by Isaac Hooke
“…the Purgoid were hunters,” came the translation into Jacob and the Captain’s ears at the same time, and they both nodded somberly.
Their hosts were strict herbivores, and Nathan had warned in no uncertain terms against any talk of eating meat.
“The Purgoid wanted to…do that here?” asked the Captain, trying to ascertain just how badly the Purgoid had offended the Indulakans.
“Yes,” said Hoho, visibly shaken, “Here! Of course we said no.” A single eye of each flicked toward each other, and then Hoho added, “So we directed them to the poles. To the heavy places. They did not fare well there.”
Jacob’s mind was whirling. So much to ask. So many questions. Indul’s incredibly fast rotation had warped the equator outward at two opposing points. They sat at one of those points now, massive centrifugal forces going some way to mitigating the planet’s huge gravity.
That someone, or something, worth visiting lived at the poles was a revelation. The north and south poles sat at the opposite end of the planet’s titanic gravity curve. Noticeably closer to the core of the planet, and with no spin to offset it, the gravity there was nearly double what it was here.
It was the reason Jacob and his colleagues needed rebreathers here, parsing in extra oxygen to account for the effective altitude that this entire part of the planet sat at. But that was nothing. The gravity at the poles would be all but lethal to them.
“So the Purgoid hunted at the poles?” said Jacob, his curiosity pushing all his expression conditioning aside. “Hunted what?”
The herding nature of their hosts that had drawn so many toward them, reversed now like a magnet, and the small group of humans could not help but feel the barometric shift as everyone now began moving off. Hoho and his companion remained, as did Zuvan, the Indulakan who had been talking with the doctor, as they were both still engrossed in their own conversation.
But Hoho and his companion were clearly very unhappy, and Jacob balked, “No, oh no, I mean…oh, I’m so sorry. Really, I meant nothing by it. I despise hunting myself. I would never…”
But he was only digging himself deeper, repeating the offensive word, and even hinting that there might be those among their party who did not find the taboo act nearly so offensive. The Captain cut Jacob off, raising a hand to silence the physicist and emphasizing it with a burning stare.
He let silence rest for a moment, then said, “We have offended you, and for that we apologize. Allow me to take this opportunity to say that all of us, as guests here, would never and will never engage in any act that might be deemed offensive or immoral by you, the rightful residents of this magnificent planet.”
But it was the Captain’s turn to be silenced, as Hoho spoke up, “Khed nahin kahana…”
“You need not apologize to us, Captain, Jacob. My colleagues did not like the conversation anymore, so they left. We do not listen when we do not want to, as we mentioned before.”
And he was not done. “And you would be wrong anyway, Captain. We are not the only residents of Indul. We cannot and would not live at the poles, of course. Life there is too much. Too much air. Too much weight. Too much violence. And those that live at the poles would not live here. These high places do not have enough for them.”
There was a strangeness in his hoarse voice, a subtle rumble their E&C conditioning had not prepared them for. Not offense. Something else.
Hoho’s companion rolled slowly to his feet at this and began to amble away from them. They had landed at dawn, some five hours ago. Already the sun was setting on their first, brief day. And now, Hoho was rising from the ground as well, clearly struggling to stay in the conversation himself.
He finished with one last comment about whatever it was that did live in the polar gravity wells, saying, “No, Captain, they would not live here,” finished Hoho, his eyes sweeping around slowly, “Not enough air for them to run…not enough air for them to hunt.”
And with that, he walked off.
Recriminations
Back in the cabin of the shuttle, tempers flared.
“You knew,” said Nathan, still barely able to contain his indignation.
“We knew nothing. It was…suspected,” said Captain Campbell.
“Based on what, exactly?” prompted the Ambassador.
The Captain glanced at Jacob, the only other member of the away-team present. An away-team that now knew about the potential duality. The rest were outside setting up their hab-module.
“There was a single reference, Ambassador, just one, in the Lost Sister’s logs.”
Nathan waited, and the Captain nodded, then sent a mental ping to the Hub, laden with all of his unique level of access. A moment later, a paragraph appeared in Nathan’s mind, bobbing in the periphery of his view, and he closed his eyes to read it.
Excerpt: “It seems likely the Lost Sister contacted the Indul intelligent species [Indulakans] at triaxial urban conglomerations, even visited them.
They investigated using their bird-probes [paraphrased] and verified that the Indulakans are mandatorily herbivorous. Also saw no evidence in records of any carnivorous behavior in any plants or animals indigenous to the triaxial landmasses, or the surrounding oceans.
This is made rule of law by Indulakans, and condition of visitation …>
“I know all this,” exclaimed Nathan, but now he came to a part he did not know, a part he had not been shown before, and his rant trailed off.
<… but this appears limited to the triaxial landmasses, and not the ‘heavy places’. We only have records of peripheral scans of these regions, but twice the Lost Sister refers to sighting ‘hot-life.’ A very fast-moving species seems to dominate, especially in the more temperate sub-polar regions. It is not clear whether this region was not explored further, or if the records were lost.”
The Captain waited a moment, watching the Ambassador’s face as he took in the last sentences.
“Hot-life,” Nathan reiterated, momentarily subdued.
“Hot-life. Aggressors. It’s a term we found elsewhere in the Lost Sister’s records as well,” said the Captain, “It was not a compliment.”
Nathan’s outrage was returning now, fired by indignation, and he locked eyes with the Captain and said, “Why wasn’t I informed of this? As the Ambassador I had a right to…”
“…to the Indulakans,” interrupted Rob.
Nathan looked confused, and the Captain said with emphasis, “Ambassador to the Indulakans.”
The implication was clear. Nathan’s mandate had, indeed, been specific not to the planet, but to the species. Rob changed his tone to a more conciliatory one, though without any measure of surrender, “The Lost Sister’s files were not always detailed, Nathan, but they were always consistent. The term ‘hot-life,’ if I remember correctly, was used only five times. And it always, without exception, referred to dangerous life forms. Dangerous, intelligent life forms.”
Nathan’s eyes were wide.
“All the information we had implied that the Indulakans considered the subject of this other race at the poles to be taboo,” Rob went on, “We assumed they would not talk of it, and we planned not to mention it ourselves.”
Nathan piped up, “How could I mention it, Captain, if I did not know about it?”
“Exactly,” said the Captain, and a blend of anger and frustration flashed in the Ambassador’s eyes.
“More importantly, Ambassador, how could you tell the Indulakans that we may well choose to analyze this…hot-life…more closely, if you didn’t know that either?”
“What!” said Nathan at last. “But our treaty?”
“We’ll do nothing to break the treaty, Ambassador, that I promise you.”
It would not be the end of the argument, but just as Nathan would not be satiated by the captain’s vague answers, Rob would not be goaded into revealing anything further.
An hour later, a frustrated Ambassador d
onned his rebreather and went to join Shellie and Raf outside, working to get their inflatable shelters erected and pressurized.
Their treaty allowed for a temporary settlement. If things went well, they had plans for a more permanent one. An embassy. If things went really well, Nathan actually planned to stay here, such was his commitment, though in truth he planned to stay here either way, as long as the Indulakans did not actively bar him from the planet.
This was Nathan’s chance to do something great, something truly historic. This was Nathan’s chance to build something hitherto unheard of, and he intended to see it through.
Based on what he had read, based on his extensive studies of the race known as the Indulakans, he had come to admire them, to aspire to be like them. He wanted to be here. He needed to be here.
Stepping out into the thin, cold air of the brief axial night, Nathan took in the two marines working on their habitat modules, noting with pride the doctor and the physicist working alongside them, and went to join them.
The captain was not far behind him, stepping onto the lip of the shuttle ramp just as the Ambassador stepped off it onto the wide grassland.
His eyes met Shellie’s through the glass of his rebreather mask. She nodded to him, and he nodded back. No confirmation was required. Plans were already in place. He would not call them off. Far be it from him to interfere.
No, the Captain would not break the treaty with the Indulakans. They had agreed to the same stipulations as the Lost Sister before them. No ranged or combustive weapons on the planet’s surface. No powered flight over land. No meat, no murder, no violence, unless in self-defense.
The Captain was a man of his word. But they would get to the poles nonetheless. They would find this hot-life.
Or at least, the twins would.
Descents
The crew, non-militant as it was, had only a modest security team. Everyone aboard had received basic training, as did the consular staffs in most countries back on Earth. There were even a wide array of people who had qualified as pilots and gunners for the Haumea Maku’s two moderately well-armed shuttles.
But only four people aboard had truly martial training. Shellie and Raf, busying themselves on the surface below, and the twins, PP and PJ.
They weren’t twins at all, in truth. They barely looked alike, and they were from vastly different backgrounds. But they shared much. They were both tall, wirey, hard-looking souls who eschewed anything that might have been termed conversation. They were both non-native English speakers, one of Russian birth, one from South Africa. Both were shaved bald. Both were veterans of Afghanistan and the bloody Syrian Liberation. And both were borderline insane.
They floated in silence as the counter ran to zero.
“No reprimand,” said PP.
“No reprieve,” said PJ, and they grinned at each other.
They were floating next to the access hatch to the Haumea’s lower spinal airlock. They were massive in their augmented combat suits. Not just the battleskins that Raf and Shellie had worn to the surface, but full-contact armor, plus an additional bulky pack mounted on their backs, fifty percent the size of the colossal suits themselves.
They nodded, then both slowly squeezed into the airlock proper, one after the other, only just fitting into the wide space. PP brushed one massive fist over the inner-door control and the bulkhead began to close.
They moved out as one, their gargantuan forms moving with power-assisted grace in the zero-G. To either side of the portal, two innocuous-looking domes were mounted, two meters across apiece. The twins released clasps on either side of them and the hemispheres came free with a metallic clang that reverberated up their arms.
PP and PJ maneuvered the heavy domes up and over them. Clamps lined the underside of the cupolas, and the twins aligned their arms with them, sending the command to their suits to connect with the domes.
“Feeling secure, PJ?”
“Feeling peachy, PP.”
“Shall we?”
PJ checked his systems. Technically he was the superior, though neither of them ever felt the need to mention it.
PJ gave a long breath inside his mech, flexed himself inside the massive suit’s torso, and nodded to himself. It wasn’t exactly a complex procedure they were embarking on, after all.
“Okey dokey.”
And with that, they both angled themselves toward the massive blue-white orb below and kicked off.
It took about twenty minutes before things started getting interesting. Twenty minutes for them to think about what they had signed up for.
By the time things started to get going, even the twins were having second thoughts. But you didn’t question orders. And you certainly didn’t question the suits. These were the real deal. They might not be allowed guns on this mission, but the twins felt pretty confident they could win a headbutting contest with a rhino in these things, and with the domed heat shields to protect them from the worst of deceleration, a simple free-fall should be a breeze, right?
But free-fall was a long way off. First they had to burn off their remaining orbital momentum, and when the twins hit the thermosphere they were doing eight thousand miles per hour, two human meteors lighting up the second dawn of humanity’s first visit to Indul.
***
Far below, an innocent-seeming Marine Lieutenant informed the Ambassador.
“Ambassador Espéce Hystad, just a quick update on our mapping work,” said Shellie.
Nathan turned to her, and she went on, smiling, “I just thought you might want to send notice to the Indulakans of two probes that have just been dispatched from the Haumea Maku.”
Nathan’s brow furrowed. “Probes?”
“Yes, Ambassador. Two probes. They will complete a brief atmospheric glide to the north, then ditch somewhere in the pan-arctic ocean.”
“Sooo, just south of the temperate sub-polar region?”
“Precisely,” said Shellie, her expression implacable.
Nathan eyed the Lieutenant for a long second, then glanced around the camp quickly. The Captain was nowhere to be seen.
“And where, might I ask, is the Captain?”
“He’s doing a quick recky around the park, Ambassador. Should be back in a few hours.”
The Ambassador did not disguise his suspicion, but Shellie’s smile remained steadfast.
“Very good, Lieutenant. I’ll inform the Indulakans.”
The Lieutenant saluted quickly and turned away, walking off toward the last of the uninflated habitat modules, Nathan staring after her all the way.
***
Far above, the twins were starting to burn.
“Yebat' menya!” screamed PJ, laughing into the hurricane.
PP didn’t speak much Russian, but he’d heard his friend say this choice phrase a thousand times before and so he replied, “Yes, PJ. I agree. Fuck you!”
And the two laughed maniacally as the suits beeped loudly in their ears, temperature alarms going off all over. They could not disable them, but they were just warnings. What you are doing is insane, they basically said.
“Yes,” said PJ to himself, “I know.”
The long minutes of burn and bounce would have made even Shellie lose her lunch, but at long last, the heat curve had peaked and was starting to bend downward, and a lot of that, they knew, was the residual heat emanating from the ceramic and graphite shields they held in front of them.
“Time to cool off!” shouted PJ across their link, at last.
“Yes, sir!”
They were about half a mile apart, a mere skip and a jump given the speed they were traveling at, and now they both began detaching from their dome-shields. With the clamps released, they both flexed their muscles and flung the big domes away from them, and instantly felt as they breached the drag shadow of the big buffers.
It had hardly been serene even inside the dome’s concave noo
ks, but outside was a cyclone, and now both of them laughed as their shields whipped away into the frenzy.
The air, crashing about them, worked to cool them now and finally the alarms went silent. But the panels inside their suits still flashed red, not with heat warnings, but with altitude. Plummeting altitude.
“I still have us at above mach 1,” shouted PP.
“Confirmed. Let’s deploy packs.”
Bending their huge arms behind them, they each locked them into the sides of their packs, and then hauled them forward again. As they dragged them outward, a nanotube framework concertinaed outward, forming into a wide arrowhead as they strained their arms forward into the gale. The sharp edges bit immediately, and for a moment the two seemed to wobble in the air, finding course as they flexed their new wings.
They both whistled with glee as they finally took flight, then they angled their thin, rippling wing-forms, and bent their descent northward.
Signatures
An hour later, the wing-forms were folded once more. They would need them again to get south, flying low over the waves with help from the tiny pulse-boosters they would be allowed to use once back out over the water.
But the ocean was not in the twins’ immediate future. Ahead, for them, was the forest. Using the fat thighs of the combat suits, they shrugged off the intensified weight that was seating them uncomfortably in their big suits, and stomped off into the undergrowth.
A few hours in, they felt a change in the place. What had seemed like a forest to them before, had given way to something different, something deeper, and now they walked through only sparse undergrowth. Sparse undergrowth, and the expansive foundations of what PJ had dubbed the pillar trees.
They rose above them for an ungodly distance, fanning out high above to intertwine with each other.
“You know,” said PP, “it’s actually still afternoon.”
“So you say,” replied PJ, glancing around the murky depths of the forest bed. The soil was, for the most part, compacted and hard, but occasionally they would come across a spot that was softer, turned even, showing hints of warmth to the heat sensitive eyes mounted around the outside of the combat suits.
