Episode 8 - Symbiosis

  Chapter 71 - The Lupus and the Garuda

  “Crisp! Fresh vegetables!” exclaims a small woman with eyeglasses under her face shield and a thick-bodied Crotalus wrapped around her neck. The Crotalus is diamond-headed, with prominent eyebrow-ridges and a slim rattle at the end of its tail, which it holds erect by her ear. Its body is crisscrossed with a dark purple herringbone on grey-beige. “This our new scout?” she asks.

  Wesley pulls the wagon in behind one of the larger trailers. He slides open the roller door at the back and flicks a switch to turn on a pair of fans that blow outwards.

  “Here, help load this into the airlock. This is Adelyn, one of our twitchers. Adelyn, Conrada. Help her settle in, would ya,” introduces Wesley dismissively. “Captain around?”

  “He’s been waiting for Captain Rattakul to get back so we can discuss the route from here. Last I heard, we were gonna stop by a wreck on the way to All-Markets, short detour though, need to recharge the batteries sooner rather than later.”

  I hold my tongue. Pooka is just an Equus here. I test my injured hand against the handle of one box, the padding of my bandages and rubber gloves distribute the pressure away from my healing blisters well enough and I follow Wesley’s lead hefting the boxes from the back of his wagon, sliding them onto the back of the trailer.

  “Get all this loaded and then update the manifest for me. I expect the Captain wants to move as soon as we can. Help the new scout find some gear for her Equus after this; our loaner came without.”

  Wesley jumps down from the back of the trailer and disappears around the side. Adelyn promptly offers me one of her hands.

  “I’m Adelyn, I go by Addie. It’s nice to meet you! You have an Equus? I have a Crotalus. Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite. What color is it?”

  I blink. “What?”

  “Your Equus? What color is it? I like to imagine all the symbionts around camp as part of our crew and know who has what. I think they express something about the people they bond to, their colors and species and powers, like they have clues to tell us all who we truly are if we knew how to read them! Did you know there are historians in some circles who reckon only certain people had symbionts? They foretold the weather and listened for natural disasters, reserving their powers in moderation. Can you imagine having so much energy you didn’t need a symbiont?”

  “Uh…” I look at Pooka who swishes his tail restlessly, his head still trained towards the Garuda, entranced by this new brother. I’m not sure which of her questions to address, she goes from one to the next, obviously not expecting any answer. “Black, I guess.”

  Adelyn nods knowingly, as if this has explained many things. “Black I feel is a heavy color, full of weights and secrets. I think a black Equus more so, something so dark and powerful and fast would be full of terrible secrets. I’m sorry. Was that mean? I don’t want to pry.”

  “I don’t think it’s that deep,” I reply, lowering the last storage tote into the back of the airlock. “What’s a twitcher?”

  “It’s a bit of a rude word for us science types. We get all excited by discoveries, so they call us ‘twitchers’. I don’t mind. No one really means it.”

  “Where’s this manifest the Bosun wanted completed? What do you do?” I ask, sitting on the edge of the trailer.

  “I’m officially our antiques expert, but I dabble in ceramics, art, and jewelry. A bit of everything that might be valuable, really. Then there’s Carol, he’s our resident botanist and lichenologist. And Terri, she’s into electronics and materials. Oh, we need to clean up. Let me show you how to pass through the airlock. Do you have a bad hand? Do you need help with the boxes?”

  Addie climbs up to the platform with me and draws the roller doors down behind us, plunging us into dimly lit darkness. She flicks a few switches on the fans, turning some off and some new ones on, and hands me a handled brush. “Can you work? Is that rude?” she asks.

  I grunt. She seems a skittish little thing but harmless. “I can, probably can’t lift anything too heavy,” I reply.

  “Okay! So, uh, brush everything down, yourself too. See here,” - she indicates a small number on a sensor on one wall that is currently hovering in the 400s but rapidly decreasing - “We wait for the air to clear till it’s down to the 20s.”

  I follow along with Addie, brushing down my environmental suit and every surface of the tubs as well, watching the fans draw the settled white dust up into the exhausts. In only a few minutes, the number on the LED screen drops to the low teens. Addie flicks the fans off with manual switches on the control panel and slides the roller door up to the rest of the trailer. “Alright, we can go in now. Masks can come off too!” announces Addie.

  I look down the length of the trailer in curiosity as my good hand fumbles on the straps over my head. The section closest to us is stacked with shelving, boxes of rations like the ones we bought with us all carefully arranged and dated. The majority are long-life meal-cakes, but there is a sparse mix of canned goods as well. Close to the airlock is a hanger for environmental suits, all labelled with names on the collar, and small cubbies with boots, gloves, and respirators hanging in them. Most are currently empty.

  The next section appears to be a small mess area, with a selection of benches and tabletops secured upright with clips. Seats are stacked and strapped against one wall to secure them during movement, with more cans and supplies stuffed between every nook and cranny available. At the end, there is a curtain and what might be sleeping areas. The entire trailer is only a few meters across, but longer than a train's passenger carriage.

  I take a deep breath, enjoying the first gasp of air without the smothering presence of the silicone face mask around my nose and mouth. It feels refreshing even if it is uncomfortably hot. Addie does the same, a red line around the edge of her face where the seal sat on her skin. She adjusts her glasses and pulls a small tablet down from the wall.

  “Get your suit off, too stuffy to wear in here. You can use… this cubby for your stuff.” She hands me the tablet. “Can you write everything down as I count it out?”

  I tap the screen on, reviewing the spreadsheet that appears. I need little instruction to follow the example set by previous entries, and Addie gets to work stacking the supplies we’ve bought onto the shelves and calling out the counts to update the manifest.

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  As we get to the end, the empty totes all get stacked inside each other to clean up, and only my bag of belongings remains. Addie frowns as she looks at it. “Just dump it down in the sitting area for now; I don’t know which bed the Bosun wants to assign you to.”

  “He said you would find me gear for my Equus?” I ask.

  “Yeah, another trailer. This and the one with the yellow stripe are the residential habitats for the general crew. Captain has his own trailer, and the Bosun, Quartermaster and Navigator all share another. Everything else is storage - oh, except for the green trailers. Toilets, they stink. Gotta take our organics with us.”

  An electronic buzz interrupts, and Wesley’s voice carries through a speaker. “Oi, bring the new Scout out. Captain wants to meet her.”

  Addie crosses the trailer to a control panel and presses a red button. “Copy, we’ll be out in a jiff! Alright, suit up again. Is your hand gonna be an issue, getting in and out?”

  I gingerly step back into the suit, nudging the sides up my torso with my bad hand and pulling the central zip with my good. “I’ll manage.”

  “You’ll get quick at it soon enough. We can find you better under-layers as well. You’ll give yourself heatstroke in those bubbler clothes.”

  Fortunately, we do not need to repeat all the steps of the airlock going the other way.

  A gruff male voice drifts through the doorway of the tent that is assembled on one side of the circular trailer camp Wesley leads me to next. “You giving him a place to run to will never teach him to grow a proper spine.”

  “And your constant disappointment is any better? Look at your second boy, you did a great job with him, Lyall.” The sarcastic voice that replies is a deep feminine voice, husky with age.

  “You will not question my parenting decisions. Boys need to be treated with a heavier hand than girls-”

  “Oh, that’s a load of shit. I’ve raised six grandkids now, and the first great-grandkids on the way. And I’ve not cocked any of ‘em up the way you have. He’ll be fine with me, and we’ll keep him away from your crews.”

  Wesley pops the door of the tent open, and ushers me in. “Captains, this is the new Scout from Aquila - Conrada Dorrien,” he says.

  There is a folding table in the center of the tent, with a few electronic devices and a map projected against the back wall in the dim lighting. On the left is an immense man in his fifties. His respirator covers his face, but there is a familiarity to the shape of his jaw and the wild mane of dark hair on his head.

  He’s not quite the man from Adrian’s memories, twenty something years of age have left their mark compared to the beast I remember. But he remains an imposing, charismatic figure nonetheless. Beneath his eye shield, I recognize unmistakable cobalt-blue eyes. Rhett got none of his father’s height, but he at least got his physique. The man is huge despite his age, giving even Blake a run for his money. This must be Captain Moreau then.

  Behind him sits a Lupus. Her long forelimbs are crossed delicately, blue eyes watching me as I enter. Her moist dark nose twitches as her ears flicker my way. She’s significantly larger than a Canis, almost pure black, with a silvering of her coat on her muzzle, her paws, and the tip of her tail.

  To the right is an old woman, easily in her seventies and certainly among one of the oldest humans I have ever seen. Retirement varies with company policies, but once people can no longer work, retirement can be rather peaceful, taking advantage of the healthcare large companies guarantee. At the end, we are all recycled - sometimes burned or composted and separated into base elements by symbionts. Nothing organic can ever be wasted.

  This woman does not look interested in such a retirement. Her environmental suit has a lowered hood that sags down her back, revealing a bun of once-black hair streaked with steely silver. She is bowed with age, gripping a cane in one hand, but her dark, almond-shaped eyes lock onto me with unnerving directness. She gives a single cackle of mean laughter. “All that hot-air and you never told me you went running back to Regina?”

  “She’s a loaner, cheap one too. Regina still fucking owes me,” mumbles Captain Moreau. His Lupus lifts one lip back over her teeth. Behind them both, I spot a thinner, olive-skinned man fussing with the maps, who looks over his shoulder at me once with an eyebrow raised, then turns back to his study.

  I clear my throat.

  “What’s your symbiont, girl?” asks the older woman, who I am guessing is Captain Rattakul.

  “An Equus -”

  “Captain,” instructs Wesley.

  “Captain,” I repeat.

  She sniffs dismissively. “What the fuck does Regina need an Equus for?”

  “I don’t bloody know. She came cheap, and with some of the heaviest fucking contract terms I’ve ever heard of. Regina is still every bit the foul-bitch she always was, what’d you do to piss her off?” asks Moreau.

  Well, I can’t tell them the truth - that I electrocuted her. I somehow think these crews might find that funny and not hold it against me, but I am hesitant to lend them any trust yet. They certainly have no love for Rhett.

  “Kept on breaking things,” I say, figuring it a close compromise between truth and lie.

  “What kind of things?” continues Moreau.

  “Uh, lab equipment. Stuff from the armory or on the job. Does it matter?”

  Rattakul gives a bitter laugh. Moreau sucks in a breath; I can hear his respirator hiss. “You have as much attitude as she always had. Yes, it matters, especially if you are going to cause trouble with my crew. Fucking great, the loaner is a handful. Regina’s eyes were always too big for even her to handle. She’d set fire to her own head if she thought it made her brighter than someone else,” he grumbles. He turns to Rattakul. “Can you lend one of your scouts to show her the ropes?” booms Moreau.

  “All that mouthing off and you want a favor now?” snipes Rattakul in reply.

  Underneath Moreau, the Lupus gets to her feet, nose twitching, and takes a step towards me. It takes all my self-control not to look at her and to keep my position planted in place. Captain Moreau knits his eyebrows together under his mask in a familiar way. “She might have bloody cheated me as well. Doesn’t smell like any Equus I’ve run into before…”

  My heart suddenly stops in my chest, and I hold my breath. Pinned in place, my lips move but no words come out. Before I can stutter out an explanation, Rattakul speaks. “Calm down, Lyall. Regina’s a sly little thing, but she’s no cheat.”

  “It’s tied up outside in a visibility harness,” says Wesley. “Not sure what else would be that size ‘cept an Equus.”

  I watch Rattakul silently, the woman continuing to regard me with a dark curiosity I find unsettling. She uncurls one fist from her walking cane and slaps the table with it. “She can ride with Scout Davidson, she’ll get her sorted. When we moving onwards? I’ve got goods with an expiry date on them and buyers waiting.”

  “Soon as we can get packed. Our batteries have got two days left on them at best, and water’s getting low. But I’m worried we’re thin on scrap to sell for the recharge,” mutters Captain Moreau, eyes still on me. His Lupus does not sit again as it watches. “Dismissed Scout. Bosun, go find my Quartermaster - and tell him to take a vote on whether we stop at the old Baise ruins and see what the storm a few weeks back uncovered.”

  “Right away, Captain. Conrada, with me.” I follow Wesley back out of the tent, casting a glance over my shoulder at Captain Rattakul, who cocks her head to one side as she watches me leave.

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  The Dungeon Broker

  The Sewage of Slaughter.

  System Log: Subject STEVEN YORK.

  Status: Dungeon rep.

  Assets: crime interface, slime contacts, shady contracts.

  Origin: MMO corporate nightmare.

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