by B. V. Larson
That was par for the course, unfortunately. Our personal relationships tended to die after a while. The worst part was the lingering feelings afterward. In some ways, these ghosts contributed to a breakdown of discipline, but they seemed to be unavoidable. When you placed both sexes in tight quarters for decades, it was only natural and inevitable that love affairs would come and go.
In effect, we acted like old married couples sometimes. We were friends, we were war-buddies…we lived, screwed, and died together. At other times, we got on each other’s nerves so badly we drove one another to the point of murder.
I threw up my hands, eyeing my squad. They were all standing now, looking at me for direction—for answers.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s put this on the table. We’ve been assigned to tail Claver. He’s headed out into the bush, exiled by the brass as part of a deal he cut. The reason he was released is because he claims to have had dealings with these plant-aliens. He can supposedly talk to them. He understands them. It’s our mission to discover how he does this and to learn what these aliens are up to.”
“A deep patrol?” Kivi demanded. “That’s what you called it? It’s a death warrant!”
“Hold on,” Carlos said, bemused. “Okay, so the assignment sucks, Kivi. Why are we all going to die?”
“Because, you idiot,” she said, “McGill is lying. The lifter has taken off. We’ve been abandoned just like Claver. I’ve tried to contact the crew—nothing. My ID has been blocked. Me, a tech—blocked. We’re all blocked.”
“What?” asked Carlos, his voice cracking on a high note. He checked his tapper then fell back onto the ground again, staring up at the green canopy overhead.
“The lifter took off?” he asked from the ground. “We’re screwed. Totally screwed. Oh God, why did I join this shit legion? I don’t believe this.”
I ignored Carlos, who was prone to dramatic displays. I frowned at Kivi instead. “We’re blocked? No net traffic?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh…” I said thoughtfully, poking at my tapper. It appeared she was right. “How are we supposed to report in our findings?”
Kivi came at me then, and I really thought she was going to punch me again. I flinched a little, but she just stood close and stared up at me, eyes blazing.
“Because, you big idiot, they frigged us. Maybe Winslade took over again, and he’s getting revenge. Or maybe he revived Turov to trump Drusus, and she decided to screw us. Does it matter? We’ve got nothing. We’re on this rock in a forest full of hostile monsters, and we can’t even eat them.”
“These plants are poisonous, huh?” I asked.
“Very.”
Nodding, I heaved a sigh. Kivi had a pretty ironclad case against me.
Right about then, Carlos kicked up his act a few notches. He took out his sidearm and pressed it under his chin. Still lying on the forest floor, he gazed up at the giant trees without blinking.
I walked over to him and loomed into his field of vision.
“That’s a violation, Specialist,” I said.
“I don’t care, McGill. You never care about the rules—why the hell should I?”
“Come on, Carlos. Don’t off yourself here. That’s bullshit.”
“I’m doing it. If you want to get eaten and shit out by one of these monsters, you go right ahead. I already did that and once was good enough for me.”
Having known Carlos since the day we both signed up together, I knew he was serious. He was about to do it. Normally, Carlos was all fun and games, but today he just didn’t feel like laughing. I didn’t blame him.
I felt a pang of sympathy for him, but I didn’t let it show. Killing yourself to get out of duty in Legion Varus—that was unacceptable. Sure, if you were badly injured and a burden to your unit, you could get away with it. But blowing your brains out because you didn’t like your assignment? No way.
“I can’t guarantee you’ll be revived,” I said.
“I know that. We’re blocked. We’re all as good as permed anyway.”
Thinking about levers I could use to motivate him, I could only come up with one thing.
“Okay then, Specialist,” I said. “If you discharge that weapon, I’ll pull your stripes.”
Carlos’ eyes rolled to look up at me. “That’s bullshit, McGill. I worked hard to get specialist.”
“This tantrum you’re throwing is bullshit!” I roared, doing my best imitation of Harris. “I’ll have your stripes, I swear. Now get on your feet, holster that weapon and march, soldier!”
Carlos growled with frustration. He scrambled up cursing, and he put away his gun. He didn’t want to look at me after that. Neither did Kivi.
“Nothing like a fine morning in Legion Varus!” I shouted, clapping Lau on the back.
The kid looked as green as a pod-monster. He’d only died once in combat so far, and I could tell this wild behavior by his noncoms was freaking him out. I gave him a hearty laugh and took point.
We marched after Claver who, according to Kivi, had been up an hour ago and moved on.
-25-
We’d only marched about a kilometer farther when we ran into something odd. We were up on a ridge, a rise in the land created by a massive root. Consequently, we could see a few kilometers across the forest floor. Up ahead were more ferns—but unlike the other ferns, these were moving, rippling like a field of wheat.
Now, you have to understand these ferns weren’t your standard-issue Boston ferns you’d find back on Earth. No, these things were like trees in their own right. Their fronds were like palm fronds—only bigger. They swayed and gyrated in a pattern, like they were doing a line-dance.
“Is there wind up ahead?” Carlos asked.
“Nope,” I said. “See the foliage on the tree above the ferns? Nothing’s moving.”
“It’s got to be a pod-walker,” Kivi said. “I’ll send a buzzer down there to see.”
“Everybody take a knee and keep quiet,” I ordered. “Kivi, send in a bug to check out the ferns. And give me an update on Claver. What’s he doing?”
“Nothing special,” she said. “I’ve been watching him. He’s pretty far ahead now, and he’s moving faster than before.”
“Is he past that strange zone among the ferns?”
“Yes. He’s way beyond that. He’s on the other side of the next big tree-trunk on the right.”
Normally, being one tree trunk ahead of my squad would’ve meant a man was right in our face. But the scale of this place—it was amazing. Some of the trees were effectively the size of small mountains, and Claver was on the other side of the next one in line ahead of us.
One of Kivi’s buzzers leapt from her arm and vanished into the ferns. I watched as it flew, thinking that its carefully designed camouflage technology was wasted on this world. It’d been built and programmed to behave like an insect—but there weren’t really any insects on Death World, at least none that we’d discovered thus far. There was no way anyone would mistake a buzzer for anything other than what it was on this planet.
I moved to Kivi and watched her tapper. She was flipping back and forth between the streaming video of Claver, and the buzzer gliding toward the restless ferns.
“How do you keep that thing from running into all those ferns?”
“I don’t,” Kivi said. “It’s on automatic. The AI is quite good when it comes to navigation and evasion.”
“You’re in the windy zone now, aren’t you?”
She nodded. The ferns on the vid feed were in motion, rustling and shivering. From a distance, the effect had resembled a windstorm. But up close, you could tell it wasn’t wind. The ferns weren’t moving in the right pattern. They were shivering and thrashing as if someone was shaking them.
“That’s really weird,” I said. “What’s going on? A localized earthquake?”
Kivi looked up at me. “Maybe. Or maybe the tree the ferns are growing near is shaking.”
That was a thought. I stood up, dug out a scop
e and stared into the distance. I wanted a close-up of the massive thing we were calling a tree.
“If it’s moving, I can’t see it,” I said. “The branches and foliage are as still as a grave.”
“What about the roots?”
“Send the buzzer up that way. I can’t see the roots through the ferns.”
“Vet?” Carlos asked. “Are we done here? Don’t you think we should start marching again?”
I gave him a glance. “You want to take point? You got it.”
Grumbling, he started down the side of the hill. Kivi stood and followed, stumbling over every obstacle. She was watching the feed from her buzzers as much as she was watching her feet. That was an occupational hazard for techs, I guess.
“Hold it,” she said after another dozen steps. “I found something, McGill.”
Frowning, I walked up to her and waved for the others to halt.
She showed me the feed. At first, I really didn’t know what I was looking at. It appeared to be brownish surface scored with orange-white streaks. The streaks were oozing some kind of fluid.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a root. An exposed root on the surface. Those slashes—I think Claver cut them before he left the area.”
I could see what she was talking about now. Slices had been taken out of the base of one of the tree roots. Big cuts, a meter long and at least two centimeters wide.
“Do you think he did that to trigger the defensive instincts of the plant?”
Kivi nodded. “It stands to reason. And that means he must know we’re following.”
“How would he know that?”
“My buzzers, probably,” she admitted. “They make noise. A distinctive sound that doesn’t naturally occur on this planet. I’m sorry. I tried to keep him from knowing I was tailing him.”
“It’s all right. You were following orders.”
I waved the squad forward, but Carlos hesitated on point.
“Hold on, Vet,” he said. “Shouldn’t we go around? I mean, if we avoid this region entirely, nothing bad can happen, right?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “We don’t know how long the defensive growths take to form. We can assume that the first pods grew because of the broadside attacks. Or maybe it was the burning exhaust of our lifter when we landed. In any case, the enemy can’t generate a pod instantly. Claver is already losing us, and I don’t want him to get farther away.”
“Yeah, but just to be safe…”
I frowned at Carlos. “Chicken? Now? You were trying to off yourself just a few hours ago.”
“I’m only thinking about the rest of my squad. I’m the medic, here. You don’t have another. Normally, bio people don’t take point.”
He was absolutely right about the role of a squad medic. I’d put him on point because I was tired of his crap from earlier on.
Taking in a breath, I tried to think tactically. Getting our medic killed out of spite didn’t seem like the wisest move.
“All right, who volunteers?”
Everyone slid their eyes from one to the next. The experienced troops—they kept their mouths shut.
“I’ll do it,” Lau said, stepping forward.
“That’s the spirit,” I said, giving him a nod. “Take point, Lau.”
We marched on, right into the zone with the shivering plants. It was weird being in their midst. Whatever had them moving, I couldn’t feel it. There wasn’t an earthquake under my boots, localized or otherwise. There wasn’t any wind, either. What else could make a plant move like that—on its own?
“Carlos,” I said, “did you see any of those nano-fibers inside the fern plant you cut down last night?”
“You mean that corn silk stuff? The strings Natasha said were muscles?”
“Yes.”
He thought about it. “My cut was clean. The force-blade burned the plant. I suppose there could have been a few strands hanging from the end... I’m not sure, really. I didn’t inspect it or anything.”
“Roger that, well…let’s pick up the pace, people.”
We began to trot rapidly through the ferns. I was getting a bad feeling. One thing they’d taught us in training was to listen to feelings like that and act on them.
We hadn’t gone a hundred meters before Kivi shouted to get our attention. I veered to her position, rifle at the ready.
She was standing in an open area where a huge root loomed. I jogged up and look at the spot she was examining. Cut, orange-white lines were bleeding sap.
“Claver did this,” I said.
“He sure did. Notice the cuts? They spell something, but it’s hard to make out.”
Frowning, I eyed them carefully, then I busted out laughing. The cuts were long and tall, and they formed the dripping letters of my name: MCGILL.
“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Carlos complained. “He knows we’re after him—what’s more, he knows who is after him. That’s bullshit. Someone must have tipped him off, and I’m not talking about your nosy buzzer, Kivi.”
That idea made some sense, and it stopped my laughter.
“Well,” I said. “If he knows we’re coming, he probably won’t lead us anywhere good. We might as well catch up with him and end this.”
Carlos lit up with a smile on his face. “You mean…” he said, making a slashing gesture across his throat.
“If it comes to that, but I hope it doesn’t. That’s not our mission. We’re to gather intel not execute him. We could have done that back at camp.”
“We should have. Claver is just toying with us.”
“This is a wild goose-chase,” I admitted, “and Claver is the craziest goose in this forest.”
We pressed on, but Kivi stopped us about ten minutes later.
“What’s going on now?” I demanded.
“He’s stopped. He’s at the next tree. Notice the one with the split trunk? He’s in there, underneath it.”
“What do you mean, underneath it?”
“There’s a natural dip in the ground—right there, see? A bowl surrounded by roots and roofed by the tree itself. It’s like a cave…a big one.”
“What the hell is he doing in there?” I demanded, looking at her video feed.
I saw for myself that Claver was sitting with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. He had the look of some kind of meditating monk.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he’s trying to talk to the aliens.”
We were past the zone of moving ferns now, just barely. That made me feel a little more confident. After all, nothing had jumped us yet. If the megaflora was generating a defensive growth, it apparently took a while. I’d been looking for pods on the trunk, but I hadn’t seen any yet.
“We’ll hold here then,” I said at last. “We’ll watch him and see what he does. This is exactly the kind of thing we were ordered to observe and report on.”
“McGill,” Carlos said, “I’m just going to say one thing.”
“Promise?”
He waved my words away. “Look, if he knows we’re here, and he knows we’re watching him, why the hell would he stop and start some kind of séance with the plants?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I hope to find out. We’ll watch him for an hour, that’s all.”
The hour passed while my people milled around and pissed and watched the landscape nervously. They reminded me of a pack of nervous housecats, but I couldn’t fault them. This world was a weird one, even by my standards.
At last, I stood up.
“Time’s up,” I said. “Let’s go get him.”
Lau scrambled to his feet, anxious to take point again. I let him, and I found myself liking the kid more all the time.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t his lucky day. He fell to the ground not a dozen paces ahead of our position, grasping at his throat. He convulsed a few times before relaxing. He looked dead to me—and I’ve seen a lot of dead folks.
“Squad halt!” I shouted. “Nobody move!”<
br />
We all froze, looking around and panting.
“We should burn these plants,” Carlos said. “Burn them all to the ground!”
“Good idea,” I said, “but right now, we’ve got troubles.”
“What killed him, Specialist?” Kivi demanded, looking at Carlos.
“You’re asking me?” he demanded. “How the hell would I know? He’s too far away to examine.”
“Then go examine him,” Kivi suggested between clenched teeth.
“No,” I said. “Nobody move. Kivi, send a buzzer down there and check the corpse. Pipe the feed to our tappers.”
She did as I asked, cursing and fumbling with her equipment. A tiny drone flexed its wings and flew to Lau. It landed on his collar and examined his face.
The magnified close-up on my tapper was disturbing. Staring eyes. Protruding tongue. He was as dead as yesterday.
“I don’t know…” Carlos said. “There’s a little foam, and his tongue is out. I think it was respiratory—but I’m only guessing. Gas, maybe.”
“Helmets on!” I shouted, and everyone hastened to obey. They unshelled their helmets and secured them as quickly as they could.
But it wasn’t quite fast enough. Gorman fell to his knees nearby. He was the closest one to Lau, the second man in line.
“Gas,” he managed to get out before he pitched onto his face and died.
The rest of us engaged our filtering systems then shut out the atmosphere entirely.
“It’s got to be a nerve agent to work so quickly,” Carlos said. “Something heavy, something we can’t see. Notice the two victims are farther downslope than the rest of us?”
Sargon came up close to me then while I studied the dead men, wondering what to do. His belcher was banging on his shoulder, and his expression was grim.
“Vet, maybe we should start burning these ferns. Any of the ones that are moving around.”
“Not a bad idea,” I lied, “but I think we should leave them alone. I think Claver cut that root to trigger them to release gas. That’s a biological defensive system. If we burn the ferns, God only knows what will happen next.”