by Ramy Vance
Toner, Jaeger, and Sphynx all looked at the speakers. It wasn’t like Virgil to hesitate.
“What?” Jaeger asked.
“Hm. I am now detecting several large life signs within two kilometers of your shuttle. They are moving rapidly.”
The droids flared to life and began to unfold, expanding from their compact storage shape to become six-legged mechanical spiders the size of picnic tables. Sphynx pushed to his feet, fiddling with the settings on his multitool as his pupils narrowed to slits. “How large?”
“Hey, come on now.” Toner put a hand on the multitool. “It doesn’t really matter because we’re not going to get involved.”
Sphynx’s gaze shot upward. He studied Toner narrowly and jerked away.
“We’ll still need to know more if we plan on avoiding them.” Jaeger switched to her computer. “Virgil, cast all the data you have to my screen.” She studied the rudimentary radar that appeared.
“Looks like a pack of eight wolves chasing a moose. Size-wise, at least. About a kilometer and a half into the forest.” She let her computer drop with a shrug. “Maybe a hunting pack chasing some kind of prey.”
“Should we wait until they clear the area?” Toner asked.
Jaeger shook her head. “No telling how long it will take and our clock is ticking. We need to get to work mining. If they start to get much closer, we’ll return to the shuttle to regroup.” Besides, she couldn’t deny a little thrill at the idea of being the first to witness alien megafauna in action.
She strode to the cargo hold door and pressed her hand against the access panel. There was a hiss of escaping atmosphere as the door unsealed and slid to one side.
The first light of an alien world flooded the dingy shuttle compartment.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The wind that swept across her legs and trickled upward to tease Jaeger’s short hair was warm and damp and friendly, comfortable like a hug and heavy with the loamy scents of water and mud.
It smelled downright earthy.
A pang of terrible wanderlust settled into her chest as she blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the bright daylight.
Sphynx had landed the shuttle amid a small boulder field on a slope of exposed stone that stretched down to a riotously blue-green jungle of massive ferns. A wide blue ribbon of river danced through the forest a few kilometers away, and a faint haze of mist hung heavy in the lower atmosphere. The distant, dark shapes of some airborne creatures circled low over the trees.
Jaeger stood frozen in the doorway, enraptured by the sight until something heavy brushed past.
The droids hummed and clanged, horribly mechanical, drowning out the gentle rush of air as they marched out of the shuttle and fanned into the boulder field. Their sensors flared to life, sweeping for adequately rich mineral deposits.
Jaeger sighed as the spell broke and dropped a meter to the ground. There would be other chances to explore alien worlds once they were in the clear.
Sphynx landed lightly on the ground beside her. His pupils had narrowed to vanishingly thin slits in the bright light. Without a word, he straightened and, cradling his multitool like a rifle, followed one of the droids into a large cluster of standing boulders.
Already, she heard the faint hum of cutting lasers as one of the droids detected an adequately dense mineral deposit a few meters down the slope. The lasers hissed and whined, filling the air with rock smoke. Jaeger turned away, wincing, as the droid sliced the boulder into manageable chunks.
“I feel like a looter,” she lamented to Toner. “Landing on a new shore and immediately raiding the place for natural resources? That’s not a human habit I really want to perpetuate.”
Toner watched the rough surgery and nodded. “I feel you. It should go quick, at least. We’ll only take what we need. Then we’ll be gone.”
He was correct. Another droid busied itself collecting the boulder fragments in the collection basket slung between its legs. The air became a whirring hum of lasers and scrabbling droid legs as they went about the brutally efficient process of stone butchery. At this rate, it wouldn’t take more than four or five hours to fill the cargo hold with raw ore.
Something moved out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to see Sphynx leaping atop one of the largest boulders, making a standing jump of three meters look easy. Being genetically enhanced certainly had its perks.
Sphynx crouched there, ears up and swiveling to catch the sounds of industry. Then he lifted his multitool to his shoulder and sighted through the telescoping aperture on the barrel, in the direction of the trees.
Jaeger followed his gaze. Through the thickening cloud of rock dust, she saw activity in the tree line. Something was moving toward them. By the buck and sway of fern fronds at least twelve meters tall, it was much bigger than a moose.
Moving on instinct, Jaeger snagged Toner by the arm and pulled him behind a large boulder. The comp speaker on her belt blurted to life.
“It’s three-quarters of a kilometer away and closing on our location,” Sphynx murmured. Jaeger craned her neck around to see only the very tips of his flickering ears. Seeking a better view, she scrambled up a small tumble of stone, Toner scampering up behind her.
Something had broken out of the tree line and was charging up the slope in their direction.
It looked like a four-legged palm tree. A long, brown neck spotted with mossy green fronds that might have been gills or even feathers sprouting up from thick, powerful legs. It shook the ground like a charging elephant as it barreled forward, its neck wobbling madly from side to side.
Jaeger cursed her scanners. “That is way, way bigger than a moose.”
A wave of smaller creatures swarmed out of the forest behind it, moving too fast to see clearly. One of the shapes darted through the air, pecking mercilessly at the monster’s hindquarters. The tree monster bellowed like a giant’s tuba.
“If it draws closer it will jeopardize our mission,” Sphynx murmured, emotionless. On his boulder, not far away, Jaeger saw him change the settings on his multitool. She shook her head frantically.
“Negative,” she hissed into the comp. “We will not interfere.”
Sphynx’s ears twitched in her direction, but he gave no other indication of having heard her as he continued amping up power to his plasma cutter.
“He’s right, Captain,” Toner agreed reluctantly. “It’s headed straight for the shuttle. We gotta do something, or it’s going to trample our ride outta here.”
Jaeger hesitated for a split second. As the monster barreled closer, she made out the details of its pursuers. They appeared to be some huge, twisted cross between chimpanzees and locusts, fluttering and leaping over the ground on crooked, spiny legs. As she watched, one of them flung itself onto the monster’s narrow back, thrusting forward with a long, pointed stick.
They’re tool-users, she thought, both thrilled and dismayed. Primitive, but definitely intelligent.
This planet wasn’t so uninhabited after all.
“Captain?” Toner said nervously. To the side, Sphynx slipped off his boulder and vanished.
“Sphynx, return to the shuttle,” Jaeger snapped into her comp as she scrambled down. “Recall all the droids. There’s a monolith about fifty meters northwest of the shuttle. Have them meet me there.”
Of all the mineral veins in boulder patches, on all of the hills in forests on planets in this wide, wonderful universe—
The locals had to drive their hunt directly at hers.
Hot dust filled the air as Jaeger lanced her plasma cutter into the ground beneath the monolithic boulder crowning the slope. Easily a hundred tons, it dwarfed the other rocks by at least two orders of magnitude. Working together beside her, Toner and Sphynx shoved aside a smaller boulder that was two tons, easy.
“They’re nearly on us,” Toner shouted, eyes wide as he stared down the slope. The monster was two football fields away, stomping over most of the boulders in its wild run. The buzzing sound of chattering
insects filled the air.
“Redirecting the hunt will not work,” Sphynx spat, stepping away from his boulder and lifting his multitool. “We must protect the shuttle—”
“Do not engage!” Jaeger screamed above the sounds of ripping stone. Behind her, one of the droids made the fatal, final slice into the rock beneath the monolith.
Slowly, ponderously, the monolith began to tip downward.
“Clear!” Jaeger screamed, waving her arms as she dove to the side. “CLEAR!”
Toner hurled himself in the other direction as the monolith’s slow tip picked up steam. Sphynx hesitated and glanced over his shoulder as the shadow of the massive boulder fell on him. His ears flattened against his skull, and he sprang to the side, an impressive seven or eight meters at least. Jaeger would have sworn she saw the cloud of hair he left behind—if he’d had hair. If he’d had a tail, the monolith would have ripped it off in passing.
The monolith broke from the nest of stone where it had rested for countless eons, and with a sound like distant thunder, rolled down the slope toward the approaching palm-tree monster. A tidal wave of smaller boulders and rocks tumbled in its wake, creating a river of moving stone. The droids scrambled and stumbled over the unsteady ground as Jaeger dove for cover.
The monolith picked up speed, taking the path of least resistance down the slope. Not directly toward the approaching hunt but cutting across its path at an angle.
At, theoretically, just barely enough of an angle to cut ahead of the monster and force it to change direction or be crushed. Jaeger chewed her lip, watching from near the top of the rise as the monolith tumbled closer and closer to an ambulatory palm tree. Her plan had hinged on the hope that the creature wasn’t so stupid it would charge head-first into a tumbling boulder the size of a house.
As she watched the creature barrel closer, however, she began to worry she had given it too much credit.
A few dozen meters down the slope, she saw the little shapes of Toner and Sphynx as they cleared the dust cloud and scrambled onto some rocks for a better view. Toner was waving his arms, a frantic traffic cop trying to make himself heard.
The shriek of insect-hunters rose above the rumble of rolling stone. The tree monster let out another howling bellow and, slow as a riverboat, veered away from the oncoming avalanche—and, more importantly, the shuttle.
Relief nearly took Jaeger’s legs out from under her as she saw the line of prey and hunters angle away from her mining operation. There. No interference with the locals. Just an unfortunate rockslide. It could have happened to anyone, right?
Then the monster stumbled, and in epic slow motion, slipped on an unstable patch of ground.
It shook the ground when it fell, harried by a swarm of shrieking, buzzing, spear-wielding locust-centaurs.
To Jaeger’s horror, all the earth-shaking had destabilized the ridge above the monster and hunters. It began to slide forward.
If any of the creatures saw the second, smaller rockslide tumbling like a freight train toward them, they gave no indication.
Jaeger screamed, and before she knew what she was doing, charged down the slope.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Will you calm your freaky cat tits and leave them alone?” Toner growled. Sphynx stood beside him, eyes fixed on the darting figures of the centaur-locusts as they swarmed across the fallen body of their tree monster. His pupils had expanded to perfect circles, black holes opening, ready to swallow his whole head.
His ears twitched. His gaze flickered to Toner. He didn’t lower his multitool. “They are a threat to the mission.”
“No, they’re not.” Toner scoffed, although the look in Sphynx’s eye made him wonder if this cat didn’t just want to play with a few bugs—before eating them.
If anyone would know that look, it was Toner. “They’re a threat to the tree-thingy, at worst,” he said firmly.
The tree monster reminded Toner of old pictures of long-necked dinosaurs. It had fallen to its side and was thrashing, bellowing, as the swarm of spear-wielding bug things stabbed at the thin slice of its soft underbelly. They were ambitious, ugly little buggers, no doubt about that. Toner might not have wanted them exterminated, but he also wasn’t eager to get himself noticed, either.
Satisfied that the hunting group, properly distracted, would draw no closer to their hidden shuttle, he turned to get back to work.
Jaeger was barreling down the slope in their direction, arms flailing, golden eyes wide with horror. Toner gasped and whirled, following the direction of her gaze. “Oh, shit.”
Sphynx turned, saw the secondary landslide spilling down the slope in their direction, and made a graceful and appropriately feline leap out of its path.
Toner and Jaeger weren’t so lucky. The ground beneath them shifted. In unison, they turned to scream incomprehensible warnings at the spear-wielding natives before tumbling down the slope.
Toner snatched Jaeger in the cage of his arms and twisted against the landslide before the world exploded into smoke and thunder.
I should be dead.
Jaeger coughed, choking on rock dust. Stabbing pain lanced across her chest. The avalanche had gone still at the base of the slope. She lay near the top of the scree, buried up to her thighs.
“Toner.” She gasped, choking on the thick air.
Something shifted in the rubble beneath her, and she saw long arms jutting out of the detritus. Frantic with horror, she shoved away the pain in her legs and chest and scrabbled at the rocks. “Christ. Toner. Toner!”
His claw hands flexed, found her shoulders, and squeezed as she shoved gravel and rock away from his head. He should be really dead, she thought, horrified at what she might find crushed beneath that rock. There was no way. There was no way he was going to climb out of this with all of his brains still between his ears. There was no—
The rocks grew sticky with blood as she scrambled, breaking her nails and jamming her fingers against the stone in her reckless dig. The stones shifted, and she fell to one side, crying out as something wrenched her ankle.
Toner, his jumpsuit in tatters, his long hair stringy and dark with blood, surged out of the rubble like a zombie ripping itself free of the grave. His face had turned to pulp, his jaw smashed, and his nose obliterated. One shoulder jutted brutally out of its socket. His other wrist had snapped backward.
He crouched over the fallen Jaeger and stared, piercing blue eyes wide and wild.
“You saved my life,” she whispered, as she knew deep down that right now, he would rip her in half and suck out her entrails without a second thought.
Then, incredibly, he turned away and slid down the rubble, limping and dragging his useless arm behind him.
He should be dead, she thought, dizzy. The ringing in her head began to fade, replaced by the high, excited buzz of dozens of insect voices. She blinked back tears brought on by the dust and looked up to see the centaur-locusts perched on the slope above, spears waving restlessly in the air as they buzzed. Were they predatory? Angry? Awestruck? She couldn’t tell.
The secondary landslide had buried the tree monster up to its bottom legs, who wasn’t quite dead. It thrashed weakly, its deep bellow falling to a sad, whale-like croon as it struggled to free itself. Dark streams of sap-like blood trickled down its long neck and pooled over the rubble, filling the air with a strangely sweet scent. This close, it was even bigger than Jaeger had thought—ten tons, at least, and as it lay dying, still easily powerful enough to crush a man by accident.
“Watch out,” she weakly called as Toner dragged his wrecked body onto the monster’s flank. If he heard her, he made no indication. Hunched, limping, and moving with animal savagery, he pulled himself to the base of its neck.
The tree-creature’s wail turned high-pitched. It twisted its neck, for the first time showing a wide, horse-like head the size of a small car, lined rows of tombstone teeth. It snapped down at Toner, mouth opening wide enough to swallow him whole.
Toner dre
w back the less injured of his two arms and punched it in the nose.
In the distance, the anxious buzz of insects exploded into an approving chatter, much like cheering, as Toner snatched the creature by its lower lip and punched it again.
The monster grunted as sticky dark sap spilled out of its face.
Jaeger watched, transfixed, as Toner punched again, and again, and again, to the growing chattering of insects.
In the space of a minute, he reduced the monster’s head to mush. Then Toner let himself sink into the pulp.
Jaeger was horrified, but not terribly surprised, to see the vampire lift a brown mass of flesh out of the skull. Toner’s jaw fell open, and he swallowed it whole.
Something moved close behind Jaeger, and she whirled. She winced at a vicious pinch in the neck. Whiplash. Her body had become a choir of injuries threatening to burst into song if she moved the wrong way.
One of the centaur-locusts had crept closer to her. It jerked backward at her sudden motion, lifting its front claws protectively. There was a beat of terrible stillness, then slowly, it leaned down and laid its spear flat between them in a universal gesture of truce.
It had an almost-human face, save for the big, multifaceted eyes and small, almost dainty mandibles curved beneath a flat nose. Its torso and two front arms sprang up from the body of a dog-sized locust. It walked lightly, almost daintily, on fine-tipped claws.
It chattered at her, its mandibles clicking in a rapid sequence that reminded Jaeger of Morse code. There was intention to the pattern of clicks there, yes, but right now she had no hope of decrypting it.
Slowly, careful of her battered limbs, Jaeger reached to her belt and checked her computer. It was cracked but functional. She licked dry lips and activated comms. “Okay,” she sighed into the microphone. “Everybody check in. I’m beat to hell but alive at the base of the secondary rockslide. Toner is, um…”