Rock Hoppers I - Rescue

    Just beyond the horizon floats a misshapen spherical mass hewn with craters, jagged cliffs, and desolate valleys. The soil of the neighboring asteroid is a dull dusty red, and from it sprouts little sprigs of brush and withering trees. Beyond the asteroid is a dark void interspersed with distant stars and, more locally, other asteroids drifting along endlessly downstream.

     Cormag studies the asteroid through the scratched lenses of old binoculars. A wide-brimmed hat casts a shadow across his dust-coated beard and his thickly creased wrinkles. The angle of the asteroid isn’t ideal, but he thinks he sees a structure in the distance that matches the description.

Almost like a tower but leaning callously. Almost like a volcano but much too narrow. The tip of the red crag could have some form of aperture through which to gain entry—he hopes it’s so, as there’s reportedly no other way in.

“Can I see?” Silas asks.

“Of course, young feller,” Cormag assents with a jovial tone that is no way congruous with the trepidation and anxiety that humbles him incessantly. As Silas surveys the surroundings, Cormag takes stock of the tools he’ll need for this mission.

“Can I come with you this time Dad?”

The question he hates to hear because he hates to tell anyone no. Yet he knew Silas would ask it if the kid were allowed to accompany him this far.

“Not this time, kiddo. Hell, I wouldn’t be going if it didn’t seem absolutely necessary. Too dangerous for my liking, but then again, so is almost every rock in the Nomadic Belt.”

“It’s going to be dangerous?”

“Well sure. You know what an ordeal it is to get from one rock to the next without a proper star-faring vessel. And you never know what kind of critter is lying in wait trying to get an easy lunch. And their bodies have been adapting to these bizarre biomes since the dawn of their creation, so the odds are stacked against us there.”

The boy’s face is forlorn. Cormag hadn’t seen a proper smile on the boy’s face since they were back home.

“But don’t worry, son, that’s why we’ve got our handy dandy raycaster! And you know your dad doesn’t put himself in harm’s way unless he’s brought the right tools to overcome every obstacle.”

Cormag beams an artificial smile to the boy in a limp attempt to reassure him.

“Are you sure the herdsman is in that weird spire?” Silas asks, eyes buried in the binoculars once more.

“If our information is current, that’s where I’ll find him. If not, well I’ll hop right back over here and we’ll just pick up the investigation where we left off.”

“I don’t get it,” Silas says. “If the sheriff wanted the herdsman to disappear, why didn’t he just kill him? Seems like it would be easy enough to fling him out into outer place.”

Goodness, I wish he hadn’t learned to be so grim at so young an age.

“Ah, well that’s a tough question to answer, bud. But the sheriff is a man who thinks he’s a king. A king needs money, he needs power. And it’s much more profitable to sell a person’s life than to take it, and the Nomadic Belt is brimming with godless vagabonds who are capable of infinite cruelties.”

He takes a knee and places a hand on Silas’s shoulder, abandoning any pretense of joviality and wit.

“This is another reason why I can’t let you come with me. Your mother and Ursa need you back in the Crater. I’m going to get a real lashing from your mom just for letting you accompany me this far. The Belt can be a terrifying place, but we’ll have to get comfortable out here until we make it back home, okay? Now why don’t you stick around long enough to watch me stick the landing, then I need you to hurry on back to the ladies.”

Cormag unzips his pack and reaches into a tightly bundled compartment. He retrieves four small cubes that pulse with dark red energy. He bends and inserts them one by one into the frame of his hang glider where the handle meets the wings. He bends down to kiss the hair that covers Silas’s forehead.

“I’ll be back soon, son. Remember to stick to the dark side of the asteroid when you can.”

He marches uphill where the plateau leads to an arete, gaining all the altitude he can find. His palms sweat and his heartbeat quickens. He verifies that his raycaster is indeed holstered against his thigh. He confirms that the spring of the harpoon gun is properly loaded, that the strap that holds it against his torso is secure. No further hesitation is permissible, so he runs and leaps, praying that his trembling forearms don’t fail him now as he grips the handle of the hang glider with white knuckles.

Cormag soars toward the neighboring asteroid, but the lift provided from his running start won’t be enough. He flicks open the hang glider’s control panel and uses a switch. Two of the cubes detonate, releasing volatile energy that forces the glider into a lunging thrust. He still soars toward his target, but Cormag feels himself beginning to dip even as he uses the handlebar’s rotator to steer defiantly against the asteroid’s gravitational tug.

He opens the control panel and flicks another switch, detonating the other set of volits. The cubes of pulsating energy detonate. Cormag squints and grips the hang glider with all his might as he surges from one gravitational field into a state of limbo between the asteroids before entering the cosmic pull of the next asteroid.

A sigh of relief almost escapes Cormag’s lungs, but he’s not out of the woods yet. The angle of his entry is too steep, too direct, as if he’s a hawk diving into a lake to pluck a fish from the waters. The scorched clay on the asteroid’s surface will not be so kind to Cormag as the water is to a hawk.

He twists his wrists to fight against the nosedive and his altitude levels out, but he’s soaring too swiftly. At this pace he’ll miss his mark and fly past this asteroid’s atmosphere to be thrown into orbit or to smash into the next rock drifting through the Nomadic Belt.

A deep breath in and he has released a hand from the hang glider to grip the harpoon gun shakily. A slow breath out and he has leveled the harpoon gun at the red soil and pulled the trigger, releasing a spear that strikes at the asteroid’s surface with serpentine rapacity. A satisfying clang indicates that he has hit his mark.

Both shoulders ache and strain as Cormag grasps the harpoon gun with one hand and the hang glider with the other. One anchors him to the asteroid as the other carries him starward upon orbital currents. The tether released from the harpoon gun aids in slamming the wayward rock hopper painfully into the surface of the asteroid. The brush and bramble does little to cushion his fall as Cormag rolls and tumbles. Finally, Cormag’s tumbles decelerate until he can lie still and exhale that dearly bought sigh of relief.

He wishes to remain in this defeated fetal resting form for much longer, but he suddenly remembers that his son is watching him. Cormag rises to his feet, stares back toward the other asteroid, and waves enthusiastically to Silas.

The boy waves back at him. He wishes he could see if the boy is smiling.

His attention falls upon that pseudo-volcanic quasi-tower where the herdsman is said to have been dropped off. The red crag scrapes against the starry sky like a talon rending flesh from bone.

***

The hike toward the spire is undisturbed. The long moments between the painful landing and the advent at the foot of the spire are characterized by the incessant chittering of locust swarms and an apprehension about the possibility of slavers finding the herdsman before Cormag can get to him.

The asteroid is now dark. A heavenly body in the distance has placed itself between the asteroid and the sun, eclipsing all light that would guide Cormag. He now relies on the light of a lantern to illuminate the narrow mass of clay underfoot as he scales the lopsided spire to reach its peak.

Cormag’s ascent would have been perilous if the sun’s rays still reached the spire. Now the ascent is simply stupid, but perhaps not quite as stupid as waiting for the slavers to find the herdsman or turning back entirely. He places his hang glider on the ground beneath some foliage, as it’s too clunky and unwieldy to bring with him and he lacks the expertise and aim needed to boost himself to such a narrow target as the peak of the strange spire.

He places one foot shakily in front of the other, at times dropping to his knees to feel around with his free hand when the footing isn’t favorable.

“You have to be kidding me,” he mutters as he reaches a wall. No steep, steady slope upward, no footholds to thrust upward with, just a sheer wall looming above the rock hopper at a slight overhang.

The cliff face is intimidating. Thankfully he has his trusted harpoon gun for situations just like this. He cocks the spring and fires—and the spear glances off the sharp, angular amalgam of stone and clay. Shaking his head, he reels the rope back into the gun and tries again. The spear collides with the spire and refuses to catch. He repeats this process until his patience is exhausted.

“Piece of junk,” he mutters, reeling in the device one final time before replacing it in its strap on his pack.

He studies the cliff face for potential footholds and handholds until he has a path figured out, but it will never work while holding the lantern.

He clips the lantern to his pack—not ideal since his body now eclipses the light coming from it—and gets to work.

He feels around in the dark until his hand finds purchase in a slim crack. One boot is lifted and jabs into the hard clay with enough force to lift him until his other hand finds an indentation that is deep enough to grasp. He repeats this process until his fingers and forearms sweat and shake. Even his breath is unsteady despite all his efforts to steel his nerves. No convenient handholds are forthcoming. The drop back to the ground before this overhang is itself dangerous and Cormag can’t resist the intrusive image of him falling, failing to land squarely on the spire’s narrow path, and plummeting to the base of the asteroid below. His only hope is the lip at the overhang’s precipice.

“Damn it all,” he says, lowering himself into a crouch against the wall and springing forth. He slaps the stony ridge with all the might his grip can muster. The weight of his body and gear swings out into the void, threatening to pitch him to his untimely demise. Call it grit or call it providence—one way or another, his grip holds.

Surprised at his success, Cormag hoists a heel onto the ridge and pulls himself up. He grasps a generous chunk of the spire with renewed vigor and steadies himself on the narrow outcropping of stone. He breathes deeply and gratefully.

The lurching spire levels out here near the tip of the talon-like structure. Cormag idly wonders if this is natural or if it was hand-crafted to be a lair or a prison by some geomancer. He wonders if such a wizard be known as a geomancer when their target is an asteroid and not a planet. Other such musings occupy his mind until he reaches the spire’s end.

Thankfully, the information he received about this place was accurate. Like the snapped bone of a skeleton, a jagged gap at the tip of the spire serves as the sole entrance and egress.

Cormag grips the edge of the stone as he places his boots on the rim of the stony aperture. He swivels his weight so that he faces into the deep pit within. He wonders if this isn’t some fell altar to a nearly forgotten god, or if an Enulshian dragon once used this place for its lair. Other such musings occupy his mind until he calls out.

“Hello? You down there, Sheldon?”

***

At the base of the spire is a pit. The pit has high red walls caked in grime and streaked with blood. Drilled into these walls are bolts that are chained to shackles. The shackles mostly hold skeletons, the bones of which are yellowed and seemingly gnashed by the teeth of some unseen scavenger. One set of shackles holds Sheldon, the withered herdsman, who is the object of Cormag’s search.

The man’s skin is pale and his eyes are sunken. The skin around the ankles and wrists is chaffed and torn, as if Sheldon has spent many hours of confinement trying to force his limbs free from this prison.

As Cormag approaches the prisoner, Sheldon slinks back and presses himself against the wall. His eyes gleam manically in the light of the lantern.

“Sheldon, I know you’ve had a rough go of it lately,” Cormag says tenderly, hands upheld as if to placate a deranged beast, “but I’m here to help.”

The prisoner wheezes and snarls. Can’t blame him for being untrusting at a time like this. He then snatches a splintered bone from the ground and wields it like a club.

“My name is Cormag. Maria sent me to find you. Says the sheriff in Crater’s Bluff wanted to get rid of you. I plan on taking you back to your family. Whaddaya say?”

A silence falls over them. The prisoner doesn’t look convinced, but the skeletal femur in his hands begins to droop.

“Come on man, drop the damn club and let me help you. If we don’t get you out of here soon the slavers will be on us in no time.”

Right on cue, sounds of movement come from above. At the peak of the spire, a speck of starlight shines down from where Cormag entered—the eclipse must have passed. Some sort of star-faring vessel hovers just outside like a pirate ship about to board and plunder.

“God dammit,” Cormag curses, his patience worn out by the incessant trials of the long day. He kills the flame in his lantern and moves to press himself against a wall in the pit. Before taking cover, he takes one last look at the intruders. Just two of them.

The other slavers are waiting on the ship, Cormag reckons.

Crouching in wait and poised to strike, the intrepid manhunter removes his raycaster from its holster. He feels the smooth granite of the strange weaponry and runs his hands over the grooves that run through it like rivers through a valley. He quietly swings the barrel downward, loads a dark red cube of volatile energy into the chamber, then clicks the barrel back into place. He holds the raycaster in one hand and grips a hunting knife in the other.

The slavers shoot the shit idly as they descend through the cracks and crags within the spire to reach Sheldon. Cormag daydreams about the star-faring vessel that the slavers sail about in.

How easy it would be to get back home if they had something like that. How nice it would be to not have to wait ten more months for the Nomadic Belt to pass over Agulon again. How beautiful it would be to get back home and take day trips among the stars in the craft instead of fending for their lives in the asteroid belt or eking out a meager living guarding the caravans that tread across the kingdom of Ysar.

All this daydreaming does him no good, of course, because he is but one man. To seize the slavers’ vessel would be to be outnumbered and outgunned. Even if he were to pull it off, he and his family would be chased to the ends of the Meridian Sphere until they themselves would be captured and sold off. These musings come to him involuntarily and are dispelled as the slavers hop down from the wall, placing their backs to Cormag as they approach their quarry.

Cormag levels the muzzle of his raycaster and squeezes the trigger. The grooves and crevices that lie between the weapon’s segments begin to fill with a glowing red energy until a cataclysmic beam surges from the muzzle through a slaver’s neck, boring a hole through his flesh and dropping him to the ground.

The other slaver raises a spiked bludgeon and whirls around in time to find Cormag’s shoulder ramming him against the pit’s wall. His knife makes several indiscriminate thrusts and lacerations along the slaver’s torso and shoulder. If Cormag caught a blow from his adversary’s bludgeon, he did not notice.

“There,” Cormag says, panting and gesturing at the corpses like two prized pigs, “I killed your captors. Do you trust me yet?”

He sets his mind to releasing the prisoner without waiting for a response. He contemplates loading another volit in the raycaster to blast through the chains that bind Sheldon the herdsman, but the weapon will need a few more moments to cool down.

Holstering his weapons, he feels around in the dark until he finds the key that the slavers held. He also finds a couple raycasters that are so worn that backfires are imminent. He scavenges three volits from them and leaves the rest of their gear.

“Alright, let’s get you out of here,” Cormag says as he unlocks each shackle. He follows Sheldon’s gaze to the aperture at the spire’s peak. “I know what you’re thinking, but that isn’t really an option. We can’t slip past a crew like what they’ve got on that star vessel, and the other slavers will notice that something is wrong soon. Do you know another way out?”

In a hoarse, gravelly voice, Sheldon says, “Maybe. There are creatures that slink in here periodically to nibble on fellas like me. I scared them off for the most part, but I think they’ve been waiting for me to starve so they could pick the meat off my bones without me flailing around. What say you light up that lantern of yours again and we start looking for the crack or crevice they use.”

Cormag obliges. He’s keenly aware that they’re announcing their presence to any unsavory onlookers, but they lack any other option. They proceed to feel the walls of the pit and shine light into its cracks, prying for the spire to reveal its secrets.

“Sorry for trying to clock you with my whoopin’ stick earlier. Been on edge for a bit.”

“I don’t think ill of you for it,” Cormag says. “Let’s just focus on getting out of here. Grab one of the slavers’ weapons. Not a raycaster, they’re too worn out to be reliable.”

Sheldon retrieves the spiked bludgeon that was swung at Cormag not long ago and continues searching for an exit.

Cormag’s hand finds a narrow crack between the stone slabs. It’s just large enough for them to squeeze through, though it’s a tight and claustrophobic fit. He groans when he sees that the ground here slopes downward.

“Looks like the only way out is through.”

***

The two men navigate the impossibly angular labyrinth together. They squeeze, sidle, mantle, duck, and crawl between the stone and clay, only occasionally finding respite in a passage that allows them to fully stand and stretch their legs. The path has raised and lowered so many times that Cormag has lost track of how close they would be to the surface. Many dead-ends have the companions retracing their steps and feebly arguing about which path they came from.

Sheldon speaks up as they navigate.

“Not that I’m complaining, but why did you come out here to bail me out?”

I’ve been wondering that myself.

“I guess when I heard your story, I saw a little of myself in you. I’m not sure what led you and your family to live in the Nomadic Belt—the way I understand, very few decent folk live on these rocks unless they have no other option. I’m not going to ask what led to you tending to herds of the strange bovine that graze in this sector, but I trust that your family won’t survive long without some help from you.”

Overhead there are damp sounds like padded footfalls tapping against the ceiling and prowling upon the stalactites. Cormag lifts the lantern, its light sputtering as its oil reserve depletes, and illuminates a brown reptilian quadruped. As soon as the light hits the creature, it’s already turning and retreating into some unseen crawlspace.

“Anyway, the folks at Crater Bluff have been very kind to me and my kin. I don’t know why the sheriff would try to sell you off like that, but I can’t sit idly by and let events like that unfold if I’m able to help.”

“That Sheriff Watts,” Sheldon says. Cormag hears the scowl in his companion’s voice. “I don’t know what’s come over him. He fancies himself some sort of ruthless despot, exploiting the people he has sworn to protect. It’s like he can’t stand the thought of others having any wealth or power.”

The passage widens into a shallow chamber. The lantern’s light illuminates a dark pool at the center of the small cavern. Little translucent white domes protrude from the black water. On the opposite side of the chamber is a corridor that leads uphill.

Sheldon advances a couple paces, but Cormag stops him in his tracks with a gesture. They look upward. The low ceiling gleams with the slick reptilian skins of the quadruped scavengers who have feasted on the bones of the spire’s prisoners. A firmament of yellow eyes tracks Cormag and Sheldon’s movements. The creatures are no larger than a cattle dog and would likely be harmless individually but engaging them collectively is far from ideal.

Too late to turn back and face the slavers now. It would be a miracle to simply find their way through the stone labyrinth to the pit where Sheldon was chained.

Sheldon grips the slavers’ spiked club tightly.

Cormag readies his raycaster, trying to recall whether he reloaded a volit during the traversal of the caverns.

The two exchange glances and proceed warily and wordlessly. Sheldon leads the way, hugging the wall on the left side of the cavern, as Cormag falls in behind. Both keep their eyes on the ceiling, awaiting the moment that the reptiles spring their ambush.

They are halfway to the corridor on the other side of the chamber. Cormag foolishly humors the idea that they will not be bothered by the lizards. One scaly figure releases its hold on the ceiling and without further delay there is a symphony of padded appendages releasing their grasp above as they fall and scurry to surround the companions.

Cormag panics and pulls the trigger of his raycaster. A red beam illuminates the chamber as it tears through the flesh of a handful of the lizards midfall. Meanwhile Sheldon lets out a battle cry as he flails the spiked club into the flesh of the scavengers, coating its spikes in a layer of purple blood.

They break into a sprint and quickly find themselves at the threshold of the corridor that slopes upward. The reptilian fiends latch onto their boots, their shins, their torsos, with sharp beak-like appendages. Cormag bludgeons the creatures in their snouts with his raycaster. He slams himself into the stone wall to stun the creatures that are latched to him. The stone floor is slick with crimson and purple blood, but the two men press upward through the corridor despite the ferocity of the melee.

With some delight, Cormag spies starlight glinting through cracks in the stone at the end of the corridor. With some dismay, he realizes that the crack is too small for them to fit through.

“Shit, we’re trapped in here,” Sheldon says as he continues smiting the vermin with his club.

“I’ve got an idea, but you have to hold them off,” Cormag says.

“No promises.”

The herdsman holds off the lizards as well as one could hope from a man who is wounded and likely starving, but the reptiles slither on the ceiling and walls regardless of his efforts.

Cormag runs to the narrow crack at the end of the corridor. He hastily slides into a crouch and slings his pack from his shoulders. He rummages through until he finds the volits that remain in his possession. Even as more reptilian beaks gnash at his shoulder, his ear, his ankle, Cormag drops the volits in the crack at the end of the corridor.

He again smashes his body against the walls to deter the lizards just long enough to take a few steps back downhill. He then lobs the flickering torch at the volits. The lantern’s glass shatters. Its flame ignites the cubes of packaged volatile energy into an explosion of orange and red, blasting a hole in the stone wall and sending the reptiles scurrying back toward the safe refuge of the darkness.

Cormag sees Sheldon slouched against the stone wall. His clothes and flesh are rife with shallow gashes.

“Come on, bud,” Cormag says as he grabs one of Sheldon’s arms and pulls it across his shoulders. He helps the herdsman to his feet and they walk into the starlight. “We’re going to make it out of here yet.”

***

Battered and bruised, Cormag stands on the asteroid where he and his son stood not long ago. In his grip is the harpoon gun, whose rope has stretched to its fullest extent. The far end of the harpoon’s rope is tied to another rope which is similarly stretched taut. On the opposite end of these linked ropes stands Sheldon on the other asteroid.

Neither of them can shake the feeling that the slavers’ ship is still patrolling the skies somewhere, but it’s nowhere to be seen.

We must have taken so long to crawl out of there that they got bored and went off to their next catch. An intrusive thought rears its ugly head. He’ll feel much more at ease once he has seen his wife and kids again.

Cormag gives the signal. Despite his fatigue, Sheldon shimmies slowly up the rope. He takes many breaks. Several times Cormag wonders if Sheldon’s injuries and fatigue will get the best of him and he’ll slip off the rope and plummet into one of the asteroids, but the herdsman’s grip doesn’t fail him.

Sheldon reaches the interstice at the center of the ropes. Once he crosses the invisible threshold where the gravitational pull from the two rocks fades, his body hangs in an inverted limbo. He climbs along the rope a bit further until he reaches the gravitational field of the other asteroid, causing his feet to slip out from beneath him as his weight is inverted. An expected outcome, but still scary if he’s unaccustomed to these strange traversals.

At last, the herdsman touches down next to Cormag.

“I didn’t think I would make it,” he says.

“I had my doubts too. But we didn’t come this far just to lose you to the orbital currents.”

Sheldon looks back at the taut relay of ropes.

“So how do we get your gear back? My end is still tied to the other rock.”

Cormag pulls out his knife and cuts off the rope of the harpoon gun. He then tosses the end of the rope with enough force that the ropes are pulled to the surface of the other asteroid.

“Simple as that. There’s nothing I own that can’t be replaced, and leaving the tether in place is a bit too conspicuous for my liking. Now come along, you need some rest. Once we make it back to the Crater I’m sure Lara will whip up a nice dinner for us.”

“I’d be honored,” Sheldon says. “Shit, I’m honored that you even got me this far. I’d already submitted my prayers and was waiting for these old bones to decay. I wish there was some way I could repay you, but my family doesn’t—”

“Now you shut your trap. I may be something of a benevolent manhunter these days, but I don’t do this to fish for a reward. We’ve talked about this so I’m not gonna hash it over again. How are your bandages doing?”

They each inspect the soggy strips of gauze that are wrapped around their ankles, their forearms, their shoulders.

“They’ll hold out a bit longer,” Sheldon says, “but just barely.”

“Don’t worry, we have more medical equipment back at the camper. Let’s hurry before our legs give out on us.”

The weary companions march back toward the Crater in high spirits despite their wounds and exhaustion. Before reaching their destination, a stream crosses their path, so they stop to wash their faces and take sips from the cool water.

On either side of the stream, the asteroid’s brush is a more vibrant green than what Cormag has seen elsewhere on these rocks. Some of the bushes sprout white and blue flowers. Others bear lavender berries. The red soil is dotted with sprigs of young foliage. Beyond the asteroids that loom above, the glittering firmament smiles upon the intrepid adventurers.

The beauty of the Nomadic Belt is unlike what Cormag could have imagined when he was back on Agulon. He longs for the day that he and his family return to the safety of their home even as he wonders how he could possibly forsake the awe-inspiring presence of the stars.