Torran

by Leslie Chase

  I came to a stop at last, the ship dead around me. Whatever taveshi weapon drained my power supply had done a thorough job; even the emergency batteries were empty, used up in keeping me safe from the impact. Relatively safe, anyway. I felt like a giant bruise.

  “Sundered Space,” I swore to myself as I kicked out the window. The cockpit’s hatch faced down now, into the planet’s surface. “Whose bright idea was it to invade the Tavesh Empire?”

  No one answered. I was alone in my ship, and for all I knew alone on this planet. Others must have survived, I told myself. The Silver Band couldn’t be reduced to just me.

  I didn’t need anyone else to answer my question. Zaren, Alpha-Captain and war-leader, led us here to capture the fleeing human colony ship. A foolish, doomed plan that looked to have cost us everything. Cursing again, I called the ancestors’ wrath on him and the other Alpha-Captains who’d followed him into this mess.

  I’m hardly blameless, I reminded myself as I looked around my new home and caught my breath. I could have refused the order, challenged my Alpha.

  But Alpha-Captain Terasi had always led us well, and everything happened so fast. I grimaced. If Terasi lived, I would take it up with her when we next met. If not, then the gods had rendered their judgement already. Either way, it didn’t help me now.

  Our clan made up the scouts of the Silver Band, and that ought to mean I was in my element on a new world. Terasi had led us to find resources and supplies, to find routes to our enemies, to explore… this was just one more planet.

  Except that I lacked any of the tools I’d usually use, and I was alone with no pack to help me. I knew nothing of this planet other than that it was off-limits, forbidden to all by the Tavesh Empire.

  It could have been worse, I decided. At least the planet seemed pleasant enough. The light of the sun was bright, white, clean. The air smelled fresh in a way that the recycled air I was used to never did, and the flowering plants nearby were beautiful. We could have crashed on a barren world instead.

  I picked up a stone, threw it from hand to hand, judging. Gravity felt perhaps a little lower than standard, but not enough to matter. Taking and holding a deep breath let me judge the atmosphere: nothing to fear there. Slightly more oxygen than I was used to, otherwise standard. Watching the shadow of my ship move, I judged that the planet spun quickly, meaning day and night would be short.

  I’d been to far worse places and survived.

  As pleasant as it was though, I couldn’t count on being able to find food. A quick check of my gear gave me the bad news I’d expected — nothing technological worked. The batteries on my blaster pistol and communicator were empty: the taveshi hadn’t only targeted the ship’s power supply.

  I had ration bars, and I had my knives. That was all.

  The ancestors did fine with less, I told myself as I looked around for any sign of other survivors. Whatever happened next, I would need a pack around me.

  “Here!” I shouted, then howled, hoping the wind would carry an answer back to me. “Silver Band! I am here!”

  The noise might draw a predator. Let it. I could do with a fight, a challenge, something to take my growing frustration out on. But all was quiet.

  My fighter steamed as it cooled from the heat of reentry, strange plinking noises coming from it. I looked back, frowning. The landing had torn off a wing and left the nose buried in the muddy soil. Even if I found a way to power her up again, the ship would need a lot of work to get into the air. Let alone back to space.

  “Sorry, old friend,” I said, raising a hand in blessing at the old fighter I’d been through so much with. “I’ll be back for you if I can, but there’s no point in me staying here.”

  Then I turned my back and started walking, picking a direction at random. There was no way of telling where I’d find help, so I might as well trust fate.

  Before long I found a stream and started to follow it. Any other survivors would need water, so that seemed as good a way to find them as I could hope for. Around me the wilderness came to life slowly, strange animal noises surrounding me as I walked.

  I kept a wary hand on my knife. The trouble with walking along a watercourse was that predators would hunt here too, and I didn’t want to be mistaken for something delicious. Nothing leaped out of the long grasses to eat me as I made my way down the stream though.

  Ahead, trees rose in a thick forest and I thought I saw smoke. That might be a good sign and I called out again, hoping to find company. I’d need to sleep eventually and without either good shelter or someone to share the watch with, night would be a dangerous time.

  No one answered my call. Maybe the smoke wasn’t from a crash, or perhaps no one had survived this time. I couldn’t tell and I didn’t want to guess. But with the sun starting to dip towards the horizon, it was time to look for somewhere safe to sleep. And that meant getting away from the stream and the predators that might follow it.

  A rocky outcropping looked like it might at least give me a good vantage point. I made my way up towards it, but as I went, I heard something moving through the long grass off to my right. Careful, prowling, hunting movement. My hand tightened on my knife hilt but I gave no other sign, walking steadily and waiting for whatever was creeping up on me to make its move.

  I nearly made it to the rocks before the attack came. The only hint was a sudden rustle in the grass — just enough warning for me to duck aside, spinning and drawing my blade.

  Another prytheen warrior sailed through the space I’d just left, hands grasping at thin air, and instinct took me in to counter attack. I jumped onto his back, forcing him down into the soft ground, my blade stabbing at his side. A killing blow if I hadn’t stopped at the last moment.

  He froze under me and then started to shake with laughter. “Nearly got you that time, Torran,” he said, voice muffled by the dirt.

  “You idiot, Arvid,” I hissed. “I almost killed you.”

  To make the point, I jabbed him in the side. Not hard enough to break the skin but enough that he couldn’t miss the threat. Arvid only laughed harder.

  “How many times am I going to have the chance to hunt a scout?” he asked. “Come on, I wasn’t about to pass this up.”

  I growled and stood up, sheathing my knife and shaking my head as he got to his feet. Arvid wasn’t exactly a friend, but we’d shared victories and defeats, we’d drunk together, we’d laughed together.

  “I’m glad you survived the crash,” I said eventually. “And glad I didn’t gut you by accident.”

  “If you ever kill me, it’ll be on purpose,” he said, brushing himself off and laughing again. “You’re too good with a knife to do it accidentally. Sundered Space, Torran, I’m glad you made it down alive. We thought we were going to starve down here, but with a scout? We’ll eat like kings.”

  I snorted at that, unable to quite hide my amusement. Arvid knew as well as I did how hard it would be to test any food we found — I had more experience, but it wasn’t magic.

  “Wait, ‘we’? How many are down here?” I asked, looking around. No sign of any other warriors.

  “Two more, waiting at the raider for me to come back with water and any food I can find. Dessus is injured and Tarva is looking after him, plus someone’s got to get a fire started.”

  I didn’t recognize the names but I breathed a little easier. Having allies I could rely on would make everything a little easier, and perhaps together we’d be able to get off this blasted planet.

  A slim hope, but a lot better than no hope at all. I waited while Arvid gathered the water bottles he’d left by the stream, and then followed him uphill into the trees. The crashed raider wasn’t far, and I smelled it before I saw it. Smoke, blood, and spilled oil all mixed into a terrible stench. We couldn’t stay here long.

  “Look what I found skulking around the water,” Arvid cried as he led me into what could generously be called a camp. “This is Torran, one of Terasi’s scouts.”

  “That’s us saved then,
” a grumpy voice answered. The speaker was a short female, face scarred from battle and suspicious. “A scout? Couldn’t you have brought back an engineer to fix the damned raider?”

  She forced a laugh to show that was a joke. One glance at the ship told me that would be futile. No one would repair that without a space dock, not even Coran’s fabled engineers. My fighter had come down hard, but this raider looked like it had hit every tree it could find on the way down.

  “My name is Tarva,” she said, raising a hand in greeting. “Dessus is sleeping, the lucky shit. I had to use most of our sleep gel to put him out, it’ll be awhile before he wakes up.”

  I nodded. A prytheen warrior’s healing trance would heal most injuries but if the pain was enough to keep him awake Dessus wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it.

  “What else have you salvaged?” I asked, looking at the makeshift camp and trying to hide my disappointment. This wreck wouldn’t help me much.

  But at least now I had company. Even if it just meant having someone to keep watch while I slept, it was a big improvement on trying to survive alone.

  “Not much survived the crash,” Tarva admitted. “A few ration bars, two days’ worth perhaps. A medkit, mostly used up on Dessus. Two water flasks. What do you have?”

  I sighed and shrugged. “Didn’t do any better. A tenday’s worth of ration bars and a water decontamination kit, that’s all.”

  Arvid and Tarva exchanged glances. I didn’t blame them for being disappointed — we’d all hoped finding other survivors would save us, but it looked like we’d have to save ourselves.

  Fortunately, we’re warriors of the Silver Band, I told myself. We can rise to any challenge.

  I hoped that wasn’t empty bluster on my part. I looked around the crash site again, catalogued the remains. The burned-out husk of the raider provided shelter, and the water wasn’t too far, but that was all that could be said for this as a camp.

  Better not to get too attached to it.

  “We can’t stay here,” I told the others. “Maybe we could hunt enough food to survive, but we’re low on all other supplies and I don’t intend to live the life of a hunter-gatherer. There will be other survivors, if we’re lucky, ones with better equipment than we have. Even if not, there’s strength in numbers.”

  “How do you expect us to find them?” Tarva growled the question. “Just wander around until we run into an Alpha-Captain and their pack?”

  Arvid laughed. “He’s a scout, Tarva. He knows how to find people on a planet, even if we don’t. And it beats staying here, waiting for someone else to come find us.”

  I smiled and sipped my water quietly. Arvid’s faith in my abilities was touching, even if it was misplaced. True, I knew how to survive on a planet better than most warriors of the Silver Band, but even we scouts were used to some technology. Navigating without an inertial map, a communications link, a scanner… this would be a challenge.

  One I intended to rise to.

  “I cannot promise I will find anyone else,” I told the trio. “What I can promise is a better chance than staying here. We will seek other survivors, human or prytheen, and with numbers we will be better able to survive.”

  Arvid nodded. “I don’t plan on sitting on my ass and waiting for rescue. We are warriors of the Silver Band! Come on, Tarva, do you want that to be the story you sing to your kits? That when the Band got stranded on an alien world you waited for others to conquer it?”

  Tarva laughed. “Sure, easy for you to say. You won’t have to carry Dessus.”

  Their bickering had the tone of old friendship and shared hardships, and I envied them that companionship. I’d never had anyone that close, no one I could share triumphs and defeats with.

  Perhaps I’ll meet someone on this journey, I told myself. It wasn’t likely, but why not hope?

  “We’re agreed then,” Arvid said, rapping a dagger on the makeshift table. “As soon as Dessus is ready to travel, we leave and seek out other survivors.”

  3

  Lisa

  The first days on this new planet were the hardest, but they were also rewarding. Maria and Tania worked on getting the communications systems working and the rest of us focused on survival. The galley matter converter turned any organic matter into a nutrient paste that tasted awful but would keep us alive until the crops grew, but we were grateful for the meat that Carrington and his sons brought in.

  Alex Dietrich cleared some of the trees around the colony pod, giving us enough space to test the soil for a farm. That was work I could do, following the instructions with Henry’s help. The autodoc in sickbay ran the analysis and I ended up spending a lot of time working there.

  The readings were strange, hard to interpret, but at last I concluded that some of our crops would grow here. They’d been engineered to grow damned near anywhere, after all.

  It kept me out of Carrington’s way, which helped. Despite his promise to stay close and keep us safe, he kept pushing out into the wilderness a little further each day. Unfortunately, every time he killed a new animal he needed to get it tested to see if it was edible. That brought him right back to sickbay and to me.

  “You know, you could test them yourself,” I said the third time he brought me something new. This time it was about the size of a large rabbit, but that was all that looked familiar about it. The animal had vibrant purple quills instead of fur, and a bright pink frill around its neck. I couldn’t help wondering what it would look like without the hole Carrington’s laser had burned through it. I picked it up gingerly and lay it on the scanner bed.

  “Got to give you something to do, girl,” he said, a faint edge in his voice. “Us men are out hunting all day, you ought to make yourself useful somehow.”

  “I’m testing the soil and—” I stopped at the look on his face. Apparently that didn’t count as real work to him, and there was no point in arguing. There never was.

  Henry barked at me, saving me from needing to say more. I looked at the display projected above his fluffy holographic head and sighed. “Sure, we can eat most of this if you can catch any more. But not the frill, okay? That’s… the computer doesn’t know what this stuff is, but it isn’t good.”

  Carrington wrinkled his nose, checking with his own virtual companion. Most colonists picked from the menu of cute animals for our companions, but not him — his took the form of a man in a business suit. In that, as in everything else, Carrington had no imagination or sense of joy.

  I tried not to let him bother me too much. That wasn’t easy when he insisted on giving me work and then doubted my results. Every time he double checked, and although we’d only found alien life unknown on Earth or Arcadia, he still didn’t believe that we were on the wrong planet.

  Even when his companion confirmed my results Carrington frowned. Without a word he turned to go, and I looked at the quill-rabbit with distaste. Down to me to figure out how to prepare it, apparently.

  Our communicators chimed at the same moment, the piercing sound of a high-priority message. Carrington grabbed his rifle as I answered.

  “Come quickly,” Alex said. “The main hall. Maria has a signal.”

  Neither of us needed to hear more. For once, we reacted the same, sprinting out of the room, the quill-rabbit lying forgotten on the table behind us. We skidded into the hall, others rushing to join us as Maria gestured for quiet.

  “We can’t transmit, only listen,” she whispered. “But there’s a lot to hear.”

  If anything, that was an understatement. Static hissed and popped as she sorted out the transmissions, some in English, some in an unintelligible alien language. A few were in Galtrade, the alien merchant language that every colonist took a basic course in. I struggled to make out words and didn’t like the ones I heard. Attack. Crash. Stranded.

  At last Maria tuned us into a signal clear enough to make out, one that identified itself as being from the Wandering Star. And what it had to say was a shock to us all. A recorded summary of what
had brought us to this planet followed.

  The transmission repeated itself and we listened to it over and over before Maria finally muted it.

  “So we’re not on Arcadia, confirmed,” she summarized. “Lisa was right the first time. They are calling this planet Crashland, which seems appropriate enough.”

  Crashland. I wasn’t sure about naming our new home after the disaster that had brought us here, but at least we had a name for it now. More important was why the Wandering Star had crashed here.

  We’d been attacked by aliens. Fled into space claimed by the isolationist Tavesh Empire. And then we’d crashed along with our attackers. It took listening to the recording a few times to piece it all together, and we still didn’t have a full picture of what had happened, but that much was clear. Our alien attackers, the prytheen, were loose on the planet with us and they’d already tried to take over once.

  And while the prytheen at the Wandering Star were willing to share authority with the ship’s captain, we were too far away for that authority to protect us. As near as Maria could work out from the signals, we were half a world away from the ship. The crash had scattered colony pods across the entire planet.

  “We must be alert,” Mr. Carrington said, clutching his rifle grimly. Did I see a glint of satisfaction in his eyes, or was that just me thinking the worst of him? I couldn’t tell. Maybe he was genuinely concerned for our safety, maybe he just liked giving orders, maybe a bit of both. “From now on, no one is to leave the pod without an armed escort.”

  “Shouldn’t we get on our way to the Wandering Star, father?” David asked. The eldest of the Carrington boys at twenty-one, he still deferred to his father in every decision. Mr. Carrington shook his head.

  “Too far, my boy. Too far to march when we have these ladies to protect.”

  I bristled at that, drawing breath to speak, but Malcolm got there first.