Consigned to the bottom of the pack were both its most and least useful components. The most useful was the lightweight but very robust multitool: knife, wire cutter, saw, screwdriver, vise; you name it. The least useful was its larger cousin, the so-called combopioneer tool. Ostensibly combining the features of a mountaineer’s pick, hammer, a sleeve-over hatchet head, attachable shovel blade, and handle extender, it managed to succeed at none of its designated roles, but instead, failed spectacularly at all of them. Furthermore, despite its much bally-hooed nano-bonded composite carbon-fiber construction, it had the strength and durability of an origami butterfly.
Caine’s pack did not contain a firearm, but that was no surprise: only the Commonwealth and Federation packs included one in every kit. One in three of the TOCIO kits versions provided a break-down rifle which was designed so that both the barrel and receiver fit inside its hollow stock. Included in lieu of the combopioneer tool, the weapon was chambered for the venerable—not to say decrepit or feeble—nine millimeter parabellum cartridge. A wonderful round in its day, but that “day” had begun in the early twentieth century and had ended by the middle of the next. But evidently, all that overstocked ammunition still had to be used somewhere, and each TOCIO survival rifle provided one such venue of terminal consumption, at a rate of forty rounds per weapon.
All in all, the survival pack contained about fifteen kilograms of gear and four more of garments and footwear, all of it so lightweight and flimsy that it was a wonder any of it held together long enough to be useful. Assuming that it did.
Everyone reported that their kits were complete. Four of the ten had the nine millimeter break-down rifles. So, slightly better than average. Caine glanced in the direction of the wreck. The last wisps of steam had disappeared.
He rose. “Okay, everyone, we’re heading back to the shuttle. Not because we’re expecting a rescue to team to find us there,” Caine added, seeing the hopeful look in Eid’s eyes, “but to see if it’s safe to salvage more gear. After that, we’ll set a watch and survey our surroundings.”
“Surveying the unknown always entails risk.” They were the first words Gaspard had uttered since the crash.
“That’s true, Ambassador, but total ignorance is an even greater risk. The only thing Yiithrii’ah’aash told us about Disparity is that our filter masks are the only environmental protection we need. We don’t know the length of day, the mean temperatures at this latitude and in this season, or what kind of wildlife we might encounter. However, since we needed markers for this world, it’s a safe bet that some of the wildlife might be unfriendly.
“So, first rule: when we travel, we travel in a secure formation. And everyone is going to take a turn walking point. With two exceptions: Mr. Gaspard and Dr. Hwang.”
Hwang was already glaring at Caine when Gaspard looked up slowly. “It is not right that I do not share in the risk, Captain.”
Damn it, I could come to like you. “Mr. Gaspard, you are ambassador plenipotentiary to the Slaasriithi. You are the package that must be delivered to them, and then back home, safely. That is my primary mission. I will not jeopardize it by putting you on guard duty. And Ben, before you torque up, let me ask you a question: how’s your gut feel?”
Ben’s glare faltered. “It’s—I’m fine.”
“Ben, you are a noble liar. But a liar just the same. You took that landing hard. Judging from the way you’re moving, you may have sustained some internal injuries from rapid deceleration. Or are you saying that’s impossible?”
“I—I cannot tell. But—”
“No buts, Ben. Lieutenant Xue, given your EMT and physician’s assistant certification, you are now the party medic. You will stay by Dr. Hwang’s side for the next twenty-four hours. Should our stoic Nobel laureate experience trauma symptoms that he tries to hide from us, you are to report them to me immediately. Mr. Gaspard, you will remain with them as well, and the three of you will travel at the center of our formation.
“In layman’s terms, we will be traveling in a delta formation. The three persons tasked to keep watch will be armed and occupy the points of a moving triangle. The foot of the triangle will actually be out to our front. Our rearguard occupies the single point behind us. The fourth rifle will be carried by one of the persons at the center of the group. Now, who wants to stand the first patrol?”
Keith pointedly did not take this as a cue to step forward. Good: if you’re too eager to help me, that would blow your cover. “Okay; no volunteers, then. First security detail will be Ms. Salunke on right point, Mr. Macmillan on left point, and Ms. Veriden on rearguard.” Riordan saw Dora roll her eyes. “You have a comment, Ms. Veriden?”
“No. Just wondering if you feel safe with me at the back of the formation.”
Caine frowned. “Elaborate, please.”
“C’mon, when do we talk about the elephant that’s not just in the center of the room, but bursting its walls? We heard the gunshots in the rear section; we see the people who are missing. But no one knows what happened back there; no one saw. Raskolnikov sealed the after-compartments the moment the firing started, kept it locked down until Rulaine called to tell him you were about to come aboard.”
Caine folded his arms. “There were three bodies just inside the aft hatchway: Mizrahi, Dieter, and Danysh. The arrangement of their bodies makes it forensically possible that the murderer was killed by one of his victims. It is also likely that the murderer was the same person who sabotaged the Slaasriithi shift cruiser. During our evacuation, Yiithrii’ah’aash informed me that Oleg Danysh caused the power loss that exposed us to what was obviously a carefully staged ambush.”
“It’s possible that Danysh and the other two killed each other, but it’s not likely,” Veriden insisted, staring hard at Caine.
“No, it’s not,” Riordan agreed, motioning her toward the rear of the gathering group. “But right now, Ms. Veriden, whatever happened on the Slaasriithi ship is not of primary importance. Figuring out how to survive on this world is. Part of that process means traveling safety. So get to your position in the formation. We are moving out.”
* * *
High in the neoaerie of Disparity’s Third Silver Tower, Senior Ratiocinator Mriif’vaal considered the speakers of both the cerdor and convector taxae who had come to deliver their reports in person. Their pheromones were an olfactory cacophony of uncertainty, anxiety, dismay. “The first alert of the alien craft came from the spore-shields, correct?”
“That is correct, Mriif’vaal,” asserted the cerdor, whose individual specialty was in overseeing the data interfaces and transfers between biota and mechanisms. “But the alien craft was not marked as an intruder.”
“Truly? Why not?”
“That is unclear, Mriif’vaal. The high-air spores are too simple to discern anything other than whether an object has been marked with Recognition, or not.”
“Yes, but you only said it was not marked as an intruder. Did it therefore carry the mark of Recognition, or did it somehow pass through the spore-shield without triggering either categorization?”
“I—I do not know, Mriif’vaal. The spore-shield did not dust a Recognition confirmation upon the regional ground biota, but nor did it signal an absence of Recognition marking. I suppose,” the cerdor mused, “that it must have detected a Recognition but did not transmit it.”
“That would be a dangerously uncertain supposition,” Mriif’vaal said mildly. “Besides, there is no precedent for such a mixed result. But let us turn to the reports of the convectorae. What did your foragers encounter, Unsymaajh? Did they observe the descent of the craft?”
The unusually large convector’s neck contracted slightly. “No, Mriif’vaal. They only detected the breaking of the sound barrier as it descended.”
“Did any of them send Affined sloohavs to fly in search of the place it where it came to ground and to sample the spore-change in that locale?”
“There were no sloohavs on hand to summon to that task.”
/> The cerdor’s eager interjection sounded like an extended chirp. “Would it not be prudent to send a rotoflyer to explore the alien’s projected region of terminal descent?”
Mriif’vaal raised a temporizing tendril. “That is an excellent idea, which we will hold in reserve.” The Senior Ratiocinator smiled within: and which you are eager to enact, given your taxon’s love of complicated machines. “But for now, we shall pursue subtler means of detection and, if deemed prudent, contact. We do not know these aliens’ capabilities or their intents. Any machines we might deploy, particularly aircraft, will be easily discerned. They are particularly susceptible to detection by orbital sensors.”
Alongside Mriif’vaal, his designated respondent and Third Ratiocinator, Hsaefyrr, stirred from her meditative absorption—and thus, recording—of the discourse. “The defense spheres are no longer actively engaged. Is it likely that hostile or unpermitted objects remain in orbit?”
Mriif’vaal’s tendrils switched once. “The absence of detectable orbital objects only means that nothing anomalous remains within the range of our sensor-cloud or the action range of the defense spheres. This descended craft might have a homing beacon. Its crew could thus establish lascom lock with extraorbital allies and transmit information. Or perhaps the forces which attacked Yiithrii’ah’aash’s ship may have seeded the space above us with sensors as undetectable as our own. So, while the current circumstances might signify that we may act without fear of report, they do not guarantee it. We may simply be unable to detect all the elements that might bring us under observation.”
Hsaefyrr swiveled her head toward the bantam cerdor. “Did you detect any radio emissions from the craft?”
“We were uninformed of its initial descent, and so were not attentive to any signaling at that time. Since it made planetfall, we have detected a few transmissions, but all are low power and very short range.”
Mriif’vaal released a few Appreciation pheromones in elderly Hsaefyrr’s direction. “Cerdor, tell me: are any of these signals known to us, either in their cyphers or physical characteristics?”
The cerdor emitted a rattle of chagrin. “I regret to say that I have little expertise in such matters. However, I may assure you that the signals are not ours, nor the Arat Kur’s, nor the Hkh’ Rkh’s.”
Mriif’vaal mused a moment. “So it may be that this ship carried the visitors that Yiithrii’ah’aash informed us he was bringing planetside tomorrow. About whose species I have some conjectures. But it is just as likely that this ship was part of the force that attacked them, and whose origins are equally unclear.”
The cerdor’s hip joints flexed anxiously. “Then what shall we do?”
“We shall send three overseers to manage this matter as it unfolds: one cerdor, one convector, and one ratiocinator. The two of you shall fulfill those roles I have thusly designated for your respective taxae. I shall find a suitable mid-life ratiocinator within the hour. You shall approach, observe, and report upon the aliens, aided by biota only. You shall make direct contact with me if the ratiocinator and at least one of you two deem it wise. You may employ whatever subtaxae you recquire to locate and keep track of these arrivals to our planet. In the meantime, our rotoflyers and other relevant mechanisms shall remain ready and pre-loaded with defense automata. Lastly, we will see to the distribution of spores that alert all our taxae to evacuate the area that lies along the projected route of the aliens’ advance.” Mriif’vaal stared at the luminous holograph which floated before them, offering an unusually precise view of the region in which the alien craft was thought to have descended. “Do you have any sense of their progress, yet?”
“No, but it seems likely they will follow the river downstream,” answered Unsymaajh.
Mriif’vaal bobbed agreeably. “Which will make them easy to find and follow.”
Hsaefyrr’s observation was typically sour. “Which, in turn, will make them easy to kill for any pursuers that might hunt them”
“Yes,” Mriif’vaal agreed sadly. “This is also true.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Southern extents of the Third Silver Tower; BD +02 4076 Two (“Disparity”)
Caine glanced up at the murky golden star in the teal sky. It didn’t seem to race through the hours much faster that Earth’s did, so in all likelihood, and allowing for the current latitude and season, Disparity’s day was probably not much shorter.
The survivors were moving carefully into and out of the wrecked shuttle, its nose having settled even further into the marshy bank. Higher up the shore, Ben Hwang sat checking for anything of value in the salvage that the team members brought to him, but that didn’t amount to much other than the tools and the sealed rations from extra survival kits. Anything made of fabric had already been inundated with a fine, alga-like slime that had entered wherever the shuttle’s hull had been warped, sprung, or ripped open by the force of the crash.
Macmillan emerged, carrying several packets that had not come from survival kits. “What are those?” Caine called to him.
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Dora found them in the ship’s locker before she headed back into the engineering crawlspace.”
“They look like extra filters for our masks.”
Hwang held up the dripping bag, kept it back from him. “That’s what they were. Who knows what they’ve been saturated with now? Probably some of the fast-growing slime we’ve found on everything else.” He glanced at Dora’s own mask further up on the bank, picked it up. “I don’t think these are safe to leave around. We just don’t know how quickly the mold and algae can ruin them in this environment.”
Far in the distance, Caine heard what sounded like the hoarse hoot of a foghorn. He turned in the direction of the sound, saw nothing that might have made it. However, looking in the other direction, he noticed a constellation of large, orange water lily analogs that extended all the way to an upriver bend. Beyond that, all visual details were swallowed by the humid haze.
Xue, sitting between his charges, nodded in the same direction. “I heard it earlier, while you were all recovering items from the ship.”
“Mechanical or biological?” Caine wondered aloud.
Hirano Mizuki, whose duty suit was wet up to her small waist, shook her head. “Unquestionably biological.”
“Unquestionably?” Ben repeated.
“Well, almost unquestionably,” she amended testily. “But this call lacks any of the patterns of machine sounds, which tend to repeat or to be comprised of remixed sub-patterns.”
Qwara Betul, who was resting a moment, nodded at Mizuki. “Yes. She is right. Before I became a multimedia recordist, I worked in audio simulation. A machine, even one trying to mimic animals, can only mix, match, and modify what is in its catalog. That sound”—the distant, soft, and sonorous foghorn was back—“is an original utterance, every time. Or it is the best imitation of an animal I have ever heard.”
Caine nodded. “Okay. Well, if you have any guesses about the creature that might be making it, please share them.”
“Of course. Why?”
“Because that sound is coming from downstream. Which is the direction we are ultimately headed.”
Mizuki nodded sagely. “Logical. Rivers tend to lead to social aggregations, whether the species in question is intelligent or not. Of course if we are presently in higher altitudes, rivers will not be so reliably correlated with settlements.”
Caine started making his way toward the shuttle. “Fortunately, from what I saw as we descended, we’re not in a highland floodplain. This quasi-jungle is part of a long carpet of foliage that runs toward the northern shore of a southern continent. The longer we follow a major watercourse, the more likely we are to have the kind of encounters that Ms. Hirano mentioned.”
“And,” added Macmillan, “since we don’t have maps, nav satellites, or any other means of knowing where the blazes we are, following a river at least keeps us from walking in circles without knowing it.”
&nbs
p; Caine smiled. “Yeah, there’s that, too.” He side-shuffled down the soggy bank, waded out to the forward hatchway; the water was now knee-level, there. As he ducked in, he almost collided with Nasr Eid, who was lugging more salvaged rations in one of the ruined packs they’d pressed into service as carry-sacks. “Nothing else of value,” he panted, his voice muffled and warped by his filter mask. “Everything is smashed in the back.”
“Where is Ms. Veriden?”
“She is a fish!” Nasr’s voice was admiring and aghast, all at once. “She fitted her duty-suit with the underwater attachments, connected a pony-tank, and dove into the engineering companionway.” He shook his head. “I would not go there. It is dark.”
“Is she using one of the glow-sticks from a signal kit?”
Eid stopped in the exit, looking back at Caine. “Perhaps. Yes. Perhaps she is.” Clearly, the thought had not crossed his mind before.
Caine moved further back along the flooded passenger aisle. Each time he waded through the shuttle, it looked more devastated than before, partly because all the compartments had been yanked open in search of useful objects, and partly because as the shuttle settled, the fuselage’s cracks and split seams were sagging ever-wider.
There was movement in the water at the rear of the passenger compartment; Caine hefted his hatchet-headed combopioneer tool slightly higher.
Dora Veriden’s head popped out of the water with a splash, her dark brown shoulder length hair plastered to her scalp, neck, cheeks. “Shit,” she announced. “I’m done back there.”
Raising Caine - eARC Page 33
