A determined little smile played along T'scek'teb's golden eyes as he expertly twined the Watchful Path. Slipping from branch to trunk to limb, he wove his winding way through the canopy of towering teucca trees. Nearing the family boundary, he slowed. This journey took him past the vine-fields he'd set out to tend today, but something else now held his interest. He had seen a stone fall from the sky.
The sky-stone had fallen upon dangerous soil. As he reached the place where tree safety met meadow danger, he climbed slowly and carefully to the ground. From a well-used blind of dense teucca branches and gaklieeana fronds he peered out. His alert eyes caught a small but dangerous clutch of pelleelitas far away and to the left, seeking fat waterbugs along the lakeshore near.
But the ground raptors were distant, and the teucca above promised sanctuary if needed. His gaze swiftly returned to that which had caused him to stray from his daily task. Across the Meadow of Fallen Mothers lay a glittering, steaming stone. It was carved with unknown symbols, lines, and whorls. And the stone was vibrating.
He closed his large eyes and felt the soil beneath his feet. Tuning his senses, he reached out for the murmurs of earth below, and felt a slight unfamiliar shivering. His toe-claws extended, then retracted. Yes, he was scared, but more than that, curious. The stone was strange, etched with arcane designs like a beucha wisdom-bole. But what beak or claw could carve stone? Should he take a closer look?
No. He was no warrior, he was a weaver, and danger-sense was strong here. The pelleelitas were enough by themselves - caught on the ground they might be able to catch him. That would be tragic. Could there be an enemy war party nearby, hiding, lusting to add his blood to the soil where tragedy had struck his family four generations ago?
He sniffed the air, detecting only the delicious fragrance of small warm bloods hiding here and there nearby. His eyes darted around but detected nothing else amiss. It was safe, for the moment.
He looked longingly back to the teucca canopy. Past it, high above and highlighted by the violet sunlight, the distant Cseuk’keeklien wheeled and danced. T’scek’teb watched them briefly and a smile returned to crinkle the skin around his large yellow eyes. It was their mating season, and the dance was deadly up there.
Good time to be earth-bound he thought wryly. His attention returned to the stone, and he considered a fast trip home. Warriors should be doing this, not him. Surely the warriors and the mothers should be told of this, but his toe claws held him firm to the spot.
Best if he brought some evidence. He was known for embellishing stories (a very common characteristic for weavers). He knew that if he had nothing wooden in hand to prove the story, he would endure some sharp jests before any volunteered to return with him.
T'scek'teb's pride was strong. He grunted softly and fingered the woven amulet at his waist, tracing the twig-work with expert fingers. He gathered his courage and prepared to step out of his hidden enclave to see if it would be possible to take a piece of the stone. But at that moment the stone came to life, and T’scek’teb froze.
It was large, half as tall as him and oval, and bulging at the middle. Like a birth-egg it tensed and pushed from within. But then it twisted upon itself. It seemed that the top and bottom were joined somehow? And were starting to rotate in opposite directions. He watched, intense, beak pressed tight.
Now the stone popped open! The top half swiveled and fell to the ground beside the bottom, and what lay within the broken egg was utterly alien. Odd protrusions and mechanisms emerged from the stone, whose halves were hollow like a birth-shell. The bottom half continued to writhe, and then the half-shell fell away in sections, revealing an artifice that was vaguely boxy, with odd bumps and pieces of all shapes, seemingly made of woven stone.
He was in awe. What was this thing? What would the mothers make of it? Was it a danger to the family? What should he do? No family lore accounted for this, a stone falling from the sky and opening to reveal such wonders.
He fought the urge to scatter home, and then awe became utter horror as something arose into the air from the broken egg. From the top half it emerged, wingless, whirred, and floated at face-height. It hovered like a greenbug, but huge, at least three hands wide.
It floated there and rotated slowly. Pieces of it moved and swiveled. Some were shiny and glinted ultra-blue from the daylight. Others were drab and stone colored. Then, nearly eliciting a whistle of alarm from T’scek’teb, it began to rise straight up into the air past the bushes, faster and faster, becoming smaller as it departed. He felt the leaves around him shiver from the air it displaced as it left. Soon it would be invisible to him, and he felt despair. No one would believe him, but what could he do? He couldn’t fly to follow it.
But his eyes smiled again as he watched the speck climb higher into the violet sky. Two Cseuk’keeklien had separated from the sky-flock and were diving rapidly toward it. Bad time to fly he thought with a quiet giggle. The sky-kings were grumpy at this time of the year.
Predictably the lead raptor met the speck at top diving speed and there was a flutter of sparks and reflecting shards of stone. The Cseuk’keeklien who had struck the airbug rapidly recoiled and circled as sparkling specks fell to earth. T’scek’teb might be able to bring evidence home to the family after all!
He needed to skirt the meadow and go to where the broken flying-stone was falling. But the clutch of pelleelitas had seen him move! They came at him at a full run, swift and deadly. T'scek'teb extended finger-claws and leapt into the lowest teucca limbs, quickly and silently pulling himself up to the safety of the tree. The meadow-predators continued toward him at a gallop but slowed as they got closer, knowing they would never catch him now.
He stopped twenty hands high and smiled, caressing the smooth teucca limbs he clung to. There were vague marks here and there from countless of his family’s claws, and that was reassuring. He turned to begin mapping his path to the broken flying stone but saw from the corner of his eye that the first stone was moving again. Incredibly the piece that had remained on the ground was beginning to trundle its way from the now-empty shell. Its legs were round? And rolled? T’scek’teb had never seen anything like this before.
It moved like an armored heukleukk, and now the pellellitas saw it too. They cocked and tilted their heads as they accelerated toward the alien thing. Racing at top speed they fell upon it with beak and dewclaw, reducing it to pieces in seconds.
What a day! What a story he would weave! No chance to gather solid evidence here though. The pelleelitas were scouring the open shells and demolished ground thing for meat, disappointed, and might not leave it for hours. The smile returned to his eyes and, feeling the breeze on his neck-feathers, T’scek’teb began to twine the watchful path to the grove to where the broken sky-thing had fallen. He would bring home wood-solid proof. What a story he would have for the family today!
---
2,000 kilometers above, the remote survey team floated around the sensor screen in somber despair. Their first glimpse of New Earth had turned deadly. Luckily only for machines, but still.
They were six, and their task was to determine ground conditions for landing. All eyes pulled themselves from the screens which now only showed data and the frozen image of a pack of charging waist-high roosters? They would need a name, and it should be one that gave credit to their viciousness.
"Good thing we brought guns," said Chief Operations Officer Martin Sauers, stating his version of the obvious.
The faces of the other five, screen-lit, displayed various responses. One nodded, two glowered, and the remaining two kept their faces blank, deep in thought.
Achi Chaudry, Geologist and Communications Officer, lifted their melodic voice and yelled upward through the spacious cabin "Yian, we need you!!"
Nhean Tsering, Zoologist, spoke next. "I will examine the footage to learn more about the ground raptors. Will we launch another probe? Maybe land one in the trees if we can, to keep it away from those creatures?"
Sauers responded "we don't know what happened to the drone. The air may be no safer than the ground."
David Rikka, Chief Geologist and Rikk-Tech Corporate Rep replied. "Well, we have to get eyes on the ground. Sooner or later, we need to do something. We can't use up all our rations staying safe up here, or eventually we starve."
"It's why we brought guns," said Sauers stubbornly, eliciting more nods, glowers, and poker-faces from the team.
Floating through the access-way above, Yian Priyadarshi, First Seed Chief Officer joined the group. She saw the six with tense faces and approached with eyebrows raised. "What did I miss?"
"The drone and crawler are both destroyed," said Sauers. "The drone stopped transmitting abruptly, we don't know why, but the crawler was attacked by deranged blue chickens or something. We have about 5 minutes of data transfer to go over, but New Earth appears to be unfriendly."
Yian frowned and slid to the side of her beloved Achi. Their hands met and fingers laced. She turned to the zoologist and asked "Nhean, may I help you prepare a report on the life forms that were observed?" Yian was the Chief Exobiologist for the mission, but she was gentle with her authority. She knew how to bring out the best in technical personnel.
Nhean smiled and said, "for sure Yian." The two of them turned to float across the cabin to the Exobiology Pod, but not before Yian and Achi's parting fingertips brushed surreptitiously. In their romance these two sometimes acted like secondary school students, to the amusement and/or disdain of the rest of the team.
As Nhean and Yian traversed the Biology pod, Achi and Chief Astronomer Chantrea Lai Meng floated upwards toward the Science Pod adjacent, leaving Rikka, Sauers, and the team's Agronomist Nafisah Singh at the Remote Survey Station to discuss what they had seen. The feeling on the ship quickly turned sober as the news spread that New Earth was populated, apparently by wildlife that would not welcome their presence.
