by Piers Platt
Muir climbed down the ladder from the ship’s bridge onto the passenger level, which appeared empty and quiet. This was misleading, Muir knew: the cabins lining the corridor were all full of guests coming off their recent stays aboard the two tourist ships, but by Conservation Department safety regulations, when the Liberty Belle touched down on the planet, the guests had to be confined to their cabins. Muir preferred it that way – visiting Olympus was dangerous enough without rubbernecking guests in her way.
Besides, they’ve got portholes in those cabins – they can take a peek outside, if they didn’t get enough of an eyeful during their safari tours.
At the boarding hatch, Muir saw that Luthena had already pressurized the docking tube on the far side – the researcher caught Muir’s eye and waved to her through the hatch’s porthole. Muir flipped several switches on her side of the hatch, and the door swung open with a hiss of gas.
“Hello,” Luthena said. “Let’s see which of our supply requests the folks back at the university have ignored this month, shall we?”
Muir beckoned for the other woman to follow her into the ship’s cargo bay. “I gotta check the manifest, but I think it’s just two pallets: some fresh food on one, and the other one was … um … spare parts, or something.”
“We’ve needed a replacement valve for one of our carbon dioxide scrubbers for some time,” Luthena said. “It’s been on back order for almost three months.”
“That sounds serious,” Muir said, glancing over her shoulder as she walked.
Luthena shrugged. “It’s part of the backup life support system – triple redundancy and all that. But still – I’d sleep a bit better at night knowing it was fixed.”
“Yeah. If it’s not in this shipment, let me know – I’ll see if I can track it down for you,” Muir told her.
“Thanks. If you’re able to find it, do you think you could request an extra trip in to see us?” Luthena asked.
“Can I request it?” Muir asked. “Sure. So can you, for that matter. The trick is getting it authorized by the Conservation Department.”
“Are they still up in arms about that dragon you injured last year?” Luthena asked.
“Yeah, they’re still sore. He flew right at us and basically broke his own wing crashing into us. Ever since, ‘limiting unnecessary aerial incursions into the dragons’ hunting grounds’ has been their standard response to everything.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Luthena said. “But as lethal as they are, it’s funny the lengths we go to in order to protect them.”
In the cargo bay, Muir held up her wrist and pulled up a screen showing the cargo layout of the bay, searching for the boxes earmarked for the research center.
“Here it is: pallet one is food, and pallet two is ‘spare parts and scientific supplies,’ ” Muir said.
“‘Scientific supplies’?” Luthena grumbled. “That’s awfully vague. I was hoping our rats were coming in on this trip, too.”
“Oh, yeah,” Muir said, snapping her fingers. “I do have a crate of rats for you, I almost forgot. Cute little guys, but they smell a bit. There were a couple dozen when I signed for them, but they’ve been busy little things, and now there are a half dozen more.”
Luthena laughed. “That’s rats for you.”
Muir found a small crate marked CAUTION: LIVE ANIMALS in one corner of the bay, and picked it up, carrying it over to Luthena, who cracked the top open briefly to check on the rats inside. Then Muir tapped several commands into a keypad on her wrist, and two of the pallets in the bay rose up on wheels, spinning slowly.
“Follow her,” Muir told the pallets, pointing at Luthena.
Luthena headed back down the corridor, and the two pallets followed obediently behind her, wheeling smoothly along the polished deck. At the boarding hatch, Luthena led the way through into the docking tube, and then waved to Muir.
“See you in another month,” she said. “Or perhaps sooner.”
“See ya,” Muir said. “Say ‘hi’ to Brondi for me.”
“Will do. Fly safe,” Luthena replied, shutting the hatch.
Muir sealed her own hatch shut, and then climbed back up to the bridge. Talus was already running the preflight checks when she arrived, dropping down into her seat.
“Luthena’s excited about her rats,” she told him.
Talus grunted. “Good. Glad to be rid of the filthy little things.”
“They looked pretty clean to me,” Muir said, buckling herself in.
“Rats in a cage, I’m fine with,” Talus said. “But there’s a very thin line between rats in a cage, and rats infesting a ship, eating up all the thermal insulation.”
“How’s that starboard thruster?” Muir asked.
“I want to take a closer look in person,” Talus said. “But I’m going to wait until we get back to Harrison’s Waypoint to take anything apart.”
“She can fly okay now?”
“Yeah,” Talus said. “Honestly, I’m just being overly sensitive. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Okay,” Muir said. “Docking tube’s clear, and I show no dragons on the scope.”
“I confirm,” Talus agreed.
“Cleared for takeoff,” Muir said. “Take us home.”
Chapter 7
“Whoooo!” In the top row of the hover-truck, Shep and Kuda bounced on their seats, rocking the vehicle in their exuberance.
Falken, navigating the truck through a patch of dense mushroom forest, rolled his eyes.
“Wait, can the dragons hear us in here?” Shep asked, quieting for a moment.
“While you’re in the truck?” Falken shook his head. “No, the canopy’s sealed, and with the noise cancellation on, you could be pretty loud without them hearing anything.”
“Whooo!” Shep hooted again, resuming the cheer.
“We’re gonna see some dragons!” Kuda yelled, pumping his fist in the air.
In the truck’s middle row, Raynard twisted in his seat and snapped a photo of the excited brothers, chuckling. “You two are something else.”
“I feel bad for their mother,” Vina said. “Imagine having to deal with that every day for eighteen years.”
“We were way crazier as kids,” Kuda told her.
“They’re giving me a headache,” Ed grumbled, rubbing his temple. “Can you make them shut up?”
“I can ask them …,” Falken began.
But Ed had already turned in his seat and faced the brothers. “Cut it out,” he snapped.
Shep frowned. “We’re just messing around.”
“No, you’re bothering me,” Ed said. “I didn’t come here to get heckled by a couple of idiots.”
“What did you come here for, gramps?” Kuda shot back. “Sure doesn’t seem like you came here to have fun.”
“None of your business, halfwit,” Ed muttered.
“What did you call me? I swear—” Shep said.
“All right,” Falken cut in, raising his voice. “Gentlemen, I’ll ask you – all of you – to try to be a bit more considerate, and tolerant of each other. This is a small truck, and we’re all going to be in it together for the next few days. Let’s make it a fun few days, okay? Okay?” Falken asked again, but as he turned to look behind him, a movement in his peripheral vision made him stop. He punched the brakes, bringing the truck to a sudden halt. “Sorry,” he said. “Off to the left, our ten o’clock. Everyone see them?”
His passengers leaned forward, peering through the fungi.
Raynard scanned his camera both left and right, then stopped, zooming in. “I see them!”
Gradually, a herd of gray-scaled, bipedal creatures emerged from the forest. The creatures moved slowly, and paused from time to time to stretch upward and nibble with their short snouts on the underside of the mushroom caps.
“We saw torstens earlier this morning,” Falken reminded them. “Those big, slug-like creatures that just slid around sucking the lichen off rocks.”
“Looked
like giant sea cucumbers,” Vina said, wrinkling her nose.
“Not far off, biologically,” Falken agreed. “What you’re seeing now is Olympus’ other major herbivore species: fauns.”
“They don’t have any arms,” Shep pointed out. “Or … front legs, or whatever.”
“No,” Falken said. “Just the two back legs, no upper appendages. A long neck for reaching food, and a pair of hooved back legs. They’ve adapted to be able to run fast, and jump quite high. Why do you think that is?”
“Because they need to jump up to the top of the mesas to get more food?” Shep guessed.
“Well, they can, yeah,” Falken admitted. “But that’s not why they had to develop that ability. Fauns are the dragons’ natural prey.”
“They’re so quiet,” Vina said. “There must be a couple dozen of them, and I don’t hear them at all.”
“Any noise they make will bring a dragon in. Watch how they step: first they touch the area they’re going to step to with one hoof, then, only after they’re sure they won’t disturb a rock or something, they shift their weight. It’s a good technique – I suggest everyone try it when we get out of the truck tomorrow.”
“Can they hear as well as the dragons?” Raynard asked.
“No,” Falken said. “They don’t really have ears in the conventional sense. See those four stalks on top of their heads, kind of look like moth’s antennae? They sense air pressure changes with those – even very small changes, at a distance. And their eyes are designed to pick up movement at a great distance, too. Between those two, that’s how they try to figure out when a dragon’s coming.”
“Are they good eating?” Kuda asked.
“Lots of protein in faun meat,” Falken said. “But they’re very lean, almost no fat whatsoever. You could eat them, but rumor has it they’re pretty tough.”
“C’mon, Falken,” Kuda said. “You’ve eaten one, right?”
“The research center used to keep a small herd to feed to the dragons they were studying, back in the day,” Falken said. He put on his best poker face. “I heard that some of the researchers got bored once and grilled a couple faun steaks, just to try them out. But that certainly didn’t happen while I was on staff.”
Kuda laughed.
Vina shifted in her seat, resettling the seat belt across her chest. “Do the dragons hunt torstens, too?”
“Nope,” Falken said. “Torstens store a type of toxin in their fat, it makes them poisonous to the dragons. They can just hang around in the open, eating lichen and getting large – the dragons don’t bother with them.”
The closest faun swiveled its neck around, facing the truck. A set of pure-black eyes studied them, and then it turned back to eating.
“Did it see us?” Vina asked, her voice hushed.
“Yeah, but they don’t quite know what to make of us,” Falken said. “They just think we’re a funny-shaped rock, until we start moving again.” He put his hands on the wheel. “Keep watching, I’m going to move just a bit, and they’re all going to bolt out of here.”
Falken lifted his foot off the brake momentarily, and the truck jerked forward. At once, the herd scattered in all directions, the fauns alternating between short sprints on the ground and flying leaps, clearing the tops of the smaller mesas easily. Within seconds, there was no sign of them.
“Whoa,” Raynard said. “That was quick.”
“Did you get it?” Falken asked, nodding at his camera.
“Think so,” Raynard said.
“If not, we’ll see more herds,” Falken promised him. He eased off the brake again, continuing down the gravelly road.
“So, what kind of software do you sell?” Raynard asked Vina, swapping out the lens on his camera.
“Boring enterprise stuff,” Vina said. “Not really consumer-facing software, it’s all about customer database mining and IT project workflows, that type of thing.”
“Oh, yeah? I studied computer science in college – you, too?” Raynard asked.
Vina shook her head. “No – literature.” She laughed. “You probably know more about the software than I do.”
Raynard smiled. “Oh, I doubt that – not if you just won a sales competition.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to say,” Vina told him.
Falken eyed the two of them in his rear view display, noting a blush on Vina’s cheeks. Wouldn’t be the first romance that started on one of these trips. But the realization made him frown. You’re not getting jealous, are you, bird-man? Remember Greban’s rule: no dating the guests. She’s gotta be at least ten years younger than you, anyway, you old creep. He checked the mirror again. But she is cute.
He swung the wheel around, skirting the base of another rock column.
“Okay, guys, get those cameras ready again.”
They emerged from behind the column, and ahead of them, Mount Olympus’ green and gray sides rose steeply from the forest floor, dwarfing the circular mesas sprinkled around its base. Far above, Falken saw tiny black dots circling the jagged edges of the peak’s rim.
“Are those dragons up there?” Vina asked.
“Yup,” Falken said. “They like to ride the updrafts that flow up the sides of the mountain. Helps them hear what’s going on down below.”
“This whole area is ‘the aerie’?” Shep asked.
“No,” Falken said. “You’re looking at Mount Olympus. The aerie is the crater right up at the top of the mountain. That’s where they nest, and care for their young. Down here’s where they hunt. And speaking of hunting …” Falken took one hand off the wheel and tapped on a multi-function display in the truck’s center console. A map of Mount Olympus appeared on the display.
“What are you looking for?” Raynard asked.
“Fauns,” Falken said, setting the truck into auto-pilot mode to focus his attention on the map. He panned around quickly, searching. “I’m tapping into an infrared feed from the Ecolympus, looking to see if we have any herds nearby.”
“If the dragons live here, why do the fauns even come near it?” Vina asked. “Why not just stay away from the mountain altogether?”
“Food,” Falken said. “The volcanic soil is some of the most fertile on the planet, and it grows the biggest, juiciest mushrooms around.” He spotted a heat signature on the map, and zoomed in. “Oh – here we go.” Falken tapped a button marked Reroute, and the truck changed directions automatically.
“Fauns?” Raynard asked.
“Not fauns – there’s a dragon on the ground already,” Falken said. “Could be a fresh kill. We’ll go see what we can see.”
“That looks like a landing pad,” Kuda said, pointing through the canopy to a wide concrete platform set near the base of the mountain in the distance. The pad was covered with a thick fence-like construction, and a metal docking tube protruded from the mountain, through the fence. Nearby, a bunker-like building sat embedded in the rock of the mountain.
“Yeah, that’s the research center,” Falken said. “It’s actually built into the mountain; most of it is underground, for safety. You’ll see small glass domes at random spots along the slopes of the mountain, too – those are observation bubbles, they connect via tunnel to the main research center. They even have an observation station all the way up in the aerie.”
“What’s with the fence and docking tube?” Shep asked.
“They’re just protective measures against the dragons,” Falken explained. “Dragons get very territorial, and they tend to attack anything airborne. That’s why this truck doesn’t go more than a few feet off the ground. When the resupply ship comes in every few weeks, the fence opens up to allow them to land, and then closes back up again to keep the dragons off while it’s on the ground. Then the supply crews and researchers can just pass through the docking tube to get inside the research center, without worrying about dragons or oxygen masks or anything.”
“Is the air breathable down here?” Raynard asked.
“There’s some oxygen i
n the atmosphere,” Falken said. “But it’s mostly carbon dioxide. So be glad your proxies don’t need to breathe in order to keep functioning. You’d be dead in minutes if you were down here for real.”
The truck crested a small rise, and in a wide clearing below, they saw a leathery form hunched over the ground, its wings tucked in alongside its body. The dragon’s head bobbed, and as they drew closer, they could see it was feeding on a dead faun. Falken took hold of the wheel, and eased the truck to a stop. A hush fell over the truck and its passengers.
“Female,” Falken said, speaking softly. “She must have just made that kill.”
In his rear view mirror, he saw Vina grimace, but she continued to watch, fascinated, as the dragon ate. Ed merely arched an eyebrow, peering past Falken to see the dragon. Behind them, Raynard had switched to video mode, and was holding the camera steady, zoomed in on the dragon. Shep and Kuda mimed a high-five in the back row.
“How big is she?” Vina asked.
“About twelve feet, nose-to-tail,” Falken guessed. “Juvenile still, but decent sized.”
The dragon tore a piece of flesh off of the faun’s rib cage, and then flicked the chunk up into the air, snapping it up greedily.
“How big can they get?” Shep asked.
Falken shrugged. “We don’t know for sure. Dragons never die of old age – that’s why the research here is so important. It could help us unlock the secret to human immortality. They live forever, and they kind of slow down, but they never really stop growing. The really big ones don’t hunt very often, they stay up in the aerie, mostly. The biggest I’ve seen was about thirty feet long. Maybe three times as big as this one.” Falken glanced up. “Heads up,” he said.
A shadow darkened the sun momentarily, and the guests gasped as another dragon flew close overhead, landing on the ground across from the first dragon with an audible thump. The first dragon reared back and hissed, eliciting a shriek in reply from the newcomer.
“Will they share?” Ed asked.
“No way,” Falken chuckled. “They’re gonna fight over it.”
Sure enough, the first dragon stepped forward, grasping the dead faun in both hind claws, covering it with its lanky body. The second dragon circled to one side, half-hopping, half-flying, and then snapped forward with its jaws, lightning-quick, drawing blood from the first dragon’s neck. The first dragon bit back, tearing a gash in the newcomer’s wing muscles.