Stars Gods Wolves by Dan Kirshtein (good books for 8th graders .TXT) 📗

for him as well, though he paid it no mind. He was pensive, as the apparently improper tool bounced in his hand. “Who still uses bars?” he complained gruffly. He swung a backpack from his shoulder and dug through it, putting his first choice of tool back into a pocket as a barbed bolt flew over his head. After a moment, he retrieved a small block of C-4 from the bag. He approached one cell in particular and eyed the lock. The green-skinned prisoner behind the bars looked confused and protested in a language the others couldn’t understand. In fact, the only people who would want to ‘rescue’ him probably wanted to punish him themselves. He tried to explain this, but Boomer met him with a blank face.

Boomer bit his lip before speaking. “No English, huh? I could see why. Did you know that the plural of ‘extraordinaire’ is also ‘extraordinaire’?” The demolitions expert typed some numbers into the block of explosives and attached it onto the cell’s lock as the green-skinned man looked on in apprehension. “For years, I’ve been introducing us as ‘Extradition Extraordinaires’. Man, I must’ve sounded like an idiot!” Boomer shook his head, chuckling. He stepped back and noticed the prisoner hadn’t done the same. Boomer shooed him, and he finally moved away as well. “Oh, you might want to cover your—”

A deafening pop echoed through the castle, and the cell door clanged against the side of the cell. The green man instinctively leapt further into the cell at the sudden noise. “—Ears.” Boomer finally finished after a pause, incapable of hearing that loud ringing that everyone else heard after such an explosion.

Nitro beckoned, and the others boarded the mound of dirt again. When it was clear the former prisoner wasn’t coming, the captain sighed. “Damn it.” He rolled his eyes as he stepped off the mound and walked to the cell. Josie provided covering fire, and Nitro walked to the cell as if about to scold a child, disregarding the venomous darts that whizzed past him.

When he arrived at the cell, he noticed the prisoner was huddled up in the corner. “Come on,” Nitro urged him. The man shook his head. “Come on!” Nitro insisted, pointing to the large hole in the building. The man shook his head again, this time sputtering some sort of explanation as to why he wasn’t going. Nitro didn’t understand or care. He punched the prisoner in the jaw to knock him out, hurled him over his shoulder, and carried him to the others. “There ya go,” Nitro grunted, patting his prisoner on the back.

Ox was now braced up against a wall of stone that he’d made. With a glance to the halls, the Waykind noticed more Arthen pouring into the room. “Perhaps we should be going?” he suggested, not wanting to give orders, but not wanting to stay.

Nitro walked past him, carrying the prisoner, as more darts whistled by him. “Agreed!” He gave the Waykind a backward nod before the mound of dirt and rock moved again. “Zerich, we’re gonna need to move fast, buddy!”

Not far away, a stocky white shuttle sat on a grassy hill. Within the ship’s cockpit, her pilot was readying for takeoff. A few flips of the correct switches, and the engines of the Wendigo purred like a kitten. That sound never failed to comfort him, and a small smile appeared on the pilot’s face as he looked around. He was an Obbitale, a red-skinned humanoid with black bug eyes and scales, and he—like most of his race—did not like surprises. He’d only recently decided that prison-breaking was a bad business to be in when one does not like surprises.

So, when the large-eyed pilot leaned over the controls to see his comrades’ traveling mountain being chased by a dozen Arthen, his warm and comforted smile slowly dropped into a disappointed—but not too surprised—grimace. “Aw, what the hell,” he grumbled as a tinny voice from the coms tried to get his attention. He paid no attention to whatever the captain was yelling while he got the Wendigo into the air.

She whirred and hummed to life, whooshing across the field and arriving just ahead of the rest of Purple Company. As she spun, several Arthen fired upon her. Spikes clanged against her hull; one went through the corner of the windshield.

Zerich cried out as he was struck in the shoulder. The pilot was quick to remove the red spike; it stung worse being pulled out than it did going in. He tried to ignore the horrible tingle that ran down his arm and into his side. His left hand dashed into a nearby compartment and pulled out a small, fat gun. He fired it at the hole in the windshield, and a gray gum plunked onto the broken glass, sealing it instantly. He then fired another shot at his shoulder to stop the bleeding: not its intended purpose, but efficient.

The ship turned, and Zerich could hear a distant rumbling as the mountain of dirt rolled up to the stern of the ship. “That’s everyone,” he heard Josie, half over the coms, half from behind him. “Let’s go!”

He nodded and pulled the throttle back as far as it could go, favoring his right side. As Zerich grunted and fell back into his chair, the Wendigo leapt out of the atmosphere.

Bridos-1: The First Habitable Planet in Alpha CentauriCapital Planet of the Human Government

Cities, as a general rule, don’t care about death; they carry on regardless. If the city had its way, the dead would be trampled over or forgotten. The inhabitants, however, make it a habit of honoring the dead, whether the city liked it or not. So when funeral processions did crawl through the city, they did so stubbornly and held up traffic. This one was no exception. It was long, slow, and comprised a train of black luxury crafts that floated along the busy streets.

Within one of the crafts, between scores of people she