Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  He glanced at the stick in his hand. Still holding on the transfer. “Did Walker teach you to use my words?”

  “No Marat akUt’ar. Is my knowing. You show Mir’ah. Small words stay inside me.”

  That is unfortunate. We’ll have to wipe her memory now. He felt a fleeting moment of remorse for her loss.

  “I need to ask you again, Tuula Mir’ah,” he said as the moment passed. “Were the ones that took Walker shiny, too? Were they Marat?”

  She looked up at him making long, steady eye contact. It was something she’d never done before. “Is keet… true. No Marat.” She swayed from side to side.

  The commlink in his ear chirped. “We’ve got several bodies out here.” Parker didn’t recognize for sure which of his people it was.

  He tapped the stud to reply. “Is it Walker and his people?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” the man said. “Something mangled them pretty good. It looks like they were trampled to death.”

  “And eaten,” one of the others said.

  “How many are there?”

  “Five… ish,” the first one said.

  “That’s about the right number,” he said. “Bag them and bring them in.”

  “No sir,” the second one said. “Whatever did this is still around. I’m not going to get myself eaten to bring in a puddle of goo.”

  “Fine, get some images and then report to me.”

  He let out a slow hissing breath and shrugged. That will make the doctor unhappy, but at least if she sees what happened she can’t say I didn’t try.

  “You were right. The jungle got them,” he said, realizing Mir’ah was still watching him.

  She lowered her head and let out a slow breath. Raising both hands above her head she spread her palms up toward the stars and raised her voice to announce, “We’ir sharrah Kep’tan Woh’kah Marat akEr’tah. Ut’ar Sharrah.”

  Mir’ah’s people all stood and raised their hands as she had. “Ut’ar Sharrah!” echoed through the night.

  The jungle replied with a million voices and Parker shivered.

  He looked down at the stick in his hand. Hesitating only a moment, he hit the button to transfer her upload. The information surged into her brain, and even as her eyes lit up with the fire of knowledge, he saw for the first time that glow of who she was fade away into the darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Kaycee sat in the captain’s seat wanting to chew her nails but instead she bounced her leg up and down like a pneumatic hammer. Anything to burn off nervous energy, while she waited for Marti to set enough bandwidth aside to open a secure channel to the shuttle. She knew they couldn’t risk letting Parker know they were down there, especially not while they were still close enough for him to retaliate.

  The AA had reached its comm limits with running its automech and teleoperating the shuttle simultaneously. She didn’t understand the technical side of data control and communications, but she took Marti’s word for it.

  So, she waited for the comm blackout to end and burned nervous energy with a twitchy leg.

  “The shuttle has reached sufficient range from the rescue location that it is no longer necessary to maintain close terrain avoidance,” Marti announced. “We are now able to restore manual control and establish a secure commlink.”

  “We’re on our way home,” Nuko said. “I’m trying to get us far enough out that they can’t catch us when we pop up on their sensors.”

  “How’s Ethan?”

  Even over the commlink, Kaycee could feel the pilot emotionally regrouping so she could report factually on his condition. “Bad. He’s still losing blood. Whatever it was that Ammo gave him, kept him alive, but it’s damn close to his heart.”

  “He keeps reaching for the arrow,” Quinn said. “I’m having to hold him down.”

  “Just don’t let him move it. Leaving it in place until I can get him into surgery will keep the bleeding from getting worse,” she said.

  “Copy that,” he said. “We’ve got him laid out on his side since the business end of the arrow protrudes fifteen centimeters out of his back. It’s a serious hole on both sides. The exit wound looks like it brought pieces of his shoulder blade with it.”

  “All you need to do is keep him alive until you get home and I can glue him back together. What’s your ETA?”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to get back to the ship without them seeing us,” Nuko said.

  “We didn’t think that far ahead when we put the plan together,” Ammo added. “And the rail gun is a surprise.”

  “Director Parker is on the comm from the surface,” Marti interrupted.

  “Stand by a minute. I’m receiving a comm from the ass gasket in charge down there.”

  “Yah, do what you need to, I’m driving,” Nuko said.

  What the hell do I say to him? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When all else fails, I guess I fake it.

  “Parker, do you have my people?” she asked, trying to sound worried, which wasn’t too far out of her way given the truth of the captain’s condition.

  He cleared his throat before he spoke. “There’s a problem with that.”

  “No problems Parker, do you have them or not?”

  “We were too late,” he said.

  “Too late?” she asked. Of course you were, bastard.

  “Apparently, they tried to escape. If they’d waited for help, they’d have been fine.” Even if she hadn’t known he was lying, he wasn’t making much effort to sound concerned.

  “What happened?”

  “It looks like they were killed by a korah.”

  “What?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound like she was in shock. “You said they were safe.”

  “We’ve located where they were, and unfortunately nobody’s alive.”

  “What about your people?” she asked. She hadn’t heard from Quinn and Ammo about what they’d had to do to them, but she was sure it wasn’t pretty.

  “We’re looking for them,” he said. “We don’t know for sure what happened, but we know it was… violent.”

  “Frak. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  “I’d suggest you go ahead and pull out.” His voice took on that tone that told her it wasn’t a suggestion as much as an instruction. “You’ve got a cargo to deliver and once you do, you can afford to hire yourself a new shipmaster and crew.”

  Yes! Oh wait, he has to believe I’m devastated. She bit down on her lip until it hurt to keep from laughing. “I can’t leave. They are my family. I need to take their bodies home at least.”

  “Have you ever seen what a person looks like who’s been eaten? Well maybe it would be better to say crushed. A korah weighs six tons and they tend to trample their dinner first.” He paused, probably for dramatic effect. “There isn’t enough to recognize as a body. It’s just a wet mess.”

  “I don’t know...” she let her words trail off. She really didn’t want to protest too hard, but if she didn’t push back enough, he’d suspect something was up.

  “Being an indie, I’m sure you have an inheritance clause in your contract with Walker. Looks to me like you’ve got yourself a ship.” His tone was edging toward impatience.

  “I’ve got to have something to show for it. I’ll have to have some kind of proof of death,” she said.

  “Dr. Ansari and I will take care of that, and I’ll send it ahead to the authorities,” he said. “We’ll clean up the mess down here. You just focus on getting my cargo to Lyra Prime.”

  “I don’t like this.” She let out a loud sigh.

  “I don’t give even a miniscule frak what you like. Consider yourself lucky that you weren’t down here with them.” The deep growl in his voice told her he was through with her pushing back and expected her to suck it up and move on. “You need to wrap your feeble brain around the concept that your continued health is directly proportionate to how effective you are at getting my cargo delivered. Is that clear enough?”
<
br />   “Perfectly,” she said. “We’ll push off now.”

  “He has disconnected the comm channel from his end,” Marti announced.

  “Do you think he suspects we slid it by him?”

  “I do not,” it said. “I would assume he is involved in trying to assess what happened on the planet and that situation is where his focus lies. If he discovers that it is his people’s bodies and not ours, he may reevaluate your conversation.”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t very convincing, was I?”

  “If the range of your performance exceeds the range of the station’s rail guns, then your believability was adequate.”

  “I guess that’s what matters,” she said.

  She pushed back in the seat and stood up. “Are we still on with the shuttle?”

  “For another ninety seconds. They are dropping over the horizon and I will lose my link at that point. If we do not move away from Watchtower Station to keep a signal lock, we will need to use standard communications channels.”

  “Then put me back through to them.”

  “They remained online during your conversation with Director Parker.”

  “Yah, we’re still here,” Nuko said. “Railguns and cargo?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said. “I’ll fill you in when you get aboard. You and Marti coordinate the details of getting you back, and I’ll get set up for Ethan’s surgery.”

  “Understood,” she said. “One battle at a time.”

  “Exactly.”

  She turned and headed toward MedBay trying to focus on the immediacy of keeping the captain alive, but the whole list of future fights loomed large in front of her. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the back of the lift cage as she rode down to the mid-deck.

  Taking several deep breaths and pushing them out slowly, she tried to drive the distractions to the corners of her mind.

  “Dr. Forrester is asking permission to come with us,” Marti said, gouging a hole in her efforts.

  “What?”

  “He is in the airlock asking to come aboard. He believes that if we do not take him along, Director Parker will know he assisted us and will have him killed.”

  “That’s his problem.” The railing opened in front of her and she just couldn’t force herself to move. “We don’t need another crisis on this ship.”

  “There may be several reasons to bring him with us,” it said.

  “I’m not seeing an advantage at the moment.”

  “He does have an intimate familiarity with the situation and those involved,” it said. “This may be useful when the time comes, and we are dealing with the authorities. Regardless of what the medical scanner that he gave you contains, having a witness to the events here will give credibility to our defense.”

  “There is that,” she agreed. “What else?”

  “He is a qualified surgeon, and as you are the only uninjured member of the crew at this point, his assistance with medical support may be invaluable.”

  She nodded, pushing herself out of the lift. “Let him in, but make sure he knows that there is no guarantee that when Ethan recovers, he won’t lock him up until we get this straightened out.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ethan woke up the following morning with a newly printed scapula and a dermal regenerator clamped to his shoulder. He felt like he’d been beaten, pounded, and dragged naked through the jungle.

  Wait? Naked? In the Jungle?

  Flashes of memory came back to him. He remembered most of the ordeal, but the last night seemed to be lost in an impossible surreal dream. None of it made sense. He stared up at the ceiling plating trying to piece things back together.

  He could tell he was in a MedBay, but he was too weak to move his head enough to look around. “What happened?” he whispered. His vocal cords felt sandblasted.

  “Ah Captain Walker, you’re awake,” a man said. He stepped into view and Ethan blinked.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Morris Forrester.” He smiled. Reaching out, he adjusted the regenerator and Ethan felt the tingling sensation in his shoulder change. “You’re lucky to be alive I think.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re on your ship, Captain,” he said.

  Ethan shook his head and pain shot through his chest and neck like a laser burn. Don’t do that again. “Where’s Kaycee?”

  “I believe she’s taking care of your engineer at the moment,” he said. “He’s far less critical than you are. Should I call her for you?”

  “Is everyone alright?”

  “Yes, for the most part,” he said. “You were all suffering from exposure and various degrees of other injury, but no one is facing anything life threatening, at least not now that you’ve recovered enough to be awake.”

  “I’m awake?”

  “Yes, you are,” he said. “For the moment anyway.” He reached up and adjusted a control somewhere above Ethan’s head.

  A heavy dark blanket began to settle over him and he fought to stay awake. “Wait. Is the ship safe?”

  “Yes. We’re on our way to Cygnus Localus.”

  “Cygnus Localus? Why?”

  “Enough questions, Captain. You need to rest.”

  He shook his head again, but instead of stabbing pain the room spun dizzily, and he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, he sat propped on a bed. The lights were much more pleasant. Dim, and more like a bedroom. The hardware previously attached to him was gone, and he looked around. He was in his quarters on the Olympus Dawn.

  The vivid band of rainbow streaks visible through the window above his bed told him they were moving.

  “How do you feel, Boss?” Nuko’s voice came out of the near dark and startled him.

  “I’m not sure.” He shrugged and the muscles around his right shoulder pulled like an electrified net held them. He flinched in pain. “What happened?”

  “Kaycee said you might not remember much,” she said.

  “I feel like I’ve been asleep for a week.” Trying to push himself up in the bed, he groaned.

  “Close.” She stood up and walked over to fluff his pillows and then sat on the foot of his bed. “Actually, it’s been over forty-eight hours.”

  “What happened?” he repeated.

  “Ammo and Quinn got us out of there.” She grinned. “It was all rather heroic, even if it was strange.”

  He nodded. “Probably not as strange as my dreams. I really don’t…” He struggled to push back through the fog that blanketed his memories, but the images from his dreams were vivid and refused to get out of the way. “I dreamed that Quinn and Ammo jumped out of a tree naked and started shooting wakats.”

  “It was only Quinn. Ammo wasn’t in the tree.”

  “Ah yah, right, she came running in along the riverbank,” he said, feeling the gears in his brain grind to a halt. No matter what he did, they refused to mesh back into motion.

  She sat staring at him, and he couldn’t tell if she was playing with his reality. He didn’t feel drugged anymore, but he couldn’t be sure. Finally, he decided she was screwing with him. “That was my dream.”

  “No, that’s a memory.” She held up a hand as if to swear an oath.

  “But they weren’t naked,” he said.

  She nodded. “They were. Quinn said it was so they could sneak in close enough to rescue us. Apparently, it worked. They took out all six of the Windwalkers and then took on Mir’ah and her party.”

  “Naked? I could barely stand up in that gravity.”

  “Yah, really. Kaycee pumped them full of drugs and they both managed to hike twenty klick and still have enough juice to kick some Ut’aran ass. Like I said it was pretty heroic.”

  “I need some of those drugs. I don’t think I could kick my way past the edge of my bed.”

  “She said you could get up and move around today if you feel up to it, but only if you want to.” She reached out and squeezed his leg. “I know the rest of the crew
and our passengers would all like to see that you’re doing better.”

  “Passengers? Where are we?” He rolled his head upward and looked out the window to make sure they were moving, and that it wasn’t just another dream fragment that refused to let go.

  “We’re about six hours from the Cygnus Localus threshold,” she said.

  “What’s there?”

  “Help, I hope,” she said.

  A rapping at the door cut him off before he could ask another question. He still felt like it took an act of will to keep the lights on in his brain, but he wasn’t willing to turn loose of the certainty that he wasn’t getting the answers he needed.

  Kaycee stood in the doorway to his bedroom. She carried a medical scanner in one hand and a large coffee mug in the other. Her expression told him it probably wasn’t the drink he’d want, once she’d given him the answers he needed.

  She walked over and handed him the mug and then pushed herself up onto his dressing cabinet to sit. They stared at each other for several seconds before she took a deep breath and asked, “Are you feeling better?”

  “At the moment,” he said. “I have a feeling that’s about to change though.” Glancing down into the cup, he realized it wasn’t coffee. It looked more like used industrial lubricant. He remembered that enzyme sludge Quinn had tried to push on him once, and he put it on the bedside table. Downwind.

  “I should go,” Nuko stood up but Kaycee shook her head, her eyes pleading for her to stay. She obviously wanted reinforcements.

  “Enough of this, let’s just get it on the table.” He pushed himself up on the bed again. “What’s wrong? Did somebody die and you’re not telling me?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Nuko said.

  “Everybody’s good,” Kaycee added.

  He shot a skeptical eyebrow in her direction.

  She nodded. “Really. Everybody’s alright. Better than you, in fact.”

  “Then what’s swinging? Why are we going to Localus?”

  “Because we’re carrying cargo back.”

  “From Watchtower?” He felt a fist of pain in his chest as his heart charged forward, faster than his brain, to a conclusion he didn’t want to make.