CHAPTER SEVEN

Kade

I stood on the observation deck, staring out at the jungle. It was gorgeous, full of every different shade of green I could imagine, and with multitudes of bright flowers dangling from vines and reaching up on tall stems from the undergrowth; pink, purple, yellow, blue, all fighting for attention from the buzzing insects that pollinated them. Above the base, dark storm clouds loomed, but there was still bright sunlight streaming in from the west, creating a vivid contrast between the sunlit greens and the ominous clouds overhead.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen anywhere so beautiful. Growing up on Eumad, I’d got used to the endless shades of beige and grey-green that marked almost every landscape on the planet. Deserts were beige. Oceans were grey. Forests were a greyish-green that always made me feel like even the trees didn’t really want to be there. The Eumadian cities followed the pattern, the buildings clad in green paint with grey roofs. The transporters were grey. The space ships were grey. The people were grey. The other dimari in my training class had been the brightest things I’d see, most days. Our natural colouring was generally somewhere between a deep, vivid blue through to a pale green, but the Eumadians had encouraged us to experiment with our colours as we got older, and plenty of my classmates had wandered around with their scales tinted a vibrant pink, or jet black, or a few canny students had managed to create blue and green stripes.

I wondered if my master thought I was beautiful, in my natural blue state. He’d said I could choose what colour I was, once we were out of the jungle, and out of danger, but as I glanced over my shoulder at the small crowd of people filling the canteen, I couldn’t see anyone else who was blue. Some were purple, others had yellow and black stripes, like Vosh, from our team, and the rest seemed to be various shades of brown. Blue would stand out, and I wasn’t yet confident enough of my place here to deliberately draw attention to myself. My master had been pleased with me so far, but I had a lot to learn about this planet and its culture.

I’d been at a loss when he’d told me to get something to eat and then left me here to go and see to his duties. It was a woefully vague instruction, and I hadn’t had nearly enough time with my master to have learned to interpret the nuances of such an order. ‘Something to eat’ could cover anything from a single mouthful to a full meal. My protein bars had run out last night, so I’d had nothing to eat this morning, and the temptation was to find something substantial to ease my hunger. But I didn’t want to be seen as greedy, or to abuse my master’s generosity. I’d been trained to go for prolonged periods without food, and warned that displeasing my master could lead to him depriving me of food as a punishment. I didn’t think he was in any way displeased with me – hence the instruction to ‘get something to eat’ – but I didn’t want to do anything that would change his opinion of me.

In the end, I’d chosen two packets of what looked like meat, contained between slices of bread. I’d eaten various kinds of bread and meat before, but never in such a configuration. The packets were labelled, but without a comm, I didn’t have a way to translate the unfamiliar script. The purple-skinned woman behind the counter had watched me as I’d taken the packets, and I’d stammered something to her about being a ‘guest of Lieutenant Aiden Hill’. I wasn’t sure whether he would have to pay for this food, or if it was provided free of charge as a part of his military service. But she’d just smiled and asked if I wanted some fruit as well.

I’d declined the offering, not wanting to take too much, and then eaten the meal quickly at one of the empty tables, before retreating out to the deck. The canteen was full now, and I was glad I’d already finished eating. Having so many unfamiliar people around was unnerving. I hoped that my master would give me more instructions about how I was to behave, rather than me having to figure it out by trial and error.

By the time my master came back, it had started raining, and I was sheltering under the wide awning. I would have preferred to go back inside at that point, the air uncomfortably cool with only my thin t-shirt covering my torso, but my master had told me to wait on the deck.

“Kade?” he called, poking his head out of the doorway. “Come on. We need to get going.” I eagerly followed him inside, then across the still-crowded room. “We’re heading back to the main base in Hon,” he told me, ducking around two yellow-skinned women. “The transporter leaves in about twenty minutes. Have you eaten?” he asked suddenly, stopping in front of me and turning to look at me.

“Yes, Master,” I replied. Was he going to ask what I’d eaten? Was I going to be scolded for taking too much? He glanced at the counter of food, then ducked over and grabbed two packets of bread and meat, very similar to the ones I’d eaten earlier. “Thanks, Jean,” he called to the purple-skinned woman, who smiled and waved back.

When we made it out of the canteen, the crowd thinned out noticeably and the noise level decreased. My master didn’t say much on the way back to the transporter terminal, and I simply followed him, refraining from asking any of the questions roiling through my mind. Where was ‘Hon’? Was it a city? A country? Another planet? How long would it take to get there? Where did my master live? How had his meeting with his superior officer gone? Were they pleased with the mission, or was there going to be trouble over the dead soldiers and missing cargo?

I’d been warned repeatedly that the first few weeks of my new life with my master were going to be difficult, with many things to learn and plenty of unfamiliar sights and sounds. And I was certainly finding that to be true. A part of me was already longing for the quiet simplicity of the jungle. The only things I’d had to do there were walk and keep an eye out for danger. It had been soothing, almost meditative. Here, there were so many decisions to make, and so far, my master was giving me startlingly little direction.

We collected our packs from the storage area and I followed my master onto the transporter. We stowed our packs in the baggage slot and he led us to two seats near the rear of the vehicle. He immediately tore the wrapping off the first of his food packages and shoved the corner into his mouth. I was pleased to see his selection of food. I’d chosen the same item and the same quantity, which likely meant I’d made an appropriate choice. Perhaps it had been sheer luck that I’d done so, but I made a note of it for future reference. For the first little while, I would be cataloguing everything my master did, to align my behaviour with his expectations as closely as possible.

He pressed a few buttons on his comm, and I sat back, expecting him to get to work on reading a report, or perhaps sending messages regarding his latest mission, but instead, he pulled up a glowing green map. It hovered in a holographic projection above his wrist, and he extended his arm towards me so that I could see it.

“This is the city of Hon,” he began, but then cut himself off. “No, hang on, let’s start at the beginning.” He zoomed out on the map, all the way until the entire planet was visible. “This is Rendol 4,” he said. Then he highlighted a pinpoint midway up the northern hemisphere and zoomed in. “This is the continent of Rinsolo,” he said, tracing his finger around the large land mass. “Most of our population lives along the coast, because there’s much higher rainfall there. A hundred years ago, this was a class six planet. It had evolved significant plant life and aquatic life, but not much in the way of animals beyond insects and reptiles. That said, there’s a pretty wide variety of reptiles around. But the biosphere is very divided. The plant life was all growing in wide valleys or on the sides of mountain ranges, mostly near the coast, due to the rainfall from the oceans. The interior of most of the continents was largely desert. A lot of it still is, actually. And that creates some wild weather patterns. The air over the desert becomes incredibly hot, the air over the jungle stays cool, which makes for some major pressure imbalances that lead to massive storms. We’re slowly working on spreading the vegetation cover further and further into the desert regions, to mitigate the heat levels, but that’s a long term project. Welcome to the wonders of terraforming,” he added wryly.

“Meanwhile, this is the city of Hon.” He zoomed in again, on an area of the east coast of the continent. Wide stretches of jungle extended to the north and south of the city, with featureless desert to the west. He zoomed out a little. “Right now, we are here…” He pointed to a small grey dot, embedded in the middle of a large patch of green. “This is the Honbasha base – which simply means North Hon, in Denzogali. The main military base is here, on the eastern side of the city. That’s where we’re going now. Colonel Henderson is in charge of that base, and he’s going to want another report on the mission we just did. By the time we get there and he finishes chewing my ear off, it’ll be dinnertime, so we’ll spend the night there. I’ve got a bit of work to finish off tomorrow, then we’ll head to my house. That’s here, on the south side of the city. It’s near a river. It’s a nice place. I’ve got a little three bedroom villa.”

The rumble of the transporter’s engines cut off anything he might have said next, and our seats vibrated. “Hm. Seatbelts,” he advised, doing up his own, and I followed suit. A few last-minute stragglers hurried onto the transporter, then the wide doors closed with a hiss.

“All passengers are to remain seated for the duration of the journey,” an electronic voice announced. “We will be arriving at the Hon military base in approximately two hours. We hope you enjoy your journey.”

The vibrations of the transporter increased, and then I felt it rise into the air. Out the window, the ground dropped away from us, and I was treated to a panoramic view of the jungle, the military base quickly disappearing into the trees as we headed south.

“I’ve got a bit of work to do,” my master said beside me. “I have to finish my report on the mission and do some research. Is there anything you need?”

“No, Master,” I replied. I was grateful for the explanation of where we were and where we were going, brief though it had been, and I tried to tell myself to relax. My master would give me all the information I needed, given time. But he’d just completed a difficult mission and he still had some details to wrap up. I should stop being so needy. I was here to serve him, not to demand his attention all the time. I sat back in my seat and watched the jungle drifting past outside.