Hunting Dog

by Andrew Beery

  The talking stopped, and I heard the sound of movement through the undergrowth I had just crawled through. I could tell the neander-thugs were moving carefully in my direction. The setting sun was making my trail a bit harder to track, but I was under no illusion. My trail was not a hard one to follow.

  I used my HUD to amplify the available light. I saw movement about twenty yards away. I zoomed in and confirmed I was dealing with neander-thugs. They were wearing some type of neander-thug camo. More concerning were the unmistakable radios they wore mounted to their shoulders. It was a good bet others knew I was here. It would not surprise me if the place was crawling with bad guys in the next few hours.

  In less time then I imagined, the three that had picked up my trail had made their way to the base of my tree. They moved past about ten feet and then stopped. A hushed discussion followed, and they moved back to my position. They had lost the trail. Not a surprise from my perspective. There was no more trail.

  My hope was they would begin to circle outward in an attempt to reacquire something that was not there… my trail. If they took long enough, the spinal block would wear off, and I would at least be able to walk.

  There was still very little chance I would be able to evade a large group of determined searchers, but at least I would have a chance… that is, if I was lucky.

  I was not. Not two minutes later, I heard the approach of some type of aircraft. As it descended to land in the open field, I caught a brief glimpse of it. The craft sported six vectoring thrusters that gave it VTOL capabilities. Based on its size I was guessing it could carry twenty to thirty troops.

  This was not good. Did I mention that thing about luck or the lack thereof? I was beginning to feel well and truly screwed. What I didn’t know at the time was that my luck was about to take a turn for the better.

  There was a slight tingling in my legs. The one with the broken femur was starting to ache. I instructed my EMS to give me a shot of happy juice. The last thing I needed was for the enemy to hear me moaning in a tree.

  I relaxed and leaned back into the crook of my tree. Better living through chemistry. There was precious little I could do while the entire neander-thug army was crawling around near the base of my tree hideout. I decided to spend some time thinking about what my best strategy would be for escaping from my current situation; acquiring the intel I was after; and reconnecting with my compatriots.

  My armor was my greatest asset. The neander-thugs seemed to only be using mark-one optics and ears. That meant that in general, my armor meant I was stronger and more capable. Sadly because of my bum leg and the number of inoperative systems, my advantages were not as extensive as they might have been.

  Once my spinal block wore off, my plan was to try and move across the treetops like some type of massive squirrel… minus the fluffy tail. Plans rarely survive contact with the enemy, and this was no exception.

  Shortly before the sunset, I heard a mechanical buzzing sound. Micro-drones. Micro-drones with enhanced optics. They were flying a fixed pattern about twenty feet above the tree canopy. This added a frustrating complication.

  The neander-thugs were relentlessly searching the forest floor. Several times they looked right at me, but between the receding sun and the foliage, I was hidden well enough.

  I couldn’t go down and, thanks to the drones, I couldn’t easily navigate the treetops.

  After about an hour, my legs were as good as they were going to get. By now, I had memorized the flight pattern of the drones. I carefully shifted between two adjacent trees. This formed the pattern for my night. Shift, wait, shift, wait.

  I had to be careful and plan my route carefully. Sometimes the perfect tree was simply out of reach because the drones never provided a window of opportunity. This ended up costing me hours. I had hoped to move several kilometers over the course of the night. At this rate, I would be lucky to cover the length of a football field.

  I’d love to tell you that I accepted these setbacks with grace, but I’d be lying. I was pissed, tired, and sore. My leg hurt. There was only so many pain meds I could take and still function well enough to swing from tree to tree while remaining quiet. The longer it took me to move, the more irritated I got.

  I suppose it was inevitable, but eventually, I made a mistake. A group of ten neander-thug searchers slowly worked their way out of an area I was trying to cross. A drone was making its rounds and would give me a thirty-second window to move from one tree to the next. The jump between the trees was going to be at the extreme range of what I could accomplish, given my physical limitations.

  I jumped, and all hell broke loose. The branch I grabbed gave way. This meant I fell a good ten feet before I was able to hook an arm around another branch. I was reasonably sure that the sound of woozy armored admiral crashing through the upper canopy could be heard as far away as the Sol system.

  To make matters worse, I banged my leg against another branch as took my ride down the trunk of the tree. It was several seconds before I could see again. As soon as I was able, I began to climb back up the tree. My powered armor made it easier, but I was quickly running out of gas.

  I barely reached the cover of foliage before Eshbaal’s minions returned to investigate the noise. With them came a swarm of micro-drones. My pursuers were no longer looking at the ground. They were scanning the trees. They had heard the noise I made and were even now focusing up rather than down. I was well and truly screwed.

  One of the drones hovered above my position for a moment and then swooped done to hover in front of me.

  “Shoo… go home,” I muttered

  As expected, my command was neither acknowledged nor obeyed. Instead, a low-intensity green laser scanned my position. There was no doubt in my military mind that the neander-thugs knew exactly where I was now.

  A series of guttural barks sounded down below and, as one, each of the soldiers raised their weapons to point them in my direction. My choices seemed to have been reduced to death or surrender. To be sure, I was not a fan of either, but the second offered the potential for other opportunities down the road. The first was, with some notable exceptions, more permanent.

  “Ok, guys. You’ve got me. I’m unarmed except for a knife, which I’ll gladly surrender.”

  2100.1289.8859 Galactic Normalized Time

  Doctor Merab Q’Tar was both relieved and worried. She and Major Morrison had made unexpected contact with a group of resistance fighters.

  The indigenous population was an avian species called the Thassi. Many generations ago, a splinter group called the Hasmoneans formed in an effort to shake loose the shackles of Eshbaal.

  Their leader, a Thassi named Marmoot, had received word of a strange alien captured by Eshbaal in the East Province. That alien could only be the Admiral. That meant he had survived.

  Sadly, having survived, he was now alone and a prisoner.

  Chapter 21: Caged Dog…

  “Remove your armor,” a female officer said in a voice that would have fit a professional wrestler. I was the first time I had seen a neander-thug female. She seemed to be a natural leader, and honestly, she struck me as somewhat more intelligent than her peers. This last was unfortunate because it likely meant I would have fewer escape options.

  “That might be problematic. I have a broken leg,” I answered honestly.

  I figured they already knew I was hurt. I had been limping ever since they coaxed me out of my tree with their weapons and trigger fingers. Two kinetic rounds had already bounced off my armor. The lieutenant or whatever she was had chewed the offenders a new anal orifice in a tradition that transcended species and branches of service.

  “Remove your armor,” the officer repeated.

  Remember that bit about she seemed more intelligent than her peers? Scratch that.

  “I have a broken leg. The armor is acting as a splint. Without it, I will not be able to walk,” I tried to explain.

  She seemed unimpressed and barked a command in neander-thug-ese. A
t once every soldier raised their weapons.

  “OK! OK!” I shouted as I signaled my armor to do two things.

  First, give me another shot of joy juice because this was going to be painful, and heavens knew when I was going to have access to it again. Second, after the injection, I ordered the suit to open.

  I stood on my good leg and pulled the breastplate away from my skin. I was wearing a military issue t-shirt and boxer shorts. The rest of the suit separated and fell in pieces just as it was designed to do. The moss-covered ground of the forest floor damped the sound of the falling pieces.

  One of the neander-thugs stepped forward to collect the armor. He placed a beefy hand on the middle off my back and pushed me out of the way. I toppled right over.

  I’d like to say I didn’t scream in pain, but my momma always encouraged me not to lie. When I was able to blink away the multi-colored stars that had filled my vision, I saw that my leg was again no longer straight. Fortunately, the dermal bonder that my EMS had used to seal my wound had done its job well, and the bone was not exposed despite the abuse my leg had just undergone.

  The female officer took one look and my leg and then my agonized face. I was surprised to see a glimmer of compassion in her face.

  She barked a command in their guttural language. One of the smaller neander-thugs stepped forward and raised his weapon and prepared to fire a round at my head. This did not look good for the home team. Apparently, the neander-thug rules of engagement did not include the care and transportation of wounded prisoners of war. Of course, for all I knew, they treated their own troops with the same care and compassion.

  It’s interesting how when you face certain death, sometimes you react in unexpected ways. I gave the young soldier my most winsome smile and extended a single-fingered salute that he likely had no way of understanding. I admit, the gesture was beneath me, but it made me feel better and, at the moment, that was all that mattered.

  The neander-thug paused for a moment and slightly lowered the barrel of his rifle. Before he could raise it again, the female lieutenant barked at him in a tone that left little doubt in anyone’s mind that she was not a happy camper and that she likely questioned the genetic heritage of the soldier attempting to offer me a coup de grâce.

  The next thing I knew, my armor was being returned minus the helmet and gauntlets.

  Of course, the bone in my leg was no longer set, which meant in order to get into my armor the bone would need to be repositioned. This promised to be serious fun. I had slowly figured out that the lieutenant’s grasp of English was somewhat limited.

  I put all of my armor on except the left leg. At this point, I was going to need my captors help. If I would have been able to wear my helmet could have instructed the suit’s AI to reset the leg like I had before. Sadly, I didn’t see that as an option.

  The lieutenant pointed to the remaining piece of armor and raised an eyebrow in a gesture that would have done a Vulcan proud.

  “I need to set the bone in my leg first.”

  The eyebrow continued its upward journey.

  I pointed to my left foot and made a pulling motion. Next, I pointed to my young friend with the passion for mercy killing and pointed to my upper leg and again pantomimed pulling my upper leg.

  The lieutenant looked confused. This confirmed my belief that battlefield injuries within the neander-thug ranks were always considered fatal. They had no concept of basic field medicine.

  I again pantomimed the pulling, but this time I ended by putting my finger in my mouth and making a popping sound. The lieutenant’s face lit up in surprise, and she attempted to duplicate the popping noise with her own finger.

  She failed horribly, so I carefully demonstrated the proper technique again. After several tries, she finally mastered the action. You’d think I had just given a kid a bicycle at Christmas her grin of delight was so broad.

  Within a few moments, there were popping sounds coming from every corner of the small forest clearing we were occupying. As I’ve often said, war can be a strange bedfellow. It’s the little things in life that bring the most pleasure.

  After a few more moments the lieutenant barked an order, and the popping petered out with a couple of more half-hearted attempts. Fun time was over.

  The lieutenant grabbed my left foot while my young Shoot’m-in-the-head Doctor Kevorkian grabbed my thigh. I put a stick in my mouth to bite on. It tasted salty, but then it was from an alien world. I just hoped it was not poisonous.

  “OK… pull,” I mumbled between clenched teeth.

  ***

  It was about three hours since daybreak. I was the guest of honor on a flight to meet either Eshbaal or one of his close associates. My leg had been set, and I was again wearing my armor. I had used a command pad on my left arm to instruct my suits AI to tend to my broken leg. What that meant was a course of antibiotics, anti-inflammatory steroids, and pain management meds, as well as a course of nanites to help knit the bone in days as opposed to weeks.

  I spent much of the last several hours as we flew to wherever it was we were headed trying to learn more about my captors… with limited success.

  The female lieutenant was called Sasa. I still wasn’t sure what her rank was, but she gave orders to some of the bigger soldiers and they, in turn, barked orders to their direct subordinates. Lieutenant might not have been the correct rank, but it was close enough for government work in my book.

  We had been in one of the neander-thug troop carrier aircraft for quite some time. I had been right in my estimate of the number of troops that these birds could carry. There were fifteen of us onboard this ship and from what I could see we could have doubled that number if you didn’t mind a limited amount of personal space. The ride was surprisingly comfortable. That made the sudden jostling and erratic flying all the more alarming.

  A klaxon started blaring, and the lighting went red. I was just beginning to think how strange it was that their emergency sound and lighting schemes were similar to ours when something hit our aircraft… and hit it hard.

  I could feel the craft beginning to go into a slow spin and lose altitude. Some type of kinetic energy weapon like a machine gun began firing from fore and aft gun bays. The sound added to the already confusing cacophony.

  A second something hit us. The sound of tearing metal and the smell of smoke filled the cabin. Strangely, the spinning stopped. It seemed the attack had damaged rotors on opposite sides of the craft. We were going down, but if we could avoid being hit again, we might manage a controlled crash.

  Lieutenant Sasa barked a series of commands and her soldiers strapped themselves in tightly. The Lieutenant and I were in the forward most section right next to the cockpit. She reached forward and pulled my shoulder restraints tighter. At the same time, she pressed a button and the magnetic shackles that had been holding my feet and hands together released.

  Apparently, there was a sense of honor or compassion at work that I didn’t fully understand, but I most certainly appreciated.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Sasa looked at me for a moment. Her face twitched with the briefest of smiles. “It is right… and besides, you are cute if a little… what is your words… Not big?”

  My life was potentially saved because I was cute and not big. That was humbling.

  “Who is shoot at us?” I asked.

  Sasa shrugged. “People who are not good.”

  “Are you at war with somebody?”

  “We war with humans. We war with you,” she said simply.

  “Are there humans on this planet?”

  Sasa looked puzzled. “You are here.”

  She had me there.

  “I mean, besides me. Are you fighting humans here?”

  The Lieutenant shook her head. “No, these are Thassi. They are from the before time. The time when Eshbaal sleeps.”

  I was still digesting what she was telling me when we hit the ground. There was a tremendous wrenching sound, and we were suddenly
thrown sideways. I was glad Sasa had freed my hands because the straps that had been holding me gave way, and I needed my hands to hold on to my seat for dear life. There was another set of straps nearby. I twisted them around my right armored arm.

  Sasa’s restraints held a bit longer than mine, but by the time we had been tossed violently the third time her straps broke as well. She flew past me, and I grabbed her arm as she went by. I managed to hold on until she could get a handful of another set of restraints.

  It was obvious now that we had not crashed onto a piece of level ground but were, in fact, tumbling down something. Every time were struck something there was more tearing of metal.

  Eventually, we hit an especially hard bump. This preceded a feeling of nothing, which quickly digressed into a sense of falling. Let me state for the record, I was really tired of falling. I had already done it several times in the last day, and the experience had failed to grow on me.

  Finally, we hit the edge of something really hard. I thought I would crack my teeth; the impact was so hard. With a horrible screech and a whole lot of electrical sparks, the entire back end of the transport sheared off… and with it, the entire contingent of neander-thugs.

  Sasa’s eyes widened in utter disbelief at what had been a sealed crew cabin thirty feet long was reduced to a wide gaping hole less than five feet away. We could finally see outside the ship; it was not the sort of sight that inspires optimism in one’s future. We were about a couple hundred yards above some type of thick vegetation sliding down the side of a rock face.

  A final hard bump and Sasa lost her grip and fell through the jagged opening. Then we hit, and all hell broke loose.

  2100.1289.8862 Galactic Normalized Time

  Marmoot cursed under his breath. The idiots were only supposed to damage the hexacopter… forcing it to make a controlled landing. Instead, they damaged it so bad that it was going to crash.