by Jean Kilczer
“You sure you want to argue now?” Chancey was plowing ahead in blowing snow.
The engines whined overhead. Glaring spotlights pinned us like insects.
“They won't fire! They want us alive,” I said as a hot beam burned snow and made it bubble in front of us. “Keep going!” I shouted. “They're just trying to stop us.”
Huff dropped back. “They are stopping us in the well!” he exclaimed.
“Keep going, Huff.” I slowed, wanting him close to me so they wouldn't fire on him. They needed a pilot for their interstellar flight. Chancey or I would do. Huff was expendable.
He lumbered forward and I kept him between me and Chancey.
The big ship skidded down with screaming engines and plunged through drifts of snow that enveloped it about a hundred feet away. I pulled out my stingler as I ran. Green light! Fully charged. I checked for hot beam. Chancey did the same. But my legs were turning to burning lead. I stumbled, fell, and got up. Through the storm, I saw the vague outline of a cottage ahead. I started to hyperventilate as I ran, and couldn't catch my breath.
“Climb on my back, my Terran cub!” Huff cried.
Good idea. Covering Huff would prevent the Mafia tags from shooting him.
I threw myself across his back and clung to his fur with the frozen fingers of one hand. I clutched the stingler in the other one.
The ship's hatch sprang open and I heard voices. We were still too far for a stun setting, but Chancey was falling behind.
Ahead, the cottage.
The front door yawned open to a rectangular darkness with those flashes of blue lights. I slid off Huff's back. “Get inside!” I yelled and went to my knees, my stingler pointed at the hatch as Chancey staggered up to me.
“I don't give a rat's ass if we're too far away,” I heard Al shout, “try the stun setting anyway, you friggin' morons!”
A tingling in my chest. A sense of spreading cold. Huff grabbed my jacket collar in his teeth, and dragged me inside. Chancey came in, threw himself on the floor and rolled. He aimed from there. I was on my knees, my stingler held at arm's length in both hands. My fingers were so numb, I wondered if I could pull the trigger.
“Hey, Al, they went in there!” I heard Vito shout.
“They might be waiting for us,” Al said.
“You got that right,” I mumbled between chattering teeth and steadied my stingler.
The door suddenly swung shut. It locked with an audible click.
The room was black, and cold as a tomb, but it was a very welcome tomb.
“Blast the friggin' door!” I heard Al say.
“Uh oh.” I held out the stingler and waited.
A sizzling sound.
“Mother fucker!” Vito exclaimed. “Something zapped my gun.”
The door was still secure.
“Thank you,” I whispered, “whoever you are.”
“I'll second that,” Chancey said between gasps of breath.
I unclipped my hand light and shined it around the room. Bare wooden walls, some planks still held hanging bark. A dirt floor, packed down for easy walking.
“Love the amenities,” Chancey said.
I rolled to my back, my arms spread, and tried to catch my breath. “Too close.”
“Too close for what?” Huff sat on his haunches, looking like a vague pyramid in darkness.
“Doesn't matter,” I squeezed out.
“I thought it mattered very much, my Terran cub, the way you were running.”
I took a deep breath. “We'll talk about it later, OK, Huff? Right now, I just want to breathe.”
“I would not want you to stop that.”
“Jesus Christ!” Chancey said. “How do you put up with him?”
“Did you ever consider, Chance…how he puts up with us?”
Huff cuddled next to me and threw a heavy forearm across my chest. “I put up and down with you.” He brushed snow off me.
“They're not going anyplace,” I heard Al say. “Get back to the fucking ship. We'll camp here an' wait fer them to give it up an' come out.”
“He's got a point,” I said.
“An' if that plane comes back fer them,” Al continued, “blast it outa the sky.”
“What plane?” Chancey asked.
“That's what he calls the hovair,” I told him.
“Tag's a natural born genius,” Chancey said. “Wish we'd kept our comlinks.”
“Yeah, they found us anyway. I wonder if those friendly blue lights would consider protecting our team in the hovair?”
“Why don't you ask them?”
I lowered my shields and imaged the bee climbing up to hover above a petal. “I just sent out an invitation.”
“Do you think those blue lights are the aliens?” Chancey asked.
“I don't think so, Chance. It's a primitive planet, perhaps only a few billion years old. Unless there were some quantum leaps in evolution, I'd say those quadrupeds we saw under the trees are about as far as evolution has come…unless there are primates, too.”
“Then what were those lights, man?”
“Weapons, maybe?”
“Pretty sophisticated weapons for goat people.”
Suddenly, I was so tired the cold floor felt comfortable. I put an arm across my eyes. “And their control of electricity speaks volumes,” I said. “I suspect it's advanced technology, But I'm reserving any conclusions until we have more information.”
“Spoken like a true scientist,” he said. “But we ain't gonna form no hypothesis while we're flat on our backs.”
“It's about all I can manage right now.” My body still ached from the tiring run through the frigid night, the thin air. But the heaviness that overcame my mind seemed to come from a tel probe. I lacked the strength to lift my shields. All I wanted was sleep. “Maybe we can just rest here for a while,” I mumbled.
If Chancey answered, I didn't hear him.
I hovered in the fantasy world between reality and sleep. Huff slid the stingler from my hand. I made a grab for it by pure reflex, then relaxed my hand. He put the weapon in my holster.
Somewhere, in a dreamscape too real for dream, but not real enough for the waking state, I found myself in a red world of devastation. Strange angular structures, burned and broken, jutted from scattered ruins, some still smoldering. The sky was full of roiling red-tinged smoke. Crumpled heaps of humanoid skeletons and rotting bodies with large skulls and hips, and rags that fluttered in the wind, were stacked like firewood among the rubble. I recoiled as the stench hit me. This was no planet under Alpha's jurisdiction of colonized worlds. No aliens I'd ever encountered. I heard myself moan in my sleep. Why were they showing me this? Huff cuddled closer, and lifted my head to his warm forearm.
Then I saw rows of living aliens, shorter than us, I think, and squatter, boarding space shuttles. I was guided to one that docked with a starship in orbit. This race of beings wanted me to know what had happened to them. And why they had come to Equus. I wondered if they understood stelspeak, the universal language of the stars. On a hunch I projected a thought in stelspeak. Who are you? Is your whole world in ruins? What happened?
There was that web again, with images strung randomly. I chose one of an asteroid breaking up as it hit the atmosphere of a red planet. Flaming chunks of rock plunged to the surface where they exploded and started raging fires that swept across the lands.
So it was an asteroid hit! I sent.
I felt a deep sadness, tinged with anger. It was not my own. An image of blue Equus with its five small continents swam into my mind.
They found their sanctuary, I thought as the dream faded and I slept.
Light seeped through slats in the closed shutters when I awoke and smelled popcorn. I was hungry, but I realized it was Huff's paws. They always smell like popcorn. I would've given a lot for a cup of Earthbrew, but that wasn't about to happen.
I gently lifted Huff's forearm from my chest and stood up. I could barely make out Chancey, still asleep o
n the floor.
Something told me to shine my hand light across the dirt floor. There, in a corner, a trap door with a latch. I went to it, opened it and peered inside with the light. A ladder led to a dirt floor.
“What's happening, man?”
I jumped. “Oh, Chancey. Come here. Look at this!”
“Damn,” he said softly as he peered down the shaft. “Could be our way out.”
“Huff,” I called.
Something slammed into the front door. Wood cracked. Huff leaped up with all fours off the ground. He came down hard and grunted. “The ice floes are splitting. Swim for your lives!”
“Huff,” I said, “c'mon.”
Chancey unholstered his stingler. “I think they're using Searcher as a battering ram.”
Light streamed through the broken door. “Whatever,” I said. “The barbarians are at the gate. Let's go!”
I let Chancey go down the ladder first, in case Huff needed help with his short round fingers and long claws.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Al called. “Throw out your stinglers and come out with your hands up. We don't mean you no harm.”
“Go, Huff!”
I didn't have to tell him twice. He hooked his claws on a rung and lowered himself, but one claw got stuck in a cracked rung.
“I am trapped like a dire on a floe!”
“Shit!” The door was splintering. “Hang on, Huff.”
“I am hanging!”
I wiggled his claw free and he slipped down the ladder, landing on top of Chancey.
“Son of a crotefucking –” Chancey exclaimed.
I slammed the trap door shut behind me and slid more than climbed down the ladder. I tried to pull the ladder loose but it was tied to holdfasts in the dry dirt wall. With my stingler on hot beam, I burned through the rungs in one long sweep.
Chancey was on his knees.
“C'mon, Chance.” I helped him up and kept an arm across his back while I shined the light ahead of us. He was holding his side as we ran. A muffled crash from above. The front door had been thrown down.
“Where the fuck did they go?” I heard Al shout.
“Over there, Boss,” Vito exclaimed. “It's a trap door.”
We came up short at the tunnel's dead end. “Uh oh.” I helped Chancey to the floor, kneeled beside him and aimed. “I guess we make our stand here.”
“Four stinglers against two,” Chancey squeezed out, “and no cover. Let's hope it's not our last.”
Huff crouched beside me.
“It won't be, Chance,” I said. “Not yet. Except for Huff,” I whispered. “But even if they take us alive, they'll dump us out the airlock once we guide them into the trade lanes.”
“Yeah. They can find their own way home from there.” He looked around. “Where are your friendly aliens when we need them?”
“Right here.”
I spun around and aimed. The stingler was slammed out of my hand by a force I didn't see.
“Do you bite the hand that frees you?” the alien asked in stelspeak. He was squat and dark with a big bare head and wide hips. Spindly legs stuck out from his plain brown smock. His features were delicate, with large amber eyes placed further back than our own.
“Where'd you come from?” I asked.
“Isn't it more important where we are going?” he asked back.
Al and his boys were swearing as they slid down the broken ladder and jumped to the floor.
“Wherever that is,” Chancey said, “it's better than here.”
“Then follow me,” the alien said.
Huff crowded behind him. “I would also rather be where than here.”
I picked up my stingler. The charge button was red again. NO CHARGE. “Did you do that?” I asked the alien as he walked through a wall. I tried to follow and hit the wall. “Dammit!”
He came back. “Why are you walking into the wall?”
I held my nose. “I was following you!”
“Then follow and stop trying to walk through walls.”
I heard Al and his boys trotting down the tunnel.
“Lead the way!” Chancey told the alien and got to his feet. He glanced back at me. “It's a friggin' three-ring circus.”
I walked with my hands out, following Chancey and Huff, and though the dirt wall looked solid behind the alien, I went through it as though it were a holograph.
We emerged from the short tunnel and into winter gardens. The alien's people were tending strange bushes that rose like still fountains and spread out in broad circles of yellow and green leafy veils. Plump purple fruit hung in clusters under the spiky leaves. The six-legged, goat-like animals wandered freely among the trees, peeling the fallen fruit with nimble fingers, and chewing, while juice dripped from their lips.
“Come,” our alien guide said and walked ahead.
Here, in the deep valley, there was no snow. The ground was covered with a dark soft mulch. Yellow grass grew in tall patches. Each breeze that brushed my cheek was scented with a sweet aroma, possibly from the ripening fruit. In the background, white huts, not unlike the cottages, were strung across the land until they disappeared behind hillocks where curled-branched trees with red pods grew. Diminutive brown and tan aliens, children I assumed, chased each other and chortled as they ran through the groves.
“Is this a projection?” I asked our guide.
His browless forehead wrinkled and he squeaked out a laugh. “What do you think?”
“I think it's your home.” I glanced back to be certain that Al and his entourage hadn't followed us through the tunnel.
“They will encounter only a solid wall,” our guide said and continued to walk. His gait was flowing, as though he hardly touched the ground.
Huff paused and picked up a ripe fruit that had split open.
“Don't eat that!” I said, “Not even with a digestall, Huff. We have to test the food in the hovair's lab unit.”
He sniffed it. “It smells like a dire.”
“Allow him to ingest,” the guide told me. “You can all eat from this garden.”
“What do you think, Chance?” I asked.
“I think if these aliens wanted us dead, we'd be dead by now.”
“I guess so.” I nodded to Huff.
Chancey eased himself down to the grass, picked up a ripe fruit, brushed it off and extended it to me with his lopsided grin. 'Course I wouldn't mind having a food taster."
“Thanks a lot, tag,” I said. “Maybe it's a slow-acting poison and I'll meet you in geth state when you arrive.” I took the fruit and sniffed it. The aroma was much like a mango, an Earth fruit. Huff slurped his down and licked his lips. I bit into the fruit and chewed. The full flavor of a ripe mango filled my mouth. “This is fantastic,” I told our guide around a mouthful.
Huff swallowed the last piece and licked his paws. “I have not ever tasted such fine dire meat as this purple fine dire fruit.”
“Dire meat, Huff?” I asked.
He licked purple liquid off his mouth. “Dire meat.”
Chancey bit into his and chewed. “Damn, man! That's the best fried chicken I ever ate.”
“What do you call this fruit?” I asked our guide.
“Wholyberry.” He turned and continued toward the huts.
We followed.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You will see when we arrive.”
“How's your side, Chance?”
“Sore.” He rubbed it. “But I think I'll live if the fur ball doesn't fall on me again.”
Huff shook his head from side to side. “You should not be under me when I fall. It is unhealthy.”
“No shit!” Chancey said.
A group of children ran up to us. They chortled and waved skinny arms.
“Hi.” I smiled and extended my hand to touch one child's shoulder.
His amber eyes deepened to gold, hard and shiny as the metal.
I felt a tingle of electricity course through my body and a
sudden tearing open of my mind. I cried out and staggered back as thoughts from Ginny's death burst through and I was reaching again, braced on solid rock, as her small fingers touched mine, her face contorted in terror, and she slipped away and screamed as she plunged down to the valley floor.
Chancey caught me as I fell backward. “What the fuck?” he said.
The child spread thin lips in a grin, showing tiny rows of block teeth.
“Evunn!” our guide said.
“I just wanted to see if it works on an alien,” the kid squeaked.
“I'll show you what works, you little shit!” I made a grab for his smock. I was going to shake him, but he jumped back, out of my reach.
Our guide stepped between us. “If you touch the child again, there will be consequences for the three of you. Do you see now why we cannot co-exist with the alien colonists? This was just a child's unformed tel. We are too powerful. Sooner or later we would destroy the communities without intention. Now follow me!”
Huff picked up a rotted fruit and threw it at the kid. It hit his chest and slid off. Juice dripped down his smock. “Yawya!” he exclaimed.
I gave Huff a thumb-up and he showed those predatory teeth in a smile.
Our guide set a fast pace and led us up to the top of a hillock. From there, we saw the field of dead bristra rotting in the sun. I choked on the stench. “Did your people kill all of it?” I asked him.
“No.” He started along the ridge. “Some retreated to the pass.”
“Great!” I said and followed him. “Are you aware of the properties of bristra?”
“Eternal youth. An end to disease.”
“Is that why you let some get away?”
“I will tell you how old I am, Terran, so that you may inform Alpha of our powers and our claim to this world.” He paused and stared into the valley. “I number my years in the thousands, by Earth's reckoning of time.”
I glanced at Chancey. He raised his brows.
“May I ask,” I asked, “how your people manage that?”
He began to walk again. We followed. “We have complete control over the cells of our bodies. While yours reproduce for a certain amount of time, and then you die, we direct our cells to continue to reproduce.” He waved a slender hand. “Of course, it's more complex than just a simple explanation.”
