SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Here we go, friends,” Naka said.

Before they had even touched down, a surge of people emerged from the buildings, some of them clearly armed. Judging by the raised voices and arm-waving, Jase guessed that no one here had been prepared for the visitors dropping from the sky into their yard.

“Look at them all,” Ocia said, amused. “They really do look an awful lot like Chideans.”

As they had planned, Jase, Ranael, Ocia, and two of Senda’s crew emerged from their ships without fanfare, closing the gates before anyone thought to even take a look inside the airlock.

Jase had no intention of indulging in proper first-contact ceremonies with these people. He led the others toward the building Zio had recommended, not surprised when some of the tall natives stalked toward them, as lumbering and stiff as Aga Tenzo, who was still sulking in his cabin on the moon.

“Are you detecting any of those Chidean hybrids here, Zio?” Jase transmitted to the AI as he raised his hand in what they believed to be a greeting. A small patch on his palm sampled the air.

“Yes, Jase. Three at least. There may be more below ground but I cannot probe that deeply. The stout male without hair on his head to your left. Also the one beside him in the blue clothing.”

By now they were surrounded by people dressed alike in colors as drab as the desert, guns aimed at the visitors. Ranael stepped forward. “Please let us pass,” she said after signaling Zio to translate via a speaker embedded in her exocortex.

There was an astonished silence, and then one of the people before them spoke, saying something in a harsh voice that made clear his objection to her request. Zio had to fill in a few patches and omit some phrases, but the language it had learned was sufficient.

Ranael looked up at the tall native. She hid her fear well, Jase thought, but then it wasn’t likely that this person would interpret her expression anyway. She turned to the broad-shouldered male Zio had pointed out. “We know who you are. You have something that doesn’t belong here. We have come for it.”

The hybrid glanced at the other, looking nervous and perhaps a little angry, if their experience with Tenzo’s people allowed them the comparison. After a moment, Zio translated his words. “We can’t let you.”

“You have no choice,” Ocia said, already impatient with this palaver.

“Who are you?” the hybrid said, his voice thin. “Why are you doing this?”

“That doesn’t matter. But we are watching you. You—”

“Zio, cease translation,” Ranael snapped.

“Understood.”

“Tell them nothing!” Ranael said to Ocia. “They don’t need to know. Let’s be gone and let others handle this.”

“Agreed,” Jase said. He activated his shield and took a step forward. “Stay together, just keep walking.”

One of the men aimed at his chest when he moved to walk between them. Someone else shouted something. A man reached out to grasp Ranael’s arm, which slipped out of his grasp as if oiled. More shouting.

It did not take long before someone fired a projectile weapon. The bullet glanced off Ocia’s shield and struck the ground beside someone’s foot. Jase’s small group moved steadily forward, untouched by the attempts to stop them. Uncaring of the live fire. Unstoppable by hands and fists. When another bullet deflected from Jase into a man’s leg, someone apparently gave the order to cease fire.

Now three hulking males blocked their way into the broad entrance door of the building.

“Ocia,” Jase said. “Just demonstrate. Nothing more.”

She bit back a grin and touched the emitter at the tip of her finger, briefly unshielded, to a man’s leg. He screeched, surprised by the sudden pain, and collapsed on the ground, twitching. More shouting erupted when the others jumped aside. When Ocia turned toward the small crowd behind them, the Chidean hybrid among them made himself heard above the din.

“Translate, Zio,” Jase said.

They listened to a somewhat-garbled interpretation, but the meaning was clear. The man, perhaps some sort of leader, urged the others to stand down. Grudgingly, the men backed off, but guns remained fixed on the newcomers. Jase almost expected Ocia to buzz one of them just to make her point, but she kept her fingers to herself.

“Tell them to stay out of our way,” he said to the man. “You know they can’t stop us. It is not our intent to hurt anyone.”

The Chidean regarded him warily, then looked back at the two ships crouching in the gloom behind them like some mythical menace come to life. “You’ve come for the ship?” he said, his voice barely audible.

“Just a part of it,” Jase replied. Aided by Zio, he managed the door’s locking mechanism, and they stepped into the building. The hybrid and two others followed after motioning their people to back away. The ship’s parts would be useless without the AI. Before any of these people learned enough from the design to replicate a useful power source, the Chideans would be standing at their gate, ready to take their world from them.

“Zio, monitor their movements and make sure they don’t find a way to barricade us in here,” Jase said after they had traversed harshly lit corridors and several stairways. Zio’s signal suffered from the layers of rock and metal that made up the underground installation, and each step down seemed like a descent into a tomb. They met no one along the way; perhaps the people who staffed this place had been ordered away.

Ocia snickered. “With what? There is no security here to speak of. No cohesive network, not even electronics. Brawn, bricks, guns is all they have.”

“It’s in here,” Jase said finally, pointing at a door.

The hybrid, silent during their descent, moved to open it for them. Jase wondered if his earlier manipulation of the locks had broken something.

They entered a storage room, or perhaps a workshop. Jase peered into the dim, cavernous space. No one waited here for them. Equipment and pieces that seemed to belong to planes and other airships cluttered massive shelves and had been collected in piles everywhere, leaving space between them for people to get around. Zio’s interpretation of their hidden scanners led them to a heap of twisted metal.

Ranael gasped. “They crashed?”

The hybrid nodded. “On their last trip here from…from up there. We believe it was done on purpose. The fire consumed much of it.”

“Did they survive?”

“We found no…no bodies. If they lived, they did not stay with the wreck.”

Jase prodded a shred of a tail section with his foot. This, then, confirmed it. These hybrids were experiments, never meant to leave this place again, serving only to support Chidean theories. For how many generations had the mission experts visited to inspect their progeny, perhaps to cut one or two of them up to see how their bodies fared in this environment? And did this person know? How much did any of them know? He ached to ask them; this man seemed to be one of the gatekeepers Ranael had assumed would be here. But this was beyond his skills and experience. He said nothing.

“What did you come for?” the hybrid said to Ocia, who was inspecting a jumble of parts on a long counter.

After a little rummaging, she held up a diamond-shaped object, rounded on one end and somewhat spongy to the touch. “This.”

“What…what is it?” he said. “We’ve not been able to identify it.”

“Piece of art,” Ocia said and marched past him back to the door.

Brigadier General Malcolm Groves barely waited until the jeep delivering him from the airfield came to a halt before the administrative bunker of the base. Leaping from the vehicle, he ignored the salutes of the personnel who got in his way and strode past the startled secretary sitting outside Colonel Farrow’s office.