by Blaze Ward
Not them.
They were the scions of generations of service, intermarried almost to incestuous degrees. Money. Power. Connections. The right boarding schools. The right summer vacations at the same wealthy enclaves and terra–formed moons. She could still see their sneers as they welcomed her, the poor girl who had risen so far above her station. So far.
She was never accepted. Never one of them. She remembered her last commanding officer explaining that she was good enough to promote, but lacked the interest of powerful players to advance her career. She was dead–ended. It was enough to drive her to resign and strike out into deep space, where people like that didn’t control her destiny.
And now, sitting right next to her, looking down his nose at her, another one of them. Another educated elite prick, from the Concord Academy on Bryce, no less, who thought she was just a well–trained bulldog bitch.
Captain Sokolov was the only superior who had ever looked at her as a person. He had rescued her from falling into the pit itself when she lost her way, given her a place again, a purpose, a job. He was the Captain.
So Djamila seethed. She considered just smashing Aritza into the bulkhead, like last time. It would be rewarding to pound on him.
But wouldn’t that lend credence to his belief that she was just another dumb gun bunny? Wouldn’t that prove them right about her? Excellent for kicking in doors, but not someone you invite to a cocktail party? A well–trained bulldog bitch?
She wouldn’t let them win.
Her jaw hurt from grinding her teeth.
Djamila blinked, surprised at the sudden swell of emotions that flowed over her. Normally, she was calmness itself. This runt just somehow pushed all her buttons.
She would have to work on that. And prove them, him, wrong.
She smiled hard. Very wrong.
Ξ
The ride down was smoother than Javier had ever experienced in any assault shuttle. It was more like riding in a VIP transport with an Admiral.
He really liked this pilot.
And the crazy ogre lady had left him alone for the whole trip.
He had been half–expecting more grief from her. Lord knew, he was dancing right up on the edge of rude. It was like poking a sleeping bear, or a missing tooth. Irresistible.
And she had a short fuse. But those military types, all structure and order and pattern, really grated on him. He just couldn’t resist. Chickens were still better company.
More than once, Javier had opened his eyes to glance over at the Dragoon, wondering if she had fallen asleep. But the eyes had been open, just lost deep in thought. Probably planning firing lanes and organizing watch shifts. Something very military.
Outside, the whistle of air over the hull was augmented by a soft thump as the wings began to deploy, softly biting into the thickening air. Javier yawned and stretched. He really liked this pilot.
Ξ
Lemuel looked up in mild surprise at the sound of thunder. The day had dawned clear and cool, with a nice autumn breeze. There should be no rain.
A glint of light in the northern sky. Movement. It took his brain several more seconds to process the image as the giant, gray–black bird resolved itself into an aircraft approaching, orbiting twice, and then flying off to the east to the grassy plain where the herdbeasts calved in the spring.
It had been years since technology.
A stray though flitted across his mind. Others were coming. Strangers come to violate his virgin wilderness. He would have to welcome them properly. He walked a few steps down the hill to where Anya, Mohr, and Thomas were buried. They had not lasted long enough to see this day.
Lemuel glanced back at the wreckage he had called home for so long, smiled, and strode down the path to the river.
Welcome them properly.
Ξ
Javier watched Sykora move with an economy of grace. For a woman who was all knees and elbows and shoulders, there was not a wasted motion or a foot put wrong. He still didn’t like her, but he could respect pure professionalism when it bit him on the ass.
As long as she didn’t actually bite him on the ass.
He smiled to himself and stayed out of her way as he tossed the sensor remote into the air and let it baseline the area around the shuttle.
The air had a strange smell, but every new planet did. It’s what happened when you got away from industrial air–processors and let plants and oceans clean things. It was also cool, a sunny day low on the horizon, so either spring or fall, depending.
Javier dialed down the sensitivity on the remote and pushed the scan range out as far as it would go. The original wreck was about six kilometers northeast, tucked up in a small valley drained by a creek. In another twenty minutes, he would have a very detailed map about halfway out. The rest would have to wait until they got around some hills for direct scanning.
There were quite a few creatures nearby, four–legged animals that seemed to be the local version of elk or antelope. Javier turned and located Sykora in the organizing mess of landing. Once more, just because. “Hey,” he called, “any chance I can have a sidearm for protection?”
The look he got in return could have smashed a glacier. Javier suddenly understood the term ‘staring daggers.’ “You’ve got me,” was all she said in reply.
Well, then. All–righty. Javier opened his field pack and put on a floppy hat.
Javier found a landing skid that was cool enough and plopped down. He pulled a screwdriver from his kit and opened the side of the portable. When nobody was paying attention, he palmed the chip that had Suvi on it and plugged her into the side of the little computer. It was going to be a tiny shoebox compared to the castle she was used to living in, but it was something. And he could use somebody to talk to right now that he didn’t want to see hung from the highest yardarm in space.
Javier muted the speakers and waited. She didn’t take long
Where am I?
Javier typed quickly on the rudimentary keyboard. This was not a conversation to have while surrounded by the bad guys listening in.
Pirates caught us. Trashed the ship. I hid you. You’re plugged into the sensor drone’s command portable. They don’t know about you. Keep it that way. JA
He couldn’t imagine she liked the idea, but there wasn’t much she could do.
Where are we?
Campeche 7, still. Wrecked starship nearby they want to loot. We have to help.
They’re pirates!!!
And we’re not dead. Survival first. Vengeance later. Promise.
Javier figured it was a draw. Hopefully, Suvi would listen for a while and understand where they were. Having her available just doubled his chances.
And now, the mucking in the mud part.
Unlike all the hard–edged military sophistication around him, his gear was, beyond the sensor remote, decidedly low–tech, almost stupidly so. A magnetic compass. Matches. Pencil and paper for hand–made maps and notes. He did have a small knife, but it was made from a steel alloy and sharpened on a stone. It didn’t even vibrate or have a laser–cutting edge, or a mono–molecular razor–sharp blade. Just a knife.
Javier pulled out a nifty little plastic hiking trinket he had picked up years ago. It had a very cheap magnetic compass, a thermometer, and the symbols you should make in the dirt in an emergency, for people searching for you. He clipped it onto the outside of his jacket and marveled. Way better impulse buy at a feed supply store than any candy bar had ever been.
Around him, Sykora’s troopers prepared to invade Guatemala.
Javier sat quietly, daydreaming until a tree suddenly cast a shadow over him.
“Are we boring you, Aritza?”
Javier looked up at the ogress, scowling down at him. Maybe honey today, instead of vinegar? What the hell. “No ma’am,” he said with a grin, “trying to stay out of your way while your crew organized itself. We ready?”
He was rewarded by the scowl lessening, warming by perhaps
a whole degree Kelvin. Nitrogen might melt soon at this rate.
She stepped back, rather than lurk over him. “What’s the terrain look like?” she asked, apparently also striving for courtesy. Maybe there was hope.
Javier flipped on the portable’s hologram projector. A color–coded terrain map hovered between them, green for trees, brown for grass, gray for rock. Southwest, it just kept gently rolling to a distant sea. Northeast, their goal, the details slowly filled in.
Javier checked a readout to one side. Exactly one transmission source other than the shuttle, anywhere within range. And even here on the surface it was weak. He pushed the remote up another two hundred meters, until it was barely a dot in the clear sky above them. Nothing was going to be shooting at it, fingers crossed.
The wreck suddenly appeared bright on the radar, refined metals covered with dirt amidst scrub on the edge of a forest. It looked like the ship was a small freighter, maybe seventy or one hundred meters long. From the debris field, she had come in pretty hot, plowed through a bunch of trees, barely under control, and broken her back when she slammed down, with three major sections of hull mostly intact, and shards over a fairly compact area.
He glanced back, up, but she was intent on the display, not him. She really had nice teeth.
“Any radiation leakage from the wreck?” she asked. And always business.
Javier felt his shoulders shrug. “No more than normal background,” he said. “Looks like it landed soft enough to protect the reactors. No load now except the emergency beacon, and it’s faint, so they’re fading. Maybe another year before they go.”
He saw the ghost of a smile actually cross her face for the first time today. “So,” she looked down at him, all business again, “something worth salvaging, after all.”
“Looks like,” he said, unwilling to commit more from the scans. He really didn’t know what this ship, this crew did when they weren’t all piratey. Maybe they funded orphanages. Space was big. There were a lot of weird people out there.
Javier watched Sykora go full tactical before his eyes. It was like a switch flipped on.
“Base team,” she called, a parade ground voice that echoed off the trees, “establish a perimeter. Smith, unlock the guns but don’t shoot first.” A group of spacers looked up from their tasks and variously kept in motion.
One of the gun bunnies even saluted. “On it, ma’am,” he said, all crisp and professional. And ready for Thermopylae.
She pointed in the direction of the wreck. “Pathfinders, north–east and stay sharp. Hostile planet.” Two women nodded and faded into the brush, vanishing as he watched. They seemed more competent than he was expecting pirates to be. Much. Who were these people?
Sykora tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Aritza.” She encompassed the remaining crew with a look. “Move out.”
Javier fell in behind her and tried not to trip over anything as he watched the screen and her butt at the same time. He figured Suvi would warn him if anything really interesting scanned.
Ξ
Lemuel sat so perfectly still that one of the forest creatures scampered right past him, chittering angrily just like the squirrel it vaguely resembled. Completely different form, but just as daft.
Below, on the game trail, two people crept past. No, not people. Females. Unclean harlots. Mistresses of Satan. Succubi sent forth to lead the righteous astray into apostasy. He resisted the urge to spit, lest they detect him.
They passed, silent as the wind.
Lemuel didn’t bother to follow them. He faded back deeper into the brush. They would seek the wreck, the destruction, the ark that had brought him to this paradise where no females ruled over men unnaturally. He would watch, carefully. There might be others.
Ξ
Djamila kept sharp. The tree–analogs here looked similar and fulfilled the same ecological role. That meant the same propensity for ambush and destruction. She glanced up at Aritza’s hovering spy.
She’d had him pull it in close, barely eight meters over her head, despite his grumbling. The scanning range was greatly diminished, but she wanted the extra edge. The woods were populated by a variety of creatures, from birds, to lizards, to things like impalas, to things like bears.
As they moved, she had her safety off. The rest of her crew were fast and good. She was still better. She demanded that extra split–second in an emergency. It might mean the difference between life and death.
Djamila stopped suddenly and pivoted in place. It was an old trick in terrain like this. The sudden turn to catch movement from a watcher giving himself away. Nothing. Well, nothing but Aritza nearly walking into her before he looked up from his screen.
“Hey,” he looked up, “a little warning?” He looked extremely put out. She chalked it up to working for so long alone. Probably forgot how to be polite around people. Or maybe he was just an asshole, after all.
She considered growling at him, settled for a sickly–sweet smile instead. The muttering under his breath was reward enough. She smiled to herself and set off again.
Ξ
Javier set his system to scanning the database of transports, looking for a baseline model to compare against. These things always got customized the second day after they launched, as captains and engineers tweaked things. It would be useful to know what they were working with here. And Yu would appreciate Javier finding him a bigger Auxiliary Power Reactor, to free up space for the next time he had to crawl into the bio–scrubbers.
He was so engrossed in the screen that he stopped ogling Sykora’s butt as she moved. And walked right into her when she stopped and looked backwards. Fortunately for his day, he avoided bouncing his nose off of her breast.
“Hey,” he looked up, “a little warning?” For a moment, Javier thought she was going to punch him, but she smiled instead. He wasn’t sure that it was an improvement, but she started walking again a moment later.
Javier kept his commentary to himself. Mostly.
The emergency beacon had been a standard affair, required by law on every vessel capable of interstellar flight. In this case, it had been the cheapest model on the market, broadcasting a twenty–four digit alpha–numeric ID from the manufacturer, rather than the more sophisticated models that included vessel particulars. That, at least, eliminated several classes of vessels, say, things big enough to have customized beacons, or military vehicles. Javier dug deeper.
At least Sykora warned him before she stopped, the next time. It was the smug smile when he looked up, up, from his screen. He grumbled anyway.
“Rest break here,” Sykora called to the group. Everyone else relaxed and looked around the area warily. Things were generally just the wrong–enough shade of green to gnaw at someone.
Javier found a dead tree and sat on the trunk. His least–favorite tree returned to shadow his view.
“Aritza, where are the scouts now?”
He looked up at her sourly.
“Please?” she added quietly. Huh. Old dogs and new tricks. That had sounded almost painful. Still, she sounded sincere. It was certainly the first time he’d ever heard her use that word with him.
Javier toggled one of the side gauges into the projector, zoomed, and washed out small animals. Two dots appeared on the map, plus a few others at a considerable distance. It was a good scanner probe. It helped to have Suvi piloting it and refining the data.
“Three hundred meters out and closing, ma’am,” he replied. Teeth were teeth. If she could pull hers and act politely, he could do the same.
She nodded and pulled something from her pocket. She started to put it in her mouth and paused. “Cover your ears, Aritza,” she said.
He blinked, thought about it for a half–second, and set the computer down so he could jam fingers in, just before she blew a whistle shrill enough to wake the dead. Hopefully Suvi had been paying attention to the audio channel before it overloaded. Everyone else jumped. Except the other gun bunny. He had apparently known it was coming.
A second sharp blast followed the first.
Javier sat patiently until he saw her put the damned whistle away. A string of curse words appeared on the diagnostics readout at the bottom of the flat screen. Apparently, Suvi had learned some new ones along the way.
Movement at the very edge of the sensor range caught his attention. Looked like a bear from the size and heat signature, but it was moving away from them at a slow amble, so he figured it was safe. Maybe remind everyone to make enough noise to scare off local critters. Last thing he needed right now was angry momma bear.
The two women pathfinders made absolutely no sound.
One minute nothing. Next, they pop out of the brush and stand right next to him. And he’d been watching them approach on the scanner, the last forty meters. What the hell did these people do that they needed this kind of experts, anyway?
Sykora was in her element. “Status report,” she barked.
The shorter of the two, the brunette with the nice hips, came slightly to attention. The blond with the long legs caught him staring and winked.
Javier considered his chances. Might be worth trying.
“We found the wreck, ma’am,” Pathfinder Brunette said. “Either there were shipwrecked survivors, or there are locals. We found evidence of habitation.”
Javier looked up at the three women. “Bear?”
All three blinked down at him. Apparently they had forgotten he spoke.
“Negative,” the brunette said. “Firepit, hand–made pottery, agriculture, closeable door into a cabin that appears recently used.”
“But no one appeared,” Sykora stated flatly.
“Affirmative, ma’am,” the brunette agreed.
Sykora thought for a second. “Three minute break here, then we’ll push on.” The two women dropped in place and pulled out canteens.
The giant redwood tree turned around and looked down at him. “Aritza, push the drone vertical and do that long range scan trick again. I want to see the wreck.” Pause. “Please.”
The drone took off straight up, but Javier pushed a button on a screen quickly before anyone noticed the discrepancy.
