Chapter 13: Morning After

“Let’s all agree to never speak of this again,” Reid sighed, hefting her rucksack onto her back as her team loitered around her. Her face was burning, Dubois seemed similarly embarrassed but Sousa and Webber were beaming. Clayton was hard to read, avoiding eye contact with his colleagues as he tightened the straps on his bag and inspected his boots, trying to keep himself occupied in order to avoid talking to them.

It seemed as if everyone had slept with one or more Krell the night prior, the mating frenzy almost impossible to avoid, the team now preparing a legendary walk of shame back to their shuttle through the muddy forest. None had been selected as Sleethe had chosen Webber, the others humans denied the bonds of Krell matrimony, or whatever their marking ritual signified. They must not have thought that the humans were marriage material, they would not be calling them back so to speak, and somehow that made the whole situation even less flattering.

“Looks like the weather has cleared up,” Dubois remarked, straightening the brim of his hat. He looked somewhat less confident now, and he was eager to leave the village, having had more than his fill of adventure and novelty. Sleethe carried Webber’s pack, trivial on his broad shoulders, and the young woman practically hung on his scaly arm as she peered up at the alien with obvious adoration. The odd symbol was still prominent on her forehead, though the ochre was starting to fade a little now. Reid imaged that she might get it tattooed there, their relationship certainly seemed stronger than those that commonly resulted in trips to seedy tattoo parlors, and she wasn’t military so she had no dress code to adhere to. An odd tattoo would draw little attention in comparison to the exotic aliens and cultural outliers that wandered her workplace.

The Krell inhabitants of the tiered village had not made too much of a fuss when they had arrived, and didn’t make much of one now that they were leaving, most going about their business with only a handful leaning over the railings above to watch the humans as they made their way into the swamp.

At least they were loaded up with samples, Reid thought as she trudged through the ankle-deep mud, once they returned to the lab they could put this whole affair behind them once and for all. The going was slow, some still sore from the previous night’s activities, and everyone was plagued by the difficult terrain and swarms of insects that harassed them in buzzing clouds.

When they finally arrived at the shuttle and emerged from the treeline, Reid was momentarily horrified to see that the vessel had sunk deeper into the mud, the landing gear almost invisible as the ship rested on its belly. After a brief inspection Dubois assured them that the shuttle would fly, the thrusters on the underside were not blocked with mud, and he lowered the ramp in order to make his way to cockpit and contact the March Hare for rendezvous. In all they had only spent about two days on the planet, but Reid was already sick of it, eager to see that sickly, green haze melt away into cold, clean space as their shuttle broke free of its gravity. The team piled into the troop bay, strapping in quickly without a word, Sleethe gripping the handholds in the roof as they prepared to launch. Reid buckled herself into her crash couch and took one last look at the planet down the landing ramp as it began to close, the pale trees in the distance almost invisible against the green-tinted mist that permeated the world.

There were sighs of appreciation and relief as the ramp sealed shut and the temperature normalized, blowing cool, fresh air onto their faces. Reid turned her face up towards the source of the breeze, closing her eyes and letting it blow her bedraggled mop of hair. It was like stepping out of a goddamned sauna, the ever-present rotting vegetation smell dispelled by the shuttle’s air purifiers. She heard Sousa laugh, and turned her head to watch the swarthy biologist chuckle.

“I just realized how bad we smell,” he said, “like we ran a marathon and used compost for deodorant.”

There were a few sympathetic chuckles, but it was more of an observation than a joke, and then Dubois’ voice rang out over the intercom with a hiss of static.

“Ok people, I think you’re as ready to go home as I am, so please buckle your safety harnesses and try not to vomit all over the bay. Skies may be clear but I ‘ave to fire the main boosters to achieve escape velocity and that can be a little ... difficile. Please ‘ang on to your seats.”

The vessel rumbled, rocking slightly as it rose from the mud, the thrusters no doubt vaporizing the waterlogged earth beneath it as it struggled to free its landing gear. There was a conspicuous moment of resistance, and then they broke free, the gear clunking beneath their feet as it stowed in the craft’s belly. Dubois climbed slowly, swinging in wide, lazy circles to get gain as much altitude as he could before enabling the boosters, the two powerful engines located in the craft’s stubby tail. The team felt the center of gravity change as the shuttle angled itself towards the heavens, and then they were blasted by G-forces as Dubois gunned the engines. Reid felt herself drawn to the left of her seat, the harness holding her tightly as Sleethe braced himself, his scaly biceps straining to keep him upright as he held on.

The noise was deafening, and the shuttle was shaking as if it might break apart, but it wasn’t long before they broke through the atmosphere and sailed into the calm waters of open space. There was a moment of weightlessness, but then the craft’s AG field kicked in to suck them back to the deck with Earth-standard gravity. Reid breathed a sigh of relief and unfastened her harness, resting her head in her hands as Dubois’ voice once again crackled over the speakers.

“We’ll be docking with the March Hare shortly, cold showers and hot food soon, comrades.”

If by ‘hot food’ he meant processed crap, but it was better than nothing. They had brought rations down to the planet with them as they had expected to have to camp out on the surface for at least a few days, but they hadn’t had an opportunity to eat them, they had been far too eager to get their work over and done with as soon as possible.

The March Hare would be flying around the planet at orbital speeds, the freighter rolling over to expose its hangar so that their shuttle could dock. As long as Dubois didn’t crater into the side of the damned thing’s hull, they were home free. Now they just had to hope that they could decipher the properties of this tribal remedy and then find a way too apply what they learned to the Krell on the station. They had made very good time, but that clock was still ticking.

The March Hare took up a geostationary orbit around the Pinwheel’s anchor planet, appearing to hang motionless near the slowly tumbling station as it waited for its turn to dock for refueling, alongside the swarm of UNN vessels and cargo ships that milled around nearby. There were bursts of color like fireworks as new ships arrived in the vicinity and others jumped out of the system, the hub a veritable hive of activity.

Moralez was eager to get the team back on the station as quickly as possible, they had no time to spare, and so he cleared their shuttle to dock with the Pinwheel’s central hub. They were escorted in by a pursuit craft, a bulbous, streamlined space fighter colloquially known as a ‘Penguin’ due to its odd shape. It looked to Dubois more like an eggplant with stubby wings, its white hull decorated with blue UNN markings, the rounded nose of the ship dotted with weapon ports that housed its compliment of laser cannons and railguns.

While railgun weapons and the larger mass drivers mounted on capital ships were universally acclaimed for their sheer destructive potential, laser weapons were only used on spaceships. The beams of light would dissipate rapidly and refract in atmospheres, but a sufficiently powerful laser would decimate enemy vessels instantly at essentially any range that ships would be engaging at, barring the ultra long-range torpedo exchanges between battleships and missile destroyers. Even then, they made formidable point defense weapons. Many UNN vessels had a reflective or refractive armor coating to help protect against such attacks.

It flew by their side in formation as they neared the central hub, the great spokes linking it to the torus that encircled it. Was the Penguin there for their protection, for formality, or to vaporize them if it somehow turned out that they were enemies in a clever disguise? Dubois was relieved to see it break off as they neared the dock, peeling away to continue its patrol. He took more care than usual as he landed the shuttle in the somewhat less than spacious hangar bay, it was barely larger than the one on the March Hare, looking as if it would barely house three vessels. This was VIP parking after all, usually reserved for Admirals and other high ranking crew members.

They were met at the bottom of the shuttle’s landing ramp by a contingent of marine guards, clad in black armor with their faces obscured behind opaque visors. They hesitated when they saw Sleethe, perhaps they hadn’t been expecting a Krell onboard the shuttle, but after a brief radio call they waved him forward and he lumbered obediently down the ramp. They escorted them into the hub and towards Chief Moralez’s office. The door slid open, and they stepped inside, Moralez rising from his seat at a bank of readouts to greet them.

“Doctor Reid, Mister Dubois, Doctors ... I trust you’ve brought me back some good news?”

“Yes Sir,” Reid replied, “I believe that we have found a solution to our problem. We have plant samples taken from the planet that are reported to have contraceptive properties for the Krell, we need a lab and a research team in order to synthesize something that we can widely distribute to the general population. We should have enough samples to treat the Krell who have transformed into females and who are currently fertile however, that should put an end to the reproduction in the short term.”