by Ed Charlton
“If the opportunity comes to either of us, let’s agree now not to let it pass.”
“Let’s hope we get in and out without having to deal with him. It’s better if they do it themselves.”
Tamric nodded and retreated into his room.
The military communications traffic all seemed routine. Jim heard no reports of their approaching craft.
Tamric emerged from his room with his composure restored. Jim said, “We’ll need to continue being discreet, but I don’t think they’re on to us.”
“I can hide us among the orbital junk for as long as you like. But we must be prepared for them to be watching their skies very carefully.”
“What’s the weather doing down there?” Jim wondered.
“Raeda, show me the weather over Muthlec.”
The screen showed a vast spiral of clouds obscuring the landmass.
“Oh, great,” said Jim.
“They won’t see us through that,” Tamric said cheerily, “though it might be a bumpy ride!”
They watched, listened, and waited for several hours. There were no signs that they had been detected.
Tamric hopped the flier from one piece of orbital debris to the next. They angled their descent down toward the atmospheric chaos of the storm. Once the flier hit the top of the storm, the steady strain of slowing through the atmosphere gave way to unpredictable battering.
Jim was aware of flashes of light burning past the windows, but his attention was on the control panels. Alarms were sounding, and Tamric was praying.
There was a sweet moment of relief as everything went silent and black. The flier lurched upward, and they became nearly weightless. Control panels flashed to life again, and the alarms sounded again.
“This is not good,” called Tamric.
“Which bit?” quipped Jim.
“Several systems just reset.”
“Are we still flying?”
“Yes, but we are not concealed. The stealth systems are not operating.”
Jim stared at the anxious face across the cabin. “Maybe we’re hidden by the storm itself. What can you do to get them back before we come out of it?”
“Without knowing the exact cause of the problem, very...”
The flier shook them sideways, and gravity regained its full strength, unfortunately angled some way up the port wall rather than down to the floor.
“Ouch!” Jim muttered as the arm of his seat slammed into his side.
“Raeda!” Tamric called. “Full stealth mode immediately!”
The ship’s voice returned an unhurried, “Stealth systems not operational. External sensors have been damaged. External plates have been damaged. External modules have been damaged.”
“Shit!” said Jim.
“Awaiting command,” replied the ship.
Tamric was shaking his head. “We’ll just have to drop to the ground as soon as we can and hope for the best.”
“Awaiting command,” said the ship.
“What about going back up?”
“We’re almost there. We’ll be visible longer if we abort now.” Tamric shrugged and waited for Jim’s agreement.
“Please restate command,” said the ship.
Jim nodded.
Tamric reached up and turned off the voice recognition.
The flier dropped out of the dark mass of the storm and hovered like a bird of prey. A wake of steam boiled off the hull as wind blasted the rain into burning sections of the plating.
Jim squinted at the rain-blurred images of the ground.
“There. Fifty degrees. Trees with a flat field beyond.”
“Got it!” said Tamric.
Within a minute, they were on the ground. Tamric brought them as close to the trees as he thought safe.
“Well done,” said Jim.
“Thanks. How do we find out where we are?”
“Work it out from the sensor logs.”
Tamric shook his head. “We were without sensors for several seconds. We don’t know how fast we were blown or in which direction.”
“So we guess. There’s a limit to how far we could have strayed.”
While they examined the logs, an alarm began to sound.
“What now?” asked Jim.
“Fire,” said Tamric calmly. “Outside. Port wing. Let’s have a look.”
He entered a series of commands, and an image of the flier’s hull appeared on a screen.
“What the hell is that?” Jim pointed at the glowing trench that stretched from the wing’s front edge into the main fuselage.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tamric said, shaking his head. “Did we hit something?”
“It’s like it vaporized the plates. They’re still burning!”
“Maybe the rain is strong enough to put it out.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
They were silent a moment and watched glowing steam drift upward from curled edges that twinkled alternately orange and intensely white.
Tamric reached up and reactivated the voice control.
“Raeda! Damage report.”
The ship intoned a litany of disaster. The burning area, out of their view, continued through into vital systems. When it was done, Jim and Tamric shared a long silence.
“Anything in your training help here?” asked Jim with a touch of bitterness.
Tamric nodded. “Abandon ship. Take any necessary supplies, retrieve minimum communications equipment for emergency rescue, complete the mission if feasible, destroy the ship upon leaving.”
Jim nodded. “All very sound. Being marooned here is not a good idea. We’re now dependent on Tella’s arrival. You get the comm-units. I’ll get some supplies.”
Tamric nodded and began to extract the equipment from the console.
Jim muttered and cursed to himself while he added to the contents of the emergency backpacks. I could use Tella’s experience. I’m trained in administrative law enforcement. What am I doing here? Marhan was right—I’m a scribbler. We’re in a dangerous situation and I’m babysitting a boy monk! I don’t need someone else’s life dependent on me.
Tamric’s voice called from the cockpit. “Jim, we have a problem.”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered and went back through the narrow passage to the flight cabin.
Tamric was pointing at the sensor display. “Vehicles are moving this way.”
Jim shrugged. “Could be a coincidence.”
Tamric shook his head. “Three groups, converging on this location. They saw us.”
“Let’s move. Try to get the autodestruct to finish before they arrive.”
“I have started the countdown already.”
***
The air was intensely cold. The storm had not lessened; wind swirled in gusts and updrafts that slapped and pushed at them as they walked. In dim light, they groped their way into the trees, hoping to be through the woods before the fireworks started.
Tamric held a direction-finder in one outstretched hand, wiping rain from its display with the other.
“Left a little,” he shouted. “When we get to the far edge of the trees, we can follow it north before we break cover.”
Jim nodded, too uncomfortable and too blinded by rain to reply. He was worried about the trees. They were all dead. The ground was littered with branches and twigs that crunched underfoot. He saw nothing green anywhere, just dead wood. This is going to be pretty when it burns, he thought.
It did not take long. Jim and Tamric had only picked their way for five or six minutes into the woods when the world behind them lit up with the white and silver fireball.
Even facing away from it, they were dazzled.
“Quick!” called Jim. “This lot may burn, despite the rain!”
Tamr
ic nodded and increased his pace, but they both found it impossible to hurry. They tripped and helped each other up time and again. Small superheated chunks of the flier were dropping all around. Fires began flaring everywhere.
Jim stood to look back at the fires from the edge of the trees. “So much for slipping in unnoticed.” He wiped rain from his face and smiled grimly.
“So far, so good!” called Tamric. “We can follow the trees north until we get over that rise and, then, cut across to more cover.”
Jim nodded and hoped Tella was having a better time than he was.
Tamric steered them both along the boundary of the field. Jim’s heart was thumping as they ran, trying to keep low, across a stretch of bald hillside. He felt sure they would be seen. Tamric guided him down the steep slope of a gully. They splashed their way down irregular steps of moss and lichen swamped with rainwater. Jim did not catch his breath until they were sheltered under an outcrop of rock, with a swollen stream cascading an arm’s length beyond.
“Well done!” he said to Tamric, who smiled but said nothing.
What dim light there had been faded. The noise of the rain and the stream continued to crash around them, but they could see nothing.
Night had fallen over Marlolori.
Chapter Nine
Even before he opened his eyes, Jim knew the storm had ended: the noise of the stream was farther away, the wind had died down, and parts of him were only damp rather than wet. He looked out at a dim, gray morning. The sun was already over the edge of the gully; it wouldn’t get any brighter. To Jim’s eyes the sun seemed disappointingly small. He remembered Marhan’s warning about Tanna Gul’s wider orbit. That’s why it’s so damn cold too.
“Good morning, my friend,” whispered Tamric. “Are you hungry?”
“Damn right I am,” replied Jim softly. “What’s cooking?”
“Sterilized protein supplement, specially wrapped in individual convenience packages.”
“Yummy.”
They both ate the tasteless rations in silence. Jim guessed that Tamric had been awake early and seen to his morning prayers.
“How far away are we from where we need to be?” Jim asked when they had eaten.
“I don’t know. I downloaded the maps and the sensor information; I’m analyzing them now to see where we are.”
Tamric studied the small panel on his pad and shook his head. “Sorry, Jim, you can’t get there from here.”
The young monk broke into an infectious smile. Jim lay back against the rock and laughed, “Okay, so we get to take the day off instead.”
Tamric nodded and said, “That sounds good.”
After a few minutes of study, he continued. “There is a main road several hours’ walk north-northwest of here. It goes two-thirds of the way around that lake our analysts thought suspicious. It connects to other main roads to the west and the east. However, I see no sign of any population center around the lake.”
“Major roads are a good clue that there’s something there.”
***
They set off down the gully. Jim was enjoying the silence until he noticed the lack of birdsong.
“Where are the birds?”
“What birds?” asked Tamric, concerned.
“There’s usually something that communicates by sound. I don’t hear any birds, or insects for that matter.”
“You’re right. I have seen nothing flying.”
They walked on in silence for a while.
“Jim, when we get to the lake, there are several points where there may be roads going under it. Do you have any preference now as to which one we make for?”
“The nearest.” Jim hoped that the sooner they started their reconnaissance, the sooner they could recover some good from, what seemed to him, an unfolding disaster.
Tamric checked the pad and the direction-finder. “Then let’s leave the protection of this route and go more to the north.”
Jim stopped and looked up and down. The gully was widening into a steep-sided ravine. “Does this get us nearer to a different road with more cover?”
“Yes, but it will take slightly longer.”
“Let’s do that. We should keep the cover.”
“I hope they think we perished in the flier. But you are right; we must assume the worst.”
Their walk was uneventful. When the ravine turned away from the road, Jim and Tamric climbed up to a line of dead and blackened trees. They began to hear the noise of traffic.
They crouched among the stumps for several minutes and surveyed the scene before them. The trees marked the boundary between the ravine and a broad, flat plain. The land sloped gently upward to a road built on stilts and laid ramrod-straight across the plain.
“Oh great!” breathed Jim. “So much for cover.”
“It looks like nothing has grown on this ground for many years.”
“We have to wait for dark before we can cross it. How far do we follow the road?”
Tamric studied his map again. “To the right is where we might have gone for the nearer access. To the left...” He craned his neck and squinted into the dim, dusty air. “I can’t see it. We should be able to see it.”
“We’re neither of us used to planets this far out. Our eyes will eventually adjust. Listen, if we break out my pack, I could probably rig up something using the infrared rifle sights. I threw in a couple of extras.”
Tamric did not reply. He was still staring into the distance.
“Tamric?”
“Do you hear that?” the monk asked quietly.
“I hear the traffic in the road.”
“There is a louder noise. I think it is coming from behind us.”
Jim turned and strained to hear. “There’s an engine of some sort.”
“I hear voices too. But I can’t tell where there are.”
“Keep still. I wish I’d done the infrared sights before.”
Tamric squatted down, his shoulder against Jim’s as they looked up and down the ravine over the tree stumps. Jim could feel the monk trembling.
“Relax,” he whispered. “Nothing can go wrong.”
A flier rose to their level from deeper down the ravine. Footfalls sounded behind them across the dust of the plain.
Chapter Ten
“Remain still!” commanded a voice from the flier. It then made a similar-sounding command in what may have been several other languages.
“There!” came a voice from behind them. “What the stench are those?”
“Ugh! Pug-nosed monkeys! What are they doing here?”
Jim and Tamric stood to see a line of heavily armed uniformed canids. The soldiers laughed at a few remarks in their own language; one stepped forward.
“Either of you female? Maglan here says he gets to screw you first.”
Another called from behind him, “If you’re not, he’ll do it anyway!”
Amid laughing barks, the soldiers stripped them of their backpacks and made them walk out onto the plain. The flier hovered overhead as the captain led them back, parallel to the ravine edge. Soon they came to a group of three armored vehicles. With weapons trained on the two aliens, the soldiers opened the doors of one and made them climb in.
The vehicle had a space inside filled with bench-like seats. Each had hook and strap arrangements that Jim did not recognize at first. The captain and three others followed them in.
Two soldiers immediately went to the front benches. Jim watched them squat down and loop the strap around their waists as a seat belt.
The captain pointed to where they should sit.
“Who and what are you?” he asked.
Tamric spoke before Jim could reply.
“I am Brother Tamric. I represent the Praestans Rapax, and I expect to be treated with all appropriate courtesy.”
/> The captain sniffed the air between them and bared his teeth. “You’ll be treated as a spy until you can prove otherwise.”
“I am James Able, from Earth. We heard you had some problems with the Mello-haffen reserve?”
“Earth? What’s that?”
“A planet. My planet, Sol Earth.”
“Huh. Never heard of it! What about Mello-haffen? What do you know about it?”
Tamric answered, “We were supposed to be taking samples of the plants for stocking one of the arks. We heard that there was some kind of disaster there.”
“I wouldn’t know. How did you end up here? You’re in a restricted area.”
“Our craft was damaged in the storm yesterday. We meant no harm; our being here is just an accident.”
Again the captain sniffed, his eyes narrowing. “It strikes me as odd that you should appear just now. If it were up to me, I’d give you to Maglan. Lucky for you, I’ve been told not to.”
Jim asked, “Why ‘just now’?”
The Gul’s eyes sparkled but he said nothing. He turned to the two seated soldiers and barked a command. One of them slid open a hatch at the front of the vehicle. The driver stuck his snout through.
“Orders?”
“Detention Block.”
“Sir!”
To Jim and Tamric the captain said, “Try anything and I’ll kill you. You’re to be questioned at a secure facility.”
Jim sat on a bench up against the thick glass of a window. Tamric was on the other side, also against a window. The captain and the third soldier sat between them. Jim tried to attach the seat belt but gave up.
He was relieved that orders about them had already been received. He felt comfortable that they would not end up dead in a ditch—a dungeon, maybe, but not a ditch. He began to talk to the captain as they bumped their way across the plain toward the road.
“So, you ever been off-planet?
“Not yet, but I...soon, maybe.”
In a flash of insight, Jim noticed the strange way the canid shifted in his seat. If the Gul had a tail, he would be wagging it!
“I love traveling.” Jim continued idly, “I just love seeing the same things, you know—the parallels, the variations of it all.”
The Gul turned his snout away but kept a narrowed eye on Jim.