by Adam Carter
He would not become the greatest pit fighter if he was never allowed to fight. It did not matter to him that he had summed up his foe so badly, that it had almost killed him. That he had needed the rescue was bad enough, but that it had come at the hand of the woman he was trying to outdo was intolerable. It did not occur to him for several hours that perhaps he was mostly angry about his own failure, and the fact that Honeywood had indeed proven herself his superior. It was something to reflect upon perhaps, but at that moment he was simply angry, and would not have listened were anyone to even suggest such a thing. And when Garza was angry he needed to be by himself to cool off. Hang the women, they could do whatever they wanted for a while, but right now he needed to be alone.
There was still no sign at all of Stiggs.
CHAPTER SIX
Ashley Honeywood seemed a very kind woman, but that didn’t count for much so far as Aubin saw things. She had learned the hard way that people only ever wanted what was best for themselves and that they feigned caring and understanding for the sake of convenience. Garza was a man like that; she had only known him for less than a day but she could already see what he was. He would use people for his own ends and discard them when something more profitable came his way. Stiggs … well at least Stiggs was upfront about what he was. There was nothing likable about the veritable rat of a man and Aubin kept out of his way as much as possible.
Honeywood however was different. She did genuinely seem to care at least on some level. Which meant she was the worst of them all. The woman was a pit fighter and long used to enticing her prey to the optimum position whereby she could take it down. Plus Honeywood was making her carry her pack through the swamp, in addition to her own, and through this Aubin could see the woman’s true character.
The event with the crocodile had been largely forgotten and no one had even bothered to thank Aubin for her knowledge of the creature which had initially saved their lives. Stiggs had come down from his tree shortly after he was certain the danger had passed and no one even bothered to berate him. They just continued trudging onwards through the endless marsh.
Just why Seward would have come this far was not something Aubin could understand. Honeywood had said Seward was likely looking for something to take back to his café, but that just didn’t make any sense to Aubin. If he was gathering berries he could just as easily have taken some which weren’t so many hours into the swamp; and if he was after meat there was no way he would be able to drag the carcass all the way back to his shack. She was beginning to think that Honeywood was wrong about all this, or at least that she was lying. But then what was the alternative? What else would Seward be doing out here so far into the swamp?
Perhaps he had been taken. It was all she could think of, but it made no sense. No one back at the prison would attack the man who made all their best meals, and so far as they knew there was no one else on the entire world. So far as they knew. She had never really stopped to think about it before, but what if that had not been true? Just because there was a penal colony on this world, it didn’t mean there wasn’t anything else. There could have been a city five miles away and they would never have known about it. Of course if there had been a city, likely there would have been some communication during the riot and help would have been sent. Valentine had been in charge of the prison for around five years now and they had seen no sign of anyone else around the area. Nor had they seen any craft come down from the sky, but then they had no sensors to detect such. Aubin had no idea how large this world was, but it had been formed of asteroids clumped together so she couldn’t see that it could have been too big. Certainly not as big as the planet ever in the sky above them.
Night was setting in by the time Honeywood called for a rest, and Aubin was glad. Her legs were aching from trudging through the swamp and her arms and shoulders were pounding from having to carry two packs. She collapsed as soon as Honeywood gave them permission to stop, and sat trying to catch her breath while she watched as Honeywood and Garza produced materials by which to make a form of tent. Aubin knew enough about the local insect life to realise what a bad idea it was to stay exposed during the night, and figured she probably should start setting up her own tent soon. She noticed Stiggs wasn’t doing much of anything, just eating some form of energy bar he had brought along with him. He even tossed the wrapper into the mire, which Aubin found kind of rude.
She felt something on her face then and for an instant thought it might be a splash of blood. Dabbing at her cheek with a finger she couldn’t see anything wrong, and then felt something else strike her. Thunder rolled in the distance and the drops intensified. Aubin raised her face to the heavens and closed her eyes. Rain was the best part about this world, for it was always hot in the swamp and it was nice to be able to drench oneself; and the showers back at the prison weren’t exactly in the best of shape.
“Cassie,” Honeywood said, and she opened her eyes. “You’re not keeping an eye out for monsters if you have your eyes closed.”
“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye out?”
“Well Garza and I can’t do everything, and Stiggs there can’t do anything.”
It was true. Aubin would not have trusted her life to Stiggs no matter what the situation. “Sure,” she called back, and focused her attention on the undergrowth. It was dark by this point, and she fished a light from her backpack, or it might have been Honeywood’s backpack. They would have to set up some kind of sonic field to keep the creatures away while they slept, but that was easily done so long as they had brought a generator with them. Alternatively they could just set a fire burning, but the swamp would douse it in moments.
The rain intensified within the next minute and she was beginning to grow uncomfortable sitting where she was. Shifting her weight, she found her foot sinking into the mire, and pulled it out before she could lose her shoe or something. She was not too proud to admit, at least to herself, that she had made some bad wardrobe choices in coming out here, but she wasn’t about to lose any of it.
Then she realised one of the packs was sinking into the mire, so she took two careful steps over to it and drew it out with a dull sucking of swamp water. She looked about for drier land, but there didn’t seem to be any which wasn’t quickly turning into sludge. Even her clothes, long stuck to her body through the heat, were now drenched through and far more uncomfortable upon her than they had been previously. The rain was intensifying very swiftly and she realised she could hardly hear anything above the harsh wail of the wind as it came screaming through the willows.
She looked about for the others of her party and saw Honeywood was shouting at her, her words lost to the sudden storm. It took Aubin too many split seconds to understand just what was going on, but as she turned in the direction she could see Honeywood was urgently looking in horror she suddenly remembered the precise recipe for a flash flood.
The wave of sludgy water struck her square against her hips, the water level automatically having risen to such a level. She staggered under the impact, but no matter how hard she fought there was nothing she could do to fight nature. Aubin felt herself yanked from her feet and released her hold on the backpack as she careened through the suddenly water-logged swamp. She tried to scream out, but her mouth instantly filled with marsh and she choked as it entered her lungs. She tumbled end over end, her mind frantic, for she knew she was going to die. She fought to gain footing, to stay upright, but her flailing limbs could find nothing to suggest she was not in a deep and thick ocean.
Light exploded in her world and she took a single gasping breath as her head broke the surface, but it was only a momentary respite, and once more she was tumbling. Her back struck something hard, she felt rock scrape down her arm and a thousand stings assailed her body as she was dragged across something sharp.
Suddenly she could breathe again and gulped air in a panic, then expelled it involuntarily as her body was slammed into the mud. She could feel the water sluicing across her back, although she
had stuck fast in a patch of mud beside what had become a fast-flowing river, and she frantically clawed at the soft surface in an attempt to drag herself to drier land. Rocks cascaded against her legs as they were taken up by the flood and carried downriver, but Aubin ignored the pain. She tasted blood in her mouth and blinked away a dark haze she knew would be fatal if she allowed it to consume her. She knew she was bleeding from a score of cuts across her entire body, but if she could just sink into the mud as she moved she would be anchored.
And then something grabbed her and she was torn forcibly from the mire. Aubin tried to say something, but her mind was fighting unconsciousness and all she could manage was a strangled groan. She felt herself fall to the ground and knew it was solid beneath her. She tried to keep her eyes open, but a red haze was clouding her vision and she knew she had probably taken a head wound. She tried to speak again, but blood and bog bubbled in her throat and her efforts came out a hacking wheeze.
She rolled onto her side and her body convulsed as she vomited half the swamp from her lungs, leaving a sickly aftertaste of mud and sludge. Her heart was hammering, her breathing almost insane, and her eyes were hardly registering her surroundings at all. She knew it would have to have been Garza who had dragged her from the marsh, for no one else of the party had that sort of strength, and as her eyes focused for but a moment upon her saviour it was to see something which did not even make sense.
The creature was not human. It stood in a crouch as though it was examining her, gazing at her with curious but blank eyes. Its skin was a mottled green and ochre, and it was clearly one of the indigenous beasts. But in that single second of sight she had Aubin could see something utterly frightening about the thing. Crouched though it was, the thing stood upon two legs, like a theropod, although its arms were long and muscular, and she could tell by its body structure it wasn’t just bipedal; it was humanoid.
*
“Over here!”
Aubin felt herself being shaken, which was perhaps not the best of medical practises, but it cleared her head and she gradually forced her eyes open. The red haze had diminished somewhat, and she could see vague forms before her. The rain had stopped, and she could no longer hear the rushing torrent created by the flash flood. She felt a flask placed to her lips and she drank in the sips she was allowed before the flask was taken from her, then returned so she could resume sipping.
Fighting to focus her eyes and mind, Aubin could make out the forms of her three companions now. Honeywood was the one who was cradling her in her arms, feeding her from the flask.
Aubin coughed once more, vomited further sludge, and felt her entire body shaking from within.
“She’ll be all right,” she heard Honeywood say and wished she could agree.
“We’re lucky to have found her at all,” Garza said. “The current could have taken her for miles.”
“Thanks,” Aubin managed, her first actual word. Garza had pulled her from the swamp, she knew that much. Only he had the strength to do so, although an odd image formed in her mind of some form of theropod. Perhaps something had stalked her and the noise of the flood or her searching comrades had frightened it away.
“How do you feel?” Garza asked her. “She’s pretty cut up, Honeywood. We need to get those injuries tended to.”
“I’m fine,” Aubin wheezed. “Thanks to you.”
Garza managed a reassuring smile. “And here I was thinking you were the one who knew the terrain and all its pitfalls.”
“Only so much books can teach you,” Aubin said, her breathing slowing at last. Pain was beginning to set in now and she knew she was hurt in many places. She could feel the warm dampness over her legs to indicate she had been torn quite badly, but she couldn’t feel that anything was actually broken. Which meant she was a very lucky young woman indeed.
“Hey!”
Aubin realised it was Stiggs who was shouting. Garza went over to see what he had found, while Honeywood helped Aubin to her feet. She seemed to ask silently whether Aubin was all right to move by herself, which of course she wasn’t, so Honeywood helped her hobble over to see what they had discovered.
And then she saw it. The odd set of footprints in the mud. She could see it had been left by some kind of theropod, but the impression of the heel indicated something peculiar indeed.
“What makes that kind of print?” Honeywood asked flatly.
“Nothing,” Garza said. “Whatever left these tracks, it was walking upright, and by the length of its stride I’d say it was human.”
“Those aren’t human tracks,” Honeywood said, more than a little fear lacing her voice.
“I know,” Garza said, and Aubin could see such fear reflected in his eyes. An image flashed into her mind of the thing which had pulled her from the mud, for she knew now it had not been Garza. The curious thing which had watched her and then vanished while she was unconscious. She had thought, hoped, she had simply imagined it, but she knew now she had not. It was real, and it was out there. And whatever it was, it was no more natural than the prehistoric extinct animals roaming the swamp in the first place.
Fear crept into Aubin’s soul then as she realised at last that there was more to this world than they had yet discovered in their five years of being free. And perhaps they did not want to explore further lest they find out just what else this world might be holding in secret from them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The bird was about three quarters of a metre in length, but then it had a long brightly coloured feather tail which made it sound larger than it was. Its beak was sharp, its eyes full and alert, and it looked very much like any other bird which might still be found on the Earth. Its neck was relatively long, its talons sharp, and there was a slight crest, a tuft of fur almost, upon its head.
Stiggs watched as the bird took flight from the branch upon which it was perched, its wings exploding outward in a beautiful spray of brilliance. It caught a mosquito mid-air and landed upon another branch. It had been as though the bird had leapt instead of flown. Stiggs had seen birds catch insects like that before – swallows were a perfect example – but that was back on Earth. The birds on this world were far more intriguing.
“Thanks,” he said to the bird. The mosquito may well have been headed for him and his friend the bird may have just saved him a nasty bite.
The bird was known as the changchengornis, or the ‘Great Wall of China bird’. When it had lived it had done so in China, obviously, but out here the name seemed somewhat redundant. With so many large extinct creatures roaming the lands, Stiggs was surprised such a thing was even here. Whoever the architects of this place were, Stiggs was grateful for their choices.
Of the creatures roaming the swamps, from the crocodiles to the dinosaurs, Stiggs cared very little. His passion back on Earth had been birds, and when he had first come to this world he had been as depressed as everyone else. But then he discovered his first bird out in the swamp and he had become fascinated. Immediately he had taken up his books to identify the creature, but of course it was in none of them. A thorough search of prehistoric records (which was something of an oxymoron), revealed the bird to have been confuciusornis. It was, so the records told him, the first bird to have developed a beak. He realised then what wonderful blessing he had been given; to be able to see the origins of birds on this prehistoric backwater world.
Since that time he had devoured the archives and sighted several more species. The changchengornis he was observing currently was a bird he had seen many times in the swamp, but it always fascinated him.
There were theories of course that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and that the dromaeosaurids had sported feathers. There were also theories that the dromaeosaurids had evolved directly from lizard birds such as the archaeopteryx. Either theory was intriguing, but both together made for a thought-provoking notion indeed. What if birds had evolved into dinosaurs, which then evolved back into birds? It gave the whole ‘chicken and the egg’ scenario a whole new twist.<
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The changchenornis took flight once more and disappeared into the upper branches. Like the confuciusornis, the changchenornis possessed a feathered tail which gave it absolutely no help during flight, and Stiggs could actually see as much as he watched it disappear. He wondered what had spooked it, and heard the dull clomp of booted feet moving through the swamp. He had heard carnosaurs make less noise than that.
“There you are,” Garza grunted when he found him. “What are you doing back here anyway?”
“Nothing you’d understand.”
Garza shrugged. “Well get a move on, we’re leaving.”
Night had come and gone and Stiggs had woken early in order to catch some birds feeding. No doubt the others thought he was off for some nefarious means, but he found he didn’t much care what they thought of him. He knew he should not snap at people so much, not entice them to hate him, but since he didn’t care what they thought of him it didn’t matter much how he treated them. Stiggs preferred birds to people, and made no secret of it.
He made his way slowly back to camp. The girl, Aubin, had been washed away by the flash flood, but had been recovered and her injuries tended to. She had managed to lose two packs in her stupidity, however, which meant the others were insisting Stiggs share his supplies. It was an annoyance for him, but had been something he had entirely expected. Had he been the one to lose his pack however he doubted they would have been as forthcoming with sharing their own provisions and equipment.
The camp was breaking up by the time he arrived. Aubin was moving very slowly, placing each step carefully, and was moving with a pronounced limp. Honeywood was securing the tents so they could be carried once more, while Garza was packing away some meat he had cured the night before. They would need food for the journey, of course, but it was water they would be more likely to run out of. Even despite the flood of the previous night. One could not drink from the swamp after all, not unless you wanted a slow death from disease.