Reunion: Chapter 17

  The shuttle shot away from the New Horizon and plunged into the Terran atmosphere.   Inside Jaren was piloting the shuttle, accompanied by Kathryn, Felix, Francis, Elim, and Molly’s head.  The engineers had rigged up a backpack consisting of Molly’s battery with her head mounted above and facing backwards, burdening Felix with carrying her around when they reached the surface.

  “We’ll have to be careful choosing a landing site…” Jaren distantly observed as he looked at the scans of the surface on the panel in front of him.  “The terrain appears quite unstable, prone to shifting…”

  “That’s what our scavengers reported,” Molly confirmed.  “It’s detritus piled on top of more detritus all covered in soil and plant.  Any extra weight tends to cause either sinking or further collapse.”

  “Right,” Jaren furrowed his brow and grimly acknowledged.  “Molly, Homeworld had recovered the old Terran maps from the archives when I contacted them, and they transmitted them to me before we left the ship.  The address you provided, uh… even with the maps it’s hard to pin down exactly the area you referenced.  I think we can narrow it down to within several kilometers at least.”

  “That should be good enough.  Once there on the surface and in the area, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get my bearings and find my way to the lab.  If it still exists of course.”
 “What are the odds of that?” Kathryn asked.

  “Poor to fair,” Molly answered.  Her head seemed to shrug the answer even without shoulders.  “I remember it being in one of the lower floors of a tower, and if any parts of the building survived, it would be that part.  Even so, if it’s still intact it’ll be buried and require excavation, some very dangerous excavation,” she remarked.

  “Grand,” Felix ironically remarked.

  “I’m going to set it down on top of one of those sharp hills,” Jaren said as he continued to look at his monitors    It’ll be tricky climbing up and down, but I prefer that to putting down in one of the valleys and risk having debris fall down on the ship.  There’s no guarantee we’d be able to dig it out again.  There could be a collapse when we touch down, but I’ll do it softly and add the weight gradually, ready to shoot up again if there’s a problem.”

  From visual observations and ground penetrating scans, Jaren selected a hill he felt safest to attempt to land on in the area Molly indicated.  He slowly lowered the shuttle down onto the thick green grass covering the mound, blowing down and away the blades from the central energy stream pouring out of the bottom of the shuttle.  The landing struts softly touched the ground and as Jaren slowly let the weight of the vessel down, the struts sunk into the soil several decimeters before stabilizing and assuming the rest of the shuttle’s weight on its support points.  Gradually letting off the throttle, Jaren powered down the engine to zero and an eerie silence filled the cabin as everyone held their breath.

  “We’re good,” Jaren reported in a muted voice, and the silence was broken by a collective exhale.  “Lowering the door.”  The door section of the wall fell away, and the extension ramp projected down from within it and touched down.

  “Well let’s get on with it,” Molly said.  Francis picked her up and slung her over his back as gently as she could.   “Don’t worry about being gentle Francis, just don’t lose your head,” she said with a mirthful smirk to the others.

  Kathryn moved to be the first out the door, but Jaren grabbed her arm to stop her and allow him to go first instead.  She stopped and looked back at his hand on her arm, and then up at him with a look amused disbelief.  He understood and let her go.  

  The ramp was at a steep incline, and she carefully made her way down, one sideways set foot after another.  Coming to the bottom of the ramp she tested the ground under her feet and found that it would indeed hold her weight.  “Seems okay,” she offered to the others, and began making her way down the hill even more carefully.  It was roughly a forty-degree slant down several stories to the wooded area between the hills.  

  The weather wasn’t especially agreeable.  Rain was gently misting, and Kathryn zipped up her jacket to avoid bone chill as the others followed behind her in a line down to the low land.  The sky was a dull grey; the midday sun behind the solid cloud cover reminded of a candle held behind wax paper.  When they’d all exited the shuttle, they headed for the tree line and descending the hill further.  Reaching the bottom of the gulley, they found a modest creek in a deep cavity.  The slow-moving water was perpetually dimpled by the soft rain.   She leaned down to run her fingers through the running water.

  “This used to be an underground transit train line,” Molly told her.  “I rode it many, many times…” she said, seemingly lost in her memories.  “It’s strange.  Everything looks different, and yet it’s still somehow so familiar.”

  “Any idea where we head next?” Felix asked the head on his backpack.

  “No…   I don’t actually.  I have a sense of the route this Skytrain took back in the day though.  If we follow along it, I may be able to get a sense of our location.”

  There was no path for them to follow, so they had to make their way very slowly and carefully through the trees and thick underbrush along the stream.  They would occasionally see small animals they didn’t recognize briefly come into view and then scurry off just as quickly, but it was too quick for Francis to turn Molly around and allow her to identify the species for them.  “Rats probably,” she offered.  “If they’re bigger maybe stray cats.  Even bigger maybe raccoons or skunks.”  Walking beside Felix in front, Kathryn looked over at Molly’s expression as her head bobbed up and down on Felix’s back, and she had to stifle a giggle at the sight.   It was a strange harmony of ghastly body horror and dry surreal humour.  Jaren was directly behind Molly, and she had the opportunity to scrutinize him face to face as they walked.  Kathryn could tell it was beginning to make him uncomfortable with Molly’s knowing smirk revealing she could tell and was amused by it, though in fairness she was physically unable to look anywhere but right in his face.

  “So Felix, you’re gay right?” she casually asked her transport.

  “Um yeah, that’s right… Kathryn tell you that?” he asked.  It was no secret, but Kathryn could guess he was justly curious how it had come up.

  “No,” she answered shortly, her smirk growing broader into a smile as she bobbed up and down and back and forth.  “I was a sexim remember?  Programmed to know these things, programmed to be sensitive to the desires and persuasions of men and women.  It’s nothing specific, I can just tell.  A lot of unconscious cues and factors tend to give it away if you know what to look for.”

  “I see,” Felix answered, as uncomfortable with the scrutiny as anybody might be.

  “Probably why I didn’t have the same immediate dislike of you I tend to have of other men,” she observed while looking directly at Jaren with a wry smirk.   Kathryn lowered her head in amusement over what a shit disturber Molly was turning out to be.

  “Perhaps…  But-” Felix began to respond.

  “Look out!!” Molly suddenly cried out in sharp horror as a large cougar jumped out of a nearby tree and pounced on Felix, taking both of them down to the ground.  The attack knocked him on his back, and he landed hard on the backpack containing Molly and her power source.  He held his arms up to cover and protect his face as, and the cougar clawed at him and tried to bite his neck as the others scrambled to his aid.  He shifted his arms and tried to roll to his side to protect his face and neck from the creature’s teeth and claws, but it quickly became difficult to tell what part of him the horrible bloody mess was coming from the worst after only a moment or two of the attack.

  The first to reach him, Francis instinctively reared back and kicked the cougar as hard as he could in the ribs.  It yelped in pain, and then pounced on its assailant, knocking him back on the ground and attacking in a similar way.  It quickly leapt back to Felix who was already bleeding at an alarming rate and making horrible pathetic sobs of pain.  Seeming to give up on getting to his neck, it turned and bit into his leg, appearing to attempt to drag him into the brush.  

  Kathryn picked up a substantial fallen branch, and before the cougar could drag Felix out of view, she hammered it on the head as hard as she could with it.  It yelped in pain and then staggered off into the bush in an apparent daze and disappeared.  All three gathered around Felix to assess the damage.  He was writhing in agony and gushing blood out of his arms and leg.

  Elim quickly whipped her medical bag off of his back and pushed the others out of her way.   Though a trained doctor, she was from Haven and their medical technology was far inferior to that of Kobol or even Roma for that matter.  She’d been trained by Nadelle how to use the tools and supplies in the Koboli medical kit he’d brought with her though.  She had to move quickly to stop the bleeding, or he would die of exsanguination.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Kathryn asked.  Her tone was professional but her personal mortal fear for her best friend clearly bled through.

  “Let me work,” was all Elim said as she cinched some straps down on his limbs above the damage to slow blood flow to the area and thus his blood loss.  She then used sterile water to clean out his wounds and then spray a coagulating agent into the wounds.  It was a brute force substance that shared some of the same properties as a human’s own platelets and accelerated the blood’s natural binding agents on contact.  It quickly formed a foamy artificial scab over the wounds, stopping the bleeding.

  Elim then pulled a transdermic from the kit and administered a powerful combination sedative and pain killer.  Felix’s whimpering sobs of pain and deep dismay slowly gave way to a blessed unconsciousness.

  Elim was emotionally amped up from the excitement, but at this point let out a long, deep sigh.  “I think he’ll be alright,” she said as she stood and turned to Kathryn.  “On Haven he might not have survived at all, and even if he did, he’d be in for a long protracted recovery.  He’d likely suffer nerve damage, nasty scarring…” she said as she looked at him while shaking her head in thought.

  “But?” Kathryn asked in eager anxiety.

  “But from what I understand of the medical chambers on New Horizon, I believe it can physically rebuild tissue.  It could take a couple of days, but it should be able to entirely rebuild his damaged tissues cell layer by cell layer.”

  “Then we need to get him back to the ship.”

  “Yes of course, as soon as possible.”

   

  Kathryn and Jaren carried Felix back up the hill to the shuttle with all due haste while still observing the dangers which the terrain posed.  Francis assumed the burden of Molly, then he and Elim followed behind, watching their back and sides for any further potential attack.

  They were all visibly shaken but quiet as Jaren piloted the ship back up to orbit and docked with New Horizon.  They pulled the unconscious Felix along in the zero gravity, and then used the same harness and winch line they’d used for Molly to lower him down the access tube to the habitat ring.  Nadelle and Patricia greeted them with a rolling medical bed, and Felix was lowered directly onto it, followed closely behind by Kathryn and the others.

  “Treatment so far?” Nadelle asked Elim as they all made their way to the medical bay.

  “I used the binding agent you instructed me on and gave him the combination sedative and painkiller.”

  “Good work.   These shouldn’t be necessary anymore,” Nadelle observed as the bed was rolled down the hall and into an elevator.   She pulled a pair of scissors out of the kit and cut his tourniquets off.

  “He’ll be alright?” Kathryn asked Nadelle.

  “Oh yes, no worries,” she confidently answered.  “He’ll be right as rain after a couple days in the sarcophagus.”

  “Sarcophagus?” Jaren asked.

  “Oh, just our little nickname for the surgical pods.  They’ll be able to reconstruct his damaged tissues with no problem.  It’s one of their primary functions.”

  “Magic…” Patricia was heard whispering to herself.

  The elevator doors opened, and Felix was rolled across the hall into the medical bay.   Nadelle tapped at the panel and the clear circular hatch at one end of the chamber swung away, and a human body sized shelf slid towards them.  They lifted his body onto it and with another panel tap the shelf slid back into the device, and the cover swung closed again and sealed with a slight hiss as it sealed.

  The interior lit up and the chamber began conducting all manner of scans on his body.   A list of recommended procedures appeared on the screen above the chamber, and Nadelle tapped the proceed button.   Deft and soft mechanical hands picked up a pair of scissors and began carefully cutting off his pants and shirt.   When it had adequately exposed the damaged areas, it would carefully strip away the artificial scab one small section at a time and replace it with new tissue synthesized from his own DNA.   Once the first layer of tissue was installed and covering the entirety of the wound, nerve, muscle, and skin cells would be laid down layer by layer until the wound was entirely repaired.   The screen above the chamber started counting down from twenty-seven hours, five minutes, and twenty-eight seconds until repair was complete.

  Francis set the Molly pack down on the floor and propped it up against the wall.  Kathryn noticed for the first time that her eyes were wet with the precursors of outright tears.  “It’s my fault…” she muttered.  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes…” Kathryn agreed with an ephemeral flash of anger.  “It is your fault.”  She breathed deeply in through her nose as she turned to her and forced a calm over herself.  “But we made a deal, and we all knew the risks.  It’s our fault too, we were… reckless.  We should have been better organized, better equipped… we should have planned better.   We won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Again?” Jaren balked.  “We’re going back down there?”  He didn’t seem to be questioning her or suggesting they shouldn’t, but it clearly hadn’t yet occurred to him that they might try again.

  “I…” Molly started.  “I want to tell you that you don’t have to, but… but I have no body at all now.”   She was letting her vulnerability show again.

  “I know,” Kathryn said as she put a hand on the transparent material of the sarcophagus.   “But it’s not just about you Molly.   We aren’t just going down there to find you a body.  We’re explorers.  We went down there to explore.  Our task on this planet isn’t over now that we’ve solved the mystery of why it went dark, and it won’t be over when we’ve helped restore you.

  “We’ve begun something here, together,” she said as she turned to look seriously at Jaren and Francis.  “Earth is not just a neutral planet we can survey and abandon, not a mere curiosity.   It is our home, our ancestral home.   It is our destiny to learn all of the secrets which this planet has to offer us.  The archives aren’t enough.  Molly’s memories are insufficient.  We will research this place for ourselves and tease out of it every secret we can about our heritage and… about ourselves.  Restoring Molly is only the first step, only the first secret we must reveal.

  “We are all at the beginning of a very long journey,” she continued.  “I intend to personally petition our governments to work together to fully restore Orbital One and make it the home base for a massive research effort, archaeological digs of the ruins, anthropological research of the people still down there, and assistance in them reclaiming the dignity which is their birthright as humans if they want our help.  We will research.  We will rebuild.  We will restore.

  “Felix wouldn’t want us to give up.  He wouldn’t want what happened to him to be the end of this journey.  Yes, we’re going back.  But this time we’re going to do it right; we’re going to ask for some help from our friends.

  “Molly, you have explorers in your village who have been to the ruins of Vancouver and returned, correct?”

  “Yes,” she answered, having calmed herself for the most part.  She seemed moved by Kathryn’s words.  “Most of our males have made at least one expedition south.”

  “Will they accompany us on our next trip down?  Their experience would be invaluable to us.”

  “They will do whatever I order them to,” Molly stated with the same shoulder-less shrug.   “I’m sure they’d be happy to help,” she added, sensing the discomfort in the room with her original phrasing.

  “Good.   When we’re done here, please contact them and have them prepare.  Have them be armed however they normally would be, those blow darts they got me with would come in handy, the firearms they were guarding you with, whatever they’ve got.”

  “Understood,” Molly answered.  “Patricia, please contact the dam guards and pass along my order for my personal guard to ready themselves for an expedition.”

  “Yes Leader,” the woman acknowledged, reaching for a scroll to carry out her orders.

  “Jaren, we need weapons,” Kathryn stated.  “Whatever weapons we’ve got let’s pass them out,” she ordered, and Jaren nodded.  “Is your shuttle equipped with weapons?”

  “No, it’s just a transport ship,” he answered.  “Nothing like that.  We’ve got scroll flashers, our wands, several printed handguns… that’s it though.  We can probably figure out how to print more.”

  “Then do so.   We’ll mount a full expedition, both shuttles.  Molly, please have your six best men prepare and have them ready in-” she looked at the countdown clock on the wall “twenty-eight hours.  We’ll leave Felix here with three others, but I want to see him okay before we head down again.  We’ll leave them on the ship to maintain its systems and give us continuous overwatch imaging support with infra-red monitoring to warn us of any threats in the area.  If we weren’t so careless, they could have warned us about that, that…” her inability to continue was combination flash of rage and ignorance.  “What was that Molly?”

  The head uttered a slightly muffled harrumph through the scroll tucked into the bag which made sounds for her.  “My children call them murder cats, differentiated from the friendly cats and the angry cats.”  She seemed to roll her eyes at their simplistic naming, but when she saw the touch of hurt in Patricia’s eyes softened her tone.  “But back in the day the creature that attacked Felix were known as cougars.  What they call angry cats were called bobcats and friendly cats were just ordinary house cats which were kept as pets.  Cougars like the one that attacked Felix can take down large game by themselves and are obviously incredibly dangerous.  House cats used to be pets and are mostly harmless.  Bobcats are a bit bigger than the housecats and can be somewhat dangerous but typically won’t attack a human unless threatened.”

  “What other threats down there can you tell us about?”

  “Well, large mammals called bears will attack you first chance they get and are twice your size.  They’re solitary unlike the wolves who live and attack in packs of a dozen or so.   They’re crafty and some will distract you while others attack from a direction you aren’t expecting.”

  The rest nodded understandingly.  They all lived in cites, but their cities all ultimately gave way to wilderness, and each planet had their own monsters out there in the wild which they warned their children about.

  “What about large prey animals?” Francis asked. 

  “Deer most prominently in this area,” Molly answered.  “Wild boars are taken as prey sometimes when found, but they can also be quite aggressive.  There are other species, but around Vancouver these days it’s mostly deer.  My people say they’re quite tasty, but… well, they say the same things about the bears.”