by Isaac Hooke
Among the pillar trees a host of small insect analogues and small critters roamed. High above them, they could occasionally make out some larger, slow-moving creatures. PJ made a note each time they saw one, using one of his multi-faceted suit-eyes to zoom in on the animal, then initiating the series of light flashes, radio pings and audio that was the approved First Contact with an Unknown Species.
In return, if PJ got anything at all, he’d only received a series of dull looking stares out of vacant eyes. So he’d logged a few seconds of video and then they’d moved off again.
At one point, to their side, one of the warm patches in the soil loomed a short distance off, and PJ stepped toward it, scanning. Beneath the surface, his sonar could make out the dense and broad buttress-like foundations of the pillar-trees. Spindles of heat ran throughout them, culminating in fat bulbs of warmth whose purpose PJ could only guess at.
PJ highlighted the images in his log file, assuming someone, maybe one of the doctors, would care about such things.
Behind him, PP kept his focus wide, his systems primed. Whenever PJ bent to check something out, PP tried to double-down on his attentiveness, taking up the slack for his distracted teammate.
Standing again, PJ, sent a vibration command to his fat-fingered maw, the dirt pulsing from its two fingers and chubby thumb as they started to move off again.
Behind them, the soil slowly churned.
Climbs
After three follow-up conversations, twenty or so dropped hints, and a dappling of loosely veiled inquiry, Nathan had reached the end of his tether. The Indulakans were nothing if not amenable, amiable even, but since the debacle at their initial conference, Nathan had been stepping carefully.
He had all but barred everyone else from further conversation until he could confirm relations truly were unaffected. But Nathan, along with the Captain—and Jacob, no doubt—wanted to visit one of the nearby cities, to see how the Indulakans really lived, heck, just to leave the patch of parkland they had stayed within for the past two, albeit short, days.
Eventually, the Ambassador bowed to the Captain’s suggestion that he simply send a request to venture further afield.
“Aap shahar kee yaatra karana chaahate?” came the reply.
“You wish to visit the city?”
“We would very much appreciate the honor of an invitation,” sent Nathan.
“We assumed you did not have interest in our cities, as you had not come to them. Do you require assistance getting to them?”
Nathan had pondered this a while, then responded in the negative, asking only if there was any areas the Indulakans wanted his group to avoid when they visited.
“There is no danger here. All is open to you, as tourists.”
Nathan cringed at the term, as did the Captain. He was considering using his override to officially change the corresponding Indulakan word to something more befitting. Guest. Visitor. But he knew there were different counterparts for those.
This was not the Indulakans’ first interstellar rodeo, and it appeared that Nathan and his fellow envoys were merely sightseers to them.
“Would it be possible that we might meet with some of the first group again?” had been Nathan’s next question, after a lengthy and formal message of thanks for the invitation.
“It is possible, as most of them live in Waluun-City, though so do many others, so it is not very likely.”
And that was that.
“Huh,” said Nathan, after the last message came through.
The Captain actually felt a little sorry for the man.
***
It took two hours to get to the city by land. It felt silly not to take the shuttle. It was quite capable of covering the distance in a matter of minutes, but the regulation against powered flight over land was absolute.
The journey was made both more difficult and more amazing by the optical illusion that they were always just a short way off. But the nearest pyramidal structure of the city, their destination, just kept growing and growing, until their view ahead was completely dominated by it.
Just like Earth, Indul had no real seasons at the equator, and the days were so short the temperatures did not fluctuate more than a few degrees from noon to midnight.
Still, it was a shock when they got close enough to make out the nearside of the edifice and saw that it was completely open, just a latticework of columns, pillars and supports, opening onto broad balconies and boardwalks. No windows, no doors.
Coming to a stop at last, they stared up at it.
“Is it all…hollow?” said Nathan. Shellie consulted her own suit’s abbreviated version of the sensor suite the twins were equipped with.
“I suppose it’s no more hollow than any building on Earth, in one sense,” she said, studying the compound sonar image being fed to her, “but they’ve taken it a step further. Nowhere in the section of the building I can make out is there anything I would call a wall. Just floors, ceilings, and pillars.”
A steady flow of Indulakans were shuffling past them, heading to and from the countless ingresses and egresses that riddled the lowest echelon of the pyramid. Many stared, some even greeted them. If they had any questions, none of them asked, though Nathan got the distinct impression that they had heard pretty much all they wanted about the tourists. They seemed neither curious nor annoyed.
Just indifferent. As for the rest of his team, they seemed as indifferent as the Indulakans, though he knew Dr. Moon desperately wanted to study their hosts more closely.
They were about to venture inside when an Indulakan spotted them from an opening, two layers and about ten meters above them.
“Majedaar vaigyaanik!” shouted the creature.
“Comedian scientist!” came the translation into their ears, and all eyes went to Jacob, who frowned a little. Is that Hoho, thought Jacob, staring upward? But the Indulakan was already clambering out of the opening and shimmying down the sloped outside of the mountainous building.
Landing with a lazy, almost drunken aplomb, the Indulakan came ambling over to them, and, ignoring all the others, spoke directly to the physicist: “You have wandered near my home, Jacob. Word had come of your approach. I have questions for you. I can offer entertainment in return. Or some currency.”
Jacob went wide-eyed. “There’s no need for that, my friend. Maybe I can exchange question for question,” then, getting into the spirit of things, added, “if the answers seem of equal value, of course.”
The Indulakan nodded. “Beshak! Beshak!”
“Agreement! Agreement!”
And without further ado, the Indulakan turned and began levering himself back up the side of the building. Jacob stared after him a moment, then over at the rest of his group, then back up again.
“He doesn’t think I’m going to” mumbled Jacob.
But he clearly did.
“Captain,” said Shellie, stepping in, “With your permission, I could help the scientist up, and stay with him.”
Captain Campbell nodded. No danger, they said. He actually believed them, he really did. And it was inevitable their party was going to get split up at some point.
“I’ll ping you regularly with our location,” Rob added, “I want status every fifteen. Clear?”
“Confirmed, sir.” And with that Shellie set to using her armor’s reinforced musculature to help push and pull the highly disconcerted scientist up the side of the building.
“Huh,” said Nathan, staring upward after Jacob and Shellie.
“I know, right?” said Raf, “No stairs. But then with arms like that, who needs stairs?”
Nathan nodded, but in truth, he could care less about the mountaineering tendencies of the Indulakans. Well, far less than he cared about their method of engaging in conversation, anyway.
“Huh,” he mumbled to himself again, “Makes sense, I guess. If you want attention from a free-roaming species, you pay for it.”
Raf, hearing the Ambassador’s external monologue, offered
helpfully, “Pay them with what, sir?”
Nathan stared at the marine, and the Captain interjected, “He’s got a point, Ambassador.”
One by one, they walked inside.
Limbs
It was getting dark. Or rather, it was getting darker. What little light that made it through the canopy had leeched away, and now the forest floor was only a murky shadow.
“I’m switching to IR, PJ,” said PP, eyes still outward.
“Me too,” replied his friend, then, “Let’s get some food in us, before it’s too late.”
It was not really dinnertime. It was more like lunch. Indeed, they had no intention of sleeping, or even resting during the brief night ahead.
Coming to a stop, they both took a couple of deep breaths. The air here was laden with heavier gasses, most notably CO2, pushing out the oxygen. Whether it was any better up amongst the roof-canopy, they did not know. All they knew was that they would have to limit bouts with their suits’ chest-plates open to no more than twenty seconds at a time.
But that was more than they needed to throw a sachet of food pellets into each suit’s central chamber with their machine fists. Then each of them released one of their maw-controls, slipped one arm inward through its sleeve mount and into the cramped space inside the suit, grabbed the sachet up and squeezed the contents into their mouths.
It was all the sustenance they needed. They’d both lived in the combat suits for days at a time before. Food pellets and water sustained them. Strategically inserted, well-lubed catheters took care of everything else.
“You see that?” said PJ suddenly, half chewed pellets spitting from his mouth.
PP had. They both stabbed their eating hands back into their sleeves, even as they whirled on the tiny blip their radars had registered.
“It was low,” said PJ.
“Where’d it go?” said PP.
They waited.
Another pip came, slightly closer now, to another side.
“How the hell did it get there?” said PJ.
“Is it the same fella?” said PP, anthropomorphizing a bit. They’d been told, no, warned that something up here was smart. Smart and dangerous.
They both longed for guns. But in their absence, they’d gained claws instead, and it was with real relish that they both sent the command to deploy. Two long, sharp blades slid smoothly down each forearm, extending well past their fat fists.
“You got your knives out, PP?”
PP did not need to reply. They both crouched, suddenly aware of the heaviness inside the suits once more. On Earth, the suits made you Ironman. Here, it felt more like they were just men clad in iron. But that was just weight. If it came down to a fight, the twins would pack a very real punch.
For a long while nothing happened.
“I don’t like it,” said PP.
PJ did not disagree.
Their suits continued to scan, ever vigilant, but something was bugging PJ. It was the pillar-trees. They were so dense, and though they were widely spaced down here, they still surrounded them.
With his senses on alert, PJ no longer saw pillar-trees. He saw only blind spots, and now he stepped deliberately to one side, away from PP, widening their shared view.
Just a step to the left.
The blips rippled through his systems, and echoed to PP’s, both of them tensing as the apparition hove into PJ’s view.
They both whirled around, just as the creature whatever it was, came flying from the cover of the tree and launched itself at PJ.
“PJ!” shouted PP, staring forward, both of them trying to compute what they were seeing. The creature had six legs, if they could be called that, but was only running on four of them. The other two met its body, not at its sides or underbelly, but on its back.
They did not have time to wonder why, as its head, or rather the long, hard horn-shaped protrusion that capped its entire body, was pointed straight at PJ’s torso, and coming fast.
PJ did not have time to duck away, so instead he braced himself, crouching down and shrinking his profile even as he brought his blade-tipped fists up in front of him.
He was positioned well to rebuff the attack, only suddenly he wasn’t. The beast wasn’t coming from there anymore, he was rotating hard to the right, bringing the legs along his back over and down even as his left legs swung upward, still running, still coming.
Now one of its front legs was also swinging upward, connecting with PJ’s moving blades and forcing them aside.
Almost too fast to register, its sword-like head was whipping to the side now as well, its serrated sides slicing across PJ’s midriff.
Inside his suit, PJ felt and heard the screeching of blade against shield and wondered for a microsecond what their creature’s head must be made of. An alarm was flashing away. Damage report. Damage, thought PJ? To his torso plating? No way, he thought.
He ignored it for now, anyway. PP was stumbling after an aborted swing after the beast, but it was already leaping away. Away and up. Away and around, using its six ambidextrous limbs to redirect its momentum back off a pillar-tree, arching into the air, and bringing its blade back at them.
Oh no, thought PJ, not likely. Not again. He was getting a feel for the movements of the beast, evaluating it, looking for weakness. Every moment gave him a greater dose of brawler’s confidence.
He did not notice the smell.
A part of him did. A part of him registered the pungent aroma of car exhaust in his suit, the smell of the noxious atmosphere seeping in through the small gap the beast had rent in his suit’s front panel. A part of him registered it, though much too late to do anything about it. The text of the red panel flashing inside his suit. Breech. The beast angling its head toward that same point, through it, driving the point into the softer flesh within before ripping it back, outward, twisting away from the twins’ sweeping blades.
Blood filled PJ’s mouth. He knew the taste. He even liked it. But this was too much, and he was staggering, and his suit was cutting commands to his legs, sensing him slipping, feeling the flood of blood filling its hollow legs and taking control away from its punctured occupant.
PP didn’t understand. Nothing in him could make him believe that this beast could have ripped a hole in one of the hefty combat suits in such a short time. But PJ was gargling, shouting something unintelligible and terrible through his comms, whipping his arms back and forth wildly even as his legs remained preternaturally still.
“PJ? Talk to me!” But his eyes were being drawn back to the beast, leaping with impossible grace from one tree to the next.
Enough, said PP to himself. PP was done with this shit. PP was pissed. It was coming at him now. He did not wait. He saw it leap, waited to see its trajectory, then flexed his massive legs right back at it.
“Fuck you, beast!” he yelled, bringing his fists together and then, seeing the animal flexing away, bringing one of his fat legs around, kicking forward, to connect with the animal’s head.
It did neither of them very much good. The head, somewhat harder than steel, it seemed, carved a chunk out of the elephantine boot. But the kick went home too, and even if it didn’t crack the animal’s hard exo-skull, it still snapped it backward, and once they had both landed it used its momentum now not to move around for another attack, but to gain some distance, coming around to stalk them from about ten meters away, flexing its sword-head back and forth as if testing it still worked.
“How’d you like that, you son of a bitch,” said PP, keeping his front to the creature.
It did not, apparently, and it kept its distance for a moment. But the one behind PP didn’t seem to mind the idea so much, or so it seemed as PP’s radar blared to life once more, a new contact coming dancing from behind another pillar-tree and launching itself at him. PP was turning immediately. He was turning, but it was too late. The blade found the gap between his suit’s shoulder and its torso and twisted into it, half dislocating the balled joint.
It was a glan
cing blow, but it was just the first, and as gas rushed into his suit, PP knew what was coming next, saw now what had happened to his friend, bleeding out into his suit only a few meters away.
A small part of his brain thought of the final briefing with Shellie. The previous visitors, the Purgoid, Shellie had said, had apparently come up here to the ‘heavy places’ as well. So these animals had seen tech before. These sentient animals.
And they’d clearly fought tech before as well. And, PP now saw, they’d probably killed tech before, as both beasts drove inward at him, driving their diamond-hard heads at him.
PP shook his head.
“Fuck this,” he said, then started to pivot, bringing his back around.
No weapons, his orders had said. No guns, they’d said. Fine, thought PP, then suck on this instead, and he ignited the pulse boosters mounted to his back.
Announcements
Nathan and the Captain stood now before a central space, wider than they could truly take in. Raf stood behind them.
“I make it…just under a kilometer across,” said Raf.
It was fed with light from pockmarks in the cavernous roof, though a quick calculation on the Captain’s part told him that even this wide cavern was not as tall as the building itself.
“A stadium?” said Raf.
“Unlikely,” replied Nathan, “they abhor competition almost as much as violence.”
“How is that possible?” said Captain Campbell, “How does technology develop without competition?”
“I’d love to tell you the two aren’t linked,” said Dr. Moon, “But I’d be lying if I said I could envision one without the other on a planet-wide scale.”
“Yet they’ve got tech. Somewhere they’ve got tech,” said Raf, taking in the scale of the building, and this immense cavern, one without any supporting columns to speak of.