Lozka!" Ben yelled over the noise of the engine. "They're scratching my paint job!"

The driver of the skiff unfurled a bundle of fabric, which expanded as it caught the wind to form what looked like a kite surfer's chute, the odd vehicle veering into the wind. It got a huge speed boost that almost lifted it off the ground, Mizi skidding in the loose sand as she changed direction to keep up.

"Patriarch's Bow, keep still!" Lozka snarled. She squeezed the trigger, and this time, her rounds found their mark. Half a dozen thirty-millimeter slugs shredded the tiny craft, reducing its wooden frame to splinters, sending it crashing into the side of an adjacent dune with a shower of sand.

Mizi hit the brakes, bringing them to a stop as Lozka kept her gun trained one the wreckage, a solitary wheel rolling its way down the slope. One of the occupants was clearly dead, his body slumped over the ruined hull, while the other was lying spreadeagled on the sand a short distance away after having been thrown clear. The broken sail still fluttered in the wind, its mast snapped in two, the parachute drifting on the surface of the sand.

"Nice shot, Lozka!" Ben exclaimed. He waited a few moments to see if either of the bodies stirred, then began to climb into the troop bay, retrieving his handgun. "Keep me covered, I need to go check the wreckage for survivors."

He dropped his visor, waiting for the troop ramp to lower before hopping out onto the cooling sand. The incline was troublesome, making him slip a little as he skidded down its face, raising his weapon as he neared the wreckage. Jagged pieces of splintered wood jutted from the sand, the torn fabric of the sail fluttering in the breeze as he approached. He neared the slumped figure of the gunner, giving him a prod with the barrel of his XMH. The Rask was wearing leather clothing in shades of black and brown, his rifle lying on the ground a few feet away.

"This one's done for," he said, communicating with the Timberwolf over ad-hoc. "Checking the next guy."

The pilot was partially covered by the parasail, Ben keeping his weapon trained on the body as he walked up and kicked its paw. There was no reaction, so he leaned over to grip the billowing fabric, meaning to pull it away.

Time seemed to slow as the Rask threw the sail aside, rising from beneath it wielding a serrated blade the size of a butcher's knife, the steel glinting in the starlight. His feline face was contorted into a vicious snarl, the flat bridge of his nose furrowing like that of an angry tiger, his sharp teeth bared. He had been playing dead, it was an ambush. Ben tried to bring up his XMH, but the alien was too fast.

A metal bolt the size of a lawn dart whizzed over Ben's head, striking the Rask between the eyes, his head snapping back like he had just been punched in the face. He toppled over backwards, dead before he had even hit the sand, Ben finally bringing his weapon to bear as he scurried away. His heart hammering like a drum, he turned to look back over his shoulder, seeing that Lozka had risen from the hatch in the cab. She lowered her crossbow, giving him a silent nod.

Trying not to think about how close he had just come to being skewered like a kebab, Ben sifted through more of the wreckage, finding little in the way of logs or data storage devices. It would have been nice to know what these guys had been doing all the way out here, and what their orders were. He gingerly patted down the bodies, finding nothing but a few trinkets and supplies.

"We're clear," he said, making his way back through the sand towards the Timberwolf. He climbed inside and closed the bay door, opening his helmet's visor and taking a deep breath, willing his hands to stop shaking.

"Are you hurt?" Lozka asked, peering at him from the cab. Mizi was looking at him over the backrest of her chair, her feathers brushing the roof as they flared purple.

"I'm fine, thanks to you," he replied. "Silent Huntress indeed..."

He returned to his seat, fastening his harness, his companions turning their attention back to their displays.

"You two okay?" he added, and they both nodded. "Mizi?" he asked, "have you...been in combat before?"

She had expressed such concern for the spider that they had encountered, it made him worry that seeing death might affect her. Some people thought that they were ready for war until they saw their first kill, and then their entire outlook changed. The Rask weren't mindless Bugs, they were people, regardless of their politics.

"I have," she replied, her tone neutral. "I lived through the defense of Val'ba'ra, I have seen my share of death."

"Just making sure," he said, returning to his sensor readout. "I know you object to killing animals. The emotional health of a crew is as important as their physical health, gotta make sure everyone is capable of doing their jobs."

"Animals are innocent," Mizi added, the engine rumbling as she began to pull away from the wreckage. "They cannot make moral judgments. If these Rask choose to harm others, and they engage in combat willingly, then they understand the risks involved. I have no qualms seeing them die."

"Pragmatic," Ben chuckled.

"That makes twenty-seven," Lozka muttered, Ben giving her a sideways glance.

***

This is as good a place as any," Ben said, his breath misting. "Pull up between these dunes, and let's get the camouflage netting over the Wolf. We'll stop here for the night, get some rest."

"It's freezing in here," Mizi complained, crossing her arms over her chest. "We should turn the heat up. Not everyone present is a mammal, you know..."

"We're gonna run the fuel cells down if we're not careful," Ben warned. "It's not cold enough to do us any harm. We have sleeping bags and blankets, we can stay in the troop bay, it'll be fine."

"We would have needed to return to the column to resupply after about five hundred kilometers anyway," Mizi grumbled.

"I know, but time spent driving back to the main formation is time spent not scouting. We need to reduce our downtime as much as possible. Remember, those systems are there to keep us alive, not to keep us comfortable. Lozka, come help me with the netting."

They squeezed their way out of the cab and into the bay, Ben collecting up the bundle of camouflaged fabric on his way out. It was even colder outside, the stars so stark and bright that he might as well have been in space. With no humidity and such sparse cloud cover, there was nothing to retain heat. The desert baked in the sunlight and froze in its absence. Suddenly, the Rask wearing leather in the desert seemed a lot less foolish...

He handed one corner of the netting to Lozka, the two of them pulling it over the Timberwolf to conceal it, driving long stakes into the sand to hold it down in the wind.

"Thanks again," Ben began, "for what you did back there. A second more, and I would have been filleted like a fresh salmon."

"It is my duty to protect my pack," she replied, out of view from where he was kneeling. "Think nothing of it."

"You're a good shot," he chuckled, "I'm sorry I doubted you earlier. I scoffed at the idea that someone who fights with a crossbow could be an asset to my crew, and you've proven me wrong pretty handily."

"It is true that I have little experience with the turret, but the principle remains the same. I can make do."

"So, what do you think that Rask skiff was doing all the way out here? I suggested scouts, but you know them better than I do."

"I concur," she replied. "The skiff was scouting for a larger force. The Rask never travel alone, they work in raiding parties of dozens or hundreds. The skiffs identify targets, such as trade caravans, and relay the information to their sandships."

"Even if the skiff couldn't alert its fleet, they'll know that something is up when it doesn't report back," he said as he hammered in another post. "We're gonna have to be careful out here, engaging may not always be the best option. The Rask aren't supposed to have anything more threatening than a wooden boat, but I don't buy it. If they could get ASAT weapons, then they could have gotten their paws on practically anything."

Once the netting was secure, he wandered around to the front of the truck, inspecting the damage that had been done by the XMR. The slugs that they fired had velocities in excess of two kilometers a second, they could punch a six-centimeter hole in solid steed. The Timberwolf's composite armor was made of sterner stuff, but they had still embedded themselves deep into the plating, leaving small craters. He'd like to dig out the projectiles, but the tungsten had slagged. It was a little frightening going up against railguns. He'd only ever fought Betelgeusians before, and they used plasma weapons that this armor was designed to counter.

"Is it damaged?" Lozka asked, rounding the side of the vehicle to see what he was doing.

"It'll be alright," he replied. "Come on, let's get back inside. I can feel my eyelashes starting to freeze."

When they stepped back into the troop bay, sealing the ramp behind them, Ben found that Mizi was already preparing their sleeping area. The bunks were designed to fold down from the walls, but she had stripped the mattresses off them, lining all three up so that they covered the whole deck in a soft surface. The sleeping bags had been strewn about, along with a few bundled-up rolls of netting and tents, creating a kind of rat's nest.

She smiled in greeting, her feathers erupting in a display of green, Lozka seeming nonplussed by the strange sight.

"What the hell's all this?" Ben asked, gesturing to the pile as he stepped around it gingerly.

"What do you mean?" Mizi asked. "I made a bed for us."

"Do you expect us all to share?" he continued, glancing between the two aliens.

"Flocks share a bed," Mizi replied with a shrug, "I didn't consider that you might object."

"As do packs," Lozka added. "I have no qualms with sharing. Besides, it is cold, we should pool our body heat if we mean to stay warm."

"Humans don't sleep communally," Ben insisted. "I guess I'll just sleep at the far end if you two want to huddle. I'll take first watch, you two get some rest. We'll rotate every three hours."

He made his way to the cab, sliding into his seat and beginning to tap at one of the touch panels. There was a thud as a drone launched into the air, unfurling its rotors and beginning to hover. The Timberwolf was nestled in the sand dunes, out of view of any passers-by, but that also meant that they couldn't see beyond them.