by Jack Porter
“Just like normal bones, then,” I muttered to myself.
It wasn’t a big issue. Not yet. But I liked to be prepared, and so far, we hadn’t really found any decent supplies of real wood.
With a sigh, I put the power cutter back away, but I still gathered up a few of the straighter bones for later use. Deeve wasn’t the only one to have brought along shards of metal from the transport, with an eye to using them as knives.
When everyone had slaked their thirst and had at least a few bites of that dried, leather-like ration bar, Uma decided that we had all rested long enough.
She called everyone back to the harness, and while there were a few groans and moans, there were no serious objections.
We quickly fell back into our rhythm, towing the sled behind us, and soon the bone graveyard was no more than a memory.
For the next several hours, we repeated the pattern. We would walk, towing the sled behind us, until we had covered enough distance to justify a halt. Then we would rest, drink, and chew on a ration stick, before moving off once again.
The terrain grew progressively rockier, with less and less sand, and it had been a long while since I’d seen any sign of the mud pools of before. Some of the rocks had a windblown appearance, with many of them displaying grooves or even holes.
It looked as if they had somehow been sandblasted. It was a curiosity, but at first no more than that. Of greater interest to me was the wildlife.
For the first time, we came face to face with a school of flying creatures.
Unlike those I’d seen in the distance, these were smaller, and displayed brightly iridescent colors. They weren’t birds as I thought of them, but nor were they insects. Instead, these seemed to fit somewhere between the two.
They moved together, turning as if they were a singular, larger creature.
It was Jayloo who saw them first. The purple-haired woman gave a startled squeal and stopped dead in her tracks. The school of flyers was directly in front of her, as if studying her to decide if she would be tasty, and I could tell she didn’t know whether to be frightened or not.
“Jayloo, don’t move,” said Uma.
Of course, the smaller woman paid no attention. She struggled to get out of her harness, and I could sense that she had made up her mind. She was going to run.
Where she thought she might go, I couldn’t have guessed. But it was clear she wasn’t thinking clearly.
“If you lose yourself in this wasteland, we may never be able to find you,” I said.
The small woman turned toward me with an expression verging on panic. I couldn’t help but notice that her top had shifted about, allowing me a view of soft, curved flesh through one of the holes.
“What are these things? Get them away from me!”
For some reason, the flyers seemed to have taken a particular interest in her. They were all lined up, hovering mere inches away from her, and in truth, I couldn’t fault the woman’s concern.
So I did what people have done to shoo away flying things since time immemorial. I waved my arms in the air and shouted at them.
“Shoo! Go on! Leave her alone!”
The others seemed to think that was a good idea, because in moments, everyone was effectively copying my actions, flapping their arms about, and filling the air with noise.
It would have been funny if Jayloo hadn’t been so scared.
All right. I admit it. It was a little funny regardless.
And it worked. To an extent. As if attracted by the noise, the squadron of flyers turned about in every direction. They seemed to consider their options, before as one, they turned and darted away, as if they’d never been there at all.
The girls and I kept flapping our arms for a second or two longer. Then Sydney started to laugh, and in moments, the rest of us all joined in.
Except Jayloo, who perhaps thought we were laughing at her. With one arm in a sling, she closed her other hand into a fist and clenched it to her side.
“It’s not funny!” she said.
But the impact of her words was partially lessened by the way her breasts jiggled as she spoke, partially visible behind her sling, through the holes in her top.
I took a deep breath and wondered just how long it had been since I’d been in the company of a woman.
“Too long,” I muttered to myself.
It must have been, given how easily I was being distracted.
But at least it was making me view Jayloo more favorably.
Chapter 11
Not long after, we had a potentially more dangerous interaction with some of the local wildlife.
It was Kia who spotted it. Either her psychic senses warned her, or she was just particularly sharp-eyed.
Either way, she was walking close to the front of the group when she suddenly paused.
“Wait,” she said, and that was enough for Uma.
“What is it?” the bigger woman asked.
“There,” said Kia, pointing just ahead of us.
At first, I could see nothing. The surroundings were no different from anywhere else. Rocky, sandy earth, largely barren.
But then Deeve saw it as well. “That ground is a different color,” she said.
She was right. There was a section of earth, perhaps a dozen paces away, that didn’t quite match the rest of it. Out of an innate sense of caution, I bent down and plucked a fist-sized rock from the ground. Making sure that everyone could see what I was up to, I tossed the rock toward the oddly colored patch of ground.
I was vaguely aware of an Earth creature called a trap door spider. I knew from my own experience that such a concept, an ambush predator hiding beneath the ground, wasn’t unique.
But this was different.
Instead of a single huge creature swarming out to attack my thrown rock, at first it seemed that there were dozens of them, erupting from all around the discolored area. It wasn’t a spider, of that much I was certain.
But it could have been some kind of octopus thing, made up of dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of tentacles.
Or it could have been that each tentacle was itself a coherent, singular creature.
Either way, within less than a heartbeat, my thrown rock had been swamped by a writhing, shimmering mass of undulating flesh.
The sight of it seemed to awaken the same part of my brain that recognized snakes and millipedes and, yes, spiders as well. I had a visceral, negative reaction to this creature, and that reaction was not helped at all by its smell.
It stank like a rotting piece of meat.
More than one of the girls turned away, their faces suddenly green, as if the sight and smell of this creature had made them immediately nauseas. But I continued to watch, in part to make sure that we were far enough away to be out of danger.
Some of the tentacles waved briefly in our direction. But only for a moment. As soon as it decided that its potential prey was nothing but a thrown rock, it quickly slimed its way back beneath its camouflaged piece of land.
When it was gone, the world seemed a friendlier place once again.
“Well,” I said. “That was unpleasant. Let’s make a point to stay out of the way of things like that, shall we?”
The girls murmured their agreement, and we continued onward, giving the foul creature a wide berth.
When it came, the first gust of wind wasn’t much. A single puff, just enough to pick up a few handfuls of sand and fling it at our faces.
We kept going, trudging across the land, and the wind picked up.
Within half an hour, it was constant, buffeting us from the side, hurling grit and sand at us non-stop.
And it was getting worse with every step we took.
I understood then why so many of the boulders in this area looked to be scoured, sandblasted. It’s because that’s exactly what had been done to them.
It wasn’t long before the girls started complaining.
“How long is this going to last?” asked one, I wasn’t sure who,
as her voice got partially blown about in the wind.
“I don’t know,” Kia responded, as if the question was directed to her.
“We have to get out of this!” Deeve said, and I had to agree.
Not only was it uncomfortable in its own right, but this wind would make it harder to see anything dangerous coming our way. If that trapdoor, Lovecraftian nightmare had been in front of us in this, likely we would never have seen it.
“There!” I shouted, pointing to a large outcropping of rock. “We’ll get behind that and use it for shelter!”
At my words, Uma shot me a look that seemed to hold equal points agreement and disappointment, as if she would have preferred to be the one to make such a call. Yet she didn’t object, and in fact was the first to angle herself toward the boulders I’d indicated.
The rest of us trudged along, hauling the makeshift sled behind us.
As if the weather gods weren’t happy with our plan to head for shelter, the wind picked up. It was as if a wall of sand had hurled itself against us, blanking out much of the light.
Several of the girls cried out, expressing their discomfort. Jayloo, the smallest and most fragile of them, stumbled into Deeve and Uma, who did both did their best to help her stand her ground.
I held my hand up to my eyes, forming a shield, and felt the sting of the sand against my skin, heard it pinging off the metal cuff on my wrist. I had to angle my body against it in order to keep my feet, and knew that the girls would have more trouble than me.
Deeve was cursing as if she was aiming to make a career out of it, and I muttered a few such words myself.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but stagger to a halt. The girls were spending their effort fighting the wind and had largely forgotten about trying to get themselves and the sled to shelter.
“Come on!” I shouted, struggling to make myself heard over the wind. Sand and grit immediately forced their way into my mouth, and I did my best to spit it back out. “Just a little bit further!”
With that, I surged forward, carrying the majority of the sled’s weight along with me, grimly aware that there was a real danger of the wind tipping it over and spilling the supplies into the sand.
I didn’t want that to happen, didn’t want to risk the few essentials we had getting buried, or, worse, having the water container puncture against a sharp rock.
I placed a guiding hand on Uma’s back and would have done the same with Deeve but I was still holding my club in one hand. The Commander seemed to flinch at my touch, but she didn’t object, and it seemed to give her the direction she needed.
She surged ahead as well, still half supporting Jayloo, and the others were finally able to gain some momentum.
With each of us doing our best, protecting ourselves against the driving sand, we slowly made our way toward the outcropping of boulders that we knew to be there, but which we had lost sight of in the wind.
All we could do was place one foot in front of the other, angling our bodies away from the wind as best as we could, and drag the sled along.
One step.
Then another.
And one more.
Again and again, we made our way forward, until I began to worry that we’d become disoriented, and that perhaps we’d missed our target.
But we hadn’t. It just took a little longer to get there.
Finally, we found ourselves in the lee of the rocks, and while they didn’t offer perfect protection, it was enough that each of the girls breathed a sigh of relief and began to relax.
“The sled too!” I shouted, not quite as loudly as before. “We have to get it out of the wind!”
The need to protect the sled and its contents was clear enough to all by then that there were no arguments. Everyone put the effort in for a few more seconds, until the sled was also sheltered from the wind.
But if the girls thought they were done, then they were mistaken.
“The canvas sheets!” I called out. “Help me make a shelter!”
At first, the girls didn’t know what I planned, but with a few quick commands—along with a little cursing—I managed to convey my intentions.
Within just a few minutes, we constructed a tent type of thing held up by steel poles I had salvaged for the purpose, the whole thing held in place with electrical cord.
By the time we were done, the open end of the tent was flapping madly in the wind, but with the boulders and the canvas working together, we were all protected from the driving sand, and there was even plenty of space for the sled.
It was Sydney who asked the pertinent question.
“Now what?”
I shot a glance at Uma, but she seemed happy enough for me to respond.
“Now, we wait out the storm. Get some rest. It’s been a long, hard day, and tomorrow will be much the same.”
Chapter 12
It seemed that the girls were too wired to settle down right away. Or perhaps it was a combination of that and the ongoing noise of the dust storm, and simple hunger and thirst as well.
Either way, as they sought to quench the thirst and deal with the hunger, they sat themselves down almost in a circle. It was as if they sought to draw comfort from the presence of one another.
As for me, I suspected the chances of any of the local wildlife seeking us out for an easy meal was low. Not much would be moving about in a storm such as this.
But I nevertheless positioned myself to keep half an eye out for any threat, even as I rested my back against the stack of supplies, a ration-stick in my hand to assuage my own hunger.
The slight separation this created between me and the women was deliberate. Deeve had accepted me. But Jayloo had not, and Uma’s impression of me seemed to change from moment to moment, depending on how useful she thought me to be—or how much she thought I was stepping on her authority.
As for the other two, if I had to bet, I would have put good coin on Kia being on my side. But Sydney was a different story. At first glance, she seemed friendly and welcoming. But I was starting to think she kept her truest thoughts to herself.
And every last one of them, including Deeve, had seen me in chains.
“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Jayloo asked, out of the blue.
“What? No!” Sydney responded. She was sitting closest to the purple-haired woman. Instinctively, the environmental scientist reached out and put an arm around Jayloo’s shoulders. “Of course not. We have food and water to last for several days.”
“Yes, but no more than that,” Jayloo argued. “And we have one more mouth to feed than before.”
Sitting hunched over as she was, the holes in her top no longer provided any tantalizing views of the flesh beneath. I looked away, and started to think about whether to start rationing that food and water, to make it last a few more days.
It all depended on how far away we were from the green I had seen before. If we could get there, then surely we should be able to find water. And even out here under the sun, there was enough life about that there must be fresh water to be had.
“If not for him, then we would die,” Kia said, her voice light and ethereal.
“You said that before. But how do we know?” Jayloo demanded.
If she thought the psychic would defend herself, then she was in for a surprise. Kia just shrugged her shoulders.
“We don’t. Not really. I guess the proof will be if we do die or not. Of course, you could try sending him away and see what happens, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
Jayloo shot me a calculating glance, but I didn’t need to say anything.
“Nobody is sending anyone away,” Uma said, her voice quiet but no less authoritative for that. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s pulling more than his fair share of the weight of the sled. And if he hadn’t stood with us against those creatures when they attacked… I don’t know if just me and Deeve could have held them back.”
Deeve nodded at the Commander’s words, agreeing all the way.
> But still, Jayloo wasn’t satisfied. “If it weren’t for him, we’d still be back at the transport,” she began.
“And what good would that have done any of us?” Deeve responded, her tone indicating quite clearly that she’d had enough of the woman’s words.
Jayloo took the hint, but didn’t quite lapse into silence.
“It would be easier if we knew what he did,” she muttered.
At this, both Sydney and Uma looked at me with a mix of curiosity and suspicion in their expressions. Deeve didn’t seem concerned either way, but after a while, even Kia turned her luminous gaze toward me.
“Perhaps it would be best if you told us,” the psychic said. “It might help things go more smoothly if you did.”
I thought about it. Chewed on a dried ration stick.
Swallowed.
“Would you believe me if I told you?” I asked them.
“Try us,” Uma said, and I had to admit, that was probably the best answer she could have given.
I was still cautious, but I had to say something.
“You all know what I am,” I said. “A canary. An explorer of worlds, an assessor for the Company. Maybe you know something about the surgeries, the implants and physical enhancements that role requires. But have you heard about the psychological testing?”
I looked around, and saw that for most of them, they’d never even considered the question.
But Uma had some inkling. “I’ve heard some reports,” she said. “But why don’t you tell us?”
The others nodded.
I thought about it, and decided it couldn’t do any harm.
“They test you for all sorts of things. Different personality traits that they say are all about seeing if you can do the job. Whether you can reasonably expect to touch down on a new world, all by yourself, not knowing if the first step you take might kill you. What do you think they might look for with those particular tests?”
It took them a moment before they worked out I wasn’t just being rhetorical. I wanted them to answer. I wanted them to do some of the work.