Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  Monde bowed at her and stepped back, already dressed for his outing back into his people's world. Ferra pointed at the silent djinn and made, "Grab it and move" noises, as if the mute Gene was also deaf. He turned towards the captain who shrugged. Releasing a fresh burst of steam, he began to drag the pod.

  Variel pushed past Segundo, still dressed in his technician outfit and patting his pockets for anything to help him on the orc world. As the only female of the group there were a few things she'd need to fit in. Taliesin slipped near her and whispered, "You may need this," as he held out his closed fist.

  She placed her own hand below it and he dropped something into hers. Before she could ask him, he moved to join his sister to wait out this minor predicament with elven aplomb. Variel opened her fist to find the shield generator curled up safely inside. She tucked it into her own pocket and prayed she wouldn't actually need it.

  A lifetime of inertia stabilizers, gravitational dispensers and other mage mumbo jumbo meant that aside from purposely climbing into a rocket coaster and hitting 3 G's in the name of fun, no one really suffered what true atmo breaking was anymore. Unless they willingly climbed inside an ancient can and shot themselves at a planet.

  "My teeth are inside my brains!" a voice cursed out to the darkness. Ferra could work miracles in bringing anything mechanical back from the dead, but she also tended to overlook some of what she dubbed luxury items and never fixed the lights.

  After slipping into their safety harnesses, a terrifying bit of straps and fabric that could at most slow their deaths by a fraction of a second, and sealing off the hatch, they couldn't see anything but the occasional rush of daylight outside the salad plate sized viewing hole. It was supposed to tell them if they were heading in the proper direction, but after WEST dropped the ship into orbit and the can slipped out of the descending hatch, it was hard to tell which way, if any, was up. There was a 97% chance they were going to wind up breeched.

  "Ferra?" Variel asked the air, her lips pulled back onto her skull in a grimace. Blood was trying to pump to her extremities but she already lost feeling in her hands. She hoped they still gripped the release handles.

  "Another 50,000 feet," the engineer's chipper voice called through the comm system that was supposed to be happily pointing out the sights below.

  The cloud scrapers were used for all of one inaugural flight, when the Arch-Emperor of the Llamos (Wolf Crest) stepped inside one to visit a vacation world glittering below, and promptly vomited all over the surface of every single wall and floor as it lost control. Oddly, he was remembered best for losing his lunch in a pleasure vehicle than for the death march that slaughtered ten thousand people of 567 Laconian Empire.

  After that, the luxury cruises promptly yanked them out and sold them off to every two bit adrenaline ride in the galaxy. They saw quite a bit of life until they started ending in a lot more death. Clean enough passengers off the floor grates and even the Better Business Bureau is gonna start to ask questions.

  "Captain," the voice was strained but definitely Monde, that crisp snap of ironed sheets was unmistakable. "What if we do not.." He was cut off, probably by the rise of bile. Orcs didn't vomit, it was considered a major sign of weakness to willingly part with any food, but they could spray bile like nobodies business in the event of poisoning.

  "We'll make it," she said, the same mantra she repeated endlessly since the first tremors transformed into bone jarring quakes. And if we don't, gods we won't know about it. The light outside the porthole shifted from the bottomless black to a warming shade of blue, rising up to them along with the ground.

  "I can't feel my hands!" Segundo would pass out, his body unused to so much gravitational force, then awake with a jolt and a fresh complaint.

  "You said that already," Orn grumbled. He stuck a pack of gum in his jaws before they took off even as Variel tried to explain that was for pressure changes. At his glare she backed off. For Orn sugar was a safety hole, a narrow crevice to climb inside when the universe stopped making sense. Plummeting out of a mostly functioning spaceship was high on the not-making-sense list.

  "Another 25,000 feet, Variel," Ferra chirped, her feet probably kicking like a child's as she spun about in Orn's piloting chair. No one ever dared change his settings. "You're doing great."

  "We haven't done anything but fall," the captain bitched back.

  "Well, you're doing fantastic at that." Her engineer was approaching ambassadorial cheerleader levels of chirpy. This should have set off alarm klaxons like Soulday church bells. Ferra was only happy when everyone else around her was miserable, and excited when the entire galaxy was about to implode. The challenge of surviving, of making it through this latest "setback" alive and mostly in one piece was a trait the elf and human shared. But the blood, stubborn sluggish blood, refused to pump through Variel's veins. Spots danced across the cabin, whirling like a set of stars on the galaxy map as someone mindlessly flicked back and forth across time dilations.

  The last thing she heard was her engineer shouting out, "10,000 feet, better pull the cord," before Variel blanked out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A giant's discarded can wobbled inside the red clay of a fresh crater deep into a farm a few miles outside New Dawn. Steam rose from the still too hot to touch metal casing as a couple passing orc children, free from their chores, inched closer to inspect it. One had that universal of probes, a long stick, and she used it prodigiously, poking at the can smaller than her family's store room. The golden oval wobbled and then slid deeper into the thick mud before sticking its landing.

  A noise, like a nest of angry wisps, buzzed from within the discovery. Her companion, one of the less weaker of her brothers ran back to the house when the buzzing started, but she was curious. A good mark of a future leader. Side stepping closer, she laid her sound canals against the still heated metal and tried to make sense of the noise emanating from within.

  "Are we dead? Is this what heaven's like?"

  "Hot, dark and filled with the echoing jabberings of a moron? Yes, that is exactly what heaven is like."

  "She's still breathing."

  "Light ahead, now give me some good news. Like you found the fucking door."

  "What light ahead? There's nothing but darkness, the endless darkness of the grave."

  "Dwarven expression, Second, now would you kindly SHUT YOUR TRAP. I need to find the damn handle. Ah!"

  A creaking just below her hand caused the farm girl to spring back, her stick at the ready. Slowly a crack appeared where pure metal had been and a rush of air shoved into the capsule. Thick short arms shoved the metal crack back and a shaggy head, the tan of tree bark, poked out.

  "We come in peace, take us to your leader!" it said to her. As it raised its hand in a wave, the entire thing bolted off his arm and thudded to the ground.

  The farm girl raced away as fast as her legs could carry and never looked back.

  Variel steadied against the red rock of what passed for ground in these parts. She hadn't lost her lunch, that was a plus. She did; however, smash her dead hand into the partition walls supposed to provide a modicum of safety while questing for the ripcord. That was somewhere in the middle of her blackout fantasy about stumbling across a pair of boots stuck out beneath the smashed remains of some space wreckage. They were crystal clear but she kept thinking they'd look better in red.

  "We landed," Orn grumbled, his own shoulder banged up but still in one piece. "Now what?"

  Monde stepped away from the captain he half hauled out of the capsule. He closed his bag, mercifully undamaged and still orderly. She staggered to unsteady feet, unhappy to have that brush with possible stroke and, flipping on her PALM light, searched through the tin can for something.

  The three men watched her, none of them wanting to voice "Why in the hell didn't we think to do that when the damn thing crashed?"

  Variel emerged, a bundled up piece of fabric in her hands. She undid a strap and a hat unrolled, slightly too white to b
e called yellow, with a black brim decked in gold cord. A pair of crossed anchors adorned a black patch in the middle. Slipping on the captain's hat, she dared the others to say anything before surveying the farm they spectacularly crash landed at. An address would be good, landmarks, something to help them find their way back.

  Most of the farm was flat, understandable as raising and educating crops on a mountain was for the desperate or foolish, but a few of the trees native to orc territory poked out to act less as a windbreak, more a reminder of home. Their trunks rose from the ground skimming it at a near horizontal angle before swaying vertical into an S shape that ended in solid branches with briars and leaves larger than a head.

  Somewhere in the distance sat a building, probably the farmhouse where an orc in a frilly apron fed small raptor-like chickens, but this field -- its crop beginning to poke curious heads out of the rich clay -- was deserted.

  "We should find a road, get our bearings, and call for a cab," she said, noticing the red clay adhered to her hand. It worked its way into her life lines, growing stickier with her sweat. After failing to pick it clean, she gave up.

  "What about our cloud scraper?" Monde asked, concerned about the state of their only escape vehicle.

  "Ferra? Can you hear me?" Variel called out to thin air and that was all that answered back. "Ferra?" The thin air was replaced by a few pops of static. "Hello? Anybody?"

  The pops switched to a harried voice, "Whatcha want?"

  "Where were you?"

  "Microwaving a burrito. You were taking forever and I got peckish," the engineer answered and the sounds of masticating replaced her words.

  "Is the ship damaged?" Variel asked, burying any hopes she had of a modicum of professionalism from her lackadaisical crew.

  "No, WEST's got it hovering near a small moon. Ain't no one gonna notice."

  "I mean our ship, pod, vehicle of certain death?"

  "Hang on," she said. As the burrito most likely hung from out her mouth, she called through garbled words, "I's upside down, but fully functional...ish."

  "Functionalish?" Variel asked, afraid when her engineer employed qualifiers.

  "Just don't take it underwater or into any swamps with acid spitting frogs and you'll be fine. Ferra out!" she chirped before severing communication. Variel's PALM went dead aside from a flickering red light to point out there was no ether signal.

  "I believe I see a road about three ticks in that direction. There should be an access point near," Monde said pointing towards an area that looked just as flat and desolate as the rest of the land.

  Variel tried to shield her own eyes against the glare of the alien sun, but would have to rely upon the accuracy of her resident orc's superior eyesight. "I suppose we go that away for awhile." Being the only woman, she took the lead. "Don't forget where we parked."

  Monde fell behind her, sliding his traveling bag across his neck and wiping some of the mud across his horns. It was either a sign of respect for the land, a warrior's paint, or a nervous tic. Variel suspected the latter most of all.

  Never one to be left behind, Orn followed quick on Monde's heel. He'd been to a few orc colonies over the years, mostly keeping himself safe in a spaceport or duty free shop. This nature stuff felt wrong and smelled like a bad power conduit as an unnatural heat billowed under his shoes. But Segundo seemed happier than a fly in shit, his eyes wide as an elf's while he gazed across the clear horizon, pointing towards some shimmering peaks in the distance and babbling in tourist-ese.

  The arduous trek through the rough and tumble wilderness of an orc colony was somewhat diminished by the planks laid across the rows, providing some mudless ground for anyone crossing the fields. A warm UV filled sky beat across their brows, and the wildlife preferred to keep itself to itself. There wasn't even a resident orc around to threaten them with pitchforks and banjo solos, only the occasional whoosh as their motorbikes whizzed past in the distance.

  "So this is a flat planet, then?" Segundo's endless chatter broke through Orn's grumbling. The pilot wilted under the weight of his traveling coat, trapping more dwarf odor than even he preferred.

  "What are you on about?"

  "The land, it's flat, quid pro quo the rest of the planet must be flat farming land," Segundo responded as if answering a question on an exam.

  "When them prophet hunters were handing out brains, your foot was caught in the midden, eh? No, it does not mean that the entire planet is farmland, it means this particular clump we crashed face first into is. You honestly expect the total ecosphere of a planet to be one thing?"

  "I...I, never mind," Segundo lapsed into silence, for which Orn was grateful. How did he wind up playing tour guide to the yokel anyway? The dwarf wiped off his brow and tried to forget he was trapped on an orc planet with a doctor, a technician, and a human he thought he knew. He hated when he got maudlin. That's when his mother would break out the hand puppets, never stopping to think that cheering up a child upset over his lack of a hand may not be so easily remedied by a slip of fabric designed for hand coverage.

  That was when he'd begin faking it, painting on his grin like the bards. Lies started simple enough. "I'm fine. It doesn't bother me at all. I meant to catch my hook on that grating." And with enough practice under his pinchers he could soon code the programs of lies most conmen dreamed of before entering trade school. He never once told the same tale of how he lost his hand, something to keep the mind sharp, which wasn't a problem until he met Ferra and her razor wire mind diced right through to his heart to ferret out all of his few secrets. It was either marry or kill her, and he didn't have anywhere good to stash a body.

  "Orn, we found a cab call," the liar's voice called against the dry winds, a spicy scent of boiling vegetables hidden within. The dwarf glanced up from his shoes and noticed the change in decor. The unnatural rows, dug deep into the clay, were replaced by a mash of grasses tittering in the low wind and reaching up to his knees. A rolling undulation of land towered farther above the dwarf than usual. Ditches, every civilization had them, except for the elves who considered themselves above such crude eye sores across their sacred land. (Which may have something to do with the high level of tree related deaths upon Cangen.)

  As he climbed out of the hole, his good hand providing some traction as he scrabbled against the too giving mud, a stretch of brick met him. It glinted onyx in the afternoon sun, speckles of gold pinging up in anticipation of another traveler speeding across its face. Roads, they either led to or away from something that could never actually be good. It was the second rule of the universe.

  "We are in this vicinity," their orc called out, waving the arm of his hilariously colored shirt/sweater/smock? It was difficult to tell exactly what orcs went for in fashion. They seemed to favor function over design until you got close and realized their approach was to steal a few patterns and stitch them all together at once. Spirits save them if they ever discovered human's plaid.

  Orn yanked the questing Segundo away from the road before his little technician insides would be squashed across the pavement. The typical speed limit in orc territory was something in the range of 4. Human's didn't even allow their motor crossers to reach speeds of 3, though they use some other speed terminology Orn never paid attention to.

  Monde and the captain were hunched beside a glass pole with a strip of blue plastic ringing the top and bottom. A single panel housed a few buttons; a cab call station. Variel kept tapping the button at the top, the request for service, as Monde nervously shifted a small knot of rope around his midsection.

  "That won't make them come any faster," Orn chided her, having used one after a very nearly toxic night on another orc planet involving a few men of the evening and their Jane, a backfiring pistol, and just enough of a starless sky someone only three feet tall could disappear into. He'd been picking briars out of his beard for weeks before finally shaving the entire damn thing off.

  Variel paused in her nervous twitching and folded her arms up, tapping her fo
ot instead. Orn watched her run head long through a ten legged spider's web, out draw the fastest etcher in the western galaxy, and down ten gargoylian rum and concretes before her informant's liver imploded, yet this was the first time he'd ever seen her nervous, even possibly scared. A small part of him was concerned, but the rest, the large part that most would call the petty side, snickered at her obvious discomfort and wanted to throw a bit of salt on the wound.

  "Pretty day," Orn said, shrugging his shoulders and raising his gloved hands to the sky as if about to give one of those elven sun salutes. Variel turned a cautious eye towards him, but he ignored it. "The sun is shining rather pungently, birds, or some kind of flying tentacled monster, are cheeping in the overgrown briar bushes," he turned towards her, the shitting grin frozen to his face, "and possible arrest and execution await you as soon as that Drake does a giant U-turn."

  "Watch yourself," Monde butted in, not much happier than the dwarf to be in this situation but trying to make the best of it.

  But Variel waved the doc off, "You have something to say, flight technician?"

  It was a negligible jab, most freight captains were happy to have anyone that could three point park and hadn't wyrmed straight into the middle of a moon in the past year. Yet, it chewed on Orn that no matter how quickly he honed his skills, inserted as many macros into his hand's software as he could, or rerouted half of the engine's drive to his feet, he could never get a proficient enough score to legally call himself pilot. Even slipping a few dozen pictures of cats wearing silly hats wasn't enough to bribe the examiner, a troll with a pinched delight in tormenting anyone smaller than her, which was everyone.

  Orn's smile slipped away, his lips curling to reveal the grinders that make up most of a Dwarf's mouth. The gloves were off now.