Tracked on Predator Planet (Predator Planet Series)

by Vicky L. Holt.

  23

  I stomped my way back to the EEP and entered through the hatch. “VELMA, will removing my helmet outside of the ship hasten the onset of the cyanobacteria’s symptoms?”

  “No. It has already infected your blood. Records indicate a gradual worsening of symptoms beginning with congestion, runny nose and sneezing, followed by mild clumsiness and confusion. Eventually, weakness and fever will overtake your body, followed by lethargy, disorientation, and systemic organ failure. You may experience myocardial infarction.”

  Cold chills ran down my spine. “VELMA, we might need to work on your bedside manner.” I stared into the reflective surface of my pod that I used as a mirror. I felt fine so far, and after inspecting the whites of my eyes and my throat, I couldn’t tell that the bacteria was working its way toward killing me dead. “What about the antibiotics you administered?”

  “Over time, the bacteria will mutate its properties, rendering it ineffective,” VELMA said. “The human who left the message, Esra Weaver, did not have the benefit of early antibiotic dosing, however. It is possible that early detection and medicines could bolster your body’s ability to defeat the infection.”

  “Ah, that’s a little better,” I said. “Thanks for the hope.”

  “You are welcome.”

  I stood with my hands gripped at the counter by the console, arms extended, shoulders tense, and head dropped. “I need a new plan.”

  VELMA didn’t answer, but it was just as well.

  My life had gone from trapping and skinning rodents to tracking a potential ally, and now … somehow to finding these sources for something VELMA called a bacteriophage. I had to find the indigenous male, fast. Since removing my helmet wouldn’t make my symptoms worse, I could travel farther and longer. Stopping to eat and drink. I needed to find him before the infection overtook my body.

  I laid on the exam table. “VELMA, supply my suit’s medicine reservoirs with the antibiotic. I need it to last five days.”

  “Are you leaving the Emergency Egress Pod?”

  “Yes. If you need those bacteriophages, I must find the hunter. He must know what the Holy Waters are, and hopefully he knows where to find a cave pool.” I closed my eyes and ignored the gentle prodding of my suit’s implanted IV ports and connectors. “I have to hunt the hunter in order to save my own life,” I said on a humorless laugh.

  Thanks, Dad.

  After my suit prep, I knelt and stuffed my pack with everything I thought I would need over the next few days. This time, I actually had time to prep, and I was going to use it. Food, blanket, water filter canister, tools, and rope.

  I cast a lingering glance at my CMM, collecting dust at this point, and was reminded that I had neglected to download all the nanosatellite array information into it. With all that data, I could compile some mass system configurations and predict things. The weather, for example. It would have to wait five more days.

  I found a poncho and put that in my pack, too.

  Outside, I grabbed my machete and javelin. Maybe he hadn’t traveled as far as his cave. But if he had, the first leg of my journey would be easy.

  Thoughts of the cougar demon, the huge salamander-snakes, the white and gray dire wolves, and the giant reptiles paraded across my mind.

  Okay, relatively easy. VELMA had the coordinates of his cave. She could direct me straight there. It made sense he would return to it, as he had been working on a perimeter of his own before the rockfall had destroyed it.

  I inhaled deeply through my nose and looked past the pile of bones into the dark forest. I might be heading toward certain death again. I didn’t want to die, but survival was about more than just evading predators now. I had a predator inside of me, cyanobacteria hunting down and devouring my healthy cells, and even if I never saw another creature again, I might die. I could die at the claws of a predator today or succumb to a bacterium tomorrow; in the end, it was all the same fate. I swallowed and licked my lips.

  Embrace death.

  My stride faltered. The image of the man lying at my feet bleeding out struck fast and hard. I sank to my knees for a second, reliving the horror of that fateful day. Death followed me everywhere.

  No. I made fists and stood, determination setting my jaw. As I recalled every living thing I’d killed in this place, I realized … I brought death with me like a stain. Everywhere I went. I swallowed and stared at my boots for a minute. I wanted to hear words of comfort from my father, but he was silent. I shook my head and carried on.

  With VELMA transmitting a high frequency pulse to act as a repellant, wasps, millipedes, and other insect-type nuisances would leave me alone. I crossed my fingers, hoping it might work for other creatures, too.

  Noting the strange, wrinkly throat bags on many of the carnivores here, I suspected the eerie silence of the planet had something to do with those. Just like dogs on earth could hear frequencies humans couldn’t, perhaps the wildlife here was on some higher-pitched wavelength.

  I passed my perimeter and the tree line where my neglected snares lay dormant. Following the coordinates VELMA had given me, I trekked in a straight line. I knew which trees to avoid and diverted from the path when necessary.

  With sound amplified in my helmet, I listened to the strident calls of a bird. It was louder than all the creatures apart from the buzzing black-and-orange wasps. It flitted high above, tittering at times, and at others, shrieking in long bursts. I caught the verdant flashes of its purple-and-green feathers whenever I looked up.

  I hacked through stubborn obstacles in my hike, preferring to use the javelin to push aside foliage.

  A male his size, he was sure to leave trace of his passing. Stems broken off shrubbery, cracked branches, or leaves shorn from a tree limb.

  But to spend any time on this planet, one had to be skilled. If he didn’t want to be found …

  I swallowed and continued to search. I ranged my search outward, recalling my father’s lessons. “To be in the forest is to be patient,” he’d said. “The trees have witnessed many lives and deaths. They bear witness to revolutions; they are the text of history humans must learn to read.”

  I had yet to see a boot print. The grasses grew in lumpy tussocks, and when I stepped on them, they sprung back up within seconds.

  “To rush in the forest is to die. Think of the predators. They lie in wait. Watching for the right moment. The advantage in the forest is patience. Prey who outlive their peers are the most patient of all.”

  I let my fingers sift through the deep red leaves of a low bush. Untouched.

  A tree with a split bole and tendrils snaking out from its base beckoned me. The tendrils twitched lazily like cats’ tails. Yeah, no thanks.

  Poking gingerly in the brush, leery of disturbing another cougar demon or a yet undiscovered carnivore, I kept my wits about me. Despite the silence, or maybe because of it, my heart raced, and my breaths came in shallow pants. I gripped my weapons tight, knuckles aching from the strain.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision for the task at hand. Once the suns set, it would be too dark to find a good place to bed down, and my helmet light would attract unwanted attention. Where was he? Walking, I still prodded beside my path, looking for bowers or a cave, anything that had a defensible side, in case I needed it.

  “Pattee, using UV sensors combined with augmented digitization, I have detected the presence of a large mammal at your one o’clock, six meters out.”

  I stopped and crouched, swallowing a lump.

  “Show me.”

  My helmet’s visor switched to UV, and I was plummeted into an alien landscape like no other. I looked into the darkness, where now the ghostly symmetry of patterns unseen by the naked eye glowed. Subtle green creatures populated my view. Hundreds of thousands of them. They crawled, flew, burrowed, and climbed. Mouth agape, I realized the fluorescing creatures were insects. They ranged in size from miniscule to palm sized. And they were everywhere.

  The foliage took on hues of cr
imson, gray, deep purple, and navy blue. With the velvety backdrop, the insects glowed like neon. A trail of creeping ants stretched for meters, crossing the path in front of me. A huge butterfly-like insect floated above me, circling away from my helmet as if repelled and toward a huge round blossom I hadn’t noticed with my natural eyes. It landed on it, and a spiny proboscis unfurled to sip the blossom’s nectar.

  I still hadn’t detected the mammal VELMA had warned me about.

  “VELMA, where is the …?” My voice dropped.

  At my one o’clock, about six meters away just as VELMA had said, a black void erased the riot of jewel tones that surrounded me.

  “Never mind,” I whispered.

  If I peered more closely, I could see it wasn’t a void after all, just a deeper shade of navy blue. The tips of its furry coat shimmered with the slightest sparkle of violet. Every other surface in the forest was covered in a symmetrical pattern of colored dots and lines, as if the creators of this world had left blueprints behind on all the plant matter.

  “Switch to daylight,” I told VELMA. The mammal disappeared among the greenery of the jungle.

  I squinted, disbelieving. There was nothing except branches, leaves, and trunks. I traced the trunk of a flowering bush, but nothing interrupted its lines. “UV vision, please.”

  It was there. A huge creature, as big as a grizzly bear, big as life, and practically in front of me. I hadn’t seen its eyes, so I assumed it faced away from me.

  I couldn’t make a sound if I wanted a chance at staying alive long enough to benefit healing from the bacterial infection. The odds of this thing being harmless were slim to none.

  With UV still activated, I tried to make out its shape and see how many limbs it had. Where was its head? Or tail? What kind of defensive evolutionary adaptions did it have? Beak, talons, claws, clubbed tail? The lower half of its body was obscured by the jungle leaves swaying in a slight breeze, the swirling colors dizzying everywhere they mingled.

  Looking at the animal’s dark bulk relieved the strain of my eyes. It appeared to be resting, so I assumed the long slope was its back, and its limbs must be curled underneath it. The reptilian creature that had bit my hand had had six legs. The dire wolves had four eyes. I couldn’t make assumptions about this thing’s configuration.

  The tickle in the back of my throat made me want to cough. But succumbing now was not an option, even though it wouldn’t hear me with my microphone off. I swallowed the prickling sensation in my throat and adjusted my grip on the javelin.

  I had a decision to make.

  Its size alone was enough to kill me with a well-placed swipe of a limb or a lunge that knocked me down. It could have the four-inch claws of a grizzly bear or a mouthful of teeth like those dinosaur reptiles. Its camouflage was … otherworldly.

  If I alerted it to my presence, I would be battling for my life. It was close enough that I doubted I could sneak by without it hearing me. That left me with only one choice: drive my javelin deep into its body while it slept.

  I hated this place. The killing. Kill or be killed. Death and dying. Shaking my head at the futility of it all, I imagined trying to make peace with death. It seemed impossible.

  I inched the javelin up to shoulder-height, preparing to use it. My fingers flexed on the wood.

  I wasn’t close enough to drive it between its shoulder blades—the safest way to avoid having to fight it—but I was too close to throw the javelin and wound it effectively.

  I bit my lip.

  “Do you require assistance?” VELMA asked.

  “Tell me, VELMA,” I said. “Did your programmers include ethical theory in your code?”

  “Of course.”

  I chuckled without humor. “Then, theoretically, you could assist me, but I’m going to go with my gut on this one.” With the cyanobacteria taking up residence inside my blood, I knew what it was like to not be given a fighting chance. I couldn’t do it to this regal sleeping giant. And if I won, then I earned the right to its pelt. A girl could use that kind of camouflage in this wilderness.

  Rising to my full height, I retreated three huge strides as quietly as I could. I needed a tad more distance for my javelin to gain momentum. Then, I toggled my mic. “Oh, Great Spirit,” I said. “Beautiful is the day of my death.”

  The creature heard me. It swiveled its huge head until its four yellow eyes peered out of the navy velvet triangle of its face. It opened its huge maw to reveal two rows of glowing sharp white teeth, but if it roared, I heard nothing. Maybe it hissed? It stared and blinked, the fur on its back rippling as it bunched its muscles to swerve and meet me. This thing was as big as a Kodiak bear. It had to be ten feet tall if it rose to standing, and it must weigh sixteen hundred pounds if it was an ounce. I had positional advantage, but little else.

  I kept a slight bend in my knees and slid my right leg behind me for my driving force.

  Surrounding color-speckled foliage swayed as the mammal moved, trying to face me full on. But I wouldn’t let it get that far. Watching with a pounding heart, I waited for it to open its mouth just one more time, preferably before it pounced. It brought a huge paw forward and whipped a long tail behind it, thrashing striped leaves in its wake, and using it for leverage to twist its body. I willed it to open its mouth again.

  “Come on, beast,” I said on a pant.

  It worked.

  Its mouth opened as it lunged, creating an angled target framed by its teeth, and I threw the javelin with every ounce of strength, bringing energy up from my right foot through my body to my shoulder and elbow, flinging it straight and true. The sharp tip struck home, finding entry into soft tissue at the back of its throat, but it didn’t cut short the lunge.

  I tucked and rolled to my left with a scream, diving into gray shrubbery spotted with pink ovoid shapes, avoiding the bulk of its weight, but not by much.

  I cried out when it collapsed on my leg. Something pulled my quadricep, but I yanked my leg out from under its huge limb anyway.

  It wasn’t dead. It thrashed, a dark smudge surrounded by glowing green insects and neon pistils and stamens, my javelin burrowing deeper the harder it fought to knock it away with its huge paws. The claws were at least four inches long, but they weren’t scratching at me; it wrestled with the javelin’s length instead. My throw hadn’t had enough power to kill it instantly. I had failed.

  My machete felt heavy; I just had to get close enough to finish the creature off. Its misery was my own. I frowned, tossed my machete to my right hand, and tried to approach, but its other three limbs flailed with their huge claws.

  Had I made the wrong choice? Would it have been better to kill it unawares? Emotion swelled in my breast. Maybe it was pity or sadness, but it forced me to blink away tears as I tried to find a way to end the beast’s agony. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to it. “I’m so sorry.”

  24

  Satisfied she would have enough meat for a few days, I made my way back through the underbrush, looking forward to seeing the human again. If only for a bit of companionship and to share a meal. I entered the glade, noting the lonely desolation where it used to seem full of life and activity. Smoke no longer rose from the fire. Signs of habitation had been flooded out of the glen.

  I trudged to the ship and laid my offerings in a pile just outside the hatch. I scratched at the panel, unsure how to announce my arrival. We hadn’t exchanged our names. I slapped at the panel, but no sound emanated from within. Concerned, I walked around to the window and peered in.

  She was not inside.

  Startled, I stepped back, immediately looking to the ground. Hivelt had trampled all over the space where her prints might have told the story of her departure.

  I growled at my foolhardiness.

  Studying the ground, I didn’t move until I had established the probable route she had taken to the tree line. I trod carefully, avoiding her trail sign. What had drawn her away from her ship and safety? Did she not learn anything from the last time she had d
one so?

  I clamped down on my tongue. It was not as if we could have told each other of our plans. I knew but one word of her language.

  At a patch of ground free of grass, I noted two prints of her left boot. They both faced the tree line, but one print left a deeper impression than the other. I squatted to study the track more closely. She had approached the tree line twice. The first time to look for me. And when she couldn’t find me, she had returned to her ship and gathered supplies. It was the only explanation for the deeper print.

  I sighed and perused the wilderness. Where had she gone? Why had she gone? If she was, in fact, looking for Hivelt, then she must have made her way to my cave again.

  I suffered a grim smile.

  The little tracker would be hunted down like my prey, but she had nothing to fear from this predator.

  I debated only a moment. Checking the progress of the suns across the sky, I knew I could find her before nightfall. I had no need to bring the fresh kills with me.

  Once again, I heard the calls of the jodaxl in the distant treetops. It would be a simple matter to follow her sign into the deep ikfal. I found the place she had paused at her snares and further in where she had left the trail to avoid the trailing vines from the forest-teeth tree. Good.

  I itched to run, but caution persuaded me to stick to her trail lest she leave it.

  The last time she had traveled this way, she had battled a shegoshe-tax. I, myself, had killed the poisonous talathel on this very path. I would not feel assurance until she was safe in my sight or ensconced in her sturdy ship.

  Pushing through the overgrowth, I scanned ahead. The jodaxl cries ceased.

  I paused.

  The jodaxl feared nothing save the … tree thief. It was a silly name for the furry mammoth beast that climbed trees to steal jodaxl eggs. It could fell an iktheka who wasn’t paying attention. It feasted on any food it desired in the ikfal, from berries, to eggs, to juvenile rokhura. The pazathel-nax knew to avoid it as well.

  My heart thumped in my chest, urging me faster.