Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World

by B. V. Larson

  She had her faceplate up too, and I privately thought they were both crazy.

  “Sap?” Carlos said. “Green plant-blood? I don’t think so.”

  Specialist Grant investigated further. “You have a point. It seems to be moving over the plant, flowing downward. Look what happens when I let some dirt fall on this leaf.”

  We watched her experiment, but I tried to keep my eyes on the cliff walls which were alarmingly close.

  “I’m developing a theory,” Anne said, sounding excited. “This waxy, sticky coating flowing over the plant is an adaptation designed to protect it.”

  “Protect against what?” asked Carlos, yanking his gauntlet back and rubbing it on his armored legs.

  “I’m not saying it’s poisonous. The coating defends these growths against the endless sifting dust that falls from above. It works like the wet lining of your throat and sinuses, carrying away debris.”

  “What the hell for?” asked Carlos.

  “There can’t be much rain here, and they only get reflected light from the walls of the canyon. The water all comes from underground. If the dust constantly falls and covers their leaves, the plants must have trouble with photosynthesis. If the leaves became too dusty, they’d die, so they’ve developed a way to filter the dust away.”

  “That’s an excellent theory, Grant,” Centurion Graves said, joining the conversation. “But I don’t really give a damn about the plant life. What I need to know is if we’re alone down here.”

  “Sir, you’ll have to scout the area for that.”

  Centurion Graves turned to Leeson. “Take a squad north. The central lake has to lie in that direction. I’ll have Adjunct Toro go in the opposite direction to locate the canyon wall. If you find anything useful or dangerous, report in.”

  “Uh,” said Leeson, “what about the rest of the cohort?”

  “I’ll give the all-clear and we’ll disembark. I think it’s pretty obvious we didn’t land in the middle of an ambush. Our core force will set up camp around the lifter to defend it.”

  Grumbling, Leeson led Veteran Harris, me and the rest of the squad northward. The adjunct seemed to be in a sour mood.

  “Graves must have it in for Leeson,” Carlos told me quietly. “I bet his dog crapped all over the Centurion’s lawn back on Earth.”

  Carlos’ idea made me smile, but I didn’t think he was right. Graves didn’t need a reason to order a man to die. He just did it out of habit. If he thought your death was a good idea—you might as well accept what was coming. If a trooper’s death would benefit the legion, even in terms of convenience or cost-savings, you were as good as dead. Even perma-death was negotiable.

  Pushing through what amounted to a thicket of fleshy, sticky-leafed flowers was strange enough, but when we reached the lake’s edge we were in for another shock.

  “What in the holy hell are those things?” Carlos asked.

  “Fish, I think,” Anne answered.

  Whatever they were, they were weird. They looked like floating rocks. They had no eyes or fins in sight. These creatures were all over the surface of the water, drifting up to the surface then down again. They varied in size and markings from little guys no bigger than my hand to monsters a full meter in length. At our approach, they moved slowly in our direction.

  “They seem to know we’re here,” I said. “Maybe the rock-look is camouflage.”

  “You might be right,” Anne said, standing next to me. She was clearly excited by the find and stared intently as the creatures approached us. “If they have adopted camouflage, that indicates they must have a predatory species that hunts them.”

  I nodded, watching the “fish”.

  “They must have some way of sensing us,” I said, “and some kind of limbs underneath that rough-looking top we can see. They remind me a bit of gators in the swamps back home. But they don’t have a uniform appearance from one creature to the next.”

  “Rock-fish,” Carlos said, coming up behind us. “That’s what they are.”

  “Who asked you?” I demanded.

  “I named them first. That’s how it works when you discover something. First guy to speak up gets to be famous.”

  Anne gave him a look, twisting her lips. “Rock-fish… All right. I’ll enter it into my logs.”

  “Make sure you spell my name right,” Carlos said, crowding close to her. “Carlos Ortiz. That’s with a ‘Z’ at the end.”

  “Okay, enough admiring the wildlife,” Veteran Harris said, slamming his gauntlets together. “Who’s going to kill one and eat it first?”

  Everyone looked alarmed. I pointed at Carlos. “He named them. He’s the expert here.”

  “Hold on!” Carlos protested. “I don’t know what they taste like. They might be poisonous.”

  “That’s right,” Harris said, grinning. “But our mission is to find foodstuffs. We’re stuck here, remember? You might have saved the entire legion with your rock-fish if we can eat them safely. Now, quit being a candy-ass and catch one of those things.”

  Unhappy and complaining, Carlos lowered his faceplate and stepped into the water at a shallow point. The lake became deep quickly. He was up to his knees only one step out.

  The rock-fish retreated at first, then came gently drifting closer again. They were like ducks, I thought, ducks at a park that were used to being fed.

  Harris had a huge grin on his face. He came up behind Carlos and surprised him, with a heavy hand on his shoulder. Carlos swayed and we could hear the servos in his suit whining to keep him steady.

  “Hey! Careful, Vet!”

  I felt a bit sorry for Carlos. This sort of thing happened to him all too often. He had a way of making people want to kill him. I was sure everyone in the unit had at least fantasized about doing it.

  Harris kept his hand on Carlos’ shoulder.

  “They say this soupy lake is over two kilometers deep,” he told Carlos. “And it goes almost straight down from the edge. You’re standing on a little shelf of sand—did you know that? Now, don’t step out too far Ortiz! You’ll sink like a rock in that armor—and you know how I hate to lose a good suit of armor.”

  “Yeah,” Carlos said. “Thanks for the warning. I think for safety’s sake I’ll move to the shore.”

  “Nah,” Harris said. He lifted his faceplate and spit into the water. Two rock-fish lunged at the spot then wallowed away disappointedly. “Catch me one. That’s an order.”

  Carlos thought about it, then he did what I probably would have done—he shot one.

  A hot beam of light flared and one of the rock-fish darkened and began to steam. It swelled up and rolled over.

  The underbelly was unpleasant. White and wet, it revealed a dozen or so small flippers with little double-jointed arms to work them. We all watched with curling lips and wrinkling noses as the creature shook and hissed.

  What happened next took us all by surprise, however. The other rock-fish lunged at the first one. Mouths appeared at the forward end of each fish, having been concealed just below the waterline. Every one of those mouths was full of triangular teeth that flashed like pearls. They tore apart their cooked comrade, pulling off the shivering fins first then taking chunks of meat away from the body. The water turned oily and slick on top with dark clouds of blood.

  Carlos shot another one and this time reached out to grab it before the others could feast upon its carcass. He lifted the heavy lump of meat, grunting.

  “Must weigh ten kilos,” Carlos said.

  “Vicious little bastards,” Harris said in concern. “I bet you’re glad you didn’t go skinny-dipping, Ortiz.”

  “Metal armor for the win,” Carlos said.

  He threw his second catch onto the shoreline where it writhed and smoked. The underbelly was like that of a wet insect.

  “Soup’s on!” Carlos shouted enthusiastically, climbing out of the water.

  No one went near the dying fish except Anne. In situations like this, bio people were the toughest among us. There
didn’t seem to be anything that could disgust them. I guess after seeing alien life on a dozen planets they had pretty strong stomachs.

  “The top still looks rock-like, but scorched,” Anne said, recording a vid for her report. “The upper layer isn’t stone but rather an encrusted series of wart-like growths. I’m not certain if they’ve all been generated by the host creature or if they’re parasitic creatures. They might be part of a symbiotic relationship where the parasites both feed upon the host and provide it with a natural defense at the same time.”

  She went on like that for quite a while. Whatever the fish was, I was fairly certain I didn’t want to eat one after she was done poking, prodding and measuring it.

  Except for the big flowers and weird fish, we didn’t encounter any more interesting life forms. We reported all our sightings and were ordered to stay on point at the lakeshore.

  We grumbled, and as night fell over the world far above, the sunlight that had reflected down the shaft from the surface world slowly died. We’d been in a shady, humid valley before, but as it became darker the canyon transformed into a clammy hole in the ground—which was exactly what it had been all along in my opinion.

  Anne was the only one that seemed fascinated by the place we were in. She dissected her alien fish with gusto. Finally, about four hours after we’d caught it, she sat back with a grunt of triumph.

  “It’ll work,” she said. “We’ll have to careful, but we can eat these things. Not the plants, though. Only the fish.”

  Adjunct Leeson came near, and I stood with the two of them near the mutilated fish.

  “Um…” he said slowly. “What exactly do you mean, ‘we’ll have to be careful’?”

  “Significant portions of the animal are poisonous. It’s about the proteins. Truly alien life forms aren’t based on the same proteins we’re based upon. Organic poisons are essentially proteins—venoms, that kind of thing. This planet has a drastically different ecology, and the life here is based on different chemical building blocks. We’ll have to be careful. The main chunk of meat in the central muscle mass—the part that works those small flippers underneath—that’s edible. We’ll have to drain the blood carefully, and strip out all the organs and the cartilage—but we can eat the tail. It’ll probably taste good.”

  Harris came up to join the party. “Whoa now, look at that! I’ve gutted fish before, but you do it right, lady.”

  “Who wants to toast up some of this meat and try it?” Leeson asked.

  No one met his eyes, except for Harris, who looked delighted. He’d been wanting to poison one of us since we’d arrived.

  “What are you grinning about, Veteran?”

  “I’ve got the perfect volunteer for you: Carlos Ortiz. He’s an avid daredevil.”

  Adjunct Leeson looked around at the nearby group. His eyes were calculating, and they fell on each of us in turn. I began wishing I’d found somewhere better to be.

  “Carlos is an ass,” Leeson said, “but he caught the thing. Grant is a bio—I need her. And she did the job of tearing it up and testing the meat.”

  Carlos let out a sigh of relief. Harris’ face fell in disappointment. Then Harris followed Leeson’s gaze, which had now fallen upon me. Harris began grinning again.

  “An excellent choice if I may say so myself, sir,” he said.

  Leeson frowned at Harris. “I need McGill and his heavy tube if those squids show up. Let’s see if your gut is as tough as your mouth, Veteran.”

  Harris froze. “What, sir?”

  “You heard me, eat some fish.”

  Carlos whooped and banged his gauntlets on his knees. He rushed forward and began preparing the rock-fish. Leeson walked away to check the perimeter of our encampment, which filled a crescent of bare land at the edge of the lake.

  “I think I have a lemon packet somewhere in my rations,” Carlos said excitedly. “Maybe a little butter, too. I’ll fry this right up for you, Vet. I’m good at cooking fish.”

  “Get the hell away from that!” shouted Harris, kicking him away from the fish. “It’s my funeral. Let a man die with dignity!”

  Carlos shut up, but his eyes were shining while Harris carefully cooked up the fish and tasted tiny bits of it.

  “What’s it like, Vet?” I asked.

  He looked at me, eyes squinting. “Not that bad, really. Kind of like crab but with less flavor. I don’t know…I’d say it tastes like crayfish.”

  He ate the damned thing. I have to give him that. He didn’t just have a taste, either. He ate his fill, consuming a big serving of the white meat.

  “How long do I have?” he asked Bio Specialist Grant.

  “Depends,” she said. “But if you haven’t started puking by morning, I think you’re in the clear.”

  “All right then,” he said, and settled down to sleep.

  Most of us camped in squads around the lifter. We watched Harris that night. We couldn’t help ourselves. Every time he burped or shifted in his sleep, we expected him to vomit blood or something.

  But by morning, the only reaction anyone could detect was some reddish itchy spots on his skin.

  “He’s got some kind of plague!” Carlos shouted.

  “Shut up,” Harris growled. “Probably just a bug-bite.”

  “Let’s hope not,” said Grant. She examined him closely. “No punctures. No bites. I’d say it was the fish. You had a slight reaction but nothing that a little shot of antihistamine can’t fix.”

  “We can’t eat the fish if we’re allergic to it,” I said.

  “We can do a better job preparing it. In this case, we just tore it up and washed it with sterile water. With a little more processing…I think this could be a completely safe food source.”

  “Rock-fish!” Carlos declared. “The new Legion Varus staple. I’m going to come up with some recipes.”

  “You didn’t even taste the damned thing, you chicken,” Harris told him. “Shut up.”

  Anne worked over Harris as we all watched and ate rations. Secretly, I think most of us were disappointed the veteran didn’t at least have a stomach ache.

  “I’ve had time to do more chemical work on the meat,” she said later on. Her expression was grim. “I’m detecting about six hundred parts per million of domoic acid.”

  “And just what in the nine hells does that mean?” Harris asked.

  Carlos nudged me excitedly. “He’s gonna die!” he whispered.

  I wasn’t so happy about it. If the fish was poisonous, that meant we didn’t have a viable food source yet, and we’d failed in one of our primary mission objectives.

  “Domoic acid is a neurotoxin,” Grant said. “It’s not uncommon on Earth, but it is dangerous. Causes brain damage at high levels over time and kidney failure at levels a thousand times lower than this. We can process it out, but it won’t be easy.”

  Harris’ face was twisted up into an enraged expression. “What I want to know is how you’re going to process it out of me!”

  Grant shook her head. “Your kidneys are trying to flush it out—that’s how they get damaged by the toxin. I can give you an injection to help, but it won’t be quick. It’ll take some time. Don’t eat any more fish.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not eating any more of that damned fish.”

  “Hey Vet, don’t sweat about it,” Carlos said. “I’m sure a quick regrow in the revival machine will solve everything.”

  Harris glared at him. There had been times in the past when Harris had given us just such sage advice.

  Carlos moved a little closer to Harris. The veteran stood up, glaring at everyone.

  “You want me to help out?” Carlos asked quietly, fingering his rifle suggestively.

  I’d been wondering up until that point why Harris hadn’t responded to Carlos’ jibes. It turned out that he’d been keeping quiet to lure his tormentor in.

  Suddenly, Harris lashed out with long arms, grabbed Carlos and slammed his gauntlet into the open faceplate. Carlos spit blood and staggere
d away.

  Adjunct Leeson walked over to see what was happening, and Harris nonchalantly reached over and slammed Carlos’ faceplate shut.

  Leeson eyed the slurry of blood running down Carlos’ breastplate.

  “Is there some kind of a problem, Veteran?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle, sir.”

  “How’s that fish doing for you?”

  “Just like mom’s cooking back home—but, there are some toxins involved. The bio says they can process them out, but we can’t eat the stuff straight out of the water.”

  “Pity,” Leeson said, eyeing the lake.

  The rock-fish were back, looking at us with their invisible optical organs. We’d figured out with further observation that they did have eyes, but they weren’t like ours. They were more like exposed light-sensitive nerve centers: Clusters of bulbous cells that allowed them to sense light and motion but didn’t really give their brains a solid image the way ours did.

  As we watched, one of the fish yawned. They did that from time to time, opening the forward third of their bodies to reveal neat twin rows of brownish, triangular teeth.

  “If you can’t keep up,” Leeson told Harris, “we’ll have to send you back to the lifter for reprocessing. I can’t have a poisoned veteran on my line.”

  “Not necessary, Adjunct. I’m feeling fine.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  After a breakfast of rations, the canyon warmed up and became dank. The heat increased steadily until it was oppressive. Everyone’s suit air-conditioners were running, eating battery power, but we couldn’t do anything about that. We’d get heatstroke if we turned them off.

  The days on this planet were long—about twenty-nine hours long. When we’d landed, the sun had been setting and the environment had been cooling down. We hadn’t yet felt the full heat of mid-day.

  “New orders, people!” Adjunct Leeson said after reporting in. “We’re to circumnavigate the lake.”

  A prolonged chorus of groans and curses swept the group.

  “What? Were you guys planning on putting your feet up? Sorry to disappoint. Let’s move out. Gorman, you take point. The rest of you stay awake. This isn’t going to be a nature walk. Keep your weapons primed for discharge.”