by J. Blanes
“I knew it was her when you mentioned that an animal had attacked you near here,” Iris explained. “She would never let a stranger or any other animal approach the house; she was defending it while I was gone. Poor little Mirby, did you miss me? Did you think I was dead?” Iris hugged her again, and the animal buried her head in her arms.
“Hi, Mirby,” Keira said, overcoming her fear. “I’m sorry about before, but you left me no choice.” Keira extended her arm to touch the animal, but Mirby misunderstood her gesture and used one of her tails to shake her hand. Keira laughed at this surprising reaction, and everybody else smiled, except Blip, who was experiencing another one of the Human emotions new to him: jealousy.
“Mirby learned to shake hands a long time ago, among many other things,” Iris explained. “You’ll be surprised at her intelligence. Sometimes I think that she’s smarter than me.”
“Can we go now?” Blip grumpily interrupted the small talk. “I mean, it’s still dangerous out here,” he added a little more soothingly.
“Blip is right,” Albert agreed. “We should go back to the ship again. I can’t wait for a good night’s sleep.”
“Do you need to fetch something from the house?” Keira asked Iris.
“No, everything I need is here,” she replied, looking at her friend.
It was already dawning on the planet when they arrived at the big ship. Iris had spent the time on the small ship showering and changing into a suit. When she finished, she was unrecognizable. Her beauty, which until now had also been a captive of the planet’s dusty and dry environment, seemed to have been liberated, too, and shone spectacular after years of undeserved seclusion. She was tall for a woman, several inches taller than Keira and only an inch less than Dylan. Her face shape slowly followed the outline of a rounded, U-shaped figure, ending in a slightly slanted, graceful chin. A pair of black eyes stood out against her tanned skin, combining naturally with her straight onyx hair, and a perfect Greek goddess nose elegantly crowned her full, rounded lips. Only her thin frame diminished her otherwise perfect figure, but she had already started to remedy that, earnestly eating the ship’s synthesized food as if it were the most delicious in the universe.
Used to being alone for so long, she spoke little, and the others waited patiently for the right moment when she would tell her story. Mirby never left her side, watching over her, but she also examined and studied every detail around her, much like Albert had done the first time he had entered the ship.
On the big ship, they went directly to the bedroom, but not before giving Iris a short tour of the ship. They were exhausted and the beds too tempting to even try anything else. They ordered the ship to turn the lights off and went to sleep. Just then, they heard Blip screaming in the distance.
“What’s going on?” Iris asked. “Where’s Mirby?”
They all looked around the bedroom. Mirby was definitely not there, which was unusual because she’d never left Iris’s side before. Then, Blip screamed again.
“The kitchen!” Keira exclaimed.
They rushed down the stairs and entered the kitchen to find Mirby sitting on the table, holding Blip with one of her tails by leg and hanging him in front of her face, clearly having fun with her newfound blue toy.
“Let me go now, you filthy creature!” Blip screamed furiously. “Let me down!”
“Mirby!” Iris called her, grinning. “Blip is a friend. You should…” She covered her mouth, restraining herself from laughing, which was increasingly difficult to achieve because of the chuckling sounds coming from the others. “You shouldn’t do this to him,” she finally managed to say.
Mirby seemed to ponder her words for a second and reluctantly let Blip go.
“This is outrageous!” Blip complained. “I have never been mistreated like this in my life!”
“Mirby, you owe Blip an apology, don’t you think?” Iris suggested.
Mirby looked down. “Bi-ip,” she said in a delicate voice, trying to pronounce his name. Then, she lifted Blip gently to her bosom, giving him a tender hug and licking him on fondly the face.
“OK, OK, apology accepted,” Blip said, pretending not to like her affections. Mirby put him down gently.
They slept for almost ten hours straight, and they could have slept more if Blip had not woken them up. The ship was approaching the next portal, and they needed to get ready.
After their morning routine, they headed for the capsules.
“You don’t seem to be too surprised by our visit, do you?” Albert asked Iris as he walked beside her.
“Not at all, I’ve been expecting you,” Iris replied enigmatically.
Albert was about to ask her another question when Blip interrupted. “We may have a problem. We don’t have a helmet for Mirby.”
“Why? Is it dangerous?” Iris asked.
“No, but the smell is strong and disgusting,” Blip replied.
If it was not life threatening, Iris saw no problem, although she felt sorry for Mirby. “She must have to deal with it, then.”
But Mirby did have problem with it. She had sensed the pungent smell well ahead of the entrance and refused to move a step ahead. She used her tails to cling to the corridor’s corners, and not even Iris could convince her to continue. After several minutes of fruitless attempts, they were in a desperate situation and without a clue as to how to force Mirby to continue.
“What if she doesn’t go into a capsule?” Iris asked Blip, though she already knew his answer.
“She’ll die,” Blip replied sincerely.
“You hear?” Iris turned to Mirby. “Don’t be so stubborn; it’s for your own good.” But Mirby either didn’t understand or was more afraid of the stench, because she just stared at her friend and remained motionless.
“It’s hopeless,” Dylan snapped. “How much time do we have?”
“Ten minutes,” Blip estimated.
“What if we just put a mask on her?” Keira proposed. “She won’t be able to smell anything.”
“I don’t know if she will let us even so,” Iris replied, almost sure Mirby would not let them do it.
“It’s worth a try,” Dylan said as he ran away to fetch a helmet from the small ship. He came back in under five minutes, panting and out of breath.
Dylan pulled the mask from the helmet, freeing it but leaving the tube attached to it. He gave the helmet and the mask to Iris.
“You must go now,” Iris told them. “It’s foolish to put your lives at risk, too. I’ll come with her.”
They hesitated at first but did as she suggested because they knew she was right. It would be useless trying to persuade Iris to come alone without Mirby, and only she could convince Mirby to put the mask on. Blip offered to stay until the last possible moment, as Iris and Mirby would need him to activate their capsule.
The three friends entered their capsules and were put to sleep by the ship at Blip’s orders. They never saw Iris and Mirby entering the chamber.
NINETEEN
Tukma’s Fleet
The Tukma admiral gave the order to cross the portal well ahead of schedule. Fifteen cruisers, thirty-three logistic spaceships, seven carriers, and three main battleships composed the fleet under his command. It was an astounding deployment of military resources for such a simple mission as finding and destroying a single ship. A Tukma battleship alone could destroy all life on a small planet, but the admiral would not risk failing on his first assignment. He was determined not only to destroy their target but also to gather additional intelligence about its occupants and their purpose. It would be his gift to Preto’or, an extra bonus that would help him to solidify his position as admiral.
Crossing a portal was nothing more than an unpleasantness for the Tukma, as their protective exterior armor shielded them from any of the side effects. Before entering a portal, other civilizations had to resort to co
nfining themselves into capsules, special rooms, or any other technology that they had devised, making them extremely vulnerable prior and after the crossing, a weakness that the Tukma had taken advantage of many times in the past. Only the most advanced civilizations had achieved a protective shield for their whole ships, and even they had trouble implementing it on their smaller ones. Not the Tukma.
A moment ago, the admiral had received the news that their target had just made another crossing. Most of his fleet had already crossed into the star system, but they informed him that their target was not there anymore. It didn’t matter to him; they would follow its steps to the remotest parts of the galaxy if necessary.
Then, another bit of news reached him, this time excellent. The last portal that the target ship had used had malfunctioned due to an unusually strong solar flare, and sent it short of its destination. Its occupants had been lucky, as the damaged portal could have stranded them forever in the immense void between star systems, but their ship’s advanced technology detected the problem on time and adjusted the destination to the nearer safe system. This was good news indeed; their target would need time to reprogram the next portal, and it would be alone and completely defenseless during that time.
The admiral’s battleship was the last to cross the portal. A Tukma battleship was a marvelous piece of technology, a proud masterpiece of destruction. As it was bigger than most cities, its construction took decades and could deplete the mineral resources of several planets. Its shape was stretched and stylized to help it cross smaller portals; it would take a full planet cycle for a Tukma to walk it from front to back, but only a quarter of it from port to starboard. Almost forty million Tukma were assigned to a battleship, from officers to slave personnel, and most of them would never leave the ship during their lives. Equipped with the ultimate Tukma weapon and defensive technologies, it was always accompanied by the versatile cruisers, smaller but much faster, and the feared carriers, each one carrying millions of their most destructive manned ships. The Tukma had never lost a single battleship during a war, the only civilization in the galaxy still holding such an impeccable record.
The Tukma detection and tracking systems estimated that the ship had been hovering above a primitive planet for at least a cycle, while a smaller ship had descended to the ground. The admiral wanted to investigate what the ship was doing there and dispatched new orders. Most of the fleet should continue the pursuit of their target beyond the next portal, with orders to destroy on sight, while his battleship and two cruisers would stay behind for his investigation.
The admiral’s battleship was put on a geostationary orbit around the planet. Only a carrier and two cruisers escorted it, as the rest of the fleet had already left.
The admiral was waiting in his quarters when the captain entered with the latest information. “Admiral,” the captain greeted him in spoken language, the traditional way of communication between Tukma officers.
“Captain.”
“We found a landing spot near an abandoned, primitive house,” the captain informed. “There were slight traces of radiation belonging to a geoengine.”
“And?” the admiral inquired impatiently. There was nothing unusual in the captain’s report. Geoengines were the most common engines on the smallest civilian ships. What he needed to know was who they were and why they had landed on this barren planet.
“Our sensors detected a commotion among a tribe near there,” the captain continued. “Their conversations have been recorded and translated. The translation shows that they are discussing a recent vision shared by some members of the tribe. Our analysts believe that their vision could be the ship we’re looking for.”
The admiral interrupted. “Interesting. Continue.”
“The tribe seems to have lost a prisoner,” the captain went on. “The ones who saw the vision said that the prisoner went to the sky with others like him, inside a Polymac bird. We’ve captured two members of the tribe, two hunters who approached our search ship, and found out under interrogation that in their mythology, a Polymac bird is a giant bird that once came to raise their heroes to their heavens.”
“A rescue,” the admiral muttered. “Bring me the prisoners; I want to interrogate them myself,” he ordered finally.
“We’ve already killed them,” the captain replied calmly. It was the normal Tukma procedure after interrogation.
“Bring me more, then,” the admiral ordered, equally calmly.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“No, wait. Bring me their leader instead. Those tribes have a chief or an elder, someone like him.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the captain repeated before living the quarters.
The tribe was in turmoil again. Since the prisoner’s escape, there had never been a moment of peace for him. He was a Yonai elder, one of the five members of the elders’ council, the respected elite that ruled the tribe. Yesterday night, he and the other elders had summoned the council to analyze and discuss the events that had transpired during the escape. Unfortunately, none of them had been present at the colony during that time. They were away in praying retirement on the mountains, and had to rely solely on witness testimonies.
The tribe believed that the Polymac bird had appeared before them and took their prisoner and others like her into the heavens. It was pure nonsense, but the elders patiently heard their stories, which they found troubling, as they had never seen this kind of mass hallucination before. In the end, they decided it was a case of ignorance and superstition, developed as an excuse for blaming the bird for the embarrassing prisoner escape. The elders only believed in the prophecy, and they would have taken the witnesses seriously if their stories had any resemblance to it.
The prophecy had been dreamed several years ago by the wisest Yonai elder who had ever lived, on the night of his death, and it foretold the annihilation of the whole tribe:
Shattered the ground, flames from the sky,
before glittering rocks their doom spread.
Helpless we are among the white hills of hell,
and the sun shines for us forever no more.
When the prophecy was announced, the elders ordered the migration to this arid territory, trying to break the prophecy by abandoning their homeland, which was full of white, snowy hills almost all year round. The tribe complied with their whishes without complaint and without knowing anything about the prophecy, as the council was their supreme religious and law court, and anyone opposing them would face banishment from the tribe.
After hearing the witnesses’ nonsense, four of the five elders returned to the mountains for prayer, leaving one of them to attend and temper the colony’s state of mind.
Now, when everything seemed to have returned to normal, it had been reported that two of their best hunters had never come back. One of them had a sick son, and he and his best friend had stayed behind their hunting party to gather some medicinal herbs for him. They should have arrived a long time ago, and everybody was worried about them.
The Yonai elder was listening to the members of the hunting party while a searching party was organized to find the missing hunters, hopefully before sunrise. Suddenly, the ground trembled slightly, and the Yonai elder sensed the screams of his children on the outside. Something bad had happened. Moments later, a guard barged in, pleading with him to go outside. The news that the guard was carrying were disturbing; moving ice rocks had come inside a Polymac bird and demanded to see him, or they would kill several hostages that they had taken by force. The Yonai elder mulled over those words with concern.
Minutes later, he slowly emerged from the caves, solemnly escorted by other members of the tribe, and everyone else gathered behind him. When he saw the ice rocks, his heart sank, and he fought hard to conceal his emotions from his children. Two elements of the prophecy were present in front of him: the glittering rocks, two-legged giant monsters covered in an icelike material that refl
ected its surroundings like the calm waters of a lake; and a white hill of hell, a fire-spitting flying cave that resembled a small rocky mountain, white as snow. The giant glittering rocks had come from inside the white hill of hell. The elder stopped a few yards in front of the giants with the whole tribe gathered behind him.
The giants were holding hostage ten women and four children they had found playing outside. The women and children had thought that another Polymac bird had arrived and knelt as a sign of respect. When the giants came out of the bird, they immediately apprehended the praying women and children and demanded the presence of an elder, threatening to kill them right there if their wishes were not granted. A few hunters and guards had dared to attack them and paid dearly with their lives. All around the giants, their corpses were spread in minute pieces, as if they had exploded from within. Everyone was afraid, and so was the Yonai elder.
“I’m the Yonai elder you’re looking for,” he managed to say in a trembling voice, despite his efforts to control his fears. “What do you want?”
One of the giants approached him and spoke perfectly in his language. “You must come with us,” he ordered. The members of the tribe gasped at the insulting command to their beloved elder, but he raised his arm and ordered their silence.
“What if I don’t comply with your order?” he replied defiantly.
The giant made a sign to one of his colleagues, who without any word of warning grabbed one of the women and killed her on the spot. The crowd gasped and screamed in shock, but once again, the Yonai elder managed to keep the order.
“We’re wasting time and losing our patience,” the giant said. “Come with us now, voluntarily or by force.”
The Yonai Elder knew he had no choice. The tribe came first, not his life. The agents of the prophecy wanted him, and he must comply. Maybe it was for the better, as he would have the opportunity to learn more about their intentions.