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The starship seemed like it was descending, but with no frame of reference Rsh couldn't be sure they were going anywhere. Surely, if he looked up, he'd see the stars overhead, but he kept his eyes on the monitor. Watched the camera feeds carefully, for the slightest sign of danger. According to the scanner, they were approaching the twenty mile mark. Just one more mile to go. One more, and then they would be at the bottom. Just one more.
His instincts riled up inside him. Made him want to get up and stalk around the flight deck. But he resisted the urge. He was in control of his unconscious, not the other way around. His bestial side was on a tight leash, which his higher intellect gripped tightly. Let it snarl and growl. His mind had more important things to worry about.
Behind him, Luci's shoes patted out an erratic rhythm on the deck. Underneath the scent of deodorant masking grease and oil, his nose picked out her nervous sweat. The smell of weakness. Her tiny frail body was vulnerable, and she was easy prey for a passing predator.
Over his shoulder, he growled, "Stop pacing."
Ignoring him, she continued to pace and breathe out in rapid puffs.
She's making me want to pace too, he thought.
Rsh wanted to stand up and force her to stop, but the camera feeds were much more important. His aggravated instincts did not know anything about human technology. Primitive animals did not have the ability to use tools. But his conscious mind was in control now, and he ordered his animalistic side to quiet down and sit still while he watched out for dangers outside which it could not comprehend.
"Twenty miles," he announced.
Blaze, hidden by the console, didn't respond. Philomena flitted from one side of the narrow footpath to the other, striding alongside the darkness without looking out at it. Although she passed it front of Blaze's field of view, nothing was visible outside of the canopy. He was forced to rely on the HUD to observe the environment, just as Rsh was forced to rely on the console.
The humans had built such incredible tools to sail between stars.
Yet these tools only seemed to highlight how incredibly fragile they were. How fragile life was. Like a feral animal backed into a corner, there were generally two responses a being had to being reminded of their own fragility: hopeless resignation, or fierce belligerence. Often in some confused mixture of the two.
"Philandia?" Philomena muttered. "Philoworld? Gotta name this place something impressive, because I'm impressive. I'm the best businesswoman, the best in the whole galaxy."
She stalked back and forth, moving in fits and starts in front of the darkness. Off in her own little world … as opposed to her own little world outside, covered in incredible darkness, which she seemed to shy away from.
Sighing, Rsh stared at the monitor, but nothing could be discerned from the infinite darkness.
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The Zantauran sun was bright and harsh. Its light stabbed outward from the bright blue skies and glanced off the arid land, turning it into a dazzling shimmer. Slitting his eyes against the blazing fury, Rsh pushed through the pelt hanging over the doorway to his den. He went down the stairs, into the earthen entrance hall of the half-underground dwelling. In the middle of the hall was a stout beam made of thick wood from the bkssh tree. It was covered in claw marks. When a visitor entered somebody else's den, it was tradition that they tried their hardest to break the main beam and make the den collapse, while the den-leader watched and laughed. A strong den meant a strong den-leader, they said. It was the same reason why they hung the most impressive pelts over the entrance — to show their prowess as warriors to the rest of the village.
Savages, Rsh thought.
The humans who came from the stars had brought with them some incredible things. Not only technology, but knowledge. Things like the theory of evolution, and psychology. His father and all the other boorish idiots stampeding across this planet dismissed what they did not understand, but Rsh embraced knowledge from the stars eagerly.
The unconscious mind was the remnant of the feral animals they'd evolved from, and consciousness was built atop it to allow them to figure out solutions to problems and increase their odds of survival. Random mutations gave organisms traits which might allow them a better chance to thrive. He had never fit in on this awful planet, but now he understood why — he was more evolved than these terrible bullies. They had their niche, to stampede across the surface of this mud ball and kill each other with rocks. But then the humans came, and opened up the wider universe. Now, evolution had gifted him with a more refined, human-like intellect. In earlier eras, someone like him would languish and die. But now, he had the galactic niche to let his traits flourish. He was superior to these crude cretins. While they let their feral side run rampant, he'd buried his. He'd spent his whole life being beaten and bullied, but it was he — not them — who would thrive in the wide, wild galaxy.
He heard racuous laughter from the living room, and cut through the kitchen to avoid it. He brushed through the pelt hanging over the earthen archway. However, when he saw his brother Tahkha cutting up a gash-tah on the kitchen counter, Rsh stopped in the doorway. Tahkha's bloody claws raked the slain beast, separating its skin from its muscle. Gash-tah lived in the wildlands, the grassy savannah beyond the arid plains, where his people went to hunt and fell bkssh trees. This one looked bigger than the one hanging over the archway to Tahkha's bedroom, which meant it would soon be replaced.
Rsh didn't care in the slightest.
Forcing himself to move forward, he headed for the pelt hanging over the other archway. Normally, he was beneath his family's notice, and he was eager to keep it that way.
"Where were you?" Tahkha asked. His claws continued to rip the gash-tah apart.
Rsh halted, halfway to the far door. He hated talking to his family, but to ignore a direct question would just invite their anger, and he didn't want to get beaten. Not that he wouldn't relish beating them up — he wasn't strong enough to impose his will on them through physical violence. That was how things worked on Zantaura.
"Gathering bkssh," he said.
"You? In the wildlands?"
"Just offcuts."
He'd gathered up little pieces of wood discarded by others. They sat in the pocket of his robe, weighing it down.
Scoffing, Tahkha asked, "What good are offcuts?"
"They have their uses."
"Whatever. Can't even skin a gash-tah."
Once, his father forced him to skin a gash-tah he'd caught and killed, in an effort to 'toughen him up.' Rsh made a botch of it and ruined the pelt, earning him scorn and a beating from his father, who then pointedly ignored him out of disgust.
"Pathetic excuse for a Zantauran," Tahkha said with a heckling snort.
Hearing that makes me happy, Rsh thought.
He swept through the pelt hanging over the doorway and entered the hall. At the left end, it opened into the living room. His father and friends were gathered around a display screen. Like the electric lights on the ceiling, the screen was an out-of-place human artifact amidst the traditional earthen den's beige walls. He'd heard that, in the cities, the buildings were much more humanlike. But human technology was slowly making its way out to rural villages like this.
Good. That brings me one step closer to leaving this mud ball.
"Ah!" his father cried. "It's happening!"
The face of a squinting human actor filled the screen. The man was long-dead, but he lived on through his films. Although there was nothing imposing or impressive about him in the least, his father and friends gazed at the stony alien visage with rapt attention. 'The Clint,' and the aspects of human culture he represented, was a source of fascination on Zantaura. Something they admired about the people from the stars. The human was — dare Rsh say it? — kawaii.
Then, with a flurry of activity, the squinting man drew his gun and blasted it, eliciting roars from his father and his friends. They bellowed out the stupidest, most obvious remarks, the human words rolling uneasily off their tongues.
"The Clint! The Clint fired his gun!"
Morons, Rsh thought, heading up the hallway opposite them.
Rsh came to his bedroom, although calling it such was too generous. It was a narrow, drafty storage room his family had shoved him into. Out of the way, where he could be ignored. At least until they needed him to make some new piece of human technology they'd bought work, which was very likely the only reason they tolerated his presence. All the furniture inside was made from old human cargo containers, and the plastic tarp hanging over the doorway had come from one of them. As he trudged inside, he pulled the offcuts from his robe and dropped them onto his 'desk'. They landed in a pile with some other offcuts, next to a half-finished human figure.
In anime, characters seemed to amass vast collections of anime figurines, but they didn't sell any anime merch on Zantaura. So, Rsh was forced to make his own. The figure was crude and ugly, but compared to his crude and ugly homeworld, it was a thing of beauty. Right now, his hands felt brutal and savage. Like they would break any delicate piece of anime merch they touched. He wanted to file his claws down so they looked more like human fingers. However, he was forced to make his crude anime figures with the materials this brutal and savage world provided, and that meant keeping his claws. His body had evolved to fit this niche, even though his mind had evolved towards the stars and the human civilization that spanned them.
It was frustrating, but … there was nothing he could do about it.
Nothing except keep going, and hope he thrived in his new niche.
He dropped onto the low bed and stared at the earthen ceiling. He didn't feel like working on his half-done figure right now. His family were going to leave soon, and he'd timed his return to coincide with it. He could snatch a few hours of time to tune into the anime the humans broadcasted. Most of the time, they showed the kinds of films his father liked — starring the Clint. But, like evolution itself, the human broadcasters inserted random mutations into their programming. Gauging the waters, to see if tastes had changed. The anime itself probably seemed like an afterthought to them, but it had shown Rsh a whole new galaxy. A galaxy where he felt like he belonged, where he could be respected. A new niche, which he could possibly thrive inside. Now, all he had to do was find a way off this rock.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
A handful of thin books were piled atop the cargo crate he used as a shelf. The human mining companies were eager to train them how to read and write Galactic Standard, so they could work at the facilities that dotted the landscape. Rsh swiped a pamphlet off the top. The cover showed an illustration of a proud human and Zantauran, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, staring boldly at the distant horizon. Inside, it told him about a training program on a nearby planet called Nimbus. They meant for him to come back and work on Zantaura, but he intended to get out of that however he could. He didn't know much about the various human skills they offered. But this one anime had made hacking look like fun, so he had settled on computer programming.
Sighing, he put the pamphlet aside and stared at the ceiling. Biding his time, waiting for his family to leave.
And, further, waiting for the chance to leave his worthless homeworld.
Soon, he thought. Soon …
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"Rsh. Hey, Rsh, answer me!"
The dark monitor had become a screen he could project his memories onto. He'd been staring at it so long his eyes went out of focus. Blurring the pixels. Obscuring reality. But when the shrill cry roused him, he abruptly straightened up. Turned his head towards its source. Philomena perched on the stairs going down to the pilot's seat. Her hands gripped the console's edge so she could hunch forward, leaning over its surface, to look him in the eye. Strands of copper hair swung in front of her eyes, which insistently searched his face for answers.
"What?" he asked.
She sighed. "I said … 'On a scale of one to ten, how amazing does the name 'Phye-topia' make me sound?'"
Still thrown for a loop by the daydream, Rsh struggled to keep a sneer off his face.
"You're awful confident this here planet's gonna be named after you," Blaze called. "How about we name it after the hombre who actually found it, huh?"
The urge to shut these humans up permanently made Rsh's arms tense up at his sides.
"I'm the boss, Corvo," she replied. She barely turned her head towards him, instead raising her voice so it carried through the flight deck. "You do what I tell you to do, so I get the credit."
Rsh clenched his fists and dug them into the armrests, forcing them to relax. No! he thought.
"And, uh, how's about them failures, huh?" Blaze asked. "I reckon that's just about 99% of your business. You taking credit for that, too?"
Rsh shouted at the feral beast deep inside his mind, I am not my father. I am not my family. I am not … not a Zantauran. I am a civilized being!
Philomena pushed herself off the console and crossed her arms. Her mouth orbited around her lower face like she was searching for the best angle to spit venom. Then, looking toward the aft bulkhead, she called out over Rsh's shoulder.
"Ramirex."
Behind Rsh's back, the tightly-wound bundle of nerves exploded in a flurry of motion. The wind she made raked the coat on his head and neck, aggravating the beast lurking in his instincts. He heard a manga volume slip out of her hands and thud on the ground, eliciting a sharp gasp.
"Hai?!" Luci yelped.
"On a scale of one to ten, how amazing does the name 'Phye-topia' make me sound?"
"Eleven," Luci said with no hesitation. "No! Um … twelve."
With a smug, beaming smile, Philomena nodded in agreement. "That's what I like to hear!"
"Yes, Philomena. A-A-Anytime, Philomena."
The arrogant human faced the ship's fore with her hands on her hips. "I hereby declare this planet Phye-topia!"
The absolute darkness on the monitor taunted Rsh. They were sinking into rogue planet's depths, where the light of the universe couldn't reach them. Couldn't provide any illumination for those lost in shadow. There was nothing but black. Nothing to distract him from his own mind … and the predator dwelling inside it. They were all lost, and there was no way to find the light again—
Suddenly, faint flickers of light and shadow stirred on the monitor. His muscles stiffened as he sat up straight. His hair stood on end. Leaning forward, he swept his eyes back and forth across the pixels. Trying to see if it was a problem with the monitor, or …
The rocky bottom of the crater emerged from the darkness, lit by the bright landing lights and flickering blue engine exhaust. An alien land, unlit by sunlight since it drifted out of its solar system. Dislodged dust floated down around them, falling through their paltry sphere of light. Beyond its reach, darkness eagerly consumed everything without mercy.
"Contact," he called.
Blaze boosted power to the thrusters. The exhaust rumbled the deck underfoot and stopped the ship's descent. Rsh pulled the scanner up and observed the grayscale terrain map it was generating, while the ship hovered several dozen feet above the bottom of the mysterious land. They tried to fill the abyss with light, but the darkness proved more powerful. It pressed up against the ring of illumination from the ship's landing lights, looming sinisterly, waiting for a chance to rush at them and pounce. Drag them down and keep them here, at the end of the universe.
He felt Luci hovering behind him, keeping her distance. But when Philomena hopped up the stairs and looked at the console over his shoulder, Luci found the courage to trudge steps forward and join the other human. They crowded behind him, making his instincts flare up. He was tense and uneasy. Being hemmed in didn't help, even if the humans were so pathetically weak he could rip them apart easily.
"Anything?" Blaze asked.
Holding his breath, Rsh studied the scanner closely. Observing the broken land below, waiting for a radar contact to the rush from one of the ridges and knock them out of the sky. In his last moments, he would bring his strength to bear on the attacker, but it was useless, all his power was useless, he was totally at the mercy of this human deathtrap, and he couldn't fight his way out if the ship crashed here. He would either be crushed or vented into the airless surface, and die horrifically in either case.
"I see nothing," he replied.
He pointedly did not mention anything about it being safe.
Blaze said, "So … what now?"
For a moment, the silence was as deafening as the night outside was deep.
"Um, Corvo," Philomena said. "You, um, hop out and see if it's safe. If it's not, we'll all fly away and, um, remember your sacrifice."
Blaze barked tense laughter. "Sure, but I think you should come out too. To … watch my daring frontier spirit in action."
"Ramirex," Philomena said.
"Hai?!"
"I'm making you my COO for now. You, um, go out and supervise Corvo in my place."
"Hai?!"
"I'll watch from here."
"Um, I-I think I'll need you to supervise me too. To m-m-make sure I'm doing a good job."
Philomena scoffed, but the tremor that went through her vocal cords betrayed her nervousness. "Do I have to do everything around here?" she asked, although her voice, rather than maintaining its typical edge, drifted off into the distance, like she'd gotten distracted by a faraway spectacle.
"All of you are leaving," Rsh declared, in a tone that rejected all arguments to the contrary.
Philomena piped up, "Excuse me, I am—"
He swiveled the chair and stared at her. She leaned away from his growl, her arms fidgeting upward to protect herself, even though hadn't moved at all.
"I shall throw you out the airlock … suit or no suit," he said.
She gulped. Twitching and blinking, she looked over his head at the darkness outside the canopy. "I guess I'll just have to—" Her voice broke into a frightened squeak. "—do everything myself." Then she gulped again and cleared her throat. Probably trying to save face, she loudly added, in a flustered, blustering rush, "I'm the greatest businesswoman in the galaxy, and I'm going to … get it all done myself. Yup!"
"Any idea where we should land?" Blaze asked.
Rsh panned the terrain map around and zoomed in to examine it closely. He noticed a large crack in the crater wall. The terrain map faded to nothingness inside it, implying the crack went deeper into the planet. In front of its opening, a relatively flat stretch of land would allow the ship to land … in theory. He wasn't sure how firm the land was down here. He set a marker at the designated landing spot, and then sent it to the HUD. It appeared on the glass pane in front of Blaze.
"There," Rsh said.
"You got it."
He jetted the ship forward, and it glided through the darkness. The landing lights briefly filled the cracks in the land with illumination. Then, as the ship sailed past, the shadows circled around them and took the crevices back. Like a swarm of insects avoiding the light. Angered by the intrusion into their homes. Biding their time, just waiting for a chance to rush out into the darkness and swarm freely again.
The hovering ship approached the crater's side. Most of its landing lights were tilted downward, and at their height they only lit up the lower half of the opening. The jagged rocks created sharp shadows and rays of light that stabbed into the interior like daggers. The top half of the opening was mostly steeped in darkness. The starship's weaker running lights could barely offer it any illumination. He stared upward at it, and he sensed the others doing the same. The arched top of the crack rose above them, dissolving into the darkness hiding the crater wall, far below the circle of stars.
What lurked up there, waiting to fall and land on whatever unlucky bastard dared enter the cave? Fractured rocks? Massive stalactites? Or … something alive, hibernating upside down on the cavernous ceiling?
Even the beast in his subconscious balked at the idea of finding out.
I have no space suit, so I can't enter. How unfortunate for me.
The starship descended, seemingly shaking more than usual. Rsh couldn't tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him, or if Blaze's hands were shaking and making the yoke wobble. Whatever the reason, Rsh gripped the console tightly while watching the feeds from the cameras chronicle their landing. The humans behind him gripped the console and the back of his seat to steady themselves. Their trembling bodies brushed his coat, incensing his already-tensed nerves. The beast inside him wanted to lash out and knock them away.
Normally, he kept his savage side under control. But this place …
The ship neared the ground. Its sphere of light brightened the land under the keel while also contracting towards their landing site. In its absence, the darkness crawled across the ground towards them. Closing in on the hull, concealing whatever hid inside it. Stalking towards their tiny, fragile habitat.
"I am unsure how stable the land is," Rsh warned. "Keep the thrusters on … for now."
"You got it, partner," Blaze said.
The landing legs, which they'd kept extended, touched down on the ground. The crunch of impact traveled through the hull and made all of them flinch. The ship's weight settled as the planet shouldered it. For one queasy moment, he feared the planet would give way. Drop them into a pit, bash the ship to pieces in the ensuing landslide, and breach the hull and kill them all. Rsh's grip tightened; the console's casing started to dent. His breath issued through his clenched teeth. The two humans behind him heaved for air, their small frames shuddering and brushing against his coat more quickly than before, and it was rousing his anger.
Stop that, he thought.
But as they waited, the ground remained steady. Piece by piece, his worries eased themselves and slipped off his tight shoulders.
"Well?" Blaze asked.
Peeling his hands off the console, Rsh sat back in the bucket seat and forced his tense muscles to loosen up.
"It appears stable," Rsh said.
Blaze made a noncommittal grunt, fell quiet for a few seconds, and then piped up in a swaggering pompous voice. "I meant, uh … you can apologize for doubting my flying whenever you want."
He killed the thrusters, and the rumble from the engines ceased. In the silence that followed, all of them froze. Waiting. Listening for the telltale shudder of the ground giving out. Or perhaps something rushing out of the darkness at them, ready to tear the ship apart.
The eerie stillness continued.
"Is it safe?" Luci asked.
"It would appear so," Rsh replied.
Blaze climbed out of the pilot's seat, stood in the narrow footpath, and threw his arms up. He stretched vigorously, twisting his body sideways. Grinning, he called up to Rsh and the two humans on the raised deck, pulling his arm behind his head.
"Whatever's out there probably took one look at my badass gunslinger attitude and ran the other way."
"Yeah," Luci said, "to laugh its ass off."
Philomena snickered at that, and Luci emitted a little delighted gasp in response. From the sound of her mouth, she'd turned her head to look at the woman next to her — probably with awe sparkling in her eyeballs. But Rsh was too busy staring at the scanner on the monitor to care about their little mating dance.
Nothing, he thought. Nothing at all.
To join them on the rear deck, Blaze stomped up the steps. Rsh swiveled his bucket seat around to face the herd of humans. It was very crowded in the alcove in front of the bulkhead, as they faced each other and tried not to swing their elbows into each other. But none of them seemed in any great hurry to leave. Awkwardly, they looked at each other and then looked away. Crowded in by all the hairless rodents, Rsh felt his hackles rising.
"The money," he said, by way of reminder.
"Right!" Philomena cried. "The money!"
"And the manga it'll buy!" Luci said.
"And the space babes we'll impress!" Blaze said.
"And the space babes!" Luci added.
The three humans psyched themselves, steeling their nerves for the EVA. Then they turned to the bulkhead and left the flight deck with an awkward shuffle that betrayed their contrived enthusiasm. At last, peace and quiet, Rsh thought, sinking down in the bucket seat. But before the door closed, Philomena planted her hand on the doorframe to hold it open and poked her head back inside. He felt his hackles rise again.
"And Rsh! You're not goofing off and watching cartoons when we're working, got it?" She pointed to the cardboard box full of paperwork sitting in the corner. The invoices left over from SwiftShip. She then swung her finger around and aimed it at him. "Batterdaze it, understood?"
"'Database'," Rsh said, his teeth grinding together.
"Whatever. Get it done quick."
She stepped back through the doorway, keeping her finger and her stern eyes aimed at him. The door timed out and slid shut on her. Alone again, he heaved himself out of his chair with a groan. Knelt down to pick the box up. Carried it to the console and set it down. He took the lid off and rifled through the faded, worn printouts. The first thing that stood out was the utter lack of standardization among addresses on frontier worlds. He sensed he'd be writing a lot of code to parse and format them into a database. Grumbling, he rubbed his forehead.
Just leave them, the savage beast in his unconscious mind said. Take this metal thing and leave the puny humans behind.
For ten to fifteen seconds, his growling throat trilled wetly.
I'll think about it, he told it.
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