Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology

by Rhett C. Bruno

  The dolphins swam toward it.

  Professor Lerner opened a channel to the second submersible. “Cec, I’m prepping the tranquilizers. Ready on the nets and have Felix move into flanking position. The sunlight should make targeting easy.”

  “Uh,” Omar said, “Professor, that can’t be sunlight. I don’t know what that is.”

  Lerner glanced up at the monitors and froze. The patch of sunlight had grown unbelievably bright; the dolphins swam into it in single file. As they disappeared into the sunny swirl, their tracking beacons blipped out one by one.

  Omar’s hand was still on the throttle and he couldn’t bring himself to move. Icky II was heading right into the heart of the light. Their bow was less than a foot away when the light simply died. Mere yards ahead of them, a wall of solid rock rose out of the sea floor.

  “Oh, shit!” Omar yelped, and threw the sub into full reverse. “Back off Icky One! Back off!” In his rear monitors, he saw the older submersible swing hard to port and throttle into reverse.

  Disaster averted, the two little vessels hovered side by side, lights trained on the canyon’s rocky face.

  “Win,” said Cecily’s voice over the comm, “I’ve lost all the beacons. Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” her husband murmured, his voice hushed. He turned to Omar. “What did we just see? Those weren't ... what were those animals?”

  Omar had had more time to consider this than his bosses had. He had no answers, per se, just a sneaking suspicion. “I don't think they were animals, sir,” he said. “At least, no more or less than we are. I think they were just folks not from around here who needed to catch the last flight home.”

  About Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Born in California, raised in Nebraska, Maya’s fascination with speculative fiction dates from the night her dad let her stay up late to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. Mom was furious. Dad was unrepentant. Maya slept with a nightlight until she was fifteen and developed a passion for things that came from outer space or went bump in the night.

  Maya started her writing career sketching science fiction comic books in the back row of her elementary school classroom. Since, her short fiction has been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Century, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, and Jim Baen’s Universe, and often anthologized. She’s also been a finalist for the John Campbell, BSFA, and Sidewise awards. Her debut novel, The Meri, was a Locus Magazine Best First Novel. More recently, she penned a series of Star Wars novels with Michael Reaves, including the New York Times bestseller, Star Wars: The Last Jedi—a Legends novel of the Expanded Universe.

  Maya is a founding member of Book View Café and lives in San Jose, where she writes, performs, and records original and parody music with her husband Jeff. The duo have plumbed the depths of absurdity with a series of parody music videos, including the viral “Midichlorian Rhapsody.” The song is on their Grated Hits CD. The couple has also produced three musical children: Alex, Kristine, and Amanda.

  You can follow Maya on these websites and on Facebook and Twitter: www.mayabohnhoff.com, www.jeffandmaya.com, and www.bookviewcafe.com.

  Take Only Memories, Leave Only Footprints

  by David Bruns

  THERE WAS NO SECTION IN THE RANGER HANDBOOK LABELED “GRIEF.”

  Sure, there were requirements for a complete physical and a mental health recertification following the loss of a familiar—Ziva had completed all that months ago. Since then, she’d been through the handbook cover to cover and there was nothing—nothing—to tell her how she should feel without her best friend by her side.

  So she’d gone back to work. Her hand strayed to the smaller seat next to hers, aching for the feel of his dense fur. Emptiness.

  “We are in stable orbit over Ragos, Ziva,” said Lola, her ship’s computer.

  “Acknowledged,” Ziva said. Felix’s slim figure had barely reached her hip when he stood on his hind legs, but the ship seemed awfully empty without him.

  The blue and green planet, so similar to Earth, raised a lump in her throat. It seemed as if everything around her was some sort of emotional trigger now. Maybe she wasn’t ready for active duty after all.

  The comm panel trilled, indicating an incoming transmission. The green and blue logo for the World Interstellar Park Rangers flashed on the screen.

  Ziva squared her shoulders and told Lola to accept the call. Her spine got even more rigid when she saw who was calling. Brigadier General Halsey Taylor had a close-cropped haircut and an even closer smile.

  “Sir, I expected Commander Acton,” Ziva blurted out. She cursed to herself. She should have changed into a clean uniform and at least bothered to comb her hair.

  Despite the light years of separation, Taylor’s eyes bored into hers. “I wanted to talk to you myself, Ranger Hansworth.” The skin around his eyes softened a fraction. “I know how hard it is to lose a familiar … there’re no words. Your partner’s name was Felix, right? Venusian sand otter?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ziva managed to get out.

  “My first familiar was a sand otter, too, you know.”

  “I didn’t, sir.”

  Taylor’s eyes drifted off screen and he gave a slight nod. “Look, Ziva, here’s the thing. I know you’ve just returned to active status, but we’ve got a bit of a situation brewing in your sector.”

  “I think work is the best thing for me right now, sir.”

  Taylor’s tight smile returned. “I was hoping you’d say that, Ranger.” An incoming file opened on the right side of her screen. “Ragos is a habitable planet, pre-industrial technology base. Bio-diversity rating of 6—and falling fast.”

  Ziva grunted. She’d seen worse, but the trend lines showed a precipitous falloff in the next few decades.

  “Why the drop, sir? Natural disaster?”

  “I wish. Poachers.” Her screen showed a large, four-legged animal with leathery skin and a crown of horns, reminding her of a cross between an old Earth elephant and a triceratops. “The survey bots categorized them as hathosaurs, but the natives call them broosers. They hunt them for their horns, if you can believe it. What these natives don’t realize is that everything in their ecosystem relies on this creature. From the birds that feed off the insects on its skin to the way it keeps the forests clear of underbrush to the unique bacteria that thrives in its dung, this animal is the glue that holds that region’s bio-diversity together.”

  Taylor’s tone had gotten increasingly heated. You didn’t get to his rank in the WISPR Corps without a passion for the job. For two centuries, mankind used Earth and its biome as if they had a spare somewhere in the universe. The result was a planet where citizens had to get respiratory enhancements implanted at birth and most of the necessities of life were imported from off-planet. Humans survived, but they also recognized there was a better way.

  The WISPR Corps was modeled after the old National Park Service of the United States, an agency with a mission to preserve bio-diversity—hopefully, without interfering with the native humanoid population.

  “Anyway,” Taylor continued in a calmer voice, “this is a simple, but time-sensitive job.” He brought up a topographical map on the adjoining screen. A red circle pulsed like a beacon. “That’s the herd we’ve identified for intervention. The native humanoid population is in the middle of a civil war, making these animals vulnerable to poaching. If you can just move them across this mountain range”—a dotted trail stepped across the map—“they’re out of harm’s way, at least for now.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” Ziva replied. “Do we have a contact baseline for the hathosaurs?”

  Taylor shook his head. “All we have is the original survey from fifty years ago.”

  Ziva grunted. She understood Taylor’s quandary now. A lot could change in fifty years, which was why the handbook specified two rangers for jobs without a recent baseline. With Felix by her side, this assignment would have been a piece of cake. After all, improvised contact was what they’d done be
st together—and they’d earned a Bio-Diversity Silver Star to prove it. But on her own?

  She found her hand straying to the empty chair again. She pulled it back into her lap. It was time to move on.

  “I’m in, sir.”

  * * *

  The valley was shaped like an elongated oval nestled up against a steep mountain range. She landed her scout craft in a gully two kilometers downwind of the herd and on the opposite end of the valley from the poacher’s camp. The terrain around her—rolling grasslands sprinkled with clumps of trees—provided plenty of cover to approach the herd unseen and make contact.

  A quick in and out, she told herself. Easy peasy.

  Ziva buckled on her ranger belt, settling the heaviness around her hips. It held all the essentials for a three-day excursion: food tablets, water purification, first-aid kit, power pack, and body shield, a sort of cloak that bent light around her form to make her nearly invisible.

  She hesitated for a moment, then drew a small energy pistol from the arms locker. Probably overkill for the situation, but Ziva was feeling increasingly stressed about making this approach without Felix. The WISPR Corps motto on the wall said “Take only memories, leave only footprints,” but that was more of a guideline. Actual results may vary.

  The night air was dry and chill with not a breath of wind. “Comms check, Lola,” she whispered, unwilling to disturb the peacefulness of the scene. In response, Lola accessed the implant in her optic nerve, projecting a transparent display across Ziva’s field of vision.

  The dots on the display representing the herd were already moving in the direction she wanted to send them. Not a panicked stampede, but a slow migration. Ziva let out a sigh of relief. Maybe all she would have to do is follow them over the mountains to complete the assignment.

  She set off at a brisk trot, the body shield shimmering slightly with her movement. The shields weren’t perfect. To the human eye, she would appear as a ripple in the darkness, a barely there phantom.

  As she drew closer to the herd, the synesthetic sensor translated raw emotions from the hathosaur herd into colors on her heads-up display. For cold introductions the synesthetic link was a quick and dirty way to gauge emotional response. Her display showed a grouping of about thirty hathosaurs, all registering a contented blue sprinkled with the green of affection for one another. She slowed to a walk. They were just over the next rise.

  A spike of red on her display and the crack of a gunshot occurred at the same time. She powered her way up the slope.

  Dots of brightness pierced the darkness like fireflies. Headlamps, she realized. Poachers.

  “Lola, what’s going on?”

  “It appears interference from the mountain range masked the approach of the poachers. Recommend you fall back, Ranger.”

  Baaa-waaah! A panicked wail floated through the night from the direction of a cluster of lights. A juvenile hathosaur struggled underneath a heavy net. The poachers were trying to take a small one alive.

  An enraged roar shattered the night. More gunshots sounded, and the gaggle of headlamps scattered as a female hathosaur—Ziva could tell by the smooth ripples of her crown—staggered into the circle of light. Blood streamed from the massive animal’s side, but she was determined to get to her baby. She seized the netting in her teeth and backed away.

  More gunshots. Pools of black blossomed on the creature’s hide, and painful red splashed across Ziva’s display. The big female stumbled, but held on to the net. The poachers swarmed around her, some wielding clubs and knives.

  “Ranger,” Lola said, her voice a beacon of calm in the chaos, “fall back.”

  Ziva stood rooted. No question this was a cut-and-dried first contact situation. If she interfered here, she’d almost certainly be seen by the humanoid population, a serious violation of the Ranger Handbook. The correct move was for her to withdraw, find the rest of the herd, and complete her mission. The mother was dying, the baby captured. There was nothing she could do.

  Instead, Ziva’s feet took her toward the carnage. Her brain told her she was reacting to the loss of Felix in a way that endangered her and her mission. Ziva’s heart didn’t care. She was going to save that baby, no matter the cost.

  Ziva entered the circle of headlamps as a blur of bent light. One of the poachers looked straight through her, his eyes wide, his mouth wider. She punched him right in the face, feeling a satisfying tremor run up her forearm, a spike of pain in her split knuckles. She swept another’s feet from under him. A third yelled something and backed away. The headlamps retreated into the night.

  Ziva was alone with the dying hathosaur and her baby.

  She whipped out her laser knife and sliced through the net pinning the youngster to the dirt. The baby staggered to its feet and raced to its mother. The elder hathosaur nuzzled her child, licking its face while the little one squealed muted cries of panic. The mother’s aura started to fade from Ziva’s display.

  The beast rolled to her knees and tried to heave herself to her feet. Her hind legs straightened, quivered, then collapsed. Blood frothed at her lips and her nose sank into the dirt. Ziva’s vision was crazy with color: the crimson of the mother’s pain, the little one’s panicked yellow, but also a wave of deep green connection between the two. Ziva swiped at her cheeks.

  “Ranger,” Lola said in her ear. “You need to clear the area. There’s nothing you can do for her.”

  Ziva ignored the voice. She slipped a painkiller hypo out of her first-aid pack and sidled next to the dying animal. Her fingers slid across the leathery skin, searching behind the lip of her bony crown. The mother’s sides, black with steaming blood, heaved against Ziva’s torso. A dark eye, as big as a baseball, watched her, frightened by her presence but unable to move.

  “It’s okay,” she crooned. “I’ll keep him safe.” The mother lowed at her as if the hathosaur understood. Ziva’s fingers found the spot behind the crown, a faintly pulsing artery as big as her thumb. She touched it with the tip of the hypo, releasing the maximum dose into the animal’s bloodstream. The rumbling breath slowed, then stopped. Ziva rested her forehead against the dead animal’s rough skin.

  The baby bumped his crown against Ziva’s hip, mewling. She slipped her arm around his neck and pulled him close.

  “Let’s get you back to the herd, little one,” she whispered. “I promised your mama.”

  Her display told her the poachers were gone for now. The hathosaur herd had moved far ahead, a clump of dots traveling fast toward the pass. A silver lining for the mission. She’d return the baby to the herd and get the hell away before the poachers came back.

  She urged the youngster to walk faster. His back was elbow-high, a perfect height for her to rest her forearm on as they walked. Her fingers found the life-giving artery behind his soft crown. As a male, he would grow up to have a huge bony headpiece with wicked curving horns, but at this young age, the top of his head was like rubber, warm and elastic to her touch.

  They rose through the tree line, breath singing in Ziva’s nostrils, the path before them latticed with moonlight filtered by the trees. She realized with an ache that this was the most alive she’d felt since Felix’s death. The baby’s eye glimmered in the dark as he watched her.

  “You would have liked Felix.” She patted his back. “He could have ridden right here and talked your ear off the whole way. He was good with languages. The best.” The baby purred in reply, but whether his response was for his lost mother or her lost companion, Ziva wasn’t sure.

  Soon—too soon, she felt—they arrived at the pass, a ten-meter gap in a sheer rock face. Beyond she could see a band of thick forest, and then more rolling grassland dotted with stands of trees. Indistinguishable from the land at her back, but also safer for these magnificent animals.

  Ziva drew a deep breath. Being a ranger at a time like this was heady stuff. She was making a difference in the universe, maybe even saving this planet. These were the moments she and Felix had loved.

  Sudd
enly, she was weeping. Uncontrollable, racking sobs that threatened to drive her to her knees. For the first time in her career, she was celebrating a successful mission alone.

  A low rumble issued from the shadows, making Ziva’s head snap up.

  A massive bull hathosaur stalked into the moonlight. The horns of his crown curved out like enormous scimitars, so long the ends almost crossed. Scars on his hide, bleached silver in the moonlight, rippled as he closed the distance between them. Ziva’s breath stilled. The crunch of gravel under his massive feet screeched in the stillness of the night.

  He stopped, lowering his gaze to her. She sensed intelligence there, understanding.

  Another rumble. She felt it resonate in her chest cavity. The youngster replied, his response several octaves higher.

  They’re talking. Given time, a full suite of instruments, and Felix, and she could have told the patriarch of the herd what had happened. But she had none of these.

  The old bull’s muzzle lowered to sniff the youngster, and she saw the fine questing nostrils touch the soft crown tenderly, like a kiss. She gulped at the horns hovering over her, so close she could see the fine polish on the ebony shafts, the razor-sharp tips. He raised his head, blasting her still-wet cheeks as he breathed out. She smelled the warm scent of chewed grass, the tang of peppermint leaves, and the musk of river water.

  With a final rib-tickling sigh, the big animal wheeled around, lumbering toward the pass. The youngster gave her hip one last nudge, then followed.

  Ziva watched them go, feeling more alone than ever.

  Mission accomplished, she thought with an edge of bitterness.