Shopping Trolley
It was amazing how awkward silence could get in so little time when it was just the two of you and neither of you was particularly doing anything. Sure, Adrian kept his eyes on the console, but he was acutely aware of Jen sitting in the seat nearby. He wasn’t even really looking at the console, just focusing as hard as he could on not staring at her.
He really had intended that she come out with him so she could learn, or at least that had been part of it. If he ever ran out of cunning or luck, she’d need to know what she could eat apart from those awful food tablets. He still had yet to discover any sort of replacement for tomato sauce, and he’d been finding all sorts of foods that could have benefits greatly from being smothered in it.
That was assuming, of course, that his lack of cunning or luck did not extend his fate to her. He did not like the idea of that possibility much, and that was partly why he had decided to get the Dominion to back him and not simply scream at the universe and tear it all down.
He really started to worry about himself when he got too self-analytical. Probably for good reason.
“So,” she said, clearly trying to break the silence, “have you done a lot of hunting?”
“Some,” he said. “I grew up in a little place called Mildura, I doubt you’d have heard of it. It’s pretty far from anywhere, but there’s a lot of farms and we’d sometimes go do some shooting. Rabbits and foxes, mainly.”
“Your da and you?” she asked. She was pushing a bit far for his liking, but she did actually seem interested so this time he decided against silence. The last thing they needed at that moment was another awkward silence.
“My real dad died,” he said. “Before I was born. He was a soldier like me, though. That’s why I joined up. After that my mum married again, and my step-dad seemed alright at first, but he never took me shooting; that was all with my mates.”
He glanced over at her to see her frowning. “No need to look so worried,” he said with a reassuring, “all that’s a long time ago now, and you can’t miss what you never knew.”
She was still frowning. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“It’s gotten pretty personal already,” he said. “Ask, but I might not answer.”
“Alright,” she agreed. “Is your step-dad the reason why you don’t care about returning to Earth?”
He snorted a bitter laugh, he couldn’t help it. “No,” he said, “although I don’t feel any need to see that particular arsehole, he got diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers a long time back. Doesn’t know who anybody is anymore.”
“That’s awful,” Jen said, aghast.
Adrian shrugged. “Means he’s not worth hating anymore. Maybe it’s karma? Maybe it’s just shitty luck. Honestly I don’t even think about him much, anymore.”
“Then why?” Jen asked again.
“I don’t want to answer that question,” he said, then turned to look at her with his full attention. “Please don’t ask me again.”
“Sorry,” she said, apologising immediately.
He sighed. “Look… no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’m not proud of some things, and the reason behind that is one of them.”
“If you ever want to talk about it…”
He shook his head sadly. “I won’t. Some things don’t get better if you share them. Some wounds only heal if you can forget about them.”
“I’ve made this awkward,” she lamented as it grew quiet again.
He laughed. “As long as we can keep it from being awkward and silent.”
“Well,” she said, “why don’t we talk about me?”
“Please!” he said, looking at her with a wry grin. “You’re like an open book!”
She had the decency to look insulted. “Oh? You think you know all about me then?”
“I can probably guess a fair bit from what you’ve told me so far,” he said. “Five brothers, dad who owns a bar and shot a stray cat once. City girl who works in IT, was doing well enough to have bought her own home, and keeps a cat, dog and some fish when they survive her. It doesn’t bespeak an exciting life.”
“I’ll have you know my life was plenty exciting!” she replied indignantly, then paused with greater uncertainty. “You remembered all of that?”
Adrian quickly returned his eyes to the console that wasn’t doing anything in front of him. “Yeah… well, I have a good memory.”
“Right, well, I bet I could tell you something surprising about myself,” she said, then grew thoughtful.
“Not coming up with anything?” he asked with a wicked grin.
“Shut up you!” she replied with a glare. “It’s because you said I was boring!”
He tilted his head a fraction in a half shrug. “I never said you were boring.”
The ship chose that time to exit warp into low orbit of Affrag. “And that was excellent timing from the ship,” Adrian said with a grin.
“Oh, you don’t get off that easy,” Jen told him. “There’s still plenty of time to talk about this before we land.”
+++++
Zhadersil
“I don’t understand what’s so difficult about this request,” Trycrur said, arguing with suppliers over the comm link in her office. “It’s very straightforward! If you can’t do it, just send me the basic components and I’ll enlist the help of someone who can!”
“What we haven’t been able to figure out, Officer Trycrur,” the hardware supplier replied, “is why a ship would require this kind of quantity of mining equipment. Detonators and explosives aren’t much use aboard a starship, in fact they might be dangerous. That’s why they’re a restricted item.”
Trycrur hissed softly in frustration. “Well, unrestrict them. Or are you telling me that it’s actually going to be easier to steal this stuff from the Celzi than buy it from you?”
“These aren’t my rules, Officer Trycrur,” the supplier protested. “I must comply with Dominion law.”
“How do I get these, then?” she asked. “And let’s pretend that I’m in a hurry.”
“You would need to be registered as a mining company,” the supplier explained. “The rest of the stuff, including the actual detonators, is no problem, I can send it over on the next shipment if you still want it.”
She sighed. “Do it, I’ll see about getting registered as a mining company. Do you know how long that normally takes?”
“Usually several (months),” the supplier told her. “You might have the connections to fast track it, but I don’t. I’ll set aside the explosives for you for about a (week) in case a miracle happens.”
“Thanks for your help,” Trycrur had said as she’d terminated the link.
She turned back to the plans she’d written out, based on a combination of Earth tactics and Dominion technology. Right now she was working on ‘missiles’ that would be compatible with the Zhadersil’s launching mechanisms. Adrian had explained the concept to her after she’d queried what they were for, and now that she considered it she realised she was about to ruin space warfare for everyone.
“Well,” she said ruefully, “maybe it’ll usher in a new age of peace?”
Chir coughed, alerting her to his presence by scaring the daylights out of her.
“Didn’t see me here?” he asked good naturedly, standing in the doorway. “Sounded like an intense conversation.”
“Apparently you can’t get explosives without being a registered mining company,” she complained. “And becoming a registered mining company may take several months.”
“The woes of the engineer,” Chir said, “never the right parts. Is there something I can do to help?”
“Can you get me (two hundred kilos) of Undlfrx?” she asked him unconfidently. “Because that would be a good start.”
“They use that on asteroid mines, don’t they?” he asked. “I’m sure Gao purchased a large amount to kickstart mining in our own system.”
“I don’t know where they use it, just that it’s ‘too dangerous to be on starships’.”
“Well…” he said, thoughtfully. “I’m sure it wouldn’t take much effort to hop into a Hunter vessel and go steal a load from some Celzi miners. We are ‘Privateers’ now.”
“I was just being sarcastic about that,” Trycrur replied. “I didn’t mean to actually do it.”
“I’ll have a look into it,” Chir told her. “Maybe it is something we could do fairly easily. We probably wouldn’t even need Adrian, since he and Jen have gone down to Affrag to gather more food to cover their gluttony.”
“If it’s easy,” Trycrur said slowly and emphatically. “Only if it’s easy. And while you do that I’ll start filling in forms to turn us into a mining company.”
Irbzrk Orbital Factory
Grznk watched the Zhadersil from the station’s most important restaurant, a tall structure that overlooked the facilities around it and provided lodging along with sustenance for the more important travelers passing through.
Or at least that had been the original intention; the war with the Celzi had scared off any important travelers from arriving in significant numbers, and as a result the facility had had to lower their demographic to a less impressive clientèle.
“I suppose this is the thanks I get for actually being competent,” he lamented to his meal. He was alone here, no longer assigned to the Itrz – Rklkrk had maintained her position there, thankfully – and ever since the Itrz had left dock he hadn’t had much of anyone to speak to.
He’d hardly touched his meal. This seat was well positioned to observe the vast bulk of the Zhadersil, although it was at least partially visible from everywhere on the station, and he wanted to be better familiar with the place he would be ‘volunteering’ to play doctor. He would eventually have to rejoin them, but while the will of the Directorate was absolute, he could at least delay doing so until the ship was close to leaving. It wasn’t in the spirit of their order, but it was technically obedient, which was even better.
It wasn’t all bad, at least. If you didn’t count there being two humans on board, people who had already killed an unknown quantity of Corti along with vastly more people – soldiers mainly – with entirely psychotic military tactics. From his briefing with the Directorate, they’d even managed to kill a whole Celzi cruiser, and force another one into surrendering.
So it was probably safer than any other place that contained humans. Grznk knew from his abduction that they were also at least good to their word, or had been in his case. He also knew that the human had a history of being… unkind, when he discovered treachery. Was being asked to report his activities to the Directorate actually treachery, though? He thought it might come uncomfortably close to the line.
“Let’s see,” he said, nibbling on his meal as he opened his data pad again to the list of scratched plans. “If I was a psychotic mass-murderer, what would stop me from killing the handsome and intelligent Corti doctor upon discovering he was feeding information to the Directorate?”
He tapped the edge of the device absently. ‘Not getting caught’ was of course ideal but it wasn’t much of a plan for when everything inevitably turned to crap.
“I could have an escape plan ready, I suppose,” he mused, with further nibbling on his sub-par, and by now nearly cold meal. “But that would suggest that it has any chance of working, and that it had little chance of being discovered…”
“Maybe,” he said, “I’m approaching this from the wrong perspective… the cool, precise logic of the Corti mind seems ill equipped to deal with such irrational creatures.”
He turned over to the waiter who was hovering nearby, not having any other guests to serve. He was a Vzk’tk, and possessed a limited intellect that may allow him to construe an answer where a finely tuned Corti mind could not. “You there,” he said, “more nkl juice, and while you’re at it I’ve got a problem you may be able to solve.”
+++++
Affrag
“One short atmospheric entry later,” Adrian said as he opened the airlock, “and we’ve got ourselves a tropical island paradise.”
He had done his best to locate a small strip of land outside of the singular continent that held almost all of Affrag’s landmass, and it was far enough away from that landmass to have been undergone a separate evolutionary process. It was small enough that it shouldn’t contain many exceedingly dangerous animals, either, but he wasn’t going to take any chances on that.
He stepped onto the gangway and was immediately hit by a rush of warm, humid air that reminded him of summer in Darwin. “Maybe a little too tropical,” he admitted. “I’ve never been to the islands here before, figured we might be able to find something interesting to eat.”
Jen stepped onto the gangway alongside him. “Phew, I’ve never been to anywhere this hot before. The air feels thick!”
“It’s heavy humidity,” he said. “On Earth it normally gets better as night takes over, but I couldn’t say what happens here.”
“It’s beautiful, though,” she said, looking out towards the apparently endless blue-green sea. “We’re probably the only people to have ever seen this view.”
“It’s likely,” he said. “This is a Class Eleven world, a death world according to the Dominion. But Earth is a Class Twelve, so you know… grain of salt.”
“If I’d known you were taking me to an island paradise, I would have gotten some swimming gear made,” she told him. “I haven’t been to a proper beach in years!”
Adrian did his best to put the picture of Jen in a bikini out of his mind so that he could actually reply to that. “No swimming,” he said, remembering the oceans around Australia. “You’re Irish, so you don’t think of the sea as unsafe.”
“Well there’s sharks I suppose,” she admitted.
“And jellyfish, and stonefish, and crocs, and any number of other things that will basically kill you in a hurry,” he replied. “Don’t trust the water.”
He was satisfied that she was now looking at the sea with a healthy sense of caution. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to spoil it for you.”
“No,” she said, “you’re right. I wasn’t thinking of any of those things. I guess that coming from the most deadly continent on Earth must prepare you a little better for the dangers of other worlds.”
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help,” he said with half a shrug. “Mind you, even though I made sure the ozone layer is in good nick, being out in this sun makes me want to go find a bottle of sunscreen.”
She laughed at that. “I hadn’t even thought of sunburn! I suppose I must seem a wee bit sheltered after all?”
“A wee bit,” he said with a grin. “Now, I think it’s time to teach you how to shoot.”
Jennifer Delaney. Mid-twenties, wishing she’d dressed lighter for the tropical heat, and firing an alien-made rifle at the alien approximation of a stack of tin cans.
Adrian had presented her with her very own space-rifle, apparently a smaller, better developed version of his own. He described it as being about a thousand times more deadly than almost anything she’d come across in the galaxy, provided she wasn’t on Earth, but that for the most part it could be used for hunting. He had even provided her with a box of small, pointed metal slugs that she did not yet need to use. Not while practicing on the alien tin-cans anyway.
She hadn’t ever really used a gun before, and Adrian had to show her how to hold it, how to stand, and how to aim. This had required him to stand very close indeed, with his hands on her and his head next to hers to help with the aiming part of things. That had been so distracting that at first she hadn’t managed to hit the tin-cans at all, but soon she was missing them on purpose so that he’d continue to help her aim. At least he was patient and didn’t seem to mind.
They must have been there for hours, getting her to the point where she could no longer believably fake incompetence, and the sun had passed to mid-afternoon before Adrian seemed satisfied with her shooting.
“Let’s talk about hunting, then,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow onto his well muscled, but equally sweaty arms. “The animals here don’t know to fear us. That helps you get closer without them running away, but predators won’t know to fear you either. They’ll just see you as prey, like everything else.”
“Don’t you normally go hunting with the hover stuff?” Jen asked him. “Although it doesn’t look like you’ve got one of those for me.”
“I didn’t have time to get one of those made,” he replied. “And if it comes to that I’ll be looking to get something proper made for us both. Today we’ll go looking for some easy prey to get you used to the hunt, then I’ll show you the messier bit of the job.”
Great, she thought, a day full of being pressed up against Adrian followed by an evening of shooting animals and cutting them apart. It was going to be difficult to make that romantic in any way.
“It’s a pity we can’t just enjoy the island,” she said wistfully. “Since we’re here.”
He frowned, looking around in various directions. “I suppose we could do that for a while. It’s not like we’ve got anything to get back to except waiting for other people to do their jobs.”
“Good,” she said perkily, glad that he had taken her suggestion and even gladder that she’d now be able to have a romantic walk instead of killing things. “You have to appreciate the little things.”
+++++
Raw terror. That was the kind of emotion that Adrian was experiencing on this hiking adventure. He could barely keep his mind off of Jen after spending so long with his hands on her to correct her aim – she’d taken far longer than most people do to pick it up – and the weather was hot enough to make them sweat heavily; she didn’t yet seem to have realised what it had done to her top, and this wasn’t the sort of thing he could easily inform her of after it being the case for so long, or having spent a fair amount of time viewing.
Add to that the fact that he was wandering through an unknown ecosystem with unknown dangers, and it seemed like there were too many things his mind was trying to keep track of at the same time. At least they’d brought their guns, so if something did happen they’d be well-placed to deal with it.
He almost wished that something would happen, to force him to think about something he was actually good at. He was terrible at this kind of thing, so bad that it was it was a miracle he’d ever gotten married, and so bad that it hadn’t really been a surprise when it had ended.
“Are you alright?” she asked him as they reached the summit of the nearest high ground. The path they’d taken had been forested with a jungle, but not the dense, horrible variety you found on Earth. It had provided shade from he sun, but an incalculable number of avenues from which something may attack them. “You seem tense.”
“It’s just the jungle,” he lied. “There’s a lot of stuff I might need to look out for.”
“I haven’t seen anything I’d call dangerous,” she said. “It’s just a really nice jungle, and the view from here is great!”
The view was good, with the sun getting lower in the sky and filling the horizon with pinks, oranges and reds, but Adrian was fixated on another view altogether. “Yeah,” he said truthfully, “it’s a good view.”
She noticed him looking and blushed. “I meant the sunset.”
“I didn’t,” he replied, his mouth saying the words without waiting for his mind to tell him not to. His mind had proved itself complete crap at this and as far as he was concerned it needed to take a back seat for a change and let other parts take over.
They stared at each other for what seemed ages.
“Adrian,” Jen began, her voice wavering.
The data pad in Adrian’s pocket beeped a warning. Something had been detected by the Shopping Trolley’s sensors.
They paused. It beeped again, and this time he slid it from his pocket and glanced at it. Something had been detected. That something was Hunters.