by Megan Alban
A decade later, a couple and their dog decided to go for a stroll after finishing a lovely picnic in the woods. Their dog ran off and they gave chase. They found the dog sitting and whining in front of an unusual cave that seemed so out of place just stuck there in the middle of the forest. They attached the dog to his lead and wandered in…
Oh, what wonderful memories they’d share together in the cave, which had strange, yet wonderful sounds coming from within.
The end.
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Claimed
EMMA GALE
It was early. Too early for Paige Roth to be awake yet, but too late for the reuzespins to still be active. It was that misty, nebulous between-time just before dawn. The first of the suns was thinking of rising, and the horizon was only just starting to purple in preparation for light.
Paige had hardly slept, and she hadn’t made it to her bed before midnight, so by all rights, she should still be out cold. Instead, she sat in the rickety chair her dad had made when they’d first staked their claim. It always felt like it might give out if she breathed wrong, but it was comforting to sit in nonetheless. Not only did it remind her of her father--something she was desperately in need of this morning--it also kept her on edge and alert--something she needed no less.
She lifted her wrist to key in the code that would turn the dome walls from opaque to transparent and then leaned back as much as the chair would allow, sipping on her caf-drip as she watched the sunrise.
In the midst of the pre-dawn peace, she saw a flash too bright to be the sun rising over the ridge. It flashed quick and burned low, and a few minutes later, she heard the land rumbling. A moment after that, she felt it, the ground rolling beneath her feet as she struggled to save her caf-drip from spilling.
When the quake had subsided, she heard a quiet beeping from under her bunk and turned to see Sergio rolling out to greet her with a questioning series of buzzes and beeps.
“No way. That was beyond our claim. Whatever MagnorCo’s goons are up to out there is none of my concern. We’ve got bigger issues. Come on, get your brothers. It’s time to get started.”
…
Arron Galven wasn’t panicking, maybe he should have been, but he was too pissed off to panic just then. Only moments earlier, as he felt his ship, Aphrodite, bucking, had he looked to her fuel gage and found that she was hurting for fire. “Sons of bitches siphoned the fuel from my poor girl.” He soothed his ship as he tried to coax her down to the only real dock on Nubia. “This might hurt a little, girl, but don’t worry, we’ll get you all fixed up when we’re through here.” He ran his hands over his controls like she was a child struggling to sleep.
“All I wanted to do was finish this damn job. Nothing’s so dangerous as when you’re dealing with a moon full of morons like those on Zaharra. Everyone knows that if you want to get a shipment back after it’s been stolen from you, taking the fuel from the thief's ship’s only going to ruin your goods when it goes down. God, where did all the smart crooks go? After this job I’m getting out.”
Aphrodite didn’t answer, but Arron was used to that. Out in the vacuum, you sometimes had to talk to whatever was on hand--whether it talked back or not--just to keep your wits.
He steered Aphrodite toward a sand dune on the other side of the Nefertiti Mountains. He’d have to gather the goods and hoof it over the mountains to Paloma, unload the goods, and then come back and assess Aphrodite’s damage.
The landing was a bit harder than he’d been expecting, and he could hear the grinding of Aphrodite’s hull against the sand, the impact shuddering through his body. A moment later, one of her engines blew, sending up a violently bright flare in the early morning stillness. So much for hoping she’d stay hidden while he finished the job.
“God damn my luck,” he muttered to himself as he assessed his own damage. His knee had jammed up against the steering console, and he was bleeding through a rip in his jeans. His shoulder pulsed with pain like a motherfucker, and he thought it was possible he’d cracked a couple ribs.
None of that really mattered, though. He didn’t have time to worry over a couple scrapes. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he squirmed out of his seat, eyeing the crumpled helm forlornly. Aphrodite may not have been much of a ship, but she was his only companion, and had been for some time now.
He paused to gather his cargo from a compartment hidden under his one-cupboard galley and stowed it carefully in a day pack. He took just enough time to make sure the fire was out before turning his face to the mountains. Nubia was infamous for its rugged terrain, and he could see why. It was going to be a long trek.
As he turned to go, Aphrodite shuddered hard and settled further into the dune.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll be back. You and me, we got a lot more adventures coming.”
With Aphrodite sighing behind him, he gritted his teeth and headed gingerly toward the mountains.
…
Paige had spent all of yesterday setting traps for the MagnorCo henchmen she knew would soon be coming for the claim. Sergio beeped along beside her, his head swiveling 360 degrees to take in the surrounding area. Ahead of them, Sergio’s brothers, Sergei and Serge, scanned the area for any life signs that shouldn’t be there.
She thought of her dad, roughing it on his own all the way to Paloma. All of the signs she’d seen indicated that MagnorCo was coming in from the east, which should put her between them and her father, but she didn’t trust them not to overstep even their own boundaries and just skip the mountain entirely if they realized he was so close to filing the claim. If she could hold them off for four days, five at the most, she’d give him the time he needed.
At her side, Sergio started beeping excitedly, his circuits whirring beneath his chassis.
“What’s up, buddy?” she asked, glancing down at him to read his screen. She sucked in a quick breath, “Hopper, Yang-tse and Lovelace,” she muttered. “We fucking caught one.”
…
The sun blistered down on Arron as he reached the base of the red Nefertiti Mountains. Their glory reached higher than the mountains on any planet in this quadrant of the galaxy. Rocks as red as sunfire, teeming with poisonous critters and vibrant wildflowers. Much as he hated to crash the ship, it could be a less pleasant hike. The air was fresh with the scent of a desert post-rain. The flowers bribed you with their sweet scent to let them be. And if that didn’t work the cacti flowering would throw their tiny darts at you, leaving you paralyzed for a time. Just a few hours, but Arron didn’t need that. Besides, he knew the perils of a beautiful thing.
This fucking heat is going to kill me before I hit Paloma, he thought.
He hiked up the rocky reds with ease. He was just walking through the first valley between the two tallest mountains when he saw a small desert tortoise scrambling through the foliage to his left. Not much Arron liked more than turtle stew, and it was lunch time. His Granddad had taught him to kill and dress a desert tortoise when he was just a kid. Shouldn’t be hard to catch; he looked plenty old and slow. Arron crept close to the tortoise, and as he was reaching for the creature, he felt the ground fall out beneath him. He fell with a thud, and the turtle fell with him, hissing on the ground at Arron. “Well, that’s not my fault,” he said, eyeing the tortoise thoughtfully. “Though I apologize for what I’m about to do,” he added as his dagger snicked into the animal’s skull.
…
By the time Paige reached the trap in question--of course it was the one at the far edge of the claim--both suns were high and blazing. Her static field was holding strong over the trap, and she smiled grimly to herself. Those bastards weren’t going anywhere. MagnorCo was doing their damnedest to threaten, bribe, or kill every small claim holder on the planet out of their stakes, but for Paige and her father, this was their last hope. They’d run through just about every other option since Paige’s mom had succumbed to the Elviric plague back on Praxis 3. Dad had run himself
ragged for a while, more to forget Ellen than to keep them afloat, but somewhere over the years, Paige had learned how to take care of both of them until Carl got his head back on his shoulders and since then, they’d made a pretty good partnership.
Now their partnership was being threatened, and MagnorCo was to blame. Well, she wasn’t going to let them get away without consequences.
She stopped just beyond the edge of the pit, checking the camera surveillance she’d set up down there. This guy didn’t look like MagnorCo, but that didn’t really mean anything. With enough money, you could buy anybody’s loyalty, and MagnorCo definitely had enough money.
“What’s your business here?” she called over the edge, keeping her voice low and intentionally gruff. She wasn’t helpless by any means, but she was small, and she’d learned early that people had a tendency not to take you seriously if they thought you were breakable. She didn’t want this to escalate to violence, so she made herself sound as big as possible.
“No business,” came the answer from the hole. The man’s voice sounded pleasant, a little pained, perhaps, but friendlier than she’d expected. “Just trying to make my way to Paloma.”
She tensed at the mention of the town. Was he baiting her? Did he know that’s where her father had been headed? Warily, she asked, “What’s your business in Paloma, then?”
“Well, like you said, honey, that’s my business.”
She scowled, and Sergei crackled out a series of rude-sounding beeps next to her. “I’m inclined to agree, Sergei,” she said. Then she called out again, “Sergei here says you’ll make it my business right quick if you want to get out of that hole before nightfall.”
There was a momentary silence, and then the man hauled himself to his feet. Paige winced as she watched him on the screen. The pit was deep, and she’d known when she dug it that a fall like that could do some damage, but this guy looked like he was hurting from more than just the fall. Peering closer, even on the grainy screen, she could see blood on his hands and wondered if he’d even last until nightfall.
The man seemed to be contemplating how to proceed, but eventually he said, “I’ve got some goods to sell, and I’m kinda on a tight schedule. My buyer won’t wait around forever.”
“Your buyer, huh?” she asked, not believing him for a moment. It was an easy enough lie to sell, and another, softer woman might have believed it. Paige had been lied to too often to be that soft. “Goes by the name of MagnorCo?”
“MagnorCo? The mining outfit? Never taken a job from them. I’m what you might call an independent contractor.”
“And I’m what you might call tired of your bullshit.” She whistled and Sergio wheeled himself over to her side. “Why don’t you go retrieve his ID, Sergio?” she said, her soft once again. Sergio was a delicate soul, and he didn’t like it when she was gruff with him.
She watched on the screen as the man backed himself into a corner. “Just be nice to him,” she said. “He won’t have reason to hurt you.”
Her words didn’t seem to soothe the man at all, but it hardly mattered. Sergio was already rolling to the edge and descending down the automated ladder. He relaxed visibly the moment the robot came into view, and Paige couldn’t blame him. There was nothing at all intimidating about Sergio. She’d built him from scrap metal and spare engine parts, and he sat at an awkward angle that made it look like he was always about to tip over. He was well balanced, though, and he rolled easily enough into the corner of the pit. His headlight briefly illuminated the fresh corpse of a tortoise that Paige figured must have fallen in with the man. Its weight wouldn’t have been enough to trip the catch on its own. The man stood still as Sergio’s light swept over him, and Paige heard a series of consternated beeps.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t have an ID. They all have IDs.”
Sergio’s beeps turned a bit more annoyed, and Paige held up her hands. “Okay, okay, I believe you.”
This changed things. MagnorCo didn’t trust its thugs, and with good reason. They always implanted them with ID chips so they could keep track of their whereabouts. That this man didn’t have one lent at least some credence to his story.
“Okay,” she called again, still not showing her face over the edge. “You got a name, mister Not-MagnorCo?”
“Arron Galven,” he said, grinning at Sergio and then turning his gaze to the camera across the pit. “Very nice to meet you.”
…
“You going to let me know what to call you?” Arron asked the girl whose trap he had fallen into. She was one of the more suspicious creatures he’d ever met, though pretty as a morning dew. “You know you’re far too pretty to be scavenging about in the high noon sun.”
“I’ll be the judge of my actions. And no, I don’t think you need to know my name just now. I don’t hand that kind of privileged information out to any old ne'er-do-well who falls into my traps.”
As she hauled him up with the rope she assessed his person. He could feel her eyes running over him. Something about her brunette locks falling out of her cap, and the strength of her manner softened her to him. He didn’t usually take kindly to folks getting in his way. He especially didn’t take kindly to folks setting traps that kept him from finishing a job. But there was something about this girl.
“Well, I wouldn’t say ne’er-do-well. Just trying to get to Paloma to unload my goods. Far as I’ve heard there’s no law keeping me from that goal,” he said as he leveraged his foot at the top of the hole and threw his arm over the ledge as well. He hoisted himself up, and just as he was dusting himself off, the girl grabbed his arms strong and quick as any man he’d fought. She had them behind him and tied with the same rope that had helped him out of the pit.
“It’s like that is it? I’m getting some mixed signals here, honey. First you call me a no-good corporate thug, and then I’m all tied up like you’re feeling amorous. Want to make up your mind?
“That’s enough talk,” the girl said. “Now walk.”
“Sure thing honey, sure thing. Uh, mind telling me where we’re going?” Arron asked, as polite as he could manage when all he was guilty of was a little trespassing and she’d got him trussed up like a prime roast.
“Yep.”
They marched further in toward the edge of the valley. “All right, all right. I got no issues with a taciturn companion. Not much different to what I’m used to.” The only real difference was that he always knew Aphrodite was on his side. He couldn’t tell yet with this one. “Hope you don’t take unkindly to me rambling on then. I got a kind of problem with silence. Gets under my skin, you might say.”
He was needling her on purpose, and she didn’t disappoint. The stiff pose of her shoulders only tightened with each word, and Arron found himself grinning manically as he did his best to keep his feet. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, and she was familiar enough with the territory to skip light and quick across the rough terrain.
“Anyway, nice land you got up here. Real welcoming. Makes a body feel right at home. I’m picturing a cozy cabin, wood smoke from the chimney, all proper and…”
“Serge,” she said, her voice more amused than annoyed as she cut him off mid-ramble. “Next time he speaks, give him a bit of cattle prod.”
She had spark--literally--and he had to admire that. He attempted to hold up his hands to show his surrender, but all he could manage was a shoulder shrug as the tallest of the three robot companions scuttled over to him, one telescopic arm extended near his waist.
He didn’t mind so much. The middle robot--Sergei? It was hard to keep them straight--had been given charge of Arron’s lead, and he marched along behind the girl, watching her as she moved. There was something proprietary in her gait, something that laid claim to the land with each step. He sort of pitied MagnorCo if they were trying to take this place away from her. She looked like she’d put up a hell of a fight.
The silence was almost too much for him, and he was about to risk Serge’s prodding when he
heard a soft noise in front of him. She was humming something, a tune that was familiar, half-remembered, maybe something from his childhood. It took him a while to place it, but when he did, he smiled. He remembered his mom singing an ancient tune when he was a kid, to calm him from a bad dream.
When she came around to the beginning again, he chanced it and sang quietly:
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil,
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
For a moment, as he sang the first line, she hesitated, her hum stuttering to a stop. Serge seemed disinclined to shock him at the moment, perhaps because he was singing instead of speaking, and by the time he got to the end of the first line, the girl had picked up her humming again. When he started the chorus, she joined in quietly, her voice soft and clear, rich with the kind of understanding that comes from a life lived hard.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil
You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
They sang their way quietly through another few verses, and Arron found himself almost enjoying the hike, despite his shoulder aching from being pulled back and the ropes at his wrists beginning to cut off his circulation. He got more enthusiastic as they went until he was bellowing out the last line of the chorus and the girl turned a sharp glare in his direction.
“Keep it down! Are you trying to get us killed?”
He cut himself off short in surprise. These hills had a reputation for danger, but most of the creatures he’d heard of didn’t come out until dark. What was she so scared of?