Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1)
Page 12
“We could use such devices,” Hatsepsit rumbled low. “But it would require most of the power generated by our power blocks. Those blocks require the isotope gases you and we use to drive our ships through black space. Relying on natural weightiness by spinning our life ship allows us to go long periods without refueling our power blocks. And if we lost power for some reason, this world would still be intact. For us, this was wisdom.”
“Agreed,” said Evelyn, looking down and outward. “Your melong trees are a beautiful wonder. How far back in time did you Melanchon live among these trees and eat their fruit?”
Hatsepsit looked down and stepped away from Morales’ hand. “A long, long time. Our past-time specialists say we lived among the melong trees before we learned to make fires and tools. They fed us early in our history. They feed us now. And our wastes feed the roots of our trees. It is a cycle that always existed. Until the Empire came, made its threat, then later destroyed my world.” The boss orang gestured ahead. “A village lies not far ahead. Do you wish to see it?”
“Oh yes!” Evelyn said eagerly. “I want to see your families at home. And see your children! They must be a delight.”
“Our children are why we still travel through the black space,” Hatsepsit rumbled low and slow. “Some of us might have stopped eating and drinking, were it not for the children. They give us the energy to go on. To search for a new home for them. Our children deserve a world with a sky that is endless.”
The sadness of the loss of the Melanchon home world hit me hard. When I envisioned Earth turning from a blue and green lifeworld into a dead black marble in the darkness of space, my gut twisted more. What this Empire did to people who had never harmed them was worse than terrible. It was evil. An evil that had spread across the Milky Way. Was there any chance we could fight this evil? Any chance we could save Earth from the same fate?
“Wait!” yelled a human voice behind us.
I looked back. It was Chang, her strong legs pumping as she ran toward us. Madamedura followed her, moving quickly on her short legs but unable to keep up with Hilary’s speed. Our Tactical chief slid to a stop near us. Then she looked up. And up.
“Oh, wow!” Chang said brightly.
“Yes, it is amazing,” our Farm chief said. “We’re inside a spinning cylinder. There are a million Melanchon living inside this life ship. Come, we’re going to see a village.”
“Sounds good,” grunted Major Owanju as he appeared through the giant trees, with Bill walking fast beside him. “Lieutenant, we got the gamma ray laser weapons specs. And saw their installation. They also have proton and CO2 laser blisters on the sides, bow and stern of this ship. I like how they have port and starboard laser mounts.”
Morales nodded as she walked behind Hatsepsit. “Good to know. And as Corporal Johnson can tell you, these Melanchon use spingee for internal gravity in order to save on DT refueling needs. Come!”
We all followed after her, now back to our full ten person count. Madamedura moved up to walk beside her sister, bumping shoulders with her and with the other Melanchon. The way they moved through this forest, filled with green vines, low reddish shrubs and scattered clumps of green grass looked beyond natural. It looked as if they had always walked through this forest. Which, in a way, they had. The sound of cheeping drew my gaze upward. Orange things flew from high branch to high branch among the trees. My precise vision painted an image of critters who were a cross between birds and lizards. Low humming and clicks also drew my attention. The sounds came from swarms of blue beetle-like insects that moved in swarms from tree to tree, while yellow butterfly-like creatures stopped at the red flowers that adorned the branches. I shut down the sensitivity of my hearing, a trick I had learned long ago when I got tired of listening to people a mile away talk BS about neighbors and people who didn’t look like them.
Ten minutes later, after a quick break to grab some yellow fruit balls that we munched on as we continued walking, we arrived at a population zone. Large bulky Melanchon sat on low tree limbs or moved along the duff-covered forest floor, their long arms swinging fore and aft as they walked, clearly a part of their natural balancing as they walked. The orang-beings glanced our way as we entered their space, then looked away and resumed what they were doing. Which included staring at hanging vidscreens that were attached to some tree trunks. In one spot was a group of five adult orang-beings, who sat in a circle at the base of a big tree. Each was hand-weaving a basket from dry vines and long grasses. Five meters beyond them and up ten meters, was balanced a wooden platform that stretched across two thick branches. On the platform moved ten or so Melanchon, their movements in synchrony with a chirping, bell-like music that came down from their platform.
“An open-air nightclub?” whispered Oksana as she walked beside me.
I smiled. “Looks like it. Which makes me wonder about their booze. Do you think they ferment these yellow ball fruits? They taste citrusy. Which means they could produce a kind of alcohol. I think.”
My Russian friend chuckled. “They probably do ferment the stuff. Wonder what they would say about brandy? Or bourbon? Or Stolichnaya vodka?”
“Might be a good trade item.”
I looked away and ahead. We now entered a small meadow without trees. But the place was filled with short green grass, and some tiny flowers that resembled daisies. Again the memory of a flower-strewn field near my ranch home came to mind. I had not felt homesick during the days of our Alcubierre trip out to Kepler 37. Now, I did. Being in a forest always did it to me. And this miles-long forest was beyond anything I had seen on Earth. In person, at least. The trees near the meadow were indeed bigger than those on the bridge. I guessed they were sixty or seventy meters high. They reminded me of the sequoia forest near Yosemite that I had visited with my Mom and sisters. That forest of red-barked trees was big and likely stretched as far afield as this ten-kilometer long stretch of woodlands, lakes, creeks and ridgelines.
The running of small orang people across the meadow drew my attention. They were small versions of Hatsepsit, their reddish-brown hair stringy but far shorter than that of the big Melanchon. Children they were. They played ‘catch and tag’, then ran off chuffing loudly. They also tackled each other, chuffing more loudly. Other children sat at the base of the two dozen giant trees that ringed the meadow. I fixed on one young orang who sat under a giant tree on my right, about ten meters away. The kid sat with crossed legs, leaning forward and playing a kind of hopscotch game with small pieces of white quartz. Next to the kid stood the five meter thick trunk of a giant melong. On its trunk were carved deep lines that ran in rows. To me the lines resembled rune marks from Scandinavia. Oksana noticed my look. She turned to Hatsepsit, who stood with her sister Madamedura watching the running and tumbling children.
“Mother Hatsepsit, what are those carved lines on that tree trunk over there?” she asked.
The boss female looked to where Oksana pointed. “It is a family heritage tree with marks made by that family’s ancestors. We transplanted it from our home world. It is ancient.” Her dark brown eyes fixed on the orang child, who was perhaps the size of a human six-year-old. “She is a daughter of the Mokladen family.” The big orang turned away and gestured at the big-trunked trees that surrounded the meadow. “Other children sit below their family heritage tree. We encourage it so they will smell . . . the scent of their heritage tree. While the flowers of each melong tree may smell the same to you, each family can tell their tree apart from all other melong trees.” Hatsepsit gestured to her left. “Over there is the Hatmokden tree of my heritage family. It too is ancient and was transplanted here.”
The rest of my friends and the civies moved away as Hatsepsit walked toward that tree, pointing out its big yellow fruit balls and red tulip-shaped flowers. Oksana gave me a grin and followed the crowd.
Instead I looked back to the young girl orang who sat maybe five feet from the base of the giant tree. She seemed absorbed in her stone game, tossing a black rock mar
ked with white dots into the grass nearby, then moving a white quartz nodule up the alternating pattern of boxes scratched into the brown soil that was clear of green grass. It so resembled my memory of how my youngest sister once played in the forest grove near our ranch that my heart ached. Both my sisters were older than me and had chosen lifeways different from my own. Louise was married with children, which exempted her from the draft. My youngest sister Anna had not been drafted due to malformation of her heels. She walked just fine. But wearing any kind of boots or—
“Caaarack!”
The harsh sound drew my eyes upward. Up. Ten meters above the girl orang a giant limb now tore away from the brown trunk. My perfect eyesight followed the limb back to where its base was pulling away from the trunk. Blackness told me the limb was dead, perhaps from some disease or infestation. Now, the weight of the giant limb had become too much for its attachment point. Five meters long and a meter thick, the limb finished its pulling away. It arced down. The spingee gravity of the ship worked as efficiently as planetary gravity. It drew the long thick limb down. Down. Toward the girl orang. Who had not yet looked up.
I ran.
The air buffeted my face.
My perfect ears heard the low whistling of the branch as it fell through the air, gaining speed as its weight responded to the spingee.
My perfect eyesight noticed small blue beetles flying away from the limb, twenty or more of them. Perhaps the black spot on the main trunk had been where they had laid their eggs. Which yielded white grub that ate at the wood, my vision now told me.
My feet dug into the grassy sod that lay between me and the orang girl. My perfect muscles moved my feet in long strides.
I ran as fast as I had run that day long ago when I had carried Bill and Warren away from the tavern and the Star Navy MPs.
I did not breath.
I just ran.
As fast as I could.
The young orang girl looked up at me with wide brown eyes as I skidded to a stop next to her, brown dirt spraying away from my tennis shoes.
I reached up, spreading my palms open.
“Thump!”
The tree limb hit my palms with the force of a giant boulder. Or a car falling from a hydraulic lift at a mechanic’s shop. That had happened once, when I was a kid. The shop was old-style and relied on hydraulics rather than the newer air blowers to lift a car up so a mechanic could work underneath it.
The limb was heavy.
Too heavy.
My arms came down.
My feet sank into the soil.
I bent my head forward to avoid the descending limb.
Which gave me a view of the young orang girl on my right. She was looking up, her eyes so wide whites showed around her brown irises. Fear filled her face.
I squatted as the limb drove me down.
Then I braced a knee in the soil.
The limb rested across my shoulders.
Movement stopped.
The orang girl was safe.
I took a deep breath.
But how long could I hold up the monstrous weight?
“Got this end!” yelled Owanju from my right.
The big black frame of the major now held onto the thick end of the limb, its bark resting on his wide shoulders. Like me he had one knee resting on the soil while the other leg was half-bent. Both his thick arms were raised, his broad hands gripping the curving base of the limb.
“Got the other end!” cried Warren from my left.
My best buddy was two meters away from me, kneeling and bracing just like the major, his weight-lifting arms bulging with muscles. His own head was down. His brown sidewalls showed the bulge of veins underneath the short haircut.
The sound of thudding feet from my right drew my gaze.
A giant brown fur ball appeared to my right. It swept through the space occupied by the orang girl, long red-furred arms sweeping her up and against its body as it went into a roll that carried her beyond where I stood braced. How long could I hold it?
“She’s safe!” yelled Cassie.
My breath came faster. The weight of the giant pressed me down. My shoulders hurt. My legs felt the strain. I had never held up anything that weighed this heavy.
“Nathan!” called the major. “On my count we toss this bastard forward! Nobody is there. Corporal, you ready!”
“Ready,” Warren said from my left, sounding breathless as the limb’s weight pressed on him.
“Ready,” I said quickly.
My vision began to swim.
That was something new.
I had always had perfect vision out to a mile, in all spectrums. I had always had perfect hearing out to a mile. And on the ranch, I had been able to toss hay bales up onto the upper storage deck of the barn with ease, lifting and tossing automatically. Even when I had lifted a boulder my size at the nearby creek to create a pond for me and my sisters to swim in, I had not felt this loaded down.
“Three, two, one!” yelled Owanju.
I thrust forward with my shoulders and hands.
To my left and right came the sounds of Warren and the major doing the same.
“Crack-thump!”
The tree limb gouged a deep rut in the brown soil and grass of the meadow before it stopped its slow roll.
I finally got a full view of the giant limb.
It was a meter thick, five meters long and the flare of the blackened base where it had torn away from the melong trunk was a meter and a half thick. Whatever kind of wood this melong tree might be, it was heavier than the oak limbs that fell from the oak trees in the grove near our ranch.
I gasped for breath. Then I slowly stood up. My vision cleared. My hearing, which had heard the barking sounds of other Melanchon from across the meadow getting loud and sharp as I held the limb up above the girl orang, those sounds had stopped. Only my breathing, Warren’s heavy breathing and the major’s grunting breathing sounded. Then came footsteps, both human and orang. A gasp came from someone I knew.
“Nate!” said Cassandra. “Your shirt camo fabric is torn. Your shoulders. They are . . . scraped red raw. Here, let me get some antiseptic from my first aid kit.”
I stood up straight. Finally.
Ahead past the dead limb stood a shorter, less bulky Melanchon. It was Leksatok. He held the small girl orang in his thick, furry arms, clutched to his chest. He looked at me, then aside to Warren and the major. His big brown eyes welled with tears.
“You saved my family’s youngest!” he said, his voice coming from the translator tube on Cassie’s shoulder.
Clearly my tube was smashed beyond recognition. As were the tubes attached to the shoulders of Warren and Owanju. My buddy walked over to me, looked at my shoulders, then nodded.
“Yup, kinda torn up there,” he said. “Me, just got some loose bark on my shoulders.”
Air hissed from a spray hypo held by Cassie. I felt a sting on both shoulders, then numbness. I looked right as the major walked slowly toward me. The big man stopped, glanced aside at the fallen limb, then back to me. He nodded slowly.
“You did good, PO Stewart. Saved a kid. And you did it faster than anyone in my platoon could move. You were a blur.” The major looked over at the fallen limb. “I’m guessing that bastard weighed a ton. Leastwise it felt that heavy on my end. Corporal, what think you?”
“Oh, yeah,” Warren muttered. “It was a heavy motherfucker. The most I’ve deadlifted at the Great Lakes gym was four hundred pounds. My end felt heavier. Damn.”
I felt several varieties of profanity. I did not say them. Instead, I looked ahead at Leksatok. Who still held the young girl. “What’s her name?”
The man’s thick brown lips lifted. “She is Mokladeen.” He looked down at the girl, who had now shifted so her short red-furred legs hung over his arms, with her back against his chest. She wore no leather straps, unlike the adults. But she stared at me, her gaze thoughtful. “Mokladeen, say something to this hairless Melanchon who saved your life.”
I smiled her way. Shaking off the hands of Oksana on my left and Cassie on my right, I knelt down, grabbed the six white quartz pieces and the white-spotted black stone, stood up and walked over to her. “Don’t know the game. But it looks like something my youngest sister once played, when she was your size. Will you teach me your game?”
Mokladeen took hold of the rocks, then nodded quickly. “Sure,” came her voice from Cassie’s translator. “Can you play now?”
“He cannot,” called Hatsepsit as she stepped into view from my left. Behind her came Madamedura, Yolomokden, the other two Mothers in her family, and a crowd of other adult Melanchon. She turned to her sister. “Mada, find this girl’s Mother.” She faced me. “Father Nathan Stewart, you saved one of our children. We owe you a debt of . . . thanksgiving. I wish to give you a gift on behalf of this girl’s family, and all our families on our life ship. What gift do you wish from me?”
I shook my head. This was one weird turn of events. Appreciation I had expected. Every adult, especially a mother of children, always wished to protect and cherish children. Whether their own or someone else’s kids. That I had learned in school and from my Mom, and my Dad while he was still alive. That these aliens felt the same did not surprise me, given their genders and what Hatsepsit had said earlier about why the seven red pencil ships continued their long trek in search of a new home world. But a gift for saving this kid? I’d only done what any human would do upon seeing a child in danger. Still, my bare shoulders gave me an answer.
“Well, I could use a replacement translator tube. Mine got smashed by that trunk. As did the tubes of my friends Warren and Major Owanju. Could you do that?”
Hatsepsit sighed. “I can do that. And more,” she said, her voice coming from the tubes on Cassie and Oksana’s shoulders. “I will gift you three with translator tubes. They are useful. But they only work by signal talking with a translator device. We obtained several Empire translator machines during our journey. I will give you one such machine. And twenty translator tubes. They will help you and your friends when you meet other star travelers. Do you accept?”