What wasn’t an illusion, however, were the thousands of birds that filled the upper level. Black, red, brown, and yellow. All sizes and shapes. The noises they made were as wild and varied as the birds themselves. Some whistled, some honked, some chirped, and others seemed to growl. Many were perched on branches and taking in the sunlight, but several hundred flew around the cavernous valley that filled the space between the level’s airy ceiling and its porous floor. He had never seen so many flying animals and couldn’t help but wonder if any of them were dangerous. None seemed to pay him any mind, though, except for the few dozen that had taken flight at his initial appearance.
Despite being stranded alone on a strange world that he knew very little about, Eli Justice couldn’t help but marvel at the wonders Cerbius displayed.
He might never make it home alive, but the colors and wildlife that surrounded him sure beat the flock out of anything he’d ever seen on Telgora.
* * *
They hadn’t seen any more of the large wormlike creatures since moving away from the coast, and Benson was relieved. His rangers had used nearly 20 percent of their ammunition taking down the single worm, and even though they had learned a valuable lesson—shoot for the mouth—he didn’t want to waste another round on the giants if he could avoid it.
They had been on the move for the past two hours. For the first hour, his only thought was to move away from the coast. After putting enough distance between themselves and the worms, though, his considerations became more strategic. Where were they headed? What was their goal? How could they survive long enough to be rescued?
They had two obvious choices for an immediate destination: locate the mining base that had shot them down or find out what was left of the Agate. The fact that the ship had crashed somewhere between their current location and the mining base really left only one choice: find the Agate.
Unfortunately, it was a near certainty that their enemy would also send forces to the downed ship, which meant they had to find it quickly and approach with extreme caution.
Chapter 7
“Colonel Drah,” Lieutenant Chisk began. Drah’s personal assistant was careful to regulate his words and tone, Drah noted. Good. Deference was an important part of the Chisk’s job responsibilities. The Minith warrior stood at attention in front of his superior’s desk and delivered the report. “The Alliance ship was brought down by our plasma cannons. It crashed just under a hundred kilometers to our east.”
“Survivors?” Drah growled. He stood looking out the window of his small, unadorned office. The view was the same as it had been for the past three months. Situated at the very top of the three-story mining facility, he could look down at the mining operations spread out below.
The spaceport—as small as it was, it hardly earned the right to be called a spaceport—was visible to the east. It was currently vacant; the last Zrthn cargo ship had departed the day before, laden with the cleanest agsel that had ever been mined. Another ship wasn’t expected for two more days. The building where the mine shaft was located was visible to his left and was currently bustling with workers arriving for the upcoming shift change.
In the distance, he spied the ever-present forest. As was his custom, he scanned the wall of broken trees, dirt, and brush that had been created when the mining facility was built. The tall berm that now surrounded the mining village protected them from most of the planet’s indigenous wildlife. The occasional menace made its way through or over the wall, but they were rare. And quickly dispatched. Still, Drah couldn’t help but watch for unwanted movement along the perimeter.
“Three carriers evacuated the ship before it crashed, Colonel. We sent a chase carrier after them. The Alliance vehicles disappeared into the forest. We continue to monitor the situation.”
Drah turned away from the window and stared daggers at his subordinate. He wanted to lash out at the male—strike him across the face—but he swallowed the urge. Rage was a constant companion for the former Colonel of the Shiale Alliance Defense Force, and Drah did his best to recognize and counter the anger before he acted on his feelings. He was mostly successful.
“Very well, Chisk,” he muttered, struggling for calm. “Search the downed ship and post guards there. They may try to return to it. Let me know right away of any developments.”
“Yes, Colonel,” the underling replied, then turned quickly on his heel and made his escape.
Drah slammed his hands down flat on the desk that occupied the center of the small space. He wanted—no, he needed—to pace, but the office the Zrthns allowed him barely accommodated such basic movements. He was restricted to a tiny five-meter-long path behind his desk.
The Zrthns.
He had to contact them to let them know that the Alliance ship had arrived. Drah had known it was merely a matter of time; the potential presence of large agsel deposits waiting to be mined demanded they give it some consideration. Frankly, the former Alliance officer was surprised it had taken this long for the first ship to arrive. Of course, he couldn’t let his Zrthn masters know that. As far as they knew, only he and a few of his most trusted deputies possessed the information. After all, that’s what he had told them.
The information about Cerbius, specifically that it quite likely possessed significant deposits of agsel, is what had saved him from death (at best) or a life of enslaved servitude (at worst). After the failure of his coup on Telgora, he and three thousand of his fellow rebels had been handed over to the Zrthns as part of a deal to end the conflict. As a result, he and his troops had spent months in the dank holding pens of a Zrthn ship, unable to do more than sit, stand, eat, or sleep. Drah had watched in glum silence as most of his soldiers were sold to various worlds before he recalled the crumb of intelligence that had spared him a similar fate.
Although the intelligence that had crossed his desk about Cerbius had been nothing more than preliminary, he had embellished it to the point where Oinoo, the leader of the Zrthn faction that held his fate, had been swayed. Instead of hearing about an unsubstantiated sensor reading by an Alliance ship that just happened to be in the area, Oinoo learned about a planet that Drah and his own soldiers had discovered and managed to keep hidden from the remainder of the Shiale Alliance.
Oinoo was no fool, though. He was accustomed to hearing wild tales told by captives hoping to spare themselves from their fates. His skepticism was replaced by surprise and glee, however, when his own sensors detected large deposits of agsel hiding beneath the planet’s surface. Drah was equally surprised by the finding, but pressed his advantage and soon found himself in charge of the operations to explore and mine Cerbius.
The last year had been spent doing just that, but now the Alliance had arrived. His forces had managed to disable the Alliance ship, but it was only a matter of time before more ships arrived.
With a snarl, he activated the communication device and prepared to deliver the news to his masters.
Chapter 8
Eli began at a slow pace, checking the security of each step before committing to it. He quickly fell into a rhythm that neared jogging as he grew confident with the floor beneath him.
That’s how he ended up stepping into a camouflaged hole.
He fell through the trap all the way to his groin and found himself lying facedown. Although his left leg had punched through the floor, the rest of his body seemed secure. He struggled to extricate his leg and finally managed to pull it up. He then studied the hole he’d stepped through. Bite marks showed where the interlaced branches had been gnawed through. Leaves and a thin layer of dirt had been placed across the top of the hole to disguise its presence. Strange.
Eli scanned the surrounding area for any indication of what had set the trap but came up blank.
On a hunch, he lay on his stomach and peered down through the hole. It was dark, so he activated his night vision and scanned the floor of the next level, seventy-five meters below. There, directly beneath his position, he spied two large, ratlike creatures.
The grotesque-looking animals were roughly the size of wild pigs, with gray, furless hides and long, straight tails. They were sniffing the ground anxiously and glancing up at him. Eli got the feeling they were surprised that their meal hadn’t landed where they had expected. Interesting. They had obviously climbed the tree, prepared their trap, and then scurried back down to wait for their prey to come crashing through. From the size of the hole they had prepared, their quarry couldn’t be larger than a standard Earth house cat. Fortunately, an armor-covered ranger didn’t fit that particular bill.
Again, Eli scanned the area around him for signs of life, but this time he concentrated his attention near the ground, where a smaller animal might reside. From this angle, with his head near the ground, he quickly spied what looked like a trail. It passed through the foliage from his left to right and—no surprise—went directly over the trap that had been set. His misstep had apparently just saved some unsuspecting critter from becoming a meal for the two ugly rat-pigs below.
He shivered at the thought of dropping through another, larger trap and decided it was time to slow his movements. He moved out again, this time taking care to scan the ground ahead much more closely.
Now that he knew what to look for, he spied the rat-pig traps at regular intervals. They were always located on or next to one of the numerous trails that cut through the underbrush.
On one occasion, he’d nearly stepped into a much larger trap, one that he could have easily disappeared through if he hadn’t been watching closely. He inspected the hole in the floor and noted that the teeth marks were decidedly different from those of the rat-pigs. These were larger. The larger teeth marks, combined with the size of the trap itself, let Eli know there were larger hunters around. It also indicated the presence of larger prey—perhaps the pig-rats themselves. The discovery required even more caution, and he slowed his movements even further.
Three hours later, the sunlight filtering down through the ceiling overhead grew dim, and Eli knew the day was coming to an end. He was tired, sore, and in need of water. The right knee he’d tweaked while on the ship was starting to ache. The going was slower than he’d hoped. A check of his data map showed that he’d covered only ten of the fifty-nine kilometers. He still had almost fifty kilometers to go before reaching the downed ship.
Resigned to spending his first night on Cerbius alone, he took another sip of his nearly depleted water supply and looked about for a place to rest. Twenty meters away, he spotted a sturdy-looking treelike bush that had managed to gain purchase on this level. The upper branches looked thick enough to hold him, and he weighed his options: he could risk the tree-bush and a possible horizontal sleep, or he could spend the night sleeping in a vertical position by climbing the nearest tree trunk and locking his suit into position. As tempting as the horizontal position was, he couldn’t do it. He had no idea what type of creatures prowled this level at night. Sleeping vertically on the tree trunk seemed the safer alternative.
With a shrug, he walked toward the nearest trunk and began to climb. He stopped at a point fifteen meters up, which placed him well above the floor below but still low enough that the suit would protect him from an unexpected fall. In the dying moments of the day, he dug his fingers into the horizontal crease in the trunk that was nearest his shoulders and ordered the suit to lock his shoulder, elbow, wrist, and finger joints. Satisfied that his hands would hold, he found a similar crease for his feet and then locked the suit’s remaining joints.
Once his body was locked into position, he gave verbal commands that turned on his suit’s external proximity sensors. Satisfied the suit’s alarm would wake him if anything approached during the night, he gave himself over to gravity and tried to relax.
His thoughts cycled briefly between Adrienne, his parents, Samna, and the other rangers who’d been on the ship. He needed to think through his current situation and determine his next steps, but he had trouble fixating on anything specific. The throbbing in his knee and the irritating aches in his groin and armpits where they met his armor took center stage.
Despite the discomfort, he was asleep within seconds.
Chapter 9
General Grant Justice, leader of the Shiale Defense Forces, sat alone in his office on Waa and started the final vid. He’d already looked at the other six versions. All showed the same thing, just from different locations: the final, dreadful minutes of the Agate’s fateful expedition.
The ship had been outfitted with the latest near-real-time communications technology, and the ship’s captain had sent the video feed out as soon as he recognized they had encountered a problem. The technology was a spoil of war, won from the Zrthn’s failed attack on Telgora only eighteen months earlier.
Unfortunately, the scout ship hadn’t been outfitted with the other technological advance they had won from the Zrthns: the deep space transportation portals. There might have been time to escape via a portal had one been on board. Currently, only the newest battle-cruiser motherships had the portals, and those ships weren’t quite ready for action. Soon, but not yet.
Grant watched anxiously as an external vid showed Captain Eli Justice, the leader of the Shiale Ranger force on the mission—and his only child—hanging upside down beneath the Agate. The vid’s angle provided a clear view of the damage to the ship. The outcome was already known, but he had to see it for himself again. He couldn’t present Avery with the news of their son’s death unless he knew for certain.
He watched the screen in silence as Eli struggled through the ordeal of exiting the scout ship and repairing the center drive. The elder Justice smiled when the agsel tape was placed on the severed line and reminded himself that his son’s actions had saved lives. His quick fix had given the ship enough power to continue on for several more minutes, which was enough to allow those inside the ship to escape.
Grant noted the time stamp on the vid and knew the moment of truth had arrived. The second blast from the laser canon would arrive any second, and he inched closer to the screen, anxious to see everything. Eli was turning toward the soldier helping him—Private Samna—and giving her a thumbs-up when a red streak flashed into the picture. The streak sliced through the port drive, traveled along the hull, and cut across the hatch where Private Samna was located.
Grant watched in horror as the top half of the private’s body fell from the hatch and began tumbling. The dread he felt increased tenfold when he saw Eli, still attached to the safety line that Samna held, snatched from the ship. One moment his son was there, alive and well. The next moment, he was gone. Although the vid didn’t show it, Grant had no problem imagining the long fall that followed. It could end only one way.
The vid continued to play for another six minutes. It showed the same view of the Agate’s scarred, empty underbelly as it made its final, uncontrolled descent.
But Grant didn’t notice.
He couldn’t see past the tears, the pain, or the grief.
Chapter 10
Wake, wake, wake.
Eli felt a whisper tickling the edge of his consciousness, and he stirred.
Wake, wake, wake.
His body ached, and the pains he’d felt before nodding off came crashing back, full force.
Look, look, look.
The greenish-gray bark of the giant tree filled his vision and he realized dawn had arrived. The previous day’s events must have taken more out of him than he’d realized. Normally, he awoke clear headed, ready for whatever presented itself. No need to shake off cobwebs, clear his head, or ingest the caffeine pills that many of his fellow soldiers relied upon. But not this morning. He shook his head and willed the haze away, but it clung, stubborn and resistant to his efforts.
Look, look, look.
What the flock is that, he wondered. The words entered his head like a cool breeze, light and barely recognizable. But they were there, nonetheless.
Up, up, up.
Brrrrp! Brrrrp! The proximity alarm startled Eli, causing him to knock the back of hi
s head against the lightly padded rear of his helmet. It didn’t hurt, but the action served to clear his thoughts, and the haze that had previously engulfed him was gone. He turned his attention to the readings that flashed across the top right section of his face screen. Something was approaching. And it was big.
He initiated the commands that would unlock the joints of his armor and glanced up.
There, barely ten meters above his head, was a . . . giant caterpillar? That was the closest thing Eli could compare it to, though its size discredited the notion. It moved in undulating waves and seemed covered by hairlike bristles, but it was easily as big as a carrier. And it was headed directly for him.
Pain flashed up and down his right arm—a byproduct of his night spent locked into position—as he reached down to his thigh for the Ginny shotgun. His hand landed on an empty holster. Flock! The weapon had been locked away in his quarters on the Agate when they’d been attacked. Not that it mattered. Even had he been carrying the Ginny, Eli wasn’t sure the weapon would be enough protection against this thing.
But he wasn’t necessarily defenseless. The PEACE armor offered serious defensive protection and gave him the strength of ten men. And he was only fifteen meters above the layer’s floor. If he had to jump, he should be fine as long he didn’t get completely unlucky and crash through one of the larger traps.
Then again, maybe the—giantpillar, he decided was as good a name as any—wasn’t even dangerous. Action isn’t always necessary, he reminded himself. Sometimes patience and inaction solved the problem at hand.
Having settled on a course, he stilled his body while simultaneously preparing it for action.
Stranded Justice (The Justice Trilogy Series Book 2) Page 5