Chapter 56
In Which the SMS Lunatic Freak Has a Whim that Shall Not Be Denied, and though It Dearly Loves Its Captain, Some Things Are Worth Straining a Relationship Over, Such as, For Instance, Rediscovering the Earth.
When the Earth popped back into existence beneath them, the ship wasted no time.
It didn’t matter that it carried a bellyful of cobalt and water, stripped from the asteroids that made up its livelihood, or that its fuel was at the lower end of its capacity.
WE’RE MAKING HISTORY, the ship said, lurching into a corrected course as the captain swore. STRAP IN!
Speed was a crucial factor. After all, nobody would care much, in the news or in classrooms, about the second ship that rediscovered the Earth.
The ship had begged for authorization to seed its drones into the atmosphere, which the captain granted after eighty-three seconds of PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, scrawling across their eyeglass.
The drone wrangler narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Visuals from the drones are connecting. We’ll see around the planet in just a sec . . . Here, a group of blue people? And unicorns. A floating church. That’s a dragon, I think. Crystal towers. Dark masses in the sea. This is . . .”
Then a pair of drones captured clouds, curling and shaping into what looked like words, and all other viewpoints shrunk, shoved into corners.
“And no incoming radio waves, electronic transmissions, nothing?” Captain Abel asked, a frown wrinkling their dark skin. “It’s an eccentric way to communicate. Are you sure it’s directed at our drones? What are they saying?”
“That’s Gita’s department,” said the drone wrangler, swiveling his chair to face her.
“The language is hard to place,” said the engineer, her hands dancing across the ship’s interface. “Lunatic’s still running it through . . . oh!”
“What?” Captain Abel gripped the engineer’s seat, their eyes following the lines of text racing across her display.
“We’re getting a match, but . . . it’s to a conlang.” Gita expressed her disbelief with a head tilt—something the captain usually found quite charming. “Loanwords are plugging the gaps, mostly twenty-third-century Mandarin and English.”
“A conlang?”
“A fictional language. This one’s from a franchise, Legends of Larnia.
It caused some controversy at the time for its socially conservative material, but it peaked in popularity right around Event X.
Actually, that timing is a touch close for my liking, let me just—” The engineer began to mumble, conferring with the ship. “Huh.” She sat back in her seat.
Captain Abel hastily released their grip, lest their fingers be crushed. “What now?”
“Ship’s got a theory.” Gita’s honey-brown eyes rolled up to meet the captain’s, who hovered, tense, above her.
“To celebrate the twelfth season of the live action adaptation, the media conglomerate controlling its copyright launched a capsule loaded with books, recordings, and artwork. They likened it to a Noah’s ark, ‘the world of Larnia,’ preserved forever in space. ”
“Gita. I’m not hearing a theory.”
“It’s just . . .” The engineer chewed at her lip. “What we’re seeing on the drone footage has to be terraforming and gene-manipulation on a level we’re not capable of. What if something received that capsule. And used it as an . . . instruction manual?”
“What you’ve just said,” the captain said slowly, “is so stupid that it makes me want to throw up in my own mouth. But alright, let’s run with it.
The clouds are speaking to us in an ancient fictional language, fine.
” They rubbed their chin, fingering the indent of an acne scar. “Can you translate?”
“Oh, sure!” Gita moved in quick darting motions, flicking through data.
“Thank Luna for the long-dead nerd who assembled this wiki, it’s fantastic.
And thank you, ship,” she added, at the Lunatic Freak’s aggrieved beeping.
“It says, and I’m translating roughly, ‘Greetings from the friendly and polite sorcerer/ God is dead/ We’d love to go to Mars/ Need help/ Thanks.
’ Then there’s a string of archaic coordinates. ”
The ship took control of the broadscreen, plumbing its database for the longitudes and latitudes of Earth, a sweep of numbers broadcast for the crew’s enjoyment. From these, it highlighted an area on the night side of the planet, where a drone pair flew over sweeping desert dunes.
“And what shall we do with this information, ship?” the captain asked, with some weariness.
Back on Luna, they’d been coerced into taking their cousin’s bully-dog on a walk.
The way it dragged them about by its leash, seemingly desperate to strangle itself on its pulled-tight collar, reminded them unflatteringly of the ship.
IF WE IGNORE CLEAR COORDINATES, THEY’LL THINK WE’RE LACKING IN INTELLIGENCE. AND I’M NOT A FOOL. I’M A LUNATIC FREAK.
“You heard the ship,” said the captain. “It has a reputation to maintain. Let’s send down a drone and greet this ‘friendly and polite sorcerer’ . . . Ah, fuck. Are we really doing this?”
OH YES, came the scrawling words. HERE WE GO!
The footage from the drone pair plummeted as they passed through the clouds. They panned over the curving dunes of a night-shadowed desert, so much smoother than the pockmarked landscapes of Luna. As the drones drew closer to the ground, the view became disturbing.
The drones transmitted footage of two men in strange dress.
One seemed in good shape, if a bit frantic in his waving.
The second man, thinner and older, with dark flecks of blood on his face and more coating his crushed prosthetics, lay motionless.
Not dead: switching views, the drones could still detect his body heat, though it was alarmingly low.
A burnt log rested at the younger man’s feet.
From its blackened toes, it might once have been a leg.
A scarce distance off, the charcoal remains of another body lay sprawled in the sand, quite dead.
The younger man spoke with urgency, judging from the nonstop flap of his mouth. He gestured emphatically at his wounded companion.
“Gita,” said the captain. “Can we translate that?”
“Ship and I are working on it. We’re almost done with the filter . . . okay, now we’ll run the captured audio through, from the start. Ship, if you’d like to do the honours?”
The ship buzzed happily, flashing the translation across their eyeglasses:
OH FUCK, WOW. SORRY FOR SWEARING. UH, MY FRIEND THE SORCERER IS VERY BADLY INJURED, AND I’M SORRY, SHOULD I BE SPEAKING IN A FORBIDDEN LANGUAGE?
I DON’T KNOW ANY. THE ONLY REMOTELY EDUCATED PERSON HERE IS OUT COLD, SO THIS WILL HAVE TO DO.
CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME? HELP, PLEASE, FRIEND, HURT.
I MEAN, IF YOU CAN’T SPEAK COMMON, THAT ROUND THING THERE IS AN EYE, RIGHT?
OR A CAMERA, I KNOW ABOUT CAMERAS. ANYWAY, YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE THE ISSUE.
MAYBE THERE’S A TRANSLATION SPELL? MERULO, WAKE UP, IT’S THE MARTIANS!
BY THE WAY, THIS IS NOT WHAT PEOPLE OF OUR WORLD USUALLY LOOK LIKE, THEY TYPICALLY HAVE MORE BLOOD INSIDE THEM.
MERULO! DAMN, HE’S OUT. LOOK, COULD YOU PLEASE HELP? PLEASE?
“Martians. They think we’re the bloody Martians.” The captain resisted the urge to spit, not wanting to sully their ship.
“What should we say back?” asked the drone wrangler, his fingers thumping against the dash with poorly contained nerves. Beside him, Gita vibrated, ready to transmit their words.
The captain sighed. There was a tension in the cabin that they lacked the skill to deflate. “Tell them the truth, that we can help. After that, we can bring them up under stage five quarantine.”
FEELING DARING TODAY, CAPTAIN? flashed the ship.
“I’m feeling,” said the captain, running a hand through their close-cropped hair, “like making history.” In truth, the unreality of it all threatened to plunge them into hysteria. They fought to keep their voice chipper, and their mind detached.
A shiver ran through the ship as the transport shuttle detached.
The crew waited in tense anticipation, the transport streaming its visual capture onto the broadscreen.
When the jewel-toned planet appeared on their screen, it looked both familiar, with its swirling whites and tranquil blues, and horribly wrong.
Nobody said it out loud, but Captain Abel felt certain that everyone had noticed.
They should have seen the Americas, or a stretch of Europe and Asia, but the continents mashed together into a single curved Pangaea.
Likely, the captain thought, with contours that perfectly matched the map of Larnia.
“We have a problem,” said the drone wrangler, and the captain jolted their attention to his section of the broadscreen. “That, uh, that dragon I mentioned earlier? It’s caught a drone. And it’s speaking to it.”
Through a shaky camera, the drone transmitted its assailant.
At first, they saw only the blur of beating wings.
Then it tossed the drone to the ground (the visual shaking briefly upon impact), and the monster was revealed in its entirety.
Maroon scales flashed, absent only on the leather of its folded wings.
Pterodactyl, lizard, dinosaur . . . None were good fits for whatever genus this thing belonged to.
Horns erupted from its brow, black weapons that curved above reptilian scarlet eyes.
Halting their examination, the beast contracted into a muscular woman.
“Oh, perfect,” the captain groaned. “I love that.”
The woman waved, which surprised them—but of course, why wouldn’t they have gestures in common?—and then her mouth began to move.
HELLO, MARTIANS, scrolled the ship, translating. OR MOONLINGS, WHICHEVER. I AM THE ONE WHO brOUGHT YOUR EARTH BACK TO YOU, AND AS SUCH I COMMAND YOU TO TAKE ME TO SPACE.
Captain Abel massaged their forehead, where the seed of a headache now grew. “Seems like she’ll be more trouble than the others. Not even a please or thank you. Also, the fact that she’s a dragon, I don’t like that.”
THERE’S ROOM ON THE TRANSPORT, the ship insisted. REMEMBER! HISTORIC EVENT!
Captain Abel inhaled deeply through their nose, held the breath in their chest, then exhaled. After four repetitions, they felt capable of response. “I suppose, if we’re already bringing up the others . . . have the transport head there next. Ship, are you preparing the med-bay?”
AFFIRMATIVE. YIPPEE!
“And we’ll need to inform Luna”—the captain tapped to get Gita’s attention—“of our unusual cargo. At least this one didn’t assume we were Martian hyper-capitalists. How’s our fuel projection with the extra weight?”
IT’S PUSHING OUR MAXIMUM CAPACITY! The words scrolled fast, betraying the ship’s excitement. BUT THAT’S THE LAST ONE, PROMISE! THE DRAGON IS ESSENTIAL!
Captain Abel forced a smile. “Well, if she’s essential, then we’ll bring aboard the dragon and the man and the polite and friendly sorcerer. Until then, I will be fucking asleep. Good work, crew!”
Before anyone could protest, they marched from the cabin.
The door slid shut behind them, and, at last, they allowed themself a small groan of pain.
This blossoming headache was a monster, and nothing that followed would lessen it, they knew that much.
Reality was different, reality had changed, reality had unicorns and dragons in it.
I’LL WAKE YOU ONCE THEY BOARD, scrolled the ship across their eye-lens, and they nodded affirmation, only to wince at the jogging of their tenderized skull.
Captain Abel’s last thought, as they crawled into the darkened nook of their sleeping shelf, was to pray to whatever God might be out there that this freshly returned Earth proved a better neighbour than Mars.