Authors: Glenn Douglass
Tags: #adventure, #travel, #dog, #future, #space, #rescue, #supercluster
Law's End (13 page)
Pulling the mask back into place Savorne shut
down, insisting weakly, "I don't know what you're talking
about."
Concerned gripped Kassad that Greene would be
returning soon for her second body and derail his interrogation.
Putting his shoulder into Savorne's gut Kassad hefted the grown man
with little trouble in the low gravity. What resistance Savorne
offered was jolted out of him as Kassad loped for the nearby woods.
Savorne continued to protest but was too weak and disoriented to
offer serious resistance to Kassad's abduction. Under the low
gravity the main difficulty was the stress that landing with the
added mass placed upon Kassad's back and knees.
Densely packed vegetation gave way easily as
Kassad crashed into it. Almost immediately it became apparent that
only Alone's sturdiest trees would offer any resistance to his
passing. Most of the plant life seemed to be supported by internal
columns of fluid that burst when even modest pressure was applied
to them. In short order Kassad's external garment was soaked from
the waist down in thin translucent plant sap.
Deeming that he had gone far enough Kassad set
Savorne down and surveyed the area around them. Although line of
sight was limited to a few meters in any given direction Kassad
didn't think he'd have any problem finding any survivors who had
run off this way. Wherever the undergrowth was broken it quickly
collapsed into a dark charcoal mass that stood out vividly among
the lighter grey tones of plant life, and whose true colors Kassad
could only guess at.
Fear was quickly winning out over fear in
Savorne's voice. "What are you doing? Where did you take me? Why
are you doing this?"
"I think we both know what's really going on
here," Kassad accused, "and if I don't get some answers there's no
one to contradict me when I say you ran off into the wilderness
never to be seen again."
Savorne's voice quickly tipped over the edge
into hysteria, "You can't. You wouldn't. There's no reason. That's
monstrous."
Getting to the heart of the matter as quickly
as he dared Kassad replied accusingly, "And there's no reason you
would rig the survey platform to blow sending all of your work into
the local star?" Savorne said nothing in response. "All of your
work, except the final data set. Isn't that right?" Savorne stood
and tried to feel his way around which only served to coat his
hands in glossy plant liquid. "Greene is here on a rescue mission,
but I'm not. Do you understand?" Savorne looked up his unseeing
eyes wide, but he said nothing and once again Kassad grabbed the
man roughly by the shoulders and shook. "This is a recovery
mission. Do you understand how important this work is? I'm being
paid a lot for this, and it's not just so you can see home again.
Do you understand?" Savorne nodded meekly, his face already
emaciated from malnutrition had managed to become even more
withdrawn and pale, but he said nothing. "Nothing to say? Because I
wouldn't think you'd want to spend the rest of your life
here."
Savorne's remaining reserve crumbled. "Please
don't leave me here." Savorne began openly weeping, the inside of
his respirator quickly fogging up.
Releasing Savorne from his grasp to let him
collapse in the rapidly wilting vegetation Kassad pleaded, "Then
tell me what I need to know. Did you destroy all the evidence about
your project when you blew the platform?"
Bitterly Savorne finally admitted, "No, not all
the evidence."
Kassad demanded flatly, "I need it."
"No, it's my insurance!" Savorne's hands flew
protectively to his breast.
With brutal finality Kassad declared coldly,
"I'm your insurance now."
Batting Savorne's hands out of the way Kassad
rummaged through the man's many layered clothing. He quickly
discovered a flat solid rectangle buried deep in a pocket. Tearing
away the last layers of fabric Kassad retrieved the rectangular
palm sized data storage device.
Considering the object he held Kassad abandoned
any notion of leafing through it to find out what was really going
on as it was as large as information storage devices were made.
Sabha's entire data system was composed of twenty of such cards and
that easily held detailed navigation charts for the entire hundred
thousand galaxies of Laniakea. Obviously the data couldn't be
loaded into anything smaller and more easily hidden or Savorne
would have. Whatever data Savorne had loaded into the module was
massive.
Pleading, Savorne's hands feebly grasped at
Kassad, "It can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. You
mustn't let it. We should all die before that happens."
Unable to suppress the wonder in his voice
Kassad asked, "What's on here?"
Confusedly Savorne asked, "You mean you don't
know?"
Rather embarrassed Kassad admitted, "No, I was
bluffing." and he put a friendly hand on Savorne's shoulder. "Sorry
about that. I truly am. I didn't like having to scare you, but I
don't like being left in the dark about a job." Mostly to himself
Kassad muttered, "Which is strange considering how often it happens
to me. You'd think I'd be accustomed to it by now."
"What are you going to do?" Savorne asked.
Kassad shrugged putting the data module into
one of his suits many pockets and sealing it in before answering,
"First I'm going to get you back to the camp so Greene can take you
back to the Sabha. Then I'm going to track down your missing crew.
Shouldn't be too difficult with the tracks left in the undergrowth
I'll just follow the outside line of dead vegetation."
Dismissing all concern over personal wellbeing
that had so dominated his mind moments before Savorne demanded,
"About the data, what are you going to do about the data?"
Seriously considering the question Kassad ran
his fingertips over the rectangular mass in his pocket before
admitting, "That depends on what it is."
Chapter 9: "Evacuation"
"I don't care what your particular job is
out in the Big Vacuum. Ship crew, miner, construction, maintenance,
or anything else; it's all dangerous work. Radiation, pressure,
gravity, and equipment failures and on top of all of that they're
always trying to replace us with more cost effective automation. So
you earn what you have and slipping any of that to your local shop
to watch your back may grate, should grate on you, but the
alternative is dying because no one was watching out for you, and
let's face facts; if living down a well was an option for you then
you wouldn't be listening to this."
-Excerpt from "Why Support Your Local
Spacer's Union?" informational.
trying to grasp the implications of what he'd learned when Greene
interrupted his thoughts demanding to know, "Where did you two run
off to?"
"Hmm, oh, the head count turned up two short."
Kassad explained. "I should be able to find them without problem
now that I know what to look for." Then he asked, "How's the round
up here going?"
Satisfied by the explanation Greene answered,
"Well I've got four onboard now. None of them seem to know what's
going on around them so they aren't much trouble. I've just been
putting all of them in the medical pods." With five of the
automated medics to each of the pods there was just enough for the
entire research team.
"Good idea," Kassad said approvingly," put
Savorne here in with the rest, but tell the machine to keep the
sedation light in case we need him chatty." Exhausted from the
emotional ordeal he'd just been through Savorne made not a single
sound of disagreement.
If Greene thought the directions were strange
she made no mention of it and instead swept her gaze around the
camp. "It's strange. I was worried about seeing him here, my
husband, but I don't know if I'd even recognize him like this. What
does that say about me?"
"The romantics think that the heart can see
through anything," Kassad opined, "but the romantics are only
romantics because they haven't actually been through something like
this and can glamorize it in their minds."
Greene raised an eyebrow at the sentiment. "I
thought you were the romantic?"
"I am incredibly romantic." Kassad protested
indignantly. "I'm also incredibly practical." Finally he smiled
broadly claiming, "I am an incredible and complex man in all
aspects."
Cutting off her scoffing chuckle Greene asked
seriously, "Are you sure you can find the two who are
missing?"
"Before the sun goes down, if we get back to
work." Kassad replied.
"Benefit of a thirty two hour day." Greene
smirked in reply as she scooped up Savorne as one might a child and
started jogging back to the Sabha.
Back in the forest it took Kassad only a few
springing leaps to place himself high enough in the canopy to get
an idea of where his rogue crew might be hiding. The pattern of
dark dead vegetation spread out in a wide swath that covered the
better part of a kilometer and a half. Fortunately there were spots
of particular darkness that Kassad strongly suspected might have
been the result of a body habituating for a prolonged period.
Taking a bearing on landmarks was impossible at ground level and so
Kassad took a bearing on his inertial compass instead to survey the
first likely location.
At the heart of an area so blackened it
appeared to have been burned Kassad found the first of two missing
crew. At first Kassad feared the individual he discovered to be
dead. Where all of them were suffering from various degrees of
malnutrition this one was gaunt, with distended stomach, and lay
breathlessly still in a morass of their own filth. The sad figure's
mouth and hands were caked in blackened vegetation and who knew
what else eaten out of desperation. A faint pulse was all that
betrayed the presence of life and Kassad gently gathered the body
to him and quickly sprinted back to the camp.
Placing the frightfully still form next to the
fire Kassad didn't wait for Greene's return. She wouldn't need him
to point out the obvious priority needs of this person. As Kassad
sprinted back to the forest he braced himself for the reality that
they might be too late for at least one of the survivors.
Back up into his spotting tree Kassad took
another bead on a likely spot for the final crewman. Quickly down
on the ground he bounded through the plants which splattered him
with their sap as if in protest. Arriving at the site he found
nothing.
Kassad was scanning the trees around him for
another likely candidate to support his weight when his eye caught
sight of something glinting brightly on the forest floor. Moving
closer to the object was all that Kassad needed to identify it as
the discarded foil from a ration pack. A bit of looking about soon
identified more of the wrappers scattered about without a clear
pattern.
It was only when Kassad looked up again in
search of a tree for scouting that he saw the strange twisted mass
of branches some four meters above. Barely visible within this
cradle was a mass of ruined clothing that moved as if something
within was breathing. Given that this world didn't have any native
life with anything as advanced as lungs Kassad breathed a sigh of
relief that he'd found who he was after.
The puzzle of how to get the figure down
immediately replaced the puzzle of finding the individual. With as
weak as the vegetation had proven to be Kassad wasn't willing to
test its limits by adding his own weight to the structure. Prodding
the figure free of the mass of limbs was a possibility, but again
there were no branches with sufficient strength to do the job.
Calculating the fall in this gravity to be less
than lethal Kassad gave the tree a stern shaking in an effort to
dislodge the figure. At first a few branches popped free of the
tangle. More violent shaking freed even more of the branches
causing the remaining supporting foliage to bend dramatically under
the mass they supported.
At last the figure in the branches came awake
with a start. Its head thrust about blindly as its limbs grasped at
the remaining branches. Kassad added a firm shaking of the tree to
finally and completely extricate the individual.
The body fell so slowly that Kassad had no
problem catching it before it could reach the forest floor. Once in
his arms Kassad realized his mistake. Unlike most of the others
this body was not weakened by malnutrition.
Strong legs kicked at Kassad hurling the two
apart. Kassad landed on his back amid fluid spewing plants.
Kassad's attacker landed in the undergrowth as well just two meters
away. Kassad sat up to see the person he'd been attempting to
rescue on all fours scrambling blindly against the earth looking,
in all its tattered and soiled clothing, like some kind of wild
animal.
down, insisting weakly, "I don't know what you're talking
about."
Concerned gripped Kassad that Greene would be
returning soon for her second body and derail his interrogation.
Putting his shoulder into Savorne's gut Kassad hefted the grown man
with little trouble in the low gravity. What resistance Savorne
offered was jolted out of him as Kassad loped for the nearby woods.
Savorne continued to protest but was too weak and disoriented to
offer serious resistance to Kassad's abduction. Under the low
gravity the main difficulty was the stress that landing with the
added mass placed upon Kassad's back and knees.
Densely packed vegetation gave way easily as
Kassad crashed into it. Almost immediately it became apparent that
only Alone's sturdiest trees would offer any resistance to his
passing. Most of the plant life seemed to be supported by internal
columns of fluid that burst when even modest pressure was applied
to them. In short order Kassad's external garment was soaked from
the waist down in thin translucent plant sap.
Deeming that he had gone far enough Kassad set
Savorne down and surveyed the area around them. Although line of
sight was limited to a few meters in any given direction Kassad
didn't think he'd have any problem finding any survivors who had
run off this way. Wherever the undergrowth was broken it quickly
collapsed into a dark charcoal mass that stood out vividly among
the lighter grey tones of plant life, and whose true colors Kassad
could only guess at.
Fear was quickly winning out over fear in
Savorne's voice. "What are you doing? Where did you take me? Why
are you doing this?"
"I think we both know what's really going on
here," Kassad accused, "and if I don't get some answers there's no
one to contradict me when I say you ran off into the wilderness
never to be seen again."
Savorne's voice quickly tipped over the edge
into hysteria, "You can't. You wouldn't. There's no reason. That's
monstrous."
Getting to the heart of the matter as quickly
as he dared Kassad replied accusingly, "And there's no reason you
would rig the survey platform to blow sending all of your work into
the local star?" Savorne said nothing in response. "All of your
work, except the final data set. Isn't that right?" Savorne stood
and tried to feel his way around which only served to coat his
hands in glossy plant liquid. "Greene is here on a rescue mission,
but I'm not. Do you understand?" Savorne looked up his unseeing
eyes wide, but he said nothing and once again Kassad grabbed the
man roughly by the shoulders and shook. "This is a recovery
mission. Do you understand how important this work is? I'm being
paid a lot for this, and it's not just so you can see home again.
Do you understand?" Savorne nodded meekly, his face already
emaciated from malnutrition had managed to become even more
withdrawn and pale, but he said nothing. "Nothing to say? Because I
wouldn't think you'd want to spend the rest of your life
here."
Savorne's remaining reserve crumbled. "Please
don't leave me here." Savorne began openly weeping, the inside of
his respirator quickly fogging up.
Releasing Savorne from his grasp to let him
collapse in the rapidly wilting vegetation Kassad pleaded, "Then
tell me what I need to know. Did you destroy all the evidence about
your project when you blew the platform?"
Bitterly Savorne finally admitted, "No, not all
the evidence."
Kassad demanded flatly, "I need it."
"No, it's my insurance!" Savorne's hands flew
protectively to his breast.
With brutal finality Kassad declared coldly,
"I'm your insurance now."
Batting Savorne's hands out of the way Kassad
rummaged through the man's many layered clothing. He quickly
discovered a flat solid rectangle buried deep in a pocket. Tearing
away the last layers of fabric Kassad retrieved the rectangular
palm sized data storage device.
Considering the object he held Kassad abandoned
any notion of leafing through it to find out what was really going
on as it was as large as information storage devices were made.
Sabha's entire data system was composed of twenty of such cards and
that easily held detailed navigation charts for the entire hundred
thousand galaxies of Laniakea. Obviously the data couldn't be
loaded into anything smaller and more easily hidden or Savorne
would have. Whatever data Savorne had loaded into the module was
massive.
Pleading, Savorne's hands feebly grasped at
Kassad, "It can't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. You
mustn't let it. We should all die before that happens."
Unable to suppress the wonder in his voice
Kassad asked, "What's on here?"
Confusedly Savorne asked, "You mean you don't
know?"
Rather embarrassed Kassad admitted, "No, I was
bluffing." and he put a friendly hand on Savorne's shoulder. "Sorry
about that. I truly am. I didn't like having to scare you, but I
don't like being left in the dark about a job." Mostly to himself
Kassad muttered, "Which is strange considering how often it happens
to me. You'd think I'd be accustomed to it by now."
"What are you going to do?" Savorne asked.
Kassad shrugged putting the data module into
one of his suits many pockets and sealing it in before answering,
"First I'm going to get you back to the camp so Greene can take you
back to the Sabha. Then I'm going to track down your missing crew.
Shouldn't be too difficult with the tracks left in the undergrowth
I'll just follow the outside line of dead vegetation."
Dismissing all concern over personal wellbeing
that had so dominated his mind moments before Savorne demanded,
"About the data, what are you going to do about the data?"
Seriously considering the question Kassad ran
his fingertips over the rectangular mass in his pocket before
admitting, "That depends on what it is."
Chapter 9: "Evacuation"
"I don't care what your particular job is
out in the Big Vacuum. Ship crew, miner, construction, maintenance,
or anything else; it's all dangerous work. Radiation, pressure,
gravity, and equipment failures and on top of all of that they're
always trying to replace us with more cost effective automation. So
you earn what you have and slipping any of that to your local shop
to watch your back may grate, should grate on you, but the
alternative is dying because no one was watching out for you, and
let's face facts; if living down a well was an option for you then
you wouldn't be listening to this."
-Excerpt from "Why Support Your Local
Spacer's Union?" informational.
trying to grasp the implications of what he'd learned when Greene
interrupted his thoughts demanding to know, "Where did you two run
off to?"
"Hmm, oh, the head count turned up two short."
Kassad explained. "I should be able to find them without problem
now that I know what to look for." Then he asked, "How's the round
up here going?"
Satisfied by the explanation Greene answered,
"Well I've got four onboard now. None of them seem to know what's
going on around them so they aren't much trouble. I've just been
putting all of them in the medical pods." With five of the
automated medics to each of the pods there was just enough for the
entire research team.
"Good idea," Kassad said approvingly," put
Savorne here in with the rest, but tell the machine to keep the
sedation light in case we need him chatty." Exhausted from the
emotional ordeal he'd just been through Savorne made not a single
sound of disagreement.
If Greene thought the directions were strange
she made no mention of it and instead swept her gaze around the
camp. "It's strange. I was worried about seeing him here, my
husband, but I don't know if I'd even recognize him like this. What
does that say about me?"
"The romantics think that the heart can see
through anything," Kassad opined, "but the romantics are only
romantics because they haven't actually been through something like
this and can glamorize it in their minds."
Greene raised an eyebrow at the sentiment. "I
thought you were the romantic?"
"I am incredibly romantic." Kassad protested
indignantly. "I'm also incredibly practical." Finally he smiled
broadly claiming, "I am an incredible and complex man in all
aspects."
Cutting off her scoffing chuckle Greene asked
seriously, "Are you sure you can find the two who are
missing?"
"Before the sun goes down, if we get back to
work." Kassad replied.
"Benefit of a thirty two hour day." Greene
smirked in reply as she scooped up Savorne as one might a child and
started jogging back to the Sabha.
Back in the forest it took Kassad only a few
springing leaps to place himself high enough in the canopy to get
an idea of where his rogue crew might be hiding. The pattern of
dark dead vegetation spread out in a wide swath that covered the
better part of a kilometer and a half. Fortunately there were spots
of particular darkness that Kassad strongly suspected might have
been the result of a body habituating for a prolonged period.
Taking a bearing on landmarks was impossible at ground level and so
Kassad took a bearing on his inertial compass instead to survey the
first likely location.
At the heart of an area so blackened it
appeared to have been burned Kassad found the first of two missing
crew. At first Kassad feared the individual he discovered to be
dead. Where all of them were suffering from various degrees of
malnutrition this one was gaunt, with distended stomach, and lay
breathlessly still in a morass of their own filth. The sad figure's
mouth and hands were caked in blackened vegetation and who knew
what else eaten out of desperation. A faint pulse was all that
betrayed the presence of life and Kassad gently gathered the body
to him and quickly sprinted back to the camp.
Placing the frightfully still form next to the
fire Kassad didn't wait for Greene's return. She wouldn't need him
to point out the obvious priority needs of this person. As Kassad
sprinted back to the forest he braced himself for the reality that
they might be too late for at least one of the survivors.
Back up into his spotting tree Kassad took
another bead on a likely spot for the final crewman. Quickly down
on the ground he bounded through the plants which splattered him
with their sap as if in protest. Arriving at the site he found
nothing.
Kassad was scanning the trees around him for
another likely candidate to support his weight when his eye caught
sight of something glinting brightly on the forest floor. Moving
closer to the object was all that Kassad needed to identify it as
the discarded foil from a ration pack. A bit of looking about soon
identified more of the wrappers scattered about without a clear
pattern.
It was only when Kassad looked up again in
search of a tree for scouting that he saw the strange twisted mass
of branches some four meters above. Barely visible within this
cradle was a mass of ruined clothing that moved as if something
within was breathing. Given that this world didn't have any native
life with anything as advanced as lungs Kassad breathed a sigh of
relief that he'd found who he was after.
The puzzle of how to get the figure down
immediately replaced the puzzle of finding the individual. With as
weak as the vegetation had proven to be Kassad wasn't willing to
test its limits by adding his own weight to the structure. Prodding
the figure free of the mass of limbs was a possibility, but again
there were no branches with sufficient strength to do the job.
Calculating the fall in this gravity to be less
than lethal Kassad gave the tree a stern shaking in an effort to
dislodge the figure. At first a few branches popped free of the
tangle. More violent shaking freed even more of the branches
causing the remaining supporting foliage to bend dramatically under
the mass they supported.
At last the figure in the branches came awake
with a start. Its head thrust about blindly as its limbs grasped at
the remaining branches. Kassad added a firm shaking of the tree to
finally and completely extricate the individual.
The body fell so slowly that Kassad had no
problem catching it before it could reach the forest floor. Once in
his arms Kassad realized his mistake. Unlike most of the others
this body was not weakened by malnutrition.
Strong legs kicked at Kassad hurling the two
apart. Kassad landed on his back amid fluid spewing plants.
Kassad's attacker landed in the undergrowth as well just two meters
away. Kassad sat up to see the person he'd been attempting to
rescue on all fours scrambling blindly against the earth looking,
in all its tattered and soiled clothing, like some kind of wild
animal.
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