Paws and Planets (18 page)

Wanda found
herself hearing sounds she hadn’t noticed before, the whirr of the
air-fans, people moving around, the cry of a child. And the steady
hum of the mainframe, she hadn’t even realised it made a noise.

Wanda, even
though she had rested, felt dry-eyed. The humidifiers weren’t
working at full capacity yet and everyone would be soon complaining
about it, but there was no time to savour the quietness, she had a
meeting to prepare for. In Spacefleet one learned not to dilly
dally around when duty called. She extricated herself from her bed
covers and swung her legs down on to the deck. She wriggled her
toes on the matting. Socks, she needed clean socks and a clean
uniform and she would feel much better after a wash and a
change.

The meeting
wasn’t for another hour so there might be time for a bit to eat,
even a mug of caffee would be better than nothing. The kitchens
were bound to be fully operational by now. It was said that an army
marched on its stomach, well, Spacefleet was much the same.

Spacefleet was
the younger sister of what was commonly known as ‘The Wet Fleet’ or
the Navy. The sea navies on planet Earth had been amalgamated in
the middle of the twenty-second century and had a long tradition
(copied by Spacefleet) of looking after its sailors.

During her
Officer Training Wanda had been required to read screen-page after
screen-page of journals and books kept by sailor captains in those
olden days, some from as far back as the eighteenth century when
the Captains had written copious notes and reports about how they
had fed and kept healthy those men under their command.

She often
thought that little had changed since these ancient days of sail.
Provisions and the state of the said provisions, still took up an
inordinate amount of a captain’s time. Nowadays of course it was
not so ‘hands on’, she had a large commissariat department whose
job it was to keep the occupants on the
Melbourne
well
fed.

Caffee would
therefore be available, of that she was sure and was proved right
when, a few moments after she had pressed the buzzer, her orderly
appeared with a steaming mugful.

She smiled a
greeting at the woman and took the mug.

“Thanks Emma,”
she said, taking a sip. The woman had been her orderly for a long
time and in private the two of them were on first name terms.

“Is it okay
Wanda? It’s last weeks stock you see. I had to rootle around a bit.
Supplies from the commissariat pod aren’t exactly normal yet.”

“No, its
perfect, as usual,” Wanda replied, taking another sip. It was
sweeter than normal but she knew Emma would have added another
measure of sweetener to cover up any deficiencies. Caffee had a
short shelf-life, beginning to deteriorate within around five days
of picking.

Once Wanda had
tasted coffee, real coffee but coffee-bean trees didn’t travel well
in space and caffee had been developed as a suitable
alternative.

“Commander
MacBrayne said to tell you that he is on the Bridge. He’s been
trying
to make contact with other ships in the convoy. I’ll
lay a fresh uniform out on the bed shall I, whilst you shower?”

Emma had
emphasised the verb and that told Wanda, without having to ask,
that so far he had been unsuccessful.

Wanda nodded
and got on with her morning ablutions.

* * * * *

Denis MacBrayne
lifted a tired ginger head towards his Captain as Wanda entered the
bridge and waved a greeting. The
Melbourne
, although a part
of Spacefleet, was not a military vessel but a colony transport and
unlike these (Wanda had served as Ensign on the frigate WCMS
Victory
before deciding that colony transports were for her.
After a few weeks of that commission she had realised that she was
not emotionally suited to the military arm) discipline was more
relaxed. When she had transferred to the colony arm it had been in
its infancy and she was now one of the oldest Captains still on
active service.

Her rise up the
fleet hierarchy had not been meteoric, rather the slow and steady
climb up through the ranks, from Ensign (some old-timers still used
the ancient term Midshipman) to Sub-Leftenant, Leftenant, Commander
and then Captain. She had held the rank of Captain for the last
sixteen years and didn’t expect to go higher (there were only three
admirals in the entire colony branch).

She was content
with her lot. There had even been time for her to marry. Her
husband was dead, he had died in a space accident when their
children were very young and she had brought them up on her own.
Unlike the military wing, crews in the colony wing were encouraged
to keep their families with them, necessary because some of the
voyages were very long, such as their now abortive journey to
Riga.

Her two
daughters were grown up.

Her eldest,
Shelley was also a Spacefleet officer and was serving on the WCPS
Electra
, the prison transport that had been a part of the
convoy to Riga.

Wanda was
trying hard not to think about what might have happened to her.

Her younger
daughter was Assistant Medical Officer here on the
Melbourne
.

“Nothing from
the others?” she asked Denis MacBrayne, her eyes ranging through
the activity on the bridge.

“Nothing so
far. We have managed to retrieve one of the external dat-recorders,
damaged but mostly watchable. We now therefore know something about
what happened, small screen, here, look.”

Wanda watched
the short replay in silence, lips thinning as she saw how the wave
of space debris had hit the convoy.

“That bright
flash is the
Oklahoma
as she exploded,” said Denis
MacBrayne. “Must be her. She was next on our starboard side.
Power-core must have blown. They never stood a chance.”

The screen went
blank.

“The proximity
sensor records tell us a little more,” he continued, “we think the
Electra
and the
Argyll
passed behind us, at speed.
We’re lucky they didn’t hit, one was very close but I can’t tell
you anything else about them. We think though that they were pushed
in the same general direction as us but hey ho I’ve no real proof.
It’s these two we’ve been trying to contact but without much
success, in fact without any success. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you
Denis. We go with our initial plan. Meeting is in half an
hour.”

* * * * *

NEWCOMERS ON
TWO LEGS (AL 0)

What happened
when man arrived on Planet Wolf?

Daru always
thought of morning as a magical time, the time when the sun would
edge over the horizon bringing light and warmth to banish the cold,
dark night. This was the time when the little burrowing vuz
scurried back to their underground homes and safety, when the
animals of the day woke and began to browse among the lush
undergrowth at forest’s edge.

He sat perched
at the very edge of the cliff top surveying the vista that was
opening in front of his sparkling blue eyes.

Flapping
wings alive, but it is good to be here, watching the morning mists
dissipating, the forest as it reveals
. It was also promising to
be a very fine day, good flying weather. He sniffed the air, a hot
summers day was in the offing he decided at last,
fly Daru,
fly
!

He bunched his
muscles, extended his wings and launched his body off the
cliff.

By the rtaths
of lost Diaglon, but this feels good!

He spiralled
down through the light wisps of cloud that clung to the air,
playing at trying to catch them, then wings labouring gained
altitude again, this time snaking his tongue out to catch moisture
drops. Xanus ago he had told his eldest son Haru that each drop
tasted fabulous and had taught him the same manoeuvres when he had
taught him to fly. What Haru, now long past the bumpety-flying
stage, thought about the spraying cloud moisture-liquid he kept to
himself, not wish to hurt his father’s feelings.

His ears
twitched and his nostrils flared as he sensed movement among the
trees below and he peered down, his wings flapping to retain
altitude then with effortless abandon he swooped down in the
direction of the movement he had spied. Yes, there they were, a
herd of kura, nosing amongst the grass, oblivious to the danger
above. They were silly creatures, the kura, small ruminant
herbivores. They never remembered that it was dangerous to move out
from the cover of the forest glades. Daru was not the only creature
on the planet who liked eating kura for dinner.

Of course the
forests were not safe either. They were the natural habitat of the
Lind, the rtath of the wolf-like native carnivores with whom the
Lai shared their continent.

Daru chuckled
to himself, the kura were safe from
him
, this morning. He
had eaten of a large zarova buck late the previous evening and was
no longer hungry and wouldn’t need to eat a full meal for a number
of days. He wouldn’t be surprised however if another of his kind
was to pay the browsing kura a visit before the day was much older
or, more likely, that the supreme four-pawed hunters of the
continent, the Lind might just cut out a meal from the silly,
bleating herd.

At the moment
all Daru wanted to do was to fly until he could fly no more. Wings
beating he flew and gloried in the simple fact that he was alive to
do so.

The sun was
full in the sky when he decided that he should return to his daga
and he turned to fly home, by a circuitous route, spiralling and
diving with and through the air currents, never dreaming the news
awaiting him.

* * * * *

“What’s up?”
Daru asked in a genial voice as he landed in the dry-mud space in
front of the daga entrance. “You look very serious.” He shivered as
he looked at the worried face of his visitor, one Suchdei, a Lind
and the Susalai of the Avuzdel.
O bright light, surely the Boton
hasn’t come after all this long time?

The dread-dream
of a Boton of the Dglai landing was still a constant nagging worry
amongst the Lai, even after all the generations that had passed
since the Lai and the Dglai had parted company.

Suchdei guessed
his thoughts, “not the Boton,” he made haste to reassure, “not the
Dglai, but,
others
.

Daru almost
collapsed on the spot!
Others?

“I have
received a report from Xanei, remember he of my Avuzdel who has
been with the Gtrathlin these six seasons past? He says that
Gtrathlin Mariya has had word from Zanatei of his named rtath.
Their Lindar found them, at water’s edge beside the round circles
where the Larg come to attack us. A large metal thing is there
which was not there last time they patrolled the marsh-lands and
creatures have come out from it. Daru, is it, are they dangerous?”
His whiskers were flickering with agitation.

“What does the
large metal thing look like?” asked Daru in a cautious voice.

“I do not have
that information to paw Daru but Xanei has ‘sent’ that it sinks
into the wetlands that are there as his Lindar watched. The patrol,
Susa Afanasei leads it, are, were, more concerned with the
creatures that arrived with it, not
it
itself. Afanasei has
sent us detailed information about
them
.”

“What sort of
creatures are they? Do they fly? Are they like us at all.”

Suchdei shook
his hairy head, not in negation but with bemusement, quite as if he
couldn’t quite believe it.

“They are
smaller than us Lind,” he said and Daru breathed a long breath
deep-full of heartfelt relief. The interlopers were not the Dglai
but another species entirely.
We must be thankful for the
smallest mercy. We will not need to fight a bloody war with our
estranged cousins, at least not at this time.

He had to find
out if the creatures were dangerous. He knew they must be advanced
technologically, had to be to have built the spaceship to bring
them here and he hoped that they would turn out to be as
peace-loving as were the Lind and the Lai. “The Lind that found
them,” he asked, “do they sense that they are dangerous to us and
what we have worked to prevent?”

“They do not.
The sense no evil, only a determination to live and to succeed.
They walk on two-legs,” Suchdei informed him, “upright and their
forelegs they have do things, like how you do.”

Daru examined
at the digits on his left fore-talon. His blue eyes were clouded
with worry. For thousands of xanus Lai and Lind and yes, even the
Larg, had co-existed on the planet in relative, very much relative
considering the disposition of the warlike Larg, harmony. What
impact would these newcomers have on the fragile status-quo?

“They are
building dagas,” continued Suchdei.

“How many are
there?” asked Daru, referring not to the dagas but the numbers of
the strangers.

“Many, some are
small, Xanei reports, Afanasei has deduced that the small ones are
ltsctas.”

“What is
Gtrathlin Mariya doing about it?”

“The Lindar of
Zanatei are to watch and wait. The Elda are of the opinion that if
these creatures are not a danger they should be left alone. She
will not order volat.”

Daru digested
this news. Volat was the term for the needless slaying of any
creature. The Larg of the southern continent committed the crime of
volat every chance they could, the peace-loving Lind of the
northern continent did not.

“Do they have a
Susa?”

“We are not
sure.”

“They must have
one
who is in command.”

“That one, if
he or she exists has not been located.”