By David C. Daoust
Grandpa Haul had never felt so focused as he did at that moment. Ratchet was clearly in trouble. He had witnessed him struggling in the debris but moments before the darkness enveloped them. The young mottled boy screaming at the hovering drone, he was too far away to hear what was said, though he knew it was his youngest grandson. And he’d never seen the boy so upset as the drones suddenly fled for the desert.
The senior Charles Haul had missed much of his own sons’ lives, it was something he never thought to regret until he was much older, and they, too, were much older. But he wasn’t going to miss his grandsons’ lives; never. The old man climbed through the rubble with abandon. Between the smoke and debris filled skies and the sudden darkness that befell the small moon, inexplicably, the starlight was barely enough to guide him. Nothing could stop him though; he felt the jagged cuts and scrapes on his hands, legs bruised thanks to the dense stone.
Grandpa Haul reached the boy, gathered him in his arms.
The screaming fit the boy had thrown had passed, and now he just felt the boy sob in his embrace. They sat there in the wreckage a long while; Ratchet did not say a word, until, finally, the boy seemed to collect himself.
Ratchet looked up at his grandfather, eyes red, face serious he took a deep breath.
“Charles fell,” the boy informed quietly, “he’s with Uncle Chuck, and Ma…”
“No, Ratchet,” Grandpa Haul said, finally having a clue to what the boy was so worked up about, the old rogue actually felt relieved. He had witnessed Charles enveloped by the strange blue cloud, while it had given him a moment of fright to see his grandson drop from such heights, he’d also witnessed the small glider deploy. “His glider caught him…’
“Really?” Ratchet asked hopefully.
“Oy,” the old rogue argued, “You don’t think ‘Charles the First’ knows how to fly? I saw it with my own eyes.”
The hug that followed was of a different variety, and it was one Grandpa Haul knew he’d never forget.
It took him a bit of ingenuity, but he managed to unlatch his Grandson’s powerless Anti-grav boots that had the boy pretty well anchored in the vast sea of wreckage. Luckily, the high-tech boots went over normal shoes, so they didn’t have to worry about Ratchet running through rubble barefoot. His grandson was pretty solemn, despite the relief that was clear on his face, it was still as though he’d just come from a funeral. Grandpa Haul managed to get them out of the rough stuff, back on the ground.
“Vincent,” Ratchet suddenly blurted out the name as though he just remembered why he was there, “I found him right before the cloud hit…”
“Where was he?”
“He was following a group of droids…” Ratchet paused to try and get his bearings, “That way… I think… um, where the Red Faction parks their ship…”
It was pretty dark, the old rogue’s eyes were adjusting pretty well to the starlight, but the smoke and debris in the air did not help matters. The Neo Vir’ees planet was a massive black void with nothing but a slim sliver of its normal sky-dominating self, barely any light was reaching it from the small spec that was the second sun, and whilst the rest of the solargates, that pocked this side of the solar system, were an interesting sight, they were basically just really big stars in the distance. A closed solargate was unheard of, but it was the only explanation that made sense. The darkness was unlike anything he’d witnessed in all his years. And the fact that he could already see his breath, could not bode well for the cold that was sure to grip, not only the moon, but this entire planet’s system.
Ratchet, who had began to travel in the direction of the crumbly, turret laden walls in the distance, called back as he noticed his grandfather deep in thought, “You coming or what?”
“I’m coming Ray,” the old rogue answered,”whats with the weird holo-parks these days?”
