Starborn Odyssey (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 1)

by Haines Sigurdsson

  I strolled with Meeza for a while, though it was necessary for me to stay in communication with the ship. After a couple of hours I returned to the ship to make the preparations for the trip to Oz in the morning. Once again we had to have gifts and trading goods to take to the Fenninz. I was looking forward to seeing my little friend Oz again; it had been a long while and now we knew so much more of their world. This time we didn’t have to shield them from our technology in the same way. Their world was contaminated long before we arrived and there could be no holding out if the rest of the planet was advancing as it was.

  Meeza came aboard the ship with me for a while for the first time; she was in complete awe of the clean smooth surfaces. She’d never seen anything quite so perfectly made with no visible seams or mark from joining things together. “How do you make everything so shiny and smooth and what are all these things, (the instrument panels and gauges) for; I mean, what do they tell you?” She asked. I gave her a brief explanation of what most of them were for and that satisfied her for the present. I guess her next question was to be expected. “How did anyone ever figure out how to make all of this? I mean it’s all so incredibly complex; it just seems so unbelievable, if not impossible, even though it’s right here in plain sight.”

  “It took a lot of people and many years to accumulate the science and manufacturing skills to make everything.” I told her. “There’s way more than anyone could dream up in fifty lifetimes.”

  “It’s really beautiful, and almost magical to me.” She sighed with a faraway look in her eyes. “Your people are so amazing.”

  “There was a time when your people reached almost to this point before their planet was destroyed; they just didn’t have enough time to finish preparing a place to go.” I told her. “They were within a few decades of perfecting their technologies. The good thing is that enough of you survived; that you weren’t all killed. Now we can bring you back into the technological level that you would have reached if the accident hadn’t happened at all.” I told her. “They accomplished what they intended even if not to the extent they had planned; they established one colony that survived, and you would eventually have redeveloped their technology even if we hadn’t come.” I could see her eyes watering over the memory we’d brought to her people. It warmed my heart to see the emotion that it stirred in her. She was as human as any Earth person in every way; and I loved her dearly for all of that. It was odd, because I didn’t love Nettie any less than I ever did; I just loved Meeza in a much different way than I had ever experienced.

  I took her hand. “The truth is, the history of your people is so full of bravery and sacrifice. I hope those heroes in that little moon base knew they succeeded in saving their race; we’ll never know for sure, but I prefer to think they did.”

  Meeza nodded. “And all of their courage led to this point—to me, meeting you.” She squeezed my hand, then let go and looked away. We were both conflicted about our emotions; it took a great effort on my part not to pull her to me and comfort her.

  Instead, having confirmed that the ship was ready for the morning’s trip to Oz, I began the walk back to the village to take Meeza home. The night had cooled off considerably, and clouds were rolling in from the northwest. “I think there’s a storm coming,” I said, looking up.

  “I think you’re right,” Meeza observed as the first drop of rain hit my face. There was a rumbling sound in the distance, and I could see far off flashes of real lightning. I’d seen some lightning before but not too intense. This looked like it might be a little more intimidating. “I think you’d better head back to the ship so you’re not out in the open when it hits,” she warned me. “Midsummer storms can be terrible.”

  “It won’t kill me to get wet.” I laughed.

  “No it won’t, but the lightning can hit you and you’re dead if it does,” she said, sounding worried.

  “Does that really happen?” I asked, somewhat incredulously.

  “Yes it does,” she said emphatically. “And if the rain is really heavy it can wash half the town away.”

  “Maybe you should come back to the ship until the storm is over?” I suggested, with some concern for her welfare. “We could watch it from the ship in comparative safety.”

  She shook her head, declining my invitation. “The biggest problem when it rains really hard is if it melts too much snow and ice in the mountains it rushes through here and can really take buildings and trees with it when it goes,” she told me. “You might have to take off and move to higher ground. Your ship is in a low spot, so if the water starts to flow through here, you’ll have to be watching for it.”

  “In that case,” I said firmly, “I insist that you come back to the ship. I’m not leaving you here to get washed away.” She smiled as if I was making a joke, and then a huge crash of thunder sounded, making both of us jump. I grabbed Meeza’s hand, and we ran back towards the ship.

  The rain started to come down like I’d never seen before. Suddenly, it wasn’t just rain; it was large chunks of ice that stung when they hit. “What is this?” I asked, having to yell over the noise of the rain, wind, and thunder; I’d never seen anything like it. I’d seen snow but it wasn’t hard like this.

  “We call it crik; it can get even bigger than this, but it doesn’t happen often. You’re just lucky I guess.” She seemed to be laughing, and I grinned at her fearlessness.

  The balls of ice were about half an inch in diameter. “I know what it’s called; hail; but I’ve never seen it before now. It took me by surprise; I’d never thought about how hard it would be. Ouch!” A chunk of hail, or crik, hit me on the head as we reached the Homer.

  I was glad to get inside the ship. We were both wet and shivering; the hail was still clattering on the hull of the ship. Everyone in the ship was trying to get a look at the nasty weather. I noticed that there were half a dozen of the Reeshian women there with some of our young men. I don’t know why that should have surprised me, but it did. What was a surprise was the girl with Brad; she was a little taller than Meeza but almost as pretty. I hadn’t realized that Brad had been out of the ship enough to meet someone, but then it had taken only seconds to fall for Meeza, when I thought about it. I asked Meeza if she knew Brad’s girl, and found out she was her cousin, Saya. Their fathers were brothers; I should have noticed the strong family resemblance between them.

  It finally stopped hailing and just rained harder than I thought possible. I began to worry that Meeza wasn’t exaggerating about the potential for flooding. I warned Brad that we might have to move and he told me Saya had given him the same warning. We really were in a bad spot if it didn’t let up soon.

  I had Doug call the other ships to make sure they were keeping their eyes on the situation and then settled down for a while to see what was going to happen. The lightning was constant for what seemed forever. Our ship wasn’t in any real danger of washing away, I thought; it was heavy and large. But then again, why take chances with nature?

  We closed the outer lock to stop the rain from blowing in and checked to see if everyone was aboard. The storm lasted about two hours; there must have been several inches of rain or maybe more. When at last it began to subside, we opened the lock and looked out to see what condition things were in, but it was too dark to see more than a few lights on in the town. There were lights from the other ship but the town was mostly dark. We would know nothing until dawn. Meeza and I fell asleep lying on my cot and didn’t wake until Brad shook me to come have a look at the devastation left by the storm. I left Meeza sleeping while Brad and I went up to the observation deck to see what the conditions were.

  It was still raining a light drizzle but it was clear that much of the Reeshian gardens had been wiped out by the wind-driven rain. The stalks of the tall plants were snapped and lying over; several of the buildings on the edge of town were collapsed from water eroding under the corners, so there was nothing to support them. I hoped nobody was hurt or killed in them.

  “We’d
better get a team together and see if anybody’s in need of help,” I told Brad grimly. “It doesn’t look good from here.”

  I woke Doug and told him to call the other ship and see if they had any people in town or if they’d seen the condition of the town. He came back a few minutes later and told me they’d had a couple of their people in town over night, but hadn’t heard from them yet. A bad feeling came over me. “We’d better step it up, Brad,” I said, urging more speed in our preparations. He nodded.

  As I was assembling a group to go to the village to see what if any assistance we could render, one of the men from the Andromeda came running to our lock yelling for us to get one of our digging machines over to the village as quickly as possible. There were two families buried in the rubble and some were still alive.

  Mike Dermot was on it before I could even give the order. The rest of us grabbed hand shovels and headed toward the village. It was a scene of absolute chaos when we got there. We had no experience in storm aftermath, and had to just do as the natives told us. There were six houses collapsed and two complete families were already known to have perished. All three ships doctors were on scene taking care of those we pulled out of the piles of what had once been their homes. Meeza and Tava, Mike’s girl, worked right beside us, covered in mud and scrapes as they dug through the rubble determinedly. We worked at a feverish pace to save as many of the residents as we could; and we were able to rescue all save two of the remaining people who were trapped. I didn’t learn until after, when I was sitting exhausted, dirty, and sore on the grass by the debris that had once been a home, that Tava’s older sister’s home was one of the houses from which there were no survivors.

  Blurg was among the first of our group there and he raised a five hundred pound section of wall by himself to free a woman and her child. His strength was almost unbelievable.

  All the excavating we could do was done in little more than two hours, and the people in charge of the town thanked us for our assistance; without which the death toll would have been considerably higher. I told them I was only sorry we couldn’t have prevented the problem altogether. I told him that we had building materials that would withstand that type of punishment and promised to help them improve some of the structures on the homes in the riskier areas as soon as we could.

  We learned that day that the Reesians still buried their dead as our ancestors used to do on Earth. We had done the same when Wade Turley and Linda Brinson had been killed. The burials were to take place the next morning at a place just up the valley from the village. Mike volunteered his digging machine to dig the graves.

  I postponed our trip to Oz in order to help those who had been left homeless, and to give Lee’s patients a chance to begin healing from their injuries. Some of the injuries were severe, and without our medical procedures some of the villagers would surely have died or been permanently disabled. It was good that we were there when the storm hit; as it was there were nine dead and six more who would have died from their injuries. There were twelve who wouldn’t have been dug out in time without the aid of our tractor—and Blurg, of course.

  The good news in all of this was that the anti-alien sentiment that had been brewing fell flat on its face and even Geeb Alori’s rhetoric was forced to subside. I knew that there would still be problems for the colonists we were leaving on this new home world, but I think our problems in that regard were at an end for now at least.

  The funeral ordeal was very sad and those who’d lost their loved ones were almost inconsolable. Tava was assisted by her family and Mike, who seemed to have been accepted by her family completely. I wished my own situation were as good. Though Meeza’s family showed no open hostilities, it was plain that they wished she’d picked a native for a lover. Meeza and I stood with Brad and Saya at the funeral, and I was strangely warmed by the idea that Brad and I, through our new attachments, were now sort of family.

  It was a whole week before we were able to make our journey to Oz. The morning was sunny and warm as we were preparing to go; several of the natives had been allowed to join our crew for the trip. Blurg and two of his friends were among them, as were Meeza and Tava, who I really didn’t think should be there. The people of the village had decided who to send with us, however, so I had little choice in the matter. I don’t know why I was worried; I didn’t think we’d have any real danger on the trip. But I was worried.

  I think, as I look back on that time, death was becoming far too common an occurrence, and instead of growing numb to it, I felt like I was being suffocated by it. It didn’t seem to matter how good our intentions, or how careful we were; death was our constant companion, only waiting for its opportunity to collect its due as part of every life. I’d wanted a little reprieve, for all of our peoples; just for a while. And in the meantime my anxiety to protect those I cared about was higher than ever.

  We lifted off with little fanfare or notice, for that matter. I was really looking forward to seeing Oz, my little friend, the first alien we had met on our first landing. We hadn’t really expected to find other sentient races when we set down on this world, and now we knew that four sentient races had been awaiting us here; though the Reeshians were no more native to this planet than we were. Still, there were three races apparently native to this world that had achieved full sentience, and three in the star system itself, not even counting the Dovpeg. That was a lot different than we had anticipated based on our Earth Studies. I couldn’t help wondering if any other ships had, upon reaching their destinations, found such an abundance of life. I hoped so for their sakes. It was a pure joy to know at last that we really weren’t alone in the universe.

  We flew low over the sea to see as much as we could of the populated islands, and the others like where we had set down to repair the ship on our last visit. That brought to mind the nightmare we’d found that had caused our damage in the first place. All the colonists who had been killed so brutally by the barbarian Vortlepeg near the equatorial region of the smaller continent. I still wasn’t too anxious to land there during this trip, though Blurg assured me that he was sure he could settle the Vortlepeg down and make them see that a fight with us would assure that they would ultimately be condemning themselves to oblivion. Since I was under direct orders to do just that; that was what we would do. I returned my attention to matters at hand and found Meeza’s eyes locked on mine.

  “Whatever you were thinking about must have been terrible,” she observed. “Do you want to talk about it or is it too personal?”

  “It was the battle I told you about when we were here the last time; before we knew you were here. That was the last time we flew over this ocean; it was right after the battle. We lost a lot of good people then and one whole ship full of colonists were nearly wiped out.” I had never given her much detail—not the bloody corpses, the flying axes, not even the unexpected heroics of little Hero, and of Wade Turley. But she clearly saw the horrors reflected in my face.

  “I’m sorry for you and all your people,” she said, with eyes wide and glistening with empathetic tears. “It was such a waste of lives; and now we had another waste of lives just a week ago. That is enough heartache for a life time.” I could see the pain in her eyes; I felt the need to comfort her the same way she was trying to comfort me. I put my arms around her and felt her melt into them. I felt suddenly warm and I knew it was enough for both of us to be together. I didn’t contemplate whether that was right or wrong; it just was.

  As we were passing over the sea we spotted a ship that was a different construction than Vooden’s ship. For one thing it was at least twice a big, and sported two sails and a large fan-like prop on the back end. I had Brad circle over it a little lower to get a better look at it. It looked like all of the sailors were Vortlepeg. I called Blurg to the front to have a look.

  “I’ve never seen one of these ships before,” he said. “Perhaps it’s from the other land; the place we’re going now,” he suggested. “I didn’t know any of my people sailed the se
a alone.”

  We got some close up shots we could expand and study to see how they worked their prop. It turned out to be a foot peddled crank shaft with ten Vortlepeg peddling; probably in shifts. The thing was traveling about twenty knots; a fair pace for a muscle-powered craft.

  “Looks like we still have a few surprises in store for us,” I said with a touch of humor. Needless to say, all were in agreement with that observation. I realized for the first time that we’d only crossed one ocean and that the other crossing was likely to hold as many surprises as this one. I began to think that our return trip should be by completing circumnavigation of this world. With that in the back of my mind I told Brad to take our speed up a couple of notches. We went somewhat higher so as not to shake up the native population with too many sonic booms and excessive noise. We arrived at our destination in another fifteen minutes.

  It was very early morning when we set down in our previous landing spot. We would have a few hours before the natives came around to see what was happening. The first thing we noticed was a statue of something that looked remarkably like our ship. Our little friends had been busy since our last visit. It was obvious that we had already contaminated their culture beyond recall. The statue was carved from a type of chalky rock that had been dragged there from just a short way up the hill to its final resting place. The dragging must have been done by the Lembroz, since the rock was way too heavy for the Fenninz. The likeness was not perfect but it was clear what it was meant to be. I had forgotten just how different this part of the planet was. The trees being a much darker shade of purple and the red veins in the sides of the trees were much wider than on the other continent. Another thing that was different was the hiss in the speech of Oz’s Fenninz; Hero’s people didn’t have that at all. Perhaps that had been because they adapted to a language that for three thousand years had been mingled with the Reeshians. This of course was all conjecture on my part.