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marlynnofmany · 11 months

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A Worthy Sacrifice

Going on a food run for this spaceship usually didn’t end up in a debate over whose body parts are more expendable. Never, as a matter of fact. Today was the first. And it could have easily been our last.

The trip had such a peaceful start, too. Along with the usual supplies that we paid real money for, Captain Sunlight sent a handful of us to pick up a local delicacy: some plant. I honestly missed the name. I was more interested in the location — inside a vast cave complex with shafts of light filtering in from above, and multiple lakes of poison to make the perfect growing environment. Or maybe they were acid lakes. At any rate, extremely dangerous, and completely at odds with the lovely sun-dappled scenery and brightly colored plantlife.

I stood with some trepidation at the edge of the cave maze, holding an empty bag and wondering if there was maybe an entrance somewhere big enough for a hoverbike. Beside me, the hulking forms of the Frillian twins were similarly hesitant. You can’t punch an acid lake, after all, or lift weights at it.

Down closer to ground level, Mur just looked annoyed. “It’s fine,” he said, flipping a blue-black tentacle forward. “The locals pick these plants daily.” His own bag was on a dinky little hoversled that followed him like a flying puppy, leash and all. The sled also held a couple pairs of pruning shears in case the stems gave us trouble. Mur could have ridden on the sled himself, pushing off the ground like a squid-shaped kid on a snow disk, but that would have been undignified. Strongarms are proud of that tentacle-walking, after all.

And apparently they’re not phased by giant lakes of acid.

“If you say so,” I told him. “Lead the way.”

He did, grumbling. I followed, taking care not to trip over the sled, while Blip and Blop stood tall and brought up the rear.

The entrance tunnel was small, alongside many others, and a few turned out to lead to the same big cavern. My first impression was warmth. I regretted wearing a sweater, thin and utilitarian though it was. I took it off as we walked, tying it around my waist, glad that I at least had my hair tied back in its usual long braid. I didn’t need any extra sweat about my neck today.

Once the sweater was secure, I was free to appreciate the scenery. It really was pretty. The walls were a wash of reds and golds, with multiple types of greenery sprouting from every level surface and a few that weren’t. The lake far below was an evil purple, fading to the innocent blue of tropical seas at the edges. A solid fence lined the cliff edge, which I appreciated.

The wall behind us was awash in climbing vines with dangling blueberry-looking things that sure would be convenient if they were the plants we were here for.

No such luck. Those were on the far side. Lots of them. A vast jungle of treelike things, most of which were bent under the weight of head-sized yellow fruit. As I watched, one particularly spindly trunk lost its biggest fruit to gravity, and sprung upwards to fling the smaller ones away in a comical fashion. I could almost hear the splats against the cave wall.

“Well, they sure look ripe,” I said.

Mur wasn’t interested. “Where’s the— Oh, there it is. We took the wrong door. C’mon.” He slapped away along the path beside that fence, over to where a single large hover platform waited like a ferry.

We were just getting on, with me trying to hide my misgivings and the Frillians doing the same, when a chorus of more slapping tentacle-steps approached at speed.

“Wait!” commanded the large reddish Strongarm in the lead, who was colored much like the cavern walls. She was also shaped more like an octopus than a squid, as was the green one behind her. The beige-gray one had a pointy squid head like Mur.

Mur waited. He’d already figured out the controls for the platform, and he stood there in silence while I clutched the railing with the Frillians, and the newcomers climbed on.

With nods all around, Mur pressed a button to close the gate. Then he removed the lid of the fancy pottery jar big enough for a child to hide inside — I’d assumed somebody had left it behind — and he scooped out a bunch of those blueberry things. As I watched in curiosity, he opened a different lid, this one over a part of the control console that stuck out, baring a dark tunnel like an ominous toilet bowl.

He threw the berries in. The platform’s engine started.

Mur steered us out over the deadly lake, engines humming happily, throwing clusters of berries in every so often. I exchanged looks with the Frillians. The other Strongarms didn’t look impressed.

“Are those fuel berries?” I asked.

“Only for this engine,” Mur said, tapping a sign. “It takes anything organic. Nice of the locals to make sure there’s always a full pot here. There is a note here to refill what we use if possible, and I think we definitely should, but I’m sure that not everyone does.”

The red Strongarm made a flapping noise that I recognized as the equivalent of a snort. Yeah, she probably wouldn’t stick around to do her part.

(And remember that bit about “anything organic”? If you recall how I started this little anecdote, this is where you’ll start to get concerned.)

There was only a moderate level of worry in the air at that point, though. We hadn’t fallen in yet and the rails seemed sturdy, if sparse, and the jungle was approaching at a reasonable pace. The slight breeze even made the temperature pleasant.

When Mur docked the platform headfirst and opened a gate on the other side, I was the first one off among the trees. Picking the yellow fruits turned out to be a great time, especially the way they kept accidentally flying through the air. They were about as heavy as cantaloupes, but with such rubbery outsides that it was like they were made for high-impact comedy. I did my best to pick each tree thoroughly, hanging onto the bent trunk with one hand before letting go. I’d started by taking a single fruit from each tree, but that had not worked.

Blip and Blop had the most efficient strategy: one held a bag and the other shook a tree like they were taking its lunch money. Mur just climbed the lowest trunks and plucked everything he found. One way or another, we filled our bags quickly and met back at the platform.

The strangers were a little slower, but again, we waited politely. Soon enough, we were on the way across the lake that lurked distantly below like malevolent grape jam.

I was just thinking that it had been a while since I’d had a proper PB&J when the trouble happened.

The Strongarms, standing on one side of the platform with their sacks of fruit, produced blasters and demanded ours.

(Yes, Strongarms keep things hidden among their tentacles. Yes, it’s just as gross as it sounds.)

Anyway, they must have taken our politeness and healthy fear of death for the signs of a bunch of pushovers, and wow they were wrong about that.

Blip and Blop swung their sacks of fruit in unison while I dove to one side and Mur took the other. You’d think we did this sort of thing all the time. In reality, there were only so many directions to go in a fenced-in battleground like this.

The would-be bandits were too busy dodging the sacks to aim their blasters properly, though they tried. One shot Blip’s bag of fruit, making her even more angry as yellow globes bounced everywhere. One nearly singed my ear, but didn’t get a second shot when I roundhouse kicked him in the squiddy head.

The other one, the leader, was wrestling Mur, and her shot went right through the center of the berry pot, shattering it and sending the platform’s fuel in every direction.

I mentioned that the railings weren’t exactly close together. And that these looked like blueberries: the little round things. My point is, they rolled. With great talent and speed. Right off the sides and down into that terrifying lake, leaving only a few behind.

“Look what you did!” Mur yelled, wrestling harder.

Blop made an undignified squeak of concern, then tried to find an angle he could help from. He ended up stepping firmly on a red tentacle and pinning the blaster to the floor.

His sister, meanwhile, was slamming an alien cantaloupe against the green guy, whose own weapon was stuck inside a different fruit, making its leisurely way down towards the lake.

The gray dude was out cold, which was a surprise to me. I guess Strongarms are easy to concuss, I thought as I made sure his blaster was safe on our side of the platform. I’d considered throwing it over the side as well, but figured we might want it to keep them in line once they woke up. I sure wasn’t planning on giving it back, though.

Crunch went the third blaster, Ow went the Strongarm holding it, and “Stay down, you arm-dragging limp grub!” went Mur. The red Strongarm stayed down.

So. We won the fight. But we only had a scattered few berries left to fuel the platform, and it had coasted to a stop in what looked to me like the exact stinkin’ center of this terrible, poisonous lake.

Blop looked worried. “Now what?” he asked Mur.

“These?” Blip suggested, holding a yellow fruit out toward the intake.

“No!” Mur shouted, startling everyone. He blocked her path. “Those break the engine. Didn’t you read the sign?”

I glanced at the defeated Strongarms. “I think only you read the sign,” I told him.

“Well, it’s very clear!” he exclaimed, waving dark tentacles like he wanted to tear out hair that he didn’t have. “Only other organics!”

Blip set the fruit down. “What do we have?” she asked, checking her pockets. “I’ve got two shrimp sticks and one of those seednuts that Paint likes.”

We all took stock, coming up with a whole lot of nothing. The unconscious Strongarms woke, and submitted to sitting in the corner with their leader, injured and embarrassed and also not in possession of any spare fuel.

“Let’s at least see how far the berries take us,” Mur said grimly, picking up the nearest.

We gathered all that we could find, and it took us a little way. Pocket snacks and whatnot took us a bit farther. We considered clothes (most were artificial), the fruit-carrying bags (same), and even treating the toilet-looking thing in appropriate but mortifying ways.

As we got increasingly desperate, we were still far from shore.

“Pretty sure this is real leather,” Mur said as he dropped in the leash for his tiny hoversled. “That will take us … not far enough.”

We were sort of close, kind of. Relatively speaking.

“The captain will come looking if we’re gone long enough,” Blop said.

“She doesn’t know which tunnel we took,” Mur reminded him. “Searching could take days.”

“Won’t the locals find us?” Blip asked.

The red Strongarm sneered. “They just finished a work cycle, and it’s a regular holiday. You think we’d try to rob you if they could come in at any moment?”

Both Frillians groaned.

Mur scowled. “Yes, very smart. See where that got you!” Moving slowly for added drama, he picked up a pair of shears from his sled. “Who wants to volunteer something organic?”

There were desperate pleas at that, and stonefaced silence from Mur that I hoped was acting.

“What about them?” the leader said, pointing wildly at the Frillians. “Surely they don’t need all those frills!”

Blip and Blop regarded her with identical shocked expressions. “Yes we do!”

“Well, we need our arms! You think that wouldn’t hurt to cut off?”

The yelling escalated while something very obvious occurred to me. I stepped over to Mur and flopped the braid over my shoulder. “Do you think this would be enough?”

The Strongarms shut up immediately. And they stayed silent while Mur calculated, so silent that I started to wonder.

They answered my question before I could ask it.

“You would volunteer that?” asked the red one quietly.

Ohhh, they think it’s a tentacle covered in hair, I realized. Have they not met a human before? Never mind; let’s see if Mur plays along.

“Yes,” I said solemnly, instead of going “Yeah” like I usually would. “If this is the only way to save all of us, then I will gladly make that sacrifice.” I looked over at Blip and Blop, who were elbowing each other but keeping mum. Good.

Mur ushered me toward the intake with all the grandeur of a high-society attendant. “If you would permit me to do the honors,” he said, “I will be quick.”

So I stood in front of the thing with my back to it so the wide-eyed bandits couldn’t see, told Mur to cut just below the hair tie, and held up my sweater ready to wrap it around my head like a bandage.

Yes, I did feel silly. But the bandits deserved a bit of shame and secondhand anguish. Besides, I’d been wanting to try a short haircut for ages, but never found the right time to chop it all off.

This is definitely the right time, I thought. “Go ahead.”

Mur snipped through the braid with one clean cut — hooray for sharp shears — and I collapsed with an anguished expression and some artful whimpers. Blip helped tie the sweater “bandage,” while Blop shielded us from view and stared down the Strongarms. I didn’t see Mur drop the braid into the intake, since my view was somewhat limited, but I felt the engine kick on with a most welcome hum.

I really hope that was enough, I thought as I lay there with my arms about my head. It’ll suck if we have to snip this down to a buzz cut. That’ll be hard to keep up the act through. And I really don’t want hair THAT short.

But when the engine finally went quiet, it was to a cheer from the Frillians. We were close enough to jump.

Or, more accurately, close enough for Blip to fling Mur across the gap with one of my socks to gather berries in. Mur was a terrible shot when he threw it back, but enough berries reached us that we were able to close the distance.

I pulled the blaster from my waistband and nudged it over the side before I forgot. It was too small for the Frillians to use anyway.

Plus, we didn’t need it. By the sound of her voice, the lead Strongarm had been so humbled by my sacrifice that she might have been considering a career change.

She even offered their collections of fruit, and the other two didn’t object.

Mur accepted graciously. I managed to turn my chuckling into pained noises as strong Frillian arms lifted me. I didn’t uncover my head to look. By the sounds of it, the many fruits were being balanced on Mur’s sled and the shoulders of whichever Frillian wasn’t carrying me.

“Farewell,” Mur said haughtily. “Make better choices in the future.”

We left the cavern to the sound of the ex-bandits promising to do so.

I have no idea if they’ll really go straight, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if they did?

Once we were out of sight, Blip put me down and took her share of the fruit bags. I claimed one too. I felt much lighter without the braid. And the threat of impending death.

I looked at my crewmates cheerfully. “Let’s never do that again.”

“Not without significant backup,” Mur agreed.

“Or more spare headfur!” Blop said.

“I’ve definitely spared enough for one day.” I freed a hand to pull out the hair tie, marveling at how simple a process it was now.

My crewmates all told me I looked incredibly strange with short hair about my face like that.

I told them to wait until I picked a final hairstyle, and I described hair gel to them.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come!

#my writing #the Token Human #writeblr #humans are weird #haso #hfy #eiad #humans are space orcs #and other such tags #science fiction #short stories #stories that are short but not as short as they were supposed to be #seriously why is it so long #anyways!#enjoy #the next one will probably be shorter

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