by Blaze Ward
You don’t exist, he typed. Don’t anticipate me. These people are smart and dangerous.
Sorry.
Javier took it up to 200 meters and hovered. One quick rotational scan, and then he focused in on the wreck. This was where Suvi would help.
Hard scan that thing for me. Inventory everything you can. And don’t let anything sneak up on us.
Will do, boss.
He poked the volume button and the screen like he was actually controlling it, but he knew Suvi was flying the remote now. After he escaped these yahoos, he might have to upgrade the remote so she could fly it from whatever ship he poured her into next.
And maybe add a gun.
Let’s see: two bears, a small herd of elk–like critters, and he was pretty sure that was the local equivalent of a bobcat. Hopefully it wasn’t the local version of a wolverine.
Javier looked up at her. “Path’s clear,” he said, “you might warn people that there are a few dangerous creatures in the woods.”
Sykora smiled down at him. “You mean, besides us.”
Javier rolled his eyes in pure reflex.
Ogre–lady trying to be funny might be worse than her as a total hard–ass.
He sighed to himself as he stood up. Another day, another drachma.
Ξ
Suvi was torn. On the one hand, it was good to be awake and doing something. On the other hand, she had been weeks off–line. Things had happened, and Javier wasn’t filling in the details.
The tall lady seemed to be in charge. And scary. Suvi really needed her processing core to read the inter–personal dynamics playing out around her. The chip she was on was barely big enough to hold her personality and near–term memory.
As it was, she’d had to off–load some of her consciousness onto the portable. There was certainly space for files, but the processor on that thing was horribly under–powered. She was almost thinking at human speeds. Egads. How did they operate so slow?
She spun the remote in place and pinged. Precious few birds, none of them big enough to threaten her new little flitter–ship. Some fauna large enough to maybe be dangerous, depending on how this planet had evolved.
Over there, some fields had been planted with human–digestible crops, so someone had survived the crash and broken out the emergency seed packet. And it had worked for them, if they’d been here for seventeen years.
Quick pass through the memory files of the remote. The wreck looked kinda like a Kallasky Engineering Mark IX Conestoga. Big, slow, durable. Too many pieces to be sure until she could read some part numbers off the engine, or they found the nameplate.
Suvi counted her humans. Javier, Tall Lady, two “pathfinders” (note: look that term up when connected to better resources. Got no useful dictionary here.), one heavily–armed male, one male and one female without arms, but with toolkits. (note: mark the latter tentatively as engineering crew. Update later. Ask Javier.)
She needed better information. She was missing too much. Javier had said to hide, so she decided to play along. Happy little flying mouse, zooming overhead.
She aimed her microphones down, but Javier grumbling to himself seemed to be the only conversation.
Who were these people?
Ξ
Lemuel watched the wreck from a nearby hilltop. He felt sure he was supposed to be overjoyed by the arrival of people. It would be possible to leave this world and return to civilization.
Did he want to?
The ancients had venerated the ascetics, monks living on the edges of the desert, praying and fasting, living holy lives of contemplation.
He had not intended to crash here. But once it was done, he had put in a great deal of contemplation on the Lord’s message to him. The Harlot was not meant to rule over men. So she had not. The others had not seen it that way. They had joined her. It was the way of things.
And now, he could return to the world.
But would he have to sacrifice holiness? More harlots had come. One seemed to rule them.
She would have to go.
But the others?
He would have to get closer to see how many of them would trod the path of the righteous. Many were incapable of enlightenment.
The silver bird troubled him.
It flew wrong, was shaped wrong, was wrong. Lemuel knew his eyes were old, but he remembered technology. The silver bird was a device, a thing. It had eyes to watch. He could not sneak up on them unaware. He would have to gain their confidence.
Lemuel silently rose to his feet and took a step down the hillside. It was irrational, but he could feel the silver bird’s eyes on him immediately.
So be it. He would be friendly and thankful to his rescuers.
Then he would kill them.
Ξ
Suvi understood the need for silence, but she really wished she could talk to Javier. Text lacked the subtleties. She settled for highlighting a dot on the display. That’s not a bear.
She pinged it, hard, once, with every sensor the little flitter–ship had. Yup. Definitely human. Male. Mid–fifties. Pretty good shape if he was a shipwrecked survivor deep into his second decade of local realtime. She displayed his stats.
Javier’s voice on the portable’s audio input. “Sykora,” he said. “Company.”
Suvi watched the two armed humans point rifles in opposite directions immediately. The two pathfinder women drew sidearms as well, squatting down and aiming outward. The two engineers dropped to the ground without a word. Javier just stood there.
Tall Lady spoke. “Where?”
Javier glanced at the screen, turned to his right, and waved with a cheery, “Good morning.”
Tall Lady was aghast. “What are you doing, Aritza?” she queried. A moment later, she called, “Flip.”
Suvi watched her and the armed male change sides of coverage like a ballet, leaving the one called Sykora pointed where Javier was looking and the other covering the “rear.”
The strange human was approaching slowly, quietly. He wore robes made of a rough, homespun cotton, probably locally grown from seedstock, and carried a walking stick.
She bounced the flitter–ship up higher for a better view and scanned everything once, and then dropped down close.
Finally, she might get some answers.
Ξ
Javier considered the dead freighter. Definitely came in too hot. Looks like it tore off a landing skid on that rock, which dropped the bow into the ground at speed, which cracked her spine there and there. Probably one you walked away from, unless your number had come up.
Reactor was definitely on–line, banked to minimum load. Heat and light leaked out of an open hatch and the cooling fins were well above ambient temperature.
Somebody lived here. A field of human crops close to harvest. A small drying shed filled with…stuff. Dunno what else to call it. A path down to the stream below. Homey. Javier could see himself living here and enjoying the place. Clean air. No people. Paradise.
That’s not a bear.
Good thing Suvi was on the job.
Might as well start the fun. “Sykora,” he said. “Company.”
Javier watched the armed lunatics go into full combat mode. This was why he was a civilian now. That kind of thinking was just bad. Desperately anti–social.
Sykora was the worst. “Where?” She was probably planning a firefight right about now.
Javier really needed some coffee.
He turned to his right, and waved, “Good morning.”
Behind him, he was pretty sure he could hear teeth grind. “What are you doing, Aritza?” Ogre lady snarled at him. A moment later, “Flip.”
Great, now she was standing next to him, hovering over his shoulder, big honking war machine ready to lay the smack–down.
I got out of bed this morning for this?
Javier pointed. “A guy. The survivor, I’m guessing. And we’re in his front yard, so maybe we should be nice to him?”
Javier slid out of reach and
stepped forward. Good old–fashioned Biblical Patriarch stepped into view, complete with a beard to his waist and the sort of stick Moses carried in every video Javier’d ever seen of Exodus. In a dark alley, he might be scary. Here? Faced by a small army? Harmless.
“I’m Javier,” he addressed the newcomer. “We saw your signal. Took a while. You are most definitely in the middle of absolutely nowhere.”
The man considered him silently. Which made sense. Javier had months where the only person he talked to besides the chickens was Suvi. The old man might have forgotten how to talk. Or, maybe he spoke something really obscure and didn’t grok.
What the hell. Javier reached into his pack and pulled out a bar of dried fruit and oats. He opened the bar and held it out as a peace offering. “Food?”
A hand descended from the heavens and drug him back a step before the man moved. Javier hadn’t forgotten how strong Sykora was. But, man…
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Aritza?”
Javier turned. Nobody was sneaking up on these people, so he could ignore the guy. “Diplomacy, lady,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Being nice. It’s the part of negotiations that doesn’t involve shooting people.”
She was back to staring daggers. “I’m in charge here.” That tone might have put an edge on a dull knife.
Fine. “Fine,” Javier said. What the hell. He plopped down, crossed his legs, and took a bite of the bar. Let the gun bunny sort it out.
She snarled down at him. “Now what are you doing?” Javier noted that at no point did the barrel ever waver from dead–center on the new guy. Pissed, she might be. Deadly, without a doubt.
“You’re in charge, Sykora,” he snarled back, only a little less hostile. “Do it your way.”
Ξ
Yes, that was the way of things, Lemuel thought. The Harlot was not suited to lead. She knew only violence or seduction. Not the ways of Men. Here, She was surrounded by sycophants, but for one who was not under her spell. Lemuel found that his purpose was clear.
He relaxed his natural scowl and tried to remember how to smile. The Harlot was a lost cause, so he directed it at the man sitting. “He–he–hello,” he stuttered.
He found speech to be a complicated task, once the habit was lost. He spent most of his weeks in silent prayer and the sort of hard work necessary to survive in the Lord’s paradise.
The Harlot kept her weapon pointed at him. And her bile.
“What’s your name?” she challenged him.
That brought Lemuel up short. He hadn’t used his name in…a very long time. He blinked a few times. How many seasons had he been here? Many, doing the Lord’s work in the wilderness.
“Answer me,” the Harlot continued, her anger palpable.
The Lord counselled patience in the face of the denizens of the pit. “Le–Lemuel,” he said brokenly, finding the word deep in his memory.
The friendly male, unbowed by the Harlot, spoke to him from the dirt. “Hungry?”
Lemuel cocked his head. Words were difficult to process.
“Here,” the man continued. He held out his hand, holding the bar of food that he had taken a bite from.
The Harlot’s fury grew. “Come no closer,” she rasped harshly.
The male looked up at her, rolled his eyes disapprovingly, and tossed the bar to Lemuel with a single, “Fine. Catch.”
Lemuel managed to keep it from falling.
A sniff. A blue and red thing. Fruit of some sort, dried and packed together, with nuts he could not recognize. Minus a healthy bite out of one end.
Since it came from the male, Lemuel broke off a small chunk and touched it with his tongue. The poisons in this place were subtle, but dangerous. Mohr had died after eating the local fruit in an attempt to go native on this world.
Thus did the Righteous fall from the Lord’s Grace.
Lemuel took a very small bite. Better to risk illness than to refuse his one potential ally among the strangers and burn a valuable bridge. He considered his words as he slowly chewed.
“Thank you,” he finally found. Language was coming back to him now.
Lemuel considered the lovely taste, fruits that would not grow in this Eden, nuts from alien trees. His body remembered the taste of honey, so different from the form the local insects made.
Perhaps the Lord was telling him that he could finally go home, after so long in the wilderness.
The Harlot would not be an easy foe.
The words of his father came back to him, across the gulf of vast time.
“Welcome,” he said slowly, carefully, enunciating each word with care. “Welcome to Eden.”
Ξ
Djamila was not taken in by the rustic’s pose. He had already survived many years on the surface of a hostile planet, surrounded by alien flora and fauna. That made him dangerous. That Eden nonsense bullshit wasn’t going to cut it.
And Aritza was going to play good cop. Big surprise there. The man had no sense. None.
Predictable. But she could bad cop with the best of them. Watch this.
“Aritza,” she called down to the punk sitting in the dirt, “Is he armed?”
“No.” The answer was surprisingly quick. And assured.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because,” he replied in a voice right at the edge of insubordinate, “the only power sources that aren’t over here are in that.” A finger pointed at the wreck. “My sensors showed him as a bear until he came into the open.”
“And the staff he’s carrying?”
“What?” Aritza shot back. “You can’t take an old man with a stick?”
Djamila considered kicking him. Aritza was really getting on her nerves.
She scowled her best, most professional, scowl at the native. Yes, she could handle him unarmed. Plus, she was supposed to be nice.
Interstellar law and custom said you always rescued ship–wrecked survivors and got them back to civilization. Even pirates honored that one. Mostly.
So, catalog the wreck. Rescue the local. Figure out if she could make it look like a tragic accident had killed Aritza.
She slung the battle–rifle on her shoulder.
All in a day’s work.
Ξ
Javier watched Sykora’s face on the sly.
He thought about teaching her how to play poker one of these days, but decided he was safer not telling her she was an open book. The Gunners on B deck were more fun, anyway.
The old man stared intently at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Better poker player there. Didn’t like Sykora at all. That made him good people.
Might as well cut straight to the messy bits.
Javier levered himself upright and brushed the dirt and leaves and crap off his butt with one hand. He clicked the recall button on the portable and caught the remote as it settled into his hand. Suvi would keep it active. She was very smart. Much better to trust her than the ogre–lady.
Now, the old man.
“So the reason we came here was to salvage the wreck, Lemuel,” he said. Simple. Honest. Easy. “We didn’t expect to find anyone alive after all this time.”
Javier read the signs as he spoke. Two guys at a bus stop, talking about last night’s game. He waited for Lemuel’s nod, got it, went on.
“Interstellar law says we rescue you at this point and get you someplace where you can get home from.” Javier turned as he spoke and looked right up at Sykora’s scowl. “Where and how will be up to Captain Sokolov, but you’ll be able to save some of your stuff.”
Again, the pause as Lemuel processed his words and nodded.
“We’re going to inventory everything for value, and most definitely remove the power reactor. What was on your manifest?”
He watched Lemuel scrunch up his face in thought. The eyes drifted off focus and blinked rapidly. A hand came up and scratched the semi–bald pate. Javier heard him whisper Home once, under his breath. A very small smile appeared briefly.
The eyes finally focused on his. “Uhm. Machine parts, I think,” Lemuel said quietly. “And trade goods for some colony.”
Sykora overrode his next question. “Which colony?” she barked.
Lemuel looked down, apparently embarrassed. “I do not know,” he said. “I was a cook and stevedore. Anya was the navigator.”
Javier turned to Sykora and gave her his best stink–eye scowl. Then a smile as he turned back to the old man. “So let’s go take a tour of the wreck, Lemuel,” he said soothingly. “You can point out all the interesting and dangerous parts as we go.”
This was going to be like herding cats. Normally, Javier would have said herding goldfish, but carp won’t turn suddenly and slash you with their claws. Sykora had that look in her eyes.
Part Four
Lemuel considered his options as they ascended into the ship. They were many, but he bestrode a dangerous path.
Javier had introduced himself and made it clear that he could become a friend.
The Harlot had a name as well, but Lemuel had not bothered to remember it. Weren’t they all the same, after all?
The others, male and female alike, were obviously under the sway of the Harlot. From the looks and mannerisms, Lemuel could see that they considered Javier an outsider to their group, though they treated him with respect.
That gave him an opening. Did he have the courage to seize it? Was this place to become Megiddo, after all? The Lord had worked in his mysterious ways to place Lemuel here so long ago.
Had he finally proven the strength of his faith? Or had he failed and was to be irrevocably damned by the Harlot?
Lemuel prayed silently to himself as he led the troupe of strangers, invaders unto his quiet paradise, down into the realm of his earliest, greatest challenge.
Ξ
Suvi was having an adventure.
The flitter–ship was far more maneuverable than Mielikki had been. She could hover, and spin, and bob, and float, and saunter. She missed having a turret she could use, but on a hull this small, it probably wouldn’t do more than irritate a squirrel. Not that that was a bad thing.
She had already used a series of ultrasound pings to map the hallway and the first cargo hold they had entered. The humans hadn’t heard, but they missed everything anyway.
