Stars Beyond

by S. K. Dunstall

  “Some of us would have heard the screams,” Cam said helpfully.

  Barry looked at him, scowled.

  “We’d have woken Alistair. He is, after all, responsible for our security.”

  “It’s quite a patch job,” Barry said, gesturing at the panel.

  “Our engineers did well, considering the amount of equipment they asked for from Santiago and didn’t get.” Still, as Melda had said, every piece of equipment they’d ordered and hadn’t received was one less piece they had to pay for.

  Alistair turned his attention to the two injured Santiagans. One of their companions sprayed nerveseal.

  “Nerveseal,” Yakusha said faintly from the other side of Cam. “Do you think they’d notice if I sneaked a pack or two.”

  “They’ll charge your whole bonus for it,” Cam said.

  Barry flashed them an unfathomable look. “How bad is it, Gai?” he asked the woman who’d sprayed the nerveseal.

  “He needs a doctor.”

  Alistair turned away. “We don’t have a doctor.” That was another thing they had requested and never received—a replacement for the medic who’d wiped himself out rock climbing.

  “We have one on ship.”

  A doctor. Nerveseal. Luxuries they’d forgotten about. Santiago charged for everything.

  “Take the injured up there. Get them into a machine.” Should he ask them to take Mayeso too? No. They’d probably charge the whole bonus for any repair. Besides, the rest of them had survived.

  “You’re hurt too. We’ll take you up.”

  Alistair looked down at himself, covered in salynx blood. Human blood, too, for salynx blood shone blue to his eyes.

  If they put him into a genemod machine, what would it do to his eyes?

  Cam laughed, clapped him on the shoulder hard enough so that even Alistair rocked. “The bugs around here are too scared to bite our Alistair.” He gave Alistair a push. “Go and wash up, to show there’s nothing wrong. We’ll handle everything here, including getting these people onto the shuttle.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The shuttle had gone by the time Alistair came downstairs, clean, shaven, stinking of the astringent ointment he’d put over his own bites.

  “You okay?” Cam asked as Alistair grabbed breakfast from the servery.

  “Ask me when I’ve had a full night’s sleep, but I’m fine.” He cocked his head, listening. Down the other end of the large lounge, voices were raised. “What’s up with them now?”

  “Who knows?”

  Alistair moved over to the sink, where he poured instant into two cups of boiling water. He handed one to Cam.

  “Thanks.” Cam took a sip, made a face. “I don’t know how we drink this stuff.”

  It was all they had left. With two weeks to go they were running short of the necessities, let alone the luxuries.

  “Do you know the first thing I’m doing when I get home?”

  “Drinking real coffee.”

  “Yes.”

  Yakusha wanted to eat lavaberries. Melda wanted to soak in a hot bath. Personally, Alistair wanted a decent whiskey. Lack of alcohol wasn’t an issue—humans could make alcohol from anything, and the cutter bushes made a potent drink that had spoiled most of them for other alcohols. Alistair thought it was more the memory of the whiskey than the actual taste of it, but he wouldn’t know until he had that first drink.

  “Angel Penn.” Cam glanced at the group at the other end of the room, turned back to Alistair, and kept his voice low. “They call her the Hatchet. Her job is to close unprofitable departments.” He put the mug of instant down onto the bench, leaned forward. “She shouldn’t be here. We’re on a shoestring budget. They can’t lose money on us.”

  They could if they had to pay out excess bonuses they weren’t expecting to.

  “I’m worried they’ll try and pack everything up under us,” Alistair admitted. “They came prepared to work.”

  “And us with two weeks to make bonus.”

  Cam was quick. Alistair had no idea why he was such a bad lawyer. “Maybe we’re imagining issues where there are none,” Alistair said. “Angel is Melda’s partner.”

  “That relationship was over before yours was. No one comes out to an isolated world like Zell if they have people to leave behind.” Melda talked a lot to Cam. If anyone knew how strong her partnership was, he would. “We can’t let them take away the bonus, Alistair. Everyone has worked hard for it.”

  “Delay them,” Alistair said. Which was easier said than done. “I think Melda can delay them for today, at least.”

  They stopped as Angel’s voice cracked out. “Then find her so we can all get back to work.”

  Alistair walked over to the group. “Is there a problem?”

  Barry ignored the frown from Angel. “We’ve lost contact with one of our team,” he said.

  “Lost contact?”

  “Her link dropped out.”

  “Inside the settlement?”

  How had they gotten in? To the Zellites, a dead link meant only one thing. Ort. Alistair couldn’t stop his sigh. Two in two days.

  “Outside.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I was talking to her. She cut out.”

  Alistair thumped his empty mug down onto the table. “I told you to stay, told you that I would give you a security talk this morning. For someone in security yourself, you are stupidly careless.” Newcomers. They always thought they knew everything. “I’ll get weapons.” He stalked off without waiting for Barry to speak.

  This time he grabbed the ax and the six-meter-long pole they kept for outside trips. It was hard, and strong, and he could use that as a secondary weapon, or for things like pushing cutter leaves aside.

  He hoped they wouldn’t need it.

  “Where was the last signal from your missing person?” he asked as he, Barry, and Cam left in the aircar. He didn’t ask what the missing person was doing wandering around, on their own, in the cold, early morning. Especially not after the salynxes. That would come later.

  Barry pushed the location through.

  It was close to where one of the miners had disappeared two weeks earlier.

  Alistair tapped the screen. “They’re watching us. They’ve been there before.”

  Cam leaned over to look. “If you say so. It looks like dots to me.”

  “Who are they?” Barry asked.

  “The Ort.” He didn’t expand further.

  Barry looked at the dots. “You’re telling me there’s another company here and you haven’t reported it?”

  “We tried to.” Back when his eyes had first been damaged. “We were informed that no one besides us had a right to this world. It was intimated that we should remove any opposition.” He hadn’t been specific about the details when he made the initial report. After all, no one wanted to be thought crazy.

  “Another company trying to muscle in on our territory is not something we take lightly.”

  “Nobody said they were another company,” Cam said.

  “Who are they, then?”

  Alistair said, “Locals, most likely. Objecting to Santiago muscling in on their territory.”

  “There are no locals. You should remember that we have the rights to this world for another two weeks. If another company is here, we have a right to sue them. You could have been gathering evidence.” Barry glared at Cam. “You’re the lawyer. Surely you know that much.”

  Two more weeks of this. Alistair was tired of the Santiagans already.

  The aircar beeped. They were coming up to where the signal had dropped out. “It’s a long way out for someone on foot.”

  “She had a personal rider.”

  “You came prepared.” A personal rider was a small platform with a motor on an antigrav unit. The r
ider used balance and skill to stay upright. They could have used a few of them to get around over the last two years. But the company hadn’t offered that.

  Alistair brought the aircar down. “Let’s see what we can find.” He took the pole as well as the fire-breather.

  They found the rider easily. However they did it, the Ort had stopped the signal dead. Alistair turned a full circle. There was no one with the rider.

  He was sure someone was watching him. Something.

  “What are we looking for?” Barry asked. “Other than Talli, that is.”

  He wished he knew. “The Ort. Anything that looks odd, out of place.”

  “Big, long, green sticks on legs,” Cam said.

  A whisper of sound. White noise in his ear. Like waves coming into a shore . . . only . . . The white noise slowly turned into words.

  “Ancestors . . . revered ancestors . . . Uncle’s uncle’s uncle . . . self is as our . . .”

  Alistair turned.

  A white cylinder propped up on four supports. As tall as he was. Two appendages jutted out from either side. A human, a woman—draped loosely in one of the appendages, hanging down, her head almost touching the ground. Something blinked at the top of the cylinder. Eyes.

  They stood frozen, staring at each other.

  Barry cried out as he reached for his blaster.

  “No shooting,” Alistair snapped.

  But Barry had already fired.

  Alistair felt the sting of something against his neck. He swung around.

  Another white, cylindrical creature stood in the shelter of the cutter bushes, arms raised.

  Barry dropped to the ground. Then Cam.

  Alistair raised his hands. It was an effort. “We mean you no haarrrrmmm.” The word stretched out.

  He felt himself falling.

  * * *

  • • •

  Alistair came around strapped to a table. An Ort leaned over him. White. It was white. Everyone said they were green. Even Alistair remembered them as green. Yet now they were white.

  Something hissed against his arm.

  He would not panic. He would not. Breathe.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The Ort reared back, then leaned over him again. Before he could do or say anything, a wash of white noise swamped Alistair. It was followed by high-pitched cries. An emotion of excitement swept through him. Alistair’s Ort didn’t turn, just used the back two legs—now the front—to move, while the two now-back legs supported the movement. Alistair would bet it had eyes around the other side of its body too.

  His Ort joined the three around a second table. Chatters and chirps filled the room.

  Another wash of excitement. Was it some kind of emotional backlash? Was it genuinely excitement? Or was that just how his brain interpreted it?

  “I don’t understand any of this,” came Cam’s voice, weakly, from in the middle of the excited group.

  The chattering grew louder.

  “What did you do with Alistair?”

  “I’m over here. Strapped to a table.” He could slide out of the straps if he wanted to. They weren’t tight.

  All attention swiveled to Alistair momentarily, then back to Cam.

  The chattering grew to a bursting crescendo. Suddenly all of them took off.

  It was unnerving seeing them change direction without having to turn.

  “I think it was something you said.”

  Alistair slid his body under the top straps, then sat up to pull his legs out. “They certainly got excited about something.”

  He crossed over to Cam’s table, helped Cam to slide out. Barry and Talli were laid out neatly on the floor.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be woozy?” Cam rolled off the table. Staggered as he stood up. “I feel fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Although, he’d regained his feet faster than Mayeso had the night before.

  Cam held his hand in front of his face, peered at it. “Yes.”

  “What did that achieve?”

  “I can’t see any whorls. Apparently, that’s what you’re supposed to see when you first stand up.”

  No one had told Alistair that.

  “We were all sitting at dinner one night, trying to describe something, and Cadel said it was like the whorls he first saw when he woke up on the Ort’s slab.”

  Slab made it sound like a mortuary.

  “Anneke and Timoty agreed. But they said that mostly all you remembered was the wooziness, which comes after the cold circle on your arm.” Which Alistair had just had. “Maybe it takes time.” It was Alistair’s second cold circle. “They might not have got to you yet.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Surprisingly well,” given he’d just been dosed. Alistair turned to Barry, who was stirring, and hauled him to his feet.

  Barry couldn’t stay upright without support.

  Cam took Barry’s other side. “I’ve got him.”

  Alistair turned to Talli. She, too, couldn’t stand on her own. “Let’s go.”

  He stopped on the way to snatch up two of the fire-breathers lined up against the wall. Placing them against the wall seemed to be the traditional way to store them. There’d been four Ort, four weapons. Did that mean there were only four altogether? Or did they belong to the four in the room? And what had made them run off?

  “I need to get fitter,” Cam said as they staggered out like drunks. “And I am really glad they have doors we humans can work,” as Alistair stopped and lifted the bar to let them exit. “Imagine how silly we’d feel if we couldn’t get out.”

  How long did they have? Would the Ort chase them? How far had they come?

  “Do you think we’ll all turn into Ort one day?”

  If they did, Alistair was going to turn long before anyone else. “You’ll have plenty of warning, anyway.”

  They’d panicked when the aliens had first started injecting them, and Mayeso and Timoty had spent weeks talking about divine retribution for what humans had done on the worlds they’d claimed. But you could get used to anything, especially when there was no alternative. The injections didn’t harm them, or not outwardly. Besides, the Ort had saved Alistair’s sight.

  They kept to the cutter bushes, which the Ort loved so much. It was risky, but it protected them a little, for it was only the bovines that went near the cutter bushes, and bovines had territories. If they could avoid this area’s bovine, they’d be fine.

  When they’d run as far as they could, Alistair pulled them into the shelter of the next set of bushes. “Let’s rest.”

  Cam helped Barry down, then flopped himself. “Can you see anything behind us?”

  Alistair’s ability to see Zell creatures had been one of the things that had kept this little community alive and whole—except for the doctor who’d been stupid enough to indulge in dangerous sports. The mortality rate on a trip like this ran close to fifty percent, according to the contract Alistair had signed when he’d taken the job. Even with a doctor and a machine. Security was an especially risky task.

  “Not that I can see.” The area was blessedly free of salynxes. The Ort’s doing, or coincidence? Alistair checked his link. It was dead. “What about yours?”

  “Dead too.”

  Would Angel’s people look for their own? Would Melda raise the alarm now their links had dropped out?

  “How long do you think we were out?”

  “No idea,” Cam said. “It didn’t feel long.”

  Alistair thought not long either. “Midmorning,” he decided. The heat trail he’d seen when he’d found Mayeso led east. Assuming the Ort hadn’t taken them too far away from their own settlement, if they walked with the sun to their backs, they’d eventually come to the lake and their settlement. “We’ll head for the lake.”

  He saw somethi
ng in his peripheral vision. Grabbed one of the fire-breathers, swung around. It was one of the small, harmless rodents. He left it.

  “Let’s go. I’ll take Barry this time.” Barry was larger than Talli.

  Barry struggled as Alistair pulled him up. “Aliens.” He shuddered. “Big, green.” He convulsed and fell against Alistair.

  “Aliens,” Talli agreed.

  “Technically, we don’t call them aliens,” Cam said. “We’re the aliens.”

  Aliens or Ort, maybe there were only the four of them, as beleaguered as Alistair’s own little settlement was. That would explain why they didn’t follow. It would also explain why they only attacked singly.

  Although, they had taken four of them this time.

  Maybe Alistair was just hoping.

  9

  NIKA RIK TERRI

  They’d ordered the Songyan in Snow’s name, just in case.

  Nika chose a simple mod for herself for their trip down to the Songyan factory. Nothing too obviously designed by a master, but good enough to accompany someone who’d ordered a Songyan. Or as good as it could be given that it was done on the Netanyu.

  Snow went for something more flamboyant. His red-gold hair turned into golden curls that hung down his back, with a golden beard to match.

  “I really like that hair add-on you made,” he told Nika.

  Hair would certainly be one of the ways other modders would identify Snow’s work in future.

  “Wait till we get the Songyan,” Nika said. “You’ll have so much control. Netanyu add-ons are limited.”

  “I hope you’re not going to use the new machine for that,” Jacques said. “We’re not risking our lives coming here just so you can play with hair. You have people to fix first.”

  They’d all come to see them off.

  “You are aware that seeing us off the ship like this looks ominous,” Nika said.

  “It’s so we recognize you when you come back on board,” Carlos said. “That’s providing you don’t stop to mod yourself before you do come back.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Carlos.”

  “We should put Nika and Snow’s images up on-screen near the shuttle bay so we know who they are,” he told Roystan.