"I bet it lived in the cave," said Tatum, squatting and examining the animals claws.
"Yeah," Shannon snapped. "While I'm gutting that SOB, I want you Marines to get your butts in gear and get the nav beacon out to the landing site. Tatum, get 'em going!"
"You bet, Sarge," said Tatum, standing erect. "It jumped us." "Used up enough friggin' ammo," Shannon snarled.
"There was three more of 'em, but this is the only one I shot," Tatum replied. "Dawson saw something else, too. Tell 'em, Nance."
Shannon bounded from the terrace to the tenting area. He unsheathed a jagged-edged survival knife and strode up to Dawson. He bent his head only slightly and stood nose-to-nose with the tall lady.
"What the hell you doing walking off by yourself? I told everyone to stay with the group at all times? I don't care if you have to take a crap. You do it with company, and that company will have a loaded weapon with them. You hear me?"
Dawson tried to return the sergeant's stare, but Shannon was too fierce, too belligerent; she could not maintain eye contact. His dark eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, surrounded with black shadows, his face and head covered with week-old stubble, thick and grizzled. Dawson unconsciously ran her hand down the nape of her neck feeling her own incipient crop of red hair. Averting his eyes, she meekly replied, "I hear you, Sergeant."
Shannon mercifully redirected his glare and squatted next to the carcass. He commenced to stab and tear at the animal's belly.
"So what else'd you see?" he asked softly. Before she could respond, Shannon looked up at the Marines still standing around, curiously awaiting Dawson' s story. "Am I going crazy, or did I not tell you leadbutts to get your asses in gear? Get moving, now!"
Everyone jumped. Petit and O'Toole, slinging rifles over their shoulders, grabbed the beacon and double-timed toward the lake. Tatum and Gordon followed. Mendoza, awkwardly carrying a rifle, and Fenstermacher, with a holstered pistol, moved off to take sentry positions above the cave. Leslie Lee stood on the cave terrace, watching and listening. Dawson looked up at the medic and then back down at Shannon's broad back.
"So what'd you see?" Shannon asked, as he yanked out entrails with a liquid, ripping sound. Dawson stared, fascinated at the gore. Feeling her stomach wamble, she swallowed; dizziness threatened to overcome her. Shannon's hands and wrists were crimson with blood, his jumpsuit sleeves rolled up to his meaty, tattooed biceps, as he tore the pelt from the back of the bloody carcass, using the knife to lever it free, leaving behind pink marbled flesh.
Dawson opened her mouth, but no words came forth. Tasting hot, acrid berries, she turned her head, put her hand over her mouth, and ran to the edge of the clearing.
* * *
As Braan worked his way back to the lake he observed the green-garbed long-legs making their way along the northern edge of the lake. Braan reached the high rocks above the lake, unlimbered his wings, and leapt out over the sparkling green water. The hunter glided most of the way to the island and then let himself settle onto the clear surface. The waters were warm. Braan landed softly and folded his wings, catching enough air to maintain buoyancy and, with only his eyes and nostrils exposed, paddled to the island. Craag awaited.
The explosive reports had frightened the hunters. They feared for their leader's well-being, but their fears had been assuaged on seeing Braan traversing the cliff face. The commotion in the aliens' camp had also attracted their attention, and they watched the strange beings depart for the high plateau. The hunters listened in awe as Braan related his adventure.
"The long-legs are powerful," Braan said.
"Why were you not harmed, Braan-our-leader?" Bott' a asked, a bold question.
"The sand-colored one had not a magic stick, and I made no move to attack. The rockdogs attacked," Braan replied. The longlegs had not desired to harm him; the long-legs did not perceive him to be a threat, even though he was clearly armed. A good portent.
The silent hunters pondered the events. Braan suddenly deduced why the strangers were returning to the plateau rim: the thunderous craft would return. The aliens were being delivered to the plateau by the silver ship. Every explosion heralded the arrival of more long-legs.
"Today there will be great noises, as yesterday and the day before. The flying object will return. More long-legs will be among us," Braan announced. The hunters marveled at their leader's prediction.
* * *
The second landing was not routine. Penetration and approach were normal, and transition was routine, but touchdown was rough.
The lander wavered severely, skidding and tottering. Buccari felt lateral forces tilting the nose of lander. With lightning reactions she disengaged the autopilot and jammed in a hard control input, offsetting the unprogrammed yaw. She was lucky, catching the excursion in time. A split second later and the lander would have toppled from its skids and exploded with a full load of fuel, killing crew, passengers, and all Marines in the vicinity. The corvette crew stranded in orbit would also have died, only more slowly.
As she waited for the lander skin temperature to stabilize, Buccari checked her instruments and command programs. With tertiaries still turning, she and Jones ran a diagnostic on the control systems but could find no indication of what had caused the unruly control inputs. When the skin temps fell within limits, the Marines and passengers moved the bulky cargo clear of the lander and staged it for transportation back to camp. Quinn had surprised Buccari by insisting that the planet survey package be transported to the planet. Buccari had not argued; they would need the medical supplies, the seeds, the raft, and the tools.
Reluctantly, Buccari shut the lander down. She checked her chronometer; the corvette would be overhead in fifty minutes. She took off her helmet, unstrapped from her station, rolled out of her seat, and climbed clumsily down the steeply slanted center passage to the aft cargo door. Gravity felt as welcome as a headache. Buccari stepped heavily onto the surface of the planet and recoiled at the bright sunlight. She was uncomfortable—a hatched fledgling, raw and exposed. Buccari took a deep breath of natural atmosphere into her lungs, so different from the insipid air of space. She could taste moistness. A sweet, humid scent flooded her sinuses. She sniffled.
Buccari scanned the exhaust-blasted rock at the base of the lander, her vision unaccustomed to focusing at a distance and reluctant to range outside of a narrow realm. Forcing herself to squint outward, she saw yellow and white blossoms clinging in profusion to the granite slabs of the plateau. Obsessed with the thought of touching real flowers, she trudged from the blackened rock to the nearest cluster of blossoms, knelt stiffly beside them, and delicately immersed her face in the shallow garden. The odor was euphoric. The quartz-shot rock beneath her was warm and smooth; her discomfort melted into the receptive granite.
An impatient buzzing caused her to sit upright, as a tiny yellow bee retreated from her newly claimed flower patch. A clutch of saffron butterflies flitted nervously about, moving unsteadily against a gentle headwind. She laughed aloud and fell on her side, head on an elbow, to watch the offloading of cargo; but then she noticed Shannon rounding the lander, headed in her direction. Reluctantly, and with dismaying effort, she pushed to her feet and met him halfway.
"Nice planet, Sergeant," Buccari said.
"Thank you, Lieutenant, but I had very little to do with it," Shannon replied. "Big autopilot in the sky, you know?"
"Touchй, Sergeant." She walked in step with him toward the lander. "Well, something's wrong. Had a secondary control input at engine cut-off. I was lucky to catch it, and even luckier not to overcorrect."
"What's your plan, Lieutenant?"
"Don't think there's an option. Unless Jones can find something mechanically wrong and fix it, we'll be going for orbit as she stands." Buccari blinked at the horizon, still finding it difficult to look to a distance. "We'll fly it out manually. Fuel's no problem."
They walked up to the lander as Jones was shutting the access hatch. Jones pulled off his helmet and disconnected
his suit power umbilical.
"Nothing, Lieutenant," Jones announced. He smiled at Shannon and nodded a greeting. "Gyros check out, and the thruster servos check good. No leaks. I'll keep looking, but all the obvious things pass muster. You sure it was the port side that fired? Playback shows nothing."
"No, Boats, I'm not sure. It happened too quickly to check instruments. I just jammed power. Maybe I dreamed it. It happened so fast," she said.
"Nah, we was definitely slewing. You saved the ship, Lieutenant."
Buccari smiled and flexed her biceps. She turned to Shannon. "Let's prepare a sitrep for Commander Quinn."
* * *
Hudson read Buccari's message aloud over the general circuit. References to the possibility of intelligent life captured Quinn's attention, but only momentarily. Quinn's focus—the focus ofeveryone on the corvette—was the status of the EPL. The lander was their bridge to existence, their ladder to life. The corvette was starting to feel like a coffin.
Rhodes and Wilson, at their respective watch stations, were playing chess on one of the corvette's computers. Quinn brought up the three-dimensional representation of their game on his own monitor. It was nearing end game. Rhodes, playing black, was vulnerable to white's rook and pawn attack. It looked like mate in less than five moves. Quinn changed screens and ran a systems check, sardonically chuckling at the ruinous state of his ship. His thoughts wandered involuntarily back to the motherships and to his wife. With conscious effort, he swept away the depressing thoughts and returned to the chess game.
"Sir, I downlinked the diagnostics and EPL maintenance data. Anything else?" Hudson asked, sitting at his watch station on the flight deck.
Quinn sat silently. Buccari and Jones were the best apple crew in the fleet. It was up to them to get the lander back to the corvette. There was nothing more he could do.
"Tell her good luck," Quinn replied, staring through the viewscreen. He shook off his dread and returned to the instruments.
"Fifteen down safe and six to go…counting Buccari and Jones," Hudson chattered over the intercom. "This planet looks more like home every day. Not paradise—whatever that is—but fresh air and water, and life. Flatulent flowers, big bats with bows, and fifty kilo carnivores."
"Anything is better than slow death in a tin can," Rhodes responded over the intercom. Quinn brought the chess game back up. Rhodes made a defensive move.
"Ah, Virgil, my friend," said Wilson over the intercom. "We don't know what we'll find down there now, do we? It may well turn out in a few days we'll wish we had the privilege of dying in space, surrounded by things we understand."
"Horsebleep, Gunner!" responded Rhodes. "You're dead for sure in this bucket. It's only a matter of weeks before it falls out of orbit, and we'll be dying of thirst long before that. I don't care what you say, you're like the rest of us; if you can delay pain and death, you will."
The intercom went silent. Hudson finally reported back: message to Buccari received and understood. Quinn acknowledged and returned to monitor the game. Rhodes's defensive situation was getting worse. Wilson's rook relentlessly menaced the black king, leaving Rhodes's position untenable. Yet Rhodes refused to concede, desperately seeking a counter that would take the pressure from his king and shift the weight of the attack to his opponent.
"Same-day rule!" Wilson needled. "You still there, Virgil?" Rhodes grunted an obscenity over the circuit. Wilson continued. "No, I reckon survival instinct says it's better to get off this burned-out pile of metal and to live for as long as we can. I feel it, too. I want to get down. But just wait—it's warm here. I don't want to die in the cold."
"You're wearing your helmet too tight," answered Rhodes's disembodied voice. "You're going to live fifty more years, Gunner, and we'll find you a regular tropical island down there. It's a whole new world. No people… except us. Here's my move."
"You know, Virgil," Wilson said quietly. "Chess is a lot like life. You start off with lots of power, but it ain't developed—you can't use it. You have to try things. Some things work, some don't. If you use your pieces well, you get to play longer, but there's no getting around it—sooner or later you start to lose your pieces, your fuel, your power. And after a while, you're down to the endgame, making do with only the last few pieces, kinda like getting the most out of an old dog, or an old horse—or an old beat up corvette." Wilson made a seemingly distant and unrelated move.
Rhodes advanced a piece. "Okay, Gunner. Enough bullshit. Your move."
Quinn watched as Wilson moved the white bishop with tantalizing slowness across the board, attacking the black king. "Time to start another game, Virgil. Checkmate."
Chapter 9. Decisions
She strapped into the cockpit. All systems were responding, but there was no hint of what had caused the lander to misbehave. Buccari read through the ignition and takeoff checklists. She was nervous. She had performed full-manual takeoffs, but only from Earth. Earth, even with its encompassing strife and poverty, had abundant recovery fields, and the penalty for failing to make orbit was simply coasting to a runway, refueling and trying again, or worst case—having someone do it for you. This was her first cold-iron restart from the surface of an alien planet. She would get only one chance to do it right. Fuel was critical, and anything short of complete success would mean leaving four men stranded on the corvette for the rest of their very short lives.
She peered out. The sky was a glorious mixture of coral and orange, with violet and gray-scalloped clouds spaced evenly overhead, a splendid reward for the coming of night. A solitary erect figure stood in the distance, fading into the dusk—Shannon. The other Marines were not visible, but she knew they were there, deployed as guards around the EPL. Guards against what?
She was anxious to return to the planet; she had seen flowers and smelled natural air. The corvette was dying, and life in space was a poor substitute for living under the warm sun of a virgin planet. But then she put her hands on the controls and felt the narcotic thrill of latent speed and power. The heavy, trigger-laden control stick transmitted an electric sensation, a stimulation resonating deep within her. The massive throttle accepted her strong grip and promised explosive acceleration beyond dimension. She donned her helmet and secured the fittings; the hiss of air brought back her professional world, like a light switch illuminating a dark room.
"Okay, Boats. Ready for ignition. Checking good."
"Checking good, Lieutenant," Jones responded. "Temperatures and pressures in the green. Starting injector sequence."
Jones read off the checklist and Buccari responded with the countdown. At time zero Jones initiated ignition sequence; fuel pressures climbed into actuator ranges; the tertiaries ignited, providing power and superheat. At ignition plus three seconds main igniters commenced detonating in stages; a low-level static rasped in Buccari's helmet speakers. The hover blaster screamed their high-pitched screech, and the secondaries fired from the tail. The EPL slowly lifted from the exhaust-battered rocks. The annunciator panel indicated the landing skids and stabilizer nozzles were stowed. The main engines gimbaled to line up with the lander's arcing center of gravity as the nose of the craft searched for vertical. Buccari's firm hands rode the controls, balancing the craft on a column of fire. At ignition-plus-six, the lander's main engines exploded with a monstrous kick of power, crushing Buccari into her seat. She grasped the catapult handles adjacent to throttle and sidestick, acceleration forces clawing at the muscles of her forearms and neck. Fighting the leaden inertia of her body and the dullness of her mind caused by the compression of her brain, she forced herself to concentrate on the lancing flight of the lander. Her vision tunneled, eradicating peripheral vision; her eyeballs rattled in her skull. Seconds seemed like hours, but they were mere seconds. The acceleration schedule altered dramatically; she adjusted g-loading, dropping it consistent with dynamic pressure optimizations. Buccari flexed her arms and shoulders against the cramping strain.
"Nice job, Lieutenant," Jones said. "Never wavere
d from profile. Escape velocity in fifteen. Temperatures stable. Checking good."
"Roger, Boats," she exhaled. "Checking good." She smiled, proud of herself. Full-manual takeoffs from planetary gravity were done only in an emergency. Things could go very wrong, very fast. She peered ahead, into the deep purple of the thinning atmosphere.
* * *
The hunters breathlessly watched the phosphorescent fireball scream into the pastel heavens, a white-hot exhaust trailing an immense tongue of orange flame. As the silver-tipped explosion neared the high wispy clouds, the roaring missile brush-stroked brilliant shades of red and yellow instantaneously across their dark undersides. The glowing rapier leapt from the planet's shadow and into direct sunlight, trailing a glorious and starkly white plume. Braan rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe out the fiery ghost images. Gradually they faded, allowing his night vision to adapt to the descending dusk. Braan hopped from the rocks. Hunters not on watch followed, congregating in the rocky clearing adjacent to their cave. They sat dumbly.
"Even if not gods, they are frightening beyond comprehension," Craag spoke at last.
"Gods would be less frightening," Bott'a said.
"They are not gods," Braan added softly. "I have been near to them. They are frightened. perhaps more frightened than we."
"Then they are dangerous, for the frightened eagle crushes its own egg," Craag said. Silence returned to the little clearing. Bott'a jumped lightly to his feet and motioned to Kibba. The watch mates wordlessly departed through the bushes. It was their turn to collect food, and fishing was too good to sit around talking. Brappa followed. Craag remained.
"Thy plan, Braan-our-leader?" Craag asked directly.
Braan was not offended. Craag had proven his loyalty many times over. By waiting for the others to depart he had rendered due respect. Braan looked the warrior in the eye, done only in challenge or in affection, and smiled to indicate the latter.
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