35. "Sorry, we didn’t mean it. They go off unexpectedly sometimes."
Seeing so many other Aurealians, adult Aurealians, was a little bit frightening. They crowded outside of the shuttle after it had landed in orderly squares, and Yellow did not know why. There had been more of Yellow’s sisters – clones from the Hrustius world – in one place on the human’s ship than there were in the landing area, but those were kips like her, and she knew why they gathered. They gathered to discuss their freedom, and sometimes compare their lives before. What could draw so many of these adults to the same location?
"They are here for us," Purple Dots told her as they exited the shuttle. "They have come to see the kips who were supposed to die to the other’s claws and escaped instead."
"We had help," Yellow reminded her sister.
"And we will pay them back."
"In this generation or the next," Yellow agreed.
Tetoma approached, and the sisters immediately noticed the aged chorus leader. Tilting their heads in acknowledgment, they approached her, only to have a young ren approach them. Ren were the closest to the earth male of the aurealian’s trinary sex system, contributing only one third of the genetic information of the children and nothing else. Which also made them the most expendable. The female provided genetic information and a womb, while the noone provided genetic information and the yolk sack.
"I’m sorry, kips, but I need to take your weapons before you come any closer. You won’t need them anymore, you’re safe here," Libik told them, holding his hand out for the blasters that the two young kips were still carrying.
"It doesn’t matter, they don’t work any-"
The blaster in Yellows hand went off unexpectedly, destroying part of the stage in front of them.
"Oh. The humans said they disabled the power source, but I guess that meant only on the ship."
Purple Dot’s blaster went off next as she fumbled with it, trying to get a safe hold of it now that she realized it was dangerous again. This shot over the crowd and created a new window in the third story of the spaceport. Libik lunged at the kips, trying to disable their weapons, only for his actions to cause them to go off again into the dirt.
"Just drop them!" he shouted. "I mean, set them on the ground and walk away."
"Sorry, we didn’t mean it," Yellow sang back. "They go off unexpectedly sometimes."
"The Jurassians put the trigger-button in a terrible location. Terrible for our hands, at least. While we were escaping the prison where they raised us, the weapons we took from them continued to go off on their own. We are fortunate that only the Jurassians were killed by the accidental discharges," Yellow admitted once she had stepped back several feet from the weapon.
"What you are truly fortunate for is that it did not discharge in the shuttle," Libik laughed. "How exactly did two young kips like yourselves come into possession of a pair of blasters? I don’t know that we’ve ever actually recovered one of these before, let alone two!"
"We’re not in trouble?" Yellow asked, looking around at the damage they had caused. The adults were all running and screaming, except for Libik and Tetoma, who had merely ducked when the weapons had fired. "We did not mean to cause distress.
"We would celebrate you just for returning with one of these, but you brought two!" Libik exclaimed, singing loudly enough that the panicking adults began to overhear. "These are some of the dreadful weapons that our people are so frightened of they eat the Urata rather than face them! With two of these in our possession, we can reverse engineer them, and, more importantly, come up with countermeasures. You said that the humans had disabled them previously? I am surprised they let you keep them at all. How did you obtain them?"
"The Other who scarred me dropped this one when the Dancers killed him, and I picked it up," Yellow explained.
"I picked up the other one when Yellow used hers to kill an Other who ambushed us," Purple Dots continued.
"And together we guarded all the rest of Theta team’s kips as we escaped. Theta team was one of the largest of all the groups that were rescued, but we also faced the most danger," Yellow finished. "Or so the dancers and the humans tell us."
"If the humans say so, then it is true," Tetoma sang. "Leave the weapons in the dirt where they lay, you do not need them, children. You are safe here. Leave them to Libik, who will get them to those who will take them apart and learn how the humans disabled them remotely, for that would be a very good thing to know, I think."
"Indeed it would," Libik agreed, and he stood guard over the dangerous objects as the kips moved onto the platform with Tetoma.
Once Yellow and her sisters were up there, and once the chaos among the adults had settled down, Tetoma seemed to purr with satisfaction as she announced "Now is the time for questions."
Yellow, who had so many questions, was eager to begin, but it quickly became apparent that it was not to her that Tetoma had spoken. The adults began singing out dissonant objections toward Yellow, her sisters, and their very presence on this planet.
"What give you the right to jump in front of unborn Neurelians? Have you no shame?"
"Will you agree to standard Neurelian population control measures and methods?"
"Will you be applying for reproductive rights?"
"That is enough. Those are not the questions the chorus should be asking these children, but I will provide the answers. The answer to the first question? It is the questioner who should feel shame. The born always come before the unborn, and the living before the dead. To the second question, all children from worlds of the Hrustius will be forever exempt from Neurelian population control methods. To the third question, that is their decision to make when they are older, but any children they have on the surface of our lovely planet will be welcomed into the fold," Tetoma sang, chastising those she had allowed to speak.
"Now, children of the Hrustius, show these fools why their questions are meaningless. Show them what sort of things they should be asking you. Sing to them the songs that you were singing when you first opened your eyes," Tetoma demanded.
Yellow frowned, looking around to her sisters. "What shall we sing to them?"
"The songs you sang to me when we conversed earlier would suffice," Tetoma suggested. So Yellow again led her litter in singing the songs of organic chemistry and the folding of proteins. As she sang, the chorus, the adults, began to fall silent and still.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sleeping Lazily in warm bedding while someone scratches your belly was not having a good day. The new song singers were not like the ones they had rescued. They were silent, and hard to find, and would run away rather than stay and watch as Sleeping and the rest of delta team tried to direct them to the spear cache that had been PMT’d down earlier. There were hundreds of the spears, more than one for each of the Singers, but few of the Rodentia’s new friends had taken the proffered gifts.
Sleepy tried not to take it personally; Human Nathan had warned the Rodentia that these new Singers would be wary. But he was surprised at how hard they were making this task of helping them. Even with the drones flying overhead, marking the singers on maps by their body heat, it was almost impossible to corner one of them, except for the kips, but Delta team was not going to make that mistake again.
The ambush had seemingly come out of nowhere as they had surrounded the kip, and it was only the Rodentia’s protective harnesses and the fact that the deadliest weapon the Aurealians possessed was sharpened rocks that saved the team from casualties. After that failure, the Rodentia had been more circumspect in their approaches. Unfortunately, that led to the problems they were facing now.
Then the speakers and holoemitters they carried burst into life, showing a young Aurealian. Not a kip, not for a long time, but still so young for all her claims of being the eldest of her hunting grounds. It was her song, her promises, which turned things around. Soon, the Rodentia need stand only near the spear cache and watch as the Aurealians came and went, coming with flint and wood and leaving with steel and ceramic.
And within the hilt, a simple but important combination of electronics.
~~~~~~~~~~
"These weapons are wonderful," Stargazer said, testing the balance on the spear she had been given. She tried to thrust it into the wall of the cabin and was surprised when the spear penetrated. The human covered his face in an expression she interpreted as praise.
"Can we not destroy the holoemitters of one of the better tactical rooms, please?" Nathan asked. Not praise, then. "Athena will put in a work order automatically and the replacement will be done by drones, but it’s still inconvenient for me not to use this one for a few hours while it happens."
"Can we not electrocute innocent Aurealians after asking them to approach so that you can ‘help’ them?" she inquired. "And not once, but twice!"
"I said I was sorry, and I am, truly. The second shock was only designed to restart your hearts, and we made an important discovery because of what happened. I’m not certain what would have happened if we’d phased you and your sisters out of the grounds without disabling your implanted devices, but it likely would not have been good," Nathan reminded her.
"I could have told you it was there without being stricken with lightning," she argued. "I would have told you if I’d had a chance to sing. It is not a secret kept from us. On the night in which the great lie is revealed, they cut into all of our flesh and implant them and tell us what the object does. They prevent us from leaving, from escaping our fate on the hunting grounds. From running out into the world where we have an actual chance of hiding from the hunters, of fighting back. These spears will mark a wonderful change in that, even if you keep no more of your promises."
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"I understand I still have to earn your trust," Nathan said patiently. "But even now, my forces are indeed leading your sisters, and the kips and Aurealians all across Horthus Prime, to large piles of these weapons. There is some variation in length, weight, balance, and that sort of thing among the many spears so that the Aurealians can pick ones which fit their body and weapons style. These things are really not very difficult to make, so we made extra. Many more than we think we’ll use."
"That is not news of happiness," Stargazer decided, "That there are so few Aurealians left able to fight that when a human arms us, he is able to make so many more weapons than are hands to wield them."
"Well, humans have a strange history with making weapons. Most of the weapons we’ve made have never actually been used, thankfully. Not for a sapient creature to kill another sapient creature, anyway. It is the goal of Yosca to keep it that way. The truly important part of the spear isn’t the blade, it’s the medical scanner, the portable holoemitter, and the tracking device. It will allow us to track and help your sisters from orbit, and hopefully it will allow us to rescue them before the Jurassians resume the practice of hunting them."
"If not, perhaps they will finally give us a chance of taking our enemies with us into the light," Stargazer said, testing her fur against the edge of the blade. The fur was shaved off effortlessly, even sharper than the sharpest of her flint knives that had been left behind.
"Yes, well, we’re hoping to stop that from happening. Stargazer, what has been happening on Horthus Prime and worlds like it to you and your sisters? I find it unconscionable that a sapient, sentient being such as yourself and any Aurealian could be subjected to such a barbarous tradition. I would like to put an end to it, to the point where I’m willing to make it my life’s work. However, there are things that I need to explain about my people. You see, while we have always strove towards greatness, sometimes that striving has brought us upon dark paths, into dark places, and caused us to do terrible things."
"Things such as what the Jurassians do?"
"No, we have never had a full on interstellar war. We, well, we didn’t think it was possible until we developed the Aurora drive, and once we had that there was what we call an ‘arms race,’ where every government established a standing army capable of inflicting terrible losses on any invader into their sovereignty. We thought that war was inevitable, but that was when we formed the UEOSC. It is Yosca – that’s a bastardized name for the UEOSC based on poorly pronounced phonetics which is surprisingly infectious – it is Yosca’s mission to prevent all forms of interstellar war between humans and our various allied species. Unfortunately, prior to meeting your people and learning of their situation, Yosca had done such a thoroughly good job of establishing a peaceful galaxy that, if we were to interfere on behalf of your people directly, it would likely cause our own people to go to war with each other on a scale which boggles the imagination.
"I want to help you, Stargazer, and your sisters, and all of your people. But I must weigh the lives of billions of your people against the lives of billions of mine. That is the reason why I am stuck only destroying cloning facilities and arming you with spears instead of ripping this star system from the claws of the Jurassians and handing it over to you. Do you understand?"
"You want to help, but are constrained in ways that I do not understand. That is my understanding of what you just sang," Stargazer answered. "You want to help my people, but your people do not. That is okay. If one human is enough to destroy the birthing houses that the Others have perverted, then I will take the aide of one human when it is offered."
"Well, that’s sort of the thing. If those facilities had military value, I couldn’t have done anything to them at all, Stargazer. It is the opinion of Yosca that hunting your kind has no military benefit to the Jurassians, and so I can take actions I deem appropriate to end the practice without running into the legal landmine that would happen if I tried to interfere in the war itself. Destroying those facilities was easy, the hard part is figuring out what to do with you and your sisters who already exist and are fighting for your lives down there.
"Because, you see, Stargazer, while the cloning facilities didn’t have any military value, at least not in the way that they were being used, the hunting preserves do. Not because of what they’re used for, but because Horthus and his government is planning on using the populations of your people there as hostages. It’s a valid military strategy, and legally, I may have already overstepped my bounds when I removed you and brought you aboard my ship."
~~~~~~~~~~
"There you go. Legally, on Horthus Prime, you are officially registered as deceased," Simon said proudly to the suicidal Jurassian.
"Will it not cause problems when they do not find my corpse?" Tanak inquired.
"It’s marked as having fallen in quicksand, unrecoverable. Nobody is going to even look for it. I deepfaked your call for help and death cries. Everyone is totally believing it and already moving on with their lives, so stop trying to kill yourself, okay?"
The Jurassian, who had indeed been trying to end his own life using the paltry means available to him, nodded with reluctance. It would have been a simple matter under other circumstances; a Jurassian is never unarmed, and he could always open a vein or major artery to end his life in moments. But the idea was to make his death look like an accident to protect his family. Tanak had been running into a wall repeatedly for ten minutes before Simon had managed to intervene.
"It is my children’s right to exist that I am concerned with. If they die, then all my efforts in this life are for naught," Tanak reminded the hacker-chimp.
"I know, and I’m taking it super serious, dude. Look, your second mate just got the notification and she’s … well, she’s going on with her day like nothing weird just happened and today was just a completely normal day. Oh, there. She just notified a dating service that she’ll need a new mate."
"Truly?"
"Yeah, kind of cold blooded. Sorry dude."
"That is wonderful! She is not worried about her or her children’s right to exist at all!"
"N-no, I guess she is not," Simon admitted, covering his face in frustration. Aliens were weird. "So, no more trying to kill yourself? I kind of need your promise on this matter, Nathan will be pissed enough already when he learns that I’ve helped you without doing more than sending him a low-priority text. If you actually succeed, I’ll be in a lot of trouble."
"If it is believed that I am dead on Horthus Prime, then my family shall face no trouble until I am to return to Horthus Prime. Fortunately I do actually know of a number of quicksand pits, and making true your lie will be a very simple matter."
Simon began smacking his palm against his face repeatedly. ‘This is still better,’ he told himself. ‘Before he was trying to hurt himself, and even though he was doing a shitty job of it, we had to do something to make him stop. Now, all we have to do is hold on to him forever.’
Grunting with frustration, he sent off another low-priority text. Simon didn’t know everything that was going on with the Theseus at the moment, but he knew enough to know that Nathan would be too busy to worry about Simon’s Jurassian Suicide Watch.
~~~~~~~~~~
"I have pulled all of you aside to issue a warning," Tetoma informed the gathered litters as they continued to pile out of the shuttle craft. Three waves had landed now, and while the first litter of the first wave continued to hang about the one with yellow splotches and that terrible scar, the others were mixing and singing joyously at their rescue.
The voices of discord, necessary even at a time like this, had fulfilled their roles and been awed by the width and breadth of knowledge that these children of Hruthius displayed so casually. They had gone away understanding why the ‘rights’ and ‘resources’ were being diverted from the natives to these refugees. But not everyone on the planet would be so easy to convince.
"On the world of Neurela, and on all places that are Aurealian, there is a substance known as Urata. If you eat it, it triggers a swift, painless death. It is very easy to recognize and easy to avoid unless you are seeking an end to your pain and struggles, in which case it is very easy to find. I sing this to you because I cannot believe that, having survived the horrors that you have, you would find shelter where you are welcome and safe, only to then take the Urata. It is more difficult for me to countenance an alternative theory, that some of the natives may resent you and use your ignorance of the Urata to murder you. To do so is a terrible crime; Urata is not meant for murder. It is a way of easing and bringing an end to pain. To use it in a crime compounds the crime more than simple violence alone."
The singing kips had gone silent as she had spoken, and she knew she had their attention.
"Yes, I am sorry to say, you are still in danger on Neurela. But you do have friends here. We will teach you to recognize the Urata, both by sight and smell and touch, but never by taste. You must never taste it, not unless you seek an end to your life. We will teach you both its natural and its processed forms. And we will teach you the ways to identify if food or drink has been poisoned with it. In the mean time, we will prepare food for you, and I advise you to eat or drink nothing which you have not seen an elder put in their mouths as well. Even then, I would wait five minutes to ensure that they are not willing to take you with them."
Never before had Tetoma seen so many kips so silent. Kips were always filled with music and noise, it was not until they were adults that the Aurealians truly learned to listen to the music of others. It was one of the great frustrations of the Aurealian education system that, by the time the Aurealian mind was ready to accept the deeper secrets of the universe, it was often already closed to them. And it was why Tetoma would allow none to poison these precious resources and destroy her hope for tomorrow, come to her when her personal tomorrows were swiftly running out.
"We were not told that we would have enemies on your world," Yellow sang accusingly.
"I am sorry, dear, but you will have enemies no matter where you go," Tetoma answered. "But you will have more friends here than you will have enemies. When you are older, some of you may wish to go to the shipyards. We will encourage the population to believe that all or most of you will be going when you reach adulthood, whether or not that is the case. It is a choice that you must make, not one that will be made for you. In the mean time, because I wish to be your friend and resource, I warn you of a danger that I hope that I will never see come to pass. And I hope that, in issuing this warning, rather than frighten you, I give you the tools to protect yourself."
Yellow – all of the kips – were silent for a moment. Then it was Yellow again who spoke. "It was their pretense of being our friends which makes me hate the Others so, and it was for showing us the danger we were in that many of us love the Dancers. That is what Tetoma does now. She shows us the sources of our danger, and in so makes us safer. And we must be safe, because we have debts to pay. To the dancers, and to the humans. And we will pay those debts. In this generation, or the next."
"In this generation, or the next," came an echoing answer.
Tetoma experienced a moment of doubt at the roar of voices that overwhelmed her. She had never experienced so many of her people united upon one subject such as this. The voices of discord were tolerated because they were necessary, but the unifying voices were never so unifying as this little kip casually singing a phrase.
Had she not already done so, Tetoma would have marked Yellow for special attention. Not as the Others had marked her, but as an old female marks a young one who may, someday, replace her. Not that Yellow would be ready to rule Neurela by the time Tetoma went into the light. But as one who ruled, Tetoma saw the characteristics in Yellow which would inevitably lead her into the halls of power at some point, unless the young kip took immediate steps to avoid it.
And given her promises, could she do that?