---Troll---
With anxious looks on their faces, the few hundred soldiers who, moments ago, were fighting ferociously with eachother, begin filing into the fortress. My subordinates (with the exception of Tuun) are looking confused and those surrounding them seem to be explaining the situation.
Speaking of which “Heidi… what is a [troll]?”
“Local subsentient fauna. Primarily bipedal. Approximately 10 tonne males, 20 tonne females. Herbivorous. Usually placid but, obviously, if they decide to take offense to something… nothing short of an elephant gun will take them down! Every year on this planet there are half a dozen or so fatal troll attacks.” she answers, digging in a compartment that sits between her seat and the speeder’s handlebars.
She pulls out what I can identify as a slug thrower.
“Is that an [elephant gun], Heidi?” I query, tentatively.
In answer she only shakes her head.
“Is it something more powerful?!” I ask, incredulously.
She shakes her head again.
“Then…?”
“It’s something I hope will mean no one having to die today… I would offer to let you get off, Tcakqaal, but… given how much more vulnerable you’ll be on the ground and how difficult you’d find flying in this gravity, I think you’re better off staying put… despite the direction we’re going to be headed.”
“And… what direction is that?” I ask, already suspecting.
In answer, she only turns the bike towards the disturbed trees.
---later---
I catch a glimpse of something terrifyingly enormous…!
It’s as tall as a kwarat bird but, if the translation of its mass is accurate, between 20 and 40 times as massive!
It wades through the trees!
“Female. Fully grown.” says the woman, as much to herself as me.
She enters a turn, circling around the animal and allowing me to piece together a coherent picture of what it looks like below the canopy.
The patches of skin, that I can see, are a purplish-grey colour, it’s mostly covered in light grey fur, its weight is supported on two columnar legs with three toes, it has two arms ending in three digits (a thumb, on the opposite sides of its hands from those which Terrans have, opposing two fingers that look stubby but are probably each more than half as long as the woman whose back I currently hold is tall!), it has two ears which protrude greatly, between them more than doubling the width of its head, two eyes, mounted on the sides of its face rather than the front, and two tusks that frame a nose, jutting directly out above its top lip.
“Wish me luck… I’ve never done this before! Oh, and… let me do the talking!”
Before I can ask what that means, my pilot takes aim at the creature’s head and, with an explosive *pwaff*, discharges her slug thrower.
The creature roars and she immediately brings the speeder out of range of its long arms.
Heidi brings the bike to a stop, facing the creature, and waits for it to calm down from having been blasted in the head.
I look to the point on its head where she shot and see a device that definitely wasn’t there before.
“Hello there!” says my pilot with a kind tone that I would not be able to muster, under the circumstances.
The creature just stares up at her for a few moments before slowly (or seeming slow, from the perspective of its body being so large but, probably, actually quite fast) extending one of its long arms toward us.
Heidi neither increases our altitude nor takes any evasive manoeuvre of any kind, trusting instead to her initial calculation of the creature’s reach.
Those crushing manipulators get much closer than I would like!
Having established that we are beyond its reach, the creature says “Hurting!” rubbing the side of its head. It has a slow, mournful voice that fits the [gentle giant] archetype, to a [tee]!
“Yes… I’m very sorry about that… it was just to let us speak… I hope you can forgive me!”
“Forgiving…” says the creature, reluctantly.
Kindly, Heidi asks “Why are you going this way?”
“Needing!” answers the creature.
“It’s just… there are a lot of people this way…” says the woman.
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“Knowing! Needing! Helping!” insists the [troll].
“They don’t need help with anything…!”
“Not them helping! Needing helping!” says the creature, frustratedly.
“You need help?” says the Human, a little disbelievingly.
“Yes! Helping needing!” confirms the creature.
“What could we help you with?”
The creature, with an anguished tone to its translated voice, explains “Baby… stucking… hurting… not fitting helping!”
“Your baby is stuck and hurt, somewhere, and you’re too big to get it out?”
“Yeah!” says the animal in answer.
“How long has your child been stuck?”
Pointing to the east horizon, the creature answers “Sunsetting…”
“About 16 hours…!” mutters my pilot, before saying “…Can you show us where your baby is?” at full volume.
“Able showing… You able helping?” says the animal, suspiciously.
“Not on my own, no… but if you show us the way then I can tell those people, back there, and they can find me… it will be quicker that way? Can you trust me?”
A long moment of hesitation before the animal answers “Trusting…” and turns around.
An audible sigh of relief emanates from the woman as she takes out her holopad.
The call is picked up almost instantly by her wife who, frantically, answers “Heidi!? Are you alright?! What’s happening?!?!?!…”
“I’m fine, sweetheart… I’ve turned back the [troll] but… I’m going to need you to wrangle some strapping volunteers… and someone with xenoveterinary training…”
---later---
The [troll] is leading us, past the boundary of the forest, into the open highlands, that my pilot has explained, are its natural habitat.
Following behind us is a large transport capsule containing several dozen of the stronger Terrans from the [reenactment], still dressed as archaic warriors while holding various pieces of equipment that might be necessary to liberate a [>700kg], baby [troll].
When the AI, who coordinates the local capsule company, was contacted, to have the reason explained that a capsule was necessary and no specific destination coordinates could be provided, he apparently made the executive decision to donate the use of the transport at no charge!
It was unclear to me (having had the story secondhand) whether that was as a result of him having his heart moved by the plight of the baby [troll], him thinking this might be a good marketing opportunity, him being amused by several dozen burly biologicals, in the garb of ancient soldiers, following a [troll] all day, at a glacial [12kmph], or some combination of the three(!)
We arrive at a field of jagged boulders at the base of a cliff. The field, where the Terran fortification stands, is just about visible in the distance.
I hear the trapped infant long before I see it!
The pained, anguished, high pitched bleating makes it difficult to think!
The [troll] mother shows us to a narrow crevice in the rock at the bottom of which is a gargantuan baby, thoroughly wedged!
Heidi indicates the tethered transport capsule to come in to land.
Victor, Ms Hunter, Katrín, the enormous uplift from the other night’s play and the man who played Victor’s brother in the reenactment, earlier, are among those that disembark.
The Human hybrid, who I saw talking with Xon, Emiko and Ms Hunter, the other night, strides forth to be the first one on the ground to look into the chasm.
After what to me, looked like a glance, the reddish-brown haired, hybrid man begins barking instructions out to the rest present… he seems to have some experience in the logistics of moving heavy loads in awkward confines.
Heidi lands and I hop off the speeder, trying to stay out of the way as Terrans go hither and thither.
One goes into the hole to offer the baby food, water and soothing words that it won’t understand.
The rest begin laying out straps (used earlier to erect the [palisade]) under the direction of the hybrid, while the mother troll looms nervously over the entire scene.
It’s astonishing to watch how quickly they coordinate the solution to this challenge! You would never guess that all of these people hadn’t woken up today knowing that ‘baby [troll] liberation’ was the second item on their itinerary, with how readily they take to the task(!)
The straps are tossed down to the comforter, who goes about weaving them about the creature’s body… that is, until; “No use!” announces the man, still in his [kingly] garb “His legs are wedged too tightly! I can’t get my hands in!”
“Keep trying! If we can’t get a strap under his legs we’re going to really fucking hurt him pulling him out!” roars the one directing, his face bearing a severe expression above his beard.
I look at the creature’s legs and observe the issue… then I notice something…
I approach the hybrid and say “Excuse me, Sir…?”
“Yes? What?” he answers, not looking at me and with a brusque tone that tells me he thinks I’m about to waste his time.
“I believe I would be able to fit through that gap, between its shins… once I’m in the cavity beneath its legs, I might be able to help by passing the strap around underneath?”
He looks to me, eyes wide with incredulity, but before he can answer, Victor does.
“Cap, no! That creature’s gotta be the best part of a tonne of wild animal, stressed out to the extreme! He may be a baby but that just means he has even less control of himself than otherwise! If he decided to thrash while you’re down there, you’d be crushed! We’ll think of something else!!!”
“Well and good to say, Victor, but that creature has already been down there for well over half a local day! Even being a deathworlder it… he can’t survive an indefinite stressful confinement, while injured! If Mr…?” I gesture, promptingly, to the hybrid.
“Sindrason.”
“If Mr Sindrason, here, approves, then I’m afraid I shall have to overrule you on this matter.”
The two of us turn, expectantly, to hear his answer.
Staring directly down and ahead the man strokes his voluminous beard for a few moments… clearly deep in calculation.
Finally he answers “Do it.” before turning to a frowning Victor to instruct “Go down with her… hold the gap open… keep the legs from collapsing, as best you can.”
Victor nods, with some reluctance, and bends down to offer me his back.
The blue eyed man, in [kingly] dress, with a short beard, who attached all the previous straps, is in position at the baby’s head speaking soothingly to it, in a way which I wouldn’t have been able to imagine, watching him scream (presumable demands for surrender) in an ancient tongue, earlier!
It occurs to me, now, how easily the baby might (intentionally or unintentionally) crush the man against the crevasse wall…
With the [5m], or so, of distance that I had, observing it from the top, I didn’t fully process just what a large, powerful animal this infant is!
Well, Tcakqaal… you volunteered… you would bring shame to R’qal if you were to develop tremorous wings, now(!)
I hop off Victor’s back and he bends to put his hands between the troll’s shins and pull them apart, such that the gap is widened.
I slide through without much difficulty.
The baby’s skin is coarse and its hair bristly.
I find myself in a cavity. I can’t stand up straight but…
“You alright, Cap? How is it down there?” queries Victor, bringing a single emerald eye to the gap.
“It’s fine, Victor… not that much more cramped than the cockpit of a R’qali starfighter(!)”
He laughs at that.
“If you’ll pass me the straps, I’ll get them attached…”