War's Oversight - Chapter 07
#6 of War's Oversight
War's Oversight
Chapter 07
A faint light shone in the middle of what was otherwise impenetrable blackness. To human eyes, it might have been a moonless night under a starless, overcast sky, with nothing but the smallest of candle flame to light the surroundings. Or it might have been a clearing in the heart of an ancient forest of thick, overhanging vegetation, in a place where there was nothing within reach - not even the most barren stone underfoot. To hold a light in one's hand was to illuminate one's hands and face, perhaps - but nothing more.
In the darkness, a faint glow slowly bobbed toward the light, gradually coalescing into a pair of eyes which glowed faintly greenish at first, but became amber as the first traces of the being's face appeared from the darkness. A faint cloud of frost momentarily clouded the placid, predatory features of the Chakri's face, parts of which were in stark illumination and others in impenetrable shadow, before a hand reached out and momentarily extinguished the light.
When the light reappeared, it was cupped in the Chakri's broad palm, casting a similar stark illumination over his face, and blanketing everything behind him in shadow. The ground on which the Chakri walked was also obscured, although he moved easily, with the benefit of long experience and the kind of low-light vision that most humans would've regarded as unnaturally keen.
The light picked out the vaguest of details on the Chakri's surroundings. Walls of stone surrounded the creature and the light - stone neither rough-hewn nor polished, but faintly glittering with the suggestions of a crystalline mineral structure. Here and there, a few pockets cut into the stone held objects - whether of utility, or of some other value, only the Chakri might know.
A low passageway forced the Chakri to duck as he continued into a somewhat larger chamber, this one not apparently different from the first. The Chakri took a moment to set the light he carried onto a small stone projecting from one wall, and then performed a minute adjustment on it.
The light flared, bathing the chamber in more substantial illumination and revealing it in greater detail. There were, to appearances, a flattened stone slab on which a few innocent-looking devices were scattered - perhaps a desk of sorts. A number of boxes made of scratched and battered plastic were stacked neatly against one wall, and a few open boxes of what appeared to be mechanical and electronic parts were less carefully clustered in a corner.
The Chakri, visible now as having a grey cloaklike garment draped rather casually over his body, stooped briefly to move a small supply container a handspan to one side, so that it was nearer to the desk, and then plucked a small device from a crevice in the wall before taking a seat. Rather than using the desk, however, the Chakri merely flexed a foot toward the floor, and rested the device on his knee.
The device was irregularly-shaped, with a small screen set in the top being the only rectangular feature. In all other respects, it was a carefully moulded platform on which the Chakri rested his broad, clawed hand, and then began to tap out seemingly random patterns - index claw, middle claw twice, little claw, third claw, and so forth -- in movements that appeared to be all but twitches of the tendons on the back of his hand.
A flood of alien characters began to fill the small screen, appearing to any unschooled observer to be nothing but gibberish, but which indicated in the language of the Chakri, "Time index 489376. Shuttle approach within distance 300. Initiated concealment procedure. Passive sensors detected landing at map reference 5893 by 2384. Shuttle continued to orbital station. Preparing for investigation of landing site." Having completed his small notation, the Chakri gently set the device on the edge of the desk, and took a moment to rake a handful of claws through the mane at his ears and forehead, before turning to another task.
From another crevice in the wall, the Chakri plucked a rolled-up sheet of some sort of sheer filament paper, and carefully spread it out to cover nearly all of the desk in front of him. From one corner of the desk, he plucked a series of small, black specks, and deftly impaled them on the points of the claws of his right hand. With his left, he reached toward the wall and hit a small switch with the claw of his index finger, which caused a dull light to shine from an emitter a small distance above.
Starting with hesitant, broad, sweeping movements, but rapidly building to the pace of a practiced expert, the Chakri slid a clawtip across the filament paper, followed by another in a different direction on the return stroke. As he worked, the dull light from above began to project a record of each stroke where it had been made, so that after a few moments, it took on the appearance of an illuminated sketchpad the length and breadth of the desk.
Clawtips circled, clawtips diverged, and clawtips met in a pincer stroke. After only a minute, the Chakri had produced a serviceable sketch of the shuttlecraft which had forced an early end to his latest reconnaissance mission - a sketch that was surprisingly accurate and included details including the craft's identification number, which would scarcely have been visible to a human at half the range.
At length, the Chakri finished what he'd set out to do, and neatly pressed a marked area on his notation device. The small screen lit up, albeit with a highly reduced and low-resolution version of the image the Chakri had sketched, and then resumed its idle state as the screen winked out.
The image on the desk, too, faded and disappeared, leaving only the filament paper behind, as blank as it had been at the outset. After plucking the stylus tips from his claws, the Chakri left them in a small pile at the corner of the desk, and then rolled the filament paper carefully before stowing it in its wall crevice again.
He stood, and reached for the clasp at his shoulder which held his cloak in place. At his touch, the clasp released, and he swept the garment one-handed into an untidy but compact bundle, which he dropped in a small heap on the desk.
He was revealed as being of somewhat slender build, as Chakri tend to be, but with a healthy coat of well-kept fur and the musculature of an athletic member of his species. A human might have regarded him as being merely slender, but other Chakri with a trained eye would have seen him for what he was - a lanky, relatively post-adolescent member of his species without the bulk of his full growth.
He stooped, and opened the supply container on which he'd been sitting. From it he drew his environment suit, his boots, and also his optical lenses, before closing the container and sitting back down.
Whatever ideas he might've had about his equipment being functional and technologically-advanced, he still apparently found frustration in some of the more practical aspects of his work.
He growled as he attempted to force his toeclaws through the narrow leg of his garment.