Fairchild

by Blaze Ward

  For a moment, Dani wondered if she was better off never returning to Panamuer Nuevo. She could make a really good living as a test shuttle pilot on these expeditions. Had, for several years. Had flown through some crazy shit and done some amazingly stupid things. Seen far more of the galaxy up close and personal than she ever had on tours and going all walkabout with a credit card.

  As long as she didn’t have to actually grow up. Never going to happen.

  “Dani?” Eleanor asked carefully.

  “I’m fine,” Dani said, suppressing tears of frustration as well as tears of rage.

  “I can tell that from your voice,” her oldest friend in the universe said sarcastically. “Look at me.”

  Dani took a deep breath and pulled Eleanor from her pocket, bringing the woman up so they were face to face for the first time in several hours. It was usually better to just pretend to be on the comm with her, than to have this woman watching her face.

  It was hard to hide secrets from Eleanor.

  “I’m sorry, Dani,” Eleanor whispered. “I really am. I wish there was something I could do to make it all better.”

  Dani shrugged. She had grown used to being shallow and a little vapid.

  It made the world hurt less. Most of the time.

  Dani shrugged again. She didn’t trust her mouth not to betray her at this moment.

  There were a lot of angry words bottled up. Had been for a long time. Usually hidden beneath alcohol and bad behavior.

  Irresponsibility.

  Except when she was sitting in the cockpit of a flying machine, making it dance. Maybe that was the way forward? Pretend to be flying more often, and approach the rest of life like that?

  Of course, that required far more sobriety than had been her acquaintance for many, many years. She’d probably go into withdrawal if she went dry.

  Still, maybe it would be worth it.

  Stupid had gotten her here in the first place, after all.

  “I’ll be fine,” Dani announced to the world. And to Eleanor. And herself.

  She found her jaw hurting and realized how hard she had been grinding her teeth for the last five minutes, or hours.

  “Are you sure?” Eleanor ventured.

  Dani tilted her head up and stopped walking. She took a deep, angry breath and let go of it. Of the angry, of the resentment.

  Nobody was responsible for her being here. Nobody but herself.

  “Yeah,” Dani said quietly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  She looked around, turning to trace her track backwards up the slope and then down to that spot where she hoped to camp tonight.

  “How are we doing?” she continued.

  “Another two hours should see us to a better spot,” Eleanor replied. “Perhaps close enough. Your eyes are better than mine.”

  “What do the records say about life forms on this world?” Dani asked.

  “Why?” Eleanor teased. “Tired of the energy bars already?”

  “Nope,” Dani replied. “Don’t want to be eaten by dragons or bears or anything.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, dear,” Eleanor snarked. “We should cut another arrow, so the search parties can find us.”

  Yes. Good idea.

  Assume success. Plan for victory.

  Stop and shuffle an arrow in the semi–loose rock and soil, ten meters on the long axis and hopefully obvious enough for whoever ended up flying the backup shuttle down to rescue her.

  Maybe it would be Rain. She could use a friendly face right now, and he might be willing to give her a roll in the hay.

  That felt like a really good way to affirm being alive.

  Dani wasn’t sure she ever had wanted so hard to be alive.

  Chike

  Morning.

  Chike had managed to sleep. Some. Enough. Probably.

  The laser spectrometer runs had thrown up as many questions as they had answered. And promised at least two really good articles in prominent, ancient, Earth–based, scientific journals. Probably at least one more geology–meteorology–centric survey Expedition to Escudra VI, if he wanted to lead one. Or come along with Hadley when she completed her doctorate and came back.

  He looked at the readouts again and whistled to himself in the privacy of his tent.

  A variety of oxides of copper, with some iron, some aluminum, various arsenides, some more exotic metals, and a bunch of other things generated by some noisy, recent supernovae in the vicinity, baked in the core for a few epochs and then tossed skyward by drift and tectonic pressures.

  Not quite a room–temperature super–conductor, in their raw forms, but certainly a live, copper wire, lying on the desert floor, just waiting for a good storm to come along and toss it into the air with a little lightning.

  Interestingly, had the initial storm been smaller, the damage to the camp would have probably been far, far worse. As it was, the winds had blasted through everything too quickly to cause all the buildings to revert to transport mode. Add a few grounding cables in the right places, and some better insulation on others, and most of the gear would not have overloaded and reset.

  Chike could just imagine the smile on Ann–Marta’s face as he gave her the equations. Her people would tear into the bar stock and carbon rods with a vengeance, fashioning new toys. He wondered if she would trademark everything and turn around and start selling improved gear to other survey teams.

  Maybe Escudra VI was going to make all of their careers.

  Now, they just had to bring Fairchild home so they could complete the fairy tale.

  Chike transmitted a quick summary report to Ann–Marta’s inbox, slipped the laser spectrometer into his back pocket, where it had worn a faded pattern into the fabric, and folded up his slab. The weather promised to be warm, bordering on rudely–hot in a few hours, so he had worn a thin, gray jersey pullover with a kangaroo pouch in the front for his slab, right below the Michigan State logo and the Spartan helmet on his chest that matched the tattoo on his bicep.

  Giles had done his undergrad work at Ohio State.

  The Convention Center was a throbbing mess of people coming and going, even worse than the showers. There were far more academics than he was expecting, since the sun had barely been above the horizon for an hour at this point. He wondered how many had simply been up all night and were grabbing breakfast before sleep.

  Chike filled his Spartans mug with coffee and located Ann–Marta, seated in a corner with a couple of people that looked like ex–Special Operations types: hard, rugged, tough, dangerous. The two guys were almost as tough looking as Ann–Marta and the other woman.

  Chike slid onto the end of the bench next to a man who had at least an entire head of height on him and twenty kilos of mass, all of it muscle. Always useful to have folks like that around.

  “Dr. Odille,” the man nodded with purpose and a serious smile belying the flattop and close–cropped blond hair that screamed ex–military.

  “Morning, y’all,” he replied.

  Ann–Marta already had her nose buried in her slab, reading. She looked up with a fierce grin on her face, like she was about to sack some unsuspecting fishing village just appearing from out of the morning fog.

  The woman could be really, really intimidating when she got locked in on something. It was a good thing she was such a pleasant bridge partner.

  “Thank you,” she said to Chike with a happy smile, almost a purr of excitement.

  He watched her transmit the file on and turn to the woman across from her, on the other side of the guy next to Chike.

  “I’m sending you Dr. Odille’s preliminary findings,” Ann–Marta said. “Round up the machine shop folks and get them in motion as soon as you can.”

  “On it,” the woman rose in one smooth motion, unruffled cup of coffee in one hand and disappeared at a fast walk.

  And just like that. It was kind of unfair, considering the number of meetings and approvals he would have had to undertake to accomplish big things, and nothing
would have happened in a hurry. Here, aim the Ground Services folks at a problem and get the hell out of their way.

  Which is why he always hired Ann–Marta or one of her friends for the job. Better to have reliable professionals.

  “So what’s the news?” Chike asked, sipping a mouthful of hot, bitter coffee to try and cut through the gunk that seemed to be coating his brain this morning.

  “We expect the second Shuttle groundside in three hours,” Ann–Marta replied. She gestured at the men remaining at the table. “Gavin and Lacumaces will head out with it at that time and coordinate the search. Fahmida and Juan–Marco were on site at first light and have been flying search patterns, but the radio interference in the area has been almost thick enough to cut with a knife.”

  “Back to primitive methods?” Chike asked.

  He wondered how long he would have been able to survive a hostile planet alone. Everyone else at the table probably would have gone months, or maybe years.

  He gave himself days.

  “Maybe,” Ann–Marta replied, glancing at the two. “You two should go get packed.”

  Both men nodded, excused themselves, and vanished in short order.

  She stopped and studied his face closely.

  “I’ve got good people, Chike,” she continued. “We’ll find her. I’m more worried about storms.”

  “I thought you would be able to harden the camp to survive them,” Chike said, maybe a little put out.

  He had stayed up way past his normal bedtime tracking down all the science so she could fix everything. A little credit would be nice.

  “And we will by mid–day,” she replied. “The problem is that another storm might come up in the same place, and we would have to either retrieve all the S&R teams on short notice, or send them up to Calypso to ride it out. I will not have people on their own out there in something like that.”

  “Can we put a search base somewhere closer?” he asked.

  “I thought about that, Chike,” she mused. “The problem is that they would have to be a goodly distance removed from the epicenter, so we don’t really gain anything, and end up with more places that need to be secured and protected.”

  “So what can we do?” Chike heard his voice starting to take on a childish whine, but he couldn’t help himself. He was supposed to be in charge of the Expedition while it was on the ground.

  Being powerless was frustrating, even with Ann–Marta to take the sting out of it. Where had all this guilt and defensiveness come from?

  “If she’s not dead, and not hurt, it’s just a matter of finding her,” Ann–Marta reassured him. “Needle in a haystack, but we have our ways.”

  Chike felt at least a little relieved.

  Hopefully, Fairchild was sitting on a rock somewhere waiting.

  Knowing the pilot, probably sunbathing nude on a north–facing rock slab and complaining about how long it was taking for them to get there.

  Fairchild

  “I thought you said there were no aliens,” Dani whispered harshly as she scampered for cover into a little draw that looked like a dry creek bed. They were still above what she would have called a treeline, so there was little cover except for strange looking cactus kinds of plants, all spiky and green and round.

  “What I said, dear, was that humanity has encountered no intelligent, star–faring aliens in our explorations.” Dani could tell that Eleanor was a bit put out, just from the tone of exasperation pervading her voice. “I did not say there were no lifeforms on this planet.”

  “So what the hell is that?” Dani kept her voice quiet, but couldn’t keep the adrenaline out of it.

  “If you would lean back, or take me out of this pocket, I might be able to answer you better,” Eleanor retorted tartly.

  That would involve taking her hand off the fire–staring laser in its holster, or climbing up on her knees so she wasn’t bracing her weight on her left hand. But it was probably a smarter move, considering who the expert on native fauna probably was on this team.

  Dani settled for rolling onto her left hip, elbow down, so she could kind of pull the Aide out and rest her, face up, on the rock ledge, pushing with one, long finger to get her Aide’s balance far enough out that she didn’t slip back. The right hand was all set to draw and fire if that thing got any closer.

  “That appears to be a very large raptor, dear,” Eleanor said after a bit. “Not one that I can find in my data files. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to name it when we get home.”

  “Name it?” Dani blinked and looked down at Eleanor’s face for a moment, before she turned her eyes skyward again.

  That thing had to be big, to be seen from that far off.

  How big?

  “It is customary to have the person who discovers a new species provide the common name and the taxonomic classification, once it is determined to be a previously–undocumented species,” Eleanor said smugly. “Fairchild’s Golden Eagle, perhaps?”

  Fairchild’s Golden Eagle? That actually sounded kinda cool. She might have to paint that on the side of her next Survey Shuttle, just to show off. Every ship needed a name.

  Right now, however, she was more worried about the possibility of being eaten. That thing looked like it had a four or five meter wingspan. Creature that large could probably take down bighorn sheep, maybe just lift them into the air so it could drop them and make them dead, like birds back home did with oysters.

  Dani pulled out the Tomya Survival Tool and checked the beam setting. Sure enough, set feathers to flaming at close range, assuming the damned thing came down to take a swipe at her. She wasn’t taking any chances.

  The bird had circled once in the sky, a single, majestic orbit, and now seemed headed off on a tangent, but Dani wasn’t fooled. She had played enough war games on flight simulator computers certifying and retraining for shuttles. Circle around and come up on them like a ninja from out of the sun.

  If a golden eagle like that was really that big, she would be able to give Dani grief if she wanted.

  Plus, what did a bird that big eat? What size of ground creatures was she likely to find this high up in the mountains that might feed a bird like that?

  Dani stirred herself, realizing that Eleanor was awaiting some sort of answer.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dani finally agreed. Fairchild’s Golden Eagle sounded good, at least for now. “I wish I had a pocket on my back where you could ride and keep an eye on it. I would feel better if we were below the tree line, but we’re in a desert and there are no trees. Not even big cactuses.”

  “Cacti, dear,” Eleanor corrected. She did that. “If you turn me around and hold me down at your side when you walk, I should be able to watch the skies behind you.”

  Not optimal, but better than nothing. Dani waited until the giant bird had truly disappeared before she moved again, like a rabbit frozen by the owl’s call and hiding in the brush until it was safe.

  Not a pleasant feeling.

  Dani wondered how the bird would react to her flying around with it.

  She shrugged and turned completely in place once to make sure where she was.

  Somewhere above her, the spot where she had woken up. Somewhere above that, the rock that bore an imprint of her helmet. Below and ahead of her, a valley was starting to open up. At least, a notch in the mountains around her, so hopefully a place where a river existed, even a creek, and she could hang out.

  Eleanor had dutifully reported that Escudra VI had things close enough to trees to count. Dani could maybe rummage up some downed trees and build a little shelter. Start a fire to keep the night terrors at bay. Maybe even spend some time outside her suit and do a little maintenance on it so it didn’t get all funky and stuff.

  And a nice fire would generate a column of smoke that ought to bring folks running.

  Anything to keep from having to eat another protein bar.

  When she got back to civilization, she was absolutely throwing out most of the emergency pack she had and reb
uilding it with some expert assistance. Starting with palatable food.

  “What does this rock have for lifeforms?” Dani asked in a truly querulous voice.

  Before, she had been talking to talk, lest the silence sneak up on her and drive her into her dark places. One of the downsides to having a regular, monthly cycle was that day when she could easily fall into OCD. Dark, angry places where she might be trapped for a day or more, unable to overcome her own brain’s neurochemical squishiness, looping endlessly on some trivial thing and unable to think happy thoughts.

  Just leaking blood was a godsend compared to that, since she could think objectively again by that stage.

  Now, Dani found herself confronted by the possibility that critters down here might be big enough, hungry enough, to chase after her, even if she had almost no smell because of her life support systems.

  Secretly, Dani wondered how many had missed her last night while she was unconscious, unable to smell her. Certainly, the shark in her dreams had swum by instead of biting her.

  “According to the logs, not much is known,” Eleanor responded after a few moments. “Most of the surveys had been done at much lower elevations and closer to the equator. Ground Station Beta was chosen as a survey site on the general assumption that there were very few lifeforms in the area, and thus the crew would have more security. Plus Dr. Odille is a xeno–Geologist and Volcanologist, so he was planning to emplace a number of big, sciency–type instruments to measure the mountains themselves, rather than the fauna that might walk atop them.”

  Silly boffins. Always focused monomaniacally on the task at hand without any thought to what else the world might offer. Sounded like someone else Dani knew, but she was unwilling to speak aloud.

  “So, Fairchild’s Golden Eagle,” Dani hazarded. “What would an eagle that size eat?”

  “I’ve been giving that some thought,” Eleanor replied in a subdued tone. “If we scale up from similar raptors on Earth, I would guess very large lizards or small ungulates. Or the planetary equivalent thereof.”

  “Define small,” Dani said in a small voice. She had a pretty good guess at the answer, but wanted someone else to say it first.