I didn’t need to be told twice. That wasn’t true for everyone else, sadly. Once we lifted Kade out of the capsule car and the others followed, a few of us got to work assembling a couple of quick litters for the injured. Morrighan and Oryx, however, went about inspecting the dead.
“We don’t have time to bury him.” Gary shouted to Morrighan.
“He may have something else we can use. I’ll just be a second.” She answered without looking up. She continued to pat him down, keeping her broken wrist tight to her body, pausing occasionally as if someone had frozen her momentarily.
With our attention drawn back to Blaze instead of the focused work on the litters, the reality of what had happened set in. It came fast, hitting me in the chest and pulling me down, all strength sapped from my body. It appeared JuneBug720, Kade, and Etsuko had been similarly affected. I only sat in that funk for a moment, as to my astonishment JuneBug720 began audibly crying. I was certain until now she was only playing him. He was a valuable member of our involuntary alliance, but even then.
Oryx was up to more grisly work. She used one of the free hatchets and started chopping the feet off of the spidaurs. Once she had a few pairs of booted feet, she began trying to surgically remove the pincers. Etsuko gagged.
“What the hell?” I called to her.
“Spidaur boots are insanely rare and super valuable. They give you a massive boost to climbing. I’ll split them with everyone, don’t worry!” She defended herself. The side of her face was already starting to swell towards the eye from Kade's haymaker.
“So just take them off!” Morrighan said, now done rifling through our deceased companion’s belongings.
“You can’t. They’re an equipment material and schematic combined in one, but they aren’t actually boots yet. They grow them. They’re flesh, they just look like boots right now.” Oryx informed us. “You can’t store them until they’ve been tanned.”
“That’s disgusting.” I said.
“What’re you? A vegetarian? They’re monsters. Calm down.” She said.
“Whatever. You’re carrying them. Just hurry up. We need to go.” She stuffed everything in her parachute pack and rejoined the group.
I walked toward the capsule car to clear my head for a moment. I needed to just not look at that for now. Only a couple hours ago I viewed Oryx as a selfless caretaker, and now she was kind of creeping me out. A blessing came in the form of a blinking red light in the corner of my Horizon. A distraction.
MESSAGE(S) 1 OF 1:
Hey, I heard there was a derailment earlier. Was waiting at the station
for you, but I guess you got caught up in those delays. I’m going
to head home. Message me in the morning and we can start
your mentor/mentee work.
- Javic Voss
I tried to respond, but when I went to send it, my display just said “User is listed as ‘Do Not Disturb’.” That was annoying. But at least I wouldn’t be totally in the dark if and when I got back. I went through the rest of my menus to clear the blinking lights and adjust the settings so I wouldn’t have a light forever in the corner of my vision.
ACHIEVEMENT(S) UNLOCKED
BATTLE HARDENED
You engaged in combat with a formidable creature and came out on top!
+3 PROTECTION TEMPORARY BUFF AWARDED
SURVIVALIST
You used the materials in nature to survive!
PERFECT MATCH AWARDED
PERFECT MATCH – THIS MATCH WILL IGNITE WHEN INTENTIONALLY STRUCK AGAINST ANY SOLID SURFACE. IT WILL WORK IN ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS, EVEN UNDER WATER. MULTI-USE – TINY – COMMON
Helpful, but nothing world-changing. It was, however, enough of a distraction to shake me back to the present.
With our makeshift parachute-and-branch litters finished, and Kade and Chodely Whipplespurt loaded on them we set off. Etsuko and I pulled one while Gary and JuneBug720 started pulling the other. I took one final look back at the gory scene we were leaving with a tinge of guilt over the destruction we were only partially responsible for. With a double-take, I caught Blaze Firestalker’s wizard robes turning to a crimson dust and falling not just to the ground, but through it, leaving him lying there in his underclothes.
“Umm… Do we need to be worried about that? Blaze’s robes just disintegrated.” I said.
“Huh?” Etsuko looked back in that direction. “Oh, no. Morality notwithstanding. Morrighan looted him. That’s how it works sometimes. If you don’t want to carry something immediately, you can assign it to your inventory as a pattern and retrieve it from on of the printers later. The original will be destroyed, but the copy will be identical as long as its a known world object. Materials and novel creations you have to carry, though. Keeps people from clear-cutting the forest if you have to do it the old fashioned way.”
“Are you done? It’s getting late and we have no idea how far we need to go.” Gary said, getting justifiably irritated. Kade crossed him arms on his litter and made a face like he was actively trying to keep his mouth shut.
“How far? We don’t even know where we need to go.” JuneBug720 said. “How do you know this is the right direction? Its a 50-50 shot isn’t it?”
“Educated guess.” He said, exaggerating a speed increase so she’d keep pulling. “The core runs this way and behind us, but the mag-line only goes in the direction of rotation. If the drag marks under the car are pointed in the direction of rotation, that means this is the way out assuming we didn’t get a weird bounce or something that flipped it 180.”
Good enough for me. Even if this had a chance of being the wrong direction, going nowhere was without a doubt the wrong direction.
We positioned anyone not pulling a litter up front with the machetes to try and clear the path. Even with that extra help it was slow going. And finding footing was hard enough when you weren’t trying to tow 170lbs behind you. Sweat poured down my face and back and the bugs were relentless. For the umpteenth time today I questioned my sanity and if this really was the best move for me and my family.
I tried not to feel resentful. To feel betrayed. It wasn’t my mother’s fault that there were restrictions on offspring, and I had volunteered to come to the Galaxion. I was happy to do it. The way things were I would have been stuck forever at the bottom of a treatment tank cleaning water reclamation filters with little hope of climbing out. On the Galaxion I could forge a brighter path and she could have the baby. My brothers and sister would still have a nice big family to care for. It wasn’t some impulse, and I wasn’t being forced out. But now deep in the jungle, nearly dying multiple times in my first few hours I couldn’t help but feel put out. Like this decision wouldn’t have even come up if she didn’t decide to keep another baby.
But that wasn’t fair either. Even before I was given my assignment and before my mother became pregnant again I had fantasized about making it to the Galaxion and making my own way. I justified it now by saying I could send rev back home, but that was just to assuage my own guilt over feeling the way I did. How pathetic that my grand plan was to switch ships and still get a blue collar job. Aim for the stars, Roane.
On the one hand I had now managed to talk myself out of that feeling of resentment. But now I was just blaming myself for getting in to this mess. It’s easy to get lost in your own head, especially when things are going so poorly. I switched gears and tried to use that pessimism for strength. Half of my mind was angry at myself, so I tried to make the other half set on proving the bad half wrong. It actually helped too. Even when Etsuko got tired and had to tag Oryx in, I stayed on and pulled Kade over every stump and slippery stone, doing my best to ignore the bugs, spider webs, and haunting sounds of the jungle.
Over an hour in to our trek I was alerted by Oryx to a flash of movement off to my left, up in the tree boughs. At first I was pleasantly surprised to see a grayish-tan monkey keeping us company, matching our pace. But I was immediately put on edge when I realized it wasn’t alone. Looking around there were at least a dozen following us on either side.
“Everyone hold up.” I ordered in a loud whisper. “Something’s following us.”
“They’re just monkeys. They aren’t a threat.” Oryx said. She pointed up in to the jungle so the rest of the group could see what we were talking about.
“Not them. I mean yes, them. But they’re human shielding. Its a thing prey animals do sometimes. They’re using us to keep whatever’s hunting them from attacking.” I told her. “Whatever it is, they’re afraid of it but the monkeys know it's probably more afraid of us. Or at least easier to reach.”
“There’s nothing here. I’ve been watching behind us the whole time.” Kade said from my litter.
“Just trust me on this. Everyone circle up. We need to have eyes looking in every direction.” I said. If its a leopard or something it won’t try to ambush if it thinks we can see it. Zookeepers wear special hats with eyes drawn on the back when they have to go in to the big cat areas to keep them from attacking.”
“Ok. I’ll keep looking behind us. You can take up front, and you two can walk on the sides.” Kade instructed to myself, Etsuko, and Gary respectively. “JuneBug, can you pull me by yourself?”
“I’ll pull Chodely with Morrighan up front, that way I can still look forward and we can have people watching the sides. And JuneBug can pull you with Etsuko.” I said. I was exhausted, but somehow the thought of a leopard or tiger stalking us gave me another jolt of adrenaline.
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“Okay. Everyone stay sharp.” Kade said as the monkeys started getting noticeably more restless. “Go fast.”
Everyone remained on high alert, especially our monkey buddies that continued to stay just at the edge of our sight. Occasionally one of them would let out a shriek and all the monkeys on that side would quickly divert to the other side of us, often times swinging right through our group. We’d take that as our cue to adjust course a few degrees in that direction while doing our best to maintain a trajectory in line with the core overhead. No doubt this was adding significant time to the journey and putting Chodely Whipplespurt at greater risk.
“Over there!” Oryx called on our left. Morrighan and I reflexively dropped Chodely on the ground and I reached for my machete. “There’s a tribute stone!”
Following her finger I could just make out a 6 foot high stone obelisk with a blue glowing capstone.
“There’s probably supplies in it. If there’s food, we could probably bait whatever’s following us away.” Oryx said.
She didn’t wait for the group’s agreement. She just adjusted our course by chopping in that general direction. There were no objections, though. Even our monkeys quieted down a little with the decision. They still maintained a safe distance, though.
The stone stood in the center of a small clearing that was obviously kept maintained with the vines and other foliage hacked back. It was some type of plain gray stone in a 3 sided obelisk shape. The top came to a point and was made of a similar stone but it glowed an oddly ethereal blue color. One side of it had an engraving that read:
For Marcoz
May your light bring
safety and comfort now
as it did in life.
Near the bottom was a large bronze placard with the instructions:
PLEASE TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED.
LEAVE HELP FOR OTHERS IF
YOU ARE ABLE.
We posted up around the tribute marker in a circle so we could keep eyes in every direction all at once. The monkeys coalesced to one side of us but seemed to have calmed down. At least for the moment there didn’t seem to be an imminent attack. I chanced a look at my Horizon, but there wasn’t much save for an achievement for finding a tribute stone.
ROANE MORIZU.....................................................................................ANIMAL CONTROL SPECIALIST
LEVEL - 5
INTELLECT - 15 ......................................................................................................................................................PRIMARY EQUIPMENT:
CHARM - 20 ...............................................................................................................................................................ACS UNIFORM
BODY - 20 ...................................................................................................................................................................MACHETE
AGILITY - 20................................................................................................................................................................________________
DURABILITY - +2......................................................................................................................................................
HEALTH - 43/43........................................................................................................................................................CURRENCY
UNASSIGNED POINTS - 0 .......................................................................................................................................REV - 2441
EXPERIENCE REQUIRED - 433.................................................................................................................................
ACHIEVEMENT(S) UNLOCKED!
IN MEMORIAM
You discovered a tribute shrine! This person’s impact on the world was
so great, someone wanted to honor them forever. Please be respectful.
PEACE CANDLE AWARDED
“Sometimes there’s a drawer in the bottom or a trap door on the ground near the tribute.” Oryx said. “This one looks pretty clean, so they probably still stock it.
She was right. A quick inspection of the space, and kicking around on the ground and we found that the placard had a basic latch on top. The placard folded down revealing a small dark compartment. Inside it looked like it had been stocked with all black billiard balls, complete with the triangular rack surrounding them. I grabbed the triangular tray and pulled it out of the compartment. The tray below it lifted to fill the space, though I left that alone.
“Well. Bad news and good news.” I said, staring down at the tray of 10 fist-sized balls. “The bad news; there’s no food or water. The good news; they do, for some reason, stock it regularly with hand grenades.”
The looks I received from that statement brought a smile to my face for the first time since this all started. Nobody was sure if I was serious or not until I sat back on my heals and tilted the tray in their direction. There were, in fact, 10 old-school push button hand grenades in the tray. I opened my Horizon to examine them in my inventory, along with the patterns I had received.
PEACE CANDLE- THIS CANDLE WILL BURN FOR 5 MINUTES. DURING WHICH TIME, NO AGGRESSIVE ACTIONS MAY BE TAKEN WITHIN A 10 FOOT CIRCLE. WILL NOT WORK ON NON-SAPIENT CREATURES. WILL NOT PREVENT HOSTILE ACTIONS MADE OUTSIDE THE AFFECTED AREA. LIMITED USE – SMALL - COMMON
FRAGMENTATION GRENADE (X10) – THIS GRENADE WILL EXPLODE IN A LOCALIZED AREA VIOLENTLY, SENDING SHRAPNEL AND A CONCUSSIVE BLAST OUTWARDS. THE GRENADE IS PRIMED ON RELEASE OF THE PRIMER BUTTON, AND WILL EXPLODE 3 SECONDS AFTER PRIMING. GRENADE WILL BE MADE TEMPORARILY SAFE IF PRIMER BUTTON IS DEPRESSED AGAIN, AND WILL BE MADE INERT IF PRIMER BUTTON IS DEPRESSED FOR 20 SECONDS. USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION. SINGLE USE – SMALL - UNCOMMON
I offered the tray to Gary who grabbed the orbs two at a time and tucked them in to whatever pockets he had. It ruined the lines of his fancy suit pants, but not much more than the mud, sweat, and blood had already done. I pocketed two of my own and left the remaining four in the tray on Kade’s litter for anyone who wanted them. We expected outrage over our hoarding of the grenades, but there wasn’t any. Oryx, Morrighan, and Etsuko currently had the other 3 machetes which left only Kade, and JuneBug720 without a weapon, and JuneBug720 seemed pretty unwilling or incapable of wielding one, and Kade now had four grenades in his lap, ready to lob them behind us if he needed to.
“Do we have anything we can leave? There isn’t much room in there, but if we could put something on the ground or something small in the compartment.” I said.
“I’ve got a pen light.” Etsuko said, removing the small instrument from her pocket. “It’s a pretty good flashlight for the size.”
“Are you sure? That’s the only one we have and we have just over two hours of daylight left.” I said.
“There’s no way it takes us that long to get out of here unless something goes horribly wrong.” Kade said. Several faces turned to glare at him with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“We’re going pretty slow, but even at this pace we’d have to be be going in the wrong direction to not make it back before then. And if that’s the case, we’re fucked either way.” Morrighan said.
The monkeys started to jump up and down and chitter again. One of them even dropped to the jungle floor and entered the clearing where it slapped the ground with both hands demanding we stop messing around. We took that as a pretty clear message and headed out again after placing the pen light in the tribute stone and sealing it up.
Oryx and JuneBug720 elected to pull the Chodely litter, while Gary and Morrighan pulled Kade. We were able to identify the hint of a path through the jungle that headed pretty much directly in the direction we were headed. It could have been an animal run, but my guess was it was the path used by whoever was tending to the stone. And if that were the case, it should lead to safety. At the very least it meant we had to clear less material and were able to move quite a lot faster.
The monkeys in their role as overwatch had quieted down once we had gotten underway again. They initially grouped up on one side, but even without course correction they settled down until they were now completely encircling us. They had even warmed up to us, I thought, because every now and then one of them would jump down to the floor within only a few feet of us before hopping back up to the vines. They seemed especially interested in Kade who still kept eyes on our rear, though he deviated from that often enough to toss little sticks at his new monkey buddies.
Finally, to our collective horror, one of them decided we were not a threat and chanced making contact. It swung in from the side landing next to Kade, put one hand on Kade’s arm, and reached over with it’s other hand to pluck one of the remaining grenades from their tray on Kade's lap. Before Kade realized it was not, in fact, trying to make friends, it jumped away back up in to the trees with its prize. We had inadvertently given a hand grenade to a monkey.
“Oh shit!” I shouted with eyes on it. “The monkey has a grenade! The monkey has a grenade.” I was repeating myself in panicked confusion. “What do we do? What do we do?”
“Maybe he thinks it’s a piece of fruit? He’ll throw it when he realizes it isn’t.” Kade said guiltily.
It was a sound theory supported immediately by the monkey’s attempt to eat the grenade. It sat on a branch and held the grenade with two hands up to its mouth and tried to chomp down. No luck.
It tried smashing it open on the branch, repeatedly hammering it with both hands. Again, no luck. We watched anxiously, unsure of what to do.
“Hey! Hey! Don’t do that!” Oryx called fruitlessly.
Growing frustrated, the monkey cycled through its options a few more times. Chomping and smashing. We couldn’t see the primer from our vantage point, but it remained unpressed.
Fortunately the button was mounted nearly flush with the ball shape and had a good deal of spring tension to keep it from accidentally detonating. But still. How many times could you bash a grenade against a tree without it activating? We’ll never know. Because once the monkey discovered the button had more give than the rest of the stubborn fruit, it used one of its giant monkey fangs to try and pry its way to the interior. The ring around the button lit up red.
“Look out!” Gary shouted.
We covered our eyes and heads with our arms as our only means of protection just in time for the grenade – and the hungry monkey – to explode in a violent BOOM!
Thankfully no bits of shrapnel had hit us. The monkey had been a good ways up in its tree so we wouldn’t try to get the grenade back. But other monkeys weren’t so lucky, and we weren’t entirely in the clear. Several monkeys were close enough to the blast and were either obliterated or forcibly thrown from the trees, killed instantly. Bits of tree bark and monkey rained on us for far too long. Long enough for the rest of the monkeys to scatter, swinging off in to the rest of the jungle.
While we tried to regain our composure and come to terms with what we had just witnessed, things only got worse. With a beacon that loud, and the smell of fresh blood in the air, our pursuer had no trouble finding us. When our ears had just begun to stop ringing and we lifted the litters to move on, a massive leopard erupted from the jungle to the right of us. It swiped rapidly at Etsuko knocking the machete from her hand and opening up multiple large gashes in her arm, sending her stumbling backwards in agony. It pulled back, readying for another go.
We were completely off-guard. Defenseless.
I don’t know who to blame for all of it, or if anyone deserves any blame, but I’ll remember those moments for the rest of my life.
In reaction to the leopards perfect ambush, JuneBug720 screamed, dropped her corner of Chodely Whipplespurt’s litter, and bolted ahead. Oryx followed suit, leaving him on the ground, unconscious and helpless.
I was staring right at her when it happened. I know she didn’t just react instinctively. She looked down at him, hesitated a moment, and then released him. There was an eternity in that hesitation. She was calculating, weighing the decision in her mind. And in the end, she didn’t show the least bit of honest remorse. A leopard was actively trying to kill us, and I was suddenly more afraid of Oryx than I was of anything that had happened thus far.
“Run!” Gary shouted after he had absorbed the scene.
Etsuko scrambled to her feet and leapt over Chodely on her way down the path. I turned with my machete toward the leopard, bracing myself before grabbing a chunk of Kade’s parachute and pulling.
The leopard leaned it’s head down ready to lunge but seemed to understand my raised machete and thought twice. It didn’t retreat or stand up, it just remained coiled ready to strike.
“Hurry! Roll him on!” I shouted as we moved along side Chodely. I felt Morrighan’s pull soften.
Gary grabbed my head and turned it to face his. “No! Go! He’s already dead!”
“But-” I started.
“SHUT UP! GO!” He screamed, his face inches from mine, spit smacking my cheeks.
I didn’t argue anymore. I should have. But I didn’t. This was a person. Why didn’t I argue?
Before we made it far I checked if the leopard was following us. It wasn’t. It had found an easy meal. I looked back just long enough to see it bite in to Chodley’s neck, and begin to drag him back the direction we came from.
I continued to run. With three hands on the litter, we were able to catch up to the others who still had to contend with the overgrowth. When we had regrouped, none of us spoke. I didn’t even bother to tell them I knew we were in the clear. They knew what we had just done. I knew what I had just done. I wanted to vomit.
We maintained a good speed after a quick pause to bandage Etsuko’s arm. With two people clearing the way and three people pulling Kade, it was minutes before we began to see a change in the tree line. A few more minutes and we had finally reached the border between the jungle biome and Home Zone. The only thing stopping us was a 10 foot barrier wall and 50 feet of paved ground, but that was nothing after everything else.
We made it. No, some of us had made it. Chodely Whipplespurt was a mere 45 minutes from a hospital when we traded his life for ours.
Chodely Whipplespurt, Blaze Firestalker, the girl in the pod, and the asshole. A third of us had died in Galaxion within hours of our arrival.
