Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 52

Castaway Planet: Chapter 11

 

Hey, they’re into Chapter 11! (yeah, okay, cheap joke). Time for the castaways to take stock of their situation…

 

 

——

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

 

       “The seven wilderness survival principles,” Melody said, obviously looking at her omni’s display, “are positive mental attitude, first aid, shelter, fire, signaling, water, and food.”

“Not a bad list,” Sakura said, dusting off a nearby chunk of coral-rock to sit on, “but some of that won’t work. Signaling isn’t going to be something we do any time soon, if we can do it at all.” She didn’t like thinking about that, but it was true, and avoiding it wouldn’t get them anywhere.

“Still, let’s go through that list and talk about it,” said her father. “Positive mental attitude—that’s an excellent point for us as castaways. If we focus on what we’ve lost and on what terrible things could happen, we’ll be undermining ourselves every minute. We talked a little about that on our way here, but that little list reminds us about how important keeping that attitude is, even when things set us back—like now.”

Mom nodded. “It’s not always going to be easy, I know that, and I want any of you who start feeling it’s too much to come to me right away about it. Depression will rob any of us of our strength and our courage, and…” she looked back at the stretch of empty water where LS-5 had once been, “… it would be perfectly understandable for any of us to get depressed after this.”

“Okay, Mom. I think we all get that, right?” Caroline looked around to the others, who all nodded. Even Whips gave a bob up-and-down that he used for a nod.

“Okay, so next is first aid. All of us are okay right now, so we finished that part of the list.” She smiled and patted the broad circular silvery pad she and several of the others sat on. “We’ve got the emergency shelter right here and it responds right to signals, so we can get it set up in a little bit. So that’s covered, right?”

“For now,” her mother agreed. “We’ll have to find something more permanent eventually, but those shelters were meant for use while people built themselves real houses at the colony, so it’s actually exactly the purpose for which it was designed.

“For the other points on that list… I think we need to look at what we already have.”

“We’ve all got omnis, Mommy!” Hitomi said brightly. I don’t think she’s quite understood that this isn’t like an extended camping trip, Sakura thought. “That’s good, right?” Her expression shifted to a slight pout. “But mine’s not connecting to the Jewelbug app.”

“That’s because there’s no server in range, Hitomi,” Melody said; Sakura noticed that Melody did try to minimize her “sarcastic know-it-all” tone, which was good.

“But her point’s very good,” Whips said. “We do all have omnis, which means at least some computation and data storage and, for some of them like Dr… I mean, Laura’s and Akira’s, sensor capability.”

“Something even better,” Sakura said, finding that as they talked it out she was feeling more and more her old self. “Communications. Okay, there’s no satellites or relays here, but still, our omnis will have some comm range, right?”

“I would think so,” Akira said, “but I admit I’m not sure. Melody, is that a piece of trivia you know?”

Sakura grinned as she saw Melody straighten up even as Melody tried to hide how proud she was that her father was asking her for that kind of information. “Um, yes, Dad. Most omnis have about a kilometer or two range, depending on what gets in the way. Yours and Mom’s are probably pushing the two kilometer range—mine too because you got me the top model just before we left, I think I might get three kilometers— while Hitomi’s is probably below a kilometer. If there were satellites we could link to them even from much farther away, but there aren’t any.”

“Very good. What else do we have?”

Sakura dug into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a handle attached to a small cube of metal with clear crystals on either side. “I have my Shapetool!”

“I was hoping you did,” her mother smiled at her. “I have mine, too.”

Melody looked crestfallen. “Oh, darn. I left mine in our cabin on Outward Initiative.”

“I still have mine, too,” said her father. “Anyone else?”

No one else had one of the transformable multitools, but Sakura thought that having three of them was pretty good as a starter. Akira went on, “I’ve got my pocket laboratory, too. Laura –”

“I did not forget my little black bag,” her mother answered immediately, and Sakura relaxed a little bit more. It sure wasn’t as good as having a real medical facility, but it was a heck of a lot better than nothing.

“We’ve got some food,” Sakura said, looking at the small pile of material in the center of the flattened shelter. “Those are compressed reconstitutable… how much is that, anyway?”

“More than a week,” Hitomi said brightly. “I counted when we were piling them up. Three for each of us a day, except Whips who gets twelve a day. That’s thirty per day, and there were three hundred and fourteen in the load we’d brought with us, so that’s about ten and a half days, right?”

Sakura’s renewed optimism took a sudden dive towards depression and worry. A week and a half of food, on a planet they’d only just landed on?

She could see that both her mother and father had similar thoughts, but their expressions barely flickered. “That’s all right for now,” her mother said, pushing back a lock of her chestnut hair, “but it definitely makes finding food and water a priority.”

“Water shouldn’t be a terrible problem,” Caroline said. “We’re in a latitude where I’d expect fairly frequent rain showers. We just landed in one, obviously. Given that we see forests of some sort and there are storms like the one we landed in, I’d think there are probably streams and ponds and such a little farther inland, as well. I think we saw a fair number of those when we did our orbital survey. All we need are containers; I’m sure we can figure something out. I’ve seen things that look sort of like seashells, so if there’s any big shells for snail or crab type things we’ll be set for that, anyway.”

“And we’re forgetting one other big resource,” Sakura said. “Whips.”

“I’m not sure if I should be pleased or insulted to be noted as a ‘resource’ along with multiform tools and food packages,” her friend responded, with a shimmering pattern that showed his amusement.

“Be pleased,” Akira said. “Sakura’s very right. We’ve already heard something large approach us—and be scared off by you—and you are undoubtedly much bigger and stronger than any of us humans. And of course you can work underwater, which we cannot for any length of time. On a world like this,” he gestured to the surrounding ocean, “I think that makes you terribly valuable.”

Over the local link Sakura could sense Whips’ embarrassment. “Well… thank you, Mr. Kimei. I will do whatever I can to help, you know that.”

“We need to be organized about this,” Caroline said briskly. “Let’s lay out what we need to do and start figuring out how to do it. I’ve already made a list while we were talking and I think it’s in order of priorities.”

That was Caroline, always a list and an set of orders. But Sakura guessed she was right about doing this in an organized way.

“First, fresh water. That’s probably covered. We already have some, and I don’t think we’ll have trouble getting more as long as our floating continent doesn’t go too far out of these latitudes.” She frowned. “That’s so hard to imagine. Continental drift happens over millions and millions of years, not in human time. But drift and shifting of continents—and weather patterns—will happen in real-time here.”

“Let’s focus on the immediate term, Caroline,” her mother said.

“Right, Mother. Next pretty much has to be a defensible shelter. Like dad said, we know there’s some pretty big somethings on land already, not to mention,” she gave a visible shudder, “… whatever that thing was that we saw in the ocean.”

“We’re not defending ourselves against anything like that, though,” Sakura pointed out.

“Of course not,” Caroline said, slightly nettled. “The point is that while our portable shelter is reasonably tough, and we can protect it some by erecting it in this overhang here, but it probably can’t take any serious attack by something hostile, unless the lifeforms here are a lot weaker than I think they are.”

“All right,” said Whips. “So we have to figure out a way to build, or locate, a shelter that we can defend from something pretty big wanting in.”

“Right. And one pretty close to the water so that you can stay with us.” Caroline’s eyes defocused momentarily, looking at her invisible list. “Okay, so next is food. We really need to figure out how to get new food fast; a week and a half isn’t very long.”

Hitomi looked suddenly worried, but her father hugged her reassuring her. “I think the best course there is fishing, Whips. If anything here is edible, I expect it will be more likely to be animals, or at least that a larger proportion of the animals will be edible. Whips and I together should be able to get a sample of things living under and upon the shoreline. This coral island does seem to have many characteristics of regular islands so I would expect a shoreline ecology of some robustness.”

“I hope you’re right, Dad. Anyway, the next thing is tools and weapons. Right now we have no weapons.”

“Not quite,” her mother said, indicating the SurvivalShot 12mm. “And Whips is something of a weapon by himself.”

Caroline cracked a smile at that and Sakura grinned at Whips. “You’re right, Mom,” Caroline said. “The SurvivalShot uses evolved hydrogen to propel anything you can fit down the barrel, so it’s a great weapon. But we only have the one, and at most you can fit a dozen objects into the magazine. If there are hostile creatures, we’ll want more weapons than that. And we’ll need all sorts of tools-knives, levers, hammers, saws, all that kind of thing—which means stuff to build them from, and to make other things from.”

Sakura suddenly smacked herself in the head. “Duh! Caroline, we’ve got tons of stuff to make tools from.”

Melody’s bored expression vanished. “Oh, yeah! The LS-5!”

“Um…” their mother looked puzzled.

“I know the main shuttle sank, Mother,” Melody said quickly. “But what me and Saki mean is that when we crashed there were huge pieces of LS-5 ripped off. We go back along this trench in the ground and I bet we’ll find metal, composite, ceramics—all sorts of stuff we can use.”

Both her mother and father looked simultaneously chagrined that they hadn’t thought of it, and relieved. So was she. Even if they weren’t ideal materials, there’d be a bunch of stuff that would be better than sharp sticks.

“The next item,” Caroline said, moving on, “might be a problem in a while. Clothes.”

Sakura paused in mid-thought. She hadn’t thought about that.

“That is a challenge,” admitted Laura. “But probably not for a while. These outfits we’re all wearing are pretty tough. But you’re right, we will have to find some source of clothing—a way to make cloth and similar materials. Anything else on your list?”

“Just one,” Caroline said. “Signaling for rescue.”

Melody snorted. “With what, a fire? Spelling out our name on the beach?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Melody,” their mother said sternly, and Melody immediately fell silent; when Mom used that tone she was not joking around.

“Melody may have a point,” Whips said after a moment. “I mean, even if we had a radio and it was powerful enough—and it would have to be very powerful to make sure anyone noticed—it would take years for it to get to the nearest colony. If we are somehow halfway to our destination, I think the nearest colony is well over ten light-years away.”

“But Outward Initiative may not have been destroyed,” Caroline pointed out. “And if they do come back looking, we need to be ready to show them where to look.”

Sakura frowned. How could they even try to signal them? If they put all their omnis together they’d barely be noticeable even for someone not too far away looking for it. A comm satellite could link to them, but that was a specialized system no one was going to be putting up unless they were planning on using it.

“I agree that we should keep it in mind,” her father said. “But that will definitely be a long-term project; we’ll have to figure out how it might be possible to do this, with anything else we might find.”

“But we do have some clear priorities,” her mother said, smiling. “And it’s time to get on them.”

Sakura bounced to her feet. “Yes, Ma’am, Captain Mommy!”

 

 

 

 

Polychrome: Chapter 22

 

And now we see what Ugu’s reaction is to his forces’ first brush with the True Mortal…

 

——

 

 

 

Chapter 22.

     “And so I will be sending several Hands of Temblors, perhaps even of Infernos, to teach a lesson to –”

“SILENCE!” roared the King.

Mombi stared at Ugu in confusion. “Y… Your Majesty?”

He pointed his finger down at her and muttered two ancient words. The old witch, dressed in finery terribly unbecoming to her, suddenly hopped as though standing on red-hot coals. “Ow! Aaaaah, have mercy, Majesty, mercy on an old woman who does not understand!”

He withdrew his hand, and Mombi stopped, shivering with fear. “Then I will explain. Perhaps you are fortunate that the Queen is busy with her own work, for if she were of my current state of mind, I doubt not that you would be leaving here in a different form than that which you now wear.” He leaned slowly back in the Throne and glowered down at the Witch and the battered form of Morg. “We are currently at peace with the other Faerie realms. This has been long arranged. Apparently, you have interpreted the word peace in a fashion I find quite enlightening; it means that we simply don’t let anyone talk about the little invasions we’re carrying out, is that it?”

Mombi looked up, fear mingled with defiance. “We all have done this, what makes my actions so terrible, Majesty?”

Idiots. I am completely surrounded by idiots, except for my Queen who is planning to kill me and my General, who may be my best chance. Ugu stood up, causing all around the room to step back a pace. “Make no mistake, Mombi; I have been busy with affairs of policy deep enough that perhaps I have been remiss in watching the actions of my Viceroys. That is ended as of this moment. I assure you, the same message will be conveyed to all the others.

“We have kept here to our borders. We have assured them we mean them no harm so long as they do nothing against us. We all know, of course, that one day we will change that truth to another, but that change will happen when I say, when the Queen says, and not one second sooner! By these raids you give them reason to remain afraid, reason to be prepared, reason, in short, to ready themselves for war. To seek ever and ever for ways to destroy us, to harry us, to weaken us.”

Mombi nodded slowly. “I… I suppose. But there is much that they have which is not to be found in Oz, and –”

“—and we shall trade for it, fairly trade for it, do you understand? Until the time comes that my armies and my spells and the Queen’s are readied and all is decided, until that time we shall be the very model of good neighbors.” He bent lower. “And if you or your compatriots do not understand this,” he hissed, “you shall be once more stripped of your powers and sent to be washerwoman to the Nome King’s armies, Lady Coo-Eee-Oh shall be again a brainless swan,” his voice rose higher, to a thunder that echoed throughout the Throne Room, “I’ll fry that plotting Dictator of the Flatheads to ash along with his entire miserable court of sycophants, and I shall level such a curse of shrinking on Blinkara of Jinxland that not even all the microscopes of the mortal world could find her with a thousand years to search!”

By the end of the speech, Mombi was cowering on the floor along with the Temblor Morg, begging for mercy. He stared down in distaste. We chose people who had no reason to care for the way Oz was, but of course they had little reason to care for anything at all. If we learn nothing on how to rule carefully, we shall soon have nothing at all to rule. “Get up.”

The old witch scrambled to her feet, bowing all the while.

“Enough. Now, Morg. Tell me exactly what happened. Not the account Mombi gave. I want your words, your memories, exactly as it occurred.”

He listened carefully, nodding. Finally, when Morg was finished, he sat back down and gestured, muttering a few more ancient words; Morg looked down at himself in amazement, his injuries now entirely gone. “Well enough done. In this case – and I say, in this case only – it was well you were there. This information is of use to me. So I shall let the issue of your abuse of power drop. For now. Remember you well my words, Mombi. Now leave us.”

Once she had left, he looked back; from his concealed area behind the thrones, Cirrus emerged. “You heard, General?”

“Indeed. So he was landed at the border of the Nome King’s lands.”

“Yes.” Ugu frowned. “Certainly a wise choice if one seeks allies of any credibility. Yet King Kaliko has also been wise, and seeks no war with us; he balances his natural dislike and fear with caution and policy. Unless this Mortal has something quite extraordinary to offer, I doubt he will get much from the Nomes.”

Cirrus nodded. “But there are few other choices, as I can see them. Aside from the darker spirits which our Lady the Queen bound, the Nomes were the only faeries who maintained a great army at all.”

“Assume he can gain some trust. What then?”

The former officer of the Rainbow Kingdom wrinkled his brow, trying to take into account all of the factors he knew. “Well, certainly the Nomes have a vast army. None of their warriors individually can match ours, of course. Yet… they must find a way into Oz. The barrier you have arranged is proof above the ground and below, so the prior tactic of digging a tunnel is no longer an option.” His head came up. “There is one way…”

Ugu was startled. “There is? I would have staked my life that no way through that barrier exists for any Faerie or of Faerie born – and while a True Mortal may pass, he does not eliminate the barrier and his allies would remain behind.”

“All true, your Majesty,” Cirrus agreed. “Yet any of us may pass through unstopped, and allow others to return under certain circumstances.”

“Ahh…” Ugu said softly. “What if they have a traitor within our own ranks? Is that your meaning?”

“It is, Sire.”

Ugu thought on that possibility. The ordinary warriors of course could not do that trick. Equally obviously, any of the viceroys or their immediate entourage could. Yet he and Amanita had quite carefully picked those people for their inability to tolerate the earlier regime, and – quite deliberately – inability to work well with others except out of fear. There were of course drawbacks to this, but…

“I find myself drawn to a single rather inescapable conclusion on that subject, General,” he said finally. “None of our Viceroys or their people are at all likely to be traitors. Not that they love our royal persons so much, you understand,” he smiled grimly, “but they fear us greatly, and none outside of Oz would trust any of them. They would see a trap in any offer of assistance.”

“But in that case, Sire…”

“… in that case, General Cirrus, there would be only one person who could possibly let in an enemy army, and who might be trusted enough to do so. You.”

Cirrus looked thoughtful. “I do see your point, Majesty. Yet I brought up the point itself, which you had not thought of at all. Meaning no disrespect, sir.”

“I take none. Yet one with sufficient subtlety to conceal his presence for three centuries in an enemy stronghold might count on the subtle misdirection involved in revealing the weakness to make himself appear innocent.”

“Do you truly suspect me, Sire?”

Ugu looked at him wordlessly for some moments, considering. “In all honesty? No, not at all, Cirrus. Had you wished to betray us, it would have been better for you to do so before you came here, or do it immediately, rather than bringing to us the Prophecy and so much other information as you have given us. You have done marvels at preparing our forces.

“But because of this, I conclude that they are very unlikely to have any traitor of high standing here, and without that, they cannot breach the barrier directly.”

“And yet they shall, if the prophecy is to be believed at all.”

Ugu chuckled. “Oh, now, that is a different matter of policy, my friend. It is quite possible that they will enter without any need whatsoever of treacherous assistance. After all… if I believe they will be easier to defeat here, I can let them in, can I not?”

Cirrus nodded slowly. “Indeed you can, Sire.”

“What of Gilgad? Can you see anything he could gain from there?”

“Not really, Sire. The country does border on the Nonestic Ocean…” a thought seemed to occur to him, and for a few moments he was in thought, then shook his head.”… but no. Yes, the Sea Faeries have considerable forces of their own, but they will hardly be very effective on land, even if a single Mortal could manage to convince them to ally in force with him. Note that we are aware that Iris Mirabilis did seek to build a grand alliance early on, and failed, and – despite the minor depredations of Mombi and her ilk – our keeping our word to stay out of other countries’ business has convinced many of them that their best course of action is to stay out of ours.”

“Then send a few spies to watch the Nome King’s lands. He may try a different route, now that he has encountered some of our people.”

“It is already being attended to, Highness.”

“Excellent, Cirrus.” He nodded, giving leave for his General to go.

Everything seemed to be progressing well. He glanced in the direction of Amanita’s throne. And that, too, will be dealt with. Once he is here.

 

 

 

Castaway Planet: Chapter 10

 

They had just had an unexpected and utterly bizarre disaster…

 

 

——

 

 

Chapter 10

  

              Laura stared in uncomprehending shock. Bobbing ever so slightly, the vast wall of dark, wet stone still loomed up less than a kilometer distant. The piece that had fallen from it—a solid mass the size of a skyscraper—should have been towering over them even nearer. There was no possible way that the lagoon before them could have been two hundred meters deep, no, not even a tenth of that!

Yet that monstrous fragment had plunged down effortlessly, irresistably, neither slowing nor pausing, and taken their hopes with it into the impossible deep.

Even as she thought that, the seething water bubbled more, darkened, and that same fragment surged from the depths, shedding water and stripping itself of soil, a massive bulwark of varicolored stony outcroppings and dripping mud. It bobbed slowly, rising and falling in diminishing cycles. She hoped against hope that she might see something else, smaller but oh so very much more valuable, also bob to the surface… but there was nothing more coming from the mysterious depths.

Sakura was clinging to her with a deathgrip, and Whips’ tendrilled arms were only just beginning to relax. Slowly Laura forced herself to stand. “Are you all right, Sakura? Whips?”

Sakura managed a tiny nod of her head, eyes so wide that white showed all the way around them. She was otherwise silent, and did not release her grip.

Whips buzz-clicked something in his native language before catching himself. “I… I am all right, Dr. Kimei… Laura,” he said slowly, uncertainly.

Her omni buzzed. “Laura!” came Akira’s shaking voice. “Are you all okay?”

“We’re… fine, Akira. But…”

“We saw,” he said. “LS-5 is gone?”

“It… looks like it. I don’t know if there’s anything to salvage. Whips is the only one who might be able to even try.”

The big Bemmie—only an adolescent, but still outmassing her by at least two to three times—shuddered, a rippling motion accompanied by jangling, discordant patterns of light and color in his skin. “I’m … not sure I can.”

Laura knelt next to Whips. “Harratrer, honey, I know that must have scared the wits out of you. But I really need to know exactly what you saw, what it means, and that might mean you have to go down and really look.”

His back quivered under her touch, and she wondered for a moment… but the clenched tendrils relaxed slightly. Then he heaved a long, wet—sounding breath and shook himself something like a long, flat dog. “You’re right. No one else can do it, you don’t have the senses or the equipment to do it right. And I …” a quick flash of bright patterns that were like a chuckle, though a very nervous one, “… I really didn’t understand what I saw, and I have to see it again to really know.”

“If you’re afraid of that… thing we saw –”

“A little, but really, something that big isn’t going to bother coming after something like me unless I make myself an obvious nuisance. I think.”

Laura bit her lip. Maybe this was a stupid idea. “On second thought…”

“No, I’m doing this.” Whips turned and moved back towards the former lagoon. “You’d do it, if you were me.”

Laura couldn’t argue. “But you’re…”

“… Bemmius novus sapiens,” he said bitterly, and she understood now what drove him.

“No,” she she said, and put her hand on the base of one of his arms; Whips twitched, but didn’t move away. “I was going to say, you’re not an adult yet, you’re like one of my own children, and I wouldn’t force them to go.”

His discordant colors quieted, went to a calm blue-green. “Sorry… Sorry. I just… this is what we have to do, isn’t it? Do what we can? If I don’t… if I can’t… then maybe they’re right about me, about us.” He contracted, then raised himself up. “I can’t be afraid to go in the water. I’m still fast, I’m still smart, I can’t let this keep me out. And if I don’t go in now, it’s because I am afraid. And I am. I really, really am.” He shuddered again. “But I’m not going to let that stop me.”

With a swift, decisive movement, Whips sent himself sliding over the edge and into the water.

Sakura finally let go. “M… mom? What happened? That didn’t make any sense, the whole end of the … the land, it tipped up, and it’s over there,” her voice was rising higher and shaking, speaking faster, “like, floating, and the LS-5, it was hit and then it’s gone and we’re—”

“Sakura.” She spoke her daughter’s name firmly but quietly, taking her by the shoulders, looking her in the eye. “Sakura. Stop.”

The girl’s brilliant blue eyes locked on hers. With an obvious effort Sakura forced her mouth closed and stood there, shaking, then closed her eyes. Slowly they opened again, but they were less wide, more focused, more there, and Laura let herself relax a tiny bit. “Sorry, mom.”

“It’s okay, honey. We’re all near that panic. We just can’t let it catch us. And I have no idea what happened.”

There was a splash, and they saw Whips emerging from the water. “I’m back, Laura.”

The dull colors on his back echoed his tone of voice. “I still can’t believe what I’ve seen.”

There were sounds of running behind them, and she turned to see Akira, with Caroline, Melody and Hitomi close behind. They came here as fast as Hitomi could run, she guessed.

She took a moment to hug her other daughters and take a rib-straining one from her husband. Then she turned back to Whips, whose colors were now brighter but slowly rippling. “All right, Harratrer, what did you see?”

“A lot. But … I don’t know exactly what it all means.” He took an audible breath. “Once I get out past where you can see the shallow water, it just… drops away. Farther than I can ping. Even when I shout as loud as I can, there isn’t a return from the bottom.”

“But…” Melody started, then stopped.

“Go on, Melody,” Laura said.

“But… I thought your people could ping to the bottom of the Europan ocean.”

“Some of us can. I couldn’t manage that, but… there are other noises. I think the bottom’s a long, long way down below even that level.”

“We’re sitting on a cliff tens of kilometers high?” Caroline said in disbelief. “That’s impossible. Even underwater that should—”

“Not a cliff,” Whips said, cutting her off. “I don’t know what we’re standing on, but… once I get down maybe thirty meters or so, there’s nothing but water in all directions. Well, that’s not true, I detect some stuff in the direction that’s, well, inland, but there’s always water in that direction eventually.”

Laura and Caroline exchanged disbelieving glances. “Whips, are you saying that, well, there’s nothing supporting the land we’re standing on?”

“Nothing as far as I can tell.”

For a moment they all stared at each other, trying to come to terms with that ridiculous, impossible statement. Laura turned and looked back at the immense stretch of land behind them, vanishing into hills on the horizon, then over to the black wet towers of what had been the land across from them. “You looked at that piece that … well, is floating there?”

“Yes. It is floating. Nothing under it anywhere.”

“Coral,” Caroline said slowly. “The rock… I noticed it looked rather like coral. But I never thought…”

“Coral?” repeated Melody incredulously. “But shouldn’t that sink?”

Caroline bent over, searching, and found a chunk of rock that had been broken off by LS-5 in the crash. Laura watched as her oldest daughter flung the rock far out into the water.

The white-pink rock plunged into the sea. And a moment later, bobbed to the surface .

“There were cases of floating coral on Earth,” Caroline said, her voice starting to become more animated, excited, “and some pieces could drift for hundreds of kilometers, last for many months. Mom, Dad, this is amazing. If Whips is right, we’re floating on an ocean so deep that no landmass could rise out of it, not for more than an eyeblink on a geologic scale, because you can’t get that many kilometers of rock to stick up above the rest. There are plenty of water worlds out there, some of them with oceans over fifteen hundred kilometers deep, so deep that even geological forces probably can’t make themselves even felt on the surface. Since this one has life like ours, though, trace elements, some kind of active geology just has to be working here to get all of that into solution. But with the gravity here, by the time you get a hundred kilometers down it’ll be all solid, ice-six, maybe ice seven, but then there’s heat from below…”

She broke off. “Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, something must have evolved here to keep itself up on the surface, where it got the advantage of all the light energy from above, or maybe harvesting things like diatoms or whatever that did use the light energy… maybe also keeping it away from a lower-down ecosystem like the one on Europa, where everything revolves around the vents. And that turned into colonies, and then other things started taking advantage of the colonies to support them…” She looked back inland, eyes shining. “We’ll have to get samples, get a look at the actual geological history… only it’s not really geological, it’s … coral-ological? Alcyoneological?”

“That‘s why the guide app got confused,” Sakura said suddenly. “It was right. The geometry shifted. We assume that land doesn’t shift detectably over any reasonable timescale—a few centimeters per year, right, Caroline?” Caroline nodded. Sakura went on, sounding finally like her regular self. “But these things aren’t land, they’re floating. Floating islands—floating continents—and they’re moving with wind and currents, so they must’ve been drifting at centimeters per second, maybe even more, and so the guide app lost certainty on the targets because it was like trying to get a fix on … I dunno, a set of waves or something. The app and the sensors could see small changes that I couldn’t with my eyes.”

Laura was still trying to grap it. Floating islands… floating things hundreds, thousands of kilometers in extent? Her mind balked momentarily at the idea. The material in question would have to remain buoyant for a timescale of… how long? To build something that huge, get forests growing on it? How strong would it have to be, how flexible, to keep from shattering into pieces at the first storm and waves flexing it?

“That is fascinating, Caroline, Sakura,” Akira said after a moment. “And we will of course be studying this as time goes on. But I think the first order of business is survival, and I don’t think it matters, for that, whether we’re on regular land, an island of floating coral, or the back of a giant turtle.”

Laura couldn’t keep from smiling at the last, and the others burst out laughing; even Melody ended up grinning. “No, love, you’re right. We’ve lost LS-5, but we haven’t lost any of us, and that’s the important thing. This isn’t going to be easy,” she said, looking at her family steadily, reassuringly, “but we will survive.”

Akira took her hand, and the others—even Whips—gathered around for another hug. “Now, everyone—let’s go back to our camp and figure out what we need to do next.”

Inside, Laura was still shaking, still worried. But she could see her family—including, now, one juvenile Bemmie—straightening up, wiping away tears, taking that new breath and focusing on the moment, ready to face whatever Lincoln held for them, and that was all that mattered. If Akira and I stay strong, they’ll be strong. And that’s what we need right now.

 

 

 

 

Castaway Planet: Chapter 9

 

Now that they’re down and alive, time to do some exploring!

 

——

 

 

Chapter 9

 

 

       “Okay, Sakura, now cycle the lock again, exhausting to the outside.”

Whips wasn’t taking any chances. Before letting anyone step out of the shuttle, he wanted Dr. Kimei and her husband to check the air readings. So they’d put Laura Kimei’s omni, which had a lot of built-in sensors for medical purposes, into the starboard airlock, let it open to the outer air, and left it there for an hour to gather data. The omni hadn’t been able to communicate well through the lock, so they had to bring it back in to check the results. Everyone was accordingly in environment suits.

It had better be okay, Whips thought. Because they couldn’t stay in environment suits the whole time.

Laura reached into the lock as it opened and brought out her omni—a Scanwise Gold Five that looked like an Egyptian bracelet. “Well, it looks all right.” She tapped into the local net and checked the data.

A few minutes later he saw her pull off her helmet and knew the answer. “All clear, everyone. Oh, there’s some pollen and other such things in the air, but nothing immediately toxic.”

“Did it see anything through the open lock?”

“Not terribly much. Mostly a lovely blue sky and a few distant flying somethings.”

Dr. Kimei tied back her hair tightly. “All right, I’m going to take a look.”

No one argued. Whips knew that Laura Kimei was not only the tallest and strongest of the humans, but much more agile than he was out of the water. If he remembered right, she was also the daughter of a policeman and trained in some hand-to-hand weapons, overall making her the best choice for first person outside. In her hand she held the only ranged weapon that had been available outside the cargo storage: a SurvivalShot 12mm, designed for use on worlds with no ammunition manufacturing in place.

Not that she was going far. They saw her go to the lock, look out cautiously, then lean out farther, looking down, around, and up, then back down and out for several minutes.

She turned back to them, smiling broadly and holstering the pistol. “Well, Sakura, we can see exactly where we came down; there’s a big trench cut through the landscape pointing right back to the heart of this continent.

“Better news is that I can see a shallow ridge below us. I think the water there is no more than a meter deep, so we can wade to shore, though someone has to carry Hitomi.”

“Very good!” Akira said. “What’s our plan, then?”

“First we need to scout out some temporary headquarters. It has to be near to the water, for Whips’ comfort, but high enough that we’re not going to get caught by waves and tides. It also needs to be sheltered, so that wind and such won’t get in too much. Everyone take some of the rations with you. We’ll probably be camping outside the LS-5 until we get her out of this lagoon and lying flat instead of mostly on her tail.”

Akira nodded. “Whips, since you’re the strongest, if you don’t mind I’d like you to carry the winch?”

“And the carbon-composite cable and block-and-tackle, yes, sir.” The compact high-powered winch was a standard piece of equipment in the shuttles, available to install on the nose or the rear loading ramp or into the standardized sockets on the colony work vehicles. And, with enough mechanical advantage—like the block and tackle—it might just be strong enough to pull LS-5 out of its current inconvenient position and up onto the land. The carbon-composite cable, of course, was more than strong enough for the job. From his engineering work he knew that he could probably suspend three or four shuttles from that single cable.

“Good.” He smiled down at Whips. “I’m very glad you’re with us, Harratrer.”

“So am I,” he said quietly. Inside, he wondered if any of the rest of his family, his pod, had escaped. The thought that all of his family—little brother Pageturner with his eyes always in a book, so much like Melody that at times he’d wondered if they could somehow be related despite all the obvious biological impossibilities; his father Kryndomerr, called Numbers by everyone for his mathematical genius; Windharvest, his mother, whose real name was Rillitrill but who was proud of the nickname that told of her success in making more efficient and easily manufactured wind turbines; and his big brother Dragline, hunter and athlete—the thought that they all might be gone was enough to dim his light even inside, make an ache spread from within to the very tips of his hands.

Am I unstable? Is that my stress limit?

He forced himself not to think of it. That would just make it worse. And perhaps they weren’t gone. The rest of Outward Initiative might have survived. And here he also had a pod, with the twin sister of his heart Sakura (who he liked to think of as “Jumpsfirst” in the way of his people), and her family who had welcomed him without hesitation. He forced the light back into his skin, mind, and heart. Yes, it would get worse later. He could feel it. But he knew they would be very, very happy to know he was alive and with the Kimei family.

He waited for the others to go out; make sure everyone else was clear before trying to get down himself. Crawling to the lock, he stuck his forearms out and grabbed the climbing rungs, pulling himself forward enough to get a good look out.

For a moment he just stopped there, admiring the view.

Below, shadowed slightly by the sharply-inclined LS-5, the waters of the lagoon sparkled and shimmered in blue-green, a lighter line of pale green showing the shallower ridge that began right at the hull of the shuttle and ran to the shore. From this height he could see that the seafloor dropped sharply to either side of the ridge, down to at least five meters depth; there were hints of movement in those depths which told him there would be prey aplenty—if he could eat it.

The shore, which the Kimeis had just reached, was a three meter high cliff which had a big bite taken out of it, right where LS-5 had finished its crash. Along that line he could see the trench the armored shuttle had dug from its impact almost a kilometer distant. The brilliant blue sky contrasted with the fluffy white of clouds, and with the deep, pure green of the forested hills or even low mountains in the distance; he guessed that some of those rolling ridges reached several hundred meters in height. Trees—or something very like them—grew at no great distance from the shore, broad and feathery-looking crowns casting deep shadows beneath.

He looked down again. This might be a little tricky. The climbing rungs were of course there for climbing down the shuttle when it was set down properly, which was to say sitting on its belly, rather than standing almost vertically on its tail. The rungs now provided only a stabilizing handhold, with the winged shuttle’s side dropping away below. The humans had gone down a rope, but that was something he really didn’t want to try.

On the positive side, though, the tremendous damage on the outside of LS-5 had taken great scrapes, dings, and divots out of the hardened exterior. He was pretty sure he could use those—especially since, unlike the humans, he had three arms with a very wide reach. If he stretched them out, he could reach almost four meters from tip to tip, and that meant he could hook fingers into a couple dozen places at once.

Stretching that far stung, as well as ached. Despite everything Dr. Kimei had been able to do, his skin was drier by far than it should be, little sore cracks opening as he pulled on normally flexible hide. But they were down, and near an ocean. He could take this, and the aches from the de-orbit and crash. They were down and they were safe.

Feeling more confident with that thought, Whips carefully slid his lower first arm out as far as he could, locking fingers and extending his graspclaws to catch anything they could. His lower second arm followed. His top arm anchored itself to the doorframe and twined around the rope. Not without some trepidation, he slowly spun his body and let it slide over the edge.

“Whips,” Laura called to him, “Make sure you close the inner hatch, okay? I don’t expect any problems, but no reason to let the local wildlife have easy access.”

“Right, Dr. Kimei.” He stretched out part of one arm and touched the control, closing and sealing the inner door. Since he was using the doorframe as an armhold, he couldn’t close the outer door, but that shouldn’t be an issue anyway.

As he let the whole weight of his body finish the slide to the vertical, a couple of fingers lost their grip, but more than enough stayed firm. With exquisite caution he carefully released the grip of his top arm and moved it lower, gripping at other scars on the shuttle and the rope. Then, one by one, the fingers of his first arm let go, dropped, and found others.

He could, of course, have just dropped into the deeper water… but a quick splashdown like that would surround him with bubbles and be momentarily disorienting. That was a perfectly good entrance to use—if you were confident nothing was waiting to eat you. It wasn’t likely there was something waiting in those depths to ambush him, but it wasn’t at all impossible, and why take chances?

A few minutes later and he was down on the shallow ridge. He inhaled the water. So fresh! He’d forgotten what real, honest seawater of any world tasted and smelled like. Lincoln’s seas smelled exciting, a tingle of salts just slightly more concentrated than Europa’s, not quite as concentrated as Earth’s seas, but different, with other smells and vibrations and tastes that promised something dangerous yet thrilling. Sharp pain sparked momentarily at the places where his hide had started to crack, but the overall sensation on his skin was wonderful. He paused for a moment, just letting his skin soak in the water of a natural ocean.

There was definitely movement in the water not far away. He wanted to see what it was, but restrained his curiosity; he did, however, take advantage of the fact that a meter of water was more than enough for him to jet his way to the shore in one quick spurt of motion, running right up onto white-green sparkling sands next to Sakura.

The whole family clapped. “That was great, Whips!” Laura said appreciatively. “You’re quite an acrobat for someone who’s normally slow on land.”

“I’d be a lot slower climbing up, Dr. Kimei,” he said modestly, though he was very proud of how well he’d managed the descent.

“Most people are.”

They gazed up into the interior, shouldering their packs—even little Hitomi making sure the backpack her mother had given her was settled properly. “You know, Laura,” Akira said after a moment, “I think our best bet might be to just go up this trail to near its beginning. Everything’s been cleared out of this region, so there isn’t much chance for surprises, and even larger things were probably scared off by that crash, and it makes a perfect path to the ocean. We’ll haul LS-5 up the trench as soon as we get a few things settled, or at least see if we can get started.”

“Makes sense to me. Let’s take a look.”

So, my crash gives us a good shelter! Clever of me to arrange that! Sakura sent.

But if you hadn’t crashed, we could still be using LS-5 as our main shelter, he pointed out.

She sent an image of her sticking her tongue out at him. He smiled (though the smile was mostly a matter of particular light and color patterns rather than the human equivalent, which wasn’t something he could actually do) and was pleased by the fact that Sakura was cheering up and able to take a joke or two.

Glassy-winged somethings zipped quickly by the newcomers, but dodged aside before approaching too closely. They probably smelled very strange to anything native. That’d keep most things away, at least for a while.

He crawled along higher on the edge of the trench than the humans, to give himself the same vantage point. Once he thought he heard something larger approaching from the high side, and extended his top hand. Let’s try my favorite trick.

Bemmie articulation was very different than human. The linkages of the arms, in particular, could both stiffen selectively in various ways, or be relaxed to the point that the appendage was as flexible as a hose… or, in this case, as a whip. There was, of course, always some risk in this trick; even though the arms and fingers were quite tough, it was possible to dislocate, break, or—in rare instances—rip off the tips of fingers with the particular trick he was going to try.

But it was what he was famous for. With practiced, focused ease, he bobbed and pulled the arm, causing a ripple to travel all along the extended arm and finger tendrils. At the far end, this hastened as he yanked the arm back, and the fingers at the very tip suddenly snapped around, multiple whipcracks of sound echoing loudly across the trench. His fingertips tingled, but didn’t hurt. Ha! Got away with it again!

Whatever it was, the thing didn’t like that sound at all; he heard a sudden and speedy movement away.

“What was that?” The Kimeis had all spun to face him, and Laura had the pistol out.

“I don’t know, Dr. Kimei, but it sounded bigger than most of us, so I scared it off.”

“Darn near scared me off,” she said, with a half-smile. “I still can’t imagine how you do that without breaking your fingers.”

“I know other Bemmies who can do it. Not as good as me, though,” he admitted, proudly. “After all, that’s where I got my name.”

“Seems to already be coming in useful. The more we can chase things off and the less we have to confront them, the better we’ll be.” Laura looked up. “Oh, that’s promising.”

LS-5 had struck hard on first impact, gouging out a considerable trench with one of the tailfins in the underlying coral-like rock, a trench that actually had considerable overhang on one side. Caroline, not only the closest they had to a geologist but one who had previously gone caving, mountaineering, and freeclimbing, moved cautiously under the overhang and started checking it. After a few minutes, she nodded. “At least this section along here looks stable—no deep cracks or flaws I can see. We could use this as a windbreak and partial weather shield and let the shelter set itself up right here.”

“Looks good,” Laura said, and Whips, after examining it himself, agreed. “All right, everyone, dump the first load here. Whips, that means the winch and such too, even though I’m pretty sure we’ll be bringing it down near the water’s edge again.”

He complied gratefully; the little winch was still pretty heavy, and all the cable—neatly tied or not—was clumsy. He noticed small shapes scuttling away from their feet and gear, lashed out and caught one.

The thing had a shell shaped like the shields of knights that Sakura had showed him in one of her books, and pulled its limbs and head under the shell when he grabbed it. What he could see indicated eight limbs and the head showed glints of sharp-edged mandibles or something like it. Some of the ventswimmers were similar. “I think we need to make sure our stuff is protected soon. These things might be able to dig through the packaging.”

“Spread out the shelter,” Melody suggested, plopping down with exaggerated exhaustion on the ground. “We have to do that anyway to let it set itself up properly. We can put all our other stuff on top of it until we trigger the setup.”

“An excellent idea, Melody,” said Akira. “Hitomi, can you and Melody start doing that?”

“Why me?” asked Melody plaintively.

“Because the rest of us have other work to do, like running all the way back to the shuttle for more supplies, and figuring out how we’re going to move it,” her father said.

Whips felt a grin ripple across his back as he watched Melody glance down the long stretch of somewhat broken terrain back to the shuttle and then up the several meter high climb to the airlock. “Okay,” she sighed. “Come on, Hitomi.”

“Akira, hon, I want you and Caroline to stay with them. Sakura, Whips, and I will go get the rest of the stuff. I don’t want Hitomi left with just Mel, and with Caroline the two of you will be able to get some of the preparation work done.”

“All right.”

The three of them started back. “Sakura, have you any idea what happened to your guidance app?”

His friend shook her head. “Not really, mom. What I got after we landed and I queried the data made no sense. It claimed that the points I designated weren’t the same points, that they had different geometry than the original points, and the same thing happened when I told it to reacquire. It tried to follow them but couldn’t hold a lock. Something had to be wrong in its calibration or something.”

“Whips? Any thoughts?”

He dug through his knowledge of the assisting app they’d devised for the landing. “I don’t know, Dr. Kimei. We designed that app to be close to foolproof, but I suppose it’s possible we missed something about how perspective affected the apparent distances. I thought we had that all nailed down, but…”

Laura nodded. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters right now.” She stopped by the water’s edge and looked up, studying the shuttle as it stood, tipped to one side, in the water; it looked somehow slightly more tipped than it had been, but he couldn’t be sure . “Whips, I think we need to know what’s holding her up—and especially if there’s anything under her that might catch on her when we try to pull her off.”

That did make a lot of sense. He could see her looking at him uncertainly, and understood. “No problem, Dr. Kimei.”

“Oh, please, Whips, I know I’m your best friend’s mother, but please stop calling me ‘Doctor Kimei’. Call me Laura. We’re going to be stuck here for a long time no matter what, we don’t need that much formality.”

“Okay, Laura.” It sounded a little strange, but he could understand getting tired of formality. “It’s okay, Laura. None of you could do that a tenth as well as I can, and if there is anything dangerous down there, well, I’m still the one you want.” He flickered a smile. “Besides, I really want to go in and swim. I haven’t done that for like a year.”

“All right, then. Get in, do a quick check around the base of the shuttle, then come back and report.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

He slid easily into the water, retracting his arms for minimum friction. The exciting, tingling smell refreshed him and the cool water buoyed him up. All his senses were now on full alert, especially the skinsight that was by far the most powerful sense his people had in the water. Oh, you could get a lot from acoustics—soundsight—and from eyesight, from smell, and so on, but the electromagnetic skinsight—related to the lateral—line and ampullae of Lorenzini found on Earthly sea life—was the most useful of all underwater. In the air it was barely active, with a range usually of only a meter for minor things, but in water…

Now he could sense movement, living things moving throughout the lagoon. There seemed to be nothing very large, at least not moving, and no strong signals of something bigger than he was. But there was a dead zone—near the ship, not surprisingly.

Whips jetted slowly off the ridge and down to the deeper areas. As he got lower, he could see what appeared to be a very steep dropoff below the mangled jets; it seemed to be a trench, broadest just under the shuttle and narrowing to either side. He hesitated, eyeing the shuttle. There was the faintest grinding resonance, as though the shuttle were shifting against the rock, but it seemed stable enough.

In and out quick, then. If it started to fall, he was plenty fast enough to get out from under it as long as he paid attention. Just duck into that gap and get a look, then get out.

He pulled in plenty of water, then jetted forward and down, flipping his body so he streaked vertically into the crevice beneath the shuttle.

For a moment, he was simply too stunned, too disoriented, to make sense of everything. There were no returns from his quick soundpings, no safe aligning of walls and surface with depth once he passed a scant few meters, barely more than a few body lengths. Sounds and skinsense and sight scanned down and down and sideways and sideways and on and on and on, and found nothing except above…

And then there was something below, something rising, rising fast, and the soundpings returned slowly, yet faster, and he could not grasp, not even with all arms, what it was he was feeling because it made no sense…

Then it did make sense and horror struck him, overwhelmed him with utter, unreasoning panic. He spun about, jetting frantically, streaking upward, past the tail of LS-5, up, up, so fast that he flew across the dry sands, almost bowling over Laura and Sakura.

As he left the water, he shouted, trying to tell them, and scrambling with tail-anchors and arms to push himself farther up, farther. “No bottom, a void, so huge, nothing, something coming!”

Sakura stared, confused, but Laura seemed to understand his panic, if nothing else, and snatched up her daughter, ran, up the slope, passing him even as he grasped in desperation and pulled himself another meter forward.

         The ground quivered.

At the same time, three somethings erupted from the water, gray-blue-green, stretching up, pointing to the heavens like curved daggers as they rose, trailing foaming water into the air with them, towering up, far, far above LS-5. Even as they reached their apex, casting sharp-edged terrifying shadows across the three refugees, LS-5 tilted sideways, falling…

And the far side of the lagoon, too, slid sideways.

Whips froze alongside his friends, unable for a moment to grasp what he was seeing. The towering… claws? Tentacles? Fingers?… were subsiding into the water, but LS-5 was bobbing in the disturbed water, its airlock now flooding (but the inner door’s closed, that should be fine…), but what held their gaze in disbelief was the far side of the lagoon, the shore that had been just a hundred meters or so distant, rising now into the air, higher, revealing a craggy, dark, weed and growth-encrusted underside, rising higher as the farther end, the very tip of the land on which they stood sank, and as it dropped the portion near them continued to rise, fifty, sixty, a hundred, three hundred, almost five hundred meters towering into the sky, pouring a cascade of dirty water and squirming, chittering, shocked creatures down into the sea below. Then a part of it broke, and began to fall with exaggerated apparent slowness.

“RUN!” Laura screamed, and Whips was galvanized back into desperate motion, climbing up, up, have to get higher—

A two hundred meter mass of stone, shedding greenery as it plummeted, landed squarely on LS-5, piledriving it into the impossible depths below, sending a huge wave thundering outward and up, inundating the shore. Whips gripped a rock with his tail anchors and reached out, catching hold of Laura and Sakura with one arm even as the other two realized there was nowhere to run, then latched onto everything around him with the other two arms and held on.

The water rumbled up and over him, clawing at him madly, but somehow he kept his grip against that titanic force—barely—and then it began to recede, slowly running back. Blinking his eyes clear, he saw to his relief that the wave had not managed to reach the rest of the family, nearly a kilometer distant.

But the LS-5 was gone, gone as though she had never existed at all… and everything she had held was gone with her.

 

 

 

 

Polychrome: Chapter 21

Well, Our Hero had finally embarked on his real Adventure…

 

 

——

 

 

Chapter 21.

     I walked straight to the East, not looking back. Not daring to look back for a while. It had been almost impossible not to just blurt it all out, looking at her then, when I knew I might die before reaching Oz, that this might be the last time I saw her. But she didn’t need that burden, even if it was something she wanted to hear, which I really didn’t think she did. I was pretty sure she did like me as a friend, now; we’d worked together a lot and she’d gotten used to me. But that was just more reason I needed to avoid that subject. I really didn’t want to get the ‘I think of you as a friend!’ knife in the gut, and our recent conversation had shown that it wouldn’t matter much anyway; her father and politics would be choosing her dating regime as much as she would.

Finally I glanced back; the Rainbow, and Polychrome, were gone. I walked on, just a bit heavier of foot for a while until the job at hand focused my attention. I’d picked this location at the border of the Nome King’s domain very carefully; Eastward, where I was heading, lay the kingdom of Gilgad (which Baum had whimsically chosen to re-name to “Rinkitink”), and its similarly-named capital city. Iris could, of course, have dropped his Rainbow right into the city itself, even on top of the royal castle, or possibly right at my first destination. And in some ways, that would’ve been a good idea.

On the other hand, there was absolutely no reason to give any spies a blazing flare-lit tipoff, complete with rainbow colored arrows pointing to my destination, as to what I was doing first. And I could use a little bit of time walking through the countryside and getting accustomed to the larger world of Faerie outside of the Rainbow Fortress.

There was a faint path visible here, which appeared to head in the right general direction. I strode along easily, something which I found amusing as hell; me, the quintessential nerd, now making my way in (admittedly very light) armor along steep mountain pathways and not even really breathing hard. A year of heavy training sure makes a difference.

As I crested a hill, I saw the trail getting more clear below… and grasses and trees carpeting the slopes farther along. I was now past the Nome King’s domain, which as described was almost lifeless barren rock, and entering Gilgad. Scents of earth and forest reached me, startlingly appealing and nostalgic; I realized that I hadn’t smelled anything like them in the Rainbow Kingdom. I’d known, of course, that they’d had to do some considerable work to keep me fed (either summoning the food, creating it, or maybe even having to occasionally send some faeries on a food run), but until now it hadn’t really registered just how alien a world that was in some ways. Iris Mirabilis’ kingdom was entirely a place of sky and wind and rain and light. There was no true stone or steel or grass or any other ordinary living thing to be found there.

This was much more like my homeworld, and I felt suddenly steadier in a way. This was the sort of land I understood, even if there were a lot of strange things to be found. I moved under the canopy of a light forest, enjoying the sparkle of sunlight and the green-tinted light in the shadows.

Glancing around, I noted signs of habitation; hewn stumps of harvested trees, tracks of indeterminate nature in the leaves and soil. Good. I needed to find people, get a good route to follow to the port city and capital of Gilgad, and get things rolling.

As I rounded a corner, however, I realized things might not be quite that simple.

About a hundred yards ahead, the path opened up into a clearing, in which was a small house with some cultivated fields around it, a small stream flowing through, clearly inhabited by a woodsman and his family. I say “clearly” because I could see the man, his wife, and two children in front of the house. They were not having a good day, as evidenced by the fact that the man himself was being held dangling above the ground by the hand of a seven-foot tall tailed monstrosity while a similar beast held an axe poised to strike the cowering children.

I took a step sideways into the forest and moved forward as quietly as I could; it looked to me like this was an interrogation, and I wanted to get some idea of what was going on before I busted in. As I got closer, I could make out what was being said, beginning with the grinding-gravel tones of the first creature:

“…ast time, mortal rat, where is it?”

I could see the man more clearly now; as you’d expect from a man living in the woods without near neighbors, he was strong-looking, weathered, the sort who would probably face down a wolf without a second thought; the futility of his struggles against the indigo-skinned hand gripping his throat showed just how strong the monster was. Supporting his weight partially by gripping the thing’s wrist, he managed to choke out an answer. “If… I tell… you let my family go…”

“I might think about letting them go.” The deep chuckle from the other made me – and from his pale face, the poor woodsman – suspect that there wouldn’t be much sincerity in the thinking.

Time to get to work. “Oooh, good. Then I might think about letting you go, too.” I said, stepping out from the forest.

The things whirled, the one tossing away the woodsman like a rag doll, and snarled.

I froze for a moment, unable to move or answer. All my training had been against human or very humanlike people. These things were nothing of the sort. Indigo-gray skin, like some sort of shadowed basalt, covered their bodies. The eyes glittered yellow crystal in the sun above wide mouths that had the jagged-fang look of a rock crusher combined with a steam shovel, but the mobility of flesh in the cruel curve of their smiles as they saw me go white; they wore gray-white stone armor and carried thick bronze axes, while their hands and feet sported sharp black claws.

Instinctive fear shot in a chill through me, and for an instant I felt myself starting to take a step back. I’d seen thousands of monsters on TV and movie screens, but that’s nothing at all like seeing them in the flesh, any more than watching a dozen shark specials on television compares to the first time you meet one in the surf, all white teeth and gray sandpaper skin and black, dead eyes, as I had once as a child.

The leader laughed. “Oh, loud of mouth but not so brave when facing the opponent, are we? Too bad for you, worm. This is Oz business.”

Oz business? The part of my brain that never stops thinking grabbed that, shoved it forward, and dumped a bucketload of shame over me. You want to save Oz, hero, and you’re too scared to face a couple of Ugu’s bullies a thousand miles from his stronghold? Run back to your little house now, then, let Poly see just what a loser she’s picked.

I swallowed, but got my limbs back under control. “This isn’t Oz, monster. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back right now.”

The creature – which I now guessed was a Temblor, one of the twisted Earth spirits under Ugu and Amanita’s control – sneered. “From one human shaking in his boots with a sword too big for him to swing?”

The other moved forward slowly, swinging its axe lazily. “Should I kill it, Morg?”

Morg nodded. “Why not, Gron? Might finish convincing these others to talk. Make it messy.”

Gron grinned widely, showing interlocking teeth like razor-sharp crystals, and lunged forward.

I’d had enough time to get a grip and prepare. Gron moved fast, but Earth spirits weren’t anything like the faeries of the air that inhabited the Rainbow Kingdom. The massive Temblor was actually no faster than me, not even as quick as Iris Mirabilis, and I first leapt aside as he charged, letting Gron thunder past.

He recovered and spun to face me. “Duck and run all you like, little man, you will tire, and I will not. Better to die with courage. Draw your blade.”

Time to learn if what works in training works in the real world. I straightened, and gave my own sneer in return. “And get it dirty? Come on, then.”

Gron gave a snort of disbelief mixed with amusement. “So be it.” He raised the axe and charged.

Bracing myself for an agonizing impact, I gritted my teeth, stepped forward just inside of the axe, and swung my fist with every ounce of force I could muster.

Stone armor, rocky skin, and mineral bone broke, split, and shattered at the impact, that felt to me no more than a hard punch into a sandbag. Gron flew backwards at a terrible speed, struck a tree, broke it off like a twig, continued on through two more before smashing into the mountainside with a sound like doom.

I stared in awe and felt a hell-bent grin spreading across my face as I turned towards Morg, who was staring in utter disbelief. “Your turn.”

Morg brought up his axe, but I could see there was no smile on his face now. “Wh… whatever trick this is, you are still a fool! Do you not know that this will bring Mombi’s vengeance upon you? And if that does not suffice, then the power of the King and Queen itself?”

Now I moved forward, and he was the one starting to back away. “Mombi, eh? I thought she’d be one of the ones they’d choose as a viceroy. Of course I know that. If, of course, you get your chance to report home.”

He was backing away in earnest now. “No! You mortal idiot! Whatever magic you’re using, it cannot equal theirs! Don’t you realize this?” As I closed in, he swung. Not without a chill of fear that it would end with my hand being chopped off, I reached out to catch the blade.

It was like catching a styrofoam prop; the thing stopped with barely a jolt and I could see the blade crumple a little on impact. “Here’s a surprise for you, Morg.” I said, ripping the weapon out of his hand and breaking it, then catching him and holding him up by the throat, just the way he’d been holding the poor woodsman. I brought his face close to mine and whispered, “I’m not using any magic.”

Then I threw him as hard as I could. That might have been something of a mistake, because he flew over the nearer ridge; I never saw him hit the ground, and given how he was basically made of stone, he might well survive. But… I really didn’t want to kill them, now that I thought of it. At least some of them were Winkies and other natives of Oz, warped by enchantment. I couldn’t go around killing them randomly. I would’ve pulled my first punch, if I’d thought about it and been sure I had the power to spare.

Now I knew. My True Mortal abilities were even more formidable than I’d thought, at least against the footsoldiers.

But enough of that. I turned to the woodsman and his family, who were staring with eyes so wide I thought they might pop out of their sockets. “Are all of you all right?”

After a speechless moment, the father recovered. “Y… yes, sir. You… you have rescued us before they could truly harm any of my family.”

“What were they after?”

The woodsman grimaced, rubbing his throat. “Stoneseeds. Grow just at the border between the Nome King’s lands and Gilgad and a few other lands. Dark magic has many uses for them.”

“And you know where to find them? Or you gather them yourself?”

“Both, milord.” He straightened and bowed proudly. “Amrin Stoneseed am I, and such has been my family’s name for generations.”

“Then I’d guess there are not-dark uses for the stoneseeds?”

“Oh, many. A stoneseed picked at full ripeness may be grown into many things – stone walls, stone houses even – under the right conditions by a skilled wizard. Unlike those growing on this border, such a seed will produce only sterile stone, not stoneflowers and new seeds, so there is always a need for new stoneseed crops.”

That made sense in the usual Faerie context. And undoubtedly, since such things couldn’t grow except on the borders of the Nome King’s territories, it was worth it to Oz to send out collection agents. “Well, I’m glad I was able to help. I hope it will not cause you worse trouble later, though.”

Amrin looked glum. “They will try again sometime, I am sure.”

“Well,” I said with a grin, “if they’ll hold off for a bit, they just might never get a chance.”

He looked up sharply. “Do you mean…?”

“I mean that all is not lost. Can I ask your help?”

He looked at me, eyes showing a flicker of hope. “After what you have done, of course.”

“Tell me how I can reach Gilgad, the city.”

Amrin looked at his wife and children. “I will do more than that. I will take you there.”

 

 

 

 

Castaway Planet: Chapter 8

 

Well, since this book has more chapters, you can tell they made a “good landing” in the technical sense…

 

——

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

Despite the sledgehammer impacts, the cabin of LS-5 remained cheerfully, invariably lit as the world spun, and now, as the ship quivered to stillness, they stayed on, as though nothing had happened.

Laura could see that Sakura, at least, was unharmed; her seat had locked properly and the girl’s one arm was visible, white-knuckled with tension. Hitomi’s sobs of terror, though heartrending to hear, were paradoxically comforting; those were cries of a frightened little girl, not one badly injured.

The local net was readjusting, and Laura could access the biosignals. “Is everyone all right?”

“I seem uninjured, love,” answered Akira.

“I’m fine, Mom.” That was Caroline, the shakiness in her voice belying the casual words.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I screwed it up, I –”

“Sakura!” Her daughter’s name came out much more sharply than she intended, and Laura took a deep breath, let it out. She had to stay calm. “Sakura, honey, don’t apologize. Are you all right?”

“I… I think so.”

“Good.” She turned her seat to face the others. That felt very odd, because with the way LS-5 was sitting, she was now looking down, held in her seat by the restraints.

“You were right, Mom,” Melody said. “I did need those straps that tight.” The twelve-year-old’s face was white as a sheet, and tears were starting from her eyes, even though she was rigidly controlling her expression.

Laura chuckled a little at that, and Melody gave a tearful but sheepish smile. “There’s a reason for what we tell you. I’m glad you listened.” She looked over to the next seat. “Hitomi, come on, little girl, just tell Mommy if you’re all right.”

The sobs slowed, and Hitomi lowered Skyfang from her face; the hazel eyes were wide and frightened, but her head nodded, and a mumbled “Okay,” managed to make it through the winged wolf’s fur.

“I’m… a little battered, Dr. Kimei,” Whips volunteered, “But I think everything’s okay.”

“Good. Now everyone just stay still for a few minutes; I’ll check your vitals to make sure that we really are all okay.”

It was almost quiet inside the crashed shuttle except for the howling fury of the wind outside, which managed to penetrate faintly even through the soundproofing. LS-5 occasionally quivered under what Laura guessed were either waves or extremely strong gusts of wind. She carefully examined all of the readings and, finally, relaxed.

“All right, everyone. We’ve landed, and we’re all fine. Sakura—”

“I’m sorry!”

“Young lady,” Akira said mildly, “your mother told you not to apologize. I think what she—what we both—wanted to say is ‘well done’, actually.” Her husband turned so the others could see him. “You already knew there were no automatics. But when we were on final approach, we went into a small storm… and even so, Sakura kept us up and flying until the very end, all by herself. I think there are plenty of professional pilots who might have had trouble when the wind hit during the conversion.”

Melody grinned—a very shaky grin, but with much of her spirit and returning, and Laura felt herself relax again. “That old saying you told me, right, Sakura?”

Sakura sniffed, obviously trying not to cry, but there was a tiny chuckle there too. “Any landing you walk away from… is a good landing.”

“Exactly!” Whips said. “By the Beyond, Sakura, you kept us flying right to the end, and I think if that wind gust hadn’t hit at just the wrong time, you’d have brought us down perfect.”

Hitomi sat straighter and clapped. “Hurray for Saki!”

Laura laughed and suddenly they were all clapping. Sakura turned her chair around and they could see she was blushing, but smiling, tears finally drying. “Okay, I did awesome then. And we’re really all okay, Mom?”

“Really. Sitting like this is going to be a little uncomfortable, but that storm won’t last forever, and once it’s over I hope we can get out. What’s the condition of LS-5?”

“Checking.”

“I have to pee,” Hitomi said suddenly.

Laura shook her head. “All right, hold on.” A thought struck her. “Um… will the toilet work in this position?”

“I think so, Dr. Kimei,” Whips said after a moment. “It works in microgravity and when we were attached to Outward Initiative, and in the position we’re sitting… yes, if we keep it in the microgravity mode I think it will.”

“Good. Then since you’re farthest back and the biggest can you help –”

“Of course.”

As the big Bemmie assisted Hitomi to get out of her harness and move to the rear of the cabin, Sakura spoke up. “Well, the bad news is that we’re not flying LS-5 again, not any time soon anyway. We skidded along on most of her exterior and ruined most of the thrust nozzles, ripped off her wings, crushed her tail. Took off most of our exterior sensors, too, so right now I can’t get much from outside.

“But that’s most of the bad news. All that stuff getting ripped off and crunched… well, it took a lot of the crash energy, let our harnesses do their work, which is why we’re all in good shape. Internal systems all seem pretty good, and the starboard lock shows all green so we shouldn’t have any trouble getting out. Cargo looks like it all stayed secure.” She looked troubled. “Getting the cargo out, though.. we’ll have to move LS-5 until we can open the rear loading doors. Right now we’re sitting on them. And this thing weighs tons. Lots of tons, actually.”

“Worry about that later. Are we close enough to land to be able to get out?” Laura was particularly concerned about Hitomi, who still needed help swimming.

“I’m pretty sure we’re in that little lagoon that’s a few hundred meters short of the end of the continent; that was my target, I wanted to set us down near the edge. If we’d come down farther along we’d have been in trouble, but we’re not bobbing up and down, just twitching a little, so we’re sitting on something solid. And the recordings of our path tell me that we were running on solid ground right up to the end when we fell.”

“We can’t get any information from outside?”

Sakura shook her head. “The cameras all got wrecked in our cartwheeling across the ground. Radar’s out, too. There’s one working external microphone, but that’s just hearing a lot of wind and rain, and a little thunder once in a while.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Akira said. “I’m sure we will be able to get LS-5 out of the lagoon with a little work and some of the smaller equipment on board, and once we get into the cargo we should be much better off. I believe we have everything, really, that we could want for this emergency on board, right?”

As was often true, Melody answered. “We have a Dust-Storm Tech Nanofacturer VII 3D manufacturing system in the cargo, Dad; that was meant for the whole colony. With raw materials and power that’ll make anything we can spec out well enough. Whips can probably run it, and LS-5‘s reactor has enough power according to the datasheet.”

A full manufacturing system! Laura found herself grinning. “We’ll be able to make our own little colony easily, then.”

“Especially since we’ve got you and Dad’s stuff, too,” Sakura said, excitedly. “You’ve got the full medical equipment list, and Dad’s bio research stuff is perfect for this—I mean, really, he was supposed to be doing research on Tantalus, but we’ll have to do the same kind of research here, right?”

Akira laughed. “You’re exactly right, Sakura. Same kind of research—what’s safe, what isn’t, how all the species interact, that kind of thing.”

Laura noticed that Melody, oddly, seemed somewhat let down. “What is it, Mel?”

The black-haired little girl flushed. “Oh… Just being stupid. Never mind.”

She caught a flash of data from Melody’s omni and realized that the girl had been reviewing old books like Robinson Crusoe and some of the outdoor survival shows that had been popular a century or so back, and couldn’t quite keep from smiling. The laziest of her children was still hoping for a big adventure. Thank goodness she wouldn’t get it.

“So… we’re really going to be okay?” Hitomi said, as Whips lifted her back to her seat.

“Really,” Laura assured her. “Oh, it’ll be a rough few days or even weeks getting everything ready,” she saw Melody make a face, “but we’ll be just fine.” She smiled around at the others. “So let’s sit back, relax, and let this storm blow itself out.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castaway Planet: Chapter 7

 

And now the moment of truth: they have to land.

 

—–

 

 

Chapter 7

 

 

“Nebula Drive fully retracted. All smart dust now stowed away. Recovery of materials at 95%,” Sakura reported, partially to herself. The routine, reporting each detail of her tasks, helped calm her, slow the heart that threatened to accelerate out of control.

It’s all on me.

The thought was terrifying, more so because she knew she couldn’t show it. Melody and especially Hitomi could panic if they realized just how scared their older sister was.

But she was scared. Lincoln now loomed up before them, as beautiful as it had been at first with drifting streamers and coils of white cloud across the green ocean and brown-green of islands and continents. It was the salvation they needed, a real, livable planet with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and water and animals and plants…

… if fourteen-year-old Sakura Kimei could manage to land LS-5.

Stop worrying, Whips said. I can tell you’re ready to jet yourself into blackness with this, and it’s not doing you any good. We’ve chosen a landing spot, the apps we’ve got for your display will help guide you, and all you have to do is keep calm.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Whips is right, sweetheart,” Laura said to her quietly. “You told me yourself, didn’t you?”

“I know, Mom,” she said, and tried to keep her voice from trembling. “But still, I’m going to –”

“You’re going to do just fine,” her father said from the other side. “Just take some breaths and relax. Even choosing the points isn’t happening right now. You want to select them once you’re sure where we’re setting her down.”

“Yes, Dad.”

She turned back to the console, bringing up the physical controls. “In a real emergency situation,” her instructor Sergeant Campbell had said, “you do not rely on the projected interfaces. Understand this, boys and girls, projections can fail. Our wireless toys can go haywire, even today. Your local net can shut down. But the real console controls, the ones built into the shuttles, those won’t fail you unless the ship itself is bad, bad damaged. So you can practice all you want on your virtual toys, but in this class you will do everything on real, solid controls, do you understand?”

I understand, Sergeant. She remembered him, a craggy-faced man towering over her, seeming almost two meters high and as intimidating as a thunderhead—but really one of the kindest and most patient teachers she’d ever had. I hope I won’t screw this up after all your lessons. I… just wish I’d had about a hundred more lessons.

The controls of LS-5 responded exactly like the simulator’s. She gave very brief test actuations of all systems to make sure they responded as expected. “All controls active. Test burns all green. On course for de-orbit and landing on Lincoln.”

Lincoln was starting to take on more the aspect of a wall than a planet. She checked all the sensors that still worked, which wasn’t many. “Huh.”

“What is it?” asked Caroline.

“There’s some… strange, really long-wave stuff that the radar’s just able to pick up.”

Her mother’s head snapped up. “You’re not saying it’s… inhabited, are you?”

“I… don’t think so. It’s kinda like some signals you can get from gas giants like Jupiter, random noise at funny wavelengths, and there’s no sign on our telescopic images of lights or anything like cities.” It was disappointing, of course. Discovering a new intelligent alien species would have been awesome.

“Should we wait? See if we can figure out what it is?”

Caroline shook her head. “Mom, that’s an unbounded problem. Looking at the waves, Sakura’s right. It’s got the patterns of some type of natural phenomenon, and they’re hardly intense enough to be dangerous, or even interfere with our systems. We could spend months surveying this planet. But we don’t have months.”

Her mother frowned, then nodded. She knew the truth as well as any of them; Whips was starting to show signs of real skin dehydration, even with everything her mother could do to try and slow it. They couldn’t afford to wait long.

“Besides,” Whips pointed out, “we have done a basic survey on approach, as Lincoln rotated. We know there are several small continents and many smaller islands. We’ve got a basic map of their locations. As Sakura says, we’ve seen nothing to indicate that it’s inhabited—though I guess it could be, especially if the inhabitants are like my people, in the water and not making lights or fires. We also know that there don’t appear to be any huge mountain ranges—largest altitudes we can guess are maybe three hundred meters or so. We’ve got good candidates for landing locations. We know that the atmosphere’s close to Earth’s ratios of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, which means we all should be able to breathe there just fine.”

“Right,” Caroline agreed. “We also know that there’s the type of salts we expect in the ocean and my guess at the concentration puts it at an acceptable level. With our limited sensors, Mom, we can’t expect to get much more.” She said the last uncomfortably, her preference being for complete and detailed answers.

“All right,” Laura said. “Then I’ll shut up and let the pilot… pilot.” She smiled at Sakura, and Sakura felt a warm glow and a boost of confidence.

Lincoln’s white-and-green filled the viewport. Close enough. She looked at the projections on the screen. We’re in orbit.. if we get ready to de-orbit, another orbit and a half… that brings us here. She studied the general area they would have to land in and saw one of the sites they’d already discussed, one of her favorites. There, the end of that small continent. I can use the very tip of that, and these points on the nearby islands. The tip of the small continent ended with an almost circular lagoon, with long, gently inclined slopes preceding the lagoon; sheltered access to the sea, easy terrain for exploration, and part of a nice large landmass—fit all the criteria they were looking for. She designated the guidance points to her display app as they swept over the target area. I’ll refine it with radar scans just before we do the de-orbit.

“We’ve got almost two hours before re-entry,” she said, trying to sound calm. “Everyone use the bathroom or whatever before then.”

Nervous as she was, she used the bathroom three times. How could time seem to be dragging by, yet going so fast?

As she sat down for the third time, she saw her timer alert go to yellow. Sakura took a deep breath and raised her voice. “Everyone please make sure you’re strapped down right, it’s going to be a rough ride even if there’s no trouble. Mom—I mean, Captain, can you check for me?”

“Hitomi is secured. Melody, tighten your straps just a bit, honey.”

Melody’s muttered, “What a pain…” brought a quick smile to Sakura’s lips.

“Caroline?” asked her mother.

“Secured, Mom.”

“Harratrer?”

Whips voice was very matter-of-fact, showing how tense he really was. “All hold-downs fastened, all secure.”

“And I’ve already made sure I’m locked down,” said her father.

“All secure, Sakura. Don’t worry about us now.”

“Yes… Captain.”

Focus. Eyes on the instruments and controls. Find those points!

The target location came into view again, the last time before—hopefully—they landed. Get the angle… clouds starting to cover the one, but no problem, I can see through the clouds with radar anyway… radar painting them… designation…

The guide app considered, blinked green. It now understood the geometry. “Caroline? I’ve got the estimates. Can you make sure everything’s right?”

“Of course.” A pause. “I make our first de-orbit burn as being in eight minutes, fifty-two seconds from … mark.”

“Checked,” Melody said.

This is it. Sakura knew that re-entry and landings were the hardest part of spaceflight. “Eight minutes, twenty seconds to burn on my mark… mark,” she said. “It’ll be about one g for eighteen seconds. We’ll have lowered our orbit and me, Caroline, Whips, and Melody’s apps will track our reactions to the first fringes of atmosphere, verifying their models of the planet’s atmosphere and the performance of LS-5, before we do the final de-orbit burn which will last for a few more seconds and drop us low enough, to about eighty to ninety kilometers altitude, for the atmosphere to do the rest of the work. That’s when it’s going to really get rough, but we might feel a little something before then.”

“Okay, Sakura,” said her father.

She watched the countdown tensely. This much, at least, she could automate, putting a simple timer in line with the engine controls. Still, she poised her hands over the actual controls in case it didn’t work. A few minutes later, the main engines roared to life, pressing them into their seats with a full gravity of pressure. Sakura watched, ready to cut the burn off if it didn’t stop of its own accord, but it shut off exactly on time.

Maybe it was her imagination, but in the minutes that followed, she thought she felt phantom quivers, twitches in the big shuttle, as the very outermost fringes of the atmosphere began to touch on this intruder from a distant solar system.

This was one of the sticky parts. The problem with a de-orbit and re—entry was that there was a very narrow band of re-entry angles—slightly more than one degree, in this case—between the extremes of striking the atmosphere too sharply and burning up like a meteor, or literally bouncing off the atmosphere back into space. They had to hit this exactly right, because there were also limits to the g-loading they could take, and what the thermal protection system (TPS) on LS-5 could handle.

“Reconfigure for re-entry, Sakura. We want as blunt a profile as we can get,” Caroline reminded her.

Fortunately, LS-5 could shift between multiple design configurations; landing, it looked not terribly different from the original Space Shuttle, a boxy airframe with stubby wings, but it could transition from that to a sleeker hypersonic configuration, a lower-speed, wider-winged subsonic craft, and even reconfigure for vectored thrust as a VTOL aircraft. She made sure the shuttle was in the first configuration. “Locked into re-entry mode. TPS shows all green.”

After a lot of checking and re-checking, Caroline and Melody finally agreed with Sakura on the landing calculations, and put the guidance data into her guide app. “This is it, everyone. We’re landing!”

Hitomi cheered, Melody said something like “Finally!” and Whips sent her an image of thumbs-up, a gesture he was incapable of really making himself.

“This won’t be fun at the beginning,” she said, looking over the stats. “We’ve tried to figure the easiest re-entry we can manage with our configuration, but we’ll have some moments above 4.5g.”

Whips twitched. She couldn’t blame him; for Bemmies, 5g was just about the limit because they were originally water creatures, and they were so much larger than the average human. “How long?”

“Only a few seconds. Mom?”

She saw her mother check the restraints and Whips’ medical readings. “I think it should be all right, honey. Aside from his hydration issues, Whips is in good shape. Just try not to tense up against it too much, Whips; your internal shift-plates need to flex with the pressure, not try to fight it.”

“Okay, Dr. Kimei.”

Everyone else settled back into their seats. Sakura swallowed hard, then took the controls firmly in hand. She couldn’t let go now until they landed, really. The guide visualization counted down the seconds and projected a simulated view for her, with a generated guide path. It couldn’t control anything for her, but it could help her know when she was going wrong—and she would, inevitably. But with these apps, she’d probably know in time to fix the mistake.

“Full de-orbit burn in three, two, one… now!”

The second burn finished, and then there was no doubt that atmosphere was touching LS-5. A faint vibration and a rumble, and Sakura sealed all ports, making sure the TPS was in place and showing green. “Re-entry beginning. We’ll temporarily lose most sensors in the next few minutes, lasting until we’ve slowed down to a few Mach numbers.”

Breathe. Calm. Hold the controls firmly but not tightly, guide the ship. Don’t react quickly! Fast maneuvers will kill us.

The manual controls transmitted more strain, more buffeting vibration as the rumble from outside rose to a frightening crescendo and the hull sensors showed that LS-5 was careening through the atmosphere like a meteor, blazingly hot, but the vibration was less than she’d expected. Deceleration crushed her down, but she forced her hands to stay rock-steady, even though her heart was racheting itself into ever-faster beats. Yellow along the guide path and she restrained her panic, forced her hand to move the tiniest, most controlled bits. Green again, and they were holding to the original calculated glide pattern as though running down a set of tracks.

Hitomi gave a series of yelps as the deceleration peaked, forcing them into their harnesses with more than four times their own weight. Whips burbled something in the Bemmie native language and she wanted to reassure him, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from the guide display or hands from the controls.

         At least if it screws up here it’ll be fast…

But now the pressure began to ease, and she felt a smile starting as the temperature sensors showed they were past the peak.

As the temperature continued to fall, Sakura finally caused the forward shields to be retracted. They were around Mach 5 and dropping, heading towards their destination. The three points should be coming into view soon.

As the speed fell to that of normal atmospheric craft, Sakura triggered the mode shift from a re-entry configuration (minimal surface area, all-refractory surfaces with ablative covering) to that of a high-speed aircraft, larger wings, multiple control surfaces, more capable and responsive. “Activating atmospheric engines,” she said. Jet intakes opened and Sakura felt the vibrations as the nuclear reactor heated the incoming air and hurled it out the back through jet turbines. Great! All engines were operating just like they were supposed to.

LS-5 now tore through the sky at Mach speeds, fast but far, far slower than it had been. “Atmospheric re-entry complete—guys, we’re a plane now!”

A rippling, pained sigh from Whips. “Thank the Sky Above. That hurt.”

She shot a glance at her mother. “Is he –”

“Just some strains, Sakura. No injuries. Just focus on flying.”

Below her, green and brown with occasional splotches of brighter color streamed by. “We’re over the target continent. Expect to see our landing site any minute. Transitioning to subsonic flight.”

The third configuration deployed larger wings, gave her more control. She tested this new setup. It responded just like in the sims. Maybe she could do this after all.

A bank of clouds was moving in over the target region, but that shouldn’t be a major concern, Sakura thought. She had infrared and radar to penetrate the clouds, and it didn’t look like a big storm. The long-range radar located the tip of the continent, built up an outline picture of a gently sloping section of land coming down from the small mountains she was approaching, a section of land narrowing to a narrow tip with a nearly circular lagoon—like a gigantic arrowhead with a huge hole punched through the tip. Beyond the lagoon was a narrow, triangular section of the continent and then the sea. To either side were two smaller islands.

Her guide program recognized the three points she’d designated—the triangular tip and the other two islands—but, oddly, showed yellow for the correspondence. Sakura didn’t understand that. She could see clearly it was the same group she’d chosen. She re-designated, the display went back to green, and the guide path solidified.

There were no flat landing fields here. She’d have to go to VTOL configuration at the end, which made her a little nervous. That was the hardest mode to control and she maybe hadn’t practiced that one as much as she should. Still, she only needed to hold it together for a few seconds, enough to get them down.

         She was grateful—so very grateful—that everyone else was staying calm and quiet. They didn’t need to see her worry. And she couldn’t do this with Hitomi screaming or worrying in her ear.

Gingerly she tested the controls as she began the final approach. They were exceedingly responsive—almost too much so. She nearly spun LS-5 out before getting a feel for the ship’s performance. Fortunately, Hitomi took it as a fun stunt rather than thinking something was wrong.

Then the two island key points went yellow again. “What the..?”

“What is it, Sakura?” asked Caroline.

“Lost lock on two of the guide points! That makes no sense. It’s just a geometric relationship.” She swallowed, forcing the acidic bile that was trying to rise from her stomach back where it belonged. “No… no problem. We’re close now, I can tie the display to the radar and focus on where we’re going.” A glide path calculated to the nominal surface appeared, guiding her like a pathway. It was a lot better than nothing, telling her the right ratio and where she needed to think about changing modes to land.

Suddenly the ship bobbled, jolted; there was a rattle from the forward viewport. Storm… entering the fringes. That was sleet or something. Radar showed it shouldn’t be too bad, though it was larger than she’d thought; it would be raining for a while.

To visible light, it was dark gray outside, and at this altitude mostly fog and rain; hints of terrain, maybe trees or something, began to appear as they descended, but if she’d been relying on eyesight she would have panicked. But LS-5 wasn’t limited to visible light; in infrared and radar, the clouds and rain was practically gone. Wind might still push on the craft, try to distract her, but it couldn’t blind her, and that was the important thing.

LS-5 bucked slightly, but she was getting a real feel for the controls, and she saw that she was staying pretty close to the middle of the glide path. Radar showed they were approaching the target area, clearing the higher ground in their path, dropping—

Just about there. She could see the lagoon up ahead. Final mode change time, to VTOL. Changeover initiated…

Suddenly a gust of wind struck LS-5, sent the shuttle swaying sideways through the air, just as the mode conversion began. The jolt made her pull a little harder than she intended, but the shuttle’s dynamics had already changed. Desperately, Sakura shoved the stick back and sideways, trying to compensate, even as she heard the sergeant bellowing not fast, not fast, don’t overcompensate!

But it was too late now, too late by far. Still moving at well over one hundred kilometers per hour, LS-5 heeled over, slammed diagonally on its tail into the alien soil of Lincoln, performed a spectacular somersault (had anyone been outside to see it), smashed back down and skidded uncontrollably, the cabin inside now filled with horrified screams and curses and cries of pain. Careening onward through the storm, LS-5 carved a trail of destruction straight down to the shore of a storm-lashed lagoon, where it dropped over a sharp incline into the water, flipped, and came to rest, tail-first, with a thunderous crash.

Movement ceased, and the storm roared its triumph.

 

 

 

Polychrome: Chapter 20

 

As the Heroes have started their move, so must the Villains…

 

——

 

 

Chapter 20.

     Ugu the Unbowed stood on the balcony overlooking the petrified Emerald City; halfway to the horizon the pure dead gray ended, in a line as sharply drawn as if by a knife, and the green of the surrounding lands began. “And so it begins.”

“Sire?” Cirrus Dawnglory – or, at least, the being who now wore his name and face – said, clearly unsure of what his King meant.

“Ah, you are here. Excellent. Walk with me, Cirrus.” Ugu turned from the balcony and began a slow walk into the depths of the Gray Castle. “Our spies – the finest and most subtle of the transformed spirits of Air which the Queen could craft – have reported back, and today – almost precisely one year after his arrival – the mortal has left the Rainbow Kingdom and landed somewhere in Faerie.”

Cirrus drew a deep breath. “I see. So the forces are now moving and the war cannot be far away.”

Ugu nodded. “Indeed, and this is why I have called for you. Cirrus, you – and you alone – are truly suited to prepare our defenses against the forces of the Rainbow Kingdom and – potentially – the other kingdoms of Faerie. We must discuss this now, at some length, as we have no way of knowing exactly when the assault will come, or in what form, and you may have extensive preparations to make.”

Cirrus’ head, crowned with hair as fine and white as his namesake, nodded sharply. “I understand, Sire. I have many thoughts on this.” They passed from the South Wing to the West, walking now through the area of the Castle reserved for Ugu’s use.

Ugu smiled thinly. “I am sure you do – and you will write them all down later.” Cirrus glanced at him, puzzled.

“We have far more important matters to discuss. Matters involving Her Majesty.”

Cirrus went several shades paler. “M… my King, I…”

“You wonder that even I would speak of her? Remember, Cirrus, it was I who helped her regain her form. I whose recipes and apparatus removed first my form, and then gave to her the shape she now wears. I, Ugu the Unbowed, am a master of many magics indeed. I studied the lore of Glinda, and the Wizard, and many others, those in my line and those beyond, sorcerers, witches, warlocks, faerie, alchemists, even the secrets of the Yookoohoo herself.

“She has spies –” Cirrus burst out in warning before he could catch himself.

“Do you think I do not know this? She can transform nearly anything or anyone as she will, and place her own will upon many such things. Yet here, in my portion of the Castle, she is still unaware that I have complete control. Her spies still see us talking, and report to her that we are discussing strategies and tactics. Which I will, at the end, command you to prepare a detailed report on, including annotations indicating what useful additions I may have suggested.”

Cirrus stared at him, both hopeful and apprehensive. “She cannot…?”

“She hears precisely what I wish her to hear, sees only what I wish her to see. Only within this part of the castle, true – I cannot safely extend my powers outside of that area without her potentially discovering it. Now,” he continued, pausing and looking down coldly at the young man, “we must talk.

“You see, I am quite aware of the Queen’s nature. She has… given you much incentive to focus your loyalty, has she not?”

Abruptly the lightly tanned face flamed red, then went pure white and Cirrus stared up, immobile with fear.

“I see.” Ugu chuckled. “Draw breath and fear no more. I am hardly unaware of those temptations, General Dawnglory. And even less am I held by them. You, of course, must follow whom you choose. But here you may speak freely, and so may I. And I say to you that she is a viper, a serpent of great beauty and skill and yet deadly to the touch, one who in the end will destroy all she encounters until she is finally eradicated by one who understands her for what she is.”

Cirrus’ face was slowly regaining its color as he realized that the King had not brought him here to suffer a painful and permanent accident, and his expression shifted to puzzlement. “But… Sire, if you know of the… favor shown to me, and her promises… are you not –”

“—taking considerable risk in revealing these things to you?” Ugu nodded. “Oh, certainly. And yet, I think, not so much risk as others might believe, for you – though not born a warrior of the Rainbow Kingdom – have become such a warrior, and one of such skill and courage that for a hundred years you were the right hand man of the General of Hosts. Such a man is the sort to see where his true interests lie, no matter what silken promises may be made by others.”

Cirrus seemed thoughtful, trying to decide how to reply. As he opened his mouth, a tremor ran through the castle, and Ugu held up his hand sharply. Another tremor. Another, and it was clear that these were footsteps, the massive tread of something so immense that even the tremendous stone edifice of the Castle had to respond to its movement. Both stood frozen as the titanic figure drew closer and closer. Suddenly, for a moment, the nearby tall windows were blacked out, the entirety of the third floor thrown momentarily into shadow by the hulking armored form of something so huge that even here, forty-five feet in the air, the head was still too far up to be visible through the windows.

Ugu only lowered his hand once the footsteps had faded away. “The Yoop has sharp ears, and is entirely her creature – one I cannot influence.”

Cirrus shuddered. Ugu could not entirely blame him; what Amanita Verdant (neé Yoop) had done to her erstwhile husband was a thing of horror, transforming an ordinary giant into a monstrous and twisted juggernaut of destruction which lived only to serve her will.

On the other hand, I have heard enough from her in the dark of night to know how little sympathy the Yoop deserves from anyone, for it was he who made her what she is, in truth. A part of him was, honestly, somewhat sorry for Amanita; the torment she had suffered at Yoop’s hands – and other parts – indicated that the Yookoohoo’s vengeance had not only been richly deserved but had, perhaps, merely brought to the surface the monster which had always been there.

Still, it was also another proof of her own vicious and heartless nature.

“As I said, Cirrus; I believe you understand your position well. I know what sort of a creature the Queen is. I was allied to her from convenience, and she to me, and both of us know that sooner or later one will betray the other. We both make preparations.

“But she believes that this is in the end a war of magicians, of sorceries, and that her powers will exceed mine. She may be right in the latter; but I believe this is also a game of alliances, of powers within the people. I made many mistakes in my first attempt to conquer Oz, and I will not repeat them. I had no allies, nor did I attempt to gain any, believing myself sufficient unto all things. I paid for that. I paid dearly for that.” He restrained the snarl that always came to him when he remembered his centuries as a nearly-helpless Dove. “I believe that having a loyal General commanding thousands of troops is a very powerful weapon. I believe, in fact, that a General who will have to examine all of his resources and describe to me their deployment – and how they might serve in small tactical areas as well as large, strategic ones – may be the most powerful weapon I could ask for. More than sufficient, perhaps, to balance out whatever small advantage in power the Queen may possess.”

The widened eyes showed that Cirrus understood exactly what he was saying. “I am no fool, Cirrus Dawnglory. Unlike her, I have learned. I will reward loyalty well – loyalty and honest effort, Cirrus, not merely success. I understand – none better – that failure is a possible consequence of trying. If you give me your best effort, I will not punish you for failure. You will not find the Queen so tolerant.”

“No, Sire… I agree with you.” Cirrus said finally. He had, after all, seen much of Amanita’s temper. “But when –”

“We need not speak of that now. You need neither write nor say anything of that matter until I say otherwise.” He smiled with a sharp and cold expression in his eyes. “But think much upon it, and how best it can be accomplished when the time comes – perhaps just after the True Mortal has been captured and the final sealing ritual performed. I need her for that – but afterwards, she would be no longer necessary.”

He sighed. “And to tell the truth, Cirrus, she is far too dangerous to live much longer. You have seen her … volatility. As she tampers more and more with the darkest forces… I am afraid she will only become worse. She will be a danger, not just to me, but to our entire realm.” Ugu looked straight into Cirrus’ eyes. “What say you then, Cirrus Dawnglory? Are you with your King?”

For answer, Cirrus dropped to one knee. He drew his sword and held it up, presenting it to the King. “I swear to you, my King. My loyalty and my strength and my will are yours to command.”

Ugu smiled and took the sword, reversed it, and placed it back in Cirrus Dawnglory’s hands. “It is well, Cirrus. I accept your pledge with gladness. Rise and let us continue our walk.”

They walked for a moment together, the tension in Cirrus clearly draining somewhat away… to be replaced by the tension of new realization. “Yes, that will be a problem, my friend. You must continue to play your part with her.” He gave a sudden laugh. “Ahh, perhaps I will show some jealousy over this favor of hers, giving her both the belief that she can still control me in that fashion and that I have no clear hold over you. How sits that with you, Cirrus? Could you manage to carry out such a deception?”

Now it was Cirrus’ turn to laugh. “My King, my apologies for reminding you of what you doubtless recall… yet you speak to one who walked the Rainbow Fortress for three centuries and more and never once was suspected.”

“Ha! No, my apologies to you instead. Of course such a simple task you can manage. Amanita is far less subtle than Iris Mirabilis or his General, I think.” He nodded, noting where they were. “We are close to the area where her spies will begin to hear us again. So I will begin to speak of another important matter, one connected to strategy, which follows logically from what she will have seen.” He took another deep breath. “General, I have one other command for you, and I suspect you will not like it.”

Realizing he was once more potentially under the watchful eye of the Queen, Cirrus looked suspicious. “And what is that, Sire?”

“While you may have to journey the country for a short time in the next few weeks, you are to return here immediately if any sign of enemy forces is seen. Moreover, you are not to allow yourself to be seen outside of our most loyal troops. Your name will not be mentioned; you must choose another name for your persona as the general of our forces. As soon as it seems even possible that an agent of the enemy could be in Oz, you will return to the Castle and remain there, never emerging until and unless I give permission.”

“What? Why, Sire? A general cannot command his troops nearly as well when he must remain hidden!”

“Because,” Ugu answered levelly, “your very existence is one of our greatest weapons, and under no circumstances do I wish this revealed until we have the Mortal in hand and under control. You are welcome – encouraged, even – to devise all of the stratagems, plots, and tactics that you wish, and we will make all manner of use of them, but you will take absolutely no risks that may betray your identity.” He looked down at Cirrus, face forbidding and grim. “Is that understood, General?”

Cirrus’ look of resigned frustration was picture-perfect; Ugu could not tell how much of it was honest annoyance and how much was merely following a script that the younger man clearly understood very well. “As my King commands.”

“So I do.” He glanced at the sun in the sky. “I have other duties to attend to for now. General, I want you to write up a report on all we discussed this day and submit it to me – with your recommendations – before three days have passed.”

General Dawnglory bowed. “It will be done.”

“Then that is all. Dismissed.”

He watched the argent-haired warrior depart and allowed himself a small smile. Let Amanita make of that what she would. He now knew he had a powerful ally which the Yookoohoo would underestimate… and he knew how best to use him.

In a few months, there would be only a King in Oz.

 

 

 

 

Castaway Planet: Chapter 6

 

They were in the new solar system hoping to find a world…

 

 

——

 

 

Chapter 6

  

         Akira’s arms hugged Laura tightly for a moment. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” she answered on the same channel. One good thing about having private comm channels was that you could have a private conversation even in the middle of a not-too-large cabin. “But my God, Akira.” Even after four days it was still hard to grasp what had happened, and only now that they had successfully reached that target solar system had she started to allow herself to think beyond the question of whether something would happen to the little shuttle’s Trapdoor Drive.

“I know. We weren’t prepared for this.”

         She rotated around to face him and then retightened her sleeping tether. “No one even knew this could happen. I wonder if this is the first time, or whether it’s happened to other ships, too.”

         He shrugged. “No way to know, Laura. And doesn’t matter now.”

“Now that we’ve found a good star… what are our odds?”

She felt him draw a deep breath. “One in twenty that there’s a planet we can live on—in theory. If Sakura can land us.”

That was one of the things that worried—no, to be honest, terrified her. She didn’t doubt Sakura normally, but without the AI running, everything would depend on one fourteen-year-old girl piloting a ship from orbit to landing.

“Stop worrying about that,” Akira said firmly. “First, it’s useless; we can’t change what we have to work with. Second, the main automatics may be gone, but there are still some basic stabilizers and other safety devices to help her. Third, she’s been studying and doing calculations with Caroline every spare moment. Caroline, Whips, and Melody have been working on display apps for Sakura’s omni to help guide her down. Sakura will do fine.”

“You’re sure?”

He kissed her quickly. “Sure? Nothing about this is sure, Laura. But what I am sure of is that Sakura will do her best, and that’s all we can ask her to do. If we die trying, well, we’ll die anyway if we don’t.”

She smiled and nodded. “I suppose you’re right. It’s not like we have much choice.”

“No. Sakura’s the only one of us with any idea how to operate this ship. And so far she’s doing just fine. I can tell how proud you are of her, too.”

         “I’m proud of all of them. No panic, yet. All listening, all pulling together. I’m most worried about poor Harratrer.”

Akira was silent for a moment. “Well, we’re only a few weeks from the Goldilocks Zone, if Sakura’s current estimates of speed and what the Nebula Drive can do are right. I checked our stores and what you gave me on his biology. We can keep everyone well-fed, even Whips, for longer than that. The ship was pretty well-supplied. And if there is a livable world, it will have an ocean that he can probably handle; remember that we made sure they had the adaptations to deal with wide variations in water salinity and mineral content.”

That much was true, and just hearing Akira repeat the facts calmly helped to relax her. When the Europan Bemmies and human beings had established long-term contact, the relatively primitive aliens had turned out to be surprisingly open to understanding. They had showed little of the signs of culture shock that had plagued various human societies—although that was probably at least partially because the Interplanetary Research Institute and its sponsoring U.N. had managed to strictly control interactions with the aliens at first.

The Bemmies, AKA Bemmius pelagica sapiens Sutter, were not identical to the similarly named aliens who had, sixty-five million years before, set up bases in humanity’s solar system and then nearly killed themselves off in a war, but were instead evolved descendants of lifeforms with which Bemmius secordii sapiens had seeded Europa prior to leaving the system. But evolution had taken them down a similar path, and to human eyes the two species looked very similar. The Europan natives had been fascinated by the idea of a real world beyond the sky—given that the most prevalent religion on Europa had been about gods that lay “Beyond the Sky”, which meant above the crust of ice that covered Europa, this was not surprising.

It was impractical, to say the least, to have starships filled with water (for many reasons, ranging from sheer mass to electronics issues), so for a while it seemed that only a rare ambassador, scientist, or student from Europa might travel from their home world. But then one of the now-aging survivors of the first Europan venture, A.J. Baker, had suggested that—just possibly—the Europan Bemmies could be adapted to live in air and water, as had their long—vanished distant cousins. “We’ve seen what we can do with genetics in the last few decades—life extension, engineering healthy organs, engineering new versions of lifeforms for our own use—and it’s not like it’s a new idea. Heck, it’s the exact idea Bemmie used when they seeded Europa to begin with!”

There was much reluctance at first, but to many people’s considerable surprise, once word of the idea got to the Europans, some of them practically insisted that this be tried, none of them more vehemently than Blushspark, the Europan Bemmie who had made First Contact. And with careful, painstaking work… the design had succeeded.

She sighed. “I’ve figured out a way to wet him down without choking us on mist. It won’t work forever but… a few weeks, yes, though I don’t think he’ll be in top shape. Now… if there is a decent planet?”

“I can’t give odds on unknowns. What I know of biology tells me that we will probably be able to find something to sustain us there.” He glanced at her with momentary concern. “That is, if you can keep our medical nanos going to filter out incidental toxins, and maybe convert some materials to any vital nutrients we’re missing like the vitamins.”

She thought about that for a moment. “I think so. LS-5 has a good nano updating installation onboard, and I have my medical kit. I’m not sure we’ll be able to update them like we do at home, though, and over some time the concentration may drop. Medical nanos are strictly limited in self-replication.”

“If you can get LS-5 to do so, I’d have it replicate some nanos now for a reserve. No telling what demands we’ll put on it later. We’ve got a few weeks at least.”

That was an excellent suggestion, and she checked LS-5‘s systems. “Yes, I think I can do that, and it shouldn’t interfere with other operations. Good thinking, love. What about other survival issues?”

“LS-5 is nuclear powered, and there’s a lot of equipment and material we can use in her. We were, after all, going to a colony world that’s just opening up. She’ll serve as excellent shelter for a long time, and we can move around as we need. Don’t worry, Laura, if we find such a planet, we’ll be okay.”

She looked over at Whips, who was floating at his own station, clearly awake, probably observing the comparator. His people, Laura remembered, didn’t generally sleep in the same cycles as human beings. They went into a sort of not-entirely-unconscious torpor for a few hours, then wake for several hours before going back into the recuperative torpor. Only when they were severely exhausted or injured did they seem to sleep deeply the way humans did—although they did, in torpor, have something like human dreams. “It’s a good thing he is so close to Sakura.”

Akira glanced in that direction, some of his black hair trying to escape its netting. “Yes. He has a connection to us and that should help against the loss of his pod.”

Suddenly, Whips stiffened, and then shouted in his deep, vibrating voice, “Found one!”

The others jolted awake, Sakura blinking blearily at her friend, Hitomi giving a little yip! of startlement, and Melody glaring at the big alien. But Caroline seemed instantly alert. “A planet? Where?”

“Here—I’ll send you the coordinates in my viewing field.”

Sakura unsnapped and drifted herself over to the controls. “Everyone secure? I’m going to turn us towards the coordinates so Caroline can use the telescope.”

Laura checked on everyone, especially Hitomi, who had a habit of unsnapping herself at the most inopportune times. “Everyone’s secure, Sakura.”

The ship pivoted and turned and the stars swirled by, then steadied. “Okay, Caroline, that should do it.”

Caroline studied the view, her hands twitching slightly with control gestures. Suddenly she stiffened. “Oh. My. God.”

“What is it?”

For answer, Caroline sent the image to the main channel. Laura heard herself give a gasp.

Floating in the star-speckled blackness was a world, illuminated in a crescent by the nearby sun, a crescent that showed swirls of white and brown but mostly a beautiful, rich green.

         “Caroline?” Akira said tensely. “Where is that? Is it –”

“Measuring now, Dad. Sakura, can you check me?”

“Now that you’ve bullseyed it, I can track back through the data for the parallax, yes.”

Another few moments passed, then Caroline leaned back, and her voice was shaky. “I put it at one hundred nineteen million kilometers from the primary, a little inside the middle of the habitable zone.”

“Yes, yes, I check you, Caroline! It’s there, it’s a planet in the Goldilocks zone.”

“It’s the right size, too,” Caroline said, her voice showing almost as much excitement as Sakura’s. “I make it about thirteen thousand kilometers across.”

“Caroline,” Akira said calmly, “give me the feed, please. And Melody, your spectroscopic app?”

“Yes, dad,” they both said. Laura understood what he was looking for, and said a silent prayer to whoever, or whatever, might be out there.

Hitomi was staring at the image of the planet. “It’s so pretty! What’s its name?”

She smiled. “It doesn’t have an name yet, little girl. We get to name it.”

Hitomi stared up at her with huge eyes. “We do?”

“We do.”

The eight-year-old looked back at the screen and then gave a nod so emphatic that it would have caused her to spin if she hadn’t been strapped in. “Then I wanna call it Lincoln!”

“Lincoln?” repeated Melody in a puzzled tone. “Why would you ever call it after President Lincoln?”

“Presi—who?” Hitomi looked confused. “No, because that’s its color—like the clothes those men wore in that story!”

“Those men—Oh!” Melody suddenly laughed. “You mean Robin Hood’s Merry Men, and they wore Lincoln green!”

Laura smiled. “Well, I think that’s a perfectly good name. What do the rest of you say?”

As Laura had expected, while obviously Sakura and Melody had hoped to name the planet (and, she admitted to herself, so had she), none of them wanted to disappoint the excited Hitomi. “Then Lincoln it is.”

“Why are the oceans green?” asked Sakura. “I’d think they’d be blue, like Earth’s.”

“It could be due to any number of reasons,” Caroline said. “A different mineral/particulate suspension in the water than we have on Earth. Or—”

“An abundance of chlorophyll-bearing creatures,” their father interjected. He was smiling broadly, and pointed to the virtual display they could now all see, a pattern of dark bands on bright. “We’re down to those odds I couldn’t guess. Chlorophyll. A beautiful, unmistakable variation on chlorophyll, and a perfect indicator of life like our own. The other ecologies use other pigments.”

As the meaning of the words sank in, the others cheered. Hitomi didn’t exactly understand, but she knew good news when she heard it, and cheered as well.

“It’s possible it may even be a seasonal thing,” Akira continued. “Something like huge algal blooms that periodically making the sea brilliant green across most of the globe, then fade away. Even on Earth you can sometimes get very green water that’s visible from orbit.”

Laura felt immense relief go through her. “Sakura?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“This is your Captain speaking, Navigator.”

Sakura snapped her an exaggerated salute, grinning from ear to ear. “Yes, Ma’am! What are your orders, Captain?”

“Set us course for Lincoln and give us an ETA.”

“On it, Captain Mommy!”

Sakura immediately went into conference with Caroline and Melody. Laura had to admit after a few moments that she honestly didn’t really understand the discussion. Unlike her offspring, physics calculations and orbits and vectors just didn’t interest her much. But she could tell the three girls were arguing over the best approach to use the Nebula Drive and heard terms including “constant acceleration”, “orbital transfer”, and “least-time course”. Whips drifted over and joined the debate. She noticed that the Bemmie’s normally smooth, flexible skin already had a fine network of lines over it, like dry human skin.

After a few more minutes, Sakura nodded and the other three seemed to have reached agreement. The fourteen-year-old strapped herself back into the pilot’s chair and carefully manipulated several controls before turning back to them. “Deploying Nebula Drive dusty-plasma sail. According to calculations, ETA is three weeks.”

Laura finally felt herself relax. That was well within Akira’s estimate of their food supply and, she thought, her ability to keep Whips in functional shape. It wasn’t going to be easy, no. But they had a livable destination, they could get there fast enough, and they had the tools and equipment they needed.

         The worst was over.

 

 

 

GamerGate: My Comments

 

WARNING: Some strong language, especially for me, ahead.

 

 

I rarely make what could be considered political or activist posts. This is mainly because of two things;

 

I am rarely 100% certain of everything I say, contrary to many people’s impressions of me. On important subjects, I hear people talking, with apparent authority, and saying things that come to opposite conclusions. I’m not equipped any better than most of these people to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. I may come to a conclusion of what *I* think is the truth, and maybe even post it, but I’ll do little more than that most of the time, because either there’s a possibility that I am wrong and I’m not going to waste time defending a possibly-wrong position, or I will be involved in an acrimonious online argument, leading to
I hate arguments that actually make me feel angry, sad, or otherwise negative. An intellectual debate about things that don’t emotionally batter me? Fine. But if I get to the point that it’s actually making me mad or sad? I stop, because I don’t like feeling that way, I have other things that are more important that can cause those emotions, and I’m not going to waste the significant emotional resources dealing with them in some stupid online debate.

 

However, every once in a while, a subject comes up that strikes close enough to my very nature that I can’t get it out of my head. #Gamergate has become one of those.

 

I’m not going to detail the origin of this clusterfuck (and yes, I’m not censoring myself for once). Basically, some jerk became an ex-boyfriend rather than a boyfriend, posted a screed against the ex-girlfriend – as jerks have been known to do for decades, although in pre-Internet days they’d just rant to their friends and start rumors in school. Among the resulting rumors was that the lady in question had effectively offered sex to a reviewer in exchange for a favorable review for the game produced by the lady in question.

 

This produced a bunch of insulting, threatening outrage – directed not at the putative reviewer, whose actions would have been the real problem, but at the woman in question. Oddly, the fact that THE REVIEW IN QUESTION DIDN’T EXIST never seemed to matter in the slightest.

 

So, the actual rage? Had nothing at all to do with sex-for-reviews or in fact anything ethics related. It had everything to do, basically, with the fact that a woman dared tread into the hallowed world of gaming and expect anyone to listen to her.

 

This got worse. It escalated to rape and death threats. This then extended to other women whose only crime was that they dared point out that something was rotten in the state of gaming, to the point that some of them, including Brianna Wu, left their homes because they were afraid that some of the threats – which included their home addresses and other information, a charming little behavior called “doxxing” (documenting)– might be genuine.

 

This makes me almost incoherently furious. See, I *am* a gamer. I’ve called myself a gamer since before that was a “thing” – long before the video games that these asshats get so flamingly stupid over existed. I’ve played RPGs since 1977, played computer games since the 80s, played on consoles since 1995, and “gamer” is a proud title, one I’ve been passing on to my kids. I met my wife-to-be gaming. My best friends are ALL gamers.

 

And these bastards are making this personal part of my life, the very label and symbol of something I’ve used as both a professional and social tool, something that’s been part of my very existence for decades, a word that people now shy away from.

 

I don’t, personally, know any of the high-profile names in this mess, though some of them I recognize. But I *DO* recognize the evil, small-minded, petty, selfish, sneering, slimy, putrescent foulness their detractors spread all over everything. I know you bastards. I’ve seen it all before. I’ve watched it in gaming clubs and in anime groups, I’ve heard it in fanboy groupings and video-game chats. I’ve seen it in high-profile science-fiction fandom and in small private gatherings. I’ve seen it used against women (most often), gays, or just that guy or gal who’s “different” – and always, ALWAYS against people they think haven’t got the resources, strength, or guts to confront them, or else from behind a mask, never with the courage to face anyone as an equal.

 

People out there saying it’s just a small group of trolls? BULLSHIT. This is endemic. It’s not the whole of the gaming community, no. It’s not even the majority. But it’s far, FAR from being just a few loonies. Oh, there are loonies involved, no doubt about it. But for every ten assholes out there actually posting rape threats and talking about shooting someone or breaking into their house and dumping their targets’ contact info, there’s a hundred or a thousand more who are thinking the same things and secretly, or not so secretly, cheering them on, and a bunch more who may wince at what’s being said, but try to convince themselves with oh-so-reasonable tones that “well, there’s something to what they say…”

 

NO. There’s NOTHING to what they say. There’s nothing but hateful misogynistic cowardly gutless bullshit to what they say. It’s not about ethics – no one, least of all these sons-of-bitches, cares whether reviews are influenced by sex or anything else, or they’d be asking why it is that there isn’t a high-profile game released that gets less than a 4 out of 5, and more like 4.8 out of 5, from any big-name source, and getting all furious about the fact that game companies are pressuring reviewers to be dishonest instead of saying “Final Zelda Combat 6 is a total piece of crap. 1.2 out of 5 stars, and I’m being generous”. But they don’t. The ethics and sanctity of gaming? Meaningless to them.

 

No, they’re targeting a woman because she’s in their goddamn stupid clubhouse. They’re threatening women who point out that there is hardly a game published that doesn’t show girls and women as targets, prizes, or eye candy. They’re furious that women dare try to be a market force and push those subhuman wankers’ little pathetic piece of the world out into the light of the fucking twentieth century (yes, I said twentieth. These GamerGate dickheads aren’t IN the twentieth yet, they’re still in the nineteenth, if we’re lucky). They’re mad because women aren’t content to SHUT UP and stay out of the clubhouse. Or in some cases mad because they think they should “have” a woman of their “own”, and are incapable of grasping that that very thought is the problem.

 

You know the only thing I think their targets have done wrong? To leave their homes. Not because I think the threats are empty; some of them might be very real. There may be real danger. And it’s true that this is only my feeling – I can’t really judge what other people’s fear and choices are.

 

But from my point of view, they’ve let those gods-damned bastards WIN. Those pusillanimous filth know now that they can shatter the lives of their targets just with disgusting invective and threats, sniggering behind the anonymous safety of their screens hundreds of miles away. They don’t have to actually carry OUT threats. They can drive their targets out of their own homes with fear, make them hide, drain their resources, their time, their energy – in short, destroy them without ever even FACING them.

 

Cowardly thugs without even the courage of the bullies I knew in high school; at least they’d say insults to my face. I spit at these people – and I abuse the term ‘people’ in that context. They disgust me.

 

I have a wife who has been a gamer with me. She is my partner, she is my friend – my best friend in the whole world – she is a fan and a reader and writer and part of the geeky world that is my home. I have two daughters, both of whom take joy in video games and Godzilla and anime and Frozen and Avengers.

 

And they BELONG IN ALL THOSE PLACES. I want my wife, or my daughters, to be able to go into any convention, or become part of any damn industry, they want without worrying that some asshole is going to threaten them, harass them, treat them as anything less than they are simply because they happened to have two X chromosomes instead of an X and a Y.

 

You monstrous, gutless, worthless pieces of shit in #gamergate – YOU are the ones who don’t belong. Get the hell back to whatever misbegotten shithole spawned you. You’re not defending anything. You’re agents of destruction, vicious little remnants of savagery who have no place in a civilized world. Grow up – or go straight to hell.

 

Ryk E. Spoor