Dark System 3

When Doctor MacLaine comes too after a quick combat with a new life form, he must convince her that he means her no harm, though he is not sure if she means him harm.

The first thing I realized as I came too was that my head hurt like it was in a vice for hours. The next thing I realized was that my arm had been restrained to a boulder near the fire I had built, that little bi…I looked around and found she had set up camp right inside my bivouac, and was looking through my equipment and getting frustrated that she couldn’t figure out how to use it to fix her own enviro-suit.

Lean and sinewy, her body was built to take and give punishment. She was covered in fur the color of a muted sunrise with leopard spots, the most striking difference, though, was her four ‘b’ mammillaries, the top pair being slightly more ample than the bottom. Her under suit was some future age fabric that reminded me of a thinsulated combo of silk and Kevlar, I wanted a piece to study. Her tail, like any cat’s, twitched in anxiety and appeared to have a mind of its own, becoming erratic as her agitation level rose.

She moved back and forth between my equipment and hers, and I noticed she had a slight limp in her right leg, it was wrapped liked it had been strained, and without adrenalin was protesting being used, and she had some kind of brace resembling a cast on her right forearm that indicated I had been beaten by a cat lady with a broken arm and sprained leg. I honestly couldn’t tell if I was impressed or embarrassed; leaning toward impressed on this one.

She started tinkering with my intact right gauntlet and I sighed, “You know, you could really mess that arm up.” She looked at me as if to say, ‘you think you could do this better?’

She started hissing and growling, as if I could understand what she was saying, “Yeah, I forgot, we have no way to understand, each other, great…”

She stood up and rolled her eyes as she stalked over and reached for my chin. Even though I was chained to a rock, I struggled to get away, my anxiety skyrocketing. She grabbed my face, the retractable claws in her paws threatening to break my skin, and looked at both sides of my head. As she released me she stood and sighed walking back to where her outer enviro-suit waited in pieces. She dug through her equipment then pulled out a small container from her right pauldron. After she found what she was looking for she stalked back over and reached for my face again, and again, despite myself, I struggled. She braced my right cheek against the rock as she reached delicately to put something in my left ear, it was actually quite comfortable, then the growling started again.

“Meow, hiss… But after a bit you should start to understand…”

“What the hey? How do you, wha!!!??”

“That’s an auto-translator.” She shrugged as she took a few steps away to sit down, “You must have a simple mind or something like, for the system to lock on so quickly. What are you doing here?”

“Just hanging around… it’s a joke… look, my ship crashed and we are just trying to find a place to hunker down and live the rest of our lives… unless you…”

“Sorry, Skippy, we’re pretty much in the same situation, we got caught in this un-charted gravity well, and even if we had engineers, out ship is beyond repair, and hyperspace coms are smithereens.”

“So, I guess were going to be neighbors here in the ass end of Nifleheim…”

“Wait, what did you say, what did you call this place?” She suddenly became agitated, and looked more menacing.

“What, Nifleheim?” I shrugged, “It’s from one of our mythologies back home. It is the darkest…

“And coldest of the nine realms, yeah, I know.” She finished with her jaw on the floor, “That’s from the futhark texts, one of our oldest epics. That’s our religion, from when we believed in stuff like that. How did you…” she ominously approached.

“It’s just one of the many myths that some believe came from non-terrin sources…” I was a bit afraid she would bite my head off, “Please don’t eat me…”

“Eating sentients is against our highest laws.” She moved to sit back down, not really alleviating my fears, “I do know that a select group of elite warriors did accompany the Byrds to start a special project, some still believed…"

“Elite warriors, birds?”

“Yeah, the Balaam, and Ahnkii I think is what they are really called.” She returned, “Look, can I trust you to not attack me if I take off the restraint?”

“Hey, you were the one…” I groaned, “Fine, I won’t attack you.”

She returned to manipulate the device, “So, I notice you have some damage to your enviro-suit, I may be able to…”

The restraint released my hand, and I scuttled as fast as I could out of her arms reach. The girl, ignorant of my unease, removed the device cleanly from the rock’s surface. It was like the restraint had never been attached, I didn’t know how this was possible, but I knew I wanted to take it apart. She silently packed it away with her stuff, and I abandoned hope of getting to study it. Shame.

“Help, really?”She laughed, “You don’t even have an auto translator, your suit looks like a first gen prototype junker, and looks like you were cornered by a plant. But sure, take a look can’t hurt it any more than the cave in did. Starting to think I’ll never get back to others. Surface is too treacherous without a fully functional enviro-suit, and none of the side caverns seam to loop in the right direction. I’m already a few cycles overdue for contact…”

As she went on her voice wavered and became increasingly forlorn, my fear shifted to concern, I felt sorry for her, could be a mistake, though she did try to eat me, but…

“Hey, no tears now, whatever we can do to help…” I postponed my inspection of her equipment wanting to comfort her, not knowing why.

“Yeah, like I need the help of mobile plant food, just check out my equipment so you can realize you don’t have a hope in Helheim.” She stalked off a little way, “And what do you mean by ‘we’, are one of those weird species that refers to themselves in third person or something?”

I plopped down with some tools and began my once over, “Ungh, no, I have a team, but as my stuff is so damaged, he needed to go get some more spares.”

“’Team’, and ‘he’, hunh. Are you sure you didn’t get brain damage?”

This was going to be a long day. But, as long as I proved I was useful, she wouldn’t kill me, right? I got to work, using some of the tools from my emergency tool set, meticulously went over everything I could; it was light-decades ahead of anything I had ever seen before.

All the surface I could find had what looked like sensors, I could detect nano-scale mono atomic gold in the fabric inner surface, the metal-like ceramic outer surface was near impervious to everything, it must have been some rock slide that damaged it. Time slowed to a crawl as I became fascinated by the tech, this was like a dream.

As I worked, curiosity got the better of her, and she approached and towered over, to watch over my shoulder, very un-nerving. “So, how long do we have to wait for this ‘team’ of yours?”

As if on cue Sean walked through the cave’s mouth, barely glancing over he chimed, “Already making friends I see, what’s his name?”

I didn’t need to ask, it was clear that we were not enemies, or I’d be dead, “Her, and I haven’t asked, what is your name?” I glanced up at her.

“Khahtrjn Ragnes, daughter of Brjnya, clan of Tyre, what are you called?”

“Steven Neil MacLaine, and that is Sean Takahito, we’re scientists.”

She could barely suppress a smirk, “Well, you clearly aren’t warriors.”

“Are you telling me you are suddenly a linguist?” Sean asked as he struggled to the camp with the equipment, “And you understand that hissing?”

“Naw, the kitten here has a universal translator that fits like ear buds…”

“Who you calling ‘kitten’, Milktoast?” She demanded, suddenly threatening again.

Her nostrils flared, her hackles rose, she was not a happy camper. I had to take a moment to make sure my pants didn’t become full.

“Milk… whatever, I didn’t mean anything by it…” I struggled as I backed up, “Its just… help me out here Takahito…”

“Help with what?” Sean scoffed as he began to set up the work bench, “Are you trying to get yourself killed, or are you just lucky.”

She glared at both of us, Sean calmly setting up a work station oblivious to the danger we were in, me white as a sheet holding my hands out in what I hoped was a non-threatening way. She inhaled deeply through her nose a few times, willing herself to be calm.

“I don’t have another AT, you’re lucky I had that one.” She finally returned, then smirked as an idea hit her, “He makes it sound like you make a habit of pissing women off, are you really a scientist?”

“Its not just women, but plants and animals too.” I sighed, hoping levity would allow me to keep my skin as I started to help out getting the work bench set up, “And yes I am a scientist, and engineer by the way, in fact I designed most of this equipment.”

“So, you going to tell me what her name is, or did she even tell you?”

“Its Khahtrjn…”

“Really, cat lady’s name is cat?”

“Yeah, Torch Hail-stone of the Aseir, it’s a perfectly noble name…” she shrugged, looking over the equipment approvingly.

“Torch hail-stone, Aseir?”

“Yeah, I was born during a meteor shower, and expected to be a scout…”

“Did you say Aseir?” Sean asked, interest peeked, “As in Thor’s people?”

“You know Thor?” she asked her interest peeked.

“We don’t know Thor,” I sighed to Khahtrjn, then to Sean, “Turns out her people may have been the source of some of the Nordic myths.”

“You mean to tell me, those ancient aliens… people… were right?” he grimaced.

“Perhaps, can’t rule anything out.” I returned to working on the enviro-suits.

“Just FYI, Steve,” Sean started as he began to effect repairs as well, “The rover’s power cells were running low, so Jen is making a return to the Erikson for a top off, and we expect her to be back in six hours.”

“Sean, I have a better chance at fixing her suit than you do, see what you can do for mine as I try to figure this out, Khaht, any clue where to start?”

“I know nothing about the workings of that, it’s mostly byrd tech.” she grimaced, I think, “What do you hope to get out of this, people go through years of training to understand that.”

“I’m hoping that I can get it functional enough that we can get you out of this cave, and score some points with your people by saving you, so you don’t kill us.”

“You really think the cats are that dangerous?”

“They have an entire crew, and clearly they have warriors and we have scientists, yes they’re that dangerous.” I returned, despite the rush of new tech to dissect, this was becoming tedious.

“Don’t think compliments will get you anywhere, Skaldi.” Khaht strolled off to sit by the fire.

“Look, I want to help, but I need something from you.” I approached cautiously.

“Oh, so the engineer needs a scout’s help hunh…” she got back up and stood there.

Sean, only hearing half the conversation just focused on his work, trying not to laugh at my struggles.

“Just give me a damage report so I have something to go on.”

“No power to extremities, multiple deformed parts, and operations and control software is, wonkey.”

“Wonkey, really? No, its just I didn’t expect an alien to use that word.”

“You’re just hearing a translation. You know, you’re pretty dumb for an engineer.”

***

Unfortunately, some of Khaht’s gear was beyond our ability to field repair, but remarkably, I managed to jury-rig pieces of our tech to cover the holes left behind and integrate our environmental controls into the processors of her suit.

“What you lack in survival skill and warriors heart, you more than make up for Skaldskill.” Khaht marveled as she started up her suit, “Doesn’t happen often, but I’m impressed.”

“Ahh, she’s purring, Stevie did good?” Sean mocked as he put his own suit back on.

“You know what,” Khaht chuckled, “Your friend is kind of a troll.”

“Yeah, things are working out.” I finished my systems check.

“There is nothing I can do out here, the programming is too advanced.” My vitual assistant was finally back on line, “But with the systems on the Erikson, we might be able to partially replicate the translation matrix.”

“That will certainly make communications easier, Vance.” I was relieve getting a VA perfectly suited to you was a pain.

“What’s a Vance, and where is it?” Khaht’s voice echoed over the comms.

“Vance is my virtual assistant and he’s been offline since we got down here, Sean, you brought the discretes?”

“Yeah, thought VA’s would be useful in the repairs.”

“You should have told me, it would have made troubleshooting hers a whole lot easier.”

“I too would have like to learn about the tech.” Vance agreed.

“Enough arguing with yourselves, let’s go.” Khaht snarled, “You’re this way, right?”

“You heard the cat, lets go.” I put out the fire and started back.

“First, I don’t understand her, and second, you’re not seriously considering leaving all this tech here, are you?”

“You’re right, we need to take our gear back, there is only a finite supply of tech.”

With muffled words I could only assume were not safe for polite conversations, she stalked back, grabbed some cases and glared until we started back.

“Onward and upward then.” I announced, starting off.

The journey back to the surface was quiet. Though I did try to spark a conversation, it was not fated to be. Sean led the way, having closed his comms to Khaht, he couldn’t understand her anyway; Khaht brought up the rear, I could only imagine she was planning our disappearance while cursing us all to oblivion.

Suddenly, an eerie moan at the low end of the audible spectrum halted us in our tracks, “No way in Hell that’s good.” Sean noted over open comms.

“That’s the noise that proceeded the collapse before.”

“I hope that means…”

“Run!!” I called, and all three of us dropped our cases and darted up the cavern.