---Island---
---Msia’s perspective---
We’re in the back of the Swift Claw, something very dangerous tethered beneath us.
My fiancée is sat next to me on my right, the fiery ring I had in my possession for the years we spent apart on her left ringfinger.
I take her pawhand in mine and give it a squeeze, contentedly.
Her snout twitches in my direction and her ears twist slightly but her slitpupiled eyes remain looking forward.
My sister and Samus are across the craft, having a very involved, animated discussion about the mechanics of landing a punch on someone.
I don’t have much interest.
I was absolutely engrossed by the footage of the thing that looked like a cross between a liopleurodon, a dunkleosteus and a spermwhale that trapped her, Tuun and Miraala in that reef they visited the other day but I’m rather out of questions to ask about that.
Marine ecology is not my speciality, my expertise being much more focused on the terrestrial, but I still find it fascinating.
I suppose, coming from a planet where, just a few generations before my birth, there wasn’t so much as a single, solitary native amoeba and the terraforming relied heavily on ecologists and conservationists (like my parents and grandparents) did rather predestine me and Kas into our chosen field. Much as I like to think it was nothing but my free will that led to me choosing the degree subject that I did(!)
The island we’re heading to is around 50,000km2 and a little less than 100km off the West coast of the supercontinent.
This planet is currently in an interglacial period of an ice age, however, and, during the last glacial maximum, around 25,000 years ago, this island was joined to the mainland.
We have confirmed a population of khorhaszh to exist on the island and to only be about a quarter million years divergent from our captured mother-to-be, easily able to interbreed with her offspring.
We haven’t actually seen any of them yet (hypercarnivores are both sparse in their environments and tend to be very good at not being seen when they don’t wish to make a meal out of you!) but we’ve confirmed their presence through environmental genomics.
Tymancha was able to locate a rather fresh looking patch of dung, that matched those found around the cave den, and Thaïs was able to confirm (remotely) that it came from a khorhaszh.
Knowing just how formidable they are, we elected not to have him track it any further for us.
I won’t lie, going out without Victor has felt a little… precarious…
No insult to the skills of Samus and Tuun but it’s clear that they’re much less confident without him around.
A full decade of experience has made that man nearly unshakeable when it comes to matters pertaining to security in hazardous areas of deathworlds.
Almost any situation that comes up, he’s seen it or something like it before.
Both of the other two first started work in this field only at the same time I came aboard the Bright Plume on Gateway.
They’ve not had much experience working without him and they’re clearly a little nervous.
Still, nobody’s died yet and, with the ship repairs almost complete, it won’t matter much longer.
We can all move back aboard, Victor, Xon and Thran can get regen and then we can be back on our way to Citadel with the 11 Vrakhand and 60 Twigg chosen to make up their delegations.
With the number of Twigg who wanted to come, if we hadn’t set a limit, we would have ended up transporting half of their population offworld(!)
Fellow Cuddle Puddlers, they have no problem being assigned multiple to a room… In fact, they reacted with mild alarm to the notion of having to sleep separately!
‘What if one of us has a nightmare!?’ demanded Grriv (the largest and strongest looking Twigg I’ve yet seen) without the slightest hint of embarrassment at being an adult admitting to needing to be consoled after having a bad dream.
It’s quite sweet…
For the Vrakhand, a lot more stoic and reserved when it comes to expressing eagerness or excitement, it’s difficult to say how many would have wanted to come if the opportunity had been open to them.
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With a population so low, each individual gone represents more of a loss to their community and, with such a high (and nonnegotiable) demand for meat, we’re going to be straining our capacity to feed them with even so few.
Vegetarian meals might get a little bit more common for the rest of us while the labs are engaged in churning out the Vrakhands’ food supply.
I’m sure Krish will have an enormous amount of fun, stretching his culinary chops to prepare Graom-Wakhkortan meat in a way that will be appetising to both Twigg and Vrakhand palettes, though.
I see the tan skinned New Australian man as he walks past me and Fliss to look out of the window at the escape pod we’re transporting with us.
Since the injuries sustained in the khorhaszh’s capture, Steve’s been significantly more subdued than previously. The cocky grin that seemed to permanently adorn his face replaced with much more of a neutral expression.
I have to say, I admire his religious conviction against the notion that violence towards animals can ever be justified. Though, I imagine he’s thinking that, if anyone were going to be injured over it, he should have been among them.
Guilt still seems to weigh on him, even after Victor woke up and made it clear he bore no ill will.
“We’re approaching the larder’s location on Cursed Isle. Everyone prepare.” announces Twila, using the unofficial name for the landmass, derived from the translation of ‘khorhaszh’ as ‘cursed ones’.
My vote would be for the (to my ear) slightly less prejudicial sounding Khorhaszhhor but, given that in Vrakhandic, that just translates to ‘of the cursed ones’ I suppose it’s about the same.
The psychological effect of the language used to discuss animals cannot be underestimated!
One notable example I remember learning about in (I think) the first year of my degree is that of painted dogs which, into the 21st Century, were still being referred to as ‘African wild dogs’, giving the impression of them being some frightening beast that’s not safe to get within 500 paces of(!)
I hope, at some point, the people of this planet agree on a name for the creature that’s a little more flattering than ‘cursed ones’ or ‘monsters that aren’t people’… but that’s their call to make, not mine.
We set down more gently than we need to, given that the animal is in stasis right now.
The ramp lowers and everyone steps out.
The escape pod stands in the middle of a large hollow in a dense forest, lined with silk sacs of various sizes.
As far as we can work out, this territory isn’t claimed by any others of her species at the moment.
The geology of this island being quite different to that in the region around the embassy, we estimated the chances of finding an unoccupied cave to move her into to be negligible.
This hollow was about as good as we thought we would get as a substitute den, though it is a bit of a downgrade.
She will have time to relocate her larder before her children arrive if she can find somewhere else more to her standards.
“OK. Quick and clean! We dump it out, wake it up and we are fucking out of here!” instructs Samus, doing a valiant attempt to channel Victor’s authoritativeness.
This is the riskiest stage of the relocation operation.
Her venom (though technically less than lethal) is not adapted to be woken up from and, necessarily, all of the animals in her larder are less formidable than she, so it would have been far less of a problem if any of them had woken up on the way here.
The reviving serum is fast acting, meaning that we will have a minute before she wakes up and woe betide us if we aren’t gone by then(!)
Samus and Tuun unclip the tethers from the top of the pod, Samus having to climb the side to reach, Tuun just stretching up with her upper arms, and reattach them at the bottom.
The Swift Claw takes off behind us, going just to where the cables go taut again and then a little further to where the pod tips forward at a 45° angle.
“Everyone step back!” orders Samus, backing away from what is about to become an impact zone “Alright Twila, open it up and kill the stasis.”
The door swings open and 1.7 tonnes of expecting mother topple limply forward, hitting the ground with a sound like a tree falling!
“OK, Twila; come back down. Mage; in position with the serum. Tuun; ready to move the cables back with me. Everyone else; back aboard as soon as Twila lands.”
All those processes are completed within 30 seconds.
I lift up the animal’s (shockingly heavy) head by the earhorn to remove the poorly fitting mask strapped over her snout (meant for Vrakhand, not khorhaszh).
“Alright, we’re set. Go for it, Mage…” instructs Samus, still at my side, to her credit, considering the fact that she doesn’t strictly need to be and I’m about to wake up a creature that she claims is just about her worst nightmare(!)
I take the syringe in my hand and extend it to the creature’s throat, willing it steady.
The serum, the doctor’s explained, needed to be fast acting since any that might have given us more leeway run the risk of harming her offspring.
I steel myself, press the heavy-duty needle through the dense flesh and *thunk* the fluid into her.
Immediately, I withdraw my hand and hurry over to the door of the craft, parked in a space just large enough for it, South of the larder.
Samus, clearly unsatisfied with my speed, takes me by the scruff of the neck and pushes me forward.
She’s a few centimetres shorter than me and we’re about the same weight. Nevertheless, I can feel that she is much, much stronger.
We make it aboard followed by Samus saying “Close the door and take us up please, Twila.”
Twila, mercifully, doesn’t take the opportunity to play a prank on us in that moment (‘we seem to be having some technical difficulties’), just doing as her mother’s severely arachnophobic girlfriend demanded.
She takes us high enough up that the escape pod is lifted clear of the canopy and backs off while keeping line of sight on the stirring creature.
Samus chooses to sit with her back to the animal so as not to have to see her while awake and moving.
The mother, slowly and groggily, gets to her feet and looks around at her unfamiliar surroundings, clearly wildly confused.
Then, she notices the ship, hanging unnaturally in the air, watching her.
She throws her thick set, thumbless arms and pedipalps wide in a threat display and bellows a roar that I can hear, even at this distance, even through the hull, even over the hum of the engines.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, Ma’am.” I puff, apologetically.