Blue Defender

by Sean Monaghan

  And she’d set the runabout’s comms system to make automated transmissions and to look for any other broadcasts. She wanted to know. Wanted to contact Charlie. Or anyone else.

  Was there anyone else?

  She wore walking boots which were comfortable, but a bit heavy for running. She’d retrieved them from the Blue Defender’s cache, along with a pair of leggings, a light shirt and a peaked cap. The outfit was a bit cool for the air temperature, but she would warm up quickly from the exercise.

  A kilometer from the runabout Matti-Jay stopped. She turned and looked back. This beach was beautiful. Stunning. The kind of thing people took images and vids of and used to promote expensive vacations.

  If she was going to have to be crashed anywhere, this was pretty good. Pretty good.

  The waves washed onto the beach far enough away from the wreck that she didn’t have to worry about any encroaching water. Ludelle had a single tiny distant moon which had virtually no tidal effect on the ocean. There was some tide created by the star, but it was negligible. A matter of centimeters. Nothing like the tides on Earth. The Blue Defender was well out of reach.

  Still, another big storm might make for waves crashing up that far. There were other, old driftwood and flotsam lines farther up the beach. Behind the Blue Defender.

  Matti-Jay kept running.

  If things weren’t desperate she would be making observations now. She would have a handheld and collect data. Images, sounds, chemicals in the air. She would sample the sand and the water. She would go up into the dunes and take pieces of the plants.

  As she ran she started angling for the dunes anyway. She was going to be here for some time, that was for sure. She might as well get a sense of the lay of the land.

  The dunes were all a fairly uniform height. All about fifteen or twenty meters. But there was one, another kilometer on that rose higher. Farther back from the shore.

  Lower dunes around it. A couple of hardy, twisted conifers growing near the apex. The dune had been there for a long time.

  Matti-Jay kept running. It helped take her mind off everything.

  How many places had she ever been like this? Places with no one around, with no city just a short drive away. A couple of vacations with her parents to remote locations in South America. A walk into parts of the Atacama Desert. Not so far from roads, but still a long way from anywhere else. A little town fifteen miles away with one store selling souvenirs and Cokes and satellite time. Nothing much else for hundreds of miles around.

  Here now, she had thousands of miles of nothing much else.

  Matti-Jay reached the top of the first dune. The grasses brushed and tickled at her calves. A fat beetle with an iridescent carapace climbed slowly up one of the wider leaves.

  Should she be worried about bugs? Bugs and snakes and big predators? In all the data the Donner had gathered from their time in orbit, there had been some about the biosphere. Clearly well-developed, with food chains and checks and balances.

  Still a lot of work to do. Were humans palatable to the lifeforms down here? Or poisonous?

  Matti-Jay kept moving. Best not to think about such things. Already bad enough that that dragon had attacked. Well, maybe that was the bigger worry. The automatic remnants of whatever civilization had existed here.

  Remnants. It had to be, right? In her overflights she hadn’t seen any evidence of movement or activity or occupation. Just empty spaces. The building, the city. Left behind. What did that mean?

  A sandy ridge ran from Matti-Jay’s dune across to the highest dune. The ridge dipped briefly before heading up. One side had a shallow slope, with grasses and some weedy things that spread around with dark leaves and tiny white-pink flowers. The steeper slope was just sand, with a few roots poking through.

  Matti-Jay walked along a meter or so from the edge, boots in among the plants. She tried to avoid disturbing the edge, but still saw little landslides of sand flowing down the steep side.

  She also saw the prints of an animal.

  Small and round. Maybe something the size of a house cat. Blurred in the dry sand, but there were some spots where the vegetation cast shade and the prints were more distinct.

  Slightly oval, with three toes forward and one back. The prints only went down maybe a centimeter or so. Which meant that animal was probably light. Perhaps only a few kilograms. Probably nothing to worry about.

  Matti-Jay kept striding up toward the top of the higher dune. Already her view was better. She could see other tall dunes farther back from the beach, some with tall and mature trees. Others looked exposed and dark, as if some storm or other had toppled trees and torn away the shallow new soil.

  A dynamic environment. Of course. Planets were dynamic for sure, anytime they had an atmosphere, or vulcanism. Or both. And especially with a biosphere.

  The surface was always being remade.

  Matti-Jay continued on, the little landslides of sand her own contribution to the surface’s renewal. In a few minutes she made it to the top of the high dune. She was breathing hard, her heart pounding. The exercise was good. She should have brought water, though. Her mouth was dry and it was a long way back to the Blue Defender now.

  The dune’s crown was covered in grasses and the patchy weedy stuff. Just beyond the crest a small, scraggly pine stood. Like a small juniper. Windblown and twisted. It could be decades old, struggling to grow in soil that was really just sand.

  She checked the handheld she’d brought along. The display remained blank. No communications from the others.

  Matti-Jay scanned around and saw two things almost at once.

  One was a kind of structure, shiny and metallic, just a couple of dune valleys over and to the right. The structure stood between dunes, so she could only see the top. It had a row of five or six small circular windows near the roof, and a smaller structure sticking up above. Like a portable toilet or a shed, or a roof-access section.

  Some stringy lines dangled from the top of the smaller structure and out across the side of the main structure. The lines shifted in the light breeze.

  The other thing Matti-Jay spotted the moment after she’d taken in the structure, was a pack of animals. Felines, perhaps, with long bushy tails and large bright eyes.

  They were on another tall dune to the left. A few ridges away.

  And the animals were running.

  Straight toward her.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Matti-Jay watched the animals for a moment. Already some of them bounded down out of view behind the ridge. The cool breeze blew through her hair. Matti-Jay took a step back.

  One of the animals stopped.

  It reared right back onto its hind legs. It stared at her.

  The animal had lighter fur on its belly. There were speckles in the fur. The animal’s arms waved as it worked to keep its balance.

  “Nice kitty,” Matti-Jay murmured. She took another step back.

  Maybe it was a nice kitty. But out here, in the wilds, she wasn’t going to take any chances. Already she felt foolish for coming out this way. Out this far from the Blue Defender.

  The dunes seemed to go on and on. Maybe five or ten kilometers farther inland there was a forest. Tall stands of lush strong pines. Mature trees.

  Overhead some big black birds glided. Raptors. Eagles. Something like that.

  She had to remind herself that this wasn’t Earth. These animals obeyed different rules. They might look something like their cousins back home, but this was a unique biosystem.

  If these cat-like things caught and ate her, they might very well poison themselves. That would teach them a lesson. Maybe.

  Problem with that was that Matti-Jay ended up being a meal. Not a good start to getting her runabout repaired and flying across the planet to get to the others.

  The one that had stopped to look at her dropped back to all fours. It sprinted down the dune. Vanished behind the next dune.

  Odd whistling peeps came from the dunes. Birds? Or was that th
e sounds the cats made?

  The first of them reached the top of the next dune over. The animal was bigger than Matti-Jay had first thought. Not cat-sized. More like dog-sized. Big dog. Labrador. Maybe bigger.

  The animal opened its mouth and snarled.

  Matti-Jay shook her head. Why was she still standing here?

  She turned and ran back the way she’d come.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The dune grass made swishing sounds against Matti-Jay’s legs as she sprinted back the way she’d come. The salty breeze worked against her. A slight headwind.

  She ran hard.

  The whistling peeps of the animals grew louder. Birds in the air closer to the shore wheeled.

  Matti-Jay felt foolish. She should have checked for local wildlife first. Should have brought a big stick.

  Somewhere along the flight from these animals she’d dropped the handheld. A nuisance. At least the Blue Defender had some spares.

  She’d just wanted to get a better view. Checking the lay of the land that way. What would happen at a beach anyway? She’d been deceived by the idyllic calm. Especially after the storm. The place was so beautiful.

  Still running, Matti-Jay reached the top of the first dune. She risked a glance back.

  The animals were cresting the higher dune. Some of them were coming around the side. Some even farther off. On another dune ridge.

  Not following her. Heading straight for the beach.

  Not good. They were spreading out. Some coming straight for her. Some angling to cut her off.

  Was that pack hunting behavior? Were they working together to surround her?

  Matti-Jay lost her footing. She stumbled. Fell to her knees. Her hands smacked into the sand.

  Back on her feet. Running again.

  No more looking back. She needed to concentrate on where she put her feet.

  The dune sand was soft. Hard work to run on. Slowing her down.

  Maybe it slowed the animals too. They would be used to it, though. Always out here. Always hunting.

  Matti-Jay had been cooped up in zero gravity for weeks. Not used to this kind of exercise at all. She was puffing. Her muscles ached.

  A bird of some kind burst from the grasses ahead. The bird’s wings beat hard. It sped away. High and out over the beach.

  If only Matti-Jay had wings.

  She kept running. The sand compressed under every step. She was making good headway. More than halfway back to the beach. Once she made it there, the damp sand would make it easier to run. Hard and more compacted. She would be wasting less energy. She would move faster. More efficiently.

  Nearby something howled. Was that one of the cats?

  She had to remind herself that they weren’t cats. Not really. They might look like cats. A bit. But they weren’t.

  They were an alien species. A predator adapted to life in these dunes. Hunting birds and rodents. Or whatever the equivalent of rodents out here was.

  Or maybe they hunted bigger game. Maybe there were deer or something living in the dunes.

  Actually that made more sense. These ‘cats’ hunted bigger game. Which was why they were after her.

  Matti-Jay ran on. She reached the even softer dry sand of the beach. Between where the root mass of the grasses added some firmness to the dune, and the weight of the ocean wettened and hardened sand on the beach.

  Her feet slid. It was hard work. And slow.

  Easy to picture the cats bounding along. Almost without touching the sand at all. Maybe little puffs of finer material flicking up from their light footfalls.

  Matti-Jay sprinted on.

  It was maybe a kilometer to the Blue Defender. Across the soft beach.

  The waves still splashed in, oblivious. The seabirds wheeled and called. The wreck lay exactly where she’d come down. Spun around and facing the water.

  There was something moving around it. Another animal of some kind.

  Hard to tell at this distance. It seemed to have long legs. It was maybe sniffing at the wreck.

  Matti-Jay kept running. Angling for the damp sand nearer the waves. The sand squeaked underfoot. Some of it sprayed up. Got into her boots. It itched. Worked its way down.

  She was going to get blisters.

  Which wouldn’t be so bad. Because from the looks of these cat critters she might just get eaten.

  And who knew what that thing near her runabout was? Some kind of browsing animal, maybe? A deer, as she’d imagined.

  Matti-Jay looked ahead. Planned her run. The sand was flatter now. Gaining solidity. Dry on the top, but damp below.

  She risked another glance back.

  The cats were there. A hundred meters away. Maybe more. Some of them moving, but some of them stopped too.

  Stopped at the edges of the dune. As if they were afraid to step away from the grasses and the hillocks. As if the beach frightened them.

  Matti-Jay looked ahead again. The tall animal kept moving around the Blue Defender.

  Maybe it was that creature the cats were afraid of. That’s why they’d stopped.

  They animals whistled and peeped again. Matti-Jay looked back. They were on the move.

  Not afraid of the beach at all.

  They were running out. Following her.

  And a lot of them were closer. The ones that had taken different routes. Coming out of the dunes. Almost alongside her.

  Flanking her.

  This was not good. All she could do was keep running.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  From out over the ocean thunder rumbled. The waves were growing higher. Whitecaps.

  Gray virga hung over the water. In patches there were patterned ripples where the rain fell. Coming in closer.

  Which was all Matti-Jay needed. A drenching, cold, stormy rain to go with the eager pack of cute predators hunting her down. And whatever it was prowling around her ship.

  That big animal moved oddly. As if its joints were old and worn and arthritic.

  Matti-Jay’s grandfather had been an athlete when he’d been in his twenties. He’d played for the 49ers as a blocker. Bragged that they’d almost made it to the superbowl. By the time Matti-Jay was born he would have been in his late fifties. By the time she was aware of such things–probably five or six years back–he’d been in his late sixties, and he walked half bent over, and slowly. He wore all kinds of robotic joint strengtheners to keep himself mobile. He was always on calls with insurance companies and team owners trying to get his policies honored to get replacement joints.

  The way this animal walked reminded Matti-Jay of that. Not the calls, but the way the old man had moved. He’d been kind and generous and loving, but it was sad how much difficulty he’d had getting around.

  Less than five hundred meters now, to the Blue Defender.

  The little vessel looked sad lying there. There was a berm of sand at the stern, pushed up when she’d crashed and slid along. Gouges on the other side.

  Matti-Jay kept running. A glance back.

  The cats were keeping pace, but staying in the dune grasses. Mostly. A few of them skittered out onto the beach. Momentary. They quickly darted back to the dunes.

  Matti-Jay focused on the way forward. Less than four hundred meters.

  She was breathing hard. The salty tang of the air burned a little. They knew that the atmosphere was safe to breathe. More oxygen than Earth, and less nitrogen but more argon.

  They’d checked for pathogens of course. And the whole crew had received general inoculations Not full protection, but better than nothing. There was still a whole lot they didn’t know about the place.

  Three hundred meters.

  Matti-Jay’s pace was slackening. She was tired. But also, the cats seemed less threatening. They were paralleling her now, not coming right behind. They continued to whistle and peep. Some of them were drawing ahead.

  Two hundred and fifty meters.

  The big animal sniffing at the Blue Defender had moved back. It walked in a circle.
>
  Instead of running straight at the hatch, Matti-Jay was going to have to come in from the bow. That meant running across the sand into the water. The beach here had a long, low slope. The water was shallow.

  The water splashed around Matti-Jay’s boots as she ran on. The beads blew back against her. It was actually refreshing. The sand underneath was uneven. Rippled. With some holes. It made the running even harder.

  Tiny fish darted around.

  Soon Matti-Jay was directly in front of the Blue Defender.

  The cats stared at her from the edge of the dunes. Some of the animals stepped out farther onto the beach itself.

  The big, long-legged animal still prowled around.

  And it wasn’t an animal at all. That was obvious now.

  Despite its animal-like shape, the thing was a machine.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  The rain blowing in across the ocean thickened. The heavy drops began to pound in at Matti-Jay’s back. The cats at the edge of the dunes ducked their heads and bobbed left and right. Maybe the rain was bothering them.

  The animals were still fixated on Matti-Jay. Watching her intently. But they weren’t coming at her. Somehow not willing to cross from the grassy dunes out onto the beach proper.

  Maybe there was something that lived out here that ate the cats. They were small. Predators, for sure, but perhaps not the biggest predator around. The cats might be well up the foodchain, but you never knew how high that chain went.

  Maybe there was something that lived under the sand. Something ready to gobble them up any moment.

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  And then there was this machine animal. Striding around the Blue Defender. Examining the wreck. But not actually doing anything to it.

  The robot–it had to be a robot, didn’t it?–had a blocky body about the size of a buffalo, but lanky legs. Fatter at the top, bulbous knees, thinner lower legs, with big chunky feet.