Chapter 33
..[ JACY ]..
Jacy had made sure they knew that they weren’t exactly taking in hostages. From what she had seen, the civilization was honestly a Class One. But some aspects of it had not made the transition that space travel had. She knew keeping her secrets secret would help her when she later needed it, but she also couldn’t appear weak in their eyes. So, the first native to try and rough handle her had lost their arm for their troubles.
“No touching,” she had said. Preemptively stopping any of the others from engaging her.
“No touching.” Bande the leader, agreed with her.
His underlings listened. But only when he had been around. When they got to the cells, the underlings tried to exact their revenge in the absence of their leader. Several broken arms and legs later, and no-one bothered them again.
A few hours later, a very disturbed looking Bande had come for them. Leading them back outside to find Mativo and Mondhe waiting for them, looking like they weren’t in enemy territory at all. The fact that no one wanted to go anywhere near them, not even Bande, meant that there was a story behind it.
“Tsk tsk tsk tsk,” Mativo said, shaking his head. “I should have you go through the rigorous training set aside for those that get captured by the enemy.”
She didn’t bother answering to that. She walked past him towards the waiting shuttle.
“Bande, we are coming for that meeting in three Hours,” he called back as he rushed to walk with her and Sylvia. “What’s with the attitude? I came back for you, didn’t I? I could have just flown away and let them do whatever they wanted. You don’t know the kind of danger I was in.”
“As if,” she told him and Sylvia snickered at her side.
“Tell them Mondhe, I was nearly killed back there.”
“He was never in any danger.” The deadpan tone she delivered that statement made her laugh. By then, they had made it to the shuttle. Carrying twice its recommended number of passengers was no issue. It was only a short hop to the ship. If it had been a three Month trip, they would have been in trouble.
…
“Your people are infiltrating everything,” Bande said in contained anger. As long as Mativo was around, they stayed fearful of him. From what Mativo had said, except for the air burst, nothing really should have made them so scared. Of course, there was the Helbos, but none of the natives were keen on talking about it. The little Sylvia had gather was that they were a mythical race of beings that wielded unimaginable powers.
“We are just making sure that you people didn’t take something that doesn’t belong to you,” Xhalo said to the room.
The meeting had been assembled in Bande’s city, the capital of his faction. The whole planet was divided into twelve factions, and Bande’s was considered supreme of all. There were no governments. The factions acted more like gang territories than anything else. There had been governments before the discovery of faster-than-light travel around forty years before their arrival. But the companies that discovered it had refused to be controlled by the governments. And when push came to shove, they had utterly dismantled the governments. Company territories had emerged in the aftermath, which soon turned to the current factions after wars between the companies had decimated them financially and depleted the resources of the planet. There weren’t any more resources to fund for an interstellar trip. The factions were trying to rebuild their collapsed economies to help them reach for the stars again. But that was a long way off.
“You check everything. You must know that we took nothing,” Bande insisted.
“Physical property wasn’t the only thing you could have taken,” Xhalo countered.
“You being unreasonable. You have security measures in the ships that stop anyone from doing that.”
“Meaning you tried. You could have found a way around that,” Xhalo said. He really was not taking it lightly that they had had the shuttles in their possession for the few hours they had.
“We didn’t. They kept shutting us out. I nearly lost more than five people in one incidence.” Bande exclaimed. Clearly frustrated by Xhalo insistence. “What are you going to do? You should be reprimanded for that.”
“Repri-what?” Mativo had not liked that one bit. “You know, I’m still of a mind to put you under the yoke. Completely take over this shithole of a planet you call home.”
“Even for you, that would be impossible,” Buel, one of the other faction leaders, said. She was as hairless as the rest of the natives, with a more rounded face than the others. Jacy thought that the overall body fat composition had a lot to do with that.
“It would be so easy. And all you would get are two options; for The Empire to rule this planet as a fertile land with no one to oppose it, or with you as willing servants working on the land for The Empire. You choose what you want to be; fertilizer or servants?”
That brought the room to a complete silence. Jacy knew that he was not joking at all. Mativo cared about those shuttles more than he care about the crew. The only reason they weren’t trying to takeover was because the nearest available Colonial Class ship was over two Years away. The closer ones wouldn’t have enough personnel to take over a planet like the Garine. But taking over they would, Jacy knew that Mativo planned to keep at least three shuttles near the system. A shuttle had already been send to inform the nearest ship, whatever the designation, that the planet needed subduing.
The discussion lasted for another hour with them talking about inconsequential things. It was like Mativo had said before they came for the meeting, ‘unless it is about what they did, there is nothing else to discuss’. Mativo thought that the civilization was too advanced to be overruled by a small force such as their own. And they had shown no hesitation in trying to steal their technology. Unless they could guarantee that they could protect what was theirs on the planet, it would be pointless to try anything.
“How long before main force get here?” Buel surprised her out of her reverie. She had been waiting for Sylvia to finish whatever she was talking to Bande about so they could head back to the shuttle.
“What makes you think there is a main force coming?” Jacy asked in turn.
Buel turned her head towards were Mativo was talking with Mondhe. Sometimes it was easy to mistake them for a father-daughter pair. Well, that was what they were but. There was always a but. Especially with Mativo involved.
“He not happy with what happened here. And he wants blood. The only reason he not do anything about it is because he not have the power to do more than kill us all,” she said, through her translator.
That was a pretty close assumption. Maybe Mativo was right to hold off on the takeover.
“There are a lot of reasons,” she said.
Buel gave her meaningful look before saying through her translator, “But that main one.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Sylvia’s approach prevented her from going on about the multitude of reasons Mativo valued over the fact that he wanted revenge. That they had discovered signs of Mutrium on the planet was on top of that list. It was also the main reason for the thorough inspection. Mativo wanted to know if they were using it. And if not, what kind of fuel they were using for their faster-than-light travel. Their ships’ blueprints and working theories had already been taken and stored away safely in the Swift’s main computer. There was already a team of scientists and engineers combing through the data. And the translator technology.
..[ MATIVO ]..
I was just glad to be leaving that shithole of a planet. Them being obtirated into extinction and their planet turned into an asteroid belt around its host star would be a fate far better than they deserved. I consoled myself on the Bridge watching the stars fly by us on the Display. I only had Mũsango and Xhalo for company. The others off doing whatever the rest of the crew did in their free time.
I had collapsed the net to only create a hundred light year ring around the Swift. The fact that we were past our designated turn around point, add to that the last civilization we had encountered just a Week earlier, and I was not in the mood for a confrontation with another Class One civilization. Not for a while at least.
So, when we confirmed the planet we had picked up the signs of habitability from a few Days earlier, I was disappointed. Why couldn’t it have been a false positive? But that mood changed to glee when we picked no radio signals from the planet. Even when we were at the edge of the stellar system. A vacation! The universe had handed me a vacation on a silver platter.
Of course, it could be inhabited by a barely industrialized civilization, but those would be no threat to us. I could relax, maybe go on a nature hike. It had been a while. Or even take Mondhe out for a true hunt. Okay, when I put it like that, it sounded like she was a dog. But the idea wasn’t bad.
“I’m off. I want to be first on that planet,” I informed the other two occupants of the Bridge. I only got murmurs in return. Xhalo stuck in his terminal and Mũsango glued to the navigation terminal. She had claimed she was looking for something. But she hadn’t said what it was.
First place I checked was my personal lab. No luck there. Sylvia’s quarters, I wasn’t even allowed in but I was told she wasn’t in there. I went to the lower Shuttle deck. It was where she had taken her shuttle for the final touches as she called them. She had even completely sealed off the area she was working in. Getting a clearance installed at the door. Only she could enter. But she wasn’t there either. I sent a whole hour going through all the places I knew she went to spent time in to no avail. I finally gave up and asked for help.
Since Sylvia didn’t want to be bothered, I asked Jacy.
“Have you checked the Forest Deck?”
“It was the fifth place I checked.”
“In the cave behind the waterfall by the northwest cliff?” Jacy asked.
Okay, maybe I hadn’t thoroughly combed through the Forest Deck. “She should be there right now, if she isn’t done already.”
That statement imply she could be done at any time, so I took off in a sprint, ignoring the elevator for the faster stairs. In my opinion. By the time I made it to the waterfall, I was sweating. Why did tropical forests need to be so humid and warm?
Passing through the falling water to access the cave behind it washed some of that sweat off me and left me completely soaked. After two turns, I came to a cave lit up by a light blue light. Looking at the walls, I saw numerous crystals that bathed the cave in their light. I didn’t even know it existed on the ship. How many people did? I wondered. But I had spotted my quarry, pushing all other thoughts away.
She was sitting in the middle of the cave, in one of those—
“What are you doing?” I decided to ignore everything else but her pose.
“Meditating.” She answered.
“I can see that. Why?”
“To clear my mind of demons that plague me.”
“Demons!?” I asked excitedly. I moved and sat beside her, in a more comfortable position. “Tell me about them. My dreams have been lacking in the horror department.”
“You mean nightmares?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you call them nightmares, I call them dreamtime entertainment,” I brushed her question away. “Now tell me about these demons. How scary are they?”
“Why are you here?” she asked instead.
“For the demons?” I tried, but she gave me a judgmental look. Seriously, that was so preteen. I always thought to tell her so, but each time I always had other more important things to talk about. Like, “The planet has been confirmed to be at most a Class Five civilization. I wanted us to go for a hunt together.”
She turned to me then, with the makings of a smile, “Really?”
I nodded eagerly. It had been a fifty-fifty thing. I was just glad she was interested.
“I’ve been meaning to try out this bow I designed. I’ll go get ready.”
She got up smoothly and started to exit the cave. Being forever youth didn’t mean I was forever nimble. I had to work on that, and getting up from my so called comfortable position reminded me of that. I caught up with her as she walked past the waterfall.
“Nah. To weapons. We will be going all natural. Claws and teeth,” I said as I showed my teeth and mimed having claws. She was not impressed.
“You don’t have claws,” she deadpanned.
“Okay. Nails, claws and teeth.” I amended.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I don’t want to get all dirty.”
I blinked a few times. Looked her from head to toe and back up again. “You’re all covered up in mud!”
“This is for meditation.”
The nerves in her to say that with a straight face, “There is no such thing as mud meditation.”
“How many forms of meditation do you know?” she asked as she started rinsing herself with the waterfall.
“None. But—”
“I bring my bow or I don’t come with you,” She stated with finality.
“Fine,” I said as I turned to leave. “But there is no such thing as mud meditation.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
…
“Did you have to dress up like that? We are going out to hunt,” I said as she piloted our shuttle to one of the unpopulated areas on the planet. There were two continents on the planet with open grasslands, but one of them was highly populated by humanoids. We chose the less populated one. And she wasn’t dressed up in the normal sense of the phrase. She still had the ship issued sky blue combat suit, with her helmet taken out. I was talking about the fact that compared to the mud covered person I had met in the caves, she had cleaned up and made herself pretty again. She didn’t use any makeup, but she had a way of grooming herself that had other girls jealous. Jacy had called her a naturally made temptress in the making. I didn’t even know what that meant. And looking up the word temptress had made me curse Jacy. She was too young to be thinking of those things. She would be ready at the ripe age of hundred Years. Jacy had accused me of being detached with reality. I had countered with that Mondhe had already had multiple sex-talks from multiple people, it didn’t mean she had to be active.
“I always need to look my best,” Mondhe countered.
“I should have never introduced you to Pink,” I told her as she brought us to a secluded area. Even from the shuttle I could see plenty of prey to hunt.
“Sylvia taught me that.”
“I know. But Pink instigated it,” I said as unbuckled myself. “I don’t have control over Sylvia, but I’m the one who introduced Pink to you.”
I left my seat and ventured outside. Feeling the smell of fresh open air, was a relief. And I felt light on my feet. I knew it was all in my head, but I felt like I could run faster and punch harder, jump higher and run for longer than I normally did. With a gravity of 0.99G, it was slightly higher than on Earth but significantly lower than on Ũsumbĩ IV or the Swift.
“What is that?” I asked Mondhe as she joined me outside. “Is it a gun-arrow? Wait, I think it’s called an arrow-gun.”
“It’s what I have been working on.”
“What does it do?”
“Shoots bolts at my targets.” She said flatly.
“Why do you always feel the need to answer my questions like that?”
“Why do you always feel the need to ask me questions like that?” she countered.
“Fine.” If we kept doing that, we might never get to hunt. I started towards where I had seen a herd of antelope-like animals. “What does it do differently that others of its kind don’t?”
“Fires bolts continuously when I pull the trigger,” she answered.
“Like those automatic rifles? You must have read about them.”
“Read and built one.”
“What? Why?”
“I needed to understand with my own fingers how they worked before working on this,” she said as she lifted her arrow-gun at the end of her statement.
I went to ask another question, but she interrupted me by signaling we should start to try and be inconspicuous. With our sky blue combat suit, we wouldn’t have that much trouble blending in to the dark green grass. But it wouldn’t be easy either. We crouched low and began our advance on the hunt. We moved moderately slow and in sync with the waving of the grass. All prey was known to have a wide field of view. No matter where you were, it was highly possible you were already in their field of view. We moved when the grass around us moved, stopping for whole minutes sometimes. I was sure I came across a snake or two. And no, those drops weren’t pee, just sweat in certain areas. It happens. Snakes were overpowered for no good reason.
It took us more than fifteen minutes to get to a distance that Mondhe felt was good enough to test her arrow-gun. She inspected it, primed it and aimed at one of the closest animals. Then fired.
The arrowed left the trough and flew before flopping down less than two meters ahead of us. The one after that less than a meter. The third one barely made it out of the trough. It was taking everything in me not to laugh out loud. The fourth one got stuck in the trough and that was the end of it.
“I’m going in,” I whispered to her to stop myself from doing something awful.
“But my—”
“Leave it. We will get our bloods pumping, then we can figure out what went wrong,” I told her as I crept forward, not bothering to check whether she would follow.