Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Originally Published in The Alien Chronicles

When the Nexus shifts to one-man missions to make first contact, the security division’s second-in-command accepts a challenging assignment to negotiate with the most dangerous planet yet. Where reason does not persuade this alien species, militaristic skill might. If he lives through the trials.

One

The captain called me on the comms routed through my cochlear implant. He wanted to talk. He never used his office, so I found him in the hall. Louise, our head of security, was finally back and out of quarantine, so I was no longer acting head of our division. But I had been, for weeks, so I was used to the routine.

“How do you feel about taking a sabbatical?” he asked as we started walking.

He was talking about taking one of the pods to make first contact with an alien race. Idly, I pulled up the most recent reports from Louise’s pod on the heads-up display on my eyescreen. It detailed the damage to her pod, as well as the changes the engineering division was nearly through implementing to prevent a recurrence. “Mostly, I’ve been focusing on preparing for the Argus,” I told him.

“Well, with your boss back, I need you to think about this now.”

“Why do I feel like I’m being pitched?”

“Because this is important. It’s not common knowledge that Elle’s—” He caught himself; it wasn’t her name, and he knew it was weird for me. “Louise’s ‘sabbatical’ hit more than technical snags. Most people don’t know she was nearly eaten by a giant, octopus kind of thing. Haley instituted a danger rating for planets. Retroactively, she rated that planet an eight. The world I’d like you to take is a nine.”

“And we’re not just going to take a pass?”

“If this were some time next year, with dozens of successful missions under our belts? Absolutely, we would. But if we can’t get someone back from a nine, soon we can’t get anyone to take an eight. Then a seven. Conceptually, I’m all for us going after the low-hanging fruit. But if we start ignoring everything else…”

“Would you take it?” I asked.

“Can’t,” he said. “Council resolution. I’m not allowed to.”

“Roles reversed, I’m your captain, asking. Knowing what you do, and knowing how important, would you take on the risk?”

He looked away and thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a lot to ask. And I’ve got things I wouldn’t want to lose. But I’d like to think so.”

“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll do it.”

His shoulders relaxed. “Just don’t take any undue risks. If things aren’t right, if anything makes you uncomfortable, walk away. It’s more important that you make it back alive than with a contract in hand.”

“How long have I got?” I asked.

“The positive of this new selection process is we get lots of data to send the most qualified candidate, making it a bit less of a lottery. The drawback is limited time. You’ve got a day. So I’d suggest not wasting another second of it talking to me.” He held out his hand and I shook it.

As I walked away, I wondered if I had just entered myself in an intergalactic pissing contest. Drew was the closest I had to a rival, not that he saw it that way. He had Sam. But he also had Louise. I saw the way she looked at him, heard the way she talked about what they had. He was what she measured me against, and I was tired of being found wanting.

I was right there on the day she got back from the seafood planet. Thinking we lost her when her shuttle malfunctioned, thinking we lost her when the natives tried to feed her to a giant squid—and then a third nightmare even after she made it back, when her life was threatened by a parasite she caught in the water. It put things into perspective, made me realize that I wanted desperately to tell her what losing her would have done to me.

I planned to tell her how I felt, just to put it out there. No more pining, just, “This is how I feel. It’s not an attempt to get you to reciprocate, I just want you to know, because maybe knowing will make you just the littlest bit happier, and that would make humiliating myself worth the while.”

I went to quarantine. Drew was already there, holding her through a wall of glass—holding her and Sam. I don’t think the bastard’s ever known how lucky he was.

Fucked up as it might sound now, I felt thankful for it. Because telling Louise how I felt, from a position of neediness and fear—that wasn’t the way to win over a warrior woman. No. I had just been given the opportunity to crack one of the galaxy’s toughest nuts, return victorious, and tell her from a place of strength.

Two

It was hard not scooping Louise up in my arms and kissing her, letting loose everything I’d ever wanted to say. I could tell she wanted to tell me something, too; I’d interrogated enough people to know when they’re about to pop. But whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t either. I was going to bring her the contract for a dangerous planet, then tell her everything.

“Just take care of yourself,” she said, finally. “There isn’t much room for error, out there on your own. Don’t take risks. I—the ship needs you back here in one piece.”

“I’ll ixnay the eyeingday.”

“Don’t be an umbassday,” she said, and smiled to herself as the pod closed around me.

Haley, the ship’s computer, started the countdown over the comms. I eyed the abort button on the console, then pulled up one of the cameras inside the bay and watched Louise. I wanted to stay with her. But I also knew she deserved the kind of man who could get this mission done and come back to her. So I tried to relax back in my seat as the electromagnets began my acceleration.

I passed out. The g forces we used for the pod launch were beyond tolerances that would leave a human being conscious, though within the safe window before the forces did permanent damage.

I woke up a few hours later. I wished I’d told Louise the truth. It wasn’t even a matter of wanting to impress her anymore, it was just knowing she was farther away from me than she’d ever been since the Nexus left Sol’s system—ignoring, I guess, the pod trip she took. But I wanted her to know. I didn’t care if she didn’t reciprocate, because that wasn’t the point.

I penned a letter, and my fingers were hovering over the send communication button. What was I doing? Maybe I did wish I had told her before I left, but taking the coward’s way out, sending her a letter when I couldn’t be farther from her, or repercussions…? No, I needed to sort myself out before I tried confessing my affection for anyone.

I started to pore over the information we had about the low-gravity ice planet. I had decided to call it Jötn, and its people the Jötnar. We learned from the Argus that most alien names can’t be spoken by humans—wildly divergent biology and all. It led them to a few diplomatic mishaps. So we adopted the custom of giving everything a human name, then letting the commboxes make the translation for us.

I had extra layers to my suit, to the point where it was practically an exoskeleton, protecting me from both the cold and potential hazards.

The sentient species we were going to make contact with was large: their smallest were about eight feet tall. And their exoskeletons were made up of semi-crystalline structures. It meant that some light could pass through their bodies, lending them a light form of camouflage, and also making them more durable.

Structurally, they looked like a cross between insects and dinosaurs, but unlike both, they were warm-blooded. They were technologically quite advanced, but so resource-poor that they couldn’t capitalize on most of their technological advances.

The planet itself was in the midst of a prolonged ice age, and the entire planetary surface was covered in glaciers, miles thick in most places. That meant all of their resources went to growing and harvesting food, which was only possible inside tunnels that ran alongside thermal vents deep beneath the surface.

The sociological report said that it was likely the species would attempt to relocate to another nearby planet with the technologies we would offer them in trade. The report seemed distressed by that idea, even including a note questioning whether it was our place to so fundamentally change the course of another species’s development. But—perhaps because I knew I was going to be standing among them—I couldn’t abstract their suffering like that. If we could help them, we should. I saw no point to letting their species die out just because they would have died out if they’d never met us.

Three

The probe that came before me, essentially a miniature pod, had dropped a commbox. The Jötnar had figured it out at about a median pace—not so fast as the advanced races we’d met, but still faster than the Caulerpans or Romaleons. By the time I hit their orbit they understood our opening bid enough to tell me that I had permission to land.

They sent me coordinates and a flight plan to get there. The planet was small, so I didn’t have to wait long. It gave me—and the pod AI, nicknamed Comet—a chance to check their figures. Their math was right, and maybe it wasn’t the smoothest descent, but it was within tolerances. The landing was rocky, but I told myself that following their flight plan to the letter would get us off on the right diplomatic foot.

I landed a couple hundred yards from a dome that covered the city. As I stepped out of the pod, I noted that it looked crystalline, but then I realized it was carved out of the exact same glacier I was standing on.

Out of it wended a pair of Jötnar, wielding what looked like short staves, though I realized as they approached that their weapons were probably bigger than me. They stopped just far enough from me that I didn’t feel the need to draw my pistol, then they turned inward, facing each other. My escort, then. Working the security division, I was more than familiar with that particular gig.

I slung my rifle. I didn’t think I’d need it, but that was no reason not to want it along, and leaving it at my back felt like it would be less intimidating.

I walked past the sentries, hoping it wouldn’t be considered an insult that I didn’t introduce myself. Inside the dome were two more guards, standing at attention. Every few dozen feet there was another pair, and I walked from one to the next. It was an odd escort, but also a show of strength, that they could spare so many fighters just to show me where to go.

Eventually I reached an assembly hall. It was large, but not large enough. I recognized projection equipment and cameras. There was a studio audience, and folks watching at home.

I noticed that the panelists—judges or leaders or whatever—were organized by size: smallest on the wings and getting larger towards the center. The one in the center, while the largest, didn’t acknowledge me, but just stared off. My HUD, working in combination with the commbox’s notes, flagged several markers I wouldn’t have caught, and flashed that he was a male. I wondered idly if he was old and suffering dementia, or if he had their equivalent to gigantism, and perhaps it had also impacted his brain.

One of the Jötnar flanking him stood up straighter, though it hardly seemed necessary, because she dwarfed me. To the eye, I wouldn’t have noticed the gender differences, but my HUD marked several morphological markers, told me she was female, and also flashed a list of suggested names from the pool I’d decided to use on my way in. I selected Bergrisar, and the name popped up under her.

She began to gyrate menacingly, and made noises that I hoped were her speaking, because otherwise I was pretty sure she was about to tear my limbs off and devour whatever was left. After a moment’s deliberation, the commbox spat out a translation. “I am Bergrisar. We have disseminated and understood your proposals. Do you have anything further to add beyond the written words?” It certainly didn’t sound like she was eager, and if they were giving me a chance to sway minds, well, that was going to be difficult.

Crap. I was never one for speeches. I’d read all of HR and PsychDiv’s materials about optimal communication, but even the best of those were written with human mores in mind. I’d given a few morale talks, to grunts, but that was about it.

I took in a deep breath, held it, then let it out. “The proposal I sent is intended as an opening to talks. I believe our two species could be excellent partners. The tech we could give you in trade would make your lives better, and having existing treaties with us would make you safer. I hope we can come to some kind of an agreement.”

The commbox projected a hologram of a Jötnar above it, flailing its arms and antennae and making the same kinds of groaning, guttural noises that made me think that even my avatar was about to attack.

I heard rumbling from the audience, and from among the judges, in response. “Very well. We will now commence voting.” The judges lifted small devices and registered their votes, and I noticed the crowd doing the same. On their screens, numbers started popping up. My HUD translated them and overlaid their Roman equivalents. The voting was close; in fact, I was starting to pick up a lead. I smiled, which evidently was not a gesture they appreciated, because it cost me some of my lead. I stood perfectly still from that moment on.

After only a handful of minutes, a percentage, which I presumed was either the necessary percentage for a quorum, or the percent of the population voting, hit one hundred.

Bergrisar reared herself to her full height, several sections of carapace stacking to expand her width. I didn’t need the commbox to tell me that this was a gesture of authority and dominance.

“We are divided. In the case of division, the proposal fails.” My stomach dropped through my feet and didn’t stop until it hit the planet’s molten core. “However, you can appeal the decision. By combat.” At least it wasn’t a spelling bee or a pie-eating contest. Then again, these were giant, terrible creatures; at least a stomach ruptured in a pie-eating contest felt earned.

“How does that work, exactly?” I asked.

“You fight to prove your mettle, to prove how much you care for your cause, until there are no more detractors.”

“So I kill half your population to swing the vote?”

“Theoretically that is possible. But more likely, others will be swayed by your victories. Theories are tested at the tip of the spear. ”

I thought of Louise and Drew. I couldn’t see either of them backing down, not with an entire ship’s morale hanging by this thread. They needed me to come back with a win. I needed it, too.

“In this trial, am I allowed to use my weapons?” The commbox translated, and the leadership became suddenly very animated. They were debating the rules, dozens of them talking over one another. I looked towards the commbox sitting in the middle of the floor, and above it my HUD printed three question marks.

The Jötnar on Bergrisar’s other side, who I quickly named Gýgr, seemed to be winning the discussion, and eventually Bergrisar squealed, flailed, and deflated.

The commbox helpfully translated, “Euphemism for female genital infection.”

Gýgr turned in my direction and started to gesticulate and murmur. “As your technology is a part of what’s on offer, we believe it is only fair for it to be allowed to make its case as well.”

With my tools, I thought I could do this. I wasn’t crazy about the idea. But I’d fought giant space monsters before. Maybe not this giant, but I was essentially a soldier. At least Drew hadn’t sent a poet. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it. So what now?”

Bergrisar exchanged a look with Gýgr. I got the feeling that something passed between them, but the twitches of their antennae and shells must have been too subtle for the commbox to read.

“We will put you up for the night, and commence in the morning,” Gýgr said. Many of those assembled immediately began filing out, but several lingered. Bergrisar picked up a shaft of ice, dwarfed in fingers so heavily segmented and shelled they appeared most of the way to pincers. She tore it into several pieces before licking each. The other creatures on the panel then reached into her palm, each removing a stick. When everyone had a stick, they smelled them, and most dropped theirs into a pile before walking away. Only one held her shard—and stayed.

“Iviðja has the þurs,” Bergrisar said. The commbox flashed a message on my HUD. It was a guess that the word meant “thirst.”

Iviðja, the one with the chosen shard, fluttered panels over her eyelids in capitulation. One shoulder had a delicate mess of spider-webbed cracks, likely signs of an old injury now healed. The light fractured through it as she turned to me.

“What’s a þurs?” I asked.

“She marked the ice,” Iviðja replied. “All had saliva from her mandibles, but one had a special hormone, the þurs.” She paused a moment, then continued. “After we eat, you may come to my fire.” I appreciated the distinction between “may” and “will.”

I nodded. “I appreciate your hospitality,” I said. “But it’s still light—why are we retiring?”

A panel on one of her arms adjusted, and for a moment I caught a fragrance off it, akin to dried lavender. “Nights are cold here. Those of us too long on the surface out of shelter forfeit the protections of our carapace. Our secretions freeze, and we die slowly as the ice shatters our entrails. It is a punishment reserved for traitors. They are fitted with an implant that sends electricity through them should they stop moving, and they are forbidden to return to the warm tunnels.”

I shivered.

In time, several people with even limbs and flat backs came in, packs bound across them. Others helped them unload and began dividing the contents. Now, I’ve never been a carrot person—not even a parsnip one, despite my mother’s best efforts. So I couldn’t say I was relishing the opportunity to eat a meal made entirely of what looked like the unholy love-child of carrots and beets, which I decided to call beetrots. If anything, the name made them less appetizing.

Iviðja was taking her role as hostess very seriously. When a plate was ready, she brought it to me. Several shell panels slid away from her hands, exposing delicate fingers nearly subsumed by the protective plates. She held a piece to my lips, and I made myself open my mouth. When in Rome, and all that.

The vegetable was bitter—fiercely so. If it weren’t for the color, I might have believed it was raw horseradish. Iviðja set the plate before me and settled in beside me.

“There are areas deep below the ice mantle where you can rely on the planet’s turmoil to send steam to warm the soil,” she said. “We mostly reside in these tunnels. Our civilization is a mountain with only the peak above the ice; the broad base of it is beneath. We had mountains, before the flood, made of rocks and ice. Do you understand the word?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and pantomimed a triangle.

She made a pleasant sound, perhaps the first pleasant sound I’d heard from a Jötnar. “It’s complex and labor intensive, and in the absence of sunlight, you can only grow food with pieces of yourself to nourish them.”

“Pieces of yourself?” I didn’t see any missing limbs.

“The pieces you no longer need: filth, and those who no longer move.” I tried not to let the thought that the bitter taste was alien shit sour my meal. “We must use all we can, for nature helps no one. Our strength, and our sacrifice, are what give us power over her.”

That put a different dent in my appetite. “I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds here. But would it offend you if I didn’t eat more? I don’t feel right gorging myself when your people worked so hard to create this.” I patted my belly. “And as you can see, it isn’t exactly like I need it.”

“I’m sure Bergrisar would find a way to take offense, get a pincer up her cloaca about it being a rejection of our cuisine or a snub at our poverty of resources. But I think it’s noble. And the vegetables do taste like digestive gases.” She let out a pleasant cackle, took a handful of vegetables off the plate, then dumped the rest back into the serving dish.

Iviðja led me a short distance from the court to a shelter formed almost entirely of a milky substance, like agate or smoky quartz. She noticed my look. “It is a glass concrete formed from my ancestors’ carapaces. It is at once a temple, a shrine, and a mausoleum. We only use them for ceremony, or when needs dictate. When I die, it will honor me to have my shell join with my ancestors’.”

“My people traditionally achieved a similar effect with melted sand—granulated rock—and modern 3D printing processes aren’t so far removed from that.”

Her eyelids shifted, in what I hoped was excitement and not a sudden desire to eat my entrails. “Lens glass? We form braziers from the leftover carapace, the smaller pieces less suited to construction. When they are new, the impurities cook out, and leave a glass lens at the base at the end of a cold season.” She made a clicking noise that was reminiscent of a chuckle. “It cracks upon exposure to the outside air. When we build a new community, each resident carries one from their old home, and we put them around the new home in a circle for protection. When they crack, the ghosts from our memories laugh, pleased to know where their shadows are now.”

It took me a moment to realize she was waiting for me to enter the dwelling first; it must have been an honor she was reserving for her guest.

Light flickered through the walls. They were milky enough that I hadn’t noticed it from the outside, but inside, the light caught the facets of the walls and made them appear to almost glow.

I set my suit to warm slightly, not seeing any sign of blankets or fabric. I didn’t doubt that clothes wouldn’t be useful to the Jötnar, as it would counter their natural camouflage and impede the movement of their shells. And the hard edges of the carapace would be harsh on cloth, too. But the lack of any coverings meant I was in for a cold night.

Iviðja—whom I’d mentally nicknamed Ivy, which worked with her clingy yet restful presence—touched a rectangular block inside the shallow bowl of a chest-high brazier. My HUD recognized a power source within, and the bowl caught fire. Warmth washed over me.

“It is a battery. It stores heat from the vents, then releases the heat slowly here.” The plates around her fingers retracted, and she took my hand in hers. “So long as there is fire, there is life.”

Those words brought to mind an incident from Drew and Louise’s younger days, fighting to rescue people from a burning colony as others fought them. It strengthened my resolve to get the Jötnar to work with us—and finally do something worthy of Louise.

Four

Ivy roused me in the morning and pressed a cup of tangy, mildly acidic liquid into my hands. I restrained myself from asking which bodily fluids went into producing this repast. She hurried away and returned with another section of root. I nodded my thanks at her and tried to make myself eat.

I’ve never been especially squeamish, so it wasn’t the food’s origins that bothered me so much as the totality of what I was about to do. I’d never risked my life when no one was actually in danger. Metaphorical danger on the ship just didn’t inspire the same protective impulses and adrenaline; here, I had only nerves.

My HUD chirped at me, recognizing my elevated stress. I forced myself to breathe evenly.

“Are you ready?” she asked. I couldn’t find anything other than polite concern in Ivy’s movements, until I noticed a small twitch on the side of her neck. She was aware that I was anxious, and that made her anxious. I wondered if her reputation was tied up in my performance, if she would be considered tainted by association. I glanced at my guns and checked their charges.

“Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

She retracted several plates, exposing her surprisingly soft hand, and hauled me to my feet. Her grip was almost overwhelmingly strong, even though she didn’t seem to be using her full strength. I would have to keep my opponent at a distance, or else guns or no, I’d be done for.

She led me into a tunnel on the outskirts of the city. We walked perhaps a half a mile, some of it steeply down, until we came upon a labyrinth of snow and ice. “They say that the world was once much kinder, that we expanded recklessly and grew soft, and could not halt the ice’s attack. And in memory of that, when we prove our strength, we do it where our ancestors, and the ice, can see us.”

She bent down and rubbed the icy wall. Beneath her mitten-like shelled fingers, metal became visible, cracked, rusted, and decaying. “How will your ancestors know to look for you here?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. But I knew that family was entirely too important to the Jötnar to fuck around.

I beckoned her head down to me. “Because they’re with me.” I held her so she could see the screen where my HUD projected. Her eyes flashed reflectively as their components widened. I scrolled through several family pictures I had, and cursed myself for ignoring my mother’s attempts to get me to take more.

She backed away. “May you bring them pride, then. I must go. Your first challenger is at the other end. May you find each other before one of you freezes.” Ivy’s word for “challenger” sounded nearly like “elder,” so I entered the name Eld.

I shivered and started into the labyrinth. My HUD made navigating easy, even without a map of the facility. Eld’s warmth made him glow like a beacon. I readied my gun as I moved forward, the wind already chewing me through my suit.

I watched my HUD until I saw that Eld was just around the corner. I listened closely to the crunch of his footfalls, then threw myself out of cover to shoot.

My blasts smashed into a plate of his carapace center-mass. It refracted some of the energy and absorbed the rest. The heat of it burned him, searing his flesh, but I could see that it was a superficial wound.

He advanced as I took a knee to steady the rifle. I fired again, into his chest. The same panel absorbed the blast. I fired again, and several more times, peppering his head and shoulders, searching for a vulnerability.

I noticed that the first panel was hanging askew. Heat from the blasts had melted the connective tissues holding it in place. I fired along the edge of the plate, and energy reflected off the surrounding plates into the vulnerable tendons beneath, severing the already melted tissues.

He screamed, and he was now close enough that I could feel the moisture on his breath. The steam made it hard to aim, but I sighted the exposed flesh and fired.

Eld collapsed.

Sections of shell around the blast were hardening, looking alarmingly like the walls of Ivy’s abode. But his flesh was already pushing past the cauterized edges. Trickles of blood seeped out, and despite his agitated shell flicks trying to force heat-warped plates over his wounds, I could see them already beginning to freeze in the morning chill.

I remembered Ivy’s tale. He may have been working against me, and he entered into this fight by choice—but he deserved better than a slow death from hypothermia. I positioned myself in front of his head, raised the gun one last time, and refused to shut my eyes as I pulled the trigger.

Five

I wondered whether I should backtrack to the entrance or wait for the Jötnar right where I was. While I thought it through, I inspected Eld’s corpse. He wasn’t much bigger than Ivy. That made sense, I thought: the challengers would go from smallest to largest. I repeated that to myself over and over, to remind myself not to get cocky.

After some time, the Jötnar found me. Ivy came in first. She bowed her head, several plates on her neck pulling back to allow the motion. Bergrisar followed, staring at me, no doubt gauging me.

Others trickled in, and soon they crowded every inch of space in the tunnels. I saw that one even had a camera. I raised my voice. “This tech is one of the benefits you stand to gain by allying with us.”

Bergrisar raised up, and I shuddered at the thought of her with a gun.

“It’s mutilated infant scrotum. That was a farce. Yours are a cowards’ weaponry: guile and aggression from a safe distance.”

“You said I could use them,” I said.

She opened and shut some of the crystalline panels on her face.

I didn’t know the specifics of the gesture, but she was pissing on my lawn. A man was dead, and she seemed to want to treat it like it was nothing. Something about that look on her face was a red flag, and I was a bull. It was all I could do to keep from charging at her. “Fine,” I spat through gritted teeth. “Send the next. I’ll beat him, but let him live, to testify to my strength.”

I offered my pistol to Ivy, then unslung my rifle and did the same. She took them with trembling hands. Her face bled concern, if I wasn’t misreading it through a human lens.

A Jötnar slightly bigger than the one I’d just defeated stepped forward, and I immediately entered in a name: Leir.

“So be it,” Bergrisar said. Some Jötnar turned toward the entrance, clearing an expanse in the widest portion of the room, but she didn’t, and it was an instant before I understood why.

Leir lunged for me, and I spun to the side to avoid the blow. One of his secondary limbs lashed out as I turned, seeking to knock me off balance, so I jumped into a roundhouse kick.

It was like kicking a steel plate.

I ran. The gathered Jötnar backed away as I approached, and continued to back away until there was space between them for me to exit. I knew already that Bergrisar would try to spin my actions as cowardice, but I needed to survive before worrying about saving face.

The “arena” was oddly preserved. The frost had claimed the city almost gently, and its dome had withstood long enough for the ice to reinforce it as it was overwhelmed. The only elements not coated in a layer of white powder were the braziers. They were spaced so that you could see between them, if only just; there for additional light, not for heat. They didn’t appear as weathered as the rest of the arena; I assumed they were brought down for the trial.

I ran full speed at a brazier, and when I hit it, I tried to scoop it off the ground. It barely tipped, sending the smoldering log rolling. The fire went out. I couldn’t be sure if it was contact with the ice, or if it had safety protocols, but I could see the battery for the heavy, metal box that it was.

I definitely wasn’t strong enough to lift the brazier, so I hefted the battery. It was a bit awkward, but it had enough weight to be useful. Then I turned back toward the gathered Jötnar. They were still in the distended circle, almost an egg. But Leir was gone.

I heard a noise behind me, so faint I wasn’t certain. I cranked the volume on my implants. It was skittering, but then it stopped. I spun, swinging the log. It impacted the same panel on Leir’s midsection I had first kicked. The impact cracked the plating. His plates flaked off like diamonds, catching the light as they fell.

I dodged behind him, and as he turned to face me, the plates began to fall away.

A sticky fluid hit the floor as he circled around me. Under the shattered plate, his flesh convulsed softly. I lashed out, swinging the battery. It glanced off the previous wound, cracking the surrounding plating. I dodged underneath his flailing limbs, and he curled his torso away from another blow.

I dropped the battery on one of his feet, then drove my fist into the most expressively pulsing organ I could see. He keened in agony, fighting to seize me with several supporting limbs, but he was distracted enough by the pain that his limbs knocked into each other uselessly behind my head.

So, a weakness. I brought my foot against the same spot with all my strength, wincing as I used muscles I hadn’t been aware of since my mother encouraged me to study ballet on my home colony. Who’d have thought that grand battement would be used against a wounded alien, with a diplomatic treaty hanging in the balance.

His flesh tore under my boot, and fluids slowly gushed onto my foot with a rapidly lessening pressure. As I pulled my foot away from him, his legs buckled and he lowered his head.

I guided him onto his back on the ice while he was distracted with pain.

He was supposed to yield, but he was a stubborn bastard. I lifted my boot, picked up the battery, and started to shove it against the wound. It didn’t quite fit, but he must have realized I was preparing to make him into a living brazier.

“Wait,” he coughed from his back. I stopped, and he curled around his torn, fragile flesh. “I…concede.” His legs trembled as he fought to make the gestures needed to communicate.

I looked up to our audience. “As I said, I didn’t kill him. But let the pitiful noises he makes tell you that I am more than capable of seeing this negotiation through.”

A medium-sized Jötnar raised her voice. “I withdraw my opposition.” Several others murmured or otherwise gestured, translated as assent through the commbox. Bergrisar clicked in agitation.

Gýgr stood to her full height and said, “We shall carry Eld back to the court to begin mourning. Then we will see who still wishes to test the outsider’s worth.”

One of the flat-backed Jötnar bent to allow others to strap Eld to his back, and another soon arrived for Leir. I followed as far as the court.

I paused, unsure whether to go inside. I was Eld’s killer, after all.

Ivy’s hand lit on the back of my neck, all soft, slightly clammy fingers rather than hard carapace. I caught her eye, and watched it widen, each reflective lens aligning itself as the lids peeled back further. I queried the commbox through my HUD, but it didn’t have a translation. I stared into her large eyes and breathed in her hand’s scent.

Light filtered through the dome overhead and caught on the less opaque portions of her shell, turning her into a ghost of glass, haunting but beautiful. A beam cut across my face, and I fought to hide my wonder.

She took my hand and led me inside.

They feasted in Eld’s honor. I made a trip out to my pod, returning with some of my rations to cook for them. They tested my food before tasting it, to be sure it wasn’t going to set off any of their allergies.

It wasn’t until midway through the festivities that I realized the trials were still in full force. Bergrisar mingled with the crowd, gladhanding. Several medium-sized Jötnar, slightly bigger than Leir, approached me and spoke. They were fascinated by both my tech and my food. After a few minutes of casual conversation, they leaned forward and informed me they would no longer oppose me.

I mingled more. Bergrisar glared her hatred over the crowd, and I waved back to her. The initial group were the only ones who had declared the end of their opposition, but I could tell that opinions were fluid and changing. Despite her best efforts, Bergrisar had lost ground.

As the crowd thinned out, I decided to get some air. I found myself walking in the direction of the tunnel leading toward the arena.

Just outside the entry was a bloodied bootprint, preserved in the powder of frost that coated everything. I knelt down to look at it. It was likely Leir’s blood, so at least it wasn’t a reminder of Eld’s death. A hand gently touched my shoulder. I recognized her smell even before I turned to confirm it was Ivy.

I widened my eyes, and sections of Ivy’s face pulled back in an imitation smile.

Her fingers were warm, and they gave me something to focus on other than that one bloody footprint leading back to the battlefield.

Six

Bergrisar looked at the gathered Jötnar. “Who no longer wishes to challenge?”

Half of those left raised limbs in assent.

“And those who do?”

Unfortunately, the Jötnar who responded this time were the biggest, the most fierce-looking of the bunch. I knew I had done well, but this confirmed what I had suspected: the hardest part was ahead.

“Who wishes to challenge next?”

One of the females stood, her carapace puffing outward to increase her size. I named her Sjórisar.

Bergrisar clicked in agitation. “Are you sure, Sjórisar?” Even through the commbox I could pick up on her distress. I pondered whether Sjórisar was especially dear to Bergrisar. Perhaps family.

Several Jötnar shifted with soft clacks and motions, responding to the tension. Sjórisar glared at Bergrisar. “I cannot deny your right to challenge,” Bergrisar said, in motions abrupt and violent enough that she nearly brained the Jötnar beside her—lucky for him, he dodged at the last moment. “But for this to be the true test our people require, let us increase the difficulty.”

Sjórisar didn’t seem to like that. “You doubt my competence?”

Bergrisar widened her eyes to tell Sjórisar to stand down. “Far from it. I propose night combat, that you may bring your full strength to bear on the outsider.”

This was getting old.

“She seeks advantage. Sjórisar formed in her eggs,” Ivy whispered to me, though in order for me to hear the tones and whistles accompanying her muted twitches, she had to lean close enough that I thought I might be enveloped. “Sjórisar will win, or die; anything else would shame her.”

I sighed. “We’ll see.”

Ivy tensed. “Do not underestimate us. We live and work underground; we see well in the dark. She can track you by smell, by heat. You have no idea what Sjórisar is capable of.”

I wasn’t underestimating. I’d been in the security services long enough to know the value of morale. But my bravado was wearing thin. Sjórisar was nearly twenty feet tall, at least, if she stood up straight. She was a dragon, and each of her many limbs terminated in a sickle honed to a razor’s edge.

But I couldn’t go back empty-handed. I didn’t know if Louise could ever love me, but I wouldn’t even deserve to ask if I returned with my tail between my legs. “I have to conduct myself with honor according to the rites of your people,” I told Ivy.

Gýgr stood again and towered over Bergrisar. “You may have your night combat, Bergrisar. And the human may have his weapons.” Bergrisar clicked angrily. “We have voted—twice now. Do not buck the will of the elders.”

Bergrisar lowered her shoulders.

I felt lighter. Having my guns meant something. At least I could rely on the tactics I knew best. But I remembered the difficulty my weapons had had even with poor Eld.

Ivy was still worried, but she had no further council for me. Her lids tightened around her eyes in sorrow, and I turned my attention back to the proceedings.

“Very well then,” Gýgr continued. “At the rise of our moons we shall lead them to the arena. Provided he accepts terms.” She turned to me.

“This treaty is too important,” I responded. “While I relish no further bloodshed, I must continue.”

“Then let the combatants adjourn.”

Bergrisar leveled something that might have been a glare at me.

I nodded, and stood to return to Ivy’s shelter.

Seven

I rested fitfully and woke to the smell of something bitter, but with a pleasant edge. Ivy was brewing something over the fire. “Made from carrots,” she said, “and sweetened with fermented carrots.”

She poured two cups, one for each of us, and we drank together. It had a mildly intoxicating effect, so I declined a second cup.

Strange ululations murmured over the city. “It’s time,” Ivy said. She led me toward the arena, but to a different entrance than the one we used before. “I can’t go with you,” she said, and stepped back.

I nodded and proceeded into the arena. The moon wasn’t as bright as I could have hoped, but its light on the snow made me remember a childhood spent sledding and making snow forts. There were no braziers here.

I checked the charge on my rifle. I’d come prepared to defend myself, but not so armed as to cause alarm among the Jötnar. As it was, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough to carry me through, tough as the Jötnar were.

My HUD filtered through the gloom. This area’s ruins were denser, and the HUD seemed to be having a hard time pinging through the stone, metal, and ice. Even the heat sensors couldn’t pinpoint Sjórisar’s location. So I went a short way in and stopped at the first wide clearing I could find. I built snow and rubble walls around me—and I hid. I needed an advantage, and maybe the surprise would be enough.

I waited.

Eventually Sjórisar appeared, scanning just past me. I sighted her in, and as she turned, I fired.

She lashed me with her tail, demolishing my shelter.

The scale I had hit—above her brow—was still intact. I turned up the setting on the rifle as I rolled to avoid a second blow from her tail. She used it like a whip, to cut my legs out, to force me to the ground where she could crush me.

I fired twice more. The first went wide. The second caught her primary arm, where the scaling was thinner, and I could smell the fat frying underneath the plating. “Bloodied insect stamens,” Sjórisar muttered.

I glanced at my rifle charge: half gone already, and I only had one cartridge to replace it with, plus another in the demolished shelter, and then the reserve charge on my pistol.

Sjórisar swiveled around, and I threw myself back to stay away from her tail. It grazed my shoulder with the force of an avalanche, but I managed to keep hold of the gun. I fired again, lining several shots up along her nearly twenty feet of bulk.

She squealed as the shots tore into her, cauterizing flesh and heating her scales until they glowed. But still she came.

Her tail swept my leg, and my ankle twisted and popped. I went sprawling, and she loomed over me, readying for the kill.

I turned my gun to maximum charge. Whittling away at her torso wasn’t going to work. I needed to end this. I fired one more shot—clear through her head. The moon peered at me from the hole as she tipped forward.

I realized, too late, that she was going to fall on top of me, or at least on top of my legs. I scrambled backward, but not fast enough. I screamed as she collapsed onto my knee.

Eight

When I managed to wiggle out from under Sjórisar’s corpse, I made an unpleasant discovery. The edges of her scales had been sharpened to razors. My suit was damaged, and there were a number of cuts across my legs and shoulder. I couldn’t tell how much blood I’d lost.

One of my legs wouldn’t hold my weight. I forced myself to probe the wounds, and I nearly fainted when my finger brushed my shoulder bone.

When the spots cleared from my vision, I brought my hand to my hurt leg. My finger sank into the wound mid-knuckle, and I had no doubt that some of the muscle had torn.

I fought for the tube of first aid goo in the suit, to staunch the bleeding, but at least one of the lines used to administer it had been cut, and even when I cleared the blockage, it wouldn’t push out.

Frozen.

Shouldn’t someone have fixed that shit before plopping me on a subzero planet?

Fuck.

I used Sjórisar’s corpse to get me off the ground and steadied. I measured her arm from the gunshot down. It was about the right length for a crutch. I tried to pry it loose, to no avail.

I decided to use one of my precious remaining shots on the weak spot. If I died here it wouldn’t matter if I’d saved it for later. The cold was already biting me hard, and I had no spare fabric to bandage myself.

Using the severed arm as a makeshift crutch, I forced myself back toward the entrance, but it was slow going, and the Jötnar met me before I’d even left the immediate area. Ivy gathered me into her arms, all four of them, but Bergrisar pushed past to Sjórisar, shrilling her grief in a voice sharp enough to make my HUD warn me of the potential for cochlear damage.

Ivy nodded. “Let her mourn in peace.” She carried me back to her shelter.

She clucked sadly as she laid me out on the floor and examined my wounds. “You’re lucky.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How so?”

“In ancient times, she would have eaten fungus for a month to make her blood poisonous, and then dipped her scales in her droppings, to ensure you died of infection.”

I chuckled. “I’m lucky, then.”

“She was not ready to fight you. We all knew it.”

I remembered the tension in Bergrisar’s face. “Was that Bergrisar’s objection?”

“Yes. She just couldn’t admit it.”

I wanted to ask how Ivy knew, but I let the thought go as she helped me out of my suit, and the chill got ten times worse despite the fire.

“We cannot have fabric in your wounds. I will warm you once they’re bandaged.”

For a moment I pictured Drew in this situation, and people teasing him for getting caught with his pants down with yet another alien species. But then Ivy bent over my leg, pressing flesh into place around a brownish paste, and sealed it with a long, rubbery synthetic fabric.

Though she was being gentle, the spots returned to my vision, and this time I didn’t fight unconsciousness.

I woke up in a moment of suffocated panic. The world was dark, and Ivy’s smell surrounded me, much more so than it ever had before. Tender flesh pulsed against my face, accompanied by a thunderous gurgling that unnerved me. I wiggled and probed, trying to understand what surrounded me.

Supple flesh on one side, the underside of crystalline, rounded plates on the other.

My face felt sticky—likely secretions to keep the plates from grinding on each other. It brought to mind suffocating during sex.

But something about that smell…It was so far from human, but the nuance of its spice pushed into my brain in a way no woman’s perfume ever had.

Ivy’s fingers, their plates rolled back, stroked through my hair, and the gesture calmed me. I realized the gurgling was circulation—her heartbeat.

I tried to remember feeling so completely protected and cared for, but nothing compared. I tried to imagine leaving her cocoon’s embrace, and couldn’t.

Nine

I lost track of the days I spent suspended inside Ivy’s shell. She had to help me to the bucket that collected our wastes for the Jötnars’ farming.

Her body formed around me as though I had always belonged there—some places loosening, others tightening, to take as much pressure off of me as possible. And strangely, surrounding myself in her soft, fragile flesh felt natural, like lying on a waterbed or floating in a pool. When her heartbeat surrounded me, pushed against my face as I rested, it pushed thoughts of the Nexus, even Louise, out of my head.

I wondered what my crew’s reaction would be if I gave up on the treaty and just stayed with the Jötnar. Perhaps in time the Jötnar would need my help, or our technology, to relocate to a more hospitable home, like the initial report had speculated.

But having known them, I didn’t see them doing that. Surviving their brutal ice age was part of their identity. How could they create lenses without winter-long fires?

I didn’t believe they could rewrite themselves. But I wondered if I might rewrite me.

Days bled together, until at last I could stand again.

I had to speak to Bergrisar, find out how this situation was going to play out.

When Ivy released me, her scales slid away from me, allowing me to pass through the cracks. I feel barely an inch onto my mossy pallet, and I prepared myself for an unpleasant conversation.

“Is Bergrisar still mourning? How many contenders are left?”

Ivy sighed. “You’re determined to jump right back to work.” The reprimand in her inflection was surprisingly human, every bit the harried and peevish mother.

I shrugged. “Not eager, but I have to know.”

Some of the plates around her eyes slid back, loosening the tension in her face. “There is only Bergrisar. No others wished to challenge you. I think she would not, but she feels she owes it to Sjórisar, as one of her brood. We do not bond with our offspring the way some herdbeasts do, but we still have a duty to avenge them.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry it’s come to that. I don’t wish to kill her.”

Ivy made a motion akin to a shrug. “You have followed our customs; there is no reason for sorrow in that.”

“Still.”

There was something in Ivy’s mannerisms that rankled me. A question came to mind.

“Will Bergrisar be the last?” I asked. “Is anyone honor-bound to avenge her?”

Ivy’s eyes flashed up to mine, startled. She clicked in agitation. “Bergrisar has lived long. Most of those gestated with her are long dead.”

“But not all.”

“Not all.” She ducked her gaze, and I filled in the rest.

“You’re of her brood.”

“Yes. The same clutch of eggs, even. Not just the same genetic material.”

“Will you fight for her?”

“I’m no fighter. She would not expect me to avenge her. And I would ask—have asked—her not to fight.” She sighed, almost a whistle. “But we cannot put Bergrisar off any longer. I told her it would be dishonorable to come for you unconscious, wounded. But we have passed that point of grace. Let me get you some snow to bathe yourself.”

I nodded in thanks, and used the armfuls of snow she brought to sponge her fluids from me. Even so,

Ivy’s smell clung to my skin, like the expensive hand lotion my mom used.

I glanced at the last remaining cartridge for my rifle. The only way I could get more of a charge for it was to drain my pod battery, trapping myself here.

I didn’t know what I would do if it came to that. I would decide after meeting Bergrisar, seeing if she wanted to meet me in the moonlight ruins.

I put what remained of my suit on and followed Ivy to the court. The rest of the Jötnar awaited me.

Bergrisar growled when she saw me. “Are you happy? You are almost at your victory.” Her voice was a dangerous purr.

“I wish no more bloodshed.” I didn’t know what else that might mean.

“It will fall, regardless; you have not broken all of us.” She flashed a contemptuous glare around the room.

“Tonight, then?” I asked.

“No. You will fight me here. You do not deserve to die on ground nourished with the blood of our ancestors.” Ivy trembled next to me. “Give him his weapons, Iviðja.”

I could see the conflict in her as she passed them to me.

Fear and adrenaline pushed through me as Bergrisar stood and the Jötnar backed away from us.

I turned to Gýgr. “I may not survive this fight. But our two peoples’ friendship shouldn’t die with me.” I opened comms with my ship. “I’m opening up the technologies we offered in the contract. Use them. Help your people.”

I didn’t have a chance to hope it could sway Bergrisar; she was already laughing as I turned. “He thinks he can buy back his blood,” Bergrisar chortled. “It’s mine already. I ache for its moisture on my tongue.”

I glanced at my rifle charge. Shit—with it turned up to the maximum, I had only a handful of shots. Plus whatever was in my sidearm. But Bergrisar was huge, bigger than the last two combined.

She lashed out at me with one of her secondary limbs; this one seemed to be akin to a scorpion tail, and I didn’t want to know what was in the stinger. As it whooshed past, a smell struck me, a familiar one, learned from living with Ivy.

She meant to poison me, even if I could defeat her.

I retreated. It had to come down to the gun, then.

She whipped her tail at me again, but didn’t put as much force behind it as Sjórisar had. It gave her more maneuverability, having less invested in the attack. I ducked, and her tail knocked into the wall behind me. I raised my gun, waiting for a clear shot to her head.

I got it.

When my shot struck, Bergrisar chuckled. The plating around her head was thicker—it had been forged into a single plate since the last time I’d seen her, essentially welded into a helmet. She’d disfigured herself in order to win. The shot dented the plating beside her eye, but not even enough to trust that another shot would do the job, even if I could hit in the exact same spot.

And from her weaving, I might not have the chance to test that.

I cursed myself for not charging my damn rifle when I had the chance.

She turned away from my next shot, but it was going to go wide even if she hadn’t moved. Due to both of our miscalculations, it tore through the limb with the stinger. The carapace there must have been weaker: the stinger fell off, completely severed by the heat of my blast.

That could work. Remove the limbs. It was dicier shooting than center mass, but if it actually got through…I fired again, at one of her smaller arms. She seemed to recognize what I planned at the last moment, and snaked to the side, absorbing the blast with the thickest part of the plating in her chest. I fired again, and again she lurched to absorb the shot harmlessly.

The rifle was dead, and I dropped it. I turned up the charge on the pistol. I had enough shots to try to break through her head plating, or I could stop fighting fate and aim for her chest.

She charged me, and I fired center mass, my training responding before my head could. As I ran to the side and threw myself over her lashing tail, my wounded ankle gave out; I couldn’t count on being able to run or dodge. She turned toward me, whipping a hand ending in a fist, the carapace’s edges sharp and exposed.

The edge caught me, biting into my already injured shoulder and reopening old wounds.

But as I fell back, my hand met Bergrisar’s fallen stinger, and an idea hit me.

When her next attack came, I leaned in to it—twisting my torso so that it skimmed by me—and then I threw myself at her torso, wielding the stinger.

I struck the weak spot in her chest with it, and felt a crazy euphoria as it sank in, deeper, deeper. Her shock rippled through me in her plates’ little trembles. I tore the stinger out, and sections of shell fell away with it. I stabbed it into her again and again, fighting to keep clear of the limbs that reached for me, thrashing around me, defiant even to the last.

Ten

I shivered and fell to my knees as Bergrisar’s twitches subsided. I felt dizzy and raised a hand to my shoulder. The old wound was open, yes, but it was more than that: the edges of her fist-plates had torn deeply into my neck. I couldn’t tell if she’d hit an artery, but from the shredded meat where my neck met my chest, I didn’t see how she could have not.

The Jötnar washed toward us, seeing that she was dead and I lived. “You shall have your treaty.” It was Gýgr who spoke. “No one else will argue.”

I nodded. The world felt floaty, and I let myself sit, knees to chest, to wait out its motion. Movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention, and the Jötnar faded away.

Impossibly, Louise sat beside me. She was pure, her eyes’ color saturated beyond anything I’d ever seen.

“I can’t leave,” I said to her, though I was certain my lips weren’t moving. “And I know you couldn’t love me. And that’s all right.” I leaned over to kiss her, and started at the feeling of a mouth without her lips. Then the fragrance sank into me, one I could wake up to every day for the rest of my life.

I hoped to God I wasn’t bleeding out, that I might live my days out here.

Mistake or no, I didn’t pull away. And neither did Ivy.

When we paused for breath, any trace of Louise was gone. Ivy’s fragmented crystalline eyes were on me, and my bloodstained hand held her face.

“How…how am I?” I asked.

She shrugged noncommittally, though I found her smile comforting.

“Will I live?” I returned my hand to my neck. I couldn’t feel where to put pressure, or where I was losing pressure.

“You’ll stay with us.” She tried to mimic my smile. “We’ll find a lens in our pit so your spirits will know where to find you.”

I told myself that that meant I would live, not that she would show them where my grave was. I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it was what I wanted to believe as the darkness overtook me.