How Six Saved the Frogs, page 9
He ignored the poor attempt at a joke. The stream was barely knee-deep. Instead, he pulled a long-sleeved shirt over his head. Much better. The sleeves were still snug, but he could breathe comfortably.
“What do you think?” he asked Jack, hoping to distract him. Both of them, really.
Jack just stared at the towel. Wouter snapped his fingers. “Eyes up here, please.”
There was a few seconds’ delay between Jack blinking and him dragging his gaze up to Wouter’s shirt. “Better,” was all he said.
“He didn’t arrive?”
“No.” Jack’s shoulders sagged. “Something’s definitely gone wrong. I’d send a message to the sefoni, but we’re on shaky ground already after begging a replacement disc for Adeel—which took two weeks to arrange. If I now tell them said replacement is missing, the sefoni might not hire us again. And the Alliance needs the sefoni’s trust. And the bani’s. Besides, even if they reached the Alliance in time, they can’t get another replacement here within the next few days.”
“Can’t they just send someone to join us the day we arrived?” Did that mean Jack couldn’t contact the Alliance at all?
“If only that were true.” Jack snorted. “There are so many rules, policies, and safety measures in place for disc travel and off-world assignments, that there’s no room for ‘just’. What it comes down to is that from the moment we arrived on this planet, the assignment’s timeline was registered and locked down. They can only set an arrival date in our future, not our past.”
Not something Ruben ever talked about. Maybe Wouter couldn’t quite grasp the intricacies of disc travel, but he had more than enough experience with rules, policies, and safety measures. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Someone somewhere messed up, but that… but I fully believe Ruben sent you the disc for a reason.”
He did. This was the moment to tell him…
But Jack sat and continued speaking. “Even if he broke a number of those rules I mentioned. If anything, your accidental arrival might just save this assignment.”
“Because you couldn’t do this without a caretaker.” What was he saying that for? He took a breath and tried to order his thoughts. “I’m sorry… It’s just… Ruben trained for this job. He knew what he was doing. I walk dogs, fix broken taps, wash windows, and rescue old Mr Jansen when he’s stuck in the lift because he can’t remember which buttons to push. I’m not an interplanetary survival specialist.” Wouter deflated. “I can’t even bloody read.”
He froze and clapped a hand over his mouth. That was not how he’d planned to reveal his dyslexia. It was not what he’d planned to talk about, at all.
“You really should stop selling yourself short.” For a moment, Jack stared at him, as if wondering what to say… or not to say. “But, Ruben did mention your dyslexia on occasion, and that it was severe.”
“He never even mentioned your name,” Wouter grumbled. Annoyed that Jack seemed to know so much about him. “He used ‘we’ a lot, though. I assumed he wasn’t allowed to.”
Jack let out a pained sigh. “I asked him not to.”
It looked like he was going to say more. Instead, he shook his head and turned on his fieldslat. “This map is nothing more than remembering what the colours mean. Blue is bad for bani, and grey are blirzi, whatever those might be, and poisonous algae.”
“I guess they don’t hibernate like our frogs?”
“Should be avoided, according to my briefing,” Jack replied. “Bani can hibernate, but it’s dangerous. They have three stomachs that turn their food—algae—into fuel. During hibernation, the microorganisms that aid in the production become hyperactive, breaking down stored nutrients at an accelerated rate, sapping too much of the frogs’ reserves and… kills them.”
Wouter gaped at Jack. “Hibernation kills them?”
“Yes.”
“But not when they sleep, right?”
Jack shook his head.
Wow. Poor bani. “Anything else I need to know?”
“They only urinate every other day, and the male bani don’t—can’t—urinate in the same container as the females.”
Wouter didn’t like what he thought was coming, but he asked, “Why not?” nonetheless.
“Something about their stomachs creating different fuels. I don’t know the details, but when the fuel they excrete meets… Boom! Explosion.”
“That’s terrible. And the containers?” He hadn’t seen any.
Jack pointed. “On the other side of the meeting place, for easy extraction.”
No wonder he hadn’t seen it. Maybe he should explore the area before they left. “So, why did the council tell you to keep track of the ponds?” He handed Jack the fieldslat back.
“No containers along the path.”
“Is that what happened with the scouts they lost? They peed in the wrong pond?”
“No, apparently a few of them ate poisoned algae. It upsets the balance in the stomachs, and… leads to explosions. Big explosions.”
That sounded gruesome. He wondered about the non-binary scout. If they needed a separate pond as well. “We’ll be travelling with exploding frogs, and you think I can be useful?”
“Our job is to find a path in this narrow strip of land that won’t be too cold for the Bani to cross. I’m sure, between the two of us, we can handle any emergency.” Jack pointed at something behind Wouter. His Klunkett and Co shirt, hanging to dry on the bushes. “Unless Ruben was making it up, you seem capable of holding your own in emergencies.”
Wouter blushed. Did Jack know what that shirt meant to him? If only he knew what Ruben had told Jack about him. “I might have picked up a trick or two from watching.” Every series he could find. On repeat. “Being a caretaker sometimes forces me to be… inventive.” Best not mention the “controlled” experiments he and Simon had indulged in. Mostly after smoking synthetic joints. It was a miracle they hadn’t burnt down Simon’s shed.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he reached for his boots, took out the notebook and qrystal sliver and offered them to Jack, who stared at the notebook and turned the qrystal sliver over and over in his other hand.
“What is this?”
Here went nothing. “I found this in Ruben’s flat. After the burglary. When I was packing his belongings.”
“But why are you giving it to me?”
“I read… my phonet read a page to me.” Wouter’s throat clogged up. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t repeat what he’d heard. Taking a slow breath, Wouter swallowed. “Just read the notebook. You’ll understand.”
He could barely breathe as Jack opened the notebook and took in page after page. Jack’s face grew more serious with every word he read, while his eyes seemed to spew fire. When he finally closed it, his hands trembled. “Soddeck. You found this in his flat?”
Wouter nodded.
“After the burglary? How?”
“Ruben has a hidden drawer. Everything had been pulled out, but that drawer… it’s impossible to spot unless you know it’s there, and it seemed untouched.”
“And the disc came with your birthday present?”
“Yes. A memslat case of my favourite series. It was stuck in the back.”
Jack let out a long sigh. “I think we have bigger problems than Adeel not turning up.”
Ten
Bitter Shades of Piracy
“What bigger problems?” What was in the notebook that spooked Jack like that?
Jack paced between the stream and the moss-not-moss, dressed in his Alliance gear, making Wouter feel severely underdressed in the towel and adapted Alliance shirt. He could put his boxers on—assuming they were even halfway dry—but that wouldn’t make him feel any more dressed. Why did he have to wear on orange pair? No. Best to stick with the towel. Draped like this, it hid more than the boxers would.
“Jack. Tell me. What problems?”
Jack stopped with his back to Wouter. His shoulders sagged for a moment and seemed to mumble to himself. Nothing audible, though. Then he straightened and joined Wouter on the moss-not-moss, gazing up at the trees, or at the bani occupying the leaves.
“Anything we’re discussing here is pure guesswork until we can contact the Alliance,” he whispered.
“I thought you couldn’t contact the Alliance?” Wouter whispered back. “And why are we whispering?”
Cupping one hand over his ears, Jack pointed to the trees around them. “Because I’d rather the bani don’t pick up anything we say and misunderstand or misinterpret it.”
The implants. Of course. That made sense.
“I can contact the Alliance, but this planet is in a dead zone. The sefoni satellite is the only one we can connect to, so all communication goes through them.” Jack grabbed his fieldslat. “But as I said, we’re on shaky ground already, so I’m going to have to be careful about what to say and what to leave out.”
Again, it made sense he didn’t want to piss off the sefoni. Sounded complicated, though.
“Right. I’ve taken my slat off the network for now. The sefoni are good people, but they might well be monitoring our progress, and I don’t want them getting a glimpse of whatever’s on this qrystal sliver.”
Wouter suppressed a shudder. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a glimpse. “My phonet wouldn’t connect to it.”
“Hmm. Probably encrypted.” He pointed at the Alliance logo. “Alliance qrystals can only connect to our slats. They have a built-in decoder. Let’s hope it’s that simple.”
Jack connected the qrystal sliver to his slat. “Ruben mentioned being followed a few times that week, and that he recorded some of that with his car cam.”
The cursor on screen kept spinning and spinning the Alliance logo, but no error or no-connection message. When a folder icon appeared, Jack looked up.
“If you don’t want to see this, I completely understand.”
All he had to do was turn away. But he couldn’t let Jack do this on his own. “It’s not from the accident, is it?” Because he couldn’t cope seeing that.
“No. I don’t think I could watch that, either.” Jack shuddered. “I assume the police and our people will have studied that footage meticulously.”
“Then I’ll watch it.” Wouter still held his breath as Jack opened the folder and played the first file. Wouter counted ten video files in total.
The video showed the view in front of the car, then switched to the back, giving a wide angle of the street behind it. He stared at the cars in all three lanes, and even the opposite lanes, trying to spot the grey Dove Eight. “Did he mention other cars?”
“Other cars? What do you mean?”
“The page I read mentioned a grey Dove Eight. I’ve only seen a white one so far.”
“He also mentioned an Aurix Observer.” Jack pointed it out on the screen.
That looked familiar. Didn’t Johan have an Observer? “Same colour as the Dove. Not very imaginative.”
“Effective, though. Do you know how many grey cars there are?”
Considering he counted at least three other grey cars in the video, Wouter assumed there were many. “I guess following someone in a red car doesn’t quite cut it.”
Jack snorted. “Only in old school TV-series.” He paused the video. “That looks like a Dove Eight, though. Coming from the left?”
Wouter squinted. “The side street?”
“Yes.” Jack unpaused it, and they both watched the Dove Eight cut in front of the Observer… and then the video ended. “They alternated.” He played the second one. “He might not have noticed because he was paying attention to the Observer.”
The second one picked up the Observer as another car disappeared into a side street on the right. Jack paused again.
“Look at the bottom left.”
The camera’s wide angle picked up a car overtaking Ruben’s. “A Dove Eight?”
“The logo on the side is blurry, but yes. I think it is.”
As they played all the videos, a third car caught Jack’s attention, a Kronon Io, a grey sedan. It seemed to stay farther back, but popped up in three of the ten videos, right when the other cars fell away.
“They’re good. None of these videos are longer than ten minutes on average… I think Ruben said his gym was a forty-minute drive from Alliance NL. The cars don’t stand out, and it’s impossible to see their number plates.” Jack disconnected the qrystal sliver. “I’m not very into cars, but all three are among the most popular models, and judging from the Alliance UK carpark, grey really is the most common colour these days.”
But they’d followed Ruben multiple times the week before… Wouter swallowed. In all the years Ruben had worked for the Alliance, traipsing off to faraway planets, being followed on the way to work by goodness knew who was the last thing they’d worried about.
“Are you all right?”
Wouter shook his head. “How am I supposed to process this? Some days, I still hear the sirens of the ambulance, and my heart fills with dread all over again. And now this?”
“I was on assignment off-planet when I got the news about… About Ruben’s accident. Which is why I missed his funeral.” Jack leaned back and closed his eyes. “Even now, I have to take a breath, have to force myself to open my email, because it takes me back to that message. Every single time.”
If only Ruben had told them about Jack. Because it was so easy to forget Jack missed him, too. Wouter needed to remember that. He reached out and put his hand on Jack’s arm. He wanted to say something profound, but couldn’t find the words.
Jack threw him a sad smile. They sat together in silence, and for a moment, these “bigger problems” Jack had mentioned didn’t matter.
“I’m not sure what Ruben told you about us, but maybe he told you about our parents insisting on taking us camping in our old Volkswagen campervan that Pa worked on every spring to keep it in working order. He even rebuilt the engine when he couldn’t buy fusion pellets for it anymore.” It had to be these luscious woods that made Wouter think of those trips. Or sleeping out in the open. “Anyway. This was the first summer after they adopted me. Ruben was so excited to have a brother closer to his age. And after reading me his favourite space adventures, he decided we were going to build our own spaceship. So, we gathered all the loose branches and leaves we could find. We even dragged broken camping gear from the recycling area to our building site. Which was a secluded spot in the woods, about a ten-minute walk from our campervan.”
It was one of Wouter’s favourite memories. The only holidays he’d known until then were being dropped off at his grandparents’ while his parents went off who knew where. Those were the best weeks of his life before the Heilands adopted him.
“Pa always brought siltape and fishing line, and we’d found old guy lines, too. Ruben took charge in designing it, of course. We spent the whole day weaving, tying, and sticking branches together to make a frame, covering it with musty-smelling old tents and marquees. We had no sense of time, but plenty of snacks to still our growling stomachs until we finished it… and fell asleep while Ruben read from his favourite book.”
The picture of it that Ma took hung in Wouter’s bedroom. He’d been staring at it a lot, lately. He glanced at Jack. “We were grounded for a whole days after they’d found us. But it stayed up all holiday, and we spent every waking hour in it, with Ruben narrating epic space adventures in which we were the heroes exploring uncharted galaxies.”
Jack’s smile seemed a little less sad after that.
There was more to discuss, worse to discuss, but they’d both needed a breather. Nif, and Sop—the non-binary bani—had greeted them with warmth and offered them leaves with a variety of fruit, making dinner a welcome distraction. Colours flashed across Nif’s skin, enriching the story he told about bani life, drawing Wouter’s attention to his belly, and a spot off-centre that resembled a clover. A purple, three-leafed clover. It was cute, and made him smile, especially with the flashing colours.
After dinner, they finished packing their bags for the trek. Despite his clothes being more damp than dry, Wouter was more than happy to exchange his towel for something more wearable.
As the bani settled down for the evening, and they’d both felt more on an even keel, they sat on the moss-not-moss to continue their conversation.
Jack opened the fieldslat to some sort of letter, with an official letterhead that looked similar to the Alliance logo. “In his notes, Ruben mentioned a memo that was sent to all Alliance personnel. I had to dig through my inbox, but this is that memo.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I only gave it as cursory browse as I was on assignment.”
Wouter just stared at the memo. He didn’t assume Jack wanted him to read it. “And now?”
“I told you Bani sell fuel, right?”
“Yes. Something about three stomachs and being paid in music.”
“That about sums it up. Well, everyone, every world, every species wants their fuel. And while Earth has advanced quite a bit since the gas era, there are still industries thriving on fuel, and not just the space exploration industry.” Jack looked up to the trees. “The bani population is just shy of a thousand, including kids. They can only produce so much. So, the sefoni regulate how much fuel each planet receives, and when. Not every species is happy with that arrangement. You know how people are; some always want more.”
Wouter had an inkling, yes. “You mentioned the planet is in a dead zone.”
“For protection. Yes. To avoid anyone from sneaking onto the planet.” Jack showed a map that meant nothing to Wouter. “Everyone assumes this planet is somewhere in this region, but there’s nothing on the map, like the planet doesn’t exist. They’re a marsupial species, the sefoni, and easily underestimated, but they’re some sharp tech-savvy sods who managed to hide an entire planet.”
Marsupial species? Wouter itched to ask, but now was not the time. “So. These pirates. They raid cargo? In space?” How unreal was that?
“Pirates are pirates, whether the ancient sea kind or our modern-day space ones. The memo warns about increased harassments recently. All around heavily guarded fuel transport routes. They’re becoming more aggressive, reckless. They’re a bunch of greedy, entitled, little sods.”
