Dear Reader,
Please note that I'm no English tongue and translated this story from German language. Please forgive some strange expressions and errors. Thank you. ;0)

The sharp sound in the computer room woke Bessinger. She had only slept for half an hour, the noise made her think immediately of one more shitty computer malfunction, she lifted her foot in the lying position and hit with the heel the intercom on the wall.
"Roger, you take care of the alarm."
She screamed into the intercom, without lifting her head. From the speaker somewhere sounded Rogers voice from the ship and he sounded pissed off, as most of the time.
"Take care of it yourself, Bee. I am all the way in the circuitry of the processing plant. You have your ass yet again on the mattress. Go over and switching it off."

Bessinger turned off the intercom in the same way as she had turned it on.
This is not a normal

acoustic-my-ass brokes apart

, she thought, but she did not get up. She stared at the ceiling. It reminded her of something, but she could not define it. Too short sleep stages. Too much stress and pressure. It took too long to get back in trip, but if she slept longer, she needed chemistry to be really awake. Then only the chemical prevented that she confused dreams and reality. A side effect of the job that did occur often and had decimated many a team.
"Bastard."
She swung her legs from the couch, stretched her arms over her head and stomped over in the computer room. In the connecting corridors, they had reduced the lighting to the minimum. Why turn the full Halloween lighting on the station only for a handful of soldiers and two pilots, mechanics and hyenas.
In the computer room, connected with headquarters and control of the ship, the bright-green signal blinked on the screen, accompanied by this penetrating tone. It was not the main screen, but one of the small screens that were connected to the decoupled system. Bessinger had raised her arms still staring at the screen, let them fall at last.
At last she remembered the signal, but what she saw there was not possible. She activated the box, typed in the code and directed the signal to the control center of the ship. In the computer room the intercom was broken and not to turn off. If you were in there, you should be careful what you said because you could never know who would listen to you somewhere in the ship.
"Roger," she shouted, louder than earlier, "to the central! This is not a malfunction!"
Roger did not answer. She knew that he was already on the way through the corridors to the central office. They worked together so long, they recognized the urge in the voice of the other.
Bessinger would not beat his ass as long it was serious. And that was not a malfunction. This was serious.
The ways in the ship were long, but the majority of lines were equipped with hyper-connections and Roger stood in the same time as Bessinger in the central. In the semi-circular screen, which occupied the whole wall, a waterfall roared. After years in orbit, the crew was tired of having to stare at the stars, or to see as small but important parts of the ship loosened and burnt in the atmosphere of this cursed planet.
Roger, half a head shorter than Bessinger, with short straight hair under a baseball cap, let his commander step first into the room. She had put on weight, but he was longer looking at her sweeping ass when she walked in front of him. The signal was clear now and Bessinger turned off the waterfall. The signal arose from a small electrical unit called the tracker and was used for hyenas and pilots. In the best case, and if the defaulting tracker done his task correctly, they showed the location of the vehicle, accurate to an inch. If the tracker was coupled with the combat equipment of a hyena, he also showed live images and vital signs, and the name and rank.
In the ship which was circling in orbit, it was primarily hyenas which were sent in gliders down to decimate the Tusk. They had done it in the last few months so well that the mining company machines could do their work without interruptions. Sometimes they were sent to take over rudderless ships, or to relocate miners from somewhere. They did that for which they were paid, but most of them cleared up.
It was three weeks ago that a hyena had gone out with a glider and only to make a test flight and two hours after the man returned to the ship.
"One of the tracker," said Roger, "but see the ID. We do not use them anymore.”
They stared at the signal on the white noise of the optical control field, stared at the missing data.
"I remember the transponder," said Bessinger. She took a step aside, using the field of general communication systems and started the first warning. The last time she used the warning was half a year ago when a short circuit in the medical station had caused a fire and had they all had to be prepared for a possible evacuation.
Roger made no unnecessary questions. He slipped his the upper body in the overalls, which had hung from his hip, so he had more freedom of movement, moved to the lock and turned the shade of his cap backwards. He was already sitting in the co-pilot seat of the little glider, strapped on and activated the launch sequence, as Bessinger said: "This is Jack's Tracker. Let's go down."


Jack was on his way home. Because Hudd the blacksmith of the conviction preferred to work under a full moon, as the wrought iron could be processed better and would last longer, they worked continuously through full moon nights. The forge and small cottage where he lived were outside the village at the foot of the mountains, because the hammering would not disturb the other inhabitants in their sleep. For Jack it was okay to work at night and come home at dawn.
The only things which could discourage him from sleeping during the day were the barking dogs around the house and Rachel, who forgot that she should try to be quiet. He walked down the hilly mountain path, smelling of smoke, fire and metal and this strong odor he would wash away in a long bath in the shallow arm of the river. With an SUV, he would quickly come forward, but in this part of the world there are no SUVs. The residents knew that there were motorized vehicles, but they had none. For the transport of heavy loads they used the mountain ponies and carts, these were enough for all purposes. On the narrow streets and paths was no room for anything other than sure-footed ponies.
Jack went on foot because he was too big for a pony, and had with these beasts, even after such a long time still closed no friendship. When he approached them, they turned their backsides to him, unless he brought apples and carrots. Rachel had tried to teach him how he had to deal with them and what he could do in any case, but they had a point immediately that something was different about him. He was not among them.
The farmers did not lock the ponies in stables or in gates. They could walk around freely and they prevented that they left the area by feeding them every morning. In the early light hours of the day, the ponies came from the woods, found one of the houses to collect their daily ration and let themselves be captured and harnessed to work. They were damn smart. They knew that they would do some work and get food for it. Rachel had two ponies that would overtake him on the way home, Jack knew.
The valley was cut off both from the outside world as well as from the sun. The valley was surrounded completely by the mountains and the dense forests protected them from the intense solar radiation and it rained frequently. The temperatures were always mild, there was no winter and no hot summer, and Jack knew that the Ciudad indeed counted the years, but it was not oriented to the seasons, but on much more complicated things that the water level of the river and the stars when they got to face them. Thus it was that Jack was the only one who knew that he lived for three years and five months with them, for his own timing was exact.
"You can count the sunrises," Jack said, "and so count the days, then the weeks, months and years."
"Why should we do that?" replied Rachel, "I was born in the year when there was no water in the river and that happened only five times. It is five times ago. Why should I count how many times it gets light?"
On the way home, in the full moon night, which was almost over, Jack arrived the part of the forest which Rachel called the forest of the spirits. She said she would not like to go there alone, for many reasons.
The part of the forest did not differ in the slightest from the rest of the wooded hills and plains, but Rachel said that the spirits dwelt there and sometimes they received messages from them. Mostly the direct relatives would report on upcoming events or about events taken place in the past. Jack was convinced that this was something that had brought by their ancestors, the runaway miners who came to this planet for work from their original home planets. He did not believe in this things and he wasted no thoughts about these spirits when he walked through this part of the woods.
When he heard Rachel's voice on his right side, he shuddered and stopped. Her voice said, accompanied by the rustling of the trees and the whisper of the branches: She will not let you down

.
That was all. Jack was waiting for more, staring into the darkness and cried, "Rachel? What are you talking about? Rachel?"
Then he realized that no one was there, only him and the forest and the soft voices of the trees whispering.
Must have dreamed, he thought, not more.
He had already forgotten this whispering voice, as he saw the first houses in the early day light.

Rachel was in the garden and cut herbs, as he entered the house. The ponies were already with her, drank from the glut and flapping their thick reddish tails to the flies. They heard him, lifting their heads, and Rachel turned to Jack, raised her hand and continued to select individual stalks and leaves thoroughly. These were the Ciudad - always focusing on what they were doing and living aimlessly from day to day. Hudd forged tools, tires, belts, knives, belt buckles, all types of containers, he traded these things for vegetables and fish, against a rabbit that someone had captured or against a new garment. But most of the time he sat in front of his hut, smoking the terrible herb that women like Rachel collected, dried and then bartered, and scratched his dog.
Jack made himself breakfast, chased away the mouse, which had come out of the brickwork between the wall and window, and wondered whether he should wash himself in the glut or in the river. He could try to catch a few fish, and contribute something to the common meal.

The river water in the shallow part was cool, and much colder when he got into the middle of the flow. Jack washed and shaved, put on his pants again at the bank of the river and trudged in the middle of the river, where he threw out a large meshed basket on a leash. It was a rather primitive way of fishing, but any other method was condemned as blasphemous by Rachel and the other Ciudads. No one should use other methods than any other, no one should have an advantage, even if it was only a matter of catching more fish. However, they were reluctant not to any kind of progress. When Jack had started to help Hudd with his work, he had forged a knife that was about the same knife he used to have in his old life, and as soon the others had a chance to see it, everyone was eager to own one. It could be handled better than the ones they used to have, the rabbits and fish could be exempt better and you could even cut the ponies' hoofs it, if needed, the men could shave with it. It was this knife that had managed to make Jack less suspicious to the others, the men traded food and other stuff for one of this knifes, they came to him while he was sitting outside the half-ruined hut, hardly ever moving while his leg was still broken.
Rachel's father had told that he had fallen from the sky. It was him who had found Jack.
He was standing in the river, holding the basket against the current, and was glad he had at least put on his pants again, for the children of the village had chosen this morning to go swimming as well. There were about ten children, some in the age at which they could only crawl and these were carried around by the older ones. They spent the whole day to themselves, running around free as the ponies, and found their way back home when they got hungry. They laughed and giggled splashing in the water, cleaned up the little ones, cleaned the dirty faces and running noses and one of the boys peed by a thick overhanging branch down into the water.
Jack pulled up the empty basket, threw it again. Probably the children drove away all fish and he would come empty handed.
When the children discovered a group of ponies, they followed the animals and tried to catch them, their cries were heard through the forest and rocky gorges a long time. The fish were found again, two large found their way into Jack's basket and he pulled them to shore. He cleaned them with the knife he always carried with him, put them into the basket, which he used to cool them in the flow.
His back ached, the night was long, he had fanned the fire, hammered metal and worked in the blazing heat and Jack went to bed on the forest floor under a tree outside of the narrow trodden path. His pants were still wet. In the distance he heard the noise of the fast pony hooves and the enthusiastic cries of the children. As it seemed, one of the brave boys had managed to climb on a pony and galloped with him through the meadows surrounded the village. The mountains threw the sounds of the forest, the sounds from the village and the area back and forth, one could never be sure where it came from, if you are not versed.
Jack quickly fell asleep and dreamed of the things he mostly dreamed of and had never spoken to Rachel about. Where had he come here and what he had done earlier, she had never been interested in, she never had asked.
When he woke up, she sat beside him, humming one of wordless songs known by the Ciudads. Like most residents of this area she was light-skinned and had ginger hair, which she wore mostly open, it was often washed but rarely combed.
"We can fish fry," she said, "and have potatoes. Mauri is back and he brought me some. He has no good news."
News from the outside were never good. It was about the news of Ciuadas from the other settlements, who had died or moved on, what was happening in the distant mines and if the Tusks attacked again.
"He wants to tell the news this evening."
Rachel lay down beside him, he turned on his side, holding a strand of her hair against the dim sunlight.
"If we are attacked," she whispered, "we must go even deeper into the forest and build our homes even smaller."
"They will not attack," said Jack.
But a meeting at the usual place, beneath the dome, which no one entered, would provoke the fears of the Ciudad again. It was only a matter of time, when the Tusks would fire again from their flying machines into the woods, where they suspected people.
"Hold me tight," said Rachel.
She was sensitive and excitable, usually for a touch or a kiss on the neck was enough. During sex she had no inhibitions and she did not care even if the children would watch them in this parts of the woods.
The Ciudad were the offspring of miners who had moved into the woods, not a religious denomination. If one man who moved from settlement to settlement bring alcohol, they got drunk unrestrained.
Rachel moved Jack up, turned him into herself and clung to him, whispering, panting, despite the fact that they were in a part of the river that are neither hidden nor was lonely. They could have been caught at any time, but even that would have been no big deal. She bit into his shoulder as she came.
"My dad escaped with me when I was still quite small," she said, "because the Tusk have shelled the village. So many has died here. If we cannot go deeper into the woods, where should we go?”
"I have no answer." Jack would have had, but he did not want to talk about it, so shortly after they had slept together. He knew Rachel, she was a tough one, if it had to be. Once one of their ponies had drowned in a mud hole and she had dug for five hours with her hands around him, pulled on his halter and pulled until it was free again. She was narrow and thin, but she had incredible will power.
"Let's eat something," he said. They get dressed, and holding up the fish, collected on the road a few more fruits and went home.

After dark, the villagers marched to the place under the dome. Mauri was a man in his last years, and he was a man without a special talent. He moved from settlement to settlement, did a little trading with the things that everyone needed, such as salt, tobacco, alcohol, and news. He knew the secret paths in the woods and was walking quickly through the valleys and mountains on the road known only by him and his pony. He'd always tell a lot when he was back in the village, but to his shame he was not a good storyteller. He quickly lost the thread, became embroiled in trivial little things and rarely took the important point of a story. It was then up to the village people to interpret the reports correctly, and then to decide for themselves whether they were good or bad news. Jack said he would go later, because he had to do something. Most of the times, he did not go to the meetings. Still, he was not really a part of the community, but for Rachel's sake, he would go and listen to the endless discussions this time.
Previously, he checked his old equipment, as he did almost every day, hoping that the old Mauri had been able to organize the batteries he requested. Rachel did not mention the batteries because she did not know about it. Some parts of his equipment he could repair, but the batteries were down for so long and he needed new ones. If he was able to fix the whole thing.
Below the dense foliage of the trees the place was lit with torches and bonfires and the large steel dome could only be guessed, but it was there.
The tusks might see it every time they flight above the green of the forest, but presumably they ignored it. Probably it was a good idea of the Ciudad to ban the dome. They treated him with respect, because they did not understand the technology and the functions any longer. It was a taboo to enter him. Even to speak of the dome was considered as bad. Jack had asked about the dome, when he had discovered him during his exploration tours, but no one gave him a clear answer, only the instruction not to ask for it and to stay away from this place.
They assembled below the hill on which the dome had been built, because it was a fitting venue for important meetings, but the dome was something from the days when their forefathers still had toiled in the mines. They had worked for a pittance in the mines, there were some deaths, and only those who worked with the machines and technology were treated with a little respect.
"We have left the mines and the technology," Rachel's father had told him, "we went into the woods, our women have organised a couple of ponies. We wanted a different life than what they had promised us in the old country, and what we had then in the mines. They have always lied to us all. Since we live in the woods, no one is lying to us anymore. We live in a close community. We wish for the blessing in all ways. And we are doing well."
Bless me on my way

, they said, when they parted, they said it if they were doing something tricky, if something was imminent.
Jack lived for years with them, but he knew that life in these forests was not paradise. They lived mostly satisfied in a stable community, but now and then there was a fight and now and then someone was removed from the community. Sometimes there were flights and manslaughter. The damp climate caused illnesses in which they suffered at the age especially. Many children died before they could walk. They had no doctor, only a few old women who knew a little about medicine, but that did not help when a man fell from a tree, broke his ribs and they stabbed through the lung, or when a woman died in childbirth because the bleeding was not stopping.
Bless me on my way

, was the only thing that helped them. The community cohesion in need, and they had no God. Certainly no God who came from the sky as the Tusk did when attacking them.
Jack went to the meeting, accompanied by one of the village dogs, who followed him and Jack mumbled questions, how he was doing and if he had some plans for the rest of the day and the dog responded to the questions with a tail wagging. He saw Rachel sitting with the other women away from the lighted square on a boulder. All the villagers were together now, children ran around and Mauri, again impressive with a terrible striking coat, just greeting him with a nod and showed him the thumb facing towards the sky. Jack thought of the batteries and nodded back. He would loose some of his good knifes, which he had made in one of the full moon nights.
Mauri sat on the ledge on which he could see any of the villagers, and at last there was silence. He would begin his minor details, with the Journal, who had married whom, who had had children, who of the young man left the village to seek his fortune. He had long been in the settlements of the mining company for news and information.
"The Tusk are quite for a very long time now," he said, "perhaps they have retired. The mines are working with at full speed and it seems that they are still not exhausted. I have seen the large transport ships, and they have loaded the still larger transport ships in orbit. I have brought many things that I can exchange it for your goods. But I also have some bad news."

He had spread some of the bad news already, but Jack guessed that he embellished a bit too much on it to exchange more canned goods.
If the Ciudad panicked, they hoarded everything, in case the transport routes would be cut off. He calculated it. Jack sat back and watched the faces of the villagers. They were taken to hear the news and were ready to make the decision to leave the village or to stay for good. Even the children were quiet.
Mauri said that the settlements near the mines have been destroyed, but he had to admit that he did not know if it had been the Tusks. He spoke to some of the men escaped and they had told him that only ashes from their homes and everything else had remained.
"Fire from heaven," Mauri said, "it nearly burned their eyes so bright it was. Everything was destroyed and only those who have not just been in the village have survived. Then they started to burn off large parts of the forest to find the survivors.”
"What has become of the men," asked one of the ancients.
"They went into the mines because they had no place else to go," Mauri said darkly, "they have lost everything."
"Maybe they have drawn the wrath upon themself."
"The anger of the Tusk."
"They were careless. We are not. We are always careful and stay in the woods.”
Jack could have said some words about it, but it would have lead the discussion to a wrong way. He suspected that it had not been the Tusk, but the mining company that had burned the forest. They needed new mining areas, and they took no account of the settlements and the people who lived there.
The Tusk would not attack the village, they said after the discussion, they followed the rules and did nothing to provoke an attack. There was no reason for them to pack their bags, to strap everything on the ponies and to go deeper into the forest. There was no reason to dig a hole in the ground and to disappear.
During the discussions he grew drowsy and fell asleep, dreaming that he was again in his glider and crashed. But this time he was not strapped into the seat, until the damn thing hit the trees and then the ground, he was ejected and flew through the air. He rushed towards the ground and saw the dome lit up like a diamond hidden in the dark woods, coming closer and closer.
Bless you on your way

! heard he, woke up and found himself in the crowd of villagers leaving the place. Mauri would have a lot of work do to this night and his pony would be happy to move to the next village with less weight on his back.
The old men were still with him, but most residents had already gone home, still debating and encouraging each other.
"They were suspicious," said Mauri, when they were alone at last. His voice had lost the fair character, and now he presented himself for what he really was, a businessman.
"They wanted to know why do I need the batteries."
"What did you tell them?"
"The fact that some of the muffled forest dwellers rediscovered the advantage of an electric lighting."
"Did they buy it?"
"Sure, it is the truth, right? Why should you otherwise need a battery pack?" Mauri grinned because he knew he would hear no answer from Jack anyway.
The battery packs were heavy, had an elongated square shape. He negotiated with Mauri about the prize for the battery pack and they finally agreed that Jack would give him four knives and Mauri they could make the choice.
When he finally came home, Rachel was waiting on his bed for him. They slept separately, visiting each other only if they wanted to. Jack had founded with his nightmares, but it was easier for him to leave the house at night, when Rachel was not closely beside him.
"Mauri scared me," she said, "I wish my father were still here."
"He would tell you the same I am telling you now. Nothing is going to be happening. Soon you will not think anymore about Mauri and his stories. You'll be angry about the ponies who are devastating your garden and we will swim in the river together.”
She cried that night, but the next morning she did not speak about her fears. And he was right - nothing happened.

He dug up the hidden batteries and brought them up into the dome.
The entrance to the dome was on the back of the mountain, a steel door, the frame cut out of the stone, which had disappeared under scrub and thorn bushes, and Jack had found it only by chance. The electronic lock could be opened easily and in the corridor leading to the ever-increasing belly of the dome, it was dark, cool and calm. Everything was still intact, no water leaks and no damages. Jack had an idea what awaited him in the dome, but he did not expect the range of existing equipment. When he had been there for the first time at night, he could not use the lamp light because the dome would have lit up like a light bulb in the wood, but during daylight he could see through the intact dome of the bright light outside the forest, squinting up and then inspect the facilities, weapons, and the shut down computer. All had been left behind with the intention of returning after a short time, but no one had returned. It had been a research station, a well-armed research station, which had concentrated on the orbit. The fast-moving lights that have misinterpreted by the Ciudad as satellites, if they had ever seen them through the leafy canopy, were the ships of the Tusk and the troops that were deployed to protect the mining company. Jack spent hours in the dome, staring up to the sky and wonder whether they were still up there.

According to his own calendar, it was three months in which life went on peacefully with the Ciudad, and where no one spoke about fleeing from the Tusk. Jack had joined the batteries, but did not test the devices and just hoped they would work in the case of emergency.
During the iron work, a metal splinter flew into Hudd’s face and although he was bleeding like a pig, he only said that he was damned lucky. It could have cost him an eye. Jack drew the splinter from the flesh and stitched the cut.
"How do you do that?" Hudd had asked and he had only answered: "I've already stitched myself together a lot of times.”
To celebrate the fact that it had not caused one of his eyes, they drank a sip from his holy booth and Jack stayed with him and listened to old stories until it was day light.
Back home and in his bed, he dreamed again he would crash on the dome and when he struggled to wake up, the old fracture in his leg hurt. No other bones, which he had ever broken, none of his old injuries came ever alive to speak to him, only that damn thigh bone.
Jack followed his intuition and visited the crash site. The vegetation was very thick, the score was almost closed in the forest and even the disintegrated remains of the glider were difficult to be found. Jack found a part of the cockpit, overgrown with ferns and poison ivy.
The glider had crashed with his three-man crew in the woods, Jack was the pilot and had tried everything to rescue them after being hit which had caused a devastating fire in the electronics. He had yelled to the hyenas, they should hold on to something, but not necessarily to themselves and they had laughed uproariously. It was not the first time they crashed, but for the two hyenas, it was the last time.
He knew that it would go wrong when they touched the first tree tops, then branches and tree trunks, the first hit them and scattered on the glider and then he saw the rocks coming up. Through the trees they would have managed their way down, but not through these rocks. Jack tried to pull the glider up and made him tilt to the right and the last thing he could remember from the crash was an incredible shock, the sound of tearing metal and the wind that took his breath away. The glider had been torn apart, Jack in the small narrow cockpit had only survived because he had missed the rock. Fortunately for him, unlucky for the others. The hyenas ended quickly and nearly painless on the rock and there was not much left of them, nor of their equipment. After the crash, Jack woke up with a broken leg, bloody skull and hanging upside down in his seat belts. He almost broke his neck when he unbuckled the belt and hit the ground. He wore his battle gear, in which most of his important utensils were hidden and it took him only a moment to switch off the tracker on his wrist.
In his mind he could see his signal disappearing in the bloody orbit station. They would not waste their time searching for him and although they constantly circling up there and shot more and more surveillance satellites in the orbits of the planets, he would simply disappear before their eyes. He had planned to work in the mines, then use the money to leave this planet and start over, but his broken leg had almost killed him. His body armor had a vacuum function, which he could control partially to stable the broken bones, but the pain remained. He was on his way to get away from the glider, using the compass, but he did not move far. On the uneven forest ground, he stopped at a root, stumbled and fell on the broken leg. It knocked him out. When he awoke, it was pitch dark and raining. The first rain for years, after so many years on ships and space stations, and yet he cursed the rain. The sounds of the forest and the nocturnal animals were around him, he crawled forward, but he eventually gave up. He waited for the sun to come back and that the pain would subside. He had crawled through the woods for days, developed fever and was not yet willing to turn the tracker on again. He did it twelve hours later, when he realized that he would die if they did not find him.

Jack stood in front of the well-hidden remains of the glider. There were no traces of rust, only the weeds that had grown in and the traces of the rodents that had been set up their nurseries in the seat upholstery. He bent down through the broken strands of thick cables, which had run from the cockpit through the whole glider. He pulled them by the meter from their cable ducts, heard some mice protesting, which had been comfortable there, wrapped the insulated cables together into thick strands and hung them like a cartridge belt over his shoulder. The rest he could not use anymore, thought briefly to seek the other part of the glider. The hyenas did not survive the crash and certainly their remains were discarded by the hard-working small predators of the forest.
He did not come to look for the remains. He wanted to make sure that the Tusk, if they should fly over this part of the forest, would not see the old lane crash. Nothing should arouse their curiosity. The broken trees had long since been replaced by young fast growing trees, the undergrowth grew denser than before. Jack was pleased, made on the way back. He had promised Rachel to repair the roof of the house, it rained in for several days and still he had not found the leak. Also he had to prepare together with the Ciudad the upcoming feast.
The feast consisted mainly of the game "catch the piglet", which means the males had to capture a piglet in a muddy corral and hand it over to the beloved ones. If the young men ridiculed themselves by chasing a pig it was always a great source of amusement for the girls and the rest of the villagers.
Dustin, one of the shy guys, whispered while working on the corral: “How would you catch the pig, Jack?"
"I would shoot it."
"You know, I'm not very fast on foot."
"Push her into the corner and throw yourself on her", said Jack, "it always works."
"And then I go to Leyna and put the piglet in her arms," said Dustin. Presumably it was quite easy if you knew how to do it. Jack stared at him with a perfect blank face and said: “Pig? Dustin, if you want to prove that you have balls, you should throw yourself on Leyna. Do not struggle with a stupid piece of ham.”
Dustin hung his mouth open, and Jack had to push him with the elbow, so that he finally understood the joke.

During the festival, they ate lots of sweet bread, the children rode the ponies and they all drank the terrible cider. In the mountains one of the ancestors created an apple orchard and if the trees were being maintained and cut, the Ciudad would drink cider in the future.
Dustin put himself together, stepped into the corral and threw himself on the piglet, encouraged by the jeers of the others. He managed to grab and hold the piglet, only to find that Leyna guessed that it came up to her and she fled, even though her friends called at her not to be silly. She disappeared between two huts, followed by Dustin, clamping the hysterically squealing piglet under his arm. Jack nearly choked on his cider with laughter.
Rachel gave him a piece of bread with honey and whispered in his ear if he would try himself on one of the piglets. She smiled at him invitingly, with a bright shining face, framed by the bright ginger hair, and though Jack had always refused to make a fool of himself, he whispered back: "Only if you promise that we bathe afterwards along the river."
"I will not run away from you."
He took off his gray coarsely woven sweater, took off his belt. Some of the men standing around noticed what he was up to and whistled enthusiastically. Jack was not sure why he did it now – in the past he had been afraid to reveal too much of himself, but this time he climbed into the corral, and they drove in the pig.
What a pig. Piglets for the boys, piglets which still needed half a year of feeding before worth of anything, but for Jack they presented a real monster sow. Hudd seems to find the weight class for each participant, he was standing at the gate and grinned. Jack knew by his face that it was his idea. They had some fun with him.
The sow was almost fully grown, high-legged and the kind of pig which walks through the wood all day instead of lying fat and lazy in the dirt.
She had been robbed of their own kind and knew exactly who was to blame - the men. She was furious.
The piglets had run away before the men, but this pig attacked. Jack found himself in the dirt before knowing it, saw the gaping mouth of the sow in front of him, rolled to the side and jumped back on his feet. She just missed him sharply after she had run over him. He grabbed one of her ears as she ran again at him and she pulled him with her. But this time he did not let go, fell her hooves and would feel the pain by the next morning. He fought with the pig as if his life depended on it and some of the men stopped with their derisive laughter when they saw it. They might have always believed that Jack was tough and now they got the evidence for it. Jack proved that he had often fight a you-or-I decision.
And he fought well. Despite the low balance point of the sow which was a clear advantage for her, he brought her down without being bitten by this murderous canines and threw himself on the beast. The sow tried to get back on her feed, but she found no support in the mud, squeeling angry and indignant. The whole lasted only a few minutes, but Jack was out of breath, the mud was running out of his shirt and dripping from his head. The pig was too heave to be lifted, but the Ciudad declared the round ended as a success.
"Come out here," shouted Rachel and waved with both hands. She might have a bad conscience having him persuaded into the pig wrestle, but she laughed anyway. Jack shouted back: "I don’t dare to get up from the sow.”

Jack is a tough guy

, the men said later that evening, as they stood together at one of the campfires, you have seen the bruises on his arms? And the claw marks on his stomach? He has taken up with the angry sow like nothing, I don’t want to get into a fight with him, bless me. I wish we had more like him, we could defend ourselves against the Tusk.

"Rachel's father told me once how he found him," George said. He was one of the old men of the settlement.
"He could fly such a sky machine.”
But they said nothing to Jack about this, because they feared they could conjure the evil upon them. Name it and you call it.

Rachel met Jack's condition and by sunset they were swimming in the river, near by each other, Rachel washed the mud from his head, they have been in the lazy current of the river drift and tried to catch fish with their bare hands. Rachel grab on a branch overhanging the water. Her shirt stuck to her body and Jack watched fascinated as her skin became apparent under the thin fabric.
"Come back here," he said, swam over to her. She fell back into the water, dived, and came puffing up again - her hair dark and smooth as silky fur.
"I'm sorry for the kicks”, she said.
"In a few days it will be gone.”
They left the deep water, lay on the bank of a verdant slope. They had removed most of their cloths for the swimming, took off the rest of it.
"It should never change," whispered Rachel, put his hand between her legs, "I am so happy when you're with me."
Her voice was a tense sigh when Jack moved his fingers in the place where she was particularly sensitive. It always ended up in this way when they started the game.
"What do we do with the sow," said Rachel. In the darkness they had put on only the most necessary, the rest of the clothes wore around their necks and they found their way home only by the torches that still stuck in the ground everywhere.
"With the pig?"
"You've won."
"I hope you don’t want to keep it behind the hut. It will see me and kill me.”
"It's your pig."
"I would not have won if you had not persuaded me."
"Pig roast and ribs?"
"Good idea."
Also around the houses and huts a few more torches burned in the night and some of the night owls were still in the streets and talking to each other.
"You do forgive me the trick with the pig, don’t you.”
Jack did not answer immediately, he looked to the torches and had worried about it for a moment.
Why do I go and check if they can see the glider from above if the whole village looks like a birthday cake?

He pushed the thought away. They celebrated many festivals with fire, careless and jaunty, but there was also no doubt that the Tusk knew where the settlements were – they just only attacked for a reason.
This feeling of unrest was difficult to suppress, but he blamed it on the cider.
"Of course I forgive you," he said, grabbed her by the hips and swirled her around, once again amazed how strong she felt, even though she was small and delicate, "but not the sow."

He woke up as Rachel fed the ponies in front of the house and groaned as he struggled out of bed. As usual, the kicks hurt more on the morning after. Around his rib cage he already developed a beautiful hematoma, not to mention the nasty abrasions from pig hooves on his skin.

It rained all day. Jack tried to seal the roof, but when he thought he had found the leak, Rachel called up to him that the water was coming in now from another place. He was soaked to the bone, wiping the rain from his eyes, put the tool and the wood shingles aside and sat motionless on the sloping roof. There was no sense in what he attempted to do here. It had been his idea to climb up and find the hole, although the water came already in for months. He would tell Rachel to use the buckets and bowls and to ignore it.
Sitting on the roof, he could see through the tree tops, it was hazy in the rain and the fog and he could see not much, but the brief flash on the horizon he could not ignore. It looked like some scap part burned in the atmosphere or the signs of an approaching storm. Jack knew that it was neither.
I should warn her

, he thought.
But he sat on the roof, staring into the sky and reacted only when Rachel called to him if he was asleep already.
I have to warn them

, he thought, they must seek shelter. I hope they do not think I am in cahoots with them.

Jack slid down the back of the roof, landed with both feet in the muddy ground.
I tell them

, he thought, and then they will decide.

He knew he could not pass this decision on Rachel, but he did it anyway. Rachel responded scared and insecure.
"A flash in the sky? But we use to see this sometimes, when the sky’s clear.”
"The sky is not clear."
"But ..." He interrupted her.
"I have seen the light through the trees. Not in the sky. This was not a satellite. What do we do?"
"Don’t know."
She stared at him scared. Jack sighed, abandoned everything what was in his thoughts while on the roof. It was impossible to play a dove, if you were a hawk.
"I inform the others”, he said, "you pack up a few things, just to be safe. The others will make their own decisions.”

Jack went to the huts to inform the Ciudad about the light he had seen, and made it as short as possible. Then he went to Hudd, who assorted iron and steel scraps and answered he had seen no light and does not think it was important. Thus, most of the villagers had responded in this way.
"If something is wrong, the dogs will react on it," he said, "they have shown the great storm that has raged for two weeks and so far they are still lazy and snoring in their sleeping places. Do not think so, Jack."
"If the dogs behave differently, then go away and find some shelter. I already informed the others.”
"What about you?"
Jack knew what he meant, but he acted the fool.
"What about me, Hudd?”
“Don’t you know more about this than you say?”
"I just know from experience that the light does not mean any good. Mauri and you told me about the latest attacks. I'm just cautious."
"What did Rachel say? She has lost her mother in an attack."
"That's why I told her first. I take care of her.”

When Jack was on his way back, finally the rain stopped, the earth was steaming and smelling of spring, as it must have done in the good times, the smell of fresh shoots, fertile soil and recurring renewal. There was no spring, because there was no winter and no summer, only small shifts of the seasons on this planet. He had known it when he greased with the glider. Evergreen, densely covered everything except the places where the ore was mined.

He would not have minded if they had decimated the whole forest at the time of his crash, then he would not have been almost died under the trees. At last he had activated his tracker and found it not working. He could have thrown it away, but he had plugged it back into his gear and waited that some animal would come and eat him. A short time in freedom, but at least he died in freedom. He already had finished with it, when Rachel’s father had found him. It was a better alternative than having a tracker working and they had found him.
They would have fixed his leg in the station much faster, but on the other hand they would have sent him immediately to the next assignment. With the Ciudad he was a man without past and could start from the scratch, without having to think about what the consequences might be if he did nothing. Finally he could let everything come toward him, nobody wanted serious decisions from him, no commander to send him to clean the room in a foreign space freighter.

"It's okay," said Rachel, when he was finally back, "the others said it could have been a light from the mines, or something that was burned in the atmosphere. They did not attack us for such a long time, right? You are still wet. Change your clothes, I’ll make some hot drink.”

Their composure was faked. The neighbors might have calmed down, but they all could hardly keep their eyes closed. Rachel made him a vegetable stock, she fed the dogs and they spent the remaining hours of the afternoon watching the mist in the forest, retreating further and further. They noted that something was amiss when the two ponies that had grazed on the meadow, they lifted their heads, listened in one direction and then disappeared into the forest. They did not take the usual beaten track, and they did not just trott away, they ran off through the undergrowth.
Rachel ran to the house, listened, and shuddered when the first explosion echoed through the forest.
"Jack," she cried, "I can’t hear where it comes from. We can’t escape in any direction. We could run against them."
Jack pulled her back into the house, made her grab the packs and took the dogs on a leash.
"Take them with you," he said, "they'll take you away from danger."
"I don’t know."
“Stay close to the river and follow the dogs. I tell the others the same."
"What about you? Are you coming with me?”
"I'll get you as soon as I can."
She resisted, pressed the bag against her breast and refused to leave the house. Even when Jack grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled the door, she would not run off.
"No," she said, "don’t leave me alone."
"You're not alone."
He could not follow her despair anymore, he could not explain his actions, because there was no time for it, but Rachel did not understand.
"If we are attacked, Rachel, I need to secure a few things, which are damn important. I will not let you down, I just want you to bring yourself to a safe place. With all the others. The further you get away from the village, the better."
"What do you have to bring to a safe place?”
A second explosion rolled through the forest and the two dogs wandered around whining, pulling on the leash. Rachel winced.
"I crashed with a glider, I was the pilot. Actually, I would not have stayed with you folks, I wanted to leave the planet and ensure that no one finds me. Everything went in a different way. Nevertheless, I keep a part of my technical equipment hidden, and I have to get it.”
“You hide it from me?”
"These are highly technical equipment, and you'd only asked questions about it. I wanted to hide here and I wanted to be treated as normal."
"You have devices hidden from us that we could have used to be warned from the Tusk?”
She moved away from him, her eyes opened wide in horror and she forgot the current situation. Jack felt the urge to slap her in the face.
“I could not have localized Tusk or others and warn you. Do you think I would have assembled the entire glider and repaired it? All I have are a few fucked up ground location devices and the damn combat gear. What do you want to say? That I would hand you over?”
"My dad always said ..."
"He knew me a lot and he kept this to himself because he knew that it was better in that way. Rachel, we do not have the time to discuss all this.”
They finally took the frightened dogs and ran from the village. Other people also packed up their things, some stood around hesitantly.
"Look for shelter," said Jack, "if they are fast, the next explosion will us all blow away."
"George said we should only kill the lights."
"He will not leave the village. Sometimes looters fake such attacks and then they steal all the beasts and food. "
Jack looked at their faces and saw it again. He had seen it years ago when he arrived in this village. These people were sometimes so narrow minded and stupid, so incredibly intellectually limited that it nearly blew his fuse. Should they sit quietly in their homes and wait for the things to pass by.
"Go," he cried, "down to the river."
He ran shortly behind Rachel, until he turned off on the way to the dome. She pulled the dogs back to him.
"Damn, Rachel, run down to the river."
"The dome? Couldn’t we hide there? "
"You cannot hide under a glass roof."
He had another idea.
"If I turn the system on, I direct their attack on the dome. This gives you more time to disappear."
"There is no entrance into the dome."
Jack said that he had already found it and that he hoped to bring the generators back to live.
"Where will you be when they shoot at the dome?"
Jack pressed one last kiss on her mouth and mumbled: "I would have hid myself already."
The explosion and the roar of the approaching gliders filled the air and finally Rachel obeyed, turned and ran. Jack waited until she was gone, looking for the entrance to the dome, and thought that he probably could survive in there. The passage was built deep into the rock and if he managed to illuminate the dome and hide here, everything could be well. But there was a snag in it. The dome would only be the first target and nothing would stop the Tusk to burn the whole forest and kill everyone hiding inside. He had to deal with it differently.
If the battery packs were fine, it would work, but Jack had no time to test it. The first attempt had to be successful.
Lights on

, he thought, searched his way through the dark passage, and then we start the fireworks.

He knew what he was doing and he knew it would probably go wrong for him, but that was fine. He had over three years, had a good life, and he was not sorry to bear the consequences.
Bless me on my way

, he thought, I can’t let them destroy everything. If I can shoot one of the gliders, I’ve already won.

He took on his old combat gear, found the weapons and the tracker and was amazed that his combat gear would not fit him anymore. He had to adapt it, but he did not fully succeed. The stupid or intelligent thing of this gear was that they had to be worn every day to keep fit. They adapted themselves to the body. He had not worn these for over three years and he had lost weight on his special wood and meadows diet.
On the control panel, he turned on the generators, waited with bated breath for a response and hit his fist on the panel in triumph as the lights flashed up in the big room.
His heart raced. After such a long time he was pushed back into his old live and he enjoyed it.
The tracker was connected to one of the batteries and he hoped it would work again, placed it on the floor behind the control panel.
From the raised podium Jack could overlook the entire space of the dome. He was interested in the scientific computer programs he could run, he opened the gun cabinets, activated the laser cannon and put his hand on the control panel. The electric light gleaming in the dome was humming, far visible in the forest, and Jack did not have long to wait for the glider. He hoped that it was the Tusk, not one of the mining company ships ready to burn the forest. One of the target screens crackled and failed, but the other one could do the job.
This has to work

, he thought.
The first glider appeared on the screen, Jack targeted and fired the laser cannon. The first one was no problem, they did not expect an attack, he hit the glider’s tail and the Tusk rushed down into the woods. The explosion shook the dome. The other two Tusk gliders turned away, attacked again and burned a swath into the forest, the fire was in front of the dome within seconds. Jack saw them though the glass of the dome, concentrated again on the control panel and hit one of the gliders. It was too late to eliminate the other one. He could not use the laser cannon within the dome, he jumped behind the sturdy construction of the fire wall and activated the tracker. Connected to the battery, it immediately sent out the signal and Jack hoped that someone was still in the orbit and would receive it. They should not come to get him. They should drive away the Tusk. Once that was done, he would disappear, if he was still able to do it. Above him, the dome exploded, he threw himself to the ground and although he pressed his forehead on the floor, his hands over his ears, the explosion was so violently that it tore one ear drum. Hidden behind the fire wall, he was protected from the flying glass and metal chunks and fire, but the wall could not protect him from what came after.

Rachel met a small group of villagers and passed on what Jack had told her. Most of them agreed to flee further into the wood and into the narrow valleys. But George held her back for a moment.
"What is he doing to stop them?”
"He will attract them to the dome."
"There are reasons why the dome is off limits for us," said George, "there are equipment and weapons which can blow us all to pieces if they are not operated correctly.”
"Jack can handle it."
"He will not come out alive."
George took over the distorting dogs from Rachel and she wanted to move on, but then she suddenly stopped.
"I can’t leave him alone," she said. George stared at her, turned around and saw through the thick trees the explosion that destroyed the first glider.
"I have to go back."
She left the dogs with George, ignored his attempt to persuade her to come along with him.
"If I find him, I come back with him," she said, ran back and smelled already the burnt wood, plastic and molten metal.
She was out of breath, her arms scratched from the bushes and was pushed to the ground when the dome exploded. For a second she was unable to breathe, felt the cuts in her face and was relieved that her eyes were intact. All around, small fires had broken out, splinter stuck in the ground and in trees. Her small incisions were burning, but she pushed this aside. She ran, stumbled and found the shortest way to the dome and stopped when she saw what was left of it.
Bless me

, she thought, I must find the entrance.

The roof of the dome was destroyed, the technology was burned and waisted. A glider hovered above the remains of the dome, several scouts had landed in the rubble. The Tusk talked with the intercom, searched through the destroyed remains and were not surprised to be attacked again. One of them was hit and collapsed, the other entrenched himself and aimed at Jack, who had barricaded himself behind the destroyed firewall. He had no chance. The bullets hit the wall around him and Jack was so busy trying to reload his pump gun and to shoot blindly on the attackers, that he did not notice he was hit. He noticed it when he saw the blood on the floor. Not just isolated little splatters of blood, much more.
Ignore it

, he thought, as long as you can feel your fingers, shoot back.

The ammo did not last long, he loaded the last two cartridges into the gun and turned around. He saw the movement in the corner of his eyes, reacted to it without thinking. The Tusk, who tried to get at him, was hit by the full charge, was thrown back and disappeared from Jacks view. The other Tusk waited for his attack, jumped from the top of the wreckage and stopped a few yards in front of Jack. Under normal circumstances, he would have reacted more quickly, but he slipped in his blood when he grabbed again for the gun and tried to dive. The charge caught him and nailed him against the ruined wall. Immediately he could not breath nor move.
That’s it

, he thought, but if they managed to escape, it was worth it.

He blinked with some efforts and looked up to the Tusk wearing his mask and battle gear and coming closer. Everything seemed to freeze around him. He took in air with a hard whistling, breathed bright red blood bubbles. The Tusk knelt beside him, leaning down to him and whispered: “Who are you? Where are the others?”
Jack could not answer. The pain was worsening with every breath and he would have said to the Tusk to end it, but he could not.
“You didn’t do this alone. Where did you come from? Did you fall from the sky?”
He beat Jack on the stomach, satisfied as he barely get any response. He would end it.

Rachel found the entrance to the dome, Jack had left the metal door open and also he had had no time to hide the place behind torn green. She entered to the dark and narrow tube which filled her with an acute attack of claustrophobia which was completely new to her, as she never had been in such a thing as a narrow dark room. Her heart was pounding and with wide-open eyes she felt her way through the passage, found the flickering fire after the bend. It was so much smoke in the air that her eyes starting watering and she pressed her palm to her lips, trying to breathe through her sleeves.
I can’t faint

, she thought, went down to her knees and crawled through the scattered debris, glass and metal fragments, moved them aside in order not to cut her hands. She did not look up, ignored the Tusk glider and looked for Jack. She screamed when the shooting began and only by the deafening roar of explosions, no one heard her cry. She had been hidden in a computer cabinet, moving out the round and square disks which no one could use anymore, to make place for herself. In the closet she pushed the crooked door close until she could see only through a crack. What she saw from her hidden place was the landing of the glider in the debris, Tusk jumping out and being shot from another part of the room.
Why don’t I have a weapon

? Rachel thought, wiping the tears from her face, if I had a gun, I could help him.

It took barely ten minutes until the fight stopped and Rachel heard the monotonous hiss of the Tusk as he put the questions on Jack and got no answers.
She pushed the door a little bit to the side, lifted her head and saw a new light above the glider which had caused this destruction. There were movements in the chaos of fire, destruction and smoke around her, the Tusk ran to his glider and disappeared, and finally she crawled out of the hiding and over to the place behind the broken fire wall. She expected that Jack was there, but she was not ready to see what she found. There was blood everywhere, smears of blood, blood in splashing and pools. Beneath a broken stone block was Jack, half turned on his side, one hand still on the tracker which constantly gave his signal. His battle suit prevented the blood streaming directly from the gunshot wounds because the fabric closes itself if perforated. The blood ran out of the neckline of his combat gear and when Rachel pulled him laboriously in an upright position, she felt horrified that the inside was full of blood.
Jack did not respond when she whispered to him that everything will be all right. She held his head and tried to see if he was still breathing.
“You’re not going to die”, she said, “I’ll bring you away from here.”
Slowly he opened his eyes, stared into space and Rachel pressed her hands to his face and pressed a kiss on his forehead.
“I’ll stay with you”, she said, sobbing and trembling, when she believed that he looked at her and his painfully face relaxed a little. She struggled violently when hands reached for her and moved her to her feet. She saw what they did, without understanding it. The men, unrecognizable in their combat gears, took the tracker from Jacks hand and switched it off. The laid him flat on the floor and pushed something over his face. When they opened his combat gear and pulled it down, Rachel saw the bullet wounds and turned away abruptly.
It’s a nightmare

, she thought, I wake up and everything will be fine. Jack is fine. This is not his blood. With such wounds he could not be still alive.

Rachel heard the question addressed to her, but she could not answer. When it was repeated, she said: “How can he breathe?”
“We take care of him. Now I wanna know who you are and what Jack has done here.”
Rachel stared at the woman who had taken off her helmet and run her fingers over her shaved head. The woman took Rachel aside, wanted her to concentrate.
“Answer my questions.”
Rachel stuttered, she did not know where to start and finally she could say something that was understood.
“You tell me that Jack has lived with you Ciudad the last years?”
Rachel nodded. It could be reduced to that.
“I’m Bessinger”, she said, “we have caught Jack’s signal. We usually don’t interfere in the affairs here, but this time it was different. We take him back to the station.”
Rachel nodded and discovered that her hands were cut and grazed and was surprised that it did not hurt.
“They attacked our village”, she said, “and if they do, we flee into the forest. We are looking for a new place for the settlement.”
“You flee”, Bessinger said disparagingly, “that was obvious.”
On the portable surveillance monitor she controlled the environment and shouted into the intercom that they should continue to monitor the area until they had Jack in the glider.
“Can I come with him?” Rachel asked.
Bessinger turned to her, looking suspicious.
“Why should we take you with us?”
Rachel tried to push her feelings aside and to focus on the next important things to do. She could go back to the other Ciudad, start over again and wait for the next attack. Without Jack. But she could not do this.
“I want to stay with Jack.”
“That’s impossible.”
Rachel knew what kind of impression she had on the soldier. What was absolutely normal for her, the gray dress made of coarse cloth which hung from her shoulders, solid black shoes without socks, their hair hold together with a ribbon, might be strange to them.
She was neither tall nor strong, was neither particularly pretty nor female. She had to convince Bessinger that she had to stay with Jack. Meanwhile, the soldiers lifted Jack into a stretcher and brought him to the glider.
“What do I have to do to stay with him?”
In her ears her voice sounded small and uncertain, and Bessinger made a face as if she could not believe that she had to deal with a wailing child.
“What’s your name again?”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel, there is no way that you could stay with him. He’s a soldier and just has been hiding for a while with you. That’s all. You go back to your forest and we get Jack to where he belongs.”
Bessinger’s voice was still loud and hard, and Rachel understood suddenly.
“There must be something I can do to take me on board. I’ll do what you want, as long I can stay with him.”
Bessinger slapped her. She hit her with the palm of her hand, her face flushed and she trembled backwards, tears in her eyes. Rachel had never been hit and she was shocked. Not because of the pain that numbed her face, but the fact that one woman beat her without a reason.
“You can beat me up if you want”, she said, wiping the tears away and cleaning her throat, “but I will not leave Jack alone.”
Bessinger received a signal, reacted frantically and put her helmet on again. She could have left Rachel alone and disappear, but she did not.
“If we take you with us”, she said, her voice sounded hollow and strange under the helmet, “there is no way back for you. You don’t have the time to think about it. You step into the glider and you’ll never return to your forest. Make up your mind.”
They went up to the glider, a run-down vehicle gives places for a half a dozen men. Rachel went inside without hesitation, took a seat and did not even looked around. She was not interested in the technology around her, she just stared at Jack, who was in the stretcher, surrounded by life-support equipment. She had never seen such things, but she knew that everything was fine as long as the devices making the noises. She went dizzy as the glider took off and she swallowed the sudden nausea. She would have liked one last look at the woods, but there were no windows in the glider. No one spoke to her and no one told her what would happen next.
“Rachel”, said Bessinger when they left the glider and entered the station, which was so big that Rachel even did not noticed it as a ship, “what I’m telling you now I will not repeat. This is a single offer and we will not discuss about it. I am the commander of the station and you do what I say. If you want to stay on board, you only have one possibility. If you reject the offer, we will bring you down into the woods and that its. I did say that you will not see your forest again, but I wanted to see how far you’d go. You can only stay on board if you join the fleet. As a soldier you can stay, not as a civilian.”
Rachel cried. She knew the consequences of her decision she had already made a few hours ago. She nodded, raised her bandaged hands when Bessinger started to explain what her life would be as a soldier.
“I don’t want to know what I have to expect”, she said, “I will know soon enough. I am not prepared for this. And I agree to all conditions.”
Bessinger took her to a booth, gave her the gear and told her to get dressed and keep ready. Rachel looked around, felt again the pressure of the small room and thought: Get used to it. You are in a spaceship.
She dressed quickly, put her old clothes neatly on the bed. At the cabin door she heard a nasty noise (she was not accustomed to electronic noises) and the door opened. One of the soldiers came in to take her to the next task.
“If I lose my way”, said Rachel, “is there a trick how to find my way again?”
“You’re not supposed to run around alone. What do you think where you are? On a pleasure boat?”
She decided to stop asking questions.
After further instructions and long procedures, she met Roger, who said that it was a pity about her long hair. They had shaved her head and treated her with antiseptic which made her feel so sick that she vomited. She did not apologize for it.
Roger was the first man on board who treated her kindly, he offered her a cup of tea and asked “Did you see him?”
She shook her head.
“I did not ask to see him. Every time I ask something I am told that I should not ask questions as a private. I do not even really know what a private is and what I have to do here.”
“Take your tea and I’ll take you to him.”
The tea was added with a little bit of sugar and contained bitterness and Rachel still only tasted the Styrofoam cup.
If everything tastes like this I’ll starve

, she thought.

The hospital was on a different level on the ship which they reached with the automatic elevators. Roger told her some details about the ship and why they circled in the orbit of this little unimportant planet instead of searching new worlds.
Jack was not the only patient on the ward, but he was the only one who was under an oxygen tube, surrounded by medical equipment and devices. In the neon light he looked pale as the death, the wounds were treated and bonded and he slept in a daze.
“We have taken good care of him”, said Roger, “and we hope he will make it. I never thought that we would ever see him again after he was gone for so long.”
“Can I stay with him for a moment?”
She had the feeling that she had not seem him for months and felt the tears again in her eyes. She swallowed hard a few times and was very grateful as Roger said: “Do you mind if I keep your company?”
Roger organized two folding chairs and set down right next to Jack.
“Can he hear us?”
“Probably not”, said Roger, “but as soon as the Doc will wake him, you can tell him that you’ve been with him.”
“Did you talk to the doctor?”
Roger grinned and moved his head.
“The doc is the computer”, he said, “he is supervising him day and night and will let him wake up if he is better.”
“A machine?” Rachel made almost the suggestion that she could stay with Jack and take care of him, but she understood the advantage of a machine.
“Tell me how Jack came to you”, Roger said.
She made a few words about it, told that he had worked as the blacksmith and that he had had some bad dreams.
We never asked where he came from”, she said, “this is not usual for us. There are always men from the mines coming to us. If they adapt, they stay.” She looked over to Jack. “When the Tusk attached he went into the dome and directed the attack upon himself. He did this only for us. Why don’t you let us return as soon he is fine again?”
Roger explained that would break the rules. The computer monitoring Jacks conditions changed the rhythm of the respirator and varied the supply of drugs. Roger paused for a moment. He could not tell Rachel about Jacks past. They both came from a planet from Rachel had probably never heard of. The children who were born there grew up in a supra-national organization because they had no parents who could care for them. It was a category five planet where they housed the part of the population they wanted to get rid of. The children paid for the deeds of their parents and the organization was originated to the military. The only sensible thing that could make such children were soldiers. Jack was one of those who understood and coped with every situation, but he took the advantage of every situation to turn his own thing. Sometimes he had tried to escape, sometimes he had started clandestine operations that almost broke his neck. But he was unbeatable as a co-commander. He was appointed everywhere and always brought back the boys, no matter how critical the situation was. He was born to fight. There would be no other life for him until his final breath.
“He should have known that they kill him in the dome, right? Why didn’t he save himself?”
“He is trained to save others”, said Roger, “and in extreme cases it excludes himself.”

Rachel was treated very tough on the first days on the ship, she received a hard training and Roger was in charge for her fitness training to prepare her for the hyenas operations. Shaving her head was just the beginning.
“She’s not tough enough”, said Bessinger, “it will take two more days and she will be on her knees to bring her down into the forest.”
“She will make it. Finally, she knows this is the only way to stay here.”
“Bloody hell”, swore Bessinger, “I have to explain even the toilet to her. She gets panic attacks when she’s in a room where she can see both sides of the walls, which means that she is going from one panic attack into the other. I don’t know how it will go on.”
Roger was patient with Rachel because he knew that everything was new and strange to her. He saw it as an opportunity to shape a recruit as he wanted him. Rachel was the perfect raw material and he formed her. Within two months she performed perfectly in the way he wanted her. She controlled the weapons and the equipment. They turned her from a panicky girl into a weapon.
“I get my period no longer”, she said during the short lunch break.
“This is due to the drugs, Bessinger already told you. It’s okay.”
“She said that women should not have children here. I would have liked to have a child down in our woods.”
“Why did it not work?”
“That can happen to us”, she said curtly.
“Women in the station are only soldiers and therefore we regulate it. It makes you stronger.”
Rachel thought about it, drank the rest of her coffee and said: “I would fight more better if I knew I have to protect a child on board.”

Now and then she asked for Jack. Roger knew that Jack was the only power to keep her going. She hoped to see him again and to work with him. Roger had not said that this would never happen.
Since three weeks Jack was back on duty as a pilot. He was not quite the same again, but he was on a good way. He did not know that Rachel was on board. He even did not ask what had become of the Ciudad or Rachel.
Roger had developed a very special interest in Rachel and although he knew that it was against the law, he used her for his purposes. During the exercises, which took partly place in the rooms without monitors, he whispered to her: “If you like, I’ll bring you news about Jack. He is still on the station, he’s getting better. I can tell him that you’re here.”
She was on the treadmill doing her daily quota, Roger checked her cardiovascular values. He stood next to the treadmill, his hands on his notes that Rachel could not read it. She stared straight ahead, running in her perfect rhythm. Only her eyes flashed once in his direction as she heard his whisper. When her routine ended, she sat on the bench and checked the values on the monitor in the opposite wall and said: “I haven’t seen him for so long. Would you tell him that I think of him every day?”
“Sure, but you have to do something for me.” He looked at her. Her female figure had disappeared during the training and due to the medications, her face had lost the soft features, but still she showed something that all other women on board had lost long time ago.
“I’ve heard that you Ciudad have sex all with each other, regardless of you are together with someone. Am I right?”
Rachel hesitated with the answer. It still hurt to think of her home. It was lost forever.
“We have sex with the partner we choose to”, she said, “but if we haven’t found a partner, we have sex for fun. Some of the men from the mines who came to us thought that this was a sin, but I have never understood what they meant. Sex is just appropriate to get children? Just as we eat one’s fill and we can work. But when the apples are ripe, we eat all the fried apples and make cider until we are sick. If two like each other, why should it be a sin? It is wrong if one forces the other to do it. That happened a few times. Everyone has the right to say no and it is wrong to ignore that. How are the things here?”
“We rarely have sex because we have to be ready for the next mission. There are some areas on the ship where you can do it, but usually it’s suppressed by the drugs we take.”
“I don’t want to do it anymore since I don’t get my period any longer.”
“Take off your clothes”, said Roger, “I want to see you again.”
She obeyed immediately and without hesitation. She turned her back, bent down, turned around again when he asked her to do so.
“What should I do for you to make you talk to Jack?” she asked and obeyed again when Roger let her kneel between his spread legs. Rachel did what Roger asked for, she carried out all the other exercises and lessons without asking. She knew it would be bringing Jack step by step closer to her. She did it, she felt nothing at all, but she was glad when it was over. Roger repeated these things to her, sometimes in variations and each time he bought news of Jack.
Rachel did not understand that Roger told her exactly what she wanted to hear. Jack is fine. All injuries are healed and soon he will be back at work and Roger would arrange a meeting.
Rachel had no idea how big the space station exactly was, where she was and where she would move after the training. She shared the billet with five other women, who were also privates, and they also suffered from the drill and would never had admit it. They could only survive if they were tough, even tougher than their male comrades. They never complained about their sore feet, the bruises and lacerations, and they all were silent as graves about the sexual assaults. They could have formed a sisterhood, but the women did not find a common ground and they distrusted each other. If they wanted to be in a team, the team was formed of the task force. Pilots, hyenas, mechanics. This was the only connection they wanted.
Roger risked a lot when he secretly filmed Jack with a communication camera while checking a glider, and showed the pictures to Rachel. She cried when she saw the sharp pictures and wanted it to see again and again.
“He’s looking so strange”, she said, “but he is well, bless him. He’s fine.”

Jack had spent only two weeks in rehab after release of the hospital area to get back into shape, took painkillers continuously and reported himself back for duty. Bessinger insisted on a tribunal to punish him for his escape, but no one in the higher ranks had an interest in it. They were far away in other orbits. There were a lot of pilots and hyenas like Jack. He hadn’t instigated a revolution on board, he simply just crashed and had failed to make contact to the station. This was the opinion of the general when Bessinger spoke to him by intercom.
“With all due respect, sir”, she said, “he will do it again. At some point, he will succeed to escape.”
“If he tries again, shoot him, Chief Commander. This is your decision. Shorten his wage, cut his period of rest, if you want to punish him.”
Bessinger did not do it, for she knew that Jack did not care how much money he got or how many hours of free time. Jack fought because it was the only thing he could do while he was on the ward or in a glider.

Before his first deployment, he had to see Bessinger. He was almost back to his original fighting weight, but his posture and his movements showed that he was not yet fully restored. She had seen the scars and knew that the muscle would hurt for months. She ripped his head off and reminded him on his duties. As in the old days, Jack did not show any signs of his mood, he stood stoically before Bessinger. She paced around in front of him while talking to him. Jack said nothing. It was not expected.
“You follow the instructions. My instructions. I am monitoring you during your sortie and if necessary, I intervene. But I don’t expect I have to. You still know what to do and you will not do any mistakes. You’re just the pilot, Jack, you even don’t have to talk to the hyenas. I don’t want you to be distracted by one of the guys with stupid questions. We just get the order to look at the cargo ship and to save the log. We suspect that the cargo ship has only been ransacked by pirates, but still we should be careful. For this task no more than seven hours are planned. Stay to that figure.”
“No problem”, said Jack. He did not move, because Bessinger still marched up and down, she was not finished with him.
“When we found you”, she said, “there was a girl with you. You’ve never talked about her.”
“What for?”
“Was she important to you?”
“Bessinger, this doesn’t matter anymore.”

As soon as he was strapped into the pilot’s seat and started the engines, his wounds started to hurt. He could only concentrate with difficulties on the flight, sweating and shivering at the same time. He managed the flight without problems, but he switched off the connection to the station and muted Bessinger. He could not stand her voice, especially if she tried to control him. Jack did not know any of the hyenas, but he made sure that they all returned safely to the station, including the electronic logbook and some metal boxes.
The collision came later when Jack was on his way through the quarantine station. Some of the unpleasant things he had actually forgotten while living with the Ciudad and the quarantine and cleaning were a part of it. After each visit outside the station ship, the crew was subjected to a special cleansing, as it turned out that the contact to alien life forms were not always safe, even if they had no direct enemy contact. In previous decades, many hyenas and pilots were infected with diseases that were not even recognized as such. The compliance of the hygiene guidelines was vital and hated on the station.
Jack went off, threw the clothes into the soil pit and stepped into the cylinder. There was no way getting around it, but he hated this procedure. During the purge he thought of Rachel and the hours together with her in the shallow shore waters, thought about her face and voice and deepened his memory back to it and blocked out any idea what might have become of her. He did not want to think about that. If his mad action had saved at least Rachel, then everything was fine with him. When he started the action in the dome, he did not plan to getting out of it alive.
Bless me on my way

, he had thought, but Bessinger had decided something else for him. He was a cog in the system, an important cog, because only a few of his kind were left.
Rachel

, he thought, as the foul-smelling chemicals were sprayed over him, he breathed in, panting. It burned in his eyes.
I might have tried to run away with you into the forest, but for how long could we have hidden there. I wish I could have shot them all to make you live in peace in your woods.

It came to him that Bessinger had said something about Rachel. She had been with him when they had found him. He still thought about it when he stepped out of the cylinder, fighting against the nausea, even though it was a normal procedure to puke after the cleansing. He dressed and moved over to the lounge, showing a gloomy face. The hyenas sat around bored, debating how they would spend their pay, that the last exciting deployment took place months ago and spread the usual slipslop. Jack crouched against the wall, still fighting the nausea and the stench of the chemicals and everything would have been fine, if not Morgan, whose mouth was as big and overbearing as his feature, would have made stupid questions.
“Jack”, he called across the room, “I reckon you’ve flown missions that were special. The guys here are only with us for one year, tell them about some encounter.”
“What encounter?”
“Have heard that you lead some operations where only half of the men came back alive and tell no one what happened to the others.”
“Can’t remember.” Jack kept his eyes down and Morgan should have known by the tone of his voice better to stop asking and to let him be.
“Come on, as if you don’t remember. I know that you were a has-been, but don’t tell me your brain had suffered. If so, you wouldn’t fly anymore.” Morgan chuckled and added: “You were hiding for years and we thought you would be gone forever, but you’ve lived with this little people. In a pretty good accommodation, as I have heard.”
As Jack did not answer, Morgan turned to the other men and begged for more attention.
“If I get it right, you caught yourself one of the forest girls and you had a good time with her. Heard that the girls lay down for everyone, especially if you came from the mines. Have you told her that you came from the mines that she spread for you?”
Morgan did not expect a physical attack from Jack, so he ignored the obvious signs, he was spurred on by the curious hyenas around. What made Jack explode and made Morgan almost loose his life was the fact that Jack had a notion Bessinger knew more than she had told him. She must have told someone in the crew where he had been. And he did not tell anybody about Rachel.
He pounced on Morgan, brought him to the ground and although Morgan was a heavyweight, he kept him down and beat him up. He was not thinking at all about what he did, he did not care what would happen to him and Morgan. If he would have had a weapon, he would have used it.
Morgan only survived the attack because the security force came in time. Jack was kneeling on his chest, banging his fists into his face and hit Morgan’s head on the floor until the security guy used the stun gun without warning and at the highest level.
It took almost twenty hours before Jack was able to move and speak again. He was in the holding cell, waiting for Bessinger to appear, but she did not come. It was Roger who risked to see him.
“Have you lost your mind, Jack?”
He handed over a plastic cup with turbid content. Neither the color nor the taste could tell Jack what it was, it was the usual beverage from the instant machine and they all were used to it.
“What do you mean?” Jack replied. He stared at his battered knuckles, grinning as he reached for the cup. His hands were trembling, the effect of the shock had not yet abated.
“Just because Morgan gassed about the Ciudad you bashed his face to pulp? Bessinger would love to throw you out of the station.”
“Then why she’s not here?”
“Hmh?”
“Why did she send you to talk to me? Is she busy?”
Jack sipped the tea, had to lift the head, as his face and his lips were still numb.
“She’s busy and she thought it would be better to clear it from man to man. We checked out the records of the Q-station and it is very clear that you went ballistic because of Rachel…”
Jack tried it again, but his reactions were slow and unsteady and he fell into Rogers arms, they both went down to the ground and Roger came quickly to his feet and levered Jack an arm on his back. Jack was quite and gave Roger no reason to break his arm. He rested his forehead on the floor, his eyes were half closed, muttered: “I’ve never told her about her and even I didn’t mention her name. What’s going on here?”
“I’ll tell you. Can I let you go?”
“Think about it.”
Roger knew that Bessinger was in front of the monitor. Probably Jack knew it too or he suspected it, but he did not show. While taking a look into the eye of the camera under the ceiling he let Jack go.
“If you knock me out I can’t tell you what you want to know.”
“I can punch you to see stars and you will still deliver.”
“You even cannot stay on your feet.”
They sat down in the exact angle of the controlling camera, assessed each other and Jack remained peaceful.
“We rescued you from the remaining of the dome after receiving your tracker signal and to find you half dead was only one of the problems. Rachel was sitting next to you and would not leave you. She hit Bessinger in a soft spot, but she would never admit it. She told Rachel that there would only be one possibility to stay on the station.”
Jack closed his eyes and blocked Rogers voice. He knew what had happened and he did not want to hear more about it. If he had suspected something, he had not reckoned such a statement. That was horrible, even worse as if Bessinger had shot her in the dome when she refused to go away from him. Jack did not want to hear it, but he heard Rogers statement like a metallic screech in his head.
“… She’s doing very well, even though we thought at the beginning she would not cope with it, but she’s a tough guy and it has…”
Jack bent down, let the scars protest mercilessly in his body and Rogers voice was silenced again.
He thought of Rachel in the lake, the sparkles of the water around her shoulders, this glint in her face and on her skin. Her ginger hair like moving seaweed. Rachel, as she fed the ponies and dogs, laughing at the piggishly beasts. Rachel, who cheered him while he was pounded by the sow in the mud. These good memories would disappear. He knew how it would go on on the station, Rachel surrounded by well-functioning space debris, artificial food, artificial air and artificial sleep. Her hair was gone, because they shaved the skulls, her cheerful nature would disappear, because there was no room for such a thing on the station and in this life. The Rachel he had known and loved would be disappeared.
She knows that she can never go back

, Jack thought, she agreed to it just to be with me. She doesn’t know what this means. The Jack she knew is also dead, as well as herself.

Roger watched Jack and did not dare to imagine what was going on in his head. He almost regretted that Rachel’s small favors would now end. He would remind Rachel that these little things should kept as a secret between them.

Bessinger was sitting in the office, checked a few entries in the logbooks, reports of hyenas and incoming news from other local stations. She tried to distract herself, pretending not to think about the problem with Jack, but she could not get it out of her head.
He will demand that we return her to the forest

, she thought, even if all from her clan are dead or disappeared. And during his next deployment he will ensure that his glider crashes. It would be an outrageous idea, but he would do it. He knows that we cannot look for him even on this small planet. I could fit him up with a self-releasing body mine to prevent this. Otherwise I cannot bring him back on track.

She worked two shifts, met with Roger and told him about her assumption. Roger was taciturn, still thinking about the collision with Jack and he agreed the assumption that he planned something.
“We cannot conceal Rachel from him”, he said, “unless we are able to put her on another station before he knows what’s going on.”
“Do you have a bad conscience, Roger?”
He looked at Bessinger frowning. He suspected she already could know about his little secret he used to keep Rachel on track. If so, she did not let on.
“From the beginning it was not a good idea to bring Rachel on board”, he said, “so yes, I have a bad conscience. She’s brave, but she will not hold it forever. Her ambitions are only to be as close to Jack as possible and that will eventually kill her.”
“You question my decision.”
Hell, yes

, thought Roger.
He cleared his throat and said: “I can’t understand you decision, but I do not question. You’re the boss.”
They decided to withdraw Jack from the next operations and to use the drugs and painkillers he still needed as an explanation. At the same time, Rachel received her first order. As expected, she did a good job, she conformed to the team as she was trained for, proved her routine and even from space sickness she was spared.
Their mission was simply to land on a largely dead planet, collect and carefully pack a few samples and return to the station. Sometimes they were ordered to collect rock samples for mineral companies hoping to find a valuable mine on some planets. In this sector a lot of dead planets could be found and those who harbored nor flora or fauna, normally chaos and anarchy were given if several mining companies showed their interests. The men on the stations did all what they were paid for, they were mercenaries. Bringing peace and justice was simply not their tasks.
Rachel did was she was ordered to do and she asked no questions about the background, because all the explanations were too abstract for her. She knew nothing about the political conditions, terms and intentions of the corrupt corporations. Some things she did not even know they existed. She functioned well in her context, but she would reach faster her limits than any other of the privates.

It took two months after the incident at the quarantine station and firstly it seemed that the old Jack was back. He did not mention Rachel at all and discontinued painfully his medications, ready for his next assignment.
Bessinger received a delicate job order and knew that she could only send a handful of the best – Jack and some experienced hyenas. It would mean one of these operations under a foreign flag and if the guys were caught, Bessinger would deny any responsibilities. Jack had managed such jobs in the past and made always the best of it.
While Bessinger went through the operational plan and wondered who she could add to the force, the intercom system squeaked and Roger spoke. He had to be in one of the off time billets because the connection was lousy. His voice was hacked and roaring from the speakers.
“Bessinger, I need your help here.”
She cast a quick glance at the ID of the intercom. Roger was in the area of crew quarters which they called the sound box. It was a small and soundproof room with a computer connected to the full equipped music archive. Many of the crew used the box to hear horrible loud music and let out their aggression. As in all common areas, in the door a glass window was embedded at eye level and Bessinger glanced through it before she pushed the sensor to open the door.
Roger and Jack showed a relaxed and calm appearance and she wondered why Roger had sounded alarmed.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Roger gestured to Jack and Bessinger turned to him.
“I know you have one of the shitty jobs up your sleeves”, began Jack. He had trained hard to facilitate the withdrawal of the medications, had put on some weight. “I assume that I’m the pilot and before we start, I want to see Rachel. This means now. I know that she’s on the station. Roger takes her to me and you give us one hour.”
“Why should I agree?” asked Bessinger.
“Because I ensure to return the guys safely then.”
Roger shrugged and signaled that this whole affair was not up to him. He had been with Jack in the sound box only to sound him out why he showed lack of interest in Rachel. Very soon he had realized that Jack was just waiting for the right time.
“Okay”, said Bessinger, “you promise not to break ranks, than it’s fine with me.”
They all knew it was a lie. Jack would try it again sooner or later and Bessinger was aware of it.
“Why just now, Jack?” asked Roger, “you could try to see her after you learned that she’s on the station.”
“I want to see her before I leave, in case I don’t return home.”
Roger disappeared. Jack sat down on the in-wall bed, stretched out his throbbing leg and stared at the door. His peace of mind returned and he hoped that everything would run as he had planned it since the day he learned that Rachel was on the station. He had been long thinking about it and had made up his mind. If he had seen an opportunity to hide Rachel and him on one of the commercial stations or in another city, he would have done it. But it was almost impossible to get off the station and start somewhere anew. In the cities you needed IDs and as a member of the station troops they had none. On the trading stations the coming and going were monitored closely and no one came on board without previously being screened. A real chance they only had with the Ciudad or on a similar planet, but the chances of survival were low. Alone Jack would have a good chance and he would cope with bad conditions, but he could not do this to Rachel. What was left from the old Rachel after months on the station?
How often had he cheated death? How many times he had woken up after a blackout in the infirmary, connected to the equipment and in so much pain that he could have screamed if his vocal cords would have obeyed. How often had he clamped gaping wounds himself, was woken up after a failed campaign and had found death or injured hyenas around him. All this would also happen to Rachel, no matter whether she could bear it or not.
Jack thought about the small ground-level house with the leaky roof, the overgrown garden, the dense forest and the sounds during night and day. Bessinger could not understand why he stayed there and hide himself, why he had no interests to return to civilization.
With difficulties he emerged from his thoughts, his head throbbed and for a moment he smelled freshly whipped trees, hot metal and smoldering cables, the penetrating odor of his crash into the forest of the Ciudad.
He rose from the bench, relieved his aching leg and stared at the private who stood stiffly in front of him, a little small guy, whose face seemed to consist only of big eyes. Only when the private moved, he saw Rachel, a Rachel with a shaved head, a face that had learned to be inflexible and rigid and no longer allowed emotions. She whispered something Jack could not understand, because his head still throbbed, and she knew immediately that he did not understand her and finally she dropped the trained discipline and was Rachel again. She called his name, embraced him and pressed him to herself, gently at first, then more firmly with every breath. She was trembling all over, but she did not cry. Jack put his arms around her, lifted his head and looked at Bessinger with patients. She was still standing next to the switchboard of the room, arms crossed over her chest, her face a pure expression of her disapproval.
“One hour”, she said and left the room.
Roger waited at the door outside, took a step aside and looked through the recessed window. For some reasons he had a bad feeling and wanted to monitor Jack and Rachel, but Bessinger hissed at him: “What are you doing? Go away from the door.”
“I don’t trust the peace in there.”
“He wants an hour with her and probably he’s asking me to send her home. That’s what he will tell her.”
“This is what you think he’s up to.”
“And what do you think what he’s up to?”
“Don’t know. You never know when it comes to Jack.”
Bessinger went back to headquarters, but she could not concentrate on her work. She had sent Roger on an inspection round, but she knew that he would find himself on the door of the sound box, as soon as he thought she was busy. She was not angry with him, but at the first opportunity she would give him a few unpleasant tasks. Rogers bad feelings had jumped on her and would not let go.
What the heck

, she thought, nothing will happen. It’s impossible that Jack finds a way to get Rachel from the station.

First, Rachel did say nothing, just clutching at Jack and it took ages until she let him go, stared at him and began to whisper. She whispered in her dialect that she was on the station because she had followed him and had wanted to save him. She was trained to become a private just to be near him. She told him about the things she still did not understand and that she was told by the others that privates do not cry.
“No tears”, she whispered, “they said I would detune the instruments. They do tantrum and scream, but they do not cry. Sometimes they laugh, but then it sounds like crying without tears. I don’t understand.”
“Rachel”, said Jack and the sound of her name in the sound box was hollow and false.
You should have stayed in the forest, to live and survive there, even if only for a few weeks or months. That would have been better than a prolonged life as a private or hyena.

But he could not tell her this.
“You’re a tough little thing, but you don’t know what you get into. I don’t want you unhappy.”
“If I’m close to you it’s enough.”
“It’s not.”
She stared at him, but she was still clueless. Jack had to shift his weight, because he had to relieve his leg. He made a half turn to the site and saw in the corner of his eye Rogers face behind the window. Their eyes met for a second and he disappeared.
“Your father told me that you’ve always been a tough thing, even as a little girl. He didn’t know where you derived this will.”
“I had it from him.”
“Do you remember when he dragged me along?”
Rachel closed her eyes and smiled. Jack knew that she would respond in this way by these evoked memories and stabbed. She did not even know what had happened, she winced, drew the breath in and was heavy in his grip. Slowly she went to the ground.

Roger had known it at the moment as he saw Jacks face and the movement of his right hand. He had seen the knife in his fingers. It took only a heartbeat and he knew what would happen and yet he could do nothing. He was too slow. He shouted at Jack not to do, but the sound box was soundproof in both directions, and he could not open the door fast enough. Stumbling he ran into the room, fell next to Jack and Rachel on his knees and froze. Her face was pale and silent, her eyes half open, with one eye still showing the last assault of her comrades. Her head was badly shaven, her body lying still in the uniform. Jack sat beside her, holding her left hand, felt her fingers, her back of her hand, her palm.
“You’ve killed her”, said Roger. Jack did not even look, incessantly touching her hand and murmured: “She was already dead when you have brought her to the station. How could you have done this to her?”
Roger had neither an apology nor an explanation which Jack could have accepted.
“Give me the knife”, said Roger, “before it brings even more misery.”
“She didn’t know what happened and she could not estimate that this life would kill her. So slowly that she would not even notice. We all have been dead for decades, Roger. Only the habits keep our bones upright and because we have forgotten that there is something else. I could not do it. Eventually, she would have hated me and herself too. Now”, he let her hand go and laid it gently beside him on the floor, “she’s at home.”
“You know what’s coming up to you now.”

Rachel never really disappeared from his thoughts, there were brief moments when he could hear or smell her, he meant to see her in the corner of his eye and when he turned his head she was gone. He was made responsible for her death, but the leadership of the trading company and the military cartel had other problems and the decision of his fate was passed down to Bessinger.
The Tusk attacked several transport ships and no one was interested in that a pilot had killed a private. This happened frequently during the basic trainings. No one learned swimming by sitting beside the pool and sticking the big toe into the water – and simply some just drowned.
Jack took up his job again, flew missions and seemed to be back to his usual self. It was the thought of Rachel which let him go on, knowing that she would not share his own fate. She had been born as a forest dweller and had been through a tough time as a private, but her mind had not suffered. She had returned to the forest of the Ciudad, to her father and mother, in the part of the forest, where the spirits lived and where the mining company would never find them. Jack believed firmly in it, because it was the only thing he still could believe in.
Rachel’s father had told him a lot about this spirit area, while he had nothing else to do than to wait for his broken leg to be healed. In the beginning he could not understand this strange dialect, he had dismissed the idea of superstition and only listened because there was nothing else to do. The ghost forest was a place of transition for the spirits of the dead. Rachel’s father had said that everyone was waiting for the departed spirit of his family and eventually they would go together to the next level. To which level? The Ciudad never knew, because from this level they did not receive any news.

Jack thought of the voice he had heard in the spirit forest.
She will not let you down.

Long afterwards, back on the station, he fulfilled the prediction of the spirit voice, and Jack knew he had completed, what the voice had not told.
Don’t let her down.

He had not killed her, he had sent her home.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.08.2010

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