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War’s Oversight

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2019 by Shiantar

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed herein are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, whether living or dead, or to real events, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 11

Sarah blinked, seeing only the irregular, convoluted shape of the green afterimage in her field of vision, left over from when she’d been looking past her own flashlight bulb, and when she’d been darting her eyes to look more directly at it while it flared and died, unexpectedly.

She blinked again. And again. And failed to see anything except the irritating and starkly solitary green smudge in front of her eyes.

She gave her flashlight a perfunctory slap and hit the power button. Nothing happened. She gave it another slap and began jabbing her thumb at the power button repeatedly, hoping at least for a spark of activity from the thing, but succeeded only in straining her thumb.

“What the -?”

There was an abrupt, painfully bright flash of light which resolved into a sizzling, brilliant flame, a tiny pinprick of blue-white which she realized she’d seen before – something not unlike a welding arc. She squinted, and cast up a forearm to shield her eyes.

The Chakri was holding a thin rod in its left hand, the end of which was burning like a strip of magnesium ribbon, and having rolled onto its stomach it was now staring at her intently, a feverish kind of glittering in its eyes. It was breathing in a rapid panting which sounded both unsustainable and unhealthily wet, even to Sarah’s amateurish ears. It pointedly cleared its throat, almost coughing on the first syllable of its address as its lips bent around foreign words.

“I am … Beh … Grak,” it coughed at her, in a voice so deep and rumbling that it seemed to echo in the cold, dark confines of the passage. “Spe-cial-ist … two-three … two-three … two-zero … zero-seven.” It seemed to be gathering momentum with its halting speech. “You … will not … take my equipment.” With a flick of its wrist, it cast the rod to the middle of the room, where it continued burning undisturbed. The Chakri, however, levered itself up on its elbows and began a determined crawl across the floor to where a small table sat in the darkness, obscured by the stark point-illumination of the place.

All she could manage was a bewildered, “What … ?”

Despite its left ankle and foot being dragged uselessly behind it, the Chakri made quick progress in crossing the floor of the room, and on reaching the foot of the table made a blind grab with its left hand at an unseen object sitting on top. Its outstretched hand made purchase, and it gripped whatever it was holding onto with urgency as it fought against quivering muscles.

It was clearly very near the end of its strength. She started to get to her knees.

As she watched, it made a sharp twist with its wrist and pulled its clenched fist upward, the object coming free of the table as the Chakri’s efforts bore fruit, but all it could do was collapse back onto its face as its arms refused to bear its weight any longer.

It lay there, panting rapidly, as she gathered herself onto her feet in a crouch and put a hand to the holster of her pistol. “Hey … !” she began.

It seemed to recover some of its momentum at the sound of her voice, and raised its head up with some kind of determination, taking the thing in its hand and raising it in front of its face. At this, the Chakri’s fist and forearm began to jerk and it gave a bodily shudder. She heard it take a gasp of breath, and it attempted to steady its grip with the addition of its twisted and misshapen right arm, but only succeeded in making things worse.

It bared its clenched teeth in a grimace, and made to bring its prize to its questing lips, but as Sarah took a cautious step forward, there was a muted crack! Its grimace turned into a low, wordless cry as the object in the Chakri’s left fist shattered, a spray of clear droplets squirting free into the light.

It stared, in an expression she would’ve taken for disbelief, as it opened its fist to reveal … glass shards? she thought. It panted for a few long seconds, staring hard, before it slowly sank its head down onto the floor, and lay unmoving.

She hurried over to where it had collapsed, and peered at it intently. Where it had previously been panting heavily, its breathing was now subsiding to a deeper, less rapid pattern. Whether it was wheezing or lapsing into the snoring associated with deep shock, she thought it sounded ominous in light of the creature’s behavior. Throwing caution aside, she took her hand from the butt of her pistol and gripped the creature by its shoulder to turn it over.

Its eyes appeared to have rolled back quite deeply into their sockets, and where it wasn’t wheezing or droning faintly it sounded like it was moaning quietly.

What the hell do I do with it? she thought. There were a million thoughts racing through her head which hadn’t occurred to her when she was hauling the heavily-laden stretcher through the dark, with the cold gnawing at her bones. What the hell was it doing prowling around my tent? Why didn’t it try to kill me then? Why the hell didn’t it try to kill me after my flashlight died?

She reached over and took hold of the creature’s left hand, which was lying slack against its body, and examined it. It was wet from whatever liquid had been spilled earlier on it, and was now also sticky with blood where the shards of glass were embedded in its flesh.

Its skin was a black, supple, leathery sort of affair, but its palm and the underside of its fingers were more of a velvety texture. It had four fingers and a thumb, of about the same proportions and placement as hers. Its blood, she noticed, was a dark red of the same crimson color she was sure was pumping through her veins.

As uneasy as the creature made her feel, and especially considering how vulnerable she was, she couldn’t help but also feel a kind of pity for it. It was helpless, and considering how without its cooperation she’d likely be frozen stiff against the hillside by now, she didn’t feel like she could just let it die without some help.

She rose, and trying to keep herself out of the path between the burning, hissing light source on the floor and the few possessions she had abandoned in the dark, she grabbed her medical supplies and returned to where the Chakri was lying.

She didn’t want to risk moving the Chakri too much or stripping its environment suit off in the usual way -- it had jagged bits of stone chips and even some pieces of metal sticking through its suit and obviously embedded in its flesh. I hope to heaven nothing got jabbed in there any deeper when I was hauling it around the gravel pit, she thought, as she searched through the kits to find the utility scissors.

She fabric of its environment suit was flexible and thin, but tough, and she worked for what seemed like an eternity to get the alien’s chest and shoulders exposed. Thankfully, it seemed to have only flesh wounds in and amongst its sleek fur, where they had bled freely but apparently clotted after a time. Some of them were deep but small, while others were shallow but splayed open like a knife wound. If this thing lives, she thought, those are gonna be some ugly scars ...

Hunting around at its neck did her no good, as its thick mane of denser fur kept her from getting a good feel for where its pulse might be. She felt around its chest, and found a steady rhythm under her fingers as she probed near its middle.

It actually had a very solid musculature, she noted, as she splayed her fingers across its ribs and through its fur, hunting for little bits of stone or metal shrapnel, but found nothing. She retrieved a digital stethoscope from one of the kits but could only hear its faint moaning when she listened for the sounds of its breathing.

At this, she couldn’t do much except put her ear to its chest and concentrate on what she could hear. This close, she could detect that the creature had a peculiar body odor -- not unpleasant, but unfamiliar. Kind of like locker-room sweat, she mused to herself. Its fur smelled like … well, like fur. It didn’t tickle her nose or make her skin itch, though, which was fine by her. She could hear its heart still pumping away in an alien pattern, although its lungs sounded like they were at least free of any bubbling or hissing.

At the touch of her head against its chest, however, she sensed that it quieted somewhat, and perhaps breathed a bit easier.

She had to hunt around for a while before it became clear what the source of all that blood around its mane and face was. It had taken a deep laceration to its scalp and she’d apparently made it a lot worse by ripping off its helmet -- along with whatever had penetrated through it. Still, with its breathing reasonably intact she could focus on carefully sealing that laceration with surgical glue. Easily half of what she smeared on the wound was lost in its fur, clumping and fusing the long strands together.

A cut with the scissors, slitting its sleeve up its length, and then another, and its entire upper body was free. She didn’t at all like the look of its right arm -- it obviously had a closed fracture but she couldn’t tend to that until she was sure it wouldn’t bleed to death in front of her.

At its waist was nothing to stop her -- the environment suit had just an elastic cord built into its fabric to keep it situated above its hips, but which did nothing to stop her scissors as she slit an opening down its right leg.

Its thigh muscles were impressive, built more like those of an immense powerlifter, than the mere athlete suggested by its torso. Here, in the flesh of its right leg near the knee, a piece of solid steel rod from her shelter -- the length of her middle finger and maybe two millimetres through -- had been fragmented and flung at high speed to spear itself into the alien. It was loose, however, rooted not too far into the skin, although when she rocked it faintly she could hear the Chakri’s moans faintly intensify.

Drawing aside the fabric at its waist, she was torn between an innocent kind of curiosity and feeling burdened by knowledge she hadn’t asked for.

A plain band of white fabric cord just above its hips and circling its body suspended a plain, white fabric pouch below it, about the size of her fist. Her mouth tightened. Figures, she thought. She looked up at its face, and reckoned that it was still largely insensate. ‘He?’ If ‘he’ ever wakes up, knowing my luck he’ll insist on having a male nurse.

His breathing was still more rapid and wet than she would've liked, had he been a human lying flat on his back, but he seemed stable enough for her to begin digging more things out of the medical and surgical kits.

A nearby sputtering from the flare he'd dropped on the floor -- still burning with a stark, intense flame, but dimming intermittently -- caught her attention.

She grabbed it at its midpoint -- relieved to discover that it wasn't hot to the touch -- and brought it over to him. He was muttering incoherently, as if in the grip of fever, and his eyes were rolling back in their sockets, never focusing on her.

She placed a hand on his brow - not gently, but not roughly - and this seemed to get his attention briefly. She held up the flare -- not close to his face, but close enough for him to see -- and enunciated, "Will this go out?"

He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then -- without answering her question -- extended a trembling, unsteady left hand to point at a nearby wall.

She looked. There was a large, heavy-duty apparatus mounted there, as black as the surrounding rock, but at about head-height and with thick, black cables strung on either side. She darted from where she was kneeling to stand by it, relieved to see that it was uncomplicated -- it appeared to be a lever, with no visible external parts but capable of being moved from "down" to "up."

She swallowed, put a hand on it, and then gave it a firm shove.

There was a muted crack! and, after a fraction of a second, she began seeing a dirty, yellowish glow from a large, hemispherical dome mounted on the roof above them. It grew brighter, until it was at least as bright as an open flame -- but so dim and yellow that she would've mistaken it for something burning had it been flickering. The dome in which it was mounted appeared to be some kind of plastic, or glass, and looked to be thick as well as heavy.

The handle she’d been holding -- a squat affair not much longer than her palm -- was bare metal, painted black, but cold to the touch. Much colder than metal had any right to be while indoors. She became aware of how her fingertips, momentarily forgotten since coming in out of the wind and into a slightly warmer environment, were now smarting with the cold again.

On the other hand, she could now see that the chamber they occupied had a passageway leading away from the outer entrance, through which some faint illumination could be seen. She was curious, but felt she had to do some serious thinking.

She knelt near the Chakri once more, and gingerly tapped his chest with her left hand where the tufted, voluminous fur of his mane tapered down and disappeared between his pectorals. “Hello?” she hissed. At his unsteady, renewed gaze she rested her right hand on the butt of her pistol and pointed with her left hand toward the passageway. “Is there anybody in there?” she enunciated.

He blinked, and gave a slight side-to-side shake of his head. He was trembling with the effort of even raising his head up slightly.

She rose, and unholstered her weapon to point at the floor. Part of her was apprehensive, the other part searching for something to distract her from her fear. She gently mouthed the words to herself to repeat what she’d said. Hello? She reached the passageway, and peered inside. The space between this room, and the room she was looking into was a gap of maybe a metre, through which she’d have to duck her head. Is there anybody in there? In a flash of memory she imagined the Chakri on the floor behind her, trembling and looking confused at her attempts to ask simple questions. Just nod, if you can hear me.

A perverse, almost giddy sensation gripped her as the combination of adrenaline and bodily cold gave her a burst of euphoria, especially in the laughable context of what she realized she’d been saying. She abandoned stealth and reassured her anxious half by humming gently what came next. “Is there an-y one home?”

A poke of the muzzle of her pistol around the corner into the adjoining room. “Come on, now.” As her fear eased, there being nobody in the room and nothing which looked hazardous, she began to sing the rest in a low voice. I must be concussed, she thought. This is no time to be singing.

I hear you’re feel-ing down. Equipment boxes were stacked in this room, and there was perhaps something like a bedroll laying out on a slightly raised platform. In a muddled pile on the bedroll looked like … Blankets? she thought. They look more like furs. But what, she asked herself, seeing a right-angled corner of a part of the whole mess, with a rolled edge and stitching, kind of fur comes off a rectangular animal?

The thick wires from the lighting apparatus in the other room passed through the apex of the passageway behind her, and were again fixed to the wall to run across and down to a final terminus, where they met a large container and were very obviously plugged into it with individual, bare-metal connectors.

No other passageways led away from this room, she could see. Unless there’s something else that’s camouflaged, she thought. Another door, maybe a hatchway … It didn’t seem worth a lengthy search at the moment, so she carefully holstered her pistol and turned back the way she had come.

The Chakri was still where she’d left him. For lack of anything better to do, she dug through the contents of the surgical kit for a set of forceps. They looked like scissor-handled, ratcheting, blunt-nosed tweezers rightly enough, but she was able to grab hold tightly of another tubular metal fragment which was embedded in the skin above his ribs. It slid out easily, with just a dab of adhesive to seal it.

The one at his right knee was more stubborn. She worked at it for some seconds while he groaned and coughed to himself, and when it finally came free she could see that it had been barbed and burred over, in addition to being bent when it had struck bone somewhere. Some faintly fatty, stretchy material came with it from under the skin, and the wound left behind bled with some persistence before she was able to stop it.

It seemed that most of the bits of rock and dirt which had made their way through his environment suit at high speed had stopped just short of going under its skin -- most could be brushed away, but left pinpricks and slashes and gouges aplenty, as though he’d been the target of hundreds of little stone arrowheads. She made an effort to seal over the largest of them, and as she made to work on the smaller ones, it became evident that they were already starting to clot.

I can ease your pain, she thought, seeing that there was irony there. She had no way of giving him some remedy for the pain that he might have stored away somewhere, and now way of knowing whether her medications would help or poison him. ‘Get you on your feet a-gain. She felt no irony there, just a sense of utter impossibility. He may still die, she thought. And then what’ll I do?

She had a moment of self-doubt, as she began snipping her way down what fabric remained on his right calf and ankle, and if she’d been frowning in concentration up until now, her frown deepened with a kind of guarded self-criticism.

Clearly, her options were dependent on whether the Chakri lived through the night or not. If he died … well, she thought, I guess I try to make my way to the communications repeater and call for help. Without all of my outer clothing, without any of my navigation gear …

If she left just as the risks of frostbite fell away, she might make it. If she rested during the hottest part of the day, she might expect to lose some good hours of traveling time. If she kept going … she might find herself with no shade and with heatstroke and no water.

Fuck …

If he lives … She stole a glance at his face. His eyes were more or less closed now, although there were still tremors quavering through his body irregularly and making the job of exposing his ankle that much more difficult. What the hell am I going to do if he needs something cut open? she thought. I can’t do anything more delicate with him like this?

Right ankle next. If he lived, it was possible she could get from him whether there was any food or water here. There must be, she thought. There’s no surface water anywhere on the planet and hardly any in the air. He’d need supplies.

And after that …

She wasn’t sure about after that. Stay here? she thought. Keep him under close guard and maybe tied to the wall while I wait for a search party? Wouldn’t it be days before she was overdue, and days before they could deploy teams to look for her? Could she find her way back to her shelter site? Could she find her way out of this defile?

The bone of his calf, just above the ankle was misshapen. Well, to be clear -- the whole of his foot looked odd. No heel to speak of, and sinewy under the skin which was stretched taut. He had four toes, and they were padded and clawed like his hands, but the whole surface of his foot was maybe a third of the balancing surface of a human foot.

‘Get you on your feet a-gain;

She shook her head. Not anytime soon, she thought. “Sorry …” she said aloud, and positioning herself at the foot of his supine form, she gripped his heel with her left hand and his instep with her right, and gave the whole works a firm jerk toward her.

His body bent upward at the waist in a sudden, convulsive movement, as his eyes flew open and he gasped aloud.

Their eyes met, with her having put a hand to the butt of her pistol again. She was well out of his reach, however, and as he was precariously propped up on the elbow of one trembling arm, she wasn’t sure if she was right to feel so nervous looking directly at him.

All the same, seeing his eyes glittering with the same feverish, intense light she’d seen earlier, she didn’t feel at ease.