Loga's war

November 29, 2450

Yotta Planet, Settlement No. 2

"Heading out again?" Eldi asked that morning as she curled up next to Loga in his small nook. She asked him this question before every departure, and even though she always knew the answer, she never thought it was pointless.

"Yes, I have to go," Loga replied, brushing aside her reddish hair, which gleamed like metal yet felt soft as silk.

"Time for a haircut!" he added, knowing full well the predictable reaction, which didn't take long to arrive.

"Yeah, right. When it gets to here!" she laughed, poking her own mid-back. "Starting from Settlement One again?"

"Yeah. I'll be back in five weeks."

"Take care of yourself," Eldi said, then thinking for a moment, asked:

"And what are the girls like over there?"

Loga answered the teasing question with a smile:

"They're not into bald guys."

"Good!" Eldi laughed. "I don't want to share you with anyone."

"You won't have to," Loga said, caressing her face.

"No," Eldi replied. She smiled, but inside she knew the truth. Awake, Loga could control his words better than anyone else-the sleeping one was more honest than he ought to have been.

She had talked about it once with Fyrst.

"Doesn't it hurt, being second in his heart?" he asked, his gaze full of sympathy.

"It would be better not to know about it, but I have to accept the truth," Eldi declared, then added defiantly, "Anyway, it's his problem who he loves. I'm selfish enough to be satisfied just being with him, no matter who his dream partner is."

Loga set out once again-what he liked to call his storytelling circuit. Over the past few months, he had become known-and apparently even liked-across all of Yotta's penal settlements. A small ritual had developed in each unit around his arrival, and he always performed to a full house. His healing efforts seemed successful, too. Ever since he'd started his mission, deaths had almost completely stopped. True, at first he had sometimes arrived too late, which he took as a personal failure. During his travels, he got to know not only the Trikkis living in the settlements but also the planet itself, where the scars of mining were still visible. There were crumbling buildings and rust-eaten pieces of larger equipment that hadn't been worth hauling away. In the distance, he sometimes saw passenger shuttles in the air, trailing spreading contrails across the acidic atmosphere. Sometimes they brought supplies to the settlements; other times they flew out toward the ocean. From Vatn's stories, he knew there was a thriving island out there-shown off to new sponsors as a fundraising lure, or at least to maintain the appearance of environmental stewardship-while vast sums continued to be funneled into armament.

Occasionally, bad weather forced him to change his route. From high up, he would catch glimpses of the ocean, where massive tentacles sometimes broke the surface. He often wondered whether he was seeing native creatures, introduced ones, or perhaps species that had adapted in their own way to the changed environment. More than once, he was caught in storms. Protocol required him to land immediately and secure the copter to the ground. He would wait there until he could take off again. Sometimes it took quite a while, since the heating drained the vehicle's batteries. In those cases, he might be stuck for days while the solar panels recharged them enough for liftoff. He didn't mind the solitude. He spent those times talking with April. Of course, he knew perfectly well that she wasn't really there, but he had learned to move past that cold fact. It was a constant topic between them: Loga telling her every tiny event in his life that could count as a story. Together, they would recall the few memories they actually shared.

The storm raging outside was especially fierce. Raindrops, black with grime, obscured his view-not just through the windshield but even on the monitors. The conditions completely scrambled the instruments. More than once, Loga had owed his survival to reflexes that had become second nature in childhood. He kept his eyes fixed on the navigation screen, trying to hold the copter on course, but the powerful gusts kept shoving it offline. Vatn's advice came to mind: In strong storms, you have to land and secure the machine. Except no one had ever told him what to do if the wind wanted to slam him straight into the ground-over thickly tangled terrain. He knew that trying to land now would endanger only himself and the craft. The copter's engines were straining at their limits, so he chose to yield to the force of the wind. He let it push him, focusing on maintaining a safe altitude. The strategy proved sound as the storm's intensity began to lessen and visibility improved. As the view cleared, he spotted the rolling, dark water beneath him. It was unsettlingly calm, given the storm's strength. On the navigation screen, the familiar 'snail-trail' line showed his heading, but the way forward was still blocked by dark, violently churning clouds.

"It's not safe to fly over the sea," he muttered.

"Then let's get out of here," April replied.

"Thanks for the tip," Loga said with a small smile. "We'll land on the coast and wait for the batteries to recharge."

But they had no chance to escape. Loga increased the engines' thrust, but they once again flashed overload warnings and the craft wouldn't budge. After a moment of uncertainty, Loga noticed the problem while watching the spray unit's control monitor. A flexible tentacle had wrapped itself around one of the rotor supports, making movement impossible. Suction cups clung tight, and the limb kept thickening as it snaked toward the water's surface. About ten meters below, it disappeared into the waves. When Loga tilted the camera down, he saw even more tentacles. They swayed on the surface like kelp-but beneath them, something much larger was moving. A massive shape loomed in the depths.

"How can something that big stay alive in this polluted mess?" he said aloud.

"Maybe it created it," April suggested.

Loga knew perfectly well that their survival depended on the sea creature's goodwill. He also sensed it wasn't looking at them as prey. The little copter had no chance of stopping it from dragging them under if it wanted to. But the creature didn't try to pull them down-it also didn't release the vehicle. Its tentacle gently rocked the copter, as if matching the rhythm of the waves. It seemed completely unbothered by the engines straining while their energy levels dropped dangerously. Indicators slid into the red zone, and the emergency mode kicked in automatically.

"We can't break free," Loga remarked bitterly.

Not daring to make any sudden moves, he kept the craft hovering in place with the minimum power needed.

"Please, let us go," April said.

Her voice was gentle but firm.

"What?" Loga blinked in surprise.

His confusion turned to relief as he saw-and felt-the tentacle that had immobilized them slowly unwind from the strut and slip back into the water.

"April, how did you do that?" he asked as they headed for the shore.

"Not me," April replied softly. "You know that."

"True," Loga admitted bitterly. "Am I going crazy?"

"You are whatever you think you are," she whispered.

"I'm afraid of that," he muttered to himself.

There was no time to analyze the situation. The charge indicators displayed sobering numbers. Loga didn't hesitate-he steered the copter toward land at maximum speed. He reached the shore just in time, with the storm roaring behind him. He set the craft down inland, in a valley, using the last drops of power. He jumped out, quickly locked the landing struts, then climbed back into the pilot's seat and wrapped himself in a thermal foil blanket. A flashing warning caught his eye on the dashboard. His first thought was that someone was trying to reach him by radio, but he quickly realized he was completely cut off from the outside world. The signal came from the onboard log system. Detecting a critical situation, it was prompting the pilot to explain what had happened so it could analyze the event.

Loga complied, giving his report-though naturally leaving out any mention of April. The system acknowledged the entry. Meanwhile, the storm hit the valley too. Wind gusts shook the copter, pelting it with plant debris. Loga watched the raging storm, turning the encounter with the sea creature over and over in his mind. In retrospect, he couldn't find any rational reason why he had thought the thing that had immobilized them was intelligent. Yet he couldn't shake the sense that there had been intent behind what happened. His thoughts grew more and more tangled until he finally drifted off to sleep.

Waking with a start, he sat in the copter's seat for several minutes, groggy, wrapped in his blanket. He waited for the batteries to recharge, but the process promised to be slow. Realizing there was nothing he could do about the numbers on the display, he turned his attention to the world outside instead. The rising sun bathed the landscape in golden light. In this area, the air was nearly clean-perhaps thanks to the terrain or the ocean's proximity. The vegetation had recently come back to life. Among the dead, rotting trees, young saplings grew, their leaves playing in shades of green-a rare sight compared to the usual grayness elsewhere. Even the storm he'd weathered here seemed like ordinary weather, not the acidic, destructive kind he'd encountered...