Malik Rosen was faced with a dilemma.
He stood beneath a crumbling stone dome that looked, to his untrained eyes, as if it were one stiff breeze away from collapsing altogether. Beams of light slashed through the gaps in the roof, illuminating an open-air room that was littered with chunks of the collapsed ceiling. A layer of muck covered most of the chamber, a filthy concoction of moss, mildew, and disintegrating rock that had been blended together by the rain for untold decades.
The only places free of the debris were six black logs that’d been cut from the menacing Gloam trees that dominated the island. Each of the logs had been split lengthwise, making their flat surface resemble benches from a distance. A closer inspection, once they’d been wiped clean, revealed a series of white pictographs. The crudely drawn images seemed to suggest that some creature, or creatures, had kidnapped large numbers of the island’s natives.
Kidnappers, Malik thought as the tip of his index finger traced the wavy lines radiating from one of the raiders, with tentacles.
“I wish Sarah were here,” Malik muttered sullenly. Starlight Journey’s communications officer was a polyglot eminently more qualified to interpret the images carved into the Gloam wood. Though the pictures seemed simple enough, Malik was no paleontologist. There could be nuance and symbolism that was wasted on him. If you wanted someone to disassemble an EM rifle, put it back together, and then put a hypervelocity round through a target at seventy-five meters, then Malik was your man. Interpreting ancient warnings from an alien culture was well outside his area of expertise.
Are these even warnings? asked a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Catherine’s.
It was a fair question. Without proper context, he could be looking at anything from a warning sign to the latest issue of a comic book. The pictographs could be a historical account left for the sake of posterity. They could also be this world’s version of a creation myth, similar to Earth’s story of Prometheus’ gift of fire. To find the answers he needed, he had to commit more time to investigate the village.
And, therein, lay his dilemma. He couldn't afford to spend any more time in this tiny ghost town if he planned to stay on schedule and retrieve his drone today. He still had hours of travel ahead of him and that assumed he wouldn’t encounter any unexpected problems along the way.
An idea that Mal found laughable. He couldn’t stumble through the forest without coming across a deadly creature or a lost civilization.
The alternative was to spend the rest of the day scouring the village for anything useful. He could make camp in one of the intact buildings and then strike off for the drone in the morning. This plan also assumed that he wouldn’t get further sidetracked.
Everything here has been undisturbed for ages. There’s no reason to believe that it can’t wait for another day or three. I can get the drone, head back to the pod, and set it up to map the island. Once it's started, I can come back here with a couple of days worth of supplies and turn this place upside down.
Without the benefit of Oscar’s sage advice, Mal was left to choose his own. Not for the first time, he felt like a blind man stumbling his way up a winding mountain trail. There were so many opportunities for missteps and only one narrow path that would lead him back to his crew. That was and would continue to be, his primary concern. Alien mysteries could be solved later. Preferably by more capable minds than his own. All he needed to do was find his people. Then he could fulfill his role as sword and shield.
The way he was always meant to.
*****
An hour after he left the village, Malik found himself staring at the base of a sheer cliff formed from white stone.
The narrow river he’d followed through the forest had widened into a shallow pool. The basin was fed by a waterfall that thundered down the side of the rock formation in a deafening roar. The plunge pool churned in white, frothy anger that filled the air with the smell of rotten eggs and burnt matches.
Malik’s nose wrinkled in distaste as he breathed in the acrid scent. At first, he thought the smell was his imagination. It seemed so out of place among the natural, earthy smells that had inundated the forest up till now. But when he reached the edge of the water, there was no longer any denying the truth. Merely standing this close to the rumbling waterfall was nearly enough to make him gag.
What the hell is that about? Mal wondered as he knelt beside the basin. A frown tugged at the corner of his lips as he drags his fingers through the water. It feels gritty. And even looks a bit cloudy. It was clear as a bell back at the village. Rising to his feet, Mal uncapped his canteen and took a small, experimental swallow. Nope. Tastes fine. Whatever is in here gets cleaned out before it ends up at the stone pavilion. I’ll have to conserve what I have because there’s no way I’m drinking the stuff in this basin.
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Still frowning at the water, Mal worked his way around the edge of the water until he was standing at the foot of the cliff. He reached out to feel the strange, pearlescent stone and immediately jerked his hand back as if he’d been stung. His brows narrowed as he tentatively moved to touch the smooth rock face again.
Warm. Was not expecting that. Some property of the stone? The water is warm too, now that I think about it. Hotter than the water downstream was, that’s for sure. What is going on here?
Only one way to find out.
Malik drew his vibroblade, a tool that he’d had to use only a few times in his trek along the riverbank.
Good thing, too, since I’m about to use a good chunk of its charge.
A slide of his thumb activated the weapon, though its signature hum was lost in the raucous roar of water crashing into the nearby basin. Mal didn’t have to hear the weapon, he could feel its bone numbing vibration rattling through his fingers as he carefully placed the tip of the blade against the stone wall. Firm pressure caused the edge of the blade to sink into the stone like a warm scoop sliding through a tub of ice cream. In seconds he’d carved a handhold into the white rock.
Malik repeated the process, carving notches into the cliff with every slide of his blade. After a half dozen sweeps of his vibroblade, Malik wedged the toe of his boot into the lowest notch and hoisted himself up. His toned muscles, weary after a long day of hiking through the wilderness, burned in protest as he held himself aloft. Rather than give in to the strain, Mal took a deep breath and forced it down.
Brows furrowed in concentration, Malik went to work.
It took him three tries to get the spacing between the handholds right. Once he did, his biggest concern was the stone’s wet surface. The vibroblade’s cut left the rock smooth as glass, compounding the slick spray of acrid water that coated everything in a fine mist. Within minutes his nose was burning and his throat felt raw. Malik’s mouth watered, his chest tight as he resisted the urge to retch.
One meter turned to two, which turned to four, which became eight as his steady ascent carried up the sheer cliff face. At the halfway point the spray of water lessened, but the scent only became stronger. A thick, cloying smell tried to work its way deeper into his lungs like maggots digging into a haunch of meat. Desperate for relief, Malik began to move faster, jabbing the vibroblade into the white stone and gouging vicious rents into the rock.
That’s when he slipped.
The foothold he carved in his haste wasn’t quite deep enough to accommodate the toe of his boot. As soon as he put his weight on the foot, his boot slid out of the handhold and skittered against the stone wall. He reflexively tried to throw himself forward, but the sudden shift of his weight sent his other boot sliding free of its crevice to swing out over the open air.
For a split second, the entire world seemed to stop. The roar of the water thundering past him became silent as the space between the stars. For one frozen second gravity seemed to be an easily dismissed suggestion instead of an immutable law.
Then the moment passed and he began to fall.
In desperation, Malik drove the vibroblade into the rock above his head like a senator ending Caesar’s reign. His palm burned as he torqued the blade hard to twist it while it was buried in the stone. Then he pulled, yanking himself back toward the cliff. For a fluttering heartbeat, the blade held steady before it began to slide through the rock.
A heartbeat was all the time Malik needed.
His chest struck the stone as the toes of his boots scratched and scrambled against the smooth rock. One toe caught in a handhold, then the second wedged itself into a notch before his balance could tip backward again. Once he was steady he quickly pulled the blade from the stone. With a renewed focus, he began to scale the cliff again, this time forcing himself to ignore the rancid odor that grew more pungent with each meter he ascended.
It took him fifteen more minutes of grueling exertion to finally crest the summit. He drug himself up over the edge and began to crawl forward on his hands and knees. His ankles were still dangling over the drop to the basin below when his chest heaved and he scattered the contents of his stomach onto the stone to his side. Again his stomach spasmed, sending a gout of bile splashing against the ground. By the time his retching stopped his arms were shaking and his legs were cramping. Feeling weak as a feverish child, Malik released an audible groan as he wiped at the flecks of spittle clinging to his lips. Tears mingled with the sweat streaking down his face as he tilted his head up to survey the land.
For the first time, Malik was high enough to see the ocean. He could see the coastline slithering like a sandy snake down the length of the island’s western shore. Behind him, he could see a tall, imposing mountain that rose from the northern area’s dense jungle. To the east, Mal could see sparkling water and what looked like a shallow bay.
The south, for as far as he could see, was a wasteland of fetid bog.
As his teary eyes focused, he could tell that a stone ring encircled the marshland like the lip of a bowl filled with pond scum. It gave Mal the impression of a caldera, with the pungent smell of sulfur mingling with the fetid scent of decay that hung in the air like winter fog. Even at this distance, Malik could see the rotten logs and the thick carpet of algae that covered the swamp’s surface.
Not everything was in a state of decomposition. Far from it. There were Gloam trees scattered across the quagmire, but they were not the imposing royalty of their cousins in the forest below. These trees were gnarled, misshapen things, their smooth black trunks bulging in places as if they were pockmarked with tumors. Their long, ropy leaf structures were floating in the tepid water. The flower buds along these structures had blossomed with bright, silvery petals that gave the murky landscape a ghostly glow.
His blue eyes wide, Malik rose on wobbly legs to try to take it all in. No sooner did he get back to his feet than his stomach heaved again? With a snarl, Malik fought down the urge to vomit again and pulled his shirt off. He was in the middle of wrapping it around his face like a scarf when a roar split the air to rival the rumble of the waterfall behind him. Blackbirds exploded from the canopy of the swamp like black confetti racing across the sky. They’d scarcely left their perches among the trees when another thunderous roar answered the challenging howl.
Malik would have to cross this wretched swamp to finally retrieve his drone. That much he knew. The question was, whose home was he breaking into?
And how angry would they be when they found a trespasser?