{2}Chapter 9[]
Much had happened today, first the agonizing hours at school, waiting for the inevitable meeting with his parents, then the actual events at Ma Swanson's boathouse and him making good on his threat to run away.
Now he found himself near the White Head Mountain range, which no one had really explored so far, without having any idea how he had ended up here.
The mountains before him were a breathtaking sight. Most of the planet’s other mountains were not as high and were completely covered with Jungle growth, but the White Head Mountains reached well past the growing zone. Mount Tradiderias was named after the Saresii expedition leader who had died here after he and his crew discovered Green Hell and landed here many thousands of years ago. It was the highest of this range and reached over 7000 meters into the sky.
He had heard that this wasn't very high for a real mountain and that there were Planets out there with much higher ones, but he had never seen any of them.
“That white stuff up there is a substance called snow. After we have figured out how we got here, Partner, we’ll go up there and check it out. I’ve always wanted to touch snow.”
Again there was this surging feeling and the next thing he knew was being thrown off Partner's back, landing face first in a blinding white soft mass.
It was cold! It was frikking cold.
Roy jumped to his feet like a steel coil and found himself knee deep in this cold white stuff, on the very top of Mount Tradiderias.
The vista was so unbelievably beautiful that he forgot everything else. The air was thin and as cold as the snow, steamy puffs of condensation created by his breath were ripped from his lips by a stiff breeze. Maxwell, the GIIIa type Yellow sun of the System, begun to settle at the horizon, bathing the mountains in a golden wash of light. He could see Green Jungles all the way to the curving horizon in every direction, only interrupted by the shimmering surfaces of rivers and huge lakes.
Partner stood right next to him and through Roy's eyes and feeling of amazement enjoyed the view as well.
The truth dawned to Roy. The Animal was telepathically gifted and he knew about teleportation. Could it be? “Partner,did you bring us here?”
The Animal sneezed happily and it was clear that it was proud of itself.
“So you can teleport! I wonder what other surprises you hide.” He patted the thick neck and grinned, “Sure beats walking and they’ll never find me now for sure. But from now on, my black pelted friend, don't teleport with me unless I really say so. Otherwise I might end up in the Senior Cheerleader's locker room or scare the living daylights out of Ma Swanson.”
Partner sneezed again.
Roy knelt down and touched the snow with curiosity, “Father once said how he misses the seasons and snow in the winter. I wonder why anyone would miss this cold stuff!”
Thinking of his father made him think of his situation and his throat restricted as if something hard was stuck in his wind pipe.
He wiped the tears away and said, “No use feeling sorry for myself, they sure don't. I bet they are glad I am gone. I was just in the way.”
Partner nudged him in the side with his head and then tenderly licked him.
***
{3}Part 2[]
Harlex had his arms crossed before his chest and leaned with his right shoulder against one of the supports that held up the sheet of heavy gauge translucent Dura Plast. It once had been translucent, but a thick layer of slimy green algae covering most of it made that a moot feature.
Heavy rain poured from the lead colored sky, thick with billowing clouds, and the rushing sound of the downpour almost drowned the poor quality transmission of classic Bombast music coming from inside the depressing looking bar-room behind him.
High pitched, silvery gurgling streams of water running down the slanted roof splashed into the yellowish muck beyond the creaky Pour-a-wood Porch and joined the spidery network of water-filled ditches that carried the water down the settlement’s Main Street and into Anars's Lake half a klick away.
“Main Street my ass,” he grunted to himself and shifted the Smoke stick that dangled from one side of his thin lipped mouth to the other. He stood on the Porch to Napha Beronou's Paradise Tavern which was one of only two businesses in this sorry settlement.
The muddy road was lined on both sides with shacks, tents and shipping containers modified to make-shift buildings; the homes of the 512 men that lived here.
A kilometer up the road was Lumber Mill Number 4 and the place where he worked, no one was forced to work in this bone breaking work low Tech Lumber Mill, no one was forced to be on one of the Lumberjack teams or the Log Drag Gangs, but it gave you something to do and it provided you with a meager salary that everyone here spent mostly on the few liquor and beer choices offered at Napha's or at the other Tavern, Oryn's Waterhole.
Harlex looked at his callused hands. He had been an excellent Lab Systems Engineer with a great career and a good salary at Enroe Bio Lab Equipment Inc, but that was in a different life, back then he was Chief Engineer Harlex Gedde, here they only called him Greenie.
This was his fourth year on Parajsa Planet. The word meant Paradise in some old Pre-Astro Terran language and it was a joke of course. There was nothing beautiful or nice about Parajsa Planet, because it was also known as Union Felon Penal Colony 23.
His lawyer said this was the best deal he could get. Twenty Years at UFPC 23 or voluntary Psycho Surgery. Having his personality completely erased and replaced with what a Psycho Surgeon thought a Model Citizen's ego should be like. Back then he would have rather gone to the Gallows than accept Psycho Surgery, so the choice to go to a Penal Colony was an easy one to make. On days like this he wondered if Surgery would not have been the better choice after all.
Tuzzzh, a yellow throat Shiss, stepped out from the bar and stopped next to Harlex, “Hey Greenie, does it ever rain on that Green Hell of yours like this?” The Shiss was easy to understand as long as there weren't many words containing S or Z sounds.
Harlex, who had been born on Green Hell, sighed deeply. missing his lethal and dangerous world. “Yes it does, it rains often and without any warning, but there isn't a real rainy season like on this cursed mud ball lasting for a month!”
“If it is warm and with lots of moisture, I think I'd love it there.”
Harlex laughed loudly, “Tuzzzh, you wouldn’t last two minutes in those Jungles.”
Muhlen, the soft spoken smooth talking former Corporate lawyer who had killed his wife and just barely escaped the Hangman’s noose, had also left the bar room and must have overheard the Shiss. He said, “Two Purples, a few Takkians, a Pertharian and a Saturnian tried that a few years ago and none of them made it. The Siliconoids did remarkably well and managed to survive for almost 20 minutes. It was all over GalNet when it happened.”
The Shiss raised his neck spines to express his disbelief, “Takkians should be immune to anything a carbon based Jungle can throw at them.”
Harlex gazed into the distance, “Not on Green Hell, Lizard. It took our Dragon Ants less than five minutes to dissolve one of the Takkians into silicon soup and the other found out why it is not a good idea to run into the net of a Moolax. Electrified Mono-filament nets with a tensile strength of Carbon Nano tube fibers, do I need to say more?”
The Yellow Throat Shiss said, “We heard of Green Hell, even before the Union and the Terrans went there, I guess everyone in the Upward Sector knows stories and legends about Green Hell or Imthe Seth as the Sarans called it before Union Times, but I never thought they were more than faery tales.”
The disbarred lawyer said, “I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve seen GalNet reports that make any faery tale you heard sound like a kid’s tale.”
Harlex felt very homesick, he was a seventh generation Greenie and like everyone born on that impossible, dangerous and beautiful world, he felt a deep connection to it and the pain his homesickness caused in the pit of his stomach was made worse by talking about it. He grunted, “I need a drink.” With that he turned and returned to the bar-room to drown the pity he felt for himself with the rough as engine fuel rot gut booze they sold here and called Whiskey.
An hour or so later, Harlex didn’t feel any better and the longing to return to his home world still tormented his memories. The alcohol didn’t really help, just dulled the details not the cause. He tried to listen as the Shiss. Tuzzzh told the story once more of how he had ended up here and not in a much nicer POW camp. The first reason was, of course, that there was no war between the Shiss Empire and the Union at the moment and the second reason was that Tuzzzh wasn’t officially a soldier but had been caught as a Pirate and tried in a civilian court. Of course everyone knew that the Shiss Raiders were directly sponsored and supported by the White Nestling himself. The Shiss government officially denounced these raider actions as Pirate acts of independent individuals, that were in no way sanctioned.”
Harlex had heard the story several times and could have told it as well as the Shiss himself, but there was nothing else to do and the disgraced corporate lawyer wanted to hear it.
To vent his frustration, he interrupted the story and said, “You are lucky it was a Federal Police cruiser who stopped you guys and not a Fleet Unit. The fleet deals with Pirates in a much more terminal way.”
The Shiss didn’t like to be interrupted and felt his Warrior honor tainted by the fact that he and his shipmates had surrendered to Federal Police. He was still a Shiss and stronger than everyone in the room. The fact that he was intoxicated lowered his low threshold to act on violent impulses, that were never far from a Shiss in the first place, didn’t help. It took very little alcohol to get a Lizard drunk. He jumped up to teach the Human a lesson.
Napha, the owner of the Tavern, was sentenced for life to this place and was allowed to run this small business. The Warden however didn’t care if his place was trashed, torched or if patrons killed themselves. He could hold his own in a bar fight, sharing the genes of a Thauran mother and a father native to Hoffman's World, where humans had lived under six Gee for over two thousand years. Living the harsh life of a fringe region Scooper raider and running a tavern on a Prison colony steeled his fists and he knew almost all of the dirty tricks and moves. However going against a drunk and enraged Shiss was certain suicide. He needed to protect his business so he pulled the old chemical slug thrower from under the bar.
The Shiss however didn’t fare as well as he thought he would against a much smaller, drunk human. The Greenie was fast and reacted even before the Shiss committed to his fast attack and evaded the claw swipe that should have maimed the human. Greenies had this unexplainable ability to somehow sense danger and react to it and the mysterious conditions that made every life form on that planet into lethal killing machines influenced humans that were born there as well.
Harlex didn’t have any stingers, no deadly poisons and never had any military or any martial arts training, yet the palm of his right hand struck the Shiss right underneath its teeth-filled maw at one of the beings’ sensitive nerve clusters. The Shiss howled in pain and stumbled a few steps back.
The former lawyer’s only combat skills were honed in court proceedings and board rooms, so he tried to find refuge under the next table.
How the situation would end was almost certain, but then a sound everyone here knew and never hoped to hear on this side of the planet. The distinctive high whistle of a Union Arti Grav followed shortly afterwards by greenish light lowering into the Bar room from outside the building. A space ship was landing where no space ship was allowed to land.
The fight was forgotten as fast as it had started and the four beings scrambled through the door to see what was going on.
A sleek ship had just settled on its’ landing struts. The greenish shine of the Arti Grav ebbed to a faint glow and then blinked out.
The lawyer pushed himself between the Shiss and the Bar keeper and said, “That is a Bombardier One-fifty, diamond edition.”
Only ships of the Correctional Service were allowed to approach this world and land and only at the Warden’s Island 3000 miles to the east. Like all Penal Colonies, there were Sensor satellites in Orbit to ensure that no one shortened the sentence of a friend or smuggled in illegal things such as drugs and weapons.
Escapes from Penal Colonies were almost unknown, but not impossible. The most famous case being of course the escape of Admiral Richard Stahl as the Peace Hawks sentenced him to a life sentence on the harshest Penal Colony known.
He came back many years later at the height of the War against the Y’All and saved the day.
All this went through the mind of Harlex as he watched the ship extend a boarding ramp.
A curvy woman, wearing a Bio Seal Suit with the typical Dual color scheme Greenies preferred, emerged from the ship. No one but Greenies would wear those suits everywhere they went.
Even Harlex still wore his old brown and green suit. One of the few items of personal belongings they had left him (there was nothing better to wear on a world where it rained more than on Splish Splash and every life form was either fungus or slug based.)
The woman coming down the ramp filled out her two-tone suit rather nicely and was flanked by two Pertharian giants in what looked like the latest Corporate Security Battle suit design. The four-armed monsters carried SII Fafnyr Thermo Bolter Gatlings, enough fire power to take on a Squad of Cerberus Robots.
Probably a good idea for a woman visiting a prisoner camp where the only women they saw were printed on posters. The female prisoners were kept on the other continent of the planet and without ships, were as unreachable as if they had been on another world.
She didn’t sink to her knees into the yellow muck as everyone else did who had to cross the road during one of the planet’s four rainy seasons. That meant she wore Terran All Terrains with the full package, including Personal ArtiGrav Adjusters. Now, as she stepped from under the ship into the rain, Harlex recognized her. Dr. Ieshia Yeager, the Science Corps Researcher who was his partner in crime smuggling and selling Green Hell life forms on the black market. Seeing her like this made his blood boil. While he was rotting away on a planet where a really dry place was equated with nirvana and she crossed the galaxy in a luxury yacht.
She had been arrested just like him and found guilty by the same court, the same jury and sentenced by the same judge. Not even her super expensive Star lawyer from Pluribus made a difference during the trial. The sentence was harsher than everyone expected, because one of their smuggled Insectos got free aboard a transport ship and caused the death of a dozen men.
He had opted for Penal Colony and she had asked for Psycho Surgery. She should not know who she was, she should have no memory and no connections to her old life and to make the new life a punishment, anyone taking Psycho Surgery would wake up as a low wage earner as far away from the planet of birth as possible and with a whole set of new memories.
She waved at him, right away dispelling any notion that she was someone else or here by accident.
The landing of the Yacht had brought everyone of the small settlement outside, despite the still pouring rain and they stared and gasped. Right there and then the Pertharians opened fire and hidden weapon ports on the ship opened.
The Inferno was as complete as it was brutal and swift.
The heavy gatlings spat one sun hot plasma bolt after another, flash vaporizing penal colonists by the gross. For every structure, there was now a crater with molten white glowing magma in the middle. The Shiss he had fought just a few moments ago had been turned into molecular ashes. To his right were the smoking leg stumps of the lawyer, sticking out of the muck. The rest of his body was missing. The Tavern and its’ owner were gone.
Through the pouring rain, the billowing clouds of smoke and steam, back-lit by the red glow of burning ruins and trees, she approached Harlex. As if taking a stroll on a sunny afternoon across Ring Park in Pluribus, with her auburn locks swinging in harmony with her swaying hips, she walked over the muck and, due to her reduced surface pressure, barely leaving a track. In her right hand she casually held a compact H&K RP 9 (Raketen Pistole).
The man crawling through the mud just before her was horribly burned and held up his crimson red arm in agony. She didn’t miss a step or lose the charming smile displayed on her red lips as she discharged her weapon and the mini rocket ripped the man apart, creating a small geyser of mud, blood and human flesh.
Harlex noticed the Pertharians combing the area with sophisticated life sign scanners and he could hear the occasional crackling blast when their sensors had picked something up.
She reached him, holstered her weapon and stretched out her hand, “Nice to meet again Harlex. I came to get you out of here as my employers have a interesting proposition for you.”
Harlex was still in a state of shock. Less than maybe ten or fifteen minutes had passed since the ship had landed and everything had happened so fast, yet to him it appeared as if had been hours. So many questions wheeled in his mind that to say he was confused would have been an understatement.
He spread his arms and finally managed to say, “Why?”
She kept her smile on her lips. That, given the situation, disturbed him even more than the destruction around him and then she said, “You are the only person who can get us what we want, of course. You are a genuine Greenie after all.” She pulled her weapon and pointed it at his stomach. “Your cooperation is not optional I might add. You are a criminal now, forgotten by the world. Do what is asked of you and you will be a rich and free man.”
Harlex never was the most honest man in the Galaxy and didn’t mind bending the rules a little if he thought he could benefit from it. That is why he had accepted her proposal back then in the first place, but what the woman had just done was mass murder and nothing less.
Federation Police would eventually find out and, as the old saying went, Federation Police worked slowly, very slowly but always caught the bad guys, always. That this was not just some advertising slogan but the truth, he knew.
“You will never get away with this. A raid of such brutality will make them turn over every rock and if they think I am part of this, I won't escape the Noose this time.”
She laughed, “You are a simple man, Harlex, a simple man indeed.”
He watched as the Pertharians carried the bodies of two dead Shiss from the landed ship and dumped them in the mud.
She waved the gun, “We are done here, Harlex. I suggest you play along, you would not like the alternative.”
Numb and not sure what to think, he sloshed through the mud to the waiting ship with her right behind him, “We will get away with this just fine by the way. The Feds won't really investigate much, the evidence is clear. A Shiss Raiding party sneaked in the System, jammed the Watch tower satellites and rescued their ship mate.
“It will cause some diplomatic ruckus, the Union accusing the Shiss of an act of war. The Shiss denying any knowledge and neither side will risk real war over the death of a few felons. I doubt this little incident will ever make the News.”
After he had stomped up the ramp into the ship’s hold, he finally managed to ask a more coherent question, “What is it you want from me?”
“We want you to get us something from that planet of yours, something hidden in the Jungles of Green Hell and we figured only a Greenie can get it. No worries, we’ll fill you in and in a few months you will be able to afford a beach house at Para Para or Maritime.”
Harlex could not help but wonder what was so valuable on Green Hell that could explain all this.