Date Point 10y4m6d AV
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Mother Ayma
“According to your Internet, there are many females interested in you…”
Baseball perked up and rolled across a bed to take a closer look at Ayma’s screen. It creaked, alarmingly. “No shit?”
“Oh yes. There is a poll. ‘Left Beef versus Right Beef, who’s sexier?”
She wasn’t quite sure if the nicknames were intended to be insulting, but they seemed to please Baseball. “Fuckin’ beef? Awesome.”
“I would have found that insulting myself,”
“Are you kidding?” he turned towards the bathroom door and raised his voice. “Yo, Horse!”
A muffled “Yuh?” drifted through the door.
“You know what they’re calling us on the Internet?”
“What?”
“They’re calling us ‘Left Beef’ and ‘Right Beef’!”
Adam could be heard laughing beyond the door. “Which is which?” He called.
“You’re Left Beef.”
“I don’t think I understand the joke.” Ayma confessed. The Internet was a source of near limitless fascination and impenetrable in-jokes. The gist was that her Protectors had acquired almost as much celebrity – if not more – than Regaari and herself, with the commentary ranging from the objectifying and overtly sexual, to the dismissive, the political and the surprisingly well-informed.
“It’s like… Y’know what, never mind. You gonna vote?”
“On a poll as to which of two humans I find more attractive?” Ayma queried. “I don’t find either of you attractive!”
“Aww, c’mon.” Base smiled. Ayma bobbled her head in resignation, and touched her claw to “Right Beef.”
“You remind me a little of one of my mates.” she explained, while Base quietly pantomimed victory with a pump of his fist.
“I do?”
“Oh yes. He-”
They were interrupted by the bathroom door opening and a thoroughly bedraggled and uncomfortable-looking Regaari shuffled out, dripping wet and wrapped head to foot in towels and a bathrobe. Warhorse was slightly behind him wearing only a pair of shorts and looking rather more comfortable, though that was hardly strange. Moisture and humans seemed to go together well.
“Oh dear. Our turn?” Ayma asked.
Regaari made a show of seating himself in as dignified a posture as he could in front of the large mirror that dominated the main room. To Ayma’s eyes, he was still as sleek and handsome as ever, and in any other setting she might have been able to appreciate his slender strength and some fond memories of the time spent siring their cub together.
Next to any human, however, any Gaoian was skinny. Next to Warhorse, Regaari looked positively pathetic.
“Your turn,” he confirmed, fighting to maintain some semblance of gravitas when he looked half-drowned and was shivering uncontrollably.
“Yeah, uh… Dude. Don’t use Formulation Three.” Warhorse cautioned, referring to one of the hypoallergenic shampoos they’d been able to acquire for the mission. The Gaoians were going to need a thorough decontamination at the end of every day, and finding products that were safe for nonhuman skin but still tough on Terran pathogens and allergens had been… challenging.
Base’s brow creased interrogatively. “Okay, but why not?”
“Turns out it contains civet musk oil.”
“That’s bad?”
“Don’t. Ask.”
“Though, um, any clan which imported that… substance would surely become very wealthy and powerful.” Regaari fidgeted in his seat.
“Ah. you mean that… interesting scent isn’t you?” Ayma asked, flicking an amused ear. The vapor that had spilled out of the bathroom alongside Regaari and his human friend had a potent aphrodisiac component. “I shall have to alert Yulna to the danger of males trying to import this substance…”
Regaari’s ears wilted and he fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat.
Ayma decided it would be cruel to tease him further. “Very well. Shall we go decontaminate, Baseball? Hopefully any lingering… awkwardness will have dissipated by the time we are done.”
Base chuckled. “Sure.”
Ayma couldn’t hold back a deep wave of trepidation when they entered the bathing suite. “Does it truly have to be a wet bath?” she asked.
“Truly does, unless you wanna wind up breathing in all the deathworld stuff in your fur. And, uh, you’re gonna need to seal those robes in this here bag.” Base offered it. When Ayma duck-nodded and began to remove the garment, he turned around sharply.
”…What are you doing?” She asked.
“Just, uh…”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Ayma directed an exasperated glance at the ceiling. “You and I are of different species, and mine doesn’t subscribe to human body-squeamishness in any case.”
“You’ve got those robes, an’ overalls an’ stuff…” Base pointed out, still not turning around. Ayma stuffed her dirty clothing into the bag and sealed it as the instructions dictated.
“And you have those ‘ranger shorts’ which don’t seem consistent with any other human notion of modesty I have encountered.” Ayma retorted. “Besides, how am I expected to carry my communicator and wallet in my fur?” She turned on her best Mother voice. “Now will you please recover your senses and help me decontaminate?”
The Mother voice worked. He cleared his throat and turned around, gave her a curious look, and then shrugged. “You’re right. You look more like a… a dog or a cat or something,” he agreed.
“I know what you’re saying, but please don’t compare us to non-sapient animals, Baseball.” she requested. “It’s not… dignified.”
“Right. Sorry.” He turned and grabbed some bottles. “So, this here’s the shampoos… Number three is out, so that leaves… these.”
Ayma’s nose twitched. “That’s… quite a potent scent. Why are they so perfumed?”
“Humans like our soap to smell good I guess.” Baseball, a man who smelled almost exclusively of clean sweat and testosterone, shrugged. “And these are prescription soaps for people with, like, delicate skin conditions and stuff, but they’re supposed to still smell nice.”
“They’re overpowering! Do your noses even work properly?”
Base scoffed. “Dude. Speciesist. Now come on, which smells nicest?”
“That one is…heady. What is it?”
“Uh… Coconut butter.”
Ayma ducked her head in a ’let’s get this over with’ way and Baseball started the shower, which coughed and spurted before settling into a steady stream. He ran his hand under it once or twice, gauging the temperature, then invited Ayma to do the same.
“That’s… just right.” she declared, took a deep breath and stepped under it.
Gaoians had an uneasy relationship with water. Males from working clanless castes and the more notable labor clans like Stoneback tended to clip their fur right back to the undercoat so as to soak it and work long hours, cooled by evaporating water.
Females, however, were not usually workers, and the only time Ayma had previously managed to be truly drenched had been when she had fallen into a fountain in the Commune as a young female just out of cubhood. Water had gone up her nose and she had felt miserable for hours as she slowly dried.
This was… better, at least. The water was nice and warm, but it still made her fur heavy and plastered it down, leaving her – she knew – looking small and skinny and helpless. Still, when Baseball played the showerhead over her scalp and water flooded her ears, it was all she could do not to claw at him and escape.
She settled instead for shaking her head violently to dislodge it, and Baseball made an “Uagh!” noise as second-hand water splattered his face.
“Right, because you have grounds to complain.” Ayma growled. She was already shivering, despite the water’s warmth.
“You’re the one who wanted to come to this planet.” Baseball reminded her. “Ain’t my fault that means a thorough shampoo once a day. Here.” He handed her the showerhead. “I got all the stuff you can’t reach. You’re on your own for the front and the awkward bits.”
Ayma accepted it and dutifully set about making sure every inch of her was properly soaked. Baseball, for his part, squirted a large (and cold) dollop of soap onto her upper back and started to massage it in with equal parts strength and delicacy.
“So who was this mate I remind you of?” he asked.
“I-? Oh. Daar, the sire of my third cub. Daar of Stoneback.”
“Big guy?”
“The biggest. Daar is the Stoneback clan’s great success story.” Telling the story was a welcome distraction. “The end product of their whole genetic program. He’s almost as strong as a human, in some ways.”
“Right. Y’all aren’t that far behind us really.”
“Far enough behind that if you were to punch me, I would have better chances of surviving a pulse pistol.”
“Yeah, but pa rt of that’s… like, we’re made to punch. Gaoians aren’t. Bet you if you could use that long dorsal muscle for punching you’d hit about as hard as we do.”
“I have my doubts.” Ayma shook her head again. Baseball raised a hand to ward off flying droplets. “…I’m sorry. It’s very hard not to do that.”
“You okay?” Baseball asked.
“I itch all over. Wet fur… what is the term? Sucks.”
“Beats acute respiratory distress.” He reminded her. “Here’s the shampoo.”
Ayma accepted it and set about massaging it right into every hair follicle she had. “He’s a bit of a freak, really.” she conceded. “But that’s what his clan have been trying to breed for thousands of years: a freak.”
“I’m guessing they’re breeding from him, too.”
“With females who’ll accept the proposition, yes. As I did. Apparently I’m quite the catch,”
“Why’s that?” Base asked. He started rinsing out the soap again.
“My own genetic legacy includes Clans Highmountain and Goldpaw.” Ayma revealed.
“That’s good?”
“They specialize in science and philosophy and in commerce and trade respectively. Thinkers and merchants. A good legacy, and one I’m proud to be part of.”
Base’s hands paused. “See, that’d bother me.” He said. “Being just… being valued only for my genes.”
Ayma turned her head and gave him as best a sidelong glance as she could. “Why?”
“Hey, someday, kids’d be nice.” Base said. “But I wanna make a difference myself, not just be the daddy of the person who made a difference.”
Ayma turned away again. “Do you know how old I am?” she asked.
“No.”
“I will be fifty-four soon. That’s in Gaoian years. In humans years, I’m…” she raised her head slightly to perform some mental calculations. “…About forty-five.”
“Wow. I thought you were younger.”
Ayma duck-nodded again. “We don’t decline slowly like you do. We stay in our prime for most of our lives, but our geriatric decline is abrupt. The very oldest Gaoian I ever heard of was Father Fyu, who lived to be more than a hundred of our years old. The oldest I ever knew personally was Mother-Supreme Giymuy, who was ninety-two when she died. Most Gaoians… eighty of our years.”
“That’s not so bad.” Base said.
“Except that there are twelve of our years to every ten of yours.” Ayma said. “Most humans can expect to live a fifth as long again as I will, and… bear in mind, that life expectancy is the product of all our advances in medical science. And I mean no offense, Baseball, but our medicine is a very long way in advance of humanity’s.”
“Oh.” Baseball didn’t apparently know what to say beyond that, and so settled for gently plucking the shampoo bottle out of her paw and starting the second lather.
“We… are not a long-lived species.” Ayma summarized. “Not by your standards, and especially not when compared to Corti or Guvnuragnaguvendrugun. If we stopped breeding, Gao would not even go a hundred years before it was dark and empty. Is it really so surprising that I might be proud to breed and raise the next generation?”
“I guess not.” He conceded.
“Not everybody can make a difference, Baseball. Not everybody should. I respect what you and Warhorse do, and what Regaari does, but you would not be here without… farmers, and builders and all the people who are content not to make a difference. You would not exist without Mothers.”
Baseball’s hands were steady as he made sure she was as clean as possible, but his voice was uncertain. “I guess…”
“Is something wrong?”
Baseball thought before replying. “Just in my head.” he decided. “It’s your life, you do what you want with it. I guess I’m just not used to women who like raising kids and all that.”
“What kind of woman are you used to?” Ayma inquired.
“Heh. Women like Technical Sergeant Kovač, or Corporal Deacon, or Major Jackson I guess.”
“I don’t know them.” Ayma said. “Well, unless you mean the Major Jackson who was your species’ first FTL pilot?”
“Yeah, she’s working with Public Relations a lot these days, and she and Major Powell are a thing. Not sure how much of a thing, but a thing. She’s pretty cool. “
“And who are the other two?”
“Kovač is our spacesuit guru. Brain like you wouldn’t believe. Pretty sure she’s sweet on ‘Horse, too, but she’s biding her time. Deacon’s fun. She’s one of Firth’s support techs, got small hands and strong shoulders. Conditioner?”
“What does it do?” Ayma asked, studying the offered bottle suspiciously.
“Should help with the itching.”
Ayma almost snatched it from him. “Oh, by all the Clans, yes please!”
Base was right, the second he started rubbing the ’conditioner’ in, the worst of the itching faded away. “You know… if you ever retire from the SOR and find that you need a replacement career, you would be well received on Gao as a masseuse.” she told him.
“Strong but gentle, huh?”
“I am yet to meet a human who isn’t.”
Base chuckled, and handed her the conditioner bottle, which she set to work soothing her itching chest and abdomen. “But… I mean, you let me know if I’m getting too personal, but did you grow up and become a Mother and that was it? How do you know this is your calling if you never tried anything else?”
“Oh, I did.” Ayma revealed. “I took a research position at a Clan Highmountain observatory when I was young. The same one that discovered Gorai, our first colony world. But… I met my first mate there, we had a healthy female cub together, and… I immediately knew that this was what I wanted to do.”
Baseball didn’t respond, but he seemed to relax, smiled and nodded.
“You approve?” Ayma guessed.
“Like I said: S’just not what I’m used to, but I feel you. Finding the thing you know you wanna do in life.”
He grabbed the showerhead. “Final rinse.”
“Let’s get it over with…” Ayma sighed, and shut her eyes, feeling the hot water sluice the conditioner out of her fur. She just knew that her ears and whiskers were drooping piteously.
Eventually, the ordeal was over, and Baseball grabbed an enormous white towel. “Okay. Get dry.”
“I need the towel to get dry.” Ayma told him.
“Nuh-ah. This is for my protection.”
”…Oh.”
She sighed, aware that shaking water out was completely undignified and uncivilized… but also highly effective. Base raised the towel to shield himself and Ayma sighed inwardly, dropped to all fours and liberally covered the inside of the bathroom with water droplets.
It felt irritatingly cathartic and, just to spite Baseball for making her do it, she shook again a second time when he peeked over the towel, then stood up again.
Baseball wiped his face off. “Did you have to?” he complained.
“No, but you didn’t have to make me dry off like an animal.” Ayma retorted, and took the towel from him.
She threw the enormous cloth around her in a kind of rough toga and dried her limbs. Base handed her a second one. “You’re really bothered by that.” he noted.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Not really. We’re animals. Why try an’ pretend otherwise?” Base shrugged. “We walk around, we eat stuff, breathe… animals.”
“Personally, I aspire to be more.” Ayma sniffed, scrubbing the towel into the top and back of her head.
“Me too! But you don’t get there by forgettin’ what you are.” Base opened the door.
If the inside of the bathroom had been humid and fragrant, the main room smelled mostly of hot air, moisture and wet Gaoian. Regaari was sitting miserably still while being methodically blasted by some kind of hand-held hot air gun while Arés combed and brushed his fur. Already there was a… fluffy… quality to him that just didn’t look dignified.
He gave Ayma an affronted look that communicated quite clearly that he blamed her for his current predicament.
“Ah. This must be that ‘blow-drying’ I heard so much about.” Ayma hazarded.
Base produced a second hot air gun. “Yup.”
“Is there any chance that I could…?”
“Nope.”
There was no appropriate word in Gaori. Fortunately, there were several appropriate ones in English, and Ayma dutifully selected one as she sat on the bed and awaited her turn.
”…Shit.”
Date Point 10y4m1w AV
Allied Extrasolar Command, Scotch Creek, British Columbia, Canada.
General Martin Tremblay
“A nanofactory.”
“Yup.” Major Nadeau grinned. “A full-sized industrial one. Kwmbwrw tech, which puts it about five hundred years ahead of the prototype in Dusseldorf.”
“Which is a good seven years from being switched on anyway.” Colonel Bartlett added.
Tremblay inspected the summary that Kirk had sent them, after a long and tense absence.
After ten years of living at the Scotch Creek facility and seeing it go from research center to the sprawling nerve center of extrasolar defence, one thing he’d become thoroughly acquainted with was advanced technology. He might not be able to write the field equations from memory like Nadeau and Bartlett could, but when it came to spotting the strategic implications of every new piece of alien gear that came their way, he prided himself on leading the pack.
It felt good not to be playing catch-up with the geniuses.
“Suddenly, I feel a good deal more optimistic.” he mused. “We’re sure it’s Kirk?”
His intelligence advisor, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke, pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Psychologically he’s yellow at worst, but until somebody with need-to-know on DEEP RELIC presses a scanner to his head, he’s orange.” he declared.
Tremblay sucked some air thoughtfully through his teeth. “Orange”, in the parlance of their system for classifying the likelihood that a given person was carrying a Hierarchy agent meant ‘high risk’. He would almost have preferred red – ‘strongly suspected’ – or even a conclusive black.
“And he’s not prepared to drop the shield and let anybody in?”
“No, sir. No jump beacons, no traffic. Not until Lewis Beverote finishes… whatever it is he’s going to finish. Until then, it’s communication only.”
“What, does he think we’re riddled with Hierarchy ourselves?” Nadeau asked.
“Either he’s being commendably cautious…” Clarke said, “or else he’s compromised. We have no conclusive way of knowing.”
“And Beverote needs to know what we need in order to put the factory to best use.” Tremblay read off the bottom of the report.
He tapped his thumb on the table to help him think. “…Shit.”
“Yup.” Clarke agreed.
Nadeau cleared his throat. “Sirs?”
”…We’re at an impasse.” Tremblay explained. “Can’t trust him, can’t gain his trust. Until we know he’s not Hierarchy, we can’t give him anything useful to do without potentially tipping our hand as to long-term strategy, and both he and that nanofactory are too valuable to waste on makework. We need to secure them, for better or worse.”
“What about this ship he mentions?” Clarke mused. “The Negotiable Curiosity?”
“True. if Kirk’s an active agent for the Hierarchy then including that detail in his report makes little sense…” Tremblay drummed his fingers on the desk some more, then reached a decision and stood.
“Bartlett, Nadeau: You’re dismissed. Thank you.”
Both men stood, nodded, and made their exit. Tremblay turned to Clarke.
“I want to sent a JETS team after that ship.”
“Isn’t chasing a spaceship the SOR’s job?” Clarke asked.
“Too valuable, and still recovering from Capitol Station. Still, ships can’t fly forever. Eventually they’re going to land somewhere…”
”…and JETS can pick them up when they do.” Clarke nodded. “So, we need our informants to keep watch for this thing.”
Tremblay paced by his window, thumb pressed thoughtfully to his chin. “Do we have anything on this Bedu character?”
“I’ll find out.” Clarke promised. “Who were you thinking of sending?”
“I’ll ask our colleagues down south for an STS element, I think. And we’ll need a V-Class, obviously.”
Clarke nodded. “That should buy trust with Kirk if he’s not compromised.” he agreed. “Not to mention whatever intel we can get from that ship and its crew.”
“They’ll be pawns.” Tremblay predicted. He sat back down and started to compose his requests and orders. “Still. You never know…”
Date Point 10y4m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Uncharted System, Deep Space
Lewis Beverote
There was an idea forming.
Okay. That wasn’t accurate. There were several ideas forming. Thousands. Most, so far as Lewis could tell, were completely batfuck crazy and of no practical use, ripped straight from the pages of old scifi novels. A factory that could turn an entire asteroid belt into an ocean of unmanned space fighters? Great idea, if only they weren’t fighting a digital species that didn’t even live in the real world.
Some kind of poison to induce implant rejection? Would have also induced fatal encephalitis.
And those were just the pertinent ideas, the ones that came even vaguely close to addressing the challenge that Kirk hat set him: Saving the Earth from the Hierarchy.
Some of his ideas were just crazy. Using forcefields to brew the perfectly aerated espresso. A field equation that proved that it was possible to build a Niven Ring if you used a solar-enclosing forcefield to power another forcefield that was powerful enough to overcome the tensile strength problem, after which point the only real obstacles were time and material. Twenty kilometer tall robots piloted by an uploaded human brain and powered by a captive black hole. The potential weaponization of mice, opera and the Big Mac. A nutritionally balanced and, importantly, palatable portable ration to replace the nutrient sphere, derived from maize and rice.
Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t so crazy.
The point was… all the data in the world was useless without context. How could you even start thinking about saving a planet from an implacably genocidal species of sapient software who held the lives of ninety percent of the galaxy’s population to ransom?
He’d been chewing it over for weeks. Fine, save the world. Great. But every scrap of data he was learning about every discipline he could think of was only doing more and more and more to convince him that there was nothing he could do.
Kirk hadn’t visited in a few days. Vedreg’s chromatophore strips had a sickly, cautious quality to them. Every conversation ended in an argument, in rage, in futility.
There was, he knew deep in his bones, just no way that he could save Earth.
And that was where the idea was coming from. The idea was this:
If it was true that once you had eliminated the impossible, whatever remained – however improbable – must be the truth, then it followed that once you had eliminated all of the impossible courses of action, then whatever options remained – however dubious the odds of success – must be the one to go for.
When Lewis came to speak this thought out loud, it didn’t sound half as good as it had in his head.
He simplified it to something he preferred: “If you can’t do what you’d like, do what you can.”
He couldn’t save the Earth.
But, he was beginning to suspect, he might just be able to save the human race.
He deleted his files and started over.
Date Point 10y4m1w AV
Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota, United States, Earth
Regaari
Major Powell was practically radiating unease, not that Regaari could blame him. After all, what Regaari was about to do was a calculated risk that would have incredibly serious repercussions for the major if it went wrong.
“You’re certain about this?” he repeated, for what must have been the thirtieth time.
“I’m certain, major. You worry after me like a Mother with a sickly cub!”
“Aye, I suppose I do…”
Ayma made a nervous noise. “He really is not the only one. Regaari, this isn’t wise.”
“Aye.” Powell agreed. “This is a risky endeavor…”
“And a rewarding one, personally and professionally, for both of us.” Regaari insisted. “Now please. My mind is made up: I’m doing this.”
‘This’, meant unadulterated, unfiltered immersion in the alien beauty of the landscape that surrounded them. He and Ayma were, after all, visiting the most dangerous temperate planet outside of Nightmare known to exist, and that sparked his adventurous spirit in a way that surprised even himself. How could he not explore such a place?
Of course, when comparing Nightmare and Earth, the question of which was “most dangerous” was open to some interpretation. Nightmare had seasonal extremes unseen on any other temperate world and those extremes drove a boom-bust lifecycle that even the Earth couldn’t match. This in turn inspired absolutely vicious flora and fauna during the resource-rich summer and a deep, torpid sloth during the long, long winters.
And yet…
Clan Highmountain – ever the scientists and farsighted thinkers – had once sent an expedition to Nightmare, looking for clues to what awaited Gao in the future millions of years of its slow ascent into Deathworld status. Nightmare’s highly eccentric orbit had turned out to be surprisingly bad for diversity: with the whole planet being freezing cold for two thirds of its year and with a scorching hot summer sandwiched by brief, mild equinoxes, biome variation was almost nonexistent. Nightmare was essentially a single, worldwide temperate rainforest, having a remarkably uniform catalog of species from pole to pole. Every last one of which were impressively lethal, to be sure, but nothing like the rich diversity of what Earth had on offer.
Earth had so many ecologies that it boggled the mind.
To Regaari’s thinking that made it more dangerous, and far more interesting. The regular seasons might have made it easier to plan for and gather resources such as food, but even a day’s walk away may find a hapless wanderer in a totally different environment, surrounded by unforeseen lurking dangers. The very idea of being able to stand on a desert hilltop and see lush grassland, or gaze across a wide river to see forest on one bank and swamp on the other was compelling.
There were political calculations involved beyond his genuine desire to see what the humans called “Mother Nature”. Yes, the award he was due to receive from the “British” was a massive propaganda victory for Clan Whitecrest, but the real value would be in the footage of a Gaoian – a Whitecrest – walking unaided and (mostly) unprotected on the most infamous of Deathworlds. That would go down well at home.
It was certainly going down well on Earth. The reporters that dogged his and Ayma’s every step were being kept at a respectful distance, shooting video with long-throw lenses and drones that were, next to galactic technology, shocking primitive but still elegantly functional in their design and execution.
He recognised major Jackson, standing politely near to the reporters. She had spent time in front of many of them in turn, answering questions, putting on a smiling face, controlling the official Allied take on Regaari’s experiment, and occasionally conversing with Powell to pin down some minute detail of their message.
Deciding that he’d pontificated long enough, he glanced at Warhorse who was fiddling nervously with a pouch on his tactical vest, then at Ayma. Both gave him a reluctant nod.
Regaari gulped, read his hazard detector one last time and confirmed the air was currently safe to breathe, stepped out onto the bluff, deactivated the forcefield around his head, and breathed.
He immediately erected the shield again. The experience hadn’t been unpleasant – far from it – but it had been the olfactory equivalent of walking into a room where loud music was playing. The nose needed time to adjust.
This time, he scaled down the field intensity by degrees, allowing more and more of Earth’s rich, warm, moist air to reach his nostrils until finally the field was gone and he could immerse himself in the full perfumed glory of it.
It was beautiful.
There were so many, many, many different and competing aromas, some subtle, some cloying, others brutally intense. For a long while he just stood there and drank in the bouquet of Earth, letting it suffuse him and change him. He had never experienced anything quite like it and he knew that he would later spend hours describing this little aspect of his adventure to his Brothers, all the while failing to properly convey it.
Behind him, he was dimly aware of cameras clicking and whirring madly as they recorded his obvious pleasure.
The second thing he noticed were the sounds. Once the cameras had died down a bit and the Park Rangers encouraged some quiet, the gentle, subtle sound of everything came to him. Life was here. Life in such enormous variety that it humbled what one might find anywhere else. Life in all of its tiny, scuttering, careful beauty. He twitched an ear as something small moved restlessly in a nearby bush, no doubt scared still by all this activity. A flying animal of some kind whirred as it burst out of one bush, undulated over a hundred meters of ground in three short bursts of powered flight, and vanished into another bush.
There was more to be seen than would be gained by simply standing still and let it come to him. He wanted to explore, and so he opened his eyes and set off on a tour with the Park Rangers who, casting the occasional glance at Warhorse, set about showed him things that challenged his perception of what a Deathworld really was.
First was the stunning, complex interplay of life itself. There was so much of it, even here, even in what was allegedly a rugged and comparatively empty part of the planet. The weathered badlands were far, far from dead and empty: They were utterly alive with flowers and shrubs and insects too numerous to count, buzzing and rustling in the breeze and each contributing to the loud but delicate nasal symphony.
Earth, the most infamous Deathworld in the galaxy, was bursting at the seams with life.
The tour wound on. Gaining in confidence, the park rangers picked out some binoculars and began to point out wildlife both nearby and distant. They steered him away from a fat, humming bee (a real danger, if it were to sting him) directed his binoculars to a bison (so big!) pointed out some nearby rabbits (which vanished when startled, so quickly that Regaari barely saw them do it) and off in the distance, a mighty, fearsome grizzly bear (that creature made even the well-armed Park Rangers nervous).
He watched it stand on its hind legs, aim its nose at them, sniff the air, the drop onto all fours and beat a dignified retreat. The bison had done something similar.
“It’s… running away?”
The park ranger nodded. “He’s just staying out of our way.” she agreed.
“Why?” Ayma asked.
“We’re an unknown to him and may be risky. Most animals will keep to themselves unless they’re forced to interact.”
“That seems wise, I suppose.” Ayma conceded.
“It’s deceptive.” Regaari mused. “I know that bear is a dangerous animal, but from this far away it almost seems…comical and fuzzy.”
“Maybe, but he’s decidedly not.” the ranger told him. “Like you said, that bear is far away. Up close, a specimen that big is a threat to even a bison. His has claws are about THIS long, his teeth are THIS big, and he’s stronger than any human alive.”
The Major huffed quietly at that, a slight grin on his face. Regaari would ask about that later.
“Anyway, that’s why we’re keeping our distance, and I think he has the same idea.”
“But surely that bear would not fear us!”
“Hard to say.” the male ranger chipped in. “Bears are unpredictable precisely because they’re so large and powerful. If he was hungry? Perhaps he may have investigated, but a good dose of pepper spray in its face would likely have scared it off. A mother protecting her cubs? Well…that’s a story we didn’t need to tell today.”
Ayma chittered at that. “Ah. That sounds familiar.”
The warden smiled at her, maybe not quite understanding the source of her amusement. “…But for the most part? He’d probably keep his distance, especially of a group this large. Wildlife is generally shy.”
“…shy? Why would he be shy?” Regaari asked.
“Because he’s smarter than the average bear.” the female ranger commented. There were chuckles at that, meaning that it was presumably some in-joke or pop culture reference that Regaari had yet to encounter. “We’re dangerous and he damn well knows it.”
Ayma’s ears twisted as she watched the bear pause atop a slight swell in the terrain and look back. “Understandable, but in that case why are we avoiding it?”
“Because he’s dangerous.” the male ranger replied. “Which means that too close an encounter would end with him dead and maybe someone here hurt, probably quite badly. And none of us want either of those things.”
That struck Regaari as a very human thing to say – All the destructive ability in the galaxy, and no desire to do so. At least, not here, and not now.
“Anyway, he’s not even the biggest threat. There’s a pack of wolves yonder-” he pointed, and both Gaoians raised their binoculars. Regaari fancied that he saw a flash of fur among the distant grasses. “-that’s been skirting the outside of our sight, watching us. They know us.” he gestured to his partner and himself “…but don’t know you or anyone else here.”
“Wolves? Surely those would be a danger! I’ve read they were feared for millennia.” Ayma sounded genuinely alarmed.
“They don’t usually attack humans, not unless they’re desperate.” the female ranger reassured her. “And even they’d rather avoid the risk. Here, in this place? Attacking prey is dangerous. What if you were a wolf, and that bison turned around and gored you? You would be broken and a liability to the pack. Would you survive? The pack would bring you food and such, but what if you didn’t heal? A broken bone is practically a death sentence in the wild. What if the wound became infected?”
She smiled fondly at the wolves while the Gaoians mulled that point over.
“So how do they hunt, then?” Regaari asked. “They must take some risk.”
“They go after the sick and isolated and obviously weak, or smaller things like the rabbits. They won’t attempt larger and more dangerous prey unless they must. And, hell, sometimes rival predators decide to be friends. We’ve seen it more than once, particularly with bears and wolves.”
“Wh…friends? Why would they cooperate?” Regaari asked.
“Why not? Instead of competing for the same resource, why not share? We see it mostly with lone male wolves and bears. They may align for a season and hunt together. It increases the chance of a kill, after all. But beyond that, they do genuinely seem to enjoy company. We see polar bears up north, for example, playing with sled dogs when no food advantage at all exists.”
“Dexter.”
Regaari turned to Warhorse, who was monitoring something on a tablet. “Wind’s picking up south of here and the pollen count’s rising. Gotta call it, man.”
Regaari nodded sadly and allowed himself one last, full immersion in what his nose was telling him. He very much doubted he would ever get another chance. “Last chance.” he told Ayma.
She paused, then bobbled her head sideways – a no. “I’m not of Whitecrest stock.” she reminded him. “What you can enjoy might… I’m happy, anyway.”
Regaari duck-nodded, and, with one last blissful sniff, raised his shield again. Warhorse ran the medical scanner over him the instant it was fully up.
”…You’re probably gonna have a runny nose and watering eyes tonight.” he decided. Baseball promptly burrowed in his bag and produced some antihistamines.
“We’ll need to thoroughly scrub that fur out.” Adam added, as Regaari accepted one and swallowed it with a little water. “But… yeah, I reckon you’re fine.”
Baseball, Powell and the two rangers visibly relaxed.
They strolled gently back up the hill toward the waiting entourage of reporters, which Regaari could tell that Powell was doing his best not to scowl at. “Feel like making a statement?” the major asked.
“I think I have just the thing.”
They strayed close enough for microphones and cameras to be thrust in their direction and a clamour of questions that only quieted when major Jackson raised her hands and pleaded for peace.
Regaari had been choosing his words with care all the way up the slope. “That was an experience I know I shall never forget.” he said. “The word ‘Earth’ doesn’t quite translate properly into Gaori. We have a word for dirt and mud, another word for the ground beneath our feet… but I think having been here to see and hear and smell all of this, the word that fits best is ‘Yeì’ which means… well, it means a place where things grow.”
Lots of deathworlder teeth became visible as the journalists collectively grinned and started spinning that soundbite while Powell and the Protectors gently escorted Ayma and Regaari away from them.
Warhorse was the first to speak, once they were out of earshot. “Bro. That was a real nice thing to say.” he enthused.
Ayma chittered. “He could talk a summer flower into blooming in winter, couldn’t he?” she asked rhetorically, using a Gaoian idiom.
“Aye. Silver-tongued, so he is.” Powell agreed, using a human one.
Regaari admitted a smug little dip of his ears, but didn’t feel remotely embarrassed by the praise. “It was nothing,” he told them “but the truth.”
Date Point 10y4m1w AV
Cairo, Egypt, Earth.
Master Sergeant Roy Vinther
Sergeant Coombes was getting nervous. “There’s that guy again… Orange Five.”
“You know the drill, BOUNCER.” Vinther ordered. “Stay casual, just keep walking.”
“When are we gonna get a fuckin’ go on this thing?”
“Soon as we’ve got grounds to upgrade these fuckers to Red. You out of sight yet?”
“Made the corner, yeah. Got a good look at the guy, looks like he might be our Yemeni victim.”
“Looks like?”
There was silence and a couple of clicks on the line – Thomson must have been walking past civilians and unable to speak. Some seconds later, he was able to reply. “Looks a lot like.”
Vinther glanced over to where Staff Sergeant Walsh, their “intel weenie”, was sat behind him in the nondescript van they’d parked a hundred yards or so from the suspicious site. The description was a joke and a farcical one: Walsh was a Combat Controller with Duty and Secondary AFSCs in ops intel. He’d been forced out of the early SOR highway by an injury, making him by far the biggest guy on the operation. Not SOR-big, but still a large, strong dude, with an even larger, stronger brain.
Walsh got on the line himself. “BOUNCER, DRINKIN’ BUDDY. Scale of one to ten?”
“Solid eight for ya, DRINKIN’ BUDDY.”
Walsh nodded, then frowned at his tablet. “Convoy. Comin’ in from the north. Two SUVs, a van and a pickup.”
Vinther checked with their guy on a nearby rooftop, Staff Sergeant Porter. “HANGOVER, you got eyes on?”
“Sure do, BARKEEP. Headed right past you.”
Everyone promptly scooted down in their chairs so as to be invisible. They didn’t move or make a noise until the eight vehicles had rumbled past.
“BARKEEP, HANGOVER. They went into the compound.”
“Walsh…?” Vinther asked, over his shoulder.
“Red.” Walsh decided.
“That’s a red.” Vinther declared, for the Delta Force team to hear. “Go for stage two, just like we planned.”
Stage two took advantage of the quiet and careful reconnaissance they’d made on the compound, an old souk that had been long since converted into a warehouse or workshop of some kind, enclosing a large open area. It was a thoroughly permeable structure, but that worked both ways – plenty of ways in, and plenty of ways for hostiles to slip out or wait in ambush.
Vinther and Walsh had the “low-risk” approach – a corner of the building where an old window had been covered over with some drapes and not much else. Thompson had already checked it and declared that a stealthy ingress that way should be thoroughly do-able. They grabbed their M4s, were out of the van and up to the old souk in seconds.
Vinther took point. It was the work of seconds to move the drapes aside, pull himself through, and wave Walsh in after him.
Their radio clicked. “BARKEEP, HANGOVER.” he was whispering, sub-vocalising into his mic. “Shit’s moving down here, they got two hostages, so we better pick it up – Oh Jesus fucking Christ….”
Vinther and Walsh exchanged a frown. HANGOVER was a professional. Hearing him so upset was jarring. “Sitrep”
“They took her brain out, what the fuck? What the… fuck. Oh God”
“They what?”
“Black. We’re fucking black. We need the fucking Rangers in here right now.” Walsh hissed.
“Call ‘em.” Vinther agreed, aware that Walsh had probably sent that on all channels just for the few extra seconds it’d earn. He darted up the hallway they were in and to a doorway, carefully swept his gun around the whole room as he stepped over the threshold. Once happy that it was clear, he scurried over to the window that looked into the courtyard.
About a half-dozen people were standing around watching invisible forcefields delicately, bloodlessly and seamlessly reassemble a woman’s head. Restrained next to her was a weeping younger woman with a strong family resemblance to the victim and vomit down her front. Even as he watched, the forcefields dropped the victim delicately onto her feet. She blinked and looked around and then, without any speech or apparent communication at all, stepped over to help one of the others in picking up her terrified former family member.
“BOUNCER, you got a shot?” Vinther asked.
“Yeah.”
“Take it.”
The unfortunate new biodrone’s head burst. The hostage screamed and collapsed, hands flailing as her other captor met a similarly decisive end. She wrapped herself into a tight ball with her hands over her head as the remaining biodrones reacted as a single unit, drawing guns and firing at BOUNCER’s position.
Vinther took his own shot, and watched in astonishment as it clearly ricocheted off something solid between him and his target that he couldn’t see. Rapid-fire and the lightning-strike detonation of flashbangs at multiple points around the compound heralded the arrival of the Rangers.
“Watch the hostage!” he ordered on an open channel, and lined up another shot.
He didn’t get to take it. Something made of nothing swallowed the last of the biodrones, and there was a roaring, shrieking noise as a very large and completely invisible object kicked up dust and loose objects. A flapping cloth hanging from the wall caught on it as it rose, and, sensing valuable intel afoot, Vinther kept his helmet cam trained on it as the cloth draped across it and revealed its outline.
It looked for all the world like a classic flying saucer.
The cloth slid off, the howl of UFO engines hit a peak, and it was gone with a sonic boom. For a few seconds, some last gunfire rattled around the old souk, and then the all-clear came in. A Ranger medic double-timed over to the hostage, who was wailing and cradling her loved one’s body, and Vinther relaxed.
Walsh was beside him. “Holy. Shit.”
“Yeah. Did you fucking see that?”
“I saw.” Walsh nodded.
“A spaceship. They have a fucking spaceship on Earth.”
Walsh nodded again, and rubbed at his brow. “Well,” he said. “‘Least we know about it now…”