Amazing how many of them survived such an ordeal. And now they all stood on a strange planet so far from home. There’d been over three hundred people in each crew, and what was left? Half that?
Gordon arrived at her side and passed her a plate loaded with cooked and raw foods unlike anything she’d seen. He sat beside her, lifting a blue tube and examining it before tearing off a bite. Janlin set her own supper beside her on the bench, uninterested.
“You look good with hair,” Janlin said. She didn’t watch him, though, but stared off into the distance. The emptiness where Ursula should be was too obvious.
Gordon chewed and swallowed. “Thanks. You should at least try some water. It won’t make up for everything we’ve been through, but it is amazing.”
Janlin accepted the bowl from him and raised it to her lips. Cool water, pure, clean, and tinged with some hint of sweetness, sent refreshing chills down into her middle.
“It is nice.”
At that moment shapes appeared out of the darkness and swooped in to land around the common area. Graceful beings strode into the light, chirping and whistling their greetings. People of Renegade’s crew rose and waved to them, calling them over into a hut across from the cooking area.
“What’s going on?” Janlin asked.
Gordon shook his head. “Not sure, although I did hear that someone sussed out a way to program a translator of some kind.” He sounded peeved.
Janlin snorted. “You can’t be serious.”
“No, it’s real,” said Gordon in a grim voice. “I’m worried everyone’s getting a little too comfortable.”
Janlin felt comforted by his morbid emotions. Everyone else seemed so in awe of the Huantag that moved among the group. At least she wasn’t alone in her mistrust of the angelic aliens. Still, it made her wonder about Anaya’s bitterness. Every story had two sides, and as much as she trusted Anaya, she wanted to know what the Gitane had done to deserve banishment by these kind and gentle creatures.
A crowd gathered around the doorway where they’d taken the Huantag. A sudden cheer brought heads about, and everyone began to line up.
“What the bloody hell . . . ?”
Gordon rose and Janlin joined him, her curiosity overcoming her grief. The medic woman emerged from the hut and immediately began questioning one of the aliens with grave intensity.
Tyrell emerged a few minutes later, somehow managing to be only second in line. He caught sight of Janlin and Gordon and came at them, beaming.
“It’s amazing! I can understand them!” He gestured at the aliens. “It really works!”
“What is going on?”
“Turns out Steve Netchkie was one of the first four brought here.” Tyrell gave them a meaningful look. They stared back. “You know, the programmer who discovered how to use the NECs to fold space?”
“Oh,” Janlin said. Had she even met the guy before?
“Anyway, he’s been working with the Birdfolk to record all the sounds they make and compare it with our own words for things. Then he programmed some kind of translation software out of it. Stunning, really, especially since he designed it to upload to our own nanites. No gear required!”
Gordon gave an appreciative whistle. “Genius.”
“What about the aliens? How will it work for them?”
“I don’t know the particulars, but it’s an upload to their own communication devices. You know, we’re more alike than I would’ve ever imagined. Come on, get in line! Once we all have the upload, they say they have an announcement for us.”
“I’ll just bet they do,” Janlin said. All this time humans had lived here without being able to understand their hosts . . . this could be a revealing moment.
Each crewmate that emerged stared at the aliens with fresh awe. Many, like Teardrop, engaged them in a question and answer session, and the Huantag seemed to satisfy their every inquiry. Janlin urged Gordon before her, willing to watch and wait, wondering what new view she would have of her ally’s enemy when she could understand them.
Inside the hut the programmer sat at what looked to be a pile of electronic junk, nothing more than a mangled box of wires and plastic and foreign materials she guessed was the Huantag’s hardware. Keys had been carved to represent the human alphabet, and the holo-display showed lines of code she hoped meant something to the man.
“Steve Netchkie.” He held out a hand, radiating pleasure and success like a beacon.
“Janlin Kavanagh,” she said, shaking his hand. His smile faltered.
“I am so sorry about Rudi. We are all less without his kindness and quiet humour.”
Janlin nodded, unable to trust her voice.
Steve pointed out a chair at the side of the table and turned to tap away at the homemade keyboard. “He died asking for you,” he said. He didn’t look up from his work. “He said to tell you he was sorry, that he thought we’d be back in a matter of days. He knew you’d be with Stepper when he came looking for us.”
Janlin wrapped her arms around herself and forced a deep breath through her lungs. “Thanks,” she said, her voice husky.
Steve nodded and motioned towards the door. “You’re good. Send in the next.”
“I think I’m the last one.”
“Really? Well, then, my job here is done.”
They emerged from the hut to find everyone engaged in excited conversations with the Huantag. Janlin listened, and realized the clicks, whistles, and trills became understandable words in her ear.
“Well done, Mr. Netchkie,” Janlin said. “It’s absolutely amazing.”
“Just Steve,” he said, but he blushed as he looked around the crowd.
A greying Japanese man noticed Steve and Janlin at the door, tilted his head in a question, and Steve nodded an affirmative.
“Please, everyone, your attention please.”
“Who is that?” Janlin whispered to Steve.
“Captain Inaba,” Steve whispered back. “Those close to him call him Yasu.” The Renegade’s former captain stepped up onto a bench and faced the group.
“If you could all find a seat somewhere, it will be easier for our hosts to speak to us as a group,” he suggested. Janlin could see that natural leadership and respect complemented his easy manner. Everyone moved to find a place, and Janlin joined Gordon on the ground against Steve’s hut.
The six Huantag in attendance moved to where Inaba guided them, their plumage rippling in the breeze. Each bore distinctive colours and markings, and their body shapes differed just as humans did from one another.
“Welcome, newcomers,” said her ear-cell. “It brightens us to see you all here.”
A few chuckled at the idiosyncratic way the program chose words.
“It gives us many pleasures to speak to you and be spoken. We are the—” The translation of their own name for themselves didn’t have an English equivalent, and so the program inserted the actual whistle-click he made. “Our first excitement is to say the modifications are complete on the flying clothes. Tomorrow we would test it, yes?”
Chatter erupted and the volume rose until Inaba stood and waved for silence. “For those of you who have just arrived, we were shown this flying apparatus earlier. It was designed for the Imag, so our guests have kindly modified it to fit our different shapes better.”
“I’ll test it,” Janlin said, rising.
“She’d be your best bet, that’s for sure,” Gordon said, also rising. “Number one fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants pilot right here.”
“Don’t need your help, Gordon,” she said in an undertone. This was her chance to gain mobility, to explore and discover the Huantag’s set-ups. She didn’t know how long she had before Anaya would need her.
“I am an Earth pilot,” she confirmed, “and a damn good one. I’m used to flying contraptions, wind gusts, take-offs and landings, all of it. I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt trying this out.”
Inaba called for a vote, and a large majority agreed to let Janlin be the first to
try the alien’s flying device. The Huantag watched the whole process without interruption, and Janlin wondered what they were really thinking. Their beaks and feathered faces made them difficult to read.
“Thank you for this time,” one of the Huantag said. “Find us returning by morning.”
They launched with a crouch and a leap, easily gaining air with their wide wings in a way that made Janlin incredibly jealous. Everyone cheered and waved, and turned to talk in excited voices about the incredible experience of conversing with the aliens. Even Gordon looked a little stunned, although he didn’t seem to have much to say.
For her own part, Janlin felt quite alone in her mistrust of the angelic aliens. No one here knew their history like she did, and she wasn’t about to start trying to educate them while they could do nothing but praise their new hosts.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JANLIN QUICKLY BECAME weary of both Gordon and Stepper tiptoeing around her. She saw the young medic talking with Tyrell and went over, leaving the men discussing the food they’d eaten that night.
“Bring her up to my hut,” Teardrop was saying. “I’ve got some ingenious salve the Birdfolk taught us to make from a local plant. It’ll clear the infection right up.”
“Someone get hurt?”
Tyrell looked around and flinched. The woman’s blue eyes widened. Janlin sighed. “I won’t bite you, Tyrell,” she said.
“Yeah, but . . . you know,” he said, stumbling over his awkwardness before his face dissolved into sincere chagrin. “I’m so sorry about Rudigar, Janlin. It’s all my fault—”
“It’s not your fault by any stretch,” she replied, running overtop his apology before the poor kid completely lost it.
The woman watched this exchange, her head tilted and face full of puzzlement. “You just arrived. How could an earlier death here be your fault?”
Tyrell opened his mouth to reply, but coughed instead. “Hmmmm, excuse me,” he said, then his eyes widened. “Weird, I had a cough just like that, a little dry cough that was enough to pull me from the crew of the Renegade. Her father went in my place.”
Teardrop whistled low and soft. “Heavy burden of guilt.”
“Not necessarily,” Janlin said. “If we want to lay blame, how about starting with the Imag?”
Both agreed readily.
“I’ll go bring Linder up,” Tyrell said. He saw Janlin’s questioning look. “She got a bad gash when she fell during a whipping, and it’s not healing well.”
Janlin shook her head. “Bastards.”
“I’ll meet you there,” the woman said, shooing him off. Then she turned on Janlin in almost a predatory way. “I’d like another look at you. You spooked me bad disappearing like that this afternoon.”
Janlin fought to keep the amusement off her face. The medic was easily fifteen years her junior, and probably a good four inches shorter, yet she held herself with calm command that all good medics were trained for.
“Sorry about that.”
“No, I understand. I also remember you getting a good knock on the head, though.”
“Yep, that was me. But I’m fine now.”
“For me to judge,” she replied. Then she glanced around and leaned closer. “I could use a little help if you’re up for it.”
Janlin opened her mouth, closed it, and just nodded. She didn’t want to end up working medical, but she recognized the need to keep busy. Was the woman thinking it too?
As they walked, the young woman chatted on about the various things the aliens had taught them. “They helped us set up when we first arrived, which was weird since we couldn’t communicate, but these shelters were here, old and abandoned, and they brought in so many things for us to use, like the lights that we still haven’t figured out. We even have a crude plumbing system that reminds me of ancient Roman ingenuity.”
“How many per dwelling?” Janlin asked when she could get a word in edgewise.
“Well, those larger ones sleep six, or even eight with all the cooking being done communally. We’re so used to that as a ship crew it’s worked out really well here, too. I really don’t have time to be learning the local plants and how to cook them. Then those smaller shelters only sleep two, and they’re reserved for couples.” Janlin thought the young woman coloured a bit at this admission. “They’re newer, and you can see how they are all placed on the outer ring, moving up the cliff and down into what we call the sagebrush meadow.”
“So, the chain of command and all the rules that go with it are out the window?”
She pursed her lips. “Not for some things, but in a situation like this, SpaceOp’s rules against romance at work have gone out the window.”
“What’s your n—” Janlin began, but the medic burst into tears in that same moment.
“Oh, Janlin, this place is so weird and everyone is emotionally scarred from the Imag and everything, and I’m not a psychologist, I can’t help them the way they need . . .”
Her breath hitched and hiccupped at each pause. Janlin gave her a hug. “It’s okay,” she said, fighting her own tears. They were all so tired and traumatized, and here this young woman had the medical well-being of all these survivors on her shoulders. Janlin lifted the woman’s chin with a gentle finger. “We’re away from those brutes, that’s what matters most, right?”
She nodded, wiping at her face. “And the Birdfolk have so many great things to teach us,” she said. “SpaceOp promised solutions. They promised we’d grow food in space and bring it back to Earth. They promised with the Jumpships we would find new planets, new homes, and now we have but we can’t get back to tell anyone about it.” She choked on renewed tears.
“SpaceOp promised more than they could give,” Janlin said, wishing she could tell her it was Stepper that promised more than he could give. But that wouldn’t help anything, in fact giving them less hope than ever if they discovered that SpaceOp didn’t even know where they were . . . or how. She put her arm over Teardrop’s shoulders and guided her onwards. “We’ll just need to make things happen for ourselves.”
Teardrop gave her a wide-eyed look. “I wish I had your confidence. But, you know, some are saying we shouldn’t worry about getting home again, that it’s better here and this way we wouldn’t have to share it.”
Janlin sucked in a shocked breath. “That’s insane. We would perish as a species without reproduction.”
“They want me to help the Birdfolk find a way to reprogram the nanos. I’m not a nano-tech! I’m just a newbie medic!”
Janlin pulled her around, face to face. “Listen, I won’t give up on getting back home, and neither will Gordon. So just you never mind the talk. That’s what people do when they’ve given up hope.”
Two people rounded a corner ahead, and she saw it was Tyrell approaching with Linder. The older woman was limping, and her strained face held an off-colour tinge that made Teardrop gasp when she saw it.
“It’s gotten worse real fast,” Linder said, puffing with the effort of walking while in such pain.
“Okay, right in here. I’ve got just the thing to fix you up . . .”
Janlin leaned against the wall outside, listening to the voices within. She still hadn’t found out where she was to sleep, or even the woman’s proper name. Well, she had nowhere to be, so she put her back to the wall and enjoyed the heat still radiating from the sun-soaked stone. She slid down, eventually, and set her arms up on her bent knees.
The night air cooled quickly around her. Small flying shapes whizzed by the lights, accompanied by a chipping sound. Strange star patterns twinkled overhead. Janlin allowed her awe to slip in past her annoyance of the crew’s general attitude. It made sense, though. Of course, people would want to stay, especially if they thought there was no Jumpship to get them home. A simple coping mechanism. Still, Janlin couldn’t help feeling scornful. There was always hope . . . always. The Huantag had space flight technology, therefore a way off the planet existed. The only hitch was the Jumpship. Would Anaya be ab
le to get the ship safely away from the Imag? Would it still be in one piece?
Janlin shifted, unable to find comfort. A smell came to her, one she felt she should know but couldn’t place. She rose and began to walk, aimlessly, and when the cleansing rain came, she caught the smell-memory—that glorious aroma of wet earth and thirsty living things soaking up the moisture. She wandered on, untroubled by getting wet, watching little rivers of muddy water flow this way and that, rushing and rippling and pooling. She heard people still celebrating in the common area, no doubt under the great eaves of the cookhut or possibly dancing in puddles. A few people ran for their own hut, or perhaps to share the hut of another. The strange little balls of unexplained light seemed to dim, changing to a pale night setting for those resting.
Janlin walked out away from the village. The night sky lightened as the rain clouds cleared away. There was no moon up yet, and the stars littered the sky as profusely as they ever did from home. Different patterns, maybe, but still abundant.
She stopped. No moon. No lights out here. Yet she could see well enough to navigate around the scrub brush. She studied the shadowed landscape, pinpointing many little clusters of faint phosphoresce gathered around stones and scattered amongst the shrubbery. Janlin crouched by a pile of stones, wondering if it was safe to touch. The glow seemed to come from some kind of lichen covering the stone’s surface.
“Fascinating,” she whispered.
She straightened her spine and stiffened her resolve, feeling better for the walk and ready to go find a bed. As nice as it was here, they would return home and show SpaceOp that Jumpships did work and they could explore a universe of possibilities.
Still, no one would believe her story right now. She would wait. Who knew what surprises tomorrow would bring?
The peace of the place calmed her, and Janlin felt a rush of certainty. If there was anyone that could pull off such a mission, it was Anaya. Her money . . . and her hopes . . . were on the Gitane captain.
Jumpship Hope Page 15