Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Strumpet is mostly white in color, which means she has no camouflage properties whatsoever on this mostly verdant planet. Greens are mostly the order of the day. There are plenty of flowers of various colors, but nothing white. No snow against which she might blend. Even the rocks have a rough green lichen covering for the most part. Strumpet sticks out like a sore thumb, and I suppose I do too, given my uniform is also white apart from the black EET logo on the left chest.
“Stop nibbling me and come on,” I tell her. “We need a new campsite.”
“Ehememeh,” she says. She does not understand a word I say, but she does understand tone.
I have been on this planet a very short time. Deployed in a small capsule, I floated down to a specified landing spot with Strumpet strapped in beside me. We watched the planet come rushing up toward us, and together we set up the geodesic dome designed to give us protection and shelter for the first thirty days or so.
This is a reconnaissance mission to see where I’m going to set up my proper base. The forests of Capricorn are dense enough that the probes we’ve flown by on previous missions haven’t caught much in the way of anything. It’s considered to be a wild planet, uninhabited by intelligent life. I’m not expecting to have any good conversations any time soon, though Strumpet does make a decent listener, especially when she sits with her little legs tucked beneath her and chews her cud. She can be quiet a lot of the time, but when she’s hungry, or bored, or lonely, she makes a sound like a startled foghorn.
She does this as we are walking over a precarious log perched over a rushing river. I have taken the lead, and Strumpet is behind me. She is more agile than I am. I have to be careful and focus on every step I take. One slip here and I might die.
MAHAHAHA!
Strumpet shrieks suddenly, scaring the absolute hell out of me. I screech, lose my footing, and start tumbling into the rocky rapids in the ultra slow motion way you do when something very, very bad is happening. I know if I hit this water, I’m gone. It’s moving very fast, and the undertows are obvious. Everything I’ve ever seen fall into this river disappears within seconds and eventually washes up, bloated and unrecognizable on a sandy beach a few miles away. My brain has time to consider the horror of my end at leisure as I tip and fall, fall, my hands grasping at objects in the periphery of my vision.
By some miracle, I grab a jutting branch and avoid meeting a sharp rock face-first. My flailing has loosened my pack. One of the straps has come off my shoulder, and as I wriggle around, trying to pull myself back up, the other slides off my open arm and the pack plunges into the rapids.
I was right about the undertow. It doesn’t bob away. It is ripped away from me in a second, disappearing under churning white water. I cling to the fallen tree, gasping for breath and trying to stop shaking. Adrenaline is not my friend now that I need to keep myself upright on this now even more slippery log.
Blehehehe!
Strumpet trip traps over my back, using me as a bridge without so much as a second thought. I curse, but she doesn’t care. She gets to the other side and starts grazing on the lust grass there. Meanwhile, I clamber my way after her, slowly but surely wriggling myself to solid land — which I have never been so grateful for.
It takes me a few more minutes to really sort myself out. I knew that being an explorer on a wild planet would be dangerous, but I always assumed the danger would come from aliens, and alien conditions.
“Well,” I say. “Fuck.”
There were a lot of important things in that pack, but upmost in my mind right now is the issue of birth control. Both our medications were in there. I was provided it to manage hormonal swings and the sort of bleeding that would make a barbarian blanch. Strumpet was given it to suppress her cycles. I asked why they gave me a female goat if her cycles had to be suppressed. They asked me why they were sending a female explorer if her cycles had to be suppressed. I stopped asking questions at that point, in case those questions reverberated so far up the chain of command I got fired.
“You are going to get us both killed,” I tell Strumpet. She turns to me, mouth full of foliage and makes a soft bleating sound that I’m free to pretend is apologetic, if I like.
Strumpet marches to the beat of her own drum, which I appreciate. She also screams to the sound of her own trumpet, which I love less. She can feed herself on the surrounding ferns and grasses. I am going to have a harder time without provisions. My plan was to move camp a few times, away from the initial base picked for me. The base is fine, but a little boring. Now I’m seeing why they chose it. A flat grassy plain offers fewer opportunities for me to kill myself within the first few days of being here.