The Lilean Chronicles - Redemption by Merita King
CHAPTER SIX
He crept closer, eyes never leaving his quarry. He trod with care so as not to make a sound that would scare the creature away and lose him his meal. Over the past five years he became expert at this and he bided his time. There’s no reason to rush things; take your time and wait for the right moment and you’ll do it right first time. When he was sure he could get no closer without alerting the shy creature, he raised his blade. He closed one eye and made sure his aim was right on target and then with one swift practised movement the blade flew silently through the air and sank into the creature’s heart. He walked over and crouched over the dying creature, looked down at it and placed a hand gently on its flank.
“Thank you for your life that gives me sustenance,” Vincent said as he withdrew his blade from the now dead creature, scooped him up and carried him away. He always made sure he took only the old and weak when he hunted for his food. He enjoyed a special connection with animals and often felt more like one of them than he did a human being. He admired the simplicity of their existence; eat, sleep, keep warm. No fuss, no hate and no deceit. With animals you know where you stand. He always trusted them and they usually seemed to respond to him without fear.
The small cave entrance was well hidden in the cliff wall but as always, he stopped some distance off and took a little time to sit and watch, just in case. He took out his scope to check out the cave entrance and only when he felt sure there were no uninvited visitors lurking around, he got up and went in to prepare his meal. With expert precision he gutted, skinned and quartered the animal ready for cooking. He took the entrails out a little way away and left them for the wild creatures that roamed around these parts. He believed in sharing his good fortune with his animal brothers and sisters and they repaid him by alerting him if anything strange was around. He got to know their calls and cries and could now recognise a bark of fear or a growl of warning easily and never ignored them. Back at the cave he spread out the hide and started to scrape it clean. He could use the skin to make some new garments for himself; nothing was ever wasted. He was no tailor but he got by. When he escaped the Cryo Stasis facility he made a point of getting his belongings from the admin block. He wanted his own clothes and his blades back. Those coveralls they made him wear at the facility wouldn’t last five minutes out here. He patched up his pants a few times over the seat and the knees and the elbows of his shirt but he was hoping to make himself a new one out of the hides of this particular creature whose leather was the softest he’d encountered since coming to this planet. With this latest piece, he reckoned he would have enough to make a new over shirt which would be more hard wearing and would be warmer in the winter months. If it was successful, he might even try to make a new pair of pants. But first things first, he was hungry and his thoughts turned to food.
A couple of hours later he ate a very acceptable meal of roasted meat and some edible roots he dug up. He knew what plant foods were safe to eat by studying the indigenous human life that lived on this planet. They knew nothing of his existence however but he got to know their ways very well over the time he’d been their secret neighbour. When he first came here and saw these humans he toyed with the idea of joining them and living amongst them but after a few weeks of secretly observing them he decided that would not be an ideal situation for him. They were very primitive humans and were a bit too unpredictable for his liking. They seemed peaceful enough most of the time but could suddenly become enraged for no obvious reason he could see. They were also very territorial and would have spats and fights with other groups of their own kind who strayed too near their boundaries. The winter before last, the one that Vincent always thought of as their leader passed away and there was much posturing and promenading from the other males who all thought they were the ideal candidate to take over his role.
He would never forget what happened next and would always thank his instincts for telling him to remain invisible. One afternoon everything came to a head and a fight broke out amongst the two leading contenders. It started with a bit of pushing and shoving but quickly escalated into a full blown wrestling match. The bigger of the two got his opponent on the ground and sat on him. He clenched both hands together into a club and raised his arms above him only to bring it crashing down onto the man’s skull killing him quickly. Even though Vincent watched the proceedings from a safe distance through his scope he reckoned he could hear the thud and the squelch as the guy’s head caved in. It wasn’t so much the killing that shocked him, it was what happened afterwards that chilled him. The victor wrenched open his dead opponent’s skull, reached in and scooped out some of the brain matter. Then he stood up and holding his prize high above his head he opened his mouth wide, displaying a fearsome pair of long fangs and roared so loud he really did hear it. Then he stuffed the steaming mush into his mouth and chewed. This sight sickened Vincent and he vomited all down his shirt front. He ran back to his cave stopping twice more on the way to bring up more of his insides.
“My god,” he kept saying to himself. “My god he ate the guy’s brains.”
He kept well out of their way after that but still observed them enough to know what they were up to and to learn what he could eat and what he couldn’t. He discovered for instance that there was a type of fish on this planet that was deadly poisonous. He saw a group of their kids playing by a small pond one day. They were playing at fishing and he supposed that such games helped them learn the survival skills they need when they grow up and need to provide for their group. They all lay down on their stomachs and sank their arms into the still water. Every so often one or another would suddenly turn on his back, his arms flying out of the water grasping a still flailing fish triumphantly in the air. They ate the fish raw right there by the pond and threw the inedible bits back into the water to feed whatever else lurked down there in the depths. One little kid caught a weird looking fish one day; one that Vincent had never seen before. It was big and brightly coloured with long dangling tail fins. All but one of them ate that fish and from the looks on their faces, thoroughly enjoyed it.
A day later he was out hunting when he heard cries off in the distance. It sounded like people wailing. He went towards the sound and used his scope to observe what the fuss was all about. He saw a group of the humans building a huge bonfire. A group of females were standing a little way off, wailing and beating their breasts with their own fists. One of the males turned and signalled to the others and from amongst the group he saw five of the males walk out towards the pile of wood, each carrying the body of a small child. The one small boy who had not eaten the fish the day before, stood there sombre hand in hand with his mother. The men stood over that fire all through the night, feeding the flames with more wood until the small bodies had been reduced to ash. A hole was dug and the entire remains of the fire was carefully scraped into it and covered over. When this was done, five women came over and placed small stones and rocks in the shape of five fishes as a kind of grave marker, each with long dangling tail fins. Vincent decided he never wanted to eat fish ever again.
The indigenous humans used spears for hunting. Some were small and thin and were used for throwing, others were longer and thicker and were used for jabbing at close quarters. Vincent found one of the small thin spears once at the base of a tree. The thrower had obviously missed his target and not been able to find it again. It was a rare find as they always retrieved these objects. He often wondered why, when they were easy enough to make. He’d seen them being made and each one only took an hour or so. It wasn’t until he found this one he began to understand why they didn’t like to lose them. The spear itself was about a metre long and made of strong but pliable wood from the tender branches of a tree that was plentiful everywhere he’d been on this planet. The wood was pale in colour and as smooth as glass but it was the sharpened tip that interested him. It was dark brown in colour and he could see from the way the light reflected off it, that it
was covered in something sticky. He was careful not to touch the substance but he took a tentative sniff only to find that it was completely odourless. He guessed right away that it was a poison of some kind and he decided that it would be in his interest to find out where this poison came from, just in case.
It was a couple of weeks later that he found out the secret of the poison. There was another band of humans roaming nearby for a few days and the local group finally decided that enough was enough; it was time to go out and meet them with a show of force to send them away and he decided to tag along and watch the proceedings. The journey to meet the invading group of humans took them through a stand of big trees with long thick trunks several metres in circumference. The trunks of these trees had no branches at all until way up at the top where they spread out and intermingled with their neighbours to create a continuous green canopy overhead in which birds called and creatures lived. The men in the group looked up amongst the treetops as if they were looking for something in particular. A call from one of them and a pointing finger indicated they’d found it. One of the men, a small wiry man stepped forward and taking a long strap of thick hide that he’d been carrying over his shoulder, he deftly threw one end around the trunk of the tree and caught it as it came back around at him. He then knotted the two ends together and stepped into this loop. Resting his backside against this looped leather strap, he used it to shuffle his way up the tall straight tree trunk. By leaning out backwards with his feet at forty five degree angles he was able to climb the tree with seemingly little effort. Vincent was impressed and decided that one day he’d try it for himself. The man climbed two thirds of the way up the tree before stopping. From where Vincent was hiding he couldn’t see what he was doing up there but through his scope it looked like the man was trying to cut something out of the tree trunk with a sliver of sharpened animal bone. After a few minutes of struggling, the man suddenly waved a hand down to his companions and dropped something down to them and then climbed down from the tree by the same method he used to climb up.
The group of men scouted around and got one biggish rock and one smaller one. They put the thing on the bigger rock and used the smaller one to crush it to a mush. Whilst this was happening, another man was making a fire nearby. Once the object had been crushed and pulped, they put it on a smooth stone that they carried with them. It had a small scoop in the centre, into which they carefully put the crushed up mush from the thing on the tree. One of the men then took another sharpened bone and made a small cut in his hand and held it up so that his blood dripped into and mixed with the mush. They put this rock onto the fire for what Vincent calculated to be around fifteen minutes or so before taking it off and using it to coat the tips of their spears. Vincent was amazed at what he was seeing and he made a decision that he would return and get some of those things from the trees for himself. It was always useful to have an assortment of weaponry at one’s disposal in a hostile environment and there may come a time when an effective poison is just the right thing.
Later that same day when the group encountered their invading neighbours and decided to engage them the newly coated spears were used. Vincent was surprised to see that the spears didn’t kill but just punctured the skin or cut it open. His local group didn’t seem bothered and after the invading group were scared off, he decided to follow them instead of his usual neighbours. He wanted to see what happened next and why the poison didn't work. Over the next three days he camped out nearby and watched through his scope for hours at a time. The first thing he noticed was on the first day after the encounter he saw one man he recognised and he looked a bit under the weather and was sweating heavily. There was a slight oily sheen all over his body as if he’d been working out for hours. During the course of that first day he saw all the men he recognised and all displayed that same sweaty sheen on their bodies. Other than that they seemed ok and behaved normally. They interacted with each other, played with their kids, hugged their women and often had occasion to make physical contact with each other, sometimes just a slight brush as they passed one another by. On the second day all of the men from the fight looked decidedly ill, with pale grey complexions and a deep throaty cough. One young man was being comforted by his wife who wiped his brow with her hand, kissed him and kept physical contact with him for hours. The third day the young man was dead and the young wife displayed the oily sheen on her skin. After a week the whole group were dead and Vincent learned all he needed to know about the poison. It worked not by killing quickly as most poisons do, but slowly and by making its host poisonous so that everyone with whom they came into physical contact would also be poisoned. If he’d ever regretted not interacting with these humans before, he didn’t any longer. He was yet to realise just how important a discovery this substance was to be.
It was getting late and the sun was setting over the distant mountains. Vincent loved to sit and watch the view on such evenings as this. Tonight though he felt a slight melancholy deep inside somewhere and sighed to himself; irritated by this feeling. He hated this; he knew what was to come and it depressed him. It made him feel like a weakling to be depressed. His mind suddenly filled with images he never saw in any waking moment of his life. As he looked through the cave entrance to the setting sun he suddenly saw a different landscape in his mind. This new landscape was filled with the same orange glow but it didn’t come from a sunset but from fires that were destroying everything in their path. Buildings burned, people ran screaming from an unseen enemy and everywhere there were white trees that swayed sadly in the evening breeze. He felt the urge to run, but from what he didn’t know. Then all at once there was silence save for the mournful sound of a woman crying into the night air. Terror gripped him as the images took over his consciousness and as he had learned, giving in to them made them end quicker. As the woman’s cries became screams they were suddenly joined by that of a baby. The woman’s cries stopped abruptly, a life ended bringing forth a new one. He walked towards the sounds feeling the need to hurry and as he came upon the scene that was now so familiar he saw her body.
She was beautiful and strangely familiar but he couldn’t quite find the memory of how he knew her or where from. Her knees were drawn up and her garments soaked in blood, both her own and that of the birth that had just taken place. Between her thighs lay the screaming newborn, a large boy still connected to her by a pulsating cord. He looked at the baby and felt a strange sense of connection that he couldn’t even begin to explain or understand. As he looked he became aware that he wasn’t alone; a huge black mist was also drawn to the child. Vincent was stricken with terror as he watched the black mist approach but he was powerless to act or even run away into the night. The mist began to take a more solid form and he saw a huge man in a cape and cowl reach down and, taking hold of the child’s ankles raised him aloft, slicing through the life giving cord which sprayed blood everywhere. The being held the child aloft while shouting something Vincent couldn’t quite hear.
He screamed at the being to stop but his pleas were ignored. He tried to run at the man to rescue the child but he couldn’t move. He was rooted to the spot, glued there by some invisible means that forced him to bear witness to this horrific scene. The being then put one large hand over the boy's face and smothered the life from him, then calmly threw the body into a midden and vanished into the night. Vincent screamed for the child and for his own inability to do anything to help and as always, he awoke from this nightmare sobbing for the child he didn’t know but felt such a connection with. He curled up on the floor of his cave and wept at his loneliness as the sun set over the mountains.
He awoke in the middle of the night with a start and the sudden urgent knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He leapt up from where he’d fallen asleep at the mouth of his cave in a foetal position after the waking nightmare of the evening before. His eyes felt swollen and his head ached but he shook himself awake and looked about him to find
the source of this feeling of being observed. He melted into the wall and listened. He was proud of his sharp hearing and it served him well over the years. A slight noise from his right caught his attention and he strained all of his focus in that direction. The sound came again and this time he knew what it was; breathing. Someone or something was inside his cave and breathing at him in the dark. Oh how he wished he had his night goggles from Moxal 3 on right now.
Silently he reached down and slid the knife from its sheath at his hip and at that very moment something lunged at him. Instinctively he moved to the side and as he did so, the knife in his right hand entered the man’s body and killed him, the poisoned spear in his hand falling to the floor. It all happened in such a rush, Vincent didn't mean to kill the man, he wouldn’t have wanted to and now in the space of a couple of minutes he’d woken to find the home he’d made for himself invaded by a hostile with a poisoned spear that would definitely have killed him within three days. He suddenly felt very alone and far from home, but where was home? He had no idea but at that moment there was one thing he did know. Home wasn’t here anymore. He’d have to move to another location and start over.
Within an hour he packed up all of his belongings and was on his way. He carried the body of the man up to the top of the cliff and dropped him over the edge so that if his fellows found him they’d assume he’d fallen and wouldn’t realise that an alien human was among them and decide to come looking for him with those poisoned spears. As was his habit, he thanked the man for giving his life so that he could live before dropping the body over the cliff and he genuinely felt very sorry. He’d never killed anyone before except in the line of duty during his military service and it didn’t feel good at all; after all he was the invader here and the guy was only defending what he saw as his own territory. If he moved briskly he should be able to make several miles before the sun came up so that if the group of humans did decide to follow, he’d have a good head start on them. He didn’t think they would follow; he’d cover his tracks well enough but it was always best to be ready just in case.
He decided to move towards the mountains he’d spent the last five years watching at sunset and sunrise most days since his arrival on this planet. He made a remarkably accurate estimate that they were roughly a hundred miles away, give or take a few miles and he was confident he could reach the foothills in three days if no trouble befell him on the journey. He would do the walking in two shifts, from before dawn until mid morning, then from late afternoon until fully dark. That way he would avoid being out in the open during the greater part of the day when the local inhabitants were likely to be up and around. It also meant he could do the greater part of his sleeping during daylight hours and stay awake during darkness when there was the likelihood of more danger from predatory animals. During his time on the planet, he didn't encounter any predators that caused him any real worry for his safety. There was a type of wild dog like creature that roamed in packs of three or four, but they were timid creatures by nature and Vincent felt sure they’d not be brave enough to tackle anything as large as he was. He didn’t allow himself to get complacent though and he was aware of the very real possibility that other, far more dangerous predators awaited him in other parts of the landscape.
As dawn broke on the third morning of his journey, Vincent noticed the change in the temperature. It was cooler here and he welcomed it. Where he’d set up home until just days ago, it was an almost tropical climate with hot sunshine and heavy downpours of rain. The winters were fairly cool but he’d never seen ice or snow here in all of his five year stay. He’d become so used to the heat that he now felt decidedly chilly. He’d reached the foothills of the mountains at last and found they weren’t really mountains at all, more like very big hills and he felt sure he’d scale them easily in one days walk. He’d have to scale them too, he couldn’t go around as they stretched off beyond the horizon in both directions and he was thankful that they turned out to be not as high as they seemed from all those miles back. He set up camp and decided to hunt for something to eat. He’d not eaten during his trek, deciding not to risk drawing attention to himself by lighting a fire to cook with so he went without and just drank from streams that snaked here and there all over the landscape. He learned that the only real way to tell if water was safe to drink was to see if other creatures drank there. If they did, then he’d have to trust that it was safe for him to do so. He had no other means to check for water safety so he had to take the risk. The water on this planet was a sort of earthy pink colour rather than the green or blue he’d seen on other planets and when he first arrived he thought maybe he was doomed to die of thirst or be poisoned by the water. As it turned out he found it tasted marvellous and never had any adverse effects on his health. He knew he’d been lucky and was aware that things could have turned out so much worse. He breakfasted on spit roasted meat that tasted like heaven after three days of fasting and relaxed him enough to make him decide to sleep for a few hours. He found the safest place he could and after sending out his thoughts for the nightmare to evade him, he settled down and was fast asleep within a few minutes.
“Vincent. Vincent.” The voice came to him from far away as though carried on the morning mist from a time before the first dawn. “Vincent,” louder now, closer. “Vincent, listen to me Vincent.” A woman’s voice; soft and friendly. He turned towards the sound and searched for its source but saw nothing but white mist. “I am with you Vincent. From the moment of your birth I have walked with you and will walk with you until you go to the land of the dead to join the ancestors.” Such a soft voice, he felt as if someone were hugging him close and surrounding him with love. He reached for that voice with his mind; he wanted that enveloping love so much that it hurt. “Fear not brave one, you are not alone. I am with you as you meet your destiny; we are all with you, all the lost ones.” The voice was so close it sounded like someone was right beside him, holding him close, safe. He’d never experienced feeling love before and this was overwhelming to him in its intensity.
“Who is it? Who are you? Where are you? I can’t see you, please,” he called out into the white mist, suddenly afraid of being alone again.
“Fear not brave one, the waiting is over now. The hand of destiny rests upon your shoulder. It is time to take up the sword and right the great wrong of our people.”
“Destiny? what destiny? what people? what do I do? help me please,” he pleaded.
“I am with you always Vincent, fear not. The fury of our nation will be your rock and your stay, as I promised at the moment of your rebirth. Trust Vincent, trust, trust.” The voice faded with that one word repeating in his mind, trust, trust. He called out to the voice not to leave him but he was alone in the mist and he wept for the love he’d felt so briefly and lost. He awoke with the tears still fresh on his cheeks as the dream faded into the mist. He packed up, looked towards the mountains and set off towards whatever destiny awaited him.
The sun was getting low behind the mountain tops as he started upward. As he climbed he was aware for the first time of how beautiful this planet really was. Up until now his only concern was surviving and apart from the times he sat and watched the sunset and sunrise from the entrance to his cave, he never felt able to take the time to appreciate the planet’s beauty on an emotional level. He looked back across the valley and could see the location that was his safe haven for the past five years. He stopped on the path and took a few minutes to look at it with real focus. He felt a little sad to be leaving the only place that offered him a home in order to run yet again. He wondered if he would have to run for the rest of his life. He hoped not but thought he probably would have to.
“Thank you,” he said into the air. “Thank you for the safety, for the shelter.” He turned away and continued to climb. The path he was walking took him up the side of the mountain in a gentle zig zag and as he climbed he was afforded the most wonderful view of this
place that gave him refuge. He let his thoughts drift back to when he arrived here five years ago, scared and desperate, a runaway, an escaped convict innocent of the crimes he’d been accused of.
Vincent learned how to pilot during his time in the TCC. Tactical Combat personnel had no choice about it; they all learned to pilot and he loved it. He had a natural flair for it and gained his wings in record time. The dumpy little craft he managed to steal was just a tramper in its day to day life, but to Vincent it was a symbol of his liberty and freedom. After it landed on this planet and delivered him to relative safety, its engines died for the last time and he shed tears for it. He laid a hand on it and gave thanks before walking away. It took him four days walking to find the shelter of his cave and during that time he almost died of thirst and lost twenty pounds in weight due to not finding anything to eat. He had the misfortune to land in the middle of the only desert this planet offered and when he finally found the cave with abundant wildlife and plenty of water nearby, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. From that moment on, the cave was the finest home he could wish for and he would never forget it. Now here he was five years later and he was on the move again. In one way he was sad. He found safety and was able to live reasonably well but being discovered by the inhabitants could only mean trouble for him and maybe even for them too. On the other hand being on the move again gave him something else to focus on, a new horizon to look for, new excitements perhaps. He didn’t know but it felt good to have a new challenge again, he’d gotten soft.
“A new challenge will keep me sharp,” he said as he strode purposefully forward.
*****
He crept closer, eyes never leaving his quarry. He trod with care so as not to make a sound that would scare the creature away and lose him his meal. Over the past five years he became expert at this and he bided his time. There’s no reason to rush things; take your time and wait for the right moment and you’ll do it right first time. When he was sure he could get no closer without alerting the shy creature, he raised his blade. He closed one eye and made sure his aim was right on target and then with one swift practised movement the blade flew silently through the air and sank into the creature’s heart. He walked over and crouched over the dying creature, looked down at it and placed a hand gently on its flank.
“Thank you for your life that gives me sustenance,” Vincent said as he withdrew his blade from the now dead creature, scooped him up and carried him away. He always made sure he took only the old and weak when he hunted for his food. He enjoyed a special connection with animals and often felt more like one of them than he did a human being. He admired the simplicity of their existence; eat, sleep, keep warm. No fuss, no hate and no deceit. With animals you know where you stand. He always trusted them and they usually seemed to respond to him without fear.
The small cave entrance was well hidden in the cliff wall but as always, he stopped some distance off and took a little time to sit and watch, just in case. He took out his scope to check out the cave entrance and only when he felt sure there were no uninvited visitors lurking around, he got up and went in to prepare his meal. With expert precision he gutted, skinned and quartered the animal ready for cooking. He took the entrails out a little way away and left them for the wild creatures that roamed around these parts. He believed in sharing his good fortune with his animal brothers and sisters and they repaid him by alerting him if anything strange was around. He got to know their calls and cries and could now recognise a bark of fear or a growl of warning easily and never ignored them. Back at the cave he spread out the hide and started to scrape it clean. He could use the skin to make some new garments for himself; nothing was ever wasted. He was no tailor but he got by. When he escaped the Cryo Stasis facility he made a point of getting his belongings from the admin block. He wanted his own clothes and his blades back. Those coveralls they made him wear at the facility wouldn’t last five minutes out here. He patched up his pants a few times over the seat and the knees and the elbows of his shirt but he was hoping to make himself a new one out of the hides of this particular creature whose leather was the softest he’d encountered since coming to this planet. With this latest piece, he reckoned he would have enough to make a new over shirt which would be more hard wearing and would be warmer in the winter months. If it was successful, he might even try to make a new pair of pants. But first things first, he was hungry and his thoughts turned to food.
A couple of hours later he ate a very acceptable meal of roasted meat and some edible roots he dug up. He knew what plant foods were safe to eat by studying the indigenous human life that lived on this planet. They knew nothing of his existence however but he got to know their ways very well over the time he’d been their secret neighbour. When he first came here and saw these humans he toyed with the idea of joining them and living amongst them but after a few weeks of secretly observing them he decided that would not be an ideal situation for him. They were very primitive humans and were a bit too unpredictable for his liking. They seemed peaceful enough most of the time but could suddenly become enraged for no obvious reason he could see. They were also very territorial and would have spats and fights with other groups of their own kind who strayed too near their boundaries. The winter before last, the one that Vincent always thought of as their leader passed away and there was much posturing and promenading from the other males who all thought they were the ideal candidate to take over his role.
He would never forget what happened next and would always thank his instincts for telling him to remain invisible. One afternoon everything came to a head and a fight broke out amongst the two leading contenders. It started with a bit of pushing and shoving but quickly escalated into a full blown wrestling match. The bigger of the two got his opponent on the ground and sat on him. He clenched both hands together into a club and raised his arms above him only to bring it crashing down onto the man’s skull killing him quickly. Even though Vincent watched the proceedings from a safe distance through his scope he reckoned he could hear the thud and the squelch as the guy’s head caved in. It wasn’t so much the killing that shocked him, it was what happened afterwards that chilled him. The victor wrenched open his dead opponent’s skull, reached in and scooped out some of the brain matter. Then he stood up and holding his prize high above his head he opened his mouth wide, displaying a fearsome pair of long fangs and roared so loud he really did hear it. Then he stuffed the steaming mush into his mouth and chewed. This sight sickened Vincent and he vomited all down his shirt front. He ran back to his cave stopping twice more on the way to bring up more of his insides.
“My god,” he kept saying to himself. “My god he ate the guy’s brains.”
He kept well out of their way after that but still observed them enough to know what they were up to and to learn what he could eat and what he couldn’t. He discovered for instance that there was a type of fish on this planet that was deadly poisonous. He saw a group of their kids playing by a small pond one day. They were playing at fishing and he supposed that such games helped them learn the survival skills they need when they grow up and need to provide for their group. They all lay down on their stomachs and sank their arms into the still water. Every so often one or another would suddenly turn on his back, his arms flying out of the water grasping a still flailing fish triumphantly in the air. They ate the fish raw right there by the pond and threw the inedible bits back into the water to feed whatever else lurked down there in the depths. One little kid caught a weird looking fish one day; one that Vincent had never seen before. It was big and brightly coloured with long dangling tail fins. All but one of them ate that fish and from the looks on their faces, thoroughly enjoyed it.
A day later he was out hunting when he heard cries off in the distance. It sounded like people wailing. He went towards the sound and used his scope to observe what the fuss was all about. He saw a group of the humans building a huge bonfire. A group of females were standing a little way off, wailing and beating their breasts with their own fists. One of the males turned and signalled to the others and from amongst the group he saw five of the males walk out towards the pile of wood, each carrying the body of a small child. The one small boy who had not eaten the fish the day before, stood there sombre hand in hand with his mother. The men stood over that fire all through the night, feeding the flames with more wood until the small bodies had been reduced to ash. A hole was dug and the entire remains of the fire was carefully scraped into it and covered over. When this was done, five women came over and placed small stones and rocks in the shape of five fishes as a kind of grave marker, each with long dangling tail fins. Vincent decided he never wanted to eat fish ever again.
The indigenous humans used spears for hunting. Some were small and thin and were used for throwing, others were longer and thicker and were used for jabbing at close quarters. Vincent found one of the small thin spears once at the base of a tree. The thrower had obviously missed his target and not been able to find it again. It was a rare find as they always retrieved these objects. He often wondered why, when they were easy enough to make. He’d seen them being made and each one only took an hour or so. It wasn’t until he found this one he began to understand why they didn’t like to lose them. The spear itself was about a metre long and made of strong but pliable wood from the tender branches of a tree that was plentiful everywhere he’d been on this planet. The wood was pale in colour and as smooth as glass but it was the sharpened tip that interested him. It was dark brown in colour and he could see from the way the light reflected off it, that it
It was a couple of weeks later that he found out the secret of the poison. There was another band of humans roaming nearby for a few days and the local group finally decided that enough was enough; it was time to go out and meet them with a show of force to send them away and he decided to tag along and watch the proceedings. The journey to meet the invading group of humans took them through a stand of big trees with long thick trunks several metres in circumference. The trunks of these trees had no branches at all until way up at the top where they spread out and intermingled with their neighbours to create a continuous green canopy overhead in which birds called and creatures lived. The men in the group looked up amongst the treetops as if they were looking for something in particular. A call from one of them and a pointing finger indicated they’d found it. One of the men, a small wiry man stepped forward and taking a long strap of thick hide that he’d been carrying over his shoulder, he deftly threw one end around the trunk of the tree and caught it as it came back around at him. He then knotted the two ends together and stepped into this loop. Resting his backside against this looped leather strap, he used it to shuffle his way up the tall straight tree trunk. By leaning out backwards with his feet at forty five degree angles he was able to climb the tree with seemingly little effort. Vincent was impressed and decided that one day he’d try it for himself. The man climbed two thirds of the way up the tree before stopping. From where Vincent was hiding he couldn’t see what he was doing up there but through his scope it looked like the man was trying to cut something out of the tree trunk with a sliver of sharpened animal bone. After a few minutes of struggling, the man suddenly waved a hand down to his companions and dropped something down to them and then climbed down from the tree by the same method he used to climb up.
The group of men scouted around and got one biggish rock and one smaller one. They put the thing on the bigger rock and used the smaller one to crush it to a mush. Whilst this was happening, another man was making a fire nearby. Once the object had been crushed and pulped, they put it on a smooth stone that they carried with them. It had a small scoop in the centre, into which they carefully put the crushed up mush from the thing on the tree. One of the men then took another sharpened bone and made a small cut in his hand and held it up so that his blood dripped into and mixed with the mush. They put this rock onto the fire for what Vincent calculated to be around fifteen minutes or so before taking it off and using it to coat the tips of their spears. Vincent was amazed at what he was seeing and he made a decision that he would return and get some of those things from the trees for himself. It was always useful to have an assortment of weaponry at one’s disposal in a hostile environment and there may come a time when an effective poison is just the right thing.
Later that same day when the group encountered their invading neighbours and decided to engage them the newly coated spears were used. Vincent was surprised to see that the spears didn’t kill but just punctured the skin or cut it open. His local group didn’t seem bothered and after the invading group were scared off, he decided to follow them instead of his usual neighbours. He wanted to see what happened next and why the poison didn't work. Over the next three days he camped out nearby and watched through his scope for hours at a time. The first thing he noticed was on the first day after the encounter he saw one man he recognised and he looked a bit under the weather and was sweating heavily. There was a slight oily sheen all over his body as if he’d been working out for hours. During the course of that first day he saw all the men he recognised and all displayed that same sweaty sheen on their bodies. Other than that they seemed ok and behaved normally. They interacted with each other, played with their kids, hugged their women and often had occasion to make physical contact with each other, sometimes just a slight brush as they passed one another by. On the second day all of the men from the fight looked decidedly ill, with pale grey complexions and a deep throaty cough. One young man was being comforted by his wife who wiped his brow with her hand, kissed him and kept physical contact with him for hours. The third day the young man was dead and the young wife displayed the oily sheen on her skin. After a week the whole group were dead and Vincent learned all he needed to know about the poison. It worked not by killing quickly as most poisons do, but slowly and by making its host poisonous so that everyone with whom they came into physical contact would also be poisoned. If he’d ever regretted not interacting with these humans before, he didn’t any longer. He was yet to realise just how important a discovery this substance was to be.
It was getting late and the sun was setting over the distant mountains. Vincent loved to sit and watch the view on such evenings as this. Tonight though he felt a slight melancholy deep inside somewhere and sighed to himself; irritated by this feeling. He hated this; he knew what was to come and it depressed him. It made him feel like a weakling to be depressed. His mind suddenly filled with images he never saw in any waking moment of his life. As he looked through the cave entrance to the setting sun he suddenly saw a different landscape in his mind. This new landscape was filled with the same orange glow but it didn’t come from a sunset but from fires that were destroying everything in their path. Buildings burned, people ran screaming from an unseen enemy and everywhere there were white trees that swayed sadly in the evening breeze. He felt the urge to run, but from what he didn’t know. Then all at once there was silence save for the mournful sound of a woman crying into the night air. Terror gripped him as the images took over his consciousness and as he had learned, giving in to them made them end quicker. As the woman’s cries became screams they were suddenly joined by that of a baby. The woman’s cries stopped abruptly, a life ended bringing forth a new one. He walked towards the sounds feeling the need to hurry and as he came upon the scene that was now so familiar he saw her body.
She was beautiful and strangely familiar but he couldn’t quite find the memory of how he knew her or where from. Her knees were drawn up and her garments soaked in blood, both her own and that of the birth that had just taken place. Between her thighs lay the screaming newborn, a large boy still connected to her by a pulsating cord. He looked at the baby and felt a strange sense of connection that he couldn’t even begin to explain or understand. As he looked he became aware that he wasn’t alone; a huge black mist was also drawn to the child. Vincent was stricken with terror as he watched the black mist approach but he was powerless to act or even run away into the night. The mist began to take a more solid form and he saw a huge man in a cape and cowl reach down and, taking hold of the child’s ankles raised him aloft, slicing through the life giving cord which sprayed blood everywhere. The being held the child aloft while shouting something Vincent couldn’t quite hear.
He screamed at the being to stop but his pleas were ignored. He tried to run at the man to rescue the child but he couldn’t move. He was rooted to the spot, glued there by some invisible means that forced him to bear witness to this horrific scene. The being then put one large hand over the boy's face and smothered the life from him, then calmly threw the body into a midden and vanished into the night. Vincent screamed for the child and for his own inability to do anything to help and as always, he awoke from this nightmare sobbing for the child he didn’t know but felt such a connection with. He curled up on the floor of his cave and wept at his loneliness as the sun set over the mountains.
He awoke in the middle of the night with a start and the sudden urgent knowledge that he wasn’t alone. He leapt up from where he’d fallen asleep at the mouth of his cave in a foetal position after the waking nightmare of the evening before. His eyes felt swollen and his head ached but he shook himself awake and looked about him to find
Silently he reached down and slid the knife from its sheath at his hip and at that very moment something lunged at him. Instinctively he moved to the side and as he did so, the knife in his right hand entered the man’s body and killed him, the poisoned spear in his hand falling to the floor. It all happened in such a rush, Vincent didn't mean to kill the man, he wouldn’t have wanted to and now in the space of a couple of minutes he’d woken to find the home he’d made for himself invaded by a hostile with a poisoned spear that would definitely have killed him within three days. He suddenly felt very alone and far from home, but where was home? He had no idea but at that moment there was one thing he did know. Home wasn’t here anymore. He’d have to move to another location and start over.
Within an hour he packed up all of his belongings and was on his way. He carried the body of the man up to the top of the cliff and dropped him over the edge so that if his fellows found him they’d assume he’d fallen and wouldn’t realise that an alien human was among them and decide to come looking for him with those poisoned spears. As was his habit, he thanked the man for giving his life so that he could live before dropping the body over the cliff and he genuinely felt very sorry. He’d never killed anyone before except in the line of duty during his military service and it didn’t feel good at all; after all he was the invader here and the guy was only defending what he saw as his own territory. If he moved briskly he should be able to make several miles before the sun came up so that if the group of humans did decide to follow, he’d have a good head start on them. He didn’t think they would follow; he’d cover his tracks well enough but it was always best to be ready just in case.
He decided to move towards the mountains he’d spent the last five years watching at sunset and sunrise most days since his arrival on this planet. He made a remarkably accurate estimate that they were roughly a hundred miles away, give or take a few miles and he was confident he could reach the foothills in three days if no trouble befell him on the journey. He would do the walking in two shifts, from before dawn until mid morning, then from late afternoon until fully dark. That way he would avoid being out in the open during the greater part of the day when the local inhabitants were likely to be up and around. It also meant he could do the greater part of his sleeping during daylight hours and stay awake during darkness when there was the likelihood of more danger from predatory animals. During his time on the planet, he didn't encounter any predators that caused him any real worry for his safety. There was a type of wild dog like creature that roamed in packs of three or four, but they were timid creatures by nature and Vincent felt sure they’d not be brave enough to tackle anything as large as he was. He didn’t allow himself to get complacent though and he was aware of the very real possibility that other, far more dangerous predators awaited him in other parts of the landscape.
As dawn broke on the third morning of his journey, Vincent noticed the change in the temperature. It was cooler here and he welcomed it. Where he’d set up home until just days ago, it was an almost tropical climate with hot sunshine and heavy downpours of rain. The winters were fairly cool but he’d never seen ice or snow here in all of his five year stay. He’d become so used to the heat that he now felt decidedly chilly. He’d reached the foothills of the mountains at last and found they weren’t really mountains at all, more like very big hills and he felt sure he’d scale them easily in one days walk. He’d have to scale them too, he couldn’t go around as they stretched off beyond the horizon in both directions and he was thankful that they turned out to be not as high as they seemed from all those miles back. He set up camp and decided to hunt for something to eat. He’d not eaten during his trek, deciding not to risk drawing attention to himself by lighting a fire to cook with so he went without and just drank from streams that snaked here and there all over the landscape. He learned that the only real way to tell if water was safe to drink was to see if other creatures drank there. If they did, then he’d have to trust that it was safe for him to do so. He had no other means to check for water safety so he had to take the risk. The water on this planet was a sort of earthy pink colour rather than the green or blue he’d seen on other planets and when he first arrived he thought maybe he was doomed to die of thirst or be poisoned by the water. As it turned out he found it tasted marvellous and never had any adverse effects on his health. He knew he’d been lucky and was aware that things could have turned out so much worse. He breakfasted on spit roasted meat that tasted like heaven after three days of fasting and relaxed him enough to make him decide to sleep for a few hours. He found the safest place he could and after sending out his thoughts for the nightmare to evade him, he settled down and was fast asleep within a few minutes.
“Vincent. Vincent.” The voice came to him from far away as though carried on the morning mist from a time before the first dawn. “Vincent,” louder now, closer. “Vincent, listen to me Vincent.” A woman’s voice; soft and friendly. He turned towards the sound and searched for its source but saw nothing but white mist. “I am with you Vincent. From the moment of your birth I have walked with you and will walk with you until you go to the land of the dead to join the ancestors.” Such a soft voice, he felt as if someone were hugging him close and surrounding him with love. He reached for that voice with his mind; he wanted that enveloping love so much that it hurt. “Fear not brave one, you are not alone. I am with you as you meet your destiny; we are all with you, all the lost ones.” The voice was so close it sounded like someone was right beside him, holding him close, safe. He’d never experienced feeling love before and this was overwhelming to him in its intensity.
“Who is it? Who are you? Where are you? I can’t see you, please,” he called out into the white mist, suddenly afraid of being alone again.
“Fear not brave one, the waiting is over now. The hand of destiny rests upon your shoulder. It is time to take up the sword and right the great wrong of our people.”
“Destiny? what destiny? what people? what do I do? help me please,” he pleaded.
“I am with you always Vincent, fear not. The fury of our nation will be your rock and your stay, as I promised at the moment of your rebirth. Trust Vincent, trust, trust.” The voice faded with that one word repeating in his mind, trust, trust. He called out to the voice not to leave him but he was alone in the mist and he wept for the love he’d felt so briefly and lost. He awoke with the tears still fresh on his cheeks as the dream faded into the mist. He packed up, looked towards the mountains and set off towards whatever destiny awaited him.
The sun was getting low behind the mountain tops as he started upward. As he climbed he was aware for the first time of how beautiful this planet really was. Up until now his only concern was surviving and apart from the times he sat and watched the sunset and sunrise from the entrance to his cave, he never felt able to take the time to appreciate the planet’s beauty on an emotional level. He looked back across the valley and could see the location that was his safe haven for the past five years. He stopped on the path and took a few minutes to look at it with real focus. He felt a little sad to be leaving the only place that offered him a home in order to run yet again. He wondered if he would have to run for the rest of his life. He hoped not but thought he probably would have to.
“Thank you,” he said into the air. “Thank you for the safety, for the shelter.” He turned away and continued to climb. The path he was walking took him up the side of the mountain in a gentle zig zag and as he climbed he was afforded the most wonderful view of this
Vincent learned how to pilot during his time in the TCC. Tactical Combat personnel had no choice about it; they all learned to pilot and he loved it. He had a natural flair for it and gained his wings in record time. The dumpy little craft he managed to steal was just a tramper in its day to day life, but to Vincent it was a symbol of his liberty and freedom. After it landed on this planet and delivered him to relative safety, its engines died for the last time and he shed tears for it. He laid a hand on it and gave thanks before walking away. It took him four days walking to find the shelter of his cave and during that time he almost died of thirst and lost twenty pounds in weight due to not finding anything to eat. He had the misfortune to land in the middle of the only desert this planet offered and when he finally found the cave with abundant wildlife and plenty of water nearby, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. From that moment on, the cave was the finest home he could wish for and he would never forget it. Now here he was five years later and he was on the move again. In one way he was sad. He found safety and was able to live reasonably well but being discovered by the inhabitants could only mean trouble for him and maybe even for them too. On the other hand being on the move again gave him something else to focus on, a new horizon to look for, new excitements perhaps. He didn’t know but it felt good to have a new challenge again, he’d gotten soft.
“A new challenge will keep me sharp,” he said as he strode purposefully forward.
*****