By David C. Daoust
Craiden wasn’t sure what was wrong. He had been dealing with the infection for a while now. He’d never had this much trouble with it, even before he got on the regiment of meds. It seemed as though, as soon as he had his mouth clear, more mucus would bubble up in its place. Something seemed to aggravate the condition; he was starting to have a hard time breathing.
The dark haired stranger that helped his mother from the wrecked speeder but moments before, was looking on with a grim face, as Mari searched through her pockets, even scoured the flipped speeder for some extra meds.
Craiden couldn’t believe he forgot to take his meds. Given that he’d woken up with a hang-over and then almost immediately found out about the Battle Drones attack, he had hopped in the speeder without a thought to his own problems.
“I don’t know what to do?” Mari said aloud as her search came up empty. No sign of any meds anywhere. Craiden knew she was almost frantic for a reason, given she’d watched her husband die of the same problem. Craiden couldn’t exactly answer her, or even put her mind at ease.
“Well, there has to be meds in this town somewhere,” The strange man said as he helped Craiden to his feet, “We just need to find some.”
Mari didn’t get a chance to answer as the battle drone suddenly appeared in the sky above, A small row of missiles suddenly dropped from its under carriage, and launched each, one after the other in a long stream of destruction as the missiles pounded the surrounding buildings.
“Holy!” is what Craiden tried to say, though came out in a murgled-mess of black mucus.
The dark haired stranger helped Mari get Craiden clear of the area, just as the battle drone dropped to its eight legs with an impressive thud. The drones did not seem to have much interest in people, only the destruction of the town, which was in thanks mostly in part to Craiden’s original plans to raze Grady from the moon.
A small group of soldiers appeared from a collapsing building just as they came around the corner. They bore the armored uniforms of the Red Faction- and rifles, massive automatic-rifles- Craiden assumed they were from the barracks ship, and he had to assume they were there to help.
Mari waved at them trying to get their attention; they were clearly more interested in escaping the collapsing building.
“Hello,” Mari waved again as they finally turned towards them, “Do you have any meds?”
“Mam?” one soldier asked, unable to make out what she said. The surrounding chaos making conversation more difficult than it need be.
“Mam, you have to get clear of the town center,” the other soldier said as they approached, “the safest place to be at this point- is outside the town gates.”
“I can’t leave just yet,” Mari answered back, “My son, though, he is having an episode…”
The other soldier seemed to figure out what she was trying to say, and started searching through his uniform… he came up with a small bottle and popped it open.
“Oh, thank the goodness,” Mari said as she accepted the medicine and turned to give it to Craiden, “Here, eat this.”
Craiden didn’t argue, swallowed it best he could through his mucus filled mouth. It would be a while ‘til the drug took effect, but he felt somewhat better already, If only that he had done something.
“Now, you really need to head to the town limits,” the soldier gestured back the way they had come.
“I’m sorry, I can’t…” Mari said still worried about her son’s health. “I have to get to a Dr. Sun…”
“What?” the soldier said, “A doctor won’t help, the meds just need some time to take effect.”
Suddenly, the soldiers broke off the conversation as they raised their weapons and began firing into the battle drone’s body as it appeared from where the trio had just escaped.
