Daros, page 29
Three times, commandos appeared from the forest or around hills. The second time, it was even a group of three. Each time, she felt her guts clench, and she crouched down immediately to hide her shackled hands, but none of them paid her any heed. Perhaps they didn’t recognize her, or perhaps they just had more pressing concerns. All were fixated on the camp, running towards the battle. In time, she neared the forest. She checked the scanner one more time. All seemed clear, but then, the scanner had not picked up all of the commandos who’d passed by. Some must still be maintaining stealth, comms passive, weapons not yet charged, and the scanner didn’t spot them.
Even so, it began to seem like this might work. She abandoned her defensive posing and switched to a full run. Anybody who saw her now would likely know she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, and not going in the right direction, and would see her wrists bound. Speed was the highest priority now. A few hundred paces more, and she would be among the trees. Perhaps to freedom. She lifted her tail, extending it behind her to aid her balance, and put on more speed.
A beam smacked into a tree just in front of her. She flinched. Another came soon after, striking the ground a few steps ahead of her on the right side. “Halt!” came a voice. It was angry, loud. Frim pondered just running, dodging. But it was too far. And she couldn’t outrun beams. Not when fired by a trained soldier. She stopped. Maybe she could talk her way out of this. She turned. A commando stood not far behind her, rifle raised. It was fixed on her chest. “Soldier,” she began. “I panicked. I am not used to combat. I was trying to get to safety, so as not to interfere with—”
“I found her, Commander. Fleeing.” The soldier stared at Frim. She waited for a response. The rifle did not move. “Understood, Commander. Should I terminate her now, or return her to camp for questioning?”
Frim did not like either of those options. Not at all. Perhaps it would be better to take off running again. Better to have a chance at freedom than none at all. Especially if she’d be shot either way. She swished her tail, tensing her muscles for a last, mad run for the trees.
“Kneel on the ground. Place your hands on top of your head.” The soldier took two more steps toward Frim. Frim heard the whine of the rifle charging. Time to act, or there would be no time at all. The soldier was too close. But there was no other chance. Frim raised her bound wrists slowly, plotting her move. A lunge to the left, a duck, then a sprint, weaving. Maybe she could get by. Get free. Strike the soldier with the shackles. Maybe.
There was a dull thump from the vicinity of the soldier. It had no obvious source, but it did have an obvious effect. The soldier crumpled and flew sideways, her rifle spinning away out of her grasp. She let out a choked groan as she flew, then landed and rolled. She lay still. It was as if she’d been yanked from her position by an invisible rope. Or…
Before Frim’s eye, a ship flickered from nothingness, from the air itself. It rested on three conical feet on the site where the soldier had stood. There was a crackling noise as the ship became visible, and she could suddenly hear the growl of its engines as the cloak slipped away. The ship was a bright yellow, and on the side, there was a picture of a human, mouth stretched open wide, one arm raised in greeting. That was highly unusual. The ship was Vonar, obviously, with the cloak, but apparently the owner was not. At least, not if the ship’s heraldic decorations were accurate.
A door slid up in the side of the ship. A human stared out, a match to the image on the ship’s side. Frim’s receptors picked up a mélange of emotion, odd flavors, but the mix and tang she recognized as human, not Zeelin. And the flavors were ones she recognized, even shared. Stress. Anxiety. Impatience. A prickly hint of anger, though not directed at Frim, she thought.
It spoke. Frim at first had no idea what it was saying, but then her training in the human language rose to mind unbidden, and she understood. “Are you coming? Get in.” The human was impatient. “The box of goo wants you. I don’t know why.” That can’t have been a literal translation, thought Frim. She tried to remember if there was an alternate interpretation for these words, or if she’d made an error. Perhaps her learning hadn’t been as thorough as she thought.
Suddenly, the other flavor was back, washing over her receptors like a cold, bitter rain. The alien emotion, the one she couldn’t interpret. And with it came the voice.
Rescue.
Come.
Now.
64
Now Boarding All Uniformed Military Personnel
Brecca stared at the invader. The Zeelin. She could see far more detail here up close than she had on her screen or through her field scope. The creature looked like the others she’d seen, except this one had no armor or helmet. And no gun, and their wrists were bound together with metal shackles trailing a half-meter of chain. Broad shoulders, a tight-fitting gray uniform, a single large eye staring out over a jagged mouth. No neck to speak of. The head just protruded like a lump, although she could see more musculature and definition on this unarmored one than the armored ones. Three slits on the top of its head all flared wide open, probably for gas exchange. This one was maybe a little smaller than the soldiers she’d seen, but not by much. Still probably 150 kilos, maybe more with the tail included. There was something clutched in their taloned hands, a device with a screen. Their eye darted from side to side, taking in everything.
The ship couldn’t stay here, so if the creature wouldn’t come, then this had all been for nothing. But Guzma had been adamant. Rescue. That one word, over and over until they landed. Brecca tried talking again, although she doubted the Zeelin understood her. “Look, I know this is weird. It’s weird for me too. But we can help you get out of here. We just saved you from being shot, after all.” Brecca had been startled by the thump as Lyra rammed into the soldier. Not something she’d have thought of, or suggested trying, but Lyra took initiative sometimes, and it seemed to have worked. The soldier hadn’t moved. Brecca hoped they weren’t dead. But maybe she should hope for that – these were invaders, after all, and they’d shot down the Envy’s Price without warning or mercy. It was hard to figure out how to feel or respond to the chaos of the past few days.
The creature spoke, but it was the harsh language of the Zeelin. No use. But then, the creature tipped their head to one side and tried again. “I am sorry. I am new to this.” This time, it was Tradespeak, clear as day. “Who speaks in my head?”
“You speak our language? That’s wild. How did… Never mind. The voice. It’s a… uh… a sentient being on the ship here. It can talk that way. It has strong opinions. Many of them turn out to be right. It said we should rescue you.”
The creature took this in, then responded. “It is Vonar?”
“No, but the Vonar brought it here, before he died. I don’t know what it is. But it seems connected to this world. Or at least, it knows more of what’s going on than I do.”
Homitta.
Sure, that’s very helpful, Guzma. Yeesh.
The Zeelin was silent for a time. Probably thinking hard. Or just totally bewildered. Brecca was sympathetic to the apparent and justified confusion, but there was no time. “Look, we’ve got to go. We can talk on the ship.” If you’ll even fit on the ship. “We can drop you off somewhere safe if you don’t want to stay with us. But let’s get out of here.”
The creature fixed their single eye on Brecca and stared. It was creepy, almost like the eye was looking inside her.
They spoke again. “You seem honest and peaceful. I am grateful. I will come.” The creature took a last look around, then came up to the ship.
“Careful,” said Brecca. “The Vonar are small, and the ship is, too. You might have some difficulty.” Brecca stepped back and watched the creature duck and compress to fit through the door. It was a surprising display of flexibility, or ductility, or whatever the right word was. As the Zeelin passed, Brecca caught a hint of an earthy, musky smell, and the scales of their bare head and upper back rippled in a fascinating pattern, showing glints of a rainbow of colors in the sunlight despite the dull gray color of the skin. The creature turned awkwardly at the end of the entry hall, scraping against the purple fuzz on the walls, and moved out of sight into the bridge.
Brecca stepped back inside and touched the door control. It slid down. She took a deep breath. This had better not be a mistake.
65
Meet and Greet (and Meat)
“Greetings, Zeelin warmonger.” The voice emerged from a hidden source. Probably a speaker somewhere. “Do not try anything foolish.”
Unlike the small human who had greeted her at the ship’s door, the hidden voice seemed to speak Zeelin comprehensibly. Frim replied in kind. “Who speaks?”
“I am a citizen of the Vonar Collective, designation 34-349452. But some call me Lyra.”
“I do not see you. Are you hiding?”
“Question level: Basic, ignorant. Yes and no. I am in plain sight, but you do not perceive me.”
Frim felt a twinge of annoyance. Her own. Strangely, the words were accompanied by no emotions at all that she could sense. But the odd flavor was here, stronger. It emanated from a point to one side of the small bridge. Could that be the Vonar who spoke? She hadn’t heard of Vonar having unusual emotional broadcasts.
“Were you the one who communicated with me? From afar?”
“Question level: Basic, ignorant. No, that was Guzma, I suspect.”
Frim had no idea who Guzma was. Asking questions was getting her very little information. She felt a vibration, and she was pressed downward as the ship lifted. No chance to get away now. She planted her tail on the fuzzy floor for balance. Her head would have scraped the ceiling of the bridge had she not ducked. She put her shackled hands up on the ceiling to steady herself.
The human emerged onto the bridge from the passage to the door. She spoke. “Lyra, can you get them a seat, at least? A big one? And then we need to talk. To find out what they’re doing, and why Guzma wanted them here. You’re speaking their language? They speak mine, so let’s use that.”
“Argument level: Basic, prideful, selfish, functional. Argument is valid, although egotistical. You should learn more cultures than your own.”
“Look, Lyra, I know three languages, just not this one. And you’re an algorithm. You can learn anything. It’s hard for humans.” She continued speaking, and she and the unseen voice carried out an argument with each other. Frim listened, but it was confusing, hearing both voices, and making sense of them, and she was a bit overwhelmed. They shifted topics, and the voice seemed concerned about the cloaking system. Frim took the opportunity to study the ship’s interior. There was a display screen at the front and a command chair. The human seated herself there and accessed controls. There were two other seats, but they were far smaller, much too small for an actual person. But as Frim watched, a compartment opened and one of them retracted into a chamber beneath the floor. A short while later, another seat emerged, larger and lower to the ground. This one had an open back – space for a tail. Thoughtful. Frim moved to it and sat. A relief, not to be so hunched over. She dropped her scanner in her lap and stretched her fingers. Her wrists hurt from the shackles. She hoped the human could get them off.
Frim squeezed her nasal openings closed, then closed her eye and pressed on it. This was madness. She had no business getting on a Vonar vessel. If she was discovered, she’d be culled as a traitor. But she had been about to be killed by the commandos, and she was already operating against fleet command orders, trying to sabotage the fleet’s goals. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t a traitor, anyway. And now at least she was free.
Frim studied the human. She had not seen one in person, although of course she’d studied images in the fleet’s pre-mission training. This one had smooth brown skin. Her head was covered with a stringy curled growth. The two tiny eyes were ugly and disconcerting. They moved together, sweeping back and forth. The nasal openings were in the wrong place, tucked on the bottom of a small fleshy beak. And the oral opening was small and lined with a flesh rim. It was weirdly animated. It seemed the creature spoke by shaping its outer oral opening and wiggling a fleshy appendage inside. Very strange. There even seemed to be small white minerals there. Perhaps part of her metabolic process. Her head was large and sat on a narrow stalk that allowed it to rotate much farther than a Zeelin head. This was unnerving. The head reminded Frim a little of the ocean palloks she had seen nesting near the sea on her last visit to Enzok. The small predators had the same flexibility in their stalked heads.
The human was definitely the one displayed on the exterior of the ship. If she remembered Vonar custom, that meant that this human was the ship’s commander. That did not explain the other unseen entity with whom the human conversed, seemingly an equal or a partner, or the presence emitting the strange emotional broadcast, which had so far remained silent, unless it was the one conversing with the human. That seemed unlikely. The presence she’d sensed on the planet had spoken seemingly directly in her mind, and only one word at a time. This was different, and the voice had mentioned another – Guzma. There might be three entities here. She closed her eye and concentrated on her receptors, searching for a third being. It was there, but faint. Toward the rear of the ship, on a lower level, barely registering. The emotions from it were a jumble, but the major flavors were a dull suffering and a thick, red ooze of pain. That was not a match for the voice that spoke here, but it was possible that she was misreading these creatures – they were alien, after all.
The human and the voice seemed to have completed their arrangements. The human went over to the side of the ship, where a panel opened. The human removed an oblong cylinder from the opening and studied it. She pressed a button, and it emitted a bright yellow arc of light and some jets of gas to either side.
The hidden voice blared out. “Attention! Be careful with that.”
“Just checking it. Sheesh.” Brecca approached Frim. It seemed she was making a careful study of Frim as well, if the cautious approach and the movements of her eyes were any guide. Frim sensed primarily a robust curiosity, with a twinge of wonderment and revulsion, but no hostility. This one broadcast openly, and the flavors were strong and familiar.
The human raised one of its hands, the one not carrying the cylinder. Frim did not know why. Then, it spoke. “Greetings. I am Brecca Vereen. I am human. I am honored to meet you. Do you have a name?”
Frim listened, and the meaning of the words came to her, and then the appropriate reply. She remembered learning all of this. Hours spent learning. Except it had not been her. “I am Frim.” She fit her own Zeelin name into the human sentence. “I am the navigation officer of Ship 807332, which is currently in orbit. I am grateful that you rescued me from danger.”
“Hello, Frim. Good to meet you.” The human’s oral opening was very flexible. It was distracting. She lowered her hand, then held up the other one with the cylinder. “Lyra says this is a gas-cooled cutting torch that I can use to get those shackles off you. She says it won’t allow the metal to get too hot or cold, and it shouldn’t hurt or damage you.”
Frim could taste a whiff of uncertainty and mistrust from the human, but it was accompanied by concern and a desire to help. She held out her arms and presented the shackles. The human – Brecca – activated the cylinder, and the beam came out. Brecca applied the beam to one of the shackles, and it abraded the metal where it touched. The gas jets activated every few seconds, cooling the surface around the beam. Brecca went slowly, asking Frim repeatedly to say if there was any discomfort. There was a little, when the metal grew hot, but it was tolerable, and Frim didn’t want Brecca to stop, so she remained silent. The human grew more confident after a while, and the cutting went faster. The first shackle came off, and Brecca started on the second.
Brecca paused for a moment. “Do you, uh, have pronouns you prefer? I use female pronouns. She, her, hers. But I don’t know if that, or how that, works. For you. I’m sorry, I just want to get it right.”
The fixation on gender in language was interesting. Such complexity and inefficiency, with so many words and rules. “I have borne a number of offspring. I think that might make me female in your estimation.”
“Good. That works for me if it works for you. Thank you.” The human – Brecca – gave off a tang of relief, then curiosity. She continued cutting. These gendered words were strange. Gender was a concept Frim knew of, in the abstract. There were a few species on Enzok, and then some alien species, that were limited to non-hermaphroditic reproduction and which exhibited various forms of sexual dimorphism. On Zeelin, they were very rare, and Frim had never seen any of them firsthand. The Zeelin had no need or use for gendered language. But the Vonar and the humans must both be gendered. This was new to Frim.
Brecca spoke again. “Why were your people trying to kill you?”
Frim pondered this. Although she could detect no hostility, she did not yet trust the human. Even so, it would probably make a better impression to put some distance between herself and the fleet. “I was not operating consistently with their goals. I had a different mission, one at variance with that of the rest of the fleet.”
“So you’re what, a secret operative? A rebel?”
“Something like that.” Time to ask some questions of her own. “Are you allied with the humans who have colonized this planet? Your ship attacked our ships in orbit, causing significant loss of life. How did you come into possession of a Vonar ship?”
A mix of concern and discomfort floated by Frim’s receptors. Brecca was apparently unhappy. “That was not me. I was not on the ship then. I didn’t even know about it. It picked me up later. I didn’t kill anybody.” The human finished, and the second shackle split open.
