38 Strange New Home
Strange New Home
Something’s gone wrong.
Orion wakes to a blur of panic and blaring alarms. He groggily tries to assess what’s happening.
The ship is failing. The Helpers have pulled Orion abruptly from stasis for orders, for a plan.
As if he had any authority, as if he should know what to do.
He’s become used to this, growing up in chunks, forcing maturity when he has no choice.
The Beasts are too close behind the ship. They’ve caught up somehow. And Orion knows his ship is still too far from their sanctuary planet to make it without being followed. He’s heard nothing yet from Mothership. There’s nothing left to jettison for distraction.
Well, that’s not quite true. Nearly a hundred much smaller targets will be much harder to track and capture than one large one.
Orion makes the only choice he can. He rushes to load the last-resort escape pods with ninety-six sleeping children, jettisoning each life-support pod individually, each with a robot Helper or two.
They’ll have to make do if they survive; the Helpers will do their best to care for them and explain, but there isn’t time to wake the children.
As for how the children will survive on their own if they make it to the planet, let alone find the rest of their species again, Orion doesn’t know.
Right now, he barely cares. A long-term plan is a long way off.
All that matters right now is to survive the night, survive the hour, survive the minute.
He gets seventy-two pods out the door and into space, hurtling into the dark toward that distant planet.
It’s a caravan of lonely little specks that may or may not make it to their only hope for survival.
Orion refuses to think of the twenty-three left behind that he doesn’t have time to save.
But he can’t help but acknowledge the grim count in his head.
They are seventy-three and seventy-four now.
The rest of his skeleton crew of little robots will try, but he has no illusions.
Chances are slim; the Beasts are at their heels.
His baby can’t wait any longer, still sleeping in the last waiting pod.
He’s going with her. He doesn’t mind that the journey will be extra cramped because they’ll need double life support crammed inside; they’ll both be asleep for most of it.
She looks peaceful. Her own Helper companion is curled around her wrist. He barely makes it inside before the pod closes, launching into the dark void.
A brief glance through the window gives him a glimpse of another pod, cruising along a slightly different path; the distance between them growing.
A fleet of lifeboats drifting in a stormy sea—he hopes some of them survive it.
Orion waits for the bright flash in the distance behind them, says a silent goodbye to their ship and those still left aboard, and heads off into peaceful oblivion, trusting the little robot curled around his fingers will wake him when they’re close.
Orion isn’t sure what goes wrong this time, but he wakes to yet another crisis.
Coming to with a gasp, startled from stasis unceremoniously, he finds the little robot curled around his fingers frantically squeezing and running checks on his vitals, all it is capable of doing to help him.
The escape pod is cracked open, ruined, a twirl of smoke rising into the air from its shell and a small fire crackling around the wreckage.
Orion searches for the baby before he feels the bruises and aches set in.
Baby, awake and panting, seems unharmed, only scared and confused.
His own body feels beaten and strangely light.
But they’ve made it; they’re alive, on solid ground.
Strange ground. And gravity feels different, light, as if he could leap and bound farther than he ever has before.
The night is darker here, the colors different.
The air smells overwhelmingly delicious but feels wet on his tongue.
There’s only one moon, but he can still see well enough. It’s complete sensory overload.
Shockingly loud sounds and pounding hooves are everywhere. Run, hide, his senses tell him. But he can’t because of the creatures; they are everywhere, so many of them. Something bowls right over Baby. She cowers silently. Rage clouds Orion’s mind, and he reacts, thinking only to protect her.
He’s no longer prey; he’s predator. And to his surprise, when he bites into the neck of the creature, it falls with little effort on his part and no fighting back.
Some of the other creatures flee, but many mill about stupidly, and Orion feels powerful.
He feels what it’s like to be the monster in the night.
He stops being afraid. The baby at his feet senses his change of mood.
She can smell the air, and she’s already drooling, a hungry gleam in her eye.
She, too, darts toward a creature, copies his movements to bring one down for herself.
Orion’s species aren’t natural carnivores.
On their home planet, they harvest plants; their sharp teeth are for piercing the tough outer shells of the vegetation to get to the sweet and soft insides.
But this creature is like a moving plant.
Full of delicious liquid. It tastes almost like the tree sap, the kind they feed the babies.
It will be enough for him for now and the baby, enough to tide them over.
This is the moment Orion falls in love with this planet, as he stands guard while Baby eats.
He sees her hunger fully fade for the first time since he’s known her; she has not just enough, but excess.
The herd of creatures hasn’t even fully dispersed yet.
Some of them linger nearby, not even bothering to run or hide or be quiet.
No more rations; they can have as much as they want.
Orion can survive here. He and Baby can thrive.
The surroundings are alien, but he doesn’t bother to analyze them too hard; he only devotes attention to vital things like shelter, safety, places to dart in the unfamiliar foliage, and hiding spaces.
The wreckage of their escape pod, the smell of his kill, will draw any nearby predators; of this Orion is sure.
His gut tells him this planet is safe enough, that the Beasts are not here.
But that’s no reason for carelessness. He’s not about to let them fail now, so he keeps his eyes up, constantly scanning for danger.
The fire burns out quickly, leaving only a thread of smoke in the air by the time the company Orion expected appears out of the darkness.
This life, too, is loud and obvious. Safety.
It all screams, “Safety!” The planet is safe if its life-forms can afford to be so careless and loud in the darkness.
Orion and the baby have plenty of time to dart into the nearby shadows. Hide, silent, still.
Different creatures, two of them. The larger carrying a little light that shines across the patches of ground.
Orion tenses, ready to pick up Baby and run if he has to.
She’s watching as avidly as he is, as silently.
The fear rolls off her in palpable waves.
Orion sniffs the air but catches no scent of the Beasts.
And these creatures are much smaller than Beasts.
Not any larger than him or Baby. They smell unfamiliar, but not bad.
Not delicious, like this prey they found.
The beings are communicating with each other, Orion realizes, as he listens.
He’s good at observing and deducing things about unfamiliar creatures now; he’s had to be to make it this far.
The larger being points and gestures, and the smaller one asks something in reply.
When the little one stumbles, the larger one catches it, steadies it.
Brother, Sister, Orion thinks suddenly with a pang. They look nothing like his brother and sister, but their interactions remind him unexpectedly of the family he lost. Of how he feels about Baby. The big one points to the sky, at the stars glimmering there.
“Orion,” it says.
Orion. Orion. Orion.
Orion rolls this unfamiliar word in his head over and over, looking at the stars where he came from. Where Mothership is flying, maybe on the way to them already. He likes it, this strange word. He decides Orion will be his new name to match his new life.
But the smaller being catches sight of the mess Orion and Baby have made of the things they killed.
Fur and horns and hooves, all familiar concepts but jumbled in a new way on this strange planet.
Orion feels a blip of sadness and guilt.
He doesn’t want to be a beast or monster here; he resolves to survive, to make his home here, but not like the Beasts do.
Orion only wants to be a part of things, not take them over.
But how to explain that? He’ll have to learn the language. He starts to plan.
The bigger being protectively throws out an arm to hold the littler one.
Brother. Sister. Orion is sure of that now.
And he doesn’t want to hurt them, doesn’t want to be the dark beast in the woods who fell from the sky.
Maybe they can help him. Orion hesitates, moves forward, trying to make his mouth form the strange sounds.
Orion, Orion, Orion. But it’s more difficult than he expected, and it doesn’t come out right, doesn’t sound at all like the sound the being made.
The beings turn toward the movement; light flashes unexpectedly across Orion. The light hurts his eyes, and he hisses in pain, inadvertently baring his fangs. He lunges quickly over the little one to shelter her.