Arcturus

Arcturus squeezed the throttle sticks of the lander, willing it to go faster, his claws digging into the grips. It was a futile effort; the little tug engines could barely keep the craft in the air, let alone achieve any real speed, no matter how he urged them along. The mismatched lander engine threatened to shake itself to pieces, grinding ominously in its housing. If he kept their velocity down it cooperated, but when he pushed it, the rattling grew from merely bad to downright ominous. At best, his wounded ship could only limp along. He’d have given his shell to go faster, but it simply wasn’t possible. No matter what he did, the shadowed countryside crawled past underneath them at a planet’s pace, slow and intractable to his desperate desire.

Worse, the humans insisted on traveling only at night. Liliane guided them on a leapfrog course from one patch of isolated forest to another, and they hid there during the day. He’d argued for pushing on when they had the light and all three humans had shouted him down in instant agreement.

“Do you want to have every plane in Germany chasing us? If we’re spotted again, they’ll be on us like soldiers on a brothel,” Francois had growled at him.

He had only a vague idea what a brothel was, but he had to admit after the first day that Francois was right. Planes buzzed over their hiding spot all through the day, as though hunting them. So Arcturus paced and worried through the day, and flew through the night over endless fields, fenced in neat square patterns. The humans rested better than he did, but he’d noticed that one of them was always watching him when the other two slept.

A fissure had opened between them, and he wasn’t sure what had caused it. Liliane had grown stiff and formal, Mark cool, and Francois outright hostile. All three of them cast sidelong looks at him when they thought he didn’t see them. Even now, he knew that Liliane was studying him out of the corner of her eye from the copilot’s chair, ignoring the maps in her lap.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that they get there as quickly as possible. Per the maps, they’d left the last patch of forest between them and their destination behind. That meant tonight, they’d reach the base. He’d get in, find Reel and her ship, and get out. His heart beat faster in his chest at the sight of moonlight glinting off of water; the ocean. Peenemunde would be close.

Liliane reached over and tapped his arm to get his attention. “Set down in the forest there,” she said, pointing.

He squinted into the starlight, but couldn’t see any trees. “Why? We should be nearly to Peenemunde, if your maps and my team’s calculations are right.”

“We are,” Francois growled from behind him. Arcturus cocked his head to the side to regard the man out of one eye; he looked angry. “The forest abuts the base, based on what your crew told us. An ideal spot to land and plan.”

Arcturus frowned back at the man. He would have rather gone straight to where Reel had been last, and Arcturus didn’t like the man’s tone. He’d gotten better at reading those, over the last few days, and Francois’ hostility was plain. Still, it made sense to plan first, even if his first instinct was to rush straight for Reel. He turned for the forest.

Liliane cleared her throat, sounding uncomfortable. “We need to talk.”

Here it comes. The scales on his neck prickled. “What about?” he answered, with as much calm as he could muster. The dark forms of the trees swelled beneath them as he drew close, easing the ship in between them.

“When you last talked with your crewmember, you seemed panicked. As though some harm had come to her,” she said, the light of the console glittering on her eyes. “What happened?”

“I don’t know for sure.” Arcturus’ knuckles creaked on the throttle sticks as he eased them down, and branches snapped and cracked as they caught on the open hatch. “I know they ripped out her implant.” Or they had killed her, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that out loud.

“Right, you’d mentioned,” Mark broke in from his other side. “But you said something about them betraying her. What did you mean by that?” The shorter male was trying to feign casual interest, but the way he leaned over Liliane’s seat to look at Arcturus gave it the lie.

Arcturus hesitated; so that was it. Francois’s eyes glittered as they bored into him. They’d realized that he’d had a deal, an understanding with their enemies, and now they wanted to know why. For a moment, he’d forgotten that these people were busily killing each other by the tens of thousands…but he recalled readily enough how they’d fired on him when he’d called out in German. He scrambled, trying to come up with something that would mollify them…and came up empty.

“Reel…did not end up at Peenemunde entirely by accident,” he said with a heavy sigh.

“I knew it,” Francois hissed, his expression hardening. “You lied to us. You implied that she was acting on her own.”

Arcturus forced his spiked scales down with an effort, settling the ship onto the forest floor. “She was acting on her own, but we had been considering Peenemunde before she left. So half a lie, I suppose..” The trees loomed up around them, thin trunks stretching to hide them in the breaking dawn light.

Liliane blew out a long breath, nodding. “Okay. I need you to tell us the truth. If we’re going into that,” she gestured in the general direction of the base, though all they could see was the trees surrounding them, “We’re going to need you to be honest with us. Why was Reel at Peenemunde?”

“She really did steal the ship against orders,” Arcturus said, closing his eyes and rubbing at the crest of scales over his eyes. He could feel a headache gathering there, brought on by not enough sleep and too much stress. “But we were going to send someone here. Just not her.”

“And when they got here?” Mark prompted.

“We hoped to trade them for new implants,” he said wearily, opening his eyes and unstrapping from his seat. That seemed a forlorn hope now; High Race or not, the humans didn’t have anything approaching that kind of technology. He’d seen that for himself. His implant buzzed at the thought, and Arcturus thought he felt a note of…satisfaction from the device.

“What’s wrong with the ones you have?” Liliane prompted with a frown. “Or did you just need more?”

Arcturus laughed. He hadn’t intended for it to be a bitter sound, but he couldn’t make it anything else. “Nothing. Everything. You wouldn’t understand.” He made to rise; he had no interest in continuing this line of questioning.

He found Francois in front of him, blocking his path. “You lied to us to get our help,” the man growled, staring up into Arcturus’ face. “We helped you fix your ship, brought you here, and we offered to risk our lives to help save your crewmember.” He punctuated each point with a jab of his soft, pink finger into Arcturus’ chest. “We deserve to know.”

On the last word, he ground the tip of his absurd, pale claw into the meat of Arcturus’ breast. The human might as well have pressed the start button of a ship’s reactor. Fury spiked in Arcturus, hot as a star.

“You deserve to know?” Arcturus growled right back at him, taking a step forward and closing the distance between them. He overtopped Francois by almost half his height, and the motion sent the little alien stumbling backwards. The Frenchman’s eyes widened, as he realized that he’d bitten off more than he could chew, but he wasn’t about to back down.

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“Yes, deserve,” he snapped back, fighting to hold his ground. “What would be so special about Nazi-made implants? What could possibly make it worth allying with those monsters?”

“They wouldn’t hurt us for every stray thought!” Arcturus shouted, his anger making him careless. He’d barely allowed himself to think consciously about the end goal, and saying it out loud kicked the implant to life. It sent him a warning spike of pain, but he ignored it. “They wouldn’t leave us unconscious, wounded for asking a simple question!” The pain intensified, but he was too angry to pay it any heed. He pressed on, looming over the man and shouting in his face. “With proper implants, we might finally be free!”

He knew it was too far even as the words flew out of his mouth. The implant stabbed pain into him, racing like fire down his spine, and he dropped to his knees clutching at the back of his head with a gasp of pain.

Distantly, he heard the humans shouting, and then Mark and Francois clutching at his arms, trying to hold him up. “You see?” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Can you blame us?”

“Your lights have all gone red!” Liliane exclaimed in alarm. “Arcturus, the lights are all red! What do we do?”

“Nothing! Don’t touch it, they’ll go back in a minute.” The pain was already fading. He struggled back to his feet, leaning on the two men for support. He met Mark’s eyes and had to look away again instantly. They were full of pity, and he felt ashamed for his outburst. “That’s why,” he whispered.

“Why wear them at all?” Francois’ voice was filled with equal measures of horror and disgust. “Why would you subject yourself to something that does…whatever that was to you?”

“We don’t have a choice.” Arcturus let go of Francois and Mark and staggered towards the hatch. Air, he needed fresh air. “Without them we can’t fly ships, we can’t remember things, we can’t…we can’t do anything.” He slumped at the edge of the hatch, taking huge gulps of cool night air. The wind whistled through the trees around them, and on it he could taste the sharp smell of the branches he’d broken while landing.

Soft, hesitant footsteps approached him from behind. He couldn’t bring himself to look at them, to meet their eyes. “Without the implants, we’re nothing,” he whispered bitterly, and at last the buzzing of the implant stopped, pacified. “We’re just one step above dumb animals.” Silence fell after he said it, broken only by creatures in the night renewing their interrupted songs. A haunting creaking noise, rhythmically sounding from dozens of places all around them. He breathed deep, smelling salt and the thick vegetation around them.

Mark broke the silence. “That’s bullshit.”

The harsh tone of it shocked Arcturus out of his reverie, and he looked up at Mark, frowning in confusion. “What?” Excrement he understood–the humans had a dozen words for it in every language, for some reason–and a bull was a kind of animal. But the word made no sense in context.

“That’s bullshit,” Mark repeated, then, seeing the confusion on Arcturus’ face, said, “You know. Malarkey, baloney, hogwash, poppycock.”

“He means,” Liliane interrupted gently. “That it’s nonsense.”

“Yes, exactly that,” Mark said, flipping a hand in the air as though waving something away. “We’ve spent enough time with you, I think we’d know. I don’t care how fancy that machine in your head is, there’s no way that you’re not smart all on your own.”

Francois grunted his agreement. Arcturus shook his head, bemused, and Mark plowed on, mistaking the gesture for negation. “You can’t turn an animal into a person; you just can’t. Oh, I don’t doubt that thing does a lot of helpful stuff; translating and helping you remember things. But there’s no way a machine could do everything a person does. And that way it hurts you…that’s just plain wrong. We have to fix that.”

“But later,” Liliane said, interrupting him. “So the plan was to get the Nazi’s to build implants for you. What did you offer them in exchange?”

“They wanted a look at the other lander,” Arcturus said, glad for the change of topic. “That seemed like a pretty good deal at the time.”

“Well that’s not so bad!” Liliane said. “We figured they’d have the lander already; we’ve got one too, so that puts us on even footing.”

“Most of one, anyway,” Francois muttered, glancing darkly at the torn away hatch.

Mark laughed and clapped Arcturus on the shoulder. “That’s way better than what we feared! You weren’t allied with the Germans, you just wanted to trade with them. We were worried you were going to help them bomb us to ruins. So the plan hasn’t changed, then. Rescue your crewmember, retrieve the other lander, and escape.”

He made it sound like a foregone conclusion, and that eased some of the worry gnawing at Arcturus’ heart. “Thank you,” he said, though it felt insufficient. “Assuming, of course, that we can even find Reel.” He’d come all this way on the assumption that he could, but now that they were here…he knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“Hrm…Let’s go take a look at that picture your crew sent you.” Mark stood and led the way back into cockpit. Francois followed him, but Liliane lingered behind, offering Arcturus’ a hand up. It was a nice gesture, even if she was only half his size; he used the edge of the hatch to hold his weight, rather than yanking her down, but he took the hand all the same.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. They’re so like us, he thought to himself in amazement. It was the sort of tenderness he’d expect from his own crew. They were nothing like the Efreet, with their cold cruelty. Or was it just these few? He put the thought aside; it was a question for later.

Back in the cockpit, Arcturus pulled up the image his crew had sent him on the one working viewscreen. The survey satellites had good cameras, and Yerry had pointed every last one of them at the base the moment Reel landed. He pinched the image with two claws, expanding it out so that blossomed across the whole screen, large as life.

The base stretched across most of the small peninsula on which it resided. From above they could see thin, straight lines that marked the boundaries of the base, enclosing a long straight, flat area leading up to what Arcturus’ group had identified as the launch testing area. A few small, squat buildings radiated out from this, with more towards the south end of the peninsula. Most clustered at the edge, perhaps acting as living quarters. A pair of tall fences enclosed a second area to the south, removed from the main compound.

Mark whistled. “I’ll bet the generals would love this. Imagine having perfect maps for every battle. Or better still, real-time, exact information on troop movements. Where are we on this?”

Arcturus consulted the map, and the location data from his implant. Couldn’t do this without it, he thought with a pang, no matter what the humans say. “Here.” He circled a spot in the forest, far enough from the base that he doubted they would need to move deeper in. They had landed on the northeastern side of it, near the test pad.

Mark got up and walked over to the screen, tracing a line towards the fence. “I’ll bet we could fly straight in before they could stop us. These look like hangars south of the pad, that’s where they’ll keep the lander.”

“Under guard, no doubt,” Francois muttered, but his tone was more thoughtful than pessimistic. “And which hangar? There are several.”

Liliane turned to Arcturus. “Do you know where they’re keeping Reel?” she asked him, and he felt a surge of gratitude for the woman. She knew what really mattered.

“No,” he admitted. “If we’d been thinking ahead, we’d have asked Reel to describe more of the base to us, what the structures were for and such. I think she was staying in the lander, but I doubt they’d let her near it now.”

“So she’ll be kept as far away from it as possible.” Mark agreed, nodding.

“Do you have any guesses what this might be down here?” Arcturus tapped the fenced off area to the south. “That’s about as far from the hangars as she could be.”

Francois’ face darkened. “Prison camp,” he spat. “I would bet my life on it.”

“So she could be there.”

“Maybe,” Liliane frowned, shaking her head. “But she’s probably important enough to be kept separately from the other prisoners.”

They lapsed into silence, considering the problem. Arcturus’ eyes wandered over the buildings in the picture, his frustration mounting. Reel could be in any of them, and they’d never know it. By the black, they didn’t know for sure if she was even still here. What if the Germans had taken her somewhere else? Arcturus hadn’t thought about this planet as large until he’d had to fly across it, and even this small scrap of it seemed ineffably vast. Finding Reel was beginning to feel like trying to track down a single dust mote floating through the vacuum of space.

The other’s thoughts flew similar orbits, he could tell. Francois muttered a curse under his breath. “Without knowing more, this will be impossible. I wish we had someone on the inside.”

Mark cocked his head to one side, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Impossible, you say? Liliane, do you still have that German uniform we gave you?”