by Ethan Proud
The Exos uneasily crawled into the canoes at the Greylings’ wordless bidding. The footing was strange, and the Exos sat down awkwardly in the middle to avoid rocking and ultimately capsizing the craft. The Greylings emitted a sound similar to a chuckle before nimbly joining the Exos and paddling. The paddles were shaped like flattened ladles. A molla cap the size of Rio’s chest was tied to a shaft of braided molla stems, and the Greylings expertly maneuvered the canoes by alternating strokes on either side of the prow. The only sound to break the silence was the rhythmic dip of the paddle.
Rio let his hand hang over the edge until the tip of his fingers touched the surface. He met the gaze of his ghostly reflection and wondered how far he would sink before touching the bottom. He imagined himself peacefully floating an immeasurable distance as bubbles escaped his mouth and cold enveloped him. His fantasy turned ghastly as a ghostly tail the length of a school bus, which he had never seen, passed mere inches from his face. He shook himself free of his reverie and pulled his hand back into the safety of the boat.
He continued to stare at the flat surface of the water as imperceptible ripples permeated from the boat’s wake. Whether it was a morbid or childish daydream, his eyes convinced him that the ethereal glow of a goni skeleton, near twenty feet long, resided just beneath him. For the remainder of the crossing he kept his eyes forward and his hands in his lap. Herma landed on his shoulder, its cold suction cups sticking to the side of his face as the creature sang playfully. The sound echoed across the cavern ceiling and was amplified when it returned. Rio closed his eyes and forced the idea of a monstrous goni from his mind.
Mere minutes shy of an hour the boats began to approach a tunnel mouth on the opposite shore. The tunnel mouth was alight, a glowing orange blaze making an eerily bright stencil of the rocks. The light seemed to be shifting or dancing. The molla craft shuddered as they scraped bottom before jolting against the ground. The Greylings easily leapt from the craft and offered their assistance to the wobbly Exos, who were attempting to make their exit.
The orange blaze was, in fact, millions of little grubs, each soft segmented body covered in long hirsute projections tipped with a globe that gave off a faint glow. Around the immature insects, the adult versions, free of their chrysalis, flitted around at head level. Taiga reached her hand out and one of the moths landed on her outstretched fingers. She couldn’t help but laugh at the feel of its fuzzy feet. The long feathery antennae probed the surface of her skin inquisitively. The creature had two sets of wings, completely black, save for a single strip of orange. It had a second pair of antennae as well, that lacked the feathery apparatus for detecting the pheromones of potential mates but were longer and curled backwards at the tip.
Quick as lightning a barbed tail whipped over its thorax and head and sank into the fat-pad of Taiga’s hand. She let out a yelp of pain, which was followed by a whimper when the insect’s proboscis sank into the webbing of her fingers. She clapped her hands together and the exoskeleton crunched followed by burning ichor that pulsed onto her hands. She ran back to the water and dipped her hands below the surface and vigorously washed her skin clean. She felt the welts of blisters already forming on her rough calloused hands, let out a brief sigh and looked at the flat surface of the lake. Except it wasn’t flat. A lump was distorting the plane, and the lump was letting off a faint turquoise light. She blinked quickly and turned without waiting to confirm what she had seen. Gonis simply did not grow that big. She chided herself for her foolishness. She was surprised to see Lepiro only a few paces from her. Apparently he had been concerned, the expression on his face a funny one, but Taiga doubted it was from the same specter she had just witnessed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, escorting her back to the rest of the party.
“I’m fine. The bastard just bit me. I wasn’t expecting it,” she reassured him.
“I didn’t just mean about the little demon,” he said slowly.
Taiga felt her throat constrict and screwed her eyes shut until the tears dissipated. Hysco.
“I will be fine,” she said determinedly.
They returned to the tunnel to find Rio, Jarrod, and the Greylings waiting patiently while Herma and Lepiro’s Goni, Icharus, chased after the flying little demons-imps as Rio called them and occasionally landed on the cave wall to gobble up the caterpillars or their pupating cocoons indiscriminately. The sounds of the insects crunching and then spurting their innards echoed across the cavern walls and in minutes the imps had fled while the grubs crawled away in a panic on numerous chubby legs. The cavern was slowly growing dark as the immatures disappeared into crevices or holes bored into the rocks.
The gonis flew from the tunnel in a frenzy and for a moment the tunnel was pitch black, until Herma and Icharus returned, each with a pair of wings protruding past their grins. Compared to the desolation on the surface on AE625, the caves were brimming with life. Lepiro mused over this, wondering if perhaps the imps were edible to the Exos as well. After all, the only reason the first human beings to land survived was because the gonis accidentally shared their bacteria with them, therefore it made sense that they could feed on whatever their extraterrestrial companions did. Then he remembered the blisters on Taiga’s palms and decided that it wasn’t worth trying.
A diet diversified from the staple food source often emerged in the back of his mind. In truth, Lepiro would eat a rock if it tasted well enough to be a reprieve from the never ending monotony of molla stew. His stomach rumbled and he began to wonder how long it had been since he had eaten. Surely it had been at least three days. He pressed his hand against his stomach and it felt concave and stretched against his ribs. He had a lanky, yet athletic build so it wasn’t as if he was starving or at death’s door, but he was simply hungry. Two meals a day in the Hydra Seven Colony was a good day, and it was commonplace to go at least one day without food.
While his mind was elsewhere, his next step took him ankle deep into a puddle. He was startled back to the present and looked in astonishment at the near perfect circles that pockmarked the floor, each one full of water. He felt a stray drop land on the tip of his nose, and looked up in time to catch another drop right between his eyes. Tiny stalactites were forming on the cavern ceiling, the pockmarked pools the receptacles for the leaching water once it broke free from its granite cage.
Lepiro stepped another foot into the pool and reveled as the wetness seeped into his boots and meandered between his toes before filling the sparse empty space that existed in his well-broken-in boots. Showers and baths were foreign to the Hydra Colonists, their concept of bathing was rubbing fine silt against their skin and through their hair to exfoliate dead skin particles and to absorb the natural oils their skin and follicles generated. The sensation of being submerged, even if it was just his feet, was a novel one.
He paused slightly as he lifted his foot and heard the squelch of a gelatinous body behind him, but decided it must be his foot and set it down and felt the water squish between his toes. The sound that echoed down the tunnel, however, did not come from within his boot.
Chapter Seventeen
The rover cavorted over each rise and jolted with every indentation, but it never tipped, no matter how uncomfortable the angle made Treya. She watched as Toledo expertly shifted gears and listened to the engine respond to each change. Despite being double the man’s age, she had no idea how the vehicle worked or what it ran on…though the only logical explanation was sand. She hadn’t seen him fuel up, and both molla and water were too precious. Or perhaps it filtered the air. Being raised in a Hydra Colony she had never learned the periodic table of elements and had no idea which molecules were found in the atmosphere of AE625. In fact, she didn’t even know what an element was in the sense of chemistry.
“What does the rover run on?” she asked when the curiosity became too much.
“What do you mean?” Toledo asked. “What powers it?”
“Yes?” Treya asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure
if that was what she was asking.
“See that dark grid on the hood?” He pointed, and Treya nodded as she observed the shiny black surface, lined with silver circuitry. “That is a solar panel, however the sun in this solar system is much closer than it was to Earth, so it had to be modified to only run for one hour before shutting off or it would generate too much energy that would be released as heat underneath the hood. We also have a reserve tank filled with rocket fuel, in case we have to drive far distances at night.”
“Rocket fuel?” Treya asked.
“Yes, it powered the Shrike. We don’t have much of the fuel left though, and we have to use it sparingly. But having not made it to Earth 2.0, we have enough to run a generator in The Wreckage and enough to fuel the rovers,” Toledo explained. He had taken an interest in being a mechanic before he became a soldier, but failed the chemistry portion of his test and when dealing with a civilization built upon a dependency on hydrazine, an understanding of the field was necessary. Not to discredit soldiers, but it required a different mindset.
“How long have we been on this planet?” Treya asked next.
“Nobody knows. The day lengths here are different than on Earth. The original crash survivors tried to keep track of time using the Earthling calendar, but the number of days in a cycle around the sun are different and there are no seasons. We’ve lost track. The engineers and scientists estimate at least one thousand years. But using our generations as indicators, I think it’s closer to eight hundred. But in Earthling years, nobody knows… not that it matters anymore,” he added.
“Eight hundred?” Treya asked. She had been told it had only been three hundred years. More than double that, though?
“I’m the thirty-second generation of Exo in my family, fifty years each, give or take. Some more, some less, bearing children between twelve and twenty. Eight hundred years.” Toledo sighed. “Too long to be living on this blasted planet.”
“How do you know all this?” Treya asked, scrutinizing the man some more.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, the sun reflecting on the sheen of the bags above his cheekbones.
“Do Hydras not attend school?” he asked, though it was more out of surprise than judgment.
Treya only shook her head in answer. She didn’t even know what school was. Hydra children learned by helping their parents with their chores, and by exploring in small bands, usually supervised by an older hunter. Their education was imitation, but then again the last Hydra child born in Colony Seven had been Rio, a little over fifteen years ago. As such, his mentor had been the last.
Treya tried to remember the man’s name, but it escaped her. The hunter disappeared while searching for water and mollas, but his corpse had been found four days later, desiccated and mummified by the scorching rays and brutal winds of the planet. Rio took it especially hard, he had only been about nine at the time. Reminiscing, Treya thought it was then that Rio and Deirde forged their deep connection. She pondered why the two had not declared marriage or tried for children, but their reasons were beyond her. Thinking back on her colony, she felt ashamed for leading them astray. She wished she had the same foresight and courage as Ellie. Instead, she had selfishly inflicted a life of servitude upon her constituents. She blinked quickly to prevent the tear from rolling down her cheek.
X
Across the desert, an immeasurable distance if judging it solely by the horizon and landmarks, a single rover putted along. A similar band to Treya’s, though it still possessed all four soldiers and a grouchy Rumo, cut a path across the burning sands. Having already contacted the fourth colony, a dismal affair, they were now in pursuit of Hydra Colony Five. The fourth colony had begrudgingly accepted the information relayed by Rumo. Judging by the looks the Elders received from the colonists, they would not be making it to the Shrike alive. Rumo found it hard to believe that any of the Elders would survive long in the Wreckage. If their own people didn’t kill them the Commanding Family surely would. The Elders were a liability, the rulers of the ruined ship had to know this. The Hydra Colonies themselves were a threat. They were savages compared to the civilized folk, and seeing the glory of the Original Settlement could only incite anger in the nomads.
Looking briefly at the soldiers in the rover with him, he began to wonder if they had orders to kill him after making contact with the rest of the Hydra Colonies. Or perhaps the colonists would be slaughtered before they reached the Shrike. As long as all the malcontent exiles were destroyed, there was little reason for the Shrikers to accept these new barbarians into their midst. Sighing, Rumo decided that the outcome had little bearing on his conscience. These people were not his concern. His survival was his only priority.
“What is it, old man?” the driver asked brusquely. He was a rude young man. He had dark skin, a sort of sunbaked brown. The sides of his head was shaven short and the top styled upwards and forward, a chunk of it dyed bright green at the front. His ears were gauged and his lower lip pierced right in the middle. His lean arms were bare and covered with scars, little muscles flexed each time he corrected the course of the rover. Had Yuto been raised in The Wreckage, he might have looked similar to this man, Rumo mused.
“Nothing,” Rumo said, equally as coarse.
“If you don’t have any questions, comments, or corrections, then you can ride in silence.” The young man’s name was Lago.
“How’d you get promoted to your position if this is how you act towards your elders?” Rumo asked tersely. He was used to being in charge, not ordered about.
“By acting like this towards my elders. Now quiet, old man.” Lago smirked but his eyes glared at Rumo.
The Elder settled in his seat and resolved himself not to make another sound. The rover purred a guttural sound only a machine can make as it made it over the next rise and Lago applied pressure on the brake when he saw a myriad of tents.
“Is that Five or Six?” Lago said, pulling out a map from between his seat and the gun holstered next to it. The map had all the movements of the Hydra Colonies on it, and Five and Six were dangerously close to discovering each other.
“I don’t know,” Rumo answered first. It was a mistake.
“I didn’t ask you,” Lago said and leveled his dark eyes directly at Rumo’s. The ancient Exo looked away.
“Neither, sir. It appears to be Eight,” one of the soldiers in the back answered.
“How the hell did we miss Five and Six?” Lago exclaimed and slammed a fist into the steering wheel.
“We will find them, sir,” the soldier answered cautiously. He was definitely older than Lago, but seemed wary of the young man.
“We have a map of their last known location. The Hydra Colonies don’t move far very fast. They usually stay at one location for months. Do you understand what this means?” Lago spat at the man.
Rumo nearly smiled when it dawned on him. “They’ve been sending you false reports.”
Lago raised a hand to backhand the Hydra but stopped himself.
“We have a coup on our hands.”
X
The Hydra Colonies Five and Six had indeed been sending false reports to the Wreckage as well as fabricated maps from Hydra Colony Three. Hydra Colonies Three and Six had initially met with hostility and Six was the victor, wiping out their rivals before the Elders could tell them what had been going on. When they discovered Hydra Five, they had been much more diplomatic and freed those they had enslaved from Colony Three.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and plunged the landscape in darkness, except for the light of the stars and the two waxing moons, Treya and Toledo found themselves in the middle of a celebration in the combined camps. Hydra Five, Six and the survivors of Three called themselves the Wyrms, after the mythical creatures the gonis were rumored to resemble. The two Exos held a bowl containing a molla broth, though it must have been cooked at a lower temperature as it still had fairly strong narcotic effects. What little light shimmering overhead seemed to dance until i
t touched the ground and the fire built at the center of the throng rose impossibly high until it mingled with the descending stars. A bag of molla spores was passed around, and when it reached Treya and Toledo they paused.
“Have you ever done this before?” Toledo shouted to be heard over the singing and the sounds of drumming on baskets with stretched fabric pulled taught across the openings. The sound was like a million heartbeats mingled into one.
“Forty-two years ago, I was ten at the time,” Treya said laughingly. She brushed her hair out of her face and dipped a finger into the bag and pulled it into her nostril. “I hated it.”
“You what?” Toledo asked, missing her last sentence.
“Just do it. It’s…fun.” Treya offered and this time he heard. His pupils widened as he insufflated the spores, though they were already huge in the poor lighting. His eyes fluttered from one side to the other before settling back onto Treya’s own dilating pits.
“This is awesome.” The next second he was gone, weaving his way through the crowd.
Treya laughed and turned her thoughts inward. She was certain she wouldn’t survive this little rebellion, but at least she was finally doing the right thing. She felt a weight on her chest dissolving, though the guilt for her own tribe remained. But tonight was for merriment and tomorrow could be for war, regret, and new beginnings. She looked up as a man at least ten years her junior sidled next to her and she blushed, and was glad he couldn’t see it. Their eyes met and danced playfully for a minute before their bodies continued the courtship.
X
The morning sun rose, and Lago and his crew descended on Camp Eight. The colonists seemed wary of the rover carefully picking its path towards them, but they didn’t move. When the Shrikers and Rumo were within ear shot, Lago kicked Rumo out of the vehicle. The old man shuffled towards the Hydras and followed the script provided.
