Chameleon in Chrome

***Not sure, but I think this might be my 200th post.

Anyway, more of the action comic and I trot out the female here. this one's a bit short as well, but the next ones are longer. It's just how the story breaks down into segments.

0_o

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She looked up at the sound. It had come as a large boom, far off at first, but then she heard what sounded like something large being torn high up in the sky. She looked around herself to make sure that she was alone and she ran for a little higher ground to get a better look.

That better look frightened the hell out of her.

Standing on the low hilltop and out of the trees was bad enough. One never knew when one of the many kinds of predators were out hunting, but it was getting toward dark now and soon the screechers would be out and to be in the open here like this was just asking for it. She'd have to be in the deep forest soon, though that brought its own hazards.

She looked up again.

The roar continued, though she could see that it was the fall of some object that caused the sound and pieces of it seemed to be coming off here and there looking like glowing globs. She felt a little thankful that it didn't look as though it was heading her way, though she couldn't be sure of it.

Then there was a bright flash and she ran, knowing that the sound of that would have to be loud when it reached her through the thick atmosphere. She ran, deciding now that the best place to be - if she could make it before full dark - was the mountain. She chose to hide herself as she went.

It carried with it the slight delay that it took for her body to "catch up" to its surroundings, but she couldn't help that. Her method worked very well if one was stationary, since she could blend in to any sort of background unconsciously, but when she was moving, she was often a little visible as her body tried to keep up with the changing background. Whenever she was running, it was always a little out of sync, but at least if she stopped then, it "caught up" quickly and she could make herself almost disappear.

The sound of the explosion reached her ears and she almost fell flat, but she kept going after a look over her shoulder. Whatever it was, it was much larger in her view now and she didn't want to be wherever it landed.

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Ryan levelled the nose and watched as his airspeed dropped along with the temperature of the ceramic tiles down below. His onboard sensors told him that there was a higher percentage of oxygen here than there was on Earth, but it was within the operating limits of his engines. He retracted the intake covers and let the turbines spool up from the air rushing through them. With his airspeed now almost low enough for a sightseeing flight, he initiated the start sequence. One engine after another lit off until all four showed as online on his display.

He looked back and down as the largest pieces of what had been his home for the past seven years from his point of view burned their way hotly to the planet's surface to land, leaving a long flaming trail through what looked like jungle canopy to him. The rest of the fuel tanks ruptured at that point and the fireball must have been miles long.

Seven years, he thought, almost all of it in cryo-sleep. That meant that decades had passed on Earth, and that he'd physically been on the ship for those seven years. To him, it had only been about seven weeks, for all the short times that he'd been awake.

What a life.

He had a thought to say goodbye to Mandy out loud, but he chose to save his breath. He wasn't certain how it had happened, but he supposed that he'd cared for her a bit more than any thought that she'd ever given him, other than for one thing. He shrugged.

Instead, he kept his mouth shut and throttled back to take stock. He wasn't falling and he wasn't gliding anymore. He was flying. For the moment, he had tons of fuel.

It was too bad that he couldn't just leave and go home. There were two problems in that. For one thing, he couldn't leave this world -- he didn't think, at least not without a lot of computations, and secondly, he hadn't had a real home in years.

He queried his nav systems. Not knowing where it was, the system began to analyse and compare its present position to the last known position at the point of separation from the main ship.

Position: X62.9-Y98.1-Z17.7

Nearby Object Class: Q2b. 4th planet in System S479568.

Size: 1.63E

Gravity: 1.21E

Length of planetary day: 26.16 hours E

Length of planetary year: 762.87 planetary days

Prevalent mineral deposits: Granite, Beryllium, Basalt, Shale, Likely substantial crude hydrocarbon deposits.

Surface water: Abundant

Technology: Iron Age (optimistic; no known humanoids)

He was a little surprised at that last bit. It meant that this lump had been at least surveyed and assessed, so he checked and found that it had - some eighty-odd years previously by probe. The main ship's crisis management software must have made a few choices as they'd drifted, he thought. He supposed that this must have been the most likely best choice available, and that accounted for the course change.

Ryan looked down. The window through the clouds that he'd been looking through to see the crash of the main ship was far behind him now, though he did see what still looked like heavy jungle through the holes here and there. He turned to go back for another look.

He hoped that, sooner or later, his queries would turn up some sort of terrain map left by the probe. It should have been loaded with the rest of this planet's file, but that would take more effort than he was prepared to put into it while he was flying over something as unfamiliar as this without a co-pilot. He wanted to get a look, just in case Mandy had made it out alive, though he knew that it was really deep into impossible, but still ...

And anyway, he'd need some sort of ground reference to work from. He planned to mark the scene of her crash as a datum point, since it was the only feature on this world that he knew of.

He was very surprised to notice that he was receiving a signal. As he leaned over to configure the craft for endurance flight, he actuated the system which might identify the source. What he heard from the shuttle's computers amazed him.

"Signal is from a beacon and identifies itself as from the mapping probe ship, 107226 X-ray Delta, lost in this region eighty-three solar years ago. Known data accumulated by last upload before loss of probe ship."

Ryan was astounded. What he'd heard indicated that at some point, there had likely been at least one survivor from that mapping ship's flight. He configured the shuttle's next interrogative query of the beacon to see if there was more data available. What he got from that instantly was a mapping feed which was loading the entire planet's known geographical features at the time of the probe ship's upload. His display showed him a nondescript wire-model of the planet, but it was filling with details quickly.

It also indicated its own location accurately on that display. It wasn't that far away, either. Ryan added this to his datum points list and turned to head there. He saw the remains of some sort of wreckage a minute later which had obviously been there for some time. A wide pass around it and he was headed in the direction of the highest feature that his map showed on this part of the planet -- a rather high plateau.

The way that he saw it, Ryan would have preferred to set down there rather than to just knock down a lot of trees and never have the chance to take-off again. The shuttle slowed further as he changed the engine configuration to vertical take-off and landing mode. It was getting dark, and he wanted to at least have a look at where he'd be setting down.

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When the long crash came, she was far ahead of it and very happy to be. The rolling flames that she could see over her shoulder grew closer every time that she looked, and she knew that she wanted to be far ahead once everything came to rest, since any form of animal life was bound to be running for all that it was worth and she didn't want to be trampled.

She slowed as she reached the stream at the foot of the mountain and walked slowly to the spring, even though she could hear the roar of the approaching stampede through the jungle. It was a matter of her own safety -- as was almost everything else in her life for as long as she could remember. She knew that she had to get to the opening in the rocks unobserved.

Her wide feet slipped into the water quietly and she began to work her way to the little doorway in the rocks. There was a more direct way, but that would take her over the stones sticking up out of the stream, and that would leave a scent for someone or something to follow, so she stayed in the shallow water.

Before she slipped inside, she stopped for a few seconds to look around. Other than the sound of hooves, feet and wings around her growing louder, there was no sound other than the quiet murmur of the stream.

But then she heard another sound which was out of place to her ears, and it caused her to look up. It was difficult to see through the wisps of clouds, but she could make out the shape for a second or two before it was gone again. Her heart rose to her throat.

She didn't know what this meant, but she saw an aircraft of a kind that she'd been taught to fear when she was small, but had never seen.

It meant that the others were here.

She saw nothing around her, so she ducked inside and moved the stone which would fit into the opening to seal it off. It was a lot of quiet work, but she never neglected this detail.

As she stood in the darkness and waited for her eyes to adjust, she thought about what she'd seen and what it might mean.

Had there been a fight in the skies above? Had there been a rescue ship sent after all of this time, only to be shot down by the hated ones? She didn't know, but all the same, she was certain that nothing aboard what had crashed would be alive now, not after a landing like that. She resolved to go back in the morning to look. The night-time was not a place for anything which had no defence against the screechers.

She knew that there were such things, but she didn't want to meet any of them in the dark either. She turned and began to make her way to her home by the dim phosphorescent light of the little things which grew over the walls.

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As he neared the plateau, adjusting his altitude so that he'd be in a position to get at least an overview, Ryan noticed something on the forest floor below him.

More wreckage -- a lot more, and a lot older than the other site as well, since the long groove in the ground was beginning to grow a few good-sized trees -- or whatever passed for that form of life here. There were the remains of a large hull down there, lying broken and a little twisted as well.

But he knew its origin, as easily as he'd been able to identify the remains of the probe ship, just from the way that it was made. What lay below him now bore all of the marks that he needed to see that it had once been a Morgaron warship.

The sight sent his thoughts back to some of the bloodiest fighting that he'd lived through during his time.

No one knew where these things had come from. They only appeared now and then, but when they did, it marked some god-awful fighting. They never attacked Earth itself, which led the more foolish among human statesmen to conclude that they feared humans.

Those who'd had any experience in battle with the Morgarods knew that, as usual, the politicians had no clue of what they were braying about. The level of Morgaron technology was at the very least, on a par with anything that humanity had developed, and the average Morgarod fighter possessed every bit as much bravery in him and more than his human counterpart.

The veterans like Ryan concluded that, had they wanted to, the Morgarods could have attacked Earth. The only reason that they could ascribe to the tendency of avoidance in that regard was that it was a form of respect for one's enemy to leave his home alone -- something which mankind could never have managed for all of their feigned nobility, civility, and superiority.

On many far-flung worlds, man had discovered some mineral or substance which had some worth to him, and he began to set up shop in some way to capitalize on what he'd found. But doing that had always only brought competition in the form of other men. It has always been a trait of humanity that though we all talk a good game, in reality, we are all more than prepared to steal each other's lunch if we can manage it.

In almost all cases, those greedy actions had precipitated wars among the armed forces of mankind. Ryan's first few tours had been to support his country's aspirations in that regard, fighting the armed forces of other nations over whose methane ocean or gold deposits those were out there on those cold rocks.

As odd as it might seem -- or as natural, if one really knew human nature, those wars skidded to a rapid halt whenever the Morgarods showed up at the party to harvest the very same materials which mankind had claimed for their own use -- though we hadn't really bothered to ask anyone else if they minded.

They didn't even want to talk, they just attacked, and so as groups of humans have always done when faced with a common enemy, the warring factions allied themselves to fight off the new threat.

Ryan had seen more than a few of the creatures. Everybody made a big deal out of demonizing the things, but he'd never found all that much about them to hate. It really didn't take much of a brain to figure out that they were a lot like us -- they only looked a little different, that was all. But it didn't stop the more narrow-minded among humans from heaping their hatred of anything different onto the outsiders.

Ryan knew that small minds were never in any danger of extinction. They made more of them every day, the way that he figured it. Stupid people fuck each other and have stupid children and the idiocy reproduces itself before your eyes, if you pay any attention at all.

The 'Frog People', he'd heard them called. Well he'd seen a bunch, and though they were different, there weren't a lot of features shared with any amphibians that he'd ever seen. For one thing, they were warm-blooded, though their fingers and their feet were a little larger than the average human of similar overall size.

At one time, he'd thought that the name might have come from the way that their legs had the same sort of shape as those of frogs -- or dogs -- or deer, for that matter, the only huge difference was that they weren't like human legs and they had bigger feet, and some of them even had a little webbing between their toes. Ryan knew that even if they'd looked just like us, we'd still find one thing that was different and that would be all that was needed.

They were 'known to be murderous, bloodthirsty things' to hear a lot of fools talk about them. But Ryan knew that almost all of those talking heads out there, offering their considered opinions on the evening news, had never even seen a Morgarod.

He had.

As part of his training once the war had begun, Ryan had met Morgaron prisoners who were used to teach their form of speech. It had been a chance for him to learn something a little different. He'd learned that they referred to their home world as 'Morgaron' and that they referred to their own kind as Morgarods. It was an important distinction to them.

What Ryan got from that was a way to tell if a human knew anything at all of what he or she was talking about.

And of course, most didn't. Sadly, that included most of the world's leaders.

Mostly, the ones that he met were badly crippled fighters who now had no choice but to live in something of a zoo to be stared at by classes of schoolchildren and used once in a while by servicemen who for some reason wanted to learn their way of speech. Since none of them were linguists, the education had been somewhat lacking, though he did learn how to curse really well.

He'd also seen them in the middle of some fierce fighting, and when asked for his considered opinion, he didn't mind telling anyone that the Morarods gave as good as they got, and they'd fight right down to the last one of them if they had to. Live prisoners were a rarity.

To his regret, he'd also seen them on the few outposts that had been located and attacked by human forces. He knew that they'd bleed red blood, just like humans. He knew that they'd weep over their dead -- especially their females and their children.

He knew that.

Because he'd been there and ripped through what he'd been told was a heavily armed and fortified settlement, along with his entire division, pounding it with everything that they'd brought along, before they'd stormed it and waded in, expecting the heavy resistance that they'd been told to expect.

What a pile of horseshit, Ryan thought, even now, all this time later. What they'd waded through was the Morgaron equivalent of suburbs on fire while most of their males were away to mine for a metal which Earth also wanted. How convenient that there were no Morgaron military units near that little rock at the time.

He'd always wondered about that little detail. The noble humans had decided to exploit the way that their enemy chose not to attack what they'd called 'home places' in their few communications. They obviously expected the same courtesy from mankind. Ryan remembered how he'd felt shamed to realize it.

A pity that they didn't know us that well.

He had no doubt that somewhere, there were pencil-necked human strategists pounding each other on the back who needed to die for this. After what he'd seen, he wanted so much to hand those planners over to the units of Morgaron female fighters that he'd come up against now and then. It wouldn't last long, but he knew that he'd feel better if he could watch something like that.

Those he and all of the others had run into were Morgaron civilians, women and children before they'd figured it out. There have always been the stupid and the bloodthirsty among us, but this almost caused a mutiny of the human ground forces, once they'd learned what they were being ordered to do. Hundreds of human troops lowered their weapons, refusing to go on. A lot of fast and fancy talk later and they'd been pulled out of there, leaving a lot of hurt and dead non-combatants behind. Ryan refused the offer to re-enlist when it had been made two weeks later and expressed his desire to leave the service at the end of his tour.

But nobody ever said anything publicly about that little walk through the garden, oh no. Nothing was said, and no word of it reached the 'war correspondents' who'd seemed to make a hobby out of drinking themselves pie-eyed every day at the hotel complexes where they'd been billeted on their government's dime at the time.

But when the Morgarods had retaliated in a similar manner, well then that just proved that they were savages, didn't it? What Ryan McCallum and others of his kind who had been there knew was that the world was very fortunate that the Morgarods didn't attack Earth itself in retaliation. He didn't really know why they hadn't. He heard the others' theory about respect, but he figured that we'd about used that up. He thought that it was more likely a matter of the economics of having to send an avenging armada all of that distance.

Ryan never told anyone the reason that he'd left the military. Everyone had just assumed that he'd made enough to live on for the rest of his life -- a hero, somebody who they could all be proud of.

Other than being at the top end of his career anyway, what he'd seen and had to do there were the reasons that he had such a hard time getting a full nights' sleep ever since. At least the cryo helped.