Planet Albeata Ch 1-1 Tr'ai Is Lost

Tr'ai slowly ascended from the warm safety of unconsciousness.  Soft flurries of confusion flew in and out between half crystallized questions.  Cold pierced through the flotsam.  He shivered, and then yelled as that small motion started an avalanche of brutal pain.  That brought him to his senses quickly. 

The birthplace of pain was his ankle, so he resolved to keep his leg still to quiet the insistent newborn agony.

He opened his eyes and squinted up at the Albeatan sky.  It glowed with the familiar sickly lilac color that meant the sun was setting.  He lay on the ground and couldn't remember how he'd gotten there.  He sneezed and received more fitful cries of distress from his ankle. He brushed his tingling nose with a half numbed hand, surprised when his glove came away covered by tiny ice crystals.  He wondered how long he had lain on the icy crust of snow that was ever present during winter in the Kalgot region.  Hmm - Kalgot region, he thought.  A few memories came swimming back.  He was here to hunt Gorn.

But the sun was setting!  How could the 60 hours of day have passed so quickly?

He sat up in increments so as not to incur the wrath of the punishing pain demon gnawing at his ankle, and looked around.  He was in a wide canyon with copious lengths of miscenoe vines hanging off the rocky walls.  Miscenoe vines were the favorite food of Gorn and around him were many tracks of the cloven footed beasts.  However, they were not the leisurely tracks made by the huge creatures as they ambled from one succulent vine to the next, but the frantic tracks of a Gorn stampede.

Stampede!  Yes, he began to remember.  He'd been the lead stalker whose job it was to cut one unwary herbivore out of the herd so that the lesser noblemen of his family had a chance to kill it.  It was an outdated right of passage, but usually good sport. 

He remembered one of the boys had broken cover too soon, and startled the witless animals.  They charged nonsensically back and forth until a slightly less half-witted older Gorn had trumpeted escape and led the stampeding herd down the trail.  Although "stampeding" was a strong word for the shambling gait of the gigantic beasts whose top speed was less than that of a running man.  Tr'ai had stood up from his hiding place in alarm as thousands of pounds of his favorite Sunday dinner lumbered en masse toward him.  Bakar, God of the Hunt, disregarded his desperate pleas for deliverance, and the pitiful bush he was hiding behind put up no resistance as the huge wool-covered bovines ran right over him. 

The cursed pea brains kicked my butt and broke my frigging ankle!  His anger lessened as he realized that it was really his fault and the fault of the over excited young nobleman who had spooked them. 

Locating the Gorn had taken longer than normal, almost 18 hours.  They came upon the herd just as they were supposed to start back for camp.  Tr'ai cursed himself by all the toes on Heron's diseased foot that he had been swayed by the boys' energetic entreaties to continue the hunt.  He had planned to call later for a ship and be picked up before nightfall. 

He had forgotten one of the most important rules on Albeata was "Planning only serves to bait the Gods." 

I never should have taken them out here with only old Dr'en to help me. This whole thing is Cr'ai's fault.  The "Fist of Albeata"!  More like the "Giant Ass of Albeata'!  He thought, not for the first time. 

Cr'ai was his oldest brother, the less than benevolent ruler of Albeata, the complete embodiment of the official title: "Fist of Albeata."  Cr'ai and his cronies should have been out in the Kalgot canyons with Tr'ai and Dr'en, monitoring the boys' first hunt.  There was no denying the tempting warmth and comfort of the new Marconan ships, (not that his brother denied himself anything,) but the gradual abandonment of noble traditions by the leader of the Albeatan royal house presaged enslavement to alien ideas and ideals.  There were already too many slaves on Albeata. 

I'll have some choice words to say to him when I get back to camp! 

But Tr'ai knew that he wouldn't really say anything to Cr'ai.  The Fist didn't take kindly to criticism, even from his own brother.  This was not the first time Tr'ai had had a broken bone.  People who weren't immediate family sometimes even disappeared.

Tr'ai looked around for his equipment bag to get his communicator and call for help.  He hoped Dr'en and the boys had chased the herd all the way to the flatlands below and managed to get a Gorn after all.  But Dr'en shouldn't have gone on without checking –

His equipment bag was gone!

Tr'ai craned his neck to get a better view.  There were only a few lonely bushes at the bottom of the gorge.  Before the stampede, Tr'ai had slithered over the silent snow from bush to bush, careful not to disturb the Gorn foraging against the steep rock walls.  His equipment bag was white, like his fur hunting suit, which made it harder to spot in the muddled snow.  But he still should have been able to see it.

No equipment bag.

For the first time a prickle of fear ran down his back.

The sky became deep lavender as the weak, distant sun slid further down toward the horizon.  Night advanced.  It crawled silently from tree to tree, from village to valley just as Tr'ai had crawled toward his prey.  Night on Albeata was a 60 hour journey into a freezing nether world that few animals and no man could survive without a heated shelter.

Tr'ai took a few calming breaths and told himself that the bag had to be there; it must have been kicked further along the trail by the bolting Gorn.  He would have to brave the evil throbbing in his ankle, get up and hunt for the bag.  As he struggled to his knees, the pain bit down on his broken bone, sending shockwaves up his leg.  Alright, apparently he would have to crawl around to find it.

After half an hour of fruitless searching and tormenting pain, he concluded that the spiteful drifts of snow had hidden the bag someplace deep and secret far away from his weary, searching eyes.  How could he signal the camp? 

Relief flooded through him when he remembered that the new communicators the Marconans had sold his brother had some sort of tracking device.  They had explained that any communicator could be located by their ships even if it was not being used.  Tr'ai hoped that Cr'ai would tell the ship's slaves to locate his communicator quickly.  He felt when he woke from his day-rest almost twenty hours ago, that the last part of the Albeatan day was going to be bad.  He hadn't imagined it would be this bad. 

* * *

The sun set and Albeata descended into its 60 hour frozen night.

* * *

Miles away from Tr'ai, seven men struggled up a steep ravine, crunching through icy crusts of snow toward their village before the malicious night and its insidious temperature drop could bar their way.  Although they were from the same ethnic stock as the nobles' slaves, these men were dirtier, thinner, tougher and free. 

The bag of equipment they had taken from the dead noble started to beep loudly.  One of the seven stopped and forced the bag open.  He thrust his calloused groping hand into the opening, and pulled out the small, bleating box.  The slim black communication device vainly signaled for its lost owner.  The man hurled it into the snow, and turned back toward the trail.

The leader halted him with a sharp swear word.  "It must be broken, you stupid arclop!  Otherwise they may be able to hear it and find our tracks."

The leader burrowed into the shallow snow until he found a rock.  He destroyed the communicator by pounding it into unrecognizable pieces.  The berated man lifted the stolen bag, bereft of its most important asset, and heaved it onto his back.

The men, already nervous about their pilfered bag, leapt and gasped as a nearby patch of snow erupted into movement.  A large ice bird, made insecure by the footfalls and the pounding, flew up from its nearby den into the night air.  As the frightened bird flew off to find itself another deep, protected sanctum, the men hurried toward the sanctuary of their village.