Under Strange Suns (19 page)

Further up he encountered a wall. No mistaking it for a work of nature. This was an artifact of precisely laid stone. It varied in height from about two-feet tall to rising just over his head. He stopped climbing, taking a moment to survey his surroundings.

The wall stretched a good fifty meters to his left. To the other side it ran about twenty feet before intersecting another wall at a right angle. Aidan turned and walked to the corner. He scrambled up onto the wall. From that vantage point he observed the ruined layout of a fortification, like a walled town or a military encampment. Assuming the terraces below had once been farms, he inclined toward the former option.

A few paces to the right of the cornerstone there was a line of shorter trees amid the taller specimens. They gave the impression of a slot slashed through the forest. The line curved about and he was forced to pivot to trace it in an arc leading back downhill. The remnant of a road or path?

He looked uphill but saw no evidence of it continuing beyond this ruin. He wasn’t surprised; the mountain above grew progressively steeper and rougher on the far side of the tumbled walls. End of the road.

Not a bad place to end his road for the day. He should be able to bed down under cover and with solid stone between him and any claws, fangs, arrows, or swords. He hopped down into the ruins, found a likely looking campsite in what had been an L-shaped hallway. He lay down a ground cloth and began rigging an overhead shelter, looking at the sky for any evidence of rain.

The light continued to fade, the sky purpling. Except to the east, where the robin’s-egg blue glow had increased. The dome of a new light source hove ponderously into view, dominating the horizon. White swathes and streaks broke the purity of the swelling, massive, baby blue orb. Planet rise; the gas giant, Upsilon Andromedae d, reflecting the light of its primary upon its moon and upon one very lost ex-soldier.

“Now ain’t that something,” Aidan said.

He did not fall asleep immediately. The day’s events remained too immediate, too consequential to allow rest. Instead, he inspected the sword, laying it across his chest. The blade, he was pretty sure, was steel. It was narrow, about the width of his index finger, with a fuller worked into the lower third of the blade. The tip was ground to a wicked point. Though lacking any sort of edge until about the final six inches before the tip, the sword looked very much like any rapier he’d seen on Earth. The cup guard reinforced the impression. The grip, though, was not made for a human, being both too long and too thick to fit comfortably in a man’s hand.

Aidan hadn’t dwelt on the detail, but the size of the alien’s hands had registered. Two long muscular fingers, and a third opposing digit nearly as long. Different from his, fewer fingers, differing proportions, but tool-making and tool-using hands. Sentients, with language skills. People, essentially.

And he’d killed them. Killed them because they’d attacked him, yes. But why? He’d left Earth behind because he’d grown frustrated with the futility of the killing, killing those who’d attacked the West continuously, also for reasons he didn’t know. Oh, he knew why. He simply couldn’t fathom it. It was all so fucking frustrating and pointless. Endless. Well, he’d had enough of inconclusive battles. Perhaps he would have stayed in the service if just once he’d fought and killed an enemy whose death created an obvious, tangibly positive change of events, not merely nudging a notional needle incrementally in what he was told was the right direction. Instead he’d traveled light years across the galaxy only to encounter the same old shit.

“Fucking universe,” he said. “I could’ve just stayed on the Team for this crap.”

That team–that brotherhood–had been the sole reason he had even considered re-upping for another hitch. Aidan thought he had started to develop a similar sense of belonging aboard the
Yuschenkov
. Not as deep a feeling, not as tight or visceral, but at the least he had experienced a growing identification with the crew. Now here he was killing again but without even that new surrogate family to serve as an immediate motivation, bolstering, encouraging, and supporting him like Summers, Hearse, and the rest had done in fucked-up situations on Earth. Two of the
Yuschenkov’s
crew were on the other side of the mountains, likely dead. The rest...

Aidan wondered what the rest of the crew were doing, somewhere up there in orbit. Would he rather be back on-board with them? He had a world beneath his boots, fresh air to breathe. Of course, there was also the matter of a hostile population and limited supplies. The remaining crew of the
Yuschenkov
had each other. He supposed it came down to whether he would rather die alone or in company. Aidan was on his own and would be unless he could reach the wreck and find at least one survivor.

He wondered what Vance was doing, somewhere up there, maybe passing overhead at the very moment.
And how would I explain this cluster-fuck of a day to her? Lost my shuttle and search team. Killed a bunch of aliens. Got my arm torn up by a monster. Yeah, impressive work, Aidan. Vance would be thrilled.

He let the wry thought drift, and with it, drifted off to sleep.

“T
HERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO
about it right this instant,” Brooklynn Vance said. “So just settle down a minute.”

The remaining crew of the
Yuschenkov
clustered beyond the hatch of the command center, with the exception of Matamoros, who sat at her accustomed station inside.

“We tracked the descent,” Brooklynn said. She kept her voice even, assured. She hoped the crew bought it. Inside panic, anger, and desperation fought against professional control and command composure. “Cameras locked on and followed it all the way to the surface. You saw the video. The shuttle crashed. We cannot establish communication.”

“Thorson cut off communication,” Matamoros said. “You were distracting him.”

Brooklynn turned to lock eyes with Matamoros. She instructed herself to take a couple of deep breaths before replying. Matamoros possessed some feelings for the First Officer, that much was obvious. How strong those feelings were, and if they would interfere with Matamoros’ functioning at her peak, was less obvious.

“Thorson was–is–a good pilot,” Brooklynn said. “Good enough that it irked him to take criticism, suggestions, or orders. Unfortunately, not good enough to ignore them. He knew the entry path the computer recommended. Maybe it was my fault for emphasizing it. He wanted to prove to me he knew better.”

“He could be trapped in wreckage and dying right now and you’re explaining his personality flaws?” Matamoros sounded incredulous.

“That’s enough, Matamoros. Don’t add to the steaming pile of shit I’ve got to shovel right now. We need ideas, not incrimination. And definitely not insubordination.”

The computer tech glowered, but kept her mouth shut.

“We’ve got no signals at all from the shuttle?” Park asked. “What about personal communicators?”

Brooklynn looked expectantly at Matamoros.

“Nothing at all from the shuttle. No response. Complete radio silence, like I told you. I don’t know about personal communicators. The wreckage is spread out, but we don’t need to send a narrow beam transmission, they could pick up our call even over a pretty wide beam. If there is someone in the vicinity, we could say hello. But none of them were carrying anything with enough power to reach us. They’d need to turn the shuttle transmitter back on, or get a portable unit from the cargo hold. If they brought one. If it wasn’t destroyed.”

“Just us, then,” Park said. “Now what? We turn on the emergency beacon and wait until our orbit decays?”

“A bit early for throwing in the towel, Park,” Brooklynn said. “When I asked for ideas, I didn’t mean song selections for our funeral.”
Keep them busy
, she told herself.
Sound confident and they’ll settle down. These are good people. They just need to know someone has a handle on the situation. So, pretend you do.

“I watched the video,” Doctor Roberts said. “While I saw a lot of smoke and some fire, it didn’t appear to me that the shuttle exploded. Like the Captain said, Thorson was a good pilot. At least some of them might have survived the crash.”

“I’m not certain they were all in the crash,” Matamoros said.

“What do you mean?” Brooklynn asked, surprised. Unfounded and unexpected hope blossomed. She fought it back with a withering blast of realism.
Allow the crew a glimmer of optimism, but don’t fall victim to false hope yourself.

“Take a look.” Matamoros sent a video replay to one of the command center’s larger monitors. A small object blurred across a cloud-streaked lavender sky. The object resolved into a clear image of the shuttle, tiny but distinct. The little ship’s motion was erratic, pushing the tracking ability of the
Yuschenkov’s
long range cameras to their limits. Clearly Thorson had lost control by this point of the recording.

“Right about...there,” Matamoros said, freezing the image on the screen.

“What?” Park said. “I don’t see anything.”

“There, on the left of the screen. That dot.” Matamoros tapped at a keyboard. The image magnified.

Brooklynn saw an irregular blob about a dozen meters from the shuttle. Too big to be a digital artifact, some glitch of pixelation. But too small to make out any details.

“Bail out?” she said. “Could be. Good eye, Matamoros.”
Carson? Probably, given his background.
She couldn’t see Thorson abandoning ship, and she doubted Burge would have mustered the nerve to jump.

She turned back to address the rest of the crew. “So we operate under the assumption that the wreck was survivable, and that at least one of the ground team bailed out. We do not begin writing our own obituaries. We start considering options. Am I understood?”

Brooklynn took some comfort at the acquiescent nods she received in response. She was selling her act. And starting to believe it some herself. Perhaps she could salvage something from the situation. Then there was the thought of Carson drifting safely to ground. She was surprised by how the mere notion of his survival buoyed her.

* * *

Aidan slept fitfully. The lack of anything approaching darkness didn’t help. Mostly, despite his weariness, he was too keyed up to reach the state of deep relaxation required for true slumber. He drifted in and out of semi-consciousness, the unfamiliar noises of this new world either jarring him back to wakefulness or slipping suggestively into the disjointed, bizarre vignettes his mind provided in lieu of dreams.

He finally gave up, figuring he’d given himself enough rest to push on through another day. He checked his datapad and found he’d lain there for nearly five hours.

He peeked out from the shelter, pistol ready, on the off chance the local predators were a vengeful lot. No sign of movement.

He crept from beneath his shelter and stretched, arching his back and spreading his arms wide. The planet loomed above. Aidan felt a thrill course through him, a burst of something akin to terror, his fight-or-flight instinct triggered by this enormous mass. A vast blue ball, occupying a relatively much greater expanse of sky than did the sun back on Earth, suspended overhead–suspended or in the process of plummeting directly upon him.

“That is going to take some getting used to,” Aidan said.

A faint crimson hue limning the eastern horizon announced the impending rise of the secondary sun.

“‘Rosy-fingered dawn.’ Homer would have had fun with this place.”

Aidan wondered what color the primary dawn would be. “Lapis lazuli-fingered dawn?” He also wondered if talking to himself so soon was a worrisome sign.

He took a long, bladder-relieving piss, then packed the shelter and ground cloth. He slipped the sword blade through two loops on vacant attachment points of his combat harness. The hilt jutted to his left, the blade resting horizontally behind his back at his waistline.

He was ready to move if needed, and he’d put off a necessary task long enough. He peeled back the bandage wrapping his right forearm, wincing as fibers that had adhered to the wound pulled free. Wasn’t a pretty wound; they never were. The flesh was still puffy where the claws had raked him, but the swelling didn’t appear aggravated beyond what he’d expect from such a wound. He saw no discolorations, no striations running up his arm. He sniffed. No unusual odors emanating from the gashes He changed the dressing with a sense of relief.

Sitting on a shaped stone–evidently once part of the wall–he opened a packaged meal and wolfed it down. He would worry about rationing later. Right now he needed the calories.

Aidan looked about him while he ate. He didn’t see any evidence of fire. Nor did he see any artifacts scattered about. Perhaps this was a very ancient ruin–perhaps destroyed by an earthquake or some other natural disaster and all the personal belongings of the inhabitants had long since weathered and rotted away. But he doubted it. The trees in the terrace farms below didn’t look that old, though admittedly he was basing that upon his understanding of the growth rates of trees on Earth. Perhaps the trees here required millennia to reach the height of the average tree he’d seen so far. But again, he doubted it. The damage looked too–orderly. It seemed more likely that the place had been ransacked, completely looted. Then the buildings had been dismantled, and the walls deliberately toppled.