Mission Pack 1: Missions 1-4 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  # # #

  Dawn was breaking when Kubu arrived back in camp. Mriy had been just about to wake Esper and Auzuma for breakfast when the huffing and panting of the noisy beast approached. To her chagrin, he was not dragging a painted elk in his jaws. It had probably been optimistic to think Kubu could haul a creature three times his size for kilometers over snow-covered terrain.

  “Mommy-mommy-mommy,” Kubu shouted as he came within sight. Tanny was already awake and raised an arm in greeting. At least she had the good sense not to give her location away by shouting.

  “Did you find it?” Tanny asked.

  Kubu pulled up a few meters from camp and cocked his head to the side. “Find it?”

  “The elk,” Mriy clarified. “The painted elk you were looking for.”

  “Kubu found kitty-people,” Kubu replied. His tongue lolled from his mouth, and he hung his head.

  Mriy flattened back her ears. “Az-rin. Not kitty-people.” She had told Kubu a dozen times at the least. “Where are they?” This could be decisive news. If Kubu could lead them to Hrykii’s hunting party, they could set up a distraction and ambush to separate them from the elk when Hrykii found it—if he hadn’t already.

  “They had a pointy little house with smoke,” Kubu said.

  Mriy felt a chill that her fur and vest could do nothing to ward off. “They had a house?”

  “Who’d be living out here?” Tanny asked.

  Mriy shook her head. “No one should be. This is a public hunting ground, an area a hundred times the size of Rikk Pa that should be only for hunters. Come, hunt, leave: those are the rules.”

  “Kubu, did they see you?” Tanny asked, bending down to one knee to look Kubu in the eye.

  Kubu nodded. “Oh yes! Kubu tried to talk to them, but they didn’t have through-the-ear magic, so they couldn’t understand Kubu. Then they got mad and pointed guns at Kubu, so Kubu ran away.”

  “Well, that was smart—the running part, I mean,” Tanny said. “You know you’re not supposed to be talking to strangers.”

  “Did they follow you?” Mriy asked.

  Kubu shook his head. “Just bugs. Kubu had bugs chase him, but he got away.”

  A sound that had no place in nature prickled Mriy’s ear. It was distant, but grew louder by the second. It was a buzz, and as it drew closer she identified it. “Those weren’t bugs,” she snapped. “Those are snow-rollers. You led them back to us!”

  “What are we up against?” Tanny asked, drawing a hunting knife. It was a soldier’s reaction, and a good one, but likely inadequate.

  “Poachers, trappers, squatters, fugitives,” Mriy listed them off as possibilities came to mind. “If they were traditionalists, they wouldn’t have vehicles. If they’re not, then they’ll be armed with more than knives.”

  “Options?”

  Mriy shook her head. “Even if we had Kubu start a false trail, he still left tracks straight to us. Wake Esper and Auzuma; get them to cover.”

  This wasn’t good. Hrykii pack was already more than a match for them. It was going to be a battle of guile against a superior force. This was more than anyone in the challenge had bartered for. Mriy headed back along Kubu’s trail, taking a position on a ridge a quarter kilometer outside camp on a low rise. There just wasn’t enough tree cover. Snow-rollers would slice through camp at full speed, and gun-armed occupants would have every advantage. Except possibly surprise.

  Mriy worked quickly. She took rope from her knapsack and tied one end around the stump of a fallen pine. The whine of the engines continued to draw nearer. The mountain echoes played tricks with the ear that prevented her from pinning down their exact distance, but time was at a premium. Crossing Kubu’s tracks in the snow, she found a standing pine and looped the rope around that as well, tying it off with a bit of slack. There was just enough play in the line for Mriy to wiggle the rope below the snow’s surface and be able to pull it back up to just about the height of a snow-roller’s tracks.

  The snow was knee-deep and powdery. Mriy grabbed a branch as long as her body, then hunkered down in the snow. White fur was uncommon in azrins. When she was young, children had teased her about it—before she grew larger than her tormentors—but now she was thankful for a bit of natural camouflage. The buzzing continued to grow, until she could clearly make out two distinct snow-rollers. She had been off-world too long; the engines were newer models that she didn’t recognize by ear. They sounded heavy duty, possibly six- or eight-seaters—if she was lucky, perhaps just four.

  With the size of the approaching snow-rollers, Mriy began to worry about the rope. It was a glass-fiber composite weave, but far from indestructible. It wasn’t often that she wished Roddy were around, but the laaku mechanic had a quick mind for such problems. Assume a speed for a snow-roller, its weight, its durability. The rope had a tensile strength, which Roddy would know or could estimate. Which would prevail? Would the rope halt the snow-roller, or at least slow it violently enough to eject the occupants? Would the trees even hold up to the strain?

  Mriy’s slapdash plan was to disable one vehicle, scavenge a weapon from the dead or injured crew, and take on the surprised survivors in the second snow-roller. Best case, the second vehicle would crash into the first, but that was asking much from a benevolent god. More likely, Mriy would die a good death, taking enough of Kubu’s pursuers with her that Tanny could find a way to deal with the rest.

  The engines grew thunderous as the snow-rollers sped toward her position. They must have been following Kubu’s tracks, with no effort to head him off or circle around. Good. She had counted on that. Just as she prepared to use her branch to lift the rope into place, one of the engines cut to idle, then the other.

  “Come on out,” a voice called, echoing in the mountain air. “Got you on thermals. You’d have to be down there long enough to freeze to hide from me.”

  Mriy let go of her branch and drew her fighting knives. She had bought them off-world, and had never gotten a chance to use them on prey. It looked like today was not going to be the first, either. “Who are you?” she shouted back over her shoulder, her back against the base of her rope’s anchor tree.

  “We are the sons and daughters of Meyang,” came the reply. “I am Hraim.”

  “Shit!” Mriy muttered in English. It was such a rich language for cursing. But now wasn’t the time to panic. These were rebels, the self-proclaimed saviors of azrin-kind. They were dedicated to evicting the human occupation with a mixture of stubborn disobedience, propaganda, and a charmingly naive misunderstanding of planetary logistics.

  It wasn’t time to fight. She was outnumbered, and her ambush had failed thanks to a pair of thermal-imaging lenses. It was time to Carl them. Unfortunately, this meant Mriy would have to play the role of Carl. Lie, and if the lie doesn’t work, lie some more. It was worth a shot. “I’m on a ritual hunt,” Mriy answered back, still not emerging from behind her tree. It was one of Carl’s tenets not to lie about the obvious and easily verified. Motives. Lie about motives. “My chaplain and I found a pair of humans and took them prisoner.”

  “Where are they?” Hraim demanded.

  “Don’t shoot,” Mriy said. “I’m standing up. I am armed only for the hunt.” She stepped from behind the tree and showed the rebels as she sheathed both knives. There were eight of them traveling in a pair of six-seater snow-rollers. Each was armed with a blaster rifle, some off-world brand she didn’t recognize—probably from a non-ARGO world, if they weren’t hypocrites. All, of course, were azrin.

  Mriy turned her back on the rebels, facing camp. “Auzuma, you can come out. They’re our people. Bring the human prisoners.” Hopefully at least one of the three of them had the sense to play along. Tanny probably. She had known Carl and his ways for a long time.

  A minute later, Auzuma emerged from the distant trees, herding Tanny and Esper in front of him. Neither of the humans were wearing the sheathes for their hunting knives. Good. Hopefully they had hidden the weapons under the snow and co
ncealed them well.

  Hraim’s rebels aimed weapons at the pair of humans. That was when things went over the ledge. “What were they doing when you—”

  His question was cut off by a snarl that had Mriy reaching for her weapons by reflex. She dropped into a ready crouch before she saw Kubu charge from the forest, teeth bared. “No, guns at Mommy!” What it must have sounded like to the rebels, Mriy couldn’t imagine.

  “Turn to stone, dog!” Hraim shouted, his rifle aimed in Kubu’s direction.

  Whether it was a poor understanding of idiom, a protectiveness of Tanny, or simple canine bloodlust, Kubu didn’t falter. Neither did Hraim. The rebel fired a single shot, and a splat of plasma caught Kubu in the shoulder. But Kubu only stumbled into the snow for a second. He came up howling, hobbling, and heading straight for Hraim. Mriy had never seen a human get up after being shot with a plasma bolt, even a non-lethal blast to a limb. She doubted she could muster the strength to stand after taking a shot like that, and she’d never have been able to run.

  A second shot caught Kubu in the chest. He let out a lone, shrieking whimper and collapsed, skidding to a limp halt in the snow.

  # # #

  Carl settled into the copilot’s seat. His guitar sounded all wrong thanks to Roddy fiddling with it—too perfect, no soul—but it was technically the laaku’s, so he couldn’t complain. Without a few riffs to relax him, Carl decided to see about scrounging up some work for the Mobius. Meyang might have been a backwater with an ARGO garrison parked in orbit, but sometimes those were just the right ingredients for someone to need the sort of service the Mobius offered.

  But the first thing that struck Carl as he looked out the cockpit window was the ship’s attitude. They were nose first to the planet, pointing like a hunting dog with a gift for stating the obvious. Meyang filled the view, like a naked Earth without its cities. Carl leaned over to the pilot’s controls and feathered the maneuvering thrusters, flipping the Mobius around without altering their orbit. He took a long, deep breath as the welcoming stars greeted him. “We’ll be back out there soon enough. You fellas aren’t going anywhere, right?” Carl had been born on a starship and lived most of his life on them. A planet was just an asteroid with pretension.

  “Now, let’s see,” he mumbled to himself, browsing the ship’s computer from the copilot’s terminal. “Meyang, Meyang, Meyang—what do you people need to get off-world?” The omni was filled with every bit of useless information anyone felt compelled to share over public computing. From ancient historical translations, to ARGO treaty terms, to complaints about the local music scene—if someone saw fit to log it to an unsecured network, it was on the omni. Slogging through the mush of data wasn’t Carl’s specialty, but anyone with a decent education could muddle through it.

  It was boring. Carl was bored. The omni went on and on forever—that was sort of its thing. Over the two hours he searched, he learned fact after useless fact about Meyang and azrin culture. It went in through his eyes and leaked out his ears. For the most part, azrins were retroverts, xenophobes, and paupers. Anything new, expensive, or off-world was a tough sell. They resented ARGO—though who could blame them. The ones who worked closely with the “occupiers” were widely derided. A tech-free lifestyle was considered the ideal—which Carl found an ironic sentiment to be posting on the omni.

  With nothing better to go on, Carl reverted to the old-fashioned method. He took out an ad. There was an art to advertising illegal services. As with many cons, it relied on the way a potential customer would read it, as opposed to an honest citizen. Turn your back on a stack of hardcoin terras, and a corrupt bureaucrat knows to take the bribe. Tell a potential client that you can “get anything he needs,” and he’ll know you’re willing to ship contraband. But the same way an honest filing clerk will leave your terras alone, an honest client will just think you’re being enthusiastic and accommodating.

  But with savvy ARGO agents out there watching, it took more care to craft an advert. They weren’t the honest sorts, which is how they did their job. Overplay it just a little and a captain could end up with a ringer on board—like one Mr. Bryce Brisson, or whatever-the-hell his real name was.

  Light freighter leaving orbit soon. Space left in hold. Prefer small, high-value cargo.

  That sounded about right. It sounded like a captain wanting to squeeze some terras into the last few cubic meters of his hold before heading off-world. Really, aside from tremble-handed cowards, who didn’t want to carry small, high-value cargo? But to someone desperate to get a quarantined plant or a thousand-year-old cultural artifact out of the system, the implication was clear: pay me enough and I’ll sneak something past customs for you.

  Carl smiled to himself, satisfied with a job well done. Let the suckers planetside do the work themselves. He had a guitar to tune until it had some soul back in it.

  # # #

  “Kubu, no!” Esper shouted. He fell into the snow and didn’t move. All thoughts of their ruse of being prisoners fled her mind. She rushed through the shin-deep snow, stumbling to her hands and knees twice on her way to reach Kubu’s side.

  He was breathing quick and shallow. A gaping hole in his chest, charred around the edges, leaked red blood onto the snow. Another in his shoulder did likewise. Esper wanted to be sick, but there was no time for that. She shut her eyes and placed her hands on Kubu’s side. “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK,” she whispered.

  He whined softly. “Kubu hurts.”

  She had learned her healing spell in a rhyme as a girl. It seemed silly at the time, but she knew from Mort that asking was a part of receiving. “Cuts close, bruises fade; three weeks healing done today; bones knit, pains ease; cleanse the body of disease.” She repeated it in Latin, remembering Mort’s advice that the universe responded better the older the languages. “Comprimare vulnus, livores defluet; tres septimanas sanando fit hodie; os implexae, lenire dolores; purgare corpus morbus.” In church Latin, it felt like an invocation to God.

  Kubu writhed beneath her hands. His whining grew stronger, pained. “Hungry! Kubu hungry.” She looked down and saw a pair of blood-crusted scars with missing fur, stark pink against Kubu’s black fur.

  Esper plunged her arms into the snow and wrapped them around Kubu’s neck, engulfing him in a hug. “Oh, Kubu. You’re going to be all right.”

  He squirmed in her grasp, his high-pitched keening causing a pain in Esper’s ears. “Hungry.”

  “Of course,” Esper mumbled. Fumbling in her pocket, she pulled out two Snakki Bars she’d been keeping handy for mid-hike snacks. Kubu took a quick sniff and gobbled them from her hands before she could even take her gloves off to unwrap them.

  “What did she do?” Hraim demanded.

  “She is holy,” Mriy replied. “A priestess among the humans. God listens to her prayers.”

  That might have been a bit of a stretch. By Esper’s quick count that was a lie, a used-to-be, and an I-don’t-know. Had it been God she’d just spoken to, or some less deific entity that held sway over physics and impossibility.

  “We are on a ritual hunt,” Auzuma said, drawing the attention of the rebels, but not the aim of their rifles. “We did not come to hunt humans, but humans are what we found. I am a chaplain, so I couldn’t abide the killing of a priestess.”

  Hraim nodded. “I won’t keep you from your hunt. We have contacts. We can get a ransom for them. But not for the dog. Those things are good for nothing but hunting our people. One fewer bloodhound, one less worry for us.” He strode through the snow like a king—or a warlord—his head high, weapon held ready to pronounce sentence.

  Esper threw herself over Kubu, who still lay in the snow after devouring his snack. “You won’t hurt him!”

  Hraim stood right over her, prodding with the muzzle of his blaster rifle. “Move aside. Obey and you’ll see your people again. Defy me, and holy woman or not, I’ll shoot him right through you.”

  Esper hadn’t been a criminal long enough to be used to people pointi
ng weapons at her. The image of Kubu’s charred wound flashed across her mind. She wasn’t built like him, wasn’t half muscle, half sinew and bone. A blaster wound would be fatal before she could even begin to heal herself.

  “Ignus,” she muttered. Tempting as it was to take out her wrath on the azrin rebel, she turned her thoughts to melting the snow around her. “Ignus,” she repeated. A thin fog rose around her.

  “What are you doing?” Hraim asked. “Stop it. Stop it at once.”

  “Shoot me,” Esper said, neither raising her head nor looking at the azrin. She continued to shield Kubu with her body.

  “Dumb human, I don’t want to—”

  “God will protect me!” Esper shouted. She wondered how many of the rebels understood English, the language of their enemies.

  Hraim hissed a long sigh, heavy with disgust. “Fine.”

  Click. Esper cringed, but nothing happened. Click. Click. Esper’s use of magic so close to the rifle had fouled the scientific principles it replied upon.

  “What’s going on?” Hraim demanded. “Zaulau, toss me your gun.” Another of the azrin rebels complied, and the weapon slapped into Hraim’s waiting hands.

  Esper buried her face against Kubu’s flank. “Ignus.”

  Click… click click click. “Blasted things. What’s—”

  “Going on?” Auzuma asked. “Just as she said, Hraim: God protects her. See why we did nothing to them?”

  Esper let out a sigh and was glad not to have been standing. She likely would have toppled to the snow with her legs turned to rubber beneath her.