The Hooman Saga - I

What the wolf saw in the sky was yet another meteor. But this one screamed in his mind as it flamed through their atmosphere...

Oct 25, 2024

THE FLAMES WERE STARTING to show up through the tiny, scarred windows. The vibrations and shaking had gotten worse.

Old scratched-up silvery Ben, the cyborg pilot, didn't seem concerned. But he was programmed to show compassion and be reassuring. His voice circuit mimicked a well-modulated baritone, "We're nearing peak re-entry speed and atmospheric drag is increasing."

Sue, belted in, space-suited, helmet secured with face visor down, was not reassured. "Does that mean the shaking is going to get worse?"

"I'm afraid so, ma'am."

Sue checked her harness for the fourth time. All the silvery web strapping was fine. She felt around the seals of her scratched and scarred helmet with her gloved hands. It seemed secure, but she wasn't going to take the time to unclasp and unseal her gloves to go any further. While she was still breathing the metal-tainted air of the escape capsule, the valves would automatically close on any air pressure drop. Then she'd have about two hours on what was in her suit. But she was pretty sure if she didn't get into breathable atmosphere by that time, the final stink she would be smelling wouldn't bother her. The temporary suit scrubbers weren't designed to handle that kind of load for that long.

- - - -

SNARL CAME TROTTING up the trail to the cliff edge. The night was clear and scent of all the nocturnal animals were alive in the air. He snuffed out his nostrils to clear them. His four legs were quiet on the rocky path, his reddish-gray tail swinging from side to side in rhythm as well as for balance.

As he approached Tig, he saw his den-mate and hunt-team leader in silhouette. He was looking at the stars, but lit by the feeble light of the moon behind him.

Snarl and Tig had been raised together as part of the Chief's family and had been born the same year, a particularly hard winter and cold spring. Those were some good times, Snarl thought. Too many years past already. He snuffed again to clear his head and focus on the job at hand.

The scents of pine as well as the lower-down hardwoods in the valley below made it difficult to concentrate. They reminded him of running with the pack on the hunt. Groups of wolves signaling to each other in turn, bunching up the quarry and surrounding it for the kill. His throat tightened to howl, and he forced it to relax.

"A quiet night." Tig sent by thought to Snarl.

Snarl would have been surprised by anyone else, but Tig was far more sensitive to thoughts, especially from a pack-mate. Snarl sent back, "A good night for hunting, Tig. Almost wish we were down with the rest. They are ready to start when you are."

"You're too efficient, Snarl. And our pack is well-supplied because of you." Tig replied.

"But you seem distracted. What is it, Tig?"

"Another meteor. This is a close one. It looks to be coming down nearby."

Snarl growled low. "I alway hate those things. Will it be near our valley?"

Tig sent, a calm thought, "No, it's parallel to the ridge. But a fire wouldn't help matters."

Fires started by meteors were more common than lightning strikes. And they tended to start with an explosion, which made them spread faster than the slow burn started by a simple sharp flash. It had been like this ever since the Hoomans left. So said the Teacher, and the Teachers who taught her, back to the times of the Hoomans leaving. Snarl sat as he thought this through. Looking up the same direction as Tig, he could see it now. Tig was better at spotting these than he was.

"That's because I watch the night sky to learn." Tig had heard his thoughts like he was sending directly to him. "And because our Teacher recommends listening for the spirits in the sky."

Snarl snuffed at this. "If only we could see these 'spirits.' I only see birds, clouds, the moon and stars."

"But there are more ways to see than just eyes." Tig replied.

"So you say." sent Snarl, as he quieted his mind.

Both wolves could see the red dot coming closer, yet not directly at them.

- - - -

THERE WERE FLASHING lights on the console, but few solid red. Mostly yellows and greens. Some blues. Ben's metallic arms were flying about the switches, when his arms weren't needed for holding his body steady during the re-entry. She could see that he was trying to adjust for the best ride, but being encased in a foot or more of thick metallic and mineral refuse wasn't helping their aerodynamics. Factually, Sue was surprised that he could keep it on a straight course at all. They should have been tumbling by now.

The sky, visible outside the few small view ports that were open, was turning from black to blue, but this was fast being replaced with reddish-orange flames. Bits of the outer rock hull were starting to break off. These showed up as sparks flaring past.

Ben spoke up, "The outer shield is holding. It is keeping our temperature steady. We should retain most of it during our final approach." As if he was reading her mind. But everyone new Cyborgs couldn't. Sue had doubts sometimes. Maybe because she had talked all those hours with Old Ben.

"How is our angle, Ben? Are we still on a decent trajectory?"

"Better than we could have expected, ma'am. It looks like we have burned off into a teardrop shape, which will help us maintain stability. Calculations show that our boosters will last until final landing, which should cushion our arrival."

"Meaning we won't hit point-blank and explode?"

The cyborg turned his head slightly away from the instruments to be reassuring. "And at the same time, we will still look like a waste-pod meteor on re-entry to any external sensors tracking us."

"Meaning we still look like the same compacted garbage blob as we have since leaving the moon and anyone there won't notice the difference if they are looking at us."

"Precisely, ma'am." The cyborg turned his tarnished silverish head back to the console, a gesture more to be comforting, since he was receiving the sensor data electronically, regardless of what his "eyes" were receiving.

Sue reached down to pat her blue-gray tool bag one more time, touching the straps that held it secure in the seat next to hers. While there were a full half-dozen seats on board, they were all empty except for her and the small tool bag. That synthetic canvas bag was all she was able to take with her from the Moon base.

She thought of her family back on the Moon base, the Elite Guard she had outwitted to slip into the escape pod next to the trash chute launcher. How few people she could trust there. Ever since she had overheard that conversation and told her mother during an allowed visit. That look her mother gave her, just as her assigned "mediator" returned from getting them each a coffee. The mediator's raised eyebrow meant she knew something had been said. And Sue knew her time was short at that point. Because certain Elite secrets weren't allowed to be known by the "down-below's".

Grief clouded her blue eyes behind the scratched face visor. She didn't dare open it as the shaking had gotten worse and her hands were gripping the plastic and metal arms of her seat so that she wouldn't be hammered by her own gloved hands flying about the small, crowded cabin. She didn't think she could open that visor with shaking gloved hands, anyway.

Sue swallowed and blinked a few times to clear. And wondered how she was ever going to see her family again.

The last sight she remembered seeing of that base was just before she quietly closed and sealed the escape pod door with a hiss. It was even darker than the stained dark channels of the waste-pod launching chute she had crossed to get into the pod. Nearly pitch black. She fished out a small black remote from a slim side pocket in her worn blue-gray synthetic canvas work overalls. The black remote had a small yellow-white pin light she turned on to show her where she needed to go. Her first action was to awake the cyborg, keeping him on mute. She found him at his station, and the few blinking and solid red lights on the control board in front of him said that the batteries were full and would support his wake-up and operation.

With two thumbs on the tiny buttons (and she was again glad for her small hands) she was able to tap in a code that turned on the minimal activity the cyborg would need. It was still a trick, but her memory was telling her from deep in her training what steps had to be done when.

They had used to sneak into these rescue pods when they were younger, in addition to the mandatory drills every citizen was required to perform annually. While they doubted that such an emergency would ever occur, there was always a guard near the rescue pods who had to be evaded in order for them to play there. So learning the skill of quickly waking up a mute cyborg and getting him onto "no-alert" status was vital.

As well, the cyborg seemed to enjoy being woken up and talked to. He was part human and that side appreciated human company. Plus, guys like Ben here could play a mean hand of poker or bridge when they couldn't bring enough players.

The lights came on in Ben's eyes. He turned his scratched metal head silently, making a smile appear on his digital-equivalent mouth. Ben recognized her from her last visit. He held up an index finger on one hand and put it to his mouth as a sign he understood to be quiet.

A regular keyboard slid out on an extension bracket, just below the control board, along with a simple light headset hardwired into the keyboard. Sue turned to sit on the floor, positioned the headset over her ears, picked the keyboard off its bracket to set on her lap and started typing in her request. A quiet sound came through the earpieces in response, all in human language, with the stilted AI speech the cyborgs were required to use. (They could mimic anyone on the ship, perfectly. But that was "illegal" in their coding. They had to be recognized for what they were.)

At last the cyborg nodded. Sue reclined her head back against the base of the control board, keeping the earpieces on so she could follow the cyborg as he repeated to her what he was doing. It was simply orders he was following, as part of a drill. Or so he relayed to her.

Sue knew that cyborgs were smarter than they let on. And she had often escaped from her routines to come to talk to Old Ben. He was quite understanding in his responses, almost philosophical. But that is why they didn't have straight AI on these pods. Sometimes an almost intuitive response was needed, a leap of judgment beyond what they could possibly program into their best AI.

Sue would always hug Ben when she left, before she shut him down again. She knew he didn't feel through that synthetic skin of his over his metal, ceramic and plasti-foam constructs. But she seemed to feel that he appreciated the gesture. And it made her feel better, at least. To have a friend she could talk to when she really needed someone.

The escape pod jarred and shook slightly as it settled in the launch tube bottom. It had been nothing for Ben to quietly dismantle all the sensors and then slide the small pod down and onto the launch track. They timed it so that the pod landed in and sunk in among a load of mineral refuse. The auto-hardening cement closed around the pod to make it look like a large section of tube-shaped refuse ready to launch. The other timing was to get this into the base's biggest launch for the day. That would get several of these ejected at once, all on a trajectory toward Earth. Her hope was that no one was measuring and calculating the extra mass in the payload too closely...

A brief alarm, quickly silenced, plus violent shuddering woke her from her thoughts. The view through the window showed that they were spiraling on their decent. The view was going blue, then black then blue... Ben was adjusting manually as fast as his arms could move. There was a burnt-electric smell in the air, as well as some smoke she could see through her face plate.

"Ben, is everything OK?"

"One of our retro-fire rockets has malfunctioned, but the others are still online. There was a fuse overload, but no continuing fire. We are still on our trajectory at this time." Ben replied, but with a terse and almost mono-toned voice. Apparently, his resources were being routed away from his vocal response circuits.

The cabin was noticeably hotter now. The shaking was worse.

Sue gave up trying to talk, as she was afraid she'd accidentally bite her tongue.

She just held on and closed her eyes.

That didn't help much, as their was enough gravity now to remind her that there was a "down" rotating around the cabin and they weren't necessarily going to land right side up.

More sparks, more smoke. Her suit air sealed against the air pressure change.

This wasn't good.

A loud explosion outside. The cabin went suddenly dark.

"Ben? BEN? BEN!?!" No answer. No lights on the cyborg or the control panel.

Sue couldn't help it. She screamed inside her suit.

She screamed against the dark, against the falling.

She screamed against her fate.

- - - -

THE TWO WOLVES SAW parts of the meteor break away and make in parallel paths to the main body. It was orange-yellow now, and would ignite anything nearby when it landed.

Snarl watched it closely. Tig had closed his eyes.

"Something is wrong with this one. It's screaming at us."

Snarl looked at him and cocked his head quizzically. "Are you kidding me? Meteors don't scream."

"This one just did."

We’ve now begun a new serial.

An escaped human girl meeting the new alpha species left on planet Earth - wolves.

There is a great deal of backstory to unpack — all in due time.

There are over 30 short chapters in this book. I hope to bring them to you a couple or few at a time. So it won’t take all year to tell this story.

For now, set your calendar to keep track of these new adventures. Every Saturday.