"We're actually not doing bad, considering…" Miss Davenport stated, attempting to make conversation with the girl walking not too far in front of her. T.J. hadn't really harbored any malice or direct dislike toward Suzee, unless one counted all those times that she'd literally called the Yensidian imaginary (likely to her face!) …That was a whole different story, though. How could she really be expected to simply know that invisible friends existed when there was no premise for them? She'd always been a very by-the-books person, though so much had happened to turn her idea of a perfect world upside-down.
"No, we're not," Suzee agreed, her tone midway between conversational and annoyed. She couldn't help it if she was still bitter about all that time Davenport had ridiculed Cat; called her a dreamer and a misfit in front of the other students. There was the whole interesting 'imaginary' speech, too. And the long talks about 'Suzee.' And—
Basically, they tolerated each other.
Davenport was a proud woman. Frantic at times, and prone to fainting spells, but proud. She wasn't about to directly admit to Suzee that she'd been wrong, though perhaps this would be a good time to talk things over… Away from the crew in a place where few would probably be around to overhear them. Yes, that would definitely be best. They could keep it between themselves.
"Terbrin?" T.J. hailed the En'hegian that slithered along quite slowly in front of them. It turned, exhibiting an enormously defined sense of balance. Both Suzee and Davenport winced, expecting their guide to simply fall over.
"Yes?" she responded.
"…I was wondering if you… perhaps have anything to eat around here that would be palatable for… Well. Us." T.J. didn't want to be rude, it was just that she'd already pictured in her mind what creatures like the En'hegians might eat… And it wasn't pretty. To her surprise, Terbrin laughed.
"…I'm sorry, but that could take some doing. I shall see what I can do, if you care to wait…?"
T.J. nodded. The En'hegian dragged itself off.
Once Terbrin was out of earshot, Suzee looked up to the older woman. "You know, we were making pretty good time. Is there any reason why you wanted to just stop in the middle of nowhere?" She leaned against one of the rock walls that made up the side of a repair bay, allowing color-streaked hair to fall in front of her eyes so she could glare up through it. Admittedly, it did make her look slightly more menacing, but T.J. had long ago gotten used to that expression. Suzee wanted a fight. The best way to dispel that was to smile.
So she did.
The expression turned to curiosity. "…Alright, so…?"
"I just thought we could talk for a while, over lunch. I was getting a bit hungry."
"Yeah. I was, too." She paused, and even considered for a moment sitting on the ground. In addition to a nagging hunger, she was also quite tired. Suzee, too, was proud, and still wasn't done being bitter at Miss Davenport. If anything, at least the anger gave her something to feel besides homesickness. "Look, they're gonna deliver the glide components. I should be there."
T.J. fought back the urge to say that she was still the superior officer, but bit her tongue.
Suddenly Suzee pushed off the wall, eyes narrowed and focused on some point ahead of her.
"…Something wrong?" Davenport asked.
"…I don't smell anything," Suzee responded.
"That's hardly out of the ordinary…"
Annoyed, Suzee shook her head, holding up a hand to indicate silence. Again, Davenport refrained from saying anything as Suzee removed one of the gill covers on the front of the Starcademy-issue jumper.
"You think something's wrong?" T.J. asked after what she considered to be a reasonable enough silence.
Holding nothing but concern and curiosity in her voice, without any of the snappish tone of before, Suzee replied, "…No. I don't think so." She paused, before folding the gill cover back in place. "…Just got the strangest… I don't know. A feeling."
---
Rosie Ianni leaned over a completely unremarkable plant, in the center of a totally unremarkable patch of dirt, and had just made a perfectly unremarkable discovery. "This isn't edible, either."
"Oh, that figures," Bova grunted, rolling his eyes. "It looks like it's just another weed. But hey, what did I tell you? I said it didn't look edible, and you had to waste a full minute of our time analyzing that. So, was I right?"
"Yeah… doesn't that bother you?" Rosie stood up, looking Bova in the eyes.
"Yeah, it bothers me! I'm hungry!"
Rosie chuckled. "No, I mean as a whole. First there's this thing, right? And the last couple plants we looked at… Well, I suppose those would have been first…"
"Point?" Bova asked. He was actually vaguely interested. This scientific stuff was, after all, his forte. He could tell at a glance whether or not something would be edible or not, or, alternatively, whether or not it would kill them if they ate it. It was the fact that Rosie insisted on analyzing every single one of his statements that was literally working him into a starved stupor.
Okay. Not quite. But a hungry Uranusian is a dramatic Uranusian.
"Nothing's edible. We would have run into something by now. I mean, even you said that the berries on that vine were so acidic they'd… Well, you know."
"You'd have really bad ulcers, that's for sure," Bova shrugged, looking at the tiny plant on the ground. As much as he didn't want to admit it, Rosie was pretty accurate. They'd checked out several dozen different species of plantlife, and not one of them was remotely edible. Some, in fact, were highly poisonous enough that a touch would make someone sick for days.
"And there's hardly any plantlife on this planet to begin with," Rosie added. Bova arched his eyebrows, turning toward her. Her face was rather downcast, which was certainly not a normal expression for a Mercurian. Rosie's shoulders sagged, and she rested her hands on her hips. "…What do they eat? Seriously, Bova? There's nothing here to eat!"
Bova's worst nightmare had come true. Almost. At least he wasn't dead yet, and there was also the recurring dream he had about the Arcturian Bugbear…
"I think we should get back to the ship."
"Couldn't agree with you more," Bova droned. There was food at the ship. The one thought that kept him going.
They hadn't gone ten steps when Rosie turned to look at him, the downcast expression turned to confusion.
"What?" Bova asked. Rosie pointed, and Bova crossed his eyes, looking upward.
His antennae were sparking.
---
"Hit" was both an understatement and an overstatement. Harlan had been trained in some sort of human fighting technique… Thankfully, the sound Radu heard wasn't Harlan being jammed against the fender of the fast-moving yet silent vehicle. It was the sound of the Earther's foot coming into contact with the front of the car as he jumped to avoid it, however, which turned out to be just as bad. To Radu's Andromedan ears, the snap was painfully audible, and anyone could see that Harlan's knee was bent at an unnaturally outward angle.
As he went flying.
As he went flying some fifteen feet.
Harlan's shoulders slammed into the ground, his head coming into contact with the packed dirt not too long after. He lay there, unmoving, though in the sudden silence, Radu could easily hear Harlan's breathing. It was slow, hollow. Hopefully he'd just been knocked out, and not something worse.
"Harlan? Harlan, are you alright?" It was an automatic response to the situation. Obviously, he was far from 'alright,' though ironically enough, the silence was becoming deafening. People that had previously been walking down the street turned to stare in silence at the now prone form of the alien creatures. The driver of the car that hit Harlan was standing outside of it now, watching without saying a word. Yellow eyes everywhere… Some had even appeared that hadn't been there before. Radu approached uneasily, kneeling in front of the other, who'd landed on his side. There was a little blood in the dirt where he'd slid across the ground, but that wasn't what he was worried about.
Tentatively pressing a hand into his friend's shoulder, he was not too surprised to find that there was no resistance, and Harlan flopped down onto his back without protest. There was a gash just above his temple where his head struck the ground, but it seemed to be shallow. It bled a lot, but head wounds tended to.
"Can I have a little help?" Radu called.
They continued watching. Staring. There was a sudden snap in his consciousness, and a calling throughout his limited psionic abilities.
It wasn't so much that Radu heard the whispered phrase carried on the wind so much as felt it.
"Let the hunt begin. Let the hunt begin. Let the hunt begin."
---
All around them were piles of stone and sand, cleared some time ago in order to fashion the crude city out of the same material. Dirt. Rock. Sweat, blood, and tears. It had taken years to build the city. Years.
Not their years.
"Suzee…" T.J. gently laid a hand on the Yensidian's shoulder as she rocked back and forth. Any second, thought T.J., and the girl's rocking would simply cause her to fall over.
Shuddering, Suzee snapped out of the trance, gasping for air. "What the hell was that?" She demanded, rounding on Davenport, wide-eyed.
T.J. took a step back. "…I was hoping you knew," she answered meekly, inadvertently turning her eyes away from Suzee's. She considered all of them under her watch, and she cared for each of them, but something just wasn't right about being afraid of one of your charges.
The frantic episode passed as quickly as it had begun. "I… I saw something. Memories. Almost like I'd pitched into someone… One of them!" Suzee's expression was unreadable, her tone indistinguishable between excited and afraid. "And I couldn't help it, either. It was like… I could feel them in my mind. I can hear something…"
She turned to the empty air next to her, then to T.J. "You hear it, too, right?" She asked, and the woman finally recognized that tone as fear. For one that heard at least one voice all the time, Suzee certainly seemed scared of whatever new one she heard.
Truthfully, though, Miss Davenport was concerned as well. No longer did she take invisible friends or inaudible voices for granted. "No, Suzee… What do you hear?"
"The same thing over and over…" Her eyes widened. "Let the hunt begin. Let the hunt begin."
---
"I have an incoming transmission!!" Thelma announced, wearing her normally cheerful smile. She shuffled toward the commander, who was currently looking out one of the monitors to the ground below. Something was definitely going on. Something big. It had caused literally the entire population to stop and face inward, toward the center of town. And that included everyone… Even those whom Goddard had determined to be women and children.
Those working on ships and transports suddenly stopped working. Those inside buildings and within quarters had emerged onto the street. As far as the monitor would show, there were En'hegians all over the place. More than he could hope to count, almost like a pack, or a swarm.
"Go ahead and play it," Goddard said, leaning toward the monitor as if it would give him a better view. He only succeeded in adding a nose print to the glass covering it.
Perhaps this was some sort of cultural thing. Maybe once a day all the natives decided it was just time to step outside and look at the sky… Maybe it was just today.
"I told you to play that transmission, Thelma," Seth said, somewhat perturbed.
"I have been," Thelma responded.
Rolling his eyes and offering a tolerant smile, the Commander clarified, "So I can hear it?"
Thelma reached up, turning the dial on the plate that covered her head. Suddenly static filled the room, though there was a voice in it. No… it was the voices that were making up the static. It was impossible to hear it.
"Thelma, can you single out one of the voices?"
The android nodded, her eyes rolling back a little. Gradually, the voices died off until only one remained.
Goddard stared. "What…?"
Thelma offered helpfully, " I believe whomever it is, is clearly stating 'Let the hunt begin,' Sir."
---
"Let the hunt begin. You hear that?" Bova turned to Rosie, who shied back away from him. The miniature lightning bolts arching around her friend's antennae were a little too dangerous for her liking. Bova told her they wouldn't hurt her.
Much.
"No, I don't," she said skeptically. Her eyes traveled up the hill they'd descended not too long ago. So far, more of the plants they'd checked had come up poisonous, or contained other means of deterrent, such as spiny leaves. Those that looked to at least be decent were covered with swarms of insects.
"Hm. C'mon. I think we need to stop detouring and bet back to the Christa."
Her friend's tone was casual, as if he didn't care that he was sparking for no reason, or that there was nothing useful to eat growing in the ground, or even that he was hearing voices that Rosie herself couldn't hear. Rosie knew how to read into him by now, though, and Bova was worried. Granted, Bova always knew something would go wrong at the least convenient of times, but it was very unlike him to be worried about it.
She followed him up the hill. The incline was steep, and she also had to be careful to avoid touching any of the plants that relied on contact-toxin as a predator evasion tactic. Using the rocks as handholds, she slowly ascended just behind Bova. Upon reaching the top of the hill, Bova hoisted himself up and seemed to stare outward, past the rocky barrier they'd crossed.
"What, Bova? What do you see?"
Rosie pulled herself up, standing next to the Uranusian. She looked first at him, then followed his line of sight outward.
"En'hegians. Everywhere."
Rosie was about to respond, when suddenly they all started moving forward, in unison.
---
"Harlan, you gotta wake up."
Radu continued kneeling next to Harlan, one hand on the earther's shoulder, and the other planted in the ground. His eyes remained on the throng of the planet's population gathering around them. They hadn't moved yet. Hadn't even done anything besides stare. They seemed passive. Calm. In fact, Radu could actually hear as their heart rates slowed.
Collectively!
Their hearts were slowing to beat on the exact same rhythm.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Let the hunt begin. Let the hunt begin.
Harlan moaned, reaching for the gash on his forehead. Just about the same time, the En'hegians started moving forward and an incredibly slow pace. Radu calculated that at the rate they were going, it might even take the closest of them an hour to reach the center.
Not wanting to take the chance that their advance would suddenly pick up, Radu lifted Harlan and rested the Earther on his shoulder. The hundreds of pairs of yellow eyes turned to stare at him as he carted the boy off, but no one made any quick move to attack. In fact, none even reached out for them.
That was rather odd.
Radu leaped over the stone barrier that seemed to separate the city proper from the dusty, spare wilderness beyond. Having put some distance between them and the weirdly tranced aliens, Radu set Harlan down, propping him against the barrier.
"You alright? C'mon. Say something."
Harlan's eyes remain squinted tightly closed, and he moaned in pain. Radu tilted his head, looking toward the odd position of the dislocated knee. Before Harlan knew what was happening, or could protest, Radu reached toward the injured join and deftly popped it back into place. It probably wasn't the most medically sound thing to do, but it would certainly take away a lot of the pain.
Harlan's eyes shot open. He started to scream in pain, but the cry died in his throat. His eyes stared ahead, straight ahead, right at the side of a wall.
"Harlan…?" the Andromedan prompted.
The Earther blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Stared again. "…Radu. I can't see."