Max had plenty of time during the nine-hour trek to ponder who had tried to kill him, and why. He quickly concluded that it was probably not a random murderer strolling the ice, looking for crab chow. It took longer to process who might actually be behind it. Was Duncan right about HOSaS? If they wanted him dead, he still had no clue why. What reason could they have to block advancement of their own goal?
When he finally approached his destination, he took a detour through the village proper, to conceal the tracks of his sled and therefore the path to his hut. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the various small homes and outbuildings. Some were made of shell, some a mix of bone and carapace, others from logs of the fungal trees shipped in from the Regions to the south, a direction that applied to all things worthy of note. Cold and exhausted, Max pulled up to the small log hut he’d rented for his survey. The logs, with their fungus like foamy cores and surrounded by thick bark, kept the heat inside and the cold outside.
Max tied up his crab team and tossed a carefully portioned chunk of frozen meat to each of them. The crabs weren’t picky, and while they wouldn’t eat members of their own pride, that specific loyalty was the only real line between food and not food. Any other creature, including other members of their species, were fair game. As a member of the pride, Max was safe. Better still, as the Pride Master, the team would more or less follow his commands.
Max dragged the star into the hut. If not for the distinct True North style doorway, made wide enough to be used by those fully attired in a crab parka, the rather wide cylinder might not have fit. When he re-emerged from the hut to retrieve the digester, his crab team had finished their meal and formed a ball like huddle, interlocking their legs and outer carapaces with each other to conserve heat. The two smallest crabs scuttled into the center of the ball. It was a sure sign of trust between pride members. Any other creature held so close within a crab’s powerful grab arc would soon be made into a meal.
Grailliyn’s twin, Mega, had set earlier in the day as the sun would soon do. The dark sky of True Night was on its way. After bringing in the rest of his few remaining possessions, he removed his cold weather gear and stored it in the cold-lock between the entrance and the hut. If the garments got too warm, they would shrink and warp. A great deal of effort would then be required to work them back into shape. To avoid this, True Northerners kept their parkas in the cold space between the outer and inner doors. In the case of a heat wave, which could bring temperatures a few degrees above freezing for an extended period of time, they were kept in cold storage below the surface.
Max set about starting a small fire. His fuel was limited, but the hut was so small and well insulated, that once heated, Max’s body heat alone would be enough to maintain the temperature.
With the oil fire going and the hut warming up, Max examined the star for what really was the first time. Its off-white surface had the appearance of smooth hard stone, but it was very light for its size and acted more like a plastic. The damage from the bullet impacts were now merely slight surface dents, and the notch where his axe had pinned the attack crab, was no longer wide enough or deep enough to have held the axe in place. All that was left was a muted wedge-shaped hole. The surface hadn’t even cracked.
In addition to the damage he had been present for, the other end of its double-ended bullet shape was blunted and slightly crumpled, as though it had stopped suddenly after a long fall. Max thought back but could not account for this damage and concluded it must have occurred before the star was frozen. Given how sturdy it seemed to be, it must have to be quite a fall. Max wondered if the star was a casket. Some sort of super plastic sometimes glowing magical mystery casket.
Whoever was in there, they were certainly a mystery. People had first settled the True North less than two hundred years ago, and there were no people and no signs of an ancient civilization to be found. This was exactly why the survey had been started, to find something like this. Some piece of evidence pointing to their origin.
No one on Grailliyn knew where they had come from. There were many theories, from godly creation to interstellar colonization. One thing seemed clear, the people of Grailliyn could not have evolved here. They shared no common ancestor with the other creatures on the planet, not even a distant connection to plants, or microorganisms. Or slime. They couldn’t even eat each other. Not really. Humans could swallow the local ‘food’, and maybe get some energy from doing so, but they couldn’t utilize the proteins or base amino acids, and so they couldn’t survive on it. Mostly it just made people sick. So instead, people relied on digesters. Digesters were filled with bacteria, which was the only life on Grailliyn humans did have a relation to. Whatever was put into the digester was broken down by bacteria, which grew into thick nutrient rich mats. The resultant Bac-mat, as it was called, was eaten and enjoyed across the whole of Grailliyn.
Max rapped his knuckles on the star and ran his fingers over it, feeling its perfect smoothness.
“This is exactly what HOSaS has been looking for. Gold,” he said.
He had never seen or touched gold of course, it might as well be fictional. They sure loved it in the movies though, where it was often the object of much desire. Now, Max had the gold. And the bad guys wanted it.
Was it worth dying for? Max thought not. But what about his mother and father’s legacy? Duncan would tell him to abandon the artifact and save himself. Or would he? He’d come this close to proving his parents had been onto something. Could he quit now?
Max would have liked to find out what happened to them. Were they murdered or did each simply succumb to the deadly environment of the True North? Either way, getting murdered himself would prove nothing.
How had the killer, or killers, known Max had found anything? Or where he was? As for who’d sent them? Max still had that very short list. HOSaS. Or maybe a wandering murderer. This morning he would have chuckled at the idea of either, but now…
The killer couldn’t have been following him all along. Perhaps he had let something slip in town? But he had hardly spoken… Maybe someone pieced it together from what he’d purchased? Or they intercepted his letter? He’d thought of the mail as sacrosanct… Of course, those inclined towards murder were unlikely to shy away from mail fraud.
If he intended to stay alive, he needed to get away from here. Eventually back to his apartment in New York, though for now any large town would do. He would be going nowhere however, before daylight, which was just over thirty hours away. He relied on the fishing boats to clear the port of ice and the fisher folk would not be working again until then.
As he prepared to rest, it occurred to him that he might be spending the night with a centuries-old corpse. He imagined the casket cracking open and some nasty withered husk slipping out as he slept, to steal his breath or devour his soul. Or molest his feet. Cringing at the thought, he’d gone so far as to get dressed and open the inner door, intending to leave the star outside, when he stopped short, his hand on the wooden board holding the outer door closed. The artifact or casket, or whatever it was, would certainly draw attention of any eyes that spotted it. Attention was the last thing he needed. He felt safer now that he was back in Tuk, but he decided it was better to chance an unlikely encounter with the foot-tickling undead, than a likely encounter with the murderous living.
His own and his mother’s journal were among those possessions he still retained. He removed and stowed the rest of his cold weather gear again, sat down in the hut’s sole chair by the oil-fueled hearth, placed his axe on his lap in case of zombie attack, and began to note the details of the day in his survey journal. A minute later he was deep asleep, as True Night descended.
Chapter 4
A far away popping sound interrupted the perfect silence and perfect nothingness. She focused on the pop as it reverberated in her mind. Soon, the sound of her own breathing stole focus and drew her mind towards wakefulness. Next came a new sensation. A rank odor, which matched the taste in her mouth, entered her nose.
She closed her mouth and soon both senses returned to a muted, more neutral state. Her nose then picked up a different scent. Smoke.
Fire bad.
With effort she forced her eyes open. Her head turned automatically towards a light to her right. A bright line blazed towards her, searing her retinas. She jerked back, closing her eyes. She could still see the line on the back of her eyes, though it was twisted and smeared from the sudden movement. She opened her eyes once more and allowed them time to adjust. She tried lifting her arms, but they were not free, something was on top of her, holding her in place. Her chest tightened and her breath caught anxiously in her throat. Her mind woke fully. Instinctively she pushed with her whole body against the thing above her. It moved only slightly, but it was enough to free her arms, and with a strength lent to her by a building panic, she pushed against the weight. It opened as if on a hinge, and relief flooded her body. She breathed deeply. The smell of smoke was still there, but faint. She was inside some container. Pod was the word that came to her. She still held the weight of the pod’s lid open with both of her stark white arms that glinted with a glossy sheen.
She squinted and blinked at the light that came from across the small room. Slowly she was able to make out her surroundings. She turned away from the brightest thing in the small room, a lit hearth, the source of the smell. There was a table pushed up against the wall across from the hearth, and to its right was a wide sturdy door. The rest of the room was taken up by the pod she still sat in. With an effort, she lifted her long legs and turned ninety degrees to dangle them slightly out the side of the pod. Her legs too were stark white and plastic-looking. She kneaded their muscles with her hands. When at last she felt ready, she slid out and down to rest her feet on the ground, attempting a wobbly upright standing position. She steadied herself with the side of the pod, which was held off the ground by a long narrow bed. Her senses returned slowly. As her eyes adjusted and the light became more bearable, she realized with a start that there was a person in the room with her. In the chair beside the bright hearth. A large person. A long-bodied, shaggy-bearded male person, covered in bloody wounds. With an axe.
She bolted.
Chapter 5
Max awoke to a shock of cold air rolling across his naked torso. He leapt to his feet and rushed to close the door, in his haste, failing to fully register the new state of the artifact. He slammed the inner door, but not before noticing footprints leading out from the hut. The wind had erased his previous path in the snow, so the new prints were obvious. Quickly he grabbed up his shirt and as he did so, finally noticed the cylindrical star was open.
His mind exploded with contradictory thoughts and commands. Inexplicably, he found himself grabbing a blanket and, against all common sense and many of those commands, opening the door to rush out into the wind. He did not have to follow the tracks far to find who had left them. A figure stood out in the light cast from the doorway.
Not a zombie but a woman, dressed neck to toe in a plastic, form-fitting, white suit which seemed little better protection than wearing nothing at all. She looked back towards the hut. Her face and hair were strangely pale, though somehow familiar. She did not seem to see him but looked bleakly at her surroundings. With the cold quickly sapping her strength, she stumbled then collapsed. So white was her suit that she’d become nearly invisible against the deep snow.
Max wasted no time scooping her up and carrying her back into the hut before he too might succumb to the extreme cold. Once inside he dumped her on the floor and rushed to seal the hut, this time making sure to close the outer-door first. The hut was now very cold, and he cranked the oil lever, releasing more oil into the hearth to heat the place back up again.
Then he returned to the woman, still lying on the floor where he had dropped her. He realized why the strange-looking woman seemed so familiar. She resembled an actor from the movies, though not any one actor in particular.
He straightened her head, which had been uncomfortably twisted against the table leg, and looked for somewhere to place her that was not cold hard floor. The star, which he realized now was some sort of hibernation chamber, lay fully across the small bed, hanging well off the end. There was nowhere else to place her. He lifted her up and lay her back into the star. He was surprised and relieved to find the interior was warm to the touch. The inside of the star was completely filled with a spongy material, indented where her body had lain. There was no room for air at all. Around her neck was a pendant on a cord which he straightened. He was surprised by the weight of both cord and pendant. They were both bright and glinted even in the dim light of the hearth. The pendant in particular looked familiar. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason it brought to mind the First People.
He turned to find something to prop or wedge the lid and keep the star from closing again. There was a tiny ‘pop’ sound and he turned to discover that he was too late. It had closed on its own. His imagination went wild, envisioning the woman inside, struggling to draw breath.
He grabbed his axe and wedged the axe edge into the seam between the lid and the casket, or rather he tried to, but there was no line of separation, not even a hint of a seam, where the artifact had previously opened. Estimating where the seam should be, he tried wedging the blade in any way. When that didn’t work, he stood up and raised the axe, swinging with all of his strength, over and over. He made no progress. A notch appeared from each strike, but somehow it only forced the previous notch to close like well-worked putty. A light pattern began flashing and playing across the surface of the artifact, bringing a stop to Max’s assault.
He breathed deeply, attempting to calm himself. Stop. Think. This box is keeping her alive. He put the axe down against the chair, and breathed, trying to believe that she was safe, that she would be okay.
He warmed himself by the fire. Once he pushed the worst of the cold from his fingers and toes, he got up and rearranged the room. He turned the star sideways, blocking the door, so that a quick dash to the outside would not be possible. Then he pulled the chair up close to the fire, wrapped himself in the thick leathery blanket, and tried with limited success to once again fall asleep.
Chapter 6
Max woke from first sleep to find the star shut tight, just as he’d left it. It was still blocking the door, and as there was literally nowhere in the tiny room for the woman to hide, he was confident she’d not re-awoken. Thinking again about her being trapped inside the artifact gave him a shiver that woke him fully. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Oww,” he said, realizing that some of the crusty bits on his face were dried blood, rather than sleep.
He prodded his face more gently, examining his wounds. They were still painful, but mostly just when he stuck his fingers in them. He got up and examined his face in the small mirror on the wall. The mirror cast only a dim reflection, so he pulled it from the wall and angled it to take full advantage of light from the fire.
“Yech. So much for your good looks,” he said to the psycho murderer in the mirror.
He had been lucky. One piece of shrapnel had stuck in his eyebrow, but his eyeballs themselves had been spared. Using a toothpick, he pried the bits of stone bullet fragments from his face, piece by piece. Next, he cleaned the wounds. Infection was a rare disease, but it was as deadly as it was rare. Chop-off-your-infected-arm-now-because-the-alien-microbe-invaders-are-coming deadly. So, it was worth the effort of a bit of scrubbing.
The hut was warm again, so Max put out the fire and blocked off the chimney and hearth to keep it that way. Trapped inside the hut, there was little to do. He considered his situation. Their situation. For the time being, he and the pretty blonde woman shared the same danger. He wondered if she might sleep for another century or so, attempting to wait out the cold weather.
He thought long and hard. What now? Each scenario started with heading home, or possibly checking in with Duncan. But just getting home now might be a challenge, so he focused on that.
Severa
l hours passed, but no greater plan came to him, so he determined that he should stick with the basic but functional plan to get safely away from Tuk and go from there. His first major stop would be SoChar, the city in which he’d grown up.
After a trip outside to feed the sled team, he sat down by the hearth to make more notes in his survey journal. Hours later, when he was satisfied that he’d covered the important information, he packed his notes away and discovered a stowaway. A small stilt crab, the runt of his team, gazed up at him from behind one of Max’s packs.
“Brew-pop?” said the crab, as it affectionately blinked its pretty purple eyes at Max.
“Don’t try to charm me. My heart…” Max said, tapping his chest, “… is a heart of stone. You’re going back outside with your friends.”
“Brew?” the little crab said. “Pop?”
Max looked at the door, the star blocking it, and considered the effort of putting on his parka, plus the time it would take to reheat the cabin.
“Alright,” Max said, “Your clever little scheme worked this time…”
The little crab seemed to understand and took a tentative step towards Max, and the fire of the hearth. Max sighed.
“I suppose you might as well come sit with me by the fire.”
The little crab leapt from behind the pack and skittered over to Max, bonking his carapace enthusiastically on Max’s shin.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 3
