Fleet Scout

"Are you English speakers?" it asked them."Francais? Español?"

"English is fine," Leah said. "Sorry, the last few minutes have been..."

"Surprising?" It nodded in agreement, a gesture that looked odd on such an alien frame. "I, too, was very surprised to see where you decided to rest. You do not know the danger here? This place is ...unwise? Perilous? I do not know the proper word usage. When the dark comes, scavengers will emerge. The thing from the wet is one such. Do you comprehend?"

"Where would be a safer place?" Leah asked.

The creature gestured upwards and Finn wanted to groan. They should have been able to get into the trees with rope and boot spikes but they'd been in their packs. He glanced over the edge but other than tentacle bits, the sand was empty.

"Our climbing equipment was taken," Leah said.

"Yes. It was a very foolish place to rest," the creature said. "I will carry you to safety after I ask your permission to touch."

"Thank you," Leah said. "Our weight won't be too much?"

Both humans blinked as a strange scent entered their noses. Spicy, a bit like peppers mixed with something indescribable.

"I will carry you. The touching?"

"Of course," Leah said.

Finn knew it was a bad idea to be completely in the creature's control, but they didn't have much of a choice. The immense arms unfolded again and gently picked Leah up and held her against its back.

"I will quickly return for you," it told him.

Then it climbed up the nearest trunk, as easily as Finn could walk on level ground and disappeared up into the gloom. He sat down, still shaky, and wondered how much trouble they'd fallen into.

A few minutes later, there was a scuffing noise as the creature came down the trunk headfirst. Finn got up, and after it had gotten his permission "for the touch," it picked him up the same way it had picked up Leah. Slowly and gently, the arms folded over him. It gave him an unfamiliar sense of reassurance he didn't understand at all. They were in deep shit here.

The reassurance became amusement. Then Finn realized he was feeling the creature's amusement, the thoughts subtly different than his own somehow.

"You would be deep excrement, were I not as quick."

He snorted a laugh at the truth of that. The creature moved up the trunk of the tree effortlessly and Finn looked around, trying to see everything. Darkness was complete under the trees, but it became lighter as she climbed.

She?

Maybe it was his imagination, but the creature felt female to him. She moved quickly along the horizontal lower limbs, making several small jumps from tree to tree. A few minutes later, she clambered on top of an artificial platform and set him on his feet near Leah. Finn was almost disappointed the ride was over.

"Thank you for saving our lives," he said.

The creature shrugged, another motion that looked very strange on her body. "The female one has thanked me already. This is my life's purpose, but I accept your thanks."

"My name is Finn, Finn Morgan. We are members of the Commonwealth Alliance."

"You cannot hear my name in your ears," she replied. "But I have seen a many-armed deity in your culture called Lakshmi. I like the feel of this word in my mouth and offer it to you. I am of the Waters' Leap Meeting and serve our Wisdom as a watcher and listener of the hoom in the..." her voice trailed off.

"I do not know the proper words yet, I will study my memory later. For now, I must hunt and eat. I will return in time."

Finn nodded but she was already sprinting across the platform. At the edge, all four legs flexed, pushing her up and out over the edge. Watching, Finn's heart leapt into his throat but Lakshmi's immense arms had already caught a large branch. Swinging to the top of it, she sprinted again and jumped to a higher branch.

Finn looked at Leah as Lakshmi's footsteps faded quickly away. "Well, that was unexpected."

She laughed but it abruptly turned to sobs and she turned away from him. Finn knew that she was dealing with her own stress response but he still felt guilty for some reason.

"Hey, it's okay," he said, patting her shoulder.

Leah spun around and hugged him tightly, still sobbing. Finn jumped but hesitantly put his arms around her and patted her back.

"I was supposed to be a logistics specialist," she sobbed into his chest. "Then I took the stupid Scout exam and they said I'd be good and I came here..." her voice ended in more sobbing.

"This is pretty unusual, even by my standards," he promised.

Finally, she let go of him and stepped back, wiping her face.

"Sorry," she sniffed. "You don't like to be touched."

"You're fine, mostly it's crowds," he said awkwardly. "No one has hugged me in quite a while."

"I saw Tyohac hugging you two days ago."

He snorted. "No, you saw Tyohac assaulting me two days ago."

She smiled shakily. "Then don't tell me Kitt never hugged you."

Finn laughed. "Kitt was many things, but a hugger she was not."

"But you two were..."

"Lovers?" Finn shook his head. "You'd be more her type. But even if she'd been hetero, we'd worked together so long that it would have been like kissing a sister."

"Oh. Well, at least she wouldn't have been paralyzed by fear down there. I was frozen."

Finn shrugged. "Leah, I emptied an entire clip into that thing and it barely twitched. Whatever you, or Kitt, might have done, it would have been just as pointless. Sometimes everything comes down to dumb luck."

She nodded but didn't look happy about that fact. Finn had been the same way, convinced he could get himself through any situation through wits and skill. She'd find out soon enough that sometimes life and death were decided by dumb luck. He looked around, rather than argue with her.

They were standing on what appeared to be an artificial construction. It was a slightly concave oval that they eventually paced out as eight meters wide and twelve meters long. The platform was made up of timbers, like the surrounding forest. The smallest of the parts was about the thickness of his wrist, the widest were at least as thick as his entire body. Somehow, the builder had woven the impregnable wood together. Neither had seen how it was attached to the immense tree, but it felt as solid as the ground.

In the center was what looked like a shelter. It was a low dome with a meter-wide gap between the roof-wall and the floor of the platform. Looking inside, they could see the floor was covered with thick pads that looked like grass and moss. Neither knew this world well enough to be sure, but they agreed that the structure looked very old. Peering over the edge, Finn guessed they were easily a hundred meters in the air. Once they'd looked around, they began taking stock of what supplies they had left.

Luckily they hadn't stopped long enough to get out of their field gear. Both still had water bottles that were designed to fill themselves with the ambient humidity. It hadn't been that useful on the Celestial Reverie, but the high humidity here filled it in less than an hour. They each carried several OneDay bars. Every field crew carried them and every field crew fervently hoped to never need them.

From the size, it could have been some sort of chocolate bar. The meal substitute was a dense amalgamation of vitamins and calories that was supposed to provide twenty-four hours of energy. Finn wasn't sure, he'd never been able to choke down more than half of one. He's heard that the bars hadn't been that bad originally. Then the chocolate had been replaced by carob. He wasn't sure what carob actually was but it was universally agreed that it wasn't an acceptable substitute for chocolate. Or for anything else declared edible.

They both carried pens and a standard field journals and Finn still had several unsharpened pencils and a small, battered sketch book. The rest of their belongings were a compass, two folding knives, and a few hard candies.

Finn popped a lemon flavored one in his mouth and Leah chose blue, whatever flavor that represented. They'd only been walking for a day, so getting back to the colony wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Inventory completed, they sat down and recorded as much of the day's events as they could. Leah didn't care for writing everything out by hand, but both their tablets had been in their packs. Finn got her to laugh a little, describing the tentacle monster biting into the lithium batteries.

Leah watched as Finn used his pocket knife to carefully sharpen a pencil. Finn concentrated on slowing his breathing as he worked. Finally, he flipped through the sketch book, finding a blank page. He spent some time sketching the Other that had saved them with Leah supplying additional details. As he finished it, Leah stopped pacing and settled into a lotus position and closed her eyes. Finn flipped back to a sketch he had started, a three-quarter view of the USS Constellation, most of her sails reefed in heavy seas. After considering it for a minute, he flipped to another page and began to sketch their surroundings.

In the late afternoon sun, huge golden-red beams of light shone obliquely through gaps in the canopies, making the mist there appear almost solid. Two of the three moons were appearing overhead, still ghosts in the bright sky. Finn tried to let his mind empty as he concentrated on getting the outlines onto paper, but he kept going back to the English-speaking Other.

He really hoped they hadn't discovered a new race of people. That was done very delicately by Commonwealth First Contact Teams. He'd never seen one, but they were from certain senior races, like the Xero'pah. He'd read somewhere that their teams were highly trained in a broad spectrum of skills. The training alone took more than a human lifetime. The Terran's Colonial Fleet had put together three teams of their own, but it was widely understood that it was more for appearance than anything else. The more senior races didn't trust humans and there would be hell to pay if they were the first representatives of the Commonwealth to a new civilization. It rankled a bit but Finn didn't take it personally, the youngest of the Archreylen had already been in space for centuries while humans were still working out how agriculture worked.

Something hit his left shoulder and then his neck. Raindrops. Finn closed the book and they both stuffed everything back in his pockets as more rain began to fall.

"Should we get under the dome?" Leah asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I only did the one required Exo-Diplomacy module and most of it was different forms of 'don't take anything for granted.' Could be something important, like a shrine?"

"Or her food storage," Leah added. "Okay, but I hate wet clothes. I'm going to strip down and tuck my clothes under the roof at least."

"Good idea. I'll do the same, no peeking."

She laughed and they stripped down, folding the heavy garments into bundles that they pushed under the shelter of the dome. Finn went and sat back down, thanking fate that they were on a warm world. Leah sat down beside him and both of them kept their eyes on the forest around them, mostly.

Then what had been a moderate downpour turned into something like standing under a waterfall. They both leapt to their feet as the torrent hit them and Leah stared at him, eyes wide. Finn tried to reassure her, but the roar of the storm was so loud that he had no idea if she could even hear him. Finally, he gave up and tried to just look reassuring.

Lifting his face to the torrent of water, Finn realized that he was strangely happy, almost gleeful. He began to sing as the warm rain washed over his face and down his body. He was delighted to still be alive and laughed as the waterfall fell on him. Leah shook her head and pointed at the dome. She went to sit in the large doorway, but Finn was determined to enjoy the moment and stayed where he was.

A minute later, he felt a thump through the deck and turned to see that Lakshmi had returned and was inside the dome with Leah. He splashed his way over and stopped outside the dome but Lakshmi motioned for him to step inside.

"Have a good dinner?" he muttered, using his hands to squeegee the water off his body.

"I consumed. This act is not discussed however." The reproof was obvious, even with Lakshmi's stilted accent.

Finn was even more embarrassed and wished there was somewhere to slink off to. Lakshmi didn't say anything else but busied herself with stowing her harness and gear in a net near the ceiling. Looking up, he saw that she'd put their clothes up there as well. He really wanted his pants but wasn't about to try and jump high enough to retrieve them.

Lakshmi was also unwrapping the covering from her upper torso and as she rolled it up, Finn saw that it consisted of a single piece of fabric that had been draped around her. Putting clothes on while she took hers off didn't feel quite right and he consoled himself that he was just as alien to her as she was to him, no need for embarrassment. Leah was sitting with her back to him, but Finn knew somehow that she was grinning.

Lakshmi was carefully wiping the water off of her fur with some kind of cloth and Finn sat carefully on the edge of the mat, not wanting to watch her in case it caused any offense. A few minutes later, there was a tap on his shoulder and Lakshmi handed him a cloth that was something like a chamois.

"It is to become dry."

Finn nodded his thanks and wiped away the remaining water. When he turned back, Lakshmi had folded her four legs under herself.

"There is much to understand at this place of meeting," she said. "You will rest beside me and we will speak."

Finn nodded and climbed up on the moss mats. It was still slippery but cool and comfortable. Leah turned around and faced them, sitting cross legged. Finn was very aware of her nudity and it was difficult to keep from looking at her.

"I was curious, how old is this place?" he asked.

Lakshmi tucked the four legs under her body and settled on the mat. "I think that we do not share the same reckoning of time. It was very long ago. The old ones built this place in the time when there were more of us."

Finn had already guessed the answer, it was damned unlikely that a Scout from an off-planet species could eat whatever food was here, let alone move so comfortably through the forest. The confirmation still made his stomach drop.

"This planet is your home?" Leah asked.

"I do not understand 'planet' but as I said, my sisters and our Wisdom are the Water's Leap Meeting."

"You were born here."

"I understand most of your words but not the meanings. What is a 'planet' and how could one know their own birth place? I became near the joining of the wet, at Water's Leap. I became and joined them."

"Became what?"

Her large black eyes regarded them both before she responded. "We are saying much and understanding little. This thing may be easier if I can...feel your brain."

"How does that work?" Finn asked, visions of trepanning dancing through his head.

She held out her front arms and they both put their hands in Lakshmi's catchers-mitt sized palms. Again, he felt the curiosity and amused frustration. It startled him all over again and he yanked his hand back.

"I will not allow harm to come to you, Finn Morgan."

He took a deep breath and put his hand back in hers. The feelings from outside of his mind returned, worry and confusion. This time, Finn closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the feeling.

After a few seconds he suddenly laughed. "Because I was standing in the rain?"

"Because that is not the action of a rational creature."

Leah laughed as well. "It's not that strange for us, we love water."

"I know the sky people are strange, but I did not believe one would willingly be immersed in the wet."

"Two-thirds of our world, the place we came from, was covered by water," Leah said. "Our people enjoyed swimming and floating in water."

There was a feeling of disbelief and laughter in return. "Then I understand the reason why your people left the sky."

Finn and Leah looked at each other and didn't say anything. Lakshmi examined each of them in turn.

"There is a great sorrow within you both. I regret I caused this, we will speak of other things. I felt surprise when you saw me. You did not know we inhabited the hoom?"

"The hoom, that's your name for all these trees together?" Finn asked.

"What your people call the forest, yes but not. We need to share experience before you can know the hoom. Very few sky-people have ventured this far into the hoom. Why have you come so far?"

"We're searching for others that came this way, before the last wet season."

It was Lakshmi's turn to feel sorrow and regret. "I saw them come, my sisters and I watched them from above, the same way I watched you today. We were not to contact the sky-people but then they were injured in a way we did not understand. We went down to them and summoned those who understand such things, but we were too late."

Finn nodded. "There was nothing you could have done, it was too late when they entered the trees. There was a sickness in their home."

"This is what Yuri Stepanovich Bogdanov told us, yes."

"Oh no," Leah said, sitting up. "I knew Boggie, we were friends."

Both of the humans felt an uneasiness in Lakshmi. "You are the same clan? He was made comfortable before he left the path and their remains were honored."

"Yes, we were the same clan," Leah said. "Thank you for helping him. This is how you learned English?"

"I do not speak it comfortably, I learned from my sisters' memories only. Yuri and his clan brothers gave them the objects that spoke and sang for a short time. I learned only some of your words, the ones spoken most often. There was sorrow when the objects followed their makers from this path."

"It is good that their sickness did not spread to your people," Finn said.

"No, we would never allow that. Now that their clan has come, it is good that the end of their song can be told. We do not easily speak of those who leave the path but we did not know if more of you would come. All were adopted as our clan sisters and we honored their memory as our own."

"Thank you for that," Leah said. "When we return to the outpost, I will send word of their passing...leaving the path."

"Will it be necessary to collect them? Very little remains."

Leah shook her head. "It is enough that they were honored, and that we knew of their end."

"You know more about the Commonwealth than I do," Finn said. "You're sure they don't need to be included in the evacuation?"

"I'm not sure, I don't think it matters as long as all the living colonists are removed." Leah answered.

"I do not know the meaning of the word evacuation," Lakshmi said.

Leah sat up, still holding the Other's hand. "We did not know your people were already here. It is very important that my people never take living space from anyone else. Now that we know you are here, we will remove ourselves and return to the sky."

Lakshmi was confused. "We do not live in the open places, we are the people of the errsha and the hoom. You have taken nothing from us."

"There were very dark things, evil things, done by our people in the past," Finn explained. "One of those things was the killing of others in order to steal the places they lived. We must never repeat these things."

Lakshmi thought about that for a little while. "Then, by saving your lives I have driven you from your Meeting?"

"We must go. Our people could someday threaten yours," Finn said.

"I do not see how, but Wisdom must be told," Lakshmi said after another long pause. "My sisters and I were not to reveal ourselves to the sky-people yet. I have disobeyed her word and now the sky-people will depart."