The soldiers led them off the hilltop and down a narrow trail towards the rising suns. Ed was glad of the warmth on his face, but his lack of footwear slowed him considerably. Pol, however, had tougher soles and was able to move along with much less discomfort.
Their escorts had little sympathy though and provided not aggressive but continual encouragement to move as quickly as possible. Their nervous eyes constantly scanned the skies for an unknown threat that only they were a party to.
They’d just dropped down beneath the treeline when the lead soldier stopped suddenly and stared at his handheld device. He turned and a brief conversation with his colleague led to them becoming somewhat elated over something. They did a version of a human high five, embraced and even did a little dance. Ed realised that their teeth-baring wasn’t anything to be concerned about, it was a Klatt interpretation of a smile.
‘Something’s just happened that they’re pleased about,’ he said, stopping to rub the soles of his feet.
‘A nice comfortable cabin with soft carpets and a hot meal would be just perfect right now. Perhaps it’s that,’ said Pol, trying to look positive.
‘I just thought, has your DOVI got an inbuilt translator?’ Ed asked.
Pol nodded.
‘You told me not to use it though.’
‘That was with the last lot of captors. I hadn’t thought about trying it with them,’ said Ed, nodding at the still celebrating soldiers.
‘You go first,’ said Pol. ‘You’re better with this stuff than me.’
Ed shrugged, took a last look to ensure the soldiers weren’t looking before he closed his eyes and tentatively felt around. No head-splitting pain materialised and when he opened his eyes again, their two captors hadn’t reacted at all. He quickly turned on his inbuilt translator. It took a few seconds to recognise their particular Klatt dialect before he could understand what they were saying.
‘…whole fleet?’
‘Almost five hundred and the GDA will be blamed.’
‘Our orders haven’t changed then?’
‘No, their bodies won’t be on a Ralf ship now, but must still be discovered in Ralf territory.’
Ed reacted slightly at the last statement, but was lucky as neither of the soldiers noticed it.
‘Is the facility near?’
‘Yes.’
‘How far?’
‘It’s down in the next valley.’
‘Right, we’ll take them there. Stay friendly and don’t give them any indication of what’s about to happen. We’ll kill them down by the river so we don’t have to carry the bodies too far.’
Ed immediately decommissioned their weapons and keeping a smile on his face told Pol what he had learned. Her eyes widened, but she sensibly didn’t react to give the game away.
‘Wait till we’re walking again and I’ll take the front one and you the rear,’ he said. ‘I’ll accidentally stumble into him, that will be the sign. Move quickly and lethally.’
‘Two-faced bastards have it coming,’ she hissed.
Ed smiled nervously.
‘You sound just like Andy again.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Pol. ‘I think.’
The soldiers finished their celebration and indicated for them to continue as before, the one with the device leading with the other bringing up the rear.
Ed waited and watched. He could see that the scaly Klatt skin appeared quite thick and rugged, so he envisioned needing some sort of club or weapon to subdue his opponent. Moments later, as they rounded a corner under a rocky outcrop, he noticed a number of assorted boulders that over time had dropped from the cliffs above. He coughed to ensure Pol was paying attention, pretended to slip on some of the gravel and piled into the back of the leading soldier. Snatching up a fist-sized rock with a sharp edge, he pummelled the soldier on the side of the neck until he stopped moving.
Turning quickly to see how Pol was faring, he found her sitting on the second soldier’s body, dabbing blood away from a cut eye with her sleeve.
‘A lucky punch,’ she said. ‘Before I snapped his scrawny neck.’
Ed nodded, took a deep breath and looked around.
‘We need to search them and hide the bodies,’ he said, grimacing at the hard rocky ground. He picked up the small tablet the soldier had been using. It showed a map of the terrain with the track they were on clearly marked and leading downhill towards a river below. ‘We were lucky,’ he said, glancing up at Pol. ‘The river’s only a few hundred metres further.’
‘Does it tell us what planet this is?’ Pol asked, finally stopping the bleeding and standing back up.
‘It might if I can work out how the thing operates.’
‘Give it here,’ she said. ‘You see if either of their boots will fit you.’
Both pairs were several sizes too large, but Ed ripped one of the blankets from the cells they were still wearing into strips and wrapped them around his sore feet. It wasn’t ideal, but the wide boots would now stay on and were decidedly better than bare feet. He had more success with the clothing, finding that a better fit than the boots. Pol on the other hand was not so lucky and looked at Ed with disdain.
‘Fucking two-armed freaks,’ she mumbled, as she settled for tying her blanket around her waist and draping the other soldier’s jacket over her four shoulders.
‘Hey, it’s not so bad,’ said Ed. ‘It could have been an ice planet.’
They dragged the bodies off the trail and hid them in amongst some low bushes. Ed reactivated the weapons and gave one to Pol, who immediately started bashing it on the ground.
‘What are you doing? You might need that,’ he said, staring.
‘Trigger guard,’ she replied without looking up. ‘Can’t get my fat fingers inside it.’
She finally succeeded in breaking the guard at one end, then she bent it back and forth at the other until the metal fractured. She glanced up and grinned, tossing the broken guard nonchalantly over her shoulder.
‘Happy now?’ he said.
‘Eminently,’ she replied.
He turned and began to trek down the path again, rolling his eyes as he went.
‘I’ve never known anyone learn a new language quite as thoroughly as you,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘One had some elocutional help from Cleopatra,’ she said. ‘She gives me homework.’
‘The swearing lessons have gone exceptionally well.’
‘Bollocks.’
Ed chuckled to himself as they trudged downhill.
The river running through the bottom of the valley was close and they stood glancing up and downstream only five minutes later, after emerging from the trees. The path they were on split here, one way upstream and the other down.
‘Which way then?’ asked Pol, nodding at the tablet in Ed’s hand.
‘Downstream, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Up just goes back into the hills we’ve descended from but then again, there’s a weird blanked out area a few kilometres downstream. It’s hatched with red lines like a no go area.’
Pol looked at the screen.
‘There’s nothing in the menu that’ll tell you what it is?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know – I’m scared to start pressing things in case I lose the map.’
‘Let’s go towards whatever it is, but not on the path. We can conceal ourselves in the trees once we get closer.’
‘Okay, we’ll drop off the path about a kilometre short and approach carefully. It could be some dangerous flora in that area, or a radiation leak or—’
‘A holiday resort, with comfortable beds and margaritas,’ interjected Pol.
‘Even that,’ said Ed, smirking. ‘You really have developed Andy’s sense of humour, you know.’
He looked downstream. ‘Come on, let’s go see what this strange hatched area is.’