by Worth, Dan
Eventually he stood upon solid ground once more and sat down wearily amongst a meadow of flowers. He had finally reached the edge of the forest and here there was enough sunlight at the tree-line for other photosynthesising plants to flourish. A multitude of trumpet like flowers, a metre high or more, surrounded him, their mouths tracking the fiery ball in the sky above, the buzzing sounds of insect-like creatures filling the air as winged things hopped from bloom to bloom.
Ahead of him, the land rose to a rocky plateau. Behind him the deep sea green of the forest stretched back seemingly forever, and there were things lurking within it that he’d rather not think about right now. The insects moving amongst the sunlit flowers reminded him of them and he shuddered, despite the heat.
He ate one of the energy bars he had salvaged from the escape pod’s supplies and drank some of his water, then started up the escarpment. Despite the steep climb and the rocky surface, it felt good to have his feet on solid ground again, and not have to pick a way across an uncertain surface wondering if at any moment his foot might fall through into empty air below. There was a breeze too, once he got a little higher, a refreshing relief from the sweltering jungle he had just left. He looked back, and saw the jungle receding into the distance, the height of the trees increasing towards the horizon, back in the direction he had just come from, like a giant green wave about to roll onto the beach of the hillside upon which he now stood.
He continued upwards, hoping that when he reached the top he’d be able to perhaps get his bearings a little better or at least plan the next part of his journey. If he could spot some signs of civilisation it might help, providing that they were friendly. The hillside was covered with low, scrubby bushes and dark, fleshy looking plants and dotted with rocky outcrops and expanses of scree which he was forced to skirt around. Nevertheless, he made good progress. The sun was finally sinking in the sky and the gas giant Tethys was starting to rise over the horizon, the bruise coloured orb resplendent with its extensive ring system and shepherded by the bright points of its small inner moons that glowed with sunlight reflected from their barren surfaces. It looked unreal and ghostly, hanging incongruously in the late afternoon sky. The air was getting a little cooler now, and the breeze was definitely helping. After around an hour he reached the top.
The top of the hill was almost entirely flat, forming a large, windswept plateau strewn with small, broken stones. Here and there were low, regular ridges in the ground forming distinct oblongs and circles that were highlighted by the low angle of the late afternoon light. They were signs that others had once lived here in the distant past. However, these were not the focus of his attention. To the north was a large bay, framed by distant mountains. The shoreline had been devastated by a tidal wave. The remains of broken trees, and huge slicks of black mud extended inland for some miles until the flat shore met a range of low hills, whose lower reaches were now piled with debris. A kilometre or so offshore he saw the culprit.
The remains of a carrier lay nose down in the shallow bay. Somehow she had survived the descent through the atmosphere, though she could hardly be considered to be intact and would certainly never fly again. She had been considerably foreshortened from her original length of around two kilometres. The rear landing deck had been severed aft of the main engines, which themselves had been reduced to slag by enemy fire before she had begun her descent. Much of the ship forward of the bridge superstructure lay underwater. Barely a kilometre of the vessel was visible above the water line and that which remained was scarred from enemy gun fire, the intense heat of re-entry and the shock of its final impact as it came to rest here.
He figured some of the breaking thrusters and stabilisers must still have been functioning during the ship’s descent, keeping her at least roughly level and slowing her fall, or else he would now be looking at a crater several kilometres in diameter and the jungle he had just come from would be both ablaze from the fireball and flattened by the shockwave from half a million tonnes of carrier slamming into the moon. The ship’s name was half visible above the water, emblazoned on her flank in stencilled lettering. It was the Abraham Lincoln. He had found his ship.
Judging from the devastation below him, the impact must have still been considerable, causing the miniature tsunami that had swept inland and scoured the shoreline. It was doubtful whether anyone left on board would have survived. Still, he guessed that was what all the commotion had been about earlier. Why there had been so much enemy activity in this area and why, possibly, they had been scouring the jungle.
He walked quickly to the far edge of the plateau and sat down with his back to the hill so as to hide his outline and then surveyed the scene, watching for signs of movement. The sight of his once proud vessel, his flagship, lying smashed like a broken toy filled him with anger and despair. There had been hundreds of people aboard that vessel when she had gone down. There was no telling how many of them were still alive. Despite the odds that they had faced up there, he still felt that he had failed them all.
He sat and watched the scene of devastation for a while. Of the enemy, he could see no sign. They had been and gone long before he had reached here. The only movement came from the flocks of bird-like creatures now descending to pick through the newly created mud flats. Some landed on the Lincoln too, and appeared to be clustering around the rents in the hull. He tried not to think about what they might be feeding upon inside the ruined vessel. From here he could hear the cacophony of cries as different groups competed with one another over the new source of food and territory. Already, some appeared to be building nests upon the upper hull of the ship as the curious oval shape of the oblate, blue sun began to drop towards the horizon, leaving the ringed splendour of Tethys to dominate the sky above. It would soon be too dark to move. He decided to bed down in the shelter of the hillside and wait until morning.
Morning came soon enough, the first brilliant rays glancing off the wave tops out in the bay and reflecting off the pitted grey flanks of the wreck of the Lincoln. He awoke and ate a meagre breakfast from his scavenged supplies, washed down with a few gulps of stale tasting water. As the sun rose he scrambled to the top of the hill again and looked about in all directions. There was still no sign of the enemy, and from here he could see for many kilometres, out across a sea of trees in one direction, across the ocean itself in another and also north across the crash site and east also to a crescent of looming mountains. Looking across the bay, with the benefit of the bright, early morning light, he could see a straight line running through the jungle, just above the line where the tsunami had deposited its debris. It looked like a road. It would lead him to civilisation.
He pulled out his comm. unit and accessed its in-built map. Despite his height in this exposed spot, it was still unable to contact any global positioning satellites. Presumably the network must still be disrupted or out of action completely. He scrolled around the map display, trying to find any bays in the moon’s tropics that resembled the one he was now looking at, but it was a fruitless task and eventually he gave up. The road looked like his only option. Once he could find a place with a name, he could work out where he was.
He’d also come the conclusion that here would be as good a place as any to activate the distress beacon. There were none of the enemy visible in this area and if they pinpointed the location of his transmission and came to investigate, he would be able to see them arrive at this barren hilltop from several kilometres away, giving him enough warning to conceal himself. He would set off the device, destroy it, and then head towards the road, skirting the treacherous mudflats to the north until he reached it. The road would, however, bring its own dangers: he would be more exposed and he ran the risk of running into any of the enemy choosing to use it. However, it still seemed like the best option. He would have to keep his wits about him and dive into the undergrowth at the first sign of anyone approaching.
He placed the beacon flat on the stony ground and opened the lid. Pressing the power switch
he activated the device and then studied its backlit screen, shielding it with his hand so that he could see it against the blue-white glare of the sun. The trouble was that this device had never been designed with his current predicament in mind. Its use had been envisaged taking place beyond the Commonwealth’s borders by stranded naval personnel on planets without any settlements or behind enemy lines. It was designed to lock on to the nearest Commonwealth hypercom node and broadcast a short, encrypted message to it of two hundred and fifty five characters maximum. Hypercom systems required immense amounts of power to transmit and receive data via hyperspace and were usually either linked to the reactors of starships or ran off dedicated power generators if located on planet surfaces and part of the static, interstellar network. The distress beacon was a one shot device and contained only enough battery power for a single use. Unfortunately, he didn’t want it to lock on the nearest Commonwealth hypercom node. The nearest was actually on this moon, rather than out in space, and was probably already in enemy hands. They would be monitoring all traffic passing through it and despite the encryption that the beacon provided he doubted that it would prove much of an obstacle to the Shapers with the sheer levels of raw computing power available to them.
He manipulated the beacon’s controls, attempting to shift its focus away from the local node onto one in another system. The device was low powered and hence its range was rather limited. The furthest node it could detect was around ten light years away, a mining installation in the Chengdu system along with the hypercom systems of a few ships closer by. He changed the device’s focus, typed his brief message - in which he attempted to include as much information as possible within the character limit and used code-words wherever possible - and then hit send. The device displayed a progress bar for a few seconds then displayed a completion message, before shutting itself off. It had already run out of power.
Now he just needed to destroy it. The beacons came with a built in self destruct charge, to enable them to be destroyed in case they fell into enemy hands. He turned it over and found a pair of inset buttons on the side of the device, with instructions for its use printed onto the plastic surface. He held his fingers down on both buttons for ten seconds as instructed and the device began to beep. He would have a further ten seconds to dispose of it.
Rushing to the southern edge of the hill he flung the device over the edge. It arced through the air and bounced, spinning on the rocky hillside a couple of times before it burst into flames with a dull ‘whoomph!’ Satisfied with a job well done and grateful that he didn’t have to lug the damn thing around anymore, he gathered the remainder of his things and made his way down the hillside towards the black, tar-like expanses of the ruined bay below.
Moving quickly, it didn’t take him long to reach the bottom of the hill. As he got closer to the area left devastated by the tidal wave his nose was assailed by the stink of the mudflats. The marine life washed on-shore by the surge of water was now decomposing in the heat of the sun. Even the mud itself was laced with algae and plankton putrefying in the heat. Groups of avians could be seen descending onto the mud to pick over the rotten remains, swooping low on double sets of wings like miniature, brightly coloured helicopters to tear at rotten flesh with snouts filled with razor sharp teeth, or to fight with one another over a particular prize.
He hugged the base of the hill, keeping above the line of mud and debris until he reached the start of the tree-line. Soon he was concealed beneath the tangled branches. The going here wasn’t too difficult and it was cool beneath the trees, though had he not had a compass with him it would have been easy to become disorientated. The trees themselves were similar to the mangroves of Earth’s tropical regions, growing up from a tidal flood plain on stilt like roots that over the years had accumulated sand, gravel and other debris to form a complex chain of small, interlinked islands. The trees nearest the shoreline had also served to take the brunt of the tidal wave and catch the debris washed on shore which had piled up in their roots and lower branches and now hung, stinking, in the sun.
He skirted the bay, keeping the sea to his left as he hopped from island to island, occasionally jumping down to the packed mud and sand between them, taking care not to step on the knots of wriggling things that slid through the loose material looking for food. He saw a few Dryads here. A few bedraggled looking creatures could be seen out on the mud, poking at things with primitive tools made from twigs and shells. From the state of them it looked as though they had been caught by the wave and survived its inundation. Their hair was matted and plastered with muck and they called to one another in desultory fashion.
When he got about half way round the bay he heard the Dryads become more agitated. They set up a cacophony of shrieking and jabbering and then as one, bolted for the tree-line. Something was up. He crept to the edge of the trees and looked out across the bay and soon saw what had frightened the creatures. A craft was moving in the sky above the bay in the direction of the hillside from which he had come, now over a kilometre away. One glance told him that it wasn’t human. It was small and almost silent, about the size of a human shuttle, but there was no mistaking the spiny, crystalline form so similar to the warships that had defeated his fleet. It was a Shaper vessel. So, they had detected his transmission after all. He’d hoped he’d have more time before they located the source.
As he watched, the craft slowed and descended to the hilltop, the plates that made up its hull sliding against one another to reshape itself for landing. As it touched down, the front of the craft split open and humanoid forms could be seen jumping down from it and moving out across the hillside. Then something else appeared from the mouth of the craft. It was difficult to see at first, an indistinct cloud that took a moment to solidify. It began heading for the place where he had made the transmission. He didn’t know how well those things could track a man. Pretty well, he suspected. He turned away from the edge of the tree-line and started to run.
He had abandoned all attempts at stealth now. Fear had overtaken him and speed was of the essence. He just wanted to get away from that thing on the hill. His mind imagined its spectral form descending the hill and floating speedily after him through the trees, questing tendrils of glittering motes reaching out to him.
He tripped and fell over a projecting root, his hands plunging into sand and mud filled with writhing worms. In horror he jerked his hands free, bringing a few of the hungry creatures with them, their annular mouths already latched onto this new source of food. He shook the horrid things from his skin and winced as their rows of hooked teeth tore small patches of skin from his fingers. He plunged onwards, scrambling over islands of mud and vegetation and stumbling down the soft beds of tidal channels, his boots splashing in the brackish water and mud. He dared not look back.
Eventually, the ground began to rise. He scrambled out of the last of the water channels and found himself amongst dryer surroundings. Panting, he dragged himself up the slope through dense thickets of vegetation until finally he reached the road. It was the first sign of civilisation he’d seen in days. The two lanes of asphalt stretched east and west into the jungle, gently curving around the hill. West lay back towards the sea, he turned east and kept running.
It was getting too much for him now. The heat of the day and weight of his pack and the fact that he had been running or jogging for several kilometres now were proving more than his aged body could take. His vision was starting to blur. Stumbling, he came to a halt underneath an overhanging tree and leant against a low branch to catch his breath. He felt sick from the exertion, his lungs struggling to pull enough oxygen in from the humid atmosphere, his heart thudding against his chest and his mouth filling with a metallic taste from the adrenaline brought on by his fear. He dropped his pack and plunged his hands inside for the water bottle. Taking grateful gulps of luke-warm water he dared a glimpse across the bay, back the way he had come. The Shaper ship had vanished from the hilltop. He glanced about the sky and could see no sign o
f it. Whether that meant that they had gone or were simply out of his sight he didn’t know.
Slightly recovered, he replaced the bottle in his pack and hefted it onto his shoulders once more, then continued eastwards. Above him, Dryads moved among the branches of the trees overhanging the road. He could see their greenish forms moving amongst the foliage. They were keeping pace with him, watching him. It was attention he could do without. Anyone watching the creatures would notice that their interest had been drawn by something on the road.
As the road began to bend to the left around the foot of a hill, the Dryads began to hoot and screech to one another. He cursed inwardly. That was all he needed. Suddenly he then realised that it wasn’t him that they were screeching at. Figures were approaching from around the bend, figures wearing combat fatigues and carrying weapons. One of them pointed towards him, signalling to its comrades.
Panicked with the realisation that he’d been discovered, he threw himself into the undergrowth on the left hand side of the road and began scrambling up the overgrown slope. The sound of boots running on asphalt thudded below him along with voices and the crashes of figures following him up the hill. He was so intent on evading his pursuers that he failed to see the other group of armed men moving through the trees ahead of him and practically ran head first into their leader. Now at close range he could see that the men wore Marine Corp uniforms and body armour. In shock, he backpedalled and fumbled for his pistol, pointing it at the leader as he thumbed off the safety, the man’s face unreadable beneath his helmet and goggles. The men from the road were right behind now. He was surrounded.