Wrinkle
Some aliens just make you want to punch them in the face.
I couldn’t wait to be off this planet.
This was our third trip to Sidar, each one more disappointing than the last.
The planet itself was beautiful. Stone ridges stretched across two-thirds of its surface, like a comb the size of a continent had been dragged through plaster. The ridges flexed, waved, and dipped so no two locations had quite the same view, but every colony on Sidar made sure to build a few towers that reached far enough up to capture the sights.
Even without a drop of native water, air, or life, the whole planet had scenery to compete with the Grand Canyon.
The colony interiors were similar, but not for their natural formations: the opposite. Built into a few stony ridges and the gaps between them were triumphs of engineering. The planet’s natural metal resources and low gravity made for even easier building than most colonies, and the earliest architects had gone bananas with incredible steel structures crawling up, over, through, and between the crevasses. The colony towers were as much for gazing upon the city skylines as the natural geography.
All that just made interacting with the people more frustrating. People here didn’t seem to appreciate where they lived.
“Vaku! Enane!” a Casti jeered at us.
“Do I want to know what that means?” I asked Tasser.
“Probably not,” he said. “Best to just ignore them.”
I adjusted the dog tag I’d taken to wearing around my neck, dropping it under my shirt. Just in case someone tried to grab it.
“We means you not welcome: leave!” another Casti spat in broken Starspeak.
Tasser and Shinshay both didn’t even look at the Casti we passed in the hangar. They were dockworkers, nominally. I hadn’t actually seen them doing their jobs so far.
“Watch the corner of the pallet, Caleb,” Shinshay asked, and we wheeled the pallet jack around the Jackie Robinson’s landing struts. This was the second-to-last pallet of cargo to load, and then we could finally get off this planet.
“Still got a few inches of clearance,” I told them. “We’re good.”
We left the pallet of cargo with the rest stacked up next to the ship. Normally a crane would help load things into our rocket, but we had a chilly reception here. With local ground crew operating the crane, best case scenario we’d pay through the nose, worst case someone tries wrecking the Jack.
Instead, Nai and I—mostly Nai—could Adept the cargo into the ship cheaper and more reliably.
Tasser, Shinshay, and I trudged back through the hangar. It was best to avoid eye contact with anyone while we made our way back to the receiving section.
Every single Casti milling about the hangar paused to look at us. At best they were cautiously interested, but far more of them seemed unhappy at our mere presence.
Luckily no one had thrown anything today.
“Is it…” I began, but then decided it was probably better not to be overheard.
I frowned.
Psionics were so nice for staying organized. The first week out of the Shirao system, Shinshay and I had torn into the ship’s conventional paper & optical disc system and married it to one compatible with psionics. It was a work in progress, but we’d been abusing the capability for psionics to be embedded into ordinary matter. Labeling had never been easier or more intuitive.
The three of us knew exactly which pallet we were looking for, matching its tracking number to the ones we’d psionically memorized for our organizing. Even if the cargo labels were ordinarily only read by machine, Shinshay and I had cobbled together a construct so we could read barcodes with our eyes.
We walked right past the counter where other Casti ship crews were forced to talk with dock personnel to determine when and where their cargo could be located and moved.
Yeah, it was far easier to just do it ourselves.
“You can’t just take someone’s cargo,” one worker said, intercepting us.
“We’re not,” Tasser said. “We have the package code, and we’re in a hurry so we’re just moving it ourselves.”
The Casti glanced at me, recognizing I wasn’t a common alien.
“…That’s not regulation,” she said.
“Cite me,” Tasser shrugged, stepping past her.
The Casti tried following him, but I might have dragged the pallet jack in such a way that she had to step out of the way before talking more. She followed us while we tracked down the number.
“You need to turn around,” she said. “I was told you can’t load any more cargo.”
I scanned the other Casti workers near the counters we’d passed, but no one stood out to me. These hangars were huge, and a lot of freight moved every day. If there was someone who wanted to watch us get hassled, it could be hard to pick them out.
I’d been looking in the wrong place. As soon as my gaze found the Casti leaning against the rail, they tried to avert theirs. I glared at the figure. They were dressed in a neater style than the dockworkers. No heavy overalls, gloves, or boots made this alien an administrator of some kind.
“My instructions are very clear,” our worker obstacle insisted. “You can’t load—"
“[Buzz off,]” I interrupted her. She didn’t know any English, so it was lost on her. But that just made her confused expression more satisfying.
“Was that supposed to be a threat?” she said, trying to sound tough.
“Are you some kind of threat?” Tasser asked. “Because no one’s been very friendly since we got here. We’re not breaking any laws, what we’re doing is, in fact, not against regulation—we checked—and we’re gone after we load our cargo. But you’re trying to stop us now, and up to this point, everyone’s been eager to see us leave. So why are you trying to keep us here longer?”
“If you try to remove cargo from the warehouses against the order of the administrator, it constitutes a crime and you will be detained, even prosecuted,” she said.
We wouldn’t be, but someone like her wouldn’t know that, or why.
“Okay, let’s make sure that happens,” Tasser said. “And…this is our pallet here.”
The stack of crates was tightly wrapped in plastic, printed with a label.
“It’s ours alright,” I said, reaching into my pocket and materializing a card with the information on it. “See? The numbers match.”
“This isn’t a standard tracking card,” she said, trying to latch onto that detail.
“We’re a small, unusual operation,” Tasser shrugged, gesturing toward me. “It’s still the right number, and how we keep our records isn’t your business. If you seriously have a problem, talk to your supervisor, and I’ll talk to my Captain. In the interim, like he said, [buzz off].”
Shinshay and I got the jack under the pallet, and this time it was Tasser’s turn to ‘conveniently’ stand so the dockworker couldn’t block us from getting the jack in motion.
The Casti looked like she would say more, but saw we weren’t listening anyway. She stormed off to kick the problem up the food chain. Going by precedent, not much would come of it.
Sidar had no shortage of people ready to get ornery with us.
Run into an asshole? Big deal. You run into one asshole. But if everyone you meet is an asshole, then you’re the asshole… At least, that was what was going through my mind.
“If it wasn’t happening to all of our crew, I’d think these people weren’t fond of me,” I said, watching out for more problems.
“It’s too consistent to be coincidental,” Tasser said. “Hostility like this at one port is one thing, but at four different ones across the planet? We must have some rumors floating around.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel any better,” I said. “If a rumor is all it takes for people to act this awfully…I know it’s just been insults so far, but I keep expecting we’re on the verge of being assaulted by a new stranger.”
Fenno had nearly been arrested last visit. Nerin and Dyn had been minding the ship when a group tried to vandalize it, and someone had talked about ‘taking care of any witnesses’. The actual wording in Starspeak had been ambiguous enough no one was sure if they meant violence or intimidation, but did it really matter?
From then on, no crew member went anywhere alone or unarmed.
Tasser hid it well, but a pistol was holstered in his overalls, and I was Adept. If anyone did try to start something, we could end it quickly.
But that would bring its own headaches.
Speaking of…
Dragging the last pallet back to the Jack took us past the same group of hecklers as before, only instead of leaning against walls and staying out of the way, they’d moved to be directly in our path.
I glanced up at the catwalk on the other end of the hangar. The same Casti still stood there, watching us from a distance.
Tasser gave me a look, subtly jutting his head.
We could just go around them.
Only, when we tried to maneuver the pallet to give them a wide berth, the lot of them stepped in our way again. I stomped on the jack’s brake and Shinshay helped keep the load steady.
Slammed to a halt before them, none of the Casti said a word. Not one of them even looked directly at us now, but it was obvious all of their attention was on us.
I told Tasser.
I was.
“Weird,” I said loudly, pretending like I was talking to Shinshay, “back on Earth, when little children get upset, they just go totally silent and they try really hard to show you they’re ignoring you. Who could guess I’d see the same thing from Casti? Someone could write an Underpinning Theory paper on this…”
A few of them shifted uncomfortably, but still no one said a thing. Before, they’d been eager to insult us. What changed?
I materialized a tiny flashbang at the tip of my finger and let it blow.
The crack made everyone jump and look our direction reflexively.
“So glad I could catch your attention—don’t you look away from me,” I said, walking right up to the nearest one. They were tall for a Casti, but I was still taller by a hair and looked down at him. “I asked you a question, and I’d appreciate an answer.”
“…Go around us, vaku,” the Casti said.
Shinshay glanced around nervously and began moving the pallet to circumvent the half-dozen or so Casti.
Tasser saw the same thing I did though, and stopped them before they could push our literal ton of cargo into the Casti once again positioning themselves to stand right in our path.
“[What the hell?]” I asked.
Tasser took over for me.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Is this some kind of scam? Get us to plow into you while we’re moving our cargo and get paid injury leave?” he asked.
“You’re talking nonsense,” a different Casti said, walking to the other side of Tasser.
The crowd of six Casti had spread into a loose picket line. Tasser had the right idea. They were trying to make something happen and pin the blame on us.
“You’re right, of course, don’t know what I was saying,” Tasser said, putting on an air of saccharine sweet friendship. “Drop the pallet, we’ll come back for it later.”
Shinshay didn’t hesitate to follow Tasser’s lead, and the three of us walked past the Casti’s little red rover line.
That really threw them off. They expected us to put up more of a fight for the cargo. It was impossible to miss the confused looks the bunch traded with each other and onlookers nearby…and above us too.
Other dockworkers and ground crew had escaped my notice on the hangar catwalks directly above us. A few silent exchanges happened and I saw one of the Casti above reel their arm back to hurl something at Shinshay.
I darted forward and caught the steel tool before it slammed into the top of Shinshay’s head.
“Sorry!” the Casti above was quick to yell. Her expression was anything but. If anything she and the rest were shocked and upset I’d reacted in time to catch the thing. “I dropped it.”
“[No, you didn’t,]” I scoffed. “You almost gored my friend’s skull.”
“But she didn’t,” the Casti on the ground said. “No one hurt. She just dropped it.”
I took one look at the Casti’s position on the catwalk and the rest of the hangar floor past and below them. It was clear.
I reeled my own arm back and flung the tool right back. Instead of hitting the Casti though, it cut through the air with a satisfying whoosh and the Casti who’d thrown it flinched aside. My throw didn’t come anywhere close to anyone, but it had been moving fast enough to make them sweat.
The tool clanged to the ground a few dozen meters away.
“Oops,” I said. “I dropped it too. Weird.”
“But no one got hurt, so it’s fine, right?” Tasser added.
We didn’t wait for a response while we walked back to our rocket, and no one else got in our way.
·
Serral met us halfway back, and confirmed we were alright. It wasn’t long before Nai returned with Nerin and Fenno, all of them carrying more spoils back to the Jack.
Securing our pallet of goods was trivial with Serral and Nai in tow. The Casti we’d left it with hadn’t been quite sure how to react, so it hadn’t actually been moved.
The neatly dressed administrator Casti made another appearance, and I watched from a distance as Serral had it out with them.
But it was a foregone conclusion from the start. Nai got our last pallet of cargo loaded up and we launched just barely within our original goal of one hour.
·····
We were headed for Mogh, the largest terrestrial body in the Mummar system. More specifically, we were headed for the Doriga station in high orbit above the planet.
It would be about four days of flying which offered an opportunity to relax. Whether or not I would manage to take that opportunity…
Let’s just say keeping myself from being too high strung was a constant battle.
Sure, I could be all laid back sometimes, but it didn’t take much for me to start thinking about just what was looming over my head. Getting out from under the threat of the Vorak hunting me down should have been the best thing that happened to me since being abducted.
Trouble was, it didn’t feel like it nowadays.
We’d escaped the Shirao system almost four months ago. We should have been free and clear to go looking for my fellow abductees high and low.
But we’d left the umbrella of Admiral Laranta’s protection on short notice, and her support could only reach so far.
There were a lot of ways disaster could strike our ship, but so far the biggest obstacle was infuriating for its mundanity.
Operating a ship like ours took resources like food, fuel, cash for other supplies.
And we were broke.
So far we’d been covering our expenses by shuttling cargo around the Mummar system whenever we poked around a new location for the freshest clues of human whereabouts. Even then, we were apparently only barely staying in the black by keeping our ears to the ground for people in need of ultra-short notice express deliveries.
I made a mental note to get more involved with the ship’s finances and operation. Serral was running this show, but if this ship was going to help humans, I needed to be ready to help this ship as more than just a passenger.
Of course trying to help humans and actually succeeding was a tall order.
Forget helping them. Just finding them was proving to be a hunt worthy of Ahab.
The problem was twofold.
Finding humans on one planet was hard. Finding them on any of four planets in this system was harder. Finding them on any planet in any of the dozen or so systems the Coalition spanned had quickly become a tall order.
The other half of the problem was what to do when we finally found them.
I loathed to admit it, but there was a serious chance I would wind up redirecting any humans I found to Nora’s little enclave back on Archo.
Was I being petty about what she’d done? Maybe.
There’d been four abduction ships in the Shirao system, but the one source of firsthand information we had on the abductions said more than five-thousand humans were scattered out here.
With twenty or so significantly colonized systems, and twenty-four abductees per ship…
We were looking at as many as twelve ships in any given system. And that wasn’t even factoring in the not-so-significantly colonized systems.
It didn’t matter for us though. Even if we found just one ship, it would be chaos just trying to cobble together the resources to feed twenty-four human abductees.
“Laranta probably wouldn’t be able to take them,” Serralinitus told me. “With you officially out of the way, the war footing in Shirao is picking back up.”
He, Nai, and I were having a strategy meeting on the Jack’s flight deck, rocketing away from Sidar at a leisurely .4 G.
“Nora’s enclave is on Archo,” I said. “Do I need to be worried?”
“No,” Serral said. “The Vorak are working to keep the fighting focused on Paris’s moons, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be able to take them. The Deep Coils actually withdrew from the system, and that’s leaving a lot of ground untended. The fighting will stay far away from Archo.”
“I hate to say it then, but redirecting the abductees to Nora’s enclave might be our only viable option right now,” Nai said.
“How long would that take?” I asked. “[Ballpark], a week? Two?”
“Impossible to say,” Serral said. “It would depend on if we find abductees by themselves or ships carrying them too.”
“As well as how operational those ships are,” I muttered. “We don’t have enough people, do we?”
Back home, embassies were supported by their home nation. The Jackie Robinson flew under similar diplomatic recognition. Technically, the Coalition recognized the ship as sovereign territory of the government of Earth.
…Of course Earth doesn’t have just one government, much less one able to financially support our endeavor to find and aid abductees. The Coalition was well aware of that fact through me. But as long as Earth itself was out of contact, it was a moot point. The status would protect any humans we brought aboard, but it also left us wanting for resources.
Our ‘diplomatic’ mission nominally had a stipend, but not much of one. And even accessing those resources was vexing.
“[God], this is depressing,” I said. “I can’t believe money problems are the biggest obstacle we have right now.”
“Not a lot of money problems back on Earth?”
“No, tons—I think so, at least,” I said. “I don’t know enough about economics to really say for sure. But on Lakandt when I was trying to anticipate what we’d need to help abductees, I just didn’t think our budget would be that big of a concern.”
“Well, give Laranta a few more months and we can probably secure more consistent resources, but for now, we’re on our own,” Serral said. “But in better news, we got a reply from the Organic Authority, and they’re on board. Their people will be waiting for us when we reach the station. Even better? They won’t be alone.”
“Yeah?” I asked, perking up. “What’s our final headcount looking like?”
“Two-hundred and climbing,” Serral said. “You two are going to have your work cut out for you.”
“[Breadwinners,]” I grinned, high-fiving my fellow Adept.
All ten of the Jack’s crew were accruing more and more psionic experience by the day, but Nai and I were the only Adepts on the crew, and while existing psionics could be modified by anyone clever and skilled enough, new constructs still needed to be created by Adepts.
Charging for psionic education wasn’t thrilling me, but I couldn’t be picky about what let us save lives right now.
“So the psionic seminars will be packed,” Nai nodded. “What about Adept work on the station?”
“Good news there too,” Serral said. “Two different bio-material firms from Cammo-Caddo are willing to pay for high purity catalytic materials if you can manage them.”
“On my own it could be tricky,” Nai said. “But with Coalescence I can guarantee stuff worth paying for.”
“They’re especially concerned with lifespan. Can you get the material to persist for more than six months?”
“Depends on the molecule, but I’d be hard pressed to think we couldn’t,” Nai said. “We should be able to get even complex protein catalysts to hold together for at least a year, maybe two.”
“If that holds up to their testing, we could be set on funds for several months,” Serral said.
That was good. The first time Nai and I had done Adept work like this on Sidar, we’d made bank.
“So Nai and I are going to be really busy with work, but it sounds like we’re moving toward a better point financially. What about our abductee hunt?”
“Three appointments on the books,” Serral said. “The Organic Authority is going to meet with us as part of the psionic seminar, and the Geslyon Transport Union agreed to something similar. Aside from them, we’re meeting with a pair of colony governors by video.”
God that felt good to hear.
Four months in the Mummar system, and every day I’d felt like we were spinning our wheels. We’d arrived in the system with barely two weeks’ stock of food. The first six weeks had been a daily scramble to keep our ship afloat, so to speak.
I understood why spaceships more often used nautical terminology rather than that of aviation. If a plane ground to a halt, you wouldn’t have to worry about it for long. But a boat could drift for months while its passengers starved.
Spacefaring was a lot more like seafaring in that regard.
We weren’t in any danger of starving for lack of funds anymore, but before this news I’d have said we were close. We’d embarked on a rescue mission for other abductees, but here we were struggling to fill our larder.
Organizing a practical rescue plan seemed like a pipe dream.
The most we’d been able to do was broadcast requests to any group willing to hear us out, and there had not been many. Jumping back and forth between Sodar and Sidar had seen a lot of transport unions turn down meetings with us. Twelve weeks of hopping around those two planets and I could count every face-to-face meeting we’d had on one hand.
It was beyond frustrating interacting with people so dismissive.
Half those meetings were with the Organic Authority, doubling as medical checkups for me and the rest of the crew. At least those weren’t totally disheartening. Maybe they were eager to make a better impression than last time, but I’d at least found the Org to be invested in the problem.
They didn’t have anything to report back yet, but news could travel slow when it had to bounce through multiple star systems.
Nora’s crew was similarly slow to communicate. I only had a handful of updates from them, and none from her personally. But I did know she and a few of the most mature abductees carved out a neat little human enclave on Archo. It was serving as a home base while they coordinated with their Vorak allies and ventured into systems I and the Coalition wouldn’t have easy access to.
Divide and conquer, I guess.
They were going and rescuing humans in the very spaceships we’d been abducted in. Just thinking about that made me shudder. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but their memories of those ships were almost certainly better than mine.
My dreams were still haunted by jagged metal spikes erupting from every surface. Any liquid in zero-G still forced me to think of the leaking blood and oil that had spilled on my and Daniel’s ship when it all fell apart.
Were Nora and company using that same ship? Had they fixed the damage on it? If so, they must have found the rest of the coffin-pods and everything Daniel and I had tried to open them. I’d always remember that ship as a tomb. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the way other people might see it.
Serralinitus’s conversation had died out, and he’d gone to go over similar matters with Dyn.
It left Nai and me on flight duty. That meant I had plenty of time to get lost in thoughts about Daniel, our abduction ship, and whether or not I’d seen more corpses than I had years. Nai must have picked up a dark cloud over me, because she prodded my shoulder to stir me out of it.
I gave her a curt nod in thanks. She could tell I didn’t particularly want to talk about it, but I was still grateful for the support.
Thinking about Nora’s rapid progress threatened to return me right back into dour thinking. When I considered how little we’d achieved by comparison, it stung. We’d arrived in Mummar too unprepared to accomplish anything sooner.
Of course, there was a rather sharp argument that we only arrived this unprepared because of Nora…but that wasn’t something that felt worth dwelling on.
No, I had to remind myself that countless abductees would have starved to death by now if things had gone even slightly differently. Didn’t mean I was happy about what she’d done to pull it off. I’d find a way to live with this result, but Nora and I were going to run into one another someday. I didn’t have the first clue how that would unfold. In the meantime, the fact that no one was discovering and turning over human corpses to the Organic Authority was a reassuring sign.
No, when I reminded myself of what Captain Serral had in store for us, I was jazzed.
“Hey Warlock, Caleb,” Weith said, poking his head up into the flight deck. “You two are officially relieved. Flight officer on deck.”
Nai and I handed off the flight stations to Deg before slipping down the ladder to the habitation decks. I continued downward toward Shinshay and the cargo bay while Nai split off for her quarters—probably to give her disgusting pet worm some love.
I didn’t know how Nerin put up with sharing quarters with her.
What I did know was that Tasser was in the cargo bay with Shinshay, and their chosen conversation was one I’d enjoy. The two of them were going back and forth on our psionic organization system and the prospect of creating some way of integrating psionic-interfaceable systems to the Jack.
I grinned. This would really be a fun topic.
Some aliens made me want to punch them in the face, but not the ones I found myself with now. We had a big task ahead of us, and I was glad these were the people having my back.
Possibilities awaited us in orbit above Mogh. Only time would tell if they were good or bad.
If they were good? Well, I had good allies.
If not? Face-punching wasn’t off the table.