Feebee lay on the floor at the back of the cave. She tried to move but nothing would work.

  ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘Not yet,’ responded the QI.

  Breathing was difficult; the collapsed lung wasn’t helping.

  Alpha-3 was trying to stop air entering her chest cavity through the bullet hole in her back. Once the chest seal was in place the lung reinflated and her breathing improved. He wasn’t worried about any infection or her going into shock, the nanites would handle that.

  Feebee’s blood, smeared across the floor, was being cleaned up by the nanites in it. Their last act before self-destructing; to leave no trace of her or themselves.

  The four Panthera bounded into the cave and sat in a semi-circle watching Alpha-3 finish bandaging Feebee. They radiated concern as they caught their breath from the fight below the cave. Alpha-2 stayed outside, on guard, at the cave’s entrance.

  With oxygen now flowing freely through her body, Feebee’s metabolism went into overdrive and as it worked her temperature rose. Alpha-3 kept pouring water onto her. Most fell away, repelled by her uniform but it helped.

  “She’s burning up.”

  One of the cats took a bright orange jacket out of their backpack, soaked it and laid it across her. It began to steam and quickly dried so they emptied their canteens onto it and rushed up to the lake for a refill.

  ‘Are you there?’ asked the QI.

  Nothing.

  She asked again, ‘Feebee, you there?’

  ‘Too hot,’ was all she could manage

  The QI sent a message to Alpha-3. ‘It’s no working. You need to get her up to the lake and into the water.’

  ‘Ack’

  They carried Feebee the short distance up to the lake then gently lowered her in, close to the shore.

  The cold enveloped her and as her temperature lowered, a past she didn’t remember revealed itself to her. Memories the QI, with her consent, had buried.

  Back then... she’d visited the local music store, off base and on a frozen planet a long way from nowhere. It was surprisingly well stocked and minded by a Stylorian Resonant whose wide ribcage vibrated with every word. Well, they were naturally polyphonic.

  “Welcome madam to the Echo Vault, my humble shop,” each word accompanied with a mix of musical chords. As the Stylorian spoke, their four ochre hands, each possessing six, long slender fingers and a thumb, conducted a symphony. Their flowing robes were ablaze with golden glyphs that drifted across the fabric. One, larger, resembled a spiral with shadowy tendrils reaching out to wrap around the robe; it moved as if wafted by an unseen current.

  They saw Feebee looking and piped up, literally, “It’s the Void Spiral.”

  When there was no understanding, they continued, “I am a Steward of Balance Through Sound.” The Resonant’s opus that followed ignited the Void Spiral, causing it to flicker and rotate within a chaotic panoply of attendant glyphs.

  Feebee’s mouth dropped open. “Wow,” was all she could say, unsure whether to laugh or not …. She just shook her head.

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  “Yes! wow indeed.” They mistook her response for being one of awe.

  “What’s your name?” asked Feebee.

  “I am Eja’Belan, once Ember-Seer of the Eja Harmonium Vaults, Steward of Balance Through Sound. And now… the Duu’ra calls again.” It was all too theatrical and obscure for Feebee.

  So, she moved on and started walking around the store, looking for something to play that was easy to handle. Eja’Belan went back to brushing the black Panthera fur on the base of a guitar-like instrument with rows of zills that jingled at every touch.

  Then, Feebee stopped in front of what could only be described as a badly constructed plumbing project, poorly attempted by an absolute beginner. She leant forward and read the handwritten label attached to its neck, “This item is housed in a null-zone showcase of obsidian glass to contain its sonic wake”, whatever that meant. She felt a pull to this ... this contrabass serpent. Did it have a name, she wondered. Va’thruan popped into her head along with what that meant in the serpent’s ancient language, ‘The One that Bends the Fault.’

  The store owner seemed conflicted as if not really wanting to sell it, but as they spoke, he relaxed and went to great lengths explaining that this one-off had an ether-tempered obsidian core, solar-forged brass tubing and motic alloy casing with glyphic iconography. It was truly unique.

  However, his words, while sonorous and enticing, sounded more like a well-honed patter than something grounded in reality.

  He explained that due to its overly large ceremonial, reinforced build it had a very deep-tonal capacity and weighed more than fifty kilos. Typically, he said, it was mounted and carried by two bearers in a ritual setting leaving the musician free to play. He then looked Feebee up and down, clearly assessing her as unsuitable to subdue such a beast.

  She wasn’t interested in what he thought, and as she hefted it onto her shoulders, the weight tested her, but she was equal to it. The Resonant gave her the smallest of concessions, a slight nod of the head.

  Feebee took a deep breath and then slowly started circular breathing in order to fill the ancient instrument. The serpent gave a small wheezing groan and then a couple of notes rolled out, heavy and trembling as if the Serpent itself had remembered things too old to say.

  As she played, its weight reduced until it felt feather light. The Resonant saw this and fell to one knee, the chaotic movement in their clothing aligned, perfectly in balance. A deep aura devoid of fear, free of corruption and imbued with purpose emanated from him.

  “Madam, I feel like a sceptical unbeliever, a deaf being, suddenly hearing and feeling words that have before only been read.”

  Eja’Belan reached into the folds of their robes and extracted a pendent with the Void Spiral at its centre.

  “Please, take this. It is old like me, but valuable. It would greatly honour me if you wore it because you have balance enough to absorb the screams of dying worlds.”

  They then made a strange gesture, their hands covering both eyes before removing them, as if suddenly able to see.

  She blushed slightly, “Or, you know… we could just get a room.”

  Feebee knew it was for her, patter or not; she was sold. The small fortune it cost raised eyebrows, but JSOC signed off on the bill.

  “No covert operative would carry such a ridiculous thing. It’s PERFECT!!!”

  But now… slowly she came round. “How long was I out?”

  “Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes.”

  “And the insects?”

  “Dead. Except for one which is tied up, back in the cave.”

  “I need to get back to the cave.” She struggled to her feet.

  The two marines looked at each other. “You sure you’re Ok? Only thirty minutes ago you were dying; shot in the back.”

  “Shit!” It was Alpha-3.

  “What?” asked Feebee.

  The two marines were looking up into the sky. She followed their gaze.

  There were two objects in orbit. Coloured light connected the larger ship to the smaller. The fight was brief and ended when the smaller craft vanished in an expanding ball of fire.

  ‘You seeing this?’ she asked the QI.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you get Chen for me.’

  The QI tried but all it got was static. ‘The ship’s not there.’

  ‘Tell me it was there’s that got blown up.’

  ‘It was there’s that got blown up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No…’ The QI paused, ‘… It was ours.’

  She looked to where the other ship had been. Almost directly above. There was nothing to see, but then the QI switched her visuals to IR. A dark red object, intensely hot, was falling towards them at Mach 10. Its dark flight making it invisible to normal sight. The object, six meters long and weighing around ten tonnes slowed significantly, to a meter per second, as it bit deeper into the atmosphere.

  ‘Something’s coming straight at us. We’ve got seconds before impact.’

  Feebee reacted instantly. “Everyone. Get under the water. NOW!!!” She dropped below the surface. Pain from the wound made her squeal but she ignored it.

  The others followed suit, jumping into the water and ducking down.

  There was a massive explosion, followed by a fireball that lit up the night sky and washed across the lake, instantly turning the surface water into a superheated gas.

  The lance had missed the lake, striking the LZ.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Best guess, a rod from God’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A titanium lance. Released from orbit.’

  ‘What the hell is going on? This is NOT a rag-tag of pirate smugglers. Who are they?’

  Rubble started to fall, splashing down around them. She waited for the splashes to stop, them breached the water.

  ‘After we got shot, I really thought today couldn’t get any worse…’

  ‘We! We did not get shot. I got shot!’ Screamed Feebee.

  ‘You die. I die. Same same,’ then the QI added, ‘I hope Hissy’s Ok.’