“I think the smell of the lizard kept the others away.” The Trooper said when we found him. He was in bad shape. He had been mauled pretty badly, bitten in at least four places or more as the lizard had tried to quell his futile struggles, but then he’d gotten the cutting device to bear and it had been over.
“It snuck up on me in the dark.” The mauled Trooper said. “No sound at all. I knew they were in the ship and it still snuck up on me. Almost got me too. My name’s Guermata.”
“Guermata the hero.” Someone behind me said, and the name was taken up by the group. A hero who would have to be helped along, no doubt, and I had reservations about bringing the wounded, but what could I do!
The lizard was a massive beast, much longer than the one I had killed outside the ship, and didn’t look as if it would be quick, but that was often a misconception about reptiles you didn’t get to reevaluate if you underestimated them the first time. Reptiles are always quick, and this hugely muscled specimen had undoubtedly been no exception. The head was almost all mouth, the mouth almost all teeth, the teeth were razor sharp, and it had claws to match. A muscular tail finished off the package. About seven or eight times our mass. A perfect killing machine.
It took us considerable time to make a complete sweep of the ship, but I wasn’t going to leave any helpless Alartaw to the tender mercies of the indigenous reptiles. The place was a damn slaughterhouse and we had lost hundreds of crewmen, to add to those we had already lost. By the time we had gathered every still breathing crewman, and all our weapons and few tools we had available, we had already lost a good portion of the morning and a good chunk of my patience.
Finally we were all gathered at a large rent in the hull which let out at ground level, what had been one of the main points of egress for the lizards during the past evening (muddy tracks entering, bloody ones leaving) and what was left of what had been a crew of over a thousand, only maybe four hundred, and many of those seriously injured or near death, before we were even ready to begin the hardest part. That of leaving the quasi-safety of the ship.
The lizards hadn’t eaten the dead among us, having been interested only in the living, and then, to compound the sacrilege, after they’d eaten their fills, they’d gone around haphazardly attacking any other living crew members they could find. Many had been bitten and shaken but not killed or eaten. Sport.
At least a third of my remaining force was injured, many with gaping, already infected wounds from contaminated reptilian mouths, but many also who had been injured in the crash or prior, as we fought the black hole's inexorable pull.
We were yet to find out how virulent the local contagions would be to our Alartaw systems, but judging by the red inflammation and swelling around the bites now visible in the light entering through the rent in the hull just next to us, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Secretly I hoped that if the infected were going to die, that they would get on with it and get it over with, but until that time they would be drug along, no matter how badly they were going to slow us down. Most could still handle a weapon, so they might avenge themselves yet, as their fellow crewmen carried them, and who wouldn’t be able to defend themselves, with their arms full of injured crewmen. The one thing I knew for sure was that this was going to get a lot worse before it got better.
“Leave no trail.” I said, then nodded to those same Troopers who had led us through the ship to now lead us out into the jungle, and grim faced but determined, they set out. We set out. The jungle began where the swath from Vengeance ended and was a moist, steamy, leafy tree throttled mass of vegetation that would be no joy to travel.
I was the fourth out, to surprised looks, but I wanted to be near the three veterans I had chosen to lead us and with Meerla right behind me, I thought us equal to anything this jungle could throw at us. After I stepped out of Vengeance, but before I moved into the vegetation, I stood for a moment under the strange, warm star at the very side of Vengeance, and then, drawing both my de-atomizers and adjusting the blast rifle on my back (plus I was wearing twin lasers in holsters forward of the holsters for the de-atomizers, and that in addition to the long Alartaw hunting knife, should we live that long), I gave a short prayer to whatever God the Alartaw worshiped, and then I went on.
“Follow the star.” I told them as I caught up, silently designating the direction as East. At least we wouldn’t be walking around in circles, and one direction was as good as another.
“What if the whole planet’s jungle?” Naagrotod asked from sixth in our single file column (the jungle was too thick for anything else), yet seemed eerily calm considering the horrors we knew existed within it. He was wearing as many weapons as I. After the previous evening there had been more than enough weapons to go around and everyone was heavily armed.
“Then some of us will learn to survive, and some won’t.” I answered harshly. “We’re Alartaw.” He knew the situation, they all did. I didn’t want to hear that kind of talk. Buck up or bug out.
I hated the idea of traveling single file but we could not afford to leave an obvious trail, either. The ground underfoot was thick grasses and dead vegetation and would hide most of our trail, but not if we chopped our way through it. The infected men grew worse throughout the day and began to really slow us down. I had never seen infections worsen so rapidly.
“Venom.” Meerla said simply, later when we stopped to take a rest. “Probably a vestige left over from their early evolution when their prey was larger than they were.” I looked at her.
“I didn’t know you were a student of such things.”
“I know everything there is to know about reptiles.” She said, and jingled the jewelry she was wearing. She hadn’t gotten this jewelry from any reptiles, but I knew what she meant.
“Or it is not a vestige at all.” Said the diminutive tech from earlier, who had been dogging my heels all day, as if I alone would be able to protect him from the death that waited for us in this jungle. In a way, he was right. He had to be protected. We would need him. He went on; “They may still hunt prey larger than themselves; they bite the prey and then hang back and wait for it to weaken or die, and then they come back for it, possibly in packs like we saw last night.”
“Pack animals?” Naagrotod asked, an unpleasant expression on his face.
“It’s not unknown among reptiles,” said the tech, “even though lizards are generally considered to be solitary hunters.”
The techs knowledge of the matter didn’t seem to go over well with Meerla, who had self-styled herself as the present expert, judging by the sour expression on her face while we listened to the tech. I fervently hoped she would find someone else to antagonize. The tech didn’t seem to realize the pit he was digging.
“For a venom designed for much larger animals,” Meerla said, “much larger than the lizards which are already much larger than us, it isn’t acting very quickly!” She smirked at the tech, obviously feeling she had made the most logical point, but the tech went on undeterred blindly;
“Alartaw are bio-engineered for immunity to reptilian venom, since we’re always fighting them. So actually, the venom must be very potent indeed.” The tech continued to dig his grave.
Meerla’s face darkened and for once she seemed tongue tied. I hid my own expression by turning and looking off into the branches above us. Had the Kievors included that same bio-engineering into our bodies, into our genetic structure? They would have, wouldn’t they, I decided. I hoped I didn’t have to find out the hard way but it didn’t appear as if it would matter anyway, because it wasn’t protecting those who had been bitten anyway. It didn’t appear as if any of those bitten had much longer.
“So don’t get bitten.” I thought out loud.
We traveled on for several more hours but it became apparent that we were making almost no progress as our infected members grew worse and continued to slow us down with their deliriums and struggles. Finally I called a halt.
“Gather in.” I called back and we bivouacked, bunch
ed as close as we could gather, but we were still spread out much farther than caution advised.
“This will never work.” I said aloud but mostly to myself. The coming night was going to be a nightmare come to reality when the star set and a few more clicks one way or the other wasn’t going to make any difference what so ever.
“Make camp,” I ordered, “and prepare to die.” Obviously I thought our chances slim.
CHAPTER 16
Historically, we Alartaw (not to mention us that used to be Human) had been great hunters, but whatever prey the lizards relied upon as their food source had no problem at all avoiding us. Whatever prey existed here had evolved to escape their lizard predators, and our clumsy attempt to hunt brought no results at all.
Alartaw hunger is a voracious thing in and of itself, like a living entity within our guts. By nightfall, after fruitless hunting forays but somewhat successful camp making, we settled in with our empty stomachs to await the inevitable attacks of the coming night.
We’d lasered down the foliage and trees in a large circle, cut the trees into logs we could manage, and built rough barricades of piled log sections around our perimeter, but I feared it would do no more than slow the reptiles, if even that.
There was very little firewood, considering we were in a jungle. Any wood we found on the ground was mushy and moisture rotted, but we gathered enough small branches and other dead limbs found hanging in the branches of other trees to get a small fire started. Then it began raining, a heavy, drenching deluge that soaked us thoroughly. The fire continued to burn just long enough to get our hopes up that it might stay lit, but then spluttered out as it was overwhelmed. Then the rain ended.
“We’d have been better off staying under the trees.” Meerla said amidst curses. “But at least it’s still warm.” It was quite hot, actually.
“We’d have no chance against the lizards in the trees.” Naagrotod said.
“I sure hope this planet has a moon.” Said the tech, whom I was keeping a close eye on. One way or another I was getting off this planet, if I had to make the tech build us a whole new ship!
We sat in near perfect misery while the local star made its descent. In the last fading light we began to detect movement outside our perimeter and shot into it with our lasers, hoping to kill or injure a few lizards who we hoped might become food for the others, but I had little idea if our attempts were successful.
There was no moon, of course. When the star had sunk completely away, we were left in pitch darkness, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. Suddenly I very much regretted leaving Vengeance and her dubious safety. My crew seemed barely to be breathing as we waited expectantly, no question about what this night would bring to my already exhausted, demoralized crew.
The struggle of massive bodies erupted outside our barricades, accompanied by grunts and hisses and the snapping of jaws, followed closely by an inhuman howl of agony that slashed across the jungle like a thunderclap it was so loud. The struggle grew frenzied and the besieged reptile’s howls of rage and agony grew with it, if that were possible, and then suddenly it was quiet. Quiet but for the sound of ripping flesh and crunching bones.
“I guess we got one of them.” Meerla opined calmly, in a normal tone of voice, shocking in the quiet of our camp, and I wanted to reach out and strangle her, but the lizards already knew we were here, so it wasn’t as if she was giving us away, as strong as the urge to whisper might be, it was completely pointless and useless.
Surreptitious crackling in our log and brush barricades brought laser flashes and then the roars of our combined weaponry as the lizards were illuminated. All around our perimeter they now came, announced by the noise they had to make climbing our barricades, and illuminated by the fire we poured into them.
They came in such a mass that several nearly reached us, the flickering weapons discharges acting as a strobe in the utter darkness and giving the rushing lizards a surreal, jerky movement that you had to be careful not to underestimate.
The reptiles moved in a shuffling, shambling gait, not so much stepping forward with their legs as twisting their bodied, first one way, then the other, throwing their legs forward, then twisting again and throwing their opposite legs, almost like a snake except with legs, and much faster.
One beast got nearly to me where I was positioned in the outside boundary before several laser strikes cut it to bits, and it literally fell into pieces as it charged, blood flying out in unreal motion as the beast’s heart continued to pump blood, not knowing it was already dead.
“Drag in that lizard.” I ordered in the sudden quiet and dark. The lizards had desisted in their attack, momentarily, or we had killed them all, I wasn’t sure which. “Feed that meat to the infected.” Maybe anti-bodies in the reptile’s meat would help to counteract the venom surely killing them. It certainly wouldn’t hurt. The moans of agony of the infected were beginning to affect me, I was suffering just listening to them.
Under the feeble illumination of several computing devices the sections of lizard were brought in and butchered out. Guermata the Hero ate his share from Meerla’s fingers because he was too weak to eat it himself, yet, despite the severity of his wounds, the worst of any of the survivors, he was far from the sickest of the lot. Many couldn’t eat at all, despite the attempts to help them.
“I should have thought of this myself, this morning.” Meerla chided herself angrily. I made no comment. I had should have thought of it myself.
We needed to know if we could eat these lizards anyway, since they seemed to be the only available food source that was going to be kind enough to bring itself to us, since it might be a long time before we were able to devise strategies to trap or hunt whatever other kind of prey must exist here.
“These things are smarter than they look.” The little tech said as we listened to the changed activity outside our perimeter. They were scouting us now. They had learned, and learned quickly.
“What’s your name?” I asked him. Many of the Alartaw knew one another by name but though I had been paying attention all day I had heard no one address the tech.
“It’s Houdar Nataku.” He said. “You forgot my name?”
Apparently I was supposed to know him!
“My memory’s been fuzzy ever since the black hole.” I lied. “Why, am I supposed to be perfect!” Always address uncertainty with aggression. It’s kept me alive so far.
“No, of course not.” Houdar stuttered. “Are you all right?”
“And we could do what about it if I weren’t?” I demanded.
Houdar looked away uncomfortably, chastised, but I didn’t feel guilty. He needed to start using his brains for something other than just filler to keep his head from caving in, and he needed to do it in a hurry if he planned to live through this experience.
“So you think these things might be sentient?” Meerla asked Houdar. I was mildly surprised she was taking up for him, after their earlier antagonisms, but it worked for me, so long as I wasn’t the one coddling him. When I yelled I wanted him to jump and I wanted him on his toes the rest of the time, ready and waiting for my yell.
“Late stage development.” Houdar answered immediately. “As you know we were ourselves sentient for many hundreds of thousands of years before we industrialized. Lizards seem to take even longer, usually. These reptiles could be highly intelligent.”
“I hope not.” I said, imagining an army of the things swarming us in military precision, but the concerted rush they’d already applied to our defenses left me with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I was dammed exhausted and we seemed safe for the moment. I set a watch from those who had gotten sleep last night and passed out immediately upon the moist ground.
I couldn’t have been asleep long, it felt like I had just closed my eyes, when screams, curses, weapons fire, the hissing and snapping of lizards, and the thud of what had to have been a large body landing near me woke me up. Mayhem ensued. I jumped up from
the soggy ground feeling worse than I had before I lay down, but with my adrenaline pumping, my de-atomizers magically in my hands, I was ready to fight, but for a long moment there was no light to see by. The lizards had attacked en mass and now were amongst us, the sounds of struggle were all around me, a muffled laser flash somewhere behind me illuminated nothing because the weapon had been shoved against a reptiles side when it was activated, bone crunching in front of me accompanied by the blood curdling scream of agony it produced, no more than two meters, I fired at the sound not caring if I hit a friendly and watched the startled reptile vaporize before my eyes.
In the flash of my weapon a hideous scene was portrayed. There were lizards all over our camp, a roiling sea of reptilian bodies, but the flash of my weapon seemed to spark a wildfire of firing, as the unencumbered among us found targets and the opportunity to act, and weapons went off all over, cutting the lizards down like grass under the mower.
A lizard looked up from its meal and caught my second shot. My other weapon was already tracking another, which had an Alartaw clinging to its neck where neither its claws nor jaws could find purchase, and who was stabbing away at the beast like a frenzied sewing machine. The reptile was shaking and struggling but there would have been no loosing the Alartaw; I actually saved the beast its agony when I fired my weapon. The Trooper fell away, covered in reptilian blood, as the beast disintegrated above it, throwing a startled look my way as he barely escaped vaporization himself (it would travel into any flesh touching it), but I didn’t have time to examine the startled Trooper because my other weapon had already found another target.
As my weapon came to bracket it, I saw that it also saw me, registering the weapon I brought to bear, and knowledge of the weapons ability, all in a single glance. Then the creature crouched and prepared to leap away with the Alartaw it held in its mouth, but I didn’t hesitate, the Alartaw hung slack and limp and if not dead, then broken and certainly near death. Time seemed to stretch as we looked into one another’s souls through the flickering light of weapons fire and the purplish glow of vaporizing reptiles, completely separate evolutionary paths, yet intelligent understanding passed from one to the other, and for one moment I thought I saw a look of guilt somehow cross the lizard’s face, like a dog caught on the dinner table, then I pressed the activator.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary Page 28