Yule Planet

by Angel Martinez

  A patch of sky broke through a moment later, though, as huge clawed feet dug around her with careful swipes. Moon's head soon hove into view, blowing and grunting warm, stinky air over Sofia.

  "Oh, ugh. Back off, Moon." Sofia slid around the nose, shivering from reaction and the snow that had slid in everywhere.

  With more nose-butting and grumbling, Moon lay down in the snow and waited for her to drag herself back aboard, not an easy task with the hard shaking. In the end, Sofia managed a sort of sprawl and hard grip on the front straps as Moon lurched up and took off after her pack at a waddling jog. Sky and Star had stopped as well when Sofia had fallen off, and the three of them made something of an awkward chionisaur stampede to catch up.

  Hannibal had stopped—or Petey had asked him to stop, since he also turned to watch them thunder up to the still-moving pack. He gave her a nod—Petey, not Hannibal—and the chionisaurs fell back into their places in line, lumbering along as if nothing had happened.

  Nose to tail, all's right with the world.

  Did wild chionisaurs travel this way? She wanted to ask Marta, who was way up front, and that brought her thoughts to another screeching halt. Why did she suddenly want to talk to someone she couldn't stand? Much. Though the novelty of talking to her had been interesting. Sofia's brain was obviously getting freeze dried out here.

  When they reached the next shelter, slightly smaller than the last but almost identical otherwise, Marta came around to Moon's left side.

  "All right there? Did you fall?"

  Sofia thought about denying it, but since she was pretty much a snowperson, that would've been silly. "Just once. Moon helped."

  "Of course. You're hers." Marta's lips make a quirk that was nearly a stand-in for a smile. "Come on down. We'll have to check your hands and feet."

  "They're all still there." Sofia kept hold of the saddle knobs and descended much more gracefully that time. She ached all over still but no longer felt like she was dying.

  "For frostbite." Marta's dark frown was back so swiftly it might have yanked the almost-smile off and locked it in a heavy travel trunk for late shipment.

  "Oh. Um." Sofia patted Moon in a distracted fashion and followed Marta toward the kitchen.

  Petey was already there, poking into cabinets. He gave Sofia a head-to-toe once-over. "Extremities check?"

  "Yes. Quickly would be best." Marta pointed Sofia to a bench by the wall. "Sit."

  Sofia resisted the urge to say woof. Tre was suddenly behind her, removing her coat. Then she sat gingerly and waited with her heart thudding against her ribs as Marta eased her mittens off. Frostbite meant you lost parts of your body, didn't it? They turned black and fell off. She'd seen photos somewhere.

  Her fingers emerged whole, a little whiter than they should've been, maybe, and a little blue around the nails. When the boots came off, the result was pretty much the same, though her feet were redder. Lanel, carrying buckets of water, had arrived, too, while she was distracted.

  "Move them. Your fingers and toes," Marta said, her voice soft but demanding.

  They all moved. She couldn't feel her toes too well, but they moved. Marta put her feet in one bucket of water—lovely, warm water—and placed the second bucket on a chair in front of Sofia for her hands.

  "Thank you," Sofia murmured.

  "Well, look at that." Marta’s almost-smile had escaped from its travel trunk. "You do have some manners."

  By the time dinner was ready, Lanel had declared Sofia's fingers and toes passable and able to rejoin the nonaquatic world. "Don't let me forget tomorrow, though. We'll make sure you have some extra insulation, just in case."

  "In case…?"

  "In case you fall off again," Tre finished for her with a quick side hug. "I don't think you should be riding on your own already."

  There were some murmurs of assent around the table until Marta gave a dismissive wave. "Sofia's a grown person and she managed. Also, you try to explain to Moon that you’re taking her person tomorrow morning."

  "She speaks," Shara said as she plunked into her spot at the head of the table. "Good to have you back, Mart."

  Marta arched a perfect black eyebrow. "The bubbies needed me to be back, our fearless leader."

  "Wouldn't have expected anything else," Shara grumbled, but she was obviously hiding a smile when she said it.

  After dinner, Marta motioned for Sofia to accompany her over to the pack, where she indicated they should sit down between Moon and Snowglider. "It's good to spend some extra time with them when you're new."

  I'm temporary. Sofia didn't say that out loud, though. It didn't seem right to say it in front of Moon, who had moved her huge head to lean against Sofia's leg. She stroked the ultra-soft snout carefully, still wary of all those teeth. "Are they bred to be with humans?"

  "No." Marta threw an arm over Snowglider's neck—at least partway. It didn't go too far around. "They can't be bred in captivity. Humans hunted them when they first came here. For their pelts, of course." Marta's frown was one of obvious distaste. "Humans are so predictable. But the chionisaurs recognized us as hunters and started to incorporate us into their packs."

  Sofia stared at her. "You make it sound like they made the decision."

  "They did. No one's tried to gather actual data on their intelligence, but they're at least on par with Earth dolphins."

  "Oh." Sofia wracked her brain trying to recall what those were. "Were dolphins a kind of primate?"

  Marta's frown darkened, her eyes narrowing before her expression cleared. "Sorry. You're serious, not poking fun. I'm thinking you probably haven't spent a lot of time outside."

  "Not Earth-normal kinds of outside." Sofia shook her head. "I'm station-born, and my only planet time's been visiting my uncles on Trocken."

  "Dome cities."

  "Right. So outside isn't a place you want to be, you know, because of silly things like breathing." Sofia snorted on a laugh, then couldn't stop laughing and was just able to keep the cackling from turning into sobs.

  Marta eyed her with a deeply furrowed forehead but let her run down on her own. "Better?"

  "Some." Sofia wiped at her eyes. "That's why I came here, you know."

  "To breathe?"

  "To stand unsheltered under a sky. To breathe unfiltered air. To experience weather."

  "I'd say you've managed a bit of that." Marta's own laugh was soft, amused rather than mean-spirited. "Reconnecting with Mother Earth—isn't that what the ad holos say?"

  Sofia shrugged, a surly bit of bitterness uncurling in her stomach. "You probably think that's stupid."

  "A little self-indulgent, maybe. Coming to a pretend eco-system when there are real ones to see." Marta held up a hand when Sofia started to protest. "But. Understandable, too. A controlled environment would be more familiar—safer, too—for anyone brought up in a strictly—by necessity—controlled environment."

  "You definitely have a lot to say for someone who doesn't talk."

  Marta turned a hard glare back at her cohorts who were pulling out the sleep pods. "They never. They told you I didn't talk?"

  There's something compelling about her when she's angry. The spark, the fire behind it. I can see her riding to the rescue of helpless bunnies. "They said you didn't talk to strangers."

  "Mmm." Marta turned back with that almost-sprouting smile. "You probably think that's stupid."

  "A little…different? Why don't you?"

  Instead of answering, Marta asked, "What do you do? Your job? Accounting, was it?"

  "Logistical accounting. I know that doesn't mean much to most—"

  Marta's smile grew a fraction. "It does to me. No one starts out as an eco-terrorist, you know. To be good at it, one has to be bludgeoned into it." She pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. "I was a site-quality inspector. Traveling from one facility to another, usually on noisy shop floors, to pick apart what other people did. So I understand all the pieces in corporate machines. Most of my
work life, it was easiest to communicate in Common Sign Language. All the workers on the shop floors knew the basics of signing, at least. Always new people. Strange how tiring that gets—never seeing the same faces twice. The more I did it, the less I talked to people I didn't know. Eventually I told myself I just wouldn't verbally speak to new people at all until I understood them, at least a little."

  "That's… I can't say I understand, but it's not stupid. I guess it's sort of a vetting process."

  "Something like that. I got tired of people. Tired of the selfish things they do. Given a new, green planet, they inevitably ruin it as they did Earth. Given stewardship over living things, they always resort to cruelty."

  "So you resorted to breaking into labs and stealing bunnies."

  "Mmm. And monkeys and rats and dogs and cats. The occasional sheep. And at the end there, setting the labs on fire."

  Partly, it all sounded appalling to Sofia—the Sofia of weekend shopping and coffee made just so from just this particular kiosk on the way to work every morning. Then again, it all sounded exciting—this dark, serious, avenging angel swooping in to save the innocents and wreak destruction, even though in the end, her wings had been plucked.

  "How long of a sentence did you get?"

  "You do just blurt things out, don't you?" Marta let out a weak sort of chuckle. "I started out with forty."

  "Forty years?"

  Every chionisaur head lifted and turned toward them with various rumbles. Moon grumbled back at them, and they all lay back down.

  "Shh." Marta's chuckle had become an actual laugh. "Yes, forty years. I did a lot of volunteer work, though, in the library, in the gardens. Improving the community, you see, which took years off the sentence. Then I volunteered for work release. This work release."

  Still. Forty years. That was a huge chunk of someone's life. "How much longer do you have?"

  "Three more years."

  Sofia thought she might have to retrieve her jaw from the floor. "That's…wow. That's a lot of commuting."

  "It is. Hazardous jobs are the best for reducing sentences." A brief flash of teeth showed in Marta's smile. "Come for the life-threatening conditions. Stay for the chionisaurs."

  "You're…not at all what I thought."

  "I've heard that before." Marta uncoiled again, regarding Sofia steadily. "Shara said the same thing after we'd been working together a month."

  "Really? Shara?"

  "I am the only one here with a violent past."

  It must've been a tense time when Marta arrived, assuming she'd come later than some of the others. A terrorist dropped amid people who were cultivators, thieves and a…historian. But our chatty little sparrow Petey called her, and they all deferred to Marta regarding the chionisaurs.

  The rest of the evening had a strange, dreamlike feel to it as Marta insisted on teaching her CSL, which the troop used in times of howling storms, and they crossed the line from nemesis to cautious allies. Some traitor part of Sofia's brain whispered that it would be nice if it was something more.

  Chapter Four

  The drop site, Shuttle Pad 483E, wasn't much more to look at than the trail shelters when it finally came into sight the next afternoon. A larger facility of four long, squat buildings placed in a rectangle to shield the landing pad, SP 483E at least had redundant communications arrays on its roofs. A line to civilization.

  The shopping-coffee-clean sheets-cocktails-at-six part of Sofia's heart lifted in anticipation. She could call the resort. Talk to a supervisor. Maybe they would come and get her by some means faster than four-footed transport.

  She wanted that—didn't she? To be reunited with her luggage and hot showers? With regular meals and comfortable transport?

  Sofia was turning this over in her mind so hard—with sort of a clack-thunk, clack-thunk rhythm—that she'd missed the moment all the chionisaurs had bunched together and stopped walking. Everyone was in the process of clambering down.

  A rumble under her seat startled her, and Moon turned her huge head with a look that clearly said, Well? Get on with it.

  "Easy for you, you know." Sofia grunted as she swung her left leg over to join her right. "You don't have to climb around on knobs wearing slippery mittens."

  The extra glove liners and extra socks Lanel had insisted she wear made both her hands and feet clumsy. Clumsier. She made it down with only a minor slip or two—for some definitions of minor. Still, she landed on her feet and not on her butt, so she'd call it a win. The majority of her body still ached, but it wasn't bad. Good thing Fiero's ominous announcement about it never getting better wouldn't be true for her.

  Though it didn't matter now, right? Civilization. Back to civilization.

  "Dieter Hobbs!" Shara bellowed at what were probably the main doors. "I see your number on the board! Don't you hide your sorry ass in there!"

  The center seam in the taller-than-a-chionisaur doors cracked, and the panels hissed open to reveal a tall man with shockingly red hair who was dressed in a flight suit and a forbidding frown. "You've got big brass balls coming back here, you skeezy pirate."

  "Yeah, they've always been bigger than yours."

  They glowered at each other, arms crossed. Shara's glower collapsed into a grin first. "C'mere, you jackass."

  The hug collision was a flurry of cheerful violence complete with the obligatory backslapping.

  "It's been a dog's age!"

  "How've you been?"

  "Still the same crew?" Dieter made a show of looking around, his eyes widening when they got to Sofia. "Holy fuck. I mean, ah, ma'am? Aren't you the missing guest?"

  "Yes, I'm Sof—"

  "Thank fuck. Er, sorry. Just a relief, you see. Flight control had us on rotating search patterns after Charlie did a flyover and found the pod empty. We hoped one of the transport crews had picked you up, but the snow and the wind really do for any tracks." He took Sofia's arm and propelled her toward the doors. "Come in, come in. We have to show you, er, show management, that is, have you talk to management so they call off…so they know you're all right."

  "The girl's not a parcel," Shara growled from behind them.

  "I know, Shar. I know. Management's been…well, you know. And us pilots have been worried."

  No translation was necessary. Sofia knew corporate management types well enough. They'd have been worried about bad press, about reputation. That Dieter wanted her to know that the pilots had been worried for her, though—that plunked some warm fuzzies in her heart.

  Sofia tried to dig her heels in as she twisted to count the people behind her. "Where's Marta?"

  "Went to settle the bubbies in their bay." Shara's voice was oddly tentative. "We'll make sure you have time to say goodbye to her and Moon."

  "Goodbye?"

  Shara's eyes narrowed. "Yeah. They'll get you to the resort from here. Probably take some doing, but that's what you wanted, right?"

  "I…" Yes. It's what she'd wanted, though she hadn't been clear on the part where they didn't have to ride all the way back to the resort for it to happen. Why then did it hurt now to have Shara say it?

  It took a few yards of pondering, but the answer crept up on her on silent, resentful paws. What she'd learned didn't matter. What she'd done didn't matter. The hours of conversation around meal times—none of it mattered. She'd always been, and still was, nothing but luggage. Wasn't she?

  She mirrored Shara's hard stare and thought she saw uncertainty there. Her sudden stop nearly pitched Dieter onto his face, since he still had hold of her arm. "Do you want me gone?"

  "Not anything that's up to me, is it?" Shara gave a shrug that wasn't as nonchalant as she probably hoped. "We did the right thing. You're here. Now you can get back to your life."

  Huh.

  "Moon will miss you. She's never picked a person before."

  "Gah!" Dieter stumbled again as Marta appeared silently on his left. "Don't do that to me!"

  The grin Marta flashed him was all predatory triumph. The more sob
er look she shot Sofia two steps later held equal parts hesitancy and question, but the crew peeled off to the galley, and Sofia didn't have a chance to ask.

  Dim and industrial described the communications center nicely. Several displays showed shifting charts and readouts—probably weather information and flight paths. One rolling chair that looked near the end of its life sat in front of the main vid plate. One portable heating unit—which Dieter squirreled away in a closet, so its authorized use was doubtful—had occupied much of the remaining floor space.

  "Give me just a sec." Dieter threw himself into the chair with reckless abandon. It screamed in protest but didn't choose that moment to collapse.

  Sofia stood more or less in the doorway shifting from foot to foot and wondering what she was giving him a second for. His fingers flew over the holo board, typing out long strings of numbers, before he settled back, cracked his knuckles, and took on an air of waiting.

  Only two seconds had passed when the comm board pinged and a pleasant AI voice came on. Central Control. How may I direct your call?

  "YP Pilot D. Hobbs, ID SP758364. I need to speak to Central Management, highest levels currently possible."

  Hold times are several hours. Please state the reason for your—

  Dieter cut the AI off. "Guest Sofia Cancino recovered. Standing here with me."

  One moment, please.

  "I feel so important," Sofia muttered.

  "Oh, you are, Ms. Cancino." If Dieter had tried any harder not to smile, Sofia was certain his face would’ve cracked. "The top layers have been hand-wringing about you ever since your pod went off course."

  A moment later an image of seven snowflakes—the Yule Planet logo—replaced the hold screen. Sofia expected it to flick over to a view of faces, or at least a face, but it remained.

  "Don't we get to see them?" she whispered to Dieter.

  "Nuh-uh," he answered without moving his mouth.

  "But they can see us?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Excellent work, Pilot Hobbs. The voice was male, patrician, probably past middle age, and dry as dust. Please put Ms. Cancino on.

  Dieter scrambled from the chair and held it steady as Sofia lowered herself into it gingerly. It creaked and grumbled but held. "Hello? I'm Sofia Cancino. To whom am I speaking?"