His head spun and all went dark.

In an instant, he felt as if cold water had been splashed in his face. His vision was blurred, and his mouth tasted foul. Warning lights blinked and sirens cackled as his senses returned. It was clear he was still in his cryotube. He looked down at the central line running into his sleep suit and found it empty of the shimmering blue suspended-animation liquid.

He summoned enough strength to raise his arm to a small control panel flashing dangerously next to his view port. Odd, he thought. What purpose did cryotube view ports serve?

When a colonist awoke from cold sleep, the tube would automatically open, and they would be assessed by medical staff. He paused for a moment as he silenced the alarms. Why was no one there to greet him? He pressed his palm against the now silent control panel and was greeted by the computer chime, which was ready to receive commands.

"Computer," a pause as he caught his breath, "status," he croaked.

The computer seemed to struggle for a moment before responding in a slightly garbled voice, "Identification."

Puzzled, he replied, "Tyler Ryan Tor."

The computer processed for a moment and began its status report, "Systems critical. Pod damaged, life support failing. Condition unknown. Location unknown. Security protocol engaged. Authorization required for pod hatch release."

Tyler tilted his head slightly, rolled his eyes, and exhaled wistfully. The computer had lost its damn mind again. He would have been one of the first to wake several months before they reached the planet.

Tyler felt strength slowly returning to his muscles and knew he needed answers. His palm still resting on the control panel, he gave the computer authorization to open the hatch.

The hatch lock cycled, smoked, and the entire front of the cryopod fell forward with a screech of protest. Tyler gasped as blinding light licked his face and fresh clean air washed over him. Where in the hell was he, and why wasn't he on the Spero?

Tyler groped around as sparks danced before his eyes. His limbs were still weak, and his first step out of the cryopod was more like a stagger. Bright daylight spilled over his cold skin, and the warmth felt satisfying.

He sat down and blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to dispel the dancing lights. He closed one eye and squinted with the other in hopes of getting an idea as to where he was. What Tyler saw was unbelievable.

He sat in the center of what appeared to be a horrific crash site. Twisted metal and debris were scattered in all directions. Flames hungrily consumed wreckage, and smoke poured into the sky. The sky itself was a shimmering blue, dotted with puffy white clouds. The oily blackness of the smoke marred its beauty and obscured its radiance.

"This just happened," Tyler acknowledged.

His vision adapted to the bright daylight, and the warmth seeped into his frigid limbs. He hugged himself tightly and rubbed his hands up and down his arms, forcing blood to flow back into his extremities. Several pushups later, he almost felt human again.

Tyler rose to his feet, this time without dizzying weakness, and turned back to his cryopod. The pod looked like it had taken a beating. His name, which had once been prominently displayed along the left side of the unit, was now blackened and burned away in places. He cocked his head to read the lengthwise lettering. "Ty Ryan T–Tyrant?"

He laughed aloud at the irony, flexed his muscles at the thought, and then sighed. He wasn’t really in a joking mood after all. Tyler walked around the cryopod and inspected the battered ark that had apparently saved his life.

The pod rested straight up and down as if it had dropped from the sky like an arrow. It was slightly taller than Tyler and big enough around to contain a person, power source, cryogenic equipment, and supply locker.

Supply locker! Tyler thought as he felt along the left side of the pod, looking for the manual locker release. The warm air and smoke from multiple fires caused him to work up a thirst.

He pulled the manual release, and the equipment drawer groaned, shrieked slightly, and stopped less than half open. Tyler stooped and peered inside. His duty uniform, light combat armor, and rucksack were inside, along with his Warquarter and provisions designed to keep one alive in the event cryogenic stasis was interrupted before medical staff could be revived.

Two days food and water, he thought as he reached inside and awkwardly pulled out the contents. He folded his uniform and placed it in the cryopod for later and strapped his combat armor over his thin cryosuit. The armor was lightweight and strong and still gave him full range of motion.

The Warquarter was stuck, and he could not pull it free with the drawer only half-open. He grabbed the face of the locker and pulled with all his barely returned strength. The drawer shrieked in protest but finally came open. Tyler gripped the Warquarter and lifted it from the drawer. He shouldered the rucksack and felt slightly better.

He thought often of his time in the military, and anytime he carried a Warquarter, a sense of pride and accomplishment welled within him. The staff in his hands was well-balanced and served a multitude of purposes.

Warquarter staves had been popular during the initial colonization of Mars. As the name implied, a Warquarter served an important purpose in the survival of humanity.

His ocular implant flickered slightly as the Warquarter came online. The staff hummed as it took readings. His right eye glimmered for a moment while his palm authenticated his identity and information scrolled rapidly before him.

He stopped the scrolling text with a flick of his left hand several times as vital statistics presented themselves. Based on the information he gathered, this was not the colony planet YAR887.

The ground shook slightly as Tyler finished his scans. He exited his scanner and pulled up the virtual network grid for ship communication. After several failed attempts, the Spero computer network remained silent.

Tyler leaned his Warquarter against the pod, dropped his armful of supplies, and swung himself back into his pod. He placed his palm on the scanner, praying the onboard computer would have an answer.

"Computer, status of Spero?" he said, sweeping his gaze over the charred, smoldering terrain. The landscape was not much different from what he expected to see on an alien world. No trees or plants were visible, and not a trace of water on the ground.

The computer voice seemed labored as it crackled to life, "Unable to establish contact with Spero." A warning flashed on the screen, indicating critical power levels.

Tyler had failed to notice any ruptures in the cryopod power core, and the diagnostic from the computer showed little damage. It looked as if the core had simply been drained over time. The problem with that theory, Tyler realized, was that a cryopod core was designed to last several hundred years.

This can't be right, he thought.

The power indicator illuminated again. He was running out of time. He knew there was little hope of retrieving the knowledge contained in the cryopod with voice commands given the pending shutdown of the pod.

"Computer, initiate data transfer to Tyler Tor," he said, readying himself for the deluge of information.

Tyler transferred the system memory from his pod into his palm implant when an earth-shattering howl broke his concentration.

"Transfer interrupted at 82%," the computer whispered as another howl pierced the air.

Tyler heard the stomping of something massive coming from behind the pod. He pushed himself off from the control panel and snatched his Warquarter from its rest. He rounded the cryopod and gasped at the creature looming only a few yards away.

The beast before Tyler was twice his size. Its large, bulging muscles stretched gold-colored skin. It wore nothing more than a loincloth made of what looked like silver scaled skin of some kind. The hulking creature held in its large hands a wicked-looking club that could have been a femur of something even bigger.

The creature stood over the wreckage, sniffing the air. It exhaled sharply and whirled to face Tyler. It had a single eye in the middle of its forehead, a bulbous nose, and a gaping mouth full of crooked, blunt teeth.

In a rush, the creature was upon him, club swinging wildly. Tyler's ocular implant and Warquarter synced, and a trance-like state settled over him. The creature seemed surprised when the Warquarter met its bone club with a loud crack.

Calculations whirled, and Tyler swung his weapon in sync with his targeting computer. He moved with lightning precision and knocked the club from the creature’s grasp, and it roared in pain.

A blur of staff thrusts crumpled the beast’s left leg at the knee, and another series of expert swings drove it completely off its feet. As the creature thundered to the soil, a rumble shook the ground.

Tyler looked towards the pod and watched it disappear helplessly into a rapidly growing sinkhole. The prone beast’s roaring abruptly ceased as it, too, succumbed to the shifting and sinking earth. Tyler tried to steady himself with outstretched arms as the ground bucked and rippled. In an instant, he tumbled wildly into the darkness.

***

Everything hurt.

He slowly opened his eyes and winced as pain threatened to render him unconscious. Tyler could tell that nothing was broken, but he had taken one hell of a beating from the fall. It was nearly dark, and the air felt damp as Tyler groaned his way to a seated position. The lights from his pod were nowhere to be found, and a panicked search in the darkness did not reveal the beast he had felled.

Tyler appeared to be in a large cavern, and the only light came from far above where he assumed he had fallen from. His Warquarter lay faithfully next to him, partially obscured by rubble.

Dust plumed around Tyler as he struggled to his feet. He realized his rucksack had taken an equal beating and appeared to be damp along the canvas side and bottom. Tyler unslung the pack, opened it, and rummaged in the near darkness, fearing what he would find.

Both water rations had ruptured. His thirst waited for that moment to remind him how desperately he needed a drink. His mouth was incredibly dry, and he rasped as more dust spun from the vast cavern above.

He pushed down the growing panic of being stranded in a pit on a seemingly alien planet with no water and removed both drinking bladders from the mess of his rucksack. They contained a trace amount of liquid, and Tyler eagerly consumed the remnants in several quick gulps. His thirst barely sated, he took stock of his remaining items, removed his torch, and shouldered the slightly damp pack.

Tyler thumbed the torch to life and winced as bright light chased away the dimness of the cavern. The chamber was vast and stretched beyond the illumination of the torch. The walls he could see glittered with crystal structures, and the floor shimmered with broken fragments.

A single opening emerged from the gloom off to his left as the torchlight intensified, and he picked his way out of the rubble from the collapsed ceiling. To describe the opening in any other way than a slight crack in the cavern wall would be an understatement. As he approached, he realized it would be a tight squeeze.

Tyler thrust his torch into the opening and squinted to see what lay beyond. Another cavern, this one much smaller, appeared a few feet through the opening. He gasped audibly as his searching gaze settled upon a shining pool of liquid in the center of the chamber.

Abandoning caution, Tyler flung himself into the crack, desperate to quench a thirst driven by mounting panic of the unknown. His pack slipped up over his shoulder and pushed against his face as he shimmied through the opening and out the other side.

As he emerged from the crack, he was struck by the stark contrast of the room compared to the one he had just left. The ceiling, floor, and walls were all polished smooth. The pool appeared to rest in the slightly slopping decline of the floor.

He could sense the dampness in the air and smiled inwardly as he cautiously approached the liquid. He tapped his palm, and the ocular implant in his eye winked to life, scanning for signs of danger. When he turned his gaze to the pool, nothing happened. He tapped his implant again, but the stillness before him returned an absence of data.

Tyler had never encountered this before. In all his training, the scans came back with something. All around the pool, he could measure air quality, toxicity levels, and microbial presence. When he looked directly into the placid liquid, nothing.

A pang of thirst washed over him, and he coughed away a dry lump in his throat. Had he ever been this thirsty? Something about the atmosphere around me, he thought, as data streamed everywhere except directly where he was looking. He set down his pack and approached the pool with his Warquarter in one hand and a torch in the other.

He knelt at the pool’s edge and stared into it. He could not see his reflection nor the bottom of the once seemingly shallow pond. With a quick twist, his torch deployed a small spike at the bottom, and he thrust it next to the edge of the liquid.

Throwing caution to the wind, Tyler grasped his staff, leaned back, and dipped his Warquarter carefully into the pool. Nothing happened. No monster sprang from its depths to battle him. No alarm sounded. Liquid dripped from his staff as he thumped the end back onto the ground. He leaned on his Warquarter thoughtfully and rubbed his chin.

Tyler shook his head at his fear and once again knelt, eager to verify if what he was considering drinking really was water. He scooped his hand and slid it gently into the pool.

***

Whispers…

Polaris! His eyes snapped open. He lay at the bottom of a small depression in a cave with a smooth ceiling and walls. He lay on his back. How long had he been here? What was he doing here? Questions overwhelmed him but, in an instant, his mind went silent. Who am I?

A vision of a scorched nameplate came to mind.

Ty…r…an…t…

He scrambled to a crouched position, looking for the source of the sound. He was alone, near a shallow depression in an otherwise unbroken floor. Thoughts skittered and fled as he closed his eyes and rubbed the stubble on his face with his hand. How long had he been here?

He had fallen. That much was apparent from what little he could remember. He was going somewhere. Had lost someone. Maybe he had lost a lot of someone’s. A different memory, one that didn't seem his own called to him. A vast ocean and a sprawling city with a single pool at its center. He knew it then, Moonlit Waters.

"Hey, are you alright?" came a deep voice from the darkness.

The man spun to face the voice. Somehow, his staff had found its way into his hands, and he stood defensively. The staff seemed to hum slightly in anticipation, but no attack came.

A heavily muscled figure emerged from the darkness holding the glowing light of a flameless torch. The figure turned out to be a short man with wide muscular shoulders, dusky skin, slightly pointed ears, and a face only a mother could love. His head was clean-shaven, and he wore a simple sleeveless shirt and loose-fitting pants with boots covered in scales.

Cradled in his thick calloused hands was a massive pickax, with a glinting blue-green crystalline blade. The haft appeared to be made of bone, and the blade was held fast with a complicated weaving of fibers.

"Razmal," the man said, thumping the butt of his ax in the dirt.

"Ty…" the man wielding the staff began but stopped short of uttering the whisper he had heard. Only crazy people heard whispers.

Or so the voices told him.

Razmal raised a hand in greeting. He looked like a friendly sort. "You sound a little skeptical of your own name."

"Tyrant," he said firmly. It sounded right, but a little short coming out of his mouth. There should be more.

"So, how did you get in here? I have been working the mine since daybreak, and you didn't pass me?" Razmal asked as if he and Tyrant were old friends.

"I…fell…" Tyrant began, fighting back the hissing whisper in his mind to be cautious.

Razmal narrowed his gaze. The torch glared in his eyes, leaving most of Razmal’s face in shadows. He seemed to consider Tyrant crouched before him holding a staff. The kind eyes fell on the staff and widened in alarm. The sight of Tyrant’s staff caused Razmal’s breath to catch in his throat.

"That staff…" Razmal began, ax coming up at the ready.

The voice inside Tyrant’s head cried out in warning, and he flung himself forward, wildly swinging the Warquarter. Crystal blade met metal staff with an audible clang and screech as the blade sparked against the staff.

"Hold!" Razmal said, gritting his teeth against Tyrant’s strength. "Where did you get that?"

Tyrant’s muscles bulged as he kept the two weapons locked in a stalemate. "It’s mine," he grunted.

Razmal pulled back his ax and danced to the side, turning aside several clumsy swings from Tyrant. The two circled each other warily. As they traded sides, Razmal gasped as the full light touched Tyrant’s face.

"Tekian!" Razmal screamed, swinging his ax in earnest.

Tyrant parried blow after blow from Razmal, losing ground against his ferocity. Tekian didn't mean anything to him, but apparently mistaken identity was about to get him carved open. The two traded attacks, parries, and ringing blows for what seemed like an eternity before a particularly savage two-handed chop from Razmal’s pickax struck Tyrant’s Warquarter. The ax shuttered, cracked, and exploded into painful shards.

Tyrant blasted the breath from Razmal’s lungs with a sharp thrust from the butt of his staff. Razmal crumpled in a heap as Tyrant shouted, "What is a Tekian?"

Razmal guarded his face with his hands, gasping for breath.

"Who are you!" Razmal managed to ask, holding his battered ribs.

Tyrant dropped his Warquarter and fell to his knees, fighting waves of sudden exhaustion. "I don't know…" he whispered.

The voices in his head died away, and he suddenly felt very tired. He stared at his shaking hands. Light swam at the edges of his vision and for the second time that day, he crashed into darkness.