The Only One

Communication took place in instants over vast interstellar distances, the legacy of a fabled lost civilization predating the next by a million years.
    Marvels, all. But now gone. And this very technology that helped the next empire expand had brought about its collapse.
    The more spread out worlds became, the more difficult it was to keep control over them. Some had decided that they didn't need what they saw as the interference of an undeservedly privileged central monarchy, ineffective and self-serving. Those planets declared independence, and the urge spread. Smaller groups formed. After a while, differences in philosophy bred hostility. Planetary factions split and split again.
    Worlds began to look for reasons to fight each other. Almost unnoticed in the turmoil, the Imperium fell.
    Power landed in the hands of warlords who used tech to invent weaponry that could ruin entire worlds. And did. History stopped being written after that—for Taj's people, at least.
    "There they are!" Petro called out.
    The rover dipped a few feet in altitude and Taj jerked to alertness, her fingers curled tightly around her rifle.
    Another rover sat camouflaged amongst forgotten carcasses of long-ago melted equipment. Yellowish smoke and sparks like dying fireflies obscured her view of the burning fuel field. Farther out, near the horizon, plumes of fire shot into the sky. Heat hammered her skin.
    Romjha stopped the rover at the edge of heaps of copper-colored boulders—rocks that seemed not to belong to the barren landscape but looked, as if ancient giants had played with them, leaving them scattered in impossible piles. In prewar days, it was said the huge stones had been hidden under hundreds of feet of knotted, centuries-old flowering vines. There, too, creatures of every description had thrived; some lived so deeply within the layers that they never saw sunlight, having evolved past the point of needing it.
    Taj shuddered. None of the people she lived with had evolved into sunlight-shirking, cave-dwelling creatures. Not yet. Give them a few more centuries underground before they wouldn't crave the feel of sunshine and open spaces and air that didn't burn its way down their throat to their lungs.
    She, Romjha, and Petro jumped out of their vehicle and ran over the sterile, hard-packed dirt, taking shelter under an ancient, scorched husk of a tank. The darkness was thick, the heat crushing. Perspiration oozed out of her pores and trickled into her eyes. Taj blinked to clear her vision. Two raiders scurried out of the shadows. Jetter was the first to reach them.
    "Report," Romjha barked.
    "We're all still in the game, Commander! The others are finishing up and on the way."
    Taj exhaled. A knot between her shoulder blades unwound.
    The other black-uniformed raider hunkered down next to her. She grabbed his bicep. "Aleq!"
    "Taj, you should have seen it—"
    Her fingers pressed into his skin. "You're alive."
    "Of course I'm alive." He grinned. Straight teeth glowed in the weak moonlight. "Why wouldn't I be?"
    She shoved him. Cock y bastard.
    Sudden fireworks of shrapnel and propellant made her squint. Her stomach tightened.
    "Look at it, Taj," Aleq said, raising his visor. His eyes glazed over. Fire danced in them. "It's beautiful."
    Taj had never seen him look at anything or anyone that way. Not even her.
    "What happened here?" Romjha demanded.
    Aleq's excitement burned brighter than the geysers of flame behind him. "We blew up the landing pad. The entire pad. It's gone."
    Taj's heart thundered. Her mouth was almost too dry to form words. "The charges malfunctioned."
    "No, they were great. They did just what you designed them to do. But give them most of the credit. They deserve it."
    Taj followed Aleq's gaze to a smoldering hulk of metal she hadn't noticed before—the smoking remains of a fighter craft.
    Romjha's helmet visor glinted. "A scout?"
    Aleq shook his head. "Not the warlord's. They're resistance fighters like us. They saw what we were doing to the skyport and asked to finish it off. And they did!" He deflated slightly, adding, "Before they crashed."
    Taj wasn't sure if she should be outraged that the skyport was destroyed on purpose, swamped with relief that her explosives hadn't detonated by accident, or stunned speechless that a starfighter had crashed on Sienna. She decided to let Romjha deal with it.
    The way the muscles in his jaw bunched was ominous. "You were the leader of this raid, Aleq. Your orders were to