Hailstorm

Prompt Quest #1

This story was written as part of the first Prompt Quest. I chose the science fiction prompt. I enjoyed responding to this writing prompt, I hope you enjoy reading it!

"When I was a child I read books about creatures called fairies," she told me, breaking a silent portion of our workday that had lasted nearly an hour. She spoke like she was merely thinking out loud, and the only reason she was looping me into this particular portion of her thought process was because it was about me. "Those fictional creatures, they were pretty, but not always kind. The way you've described your people, it sounds like they look like fairies. Am I correct?"

"No. The real things aren't pretty and I've never known them to be kind, especially to those of us born without wings."

"Well, then I'm glad you're here instead. Aren't you glad of that? You almost look human, you know. There aren't many of us humans here on this outpost, but everyone assumes you're one of us. I let them continue to think that, when they talk to me."

"Is that so?"

She nodded. "Yes. I don't think anyone associates you with your home planet, even if you tell them, and you speak their language, and you translate their broadcasts for us. I'll let all the new recruits think you're human, if it makes you feel better. The interns and students, they really don't need to know. It's hardly their business."

I'd told her I didn't mind, and when she pushed the subject, I'd told it her it'd make me feel better, relieved even, if she did me this small favor. Over the past few months, slowly, it had become the truth despite starting as a lie. I was sure of it today, as ships flooded the sky and fires chewed through our camp. I'd been translating the broadcasts from my birthplace at least once a day for the past few weeks. I was the only one on this research outpost in the middle of nowhere that could. We were still terribly unprepared. We hadn't thought we'd be such a target, but in hindsight perhaps it was exactly that sort of thinking that had turned us into one.

It was nearly a relief now that it was happening. Despite the destruction they'd wrought, they'd done us one small favor; they'd turned the looming threat into a tangible one, with a time, a date, and a location. Our most pressing question had been answered, loudly.

It was easy for me to think this since I wasn't their target. All that was on the line for me was my research — which was no small sacrifice, though I had the tact to keep that complaint to myself. I'd been at this post for nearly a decade. All that work was about to go up in flames, if it hadn't already as I crouched here in a dark tent, waiting and listening. The fact that my blood was not as valuable as that of the natives, that there were no myths about life giving serums flowing through my veins, no superstitions giving every successful hunter a payout to last a lifetime — this would save my skin but not much else.

I crawled to the exit and peered through the gap between two sheets of canvas. Half a dozen intruders marched down the road past me. Just as they started to split up, someone unseen took one down with a shot through their right wing. There was shouting, followed more shots. I closed the curtain.

A moment later something punched a hole through my tent, a gap a few inches in diameter that was repeated itself on the opposite wall. I crawled under a table. My research, a project on this planet's unusually large hailstorms, was just a couple of tents away. The sounds outside did not diminish, but they moved away from the front of my tent. I walked, bent low to the ground, to the exit. I peeked through the gap, confirmed that it was all clear, and ran to the next tent. I told myself I looked like neither a target nor an invader, and no one had any reason to shoot me. This wasn't my fight — why shouldn't I be able to get my research and leave?

Someone may have shouted for help a few tents away. I didn't spare a moment to think about it. I had already helped these people, anyway, with all of my translation efforts. Translations I'd done for free, at any time of the day. I smelled something burning in my new shelter, mostly likely the skin of the shelter itself, and quickly made my way into the next tent, the one that held my research.

I'd been so focused on checking for danger between tents that I'd forgotten to consider the spaces inside. I found myself staring not at canvas but at a pair of translucent wings, attached to a figure holding a weapon in each hand. A flamethrower and a dart gun. One weapon to cripple the inanimate, one to cripple the animate. They were standing in front of a table covered in notes. My notes. Fluid was dripping from both weapons onto the papers.

I'd been in this space so often over the past few years that I barely had to look at the table next to me to know what was on it. There was a glass tank like the home of a pet fish, holding something much more valuable than some child's fairground prize. Inside were three hailstones, each the size of bricks.

It pained me to open that case, not just because of the value going down the drain but because of the environmental controls that kicked in. I'd just popped the thing open, not realizing that the default safety settings had been deactivated. Wires along the top of the tent shuttered to life and pumped the room full of cold air. Someone's cup of coffee, left unattended in the chaos, froze over in a second.

The invader turned around just in time for me to bring the brick of ice onto his head. He crumpled to the ground, one wing bent at a terrible angle. I was grateful to the environmental system, despite my discomfort. The hailstone was nearly intact.

"Professor?" a voice squeaked from below yet another table. A face followed it, golden and betraying the color of the blood flowing beneath, the color of wealth and greedy aspirations. This girl was one of the more recent research assistants, she'd been interested in meteorology specifically; I remembered this much but not her name. "You came to help me?"

I would have betrayed my own people for much less than her life. A moldy loaf of bread, perhaps, even if eating it were part of the bargain. I didn't tell her that. I didn't ask her name. I started to pick up the most important parts of my research notes. She helped me and we worked in silence — aside from the muffled violence just outside our tent. She took the coffee cup, tried to get the frozen of beverage out of it for a moment, then gave up and left it on the table.

"Is he..."

"Unconscious." All I really knew for sure was that I could still see the rise and fall of his chest. His wings were turning from translucent blue to a sickly mauve. I was vaguely aware of warnings about wings and exposure to cold, warnings I’d ignored as a child because they didn’t apply to me. I chose not to let that memory resurface, and I chose not to voice it. "Did you turn off the safety settings on the environmental system?"

"I was adjusting it when the invaders arrived. I crawled under the table when I started hearing shots. If you hadn't come in when you did..."

I glanced back at the hailstones in the glass case. I couldn't reasonably haul it with me.

"Where will we go now?" she asked. I debated on asking her for her name, but decided it was too late. It'd come to me later.

"The woods. I... we can move from tent to tent to get to the edge of camp. That's how I got here in the first place. Just stick close behind me. Once we get to the tree line they won't be able to follow us."

"They won't?"

"They'll find it difficult. They can't fly through trees that dense."

"How do you know that?"

"I took a class, once. I've learned some of their language." Neither of these statements were lies. She nodded, and I knew exactly how she'd taken my answer. Perhaps, if the two of us got out of this, later down the line when the situation was less complicated and less urgent, I'd correct her.