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adverse_camber “…Slipstream? Seemy? Come on, spark, wakey wakey… there’s a good lad…”
The voice that roused him out of dormancy was gentle, but nevertheless had that same sort of stridency of an alarm bell. He flickered his optics, rebooted his vocaliser with a little khuff of effort, and stared at his reflection for a moment or two while the static cleared out of his vision.
“I said I’d wake you when we got here,” Celerity went on, gently, “and here we are.”
“You let me sleep for a whole day?” he groused, accusingly.
“Yes,” she agreed, simply. “You obviously needed it, or you’d have woken of your own accord.”
Couldn’t deny the logic in her words, for once, so he let it slip. “So where’s here?” He peered out of the viewscreen at the starscape. “We’re kinda not quite here, are we? Couldn’t we have got a teeny bit closer? Because that’s like, just two planets.” He gestured, although it was more of a dismissive flap of the hand. “Four, if you count those two little bits of rock going round them as well.”
“That’s right.” The bigger machine inclined her head. “Firewire’s trace leads quite clearly to here, but then it gets muddled. I thought you’d like to help me decide where we go from here.”
She didn’t outright say it, but the undertone to her voice was loud and clear. I don’t want you blaming me if I get it wrong, because the fates know you WILL, even if it wasn’t me at fault. “Um, ok.” He pretended not to have noticed. “Can you bring up the traces on the heads-up?”
Celerity nodded, tweaked the console, and the flurry of varicoloured lines on her personal screen flashed instead up on the main viewer, scattering like a sloppy spiderweb between the two planets, and a firework of extra lines exploded out of the solar system in all directions.
“…ah,” Slipstream felt his hopes sink. “I thought-… didn’t you mean… I didn’t think there’d be more than one, uh…”
She smiled, ruefully, and nodded. “I didn’t realise so much could happen in biological societies in such a short time, either. Since our last survey, this little green-covered bit of wet rock has turned into a highly populated area, full of interplanetary travel,” she confirmed. “The one advantage being they use a different system of drive to our vessels, so the traces are different, and I think I’ve narrowed Firewire’s trace out of this big mess…” She pointed at the screen and gestured a finger along one of the lines; the computer helpfully labelled it in a bright gold, dimming the rest out to the same shade of grey.
“It stops a bit short, doesn’t it,” Slipstream observed, grimly. “I hope nothing bad has happened.”
“No, that’s the point where the trace loses focus.” Celerity reassured. “It’s some sort of magnetospheric interference, so far as I can tell. I’m happy that he landed safely, but I can’t pin down an exact destination.”
“How close can we get?” Slipstream leaned closer and studied the globe.
“Well… I’ve narrowed it down to perhaps the right portion of a continent, but… we’re looking at an area several times the size of Deixar.”
Slipstream pouted, sadly. Deixar, their home district, wasn’t that big when compared to the more major city states back home, but it was certainly big enough, a few thousand square miles. “We could be looking forever,” he observed, softly. “He could hide up anywhere, down there.”
“One step at a time, eh?” Celerity smiled, in a way she hoped was reassuring, and gestured towards a portion of the southern half of the main continent. “There’s some engine particulates that might be from his vessel down here. If we make planetfall at that point, the worst that can happen is he’s not here, and we can continue the search on foot.”
Although he knew searching by air made more sense, Slipstream didn’t challenge her. To his unending shame, he was intensely acrophobic, to the point that being only a few dozen metres up left him completely incapable of functioning. He knew that having to be up in the air and looking down on the ground would upset all his gyroscopes and make him so vertiginous that he’d be about as much use as a wet paper bag. “G-good idea,” he agreed, feeling ill at just the thought of it, and tried not to dwell too hard on the idea that – technically – they were flying even now…
0o0o0o0
//Mirii?//
Not expecting a call, hearing Sei’s voice in her brain took Mirii a little by surprise; luckily, computerised reflexes stopped her before she could stab her patient. Yes love? She straightened, a little; Sei had an anxious tone to his voice. Is everything all right?
//I am not sure,// he admitted. //The vessel I informed you of yesterday evening seems to have acquired a companion.//
Another one?
//Yes, and it seems to be aiming for your location.// He sighed, awkwardly. //We do not anticipate any hostility, because it seems minimally armed, but… we are still getting no response to hails, and we want you to be prepared.//
Is it Laima? she wondered, unhappily.
//No-one here has been able to isolate any markings to suggest that it is,// Sei demurred. //So far as we can tell, it is unmanned.//
She sat up straighter. That makes no sense. Especially if it is from the same origin as the previous vessel.
//I concur,// Sei agreed, tiredly. //Perhaps… perhaps they are nothing more than pre-programmed survey drones. This system was populated only by the ruta, until very recently, if you recall, although Chak has evidence of an older civilisation. Perhaps these vessels have been sent by that society, checking if their former home is still inhabitable?//
Maybe. Mirii studied her fingers, briefly, and tried not to sound too doubtful. What happened to the previous vessel?
//It landed without incident just north of the Hajalla kari, and has done nothing since.// He gave another one of those sort of sigh/huffs. //We will keep you notified, m’chi. As soon as we find anything else out, I promise, you will be first to know.//
Of course. She took her own turn to sigh. I too will let you know if I find anything out. Take care, love. I miss you.
“Everything okay up there?”
“Hmm?” Mirii turned briefly to glance over at Kinta, who was watching her; the nurse had presumably twigged that she was talking to her spouse. “I mean… I hope so.”
“You hope so?” Kinta’s ears flicked to face in different directions, lending her a peculiarly comedic look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you recall the vessel I mentioned to you yesterday evening?”
“Kinda – although you were talking to me when I was eating and I’m a bit one-track at mealtimes. Not so good at taking in inputs from six sources at once, you know?”
Mirii smiled in a sort of gently chastising way and bounced a wad of cotton wool off her friend’s head; the reel of white wadding promptly unrolled all the way down the slope the two were sitting on. “Did no-one tell you it is not nice to tease?” she scolded. Lightening the mood was often a useful trick of Kinta’s, but right now wasn’t especially helpful. “Now if I may be permitted to finish before those squishy pink processors lose track of the conversation again?”
“You better, before I forget what you’re talking about.” Kinta snagged the tail of the cotton wool and began to roll it back up. “Something about a ship.”
Mirii was looking over her head, already. “I think my explanation has come to us already,” she explained, quietly.
Kinta turned to follow her gaze, and her ears instantly flattened against her head; she gave a most-un-grown-up yipe of alarm and her tail (already between her legs) puffed out like a bottlebrush. She cowered against her friend – only too aware that Mirii was holding her back almost as tightly – and together they watched as the big vessel bellowed overhead like a tamed thundercloud, coming low enough to make even Mirii’s ears hurt.
Once it had landed, further down the hill and closer to the shore, it sat and did absolutely nothing for a full ten minutes. The frightened onlookers had begun to advance, warily, when the main hatch gave a low, ominous thunk, and there was the hiss of equalising pressure, making the closest, bravest ruta all puff up their hoods and scuttle for safety.
The hatch door rapidly became an exit ramp, lined with a gleaming metal (marked with what looked like very large dirty footprints…) and after a second or two during which the two frightened nurses (and their attendant cloud of terrified ruta) watched for a vehicle to appear… What finally emerged was definitely not a vehicle. Perhaps a body suit of a kind, but definitely not the traditional idea of something to ride in… The crowd involuntarily clustered closer to each other.
To start with, the creature, whatever it was, was a biped, with roughly the same proportions as the frightened gathering below but on a more gigantic scale; two legs with flat feet, two arms with dexterous hands, a strong, straight body, and a stern face with hostile, glowing eyes. What made it so terrible was its sheer bulk; it was taller even than the giant Mirii – it dwarfed her, in fact, standing close to twice her height – and seemed to be crafted from plate metal, all harsh corners and joints, decorated in a violently garish colour-scheme of royal blue, electric yellow and orange. It surveyed them all with a critical, alien glare, and a rattle of hard clicks and electronic noises emerged from its lips – distorted as the jangle of code coming transmitted from a distant computer at the other side of a wormhole.
“Sweet Mother of Holies,” Mirii heard Kinta murmur, from somewhere behind, and felt the vulline’s little hands on her shoulders as her friend hid better behind her. “What in Gavos’ name is that?”
The blue giant fixed them on a curious stare, homing rapidly in on Kinta’s voice, and tramped down the ramp; half the ruta gave up the pretence of bravery and fled to the safety of the trees. It jangled another mash of strange electronic noises, and Mirii rapidly twigged it was speaking to them.
“Forgive me, we do not understand you,” she called up to it, bravely, although not anticipating to find a language they’d have any common ground in.
“What are you doing?” Kinta hissed in her ear, trying to pull her away without revealing too much of herself in the process. “We don’t know that it’s friendly!”
“Then it is all the more important we find out,” the pen demurred. “If it is friendly, I do not wish for it to turn hostile because we insulted it first.”
“Does that look friendly to you?” Kinta squeaked, cowering even further down as the giant advanced another few steps. “It’s huge, it could smash us into pate without the slightest effort. Even you!”
“Shush, Kinta.” Mirii patted her friend’s hand where the nails were digging into her uniform sleeve. “I am sure it will be fine…”
“Well if you don’t have any luck, I’m getting out of here while it’s attention is on you,” Kinta argued, faintly.
Mirii smiled, hoping to look friendly, and attempted a selection of greetings in a variety of languages; she was despairing of finding a common ground when she landed on a much older variant of Galactic standard and it straightened up, apparently understanding.
“Hello? Do you understand me now?” she chased, pleased by his response.
“How did you do that?” it – no, that sounded like a male voice, youthful and as sharp edged as its outfit… He changed the subject, excitedly. “How did you work out that language so fast?”
“I… tried nine and got lucky?” Mirii backed up hastily and almost tripped over Kinta as he clustered closer. “Please, stranger, forgive my forwardness, but at least reassure us you are not a threat?”
He pulled to a halt, recognising that they must be alarmed by his enthusiastic advance, and perked his head to one side. “A threat? No, I work for the police. I’m on the law abiding good side, mostly.” He gestured to a little star-shaped blue insignia on his chest, which he seemed to think they should recognise. “My name’s Seem-… um, well, actually Slipstream, but… Seem works better. Who are you?”
“My name is Mirii. My cowardly friend here…” the tall pen patted her friend between the ears; the vulline growled playfully and pretended to bite at her fingers. “…is Kinta.” Ignoring the ‘mostly’, because thinking too hard on that would only worry her, the information that he was a police officer was reassuring – providing he wasn’t lying, and his mood suggested that that was unlikely. Didn’t explain why he was out here in the middle of nowhere, though. “So what brings you here? Are you helping the program?”
“Um, program? What program?” he wondered. “No, we’re, uh, following someone.” His face fell, lips pursing back into a little moue of displeasure. “We lost him when the magnetosphere disrupted his engine trace. Have you seen him? Looks a bit like me except he’s red and yellow…?”
“Was he in a vessel similar to your own?” Mirii perked an ear, curiously. “We tracked one landing just yesterday, I may be able to get co ordinates off my husband.” Something struck her. “…beg pardon, but could you explain the ‘we’ in your sentence?”
“Oh! Of course, I’d forgotten. I’ll just-… one moment…”
His head had perked to one side, and Mirii recognised it – with a flicker of amusement at seeing one of her own mannerisms repeated on a grander scale – as him engaging in an internal conversation with someone else. So he was presumably not a creature in a large “body-suit”, but a synthetic organism, like herself.
“She’ll be out in a moment,” he explained, at last. “Just keying the shutdown on the generator core.” He gave her a look, apparently noticing her curiosity. “All ok?”
“I am a little… intrigued,” Mirii admitted, with an embarrassed little smile. “I do not believe there are many more creatures like myself in this region of the galaxy, and if it were not so imperative that you moved on in search of your target, I should have liked to get to know you better.”
“What do you mean, like you?” Slipstream perked his head to one side. “You’re a robot?” he wondered, curiously. “I’d never have put credits on that.”
“I… that is, I am not familiar with your terminology,” she apologised. “Could you elaborate? What is a robot?”
“Um, well, like me and Lara.” He touched fingers to his chest, brow furrowing in thought as he looked for an appropriate explanation. “You know. A machine,” he came up with, eventually.
“Ah, a ‘non-biological life-form’,” she corrected, with a good-humoured smile. “Forgive me, ‘machine’ tends to give people the wrong first impression. In that case, yes, we are the same ‘class’ of organism. Your aunt is the same?”
“Yeah, just bigger,” he confirmed, with a nod, watching as a new, taller figure appeared in the mouth of the hatch and ambled with a steady, foursquare gait down the ramp. “And slower. Come on, Lara,” he fidgeted his feet and gave the newcomer a reproachful look. “Can we just go?”
“In a moment, Seem,” ‘Lara’ rumbled, its vocalisations soft but resonant, like a stringed instrument made of honey. “I’d like to see what we’re up against, first. If the land is mostly swamp, we may have to rethink things.”
The new arrival was even bigger than Slipstream; a good third as tall again, and built like a tank, although its lines were…softer, somehow. The colour-scheme was less abrasive, too, with a lot of white as well as a more subdued cobalt and yellow chequering. The gentle face had a peculiar but undeniable femininity about it. In its arms, a small bundle of light tan fur and drab-coloured fabric was stirring, stretching legs and flicking ears.
Slipstream gave a long-suffering sigh and waved a hand. “Mirii, this is my aunt, Celerity – and Fred,” he explained. “Lara, this is Mirii. She’s… like us, just littler.”
“Celerity,” the big creature greeted, offering an enormous hand in greeting, and an affable smile. “Or just Lara, to friends.”
Mirii returned the gesture – or at least, tried to, because her entire hand was not that much bigger than Celerity’s fingertip. “Please to meet you, Celerity.” She gave the hand a firm shake, in spite of their difference in sizes. “Your… nephew… said something about coming here because you were looking for someone?” Mirii coaxed, gently.
“That’s correct. We’re here because we’re looking for a fugitive,” Celerity explained, carefully.
“A fugitive? A criminal,” Slipstream corrected, interrupting her. “Let’s not mince words, here.”
“…yes, all right, a criminal,” Celerity allowed, with a nod. “Not a particularly dangerous or violent one, but one with a history of inappropriate behaviour, and who has stolen an, ah… component… that it’s essential we recover. We’ve been following him for some time, and might have caught him had he not decided to go planetside. He only got here a short while before us.”
Slipstream muttered something ugly in his native tongue, but that was all.
Mirii gave them both a solemn look. “Are you sure he has come here?” she wondered. “Is he likely to pose a danger to us?”
“We’re… fairly confident he’s here,” Celerity agreed. “But I doubt very much that he’s going to be a threat. He’s running from us because he took something from us and knows he’ll be punished for it, not because he wants to cause problems for other people.”
“I see.” Mirii visibly relaxed; her green hair had been sticking up a little, alarmed, but now smoothed back out. “Perhaps I could ask the village’s holy man, see if he has seen anything lately?”
“I would appreciate that. Thank you!” Celerity smiled, and gave Slipstream a comforting glance, which he refused to return, glaring at his feet. Well, they were making some headway, at least, hopefully the mood would start to pick up again later.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the mood would sour more dramatically before it got better. Once it was recognised that the giants were not a threat, the ruta – naturally xenophilic, and curious about travellers, which had been their downfall in the north – set out to make them feel comfortable during their stay, however long that turned out to be. And Slipstream wasn’t overly keen on their “welcome”.
The little ishten at his feet stared awkwardly up at him; the smallest, on the left, had flared her hood a tiny bit, but all three were trying to look welcoming nevertheless.
Slipstream glared down on them. “I do not need a bath,” he said, gruffly.
Mirii gave him a look. “It is customary,” she explained, gently. “Newcomers are… groomed, as it were. Any small skin parasites are removed, mud and vegetable matter washed off, local fragrances applied. It is to make visitors feel more welcome.”
“I have no parasites, no mud, and I don’t need to be made smelly, thank you.” He folded his arms, defensively. “I don’t want them getting water in my venting, it’ll take ages to dry out.”
“I’m sure they’ll be careful,” Celerity reassured, watching as a sleepy Fred purred noisily at his attendant as she brushed all the tiny knots out of his mane.
“They’re going to have to climb on me!”
“I hope you will forgive me for pointing out, we do have a problem with a xenological virus, at present, also,” Mirii added, softly. “Brought in by the Laima, it has severely damaged the native population.”
“Well, no worries there, I don’t carry any diseases either.” The little mech had already stopped looking quite so genial and friendly; now his brow had furrowed and his lips compressed into an irritable line, in addition to the folded arms. “Thank you for asking.”
“Slipstream-…” Celerity caught his shoulder, irritably, and pushed him – none too gently – a step or two away from the little gathering. “What is your problem, right now?”
“What do you think? I want to know why they want to wash me.” Slipstream jerked a thumb backwards at the little group, then folded his arms and levelled his best glare at his aunt. “I’m clean. I could understand it if I was doing Lou’s trick of slowly turning into a walking dustcloud, but I’m clean. I don’t need a bath. They’ll get water in my venting, bend my aerials, and wash all the oils out of my knees, because that always happens. I’ll be stiff for ages.”
“Does it really matter that much?”
“Well I could ask the same thing of you-…!”
“I’m trying to make a good impression, here.” Celerity spread her hands with a despairing noise. “They’re friendly now, but if we go ignoring and refusing all their customs, how long before they stop being friendly? And tell us to leave?”
“Why the frag do you think any of that matters? We’re wasting time, here, Lara,” Slipstream half-pleaded, angrily. “The longer we’re stuck here, playing noble explorer and pandering to these stupid squishy little biologicals and their stupid useless little rituals, the further away he’s getting! We should be out there, right now, chasing him, not… not sitting back and being pampered while Lucy creeps closer and closer to not existing any more!” His words ended on a painful sort of high note that he’d clearly learned off one of his uncles.
She knew why he was upset, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to have him not listening. “We know Firewire landed near here,” she gritted out, softly. “And I want to at least try and recruit native help for us to find him. Not only do they know the world they live in, and they may have seen him, or his ship, or traces of him moving about, but if we have fifty pairs of eyes looking for him, we stand a far better chance of success than just having two pairs!”
“This is stupid, and I’m gonna go look for that stupid bastard who butchered my sister, even if you don’t give enough of a frag to help me!” he shrilled, stamping a foot. “I’m not going to go play fascinated tourist to entertain the natives just so you can feel like you’re being useful for a change!”
Celerity didn’t often use her rank (and size) to intimidate, but she’d finally lost patience. Her optics glittered with electric fire, and she drew herself to her full, imposing height and loomed over him. “All right, Slipstream. This has gone far enough.”
The smaller machine did cringe back a little, the tantrum falling off him like water. His aunt was usually such a sweet-natured, gentle, non-confrontational femme, it was easy to forget what she’d been designed for, and that was subduing unruly machines just like him. She could flatten him without him landing a scratch on her, if she felt so inclined, and right now she looked almost like she wanted to slap him round the face.
“I promised Dack I’d look after you,” she scolded, and he was a tiny bit ashamed to hear how genuinely hurt she sounded. “And that is what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not. If you can never forgive me for that one mistake I made, then I’ll understand; it was a stupid mistake and you’re right, I’m an over-trusting idiot who deserves some sort of punishment for it.” She drew a long, cool pulse of air through her fans and struggled to stabilise her emotions. “But I am not going to let you turn your… your bad feelings towards me into some sort of… interstellar diplomatic incident! We’re the intruders here, we go by their rules, and so help me if you kick up a stink once more about something you don’t think matters, I’ll dunk you myself!”
In the time it had taken her to chew out her unexpected tirade, Slipstream had backed away a good few strides and been reduced to cowering, optics rounding out to pools of shocked violet in his pale face.
“Now go have your damn bath!” She stabbed a finger in the direction of the village, and he scuttled away so fast it was like someone had lit firecrackers under his heels.
9338 / 80000 words. 12% done!
The voice that roused him out of dormancy was gentle, but nevertheless had that same sort of stridency of an alarm bell. He flickered his optics, rebooted his vocaliser with a little khuff of effort, and stared at his reflection for a moment or two while the static cleared out of his vision.
“I said I’d wake you when we got here,” Celerity went on, gently, “and here we are.”
“You let me sleep for a whole day?” he groused, accusingly.
“Yes,” she agreed, simply. “You obviously needed it, or you’d have woken of your own accord.”
Couldn’t deny the logic in her words, for once, so he let it slip. “So where’s here?” He peered out of the viewscreen at the starscape. “We’re kinda not quite here, are we? Couldn’t we have got a teeny bit closer? Because that’s like, just two planets.” He gestured, although it was more of a dismissive flap of the hand. “Four, if you count those two little bits of rock going round them as well.”
“That’s right.” The bigger machine inclined her head. “Firewire’s trace leads quite clearly to here, but then it gets muddled. I thought you’d like to help me decide where we go from here.”
She didn’t outright say it, but the undertone to her voice was loud and clear. I don’t want you blaming me if I get it wrong, because the fates know you WILL, even if it wasn’t me at fault. “Um, ok.” He pretended not to have noticed. “Can you bring up the traces on the heads-up?”
Celerity nodded, tweaked the console, and the flurry of varicoloured lines on her personal screen flashed instead up on the main viewer, scattering like a sloppy spiderweb between the two planets, and a firework of extra lines exploded out of the solar system in all directions.
“…ah,” Slipstream felt his hopes sink. “I thought-… didn’t you mean… I didn’t think there’d be more than one, uh…”
She smiled, ruefully, and nodded. “I didn’t realise so much could happen in biological societies in such a short time, either. Since our last survey, this little green-covered bit of wet rock has turned into a highly populated area, full of interplanetary travel,” she confirmed. “The one advantage being they use a different system of drive to our vessels, so the traces are different, and I think I’ve narrowed Firewire’s trace out of this big mess…” She pointed at the screen and gestured a finger along one of the lines; the computer helpfully labelled it in a bright gold, dimming the rest out to the same shade of grey.
“It stops a bit short, doesn’t it,” Slipstream observed, grimly. “I hope nothing bad has happened.”
“No, that’s the point where the trace loses focus.” Celerity reassured. “It’s some sort of magnetospheric interference, so far as I can tell. I’m happy that he landed safely, but I can’t pin down an exact destination.”
“How close can we get?” Slipstream leaned closer and studied the globe.
“Well… I’ve narrowed it down to perhaps the right portion of a continent, but… we’re looking at an area several times the size of Deixar.”
Slipstream pouted, sadly. Deixar, their home district, wasn’t that big when compared to the more major city states back home, but it was certainly big enough, a few thousand square miles. “We could be looking forever,” he observed, softly. “He could hide up anywhere, down there.”
“One step at a time, eh?” Celerity smiled, in a way she hoped was reassuring, and gestured towards a portion of the southern half of the main continent. “There’s some engine particulates that might be from his vessel down here. If we make planetfall at that point, the worst that can happen is he’s not here, and we can continue the search on foot.”
Although he knew searching by air made more sense, Slipstream didn’t challenge her. To his unending shame, he was intensely acrophobic, to the point that being only a few dozen metres up left him completely incapable of functioning. He knew that having to be up in the air and looking down on the ground would upset all his gyroscopes and make him so vertiginous that he’d be about as much use as a wet paper bag. “G-good idea,” he agreed, feeling ill at just the thought of it, and tried not to dwell too hard on the idea that – technically – they were flying even now…
//Mirii?//
Not expecting a call, hearing Sei’s voice in her brain took Mirii a little by surprise; luckily, computerised reflexes stopped her before she could stab her patient. Yes love? She straightened, a little; Sei had an anxious tone to his voice. Is everything all right?
//I am not sure,// he admitted. //The vessel I informed you of yesterday evening seems to have acquired a companion.//
Another one?
//Yes, and it seems to be aiming for your location.// He sighed, awkwardly. //We do not anticipate any hostility, because it seems minimally armed, but… we are still getting no response to hails, and we want you to be prepared.//
Is it Laima? she wondered, unhappily.
//No-one here has been able to isolate any markings to suggest that it is,// Sei demurred. //So far as we can tell, it is unmanned.//
She sat up straighter. That makes no sense. Especially if it is from the same origin as the previous vessel.
//I concur,// Sei agreed, tiredly. //Perhaps… perhaps they are nothing more than pre-programmed survey drones. This system was populated only by the ruta, until very recently, if you recall, although Chak has evidence of an older civilisation. Perhaps these vessels have been sent by that society, checking if their former home is still inhabitable?//
Maybe. Mirii studied her fingers, briefly, and tried not to sound too doubtful. What happened to the previous vessel?
//It landed without incident just north of the Hajalla kari, and has done nothing since.// He gave another one of those sort of sigh/huffs. //We will keep you notified, m’chi. As soon as we find anything else out, I promise, you will be first to know.//
Of course. She took her own turn to sigh. I too will let you know if I find anything out. Take care, love. I miss you.
“Everything okay up there?”
“Hmm?” Mirii turned briefly to glance over at Kinta, who was watching her; the nurse had presumably twigged that she was talking to her spouse. “I mean… I hope so.”
“You hope so?” Kinta’s ears flicked to face in different directions, lending her a peculiarly comedic look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you recall the vessel I mentioned to you yesterday evening?”
“Kinda – although you were talking to me when I was eating and I’m a bit one-track at mealtimes. Not so good at taking in inputs from six sources at once, you know?”
Mirii smiled in a sort of gently chastising way and bounced a wad of cotton wool off her friend’s head; the reel of white wadding promptly unrolled all the way down the slope the two were sitting on. “Did no-one tell you it is not nice to tease?” she scolded. Lightening the mood was often a useful trick of Kinta’s, but right now wasn’t especially helpful. “Now if I may be permitted to finish before those squishy pink processors lose track of the conversation again?”
“You better, before I forget what you’re talking about.” Kinta snagged the tail of the cotton wool and began to roll it back up. “Something about a ship.”
Mirii was looking over her head, already. “I think my explanation has come to us already,” she explained, quietly.
Kinta turned to follow her gaze, and her ears instantly flattened against her head; she gave a most-un-grown-up yipe of alarm and her tail (already between her legs) puffed out like a bottlebrush. She cowered against her friend – only too aware that Mirii was holding her back almost as tightly – and together they watched as the big vessel bellowed overhead like a tamed thundercloud, coming low enough to make even Mirii’s ears hurt.
Once it had landed, further down the hill and closer to the shore, it sat and did absolutely nothing for a full ten minutes. The frightened onlookers had begun to advance, warily, when the main hatch gave a low, ominous thunk, and there was the hiss of equalising pressure, making the closest, bravest ruta all puff up their hoods and scuttle for safety.
The hatch door rapidly became an exit ramp, lined with a gleaming metal (marked with what looked like very large dirty footprints…) and after a second or two during which the two frightened nurses (and their attendant cloud of terrified ruta) watched for a vehicle to appear… What finally emerged was definitely not a vehicle. Perhaps a body suit of a kind, but definitely not the traditional idea of something to ride in… The crowd involuntarily clustered closer to each other.
To start with, the creature, whatever it was, was a biped, with roughly the same proportions as the frightened gathering below but on a more gigantic scale; two legs with flat feet, two arms with dexterous hands, a strong, straight body, and a stern face with hostile, glowing eyes. What made it so terrible was its sheer bulk; it was taller even than the giant Mirii – it dwarfed her, in fact, standing close to twice her height – and seemed to be crafted from plate metal, all harsh corners and joints, decorated in a violently garish colour-scheme of royal blue, electric yellow and orange. It surveyed them all with a critical, alien glare, and a rattle of hard clicks and electronic noises emerged from its lips – distorted as the jangle of code coming transmitted from a distant computer at the other side of a wormhole.
“Sweet Mother of Holies,” Mirii heard Kinta murmur, from somewhere behind, and felt the vulline’s little hands on her shoulders as her friend hid better behind her. “What in Gavos’ name is that?”
The blue giant fixed them on a curious stare, homing rapidly in on Kinta’s voice, and tramped down the ramp; half the ruta gave up the pretence of bravery and fled to the safety of the trees. It jangled another mash of strange electronic noises, and Mirii rapidly twigged it was speaking to them.
“Forgive me, we do not understand you,” she called up to it, bravely, although not anticipating to find a language they’d have any common ground in.
“What are you doing?” Kinta hissed in her ear, trying to pull her away without revealing too much of herself in the process. “We don’t know that it’s friendly!”
“Then it is all the more important we find out,” the pen demurred. “If it is friendly, I do not wish for it to turn hostile because we insulted it first.”
“Does that look friendly to you?” Kinta squeaked, cowering even further down as the giant advanced another few steps. “It’s huge, it could smash us into pate without the slightest effort. Even you!”
“Shush, Kinta.” Mirii patted her friend’s hand where the nails were digging into her uniform sleeve. “I am sure it will be fine…”
“Well if you don’t have any luck, I’m getting out of here while it’s attention is on you,” Kinta argued, faintly.
Mirii smiled, hoping to look friendly, and attempted a selection of greetings in a variety of languages; she was despairing of finding a common ground when she landed on a much older variant of Galactic standard and it straightened up, apparently understanding.
“Hello? Do you understand me now?” she chased, pleased by his response.
“How did you do that?” it – no, that sounded like a male voice, youthful and as sharp edged as its outfit… He changed the subject, excitedly. “How did you work out that language so fast?”
“I… tried nine and got lucky?” Mirii backed up hastily and almost tripped over Kinta as he clustered closer. “Please, stranger, forgive my forwardness, but at least reassure us you are not a threat?”
He pulled to a halt, recognising that they must be alarmed by his enthusiastic advance, and perked his head to one side. “A threat? No, I work for the police. I’m on the law abiding good side, mostly.” He gestured to a little star-shaped blue insignia on his chest, which he seemed to think they should recognise. “My name’s Seem-… um, well, actually Slipstream, but… Seem works better. Who are you?”
“My name is Mirii. My cowardly friend here…” the tall pen patted her friend between the ears; the vulline growled playfully and pretended to bite at her fingers. “…is Kinta.” Ignoring the ‘mostly’, because thinking too hard on that would only worry her, the information that he was a police officer was reassuring – providing he wasn’t lying, and his mood suggested that that was unlikely. Didn’t explain why he was out here in the middle of nowhere, though. “So what brings you here? Are you helping the program?”
“Um, program? What program?” he wondered. “No, we’re, uh, following someone.” His face fell, lips pursing back into a little moue of displeasure. “We lost him when the magnetosphere disrupted his engine trace. Have you seen him? Looks a bit like me except he’s red and yellow…?”
“Was he in a vessel similar to your own?” Mirii perked an ear, curiously. “We tracked one landing just yesterday, I may be able to get co ordinates off my husband.” Something struck her. “…beg pardon, but could you explain the ‘we’ in your sentence?”
“Oh! Of course, I’d forgotten. I’ll just-… one moment…”
His head had perked to one side, and Mirii recognised it – with a flicker of amusement at seeing one of her own mannerisms repeated on a grander scale – as him engaging in an internal conversation with someone else. So he was presumably not a creature in a large “body-suit”, but a synthetic organism, like herself.
“She’ll be out in a moment,” he explained, at last. “Just keying the shutdown on the generator core.” He gave her a look, apparently noticing her curiosity. “All ok?”
“I am a little… intrigued,” Mirii admitted, with an embarrassed little smile. “I do not believe there are many more creatures like myself in this region of the galaxy, and if it were not so imperative that you moved on in search of your target, I should have liked to get to know you better.”
“What do you mean, like you?” Slipstream perked his head to one side. “You’re a robot?” he wondered, curiously. “I’d never have put credits on that.”
“I… that is, I am not familiar with your terminology,” she apologised. “Could you elaborate? What is a robot?”
“Um, well, like me and Lara.” He touched fingers to his chest, brow furrowing in thought as he looked for an appropriate explanation. “You know. A machine,” he came up with, eventually.
“Ah, a ‘non-biological life-form’,” she corrected, with a good-humoured smile. “Forgive me, ‘machine’ tends to give people the wrong first impression. In that case, yes, we are the same ‘class’ of organism. Your aunt is the same?”
“Yeah, just bigger,” he confirmed, with a nod, watching as a new, taller figure appeared in the mouth of the hatch and ambled with a steady, foursquare gait down the ramp. “And slower. Come on, Lara,” he fidgeted his feet and gave the newcomer a reproachful look. “Can we just go?”
“In a moment, Seem,” ‘Lara’ rumbled, its vocalisations soft but resonant, like a stringed instrument made of honey. “I’d like to see what we’re up against, first. If the land is mostly swamp, we may have to rethink things.”
The new arrival was even bigger than Slipstream; a good third as tall again, and built like a tank, although its lines were…softer, somehow. The colour-scheme was less abrasive, too, with a lot of white as well as a more subdued cobalt and yellow chequering. The gentle face had a peculiar but undeniable femininity about it. In its arms, a small bundle of light tan fur and drab-coloured fabric was stirring, stretching legs and flicking ears.
Slipstream gave a long-suffering sigh and waved a hand. “Mirii, this is my aunt, Celerity – and Fred,” he explained. “Lara, this is Mirii. She’s… like us, just littler.”
“Celerity,” the big creature greeted, offering an enormous hand in greeting, and an affable smile. “Or just Lara, to friends.”
Mirii returned the gesture – or at least, tried to, because her entire hand was not that much bigger than Celerity’s fingertip. “Please to meet you, Celerity.” She gave the hand a firm shake, in spite of their difference in sizes. “Your… nephew… said something about coming here because you were looking for someone?” Mirii coaxed, gently.
“That’s correct. We’re here because we’re looking for a fugitive,” Celerity explained, carefully.
“A fugitive? A criminal,” Slipstream corrected, interrupting her. “Let’s not mince words, here.”
“…yes, all right, a criminal,” Celerity allowed, with a nod. “Not a particularly dangerous or violent one, but one with a history of inappropriate behaviour, and who has stolen an, ah… component… that it’s essential we recover. We’ve been following him for some time, and might have caught him had he not decided to go planetside. He only got here a short while before us.”
Slipstream muttered something ugly in his native tongue, but that was all.
Mirii gave them both a solemn look. “Are you sure he has come here?” she wondered. “Is he likely to pose a danger to us?”
“We’re… fairly confident he’s here,” Celerity agreed. “But I doubt very much that he’s going to be a threat. He’s running from us because he took something from us and knows he’ll be punished for it, not because he wants to cause problems for other people.”
“I see.” Mirii visibly relaxed; her green hair had been sticking up a little, alarmed, but now smoothed back out. “Perhaps I could ask the village’s holy man, see if he has seen anything lately?”
“I would appreciate that. Thank you!” Celerity smiled, and gave Slipstream a comforting glance, which he refused to return, glaring at his feet. Well, they were making some headway, at least, hopefully the mood would start to pick up again later.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the mood would sour more dramatically before it got better. Once it was recognised that the giants were not a threat, the ruta – naturally xenophilic, and curious about travellers, which had been their downfall in the north – set out to make them feel comfortable during their stay, however long that turned out to be. And Slipstream wasn’t overly keen on their “welcome”.
The little ishten at his feet stared awkwardly up at him; the smallest, on the left, had flared her hood a tiny bit, but all three were trying to look welcoming nevertheless.
Slipstream glared down on them. “I do not need a bath,” he said, gruffly.
Mirii gave him a look. “It is customary,” she explained, gently. “Newcomers are… groomed, as it were. Any small skin parasites are removed, mud and vegetable matter washed off, local fragrances applied. It is to make visitors feel more welcome.”
“I have no parasites, no mud, and I don’t need to be made smelly, thank you.” He folded his arms, defensively. “I don’t want them getting water in my venting, it’ll take ages to dry out.”
“I’m sure they’ll be careful,” Celerity reassured, watching as a sleepy Fred purred noisily at his attendant as she brushed all the tiny knots out of his mane.
“They’re going to have to climb on me!”
“I hope you will forgive me for pointing out, we do have a problem with a xenological virus, at present, also,” Mirii added, softly. “Brought in by the Laima, it has severely damaged the native population.”
“Well, no worries there, I don’t carry any diseases either.” The little mech had already stopped looking quite so genial and friendly; now his brow had furrowed and his lips compressed into an irritable line, in addition to the folded arms. “Thank you for asking.”
“Slipstream-…” Celerity caught his shoulder, irritably, and pushed him – none too gently – a step or two away from the little gathering. “What is your problem, right now?”
“What do you think? I want to know why they want to wash me.” Slipstream jerked a thumb backwards at the little group, then folded his arms and levelled his best glare at his aunt. “I’m clean. I could understand it if I was doing Lou’s trick of slowly turning into a walking dustcloud, but I’m clean. I don’t need a bath. They’ll get water in my venting, bend my aerials, and wash all the oils out of my knees, because that always happens. I’ll be stiff for ages.”
“Does it really matter that much?”
“Well I could ask the same thing of you-…!”
“I’m trying to make a good impression, here.” Celerity spread her hands with a despairing noise. “They’re friendly now, but if we go ignoring and refusing all their customs, how long before they stop being friendly? And tell us to leave?”
“Why the frag do you think any of that matters? We’re wasting time, here, Lara,” Slipstream half-pleaded, angrily. “The longer we’re stuck here, playing noble explorer and pandering to these stupid squishy little biologicals and their stupid useless little rituals, the further away he’s getting! We should be out there, right now, chasing him, not… not sitting back and being pampered while Lucy creeps closer and closer to not existing any more!” His words ended on a painful sort of high note that he’d clearly learned off one of his uncles.
She knew why he was upset, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to have him not listening. “We know Firewire landed near here,” she gritted out, softly. “And I want to at least try and recruit native help for us to find him. Not only do they know the world they live in, and they may have seen him, or his ship, or traces of him moving about, but if we have fifty pairs of eyes looking for him, we stand a far better chance of success than just having two pairs!”
“This is stupid, and I’m gonna go look for that stupid bastard who butchered my sister, even if you don’t give enough of a frag to help me!” he shrilled, stamping a foot. “I’m not going to go play fascinated tourist to entertain the natives just so you can feel like you’re being useful for a change!”
Celerity didn’t often use her rank (and size) to intimidate, but she’d finally lost patience. Her optics glittered with electric fire, and she drew herself to her full, imposing height and loomed over him. “All right, Slipstream. This has gone far enough.”
The smaller machine did cringe back a little, the tantrum falling off him like water. His aunt was usually such a sweet-natured, gentle, non-confrontational femme, it was easy to forget what she’d been designed for, and that was subduing unruly machines just like him. She could flatten him without him landing a scratch on her, if she felt so inclined, and right now she looked almost like she wanted to slap him round the face.
“I promised Dack I’d look after you,” she scolded, and he was a tiny bit ashamed to hear how genuinely hurt she sounded. “And that is what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not. If you can never forgive me for that one mistake I made, then I’ll understand; it was a stupid mistake and you’re right, I’m an over-trusting idiot who deserves some sort of punishment for it.” She drew a long, cool pulse of air through her fans and struggled to stabilise her emotions. “But I am not going to let you turn your… your bad feelings towards me into some sort of… interstellar diplomatic incident! We’re the intruders here, we go by their rules, and so help me if you kick up a stink once more about something you don’t think matters, I’ll dunk you myself!”
In the time it had taken her to chew out her unexpected tirade, Slipstream had backed away a good few strides and been reduced to cowering, optics rounding out to pools of shocked violet in his pale face.
“Now go have your damn bath!” She stabbed a finger in the direction of the village, and he scuttled away so fast it was like someone had lit firecrackers under his heels.
