Brak swept his sword through the wall of grass in one long stroke, and three meter-long grass cuttings fell with a loud rustling noise. He swiped again, and then leapt down from the airlock. The stalks cracked like twigs under his feet. After just a few seconds, they saw the pale green sky appear, and a few more seconds after that, Brak had cleared and trampled a path long enough for them to follow.
“Let’s go,” Tyra said, and jumped down from the airlock. Lucien watched her go. Her exosuit gleamed in the light of Panda-1A-V’s sun.
With their suits and helmets on, it was impossible for Lucien to visually identify anyone unless they were facing him, but his ARCs labeled everyone in sight, and their names floated above their heads in a bold green font.
“Set sensors to active scanning,” Tyra said as they followed her.
Grass stalks crunched underfoot as they jumped down. Olfactory sensors brought a pungent, musky odor to Lucien’s nose. From the air, or the grass? he wondered.
Lucien configured his sensors and set active scanning. The initial scan revealed so many lifeforms around them that his scopes were impossible to read. He filtered the data, setting the circular fore and aft scopes in the top left and right of his field of view to display only potential threats—lifeforms that were either very large or moving toward him.
“Captain, I am reading a lot of life signs around us,” Panda said.
“Likewise,” Garek said, “but so far they’re all scurrying away.”
“Path is cut,” Brak panted over the comms. The Gor stood about fifty meters from them, where the grass abruptly ended and a dark forest began.
A shadow passed over them with a loud whoosh. An alert sounded from Lucien’s sensors, and he looked up to see something big and black flying circles around their heads. His bio-scanner identified it as insectile, and over three meters long.
“Heads-up,” Lucien said, already charging his grav boosters in readiness.
But after circling once more, the insect flew away.
“Did anyone get a read on that thing?” Tyra asked, her voice piqued with excitement.
“I did,” Lucien said. The bug had been automatically cataloged by his sensors for later study and classification.
They reached the edge of the field and found Brak already studying one of the obelisks they’d seen from the air. “It appears to be made of silicates,” he said.
“So it could actually be a silicon life form,” Tyra concluded, running a hand over the smooth surface. “It’s warm to the touch. Troo? Would you see if you can make contact for us?”
The Fossak stepped up to the rock and placed both of her hands against it. “It is… being life.”
Lucien blinked. “Intelligent life?”
Troo shook her head. “I cannot say. Its mind is being empty. All it is having knowledge of is hot and cold. Right now it is hot. This makes it happiness.”
Tinker snorted. “Surprise, surprise, rocks don’t do a whole lot of thinking.”
Tyra withdrew a scanner from her equipment belt and passed it over the obelisk. A fan of blue light flickered out, briefly illuminating the dark forest.
Lucien caught a glimpse of a hulking shadow with red eyes watching them from the trees. He took a quick step toward it, waiting for his scanners to get a lock, but the light from Tyra’s scanner went out, and the shadow vanished.
“I thought I saw something in the trees,” Lucien said.
“I saw it, too,” Jalisa replied. “It was watching us.”
“Let’s not get jumpy, people,” Tyra said. “There’s probably a thousand creatures watching us right now—this is amazing…” she whispered, still studying the results of her scan. She unslung the pack from her back and took out a sample container while Pandora sliced off a small piece of the rock with a cutting beam.
Lucien looked away, back to the dark forest. He turned on his helmet lamps and started walking in the direction that he’d seen the shadow. He armed the grav boosters in his palms, setting them to a low power mode. A blast from one of those would scare off most creatures. Jalisa walked up beside him, sweeping her headlamps from side to side. Glossy purplish logs gleamed, and blossom-shaped crimson leaves crunched under foot.
Thump. Something fell at their feet.
Lucien looked up, but he could see nothing through the tangled mess of dark tree branches. High above, the crimson leaves of the forest canopy glowed in the sun like a translucent tarp, adding a dim crimson hue to everything they saw. Lucien bent to retrieve the object that had fallen in front of them and picked it up. It was hard, jagged, and black—a shard of rock.
Thump. Another rock fell at Lucien’s feet, and he looked up once more. One rock falling could be a coincidence, but two?
“I’m reading lifeforms in the trees,” Jalisa said.
Lucien zoomed in, and a sea of red eyes appeared, glinting from the shadows.
“It’s time to leave,” Lucien whispered.
“What?” Tyra’s asked. “We’ve just started exploring!”
He and Jalisa backed away slowly, keeping their eyes on the trees.
Thump, thump, CLANK. A rock bounced off Jalisa’s helmet.
Lucien raised one palm and braced himself before firing a focused burst from his grav booster. Whoosh. The gun punched the air into a shock wave that sent creatures skittering from branch to branch, chattering in musical voices that sounded like wind instruments. Crimson leaves fluttered down.
THUD. One of the creatures landed on its back at their feet. It was a hairy black mass about twice the size of Brak. Lucien grimaced. There was no way something that big had survived the fall. He crept forward with Jalisa and crouched beside the creature, waiting for his scanners to tell him more. He placed a hand on it. It was warm to the touch. The beast heaved under his hand and air whistled out softly through its nose.
Lucien flinched and took a step back. “It’s still alive,” he said. “Troo!”
“What is you needing?”
“Try to make contact with this… animal. Assess its injuries if you can.”
“I is trying to do this…” Troo said as she placed a hand against the creature’s giant head and closed her eyes. “It is being much pain… it is not being thinking clearly.”
“Do you think it will live?” Lucien asked, frowning as he gazed down on the creature.
“It is unable to be movement or breath. I is believing this means it will die soon.”
“Thank you, Troo. Step away please.” Troo did as she was told, and Lucien armed the laser cannons in his suit gauntlets.
“What are you going to do to it?” Addy asked, walking up beside them.
“I’m going to put it out of its misery,” Lucien said, and shot it twice in the head. Lasers screeched and crimson light flashed through the shadowy forest. The creature’s fur ignited and blazed brightly, bringing the smell of burnt hair and flesh to their olfactory sensors.
Clank, clank, clank-clank… Rocks pelted Lucien from above, and his sensors chimed continuously in warning as dozens of lifeforms raced down the trunks of nearby trees. “Damn it,” Lucien muttered, glancing up at the trees.
“Get back here now!” Tyra ordered.
A pair of monsters landed in front of Lucien with muffled booms, and bared long fangs. They stalked toward him on eight thick, furry legs, walking like spiders. The nearest one crouched, about to pounce. Lucien fired at it with his lasers, and it slumped into the leaves, whistling in pain. It thrashed, sending leaves flying. Lucien shifted his aim to the second one, but before he could fire, it leapt high over his head.
Before it could crush him, he ducked and rolled away. The creature landed with a ground-shaking boom beside him. Lucien jumped back to his feet just in time to see Brak race in, his razor swords flashing bright blue in the gloom. The monster fell in two smoking halves at Brak’s feet, and the Gor roared with enthusiasm, already looking for his next target.
“Barbarian,” Pandora said as she shot one of the beasts between the eyes
with a plasma pistol.
Another creature came bounding toward Lucien, its footfalls like thunder. He fired his lasers with a screech, and the animal burst into flames and skidded to a stop at his feet.
Seeing their fellows die did nothing to dissuade the others. The monsters flowed down the tree trunks in rivers, while others stayed up to throw rocks that bounced harmlessly off the away team’s armor.
Lasers flashed crimson in the dark. The smell of charred flesh and burnt hair was nauseating. Hulking bodies rose in shadowy mounds around them.
One of the creatures got close enough to clamp its massive jaws around Lucien’s helmet, but only for a second.
Brak cut the head off and splashed Lucien’s faceplate with black blood. The head fell at his feet with a thump, but Lucien couldn’t see. He fell on his knees and frantically grabbed fistfuls of leaves to wipe away the blood. By the time he’d cleared his visor, the battle was over. The remaining monsters fled, crashing through the tree tops and shouting harmoniously in their musical voices as they went.
“What a mess,” Tyra said.
“Poor things…” Addy put in. “They don’t know any better.”
“I think… they g-ot me…” Tinker panted.
Lucien spun around, looking for him. He found Tinker’s name tag a split second later, alongside Garek’s. The medic was already checking on him.
Everyone hurried over.
“Brak, watch our backs!” Tyra instructed as she ran.
“With pleasure,” he growled, brandishing his swords and scanning the trees.
Lucien reached Tinker’s side and immediately saw what the problem was. His legs were folded back under him at the waist, and his neck lay at an odd angle.
“His back and neck are broken,” Garek declared as he passed a scanner over Tinker’s body with a flickering fan of blue light.
“It picked me up and shook me like a doll,” Tinker said, his voice pinching off in pain.
“I can fix him, but not down here,” Garek added. “I’ll have to take him back to the galleon.”
“Do it. Jalisa, take them back on the shuttle.”
Jalisa nodded and waited while Garek unslung his medical pack and fitted a brace around Tinker’s neck. When Garek was done, he and Jalisa picked Tinker up and began carrying him back to the shuttle. The others escorted them there.
Within just a few minutes, those three were safely aboard, and the shuttle hovered up from the field, blasting them with wind from its grav lifts. It angled up and ignited its thrusters in a thunderous roar. Lucien placed a hand to his visor to shield his eyes from the glare as the shuttle raced away, a dwindling speck against the pale green sky.
Lucien turned to Tyra with a frown. “We should have gone with them.”
“There’s still plenty to study down here, and I doubt those monkey bears are going to bother us again after we killed so many of them.”
“You is being bad huntress if you think this,” Troo said.
“They seem like alpha predators,” Lucien added. “If so, they won’t be used to finding prey stronger than they are, so they’ll keep trying. Besides, sooner or later we’ll encounter another troop that hasn’t seen what we did to the first one.”
“You did provoke them by killing the one that fell,” Tyra pointed out. “But you’re right, we should probably try to get out of the forest as soon as possible.”
“Aerial maps we generated on the way down indicate there’s a long range of mountains not far from here,” Pandora said. “The mountains will be relatively devoid of vegetation, and you should be able to climb them quite easily with your grav boosters.”
“Lead the way,” Tyra said.
“We’ll have to cross through the forest to get there,” Pandora warned.
“How far?”
“Two point four kilometers.”
“Close enough,” Tyra decided. “Let’s go. Everyone keep your weapons armed and an eye on your scopes. Brak, Troo—you watch our backs. Lucien and Addy, you take point with Pandora.”
They set out like that, with Tyra walking safely in the middle. Coward, Lucien thought.
“The captain is not having Paragon training,” Troo said from the rear. “This is why she is being cowardice.”
“What did you call me?” Tyra demanded.
“Not I—it is Lucy who thinks this.”
Lucien grimaced. “Stay out of my head, Troo.”
“I is freedom to do as I please. You cannot be telling me what to do.”
“Don’t I outrank her?” Lucien asked.
“And I outrank you,” Tyra said. “Thank you for telling me, Troo.”
That was the end of the conversation. They continued on, walking over fallen logs and wading through deep piles of leaves. They swept the shadows with their headlamps as they went, but no more monkey bears appeared skulking around them. The forest was full of other strange animals, however, as evidenced by their howls, hoots, squawks, and chitters. Every now and then a small creature would dart by in front of them, spraying leaves in its wake.
They even came across a lumbering worm-like thing the size of a hover train, with a glossy purple exoskeleton and what must have been a thousand legs. Addy threatened to vomit in her suit, but the threat of asphyxiating on the contents of her stomach appeared to quell her disgust. The arthropod seemed docile and harmless, possibly even blind, but they all wisely decided to hang back and wait for it to pass.
When they finally emerged from the forest and saw the mountains soaring in front of them, they were all tired and thirsty, so Tyra called a short break. Their exosuits came with a ready supply of fresh water and a waste management system that allowed them to relieve themselves without removing their armor.
Lucien sipped on the straw coming up from his collar, and studied their surroundings. The forest was dark and ominous behind them, while sheer gray cliffs soared in front. A thin slice of the pale green sky appeared between the cliffs and the trees. And the curving outline of the gas giant Panda-1A shone faintly through the atmosphere.
Bringing his gaze back down, Lucien found Tyra running her scanner over the cliffs.
He walked up to her. “Besides exploration for explorations’ sake, what exactly is our purpose down here?”
“Ideally, to find and make contact with sentient alien life,” Tyra replied.
“Well, then I think we’re barking up the wrong trees—or cliffs. The planet is clearly habitable, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything intelligent here. If there were, we should have seen signs of civilization from orbit.”
“Not all intelligent life develops a civilization, at least not immediately,” Tyra replied. “For most of human history we were tribal hunter-gatherers who lived in caves and made finger paintings on the walls.”
“So we should be looking for caves?” Lucien asked.
“Or subterranean passages,” Tyra replied, still scanning the cliffs. “And these mountains are riddled with them.” She looked up, her blue eyes bright with anticipation. “Now we just have to find a way in.”
Chapter 11
They found an entrance to the caves at the base of the cliffs just a few hundred meters from where they’d taken their break. Before they went inside, Tyra made contact with the Inquisitor to confirm that Jalisa had made it back with Garek and Tinker. She told them to wait up there rather than come back, in case they found a better place for pick-up than the field that now lay a half-hour’s hike behind them.
As soon as Tyra got off the comms, she led the way into the caves, her eagerness taking precedence over caution. Lucien was about to walk past her so he could take point, but Pandora beat him to it. The bot had her plasma pistol out and tracking, so Lucien decided he could hang back with Brak and Troo, while Addy kept pace just behind Tyra.
The cave walls glittered like diamonds in the light of their headlamps. Upon closer inspection, Lucien saw that the glittering was from sticky white clumps of bio matter that clung to the walls.
&nbs
p; Tyra stopped to pass her handheld scanner over one of them. She nodded with the result, as if it had confirmed her suspicions. “Egg sacks.”
“Lovely,” Lucien replied.
“From what?” Addy asked.
“Some type of arthropod,” Tyra said.
“Arthropod?” Addy pressed.
“Spiders,” Tyra clarified.
Addy shivered. Lucien didn’t blame her. Fortunately, their exosuits were air tight, so no bugs were getting in.
No threats had appeared on their scopes yet. After another five minutes passed uneventfully, Lucien decided now would be a good time to get some answers.
“Brak, what are you doing here?”
“Exploring. The same thing you are doing.”
“No, I mean, how did you know to find me on Astralis?”
“I is telling him where you be going if he is taking me with,” Troo said. “Brak is being my new guardian.”
Lucien shook his head. “Neither of you should have come. Why would you follow me here?”
“I is coming because you is going,” Troo replied. “You is having saved my life, so I is going to save yours.”
“It’s going to be hard to save an immortal,” Lucien said. “Even if I die, they’ll just bring me back on Astralis.”
“And if Astralis is being destroyed?”
“Well, then I guess I could die, but that’s not going to happen.”
“Perhaps it is not to be happening, or perhaps it is. Time is to be telling us.”
“So, you’re here to repay your debt—not to get even with me for stranding you on that balcony?”
“I is here to do both things,” Troo said, and turned her helmet so she could bare her teeth at him in a feline grin.
“Of course,” Lucien muttered. “What about you, Brak? Why did you agree to bring Troo here and follow me to Astralis?”
“I come to take you home, to save you from yourself,” Brak said. “But you do not go, so I stay.”
Dark Space Universe (Book 1) Page 7