Date Point: 14y1d AV
HMS Caledonia, Low orbit over planet Gao
Commander Ellen McDaniel
McDaniel was juggling two battles at once. Of course there were the Hunters to worry about, as a seventh boarding ship decloaked barely ten meters from their hull. The first had been too close to avoid even if it hadn’t then turned on a gravity spike and wormhole suppressor, pinning Cally in place. They were confined to kinetic acceleration only, which put them in a bad place, defensively. Any of the biodrone ships higher up in the gravity well could pick them off, and the rest of the fleet was scrambling to shield them, but were confined to sublight themselves thanks to the gravity spike. Even the Firebirds were minutes away at best.
All of that demanded her attention, but seven—no, eight—boarding craft was by far the more immediate problem. How many could there be?
Too many. They needed clear space around them, now.
“Cap charge?” she demanded.
“Eighty-seven percent!”
McDaniel grabbed her radio. “XO to Captain.”
Bathini sounded perfectly, inhumanly unruffled somehow. “Go ahead.”
“The bastards keep coming, sir. There could be hundreds of them cloaked just feet from the hull. Suggest we dump cap.”
“Do it. Keep us above the green line.”
“Aye aye,” a quick change of channel put her through to reactor control. “XO to reactor chief.”
There was a pause, and Chief Andow’s voice came back sounding tense. “Reactor here.”
“Chief, we’re dumping cap, down to the green line.”
“Aye aye…” Andow must have been a step ahead of her, and forgot to let go of his call button, because she clearly heard him shout “Hooky! She called it! Dump prep? Okay!” His voice came back to the radio clearer and more audibly. “Dump ready, XO.”
“Dump it!”
There was a slamming noise, quite different from the physical, ringing impacts made by Hunter ships raping their skin. This one was the sound made when the supercooled ultra-high-capacity power buses to the ship’s shield emitters were called upon to direct and handle energies equivalent to a nuclear explosion. Vats of liquid nitrogen would be boiling furiously around white-hot superconductors, fighting to bring them back down to a more reasonable temperature, and that was just the beautifully controlled waste heat.
Outside, *Caledonia*’s sensors tracked no fewer than twelve more Hunter ships as they briefly did a convincing moth-in-a-campfire impression.
One of her warfare officers made a save, triumphant sound that perfectly echoed McDaniel’s own sentiments.
“Damage report!” she demanded, keeping everything on track. Now was too early to celebrate.
“Hull breaches E deck forward, C deck forward, A deck midships, Starboard hangar, Hospital deck, B deck aft, F deck ventral. Total pressure failure between bulkheads two and three. Emergency disconnect of capacitor bank C, emergency shutdown of Reactor Two. Casualties reported A deck midships—”
It was obviously a long list, but it was cut off by the way the whole deck lurched and Caledonia screamed the long, tearing sound of her pressure hull failing in a big way. McDaniel gritted her teeth and braced herself against the bulkhead as her sense of balance went completely awry for a minute. A sure sign that the artificial gravity plating was fighting against some violent G-forces. Alarms of every conceivable type all went off at once.
“What was that?!”
“One of the Hunters just…blew itself up!”
McDaniel turned around to see for herself and at exactly the wrong moment a second Hunter self-destructed and took part of Cally with it. The gravity plating failed. Not for long…but for long enough. She completely lost her balance, tipped over, and when the gravity came back on the last thing she saw was the corner of a desk coming up to meet h—
Date Point: 14y1d AV
HMS Myrmidon, High orbit over planet Gao
Admiral Sir Patrick Knight
“Mayday! Mayday! HMS Caledonia declaring an emergency, we are sinking! Repeat, HMS Caledonia is sinking!”
The navy had kept the word ‘sinking’ even though it couldn’t possibly apply to a ship in space. There was nothing to sink in. But if a ship was totally wrecked, had suffered a catastrophic loss of its ability to retain atmosphere and life support, to maneuver…in short, to function as a ship, then it was pretty much definitively sunk.
The telemetry coming through the FIC was a knife in the gut. The half-dozen Hunter boarding ships that had buried into Caledonia like ticks had turned suicide bomb, obliterating segments of the hull, breaking her back. In seconds she had gone from a damaged but functioning warship to a tumbling, burning hulk at the heart of a cloud of condensing air and glittering metal shrapnel.
And there was absolutely nothing that Knight could do about it. The biodrones were winning the war to control the Gaoian fleets, and they had learned more than a few of humanity’s tricks in the last few years. It was taking every trick of maneuver that Knight and Caruthers could devise between them to stay ahead of the fight, and sometimes the only things tipping the balance were the nukes.
He had his plate full with the battle, he didn’t have time to worry about Caledonia’s crew. All he could do for them was pray and carry the day for them, and that would have to be enough.
Even so…His own daughter was on that ship. Not a perfect daughter, nor he a perfect father, and their relationship could hardly be described as close…But still: his daughter.
He tried his best to put Ellen’s fate out of his mind, and focused on the task at hand. There was a war to win.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc ARm
Master Sergeant Derek “Boss” Coombes
“Boss…Playboy. I can see you. Slow down and stop for a skull check. You too, Tigger.”
Coombes slowed from his cross-country jog and paused next to a Ketta, utterly bewildered. There was absolutely no sign at all of anybody besides himself and Daar in the area. Not a stray sound, not a whiff of scent, nothing.
He knew Etsicitty was supposed to be skilled. And he’d worked with some stealthy motherfuckers in his time, snipers mostly. But there was nothing, not even the wary silence of disturbed forest animals. The birds were still trilling in the trees above—
They weren’t birds. A Given-Man landed on Coombes’ back and crushed him to the ground. Two landed on Daar. Coombes got a mouthful of leaf litter, and had to endure the indignity of having somebody pin his ha nds behind his back by holding his wrists with their foot.
One tanned brown bare foot and one unnatural white plastic one encroached on his peripheral vision as Etsicitty pressed the scanner to his head, then swept away to do the same for Daar. After the second beep he made a satisfied grunt and dropped a black tomahawk on the ground.
“Let ‘em go,” he said. The enormous weight keeping Coombes belly-down in the dirt lifted off him and he was hoisted to his feet. Yan grinned toothily at him, and brushed the leaves off his chest and belly.
“Lucky you we not en’mee!” he declared, patted Coombes on the head and stepped back.
“Yeah, well. What’s a broken back between friends?” Coombes replied, trying to massage some feelings back into his kidneys. The joke earned a jolly trill.
“You look in our heads now, yes?”
“…Yes.”
It was definitely a formality as far as Coombes could tell. If the hunting party had been ‘droned then he and Daar would already be dead or ‘droned themselves and they wouldn’t have seen it coming. But procedure was procedure. He pressed his scanner firmly to the Given-Man’s flat forehead and nodded at the expected green ping.
Etsicitty was waiting for him with his arms spread, looking quiet, patient and focused. Sure enough, his head was green too, and he stooped to retrieve his tomahawk the second it was confirmed.
“Where’s the Professor?” Coombes asked him.
“Went east with the women, children and old men,” Julian said. “Chimp and Tiny are playin’ chicken with the drones. They seem to be running on automatic.”
“Automatic?”
Etsicitty shrugged. “They’re about as sharp as a sack of Dizi Rats. Just go after whatever they see. I dunno what’s goin’ on, but nobody with a working brain is controlling those things.”
“Like angry Werne’gok,” Yan supplied. “Charge, not think. Easy to lead!”
“A bull,” Julian translated.
He was in an unusually silent mood, Coombes judged. He hadn’t got the chance to know Julian much, but the impression he’d got was of a man who was quiet and calm out of simply being comfortable and happy with life, or maybe wanting to spread some more.
Not terse. But then again, he wasn’t military. He’d been dragged into this, and he didn’t really have any formal training. Coombes wasn’t about to fault him if that put him in an uncomfortable place in his head, so long as he held it together.
He certainly had the experience, according to his file. He’d probably do better than he thought.
Not that Coombes was feeling much better himself. He’d run all day over rough terrain, including climbing a mountain and moving some heavy rocks at the top of that mountain. Right now most of his body and soul were singing wistfully about bed, and Daar had it even worse between their heavy gear and the lingering effects of the blast and medicine. Even his permanent unquenchable boisterousness was, if not quenched then at least soaking wet.
“So. We lure them into a trap and take them down hard,” he summarized.
“Too bad we don’t have another mountain to drop on ‘em,” Daar grumbled. Yan gave him an incredulous look.
“Drop…mountain? I have wrong words?”
“We’ll explain later, I promise. It’s one of those steel secrets.”
A voice above Coombes made him flinch. Ten’Gewek were quiet in the trees.
“Daar tell me of these.” Sky-Thinker was hanging upside down by his feet and tail, chewing on a fruit of some kind. “He say, some stones go…” he gestured and made an explosive sound effect with his mouth. “Smash rock, break tree. Big taking-magic, yes?”
“Well, in that case,” rumbled Daar, “If you know how to read a rock face ‘fer cracks and stuff, you can blow up a small part and make the whole thing slide down and kill everyone at the bottom of the valley.”
The young alien was definitely a nerd after Coombes’ own heart. Nobody but the geekiest geeks got quite such a gleeful look in their eyes when somebody described things like that. Everybody else needed to see it to get the effect, but for those truly gifted with a vivid imagination…
Julian flashed a quick chuckle and scratched at his bare chest, but his mirth didn’t survive for long. “We can’t play cat-and-mouse with these things forever,” he said. “I don’t know shit about Big Hotel power supplies, but no way those things run outta gas.”
Yan and the Given-Men nodded vigorously. “We need sleep, food. Steel birds, not.”
“We gotta keep moving, boss.” Daar seemed resolved to it. Which meant he considered their situation dire; he was so tired that he hadn’t even tried to tussle with the Given-Men who had tackled him.
“Yup.” Coombes shrugged at his ruck more for mental comfort than physical. “We’re the anvil. Tiny and Chimp need to bring ‘em to us, in favorable terrain. We need something to smash them against.”
Vemik, still upside-down, raised a juice-stained hand.
“Forestfather,” he said.
“What about ‘em?” Coombes asked him.
“First steel bird I find, shoot blue fire at me. I run, dodge. It not see through forestfather vines, run into cwiff. Cer-riff.” He paused and snarled at himself. “Cliff.…Maybe Daar Stone-Back drop mountain?”
Daar scratched his ear in the complicated way he did when he was thinking uncomfortable thoughts, and then looked at Yan. The two seemed to understand each other instantly and Yan sidled up alongside him. “I hunt with Daar. Help climb and carry.”
Julian was checking the topographical survey from *Misfit*’s legion of microsatellites. “…Those cliffs look like a hard climb,” he warned. “And Daar ain’t light and neither is his gear.”
Which was a concern, because Gaoians climbed like the quadrupeds they were. Yan would more or less have to carry the big oaf and all his stuff up the cliff.
Yan, however, was enthusiastically confident. He grinned smugly in reply and slapped his arms. “Daar, ‘gear,’ no trouble. Will be good climb, make us strong!”
Vemet, who had hitherto been silent, chose that moment to chime in with his usual quietly pertinent observation.
“If we do or we killed, we do,” he said simply. “Hard climb, good climb, no matter. Do, or death.”
That settled that, and there were nods all round..
“We got a Plan, then,” Coombes declared. He shrugged his ruck to focus himself again, got his bearings, and took point. “Come on. Sooner we quit wastin’ time an’ make it happen, the sooner we get a smoke break.”
“…Break smoke? How? And why?” Vemik asked.
“…We’ll explain later.”
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Dataspace adjacent to planet Gao
The Entity, Instance 4
Success.
A costly success, but success nonetheless. The Entity had honestly hoped that the Caledonia would fend off its attackers and come through the battle scathed, but afloat.
As it was…
Its body had been crushed, killing it almost instantly. Even knowing what was coming, the Entity had barely escaped from the host’s implants in time. It could remember being human, though. Could remember the subjective sense of having a human body. A Hunter’s sense of its own body was very similar—they felt, to themselves, just as strong.
Even from the Entity’s removed perspective, a first-hand lesson in just how different humans really were had been…shocking. As far as the body’s own kinesthetic instincts were concerned, that much power simply shouldn’t fit in that small a creature. Had the Entity’s biodroned host been free to form its own thoughts, its short-lived last experience would have been awed disbelief.
The important point was, the swarm’s scouts were gone. Vaporized by *Caledonia*’s huge energy discharge, or self-destructed. They and the Hierarchy had been robbed of a critical intelligence advantage. It had won, if not the whole war then certainly an important battle.
But deep in its core, several of the subroutines that had once been Ava Ríos were in agony. When Adam found out…
It deleted the thought. There were other battles to win before it could afford the luxury of <Remorse>.
It flashed away into the dataspace to go fight them.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Farthrow Facility, Lavmuy, Planet Gao
Lt. Col. Owen “Stainless” Powell
After several hours on the ground, the suit fatigue was setting in hard. The only countermeasures were electrolytes, painkillers and Crue-D, and Powell knew he was feeling it less than the other HEAT operators due to spending most of his time doing comparatively steady work, saving his strength.
Akiyama was in a similar boat. He’d spent most of his time on the ground so far working with Meereo on modifying the Farthrow generator.
The rest of them had worked hard, fought hard, run hard and were burning through their energy hard.
But it was all coming together. VENUS, MARS and MERCURY were through and deployed. Farthrow, which had started life as a former aerospace hangar full of prefab “rooms” was rapidly becoming a fortress thanks to a battalion of combat engineers and their unlimited supply of HESCO gabions. The walls were manned, the second jump array was up, and a master sergeant out on the front lot was colourfully educating his unit on exactly why latrine detail was so important in this case and the reason it was so high up on the list of shit-to-get-done-immediately.
Another thump through the floor heralded the arrival of another element of the brigade combat team, and punctuated the moment before Costello’s long-awaited call came in.
“Stainless, Abbott. The passenger terminal is secure, our sweep is complete. Suit fatigue’s biting pretty hard.”
Powell made a ‘hmmph’ noise to himself before replying.
“Abbott, Stainless. Return to Farthrow. Be aware, suit technicians aren’t available. All HEAT to report for a debrief before de-suit.”
A click on the line signalled Costello’s understanding and acknowledgement, and Powell returned his attention to the report from MERCURY’s operators and the FIC.
Caledonia debris—some of which they were fairly sure was lifeboats—had been tracked describing a three hundred kilometer field across Gao’s equator, and a lot of it was over water. The majority of the stricken ship’s hull was still up there and possibly salvageable, but the SOR technicians on board had all been out of contact for a long time now.
Hopefully, that would change. Re-entry was a bitch for communications at the best of times thanks to all that opaque plasma. Bailing out of a burning, disintegrating spaceship in low orbit had to add all kinds of complications.
Still. The techs were trained for it, and their continued silence was deeply unwelcome.
“Titan.”
Akiyama looked up from his work and stood. “Sir?”
“How’s it holdin’ up?”
“Meereo’s debugging the new scripts now, and I’ve checked everything I can. We think it’s solid.”
“You aren’t gonna need to shut it down for a software update, are you?”
Akiyama winced almost imperceptibly and shook his head. Apparently he’d inadvertently asked a dumb question. “…No sir.”
“Champion,” Powell nodded, glad that that had gone right at least. They had wormhole suppression across an entire planet, and more importantly they could open timed exceptions in that suppression to admit their own logistics train. They had orbital superiority, ground defences and interceptors in place to keep Farthrow alive and running, and they had an army literally marching off one planet and onto another as fast as the jump arrays could cycle, ready to be shouted at by the MPs.
And all it had cost them was an invaluable warship. Even if Caledonia was salvageable, she would be out of the war for…years, probably, severely curtailing the SOR’s operating capacity.
And those were just the practical concerns. On a personal level, Powell was scared for his people. Badly scared for them. And he hated the impotence that came with knowing that, no matter what, the HEAT was a minimum of two days of recharge and rejuvenation time away from its next operation, assuming they cut corners and pushed too hard.
Heavy footsteps at the door heralded the Lads’ return. They filed in, and several bystanders both Gaoian and human alike immediately got the hell out of their way—every last one of them was splattered with gore. Even Costello was sporting a smear of the stuff across his chestplate, and both Firth and Arés were basically red from head to toe. Only the Gaoians were clean, and Powell was certain that was only thanks to the surface properties of their suits.
He shook his head, slightly awed. “In the wise words of her majesty Queen Elizabeth…Fookin’ ‘ell, lads.”
“It got interesting,” Costello summarized.
“Aye, well. We’ll go over it in a moment. Right now, I’m afraid I have bad news. Fall in.”
They formed an attentive half-circle around him.
“Turns out there’re already Hunters inside the shield and suppression perimeter,” Powell revealed. “A couple hundred scout ships. They mobbed Caledonia an’ sunk her. Our people are currently unaccounted-for.”
There was a long, sick silence.
“…Escape pods?” Vandenberg asked, eventually.
“Intel’s havin’ a hard time pickin’ them out from debris. We don’t expect to be in touch just yet, if there are any pods out there they’re prob’ly still comin’ down. Don’t lose faith, Lads. For now…get outta yer suits, clean ‘em up, do your therapy. I want us all suit-ready and mission-capable on emergency turnaround. You never know, it might be us they send to get our techs back. You have one hour, and then it’s debrief. Dismissed. Costello, a word.”
The lieutenant hung around and watched the team stumble out of the room, literally in Warhorse’s case—Arés looked like he’d just gone completely numb. Powell waited until they were well out of even the sharpest conceivable earshot before commenting.
“…Regaari and Arés,” he said, needing neither preamble nor elaboration.
“Reeling,” Costello said immediately. “I trust Vandenberg to keep them busy but they’re only human…or, uh, Gaoian.”
“Aye. Put all your weight behind him too. Hold it together.”
Costello cleared his throat. “Sir…if the techs are dead…especially Kovač…”
“Then this unit’s holed below the bloody waterline,” Powell finished. “Hold. Them. Together, Costello. I’m doin’ every damn thing I can to find out what the fook’s goin’ on and bring our people home, but I need time.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good man. Carry on.”
Costello nodded briskly and departed, clearly eager to get out of his suit and do his part. Powell grimaced to himself and returned to combing through all the information that was flowing past him.
It helped to have something to do.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Champion and Stud-Prime Daar of Clan Stoneback
If Yan was anything to go by, Daar and the other Champions would need to carefully cultivate a strong relationship between the Ten’Gewek and the Gao. Theirs was a formidable species. Daar found himself especially liking Yan a whole lot ‘cuz they were alike in a lot of ways, but the most importantest way was how Yan was a lot smarter than he generally let on.
The Ten’Gewek were like that: Keeda take their super-strong high-gravity cavemonkey bodies, the whole species’ real strength was in how stupid-quick on the uptake they were. Gaoians were smart too but it was different, somehow; most Gaoians were task-oriented and efficient, natural followers that worked best on teams. They were intelligent, but…reserved. Personally brave yet reluctant to lead. That meant the genuinely brilliant Gaoians were almost all Clan, or sometimes they were overlooked diamonds quietly leading amongst the Clanless. Centuries of Hierarchy tampering was probably to blame for that…
The Ten’Gewek, on the other hand, were all razor-sharp and fiercely independent with a strong sense of tribe. Within that tribe there was an easy flow between leading and following that Gaoians simply didn’t have and which Daar openly admired. They were rational, perceptive, experimental, and smart risk-takers who were quick on their feet and clever with their hands. Between them and the Humans it was hard to say which were the more intimidating.
For Daar’s money, it might still be the Humans: They felt so strongly that their emotions were contagious, but then they used that feeling rather than being ruled by it. Ten’Gewek were more…Vulcan. Calculating, logical, guarded. Not dispassionate, but slower-passionate. It was only by a little bit but it took more provocation to arouse them, and that extra degree of intensity made all the difference when it came to motivation. Humans could be just as rational, but they got fired up so much more easily that it honed their minds into hair-trigger weapons.
The Given-Men seemed to be the big exception to that. They got mad, quick, and they rode it like practiced athletes. Threaten their tribe and a Given-Man became about the canniest, deadliest foe you’d ever hate to have. And explosives really caught their imagination, especially Yan, who like Daar or Warhorse was arguably the most bestest of his species.
Yan had come along as a safety man, climbing behind Daar as he picked his way up and down the cliff. He watched everything Daar did very carefully, those big, bright eyes hardly blinking and focused intently on wherever Daar’s paws happened to be at any given moment.
The two of them were back at the bottom of the cliff again, taking a quick moment to catch their breath.
“We knapping big flint, yes? Just with sky-magic?” He’d figured Daar’s strategy out without even being told.
“Yeah!” Daar thumped his tail while he laid exhausted in the dirt, panting heavily and nursing his ‘juggernog’ energy-drink-and-protein cocktail. And his ibuprofen, a full eight hundred milligrams of the stuff. It worked wonders but any more would be dangerous maybe.
Yan trilled and laid down a spell next to Daar, stretching out his heavy limbs and recovering his strength. It hadn’t taken long for the big cavemonkey to figger out exactly what Daar was looking for; exposed fault lines in the rock, things that could be ‘nudged’ into letting go and sliding down the cliff, and of course he had a lifetime of working with stone. He’d found the perfect patches, right at the top of a cliff overlooking a horseshoe bend in the river.
Which meant a whole lot of climbing, and if Daar was being perfectly honest, he was pretty much out of gas. The long loping pace he’d used to keep up with Coombes was effective, but in the high gravity his timing was slightly off and it had slowly sapped all the energy out of him. He’d never properly recovered before climbing to the top of the cliff twice now and his every muscle was vibrating from pure exhaustion. Even rising to his paws while wearing his pack made him visibly strain.
Yan didn’t fail to notice.
“You…need more rest, yes?”
“Yeah. And food, but we ain’t got time. We got at least four more charges to plant. Can you see where?”
Yan scratched at his crest and thought for a moment before speaking. “If hill was big flint, I would hit…there, there, there and there.”
Top score! But now for the real test. “There’s two other good places we might look at. See them? Look for where the rock face changes ‘direction,’ or where there’s weird boulders.”
Yan frowned at him, then back at the rock. One of his stubby fingernail-claws excavated a shred of meat from between his teeth as he thought. “…There. Would be bad place to hit if making knife—break in two. But we not make knife.”
Daar gave him his most biggest pant-grin. “See? Sky-Magic is easy!”
“Is small-magic, but bigger,” Yan agreed.
“Yup! It’s all little things building on top of everything else, over and over again.” He flopped over, dug out an explosive charge, and waggled it in his paw. “This is just fire, but bigger. Anyway…Sky-Magic’ll prol’ly go a lot quicker ‘fer y’all, ‘cuz Daniel can point out where to look.”
“If we live.”
“Ayup. We better get on that.”
Yan looked at the locations they’d mapped out. They were all of course hugely spread out from each other, and Daar just…didn’t have the energy. He was done like only truly tiring work could do. More, even.
Yan noticed that, too.
“Maybe…I carry pack?” he offered.
“Won’t fit, it’s the wrong shape. Too long for ‘yer back.”
“Then I carry Daar.”
Daar was skeptical. “…Not even you’re that strong, Yan. I’m big. Bigger than almost anyone, Human or Ten’Gewek.”
“Yan bigger!” He hooted smugly. “What is words?” Yan asked, thought for a second, then grinned. His huge fangs glinted ferally in the sunset. “…‘Challenge accepted’.”
He stood and swaggered over toward the cliff in the thick-thighed, almost bow-legged way the bigger Ten’Gewek males walked about. He bounced the last few steps, gave the cliff a quick look, then beckoned Daar over. He groaned and rose to his paws, then to his feet, stretched, and plodded over alongside.
Daar looked up. It was a very tall cliff face.
Yan seemed undeterred. “Is not too high, Yan do.”
Daar begged to differ but he didn’t have much choice if they were going to get it done, so he duck-nodded warily and mentally prepared himself. Yan trilled, leaped up and onto the cliff—clear over Daar’s head, amazingly—and wrapped his tail under Daar’s arms.
“You hug around belly, yes?”
Daar did and locked his arms around Yan’s teak-hard middle as best as he could while that tail tightened and lifted him easily off the ground. A little wiggling, a better grip around Yan’s thick waist, and up the cliff they went. Quickly. Yan didn’t even seem to be trying.
Daar had seen a Burmese Python in a zoo on Earth one time, and after much plaintive diplomacy had persuaded them to let him hold it. He’d been struck by its dense muscular weight, and the sense of incredible power. Those things crushed Gaoian-sized critters to death in the wild and swallowed them whole.
Yan’s tail was both thicker and stronger, and just as flexible. He was very careful but every now and then an accidental little twitch in his tail would send a sharp pain through Daar’s chest and elicit an undignified yelp, and a grunted apology from Yan. It was easy to forget sometimes that Ten’Gewek effectively had five limbs, and used all five of them when climbing.
They climbed. Or rather, Yan climbed like he was crawling straight up the cliff without a care in the world. All four of his hands found every little crevice, the tiniest little bump to grip onto. Where he couldn’t quite fit his fingers into a crack, he’d grunt and make them fit, his sheer strength and those thick hoary nails breaking the rock to his will. Daar mostly just held on and did his best to help, or at least not make the climb worse.
Daar was always one to notice details. It was the secret to being good at anything really, and the way Yan tackled the sheer cliff and the lazy, effortless power he showed while doing it…that was prol’ly the scariest thing Daar had seen in a very, very long time. The last time he’d felt so unexpectedly overpowered had been his first ever meeting with Murray.
He hadn’t made that mistake since. The only way around it was trust and right now, Daar was utterly helpless, high up a cliff, and had no way out. He had to trust Yan, and so he did.
They must have looked ridiculous, though. By height and sheer volume Daar was easily the larger of the two, so for him to dangle from Yan’s tail must have been especially cartoonish…but Yan was Warhorse dense and considerably heavier than Daar. In any case it worked. It was dumb, but it worked, and therefore wasn’t dumb. Good mantra even if it felt dumb.
Fortunately the first spot had a little outcropping they could both stand on. There was barely enough room to move so Yan kept himself firmly anchored to the cliff face and his tail solidly in place. Daar swung his pack around, shaped a long, thin but substantial charge, and stuck it onto the face.
That done, Yan was scrambling crosswise across the rock when their time really started to get limited. There was a crackle and flash some distance away among the trees.
“Net, Tiny. My guys are really startin’ to slow down here. Dunno how long we can keep playin’ keep-away with these assholes.”
Daar growled to himself thoughtfully, then asked a question he was dreading. “We’re outta time, Yan. Can you go faster?”
Yan gave him a sympathetic look. “Yes, but…will hurt you, I think.”
“I only heard ‘yes.’ Let’s do it.”
Yan grunted in acknowledgement, and Daar suddenly found that he’d been wrong about the most scariest thing. Yan stopped climbing and started flying across the rockface like he was swinging through the trees. Every landing was another slamming impact that drove some of the air out of Daar’s chest before he bounced along the surface to the next tiny crack, then a flying leap across the surface, more bouncing, more speed. After the first crunch Daar learned how to brace himself and use his limbs, but he was sure he had a bruised rib or two, and he definitely would need a Crude recovery after the Yan-ride was over.
The second stop was easy. Yan let go and Daar took a moment to recover before quickly deploying a charge. It was small and Yan had some pointed questions about that, which Daar didn’t have the time to answer. He promised they could play later, though, and Yan seemed happy with that.
Daar wasn’t too keen on annoying Yan at the moment.
Onward. The third and fourth flew by in a few rib-crushing moments, and the fifth—Yan’s “break-knife-in-two” spot—got the special treatment. He’d been saving up for it, on the grounds that the more explosives he planted there, the more stuff would fall. Nice and simple.
The sixth was in the worst spot. There wasn’t any way to get to it without a huge leap across an open space at the top, and that meant Daar had a decision to make. He was mostly sure he had the strength to make the jump and jump back—Gaoians were quadrupeds after all and could leap pretty far—but he was in a lot of pain, his energy was dangerously low…
Risky. Alternatively, he could tell Yan exactly what to do and send him over. That was risky too, because the placement was critical and had to be exactly right or the thing might fizzle. It’d be the difference between a shower of rocks and a geological hammer.
Yan sensed the problem, too. “I can make jump, no problem. Maybe not make with you, though. But I jump, hold, you jump, I catch. Easy.”
Daar resisted the urge to flinch. The humans had a mild superstition about using the word ‘easy’ in these circumstances, and like so many other Human things their superstitions were contagious. Instead he duck-nodded. “Makes sense.”
Yan grinned at him then turned and jumped the gap without a moment’s hesitation. He flung himself across it with all the assured confidence of a lifelong brachiator, slammed into the far wall and stuck like his hands were made of glue. He turned and beckoned Daar over.
There was nothing to do but trust him. The sporadic chatter of rifles and the occasional thump and flare of a plasma weapon among the trees was definitely getting closer. Daar dropped to four paws, took three paces back, then pounced forward with his claws gouging at the scree. Three strides took him to the edge, he bunched his back muscles, leapt—
Four or five confusing, terrifying seconds later they finally came to a rest halfway down the slope, swaying perilously from only one of Yan’s hands. The Given-Man grunted powerfully, worked the fingers of his free hand into a fault in the rock, and hauled Daar upwards with his feet.
“…Maybe not as easy as I think,” he admitted after a second.
Daar unclenched every muscle he had. Suddenly, he understood what the human expression about life flashing before one’s eyes was all about. Not that he’d been risk-averse in his past, but something about swinging above a terminal drop on an alien world under supergravity amplified the pucker factor by an order of magnitude. Heights were generally among his least favoritest things.
Also, his abused bones were really starting to complain.
“…You okay Stone-Back?”
Not really. “Ow.”
Yar trilled in sympathetic humor. “Hurt is not dead!”
“Yeah,” Daar managed, still not quite able to tear his eyes away from the hungry drop below him, “we got that goin’ for us. Which is nice.”
Yan got his tail re-seated around Daar’s chest and ascended the cliff at his usual absurd pace. “We plant magic knapping clay now. Then I climb down slow. Easy, you see.”
“Please stop saying easy,” Daar requested, giving in to the superstition. “Bad things happen.”
Yan trilled again, and heaved him up to the blasting spot. The gunfire was close now. “You hurry,” he said.
In fact, Daar was only about half done planting the charge when the gunfire arrived in the form of Walsh, who seemed to be enjoying himself. At least, he was hollering like the crowd at a prize fight as he backed into the open ground, firing back the way he had come. Ten’Gewek hunters and Given-Men burst from the trees around him and scrambled over the rocky ground and dried stream bed to get away from the drones pursuing them.
As soon as they were past him, Walsh turned and put his head down. He charged for the cover of a rounded boulder and dropped into a feet-first skid as a Hierarchy drone burst out of the woods. A blue plasma bolt lit the twilight and threw deadly shadows across the cliff and trees as it flashed over his head and burst harmlessly against the cliff face.
There was the whip-crack sound of Etsicitty’s rifle from somewhere hidden at the gulley’s end, and the drone flipped out-of-control in a shower of sparks.
Daar got the charge set as he heard the whine of more drones climbing in pitch back among the trees. They were on the hunt now, and their quarry was in the open.
“Go!” he barked. “Now!”
Yan needed no more encouragement. He grabbed Daar hard enough that Daar felt something go click painfully in his shoulder, and practically threw them both down the rock face. Keeda only knew what the skin of his palms was made of, but it must have been tough as motorcycle leathers, ‘cuz their rapid skidding descent didn’t seem to trouble or harm him one bit.
Daar was still dizzy from that effortless display of superior cavemonkey athleticism when they reached the bottom, where they charged away from the killzone and towards the safety of the forest. Daar recovered some dignity there; even in his weakened state he was still the fastest thing in the Forest, and he made it to the root-hollows of an especially huge Forestfather before Yan came bounding to a halt along with him, desperately gulping air with his big hand clutching at his chest.
He was grinning like a maniac.
Daar keyed his radio. “All, Tigger. Charges set!”
“Tigger, Chimp. That’s my cue…”
There was a burst of gunfire in the woods, a fireworks show of blue flashes between the trees. More of the hunting parties burst from the brush, dashing for the safety of the far end of the gulley where Coombes and Julian were set up. A blue blast skewered one of them out in the open and he went sprawling, definitely dead. Plasma didn’t fuck around, there. Daar grimaced at the stench of burnt hair and flash-charred flesh on the breeze.
Hoeff was last out. He threw a grenade behind him as he ran with his head down, and got the timing about perfect because the first drone out of the woods behind him was just in time to be pulverized by the detonation. He helped one of the slowest Given-Men make it to safety, and the group dug into cover with their rifles aimed and their bows drawn.
A dozen strained heartbeats later, the ten or so remaining drones swarmed out of the woods as an angry ball of fusion blades and plasma fire, marching a disciplined pattern of fire up the gully that kept everybody’s heads down.
Fortunately, they were much too dumb to see the trap coming.
Daar held his detonator, held his nerve, waited until the perfect moment when all ten drones had just entered the killzone…and fired.
For the second time in a day, he made it rain stone.
The drones saw the danger coming, of course. They were smart enough to recognize hurtling rocks as a threat and tried to take evasive action but it was too little, too late. The mountain fell apart and slid down its own cliffs, with boulders bouncing like rubber balls and a sound so loud it was physically painful.
Eventually, the noise died down. Then it stopped, leaving only the bounce and clatter of a few last stray pebbles. Nobody moved for a long while, long after the pebbles had stopped, until even the inaudible hiss of the settling dust was gone on the breeze.
Very, very slowly, Daar lowered his detonator, and remembered how to breathe. It seemed to break the spell. Walsh thrust his fist into the air and whooped long and loud, Coombes sat back on his butt and rubbed at his stubbled jaw, Hoeff crossed himself and glanced skywards mouthing the word ‘thankyou.’ Around them, the hunters and Given-Men celebrated in their own ways.
Yan eyed Daar warily. “Small-magic, but bigger,” he grunted, and shook his head. “Godshit.”
“Yup.”
Yan sighed and stood up. He stalked out into the open, shaking his head. “Nearly, we save everyone,” he said, and trudged toward the fallen hunter. “So close…”
Daar followed him. “Who did we lose?”
Yan stopped by the body, knelt, and turned it over. He made a long, low, pained sound and hung his head.
“…Yan?”
“…Use radio. Call Sky-Thinker,” Yan ordered. He sat on his tail, rested his arms on his knees and wept.
Daar was having trouble seeing in the encroaching dark, but he didn’t need to. The nose told everything.
They’d lost Vemet.