Part Five

For Disclaimers See Part One

 

The three women were tired and extremely dirty as they moved through the last of the tunnel. Returning to Storm's living space had been almost as arduous as making their way into the tunnel. All the debris they had removed to get further up the tunnel had been pushed to one side, making the tunnel very narrow in some areas.

They had elected to return to the cavern after clearing the doorway as much as they could. All of them were now convinced that somehow the original satellite survey had not been completely accurate in its findings. It was obvious to them that at some point in time a technologically advanced civilization had had at least an outpost on the planet, if it hadn’t inhabited it. Once the door had been cleared they’d found a control panel that suggested that electricity had powered the doorway, though Carrie was convinced it was an elevator or transportation tunnel. Knowing that Rachel would want to hear about their findings and that they really were too tired to carry on exploring, they decided to make their way back. It took them over an hour to progress this far but now they could see the welcoming glow of the fire that was burning in the main cavern; the smell of food cooking made their mouths water.

Lisa entered the cavern first, closely followed by Carrie and then Tasha. Lisa frowned as she looked around, unable to see Rachel or Storm within the wide space. "Rachel?" she yelled.

"Here!" Rachel’s voice echoed around the cavern but definitely originated from above.

Lisa craned her head back and looked up to see Rachel dangling from the ceiling of the cavern. "Christ, woman, what the hell are you doing?"

Rachel leaned forward, no longer wary of her precarious position. Several hours of hanging about and moving across the cavern had boosted her confidence in the rather primitive system Storm used. "Hi. You guys look as though you’ve been having fun."

"Doc," Carrie called, looking up through the shadows with concern, "are you sure you're safe up there?"

"Positive. I’ve been up here virtually since you’ve been gone. These paintings are amazing. I found out a little more about Storm," replied Rachel as she began to unhook slings and move back across to the cavern wall.

"I think I’m going to be sick," said Carrie. "She’s going to kill herself up there and I can’t watch it."

"Nonsense," grumbled Tasha. She moved past the staring Carrie and Lisa over to the fire and fragrant, cooking food. "If she killed herself she wouldn’t be around to see all the mayhem her death would cause us. Most she is likely to do is cripple herself." She bent over the bubbling pot on the fire sniffing at it to see what it was.

"Oh, that makes me feel a million times better, thank you," replied Carrie, nervously looking away from the dangling doctor. A thud to her chest made her look down to see that Lisa had thrust her bag into her arms. "What?" she asked.

"Go sit down while I make sure that Spiderwoman over there gets down safely. And get some water so that we can clean up." Lisa smiled at her partner when she saw the hard-done-by look on her face. "Well, you can climb up there if you prefer," she said, tossing her head in Rachel’s direction.

"Uh uh. I’ve done enough climbing about in the last two days. Besides, if you fall I get to play hero."

Lisa laughed. "Go on, I’ll get her down." She walked over to the cavern wall and looked up. "Where is our host?" she asked the descending doctor.

"She went out," replied Rachel.

"Do we have a surprise for you or do we have a surprise for you," Lisa said as she leaned against the wall.

Rachel finally reached the cavern wall to climb down. "What’s that?"

"You really think I’m going to tell you when there is still fifty feet between you and the bottom? No way. I’ll tell you when your feet are firmly on the ground."

"Okay." Rachel reached over to the handholds that Storm had shown her earlier and quickly climbed down the wall. Lisa reached up and helped her down the last few steps. "So what’s the surprise?"

"We can confidently say that the satellite survey of this planet was not as complete as we thought it was."

"Huh?" Rachel mumbled, walking over to the fire.

"That tunnel goes for quite a way. We found a metal door that looks like it might lead to an elevator though it could just be preventing further access to the tunnel. From what Tasha could tell it must be powered by some form of electricity."

Rachel stopped all forward movement and whipped back round to face Lisa. "You found what?"

"That would have been a door," said Carrie as she walked past, handing Lisa a mug of water to drink.

"A door?"

"Last time I looked in a dictionary that is what d, double o, r spelt," Tasha said from the fireside.

"A door."

"Why is it that she has no trouble dangling fifty feet above the ground on a bit of vine, but has such a problem with the concept of a door at the end of a tunnel?" Lisa casually remarked to Carrie as she sipped at her water.

*******************

It was still raining though not as heavily as it had yesterday. Storm knew, however, that this was one of the great rains. In times before she had known it to rain for so long that she had forgotten when it had started. The water level had never before reached the height of this section of the forest so Storm felt secure in leaving the confines of the cavern.

Making her way back toward Rachel’s camp, she wanted to see if the water runoff had submerged the site as it had on previous occasions. It didn’t take her long to get back to the site; she could have traversed the route with her eyes closed, she had been that way so many times before.

The water level was still very high and fast flowing. The roof of the shuttle was only just visible but it had not been moved by the power of the water. Storm smiled at this. Rachel would be pleased that their vehicle was relatively intact. Most of the buildings of the small camp were still visible as well, though some showed obvious signs of damage and one had completely disappeared.

Using the sturdy branches of the bigger trees, Storm skirted around the clearing in which the camp was situated. Her priority, now that she had checked on the camp, was to obtain food. As well as she knew the area and the inhabitants of the forest, Storm recognized that providing for her four guests would mean longer hunting excursions. Fruit was plentiful within the forest; if you knew where to look meat was also plentiful.

Knowing where the meat was available, however, and being able to catch it were two different things. Storm knew she needed to set traps. The previous big storms had lasted days and some even weeks. The animals of the forest would move to the safer grounds up toward the highlands. If the storms persisted, Storm herself would be forced to migrate along with the food supply. Although the forest was her main home, territories she had visited and roamed over the years were scattered throughout.

A high-pitched whine caught her attention and she paused, looking back over her shoulder toward the camp. Above the clearing a small craft hovered. Its form was similar to that of the shuttle but much smaller, holding maybe two people at the most. The colourings matched those of the larger craft that Rachel had arrived in. For several seconds Storm felt uncertainty at the newcomers, like she had when she first saw the others with Rachel. That faded as she remembered the kindness and friendship that they had shown her. Deciding that food could wait a few minutes more, Storm backtracked to watch the craft.

***************

Corporal Bryce Willis had come to hate this planet with a passion. Well, that wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t the planet that he hated, just the jobs he’d been stuck with since they had made landfall. Today he had been all geared up for two days' rest and recuperation in the village. Time off the ships was at a premium for all of the military personnel. Captain Sue Rodgers, of the flagship Kingdom, insisted that patrols be carried out in the systems nearest to the planet and although the continued appearance of a small number of ships had swelled the military and civilian ranks, there were still too few to do the job. So only every fifth tour got two days' layover at the village.

This time when they had landed they were immediately tasked to go search for a missing science expedition. With all that had happened over the last few years, it amazed Bryce that anybody could even consider scientific exploration, but the civilian government had decided it worthwhile. So here he was, along with Maggie Sutcliffe, hovering over the flooded base camp, which was exactly where it was supposed to be.

For some reason the beacon on the shuttle wasn’t transmitting as well as it ought and its reach was limited to three kilometres. As soon as the craft had got into range they had received the transmission that informed the village that the camp was being abandoned due to likelihood of flooding and that they would return as soon as practicable. Bryce had forwarded the transmission back to the village, which had then insisted they check it out just to make sure nothing too sinister had happened.

"What do you see?" Bryce asked as Maggie hung out of the hatch.

"It’s flooded," she replied matter-of-factly. Maggie was in her fifties and tall; she stood over 5’10". Her hair had been dark brown but now was washed through with grey. She had been in the service just since the outbreak of the war and so only held the rank of private. Though had anyone asked anybody who served with her, they would have been told that when Maggie told you to do something, it didn’t matter what rank you were, you didn’t ask questions, you jumped to it.

Maggie had been what used to be termed a survivalist. She and those that followed the same beliefs had lived on the fringes of Confederation society. They trained in the same fashion that the old-style military armies of earth had done; they stockpiled weapons and food and were openly hostile to anyone who stepped foot in their territories. None of them had any experience in space but on the ground they were second to none. Specialists in hit-and-run tactics, they had been instrumental in setting up escape routes for those in the path of the invading fleet. Here on the planet they were to be used as the local police force. Maggie was an expert in tracking and so had been selected to accompany Bryce on his little jaunt to the forest.

"So tell me something I didn’t know," Bryce remarked as he made an adjustment to his altitude control.

"Okay, then. We’re being watched," Maggie replied with a smug smile on her face.

Bryce did a double take. "What?"

"Yep, just over in the fringe of the trees in our eleven o’clock." Maggie nodded in the direction Bryce should look.

He peered out of the windows and then made a quick scan with instruments. "I can’t see anything and I’m not picking anything up on the scanner."

"Well, hot rod, we are being watched and whoever it is isn’t too afraid to be seen either; at least they aren’t really trying to hide. Nope, they’re just sitting in the tree, watching." She looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. "So what you wanna do?"

"Well I wanna be in the bar at the village having what passes as a beer, but I suppose we really ought to try to find the doc and her friends." He sighed. "You think we have friend or foe below?"

"Don’t have a crystal ball with me, Bryce. If it were one of the team I’d expect them to be giving us some sort of signal," Maggie replied, peering back out of the hatch.

"Whoever it is isn’t turning up on the scanners so I can’t target them with the guns. Can you get a manual shot?"

Maggie scratched her head in annoyance. "I most probably could but why would I want to? They’re just watching us."

"But the team is still missing," Bryce replied, almost whining.

"No they aren’t. The beacon said they were leaving the area till the floods abated. For all we know this is an intelligent animal of some kind. That is what they were out here to find, wasn’t it? Why don’t we just fire down some trackers and if whatever is down there takes the bait we can follow and see if the team is there."

"Yeah, okay, we’ll do that," Bryce replied as Maggie reached over to a tag gun. The gun was very similar to a pulse rifle, however instead of firing energy bolts it fired electronic tags with Confederation identification letters on them. In this case Maggie was going to fire a tag at a tree near where their watcher was residing. The tag she would use was brightly coloured and hopefully would attract the watcher's attention. When the weapon was loaded, Maggie precisely took aim and fired several shots into the trees, careful not to hit the creature watching.

****************

Storm flinched back as the brightly coloured darts hit the trees around her. Once the barrage was over she moved to one of the bright yellow objects that had embedded itself into the tree trunk. She pulled at the small dart and it came out easily. A trailing tail of yellow material connected to it bore printed symbols that Storm had seen Rachel using before. Thinking that her friend might want them, Storm collected them and slipped them into one of her small pouches. With one last, quick look at the hovering craft she turned and headed back into the forest.

***************

Lisa shook her head again as she saw Rachel sneak another look at her watch. Every fifteen minutes or so Rachel would take a quick glance then look up at the cavern's entrance for Storm's return. Rachel had finally got the picture that they had found a door at the end of the tunnel. Now she was concerned about Storm's absence.

"You know, anybody would think you had sent her out on her first date," Lisa said quietly, leaning over in Rachel’s direction.

"What?" Rachel asked

"You gotta remember that she has been running around this planet a whole lot longer than we have. She obviously knows this area very well, so why not stop worrying? She’ll be back when she’s back."

"Guess I’m being a little over protective, huh?" Rachel replied looking down at her hands that had taken to fiddling with a small piece of twine.

"Yeah, maybe just a little. But that is understandable. She hasn’t been away from us for any length of time since we brought her into the camp."

"Where do you think she’s gone?"

Lisa shrugged her shoulders and looked to her right as someone nudged her. She reached up and took the bowl that Carrie offered her. "Thanks, honey," she said, before turning back to Rachel who was taking her bowl from Tasha. "I have no idea where she has got to, Rach, but I reckon that she is most probably out doing what she would normally be doing. Most likely hunting, or gathering food or water. Then again she could be out taking a long shower in this rain. We’ll have to ask her when she gets back, won’t we?"

"You're right; I know you’re right. Okay, I’ll stop worrying about her now. Though I reserve the right to do so in the future."

Lisa chuckled at her friend. "Like I would be the one to stop you from doing that."

"So what are we going to do about this door?" she asked, switching the subject back to the girls' discovery.

**********

Storm landed on the rocks and looked up. The flying vessel hadn’t exactly followed her but she knew it was still in the vicinity. Water dripped constantly from her hair and face. The thundering rain hadn’t abated; the sky was still dark and heavy and Storm knew that there were still many days of rain ahead.

Hunting down food hadn’t been that hard. She had three primates to gut and cook, but she could already see the signs of migration to the higher grounds of the mountains. At most she would have a week or so before she would have to follow--before she lagged too far behind her food source.

The tags she had picked up from the campsite were still safely tucked away in her pouch for Rachel. Her eyes fell to the forest, scanning the trees carefully. Most creatures knew to leave this area alone but with the rains there was always the possibility that her home would attract company. In previous times she hadn’t minded the occasional company of the less aggressive forest dwellers, but she was loath to share now that Rachel and her friends were in the cavern. Seeing nothing that needed her attention, she slipped into the entrance.

**********

After their meal, Tasha had produced a pack of cards from her rucksack and proceeded to trounce them all in every game that had been suggested.

"Hey, don’t blame me," she said cockily as she shuffled the pack after winning another hand of poker.

"Don’t you ever lose?" grumbled Carrie.

"Nope, I don’t play with people I can lose to." She grinned back at Carrie as she began dealing the next hand.

"How do you know who you can beat and who you can’t?" asked Lisa as she picked her cards up and tried to put them into something resembling a hand she could play.

"I can tell after the first hand. Besides, being in the service you have to learn quickly who to play and who not to. You’d be fleeced of your wages on pay day otherwise."

"Are you telling me that you used cards games to supplement your pay?" Rachel inquired, frowning at the cards she held in such a way that even Carrie could read that her hand was less than stellar.

"Of course." Tasha threw a couple of stones into the centre to open the bidding. "It is a good ground-pounder tradition." She laughed. "Still I prefer to take the money off the flyboys rather than my own."

"Ha! Since when did we qualify as flyboys?" Lisa queried as the betting continued.

"Can you see anybody else around here to keep me amused?" The group broke into quiet chuckles.

The slap of wet feet landing behind them alerted them to Storm's return. "Told you she’d be back," Lisa said, without looking at Rachel. Throwing her hand into the centre, she folded, quickly followed by Carrie.

Rachel threw her hand in, leaving Tasha with the stack of stones again, and clambered to her feet. "Hey, you’re back." Stupid, of course she’s back. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here, would she? Still a smile automatically sprang to her face as the tall woman approached.

Storm held out the carcasses toward Rachel as she neared her then remembered the tags and pulled them from her pouch as well, handing them and the carcasses over to her.

Lisa was watching the interplay with amusement. Rachel was stunned and stood staring at the gifts that Storm had given her, completely flummoxed as to what to do. Lisa had seen this behaviour on a number of occasions; it was normal in the mating rituals of several of the animals. The suitor, in this case Storm, would attempt to curry favour in the prospective partner by offering gifts. Of course in the human culture the gifts tended toward flowers and chocolates. Here Storm was a little limited in what she could offer. Still, she had offered what in her world was a cherished and even invaluable gift--food that was required to sustain life--plus several Confederation tracking tags.

Climbing to her feet, Lisa hurried over to the two women. "Rachel," she whispered in the doctor's ear as she arrived, "you need to show her thanks or she may think she has offended you, and you also need to ask her where she got the tags from."

Rachel nodded her head and looked down at her hands, for the first time realising what Lisa was talking about. She quickly looked back up at Storm whose smile was starting to falter at Rachel’s less than enthusiastic reception of her gifts. "Thank you, Storm, they are most welcome," Rachel said. She handed off the carcasses to Carrie who had joined them, with Tasha not far behind. Storm's smile turned radiant once again at Rachel’s remark. Rachel held up the tags. "Where did you get these, Storm?"

Storm had dropped her smile as Rachel stared at the gifts that she had given her. Maybe she doesn’t like them? Do they not give offerings where she comes from? She was starting to get confused. These people were in so many ways like her yet they were also very different. Her smile grew once more as Rachel accepted the offering of meat and then questioned her about the brightly coloured tags she had also brought. She took Rachel’s hand and began to lead her back up to the entrance to the cavern, pulling her through behind her as she went out.

Rachel instinctively ducked against the rain as they left the shelter of the cavern and then relaxed, knowing it was futile to think that she wouldn’t become as wet as Storm already was. Storm guided her carefully to the top of the rock outcropping that was the roof of the cavern and pointed into the air. Rachel strained her eyes but could see nothing against the rain that was pounding her face; even shielding her eyes against the onslaught did little to improve her vision.

"I can’t see anything, Storm," she yelled over the sound of the downpour.

Storm looked about the sky and could make out the shape of the craft that had been hovering over the campsite they had abandoned the day before yesterday. She again pointed into the sky and with her other hand made a swooping motion.

Rachel felt another thrill of excitement as she finally caught on to what Storm was trying to tell her. "An aircraft?" Yeah, like she is going to know what that is. "A flying machine dropped them?" She motioned with her hand in the same manner Storm had.

"Yes, yes, yes," Storm yelled back at her, pointing into the sky.

Rachel looked in the direction that Storm indicated. They must have sent a shuttle out to find us. The beacon can’t have worked, or it did and they just ignored it. Why is she still pointing into the air? I got what she was telling me, didn’t I? Rachel frowned and squinted harder. Maybe they are still here? That’s it, they are still in the area and she is trying to tell me that. Rachel gave herself a pat on the back for figuring it out then checked her result with Storm. "They still up there?" The woman nodded in return. "Ok, Ok, think," Rachel muttered to herself. "Comms link, right! I’ll be right back," she said to Storm and ran to the cavern, almost colliding with Carrie.

"Hey, boss, what’s the hurry?"

"We have visitors; I need a comms link," Rachel replied as she ran past her friend.

Carrie shook her head and wandered over to where Storm still stood.

Rachel dived through the entrance to the cavern and all but jumped the ten feet onto the cavern floor, startling both Tasha and Lisa who were still sitting around the fire.

"Whoa, what's going on?" asked Tasha, standing up as Rachel rushed over to her bags and began rummaging through them.

"Looks like reality got fed up of waiting for us and they’ve sent out a search party. It’s hovering about a hundred feet away. I need my comms link," she replied as pieces of clothing and several data chips went flying.

"Here, use mine." Lisa leant over and grabbed it out of her own neatly arranged rucksack and tossed it to her.

"Thanks." Rachel snatched it out of the air and bolted back outside.

"Guess we had better go with her," Lisa said, climbing to her feet. "Yuck, that means getting wet." She looked over at Tasha. "You’d think the least they could have done was waited till after it stopped raining."

"They’re fly boys. They don’t get wet in the aircraft so it’s all the same to them. Come on, let's get up there before we miss all the fun."

************

Lisa miserably wiped the dripping water from her face and followed Rachel back inside, leaving Carrie and Tasha with Storm. She had rapidly got fed up with things once the novelty of disembodied voices from the comms link wore out. She was up there now, totally oblivious to the rain, showing the girls how to weave the water holders she had provided for Lisa and herself the first time they had been on the planet. The only good word that Lisa had for that was the fact the rain was moderately warm.

The shuttle had gone for now but would be back within a couple of hours to see what they wanted to do. News from the village was pretty good. Several more ships had turned up and apparently pockets of resistance to the invaders were springing up throughout what was once Confederation space. To keep their offensive up, the invaders had to keep their main forces together and didn’t have enough to leave many occupying forces.

There were now several thousand people on the planet mainly due to a couple of old cruise liners that had somehow managed to evade detection. They also had several industrial modules that were capable of mining ores and producing hardened alloy to repair the orbital ships and possibly would be able to produce enough to manufacture items in the future. Agriculture had improved ten-fold and farms were now producing enough that the whole community was able to replace the ship rations with fresh produce.

The only thing they didn’t have was a viable meat product, but hunting was providing more than enough to supply them for now. What they really needed to have turn up was a generational or colony ship. Either of those vessels would be able to provide genetic stock to breed from. Still things were much better.

"We really need to go back and present our findings, Rachel.  We already decided that they need to know about the tunnel." Lisa moved over to the fire to start drying off and picked up a stack of firewood to feed the glowing embers that remained of the earlier one.

"I know, I know. We got so much further than I ever dreamed we’d be able to and then there is the tunnel; that is what is causing me the headache now. How the hell do I leave Storm now? It isn’t as if she’s going to understand my leaving again, is it?" Rachel slumped down next to the fire, staring at it morosely.

Lisa could see the worry etched onto her friend's face, but had no idea what she could do about it. "You're right." She sighed. " She isn’t going to understand that, and unfortunately I have no viable suggestions about how to help her understand. Sorry, Rachel."

"Hey, no problem, I’ll think of something; I always do." She patted her friend’s hand.

"I can’t even figure out a way for you to stay. You know more about what we’ve learned about Storm than any of us. I doubt I could present it in the manner it needs. The only alternative would be to take her with us but I get the feeling that would be very bad."

"There is no way that I’d take her back, Lisa; she’d be the proverbial lab rat. They’d all be poking and prodding within minutes of her getting there. Besides I don’t think she’d take well to life in our society. Can you imagine what would happen if someone hit on her?" They both had a good chuckle at the mental picture of Storm dangling the unlucky soul by his feet. "God!" Rachel dropped her head into her hands. "I hate making hard decisions."

"You seem to do pretty well at it," remarked Lisa.

"Professionally maybe, but I have a personal stake in this, Lisa. I could never live with myself if she came to harm in any way, physically or mentally. And I just can’t come up with a solution for this one."

"I can." Tasha’s voice drifted over their shoulders. Rachel and Lisa craned their heads to see Tasha and Carrie coming into the cavern out of the rain.

"Where’s Storm?" Rachel immediately asked, ignoring Tasha’s remark for the moment.

"Where do you think?" Carrie answered for her, flicking her head toward the entrance. "I swear if she wasn’t six-foot tall I’d believe she was a two-year-old kid, she has all the energy for it."

"She wear you out, honey?" Lisa asked with a grin.

"Oh, yeah. Anyway she's up there playing."

"Playing?" queried Rachel.

"That’s what it looks like to me," agreed Tasha. "Whatever you want to call it, she’s having fun anyway."

"At least one of us is," moaned Rachel. "What was the idea you had, Tasha?"

"I’ll stay here with her."

"What?" Rachel and Lisa said together.

Carrie, already having heard the plan, rummaged through the bags, grabbing two of their towels and slinging one of them toward Tasha who caught it.

"She can’t come back with us. Hell, she’d cause a riot in the male population." She started rubbing vigorously at her hair. "And I don’t think you really want to expose her to that type of environment yet. It also occurred to me that you wouldn’t take too kindly to leaving her, but that you also wouldn’t have the option of staying with her. So I thought if one of us stayed with her the problem would be solved."

Rachel and Lisa looked at each other. "Why you?" inquired Lisa.

Tasha tossed the damp towel to Carrie who hung it up to dry and then joined them all at the fire. "I couldn’t see you being too happy if Carrie stayed. Rachel can’t stay and neither can you. The doc here will need your support. Besides I’m really the only one trained for this type of thing."

"Good point, well presented."  Rachel grinned over at her. "I guess that solves that little problem. Now all I have to do is explain it to Storm."

 

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