Seasonal

“A what kind of storm?”

“An ending one,” Dyn said. “Each season we usually get three or four storms worth talking about, but some cycles it all builds up and spills out to mark the end of winter in one big bleeding storm.”

“Uh huh…” I said ruefully, “Is that how weather works? Who can I talk to, to check the science?”

“He’s not wrong, human.” One of the other Casti in the room. If I remembered correctly, his name was Letrin.

“ It’s Caleb,” I corrected him. “And you might be taking me a bit more literally than I meant. I’m mostly giving Dyn a hard time.”

“Did Rahi Dyn offend you in some way?” Letrin asked innocently.

I looked toward Dyn, “He did in fact,” I said. “I was made to participate in this little chore today under false pretenses. I suspect that he has prematurely given me a clean bill of health so I could help with this.”

The Casti soldier’s face went slack with shock, and after a second I realized he wasn’t catching my joke.

“Caleb, if you keep talking to the poor man he’s going to actually think you’re accusing me of medical impropriety,” Dyn said. “Now watch what you’re doing, you didn’t put the blankets in these two.”

The medic hefted two boxes back toward me and revealed that I’d passed them down the table only having loaded lamps.

“Whoops,” I said, both to the packing mistake and Letrin. “I am joking, by the way, just to be extra clear.”

This ‘ending storm’ had all hands on deck, and because I was regularly helping Dyn in the medical ward, I was helping with this today. We had heat reflective blankets, thermal lamps, both water tablets and filters, Casti food goods, and several forms of survival devices that Dyn had not been able to explain to me.

Demon’s Pit had taken delivery of all the supply, so we were also handling distribution. The borough was forecast to get more than a meter of snowfall in the next day-night cycle, all at once.

Dyn had arranged a little assembly line for us, each one of us packing a different supply to make not-so-little care packages to be distributed to the borough.

At first, the bustle had seemed like overkill, but Dyn had pointed out that we might be safe, holed up in our fortified base whose structure housed a nuclear fusion reactor, but not all of the borough was so protected.

It was, I thought, very easy to feel secure in such a building.

“I’m getting better at translating idioms,” I told Letrin, “but I think my sense of humor isn’t coming through properly when I’m speaking Starspeak.”

Starspeaking? Bah, whatever.

“Then you are not too injured to help?” he asked.

“Good question. Dyn, you took a look at me. Am I going to start bleeding from my eyes?”

The Farnata scowled at me before talking to the Casti who asked, “I have no clue. You think I have the equipment to image inside his skull?”

“I should be fine,” I told Letrin, “it’s been a whole day and I haven’t shown any signs of dying. Besides, this is low intensity labor. If this manages to kill me where four Vorak Adepts failed, I’m going to be really embarrassed.”

The other Casti with us today, her name was Cor-something, spoke up.

“If Rahi Dyn can’t image your injuries, maybe you yourself could?”

Oh?

“Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Hahi, my name is Corphica,” she said.

“Dyn, help me. She’s calling me names,” I said trying to over indicate to her I was joking. She looked like she got it a little quicker than Letrin. Poor guy.

“It’s a Casti term for respect, of an elder or teacher usually,” Dyn supplied.

“Corphica, you realize I’m younger than you right? Probably by a lot? There was some confusion about that…” I said.

She nodded, “Sorry Hahi, it’s just, if you’re Adept, you could examine your own brain tactilely.”

“Please just call me Caleb,” I asked. “But you might be onto something when I get better at tactile cascading.”

Corphica nodded once again, something of a rarity for Casti who weren’t Tasser.

I fixed my mistake with the boxes and shoved them down the collapsible table to Dyn who was responsible for the water chemical packets and odd devices.

We settled into enough of a rhythm that Letrin wanted to continue the conversation.

“I’ve always been curious about what it’s like to be Adept,” he said. “I’ve read about different forms of exotic materials and how the first Adepts went about studying them. Would you be willing to share?”

“I don’t think I’d be much help,” I said, “Most of my answers would probably be some variation of ‘I don’t know.’ The sensation…the feedback I get when I make something is hard to describe even in my native language.”

“That’s too bad, are you really that inexperienced?” the soldier asked.

“Yes,” I said frankly. “The first time I materialized anything was during your group’s attack on Korbanok. I’ve only been doing this a few months, and even then, not much. Most of my time has gone toward learning Starspeak.”

Letrin nodded, “I’ve been told the first thing an Adept creates is often related to their aptitudes…” He gave me a prompting look.

“Well, the first thing I made was a couple specks of metal or something, but you’d have to tell me what that means about my ‘aptitudes,’ ” I said. Technically Daniel had been the one to make those, but I was pretty sure that still counted.

“Truly?” Letrin asked. “That’s somewhat surprising. Most, though not all, Adept powers tend to first emerge…stressfully.”

“You remind me a bit of Tasser,” I told him. “He’s the only other Casti I’ve met who’s eager to talk about Adeptry.”

I watched Letrin, and Corphica out of the corner of my eye, wince at the comparison. What was that about?

“Not a fan of Tasser’s?” I asked.

Letrin hesitated a second too long and Corphica elaborated.

“Raho Tasser is a respected officer, but…his methodology can be unorthodox. It has clearly produced results for him, but…” she spoke haltingly, carefully picking her words.

“…but he’s not what you’re looking for in a model officer?” I guessed.

Embarrassed, she nodded.

I turned to Dyn, “If I said Tasser should be promoted, would Serral give it any weight?”

He snorted, “Probably not, but he was livid enough about Nai to demote her all the way below me, so I would be curious to see the result if you did.”

Corphica leaned over to whisper something to Letrin, and his expression reacted strongly, though I couldn’t be sure what his precise reaction meant. I could guess.

It had barely been more than 24 hours, and the base was abuzz with gossip. Well, not twenty-four hours, but I would have thought news took a little longer to circulate than just one day.

“Alright you two,” I said. “You only get three questions about this stuff with Nai.”

“Is it true she attacked you?” Letrin said.

“Yes,” I replied easily, “and bad question; I’m pretty sure Corphica was there.”

She gave him a small jab without even interrupting our flawless assembly line and they conferred for a few moments for their next question.

“Is it true she said she wasn’t going to right before she did?”

“I’m not answering that,” I said. “One more.”

“But—” Letrin started.

“I said you get three questions, not that I’d give three answers,” I said. “I’m willing to talk about some of it, but she and I need to resolve our differences before I’ll speak about the rest.”

Corphica asked the third question, without thinking.

“You’re not mad?”

I looked at her with an expression I hoped said ‘are you sure about that?’

She realized what she’d said, but after a moment’s deliberation, nodded anyway.

“Yeah, I’m mad,” I said. “I’m going to have a nasty headache for the next few days, and she’s still the only one who can teach me Adeptry, so when I work more with her I’m going to have this unshakable feeling like she might lash out again. She attacked me for no good reason.”

Even though I knew I was talking to Casti who were both older than I was, their rapt attention felt uncannily reminiscent of kids only slightly younger than me.

“…But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have a reason,” I said.

I reached for the next box to pack, only to discover my audience had paused what they were doing to listen.

“Come on, people,” I said. “If you’re going to stop every time I say something, I’m going to have to stop answering questions.”

“Sorry Ha—” Corphica began, but I pointed at her as a lighthearted warning. “Sorry, Caleb, what’s your homeworld like?”

I took a few seconds for our little assembly line to resume before answering.

“That’s a bit of a large question. Anything in particular you want to know?”

“What’s the biggest animal?” Letrin asked eagerly.

“Land or water?” I replied.

“Land.”

“It’s called an [elephant],” I told him. “They’re massive. Probably three times as tall as me, four legs—really thick ones. They have these giant [tusks]…teeth, spear things on their face, plus these really long noses that they use to grab stuff.”

The more I talked the more ridiculous I felt.

“They sound terrifying!” Letrin breathed.

“Aw no, they’re really sweet as long as you don’t antagonize them.”

“They don’t hunt you?” Corphica asked.

“They’re herbivores, so no. But they’re big enough to trample you if you piss it off.”

“But you said they have the…the ‘tuks’ things, they have spears on their face, and they don’t eat meat?”

“They use them to knock over trees that are in their way. They’re very intelligent animals too. If I ever get my [phone] working I can show you. I think I have a picture of one.”

“Do your ships have artificial gravity?” Letrin asked. “I heard Asu Nai say something vague about your world’s technology, but I didn’t get any more details.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d answered questions like this. Most of the Casti that I spent more than a few minutes around mustered up the courage to ask a few odd questions.

I glanced at Dyn because I knew he was higher ranked then they. Ase Serral had compiled a document for the Naxoi personnel about what they weren’t allowed to ask me. Most of it had been hilariously unrelated to me, things like details about Earth’s strategic centers, or governmental details that I wasn’t qualified to answer anyway.

First Contact involved not sharing so much about the present. The aliens wanted to avoid even the potential appearance of hostility, so Serral had put his soldiers on notice not to pry about anything potentially sensitive.

Of course that didn’t stop questions from being asked, it usually just meant I looked at the nearest officer for some indication about how much I should say.

He gave me a small nod.

“The ship that abducted me didn’t have artificial gravity,” I told them. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that was possible until you said so.”

I regretted the way I phrased that, because the moment I said the word “abducted” they practically dropped what they were doing.

“Yes, you did,” Dyn told me over Corphica and Letrin’s hushed gasps. “Korbanok is only a couple miles wide, you think it has gravity that heavy without an artificial source?”

“That had not occurred to me,” I admitted. “Should we give them a minute??”

I nodded toward the two Casti who had instantly devolved into a hushed exchange.

“I think not,” Dyn said.

“Hey!” I said, clapping my hands loudly, “I want to get these packed quick; after I’m done here, I get to go up on the roof.”

Letrin and Corphica clicked an affirmation at me, and we pushed through the finish of our little packing exercise.

“What’s up on the roof?” Dyn asked as we finished loading the vehicle with the emergency kits.

“Well for one, it’s a great view,” I said. “But I promised Nemuleki we’d catch up. Compared to you or Tasser, I don’t see as much of her, and I’ve been feeling a little bad about it.”

He nodded, “Have fun, I need to check our shelters on base now. I’ll see you after the storm blows through.”

I waved goodbye to Letrin and Corphica before mulling over whether I could get away with climbing to the roof on the outside.

·····

Nemuleki was already waiting for me on the garrison rooftop when I walked through the door.

A gust of cold wind greeted me, but I was bundled up under two layers, so it was merely chilling instead of numbing.

She gave a glance to confirm it was me before looking back through a pair of binoculars tailored for Casti eyes.

“I’m a little surprised you took the stairs, ” she said, voice slightly raised to compete with the wind.

“I thought about climbing up here, but I’m pretty sure I’m in the same shelter as Serral. And he’s one of the only Casti on this base that can really chew me out for something like that,” I replied.

“Ase Serralinitus,” she corrected. “And if that’s supposed to be an Earth idiom, I don’t think it translates very well.”

“Well you’ll never convince me to stop trying,” I told her. “So what are we doing up here?”

“I'm watching our groups that are mobilizing through the borough, the storm too. I have the button that signals everyone on base to drop whatever they’re still doing and get down to the shelters.”

“And is there some official criteria?” I asked.

“Wind speed,” she said. “As soon as that little spinner on the tower goes fast enough, I radio to the security station which activates the yamagamarak.”

I blinked in disbelief. There were still words I hadn’t learned yet, and some of them turned out to be ridiculous.

“And a… yamagamrak is…?”

“Big loud thing. It just makes a loud warning sound.”

A siren or klaxon then.

“So,” I gathered, “you’re effectively the last one into the shelters.”

“Yes,” she said. “You want a look?”

She handed me the binoculars, which were far too large for me to look through both lenses at once, but I could still look through one side.

“I do,” I said, looking out at the looming clouds in the distance. “But it occurs to me that if you’re the one going to the shelters last, then I am too, because I’m here with you.”

She paused.

“Mmm…” she hummed, “that…shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well as long as we get in the shelter, everything should be fine right?”

“How long do we have before you think it gets dangerous to stay up here?”

“We could probably stay out for the next hour or two, but we’ll get in the shelters before then. This is one of those…how did you put it? It’s a ‘better safe than sorry’ time.”

“Have you been in one of these before?” I asked.

She gave a click. “When I was a lot younger, yes. But the west coast doesn’t get the same kind of storm as here.”

“You’re from this planet, right?”

“In every sense that matters, yes. I haven’t been home in a few years. Still haven’t, I suppose.”

“Where is home then?”

“Remember where our drop pod landed?”

I nodded.

“I grew up about two hours north of there, and I got an education at the school we stashed you in overnight.”

“You knew the Casti there who helped us,” I remembered.

“I hope she’s okay,” Nemuleki said. “Lorel too. I haven’t had the chance to reach out since then.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“Gah! Let’s talk about something else, I wanted to catch up, not wallow.”

“Alright, well, the roof is a good vantage point. What else is there to look at besides the storm coming in?”

The distant flash of lightning in the distance was interesting, considering how cold it was, but it also made me a little skittish.

“Well, if you look out at some of the main roads, you might be able to see Tasser driving supplies to shelters in the borough.”

“Yeah?” I asked, looking south.

“Hey, Tasser,” Nemuleki said into a radio, “where are you right now? Caleb and I are on the roof and we’re trying to catch a glimpse.”

Tasser’s voice crackled back on the radio, and we had some fun trying to figure out what streets he was turning on. Casti roads didn’t have the same labeling system as back home. They used a numerical formula instead.

“I said three-three-nine Caleb, not three-three-five.”

Nemuleki tapped my shoulder and pointed about ten degrees to my left. I looked back through the binoculars at a street visible through the gaps in the building. At first there was nothing, and I started to ask Nemuleki if she was sure.

But then a heavy-duty grey vehicle rolled into view for a moment before disappearing behind the next row of buildings.

“Aha!” I said, “I saw him!”

Nemuleki clicked the radio again, “I hope you’re driving carefully, Tasser, Caleb tells me he helped pack those supplies. So if you spill them, I think you’ll offend him.”

This was good fun, and not at all what I’d expected to be doing a few hours before a superstorm.

Tasser radioed in that he’d stopped to actually drop off supplies, and Nemuleki stopped pestering him.

“Do you know the name of the Casti who died when we first landed?” she asked out of nowhere.

“Osino,” I replied. Tasser had shared his name and Lorel’s with me.

“I know I said I didn’t want to wallow, but a lot of people are talking about what happened with Nai. She, Tasser, and I are the aliens you’ve known longest and…I don’t know. It put my mind on the rest of our Korbanok team. I’m rambling,” she said.

“I don’t know how to feel about it either,” I said honestly. “Truth is, Nai scares the [hell] out of me, but I’ve been wondering how much that depends on me.”

“Did you really talk about her homeworld?”

“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t even know Farnata was a planet. I want to apologize, but Tasser said it’s too soon.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Nemuleki said.

“Apologizing or waiting a day or two?”

“Both,” she said.

“Correct me if I’m misunderstanding, but it seems like you might favor her response.”

“…No, she definitely shouldn’t have assaulted you,” Nemuleki said, “but I think it’s easy to criticize her when anyone would probably make the same mistake, put in the same scenario.”

“You don’t think you’d react any better?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Can’t say for certain, but I doubt it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”

I tried to imagine how I would react if someone had disparaged Daniel or one of the abductees I’d never gotten to know.

“What was it for you?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“The same scenario,” I said, “or as close as you can manage it. For Nai it’s losing her home, for me it’s my home losing me. What about you?”

“You’re asking me what the worst day of my life is, you realize?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I said, “I’m just thinking about the intricacy of topics Tasser and I couldn’t cover until recently. I can’t say ‘realizing,’ because I’ve known I would need to learn about the Casti, all the alien species, really. I got used to waiting for the day I would need to. Now, the day’s here and I’m still used to waiting.”

Nemuleki gave a soft smile. “I wouldn’t be too harsh on yourself. You’re in an awful situation, but I think you’ve done a great job making the best of it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“…My aunt died after being arrested by the occupation,” Nemuleki said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It didn’t feel like enough.

She gave a click, “That’s not my worst day though. It was when her kid, my youngest cousin, asked me why his mom died…I broke a bit when I heard that. I couldn’t do nothing after that day.”

That hurt to hear, but I was glad she shared.

“I—”

Whatever I’d been about to say got cut off by Nemuleki hitting a button on the radio. Instantly, a deafening klaxon roared to life.

I jumped in surprise and there was just enough snow on the rooftop for my feet to slip under me.

My cat-like reflexes might have caught me before I fell to the ground and looked pathetic, but they did not spare me a chuckle from Nemuleki.

She gestured toward the door back inside and I saw her lips move, but the klaxon drowned out whatever she said. I got the message.

Time to go.

But no sooner than we’d ducked into the relative quiet of the stairwell did I realize I was going to be in a bunker for the next few hours.

“Wait!” I told her, “Can we swing by my bunk on the way?”

“Why?” she huffed.

“I’m going to be stuck in one place for a while right? So, I want to grab my oxygen barrier, plus I think there’s a deck of cards in my backpack…”

“Alright, but I have to come with you,” she said.

We exited the stairwell and saw several Casti going the opposite direction, several of which gave us confused looks.

I ran past the security booth and just a little further down the second-floor hall. The blue cylindrical device was sitting where I kept it on the shelf, powered off. It only took a few seconds to grab it and my backpack before I was back in the hallway with Nemuleki.

“Okay, I should definitely have asked this earlier, but where are we sheltering?”

“Basement complex,” Nemuleki said, leading the way back toward the stairwell. “We’re in the same place as one of the officer shifts and Ase Serralinitus.”

“Oh, that’s good. I wanted an opportunity to talk with him,” I said.

We stopped at the ground floor long enough for Nemuleki to radio one last message to Tasser.

“Hey, we’re headed underground, you at your shelter yet?”

“—not ver—clear—I—lready—”

“Okay,” Nemuleki said. “So he’s already safe underground.”

Hah.

This was honestly pretty exciting. The wind was really howling outside, and I was beginning to think this might look more like a hurricane than a blizzard.

Then a peal of thunder exploded somewhere above the building, and I felt my blood run cold. Logically, I knew I was probably safe indoors, but the sound reverberated far louder than I ever would have thought possible for something outside.

“Hey, even with the snow, thunder, and wind, this building isn’t going to come down on us, right?”

“No,” Nemuleki said, leading me into the basement halls. I didn’t get down here at all, so I was totally dependent on her to navigate.

Another blast of thunder shook the building and Nemuleki paused. “Probably not,” she amended.

I had trouble keeping track of the turns we took to reach our shelter, but if I had kept track of the building’s layout correctly…

“Aren’t we pretty close to the spot that Chief tore the ceiling off?” I asked.

“Who tore what?”

“Sendin Marfek,” I said. “She chased me all over this stupid base, and at the end, she tore up the concrete from below. And I’m pretty sure we’re close to that spot.”

“Actually, yes,” Nemuleki said. “That’s one hallway over though, and here is our spot.” She gestured to a heavy pair of metal doors.

She ushered me inside past a Casti standing at the door with a clipboard.

“Here they are, Ase,” he said, and Serral gave us a glare.

“Sorry, I wanted to grab this,” I said, hefting the oxygen barrier. “The mask gets uncomfortable after a few hours.”

He gave a terse nod, signaling the Casti at the door to shut us in.

There were about thirty of us in this shelter, clumped into various gaggles of Casti. Some of them were quietly going over paperwork, others were circled up in chairs having a quiet conversation.

“So,” I said, “do we just pick a spot and settle in?”

“Yes,” Nemuleki said, “But you might want to steer clear of her…”

She pointed, and across the room, I saw Nai sitting on a rigid crate. She saw me too, and suddenly the storm wasn’t my biggest concern for the next few hours.

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