by S. H. Jucha
“The four soma, who Dassata speaks of, live in the great waters, Commander. Those ships, buried on the shores, were once flown by their progenitors many generations ago. Dassata is asking if you’ve seen these four.”
“They were seen at the shore,” Pussiro said. “Teague whistled at them, and they fled into the waters. That’s the one and only time when my warriors saw them.”
“We will be at the shore for some time before we leave,” Alex said. “We will trouble your nest no longer, Queen Nyslara.”
“Dassata Alex Racine, I would speak with you again when Nessila is high,” Nyslara said. She wanted to talk to the alien peacemaker now but needed time to order her thoughts.
“Yes, I will come here,” Alex replied, pointing at the ground. “Your lookouts can warn you when I land.”
Nyslara nodded her acceptance, and she and her soma watched the aliens climb into their ships, which, without a sound, lifted into the sky and were gone.
Pussiro regarded Nyslara, his forehead heavily furrowed in a frown.
“You’re wondering, Commander, what Dassata will do to our soma when he discovers the Dischnya have made war upon the ceena, who he considers part of his nest.”
“That was my thought, my queen.”
“It was my thought too,” Nyslara replied softly. She turned to reenter the tunnel, her tail whipcracking across the muzzle of the female feedwa, who yelped in pain.
-16-
Alex and Teague
After the meeting with Nyslara, the discussions aboard Alex’s traveler were heated, and Teague was at the center of them.
“What do you mean you haven’t found them, Captain?” Teague cried out. He was standing in the aisle, hands on his hips, and towering over a seated Reiko.
“I believe my comment was self-explanatory, Teague, and, while I know these are close friends of yours, let me remind you that you are a journey member, and I’m the mission commander.” She punctuated her comment with a captain’s stare, designed to put overreaching crew in their places.
Teague was about to issue a hot retort when he received Julien’s comm.
“Dad, can’t you say something to the captain?” Teague complained.
“I believe more than enough has been said to Captain Shimada, Teague. Our Swei Swee haven’t been found, but we’ve been unable to mount a serious search for them. The Dischnya possess dangerous, slug-throwing weapons. They seriously injured Lieutenant Soucis when she tried to lead an operation to free our downed traveler.”
“The Dischnya trapped a traveler?” Ginny asked.
“There’s much that’s happened while the five of you were held hostage. I always found it to be of great value to be brought up to date on the latest reports, to make more informed decisions,” Alex said, eyeing his son.
Immediately, Teague reached out to Julien and Ginny contacted Cordelia for a synopsis of the events that took place above ground, during their time in captivity.
Alex and Renée sat quietly, while the two young ones were deep in their review.
When Teague finished, he sent an apology to Reiko.
“Teague, tell your father about the warrior’s reaction at the shore,” Ginny urged.
Teague wasn’t sure what value the story held for his father, but Ginny’s expression insisted.
“Well, it was odd, Dad. I was coming out of the water when I ran into these warriors, who were waiting for me and the Swei Swee. The odd part was the way they were looking funny at my friends.”
“Funny? How, son?” Renée asked, and both Alex and Renée received a short vid of the warriors.
“So, I whistled to the Swei Swee to seek shelter,” Teague said continuing his story, “which upset one warrior, who swung his weapon’s butt at my shoulder.”
“Which you took issue with, despite being surrounded by weapon-toting natives,” Ginny remonstrated.
The expressions on his parents’ faces made Teague duck his head. He would rather Ginny hadn’t underlined that part of the story. She was always doing that to him. He’d be having a little fun, enjoying the excitement of a dangerous stunt, and she would be warning him to be careful.
“Yes, well, anyway,” Teague continued, throwing Ginny a reprimanding look, which she ignored, “I blocked his swing and snatched the weapon away from him. When I did, it yanked him off his feet and launched him out into the shallows. Dad, you should have seen this warrior lose his mind when he hit the water. He panicked beyond all reason. He wasn’t even in waist-deep water, but he was shrieking and whining like he was about to die. I had to fish him out. When I did, he dug his nails into my shoulder, and … and …”
“He threw him into deeper water,” Ginny finished for Teague.
Alex had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing, but that didn’t stop him from receiving a glare from his partner.
“But I fished him out again,” Teague objected.
“Teague told the warrior off once the two of them reached the shore with a gesture like this,” Ginny said, wagging a finger at Teague, “and then pointing at his bleeding shoulder. When we made a mistake of showing our teeth to the Dischnya, it was pointed out to us, using the exact same gesture, that we had displayed bad manners.”
“Captain Escobar remarked I had become infamous, having become the first human to teach the aliens a new gesture, which happened to be a remonstrative one,” Teague added.
The lights in the main cabin brightened, and Commander Cohen announced their arrival aboard the Sojourn. Moments later, the telltale at the hatch signaled the bay was pressurized, and the Harakens filed off the ship and groups moved through the bay’s airlock. Teague headed for the bridge, but a signal from Alex stopped him.
“We will begin a full-scale search for our Swei Swee tomorrow, first thing in the morning, Teague. But for right now, and except for Willem, of course, you and the other ex-captives have appointments with medical.”
Teague looked at the medical specialists, who were standing by, Pia in front. He took a breath to object, but Ginny truncated that protest with a swift punch in his arm. “Ow,” he uttered, glaring at Ginny, who glared right back at him. “Guess we’re going to medical,” Teague said, rubbing his arm and following Pia, who hid her smirk at Ginny’s antics.
Ginny flashed a bright smile at Alex and Renée and then ran to catch up, linking an arm with Teague and rubbing the spot she hit.
Julien returned the image as a vid. He was seen turning blue, his head slumping and passing out since Alex failed to provide an opening for the mouth.
reflected in the sense of relief, circulating throughout the fleet, at recovering the hostages, especially after suffering the losses of Edward and Ullie.
In quick order, the medical specialist checked out the returned captives and, much to their surprise, pronounced them healthy, although suffering from slight weight loss, most evident in the New Terrans.
Cleared from medical, Captain Escobar and Corporal Daubner hurried to join the conference about to take place on the Sojourn’s bridge. Reiko thought that the next steps were obvious, but since Alex seemed lost in thought, she kept her opinion to herself and waited.
“Alex, there are several things that Corporal Daubner and I wish to discuss,” Xavier said, choosing to start the conversation. “Willem has done a wonderful job of learning the native’s language, but I believe there’s a bigger picture that must be considered when dealing with the Dischnya.”
“Yes, Ser,” Keira added. “There’s something odd about the concept of an underground nest on this planet. I get it that this is the way they might have lived on Sawa, but they’re not on Sawa, and they haven’t lived there for generations.”
“You mean why are the Dischnya living underground when there seems to be no reason for it?” Alex asked.
“Exactly,” Xavier exclaimed.
“Well, I, for one, am interested in finding our four missing crew members and leaving this planet to the Dischnya as soon as possible. They can keep their confusing society,” Reiko said. She expected a swell of support, but no one showed an interest in seconding her comment. Or not, Reiko thought.
“In contrast to the Captain’s opinion, I’d like to request permission of Nyslara to spend time investigating her planet. This is Haraken’s first exploration mission, and there is much for us to learn,” Willem said.
“Willem, I believe that Nyslara’s conversation with Dassata tomorrow will be enlightening and will provide you with answers without voicing a request,” Julien commented.
Alex frowned at Julien’s use of his Dischnya title, but his friend wore the most innocent expression on his face, which Alex knew was about as far from the nature of Julien’s thoughts as the enormous distances between stars.
“Captain Escobar, what were your other concerns?’” Alex asked.
“I’ll let Corporal Daubner describe it. She found it,” Xavier replied.
“For many days, we were held in a storeroom, where we initiated an ongoing conversation with our two primary guards, Simlan and Hessan, who you saw at the meeting, standing behind Nyslara and Pussiro,” Keira began. “Ginny and I were drawing images on the floor with some stinky, dark pigment that I think was boiled down from animal parts. Once we earned the trust of our two guards, which took a while, I went looking among the shelves for something else to use for drawing. In the back and high on a shelf were a set of large, shallow bowls that were stacked together. I thought there might be something inside them, so I took them down.”
Keira paused and looked at Xavier, who nodded his encouragement to continue.
“I didn’t pick up on it at first, Ser,” Keira said. “But the platters were light. It’s when I held them over my head to see if they were wood or some other exotic material that I noticed the pattern in the base. They were Swei Swee carapaces, Ser. From the size of them, they were younglings.” Tears of anguish formed in Keira’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ser.”
Alex shared Teague’s images of the warriors staring at the Swei Swee when the five captives were taken. “As you can see by the interest of the warriors, combined with Keira’s news, the Dischnya have been harvesting the Swei Swee, as a food source, since they arrived on planet. I don’t need to tell you that this information must not be shared with my son, right now, or Ginny, for that matter. But this does mean that there is the distinct possibility that the Swei Swee, who inhabited those dark travelers, might no longer exist.”
Alex let those thoughts sink in, and then he brought everyone back to their next priority. “However, first things first. Captain Shimada, I believe we have four crew members to rescue.”
“I was thinking the same thing myself,” Reiko replied. “We’ll put a pilot and copilot aboard each traveler and launch eight of them, keeping the mission shuttle and one other shuttle aboard this ship. The pilots will slow cruise the coastline, alternating duty with the copilots, until they locate them.”
* * *
Franz Cohen was chatting with his copilot as he boarded his traveler. He would be in command of the squadron’s search for the four missing Swei Swee. He spotted Teague by his height and distinct body shape, sitting head high over his seat back, and Franz had no doubt he would find Ginny seated beside him.
Nodding briefly at the two teenagers as he passed, Franz noted that they both held pilot helmets. Not that they would be flying, but they could aid in the search. The remaining crew aboard would take feeds from the controller via their implants, which didn’t possess the sophisticated controls and viewers in the helmets.
Franz knew better than to ask Teague or Ginny whether they had Captain Azasdau or Captain Shimada’s permission, much less Alex’s, to join the search — he knew they would be extremely cooperative, lest it endanger their permission to be aboard. If Reiko had been lost planetside, no one could keep Franz from taking a front-row seat in the effort to find her. And Teague grew up with these four Swei Swee. To him, they were brothers.
After exiting the mother ships in orbit, the travelers descended planetside, targeting the point where the Swei Swee were last seen. Franz split the eight travelers into two groups, one to head north along the coast and the other to head south. Two ships in each group would hover over the shoreline, while the other two would spread out over the waters, one surveying the shallows and one following the edge of the dark waters.
The travelers moved ever so slowly, per Alex’s advice that the Swei Swee could stay underwater for up to 0.35 hours and travel hundreds of meters during that time. The crew in the main salon rotated shifts as time passed, as did the pilots, although the controllers did all the flying once they were programmed.
Everyone’s eyes in the helmets or implants were focused on various wavelength feeds from the controller. Most were in the visual spectrum, but some thought that a Swei Swee on the surface might have absorbed more of Celus’ light. Warmed by the star, the carapace would appear at a different temperature than the waters surrounding them and might stand out under thermal imaging. Still others monitored for disturbances or wakes that might indicate a Swei Swee swimming below the surface.
In each traveler, the crew was emotionally feeding on their recent successes. Despite the loss of two mission members, they successfully recovered an entire shuttle of their people and every captive. Finding the four Swei Swee would complete their efforts.
Unfortunately, the cave where the Swei Swee hid was far up the coast from the original point of attack. The foursome chose it because of the bluff above and the thick growths of tall trees that supplanted the grass and shrubs of the plains. It was their thought that the land hunters wouldn’t have ventured into the forests where their underground tunnels would be challenged by the deep tree roots.
To further complicate the searchers’ efforts, the Swei Swee’s visible exposure time was minimal. They fished briefly at Celus’ emergence over the horizon and quickly returned to the cave and, hidden beneath the rocky overhang, a traveler would need to pass within 50 meters for the ship’s controller to pick up their implants.
* * *
It was Wave Skimmer’s turn to monitor the little ones. He’d alternated the surveillance days of the strange Swei Swee with Long Eyes and Dives Deep. On the prior evenings before his turn, Wave Skimmer would receive the reports of the activities of the foreign Swei Swee before leaving the following morning to watch them from where the dark waters broke to form the shallows.
What Wave Skimmer noticed, as the days passed, was that while the little ones’ routine didn’t vary, their exposure time in the water lessened each day, and Wave
Skimmer recognized the signs. They were separated from whatever they considered their hive, and, detached as they were, there was no community support for them.
It was the calling of Swei Swee males to search the waters every day to support themselves and the hive’s females, who tended the younglings and eggs, and the search could only be conducted during the light of day. Duty drove every member of the hive. But these four Swei Swee had no duties to perform for their hive. They could only wait, and they were sleeping more with the passage of every day. It was Wave Skimmer’s thought that if the foursome were not discovered soon, they would grow too weak to fish. Lethargy would follow, and, soon after, they would travel the endless waters.
Long Eyes reported one evening that when he left his watch, as light faded, he’d seen eight travelers on the horizon. He kept watch for a little while longer, as he returned to the hive, with a pair of eyes turned backward and staying on the surface — a dangerous maneuver for a Swei Swee in the open waters. Long Eyes noted that the ships halted their movement along the shore as dark fell.
Today, when Wave Skimmer assumed his post, he was barely in time to catch the foursome returning to their cave. They couldn’t have had time to each catch more than one or two small fish. As the day stretched on, Wave Skimmer dove, caught fish, and fed.
When the star was at midday, the ships cruised into Wave Skimmer’s view. The travelers, which mirrored the colors of the shallow waters, approached the cave. To Wave Skimmer, it was obvious the travelers would be far past the cave when the light faded from the day. The little ones would crawl out the next day and never know they had been missed.
Wave Skimmer warbled a small apology to his mates and younglings, if what he was about to do would send him to travel the endless waters. With a powerful thrash of his tail, he launched toward the shore. His six-walking legs stroked the water like sets of triple oars, adding to the speed created by his tail. The Swei Swee First appeared to skim across the surface of the water — underlining the name given to him by his matron.