Game Changer, Part 3

by Mary Ruth Pursselley

Robin dropped his pencil into the pile of paper on the table and sat back in his chair, rubbing his tired eyes and stubbled face. He’d taken the disk translation as far as he could. He was no linguist or angel expert, so most of the finer nuances and references in the inscription would have to be figured out by someone else, but he had understood enough.

Enough to make him laugh as he sat, face in his hands, exhausted and ecstatic. Enough to assure him that this was the find of a lifetime—maybe several lifetimes.

“Unbelievable,” he said aloud, referring not just to the disk and its writings, but to his own fortune in being the one to decode it. God was, as always, watching out for him… though His watchfulness and favor were surpassing even Robin’s wildest imaginings. He couldn’t possibly have deserved this.

He said a brief prayer of thanks, then looked at his watch. Doing so made him laugh again—he’d been sitting here for almost twenty-four hours. No wonder he was starving. He stood up and stretched, already working on a mental to-do list:  Arrange for the disk to be taken to Trinity University. Get a crew of interns assigned to Adagio to help him. Look into renting boats and diving equipment for an expedition to Funder’s Cove, where the fisherman had found the disk.

Oh—the fisherman. Robin remembered his promise to tell the man what the disk said. He rifled through the blizzard of papers on the desk until he found a blank sheet, grabbed his pencil again, and jotted down a basic outline of the translation.

As he wrote, he considered a few of the stranger points in the account. Strangest of all was the reasoning given for the angels’ decision to abandon their city, Light: an invasion that caused the loss of several lives, as well as considerable damage to the city itself. It wasn’t an invasion of humans—references to the Founders were very distinctly worded—but Robin was sure either he or Hanks must have mistranslated the symbol describing what the invaders were. It was too random, too bizarre. An invasion of crazy bugs, so crazy they nearly destroyed the city? Robin had no doubt that the linguist assigned to the disk would get a good laugh at his expense over that one. Oh well. He’d never claimed to be a linguist.

He was curious to find out what or who the invaders really were, though. Especially since the disk explained the angels’ realization that the event would take place again, because “such is their nature”. Whatever that meant.

As he headed for the bathroom to get a much-needed shave and shower—the last one he was likely to get for a while, if he set out on the expedition to Funder’s Cove as soon as he hoped—he suddenly stopped and grimaced. He’d promised that girl from the school in Zirconia that he’d contact her sister, the archaeologist, while he was in Adagio.

Well, he decided with a sigh, that shouldn’t take too awfully long—a day, at most. He’d get that out of the way, give the fisherman his rough translation of the disk, and then he’d be free to get to work.

Inquiry

Inquiry

By Travis Perry

“You seen this man?” The woman asking had a definite no-nonsense presence—titanium patching on her face, a robotic left arm and left leg. The glossy she held in Jax’s face looked familiar.

“Uh, maybe. I see lots of people.”

“There’s a substantial bounty on this one—the biggest I’ve ever seen. If you know something leading to the arrest of Ernsto Mons, that would be worth five thousand credits to you.”

“Ernsto Mons—that’s the guy in the picture?” Jax looked up at the woman’s face. Her non-robotic parts were actually quite attractive. He felt embarrassed to notice, and it formed a painful reminder of his wife separated from him on Avenir, but in fact he hadn’t seen a lot of women of late—other than Maddie, of course, and some old hag who did cleaning. But the blaze in her eye told him she was even more no-nonsense than his first impression would indicate. Her dog eyed him with a tilted head, as if suspicious.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“About everything—theft, smuggling, murder, human trafficking, insurrection, plotting to assassinate an Avenir government official, plotting to overthrow the Avenir government.”

Jax let out a low whistle. “Whoa. So what’s five thousand credits? Like ten percent?”

The woman nearly smiled at him. The expression sent a chill down his spine. “Why? Are you going to try to haggle for a bigger cut?”

“No—I mean, no, ma’am. Just, er, wondering…” his voice trailed off.

“Look, do you know something or not?”

Jax had already decided what to do. Whatever else he had done, Ernsto had kept a coriander beetle from attacking him from behind while another attacked from the front. Ernsto had also helped move the beetles into the trading camp, yielding a good haul, though he had insisted on staying outside himself. Jax owed him. “Er, sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Hmmm,” she replied, studying him. “Well, if you change your mind, ask for me at the trading post. Everyone knows my name there.”

“Which is?” When her fierce eyes met his own, Jax added, “…er, ma’am…”

“Zana. That’s all you need to know.” And then she turned away.

Bounty

by Travis Perry -

Jax ran after the headless coriander beetle that dragged Ernsto under its body. The spear would not be effective against the thick shell at the rear of the creature, but he thrust it anyway. Perhaps some sort of pain reflex would slow it down…

The beetle’s hindquarters twitched when Jax jabbed, but otherwise the spear point had no effect. A streak of dark human blood flowed behind the dragged human, from Ernsto’s back.

“Help! Help!” Ernsto barked as he helplessly kicked and punched upward. Jax briefly considered pulling his scythegun. It would ruin the value of the kill, but it certainly would stop the beetle’s forward motion. He hesitated, concerned the blast might also injure or kill the human underneath the beetle…

Before he could decide, the beetle’s headless—but still running full speed—thorax pushed into the sandy patch where Ernsto had hidden. In the sand, Jax saw him push hard with arms and legs and disengage himself from the bug’s undercarriage, the softer ground allowing him to succeed in pushing himself down and away. The decapitated beetle kept moving forward until it impacted a boulder on the other side of the sandy patch. Its way blocked, it still tried to move ahead, its legs vainly scratching the rocky ground, the headless torso pressed into the boulder too big for it to budge…

“You all right, pal?” asked Jax, standing over the motionless Ernsto, who had rolled over to his stomach on the sandy ground. Quite a lot of dark venous blood oozed from his back, all over the back—the wounds in fact seemed deeper and more extensive than what he could account for based on the recent scrape along the ground.

“Just give me a minute,” said Ernsto. “I’ll be fine.”

 “We need to get you to a doctor,” Jax replied. “With this bounty of a harvest—three corianders in good condition—we should be able to pay the medics for some treatment.”

“Bounty,” muttered the voice below him, “That’s an interestin’ choice of words…there’s a bounty on my head that’ll make your notion difficult to carry out…”

“Don’t worry. Nobody checks that sort of thing at the Palmer trading camp.”

The man chuckled bitterly. “If only you knew.”

Uncertain Injury

by Travis Perry -

 “Front or back?” demanded Ernsto in a low voice.

For an instant, Jax wondered front or back what? But then his mouth said, “Front,” and he stepped forward with the spear, eyes searching for any bit of rock he could quickly scramble to the top of to lure the beetle coming down the draw into a standing position, exposing its lungs.

A quick glimpse cast backward showed the man he’d just met pull himself out of the sand, moving backward toward the aggressive male coriander on the rock pile behind them, his very large knife gripped in his right hand. Snapped back forward, his eyes registered the beetle from above now charging down the draw, grunting in rage.

Many possible rock formations lay in view—all good, none great. With reaction time running out, Jax charged a fractured boulder to his left and leapt upon it in a single adrenaline-fueled bound. He just managed to raise his hands over his head as the beetle hit the rock. It paused a moment then flipped up to a standing position, the four lower legs on the ground, its pinchers and upper two legs clawing at its higher opponent—Jax.

The edge of the book lung showed itself near the bottom of the beetle, close to the ground, close to the boulder. It would have been relatively easy to miss the target for someone too nervous or plain terrified. But Jax had done this many times before…his pulse pounded and his body trembled with the rush of fight-or-flight chemicals that naturally flooded into his bloodstream, but his mind was focused and clear—the spear flew down in a very short throw, sinking straight into the lung with a psssh of releasing air.

The mortally-wounded bug was not dead yet. It shook, as if with rage, and dropped back down on all sixes and charged up the boulder, pinchers hammering together. Jax lept backward, landing on hands and feet just behind the rock. Before him he witnessed the butt of the spear wedge into a crack of the boulder as the massive beetle plowed forward. Its inertia only drove the spear deeper into its body. It twitched but stopped moving forward, its yardball-sized head advancing no further than just beyond the boulder’s peak.

“Help!” the voice came from to his left. Glancing that way, he saw a headless coriander beetle that clearly had kept charging forward after its decapitation, which must have impacted into Ernsto and knocked him down because now it was dragging him forward, pushing him by the beetle’s undercarriage, its headless neck gushing fluids on the human’s face as it plowed Ernsto forward nearly at full speed, tearing the man’s back across the ground.

This was bad. Jax knew a coriander beetle could live a long time without its head.

Itsy Bitsy

by Kaye Jeffreys -

The summer night was not unbearably warm, thought Jereth. Although the extremes in temperature were the hardest thing for him to get used to on the surface of Eclectia, tonight when he sat down to relax he eventually stopped perspiring. He settled back into a surprisingly comfortable, collapsible chair. Next to him, Uncle Logan sat in a swinging chair that hung from a beam supported by two sheltered wagons. It was the only one they had and the favorite seat in the circle. Logan had the honor of sitting in it now as he swung his sleeping granddaughter on his lap. Someone absently strummed a rickety stringed instrument nearby.

The sound of grit blasting the metal sheets over Jereth's head was deafening in comparison to the rattling of the circuit office window back in Woodless Valley somewhere near civilization. But after a few days it had become background noise to the activity of Apollo Unit's circle while they waited out the storm.

Kellie approached and reached for the child on Logan's lap.

"She's fine here." Uncle Logan smiled.

"Rose is going to tell Itsy Bitsy. I want my baby sleeping in her cubicle before the story starts."

Logan grimaced and handed the little girl off to her mother.

Rose approached the tack box, stepped up, and faced the small congregation of people with her eyes closed. Her somber face, bare arms, and coarsely woven shirt reflected the flickering orange and black patterns of a nearby oil lamp. The stringed instrument fell silent. Rose took a deep breath then opened her eyes wide and recited in a steady voice.

"Long ago

Near the time of the beginning

Darkness came

The angels stopped singing

What is this

The time of gleaning?

Where to go

Away from this stinging?"

Then Rose relaxed and took on her storytelling stance. She glanced around the circle, making eye contact with a few of her listeners.

"Eclectia sat upon her orbit, warm and firm. The early colonists saw her beauty and they settled there singing, 'Arise, Avenir Eclectia. Be strong, Avenir Eclectia. Stand firm, Eclectia, live on, Avenir Eclectia." Rose raised her arms even with her shoulders as she sung and smiled promise and hope.

"But then, the mountains erupted." She threw up her arms over her head. "And the big bugs marched." She marched in place on her box. "And they knew with all of her beauty Eclectia was a dangerous place for men." Anyone else marching on a metal box would look silly. But somehow, in storytelling mode, Rose could pull it off.

Rose stood still again and looked straight ahead. "But there was no greater danger than..."

She crouched down, got a wild look in her eye, put her hand out in front of her, and wiggled her fingers like a bug.

"A gnat, a mite,

a tiny spider,

took to flight

and sat down beside her."

Rose stood up again into her casual story mode. "Merreth Morrett and wife Sara led their family out into the waste. They had gear, they had supplies, and they intended to stake a claim. 'Arise, be strong, stand firm, live on,' they chanted from Merreth down to his youngest child, baby Jayne. They chanted with hope and promise as they steered their land rover out into the swirly grit."

Rose clasped her hands together. "There was a pond in a valley fed by a spring that spouted out of the side of a cliff. More than lavabush grew around the pond. It looked like a garden sheltered from the wind and waste."

Rose looked around her in amazement as though she saw the garden with her own eyes. "This was it. They knew it. Perfect in all things, except..." This time several joined in with her as she crouched and recited:

"A gnat, a mite

a tiny spider

took to flight

and sat down beside her.

"The purity of the water from that plentiful spring amazed the family and they drank their fill. But in the night something attacked baby Jayne. She clawed her skin and cried out in pain because..." more joined in with her.

"A gnat, a mite

a tiny spider

took to flight

and sat down beside her.

"'It was the water,' they said, 'an undetected toxin.' They filtered and purified and comforted little Jayne. But all she could do was cry and say, 'my body, my head, I wish I were dead.' 'Do not speak thus,' her mother Sara soothed. But soon another child cried out in the night, and then another until one by one, all four in agony died, because...

"A gnat, a mite

a tiny spider

took to flight

and sat down beside her."

The hairs on Jereth's neck tingled.

Rose dropped her head into her hands and held it there as she said. "Merreth cradled Jayne in his arms as the skies opened and poured down rain. He shook his fist at the spring-spouting cliff and cursed the day he led his family away from the safety of the colony."

Rose lifted up her head with worry in her eyes. "The safety of the colony." Determination replaced worry. "The safety of the colony.

"And then Merreth knew what he and Sara must do."

Rose turned to look at some unseen person next to her. "We must preserve the colony, Sara. We must save the colonists from this deceptive place, this false garden, this paradise of pain and death."

Rose turned her head the other way to respond to herself, "But what can we do, Merreth, my love? How can we save them?"

Rose turned back, "There is only one way. We must destroy it all, bury it all and leave no trace."

Rose looked back at her listeners. "They guided the land rover to the base of the cliff. They clawed their skin and cried out in pain out in the torrential rain as they rewired their machine. They kissed one another and sang, 'Arise, be strong, stand firm, live on, Avenir Eclectia... live on and on...'

"Merreth touched off the wires and the explosion could be seen for a hundred miles. The cliff and the spring collapsed on the pond and the garden. And the colony was safe, the tiny mite was stopped.

"Or was it?"

Then Rose stiffened and made her eyes wide as she tipped her head back and looked down on Apollo Unit. She quavered her voice as she slowly sang,

"Itsy bitsy spider

went up the water spout

down came the rain

and washed the spider out

Out came the sun

and dried up all the rain

and Itsy Bitsy spider

climbed up the spout again."

The hair on the back of Jereth's head felt like electricity. He turned to Logan and asked, "Where is Itsy Bitsy and this garden buried?"

Logan bore into Jereth with his eyes, "Don't believe this story. There is no such thing as Itsy Bitsy. It was made up by the people on Avenir to scare us away from striking out on our own and to keep us from scattering seeds."

Jereth sat back into his chair, rubbed the back of his neck to coax his hair flat again, and worked to convince himself that there was no such thing as Itsy Bitsy.

Surprise

by Travis Perry -

                    

Jax often hunted alone. He’d tried partners and had found that while there is safety in numbers, there was the downside that a lot of these hunters were bugscat crazy—and dangerous. And when hunting alone, he got 100% of the haul, every time.

This blazing fiveday Summer afternoon, out on his own, he stood with a rock formation behind him. Temporarily he leaned his spear on a rock as he pulled loose the drawstring on his rucksack made from a membrane found on the inside of the pinto beetle shell. He reached in and pulled out a wet gland, one he’d taken on a hunt just three days ago. This contained the musk of male coriander beetle. He squeezed the gland, expressing pungent fluid on his hands. He wiped his forearms in the smelly goo and held his arms upward in the air, letting the hot wind spread the odor wherever it whipped in this narrow rocky draw.

He’d learned from experience that male corianders were aggressive and territorial. One strong whiff of a rival and they’d come charging from all around, spoiling for a fight. In practice this may not work so well, since there wasn’t always one in the range of the scent. But he’d spotted several in the area before he came down the ridge covered with broken black basalt into this claustrophobically tight, sandy-bottomed draw.

Another problem came from the fact the beetles could charge in from any direction—that he’d accounted for by where he placed himself. Within the high rock walls on either side, there was only one route in—the natural rock heap behind him covered that route to his rear, so any bug coming after him would have to charge down the draw from the ridge, the direction he was facing, one at a time.

The rocks helped him with another potential difficulty—male coriander beetles usually charged in low, pinchers first, making a poor target for a spear attack, which ideally hit the book or bellows lungs under the belly.  If a beetle charged him here, he could back up the rock pile a little bit. Almost every time the corianders would raise themselves up on their four hind legs when facing an enemy on higher ground, giving a perfect shot at the lungs. Though sometimes they didn’t slow down at all, charging straight up, slamming their heavy sharp pinchers together in the attack. Times like that were a little more challenging…

He heard scurrying from the ridge before he even had time to retrieve his spear. Spear newly in hand his eyes caught a coriander as it shook its head back and forth, sweeping its antennae. It audibly grunted from the top of the draw, just over one hundred meters away.

“Right down here, buddy,” Jax said. “Come on down.”

Within seconds the obedient bug charged down the draw, straight toward his position. It was a healthy young male, larger than average. It would bring a decent price.

Crossing the sandiest patch in the draw, the bug suddenly stopped and squealed. Its legs thrashed but something from underneath held it in place. It attempted to pivot its pinchers underneath its body, a position anatomically impossible for it. It thrashed over on its side, legs twitching.

Bug flipped over, Jax now saw an arm, a human arm, holding a large knife that had pierced the bug’s lungs—sticking straight up from the sand. The patch moved and suddenly a man stood up from it, huffing and blowing sand from his mouth.

“Hey you, on the rock pile,” croaked the voice. “I’ll split the kill with you if you can give me a hand.”

Jax moved forward. He didn’t know whether to be more annoyed at the loss of his kill or amazed by the means by which he’d lost it.

The man’s legs were still buried in sand. “I figured one would come by sooner or later,” he mumbled.

“Sooner or later?” exclaimed Jax. “How long were you buried there? I’ve been in the area for a couple of hours and I didn’t see you at all.”

“Ah…it’s been about two days I think. It was fiveday Winter when I dug in.” The man tried to spit but nothing came from his mouth. “You wouldn’t happen to have any water, would you, pal? That’s the main thing I need.”

“Sure,” said Jax, more astounded than before. The dark-haired man took a long drink from his waterskin and reluctantly handed it back.

“So now what do we do? This is my first kill.”

“Your first?” Jax scratched his head. “You came out here with just a knife?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“Dear God—who are you?”

“Ernsto—last name doesn’t matter.”

Jax couldn’t help but chuckle. “You must be the craziest man—” he cut off when he heard new grunting from the top of the ridge. Another coriander beetle, this one bigger than the last, stood at the top of the draw.

And then he heard grunting from behind. He whipped his head back and saw another big male waving antennae. From the top of his rock pile.

The Flight

by Travis Perry -

“It is the wrath of Lallah. We must flee it!” exclaimed Shoo. Back in the nomad camp, all the men had formed a circle around a small fire of lavabrush and bug bristle. Ross had been included this time without question…and now Shoo had just pushed her way into the circle.

“Grandmother,” said the young man standing just to her left, eyes lowered in embarrassment. “Please, this is the council of men…” his voice trailed off into a gurgle.

Shoo looked around with bright eyes, “Yes, I suppose that would be why there are none but men here!”

“Grandmother, please,” said the young man on her right—this one really was her grandson.

“This is a simple thing, dear men. Hear me out and I shall quickly leave you in peace.” The sweet old hag grinned toothlessly.

Markas looked across to the oldest man in the council, meeting his eyes…who happened to be Shoo’s husband. The grizzled elder simply shook his head with a cough that nearly formed a laugh.

An expression crossed Markas’ face that might have been a wave of annoyance, but it soon disappeared as he faced her, his eyes blazing. “You may speak, woman, but then you will return to your place.”

“Good you hear me, young man. Good you hear. For it is recorded in the tales of the old women that if the mountain will not come to the prophet, the prophet must go to the mountain. And in times of trouble, ‘Flee, flee, always to higher ground.’”

“So we are to run then? That is your advice?” Markas spoke the last word with a sneer.

“What will you do instead? Fight? The righteous shall be saved from the wrath of the Holy One, but only if they heed the word of Lallah, given to the community of the righteous, to both the men and yes, the women!”

“The old women’s stories,” replied Markas in faux-deference.

“Stories I was teaching when you were still sucking at your mother’s milk,” answered Shoo in firm determination, her hands on her hips.

“Very well, old woman,” said one of the elders. “We hear you. Please leave now.” Soon others echoed this plea. Moments later, the chorus of voices rising, Shoo stepped out of the circle of men as abruptly as she’d entered it.

Ross found it interesting to note that after hours of deliberation, even though none of the men repeated anything Shoo had said—not in the way she’d said it, anyway—the council agreed the tribe needed to flee…up into the mountains of the volcanoes of the Five Rims…until such time as the wrath of God had passed them by.

The Cause

by Travis Perry

Markas stood over his aspbug. Three of its legs had been torn from its body before Markas had killed the flailing mount himself.  Ross stood beside him with the other two nomads, surveying the damage. One aspbug and all five buzzies dead, but the humans were still alive.

Ross could see in their eyes that nomads respected him more for having fought for himself. But he’d only been trying to stay alive. He tried not to flinch in pain as Markas bound his wound with a cloth, stopping the bleeding. He did his best to keep his hands from shaking—he thanked God he’d peed not long before the attack, or else he probably would have wet himself.

Standing next to Markas, Ross shifted his feet back and forth to hide the shaking of his legs from the tribesmen, none of whom seemed shaken at all. He watched Markas use his knife to open the body of one of the beasts who had attacked.

The inside of its carapace was crawling with white little moving shapes, like carrion fly larvae, but with legs like spiders. “See, stranger?” The nomad’s voice rasped in a hard whisper. “These are the cause, the reason the buzbugs ran yesterday, the reason they attacked just now.”

“I see them. What are they?”

“They are a sign of the wrath of Lallah. They come to execute His judgment on all that lives.”

“How do they do that?”

Before Markas could answer, one of the small white bugs leapt of out of the body of the dead buzbug onto the nomad’s right hand, the one holding his knife. Immediately the small creature began burrowing into the skin of his hand. With surreal calmness, Markas switched his knife to his left hand and held up the back of his right in front of his face. For a moment he watched the bug dig itself under his skin. And then with the knife in his left, he slashed at the bug, removing it and half the skin from the back of his hand.

Corrupted

by Jeff C. Carter

“Go ahead, I’ll show you how it’s done,” Grady said.

Enforcer Barney Keepagami slipped on the Medical Examiner’s electronic goggles.  A perfect replica of a pale dead man floated in front of him.  Hovering next to the cadaver’s no-nonsense buzz cut was a name and occupation: Kyupiti Brantry, customs officer.  His brutish frame and rough hands clashed with his fashionable clothes and expensive bug shell jewelry.  Barney’s old detective training jumped to the conclusion that the customs officer had been taking bribes.  He dismissed the thought and watched Grady work.      

“Thanks to the deep scan we’re free to do a virtual autopsy any time we want,” Grady said.

“Back in my day they used arthroscopic threads,” Barney said.

“Yeah, and in the dark ages they cut cadavers open and pulled everything out,” Grady said with a shiver of disgust.  “Can you imagine?  Thank God for deep radiation scanning.  Every detail gets captured while the entire body is sterilized.  But here’s the best part…”  

The corpse grew larger until it filled Barney’s view like a foreign landscape. 

“Let’s take a look inside,” Grady said.

Everything tilted and the surface of the dead man rushed up to meet them.  Barney tensed as they smashed through the outer layer of fabric and skin.  They flew through a tangled forest of muscles and arteries towards a pulsing red horizon.

“The red lights are areas that the computer has flagged as outside the healthy base line,” Grady said.

They coasted through the abdominal wall and passed under the broad sweeping arches of the rib cage. “Arteries aren’t in bad shape for his age.  So where’s the red light coming from?”  Grady wondered.

The heart swelled to the size of a house while the red lights shrank down to glaring pin points.  No matter how far they zoomed in the red lights always slipped into the distance.  Finally, they skidded to a halt inside a grey patchwork of spheres pierced with glowing red lines.

“Incredible.  The injury is at the cellular level,” Grady gasped.

“Have you ever seen this before?”  Barney asked.

“Once.  Micrometeor damage.  It happens to meteor cowboys sometimes.  It’s a bad way to go.  I’m ruling this death by trauma,” Grady said. 

Barney pulled off the goggles and looked around the morgue.  He imagined the room stacked full of bodies after the bloody riot.  If there were any clues to glean from the inmate’s cadavers, they would be on these scans.

“Now, about your missing doctors.  What are their names?”

“Doctors Thaani Lev and Samuel Loomis.  They disappeared around the time of the riot.  Actually, I’d like to review all the scans from that period,” Barney said.

“Think they were lost in the shuffle?  I’ll pull up the whole batch.”

A long list of names rolled up onto the screen, but the doctors were not among them.

“Let me dive deeper.  Could be they were filed as Jon Avenirs.” A garbled list appeared on the screen and Grady hissed. “Dammit!  The files have been corrupted.”

Barney gave a low sigh of disappointment that held little surprise.  When would people learn that information was too important to entrust to machines?  The first thing he had learned on the job was that you could only trust hard evidence.

Barney glared at the computer screen and the fragmented list of the dead.  So many lives lost, so many questions without answers. “Did you perform these autopsies?”

“No.  But I remember who did,” Grady said.

Barney’s eyebrows perked up with renewed hope.

“His name was Dr. Kes.  Said he was with the ZMB.”

Barney rolled onto the balls of his feet, ready to go. “Where is he now? Can I speak with him?”

“He was just passing through.  The Peace Council brought him in to help process bodies while I was at the crime scene.  It’s possible he didn’t know our system, or just made a mistake.  We were completely swamped.”

“I suppose I’ll have to add him to my list of missing doctors,” Barney sighed.  “Where are the actual bodies now?”

“If you’re lucky they might be in the disposal bay, waiting for next of kin,” Grady said. 

Barney nodded and handed back the goggles. “I suppose I’ll go pay my respects.”

The Fight

by Travis Perry

Ross yanked his knife from his belt and stabbed hard at the buzbug that had fixed itself to his leg. His stabs counterattacked in an unaimed frenzy while he screamed at the top of his lungs. His pierced leg kicked hard, almost of its own will, and after eternal seconds the mandibles which had sunk into his leg broke off, the bug falling to the ground.

His fellow nomads had yanked their own black powder pistols from their belts, each responding with a directed fury as if they’d been killing rabid buzbugs their whole lives, firing their single-shot weapons, each one impacting a bug carapace. Then in a flash each dismounted and pulled their knives, launching themselves into frenzied buzbugs with fast hard stabs of the steel knives Ross had traded to them years before.

Ross shouted again, more an enraged roar now, and followed them by jumping off Markas’ mount, which had become the target of most of the buzbug attacks. On the ground he eyed the screaming buzzie with broken mandibles and hurled himself into it, knocking it down, one arm around it as it clawed at him with its hard legs, his other arm stabbing at the side of its hard abdomen, some of his blows glancing off. He finally dispatched the beast which had bitten him, it struggling far longer than it had any right to do.

He looked down and saw blood gushing from his wounded leg…

The Attack

by Travis Perry

Ross rode behind Markas on his aspbug mount. As much as the nomad did not seem to like him, the man clearly expected Ross to hang onto to his body. The discomfort most Eclectia men felt about touching one another was clearly not something nomad men experienced. Ross found himself more comfortable reaching under his own thighs to grasp the rough saddle strapped across the bug, even though this made staying put in his seat awkward.

The three bugs rode hard to the west, their riders chasing the buzbugs that had charged off in a frenzy toward the setting sun. The wind whipped hard and the ash blocked out the stars. Ross had no idea how the men knew where they were going.

A cold winter morning revealed a bleak rocky horizon, the distance scattered with a few pygmy lavabushes. Markas glanced back at him without slowing the aspbug’s trotting pace. “You see them, stranger? There, by the hill on the left.”

At first he saw nothing…but then his eyes caught sight of five or six buzbugs charging east in the direction of the rising sun with the same ardor with which they had run last evening, but no longer bleating. He wondered what happened to the rest of them, the other dozen or so bugs…

Markas and the other two riders angled off to the left. The long legged aspbugs soon brought the men to in line with the charging buzzies.

Normally a buzbug would come to a stop near an aspbug, or at least change direction out of fear of the much larger beast. But these buzbugs, each one an herbivore, charged straight at the much larger mounted animals.

Markas, leading the riders, brought his mount to a quick halt, too late to respond to the charging buzbugs, who now voiced a sound Ross had never heard before. A sharp hiss. They leapt at the aspbugs, their mandibles chopping, attacking the Markas’ aspbug. One leapt high and pain lanced through Ross’s right calf as the mouth of the frenzied herd animal pierced his flesh…

The Council

by Travis Perry

Markas’ hard eyes shifted away from Ross toward the western horizon, toward the buzbugs still charging that direction. “A day’s ride and I can bring them back. I’ll need two other men with me. Useful men who can ride.” After addressing the tribe, his angry glare returned to Ross, who found himself flushing red.

“Oh, no, child,” interjected Shoo. “You must not go! They are harem.” Ross would have thought from his knowledge of the tribe that an old woman would not be allowed to publicly speak to an unrelated adult male as she just had done. But apparently Shoo played by her own rules…the word she used, “harem,” Ross of course knew, but she had used it in a foreign way, totally unlike the meaning he was familiar with. He wondered what she had meant…

His chain of thought ended when a young man shouted, “Keep yourself quiet, grandmother! Your open mouth shames us!” Shoo’s face set in anger and the shocked reactions of both men and women told him that her grandson had just violated a rule weightier than a woman addressing a man.

“Calmness and peace,” snapped Markas as his aspbug mount shifted and grunted. “We need to meet in conference over this matter—strangers not included.” The last phrase he uttered while staring directly at Ross.

#

Ross sat at the edge of camp during the conference, on an outcropping of flat rock. Next to him sat Shoo’s grandson, unspeaking, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in the palms of his upward-reaching hands. They did not speak to one another.

At one point, one of the herd boys passed Ross, his face still pale and sweaty, like the time several months ago when the same boy had thought he’d seen a ghost. “What happened to the herd?” he asked, guessing this to be the cause of the boy’s anxiety.

“Bugs just started running, the same ones who are still running I think. They scared the rest of the herd before we could do anything. Bugs jump sometimes, but a dozen, all at once? I’ve never seen that. There was nothing I could do.”

“I’m sure you did your best,” said Ross. “The tribe won’t blame you.” These words brought a small smile of relief to the boy’s face.

After a bit more conversation, the herder returned to his beasts. Not long afterward, Markas approached Ross. “All is well with Shoo, I trust?”

Markas paused before answering. “She was never in any danger of reprimand—but you have charmed her, it seems. For she defended you and gave her reasons as to what happened to the herd. She says it is not your fault.”

“Praise Lallah. I’m glad to hear that.”

“I would not praise yet. You are to come with me and we shall see if her words are true. If they are not, you will not be returning to the tribe.” As he spoke, perhaps unconsciously, Markas moved his right hand to rest on the pommel of the dagger in his belt.

Preparations

by Travis Perry

Burt had always been careful to save as much money as he could. Now he held all that remained of all his decades of hard work and thrift in the bugbristle sack in his right hand, maybe eight or nine blank copper coins left. From his boat at the dock, he looked over to his boys loading cargo on all three of his ships.

He’d been able to get financing on two more Zirconia-made aluminum boats, but he’d had to make down payments. He’d told his fishermen his plan and to a man they’d looked at him wide-eyed astounded. But they’d faced tsunamis with their boss, Burt Jonzn. They knew his instincts and in the end, they trusted him.

He trusted them, too, they were good boys—though they did need to be watched from time to time. Had he and Marta been able to have children, he’da hoped they would have turned out like his boys.

Sam would captain the second boat, Rekay the third. The boys began to load down from the rusted metal fishing dock onto the boats the supplies and provisions they’d just purchased with Burt’s life savings. The boys had chipped in too, even though he’d been against it at first. But his money had simply not been enough.

The boats sank low in the water as biodiesel for the motors got loaded in, along with heavy cases of scythegun rounds, and of course the weapons themselves, along with food and medical supplies. They’d cleaned out the Smit family store and had to go to the Palmer trading station to find all they needed, which Burt disliked. Palmer cost too much—plus the profits wound up on Avenir, instead of in Adagio itself…

The boys aboard, him and two others in his ship and two in each of the others, the three aluminum boats—not fishing craft at the moment, rather miniature cargo ships—cast off from the dock and headed out in loose formation past Adiagio’s open tsunami gate, headed for Funder’s Cove…

The Rider

by Travis Perry -

The charging bugs hurling forward, Ross didn’t know where to run. He dodged left as a buzbug bolted past him and then right, too slow, as another plowed into him. The beast massed less than half his weight but it sprinted as it bleated in terror and hit him low and off-balance. Ross plunged to the ground, rolling, catching glimpses of the nomads responding. None yet knocked down like him—all dodging more successfully than he, even the old ones—in spite of his terror of being trampled to death, some part of him registered chagrin at that.

He pulled himself to all fours, the herd bugs of the nomads still rumbling around, over, and into him. Markas, a robust man of about thirty, jumped up and seized the elongated neck of his aspbug as it galloped, all sixes clawing rocks and gritty dirt backward. He swung upward into the saddle and in moments had his mount under control. He thundered the beast forward and reached a calloused hand out for the bridle of another frenzied mount.

Ross watched in fascination, again amazed at the resourcefulness of this nomad people. But several herd bugs hit him in the side at that same moment, knocking the wind out of him and rolling him onto his back, reminding him he was still in the midst of a struggle to survive.

Covering his face with his hands and balling himself up to make a smaller target, belly down, his ears recorded not only the bellowing bugs and the staccato thunder of their hard chitin feet impacting on rocky ground, but also the nomads calling out to their beasts and one another. In minutes—no, probably seconds drawn out long in the heightened awareness of fear—the rumbling of most of the herd had ceased.

Ross uncovered his head and quickly stood to his feet, ashamed to be the only man on the ground. He spotted Shoo, the old woman who always favored him, also hunched down like he had been. He walked over to her and without thinking offered his hand to help her up. The move was unthinking because in the tribe men only touched women if they were close relatives or married to them. So the fear of having committed a grave social error rushed into him, too late to take back the hand hanging down. But the old woman took the hand and pulled herself up, grinning toothlessly at him.

After that he afforded himself the luxury of looking around. His eyes confirmed what his ears already knew. The nomads, led by the first aspbug rider, had gotten the herd back in control…most of it anyway. Some dozen bugs still rushed westward.

Ross met the eyes of Markas, the rider, who glared back at him in anger. As if the stampede had somehow been his fault.

Rumbles In the Wilderness

by Travis Perry -

The nomads knelt down when they prayed and then arched their backs to the rear, catching themselves with hands stretched to the rocky ground behind them, their faces swinging upward toward Eclectia’s ash-tormented dome of a sky. Their faces sought the sky, but their eyes remained closed as their lips mumbled their supplications to the Divine.

Ross Smit had worked many years to earn his place among the nomads. Most people in fact, did not even know that the nomads existed—he’d learned of them as a teenager from a friendly and overly-talkative-when-drinking miner.

He’d begun his efforts by first pursuing Human Studies at Zirconia University (though he’d grown up in an underwater colony mysteriously named “Enterprise”), not realizing for many years how much all he learned fell short of what his choice of study had been in the Golden Age of Social Sciences back on near-legendary Earth. He then had studied every fragmented bit he could learn about the dialect of the northern nomads—during The Voyage, nearly all languages of the past had been forgotten, leaving what had been called “English” as the dominant tongue. But that one language had since begun to split and fracture—and the nomads must have been different from the beginning. Even then, with all the knowledge of their language and culture he could attain, it had taken four years of him posing as a friendly trader before they’d accepted him into the tribe.

He dressed like them, ate like them, rode their giant insect mounts wherever they rode to follow their “buzbug” herd (the prefix “buz” did not refer to any sound the canine-sized insects made—Ross suspected the word tied back to some now-lost human language), and followed their customs in every way he knew how. Still, he was not fully accepted as one of them—he once asked them to teach him to pray, but they’d treated the very request as a near-blasphemy. So he’d learned to content himself with watching as they rose upright on their knees and fell backward, over and over, performing the evening prayer as the Whale set into barren hills far to the west.

He’d asked once why they did this and at first no one had answered. But finally, as the awkward silence stretched long, an answer came from one of the old women, the one who from time to time toothlessly grinned at him and seized his cheek in her iron grip as she served him supper, hurting him, but meaning only to show affection, laughing at what a good son he would have made…if only he’d been born human. She’d said, “To face Immakah, dear child.”

Through his studies he suspected the word referred to an ancient holy city on Earth. So instead of bowing down in humility to the ground as many praying cultures had done, of course they prayed upward to face their holy city. The sky somewhere contained the city, somewhere on Planet Earth—which they called “Ard,” though without real knowledge of what “Ard” was—so of course they faced the sky in prayer. That moment of discovery, that rapture of understanding—that was why he’d chosen Human Studies (what he’d once heard anciently had been called “Anthropology”). It was better than Wizardry—better to know his fellow man, and thus, himself, than to know the angels and whatever powers knowing them might offer.

But this day the prayers did not end with the setting of the sun. “Buzy! Buzy!” yelled one of the boys left out with the herd during prayer time. On ancient Earth it would have been like shouting, “The sheep! The sheep!”

At that same moment the bugs began sounding, their voices repeating in a, “AhAhAhAhAh AhAhAhAhAh.” Several of the praying nomads snapped upright and turned their heads. Most continued to pour petitions upward.

But in an instant the voiced “ahs” came much faster and in a much higher pitch. And much louder, as the entire herd emitted piercing near-screams. Now all the nomads, even the old ones, sprang to their feet, their eyes looking behind him wide with shock and terror. Ross whipped his head back eastward, the direction all the nomads were looking. He saw what all of them had seen, what his ears also began register as rumbling thunder. The entire herd, hundreds of bugs, were charging full speed at the dismounted humans. As were the “aspbugs,” their mounts. All of them in a frenzied charge all at the same moment, straight at the humans, all of them together, and screaming, screaming, stampeding westward, as if trying run headlong into the blazing circle of the setting sun…