Date Point: 15y6m AV
Alien Quarter, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Nofl
Patient. Calm. Menacing. It was funny how many emotions a dog could project just sitting there and quietly watching. There were subtleties to the precise lift and angle of those cropped ears, whether the tail was twitching gently to the left or the right, the exact angle of the skull… they communicated a lot for a non-sapient species.
Then again, they had evolved to communicate with a sapient species. And despite the fact that Bozo outmassed him by an order of magnitude, Nofl found he rather enjoyed the enormous canine’s company.
Especially when he disarmed Nofl’s guest so effectively.
“The Ark project is going nicely…” Tertiary Director Trafn said, edging away from Bozo’s thumping tail. “And the Directorate has accepted your argument regarding transparency with the Humans. If we intend to reverse-engineer some of their genome then it is probably best if we do it with their permission…”
“They have a nasty habit of finding out, dear,” Nofl said. He was running a few tests on one of Bozo’s puppies, the hybrid pups mothered by a very different breed. The youngsters were blessed with much more fur than their father, and it was longer, softer and silkier, but they were also equipped with a frankly alarming amount of muscle underneath. “And they have been so much less forgiving about the Directorate’s zoological program, after all…”
Trafn, unused to being referred to as ‘dear,’ sidled a little further away from Bozo, who panted affably at him.
“And if they say no?” he asked.
“Oh, they won’t,” Nofl predicted. “Not if you make them a good enough offer, anyway. They have vast archives of their own genetic data on file, and they trade in it quite regularly.”
Satisfied that the young dog was in good health, he stepped down from his examination stool and let it jump down after him. He opened the door and the two alien animals trotted out into the Quarter to go do… whatever it was dogs did around Folctha. He’d have to track them sometime.
He fired up the laboratory’s biofilter field and tidied up as it swept away any lingering deathworld hazards. And slobber. “Admittedly, I don’t think they use that information the way the Ark Project intends, but… well, they’re open-minded enough, hmm? Goodness, if you just told them what it was for you might get volunteers!”
“I’m sure,” Trafn commented drily. “I think it would be wiser to preserve the project’s secrecy, however.”
Nofl finished his tidying and turned around. “So, am I the Directorate’s go-to Human expert now?”
Trafn gave him a look of exceptionally faint irritation. “You… have been among them for some time now,” he said. “You know their ways, even if you do choose to mimic some of their affectations for reasons known only to yourself.”
“It’s a disarming tactic,” Nofl explained. “They think they know how to interpret a good College member who conforms to the vocabulary and behaviour guidelines. They don’t know how to interpret me.”
“Clowning around like you do is hardly dignified,” Trafn grumbled.
“And is that supposed to upset me?” Nofl blinked at him innocently. The answer of course was ‘no.’ Corti were not supposed to be upset by anything, traditionally, and it was always pleasing to catch a Director—especially a high-end one like a member of the Tertiary Tier—in an inconsistency. He flashed a little infuriating smile. “Or have you forgotten that we are in the process of reconfiguring ourselves?”
“Is abandoning our dignity part of our reconfiguration?” Trafn asked pointedly.
“If it interferes with our continuation as a species, yes.”
Nofl ambled over to his coffee pot and checked the brew. Caffeine levels were far, far below the toxic dose for Corti physiology—as far as Human biochemistry was concerned, it was entirely decaffeinated. He set it to pour him a Ristretto and turned back to business.
“What exactly does the Directorate need these genes for?”
“Baseline comparison, to begin with. Later, possibly, we might consider compatible splices or engineering our own genome along similar lines.” Trafn sniffed at the coffee scent with interest: the Corti palate loved bitter tastes. “The Directorate are examining all avenues to produce a superior Corti body.”
“Hmm.” Nofl wordlessly handed him the finished short drink and made another for himself. He watched, pleased, as Trafn sampled the coffee and obviously found it delicious. “They will, I think, want a show of real solidarity.”
“What do you mean?”
“Crossing the chamber on the Rich Plains was a useful gesture, but I have found that Humans and Gaoians both prefer more than mere symbolism. ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ as they say.” Nofl took up his own coffee but didn’t drink for now. He just appreciated the aroma. “The Directorate should consider the benefits of providing direct services to both species. The Gao liked what we did in the aftermath of the Hunter attack. If you want the Humans to trade in genetic material then a similar gesture may be useful.”
“…Thank you, Nofl. I will pass that observation on to my fellow Directors.” Trafn finished his ristretto and set the cup down next to the coffee machine. “…That is an excellent beverage.”
Nofl nodded. “It’s a stimulant. Alas, fatally toxic to us with the active ingredient, but I find I like the flavor. Allegedly, its discovery and growing popularity contributed to a revolution in Human thought and culture they call the Renaissance.”
“Intriguing.” Trafn considered the coffee some more, then turned for the door. “You are doing good work here. Continue.”
“Don’t worry dear. No fear of that,” Nofl lilted, falling back into his persona. Trafn gave him another curious look, then departed without further comment.
With him gone, Nofl returned to the subject of dogs. He was getting some very interesting data from Bozo and the puppies, very interesting indeed. It needed cataloging properly before he could consider the Directorate’s problem.
He sipped his coffee before returning to work and shut his eyes in delight at the taste.
It was perfect.
Date Point: 15y6m AV
The Ring, Hell System, Hunter space
Rachel “Ray” Wheeler
“…It’s hotter in here than I remember.”
Ray had to agree. After the shivering blast they’d endured upon re-entering the cooling system back where they’d first left it, the air had got warmer much faster than she recalled. Her shirt was going dark gray and sticking to her chest and back., and the sleeve was damp from where she’d used it to mop her face.
Garaaf was panting, but he duck-nodded and sniffed the air. “If we were much further up, it’d be hot enough to cook us. I explored it as a possible route to infiltrate the manufacturing areas a few years ago, and had to turn back.”
“Guess breaking the ships up generates a lotta waste heat…” Jamie mused.
Garaaf duck-nodded. “Especially when they melt stuff down. Just getting close enough to see that nearly cost me the rest of my face… There’s your ship!”
“Ray. Berry.” Spears communicated his meaning by tone of voice alone, and the three of them picked up the pace, hustling up to their stolen ride’s ramp with their rifles up and ready.
It turned out to be empty, and they waved the others in. Garaaf and Jamie promptly vanished into the engineering bay.
Seconds later a disappointed whining noise floated back out. It was followed by Garaaf, who threw himself onto the closest thing the ship’s hold had to a couch—at least, it was soft—and dragged his claws across the fabric.
“It doesn’t have a jump,” he lamented.
“…Well that was a waste of time,” Conley muttered. He promptly drew ‘shut-the-fuck-up’ glares from Ray and Spears, and a snarl from Garaaf.
“Absolutely no, it wasn’t,” The Whitecrest told him. “There’s still stuff here we can use. We’ll just need… hmm.” He sprang back to his paws and retreated back into engineering. “Choi, where’s the warp drive on this thing?”
Jamie sounded surprised. “Uh, I think it’s over—”
There was an urgent hiss from the ramp: Cook. “Ray! Spears! Trouble!”
That wasn’t a welcome word, not at all. Ray darted back to join him and Berry at the door.
The trouble wasn’t hard to hear: clanging, metallic noises were echoing down the tunnel from upwind. They sounded unpleasantly like the same kind of noises made by the heavy door they’d used downwind.
“Shit,” Spears muttered. “If those are Hunters…”
“It’s a straight tunnel. Nowhere to hide,” Ray pointed out.
“…Okay. We’re gonna shoot first. If we stay in the dark and take ‘em out fast…”
“Backup’ll still come running,” Cook said.
“Yeah, but it’ll come a lot faster and bigger if they know we’re human,” Ray said. “We gotta drop ‘em before they see us.”
“R-right….” Berry cleared his throat, then lowered himself to the deck and squirmed out along the ground until he was tucked safely in a deep shadow where their Hunter ship had peeled back some of the hull around it. He stayed prone, aimed his rifle and waited. Ray moved quicker, staying low and darting out to the far side of the tunnel before dropping down, and Spears parked himself in a similar shadow to Berry’s on the opposite side of the hull breach. They were pathetic hiding positions, but the Hunters—if Hunters they were—would be looking toward a bright light source. Hopefully, their eyes adjusted to light in about the same way that a human’s did…
Ray could barely bring herself to even risk breathing. She was certain that every breath would give them away, despite the roaring hot air current. All she could do was aim, keep her finger carefully away from the trigger to avoid shooting at shadows, and wait.
Cook stayed on the ramp with his spear in one hand and his knife in the other. He looked like he was actually relishing the prospect of imminent violence.
There were more clanging sounds, then the scratching skitter of too many clawed feet on steel. Shadowy shapes loomed huge up the tunnel.
“Steady…” Ray muttered to herself
They were Hunters indeed. Four of them navigated a kind of floating pallet laden with equipment up out an exit that must have been only a hundred yards up from where they’d left the ship. Ray internally kicked herself: They had gone the longest possible way around by choosing to go downwind.
These ones weren’t as… spiky as she was used to seeing from Hunters, which were usually laden with blades and weapons and stabbing implements. These ones were bigger, squarer and their cybernetics had a blocky industrial look.
Ray glanced over at Spears and Berry. There were nods, they returned to their aiming. One of the Hunters raised a twisted arm to point at the hull breach, and Spears shot it. Its face burst in a slurry of nasty pinkish blood but rather than collapse dead it writhed and actually vocalized, the first time Ray had heard a Hunter make any noise: A high, thin, agonized shriek.
It lasted only an instant before Ray and Berry fired too, and all four dropped. One of them writhed in the tunnel for a second before Berry shot it again and it finally went still.
Cook peeked around the corner. “…Goddammit, you coulda left some for me,” he complained.
“Not now, Cook,” Ray told him. “Guys! We gotta go now!”
Conley, Choi, Holly and Garaaf bundled out of the ship. Conley groaned when he looked up the tunnel. “You mean there was an exit that close and we missed it?”
“This is not the time to worry about that,” Garaaf said, echoing Ray’s sentiment. “They’ll be coming.”
“Fuck.”
They dashed over to the fallen Hunters and checked them over. Up close, these ones were quite different: a little more muscular, their hides tougher and ridged in places. One’s eyes were still grotesquely open, and rather than the spider-like black jewels she’d seen on other Hunters these ones had weird horseshoe pupils and vivid green irises.
“Workers,” Garaaf sniffed. “Probably came to repair what they thought was a small hull breach.”
“Workers?” Jamie asked as the Gaoian stooped to rummage through the tool kit they’d brought with them. “So, like, the Hunters we usually see are the soldiers?”
“Like insects? Is there a Queen? Drones?”
“No.” Garaaf pulled something out of the kit, sniffed it, then threw it over his shoulder. “ll explain when we’re safe…Ah! ”
He pocketed a prize and grabbed a double pawful of other stuff, which he thrust on whoever had spare hands. “Let’s go.”
None of them were inclined to argue or waste time. They hauled ass up the tunnel to where the Hunters had come in and, finding it clean of Hunters for now, slid down the steep steel chute on their asses. Cook even let out a “Yippie-aye-yay!” and giggled like a schoolboy.
“Let’s do that again!” he said, the moment he bounced to his feet at the bottom.
“Focus,” Ray reminded him. “We’re in trouble here.”
Cook didn’t seem remotely contrite. “Gotta squeeze out as much fun as I can before I die!” he chirped, but pounced on the exit hatch. “We ready?”
Conley finished helping Holly get her cargo truck down the ramp and nodded. “Ready.”
“Ready,” Spears confirmed.
The door squealed open, and Cook seemed almost disappointed to find that the far side was entirely deficient of waxy-skinned flesh-eating alien monsters.
Garaaf shouldered past him. “…I know where this is,” he announced. “This way.”
Spears followed him. “Ray, up front. I’ll watch our backs.”
“Right.” It made sense. Berry was their best shot but in times of stress he couldn’t get a word out, meaning he’d have made a bad choice for rearguard. She ducked out past Spears and followed Garaaf.
“Jesus, it’s hot out here…” Conley muttered.
“It’s about to get hotter,” Garaaf told him. Sure enough, there was a dull orange glow around a bend in the tunnel up ahead.
They picked up the pace, quickly discovering that Garaaf was their slowest member. His short legs and long torso just weren’t made for running.
“Dude, that looks kinda awkward,” Jamie commented after a few seconds. “You look like you’d be doing better on all fours.”
“Can’t… hold a gun… on all fours…” Garaaf replied. He was panting in the heat.
“…You don’t have a gun.”
Garaaf looked down at his paws and the stump of his ear waggled in a way that somehow managed to convey irritation at himself. He dropped to all fours and sure enough his gait was immediately more fluid and easy. “…Habit…” he grumbled.
The bend up ahead turned out to be another catwalk over another huge space… only this time, it was a well-lit vision of Pandemonium. There was glowing metal everywhere, being carted through the air by drones, held under enormous hydraulic presses or crashed down onto by titanic drop hammers. Hunter Workers were moving in well-drilled gangs down there, dragging chunks of steel into position, turning them, levering drifts, dies and punches into place.
There was pure technology being applied down there, too, well above and beyond the industrial-age bedlam on the floor. Ray had to grimace and shield her eyes as a loop of painfully bright molten steel literally flowed out of one orifice on the wall, looped through the air in what must have been an invisible channel of forcefields, and was siphoned easily into a mold without spilling so much as a stray spark.
The air was skin-tightening, throat-scratching hot.
It was all so distracting that the three Hunters that stepped out of an elevator in front of them caught them all completely off-guard. The Hunters seemed equally flat-footed, and for a stretched second the two groups stared at each other as though neither could quite believe what they were seeing.
Cook acted first. With a gleeful howl he lunged forward and his makeshift fusion claw knife tore through the lead Hunter’s neck like it was a hanging salmon, almost completely severing its head. Ray’s numbed body jolted into action as the Hunter crumpled: her rifle came up, her finger slipped inside the trigger guard, three rounds drilled a second Hunter in its skinny chest before she’d even realized what she was doing.
Cook was in the way which kept her from getting a clear shot on the third, but he was in the middle of ripping it open from belly to throat anyway. With a roar he grabbed its arm, heaved, and the spindly mass of broken legs and guts he’d made went crashing over the railing before anybody could cry out to stop him.
It plummeted down into the forge below and landed smack in the middle of a work gang, spread-eagled, smashed and sizzling on the block of red-hot steel they’d been working.
They all stared down through the grating between their feet as the Hunters below first examined their fallen counterpart then looked up to peer into the shadows, until the stupidity of his own action finally broke through Cook’s bloodlust.
“…Shit.”
Garaaf shot past him in a furry blur. “RUN!!”
That spurred them into action. In fact, at a dead four-pawed sprint Garaaf was tough to keep up with, but Ray put her head down and ran as hard as she could ever remember, willed her lungs and ribs to keep going, ordered her quads and calf muscles to shut up and work.
Garaaf seemed to know where he was going, at least. He jinked left at an intersection up ahead, paused long enough for the humans to see where he’d gone and plunged right down another branch.
She heard shots behind her: Spears.
“Move! Move!!”
Garaaf sprang back into view from around the corner ahead. “Not that way!!”
The source of his desperation was obvious: Hunters were hot on his heels, a dozen or more. They skidded to a halt on seeing the humans and abandoned their quarry in favor of more valuable meat, giving Ray and Berry no choice but to stop running and start shooting.
Two rifles. Thirty rounds per magazine. In tight quarters and against such large targets, neither of them had any trouble hitting their targets and as the first Hunters collapsed their carcasses bogged down the ones behind… but Ray could hear Spears’ rifle still hammering away behind her, underpinned by battle cries from Conley, Choi and Cook.
Thank God these ones were Workers. Not a one of them had a fusion blade on them, but that little prayer of thanks turned into cursing when a hot steel bolt of some kind kicked sparks off the wall inches to Ray’s left—a nail gun.
Berry drilled the offending Hunter in the throat, spraying horrible fluffy Hunter brains the general color and texture of moldy cauliflower all over the wall. Three more shots slew two more Hunters and bathed the ones behind them in sticky off-colour blood.
Then a second nail caught him dead-center in the chest.
Time slowed for Ray. She saw Berry stagger, saw him frown slightly as if he was a little confused. He looked down at the foot-long metal spike through his heart, his rifle fell from his fingers, and his body slumped heavily to the deck next to it a second later.
“Tom!”
Ray dropped to one knee and kept firing despite the tears that threatened to blur her eyesight, barely noticing another nail that plucked through her hair and nicked her right ear.
Garaaf pounced through the melee, snatched up the fallen rifle, raised it and fired. It was an awkward shape for him, a little too long in the stock, but whether out of desperation or sheer skill he drilled his targets in a tight grouping. Within a second, the corridor in front of them was clear again and the last Hunter staggered, gurgled, and collapsed.
There was silence front and back except for her own heavy breathing… and sobs.
She couldn’t check on Tom just yet. She turned, checked what was going on behind her. Spears, Conley, Choi and Cook were all still standing. Jamie’s shield had three or four nails sticking out of it and blood was running down Pete’s arm. There was a clatter as Spears ejected his magazine and rammed a new one home.
Holly was down.
Some panicking big-sister instinct took over and Ray flung herself to the smaller woman’s side. Holly was still alive, but she croaked out an agonized sound as Ray confirmed that fact. Blood was sticking her sweater to her belly.
“Holly!”
“Shit!”
Pete discarded his spear and shield and dropped down next to them. He looked back over Ray’s shoulder as he grabbed his first aid kit. “…Tom?”
“He’s…” Ray could barely bring herself to say it. “…He’s dead.”
Conley just took a breath and focused on Holly’s wound. “…Pressure. Here.”
Ray complied, though part of her died when she heard the pained noise her ministrations dragged out from between Holly’s gritted teeth.
Pete worked fast at least, and the first aid kit was meant for trauma situations. He sprayed some kind of a white foam into the gash on Holly’s stomach, which expanded to fill the wound. Some kind of clear plastic sticking patch and a bandage covered it over, and he finished the job with a painkiller injection.
“…Is that enough?” Ray asked.
Conley gave her a look that said it wasn’t. “It’s all I can do.”
Garaaf touched Ray on the shoulder and she looked up. The rest of them were gathered round. Cook was kneeling at Tom Berry’s side, closing his eyes and murmuring something.
“We have to go.”
“Don’t tell us to leave her,” Ray snarled at him, but he shook his head viciously.
“Never. Clan stick together. But we have to go.”
Cook wordlessly handed them Berry’s jacket. “Stretcher,” he said, and offered his own unused spear. Combined with Conley’s, they quickly had a basic enough litter lashed together that Conley was able to drag Holly along on it.
They stopped to say goodbye to Berry. None of them wanted to leave him to the Hunters, but there was nothing else they could do. Nobody knew what to say, anyway.
The only words spoken were Ray’s.
“…I’m sorry, Tom.”
Thus ended the only kind of funeral they could manage. It was pathetic, it was far less than he deserved, it left Ray feeling hollow and sick… but they couldn’t remain.
They picked up their gear and moved on.
Date Point: 15y6m AV
Dataspace adjacent to Mrwrki Station
The Entity
Simply talking about itself was… therapeutic.
Darcy was no kind of a counsellor by her own admission, but she was a sympathetic ear and thirsty to learn about what the Entity was, how it had come to be, how it thought about and perceived things.
The Ava-memories supplied it with the suspicion that she felt guilty, and was being soothed by the conversation in her own right. The Entity had spent some time thinking about that notion, and had arrived at the conclusion that it didn’t want Darcy to feel any guilt.
After all: if Six had not trapped Ava Ríos all those years ago in Egypt, the Entity would not now exist. Its genesis was arguably horrific… but here it was. And it was grateful to exist.
Watching Darcy interact with the Ava-memories was intriguing as well. There was a relationship there that it was not properly equipped to understand, and when it tried to interpret the experience via the Ava-memories it found a peculiar block. The memories, it seemed, had limits on their own capacity to self-reference and interpret themselves. They refused to enter that particular loop entirely.
None of the Igraen memories were remotely equipped to understand either. Not even the Hierarchy agents, who knew the most about matterspace life forms, really understood what was going on there. They suggested words like “motherly” and “sisterly” without really and truly knowing what those words meant.
Meanwhile, the Ava-memories vigorously rejected those labels. Curious.
They had always been the most… lively of the Entity’s assimilated data. Sometimes they seemed less like the shell of a personality that it could use as a proxy, and more like the actual personality itself, bound and compelled to say what the Entity wanted said.
Maybe she had just been an unusually lively person.
It seemed like a lively conversation, at least. The Entity experienced more like a listener in an adjacent room, hearing muffled discussion through the door in a language it didn’t understand. Every so often, a note summarizing the conversation to date would slide under the door, and it would reply with a note conveying the thrust of what it wanted its advocate to say next.
All it could do was trust that the advocate was faithfully communicating its wishes, and accurately reporting what had been said. It didn’t really understand, but the conversation was definitely emotional.
They had been at it for hours, and Darcy inevitably ran out of energy first. The Entity was incapable of exhaustion: Darcy hadn’t eaten, drank or slept for most of a day. She finally made her apologies and retired, and the Entity was free to compile everything that had happened, and pay attention to other concerns.
On a whim, it checked its proxies and spy programs in the Hunter networks again.
Darcy turned as the Ava-memories exclaimed her name with a definite air of urgency.
“…Yes?”
“The Humans in Hunter space! They’re still alive!”
Darcy came back to life, as if there had been hidden reserves of energy and alertness there, just waiting for a crisis to activate them. She sprang back to her desk. “They are? Where? How?”
The Entity fed her all the information it could, as quickly as it came in. Within minutes, other analysts had appeared, men in uniform were speaking urgently with each other or into communications devices.
It had no way of telling the people on the Ring, not yet. But in mere minutes, decisions were being made that began the slow spinning-up of two species’ war machines.
In the middle of the bedlam, it left behind a proxy to communicate on its behalf and flashed away into the dataspace, headed for the Ring’s networks itself.
An opportunity had presented itself, and the Entity was not about to let it slip away.
It would attend to this personally.
Date Point: 15y6m AV
The Ring, Hell System, Hunter Space
Rachel “Ray” Wheeler
They were attacked twice more as Garaaf led them, but neither time in as many numbers or as ferociously. The Hunters had been stung: presumably they were building up their forces for a more serious attack. The first time, Ray, Spears and Garaaf laid down a withering volley that slaughtered their attackers in seconds. The second time, Jamie took down two with his spear, while Cook tore a third limb-from limb.
After that, they had peace. Whether they’d cleared out every Hunter in the area, or just convinced them to stalk rather than attack, Ray didn’t know and Garaaf didn’t care to guess.
Or maybe it was just that they never got a chance to attack a fourth time. Shortly after the third attack, Garaaf paused to check a spot on the wall. He made a pleased noise and levered up part of the floor plating.
There was a mark scratched into the metal where he’d checked, Ray realized.
“My smuggling route,” he explained, and vanished into the hole he’d made.
It was cramped in there. Even Ray, who was only average height at best, had to duck her head slightly: Poor Conley was forced down into an awkward and exhausting half-crouch.
“Hunters can’t fit in here,” Garaaf explained. “Don’t worry, there’s more room up ahead.”
Alright for him, Ray decided. On four-paws, the Gaoian had plenty of room to move but the humans were all at risk of banging their heads.
All except Holly, anyway. She’d gamely tried to stand and walk on her own, but even if Conley hadn’t vetoed it the attempt had obviously been more than she could handle. Ray wished she could do something: even with her system full of a potent painkiller, Holly was obviously in tremendous pain.
Garaaf was true to his word, however. The ceiling got higher after about fifty yards, to the point where even Conley could stand up straight again.
“What is this?” Jamie asked, looking around.
Garaaf shrugged. “I always figured it’s a utility corridor.”
“It can’t be, there’s no way the Hunters can fit in here…”
“No, but robots can… or at least, they could if I hadn’t disabled the tramway.” Garaaf aimed a claw at a metal rail on the ceiling. “They’d have to dismantle this whole part of the Ring to get at my sabotage, too.”
“So from down here, you can get around unnoticed…” Spears nodded. “Useful.”
“Means I don’t have to get in with the crush around the trough at feeding time, too,” Garaaf said. “One of my little warrens goes right up to the delivery system… Actually, if I know anything about Humans it’s that you guys eat a lot. Are you hungry?”
Ray wanted to say that she wasn’t, but her stomach had different ideas. It immediately let out a loud growling sound. Maybe that sick feeling in there wasn’t all grief and fear…
“Hungry or not, we need’ta eat an’ drink anyway,” Cook declared. “Gotta keep our strength up.”
“This way, then.”
There were a few more tight spots, including one where they had to worm through on hands and knees, but Garaaf hadn’t been exaggerating—his warrens really did go everywhere. Every so often they heard clanging and crashing sounds from above and around them, and one time they all stopped and held their breath as something made the Ring around them shake and hammer with its footsteps. It sounded like a Hunter the size and mass of a tank.
When they eventually stopped, Ray was tireder than she could ever remember being. Her knees and shins were raw from crawling through tight spaces, the cut on her ear was throbbing, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been awake…
But Garaaf’s den was a little slice of paradise. It was quiet, it was cozy… he’d even set up some kind of a decorative water feature rather like a Shishi-odoshi in the corner under a leaky pipe, though this one was muffled so that rather than making a clatter whenever it tipped up and spilled its water it instead leant some texture and rhythm to the steady tinkle and splash.
The sound of running water coupled with a warm distant hum from somewhere to create a soothing, warm atmosphere.
“We’re directly above the shanty,” Garaaf said as he lit a makeshift lamp that filled the space with warm yellowish light. “And the food balls run down through… here.” He indicated a wide pipe that he’d sawn a little bit out of. There was a catch tray at the bottom, made from a scavenged I-beam, and it was brimming with doughy gray spheres about as big as a pool ball.
“They don’t taste of anything much, but they’re better than starving,” Garaaf commented, handing them out. Ray bit into hers eagerly. He was right, it had even less flavor than even plain wheat dough would have but it was the first thing she’d eaten in years that wasn’t the Hot.
A spike of loss and grief crossed her mind as she tried to imagine Berry’s expression if he’d been here.
Water was handed out in a tall “glass” made from what looked like uPVC. Garaaf’s remaining ear moved in a fascinated little dance as he watched all of the humans drink, and drink, and drink.
“…I’d heard you people ate and drank a lot, but seeing it in action is something else,” he declared. “You all just ate three days of rations each.”
“Can… is that a problem?” Choi asked. “That sounds like a lot.”
“Relax, I usually keep a month’s worth of food in here for safety’s sake, and I can refill it every time the Shanty gets fed. Sometimes I wondered if I was being over-prepared but… well. Clearly I, uh… wasn’t…”
He trailed off, round about the same time that Ray realized she was crying. Up until now she’d been focused, scared, surviving. She’d had Holly to worry about, and the tight maze of the warrens to navigate. Now that they were somewhere safe and quiet, reality was catching up with her.
Her hands had started shaking. She tried to stop it, tried to clamp down but just couldn’t. She couldn’t stop the tears that blinded her, or the choking feeling in the back of her throat, or the hiccups that came on all by themselves. She hated it all, she hated how much she needed the hug that Spears gave her.
Garaaf cleared his throat and slipped away to give them some privacy. After a second, Conley stood up and followed him. He paused before vanishing, gave Ray a long and unreadable stare, then ducked under some piping and left.
Holly groaned as she reached out to take Ray’s hand, Jamie and Cook made their own delicate exit, and…
Time passed. Eventually, Ray managed to find herself again, at least enough to look around her and realize that Spears had been weeping too. Holly was dry-eyed but her face was back in that blank expression she’d worn for so long, pinched and wan.
“…God… he was standing right next to me…”
Spears gave her upper back a small rub. “I know.”
“I got him killed.”
“It was a crew decision, Ray. We came up here together.”
She sighed and nodded. She wanted to blame herself anyway, wanted to imagine that if she’d just shot a little straighter, picked her targets a little better… But she knew how that conversation would go. Spears would try and talk her out of it, but she needed to feel guilty. Somehow, she could feel in her belly that if she didn’t allow herself to feel responsible for Berry’s death she’d never be able to heal from it.
Assuming she lived long enough to get the chance.
Holly gave her hand a squeeze, then winced and touched her dressing, which sent another stab of guilt through Ray’s soul. She’d seen Conley’s expression when he tended that wound: He thought it was fatal. Another of her friends to feel guilty over… except Holly had come to mean more to her over the years than mere friendship. Whenever she imagined survival, escape and somehow getting out of Hell… she’d always imagined it in the form of getting Holly home. If she died… Ray doubted she’d have a purpose any longer.
Which meant they needed a plan, and they needed to put it into action now.
She strai ghtened her back and cast around. Jamie and Cook were slumped in an alcove a few meters away, talking quietly. There was no sign of Garaaf or Conley.
“…Guys.”
They raised their heads.
“…We can’t stay here forever. They’ll tear the whole Warren apart to find us.”
“Right.” Jamie groaned and stood up. “I’ll go find Garaaf. Hope he got something useful off the ship.”
Cook nodded. “I’ll go find Pete.”
Garaaf, it turned out, had been busy. He had a workshop of sorts next to his living area that was little more than a workbench and whatever tools he’d been able to steal, scavenge, repair or fashion for himself. He seemed pleased with whatever it was he’d made, though—when he returned, he was turning it over in his hands, inspecting it. Ray felt certain she even saw him sniff it, though what he could possibly hope to glean from the scent of cobbled-together circuitry was beyond her.
He had a desk in the living area, with a power supply that he’d obviously (and dangerously) tapped from the power conduits in the ceiling and run through a home-made converter. It looked like junkheap science—in fact it was junkheap science—but when he plugged his new creation in, all that happened was an LED on the top blinked green, then settled to a steady glow.
“…I’ve waited a long time to make this,” he said. “I just needed one component off a ship with a working warp drive.”
“…The distortion field amplifier?” Jamie asked, stooping to get a better look. Garaaf waved him off.
“Yeah. Watch this.” He clawed a switch on the side, and cleared his throat.
“…Lost cub howling, lost cub howling. Big brother played fire-in-the-cold, now plays hide-in-the-dark. Stole some toys, mother’s angry, showing fangs, claws out. Made some friends from Clan Dirtyfoot. Want to play fetch and run home, here’s how we play.” He slotted what looked like a data drive into a port on the device’s side and watched intently as it did… whatever it was doing.
He rocked back and flicked an ear with a satisfied air when the green light atop the device blinked three times and turned blue.
“There.”
“…What was all that?” Cook asked. “Sounded like some spy shit.”
“That’s right. Whitecrest cant. Our own private language, sort of. One of them, anyway. You can probably guess most of what I said.”
“Clan Dirtyfoot?” Spears asked. He looked amused.
“Well… the Gaoian word that most directly maps to the word ‘Earth’ literally means ‘dirt’.” Garaaf had the good grace to shrug apologetically. “If it’s any consolation, the code words for some of the other species are much less complimentary.”
“Yeah?” Ray found room for a touch of amusement, somehow. “Do tell?”
“…The Guvnurag would translate most directly as ‘Clan Wide-Arse’.”
Even Holly giggled.
“So… now what?” Conley asked, once the little ripple of laughter was gone.
“Now? Sleep. I’m almost falling down dead here, I don’t know how any of you are still going strong.” Garaaf stepped away from his desk and headed for a nest-bed he’d assembled in one corner. He curled up in it and tucked his nose under his tail. “We’re going to need our strength for whatever comes back from my Clan.”
“Sleep? You’re kidding.” Conley looked skeptical.
“Gotta do it sometime, Pete,” Spears said. “And he’s right, it’s been a long day.”
Garaaf raised his head. “I promise you, there’s nowhere safer than here on this whole Ring,” he said. “Even if they somehow found us, it would take weeks for them to dismantle the station and dig us out… and I made sure there are plenty of escape routes. Lights.”
The lights dimmed, until all that remained was a dull orange warmth that did little more to the darkness than put some edges and shapes on it, and the steady slow blinking green from on top of the device on the desk.
Conley sighed and found a length of open floor to stretch out in. Ray realised quite suddenly that Spears had never actually taken his arm from around her. She glanced at Holly, who’d snuggled down on her litter and was probably as comfortable as she was going to get, then decided not to question it. Right now, a little human warmth was just what she needed.
He stiffened a little as she wriggled into him, as if he’d only just noticed that he was holding her too, then shrugged himself into a more comfortable posture. He was mostly bones and lean muscle, not the most comfortable man she’d ever cuddled up to… but within seconds of resting her head on his shoulder, Ray was asleep.
She was so exhausted that, mercifully, she didn’t dream.