by GARY DARBY
She keyed her communicator. “All teams, we have prowlers to our front and right flank, possibly large canine size. We don’t have a visual.
“Flankers, rejoin your teams. Everyone close up. LS position is beta four point five.”
She waited until the trailing teams moved up and then tapped Anyar on the arm. “Let’s go.”
Dason fixed his eyes on his LS display, waiting for any appearance of the unseen creatures. The forest stillness was broken by the flittering birdlike creatures, and the occasional humming sound the pseudo-insects made when one came close.
Without warning, his sensor lighted up with the creature’s distinct signature. Dason shouted, “Right flank! Coming right at us!”
Anyar and Bianca dropped to one knee with outstretched stunners. The pack charged in from several different directions making a spray shot impossible. With a lightning lunge, one of them charged Anyar and bowled him over.
Anyar scrambled to avoid the creature’s snapping jaws. Without hesitation, Bianca joined the fight, firing her stunner point-blank at the beast’s head.
Dason and Sami fired into the pack. Both got off several shots before one of the animals charged straight at Sami. With catlike reflexes, he hurled himself out of the way at the last possible instant.
The thing whirled sideways to attack again, and for just a second, Dason thought he confronted a Komodo dragon.
Only, this brute’s body wasn’t scaled and rough, but sleek and leathery smooth, almost feline in appearance. The snapping jaws held several sets of sharp, pointed teeth, and the thing raked at Sami with wicked, clawed appendages.
The beast that attacked Dason and Sami charged past the two young novices and plowed into the trailing teams. The rest of the pack charged in and among the group. The priing-prriing-prriing of stunners discharging echoed in the forest glade.
A shout caused Dason to spin around. An enraged animal had Anyar on the ground with its jaws clamped tight on the outlaw's boot. Off to the other side, Sami and Bianca battled another beast that had stormed out of the forest.
Without thinking, Dason grabbed an arm-sized dead log.
He rushed the brute that had Anyar, and slammed the branch into the creature’s mouth. The thing shook Anyar's foot back and forth, but Dason’s desperate maneuver paid off.
The animal let go of Anyar’s foot and instead clamped down on the woody bough that jutted inside its mouth.
Freed from the viselike jaws, Anyar rolled free. The creature chomped on the wood until with a loud snap the branch broke, sending Dason stumbling backward from the sudden release.
His head slammed into an overhanging tree branch, causing him to see stars for a few seconds as he stumbled to the ground.
Dason tried to stand but his legs wouldn’t hold him. He latched onto a small branch and pulled himself to his feet. He stood swaying for several seconds before someone spun him around.
“Hey, you okay?” Sami demanded.
“Hit my head,” Dason answered, “I’m a little woozy.”
“Phhh,” Sami replied. “You should be used to getting conked on the head by now. C’mon, we’re getting outta here.”
“What?”
“Diversion time, thanks to whatever these things are. You know, time to bug out. Vamoose. Scram.”
“Wait, they may still need help.”
Sami shook his head. “Trust me, they don’t. They’ve got things pretty much in hand. Well, sort of, mostly in hand which is good enough for this bunch.”
“What about Shanon and TJ?”
“TJ is the one that give me the signal and Shanon was right behind her. Enough with the chatter, let’s go.”
Dason followed Sami, running low to keep out of sight. They ran for several minutes and had just scrambled around a threesome of giant trees when a small rock sailed through the air and landed at their feet.
TJ and Shanon stepped out of the dark shadows. With a little wave of the hand, Sami said, “Hey, good thing we found you when we did.”
“You found us?” TJ retorted.
Dason held up a hand to stop the two from bickering. “Doesn’t matter who found who. What matters is that we’re back together.”
He quickly turned to Shanon. “You okay with this? You weren’t too certain before.”
Shanon grimly nodded at him. “Don’t have much choice now, do we? So, what now?”
“Turn off our communicators,” Sami replied.
“But—” Dason started.
“No, he’s right,” TJ responded in a firm tone. “No comms, could give away our position.”
“What if we get separated?” Dason pointed out.
“We stick to the plan,” TJ replied. “Find the stream, pretend we’re making for Stinger One, then double back and grab a scouter.”
Dason hesitated with his hand over his comms key, then firmly pressed the off key, as did the others. He turned to Sami. “Path Finder?”
“You got it, let’s move.”
With Sami in the lead, the four made their way toward the brook, intent on putting distance between them and their former captors.
After ten minutes at a steady lope, Sami pulled them to a halt. “What is it?” Dason whispered.
“Water,” Sami stated. “We’re close to the stream.”
Dason started to reply when Shanon yanked at his arm and pointed. In the distance, several renegades slipped around the intervening trees, headed right toward them.
Sami groaned, saying, “These guys are good and fast.”
“Now’s not the time for compliments,” TJ offered. “We need to move.”
As one, the four scrambled toward the tiny tributary. A large, lime-colored moon rose above the valley hills, casting a dim, pale light into the forest. The orb’s luminance made ghostlike shadows of the four fleeing novices.
Dason had his Life Sensor out, trying to pinpoint how close the pursuing outlaws might be.
But attempting to calibrate the little device while on the run was too difficult and he had about decided to stop when Shanon gasped, “Look!”
Dason spun to see two figures crossing a far meadow and headed for the stream also. He couldn’t tell if the renegades had seen the novices or not. He pushed at Shanon and whispered to Sami, “Left!”
The four cut to the left and raced ahead. Forsaking stealth, Dason urged the three to greater speed. A limb from a thorn-studded bush whipped across Dason’s cheek, and he wiped away blood.
They burst out of the thick flora into a small glade. Sami turned to Dason, “Which way?”
A small hill rose to their left and to their right was the streambed. Dason pulled at Sami’s arm, turning the youth slightly. “Over that hill.”
The four sped up the knoll and stopped at the crest. They hid behind several trees to spy on their back trail.
The crack! of a broken limb caused the four to jerk their heads up and spin to their right. Several wraithlike shapes moved through the forest toward them.
The outlaws had found them!
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Star Date 2433.060
Unnamed Planet, Helix Nebula
Spinning on the balls of his feet, Jadar whipped out his stunner to point at the rustling coming from the dark.
A hulking shape limped out from the shadows into the firelight. “Easy, Jadar,” Shar remarked. “It’s only me. Sorry, should have said something.
“Keep forgetting that you still have the mindset and the reflexes of a scout on the trail, whereas I’m showing how rusty I am.”
Jadar unwound his lanky frame from his firing crouch, holstered his weapon, and watched Shar hobble over the rocky ground. “You almost had an unscheduled nap. Sorry, I guess I’m a little jumpy after being bushwhacked.”
“Who isn’t,” Shar rejoined and shuffled over to sit on a splintered tree trunk. He gazed at the darkened evening sky where the nebula’s lustrous twirls stretched overhead.
He waved a hand upward at the celestial panorama. “That’s
quite a view.”
Jadar followed Shar’s hand and answered, “Yeah, isn’t it? I have to admit, nebulas are one of my favorite things to look at, but my least favorite to fly through.”
He paused to say in grim tones, “And even more so now.”
“A great big roger to that,” Shar responded.
He gestured toward the distant horizon where the last of the afternoon thunderheads rumbled from repeated lightning strokes. “Think we’ll get a repeat of that?” he asked.
Jadar shook his head. “Hard to tell,” he responded. “The humidity seems to be dropping, which is a good sign, but without a working barometer, don’t know which way the air pressure is going. But it would be nice if they moved off.”
Shar grunted and swung an arm upward at the sky. “A lightning show on one side and the nebula on the other. Talk about being in the center of the storm.”
Jadar skewed his mouth to one side while saying, “One thing we can certainly do without is those wind gusts.”
Gesturing toward the littered landscape, Jadar rumbled, “We’re scattered over hell’s half acre thanks to those gale-force winds.”
He laid a hand on a pile of salvaged gear and ship fragments. “I managed to recover this, but those blasts were strong enough to carry a lot of it off to who knows where.”
Glancing around, he said, “And I don’t fancy searching for anything in the dark, either.”
Shar reached down and tossed an arm-sized wood log onto the small fire. The added fuel caused the flames to pop and crackle and throw off tiny burning cinders.
Burning higher and brighter, the flames added their light to the lamp’s glow. “There,” Shar smiled. “Now it’s not quite so dark.”
“Thanks,” Jadar replied dryly. “But I’m still not going. Not yet, anyway.”
Shar grimaced as he shifted his weight from his injured leg. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
“I think so,” Jadar replied and held up an oblong tube whose outer exterior looked scarred and blackened. One side looked like someone had taken a diamond saw and sheared clean through the metal. “But it’s a little hard to say at this point.”
He scratched at a cheek. “This thing’s so beat up that I might be working on the latrine’s outflow tubing for all I know instead of the antenna array for the n-space transmitter.”
Jadar put the device on the wide log that made for a makeshift workbench.
Shar gave the charred cylinder the once-over. “Well,” he offered, “if it’s not the array, we could still use a working toilet, you know.”
Jadar lifted his mouth in a small smile at Shar’s remark. He stood, leaned back, and stretched his back muscles.
The crash had left him unscathed except that his lower spine felt like someone stabbed it with a stiletto every few seconds.
He shook his head and tapped on the misshaped device. “You wouldn’t happen to have a full-up repair station in your back pocket by any chance?”
Shar held out empty hands. “Sorry, not even a micro screwdriver to my name.”
Jadar shook his head at the apparatus. “It’s probably beyond my abilities. Got crunched, along with everything else in the electronics pod when we bounced off the side of that cliff.”
Shar gazed at the blackened device and observed, “That's a shame, though even if you got it working, I’m not sure we’d have the power for much of a signal.
“I checked the power pack; it’s about gone. I think we got off a Search and Rescue call before we hit, but I’m not certain.
“They destroyed our main signal emitter in the attack, but the secondary might have broadcast just before we cracked up. Whether anyone is close enough to pick it up is an entirely different matter.”
Jadar glanced sideways at his companion. “Guess that’ll teach you to ignore the general. He warned you not to come, you know.”
Shar shrugged in return. “True. But when—not if —we get back, the next time I want to walk a trail, he won’t be able to argue against it. He’ll just shake his head and say, ‘Shar, it was just plain dumb luck you made it back last time, just how much plain dumb luck do you think you have?’”
“And,” Jadar replied, “you’ll say I’m just getting started on being dumb and lucky, right.”
Both chuckled and then stopped. Both knew that for Shar ever to have that particular conversation with General Rosberg, they needed copious amounts of luck on their side.
Jadar sighed out loud and lifted a hand towards Shar. “One thing about that word if —it may be only two letters long, but it sure makes a powerful statement with just those two letters.”
Neither spoke for several minutes before Shar reached up and slapped his fellow Star Scout on the back. “Jadar, for what it’s worth, that was an extraordinary piece of piloting.
“With the damage we sustained in that ambush, I doubt if the fleet’s best pilots could have done a better job getting us down.”
Jadar turned his head to stare at the cliff base before he sat down, and picked up the twisted metal tube. “Good, but not nearly good enough,” he returned in a flat and sad voice as he recalled the terrible journey to the planet’s surface.
After the surprise and ferocious assault by their unidentified assailants, their wounded ship had yawed and pitched from the atmospheric deceleration forces, tossing Jadar and Shar around like some giant hand batted and swatted at them.
With only a few navigational controls working, Jadar had fought like a wild man to stabilize the dying craft. It was just in the last few seconds that he managed to slow their descent enough so that they didn’t vaporize upon impact.
But even then their momentum was such that the violent collision with the rock cliff split metal asunder, fragmenting the ship into several pieces.
The pilot’s pod corkscrewed off through the forest, its flight slowed to a final jarring stop by repeated encounters with the giant trees that stood like castle turrets against the hillside.
It was a sheer miracle that Jadar and Shar had survived, but their young companion had not shared their good fortune.
The aft section, with Lengley’s body still inside, lay crushed by tons of avalanching hillside. Both men became quiet and somber when their eyes wandered over to the large rock mound that now covered the young Star Scout.
His eternal tomb would now be the granite boulders and the ship’s crumpled shell.
Jadar stirred and asked Shar, “How’s the arm and leg?”
“Green-stick break on the arm is my guess,” Shar answered, “but the InstaSplint stabilized the fracture. The ankle’s not broken, just got bent way back when we hit the cliff. You?”
“Ribs and back are a little sore, but I’ve had worse. I’m okay.”
Again they were silent and then Shar asked, “Well, what now?”
Jadar held up the damaged equipment and asked, “You want to take a crack at it?”
Shar snorted in response. “Barely made it through the academy’s micromechanics course.
“Took me four tries on the final exam to get a minimum passing grade and that was only because the instructor was so impressed by how imaginative I was on the hands-on compu interface replacement.
“She told me that she’d never seen anyone integrate the circuit boards in such a fashion. The circuitry didn’t work, of course. It was a real mess, but she said she had never seen such creativity and imagination before in a total and complete foul-up.”
Gesturing toward the device, he exhaled deeply while saying, “When it comes to those things I’m an idiot studying to be a moron. Sorry.”
Jadar nodded and set the broken piece back down. He reached out and pulled a long sliver of wood off the log. He rolled it between his fingers, feeling the grainy surface, before feeding it to the fire.
Gazing at Shar, he said, “We’ve got enough food and water that if we ration what we have, we won’t have to chance the local stuff for several weeks.”
He looked around and gestured
to what was left of the transport. “There’s enough left of the pilot pod that we can put together a pretty decent makeshift shelter. Should give us some protection if we have a repeat of those t-storms.”
Jadar stopped and looked Shar square in the eye. “What we don’t have is a way to communicate with anyone, let them know where we are, and our situation.”
“What about the general?” Shar asked. “Remember we were supposed to send him that fake message. When he doesn’t get it, don’t you think he’ll send out some teams to search for us?”
“Sure,” Jadar grunted, “and look where? Remember, we filed an open flight plan; he’ll have a broad idea of where to search, but he doesn’t know that we slipped off our intended route and headed into the Helix.
“He’ll send scouts, try to get some Nav help; I’m sure, but they’re going to concentrate on where he’ll tell them to look. And that’s not here.”
“What about Bartley’s unit, they’re in the Helix.”
“Yes, but they’re in the wrong quadrant. At a guess, the closest scout team is a good two, three hundred light-years away.”
Shar rubbed at his forehead before saying, “You paint a pretty grim picture.”
“Sorry,” Jadar replied. “Bad habit of mine. Painting grim pictures.”
He took a breath and offered, “There is one possibility, slim, but it might be the one chance we have.”
Shar looked at him, his brow furrowed in an unspoken question. “Just a few seconds before we crashed,” Jadar explained, “the scope picked up the Zephyr.
“She wasn’t trailing us down as if to finish us off. I think we hurt her bad enough that she had to make planet fall in a hurry. Maybe even crash-landed.”
He looked up and jutted his chin toward the distant peaked hills. “From their trajectory, I think they’re on the other side of those hills. I haven’t seen them take off so they might still be there.”
He looked over at Shar. “And if they are and can’t boost off, maybe, just maybe, we can put together a workable n-space transmitter.”
Shar turned his head toward the high hills and asked, “How far?”
“Too far for you on that ankle,” Jadar stated. Shar jerked as if to make a sharp retort before Jadar stopped him with, “And you know it.”