by Mars Dorian
“Why are they playing sex in my bed?”
She chuckled. RX walked toward the two naked humanoids and dragged the sweaty male away. His body was soaked in the salty liquid and wreaked of strong pheromones.
Disgusting.
RX clutched the man’s arms and asserted force into his voice.
“You’re smearing my bed. Get away from it.”
The man looked at him with big baby eyes and offered no resistance. RX could have snapped the guy’s humerus with ease. What a pathetic specimen of a man. The female in the bed covered her naked breasts and shouted at RX. Aida translated the snippets.
“She asks why you’re disturbing them.”
“Because they’re playing sex in my bed.”
“They don’t understand.”
Of course they didn’t.
Freaking primitives and their outdated habits.
The young female unit from before touched RX’s shoulder.
“She wants you to go to another house.”
RX was tired of arguing. The colonists’ strange customs confused him with every passing minute. He left the house with the female and reentered the wide street sections of the colony. At least the weather was warm and clear. The sun’s rays brushed RX’s pale skin and sent a sizzling sensation through his limbs. It had been a lifetime since RX came in contact with natural weather. And apart from the frequent coughing, he enjoyed the natural climate.
He looked at the young female and discovered her deep, brown eyes.
“Who are these people in your house?”
Aida translated.
“She doesn’t know what you mean by ‘your house’. She says this house is for everyone.”
“Everyone?”
The young female nodded.
Strange customs indeed.
“You need to hurry with the deciphering, Aida. I want to understand their language as soon as possible and get the hell away from here.”
“I need to get more samples. Just keep speaking while I record all the answers.”
“Fine.”
He strolled around with the young female and commenced chit-chat. Conversation still suffered from misunderstandings, but at least he was gathering sound samples for his AI. RX looked at all the offspring units that hopped around the vast spaces. At least half the population consisted of minors. The streets themselves were divided by parcels. The organic structures lay around the tall ruins that seemed to scratch the sky. Two different architecture styles that didn’t fit together. Not to mention the ginormous highways that connected the colony to the rim territories. Why have such a complex speedway infrastructure when so few settlers used them?
Made no sense.
RX halted near an oval-shaped house wall and inspected it up close under the daylight. The surface seemed to channel the sun energy and changed its plates according to the angle of incidence. Smart houses, probably smarter than the savages that lived in them. RX craved more knowledge about this tech, but he postponed the complex questions until the translation worked. He turned to the young woman’s face and said,
“Do you have an ID?”
“ID?”
“Stands for identification.”
She shook her head.
“How about a label, or a name?”
The woman just could not comprehend.
“Whatever…you want…”
Maybe another translation error, but RX went with it. The young woman pointed at his nose.
“You?”
“RX-88."
The woman hesitated, Aida helped RX navigate the conversation.
“She doesn’t understand the idea of IDs and numbers in names.”
“Well, it’s complicated,” RX said to her, “I’ll explain it to you once we get the language issue fixed.”
She bowed and smiled. Under the daylight, she actually looked attractive. Her features were well placed, the skin healthy brown with a green tint. An interesting circuit decoration graced her face and snaked along her arms, down toward her finger tips. Similar to the patterns he found on the houses. Also, the female didn’t carry that artificial bio-engineered look like Arrow and other premium members of Stryker.
Maybe it was the surface life that kept everyone’s body around here in perfect, natural shape. After all, nature constructed humanoids to live on planets, not above them.
RX continued walking with the female and observed more of the colony's streets.
After ten more misunderstandings, peppered with the occasional chuckle, he headed back to the hall where his APEX awaited him. The idiots in their exosuits still tried to open the spacecraft to no avail. How many hours and tools did they have to waste to realize their tech wasn’t up to the task? RX observed the ten ‘workers’ with fading interest.
“Aida, can’t I just use my beam to scare them a little bit?”
“Killing civilians, even those not part of Stryker Solutions or the US Corps, is against protocols. Exceptions do apply, but not in this case.”
“I mean scaring them, not killing. Ah, whatever.”
He walked toward his cockpit and waved the welders away.
“Aida, tell them to get out of here, I want to sleep.”
The humanoids looked at him like curious bystanders and returned to their work. Dulling another cutter, breaking another crowbar.
“I’m afraid they did not understand,” Aida said.
RX sighed.
“The running gag as of lately. Well, let me speak in a language they will understand.”
He remote-opened the hatch to his cockpit and crawled inside. Activated the weapons systems and manually aimed the beam via the HUD. Aida intervened.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“I’m not going to shoot them. Just scare them a little.”
Aida hesitated.
“Just a signal, no one will get hurt.”
She unlocked the weapon. The beam phased out and cut through the tool table. The workers shrieked and dropped their cutters and welding devices. They looked at each other with fearful faces. RX communicated through the speaker system of his APEX.
“Get out now or you’ll end up like your tools.”
The workers ran screaming out the hall and sealed it shut from the outside. RX laughed so hard his ribs started to hurt again.
“What a bunch of pussies. They don’t even try to put up a fight.”
Aida’s voice rang from the comm channel.
“I think they’re not used to weaponry.”
“Good, that makes them more harmless. Are you still recording the conversations?”
“I’m decoding as we speak. I’ll have the 2000 most common words figured out by tomorrow.”
“Excellent. Stay alert and wake me up when one of these savages tries something stupid.”
“Roger that.”
RX straightened his seat to a horizontal position and rested his body. The lights of his cockpit dimmed, the noises tuned out. He closed his eyes, calmed his breath and slipped into slumber. In dozing mode, he wondered how D12 was doing back at the carrier. He missed his peer unit already.
RX also hoped Stryker would send a search & rescue team to get him back, but deep inside he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Even though he was an APEX pilot, his ranking wasn’t high enough to justify a dispatch. If Arrow went missing however, Stryker would send half a fleet to return her to the carrier. RX snarled. If only he had achieved a 80+ ranking before he crash-landed on this savage land.
If only…
Meh, useless thoughts of a whiner.
He was a soldier unit.
His motto: combat, don’t complain.
Tomorrow, he’d figure out the colonists’ verbal abuse of the English language, talk to the authority and find a way to return to space, one way or another. Besides, not all was lost. He still controlled a somewhat functional APEX and had a superior AI by his side.
Which meant he was the most powerful individual in this colony.
Who could possibly harm him?
25
Knock knock.
“Who’s there?”
The words escaped RX’s mouth before his mind went online. Aida’s gentle voice brought him back to the wakeful.
“You have visitors.”
RX looked through the transparmor of his cockpit and recognized the elderly dame, the young female and a bunch of males who tried to take his APEX apart. They stood in front of his spacecraft and beamed with intense stares. In the distance, the daylight shone through the opened gate and flooded half the hall with the golden rays of the sun. RX straightened his back and slapped his cheeks awake.
“What do they want this time?”
“They want to talk to you…about you.”
RX’s favorite topic.
The older female knocked on his left wing and looked into his cockpit.
“Can you please come out? We’d like to talk to you.”
RX nodded and was ready to open his cockpit when he realized he understood her.
Every single word.
“Aida, did you…?”
“Yes. I managed to decipher the 2344 most used words. I will translate their tongue in real-time so it sounds natural to you.”
Eureka times seven. RX grinned. He wanted to burst from his seat and high-five Aida in the sky.
No more stupid sign language and head-shaking because of annoying misunderstandings.
No more unnatural noises à la ‘ungh’, ‘heh’, ‘ehhhh’ and the classic, ‘mmmmmm’.
Time to set the biz straight.
“What have you found out about their language?”
“It’s actually a simplified version of English mixed with a lot of simplified Mandarin.”
These language fusions happened all the time, especially in reclusive colonies.
RX opened the cockpit and saw the colonists standing back in awe.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a hatch.”
The elderly female raised her right eyebrow. She was probably the oldest person in the hall, but her tan skin and healthy build let assume she was in excellent physical health. All of them, even the offspring units, could model for the next family-friendly Stryker commercial. Maybe a life under a free sky nurtured the body?
RX climbed down his spacecraft and approached the group that gathered around him. He addressed the older lady first and reached out his hand. She responded to his gesture like a malfunctioning grenade that was about to detonate.
So no handshaking in their customs.
RX retracted his hand and put on a polite smile.
“I think we had a couple of misunderstandings. I didn’t mean to disturb your settlement, I was just confused when your men took my spacecraft and tried to cut it apart.”
The female nodded.
“I’m glad we understand each other. Let’s start this encounter anew—what is your name?”
“You mean my product unit number?”
She twitched.
“How do your people call you?”
“Well, the superiors and AIs reference my number, but—“
He paused himself and pondered the possibility.
This was a chance to start fresh.
So why not start with the label?
“Rex. You can call me Rex.”
He said it half-jokingly but no one else smiled.
“So Rex it is. My name is Norma. The woman that you met on your first day of arrival is Bloom.”
The young woman who acted as his guide stepped forward and smiled.
“A pleasure to finally understand you.”
RX nodded at the young woman’s direction. He already felt bad for taking her hostage that night. It was incredible to finally understand these colonists.
“And the man who worked on your machine is called Toyler.”
The guy stepped forward.
RX remembered him as well. He melted half the man’s tool set with the beam. And yet, he didn’t seem resentful. At least not on the surface.
“Listen, I’m sorry for crash-landing in your territory and causing all this ruckus. You seem like peaceful people, but I was frustrated because I was separated from my carrier.”
The older female called Norma spoke again.
“No one died from your actions, so all should be forgiven at this point.”
She paused.
“Have you managed to contact your people?”
A silence followed and brimmed with vibration.
“No, I can’t establish a connection with my carrier. Maybe the distance is too great, or there’s a disturbance in the atmosphere.”
Worse, he didn’t know the carrier’s coordinates since Aida was disconnected from the Stryker Net. But he didn’t feel safe enough to declare that intel. It was better to check and see.
“What kind of vehicle is that?” Norma said.
“It’s a special spacecraft made for both orbital and planetary battle.”
The second he said spacecraft, Norma had a strange twitch in her left eye. Maybe that was a coincidence.
“We have lots to talk about, Rex. I assume you’re hungry, so we should have a hearty breakfast before we discuss details. Why don’t you join us in the commons? The tables are set as we speak.”
“Sounds great.”
Really did. He hoped it was better foodstuff than the bitter rubbish Bloom fed him the other day. RX was desperate for some good nutrients. It looked like the colonists used organic food as a primary energy source. Probably ripe with bacteria as well, but his narnites should take care of them.
“Please follow us outside.”
He joined the group and walked into the sunshine. It was another day with a fluorescent indigo sky and warm sunlight. RX couldn’t remember the last time he walked on a planet’s surface, enjoying real, non-simulated weather effects. Something he didn’t know he even craved. Bloom flanked him from the right and haggled his arm.
“You look so white. Do you use some kind of cream?”
“Where I come from, we don’t get unfiltered sunlight. But you can buy skin upgrades that change into any color you like.”
Bloom’s face grimaced.
“Oh no, that’s terrible.”
“Not really. We have weather sims and artificial light sources that produce Vitamin D.”
He looked up at the sky. Few clouds and massive scope. The heavens seemed even more vast than space.
“But I have to admit I prefer the real deal. Does the sun shine often here?”
“Yes, most of the time. But in the red season, we get lots of rain, too. Just the right mix.”
“Interesting.”
They walked in unison. The citizens who followed him pretended to glimpse at the houses, but RX could tell they were piercing him with stares.
Bloom lit up.
“You’re very popular. We already have a nickname for you—the Spaceman. Because you dropped from high in the sky.”
She snapped her finger. RX shrugged.
“Well, dropping isn’t the right term. I engaged in a crash-landing protocol because space debris messed up my main thruster.”
Bloom rounded her index finger and thumb into an ‘O’.
“What’s the name of this place?”
“We call it Evergreen—paradise for you and me.”
Sounded like a cheap motto for a third-rate intergalactic travel corp, but RX kept his mouth shut.
“Interesting. How come this place isn’t mentioned in any database? Are you part of the US Corps or any other faction?”
She listened to him with curiosity.
“You’re a strange person, Rex. But I’m glad we finally understand each other.”
That's one way of answering a question, RX thought.
“Me too, Bloom. Me too.”
They took a group transporter to the inner section of this settlement. For the first time since his crash-landing, RX felt optimistic. These colonists, despite their strange customs, seemed to be decent folks. He looke
d forward to the feasting and glanced out the windows. The organic buildings flashed by, interrupted by the occasional ruin. Inhabitants traversed the wide street sections and entered their green houses. Offspring units ran around and played road games that involved hopping. Peaceful place, RX thought. If he ever retired from battle, he wouldn’t mind decomposing in a world like this. Easy living, especially with these cool, organic houses and their adaptable tech.
So much to learn about this colony.
Soon.
RX continued inspecting the odd landscape while the rest of the passengers in the transporter chatted each other up, including Bloom. In the periphery of his right eye, he recognized Norma shooting glances at him. She sat on the opposite bench and tried to be discreet about her glimpses, but RX could smell suspicion a klick away. He made a mental note and put her on the watch list: Norma, the leader of the colony with no leaders.
26
RX walked into the hexagon-shaped structure drooling with his mouth wide open. First of all, the hall was big, even bigger than the commons in the carrier. RX counted fifty tables and at least five times as many chairs. Plates with boulders of meat, green slices and other unknown food begged to be eaten. RX once watched a feed about how the ancient kings and queens dined back on Terra. He thought it was all fiction, but apparently, the tradition was well alive within the four walls of Evergreen.
“You can close your mouth now,” Norma said.
RX realized it was still open.
“Are you celebrating something special?”
“Everyday above ground is something special, wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends on whom you are serving,” he said.
“You can sit between me and Bloom if you like.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Since Norma seemed to be the authority, it was time to bring back courtesy. RX plopped his butt in the chair and enjoyed how the backrest adapted to his spine. Bloom filled his glass with a transparent liquid and flicked a wink. Norma waited till everyone in the hall sat down. RX watched everyone’s faces. Multiple shapes of greenish brown.
“Are these the most important members of your community?”
