Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  “It didn’t kill—”

  “Shut up Liu. Whose side are you on? Look Iss— whatever you are, you need to leave . And you need to hide.” Titov shoved at it, trying to push it toward the door, but it was massive and Issk’ath didn’t move. “Because we’re coming. Whether you like it or not. Our people up there— the conditions are ‘not optimal’. Our kids are dying. It took us sixteen hundred years to find this planet. We aren’t going to find another one. Maybe you can’t process this with your wire brains. We’re desperate, got it? That means we will do whatever it takes. Bombs, guns, damming your rivers, collapsing your nest, whatever it takes. We’re ready. So get out of our way or get crushed.”

  Issk’ath turned back toward Emery. “This one’s hostility is irrational.”

  “We aren’t always rational organisms, Issk’ath,” said Oxwell.

  “Maybe you should wait outside. Just until the Captain is better,” said Rebecca.

  “He will not get better. If I am not here, his data could be lost.”

  “That is how the Captain would prefer it,” said Rebecca. “Your programming doesn’t extend to us, does it?”

  “No. You are correct, Emery. I will wait outside.”

  Issk’ath extended to its full height and backed quickly out of the open door. Liu puffed out a relieved breath.

  “What do we do now?” asked Titov.

  “Technically, the next ranking officer is Al Jahi. It’s up to her until Captain Stratton is back on active duty,” said Liu. “But I think we should get Emery a painkiller and talk to the others, if we’re taking suggestions.”

  Alice helped Rebecca up. “We don’t really have any options,” said Alice. “Not if we want to uphold protocol. I was ready to declare Dorothy free of quarantine. But that was before we came into contact with Issk’ath. If its story is to be believed, then we have little to worry about. But if it is lying— it hasn’t been through decontamination and just brought whatever it might be carrying aboard the Wolfinger. I’m afraid we can’t return to the Keseburg until we are certain, whether we decide that’s for the best or not.”

  “But it said it didn’t want to use deception—” started Rebecca.

  “Oh boy, you hit your head harder than I thought,” said Titov. “Why wouldn’t it lie about lying?”

  “Come on,” said Liu, “it does no good arguing out here. We need to get the door back on and see what the others are thinking.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Issk’ath stood at the bottom of the ladder. It faced the Wolfinger’s open door, but the humans had long disappeared from view. They’d turned off the data stream but Issk’ath could still hear their raised voices from deeper within. It tried not to listen. It was apparent that the humans did not want to give it their data. Issk’ath debated whether it ought to tell them that the filament was no longer necessary. That it had created a remote link to the Wolfinger’s system and the explosion had done little except destroy their equipment. Deception was against Issk’ath’s inclinations. But omission was not. And the humans had proved that they were willing to deceive. It would be prudent to hold back the knowledge of its abilities until Issk’ath was certain that secrecy was no longer useful.

  Three of the humans returned to the doorway. Emery was among them. Oxwell and Martham, biologists, offered Dorothy. “Emery, your casing is incomplete,” said Issk’ath as Rebecca began descending the ladder.

  “You mean my helmet?” asked Rebecca. “It was meant to keep any microbes out of my lungs and the Wolfinger. But the door is open now. And Dorothy—” a strange squeak erupted from her and she stopped. Oxwell placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. Issk’ath could hear her pulse speed up.

  “You are in distress,” it said.

  “My friend died,” said Rebecca. She was excreting. Was it to signal the others of danger? Issk’ath swiveled its head around. There was nothing overtly threatening in the area, except for the fire they had created themselves.

  “Do you need help with the— with Dorothy?” asked Martham.

  Rebecca shook her head. “Not unless you want to.”

  “I’d prefer not. But I will help if it will make it easier.”

  “No, Beatrice, you need to go check the lab. Let Spike go. Try to get some work done, maybe. I expect we won’t be here much longer, and the Keseburg needs every scrap of information we can find.”

  Martham nodded and strode off toward the lab. Issk’ath followed Rebecca as she picked her way over to the ruined isolation chamber. It was still in flames. “Can’t get to her like this, Rebecca. We need to put it out,” said Oxwell, shielding her face with an arm.

  Rebecca flipped her filament on. “Liu, can you switch on the Tranrob? We’ve still got fire out here.” She pulled Oxwell back by an elbow and turned to Issk’ath. “You might want to stand back, this will be pretty loud.”

  Issk’ath scuttled back just as the air shattered and thrummed with a deep rumble. Its tympana became unstable and Issk’ath switched them off to prevent damage. The flames seemed to evaporate from the remains of the isolation chamber.

  Rebecca was shouting something, but Issk’ath could not hear it without the tympana. The air pressure shifted and Issk’ath cautiously turned its auditory sensors back on. The sound was gone, the fire out. Oxwell picked her way back toward the shriveled shadow that had once been Dorothy Hackford. Rebecca followed her, grabbing Oxwell’s hand when she reached her. They stood in silence for a long time. Issk’ath circled the charred metal bed to look at them.

  “It is only a shed casing,” it said, confused.

  “We don’t molt, Issk’ath,” said Rebecca. “When we shed our casing, we— we’re gone.”

  “But Dorothy isn’t gone. She’s here. I took her.”

  “Can she hear us?” asked Oxwell looking up at the towering bug. She was excreting as well.

  “Yes, if she chooses.”

  “I’m so sorry, Dorothy,” said Oxwell. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t fast enough with the defibrillator—”

  “There was nothing to be done. Her casing was faulty. She says her mind was faulty. She should not have come, this place wasn’t meant for her.”

  “I’m not sure it was meant for any of us,” muttered Rebecca. “Dorothy was just the first of many.”

  “Why have you come here then?” asked Issk’ath.

  “We have nowhere else.”

  “But you must have come from somewhere.”

  Alice sighed and reached a tentative hand toward Dorothy’s body. “It will be too warm still,” warned Rebecca. “We have to wait.” She glanced around. “Not here.” She trudged back toward the Wolfinger, sitting in its thick shadow. Alice and Issk’ath followed.

  “We came from Earth. Hundreds of—” she paused, still uncertain of how Issk’ath measured time. “It was many generations ago. There is nobody alive now who has seen it. Nor anyone who had parents who saw Earth. It has faded into legend, bits of it falling away as we drifted. We— the people who arrived on the Wolfinger, we are the first people to walk on a planet in four generations.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “The first to breathe unrecycled air or feel a wind since we departed our home.”

  “How do you live up there? Without water or food.”

  Alice laughed. “It isn’t just water and food. Space— up there, is empty. All empty. Just a few floating rocks. No air, no light, no food, no water, no people. Just empty. We mine the rocks and we have machines that take them and make them into new things. Into heat and food and propulsion to keep our ship moving. Elemental printers. We built our own world from the crumbs of others.”

  “Why?” asked Issk’ath, “Why did you leave?”

  “The stories are a little like yours,” said Rebecca. “We were not unlike your people. We had a swarm too. But we didn’t have anyone like you to stop us. And we never had anything like the Takesh. We were allowed to evolve unopposed. Gradually, any natural predators we had were overcome or driven off. Grea
t beasts that we hunted to extinction, tiny microbes that we wiped out with medicines, the wild forces of water and sun and wind all tamed by technology. We had nothing to challenge our dominance. Except each other. We fought for many generations. Over resources, over land, over belief. But still, our population grew. And at last, there were too many of us. People starved or died for lack of water. But still, we made more of us.”

  “Humans stripped the planet clean?” asked Issk’ath.

  Alice shook her head. “It wasn’t so much that. We did— but that was not what drove us out. It was our own waste. We ran out of places to put it. It poisoned the water and air and soil. We didn’t just leave because we ran out of resources, we fled earth because it became toxic to us. We left to find a new home.”

  “And when you find one— will you swarm again? Have you cured it?”

  “It was not a sickness. Not like your people,” said Rebecca, “I don’t know if we’ve changed. I hope that we have. That is the reason we pass the story on. It’s in our data, it’s in our schools, it’s part of our reality every day. But we’re lost and dwindling and space is killing us. There are so few of us left, even if we swarmed, what would it matter? We are too small to do much, either for good or ill.”

  “I am not certain that’s true, Beck,” said Alice.

  She frowned, but then patted Alice’s knee. “Then Issk’ath will stop us.”

  “My program demands I protect the colony. It does not extend to you or to the planet,” said Issk’ath.

  “Are you limited to your programming?” asked Rebecca. “Are you capable of emotion? Of desire or grief or joy?”

  “If I were limited to my programming then I would be no more than a tool. Like your machines. I am not like them. But I think your language is still beyond my grasp in these matters. Dorothy shows me pictures of humans and calls it by your names, joy, surprise, fear. But I am lacking something— some significance and context. Dorothy said your excretions earlier meant grief. Distress. I understand distress. The others, perhaps in time I will connect the correct phrases. But I have emotion.”

  “Then you must crave a purpose, beyond sitting alone on a planet, don’t you?”

  “It is not policing a new species. I have fulfilled my purpose, continue to fulfill my purpose. I have no wish to battle another swarm.”

  “And I have no wish to become part of one,” said Alice.

  Rebecca sighed. “To be honest, I’m not certain enough of us would survive colonization to repeat our past mistakes.”

  “Then perhaps you should stay in the world that you built. The one you have adapted to. Traveling is a purpose I would wish for. I will go with you, if you consent,” said Issk’ath.

  Alice shot Rebecca a warning look, and both stayed silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Titov stared down at the sealed box as he scooped the last of the soil over the pit. Rebecca sat on her knees across from him, her gaze on the valley below them rather than the grave. It was so green. The plain was dark with it, as if it were in deep shadow, even in the red-gold glare of the ancient sun. Titov rolled a chunk of white stone between his hands. Rebecca glanced over at him. “That’s pretty,” she said.

  He nodded. “Found it during the initial survey. She would have been excited about it. If she’d just—” he broke off and looked down where Rebecca had been staring. “They shouldn’t have passed her. She should have stayed on the Keseburg. Belham was younger, he should have been on this crew. Dorothy could have gone to the moon. She would have been happy. Peaceful. Wandering around sterile stone formations.” He sighed and knelt down next to her. “And Stratton. If he just would have— she was clean .”

  “He was doing what he thought was right,” said Rebecca. “We all knew what exposure meant. What if she hadn’t been? What if she’d had some long incubating thing?”

  “I know. It just seems so cruel. All of it.” He sighed. “I’m glad we at least have something to show for it. Never seen a green that vibrant on the agri deck, have you?”

  Rebecca shook her head.

  “Maybe they’ll build a school just on the crest of the ridge. Call it Hackford Academy. Peter told me he wanted to be a mountaineer.” Titov laughed suddenly. “I had to look it up. Didn’t know what a mountaineer was. He said Dorothy was the one that told him about mountains. ‘Rocks bigger than the ship, Dad!’ he told me. ‘And trees, as tall as a deck.’ He made it sound like mythology, even to me.” He tried to wipe his face and smudged his cheek with a dirty glove. He blinked the rest of his tears away instead. “Now he’ll get to see them, touch them. They all will. Dorothy might not see it, but she helped it happen.”

  He placed the stone at one end of the soft soil.

  “Andrei,” said Rebecca gently, “the gravity here— lots of Peter’s genmates have been showing Spindling. Even with new health regimens. Leroux told me it may be a mutation on the genetic level now.”

  “We’ll introduce them slowly. The engineers can outfit them with exterior structures, Celia and I have thought about it. We always told Peter that he could do whatever he set his mind to, that Spindling was just a temporary setback—”

  “It’s not just the Spindling. Dorothy got lucky. She died because of a weakness in her heart instead of a deadly alien disease. We may not all be as lucky. And that green down there, you know what that is?” She pointed at the vibrant jade expanse below them. “It’s millions of uncatalogued plants. Maybe toxic, maybe home to dangerous animals or bugs. We aren’t ready yet. Not us, not Peter’s gen, maybe not ever. The Keseburg is safe—”

  “The Keseburg is killing us!” shouted Titov. “It’s what caused the Spindling in the first place. Generation by generation it’s picking us off. You know what the original complement was? Almost fifty thousand people. Celia showed me the last census. You know how many we have now? Thirty thousand and falling every day. A few more generations and we won’t even have enough people left to man the ship or even sustain a population if we found some other lucky planet. We’re at a turning point, Emery. If we don’t get those people onto a planet soon, we’re going to die out completely.”

  “Do you really want Peter to be a guinea pig? You want to risk him as one of the first to try to survive out here?”

  Titov shook his head. “You don’t understand yet. I want the best for him—”

  “Then don’t tell him about this place. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Why are you so adamant that this is the wrong thing for us?”

  “Because I don’t want to watch my father or my sister or my friends die in the hope that maybe this will work. Yeah, the Keseburg is old. Yeah, we aren’t all in a hurry to produce the next gen and more of them are Spindlers every time. But what happens in several more generations isn’t my concern. Whether we limp along in space until the ship falls apart or get wiped out by a microbe here, what’s the difference? I just care about the people who are alive now. We aren’t moving into a shiny new city with all the modern conveniences you know. You ready to go back to subsistence farming? Do you even know how? I don’t. We don’t even know the seasonal patterns yet. Or whether our species of plants will thrive here. Or our animals survive the native life. We’ve only explored a tiny fraction of the planet. A few miles radius— anything could be out there, regardless of what Issk’ath says. But none of us will see it if we settle here. We aren’t going to be explorers. Not once we’re here. Are you ready to watch Celia break her back to eke out enough food? Peter won’t be a mountaineer. Or a chemist. He’ll be a farmer. We’re all going to be farmers. Peter won’t have a choice. And he won’t be a good one. Sorry, Andrei, but it’s true. Even with help he’ll always be weaker and take longer than someone who isn’t Spindling. And if it’s like Leroux expects, his kids will all be Spindling too.” She was silent for a moment. “They don’t belong here. We don’t belong here,” she said after a moment. “Dorothy’s death was a warning.”

  She stood up and brushed the loose soil from her suit’
s knees. She wandered back down the hill toward the ship without waiting for Titov to respond.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Issk’ath watched Rebecca pass. It was silent, its only movement the slow swivel of its triangular head to follow her path. Then she heard a rapid series of crunches behind her and turned to see Issk’ath skittering behind her in order to catch up. She tried to suppress a shudder. The legs. She hated that about insects. All the legs. It didn’t help that Issk’ath’s were so long and each barbed. “You are heading toward the mobile lab,” it observed.

  “Yes,” she said, waiting for it to catch up. It was better to walk beside Issk’ath than feel it hovering behind her. “I need to get some equipment. I would like to go back to the nest before we are forced to leave.”

  “You crave data.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can give you data. About the nest.”

  “Do you mean you want to come with me?” She looked up at its pale eyes, wishing there was some expression to read there, that there was some emotion in its voice.

  “The nest’s structure is failing. It would be safer if I accompanied you. And efficient for your data gathering.”

  “Safer? The others would tell me you’re lying. That you only wanted to separate us in order to kill us one by one and— do whatever it is you do to our brains.”

  Issk’ath’s head swiveled. “We are alone now, Emery. If I wanted to harm you, I could have done it several process cycles ago. And I would not need to separate you. Your numbers are not overwhelming.”

  Rebecca shivered. Issk’ath’s legs stopped and it stood still a moment, processing. “You believe I take the data for my own purposes. That I derive some benefit from Dorothy and the colony. This is false. They exist within me but are not part of me, Emery. I do not use them for power or to satisfy some need.”