by Smith, S. E.
“What’s out there, Mr. Kraye,” she asked through her head set.
“I see twenty heat signatures holding about twenty feet out from the point of the land mass.”
Faxton’s voice came over her head set. “The Cygninains say their, um, people won’t appear until they see them.”
Everyone had trust issues. “Send them out.”
“I would like to go with—”
“Let’s see if there is anyone for you to talk to first.” She did not want his team in their way if things turned unfriendly.
Her other Marines were providing as much coverage as they could as the swans waddled down the ramp. They’d left the kids behind, she noted.
“Let’s take a less aggressive posture,” she ordered, lowering her weapon, so that it pointed at the ground.
The swans stopped about halfway between their forward and rear positions, clear of the ramp, but still within a zone where they could protect them. The air was cool, but sweat beaded on her upper lip and her hackles rose. It was too quiet. Even the water was still. When City considered how almost casually she’d signed on for this mission, it made her brain hurt now. She seriously needed to have her head examined.
“Anything on the sensors we should be concerned about, Mr. Kraye.”
“The life signs are on the move.”
The water almost at her feet confirmed this as it lapped softly against the small shoreline.
Life signs under and over. “Do we have a way to tell how deep the water is around our position?”
Kraye read off a number that was deep enough to make her take a half step back. The ripples grew, the angle suggesting something was moving across the surface, but she couldn’t see a bean. She opened her mouth to ask why when suddenly she could see shapes. They slowly resolved into a cluster of swans very like theirs.
They drifted just off the bank, holding their position with, she guessed, only their webbed feet. They were incredibly beautiful though their silence might be creeping her out. With barely a ripple on the water surface, the swan delegation reformed, most of them falling back to form a “V.” The lead swan emitted a sound that was a cross between a chirp and a bark. One of their swans answered. The conversation bounced back and forth for about a minute, then their swan turned to look at City.
She or he said a word that City couldn’t begin to understand, and followed it with, “…will speak to Mr. Faxton.”
A name? Or a designation?
She tapped her head set. “Come on down, Mr. Faxton.”
The lead swan shot forward, then lifted from the water, passing near City’s face—not a great smell—and landed near their swans. With or without parental consent, the cygnets followed Faxton and his team down the ramp. Oh yeah, Brittani’s shoes were a mistake. She sank in the ooze up to her ankles. City gave her props for grabbing Dr. Dauwn’s arm and removing both her muddy shoes. City was about to protest, but she was smart enough to climb back up on the ramp. Dr. Dauwn elected to stay with her, though he looked about him with more animation than she’d seen so far. He had a camera, but he didn’t lift it up.
It wasn’t until ten minutes into the diplomatic dialog that Kraye started sending her rough translations with a fifty percent accuracy rating. It sounded like they agreed in theory that being allies would be acceptable. They were not open to exploring that theory at the moment. It sounded a lot like “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” only with what?
Something, maybe the sense of movement out of the corner of her eye, had City glancing down at the water barely a foot from where she stood. It moved, the ripples horizontal to the shore now. She realized there was a shadow where there hadn’t been one. A shadow that reached into the drifting mist in both directions. And then a line of fins broke the surface. A long line of fins.
“It will not eat you.”
City tore her gaze away with difficulty—and kept her weapon pointed down with even greater difficulty as the shadow continued to flow past. At her feet stood one of the swans, with her cygnets circling her like many small planes.
She swallowed. “It won’t?”
“It eats,” a wing swept against a bush and it said a word City didn’t recognize.
“It’s an herbivore,” Dr. Dauwn breathed out, his tone somewhere between awe and horror as the end of the thing finished its pass with a twitch of its tail fins.
“It was curious,” the swan said.
“Okay, well,” City swallowed dryly again. “We should probably wrap this up.”
Dr. Dauwn lifted his camera. “May I take a picture, capture an image of you?”
City couldn’t figure out why it felt like this amused the swan.
“You may.” She lifted her beak toward the camera.
City resisted the urge to say, “Cheese.”
Dr. Dauwn pointed his camera toward more than the swans and was the last, except for the Marines, to retreat back up the ramp. Before City’s Mikes were up the ramp, the swans had faded into the mist.
* * *
As soon as the ramp closed, City gave the order for Kraye to lift off. City joined him in the cockpit, giving her caticorn a look. When it didn’t move, she picked it up, took the seat and let it settle in her lap. “If anything happens, you book it,” she said, sternly. All this earned her was a limpid look from the caticorn.
She let Kraye keep the con while she activated their bottom cameras, but the mist, as if it had the ability to think, blocked their view of water. They reached the upper atmosphere without being buzzed by the owl and Kraye set a course for the Emissary.
She activated the comm. “Dr. Dauwn, when you download your images, I’d love to take a look at them.”
There was a pause.
“I have downloaded them and there is nothing to see,” came the despondent reply.
City looked at Kraye. “Nothing?”
“Not nothing but—I will send them to your control station,” he said.
There was a ping as the images arrived. City pulled up the first one. He was right. They were not nothing, but they weren’t anything either. They were pictures of the mist. No birds. No huge fish. No colors. Just gray mist.
‘That is…” Kraye stopped.
“Not how it looked when I was out there.” She sat back and rubbed her face. “Rita, you got anything spooky on your playlists?”
The Addams Family wasn’t quite what she had in mind, but it would have to do. She petted Tiger with one hand, the other tapping along with the music on the arm of her seat. She was a Marine, so she couldn’t say they were in over their heads. But there were no regs against thinking it.
5
The Emissary had entered a high orbit over the planet of the Sulian Nebos and transported the green-footed creatures to coordinates provided when the probe and scans determined it was also a planet without the capability to talk to them. The densely covered planet also had no landing zone large enough for the shuttle.
Faxton and his team managed to hide their chagrin, but the three of them had been decidedly morose at dinner as they left orbit and set a course for the planet where they would drop off both the Pinyains and the Erinaceines.
There were signs that they’d been spotted by less than friendly sources. OxeroidR, who had been monitoring channels official and not official, was not certain the questions were about them, but he was concerned.
“Is there any way for them to predict where we are going based on where we have been?” Caro had asked.
“They would need passenger specific data to make such a determination based on our past movement.”
“I hear a but in there,” Caro said.
“Our energy signature is not typical and—” he stopped once again.
“—one of our former passengers could have talked.” Caro bit her lip. “The only ones who seem to have ‘rat us out’ technology was the turtles.” Her hand ran absently down Tiger’s back. He arched and emitted a humming sound. “Are we sure we handed them off to their own kind?”
It was true that none of them had seen anyone on the Testudinian ship.
“The Testudinian passengers seemed certain they were speaking with their own kind,” OxeroidR said.
“Doesn’t mean they weren’t fooled. Or they spilled what they knew for reasons of their own. That might explain the cool welcome at our other stops.” Caro sighed. She spun around and faced OxeroidR and Rocky. “What do you think, Rocky? Are we being paranoid?” Rocky tipped his head to the side as if puzzled. “You spent more time with them than any of us.”
Rocky scratched the side of his head and appeared to consider the question. “We occupied adjoining cages or cells,” he agreed, “but we did not talk amongst each other. There were…rewards for sharing…” His voice trailed off.
“So, we should assume our last two stops are known.” Caro’s tone was flat.
“It is better to be prepared,” OxeroidR agreed.
She muttered something.
“I did not hear—” Kraye began.
“We have a saying on my planet, one about good deeds not going unpunished.” Her smile was wry.
Kraye echoed her wry. They had had no time together. Caro had asked him and OxeroidR to do practice simulations—and she’d asked OxeroidR to “up the level of difficulty to impossible.” Her Marines were also doing sims, using probe data they’d collected so far.
When they’d left on this mission, there had been a business-like air about them all, but their sense of purpose had taken on a grim edge now. The signs of interest had turned into signs of pursuit, signs significant enough that they’d sped up their transit to the planet where the Erinaceines and the Pinyains were to be repatriated.
It had been a wise precaution. The probe data showed at least two ships known to them patrolling the system.
“We can go in cloaked,” Caro had told them, “but we’ll have to limit our ground time.” Her gaze had been apologetic when she directed it at Faxton. “I’m sorry, but none of you can go down.”
He’d started to protest.
“There won’t be time for talking down there. You can talk to them before we disembark, but that’s it. We have to do two drops and our passengers are picking the LZ’s, not anyone down there. There won’t be anyone to talk to because we’re not telling them we’re coming. We have probably already been betrayed at least once.” When Faxton still showed in inclination to protest, she added, “We could lose more than a pair of shoes this time. I’m not risking your lives or the lives of this crew.”
“What about Teuhhopse?”
She’d bit her lip then. “We don’t have probe data back on it yet. If you can get more out of Lady Yodrirka, I’m willing to discuss one or all of you going down. But what we do will also depend on what we find when we get there. I’m not going to promise anything. I can’t.”
He’d finally nodded and left.
“I think he’s finally realizing how bat crap crazy it was to sign up for this trip,” she’d said, when the hatch had closed behind him.
“If you are not stopping,” OxeroidR said, “I should fly the shuttle.”
Kraye stopped an instinctive protest. He well knew that the robot was more than able to accomplish the mission and he—or Caro and her Marines—would only get in his way.
“I concur,” he said. She was correct, the level of difficulty was rising. Someone had talked.
Caro had considered the request for what felt a long time. “I don’t like sending anyone out without backup,” she said finally, her tone reluctant enough to indicate she was considering the suggestion. She did not like it, but she was a wise mission commander. She needed to use her available assets in the most optimal manner.
“I,” OxeroidR pointed out, with something that was almost amusement in his computer-generated voice, “am my own backup.”
That had surprised a laugh out of Caro, one the softened the worry in her face.
I can act as his backup.
“Rita would be useful,” OxeroidR admitted in his version of almost surprised.
“I hate to lose you up here, Rita,” Caro said, frowning.
I can be two places at once.
“That’s a skill I would not mind having,” Caro said, her grin appearing. “Alright. I’ll take it under advisement.”
* * *
“So you think they might be able to see the energy signature from our comet drive?” City asked. They were in her ready room. It was a total Star Trek moment, the room and the incoming risk—which took the edge off her squee moment.
Bull gave a solemn nod. “The data is not clear on whether it is safe to cloak while in comet drive. We will be visible when we drop into normal space.”
“If we have to be visible, we might as well launch the shuttle then. We’re programmed to drop out close to the planet. After a deeper dive into the probe data, there appears to be a humanoid presence, along with indications that someone down there is space capable.” This would increase the level of difficulty for the shuttle landing. She looked at Bull and Kraye and knew what they wanted to ask. She appreciated their restraint. She hated to do it, but Bull was right. He was the best…team for the job. “I concur with your assessment on who should be in the shuttle, Bull. We need to prep the shuttle and finalize your LZs.”
“I have been consulting with the Pinyains and the Erinaceines. They are willing to share their LZ and agree that any approach to either of their colonies will increase the risk to us and them.”
Or they don’t want us to know where those colonies are. Their motives didn’t matter unless they were lying, too. She’d been considering deploying two shuttles, but she didn’t think Rita, a fairly new sentient, was ready to go into battle.
“What else do you need for your part of the operation?” she asked. She would be a fool to discount any advice from him. He’d been designed and programmed for impossible operations—which she hoped this wasn’t one.
If you could get Mr. Faxton to quit whining, that would be helpful.
City bit her lip, exchanging an amused look with Kraye. Rita was definitely developing a personality. “I’m a Marine, not a magician. Sorry about that.”
She understood the diplomat’s frustration. What he didn’t understand was that up here or down there, neither would be a cake walk. Both ships were probably going to be dodging bogies and possibly under fire. She tapped her controls, pulling up a representation of the system they were about to drop into. The data was old, of course. Their probe data was a snap shot of how it had been. None of those ship positions were current, and it was possible they’d be facing more than two ships by now. She frowned at it.
“Rita, can you add our drop in point?” City was a decent strategist, but this was not her arena. It flashed onto the holo. They would have to drop at an angle, or they’d run into the planet before they could apply the speed brakes.
“What’s our braking path?” Kraye asked. Rita added that, too.
“If you were setting a trap for us, Bull, what would you do?”
It looked small in the holo but it was a lot of real estate—or space estate—they’d be navigating when they got there. If he’d been human, he’d have taken a breath and time to think, but he was robot and could do thousands of simultaneous calculations in a nanosecond.
“Without the complicity of the planet authorities, they won’t be able to set mines.”
It was the qualifier that was troubling. “Could they get that kind of agreement?”
“The usual—” Kraye hesitated.
“Suspects?” City offered.
He smiled. “Yes, the usual suspects for this kind of interdiction would not be able to secure an agreement with a legitimate government.”
Legitimate. Another troubling qualifier.
Actually, the fact that their passengers didn’t want to arrive through official channels might indicate the government wasn’t legit. Which brought her back to: what had she been thinking to do this? Usually, she was level-headed and matter-of-fact. She did h
er job, and she was good at it, but this was not her job. And yet here she was. Her gaze intersected with Kraye’s and she felt a tremor of unease, an inkling of why she said aye, aye instead of “yeah, that will never happen.”
She’d trained with guys, worked with guys all the time. There were women in the military but there were a lot more men. Tall ones. Short ones. Middle range ones. Jerks and heroes. She liked some, didn’t like others. She’d dated some, kissed a few, but…
She shouldn’t be thinking about kissing, not here and now. She’d let her thoughts go down the rabbit hole to something she had neither the time, nor the inclination to face. Of course, thinking about not facing it was a lot like facing it because she had to know what she wasn’t facing to not face it.
Okay, so she liked Kraye. So she felt more comfortable with him than anyone she’d dated. She might even get tingly and warm around him and yes, she wondered what kissing him would be like. But that was it. Totally it. Nothing more to see here, so thoughts move along.
Luckily no one had been inside her head because the conversation had continued without her. She checked back in, and after a moment, realized they had decided they needed to assume that anything and everything could go wrong so they should plan for all of it. She nodded like she’d kept up.
Kraye sent a look toward Bull. “So sensor nets are probably their best option.”
“I do not believe they wish to destroy this ship unless forced to.”
She felt a twinge of unease, which did not surprise her. Who wanted to be captured by aliens? “There hasn’t been time for news to filter back about what we did to, you know, the spider?”
Kraye looked at Bull. Bull looked at Kraye. Kraye shrugged, possibly because Bull couldn’t.
