Jeek
Goddamn miracle we’re all suited up for another day in the mines when the bomb hits. The ground shakes, a roar splits the air, and the gates of hell open as a huge plume of smoke and fire rises above the newts’ village.
At the top of the mine shaft, our transpo hasn’t left yet. Foreman’s talking to a guard at the security gate who’s got someone else on the radio. They’re falling over each other piecing together out what’s gone wrong. Once they figure it out, we’re back in the transpo, flying to the village. “Impromptu recovery mission,” foreman says.
Coming back down, we hover over that big old building in the centre of town. Their only real permanent structure, once a high-ceilinged open-air gathering place that dwarfed all the one-room huts surrounding it. Now it’s a ruin. Rubble everywhere. The stink of overdone barbecue choking the air. A thick layer of dust and smoke obscuring everything, the pale light of the blue sun barely peeking through. Some of the local lizard-folk try scaling the wreckage, but a cadre of ValuCorp SecuriCorps guards holds them at bay.
On the ground, we pick through the debris, tossing huge chunks of plaster and wood aside as we go. Thank god for our exosuits. The electromechanical exoskeleton lets me to lift five times my weight. It also has a built-in sensor to locate people trapped in a cave-in by their ID implants, so I know who’s under this burning heap the moment we arrive. Five of our boys. As I feared, Ramirez is among them.
Me and Ramirez have shared a bunk at the civilian barracks since the day I got here three years ago. He’s religious, though; like Catholic religious. So on Sundays when I go down to earn extra money for my girls back home, he goes into the village. The newts let us use the big communal building as a substitute for just about anything. Mosque, synagogue, church, whatever. They don’t judge. It’s not like the place was an architectural marvel or anything. Just a bunch of deadfall lashed together by vines and packed with mud. But local legend says it stood there hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Now it’s just an ash heap smothering my teammates. My roommate. My best friend.
Ramirez is a couple of feet in front of me, and I dig with furious resolve to expose him, careful not to put weight on him. The suit’s stupid heavy and I don’t want to crush him any more if possible. A couple more miners who had the day off show up to help dig, and a whole platoon of SecuriCorps guards report for crowd control. Their sergeant barks orders at the newts as if they understand English or something: “Remain calm. Stay back. We’ll handle this.”
“What the hell happened?” someone asks.
“Red eyes,” a guard says. “Ship came out of nowhere. Left just as quick.”
Bad news. The Goulangaan. Stubby guys with grey skin, beady red eyes, and a vicious temper when things didn’t go their way. We thought they didn’t know about our little mining operation here. Guess that’s changed now.
When our people made first contact with the red eyes a few years ago, there was a language barrier. Our linguists got working on it, though, because we wanted to negotiate trade agreements. Put together a cultural exchange. But talks broke down once the Goulangaan’s primary demand was deciphered: “Accept our Pantheon as your salvation or we’ll wipe you out of existence.”
Just our luck. Our first chance to befriend an advanced alien race, and they’re a bunch of religious zealots.
My heart skips a beat as I unearth a shoe. I use that as a guide for where Ramirez’s head should be. The newts are restless. Agitated. Groaning in that croaky tongue of theirs. I reckon some of their own are buried under here too.
Newts look like overgrown salamanders who walk upright and cover themselves with loincloths. Seriously. A little on the primitive side. Things like agriculture, fire, and the wheel are relative newcomers in their society. Under ordinary circumstances we ignore cultures like this. We’re sworn not to interfere in the development of emerging civilizations. But these guys happened to be sitting on a geological anomaly. The biggest ditrellium deposit in the known galaxy. So we made an exception.
Behind me someone finds a body. What’s left of one, anyway. “Oh crap, that’s not Gennedy, is it?” I ask. My sensor says yes, but the guy who dug him out can’t answer, bent over double getting sick.
What’s ditrellium? Long story short, it’s the stuff that makes starships go vroom. Transwarp is impossible without it. Comes in handy when you need to outrun an alien guerrilla army of religious fanatics who want to follow you home and blow up your planet.
The newts live a peaceful enough existence, but they don’t got a clue what they’re sitting on. They think ditrellium’s just a pretty rock. They wear pieces of it on strings around their necks. Ramirez befriended one of their kids before I got here. Cute little guy named Jeek. In the kid’s hut, it hangs on the wall for decoration. A chunk big enough to send a battle cruiser to the other side of the galaxy and back. Just hanging there so they can watch the light dance through it as the sun crosses the sky. It makes cool patterns on the wall, though; dancing, splintered iridescence all the colours of the rainbow and then some.
I dig where Ramirez’s head should be but find the palm of his hand instead. Still attached, though. “Hang on, buddy.” The geometry of his body baffles me. I follow his arm through the rocky debris, praying it’ll lead me to his head.
To one side they’re pulling out another body. Still alive this time. Shastri, the cook. In triumph, foreman calls for a stretcher.
There’s the back of Ramirez’s head. He’s still drawing breath, still in one piece. “Got you, buddy.” My voice high, constricted. Maybe it’s the smoke, or the stench. Maybe I’m going to lose it. Ramirez inhales sharply and yells as I pull him up. I look down and get a cubist view of his leg as if seeing it from too many angles at once. “Little help!” I call out.
Foreman gives a hand while the medic team comes with a backboard. “You’ll be okay, son,” he says. “Just hold tight.” He looks at me and lowers his voice. “Compound fracture.”
“Fuck that. I’m all right, boss.” Ramirez grabs my wrist. “Get. Jeek.” His little newt buddy. Ramirez nods toward the hole I just pulled him from.
“In there?” I ask.
“Tried to shield him.”
Scrambling to the edge of the hole, I see Jeek’s broken little body down at the bottom. I step in.
Behind me foreman says, “Humans first. We’ll get to their kind later.” But this is Jeek. We don’t know much about newt physiology or whatever, but we do know Jeek’s just a kid. He’s smaller than most of them, still lives with his parents. But he tags along with Ramirez and me anywhere he can. Cleans our gear and our barracks and we ask him not to but he does it anyway. He’s not allowed in the mines, of course, but sometimes when we get back from work he’s got hot food waiting for us. Pretty damn good, too, spiced with some local powdered root halfway between cumin and toasted cinnamon. I’m going in. Jeek’s earned this. He’s one of us, in my book.
He’s even picked up some English, even though we still have trouble saying his name right. And he pisses foreman off, too. That’s a plus. Sometimes foreman says, “We need tighter regulations about fraternizing with locals.” And Jeek croaks back, “Go fuck yourself.” But foreman hasn’t taken the time to learn to listen so it goes right over his head. Damn near peed ourselves laughing the first time.
After that, I taught him how to sign. See, Kayleigh — that’s my little girl — was born deaf, so I learned to sign for her. Taking this job with the mining division of ValuCorp Galactic was my best shot of paying for the new bionics that might help her hear. Anyway, I saw this old movie where some guy talked to monkeys by signing, so I gave it a shot. Jeek picked it up right quick, too. So did Ramirez. In a few weeks, Jeek could sign “ass-hat” when he saw foreman and I knew a new milestone in cross-species communications had been reached.
Now Kayleigh, there’s nothing I can do for her but put in my time and send her mom every penny possible. Jeek, though, he’s right here, and he needs me. He’s motionless as I clear away the rubble. I’ve never watched a newt sleep before, but I’ll wager dollars to donuts you can still notice the rise and fall of its chest. “Just breathe, dammit,” I say under my breath, but he doesn’t respond.
Clearing away the last of the detritus pinning his tiny frame, I lift him up and climb back out. I know Ramirez needs me to check in with him, but I can’t meet his gaze. Not right now.
Seeing Jeek cradled in my arms, the newts on the other side of the line of guards are taken aback. I spot Jeek’s mother, her webbed hands going to her heart. Her son’s head lolls as I struggle to find footing and she goes weak in the knees, her neighbours propping her back up. No way this can be easy for her.
Foreman’s growling through gritted teeth, “Put that thing down and dig out your own kind.” But Jeek is my kind. Besides Ramirez, he’s pretty much all I care about on this god-forsaken rock. Now we’ve gone and got him killed. The Goulangaan wouldn’t know about the newts if it weren’t for us. We brought this upon them.
As I walk through the security cordon, Jeek’s mom is joined by an older looking newt. A village elder perhaps, maybe a shaman of some sort. As I lay the busted up kid on the ground at his mother’s feet, his arm hangs at an unnatural angle. The grinding gears of my exosuit sound inappropropriate, out of touch with nature, so I step back, giving them space.
Jeek’s mom gives me a nod, a quick blink. Her way of saying thanks. But she has more pressing needs.
She takes the ditrellium crystal from her neck and presses it to her son’s heart, mumbling low, rhythmically. The older newt puts a webbed hand on Jeek’s forehead, joining the chant at a higher pitch. Administering last rites, I figure. A murmur arises from the surrounding villagers, and at the last line there’s an almost imperceptible pulse of light from the crystal. It glows through the mother’s webbed fingers and before my lungs exhale Jeek’s hand starts flexing.
The kid moves his head side to side and opens his eyes, looking for mama. She pulls him close and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t reach out with both arms and hug her. I’m seeing this with my own teared-up eyes but can’t believe any of it. Goddamn miracle.
** First appeared in Unoriginal #2 **
