The air was sticky as they made slow progress through the jungle towards the Profiteer. The heat sapped their strength and their clothes chafed, plastered to their skin by sweat. Before long, Zelia’s head was throbbing and she was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of another. She stumbled, tripping over a root and crashing to the floor, the sudden impact sending multicoloured insects scuttling away from the mulch. It was all she could do to push herself up again.

  ‘You need water,’ Mekki said, stopping to help her. ‘You are becoming dehydrated.’

  She stood, holding onto Mekki’s good arm as the jungle spun around her.

  ‘I wish Talen was with us,’ she croaked. ‘He always keeps his canteen topped up.’

  Mekki looked around. ‘Here.’ He led her to a thick tree. Large leaves sprouted from short branches near its base, each the size of a dinner plate.

  Zelia didn’t understand why he was so fascinated by them. ‘Yeah, very nice. They’re… big.’

  ‘They have to be,’ he replied, ‘to gather what little light makes it through the canopy. But they are also handy when you are in need of refreshment.’

  ‘I’m not eating leaves.’

  ‘You will not have to.’

  He gently pulled one of the branches down to reveal a reservoir of water nestled in the middle of the bowl-like leaf.

  She looked at him in wonder. ‘How did you know it would be there?’

  ‘The ground is wet,’ Mekki said, as if it were obvious. ‘That means it rained recently. The leaves catch the water.’

  ‘Should we boil it?’

  ‘If it came from a stream yes, but rainwater will be filtered by clouds and therefore safe to drink.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent sure. Unless the leaves are poisonous.’

  Her eyes opened wide in alarm.

  ‘I am joking,’ he said, his tone as studious as ever. ‘While I have never experienced these particular trees, the leaf structure matches hundreds of similar species that are harmless.’

  She smiled. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the time?’

  Mekki pouted. ‘Maybe ninety-eight.’

  He folded the leaf so the water poured into Zelia’s open mouth. It splashed over her nose and chin, but she didn’t care. It tasted wonderful, so pure and fresh, as different to recycled voidship water as she could imagine.

  When she had exhausted the supply on the leaf, Mekki found her another, before drinking deeply himself.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘How did you learn to do that?’

  ‘When my family were forced…’ He stopped, correcting himself. ‘When I first left Mars, I… travelled for a short while. I met someone who taught me basic survival skills. I would not be here today if it was not for them.’

  Zelia looked deep into Mekki’s grey eyes. ‘Your family was forced to leave Mars?’

  Mekki hesitated, but before he could answer her, Fleapit swooped through the trees, gibbering furiously.

  ‘What is it?’ Mekki asked, breaking off to follow the Jokaero as he beckoned them forwards with long orange arms. Zelia held back, finding one last precious drop of water on her leaf. When she joined them, she could see what had excited Fleapit so much.

  The hovering alien had found trees grubbed up and scattered across the jungle floor. It wasn’t so much a clearing as a path.

  ‘What did this?’ she asked, looking at a thick trunk that had been snapped in two as if it was a twig. ‘One of the downed ships?’

  Mekki glanced around. ‘There is no debris or signs of a crash.’

  ‘What about a vehicle, then, driving through the forest?’

  Mekki crouched down and examined the ground. ‘There are tracks, but they were not caused by a machine.’

  She clambered over a log to see for herself, her mouth going dry when she saw what he had found.

  Mekki was crouched in the middle of a gigantic footprint. It had three toes, each ending in a curved claw.

  Fleapit clicked and grunted above them. There were more footprints running through the trees. Something had stampeded through here. Something huge.

  ‘I wish I could see them from above,’ Mekki said, obviously missing his ever-attentive servo-sprite, which was still back on the Profiteer. He looked up at Fleapit. ‘Can you lift me up?’

  The alien dropped down and hooked his long arms beneath the Martian’s arms. He hovered back up again, lifting Mekki from the ground to provide a bird’s-eye view.

  ‘Flegan-Pala is correct,’ he shouted down, the holo-cam he wore on his head buzzing slightly as it recorded their surroundings. ‘Two sets of footprints running right through the trees.’

  ‘Two?’ Zelia asked.

  ‘One larger, one smaller, possibly a creature running on all fours, its front paws slightly smaller than the back.’

  Zelia was about to ask if he recognised the tracks when a scream cut through the jungle, high and shrill.

  ‘’Eeeeeeelp!’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Zelia said, whipping around.

  ‘It was hard to miss,’ Mekki replied, jumping down from Fleapit’s vantage point.

  Zelia had already taken off in the direction of the scream. ‘Someone’s in trouble. Come on.’

  ‘’Elp me. ’Eeeeelp meeee!’

  The wails were coming from a twisted lump of metal that seemed to have dropped out of the sky to land between the trees. To Zelia’s untrained eye, it looked like part of a large engine, but with rotor blades and propellers attached to it with no rhyme or reason.

  Whoever was shouting was trapped beneath the misshapen contraption.

  ‘Do you think it’s one of the refugees?’ Zelia asked, as they ran up to the strange machine.

  ‘There is no way to know until we get whoever it is from under the device,’ Mekki replied.

  ‘Oo’z that?’ the nasally voice replied.

  ‘Someone who can help,’ Mekki told them, examining the crude machinery.

  Zelia got down on her knees to peer beneath the hunk of steaming metal, but couldn’t see anything. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Wot do yoo fink? It fell on me ’ead, didn’t it? Course I izz ’urt! Get us outta ’ere!’

  For a moment, Zelia thought Mekki was about to correct the poor soul’s grammar, but instead he tried to lift the engine. She joined in, but it was far too heavy, the hot metal burning their hands.

  She looked up at Fleapit, who was keeping his distance. ‘Can you help?’

  The shaggy alien shook his head, pointing in the direction they had been heading before they’d discovered the giant footprints.

  ‘I know we have to get to the ship,’ she said sternly, ‘but we can’t leave them trapped under that thing.’

  Fleapit’s jabbered reply made it obvious that he thought they definitely could!

  Mekki looked up from the machine. ‘Flegan-Pala, please. It is the right thing to do.’

  Fleapit hovered for a moment, glaring at the children, before grunting and dropping back down to the ground. Chuntering beneath his breath, he jumped onto the ramshackle device, the heat of the metal not seeming to worry him. He scampered over the machinery, shaking his head as if he had never seen such shoddy workmanship in his life.

  Scowling, he removed his grav-chute, indicating for Zelia to do the same. Then he leapt down, removing the anti-grav device he’d attached to Mekki’s backpack before clambering back onto the metal monstrosity. He got to work, grunting instructions to Mekki, who helped him connect all three suspension field generators to the machine. When they were done, he jumped back down to the floor and nodded at the Martian. Mekki pressed a button on his wrist-screen and a whine filled the air. As they watched, the heavy device lifted slowly from the ground, nuts and bolts raining down around it.

  ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ encouraged Zelia as it rose into the air. She dropped back to her knees, looking beneath the widening gap. ‘You should be able to wriggle…’

  The colour drained from her face and she leapt back up.

  ‘We need to go,’ she told Mekki. ‘We need to go right now!’

  Mekki frowned at her, his finger hovering above his controls. ‘Why?’

  His answer came as a long green arm shot out to grab Zelia’s ankle. It was followed by an oversized head, connected to a wiry green body. Wide nostrils flared in a bulbous nose, beady eyes twinkling as a mouth filled with pointed teeth grinned evilly at her.

  ‘Wot ’ave we ’ere?’ it wheezed, halfway out of the machine’s shadow. ‘Humies. ’Orrible, stinkin’ humies ’elpin’ a grot. Oo-ever ’eard the like?’

  Still grinning horribly, the green-skinned creature licked its thin lips and dragged Zelia towards it. She kicked and struggled, her mind racing.

  The thing with the pointed teeth and the vice-like grip was a gretchin, and that could only mean one thing…

  CHAPTER SIX

  Stick Figures

  ‘Zelia? Can you hear me? Hello?’

  On the other side of the jungle, Talen waited for an answer that never came.

  ‘Mekki? Are you there?’

  Static hissed from his vox-box. He sighed, clipping it back onto his belt and walking over to join Amity.

  ‘No luck?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t get through.’

  ‘They could be out of range, or there’s interference from these things.’

  The rogue trader slapped the twisted hull of a star transport. The metal was corroded, vines snaking through the flaking armour plates of the once mighty spaceship.

  ‘So much for thinking it was the refugees,’ Talen said, looking around.

  There were dozens of wrecks dotted around the forest, but it was obvious that they’d been here for a long, long time. Some even had trees growing from inside their superstructures, slimy trunks bursting from the downed ships to reach for the sun.

  ‘Do you reckon they’re safe?’

  Amity pulled out a handheld auspex and scanned the nearest wreck. ‘There’s background traces of radiation, but nothing that’ll have us growing an extra head… probably.’

  Talen watched a long insect with dozens of eyes crawl out of a smashed porthole. ‘That’s comforting.’

  ‘It might explain what’s disrupting the vox signals.’ He clambered up the side of the cargo ship, feeling the metal bow beneath his feet. ‘Is there anything we could use to patch up the Profiteer?’

  Amity was trying to prise open an access panel on a rusted skimmer. ‘It’ll break my heart to use this junk, but maybe, yes – especially if your Jokaero can lend a paw. I’ve heard he can work wonders.’

  ‘You better believe it, but don’t tell him I said so.’

  ‘It’ll be our little secret.’ The access panel came off in her hands and she threw it aside. The components inside were surprisingly free of moss, although tiny beetles swarmed across the circuitry. Amity brushed them aside with a gloved hand to get a closer look. ‘That settles it,’ she said, pointing out the serial numbers printed on the circuit board. ‘The ships are Imperial, at least originally.’

  Talen had reached the top of the cargo ship. ‘What do you mean?’

  Amity checked on the next downed craft. ‘Some of the ships have been… adapted, and crudely too. Parts that were never designed to work together bolted into something new.’ She was examining a two-man fighter, its wings stripped away to leave nothing but a cylindrical fuselage which had been subsequently welded to a pair of tank treads. ‘But actually, for all its clumsiness, some of the work is actually quite ingenious.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Talen took a step forward and the hull plate beneath his foot creaked, before giving way completely. He cried out as he tumbled into the belly of the ship, crashing to a fungus-strewn floor.

  ‘Talen!’

  Amity’s voice was muffled by the thick hull plates.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he yelled back, prising himself from the ground, light streaming in from the hole in the ceiling. He cursed himself for being so stupid. Hadn’t he learned anything since the ice planet and his botched boar hunt?

  He spun around as a beamer fired behind him, sending a rusted hatch flying across the darkened space. Amity stepped into the ship, weapon still in hand.

  ‘Careful,’ he said. ‘You could bring the roof down.’

  ‘Says the boy that fell into a rusty hulk,’ she replied, slipping the beamer back into its holster. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he lied, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, which still ached from where he’d dislocated it not long ago. ‘What is this place?’

  Amity looked around herself. ‘A storage hold, although a lot of the central structure has been removed.’ She unclipped a brooch from her coat and threw it into the air. Instead of tumbling back to the ground, the four-pointed compass stayed where it was, spinning on its axis like a tiny flying saucer. As it whirled, the star began to glow, flooding the interior of the crashed vessel with a cold blue light.

  ‘Clever gadget,’ Talen said. ‘Don’t let Fleapit get his hands on it.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  Talen paced around the empty space. Amity had been right. The internal walls had been removed, the roof propped up by metal girders that had been welded haphazardly into place.

  ‘It’s like Onak’s great hall back home,’ Talen said, as dust mites danced in the light of the spinning star. ‘It used to be a troop carrier before her father got hold of it.’

  Amity wasn’t listening. She had noticed something on the walls. She pressed a button on her sleeve and the light from the star intensified, reaching the bulkheads.

  The walls were covered in crude paintings. Everywhere Talen looked there were hundreds, maybe thousands of stick figures. They were childish in their composition, barely more than blobs for bodies and short stubby lines for the arms and legs. Most were fighting, while others were riding angular machines that belched clouds of black smoke.

  ‘It’s a battle,’ Talen said, finding a pile of wounded stick figures oozing red paint.

  ‘Multiple battles,’ Amity agreed. ‘But what’s that?’

  She was pointing at an even bigger blob, this time with sharp triangles for teeth. It looked like a giant mouth on legs, dwarfing the stick figures that clustered around it, weapons drawn.

  ‘It’s a sequence,’ Amity realised, pressing another button to draw the shining lume-compass nearer. The hovering light followed her as she walked along the hull, revealing each stage of a story. The first picture showed the mouth on legs eating the stick figures, but as they followed the sequence, the stick figures rallied, gathering weapons, chasing the monstrous maw into the trees.

  ‘They’re hunting it,’ said Talen.

  Amity pointed at the next image. ‘Without much success.’ The creature had turned on its pursuers, rolling over them to mash them into the ground. As they walked around the hull, the story repeated itself over and over again, the hunters becoming the hunted, only to start again.

  Talen took a swig from his canteen and offered it to Amity. ‘They didn’t give up, did they?’

  The rogue trader took it gratefully. ‘Or they were too stupid to realise that history was repeating.’ She passed the canteen back to him.

  ‘Who do you think painted these?’

  Amity ran her fingers across the flaking metal. ‘Natives, maybe.’

  ‘Aliens?’

  She squinted, cocking her head to the side. ‘They don’t exactly look human.’ She pointed at smaller figures huddled near the larger ones. ‘These could be children.’

  ‘In a battle?’

  She snorted. ‘Maybe they are humans after all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just thinking aloud.’

  Something crunched beneath Talen’s boot. Attaching the canteen to his belt, he bent down, picking up what he thought was a stone. He frowned as he held it up into the light.

  ‘Is this a tooth?’

  Amity held out her hand. ‘Let me see.’

  She turned it over in her fingers. It was long and curved, almost like a tusk. Even in the dim light, Talen could see her face blanch.

  ‘What is it?’

  Amity looked back at the paintings. ‘The figures, they’re all green.’

  ‘What of it?’

  Now the rogue trader was running her gloved hand through the patches of fungus that covered parts of the primitive drawings.

  ‘Green figures with big weapons and welding equipment.’

  Talen’s heart skipped a beat as he realised what she was saying. ‘You mean… these are Orks?’

  An inhuman roar shook the cargo ship, sending flakes of rust fluttering down from the ceiling like red snow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  String-Guts

  ‘Let go of me!’ Zelia yelled, trying to pull her foot from the gretchin’s grasp.

  The creature giggled, although its amusement turned to a squeal of outrage as Fleapit leant over and flicked a switch on Mekki’s wrist-screen, sending the floating engine crashing back down on it.

  ‘No fair!’ it wailed, letting go of Zelia’s ankle. ‘I woz only tryin’ to pull meself out, weren’t I? Ye said you’d lend an ’and.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you could grab my foot!’ Zelia snapped back, jumping up.

  The gretchin struggled and twisted, but was pinned down from the waist by the heavy contraption. There was no way for it to wriggle free.

  ‘I’s sorry,’ it said, bottom lip quivering. ‘Didn’t mean to scare ya. I’s just a grot. Can’t ’arm anyone me, not like da big boyz.’

  ‘You mean Orks,’ Mekki said.

  The gretchin’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Dey sent me to fetch their whirligig, but it went wrong, didn’t it? Smacked down to da ground, with me underneef. Dey’ll give me such a beatin’ if dey finds me like dis. Dey’ll skin me alive.’