Prologue
The jungle forest was hot and damp as Sapphire dodged through the trees. Wet leaves slapped into her legs as she sprinted as fast as she could manage in the heavy gravity of the planet. Her legs felt like lead, and the air, with a slightly higher concentration of oxygen than she was used to on earth, was making her light headed, an odd combination. On one hand, she felt like she was being pulled inexorability into the ground, and on the other, she felt like she might float away at any moment.
Her chasers were still following her – she could hear them somewhere far behind, but she couldn't figure out why they hadn't caught her yet. Their hunting cats could navigate the foliage with ease, and both the humans and the animals were in better physical shape than she, as well as being used to the gravity that she was struggling so much with.
Yet she was pulling ahead, the leaves and plants a blue and purple blur, with dots of flowers in greens and reds and yellows.
Her breath was coming ragged now, a stitch in her side was nearing a point that she could no longer ignore. She approached a shallow creek, the bank was muddy, but she thought maybe – just maybe - she could use it to hide her tracks.
She splashed through the water, her leather boots sinking into the silt, schlorping as she pulled each foot out. The water came up to her waist as she crossed though the deepest part, making the slog even more difficult in tandem with the gravity. She splashed to the other side, thankful for the cooling effect of the water, and took three or four steps up the bank to where the ground was dry(ish) and solid.
Glancing backward to check if her pursuers had found her yet, heart pounding in her chest in fear, but they still seemed to be moving cautiously.
One fleeting rational part of her mind wondered why the hunters were taking so long, moving so slowly, but she was really more interested in eluding them.
She then carefully walked backwards in her own foot prints, until she was properly back into the water. The creek was moving swiftly enough that her footprints under the water were washed away in seconds. Hopefully the tracks on bank would make her followers think she had gone in that direction, deeper into the jungle.
Back into the water, she dove under the sunshine, holding her breath, and swimming along with the current as far as she could. She remembered from watching a documentary years ago about tracking dogs – that they could scent odours in the air – and that someone breaking their trail in a creek didn't actually work, since their trail persisted in the air above the water. Sapphire hoped that if she swam under the water, she might actually be able to throw them off.
She stayed underwater as long as she could, kicking frantically, her eyes stinging slightly in the murky water. She was able to stay submerged longer than she expected, but once her lungs started burning, she popped up with a splash and looked wildly around.
She hard turned a couple bends in her escape, and was an indeterminate distance away from her departure point. The jungle looked like more of the same – indigo plants and vines and great trees with rough mocha coloured bark. Small primates not too dissimilar to lemurs leaped through the branches, completely uncaring of her presence.
She might have been far enough to get away safely, but in her frightened state, she decided it was better safe than sorry, and she took another deep breath and vanished under the water again.
The creek was moving faster now, and the silty bed was becoming more rocky. She passed by startled fish, long phosphorescent eels, and something resembling a cross between a spider and a shark scrambling along the rocks. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she couldn't help but turn to look at it as the current carried her by.
The spider fish frightened her, not knowing its place in the ecosystem, it was truly something worthy of nightmares. It had stalk like eyes that followed her as she glided past. It lifted up its legs and drifted along side her, seemingly as curious of her as she was scared of it.
It lost interest in her fairly quickly, and once it grabbed back onto the rocks to anchor itself, Sapphire felt safe in taking her eyes off of it. She redirected her attention to the path ahead of her.
The current had picked up, and Sapphire noticed that the creek was suddenly much larger, and the bed of it was more rock than mud. She surfaced again to get some air.
Her clothing, a mix of leather and heavy woven fabric was thoroughly water-logged, and she was struggling now to stay above water. Her boots were laced on, so she couldn't kick them off.
A roaring filled her ears, and with a jab of fear, she kicked herself higher out of the water to look ahead. She couldn't see very well, but it appeared to be a great big honkin' cliche. A waterfall. How big it was, she didn't know, but she did know that she needed out of that creek, and she need out now.
She frantically cut towards the shore, which was suddenly much farther away than when she had started this escape. She tried to push off the bottom, but it was just deep enough that her toes simply slipped off the rocks ineffectually.
She thrashed in a near panic as she was swept mercilessly towards her doom. She no longer cared about the less immediate threat of her pursuers, of whom she was sure she had left behind. She only cared now about getting out of the water before she was thrown over a cliff and pummelled to death under the weight of the crushing water. She struggled, and slowly inched towards the edge. In a moment of clarity, she both remembered the trick of swimming with the current on an angle (which was mostly happening now anyways), and also thought to intentionally dive under water for a moment to properly kick off the rocks.
The manoeuvre gained her a great deal of precious distance, putting her only feet from the shoreline, where the water was shallower and the flora trailing into the water from the jungle. As she scrambled into a more upright position, she could see that the waterfall fed into a great red lake. She slips and slid on the rocks, desperately trying to get out before she went over, but the water was still pulled inexorably at her legs.
She stumbled and fell to her knees, and got pulled along. She cried out in pain as her leg smashed against the corner of a large rock, and she groped wildly at anything that might stop her from being swept over the lip of the waterfall. Her hands found a trailing vine, a flexible switch not unlike a willow whip back home. She grasped it in desperation, and for a half second it held her weight, before her hand slid along it, and a sharp pain in her palm made her gasp in surprise and release it.
She felt a moment of weightlessness before gravity took over, and she plummeted over the edge.
It a short drop, all things considered, she only fell around twenty feet before she hit the water at the base of the waterfall, but she didn't know it at the time. All she knew was that she was going to die in about three seconds.
She was driven down, down down, almost the bottom of the lake, the pale pink haze of bubbles and water foam filling her vision. If she'd been in less dire straits, she probably would have marvelled over the strangeness of red water, but at the moment she was more concerned with finding up and getting out from under the torrent she was trapped under.
She was tossed about, bouncing into rocks again and again as she struggled to escape, collecting bruises and bumps along the way. She finally managed to wedge her feet onto a boulder, and launched herself like a rocket away from both the danger zone of the waterfall and the rocks that represented down.
The surface sparkled high above her, and as her lungs burned and screamed for air, she couldn't help but think about what had gotten herself into this mess in the first place.
Aliens.
God-damned, space-faring, evil, eternally youthful, genetic splicing aliens.
If she got out of this alive, she was going to find the nearest laser gun-thing, and walk up to the bastard that had sent these hunters on her, and shoot him in the god-damned face.
That and her own damn insatiably curiosity, that made her want to visit this planet in the first place. But it was more the aliens that pissed her off.
Her head broke the surface, and she gasped for air, coughing and choking as the water splashed into her mouth while she desperately filled her lungs.
She cried as she gasped, exhausted and frustrated, and just wishing for all of this to be over. She couldn't tread very well, heavy as her clothing was, and between that and the lack of natural buoyancy of the water, she struggled to stay afloat.
She wanted to rest, to sleep and cry, but she couldn't, not yet. She had to find her way to shore, and find a safe place to hide until her bodyguard and travel companion, Faize, could come find her. She had a tracker pinned inside her vest, which would supposedly lead him to her.
As she picked a trajectory to take her to shore, she swam as quickly as she could without expending much energy that she was so very low on.
Sapphire had no idea if there were predators in the water, and was at the point where she just didn't care anymore. She dragged her sopping wet body onto the rocky shore, and once she was clear of the open water, she flopped onto her back, breathing heavily.
The red sky above her was getting dark. The blue sun was setting, painting the sky in orange and yellow and green. It was a bizarre blend, something she hadn't gotten used to in the past week she'd spent here. She hadn't gotten used to any of it. The cool alien creatures were neat, she loved those, but the purple plant life, the red skies and water, and the green sunsets. She didn't even know how that worked, red and blue made purple, not green.
Her heart was slowly returning to a normal pace, and as the water set in, she began to feel cold. Even with the humidity in the air around her, she knew that as night fell, she would do well to get out of her wet clothes.
With a sigh of frustration and exhaustion, she hauled herself to her feet and stumbled back into the bush and out of the open air. No longer concerned with speed – she was sure she had left her pursuers far behind – she began looking for some sort of shelter to get her through the night. She didn't know much about the fauna of the jungle, she had spent most of her time getting to know the culture and town life of the people of the planet. Were there predators that would come out at night? The town folk had the hunting cats, medium sized felines that resembled a cross between a lion and a leopard. They were domesticated, but they had probably come from some sort of wild creature, but where those creatures still around? Dogs had come from wolves, so what did the Draft come from?
As she wandered through, climbing over small fallen logs, and navigating around great obstructions of ferns and prickly plants, she couldn't help but wonder about other, more insidious threats. The jungles back on earth were filled with venomous insects and reptiles. She'd seen insects floating about, but nothing particularly notable had given her problems. Did the animals here display bright colours to warn away predators? Or would they blend in?
She kept looking for a shelter – a cave or hole, or she'd even just settle for a particularly thickly leaved tree. It had a tendency to rain in the night, that at least she had learned in her time here, and she wanted to be under cover and drying off before that happened.
She had no allusions to be able to start a fire, without matches or lighters or a fire starter, she doubted she had the skills to start one from scratch. She knew the theory of starting a fire with a bow, but she also didn't have a knife or any dry wood.
She might be able to find some flint-like rock if she went back to the lake, but she had little faith in that. Faize would find her before it came to that, she had faith.
If he hadn't gotten detained. She froze as the thought occurred to her. He was a skilled fighter, quick and resourceful, but he was fallible, just like any other living creature. He could get overwhelmed. Actually, getting overwhelmed would be the surest way to beat him in a fight – he was a rogue, an assassin. He was used to one-on-one fighting, and excelled at sneaking and stealth, but he was never trained to fight groups. He was a spy.
Sapphire shivered.
She had to believe that he was okay. She had to trust that he would come for her. Jupiter had hired him to protect her, and Sapphire had to have faith.
She didn't know if she could survive otherwise.
Her throat tight, she resisted the urge to just give up and cry. She was stronger than that – she wasn't helpless. She was capable at least, of finding shelter and keeping herself safe. She could do it.
She continued her search, no longer even aware of where the lake was anymore, or which way was civilization, she only cared to find a shelter.
The sun was very nearly set, and the night was following swiftly. Through the canopy she could see the black sky, and the stars slowly becoming visible as a the sun slipped under the horizon. She didn't know the constellations that the locals used for navigation, but she had learned about the helix nebula, it was sort of this hemispheres equivalent of a north star. They of course, didn't call it the Helix nebula – that was earths name for it – but they referred to it simply as 'The Eye'.
She finally glimpsed it through a couple of branches, glowing so far off that she could barely see the distinctive eye shape. The Eye was east.
Which didn't help her at all. She had no idea, not even an inkling, what direction she had fled from the town. She had a terrible sense of direction at the best of times, and on an alien planet, she had even less of one.
She sighed. She was well and truly stranded here, and there was nothing she could do about it. She flashed back to high school science class, where she doodled in her notebooks while her teacher droned on about how sailors could use the night sky to navigate. It had confused her at the time, so she made no effort to understand and comprehend. She was regretting now, her lack of interest. At the time she couldn't conceive that she might need to use those skills.
She couldn't see the sun anymore, but the last of the light in the sky vanished, taking away the dusk, and becoming true night. The planet had a pair of moons, but they were either in the wrong phase or wrong rotation, and were not offering any aide in the form of additional light.
She stood, shivering and frightened, while her eyes adjusted. Her neck hairs rose as she imagined all the potential dangers around her. She envisioned critters and predators climbing out of their burrows and nests and caves, all of them smelling in the air a scared, defenceless human.
She had nothing to help her. She had lost her bag in the initial firefight, and all of her supplies and essentials had been in it. She had a gun and knife and currency, but the gun was most definitely not local tech, so she had chosen to tuck it away in her rucksack for safe keeping. Faize had suggested she pick up some local weaponry to protect herself with, but when they tried, they found the local laws made it hard for the average citizen to acquire one.
In hindsight, the enquiry may have been what had brought her to the attention of the local political power. In any case, word had trickled down (up?) to Ardest Rakelm, heir to the planet, before she had come along and taken it away from him.
And now she was running for her life from his cronies, stranded in an alien jungle, cold and tired and hungry. She had just purchased the knife, a hunters knife, and was about to attach it to her belt when she and Faize had been ambushed. In the chaos she lost her bag, gotten separated from him, and been driven out of the town walls.
Walls. The town had walls. Why would the town have walls? Was there something out there, out here, that was a threat?
She needed a shelter, and she needed it now.
Her eyes had adjusted enough now that she could see a little bit. Enough to see shapes at least. As she began to search again, she noticed small lights, things glowing. At first she thought they were something like fireflies, but as her curiosity got the best of her caution, she learned that the plant life had small amounts of phosphorescence decorating their stems and leaves. It was not much, but as the light had waned, they had come to light, slowly releasing their stored light, getting brighter and brighter as she moved along. It wasn't nearly enough to light her way, but it was certainly enough to help.
She moved carefully as she walked, wishing she had better night vision, looking desperately for a dearth of light somewhere that might mean a cave or hole. Around her, the night was waking up, she could hear faint cries of various critters as they moved around in the dark. She heard the chattering of something in the trees above her, and the croaking of some alien frogs all around.
She spotted an odd formation, a blue glow running at an angle, which was unusual. Most plants were either vertical trees reaching to the sky, or meandering vines and curved fronds. Off to her left, was a thick, blue irregular glow, that stretched on and on, in the same general direction. Underneath it was more of a similar glow, more orange-red, but soft, in contrast to most of the plants that had distinct lines or dots.
As she moved closer to investigate, it became clear that the blue glow was some sort of fungus or moss growing on a great fallen tree. Alive, the tree must have been a hundred feet tall, and three or four arm lengths around. At the base of it, the ground was soft, and it seemed that the massive height of the tree had been too much for the roots to hold onto, and the entire behemoth had simply fallen over, ripping the roots out of the soft ground.
The plant life and other trees had prevented it from falling completely over, leaving it at an angle, with everything directly below it starved for sunlight. As she investigated further, trying to ignore the grumbling echo of her stomach, she saw that the giant had caused some collateral damage in its fall, and a few smaller trees had been knocked down with it, pinned to the ground, and holding it up off of it.
She had a shelter. It wasn't properly enclosed, but she had a sloping ceiling and the hard wood of the smaller trees as a wall. It was open on either side, but she though if she could rip off some branches of the dead trees, she might be able to block off one side at least, giving her only one direction to face trouble from.
It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.
The orange glow underneath the tree turned out to be actual moss. It was odd, bright orange, but it was soft and almost dry. It glowed faintly, throwing an eerie light on everything above it, but it was enough for her to see what she was doing.
Sapphire very much wanted to curl up and cry herself into oblivion, but to give up now was to kill herself. Her left knee ached terribly, and her right hand – the one she had grabbed at the vines before going over the water fall was stinging and throbbing with every heart-beat. Everything hurt, and she was sure she was a patchwork of bruises, but she still had work to do before she could rest. Then she could sit and maybe dry herself out and maybe – just maybe – she'd survive the night.
She pushed aside all of the pain and fatigue, and set to work at breaking branches to make her barrier, all the while, her neck prickled as she tried very hard not to imagine the things that may be creeping up on her as worked.
