As their speed diminished, that fire subsided, and finer details of the surface appeared—the most notable of which were the swarms of black specks circling the brown plains below.
Mokari? Lucien wondered.
Katawa leveled out, and they saw a range of obsidian-black mountains soaring to one side. The jagged spires and cliffs were wreathed in pink clouds against a salmon sky. A bright red sun simmered above the horizon, to one side of those mountains, while its twin hung directly overhead as a dim, hazy orange ball of light. The separation of those suns likely meant that night would never truly fall on Mokar since shadows cast by one sun would be illuminated (at least partly) by the other.
Katawa took them up to a sheer black cliff that must have plunged at least a kilometer straight down. A bright green river roared over that cliff to a darker emerald pool below. The pool was surrounded by some kind of blue and red vegetation.
“Where are we going to land?” Lucien asked.
Katawa flew on toward the cliff and raced over the top of the shimmering green waterfall. A broad, flat plateau opened up before them, and both banks of the river were speckled with strange brown mounds. Each mound varied significantly in size and shape from the next.
Katawa slowed the ship and hovered down for a landing. As he did so, a pair of giant black shadows passed over them and swooped down to land beside one of the brown mounds. Those had to be the Mokari. They became mere specks beside the mound where they’d landed, and yet their shadows had been big enough that Lucien thought the Mokari had to be at least as large as humans.
“This must be a Mokari village,” Addy said.
Lucien watched as more black specks picked their way along the ground from mound to mound, while others took flight, and still others landed in a constant bustle of activity. He nodded slowly. The mounds appeared to be made of mud and grass, and their size relative to that of the Mokari suggested that each of them was a nest. The larger mounds were likely larger nests for bigger families.
Katawa landed the Specter among the Mokari nests, some of which towered three and four stories high. Lucien marveled at how much work it must have taken for the Mokari to fly more than a kilometer up from the plains below, carrying that much mud and grass. They obviously didn’t have things like hover trucks to make the job easier.
“It is time to prepare you for the surface,” Katawa said. “Please follow me to the med bay.”
Once they arrived there, Katawa took blood samples from each of them while they sat waiting on rusty metal examination tables that had probably been gleaming silver when they were new. They’d probably also come with mattresses, Lucien reflected as he tried to shift his weight in some way that didn’t result in a stab of pain from his backside.
“Interesting...” Katawa said.
“What?” Lucien asked.
“Your biology. It is extremely flawed... almost intentionally so. It is a credit to your species that you have done so well in spite of your shortcomings.”
“Thanks,” Lucien replied dryly.
Within just a few minutes, Katawa announced that he had finished testing their blood samples against air samples collected by intake vents in the ship’s hull. His analysis revealed over three hundred potential vulnerabilities. Most of those were threats from alien microbes and viruses, and that was probably just the tip of the iceberg.
“What about water-borne microbes?” Lucien asked. “Or food-borne?”
“I have found an easy way to immunize you against any biological hazards on Mokar—as well as any other alien planet you travel to in the future.”
“And that is?” Addy asked.
“A one-time injection of modified white blood cells from your own blood. Unlike your original cells, the engineered ones will be capable of reproducing on their own, and they will quickly populate your bodies to provide a second layer of defense against any biological threats you might encounter. In approximately forty-eight hours, you will never get sick again,” Katawa announced. He withdrew four vials from the fabricator and slotted them into syringes and hypodermic needles. Then he walked up to Garek with one of the needles.
“You sure this is safe?” Garek asked as he held out his arm to receive the injection.
“Oh yes.”
“What happens if we get infected before forty-eight hours?” Lucien asked.
“You may develop a few unpleasant symptoms,” Katawa replied. “To avoid this, I suggest you don’t drink the water, or eat any of the food.”
Garek snorted. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Why don’t we just wait until we’re immunized to leave the ship?” Lucien asked as he received his inoculation.
“The Mokari are not a patient species,” Katawa replied as he moved on to give Addy her injection. “By now they will have our ship surrounded. If we keep them waiting, they may decide to push us off the cliff.”
“They can do that?” Lucien asked.
“They are very strong, yes,” Katawa said as he walked over to Brak and lifted the Gor’s shadow robes to give him an injection in his thigh.
When Katawa was done, he went back to the fabricator and produced antihistamine tablets for them. He gave each of them a tablet, except for Brak, who apparently didn’t need one. Gors were direct evolutionary descendants of Etherians who’d been stranded in the ruins of their galaxy after the Great War, so their bodies were much hardier than humans, whose Etherian DNA had been diluted with a local species of primates from ancient Earth.
“Take the pills now,” Katawa said, and pointed to a sink.
Lucien and Addy both jumped down from their examination table to get some water, while Garek dry-swallowed his pill.
“What is the concentration of different elements in the atmosphere?” Lucien asked, as he filled a cup with water and took his pill.
“The air is breathable, but richer in carbon dioxide than you or I are used to,” Katawa replied.
Lucien nodded along with that. Most alien species were carbon-based, and as a result, their body chemistries required both water and oxygen to function, so almost all of them had evolved on worlds with both readily available.
Despite that encouraging fact, different planets had different concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in their air, not to mention different levels of toxicity in the water. The water problem was easy to solve—bring their own supply from the Specter, but the air was more complicated. Paragons were all trained to recognize the symptoms of respiratory acidosis, which was the most common malady caused by exposure to ‘breathable’ alien atmospheres.
Katawa walked over to a cold storage bin and withdrew five silver flasks with breather masks attached, one for each of them, including himself. He made a few adjustments to the flasks via holographic control panels, and then passed them out, keeping one for himself.
“We’re supposed to wear these the whole time?” Addy asked, trying to figure out how to secure the mask, and accommodate the flask without its weight ripping the mask off her face.
“No.” Katawa’s voice was muffled by his mask as he put it on. “You must inhale the contents. It will help your lungs to process the air and give you the appropriate concentration of gasses for your bodies,” Katawa replied.
Lucien watched as Katawa depressed a silver button on the back of his flask and took a deep breath. The alien held his breath for a moment, then removed the flask and exhaled.
They each mimicked Katawa, emptying their flasks.
“How does it work?” Lucien asked while Katawa collected the empty flasks.
“The particles will assemble a synthetic lung inside of your airways to filter the air.”
“You mean a machine?” Garek asked.
“A living machine,” Katawa corrected.
“How’s it going to power itself?”
“It is highly adaptive,” Katawa replied. “The lung will feed off the glucose in your blood. It may make you hungrier than usual, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice that you have a ne
w organ inside your bodies.”
“It’s alive?” Addy asked. She looked like she was about to be sick.
“It is not in any way autonomous or harmful. Do not be alarmed,” Katawa replied.
Lucien nodded, quietly amazed by the Faros’ mastery of biotechnology. “Now what?”
“Now, we go to meet the Mokari before we anger them any further.”
They followed Katawa to the ship’s rear airlock. Before cycling the airlock, Katawa retrieved a shadow robe like Brak’s from a locker and pulled it over his head. The garment automatically shrank and adhered to his body until he became a shapeless shadow like Brak. Not even Katawa’s giant black eyes were visible through the garment, but Lucien assumed he must be able to see and breathe somehow. Brak had been wearing one of those robes ever since boarding the ship, and he hadn’t been stumbling all over because of it.
Katawa began passing out translator bands, and Lucien realized he and Addy had left theirs in their quarters.
“It does not matter. Use these for now,” Katawa said, and handed two of the bands to each of them.
“Why two?” Addy asked.
“So you can give the spares to the Mokari when you need to speak with them.”
Lucien nodded and slipped one of the bands behind his head, above his ears. He put the other in one of the inner pockets of his robes.
Katawa opened the airlock and ushered them inside. The door irised shut behind them.
“Shouldn’t we bring weapons?” Garek asked.
“Faros do not need weapons when dealing with previously-subjugated populations,” Katawa replied. “Their most effective weapon is fear, and it is far deadlier than any sword. Besides, I was unable to procure Farosien weapons for this trip.”
“Great,” Garek muttered.
The airlock cycled quickly, and Katawa explained that the Faros didn’t bother with decontamination procedures.
Lucien was horrified. Maybe they didn’t care if they infected indigenous populations with deadly diseases, or maybe they weren’t carriers of such pathogens. Still, that didn’t mean they couldn’t transfer them from the worlds they visited, and there was plenty of ecological damage they could do by allowing biological contaminants to travel on their ships from one world to another. It was yet another example of the Faros’ careless disregard for all species besides their own.
When the outer door of the airlock irised open, a wave of hot dry air gusted in and took Lucien’s breath away. The alien smells were overpowering but also fascinating—sickly sweet, gamy, and acrid all at the same time.
Something in the scenery beyond the airlock shifted and clicked in Lucien’s brain, and suddenly he saw the host of nightmarish black birds waiting for them on the plateau where they’d landed; their dark leathery skin made them blend almost perfectly against the gleaming black rocks of the mountains.
Lucien waited for Katawa to lead them down the ramp from the airlock. Garek nudged him between the shoulder blades, and he remembered that Katawa was supposed to be posing as a Faro slave.
Lucien took the lead, He started down the ramp toward the assembled aliens, trying hard to hide his growing unease. If the Mokari killed him, he wasn’t going to come back to life in a cloned body like he would on Astralis, or like a real Faro probably could.
One of the Mokari stepped forward to greet him. It walked on two skinny, multiply-jointed legs, using the bony tips of its wings for added stability to give it what seemed to be four legs instead of two.
Besides the obvious difference of wings, the Mokari had startlingly humanoid bodies: two eyes, two arms, two ears...
The differences were almost easier to count than the similarities; they had big, sunken red eyes, and bony faces with protruding, beak-like mouths, and sharp white teeth that were always bared in a predatory grin.
Lucien was already wearing a translator band, but the Mokari wasn’t, so he produced the spare from his robes and held it out. The alien tossed its head and clacked its teeth, followed by a loud chittering sound.
The sounds automatically connected to meaning in Lucien’s brain thanks to his translator.
“No need Faro magic,” the Mokari said. “You leaving now, or dying now. Choose.”
Lucien blinked, taken aback by the alien’s hostility. The databanks on the Specter said that the Faros had subjugated the Mokari. They should be more deferential—unless something had changed since the records had last been updated. He hadn’t thought to check the date stamp.
Or maybe this Mokari was testing him. Lucien decided to gamble on that. He stood his ground and shook the translator band at the alien.
The Mokari tossed its head again and screeched.
This time the sound didn’t connect to meaning in Lucien’s brain, but he didn’t need a translation to understand that he was in trouble.
The bird jumped up and flapped its massive wings with a violent gust of air. It hovered easily in front of him, buffeting him with gusts from its massive wings. Its wingspan had to be at least thirty feet. It hovered there, studying him with those red eyes, and cocking its head from side to side, as if trying to decide which part of him would be the tastiest.
That went on for only a second or two before another untranslatable screech tore out of the Mokari’s chest, setting Lucien’s teeth on edge. He felt Addy’s hands on him, pulling him back.
“Get back inside the airlock!” she whispered.
But Lucien held his ground. He shook the translator at the Mokari once more. “Take it, you ugly kakard!” he roared. The alien wouldn’t understand him, but he hoped it would grasp something from his tone.
The Mokari’s red eyes flashed like daggers in the night, and the alien swooped forward. It knocked him over and stood on his chest, threatening to break his ribs with its weight. Its talons stabbed through his skin, drawing hot rivers of blood. Lucien gasped from the pain, but found he couldn’t suck in another breath. The Mokari was too heavy. He couldn’t breathe!
The monster regarded the crimson pools of blood around its feet, its head cocked curiously to one side, and jaws slightly agape. The Mokari’s red eyes were narrowed, as if with intense interest. Addy ran behind the creature and began beating it on the head with her fists, but the Mokari took no interest in her. It was fixated on him—on his blood. It could probably smell it.
Lucien’s whole body went cold. He’d miscalculated, and badly. Addy screamed and intensified her assault. Both Garek and Brak ran into view, and grabbed the Mokari by its wings to pull it off him, but they were too late.
The Mokari’s head snapped down, jaws gaping wide, and Lucien cringed, waiting for the searing bite that would rip out his throat and end his life.
Chapter 24
Mokar
A long green tongue flicked out of the Mokari’s mouth. It lapped Lucien’s blood from one of the pools around its feet, and withdrew sharply, chittering at him.
“Blood red. Not blue. Or black. Taste good,” it said.
Lucien grimaced from the pain still radiating from his chest. Brak, Garek, and Addy were pulling on the Mokari’s wings as hard as they could to get the creature off him, but they weren’t getting anywhere.
The Mokari glanced over its shoulder at them, and flapped its wings to shake them off. All three went flying.
The alien returned its full attention to Lucien, its head cocked curiously. It chittered something else. “Not Faro?”
Then Lucien got it. His holoskin did nothing to disguise his blood. It was red, not blue, or black as the Mokari had said.
Lucien decided to take a risk. Using what little air he’d managed to suck in despite the crushing weight of the Mokari standing on his chest, he croaked out, “Not Faro. Human.”
The Mokari cocked its head to the other side. “Look like Faro.” Lucien’s head swam and dark spots crowded his vision. He had no strength left for a reply.
Addy ran up and crouched beside him. “It’s a disguise!” she screamed, and deactivated her holoskin, revealing her h
uman features once more.
The Mokari screeched and rocked back on its heels. Its talons dug even deeper into Lucien’s chest as it did so. A guttural cry burst like a living thing from his lips, taking what little air he had left.
“Get off him!” Addy said. “We’re not your enemies! We come in peace!”
The Mokari stepped off Lucien’s chest, and he sucked in a deep breath. His ribs ached sharply as his lungs filled with air, and more blood bubbled from his stinging wounds, hot and wet, soaking his robes.
A small shadow came and crouched on the other side of him—Katawa. The little alien wiped away Lucien’s blood with the beige fabric of his robe, and sprayed his wounds with an aerosol of some kind.
The wounds bubbled, then sealed with a translucent resin, and the pain was replaced by a pleasant tingling.
Lucien sat up and glared at the Mokari who’d attacked him. Addy helped him to his feet.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Lucien shook his head. “Fine,” he grunted. Then added in a softer tone, “Sorry. Thank you for defending me.”
Addy nodded mutely, her eyes full of concern. Garek and Brak walked back up the ramp and stood to either side of them.
Lucien found his spare translator band lying a few feet down the ramp and went to retrieve it. The Mokari watched him curiously out of one eye as he walked by.
Lucien held the band out to the alien once more. “Take it,” he insisted.
And to his surprise, this time the Mokari did so, grabbing the band in over-large, three-fingered hands that tapered into vicious-looking claws. The alien placed the band behind its head, above its dish-shaped ears. Apparently this Mokari already had experience using the translators.
“Finally,” Lucien breathed, wincing as that exhalation provoked a sharp ache from the right side of his rib cage. He clapped a hand to that side and leaned the other way to take the weight off his injured ribs.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 41
