The video hadn’t prepared me at all.
The bead light shone bright enough to reveal the creature was eight feet long, with four segments, and too many legs to count in one pass. It waved a long-curved spike that protruded from behind its bulbous head. The head had a hundred eyes and serrated, black mandibles that clicked and snapped.
Hivelt grasped my shoulder and stood in front of me, blocking my view.
“Stay behind me, Pattee,” he said. “Watch how she fights before you enter the fray.”
Stricken by the unorthodox treatment, I hefted my javelin and studied what I could see of the battle as Naraxthel, Hivelt, Esra, and Raxthezana fought the huge predator.
Swords caught the light from their helmets as well as the bead light on the wall.
The agothe-fax’s eyes glimmered, and my attention lasered on a sparkle at the tip of her striker. The striker waved. The agothe-fax couldn’t decide where to lance, so she used multiple legs to hamper sword strikes. Some crumpled or were severed, but it didn’t stop her advance from the side tunnel I’d missed.
Didn’t someone say the beasts traveled in twos on this planet? Where was the second one?
Heart in my throat, I adjusted my grip on my javelin and held the loaned dagger in my left. I crouched and focused my attention on the dark tunnel at the edge of the shadows.
The sounds of clashing metal and feral grunts punctuated by deadened thuds ratcheted up the suspense.
“VELMA, what else is out there?”
“Scanning. Anomalies detected.”
Damn.
I saw the action in my peripheral vision, but my instincts led me to approach the tunnel from which the monster had emerged.
I switched to UV vision, but it was sketchy. Something about this mountain range didn’t like our tech. I flipped to night vision, and my heart stopped.
A pack of spider-beasts hurtled toward us. While they were smaller than the monster my comrades fought, there were so many sets of eyes and legs that I couldn’t tell how many there were.
“Incoming!” I shouted.
The tunnel was wide enough that several could emerge at once, so I wanted to stem the flow. While my javelin had reach, it was unwieldy in the tunnels. I swapped weapons in my hands and planned to strike with vicious jabs from my dagger as they crawled out.
I wasn’t prepared when they swarmed out across the ceiling as well as the ground, and my scream echoed through the tunnels.
Chaos and madness ensued.
With my heart beating triple time, I lost all connection to reality. I could no longer feel the solid ground beneath my feet or hear my rapid-fire breaths in my helmet.
Everything was spider legs, and tough exoskeleton bodies, and mandibles.
I stabbed and grunted, my fear honing my desperation into lethal ferocity. I could feel them at my back, but I focused on dealing blows within my reach. I lost track of time. I couldn’t hear or see my companions, and when the creatures thinned out in front of me, I spun to hammer away at the ones teeming across the wall behind me. A powerful thud hit my helmet, and legs obscured my vision.
I retched, knowing a huge spider had clamped on my helmet, trying to take my head off. My dagger arm grew tired, so I used the javelin in my left hand to impale spider bodies farther from my reach. Their mates tried to climb over and around my spear, but I kept my grip tight.
I swung my right elbow back, dislodging another from its climb up my back. The one on my head hadn’t budged; I imagined its mandibles trying to find purchase on my slick helmet.
I screamed again and raced toward a tunnel wall, charging like a bull. With a sickening crunch, I killed it when I rammed my head into the cave.
Goo smeared my visor, but I couldn’t wipe it away. My hands were filled with weapons.
Agothe-fax blood stirred my anger, and I renewed my fight with my right arm’s dagger.
Downward strikes were the most effective, but I swung, parried, and gutted without prejudice. When at last I couldn’t feel legs crawling all over my body, I stood panting and looking around at the heap of gooey broken legs and flopping bodies.
When I looked up, I saw the hunters and Esra staring at me. I switched to natural vision.
No one spoke.
I panted and glanced at my weapons, gore dripping from the blades.
“Pattee is my heart mate,” Hivelt said, staring at me with both fists at his waist, his back to the slain beast. As if anyone contested him.
Raxthezana chuckled and turned to move the giant carcass. While he bent to push, I saw its striker rise.
“Wait!” I lifted my javelin to throw, but the striker was too fast.
When it struck Hivelt in the joint between his neck and helmet plates, he collapsed.
Time dilated.
The alien I’d tracked all over this godforsaken planet, the one who single-handedly pulled my ship away from the ledge, who I had laughed with and cried in front of, lay helpless and vulnerable on the ground.
My heart seized. “Hivelt!” I dropped my weapons and ran to him, noting Raxthezana as he severed the agothe-fax’s striker from its body.
Too little too late.
I dropped to my knees. “Hivelt,” I whispered. I looked up to his brethren. “What do I do?”
Naraxthel knelt beside me, a beautiful bottle in his hands.
“Remove his helmet,” he said, his voice a calm counterpoint to my panicking whimpers.
I found the latch and struggled to remove it. Esra came and helped carry the helmet so I could cradle his head.
His eyes were open, staring at me.
“Hivelt?” I whispered again, searching his eyes.
“My greatest joy,” VELMA translated his words in my ear.
“You’re not going anywhere, Hivelt,” I said, my voice lowering.
Naraxthel held the bottle near Hivelt’s lips. “Drink, my brother,” he said. “The Elder Sister drop.” He tilted the bottle so a single drop dripped onto Hivelt’s lips. Then he unstopped a second spout in the bottle. “The Younger Sister drop.”
I touched Hivelt’s lips to open them so the drops could slide into his mouth. I was startled to see his tongue black, where it had always been dark pink before. In alarm, I looked at Naraxthel, but he wore his helmet. Damn these aliens and their hideous helmets. I wanted to see their eyes. Their faces. Their expressions.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked Naraxthel. My heart ached. Memories of stepping over my dead father’s body swamped me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block it out.
“Why Dad? Why did you break the law?” I asked him through the glass at the detention facility. I couldn’t hide my tears or the pain of the years from my face.
He looked away from me and then met my eyes. “Don’t you know, Pattee? Because I wasn’t good enough to do anything else.”
My memory switched to the moment I had stood over my father’s killer. My hands were covered in his blood. I turned to my father’s body and collapsed by him, listening for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. The Chief Peace Officer found me like that and assumed the blood was from my father’s wound. I didn’t correct him.
“The Holy Waters of Shegoshel will bring him back to life,” Naraxthel said in a soft voice.
Hilvet was dead?
I couldn’t help the agonized cry that erupted from my mouth.
Esra held me tight. “He’s going to live,” she said in a fierce voice. “He’s going to recover, and you guys are going to make the thickest damn babies this planet has ever seen.”
I gripped Esra’s arm with one of my own, and my other hand rested over Hivelt’s chest armor. I looked up at Raxthezana, who stood still and ominous with his helmet that looked like a prehistoric shark.
“We will carry him out of the Tunnel,” he said.
Esra helped me replace Hilvet’s helmet, and Raxthezana and Naraxthel carried his mammoth weight, while Esra took point, and I had rearguard. Our mettle tested, they knew we could protect them despite o
ur smaller stature.
Mighty wasn’t just strength and size but also will and courage. And stubbornness. If my stubbornness and pride were enough, Hivelt would be walking out of this nightmare on his own two legs, though.
I let the tears fall inside my Galvanite-infused helmet, but I gripped my weapons tight, eager to battle anything else that came our way. I could fight enemies I could see. I was powerless in the face of things I didn’t understand, but I was trying not to leave my hope behind in the treacherous cave.
55
The Ikma Scabmal Kama feasted on Pattee’s bloody corpse, raising her head to look at me with blood-smeared fangs. “Your heart mate is delicious,” she said.
I roared, pulling at the chains that held my wrists and ankles.
The nightmare vision changed.
Pattee running from me, turning to laugh, then picking up a burst of speed through a field of meadow grasses on Ikshe. She wore a white dress but nothing on her feet. Her strange little feet disappeared each time she ran forward, and I tried to catch her. She dodged out of my way, her laugh a ripple of joy. She jumped and evaporated before my eyes, and in her place stood little Afarax, petting the agothe-talaza as if it were a simple harvest snake.
I held my hand out, my breath caught in my throat. “Afarax, put the pretty snake down and come to your father.” I beckoned at her with my curved fingers. “Come, little Afarax.”
“I don’t have a father,” she said, her voice sweet and soft. Her tiny hands petted the deadly serpent’s head.
Its mesmerizing eyes stared at me, drunk me into itself, and I spun inside, my body and organs displaced, swirling in a colorful tunnel, diving into the bowels of the poisonous snake.
The vision changed again.
I sat in student’s pose at the top of a mountain. The sound of chimes tinkled in my ears. A clap of thunder reverberated up through my body as I sat on cold rock, free of my armor. I looked down, patting at my bare skin.
“You have no need for armor here,” a deep male voice rumbled.
I looked up, but a dark cave entrance was all I saw.
A huge golden bird unlike any I had ever seen folded its wings as it drifted on a gust of wind and landed before the cave. Its huge talons clicked on the stony ground.
“Who are you?” I asked it.
“I am Animikii,” it said. “I am a friend of your heart mate. She summoned us to attend you in your hour of need.” His regal head tilted to indicate others.
At first glance, I thought the shegoshe-tax stalked out from the cave, but I realized this was more massive, more intimidating, and more lethal—with its iridescent scales, and golden furred ears, and long curving fangs. Its snout was reptilian; its gaze was lazy … or perhaps all-knowing.
“I am Mishibizhiw,” it said. His tongue reached out to swipe at a wound on my neck.
The male voice from the cave spoke again. “Are you ready?”
I felt a tenderness from the voice, as if from a doting mother. “For what?” My heart thudded in the new place. I missed Pattee. I wanted to hold her hand. To kiss her lips. To stare into her eyes. And to know all her thoughts.
“To live the life in store for you,” the voice said.
Movement from the cave drew my eye.
A massive male figure stepped out of the cave. He wore bells around his ankles. His headdress sported feathers of every species in the universe and trailed down to the ground. His dark eyes and sand-colored skin recalled to mind Pattee’s features.
“You are full of wonder,” I said, my voice reverent.
“And so are you,” the giant personage said, dipping his head toward me. “Give my love to Pattee when you see her again.”
Spinning. And spinning.
Blackness. The deepest black.
Light and heat. The brightest light.
And more spinning.
There was no Hivelt. There was only spinning.
56
Moon Shield was a mesa that jutted up from the moraine in a vast plateau. It had scrubby brush and a lot of rocks. Esra brought me several a day, showing me their colors and exclaiming the events of Ikthe’s geological history that would have caused them to form and rise all the way up here.
I could see her coming now, beyond the racks upon racks for drying meat that Raxkarax had built while we were in the Magnetic Burst Field.
Raxthezana and Naraxthel were collecting water.
I brushed my fingers through Hivelt’s feathered hair. His head was in my lap, and I uncapped my water bottle to give him another drink. I poured with care and used my palm to close his mouth and stroke under his chin so he would swallow. “Wake to me, Hivelt,” I whispered, using his unique phrasing.
“Anything?” Esra asked, handing me a root.
It was already cleaned of the dirt and sand, so I bit into it, relishing its hearty flavor.
“Not yet,” I said after I swallowed. “But I think his color looks good, and his tongue is definitely darker pink than it was a few days ago.”
“BoKama said she can’t spare a Maikshe,” Esra said, squatting beside me. “The Kama is too suspicious. But BoKama sent VELMA several images of plants the Maikshe said we should look for.” Esra pulled out her pouch. “I found one of the plants. It grows up here, if you can believe it.” She held out the brown frayed leaves in her white palm. “Smell. They smell like cinnamon.”
I leaned down and inhaled, tears pricking my eyes at the memory. “I haven’t smelled cinnamon in forever,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said with a smile. “BoKama said to brew it with water and make a tea. I’ll get on that now.” She sat by our fire pit and started the fire with a couple flicks of her wrist and two stones.
“You’re disturbingly excellent at that,” I told her.
“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. “I’m good with rocks. I bet this is the easiest part of our stay here. Once Hivelt wakes up, we’ll start our quest for real.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”
She met my gaze. “It’s been a long time since I had a friend, Pattee,” she said. “I’m happy to do these little things.”
“I had a friend on Lucidity.” My hands drifted through Hivelt’s hair, and I looked out over the moraine.
Esra raised a brow. “You never mentioned that.”
“I know,” I said. “It hurt to think about never seeing her again. But I’m getting used to this feeling of loss.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Amity was the ray of sunshine to my analytical monotonous life,” I said with a small smile. “She made me laugh as often as she could. It became a game to her.”
“I would have liked to have known her,” Esra said. “And I would love to hear you laugh more.” She smiled at me, and I gave her a half-smile in return. “I wonder how many we lost on the Lucidity. Tell me again what you heard before you boarded your pod?”
Hivelt’s silky hair passed between my fingers, and I leaned closer so I could smell him. I loved his smell and the textures of his hair and skin beneath my fingers.
“I heard the klaxons,” I said. “I was working on one of the mechs, and it was strange because we had just had a cosmic storm drill a couple days before. But the signal was off. It was the Under-Attack alarm.”
“Something attacked Lucidity. The pods ejected, and we ended up here, weeks apart,” she summarized.
“Yeah.”
“Naraxthel says the Magnetic Burst Field and Black Heart Mountain are both terrible areas for reception. He’s not worried that we haven’t heard from Natheka yet,” she said. “But I am.”
“Me too,” I said. “If something can go wrong …”
“It will.”
We both sighed.
“And VELMA’s still sending out pings, right?” I asked her.
“Yep.”
We didn’t say it, but I guessed we both doubted there was a survivor from the crashed pod, and without receiving any pings from others, we doubted the existence of two mor
e humans somewhere on Ikthe.
“Esra,” I said, my mouth a frown. “You don’t suppose the others could have landed on Ikshe?”
Esra’s fair skin paled. “That would be bad,” she said. We stared at each other but said nothing else.
Voices drew our attention. Naraxthel and Raxthezana returned with water.
“Pattee, Raxkarax suggested you join him on a hunt,” Naraxthel said. “It will do you good to move around and hone your skills.”
My back did ache, but I looked down at Hivelt’s peaceful face. I had memorized the slant of his brows, the curve of his jaw, and his full lips. If Sleeping Beauty was accurate at all, he would have awakened a long time ago when I allowed myself a single kiss on his mouth, to return the one he had given me when I cried. More than that seemed wrong somehow.
“Raxkarax waits at the head of the trail,” Naraxthel said, then bent to touch Esra’s head. He and Raxthezana poured water into the huge basin. “We will bathe his armor.”
I positioned Hivelt’s head on his cushion and caressed his cheek.
His breathing was steady, his heartbeats normal. He slept. VELMA had assured me his vital signs were all within normal ranges for his race.
“Okay, I’ll hunt.” I put on my gloves and helmet and snatched up my weapons, following the dusty path to the trailhead, where a rocky descent left Moon Shield and joined another gravel trail on the moraine.
Raxkarax, he of the agothe-fax helmet, waited. He saluted me with a clawed finger, then turned, and led the way.
“We need smaller game,” he said. “There is a wood this way where we might find some jokapazathel.”
“Have you set snares?”
He snorted. “Had I known we would be here this long, I would have,” he said. “But they are easy enough to catch.” He gestured to the small stand of trees at my right. “In there. I will move farther down. Take care not to be eaten.” He always told me that, but this ecosystem had been free of the giant monsters that haunted my nightmares.
I returned his salute and entered the trees, whispering a Prayer of Thanksgiving, though my heart ached from yearnings. Hivelt, the crashed pod, the two possible other survivors based on a hunch, Amity, and the glade where I had thought I would live out my days. How did the human spirit endure loss after loss? Was grief meant to be a constant companion throughout life? And yet if I tempered the sadness with gratitude for having experienced the people I missed, I was able to find a balance inside my heart. However brief, those little joys had once lightened my soul. “Great Spirit, I give thanks for my life and for the abundance on this planet. Here I leave an offering in exchange for the life I hope to preserve by taking another.” I sprinkled wild rice from my cache.
Tracked on Predator Planet (Predator Planet Series) Page 28