Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  M-210- Marcus.

  Procedure: AIT 3650 Transducer Implant. C-2 bridge mode.

  Status: Operational.

  She closed her eyes trying to hold the image of the screen in her mind but nothing else had been clear enough to see. “Damn it,” she muttered.

  “Damn what?” Ammo asked. She’d apparently followed her into the dining hall.

  “He was looking at Marcus’ file when I sat down,” she said, pointing at the thinpad. “It autolocked when he walked away and all I saw was the headerfile.”

  “Let’s talk about it when we get you back to the ship,” Ammo said, looking pointedly toward the door. “I think you attracted some attention and it might be better to have this discussion elsewhere.”

  Kaycee followed her gaze to where three men stood with Bradley Parker. He was staring at her with intent. She nodded, standing up and looking around for another exit. The only one available was through the galley and there was no guarantee that wasn’t a dead end.

  Ammo tapped into her collarcomm. “Quinn, if we aren’t back in five minutes come looking for us.”

  “Do you need help now?” he asked, his tone pure professional.

  “Let’s see if we can walk this out, but if we aren’t back in five, do what you have to. If they don’t want to talk, it might get physical,” she said.

  “Standing by. I’ll tool up and be ready. Five minutes,” he said.

  As they headed toward the door, Parker angled to intercept. He put on a smile that looked like a viper trying to grin. “Dr. Caldwell, I’m surprised to see you in the staff dining hall,” he said. “The food is much better in either of the two cafes.”

  “I was here to talk to Dr. Forrester,” she said, smiling and trying not to look like she was concerned about him approaching them. “I had a question on a procedure and was after a medical opinion.”

  Over his shoulder she saw two of the men with him slide toward the door, while the third one walked up behind Parker. He was short and wide and gave off the same feel as Marcus. Ammo caught it too and shifted her position to get a better view of him as he dropped into Parker’s shadow.

  “Someone with your credentials?” He shook his head and frowned. “I mean Morris is a good doctor, but I don’t think he’s likely to breathe air from the same deck as you.”

  Kaycee looked down at the floor. “Alright, the truth is, yesterday I checked in at the medical center to offer my services while we’re here, and I noticed he was having problems with his surgical arm. I didn’t want to make it an issue out of it, but that kind of problem can be a huge liability issue, and I am obligated to report it to the Coalition Board of Medical Licensing if I see it. I didn’t want to do that and just wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything serious.”

  “He hasn’t mentioned problems that I know of,” Parker said, glancing at Ammo who had taken another half step to the side and was sizing up the small man behind him. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes indicated she should step back into place. “I’ll talk to him about that, but I wanted to make sure I escorted you both back to your ship.”

  “Are we in trouble,” Ammo asked. She still hadn’t moved from her position and had settled herself into a much more defensive posture. It was clear she expected problems.

  “No. Not at all.” Unless you resist. He didn’t add it, but he meant it. “We’re about to start that maintenance on the recyclers and I wanted to make sure you weren’t out and about when that starts.” He held his arm out toward the door and waited for them to head out before he dropped into step behind them.

  “How long is this maintenance supposed to take?” Kaycee noticed the other two men had dropped into position and were walking a few meters in front of them.

  “At least until the rest of your crew gets back,” he said. “You need to stay on your ship until then.”

  “I know a recycler purge is unpleasant, but it seems extreme to keep us confined.” Ammo turned and glanced over her shoulder at him as she spoke.

  “It is for your own safety,” he said.

  “Safety?” She frowned.

  “There will be a lot of open engineering systems on the station and it would be unfortunate for you to stumble into a dangerous area,” he said. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t end up having a tragic experience.”

  There was no doubt about it now. That was a threat.

  Chapter Twelve

  They’d left early and were almost four hours into the morning hike when Ethan smelled it.

  Smoke.

  Within a minute, one of the Windwalker escorts had swung down from a tree and had pulled Sandi aside to have a hushed conversation. He watched the two of them discussing something before she nodded and pointed forward on the trail they were following.

  The scout frowned, apparently not agreeing with whatever instructions she’d given, but he disappeared backup into the trees without an argument.

  “Problems?” Ethan asked when she came back over to join them.

  “Probably not, but we’ve got something strange going on in the Ar’ah encampment we’re approaching,” she said.

  “The smoke,” Angel straightened up and scanned the jungle. “How close are we?”

  “About a klick,” Tash said.

  “It looks like something happened and most of their tents have been destroyed by fire. I’d like to see if we can figure out what’s going on, but it might be better if we take you back to the Rockpile first,” Sandi said.

  “It just happened,” Ethan said, tapping the side of his nose. “It’s four hours home and then almost that long for you to get back. That would make it sundown, so you’d need to put it off until tomorrow. If you want to find out what’s going on, we should at least get eyeballs on it while we’re out here.”

  Angel and Nuko both nodded. Rene shrugged.

  “Captain Walker’s assessment is correct,” Marti added. “If determining what may have occurred is time critical, I would suggest we proceed forward. Since I am equipped with a substantial sensor kit, I may be of assistance in making a determination.”

  Tash looked at Sandi and sighed. Undoubtedly, the two of them shared a deeper understanding of the significance of the situation because neither spoke, but Ethan could feel the communication between them. “It’s your call, Boss,” Tash said. “Blake will burn us both if we foob this.”

  “If it’s any help, I’ll take responsibility for my people and we’ll tell them we refused to go back,” he said.

  Sandi glanced up at the trees. “There are witnesses up there who know better. If we go forward, it might be dangerous. We’ve got no clue what’s happened.”

  “Let’s not waste daylight then,” he said. “If we get there and it looks ugly, we can change our mind and run back to our cave.”

  She waved her arm and pointed in the direction they were traveling to let their escorts know they were going on.

  They’d covered little more than a half klick when they dropped into a ravine and she stopped abruptly. “Frak me,” she whispered, tapping her earpiece. “Isaiah found an Ut’aran body. He says it’s been dead a while.”

  “Why didn’t the korah take it?” Tash looked stunned.

  “It’s inside a zo’mar utel,” she said. “He says it looks like it’s had its skull pounded in with a rock.”

  “What’s a zomar whatever?” Nuko asked.

  “It’s a stone ring they set up when they have to be outside at night,” she said. “It keeps the wild animals out.”

  “Magical stone rings?” Angel’s tone showed skepticism.

  “The zo’mar stones are slightly radioactive, and we think the infrared glow they emit scares the animals off,” she said. “We don’t know for sure why, but even the biggest predators in the jungle won’t cross one. Not even to feed, as far as we know.”

  “Iz says the body has a zo’mar still embedded in its forehead,” Sandi said.

  “The only thing that will cross an utel is a wakat, or an Ut’aran,” Tash o
ffered. “That would limit the potential suspects.”

  “To get to the lookout blind we’ll have to go past the body. It’s right on the edge of the trail,” she said. “None of you are squeamish?”

  “It’s not high on my list of fun things, but we need to figure out what’s going on,” Ethan said.

  Around the next bend in the trail, they walked up on the utel and stopped. “If this is on the trail to the hideout, why didn’t any of you see this before?” he asked standing back and letting the two anthropologists examine the scene in detail.

  “We come in from a different direction,” Tash explained. “The other trail is shorter but brings us down a cliff face. It’s not for someone in a borrowed PSE.”

  Nuko and Rene stood well back under the trees and watched from a distance as they recorded everything. The corpse had enough of an odor that neither of them wanted to get downwind of it. Angel knelt on the edge of the stone ring staring at the body. She ran her fingers through the tall yellowish grass and shook her head. Marti stood beside her, motionless and absorbing all the data its sensors could take in.

  After several minutes, Angel stood up. Getting the captain’s attention, she tilted her head toward the trees. “There’s something fraking foobed here,” she whispered as he joined her.

  “Other than a murder scene in a world of happy people?” he asked.

  She held out her hand and dropped several pieces of shiny ceramic into his palm. “Stunner pellet casings. The victim was stunned several times before his skull lost the fight with the rock. It looks like there are several more casings over on the other side of the ring, but I don’t want to attract attention to them by walking over and checking to be sure.”

  “You’re saying that a human attacked this one and then beat his head in to cover it?”

  “That is one possibility,” Marti said, walking up and joining in. “Regardless of what transpired, this situation is now much more complex. It may now be impossible to know who is trustworthy.”

  Ethan stared at their two guides and shook his head. “I don’t think either of them knew about it. They both look like they’re about to lose containment of breakfast.”

  “And more from shock than the smell,” Angel added.

  “We should keep it to ourselves for now and play ignorant.”

  “Is that the encampment?” Nuko had walked a short distance down the trail and pointed toward the end of the canyon. She obviously wanted to get some distance from their grim discovery.

  Smoke obscured the view, but several spots looked like they were still burning.

  Tash looked up and nodded. “The blind is just over the next rise and to the right of the trail by a few hundred meters.” Turning to Sandi she added, “We should get them into the shelter and then figure out what happened here later.”

  “I have a sub-millimeter three-dimensional recording of the local environment I can download to the AI in the Rockpile when we return,” Marti offered. “This event does not appear to be recent, but until we can assess what has happened in the encampment below, it may be dangerous to remain in the open any longer than necessary.”

  “Alright then, let’s move,” she said, bracing herself as she turned back toward the trail. “The Windwalkers say there’s nothing moving this side of the Ar’ah encampment so we should be clear, but keep your eyes open, anyway. Fire makes wild animals act strangely, especially on a world where it’s so damp that it’s rare for anything to burn.”

  They made it the rest of the way to the blind without incident and once they’d all perched themselves on rock seats to look out at the burning village, Sandi paced the small floor of the shelter with measured strides. The forward wall of the blind was dirt and grass and the entire roof hung low with layers of huge leafy fronds from one of the jungle trees. Nowhere near as well constructed as the one above the Ter’can village, the scientists clearly threw this shelter together in a hurry when the Ar’ah had set up camp.

  “What are we looking for?” Angel asked. She’d picked the seat closest to the door and was already staring out the window with her heads up in place. Once she’d realized that things were stinking strange, she’d gone from happy tourist to security handler instantly. She dropped the smile and it was all business.

  “Anything unusual?” Tash said.

  She rolled her eyes. “That helps a lot. Everything is unusual since we’re new here.”

  “What are we supposed to be seeing?” Rene asked. He was almost as focused on his observation as Angel.

  The Ar’ah are a larger migrating tribe with almost 500 members. They have substantial herds of domesticated livestock that they keep penned up while they are encamped. They set their camp up in rings around a large central pavilion that is maybe seventy-five meters across.”

  “What are the tents made of?” he asked.

  “The outer covering is made of bleached and processed animal hides and they drape the interiors with textiles to divide them into rooms,” Tash explained.

  “How do they set up the pens?” Angel was craning her head out through her observation slot and scanning far to the sides.

  “They are zo’mar utel. The animals stay inside those,” she said. “And then the entire encampment will be set up with a ring around that too. For some reason that we’ve never figured out, they change the ring every day. They have a team that picks up yesterday’s zo’mar and another one follows behind and drops new ones in their place.”

  “Do they use a cart to move the stones around?” the handler asked.

  “Yes. One to pick up and one to place new ones. They are large, high sided—”

  “Then the encampment was attacked,” Angel announced.

  “Attacked?”

  “How do you know?” Ethan said.

  “Because I’m looking at what’s left of two carts flipped up on their sides and burning. Both of them look like they were carrying rocks,” she said. “It looks like someone rolled them up on their sides intentionally.”

  “I concur, Captain,” Marti said. Based on the burn patterns it appears there are at least four points where the fire started simultaneously. The fire spread around the perimeter edge of the encampment then toward the center. There also appears to be a clear trail visible in the grass that heads away to the north.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tash said. “We’ve never seen the tribes fight with each other. It just doesn’t happen.”

  “Obviously that’s not true,” Angel said. “Do you know which tribes are to the north?”

  “There are two harvester-gatherer tribes north of here. The Cha’nee are northeast a long day’s hike and the Sha’tana are northwest about two days.”

  “Nothing says it was either of them.” Sandi shook her head and stopped pacing. “They’re both agrarian. I’d look at the Sho’can. They’re game hunters and would have the tools for an attack.”

  “But they’re almost 300 klicks south,” Tash said.

  “We’re pissing blind,” Sandi said. “I’m not seeing any signals from the surveillance transponders on my display, are you?”

  Tash shook her head. “It’s probably the heat from the fires.”

  “We can deploy new ones but that will be slow. I don’t think either of us is carrying a control kit.”

  Sandi knelt down along the edge of the room and heaved one of the seating stones to the side. Under it was another flat rock and she pulled it up from the floor with her fingertips. She flipped a lid up on a storage box and brought out a container full of what looked like small winged insects.

  “We can each fly one at a time,” she said, handing a small pile of the bugs to Tash. “We’ll need at least a dozen of them in place to get any kind of image resolution but maybe we’ll get lucky and we can get some idea before we waste too much time.”

  “Are these standard RF controlled drones?” Marti asked, holding out a hand and waiting for one to look at.

  “Yes,” Tash said. “They work together with a collective AI alg
orithm, but we can only control them individually with our PSE comm systems. We don’t have the bandwidth to work them as a swarm.”

  “I have more than adequate comm capacity,” Marti said. “With your permission I can deploy them en masse.”

  “As long as you’re sure it won’t overload your own control system,” she said.

  Marti’s face glanced over at Ethan and rolled its eyes.

  “I think we’re safe on that,” he said.

  The entire swarm of robot bugs snapped to and launched into the air in a buzzing cloud of flashing wings as they funneled out the open window and toward the burning Ar’ah camp.

  “The drones have limited visual acuity,” Marti said. “Imaging anything through the smoke is difficult. Once I get closer to the camp, I will drop lower to the ground and make an approach.”

  “Can you describe what you’re seeing?” Sandi asked.

  A blurry image of what might have been grass and smoke appeared on Marti’s faceplate. “I can feed the signal to your heads up display if you would prefer,” it said. Everybody snapped their visor’s into place and opened the feed.

  “Once I am in position with the microdrones, I will stabilize their positions and integrate the image to provide better resolution.”

  “Wait,” Tash gasped. “Is that a body?”

  Marti stopped the drones and swung them back toward the object. “It does appear to be at least part of a body.” The image cleared as all the drones took up a stationary position. There was no doubt that someone hacked parts of the corpse off in what looked to be a monumental fight, although that didn’t appear to be the cause of death. There was a thin straight stick protruding from the upper left quadrant of the body. The end had four thin vanes spread around its circumference.

  “That looks like an arrow,” Nuko said.

  “The Ut’arans don’t have archery,” Sandi whispered.

  “Apparently they do now,” Rene said. “And I’d say that’s a damn finely manufactured arrow too.”

  “It would be plenty deadly I’m sure.” Ethan stood up and set himself in Sandi’s line of sight to make sure he had her undivided attention. She looked like she was on the verge of passing out. “I am seriously suggesting it’s time for us to leave.”