The Scout
[end hyper sleep – scout 91]
The sensation of awakening from a deep sleep was, for Nora, like having your body smothered in blankets and forcing your weak, trembling limbs to shove them away. Eventually, the leaden feeling dulled and something cold flooded her limbs. Drugs, she realised, designed to hasten her awakening; a complex cocktail with adrenalin and numerous other stimulants and stabilising agents. After an eternity her eyelids respond and she willed them open, wincing as the white light of her reanimation room hit her, even dulled for moment. Stubbornly, she didn’t close her eyes, only blinking briefly as needed, until she saw the lab around her. Empty of life. Only her work station, the wall of screens, the fridge for the drugs onboard, an operating table – something from a bygone era when scouts had the luxury of going out in pairs. The second sleep chamber had been removed.
Why waste power and space? That’s what they told her.
Once the drugs had done their work the glass of her sleep chamber hummed open and, shakily, she stepped out, one hand on the side of her chamber. She staggered over to the work station, waving her hand over the console. The holo-image sprung up of a planet in front of her, a jewel-green world with fair sized stretches of ocean. Scans indicated forty five percent water, which was good, and all other markers indicated it a viable world. The only problem seemed to be a particularly nasty storm system that, at that moment, lashed the northern hemisphere and seemed to cycle around the planet. At least, according to her systems. Her ship had been circling for thirty-day cycles, enough time to study – if it detected any hazardous anomaly it’d keep her asleep and move on.
By her count, she’d been asleep more than thirty years, her body preserved all that time. With the body of a woman in her early twenties and the actual age nearing two hundred and fifty she was left feeling, as close as was humanly possible, immortal.
She sat by her bench, studied the holo until the lingering weariness bled from her system and she was awake. Rising up she wandered, clad only in the hyper sleep wraps that were more for propriety if anything else, into her private room and changed. She drew on a plain grey shirt, plus her scout uniform, which looked increasingly worn but, for its age, held well on her body. Like her, it was made to last.
Dressed, she made her way onto the adjoining bridge, which was small. Aside from the main panel, which had only one seat for her, there was two other desks opposite each other with holo panels for displays. In front of the main one was the glass window, which for that moment, focused on the vast abyss of space with glittering stars. It had been, in her much younger and humoured years, something of a marvel. Now, it only disturbed her, reminded her of how bloody lonely she was and how long it had been since she’d seen another living soul.
With a sigh she sat down in her seat and set her hands on the controls, the grips cold to touch. She flicked the ship off auto-pilot and angled it towards the planet; then she saw it, in all its luminescent colour and life. An old stirring gnawed at her mind. What if she just landed and didn’t set off the beacon, calling the colonisers, forcing her to head off, find the next world? She’d given them three worlds already, more than enough and there had been plenty of scouts sent out. It was selfish of her, greedy it but, fuck her, she was tired. She’d stupidly surrendered her life the second she agreed to be a scout, effectively agreeing to work until she died, wherever that was. Alone, forgotten. They told her she’d be a legend.
She believed them.
Every scout had before they boarded their vessel, alone.
As the planet neared she adjusted the settings, readied the ship for entry. The solar sails on the wings of her ship retracted, drawing back under the panelling and the main engine reduced power as the main stabilisers engaged. She reached back and buckled herself in. Landings weren’t easy and she wasn’t about to break a bone – again. It’d been a painful enough lesson the first time when she made her first landing on a planet with unexpected winds that nearly tore her ship apart. Herself included.
As the ship pierced the atmosphere it jolted and groaned, the rapid change in temperature and pressure and gravity hitting all at once. Nora tightened her grip and nudged the ship down, manually adjusting the stabilisers as required. For a couple tense minutes, the ship fought to keep straight – then, like a bubble, it broke through and shot through a thin layer of cloud, settling out across a forest that stretched onto the horizon, broken only by intermittent patches of clearing.
The land itself undulated up and down, the forest blanketing it evenly. It seemed a paradise, if ever there was one, and she wondered what the catch was. The air quality was ideal and the temperature was, on average, a little warm but manageable.
She brought up a holo of the landscape and saw the edge of the forest, just beyond the horizon, a vast clearing that advanced onto a beach and the closest ocean. As she angled the ship over and set auto-pilot on sensors beeped. A signal detected. She froze in her chair, white with shock. Her hand circled the signal beeping from the edge of the forest, zoomed in but she saw nothing. The holo was made up of what the ship saw from space, so it wasn’t detailed enough to see through the trees, to spy the source, which it hadn’t detected until she’d come down. A signal that had turned on when she got close.
Her heart slammed painfully in her chest. She quickly took auto-pilot back off and fired the main engine again, the ship shooting forward in a thunderous roar. The forest beneath her blurred as the holo rapidly adjusted in front. The signal neared and then she saw the edge of the forest, a neat line, like a hair parting. She might’ve admired the vast ocean before her, so rare to find, but her focus was on the signal as she disengaged the engine and slowed down, using the thrusters to land. It took all her control to not rush the landing but, if she did, something might break and she didn’t know what the signal was.
What it might mean.
As the ship landed with a solid thump the signal, which her systems finally identified as a homing beacon, continued to chime. She unbuckled herself and raced into her room, grabbing her laser rifle before darting out to the rear of the ship. At the loading bay she waved her hand over the panel by the door and stood back as the rear door groaned open, the ramp lowering simultaneously. The fresh air and thick humidity hit her like a wave, smothering her.
Barely two steps out she had a thin layer of sweat on her skin. She held up the rifle, creeping out slowly, her heart slowing to a steady calm. Her Visi-scan detected the signal, which was approximately thirty metres in, just out of sight through the thick forest. Slowly, she approached –
The trees rustled.
She froze, armed her gun but said nothing.
Then she saw it, a flash of movement. Something was watching her from the trees, something intelligent. It moved again, creeping slowly out from behind a tree and into view. The blood drained from Nora’s body.
It was a man.
No, it wasn’t just any man. She set her rifle to safe, then lowered it as he stopped at the threshold, eyeing her like he didn’t believe she was there either. On the opposite end of the universe, far from their home world, staring at each other. He didn’t look like he had back then; before her stood a weary man, whom looked at least a decade physically over, with a thick beard and long hair, framing a hardened face that didn’t smile at her.
“Michael? That you?”
His name sounded strange in her mouth. Hell, even talking to another soul sounded wrong, foreign. Everything about what she saw felt strange, alien to her. Ironic as that sounded. Yet how was she to expect to find him, another scout? The man she’d cut away because they’d both signed up as scouts, drawn inevitably to the stars?
He stared at her, seemed to try and speak but failed. She stepped towards him but he staggered back in alarm, then ran, vanishing into the forest. She didn’t follow him, the shock too raw, her mind reeling.
She was no longer alone.
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