Under Strange Suns (23 page)

From a fold in the blue clad plain emerged a one-armed alien.

Aidan rose to his feet, clawing out his pistol.

* * *

At McAvoy’s knock, Brooklynn Vance looked up from the monitor. The screen displayed the moon rolling beneath the
Yuschenkov
, telemetry numbers churning along a graph in the lower right corner.

“Got a minute, Captain?” the geologist asked.

“Sure, Sam. What’s up?” She stretched, glad of the interruption. She and Matamoros had been studying images for hours, real-time and recorded, along with all the sensor data across the electromagnetic spectrum that the ship could provide, looking for signs of survivors. It was maddening to wait for each orbit to pass over the site of the crash, but she couldn’t justify the expenditure of fuel required to maintain a stationary orbit. Not yet anyway.

“You asked us for ideas.” McAvoy leaned against the hatchway entrance, arms folded across his lean chest. “I’ve been working on something –”

“Captain!” Doctor Roberts’ voice broke in over the ship’s priority channel, insistent, with a hint of tremolo. “Get to the infirmary, right away.”

“Grace? What is it?” Vance asked.

The doctor did not respond, so Vance rose stiffly to her feet.

“Rain check on the idea, Sam,” she said to McAvoy, brushing past him. She broke into a trot.

Gordon Foster lay stretched flat on one of the two beds in the infirmary. Doctor Roberts bent over him, applying a bandage to his left wrist.

On a tray next to the bed Vance saw a roll of bandages, a bottle of antiseptic, and a scalpel still wetly red.

“What happened, Grace?” she asked. Then, as the doctor did not immediately reply, “Doctor Roberts, report.”

Doctor Roberts half-turned, maintaining her grip on Foster’s arm. “Suicide attempt. Apparently Foster didn’t want to drag this out.”

“Slashed his wrists?” McAvoy asked from behind Vance. She cast a glance over her shoulder, startled. She had not realized he had followed her.

“No,” Doctor Roberts said. “Well, yes. Both wrists show minor punctures and lacerations. Experimental, I suppose, trying to work himself up to it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it that way. He tried another path instead.”

Doctor Roberts held up a pill bottle that had been concealed from Vance’s view by the roll of bandages. The cap was missing.

Vance fought down despondency, regret, and guilt with the help of a rising surge of anger. How dare he do this to her? To the ship.

“An opiate,” the doctor was saying. “I need an assistant to help with the stomach pump.”

“Damn it, Foster! I need every hand,” Vance said, stepping up to Doctor Roberts’ side. “Okay, Grace, tell me what to do.”

* * *

Yuschenkov placed a restraining hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “Stand down, soldier. He’s a friend.”

Aidan allowed his hand to drop away from the pistol. The alien was looking at them, arm bent at the elbow, as if unsure whether or not to reach for a weapon. The alien was not wearing the armor Aidan had seen on the others across the mountains, but he did have a sword hilt jutting up from behind his head, just to the left, and the points of three javelins peeking up from the right.

Yuschenkov called out again. Aidan thought he recognized the word “Checkok,” but the rest was guttural gibberish.

“You speak their language,” Aidan said, immediately berating himself for stating the obvious.

“I’m not a naturally gifted linguist, but a twenty-year immersion course will do the trick for most people.” Doctor Yuschenkov grinned through his beard. “I told Checkok everything is okay. That you are a friend and it was safe for him to approach.”

And indeed Checkok was approaching, his arm dangling at a forty-five degree angle, nowhere near a weapon.

“Checkok, Aidan Carson,” Yuschenkov said as the alien approached

“Does ‘he’ shake hands?” asked Aidan, managing to work in two questions.

“‘He’ certainly does.”

Aidan thrust out his right hand. Checkok enveloped it in his long-fingered shovel of a hand, giving it a vigorous pump. Aidan noted the wrist was capable of nearly 360-degree rotation.

“The joon are a two-sex species,” Yuschenkov said while the ritual of greeting was concluding. “I assigned ‘male’ and ‘female’ designations based on which group gets pregnant. I’m not a biologist, but it seemed reasonable to me. Checkok and the other joon males conform to most of the characteristics I associate with the masculine. Depressingly conventional, the whole thing: monogamy, marriage, resulting in three-four children on average.”

“Doctor Yuschenkov,” Aidan said, keeping his face blank, not knowing if a smile would be considered a threatening expression, “That’s real interesting. But I should probably tell you that I had to kill several–what do you call them, joon?–on the other side of the mountains. They attacked me. Is that going to be a problem?”

Aidan maintained eye contact with Checkok while he spoke, looking into those huge, luminous orbs that reminded him of glittering pennies he had seen in a museum, displayed with other numismatic relics. This was not a game of D&D. Checkok was not a goblin with a fixed alignment that he could slay with impunity. He was a person, a joon, not all of whom wished to kill him on sight. Some–one at least–wished him well.

Yuschenkov laughed. “No, that will not present a problem. Come on, let’s see what we can salvage before those rain clouds reach us.”

Aidan considered that answer a bit too enigmatic. But Yuschenkov had a point. They should see what useful items they could glean from the wreckage. And the clouds did seem increasingly threatening.

They began picking through the strewn debris. Thorson had performed a thorough job of destroying the shuttlecraft. Other than the few relatively intact sections Aidan had already seen, the unlucky craft was so much metal and plastic confetti.

He scrounged some packaged meals. He shared out a box of fire-strikers with Yuschenkov and Checkok, Checkok issuing grunts and arching the muscles around his eyes in a manner that Aidan guessed was an expression of pleasure. Yuschenkov seemed equally pleased by finding a pair of boots, then voiced dismay when it turned out they were mismatched–not a pair at all–and only one of them fit.

The doctor put it on anyway.

They did not find what Aidan most hoped to, an emergency beacon. He found the smashed casing of one, but only fragments of the electronics and no power source. They did find one intact emergency shelter. Aidan saw scraps of others tumbling about in the increasingly strong breeze blowing in from the north.

They also found a pack of survival blankets and an inflatable raft.

“Don’t bother,” Yuschenkov said when Aidan displayed the raft. “Joon aren’t much for boating. And we have no major watercourses to cross on the way.”

“On the way where?” asked Aidan.

“Girdled-by-Fields. Hey, I didn’t name the town. That’s what they call it. Girdled-by-Fields. At least as best as I can translate it.”

A spattering of fat, wet droplets broke over Aidan’s head.

“Looks like we’re in for a drenching,” he said.

“Looks like. Let’s call off the salvage operations. The wreck isn’t going anywhere. We can come back and pick at it in the future. For now I suggest we get some travel in before the worst of it comes down. Then we can set up that fancy pup-tent of yours and sit out the storm.”

Aidan shrugged. He had reached an impasse and was willing to be led.

Yuschenkov spoke to Checkok, and the joon took point, leading them eastwards.

Aidan handed Yuschenkov a plastic wrapped brick about the size of his hand. “Rations,” he said. He was holding a second and gestured with it at Checkok’s back. “Can he, uh, digest human food?”

“That is a good question, Aidan. I don’t know. I was able to salvage very little food from my wreck and did not want to expend any of it upon experimentation.”

“You obviously did not have twenty years’ worth. So, can I assume we can eat joon food?”

“That would be an assumption too far, Aidan. So, one point for the good question, minus one for the assumption. I’m afraid you’ll have to become accustomed to a rather restricted diet. Our metabolism can only absorb nutrition from certain joon foods. Much of it is so much bulk, it’ll just pass right through you.”

“Any of it poisonous?”

“I don’t know if poison is the right word, but there were a few items I sampled in the first year that left me sick, while a couple made me severely ill. They know what I can eat, so don’t worry on that account, but I’ll walk you through the Complete Guide to Ghark Cuisine just to ease your mind.”

“Ghark?”

“Oh, right. Ghark. You’re standing on it. It’s what the joon call this moon. Means something like ‘the Land.’”

“Ghark,” Aidan said again.

“What? Hoping for something more poetic?”

“Something like that,” Aidan said, thinking of place names from Captain Merit’s D&D campaign world.

“Well, it ain’t Barsoom, I’ll give you that. The gravity is a smidge below Earth normal, but that hasn’t allowed me any sort of superhuman ability. In fact, the diminished gravity combined with the constrained diet have cost me probably five to ten percent of my body mass.”

“You’re looking fit. Maybe a bit further past ‘trim’ than a nutritionist would advise, but fit.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘gaunt.’ But I do maintain a vigorous exercise regimen to combat the bone and muscle loss from lessened gravity. Once you acclimate to the increased oxygen, I suggest you start a program as well.”

“I feel like I already started. Crossing the mountains was a workout. And not the safest hike.”

Aidan flexed his bandaged arm. It didn’t feel too bad, not stiffening. He sniffed at it. No funky odors.

“Collect a scratch, did you?” asked Yuschenkov. “The Ghark bugs don’t show much interest in human wounds. I haven’t had to amputate any of my extremities yet. You’re not going to get gangrene. But you were fortunate to get across the Wall. I was fortunate to crash on this side. I might not have had the same luck against the Lhakovi that you did.”

Checkok turned at the word ‘Lhakovi’ and spat out a few syllables.

Yuschenkov laughed. He spoke a few word,s then pointed at Aidan and spoke a few more.

The alien fell back to walk in step with the two humans. He said something to Aidan and thrust out his long-fingered hand for another handshake.

Aidan obliged, but looked quizzically at Doctor Yuschenkov.

“I told him you’d had a run-in with the Lhakovi across the Wall and had killed a few of them. He was –” A howling wind hurled a torrent of raindrops horizontally at the three, then fell away.

“Maybe we should put up the shelter before we continue our conversation,” Yuschenkov said.

“Yeah,” Aidan said.

He broke out the case, a rectangle about the same dimensions as his forearm. He snapped open the fasteners and removed the tightly packed weave of plastic, Kevlar, and carbon-nanotubes.

“Let’s set up in the lee of that boulder,” Aidan suggested, pointing to an outlier of a rockfall from the mountains, about a hundred yards south.

The boulder, on closer inspection, would provide little protection, only rising about three feet from the damp blue clover. But that was three feet better than nothing. So Aidan set the shelter roll on the ground at the base of the boulder and thumbed the slide on the two-inch square metal plate that housed the shelter’s electronics.

The shelter unfurled and hoisted itself into shape, creating a round, domed enclosure about five-feet high and four paces across. Six spikes drove themselves deeply into the ground, anchoring the structure.

Aidan ushered them in, noting that Checkok paused for a moment before following Yuschenkov inside.

Light strips illuminated the interior. Aidan adjusted them from dim red to a more useful soft white light. They hardly needed to exercise light discipline here. The only enemies he was aware of were on the other side of the mountain range. Of course, who knew what range of the light spectrum the joon could see in? And the light could attract more predators. Still, no point overthinking it. He had a couple of experts here to correct him if he chose wrong.

The floor of the structure was of a cushioning material atop a pocket inflated by the same canister of gas that erected the shelter and powered the anchoring spikes. Aidan removed his combat harness and lowered himself to the floor with a sigh, leaning against the wall of the shelter.

“Home again, home again,” he said.

He retrieved a collapsed, flexible cup from a pocket. With a pull and a twist he fixed the cup into functional rigidity. “Water?” he asked, squirting a stream in from the bladders in his combat harness.

He passed the cup around, poured himself a measure and drank.

“We were, I believe, talking about the Lhakovi,” he said, raising his voice over the sound of the squall currently pelting the shelter.

Aidan had noted an expression on Checkok’s face to which he had assigned the emotion of joy, a lift, or arching of the muscles above the eyes. To the bulge of ridges over each eye–a distinctly different motion, an expansion instead of a rising–he assigned anger. The joon spat the word “Lhakovi” and then a string of other sounds.