Chapter 9 #3
“I don’t know,” Drako says. “We just tried not to fall into them. Some are very deep and turn into tunnels, but it’s hard to go down them and come back. Mostly because you crush yourself into squishy powder at the bottom, I think.”
I can feel Thor glowering at me, mad that I didn’t take all due precaution to protect myself.
I’m not allowed to let my thoughts wander for even a moment, on account of the ever-present threat of death.
I get it. It’s just hard not to think about how fucked everything I ever loved and cared about is now.
Fortunately, I think of something to say to take the heat off me. That’s a talent they don’t teach in schools. Not directly, anyway.
“If we’re going somewhere safe to call our comrades, what will happen to you, Drako? Are your people going to come for you?”
“No,” Drako says.
Thor and I exchange looks.
“Why not?”
“Because this was a colonization mission,” Drako says. “We came with the resources needed to start a small civilization. They’ll check in on us in a few months. They might send a new landing crew in a few years, but my guess is they will assume the planet is too hostile.”
“You shot us down from the ground,” Thor says. “Why would settlers shoot a passing ship down? We weren’t even looking at you. We were headed to an entire other system. All we were doing close to orbit was using the planet’s gravitational field to slingshot us on.”
I can see he’s pissed, because he’s thinking that this didn’t have to happen. I wonder if he’s letting himself think about the fact Drako is definitely the one who gave the command to shoot us down. He killed everyone we were coming to know on the ship, and he almost killed us too.
“It’s also a strategic point,” Drako says. “Which is why you got sent on a death mission here too. I don’t think you were trying to perform a gravitational slingshot. You were too low for that.”
He pauses for a moment, as if he is thinking about whether he wants to say what he’s going to say next. I can see the point where he decides just to fucking say it.
“You might be surprised when your friends don’t come looking right away either. The three of us might be all we have for longer than any of us want to think.”
I process what he’s saying. I don’t like it. I know Thor hates it too, but I hate this even more.
“Are you saying there’s some chance I never get to go home?”
“There’s a massive chance you never go home, girl,” Drako says. “The way you wander about the place like it’s a walled garden, thinking that you’re immune to danger, you could die at any moment.”
“I did survive a plane crash that killed pretty much everyone,” I say. “So. You know. Maybe I am charmed.”
Drako looks over at Thor. “What about you, Golden Boy? Are you charmed?”
“I’m lucky,” Thor says.
I am trying not to blink back tears at the idea of never seeing my sisters again. I haven’t been taking this completely seriously. That’s my problem. I ran away on impulse and even when we crashed I figured it would all work out somehow. I am absolutely banking on someone coming to save us.
“Is he right? Are they not going to come for us?” I ask Thor the question as we start walking again.
“Of course they’re going to come for us. We’re from a civilized culture,” Thor says. “We don’t leave each other to die in the wilds of forgotten planets.”
Up ahead, Drako laughs in a cynical way.
“What?”
“Neither one of you have any idea of the barbarism your so-called civilized culture likes to partake in,” he says.
“You’ve been brainwashed to think you’re the good guys.
You have fancy big buildings, and shiny clothes, and you speak fancy to each other.
But deep down? You’re Vikings. Just like us, and you do bad things, just like us. ”
“Bad things like what?”
Drako gives me a faintly irritated look, then strides off ahead. I have to trot to catch up with him. “Like what?” I ask, practically nipping at his heels. “If you’re going to say we’re the bad guys, tell me something bad we did. I bet it wasn’t even that bad.”
“The Frayer eradicated an entire colony of Vikar settlers on Dagr Dottir,” he says. “They used an energy weapon. There was no chance to fight back. There is also a reason only the Frayer still occupy Verold, Earth.”
“It’s because the Vikar are restless, nomadic raiders who cannot stop and build and must travel the stars,” I say, parroting what I learned in school.
Drako looks at me as if I am soft in the head. “Is that what they tell you?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“The Vikar are not on Earth anymore because the ones who did not flee to the stars were murdered.”
I frown slightly. “When was this?”
“Before you were born,” he says. “Don’t worry, little one. Your ancestors performed the bloodbath. You were free to enjoy the fruits of their bloody labors, before you decided to fling yourself into the stars.”
I look around at Thor, to see what he thinks about this story. Sounds like propaganda to me, though I did always think it was a bit strange that there weren’t even a few thousand Vikar living somewhere on our world.
He looks at me and gives a little shrug.
“Is that true?” I ask him outright. Shrugs are useless to me. I need information.
“It’s true there were wars,” he says.
Drako snorts. “Wars are between two sides of opposing strength. My people were hounded from the cradle that birthed them by the twin they were created alongside. We seek to settle the stars, so that never again can our world be taken from us. And that is why when a Frayer cruiser with a crew of many hundreds slides by in the night, we shoot it down.”
“Didn’t really work out for you, though, did it. Because it made those scavenger creatures wake up and eat everyone except you somehow because you were sitting on a chair.”
I think that reason is dubious as hell, but I have done a lot of pushing and questioning, and the terrain is starting to shift to uneven rock, so I have to pay attention to where my feet go or else risk another lecture from Thor.
I follow Drako quite closely, looking at him often, examining his tattoos as much as I dare, wondering if what he said was true.
It does make a certain amount of sense. Frayer culture is all about expansion and improvement.
It’s why my father’s house had to be sacrificed in the end.
Weltheim is a city of many wonders, but there’s no wilderness left in it.
Nature has been entirely dominated by our kind.
That’s why I ran to the hills to herd goats until I was called back to the birth of Freya’s child.
Drako notices me looking, I am sure, but he does not growl at me, or tell me to stop.
“These rocks are strange,” Thor muses from behind. “I wonder what geological process caused them to form. They almost look as though they are armored, the way the plates seem to…”
“Stop,” Drako says firmly, but not loudly. There is an urgency in his voice that Thor and I both instantly respond to.
He looks down at his feet, and across at the plain of undulating rock.
“We have to go back,” he say. “But not by the same route.”
“Why?”
I follow Drako’s eyeline, which is cast back the way we came, and I see that the ground seems to be undulating a little, sort of shifting and settling again. What a strange geological feature. I wonder if there are springs under this ground or similar.
“These are not rocks,” Drako says. “We are walking on the same horde that consumed your crew and mine.”
His words send a bolt of adrenaline right through me. Every part of my body is immediately tingling with fear as my primitive brain screams at me to flee.
“What the fuck?” I gasp, looking down at my feet and then around myself.
It would be so easy not to notice that at all.
They are packed together so tightly one seems to blend into the other, and there is no sign of limbs or eyes or anything else that makes a creature a creature.
They must be coiled up on themselves like roly-poly bugs, their eyes retracted as they sleep off their recent meal en masse.
They are spread out as far as the eye can see, though we have traveled only a short way over them.
I am realizing now that the motion I saw was them stirring a little from being woken up just a bit before settling back into sleep.
My mind concocts a horror scene of what would happen if just one of these creatures were to wake completely, pop a single stalked eye up at us, and call down the army of his family upon us.
There would be nothing left. Not even bone.
Thor, Drako, and I make our way off the plain of sleeping horde as quietly and quickly as we can.
We tiptoe cautiously, holding our breath, not daring to make a sound.
No more words are spoken. Nobody is complaining about the crimes of the past now.
Every moment matters until we are back on what my mind is going to refer to as solid ground.
Once we are no longer wandering over the backs of our greatest predators, we run.
It’s an instinctive thing, our bodies are demanding safety and we have no choice but to give it to them.
We sprint as fast as we collectively can all the way up an incline that turns into a steep hill where the trees thin and the field of scavengers can be seen laid out beneath us in what mercifully can be described as the distance.
We are all panting as we come to a halt, adrenaline starting to fade from the use of it doing what it was supposed to do—get us to safety.
Thor lets out an unexpected peal of laughter.
To my surprise, Drako follows suit.
They slap one another on the back and shoulder, their faces contorted with what to me seems genuine merriment. I stare at the pair of them, wondering if I should be laughing too, but not really understanding why.
“We are the stupidest fucking descendants of primates,” Thor chortles. “We don’t deserve to be alive.”