She looked toward that green sky, wondering if her own sun might by visible among the stars when darkness came here. She was on the verge of asking Orion if he knew how far they were from her home now, and also where in the galaxy his home was, but another screech came from the trees, distracting her.
He turned in that direction, his hand on his bolt bow.
“Are fire falcons deadly?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. I’m sure the Star Guardians wouldn’t have designed their ships after tame birds.”
“Where’s the Star Guardian crew now?” Juanita pointed toward the lake as a fish at least as big as she was leaped out of the water, caught an insect, or maybe that was a bird, and disappeared with a splash. “And why are the fish so big here?”
“A lot of the predators here are large.”
“Are fish considered predators?” She didn’t truly know if fish was the right word, since she hadn’t gotten a good look at that thing. Were fish, as she knew them, universal? Did they evolve all over the galaxy wherever there were lakes and oceans?
“These ones are,” he said grimly. “As for the crew, I’m not sure where they went. After I woke up, I came out here to see if I could help, since I’ve been forbidden to offer you tours, and I came out to this.” He waved toward the hoses, then walked toward the front of the ship. “People were here recently, but everybody’s gone. I don’t know why.”
Juanita hesitated, not sure if she should walk after him. It wasn’t as if she had weapons, and she’d already vowed not to be the stupid Earth woman who heard a noise and wandered off on an alien planet to get eaten.
“Just to the front of the ship,” she muttered.
Besides, standing next to him seemed safer than standing by herself.
There were boot prints all over the muddy ground between the ship and the lake, and dirty handprints on the wide white hoses that were presumably pumping water into the Falcon 8’s tanks.
Juanita didn’t know exactly why the ship needed water, but she’d definitely gotten the idea that the slavers had sabotaged things. She could hear pumps running somewhere behind the hull, but there was nobody out here minding the refilling.
“Maybe they set it up and went back inside?” she suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Orion walked along the shoreline, moss covered mud slurping at his boots. “A lot of tracks head off that way, into the trees.”
“The trees where those loud screeches are coming from?”
“Yes.” Orion glanced back toward the ship, then paused and took a longer look. “Odd, the ship’s not on dry ground. Look, the nose is sunken into the mud near the lake, almost as if this was an emergency landing, and they had to take what they could get. That’s not like Zakota. Or the captain.” He frowned, then looked to the tracks again. “People look to have been out here in combat armor. Big, heavy boot prints. I could see a few people getting kitted out to guard the engineers setting up the hoses, but it looks like everybody out here was in armor.” He paused, staring down at the mud. “There are a lot of tracks. I can’t tell if one group was tramping around a lot, or if there were more people out here than makes sense. Why did so many of the crew come out to suck water out of the lake?”
Juanita crept up beside him. Something had left huge three-toed paw prints—or maybe those represented talon marks?—in the mud next to all the human boot prints. No, wait. She squinted for a closer look. The alien creature had trampled over the boot prints.
“Were they chased into the woods?” she asked.
“Good eye,” Orion said, “and it does look that way, yes.”
The praise warmed her, but she frowned at Orion. “If big predators came out after them, why would they have gone to the woods way over there instead of into the ship?”
“A good question. And I don’t know.” Orion gazed toward the trees and then toward the ship. He brought his wrist device to his mouth. “Falcon 8, anyone at the comm?”
Nobody answered.
“Sage,” he said, presumably calling a different number, or maybe the device did that automatically. “What’s going on here?”
Again, nobody answered.
Orion looked at his watch. “Oh. That explains it.”
Juanita peered over his shoulder. The device had an interesting screen that somehow projected everything on it to a flat holographic display the size of a tablet computer back home. Despite being holographic—she assumed that was what it had to be—it looked solid. She had no trouble seeing all the icons and words on the screen, but she didn’t understand any of them.
“No service,” Orion said.
“I have the same problem with my phone,” Juanita said. “It’s hard to get a cell signal from another solar system.”
“Yes, we can’t comm home from here under any circumstances, since there’s no way to send radio waves through the wormholes, but the ships have their own local networks with enough power to transmit across a planet or even a small star system. I shouldn’t have any trouble contacting the bridge from fifty meters away. We better go inside and see what’s up.”
Orion headed for the door Juanita had come out.
“Should we get a team together to find the missing people?” she asked.
“We?” He smiled at her.
“Well, you. I don’t have a weapon, and that thing with the three toes looks big.”
“I’ll let the XO know what’s going on, but ultimately, I’m just a guest on this ship. I don’t get to make decisions.” His voice lowered. “Especially now.”
Despite his words, he gazed toward the trees again, his hand brushing his bolt bow. He looked like he wanted to help.
“If you did something heroic, maybe your brother would be more likely to include you in the decision-making.”
“I could risk my life doing something I believed was heroic, and I doubt Sage would even notice. Or he would think I’d done something idiotic and risked myself for no reason. All he ever sees me as is his screw-up little brother who never fit in with the rest of the family—or the rest of the planet, for that matter. I’m surprised he even agreed to bring his ship out to help when I stumbled across Cutty’s plan to kidnap you all. He does like rescuing people and being the big hero, but he didn’t seem enamored by my plan for infiltrating the slavers.”
“I liked your plan.”
He smiled and touched her shoulder. “Thank you. Are all Gaian girls so supportive?”
Gaian? It seemed a weird way to be identified, but claiming to be an Arizonian wouldn’t mean anything to him. “No, I’m special.”
He snorted. “I believe it.”
They reached the hatch on the side of the ship. It was closed now.
“Huh.” Orion climbed up the hull, having some trouble on the ship’s smooth exterior. The inset latch didn’t look that easy to access, either.
Juanita had a feeling people weren’t supposed to be able to let themselves in. He tapped at the hull beside the hatch, then stared at it.
“There should be a glowing keypad that appears here.” Orion reached for the inset latch, trying to turn it manually. It didn’t turn.
He jumped down, propped his fists on his hips, and glared up at the hatch.
“This isn’t the part of the movie where the ship takes off and strands us on the planet, is it?” Juanita asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that to me, but you’re a guest.”
“A guest who was supposed to stay in the rec room. Maybe they don’t know I’m out here.”
“I had a feeling you weren’t supposed to be hanging out the hatch taking pictures of yourself.” He smiled at her again. “I’ll check the other entrances.”
That involved jogging around the ship to a much larger hatch, probably for loading cargo, and then climbing to the top where there must have been something akin to a submarine hatch. Orion checked both, then slid down, landing in the mud with a splash beside her.
“Everything is locked up. What’s odd is that none o
f the keypads light up. It’s almost as if there’s no power to the exterior of the ship. That shouldn’t be the case unless it was damaged at some point.”
“Could it have taken fire in the battle with the slaver ship?” Juanita asked.
“Nobody told me about it, and there wasn’t evidence of anyone doing repairs. All I heard about was some weird algae contaminating the water, hence the need for this side trip.” He grimaced and poked at his watch again. “Apparently, I was inadvertently responsible for that.”
“What? How?”
Orion was looking at his screen and didn’t answer. “There isn’t power to the exterior. According to my logostec’s sensor, there’s no power coming from the ship at all. Hells, did that algae mutate into something that could affect more than the water tanks?” He looked at the hull, his eyes concerned.
“I was just in there, and I didn’t hear any alarmed yelling or see anyone running around.” Juanita scratched her cheek. “Actually, I didn’t see anyone at all. Not even the green-haired ensign who was standing guard for the rec room yesterday. Is that weird?”
“Something’s definitely gone wrong.”
A knot of worry started forming in Juanita’s gut. Could something be happening inside the ship? Was everyone in there in danger? Angela? Tala?
Another screech came from the trees.
Or were she and Orion in more danger since they were stuck out here?
“If the power went out,” she said slowly, “would they be stuck inside?”
“There are panels you can open to physically unseal the hatches and get out in an emergency. They may simply be so absorbed with their problems inside that they haven’t tried to go outside yet.” Orion shook his head and looked toward the sky. “This is not good. If an enemy were to come by, the ship would be an easy target. And even though the Star Guardians tend to be adored and even worshipped by the good people of the galaxy who appreciate what they do, they’ve made a lot of enemies among those in the underworld. Like slavers. There are those who would take advantage if they found a helpless Star Guardian ship.”
“Could those slavers have friends out here?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t hear if Sage managed to interrogate that first officer yet. If he did, I wasn’t invited.”
“Neither was I. I guess we’re both outcasts.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You’re not an outcast. You’re an uninformed guest.”
“I’m not sure that sounds more flattering.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ve been an outcast for plenty of my life, if that makes you feel better.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows rose. He looked intrigued. “That’s hard to believe.”
“My family is very traditional, and I’m… well, I grew up with a crush on Daniel Jackson and wanted to go through the Stargate with him and Captain Carter. She was so smart. I wanted to be like her. And I wanted to go to the stars with Kirk and Spock. And I wanted to go back in time with Marty McFly. I think if I’d become an aerospace engineer or a rocket scientist, my parents would have been proud, but I, uhm, live in a house with three roommates, and buy groceries with the money I make from my YouTube sponsorships. I’m trying to get my first novel published, but right now, I can’t afford a car or health insurance, or anything really. My parents want me to come home to work at the restaurant, but that’s not my dream. But nobody in the family gets my dream.”
She found herself looking out toward the lake and the jumping fish. She hadn’t meant to rant to him. She usually saved that for when her roommates were all home and also in the mood to rant, and they did so while standing around the kitchen and eating ice cream.
“It’s tough when your family doesn’t understand.” He still had his arm around her shoulders, and he gave her a squeeze. “It’s also tough when you’re locked out of your brother’s spaceship.”
“If I were an aerospace engineer, I could probably find a way in.”
“Then we wouldn’t have this time alone together.” He waggled his eyebrows, though his heart didn’t seem to be into the flirtation, and he soon looked toward the trees again.
A high-pitched scream came from them, something different from the screeches he’d said belonged to fire falcons.
“There’s nothing more romantic than a deserted swamp full of crazy predators. What’s making that noise? The three-toed things?”
“Possibly. The brief entry I read on the planet mentioned a lot of large birds, some that fly and some that prefer to run on foot. The forests are full of them.”
“Can they kill people?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So we should avoid them.” Juanita didn’t imagine sitting down in the mud, waiting for this situation to resolve itself, would be very exciting, but what else could they do?
“I…” Orion looked toward the spot where the giant bird tracks had trampled over the boot prints. “I do not wish to leave you here alone, but I also want to go look for the men. They may need help.”
Juanita also did not want to be left there alone. She had the thought that she might be safe from animals if she climbed up on top of the ship, but then she remembered that large birds were a threat.
“I guess I’m going with you then,” she said. “Do you have a weapon I can borrow?”
He blinked at her. “Do you know how to use any of them?” His hand strayed toward his big bolt bow, and then toward a more gun-like weapon on his belt.
“No, but if you show me what to grab and squeeze, I can probably manage.”
“I suppose this wouldn’t be the appropriate moment to turn that into an innuendo.”
Juanita blushed as she considered her words. “Well, we did decide that swamps full of screeching things are romantic.”
“Indeed. Tell me about this Daniel Jackson. Do I need to be worried about competition from your home world?”
“Uh, no. He’s, ah… not someone who ever would have shown up in my parents’ restaurant, looking for me.”
“I would have.” Orion smiled, but it faded quickly as his face sobered, and he handed her something that looked like a fat flare gun with brass knuckles on the backside. “Put your fingers through the holes, then squeeze them into a fist to fire.”
“I understand.”
He led the way along the lakeside, following the tracks toward the dark, ominous woods.
Juanita took a deep breath and told herself she hadn’t been a fool for wandering off to take pictures. She wasn’t quite sure she believed herself.
16
The tracks were a mess.
The men had stuck together until they’d reached the trees, but then split off in numerous directions, some following the lake and others veering inland. What had been two sets of bird tracks pursuing them had turned into a flock. To make matters more confusing, the birds had occasionally taken to flight for long stretches, then come down later. Orion followed what appeared to be the main group, continuing along the lake.
What he didn’t understand, among other things, was why the men had run from some big birds. The tracks promised they were wearing their combat armor, and they likely had weapons too. Maybe the birds had followed them, not chased them, and maybe the men had gone out to deal with some other threat. Could some of the slavers have escaped the brig? Or could another slaver ship be out here? With the ship’s network down, the sensor capabilities of his logostec were severely limited.
Orion glanced back to ensure Juanita was staying close. He wondered if he was making a mistake by wandering off with her. It was possible the Star Guardians would need help, but what if the men circled back to the ship without anyone realizing that Orion and Juanita were out here? If they took off, he and Juanita would be stranded with no way home.
That might not be horrible for a few days—he was sure they could find a way to pass the time—but he would miss his own ship eventually, and even his parents back home. And she… Well, he had promised to make sure she was taken home.
A screech came from above the trees, and something flapped past, rustling branches. One of the fire falcons? Twilight was coming to the swamp, darkening the sky above the canopy and making it harder to see threats. Before long, Orion wouldn’t be able to follow the tracks.
At another screech, he admonished himself to concentrate on the sights, sounds, and smells around him and not on the fate of Gaia or the woman cheerfully following him into the swamp. Cheerfully and willingly.
Juanita not only seemed to trust him, but she wanted to help him. She had no reason to care about his fate or the fate of the Star Guardians, but for some reason, she did.
He smiled, thinking of Treyjon’s words from when they had crossed paths the night before. He’d said that Juanita had tried to straighten out Sage and let him know that Orion’s attentions hadn’t been unwanted. Most people were nervous speaking to Sage, including his own men who had served under him for years, but Orion had no trouble imagining her looking him in the eye and speaking her mind. Orion doubted it would change anything—Sage would still be certain it was inappropriate for Orion to have feelings for a kidnap victim—but it meant a lot to him that she had done it.
What would Sage say if he found Orion leading Juanita out here into the woods? What awful things would he think Orion intended to do?
Orion: Star Guardians, Book 1 Page 15
