Date Point: 12y AV
Uncharted Planet, Near 3Kpc Arm
Yan Given-Man
The end of winter was the most important time in Yan’s year. His crest had gone back to the pale yellowish-orange of an ordinary man, rather than the flaming scarlet blaze that marked Given Men. His muscles had shrunk, he was light enough to traverse the upper branches again, he could feel the weight of the season on him.
But the sun felt warm today, and there were new green shoots coming up, forcing their way past the snow.
To a Given Man, that meant something special.
The tribe barely noticed. They were too busy cooing over the little girl that had been born to the Singer and Vemik. Yan’s niece had borne her first child well and stoically, and had presented the pale beige little bundle to her father with a sweaty, exhausted smile.
A quiet child. Alive and warm and breathing, but she didn’t wail—at worst, she grumbled. Mostly, she watched and flailed her hands aimlessly at whatever caught her attention.
Vemik and Vemet had promptly gone on the birth hunt in search of a suitable beast to thank the gods for the health of both child and mother: Yan had gone with them. They were family now, after all.
They had shown him the Destroyer they had killed. A nesting Natla had set up a warm bowl of sticks and fur in one of its upper recesses and there were still a few lines of melting slush between the slicing sharp blades of the monstrosity’s upper hide.
The ground was black and dead beneath it where its guts had spilled out and for some distance around: a few poisoned sticks remained rooted, but they were obviously beyond saving. It was an island of corruption in the forest, and the three of them stayed well away from it.
“You’re brave men, I’ll grant you that,” Yan commented at last. Vemik and Vemet both smiled sheepishly.
“It took us a week to work up the courage to even let it see us,” Vemet confessed.
“Sensible caution,” Yan said dismissively. He looked up and tasted the air—There was a greasy, odd scent on the wind that nearly overpowered the sharp flavor of the spring thaw. “I’m glad it’s far from the village, though.”
“I wouldn’t hunt here anyway. I don’t want to know what kind of curse it might have left on the meat,” Vemet grumbled.
“You’ll find a good prize, I know it. My great-niece deserves no less.” Yan shouldered his pack and straightened. “…I’ll see you in the summer.”
“I wish you’d tell me where you go, Yan…” Vemik grumbled. Yan trilled quietly and gave the younger man’s crest a ruffle as if he was still a boy.
“The world is full of secrets you’ll never learn, Sky-Thinker. Get used to it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know everything, Yan,” Vemik replied. They gripped each other’s’ wrists and hugged.
“Be careful, Yan,” Vemet advised. “It’s dangerous out there right now…”
“It’s always dangerous out there,” Yan replied as they hugged as well. “…but I’ll be careful.”
The two of them stepped back and waited as he finished checking his possessions.
There was a balancing act involved in the annual Journey. He needed to carry enough to live, but not so much as to exhaust himself. He had plenty of cord, a piece of fire-hardened Werne femur for a club and for basic flint-knapping, a sturdy short spear with plenty of other uses if he needed them, and some food wrapped up in a hide bundle tied around his waist. Nothing exciting—Werne jerky, pemmican, some dried berries and some spices and herbs in pouches—but enough to avoid starving and to turn a basic meal into a luxury.
The Journey was several things. Among them it was a test and practice—a chance to keep his skills sharp by pitting them against the real consequences of failure. Do, or die.
Yan had Done several times, and it didn’t take him long to get into his rhythm.
For women, and for slight young men like Vemik, brachiation was a balletic and smooth process higher up in the trees where the foliage was sparser. Heavy-set brutes like Yan were forced to stick to the lower, sturdier limbs and crash through the brush like a charging Werne.
The skin of his arms and chest was dark, tough and leathery from long years of being whipped by passing thorns and sticks, and that natural protection allowed him to hit a good meditative pace that took away half the day quite easily.
He made camp just after the top of the day by folding some branches together to make a suitable nest, and stood up straight to stretch out. He scrounged up some appropriate firewood, secured his food against scavengers, then explored the area around his camp in search of dinner.
He found it in the form of a bibtaw burrow. The little furballs were perfect for on the trail—stick a spear into their burrow and one of the males would bravely lunge at the “intruder” to protect the warren, and could be easily skewered. It wasn’t an honorable or impressive kill, but it was food that cost him almost nothing to acquire.
He roasted it over his campfire directly below the nest and hung the skin in the smoke to get started on drying it out. Bibtaw skins were just the right size to make bags. Rubbed with a few herbs and eaten alongside a few tanew nuts and fresh young green leaves, the unfortunate critter made for a solid and delicious meal, especially when he cracked its thin skull and savored the nutty brains.
He stayed awake and stared contemplatively into the fire, poking and fuelling it as the dark closed around him, then used the last of the sunset to scale back up to his nest and settled down in the hot air rising from the ashes.
When he woke in the morning and looked back, High Forest mountain was pleasingly distant and small—he’d made good progress yesterday. His destination was toward the rising sun, so he ate the last of yesterday’s meat, packed his new bibtaw skin, and set out.
Each day was different in the field. Some were clear and comfortably cool, some were grey and damp, some were miserably wet and one or two forced him to huddle shivering in impromptu ground-level shelters.
The moon had gone through more than half of its cycle by the time he found the first trail mark. Two straight sticks lashed together pointed him slightly south of the course he’d been taking
It was about time, too—He was starting to feel his Fire.
The Fire was one of the things that separated Given Men from others, and it was a secret that Vemik would have thought upon long and solemnly. It started slowly and gently as an intensity in his step and a fierceness in the way he would bully from branch to branch, shouldering the whipping twigs aside as if they had personally offended him.
Over the next two days, it got worse. When a particularly springy branch caught him in the face he gripped it with a snarl and tore it from the tree, spitting the most fearsome curses he knew until he caught himself and realized how stupid he was being, to get so angry at wood.
And the things he did to the poor stupid werne that blundered into the midst of the root-birds he was planning to eat and scattered them… At least there was enough left to eat after he was done with it. And the catharsis of indulging the anger simmering causelessly inside him temporarily dampened it and helped him think straight again.
Which was why he didn’t rip apart the younger man who attacked him.
It was a rainy day when they met, and he was angry about that. He was angry about the cold wetness slicking his crest to his back. He was angry about a treacherous patch of slippery moss that had nearly sent him plummeting from the tree. He was angry about being hungry and he was angry about being angry.
But, he wasn’t in a full rage yet. He was still Yan, who had been here a dozen times in his life and knew how to ride the anger and let it flow around and past him while leaving his essential Yan-ness untouched.
The newcomer was… not. He wasn’t young, Given Men never were. They only became Given Men after going through the Change, which came later in life if it came at all. But this man had clearly only just gone through his Change, and it was never pretty. The rage…
…Was always difficult. But it was far beyond being mere rage the first time. The first time, when a man was chosen by the gods to be Given, he became nothing but violence.
Yan found him laying into a wounded neyma. Neyma were more skittish than Werne, and much more fragile: they were hard to catch, but their legs broke easily. This one was bleating and whickering in pain and panic as the hunter advanced on it with his hand-axe. A good kill! Skillful.
Except that he heard Yan approaching, span, spat a curse and charged. He bounded across the leaf litter with his axe in hand, loping animalistically with his hackles up and his fangs bared.
Yan leapt backwards up a tree. He swung around the trunk by his tail as the axe knocked a hand-sized chunk of bark out of the wood where his head had been moments ago.
Scramble, dodge, jump, push. Had to get close to wrestle, or that axe would kill him. Couldn’t brave the axe to get close enough.
But, advantage: Thinking. Still had thoughts beyond just kill. Could remember not to kill, could remember how to do more than charge and destroy.
He scrambled higher up into the thinner limbs as the axe chok!-ed into the wood at his heels and found what he was looking for five man-heights above the ground—a branch strong enough to just hold one Given Man, but not two. He dashed out onto it and turned as if cornered.
His opponent snarled triumphantly and pursued. The branch shook, sagged, cracked, then snapped.
Yan hung by his tail and hands from the branch above him and watched as the raging younger man lost his footing, dropped his axe, scrabbled desperately at the broken branch. He arrested his fall but the jolt tore apart the last of the branch’s strength and he fell three man-lengths down to earth and landed heavily in the leaf mold where he lay writhing and winded.
Yan’s blood was singing with the urge to rip the upstart apart. He surged down the tree, snatched up the other man’s dropped axe and caught himself just as he raised it with murder in his eyes.
The two of them stared at each other in the tense, deadly moment and the younger man broke the spell by croaking out something.
“Please…. Sorry… Sorry…”
Yan snarled and took out his frustration on the hand-axe by flinging it viciously into the underbrush. He backed off and took several deep breaths to recover himself.
“I know… I know.” He grunted. He extended a hand and helped the younger man to his feet. “First time?”
“Yes…Tarek. Tarek Bark-Breaker.”
“Yan Given-Man.”
They hugged like old friends.
“I’m sorry,” Tarek repeated.
“I don’t blame you,” Yan replied. “You don’t have a Given Man to mentor you?”
“He went away. We don’t know what happened to him, he just…”
“Let me guess. You saw smoke from another village and he went to investigate?”
Tarek stiffened. “Yes! You too?”
“The young man we sent to look came back, burned but alive. Something destroyed the village… ours was east of here.”
“Mine is north.”
“*Godshit!*” Yan swore. “That means there’s more than one…”
“One what?”
“A beast, like a Skithral made of stone, twice as big as a yshek. It spits blue fire and sends birds with knives for wings to scout for it.”
Tarek blinked at him. “You SAW it?”
“Saw its corpse. Two men of my village found it asleep and tore its guts out.”
Tarek sighed and relaxed a little. “At least it had guts to tear out. What kind of beast spits fire?”
“I don’t understand it either…” Yan looked around, and saw the trail sign not far away between the trees. “We’re only two days from the lodge. I’ll stay with you, Tarek. Help you damp that Fire.”
“Thank you, Yan.” Tarek wiped sweat out of his ears and shook himself out. “It’s… been hard. I nearly killed my brother.”
Yan put a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. “…I know. But the Lodge will help you.”
Tarek shot an irritated glance at the Neyma, which was still making strangled agonized bleating noises. “We should shut that up.”
“Mm. Don’t let good meat go to waste. You’ll need it.” Yan retrieved his dropped spear and made a ’do you mind if I-?’ gesture to the wounded beast. Tarek twitched his head in assent, and moments later the wailing animal was mercifully and easily dead.
The two of them knelt and anointed themselves with its blood—a touch between the eyes, and two stripes under each eye—and set about butchering the carcass, which was quick work for two seasoned hunters.
The act of getting a square meal sorted out quickly killed any lingering animosity between them. Besides, Yan was familiar with the way that being around another Given Man at this time seemed to soothe, somehow. The Fire didn’t go away, but it burned lower just for knowing that somebody else nearby was suffering it as well.
Small though neyma were they yielded plenty of meat, far more than Yan and Tarek could eat in one sitting so they smoked and preserved what they didn’t eat as well as they could. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to keep the meat good for the remaining couple of days they had to go until they reached the Lodge.
They slept at a respectful distance from one another, though, and Yan let him nest on the lower, warmer branch and woke up stiff from the cold in the morning.
This close to the lodge, the trail sign was thick enough to trip over. They made good progress despite stopping every now and again to repair a sign that had been disrupted by the weather or an animal. With no need to hunt they were able to go on for most of the afternoon, and they finally set their camp at a spot Yan knew well, by the rapids of a stream that was far too small to contain any yshek and where the water was good to drink.
Tarek spoke to him for the first time all day as Yan unwrapped one of the neyma’s shanks and bit gratefully into the cold meat.
“How do you control it?”
Yan looked up chewing, and tried to let a stab of irrational irritation slide off him. “Hmm?”
“The Fire. It’s… everything is irritating me. How do you fight that?”
Yan bit down the urge to snap at what wasn’t a stupid question no matter what the Fire was telling him. “You don’t.”
Tarek growled and stood up. “*What.*”
Yan’s instincts sang about putting the silly little upstart in his place but he deflected the anger toward the Fire itself.
“I knock it aside. I remind myself to be angry at something harmless. And I try to stay busy and tired. Just until we get to the Lodge.”
“And we can deal with it there?”
Yan nodded. “There’s magic, and a vision, and food. You’ll see tomorrow.”
“It had better be soon. I just want to… break something.”
“Go ahead. So long as you don’t break anything of mine, please.”
Tarek blinked at him then surged to his feet and vanished into the brush. A minute or so later there came the sound of crashing and crackling as he released his Fire harmlessly. A startled trio of birds whirred desperately overhead and Yan watched them vanish between the trees, musing on Vemik’s special spear-thrower. He wondered if it might be possible to shoot one of those birds as it flew.
He was going to have to tell the others about that thing. Given Men traded knowledge like that at the lodge every year, and soon Vemik’s spear-thrower would be all over the forest. In a few years, they would be a normal part of life.
And the peace would be kept.
Date Point: First Contact Day, 12y AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
General Martin Tremblay
“Where in the hell did you get this?”
Gabriel Arés shrugged painfully, and he seemed to need a kind of mental run-up to launch into speech. The quiet precision was gone from his voice, replaced with a halting quality almost like he was drunk and dazed. “I, uh, don’t know… uh. My partner got home, sh-she said, uh, said it was in our mailbox, and…as soon as I, uh, figured out what it is, uh…”
He trailed off.
Tremblay gave the three vials on the desk a long, awed look. “You called us.”
Arés nodded. “Uh… I admit, uh I was, uh…tem-tempted to use a dose.”
Powell rubbed his jaw, then picked up a wall phone, and hit a button. “Technical sergeant Kovač to wardroom two, please. Cheers.”
He put the phone down and picked up one of the vials as the call went out on the base announcement system. “Real Cruezzir, by God.”
“The full-fat, unadulterated, genuine product,” Tremblay agreed.
“Without the built-in self destruct,” Knight finished. “This isn’t three vials, gentlemen, it’s an unlimited supply. All we need to do is synthesize it.”
“Bloody easy, if Saunders and Delaney are any guide,” Powell grunted.
Tremblay stroked his chin. “I thought the whole project was scrapped. Where did this come from, and is it still good?”
“That’s why I called for Kovač,” Powell explained. “Dunno about the where it came from bit, but she can tell us if it’s still good right quick.”
In a classic ’speak-of-the-devil’ moment, the woman herself chose that moment to knock and enter.
“Reporting as ordered, sirs.”
Powell handed her a vial. “Happy First Contact Day, sergeant.”
Kovač stared at it and promptly geeked out. “Omigod, is this-? It IS! Where-?”
Gabe Arés waved gently from his wheelchair. “Some, uh, good Samaritan left it in my mailbox.”
“Is it viable, sergeant?” Tremblay asked, urgently. Kovač paused, then held it up to the light.
“…Probably? I’d need to run it through the lab…”
“Right away, please,” Tremblay ordered.
She hugged it to her chest and backed toward the door. “Yes sir!”
“Sergeant…” Knight held up a hand to stop her and looked to Tremblay. “I think in light of the circumstances, our chief of colonial security deserves some recognition of his sacrifice, don’t you?”
Tremblay nodded and gave Gabe a thoughtful look. “I think you’re right. And we could solve a strategic inconvenience, too…”
Powell nodded. “Aye. …If you want it, Gabe?”
Arés hesitated. “I uh… what? Sorry, I got lost again…”
Knight nodded. “Sergeant, would you please prepare a course of Crue-D for Mister Arés and release it to Staff Sergeant Arés for him to monitor? Including all the appropriate SACRED STRANGER paperwork, the non-disclosure and so on.”
Kovač smiled. “At once, sir.”
Tremblay could see Arés struggling to wrestle his brain into gear as she left. “Crue-, uh, Crue-D? Full fat? General, is, uh…?”
Tremblay sighed and sat down opposite him. “Seven years ago, we negotiated a trade deal with the Corti. They had developed a, um, limited version of Cruezzir with most of the negative side effects removed, some long-term limits on its effectiveness and, most important, it couldn’t be synthesized by a human’s gut microbes,” he explained. “It’s the key to HEAT training.”
“Train fookin’ hard until yer droppin’ down from wrecked muscles, pop a Crude patch or a shot if your boy’s been pushin’ us hard… and then it’s all right as rain a couple of hours later, and stronger than before. It’s a fookin’ nasty way to get strong, but it fookin’ works,” Powell commented.
“…You’re on this stuff, Powell?”
“Aye.”
“And Adam, of course.”
“…Since he was seventeen. Aye.”
Gabe gave him a long, cool stare that came with a sudden resurgence of his usual focus. “You gave a teenager an experimental alien medicine.”
Tremblay and Knight glanced at each other, but Powell grabbed a chair and sat down in front of him,. “…Offered,” he said, quietly. “And he accepted, freely and of his own volition.”
“He was just a boy!”
“No.” Powell shook his head seriously. “He wasn’t. I don’t think I ever knew your son as just a boy. Besides, you must’ve bloody known summat was up! He didn’t get that big on his own, right? You must’ve seen it. Suspected.”
“And now you’ve gone and confirmed those suspicions!” Gabe tried to stand, failed, and sat back cursing. “Madre de Dios, the Corti?!”
“Personally, I’d trust them as far as your son could throw them.” Tremblay said. “You just have to know how to pull their strings.”
Gabe grunted, touched his forehead and visibly pulled his thoughts together. “I… you’re right, I knew. I knew it had to be Cruezzir or something like it. I’m… sorry.”
“Don’t be. If my son tried to join HEAT I’d be…” Knight trailed off. “Well. I’m glad he never will.”
Gabe frowned at him. “…I didn’t even know you’re a father,” he confessed.
“Oh yes. A son and a daughter. Doctor Robert Knight is a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon at Great Ormond Street.”
“And your daughter?”
“Followed her old man’s footsteps, I fear. But we’re digressing.” Knight cleared his throat. “The point is, that same medicine would be ideal for helping you overcome your own difficulties. If you’ll have it…”
“It’s the least we can do,” Tremblay agreed.
“Powell?” Gabe asked.
“Gabe, mate, I promise you this: I’d never let your son or anybody else near the stuff if I wasn’t perfectly happy wi’ it myself. You’ve got a chance most blokes who suffered an injury like yours would fookin’ beg for, so for Chrissakes, bloody take it.”
“I… it feels like a cheap way out.”
Tremblay was surprised by Powell’s response: the reply seemed to momentarily give him pause and he looked away.
“…Aye. I can see why you’d think that,” he conceded at last. “An’ I’ve always bloody respected your commitment to doin’ things by the book or not at all. We’re givin’ you a way to avoid a long and bloody difficult recovery, assuming you recover at all. I can see how you’d feel that’s the simple way out. But…”
Gabe raised his head and listened intently. “Yeah?”
“…I dunno, mate. Do you turn down a fookin’ paracetamol when you get a headache? Or the anaesthetic when you go for an operation? This right here-” he picked up one of the Cruezzir vials. “—This right here is gonna be the by-the-book way to deal with injuries like yours in the not-too-distant future. This is the right way. This isn’t some fookin’ bribe, Gabe, or a cheap way out—this is your bloody medicine, mate. So stop bein’ fookin’ daft and take it, aye?”
“Hear, hear,” Knight commented.
It was to Tremblay that Gabe turned last. “I don’t…” he flapped his hands irritably until the word came to him. “trust anything this easy!” he said, almost pleading. “There’s always a… a catch!”
Tremblay considered him carefully. “Maybe…” he agreed. “Maybe. But from where I’m standing I’d weigh the potential catch against the known consequences of your injury… and discuss it with your son.”
Powell and Knight both nodded.
“What…what would Adam tell me?”
“That’d be between you and him,” Powell said. “But n obody alive knows the effects of Crue-D better than him.”
Tremblay picked up the remaining two Cruezzir vials. “I need to get these back to SCERF immediately,” he said. “Mr. Arés… thank you. You’ve done humanity an incredible service today.”
“Uh… uh, sure.” Gabe managed. “*De nada.*”
Tremblay shot Powell a look that said ’take care of him’ in absolutely certain terms, which made the major stand up straight before Tremblay let himself out of the room and strode purposefully toward the relay link to Scotch Creek. Men and women from every branch of the militaries of three nations got out of his way as well as they could in the narrow corridors, sensing that if there was ever such a thing as a good time to impede the Supreme Allied Commander, this definitely wasn’t it.
The Cimbrean end of the military Array was manned by two Royal Navy technicians, who straightened sharply as he entered as did the marine guarding it.
“One for Scotch Creek, sir?” the senior of them asked.
“Yes please. How soon until it’s charged?”
“It’s ready to send a lone man already, sir. Three hours until it’s ready for a full-capacity send, scheduled jump’s in five hours.”
Tremblay considered. The sensible thing, probably, would be to wait for the scheduled jump and not use power that wasn’t going to be used anyway.
But in the immortal words of a historical peer of his: Nuts. They had Cruezzir, and he wasn’t going to breathe easily until it was safely in as many labs on as many planets as he could manage. Some things were just so precious that the idea of dallying…
“Right away, please.”
“Yes sir.” The techs jumped to and Tremblay parked himself firmly in the green square at the center of the Array and waited carefully. He could have stuck out the hours until the scheduled jump, but the very idea just filled his head with awful visions of tripping and smashing the vials he was carrying, or…
Something like that. There was a snap and a sudden moment of lurching gravity as he was translocated back to Earth, and he made immediately for Ted Bartlett’s office.
Some things were just too important to wait on.