by Craig Allen
Hayes waved a hand toward Sonja. “Go ahead and set her down, Gunny.”
Sonja guided the hopper toward a landing pad on the corner of the island, some fifty meters from the water. No one had wanted to build it any closer, given that creatures with a long reach lived in the water. The hopper slowed its descent, hovered over the platform, then touched down gently. Sonja switched off the engines.
“Not bad, Gunny,” Hayes said. “Keep this up, and I’ll be out of a job.”
“Guess you better watch yourself, sir.” Sonja continued the shutdown procedure, grinning.
From the hopper bay, a marine shouted, “Rear hatch in five!”
Cody double-checked the systems on his suit, which showed green. Shortly thereafter, the rear hatch split open, and the ramp descended. The marines, all in half-can power armor, filed out and formed a perimeter around the hopper in seconds.
One of them chimed in on the comm. “Clear.”
Cody exited the hopper through the pilot’s hatch after Sonja while Hayes leaned back in his seat, his hands behind his head. The marines had taken up positions around the hopper but kept their rifles shouldered. After several encounters with the fliers, they’d learned they really had nothing to fear from them. Frankly, Cody expected them to hand over the ex-mat pod without a problem.
The landing area sat on a plateau, from which they could see the ocean in most directions. Some boulders had been around, but they had been cleared when the landing platform was constructed. The hills to the west weren’t terribly high. Most mountains on the planet were not all that high. The nearby vegetation that had once lived near the base of the hills had long since fled once hoppers started to land, leaving the yellowish, rocky ground exposed.
Cody switched to a private comm where only he and Sonja could hear. “Not bad, pilot.”
“Thanks.” She shut the hatch behind her. SOP was for the pilot to stay on board, which meant Lieutenant Hayes. Sonja still had a job to do on the ground. “What do you think my call sign will be?”
“Hot Stuff.” He didn’t react when she punched him in the arm. “Or maybe Sexy—”
“Okay, forget I asked.”
She switched back to the public comm, and Cody had no choice but to do the same. He glanced at her as she suppressed a smile. Nothing seemed wrong, at least not anymore. She was probably still thrilled that she had been allowed to fly the hopper on her own, which meant whatever was bothering her would resurface, and she’d have to face it. Then Cody would, too.
The dark-blue ocean lapped up on the shore. The higher gravity made the waves roll in and out tighter and faster, making the sea look like a sped-up recording. Cody was marveling at the sight when, in the distance, bubbles spilled over the surface. He zoomed in on the water, but whatever had happened stopped. He frowned. For a moment, he could’ve sworn he’d seen something red in the water.
Sonja pressed the side of her hand to her helmet, blocking out the direct glare of Kali’s bright sun, though her helmet polarized the worst of it. “How long until they’re here?”
Cody deactivated the zoom on his suit. “They should be here by now. Oh, here they are.”
Three fliers appeared over the hills, flying low. They circled a few times and then landed several meters away from the hopper. They folded their four-meter wings and hobbled over. Cody went to greet them.
Several fliers lowered their young to the ground. From what Cody understood, they would be able to fly on their own in a year. Until then, they were cradled in the central arms of their parents.
They could hop pretty well, though. As soon as their small feet touched the ground, they hopped toward Cody, flapping their vestigial wings wildly as they squeaked like chipmunks. They gathered around him and bounced up and down. The sight always made Cody laugh. Why they had taken a liking to him over other humans, he had no idea.
“How are you guys?” He held out his hands and let the young fliers rub his palms with the tops of their heads. “You’re all being good, right?”
They squeaked again. Cody couldn’t believe they could understand English already. They were only two months old. Then again, they reached full maturity at two years.
The young fliers scurried away as Stripe shuffled forward, his wings folded and his central arm tucked in. Even on stubby legs, Stripe stood a good half meter taller than Cody.
“How are you?” Cody hoped Stripe wasn’t angry anymore.
Stripe’s head bobbed, imitating a human nod as best as it could manage. He then extended his central claw. Five digits were spread equidistant around a fleshy, dark pad. Cody held out his own hand, and they shook. The envirosuit did its best to duplicate the texture of Stripe’s hand, which was something similar to sandpaper. As usual, Stripe kept his claws away from Cody’s wrists.
Cody lowered his hand. “You never told me where you learned how to shake hands.”
Another flier hopped toward Stripe, carrying a viewer with him, one of many they’d given the fliers so they could communicate with humans. Stripe took the viewer and showed it to Cody. It had an image of an old movie of some sort, one that was in black and white and looked like a political rally. Humans were shaking hands and smiling.
While the viewers given to the fliers had been stripped of anything considered sensitive by the military, they hadn’t been deleted of everything. Apparently, human history was deemed nonsensitive material.
Cody chuckled. “You’ve been reading about our history, have you?”
Stripe’s head bobbed again. His head spun around toward the east, along with all the other fliers. The bouncing young ones stopped and did the same.
Cody’s suit tracked the sound of a hopper’s engine. With his suit’s HUD, he zoomed in on the incoming hopper as it crossed the sky just over the horizon. Before it got close to the island, it banked east and vanished.
The fliers’ postures relaxed, their wings sagging almost to the ground.
“They’re looking for our lost friends,” Cody said. “The ones that disappeared. You haven’t heard anything more, have you?”
Stripe rotated his upper body back and forth, emulating a human headshake.
Sonja grimaced. “Hope that wasn’t too close.”
Again, Stripe shifted his body side to side.
“Good.” Cody wanted to ask Stripe if he had contacted Reggie.
The toads had been forbidden technology, even the simple handheld viewers used for communications, storage, and other simple tasks. The fliers were the go-betweens for humans and the other species of Kali, which meant they needed them to talk to the toads, but Stripe had already hopped away.
His suit’s electromagnetic sensors flared up as Stripe spoke to the fliers behind him. Then the flier in the rear hobbled forward, carrying the half-meter sphere he’d showed them earlier. Other than the blinking lights, it had no markings anywhere.
The flier held the sphere out to Cody until he took it, then the creature shambled back behind the other two fliers. The sphere was heavy, and Cody stumbled but caught himself. He doubted he could’ve held it at all without the aid of his envirosuit’s actuators. Still, the weight of the sphere didn’t mean it was full or empty. Less than ten milligrams of ex-mat was likely inside the container, if it had any at all. Cody set the sphere down as gently as he could manage.
Sonja ran her hands over the globe until she found a holocontrol port. She waved her hand over it, and the controls materialized in the air, showing a readout Cody couldn’t read, but they made Sonja’s eyes grow wide.
“Well, it’s definitely active.” She crossed her arms. “There’s no manufacturer or military markings or identification, but the thing’s been scratched to hell. The ID could’ve been removed.”
Cody wasn’t precisely sure what exposure to a few milligrams of exotic matter would do to a person, but he was certain it wasn’t good. “Where’d you find it?”
Stripe tapped out a message on his viewer.
During a flight we saw unnatural thing on ma
inland one day’s flight away and bring here and tell you.
A day’s flight usually meant two to three thousand kilometers, depending on altitude.
Sonja frowned as she continued to examine the pod. “No idea if there’s still ex-mat in here.”
Cody had never actually seen an ex-mat containment pod before, only read about them. The power supply maintained gravitational fields inside to keep the exotic matter, typically degenerated quark strange matter formed in particle colliders, from touching the sides of the chamber. If the ex-mat did touch the chamber edge, it would likely pass through into the open air. Nothing physical could hold it, considering the only thing denser than degenerated quark matter was a black hole.
A port allowed a Daedalus engine to access the ex-mat, which it used in conjunction with negative energy derived from the Casimir effect, as a catalyst to push the ship faster than light. That process allowed humans to reach Kali as well as hundreds of other worlds.
Cody ran a finger along the sphere. “Didn’t we scan the whole planet for these things?”
“For beacons, sure.” Sonja handled the sphere as if it were made of glass, though it was probably safe if it still had power. “Once disconnected from an engine core, they automatically send a signal. But not this one. The beacon must’ve been disabled somehow.”
Cody wondered how strong the artificial gravity field inside the pod had to be to contain exotic matter only a little less dense than matter found in a black hole. “Where do you think it came from?”
“Spicans?” Sonja asked. “Maybe they’re doing an end run around us?”
“Not a chance,” Cody said.
“Are you sure? We didn’t even know the UEAF Kali had crashed here ten years ago, only that it went missing. We only found this world two months ago. Maybe the Spicans have known about it all along. We’re not far from their space.”
“They have no reason to do that. They have nothing at stake on this world. They haven’t even been here before.”
Sonja held up a hand. “The last thing I want is for a bunch of toad-shaped super predators with an intelligence greater than the average human reaching Earth, and what if the Spicans are helping them by giving them ex-mat, the one thing they’re missing to venture out into space. I just want to be sure.”
“I understand,” Cody said, “but no way would the Spicans backstab us. They feel regret for what they did to us. They really wish they could take it back.”
“Says you.”
“Says a lot of people. There is no connection between toads and the Spicans. They claim no knowledge of this system. They don’t really lie about things like that. They don’t know how. They only know how to speak their minds. It’s just who they are.”
Sonja crossed her arms.
Cody started to put his hand to his head but stopped himself. “I know you fought them, Sonja. I know what they did to your home world.”
Her face went ashen, and Cody regretted saying it. Everyone on her world had died during the war, having the atmosphere blown off the planet by a weaponized device using exotic matter. Even ten years after the war had ended, people still felt a lot of anger. Everyone had lost someone in those days, Sonja more than others. He hoped she’d keep her head on straight when the Spicans arrived.
“Sorry,” he said. “Look, we’ll let the people on the Washington examine it.”
Her only response was a nod.
Cody’s cheeks hollowed. That could’ve gone better. On top of it all, she was back to being reticent, and he’d made it worse.
Stripe had been watching the entire exchange, his head twisting from side to side. He held up a viewer to Cody.
We do not know this person Spike Ann and we receive nothing as we only talk to you.
“I understand.” Cody watched the young fliers for a moment, who had taken to playing some sort of game near the shoreline. “I saw something out in the water when we landed.”
The fliers’ necks retracted slightly, a reaction Cody had associated with anxiety. Stripe tapped out another message.
Tell us of this.
“All I saw was red. It looked like the reeds.”
Magnetic waves flared up on Cody’s envirosuit sensors as the fliers spoke to each other. They faced each other, bobbing their entire bodies up and down, even spreading their wings. Finally, Stripe tapped out a message, the hairs on top of his head standing straight up.
What you call the reeds are everywhere in sight and not in sight and it know all.
Cody read the words several times. “Any idea why they attacked us earlier, when we were looking for technology by the plateau?”
Stripe hesitated before pointing at Cody’s boots.
Your exterior coverings not hurt at times and hurt at others, which make what you call the reeds angry maybe.
Cody was sure no one had used their magnetic boots prior to the hopper vanishing.
The other two fliers had gathered around Stripe. Cody didn’t fully understand their body language, but he had the impression they weren’t telling him everything.
Cody continued. “You need to hear the whole story.”
The fliers’ wings fluttered as Cody described the disappearing hopper, and their bodies quivered as he explained the reeds rising from the ground and swirling around like teeth. Sonja drew closer to him as he spoke, her arms still crossed.
When he finished, the fliers faced each other again. When the magnetic readings on Cody’s suit died down, Stripe tapped out another message.
You never go back to that place where the things you call reeds gather who are friends with eaters of the people.
“The reeds are working with the toads?” Cody frowned. “Why would they do that? What are they planning? Did they take our friends?”
The fliers went still as statues before Stripe tapped the viewer.
The red reeds hear all no matter where people speak.
Cody wondered if the reeds could hear them from the water. “The reeds used to speak to you once before? When did they stop?”
When your people rescue my people from the eaters long ago.
“So after the Kali crashed ten years ago, the reeds pushed you aside. Why?”
The flier started to tap a message then stopped. It did so twice more. The differences between humans and fliers was extensive, not just physically but mentally as well. Such was the case with two species that evolved in vastly different oceans. Sometimes, though, Cody was certain he understood what they were thinking as he was certain he could see Stripe’s confusion.
“What happened to our people?” Cody asked. “What happened to the blobs, the behemoths—to the toads? How did they vanish so suddenly?”
Finally, Stripe tapped out a message, glancing at the water from time to time, but no sign of any disturbance was visible on the surface.
The Reed creates and destroys. It takes and gives nothing. It not want us anymore. It talk to all but not the people. My people live only because of your people.
Cody read the message several times. “You speak as if they rule the planet.”
The flier showed Cody the viewer, and his jaw dropped. It contained the shortest response from a flier he had ever seen, one he didn’t expect to see at all, and it spoke volumes.
Yes.
Chapter Six
Cody waited patiently in engineering, located on a lower deck, according to the map on his internal viewer. Without the map, he’d never find his way anywhere. The Washington was a veritable maze, with some passageways just dead-ending. Bodin had told him that was for security. If anyone that didn’t belong was on board, they’d get lost quickly, but everyone who worked on the ship knew the layout by heart.
At the center of the myriad of holoconsoles, pipes, and other structures Cody didn’t understand sat one thing he did understand. A half sphere twenty meters across was the center of attention for a dozen engineers. It was, in fact, a full sphere but large enough it took up more than one deck. The other half could be seen from th
e deck below the one Cody was on.
Lights flickered across the sphere—all green, to Cody’s relief. The giant half sphere facilitated the expansion of the exotic matter via a smaller ex-mat container located deep inside the larger sphere, through various compartments leading to the Alcubierre rings that surrounded the ship. At least, it would if the rings were unfolded and ready for superluminal flight. In the center of the larger sphere was an ex-mat containment pod similar to the one Technician Broward had been examining for the past half hour.
Finally, Cody set aside the small magnetic grapple he had picked up earlier to pass the time. “Any luck?”
Broward scratched his ear. “Damn curious.”
“What’d you find?” Admiral Rodriguez strode into engineering, right on cue.
Broward wore a visor attached to a headband, which he adjusted so he could see the admiral. Unlike everyone else on board, he didn’t bolt upright to attention. No one in engineering did. For the life of him, Cody would never understand all the rules of military protocol.
“Not as much as I would like.” Broward removed the headband containing his visor. “The area on the pod where the manufacturer and serial numbers would be has been damaged.” Broward held it up to the light. “That is scarring, likely from improper insertion.”
“Is there ex-mat inside?” Cody asked.
