Marooned: Cubeo Crusoe
04 Aug 2023Creamy Goodness III
Let your mind's eye pull away from the bubble and paint a vista of space and stars on the cinematic screen of your inner sight. Leave behind the grinding consequences of living in populated systems. Forget, for a time, the ever present threat of Targoids and their ceaseless push to endanger humanities very existence, and put your self in the mind of an explorer, imagining their journey westward through the cosmos.
Watch the planets and stars fade to a point, replaced by more, zooming in from the fringes of your vision, as your camera pans out. Now, look to the west a few thousand light years and focus in on the Crescent Nebula. Not a particularly interesting nebula, and as it is close to the bubble, it's not uncharted territory, but let your self look a little way beyond the cloud of the Crescent, to a blue star a few short jumps to the galactic west.
This star is the only star in an unremarkable system on the outskirts of an unremarkable nebula. It contains a sizable white and yellow planet in the goldilocks zone of the system's parent body. Although these qualities are not, on a galactic scale, uncommon, they are at least worth of remark. Worthy if people that are interested in that sort of thing, knew about. The system has had the odd ship pass through, one very recently in fact, but none of the pilots flying them thought this system remarkable enough to register.
Its surface also boasts properties that, in the right circles, would spark conversation. Like so many planets that have been fictionalized on the page, and in the holos, it is for the most part, a desert. It at least has enough atmosphere to allow clouds to form, so water is present in abundance, just not where we happen to be looking. Wind is also present, and thanks to a quirk of nature, almost never stops blowing.
The endless expanses of white and yellow sands are in a constant flux. A rocky crest that you kept on your left to aid navigation yesterday, is buried today, making landmarks a find as valuable to the lost wanderer, as any trove a treasure hunter could discover. Yes, there is a today and yesterday here, but there are no devices to slice up, and quantify the passage of time. In fact, until very recently, this planet had only been touched by technology in the form of a distant echo from space.
The planet's day and night cycle has been observed by indigenous forms of life for millions of years. In the boundless desert, many plants and creature pay very close attention to the time of day, in so far as instinct, and biological necessity can. This yellow and green lizard cares very much about star rise for example. He needs to warm up in the (relatively) cool morning, because he has a full day foraging ahead of him, to get enough nurturance before he has to take cover from the blue star at midday. How long between morning and midday, nothing cares, but the stars position in the sky is the closet thing to a clock this planet has.
To a Xeon-Zoologist, this creature, so very much like reptiles from Earth, is very interesting. Any scientific body would gladly fund an enthusiastic Zoologists quest to lean all they could about this one spices alone. It bears more than a superficial likeness to reptiles of Earth, but it is also wildly unique in many ways. Its primary defence is speed, but it has other abilities to protect its self from the airborne predators, and its method of finding food and water is almost mystical. A creature well worth study. . . But this one just got its skull crushed by a stone jammed in the buckle of a leather belt. All this planet's latest inhabitant cares about regarding this lizard, is its nutritional value, and the usefulness of its inedible body parts.
The second person ever to step foot on this planet has no idea what time it is, or how long he has been here. It's been long enough for his hairstyle to grow out, and a full beard to skirt his face, but someone will come soon. He doesn't know where he is, topographically or cosmically, but someone doses; after all, the first person to step foot on this planet dumped his unconscious body here. He puts his belt back on his waist, and loops the lizard's tale around it, because he's going to need his hands for climbing the dunes.
Three more this size he thinks, that's how many lizards he'll need before it gets too hot to hunt. Four of them last the day and fill him up enough, if he can get them. Catching them in the morning is best; it's bright enough to see, and if he sneaks up on them before they warm up in the starlight, they are lethargic and easier to hit with is make-shift weighted whip.
When he was marooned here by Lord Vengerfield, he'd been left with a box of MRE rations, and a twelve pack of bottled water. The pirates had also thought it quite funny to leave him here with his beauty products. Nothing obviously useful like scissors or a nail file, but every bottle, pot and tube he had in his ship's bathroom. Fortunately, some of them were glass, and others had metal caps or decorations; they had been a blessing. One of the biggest boons of the joke stash was the sunblock. That had allowed him to turn most of his clothes in to something useful, like a small sun-shade, and dew collector.
Climbing to the top of the next dune, he looked for more basking lizards, but his eyes wandered to the sky. After Lord Vengerfield was done questioning him, he was permitted a communication with Vodan before Vengerfield administered a punishment for hindering the Lord's investigation for so long. Vodan had promised to deliver the Covas, Nineete to Mrs Sharp, or Mrs Muir, with the phrase "The prisoner of D'if" One of those people would be bright enough to unlock Ninette, and one of them may care enough to find out what had become of him.
He had been pressed before, and found his optimism was not boudless, but it was plentiful. Even so, he couldn't help thinking, as he looked to the sky for the tell tail streak made by a ship dropping out of hyperglide, that he was going to live the rest of life without music, and die alone. One of the cruelest fates that could be inflicted on someone like him.
Still, Vodan was not exactly a friend, but there was a mutual respect between the men after almost two years of cat and mouse. There was no way Vodan wouldn't deliver Ninette to one of the women like he promised, unless he'd got beaten senseless on the way, and completely forgot what he was supposed to do.
Marooned Part Two