“Captain Campbell?” came the voice in his ear, even as the crowd around them, without warning or preamble, parted as one, and a loud pop echoed out from above them.
They looked upward to see an undulating bubble-field hurtling downward, coming to a stop with shocking suddenness only inches from the ground.
“Just a moment,” managed the Captain, trying to remember his training. No violence here. He was trying not to feel threatened, to feel defensive, but the bubble merely popped and vanished, depositing an Indulakan onto the ground directly in front of them.
“Hello again,” it said.
The sudden turn, as stunning as it was to the group, also warranted a second glance from the surrounding herd of Indulakans, apparently, and they all turned as one to face the new arrival, forming a circle.
“I am Zuvan,” said the new arrival, stepping up to Dr. Moon. Nathan tried to hide his disappointment at being ignored once more, but he was starting to get it. The Indulakans didn’t care about title and job. They were, it seemed, beyond that, if they’d ever had much time for it in the first place. They talked with whomever they perceived to be like-minded, and ignored pretty much anyone else.
“I have news of your probes in the poles,” said Zuvan.
All eyes were already on Zuvan, so it continued, “They have been forced, not surprisingly, to defend themselves.”
The Captain stepped forward, interposing himself without apology, even as the Hub spoke to him once more, “Captain. It’s the team to the North. They’ve been attacked.”
News travels fast on Indul, it seemed. The Captain was of two minds. Who to listen to first? I can control the feed from the Hub, thought the Captain, not this Zuvan, and so he focused for now on the stocky being in front of him and said, “Zuvan, if I may, I have great interest in this. Do you know more?”
Zuvan turned to him. “Of course. I know much more. Are you the owner of the probes?”
The Captain debated for only a second before replying, “Yes, I am, Zuvan. And I would very much appreciate …”
But Zuvan was talking again as soon as the word ‘Yes’ was translated into his language, “Good. Then for now at least, I have to rokana you.”
“Rock-ay-nah?” said the Captain, glancing to Nathan quickly.
Nathan gave the briefest of shrugs, apologizing with his eyes, but quickly interceding, saying, “If I may, Zuvan, that word was not…”
But the Indulakan, seeing their confusion, was already looking for an alternative, and now said simply, “Detain.”
And with that, a bubble, not dissimilar to the one that brought Zuvan so spectacularly to them, formed around the Captain, and he was sucked upward to vanish in a pop.
***
“I have to go,” said Shellie.
“Go where?” said Jacob.
Hoho sat still watching them, clearly just as interested in this as he had been in their discussion of gravitics.
“Well, I need to connect with Raf, and then…” She needed to act. But Raf had not specified orders for her in his message. She knew the Captain had been taken. She knew that Raf was evacuating the Ambassador and Dr. Moon to the shuttle.
“Relax, Lieutenant…Shellie.” Jacob put a hand on her shoulder, “We’re not in any danger here.”
Her eyes flashed to his. No danger. Apart from getting vanished by blue bubbles.
Jacob glanced over at Hoho. “Are we in any danger, my friend?”
Hoho looked confused. The concept was almost as alien to him as the two humans standing in the open floor space he called home.
“Here, in Waluun? Of course not. No danger in Waluun. Not for anyone.”
Jacob focused on the Indulakan, remembering his ECC training, and then said, “And the Captain?”
Hoho looked distracted a moment, his eyes moving independently in a manner that did not increase Shellie’s faith in the creature.
“He is being detained.”
“For how long?” said Shellie.
“His probes have gone rogue. He will remain detained until they have been destroyed or disarmed. Then he will have to make reparation for any damage done.”
“Whoa.” said Shellie, “Destroyed. Can I…”
She went silent as Jacob squeezed her shoulder.
“Make reparation?” he said, “I think I speak for Lieutenant Horst when I say that we would like to help with that, if we can.”
Hoho made a flicking motion with his long neck, a gesture they knew to mean he was surprised.
“Help is allowed,” Hoho said. “It is strange, but allowed. Would you like to join the Captain?”
Shellie and Jacob glanced at each other, then Shellie said emphatically, “I would.”
“We both would.”
Hoho, like any other Indulakan, did not recognize Shellie’s right to speak for anyone else, so it took both their consents as binding and started for the small balcony that bled out onto the outer face of the building.
They joined him, staring at each other rather stupidly for a second or two before their world went green, then white, then utterly reflective, and they were inside a bubble, and they were off.
Revelations
An instant later, Jacob and Shellie stood at the edge of a wide, open crater whose sides and floor were almost too dark to be indiscernible. To their side, Hoho stepped toward the edge. Without preamble, he leant out and then stepped forward, seemingly into air, dropped away with a grace that spoke of hidden control.
Stepping to the edge, Shellie and Jacob looked down and took in the hive of activity across the wide space. Indulakans worked alongside amorphous white machines, which in turn tended to, and sometimes wholesale picked up and carried away, large tanks of opalescent liquid.
Shellie could make out Hoho, lumbering over to a small cluster of Indulakans surrounding the Captain, who hung suspended in air a foot or two off the ground, mute and motionless.
But Jacob’s eyes were elsewhere, studying the great tanks of liquid that dotted the space.
Shellie saw understanding dawn on his face, and followed his gaze.
“Oh,” she said, seeing their contents.
“I wonder…” Jacob said, frowning, and, hesitantly, they both stepped over the edge.
Last Rounds
“Hot, isn’t it, you spikey fuck?”
PP had reached a tenuous stalemate with the current threesome of attackers. He’d managed to maim the first two, scorching them with three wide swipes of his burning thrusters.
The next to come had given him a wide berth, maybe warned off by the smell of its cousins’ charred flesh, but they too had engaged eventually, attacking with a shocking suddenness, only to be scarred by a glancing flame from one of PP’s thrusters, by then dismounted from his back and wielded like a sword.
PJ, for his part, had managed to engage his suit’s internal foam buttress before losing consciousness, the foam hardening in the suit, sealing both it and his wound. Now his suit, carrying the unresponsive PJ, followed PP around like Lennie Small, all but mute, but responsive to voice commands from PP.
Dawn had brought temporary reprieve, the creatures returning to their underground hollows, deep in the crooks of the pillar-tree roots.
For five arduous hours, PP had made his way south during the brief day, PJ’s suit lumbering along behind obediently, seeking the coast, seeking an escape from the forest, seeking a way to communicate since losing most of their external systems during the night.
PP had longed for sleep. Now, though, with their second night well underway, his mind veered closer to suicidal abandon. He could not survive much more of this, he knew that.
Silencing his torchblade, as he’d come to affectionately call it, PP checked his levels. This booster was all but empty. They’d each had two. He’d gone through both of his the first night.
Only one of PJ’s remained once this was done.
“Fuck you.” PP mumbled into his helmet comms, then, engaging his external speakers, he shouted it again,
just for good measure, “Fuck you! You hear me? I’ll cook you all, you spikey bastards.”
The predators did not make any sound in reply. They were not a talkative bunch, it turned out. And as keen as they clearly were to get at PP and his friend, they were also far from sociable amongst their own ranks. Distance was maintained as much from each other as from PP’s hot blade. Occasionally, one would stray too close to another, letting his guard down, and would be set upon.
They usually ended up dervishing away from each other after, but once PP had gotten to witness a bout of cannibalism. He smiled coldly at the memory.
He had brought them to the edge of a cliff, hoping it was headland, that they had reached the coast once more, that they could try to launch from here. But below had only been a wide stretch of the roof-canopy, reaching off into the distance once more. He had barely contained his despair.
With trademark suddenness, two of the circling killers lunged forward at once, arching apart to draw his fire.
“Hell no!” screamed PP, stepping firmly toward one to bring his quickly igniting booster into range, then sweeping it back around to hit the second beast as it came in.
Wielding the boosters was like wrangling a fire hose, bucking and arching in his hands. But he had rage to spare, and he was actually starting to get good at it.
“How’s that for hot-life, suckers!” said PP, his eyes wide, teeth bared in a manic grin, but the scene was shifting again.
The two, writhing away from his fire, clambered back to their feet once more, twitching, in part with the pain of their singed flanks, and in part because of a newcomer.
“Come on in, join the party.” shouted PP. He’d rarely seen so many at once, but he was beyond care. If he was going to die he’d do it fighting, and hopefully this would bring on a little spat of infighting.
Sure enough, the newcomer was big. It looked fresh and healthy and ready for bingo, and one of the more injured creatures took this as his cue to move on. It bristled and braced one last time, and the newcomer returned the favor, stomping and rattling its sabre-like head. The injured animal turned and moved off.
Goddammit, thought PP, if this new one doesn’t seem even more pissed off than the rest of them.
Now it edged forward, not toward PP, but toward another of its cohorts. The new kid, apparently, did not like to share. With a shot it was lunging forward, PP sending the fire command to his booster as a matter of reflex, before silencing it a moment later.
The challenger, after stopping just shy of its cousin, lunged again, this time for real, and they came together in a flash of horns.
The incumbent rocked back, twisting and turning to get away from the sweeping scythe coming at it. Even its homicidal hunger was soured by the severity of the attack. Again the newcomer lunged, and this time connected, slicing upward at one of the other creature’s legs and removing it at the knee.
PP shuddered as the injured animal hobbled away, only to be set upon by the last of PP’s original combatants. The newcomer let the other animal have its feast as it turned its attention to PP at last, starting to circle slowly.
PP shuddered. He knew a killer when he saw one. The others, however deadly their intent, had seemed to be in it for the sport, not just the food. This one was here for violence. This one needed blood.
They faced each other, each bristling, each rattling their very different sabers. The creature circled, rolling in lithe turns as it flexed its omnidirectional limbs. It seemed to be thinking. Its verve, so pronounced when it arrived, seemed to have stabilized. Not subsided, its intent was all too clear. but it was plotting now, studying.
“Come on then,” PP shouted through his systems, speakers blaring the spur at the animal, “Stop prancing about and get it over with, little piggy. I’ve got a spit here just for you.”
Now though, the creature did what none of them had done before. It seemed to pause, as if contemplating PP’s little invitation. Was that surprise? thought PP.
But the moment was past, and now it was coming, not side-stepping, but driving forward. PP kicked his booster into life and then, just a moment too late, felt the sudden ping of a new contact as yet another of the killers came bounding up, up and over the edge of the cliff behind him, and lunged inward for the kill.
PP kicked the engine’s intensity up to max, ignoring the strain on his combat suit’s arm as it whipped him around, firing the fat flame in a hot circle. He was no longer aiming so much as scorching the sky. Heck, if he couldn’t even track his movements, then maybe they wouldn’t be able to strike home either.
It was nearly a full second before he muzzled his torchblade again. He clambered to his feet again, surveying the scene around him. He’d managed to throw himself up and over PJ’s prone suit. He scanned the ground, primed and ready for whatever would come next.
Heat signatures. Two. Still enmeshed near the spot he’d been only a moment before. They were writhing. One had managed to impale the other through and through, and was even now pinning three of its six limbs back as it slowly died.
The newcomer had come out on top again, it seemed, killing the sneaky little sonofabitch from the cliff. But it had gotten badly burned in the process, PP thought, smiling. PP set aside the now-spent torch and retrieved the last of their boosters from PJ’s side.
He stepped up to the injured pair, ready with his torchblade, but happy to save the juice and cut them with a colder knife if he could get close enough. The speared beast finally stopped fighting, and the burned one seemed to relax. Its head was still buried to the hilt in the other animal’s side, but it did not try to withdraw it.
With his opponent’s terrible appendage sheathed for now, PP stepped closer, and readied his short-blades. Then he saw it, there amongst the charring of the animal’s leathery underbelly. It almost looked like writing. English writing, to be exact.
‘surprise!’ the animal had carved into its skin.
PP leaned in closer, and the creature writhed slowly to one side, revealing another part of its flank.
‘you have no idea how far I’ve come to find you.’
It moved again, this time gingerly freeing itself from the carcass of its final victim. PP knew he should back away. He knew he should fry the beast, but somehow he just didn’t have it in him anymore.
“If this is some kind of joke,” came from the speakers in PP’s suit as the beast in front of him turned slowly over, revealing a longer line of text.
‘pj, pp, twins, you need to put down the boosters. they’re considered weapons. i can’t help you if you have weapons.’
PP stared at the animal’s belly, then at the creature’s elongated head, looking for something akin to a face, but there was none. No place to look at, no eyes to look into. Just the diamond-hard serration of its razorblade cranium.
“Ah, fuck it,” PP said aloud, tossing the booster aside. If this was all a trick, then it was the nuttiest one he’d ever heard of, and he was going to go for it almost on principle. Defenseless, he allowed the massive animal to nudge him gently toward the unconscious PJ.
Reunion
Close. So close now. God, but her skin hurt. This was worse even than the procedure. Worse than realizing she was blind, then feeling as her sense of smell and hearing became louder and more noxious until she was being assaulted on all sides by sound and stench and confusion.
But that was all gone now. Somehow she’d adjusted to that, as she’d been promised. Somehow that had become natural, but not this pain, this heat on her skin where the booster had brushed past her, boiling her blood beneath her thick hide.
She willed it away. Nearly over now. She could smell another, another Sabhak, the coward from earlier, maintaining its distance. A rush of hormones made her tremble with bloodlust. She wanted to kill it. She could. She must.
Again, she wrangled the desire, using the pain to silence it. She even wanted to kill these two. The moving one, so slow and lumbering, alive only because his fire had kept her brethren at bay. An
d the sleeping one, cocooned, ready for consumption. Ready for digestion.
But no. She must not. Not these. Not anyone, a quiet voice in her said, all but forgotten. She ignored the noise. She ignored it all. Focus. She’d shown her flanks, given her message. Now she pushed the slow one towards his comrade, so close she could taste them, pushed them together, until the three of them were almost on top of each other.
Good enough, she thought, accessing a place deep inside her left there by new friends, an inner-voice.
“We’re ready,” she said with that inner-voice.
“You are all together?” came a reply into her mind.
“We are,” thought Shellie, deep inside her new body, “Bring us home, please.”
And with that, the world went green, then white, then utterly reflective, and they were inside a bubble, reappearing a moment later at the edge of a wide crater.
“Welcome back,” said Hoho from one side, before lancing the deadly creature they had turned Shellie into.
As darkness took her once more, she could see Jacob running over to help the twins. The Captain was with him.
How’s that for Expression and Countenance Conditioning, she thought, and she was under, ready to be transformed back into something more suitable for civilized society.
Official Response
Nathan never asked her what it was like. He read her report. He read it fifteen times, but he never asked her. Shellie was never quite the same after her…reintegration.
Nathan only knew that the Indulakans had been happy. She’d proven herself in the northern climes, where temporarily-mutated Indulakans vented their anger. She’d proven herself and then some, and now, back in more familiar guise, she’d become somewhat of a celebrity. She had become a subject of conversation, a source of interest, and, for Nathan, a route into Indulakan society.
Explorations- First Contact Page 33