I’ve finally had a chance to type up some of the progress I’ve made on the Maria and Lah-Shah story I’ve been sharing with you for the last year (?). I have written more, but I’ve only just typed this next 2500 words up. I had two writing sessions this week, and I’ve got another this afternoon, so you might get an update before much longer. Certainly it won’t be three months this time.
I’m making this one available to all subscribers, rather than just to paid subs, because no one is paying for subs. I might go back through the posts and unlock them all.
I present to you Maria and the space-dragons investigate #1
Chapter 13 – Exploring Aurox by air – Maria
After a week staying with Sahrai, taking prophylactic medicine and observing the local life from the safety of the container house, Maria felt it was time to explore. Outside.
Sahrai showed them how to operate the land flyer, a small airborne vehicle which could use the road, where there was road.
“I’ve used something like this, at the academy, although it only had two wheels.” Maria said.
Maria and Sahrai stood in the other converted container, at ground level. Maria had noted the food storage and water filtration, and the hatch into the subterranean compartment. That basement intrigued Maria, but they were distracted by the four-wheeled, rotor-flying machine. It looked like a giant dumbbell, with an engine and helix rotor between the two ball shaped ends. These were clear pods, each containing a seat and control panels, and sitting over a pair of solid, thick tired wheels.
“How does it stay in the air? How do you steer it without a tail?”
“The engine is really quite powerful, and of course the tail folds out when it prepares for flight. The cabins rotate too. And then as you land it all folds away again. Hardly ever fails.”
“Hardly ever? So, it has failed in the past?”
“Not often, and nobody has died.”
“If you say so.” Maria knew their face was screwed into a meu of disbelief and consciously fought to relax the muscles.
Sahrai opened the control panel on the container wall, punched in a code and turned to the short side of the container. A creaking, screeching sound echoed around the building, forcing Maria to cover their ears in pain. The short wall swung up, wedged against something, and then started to move again, as debris pattered down. Orange light spread across the concrete floor; dust motes danced on the light. Unfiltered air polluted the sealed structure. Somewhere a rumbling sound added to the cacophony, possibly the air filters going into overdrive.
“Hop in.” Sahrai opened the door to the front cabin, bowing awkwardly. “If you’re sure? Wouldn’t it be better for you to drive?”
“I will be,” Sahrai waved at the second cabin, “but you need to see where we’re going, and you might need to fly it on your own.”
Maria sighed. They couldn’t imagine a reason why they’d have to go out on their own, but Sahrai was the experienced field agent here, so she must have a good reason. They ducked into the cabin, stumbling slightly on the lower lip of the opening. Maria grabbed for the chair as Sahrai reached out to steady them. The chair moved.
“Whaaaa!” Maria yelped as they lost balance again.
Sahrai’s arm was around their waist before they consciously understood that they were falling. Steadier, Maria turned the chair, realising it was on a swivel.
“Thanks Sahrai.” Maria gently removed the star-dragons arm and turned to face her. Reaching backwards and down, Maria found the chair and lowered themselves into it.
“Settled now?”
Sahrai had a strange look on her face, Maria thought, as though she couldn’t decide between laughing at Maria’s clumsiness or finding it endearing.
“Oh, wow, this is really comfortable!” The chair was wide and supportive, covered in a faux fleece that was soft and didn’t make their skin itch. “Whee!” Maria spun the chair, glee making their voice shift in pitch to a higher register.
The chair spun easily through 360 degrees, rotating twice fully before coming to a stop in front of the control panel. It adjusted the height automatically, putting the panel in easy reach.
“You are such a hatchling!” Sahrai laughed, skin flushing, and visible scales turning magenta and cyan in joy.
“Press that.” She pointed to a circle on the control panel.
Maria pressed it. A gentle thrumming started behind them. “The engine?” they asked, uncertainty shading their voice, making it a little deeper again, as the excitement drained and anxiety crept in.
“The engine.” Sahrai patted Maria’s shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”
A screen on the control panel lit up. It showed a map of the local area, with pinpoints for their location, the local ‘town’, and other landmarks. There was one to the south, untagged on the screen. Maria pointed at it,
“What’s that?”
“That is where we’re going today.”
“Something to do with the science team?”
Sahrai blew air over her teeth. If Lah-Shah had done that Maria would have interpreted the gesture as frustration and excitement. Sahrai was in an unusual form, but she probably had most of the same communication mannerisms as she did in her basilisk form.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s something you need to see, but I don’t know if the science team ever went there.”
“Did you see much of them?” Maria asked.
“I tried not to. I need to keep my cover story as a disgruntled human from Earth. If I seemed too familiar with an IGASS team the humans would become suspicious.” Sahrai shrugged.
“That makes sense,” Maria thought for a second, “When did you last see them?”
Sahrai thought about it for a moment, then nodded as if counting to herself, “About five days before they disappeared. I was heading up to Rocky Horror with a new batch of slave-convicts. They were huddling around their shuttle, putting their suits into a decon case.”
“Deconstruction or decontamination?”
“Deconstruction.”
“Why on Aurox would they destroy their surface suits?”
“Don’t know.” Sahrai shrugged, or at least the star dragon imitation, where their shoulders and wing bones all tried to shift upwards and once, clashed and then collapsed back into place. “About eighteen days before that I saw one of their teams leaving Rocky Horror a few hours before we were due back. They seemed fine.”
“Did you get any updates from them? Why they went to Rocky Horror? I thought they were looking for sentience on Aurox?”
“I don’t know. It was weird. They didn’t get back before my shift did, so they must have gone somewhere else before coming back to Aurox, and then I saw them again as I was leaving for my next rotation up there, as I said.”
“Have you been able to contact their ship? Maybe they went there? Maybe it was a different team to the Aurox team?”
Sahrai shrugged again; she had no answers for Maria. “By the time I got back to Aurox after my rotation, they’d disappeared, and their shuttle had been covered by that camouflage sheet. I couldn’t get a signal for their ship when I tried searching, so I sent a warning to the Elder. Dran must have tried to contact them.”
“And when dran couldn’t dran sent Lah-Shah and me to see what was going on.” Maria nodded, “Something must have gone very wrong on their ship if they’ve gone dark and haven’t sent anyone to look for the planetary team.”
“I think so. Hopefully your Lah-Shah will find them and report in, if not to us then to the Elder.”
Sahrai shut the cabin door. Maria turned the seat to watch Sahrai strap in and touch her screen.
“Cabin two to cabin one, receiving?” Sahrai’s voice came over the intercom, surprisingly clear. Maria turned their seat back to face their own control panel and touched the screen.
“Cabin one to cabin two, confirmed.”
“Cabin one, strap in. The next bit can get a little rough.”
“Cabin one to cabin two, understood.”
Maria touched an image on the screen of a chair with a cross over it, hoping it was the symbol for seatbelts, and felt the real belts release from the side of the chair where they were tucked away. Maria puled the straps together, clicking them into place at the centre of their chest. The belts pulled tight, and the chair further moulded around its occupant.
“Cabin two to cabin one, engaging engine…now.”
The vehicle rolled forward, slowly edging towards the door. It sped up as the cabin emerged into the light. As Sahrai’s cabin exited, Maria’s started to rise gently.
Maria closed their eyes.
The cabin dropped with a thud of thick tyres against hard-packed earth. Rose again. The engine thrummed quietly.
Dropped.
Rose steadily.
The engine became louder. It had settled into a steady rhythm.
Maria opened their eyes. The flyer was about ten metres above the ground. The thick air had speckled the bubble with dust. The orange light filtered through above their head.
“Cabin two to cabin one: take the wheel, time to start your flying lessons.”
“I know how to fly.”
“Cabin two to cabin one, observe flight protocol please. Take the wheel Maria.”
“Cabin one to cabin two. What wheel?”
“It’s a figure of speech you humans use, isn’t it?”
Maria grinned, “Now who’s forgetting protocol.”
“Brat. Just get on with it. On your screen there’s a range of navigation tools, you’re taking over.”
Maria sighed and tapped at the screen again. A compass, a globe, and an altitude reading lit up. Tap the altimeter.”
Maria did as Sahria said, the altimeter grew to dominate the screen. They were currently 12.5 meters above nominal ground level.
“Tap the fifty-metre mark. We’re going up.”
Maria tentatively touched the fifty metres above. The flyer rose twenty metres, steadied and then rose again. The house showed clearly below them now, with the garden outlined by the metal fence. The vegetation was a stark contrast to the metal building, softer, waving without a breeze.
The tall vegetation, trees on this planet, still hemmed them in, but at the height it was possible to see a path through the branching limbs.
“Cabin one to cabin two, is that a road?”
“Cabin two to cabin one; something like that. I needed a way to getr about without being limited to the official roads.”
Maria looked at the control panel, they noted a sign that showed a chair and rectangle wrapped in a bubble, with left/right arrows. Maria tapped the right arrow. The cabin swivelled, or more precisely, the internal furnishings swivelled right. Looking over, they saw Sahrai had done the same, so they must have touched the correct part of the screen.
“Now, forward.” Sahrai’s voice came over the comms, “It’s the compass icon.”
“Yes, yes, I guessed that.” Maria laughed and tapped the compass. Now it enlarged, the altimeter shrinking as the compass increased. Their current heading was displayed over the compass, , waiting to be confirmed. Maria tapped the confirmation icon (a green tick mark).
The flyer jolted forward, getting up to speed quickly. Maria fekt panic rise in their throat as the vegetation hurtled towards them.
“You’ve gone pale, should I take over?”
Maria gurgled out an attempt at an answer, swallowed bile and tried again,
“Just…just…trying…to get a…get a…a grip…on the navigation system. It would be easier with a steering column.”
“The interface is intuitive. It’s easy to use.”
“Not for me, not tactile enough. I can’t respond fast enough if I’m trying to work through the correct sequence on the control panel.”
“Most humans pick it up fairly quickly, this is the simplified model, for limited human senses.”
“I’m not most humans.”
“I suppose.” Sahrai became quiet, controlling the flyer as aria tried to process the control mechanism.
Maria navigated through the control panel, searching for instructions; they always understood something better with written instructions to read through and apply, step by step. They needed to understand the process of running the flyer, step by step.
Under the flyer, the dirt road they’d walked down when they’d first arrived was eaten up by the speed of the vehicle. The crossroads came into view, the chipping container and concrete block buildings standing out as stark rectilinear structures in a wild landscape. A group of men stood around the door to one of the buildings, drinking. As they got closer, Sahrai took them higher. The men looked up. A couple pointed at the. One waved.
“Who’s our fan?” Maria asked. The man looked familiar, perhaps the one who’d stared after them on the first day?
“That’s Joshua Dolton. Head of prison security and senior corrections officer. “
“I don’t trust him”
Sahrai’s snort came clear over the intercom, “You shouldn’t. He’s a bully. Not what any of the human administration would call a ‘true believer’. He’s a mercenary.”
“The money can’t be that good?”
“Better than he’d get anywhere else, humans break too easily, and he doesn’t care who dies or about laws, Earth or IGASS.”
Maria could hear the contempt in Sahrai’s voice. They smiled; the man, Joshua, had given Maria the creeps and it had played on their mind for the first week, until they’d settled in and started to feel safer at Sahrai’s house.
The cross-roads disappeared behind them and the road started to peter out.
“Right, Maria, how do you feel about setting in a course? I need you to take us fifteen miles north-west.”
Slowly, carefully following the instructions displayed on half the screen, Maria set the course, direction, distance and flight altitude.
“Well don! Take a deep breath Maria, you’ve done it.”
Maria felt a rush of relief as the flyer turned north-west and safely skimmed over the vegetation. Still, a worm of irritation spoke inside, ‘Sahrai could have had more confidence in me. And she spoke to me like a child.’ Maria grumbled away to themselves as they flew.
“I can hear you, Maria. Sorry.”
“Fine.”
Below them, the plants seemed to stretch on forever, across an undulating landscape. Tors rose on the horizon. Maria admired the scene and let their anxiety and resentment go. It was far too lovely out here to hold a grudge,
Aurox roamed among the tall vegetation, browsing at grass-like structures or berries hanging from branches. Maria thought the aurox must damage the vegetation, they were so large and ungainly but watched in wonder as plants sprang back into place or actively fought back. Maria was astonished to see on orange tree, with curled branches that reminded them of bunches of cinnamon roles, whip out , uncurling with such firce that it smacked against the horns of an aurox, staggering the animal backwards. The branch curled into the harmless looking pastry shape.
“What is that?” Maria said.
“No name for it yet, the humans call it whip grass. They use the branches on the slave labour on Rocky Horror.”
“What? Why?”
“Leather and metal corrode quickly on RH. For some reason the plant life on Aurox is more resistant to the caustic atmosphere there. I think the life forms on Aurox and Rocky Horror are distantly related. The rock plants on RH have a similar whorl pattern to their surface and produce tiny flagellates to move and catch prey.”
“Do you know if the surface team got a chance to do any sampling and analysis?”
“I think they started, but then they disappeared, didn’t they?”
Sahrai sounded almost disappointed in the surface team, at least to Maria. They nodded to themselves; it certainly seemed as though someone was hiding something and the expedition from IGASS had been ‘taken out’, as the saying went.
“The landscape pulses in ultraviolet frequencies, signalling attack and retreat, growth and death.” Sahraii said, sounding entranced, “The air sings and pulses with discharged energy, I wish you could hear the song, Maria.”
And that’s your 2500 words for the month. See you soon.
For all of the chapter see this page.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 