Holding the flare gun above her head Agra stood alone outside another cave entrance watching the light of the rocket fade away. As the smoky tendril drifted apart in the wind, she reloaded the gun from a small box her father had treasured all his life. In it was the sum of their salvation, all the flares he had salvaged from every downed pod he had found scattered across the wind-blown horizon of snow and ice. With a click she hinged the barrel forward and discarded the small smoking canister. Her father always told her to look away when they had encountered a crashed pod, told her to run off and find stones. They would gather what supplies they could use, usually parachute material, and leave a small pile of stones behind. For the longest time Agra could only guess what her father had buried. He didn’t like to talk about the other pods and always changed the subject to what lay beyond the sky. Greg Anson had been certain that they would escape, but eventually even he ended up buried beneath a pile of stones. That would not be her fate. Agra loaded another flare and raised her hand skyward. She watched the lights of the distant battle flicker vindictively and depressed the trigger. Another flare launched high into the sky with a blinding flash of red twinkling light as the others found her. The Syn ship circled overhead

  “Agra what are you doing?” Liz demanded with a flustered tone.

  “I’ve waited long enough. If they want me than they can come and get me,” Agra exclaimed. “If I’m to die then I’d rather it be up there then down here.”

  “One ship.” Quintek said with a befuddled look as he plied her mind for a plan, “I can’t say I’m not relieved, but I don’t think taking the ship is as easy as you think it will be.”

  “You want to hijack that ship?” Taylor exclaimed.

  “You don’t think I can?” Agra asked with a defiant growl. She raised her clawed hand with a wild look in her eyes and gestured at the sky with the flare gun. The shrieking sound of the Syn craft was getting louder. Agra stopped herself, suddenly hesitant. She calmed herself and gave her friends a worried look.

  “You really don’t think I can?”

  “I suppose it’s our best shot at getting out of here, better than the Syn Queens landing their armies,” Liz shrugged. She glanced at Taylor as Quintek picked at the tip of his beak. He already seemed to be contemplated possible plans of action.

  “You better get Jakob and the others,” Quintek said. “Whoever has come will be landing soon whether we want them or not.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Jakob grumbled as Liz and Taylor stormed into his room. He tossed and turned in his hammock to stare at the others with baggy half shut eyes. Sweat beaded on his pale face. He didn’t complain when Liz and Taylor helped him slid onto his feet.

  “A ship is coming,” Taylor explained quickly, “Agra and Quintek seem to think they can hijack it. How they expect to do that if it is full of Syn is beyond me.”

  “A ship? No kidding. Crazy Syn,” Jakob babbled with a weak voice. Liz and Taylor gave each other winced looks of concern. Moving him had only shown how bad his condition had deteriorated. They carefully lowered him to the floor. Liz removed her pack and dug around for the medication they had retrieved from the Orion escape pod.

  “This should help him for a while,” she said as she pulled the small syringe from its plastic packaging. Jakob blinked as he felt the jab in his arm and gasped with renewed strength.

  “You mentioned a ship?” he asked again as he held his head. Taylor and Liz grabbed his arms and hoisted him off the floor.

  “Come on,” Liz prompted as she and Taylor carried helped him down the rocky corridor.

  “Wait!” Taylor said as they shuffled through the main atrium where a small fire still burned. He handed Jakob off completely to Liz and ran to a small crevice in the rocky wall. He grabbed Greg Anson’s data pad and rejoined Liz as they helped Jakob up the tunnel to the surface. Quintek was there with the other Syn crouching out of sight just before the jagged entrance.

  “Where’s Agra?” Liz whispered as she, Taylor, and Jakob lay on the floor beside the idle black feathered Syn. Quintek craned his neck and gestured at Agra who was standing alone in the snow. Her red feathers ruffled in the blast of wind swirling around the rough textured bronze skin of the Arrowhead shaped craft slowly descending toward the ground. She was holding her mother’s headdress against her head as she struggled to stand upright in the howling cyclone radiating from the landing craft. The ship hung a few meters off the ground as the wind dissipated, and a ramp unfurled without fanfare. A cloud of vapor poured from the entrance as warm interior air abruptly mixed with the frigid air outside. She glanced back at the others hiding at the cave entrance as a single red feathered Syn wearing a silver collared necklace appeared. She and Quintek shared each other’s confusion as the lone Syn shuffled nervously down the ramp. They stopped at the snow, recoiling from the cold after a single testing prod of their three toed foot.

  “Be cautious,”Quintek’s thoughts echoed in her mind.

  “I mean you no harm,” the Syn announced with the refined clicking hiss of the sacred tongue.

  “This feels awfully familiar,” Jakob noted as he watched with the others from the cave. Liz silenced him with a quick scolding. They watched with interest as Agra took a step closer to the Syn ship.

  “What are they saying,” Taylor asked Quintek.

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  “That he means no harm,” Quintek translated skeptically. He said nothing else, fixated on the red feathered kin descending the ramp towards Agra. He knew their type. They were the upper echelons of his society and the Queens most loyal subjects. They were however not expected to fight and the fact that this one had not been assigned a protective guard of soldiers was strange.

  “Right,” Jakob said unconvinced. He was more interested in the ship.

  “You think you can fly that thing, Taylor?”

  “Quiet!”

  Agra was now at the base of the ramp with her hands held defensively. Agra studied the red feathered syn with an apprehensive glare waiting for others to appear behind him.

  “I’m alone,” the Syn reassured her nervously. He stared back at her with a distressed look of fearful recognition. Agra brandished her claws and caused him to flinch.

  “Why come alone if you are so afraid?” Agra hissed as she took a step up the ramp. The Syn fell back on formality, bowing cautiously to maintain appearances.

  “I am a navigator of the divine one’s home ship and I have come to take you home,” the Navigator said earnestly. He stared at her headdress. She did indeed possess the crown of his people. She must have been the Matriarchs heir to possess it yet another defining feature disturbed him. Her piercing yellow gaze reminded him of what else she was supposed to be.

  “I was born here. This is my home,” Agra said gesturing at the landscape behind her. The Navigator scanned the bleak white horizon behind her with confused dismay. Agra studied the Navigators expression with a dark chuckle as her gaze drifted skyward. “Don’t they know it’s a little too late for a rescue?”

  “The others intend to follow the edicts and destroy you,” the navigator admitted bluntly. His nervous expression momentarily shifted upward as well. “We have to leave before they realize I’m here.”

  “You tell me that and expect me to believe that you have been sent by your master to retrieve me” Agra demanded forcefully. “You expect me to believe one of them would care? What makes me so special?”

  “Uh,” the navigator croaked hesitantly. The Devil he had only read about in the edicts loomed above him with fury in her amber colored eyes. He shrank from her timidly. His fearful gaze lingered on her sharp claws as he whimpered; “Only a Devil would harm her own blood.”

  “A Devil?” Agra repeated with a disheartened tone. The sinister clicking tones of that word in the sacred tongue somehow combined the greatest horrors the Syn language could describe. The specific inflection of the word “blood” also caught Agra off guard. In this case it meant more than just kin but carried the implications of direct kindship. Sudden inexplicable anger flared up in Agra who against her better nature lunged at the Navigator and forced him against the wall with her claws wrapped around his trembling shoulders. Sensing that this was their chance the others dashed from the cave and begun making their way towards the craft. Jakob was cheering. Agra didn’t care, focused only on the Navigator and the impossible thing he had said.

  “My mother is dead,” Agra hissed, “Our people were no better off without her. By now I would be the only one left.”

  “That’s not true,” the Navigator choked. “I survived the fall of our empire, so did some of her brothers, so did the Divine Mother who birthed her. She doesn’t care what you are, she only wants you back.”

  Dumbfounded Agra released her grasp and stumbled away in shock. Even the sound of the others running up the ramp couldn’t snap her out of it. She just stared at the frightened Navigator as the others surrounded him.

  “Do you believe him? Just say the word and-,” Quintek growled in the sacred tongue. He wanted the Navigator to know what he intended to do. A throbbing in his head stopped him.

  “Don’t touch him,” Agra warned

  The Navigator stayed pressed against the wall staring at Quintek and the other Syn soldiers with a terrified look on his oval beaked face. He didn’t seem concerned at all with the humans standing amongst his kind.

  “You dare speak?” The Navigator stammered at Quintek. “This is blasphemy.”

  “Don’t like it?” Quintek said sharply as he again threatened the Navigator with his claws

  “Agra what did this Syn tell you?” Liz asked as she studied the Navigator and the interior of the ship.

  “My grandmother still lives and sent him to get me before the others do,” Agra said in disbelief.

  “Really?” Taylor exclaimed. “Your grandmother sent him? Syn have grandmothers?”

  “This one is evidently my brother,” Agra said plainly.

  “We don’t need her help. Tell him we’re taking the ship.” Jakob growled from where he hung supported between Liz and Taylor. Agra shook away her stunned surprise and joined Quintek where they stood as equals.

  “You defiled our blood, made a pact with this monster, didn’t you?” The Navigator chittered vaguely to both Agra and Quintek. They exchanged confused glances. Together they pulled the Navigator from the wall. That is when the Navigator finally acknowledged the humans.

  “What are they? You are in league with an impure race as well? Do none of our sacred edicts mean anything to you?”

  “Not really?” Agra said. The Navigator looked as though he had been slapped in the face.

  “So you’re a navigator,” Quintek pressed as he tugged at the silver collared necklace. “You’re lucky we need you.”

  “You will take us where we want to go,” Agra explained making it clear that it was the Navigators only choice.

  “Where you want to go?” the Navigator repeated with sudden renewed resolve. “Absolutely not. I cannot fail my Matriarch. I cannot. I promised her personally that I would bring you back and you alone.”

  “Who said you’d fail?” Agra negotiated. She and Quintek loomed over the navigator. “Who said I didn’t want you to take me to her eventually? I'll come willingly if you first take me and my companions where we want to go.”

  Quintek wanted to object but said nothing. Unable to understand what was being said, Jakob groaned and demanded to know what the holdup was.

  “Are we hijacking this guy or what? It’s damn cold out here.”

  “The Navigator will fly us where we want to go,” Agra proclaimed with confidence. She placed a hand on the Syn’s shoulder in a cruel gesture of kindness. She repeated her demand slowly in the sacred tongue to the increasingly receptive Navigator.

  “Yes,” the Navigator agreed hesitantly. Time was running out and the Navigator was certain that somebody had noticed his presence by now. He needed to leave immediately and was willing to agree to anything. He did not intend to fail his Queen by letting himself and his ship be destroyed. “Come aboard quickly.”

  “Do what you need to get us out of here,” Agra said as she released her grasp on the Navigator. She was the first to vanish into the Syn spacecrafts dimly lit interior.

  Quintek lingered on the ramp with the Navigator as the humans, and his kin sauntered up into the craft after Agra. He scrutinized the Navigator skeptically before boarding. Shivering, the Navigator surveyed the icy wind blasted tundra of Altaire IV one last time before racing up into the cockpit. The devilish heir had called this forsaken place her home he thought as the ramp sealed behind him. She hadn’t even looked back.