by Sam Coulson
The command deck had broken off from the fuselage and was lying next to the rest of the ship, which remained upright, engines down, and nose up. The four long engine tubes that had been mounted on the rear of the vessel were crushed to less than a third their original size, they had taken the brunt of the impact. It looked like a body, still standing, with its severed head lying on its side. There were pools of chemicals and hydraulic fluid at the base of the ship, and debris was scattered throughout the little valley where we’d landed.
Now that we were out in the sun, I could tell that Lee’s wounds were serious. The shot to the shoulder hadn’t been just an energy weapon. Whatever had hit him was still lodged in his shoulder. Though the bleeding had stopped, his face was pale and his teeth were set in a grimace.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that boy,” he waved his good hand. “I’ve had worse.”
“How did you know find us?” Ju-lin asked. She seemed to be comforted by his dismissal. I wasn’t so sure.
“Growd,” Lee responded. “He sent a distress call to the other colonies when the Celestrials started bombing New Haven, and then a few minutes later he made a second call, saying that he had spotted Draugari fighters engaging the Celestrials. We didn’t know what to make of that, I figure the Celestrials and the Draugari must have been in a battle, and a few stray shots hit the colony.”
“No,” Ju-lin responded. “There were three Celestrial fighters making bombing runs on the colony before the Draugari arrived. The Draugari showed up with two Slires and this Carrack, got the drop on them. Ghosted one before the Celestrials knew they were there.”
“Why would the Celestrials would come out this far and cross the blockades at the Furies just to attack a defenseless colony?” Lee asked to no one in particular. “Where were you when they attacked?”
“We were in the cave when the bombing started,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ju-lin broke in. “And then they fired a plasma drone into the cave. We barely made it out.”
“They fired into the cave?” Lee turned toward her, his voice incredulous. “Sure it wasn’t a stray shot? Dumb luck?”
“No,” Ju-lin answered. “We saw them bombing, they were using standard charges on the colony, what hit the cavern was a semi-autonomous drone. It was targeted.”
“The Celestrials attack an archeological site, and the Draugari sweep in behind them?” Lee asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if the Draugari were protecting something,” I said.
They both turned to me.
“Protecting what?” Lee raised his eyebrows, expectantly.
“I don’t know,” I said sorting through my memories. “I’m not even sure why I said that, but somehow, I know it. They were protecting something. I just don’t know what. Maybe they didn’t know what.”
“And the Celestrials?” Lee pressed.
“I have no idea,” I responded.
“You intercepted Growd’s message when he sent it to the orbital com station. Maybe they intercepted the communications drone after it left the coms relay,” Ju-lin broke in. “We’re close enough to the Celestrial frontier that we should expect that they would intercept any coms drones they can.”
Lee looked at Ju-lin, considering for a moment before shifting his focus back to me.
“You know the Draugari were protecting something, but you don’t think they knew what.” He said, his voice was metered, he was calculating his words. “On the ship everything happened quickly. When you killed that Draugari, something happened. I saw it. There was, well, I don’t know what it was. It looked like some kind of energy transfer. There was electricity in the air. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it. And when you got up, you said you’d seen yourself kill him.”
I looked down at the grass. I knew the question that was coming, though I didn’t have any of the answers.
“And then,” he continued after a pause. “You could read the Draugari symbols. The best minds in the fleet haven’t made heads or tails of the fragments of Draugari writing we’ve found. But you read it. And you knew the code to override the self-destruct sequence. Where did you learn to reroute power to the engines for that last burn? You did it without thinking. But it’s a complex procedure on a Carrack. You did it in seconds. You didn’t learn how to do that by plowing a field and planting peas.”
“I did it without thinking,” I realized that he was right. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, I had just acted.
Ju-lin sighed uneasily.
“So, Eli, in the last hour we have saved each other’s lives.” Lee was solemn, serious. “That means something where I come from. I’ve asked you before, and so now I’m going to ask you once more, and I want as much of the truth as you yourself understand. Where are you from?”
I was silent for a long time, staring at the grass. Ju-lin and Lee waited. The grasses were brown at the base, dying. I pressed my finger into the soil, it was sandy. I put the tip of my finger to my tongue, salt. The terraforming had planted grasslands on a salt plain. I looked around, we were in large valley like a bowl. There had been a lake here, long ago. But it was gone. Gone with everything else from this world, save for me.
“I was born here. On this planet." I didn’t look up. “The site where you built the Downs was once a village. A quiet village. I used to farm and cut wood. The grasses were blue-green, not green. I lived there. My family lived there.”
They remained silent, waiting for me to continue.
“I wasn’t in the village when the terraforming started. I don’t remember why. My memories are scattered into pieces. I just know that I woke up in a cave up in the hills, alone.”
“My god,” Ju-lin whispered. “People had already colonized the planet.”
“Not people,” Lee answered, and then paused. “Well, I’m sorry, yes, people. But I suspect, not Earthborn.”
“What are you talking about?” she blurted. “Not Earthborn? We’re a dozen fluxes away from the Collective, with all of the Draugari attacks Collective traders are sticking to the trading lanes. The Celestrial worlds are closer, but look at that hair on his head, he’s no Skin. He’s not just human, he’s Earthborn. Chen’s tests said so. You two must have knocked your heads back there.”
“Ju-lin,” I looked up, leveling my gaze at her.
She met my eyes and held my stare. A wave of realization swept over her.
“You cannot possibly mean,” she broke off.
“The terraforming,” I said. “The cave must have protected me from the worst of it, but it found me. It changed me.”
“Is that even possible?” she gasped. “That can’t be possible. Stage 4 terraforming wipes out all life forms down to the smallest microorganisms and then repopulates the world using earthborn DNA. What you’re saying is that—No fucking way!”
“Lin,” Lee snapped. “Language.”
“But he’s saying that he survived the terraforming and that it turned him from—something else into a human,” she continued , her hands flailing in the air wildly as she spoke, as if the more she moved, the more what I was saying would make sense. “That’s crazy! It’s impossible!”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Lee said. “Your people, Eli. Were they another branch of humanoid, something from the Collective? Maybe from Noona or Olsterians who settled a few hundred years ago?”
“No,” I answered. “I am, I mean, I was, something else.”
“You were?” He pressed. “Why do you say it like that?”
“I know they’re my memories, but it doesn’t feel like it’s me.” I said. “The faces I see aren’t human. Sometimes they frighten me. The stories, the moments, the world, they all feel strange to me. They may be my memories from before, but they are alien to me now. It’s as if someone else had poured their memories into my own.”
“Like stealing someone’s memories?” Lee responded.
“Something like that,” I answered, looking back at the dirt.
�
�Like with the Draugari,” he pressed.
“Yes. But no.” I answered keeping my eyes locked on the ground as I sorted through waves of confused emotions. “My memories from before, the ones from my life on this world. They are like background music to a song you know. Something that plays deep within. They somehow fit into my head. Like the beat of a familiar song. The thing with the Draugari, that was different. It’s like a marching band running around inside my head, it’s out of control. It’s something, I think my people, well, the people I used to be, called it the Charon.”
“Charon?” Ju-lin repeated the word.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s hard to sort through all the words, but a Charon is the energy of your life that slips away in death.”
“The soul,” Lee said.
“No, but—well yes. Something like that,” I answered. “I really don’t understand it.”
“When you killed the Draugari,” Ju-lin eyes were wide. “You are saying you captured his soul? Okay, that’s crazy and creepy.”
“Captured isn’t the right word,” I said. “The best way to describe it is that, well, as I held the knife it felt as if his energy was pulled through it and passed through me, making an imprint as he went.”
Lee shifted here he sat, he winced in pain as his hand went to his shoulder.
“This is all insane,” she said.
Lee didn’t disagree as we sat in silence. Looked up at Ju-lin, she was staring off at the wreckage with a furrowed brow, avoiding my gaze.
“The knife,” Lee looked at the blade tucked into my belt.
“Yes, I suppose I shouldn’t keep it.”
“No you should,” responded Lee. “You killed a Draugari with your bare hands. The Draugari may seem barbaric, but they live by a code. If you kill a Draugari, his blade is yours.”
“My weapon is my honor, in my defeat my honor is yours,” as I spoke the words, a shadow of a memory passed through the forefront of my mind: I was on a ship, and an old Draugari passed the blade into my hands. I shook my head. The Draugari’s memories in my head were difficult to manage and control.
“That was unsettling,” Ju-lin commented with a low breath.
Lee didn’t disagree. Honestly, neither did I.
“So, back to the question at hand.” Lee said. “You said that the Draugari were protecting something.”
“Yes, I know they were.” I answered. “But I don’t know what.”
“If they were, then they’ll be back.”
“Possibly,” I answered.
“And the Celestrials,” he continued. “We still don’t know why they were here. If they intercepted Growd’s coms, there is no telling what piqued their interest. Maybe it was the message about whatever he thought he found, but maybe it was the colony itself. This system may have some strategic importance we don’t understand. Rare minerals, undiscovered flux points, something we don’t know about.”
“But then what about the Draugari?” Ju-lin asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Lee answered. “Eli says he doesn’t think that they themselves knew what they were protecting. It could be they were a just a simple patrol watching the flux point. They picked up the incoming Celestrials on the scan and got lucky. From my experience, Draugari tactics are straightforward: fight when you have the advantage, run when you do not. The Draugari had the Carrack which gave them the upper hand in the fight, so they attacked.”
“Makes sense,” Ju-lin said. “So the real question is, what were the Celestrials doing?”
“Whatever it was, they may be back,” Lee said. “We need to know when and why. And we need to be ready to defend ourselves.”
“I wonder if Growd knows,” Ju-lin asked.
“I wonder if Growd survived the attack,” Lee said. “There were casualties in New Haven, the wave he sent said that at least half of their structures were hit. We were loading up the skiffs to go help them recover when I checked the weather satellite footage to see if I could find you. I saw where the Carrack had landed, and figured out that they had taken or killed you two. Then I caught the damaged Carrack on long-range scans, so I took the shuttle up to go after it.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “Thanks Dad.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “We’re on the wrong side of the world, and unless we can salvage some coms equipment from the wreck, we may be here for a while.”
“I think the first thing we need is to see if we can find a med kit,” I said. “That shoulder looks bad.”
“Bah,” he grunted gruffly. “I’m fine. Look for coms equipment. If you happen to see a first aid kit, bring it on over, but don’t go out of your way.”
Ju-lin pulled herself up and was dusting herself off when she paused and turned, looking behind us
“A ship,” she said as she scanned the sky, zeroing in on a silver spec in the distance. “There, heading toward us.”
We watched as the ship descended and made a broad loop around our position.
“A Scotsman,” Lee commented, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“More Draugari?” I asked. Aside from the knife on my belt, the rest of the weapons were buried somewhere in the wreckage.
“I don’t think so,” Ju-lin answered. “Scotsman’s are human ships, tough, but old, not too many of them flying anymore. But this one’s hull looks clean and intact, and it’s approaching cautiously. If it were Draugari they would attack us straight away.”
“The only thing more cold blooded than a Celestrial, and more desperate than a Draugari,” Lee commented with distain. “Scavengers come to pick the bones of the dead.”
Stranded, and wounded, we had no choice but wait for the ship to land.
The Scotsman, as they explained, was a cheap, but effective Earthborn-designed and built merchant and fighting ship commonly used by traders, scavengers, and ill-equipped pirates. When docked side-by-side, the Scotsman is narrower and more slender than the Carrack. The Carrack’s broad three-seat cockpit with a top-mounted turret, reminiscent of a cobra’s head, and a stout body with four exterior-mounted engines make it look imposing and dominant. Meanwhile, the Scotsman has a rounded, narrow cockpit, and its two main thrusters are tucked tightly against the rear of the fuselage, creating a much tighter and compact aesthetic. From that first day I saw the Scotsman land next to the hulk of the Carrack’s wreck, I liked the look of it. However, that’s not to say that I was drawn to this, specific Scotsman.
The ship set down softly on her landing skids about forty meters from the edge of what was left of the Carrack. As the dust settled and the maneuvering thrusters powered down, we could clearly see a painting on the bow of the ship like a figurehead: a large and excessively voluptuous blue-eyed human woman with a slight, clever, smile and a mess of long, wild orange hair that swirled around her ample body, providing the barest coverage to the woman’s most intimate areas.
Written beneath the woman was the ship’s designation: Tons-o-Fun.
“You’ve got be kidding me,” Ju-lin shook her head in disgust.
Lee pulled himself to his feet to stand between us.
The hatch opened and loading plank extended. The pilot looked Earthborn, shorter than me, but not by much. He was so square at the shoulders and hips that he looked like he could have been carved from a brick. He a pair of goggles pulled up over his forehead, and two pistols on his belt.
“What a pleasure,” he made a grand sweeping motion with his hand. “It seems congratulations are in order. That has to be the worst landing I have ever witnessed. I mean really, you do know that the Carrack has landing skids and is supposed to land on its side, not its ass-end down? Well, let me back-up, that was a Carrack, right?”
“Who the hell do you think-” Ju-lin’s face burned red.
“Lin,” Lee put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her back.
“Tsk, tsk. A shame. The Carrack is such a proud vessel, fearsome even,” he continued. “Not much left of this one, not much left of value anyway.”
“Yet you saw enough profit in it to land,” Lee responded.
“Well yes, of course,” the pilot responded, absently running his hand through his thinning black hair. “I’m a good citizen after all. Well, not an upstanding citizen, but you take my meaning I’ll expect. I’m not a big fan of Government and rules and the like, but then I’d wager you all aren’t either, being out here in the middle of nowhere on an empty rock. What I am is neighborly. You’re lucky I happened to catch you on my scanners.”
“This isn’t an empty rock,” Lee responded gruffly, “and you didn’t just happen by.”
“Well now Gramps,” the pilot stopped, leaning back on his heels with wide, innocent, grey eyes. “I do not believe I take your meaning.”
“You caught a scan on the Celestrial ships a few systems back, and then saw the Draugari in pursuit.” Lee responded. “You figured there would be a firefight and decided to follow at a safe distance and pick apart what was left once the dust settles.”
“Well, that too,” the pilot smiled easily. “I’m a curious man. If I see a curious thing, I am inclined to take a look. And I will say, you three walking away from that after being in the middle of a firefight between three high end Celestrial fighters followed by a shipboard brawl with gang of Draugari is one hell of a curiosity.”
“Where did you pick up the signal?” Lee asked.
“Pardon?” The pilot responded.
“The Celestrials,” Lee continued. “Where were you when you caught their signal, and what was their most likely point of origin?”
“Woah now!” the pilot held up his hand. “We’ve moved from greetings to negotiations already! Slow down Gramps, we’re just getting warmed up here. I’ll tell you what I know, but nothing in the verse is free my friends.”
“We ain’t your friends,” Ju-lin sneered.
“Ah, now Twiggy, that’s just because you haven’t gotten to know me,” the pilot waved Ju-lin off as he surveyed the three of us. “See now, we haven’t even had proper introductions. I’m generally called Loid Burns. You are, let’s see, Gramps, Twiggy, and—oh my—half-covered in purple Draugari blood with a new blade on your belt—I’ll just call you sir I think.”