Path
Into the Darkness
Part
Five: Grune
Chapter Four: Nothing Left To Lose
Grune and Kalin spent their last day in Serilune, and a good portion of the evening as well, in a deep and restful sleep. The physically taxing nights of The Hunt had taken a toll on their bodies, one that was repaid by a day of rest before their return to the capitol. Later that evening they awoke and checked out of the inn, ready to face the altogether different wildlife of the city. Grune felt somewhat reluctant to return to “civilization” after his intense experience in Serilune, but he made no complaints. If anything the sabertooth felt more invincible than ever, and his renewed aggressiveness had the added bonus of reinforcing the fact that he would not stand for even the slightest bit of disrespect from Kalin’s associates.
The pair arrived at Luna’s club sometime in the late
evening, about five hours after sunset.
The place was crowded, as usual, and there was a rowdy crew of Lunatacs
in the back chugging down vile and strong liquor at an alarming rate. When he walked in with Kalin, he got the
usual few surprised looks, but by that time most of the regulars had become
accustomed to seeing Grune. That was not
to say the particularly cared for him, but they were used to him. Besides, as far as they were concerned for
the most part, if Luna had no problem with hi
Grune and Kalin made their way toward the bar in the back, where they encountered RedEye and Torlei in the midst of some sort of discussion. Their conversation came to an abrupt halt as soon as the sabertooth and the huntress approached however. “Well, well, look who’s back,” Torlei said in greeting, her expression calm yet unreadable.
Kalin regarded her impassively. “Yes, now you can start the party,” she remarked with only a slight arch of her eyebrows to mark her sarcasm. “I take it nothing fell apart in my absence?”
RedEye stretched and threw his feet up onto an empty bar stool next to him. “No,” the graviton replied gruffly. “It seems you’re not as indispensable as you think.” He eyed Grune intently, as if he were trying to read him. “So you survived living with the hunters?”
Kalin noticed a fleeting dark scowl pass across Torlei’s features as Grune addressed RedEye’s question, but she chose not to comment on it and the psi herself remained absolutely silent. “It was nothing I couldn’t handle,” Grune said arrogantly. “In fact, they’re quite a fascinating group.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Torlei muttered under her breath as she swished her drink around in her glass.
If she was going to say anything else, it was cut off when a
shrill voice fro
Kalin nodded and offered her employer a cordial smile. “Good news travels fast. We just barely got in.”
“Good, then you haven’t had time to get involved in anything,” Luna replied. “I need to talk to you, and you too, Grune.” She turned toward RedEye and Torlei. “You two need to be there as well, and I want TugMug, Alluro, Stelthor, and Chilla there too. I have plans for a big operation in the works, and I want all my most skilled people in on it.”
“Stelthor’s out,” RedEye said, surveying the room with his superior vision to see who all was available. He frowned as he continued to eye up the area. “He’s been pretty scarce lately. You have him working on something?”
Luna frowned. “Nothing that should keep him that busy. What about the others?”
“I saw Chilla around about fifteen minutes ago, and from what I can see here, TugMug and Alluro are in one of the back rooms taking care of that little job you put them on earlier.”
Luna tapped her toe impatiently against one of Amok’s massive horns. “Alluro and TugMug should be finished by now, so go get them and Chilla and meet in my office within 20 minutes. This matter will have to be kept absolutely private, and it’s important, so don’t hold me up,” she warned. The lunar woman then prodded Amok to take her out of the room, leaving the four of them there at the bar once more.
“It would seem we have our orders,” RedEye said with a less-than-impressed shrug.
“We still have to put our things upstairs, so you two can find the others,” Kalin said, slinging her bag back over her shoulder. “See you in Luna’s office for whatever it is she wants.”
Torlei nodded. “I’ll go get my brother and TugMug,” she volunteered, and then turned to RedEye. “I assume you can find Chilla?” RedEye nodded a reply and Torlei set her drink back down on the bar. “We might as well get in there and find out what all this fuss is about.”
“Later,” Grune said with a low growl. He picked up his bag and followed Kalin back to her quarters. On the way he wondered exactly what it was that Luna wanted, and how it involved him. It had seemed to him that Luna wanted him to play a key role in it, and that intrigued him. He did not like the idea of working for her on a general basis, though, for he found her voice to be amongst the most grating he had ever heard, and thought she was little more than a middle-aged spoiled brat. The sabertooth had no intention of being a flunky of hers for very long. He knew in his heart that was destined for greater things, his own conquests, as was his lover Kalin. As they climbed the stairs he wondered why she never sought out more for herself. It occurred to him that perhaps awakening that desire in her, in the same way she had opened his eyes, would be his gift to her in return.
They dropped off the bags and stretched for a few minutes. Kalin changed her clothes and then glanced at the time. “I wonder what Luna wants,” she said curiously. “But I guess we had better head down there before she comes looking for us.” She rolled her eyes slightly as she finished her sentence. Kalin was used to Luna “summoning” her by now, and found her boss’s manner somewhat amusing. When her tantrums were not focused on her, Kalin got quite a laugh out of most of her employer’s quirks.
Grune nodded to Kalin and headed for the door, with the hunter behind him. She locked up her—or at present, their, as they had been sharing it since Grune had come back to the Third Moon of Plundarr—room and the two of them headed to Luna’s office. When they entered they saw that Luna and Amok were in the center of the room in front of Luna’s desk, while Chilla and RedEye sat in chairs watching the door impatiently. Grune and Kalin waited near the door for a few moments until a minute or so later when Torlei came in, followed by Alluro and TugMug.
Luna indicated for TugMug to lock the door, which he did. Once that was done she prodded Amok to step forward and addressed the group. “Now, I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you all in here.”
“Yes,” Chilla rasped impatiently. “What’s going on?”
“I called the six of you in here—” she looked over the faces of her fellow Lunatacs “—and Grune, because you are my most skilled operatives. I have something very big planned for all of us, one that will give us all unthinkable wealth and a great deal of power.”
“Another raid?” TugMug asked with interest. The graviton liked raids. Raids meant riches, valuables, and all sorts of goodies, sometimes even slaves.
Luna smiled evilly. “Not just any raid, TugMug. I’m talking about a strategic strike that will not only give us a large material payoff, but will establish a base of operations in a place that is ripe for the taking, one that until now was defended too well to be worth our efforts,” she explained. “We’re going to stage an assault on a Thunderian province and take it over.”
“On Thundera?” Grune retorted, surprised. Both Lunatacs and Plundarrian Mutants had
tried such attacks in the past, but the Thundercats always defeated the
“Yes,” Luna continued. “And you, Grune, will be our key to success in this operation. You were once a Thundercat, so you know their secrets and their strategies. You know the weaknesses of such legendary pains in the ass as Jaga, Claudus, Firestripe, and Tessana, not to mention the newer ones. You can show us how we can use those weaknesses against them. With your inside knowledge combined with our power, there is no way that they will be able to stop us, especially if we get in there and take it over fast enough.”
Grune frowned slightly as he considered about her plans. “And what would be in it for me if I did? Leaving the Thundercats to come here is one thing, but doing something that would betray citizens I once called my countrymen is another. I’m afraid you’ll have to give me some incentive to help you, Luna, other than the privilege of doing you a favor,” he said, with rising sarcasm on the last phrase.
Luna rolled her eyes impatiently. “I didn’t expect you to help me for nothing,
Grune,” she said irritably, as if it should have been obvious. “Unlike the do-gooders of Thundera, here on
the Moons of Plundarr it is expected and understood that we not simply ‘do
favors’, at least not without expecting something in return. I was prepared to make you an offer, Grune,
and I assure you that it will be a tempting one indeed.” She twirled her riding crop around as she met
the eyes of each of those gathered in front of her and continued to explain her
plans. “Once the target area—the
southern mountainous
“What?” Torlei interrupted with a furious hiss. The psi woman shot Luna, and then Kalin and Grune, an angry glare. “Luna, I’ve worked for you longer than both Kalin and the sabertooth put together. I deserve that position of power!”
“Yes, why them?” Alluro questioned, rising to his full height from his casual slouch indignantly beside his sister. “Why not one of us?”
“Yeah,” TugMug echoed. He was more direct, however, and raised his gravity carbine somewhat threateningly in Luna’s direction. “You’re putting a cat before one of us? What gives?”
“Maybe because she knows we won’t screw it up, unlike you,” Kalin said sarcastically.
“Calm down,” Luna snapped, while Amok accented her words with a forceful pounding of his fist against the floor. “First of all, I do not need to explain my decisions to any of you. Remember that you work for me.”
“Lunatacs are free agents, Luna,” RedEye growled.
Chilla stood up and stepped toward Luna. “He’s right,” she continued in a challenging tone. “We may work for you on a payroll, but we’re not your servants or slaves. And if we don’t like how you’re treating—”
Irritated at the disrespect of his mistress, Amok swung a
fist in Chilla’s direction, interpreting the icewalker’s advancement toward
Luna as a threat. Immediately she jumped
back, knowing that any fight with Amok, whether she could freeze hi
When a hush fell over the room Luna glowered at her discontented crew and addressed them as if they were misbehaving children. “If you don’t like how I treat you, you’re more than welcome to walk out that door and find someone else willing to hire you for your, shall we say, unique services, for the amount I pay you. But you won’t, because you know better. So I suggest you all just shut up and listen to me, instead of squabbling like a bunch of two year-olds over who gets the last cookie in the jar, and let me finish outlining my plan.”
She received no protests aside from some sullen glares, and continued to address them. “Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, once we’ve secured Gatoria, Grune and Kalin will oversee and defend our position there. Like I said earlier, Grune, that is what your reward will be for giving us the information we need on the Thundercats and helping in this mission. Once the rest of us have taken all we want from Gatoria and its people, you and Kalin—since as a cat you must understand I can’t trust you completely once back in your own territory—will supervise it. Not only will you get the reward of being an undisputed ruler of your own province and possibly more, you will be able to get even with the Thundercats who so coldly turned on you in a moment of doubt.” A cruel smile spread across her features as she met Grune’s gaze. “Just think about how wonderful it will feel to get even with them for their betrayal, and to finally take that which you so richly deserve.”
Luna’s words struck a pleasing chord of revenge in his soul. “To think of the looks on Claudus and Jaga’s faces…”
“And how you will prove to them how foolish they were to try and hold you back, and how you will show them just how much better than them you really are,” Kalin added softly, following Luna’s lead and sliding her fingers along his furry and muscular arm suggestively.
At that thought, Grune broke into a wide grin, one that made his saber-teeth gleam ominously in the harsh, fluorescent light of the office interior. It took no time at all for him to come to a decision. “All right Luna, you’ve got yourself a deal,” he growled. “So where do we start?”
“We leave for Gatoria in two weeks,” Luna answered with a satisfied smile. She then proceeded to fill her now quite interested group in on the particulars of the plan. As it turned out, the more she told them of it and its potential, the more they liked it and were willing to take part in it. Soon the earlier disagreement was forgotten entirely, and the nine of them were engaged in making detailed plans for the operation.
But as it turned out, Luna’s plan of taking over Gatoria would never come to pass.
* * *
Ten nights later, the usual crew, along with the regulars who frequented Luna’s club—it did have some of the best domestic and imported spirits in the entire city, after all—was assembled in the main bar room at one of the large round tables in the back. The nine of them sat together discussing some of the more technical aspects of the upcoming mission. Among these topics were what grade of Thundrainium to purchase for their weapons, how to obtain an antidote which would make Grune temporarily immune to its effects, and which features they would install on their new warship. The craft was something Luna was quite proud of. It was a sleek army-grade combat vessel that she’d obtained through “alternate channels”, as she liked to call it when she had her people confiscate something that they had no right to, and she had appointed RedEye and Alluro to equip it with the best weapons systems possible. Until this point Luna had kept it stashed in a secret landing bay under the complex her club was built on, which conveniently avoided those pesky taxes and inquiries if the government didn’t know about it, and only she and those who were in on the Gatoria mission had any knowledge at all of where it was and how to access it.
Now that they were into the finalization of the plans and were not discussing anything overly confidential, Luna had suggested that they discuss their plans that night out in the club itself to soak up the atmosphere of the crowd and in some of their cases, get prompt bar service. Naturally, Luna herself led the conference and did all the talking while Amok snoozed beneath her. He didn’t bother to pay attention because his part was always simple. Bash and smash anyone that mistress didn’t like. At Luna’s side Torlei was jotting down some sketches and notes of worthy points. Aside from Luna the telekinetic was perhaps the most serious of the group, and she intended to make sure that everything went off without a hitch. Chilla meanwhile took a more relaxed approach to the whole thing, and leaned back in her chair sipping at a Frosted Mutant as she listened to the plans. It was one of the bartender’s specialties, and one of the icewalker’s favorites.
Across the table, Alluro listened while he counted some newly acquired cash that he had acquired from his rich girlfriend. He had told Lurella that he needed it to pay off Luna so he could quit working for her. While it was true that Alluro did owe Luna money, the psi had convinced her to part with more than enough to cover his debts to Luna already had he not been skimming some off the top for personal luxuries. The story that he fed Lurella of how much he hated working for Luna was greatly exaggerated, aside from perhaps his intense dislike of Luna herself. Next to Alluro, TugMug sat and shined his gravity carbine. The graviton was somewhat distracted by imagining how much fun it would be to blast at hundreds of moving feline targets. Beside him were Kalin, Grune, and RedEye. All of them were actively participating in the discussion with Luna.
Things were going along well until a loud commotion at the front of the club interrupted them. Their doorman Ishar let out a loud shout to catch their attention and climbed up on the bar, waving his arms wildly. His normally pale skin was a positively ashen color, and his eyes held a look of unashamed fear. “Listen up!” he shouted. “We’ve all gotta bail from here and now! The royals… oh shit, I just heard on the radio that King Lunaro put out an official warrant for the arrest of Luna, and anyone found to be associating with her… on the charge of high treason,” he said, his words causing a shocked hush to fall over the room as the implication of his words sunk in. High treason against the crown of the Moons of Plundarr was not a charge to mess with and one that very few were cleared of or spared death if convicted. “Lunaro’s sent entire Royal Guard here to apprehend Luna and her accomplices,” Ishar added, glancing at the door in a panic. “They’re on their way here now! Everyone’s gotta get out now!”
The whole club immediately erupted into an outraged uproar,
especially the crew gathered at Luna’s table.
Except for Grune, they had each experienced what they considered
bullshit raids by palace officials before, but nothing as serious as what Ishar
was talking about. Luna had just drawn
in breath enough to raise her voice and demand more information, but there was
no time for reaction before the sound of laser rifle fire filled the room, and
the door itself blew apart revealing several Royal Lunar Guardsmen fro
“Correction, street trash scum, the Royal Guard is here!” a gruff voice growled authoritatively from the doorway.
“Shit,” Luna swore under her breath. The fact that the lunar woman swore at all showed just how shaken she was by the turn of events. Luna generally regarded cursing to be lowbrow and vulgar, and she herself only used profanity in the rarest of circumstance. Luna was hardly concerned about propriety in that moment however. She had always known it was only a matter of time before her cousin Lunaro would take serious action against her, but never had she imagined that it would happen so soon. She was well versed in moon kingdom law, and had legendary skills in skirting it and keeping evidence hidden. It made her both scared and angry that he dared to pull something so blatant against her. Were she and her people, the notoriously evil Lunatacs of Plundarr, not among the most feared on all of Plundarr, the Moons, and even thought a force to be contended with all the way on Thundera? It struck her that she had grossly underestimated just how deeply her second cousin’s contempt for her blatant disregard of the royal household’s authority ran.
A burly Lunatac armed with a gun dressed in a unifor
“I’ll give you ‘on the floor’!” a furious Chilla hissed. Immediately the ice Lunatac got to her feet and spat frost, ready to fight.
“Damn right,” Kalin growled, springing to her feet as well. Rare was the occasion she agreed with Chilla but that was one of them. “If these losers want a fight, they’ve come to the right place.”
Bracing herself on Amok’s horns for support, Luna struggled to her feet and shouted to the guard defiantly. “My cousin’s overpaid lackeys will never take us alive! You can tell that to my cowardly relation of a king! Luna bows and concedes to no one!”
RedEye charged up his sidewinder and spun it at the leader of the troop. “Take that back to the palace,” he sneered viciously. The weapon flew through the air, but one of the palace militia shot it off course while the leader ducked away from the fallout.
The angered soldier then raised his own laser rifle. “All right, have it your way then, degenerates,” he snapped, and turned toward his troops to give the order. “Fire!”
Instantly every royal guardsman in the place opened fire with their rifles on anything moving that was not in uniform. Most of the troops realized which individuals were the prime targets and which were just local drunks, and aimed primarily at Luna and her group toward the back, but some held no regard for who they fired upon and took aim at the general crowd as well. In their opinion everyone was guilty by association anyway. As a result hordes of terrified patrons sprang from their seats and scrambled wildly, dodging fire and rushing for windows and back exits like lemmings in a vain hope of escape. Unfortunately for them, the club was already surrounded on the outside by even more of the royal troops, and they found themselves greeted by more armed guardsmen as soon as they got out.
Meanwhile Luna and her crew made a stand in the back corner
that area that they had been seated in, taking on anything that got close and
ducking any shot that came near them.
Slowly and carefully they made their way as a group toward the door to
the back hallway that led to the offices and sleeping quarters. The odds against them steepened further as
more and more guardsmen poured into the place, arresting everyone still
standing from minor thugs to casual bar drinkers. Ishar the doorman ran across the top of the
bar and tried to get to safety only to be shot fro
The force captain scanned the room for his prize, Luna and her crew. The prime suspects listed on the warrant were named TugMug, RedEye, Torlei, Alluro, Kalin, Chilla, and a special mention was given to the sabertooth and former Thundercat and Ambassador Grune the Mighty. Oh yes, those captives would fetch him a nice reward.
“Head for the back! That’s where they’re trying to run for,” a familiar voice shouted to the force captain. The captain and several of his men, along with the informant, charged through the crowd toward the back of the club.
Luna’s outrage turned to cold fury when she heard the voice, and she paused long enough to scowl in utter contempt when she visually confirmed the identity of the informant—her once trusted associate and henchman, the scar-faced darkling Stelthor. “You,” she shrieked furiously, as Amok finished choking the dying breath out of the unfortunate royal guardsman that had attempted to apprehend his mistress.
“Sorry Luna, but you know how it is,” Stelthor called out with a rather unapologetic shrug. “Lunaro cleared my record and paid me a lot more than you ever did, just for a few key pieces of evidence and information he could use to nail you once and for all.”
“You miserable piece of Mutant shit,” TugMug snarled hatefully. “You sold us out.”
Kalin drew her hunter claws and bared her fangs like an angry and feral beast. “Well I hope all your money does you good in the afterlife, because that’s the punishment for betrayal around here.” The enraged hunter then lunged at him with full intent to kill. A guard shot at her, but her reflexes were at their peak from their fine tuning during The Hunt and Kalin was too fast for him. She landed unharmed on top of Stelthor and viciously ripped his neck open with her claws, nearly severing his head from his body before his fruitless struggles ceased and he fell to the floor dead. Two more guards charged at Kalin as she delivered Stelthor into the hands of death, but Grune stepped between them, his own mighty fists along with the spiked club he now kept on his belt flying in a wild rage.
Unshaken by the brutal resistance, the royal guardsmen
intended to fulfill their mission of apprehending the group, and they went
after them with no holds barred. TugMug
was unimpressed at their stubborn persistence and he gleefully fired at
anything in a royal uniform while RedEye’s sidewinder made short work of two
guards that had charged him, fatally electrocuting the
Things were starting to look better for the outlaw crew, until a second wave of uniformed royal guards poured in. It became painfully obvious to them that King Lunaro had pulled out all the stops and called in just about everyone at his disposal to take care of what he often referred to as the “Cousin Luna Problem”.
Chilla saw the additional troops charging in through the front doors and she backed against the group with rising apprehension. She intended to go down fighting but she did not like the odds in the least. “Fuck,” she cursed under her breath, her throat now sore and her stamina low from the constant spitting of ice she’d been doing to keep the guardsmen at bay. She had already frozen at least ten men solid, and had fried several more with her heat beams, but her hands were nearly burning from the overuse of her energy and she knew she could not keep it up much longer. “I can’t take on too many more,” she growled in urgent frustration.
“She’s right,” TugMug said with a nod. “We can’t defeat an entire battalion of them with just our hand weapons! We’ve gotta cut and run and get the hell out of here!”
“The ship for the Gatoria mission,” Torlei suggested, glancing at the door to the back. “It’s in the complex underneath. If we can just buy ourselves a few minutes to get down there and get the systems online, we can escape in that. I doubt Lunaro sent any of his deep-space capable ships for an arrest in the city.”
Luna nodded. It was risky, but they had no other choice as surrendering to certain death at the hands of her bloodthirsty cousin was not an option. “Yes,” she said hurriedly. “Let’s go!”
Nearby, Kalin climbed off her latest victim, now little more than mincemeat once she finished with him, and stood calmly with her back to Luna and facing the enemy. “I’ll buy us some time. Head for the ship, and I’ll be behind you.” With that, she stretched out her arms and morphed, drawing on her innate shape-changing abilities.
Grune gave a nod to indicate that he would stay with Kalin and for a moment watched breathlessly as she changed while the others scrambled for the back exit. He had seen hunters shape-shift before, but never Kalin herself. Her limbs began to lengthen, while her back arched and twisted. Her clothing fell to the floor, useless in the strange new sexless shape, while the limbs that were once her arms sprouted large wings. In only a few moments the woman he called his lover had transformed into an unnatural creature, bearing a strong resemblance to what a resident of Third Earth might have called a gargoyle. The morphed Kalin screeching in a rage and flexing her claws hungrily, diving at the offending royal officers who dared to attack the duo. Smiling satisfactorily, a part of him enjoying the notion of Kalin and him facing impossible odds together, Grune gripped his spiked mace tightly and charged at the guards. He fully intended to make his last hits count before he and Kalin made their break for escape as well. So confident was the sabertooth that never once did he think that he might not make it to the ship that Luna and the others were running for at that very moment.
* * *
“Faster!” the fleeing Luna hollered to her steed. “Hurry up, Amok!”
Torlei, Alluro, RedEye, TugMug, and Chilla were only a few steps behind the brute and lunar pair as they fled for the route of their escape. They had just made it through the door that led to the underground complex, a heavy metal door that was hidden in Luna’s office underneath some fake wood paneling. They ran in a panicked rush down the stairs, until they reached the ship, which was a small but powerful warship-class vessel, capable of deep space flight but equipped with some extra weapons that they had added themselves, as well as enough supplies to last a long interplanetary trip. They had stocked the extra equipment and weaponry in case it turned out that the Gatoria mission went badly, but it seemed like now those supplies would be needed for another reason. If Lunaro had declared them conspirators to the crown, it was a safe bet that staying anywhere on the Moons of Plundarr meant certain death for any of them, especially if the number of guards shooting at them to kill was any indication.
Once they were inside the ship, TugMug and RedEye punched at the controls wildly, bringing the craft to life and impatiently waiting the minute or so that felt like an eternity as the ship’s engines came on line.
“They’re ready,” RedEye said after the torturously long wait.
“Then why are we still on the landing pad?” demanded a furious, if not somewhat scared, Torlei. “Open the landing bay doors and get us out of here!”
Chilla glanced at the ship’s hatch, now shut and sealed, and glanced at the monitor. There was no sign of Kalin or Grune following them yet. “What about Kalin?” Chilla asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
Luna glanced at the monitor, and she saw the same thing Chilla did. No sign of Kalin or the sabertooth. The computer’s scanner readouts also indicated that there were now guards in her office, undoubtedly only moments away from finding the passage to their ship. “Kalin can take care of herself,” Luna stated in a voice devoid of emotion. “Start the ship. We can’t afford to wait a moment longer.”
TugMug didn’t need to be told twice. Within seconds, the engines blazed to life and the ship ascended out of the complex and past the now open skylight doors, once concealed in the vacant lot behind the club, and they sped off into the air above. One or two non-space capable royal aircraft surrounding Luna’s building fired at them as they made their escape, but the shots bounced harmlessly off the sleek and well armored warship. Seconds later, the club, surrounding buildings, and then the entire capitol city as a whole appeared to the passengers as nothing more than a vague and faraway landscape. The bright purple sky above them quickly gave way to a wide black blanket of stars, welcoming them into the safety and distance of space. It was not long before the entire Third Moon of Plundarr was little more than a distant orb in their rear view monitors.
* * *
Back in the club, Grune and Kalin fought the Royal Guard against impossible odds, doing surprisingly well considering what they were up against. The two of them were by no means winning their fight, but still none of the guardsmen had gained much ground, and that in and of itself spoke volumes of their fighting abilities. Still in her beastlike form, Kalin swooped out of the air and snatched two guardsmen in her talons. She wasted no time in crushing their necks and slicing them to ribbons before she dropped their mutilated bodies on the ground and made a fast dive toward Grune. She started to shift back to her natural form while still in the air, maintaining her wings but allowing her head and face, as well as torso and legs, to re-emerge as she descended. “Now, Grune. Go!” she shouted to him, her voice somewhat distorted by her half-changed form. Giving her only a short nod of acknowledgement, Grune dropped the dead guardsman in his clutches and bolted for the back.
Kalin had already broken into a run as she made contact with the floor, using the lift from her quickly shrinking wings to push both her and Grune into the hallway. “Luna’s office,” she panted, not breaking stride for a moment, while her body finished reverting to its normal state. Laser fire lit up the hallway all around them as they made their hasty escape, and there were several guardsmen hot on their trail. However bad things may have been when the fiasco started, they were now ten times worse. They were no longer just wanted criminals evading arrest, now they had the blood of many a member the royal force that lay dead in the other room on their hands. Both Kalin and Grune knew that it was not going to end until they got on that ship and got away from that place for good—or died trying.
Luckily for them, they were both faster than the guardsmen. The rigors of The Hunt had left them in exceptional condition, and that was a welcome advantage in this race where a few seconds would mean the difference between escape and certain death. Finally the duo made it to the metal door in Luna’s office. They saw that it had been left open, presumably for them to go through once they had finished making their parting shots at the royal forces. Grune gave a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods were listening when he saw the thickness of the security door. “It’ll take a lot of laser fire to break this down, and it should buy us a minute or two” he told Kalin with some relief. “Once we’re through, we’ll seal it and meet them on the ship.”
Both quickly ran through the door and into the hallway that led to the chambers beneath. Once safely inside, they pushed the heavy metal door shut into a locked position and ran down the corridor that led to the Gatoria ship. They hadn’t gotten five feet when they heard pounding and fire on the door they had just sealed. They knew it would hold for a short while, but it wouldn’t hold long and they could not afford to waste any time.
Grune and Kalin were a mere fifty paces from the door that
led to the escape craft’s landing bay when everything, including the loud sound
of weapons discharging and the following crash of the door behind them giving
way, was silenced by the deafening roar of the Gatoria ship’s engines. The two of them exchanged panicked looks and
finished their sprint to the door. As
they ran into the landing bay, a blazing flash of light and heat knocked the
“Those bastards!” Grune shouted in utter outrage and shock. “They left without us! Gods damned backstabbing cowards!” He slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a sizable dent.
Though Kalin would have agreed with him, she had no time to
react to the thought, or even the full realization that Luna and the others had
fled and left the
“Grune!”
At the sound of Kalin’s voice, Grune snapped out of his rage and whirled around, still clutching his spiked metal club. He saw the guardsman aiming at him… and then in horrified slow motion, he watched as the uniformed man heard Kalin’s warning. The guard’s reaction to the unexpected call was to suddenly turn his gun in her direction instead—and fire.
Kalin never saw it coming. She had barely made it two running paces before the laser blast struck her squarely in the back, dropping her instantly.
An incredible deluge of emotions washed over Grune in that instant—fury, fear, hatred, loss, and love—and it was more than he could control. Running on pure adrenaline, the sabertooth raced to Kalin’s fallen form, dragged it through the doorway into the now vacant landing bay, and slammed his palm against the keypad that operated them, in the vain hope of buying some more time. The doors slid shut obediently, though his rough handling of the delicate instrumentation had damaged some of the wires in the keypad itself. That set of doors was far weaker than the one leading into the underground complex, however. It would hold out the small militia following them for even less time than the other one had, but at the moment, Grune did not care.
Instead he knelt beside Kalin and pulled her head into his lap. Her body was now wracked with painful spasms and twitches, and the dying Lunatac was gasping for breath. Her lungs were filling quickly with blood from the blast wound, which had not only singed part of her spinal cord, but had seared into several of her internal organs as well. Grune lifted her head gently so that it might help her breathe easier although he knew on some level that it was in vain. “Hold still,” he urged her with tenderness that seemed utterly out of place after such a bloody fight. “I’ll find us another way out.”
Kalin wheezed as she drew in another breath. “I’m already on my only way out, Grune. Leave. Save yourself.”
“Don’t say that,” Grune argued. “I’m not going to leave you behind to die like that miserable little bitch and her friends did to us.”
“Wouldn’t have expected them to do anything else…” Kalin murmured, her voice barely a whisper, closing her eyes for a moment as she fought the inevitable. “Couldn’t. Law of the Jungle you know. Everyone for,” she coughed, “himself.” Her words grew slurred and she coughed a second time, drawing up blood.
Grune began to shake as the grim realization that his lover truly was going to die set in. “Just because it’s the law doesn’t make it right,” he snarled quietly. “It was you that showed me that.” He brushed the soft green hair above her forehead tenderly and tried to keep himself together. Too much, all of it, it was all too much… first Scarlette, then the Thundercats turning against him, and now Kalin…
“Go,” Kalin wheezed. “I hear them. They’ll be here… not much longer…”
Grune too was vaguely been aware of the firepower focused on the doors, and the pained sound of the metal weakening under the blasts. He chose to keep ignoring it. “Don’t give up,” he urged her in a soft, gentle tone. It was one that he hadn’t used in gods know how long, certainly not since he had come to that gods-forsaken place. “Don’t leave me. I need you. I—I love you.” He realized as he spoke the words how much he truly meant them.
Kalin managed to form a faint smile despite her rapidly decreasing strength and ever increasing pain. She started to speak, but fell into another coughing spasm. When it ended, she squeezed his hand affectionately with what strength she could muster and met his gaze for the last time. “You—” she coughed heavily again—”you too.” She then tried to move toward him, but it took the last of her energy and fell back limp against his legs. Her eyes closed for the last time, and she lay there still and silent, her head still cradled in his hands.
The weakened door that had been holding the royal guardsmen out finally gave way to their fire, and crashed to the floor in a loud clatter. Laying Kalin’s head down on the floor reluctantly, Grune got to his feet and turned, fixing his gaze upon the bastards that had taken away the last thing he cared about. The flood of emotions that he had been holding back for the sake of his now dead lover suddenly washed over him in full fury. He let out a feral roar and leapt into the air, claws bared on one hand and a tight fist around the handle of his spiked mace with the other. He tackled the first of the troopers to come through the door, which he now recognized as being the same one who had delivered Kalin her fatal blow. The enraged sabertooth pinned him to the ground beneath him, and with all his might, slammed his spiked mace into his face again and again and again.
A sick feeling of pleasure came over him at seeing the Lunatac’s dark blood spurt from the wounds, and hearing his screams of pain give way to the sound of his skull shattering. In a way, it reminded him of his very first kill, only that time it felt much more intense and far more gratifying. That time it was not just him taking out some lowlife who had crossed him in his newer line of work, nor was it simply him offing a thug who had mistakenly thought he could get the better of him. It was not even the thrill of the chase and kill that he had experienced at his victory in The Hunt. No, it was entirely different. It was pure, unadulterated vengeance, and it felt great. And with each blow, it felt better and better.
Grune could feel more of the guardsmen grabbing at him, trying to pull him off the body, and a strange detached part of him wondered why they weren’t shooting at him. Maybe they preferred physical combat, or maybe they had a notion of saving the man whose brains he had just mashed into oblivion, and had not wanted to risk hurting him with a bad shot. It didn’t really matter, anyway—it just gave him the chance to hurt them too.
As soon as Kalin’s killer was clearly dead, Grune grabbed and swung at the guardsmen gathered around and trying to take hold of him. Struggling furiously he tried to break free of their grasp and he broke several of their bones in his adrenaline rage. It seemed to Grune almost pathetic in a way, it was no wonder had been anointed a Thundercat. Here there were at least six Lunatac men trying to take him—just one Thundercat, or ex-Thundercat as the case may have been—down, and they were having a hell of a lot of trouble doing so. He supposed had not earned the name “Grune the Mighty” for no reason.
Two powerful shots from above changed that and humbled him in a flash however. Bluish beams of some sort, seemingly from the sky, struck him on the head and weakened him instantly. He did not bleed where he was hit, and strangely his skin was not even broken, but all of a sudden he was so fatigued that he could barely move. He looked up in confusion and saw some sharpshooters around the rim of the open skylight, through which Luna and the others had escaped only minutes ago. The guardsmen stationed outside wasted no time in taking advantage of that, now that they had a clear aim at the wanted sabertooth below.
“Not so tough when you’re pumped full of Thundrainium, eh kitty cat?” sneered the angry force captain, whose nose he had just broken about thirty seconds before.
Thundrainium—t hat explained his sudden weakness, Grune realized numbly. He supposed that if the Lunatacs knew he was there and intended to capture him along with the others, it made sense that some of the guardsmen would be armed with Thundrainium. They had been planning to use the same sorts of weapons for the Gatoria mission, he remembered in grim retrospect.
Grune could barely resist as the guardsmen bound him in heavy chains carried in by a backup force that had just arrived. The metal binds weakened him further, and he knew instantly that they were made of Thundrainium too.
The force captain, rubbing his now very tender nose, glared at his prisoner. “One out of nine of the most wanted isn’t a great capture ratio, but I’m sure his Highness is going to be pleased to see that you’re the one we brought in, if we couldn’t get Luna herself, ex-Ambassador,” he taunted. “By the time we’re finished with your sentencing, you’re going to wish you died simply by being shot while evading arrest like that hunter bitch girlfriend of yours. I can guarantee you, the torture for a Thundercat spy conspiring against the crown of the Moons of Plundarr is going to be a very slow, painful, way to go.”
Grune growled hatefully, but he refused to dignify him with a verbal response. He was too enraged to put together a coherent sentence at that point anyhow. All he could think about was how much he wanted to rip out that force captain’s internal organs and force-feed them to him.
The guardsmen that captured Grune dragged him to his feet and pushed him roughly out of the now-destroyed and vacant club, past the sea of dead bodies and others in the process of being arrested, into the streets. A large crowd of onlookers was now gathered, a bloodthirsty and cruel one that delighted in shouting taunts and jeers as the guardsmen hauled him past. He paid them little attention. His awareness was focused on two things—not succumbing to the debilitating effects of the Thundrainium, and the one thought that kept him going—revenge. One day, he’d get his revenge on all of those people, he vowed.
After a walk that felt like miles to his exhausted body, Grune’s captors shoved him roughly into the back of an armored vehicle. It was one of several they had brought to the scene in the hopes that they would be apprehending all of the individuals they had come to get. The inside was pitch black with no windows or lighting, and from what he could feel as he stumbled around in the darkness, there was not even a seat. Grune was too weak from the Thundrainium to do much else at this point, so he lay back on the cold metal floor and conserved his energy. He had a feeling he was going to need every bit of it.
After what felt like a very long ride, the doors of the vehicle swung open and three armed guardsmen pulled him out. One calmly held up a hand pistol and shot him squarely in the gut, but it was only another blast of Thundrainium. It did little more than bruise him on impact, but it went right through his system, wiping out every bit of the strength he had built back up during the ride. “That should take care of him,” the lunar maid said satisfactorily to the other guardsmen. “You can take off the heavy shackles, but leave the collar and handcuffs on him. The Thundrainium may weaken him, but this is Grune the Mighty, so we don’t want to take any chances.”
“Oh yes, gods forbid you try take me on in a fair fight,” Grune muttered as one of the guards unlocked and removed the heavier excess Thundrainium chains.
“Shut up cat, you weren’t given permission to speak,” the guardsman in charge snapped arrogantly. “You are our prisoner, and as such, you have no rights. Got that, feline? Any further resistance and you’ll feel a real measure of lunar hospitality,” he threatened. “Now move along. King Lunaro would like to sentence you personally.”
“What, no trial?” Grune said in a mocking tone.
The guardsman shot him with another blast of Thundrainium, that time knocking the wind out of him and almost dropping him to his knees. “There’s plenty more where that came from, kitty. Handy weakness you Thunderians have, that Thundrainium. Very easy to exploit when given the chance.” He shoved him roughly. “Now I said move it!” They began to walk again, with one of the guardsmen giving the weakened Grune an extra shove each time he stumbled or slowed down. “As for the trial, you are not a citizen of the Moons of Plundarr. You’re a war criminal. As such, you forego your right to a trial under our laws.”
Grune let out a short, bitter laugh. “I know all about your laws, Lunatac. Remember? I spent the last several months breaking them.”
“Oh, I’ll take that as a full confession, then,” the guardsman sneered. “Makes sentencing that much easier, with us three witnesses to give that little account to King Lunaro if he asks. Not that I think he’ll care. He’s wanted you out of the picture since day one, ‘Ambassador’ Grune.”
Finally they arrived at the throne room, where Lunaro was seated at the top in his opulent throne which was large and plush, making an amusing contrast to the Lunatac ruler himself. Lunaro grinned like the proverbial cat that had eaten the canary when he saw Grune being dragged in. His wife, Queen Sileira, sat beside him, but she was silent and expressionless, her eyes focused on something other than Grune altogether. Several other Lunatacs he remembered meeting what now felt like ages ago were also assembled in the room, various high-ranking political officials whose names he had already forgotten. At that point he did not care who they were. He had known even when he had been there on that joke of a peace mission, that they had not liked him, and the feeling had been mutual. In fact, Sileira had been the only one he could tolerate, but he was not counting on much, if any, support from her.
Lunaro flexed his fingers and stood, smoothing an unruly strand of his thick white hair before he took a few steps toward the sabertooth. “Ah, how the ‘mighty’ have fallen, eh Grune?” he began, his voice dripping with arrogance and condescension. He laughed for a moment before he stopped himself. “Oh, I’m sorry. That was a cheap shot, wasn’t it? As a King, such things should be beneath me.”
“There’s not much that’s beneath you or your kind, Lunaro,” Grune snarled contemptuously.
The Lunatac ruler scowled at the sabertooth’s brazen insult. “Well now, that’s a rather racist remark, don’t you think, feline? And stupid, too, considering I’m the one who’s about to sentence you for your rather long list of crimes.”
“You think it’s long now?” Grune retorted. “Let me out of these chains, and I’ll add
assassination of the
“In your dreams, sabertooth,” Lunaro said with a condescending and dismissive wave. “No, with your list of crimes—consorting with dear Cousin Luna, who has evaded capture thanks to you, which I believe qualifies as an additional aiding and abetting charge, not to mention at least fifteen counts of murder just with the members of my royal forces that you killed while evading arrest added to the highest charge of conspiracy and espionage—no, Grune, I’d say that it’s you who’s about to meet his end. And with your list of crimes, it will be a very unpleasant one, I can guarantee that.”
Grune growled at the Lunar King again. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Perhaps not, but what about death? Does that frighten you?” He eyed the captured Thunderian closely for a reaction for a moment before continuing. “Hmm… I wonder what you would find the most unpleasant. Would it be starvation? Being buried alive? Or perhaps a more violent end, like being fed to a pack of half starved Mokrikett beasts from the Dark Moon of Plundarr?”
Lunaro watched Grune’s face for any change in expression that would betray a hint of fear beneath his angry and defiant exterior. Not yet seeing the sort of reaction he was aiming for, he pressed further, taking full enjoyment of the opportunity to taunt the ex-Thundercat. “No? How about something a bit less tangible, but no less painful? Like being forced to watch someone you love being killed right in front of your eyes?” He paused for a moment and then grinned with malicious amusement. “Oh, wait a minute, we already did that one when my lieutenant shot that hunter slut you shacked up with, didn’t we?”
His last remark got the desired reaction in the form of an infuriated roar out of Grune. “I’ll rip you apart for even mentioning her, you cowardly bastard!” The sabertooth thrashed in his chains in anger, hoping in vain that he might be able to have the strength to break them and give the smug troll of a ruler what was coming to him. However, a fresh shot of Thundrainium right into his back, courtesy of one of the armed escorts, squelched that notion in a hurry. Grune growled and doubled over, trying to maintain enough strength to stand on his own.
Unfazed by the outburst, King Lunaro strode right up in front of the restrained sabertooth and faced him down as best he could at his short stature. Like all lunars, Lunaro was not tall in the least at his height of 4’2”, though he was on the tall side for his kind. If Grune had ever lived long enough to make the connection and meet him, he would have then noticed the striking similarity in appearance and expression between Lunaro and his yet to be born son, Prince Silvian. “Your idle threats mean nothing to me, Grune. After all, I’m not the one who’s about to be sentenced to death. Speaking of which, I’ve had enough of this trivial chatter. I just thought of the perfect sentence for someone like you, Grune.”
Grune found enough strength to raise his head and glare back at him, but said nothing. He just wanted to hear what the Lunatac King would pronounce his sentence to be, and be done with it. If he had the energy to say it, he would have told Lunaro that he was already suffering the worse torture possible—having to listen to him drone on and on.
Lunaro strode back to his throne and sat back down. “Grune the Mighty, Thundercat—excuse me, ex-Thundercat—” he corrected himself with a sneer, “and enemy Thunderian guilty of all the aforementioned charges, I sentence you to death as punishment for your crimes.”
Gee, now there’s a big fucking shock, Grune thought, shaking his head in disgust.
“As for how the sentence shall be fittingly carried out, I have decided that you are so vile a creature, that I don’t want even your physical remains tainting the soil or any of the other elements of any of my Moons,” he said as he retook his seat upon the throne beside Sileira, who eyed him for a moment before looking away. “Now,” Lunaro continued, “given that you left your home planet of Thundera, and certainly are not welcome among the Mutants of Plundarr, the only fair sentence I can give you is to be jettisoned into deep space, as we do with all our toxic garbage. In exactly thirty-four hours, the equivalent of two Lunar-Plundarrian standard days, you will be placed in a pressurized space pod and launched into space, well past the orbit of any of our moons. Then, by remote control and at a time that we will determine after launch, so you don’t know when it’s coming—could be hours, could be days, depending on what I feel like—the capsule will be opened and you will be ejected into the vacuum of deep space. That will neatly take care of the both the task of ending your worthless life, and keeping the mess of your bloody corpse from tainting any of the planets or Moons in this system, since I imagine the rulers of Thundera and Plundarr want just as little to do with you as we do here.” He paused, a sadistic smile on his face. “I wonder which will kill you first, Grune—asphyxiation or the pressure of your body blowing apart into thousands of tiny pieces. Either way, I’m sure it will be quite unpleasant.”
Next to her husband, Queen Sileira swallowed back a feeling of disgust, and focused on the ornate moldings that decorated a pillar by the entrance. It was easier for the Lunar Queen to do that than to make any eye contact with the condemned soul at the foot of the throne or her husband. There had been many times in her life when she was sickened, although she never would have stated such, by the way her husband seemed to take such delight in inflicting pain, be it mental or physical, just for the sake of doing so. That was one of those times. She had no particular love for Thunderians or Thundercats, but she did not like the idea of Grune’s life ending in such a way, especially since she had found him to be rather interesting if not somewhat likeable in an unusual way in her experiences with him. Why did you have to go and get involved with Luna and let it come to this, Grune?
Oblivious to his wife’s sympathetic notions toward his prize prisoner, Lunaro allowed Grune to dwell on the words of his sentencing for a few moments before he decided that he’d had enough of him, and dismissed his guardsmen. “Take the prisoner away to one of our Thundrainium cells for holding. I want this cat out of my sight until the time for his execution.”
“Yes, your highness,” the officers echoed, and the two subordinates took hold of Grune’s arms while the leader led them out of the throne room.
Grune only turned his head once, long enough to give King Lunaro a disgusted and challenging stare that silently warned him that someday he would get his. He never noticed the look that flashed across Queen Sileira’s features for a moment, one that if he had seen it and looked at closely enough, he would have seen held a glint of tears and a solemn regret.
* * *
Hundreds of thousands of miles away in the depths of space, a silence had settled over the seven Lunatacs assembled in the bridge of their ship. Now that the hurried tension of their escape had worn off, the outlaw crew found themselves idle, with plenty of time to mull over all that had happened back on the Third Moon. Only TugMug, who had busied himself with the task of piloting for the time being, was too busy to think about it. The others found themselves lost in thought, staring blankly at the view screens and monitor readouts.
Chilla was still seated in the same place she had been since they left, an odd look on her face as she glanced at the sealed hatch. Alluro noticed her expression, which had not really changed since she had asked the question which, when answered by Luna, had been what brought the somber mood to the room. He watched her long enough for her to feel his eyes on her and she turned around to face him. “They were probably dead already,” he said as he met her gaze. “If they wanted to leave with us, they should have come with us when we left.”
“Right,” Chilla stated emotionlessly. “She volunteered to buy us time. No one made her or the cat stay there.”
Luna heard their conversation, the first outwardly spoken words about it since they had taken off. She was still watching one of the rear-view monitors. The Third Moon of Plundarr was long out of visual range by that point, but she felt a strange compulsion to look anyway. “We couldn’t very well sit around and let ourselves all get captured, now could we?” she justified, glancing over at each of them. No one voiced an argument to that, nor would they have. There was not a single one of them that would not have made the same choice, had they been in Luna’s position.
Her words hung in the air like a fog for several silent moments before she finally tore her eyes away from the rearview monitor for good. “Now,” she started, bringing about a much welcome change of subject, “let’s see to the more relevant matters at hand… like where we should go, now that it’s not safe for us on any of the Moons of Plundarr.”
“I’m not going to Plundarr itself,” RedEye said with distaste. “I’d rather be arrested than live with those primitive Mutants.”
“And Thundera’s obviously out,” Chilla added. “We’re not prepared for it.”
Torlei pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Surely there must be another planet around, one we could lie low on for a time without incident.”
Alluro checked through the ship’s computers until he found a record of something with potential. “How about this one? It’s listed as having a breathable atmosphere, temperate climate, and even a region known as a ‘DarkSide’ that has properties similar to some of our native climates. The planet itself has no advanced civilization, at least none so much to even be close to ours. It would be easy pickings for us, so to speak, until we could return to the Moons of Plundarr and re-establish ourselves.”
“Where is it?” TugMug inquired.
“It’s far,” RedEye said, examining the information Alluro brought up on the screen, “but it’s not so far that we can’t make it. It’s in a galaxy in Sector 7.”
Luna’s eyes widened. “Sector 7? My grandmother once told me about such a planet in that area, that she had spent time on before being forcibly removed by a mage called Mumm-Rana. It was called Third Earth.”
It was then Alluro’s turn to be surprised. “That’s the name of this planet.”
“What do you say then, everyone? Shall we make our temporary relocation to this Third Earth?” Luna asked. The others responded with nods of approval, for no better suggestion had been made and it sounded reasonable. Once the agreement was made, TugMug promptly set course for the small planet.
As the ship accelerated to appropriate speed, Luna found
herself glancing back at the rearview monitor once again. An unpleasant and decidedly unusual feeling
of guilt nagged at her. You could have
waited a little longer. You didn’t have to leave her behind. You could have waited.
“No,” Luna muttered to herself aloud in argument, shaking her head in denial and garnering strange looks from a couple of her fellow Lunatacs for a moment.
“No.” Paying no attention to any of the others, she then prodded Amok to take her to one of the sleeping quarters in the back of the ship, so she could clear her head and rest. She was in no mood for anything else.
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