by John Shirley
“Yeah? How long you had this information?”
“Not long. Rans here—he was trying to do an end run around us. Gave the info to an old associate of his. The guy crash landed between here and the site. Might be alive.”
Cal thought excitedly: He’s talking like Dad is alive …
“When we took Rans into … protective custody,” Gorman went on, “he offered to show us in person. This is as close as we can get from the air. We need you to get in there, run interference. Take down that thing’s defenses.”
“I saw a starship break up in orbit …”
Gorman nodded. “The Homeworld Bound. Signal from down here took over their security. We think it was the alien ship protecting itself.”
Roland snorted. “Liar,” he muttered.
“You still have those outriders we gave you?” Gorman asked.
Crannigan shrugged. “Still got two of ’em. Lost the others when we got nailed by some Primals. They were after”—he glanced over at Roland—“somebody else. They lost some pals, came after us instead. Kinda caught us by surprise.”
Roland smiled.
“We can give you a couple of sandtrackers,” Gorman said. “I’ll have my men offload them. It’s all we brought but it should get you to the vicinity. Check out that DropCraft—we don’t want anybody else messing with the site, if you get my meaning.”
Crannigan nodded. “I got that message already. We’re heading there today. Let me tell you something, Gorman—there better be a payday at the end of this. You bastards have been holding stuff back.”
“Mr. Crannigan, I’m afraid I just don’t like your attitude. Remember that you work for us. You’re on salary—and you get the bonus we talked about if you succeed. Have no fear—it’ll make you a very rich man indeed.”
“Uh-huh. I could use some more men. How about these metal monsters of yours?”
“The bodyguards remain with me.” His affable expression became coldly ironic. “But you can have Rans Veritas. Maybe he’s good in a fight. Anyway—he’s your guide. It’s not just a question of location, as it turns out. It appears you’ve got to know just the right way to get into the alien ship. That’s where Mr. Veritas here comes in.”
He turned to go.
“What about those sandtrackers?” Crannigan demanded.
The exec replied as he walked up the ramp, not even turning around. “I’ll see they’re sent out.”
The bodyguards clanked up after him, one following close behind him, the other walking backward, keeping a wary eye on Crannigan.
The ramp withdrew into the ship, the port closed. The onlookers stood back as the shuttle took off.
Rans Veritas stayed behind. And he was staring, with a sort of dull hostility, right at Cal.
Zac was pretty sure something was stalking him. Trouble was, it was underground.
Spiderants, maybe. Or some of the other creatures Berl had told him about. Larva crab worms.
He was heading southwest down a mostly dried-out riverbed, stopping only once to refill his canteen from one of the few patches of water left. And every so often the ground trembled under his feet.
Now he felt the vibration underfoot again and looking behind him he saw the sand hump up in spots, as if something large was coming close to the surface. Something that was tracking him.
He stood stock-still, suspecting that whatever it was, was tracking his footsteps across the ground.
The trembling in the ground subsided. He had a feeling, an intuition, of something waiting for him to move …
Could he stand here, frozen, unmoving, till they went away?
He assessed the area. The dried river seemed to fork just ahead. One fork went southwest, the other bore due south. If he could get these things to assume he took the south fork when he took the southwest …
To his immediate right the bank of the dry riverbed beetled with an outcropping of loose rock. Several smaller boulders lined up, in the riverbed, in a sort of natural flagstone pathway to the outcropping. There was a shadowy place behind the outcropping he might hide—or he might be trapped and killed, if the things caught him there.
A rumbling came from the ground to his left. The sandy soil shook, and humped up. Suddenly two purplish jointed probes thrust above the sand like periscopes.
Zac shouldered his satchel, arranged the canteen, got a good grip on his shotgun, and turned to leap to the nearest low boulder, in the row leading to the outcropping. He jumped to the next “flagstone,” and the next, hoping his impacts were absorbed, muffled by the stone. On the third rock he nearly tipped over, almost dropping the shotgun … swaying like a drunk on the uneven stone till he got his balance.
At last he got to a big rock jutting from the riverbank, climbed onto it, slipped down behind, then peered over it just as the creature emerged bodily from the sand …
Larva crab worms, boy, Berl had said. Mean, purple sons of bitches, bigger’n a big man. Like giant crustaceans they are but with one big glowin’ purple eye! Spit acid at you, they will, burn you down, cut up your remains, drag you down to their burrows below the sand. They burn off your limbs, snip and snap through spine, and then eat you! Eat you nice ’n’ slow, they do!
That’s what he was seeing: A single large, dark purple, glowing eye in the thing’s head—and forearm pincer-claws, each pincer big enough to cut through a man’s neck, and all bristly. The thing wormed and humped eagerly along, hissing to itself, clacking, clearly hunting for food. Those antenna-like probes extended from its mouth, to poke about the sand where he’d been a moment before, examining the rocks he’d jumped onto.
Zac ducked down, trying to think. Maybe the crab worm was intelligent enough to figure where he’d gone. Then it’d trap him here in this stone niche and snip him into pieces or burn him to an easily digestible ooze with a thick squirt of its corrosive phlegm. Or both. He might be able to kill it with his shotgun before it killed him—or he might not.
He noticed a small pile of stone rubble at his feet. If it was true that the things followed surface vibrations …
He picked up a rock the size of a softball, and hefted it, slowly straightening up to peer over the top of the outcropping. There were two larva crab worms in the riverbed now, each one about the size of a large crocodile, clicking and hissing and screeching along as they searched for him. They seemed to staring down the passage to the southwest—as if thinking he might’ve gone that way. And that was the way he was planning to go.
The chitinous purple creatures humped toward the southwest fork in the dry riverbed …
They weren’t looking his way. If he climbed out of his hiding place, right now, they might spot him, and drag him down.
He got a firm grip on the rock, and threw it overhand with all his strength, as far as he could, down the south fork of the riverbed.
It struck the ground about fourteen meters away with an audible thump. The larva crab worms turned that way, chittering excitedly, humping quickly down the south fork to investigate. He waited till they’d moved well down the fork, then he crept slowly out of his hiding place, and went in the other direction, stepping on rocks where he could, till he was well down the other fork. He looked back, and saw no pursuit.
He continued another kilometer until the riverbed no longer headed southwest—it veered off sharply to the southeast.
Zac sighed. He climbed up the crumbling bank, out of the riverbed, and started across open desert. He was far more exposed now.
But he had to keep on to the southwest—where the half-shattered volcanic cone loomed dark blue against the horizon: tantalizing, inviting, and sinister.
Gnawing salted skag jerky, Marla waited in the cab of a rusted old tractor, a construction vehicle abandoned by the Dahl company and long since stripped of useful parts. She looked out through the cracked window of the cab, squinting at the dark trail that Vance had taken between the piles of trash and mine tailings. Was he even coming back for her? Did the big lug really care what happened to her?
Stop it. It didn’t matter if he cared about her. All that mattered was using him to stay alive till she found her family.
But that ache was there, inside her …
She’d read about a psychological syndrome that might apply. A prisoner learned to identify with their captors, in order to survive. Vance wasn’t exactly her captor—but then again, he was. She had no doubt he’d knock her flat if she tried to run away.
So maybe … Maybe she’d gone a little crazy, lost in these endless borderlands. Maybe the whole nightmare had traumatized her more than she’d realized. Maybe her feeling for Vance was just a twisted strategy to survive.
If what she’d seen on this planet had traumatized her—what was it doing to Cal?
She felt her eyes burning with unshed tears. Cal. She couldn’t do a thing to help him. Not sitting here.
She ought to simply slip away on her own, and try to find her son. If she kept to the shadows and stayed alert, she just might survive. She drew her pistol from her coat and looked at it. One clip was not much protection on this planet. Should she try it?
But that’s when Vance came trotting back down the trail. He waved, teeth flashing as he grinned in the moonlight. He climbed up on the wheel axle, leaned near, whispered, “They’re there—and they’re drunk! Someone made a run into Jaynistown and got some booze. Ought to take the edge off their sentries. Come on, let’s steal that truck. Then we head for the alien treasure horde!”
“If this bunch used to work for you, Vance … maybe they’d still take your orders.”
“Naw, they worked for Grunj. They took orders from me, sure. But not no more.” He took a communicator from his pocket and waved it at her. “I’ve been listening in to the sentry chatter. The bastards know I blew up the island. There were survivors. Not many, but enough. Turns out Dimmle’s still alive … and he’s looking for me. Told ’em to shoot me on sight.”
“But—you’ve got that money you stole from Grunj. Couldn’t we just go to a settlement and buy a vehicle? I mean—why borrow trouble with this bunch?”
“Long way to a settlement—where I just might be shot dead for being an outlaw, anyhow. There’s a price on my head. If your old man knew about the alien ship—then so do the corporations. I’m gonna get there before they do. This’ll get us transportation fast. Now come on—let’s do this!”
Marla groaned to herself. It seemed her mind was made up for her. She climbed out of the old tractor and they moved quietly as they could toward the bandit camp, picking their way through rock and trash and old metal debris.
The night was eerie in the vivid moonlight; the debris seemed transformed by the moonlight into abstract metal sculptures. She caught a glimpse of an attenuated fountain of sparks rising against the dark sky: the campfire of the bandits.
It wasn’t a campfire so much as a big bonfire she saw as they approached a ragged ring of rusted metal around the camp. They squatted in the darkness, watching the bandits. There seemed about twenty of them gathered around the bonfire, passing bottles, laughing. They had taken off their masks and goggles so they could drink and their deformed faces seemed strangely naked without the masks. One of them nudged the bandit to his right and hand signaled, Watch this! Then he took a handful of bullets from his pocket and tossed them onto the other side of the fire. A splash of sparks—and the bullets, swallowed in flame, detonated almost immediately. A man screamed, others shouted profanities and ran from the fire.
Vance swore as a bullet zipped overhead and flattened down; Marla flattened, too, but watched the bandits through a rust hole.
Bullets ricocheted from stone and steel. Another man shrieked. The man who’d thrown the bullets laughed in drunken hysteria, slapping the ground. He turned to the man beside him, the one he’d signaled to watch … the man lay dead, a bullet through his brain. The bandit who’d thrown the bullets gaped—and then erupted into even louder mirth. The others returned to the fire, laughing and cursing both, shaking their heads at their crony’s sense of humor. What a card.
Vance signaled to Marla, and they crawled through the shadowed debris, about five meters from the fire. They’d gotten most of the way around the bonfire when Marla saw the truck, just a few long paces away. It was a simple flatbed truck, solar powered, and there were two sentries leaning on it, talking and passing a bottle.
Vance whispered a suggestion to Marla. She rolled her eyes, but shrugged and crept up, alone, to the front of the truck. She was on the side opposite the sentries, blocked from the view of the men at the bonfire. She stood up, walked around to the sentries, pulling up her shirt as she went. “Fellas—do these round plump pink things on my chest mean I’m a girl? I’ve wondered for years.”
They gaped. They stared at her exposed breasts. They both took a step toward her.
Vance stepped up behind them and hit them on the back of their heads—hard, judging by the crunch sound—with the butts of two pistols, one in each hand. They went down, eyes crossing, gazes still fixed on her breasts.
Vance holstered his pistols. “Good job,” he whispered. “Put those things away before someone else gets hurt.”
“Just one of the many degradations offered to women visiting the planet Pandora,” she muttered, covering herself.
Vance looked over the top of the truck at the bandits whooping and laughing at the bonfire. “Seems like a good time. Let’s get out of here …”
“How you going to start the damn thing?”
“I know the code. This was my bunch, don’t forget.”
“What about the others? If you drive off they’ll see it go. I noticed some big weapons back there. They couldn’t miss that truck.”
“You think strategically,” he said, grinning. “I like that. But I’ve got it covered—I hope. They gimme the idea themselves. Go on, into the truck.”
She got into the passenger side and watched as he hunkered down and went to the other side. He opened the driver’s side door, then took a large clip of bullets from his trouser pocket. He turned toward the bonfire, took careful aim, and threw the clip underhand, through the air, a good long throw. It came down from above—anyone who saw it wouldn’t know where exactly it had been thrown from.
The clip bounced into the midst of the fire, and the men jumped up, cursing, accusing one another—and then diving to the ground as the bullets in the clip went cracking off, firing randomly from the flames, trailing fire into the dark sky.
Vance jumped into the truck, tapped a keycoder, starting the engine. Marla gripped the dashboard as he floored the accelerator and drove the truck off into the desert, while the bandits at the bonfire behind them shouted, swore, and started shooting—at one another.
Marla looked through the back window to see if there was any pursuit, anyone firing at them. She saw nothing but the receding firelight. Soon the fire’s flickering light was swallowed up by the night.
It wasn’t yet noon but the sun was hot on Cal’s head and his backside hurt from the long ride in the jolting, open-air sandtracker. He shared the ride across the rolling plain with the driver and two other mercenaries. The sandtracker’s oversized six wheels were ridged, flexibly axled to get traction on sandy terrain and crumbling rock. Another sandtracker, carrying three mercs and Rans Veritas, rumbled along five meters to their left. The outriders, much faster, were flanking the big sandtrackers, sometimes moving ahead or dropping behind to check their perimeters. Roland was up ahead driving the outrunner with Crannigan on the turret gun. Cal wished he could be up there riding with Roland. This was one tedious ride. He couldn’t even talk to the mercs in the sandtracker without giving himself away. If they said anything to him he said, “No mezucka Englitchy!”
So far they seemed amused by him. What would they do when they found out he was a fraud?
Wiping dust from his eyes, Cal glanced at the other sandtracker—and caught Rans Veritas staring at him again. Rans lifted his binoculars and looked through them, right at Cal. From that close, looking at him in binocul
ars—the guy had to be trying to identify him.
Cal smiled, waved, and gave Rans the finger. Then he turned and looked toward the outrunner. What was Rans thinking?
He’d heard him talking to Crannigan, earlier, mentioning his father. “Finn set out for the same site. Don’t seem like he got there. It’s waiting for us and Atlas now …”
If Rans had known his father, maybe his dad had shown him pictures of his family. That’s something his dad liked to do. Dad bored lots of people with family holos. So if the guy knew he was Zac Finn’s son, he’d know that the stuff about the colony he’d come from—and the language only Roland understood—was all crapola. Had Rans told Crannigan what he knew?
A machine gun rattled up ahead—that was the outrunner’s gun. Cal thought: What if Crannigan, riding behind Roland, decided to get rid of him?
Maybe that’s what that gunfire was. People were so treacherous on this planet …
But the helmeted, rawboned merc riding beside him looked up ahead with his own binoculars. “Looks like they shot some scythids. No big deal.”
Cal almost responded in the language of the homeworld, wanting to talk to someone. Anyone. But he bit his lip and kept quiet.
Instead, when he saw a group of creatures flying over a nearby cluster of rocky hills, he pointed at them and asked, “Mezka rakks?”
“You asking if they’re called rakks, them birds? Nope.” The man removed his goggles, so that his sunburnt, lined face showed pale goggle marks where the dust was missing around his eyes. He spat on the goggles and wiped them off with his sleeve. “Nope, those is what they call ‘trash feeders.’ Almost like big, leathery birds. Some can train ’em as attack birds. Mean little bastards when they’re mad but they won’t bother us unless we shoot at ’em. Least how, that’s what I heard.” He looked at Cal shrewdly, probably trying to figure out if Cal understood what he’d said.
Cal remembered to shrug and say, “No mezucka Englitchy!”
The merc looked at him suspiciously but only shrugged and put his goggles back on.