Chapter 40

Onderon, Japrael System

Japrael Sector

Saw wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t deny that Steela has always been the clever one between the two of them, but that didn’t mean he was dumb. Saw and his sister, they were raised as hunters, and you don’t survive for weeks in the wilds without learning quickly. Steela planned the hunting, and Saw did the hunting. But improvisation was a necessary skill, and he picked it up the first time he stared down a mother grefna standing over her nest.

…The mother was supposed to be gone, see.. Hunts involved dozens of people, and not all knew each other, so something went wrong somewhere up the chain, and two good men found themselves on the wrong end of a grefna’s beak. Or horn. Or claws. Saw couldn’t remember; he barely escaped with his own life.

In any case, he learnt to be observant from that day on. A nifty skill, because that was essentially the one thing you had to be good at on the back of a ruping. And as a rider, let’s just say a rider can’t hide from another the same way a ruping can’t hide its wings.

So the moment he saw Alvera walking like a midday drunk he knew he was looking at a woman who spent more time fifteen thousand feet in the sky than on dirt. He knew what it felt like, when your inner ear was constantly self-correcting for a wobble that wasn’t there because it hadn’t gotten the bloody memo that the ground was solid yet.

Now that got him thinking; Alvera was a rider. Guardsmen were the elites of the Royal Army, and far be it for Saw to presume anything but he wouldn’t be surprised if they could ride rupings far better than any hunter could. There was just one slight problem with that, and the problem is that he didn’t know what it was.

It was just a gut feeling, but Saw has since learnt that gut feelings were more reliable than people gave them credit for. It kept the ancient Onderonians alive, didn’t it? It kept him alive.

He found her in the shadow of a stone column, in the middle of the ruined fortress that served as one of their waypoints. The name of the fortress has been lost to time, but these days it served as a hunters’ camp or simply a traveller’s waypoint for any party coming through this part of the woods. It was easy enough, disguising a rebel cell as another hunting party. But they also couldn’t stay long. First light, and they’d be off to the eastern highlands, where their base–the Nest–was.

This old place? Just the rendezvous location for his and Hutch’s cells. They waited a bit longer for Steela and Dono to show up… but they didn’t, and now they could only hope to the purple king that those two still had their heads on their shoulders.

And see, those two were the smartest people Saw knew. They had a way with words, and could probably manage to get the truth out of Alvera without even making her realise it. Saw… didn’t have a way with words. Which was why he preferred the straightforward approach–the kind with a blaster held behind his back.

“You’re a beast rider, aren’t you?”

The defector snapped up, slowly bringing her arms down from her face, one hand curled in a loose fist. If there was something in that hand, Saw couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

“How would you know if I was?” Alvera returned.

Saw crossed his arms, “The girl up there is my mount.”

He nodded at the mottled ruping nesting in the understory above them. Alvera casted her gaze after him, shifting her balance again,

“There’s a saying, isn’t there?” she huffed, “The one about a ruping and its wings.”

“You’re not a ruping rider,” Saw denied, “You get the stiff from rupings, not whatever you have.”

Her fist clenched–beeeep–and Saw drew his blaster with the speed of a starving pritarr. The blaster purred as its energy pack warmed up, aimed squarely at the shock of rusted red hair visible against the murk.

“And if you’re not a ruping rider, you’re not a guardsman,” he finished, finger curling around the trigger.

“I was not lying,” Alvera said far too calmly, “I was a guardsman.”

“Which one is it?” he demanded, jabbing the blaster forward, “Your Space Force. What warbeast is it?”

“You know quite a bit for an Izizian.”

“Warbeasts aren’t so rare outside the walls. We find them as far as Dox Piter,” Saw swallowed, eyeing for a blaster on her body, “Now what warbeast is it?”

“Dxunian raptor,” she stepped back, one arm against the column to keep herself steady.

He swore loudly. By the Four Moons, this couldn’t get any worse. None of Onderon’s flying warbeasts were easy to handle, but Dxunian raptors were the worst of them all. Rupings were loyal to their deaths, drexls were gargantuan and pants-shittingly terrifying in person, but simple enough to keep appeased if you kept them fed. But skreev? They attacked anything that looked at them wrong.

Adult drexls were dangerous, but cautious. At their size, even a small wound could kill them, due to infection. It was why they loved humans back in the day–small, defenceless humans. When they didn’t have to hunt, they hibernated. Raptors on the other hand, hunted for sport. Saw once saw a raptor pick a fight with a drexl five times its size on a hunt, for no other reason than because it could. He didn’t linger around longer–because he enjoyed his body in one piece–but he figured it wasn’t long before both were run down by either the Beast-Lords or Space Force.

Another raptor that went down in legend was Wodnakki, who was said to have grown as large as a drexl. It terrorised the eastern highlands for years, before Queen Lina was forced to marshal the entire Royal Army in order to put it down. Drexls were predictable, skreevs were not. Vicious buggers.

Most importantly right now, however, is that they had single riders. Which meant, unlike drexls who could have up to twenty or so, that raptor could be following its owner. And stalking them.

“Where is it right now?”

“You shoot me, and you’re going to find out.”

“You’re bluffing,” Saw accused, “Raptors aren’t loyal. It’d sooner fly off before attacking us.”

“You want to take that chance?” she shot back, “Your people are tired. You have pack animals and burdenbeasts. My Red Galia is seventy feet across and starving.”

Stang, she’s right. Alvera had been with them all this while; that meant the raptor was unattended and mostly unfed. Saw involuntarily flinched at the thought, glancing upwards into the canopy, under some illusion that he could find a Dxunian raptor that didn’t want to be found. Could he warn the camp before she could whistle? There were hundreds of them, and only one raptor–but that wouldn’t matter if only a handful were left by the time they put down the monster.

Alvera moved again, and Saw cursed himself for his lack of attention; “Drop whatever you’re holding, now! Hands where I can see them!”

The defector made a childish face, unrolling her palms as she raised them in front of her, letting a small device fall onto the moss. A glaring red dot blinked in the darkness. Comlink. Saw stomped down and crushed it.

“I underestimated you,” Alvera said sourly, with a languish that made him uneasy, “I thought your sister was the hard part.”

“Steela prefers to see the best in everyone. It makes her an effective leader,” Saw circled around her as if she was a wild animal, jabbing the blaster into her back and nudging her towards the camp, “I see people for what they show. You’re the one who planted the idea that we should find help from the Jedi, and now Steela and Dono are missing.”

“It was a good idea!” she protested, “You can’t deny you were convinced a bit.”

“I should’ve realised sooner,” Saw snarled into her ear, “You led the two of them right into your people’s arms– if they aren’t already dead!”

“They have a good head on their shoulders,” Alvera laughed, “If your sister is as clever as I give her credit for, she’ll stay alive by being useful.”

Saw froze, and for a moment it felt as if liquid spice had been injected into him, flooding his bloodstream and hazing into his vision. His finger curled around the trigger, though Alvera wouldn’t know it, and he considered putting her down right there.

“You don’t know what you are talking about!” he roared, “Steela would never betray us–!”

The silence that followed was loud. You idiot, he scolded himself, you let her get under your skin too easily. The branches rustled overhead, and Saw tore his aim away and up, fully expecting to find himself face-to-face with a salivating Dxunian raptor. But there was nothing overhead, except maybe the odd Izizian monkey wondering what they were doing.

“…Wait,” he snapped his blaster back, “Is your skreev even here?”

Alvera snickered, “Your little rebellion means nothing, Gerrera. You are so petty. Billions of men are dying out there, but you would put your pride over the entire galaxy.”

“A meaningless number. We all know that. Why should we care what happens out there?” Saw clenched his jaw, “The galaxy didn’t care about us. We would have lived as we always did, until your opportunistic and greedy nobles bit the first kriffing worm Dooku threw at us. Our own streets no longer belong to us!”

The spy shook her head, “The sooner the war ends, the sooner those droids leave.”

“Don’t tell me you believe that ‘security’ famba-shit they are trying to feed us,” he scoffed, “Those droids are building bases in our jungles! If we don’t drive them out, they will be here to stay.”

Alvera sighed, shoulders rising and falling. For a second, he thought he had gotten through to her–

“No point reasoning with the unreasonable,” she mumbled.

“Unreasonable!? No, obviously we are unreasonable. You haven’t been in Iziz for a year, you Unifar-damned exile. You don’t know what it’s like to live with a droid watching your every move, their boots pressing down on your neck–!”

–BOOM–the forest shuddered, with even the tallest and mightiest sentinels and monarch trees shuddering. A sharp wind pierced through undergrowth from above, followed by a torrent of fruits and nuts, plummeting from up high and thumping against the moss. Saw hastily ducked beneath a low-hanging tree, spying Alvera mirroring his action with a nearby arch.

–BOOM–another thunderous clap echoed through the forest. Their camp’s rupings screamed, blasting off their lofty perches amidst falling leaves ablaze in hues of amber, purple, and gold.

“Saw!” Hutch shouted at him, dashing across the forest floor as he dodged vine nuts large enough to cave his skull in, “We’ve got a situation!”

Saw stared at Alvera, whose grim expression did not bely the tone she had used with him beforehand. His mind flashed to the comlink she had, and then at the rupings who had uncharacteristically scattered like pikobis at the first sign of trouble. Whatever rage he had left in him bled away into a panicked chill. Not frightened–he wasn’t frightened. Just worried.

Because the only thing that can make rupings flee like that were–

“Warbeasts,” he whispered.

Hutch nodded, swallowing thickly, “What do we do, boss?”

“How many are there?”

“J-Just one, but it’s large enough to–”

The world disappeared before his eyes. What rare sunlight there was filtering through the emerald canopy were snuffed out as a soaring shadow engulfed them, accompanied by a tearing wind that raced through the undergrowth, sweeping up everything before it and literally bending the ancient trees to its will. It had always been dark in the jungle, but right then it was as if day turned to twilight, then downright nocturnal. It had only been for a second, maybe two, but when you were beneath a scouring drexl it could’ve been a lifetime.

“Are you sure they are after us?” Saw asked harshly.

“If they weren’t, then they had definitely seen our rupings,” Hutch answered, voice hushed for no reason, “Our mounts still had harnesses.”

Another undercurrent of wind whipped through the brush in the damning silence of the wildlife. Saw could feel a primaeval fear in his bones, as the flying tyrant slowly yawned around, beating its wings a single time like a drumbeat against the world.

“What should we do!?” Hutch demanded, unabashed terror in his voice.

There wasn’t any possible answer. There wasn’t any time to do anything. The warbeast crashed through the forest in a wall of impenetrable scales without end, claws slicing through the foliage while its thrashing tail ripped through gnarled branches and towering trunks in order to carve out space for its colossal form. Unhindered sunlight glared down, illuminating the wavefront of dust and debris, as the forest’s protective canopy found a new dragon-shaped hole in it.

The warbeast writhed behind the dust, tearing up everything in its path as it dragged itself on towards the camp. Saw swallowed. The entire camp was silent as death as the monster’s pincers snapped through the fog, its mouthful of tendrils licking up the bracken in search of prey. Drexls had poor eyesight, and frozen as statues they could only hope it would sense their presence with its disgusting feelers.

“Cityfolk!” an accented voice howled from the top of the warbeast, “Your machines steal our wilds, and now you march an army to our lands! State your piece; would you leave, or have war!?”

Saw snapped his head towards Alvera, whose grim had deepened into a murderous scowl. He could have laughed. The Demon Moon was smiling upon them. These weren’t the Space Force, these were Beast Riders, the very people they were seeking out.

He sucked in a breath, and marched out of the shadows, feeling the anxious gazes of well over a hundred comrades fixed on his back.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Beast Rider!” he shouted up at the monster, “The machines have already taken the city, and we now must seek refuge in your wilds!”

A tall, lithe figure leapt off the warbeast’s back, catching its protruding spines on the way down to slow his descent. A mask carved out of dxunwood, depicting a savage pritarr, regarded him warily. The Beast-Lord hefted his carbine, the gleaming ammo belt slung over his shoulder clanging against his tactical gear as he did.

“You do?” the masked Beast Rider asked, “Then the Amroth Clan welcomes you. The cowardly Clazca and faithless Ezelk have slept with the machine. We will not, and all who fight them are friends of ours.”

Vindication soared in his soul, followed by punishing regret. If only Steela had believed me! If only I had convinced her!

“We seek only safe refuge,” Saw decided to tread evenly. Offending the man with the three-hundred foot devourer wasn’t wise for his health, after all, “Until we can take back our city in the name of the rightful king.”

“There is only one rightful king!” the Amroth declared, offering a weathered hand, “Our Beast-Lords, the Kira Clan, will be pleased by your fealty.”

Kira Clan–the House of Kira!? Saw’s breath hitched, and it took every fibre in his body to not cough out his lungs. Was he talking about the House of Kira, the founders of the royal dynasty? They were vying for the Royal Court? He couldn’t even begin to imagine who the current Lord of Kira was; he doubted even the Houses did… in fact, the House of Kira didn’t respond to the royal summons, did they?

Saw and Steela wanted to return Ramsis Dendup to the throne because he would surely expel the droids, but if there was a Kira who wanted the throne as well… was there anybody in Japrael that could stop them? He could feel the camp cautiously emerging from the brush, their expectations laid on him with all the pressure of a warbeast’s stare. You should be here, Steela, he lamented, you always knew what people were thinking. You would have made the right decision.

Saw could only make what he thought was the right decision. He glanced over his shoulder–first seeing Hutch nod shallowly, then at the empty spot where Alvera once stood. She was nowhere to be seen.

He swallowed. She’s gone, and that means our movement is on borrowed time. The droids will soon come down on us with all the wrath of Dxun. The only way out… to survive…

“You have our allegiance,” Saw announced loudly.