Dark Planet

by Charles W. Sasser

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY NINE

  It didn’t seem possible that forest fires could combust in such a drenched land, but the old burn I came to attested to the fact that they happened. I paused at the edge of a woodline and looked out over a wide expanse of dead and barren blackness, the only features being charred stumps and the scorched carapaces of beetles trapped and destroyed by the blaze. I couldn’t go back; I couldn’t go around to the right without moving into Blade’s trap; skirting the burn to the left killed time without leading Blade deeper into the planet away from the pod. That meant I had to go straight ahead, across the burn.

  A stream meandered through the middle of the seared plain. Blackened tree skeletons stood along the banks. Further into the opening a herd of Goliath beetles, rather passive creatures in spite of their furious appearance, browsed on pioneer weeds that were starting to sprout in the wasteland. I girded myself mentally and took to the streambed. The water ran slow and shallow, its surface dimpled by the drizzling rain. The banks were relatively high and afforded some cover.

  I tried to pick up the pace, but running for any extended time might cause additional damage to my fractured chest plate. I maintained a steady, slow jog, favoring my right side, sloshing in the stream and bending low to utilize the full benefit of the banks as cover.

  I sensed the sniper’s frustration and realized with a start that he had spotted me and was trying to get a clear shot. I controlled my taa, refusing to allow it dominance. I was getting better and better at it.

  I tasted the Presence and, through it, received a disturbing impression of the sniper. The Republic military always attempted to weed out the “over the edge” types, but no system was fail proof. For Blade, the perfect psychopath, being team sniper was all about power. He was the consummate hunter. He tracked his target, observed it, matched wits with it, waited for the perfect time … and then … one shot, one kill. Killing became a heady drug to which Blade was obviously addicted.

  He was enjoying the hunt. I recognized that in Blade’s personality it would be as hard for him to withdraw now as it was to pull out halfway through sex. Good. Maybe I could use that information against him.

  I was fairly certain Blade had none of the Hornet sensor rounds remaining, else he would surely have used them by now. That left the dumb rounds. Although they came in faster than the speed of sound, without emissions to give them away, and slammed into a target before the target knew it, they were less formidable than Hornets. Nonetheless, it occurred to me that I might have made a foolish mistake in taking to the open ground for expediency’s sake.

  I crouched lower and jogged a bit faster to make a flitting target, carrying the Indowy lindal in my left hand, the Punch Gun in my right.

  I received from Blade an overwhelming rush of hatred and cruelty and pleasure. At the same instant, I picked up his thoughts. Elf moving at eight klicks an hour … one meter lead … bullet half a second in flight …

  Calculating a shot.

  He “dropped off my scope,” disappeared from my senses. I realized he had gone into his “cocoon.” Snipers often talked about the state of auto-hypnosis in which all thought and emotion ceased the moment before they squeezed the trigger on a target.

  A voice screamed inside my subconscious. Accompanying it came the danger image of a crouching fanger.

  Down!

  The warning a half instant later would have come too late. Taa kicked in and I dodged.

  The bullet sizzled past, only inches in front of my chest. It thudded, spent, into the opposite stream bank. I heard the distant report of the shot. A wrenching spasm of pain in my chest reminded me that I wasn’t yet whole. Ignoring it, I used taa to propel me another hundred meters up the streambed before I flopped to the ground.

  Under cover of the near clay bank, I rolled over on my back and let it rain in my face while I took deep breaths to restore my equilibrium. Being half-Human, I supposed, reduced my power of taa to some extent, but at the same time increased my immunity to random lintatai. I didn’t think I understood that until just now.

  That was close. If it hadn’t been for the warning … The Good Presence.

  Are you there? I asked in thought.

  Yes.

  Where?

  I am here.

  I could use some help about now.

  We are prohibited from interfering directly. We can only influence.

  Who prohibits it?

  It is prohibited.

  It is the same for the Presence? It can only influence? Is that why it cannot take the lindal from me and cannot directly help the Human destroy me?

  Yes.

  But the Presence destroyed the robot at the river and the other one when we found the lindal.

  Those were machines only. Their destruction was meant to demonstrate its power and attract evil to it.

  That was how the Presence selected Blade? Evil attracting evil?

  The sniper responded favorably. He continues to respond favorably.

  Blade and the Presence were acquainted from before?

  The Presence was acquainted with him.

  It was a strange mental conversation.

  Who are you? I asked.

  I am who I am. That is all you can understand.

  Who is the Presence?

  It is evil and feeds on evil and grows stronger.

  Can you destroy it?

  It is stronger than I. The Human is stronger than you.

  Great.

  But they have their weaknesses. Which you will exploit with my influence. They fear you.

  If I fail?

  We both fail. We both perish. The lindal you carry will release its evil into the galaxy.

  Can you take the box and destroy it?

  I can only influence.

  Right.

  I was stuck with a weak old aunt when it came to a presence. Chalk up another advantage for Blade in his strong, evil Presence. Nonetheless, my Presence had saved my life.

  I felt Blade’s hate and frustration drop beyond my awareness. He was blocking me again, obviously with the help of his Presence. It was going to be a cat-and-mouse game the rest of the way across the burn. It was time to screw with his mind. I took out the squad radio and calmed my breathing so Blade couldn’t tell how seriously I was injured. I had to entice him closer, into range of my Punch.

  “As long as you stay at such long range,” I radioed chidingly, “I can duck your bullets forever.”

  “Fu-uck.”

  “Tut, tut, Sergeant Kilmer. You need to learn the ancient Human art of Zen. Think of calm water, Sergeant Kilmer.”

  I began taunting him over the radio, pushing the right buttons to get him to relax control.

  “If you are going to be a real sniper, Sergeant Kilmer, let me help you. Think: front sight, front sight, breath in, let half of it out, clear your mind, you are in a soap bubble in a gentle breeze … squeeze, squeeze …”

  “Fu-uck you, elf!”

  I felt him in the highlands.

  A couple of bullets, delivered in exasperation, thudded into the streambed where I had been but was no longer. His anger gave him away before he fired. I knew I had a chance as long as he continued his mind blitz of hatred and pleasure at the instant of his trigger squeeze. Once he learned to control that, however, recognized what he was doing, I would no longer experience an advance warning. Even the Good Presence wouldn’t be able to save me.

  The twin blasts of Blade’s rifle blended into a crack of lightning. The mass of giant beetles, to my rear now, began to move past me in the same direction I was heading. The rifle shots shouldn’t have spooked them, accustomed as they were to the pop and banging of lightning. But whatever set them off, I saw my opportunity.

  I scurried low along the streambed until I reached the nearest insect. The herd flowed rapidly but was not stampeding, simply moving out of the way of perceived danger. I vaulted out of the little creek and was soon trotting among the beetles, using the masses a
s cover against Blade’s rifle. His fury lashed out at me. He blasted away with the Gauss, hitting the beetles and killing several.

  When the burn ended and woodland began, I split from the herd and dropped into bushes to look over my back trail. I soon discovered what had motivated the movement. A pack of the thinking predator lizards was slinking along the edges of the burn. I counted six of them. Because of their number, two of whom were the larger king reptiles, I assumed they were the survivors of Blade’s massacre. Obviously, they learned from their experiences, for they stayed in the woodline under cover, circling the burn. I probed their brains. They were cautious, wary. Obviously, since they could actually see me and not Blade because of his chameleons, they associated me with the death that had taken three of their number — and they were seeking revenge.

  They were stalking me.

  I chilled to the core. Just what I needed. Blade and the lizards all hunting me.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY FORTY

  I should have pushed things at the camp after Blade annihilated DRT-213. Had the fight right then and got it over with. But the injury done me by the Hornet round and the ultimate Zentadon prohibition against killing another sentient had stopped me. On the other hand, what ultimate good would it have done, other than raw revenge, to destroy Blade? As it turned out, I wasn’t programmed into the pod’s computers. I couldn’t leave Aldenia on my own anyhow.

  What if I captured the sniper? Captured him and forced him to operate the pod?

  It could be done. Ironic that the Human who meant to kill me was now my only hope. What a strange turn of events. Whereas I had previously given up hope of personal escape and desired only to rid the galaxy of the dreadful lindal and, perhaps, of Sergeant Kilmer, I now depended upon Blade’s survival for my own.

  Thinking that I had put some distance between Blade and me, I crawled into the shelter of an outcropping of rock to rest. I sat huddled in the side of the ledge and looked out over a vast expanse of mixed savannah, forest, and burnt plain where bolts of lightning cracked and strobed, sizzling in the rain. I was wet and chilled literally to the bone. I used precious energy warming my body telekinetically, but the loss of energy would be more than compensated for by the restoration it helped accomplish.

  I gnawed on the newt I had saved from lunch, barely feeling the taa push that came as the result of consuming what had once been living flesh. So far, in this cat-and-mouse game with Blade, I was managing to maintain control over my taa in spite of how my emotions kept pegging out. Other Zentadon, the taa addicts, pushed the edge of lintatai; I had to push it the same way, but for a different purpose. My survival, my mission, ultimately depended on it. If I went too far, just one time, and succumbed to it …

  Well, I had seen the Zentadon addicts drifting away, withering into infinity and dying with smiles of bliss on their faces. That seemed an easier way to go than spontaneous combustion. It wasn’t comforting to know that I could go either way.

  I felt Blade’s anger out there somewhere, more dreadful than the storms. I also felt the lizards. Both elements on my trail.

  I analyzed the problem logically, as was the Zentadon way. The problem: Only Blade could operate the landing pod. Complication: Blade was going to kill me. Solution: Avoid being killed, take Blade prisoner.

  I had this thing half solved already. Everything except the “avoid being killed, take Blade prisoner” part.

  I had attempted a booby trap before. It failed. What made me think I could construct one now that would operate more successfully than the first?

  I had to play to his greed and to his competitiveness. Make him think he had won. Looking downhill from my rock shelter to a copse of twisted and splintered trees spun into a decaying spider’s web gave me an idea. I jumped up immediately, revived by the prospect of taking the offensive, and raced down to the spider’s web. I didn’t have much time, but I thought I had enough. What a tangled web we weave. An old, old Earth expression. I thought sadly of Pia.

  I climbed one of the anchor trees, careful to avoid being trapped and tangled in the web myself. Using my clasp knife with the broken point, I cut all the web’s anchor points except the one nearest the bottom of the tree and the one at its topmost. Sticky goo covered the strands. The remnants of a dragonfly long dead with the juice sucked out of it clung near the middle. I climbed the other tree and worked feverishly to prepare that side of the web the same as the first. Above me in the drizzle a giant dragonfly made curious circles. So far, dragonflies had proved no threat. I wondered what they ate.

  I attached a thin, pliable vine to each top anchor point and cut both web points half through their junctions with the trees so that a stiff tug would release the top portion of the web. Lastly, I ran a long vine through the grass to a point where I could reach it to give that tug. If everything worked the way I planned, and I saw no reason why it shouldn’t, the web would drop silently and swiftly like a net and entangle its prey, Blade, in myriad filaments so gluey that he wouldn’t be able to move for the few minutes I needed to complete the capture.

  I stood back and regarded the snare with satisfaction. The spider’s web, having been long unused and sagging, still looked completely natural even with my modifications. Its bottom lines were at least three meters off the ground, leaving plenty of room for a Human man to walk underneath without feeling unduly threatened. There was a small clearing there so the web could fall without becoming entangled before it served its purpose. The trap vines merged with the foliage so that even an accomplished woodsman like Blade wouldn’t suspect anything.

  All I needed was the bait.

  I radioed Blade.

  “What do you want, elf?” he demanded suspiciously. “You’ve been still and in one place for too long.”

  The monitor on the lindal would have told him that.

  I inserted pain and suffering into my voice. “I am hurt. You have shot me again.”

  “Well. Is that a fact? My heart bleeds purple piss.”

  “I will die, Blade. But before I do I will keep going with the Hell Box until you are too far from the pod to make it back in time.”

  Silence. Blade had apparently considered that possibility. I let him stew over it for a few moments.

  “Will you still make a deal?” I asked, forcing myself to plead.

  “What kind of deal?” He sounded shrewd and cautious.

  “We will have to work out the details so that we each get what we want.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You must dispose of the rifle …”

  “Fu-uck! Double Fu-uck!”

  “That is nonnegotiable.”

  Like I really expected him to negotiate in good faith. I felt him mulling it over. I felt his deceit brewing.

  “Go on,” he encouraged presently.

  “You keep your Punch,” I said. “I will keep mine. That puts us on an equal footing. We select a point and we walk out to meet each other. From that point we can talk.”

  “You’re bringing the box with you, is that right?”

  I hesitated to make him think I was wrestling with my decision. “I will bring the box.”

  Box. That was the only word his greed heard.

  “No tricks?” he said. Those who were knavish and treacherous always anticipated those qualities in everyone else, while honest people expected other people to be likewise honest. I would have to be on my guard.

  “You want the box,” I resumed. “I am hurt. I cannot leave this cursed planet without you. That seems to preclude tricks — as long as each is aware of the other’s needs.”

  My ears flicked. I knew I could not trust Blade. His sole objective was to obtain the box by whatever means, by hook or by crook, as Pia would have put it, and then dispose of me. But then, on this occasion, he couldn’t trust me either. It was going to be a tryst built upon mutual deceit; and Blade, I kept warning myself, had much more practice at it than I.

  All we needed to do was select a rendezvous site.<
br />
  “Where are you, elf?” he asked. As though he didn’t know already.

  I played along, pretending that I hadn’t figured out that he was tracing me with Captain Amalfi’s monitor bug, not tracking me.

  “Do you see the rocky hill to the southwest of the burned plain?” I said. “Near where the dragonfly is circling?”

  “Is that where you are? All right. Where do we meet?”

  We negotiated. I suggested he come to the ridgeline. He declined it as being too enclosed, which I knew he would. He offered the burn by the muddy stream. I rejected it as too open. Finally, I proposed the copse of trees where my trap awaited. For a moment I thought he was going to reject it outright because the idea came from me.

  “It is open enough on either side that we can see each other before we get within Punch range,” I said, panting a little in pain for effect, “but it gives me cover in case you decide not to lay down your rifle first.”

  “Don’t you trust me, elf?” he gibed.

  “You are an honorable, decent man who has not recently murdered all his comrades. Of course, I trust you.”

  He laughed over the radio with the unnerving voice of the Presence.

  “One other thing,” I added. “Turn off your chameleons. I want to be able to see you.”

  “Done,” he agreed. “We meet under the dragonfly. Make sure you’re carrying the case or all deals are off.”

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  FORTY ONE

  He wasn’t carrying the rifle. With his cammies turned off, I could see that as he worked his way off the burn and started to climb toward me through the lush grasslands below the trees. I also knew the rifle couldn’t be far away. He was exclusive with the thing. He probably conjoined with it.

  Rain slashed at his figure. Storms were moving back in. The crash-flash of lightning infused the meeting with all the drama of a state summit. Not so far away now, the six lizards were making their way toward us in the treeline on our side of the burn. The damnable dragonfly flew lower and lower, its membrane wings misting the falling rain and causing the precariously-clinging spider’s web to tremble. I waved my arms at it, but that only seemed to whet its curiosity. I watched it uneasily.