Kestrel Kestrel - Chapter Two
Tuesday, 22 October 2024 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keaaluTitle (chapter): Kestrel Kestrel (2)
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: We join the rest of the Terrahawks operatives in their search for Kate Kestrel, who reported feeling unwell and had to make an emergency landing in the desert. Except that no-one seems able to work out where she is? She can't have got that far, surely.
Kate, unfortunately, isn't in any position to help anyone, seeing as she's considerably smaller than she was when she landed.
And featherier...
-----------
Mein gott. Why can’t you do anything right, uncle! She was meant to have been on the Hawkwing when she changed! She was meant to have crashed it!
Well how was I meant to know she had a little private airplane? You’re supposedly the genius, you horrible little thing. You should have taken that into account.
And you’re ‘her greatest fan’! So great you didn’t even keep watch on her properly? Is it any wonder those idiotic earthlings always defeat our most cunning plans? Anyone would think you were on their side-
Are you two idiots bickering again? Yes, Itstar, I’m including you in that – no, don’t start; you’re both to blame for this. But never mind – we have our proof that it worked. Now we can figure out how this can be played to our advantage. It would be such a terrible shame if the humans ended up killing their own protectors…
-----
“Anything yet, Hiro?”
Captain Mary Falconer sat at Battlehawk’s controls, piloting the great craft out to Kate’s last known position, with Lieutenant Hawkeye down in the cargo hold, making final preparations. On the comms terminal was a visual connection to the Terrahawks’ orbital platform; Spacehawk had easily found Kate’s ship, right where she had reported she was landing, but the canopy was open and the little vehicle looked empty. The stellar vessel’s crew were busy scouring the landscape, but being hundreds of miles above it limited their productivity. Zeroid optical resolution was good enough to read a book on the desert sand, but they couldn’t look under things.
“Nothing at the moment, I’m afraid. It is a large area to check.” For confirmation, Lieutenant Hiro glanced back at the ship’s command zeroid, who swivelled from side to side on his perch, shaking his head. “We were not in visual range to see her land or exit her ship, but we have predicted her maximum range on foot since then. We can’t see her anywhere within it, but will continue searching. It will be hot, down there; I can only guess that she may have gone looking for some shade.”
“You don’t think anyone might have abducted her?” Mary wondered. “You heard what Five-five told us. It all feels a little too convenient for her to just go missing, after all that. It might not have been food poisoning – she could have been drugged.”
Hiro frowned and considered it for a few seconds. “While I won’t argue the plausibility of the latter, I feel it is unlikely she was taken,” he demurred. “Her landing site was quite random, not to mention remote. There are no recent vehicle tracks to or from the area, and the interval between her contacting us and our arrival in range was comparatively short. Unless whoever took her was acting opportunistically, I do not think anyone could have got there before us, over land, without a strong chance of us seeing them.”
“Hmm.” Mary drummed her fingertips on the control column, uneasily. “All right. Thank you. Keep looking, and keep me updated.”
“Ten-ten, ma’am.”
“Guessing Hiro didn’t have anything positive to say.”
Mary glanced sidelong to watch as Hawkeye slid into the copilot’s chair. She shook her head. “No. But he doesn’t think she was abducted. I’m taking that as a good sign.”
“Could sure do with a few of them, right now,” the man agreed. “The zeroids are all briefed and ready to go, now. Since we picked him up, Five-five has shared all the data he has, so everyone’s up to date.” He covered his face with both hands. “Why in spacefire didn’t we tell her to stay with the dang ship, Mary.”
“I don’t think any of us could have reasonably expected this would happen. Kate wasn’t feeling well. Perhaps she was sicker than we thought? Who knows what was going through her head.”
“Exactly! She wasn’t thinking straight!” He threw his hands up. “We shoulda told her to stay put.”
Mary engaged the big vessel’s VTOL drive and guided Battlehawk down into a patch clear of vegetation, near where Kate had landed. A cloud of dust swirled up around them. “There’s a lot of things we maybe should have done. Would she have listened?” She let a hand rest on his shoulder. “Perhaps we should focus on finding her, and leave punishing ourselves until after we have some answers.”
“Right.” Hawkeye blew a sigh through pursed lips and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What were your plans?”
“Worst case scenario, I’ll need you to fly Kate’s ship back to Hawknest. I don’t think we’ll get it into Battlehawk’s hold. But that’s our worst case scenario, because we’re going to find her.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’m going to take Terrahawk up to a better vantage point to monitor our overall progress. Are you coming? I could do with your eyes.”
“Not sure I’ll be able to see much more than Spacehawk, if we’re all still looking down on the place. We need boots on the ground to check under things. Besides.” He looked at her. “Five-five is eating himself up for not stopping her going, so I was gonna partner with him for a bit.”
“Thank you. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.” She opened the intercom to the hold. “All right, Sergeant Major. Your men know what they’re doing?”
“Ten-ten, ma’am!” The zeroid commander’s gruff tones came over the communications. “Don’t you worry – we’ll show that spaceified little twit in orbit how to do a proper search. We’ll stay out here until we found her!”
Mary smiled, tersely. Zeroid one-upmanship usually frustrated her, but if it meant they focused their energy on doing a good job? For once she felt disinclined to tell them differently. “Good hunting, Zero.”
-----
When Kate finally came around, it was inside a sack.
Or at least, that was what it felt like. A brightly coloured sack that glowed with the sun’s heat, made of a heavy, stifling fabric, holding her down on the ground.
It felt rather like a hot air balloon had deflated on top of her. What a stroke of bad luck. First the food poisoning, then almost a crash landing, and now this?
At least it didn’t feel like anyone was with her, so if she was a captive, she stood a good chance of escaping. Still hot and dazed, she flailed her way out of the constricting tent of fabric and collapsed onto her face in the dirt. Dusty shingle filled her nostrils with fine sand, making her cough.
Coughing didn’t quite feel right…? Felt like it came from deeper inside, all the way up from her abdomen, and it sounded shrill. Squeaky. Not like a cough at all. And her arms were stiff, didn’t want to straighten properly when she tried to push herself to stand. Her clothing, too – like she was wearing an outfit made of thousands of pieces of paper.
She tottered unsteadily upright, feeling like her centre of gravity had shifted, and almost fell over all the way in the opposite direction. Her feet hurt. It felt like her toes were broken, but she still couldn’t quite get down off tiptoe. Things on the ground kept grabbing onto her, alternately tripping her or holding her in place when she tried to shake them off.
At least her head was clearing. The muzzy confusion that had grounded her was fading the longer she was awake and standing. Finally she felt lucid enough to work out who’d tried to capture her, and why they’d done such a poor job at it. (Although if the martians were involved, the latter wasn’t precisely a surprise.) She turned to look at the… sack, or whatever it was.
For several seconds, she couldn’t work out what she was staring at. An enormous sprawl of dusky red and silver fabric, the size of a tennis court.
But it-… it wasn’t a fallen hot air balloon. Or a tent. Or even just a huge bag.
Caught up in the barbs of an aggressive thorny little tree, it was… her own clothing? But on an absurd scale. She could see every individual thread in the dark pink fabric. How was that even possible?
Then she realised, taking in the gargantuan scenery – the enormous shingly gravel she stood on, the overgrown plants that towered over her – that it wasn’t her clothes that were huge. The problem was with her.
And she’d shrunk.
Which… felt… particularly bad.
With difficulty, she looked down at herself, and found a smooth, pale beige chest, streaked with regular little dark brown flecks – feathers. Beneath that, she could just see a pair of bright yellow feet, each long toe tipped with an absurdly large raptorial claw.
They clenched automatically into the dirt as adrenaline surged into her veins.
Panic welled in her chest. She automatically recoiled, as though she could somehow step away from the new body she’d found herself in.
New.
Body.
Oh, holy hell.
“Oh god, I better be dreaming,” she said – or tried to. All that came from her throat was the shaky screech of a small falcon.
Staggering away backwards, as if it would somehow help, she tripped and lost her balance, and landed on her tail, whereupon a bright, sharp new pain shot up her spine. She threw herself urgently away from it, in an ungainly tumbling whirl of feathers and dust, and went sprawling on her chest when her feet refused to behave – because it wasn’t things on the ground grabbing onto her, was it, keeping her from walking. It was her own newly-taloned little bird feet, involuntarily clutching closed every time she tried to lift them, thrusting those long claws into the loose soil and catching them on stems and roots.
Even breathing didn’t feel right. Too much air moving, like her lungs were the wrong shape, taking up too much space inside her. She shuddered. A shaky little inhuman noise like a shrill, shuddering scream threaded itself out of her beak.
Could birds hyperventilate? (It sure felt like she was hyperventilating.)
A waft of dizziness passed over her and she thought she might pass out again. Her wingtips – wingtips – were trembling, rustling against the dirt.
Calm, Kate. Oh lord please just calm down. This whole thing, it’s just something new that Zelda’s cooked up, she tried to reassure herself, and it’s only Zelda, you know it’s only Zelda, it can’t possibly be anyone or anything else, and this is not even the weirdest thing she’s ever done to us.
Probably, she corrected herself. Probably not the weirdest.
She wanted to laugh, hysteria bubbling in her throat – it’s only Zelda? ONLY Zelda? Really? You’re suddenly a bird and it’s ‘only Zelda’? – but laughter didn’t really feel appropriate. Or even possible, actually, with lungs that didn’t behave like she was familiar with.
Keep it together, Kate, she told herself, as firmly as she could. Keep it together. You’re-… okay, you’re a bird, but you’re alive and unhurt. Calm down and find something else to focus on. You’ll be fine. Everything else Zelda’s ever done has been fixed. So will this be. Calm down and just breathe.
Easier said than done, me. You’ve never been a bird before. She tried to focus on her breathing, anyway. In, and out. Ignore the weird parts. It's still just in, and out.
In, and out.
She closed her eyes, unwilling to look at the over-detailed dirt while she accustomed herself to everything else new.
In. And out. Good.
Remarkably, it did seem to be working? Her breathing was growing more even, and that light-headed sense of panic was passing.
Finally she decided to chance getting up; she shakily managed to regain her feet and didn’t immediately fall straight back down.
All right. Good. Let’s work out our next steps. Focus on something else that doesn’t involve being a bird.
Mary had said they were coming, right? A whole eternity ago, while Kate had only had a strange case of food poisoning?
That meant Kate had to get back to her ship. If she was with her friends, then she still had options. Exactly what options, she wasn’t sure. But options.
If they got to it before her and found her missing, who knew how long they’d stick around? That they’d exhaust all possible options and search everywhere for her before they finally left, she had absolutely no doubt. They weren’t just co-workers – they were family. But they’d never make the connection between the vanishing act of her human self, and the appearance of a strangely tame little falcon – it was just too fantastically absurd.
If she could stay with her ship – and be really annoyingly persistent about it, not let herself be shooed away – then there was maybe the slimmest chance they’d think she was someone’s pet, and take her with them, and that might be long enough to work out how to clue them into what had happened. The alternative was that they unwittingly left her on her own in the desert. Fending for herself would probably mean eating mice, assuming she could catch them. And that… really didn’t sound like something she wanted to deal with, right now. She shuddered, feeling her feathers fluffing out in distaste, like a really bad case of goosepimples.
But where in spacefire even was her ship? She’d completely lost her bearings, and couldn’t even see it, now, not from all the way down here! At not even a foot tall, any more, the horizon had drawn ridiculously close, and even the smallest desert plants formed a defensive barrier she couldn’t see over.
Kate cast her gaze around herself, wondering if there was anything she could climb, and lit upon that horrible scrubby little bush that had tried so hard to steal her clothing. It had dense branches and looked like maybe it wasn’t totally impossible to get up it, even though right now it felt a little like contemplating climbing a giant sequoia. She walked over to it – shakily at first, walking on tiptoe on treacherous feet that kept grabbing at the dirt, but with growing confidence – and studied the ladder of tight twigs.
Her first attempt resulted in her falling straight back onto her tail after only one or two steps, automatically trying to grab onto the branches with fingers that no longer existed. (She got a little frustrated inkling of what it must feel like to be a zeroid, with no hands to manipulate the world around them.) She did have a beak, though – would that work? She swallowed her distaste at the idea of biting onto the little tree, and tried again.
Annoyingly, the trick with her beak worked like a charm. Thorns combed aggressively through her feathers and nicked at her skin, but Kate kept going, pushing her way higher. At last she was back at a useful vantage point, close to where she imagined her normal eye level would have been.
And in a clear patch of ground in the distance, next to her own little ship, there was Battlehawk. Her heart sank. They were here already? She’d not even heard them land! How long had she been unconscious? As she watched, the command module lifted up and away from the main body of the huge vehicle, before soaring up into the sky. She could see zeroids, as well, setting out in a starburst away from the ship.
It was only a couple of hundred metres away, but it might as well have been kilometres. However was she going to cover all that ground in time?
Come on, girl. You have wings of your own now. Let’s try making them work.
Kate took a deep breath, spread her wings and launched herself into the unknown.
Alarmingly, she went mostly down, but her wings weren’t completely terrible as parachutes and her feathers cushioned her fall, and being so small, apart from being shocked and startled the fall didn’t hurt her. (She’d never bounced after falling from a great height, before.)
Spacefire and damnation. How are you meant to work these things?!
She flapped hard, but stayed firmly on the ground. Perhaps she wasn’t using them properly-
You’ve only had them like twenty minutes, Katie, and it’s not like you just had the shock of your life or anything. Give yourself a bit of a break. Your legs still work – well, mostly. Try them, instead.
After a little experimentation, she found that a graceless hop-skip across the dirt with her wings spread for balance was the fastest way of covering the ground. And all right, okay, it actually felt like she was making a bit of progress. If it came to the absolute worst, could she fly all the way to Hawknest? Or would she have to work out how to live as a genuine kestrel for the rest of her days-
Oh no, you are NOT thinking about that. This is gonna be fixed. It is gonna be fixed. And you are not going to even contemplate having to eat mice, not even once, no sir.
-----
While he understood it was probably all just down to some kind of… impenetrably efficient zeroid search algorithm (or possibly Sergeant Major Zero trying to be clever), Hawkeye had been increasingly feeling like he and 55 were just wandering around aimlessly, not using either of their skillsets particularly effectively.
He’d though it was probably his imagination that 55 felt the same – until Space Sergeant 101 had sent 55 some urgent co-ordinates, and without a word the zeroid had instantly gone bounding off like an excited hunting dog, forcing the human lieutenant into an ungainly gallop to catch up.
They only covered a short distance, but Hawkeye didn’t think he’d have caught up if the zeroid hadn’t already stopped. As he watched, 55 nosed at a patch of lilac on the ground, and Hawkeye realised with a clutch of deep dismay that it wasn’t some desert flower but one of Kate’s wigs.
55 looked up at him as he approached; the zeroid managed to look weirdly nauseated.
“Aw, man.” Hawkeye crouched and picked it up out of the scrubby set of twigs the wind had blown it into, then patted 55 gently. “It’s all right, buddy. We’ll find her.”
The zeroid bumped into his ankles, leaning heavily. “I hope so.” He was obviously sorely off-balance as he didn’t even attempt to rhyme.
A short distance away, tangled up in the shady twigs of a thornbush, Hawkeye quickly spotted the rest of Kate’s clothing. No wonder they’d struggled to find anything.
“Mary?” Hawkeye opened a channel to his senior officer. “We’ve found something. But you’re not gonna like it. Five-five, can you give Captain Falconer a live feed? Thanks…”
“Is that her clothing?” Mary asked, quietly, watching while Hawkeye unhooked the jacket from the thorns and examined it. “Is that all you found?”
“Yeah. I don’t get it. What the heck was she playing at, undressing?” He stood taller, alarmed, shading his eyes with one hand. “Is she out here naked? Oh, man. Have the zeroids reported back with anything yet?”
“Easy, Hawkeye. I think we’d have found something if that was the case.” Several heartbeats of thoughtful silence passed. “Could someone have forced her to change her clothing? So no-one would recognise her? Hiro said he didn’t think she’d been abducted but I’m not so sure, any more. Are there any footprints there?”
Hawkeye narrowed his focus and examined the ground with his computer-augmented eyesight. “Only hers, and only approaching. I don’t see anything else, even in enhanced.” He frowned. “You know what? I don’t even see her footprints leaving.” He looked around himself. “What the hell.” And the longer he looked at her clothing, the more he realised there was something weird about that, too. “It doesn’t look like she undressed, either. It looks like she just… disappeared from inside it? Her socks are still in her boots, her undershirt is still all caught up inside her jacket.”
“That implies the martians may be involved,” Mary suggested, grimly. “I know Zelda has always reclaimed her own, but I didn’t think she could abduct unrelated people too, by teleporting them away.” After a pause, while the implications sank in, she added; “that could make our fight a whole lot worse if it’s something new she’s learned to do. She could snatch any of us, at any time.”
The silence felt heavy – like a mallet primed to fall on them.
Hawkeye coughed, awkwardly. “Well why the heck didn’t she take her clothes?” He gathered up the discarded clothing, folding each item into a neat pile with the boots on top. “And what do we do now, wait for a ransom?”
“A ransom doesn’t seem quite like Zelda’s style, but I’m sure she’ll be in contact to gloat over her latest nefarious plan soon enough.” Mary sighed. “Get back to Battlehawk. We can regroup and rethink.”
“Ten-ten, Mary. See you soon.”
It would be nice to get out of the unrelenting sun, Hawkeye mused, trudging over the dirt with 55. They were almost all the way back to Kate’s little ship when he noticed that the zeroid was hanging back, and hesitated himself. “Is there a problem, little buddy?”
“I think we may have a guest, so a quiet approach might be for the best?”
“A guest? What does that mean?” Hawkeye’s vision was easily as good as the zeroid’s, but he couldn’t quite work out where 55 was looking. His instant of hope that there was a person there who could tell them something useful rapidly deflated when he couldn’t actually see anyone.
“It’s very small so I’m not sure yet? But I’m pretty convinced that it isn’t a threat.” The zeroid closed his shutters and rolled carefully, slowly forwards.
Hawkeye followed him, and after an instant worked out what 55 had spotted. A little speckly brown hawk, scarcely as tall as even a zeroid, perched on the rim of the vessel’s open canopy. “Huh. Will you look at that. I wonder what that’s doing there? Can’t be for the shade!”
Expecting it to fly away at any second, the two Terrahawks operatives approached warily, but it stayed where it was, placidly watching them.
55 parked, and sat staring at it for a very long time. “Huh! It’s a kestrel, sir – but it is kinda strange. This state isn’t part of this bird’s normal range?”
“A kestrel?” Hawkeye sighed. “Well if that ain’t ironic. Went out looking for a kestrel, and came back with the wrong sort.”
“Wronger than that – I just investigated. It’s a European kestrel. It must be domesticated?”
“Is that it, little birdy?” Hawkeye crouched and inched closer, as though trying not to spook it into flight. “You’re someone’s pet?” He held out his arm, forearm level. “Are you lost, huh?”
-----
Are you lost? Oh, more than you know, Hawkeye.
Still hot and achey, and now exhausted by her efforts to get back to Battlehawk before her friends left her alone in the desert, Kate studied Hawkeye’s arm for a long time before deciding fuck it and climbing shakily aboard, wings trembling with the effort of balancing.
“Heyyy, there we go.” The man smiled in spite of himself, and automatically lifted his free hand to stroke her before remembering her sharp little hooked beak and thinking better of it. “You might be right, Five-five. This sure isn’t a completely wild bird, at least.”
55 gave her a quick visual appraisal. “If she’s a pet, her condition’s not great; her feathers are scruffy, and she looks underweight.”
Thanks, Five-five. She shot him a little glare; machine honesty did sometimes sting. He just looked back, oblivious.
“I always thought tame falcons wore those little leather straps on their legs, too,” Hawkeye mused, giving her his own cursory examination. “So they didn’t fly away.”
“They’re called jesses,” 55 supplied, helpfully.
“Right. But she doesn’t have them. This is just a little bird, all on her own.” Hawkeye gave into temptation and used one curled finger to gently stroke the feathers of her chest, right under her beak. “Maybe that’s how she escaped and got lost out here.”
Kate leaned into his touch, tiredly. She recognised that he wouldn’t be doing it if he knew it was her, but she felt disinclined to try and stop him. After everything else she’d just been through? That little bit of friendly human comfort was nice.
“What do you think we should do?” Hawkeye went on, quietly, while 55 watched, curious. “I guess I don’t wanna just leave her out here to starve. If she’s someone’s pet, who knows if they’ll come along and find her?”
“True, sir – but not to cause a fuss, they won’t find her either if we take her back with us.”
“What would you rather do, huh?” Hawkeye asked her, softly, although it sounded like it was more for his own benefit. “Come with us, or stay out here so your owner can find you?”
Stay with you guys, obviously. Kate nudged his finger with her beak. But how in spacefire do I tell you I’m me, while I can’t even talk?
“I guess maybe you’re hungry. If you rely on people for food, we’re probably as good a bet as any other, huh.”
He stooped to pick up her clothing, to put it into the little jet’s cockpit, and the sudden movement felt like he was about to send her tumbling to the ground. Involuntarily, she tightened her toes in his arm, flailing out her arms – no, her wings – to try and catch her balance. Hawkeye hissed softly in pain and tensed, making an obvious effort to fight the urge to shake her off, fingers flexing.
“Yeowch, lady! Careful where you stick those little pins!” he said, his jaw tight. “I hope this means you do want to stay with us, and you’re not just pissed off at me for some reason.”
Shoot. Kate made a conscious effort to unlatch her toes and relax her claws from where they’d punched into his skin. She hadn’t considered it was possible to hurt anyone, not this small – but she figured a needle didn’t have to be big, either, to hurt if you were jabbed with it. Her talons caught in his clothing, but she finally managed to shake herself free. She gave him a long serious look, hoping her stern features could convey something like apology.
“I guess I’ll have to have a chat with Mary before I decide what to do. You can’t exactly ride with me in here. I mean, last thing I need is a little hawk freaking out around my head when I’m flying, right?” Hawkeye crouched and encouraged her to get down onto the shingly ground next to 55, before finally picking up her clothing to stow it in the jet. “I don’t even want to guarantee Mary’s gonna be happy with you in the cockpit of Battlehawk…”
It was strange to be on the same eye-level as a zeroid. 55 watched her with a curious detachment; she looked back, frustrated.
There had to be something she could do to clue him in. Her zeroid was usually attentive and observant, but recognising a tiny bird as his human was asking a lot of his rudimentary imagination. Could kestrels sing? She knew a lot of birds could. Even crows could mimic songs! Surely a human in the wrong body could?
Her voice just wouldn’t behave, though. Even the most generous voice coach would never allow her to call this shrill, shaky screaming noise singing.
55 rocked slightly back on his axis, away from her, then recovered and tilted back, subtly. “I’m sorry, little bird. I know you won’t attack. I just feel… disappointed. I want my miss kestrel back?”
Yeah, Five-five. You and me both.
---------
Crossposted to AO3 and ff.net.
Series: Terrahawks
Notes: We join the rest of the Terrahawks operatives in their search for Kate Kestrel, who reported feeling unwell and had to make an emergency landing in the desert. Except that no-one seems able to work out where she is? She can't have got that far, surely.
Kate, unfortunately, isn't in any position to help anyone, seeing as she's considerably smaller than she was when she landed.
And featherier...
-----------
Mein gott. Why can’t you do anything right, uncle! She was meant to have been on the Hawkwing when she changed! She was meant to have crashed it!
Well how was I meant to know she had a little private airplane? You’re supposedly the genius, you horrible little thing. You should have taken that into account.
And you’re ‘her greatest fan’! So great you didn’t even keep watch on her properly? Is it any wonder those idiotic earthlings always defeat our most cunning plans? Anyone would think you were on their side-
Are you two idiots bickering again? Yes, Itstar, I’m including you in that – no, don’t start; you’re both to blame for this. But never mind – we have our proof that it worked. Now we can figure out how this can be played to our advantage. It would be such a terrible shame if the humans ended up killing their own protectors…
“Anything yet, Hiro?”
Captain Mary Falconer sat at Battlehawk’s controls, piloting the great craft out to Kate’s last known position, with Lieutenant Hawkeye down in the cargo hold, making final preparations. On the comms terminal was a visual connection to the Terrahawks’ orbital platform; Spacehawk had easily found Kate’s ship, right where she had reported she was landing, but the canopy was open and the little vehicle looked empty. The stellar vessel’s crew were busy scouring the landscape, but being hundreds of miles above it limited their productivity. Zeroid optical resolution was good enough to read a book on the desert sand, but they couldn’t look under things.
“Nothing at the moment, I’m afraid. It is a large area to check.” For confirmation, Lieutenant Hiro glanced back at the ship’s command zeroid, who swivelled from side to side on his perch, shaking his head. “We were not in visual range to see her land or exit her ship, but we have predicted her maximum range on foot since then. We can’t see her anywhere within it, but will continue searching. It will be hot, down there; I can only guess that she may have gone looking for some shade.”
“You don’t think anyone might have abducted her?” Mary wondered. “You heard what Five-five told us. It all feels a little too convenient for her to just go missing, after all that. It might not have been food poisoning – she could have been drugged.”
Hiro frowned and considered it for a few seconds. “While I won’t argue the plausibility of the latter, I feel it is unlikely she was taken,” he demurred. “Her landing site was quite random, not to mention remote. There are no recent vehicle tracks to or from the area, and the interval between her contacting us and our arrival in range was comparatively short. Unless whoever took her was acting opportunistically, I do not think anyone could have got there before us, over land, without a strong chance of us seeing them.”
“Hmm.” Mary drummed her fingertips on the control column, uneasily. “All right. Thank you. Keep looking, and keep me updated.”
“Ten-ten, ma’am.”
“Guessing Hiro didn’t have anything positive to say.”
Mary glanced sidelong to watch as Hawkeye slid into the copilot’s chair. She shook her head. “No. But he doesn’t think she was abducted. I’m taking that as a good sign.”
“Could sure do with a few of them, right now,” the man agreed. “The zeroids are all briefed and ready to go, now. Since we picked him up, Five-five has shared all the data he has, so everyone’s up to date.” He covered his face with both hands. “Why in spacefire didn’t we tell her to stay with the dang ship, Mary.”
“I don’t think any of us could have reasonably expected this would happen. Kate wasn’t feeling well. Perhaps she was sicker than we thought? Who knows what was going through her head.”
“Exactly! She wasn’t thinking straight!” He threw his hands up. “We shoulda told her to stay put.”
Mary engaged the big vessel’s VTOL drive and guided Battlehawk down into a patch clear of vegetation, near where Kate had landed. A cloud of dust swirled up around them. “There’s a lot of things we maybe should have done. Would she have listened?” She let a hand rest on his shoulder. “Perhaps we should focus on finding her, and leave punishing ourselves until after we have some answers.”
“Right.” Hawkeye blew a sigh through pursed lips and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What were your plans?”
“Worst case scenario, I’ll need you to fly Kate’s ship back to Hawknest. I don’t think we’ll get it into Battlehawk’s hold. But that’s our worst case scenario, because we’re going to find her.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’m going to take Terrahawk up to a better vantage point to monitor our overall progress. Are you coming? I could do with your eyes.”
“Not sure I’ll be able to see much more than Spacehawk, if we’re all still looking down on the place. We need boots on the ground to check under things. Besides.” He looked at her. “Five-five is eating himself up for not stopping her going, so I was gonna partner with him for a bit.”
“Thank you. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.” She opened the intercom to the hold. “All right, Sergeant Major. Your men know what they’re doing?”
“Ten-ten, ma’am!” The zeroid commander’s gruff tones came over the communications. “Don’t you worry – we’ll show that spaceified little twit in orbit how to do a proper search. We’ll stay out here until we found her!”
Mary smiled, tersely. Zeroid one-upmanship usually frustrated her, but if it meant they focused their energy on doing a good job? For once she felt disinclined to tell them differently. “Good hunting, Zero.”
When Kate finally came around, it was inside a sack.
Or at least, that was what it felt like. A brightly coloured sack that glowed with the sun’s heat, made of a heavy, stifling fabric, holding her down on the ground.
It felt rather like a hot air balloon had deflated on top of her. What a stroke of bad luck. First the food poisoning, then almost a crash landing, and now this?
At least it didn’t feel like anyone was with her, so if she was a captive, she stood a good chance of escaping. Still hot and dazed, she flailed her way out of the constricting tent of fabric and collapsed onto her face in the dirt. Dusty shingle filled her nostrils with fine sand, making her cough.
Coughing didn’t quite feel right…? Felt like it came from deeper inside, all the way up from her abdomen, and it sounded shrill. Squeaky. Not like a cough at all. And her arms were stiff, didn’t want to straighten properly when she tried to push herself to stand. Her clothing, too – like she was wearing an outfit made of thousands of pieces of paper.
She tottered unsteadily upright, feeling like her centre of gravity had shifted, and almost fell over all the way in the opposite direction. Her feet hurt. It felt like her toes were broken, but she still couldn’t quite get down off tiptoe. Things on the ground kept grabbing onto her, alternately tripping her or holding her in place when she tried to shake them off.
At least her head was clearing. The muzzy confusion that had grounded her was fading the longer she was awake and standing. Finally she felt lucid enough to work out who’d tried to capture her, and why they’d done such a poor job at it. (Although if the martians were involved, the latter wasn’t precisely a surprise.) She turned to look at the… sack, or whatever it was.
For several seconds, she couldn’t work out what she was staring at. An enormous sprawl of dusky red and silver fabric, the size of a tennis court.
But it-… it wasn’t a fallen hot air balloon. Or a tent. Or even just a huge bag.
Caught up in the barbs of an aggressive thorny little tree, it was… her own clothing? But on an absurd scale. She could see every individual thread in the dark pink fabric. How was that even possible?
Then she realised, taking in the gargantuan scenery – the enormous shingly gravel she stood on, the overgrown plants that towered over her – that it wasn’t her clothes that were huge. The problem was with her.
And she’d shrunk.
Which… felt… particularly bad.
With difficulty, she looked down at herself, and found a smooth, pale beige chest, streaked with regular little dark brown flecks – feathers. Beneath that, she could just see a pair of bright yellow feet, each long toe tipped with an absurdly large raptorial claw.
They clenched automatically into the dirt as adrenaline surged into her veins.
Panic welled in her chest. She automatically recoiled, as though she could somehow step away from the new body she’d found herself in.
New.
Body.
Oh, holy hell.
“Oh god, I better be dreaming,” she said – or tried to. All that came from her throat was the shaky screech of a small falcon.
Staggering away backwards, as if it would somehow help, she tripped and lost her balance, and landed on her tail, whereupon a bright, sharp new pain shot up her spine. She threw herself urgently away from it, in an ungainly tumbling whirl of feathers and dust, and went sprawling on her chest when her feet refused to behave – because it wasn’t things on the ground grabbing onto her, was it, keeping her from walking. It was her own newly-taloned little bird feet, involuntarily clutching closed every time she tried to lift them, thrusting those long claws into the loose soil and catching them on stems and roots.
Even breathing didn’t feel right. Too much air moving, like her lungs were the wrong shape, taking up too much space inside her. She shuddered. A shaky little inhuman noise like a shrill, shuddering scream threaded itself out of her beak.
Could birds hyperventilate? (It sure felt like she was hyperventilating.)
A waft of dizziness passed over her and she thought she might pass out again. Her wingtips – wingtips – were trembling, rustling against the dirt.
Calm, Kate. Oh lord please just calm down. This whole thing, it’s just something new that Zelda’s cooked up, she tried to reassure herself, and it’s only Zelda, you know it’s only Zelda, it can’t possibly be anyone or anything else, and this is not even the weirdest thing she’s ever done to us.
Probably, she corrected herself. Probably not the weirdest.
She wanted to laugh, hysteria bubbling in her throat – it’s only Zelda? ONLY Zelda? Really? You’re suddenly a bird and it’s ‘only Zelda’? – but laughter didn’t really feel appropriate. Or even possible, actually, with lungs that didn’t behave like she was familiar with.
Keep it together, Kate, she told herself, as firmly as she could. Keep it together. You’re-… okay, you’re a bird, but you’re alive and unhurt. Calm down and find something else to focus on. You’ll be fine. Everything else Zelda’s ever done has been fixed. So will this be. Calm down and just breathe.
Easier said than done, me. You’ve never been a bird before. She tried to focus on her breathing, anyway. In, and out. Ignore the weird parts. It's still just in, and out.
In, and out.
She closed her eyes, unwilling to look at the over-detailed dirt while she accustomed herself to everything else new.
In. And out. Good.
Remarkably, it did seem to be working? Her breathing was growing more even, and that light-headed sense of panic was passing.
Finally she decided to chance getting up; she shakily managed to regain her feet and didn’t immediately fall straight back down.
All right. Good. Let’s work out our next steps. Focus on something else that doesn’t involve being a bird.
Mary had said they were coming, right? A whole eternity ago, while Kate had only had a strange case of food poisoning?
That meant Kate had to get back to her ship. If she was with her friends, then she still had options. Exactly what options, she wasn’t sure. But options.
If they got to it before her and found her missing, who knew how long they’d stick around? That they’d exhaust all possible options and search everywhere for her before they finally left, she had absolutely no doubt. They weren’t just co-workers – they were family. But they’d never make the connection between the vanishing act of her human self, and the appearance of a strangely tame little falcon – it was just too fantastically absurd.
If she could stay with her ship – and be really annoyingly persistent about it, not let herself be shooed away – then there was maybe the slimmest chance they’d think she was someone’s pet, and take her with them, and that might be long enough to work out how to clue them into what had happened. The alternative was that they unwittingly left her on her own in the desert. Fending for herself would probably mean eating mice, assuming she could catch them. And that… really didn’t sound like something she wanted to deal with, right now. She shuddered, feeling her feathers fluffing out in distaste, like a really bad case of goosepimples.
But where in spacefire even was her ship? She’d completely lost her bearings, and couldn’t even see it, now, not from all the way down here! At not even a foot tall, any more, the horizon had drawn ridiculously close, and even the smallest desert plants formed a defensive barrier she couldn’t see over.
Kate cast her gaze around herself, wondering if there was anything she could climb, and lit upon that horrible scrubby little bush that had tried so hard to steal her clothing. It had dense branches and looked like maybe it wasn’t totally impossible to get up it, even though right now it felt a little like contemplating climbing a giant sequoia. She walked over to it – shakily at first, walking on tiptoe on treacherous feet that kept grabbing at the dirt, but with growing confidence – and studied the ladder of tight twigs.
Her first attempt resulted in her falling straight back onto her tail after only one or two steps, automatically trying to grab onto the branches with fingers that no longer existed. (She got a little frustrated inkling of what it must feel like to be a zeroid, with no hands to manipulate the world around them.) She did have a beak, though – would that work? She swallowed her distaste at the idea of biting onto the little tree, and tried again.
Annoyingly, the trick with her beak worked like a charm. Thorns combed aggressively through her feathers and nicked at her skin, but Kate kept going, pushing her way higher. At last she was back at a useful vantage point, close to where she imagined her normal eye level would have been.
And in a clear patch of ground in the distance, next to her own little ship, there was Battlehawk. Her heart sank. They were here already? She’d not even heard them land! How long had she been unconscious? As she watched, the command module lifted up and away from the main body of the huge vehicle, before soaring up into the sky. She could see zeroids, as well, setting out in a starburst away from the ship.
It was only a couple of hundred metres away, but it might as well have been kilometres. However was she going to cover all that ground in time?
Come on, girl. You have wings of your own now. Let’s try making them work.
Kate took a deep breath, spread her wings and launched herself into the unknown.
Alarmingly, she went mostly down, but her wings weren’t completely terrible as parachutes and her feathers cushioned her fall, and being so small, apart from being shocked and startled the fall didn’t hurt her. (She’d never bounced after falling from a great height, before.)
Spacefire and damnation. How are you meant to work these things?!
She flapped hard, but stayed firmly on the ground. Perhaps she wasn’t using them properly-
You’ve only had them like twenty minutes, Katie, and it’s not like you just had the shock of your life or anything. Give yourself a bit of a break. Your legs still work – well, mostly. Try them, instead.
After a little experimentation, she found that a graceless hop-skip across the dirt with her wings spread for balance was the fastest way of covering the ground. And all right, okay, it actually felt like she was making a bit of progress. If it came to the absolute worst, could she fly all the way to Hawknest? Or would she have to work out how to live as a genuine kestrel for the rest of her days-
Oh no, you are NOT thinking about that. This is gonna be fixed. It is gonna be fixed. And you are not going to even contemplate having to eat mice, not even once, no sir.
While he understood it was probably all just down to some kind of… impenetrably efficient zeroid search algorithm (or possibly Sergeant Major Zero trying to be clever), Hawkeye had been increasingly feeling like he and 55 were just wandering around aimlessly, not using either of their skillsets particularly effectively.
He’d though it was probably his imagination that 55 felt the same – until Space Sergeant 101 had sent 55 some urgent co-ordinates, and without a word the zeroid had instantly gone bounding off like an excited hunting dog, forcing the human lieutenant into an ungainly gallop to catch up.
They only covered a short distance, but Hawkeye didn’t think he’d have caught up if the zeroid hadn’t already stopped. As he watched, 55 nosed at a patch of lilac on the ground, and Hawkeye realised with a clutch of deep dismay that it wasn’t some desert flower but one of Kate’s wigs.
55 looked up at him as he approached; the zeroid managed to look weirdly nauseated.
“Aw, man.” Hawkeye crouched and picked it up out of the scrubby set of twigs the wind had blown it into, then patted 55 gently. “It’s all right, buddy. We’ll find her.”
The zeroid bumped into his ankles, leaning heavily. “I hope so.” He was obviously sorely off-balance as he didn’t even attempt to rhyme.
A short distance away, tangled up in the shady twigs of a thornbush, Hawkeye quickly spotted the rest of Kate’s clothing. No wonder they’d struggled to find anything.
“Mary?” Hawkeye opened a channel to his senior officer. “We’ve found something. But you’re not gonna like it. Five-five, can you give Captain Falconer a live feed? Thanks…”
“Is that her clothing?” Mary asked, quietly, watching while Hawkeye unhooked the jacket from the thorns and examined it. “Is that all you found?”
“Yeah. I don’t get it. What the heck was she playing at, undressing?” He stood taller, alarmed, shading his eyes with one hand. “Is she out here naked? Oh, man. Have the zeroids reported back with anything yet?”
“Easy, Hawkeye. I think we’d have found something if that was the case.” Several heartbeats of thoughtful silence passed. “Could someone have forced her to change her clothing? So no-one would recognise her? Hiro said he didn’t think she’d been abducted but I’m not so sure, any more. Are there any footprints there?”
Hawkeye narrowed his focus and examined the ground with his computer-augmented eyesight. “Only hers, and only approaching. I don’t see anything else, even in enhanced.” He frowned. “You know what? I don’t even see her footprints leaving.” He looked around himself. “What the hell.” And the longer he looked at her clothing, the more he realised there was something weird about that, too. “It doesn’t look like she undressed, either. It looks like she just… disappeared from inside it? Her socks are still in her boots, her undershirt is still all caught up inside her jacket.”
“That implies the martians may be involved,” Mary suggested, grimly. “I know Zelda has always reclaimed her own, but I didn’t think she could abduct unrelated people too, by teleporting them away.” After a pause, while the implications sank in, she added; “that could make our fight a whole lot worse if it’s something new she’s learned to do. She could snatch any of us, at any time.”
The silence felt heavy – like a mallet primed to fall on them.
Hawkeye coughed, awkwardly. “Well why the heck didn’t she take her clothes?” He gathered up the discarded clothing, folding each item into a neat pile with the boots on top. “And what do we do now, wait for a ransom?”
“A ransom doesn’t seem quite like Zelda’s style, but I’m sure she’ll be in contact to gloat over her latest nefarious plan soon enough.” Mary sighed. “Get back to Battlehawk. We can regroup and rethink.”
“Ten-ten, Mary. See you soon.”
It would be nice to get out of the unrelenting sun, Hawkeye mused, trudging over the dirt with 55. They were almost all the way back to Kate’s little ship when he noticed that the zeroid was hanging back, and hesitated himself. “Is there a problem, little buddy?”
“I think we may have a guest, so a quiet approach might be for the best?”
“A guest? What does that mean?” Hawkeye’s vision was easily as good as the zeroid’s, but he couldn’t quite work out where 55 was looking. His instant of hope that there was a person there who could tell them something useful rapidly deflated when he couldn’t actually see anyone.
“It’s very small so I’m not sure yet? But I’m pretty convinced that it isn’t a threat.” The zeroid closed his shutters and rolled carefully, slowly forwards.
Hawkeye followed him, and after an instant worked out what 55 had spotted. A little speckly brown hawk, scarcely as tall as even a zeroid, perched on the rim of the vessel’s open canopy. “Huh. Will you look at that. I wonder what that’s doing there? Can’t be for the shade!”
Expecting it to fly away at any second, the two Terrahawks operatives approached warily, but it stayed where it was, placidly watching them.
55 parked, and sat staring at it for a very long time. “Huh! It’s a kestrel, sir – but it is kinda strange. This state isn’t part of this bird’s normal range?”
“A kestrel?” Hawkeye sighed. “Well if that ain’t ironic. Went out looking for a kestrel, and came back with the wrong sort.”
“Wronger than that – I just investigated. It’s a European kestrel. It must be domesticated?”
“Is that it, little birdy?” Hawkeye crouched and inched closer, as though trying not to spook it into flight. “You’re someone’s pet?” He held out his arm, forearm level. “Are you lost, huh?”
Are you lost? Oh, more than you know, Hawkeye.
Still hot and achey, and now exhausted by her efforts to get back to Battlehawk before her friends left her alone in the desert, Kate studied Hawkeye’s arm for a long time before deciding fuck it and climbing shakily aboard, wings trembling with the effort of balancing.
“Heyyy, there we go.” The man smiled in spite of himself, and automatically lifted his free hand to stroke her before remembering her sharp little hooked beak and thinking better of it. “You might be right, Five-five. This sure isn’t a completely wild bird, at least.”
55 gave her a quick visual appraisal. “If she’s a pet, her condition’s not great; her feathers are scruffy, and she looks underweight.”
Thanks, Five-five. She shot him a little glare; machine honesty did sometimes sting. He just looked back, oblivious.
“I always thought tame falcons wore those little leather straps on their legs, too,” Hawkeye mused, giving her his own cursory examination. “So they didn’t fly away.”
“They’re called jesses,” 55 supplied, helpfully.
“Right. But she doesn’t have them. This is just a little bird, all on her own.” Hawkeye gave into temptation and used one curled finger to gently stroke the feathers of her chest, right under her beak. “Maybe that’s how she escaped and got lost out here.”
Kate leaned into his touch, tiredly. She recognised that he wouldn’t be doing it if he knew it was her, but she felt disinclined to try and stop him. After everything else she’d just been through? That little bit of friendly human comfort was nice.
“What do you think we should do?” Hawkeye went on, quietly, while 55 watched, curious. “I guess I don’t wanna just leave her out here to starve. If she’s someone’s pet, who knows if they’ll come along and find her?”
“True, sir – but not to cause a fuss, they won’t find her either if we take her back with us.”
“What would you rather do, huh?” Hawkeye asked her, softly, although it sounded like it was more for his own benefit. “Come with us, or stay out here so your owner can find you?”
Stay with you guys, obviously. Kate nudged his finger with her beak. But how in spacefire do I tell you I’m me, while I can’t even talk?
“I guess maybe you’re hungry. If you rely on people for food, we’re probably as good a bet as any other, huh.”
He stooped to pick up her clothing, to put it into the little jet’s cockpit, and the sudden movement felt like he was about to send her tumbling to the ground. Involuntarily, she tightened her toes in his arm, flailing out her arms – no, her wings – to try and catch her balance. Hawkeye hissed softly in pain and tensed, making an obvious effort to fight the urge to shake her off, fingers flexing.
“Yeowch, lady! Careful where you stick those little pins!” he said, his jaw tight. “I hope this means you do want to stay with us, and you’re not just pissed off at me for some reason.”
Shoot. Kate made a conscious effort to unlatch her toes and relax her claws from where they’d punched into his skin. She hadn’t considered it was possible to hurt anyone, not this small – but she figured a needle didn’t have to be big, either, to hurt if you were jabbed with it. Her talons caught in his clothing, but she finally managed to shake herself free. She gave him a long serious look, hoping her stern features could convey something like apology.
“I guess I’ll have to have a chat with Mary before I decide what to do. You can’t exactly ride with me in here. I mean, last thing I need is a little hawk freaking out around my head when I’m flying, right?” Hawkeye crouched and encouraged her to get down onto the shingly ground next to 55, before finally picking up her clothing to stow it in the jet. “I don’t even want to guarantee Mary’s gonna be happy with you in the cockpit of Battlehawk…”
It was strange to be on the same eye-level as a zeroid. 55 watched her with a curious detachment; she looked back, frustrated.
There had to be something she could do to clue him in. Her zeroid was usually attentive and observant, but recognising a tiny bird as his human was asking a lot of his rudimentary imagination. Could kestrels sing? She knew a lot of birds could. Even crows could mimic songs! Surely a human in the wrong body could?
Her voice just wouldn’t behave, though. Even the most generous voice coach would never allow her to call this shrill, shaky screaming noise singing.
55 rocked slightly back on his axis, away from her, then recovered and tilted back, subtly. “I’m sorry, little bird. I know you won’t attack. I just feel… disappointed. I want my miss kestrel back?”
Yeah, Five-five. You and me both.
---------
Crossposted to AO3 and ff.net.