The Mountains of Czird, two days west of Derktha
The creature had vanished into the stone of the great cliff, clambering up the stone with supernatural ease and simply squeezing itself into a space far too small for any mortal being to follow.
Groddi put down the lens and looked over to Kavor. “It has disappeared into the cliff,” he said. “I… do not understand its actions.”
Kavor pondered, taking hold of the lens and using it to survey the situation for himself. “There are reptiles of the ground and sky who make their homes in such places… perhaps it has relation to such things?”
“I saw no wings on the creature,” Groddi replied sharply, expecting better of the Astrologer now that he had more accurately gauged the old man’s intelligence. “Don’t tell me you think it supernatural as well?”
Kavor frowned, mulling over his answer. “I do not know what I believe it is, Lord Groddi,” he admitted. “I have never seen anything like it.”
“Elder Tak suggested it may be a Krevu,” Groddi recalled. “But that seems equally unlikely.”
“Elder Tak invests too much credibility in stories told to children,” Kavor replied, apparently blissfully ignorant of the hypocrisy of the statement when it came from the same man who predicted the future based on the appearance of the sky. “We do need to determine what it is, though. What are your thoughts on this, Lord Groddi?”
“I had imagined I would defer to the wisdom of the Elders,” Groddi lied in reply. He wasn’t about to start letting a manipulative old man like Kavor get too much insight into the inner workings of his mind. “Perhaps Elder Tak could be persuaded to act in the capacity of Greeter?”
Kavor chuckled. “Indeed? I am not so certain he is brave enough to volunteer for the role. I am certain he may be convinced to do so, however, so it is far from impossible. I think the main problem will be the fact it has made its home so far up the rock face.”
The other main problem was that sending in Tak may possibly provoke an otherwise peaceful spirit-creature and bring ruin upon them all, but Groddi knew better than to talk that way about an Elder, even to an Elder who was known to harbour such enmity.
“Then in that case we will need somebody capable of climbing that sort of distance, and that rules out the Elders and myself,” Kavor decided. “That leaves yourself or Vaday.”
“I will not send Vaday into such danger,” Groddi replied protectively. He and the younger Lord had trained together since youth, but Groddi had always been better and he had always been sure to keep the other lads from cornering Vaday into a fight by himself. He wasn’t about to send him into a situation that could be far more dangerous.
Kavor stared at him expectantly, waiting for Groddi to make the offer where he volunteered. “Then whom?”
“I shall go,” Groddi decided, “but only after I have seen the creature in more detail. “I will not go in blindly, Elder. We need to draw it out, and I think I have an idea.”
+++++
Record 573-Black-09
+Recovered from C11-Orange-712-Yellow-6+
“… some naked girl and then-” the latest bearer of the camera began, having just turned it on for recording.
“Naked girl?” a male voice asked, curiosity clearly piqued. The camera shifted over to a gaunt, young male, clearly malnourished and with little of his brown body hair remaining. He did not look well, but he still seemed to have found this particular information interesting.
“-and them some guys. They got shot… then there’s some police talking about killing the guy who took this camera from their bodies,” she finished. “Apparently while he was pleasuring himself.”
The tone she used for the last part seemed somewhat disgusted, and she handed off the camera to the male. “So you can have it.”
The male took hold of it and pointed it at the female, showing a female with an obvious family resemblance but more body hair. “And this is my sister, Oiri.”
“The post-apocalyptic audience does not need to learn my name, Kinon,” she rebuked. “Keep filming though, because this will be good for the records.”
“Assuming anybody survives to make any,” Kinon added rather negatively. “Go on, though.”
Oiri scowled at the camera. “Stay positive, little brother-”
“By three minutes!” Kinon interrupted.
“Still counts,” Oiri replied. “We can’t give up so close to the mountains.”
“Just talk about the bodies,” Kinon commanded.
“Well, hello dear viewers!” she said dramatically. “You may like to know that those police you last witnessed? They’re dead. Or at least I assume these two barbecued corpses are them, it looks like they’ve been here about a week or so…”
“Back on topic,” Kinon told her. “Talk about what we found.”
“A journal!” Oiri said brightly. “I was going over it while Kinon was winding the dynamo-”
“Something only Oiri Salthor would force upon a cancer victim,” Kinon interjected. “My arm hasn’t worked so hard since-”
“Since you had naked girls to look at?” Oiri teased. “I know what you did in your room!”
“Shut up!” Kinon shot back in horror. “People are going to see this!”
“Well, they should know that the owner of this journal was police officer Relti Ovrin,” Oiri said more seriously. “Ovrin family… if you see this, I’m sorry to tell you that Relti is dead. But Relti also had an idea of what was killing everyone.”
“Which was?” Kinon asked impatiently.
Oiri paused for dramatic effect. “She thought it was aliens.”
“That’s stupid,” Kinon responded immediately. “If you’re not going to be serious, then I’ll just turn this off until you are.”
Oiri pouted. “But Kin-”
End Recording
+++++
Planet Cisco, Alpine region of northern continent
Jen could not rest easily. It was not late in the day, and she had naught to do but sit around waiting for something – or more likely nothing – to happen, and she simply could not get comfortable to do it. This had already resulted in her getting up and pacing back and forth in the small confines of the little cave, itself a factor that did not sit well with her, ever so occasionally poking her head out of the little hole far enough to ensure that the debris pile remained unaltered and that there was nothing new crawling over it.
Nothing had been, of course. They’d probably seen that and have written her off along with their robots, if they cared at all.
She poked her head out, and drew back sharply when she did actually see something: a hairy biped who looked like a discount version of Chewbacca – maybe some kind of space yeti – all dressed up in crimson and ivory robes, was attempting to quietly make its way through the area. It had carried a white sheet, probably for camouflage in the white snow, and had seemed to have something else bundled within.
“That was really weird,” she whispered to herself. It wasn’t every day you saw an alien wearing clothes, let alone ones as vivid as that. “Maybe I’ve already gone mad…”
She looked out there again, this time not seeing any sign of the bizarre creature. This time, however, two parcelled items that were very obviously gifts had been placed at the foot of the nearest wannabe-conifer – she decided to call it a conifaux – looking exactly like an offering or, as was more likely, bait for a really shitty trap.
“It’s a trap,” she said, looking at them from her cliff-side perch. “It’s got to be.”
Not that it made any sense for this to be a trap; if they knew who and what she was, they could surely just blast the cave with plasma and be done with it. There was absolutely no reason she could think of for them to lure her out.
“I’m not going out there,” she told herself every time she looked down on them, and every time she looked around for any signs of the trap waiting to spring. Each time the gifts were still there, and each time there remained no sign of any enemies waiting to attack.
There was also the possibility that there was somebody else out here who wasn’t a friend to the owner of those robots, and in that case the gifts may very well be a genuine gesture, or at least that was the reason she gave herself when she finally decided to descend from the cave before the light of day gave out completely, and made her way to the base of the conifaux with the greatest stealth possible.
The two gifts were covered in a form of fabric, but were well packed in a primitive fashion that Jen had never seen out in the galaxy. There was no plastic here, only natural materials as might be found at a hippy market back on Earth, and that… maybe that meant something?
She wasted no further time in unwrapping the items, revealing a pile of soft, yellow mould and some finely produced fur. “Ugh, mould… that makes no sense, and fur? What wrong with just giving jewellery and perfume?”
The mould could stay where it was, although from the gag-inducingly pungent odour it didn’t seem entirely unlike the stinkiest cheeses she had experienced in her life on Earth. Furs she could use, given the rapidly dropping temperature and the nature of her current habitat, and she bundled them back up and ready to depart.
That was when she heard the snap of twigs and the rustle of movement, and once again saw the white-and-scarlet robed yeti-man along with three others, one in bright green and the other two in drab shades of grey. To another side, closer to the cliff, more of them rose from hiding, although only one wore robes of significantly vivid coloration, a sharp blue and yellow combination.
“Hold there, being of the otherworld!” the white-and-scarlet clad one said. “We are come from Dektha, grandest city of the Agwaren race, and bring gifts of Gavaktsi and the finest furs of wild Popporeth! May I present to you Elders Tak, Borivud, and Kavor? The bravest of the wise men of our people.”
“Three wise men and a bunch of gifts…” Jen thought, looking down at the furs she clutched in her hand. “No… no, it couldn’t be… there’s not even a baby!”
The green-robed yeti-man stepped forward, and now that Jen had a proper look at him he did seem to harbour a greater measure of age than the one wearing white and scarlet. He approached carefully, timidly, not wanting to appear any more threatening than a bunch of space-yeti soldiers surrounding her already did, and he held up open hands as he edged forward. “I mean you no harm, noble otherworlder, but we must know one thing… are you here to deliver us from the evil of the Dark One? Can you possibly be… the fabled Chosen One?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jen asked in reply, more disgusted with falling into this stereotypical sci-fi show situation than anything else. Were they natives? That was supposedly impossible on a Deathworld, yet Earth had clearly managed it so why not another? Could this have been the secret that the aliens were protecting?
There was only one answer to a question like that, however; be it ‘Are you the Chosen One’, or “Are you a God’, the answer was the same. “Yes.”
The green-robed one looked back to the others, expressing confusion. “I believe it does not speak the language of our people…”
“You can’t understand me?” she asked in surprise, not having expected communication to be one way. It seemed as though it should be all or nothing, the latter especially when it came to primitive cultures, and that begged another kind of question. “So why the fuck can I understand you?”
+++++
Mountain lair of the Dark One
One-Thirty was on the cusp of escaping; escape was the ultimate goal of her ancient scheme to get off this awful rock before anybody else did. That was of primary importance.
Long ago, too long for the number to really make sense, back when the purge of this Deathworld had been drawing to its close. Her ship, the last to leave, had been downed by one of the dying natives in such a way that rendered it useless for either communications or flight, and as there was no reason for anyone to return to double-check on a species quickly going extinct there was also no reason for them to find her. She probably had a duplicate out there, crafted from some backup she had made before everything went badly wrong.
Things had, in fact, gone badly wrong in a number of other ways. One of those ways was the fact that the species they had intended to wipe out had somehow managed to survive.
That could not have been predicted. The Deathworlders were violent and savage, and One-Thirty couldn’t imagine them having set aside their differences for long enough to survive and recover from nuclear winter and radioactivity. She had noticed the resurgence when it was too late, and ultimately had ceased sending out her ever-dwindling supply of Micro-Abrogators in preference of waiting for another kind of opportunity. She knew she needed assistance, because otherwise the galaxy would once again face the threat of Deathworlders spilling out into the stars.
No matter the cost, that could not be allowed, and she had expended the last of her missiles to bring down the small exploratory ship that had attempted to land. Taking that course of action had been important in order to maintain total secrecy – there was no way a proper inspection would fail to discover a race of Deathworlders – but it had been far more important to take it in a salvageable state with the communications systems intact.
It certainly hadn’t helped that this world was located in the least desirable section of the galaxy, where the Galactic Senate would never engage in habitation efforts of any kind. In normal space the standard sub-light radio might have been picked up, but in the nebula its weak signal would be lost in the noise.
Finally she had a mostly functional ship, and an entirely functional communications system, and it took all of her willpower not to start broadcasting her distress call right away.
It was more important to discover what had happened in the aeons since she was stranded. One-Thirty reclined in her command chair, and enjoyed the familiar sensation of the link activating with the ship computer.
Then she began to explore the alien databanks.
She didn’t like what she found.