“Arrival” part 5
Date: Posted July 2002: or 2267, whichever direction you're peeking from. :)
Disclaimer: jms owns the B5 universe, though WB seems to have the rights to it still, at least until I make enough money to buy it from them and give it back to dear ol' joe. :)
This is AU, it went AU in the middle of B5's season 5, and took off from there.
Summary: The common members of the crew try to deal with each other and where they've ended up . . . the telepath homeworld!
Notes: Most of these characters are my own and original, though I confess that some of them had help with being born via some online friends (and being named after them). If you want to borrow them, this physical setting, or this universe, go ahead; just let me know where the fic is so that I can read it too!
Thank you Aubrey and Vee for editing mega-help.
Feedback to h_raelynn@hotmail.com
This part = PG 13 - language, general ickyness
*shows emphasis*
[shows thoughts]
Flashback in 'pre' text
****
(James)
James Cevry could not remember the last time he had felt so tired. He couldn't remember the last time he’d felt so frustrated, either. He had good reason to be both, but at the moment all he wanted to do was sit down and rest. He'd actually have preferred to sleep - in his own bed - back on the Sophocles, after tucking into a familiar (if slightly dull) meal of whatever the hydroponics harvest had been that day added to a prepared assembly of the carbo-protein rehydrated stuff that was the staple of all long-range explorer ships, and maybe watch a video with his friends between dinner and sleep. He knew, however, that all three were quite impossible.(Manuel)He hadn't slept well - or very much - the few nights previous, and he'd had a series of very long, very exhausting days. Cevry was used to 8 hour shifts, even 10 or 12 if the Captain was holding drills or there was a lot of repairs to be done or a special project underway, but not even the half-forgotten survival training could really prepare someone for constant 16 hour days.
He thought they were 16 hours. It was probably longer - ever since the attack had shook him clear out of his bunk and woken him all the way with alert sirens (never a good thing to wake up to), his 'work' day had started when they got up with sunrise, then after a rough breakfast the whole group would hike until they had a short lunch stop to rest and check their maps, then they'd hike again until it was getting too dark to see safely. It was probably closer to 17 or 18 hours a day that they were moving. That's what Jocylen had proposed, anyway.
Despite the Lieutenant's being just over double Cevry's age, he could still set a pace that left the 26-year-old wheezing slightly. Cevry knew that his own pack, containing the linked comm units, was a fair bit bulkier than Jocylen's; but it wasn’t especially heavy - and Jocylen had to keep checking the maps and holding odd little conversations (usually with gestures on one side, because a written response meant they'd have to stop walking) with their guide. The sun had finally vanished behind the mountains after shining down on them all day; and the sky was still blue and well-lit, though the night-singing birds had just started to chirp. Their guide was apparently suggesting that they stop and set up a night-camp at an upcoming clearing, as far as Cevry could tell, but Jocylen wanted to press on for another kilometre or two to a different clearing before he considered stopping for the day. Much to the disgust of Cevry's aching feet, it looked like Jocylen was going to win.
"Psst," someone hissed at him. Cevry turned to look. It was Zimmer, making an energetic if rather clumsy attempt to steer her horse to where he was. "We're stopping now, right?"
"Erm-"
"Well go try to convince him, then. My ass is killing me and I've got to pee." She gave Cevry a slight kick with her toes. "Go on, he knows you."
"He outranks me," Cevry said in a mutter. "He doesn't have to listen to my suggestion."
"You can bloody well try, or I'll go ask the gutmonkey there."
Cevry bristled. If there was anything that the engineers in the main center did not like, it was being compared to the department members who spent their shifts in the bowels of the ship manhandling pipes and electrical conduits, surrounded by heavy machinery and grease. Most engineers only saw those parts of the ship if doing a major repair or if they were on punishment duty. "You can't get that animal over to Sanov and you know it. Since I outrank you, either shut up or ask Jocylen yourself."
Just then Shea (who'd turned around a little to glare at them as they whispered) spoke up, fairly loudly. "Sir? Is there much chance of us taking a break soon? I'm about to fall off, sir."
Jocylen stood still for a moment and looked over the weary little group.
"We could use the remaining light to get the camp set up, sir," Shea added. "And maybe we could find a bit more to eat, get a chance to clean ourselves off?" The young man looked very hopeful.
"The next clearing has a water source and level ground. We'll stop in just a few minutes."
[Thank you, Micheal,] Cevry thought fervently. His relief only lasted about 3 seconds, however.
"Cevry, Barnett, you two will be on fire detail. You recall what type of wood to look for?"
"Dry, sir," Barnett answered crisply, having perked up at the mention of stopping. "Permission to check around for the plants he men- um - wrote about as well, sir?"
"As soon as we get a fire going, Private. Torres and I will start on the latrine. The rest of you can clear any ground we need, get the water filters going, and generally set up. Think you’ll be able to catch another roast, old man?"
Uncle nodded, but he pointed at the horse closest to them then held up his left thumb, touching it with his right index finger.
"Pardon?" As pleased as Jocylen seemed to be in no longer being the oldest person for light-years around, the local man's lack of intact vocal cords (they'd been shown the throat scar earlier) was obviously frustrating for him.
"He's saying we need to unload the horses, first, sir," Sanov suddenly said. Then at the suspicious looks he received, added, "I'm guessing. We had neighbours who kept horses back home, sir."
Uncle smiled and nodded.
"Oh. Right, then. The people first, I assume," Jocylen said as they stepped out of the trees and into the tiny meadow.
"Yes please," Zimmer stated quickly. "I'd li- hey, hold still. Uh-oh - bad horse! Stop!"
They shed their packs gladly, Uncle darting over to restrain Zimmer's horse long enough for her to climb down. The other horses were just as impatient to move to the stream, but Shea's ride was willing to wait until Uncle had helped its human return to the ground and hobble off on his crutches before it shook itself and joined the other animals in drinking. Torres helped with taking off the crates and packs, but only until the two small shovels were uncovered. Then she took the tools and walked off without saying a word to the local man.
Uncle, for his part, gave her stiff figure what might have been a blown kiss, but he hadn't puckered for it. He finished unloading the horses, then stripped off their harnesses and patted each before they tiredly moved away to chew at the grass. Cevry noticed all of this as he sought out and carried back fallen branches and twigs, which he piled beside the cleared patch of dirt where Barnett had soon squatted down to try to ignite the required blaze.
She wasn't having much luck. After Cevry had carried back a couple of armfuls, he stopped to ask her, "That starter's battery-driven, right? Have its circuits fried too? It can't be out of fuel already."
Barnett's muttered reply was both unladylike and unbecoming to someone wearing the uniform. It did say 'this tool is not working', though in a great many more words.
"Maybe we can ask the local - he got the fires going before," Sanov pointed out as he and Shea shifted twigs and big lumps of dirt out of the way of the blanket space. Zimmer (after coming back from behind a patch of trees because the latrine was taking too long) had managed to get Zoe focused on unpacking the blankets and cooking equipment.
"But - but it actually *worked* at lunch!" Barnett exclaimed.
Cevry just shook his head and went off to find more fuel. When he returned, the local man was showing her how to strike the special spark-making rocks he carried. By Cevry's last trip, he'd gathered enough wood for a few hours, and the small fire was crackling happily, watched over by Shea as he peeked inside a battered teapot.
The local man had temporarily vanished, but that didn't worry Cevry since no one else was panicking. Putting down his load, he wilted onto a pile of blankets, grateful to be just sitting and breathing the thin air for a few minutes. His skin felt hot all over, even though he was over a meter from the flames and the sun was no longer shining on his sweat-stained body.
[I'm not getting sick, am I?] He wondered for a minute, running a mental checklist for other symptoms. [No, I'm probably just overheated.] He dismissed the worry as he grudgingly got to his feet and made his way over to the water filters to get a drink.
A short ways off, Barnett had a small pile of thick root-like growths that she was cleaning off in the stream. Torres and Jocylen were just visible behind him in the darkening trees as they finished putting up a half-screen for privacy around the new latrine pit, and Zimmer was trying to lay out blankets one-handed with an equally inept Sanov. Cevry frowned slightly - something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what as he looked about the camp. His skin still felt too hot, scratchy even, but that wasn't enough to warrant the tiny alarm siren in his mind. The comms were there, as they should be, there sat the unopened crates of stripped equipment, the horses (one of which was rolling on its back - a boy horse, he noticed) were across the meadow . . . what was wrong?
His mind droned in standby for several long seconds, then it tossed up a report. [Oh crap! Where'd DeClerke's wife go? She faded out again this afternoon once the surprise from that tree wore off . . .] He checked the forest around him, eyes scanning the gaps in the trees, for a complete circle. No sign of the pretty black-haired woman with beautifully dark eyes that he'd spent the last three months envying his boss for. [Oh, crap.]
He took a deep breath, careful to not let his concern show. "Did the local take someone with him hunting?"
Zimmer glanced up at him. "No, he said we'd scare off the game. Why, who are - oh. No, never mind looking for her, we gave Zoe the jar of soap and a towel and sent her downstream a bit - found a little basin that'll work as a spot to get clean in. Tara's been keeping an eye on her, so don't go that way or us girls'll geld you. We're gonna take turns to wash, and you men are last, got it?"
"What's geld mean?" Shea asked in puzzlement. Cevry felt equally confused at the unusual term.
"It means getting your balls cut off - neutered, castrated. Gelding's the name for a castrated horse," Sanov explained.
Shea suddenly looked a little pale, and Cevry nodded quickly, unsure whether he should be relieved that Zoe was not lost, or pissed off that a lippy low-grade private should assume he'd purposely go and look at a woman showering. Washing in a stream, whatever. Wet . . . and naked. The tiny siren in his brain re-started and was considerably louder this time as he pictured what she'd look like. "I think I'll just sit down," he mentioned with great deliberateness, and did so.
A few minutes more, and the object of his errant mind was back, dressed in a clean dry outfit and shivering slightly as she tried to dry her long hair, and Torres was the one who had vanished downstream. Cevry tried to look inconspicuous as he scratched the tender skin on his arms and legs, but he also tried to watch her as much as he thought he could get away with. The local had returned with what looked exactly like a large rabbit (until he showed them the mouth and retractable foreclaws - this 'rabbit' was most certainly a predator in its own right) which was now skinless, gutless, and roasting stretched out on a peeled green stick. Barnett had poked a series of tiny holes into the roots, and they were baking underneath the flames themselves. They did not have to use up any of the rations for the meal even, though Barnett gave a few mild grumbles about the vitamin content. It was quiet apart from the faint sizzling sound the rabbit made and the 'fweep, fweep!' bird chirps.
Cevry was tempted to pick up a rock and throw it at them, but he couldn't see where the birds were to aim. He just sat there instead, uncomfortable and sore, waiting for the food to be ready. Nobody seemed to want to talk, certainly no more than the meals before this. Cevry could remember the occasional leave - even a mission once, on his last ship - where he and some colleagues went camping. There had been a lot of conversation those times, but those situations had been completely different from this one. They hadn't been so tired, their equipment had worked, they'd had decent tents and enough clothing.
He'd had a ship to return to, before. He hadn't been mourning the deaths of an unknown number of the crew then, either. He hadn't been facing the idea of the good-looking young widow of his now EX-boss constantly being in his vicinity for an unknown amount of days, in rather wild and completely unknown terrain. He hadn't been stuck on a planet full of telepaths, either, so Cevry was forced to do his best to not think improper or bigoted thoughts.
None of the crew had asked their guide yet just how strong a telepath he was, but Cevry was vaguely certain that he wasn't very close to the maximum P12 level of the former Psi Cops. The local's demeanour, though obviously prideful, wasn't stuck-up or superior enough to be one of the black-uniformed, polished-boot enforcers of repression that Cevry could recall from memories tainted with dread and fear. Psi Cops had been powerful enough to put *their* thoughts into someone else's head, as well as being fully able to enter and pick apart any normal or even a weaker telepath's brain. When the Psi Corps had finally collapsed a few years previous, the records forced open showed a grim picture: in order for a P12 to survive his or her training and actually become a working Psi Cop, they had a test that included whether or not they were willing to cold-bloodedly kill at least one normal. If they failed, the initiate was killed and then the normal died anyway. The Psi Cops had run the internment camps and re-education centers, the hidden research labs, almost everything. Most of them could have easily put 'Torture and Mass Murder' on their resumes; they didn't live past graduation if they weren't willing to do such things.
Very few Psi Cops had survived the fall, and Cevry now wondered how many of them were on this world, hiding from the Alliance's justice systems, instead of serving 5 or 6 (or even more) continuous life sentences in maximum security prisons, back in Earth-controlled space. It was a disturbing thought. The local looked innocent enough; he'd spent the majority of the evening away from the fire, away from the soldiers. Each of the horses had received careful attention with a rubbing cloth and a large stiff palm-brush, as he brushed their fur all over and checked their feet to pry away little pebbles. He didn't look like a killer, but he certainly hadn't blinked or hesitated when it came to hunting down dinner with that long cord he had spun around. With a round stone acting as ammo for the slingshot, he'd crushed the skull of the animal he'd caught; with just the one wound on the rabbit, it must have been a hell of a good shot.
At least some of the same thoughts must have been inside the heads of the others, because none of them said anything to the local and very little to each other. There was just the one brief call Jocylen made over the radio to pod 26 telling them the new position and a rough ETA for the next day. Zoe had barely eaten anything before lying down, not breaking her gloomy silence once. The soldiers gradually took turns - before and then after they all ate - wandering down to the little noisy channel of water to scrub off the day's sweat and dirt. It was quite dark out, with an impressive aurora visible to the north and thick stars, before Cevry got his turn. They had gathered more wood for the fire and lit several lamps. One at the camp itself for taking to the latrine as needed, one that stayed at the water basin, and one to carry back and forth from the stream. The water was cold, but the two lanterns around him helped keep back the night. There weren't any flying insects to bother him and the chilly stream helped to slightly ease the lingering heat on his skin and in his groin.
He was shivering from the cold, actually, by the time he pulled on a clean set of clothes and carried the laundry and moveable lamp back to the fire. Jocylen took his turn next, then the local man at the very end. Most everyone else had fallen into an exhausted slumber when Cevry leaned over to add one of the last sticks to the fire; little more than tiny blue flames dancing - not quite touching the wood itself - on a shimmering bed of red coals. He whimsically wished for a few marshmallows, then he fell asleep, even before the local had returned.
****
Waking up the next morning seemed to take Manuel Sanov a very long time. His head was fuzzy-feeling, like it had been stuffed full of the fluff from trees that had always half-covered the settlement every spring. His face itched, though what his brain eventually deciphered as being his right arm was definitely hurting worse than the other parts of him. He’d been having a dream about being back home, and it took a while for him to realise that the daylight attempting to sneak past his gummed-up eyelids was not part of the now-always-painful memories. Then he laid still and listened - birds tweeting, the creak of branches shifting around in a slight wind above them . . . but nothing else. [Oh good, it’s gone. I was sure I was going insane for a while there.]part 6Sanov was not a morning person, but his body - though in mild pain from the hardness of its leaf-litter mattress - insisted it was time to get up. The sun had not yet even started to do more than lighten part of the sky, and he recalled their general location with small degrees of sadness and anger, all mixed up with a grainy feeling on this tongue. [It’s still half-dark,] he told his body, [there are stars out and nobody else’s up yet. It’s cold out there and I’m sore still. I need to sleep.]
His body answered, Tell that to the three cups of tea that you drank. You need to pee. Tell that to your empty stomach, you need to eat. Tell that to your arm - it’ll start to really hurt again in a few more seconds, you better go figure where that jar of ointment was put.
Outnumbered three to one, Sanov made himself roll over and dragged himself out of the blankets. [Meitez,] he swore, [It’s very cold out here.] The chill woke not only him but his pain centres as well, and his broken forearm promptly started to attack itself with dozens of tiny knives.
Shuddup and empty me, his bladder seemed to be saying. His aching back added: Just be glad you followed that mountain man’s advice and put most of the insulation under you this time - last night was worse. The ground is colder than the air, his body said.
Sanov wondered if he was going insane as he stuck his shoes on half-heartedly and tiptoed out of the circle of sleepers with a little portable light whose battery still worked. Even the local was sleeping - well, the figure in the hammock seemed to be sleeping - as he trudged past on his way to use their rustic little restroom. He was halfway across the clearing when he slowed, surprised. *It* was back - that frustrating ear-tickle sound that he couldn’t pinpoint and didn’t seem to get any louder no matter where he was, so it wasn’t some bird singing. It didn’t even sound at all like it was from a bird or even flock of birds, but it was back, just barely there, trying to convince him to listen to it’s prettiness. It hadn’t been there when the others were around; it seemed to fade in and out as it pleased, without any pattern he could figure out. Sanov didn’t know why, but he was sure - completely, utterly *sure* - that he could hear music being played somewhere. But he couldn’t tell what kind of music or the instruments used or even if someone was singing but he wasn’t certain if there even was words with it . . . Sanov didn’t want to hear words being sung, he didn’t want to hear any music or words, not at all. He shook his head and focused on just getting to the latrine.
He hadn’t put voices to the rest of him since he was little, since the last time he’d played that game with one of his brothers. Not since before the day he had hiked from his home on the outskirts of the settlement to the spaceport, leaving the backwater colony to see what else there might have been in the universe. What he found was a drafting into the military, but he didn’t object. The mindlessness of enlisted life was only slightly more tedious than life had been in the mining and agricultural world he’d left, and at least Earthforce offered plenty of food and small paycheck. In the years since then, he’d driven back or repressed all the hillbilly habits and customs he could; but every so often they’d pop back up like bad weeds. In the years since then, he’d only returned home once, and that had not been a willing visit. Considering his current location, it did not surprise him when the memories rolled into his mind like an ore freighter trying to overload its thrusters.
The Rangers had come to the base he was at as well as other bases and ships, rounding up a few people here and there, getting them sudden leaves of absence, and it hadn’t taken a genius (which Manuel Sanov knew he was not) to realise that almost all of the ones gathered were from isolated, underdeveloped colonies such as the one he’d been born to. Some of the others with him - from all parts of the service, from all ages, and there even was a few who weren’t with Earthforce - had asked the Rangers ‘why’. The Rangers just brought those people to another part of the ship, to the cargo hold. The others had returned to barracks in tears . . . Manuel, unsure of what waited down there but knowing it had to be unpleasant, had not asked anyone what the cargo was. He had not wanted to ask what would make them break down - from hardened marines who kept bits of the Dilgar they’d killed decades ago as trophies, to greencollar rookies who hadn’t even finished bootcamp yet, to civilians who wouldn’t have known which end of a gun to point. He found out when the ship made it’s fourth stop, at the same run-down freight-processing port he’d left years before. His father was waiting. So was over half the settlement, and they all wore their best clothes - clothes you could not work in, clothes that were only brought out for three occasions, and grudgingly at that: to celebrate births, to celebrate marriages, and for funerals. There were no decorations. His younger sister was in the cargo hold, as were several others - dozens of others, actually - but only ‘several’ were offloaded that day. Neighbours, most of which he didn’t know. A few that he had known, to his surprise and tears. The Rangers had brought home coffins. Manuel hadn’t even realised Beth had left home - he’d never bothered to send any mail other than the required one that told them he’d survived boot and was in new placement training, he’d known it was safer that way, safer to leave fewer traces. That had been Fion’s request, when the boy had discovered his eldest brother sneaking out before dawn that last day. ‘Leave no traces to back here, please Manny, don’t let anyone track you back here - we have to protect the family.’ And Manuel had kept his promise, he had repressed all that he could of his family, he had tried to not even think about them. To keep them safe. He’d heard stories all his life from the cargo crews about the bad things that happened to people who could do the little mind-touch things his baby brother could do with him and the girls, what some of the neighbour's kids could do, things you did not talk about, *especially* with the crews of those freighters. The bad things that would have happened to a little boy who could climb up on your back and help you pretend that your foot was talking to you, or your elbow, or something else that spoke without a mouth, spoke without the words that Fion didn’t need to use as long as he was holding someone’s hand or touching them in a hug. He had no idea that two more of his siblings were completely gone as well, vanished, but his crying mother had not asked him for news. Lucy’s not being there did not surprise him, as she had sometimes talked about seeing the stars from the other side; but when he learned that Fion and so many others had been taken away by cruel people in clean, polished all-black uniforms, carrying both handguns and plasma rifles . . . he hadn’t wanted to think about it then, and he didn’t want to remember it now. The others who’d arrived with him had done enough talking, Manuel just had to maintain silence and listen respectfully, and he found out what had happened. The internment camp that had been on the news - still was, at the last data packet the Ranger ship had received - the camp a reporter had found and got footage of before having been caught and presumably killed. The camp that publicly showed the first of what was to eventually be a great deal of proof that the Psi Corps was not entirely the happy family it pretended to be. He’d numbly watched the first of the news on his ship, and just felt glad that little Fion was safe, hiding back among the scrubby brush of the forests and the open scars of the mines. He’d wanted to cry at the footage of carnage that he had watched, horrified, with his former crew, but then - worse than watching it on the news - the others had actually *mocked* the victims afterwards, saying that the bodies shown were not even really human beings, there weren’t, they were freaks, they deserved everything they got, it was a pity about that reporter though, she had been a pretty thing, hadn’t she? The resulting fight had lost Manuel a month’s wages as he languished in the brig for almost three weeks. It would have been the full 40 days, but some Rangers had come and spoken to the MPs, and he’d been escorted off the next day. The Captain had actually taken the time to shuttle down to the prison’s port and shake his hand, apologising for the crew’s behaviour to him; where before he’d been ready to have the private ejected into space for Inciting A Riot. That had been the moment Manuel had not wanted to know ‘why’. Beth, little Bethany who’d been born on his fourth birthday, whose hair he used to burn off and who used to tag along after him with her annoying little friends, was suddenly delegated down to being one of what would turn out to be six thousand bodies taken from the killing grounds in a sealed coffin. Manuel had been one of four pallbearers, along with his father, the village Padre and the doctor who’d helped birth them both. He could have done it himself - the entire thing was just under 20 kilograms, and he knew that the coffin itself was almost 15 kilos. ‘That is what *should* happen to rogue telepaths’ they had said on his ship, and he didn’t even have to ask his parents why the other children weren’t there, why some of the neighbours were setting more places than people on the table when they’d all known there would not be anyone sitting where the black ribbons were curled. He had known it wasn’t because the missing had gone off to join Earthforce. The ones missing were the ones who’d been able to play the mind-games.Fion was still missing, Sanov mused as he located a few dry bits of tree and made his way back to try to restart the fire and warm up. Though he knew Lucy was dead. His mother had put in a short message - there was no way to do a long-distance live conversation over the antiquated communication system the colony had - a few months after he’d returned to duty. He’d been transferred while on leave, and he had been relieved to learn he didn’t have to face the whispers and bullying he’d have had to endure at the hands of the last crew. His mother had only said ‘Lucinda is beyond their reach now’. The message didn’t have to say whose reach it was, because he already knew. Haunted by images of the last funeral, he hadn’t asked for leave to return home for a detailed explanation. He was by then posted to a different ship - from the battered old frigate to the first of the Warlock Class destroyers - and was now under a Captain that didn’t tolerate any kind of prejudice or infighting. He didn’t talk about his family, as much to keep the memories damped down as to prevent rumours. He didn’t have to, even, because the crew - most having been posted there for a couple of years, he was one of about a dozen replacement crew for those killed in the line of duty - was rife with whispers about the sorts of things his new Captain did to telepaths, to rogues and Corps both. His first night on board, his new bunkmates had stuffed his head with several different tales of the things she’d done to the Psi Cops she’d encountered over the years, and they were as detailed in their stories as they were creative.
Sanov, hiding in the belly of the Sophocles most of the time, was only slightly relieved to find out that she punished anyone who spread such rumours. However, the fact that Ivanova had never refuted any of the stories was enough to make him keep his head tucked in, not an easy task considering how involved she was with knowing and working with all the crew and parts of the ship. He’d been beyond astonished to find out that she had no reservations about coming down, on duty or off, and talking to them - even helping swing the heavy primary junction nodes into place, a job that was both painful and difficult. He’d been so startled by her sudden appearance that he’d cracked his head on a pipe the first time, but he could keep his emotions in check by the next visit. He found out that he actually liked her, not only because of her competence but also from her grim sense of humour that many of the crew from plushy well-developed colonies - or even Earth - didn’t understand. And when she spoke Russian with him (that she even knew it was surprising for him, though he’d been told she was born in the Russian Consortium) her flat north-american accent vanished, something that just spun Sanov’s heart around. And now he - and she - was trapped on a world full of telepaths. He didn’t know how many, but the comms had spoken of a settlement of several hundred thousand at the edge of the mountain range: their destination. It was enough to make anyone lose sleep. But she hadn’t even threatened any of the locals with her, the comms had said. She certainly hadn’t killed any of them, though Mazu had passed a report on about a few mild arguments between her and the local’s leader. There was a lively betting pool - unofficial, of course - thriving as to how long until she tried to kill one of them, and whether or not she’d succeed before being stopped. Extra credit hung on if the others would even be *able* to stop her, and which local it might be that died.
He had several more minutes to wonder in the half-darkness, until he got some sparks off the flint he’d been working at and the dry twigs caught. Sanov had time to awkwardly bring back a few actual branches to burn before the next person woke up, and by then he’d gotten a pot of water to balance next to the fire to warm and was already down by the stream. His arm felt like it was burning where it had been broken, the pain was even worse than it had been yesterday. [Definitely shouldn’t have tried to hold that rock with this hand,] he worried as he knelt down and plunged his whole arm into the frigid water. [I wish I’d have had the sense to get to the medical bay that night. It’ll be days before I can see a doctor now.] He kept his arm buried in the current until the cold made his fingers hurt worse than the numbing effects could compensate for, then he carefully sat back to experimentally open the covering on the splint. Between pain, smoke, and the drug patch he’d had put on him, he didn’t recall much about the end of the attack, or even how he’d gotten into the escape pod.
[Meitez’s *victims* - I don’t think the medic had time to even *set* it before he was called off!] Worried, he stared at the forelimb in the growing light. He knew that it was bent wrong and twisted slightly. It was hard to tell for sure from all the swelling - it was red and puffed up tightly, trying to leak past the cold metal of the brace. He could see a jagged hole, redder than the rest and leaking bits of yellowy ooze that smelled bad. [That was where the bones broke out,] he remembered suddenly, then shuddered at the memory of a chunk of wall slamming into him when the things behind it had exploded. There had been sutures on the gash, he could see the traces, but the wound had since swollen and broken them apart. [At least the bones are all back inside of me now.] It looked very bad. Injuries like this back home meant that someone’d been lost in the bush for days and once they did get back to the settlement Doctor Szabo had to put his drinking bottles away long enough to load the victim into his half-wrecked groundcar and drive down to the port because it had advanced equipment. Sanov knew the little first aid station at the port was a long drop below the medical facilities on board the Sophocles, but he’d still have given anything to be near either of them, just for a sense of Hope if nothing else. If his blood was infected . . . [Is that why I keep hearing music? Am I sick? Having - what’re they called-] He thought for a few minutes, trying to recall a complicated word for a complicated thing. [Hallu-sin-ations. I’m hearing things, is all,] and he stopped to listen to what his ears insisted wasn’t there but his still-slightly-fuzzy mind insisted was music. It wasn’t very loud, but it was slightly clearer by the stream compared to the latrine.
[Why aren’t I hearing it by the camp then? If it’s a hallucination. Well, at least it’s a nice one - when Deso got that fever that killed him, he was screaming about seeing monsters.] Sanov frowned suddenly, feeling his face for a raised temperature, but all he got was pain. He looked in the rippling water at his reflection. [Oh great - a sunburn, too!] His face and left arm were a light shade of red, and he was grateful that he hadn’t put on a pair of shorts like Cevry had the day before. He hadn’t remembered to wear sunblock, though he remembered seeing the little tube in the first aid kit. [Later. I need to deal with that later, the arm is now - I need to get out the infection before I see monsters and die.] Staring at his wound again, Sanov wondered how to get an infection out without doctors using their sprays and scanners and laserscalpels. Then he carefully reached his smallest finger between the lengths of the brace and pressed very gently on the skin next to the wound. A sudden, extremely powerful jolt of pain followed, but once he ungritted his teeth and opened his eyes, he saw a small, chunky bubble of pus had been forced out.
[Painfully is how,] and he winced at the thought, but proceeded to continue pressing out what he could along the jagged length of the wound, despite the near-crippling pain it caused him. He had to twice again dunk his arm, to wash away the filth as much to try to stop the burning agony. There seemed to be a great deal of infection, yellowy and grey and runny with chunks and he felt very light-headed when he figured he was done. One final swish under the water, and he slid the covering back into place. [I’ll put some of that antiseptic stuff on it when I treat this stupid sunburn. If we can get the sprays to work today there should be some left in them. The old man's got a bunch of stuff, if not.]
The sun was still not up by the time he had walked back to beside the fire, and the night birds were still tweeting, but the sky was more blue than black, and several people were awake, though the local man was the only one really up. He was coming back from the trees with an armful of wood; the sticks Sanov had put on were almost gone already. He looked up, face a mass of unreadable brown lines. But he held Sanov’s gaze long enough to put the wood down, and tap his own right arm before pointing to the crate that held the medical supplies.
[Could he feel me hurting?] Sanov wondered in sudden surprise. [He IS telepathic, I guess so.] He nodded to the local, and found a vial of disinfectant and a sprayer that worked - noticing along the way that the music vanished again once he got near the pile of crates and carried equipment. His arm had a slightly glossy coating over the wound a minute later, and Sanov took a mild painkilling pill with the drink of water the man had brought over in a recycled metal mug, one of the dishes he’d carried up on the horses. “That ought to fix it, then,” he said to him. “Thank you.” The local man smiled at him, and started to get breakfast together while Sanov dug around to find the sunburn salves. He suspected he wasn’t the only one who’d need it - yesterday had been the first warm day here, and he was sure Barnett was the only one of the group who might have spent any time under UV lights during the past few months; garden harvests were part of the messmen's duty. He knew he hadn’t, his own skin had been as faded pale as his siberan ancestors, the tiny traces of blood vessels clear on any surface not thickened by calluses or permanently stained by black grease. He left the burn spray vials and a tube of sunblock on top of the crates once he was done.
It was about three minutes (and half of a small bowl of some kind of edible needle he was helping pick) later that he heard the swearing as the others woke up and discovered their burns. Cevry woke up first, and his foul language woke up most everyone else - Jocylen was not pleased, and promptly chewed Cevry out, much to Sanov’s secret delight. He’d seen how Cevry had started to act towards their boss’s wife, and Sanov did not approve of trying to - even showing they had interest in doing so! - seduce a woman before the funeral had even been held.
He ignored the sight of Cevry doing crunches while being yelled at, and concentrated on getting the tiny, sticky little needles picked without crushing any more of them or getting any of the flaky bark caught as well. His arm was getting a little better as the painkillers kicked in, but it still wasn’t useable, and it still hurt like hell.
He was still hallucinating about hearing some far-off orchestra, however. But he didn’t mind it - now that he’d figured out what it was, the sound didn’t bother him so much. It was actually rather nice to listen to.
****
They had warm sticky-needle tea with reheated roots for breakfast, along with a few insta-heat packs that they shared out among themselves. Sanov would have preferred to eat some leftover meat as well, but they had picked the rabbit clean to the bones the night before. It was enough to hike on until they had lunch, he knew, but he still felt a little hungry as they cleaned up the camp and packed. [There will probably be more little patches of the sour berries as we walk,] he reasoned, and made sure to keep a few of the little mugs with handles close to the top as he rinsed and put them away. [The ones riding will get hungry too, this way we can share what gets picked.] Then he helped hold water bags as they filled everything that could hold the filtered drink. It was already looking to be as warm as yesterday had been, and Uncle had written that any place not in deep shade or a breeze would get very warm. ‘It is just past mid-summer’, he had told them, ‘the giant gets very close to the sun, our world orbits it and gets closer still. The eclipses are usually not cold enough to kill you in summer.’
At the moment, their guide was at the far end of the meadow, trying to convince a grumpy horse to come back so that he could finish loading its harness. Jocylen used the distraction to gather them together mid-packing. “I didn’t let you start to rinse your clothes today because there won’t be time to dry them. My main priority is getting to 26 as soon as possible - we might not be able to move on from there today, but I don’t like having to leave Mazu exposed with three injured to look after by herself. He was right about that tree thing,” Jocylen gestured at the long, partly-healed gash that striped up Zoe’s face, which she rubbed at absently with the back of her equally-marked hands, “and if he’s right about that big predator he described . . .” He left the idea dangling.
“But we aren’t allowed to use - even put the power cap in! - our guns. What good could we do, besides make a bigger target,” Torres said, then added hastily, “sir?”
“Whatever demonstration the Captain had her guides arrange, it scared the stuffing out of everyone who saw it - if she says no guns, we use no guns. Have you ever known her to do anything without a damned good reason?”
“No, sir.”
“Besides, if all else fails, I jab my own knife into a pack horse and we leave it crippled as bait while the rest of us scoot. I’m not going to let any of you get mauled. Besides, he said that even rifle fire would just piss off one of those ‘Reapers’. If we see something bigger than us, we just hope it’s not hungry and move on. We finish packing and get moving. Got it?”
There was a chorus of affirmation, and they all got to their feet. Sanov wasn’t the only to notice Cevry holding his arm out to assist Zoe, but she wasn’t among their number. She got to her feet slowly, not even seeming to see his hand. Sanov couldn’t really blame her for ‘going vacant’ - he’d seen what happened whenever a wildfire reached the settlement, or mineshaft collapsed, whenever people were trapped inside and usually died - some people just faded away, if the family loss was too great. Some could move on, some could grieve loudly, but he didn’t think Zoe was either of the latter types. Sanov had known her husband, a little - all of engineering did, the man had been a bit of a cantankerous driver, but he’d not been lazy and didn’t complain out loud about having to work in the ship’s guts as most of the pampered console-pushers did. He’d even been slated for a promotion when the last chief engineer had transferred off to be nearer to his family; but with the fuss Earth had been in over that horrible plague, the brass hadn’t confirmed it, and the Captain had to let it sit on the shelf along with the other promotions she’d wanted to dole out. [She’s always made the pay retroactive before, there’ll be enough sitting there once we get back for a really good proper funeral. There’s that for her to look forward too,] he reasoned. Then the thought of pay made him stop mid-fold.
“Hey,” Shea said, and shook the blanket at him. “Keep up.”
“Do you think we’re getting extra pay? You know, for the 24 hour shift thing, active or maybe even hazard pay? For being here?”
Everyone in the camp stopped what they were doing to stare at Sanov. It was silent but for the birds.
He added, “It’s not like we can get off our shifts here, and you can’t tell me - no matter how nice you and your friends seem, Uncle - that Ivanova would consider this a friendly planet.”
There was a slight pause, and he saw Torres smirk at the thought. “We’re gonna be stuck here for weeks,” she said. “There ought to be a fat little paycheck waiting for us once we get back to civilisation. Something good about being here - they aren’t gonna dock us any for using ships’ food and supplies, either.”
Shea grinned at him, and they went back to folding and packing the blankets. They were almost ready to go, and the mood seemed to be visibly lighter with this recent injection of optimism.
It only lasted - maybe - 3 minutes. Just until Sanov reached down to grab the same pack he’d been carrying the day before. He couldn’t hold onto it.
He didn’t drop it, though he wished that was all he had done. What he *had* done, but wished he hadn’t, was swear suddenly in fright and throw it down while stepping back a pace, then he stared at his uninjured hand like it had been burned.
“What - some big bug scare you like a girl?” Cevry asked him, his tone less than polite.
“Shut up, James,” Zimmer snapped, “you’d have screamed too if it had been your blankets that giant millipede had climbed into. Was it the same thing that I saw before, Sanov?”
Sanov could not answer. He just stared at his hand, then at the bag lying there innocently.
The others had had backed away from the fallen backpack, but Jocylen had come over to examine his hand. “You don’t look hurt, what was it?”
Sanov didn’t know, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Private! Did something sting you?”
“I - I don’t think so sir. I don’t know what it was, it was - it was . . .”
Jocylen checked the bag over carefully. “Whatever you saw, it’s dropped off. Come on, everyone’s ready to go.” He held the bag out for Sanov to take. “I’ll buckle it for you.”
Even as he reached for it, Sanov felt the thing return, and it scared the hell out of him - a quietly high-pitched but horrible feeling, like he was reaching into a pool of rancid food-grease. When his fingers came into actual contact with the bag itself, he felt a soft but distinct *scream* suddenly enter his otherwise silent thoughts, and he dropped the bag again in horror.
Everyone was staring at him, now. Jocylen was not amused. “There’s nothing on it, Private,” he growled. “And that’s your arm that isn’t broken, pick it up so that we can GO.”
“I - I can’t sir,” Sanov said weakly.
“Excuse me?”
“I just can’t sir, it - it - there’s something wrong with it.” Sanov had begun to sweat in fear. Everyone was looking at him, and he could hear several muttering to each other about backwater colonists being inbred and insane.
“What is wrong, can you tell me that?”
There was a very long pause, while Sanov tried to figure out what to do to get out of trouble. Finally he opted for the truth, as odd as it sounded, even to him. “It’s screaming, sir, I don’t know how else to describe it. But it’s screeching at me. When I hold it.”
Jocylen turned the pack over and examined it, clearly looking like he did not believe what the nervous Sanov was saying.
“Sir, the local,” Shea said in the pause.
Uncle was holding the battered pen he had been using, walking up to the pair with his notebook open to be read. ‘What is inside that?’
“Electronics, stripped things, ones that we don’t need at the moment but still work.”
There was a longer pause while his pen scratched out another question. ‘How much did you work with consoles, with small or large power sources on the ship - Could you tell when you were near a main relay?’
Sanov wondered what he was getting at. “I - I never - well I rarely worked with consoles, we had most of our orders verbally, or just the little readout things. Some of the others, they don’t read too well - but everyone can tell that, you can feel the main relays and power junctions from a meter or two away, more if the shielding’s off, it makes your neck prickle and you can - you can . . . it makes a little shriek sound if it’s active, everyone knows that.”
The others from engineering looked like he’d told them the sky here was neon green. “What are you talking about, you moron, I had to spend a whole damned week in that hole and you can’t hear anything, even without the earplugs,” Cevry snapped. “And you can’t feel anything unless something’s overheated and even then you need to have your gloves off to tell before it blows up on you.”
“Yes you can, everyone can t- haven’t any of you felt that? Half my team says it’s as clear as can be, the - the way it - what!?”
Uncle had tapped Sanov's good arm to get his attention, but was still writing in his book. Sanov shut up and waited while Zimmer whispered something to Cevry, though the rest of their exchange was loud enough for them all to hear.
“Punishment duty, stupid. DeCl- um - well, someone busted me for being on duty and - um-”
“What?”
Cevry moved out of her kicking range before he continued. “You know Private Brandan, one of the new medical student-residents that came on board same time I did? Bright red hair, rather short and well-shaped?”
“Who doesn’t? That little tramp has slept her way through half the ship in just 3 mon- oh, don’t tell me. You were caught being ‘overly sociable’ with her instead of working.”
“Kinda.”
Zimmer snorted. “And you only got a week’s punishment? That’s light. Did you not have time to actually start yet?”
“Well - um - I was already done and had gone back to trying to keep watch on the doorway but I couldn’t keep the Lieutenant out when he heard the sounds - the other guys got 3 days in the brig and demoted.”
Zimmer laughed at him and nudged her horse to start down the hill.
Sanov, though extremely nervous, watched this - everyone did - with some amusement, but whatever else might have been said was lost as the local gave him and Jocylen the notebook to read.
“You can’t be serious,” Jocylen said finally. Turning to Sanov, he then asked, “Does this sound plausible to you?”
He had to wait for Sanov to finish slowly reading before answering. “I don’t know, sir, I’ve just about always been around stuff with at least some power in it, but - it might be. That might be what’s wrong, sir.”
“And you never noticed the feeling before?”
“Not screaming, not like that-” Sanov jabbed a finger at the bag Jocylen held “-not really. But I’ve never really been away from current power, not for years, there’s power all over the ship, behind every wall panel almost, it might be like he says and I just never noticed it before. It does sound like - well it doesn’t sound like anything - but it does feel like a littler version of the main junctions, the way it prickles and hurts. Sir, could I switch packs with someone like he suggests? I’ll take something bulky, heavy even, but just not that, sir, I don’t want to have to touch that again.”
There was a lengthy silence - a few ripples of crude laughter from some of the others as Shea told them something - in which Jocylen gestured for Sanov to start walking. “I’m not sure I really believe what he says - what you write, old man - about ‘some people’ being sensitive to power.”
“But sir - half my team, the others - at least half - they can do the same thing, they say it helps them, keeps them from frying their fingers on a live connection, it’s not strange sir, but - but I don’t understand why I was okay yesterday with it.”
Uncle shrugged, and just underlined part of what he’d written in emphasis. ‘The lack here will make it more noticeable.’
“There likely are others who are the same, son. We’ll have to see. But don’t brag about it if so, we’re all tense enough as it is. I’ll switch you with a heap of blankets or something; the horses don’t seem to care what they carry. But you might have trouble once we finally get back to the ship, if this little pack makes you afraid to touch it!”
“Thank you, sir,” Sanov said weakly, rubbing at his sore arm. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
As Jocylen jogged slightly to catch up to the rest, Sanov noticed that the local was giving him a long, hard look. Turning his notebook to the back, he quickly scribbled out, ‘No matter what you must not tell your Captain. There is more - but I cannot explain it now. If you have lost family REMEMBER WHY. Remember this place and keep quiet. I do not think you even know. If you hear the music, then you must not say so!’
Sanov looked at him in bewilderment, but the local just took the book back, quickly ripping out and hiding the page before signing that they needed to catch up to the others.
[How does he know that I’m hallu- oh no.] Sanov realised that he could hear it again, the soft rhythm. One his ears said wasn’t there but his mind says was. [The others could tell where power was too. Fion especially.] An intense fear wrapped itself around his chest, like he was choking suddenly. [It can’t be! I could tell when they were doing it, but I could never do it myself!]
Fearful and in pain, Sanov said nothing to the others for the rest of the hike, just sweated nervously under a heavy pack of blankets. He didn’t gather any fruit, even though there was time at a short lunch break to do so, his stomach hurt too much - all of him hurt too much, he felt cold even while he was sweating. He could hear the music still, though he tried not to listen. He’d never felt so afraid before.
They reached pod 26 late that afternoon.
****