“You’re kids,” she said without a hint of mockery.
“We’re not kids. We’re Gatekeepers,” Dean said, as if to protect a fragile ego.
“Of course you are. Come on. I have a camp close by, and you two won’t last the day in these elements. Those tents have a relay that burns out if the heater’s kept on full. Been known to start a fire.”
“What’s your name?” Jules asked.
“Yeera. Doctor Yeera.”
“A doctor? We have some injuries. Can you help?” Jules was thrilled at their luck, and the Shimmal woman nodded slowly.
“I’m a biologist, but I’m sure I’ll be able to assist you at my camp. Bring anything you need, because by the time we return, your shuttle will be enveloped by the storm.” She pointed to the dark sky, and Jules cringed as heavy droves of snow began falling as far as the eye could see. She guessed they’d be in a complete whiteout within the hour.
“How did you find us?” Dean asked, letting Jules pull him to his feet. He stepped gingerly on his injured ankle and leaned his weight on her shoulder to stay upright.
“This is my bay. The ocean is that direction, even if you can’t see it. The waters are calmer here than the rest of the continent, and I study the migration patterns of the local Catoleels. We deal with climate change on Shimmal too, and over the last three decades, the once thriving creatures’ population has dwindled.”
Jules had no idea what a Catoleel was, but that didn’t matter. They were saved.
“You didn’t answer his question.” Jules hated how her voice held a tinge of suspicion.
“I have drones circling the region in search of wayward Catoleels. The children come to the shore and often are lost from their mothers. I return them. I saw the ship plummeting from the sky a few hours ago and came to find you.”
Jules smiled at her. “In that case, thank you.”
Dean and Jules flung on their parkas and gathered their supplies, zipping up the heavy weapons before Yeera could peer into the packs. Jules took the heftier of the bags, and Doctor Yeera carried the other, leaving Dean to hobble after them through the deep snow.
It was morning but felt as dark as night as they trudged forward, each step difficult. It didn’t take long for Jules to spot the warm comfort of a vehicle’s headlights, and she soon heard the gentle rumbling of a Snow-Tracker. It was designed to move one or two people across icy terrain, with thick bands of gripping track to propel it through deep snow. She’d ridden a snowmobile as a kid outside her aunt and uncle’s house near Terran Five on New Spero, but this was far slicker, and definitely more expensive.
“Now this is cool.” Dean propped himself near the door, favoring his ankle as they loaded the bags.
“Climb in. It’s going to be a tight fit, but the drive is only an hour.” Yeera opened the door, and Jules felt relief as warm air brushed against her chilled cheeks. She let Dean climb into the rear seat first and squished in beside him, their combined hips barely able to fit. The lead chair was directly in front of theirs, and her knees touched the back of the seat.
Once the doctor was in her chair, the door sealed them in, and Jules peered over the woman’s shoulders, seeing a mapping screen blanketing the windshield.
“This lets me navigate through any kind of weather.” The motorized sled vibrated beneath them as the tracks began operating, and they were off. She assumed Yeera was taking it slow for their benefit, but a moment later, she pushed the throttle forward, sending the Snow-Tracker speeding for her camp.
“I haven’t asked you yet, but what are you doing all the way out here? We don’t have many visitors. As you can see, this isn’t the most welcoming part of Shimmal,” Yeera said.
Jules glanced at Dean before answering. “We’re practicing for a mission. Ice world. The shuttle had a malfunction.”
She couldn’t tell this woman about their real purpose for coming. Even though the Locator was broken, she hoped they’d be able to fix it once they were dry and had access to some basic tools.
“Where are you from?” Yeera asked.
“Earth. Well… Haven, and New Spero too. Our parents move around a lot,” Jules said.
“You’re siblings?”
Dean coughed in surprise. “No! We’re not related. We look nothing alike.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m used to being alone, and forgive me, but I haven’t met many humans out here.”
“How do you… you have the translation surgery, don’t you?” Jules understood how she spoke English so well.
“I was supposed to be an ambassador for Shimmal, encouraging various Alliance worlds to share information about biological creatures under different climates,” Yeera said.
“What happened?” Dean shifted in his seat, and Jules found that her head ached from hitting it the night before.
“I chose to stay with the snow and Catoleels at the last minute. I wasn’t finished with my job, and someone else went in my place. But the work had required the translation surgery, so I had it done before I’d changed my mind. Looks like it’s coming in handy now.”
Jules stared out the narrow slot of a side window, seeing nothing but snow on the ground and in the air. Outside the front windshield flew a steady stream of snowflakes, reminding her of hyperspace travel.
They chatted idly for the next while, and an hour passed like a breeze. Before they knew it, the Snow-Tracker was decelerating.
“This is Sub-Base Eleven. My home,” Yeera said with pride. Jules noticed a building ahead, finding a large bay door opening, letting their host drive the Tracker inside, hiding from the inclement weather.
Dean was sleeping, and Jules gently woke him now, hearing his stomach growl as he sat up straight. “We’re here.”
They exited, Jules making sure to grab their packs before Yeera closed up the doors. The bay was smaller than she’d expected, with cans and mechanical tools lining shelves and hooks along the wall. The floor was white tile, and pools of water sat around their sled where the snow was already melting off the tracks.
“This is your camp?” Dean asked, looking around, and the doctor shook her head, leading them to a door across the room.
“No. This is.” Yeera opened it, and Jules beamed as she saw the comfortable living space. “Make yourselves at home.”
“Where are you going?” Jules asked.
She stopped at another door, smiling at them. “I need medical supplies. Have a seat, and we can see to your injuries.” She frowned with a wag of her snout. “Wait. You haven’t told me your names.”
“I’m Dean. This is… Jules.” Dean plopped onto a soft sofa.
“Welcome to Sub-Base Eleven.” And Yeera was gone.
Jules leaned in. “Dean, we should have made up names. What if she knows who we are?”
“No one has any idea, or cares. She’s a biologist working in the most remote region of Shimmal. Why would she have any knowledge about anything within the Alliance? And even if she did, what does it matter? She’ll help mend us and contact Sarlun, and we’ll be out of here in a few hours.”
Dean was right, but something was nagging at her. “What if she’s the one? The red dot on the Locator?”
“Does she seem psychotic to you? No. She’s super nice, and…”
“Uncle Zeke isn’t crazy, and he has the marker. Maybe it hasn’t triggered in her yet.”
Dean sighed, rubbing his dark eyes with his palms. “We can keep an eye on her. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
Jules accepted this and waited for Doctor Yeera to return.
Thirteen
The Grinlo guided us through five more buildings, each connected to a buried pedway. When I asked about the monsters, Welka, the female leader, dismissed my queries. Our language translator was working better with practice, the intuitive application learning as we spoke.
Slate hadn’t communicated in some time, and I assessed him from the corner of my eye. He was tired, his face long and drawn. “How much fart
her?” I asked Welka.
“The Celestial is near. Another five ticks of Luna.” The translation didn’t compute, and I had no idea what a tick of Luna meant, so we walked.
By the time we stopped, I judged we’d been moving for at least an hour and a half. The Grinlo slowly trod with no sense of urgency, draped in dark robes and cowls. Even Welka had replaced the cloak over her head, and only on occasion could I see her pink eyes peeking from the shadows it created.
“This has to be the region we had listed on our map, don’t you think?” Slate asked me, and I agreed. We’d taken multiple turns, but my internal compass determined he was correct.
“What are the odds our ship and their Celestial are one and the same?” I asked.
Slate’s face broke into a smile behind his helmet’s shield. “Are you taking bets?”
We passed by a few lingering Grinlo people and entered an auditorium. There were hundreds, maybe a thousand seats circling around a central stage, and I glanced at Slate when I saw the vessel sitting in the middle of the dais. He offered no reaction.
Large screens were mounted to posts on either side of the round craft, and lights danced across them. Pulses of colors carried from one screen to the other. I had no idea what they meant, but the Grinlo in attendance seemed excited by the event.
“The Celestial wakes. This is important.” Welka made a screaming sound, and someone returned the call from across the room. They opened an adjacent door, letting in a stream of cloaked people. They filed inside the auditorium, taking up the seats in a slow and methodical fashion. We stayed where we were, and I had to fight the urge to leave. This felt bad, maybe a religious sacrifice.
“I don’t like this,” Slate murmured.
“Neither do I.” So far, the Grinlo hadn’t taken our weapons, but what could two pulse rifles do against hundreds of enemies? They had all the advantage, and I wasn’t going to let an ancient vessel determine our fates.
I stepped down a few of the stairs and heard Slate’s footsteps following me. The entire group of Grinlo gasped as the screens flashed green, then white. “Slate, stay where you are. I think the lights are reacting to you.”
Slate walked backwards, and they reverted to normal. He tested it, returning to my side, and they repeated the pattern. “So this is one of the ships used to abduct people. It must have a built-in responder to something they left inside me. The mutation, maybe.”
“And these people think it’s alive. That it’s their god from the stars. But really, it’s probably responding with electrical currents. They attached screens to translate the currents and take the color shifts as communication. Who knows how they read the patterns? They might see its reaction to you as anger.”
Slate grimaced, clutching his rifle. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“No way. We need to solve this, and this ship is our only connection. We’re not letting them do anything to us or the one clue we’ve found,” I assured him.
“How are we going to stop them if they turn violent?” Slate asked.
Welka smiled from the front of the stage, and she beckoned us to join her.
“She’s in good spirits. Maybe this won’t be so bad.” The auditorium’s seats were half full as the door letting the Grinlo in closed. This had to be everyone. I glanced up at the domed glass ceiling. Dirt coated it here too, and I wondered how they’d managed to move this alien vessel into the room. I decided to investigate.
The screens shifted green, then white again, and orange as Slate stepped closer to the stage, garnering another audible gasp from the gathered crowd. We must have looked so strange to the underground people, hiding from the surface monsters in their ancient buried city.
“Welka, what do the colors mean?” I asked her.
I noted how she didn’t stand directly on the stage where the ship was located, instead choosing to wait on a lower platform. She was the only of her people on the level, though a few elderly faces stared at me from behind their hoods from a few yards away.
“The Celestial is all knowing. It communicates with us through the screens.”
“How did it talk to you before you added them?” Slate asked gruffly. They were stuck on orange now, the color tinting and waving over the monitors like rippling water.
She didn’t reply instantly, but I saw a wave of annoyance at his question. I flicked the translator off and whispered through my helmet’s mic. “Slate, try to be more diplomatic. We need to learn what we can off this vessel and get the hell out. In one piece.”
“Fine, but I’m not playing their stupid game for too long.” Slate had his rifle in his hand, but the barrel was pointed toward the floor.
“The Celestial indicated its interest in us. We did not know why one so powerful would want anything to do with the lowly Grinlo, but Ulivon determined a path to its consciousness through the screens. We applied them a generation ago and have allowed the Celestial to make our decisions for us.” She smiled wide, her teeth glinting along their sharp edges.
“Which one is Ulivon?” Slate asked.
She indicated the oldest-looking man in the room, one of the four standing close to the stage. He stepped toward us, removing his hood. This Grinlo looked older than the others. His skin hung like a drying shirt on a clothesline, and his eyes were sunken in a thin skull. They were no longer pink, but a cloudy, bloody color. His gnarled knuckles held a wooden cane so tightly, the fingers turned white.
“Hello, Ulivon,” I said. “We’re glad to…”
I saw his fingers twitch, and the screen flashed to a fiery red.
It was Welka’s turn to shudder in shock. “The Celestial is furious at your presence. What have you done to deserve the wrath of our god?”
“Nothing. We came here to escape the giant creatures hunting above ground,” I lied. “How do you keep them out?”
“The Quall rule the surface, but we govern below.” Welka’s gaze darted to the group of three standing behind her.
“You once ruled above, did you not? You were the Grinlo, a powerful race with no one to fear. What happened to force you underground, to hide in buried skyscrapers and read colors off screens to guide your race?” I asked, trying to copy her intonations.
The crowd was growing agitated, but they were drawn into my translated words. They muttered to one another, quietly passing on what I’d said to Welka.
The color changed again, and I watched Ulivon’s finger move right before the transference. I finally understood what was happening.
“The great battle took place millions of ticks of Luna ago. We were fortunate to survive the war with the Quall. They were stronger, but we’re smarter. We connected our structures with walkways, making it impossible to penetrate. We grew food on rooftops, so say the legends. But it wasn’t enough. Time passed, and we became weaker, our population dwindling. Parties would scavenge the wastelands, only a handful returning without much sustenance.
“The storms grew erratic, burying our walkways first, then the entire buildings. We lost our path between them, separating our population between the city, but recently, under the guidance of Ulivon, we broke through dams, repairing collapsed tunnels, and have reunited. Ulivon discovered the Celestial, who called to him in his sleep. He is the chosen.”
“Why are you leading, then? Why doesn’t Ulivon do the talking?” I asked.
Ulivon stepped forward, the speed of his hands denying his tremendous age. They grabbed hold of my collar, and his head pressed up against my helmet. His mouth opened, showcasing sharp broken teeth and a stub where his tongue should have been.
“Ulivon lost his tongue when the walls were breached. He defended against the Quall, and paid for it. Now he connects us to the Celestial,” Welka said proudly.
I chose to remain calm, letting the relic of a man release his tight grasp on my spacesuit.
“Boss, any chance this character has the marking too?” Slate asked.
It was a fair question. We hadn’t use
d the Locator yet since arriving, but we really should have. If I pulled it out now, they’d see it as an offensive action, and I couldn’t risk that. Things felt tenuous enough in the amphitheater.
“So you remain underground, protecting the entry points from the Quall?” I didn’t answer Slate, choosing to continue probing Welka with as many questions as I could.
“That is correct.”
“How many of you are there?”
She indicated the crowd with a sweep of her hand. “This is everyone.”
This was all that remained of the Grinlo. Not many. Maybe five hundred, tops.
“Will you help us return to the surface? We will need to go home,” I said, trying to sound as friendly as I could.
“That will be up to the Celestial,” she said.
Slate tensed, and I glanced at Ulivon. He’d stepped to his original spot, but his hand stayed on the cane. I noticed a glint of something metal at the handle, sticking into the wood.
“People, we have found strangers. They defeated one of the Quall in the sanctity of our city, breaching our contract with the surface dwellers. This may cause us pain in the future, but I sense they were unaware of their actions’ consequences.” Welka turned to face the ship, and I was able to assess it too.
The craft was round, flat on the top and bottom, almost like a tire, and lights shone on the exterior of the dull metal hull as she spoke to it. The entire thing was maybe twenty meters in diameter, and five tall. It was extremely unassuming, I was surprised. With the abductions being so widespread, I’d expected something much deadlier and more detailed.
“Boss, it seems like a large drone,” Slate told me.
He was right. “What do you think? The aliens in question send these things out across the universe, picking up and modifying targets?”
“Could be. Would explain a lot. Probably why no one’s ever linked them to any specific race, for starters.”
I stopped talking when Welka raised her arms, watching the screens with interest. “Celestial, what would you have us do with them? Shall we help?”
The Survivors | Book 15 | New Beginning Page 13
