Viking

by Daniel Hardman

  Sure, certain viruses and bacteria thrived only when hosted by a particular genus or species—but there were plenty of counter examples, both on Earth and off. Why else would planetfall mean a mandatory one-year quarantine?

  What chafed almost as much as the misleading information Heward was dispensing was the abrasive, domineering way he controlled the crew. Rafa had taken orders from commanding officers before, had been around military-style chain of command. He’d seen different styles of leadership, but none less likely to inspire confidence in critical moments than sneering insults and unrelenting condescension.

  Heward couldn’t afford to be taunting everyone and throwing his weight around if he was really interested in their survival—or his own.

  Almost as if he’d read Rafa’s mind and bristled at the criticism, Heward turned back to Fazio.

  “Fazio, it’s time to get off your lazy southern hemisphere and get some work done. We all slaved like dogs today while you were in La La Land, so you can put in some time while we’re sleeping.”

  Chen raised her hand to forestall Fazio’s angry response and shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Heward. He’s still got a fair amount of narcotics in his blood stream to block the pain, and what looks like the start of an infection. He won't do much for a few days. Definitely not tonight.”

  “Definitely not tonight,” Heward parroted in a sing-song tone laced with sarcasm. Unconsciously he fingered the insignia on his shoulder. “Hardly the line I expected from you.” He waited for a response, but when none came he strutted over to the woman and lifted her chin with his finger. There was a suggestiveness in his stance, a subtle subtext behind his words. “I was giving an order, not a suggestion.”

  Chen flushed. “I’m telling you it’s not a good idea.”

  “Oh, Little Miss Can’t-Be-Wrong is sticking up for a boyfriend. I must say, you sure know how to pick ‘em. But then again, you’re not the choosy type, are you?” He leered at her mockingly.

  Chen had done nothing to hide the prostitution in her background, but Heward seemed to be privy to details that had escaped the rest of them. Had he read all their dossiers, or just cornered Chen back on Earth when nobody was looking?

  Fazio growled in anger but didn’t move.

  Chen looked down.

  Heward stepped back and glared around the room, weighing the reaction of his audience. “I’m getting pretty tired of all this remedial tutoring, but I’ll repeat myself one more time for the intellectually challenged. This is bondage, not Boy Scouts. We are not a democracy. When earthside signs off at night, I am the law, and what I expect is complete obedience. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  Rafa closed his eyes in disgust. Obviously it would only make things worse to interrupt, but he longed to put the petty dictator in his place.

  “What’s the matter, Orosco? Am I boring you?”

  Rafa kept his voice quiet and even. “Not at all.”

  “Oh, you were resting your eyes, is that it?”

  Rafa stood slowly, his gaze locked with Heward’s. The fatigue, the stiffness melted away, and his body automatically molded into the loose, balanced fighting stance perfected years before. He felt no fear—not about the physical confrontation at hand, and certainly not about its unavoidable resolution—only a sick regret of the spiraling cruelty that would be prompted by his antagonist’s humiliation.

  “Yes. I think we’re all pretty beat.” Again Rafa forced a matter-of-fact calmness. He could feel his heart thumping steadily away and mused for the briefest moment at its plodding pace. Perhaps he’d known the confrontation was coming and had subconsciously exorcised any anxiety about it.

  “Not beat enough, I think.” And then Heward’s pistol sprang from its holster and was whipping through the smoky half-light in a blur, the angular fluting on the barrel whistling as it cut toward Rafa’s eyes and jaw.

  Time slowed to a crawl.

  The reflexes Rafa had honed by long practice emerged from dormancy, and deftly mapped the conflict into thrust and counterthrust, feint and deadly follow-up. Mongoose takes cobra in a lightning game of bloody chess.

  It was all plotted out for him: the fluid sweep of his arm that would twist the pistol away with a wrist-shattering pop and raise an elbow to meet his opponent’s jaw—the inevitable pulling back, amplified by pressure on the pinned shoulder, that would leave Heward off-balance when Rafa’s foot took out his knee—the echo Heward’s skull would make as it cracked like a melon against the deck—and the horrifying picture of congratulations from unpitying and relieved spectators.

  All so easy.

  But superimposed upon the map was the specter of his daughters, splashing innocently in the breakers at the beach, eyes glowing with merriment over twin birthday cakes. His wife’s haunted eyes the last day she attended the trial. His parents. His brother.

  He had decried violence, been its most bitter victim. If he struck back he would be embracing it, using it ruthlessly to eradicate his problems. Never mind that it would be defensive. Never mind that Heward deserved what he got. Never mind that every soul in the sweaty, haze-choked room welcomed their commander’s annihilation.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He wouldn’t do it.

  The carbonized tines around the mouth of the barrel tore into his cheek and across the bridge of his nose. Rafa’s neck snapped back and rotated, dampening the fire of the blow as much as possible—but immediately he could feel blood welling from the cuts, running in scarlet outline along the stubbled jut of his jaw to the center of the chin, and dripping through the open suit collar onto his chest.

  Rafa staggered back a half step, regained his balance, and swept pain-clouded eyes across the grimy upturned faces. He read scorn in Whemper’s cruel smile, contempt from most of the others, and sorrow from Chen. Abbott looked thoughtful. Puzzled, maybe. The kid had his nose back in his book already.

  Heward was waiting when he finally faced forward again. He appeared surprised by Rafa’s lack of reaction. Possibly even disturbed. But his voice was as cold as ice.

  “There’s a little wake-up call. I wouldn’t want you dozing off.”

  Rafa met his gaze steadily, making no attempt to stem the bleeding. “Okay. You’ve made your point.” It took every ounce of discipline he had to corral the hostility from his voice. He didn’t fully succeed.

  There was a sudden flicker of understanding in Heward’s eyes, an awareness that he had narrowly escaped danger instead of crushing a defenseless coward. He hid the awkwardness by spinning on his heel to face the rest of the crew. “I’m glad that’s settled. Now, Fazio, as I was saying, you’ve got some work to do. When I wake up tomorrow I expect all the crates in the cargo hold to be organized and resealed.”

  Fazio’s eyes burned with hatred. He made no move to rise.

  Heward raised his eyebrows in contrived astonishment. “You think that’s a bit much? You think I’m being nasty?” He raised his laser pistol slowly, released the safety, cranked the power setting to maximum, and sighted casually along the barrel.

  “This is mildly annoyed.” Suddenly he whirled and squeezed the trigger three times. A trio of molten metal blooms erupted in perfect outline around Fazio’s shadow on the bulkhead. Fazio paled and leaped forward to escape the sudden heat as the slag dripped sizzling to the floor. “Nasty is what I’ll be if that job isn’t done when I wake up tomorrow.”

  And with that Heward left the room.

  13

  Rafa staggered down the corridor from the cargo hold, making half-hearted efforts to stifle the hollow clang of his boots.

  Every muscle ached. Every nerve had been strained beyond tolerance. Every joint, every bone felt hammered and spent. He was seeing double and his eyes were red. The lines of blood on his cheek were sticky and throbbing. But despite the weariness he felt a glimmer of something approaching satisfaction. It was a peculiar sensation, unfamiliar and out-of-place after weeks of unbroken fear, despair, and misery—yet it glowed with a quixotic persistence.<
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  After Heward’s strutting at shift-end, Rafa had been brimming with loathing and hopelessness. It was all more of the same mindless cruelty that had left his life a shambles, and as he watched the little melodrama he’d passed beyond abhorrence to rebellion. Maybe he couldn’t save his own life. Maybe he couldn’t clear his name, or hold his wife or know a daughter’s smile ever again. But he would not sit back and let savagery reign supreme.

  He was going to kindle a spark of kindness if it killed him.

  He thought of it that way—as an act of will, a statement of principle, a tilt at the windmills of brutality—more than as a personal favor to Fazio.

  Rafa had half-expected the big man to drag himself to the cargo hold after the gun play. Instead Fazio retreated to his bunk rasping dire threats at anyone who disturbed him, leaving them dreading the fireworks when Heward showed up again in the morning.

  It had been easy to slip out unobserved as the vikings sagged into their bunks, though every step had been a battle against his weary mind and body. This won’t take that long. I’ll be in bed soon, he had told himself.

  Once he reached the cargo hold all pretenses fled, and Rafa had nearly abandoned his intention. Heward had been even more outrageous than he realized. The detritus of scores of opened crates, packing material, protective wrap and tools lay scattered all across the slick muddy floor in a jumble that would take hours to remedy.

  But after a moment of soul-searching, Rafa’s resolve hardened. He marched to and fro in a frenzy, lifting and stacking like an automaton on overdrive.

  It became a holy crusade of sorts. He set a cadence, beat the rhythm with the same mental metronome that had served him so well in his marathons, and drove himself until the ordeal was done.

  Now, as he tumbled into a bunk without bothering to disrobe, Rafa permitted himself a small but infinitely sweet smile. Tomorrow he’d no doubt pay for the foolhardy gesture, but he didn’t care.

  It was worth it.

  * * *

  As he began his shift the next morning, Rafa blinked, eyes adjusting to the brightness of tropical sunshine streaming through the open hatch. The air curling into the mostly empty hold felt cool and damp. His arms and shoulders ached as they remembered last night’s labors.

  “Where do you want the sequencer?” he asked out loud.

  Satler echoed like a cheerful phantom in his ear. Take it out to the skimmer and strap it someplace where it can’t fall off. We won’t need it until we unload again.

  “And when will that be?” Rafa grunted as he stomped into the sunshine, failing to mask his annoyance. On the deck of the skimmer, Abbott heard him and looked up in confusion. None of them were accustomed to this strange game in which people were continually speaking aloud in random snatches.

  Sorry. I guess this morning’s briefing focused more on protocol than agenda. The mining team’s supposed to get some soil samples and seismic imaging out on the plains to the southeast. They think they’re onto petroleum deposits or something. Since they need the large skimmer to carry the equipment, Edvardsen said the biology folks could tag along to check animal populations and collect more genetic samples.

  “How are we all going to fit?”

  Well, meteorology’s headed down to the coast in the smaller skimmer, and some of the geology group’s riding into the mountains on a robot. So not everybody’s going.

  Rafa slid his heavy carton onto the galvanized deck and vaulted up to secure it with nylon straps. After seeing a pufferbelly play with their mining machine like a toy, he wasn’t eager to get up close and personal with any of the larger fauna. He doubted the others were all that thrilled either. But MEEGO wanted data about everything under this strange alien sun, and there was no use protesting.

  Nickerson and Whemper are both feeling better.

  “That’s good.” There was soft but genuine relief in Rafa’s voice.

  Doctors think it was just a boring old bug from Earth.

  Rafa nodded and straightened up, rubbing the small of his back.

  “What now?”

  Go grab the sampler kit and tranquilizer rifle. Manifest says they’re in G-3.

  “Why the rifle?”

  We’re going after some herd animals today. Where we’re headed it’s a lot like African savannah. Satellite recon shows some heavy six-legged herbivores about the size of an elephant—hexapods, we’re calling them—plus smaller browsers like antelope and bovines. Hard to see in low res, but they look reptilian, mostly.

  “You mean you want us to bring down a lizard the size of my living room and then walk up to borrow a blood sample? What if the tranquilizer doesn’t work? What if they’re aggressive?”

  It’s a risk. But it’s no different than back here on Earth. Half the time you don’t know whether the dart penetrated very well or stayed in. Just have to wait and see what happens and be ready to run like the wind if what you hit turns out livelier than you thought.

  “That’s a comfort,” Rafa observed wryly.

  * * *

  Heward finished the pre-flight checks about the same time Rafa returned with a final load of equipment.

  “Everybody up. Time to head out.”

  Rafa climbed into the glass-enclosed portion of the cockpit and stopped at the hardness in Heward’s eyes.

  “Don’t have room for everyone,” Heward said. “Why don’t you grab some straps on the deck?”

  Rafa shrugged and dropped back to the grass. His cheek and nose still throbbed from last night’s violence. But the look of amazement and confusion on Heward’s face—and Fazio’s, for that matter—when he pompously hauled the bloody-throated man down the hall for an inspection of the cargo hold—it made Rafa’s secretive labors doubly sweet. Now it was tempting to remind Heward about the copilot rule, just to make him eat crow again. Rafa was a better pilot anyway, according to pre-mission testing.

  It wouldn’t make any difference, though, especially after the scene with Compton coming out of the shower this morning. Echoes from Heward’s abusive attack on a slow-to-rise Fazio were still bouncing off the walls when she’d bellowed her own accusation. Someone—probably Whemper—had stolen her clothes for kicks; Rafa hardly endeared himself when he retrieved them from Heward’s bunk and tossed them down the corridor in disgust. Then the perverse woman had snickered a thanks every bit as sarcastic as everyone else’s, and proceeded to clothe in full view of half the unblinking crew, to a chorus of catcalls.

  Well, he certainly couldn’t claim surprise that people were behaving like barbarians. He’d signed on the dotted line.

  Abbott was groaning as he popped the remains of a ration bar in his mouth and rolled painfully to his knees. In the muddy shadows of the module, Compton looked up as she zipped her heavy worksuit. “Got time to take a pit stop?” She still seemed to be enjoying the residual interest from her exhibitionism.

  Heward’s eyes narrowed. “We did five minutes ago.”

  Compton shrugged. “I’ll save it then.” She slipped gracefully into the cockpit and stretched supple arms in feline laze, fully aware of Heward’s steady appraisal. Behind her, half a dozen other crew members clambered into the cockpit. Another two assumed positions next to Rafa, on the open cargo deck, and wrapped wrists around restraining straps for support.

  They rose in a pulsing gush of wind and fumes, the coppery outline of the module quickly dwindling into the swath of the mud slide. Overhead, scimitar rings sliced the morning sky, tapering to a razor-thin line as they disappeared behind the mountains. Mist floated beneath them as they shot over low-lying jungle, obscuring unknown creatures whose hoots and calls drifted upward. The faint odor of distant ocean swelled and receded again.

  The ride was bumpy; their skimmer wasn’t built for fast or smooth travel, but even heavily burdened it generated a hundred-kilometer-per-hour slipstream.

  As they skirted an approaching mountain, the terrain fell away into a large bowl-shaped valley. Glancing down from eight hundred meters, Rafa felt for an insta
nt like a migratory bird traversing the Minnesota boundary waters: the ground seemed to be covered with lakes and ponds. But why the strange colors and perfectly circular shapes?

  At the sound of whirring engines washing across the valley, the ponds began to shimmer and surge skyward. In a moment they became recognizable as pufferbellies, some so massive that Rafa’s sense of scale was momentarily stymied. It was an awesome sight; the entire floor of the valley seemed to be lifting to greet them. The crew had seen one of the creatures in Rafa and Abbott’s visual feeds, but this was a first personal encounter for most. They gazed in open-mouthed astonishment.

  But there was no time to enjoy the startling beauty of the image; the skimmer was hurtling forward, directly into the path of the gigantic creatures. With a low ceiling and limited maneuverability at high speeds, the skimmer was in imminent danger of collision.

  They were fast enough to pass safely over the first ascenders, but a second wave of pufferbellies soared so rapidly that Heward was forced to backthrottle and bank in a steep cut around them, tilting the deck at a crazy angle. Rafa clutched to the taut packing straps, the muscles in his arms and shoulders rippling beneath bronzed skin. One of his companions slipped, blew down and to the lee, and then caught himself at the last minute, his feet dangling ominously into rushing emptiness.

  The expanse of a pufferbelly’s midsection rushed by, mere meters over the skewed deck. Rafa caught a glimpse of scaly yellow on its bulging skin. For a split second he thought he also saw dark shadows on the far horizon through the translucence of its gas sac.

  Then the curve of alien flesh rolled away again in a blur, and the skimmer righted itself.

  “Everyone okay?” Heward shouted over his shoulder.

  Rafa’s companions swore fervently and made no answer in the wind.

  Thirty minutes later they landed on a plain of chest-deep grass dotted by an occasional tree, within easy walking distance of a herd of the so-called hexapods. Disturbed by the sound and wind of the skimmer’s descent, the animals milled uncertainly for a few moments before settling back into a rhythm of steady grazing.