Kate’s pilot was a very tall, heavy, dark, and taciturn man named Paul Ironhorse. Redfire checked out his background, found he was from Sapphire, Boreala Continent — Brendan Frost Land, specifically, one of the few places on the planet he had never been. A large grassy island archipelago, with active volcanoes where herds of lycobeasts pounded the plains. Redfire sat behind Ironhorse on the command deck, with the Mission’s Medical Technician, a Republicker with the unlikely and unbecoming moniker Adpansia Gilbert. He called her Addy. Redfire turned away from the view, “It seems pretty quiet out there.”
“They could all be sleeping,” Addy said. “With a night cycle this long, and so very cold, they might go into a state of hibernation to wait it out. It would help them conserve energy more efficiently.”
“Only if they’ve lived on the dark-side for a couple hundred generations,” said Redfire.
“They’re basically human, after all.”
“That’s a point of contention,” Addy said. “There’s a certain body of evidence that human colonists were genetically altered to match the climates and biospheres of the planets they colonized.”
Redfire shook his head a little irritably. “That’s not really my area of expertise. I think the real question is, when are we going to find a planet with nightlife?”
Kate plunged through a cloudbank, assaulted by an army of ice pellet hail. The topography display showed the mountainous terrain below, invisible in the darkness. Addy shrugged. “You never know. All of the outer colonies could be underdeveloped.”
“Two thousand years should have sorted out the winners from the losers. There’s probably about a billion variables that go into making or breaking a civilization.”
Ironhorse spoke. “Human culture rises and falls in cycles, across many worlds.”
“What does that mean?” Addy asked.
“We just might be going to worlds on the bottom of their cycles.”
“This is the kind of thing the Captain gets off on,” said Redfire. “Anthro-sociological speculation. I hope this world gives him something to chew on.”
Eden – The Dayside
About forty of the birdmen had arrived, more or less surrounding Zilla and Yorick, but they had kept their distance, staring at the landing party, keeping weapons close at hand but not attacking. Keeler did not particularly like the “birdmen” nomenclature, but for the moment, there was no avoiding it.
The birdmen shouted unintelligibly at one another and occasionally tried to address the landing team, but linguistic differences had yet to be worked out. The Edenian language reminded the captain less of any language he had heard on his own world, and more of the noise a herd of un-genetically-enhanced cats might make if they were being chased by a herd of pianos during a thunderstorm.
“How much longer?” Keeler asked.
“The LingoTron is still assembling a language matrix.” Alkema was feeding LingoTron samples of the birdmen’s chatter in an attempt to decipher the local dialect. “It’s not ... too…
easy.”
Keeler looked over to Lt. Cmdr. Honeywell, the lead Marine; a Republicker close to his own age and perhaps older, built with the brute, purposeful muscularity of one of those statues of Warrior-Heroes of the Unification Wars that lined every street of Republic’s City of Consensus. Keeler found the resemblance reassuring under the circumstances. “Pegasus is aware of our situation?” he inquired.
“Affirmative,” Honeywell answered, not taking his eyes from the birdmen. “There’s two Aves with reinforcements in orbit. They can be here in two minutes if we need an assist.”
“Let’s hope we don’t.” Keeler had already ordered most of the landing teams to stay inside, or close to, the ships, or at least close to the ships.
“Agreed,” said Honeywell.
Keeler leaned over. “What’s your analysis of the situation?”
“This is a scouting party,” he answered. “Every few minutes a new one arrives and an old one returns to the base to tell them what we’re up to. They’re holding back until they can discern what our intentions are.”
“Sounds good to me.” The Captain chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. On his mind, how to demonstrate peaceful intentions in a non-verbal way. He had considered food, but what if their food was toxic to the Edenians, or tasted bad? What if the gesture was interpreted as a sign of weakness, of appeasement? “We’ve got to find some common ground,” he muttered.
“How’s that, sir?”
“Common ground... something unambiguous to convey our peaceful intentions, and hopefully promote the kind of dialogue the LingoTron can decipher. He looked across the field toward the apparent leader of the birdmen, the one who had landed first and had the least amount of crud on his armor. He was about 200 meters away, and Keeler began walking toward him.
“Captain,” I wouldn’t advise that, said Honeywell.
Keeler ignored him. He continued walking toward the lead birdman. He began to sing.
“I know of a girl
Whose hair is black as night
They say she never shares her favors
But they say her sister might.”
The birdmen regarded him quizzically. Alkema stood up from the computer, saw what his Captain was doing, and hesitated only momentarily before joining in on the second verse. Through rose and thorn I traveled,
Alas, her sister foiled my stealth
If I can’t play with your sister, dear
I’ll have to play with myself
The song was quite old, a traditional drinking song in the taverns of the University District in New Cleveland, as well known to the university’s alumni as the Armpit Avengers fight song, but less likely to be sung in the den on Bountiful Harvest Day.?
“When her maidenhead was broken,
I was called to account for her shame
I told her father, Sure as I’m standing
It was like that when I came.”
They had crossed the field, and stood only a few meters from the birdman leader, whose hand hovered near the knife on his belt and twitched slightly. Honeywell raised his pulse cannon.
Keeler and Alkema did not move a muscle. The leader slowly dropped his hand away from his knife belt, and approached them. Keeler and Alkema stood. The Marines tensed. Everyone seemed to know, this was it.
Alkema did not take his eyes off the approaching figure, but said quietly, “Clever idea, Captain. It’s hard to look threatening when you’re singing a drinking song.”
“Especially when you sing it as badly as I did,” Keeler whispered. The birdman stood before them. Very tall, easily higher than two meters. His head mostly hidden by the goggles and helmet, but the wings were what drew the eyes. They were large, covered in what looked more like leather than feathers, with an elaborate colorful design across them. When the sun was directly behind, a faint network of veins appeared.
“Ezhvergh roan chollo Altama cheskova,”he said. “Hroth.”
“Hroth,” Keeler repeated.
Hroth slowly reached across his belt and removed a large, heavy-handled knife. He slowly extended the knife toward Captain Keeler and held it before him.
“This is the tricky part,” Keeler said. “If I take the knife, am I accepting a peace offering, or am I accepting an offer to engage in combat to the death?”
“What are you going to do?” Alkema whispered.
“Normally, I’d offer my jacket, an unambiguously peaceful gesture, but I don’t think it would fit over his... uh, ...” A clever way of referring to his wings did not come to him.
“...wings,” he finished.
“Ezhvergh roan chollo Altama cheskova,” the birdman repeated.
“So what do we do now? His arm is probably getting tired.” Alkema asked.
“I could let him have you.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
Keeler removed his gloves from the large pocket at the front of his underjacket and handed them toward the birdman, holding his other hand b
elow the knife. The birdman took the gloves gently and dropped the knife into Keeler’s palm.
“Thank you,” said Keeler with a slight bow of his head. He tested the tip of the blade against his thumb, and a bead of red blood appeared without his even being aware of any sense of penetration. He grasped it by the handle.
“So, you would be ... Hroth?” Keeler said, gesturing toward the man.
“Hroth,” the man repeated.
Keeler touched his own chest. “Keeler.”
“Keeler,” the man repeated.
Keeler gestured toward Alkema with the knife. “Alkema,” he said.
“Elk-ma,” the birdman repeated.
“I think the LingoTron is onto something,” Alkema said. “Keep talking.”
Keeler gestured to himself. “Captain William Keeler, of the Pathfinder ship Pegasus, leader of the Eden Expedition and all-around swell.” He handed the microphone to Hroth.
“Arch gardisto Hroth de Altime prefecture dua ordono.”
“We ... we come in peace?” Keeler ventured.
“Whack ream you buskin in Altama Prefecture?”
“We’re getting something,” Alkema reported.
“I certainly hope so.”
“Kiun do you your dealt suldi?”
A sudden electronic chirp caused Keeler to look to the LingoTron. Words and colors were flashing across it in an excited manner. “It’s got a hard-on for something.”
Alkema agreed. “It’s latched onto a likely language matrix and its resolving the variables. I think we might have it, Captain.”
Parameters resolved
The LingoTron announced.
“We’ve got it,” said Alkema.
When the lead birdman spoke again, his voice was channeled into a small ear-speaker embedded in their jacket collars. “High Guardsman Hroth of the Altama Prefecture, Second Command.”
“Za!,” Keeler announced. He faced Hroth. “Captain Keeler, of the Pathfinder ship Pegasus.”
The Lingotron spat out the sentence in the native language. Hroth looked perplexed.
“No corresponding language for pathfinder ship,” Alkema explained. “It’s translating now... ‘a ship that charts a course among the stars.’”
Hroth looked up to the sky, then over at the Aves.
“Your manner of conveyance is unknown to us,” said Guardsman Hroth. “What is the purpose of your arrival here and to which Prefecture will you give fealty?”
“We come on a mission of exploration. We have sought out your world because it was known to us as a colony of the Galactic Commonwealth.” Alkema transmitted the matrix from the LingoTron to the central processing unit on Zilla, from whence it was networked to the entire landing party.
“Will you ally yourself with the Altama Prefecture?”
“We know nothing of this Altama Prefecture of which you speak,” Keeler told him. “But we seek friendship wherever we may find it.”
“Altama Prefecture is where you have landed your ships,” Hrother answered gravely. “The Scion Altama will wish an audience with you,” Hroth told them. “You may accompany me back to the citadel, but you must leave your weapons behind. A force of Low Guardsmen will escort you.”
Or take us prisoner, Keeler thought. “Escort us to the citadel... you must mean the town we passed, a few klicks from here.”
Hroth favored them with a slight nodding bow.
“Do all of the people on this planet have wings?” Alkema asked.
“Only the High Guardsmen,” Hroth answered.
“Are you born with wings, or are they attached later.”
Hroth gave him a look as though the question was asinine, and Alkema supposed it would have been an asinine question if he knew what the answer was.
The Captain heard Honeywell’s voice in his earpiece. “Forty Edenians approaching, bearing 077.”
“That must be the Low Guardsman now,” Keeler muttered.
The Low Guardsmen entered the field, marching in-line in four columns. They were all huge, but this was not so remarkable. Their enormous shoulders and arms were encased in a kind of golden armor and chain-mail arrangement, topped by gold helmets, but this was also not so remarkable. Their weaponry consisted of things that were sharp, heavy, and intended for close quarters, although the short-spears might have made useful projectiles, but this was not so remarkable either.
What set the landing party agape was the guardsmen’s thick rough gray skin they wore like living armor. Bony plates stuck out from their hands, positioned so as to serve in the capacity of both weapons and shields. Horns and ridges protected their faces and eyes, and from their upper and lower jaws, huge teeth, like tusks, protruded.
Alkema stared on wide-eyed, while Keeler imagined what the USNC groundball recruiter might have offered to secure some of the guardsmen as players.
“By your leave,” said Hroth, bowing slightly. “I have to tell them not to kill you.”
His wings unfolded, blocking out the sun. As he lifted off, he looked less like an angel, less like a bird than just a man, leaping into the air, and going very much higher than that leap should have taken him. As he reached the top of his jump, the wings took over him and beat down, lifting him still higher into the air.
Sitting in the hatch of the ship, Toto shook his head. “This is the damndest place... I never thought any place could be this strange.”
“How do they do that, Captain?” Alkema whispered.
Keeler shook his head. “Directed evolution? Genetic engineering?”
“But how? this planet barely possesses the technology for electric lights.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think they could be aliens?”
Keeler hushed him as the leader of the Low Guardsmen approached, his eyes dark and invisible behind his helmet and bone structure. Hroth walked beside him. “I have instructed him and his his guards to escort you to the Citadel Altama. My guards will follow from the air. The Scion will receive you before his Second-Best Palace.”
“Are we your guests or are we your prisoners?” Keeler asked.
Hroth seemed puzzled by the question. Alkema explained. “The Lingotron translated both words, roughly, as ‘captives.’”
“They don’t make a distinction.”
“If they do, Lingotron hasn’t figured it out yet.”
Keeler thought for a moment, “Let me consult with my people.”
Hroth stared at him. “I will permit that. Explain to them that they will be received by the Scion and probably not killed.”
The Marines were still standing in a wide V, protecting the non-Marine portion of the Landing Party. Keeler approached Honeywell, “Did you get all of that?” he asked. Honeywell nodded, and turned off the open channel to Keeler’s comm-link.
“Your assessment?”
“Tactically, it’s a tough call Captain. In close quarters, we might be able to take them out with pulse compression grenades, but that thick skin and bone,” he shook his head.
“What about us?”
“Landing Gear would protect us, if we’re fully-suited, helmets and all.”
Keeler looked back to the Guardsmen. His intuition told him if they had come to slaughter the party, they would have done so by now, or at least tried. Instead, they were to be taken to the leader. Keeler thought they’d make it.
“Get everybody suited up. The Marines will come with us, in case we have to fight our way back to the ships. Pilots will leave their ships in hot stand-by for immediate take-off.”
“Aye, sir”
“Everybody else wears pulse-cannons on both wrists.” He fixed Honeywell with a dead-serious look in his eyes. “Nobody dies this time.”
Eden – The Farside
Kate and Neville had set down, in the middle of a chilly meadow, sinking slightly into the soft, moist soil, Neville to the immediate right of the back edge of Kate’s wing.
“Air is clean and breathable. No signs of microbial pathogens. External pressure is at 220
millibars. Ext
ernal temperature, 2 degrees Earthscale, and falling,” Adpansia Gilbert reported from her monitoring station at the front of Kate’s Main Deck.
“Anybody around?” Redfire asked, leaning over a sensor station.
“There’s a village less than a klick from here,” Gilbert reported. “I think they saw us flying over-head. I’m reading elevated adrenaline and hormone levels. I think we may have caused some excitement. I’m reading individual vitals signs... and I think they’re beginning to gather in a common structure.”
Redfire looked out over the settlement. The floater probe hanged at treetop height, had there been any trees, and provided an overview of the settlement, processed into natural daylight colors. The dwellings were low, constructed of stone and hidden among thick brush and rocks. They were small, from what he could tell, much smaller even than the average quarters on board Pegasus. The village followed no regular layout of streets, but a network of narrow, almost invisible alleyways.
It was kind of pretty, Redfire thought. It recalled the reconstructed Landfall Settlement at the Colonial Museum in Corvallis.
“I’m picking up a lot of life signs moving into the hills,” said another technician. “I think we scared them.”
Redfire spared her a glance. Her name was Anne Hulley. She came from the port city of Matthias on the northern coast of Oz continent, Sapphire. From an upper-class family with a fortune in shipping. No family on Pegasus, but a brother on Olympic. Redfire had always found examining the personnel files of his landing team to be the most efficient way of getting to know them.
“Captain,” said the Marine, Caleb Sikorsky, (City of Peace, Republic, pregnant wife on board Pegasus). “I think they’ve decided what to do about us.”
“What’s that?” Redfire returned to the scanner. About twenty of the returns had left the common gathering place and were approaching there position.
Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld Page 6
