The two Zoasian vehicles rushed across the sandy expanse of the Ecosian desert. At times, I was sure that I was gaining on the other transport, but then at other times there seemed to be a widening of the space between us. One thing was for sure. The Zoasian in control of the first craft was a far better driver than I was. I was continually flying out of my seat as I bumped over some obstacle, and I am sure that my Amatharian passengers were similarly troubled.

At that moment a missile fired from some section of my vehicle below me. Evidently Terril Jennofar had found a gunner, or was manning a missile station himself. The projectile impacted just to the left of the fleeing vehicle. Seconds later a second missile shot forth, and this one was better aimed than the first. It hit the right rear wheel of the fleeing vehicle. For a moment it looked as though there would be a great crash, but the Zoasian driver regained control of the now smoking, crippled truck and continued on, albeit at a slower pace. I was sure now that we would be able to catch it.

Just then a massive explosion from below racked my own vehicle. I was lifted completely out of the driver’s seat, and hurled across the compartment, as the car turned first left and then right, and then began to flip over wildly. The cabin spun around and around, and my head was dashed against some piece of equipment, sending me into the darkness of unconsciousness.

When I came too, I was lying in the sand beside the great mass of bent metal that had once been the great Zoasian vehicle. A good half pound of sand was glued to the side of my face by a mass of dried blood, and my left arm was bent backwards at the wrist, obviously broken.

I pulled my tabard off and using my knife and my one good arm, cut several strips from it. I wiped the mess from my face as best I could with the rest, and then discarded it, keeping only the tiny ornament that Nona Montendro had given me to wear. I straightened out my arm with a great deal of pain and effort, and finding a straight piece of metal from the wreck and the cloth strips, splinted it. I then determined to set the break. I grabbed hold of a bar on the main part of the wreck with my left hand and leaned my body back as hard as I could. As blinding pain shot from my arm to my brain, I once again lost consciousness.

I don’t think that I was unconscious very long. When I woke up, I was dismayed to find that my arm was still not set. I set about trying the same procedure again. I was rewarded with two barely audible snaps, as my bones found their proper locations. Though I didn’t lose consciousness this second time, I was forced to lie back on the sand for several minutes trying to inhale and recover my wits.

Once my arm was stabilized, I began to look around for any other survivors of the wreck. I found two of my companions lying in the sand and another partially buried in the wreckage. All were dead. Near the rear of the mess was the body of Terril Jennofar. He was mangled almost beyond recognition, and yet when I approached, he opened his eyes and looked at me.

“I am sorry,” he said. “It is my fault. I accidentally ignited the missile, as I was attempting to load it.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I will report you well.”

“Rescue her…” Then he was dead.

The Kartags are rat-like creatures that live in the dark places of the world of Ecos. They are sentient and live in tribal groups. I have to admit to a certain prejudice when I created Ecos. The creatures that resemble rats, spiders, snakes, etc. are inevitably evil, while those that resemble cute birds and cuddly teddy bears are good.

“This is a band of Kartags,” said Norar Remontar, turning on his small flashlight and pointing it at several prone figures. “They burst out of a hidden door while I was in the chamber alone, and knocked me out with a well placed blow to the head. I was lucky to regain consciousness before they were able to do whatever it was that they were planning to do to me.”

I looked at the beings lying dead in the circle of artificial illumination on the floor. They would have been about five feet tall when standing and they reminded me of a large rat, at least as far as their faces were concerned. They had legs designed for upright locomotion, and two sets of arms on their upper torso. Their dirty, wrinkled skin was a dull grey color, and hairless, reminding me quite a bit of the way rodents look just after they are born. Though they wore no type of clothing, they did wear simple leather harnesses upon which they carried crude hand-made stone tools.

“The Kartags are well-known to my people,” said my Amatharian friend. “They live by scavenging from more civilized beings.”

“I kind of got that impression from looking at them,” I replied. “It is lucky that you were able to rescue yourself. If it hadn’t been for the soul in your sword, Malagor and I would never have found you.”

“It may have been lucky for us that they attacked me. This subterranean passage may be a considerable short cut home to Amathar.”

The name Kartags is another made up word.

“Look over there,” said Tular Maximinos, suddenly at my shoulder. It was his company who had come to our aid.

I turned to see one of the black Zoasian battleships explode into a huge fireball and fall into the city below, setting off even more explosions. The battle seemed to be going well, and I could see three other enemy ships burning in the sky, as they spun out of control. All of the ships in our squadron were still in the air, though many had taken quite a bit of damage. I imagined that the squadron making the direct assault against the city was incurring even greater losses, but we had our reserves, and we knew what we were after.

Suddenly all the soldiers on deck were knocked from their feet, myself included. I jumped up to see another Zoasian ship grinding along our bow. The two ships had collided in mid-air, and the enemy was sliding down our side. As the black battleship moved closer to where we stood, it began to move away.

“Come on,” I shouted to my men, and taking a running leap into the air, I crossed the distance to the reptiles’ airship. This wasn’t really part of a plan. It just seemed like a good idea at the time to take the battle to the enemy.

Landing on the deck with a thud, I turned around to see how many of my company had made it across with me. About thirty others, including Tular Maximinos, had made it. One young warrior had not been able to make the jump, and was still falling the several thousand feet to the ground below. The remainder of our small battalion had remained behind, being unable to cross the distance before the two ships had moved too far away from each other.

“Where now?” I called to Tular Maximinos, as there seemed to be no Zoasians on deck.

“To the engine room!” he called back, and the two of us rushed toward the back of the ship, followed by thirty or so men and women.

A wide path ran along the side of the vessel between the superstructure and the edge, giving us a metal avenue down the length of the ship. It was good that it was a broad space too, because there was no rail along the side, as there was on Amatharian ships. We had gone down about half the length of the mile long vessel when I heard weapons fire behind me. I turned to see over a hundred Zoasians at the bow of the vessel, where we had just been. They were firing at us, and had already shot two of our team.

I sheathed my sword, and whipped out my light pistol. The Amatharians with me did the same, and we soon had the hulking reptiles diving for cover.

“Swordsman,” I called to a female Amatharian, “take five warriors and hold this position.”

“Yes, knight.”

I could see in her face that this young woman knew that she had just been ordered to give her life, but I could also see the fierce determination to complete her orders, and a strong desire to sell her life as dearly as she could.

Tular Maximinos and I led the other soldiers onward. At last we reached the rear of the superstructure, but there seemed to be no opening.

“We need to find a way inside.” said the Amatharian knight.

“Well then,” I said, putting away my pistol, and whipping out my long sword. “Let’s go inside.”

The blade of my sword began to glow even before my arm started its movement. I swung down to the deck, slicing with my sword, through the metal, like a butcher knife cutting through a soap bubble. With four clean strokes, I cut a large square hole in the deck. Tular Maximinos kicked the newly made door with the heal of his boot, and sent the square of metal flying downward. I whipped out my pistol and jumped into the new hole, landing some ten feet below and rolling to one side. A moment later, Tular Maximinos and the warriors of Amathar were beside me.

We were in a long hallway which seemingly stretched the length of the ship. It was brightly lit with artificial light. There were no Zoasians in sight. With a wave of his hand, Tular Maximinos signaled us to follow him, and we moved silently down the hallway toward the stern of the vessel. At each intersection of the hallway we glanced down the perpendicular shafts, expecting at any moment to be confronted by a large group of heavily armed lizard men. We ran across only one unfortunate Zoasian, whom Tular Maximinos sliced into three separate pieces.

After running literally more than a quarter mile down the hallway, we found ourselves at its end. The hallway opened up to a balcony overlooking a huge room full of machinery a hundred feet below. On the floor far below us, was the apparatus responsible for keeping the ship aloft. It looked something like a great turbine, though its hum was below the sound level of our own voices.

Almost immediately, we were spied by one of the enemy crew members on the floor, and seconds later we were engaged in a firefight with a dozen Zoasians below. Seconds later, two of my companions fell, wounds in their backs, and I turned to see a whole army of reptiles running toward us from the hallway we had just exited. I knew that the brave soldiers we had left behind had been overcome. I called out a warning to the others and fired several shots down the hall. But we were caught in a crossfire. A narrow catwalk led to the right or left of the balcony, but with weapons fire from below, and an enemy approaching from behind, it was suicide to attempt it.

“Good luck to you, my friend,” said Tular Maximinos, smiling. He then jumped to the top of the balcony railing, and holding his sword straight out, jumped down toward the machinery below.

As Tular Maximinos fell, he carved his blade into the great machine. The mechanism began to sputter and spark and shriek loudly. The Amatharian’s body continued to fall though, and hit the floor with a horrid crunching sound. I looked down to see him lying on the deck below, his legs a twisted mess of blood and bone. Before I could raise my own weapon in his defense, a nearby Zoasian pointed his ray pistol at the knight’s head and shot him.

Like a streak of lightning, a blazing light bust forth from Tular Maximinos’s sword. It danced around the room for a moment, and then blasted through the bodies of every Zoasian in the engine room. Finally it disappeared. Before my eyes had readjusted to the normal light levels, a huge fireball engulfed the room, as the massive machinery that the Amatharian had damaged, exploded.

“Come on!” I called to the brave men and women with me.

In many ways, life aboard the great Amatharian battle cruiser was much easier for me than it had been in the city. The ship operated on a fixed schedule based on its own version of the city-cycle, which was recalibrated each time the ship docked in Amathar. Each person on board was assigned a duty and worked three cycles, followed by six cycles off duty. I knew absolutely nothing about the ship or its procedures, so initially I was assigned to the security detail. Since I was a knight, I was given what was essentially an officer’s rank– command of ten swordsmen, each of whom commanded eight to ten warriors.

Amatharian ships didn’t have names, though they did sport numbers. The battle cruisers were essentially all of the same class, though they had minor differences, and some were newer than others. Their importance was based entirely upon who commanded them, and what mission they were on. This ship was Sun Battle cruiser 11, and it was the flagship of Norar Remontar’s twelve ship squadron, one of four squadrons making the assault on Zonamis. Like the other ships, this one was painted navy blue with silver trim. Like the other three flagships of the fleet, this one had a great crest across the bow– in this case, a flaming sun with outstretched wings. And like all Amatharian ships, this one was arrayed with the banners of her knights. When I first saw my own banner, with a flaming sun embossed by the letter “A”, flying among the many others, I was filled with pride. There were more than ten thousand soldiers aboard this one ship, and about one in a hundred were knights.

The accommodations on the vessel were far more spacious than I had expected. Every soldier aboard had his own cabin, and though they were very small in comparison to their homes in Amathar, they were far larger than I had seen on any ocean going vessels of Earth. Each was large enough to have a bunk, which was mounted to the wall rather than sunk into the floor as was the Amatharian fashion, a small table and two chairs and a closet. My own cabin had a large window looking out toward the landscape that rolled continuously past.

Now that we were finally on our way, I spent more and more time thinking of the woman I knew I was in love with, though I had seen her only one time– the Princess of Amathar. Sometimes these thoughts would lead to remembrances of her cousin, Vena Remontar, and the friendship she had shown me. Other times I just fretted over what might have happened to Noriandara Remontar since her abduction by the Zoasians. Even cruising at full speed, it would be a long time before we reached Zonamis, and I worried about all the things which she still might face. I figured our maximum speed to be between two and three hundred miles per hour, and so even accepting the more generous of the two figures, it would be the equivalent of four and a half months before the fleet arrived. It was a long time.

I tried to make good use of all the time I had available. I learned to pilot the Amatharian aircraft, both fighters and shuttles. It wasn’t as difficult as one might expect. I imagine that any child capable of playing those fast action video games could easily manage it. The controls consisted of a joystick in the left hand to control the steering and a lever for the right hand which controlled lift. There was an automated training simulator on board which I used at first, but after it became apparent to me and to the pilots that I would probably not crash the vehicle, I was allowed to participate in some of the flight drills which were constantly leaving the battle cruiser and returning.

I improved upon my growing skill with the sword, which was in fact my primary duty aboard ship. As the leader of a security team, I did little but see to the watches around the vessel, and drill my troops with the sword and the light rifle. I must say that I had never seen men and women so devoted to duty as those one hundred or so Amatharians under my command. In that entire time, never once was a soldier absent from his duty because of sickness or anything else.

Even with all of the military activity in which I was involved, there was plenty of time for recreation and social activity. The swordsmen and warriors of my company enjoyed playing a kind of catch, in which they used an irregular shaped cloth bag filled with plastic-like beads. Another game involved the skewering of various thrown objects upon a stick as the individual ran through a maze of obstacles. I gathered that this traditional activity once involved the use of swords, but now it was considered a great dishonor to endanger one’s sword for a mere game. In addition, I spent a large amount of time in the ship’s prodigious library where I read biographies of interesting Amatharians, novels of several different types, and a book of rather dark and morbid poems penned by Mindana Remontar herself.

I was lucky to have my friends present on the same ship. Norar Remontar was of course in command, and though he was busy with his duties far more than I was with mine, we still had time to discuss life, love, and duty over dinner. Malagor occupied the cabin right next door to me. He had been given command of eight warriors, and had been placed in charge of one of the ship’s great light guns. Vena Remontar was aboard this ship as well, in command of all the squadrons of fighter aircraft. She seemed more and more beautiful each time I saw her. Tular Maximinos was there too.