Stowaway

by Z D Dean

  “Thank you.” Jorloss said as he turned and headed back to the cave.

  Zade turned his attention to the task at hand. He brought up his map and identified the route he would need to take to the village. The village was just over twenty kilometers away, a distance he could cover in just over an hour with his improved sight and musculature. Night had just begun, giving him ample time to get the water without being seen. The run was quick, and the villagers kept the jungle edge cleared, meaning that he could observe every angle of the village from the cover of the jungle before heading to the well. After a quick patrol around the village Zade found a good vantage point overlooking the well and waited for the foot traffic to cease and hut lights to go out before he entered the settlement.

  Hours passed, but when the planet’s twin moons were directly overhead the village was completely quiet. Zade did a quick thermal scan of the houses surrounding the well and was pleased to see all but one of the homes’ occupants were lying on the ground, presumably sleeping. Before entering the village, he unsnapped the clips on his assault pack so he wouldn’t have to make noise while he was exposed. He crept quietly towards the well; his movements catlike. At first glance the well appeared to be a rope and bucket affair with the obligatory stone knee wall surrounding it. Upon closer inspection Zade saw that the well, although built like an old fashioned one, had a small spigot and valve on one side.

  After dropping his pack, he opened and lined up all of his water bottles. By having them ready he would only need to turn the, possibly squeaky, valve twice; once on and once off. This was an unneeded precaution as the valve was mercifully quiet. Turning the water on as low as possible, to prevent splashing noises, he began filling the water bottles. As he capped the second bottle and reached for the third, the sound of a door opening behind him caused him to freeze. A glance over his shoulder showed a woman walking towards the well with a pitcher in one hand and a torch in the other. Unable to escape into the jungle without being seen in the torchlight, he quickly gathered his things and moved around to the side directly opposite the woman.

  With his back pressed against the well he held his breath and anxiously waited for the woman to go back inside. The torchlight spilled around the well, unnervingly close to him, as the woman filled her pitcher. Zade finally took a breath after he watched the torchlight recede and heard her hut door close again. Not wanting any more excitement for the night, Zade expeditiously filled the last water bottle and headed back into the jungle. At the cave he saw that Jorloss had gone to sleep and let the fire burn low. Noting that the entrance to the cave faced south, away from the village, Zade stocked up the fire before bedding down himself.

  The men spent days with little more than scavenging for food to fill their time. Zade had taken to hunting, while Jorloss focused on gathering edible plants and berries. As the days passed Jorloss seemed to recover from the identity crisis he had been plagued with since the pig kill. Although the men could never finish the entire amount of meat from one of Zade’s kills, it spoiled quickly in the jungle heat and humidity, Zade had to hunt almost daily. With the daytime hunting over and evening meal consumed, Zade would wait for nightfall before heading to the village to refill the team’s supply of drinking water. By the second night he had gotten his timing routine down and had not encountered a local since the first time visit to the well.

  After a meal of game and the purple and red berries, on the third day, the men sat around the campfire idly chatting as they waited for night. Jorloss’ arm had almost completely healed, and his energy levels were steadily rising by the day.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, why didn’t the nanites close off your wound when we were attacked by the SSILF?” He asked the scientist who was grabbing more wood for the fire.

  “Like the amphibians of your world, my species has rather robust regenerative properties. That fact coupled with my role as medical officer, caused me to remove the trauma repair programming in my nanites to allow them to run more efficiently. I figured I would never be in danger, so the repair code wasn’t necessary.”

  “You didn’t think you would be in danger. How exactly was this mission briefed to the crew? I’ve only been on the ship for a couple of weeks, and it has been the most dangerous time of my life.”

  “Unity space has been peaceful for the last fourteen centuries. No one in the fleet has experienced anything more than a police action, let alone open combat. I guess we just figured that space outside the Unity would be just as civilized as space within.”

  “That is amazing. My planet can’t go more than a few decades without armed conflict, and that’s just a planet. How has there been no power struggles in your whole galaxy for over fourteen hundred years?”

  “It just happened that way. The founding species of the Unity came to power because they were more technologically advanced than other species. Everyone played nice to get their space travel tech. The prosperity that accompanied the ability to spread out into the galaxy stopped any infighting. Now the Unity is very proactive, dealing with threats before a shooting war can develop.”

  As the light faded Zade entertained the thought of how earth would be if man could travel the stars. He hoped for an ideal situation, where different countries would turn their focus outward, colonizing to meet their needs. He feared that the reality was; countries would use advances in technology to destroy each other without even batting an eye towards the stars. Only after one country or coalition claimed the entire earth would they look to expand outward.

  Night had finally fallen, enveloping the men in impenetrable darkness before Zade headed out for the water resupply. Like the previous nights, movement through the jungle was easy and, Zade circled the village waiting for the last inhabitants to fall asleep. With all but one cottage dark, Zade watched a young woman, the one who had almost caught him on his first visit, walk to the well. Halfway to the well something caught her eye and she stopped. She turned to peer into the jungle to her right, the direction from which he initially approached the village every night, Zade though nothing of it since she wasn’t interested in his current location. Her curiosity now peaked, the woman slowly progressed towards the tree line torch outstretched in front of her.

  With a blood curdling scream, she dropped the torch and ran back to the safety of her home. As the other villagers heard her, lights came on and people rushed outside to see what had terrified the young woman. Those that did come out to investigate were armed, a sign that threats to the village which called the jungle home were commonplace. Having no direct line of sight to the thing that startled the woman, Zade began backtracking until he could see it. As he cleared a dense patch of large trees, Zade saw the unmistakable silhouette of Jorloss, standing just inside the jungle.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked Jorloss via interface.

  “I wanted to see how you got the water so we could take turns. Didn’t think it was right that you had to go every night.”

  “Well it looks like we’re going thirsty tomorrow. Get back to the cave as quietly as possible and douse the fire.” Zade instructed as he himself began heading back to the cave.

  The villagers had begun lighting more torches and throwing them towards the patch of jungle that the young woman identified. It was a smart tactic to try and get a visual on the threat before blindly rushing towards it. Zade turned to watch his crewmate’s progress into the depth of the trees. He prayed that their direction of travel would go unknown. But he could see Jorloss, now fully illuminated, working his way towards the cave. Lacking any kind of knowledge on misdirection, Jorloss was headed directly towards the cave as the villagers watched him recede into the jungle. Based on how the villagers were armed, Zade figured that they would be hunted by morning light.

  Zade met Jorloss at the cave. The trip back was slow, as he stopped often to look and listen for anyone following him. Jorloss had doused the fire then headed up a large tree nearest the cave entrance to watch for Zade. The crewmen quickly
packed everything they needed in the event that they had to suddenly abandon their hide. Knowing that trouble could be following them, Zade organized an impromptu guard schedule so that the men could get some rest. As the cause of their current predicament, Jorloss volunteered for the first watch. Zade closed his eyes but sleep was evasive, he was awake when Jorloss signaled the change of shifts.

  Zade couldn’t simply sit stationary as he guarded, sleep’s siren song was calling to him louder and louder as the night stretched on. Instead he began patrolling the perimeter of their campsite, straying farther from the cave with every lap. As he had anticipated the night was quiet, but at first light he could hear a large group of men gathering at the edge of the jungle. His patrol had taken him kilometers away from the cave entrance, and by morning he was equidistant between the cave and village. More disturbing than the sound of the men was the sound that accompanied them, the sound of tracking animals.

  He hurried back to the cave to inform Jorloss about the current situation, knowing that if the villagers were using animals to track them, their escape had become infinitely more difficult. The scientist was alert and ready when Zade returned to the cave, so the men set off trying to put distance between them and the scared villagers. Before leaving their site, Zade quickly affixed his last smoke grenade to one side of the cave entrance, and using the expandable pin, stretched a trip line to the other side. The locals would come to the cave first and he expected that once triggered, the smoke grenade would hold their interest allowing the crewmembers to increase their distance from them. Initially Zade had thought about planting the thermobaric grenade but felt it could serve him better in an emergency. Plus, the villagers were no real threat to the crew, just a scared group trying to track the monsters in the woods.

  With the villagers still gathering, and not in active pursuit, Zade set off on a south west heading at breakneck speed. Surprisingly Jorloss didn’t have any trouble keeping up. Zade should have expected no less, since the scientist didn’t like to fight, it made sense that he was competent in flight. The men quickly reached the rocky outcroppings that delineated the arid region to their south from the jungle region to their north. The rocks would make the crewmen’s trail more difficult to follow, and in a last-ditch maneuver Zade planned to crawl down the rocks, run along their sandy bottom, and climb back up to reenter the jungle. As the men shadowed the outcroppings Zade heard the distinct pop of his smoke grenade being triggered, the local inhabitants had found the cave.

  The men slowed their pace to recover slightly. Even with the genetic modifications, they couldn’t maintain their fastest speed indefinitely. As day turned into night the crewmen had begun to feel that they had completely shaken the search party. While they sat and ate a quick meal of berries and vegetables, Zade started hearing rustling in the underbrush behind them. The villagers had continued their search long into the night, and the tracking animals had closed with their quarry.

  After dawning his assault pack Zade lead his party down onto the arid flats towards the south. Reinvigorated by the meal, he hoped that on the open terrain of the desert both he and Jorloss could use their modifications to outrun the search party. Again at full sprint, Zade listened through the wind whipping past his ears to the receding sound of the search party. Although his plan to outpace the searchers had worked, the team now faced the greater problem of being caught in the desert with little food and no water.

  The barren stretch of land had become exceedingly cold during the night. Zade knew that although the cold was helping them maintain pace, during the day the desert would become almost unbearably hot, entirely halting their progress. As the night progressed the men continued south. By first light they had become so exhausted that neither could move more than a few hundred meters without stumbling or falling over entirely. As Zade watched the planet’s red sun fully crest over the horizon, Jorloss collapsed unable to go any further. While Zade ensured that Jorloss was not injured he noticed that he could no longer hear their pursuers.

  Throughout the night the men had transitioned from running on barren hard packed ground to a landscape filled with rolling sand dunes. Zade helped the scientist to the backside of the nearest dune in order to utilize as much of the natural shade as possible. Zade contemplated a new plan as Jorloss rested, when suddenly he felt a tingle in the back of his mind. Little did he know that the tingle signified that the ship had entered the system, and his interface had connected with it.

  “You gentlemen need a ride?” Samix’s voice echoed in Zade’s head.

  “Damn it’s good to hear your voice. What took you so long?” Zade asked, still astounded by the change of events.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. We are fifteen minutes from orbit. Stay where you are at and I will bring her down, right next to you. Hopefully your stay on the planet has been less exciting than ours aboard the ship.”

  “Well it was pretty mundane until Jorloss scared the locals. We’ve spent the last eighteen hours being pursued across the planet.”

  “I can beat that. After we took off, Mur tried to kill me.”

  “Shit, when it rains it pours.”

  Zade woke the sleeping scientist and informed him that rescue was minutes away before turning his attention to his equipment. Jorloss didn’t believe Zade at first and after three attempts Zade finally broke through to him. Clearly the scientist had given up hope. The good news was almost too much for him to handle. He just sat, knees tucked up under his chin, quietly rocking back and forth as he waited. Zade cleaned the nonessential supplies out of his pack, and in the process saw that the original plant specimens were still in good shape. Throughout the whole ordeal the men had maintained the initiative, with the plants soon aboard the ship, Zade chalked the mission in the win column.

  Chapter 13

  Samix woke while the ship was still in warp. She was a little sore, which was not too surprising since she had almost died during the robotic mutiny. Determined to not be absent when her two stranded crewmen were rescued Samix had set an alarm, giving herself ample time to clean up and be ready for her rendezvous with Zade and Jorloss. Collecting herself and rising from the medical bed Samix noticed that her foot, while sore, was completely healed and functional. Axis had since given up his vigil and headed back to his lab to work. The Settler rarely left his work and Samix understood the implication of him staying by her side while she recovered.

  Even feeling good from her recovery, Samix was happy that her quarters were directly across the hall from the medical bay. Although she spent most of her recovery time sleeping, the lack of nourishment had taken its toll on her body. The first thing she did was strip off her ruined uniform and jumped in the shower. She had only ever gone into stasis twice before, both times to practice, both of which were accompanied by an unmistakable odor. Her parents had said it correlated with her skin outgassing as it hardened into a protective shell, and after a quick shower it was gone.

  Bathed and in a fresh set of fatigues, Samix headed to the galley for some much-needed food. After ordering she began skimming through the data logs that captured the events that had occurred, absentmindedly picking at her food. The last thing she remembered was getting ready to enter the AI core. Axis tried to fill her in on what happened since, but she could only remember foggy snippets of the conversation. After reading about how Mur had tried to kill her, Axis’ ridiculous overprotectiveness didn’t seem so ridiculous. With the events log complete, Samix glanced at the command log. All of Axis’ orders as acting commander were listed, from the restrictions he put on Mur to his latest act of moving the ship back to their previous planet. Even though she was confident that the AI’s hard reset would alleviate problems, she left the restrictions in place just to be safe.

  With her meal finished, Samix headed to Axis’ lab while studying the navigational readouts. The ship was still a forty-five-minute warp out of the system. As soon as it dropped out of warp, she would be able to hail the crew; that was if they were still al
ive. She had no doubt that the two men could handle their own, but it was hard to tell how much time had passed for them. One of warp travel’s nastier side effects was the time dilation that comes with faster than light speeds. While in warp time nearly stands still for the crew relative to objects moving slower. For all she knew the handful of days spent in warp could equate to years’ planet side for Zade and Jorloss. Luckily the ships jump was short and made at low power, meaning the time difference wouldn’t be more than a few hours, but Samix wouldn’t know for sure until she landed and spoke with the lost crewmen.

  Axis was standing on one of the worktables in his lab, trying to uncover the secrets of a large boulder he brought onboard before they left Unity space. At first Samix didn’t even know he was in, the boulder completely blocked view of him from the door. He had brought it aboard, saying that it could help the Settlers optimize their land formation during the terraforming process. Just as Samix couldn’t see him, he didn’t know she was present until she rounded the table, startling him.

  “It’s good to see you up and about, but damn you almost scared me to death.”

  “Sorry, just wanted to stop by and say thanks for everything you did after I got hurt. Oh, and we’re less than an hour away from dropping out of warp.”

  “No problem, to be completely honest, I was really worried about doing the rescue on my own. Glad you’re here to take over.”

  “Well I’ll leave you to your work. Just wanted to stop by and thank you.”

  “Again, no problem. Let’s get our guys back. What do you need me to do?”

  “Assuming something terrible didn’t happen, or that they haven’t died of old age, I shouldn’t need anything. I’ll hail them when we get in the system, then program the ship to land at their location.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  As Samix left the lab a sense of relief washed over her. She had gone into the lab with mixed emotions. On one hand she was grateful that Axis had helped her, on the other she was worried he wouldn’t want to relinquish command back to her. Looking back on the worry, she felt foolish. Axis was a scientist from a science driven species, and he had never hinted at a desire to command. She headed to the command deck to prepare for the landing. Once the ship dropped out of warp halfway into the system, Samix sent the stranded men a voice message.