by Marc Secchia
Check the aerofoil. Had the local conditions changed? After a few mins, she felt the air shift again. Not good. That was a night breeze, pushing her southward toward the river with increasing force. Too much and she’d overshoot by a dozen kloms. No telling where another river might be out here. After that initial push, the air began to swirl, making her parachute luff and almost stall. She bit her lip. This would require fine judgement. One chance, no misses. Here it came. With a rising whistle, the wind surged in beneath her chute and hurled her skyward, before abruptly punching her in the opposite direction.
She fought with grim fury. The tempest rolled about near the cliffs, shoving and pulling her every which way until she finally managed to fight through to about 5 kloms from the cliff, whereupon the breeze steadied and began to sweep her over the river. Struggling for the longest time, she applied every trick she knew from her training and a few the instructors had probably never thought of, some of which failed immediately – yep, good reason she’d never been taught this one. Useless.
Should she cut loose?
Better idea. Hissing unhappily as the wind buffeted her sideways yet again, Alodeé transferred both control rings to her right hand and began to twirl her arm like a winch, winding in her parachute. She needed to lose kloms of altitude. Stat. That meant one thing. Collapse the aerofoil. Take the plunge and hope like Humankind had once dreamed of reaching the stars above, that she did not drop past that precious thread of water.
This wind’s impossible to judge!
Go, go – drop! Clutching the thin, tough cloth bundle to her chest, she left her stomach up in the sky. Got to love her world. No end of insane places to jump from.
I’m going to try them all – whee! Nitwit.
She watched and calculated narrowly as the blue saviour neared. Flowing in the right direction, check. Fish, yum-check! Wind pounding water off the tube, some 90 to 100 mets in diameter, check with rather less enthusiasm. The awesome natural forces created by the upwelling punched her about liberally, hurting her already aching ears. Ready chute? No. Yep, do it!
Flinging the bundle loose, she screamed in frustration as it tangled up immediately. She’d fall short! A wild wave of her right arm released the aerofoil, but it only half-filled before collapsing again under a contrary, invisible air-punch. The control cords tangled up. What the hells would an Oraman do in this situation? She felt the gravitational pull of the water as she slid past, agonisingly close, heading below the lower margin of the stream now. Water thunder! How did water carry its own specific gravity?
Her brain clicked into gear. Heat. Rising air. Aiming for the nearest glob of lava, a seething ovoid half a klom across, she laughed as a powerful thermal filled out the chute and flicked her heavenward. Control the rectangular aerofoil – yank it across! Harder! The front-right corner caught in the surging flow and fluttered agonisingly for several heart-stopping secs, before it submerged and the river pulled her in sideways.
Splash!
This girl had never been so grateful to be dunked.
She battled the sodden, heavy material for fifteen mins before she finally got it all under control and was able to deploy her grass coracle. Fascinating. She floated at about 120 degrees from the vertical, held perfectly in place by the river’s crazy specific gravity. Her inner ears told her this was perfectly fine. Her brain wanted to throw up. Her sense of humour made her burst into peals of relieved laughter. To this river, every part of the surface was the right way up. Nonetheless, for the sake of normalcy, she paddled on one side of her grass coracle until she resumed an ‘upright’ orientation atop the tubular river.
Much better way to see the world, Alodeé. Now, a little taste … sweet! Tang of honey, perhaps?
Maybe the local fish would be as sweet? One way to find out. She checked for her compact survival pack and found it gone.
Probably shaken out of her backpack during that pummelling she had taken.
Alodeé thanked the fates warmly for making her life that touch spicier. Then, she pulled out her nanodagger and contemplated what she had that she might be able to turn into a fish hook.
Considering how the wind whipped through the canyon now, the top of the flow really was not a choice location. After paddling to her right hand a little ways, she succeeded in removing herself from the main blast, even where the river’s flow wriggled for no reason she could discern. In fact, the length she could see was in a constant state of flux, responding to the breathtaking force of the phenomena constantly erupting, surging, or falling several kloms below. She would have to take care that an extra-powerful blast did not knock her right off.
* * * *
In the end, Alodeé fashioned a fish hook from one of her backpack’s buckles. Then, she had a merry old time trying to catch any of the wily fish. They seemed all too aware of her intentions, perhaps alarmed by her belly’s low grumbling at the slightest thought of food. Come daylight, the slender, 40-cent long silver rascals became even more skittish, to her annoyance. Ugh. Bath time.
The instant she dipped her toe in, the fish crowded up to nibble at it with their protruding lips. Try a finger? Same effect.
A wary survivalist tested the intentions of the local fish population before sticking in more than a finger or a toe, that she knew for certain. As it turned out, they were just friendly. So friendly, she felt almost guilty catching a few for a breakfast of oily fish meat, slugged down raw. Alright. Honesty must admit to 22 fish. Hungry girl. She’d eat her way right through this planet if she was not careful. As usual, all the food went nowhere on her spare frame. Honestly, she ought to look like a blimp by now with her … er, robust appetite, one might say. Not so. Bathing, she could count her ribs. Her abdominals were lean washboard stripes, sucked back against those poor, underfed ribs.
No spare padding whatsoever. She’d blow away on the next puff of wind.
Sigh. More fish for lunch, anyone?
The afternoon brought a few extra blasts for excitement, but nothing that did more than rattle her about in her coracle. The river’s gravity was a constant. She watched the great avians feeding on what appeared to be tiny insects tossed into the air by the constant churn below. They used what appeared to be specially adapted mouth wings to shovel their meal into huge, billowing sacks on the sides of their necks that expelled the air but presumably kept the good stuff inside. Periodically, they swallowed and every few mins passed blasts of gas that sounded like a busy demolition site. Given as they reached wingspans of up to 100 mets, the volume of sulphurous gas was disgustingly impressive. Came with the territory of being an air filter-feeder, she supposed.
The gaseous wash stank; the particles gushing up from below clogged her throat and airway.
As darkness fell, she was once again spectator to the phenomenon of the bat-like hunters descending in their droves to hunt in the canyon. A much closer spectator than she would have preferred. That icy sensation wriggled like a freshwater eel inside her belly. Lie low. Observe. Several of the huge reapers tried to escape by diving through the river, one passing by so closely, it knocked her out of the coracle and she had to swim to recover both her parachute pack and her simple vessel.
Terrifying as that incident was, the black creatures were worse. Despite considerable ambient light, she could not actually make out what they were – like strangely folding geometric shapes, coal black, but with a hide that constantly deceived the eye. Stealth Raptors, she decided on the spot. Incredible. The camouflage level was on a par with her Dad’s descriptions of the capabilities of his 78-KAR Whisper Privateer with its best-in-class chameleon and electronic shielding. Even when one flitted by several mets away, she heard nothing. Saw barely any detail – like being attacked by ravenous shadows. The giant reapers hardly stood a chance.
Nor did she.
Ducking down, she made herself less of a target. No point in inviting trouble.
Fish meals punctuated her days. Alodeé could only chuckle and shake her head in amazement. A couple of ti
mes, she was fortunate to snag a piece of fruit in the flow and once it was even ripe and edible. The rest of her meals for seven days straight were fish, fish and … yep, more slimy, oily fish. Washed down with a good portion of fish.
The morning of that eighth day, as the river looped up over a particularly vigorous lava explosion, she sat up straight in the coracle. “Are those …”
Yep! She leaped to her feet with a low cry of excitement. Rub eyes, pinch arm, check-check. The tips of white mountains rose in the distance, on her horizon, geometric and precise enough that she guessed they must be crystal once more. As the day drew on, the mountains rose farther and farther into the sky. Twenty serried ranks, she counted. Twenty-five, by late afternoon. In the morning, thirty-seven. The scale was truly awe-inspiring. Standing upon cloud-like beds of deep purple, the white tips resolved into sheer, dazzling crystal mountains, with serrated edges that looked as sharp as her nanodagger.
The white was pearlescent, the colour of Tomaxx’s eyes.
Clearly this land was a castle for giants. What should she call it? Her eyes roamed the islands, arranged like a massed choir ascending to the heavens, linked by chains of pinkish-mauve vines and rivers that incongruously appeared to run upward into their secretive depths, as she pondered this question of enormous import. Tomaxx’s Playground? The Oraman Edifice? No, not quite right. What about the Oraman Oligarchy? Connotations of despotic rule by fur-clad barbarians waving photonic hammers, dispensing justice one almighty blow after another?
Picturing Tomaxx in such a panoply of wrath, she dissolved laughing. Sorry, my friend. Impossible to resist.
Then, she saw the turmoil washing up against the edge of this new land. This promised to be exciting. Time to hunker down for a wild ride.
The tubular river rushed into billowing clouds about 15 kloms from the new land. Alodeé used the wet fabric of her parachute to shield her nose and mouth and just as well. Incredible stench. She had always been aware of the possibility of being poisoned by toxic gases in this region. This was bad. A couple of kloms in, her stomach heaved. Then, she convulsed – one of the most terrifying experiences in her life. She could not regain control of herself until after the spasm passed. Using the parachute cords, she weakly tied herself into the coracle as the water rushed and foamed through its first rapid.
Crud. This is going to stink!
Worse than stink. It was all she could do to hold on as the convulsions wracked her with increasing pain, cramping her into a doubled-up posture or arching her back until she feared something might snap. Crazy power in these muscles. Great as that might be in certain contexts, now really was not the time. She groaned and hacked into the cloth. Hold the breath. Snatch a breath. Gnarrr …
The river jerked about, pummelled from all directions as if under attack by a massive army of giants. Several times, it snapped up and down with a whiplike action, almost bucking her off the seething surface. Waves crashed over her, perversely providing some relief from the toxic atmosphere. Alodeé curled up in her coracle, shuddering, hearing herself whimper at the pain, then gritting her teeth once more, resolved to see this through. Indomitable.
I will live, even if it kills me.
Silly thing to think, but her choice was to live. She was not giving up without an epic battle.
The coracle shuddered, skimming her through the blast. Upside down. Bouncing. Submerged, sloughing up from beneath the water. Convulsions hit her harder and harder. Screaming now, screaming through the pain – come on, Resurrection Dawn! Show me what you’ve got!
Crashing waves. Thunder. Seething black gases wrenched from the deepest pits of the atmosphere. Avians shaped like winged spears plunging through the river, hunting. I’ve got this! I am more and you are not taking this life from me!
Her teeth ground together uncontrollably, biting through her screams.
At some point, darkness claimed her.
Chapter 16
Standard 1301.07.01 Estimated – Sailing up Mountains.
PECKING AND PAIN WOKE her. Stirring, Alodeé slapped away a few reptoid avian scavengers. “Not … breakfast!”
They chattered angrily and returned for another bite of her nose.
Nanodagger!
She hurled the corpse into the river and slumped back into the coracle. “Ugh, freaking lumoslugs, I feel terrible.”
Opening her eyes might be quite the trick. Especially since they were stuck together with dried pus. She scooped up water and bathed them until the crustiness softened and she could part her eyelashes. Blearily, she focussed on her surroundings. Gorgeous day. For once, the river behaved itself like an actual river, flowing through a channel that cut between bushes, reeds and farther back, stands of bamboo-like, tufted plants 20 mets tall. Most of the foliage boasted shades of purple – deep purple for the berry bushes – yum, gotta get over there – a lighter purple for the wispy river reeds and a fetching luminous violet for the bamboo. Purple fruit dangled enticingly from the branches of the large, overhanging trees just ahead.
Somebody liked a theme of unrelenting purple.
After a pause to consider the unnatural experience of a river’s running up-slope into the mountains, Alodeé focussed on her immediate needs. Food, water and an awful stomachache. Actually, she had a stomach for once. A pot belly. How exciting – she had never experienced such a thing in her life before. It … moved. Writhing, it did unmentionably nasty and painful things to her gut and organs.
Horror!
Honestly, after all I’ve lived through, this terrifies me?
Maybe the prospect of having funky alien wildlife infesting one’s gut would put the chills into most people. Fumbling with her belt, she extracted a tube of tablets packed for, admittedly, a less urgent or repellent scenario than this appeared to be. She read the tiny script on the back at top speed.
Bug Off
One-stop protection from all gut infestations, fungal, bacterial, or parasitic.
Bug Off? Perfect name. The small print stated that one dose would kill any known parasite. It also said that more than one dose in a week would probably kill her. Yep. Time to get rid of the bump. Pregnancy was not in her future, as best she knew. Especially not this sort. Popping one of the tiny pink pills into her palm, she slugged it down with a mouthful of water and looked for a place to make her landing. If she knew anything about these pills, she had just swallowed the medical equivalent of a stun grenade.
Paddling with her hands across a steady current, challenging at the best of times, became considerably more exciting as the inhabitants of her gut protested being ousted from their cosy abode with increasing vigour. Sweat dripped off her brow as she doubled over, groaning. Finally getting to the shallows, she ripped off her armour and combat skin just in time to frighten off all of the local wildlife with the explosive evacuation of her bowels. Delightful. Dozens of blue-grey blobs with waving tentacles, not unlike freshwater anemones. And blood. Much more blood than she was comfortable with.
Finally, doubled over and gasping, she staggered back into the water to clean up. The local fish appreciated the offerings.
Remind me what’s not to love about Resurrection Dawn again?
Hearing rustling in the bushes nearby, she checked her surroundings with some semblance of alertness. Nothing too large out here yet, but – hmm, a two-legged mottled yellow-and-black creature with the large mouth of a raptor but no wings? Swarm predator if she had ever seen one. She hurled a rock to chase it off. Best pick a few berries and fruit while she had a chance. Yep. Sure enough, the critter dashed off into the undergrowth with a series of shrill whistles.
“Hey, buddies! Guess what just washed up on the shore? Lunch on legs!”
Alodeé did not plan to stick around to become the party. Quickly stripping a couple of bushes and nicking three of the likeliest-looking fruit, she beat a retreat. Just in time. Seven of the little guys peered at her from beneath the bushes, their beady black eyes glittering hungrily. Mini Snappers, she told herself, quickly p
addling away from the shore. This land was more dangerous than she had anticipated. Ah, driftwood! Perfect. Time to make herself a paddle.
Stretching out a hand, Alodeé snatched it back. “Freak!”
The water snake almost hidden beneath the piece of driftwood eyed her. She eyed it. Maybe finding another piece, minus snake, would be advisable? This creature might have friends, too. Its brilliant orange stripes proclaimed extreme venomousness to anyone who cared to take note.
Paddling swiftly on …
* * * *
Having found unguarded wood later that afternoon, she carved herself a serviceable paddle using the nanodagger. She rested beneath the parachute canopy as yet another of this planet’s overload of winged predators circled overhead, these ones avians with a 3-met wingspan, boasting feathers of brilliant rainbow colours, despite the clearly reptilian beaks, wing-hooks and talons.
Rule of survival: don’t make yourself a target.
Pretty sensible, that one.
Another rule was to test before eating much of anything. She nibbled a few berries and decided they might be alright for consumption. The fruit, less so – gritty, tart and altogether unpleasant. Try something else. That evening, she made herself a campsite on a small island just offshore, hopefully protected by the river and grilled a fish for herself. She washed every trace of blood off her clothing and boat. Still bleeding a little, but not enough to be a cause of concern.
Oh – tracks on the sandy shore. Alodeé examined the paw prints and scrape marks and promptly decided to bivouac in a tree for the night. Stringing up the parachute, she created herself a hanging pod about 5 mets up. Truly a marvel, this parachute. Warm fondness swelled in her chest as she considered just how many times it had whisked her green hide out of the path of imminent death.
Come the morning, she became even fonder of her parachute than ever. The last six-legged croc of a family of four was just scraping down off the small island, crushing the coracle as it departed.