Mark

Germany. Of course, it would be Germany, Mark thought to himself, kicking a pinecone down the slope.

He was supposed to be scouting, making a big loop of the mountainside to make sure that no one had discovered them. By some stroke of good fortune, the crash seemed to have gone unnoticed, at least so far. No one had shown up as they questioned the alien—Arcturus—about who he was, where he’d come from, and what he was doing here. All through the long night, he’d patiently answered their questions, well into the dawn. Mark stumbled through the pine needles, staring into the distance; he was still trying to digest everything that the big alien told them, and doing so on zero sleep.

Most of it he would have laughed off as the kind of foolishness you found in pulp magazines, but hearing it right from the horse’s…turtle’s…mouth made that a bit harder. A crew of these things was out there right now, in the stars somewhere overhead. Cracking apart great big rocks for the stuff inside and building things in space. All of it was completely unbelievable, or it would have been a day ago…if it weren’t for the alien captain and his crashed ship.

The ship…now that was a wonder to behold. Arcturus claimed to have come from the asteroid belt, in three days’ time. Francois had wanted to know how far that actually was.

“Right now, it’s about three times the distance between your star and this planet.” Arcturus had answered, tapping the ground with a clawed foot.

“That’s…not very helpful,” Mark had replied, frowning. What had he meant by “right now?”

Arcturus had considered that for a minute. “Hrm…Well, it’s about the same distance you’d cover if you circled your planet…” He’d paused, as though doing sums in his head. “Thirteen thousand times or so.”

The sheer scope of the distance, and the speeds involved, had made Mark’s head spin. That same lander, now laying toppled on its side somewhere above Mark on the mountain, had done all that in a matter of days. It was nothing short of magic. The math involved was somewhat beyond him, but he was pretty sure that such a machine could get you anywhere in the world and back in minutes.

And the Germans had one just like it. Of course they did. They had seemingly every other advantage in this stupid war, why not that too? He knew just how they would use it too; as a weapon. When they’d voiced this concern to Arcturus, he’d assured them that it would be impossible for anyone but one of his people to fly, but Mark didn’t trust that one little bit. They would find a way to work the thing. And that would be the end of war, for all intents and purposes. Based on what it had done to the trees it had crashed through, he wasn’t sure that anything England had could hurt it, assuming you could even get a shot off at a ship flying that high. They would bomb London into the ground from so far up that nothing could touch them.

His gut twisted as he trudged back up the pine needle-strewn slope to where Arcturus had crashed. They hadn’t slept all last night, and he was bone weary and heartsick at the thought of his friends, dead or languishing in a camp somewhere. MacDougal’s last words echoed in his head, over and over. “Get them out.” But he’d also said, “Prove that I wasn’t wrong to bring you.”

And who knows where they are now, he thought bitterly to himself as the lander came into sight. In the clear light of day, it was clear the ship had suffered in the crash. Some of the big off-white pods had cracked like eggs, and a ragged hole showed where another had ripped entirely away from the side of the ship. The stubby wing pointing up at the sky bent backwards at an angle not conducive to flight, and the trees had sheared half of the other one off in the crash. The flames that had engulfed it had charred the surface, dulling the shiny metal in places with thick burns. But looking past all that, it was still in pretty good shape, especially considering the violence of the crash. The trees had certainly come off worse in that confrontation; a hundred-year-old pine lay shattered at the other end of the clearing, leaking pitch. How had the ship survived that, anyway? The metal didn’t look very thick, but it had sheared through the trees, instead of wrapping itself around them like a tin can. It made no sense.

Liliane and Arcturus huddled together in the ship’s shadow, pouring over maps stretched over a flattish section of log. None of them had ever heard of the place where Arcturus claimed his crewmember had landed, “Peenemunde”, and Liliane couldn’t find it on the maps she’d brought. They made an odd pair, Liliane’s small frame dwarfed by the bulk of the alien, and the heavy white bandage wrapped over Arcturus’ brow made it even more surreal. You’d bandage a head wound on a man the same way, but seeing it on this hulking, scaled creature was disconcerting.

“I’m pretty sure the coastline you have drawn here is wrong,” Arcturus complained, tapping at the map with a thick claw. He’d swapped the suit he’d worn when they found him for what Mark would have called a boilersuit, but Arcturus insisted they were called coveralls. The muted gray outfit fastened up the front and was loose around his limbs, but hugged tight at the wrists and ankles, stopping short of his bare hands and feet. It didn’t cover his shell at all, wrapping over his shoulders instead. The alien eschewed shoes, leaving his clawed feet bare. Indeed, Mark couldn’t imagine a boot tougher than those scaled soles. “It looks nothing like this from orbit,” Arcturus complained, tapping at Germany’s northern coast with a blunt claw.

Liliane grimaced, pulling at her bun. “This is the only map I’ve got of north-eastern Germany, so we’re just going to have to make do. What’s near this place?”

“Give me a moment and I’ll check.” Arcturus’ face took on a distant, unfocused quality, and Mark shuddered. The metal plate embedded in the back of the alien’s skull glinted, a couple of small lights glowing green in it. He was talking to someone, back on his ship, through that thing. He’d explained that much about it, though he hadn’t spoken as freely of it as he had everything else. It was hard to read the mix of emotions on that reptilian face, but Mark thought he was protective of it, or embarrassed by it.

Either way, the thing unnerved Mark. The scales around it had a puckered, graying look to them that Mark was certain wasn’t healthy. Arcturus’ head bobbed in a nod, and he took up pencil from where it lay on the map. It was comically small in his claws, but he handled it well.

“Here,” Arcturus said, circling something. Mark wandered over to them, craning his neck to see. “It’s this peninsula.”

Mark looked down at the map in consternation. Arcturus had marked a tiny speck of land jutting out of the northeastern corner of Germany, all the way across the country from them. He glanced at the alien’s face to see if it was a bad joke, but Arcturus wasn’t smiling. That expression, among others, they seemed to have in common. Liliane stared grimly down at the map, and gave her bun another long tug. She let go of her hair, now half loosed from its coil, and traced a line from the spot Arcturus had marked to their camp.

“That…is a very long way,” she said, drawing the words out. She didn’t say that it was impossible, that they would be out of their minds to attempt it, but Mark could tell she was thinking it. “We’ll need to plan this very carefully.”

Arcturus nodded. “How long do you think the journey will take?”

Mark tried to imagine the four of them trying to sneak through Germany’s back roads, on dirt tracks past farms and bombed-out cities with a giant green alien riding in the back of the truck. He didn’t think they’d last more than a week. Why yes officers, we’re sightseeing. Just on our way to Peenemunde, don’t mind the turtle. Maybe they’d all end up in the same prison camp as Johnson and Wight.

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Liliane puffed out her cheeks and blew out a long breath. “Maybe a month, if we can do it at all.”

“Plus however long it takes us to find our friends.” Mark broke in. “Hopefully we’ll pick up some word of that train today…”

The other two fell silent, blue human and black alien eyes turning to regard him. Liliane looked troubled, and Arcturus…was that discomfort? He turned his huge head back to the maps, scratching at the scales of one cheek.

“Mark,” Liliane began gently. “We can’t go after the prisoners.”

Mark stared back at her, blinking in consternation. “What? What are you talking about? That was the whole point of this mission!”

“It was,” Liliane agreed, her mouth firming into a thin, hard line. “But plans have to change when you get new information.” She winced, probably remembering the disaster back in Paris, when she’d been too slow to change. “We can’t leave a thing like that,” she gestured to Arcturus’ ship, “in German hands. If they figure out how to fly it, this war is as good as over.”

“So what, you’re just going to up and abandon our friends?” Mark snarled, his fists clenched at his sides. Arcturus shot him a disapproving frown at the outburst, but Mark carried on, ignoring him. What say did some giant space turtle have in this anyway? And while Liliane’s words echoed his own earlier thoughts, that didn’t make them any easier to swallow. “All because some…person,” he stumbled a little over the word, but pressed on, “says so?”

Liliane met his glare levelly, her blue eyes cool as ice. “You’re a soldier Mark. You should know that you can’t always save everyone,” she said pointedly.

Rage flared in Mark. “There was nothing I could have done differently for MacDougal! You-”

She slapped her hand against the log with a gunshot crack, cutting him off. “I wasn’t talking about MacDougal,” she growled. “I was talking about my bad decision, to stay in Paris when we should have evacuated everyone sooner.

Mark flushed crimson, his torrent of anger drowned in embarrassment. “But…” he flailed for words. “The whole point of coming here was to save them.”

Even as he said it, he knew it was a weak and petulant argument. Liliane was right; even the chance of the Germans getting their hands on a lander was too great to risk. Johnson and Wight would have to wait. His head drooped.

Arcturus snapped his teeth together, a gesture that Mark took to indicate frustration. “Reel is hurt, and I need to get there as soon as possible. I understand your fear for your colleagues, but my first duty is to her.”

That was the first time Mark had heard him mention this crewmember’s name. He looked back up at Arcturus, grateful for the change in topic. “What’s the deal with her, anyway? You’re awfully concerned about a thief and a mutineer.”

Arcturus drew himself up to his full height, his neck stiff and the scales all along it spiked up. He’d admitted, with some reluctance, that the crewmember’s trip hadn’t been officially sanctioned. “She is no mutineer; there hasn’t been a mutineer in the entire history of the Old Bug.” He hesitated for a moment, as though some thought he didn’t care for had occurred to him, and his expression turned sour for an instant. “She’s just…young and stubborn. Not malignant.”

Mark cocked an eyebrow at him. There was something there, in the way he talked about her…a lover maybe? Did aliens have lovers? He glanced at Liliane to see if she’d caught that too, and saw her looking at Arcturus with a bemused quirk to her lips. Mark shook his head, speaking up. “Well, regardless, she’s going to need to hold on for at least a month. We can’t get there any quicker.”

Arcturus leaned forward over the map and started to trace possible paths with a blunt claw, muttering. “You said we were confined to small, less traveled roads. Would the larger ones be faster?”

“We’d never avoid detection,” Liliane sighed. “Hard enough on these back roads. If we tried anything larger than a country lane, we’d be caught for sure.”

Mark nodded his agreement. “We’d have a better chance flying there in that thing,” he said sarcastically, jerking a thumb at the downed lander.

Arcturus snorted at him, missing the joke entirely. “Not likely. We’re short three engines and half the power cells to run them ruptured in the crash.” He brought up a hand and started ticking off his claws. “The navigation system isn’t working, the environmental support array is broken, which doesn’t even matter since the hatch can’t be resealed. I’ve got a hundred alarms going off in there. No, not much chance of getting it back into orbit.”

Mark cocked his head to one side. “But most of that is a problem only if we’re going into space, right?” He’d gathered that much at least.

“Well, yes…” Arcturus frowned and rubbed the back of his head, as though he hadn’t really thought about it. “But it really shouldn’t be flown without being fully repaired. And without engines, it’s all moot anyway.” He trailed off and fell silent, the three of them looking at the lander together.

“If I’m honest, I like our chances better in your ship than I do trying to drive across Germany,” Mark offered, trying and failing to inject a little humor into his words. His shoulders slumped. Sorry Johnson, Wight. He thought miserably. You guys are going to have to hold on a while longer.

Arcturus looked at him, puzzled. “Is my translator working right? I just told you that it can’t fly.”

“Yes, but at least sitting here we’re less likely to get killed,” Mark said, forcing a laugh. “Though I will say, if we could get it flying, we’d have a better chance of finding our own friends.”

Liliane drummed her fingers on the log they’d laid the maps on, her brow furrowed. The log was half rotten, and she paused her drumming to pick at it as she stared hard at the lander, pulling loose decaying slivers with the tips of her fingers. “What’s the bare minimum you’d need to get it into the air?” she asked.

“I’m…not sure,” Arcturus said. “It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever considered trying. Let me think…” He reached up to rub at his head again, and Mark thought he saw…was that pain flitting across his expression? “Four working engines and power to run them, I guess. The controls are still good, but you wouldn’t be able to go very fast or very high…” He ground out the last few words, wincing.

“Engines?” Mark prompted. He shot a quick glance at Liliane. What was with that reaction? She’d noticed it too, and was watching Arcturus closely through narrowed eyes.

“Those round off-white things,” he said, his voice easing as he pointed at the closest one. It had cracked open, exposing a turbine of metal inside on a central axis. “They’re too damaged to function, and I don’t have the equipment I’d need to repair them.”

Mark couldn’t see how they would function in the first place; they didn’t look like any engine he’d ever seen, but he supposed that was the least of his problems. “Hey, if we manage to get you to this Peenemunde place and find your crewmate, get your other ship back, could we use it?”

“Of course.” Arcturus turned his head to look at Mark, his expression intense, meeting Mark’s brown eyes with his own beetle black ones. “I would owe you more than I could begin to repay. What did you have in mind?”

There was something unnerving in that gaze, a fierceness that Mark found hard to meet. It reminded him of MacDougal, in a way, though barring the wrinkles the two looked nothing alike. “One of these things is pretty fast when it’s not all busted up, right?” He jerked a thumb at the lander.”

“Very.”

“Well, it strikes me that we’d have a much better shot at finding our friends from the air.” Of course, who knew where they’d be by then. Dead, most likely. “If you’ll help us look for them after, we’ll help you get your crewmember back.” Liliane had already promised to do just that, but she nodded her head in agreement anyway.

“It’s a deal.” Arcturus nodded gravely, and Mark offered him his hand. The alien looked at it, puzzled for a moment, before he realized he was supposed to take it. The alien’s hand engulfed Mark’s, the scales sliding smoothly across his skin. Mark almost squeezed out of habit, and then thought better of it; thick muscles bunched just under the scales of the huge hand, warm to the touch. Weird; he’d figured Arcturus would be cold, like a lizard.

“Deal,” Mark echoed, releasing his grip. “Now we just need to find a way to sneak through a country of people who want to kill us, since flying is out.”

“Maybe not,” Liliane said slowly, staring at something over Mark’s shoulder. Arcturus and Mark both turned to look.

Francois struggled up the hill, dragging something behind him. He’d fashioned a sledge of saplings, bound together with rope from his pack, and he huffed and puffed as he pulled it up the slope, leaving great long ruts in the ground.

On top of it lay three off-white eggs, mounted on a set of metal struts. They looked, to Mark’s eye, like smaller versions of the engines on Arcturus’ ship. Even better, so far as Mark could tell, they seemed to be in perfect condition.