“This thing hasn’t moved for decades,” she said, running her hand along the pitted surface that looked like no metal she’d ever encountered. “Look at how high the moss reaches. I wonder why they’d want to stick around on a planet like this. What’s here for them?”
“The vessel may no longer be able to fly.”
But Sam was thinking of the dark hints that Hunter had dropped, about the Amam’s feeding habits and them having easier options than hunting. She wasn’t sure what he meant, but it didn’t sound like anything good. The sooner they found a way off this planet the better.
For that, they had to find the colonel first. Up ahead the ship curved around and from Hunter’s diagram, she knew they were close. They rounded the hull and found the opening he’d spoken of: a narrow aperture covered by a mesh, about three-feet square, which led into a dark vent. It wouldn’t be comfortable, especially not for Teal’c, but it would do the job. Sam pulled out her pocket knife and began to work the mesh free.
Hold on, sir. We’re coming for you.
Hunter walked with the steady lope of a man used to crossing large distances by foot and Daniel allowed him to range ahead while he followed more slowly. Out in the daylight, away from the murk of the Amam ship, he could see him better and took the opportunity to study their new ally. Hunter was young, but his skin was weather-beaten and his body lean and wiry. Just like Aedan and his people, Hunter looked hungry, his youth already ravaged by the hard life he lived.
They walked downhill through the scraggy forest, its pine scent intensifying the lower they got and the denser the trees became. Daniel was no expert in forestry, but from the amount of dead wood rotting on the ground and the uniform height of the new growth, he could guess that this whole forest had burned at some point in the past — probably when the Amam ship had landed, back during the war Elspeth Burne had described. He wondered if there were bodies beneath the loamy soil, the bones that Aedan claimed they still found everywhere. The thought made him shiver in the cold morning air and he tugged his boonie lower, sticking his hands into his pockets.
Behind them, the Amam ship crouched against a mountainside that disappeared up into low cloud. The ship seemed to merge with the rock, its weirdly organic hull covered in lichen and clumps of scraggy grass. It almost looked like an abandoned crash site, except that there didn’t seem to be any damage to the ship.
“Hunter,” Daniel called, keeping his voice as low as possible.
Hunter turned, stopping and waiting for Daniel to catch up. “You doin’ alright?”
“Yeah.” He gestured back toward the ship. “Does that thing ever move?”
“Nope. Told you before, it don’t fly.”
“Because it can’t?”
Hunter shrugged. “Just know it don’t.” He jerked his head in the direction he was walking. “Nearly at the Shacks now. C’mon.”
He headed off again and this time Daniel kept pace with him. The descent was steeper here, the ground sometimes rocky, and occasionally Daniel thought he saw patches of some kind of paving. Probably the Old Road that Hunter had mentioned. He’d also spotted what looked like metal girders, twisted and misshapen, and the rough signs of structural foundations. There had been buildings here once.
After a while, Hunter reached out and touched his arm, slowing him as the ground levelled off and then fell away steeply ahead of them. The forest grew sparser again, and here and there Daniel noticed stumps where trees had been recently felled, ax marks biting deep into the blond wood. People foraged here, he guessed.
Hunter turned to the right, walking parallel to the trees that ran along the top of a steep escarpment. And through the trees, beneath the mist, Daniel began to see a camp emerge. The sight stopped him dead, stunning him with its sheer size. He’d been expecting something like Aedan’s encampment but this was on a whole different scale.
He let out a breath. “Whoa…”
The milky sun was behind them and the mountain cast a long shadow, reaching like a pointing finger across the valley below and the sprawling encampment that stretched out in all directions. It was vast and squalid, the worst kind of human misery, and even from where he stood amid the pine trees, Daniel could smell the rising stench of degradation.
Hunter spat on the ground as if trying to get rid of the foul smell. “They say it was a city once, but there ain’t nothing left now. Just people on top of people, hoping they ain’t the ones to be snatched.”
“How many people?” Daniel said, his heart sinking with a sudden, overwhelming sense of despair. Like the people waiting to die on the Amam ship, there was nothing he could do to help these people, and it left him feeling angry and powerless.