by C. W Tickner
‘Damen?’ Sky called through the open door, still inspecting the hand.
‘Yes?’ Damen asked, turning around in his co-pilot seat to look suspiciously at her through the doorway.
Sky didn’t look up but just continued to stare at her nails.
‘Do you think my nails are pretty?’
Damen sighed and turned back, ‘No idea,’ he said, tactfully playing neutral.
‘When we gets back,’ Sky said, nodding to Tess.
‘Doctors orders,’ Tess said.
‘Maybe you’re not so bad at diplomacy,’ Harl heard Kane say. The engines roared to life, drowning out a string of curses from Damen.
Chapter 14
I have searched nearly a tenth of the ship’s cargo for the cryobed before I realised I could just boot a computer up and do a search. I made it to T deck and using a hydrocart, I have moved one from its container and taken it several kilometres to my room. It took over a day and I’m famished. Now to wire it in.
They flew over the island, passing the Compassionate’s city of leaf and the island’s central forest that they protected. On the opposite shoreline of the mainland they found vast complexes of buildings billowing smoke like giant factories. A dual line of rails snaked over the land with titanic machines slowly following the lines, loaded with supplies.
Uman tucked a half-formed piece of wood into a pocket, unclipped his belt and joined Harl at a window.
‘It doesn’t feel right,’ he said, looking out across a built up area of low buildings with Aylens walking down a giant parody of streets and alleyways.
‘What feels wrong?’ Harl asked, wondering what the man meant.
‘It’s all too big,’ Uman said.
‘You mean we’re too small,’ Sky said from the seat behind.
Uman nodded. ‘How did they get so big?’ he asked.
Tess turned from her own window at the question.
‘Millions of years of evolution,’ she said. ‘We believe it was competition from another long dead creature that forced both species into an arms race of evolution. Each grew bigger over time in an attempt to kill or hunt the other to extinction. I imagine they couldn’t do it by size alone and only when their minds grew were they able to destroy the other using intellect instead of brute force.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just a theory though.’
They crossed over pastures and roadways until they reached the great swathes of black dead land. The soil had a burnt look and was gouged in deep lines as if a plough had been pulled through it.
It was a sharp reminder that Harvest Ten was still sucking the life from the planet and converting it into charges to power the machinery of the world. There was still areas of forest below them, but they had been cut off and were now islands of green among a black sea, waiting to be eradicated.
‘There’s more strips now,’ Tess said. ‘When we first came this way it was a subtropical forest.’
The engines sputtered and a tremor passed through Harl’s seat.
‘Branchers?’ Harl asked.
‘We’re too high up for their birds,’ Sky said.
‘And they only live on the island,’ Tess put in.
fear began its slow creep into Harl as the vibrations grew more intense.
‘What is it?’ he called through the open door to the cockpit.
When neither Damen or Kane answered, he unclipped his belt and walked through to the small room. Through the curving glass he saw a wide swathe of trees and greenery, surrounded by the blackened soil.
Kane’s hands darted across the screens in front of him as he instructed Damen. ‘Up forty percent on side thruster three.’
Damen scanned the screens and dragged his finger up the power display bar for the engine.
The ship lurched down on one corner, forcing Harl to grab the head rest of Damen’s chair.
The trees raced up at them and Harl struggled to see it clearly as the vibrations intensified and his vision blurred.
‘Fourth thruster to sixty percent,’ Kane said his hands a blur over flashing red diagnostic images.
Damen moved for the screen but Kane leant across to his terminal and raked his finger tips over the controls. ‘Keep up,’ he said.
The droning of the engines became a wail and the green canopy enveloped the window as giant leaves battered the underside of the ship. Branches slapped against the window, smothering their view with their emerald sheets.
The nose of the ship pitched forward, revealing the jungle floor layered with huge broad leafed plants and spindly white flowers poking through the gaps.
‘We need to land,’ Kane said as the droning stopped and an eerie silence fell over the small room before warning sounds blared from the computers. The ship glided and started to pitch around.
‘Engine four overloaded,’ Damen said.
‘We have to land,’ Kane said, gripping the stick and tilting it left to counter the slow spin of the ship.
‘There,’ Damen said, pointing to a huge fallen tree that had been smothered by foliage. Its surface was flat bark, rough and crinkled with grooves but along the centre was a thin strip like a runway that the plants had yet to conquer.
‘We’re coming in too fast,’ Damen said.
Harl didn’t need to be looking at the screens to tell. The log was rushing towards the window and Kane was holding the stick at full left tilt to hold the front in place.
‘I know, dammit,’ Kane said. ‘If I slow too fast on one engine we’ll spin out and I cant land this thing sideways.’ He jerked the stick up as the bark blocked everything from sight angling the shuttle up so all that was visible was the bright green canopy above.
‘Hold on!’ Kane said but it was too late. The ship smashed hard into the surface throwing Harl forward towards the console between the two seats and blackness swallowed him.
Chapter 15
Excuse the lack of entries but it has taken two painstaking weeks to realise that I need outside help to make this accursed cryobed work. I can’t learn organic cryogenics quickly, so it’s time for a long term crash course.
Harl looked up as the dizzy feeling passed and found himself in the footwell. He could hear the sounds of the others stumbling from their chairs in the passenger section behind the cockpit then Damen swearing behind him.
Pushing himself up at the base of Damen’ chair, Harl staggered to his feet and held on to the seat’s headrest.
‘We’re all alive then?’ Kane said, as another string of expletive words spilt from Damen, who was wiping a trickle of blood from his forehead.
‘Where are we?’ Harl asked, staring out at the utter blackness that enveloped the window. Had they been buried in the soil? If the ship had been buried how would they dig themselves out?
Damen heaved himself up from his chair and Kane slipped his seatbelt off, ignoring Harl’s question and squeezed past him.
‘Dammit,’ Tess cursed from a passenger seat in the back.
Harl ducked under the doorway to see her inspecting her nails.
‘Every time we crash I lose one,’ she said.
‘At least no one’s seriously hurt,’ Sky said and Tess frowned at her before attempting to extract the remaining spiky ends of the nail with her teeth.
‘Your lack of bulk saved you from a heavy fall then?’ Damen said to Uman who was clearly unharmed and staring out the into the blackness.
Uman turned to them and grinned ‘And your big head saved you from any further damage,’ he said glancing at the smear of blood. ‘Or not.’
‘Where are we?’ Harl asked again, but now he had collected his thoughts he could guess.
‘The tree was rotten,’ Kane said, stealing a glance at the window that showed only the reflection of the seats and their faces. ‘I will need to get outside to manually restart the engine.’
‘Stupid machinery,’ Sky said tugging her goggle down in preparation to leave. ‘Can’t trust any of it.’
Kane just grumbled something about needing to feed living cre
atures or they’ll bite your hand off as he snatched up a tool box from a compartment under his seat.
Damen and Uman wrestled through a jumble of loose boxes that had dislodged from a stack in the back until they found one containing a selection of rifles and ammunition clips.
Harl picked a rifle out of the box. Sky helped herself to one and checked inside the magazine opening and tugged back the cocking mechanism. She plucked out a handful of clips and slapped one into place.
Damen had his own rifle and Harl noticed it was the only gun with a flash light welded to the side.
Damen and Uman walked to one of the cargo doors on either side of the ship and depressed the open switch. The door moved a fraction from the bottom and attempting to open upwards but stopped with a sharp grating noise. Damen grunted and launched a powerful kick into the base of the door and it hinged up with a whining hiss.
Sky and Harl lined up behind the two hunters while Kane and Tess hung back.
Except for a gleam of light trickling down a hundred metres up where they’d punched into the log, Harl could see nothing further than a pace in front of him. The lights inside the ship cast a faint glow but not enough to pierce the gloom.
‘Can’t we activate the exterior lights?’ Tess asked Kane as he checked the tools in the small hand held box.
He looked up as if she’d just revealed a secret truth.
‘Of course,’ he said and walked to a series of switches beside the door. He clicked one on and bright bulbs blasted the interior of the log with light. The huge brown chasm was nearly a perfect cylinder stretching hundreds of metres to the front and back of the ship before the darkness swallowed the light. Small creatures scattered from the damp walls, leaving only a scrabbling sound and a glimpse of hairy legs and bodies disappearing from sight as they scurried in to black nooks and crannies.
It was a hundred paces from one curving wall to the next and the loose floor was covered in piles of wood chunks where sections of wall above had crumpled down to form a soft woodchip layer. None of the collapses had been big enough to break through the thick exterior of the tree except their own entry hole high overhead.
Roots clawed through the damp wood above, weaving around dark holes that spotted the curving walls like cave entrances. The smell of peat and rotting wet wood was overwhelming as Harl stepped outside behind Damen and Uman, and onto the mixture of damp sawdust and wood chip.
Kane bustled around to the engines on the rear sides of the vessel. ‘Fascinating,’ he said staring above in wonder. ‘The amount of micro ecosystems like this that must spring up around the planet. The chance for new creatures to evolve in such a place must be extremely high.’
‘It would depend how long the wood took to rot,’ Tess said. ‘Not much time.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Kane said, placing his rusted tool box on the soft floor beside an engine, that was mounted on a swivel joint, protruding from the hull.
‘You guess?’ Tess said.
Harl glimpsed tiny movements just on the edge of sight where the light ended and darkness took over like a swarm lurking beyond sight..
‘Maybe,’ Kane said, pulling out a handful of tools, ‘they move from rotten tree to rotten tree.’
Harl kept his eyes focused on the band of darkness. It was only the shifting of shadows but looking around at the hundreds of cave holes and seeing the same made his flesh crawl. A stray black claw or hairy limb would show in the light before it slipped back into the shadowy recess.
‘Or,’ Kane went on, ‘they-’
‘There’s things beyond the light,’ Harl said.
‘Fancy a hunt?’ Damen said, stepping towards the closest rotting wall and a black cave that was low enough for a creature to scurry out along the ground at them.
‘Stay close boys,’ Sky said, skipping across the wood chip as if born to it. Harl wondered why she was so adept when the rest of them were slipping and struggling to stay upright. Put her in an empty room and usually she’d trip over herself.
Damen grunted at her words and dropped to one knee as he attempted to peer inside the dark cave fifty paces away. When nothing jumped out at him he trudged his way back to the engine, where Kane was attempting to heave a battered panel off the side of the block.
He barged the small man aside, gripped the metal where Kane had loosened it and yanked the sheet off as if it was made of thick paper.
‘Strong as an ox,’ Sky said, eyeing Damen’s muscles as Tess rolled her eyes and began biting her nails, the other hand loosely clasping a pistol.
Kane muttered something about brute force and leant in to the box of wires, tubes and greasy gears.
Harl watched the shadows, waiting as Kane began to whistle a jaunty tune, muffled by the constant sound of banging from within the engine.
‘If it takes any longer, I’ll be a daddy by the time we get out of here.’ Damen said.
Sky blush and glanced away from him.
‘Who knows,’ Uman said jostling an elbow into Damen’s side. ‘You might already be a daddy.’
‘Could be twins,’ Tess said.
Damen held back the fist we was about to hit Uman with and spun around to Tess.
‘What?’
Tess laughed. ‘She’s big enough,’ she said. Damen paled. ‘We had a woman on Orbital who had triplets. She was expecting a huge baby and got three small bundles of screaming joy.’ She stopped biting the nail. ‘It’ll be nice for the child to have company. Do you have siblings?’
Harl turned from examining the cave mouths to listen. He’d never considered asking and suddenly felt rude for not taking the time. He knew Damen would only tell if he felt comfortable, and somehow within the gloomy atmosphere of the log, he did.
‘A sister,’ he said.
‘Was she a twin?’ Tess ask eagerly.
‘No,’ the big man said.
Tess went quiet at his tone but Harl had never heard this from Damen. He had noted the reluctance in his friend and in a moment of bravado Harl risked having the fist that had been aimed at Uman come for him.
‘What happened to her?’
Damen frowned and looked hard at him. Harl felt adrenaline leak into his system in anticipation of the man’s wrath. Instead Damen shrugged as if recognising the chance Harl had taken.
‘When we were little we went out with our father to Delta for a trading trip,’ he said. ‘We begged him to take us until he agreed to the two day march.’ He chuckled, ‘I don’t know how he managed it. We pestered him until he roared in anger and proclaimed his ears would fall off if we didn’t stop. Vulya was younger and I’d promised to protect her. Neither of us had expected him to take us and it felt like the adventure of a lifetime when we set out on the cart. The city was breathtaking and like two mesmerised little monsters we gazed around at the smoke belching buildings and huge market. On our return trip we were robbed by another clan preying on those who left the city without protection. No one had bothered to warn the three of us and we left as we had come, our cart stocked with goods to take back to my mother. They killed my father and the two of us fled into the forest.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Tess said as if her asking had made it happen.
Damen shrugged and turned away from them to scan the dark holes.
Harl didn’t expect him to continue but then his deep rumbling voice broke the silence, even the banging from the engine had stopped as Kane turned to listen.
‘We found a hole in the ground to sleep in and decided to stay the night. It was foolish but I was very young and I thought the men might chase us. I had made a promise to Vulya. Something crept out from deep in the hole and attacked us in the night, giving me this. He pointed to the tip of the scar that had been half concealed under his black beard and Harl wondered if he’d intentionally grown the beard to hide it.
‘Once it had mauled me it snatched Vulya and dragged her screaming deep inside the hole. I tried to be brave and keep my promise but the screaming had long ceased and I turned back when I
found her leg lying in the tunnel. I stumbled out away from the death trap and wandered until I was picked up by a scout from our tribe.’ He looked at Uman with a gracious nod. ‘Uman’s father brought me back to my mother. From then on I vowed never to let any monster get the better of me again, even as I watched her retreat into someone who’d lost nearly everything.’
‘And that is the reason he hunts,’ Uman said.
The two men eyed each other for a moment before Damen inclined his head and then turned away.
‘Aren’t you gone yet?’ he snapped at Kane.
Kane poked his grease covered face out from the engine. ‘If you hadn’t taken to stealing ships,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘I’m no thief,’ Damen said.
Kane resumed his banging and the lights from the ship cut out, plunging them into darkness.
Kane cursed.
A faint scrabbling sound came from the darkness. Harl shook his head as tiny flecks of wood dropped from above and lodged in his hair.
‘Keep close to the ship,’ Damen said as his flashlight clicked on, illuminating a section of the wall and a swarm of black legs creeping out of the holes in the wall.
Something dropped on to Harl’s back and he screamed in terror as thin legs clutched his head and something tried to bring a clicking mouth towards his head.
‘Ahh!’ He grabbed a spindly leg and threw it just as Damen’s light caught it mid flight and the six legged creature, as big as a chicken, hit the floor squirming before Damen fired and yellow gore splattered the damp woodchip.
Harl caught a glimpse of movement in the blue light from the shot before the light shrunk back to the narrow beam of Damen’s torch.
‘Got it,’ Kane cried and the spotlights flickered on around the ship as the engines rumbled to life.
The lights beamed on to a hideous swarm of small white scuttlers and creeping monsters coating the interior of the log. A mass of legs and hairy bodies scurried down the walls towards them, some dropping from the roof into the soft floor.