by J. N. Chaney
Thorn opened his awareness again, but cautiously. He didn’t want to tweak the squid shaman’s senses at all, if he could avoid it. They’d brought several measures with them to incapacitate a Nyctus, everything from physical restraints to a drug that, based on tests on squid corpses, should be neurotoxic enough to render one helpless. It was all speculative though, and really depended on getting to their target while it was unaware.
Thorn was crushed by something that erupted from the underbrush, slamming into his ribs like an orbital strike. His breath left in a surprised whoof as dank moss filled his mouth with an earthy, mineral taste. Claws raked him, and he rolled, striking back in animal desperation as he unleashed a furious flurry of punches, kicks, even biting at something that might have been a small, scaly ear, tearing and spitting and gouging all while growling with a sound that was far in his evolutionary past.
An acrid stink filled his nose and pain bloomed again with each breath; the creature levered two legs up underneath him, preparing to kick his guts out with claws that flashed black in the wan light. Thorn sank a thumb into something that felt a heluva lot like an eye; he was rewarded with a gelatinous squirt of warm fluid, then he pushed on and tore at the animal with both hands even as it rhythmically kicked and kicked, shredding his armor and finally touching skin with a talon that felt like a sword.
Thorn drew in his power, feeling a sear of heat as he began to cut loose with the fatal blast—
—A crack sent his ears to ringing, and the weight on him shifted, then shifted again in a liquid tumble.
Alix stared down at him, searching his eyes. “Thorn? Thorn, can you hear me?”
“Yeah . . . I . . .” Thorn began, then took a moment to just suck in air. Adrenaline kept his heart hammering away, loud enough that he was sure even the squid shaman must be able to hear it without magic.
Alix kept her gaze locked on his. “Thorn, just look at me. Toff here is going to patch up that wound, okay?”
He nodded. Alix’s brusque confidence kept him steadied. The other soldier, Toff, did something that made a hissing sound, then the pain in his shoulder, which had gone from keen flame to deep, diffuse ache, faded.
With their help, Thorn sat up. He looked at whatever attacked him, which was now sprawled off to his left.
“Holy shit.”
Alix nodded, then poked the beast with a toe. “Right? Nasty little critter. Meet one of the local carnivores. Carnivore, meet Thorn. He’s the one who took your eye.” She prodded the creature again, eliciting a stream of fluid from the mouth. “And your life.”
The beast was almost three meters long, quadrupedal, but with an extra pair of prehensile arms ending in claws that looked even more lethal, now that Thorn could see them clearly, than they had in the chaotic moment of attack. It had a tough, leathery hide sprouting coarse, wiry fur in patches, and its mouth bristled with teeth.
Teeth. Many, many teeth. Hundreds of them, it seemed, each a serrated horror seemingly purpose-made to shred the flesh of someone named Stellers.
“And I thought Murgon sucked,” Thorn managed.
He took one more breath that tasted of wet moss and a lingering hint of primal fear, then pulled his eyes away from the nightmarish corpse. He was able to stand, and although a deep, dull ache remained in his shoulder, he could mostly use his right arm.
“You’re lucky,” Toff said.
Thorn shot a glance at the creature. “You have a strange definition of what constitutes luck.”
Toff smiled, shaking a can of wound sealant. “Single puncture wound, in and out, into muscle. Doesn’t seem to have hit anything vital, nerves or blood vessels.” Now it was Toff’s turn to regard the monster. “Considering what could have happened, yeah, I’d call that luck.”
Thorn had to concede that. Toff handed him a canister of first-aid spray, a combination of dressing, antitoxin, antiseptic, and anesthetic all in one, and told him to apply it to the wound as he needed to.
Alix ran a finger along a rough furrow plowed through Thorn’s body armor. “Did you say something about not wanting to wear this? That it might get in the way of your cosmic casting, or whatever it’s called?” She tapped his armor, then whistled. “Worth everything we paid for it.” A smile quirked her lips, and she crouched easily next to Thorn, railer still at the ready.
“It’s Starcasting, thank you very much,” Thorn said, breathing more easily now as his heart finally slowed from racing, to merely pounding. “And, yes ma’am, you were right about the armor. Oh, by the way, here’s a new hand signal for you and your team to use.” He lifted his finger in a rude gesture.
Alix didn’t even blink. “Already use that one all the time—a few times since we landed, actually, while your back was turned.”
Thorn managed a weak smile, then patted the air. “I’m fine with that. You mind taking the next one before it, ah—”
“Kicks your guts out?” Alix said cheerfully.
“Yes. Well put,” Thorn said.
“Consider it done. Don’t like the smell of them, let alone the damned teeth. We’ll double down. Can you stand?” Alix asked him, extending a hand.
“Damn right I can. I’m not sitting around with those things out there.” Thorn grunted as she pulled him to his feet, then stood swaying as he got his bearings. The wound spray was nothing short of miraculous, and he couldn’t feel a thing. “Let’s go. And thanks.”
“Haven’t lost a SME yet,” Alix replied. “Not going to break our winning streak for you.” She offered a glimmer of genuine smile, though, then slipped off through the undergrowth.
Thorn caught movement near the compound wall and tensed. But it was Alix and her fireteam partner on their way back from their recon jaunt. The rest of Tiger Team Three had “gone firm,” forming a protective ring around Thorn while he carefully explored the ether around them for any hint of the Nyctus shaman.
He shook his head as Alix crouched beside him. “Nothing,” he whispered. “For whatever reason, that shaman seems to be entirely off the air.”
“No physical signs in the compound, either,” she replied, then narrowed her eyes. “Correction. We found some tracks that definitely aren’t native fauna, but we already know the squid was here. We can’t find anything fresh, since the last time it rained a day or so ago, anyway.” She shrugged. “Maybe it's dead. Could have been injured, sick, whatever.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t really add anything,” Thorn replied. “So you might be right. I just don’t know.”
“All due respect, but you didn’t sense, or detect or whatever, that critter that almost ate you,” Toff said. “And it was very much there.”
Thorn waved a hand around him. “It’s not like I’m always on. Sensing other conscious minds is something I have to do, with intent. It takes some concentration, separate from trying to be silent in the brush.”
“Well, you get to make the call, Thorn,” Alix said. “We either stay here and keep trying to find the primary objective, or we suck back, return to the ship, and go after the secondary.”
Thorn whistled through his teeth, thinking. The orders had been clear; this was his call. If the shaman was dead or had returned to his own crashed ship, then they could just end up wasting a lot of time here—keeping Mol on the ground and the Hecate in orbit while doing it. On the other hand, if he had gone back to the crash site, then—
Thorn froze.
Something had just brushed against the edge of his mind.
Alix tensed, sensing the change in Thorn’s demeanor. “Thorn? Talk to me.”
“He’s here, somewhere nearby. The Nyctus shaman is here. I just felt him.”
Toff cursed. “Shit, did it detect us?”
Thorn considered the question, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve been keeping us Shaded, basically hiding us from psychic searches.”
“Thought you said you had to concentrate to do this stuff.”
“The Shade is a fire and forget. As long as I have power and set th
e intention, it exists. It’s in place, and whole,” Thorn explained.
“So can you tell where it is?” Alix asked.
“Not without actually searching for him—and that’s where this is more like shooting a weapon. There’s a good chance he’ll see me at the same time I see him.”
“Let’s make that plan B,” Alix said. “We’ll try to do this the old-fashioned way first. As long as you can prevent that squid from seeing us, we’ll do the rest.” She tapped a tranq-pistol holstered on her tactical harness. They each had one of the single-shot weapons, loaded with one projectile containing the untested neurotoxin that they hoped would subdue a Nyctus, plus two more shots each. She gave Thorn a searching look. “But if this doesn’t work—”
“Then it’s one of these,” Thorn replied, lifting his railer. “I know.”
Alix nodded and passed quick orders around the Team, then they set off to make a circuit of the compound. Thorn now put extra effort into his Shade effect, making it as secure and yet as transparent as possible. It was more complicated than just erecting a mental barrier to block the squid magic; if the shaman just slammed headlong into a psychic wall, it would obviously know the wall was there and was being produced by someone of talent and power. Thorn had to be more subtle, focusing on refracting the squid’s magical probes around them, and into blank ether, rather than just stopping them outright.
They reached the far side of the compound, then stopped. Thorn used the pause to refresh the spray dressing on his wound. It got complicated here, because the two hundred meters or so between the facility’s nearest wall and the rocky lakeshore was most clear of undergrowth and covered instead by some sort of fluffy, tangled grass. A well-worn trail led from a gate in the wall down to a shed propped over the water on pilings. A pipe led back to the compound. It must be a pumping station, sending fresh water back for storage.
The hint—a whisper, really—of the shamanic mind touched him again, less shy than before. It was stronger this time, and more deliberate.
“I think he’s getting suspicious,” Thorn whispered, as Alix plotted with Toff for the best route across the stretch of mostly open ground.
“Meaning?” Alix asked.
“He’s ’casting around more, and being a little more aggressive about it.”
“Can you clarify? We’re in your playground now, not mine,” Alix said.
“If he were a ship, he’s put more power into his sensors. I’m able to deflect him, but if he keeps amping himself up like this, he’s eventually going to notice he’s being deflected.”
“So we’re on a clock here.”
“Yeah, we are.”
“Okay, then.”
“Mol here,” a voice said over their comm net. “Just got a message from the Hecate.”
Alix looked at Thorn, who nodded and replied. “Go ahead, Mol.”
“Tanner says he just got a burst transmission from Fleet. The squids here must have managed to get a message out. Some asset our intel people have in the Zone just detected a squadron of Nyctus ships on a trajectory to bring them straight here. Estimate was twelve hours ETA when the message was sent, which puts it down to six to eight hours with transmission delay.”
“You were saying something about a clock?” Thorn said.
Alix shrugged. “I hate being right about that.”
“Okay, well, we’re doing our best here, but we’re having trouble finding them.”
“Might be able to help with that. According to Tanner, someone’s transmitting from inside the compound while we speak.”
Thorn stiffened, his eyes drawn to the wall with unerring aim. “That’s where he is,” Thorn said. “He’s inside there, right now.”
Alix made a hand signal to the squad, and the team moved like a school of fish—one direction, one purpose, no wasted motion.
Alix turned back to Thorn. “Ready to move?”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
She nodded and made a move out gesture, then they started toward the compound, railers at the ready. Half of the team kept their attention focused on the gate and the wall around it. So did Thorn.
Fortunately, two of the team kept their focus swiveling around, covering everywhere else, which is why they weren’t completely surprised when the world exploded into chaos.
15
Kira snapped her eyes open. Impact noises, she thought. And heavy.
She blinked. She had been surrounded by thick forest filled by tentacled monstrosities. She remembered seeing Gillis taken by them, and Riley, and Rainer. A mass of boiling, writhing tentacles and panicked retreat, all under the canopy of an uncaring forest.
Gasping, she sat up. She wasn’t in a forest anymore. She was in a room. A small room, the walls, floor, and ceiling made of metal. There was a door, a single, dim light source set in the ceiling, and something bucket-like in a corner.
Wait—so the horror on the planet had just been a nightmare of some sort—
Another heavy crash, and the room shuddered, tossing her to one side in a stagger. She still didn’t understand what was happening. She tried standing, but her legs wobbled like springs. Instead she crawled on her hands and knees to the door.
“Hey!”
Her voice was just a croak. She sucked in a breath to shout again—
But her cry was truncated by a third impact, more massive than the last two. Everything tilted hard to one side, and Kira slid into the wall.
She shook her head, trying to clear away a fuzz like stubborn cobwebs. She was aboard a ship? Locked in a brig of some sort?
Realization flooded her, with raw, panicked terror thundering in right behind it. She’d been taken. A prisoner.
Of the Nyctus.
“No!” She threw herself at the door. “NO!”
The door slid open, dumping her into a dark corridor. She saw legs. Feet.
Gasping with fear so extreme it was almost physically painful, she looked up.
It was Rainer. Riley and Gillis were right behind her. Gillis gripped a snub-nosed weapon like a submachine gun. Like her, they were all were grimed with dirt and sweat, their fatigues torn and stained, bruises and cuts dark against their skin. But each also radiated a grim, fatalistic resolve.
“Kira!” Rainer shouted. “On your feet! We have to get out of here!”
“Wait, what?” She shook her head. “What’s happening?”
Another heavy crash and a sudden burst of acceleration flung them all into the bulkhead. The lights, already dim, flickered, died, then came back on.
“We’re escaping the squids!” Rainer shouted back, grabbing Kira’s arm and urging her along the corridor. “Let’s go!”
Kira stumbled along a few paces, as though she was plowing through the molasses-thick unreality of a dream. Another bang, another flicker of lights. She slammed hard into the bulkhead again, the shock seeming to shake her sluggish thoughts free.
She spun on Rainer, a torrent of questions on her tongue, but only one came to the front. “Where are we going?”
“Escape pod, shuttle, any way of getting off this squid bucket!”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, this ship is under attack.” Gillis spun and looked back the way they came. As he did, something stumbled into view at a far bend in the corridor. Pale, tentacles, less than two meters tall—
A squid. A Nyctus, in the flesh. Kira had only ever seen imagery.
Gillis raised his weapon and sprayed the corridor with a hail of wicked darts. A barrage of flashes and sparks erupted around the alien, and it toppled back in looping arcs of viscous fluids, their wet impacts streaking the walls, the floor. Droplets landed on Kira’s skin, obscenely warm.
Rainer shoved at Kira again. “Discuss later. Fight now. As of this instant, we need to find some way off this ship so we can be rescued!”
Kira gaped for a second. Rescued, but also under attack. That meant one possibility—
The Orbital Navy. Somewhere nearby, there was at least one ON ship.
&n
bsp; All they had to do to get to it was get away from the Nyctus, find a way of negotiating who-knew-how-much hard vacuum, through an ongoing battle, then somehow signal to the ON who they were and—
And it didn’t matter. They’d most likely die long before they got anywhere near actually being rescued, but it was still vastly better than remaining prisoners of the Nyctus.
“It has to be an escape pod,” Riley snapped.
Kira peered into the small compartment. It was a dead end, on the other side of a single means of ingress, an unguarded airlock. While her mind raced, Kira heard Riley continue firing, muttered curses punctuating each ringing metallic impact of his gun.
“I think that’s it. Whatever passes for a mag on this thing is empty.”
“Kira, we’ve got to—” Rainer began.
Whatever she was going to say was cut off by the heaviest impact yet. Kira was slammed hard into the hatch coaming, igniting a deep flare of pain in her shoulder. Somewhere behind them rose the clamor and shriek of tearing metal. An instant later, a wind gusted around Kira as the atmosphere was pulled toward a hull breach in a hissing shriek. It wasn’t an explosive decompression, but a decompression, nonetheless.
“Kira, it’s now or never!” Riley shouted.
Pass through the airlock, into a dead end—or don’t, and just end up dead.
“Let’s go, inside!” Kira shouted, pushing Rainer through the hatch, then Riley, then Gillis. She entered last, just as another squid appeared only a few meters away. It raised something like a pistol—
“Take cover!” Kira barked. She was alert and ready.
—and snapped out a shot that clanged off the coaming and ricocheted into the compartment, missing Rainer’s head by centimeters. Kira braced herself to charge the squid, maybe get to it before it could kill them all, maybe save the others—
But the outer hatch abruptly slid closed. Kira dove into the compartment as the inner hatch followed suit. A sudden, thick silence engulfed them.