by Craig Allen
I scanned the list several times. “If these frogs had gauss weapons that can fire projectiles twenty times the speed of sound,” she said, “what kind of advantage would that give them?”
The parts I had given them contained the same material flaws. Perhaps they wouldn’t last long. Perhaps the weapons they made wouldn’t last one shot. Perhaps they would never figure out why the materials fell apart after a few months.
Perhaps.
And when the weapons didn’t work, what would they do? What would they do to us? To Marie?
The deck vibrated. Marie yelped when it happened again. The hull groaned for a few seconds, and I could’ve sworn the entire ship had moved. It stopped as quickly as it began, and the floor listed slightly downward in the direction of the cargo bay.
The vultures communed with each other, then one left. It hopped over to the two frog guards at the entrance. For a moment, it stood motionless as it communed with the guards, and then it returned. It grabbed the viewer and quickly wrote a message.
They hide sky beast with burrowers under beast removing dirt.
“Removing dirt?” I asked. “They’re trying to bury us?”
It gave a short nod.
“Why?” Marie swiveled in her chair. “Why would they bury it?”
Hide from others so no one knows and no one use but hunters.
“What about us?”
We stay with sky beast so we not escape.
“They’re going to bury us alive?” Marie said.
They dig holes so they reach and use but keep us here to use.
“They want us to operate this stuff,” Marie said. “Indefinitely.”
She was wrong. They wouldn’t keep us indefinitely. They would keep us until they decided to use the factory themselves—or trained others to use it. Maybe that’s why the vultures were there. Then they wouldn’t need us anymore.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
The vultures looked at me for a moment.
We cannot leave. We are cattle. They keep us until hungry and eat us. We cannot leave.
“We don’t have to stay here if we don’t want to.”
No escape no pity no mercy no way home to high rock no more living.
“There is a way.” My voice grew louder. “The question is, do you have the will?”
~~~
Provider returned, and I showed him a series of logs indicating that the magnetic grapples must have detected a ship and tried to latch on to it automatically. It took some doing, but Provider seemed to accept this. He demanded I stop it from doing it again, or Marie would pay the price. He left before I could respond.
I pulled out the last magnetic grapple. The power cells indicated they were fully functional. All I had to do was press the button, and the natives would squirm in agony.
“How many are coming with us?” I asked.
Who other than us and you?
“What about those guys outside?” Marie said. “They’re prisoners, too, right?”
The vultures paused for a moment and communed.
They are not people. They would not help us. Why we help them?
“They are people,” Marie said. “They are just different. They don’t want to be here any more than we do.”
“She’s right,” I said. “If they want to come, we should give them that chance.”
They are different and not people.
“We are different from you,” Marie said. “Do you think we are not people?”
They flinched at her comment. They ruffled their wings while communing with each other. It went on for several minutes.
We not think of this that you are not people but you are people and we not want harm to you.
“Great,” I said. “How do we tell the others without the frogs finding out?”
~~~
I didn’t think anything of them when I had first seen them crawl out of one of the holes in the encampment. Metal plates covered the tiny beetles like armor. It was a bit disconcerting as they crawled all over the control room, but it didn’t bother Marie one bit.
“They’re kind of cute.” She ran her finger gently across the top of one of them. It quivered at her touch, and the rest quivered in unison. She laughed and did it again.
Her smile made me forget how much trouble we were in. I turned to the vultures. “They can tell the others without the frogs—the hunters—being warned?
They know all the others. They travel everywhere. No one knows different peoples better than they who will tell and not tell hunters.
It took me a minute to parse what it had said. “They know who is in good with the hunters, and they won’t let them in on it.”
They stared at my comment and then bobbed their heads. One tapped on the viewer and showed it to us.
When?
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We move out tomorrow morning.”
~~~
The beetles crawled over the whole camp that same day after we’d worked out the hand signals. The creatures in the holes wouldn’t have much time to get away, but at least they would have a chance.
I pulled out some cargo straps from a wall panel and started to rig them into a harness. Marie wrinkled her brow. “Are you sure this will hold me okay?”
“Well, it’s designed to strap down cargo up to half a ton,” I said. “I’m reasonably certain it can hold you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Funny.” She continued to run the recipes through the factory. “I’m just not sure I want to go flying.”
“Me neither,” I said. “But I’d rather risk that than stay here.”
The factory aperture opened. This time, it didn’t produce a tool designed by the frogs. I pulled out a small amount of potassium nitrate and sugar melted into a brick. I put a charged capacitor in the center. When it went off, it would ignite the brick.
I’d yanked the broken door conduit from the wall. Though still busted, it had some residual power to burn a hole in something. I set it down and went to work.
“That’s what you wanted?”
I nodded. “Simplest stuff is often the best.”
“That’s not going to hurt anything.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“What about this?” She gestured at the factory. “We can’t leave this.”
“I’ll vent the deuterium,” I said. “Without the reactor, all of this will be just a big pile of junk.”
“And their tools break in a few months.” She smiled. “We can do this, can’t we?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
She sighed, relaxing. I gave her the most reassuring smile I could. I had a million doubts, but I didn’t share them. If we stayed, we would die eventually. If we left, we might live. There was no other choice, but I was still scared to death something would happen to her.
~~~
Sleep didn’t come easy that night. The vultures didn’t appear to sleep. They simply stopped moving. Earlier, I had spoken with the vulture that would carry Marie and told him to take off with her as soon as he could, no delays. The vulture nodded.
I understand. We have mates as you do. Not like hunters.
“The frogs don’t have mates?”
They are all one and feel nothing only birthing from the pool.
I’d seen the miniature frogs emerge from the pool, which they used also used for a toilet. I wondered if they left genetic material behind—the equivalent of sperm and egg—when they defecated. In the pool, the genetic material combined with other frogs’, thus creating the next generation. No parents or nurturing was involved. And the adults ignored their children when they emerged from the pool of shit. No wonder the frogs were so vile.
I looked down at Marie as we lay on the cargo bay deck. I promised myself I would never tell our children about what had happened to us.
She stirred. “You still up, babe?”
“Yeah.”
She hesitated. “What if they can’t regrow my legs?”
I hadn’t expect that que
stion. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“There’s a chance my body will reject the regrown limbs.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, about a one-in-ten-million chance. That’s not going to happen.”
“What then?” she asked. “Will you still stay with me?”
“Of course I would. I don’t care if you have legs or not.”
“Really?”
“Marie.” I pulled her closer, as close as I could. “Why would you think I’d leave you?”
She smiled. “When this over, I want to muster out. I want to go to a colony world, one far away from the war, away from all of this. Will come with me?”
“Try to stop me.”
We made love that night, for the first time since the crash. I allowed myself to believe we could make it, that we would retire on some colony world, just the two of us. It was a beautiful thought.
~~~
The next morning, I entered my access codes into the factory, and Marie went to work setting up a timer. I wanted to nuke the thing, but I would have needed codes from a commander or someone higher in rank to remove them. It didn’t matter. We could still bomb it from orbit when the rescue arrived. Just in case the frogs managed to acquire more deuterium for the reactor, I screwed up every recipe so that anything they made would break down in months. I hoped they weren’t smart enough to fix them.
I checked ten times that morning to verify I had the commander’s viewer. I was reasonably certain I could hack it and send a message to the bridge-sat. Then the rescue team would arrive and take us away from this terrible place.
The vultures had used the food processor to make a huge batch of turkey to take with them. They couldn’t eat it just yet, not until it ripened. They left some for the little beetles, who carried it off in tiny armloads. The vultures also gathered supplies, including food they knew was edible to us. They made every effort to help us.
When everything was ready, I went outside. The frogs wandered about the encampment, keeping an eye on the slaves. They usually relied on their captives to stay put, probably out of fear. The prisoners never tried to oppose them. Maybe the many species of this world just accepted the food chain the way it was.
The beetles poured out of the holes and headed toward the hopper. A number of them carried the puck-sized chunk of potassium nitrate and sugar on top of their backs, along with the door conduit I’d rigged to burn. It was so bloody obvious that the beetles were carrying something unusual that I thought the jig was up, but the frogs didn’t notice at all. I guess the vultures were right—the little guys pretty much went everywhere they wanted, and no one cared.
They scrambled under the hopper to set up the cake of potassium nitrate and sugar. The beetles operated efficiently, moving as if they had one mind. I just hoped they were smart enough not to screw it up.
A few minutes later, they scurried away. I got the magnetic grapple ready. I’d modified the power output to twice what it had been. It would burn out after a few hours of operation—more than enough time to get away.
I stood a good twenty meters from the remains of the Kali. If I were any closer, the grapple would rip out of my hands when I turned it on. I didn’t want it to connect with the hull just yet.
I took a deep breath. I had nothing else to do but wait. There was no going back, even if I wanted to.
Nothing happened for several minutes. I panicked that the little guys had botched it. And then, sparks appeared from beneath the hopper as the capacitor lit up. It took a few seconds, but then the mixture went up quickly. Sugar and potassium nitrate, when set on fire, never stopped burning, even after being dropped in water. Fire licked the underside of the hopper while the dense smoke poured forth.
The frogs reacted immediately, gathering around the hopper. Some reached under it, only to yelp in pain when they touched the small burning puck.
The armored beetles scurried away, avoiding the frogs’ big feet. I gave them the thumbs-up signal I’d worked out with them earlier. They danced for a second then scurried around, sending the message to the others. After a few seconds, creatures started climbing from the holes. Those that made it pushed on the ladder-logs that lined each pit until they rolled inside. Everything inside scrambled out and headed south, just as we’d planned. None of the frogs noticed a thing, except for one.
Provider took one look at me and the beetles around the holes. He didn’t hesitate. His massive form raced toward me from the hopper. He wasn’t stupid. He must’ve known something was up. His timing, however, could have been better.
I twisted the knob on the grapple to full power. It vibrated gently in my hand. It meant nothing to me. But to everything else in the encampment, the effect was devastating.
Provider fell onto his side. His momentum caused him to slide toward me another few meters. Squirming in agony, he covered the large metallic plate on his head with his primary arm.
The beetles had already gotten away. Everything else stampeded. They knew what was coming. They should’ve been ready for it, or maybe the magnet was more powerful than I’d thought. Some simply fell over in pain. Others even left behind their own species in the struggle to get away. The mammoths stormed away, their riders yanking on their fur violently. They had no compunction about squashing whatever lay in their path.
The frogs simply writhed back in forth in the billowing smoke, completely helpless. Maybe they were more sensitive to the magnetic fields since they were predators. I didn’t know for sure. And I didn’t care. I dropped the grapple.
Marie called to me. “Matthew, let’s go!”
The vultures had exited the Kali. Marie rested in her harness, strapped to the front of one vulture. Its front arm was wrapped around her as it easily carried her. I’d never really taken a close look at those claws. They had talons three centimeters long. They could perforate human skin easily. But seeing the creature hold her in place within the straps by those claws assured me she would be safe. The only difficulty the vulture had was caused by the trouble I’d just created. The vultures twisted their heads in ways impossible for a human.
I ran to the door. They pushed themselves north, but they were having trouble. I guided them, trying to lead some of them away from the broken spaceship.
“You can do it.” I hoped that if they got on the north side of the Kali, then the hull would shield them. If not, then I hoped the frogs wouldn’t regain their senses until we were gone.
The Kali was a big ship, and getting the vultures outside while the magnet was screaming proved to be a problem. One of them stumbled and fell. I went to him and pulled on his wing, trying to help him back up. Another vulture came to my side. Together, we got him to his feet and guided him around to the north side of the ship. On the other side of the Kali, their reactions changed. As I had suspected, the hull shielded them.
“Let’s go,” I said. “You sure can carry—”
They didn’t hesitate. The one carrying Marie spread its wings wide. It flapped, taking three bounding steps, and then it was airborne. The vulture flapped hard and propelled itself into the sky quickly, thanks to the thick air of the high-gravity world. As they gained altitude, Marie shouted with glee.
The others took to the air, climbing quickly into the sky. The last one gestured toward the harness it carried.
“You’re okay with this, right?” I asked.
It curled the fingers on the end of its wing, one pointing at the sky and the other two pointing down. It looked very much like a thumbs-up.
“Who taught you that?”
It reached for me with one wing and nudged me, as if to say, “Hurry up.” I quickly nestled into the harness. I’d barely gotten it locked together when the vulture started flapping its great wings. It bounded forward once, twice… and we were still on the ground. After the fifth bound, I wasn’t sure we’d make it, but the sixth one did it. It flapped hard against the thick air. The ground fell away from us. We were at a hundred meters in no time, and we still climbed higher.
Below us
, the wreckage of the Kali was sunken partway into the ground. Deep trenches in the ground from the landing stretched back from the ship. The rest of the Kali had crashed elsewhere. The frogs weren’t in sight, but I knew they would be writhing on the ground for hours. Those monsters deserved far worse for what they had done to Marie.
Holy Christ, I thought. We made it!
The vultures gathered into a V formation, not unlike geese on Earth. It made sense. It reduced wind resistance, making it easier on the others. Marie and her vulture moved past us and took position just ahead.
She called out to me. “Hey, baby!”
“Hey, yourself,” I shouted.
“We did it!”
I laughed. “I told you we would! You ready for retirement?”
“Oh, I can’t wait. Honey, I love you so much!”
“I love you too, baby. We—”
It came from below, slamming into the lead vulture. The vulture turned sideways, falling out of position and spiraling down. A second creature brushed past me, jarring the vulture that carried me and nearly ripping me from the harness, but it sailed past.
Those bat-like creatures that had flown right through the flock of vultures were probably the same ones that had emerged from the satellite trees days before. One of the bats tilted into a dive, straight for us.
“Matthew!” Marie pointed downward. “Watch—”
A bat rose like a cannonball, clipping the vulture that carried her. The vulture spun violently upward, its wing obviously broken. The harness came undone completely, sending Marie spinning through the air.
