The Forgotten One

by Part One (lit)

  A jolt of pleased surprise went through Danielle. "85? What time of day is it?"

  "Nearing dusk on this side of the planet," Gertrude responded. "According to my calculations based upon the speed of rotation, this planet has a 32 hour day-that should be helpful in making repairs-resolution around its parent star is approximately 435 days."

  "That's going to seem weird! Not that I expect to be here long! You didn't give me your calculation on repair time," she reminded Gertrude.

  "At the current condition you should be able to affect repairs in 72 hours or less. This is assuming, of course, that you don't do any more damage in landing the craft."

  Danielle glared at the optical sensor. "Is there some reason that seems likely to you? Or is that just a snide assessment of my piloting capabilities?"

  "You were 100th in your class in landing," Gertrude said pointedly.

  "Bite me!" Danielle growled. "I passed, didn't I?"

  "You were 100 out of a hundred."

  "Fuck you, bitch! If I'd been given something besides this hunk of junk and you as a fucking co-pilot I could've done better!"

  It still rankled that she'd been given the most ragged fighter in the entire arsenal to train on and then had ended up with the damned thing as her permanent assignment!

  Apparently the computer decided not to dignify that with a response. It went silent. No longer distracted by her argument with the computer, Danielle focused on her viewing screens to see what she could tell about the planet they were approaching herself and discovered a bright, blue-green gem filled the forward viewer. Her stomach went weightless at the sight of it.

  Her home world, the Earth colony of Meridie, didn't even begin to compare in beauty. She felt a twinge of guilt at the disloyal thought almost immediately, but she was too awed by the planet to pursue the sense of discomfort for more than a moment. Excitement filled her, generously mixed with anxiety as the comments the computer had made flickered through her mind. The planet was clearly lush with life and if there were no indications of higher life-forms, then it was slap full of beasts … and Gertrude had suggested the possibility of gigantism. Of course, they didn't have to be giants to be dangerous, but it certainly didn't help her feelings to think she might have to do her repairs fending off monsters big enough to squash her fighter like a toy!

  "Will you be able to maintain a shield while I take care of repairs?"

  "Negative. The portable shields on board have their own power source and should be sufficient to repel anything up to 500 pounds, however."

  "Reassuring," Danielle muttered uneasily. "Didn't you say the oxygen levels indicated the possibility of gigantism, though?"

  Instead of responding to that question, the computer abruptly changed the subject. "Captain Dubois, I am detecting an anomaly on the surface that seems to indicate the presence of intelligent life-forms."

  Danielle's pulse leapt. "Seriously? I thought you said …. Never mind! Give me the controls. I'm going to try to land this bitch! How close?"

  "May I remind you, Captain Dubois, that I said the regularity seemed to indicate civilization? The composition and regularity of the structure indicate a high probability, but you will not be able to regain the altitude for an orbit if you abandon orbit now."

  "A high probability is about the best I can hope for as far as I can see!" Danielle said angrily. "Give me control, damn it!"

  "Affirmative. Shall I bring up forward shields for descent?"

  "We'll burn up if you don't! That's a stupid question!"

  "Nevertheless, diverting power to the shields is a one time opportunity in the current situation, Captain Dubois."

  "Well I have to land anyway! It's not like I have a choice in that! I'd rather be close to civilization if there is any."

  "They may be hostile."

  Danielle's heart rate leapt. "You think it's a Nubian outpost?"

  "Here? Negative. Nevertheless, this is a fighter …."

  "And it's crippled!"

  "Which means you will not be able to defend yourself."

  Indecision gripped Danielle briefly but the prospect of setting the ship down for repairs in the middle of a jungle certainly didn't appeal any better, especially not when she might be looking at having to fight off huge wild beasts. And there was no telling what sort of plant life there would be here. It could be as dangerous as the animals if they had plant life capable of 'walking' like there was on Meridie. "If they look like they might be hostile, I can still put some distance between me and them before I land. A civilization is my best chance of finding a safe place to put this thing down. There will be cleared areas, I'm sure."

  "They are not likely to look kindly upon you if you plow up their fields," Gertrude said pointedly.

  "I'll worry about that when I have to. How far?"

  "Your current trajectory will bypass the settlement, if indeed it is a settlement, by two hundred miles."

  "God damn it, Gertrude! You useless bitch!" Danielle growled, fighting the controls to pull the ship into a nearly vertical dive toward the surface. "How about now?"

  "The ship will begin to burn up in fifteen minutes, EST, and create a crater the size of home-base when it plows into the surface."

  Danielle ground her teeth. "Not if I pull up."

  "I would suggest a gradual pull up if you have no wish to shake the ship apart."

  Since the ship was already bucking like a wild podget Danielle had a hard time assimilating the possibility that it could get worse. Beyond that, the temperature inside the craft had already risen to an uncomfortable degree. Discovering that she had dropped below the cloud cover of the planet's atmosphere and that the ground was zooming toward her at a dizzying speed, she began struggling to pull the fighter into a less drastic angle of approach. Fear brought sweating popping from her pores when she discovered the ship was sluggish to respond.

  "Oh fuck! Oh shit! Oh hell!" she began chanting in a litany as she fought the ship's controls, trying to pull up, and saw that the blur below her was now close enough that she could see details about the landscape that didn't thrill her at the moment.

  "You need to compensate another 25 degrees to have any hope of landing the craft."

  Grinding her teeth, Danielle switched her focus from the blur of greenery flying toward her to the console, every muscle in her body straining with the effort to bring the nose of the craft up. She caught the flash of sunlight on metal as the ship slowly began to tilt upward and a mixture of hope, excitement, and sheer terror washed through her as a fresh rush of adrenaline poured through her system.

  "I'm going to overshoot it, god damn it!"

  "Affirmative. It is a city, however, and appears to belong to a fairly advanced civilization. There is a field beyond. May I suggest that you try decelerating the ship?"

  Danielle began muttering obscenities under her breath mixed freely with dire threats of what she meant to do to the onboard computer if she lived long enough. "Any sign of hostility?"

  "A very great deal, actually. There appears to be a battle in progress in the field you have selected to land in."

  "I picked? You fucking bitch! You directed me to the damned field! Shit! I can't pull out now, god damn it! I can't get the speed back up!"

  "Noted. May I suggest you ditch the craft?"

  "Shove your damned suggestion up your ass, bitch! I'm not ditching the god damned fighter! I'll be stuck here forever!"

  "You may be buried here if you do not."

  "Then I won't have anything else to worry about, will I?" Danielle snapped angrily.

  ?

  Chapter Two

  Kiel couldn't say that he had ever really understood why Manuta had thought it logical to create them as half-robotic and half-biological entities, but there were days-like today-when he seriously questioned the wisdom of it and wondered if the creator hadn't developed dangerous defects in his ancient logic circuits. Rivulets of sweat were coursing down his body from his excursions, a by-product of his biological half
, one of the many that annoyed him. It helped to cool him, but it seriously interfered with his concentration and his ability to fight; making his weapon slip in his hand and his feet on the coarse grasses beneath them; blinding him at times when it ran into his eyes; making his skin itch until it was maddening and distracting.

  He instantly forgot both the distraction and the discomfort, however, when a burst of light and sound above the field where the militia was exercising war games-hand-to-hand combat at the moment-caught his attention.

  It distracted nearly everyone-except his opponent, who completed the swing with his broad sword, nearly cleaving Kiel's arm from his shoulder and effectively drawing him back to the task at hand as pain exploded along his nerve endings.

  "Great Manuta, Jalen! You've fucked up my arm! Hold!" he roared at his sparring partner, barely waiting to see that he'd obeyed the order before he returned his attention to the ball of fire descending toward the city. By that time, it had caught the attention of most of those participating in mock battle and they, too, had broken off their sparring to watch the very real threat barreling toward them at incredible speed.

  "A meteor?" one of the soldiers in the group speculated.

  Kiel narrowed his eyes, focusing. "Nay. Something else," he responded with a mixture of rising excitement and anxiety as it occurred to him that it might be the Danu at long last and that it seemed likely that they were about to be killed. "It will crash into the city at its current trajectory."

  Almost before he'd gotten the observation past his lips, the ship-because he could see then that it was an airship-veered abruptly, heading straight for them. Instinctively, the soldiers flung themselves at the ground as the ship screamed overhead. It had barely cleared the area where they stood when it impacted with the ground hard enough to make the ground beneath them shudder. Kiel was on his feet again on the instant, staring at the great metal flying machine as it plowed a furrow along the ground, throwing up dirt, rocks, and vegetation like water in the wake of a seaborne vessel.

  His belly tightening with the certainty that whoever was inside would die, he launched himself into a run, chasing after it and then scrambling over the twisted metal the moment it shuddered to a halt in search of an opening. Despite the crash, the door he finally discovered was still sealed. Grasping the handle, he wrenched at it, but he only succeeded in twisting the flimsy metal off. The door itself barely gave even a fraction. Crouching, he wedged his fingertips into the small crevice he'd created and used the entire force of his body to lever upward. The metal gave with a tortured scream and an almost biological gasp as air rushed from the wrecked ship.

  He detected high levels of oxygen as the atmosphere inside wafted past his nostrils and a frisson of both relief and anger went through him as it dawned on him that it hadn't even occurred to him before that moment that the creature inside might not be an air breather. The moment he tossed the door aside and dropped into the dark interior, Jalen landed beside him, nearly on top of him, jostling him so that he slammed into the side of what appeared to be a small, narrow corridor. It sent pain through his shoulder, reminding him of his injury. Absently, he grasped his arm and jammed the loosened joint back into place. Instantly, his nanos began gathering at the point of injury to close the gaping flesh and repair the damage, and the pain began to recede.

  "The Danu, you think?" Jalen asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Kiel glanced at him sharply. Using his night vision to penetrate the gloom within, he glanced around. He couldn't detect anything within sight that suggested the builders of the vessel were Danu. He saw almost instantly, however, that there was a good deal to suggest otherwise. "Unless they have shrunk in stature, I do not think so."

  Disappointment was evident in Jalen's features for a split second. Nodding, he glanced around himself. "These symbols are not Danu," he murmured. "I should have noticed that right off. This is an alien language."

  Kiel grunted an affirmative. Looking up, he discovered a half dozen faces staring down at them through the doorway. "Form a cordon around the craft. They may be hostile." Shifting a twisted segment of wreckage out of his way, he ducked his head and moved deeper into the alien craft, trying to ignore the sense of claustrophobia clawing at him from the narrow tube he had to follow to reach the control room at the front of the vessel. There was only one, tiny room that opened off the corridor. He paused to examine the fixtures inside and determined that whatever it was piloting the craft, it was somewhat danoid in form, at least. Clearly the facilities had been designed for a creature that walked upright for, despite the alien design of everything, the fixtures were still familiar enough to identify the purpose of them.

  A faint sound from in front of him, a groan, caught his attention and he felt his blood leap in his veins, felt a surge of adrenaline rush through him. He'd abandoned his weapon when he'd torn the door off, he realized, chagrinned.

  Dismissing it, he moved purposefully toward the end of the corridor where he found another door, far smaller than the one he'd used to enter. Frowning at it, he paused to consider the situation. He had no doubt that he could remove it as easily, or mayhap more easily, than the other, but there would be no surprise on his side. Whatever was behind the door would know they were coming.

  It could not know what they were, however, and, despite the disadvantages of his biological half, the part of himself that robotic made him, all of them, far more powerful than any living organism designed exclusively by nature.

  Shrugging, he gripped the strange lever he was certain would open it and jerked on the door. It came off at the hinges, disconcerting him for a handful of seconds. After considering the poor construction for a split second, he handed the door to Jalen and stepped into the tiny room he'd revealed.

  Blinking lights of many colors greeted him. When he'd surveyed the tiny room, he saw there was a chair in the very front facing an opaque screen that covered the upper half of about a quarter of the nose of the ship. Nodding at Galen to hold his weapon at the ready, he surged toward the seat, catching the back and wrenching it around to reveal the alien.

  A jolt went through him. The small figure seated in the chair appeared dead, or at least unconscious, he decided when he detected a faint rise and fall of the chest. He'd been right, he realized with a modicum of satisfaction. It was danoid in form!

  It was not, however, Danu. Even without the alien clothing, he would've been certain of that. It was far too small for one thing and the face-it looked almost Danu and yet … strangely exotic, soft, oddly vulnerable.

  "Is it dead?"

  "Nay. Pretending, mayhap. Or mayhap injured and near death." He crouched down to study it closer, looking for injury but just as focused on studying it. "It is biological-unless …." He shook his head. "I cannot detect any known metals. Purely biological."

  Jalen edged closer, staring down at it. "Then it would be male or female, yes?"

  Kiel sent him a startled look and then turned to study the alien again, his heart beating twice as fast as before. "It would be male, surely? This craft appears to be a warship of some sort."

  "It is a strange looking male," Jalen commented doubtfully. "It looks … frail."

  "Of course it is strange looking! It is not Danu. I am certain of that."

  "Take that thing off of it and let us see what it looks like."

  Kiel frowned, but he was curious himself. "We will take it out to examine it. I cannot detect any injuries, but it must have them." After studying the restraints that pinned the creature to the seat for several moments, he found a catch and released them. Removing it was another matter. He couldn't move along the corridor upright. The ceiling was too low. He couldn't carry it on his shoulder and it was perfectly limp. After a little thought, he simply hooked his arm around the middle and shuffled down the corridor with it since the corridor also wasn't actually wide enough to accommodate both of them. Jalen had already leapt out when he reached the opening.

  Reluctance to give up his find flickered through
him when Jalen reached down to take his burden, but Kiel dismissed it and handed the creature to him. He saw when he emerged that Jalen had lain it on the dirt and the rest of the platoon had gathered around in a circle, craning to get a view of the alien. Shoving his way past the gawkers, he knelt down and studied the clothing for several moments before he detected a closure that seemed to run from the neck all the way down one leg of the suit. Grasping the edges, he opened the clothing from the neck to one foot. A collective gasp went up from the observers that brought his gaze back up to the body of the alien.

  The strangest sensation he'd ever felt wafted through him. It was almost the same feeling he got whenever someone punched him in the face hard enough to short out his brain functions and make him lose consciousness. Beneath the suit he'd unfastened, he saw there were other coverings, colorless and thin, shielding the upper half of the chest and the groin area from his view, but even so he could see that neither area looked at all like he would've thought they would.

  After a brief debate regarding which to examine first, he grasped the thin material at the groin and ripped it loose. As he stared at the alien's genital region, his throat closed as if someone had put a chokehold on him. "No phallus," he said a little hoarsely, grasping the legs and moving them further apart to examine the creature more thoroughly. "There is a phallus receptacle here!"

  "A what?" Jalen asked blankly, his own voice sounding strange.

  Ignoring him, Kiel focused on the chest. Feeling strangely light-headed, he lifted his hands to push the upper clothing away, stared at the round mounds for a split second and then covered them with both hands, squeezing lightly. "Mammary glands! Great Manuta! It is a female!"

  Something cold and hard dug into the flesh beneath his chin.

  Startled, Kiel looked down at the face of the alien and found it looking back at him through narrowed eyes. "Get your fucking hands off of me!" the alien growled.