by B. V. Larson
She stood up promptly. “I’ll see that the ship is prepared.”
She left, and I caught myself staring after her. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Maybe to a Beta, the night before had been nothing but a bit of harmless fun. But I doubted that.
Rumbold hurried after her. “She’ll fill the entire ship with weapons if I don’t get down there to keep her in check!” he complained.
Next, I looked at Yamada. “I think you’d do best up here helping Durris.”
She cast her eyes downward. “I thought you might say that.”
I frowned. Was she jealous? Perhaps upset about last night? How much did she know about what had happened between Zye and myself?
Giving my head a little shake, I did my best to erase these thoughts. I turned back to Durris.
“I’ll take along Marine Commander Morris as well. Have him choose two of his troops and send him down to meet us on the hangar deck in their full kit.”
“Will do, sir. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
I exited the command deck and soon afterward, the ship itself. Like all starships, Defiant wasn’t built to land on planetary surfaces. We flew the pinnace down into the atmosphere.
As we plummeted like a whistling bomb from space, I told myself repeatedly that this was the best possible course of action. In order to really explore these worlds, we had to perform our investigations in person. We’d move as quickly as we could and then fly back up into the relative safety of space.
We landed in a gush of vapor and dust on the main street of the abandoned town I’d chosen. My three marines were the first to disembark, rushing to either side and seeking any possible enemies. They found none, but they stood tensely in their body-shells. Their automated cannons swiveled this way and that, tracking everything that moved.
I stepped out of the ship next and walked down the ramp more slowly.
“All clear on the plague factor, Captain,” stated Morris, looking up from a device designed to detect biological pathogens.
I nodded and opened my helmet.
Sapphire was a bright world. The air was clean and thin. It was also shockingly cold. After being trapped in ships breathing stale, recycled gases, it felt good to suck fresh oxygen into my lungs.
“Taste that air,” I said. “It’s glorious.”
Zye stepped down after me and stood at my side. She looked at me quizzically. “You like the air? It seems thin and cold to me.”
“Exactly. It’s frosty. I haven’t experienced anything like this since the last time I visited Lady Astra.”
Zye reacted with a flinch. I immediately regretted my words. After last night, she obviously didn’t want to hear about any other women I’d recently been visiting. I spoke up again to quickly cover any signs of embarrassment for both of us.
“Any life-readings?” I asked Marine Commander Morris.
He examined his detection equipment speculatively. “Nah. Nothing to speak of. A few odd birds in the trees, a dog or two. Nothing else on the scope—nothing human, anyway.”
“Dogs?” I asked. “You’ve found dogs on the tracking systems?”
Morris nodded and showed me the tiny screen of his handheld tracker. It listed identified contacts and displayed their descriptions in tiny print. The icons said it all—there were two, medium-sized dogs in the trees behind the pinnace.
I walked around the ship and surveyed the land on that side. If they were dogs, they were hiding well, and remarkably quiet. They certainly had no interest in barking at us.
“Over there,” Morris said, following me with his instrument in hand. “Between those two freaky trees.”
The streets were overgrown with twisted roots from the towering trees that grew in the region. The growths were indeed odd-looking, as he’d suggested. They were gnarly and uneven in every dimension. The trunks themselves seemed to lean randomly like drunken men staggering out of a bar.
The streets were equally strange. Why would there be dogs, of all things, somewhere in the middle of those trees…?
“Let’s check it out,” I said, and began walking toward the distorted trees.
“Whoa, hold on, Captain!” Morris cried, hurrying after me. “It’s not safe to leave the pinnace. We haven’t secured the area yet.”
I snorted at him. “We haven’t got all day. If you like, you can aim your chest cannons at the dogs in case they bark.”
Frowning, he marched beside me without further complaints. Zye and the marines walked cautiously in our wake. Rumbold stayed quietly in the pinnace’s pilot seat, and I let him.
I was the only member of the group who wasn’t heavily armed. I had my sidearm, a smart-pistol that had served me well over the years, and I openly wore my power-saber. But I’d left behind the body-shell and heavy, swiveling chest-cannon. After all, this was supposedly an exploratory mission. If we did meet colonists, appearing to be armed to the teeth probably wasn’t the best way to earn their confidence.
Stepping into the cold gloom under the trees, I suppressed a shiver. This world wasn’t warm and inviting. I still liked it, but it would take some getting used to.
The dogs converged on me suddenly, silently. They’d been hiding in the undergrowth watching us. Neither of them barked—they didn’t even whine.
Instead they stared, and as they got closer, they sniffed.
With a frown of concern, I extended a hand toward each of the dogs.
“Careful, sir,” Morris said. “They might be starving.”
“I doubt it. Look at their coats, their paws, their red lolling tongues. These animals are well cared-for.”
The dogs snuffled my fingers at length then withdrew as silently as they’d come.
Abruptly, a patch of leaves and sticks pushed up from the ground nearby. A man’s dirty, unkempt head appeared. Their foxholes had been camouflaged in the brush, I realized immediately.
All around us, more men did the same. They held weapons: Crossbows, worn rifles and a plasma blaster or two.
My hands lifted into the air. My marines circled around me. Their cannons swiveled automatically, aiming at one target after another like the beaks of nervous birds.
“Careful,” I said to the marines. “Remember why we’re here, gentlemen. Stand down.”
With obvious reluctance, the three marines directed their weapons skyward. Zye scowled fiercely, but she didn’t say a word or draw her gun.
“Hello colonists,” I said, “we’re human explorers from a neighboring system. We’ve come to talk to you, to trade with you.”
“We know who you are, Sparhawk,” said the leader, a man with a shock of red hair and a torn shirt of woven flax. “We heard your transmissions. Did you notice we made no response? What we want to know is why you won’t leave us alone?”
I smiled. “You certainly have taken great pains to hide yourselves,” I said. “We thought this planet was abandoned.”
“You can’t claim Sapphire,” the red-headed leader said quickly. “It’s ours. Nothing here is for sale, either. Not our women, or our dogs—not even our children. You’d best pack up your trade goods and go back to your ship while you can.”
His words surprised me. Not because he was so unfriendly, but because he’d referred to this planet as Sapphire. It had been my impression, up until that moment, that Lady Grantholm had recently named these worlds upon seeing them for the first time.
It made me wonder about her motivations. Had I been duped into coming here? What was she really up to? For all I knew, she was misbehaving aboard Defiant right now, perhaps sending further unauthorized transmissions.
That was a mystery for another time, however. At the moment, I had other considerations to contend with.
“We’re here to talk,” I said. “If you have nothing physical to trade, we might as well share information. That’s free.”
He looked me up and down speculatively. “All right. We can’t stay here, though. This place isn’t safe.”
“Perhap
s you can take us to your living quarters,” I said.
“We’ll go somewhere secure. Follow us into the tunnels.”
Bracing myself, I did as he asked. The troops behind me grumbled, but they didn’t openly object.
As we moved through what amounted to cramped, dirty holes, I soon learned the colonists were a tough, primitive lot. They were highly suspicious as well. Their leader was named Jkal, and I found that I liked the man, despite his faults.
“Jkal,” I said, “you haven’t yet explained to me why your people are hiding underground.”
“You’re the visitor. You will explain things first, Earthman.”
Nodding, I had to admit there was a certain logic to that statement. I followed Jkal and his group farther and farther from the source of gray sunlight behind us, I found the tunnels oppressive. Worse, they became muddy as we passed under the village and continued onward.
At last, several hundred meters along, the tunnels opened out into a more wholesome region of thick concrete pipe.
“This must be their sewer system,” Morris said to me. “But they don’t seem to use it that way now.”
Looking down, I saw a trickle of dark water that looked like melting ice from the surface. Morris was right, there was no sewage here. My nose wasn’t as happy as it had been on the surface, but it wasn’t rebelling, either.
“Tell me, Jkal,” I called. “Why haven’t you taken our weapons?”
Jkal stopped and turned. He had a startled look on his face.
“Would you have allowed such a thing?”
“No,” I admitted, “probably not.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m relieved to hear you’re sane.”
“What do you mean?”
“No sane warrior would give another his weapon. Not without dying first. Even then, a death grip can be hard to dislodge.”
“I see.”
We pressed onward. When we reached a major junction in the sewer system, I expected to find some sort of habitation. Instead, we were turned in another direction and headed down a longer, darker tunnel.
“Hold on,” I said. “Where are you taking us?”
“To our village,” Jkal said. “You asked to go there.”
“Yes, but… aren’t we already underneath your village?”
“What? The buildings? We don’t live in buildings! We did once, of course, but that was before even my parents were born.”
I was beginning to catch on.
“Who raids your planet?” I asked.
He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“Someone comes and captures your people, right? That’s why you hide like rats under the ground.”
Jkal looked suspicious. “What’s a rat?”
“A noble animal,” Morris said over my shoulder, grinning.
I didn’t chide him for lying. After all, it was for a good cause.
“We’ll talk when we reach our destination,” Jkal said.
At length, we were led to a natural cavern. I had the feeling we were under one of the peaks that circled the valley. That meant we were entombed beneath a thousand meters of rock—the very thought was oppressive.
Heading upward through winding, natural passages, the cavern eventually opened at last to a yawning mouth. I was quite relieved to feel the sting of Sapphire’s breath in my lungs again.
Jkal walked some steps ahead, peering intently into the distance for long moments.
We could see the sky again. From underneath a thick overhang of granite, I could see the valley sloping away. There was a tremendous amount of cover provided by trees. The terrain was rough and covered with scrubby brush. The village itself must have been hidden by the strangely twisted trees.
“Hmm…” I said, looking around. There was no encampment here in the cave mouth. There were only a few ash heaps, indicating people had burned campfires and eaten game.
Jkal came to me. “You must stay here,” he said. “I’m going to get our leader. You must wait. You may start a fire if you like.”
Shrugging, we did as he asked. The group of villagers left us and stealthily crept out of the cavern and into the open.
Sitting down on a rock, I noted that Zye was looking agitated.
“What’s wrong, Zye?” I asked.
“I don’t trust these men,” she said. “They’re carrion-feeders.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Morris said, stepping into the conversation. “Sure, they’ve had a rough time of it. They’re failures in comparison to your civilization. But not all colonies were destined to be successful. Especially not after they were cut off from Earth. These folks just got the short end of the stick, that’s all.”
I frowned, thinking about Zye’s concerns. She was standing, not sitting. She was near the edge of the cavern mouth, staring outside.
Darkness was falling fast. The local sun had dropped behind a craggy peak, and the light was fading rapidly, as it always did in the mountains.
Standing up and walking to the edge of the cavern mouth, I decided to communicate with Defiant. I hadn’t done so for quite some time, as we’d been trapped underground.
“Captain,” Durris said when I contacted him. “There’s something wrong. We’re picking up an audio signal from your location. A repeated pinging sound, too high in pitch for human ears to pick up. Are you transmitting something?”
Puzzled, I assured him we weren’t. I immediately set my team to searching the area.
We found the source of the noise just as the darkness became total. A silver box with a crude speaker attached to it sat just above the cave mouth. I put my hand on it, and I felt a tiny vibration, but I couldn’t hear anything.
I yanked the cord out, and it stopped vibrating.
“That little red-headed bastard,” Morris said when he saw the contraption. “What kind of a trick is this? He set this up deliberately, that’s for sure. I’m going to have some words with him when he gets back here.”
“He’s not coming back,” Zye said.
There was certainty in her voice, and I had to agree with her.
The first thing I did was try to contact Rumbold. There was no response from the pinnace.
I growled in frustration. We were faced with a difficult decision. Should we march back down to our pinnace? Or should we search for Jkal?
“I vote we hunt that skinny frigger down and burn some holes in his legs until he explains himself,” Morris suggested.
“Certainly not,” I said. “This is an exploratory expedition, after all. The locals may have played a trick on us, but they’ve done nothing overtly hostile yet.”
“Always do the unexpected,” Zye said in the tone of one quoting a proverb.
Glancing at her, I put up my hands. “What would that be, in this case?”
“I don’t know, but we shouldn’t stand around in this cave any longer.”
She was right, of course. For all we knew the transmitter could have been a homing device marking our location for some kind of primitive missile.
“Let’s head back toward the ship,” I said. “They might be back there now, breaking into it.”
Hurrying this time, we used our compasses to draw a line through the forest. The terrain was rough, and we were breathing hard before we were halfway there. This planet had no moon. The darkness was nearly complete. We had to use the infrared systems in our helmets, and the light boosters in our implants to see where we were going.
The first warning we had was a tremendous crashing sound.
“What was that?” demanded one of the marines.
“A tree went down,” Morris said, “I’m sure of it.”
“Keep moving,” I said, drawing my pistol and saber.
Zye had her weapon out now as well. No one was calm, but we weren’t running in a panic. Not yet.
Another tree went down. The sound was unmistakable. In spite of our hasty pace, it seemed to come from closer behind us than the first one.
“Something’s coming,
” Zye said. “Something big. I’ve been stalked before by megafauna on Beta. They come like this, sometimes—the largest of them.”
That was it. We’d been jogging, but now we broke into a run.
A thumping sound came from behind us. A series of cracking sounds joined it. There was something big on our tails. And it was gaining.
When the third tree crashed down, closer than ever, I ordered a halt.
“We’ve got nearly a kilometer to go,” I said. “We can’t make it. We should consider hiding and ambushing it.”
Nodding, Morris and his troops spread out. Zye stayed with me. We chose a boulder that was big enough for the two of us and crouched in the frosty darkness.
While we waited, and the thing crashed closer and closer, Zye reached out a big arm and gave me a squeeze. I looked at her in surprise. She met my eyes.
“We’ll be fine,” I said. “If it can die—we’ll kill it.”
She flashed me a smile that I could see by the lights inside her faceplate—and then something waded through the trees and paused right on top of us.
I knew in an instant that we’d miscalculated. The alien creature was huge. Above us, where there had been branches and stars a moment earlier, there was now nothing but blackness. I tried not to breathe, and for a moment, the beast seemed to have lost us.
“Permission to fire, sir!” Morris’ voice hissed inside my helmet.
“Hold,” I transmitted back.
We were conversing using our helmet radios. The creature shouldn’t be able to hear us, not unless it had—
But the beast reacted. Twisting and looking this way and that, I saw the shadowy monster searching for our voices. Fortunately, Morris had shut up. I thought of the high-pitched sound Jkal had used to summon this monster—it only made sense that it would have excellent hearing. Many predators did.
One of my marines didn’t follow my orders to hold his fire, however. He broke from his hiding spot and opened up with his chest-cannon, ripping the air with flashes and a crackling spray of plasma.
The creature attacked immediately. A long curving shape dipped out of the sky and lifted again, taking the man and his weapon away.
Jaws? Had I seen, in a brief flash of gunfire, the drooling jaws of a bizarre monstrosity?