Aldebaran Divided

by Philippe Mercurio

  Mallory was in her element. The blood-red vessel set off on the proper trajectory, and she pushed the engines to maximum. The ship lacked a gravity control system, and so the acceleration flattened them against their seats. Despite the pressure induced by their speed, Laorcq managed to utter a few words. “C’mon, admit it… You’re having a great time!”

  Her joyous expression and the scarlet roses on her sensitive tattoos answered his question.

  For a split second, she realized that this sudden burst of joy could possibly be related to her renewed feeling of closeness with Laorcq. She stifled the idea immediately: the circumstances left no room for that sort of thing…

  Fifteen minutes at top speed brought them within range of the Vohrn shuttle. Its silhouette stood out against the pale green disc of Reival.

  Mallory eyed her target: oblong, about the same size at the Sirgan. Fore and aft ended in depressions that indicated the ends of its synergetic tube.

  Holding the U-shaped steering wheel with one hand, Mallory used the other to operate a lever located on the console between the seats.

  Two cracks appeared on the aero’s hull, like incisions made by an invisible scalpel on the synthetic skin. From underneath these openings, the barrels of automatic weapons emerged from their housings.

  Laorcq leaned towards the on-board navcom and tried to contact the ambassador. Mallory heard him make several attempts, without much enthusiasm. Against all hope, he finally got a reply.

  “Commander Laorcq Adrinov. You have overstepped your bounds. Stop following me and return to the planet.”

  Mallory was focused on navigation, so the scarred man responded.

  “Sorry, but Hanosk has revoked your status. We’re going back to Solicor, and so are you!”

  Jarvik spent several minutes trying to shake them off. His attempts had little effect: Mallory was the better pilot, and the aero was more maneuverable than the shuttle. The result of the pursuit was a foregone conclusion. The alien spoke again. “Leave. You are only humans, you cannot…”

  He broke off suddenly and said, “Shoot at me.”

  Mallory looked at Laorcq with round eyes. Had she understood correctly? Jarvik wasn’t really of sound mind. Shrugging, she declared, “Since he’s asking…”

  Guessing what she was about to do, Laorcq started to ask her to wait.

  “Mallo…”

  Too late.

  She pushed a red button on the steering wheel, near her right thumb. With a slight vibration that shuddered through the ship’s chassis, the aero’s machine guns fired a high-caliber salvo. At the rear of the Vohrn shuttle, the synergetic tube was blown to pieces, torn apart by the hail of bullets.

  “It’s the only vulnerable spot,” Mallory explained. “The rest is armored.”

  “Thanks, but that’s not really the issue,” the scarred man objected. “How are we going to get him back to Solicor?”

  She felt blood rush to her cheeks. She had acted impulsively. I really need to get ahold of myself! Usually, even in the heat of the moment, I can still think clearly!

  She tried in vain to overcome her embarrassment by focusing on the data displayed by the navcom. Deep down, she finally admitted that her muddled feelings for the veteran were distracting her more than she wanted to admit.

  Fortunately, an unexpected event interrupted her train of thought.

  The shuttle seemed to disintegrate in front of their eyes. A dozen seconds later, it had become a cloud of metallic pieces and components forming an expanding sphere. When the fragments were far enough apart, Mallory made out a white cube in the center that measured about six feet on a side: an escape pod.

  At the rear of this tiny vessel, two fuel-based engines fired up and pointed the ship toward Reival’s emerald surface.

  X

  JUNGLE

  MALLORY and Laorcq watched the cubic escape pod plunge into Reival’s atmosphere. After exchanging a brief glance with her passenger, the pilot sent the aero into pursuit.

  The green disc quickly transformed into a horizon, and the air began to redden around the small vessel. The humans caught sight of an endless jungle, a vast ocean of vegetation dotted with colossal trees.

  Reival was a large moon, with gravity equal to two-thirds of Earth’s standard. The plants that had evolved in this environment grew in gigantic muddles of vines and trunks.

  Thanks to the aero’s sensors, Mallory determined that the ground was about two miles below the canopy. As if to confirm this fact, the fleeing pod dove through the upper level of the forest and disappeared from both the humans’ sight and radar.

  “Fantastic! You said you wanted to have some fun. Well here we go!” she said.

  Laorcq didn’t say a word. His silence spoke volumes: tracking a Vohrn through a jungle where most of the trees rivaled skyscrapers in height was not going to be a picnic.

  Mallory located traces of the pod’s passage through the canopy and dove in after it. She stopped the aeroglider at the bottom of a shaft whose walls were made up of impenetrable foliage and branches.

  The escape pod lay before them, hatch open. Tiny, furred creatures, an improbable hybrid of rabbits and dwarf monkeys, had already taken up residence. The little primates with long drooping ears hopped on the control panel, yipping enthusiastically when they set off an alarm.

  The plant life was excessively luxuriant, and the fauna was easily as abundant. All around the small ship, the humus swarmed with arthropods and lizards all busy devouring one another.

  Through the door’s window, Mallory saw an unusual-looking serpent that was thirty feet long. It was binging on hexapods that looked like obese roaches. The reptile’s body, barely two inches thick, looked like a fat, living pipe. It formed a loop which it tightened slowly to collect the insects crawling on the ground into a pile. As soon as the number of victims had grown large enough, it plunged its head into the teeming mass and munched on whole mouthfuls.

  Mallory wasn’t too enthusiastic about running around in a jungle seething with such creatures.

  “Frankly, I’d be surprised if Jarvik made it ten steps before being swallowed by something with lots of feet and a big mouth. It’s not worth it.”

  “Yes, it is,” interrupted Laorcq. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of the little critters?”

  “That’s it. Manipulate me by playing to my pride.”

  He smiled wide, and his gray eyes lit up.

  “It works every time, doesn’t it?”

  Mallory didn’t respond.

  “Come on – at least the air is breathable,” he said reassuringly after consulting the instrument panel.

  The two humans activated their protective suits once again and left the aero, following the Vohrn’s path.

  Thanks to Laorcq’s military-grade navcom, they were able to pick up the fleeing alien’s trail. The smallest broken or crushed twig or the tiniest scratch in the humus was highlighted on the screen by a green blinking hologram.

  They followed these markers, often distracted by this new environment. All around them, thick walls of vegetation were covered with plants that were each more impressive than the last. They had to cut a passage through a clump of red daisies, each petal of which was longer than a human is tall. They then circumnavigated a yawning hole that turned out to be the mouth of a gigantic, funnel-shaped, carnivorous plant. Before their eyes, a rabbit-monkey felt into the formidable trap and ended up in the yellowish treacle pooled at the bottom. Its frantic attempts to escape failed, and it was digested in a handful of seconds.

  They were struggling through the foliage of a tree with fine, hair-like tendril branches covered with miniscule blue leaves when they came nose to nose with some kind of jellyfish.

  Its bloated body was a large as an elephant, and it floated in the low gravity. Its belly, which looked like a liquid-filled plastic membrane, could deform to allow it to slip between the trunks and vines. It used its mass to push everything else out of the way.

  Mallory looked at it w
ith surprise.

  “I wonder how that thing manages to float, even in reduced gravity. Maybe its fat stomach is full of helium.”

  “Maybe,” Laorcq agreed distractedly.

  Since he was clearing the path, he walked a few paces in front of the pilot. A bit further on in the dense tangle of blue-leaved filaments, he stopped. Mallory caught up with him and noticed that some of the ground along Jarvik’s path had collapsed. She knelt on the edge of the hole and looked in.

  She saw a circular cross-section of a wide gallery, a sort of tunnel that ran through the thick layer of vegetation covering the large moon. The walls were striated, as if a drill had been used to construct the tunnel.

  The holograms projected by Laorcq’s navcom left no doubt. The alien had definitely taken this tunnel.

  “An underground passage,” sighed Mallory. “The last time we did this didn’t turn out too well.”

  Memories of being pursued by a flesh-and-steel monster came back to her.

  “This is a deranged Vohrn, not a killer cyborg…” Laorcq retorted as he entered the opening.

  Mallory joined him, and they walked for about three hundred feet down the narrow tunnel. The air was hot and humid, suffused with a slight odor of decomposing vegetation. Jarvik’s path was highlighted by the bright light flowing from the navcoms.

  The gallery dropped off suddenly, so much so that they had to use their hands to stop from sliding down the slope. Mallory was beginning to wonder if the descent was going to continue forever when the ground leveled out. Shortly thereafter, they emerged into a large empty space filled with a number of glowing spheres ranging in color from pale yellow to bright orange.

  Once they adjusted to the influx of light, they saw that the large underground room’s ceiling consisted of the roots of a tree, probably one of the giants whose crowns they had seen from the air.

  Mallory approached one of the phosphorescent spheres. At first, she thought it was some kind of fat larva, a distant cousin of terrestrial fireflies. A closer inspection revealed something else: a bizarre bat with four wings and as many claws, emitting light from its distended abdomen.

  Hanging by tiny talons from the walls and the roots that crisscrossed the ceiling, they swayed gently, their hue shifting slowly.

  Mallory turned to Laorcq. He was busy following Jarvik’s trail, concentrating on the diagrams projected by his navcom, and was paying no attention to the multi-colored creatures. She noticed that the scarred man’s right shoulder was dangerously close to one of the animal lanterns. With three light, quick strides, she reached him and pulled him away by the arm.

  “Those big Chinese lanterns are flying creatures!” she explained to him quietly. “Don’t bother them!”

  Just as she finished her sentence, the Vohrn burst from the other end of the vast underground room and charged at them.

  Mallory threw herself to the ground to avoid the alien’s brutal assault, but he was targeting Laorcq. He hit him savagely and dragged him into a backward roll that continued for several yards.

  Seeing this, the pilot grimaced. Without his protective suit, the shock would have left Laorcq unconscious, or worse. Adding insult to injury, he had dropped his weapon in the heat of the moment, and it had disappeared into an inaccessible nook. Without even bothering to stand up, the human and the Vohrn were now engaged in violent hand-to-hand combat.

  Mallory knew Laorcq’s chances were slim. If she didn’t intervene quickly, Jarvik’s brute force would kill him despite his combat suit.

  The Vohrn’s physiognomy made the battle unequal: his thick, scaly skin protected his entire body. Laorcq connected with direct hits that had little noticeable effect. Meanwhile, the extraterrestrial wrapped his knotty arms around the human in a hug that could crush steel.

  A warning appeared in the pilot’s field of view: Laorcq’s navcom informed her that his suit was losing integrity.

  “Mallory! I can’t hold on much longer!” he cried.

  Confirming her fears, the sudden activity panicked the living lanterns, which flew off in every direction. They quickly formed a luminous wall between Mallory and the two adversaries.

  Aiming her hypertrophic pistol toward this obstacle, she opened fire with several bursts to clear a path to the combatants. She moved forward, step by step, at a ridiculously slow pace. She had the impression that disturbing the pot-bellied, glowing bats haunting the plant-filled cavern had increased their numbers by a thousand.

  Or maybe all of this disturbance had attracted others, the pilot thought as she batted one away from her face with a sharp and precise gesture. She gripped her weapon with both hands and forced herself to advance, firing in bursts. Behind her, she left piles of small spherical corpses, whose glow faded slowly. Finally, she was close enough to target Jarvik without a risk of hitting Laorcq. She pulled the trigger again, only to discover that she had run out of ammunition.

  “Unbelievable!” she cried, furious. “Every time!”

  Dropping the gun, she threw herself into the melee, only to be pushed back out by a violent kick from the Vohrn. In her haste, she had forgotten that his knees bent in the opposite direction from humans and thought she had found an angle of attack.

  The impact knocked the wind out of her despite her protective suit, and she tasted blood on her tongue. She had to crawl to get back to the fighters again. Around them, the orange lanterns continued their panicked dance, smearing her retinae with trails of light.

  Mallory didn’t make the same mistake twice. When she reached the area where the two adversaries were engaged on the ground, she was careful to stay out of range of Jarvik’s limbs. Laorcq had noticed this as well and tried to create an opening for her. Apparently using his last ounce of strength, he connected with a series of punches and headbutts to the alien’s head and shoulders.

  Although the Vohrn was well protected by his thick skin, he released his grip a little when Laorcq managed to strike his rostrum. Mallory didn’t need an invitation: from her hands and knees, she sprang at Jarvik, who tried to push her off with one hand. She barely eluded him and got past the alien’s arms, grasping him tightly in a leg lock capable of instantly crushing a human’s joints.

  In the Vohrn’s case, the pilot had to bend backward and pull hard to apply enough force to make him release Laorcq.

  The latter moved away immediately, and, barely standing, kicked Jarvik hard in the rostrum.

  The Vohrn seemed to weaken but managed to escape Mallory’s grip with a tremendous push. He then rolled onto one side and slowly retreated toward the back of the cavern, keeping an eye on his adversaries.

  “Jarvik! That’s enough!” the pilot protested between two deep breaths. “This doesn’t make any sense! Are you planning to hide in this jungle until you die?”

  Equally out of breath, Laorcq added a few words while rubbing his crushed ribs. “Hanosk is on his way, on board one of your cruisers, just outside the Aldebaran system. He can help you…”

  The extraterrestrial had an unexpected reaction. He approached the humans and stopped, extending one arm. His long, thin fingers with their numerous joints moved with a tremble. Then he turned his back on them and moved away before collapsing to the ground.

  Taken aback, Mallory looked at the tall alien lying on the ground in the plant-filled grotto.

  “Well now, that…”

  “…doesn’t help us at all!” the scarred man finished. “I have at least three broken ribs, and now we have to drag an alien who weighs more than three hundred pounds through a jungle!”

  Around them, the strange, glowing bats were finally calming down, slowly returning to their perches on the ceiling and walls.

  As the rush of adrenaline receded, Mallory discovered that she had also taken a few good blows. One of her thighs throbbed, and her stomach was struggling to recover from its encounter with the Vohrn’s foot.

  They both hobbled as they approached Jarvik. She leaned down to him and put a hand on his torso, at the base of the conic bul
ge formed by the extraterrestrial’s rostrum. Reassured, she felt a slight pulse. “At least he’s still alive…”

  They barely managed to stand the unconscious Vohrn up between them. They balanced his arms on their shoulders and retraced their path.

  Leaving the gallery was particularly challenging. Mallory had to exit first and pull the Vohrn through while Laorcq pushed from below, despite his bruised ribs. If the gravity hadn’t been lower than Earth normal, they would never have succeeded.

  Although worn out and severely injured, they had to cope with a swarm of giant black wasps whose red wings veined with blue helped them blend in with the surrounding trees.

  These hornets seemed to have decided to devour Jarvik. Even through their protective suits, the humans could feel the bite of their stingers. When Mallory saw the aero, she was too exhausted to declare victory. They simply loaded Jarvik inside and took off as soon as the doors closed.

  Leaving the hostility of Reival behind them, she flew the small ship at top speed toward the Vohrn cruiser. She had a bad feeling that the extraterrestrial was not in good shape.

  The trip seemed to stretch out infinitely, and the pilot fought her fatigue. When the enormous ship under Hanosk’s command appeared against the starry sky, relief flooded through her.

  They arrived just in time: in the back of the aeroglider, the Vohrn began to convulse…

  While Mallory contacted the Vohrn to request a medical team, Laorcq slipped between the aeroglider’s front seats to try to restrain the alien’s more violent spasms.

  “He’s in real trouble,” he declared. “I hope their airlocks work quickly!”

  “Don’t worry about that. They have an amazing landing system.”

  Laorcq remembered that Mallory was the only member of the crew to have previously traveled on a Vohrn cruiser. He was too busy with the Vohrn’s convulsions to ask what she meant.