- Sub-Captain Ortner’s Awakening Log UT1
- Prime-Captain Larkina’s Cryo-Dream Analysis UT2
- TO NAME A PLANET UT3
- Stepping out of the Steel UT4
- Footprints in the Gulch UT5
- The First Fatality UT6
- Prime-Captain Larkina’s Doubts UT7
- The Autopsy of Specimen Alpha UT8
- Ortner’s Wall UT9
- Sub-Captain Pine’s Departure UT10
- 1000 Years On UT11
- The Hunt for Captain Pines UT12
- The Linguist Lives UT13
- The Surveillance of Pines UT14
- Adam’s Observations UT15
- A Plea from Captain to Captain UT16
- Fertilizer Detail UT17
- The Screaming UT18
YEAR: 52028
SHIP: Matriark II, Super-frigate exploration Class
LOCATION: Purple Mountain Valley, North of the Landing site.
Professor Adam’s Earpiece Log
DAY EIGHT
They have taken me back to the surface. Something is wrong. The Pond Apes are screaming. All of the Ruki are dead. There screams are loud guttural cries of grief. They keep looking my way as if I know something.
They have been screaming for hours. They keep trying to shake the Ruki back alive. The Ruki are dead no movement no life. They are clearly more than mere mounts. They keep taking water from the lake and trying to get the Ruki to drink. The sight of them screaming for their loss is disturbing.
The leader is shouting at me. I can’t understand. He keeps pointing at the dead and then back to me. I think he thinks it was my fault. Or maybe he thinks it’s my people who have done this. I don’t know for sure but I think he’s right.
The leader has produced a leather flask. He means for me to drink it. I am in no place to refuse. They have stopped screaming and have started shouting in rage.
I have drunk the liquid. A frosty cold trickled down my throat. The leader has my head in his huge hands. Our foreheads are touching.
DAY NINE
A rush of visions invaded my head until I lost consciousness. I saw them ride across dusty plains. I saw a huge purple serpent with seven eyes. I saw the birth of a Pond Ape. The Ruki was the mother, the pond ape came from the Ruki.
They reproduce through some strange cross species act of insemination.
I heard them talking in my visions. I began to understand their words. I think I can speak it through some implanted alien telepathy. Whether it is a dream or whether they can understand me has yet to be seen.
I have asked for tonic. They brought it to me.
‘You did this to our mothers,’ said the leader.
‘I cannot deny it. It looks like the work of my people.’
‘They will pay for this. We will make a pond from their blood.’
I could not argue. I was their prisoner. I wondered how long I would survive now they knew we had killed their Ruki mothers. Grikka had to stop the others from attacking me. I can’t sleep.
