Unreconciled

by W. Michael Gear

  Kalico spun the woman around, glaring. “And there’s things down here! You want worse than thorncactus to worry about? Now, think! We’ve got to go slow, go smart, or we’re as dead as Dya and Mark. You hear me?”

  “Yes.” Muldare swallowed hard. Jerked a nod.

  “Good.” Kalico fought for breath. Thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and now horror. Could this get any worse?

  Have to find Talina!

  Signal shot.

  Or would that draw the beast?

  She pressed her com. “Talina? Where are you?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Something in the trees. Something big, Tal. Like nothing we’ve ever seen. It took Mark and Dya. No warning. Just speared them through the chest and jerked them up into the trees!”

  For a moment there was silence as Kalico tried to catch her breath, shifted the rifle, eyes on the darkening branches above.

  “Mark and Dya?” Talina’s voice came softly.

  “It’s in the trees! Something big!” The panic was building again.

  “Roger that. In the trees. We’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Talina, you don’t understand. If it’s hunting you, you won’t have a chance. No warning. It’s that fast. That deadly.”

  Again there was silence.

  Say something, damn it!

  Then, “Kylee’s coming. She’s riding a quetzal, so don’t shoot it.”

  “Roger,” Kalico repeated. “Kylee’s riding a quetzal. Don’t shoot it.” She repeated for Muldare’s benefit.

  “Yeah,” Kalico whispered to herself, desperately searching the high branches. “As if a quetzal would stand a chance against this thing.”

  And worse, it was getting dark.

  60

  Talina watched Kylee climb up on Flute’s back. The sight never ceased to amaze her. As if the camouflage-mottled quetzal was a pet horse instead of an alpha predator.

  “You be damned careful,” Talina warned again. “Aguila sounds like she’s on the edge of a breakdown. No telling about the marine she’s with. They could shoot at anything that moves.”

  “What about Mom and Dad?”

  “Nothing new there, kid. Kalico says whatever this thing is, it speared them and hauled them up into the trees. That’s all I’ve got so far. Pay attention! First priority: Find Kalico. She’ll tell you more.”

  “Someone’s going to pay for this,” Kylee vowed, tapping Flute and saying, “Let’s go.”

  With Dek beside her, Talina watched Flute stretch out; the blonde kid on the beast’s back bent low as the quetzal leaped to the next batch of roots and disappeared on the other side.

  “Dek, you stay close now. We can’t afford a mistake.” Talina shifted her rifle, staring up at the darkening branches overhead.

  “I don’t get it,” Dek said as he followed behind her. “Hauled them up into the trees? What can do that?”

  “Nightmare hunts that way.” Talina experienced that familiar crawling in her gut, and for once it wasn’t Demon. “Maybe that’s what this is.”

  But as she glanced up, it was to wonder what kind of nightmare could reach that far, lift that much weight that fast. Mostly they suspended their prey like dangling fruit as the tentacles wound down and into their victim’s guts. It took days.

  Spearing the victim’s body? Jerking it up? It just didn’t sound right.

  Or it’s something we haven’t seen.

  And worse, it had taken two of the most important people on Donovan. Dya Simonov had revolutionized their understanding of Donovanian genetics, was in the process of developing local plants that humans could actually digest in case anything happened to the terrestrial species upon which survival depended.

  And if Talbot was dead, too? Another talented second in command at Port Authority security? A friend? Just gone like that? Poof? Hauled up into the high branches to be eaten?

  “You look grim,” Taglioni noted as he panted along behind her.

  “Just thinking what it means to lose Mark and Dya. On the com Kalico said this thing speared them through the chest. Yanked them up into the branches. Said it took just a couple of seconds.”

  Taglioni shot a furtive look up at the darkening branches overhead. “That’s what? Forty, fifty meters up? That’s a lot of muscle to haul a body up that high.”

  “Now you’re getting the idea.” Talina shook her head as she climbed over a bundle of interlocked roots, reached back, and helped the struggling Taglioni as he clambered awkwardly over the mess.

  “You know, it’s starting to get dark.” Stress thinned Taglioni’s voice. “We going to be able to track down Kylee and the Supervisor in the dark?”

  She tapped the side of her head. “Part of the curse of being infected is that I can see in the dark. We’re fine. At least I am. You? If you can’t see where you’re putting your feet? If you blunder into a chokeya vine? Guess you’ll be the main course for some lucky critter out here.”

  “And to think, I used to worry about being eaten on Ashanti. That was my night terror. That the Unreconciled would get loose in the night. Come slipping up from Deck Three. Sneak into my room, and I’d be helpless as they started carving on me.” He chuckled hollowly, eyes on his feet as he tried to match her steps. “Why does it always come down to being eaten?”

  “Stop. Take my hand. We’re climbing this knot of roots. There’s a tooth flower off to the side. I need you to follow my lead. Don’t do anything dumb.”

  “You got it.”

  “Give me your rifle.” She took it, slung it next to hers. “Okay, let’s go.”

  She eased Dek over the tangle, ensuring he didn’t accidently close the distance with the tooth flower. Damn, the thing was bigger than the ones she’d seen previously. And it was aware, watching them where it hung down from a thick vine that spanned the space between two aquajades.

  On the other side, she took a quick look around. Noted a sidewinder that was easing out from a dark hole. The thing had probably hidden as Flute passed this way. The roots were still squirming but starting to relax after the quetzal’s passage.

  “How much farther do you think?” Dek asked.

  She gave him a sidelong glance. Dark as it was getting, the guy probably figured she couldn’t see the outright fear in his face.

  In the branches high overhead, something uttered a whistling, almost hypersonic scream. Taglioni jumped half out of his skin.

  “Don’t know, Dek. Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

  She saw the flicker of amusement behind his fear as he said, “Oh . . . sure.” A beat. “Gave myself up for dead back when the ping pong tree crushed the airtruck.”

  61

  To say that night fell like the flick of a switch wasn’t quite right. But the analogy wasn’t too far off the mark. At least, not as far as Kalico Aguila could tell.

  For the moment, she had effectively been brought to a dead stop. Couldn’t tell where to put her feet. Wasn’t able to see more than a couple of feet in any direction. Go bumbling around? Stick her head into a cutthroat flower, or maybe a biteya bush? Offer a tempting leg to a sidewinder?

  “We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Briah Muldare asked, stepping uneasily to the side as roots squirmed under her feet. The woman kept sweeping with her rifle, using the optic’s IR to search for approaching danger.

  “Kylee will be here.” Kalico tried to say it with assured bravado. Fact was, she’d never been as sure that she was about to die. Terrified that some spearing thing was going to lance through her chest. And she’d never know it was coming.

  The voice, from the darkness off to the right called, “It’s us! Don’t shoot!”

  Kalico laid a hand on Muldare’s rifle, just to be sure the woman understood.

  Given all that had happened, the sight of a slim blonde girl riding up on a quetzal like it wa
s a quarter horse didn’t seem as incredulous as it should. Kalico figured her sense of reality had taken so many blows, nothing was beyond belief.

  “Damn, we’re glad to see you.”

  Kylee unhitched her backpack, slung it down. “There’s water. Talina’s right behind us. Which way to my parents? Back there? Follow the roots?”

  “Kylee, listen. Whatever this thing is, you really don’t want to—”

  “We’ll be back.”

  “—take any . . .”

  The quetzal—Kylee on its back—wheeled, leaped to the top of the root mass Kalico and Muldare had just climbed over, and vanished into the encompassing darkness.

  “Did I just see that?” Muldare asked hoarsely. “A kid riding a quetzal?”

  The water was the finest Kalico ever drank. She and Muldare emptied the bottles, heedless of saving even a drop. The water hit her stomach like a gift from God. She was already feeling better.

  Now she peered around in the almost charcoal black. Kept shifting her feet, wishing she could see what the roots were doing.

  “Supervisor?” The rising stress in Muldare’s voice couldn’t be missed.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Got to do something.

  They couldn’t just stand there. The roots were going to be grabbing hold. Kalico could feel them underfoot, becoming more agitated, starting to cling.

  “Here, take my hand.” She reached out, got Muldare’s hand.

  Step by step. That was it. She thought she was headed north. The darkness pressed down around her, thick, almost solid.

  “What do you see with your rifle sight?” Kalico asked, lifting Mark’s rifle, trying to hold the heavy weapon one-handed, to see through the optic. The thing was too heavy, or she was too weak. It would take two hands, and she couldn’t convince herself to turn loose of Muldare’s hand.

  “Root mass ahead,” Muldare told her. “Maybe four meters.”

  It was foolish. A sure recipe for disaster. But so was standing still, letting the roots entangle their feet. Get stuck in them? Unable to pull free? They’d entomb a person. Surround her, crush her, and absorb the decomposing body.

  At least this way I’m doing something.

  Kalico wanted to throw her head back, to howl with insane laughter. She was going to die here. In the darkness. From something horrible. Like that tooth flower that had been eating that man’s naked corpse. Why? Because she was running from a bunch of cannibals. In the twenty-second century? Shit, who’d believe it?

  “This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Muldare asked softly.

  “Probably not.” Kalico squeezed the woman’s hand in a gesture of solidarity.

  “For the record, ma’am. I want you to know that while I sided with Cap back during the Turalon days, it has been an honor and the finest privilege of my career to serve you these last four years.”

  “I appreciate that, Briah. But we’re not gone yet. Kylee and that insane quetzal should be back at any moment.”

  “Maybe. Ma’am, whatever that thing was that got Mark and Dya, no child, and I daresay no quetzal, can stand up to that.” A return squeeze and a tug stopped Kalico. “And that’s why I’m taking the lead. If there’s anything out here, I’m stumbling into it first.”

  “Can’t do that. You’re as blind as I am. If it were daylight, with your training, yes. You’d have a better chance of spotting the danger than I do. But here, in the black? I can’t ask you to take a risk I’m not willing to take myself.”

  “You think I don’t know that? That any of us don’t know that? Besides, I can scan with my optic.” Muldare shifted to the lead, took a step. Kalico thought she saw the woman sweep the night with her rifle sight. “Wonder if any of those assholes back in Transluna would have had a clue?”

  Kalico pulled Muldare to a stop. “You hear that?”

  “What?”

  Kalico turned, let loose of Muldare’s hand and raised her rifle. “To the right, Briah. I’d swear I heard something.”

  “Got to go,” the marine said. “Roots are pulling on my foot.”

  Kalico cocked her head, allowed herself to be pulled another step forward, worried she was just antagonizing the roots Muldare had trod upon.

  She was on the verge of taking another step when a voice off to the side said, “I wouldn’t do that. You’ve got a couple of brown caps about three meters ahead of you. Step off to the right.”

  “Kylee? That you?” Kalico asked.

  “Yep. We’re going to hop down from these roots, Supervisor. Don’t shoot us.”

  Kalico heard the thump as a heavy body landed on the root mat.

  “Okay, walk toward my voice. We’ve got to get you out of this little bowl and into someplace where the roots aren’t as pissed off.”

  “How the hell can you see?” Muldare asked.

  “She has quetzal TriNA,” Kalico answered when Kylee didn’t bother to.

  “Yeah,” Kylee said shortly. “My weird eyes. They’d kill me back at Port Authority because of my infection. Call me a freak.”

  Kalico winced at the anger in the girl’s voice. “What did you find back there? Any sign of the creature?”

  Kylee’s voice was like stone. “Tell me what happened, Kalico. All of it. Everything you remember about how my mom and dad died.”

  Kalico felt her way forward across the wiggling roots, step by step. “Mark was standing up high. Looking for any sign of you and Talina. It hit him from the side. Like a long black fire hose swinging down from the high branches. The tip was a black spike, like a horn. It speared clear through his chest and literally ripped him upward so hard it tore the rifle from his hands.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t come down,” Muldare added. “I was headed back up to drag her, and that black spike hit her from behind. Took maybe two, three seconds, to yank her up into the branches.”

  “Got a step now, Kalico,” Kylee’s voice was flat. “Don’t trip over that bottom root. Sling your rifle and climb like a monkey. I’ll tell you when you reach the top.” A pause. “What did it look like? A nightmare?”

  “No.” Kalico felt her way up the roots. “That’s the spooky thing. Private Muldare fired a burst at the branches after it took your dad. Nothing. We couldn’t see a body, a shape, just the branches up there. If any of the rounds hit it, it didn’t react.”

  “Mom wouldn’t come down?”

  “She just stood there, shouting for your father.”

  “That’s the top, Kalico. Sling your leg over. Muldare? You’re next. That’s it. That’s the root. Now climb.”

  Kalico felt her way over the root, eerily aware that one of those firehose-thick tentacles could shoot down from the black, could skewer her, and no one would even know. They’d just hear the falling rifle, and she’d be gone. Vanished into the blackness.

  “It’s something we’ve never seen,” Kalico said as she felt her way down to the flat root mat. “Did you find any sign back there?”

  “Nothing,” Kylee said, voice clipped. “Neither did Flute. Just a couple of drops of blood. All spattered wide.”

  “I’m sorry, Kylee.” Kalico stopped, staring around in the blackness, wondering where the girl could be, and even worse, where the hell was the damn quetzal? That monster could be right at her shoulder.

  Kylee softly, bitterly, asked, “Why the hell were they out here to start with? What did those people up there want to do to you?”

  “Going to cut our throats and eat us,” Muldare growled. “And me, personally, I’m about to go explosive on the whole lot of them.”

  “You won’t be doing it alone,” Kylee said. “I think Flute and I are going to pay them a little visit. Sort of a remembrance of Mom and Dad.”

  “Kylee,” Kalico said. “Don’t start something—”

  “’Bout time!” Kylee raised her voice and called. �
��What took you?”

  Kalico turned, seeing the yellow haze of a handheld light as it shone through the roots.

  Talina’s voice carried: “Hey, I got soft meat with me. Didn’t want him stepping into a you’re screwed vine. Might have given the poor plant indigestion.”

  Kalico vented a sigh of relief. Felt her heart settle back where it belonged in her chest. She watched as Talina crested a batch of roots, shone her light back, and took a second gander as Derek Taglioni clambered woodenly over the roots, a long rifle swinging on his back.

  “You brought him out into this mess?”

  “Wasn’t exactly my preferred plan,” Talina told her, shining the light around. “Good to see you, Private.”

  “Ma’am,” Muldare said respectfully.

  “What’s the plan?” Kalico asked.

  “We’re beating feet,” Talina said. “If we don’t get the hell off this floodplain, back on the basalt, we’re dead.”

  “Yeah,” Kalico agreed. “Someplace where the trees aren’t as thick and tall. Where that thing can’t hide and pick us off one by one.”

  “Where’s Kylee and Flute?” Talina asked.

  “They were . . .” Kalico glanced around, following Talina’s flash as it searched the surroundings.

  “Kylee?” Talina called.

  Kalico felt that deadening of the heart. If she was headed up to Tyson, going to pay Batuhan and his people back for her parents, it would be a . . .

  “Over here,” Kylee called. “We’ve got a path out of here. And I think we need to go. Soonest.”

  “Go,” Kalico ordered Muldare. “Then you, sir,” she told Taglioni. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

  “Middle of the night like this? That could get you killed,” Talina told her wryly.

  “Yeah? So what couldn’t?”

  62

  Dek’s feet might have turned to wood for all the feeling they had. His coordination was shot. For a time, all he prayed for was the opportunity to lay down on the soft root mat, close his eyes, and let the rhizomes entomb him in their gentle caress as he dropped off to sleep.