The Sha'lee Resurrection

by Paul G White

  But Erwe knew she had little time for such extravagances; somewhere out in the ocean a tsunami was relentlessly building its destructive power as it headed towards landfall. From the scale of the aftermath of the meteor strike so far, Erwe had every reason to suspect that the tidal wave would be gigantic. All that she could hope for was time; and if the event had taken place far enough away, she might – just might – have enough of that precious commodity to reach the safety of the Comora. So far, she had refused even to contemplate the fate of the Comora. As far as she was concerned, the mighty ship would be there, waiting to pick up survivors. To Erwe, any other scenario was beyond contemplation.

  Progress was pitifully slow. Tane had been shattered by the catastrophe, and he had receded into the depths of his own mind. Somehow, Erwe knew she must break down the barrier Tane had thrown up within his mind to isolate himself from the dangerous reality of the disaster and their perilous situation. But she was not a medic and did not have the necessary knowledge – or the time.

  As she guided her companion around the shattered remains of yet another massive tree, Erwe felt Tane’s arm slip sideways out of her grasp. He cannoned into the still smoking stump, sending a plume of sparks skyward, and ricocheted and slid downslope into a mound of charred flesh that had once been a duck-billed dinosaur. With a horrid squelching sound, his impetus carried him though the brittle covering of the ribcage and into the cavernous interior.

  Erwe watched in horror as the events unfolded, and she was certain that this would be the last straw that would completely unhinge Tane’s fragile grip on reality, perhaps to the point where she would be forced to leave him behind in order to give herself a chance of survival.

  She was astonished to hear an agonised mental wail, ERWE-E-E-E! HELP ME! emanating from the interior of the carcase, and see long fingers grasping the ragged edges of his point of entry, attempting to tear out an escape route. Erwe reached in and grasped Tane’s gory hand, and hauled him out into the open air. He was breathing heavily but his eyes, which for some little while had been empty of any sign of animation, were now imbued with fire.

  Tane shuddered, and bits of charred flesh dripped from his clothing. “That was utterly disgusting,” he growled as he wiped half-congealed blood from his face with the back of his hand. “No one should ever have to suffer anything like that.”

  Erwe smiled in relief. “I for one am grateful that you did, because it brought you out of your mind loop. I was even wondering if I would have to leave you behind.” Denying Tane the time to protest, she scanned the distant horizon. “There’s a tsunami on its way,” she announced. “I don’t know when it will reach land, but we’ve lost too much time and we need to get going.”

  Thinking about the imminent tsunami reminded Erwe that she needed to gain more height. So far, she had been forced by Tane’s breakdown to pick out a fairly lateral pathway across the hillside, but now that Tane was rational once more they could select a more adventurous route. So, despite the steepness of the terrain, she angled her pathway towards a point at the top of the ridge, more than two kilometres away – two kilometres nearer to the Comora. Every time they negotiated a fallen tree, Erwe glanced fearfully out over the ocean, expecting to see a wall of water approaching, but all she saw was dirty mist on the horizon. Tane could not avoid the outwash of her fear, and picked up his pace despite the weariness that was eating into his strength. Gaining height wherever she could, Erwe found their path blocked by a rocky crag, and once again glanced out to sea before making the decision on how to negotiate the obstacle. Tane followed her gaze, first with his mind and then with his own eyes.

  From their elevated position, they noticed that the white coral sand of the beach had grown broader, and the two Sha’lee stared in fascination as the water swiftly receded from the shore as if being sucked out to sea, baring still more sand. The ocean continued to recede until, eventually, a coral reef several kilometres out to sea lay exposed to the air. What was happening? Were they, by some strange quirk of fate, to be afforded the necessary time to reach the safety of the Comora?

  And then Erwe saw it! What she had for some minutes imagined to be mist and smoke on the horizon was, in actuality, a vast wall of water more than a thousand metres high, hurtling towards land at breakneck speed.

  Erwe screamed, “Climb, Tane! Climb for your life!”

  With renewed vigour born out of terror, Tane leapt five metres up the sheer rock face, utilising the springy quality of the muscles and tendons in his strangely jointed legs, which had evolved on far off Sha’lee’an as a means of escaping predators. Even before they had developed intelligence, primitive Sha’lee had been able to leap up trees and bound up steep cliffs, courtesy of their radically evolved leg joints and muscles. As he grasped at the rock face, Tane’s toes instinctively gained the necessary purchase and he leapt upwards once more, continuing in a series of bounds until he reached the top. Erwe took one more fearful look at the approaching wave and then fled up the cliff face, automatically replicating her companion’s moves and handholds.

  Breathless at the cliff top, the two survivors of the doomed field expedition turned to watch the approaching tidal wave, and they saw the vast wall of water envelop the reef and rip the coral from the sea bed as if it were no more substantial than foam. The crest of the immense wave was beginning to tumble now as its foot dragged against the rising sea bed, ripping up cubic kilometres of rock and coral and sand; and from their high viewpoint at the top of the cliff, Erwe calculated that the wave top would hit the hillside a little short of where they were standing. They had done everything they could to escape but, in truth, their headlong flight been utterly futile. All that was left for them was to enjoy the spectacle; so Erwe and Tane held each other close and made themselves as comfortable as they could, with their legs dangling over the precipice. Silently, they let their minds flow together as they made their peace with the gods of Sha’lee’an.

  With no knowledge of the distance still separating her from the Comora, Erwe separated her mind from that of her companion, closed her eyes to isolate herself from her surroundings, and gathered together all her mental strength. With a mighty effort, she projected a final farewell to their friends on the starship, not knowing whether anyone would ‘hear’ her cry, but feeling certain in her heart that it was the right thing to do.

  The crest of the tsunami made landfall a little lower down the slope than Erwe had calculated, and the violence of the raging water scoured soil and rocks and house-sized boulders from the hillside, driving the debris remorselessly up the steep incline. Powered by the irresistible rush of the tidal wave, the suspended debris ripped away the crest of the ridge as if it were a heap of fallen leaves and flooded over onto the slopes on the other side, surging downwards in a homogenous soup of mud and water hundreds of metres deep.

  With their minds locked together once more for mutual solace, Erwe and Tane watched the spectacle until the last moment, and then closed their eyes as they were consigned to oblivion beneath several hundred metres of mud and rock and sand and charred vegetation and mangled flesh.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The communications operative, Axolin speared a telepathic warning at Captain Lessil, and in response to the tone of the warning, Lessil dropped everything to give her his immediate attention. The two remaining officers on board, Hollifal and Cray were already beside Axolin at the banks of screens which filled a long wall of the bridge of the Comora.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Captain, you should listen to this.”

  Axolin touched a key and the panicky voice of Tane filled the bridge. The driver’s words were almost incoherent, but they were able to pick out the phrases, “—major meteor strike to the northwest . . . distance uncertain . . . groundcar disabled. We are making our way back to the ship on foot . . . out!”

  Lessil was instantly fully alert. “Bring it up on screen, Comm-op and let us see what we have.”

  Several square metres of screens mer
ged to show real-time video images of the impact from the Comora’s forward cameras. The ejecta from the strike were rapidly climbing towards the stratosphere and the voice of the ship’s AI added commentary on the event. Columns of numbers filled a corner of the display and Lessil’s eyes widened as he read the data regarding the size of the impact: it was immense! The fiery cloud mushrooming into space was hundreds of kilometres across, and the AI estimated a crater size approaching three hundred kilometres diameter. This was a disaster of global proportions and the captain immediately issued orders for every ground expedition to return to the ship at maximum speed – even if it meant leaving the odd straggler behind. As captain of the Comora, Lessil had made the decision that anyone separated from his ground vehicle by more than a few minutes was already doomed, and to delay return to the ship whilst stragglers made their way back would threaten the safety of the rest of their party.

  More panicky cries came from the units out in the field as people reported in; but Lessil could tell from the information flooding through the communications panel that things were going badly. He had decided to allow almost the full complement of the starship to take part in the survey of the flora and fauna of this island, and now he wondered if he would have cause to regret it. At present, there were twenty souls on board, too few by almost a hundred to raise the ship from the planet and crew her on the next stage of their journey between the stars. The captain could only hope that his crew would make it back in sufficient numbers to enable the Comora to lift off into the safety of space, and avoid the aftermath of the meteor strike.

  Lessil gave orders for the ship’s shield to be activated and maintained at fifty per cent. Should any of the crews make it back to the ship, it would take only seconds to deactivate the shield to permit entry and then bring it up to half power once again. If the heat from the impact reached the Comora, Lessil wanted to be certain it would not penetrate the hull. The gentle hum pervading all the inner decks and walls of the starship increased momentarily, and then settled down at a slightly higher pitch as the shield blossomed outwards from the hull. Now, all they could do was await the arrival of field expeditions. Meanwhile, the banks of communications screens were alive with images of heaving vegetation from the forward cameras, as the ground cars ploughed their way back to the ship over the rough terrain.

  Hollifal spotted a dark speck in the sky, which grew rapidly larger; one of the three aircars was approaching at high speed over the bay. The vehicle began shedding speed as it crossed the line of the beach, and by the time it reached the edge of the plateau, the pilot was able to bring it down in a controlled vertical descent. Seconds later the car settled on the ground on a cushion of air as a second aircar and then a third came into view over the jungle. Captain Lessil made a quick calculation: thirty-three crew to join the twenty currently on board. Better numbers, but still insufficient to raise the starship.

  As the leading aircar dropped the last few centimetres, the canopy flew open and the passengers tumbled out carrying their equipment and samples. Lessil gave the order for the screen to be deactivated and the main transport hatch opened. But before he had voiced the command in full, he saw the two airborne vehicles explode in mid-flight and the slopes below the ship erupt in flames, followed instantly by the grounded aircar and everyone around it. The Comora’s sensors registered a sudden increase in temperature of almost fifteen-hundred degrees, and the defence screen shimmered and sparkled as power surged to repel the superheated air and burning debris. Axolin turned her head away from her console and retched at the horror of Sha’lee lives snuffed out so violently and emphatically.

  She was still retching when the blast wave, following in the wake of the intense heat, levelled all the trees downslope and propelled them like giant spears at the hull of the Comora. But the ship’s shield had been designed to withstand the impact of particles of space dust, moving at near light speed and carrying far greater kinetic energy despite their tiny dimensions. The burning vegetation followed curved pathways around the ship’s shield, leaving patterns of sparks fountaining behind. The effect would have been beautiful if anyone had been able to appreciate it.

  The blast wave passed around the mighty starship, leaving her hull completely unscathed, and creating a silence in its wake that was utterly oppressive. The decks and walls of the Comora seemed to resonate with squeaks and groans, overlaid with the humming of the power plant, which built into a cacophony of complaint. Captain Lessil stared at the white faces around him. Everyone was in a state of shock, and Axolin was sprawled over her communication console, still retching feebly. The situation called for decisive action.

  “Hela,” Lessil yelled at the AI, trying hard to keep the edge of fear from his tone, “please detail what we should expect to happen next.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The AI paused for a moment, giving the impression of a Sha’lee considering the order. “My databanks suggest that we should expect a wall of water to approach at high speed over the ocean, and from the size of the meteor impact, I infer that the Comora is in great danger of inundation by the wave. All crew on board should take the precaution of strapping themselves into emergency harnesses, because all my data suggest that there will be considerable movement, which is certain to be extremely violent.”

  “Thank you.” Lessil addressed Axolin, gently but firmly, “Axolin, please relay the information to everyone on board. Let everyone know it is my order that they strap in to their harnesses.”

  Axolin raised her head wearily. The prolonged bout of retching had left her wrung out, but she could still follow orders. “Yes, Captain.” She passed Lessil’s order to the remaining sixteen crewmembers at present dotted around the huge vessel. When the last one had acknowledged, she turned to Lessil and said, “It is done, Captain.” She paused for a few moments before saying, “Captain?”

  “Yes, Axolin?”

  “Sir, I request permission to remain at my station in case other crews try to contact the Comora.”

  “Very commendable!” Lessil was impressed with the comm-op’s devotion to duty, despite the fact that she, more than anyone else, had felt the loss of her crewmates outside the ship on the deepest emotional level. He glanced at Hollifal and Cray in turn, before saying, “I will stay with Axolin on the bridge. The pair of you will strap into your safety harnesses immediately. Quickly, there is little time.”

  “But Captain—” Cray protested.

  But Lessil’s voice was steely as he repeated his order, adding, “My order is not for negotiation. Go now!”

  With a backward glance at their captain, the two officers hurried away to the nearest harness points to secure themselves against the fury that was soon to be unleashed upon the mighty starship, leaving Lessil and Axolin alone on the bridge.

  Lessil opened a locker and took out a number of lengths of webbing. Then, working as hurriedly as he could, he bound Axolin to her chair, which was securely bolted to the deck. When he was satisfied that the communications operative was as comfortable as the situation would allow, Lessil commenced strapping himself into an adjacent chair.

  The AI’s voice said, “The tidal wave is about to make landfall. I suggest you make haste, Captain.”

  Lessil almost gave vent to an uncharacteristic expletive at the AI’s unwanted commentary, but all he offered in reply was, “I am doing the best I can.”

  At that moment, a mental cry filled the bridge: it was Erwe’s final farewell to all the friends and companions she had known on the Comora. She said, GOODBYE TO EVERYONE I HAVE KNOWN, AND MAY OUR SPIRITS MEET AGAIN ON FAR OFF SHA’LEE’AN.

  Captain Lessil paused for a few vital seconds to ‘hear’ Erwe’s last words, and so failed to fasten the last part of his protective webbing. The tsunami engulfed the starship Comora, picking up the huge vessel in its roiling waters and driving her all the way to the crest of the ridge, which formed the backbone of the island. The crew, including Axolin, who was fastened securely into her chair, were thrown violently about in their h
arnesses; but the safety webbing was designed to protect crewmembers during the most extreme emergency landings, and in every case, it conformed to design specifications.

  Despite his haste, Captain Lessil had been unable to properly secure his webbing, and as he was thrown about in his seat by the ferocity of the Comora’s passage up the slope, the straps unravelled piece by piece, placing him at the mercy of the violent motion. Once his straps had completely unwound, he slid from his seat and caromed from wall to wall, until he was a bruised and bloodied heap on the floor of the bridge, sliding this way and that with every succeeding cant and slope of the deck.

  At a point below the ridge, the tsunami lost its power to move the immense ship, and the Comora settled for a few seconds before the water began to recede. Then movement commenced once again, and the ship slid downslope, cocooned in a soup of seawater, rocks and mud. The motion continued for some minutes as the seawater drained slowly away, leaving behind a sea of mud, with occasional dirty boulders breaking the surface. Where the mud had been weakest and most fluid, deep channels scarred the slope and ran down to the turgid sea.

  Of the starship Comora, there was no sign.

  *

  In the ensuing silence Hollifal stirred. His head was spinning from the craziness of the ship’s motion up the slope and its return to its present position – wherever that was. He turned his head in his harness to see how the movement had affected his fellow officer; Cray was just unfastening the last of his webbing. They, at least, had survived, which augured well for the rest of those on board. He thought of Captain Lessil and the comm-op, Axolin, and his spirits sank. If the violent movement of the ship had left him feeling disorientated and sick, then what had it done to their captain and comm-op, who had been unprotected?