Nexus: Octopied Read online

Nexus: Octopied

  Nic Wilson

  I was going to kill SciDiv—Stephen—whatever. I was supposed to be in suspended animation. Instead, I spent the entire trip in the stupid pod conscious—which meant I was aware of how very much like a can of pickled foot I smelled like.

  And crappier still, one of the habitable planets in my survey was actually inhabited. So I had to go down to the planet's surface and press flesh with the natives. Which reminded me: I needed to kill Drew, too. It was his asinine idea to repurpose our advance scanning pods so you could put people in them, and his worse idea not to exempt me from the lottery. I’m head of security, and our ship was being hunted—my place was on the Nexus, prepping my officers, and training the civvies for a fight that likely wasn't going to exempt them.

  But there was no point grousing; in space, no one can hear you bitch. So I had to make first contact with an urchin people on a planet entirely covered in water—though in the places they lived, it was only a foot to three feet deep. From the intel the pod had gathered, it would appear it was also their bathroom. Joy.

  The people looked like porcupines cross-bred with pincushions. No matter how well the negotiations might go, we weren’t hugging it out. I got my hopes up when I found out the planet was waterlogged, that habitable species or no, the comm box wouldn't survive the descent, but apparently the comm box was waterproof—and they got it up and running. Their language seemed to be made up entirely of baby farts; I just hoped they made the sounds with whatever their equivalent to a mouth was, because I wasn’t not negotiating with a species that speaks through a sphincter.

  When the pod found intelligent life on the first pass, the craft set a course around the solar system; it gave the species time to get the comm box functional, and it let me burn off speed using local gravity rather than thrusters. I spent the last local day in orbit. I missed my entry window by a little over an hour.

  “Entering orbital window,” the pod's computer told me.

  “Do it,” I told her. I wasn't looking forward to meeting a new species—that had gone sideways on us often enough I had reservations—but at least it was a chance to stretch my legs. That is, p—rovided that the pod’s landing protocols worked better than the damn suspended animation.

  I wished I‘d spent more time in the landing simulators, but EngDiv—damnit, I was still getting used to the bullshit first name policy—Bill—admitted to me while slightly tipsy that there wasn't much of a point. At the speed the pods dropped from the atmosphere, if there was a problem, I wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough to correct it—and the g-forces would probably knock me unconscious, anyway.

  The one bright spot was that since the planet was a toilet, I got to make a splashdown. It marginally increased my odds that the pod would be functional enough to get me back off the rock after negotiations.

  I was sure those would go lousy. I’d never been a people person. I was even less of an urchin person. And I’d spent over a month literally stewing in my own juices.

  The pod rocked when it hit the atmosphere. The autobriefing warned me about that, or at least I think it was trying to. It read like the Chinese essay my sister bought to get her into college—and then foolishly didn’t proofread to make sure it sounded like it was written by even a stupid native speaker—

  I found myself gripping the hand rests built into the seat. They gave slightly; engineering had learned in early testing that people tended to need something to grab onto. “Give me visual,” I said.

  “Visual is not advised,” the computer replied. “In 73% of occupants, visual information of this speed and complexity causes disorientation and nausea.”

  “Visual. Now.” It put up a rocky image of the planet below, rushing up to meet me. It was every falling dream I’d ever had, only at a sharp angle, impossibly faster, and into a shallow toilet bowl of a world flashing by so fast it wasn't even a blur, it was ocular gibberish. It was like the worst coaster simulator ever designed—and the knowledge that it was real made it impossible for me to fight back the queasiness. “Visual off,” I managed to get out.

  Then the pod lurched. I felt it slow as the water burned off the last of my velocity, so fast that I nearly passed out from the sudden deceleration. Then the pod bobbed back up to the water’s surface. “Can I get out?” I asked.

  “Hull exterior requires heat dissipation,” the computer told me in its monotone; it made me miss Haley. “Water will cool exterior to safe temperature in approximately 3 minutes and 46.2 seconds.”

  I sighed. It gave me time to try out the pod’s cleaning functionality. Of which there was none, I learned after a few keystrokes. None working, anyway. Which was fine. So far as the locals knew, maybe my entire species smelled like a tuna fish sandwich left under a seat cushion for a year.

  “Please seal helmet,” the computer said. I slid down my visor and locked it in place. I felt a rush of air as my suit pressurized, and finally the door opened up. The water had a high concentration of uric acid, so the entire planet smelled like cat pee—even through the suit. I hope it only smelled like pee, but I knew better than to be optimistic about that.

  The pod landed a ways from the continent by design, but I had a marker on my HUD pointing me in the direction of the box. I dove into the water and started swimming. It was clear, with a reddish hue to it; I cleaned up a shark tank after a drunk reveler tried to swim in it, once, and it looked about like that. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't likely that the species on this planet bled red, so it probably wasn't just that I was swimming through an aquatic abattoir.

  I thought I saw movement just past where the light pierced the water. “Can you get me a scan of things moving down there?” I asked the computer.

  “You don’t want me to,” the computer said. That made me swim a little faster. But I made it to shore without incident—shore in this case being relative.

  The urchins met me a short ways up the coast, hauling the comm box. I let them make the approach—in my experience, it makes the invaded species feel less hostile, getting to be the aggressor in the first contact.

  They dropped the box roughly into the water, and I hoped maybe it would break, so I could turn around and go home. “She’s exactly as ugly as a florgh-bak’s hindparts,” one of them whispered, and the comm box grabbed it and broadcast it to me.

  “And your entire planet and people smell exactly like the aftermath of my worst hangover. Or were we going to try and pretend to be diplomatic?”

  “What makes you think it's a she?” another asked.

  “I can see her egg-sacks.”

  “No, you can't,” I said.

  One of them gave me what I assume was supposed to be a contrite expression—otherwise, he had something stuck in his throat. “Apologies, Ambassador,” he said out of a very mouth-like anus—or a very anus-like mouth—moving ahead of the others. “We meant no harm. Just, to our species, your appearance is very strange.”

  “Look Blarquen!” an especially belligerent one of them bellowed at me from behind the box.

  “She isn’t from Blarque,” their Ambassador snapped at him, “and I don’t believe she can change her appearance just to suit us. Can you?” He paused, but not long enough for me to respond. “Of course not. Why else would you choose to appear to us in such a form?”

  I bit my tongue; there wasn’t a goddamn thing wrong with my form, but now wasn't the time to discuss alien beauty standards with a bunch of speciest urchins. “I’m not an ambassador,” I said, “except in maybe the loosest meaning of the term.” My hand went instinctively to my holster.

  “Ah, so you’re a warrior. Excellent.”

  “Excellent?” I asked.

  “We have…need of a warrior’s skill.”


  “Then institute a draft,” I said, and forced my hand down to my side, further from the gun.

  “I’m afraid our species isn’t built for conflict. Our carapaces mean large predators can’t eat us whole, but the more enterprising of them…” He pantomimed something like breaking open a crab leg and sucking out the meat.

  “I’m not here for that.”

  “Then what, pray the tides tell, are you here for?”

  “Mining rights. I want to broker a deal, for the mining rights to this solar system. The other rocks rotating around the big, burning orb.” I pointed up at their star.

  “Ah. Done,” he said, “on condition you lend us your military skills.” Goddamnit, verbally outflanked by a porcuped.

  “Tell me what you need first, and then I’ll tell you what I might be able to do. I could probably help you out with a tactical assessment——but that is the furthest I go. I’m not here to fight your battles for you. In fact, I don’t care if you sign on with me or not. My current bosses might not be as dickish as our old corporate overlords, but you’re still probably getting screwed, since you seem to have the collective intelligence of a tube cheese. Either way, I’m on the next pod the hell out of here, signature on the dotted line or no.”

  Enough of that translated for the Ambassador to be offended, but he was also enough of a politician to stow it. “Understood. But this