“It’s a nuke.” I told her in Galacta. I didn’t actually know the Alartaw equivalent.
“You think.” She had time to add before the shock wave hit us.
It approached us like all the demons of Hell on parade, thundering across the land, demolishing everything in its path, but we were too far outside the epicenter, by the time it reached us its killing force had been weakened, and though it smashed at the jungle around us, bending the trees and ripping free showers of leaves that rained down around us, it rushed by harmlessly.
Harmlessly except for the radiation, I thought. I felt myself getting sick just thinking about it. Earliest civilizations always used radioactive elements in their processes, because it was the earliest link in the chain of technological advancement.
The shock wave had passed and was gone. We laid there in stunned silence a moment, contemplating the violence and the close call. They must have really wanted us dead to nuke their own world.
“I would suspect they think us finished now.” Houdar said, standing up and dusting himself off.
“We might be, depending on how much radiation hit us.” I said.
“Radiation?” Houdar said. “There’s no radiation. That was a rather advanced hydrogen bomb. Perfectly safe. Unless you’re caught directly in the blast. You seem to be worried a lot about radiation lately.”
“Living with lizards does that to you.” I lied quickly. “How do you know that was a hydrogen bomb and that there’s no radiation?”
“The sound of the explosion, for one,” Houdar said patiently, as if lecturing a small child, “plus there’s no radiation.” He unclipped a small hand held computing device, activated it and scrolled through several menus until he found what he wanted, and held it up for me to see. It was an active graph of present radiation levels and it was well under normal.
“You hadn’t already looked at that.” I challenged him.
“My ear must be keener than yours, Sir, is all.”
I glared at him for calling me Sir and to cover my own lapse. I was obviously supposed to know the difference between types of nuclear devices, but how you survived long enough to learn such things seemed beyond me.
“Fine. We’re not going to die of radiation poisoning.” I said. “Now we have the edge, they think us dead.” Several of my remaining group looked around when I said that, trying to figure out just how we had any edge, but I ignored them. “What I don’t understand is why they were so aggressive. They seemed excessively scared of us, as if they’d bomb their own cities just to kill a few of us.”
“As you know, lizards are always excessively aggressive. It’s why it takes them so much longer to evolve than mammals.”
“I think they were warned by the Kievors.” Meerla said, putting pieces together that fit uncomfortably well once you thought about it. By the shocked expressions everyone else mirrored they all agreed. No one had anything to say for a moment.
“You were absolutely right to be worried about the grass eaters,” Houdar said, “and to think the Council wanted to enter into an alliance with them.”
“The Council was soft.” Said a Trooper angrily. “We should have followed normal protocol, tested their defenses, and if possible wiped them out.”
“All the Council did was give them time to plot against us.” Said another. “All the lives lost and still to be lost are all their fault.”
“Their families are dishonored forever.” Guermata said.
“Let’s not let any more of those lives come from our group.” I said. “We’ve given enough.”
“We look like we’ve been to Hell and back.” Meerla said, garnering chuckles from among the group. As far as I could tell from my force educated memories, Alartaw Hell was similar to our own, but Alartaw went there for somewhat different reasons; cowardice, dishonor, treachery, or the like. If there really was but One God, He certainly had different criteria for the myriads of His children.
“The rest of us do.” Houdar said to Meerla. “You don’t look like you’ve been through anything.” In fact, besides a couple dirty smudges and the blood of others, and the smudge probably from when I threw her down myself, she hardly looked the worse for wear, considering the rest of us. With the jewels she was still wearing and her relatively pristine condition, she almost looked a spectator to the whole affair.
“It’s late afternoon.” I said. “We should make a little more distance.” I wanted to be as far gone as possible in case they decided to vaporize the whole damn jungle. I wasn’t putting anything past them at this point.
Two Troopers led out. They were two thirds of the original trio I had chosen to lead us from the beginning and were obviously able individuals. Their expressions said I shouldn’t have been on point earlier and they were clearing that error up. I followed the two and Meerla came behind me.
We moved on the rest of the day, only once stopping to butcher a lizard we caught napping and lasered down where it lay in some tall grasses. The salty meat made me terribly thirsty. Several variety of prey animals we startled we let be, for now we’d dine on the reptiles, since they were our direct competitors.
It rained later in the day, soaking us through despite the thick vegetation overhead, but it was welcome and washed away the sweat that had dried and accumulated. When the light began fading, we stopped where we were and chose trees to make our aerial nests.
The thick jungle trees were so closely interwoven that the trees we climbed, though not connected at ground level, were nearly indistinguishable once we were within their heights, their branches woven into and intertwined with their neighbors so that it was difficult to fall through even had we wanted. By stripping leafy branches from the tops of the trees we were able to create sturdy and even comfortable beds within which to spend the night. Finally, finished, we climbed in, cuddled, and fell instantly asleep. At least I did. I was just gone.
When I opened my eyes it was because some subconscious alarm had rung silently within my head. I could sleep through the loudest noise if that noise was supposed to be there, but let even the slightest disturbance I did not recognize make itself known and I woke instantly, fully alert and ready to fight. Now awake and fully alert, I listened but heard nothing.
It was pitch dark. I couldn’t see two mili-meters into the gloom, so I re-closed my eyes and simply listened. I could hear the irregular breathing of my sleeping crew, and Meerla's even breathing . . . no I couldn’t, and she was wrapped in my arms, right there with me. She was awake and she knew I was awake, I knew without a doubt. We were the predators here and we would do the killing.
Moving with ultimate caution I began moving my left arm that was draped over Meerla to free a laser pistol. Her right arm over mine eased away so I was able to move unhindered, and without having made any sound I freed the weapon.
Crack! A branch taking too much weight. The sound came from directly below us but several meters further down the tree. An involuntary shiver ran down my spine as I recognized the danger. Then a movement even nearer startled us both, and forgetting caution, we were turning to greet the noise, weapons coming up, when the closest noise maker flipped open his computer. Houdar. He had his computer in one hand and a blaster in the other!
I ripped aside the vegetation to get a better look at what was below us and was greeted by two sets of gleaming red eyes, much closer than I would have liked but not nearly close enough to stop what happened next.
I shoved my laser down through the vegetation and aimed at the closer of the two, purely by reflexive instinct (since I couldn’t see my weapon as it was shoved through the nest we had made) and shot out the lizard’s eye.
These lizards had obviously never seen anything faster than themselves. The reptiles head was cocked at an angle when the ruby beam struck it, passed cleanly through it, and speared all the way down to the ground, as if I had tied a glowing string from the end of my weapon, down through the lizards head, and anchored it in the ground. For the briefest moment, anyway, then the lizard�
��s brain caught up with current events and it freaked out, throwing itself sideways violently, trying to escape the pain spearing through its eyeball, but it only succeeded in slicing open a flapping chunk of the back of its head as it moved through the beam of my weapon. After thudding against several branches, it came to rest draped over one of the lowermost branches, quite dead.
The second lizard didn’t watch this scenario beyond the point where I shot its comrade, it was climbing backwards out of the tree. Very slowly. If they weren’t designed for climbing trees, they really weren’t designed for climbing out of trees. It noticed the attention now directed its way and stopped to glare its hatred and cognition of what was about to happen, and then it was cut apart.
The sloppy thuds of falling lizard parts had barely faded before there was a ferocious scuffle on the ground, well out of reach of the feeble illumination of Houdar and others computing devices, but the hisses, scuffling and crunching of bones lent unavoidably clear picture to our imaginations. The ground below us was perfectly alive with the monstrous predators busy cannibalizing their comrade.
Hungry again I climbed down to the carcass which had become lodged in the tree and began butchering off chunks of the reptiles muscular back, which I passed up to waiting hands. When everyone above was loaded with as much as they could eat and cache upon their persons, I carved myself a massive chunk, bit into it to hold it, sheathed my knife, and kicked the lizard off its branch. It fell through the remaining branches and hit the ground with a thud. The skirmishes and scuffles resumed as those not fed fought over the new meat. I climbed back to my arboreal nest and, after devouring my fill, fell back asleep and slept the sleep of the dead.
CHAPTER 18
Somehow I woke hungry and regretted kicking the corpse of the reptile down, but it had apparently satisfied them enough that they hadn’t made another attempt on us. Or maybe they were learning. I looked at the remainder of my meal with regret.
“Is anyone else hungry again?” I asked.
“I’m not starving but another lizard steak would hit the spot.” Houdar said.
“I’m happy to have had a good night’s sleep.” Meerla pointed out.
“We’ll have the opportunity to hunt more.” Said a Trooper named Hoarnaku, whose name I had learned yesterday. He was the largest member of our group and had slowly been exerting his leadership qualities, I had been happy to note. He didn’t seem highly intelligent but was competent and probably the best woodsman among us. “One of those hoofed animals, maybe.” Hoarnaku had long, sharp eyeteeth.
“Or one of the local sentients.” Said another, an ugly scarred rascal I wouldn’t trust to look away from in other circumstances. I wondered if Alartaw ate their vanquished foes. Eating primordial reptiles was one thing, eating sentients quite another, though I thought I wouldn’t pass on a fresh Kievor steak right about then.
There was agreement among the group. I wanted the opportunity to get back at the locals myself, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat them.
“We aren’t going to find them hiding in these trees.” I said, and led the way to the ground, watchful and wary. All we could find on the ground of the two interlopers was trampled vegetation. The blood had soaked into the ground like a sucking wound, thirsty for life. There was no trace of anything living.
“Slow learners.” Meerla said, eying Houdar, who studiously ignored her as he studied the ground.
“No point in responding to a pointless comment.” I said, and though I was looking at Houdar, felt Meerla’s eyes stab at me. I felt a warm flush of pleasure at the annoyance I felt conveyed in the look. “Let’s go.”
I fell in behind Hoarnaku and the two other veterans as they made their way to point, and Meerla fell in behind me, as usual. Once again we were traveling quietly and surreptitiously, stealthily and furtively, very careful to leave no trail. Who knew that the locals weren’t on to us already. We couldn’t afford another confrontation like the last.
We hadn’t traveled long when Hoarnaku lasered a deer like herbivore of about a hundred kilos, cutting off three of its legs, not killing it immediately, so that it was still flopping on the ground when we surrounded it. Working quickly we dispatched it and fell to like the animals we had become. There was something terribly arousing about Meerla as she devoured the hot, bloody meat, a primordial lust for everything barbaric and animalistic about her.
She noted my look and paused to grin over a mouthful of red flesh, her fangs momentarily sunk into un-torn flesh that oozed blood as her bite increased. A rivulet ran down her chin and before I knew what I was doing I’d leaned over and licked it from her face.
A look crossed her face, derived from a wellspring of emotion I had no trouble interpreting, judging by the smoky look in her eyes and the coy twist of her lips. I truly thought she would leap upon me there and then, right in front of everyone.
I couldn’t picture denying her, so I was glad when I didn’t have to make that decision, but it looked to have been a close call. Meerla’s look now said ‘later’. I looked forward to it.
We traveled on again until a rumble off in the near distance brought us all up short, tense, weapons ready, eyes alert and ready for anything. The rumble was felt as much as heard. I had no idea what could cause it.
“Ground transport.” Houdar whispered when I looked at him questioningly. “Big bastard. Moving slowly.”
I glanced at Meerla for her opinion of Houdar’s announcement, not because I didn’t believe there could be a large ground transport moving nearby, but because I simply didn’t see how Houdar could make that distinction, at least not so positively, with what little he had to go on. Meerla simply shrugged.
“He is our boy wonder.” She said, for once not sarcastic.
Houdar made a bit of a sour face and I wondered how old he really was. There was just no telling.
“All right.” I admitted. If she was living with it, I guessed I had to, too. “So we’re close to their settlements. Let’s go check it out.”
“We may not be close yet.” Houdar interrupted, and now I thought I was getting a taste of what had rubbed Meerla the wrong way about Houdar. Houdar went on anyway, oblivious to my sentiments. “It’s probably headed for Vengeance. They’re obviously not too advanced or they’d just use anti-gravity. Without anti-gravity, they aren’t likely to have much space faring ability, either. We need to follow and steal back our ship. It’s likely our only way off this world.”
‘Plenty of races which do not possess anti-gravity have space faring abilities.’ I wanted to yell at Houdar, but of course I said nothing about it.
“It’ll take one hell of a big transport to carry Vengeance.” I said instead. I began to see how Houdar had made his deduction, and it certainly hadn’t required any spectacular mental capacity, so I scowled at him, just for general principles.
He was right about needing Vengeance back, though. It was the same damn dilemma we had been faced with when the Kievors sent us through their worm hole. Having a ship didn’t mean we would be able to get home. We would need the data in Vengeance's data banks. There was absolutely no telling where we had ended up, and could spend the remainder of our lives searching without ever coming near to getting home, if we did not retrieve our ship.
“I admit,” I said to appease Houdar, “that the idea of trying to get home in some rickety, under engineered, fossil fueled rattle trap isn’t what I had in mind.”
“Not when our own ship,” Meerla growled, “and most of my jewelry, are there for the taking.”
“They’re even going to move it out of the jungle for us.” Guermata said. “So we won’t have to bring the power to it. They’re bringing it to the power.”
“We’ll have to thank them.” I said cheerfully, though that was anything but what I was feeling.
“Yeah, by eradicating them.” Houdar said, the gleam of insanity briefly shining out of his soul, but then, we were all just the littlest bit crazy right then, weren’t we. Only someone completely insa
ne could still be functioning competently under these conditions, and we were operating very efficiently, under the circumstances. No, no one sane was still amongst us, those individuals had been weeded out.
“We can eradicate them when we have Vengeance back.” I said. “No heroics. It’s still us against a whole planet, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.” Houdar said, glancing around to take in our much diminished group.
We moved off again, changing course to intercept the native machine. It seemed to be entering the area on a North East vector, cutting straight towards Vengeance. I wondered what kind of road would carry such a vehicle and how we had missed it.
The answer became evident as we moved closer and I halted our progress to let it pass by. The rumble of its passage was accentuated by sporadic metallic screams that I immediately recognized must be massive saws cutting the trees out of the machines way.
“They’re making a road.” Houdar said, but this brain fart was hardly a revelation and no one acknowledged him.
When the machine had passed by, maybe a half hour later, we resumed our own progress, albeit much more slowly and carefully, if that were possible. We made no noise.
We crept through the jungle, fanged phantoms bent on vengeance, slipping from shadow to shadow. When I saw light ahead within the jungle, I raised my hand, motioning everyone down, and on hands and knees we crawled the rest of the distance, but it hadn’t been necessary, the swath the massive machine had cut through the jungle was deserted.
Three meters wide, twin treads had shattered the low cut stumps as it had passed over them, and sinking deeply into the jungle where the stumps had not been there to hold it up. The trees themselves had been piled haphazardly on top of the jungle canopy and the sound of snapping branches and groaning, over stressed trees now surrounded us. We crept along beside the swathe, even at our crawling pace catching up to the even slower moving machine. We weren’t challenged nor did we see any of the locals along the way.
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