Their luck was holding, as the skies immediately opened up in a blinding wall of rain.
He kept the rover on the muddy trail with a balance of skill and luck. He was fleeing from ghosts now. With the rear monitors destroyed, he had no idea if he was being followed, or how close they were. He drove with reckless speed, often taking turns by sliding sideways and tearing into a thick wall of vegetation. He came to the fork in the road hours later. The rain had, by then, petered out to a gentle drizzle. The cloud cover remained, still blinding the eye in the sky.
He was sure the Kalmakans knew something. He would take their advice and turn south into the jungle. Besides, staying on this road, they’d be as good as dead. They'd easily spot him from above. The canopy would provide cover.
He searched for a workable opening, careening down the muddy path in reckless speed. Then he saw it – a brief opening in the dense foliage. The rover cranked sideways, immense wheels sliding in the mud, spinning insanely as its engine pushed the vehicle into the jungle.
Speed slowed to a crawl as the rover powered over small trees and dug through ruts and hills, leaving behind a freshly cut and very visible trail.
They were going too slow. They’d catch up with them for sure at this speed. He had to find a natural pathway or shallow waterway, something to gain speed or hide their tracks, and soon. If they wanted to follow him into this hell, fine. But he was going toward the equator like the natives told him too, deep into the jungle, where they were too scared to go.
Behind him Bosn stirred, but he couldn’t stop to check on him, if he did, the time it took would probably cost them their lives.
No, they had to keep moving.
Dawn arrived. The alien sun burnt its way through the cloud cover. The thick canopy allowed through little of its light. But Ryan was not navigating by vision. He had paid attention to the old mechanic, learned about the instrumentation. The forward scanners were superior to his eyes. They would warn him of quicksand, sudden drop-offs, and reveal the more navigable path to take. Regardless, the jungle was becoming denser, and the vehicle's engine whined as it pushed through the wall of upward stretching plants.
At last, an opening appeared - a trail cut through the dense plants. The rover gained speed, moving easily along the trail. It lasted for a number of kilometers, but then the path diverted the wrong way, and he decided to push on through and hope for another.
It didn’t matter if he met up with the creatures that created these trails. He was going in the right direction - away from the torture, the killing. In respect the risk was trivial, and he did not care.
So he pushed on, sometimes with the rover fully submerged under the brackish waters of the swamp, with him transfixed on the scanners to guide him to the other side as black, rancid water sprayed into the cabin through countless leaks.
Soon, he told himself, soon he would be able to stop.
* * *
3. Providence
T he Xilozak patrol had lost track of the rover's heading shortly after it had turned into the jungle. The geostationary satellites revealed thousands upon thousands of potential heat signatures but nothing definitive. The atmospheric particle emissions scan failed miserably as any possible rover emissions were simply absorbed by the vegetation. Swamp gases skewed the readings, and photographic imagery simply failed, as low lying fog concealed any surface details under the canopy. The stolen rover had literally disappeared.
The only alternative was to send in an armed compliment, although that was initially delayed due to the extra deployment of forces required to protect the perimeter of the mining town while the fences were being repaired.
The replacement Torzon arrived quickly, incensed with their lack of progress, demanding an immediate assembly of a hunting party.
That turned out to be a very costly excursion. After all, they were miners, not military types. Accidents happened, valuable equipment was destroyed. A few large carnivore attacks resulted in personnel losses. Others simply vanished into the shadows of the jungle. Eventually, the search was abandoned. There was a mine to run and two random slaves were not worth the effort. They were assumed dead and a false story was circulated in order to suppress any others’ hope of escape.
The Torzon was livid. He ordered the execution of some of the guards to set an example but was wise enough to leave the mechanic alone.
* * *
Ryan had driven steadily through the night and a full Kalmakan day before he finally stopped, hoping they were deep enough into the jungle for safety.
Bosn lay where he had fallen, severely burned and breathing sporadically. Ryan pushed aside fallen packs and equipment to get to him, fighting off a wave of exhaustion. He located food, water, and what could be used as medical aid from their supplies.
The Signite was not doing well. Sepsis had set in and he carried an odor of death. He rolled him over onto his back. The Signite groaned in pain, skin blackened across most of his torso.
He poured some water onto his lips and face.
“Bosn, friend. You are not going any good.”
His eyes fluttered open, following a grimace. “And you’re Trinarieit is piss-poor.” He laughed then coughed hoarsely. “You’re right. I’m done for. Get me up – in the seat. Don’t want to die lying on this damn floor.”
Ryan pulled him to the cockpit as gingerly as possible, knowing his efforts were probably insanely painful to his friend.
“I have food.” He offered up a bar. “Take?”
“Why, so I can last longer?” He grinned with a half-blackened face.
“I found this in medical,” Ryan offered, holding up a needle. “Steroid-antibiotic mix, think helps pain too.”
“Knock yourself out, buddy. Don’t know if it will work though. Pretty far gone.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, will help. Seen it before. Kills infection.” He pushed the needle into his shoulder.
Bosn gasped. “I can feel it working now.” He said, with a slight slur and a sloppy smile.
Ryan searched through the rest of the rover, discovering a second set of meds and needles. The glyphic characters on the labels were difficult to understand, and more difficult to make out in the poor light.
Two more treatments. Will have to do.
“You know I had a wife, Earthman? Yeah, we’re not much different than you. I had a beautiful wife and a baby on the way, a little girl.”
“What was her name?”
“Sharanoa, but we never named the baby,” he could not hide the grimness in his voice.
“What happened to them?”
“They were on an evac ship before the main force hit. We had a fleet of them launching in succession, one after another from the surface. I was already on a destroyer. My ship, along with 10 others, were assigned as protection escorts.”
He winced in pain.
“They came in fast and in large numbers. We tried, we all tried. But our shields were inferior, and most of us went down in the first exchange. Our destroyer crashed on our moon. We left them exposed and helpless. I watched from the surface as my wife’s ship was incinerated by them. They didn’t have a chance.” It overcame him suddenly and he wept, shoulders shuddering.
Ryan reached over and put his hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s better, you know? It’s better than having them live through this.” He turned away to face the window. In a few minutes, he was fast asleep.
Ryan checked his pulse: weak but steady.
Nothing to do but wait it out.
A glance out the cockpit caught his attention. A movement, however slight. He flipped on the spotlight. The floor of the jungle was teeming with millions of squirming creatures, no more than 10 centimeters long. They covered the area as far as he could see. He briefly entertained the grim thought of being eaten alive by these things, but they were harmless as long as he kept the hatch sealed. He remembered hearing the Kalmakans talk of these creatures. Even the Xi-Empire feared these swarms. Whole coloni
es had been wiped clean of every living being, unlucky victims in the path of their migration. They were safe that night, for the jungle's largest and most vicious animals knew better than to approach a nest, for fear of being devoured.
Safe, for now. He sat back in his chair and quickly fell into a deep, needed sleep.
Bosn stirred, then moaned. Ryan jumped, fully awake and ready for the worst. The Signite was twisting in his chair, perspiration beading on his forehead.
Ryan grabbed a bottle of water and poured the contents over his friend’s forehead, hoping to cool him down. Another shot, immediately. He scrambled for the needles and injected Bosn in his other arm. Swelling of his burns seemed to be subsiding slightly. Did he have a chance? Waiting here did him little help. He had to push on. He had to get across this jungle. Through to the other side.
He fired up the rover and started crawling through the vegetation, maintaining a longitudinal southbound heading. After a half day's travel, the jungle was becoming too dense even for the rover. Its motors were winding out to maximum and running dangerously hot. He brought the rover to a standstill, half-suspended on a fallen rotted tree trunk. It was time to check the fuel rod supply. They were burning through the fuel rods quickly under the heavy load. Had enough for, at most, four days. If he was able to find more southbound trails, could possibly last longer. With a bit of luck, they would reach somewhere survivable before the fuel was spent.
The rover fired up easily and crept over the rotting undergrowth. The deeper he drove into the gloomy abyss, the more his weariness grew. Everything was large in this jungle, exaggerated into a scale 10 times that of Earth's. He passed by towering phosphorescent glowing shapes that moved rhythmically by an invisible wind, with arms reaching down from an unseen sky above. Shadows moved just beyond the edge of the rover's powerful floodlights, their range now limited to scant few meters, the radiant beams now useless, hungrily absorbed by a soupy greenish-white fog that lay in a thick, unrelenting carpet. The scene beyond the rover's quartz viewport was of a distorted, twisted world, in a dismal, everlasting darkness. Often he heard, and felt, thunderous footsteps heading toward him. More than once he reacted without thinking, finding himself accelerating dangerously in his haste to leave this place. To check himself, he need only bring to mind the thoughts of the rover breaking down from pushing it too hard. He did not want to be left alone, defenseless in the gloomy nightmare outside.
The Xi-Empire was far behind. They would have assumed them dead by now. It was only the jungle, him, and his dying friend.
The fear, the adrenaline, kept pushing him to drive. His hands clenched white on the steering controls for stretches of indeterminable hours until his muscles ached in retaliation. Rarely would he halt the rover and when he did, he would leave the engine running, ready to move at a moment's notice. He would drink, relieve himself in a pail, and push on. The air in the cabin was rancid. He longed for a safe haven to park and walk freely, to breathe fresh air.
It came as a small, slight change in the terrain and a thinning of the obscuring fog. Small outcroppings of sand raised themselves above the black mud of the swamp floor. The sand soon formed a lane on the surface of the foul water. The rover’s speed picked up as the wheels found traction. The scanners reflected a cheery, bright blue signature, indicating firm terrain.
Bosn stirred beside him. “We’re still alive?”
“We are, old friend. The jungle not killed us yet.”
“Not yet, Ryan, but soon I would think.”
They locked eyes for a moment. “We’ll make it,” was all he could bring himself to say.
Bosn turned to watch the view ahead.
“Why south? What do you expect to find?”
“The Kalmakans were clear. I take this way. No other way to go. They know something.”
Bosn coughed weakly. “Seems just as good a reason as any.”
“We are on road, not much of road, but a road.”
He chuckled, then coughed again. “A road to nowhere, or somewhere? Did I tell you what I did, Ryan, before the war? I was a surveyor and architect. I built things.”
The road twisted suddenly, drawing Ryan’s attention away.
The sharp turn caused Bosn to shift, and groan in pain.
“Dying sucks, Ryan. Don’t recommend it.”
“You hang on. I find help.”
He chuckled lightly. “No, don’t believe I have it in me.”
They were veering past the edges of numerous pits of boiling tar that showed up as dark red on the monitor - and these obstacles were becoming more and more frequent. Instantly the scanner shifted to complete red and warning alarms rang constantly.
“Maybe our luck is running out?”
“No these are roiling pits. We go past. Keep to road. It leads out.”
“Ha, and how do you know this? No way outta this.”
Ryan just gave him an irritated look. “No. We make it out.”
He followed the outline of the sandy lane faithfully, ignoring the instruments' warnings, watching for the tell-tale trace of blue. The fog had lifted completely into light clouds, faint and wispy. Vegetation was sparse, although the immense trees still towered above in stands where the soil was stable enough to support them.
It seemed almost barren - and safe. It had been a long time since he felt he could open the hatch without being attacked. He had to air out the cabin. He had to breathe some fresh air.
“We stop. You drink, eat, more medicine. We open hatch, rid of stink, dump waste pail.”
He brought the rover to a full stop at the foot of a black-tar lake. With a spent fuel rod poised for action, he opened the upper hatch. Thick, sulfur-smelling air flooded in, strong enough to make his eyes water. It was worse than the air in the cabin. He looked up, hundreds of meters above, through the hazy layer of cloud, up through the canopy. The vegetation was very thin, networking like spider webs between the treetops. Rays of the sunlight shone through the suspended vegetation.
Shit! This wasn’t safe either. Overhead Xi-Empire satellites could easily spot a rover through this.
He dumped his waste and closed the hatch.
Maybe next time.
Bosn had nodded off again. He gave him the last shot and prayed it would be enough to bring him back from the brink. The cabin’s air was permeated with sulfur, and it seemed to burn the inside of his nose, douse his ability to smell.
A mixed blessing.
The tar pits were thinning. The inadequate canopy soon thickened again, darkening the area below into the typical generic gloom. The path began a gradual incline. Hot springs sprayed the vehicle as they passed, bidding a farewell to the gleaming metal visitor.
They were now at the edge of the denser jungle. The air had to be better here. He pulled the rover to a halt. Its tremendous spherical tires sunk slightly as they settled into sand. He killed the powerful searchlights and watched as they silently died out, rescinding to a growing darkness.
He hadn't eaten a full meal since they had left, just the odd bar. He could not keep pushing himself. A simple mistake, a wrong turn, could kill him. He had to eat and rest.
He checked Bosn one last time. Breathing was raspy but regular. Hunger pangs in his stomach were too much to ignore. He dug into the supplies, pulled out the rations. They tasted like cardboard dipped in sulfur. Every muscle in his body ached. He had to lay prone, stretch out. The cabin floor, hard and flat, seemed luxurious at worst. It took but a few moments to slip into the soothing cradle of sleep.
Outside, in the pitch black, creatures slithered and crawled in deadly silence.
* * *
Ryan jerked awake, eyes wide and frantic. The soft phosphorous green of the console controls bathed the cabin in a weird glow. He scanned the cabin.
Bosn was sleeping in the co-pilot chair, the reactor status display blinked regularly, as it should. And the scanner was on, registering something. How could it not in this jungle? But something didn't feel right. Maybe his mind was playing t
ricks on him again, as it had done before, down in the dark bowels of the mine, when they had pushed him beyond exhaustion.
He dragged himself into the driver's chair and powered up the systems. The scanner display was showing a solid, dark yellow blip registering directly in front of the rover.
Had that been there before?
He peered through the quartz viewport and froze. Through the indirect glow from the console, he could just make it out. Staring directly at him was an enormous eye, its pupil oblong and black, like that of a snake. It belonged to something very, very large. Instantly, the pupil contracted and pulled away. A second later something rammed into the rover. The impact almost knocked Ryan from his seat. He struggled to strap himself in.
Again it hit.
“Keep it steady!” Bosn yelled. “Don’t veer off. We’ll ram’er down their throats!”
He was hallucinating.
The cabin was beginning to tilt. The thing was trying to flip them over. He engaged the transmission and poured on the power, but the wheels spun futilely, suspended in mid-air. Warning alarms shrieked, indicator lights blinked red. The rover tilted at a steep angle, on the verge.
The anti-skid plates!
He hit the controls, cursing under his breath. They shot out the side and deployed to their full length. Hydraulic motors whined from the strain as they bore the full weight of the rover.
But they held. The tilting stopped.
It wasn't strong enough to roll them over, completely. Lucky break.
“Ha! Sonofabitch!” He cursed in English.
The thing abandoned its efforts and the rover slammed down. The two of them flopped in their chairs like rag dolls.
Bosn screamed in agony as the movement tore at his burns.
“Hang on!”
He scanned the controls. The wheels were still spinning, shrieking out an eerie whine as they twisted in the mud.
Still not moving! The damn thing wouldn’t let go!
A Bellicose Dance Page 9