Unknown
Chapter Eight: Escorted
I left Catherine a note detailing where I was going, what I hoped to accomplish, and that I would be back before sundown, no matter what. My writing was certainly not the best, but given the fact that I could not remember the last time I used my calligraphy skills, I was pleasantly surprised by my wrists' muscle memory. The basket of apples along with the water barrel and cup were left beside her should she require them. For protection, I left a submachine gun, which also doubled as the paperweight that pinned the note down. I knew she could operate the firearm: all military personal aboard Daedalus-class transports were competent in handling weaponry up to and including assault rifles.
I wanted to provide every possible need that might appear in the time I was gone, but I knew that wouldn't be possible, no matter how hard I tried. I constantly thought that I could do more, when in reality I couldn't—it was strange. I suppose my conditioning was working as intended.
After ensuring that Catherine was as supplied as possible during my absence, I performed a full-perimeter sweep of the entire ship. My paranoia paid off: the hole in the Control Room had been reopened somehow, with the sheet of metal and filing cabinet used to block the gap having mysteriously disappeared. The hole seemed to have increased in size as well. The strangest part, however, was that the Control Room seemed to be... cleaner than it should've been. Metal plating, support struts, and even some of the electronics were missing.
Upon peering out of the breach, I could see through the pre-dawn light a slightly raised pit large enough to comfortably fit my physique jutting out of the ground only a few metres away. Some metallic debris including a stapler and several stainless steel pens led a trail into it.
I stood up, slightly perturbed. Giant dogs, snake-chicken hybrids, and alien ponies weren't the only things lurking just beyond the ship. One thing was certain: whatever did that could not be allowed any further access into the ship.
There was nothing large enough to block the enlarged aperture in my immediate vicinity, nor was anything big enough able to brought in from the Hangar. After scanning the room, wondering what I could do, my eyes rested on the doorway—more specifically, the emergency lockdown doors that the entrance to the Control Room would certainly have.
I looked inside the frame and found exactly what I was looking for. I reached into the gap that was barely large enough to accommodate my glove and began searching for a purchase by which to pull from with both hands, one on either side. Having found a small handhold on each side, probably created for such a purpose, I began pulling with all my might.
The inner doors were incredibly heavy; I had pulled pieces of tanks that were lighter. My muscles jerked and spasmed, my vision became tinged with red, and I could feel sweat run down my forehead and drip off of my nose. The doors refused to move.
A second before I gave up, I felt an imperceptible amount give way. Redoubling my efforts, and feeling a sharp pain in my eye because of it, the doors slowly slid together until they hit a certain point, then slammed together with a profound, echoing boom. I was immensely thankful that I had taken the precaution to move my feet and head out of the way beforehand.
Panting and sore, I drove my shoulder into the emergency doors. They didn't budge. Satisfied, I began the trek to the barricade I built in the Hangar knowing that whatever was stealing pieces of the ship would be confined to the Control Room for the time being.
On the way back, I noticed that the giant dog's decomposition had taken a strange turn: namely, that it had turned into what appeared to be dirt. No traces of the creature or the viscous liquid which it had first become remained. I ignored it for the time being and kept walking to the barricade.
Upon arriving, I peered out of a porthole, looking for any signs of the aliens. The sun had risen enough to be called dawn, and I quickly spotted the possible-military forces that had camped outside overnight. Two were sound asleep, but a third was drowsily keeping watch. If they didn't flee at the sight of me, this small group would be the perfect test to see how they'd otherwise react.
Taking a deep breath, I began tearing at a section of the barricade that I had meticulously created several nights before.
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The alien ponies had obviously heard my clangs and the grinding of metal, so when I removed the last sheet of metal that blocked my path, I wasn't surprised to see the three on top of the fallen ramp, fully alert and waiting. I jumped down the metre-and-a-half gap without delay, eliciting a thunderous crash from the ramp and causing the aliens to jump back in surprise. I landed in a crouch.
When I looked up, I could see the fear in the closest one's eyes. Beads of sweat ran down the exposed portions of its face not covered in a plumed helmet, and it shivered with nervousness. The other two weren't visibly afraid, but I could see the tenseness in their bodies.
I sighed. This was going about as well as I expected it to. Now came the difficult part: convincing them of my peaceful intentions.
I slowly stood up and raised my hands to shoulder-height, showing that both were empty. Of course, I would never leave completely unarmed—I had two submachine guns holstered at my sides and a grenade hidden in one of my chest pouches—but I had left any heavier weaponry back on the ship. If the behaviour of the horned and winged aliens that saved Catherine told me anything, it was that they knew what my light machine gun did, and hopefully, that knowledge was prevalent among them.
It worked better than I thought. An instant look of relief appeared on the three aliens' faces when they saw me empty-handed, and their tension, while not completely disappearing, at least lessened. One of them, grey in colour and the only one with a horn, stepped forward and tilted its head, something I roughly translated to, "What do you want?" I pointed at a collection of dwellings behind them, perhaps a kilometre away, and made the motion of walking with two fingers. The horned one nodded and through a combination of leg movements and pantomimes, I determined that they wished to accompany me.
I nodded and began walking, the aliens immediately following, creating an entourage in front, to the left, and to the right of me—some sort of honour guard. At first, I thought it strange that the aliens sent to guard the ship from intruders would know what to do in the situation I presented them with; then I realized that these three must have been purposefully placed for this very purpose.
I thought deeper.
Whoever their superior was, they knew—or guessed with such precision that they might as well have known—what I'd do ahead of time. I ground my teeth. Was I that predictable? Or were the aliens more clever than I? I wouldn't know until a complex means of communication was obtained. Playing charades had worked somewhat so far, but if a deeper knowledge of their motives were to be known, a greater form of discourse was required.
As we walked towards the buildings, I felt the sensation of being watched; a tingle at the nape of my neck. My intuition was normally correct, yet nothing seemed out of place: the sky was clear, and no other beings seemed to be awake at this hour, save for myself and my escort. Only the occasional moving shadow originating from the wreckage of the forest gave me any pause, but those could just as easily be a trick of the light or a swaying branch as a potential threat. Regardless of whether I was watched, nothing came of it, and the entrance to the collection of buildings approached quicker than I had anticipated.
It was a very strange place. There had obviously been no organization or development plan when the buildings were constructed: they were placed haphazardly, and lacked cohesion with each other. Each was a myriad of different colours and shades that an artist would have difficulty naming, and no two buildings were the same. Pathways winded and twisted in every conceivable direction, so much so that it gave the illusion of a never-ending maze of structures stretching as far as the eye could see. I didn't like my odds of escape if I was forced to navigate the alleyways myself.
It reminded me of the slums in a large city. Unlike the slums, however, the buildings were clean and graffiti free, although a little dusty. Nothing was made of discarded metal, either.
There were only a few of them up and about in what I now knew to be some sort of village, but the ones that were awake froze when we walked past, no matter what they were doing. The expressions varied wildly: abject terror was a common one; shock another. What was surprising to me were the ones that only displayed curiosity, like I was some sort of exotic animal being escorted. I didn't know how to feel about that.
After about five minutes of traversing along the winding paths, it led us to a wide-open, market-like area where strange and colourful items were displayed on carts and wagons of varying sizes. When my entourage and I stepped into the area, a profound and sudden silence followed. The vendors stopped stacking their goods, and all eyes turned to me. My escorts kept walking as if nothing had happened, so I followed suit—that is, until I recognized an item aboard one of the wagons that I walked by: the juicy and delicious red fruit that was given to me along with the grey fabric. I stopped walking.
The food in question was being stacked by an orange alien wearing some sort of hat, its blond hair tied together and down. A large red one wearing some kind of harness around its neck looked at me. The orange one hadn't yet noticed my presence, and was oblivious to the fact that I was only a few metres away, so intent it was on unloading the fruit. Only after being nudged by the red one, which happened to be the same colour as fruit, did the orange one stop what it was doing and turn around.
When it did, its eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. It glanced to the left. I followed its line of sight. To my surprise, one of the three small aliens that had investigated the Control Room had appeared, half hiding behind the orange one. I recognized the bow in its hair.
I heard a sound akin to a cough from one of my escorts. They must have been growing impatient. Deciding to take the initiative, I pointed at the fruit, patted my stomach a few times, then gave a quick thumbs up. I hoped they would take that as a sign of my approval.
The horned escort whistled and stomped the ground twice. I followed them once more.
Nothing else eventful happened until my 'honour guard' stopped at an innocuous building a little ways past the market, one that had no outstanding characteristics that differentiated it from its neighbours. The horned escort knocked on the door a few times and waited. Not long after, it was opened by the familiar blue-green one that I had been hoping to see.
It yawned and rubbed at one eye with one of its front legs. It chirped something at my guards, then looked when they tilted their heads toward me. Surprise was evident in its eyes when it saw me, but it was not frightened. I reached into my chest pocket and offered the Rubik's Cube in an outstretched hand.