Shielding his eyes from the morning sun’s glare, Bo scanned the horizon for any sign of his rescuers. He could feel Dan growing closer, but he resisted the urge to reach out to him. What could he possibly say?  The shame of costing the entire survey team an entire day’s worth of productivity was eating at him, and the last thing he wanted to do was inflict that upon Dan.

Worse yet, Dan was probably furious at him. Bo didn’t even want to imagine how angry Dan would be after being forced to drop everything and come rescue him, but he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering in that direction. Not wanting to exacerbate the problem, he clamped down on his end of their bond and remained mute.

He could save them a bunch of trouble if he could just climb down himself, he thought. Idly, he turned to the protrusion he was leaning against and scraped an extended claw across the surface. The shallow gouge he made cost him nearly an eighth of his claw’s length. Picking the dull remnant of his claw free to expose a new sharp point, he estimated he’d only be able to dig a half-dozen, maybe ten, of his own footholds in the rock face before his claws wore down to nubs. They had been engineered for slicing, not as piton replacements. From what he could see, the mostly-vertical surface had a few of its own eroded gripping surfaces, but not nearly enough to make the climb down by himself.

Bo made himself as comfortable as possible and considered potential rescue scenarios. They would surely come to get him in the transport, but that vehicle wasn’t designed to operate more than a meter or two off the ground. Perhaps they would bring rope and he’d be able to rappel down the side of the formation in an impressively manly fashion. There were a few protrusions up here that he could use to belay one end of the rope, but...how would they get the rope up to him in the first place? With a grunt of disgust, he discarded that idea.

They could drive pitons into the rock face and climb up to him, but Bo couldn’t remember seeing climbing gear anywhere in the shuttle’s inventory. He rejected that idea, as well as the next several ideas that presented themselves. Despair was closing in when the whine of a half-dozen large repulsor units penetrated hs gloom.

!dan!

He thought, excitedly,

!i am here!

before remembering Dan’s probable anger and pinching his end of the link shut.

?where?

came back to him,

we can not see you

we are circling a large formation...

*humiliation*

This isn’t working, Dan thought to himself. “Shut it down!” he told Dali, nearly screaming to be heard over the whine of the transport’s emitters. “He’s close!”

Dali brought the transport to a stop in the formation’s shadow and shut the repulsors off. Dan’s ears rang in the resulting silence, which was as sudden as it was profound.

“Hey!” they all heard, ever so faintly.

Three sets of varii ears swiveled back and forth as their owners tried to home in on the sound, but it was Victus who located him first. His ears immediately formed two alert points on top of his head upon finding his target. “Look!” he pointed almost straight up. “There he is!”

Following where the lupine was pointing Dan looked up, and a half-second later his shoulders slumped. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered. Silhouetted against the brilliant morning sky, what looked like a hundred meters up, he saw the bowling-ball-sized head of his beloved husband.

“I’m up here!”

Dan groaned. “Of course you are." The quiet comment drew stares from the others, but they didn’t know Bo as well as Dan did. Bo possessed a singular ability to get himself into uncomfortable situations ranging from embarrassing to downright lethal. Since they’d been together, Bo had trapped his foot in a storm drain in the middle of a busy street, fallen down two flights of concrete stairs, and had gotten his head stuck in a chair at a wedding reception. If Bo wasn’t completely dead he would be okay, and that’s all that mattered to Dan. Everything else could be figured out in due time.

Dan tried to reach him again, with as little success as before. “Open up!” he shouted up to his mate. “Let me in!”

“No!” Bo yelled back.

“This is ridiculous,” Dan muttered, before shouting, “Why?”

A soft breeze blew away Bo’s reply as his head disappeared back from the ledge, and Dan looked to Victus for help.

Victus looked uncomfortable. The last place he’d expected to be that morning was in the middle of a marital squabble. “He says...you’ll be mad at him."

Dali stayed silent, but Dan thought he might have seen the man rolling his eyes. Chuck groaned quietly and shook his head as he slumped into his seat at the control panel. “It’s always the big ones...”

Dan ignored them. “I’m not mad at you, Boo!”  When he saw Bo’s head slowly appear over the ledge again he added, “I was worried, that’s all!  We all were!” Mentally, he felt the block between them ease.

?you sure you are not mad?

Of course i am not mad

Dan thought back at him, as the barrier lifted,

i am just glad we found you

?how are we getting

you down from there?

i do not know

Bo admitted, hesitantly.

?what did you bring with you?

not much,

Dan said,

we thought you would…

The deckplates beneath his feet shifted alarmingly, cutting Dan off mid-thought.

?what was that?

Bo demanded.

?what happened?

not sure

Dan answered,

hold on

Dan found Chuck at the helm, manipulating the controls to make the transport go higher. Every time it seemed to be working one side or the other dipped precariously, dragging them back down. Dan thought that the motion felt very much like they were sliding off a giant, slippery balloon.

“There’s no reason this damned thing can’t go higher than three feet,” the varius grumbled. “There shouldn’t be any difference between managing gravity two feet or two miles off the ground. It’s the same thing.”

“The problem’s not with the emitters,” Dali said, “I think you’re triggering the safety systems.”

Chuck’s mouth twisted in annoyance. “I should have thought of that." He settled them to the ground, turned off the emitters off and began prying at the edges of the console with long, dark fingernails.

“Slow down,” Dali protested, before his friend did permanent damage to the navigation station. “We do have a toolkit, you know.”

Chuck’s ears flattened against his head. “I threw it out.”

“I know you did,” Dali answered, patiently. “And I put it back in." He nudged Chuck out of his seat. “Move.”

Dali flipped the pilot’s seat up and pulled out a blue, plastic box. “Never go anywhere without tools,” he admonished, as he handed Chuck a screwdriver.

“What are you doing?” Dan peeked his head over the console. “Is it broken?”

“It’s about to be,” Chuck answered, as he worked loose the screws holding the front of the panel in place. As the fasteners came free, he tucked each one carefully between his lips. “I’m going to override the safety system.”

“Break it, you mean,” Dali interjected.

“Same thing,” Chuck muttered. The panel came loose and he flipped it over, then examined the exposed mass of circuits and wires. “Is there a small screwdriver in there?” he asked, talking around a mouthful of screws while trying to not swallow any.

Dali picked through the kit and offered Chuck a suitable tool. Chuck used it to pry off a small cover on the back of the instrument cluster, exposing the transport’s diagnostic port. “Anyone got a comm?”

Dan reached for his, but Dali already had his out. He knew what Chuck was doing and, as usual, was prepared. “Never go anywhere without your tools,” he repeated, as the screen on his comm glowed to life. “Go.”

Chuck read off the long string of letters and numbers which would allow them access to the transport’s diagnostic systems. “Got it?”

Dali hesitated. “Is that hex or oct?”

Chuck double-checked the lettering on the port. “Sorry. It’s oct.”

Dali grunted and made a quick correction, then his ears perked up. “Got it. We’re in!”  After a few seconds spent craning his neck to see what Dali was looking at, Chuck pulled Dali’s handpaw down so he could see the screen as well.

“Can you throw that up on the nav monitor?” Dan asked.

“You know anything about safety systems?” Dali asked, hopefully.

“No,” Dan answered, “but I’m curious." He leaned forward and watched the unfamiliar code scroll by. He had no expectations that he would understand what he was seeing. Back in his college days he had become comfortable hacking his way into computer systems, but what he was looking at now was another animal entirely. The language looked proprietary to this manufacturer’s systems, and even after being translated by Dali’s comm it was cryptic.

“There!”  Chuck shouted excitedly, pointing at the screen. “Does that term set the height limit?”

“I don’t know,” Dali asked. “What is it? Where are you looking?”  As much as he was trying to stay calm, he felt his pulse quicken at the possibility of spotting their quarry.

“About a meter and a half,” Chuck answered. “See?” He said, scrolling the text on the screen up and down, “I think this defines the term, this limits it, and this little guy here,” he tapped the screen with a stylus, “reads the sensor.”

?can you hurry?

Bo interrupted Dan’s thoughts.

it is getting hot up here

and i am hungry

we are doing our best

Dan responded, trying to be patient.

just hold out for a little while longer

Chuck tapped in corrections to the program and reset the system. The emitters powered on, smoothly lifted the transport a few centimeters off the ground, then abruptly shut off. Dan squeaked involuntarily as the transport belly flopped back to the unyielding earth.

“Oh, fuck!” Chuck winced. “I bit my tongue.”

Dali sighed. “I guess that wasn’t it. Open it up again.”

The three stared at the screen as relevant sections of code scrolled past, but nothing obvious stuck out. Dan did not find this surprising, since he didn’t understand a single thing about what he was looking at.

Or did he?  The more he stared at them, the more he understood these cryptic commands. No matter how alien it might seem at first, every programming language has an underlying logic. The trick to understanding any of them was to focus on the similarities to what one already knew. On their third pass when Dan spoke up. “Check your closing parenthesis.”

“What?” Dali looked at him. “I thought you didn’t know anything about this.”

“I don’t,” Dan shot back, “but I count nine opening parentheses and only eight closing, so something must be wrong.”

Chuck ran the code back to the beginning of the safety routine and scrolled through it with painstaking slowness, counting carefully as he went. Without the help of a compiler It was tedious work, but after he reached the end he confirmed Dan’s suspicion. With the click of a single key, they appeared to be back in business.

“Is it really that easy?” Victus asked, suspiciously. “Why don’t they just make them like that?”

“Not really,” Chuck answered as he waited for the transport’s systems to reboot. “Emitters work by making a bubble underneath you. You get forward motion by slipping off your current bubble as you make a new bubble just ahead of the old one.”

The lights on the console all turned green. “And now, we can make a really big-assed bubble,” Chuck said, rubbing his handpaws together with satisfaction.

Dan put a restraining hand on Chuck’s black-furred shoulder. “The problem is, the larger the bubble gets, the more power it takes to grow each new one. If your speed exceeds the generation time of your bubble, you crash.”

“Spectacularly.” Dali added. “Depending on how fast you were going, forming a new bubble while you’re falling off the old one might actually accelerate you towards the ground at the speed of formation.”

“Which is around four thousand meters per second,” Dan concluded. “Give or take. That’s why these things have safety systems: To protect from that sort of thing.”

Victus’ ears flattened slightly. “So I’m guessing that means we need to do this slowly?”

“We’ll get directly underneath and then just ride the bubble up,” Chuck said, as he manipulated the controls. “We’ve got nothing to worry about as long as we don’t try to go anywhere. Big bubbles are stable bubbles.”

“Big bubbles are very slow bubbles,” Dali argued. “A stiff wind could push us off.”

Dan was not reassured when Chuck didn’t argue the point.

This time the emitters did not drop them back to the ground. They rose smoothly, and Dan felt Bo’s anticipation grow with every meter they ascended.

we are almost there Boo

he thought, but his sentiment was overly optimistic. Twenty meters from the top of the formation their upward velocity slowed, and by eight they had stopped entirely.

“What’s wrong?” Victus asked. “Why have we stopped?”

“This might be as high as we can go,” Dan theorized. “Each bubble is decaying as fast as we can create a new one.”

“Did anyone bring a ladder?” Chuck asked. The scathing look Dali shot him made him throw his hands up in surrender. “I’m just kidding,” he protested, weakly. “Geez.”

*impatient*

you are close enough

Bo signaled to Dan. A moment later, first one then another of Bo’s oversized shoes hit the transport’s deck.

Dan instantly understood what Bo was doing, and he knew without a doubt that it was a bad idea. “No!” he shouted back, “Stay where you are!”  Adding another three hundred kilos to the transport’s mass so suddenly would play hell with their gravity bubble.

It was too late.

Bo’s hind end was already over the edge,  his foot claws fully extended and digging into the soft sandstone beneath him.

too late now

He sent to Dan,

ready or not

here i come

The soft stone under his feet turned to powder, whispering down on his rescuers in a dry, gritty rain. That gave Dan all the excuse he needed to turn away from the spectacle. If Bo plunged to his death, the sight would haunt Dan until his dying day.

Victus grabbed Dan by the arm to get his attention. “Calm down,” he urged. “You can be his eyes from below. Send him what you’re seeing.”

Watching Bo struggle to maintain his grip was something Dan had no desire to do, but he shut his fear away into a mental box and locked the lid. He scrambled up to the observation platform where so much sandy dust wouldn’t get into his eyes, then turned to watch as Bo’s feet scrambled to find purchase against the smooth looking stone. He opened their link and thought carefully about everything he was seeing, and Bo’s legs immediately stopped their aimless flailing.

Thanks

Bo thought in return,

that helps

Bo closed his eyes. Working with deliberate movements, He used what Dan was seeing to find footholds beneath him as he descended the formation. Where nothing already existed, Bo dug his claws into the rock face to anchor himself in place one laborious hold at a time.

Dan was terrified, but did his best to keep fear from polluting their link - Bo didn’t need the distraction. Instead, Dan tried to maintain his view of the rock face. That was more difficult than it should have been, with the transport constantly sliding back and forth on top of its greasy, invisible bubble. More than once the ship strayed far enough away from the formation that it was no longer underneath the varius, leaving him free-climbing a hundred meters off the ground without a rope. Determinedly, Dan did not think about what would happen if Bo lost his grip when the transport wasn’t there to catch him.

Without warning the sandstone Bo had anchored to gave way in a silty spray of dust and grit, tilting his body away from the cliff face where he had no hope of ever regaining his hold. In a last ditch effort to reach the transport he collapsed his legs, then pushed against the cliff face to give him some forward momentum.

From Dan’s perspective, it would not be enough. With practice Bo would almost certainly have been able to bridge the gap, but in a one-shot situation like this…no. Bo only had six or seven meters to fall until he passed the floating transport, before he’d be nearly close enough to grab the railing, but not quite.

Dan was in motion before his conscious mind kicked itself into gear. He vaulted the platform’s chrome railing and landed on his feet in a mad sprint to…to do what?  Instinctively he knew that there was nothing he could do, but he had to do something. Standing still and watching Bo die wasn’t an option, so he ran.

He didn’t have time to think of a better reaction before a muscular gray arm shot out to grab Bo’s extended hand. Victus’ grip was rock solid, but even the best Kenzine warrior at his physical peak had no hope of suspending such an enormous weight. After a single, hard grunt of exertion, Bo’s hand ripped free of his grip.

The transport’s drive units throbbed as they tried to compensate for the changing mass. Their platform dipped crazily when Victus grabbed Bo’s hand, then bounced high into the air after the battle varius slipped free. Dali struggled to keep the transport on top of its bubble in the midst of the chaos, and was thoroughly surprised that they did not all immediately plummet to their deaths.

The bucking only lasted for a second or two, and had barely stopped before Dan launched the upper half of his body as far over the railing as he could go while still maintaining his balance. Helpless, he watched as Bo completed his fall to the ground. But why was he still falling, and not already a broken heap of muscle and bone?

Dan’s wrinkled brow smoothed. He turned to Victus, who grimaced silently to himself as he attempted to massage feeling back into his shoulder. “You had no intention of catching him, did you?”

“Heavens no,” the Kenzine replied. “It would have ripped my arm out." He tested his shoulder, rotating it slowly back and forth. “I’m not sure it didn’t do that anyway.”

Beneath them, they heard a “Whoof!” of air as something hit the ground hard. Dan was apparently unconcerned. “You threw him into the bubble.”

“Yes.”

The varius had still fallen all the way to the ground, but he had done so with no more velocity than he’d had when he entered the null-gravity field.

Impulsively, Dan grabbed Victus and pulled him into a happy hug. “Aah!” the Kenzine yelped. “Watch it.”

Dan immediately let go.

“When I grabbed Bo, the side of my face slammed into the deck." He rubbed his cheek and winced. “I think I might have knocked a few teeth loose.”

“I’ll be careful,” Dan promised, reaching for his friend’s face. Gently he ruffled the fur against its growth patterns and saw the skin hidden beneath already beginning to mottle. “You’re going to have one hell of a bruise there. “

“Victus touched the side of his face gingerly. “Yeah. Well, it was worth it.”

“We owe you one, Vic. Big time.”

By the look on the man’s face, Victus knew that he wasn’t kidding. If he’d been the sort of man to call in his debts he could have gotten nearly anything his heart desired out of Dan Blocker, whether those desires be legal or not. Victus stared out at the vista of this new land they inhabited, and with a contented sigh he shrugged and released the debt to the softly whispering winds. “Alright.” He smiled down at his sapiens friend. “Let’s get down there and pick up our errant boy.”

***

Piece by piece, Bo pulled bits of the radio from his backpack and arranged them on the small table between himself and Dan.

You think you can use any of that stuff?” Dan asked.

“Not much,” Bo grumbled, as he held up, examined, and then discarded the remnants of some electronic assembly or other. “It was the only thing cushioning my fall.”

Dan winced. That was a lot of abuse to endure, even for something that was supposed to be military-hardened. “What about the data?”

“I backed up everything in my comm so I didn’t lose anything,” Bo said. “Even if I hadn’t, I still remember the readings.”

“Is it close?” Dan asked.

“Yeah,” Bo grumped. He was having a difficult time masking his annoyance. After going through all that, he hated to go back to the camp. He held a handpaw up to shield his eyes from the morning glare, and it took a few beats before he realized that the sun wasn’t where it belonged. “Where are we going?”

“Crash site.” Dali answered. Dan thought he sounded a bit bored, now that the action was over.

“We should get back to the others,” Bo protested. “This has already taken long enough.”

Their pilot turned to explain, conspicuously not touching the controls as he did. “What’s the hurry?  They weren’t supposed to do this survey for another three weeks anyway. And who knows?” he asked, cutting off Bo’s protest, “We might find something interesting!”

That sentiment was all it took to ignite the fever that lay nascent inside all varii. The drive to explore was as much a part of Bo as his own skin, and he was all but powerless to resist the temptation of adventure. “You don’t know where you’re going,” he pointed out.

“I know a direction,” Dali reasoned, “and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to figure out when we get there. It’ll be the spot with the crashed ship in the middle of it.”

Bo’s eyebrow threatened to disappear into his unruly thatch of headfur. He’d expected the other varii to be upset with him for having disrupted their jobs, but none of them seemed bothered. In fact, now that he wasn’t preoccupied with being angry at himself, it appeared that the others were enjoying themselves. The hair on Dali’s face was blowing back in the wind, highlighting a contented smile that turned up the corners of his lips. Chuck and Victus were both leaning against the railing at the bow of their craft, enjoying the sensation of speed as the ground disappeared beneath them.

Bo reached around Dali and tapped a series of coordinates into the ship’s nav system. “There’s your target.”

“That’s only about a hundred-and-twenty kilometers away,” Dali said, after glancing at the numbers. “Should I slow down?”

It occurred to Bo that the man might hate survey duty every bit as much as much as he himself did. “No,” he answered, reluctantly, “whatever’s out there, let’s find it and get this wrapped up as soon as we can.”

***

By the early afternoon, they knew they were getting close. “This doesn't look good,” Dan said, as he spotted another chunk of debris that littered the ground beneath the shuttle’s glidepath. They’d been seeing blistered remnants of varying sizes for the past few kilometers, bits of insulation and loose cargo ejected from the ship as it roared past.

“I don't see anything that would have come from the capsule,” Bo remarked his eyes scanning back and forth. “This is all from the cargo area.”

“How can you tell?” Dan asked, bemused. “It all looks the same to me.”

“That's how you can tell,” Bo reached out and touched the delicate tendrils of their connection, checking on his mates emotional state. “The insulation in the cabin areas is always tinted red, so rescuers know where to start looking.”

red

Dan thought, involuntarily,

the color of blood

“Don't get morbid,” Bo reassured him. “there’s still a chance.” He sounded sure of himself, but Dan could tell that inside he felt just as nervous.

“There!”  Victus cried, pointing to a large metal object half-buried in the trees, “I see it!” Unsurprisingly, it was in line with the trail of debris. All decorum forgotten, his tail batted back and forth nervously, betrayed his emotions. “Can you tell if this was his shuttle?”

“Sorry, Vic, no way to tell. But it looks like there’s been activity since the crash, so that’s good.” Dali brought them in hot, then at the last moment turned the transport ninety-degrees to scrub off speed. It was unnecessarily showy, but at that point they were all in a hurry.

Victus hit the ground before the transport did, running full speed for the primitive camp that the survivors had set up. “Lucas!” his voice rang out. He breathed deeply, but detected nothing familiar on the moving air. Had it been so long that he’d forgotten what his partner smelled like?  His gold flecked eyes scanned back and forth, desperately looking for the smallest sign that his mate might still be alive. “Lucas!” he shouted again, his voice growing coarse with desperation.

He slowed, then stopped in the middle of the crash site. Clearly, someone had lived there long enough to get things cleaned up, but now there was no sign of activity. The camp had apparently been abandoned.

Dan was panting heavily by the time he caught up. He’d never been big on running, and today wasn’t any different. “Hold on, Vic." He put a hand on Victus’ arm, to help ground the man, and also to stop him from calling out again. Hearing the crazy desperation creeping into his friend’s voice was killing him.

“Come on,” Dan gently steered Victus toward the remains of the shuttle. “Let's have a look inside.”

Dan had one hand on the shuttle's halfway-opened door when a crashing noise in the surrounding underbrush made them whirl. An enthusiastic disturbance generated an equally enthusiastic "Fuck!" as whatever was crashing towards them fell hard on its face.

“Lucas!”  Victus yelled, sprinting towards the woods. He made it to the perimeter just as the bedraggled canine righted himself and emerged from the foliage, limping along on a splinted leg and an improvised crutch. He wasn't visible for more than a half second before he was obscured by a mass of silver-grey fur.

Lucas had relied on the crutches for almost two weeks now, but abandoned them instantly when doing so meant more physical contact with his beloved. He'd figure it out later - right now, he needed Victus in his arms as much as Victus needed holding.

Bo felt a hand on his arm. "Let's give them some time, huh?"

"Yeah, " Bo agreed, feeling unexpectedly moved by the reunion. He wanted to run to his friend as well, to make sure he was safe and tend to his needs, but he realized that in this particular pecking order, Victus was his superior. "C'mon, guys," he called to Chuck and Dali, "let’s go...uh...look for survivors, or something."

They all recognized it as the transparent distraction it was. Lucas had been living there for almost a month and would have been the most logical choice to direct a salvage operation, but none of them, for all the service-oriented behavior programmed into them by their genetics, could bring themselves to bother the two. Instead, they milled around the downed ship, discovering what they could by themselves until Lucas and Victus felt ready to join them.

“Hey!” a voice called out from halfway inside a service conduit. "I think I found something important!"

Bo shone his light into the cramped crawlspace. "What's up there?" he asked. "Something we need? "

"We need everything," the voice answered him, "but it looks like the controller nodes are salvageable."

Dan came up close behind Bo, wanting to feel the man's presence.

?where are the others?

he asked, silently.

don't know

his mate responded,

gonna have to ask Lucas that one

As if on cue, the Shepherd/Rottweiler mix peered around the corner, Victus visible close behind him. "Find anything good?"

Bo pulled him into a quick bear hug, then moved the man back to a decorous distance. "Where is everybody?" he asked. "what's the count?"

"Eight dead," Lucas reported, as if to a superior officer, "fifty-two survived. Most of them took off about a week ago to find the colony, but six stayed behind to watch over me and the shuttle.” A look of concern flitted across his face. "is Clay okay? His folks are worried sick."

Dan smiled broadly. "Yeah! He's going to go nuts when he learns they're okay."

"They're the reason I'm still alive," Lucas said. "Some of those jizzbuckets thought it would be just fine to leave me behind to rot, but those two stayed behind to make sure I was okay. They’ve been bringing me food and water since we landed." He looked around. "They should be back here soon," he guessed."they had to hear you land."

"Bodies?"

"Three of them were buried over there,” Lucas said, pointing to the east. “Five didn’t make it down.”

Bo considered Lucas’s words then gave a quick nod. “Got it. You can fill me in later." There were a very limited number of ways one might lose just a few people between a spaceliner and a planet, and none of them were pleasant.

Two of the surviving passengers had returned to the camp and were showing Dali and Chuck the best salvage opportunities. "Hey, dog dude!" one of the orange-suited sapiens called. Bo squeezed his eyes shut in annoyance, taking strength from his bond with Dan. Since their bonding, much of Dan's tolerant personality had worked its way into Bo, but there were still times he had to marshal his patience. "There are four canine varii within earshot...dude," he answered, loudly. "Which one of us are you addressing?"

"I dunno," the man said, unaffected. "You, I guess."

Bo raised an interrogative eyebrow. "What?"

"I think this replicator might still work. Want to look? "

"Sure," Bo said, levering himself off the wall he was leaning against with a roll of his shoulders. "Let me take a look." He put a paw on Dan's shoulder. "Come on, buddy. Let’s see what he's got."