Courser

Ten minutes later, we still hadn’t seen Courser itself.

Its two hounds were still trailing the car too far back for a guaranteed shot. Tasser wasn’t willing to gamble with his limited stock of bolt-rounds.

The pair of animals was keeping a leisurely pace, neither gaining nor losing ground.

Daniel said.

I noted,

To this planet? Oh boy, I wasn’t sure at all. If the animals were native to this planet, did that make this the Casti homeworld? That didn’t seem right though. Too many of the buildings were prefabricated, they had the same basic structural components even if the possible layouts were endless. Even back in the larger settlement where we’d landed, I’d stolen glimpses of buildings with predominantly identical supports—partially exposed and visible from the outside.

< Even if the Casti moved in, there’s an ecosystem here. Even if they built the infrastructure, could they have introduced this much life? >

Either way it had some large implications.

Native or not, the hounds kept after us. Every minute of watching them put a bit of a damper on our off-duty squad theory.

< Unless animals are used more ubiquitously in the Vorak military. >

As usual, we just didn’t know enough yet. And there was no time or room to speculate further.

Then again, the minutes were dragging on and nothing had broken out yet. Just a truck carrying three different flavors of alien being chased by a pair of hounds. From a distance, if I hadn’t been in the middle of it with my life on the line, it would have been pretty amusing.

Daniel decided.

I repeated. It didn’t quite capture the finer details of the animals, but the broad strokes were there. He’d really taken the naming in stride and made a little ritual out of it. Giving names rendered the alien horrors a bit more mortal.

<‘Horrors’? Isn’t that a little melodramatic? > Daniel asked.

He’d joked about the hike Stalker had plagued us earlier. Maybe I was testier about it than I’d first realized.

I knew he was trying to lighten the mood. I even appreciated the effort and attention he placed on my attitude. But playing down what had happened to us was not the way to do it.

By my estimate I was going on three days out of Vorak clutches. The level of acceptance I had of that period was going down with time, not up. Stalker’s hunt was no different.

The more time and distance I had from these events, the less I would tolerate them.

I asked.

I told him, recalling the sight.

<…Shit man. Sorry. I keep forgetting important parts.>

I asked, hauling the conversation back toward our tail.

We rounded a bend in the road that stretched out, only to double back on itself as it wound up the side of the mountain. I’d lost sight of one of the panther-hounds in our wake.

Its pair appeared normally, more than a hundred feet behind our bumper, leaving no trace of the other.

“Tasser.” I said, gesturing for his attention again. “ Ser. ” I said, holding up the same number of fingers. Two hounds it should have been.

My Casti friend started scanning the landscape more intently. If I had a handle on him, Tasser’s eyes were better than mine.

The truck slowed a bit further as we pitched uphill. The snow deepened too as we climbed. In the deepest part of the road’s bend, it probably reached three feet deep. If there hadn’t been trees lining the road, it would have been impossible to see where the road even was.

We were rounding the second zigzag of the road when we finally got another glimpse of the second panther-hound at the bottom. It trailed far behind compared to its fellow, still an uncomfortable distance behind the truck.

They were both benefitting from the compacted trails our tires left in the snow. The first one was closer than ever and keeping pace. So why had the other one held back?

If I had to pick one weakness of mine, it would be the commitment I have in my assumptions. It’s not that I’m bad at reevaluating. I’m just awful at doing it before I make a mistake.

In this case. Ser was my assumption. ‘Two’.

Because I didn’t see the third panther-hound in time.

It leapt up toward the truck. It landed off kilter and plowed into Tasser, knocking him down.

In a panic I tried to kick at the animal, but it snapped toward me before anything connected. Tasser flailed too and caught one of the loose tarps under the animal.

It was utter chaos.

As it flailed around, the panther-hound was a snarling bundle. It twisted back to snap its jaws at Tasser again. But in its haste, it slipped again, getting caught up in the tarp, which only made it struggle even more.

I couldn’t be sure if it was the four-hundred-some-odd pounds shifting the weight in some way, or whether the shock distracted the driver, or something else that I didn’t catch in the moment’s chaos.

Whatever the cause, the truck drifted to the outside of the curving road. I only noticed our line had shifted when the front tire suddenly dipped off the road. The bed of the truck shifted violently beneath us.

Nemuleki pulled hard on the steering handles, careening the vehicle back onto the road, but it was an over correction. The deep snow wasn’t heavy enough to absorb the truck’s shifting momentum and the truck zoomed off the road again, this time onto the downward slope.

If this had happened on the road directly connected to the mining facility, we would have been dead. The truck would have rolled several times, likely crashed into any number of trees and certainly been inoperable afterward. Even the survivors of such a crash would freeze to death.

This section of the mountain road was not so steep, though.

This road’s architects had placed the switchback on a gentle enough incline that our truck didn’t flip.

Of course, the sickening moment as the truck tipped off the road was worse than every roller coaster I’d ever been on combined. Images of red and orange blood smears caking the snow flickered through my mind. For a horrifying second, I thought for sure the truck was going to roll and after everything Daniel and I had survived so far, we’d just die in an auto accident.

Instead, the truck’s wheels locked up and it began plowing downhill. It remained upright, but the hectic glance I caught of the cabin told me that Nemuleki was not in control of the vehicle.

The truck slid down the slope, slamming sideways into a tree on the way down. Our careening slide was finally arrested when we lurched into the shallow ditch on the uphill side of the road.

We were setback only a few hundred feet down the road and around the same bend. But it felt like a few hundred miles.

Daniel asked.

I hadn’t even realized the Casti was no longer in the truck. Both he and the panther-hound weren’t here. They had to have fallen out somewhere uphill.

My backpack and the bolt-rifle were both still in the back of the truck, so Tasser was unarmed up there.

Nemuleki spilled out of the driver’s seat onto the snow. They couldn’t be in good condition. They’d been caught in a bomb earlier this very morning. Even Nai. It wasn’t visibly injured like the rest of us, but it was still debilitated in some Enumius way that I didn’t understand. We were running ourselves ragged. I couldn’t go much longer before I broke. Even if I felt like I should have broken already, it didn’t make the eventuality any more acceptable.

Worse still, when Nemuleki tried to fiddle with one of the switches on the truck’s dashboard, the vehicle only made a harsh grinding sound. It was an alien car, sure. But it wasn’t that hard of a sequence to recognize.

Somewhere in the descent, the car’s engine had died.

Things kept going wrong. Couldn’t we catch more of a break than ‘we didn’t get crushed to a bloody paste in a car wreck’?

We’d been harried by stupid alien otters for days. Every single one of us was bloodied and beaten. I didn’t want to think about the increasing possibility of another Casti’s brain exploding in front of me.

How much longer would we need to keep this up for?

Daniel said, trying to encourage me.

I imagined some Vorak sitting up on a satellite platform looking at a futuristic screen with a bird’s eye view of us, directing its dogs.

I clenched my eyes shut for a moment, trying to collect myself.

I said. Maybe it wasn’t even one more. I doubted the Vorak actually had us on satellite, because if they did, why wouldn’t they have more goons on us by now? But the possibility that Courser might not need to be close was not out of the question.

Daniel was right. Now wasn’t the time to distract myself. I’d survived two Enumius Vorak already, three panther-hounds couldn’t possibly be worse.

From our position down the hill, it was easier to see how we’d been caught off guard. Our truck’s slide down the slope wasn’t the only disturbance in the otherwise pristine snow. There was a second, much thinner, trail where the second panther-hound had torn up the mountain the direct way.

A four-legged animal didn’t need to take the road’s switchbacks.

And directing them it was. We didn’t hear anything; we were more than a hundred feet downhill from Tasser. The snow absorbed any sound. But on the road, I did spy puffs of snow being strewn upward, like a violent struggle was happening.

I didn’t climb up the outside of a frozen four story building just to let Tasser die an hour later. I could pick my way up the slope, following the trail the truck carved in the powder.

“Caylob!” Nemuleki said at me, grabbing my shoulder when I went to move and yanking me backward.

“Mamor.” They said firmly, pushing me back toward the truck. Nemuleki retrieved the bolt rifle from the back and cracked it open to confirm it was loaded. That’s right, the rest of the ammunition was on Tasser’s belt. Nemuleki had one shot with the gun.

They would have had more than that, but they took their pistol and placed it in Nai’s unconscious hands.

The Farnata alien had somehow remained unconscious through this whole fiasco.

Nemuleki stared daggers at me and repeated themselves, “Ma. Mor.” enunciating each syllable. Not unlike a threat… I didn’t feel the need to guess at their meaning.

Stay.

“It’s unconscious. You’re really going to leave the gun with it?” I asked. I was fully cognizant that Nemuleki didn’t understand a word of it. But I did point at the pistol, and Nemuleki put their hand up to interrupt me again.

“Ala.”

Instead, Nemuleki bade for me to climb back into the back of the truck and hunker down under one of the tarps.

“Mamor!” They said.

“I get it!” I hissed. “Stay! Mamor !”

Nemuleki pulled the tarp over me and adopted the same strategy I had intended to use; carefully picking their way up the section of snow the truck had plowed through. Thinking about it more, it might have been just as fast to go up and around the long way. Even without as much of the powder, if Nemuleki slipped, they would probably slide all the way back down to the truck.

< Well considering before… >

I cut Daniel off. I didn’t need him to spell out the likelihood that it was the other way around. An unconscious alien-of-mass-destruction made for a polarizing chaperone. There was no middle ground. Nai was either comatose or monstrous.

I hunkered down in the truck, trying not to think about what would happen if Nai woke up and Tasser and Nemuleki weren’t nearby. Would it bother making it’s teal-fire or would it just shoot me?

Even thinking about getting the gun for myself gave me shivers. With my luck, Nai would wake up the very second I put my hand on the weapon and then I would be dust.

, A flicker at the edge of my awareness cut him off. A single thought synchronized between us.

Even further down the slope, on the next switchback beneath this one, we’d caught an emanation for a moment. It hadn’t been for more than a second, but we’d felt an Enumius alien at the very edge of my radar’s range.

It figured Courser was nearby. I’d let myself hope we would only need contend with the panther-hounds.

Daniel said, < Try to calm down. Don’t do anything reckless.>

“” I said the words within my mind, and out loud. A mantra to try and do what Daniel suggested. Deep breaths, focusing on pressing goals, avoiding negative thinking. I needed to do those kinds of things.

I said,

Daniel said,

Even as Daniel began to ape pessimism, there was the tiniest shift in my own mind. I would never have noticed it if I hadn’t specifically mentioned it just a moment earlier. It was like the… the slightest hint… the barest promise of a light at the end of the tunnel, without actually being able to see any such hope.

I admitted, equal parts disturbed and fascinated by what was happening in my own mind.

I said.

I peeked out at the mountain, trying to figure out how far away Courser was. It was outside my radar’s range, but it was broad daylight, and I hadn’t run into a Vorak that blended into pure white snow yet.

The dark coloration of the panther-hounds also stuck out. It wasn’t hard to see the third one on the road. It glanced back and forth between up and down the road.

We were all up the road, so whatever it was glancing at down the road had to be Courser.

No way could I handle an animal like that plus a Vorak. Nai needed to wake up now .

I banged a fist on the truck cabin.

“Nai!” I said. “Wake up!”

Nai didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual. But when presented with the choices of attacking me and attacking Stalker, Nai had picked Stalker. I had to trust that there were aliens it hated more than me. Or at least ones that it wanted to hurt more immediately.

Of course, this depended on Nai waking up. Which it didn’t.

I thought.

< I know you’re not a fan of being too close to it, but you might need to shake it or something. >

I didn’t argue. Courser would be here any second now. I got out from under my hiding tarp and slunk around the truck to Nai’s door. Even when I cracked the door open, the Farnata remained motionless.

Daniel muttered absentmindedly.

I responded. Except it was him trying to keep himself from consuming more valuable focus in my mind.

“Nai.” I said, “Vorak. Close. Come on!”

Against my better judgement, I grabbed its shoulders and tried to shake it awake. Nothing.

I thought.

“Nai!”

A glance down the road showed the third panther-hound rounding the corner onto our stretch of the switchback. I frowned for a second. Courser should have been with it…

In a vehicle. Courser would have been with it if it had wheels. Was Courser on foot like the dogs? That didn’t really buy much time, but it was strange.

I tried shaking Nai awake some more. I wasn’t sure how forcefully I could try without injuring it. The Farnata’s body was a tad lighter than it looked. Not to the same degree as the Casti, but still certainly the opposite of the Vorak with their density.

If I didn’t know better, I might have made the mistake of calling the alien ‘fragile’.

“Nai!” I was nearly shouting, but the alien wasn’t reacting at all. “” I said, putting some verbal thought into it without thinking.

Nai’s face twitched.

I froze.

No way.

Nothing. The Farnata didn't react this time.

I was going to die any second now, and my only hope was an alien that might just kill me the moment it woke up.

Peeking my head over the road showed me that Courser was in fact in sight of the truck now. I ducked down immediately after getting a glimpse.

The Vorak was indeed on foot, in the same uniform as the first two, and looking mean. It was a big Vorak. Nearly the same size as me, which cleanly put it in the ‘walking tiger’ weight class. And because there weren’t enough things against me yet, it was armed.

I hadn’t looked very long, but it had been enough time to recognize the shape of a long two-tone grey rifle in its arms. It wasn’t the bulky alien looking weapon Tasser carried, but it was still unmistakably a gun.

This was so not going to work.

“”

Nai still didn’t stir.

“” I said, “”

Daniel said. < Think of it this way, you’re receptive to… ‘something’ when it’s awake right?>

…what? Was that even possible? Nai wasn’t conscious right now. I barely sensed it at all, even inches away.

Daniel said.

I had nothing to lose. The mental mirror was easily identifiable, even manipulable, in my head. And even if the ‘signal’ from Nai was weak on the verge of nothing, it wasn’t actually nothing. There was something there.

Would the mirror even work on it? Would Nai even be able to tell if it did?

To my simultaneous shock, horror, relief, and fascination Nai unmistakably did react. Stress tensed up in the alien’s face. It wasn’t awake, but it felt… something.

And wasn’t that just the most chilling thing?

I felt like the ground might fall out from under me again, but I didn’t have time to wrestle with the implications.

I left the mirror with Nai.

It was already done before I realized how I did it. Even having just done it, I didn’t know how exactly. But I felt where the emanations from Nai were, and I saw that I could hold the mirror up to them and leave it there.

That wasn’t all though. I pulled the tarps from the back of the truck, catching another glimpse of Courser down the road. It had entered my radar’s range. Now I really only had seconds.

I pulled Nai out of the passenger seat onto the tarp in the snow.

Interesting thing about the ethereally un-dense snow on this planet, you could basically just shove things into it, and have them disappear. I folded the tarp over Nai, double checked the mental mirror was still… in place?

I didn’t have the words to describe what I’d done with it. But with Nai wrapped in the tarp as best I could, I shoved its body into the snow right beside the truck.

Neither the tarp nor their body was visible.

Good. Even if Courser searched the truck, it might not find Nai immediately. This was such a bad idea. I was gambling on forces well beyond my understanding or control—the flimsiest chance that my wordless intuition was reliable about these things.

But I had no better options.

Neither did Daniel, apparently.

I said.

He said, not elaborating.

Daniel mentally gave me a nod.

Another wordless nod, and I felt my image of the timer’s button press. If the timer started, then Daniel would be AWOL again. Time to see if I could really keep myself from losing it.

I’d done it before hadn’t I?

Both tarps had been removed from the truck. I’d already wrapped Nai in one, and I fully intended to use the other. I quickly folded it over itself several times and used it as a sort of blanket for my hands.

I needed to buy time for Nai to wake up. The best way to do that was to run, and get Courser to chase me. I dreaded it. But it wasn’t any different from the situation before, just a bit more… individual.

Courser had a gun. If I let it see me, it would shoot me. But it had to chase me more. If it didn’t, it would pick us off one by one. How could I get it to see me and chase me?

Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe in order to have a chance at winning, I needed to risk getting shot.

Daniel didn’t have to say anything for me to know he wouldn’t like that.

There was another option.

One I hadn’t tried yet. Stalker hadn’t given us the chance. Although Trapper actually had seemed to at the beginning…

I moved to put as much truck between me and Courser as possible before poking my folded tarp up over the hood.

“Vorak!” I yelled. It was still far enough that the snow still muffled the lion’s, or maybe the panther’s, share of the sound. My air mask probably wasn’t doing me any favors either.

But Courser did hear me.

It also didn’t shoot the tarp, which was a good first sign.

I poked my hand out and waved, agonizingly aware my hand might be about to take a bullet. But no gunshot happened.

A promising follow-up.

This next part was the riskiest. In one quick dart, I poked my head up and instantly dropped back down.

What I saw let me take a steady breath.

Courser was standing between one and two-hundred feet behind the truck with its third panther-hound right next to it. And it hadn’t raised the rifle like it was going to shoot me.

Yet anyway.

I rose back up into view, and Courser still wasn't ready to fire.

“Vorak!” I shouted again, seeing if it might say something back. It actually was, but I couldn’t hear from this distance.

It seemed to recognize that I hadn’t heard it and started walking closer.

“Whoa, whoa…” I said, holding up a hand and taking a few steps backward. Courser tilted its head at me. It was hard to make out expressions at this distance.

I cupped a hand to my ear and the Vorak seemed to get the gesture, and raised its voice.

“Mo tuen nas?”

Uhhh… rats.

Funny thing was, I actually knew exactly what it had said. Mo ; ‘are/am’, tuen ; ‘you’, and nas ; ‘what’. Shuffling the grammar into English, Courser had asked ‘what are you?’

And the problem I’d just given myself was that I was in no way prepared to answer.

“Uhhh…” I began eloquently, “ Alala… ” what was the name of this language? Daniel could have checked faster than me, but I had to look through the journal pages myself. I didn’t want to risk something shutting him down. So far the timer hadn’t started, he was still conscious, however feeble, holding the button down.

The word was… “Sasat.” I said, “Alala Sasat.”

Courser gave me another look that I felt safe interpreting as ‘baffled’, even at this distance. It was what I was going for.

Stalker had come across two armed Casti, a fire slinging Farnata, and me. It had been ready for battle from minute one. Trapper had similarly found all four of us.

Courser, though, had only seen me.

And one of the things I’d come to notice interacting with aliens, is that I was an alien too.

Tasser was far and away the steadiest alien ally I had. Enough that it didn’t feel like a reach to call it an ally. But even then, he wasn’t just suddenly known to me. There were moments I thought he was worried I might vomit acid on him or something.

I was sure it hadn’t seen Nai, and the air on the mountain was practically still. There wasn’t a breeze to carry any scent toward its hound.

So from Courser’s perspective, it found a truck with a strange alien failing to talk to it. It’s hounds couldn’t talk. They must not have been wired with cameras either. Because it seemed like Courser was open to the idea that I had been driving this truck all on my lonesome.

My mother was in the Air Force, and she’d told me about what constituted a war crime.

Technically, I might be committing one. Perfidy, that is, false surrender. Except I hadn’t surrendered. And didn’t plan to. It wasn’t my fault the Vorak had gone and abducted people with a language barrier.

“La Sasat?” Courser asked, its voice loud enough to hear easily.

I nodded. “Su, su. Alala Sasat.” I really didn’t speak the language even though I’d exclusively spoken alien words with this Vorak.

Despite the fact I might be shot, or mauled by a panther-hound, I was just blithely trying to talk down an alien otter.

Surreal.

Courser tugged a thin but blocky shaped item on a cord around its neck and put its mouth onto it. I didn’t hear anything, but upon the action, the panther-hound next to Courser let out a short pair of barks.

Two more pairs of barks rang out from the next stretch of road above us. It was a reminder that every second here was a moment that Tasser and Nemuleki were fighting the other animals. How many rounds left had there been for the rifle?

If I remembered right, one for Courser and each of the dogs.

Courser gave a glance uphill, maybe not able to see the faint signs of a scuffle I did. When it looked back at me, I got the feeling it was seriously entertaining shooting me.

“Nas tuen—" it began.

The sound of the Castis’ bolt-rifle interrupted Courser who dropped low and raised its gun reflexively.

Well that certainly changed Courser’s tune. In one second, it had gone from disarmingly baffled to business .

It seemed like it might have thought about pointing its gun at me. Instead, it barked a command at panther-hound no.3 and broke uphill, following Nemuleki’s own route. I wasn’t shot, and the aliens with the guns weren’t pointing them at me right now.

Courser wasn’t taking the time to search the truck. We had a shot.

I’d said it too much already, but Nai really had to wake up now.

Panther-hound no.3 reacted to Courser’s bark, a command, and broke into a full on run straight at me.

I didn’t hesitate this time. I’d been ready from the start.

I ran.