A Modicum of Trust

A story of love and betrayal for SciFi Spring

11'291 of the Jun era, Atmosphere of Myeong Mai, End of The Hulak War

'Delivery complete, activating astro-engines and returning home.'

'Great work, Calahan, come on home.'

Calahan's HUD darkened along with his cockpit as a blinding flash of light erupted behind him. His Tarantula fighter climbed through the sky, the stars within reach. Seven more atomics detonated mere metres from the surface. Another twenty would follow. The entire planet, a fortress world, was reduced to ash and would signal the end of the Hulak War that had raged for sixteen years.

When the war started Calahan had been fifteen and his father was called up to duty on an astro-cruiser, manning a gun battery for ship-to-ship combat. He'd been killed two years later. In anger Calahan's grandfather had signed up, more accurately had forced the military to take him, for infantry. One-hundred and thirty-eight kills later he'd died too.

'My son won't die in this war,' Calahan said to himself as he watched the mushroom clouds dominate the sky. Myeong Mai was done for, nothing would survive the blast and anything that did would succumb to radiation within hours.

'Weapon lock,' the flat feminine tone of his onboard computer said. Sirens blared and Calahan banked hard left.

It was too late.

The ground-to-orbit laser pierced a fist-sized hole through the main engine and one wing. The Tarantula sputtered on the edge of the thermosphere and began to fall back into the mesosphere. Calahan stomped on the accelerator but it was no good. 'May day! May day! My fighter's been shot, I am going down!'

'Prepare accordingly, use your escape pod if needed. A team will be sent to rescue you,' the man aboard the astrocruiser Celsius was struggling to contain his elation. Cheers erupted in the background.

'What's going on?' Calahan screamed. The ship creaked, turned its nose towards the surface and began to free fall.

'The Vong have surrendered! You and your team are heroes.' He composed himself, 'A team is tracking your descent now,' the connection vanished.

Calahan gripped the ejector handle, the vague sense of joy smothered by fear. Fear of never seeing Celeste again. Fear of never teaching his boy how to shoot or climb. Fear of leaving his girl to the trials of the world. Fear of his children forgetting him. Clouds flew by and the shockwave of another atomic detonation shunted him westward away from the emerald oceans and towards a ridge of coastal mountains that stretched from the frosts of the northern hemisphere, through the desert of the equator, and to boreal forest in the southern hemisphere. At least there was drinkable water, food, and a lack of settlements where he would now crashland. Maybe. A glaring light burst to the east, the darkened glass of his cockpit barely shielding him. He raised his hand and swore he could see through the palm of his hand for a second. A second shockwave hit and he thrust over to the western slopes that descended into unending forests dotted with marshland and lakes. He pulled the ejector.

The centre of his Tarantula rocketed up a hundred metres into the air while the wings, engine, weapons, and everything but his cockpit and an emergency storage compartment continued to fall. Three parachutes popped out the rear of the pod and Calahan was left gliding through the air, facing the surface.

Minutes later he slammed through the branches of a tree almost half a kilometre tall with a trunk thick enough to house a whole town. The lines of the parachutes tangled with the foliage and Calahan was left swinging in his pod, the ropes squeaking and the branches creaking. It was too far to drop but he could climb, though not with all his supplies, a tent, and mag-gun.

Far below there was a shudder in the undergrowth. A blaze of orange fur with a glint of steel claws caught Calahan's eye. He reached for the boltgun on his thigh...

11'310 of the Jun Era, Atmosphere of Myeong Mai, 19 years since the End of the Hulak War

'Can you believe this planet was uninhabitable for seventeen years?' Tania stared out of the port side window, her nose pressed to the glass. Myeong Mai had been reduced to a scorched rock with rain storms that would melt skin off bone but in less than two decades had been cleaned and returned to its lush state as a garden world.

'Dad went missing here,' Gibon said, arms folded as he focussed on a rivet in the steel panel deck of the transport. His sister and he had stretched to paying for a private room with separate beds for the two and a half weeks of travel. Tania had paid extra for a room with a view, though the window was barely fifty centimetres in diameter.

'And now mum has too, searching for a dead man.'

'Dad isn't dead, he's missing.'

Tania turned, the curls of her mousy hair ruffling round her ear, 'Oh come on. There isn't enough anti-radiation meds in the universe to have saved him. The rescue team found his pod, glass smashed, half the supplies left behind, including anti-rads, he died here. After he ended the war,' she turned back to marvel at the planet below.

Gibon hmph'd and returned to nursing his melancholia.

Gibon and Tania stepped out into the settler town of Ko. Clean, fresh air washed into the town from the emerald ocean to the east while the tickle of burning sulphur from the astrocruiser engines roared behind. Gibon shifted his backpack, 'Do you think we can trust this guy?'

'Mum did,' Tania surveyed the crowds in front of the astroport.

'Mum's missing,' Gibon reminded her. Not that she'd forgotten.

'If Hu Von Jo had anything to do with that he wouldn't be meeting us to help find her. He wouldn't have contacted us in the first place.'

'I guess your right,' Gibon squinted into the afternoon sun. It was hard to believe the holovids he'd seen of the atomics detonated on Myeong Mai. Impossible to imagine such destruction and then recovery in such a short time. He wondered if the few survivors had returned home, any of the three hundred fated to be on a tour of an archipelago far to the south when the bombs hit, lucky enough to be in a wild sanctuary seeing rare plants and almost-extinct sea creatures. Three hundred of...

'Tania?' A nasally voice crowed. People were shoved left and right as a man, stout and red faced, barged through. 'Tania, Gibon! Glad I found you, this place is a locust swarm.' He smiled through his patchy stubble and grabbed Tania's bag. 'Follow me! I have a cab waiting.' Darting into the crowd before either of them had said a word.

Tania sprinted off, dashing between the settlers going every which way but the one the siblings were. 'Hey! Wait!' Gibon shouted and chased after his sister.

Hu Von Jo was seated on the back of what looked like a sofa on wheels attached to a droid with a ball for a lower half. 'Hop on, your bags in the chest on the back. Join me,' he gently tapped the seat cushion behind. It was velvet and trimmed with golden tassels. A multitude of blankets and rugs lay over the chair, stripes clashed with dots clashed with floral patterns clashed with a night sky with the constellations labelled. Tania sat down and Gibon squeezed himself on the end. The cab had a cover to protect them from the worst of the sun.

Hu Von Jo told the droid their destination in his own language. The droid nodded with a series of ribbits and rolled on. Hundreds of rickshaws spun along the road this way and that, all droid pulled. 'Vehicles are still banned here but these are allowed,' Hu Von Jo nodded with pride.

Gibon gripped the side of the rickshaw, the wind catching in his throat as he was pulled along. The astroport faded into the distance, dozens of freighters and cruisers taking off and landing. He sat back, hugging his backpack, 'So, you know where our mother is?'

'Right to it,' Hu Von Jo scratched the back of his head and sucked his teeth. 'Listen I don't know where she is but I know where she went and I know where she was when her beacon went dark. We can go there but first we should eat.'

'I'm not hungry,' Gibon said.

'Well I'm not trekking into the boreal forest on an empty stomach.'

Hu Von Jo had ordered everything on the menu. The table for six was filled from edge to edge with plates of dumplings, fried and steamed, bowls of noodles, soups, braised chicken, slow roast pig, mounds of steaming rice crammed with greens and shellfish, and plates of fresh vegetables. Three cast iron pots were steaming with the first crop of lotus leaf tea. Hu stacked his plate with rice, noodles, three fried dumplings, half a chicken breast, some pork, and a whole pak choi.

Gibon tried a steamed dumpling. Ate half, didn't taste it, and set the remaining half on his plate while he sipped at the gentle tea.

Tania picked at a plate of plain rice and braised chicken with her chopsticks, quizzing their host throughout. 'Why did mum go to the southern forests?'

Hu Von Jo shovelled some spiced rice into his mouth and said, 'Your dad went down near there. Stuck in a tree I heard, no body was found. Celeste figured she'd be able to trace his steps,' a grain of rice flew from his lip. He swallowed. 'Alone on a world for near twenty years. Man's dead or crazy but Celeste wouldn't hear it nor would she wait for me to organise a proper expedition.'

'You can do that?'

'Sure. I have contacts,' the wanton crunched between his teeth.

Gibon shared a knowing look with Tania, mum wouldn't leave unprepared. 'What did mum have with her?'

'Big pack. Bag of water, a tent, antirads, so I told her she didn't need them, enough dried food for a month, portable stove, desalination tablets, maps upon maps upon maps, ceramic machete, boltgun, though I warned her sidearms are illegal in the settlements. There's no wildlife anyway, at least not where she was going.'

'So she was prepared,' Gibon said.

'Totally. Totally,' he pinched a strip of pork glazed in honey with his chopsticks. The sauce ran down his chin as he ate. 'But she was alone, even in a forest without predators that's dangerous. No one's been out there in twenty years, who knows what you could find? When they quarantined the planet after the bombing,' he said in a hushed tone, 'nothing got in or out. Nothing. When the clean-up started it was all done by droids and machines. Good job too because the circuitry barely lasted a year, people wouldn't have lasted a day down here. Point is,' he leaned into the middle of the table, 'the planet we knew is gone and this is an unknown frontier again. It's dangerous beyond Ko or Chung Lai or Guan Po. Come on eat up and we'll be in the forest by nightfall.'

'Nightfall?'

'Best time to travel. Cool air, no predators, and I have military grade torches to guide us. Plus the navigation is so easy a child could do it, so long as you have one of these,' Hu unclipped a satellite map from his pocket. 'Not easy to come by, yet. Satellites are new and still going through tests but I know a guy.'

'Do you know a lot of guys?' Gibon nibbled on his dumpling.

Hu Von Jo considered the question, swallowed a cut of chicken, and said, 'Come to think it, I do. All in sensitive areas. Definitely people you want to know.'

But what use are you to them? Gibon thought.

Hu Von Jo was right about the lack of wildlife, the forest was silent. The mighty gagao trees split the sky and towered over the three of them, yet there was no birdsong, no rustling leaves, no buzzing of insects. Gibon was shocked that the trees had survived at all. There was little undergrowth and where once he imagined there to have been hundreds of species of tree, bush, and plant there was just four that dominated the forest in the gaps between the gargantuan gagao.

'The animals died from the radiation, as did a great deal of the flora, but certain trees are more resistant to radiation and this part of the world was far enough away at first not to suffer. The acid rains changed that but still these persevered,' Hu Von Jo panted between every word. His shirt rode up under his backpack as he clambered over a sprawl of thick roots. He checked the navigation portal, 'Not far.'

'Not far till what?' Gibon angled the torch up to his face.

'Shine that downward if you wouldn't mind,' Hu shielded his eyes. 'To your dad's crash site. That's where your mother went first.'

Gibon lowered the torchlight and let Hu pull ahead. He whispered to Tania, 'Do you think dad survived?'

'No.'

'Not even a little chance, now that we're here?'

Tania stopped and stared at Gibon, 'No. Dad's dead. Let's make sure mum isn't.' Tania wiped the sweat from her forehead and continued on through the forest, jogging to catch up to Hu Von Jo. 'How did you know our mum? She mentioned you once or twice but that was all,' her voice carried through the still and silent air.

'I guess... well it must be close to thirty years, though hard to keep in contact when we lived on different planets in different systems. We worked for the same conglomerate and would meet on a deep space astrostation a few times a year for conferences, training, company updates, new product launches, that sort of thing. There was a little gang of us but as the years went on most left or got promoted but Celeste and I remained until she gave it up a few years after your dad, Calahan, was declared MIA.'

Gibon caught up to them as he was finishing. 'Had you seen her during the war?'

'Once. The company wasn't doing well by then and had laid off huge swathes of staff, I was the last from Myeong Mai to go. Not that I'd lived here since I was a child. I think she quit before they got to her and all the other Latafians.'

Gibon nodded and tried to recall what mum had done then but everything from then was a haze. Moving from smaller house to smaller house, gradually closer to his grandparents but never close enough. Different schools, a new language. There was too much to remember whether Hu was telling the truth.

'We can rest later. Come,' Hu Von Jo sucked down half a litre of water and set off again.

The escape pod dangled from the gagao tree branch far ahead. Gibon focussed his monocular and could make out the shards of smashed glass wedged in the headrest. There was a stain, probably blood, along the glass. He handed the monocular to Tania.

'No body... I always assumed the military lied, as a kindness you know.'

'No tracks either. No sign of your mother,' Hu Von Jo scanned the ground with his torch, the stark light obliterating any details.

Gibon ran his hand along the rust red bark of the gagao. Splintered and cracked and peeling, he began to pull a section free.

'I wouldn't do that. Working theory is the gagao survived by absorbing the radiation into the bark and storing it there, keeping it away from the roots and leaves,' Hu Von Jo said.

Gibon dropped the strip of bark and wiped his fingers on his trouser leg. It was there, in the ground beneath the pod he saw an aquamarine bead. He crouched and picked it from the dirt. Sure enough it was a single bead from a bracelet he bought his mum, Celeste, a few years prior. 'Mum was here.'

'You sure?' Tania hurried over.

'That's from the bracelet I bought her for a birthday,' Gibon handed the bead to Tania.

She squinted at it, her green eyes attempting to find fault, 'Yup. So we follow the beads or what?'

Gibon shined his torch around him and ten foot ahead of him was another bead sticking out of the soil, 'I guess so.'

'Good spot, Gibon. We should hurry though,' Hu Von Jo rushed ahead, stamping the second bead deeper into the soil.

'Don't crush are chance of finding her!' Gibon shouted after him but it was too late, he was gone and deaf to warnings. Gibon ran after him and found him crouching over a bead, split in two, the next one was a few metres ahead and another glinted beyond that one just underneath the arch of a hollow tree trunk. A gagao tree had fallen, long ago now, and all that remained was the outer husk twenty metres tall and fifteen wide. Gibon swallowed hard. Carefully picking his footsteps he passed by Hu and headed into the tree.

At first it was just a tree, empty save for the moss growing on the inside of the bark and the pale soil but then he heard a whimper. The torchlight glided over the curved walls and fell upon a figure curled up, wrists and ankles bound together, with a rope gag in her mouth.

'Mum!' Tania cried and ran to Celeste to remove the gag.

'You shouldn't have come,' Celeste spat. Dirt and grime lined her face and her hair was a tangled mess.

'What are you – '

'Get over by the wall,' Hu Von Jo barked. Gibon turned to find a boltgun aimed at his torso. 'Over by the wall, both of you. Leave her,' Hu Von Jo flicked the matte grey handcannon with a trained ease.

'I don't understand,' Tania quivered, her hands in the air.

'You're stupider than your mother. You thought a Vong would help you find your father, the man who destroyed this planet. Do you know how many died?'

'Less than died in the war,' Gibon spat.

Hu charged at him, shoving the gun under his chin, 'And that's fine with you?'

'My great-grandfather and grandfather died in that war, my father went missing at the end of it, so yeah it's fine with me.' The steel was cold under his chin and the pressure built and built until Hu backed off with a sneering grunt. He stormed off to the far corner and picked up a black box.

'Do you know what this is?'

'A distress beacon.'

'Yeah, it's been going for days. Calling your dad out of hiding, so I can kill him after I force him to watch you three die. He'll come if he knows your here too.'

'Our dad's dead,' Tania said. 'Get this over with.'

'Tania!' Celeste cried. 'He isn't. Calahan's here, I know it. Alive.'

Tania tsk'd but said nothing else.

'Dad's here, mum. I know he is. He'll find us, he has too.'

'Damn right he has too,' Hu Von Jo stalked over to Tania. 'Though he'll wish he stayed in whatever hole he's been hiding after I'm done with you.' He whacked Tania across the temple with the boltgun. Tania slammed into the dirt, unmoving.

'Tania!' Gibon fell to his knees and checked his sister's pulse. Strong and fast. Gibon punched the earth and launched up only to come face-to-face with the muzzle of the boltgun.

'Sit down and wait,' Hu Von Jo whispered.

Hours passed. The white moon arced overhead and then the pink moon did the same but there was no sign of Calahan. Gibon sat with Tania and their mother, Celeste, their wrists bound with cord. The Vong man paced the tree trunk, tapping his handcannon on his thigh, his ear, his chin.

'Who did you lose?' Gibon asked.

'Who? Everyone. Wife, four children, parents, six brothers, two sisters, five uncles, an aunt, all my cousins and nieces and nephews. Friends... everyone,' Hu's voice cracked and his shoulders sagged. 'Most were vaporised but some, some hung on for a few days, their skin fell off, their eyes melted, they went mad, the pain was unending for them all. I was light years away and could only send thirty second videos that took a lifetime to reach here and then I'd wait for a reply until there where no more replies.'

'Why my dad?' Gibon asked if only to keep Hu talking. The man moved oddly, he twitched and fidgeted and seemed to count his steps in even then odd numbers.

'Not just your dad. Oh no. Calahan is the last in a long, long line of dead men. I found every pilot, that was easy. The commanders, a little harder. The admiral and your Exarch, that was difficult. Had to hire help for those two but I got them too, and their families. After the first three pilots your government stopped reporting the deaths and started hunting me instead. They failed and will continue to fail.'

'Revenge? This is all for revenge?' Gibon counted Hu Von Jo's steps, seven away and six back with each turn taking three.

'Thousands. No, millions of my people would relish the opportunity I had, the contacts, the inside information. I had to, it would have been a betrayal of Vong if I hadn't.' Hu Von Jo reached Gibon, took three steps in an arc and headed back towards the broken bark archway.

'Then what? You kill us and go back to your life?' Gibon shared a look with Tania. She shook her head and mouthed, 'No.' But he had too, no one else was coming to save them, he knew that now.

'I reveal what I've done and am lauded as a hero. I have proof of every kill and it will set our souls to rest knowing justice was delivered,' he made his seventh step and took three steps to walk an arc then headed back towards Gibon, the boltgun held loosely in one hand. 'Your father will be the most celebrated for his desecration of Myeong Mai while no others were here, could be here.'

'My father will put you in the ground,' Gibon clenched his jaw. Tania was right, their dad was dead, he'd died in the crash, soon after, or from radiation. It didn't matter how, not anymore.

Hu Von Jo reached Gibon, took three steps to walk an arc and headed away from him. Gibon lunged for the boltgun, his hands clamping around the barrel while his elbow slammed into the back of Hu Von Jo's knee. The man fell backwards, three shots ringing out and punching searing holes in the ancient tree trunk. Gibon and Hu Von Jo wrestled for the handcannon. Molten uranium rounds flared, blinding Gibon and making his ears ring. He slammed his elbow into Hu's jaw while he felt the man's knee crack into his spine and ribs. Gibon bent back three of Hu's fingers and wrenched until he heard a snap, his vision flashed and vanished each time he blinked but he knew he had the boltgun in hand and pressed it into Hu's flabby neck.

Gibon hesitated.

Hu Von Jo planted a fist into Gibon's jaw, sending him prone. Gibon's teeth rattled and the boltgun had fallen from his grip and lay in the dirt between him and Hu. Gibon blinked and scrambled for the handcannon only to see Hu kick it away. 'That's too easy, you need to suffer.' The man reached down and hoisted Gibon to his feet and then held him in the air. The punches fell hard and fast, into his face, his stomach, his neck. Gibon kicked and squirmed. Hu grunted and slumped forward, dropping Gibon to the ground. 'You little bastard,' the man coughed.

Gibon's vision was patchy but he crawled his way to the boltgun anyway.

Hu Von Jo struggled to his feet and stalked after him, 'You're done. You're not seeing your dad again.' Hu reached down for Gibon's collar.

Gibon felt the cold matte grey steel in his hand. He felt the trigger, rolled over, and shot three molten uranium slugs into Hu Von Jo's chest. They bored right through him and out the other side, piercing the tree trunk too. Hu swayed on his feet, three fist sized holes in his chest, each steaming and glowing orange. The Vong man gasped for air and fell backwards, dead.

Gibon blinked away the flares in his eyes as he rushed over to his mother and sister. He untied them and Tania untied him. 'Let's go home and hold a funeral for dad.'

Tania and Celeste both agreed and the three of them set off for home.

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If you have yet to read HUNTED: Chapter 4 NOW IS THE TIME: