Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation

by Dale C. Musser

  “Tibby,” Kala’s voice came over the com system, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m a bit shaken, but I'm fine.”

  “Were you able to kill it?” She asked.

  “I don’t know. I hit it twice before it went over the ledge. I’m not going out there tonight,” I answered, “I’ll check in the morning to see if it’s dead or not. Either way, I don’t think it will be coming back any time soon.” I pressed the button closing the outer hatch and went inside the ship.

  “I never thought about not being able to sight the rifle while cloaked. I would have been better off using one of our hand guns. I had to uncloak to get an aim on it.” I continued as Kala met me in the corridor.

  “I hope you got that thing, Tibby. It’s an intelligent animal and a cunning predator. I’m surprised that the scientists who were here never reported anything about it.”

  “Well, you did say they never completed their study and didn't explore all the planet. This creature may only exist on this one part of the planet.”

  From our cabin, sounds could be heard as Lunnie was waking from her nap, her sounds were almost instantly followed by those of Reidecor’s, but his was less pleasant, and it was obvious he wanted or needed some serious attention.

  “Sounds like your son and daughter are awake and wanting some ministrations. You take Lunnie, and I’ll take Reidecor, it sounds like he needs a changing and last time you did it, you didn’t get a very good seal on the legs of his diaper.” Kala said as she picked Reidecor up and held him at head height as she checked his legs and diaper.

  Lunnie looked at me and gurgled. I picked her up and held her in my arms, and she gave a grin.

  “Kala! Did you see that…? She grinned at me.”

  “She probably thinks you are pretty funny. You are you know.” Kala answered as she continued changing Reidecor.

  By now, it was nearly morning, and we had been awake a good deal during the night. I wanted to get a look at the woewe, or its remains, before I went back to sleep, so I busied myself going over my gear and packing it in a knapsack. One thing that was interesting in the survival gear aboard the ship was sleeping bags. They were not that different from mummy bags back on Earth, but they were extremely light and could be rolled up tightly into a very compact and small space. Once opened up, they expanded and fluffed up and were very comfortable. Kala said they were equally comfortable at below freezing temperatures or in sweltering heat. She said they worked using some sort of thermocouple nanotube technology that sensed the body’s temperature and adjusted to either taking heat away from the body or bringing heat in from outside to warm it, in much the same way that heat pumps had worked back on Earth.. The survival suit the replicator made for me was made out of similar material and was pretty much guaranteed to keep me comfortable in a wide range of outside weather conditions. It was light and very flexible.

  There was head gear also that reminded me of a motorcycle helmet of Earth. However, the appearance was the only similarity. Helmets on Earth could become a sweaty mess if they got too warm, and your hair would soon become damp and matted to your head. These helmets had air circulating through them in some manner so your head was never damp and sweaty. They also had directional sound sensors that gave you a 360 degree sound effect so you could hear every sound and knew exactly where it was. There was a drop-down eye protection cover made of some type of photo sensitive material that would darken if the light was too bright. At night it worked to amplify light, so waking about at midnight would appear just as illuminated as walking about at day. The face shield didn’t come all the way down the face, leaving the nose and jaw exposed, but there was an add-on to the mask that functioned like a gas-mask filter unit that could be clipped on the helmet. This left the wearer looking like a 21st century jet pilot in a high altitude flight suit. Like the sleeping bag, the helmet was very light but also very strong.

  A pair of gloves made of some flexible ceramic material were included. According to the ship's computer, they were intended to protect my hands from injury. This seemed to cover a wide range of possible harm, including fire, crushing and or bruising, as well as loss of a finger. All in all, I was going to be covered from head to foot, and anyone seeing me who knew me would never recognize me in all this gear.

  “Kala, why wasn’t I told about this gear when I went to Alle Bamma?” I asked as I donned the outfit.”

  “I don’t know, Tibby, maybe you were too busy to ask anyone, or they were so overwhelmed by your demands that they didn’t think to suggest them,” Kala responded.

  “Well, they certainly would have been a lot more comfortable in the jungle there than what we wore. These things wick the water away from your skin when you perspire or if it’s raining, which keeps you dry. I thought Kerabac and I were going to start growing webbed feet and hands as well as gills, with all the rain and humidity we endured there. When I think how miserable we were inside the I’aban tree that one night, we were soaked and never did dry out.”

  Kala chuckled as I said this, “That was the night that Hotyona had his drugged hallucinations and wandered off while you and Kerabac were asleep, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I had to laugh, though at the time it wasn’t all that funny. “He’d tasted just a small amount of sap from the plant the Brotherhood was using to make God’s Sweat, and next thing we know he’s off in another world. He is a heck of a nice guy. I wonder how he is making out on Alle Bamma these days with his research.” Hotyona had been one of the scientists aboard my ship who worked under Cantolla as a biologist. I had taken him with us to help find the ruguain eggs we desperately needed to make the antitoxin needed to save Kala’s life. After our mission, Hotyona wanted to stay on at Alle Bamma and to study the Eco structure there further. He was an ideal choice to stay there, because the natives knew and trusted him, and he was one of the few outsiders they would allow on their planet. Any outside scientists wanting to visit the planet’s surface had to go through Hotyona to visit, and all their actions and studies were monitored by him to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the natives and the environment. I made a mental note that on my next visit to Alle Bamma, I would meet up with him to see how he was doing.

  I fell asleep and slept for hours, waking up once or twice long enough to play with the babies and help Kala feed them. It seemed the strange drinking cups I found so disturbing to use because of the nipple-like nub on the side were perfect for feeding the babies, and the food synthesizer could concoct the faultless baby formula, so I got to hold one baby and bottle feed it while Kala fed the other. We would switch off babies each feeding time. On this occasion, I got Reidecor. He seemed most eager to get his lips on the feeding nub and his little head bobbed and weaved about trying to grasp it.

  “Tibby, by the stars stop teasing him and let him eat!” Kala commanded with a chuckle.

  “I wasn’t teasing, it was coordination training,” I said jokingly.

  “Yeah, sure,” Kala quipped back.

  Once the babies were fed, I took a long nap, waking up just before sunset.

  Finally I was ready to head out on my exploration journey as the sun was about to sink beneath the horizon. The sky had a blazing gold color that faded into a golden peach shade just before the sun finally disappeared. I walked to the cliff edge and looked over expecting to see the body of the woewe lying down by the stream below, but there was no body to be seen. At first, I thought that perhaps the body had fallen into the stream and been carried off. However, the water was neither deep enough nor swift enough to do so. Then I thought that perhaps some other predatory animals had come out and devoured the carcass, but if so where were the bones? I took a closer look at where I was standing. I could see a trail of blood on the sand at my feet. I was standing at the right place, but where was the woewe? As I looked, I noticed blood on the ledge below me. The same one the muralam used for its escape.

  The ledge surely wasn’t large enough for the woewe to have escaped on. I looked
closer, and I noticed claw marks along the edge of the ledge and blood smears as well. They moved off in the downstream direction of the cliff face. The creature must have grabbed the edge with its clawed hands and moved hand over hand on the ledge in that direction, but how? I had wounded the animal in its shoulder, which should have rendered it pretty much useless. Yet it seemed that somehow the woewe could garner up enough strength to use it to grasp the ledge and support its weight as it moved along the ledge.

  Looking down from the cliff’s top, I followed along the ledge looking for blood and claw marks. I followed these for nearly 150 meters before the ledge widened, and there I could see that the animal had been able to pull itself up and it rested upon the ledge. I could see there was blood smeared about a good portion of the ledge. I still didn’t see the woewe anywhere and the ledge narrowed down again a few meters away, but I saw no sign that the woewe passed that way.

  Where had it gone? As I looked closer, I noticed some small rocks projecting from the cliff’s face of the ledge. There was some blood on a couple of them, and I saw claw and scratch marks in the cliff wall leading back up to the edge of the cliff. The woewe obviously used these as hand and foot holds as it climbed out of the canyon. My suspicions were further verified when I moved to the position where the woewe had climbed out of the canyon. There I saw blood stains in the sand where it had lain after its final escape from the canyon. It must have rested there for some time before it had moved off away from the ship leaving an ever thinning trail of blood. I had not killed the woewe, but it was injured, and it would be several days or weeks before it would regain its full strength, if it didn't die first.

  I returned to the ship and gave Kala the bad news. “You don’t think it will come back, do you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so, it was badly wounded, and animals learn quickly to avoid places that cause them pain.” I answered. “I don’t want you opening the hatch door or going outside until I return, just to be on the safe side, if you don’t mind.”

  “I have no intention of opening the hatch if that thing is still out there.”

  “Good, well I had best be on my way, but let me say good-bye to the kids first.” I went inside the ship and found that somehow Kala had managed to put rails around the bed. "How did you do that?” I asked.

  “The rails have always been there Tib, they are built in the bed frame for a number of uses, not the least of which is a loss of gravity. There is netting that attach’s over them if you need to be kept from floating off at night. The rails also can serve if you are injured or ill to prevent you from falling out of bed. They retract into the bed frame when you do not want to use them.” She indicated two buttons on inside of the frame that I had never noticed. I picked up the babies, one in each arm… Reidecor opened his sleepy eyes and yawned and promptly fell asleep again. Lunnie on the other arm, peered at me with that intense analyzing look that she always had, and then smiled and cooed.

  “All right now,” I said addressing them both, “I want you to be very good for your mother. Daddy has to go look for a new home for us. I’ll be back in a few days.” Lunnie looked at me seriously, and Reidecor yawned and threw up on my hand.

  “See how much respect I get,” I said laughing as I handed Reidecor to Kala. I went to lay Lunnie down, but once again she managed to grab a hold of my finger and squeeze it tightly. “Ok honey, I love you too, but you need to let go. Daddy has a lot to do.” I bent down and kissed her on the forehead, just as she released my finger. I went to Kala, kissed Reidecor and then kissed Kala long and sweetly on the lips. Inside I wanted to stay, and I think if Kala had said, “Don’t go,” at that moment I would have stayed. As it was she said, ‘Take care, Tib, and keep your com link open.” I noticed her eyes were filled with tears and my own felt a bit full also, but I kissed her one more time quickly on the cheek and let myself out through the airlock, making sure it was solidly sealed before heading upstream along the canyon rim.

  By now, it was dark outside but with the visor of my helmet down everything seemed as bright as at day. The only thing that seemed strange was that there were no shadows, which made things look odd and surreal. The lack of defined shadows had a tendency to make things look 2 dimensional, and it took some getting used to. Here and there, Sisoma trees with their lights shining like Christmas decorations back on Earth, lit up the desert. I saw small shelled creatures about the size of golf balls crawling about. Several times I came to dry washes that led down into the canyon. Most of these were narrow and relatively short, and I could walk around or even leap across them with no difficulty. At one place, however, the gully was too long to walk around. I found a place where it was not that deep, and I climbed down into it and crossed, and found a place on the opposite side where I could climb up and out to continue my journey. I was making better progress than I had hoped and soon found myself at the side of one of the sheer cliff faces of the first mountain.

  The canyon I had been following through the desert began getting shallower; the walls were only about 6 meters from the rim to the bottom. I followed it for some distance until it came up to the cliff face and the stream turned and flowed along the cliff, so one side of the stream was bordered by the cliff. I went on for about a kilometer until I came to a larger canyon carved through the cliff face; there it the divided the mountain.

  “Tib, how are you doing?” Kala’s voice came through my helmet speakers.

  “I’m doing great. I’ve made it to the first mountain and a place where the stream enters a giant canyon that runs through it. I was just debating if I want to try to enter it now or wait until its dark again. It's nearly dawn now, and I need to start looking for some shelter.” I said as I looked about trying to see somewhere to spend the daylight hours. “What are the sensor readings indicating for solar activity?”

  “Everything looks calm for the next day or two,” Kala came back.

  “Was there any sign of the woewe last night?” I asked.

  “Nothing that I saw, but I didn’t watch the monitor all night. I’ll fast scan through it once we are through talking and see if there are any signs of it, and let you know if I notice anything.”

  “I don’t suspect you will. Most likely, it crawled off somewhere and died. It was pretty badly wounded and lost a lot of blood.”

  While we were talking, I had walked away from the cliff face to a small hill and to a large pile or boulders. From there I could see the entire valley that I had come from. Out there in the middle of it was the ALI, Kala and the twins. I tried to spot just where they were, but I couldn’t, and the way the canyon twisted and turned made it impossible to see the entire canyon and follow it as a trail back to the ship.

  “How are the babies doing?” I asked.

  “They are doing just fine.”

  “Kala, I miss you.” I said, suddenly feeling very sad and heavy.

  “I miss you too Tibby. However, this is something that can’t be helped, and we just have to make the best of it.”

  “Yeah, I know. However, it’s still lousy.” I replied. I could hear Kala laugh at the other end. "Find yourself a safe place and get some sleep,” Kala commanded. “I love you, Tib.”

  “I love you too.” I said just as I saw the sunlight starting to light up the tops of the cliff walls of the mountain.

  I found a small cavity in the rocks that I could crawl inside. I was concerned that I might find other life forms inside, but I found nothing, and it didn’t appear that anything had been inside for a very long time, if ever. The space existed between several sizeable boulders with one large piece balanced on top. I estimated they had probably been deposited there millions of years ago in some giant flood or had simply been deposited on top of one and other when the soil around them eroded away, leaving them stacked as they were. The space wasn’t large enough to stand up in, but I could easily sit up inside it and lean against one of the rocks for back support.

  I’d brought several bottles of water with me and sipped on them d
uring the night. Now it was time for me to eat something before going to sleep for the day. The food synthesizer had managed to make up a food bar that was kind of like a piece of beef jerky mixed with a fruit bar. While it was just a little bigger than a granola bar back on Earth, it was far more nutritious and one bar equaled a full day’s dietary needs. The computer had advised that one should eat the bars slowly, consuming one over the period of a day, but I had not eaten all night and elected to eat the entire bar in one sitting. That turned out not to be a very wise choice, as shortly thereafter I found myself feeling overly full and bloated. I crawled out of my hole under the rocks and tried walking about a bit hoping the motion would relieve some of the pressure in my stomach.

  I decided to make an inspection tour of the rock pile I was using for shelter as it only covered an area about the size of an Earth's football field. I began to walk around it and had completed about half the circuit when a particular rock face caught my attention. It looked to be perfectly flat on one side. I remembered from one of my physics classes my professor made a statement that nature abhors a straight line, and anytime you see something that is flawlessly straight, or in this case flat, it’s almost always man made.

  I approached the rock and observed some sort of inscriptions or writing engraved upon its surface, but it was quite weathered. I began taking a closer look at the rocks and realized that what I had assumed to be just a pile of rocks was, in fact, the ruins of some ancient building made from a concrete like material. Over the centuries, this building had collapsed and everything but the stone-like material had rotted or decomposed away, leaving only large pieces of the broken rock-like substance. As I looked closer, I could slowly begin to see the foot print the building must have once had, but there were not enough large and intact pieces to determine what the building looked like when erect.