Before Levi could do anything more, the same hands grabbed him, and with a shout, they pulled him out. The leering creature grinned. And silently tied and gagged him. When he struggled, one simply reached over and jabbed his neck with what was likely the same dart they shot Robert with, and he slumped, his vision fading to black. Aliens had kidnapped him on his first mission out, just his luck.
• • • • •
The southern plains of Yi’up (meaning ‘the world’ in English) were roiling with one of the many planetary storms that could circle a point for weeks while they used up their fury. Tribal tales told of the great monsters to the north, who created these storms to throw them down to the only habitable area in the south to try and make it like the rest of Yi’up (that is, desolate), which was the last world to have living creatures on it, for the monsters had destroyed all else.
Mel-Tio-Gessed-Van-Tok-Gru-Shan-Lem-Elm, or just Mel, didn’t believe those stories; he still thought that the high ones had banished his people to this planet many hundreds of years ago for some crime, and since then they had lived in squalor and near death on the southern plains of Yi’up. As such, he was not happy with these world walkers who had stumbled their way onto his home, undoubtedly to harass his people once again.
“Do you speak? creatures from the air.” He asked, he used the ancient tongue since that was more likely to be recognized.
One of his prisoners stirred, “Levi?”
Mel bent towards the captive and removed the blind fold from the sweaty face. “Levi, to you, world walker,” he returned the phrase, hoping he would understand something from his language.
The prisoner burst out in unintelligible speech, which almost reminded Mel of the cursed tongue; perhaps he was a friend of the previous traveler. That traveler had come speaking the cursed tongue, wearing light as a weapon, and asking them of the high ones. They had taken him to the pits where all the cursed deserved to go.
“Do you speak, or are you of the cursed?” He wore no light, nor had metal skin, but his face was similar to theirs.
Robert heard the noise of another language, but he didn’t bother to try to communicate. That is, until he heard the word ‘speak’. Robert’s head snapped up, and he recognized the word from his eighth-grade Shellom classes. Shellom was the primary language of Marquesh, Earth’s closest ally. He focused and tried to piece together the statement. Finally, he responded. “Yes, I speak, no, I am not cursed, how do you come to speak this tongue?”
Mel kicked Robert with a floppy foot, “I could ask you the same! Are you from the high ones? Is our punishment at an end?”
Robert scrambled back from the blunt, toe-less foot. “Look, I don’t know what is going on, but I am from Earth, and the ASA, listen, you have to let me go!”
Mel cracked a smile. “Perhaps we shall! For the great devour storm has descended to the plains, anyone who leaves the caves for the next three weeks will likely die.”
Robert stood carefully, his hands and feet still tied. “Listen, my people are very powerful and very dangerous, but they are also peaceful! If you give us back, they will give you much and our two peoples will be friends. However, they have to know we’ve landed and that you have captured us. They will be angry!” Robert left out the part where the ASA would take three months to get here at superluminal speeds.
Mel shook his head. “your kind? You think that the high ones would allow you to destroy us. They have punished us, yes, but they remain our masters. Once our imprisonment ends, they will set us free!”
“High ones?” Robert asked.
Mel stepped back, “How do you speak their tongue if you do not know them? Are you of the cursed!?”
Robert didn’t know how to answer. He looked towards Levi on the ground next to him, still unconscious. He was probably going to wake up with just as bad of a headache as Robert had, even as he thought it, the younger boy stirred, looking around with his eyes still blindfolded.
“Robert?” He asked.
“Yeah, I’m here!” Robert responded, “We are in some cave where this red alien guy is questioning us. He speaks Shellom somehow.”
“Shellom? Like from Marquesh?”
“Yeah, but he calls it the high speech or something.”
Levi rolled over and tried to get his blind fold off, finally succeeding in his venture by pushing with his knotted wrists. There was Mel in front of him. The large red alien with twelve fingers and big paddle-like feet. He looked something like a Zytoc. Tall, skinny, long-limbed, but his skin was red and he had a large head, unlike the tiny Zytoc ones. He wore a pair of what appeared to be slacks. They were baggy and long, trailing past his knees. He had no shirt, though, just a sort of breastplate made of a strange, shiny metal. An assortment of feathers stuck out from tassels all across his body and a headband, showing that there must be some other living things on this desolate world.
“Ah, so the second one has opened his eyes!” Mel laughed, “So I hear you speak the cursed tongue again. Offer me proof that you are not from the silent worlds, dead and cold, and I will rethink my plan to throw you into the cursed pits.”
Levi struggled to a sitting position. “No, you have to believe us! We aren’t from any cold worlds; our planet is called Earth. We are Humans! We aren’t here to bring you ill, we are here to make friends!”
Mel stroked a small fungus-like growth on his chin, probably a beard of some kind, though it was a pale yellow color, “Do you admit then that you are… man?”
“Yes!” Levi seized on the recognition, “We are of mankind!”
“So said the cursed!” Mel shouted, “Take them to the pits, Yub-Mig-Lip and He-Ron-Jeck!” Two young warriors of low status (and therefore small names).
“Great, Levi,” Robert muttered as the giant aliens put a pole between their ropes, “Now we get to be cursed!”
“Wait!” Levi shouted, “We aren’t cursed! Can’t you hear us talking in the speech of the high ones? If you let us live, we can help you!”
“Halt!” Mel called out and motioned for Levi to return, “and how can you help me?”
“I can teach you how to use the weapons you stole from our ship!” Levi said. Robert tried to get his attention, Levi looked, and Robert gave him a confused look. Levi shrugged and returned his attention to Mel.
Mel shook his head, “cursed weapons!”
“No, powerful weapons, they are not of the cursed.”
Mel looked at the weapons in a pile against the wall. Levi noticed a small notch carved into the wall above them. The storm was in full rage outside. The notch was built to let sound in and maybe light too, but not the wind or rain if there was any. A plan sprang into Levi’s head.
“Robert,” He whispered in English as Mel cut his bonds, “if these aliens weren’t an issue, would you be able to free yourself?”
Robert thought a moment, then responded, “Yes, but whatever you are planning, it better be good.”
Levi shrugged, “I actually don’t really have a plan.”
Robert let out a short moan of frustration, “Of course.”
Mel drug Levi to the weapons, “None of these use the cursed light?”
Levi guessed that he meant lasers, and the radial-16s used a powerful energy beam, one of the best examples of a DEW in the ASA.
“No,” he lied, grabbing instead a projectile pistol, “this is like the dart weapon you have, but better.”
Mel took it and stuck his mouth to the muzzle, blowing hard. Levi shook his head and took it back, flipping it in his hand, he caught it right way around and pointed it at the wall. He fired off a couple of shots into the stone wall opposite the small sliver of window, which was his hope of freedom.
He handed the gun back to Mel and showed him where to pull. Mel jerked back as the bullet shot out and buried itself in the wall.
Robert, thinking that Levi wanted to shoot the aliens, tried to call him off, but Levi didn’t notice.
“You know, if you took us to our ship, we could fly some of you to another world where it wasn’t as harsh,” Levi said wheedlingly, “and then bigger ships would return for the rest of your people. Or we could use the radio on board to try and reach Earth, and they would send the bigger ships first.”
“No!” Mel growled, “You speak like a cursed. That was their plan! You will show me the weapons, then I will throw you in the pit, and as for us, we will wait for the return of the high ones!”
Levi looked through the energy grenades and laser plumbers, looking for something that didn’t emit light. Finally, he decided to hurry up his plan and grabbed the one rocket launcher and hefted it to his shoulder. Robert’s eyes went wide, and he mouthed the word no at Levi, even using some quiet English, telling him to stop.
“I got this!” Levi whispered, and he handed the weapon wrong end forward to Mel.
Mel took it and aimed it at the wall. He paused and glanced at Levi askance, “This weapon looks very destructive. You are not playing a trick? Do you wish for me to destroy myself?”
“No, no!” Levi assured him, “If you were to die, I would be tossed into the pits or given to the storm. But it is dangerous that your men should come and stand to the side of you.”
The two warriors crossed to stand next to Mel, and Levi made room for them conveniently by stepping away.
“Levi!” Robert hissed, “What are you doing!? If you are planning on killing these guys, then that is a horrible idea and a bad way to introduce our two species!”
Levi ignored that, “Just be ready to run towards that pile of weapons.”
Mel fired it off the way Levi had shown him, the blast shot backwards into the wall behind them with a loud crash and a boom that deafened all of them. Mel fell to his hands and knees, dropping the weapon while the two warriors scurried away with shouts of terror. The wall burst away and out into the frothing, roaring storm, which pulled at all of them with a roar. Levi ran across the room as the howling wind tugged at his clothes. He grabbed a radial-16 and pointed it at Mel, “Don’t move!”
Robert followed and grabbed his own weapon. The storm made almost all talking impossible, but he managed to shout in English, “That was crazy, I can’t believe it worked!”
Mel spat at the ground, “So you are cursed! I knew it!”
“We aren’t cursed,” Levi said, “at least not the two of us specifically, but our people want to be friends with yours. We are leaving, and you can let us go and help us go, or you can try to detain us. Either way, our people will return. The real question is what mood they will be in.”
Mel stood up, backing away cautiously. “Fine, go! But you won’t survive the storm!”
“He is right!” Robert shouted in English, “We can’t just go out, we need to make them keep us.”
“I don’t think we can trust them enough,” Levi replied, “if we want to go, we need to go now!”
He grabbed a pair of breathers and strapped one on, handing the other to Robert. The breathers worked by compressing the air around you and using its ingredients to make a breathable atmosphere. So for this planet, the machine was just collecting surplus oxygen from around them and adding it to what they drew into their lungs.
Levi motioned Robert to the front. Robert geared up and grabbed the beacon locator that would lead them to the ship. Without any further ado, they sprinted into the storm. The winds whipped at them mightily. Levi went into the air at the first gust, coming down hard several feet away. Robert grabbed at his collar and pulled him low, screaming as loud as he could to Levi, he barely made himself heard, “CRAWL! Make yourself small so the wind won’t pull as hard!”
Levi hunched over and followed Robert. There were shouts of alarm from behind them, and Levi even heard a pistol shot, but the storm was strong enough that it was impossible to see, let alone hit any mark.
Robert continued to crawl away, as lightning forked across the landscape up ahead, he stood a little to hurry his pace. Levi copied, and they tried to run hunched over as the beacon on their ship guided them forward. Lightning blasted the ground next to them, dancing like it was on caffeine across the ground in little forks. The orange light nearly blinded Levi, but Robert pulled him aside even as he could barely see. Another blast, then another. They stood up more to run better, but the dry battering wind continually shoved them off course. Small whirlwinds spun past, throwing dust into the air. The only thing they could see was the ever-increasing number of lightning strikes. They reached the bottom of the hill in fifteen minutes, and their ship was at the top.
Robert leapt up the slope, fighting to keep his footing, and held out his hand for the struggling Levi. Another lightning blast separated them momentarily, and Levi fell back to the ground.
Robert dropped forward and slid down the slope. A massive whirlwind that seemed to emit lightning bolts itself spun its way directly towards. Then, Robert grabbed Levi and hauled him to his feet. Levi came to and tried to struggle up the slope, but the wind pulled at their bodies even as dust bit deep into their skin, carving out gouges. Within half an hour, they could be no more than bones. Robert pulled again, Levi dug his nails into the rocks, and they worked their way up the slope, feeling the wind bite and the sand cut.
Robert ran for the ship. If it weren’t for the fact that the doors automatically closed after some time, sand and lightning would have likely ruined the interior. Their spacecraft, being made of metal, was a lightning magnet, and the shields had taken quite the beating to protect it. A crackle split the air just above Robert’s head even as Levi thought this. Levi didn’t even have to deliberate. He dove, aided by the wind on his back fairly, soaring, striking Robert, and knocking him through the ship door he had just opened.
Lighting spun its way across the shield, turning it into a glowing aura with Levi trapped in between, the lighting flashing across his body. He dropped to the ground a few arcs of light, hopping to and fro, and then all was still as if the wind itself was respecting the sacrifice.
Levi heard noises, words, sounds not like the wind that had screamed at them, sounds of anger. No, these sounds were desperate. They were sad sounds.
“Not again,” Robert said, he felt for a pulse after dragging Levi in, “I won’t allow it! Not again!”
The pulse still didn’t come, and Robert was unsure what to do. He pounded on Levi’s chest, beating to the proper rhythm. The lightning seemed to have stopped his heart, but maybe there was a beat there still. No, there had to be!
“Come on, Levi!” Robert shouted, feeling for a pulse, “Come on!”
He put two fingers on Levi’s neck, a faint throb, a single beat. Then another, then again. Robert whooped, “That’s it, come on!”
Levi’s chest rose, hesitantly, and fell again, his breathing coming in hard-earned bursts. Levi’s eyes fluttered open, burns traced out patterns on his skin, he couldn’t speak, but he smiled faintly at Robert, and somehow the message got across.
“We really are a team now.”
• • • • •
“We radioed the ASA,” Levi said, “Once we were in space, the radio beams barely made it. They weren’t made for that distance, even with recent improvements. They told us to return immediately and sent a ship to meet us halfway since we were low on supplies after being ransacked. When we got back to Earth, people were so excited by a new alien species, I don’t think anyone cared how I tricked them, though I didn’t tell the full story about the weapons or the final lightning blast until now.”
Everyone was silent. Finally, Shane asked a question, “What does it all mean? The stuff about cursed and high ones and how they speak Shellom?”
Levi shrugged, but he knew Shane didn’t actually expect him to answer.
“Where is Robert now?” Daniel asked, leaning back.
“Oh, I asked him…” Levi began but stopped as the door to the room opened and Robert walked in, looking very stiff and uncomfortable. Robert didn’t necessarily like people Levi knew, but he was willing to try, which Levi was glad of.
He cleared his throat. “Am I late?”