Chapter Nineteen:

---

Dommik ignored the Piercer and crept to the high stalks that ran flush and far over the endless fields on either side of him. They were stiff and stubborn, the type of plant that made great padding for dens, burrows, and nests for birds but he didn’t see any immediate wildlife about him, he never did when he first landed on a planet. His ship would scare everything away.

The shadow of his spacecraft towered over him, blocking out the twin suns on the horizon. The colors of the day were moving fast, and the moon was small, he would encounter the night soon. Dommik walked over the plants, pummeling them down under his boots only to have them spring back up behind him as if he had never passed through. He checked his wrist-con and followed its compass to the nearest settlement, a half-league away.

He hoped, which was something Cyborgs Did Not Do, he hoped that he could buy a flower straight from the source, alive, dug up with roots and all.

He didn’t have alien currency on hand, coins forged deep within the tunnels on Xanteaus Trent, but he did have things to barter. That hope was only brought on by a bone-deep urge to get this job done and get Kat someplace safe.

Someplace they could both heal together.

Dommik looked back at the two ships in the distance, checking the landscape and listening to the breeze. No one was following him which was just as well, if Markoss sent a scout after him, he would have to keep that peon alive.

He reached down and untied his boots, setting them aside in the rushes before he shifted his lower body. He counted to ten, his bio-suit reformed, down to five, he tied back his hair and ended at one.

Dommik sprinted, low to the ground and out of sight toward his destination.

There was no sound but the rush of wind over his face and no one to see him but the suns in the sky, damning him and judging his form. Time slipped by as he closed in on his destination, minutes only, while his body ran with four legs, skittering with metal close to the ground.

He stopped short when his destination appeared. His extra limbs twisted back into hiding while he took cover at the edge of the stalks. He peeked through the gaps.

Pillars and a hole. Nothing more although he knew there were others. He checked his surroundings, finding it clear, and stepped out into the light.

The hole slipped into the darkness at an angle and as he got closer he saw that there was a staircase made out of stone that led deep within. Small white globes sat on the sides. They illuminated every step.

Dommik stared up at the sky. Always underground. Always fucking underground. He wasn’t the type of spider that thrived in the dirt, especially after his past experiences.

He should’ve known the settlements would be away from the sun and the heat of the day. The aliens couldn’t tolerate heat, they thrived in the cold. Their blood would slowly boil until they cooked and collapsed. Xanteaus Trent, their homeworld, was farther away from their sun and they adapted to accommodate it; just like humans had for their relatively temperate environment.

Dommik stepped down into the hole until he was swallowed up by the terra. His fingers flexed over his knife. By the time it leveled out he had an audience of a hundred staring at him.

“I come in peace,” He shouted, feeling like a space-age idiot. Two men draped in green pants, weaved by the stalks above approached him, their chests bare except for designs knifed into their skin brought out by scars. He didn’t need to look around to know there were no women present.

If they had women, it wouldn’t be here. The wood smelled of mold, the rocks uncarved, and the cavern in its entirety reeked of sweat and rot.

“Yhal en Erarth, pucha ere,” one of the two said in Trentian. Dommik closed his eyes and subsumed his inclination to kill the aliens back deep within himself and switched to Trentian. You’re from Earth, why are you here?

“I’m here to buy a flower.”

The same one spoke, his head rolled as he considered him, “We don’t sell to humans. We don’t negotiate with filth.”

“The Space Lord I came here with said you would.” Dommik didn’t mind name-dropping if it got him out of there faster. He placed his hand on his knife’s handle.

“We don’t follow the sect that lost this war and tainted our blood,” the alien bared his teeth, followed by the hundred still staring at them baring their teeth. “They have no jurisdiction amongst the pure.”

“Unfortunately for you, your moon lies within that sect’s jurisdiction.”

Dommik felt the change before it started, the rustle of beings all focused on their weapons, the one that was easily within reach. A target for one’s mind and the stiffening of muscles a moment before. He kept his eyes on the man before him.

“Xanteaus has forsaken them, his voice no longer fills their heads, we are here to rise up and take the impure down and restore the god’s star in pure soil. You taint holy ground, outsider.”

Dommik looked out calmly over the aliens, their bared bodies strained, their hands cupped and unclothed. Each an unlit wick waiting for the fire. Unconcerned hatred marred their faces.

“Markoss didn’t tell you I was coming, did he?”

Several of the aliens closest to him stopped.

A trap?

He continued, “You don’t have to die, I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again. One flower, with the roots still intact, is all I ask for.” The snake hiss of daggers being unsheathed filled his ears. “I’m not interested in war.” The aliens started to slink around him.

The sweat of impending battle stunk up the globe-glowed cavern.

“We will sacrifice you to Xanteaus, the god of gods and the star within the first world. There will be no accursed here!”

He let his Trentian kill-code arise and allowed the poison to build up in his system.

The alien savages expected a slaughter, and it looked like they were going to get one. Not the one they wanted, though. He turned into the metal monster that he was and let the venom that bubbled up from his body to bubble from his elongated teeth and from his fingertips.

He slashed and cut, dripping with rancor and vitriol, and soon the slop of alien blood as the first wave came at him. His legs came apart and then the real slaughter began.

It wasn’t until he climbed the cavern walls and sprayed down his poison that the screams took on a whole new pitch.

He left bodies in his wake, some dead, most almost dead as they succumbed to the acid in their veins and the paralysis. The aliens on the outskirts, untouched, began to back away while the brave began to shoot him down with bullets that ricocheted off his exoskeleton.

For every alien that dropped, two more took its place, and he had yet to enjoy the carnage. His joints popped and his mouth pulled out until it broke away from his face while the bones of his canines shifted underneath, soaking up the poison that was left over, and replaced with razor sharp steel.

Dommik let his control vanish in the battle cries and the spears that poked at his Cyborg body and dropped down on a horde of aliens, crushing their bodies under his heavy frame.

“Drop the dirt!”

“For the god of gods!”

He tore at their throats and roared with a mouth full of blood until the Trentians backed away. A rumble shook the ground followed by the stone floor cracking open. The dead and dying began to tremble and slip away as the wails of the aliens turned to cheers.

His limbs shook as the jagged crevasse came for him. He jumped back but stumbled over the pliant bodies littering his escape. The small ray of sun from the entrance began to disappear. A gate closing in from the sides.

Dommik speared his lower half into the wall when the entire floor opened up into a black hole. The Trentians around the edges continued to berate him with bullets and throwing spears, he even felt the sting of rocks.

Fucking hell. His spider legs slipped down the stone and with the rumble of the floor closing up, he fell into the pit.