Chains of Mist (14 page)

Roger threw himself to the ground, rolling once and springing back to his feet. He saw a flash of motion and struck out with his club. The weapon connected with a sickening
crunch
, sending the native sprawling to the ground. He landed and did not move again.

Roger didn’t have time to savor his victory. Another man, taller than Roger and clothed in a material that camouflaged him almost perfectly with the forest, was suddenly on top of him, jabbing with a flint-tipped spear. Roger barely dodged, enough to save his life but not enough to keep the spear from smashing into his side. The nano-weave lining in his jacket absorbed the worst of it, blunting the blade enough to keep it from stabbing through his kidney, but he still felt shooting pain lance through him. As he sank to his knees with a gasp, his brain registered with shock that the natives who had attacked him was
Human.
A little taller than normal, perhaps—no doubt a result of Espir’s lower gravity—but otherwise little different from the inhabitants of Tellaria, Despasan, or any of a hundred other worlds throughout the galaxy.

That’s why I thought the name Espir was familiar. There are Humans here—not just close approximations, but the real thing. I thought it was just a myth, some faked-up special that the researchers used to drum up sponsors…but here they are.

Just my luck…to run into the most dangerous animal of them all.

More warriors appeared, too many for Roger to count. He gripped his weapon, eyes sweeping over his attackers, waiting for them to make their move.
Come and get me. I’ll take all of you, all at once or one at a time. Take your pick—

He never even saw the man behind him. All he felt was a sharp blow to his head before he fell into unconsciousness.

-7-

Austin awoke to the shrill cries of birds and the resonant hums of the forest. Opening his eyes, he found himself staring up at a canopy of green and red and orange, a thousand different hues swaying gently in the breeze. He inhaled, and tasted an intoxicating aroma of earthy smells, as gently comforting as a parent’s embrace. He tried to move his head, found that he couldn’t, and then wondered why he would want to.
What could possibly be more comfortable than this? I could just stay here forever.

Closing his eyes, he took several more deep breaths, filling his lungs with the sweet forest air. Gradually, he became aware of dull aches in his arms, legs, torso—
everywhere, really
—but the pain seemed somehow distant, as if it were happening to someone else. It was certainly not troublesome enough to make him move, even if he could.
Probably some spinal damage,
noted a remote corner of his mind.
That’s a shame.

As Austin lay there, slender rodent-like creatures no larger than his palm scurried all around him, chittering madly and carrying away for some unknown purpose the yellow, star-shaped leaves that lay sprinkled liberally across the forest floor. A few of the more adventurous ones crawled onto Austin’s legs and chest, investigating him with long, hairy noses. One even dared to venture all the way to his face. Its fur had a bitter scent, and its prickly whiskers tickled Austin’s nose and caused him to sneeze, an action that was excruciatingly painful for Austin and which sent the tiny furry beasts scrambling for cover. They left him alone after that.

Seeing the rodents reminded Austin that this part of Espir was supposedly home to several very large and very nasty predators. One of them, a giant lizard-like creature called a koffa, had a predilection for attacking lone, helpless prey. As that was a description that fit him perfectly at the moment, Austin reasoned that he should probably think about getting up and finding someplace less exposed. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Caring would require energy, and right now he had none of that.
There’ll be plenty of time to worry about it later,
he decided.
Now, rest…

Luck was on Austin’s side, however, for no roving predators came by to turn him into their lunch. For a long time he simply lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. Slowly the pain permeating his body grew, until finally, sometime just past mid-day, he shook off the haze of sleep to realize that he was no longer comfortable. Experimentally he flexed his fingers, and the digits bent with the stiff sluggishness of poorly oiled gears. Reassured that he was not, in fact, paralyzed, he rolled over and raised himself painfully to a sitting position. Cautiously, he ran his hands along his legs and back, checking for points of extreme pain that would indicate a break, but miraculously he found none. Looking back up at the trees above him, he saw the tattered remains of his parachute hanging limply from the branches and realized that it, along with the light but tough fiber armor that he’d been wearing when he’d jumped, had slowed his descent just enough to make the landing non-lethal.
Hurts like hell—but the pain means that at least I’m still alive.

Wearily, Austin stripped off what was left of the parachute harness and dug through his rucksack for some painkillers.
Okay, so the good news is, I’m alive and relatively unharmed. The bad news is, I went ahead and got myself separated from the two survival experts, and am now stranded in a jungle somewhere with limited supplies and possibly enemies all around me. So the question is: what do I do now?

Austin mulled over his options. There were really only two choices: he could either stay where he was feeling sorry for himself and wait for the others to rescue him, or he could continue with the mission. The decision was so obvious that Austin was a bit ashamed that he’d even had to think it over.
If it was the Black General or Admiral Ortega in my place, they’d already be on the move for Nembane Mountain—they wouldn’t just sit around and wait to be rescued like some spoiled tourist, and I can’t either. If I were here on Guild business, I sure as hell wouldn’t just wait around for Justin or whoever else I was working with to bail me out. The Admiral trusted me enough to include me in the mission on Leva and enough to take me along to Espir—it’s pretty safe to say that I’ll lose his trust and respect if he has to dig me out of every minor problem I get myself into.

Besides,
he reminded himself, his expression growing grim,
when it comes down to it I’m not here for the Admiral—and I’m
certainly
not here for that damned Vizier. I’m here for Justin, and every moment I sit here is one more moment that he has to suffer at the hands of that monster. I’m coming, Justin—and that’s a promise.

Having made his decision, Austin rummaged through his rucksack to see exactly what he had at his disposal to help him get to Nembane Mountain. He had a few travel-sized water bottles—one of which he drained immediately and gratefully—and some unappetizing-looking military-issue survival rations. He had a breathing mask, a small piece of fabric designed to be stretched across the nose and mouth with tiny but powerful filters that could extract oxygen from water. He was relieved to find a short pulseblade and a small par-gun, ensuring that he would not be totally helpless if he did run into any of the planet’s larger predators. He found a comm, but based on the fact that the device’s casing had shattered and its insides were spilling out like the seeds of a cored kejelha, it was a safe bet that it was no longer functional. A handheld personal navigator had suffered a similar fate.
Going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,
thought Austin as he packed both devices securely back in his bag.

Fortunately, neither technological aid nor the numerous physical maps also packed in the rucksack would be necessary.
No, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to find Nembane Mountain,
thought Austin with a wry smile. Tilting his head upwards, he stared at the canopy of trees over his head. The cover was reasonably thick, allowing only a limited view of the surrounding environment, but he could still see Nembane Mountain towering over him.
Fortunately for me, that mountain’s so tall that I bet I could see it from a hundred kilometers away.
He chuckled in spite of himself at this tiny break of good fortune. “No,” he said, rubbing his back and wincing. “
Finding
Nembane Mountain isn’t going to be a problem at all.”

“
Ak pona
?” came a sudden voice from behind him. “
Ke dola merata
?”

At the first sound, Austin’s hand instinctively went for his blade, but his conscious mind stopped him before he drew the weapon. If the speaker had hostile intentions, there had already been ample time to strike while Austin had been lying unconscious.
Besides, that didn’t sound like a warrior talking—or even an adult.
The high-pitched tone and cheerful innocence were unmistakably that of a child. And indeed, when Austin turned towards the speaker, that was exactly what he found—a young girl of perhaps eight or nine, seated atop a boulder with her legs dangling freely over the lip.

A young
Human
girl.

She had long dark hair and skin tanned nearly red from constant exposure to the intense ultraviolet radiation of Espir’s blue star. She was thin without being gaunt, with gangly limbs that seemed slightly too large for the rest of her body. A thin slip of some kind of weathered animal skin covered her from her shoulders down to just past her knees. Her feet were bare, the skin tough and calloused. She looked down at Austin with wide, curious brown eyes.

When the Vizier had informed Austin of their destination, he had called Espir a ‘scientific curiosity.’ This was what he had been referring to—the tribes of natives who called the planet home. They were hunter-gatherers with a few basic agricultural techniques and almost no manufacturing to speak of. Their technological level had remained stable for the five hundred or so years since Federation surveyors had first explored the Espirian system, and there was no indication that this would change soon; near-constant warfare among the tribes, combined with the ever-present danger from the large predators who roamed the prairies and forests, left little time and energy for technological advancement.

The existence of a pre-space-age people did not make Espir unique; the Federation knew of a handful of other such races, and there could very well be hundreds more yet undiscovered. However, the people here were
Human
—identical to the Federation Race not just superficially but genetically as well. Every scientist of repute agreed that the only explanation for their existence on Espir was that they were the descendants of a lost colony ship launched from Tellaria during the early days of Human interstellar travel. There was simply no way for two genetically identical races to independently evolve half a galaxy apart—there had to be a connection between the two, and a lost colony ship was the only theory that made any kind of sense.

Except that it was also impossible. Federation archaeologists had found artifacts—and, more tellingly, biological remains—on Espir dating from over ten thousand years ago, several millennia before the first colony ships had launched. However Humans had come to be here, it could not be via a Tellarian colony ship. Most scientists had effectively given up on the entire business as hopeless, especially since the intense funding, both Federation and private, which had originally gone towards the study of the Espirian tribes had long since dried up. Espir, which had once captivated the galaxy enough that the Federation had designated it as off-limits to any without official sanction, was now barely more than a footnote within various small scientific communities. As far as Austin knew, no one from the outside galaxy had been to Espir in over two hundred years, and few now even knew of its existence.

The two of them stared at each other for several long moments. Then the girl spoke again: “
Erta colo belara
?
Dara te lo kahana
!”

At first, Austin wasn’t sure how to react. He didn’t know the local language, and this girl certainly would not be fluent in Federation Standard.
But then again
, he realized suddenly,
we don’t need to know each other’s languages. Someone else has already done that work for us.

Moving very slowly, so as not to alarm the girl, Austin reached into his pack and began to rummage around. Within a few moments, he found what he was looking for—two objects, one of them disc-shaped and about the size of his thumb and the other a flat square barely larger than a grain of sand that was attached to a tiny needle. He inserted the first into his ear and implanted the second—wincing against the sharp prick of pain—into his neck just below his chin.

The girl waited, leaning forward so that it appeared that she was about to fall right off of her perch. Her eyes sparkled in the morning light, and a raptured expression stretched across her face. She was obviously intrigued by what Austin was doing, for when she spoke again, her voice was soft and full of wonder. This time, however, Austin understood her. “What is that?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

Austin breathed a sigh of relief. The translating technology encased within the audio receiver in his ear and the vocal modulator nestled up against his larynx had been designed millennia ago by the insectoid Erigion, whose vocal cords could not replicate the sounds produced by the other species they had encountered. Nowadays, the Erigion were still the primary users of that technology, but the devices could be programmed to support any known language. Austin whispered a silent thanks to whatever researchers had accepted the tedious task of documenting the local languages during the initial surveys of Espir
. And also that the language obviously has stayed stable enough for the translators to recognize it even hundreds of years later.