Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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CHAPTER THREE Torrance

“Shit.”

My rock hammer glanced off the crystal, sending a too-small jagged chunk thudding into the deep snow around my shins. I blew out a frustrated sigh. My breath seeped into my face and neck warmer, hot and damp against my skin. I risked a glance over at Major Corey. He stood nearby in his US Army winter uniform, a parka and snowpants with a pale grey and white camo pattern. It contrasted with the snowsuit I wore – pure white – marking me as a civilian. Luckily, it didn’t look like he’d noticed I’d fucked up. Again.

“Don’t get frustrated. It makes it harder.”

Suvi’s calming, Finnish-accented voice drifted quietly over to me. She was doing the same thing I was just a metre away to my right, her own rock hammer in her gloved hand. When I looked at her, it was almost like looking at myself. All the civilian women looked the same in our snowsuits. Covered head-to-toe in white, with white-framed protective dark goggles. It was only the nametags we wore, and the voices I’d grown to know so well, that differentiated us out in the field like this. But beneath her snowsuit and goggles, I knew she was looking at me with kind, dove-grey eyes, white-blonde hair under her hood.

“I don’t know. When I get frustrated, I find it actually makes the job easier.”

That remark came from Min-Ji, who was on my left. The three of us had been ordered to work together in this small patch of snow-drenched forest. The rest of the crew, and the other women who’d been dragged here with us, were doing similar work closer to the ship that had brought us to this planet and now served as our home base.

“The trees are lucky you don’t punch them, then,” Suvi teased. I couldn’t see her smile under her white neck warmer, but I could hear it in her voice.

I heard a similar smile in Min-Ji’s reply. She dropped her hammer into the soft, deep snow, and raised her fists to her face, pretending to jab at the tree she’d been working on. She’d been a boxer back on Earth. Before.

Before we’d been taken.

“Fists down and back to work, Park!” Major Corey barked from his post.

Min-Ji dropped her hands, but her fists didn’t unfurl for a long moment.

“I’d love to get one good hit on him,” she muttered before bending to retrieve her hammer. She had to dig a little, since the snow was up to our knees.

“You too, Harju!”

Suvi let out a short sigh at the command then turned back to her work.

“And you, Hayes!”

“It’s Torrance,” I hissed to myself. I hated when Major Corey and the rest of the military crew – the crew who’d abducted us – called me by my last name. Like we were soldiers to be commanded. We weren’t their soldiers. We were civilian academics, most of us scientists.

But maybe it’s better that way. It’s not like any of them really know you, anyway. They hadn’t earned the right to use my first name. That right was reserved for the other women here who were in the same shitty situation as me. Knee-deep in snow on an alien planet none of us had signed up to visit.

I turned my attention back to my tree. It still felt weird to call this a tree. It was a monolith of glittering facets, more crystal than plant. It was generally conical in shape, a massive but slender mountain made of shining, emerald-green stone. But according to Suvi, the botanist of the group, these massive crystalline structures really were alive. And they filtered carbon out of the atmosphere more than two hundred times more efficiently than trees on Earth. We were supposed to be carefully chipping away chunks from the trees to be studied on the ship.

Min-Ji had no trouble with the task. She was a geologist and was used to hacking away at rocks and gems, plus she had impressive upper-body strength from her boxing back home. Even Suvi, with what I knew were delicate hands and willowy wrists under her gloves, had mastered the technique. She had the unique knack of finding invisible fault lines in the trees that meant her hammer struck gently but efficiently, sheering away perfect crystal chunks.

But me? I wasn’t a geologist who could punch through a wooden plank or somebody’s nose, or a botanist who was basically an alien tree whisperer. Nope. I was an astrophysicist. I was used to looking at charts and computing mathematical sequences and stargazing.

“Hayes!”

I jumped, startled from my thoughts by Major Corey’s irritated call from nearby. I glanced back, eyeing the machine gun slung across his torso. I wonder if they’d actually shoot one of us if we fucked up bad enough?

“Sorry,” I mumbled, keeping the sarcastic bite out of my voice. I tucked my hammer under my armpit and rubbed my gloved hands together. “Just gotta warm up and get back into it.”

Major Corey clomped closer. I stumbled back against my tree, suddenly afraid he really was about to get physical with me. No one had gotten shot on this mission, but I’d seen other women get roughed up and put in the ship’s brig. And, of course, we’d all been drugged and violently taken from Earth in the first place. Abducted and taken to an alien planet. Isn’t it supposed to be aliens doing the abducting? Not your own fucking people!

My jaw worked, my heart pounding as Major Corey came to a stop before me. I stared at the American flag stitched onto his military parka. Our particular mission was largely run by the US military, but governments from all over the world were apparently in on this project. Hell, Suvi had been taken out of her bed in Finland, and I’d been snatched from Northern Ontario. Min-Ji had lived in Vancouver before this.

I could sense Min-Ji tensing up nearby. From the side, I saw her gripping her hammer harder, weighing it in her hands, as if figuring out if she could throw it hard and reliably enough to knock Major Corey out.

Don’t do it, I begged silently. The last thing I wanted was to see her in cuffs thrown into the brig. Just let him be an asshole and be done.

“Don’t like the cold, Hayes?” Major Corey sneered. “Maybe we send you to the sand planet next time.”

I shivered, and it wasn’t from the chill in the air. The higher-up military liked to keep a tight wrap on what was going on with other missions – other missions just like ours. Ships of abducted scientists being sent out all over the cosmos to try to find resources we could study to use on Earth. But we all knew what a threat about the sand planet meant. There had been enough whispers, enough snatches of gossip, to know that the ship to the sand planet had been destroyed by alien monsters the moment it had landed. The crew had all been killed, and the women had been taken prisoner by violent alien male hostiles. I didn’t know what had happened to them after that, but it was pretty easy to assume they’d been raped, maybe even murdered. It was a stark reminder of why the military only used female civilian scientists for these projects.

Honestly, getting shot is probably a better fate than that.

“I’m fine. It’s fine,” I said. I was speaking more to Min-Ji and her hammer than Major Corey, but it did the trick. He made an unconvinced noise, then trudged back to his spot to watch us like he’d done all morning.

“Alright everybody,” he snapped, hand resting on his gun. “No more stupid shit. Get back to fucking work.”

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CHAPTER FOUR Torrance

“Man, weather like this makes me want Korean food so bad,” Min-Ji moaned as she bent to retrieve a crystal shard she’d just sheered off her tree. “I’d kill for a bowl of my mom’s kimchi-jjigae right now.”

“That sounds good. What is it?” Suvi asked, aiming her hammer precisely and striking off an impressive hunk. Unlike my green tree, hers was a pale lavender colour. Min-Ji’s was pink. We’d been working tirelessly on our trees since Major Corey had snapped at us a couple of hours ago and had been largely silent until Min-Ji had just spoken.

“It’s amazing is what it is,” Min-Ji replied. She tossed her crystal into the bin we were all using. “Like a stew basically. With pork and spicy fermented cabbage. It’s so good on a cold day.”

“I’ll take a bowl,” Suvi replied wistfully. “Along with a cup of glögi. Spiced mulled wine,” she explained before we had to ask what the Finnish word meant.

I smiled behind my neck warmer. This was a game we often played to pass the time. The game didn’t have a name, or rules, but it was something we all instinctively gravitated towards. Talking about the things we missed, the best parts of our lives back home. Living on military rations on the ship meant that the game often revolved around food.

“Maybe I’m boring, but I just want a really good burger, you know?” I said.

Min-Ji groaned in agreement.

“Fuck yeah. Burger. Kimchi-jjigae. Wine. Sounds like a perfect, balanced meal. I could eat that forever.”

“No salad?” Suvi teased.

“Hey!” Min-Ji shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to be a friend to the plants? You love them so much I figured you’d want me to eat less salad, not more. Besides, the kimchi counts. And throw some lettuce on the burger and you’re golden.”

“It’s precisely because I love the plants and study them so closely that I know how good they are for you,” Suvi laughed. Her chuckle was punctuated by the tinkling sound of her next crystal shard falling into the bin. I tried to ignore the fact that the bin was mostly full of sparkling purple and pink, with only a few bits of dark green peeking out.

“Nah, I’m sticking to my guns on this one. Salad can fuck right off,” Min-Ji said. “Meat. Kimchi. Booze. That’s all you need in life. The three essential food groups.”

The three of us broke into snorting laughter. It felt good to laugh with friends like this. As if things were almost... Normal.

I could practically taste the burger I’d mentioned. Smoky and cooked to perfection. I’d long since moved south to study and then work at the University of Toronto, but I visited my dad up in Thunder Bay whenever I could. He always got the smoker going for me as soon as I arrived. If it wasn’t burgers, it was steak, pulled pork, brisket...

My mouth watered.

So did my eyes.

The last time I’d gone to Thunder Bay was the first time I’d been there without him. The first time since he’d died. The memory was so fucking painful, a wound that wouldn’t heal, because I never got any real closure. I never got to spend time in my childhood home, his home, to say goodbye to him. I never got that chance because men dressed all in black had knocked me out, drugged me up, and dragged me away as soon as I’d gotten my key in the front door’s lock after the funeral. It had been two months since that day. One month spent travelling on the ship. One month on this planet.

Fuck.

If I didn’t get a handle on my emotions now, I’d start bawling. And crying in temperatures this low with goggles on was a recipe for disaster. The goggles would get all wet and fogged, but if I took them off, the tears would freeze in my eyelashes and on my cheeks, making my skin painful and raw. Plus, my nose would be running even more than it already was, making my neck warmer a snotty mess.

I sniffed hard, refocusing on the task at hand to try to distract myself.  I braced myself against the tree with my left hand and raised my hammer high in my right. I brought the hammer down against the stony tree as hard as I could. I felt good about the movement.

Until the hammer glanced off the tree and smashed into my left wrist.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I cried, dropping the hammer. I bent over at the waist, curling around my wrist and squeezing it with my right hand.

“Shit, you OK?” Min-Ji asked. She and Suvi peeled away from their trees, but they both froze when Major Corey shouted at them.

“Back to your posts!”

“She’s hurt!” Min-Ji said, pointing at me as if Major Corey was too stupid to know who she was talking about. Which, to be fair, he might have been.

“For fuck’s sake,” Major Corey muttered. He stomped over. “If you broke something, Hayes, I swear to fucking God...”

“I didn’t,” I gritted out, straightening up. My wrist hurt like a motherfucker, and I already knew I’d have a vicious bruise there soon, but I could tell it wasn’t broken.

“Fine. Stick your hand in the snow for a bit and get back to it, then,” he said.

“No.”

Major Corey went very still. I could practically feel the shocked, concerned intake of breath coming from Suvi and Min-Ji. I was just as shocked myself. I’d never told Major Corey a flat-out no before.

“What the fuck did you just say?” he asked, deadly quiet.

“I said, ‘No.’ I need a break. Um... A toilet break.”

“Then find a tree to squat behind.”

“I can’t,” I said tightly. “I need to deal with something.”

I rolled my eyes at the confused cocking of Major Corey’s head.

“Menstruation,” I added, a terse word of explanation.

Major Corey physically recoiled.

I bit my tongue, the words almost leaving my mouth. Big bad soldier scared of a little blood.

I wasn’t even on my period. I just knew that was the one thing, other than actually breaking a bone, which would get me a short reprieve from the fieldwork to use the ship’s toilets. Between the pain in my wrist and the agony of thinking of my dad, I had to get out of here. Just for a little while.

“Fucking females,” Major Corey said under his breath. I was pretty sure I was the only one who heard that remark because I knew Min-Ji would have something to say about it if she had.

“I’m not dragging my ass all the way back to the ship for this shit,” Major Corey continued louder this time. “You’re on your own. Don’t take too long.”

“She can’t go alone!” Min-Ji cried. “It’s like a twenty-minute hike through the snow! She could get lost.”

“Let one of us go with her,” Suvi added.

“Not happening. You three have been fucking around way too much today already! Your bin’s at half of what it should be for the day!” Major Corey exploded. The sound of his angry voice sent a couple of pale pink bunny-peckers flying away in dismay. We called them bunny-peckers because, while they were generally bunny-like in shape, with long ears, their trunks furred and fluffy, they had feathered wings. Their rabbity faces ended in hard beaks used for pecking at the crystal trees, creating hollows to live and nest. They had a longer, scientific name that I couldn’t remember. Marta the xenobiologist would know it.

I watched the bunny-peckers’ flight across the pinkish sky that so closely matched their colouring. My heart lurched at the natural beauty of the small forest creatures. The freedom in their flight. It made me want to follow them.

“I won’t get lost,” I said softly.

Both Suvi and Min-Ji were looking at me with what I knew was concern behind their goggles and neck warmers.

“Come on, guys,” I said, simultaneously grateful to have friends looking out for me but also a little annoyed they thought I’d get lost on such a straight path. I may have been an absolute shit show at carving crystal off the trees, but I wasn’t stupid. Not many stupid people could earn a tenured position teaching astrophysics by the age of twenty-nine.

“The snow’s deepest here,” I reminded them. “Once I’m up the hill it’s a straight shot to the ship. I’ll be able to see the ship from the top.”

It was true. The walk was long, but once I got out of the well of this part of the forest, the snow wouldn’t be as deep. Here, the snow drifted around the base of the trees, but it was shallower up the hill behind us and beyond. I was used to snow, to cold winters, from back home. I’d hike and go snowshoeing or cross-country skiing with my dad whenever I visited him in the winter.

“Then get going, Hayes. I’ll radio the ship and let them know you’re coming. They’ll be expecting you, so no stupid shit.” Major Corey stepped closer, leaning in so close to my face that I would have felt his breath crawling over my skin if not for our neck warmers. “Straight to the ship, you hear me? Do not make me come track you down.”

“Roger that,” I replied, my tone more biting than I usually dared. I just barely stopped myself from giving him a sarcastic salute. That, or flipping him the bird. Something told me neither gesture would be appreciated.

“See you guys soon,” I called over my shoulder to Min-Ji and Suvi as I turned away from them. I ploughed forward, slowed by the snow but not letting myself falter. My heart pounded with the exertion, the pulse of it throbbing in my wrist. My neck warmer was hot and wet against my mouth as I panted. I wanted to rip the fabric away from my face, but I knew that meant the moisture on the fabric would freeze and it would be like scraping frozen concrete against my skin.

After a few minutes, I stopped and looked back. The others were out of sight now, blocked by the huge, crystalline cones of this alien forest’s trees. I knew I hadn’t gotten too far yet, but by now I could barely hear the tapping of Min-Ji and Suvi’s hammers. The snow swallowed the sound, making the air into cold, quiet velvet.

I faced forward once more, starting my ascent up the huge, broad hill that led out of the forest. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing or where I was going – I definitely wasn’t going back to the ship. I needed to be alone for a bit, and that did not involve heading straight for the soldiers who’d abducted me in the first place. I swore, the pain in my wrist flaring, as I remembered that night. Barely keeping it together after Dad’s funeral. Stepping up to his door but never getting it open before the pain and the needle and the dark.

When I’d woken with the other women on the ship, it was too late. Too late to go back. Too late to hope that someone would rescue us like a goddamn movie.

I thought of the fate of the women on the sand planet and wanted to punch something.

It could be worse, I reminded myself darkly.

It became a mantra as my boots drove through the snow.

It could be worse. It could be worse.

But saying, “It could be worse,” only got you so far when you were desperate for things, for people, to be better.

I was so overwhelmed with hatred and grief that it stopped me dead in my tracks as I crested the hill. My lungs burned, my breath heaving. I squeezed my eyes shut, but luckily, there was no sign of tears now. The anger inside me became hot and rocky, like an ember. My eyes were dry when I opened them again.

This hill really was huge. It tumbled downward, another hill of similar size rising up across from it, creating a flat, snowy valley between them. In that valley rested the dome of the ship that had brought us here. Recent snowfall had turned it into a small white hill of its own.

Looking at the ship made bile rise in my throat. I almost wanted to laugh at the bitter absurdity of the situation. I was an astrophysicist. I’d dedicated my life to space and the stars, dreaming of what it would be like to travel among them, not even knowing the technology already existed, the possibility all too real.

My wish had come true in a dark and twisted way. I’d left Earth and travelled light years...

And all I wanted to do was go home.

If I squinted in my goggles, if I ignored the slightly pink tint to the sky here, I could almost pretend this was Ontario in winter. The sun this planet orbited gave off more red light than we were used to back home, which caused the pinkish hue in the sky. But otherwise, despite the odd animals and the crystal trees, this planet shared quite a few commonalities with Earth. It had a breathable atmosphere, and I’d studied enough data by now to know that it had distinct seasons. If I really let my gaze go hazy, the crystal cones that dotted the valley and hill beyond could have almost passed for towering spruce trees. Spruce trees that came in shades of pink, purple, and silver as well as green.

Other civilian women, escorted by soldiers, were in the valley, too, analyzing the trees closer to the ship. I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear any of their activities. And unless one of them looked at a life sign scanner and saw my little dot up here, they probably wouldn’t notice me.

I’ll have to get back soon...

I rubbed my wrist through the puff of my parka’s sleeve, deciding what to do. I already knew I wasn’t going down into the valley or to the ship. But I definitely wasn’t ready to get back to Major Corey, either.

I settled on walking a little further along the ridge of the hill before turning and clomping back down into a new patch of forest. There was no wind today, and it wasn’t snowing. I’d be able to follow my footsteps back pretty easily, so I wasn’t too worried about getting lost. The pale pink sky was clear, the alien sun shattering into infinite spangles along the glittering ground and the shimmering trees. In another lifetime, I would have called it beautiful.

A beautiful prison.

In that moment, my prison became my sanctuary. The hushed, sunlit forest on this strange and foreign world welcomed me, sheltered me, let me escape, just for a few precious moments. The push and pull of the sensation left me breathless. I was trapped here, in this place. This forest. This winter. This world.

And even so, even shackled to its hard trees and sinking in its snow, I begged it for solace.

I reached the bottom of the hill I’d climbed up before and collapsed onto my ass. My stiff snowpants made a crinkly sound, muffled by the snow I smooshed on the way down. My quads were on fire after the hike, my chest tight. With a sigh that felt like surrender, I arched back until I was lying on the ground.

My limbs akimbo, I stared up at the clear pink sky. Even though it was afternoon, the colour reminded me of dawn. A tired laugh bubbled up in my throat when I realized I was in the perfect position to make a snow angel. Not that I had the energy for it. Now that I’d flopped down here, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back up again.

But something revolted in me at that. Something hard and urgent. Something that told me to fuck the exhaustion, fuck the grief, and make the snow angel anyway. Suddenly, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The idea that I’d leave something of myself, my childhood, my life, out here in this hidden stretch of snow. A secret human angel left by a trapped interloper – half rebellion, half apology. It wouldn’t be an indelible mark. Fresh snow and wind would wipe it all away. But I would know it was there. And maybe the forest would, too.

With a burst of strength, my arms and legs pushed through the snow, swiping back and forth. The snow was powdery, not too wet or heavy, and I could soon tell by the feel that I’d made a perfect snow angel. My cheeks ached, and I realized I was smiling.

My flare of energy began to fade. My legs came to a quivering stop, my arms resting in the hollow of the angel’s wings. I gazed upward, the pink of the sky so bitingly clear it didn’t even look real.

Except...

Wait.

The sky wasn’t all clear.

Shit. Storm clouds?

I tipped my chin further up, driving my hood harder into the snow as I craned my neck back to better see. The sky over the valley beyond the hill looked... wrong. Darkening, as if with clouds. But it wasn’t clouds. Was it? No, it looked like...

Stone.

Anxious energy spiking into my limbs, I clambered onto my hands and knees and then stood. It was impossible. It made no fucking sense! But somehow, my instinct seemed right.

The sky was turning to stone. Right in front of me.

A dark grey, opaque oval hovered, somehow immune to gravity despite its rocky appearance.

Before I could even try to figure out what the fuck was happening, a thunderous boom so loud it made my skull ache crashed through the air. My breath caught in a stuttering gasp as the cause for the boom became clear.

The stone had cracked. A deep, dizzyingly dark chasm had opened up.

And something was coming out.

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