by Jack Halls
A large, three-clawed hand appeared from a hole on top of the wreckage. A second hand appeared after that, and a scaly head emerged from the hole. It was long and reptilian, with two yellow eyes peering at Gideon from one side of its head. It had a long snout and rows of sharp teeth inside jaws that were red with blood.
Gideon’s hands tensed around his rifle. The creature sniffed at the air and flicked a long, purple tongue out from between its teeth. When it pulled itself out of the starfighter, the whole thing rocked under its weight.
The creature had a long, thick body ending in a whip-like tail, and six legs just like the other animals they had seen, each ending with a three-clawed foot. Crawling down the side of the hull headfirst, it slipped into the tall grass and disappeared.
“Gid, where did it go?” said Takomi with a twinge of panic in her voice. “My infrared can’t pick it up.”
“It must be cold blooded,” he said. “Just cover me.”
Gideon slowly dropped to one knee. Since he was old enough to walk, Gideon had studied the art of combat for hours every day. His training told him that he needed to take away the creature’s advantage, and he guessed that this creature was most comfortable in the tall grass. He set down his rifle and backpack, then pulled out the long knife strapped to his thigh. Scanning the grass for movement, he slowly dropped down to his belly.
“Gid, what are you doing?” whispered Takomi in a frustrated voice.
He made no reply as he inched through the grass, looking from side to side. He made slow progress toward the wrecked ship, scanning the ground in front of him as he went.
Then he saw it. Through the grass, four eyes peered back at him from about two meters away. Slowly bringing his knife hand out in front of him, Gideon stared the creature down. Its tongue flicked through its teeth again. Their eyes remained locked for several moments, then the creature slithered forward, weaving through the grass without disturbing it at all.
Gideon shouted at it, waving the knife in front of him. The creature jerked its head back, snarling and hissing at him. It lifted its head out of the grass and reared up, settling back into a sort of sitting position on its back two pairs of legs, looking much like a coiled snake.
Gideon stood as well and assumed a fighting stance as the creature loomed over him. Its head bobbed back and forth in a mesmerizing dance. Gideon circled around to the left a little to give Takomi a better shot.
“I don’t think this thing is friendly,” he said.
“You think?” Takomi replied. “Be careful, Gid. Remember how fast it jumped out of the cockpit. Want me to shoot it?”
Gideon had stopped moving and stood facing the creature. “Weren’t you just going off about how we shouldn’t shoot things?” he said. “What if it’s part of an advanced species? What if we...”
The attack came the second his eyes looked away. The creature’s powerful body launched at him, and its jaws latched onto his helmet while razor-sharp claws raked across his armor. The impact knocked Gideon backwards into the grass with the creature on top of him. Takomi fired, but the shot missed as Gideon and the creature tumbled into the tall grass.
Gideon slashed at the creature’s side with the knife, cutting a long gash across its ribs. It shrieked and jumped away, giving Gideon a chance to come back to his feet. Seizing his chance, Gideon hurled himself at the creature, aiming a thrust at its chest. The creature dodged and slashed at Gideon. Claws that normally would have shredded him scraped harmlessly across his Sentinel Armor.
The creature let out an enraged shriek, then whipped its heavy tail, knocking Gideon off balance, and the creature again launched itself at him. He raised his arm, and the creature’s jaws clamped down on it, but the teeth were no match for Gideon’s armor and the creature released him. Taking advantage of the creature’s confusion, Gideon attacked with added vigor. Surprised and wounded, the creature backed away and then turned and fled into the forest, disappearing once again into the grass.
Shaking from adrenaline, Gideon turned and looked at Takomi. “Why didn’t you shoot?” he said.
“I did,” said Takomi. “It was too fast, and you kept getting in the way. What possessed you to put down your rifle anyway?”
Gideon shrugged as he wiped the blood off his knife. “I already killed one alien today, and you acted like I was a monster. I just wanted to scare the thing off so it would leave the SF alone.”
The starfighter now stood still, and dread crept through Gideon as he glanced again at Takomi. He reached down in the grass to pick up his rifle and backpack, and then walked toward the ship. At the front of the cockpit, he found a good-sized hole, and he lifted himself up to look inside. The second he did, he pulled away.
“Bad?” asked Takomi as she walked up to stand by him.
Gideon nodded, still looking at the ground. He took a few deep breaths, swallowed hard, and looked through the hole again. There wasn’t as much blood as he would have expected, but mangled and torn flesh mixed with hair and clothing. It was impossible to discern who the two crew members were from their remains.
He stepped down and walked to the side of the ship to find its hull numbers. Takomi looked into the cockpit with an unreadable expression on her face. Gideon noted her stoic gaze as she surveyed the carnage inside.
“Judging by the hull damage, I’d say they were killed on impact. They went quickly,” she said.
Gideon stared at her in disbelief. “How can you be so calm about this?”
Takomi shrugged. His stomach was still reeling from the sight of the two mangled corpses. It was the first time he’d seen dead people, and he suddenly had the thought that these two would not be his last.
“This SF was probably built before the Martian wars,” he said, circling the craft. “It hasn’t seen action in over a century and a half. I’ll bet the parachutes failed because of corroded tubing or something.”
He pulled away a piece of the wreckage to reveal the hull numbers. “Pauline, do you have a record of who was aboard SF7-1894?”
Pauline’s flat voice responded immediately. “First Lieutenant Sanjay Patel and Sergeant Veronica Hallows.”
Gideon blinked. Sanjay’s son, Raj, was Gideon’s age. The name made him wonder what had become of his former classmates. Most likely they had been on the shuttles.
Veronica was only about ten years older than Gideon and Takomi. They’d only just begun to get to know her and her new husband, Connor, through the Order and in flight school. He tried to feel grief, but his emotions had already been spent.
“Pauline,” he said, suddenly feeling tired, “please record that Lieutenant Patel and Sergeant Hallows were killed when their starfighter malfunctioned.”
His AI confirmed the command.
Takomi walked over to the side of the starfighter and knelt down to place her hand on the ground. “There’s lots of fuel leaking all over the place, Gid. Do you think we should burn the ship?”
Gideon’s head snapped around. “Burn it? Why?”
“It’s the logical thing to do. If we leave them in there, that thing will come back and finish his meal. We don’t have any shovels to bury them, and even if we did, they’re not very... well, moving what’s left of them would be awful. The next best thing is to burn the SF with them inside.”
She stood and walked around the starfighter, surveying the wreckage. “And don’t forget the fact that the ship that attacked us sent four smaller ships down here to the surface before your dad blew it to smithereens. That means they’re still down here, and probably not too happy with us. We have to keep them from gathering intelligence from our military assets. Plus, it’ll be getting dark soon. The light from the bonfire will be visible for a dozen kilometers in every direction. If there are lost people out there, they can use it to find us. We’ll hide up on that ridge and take turns keeping watch in case the fire attracts hostiles as well.”
Gideon stared at Takomi with his mouth wide open. “Wow, General Tsukamoto, you’ve really thought this th
rough.”
Takomi glared at him. “Well, one of us has to do some thinking around here. We’ve been in combat training our whole lives, remember?”
“Well yeah, but...”
Takomi put her hand on her hip and leaned forward. “But what?”
“It seems so final. Shouldn’t we find the others before we decide to cremate people?”
She shook her head at him and climbed up onto the starfighter. “And in the meantime, Sanjay and Veronica’s bodies are food for scavengers? I think it’s better my way. If you don’t want to be part of it, don’t help me.”
Gideon didn’t have time to answer before Takomi dropped into the same hole the creature had emerged from. Fighting back a sense of nausea, Gideon climbed up to the hole as well. As soon as he had poked his head inside, Takomi shoved a gray backpack in his face. He took it from her and tossed it to the ground. Another backpack, this one stained with blood, followed. After that came two rifles, two pistols, and a black metal box.
“What’s this?” he asked as she climbed back out of the hole.
“Transponder. It’s still emitting the signal our AIs picked up. It’ll help the others find us.”
“And the hostiles,” said Gideon.
She shrugged. “It’s a risk we have to take. We need to regroup if we want to survive.”
Gideon stood staring at the black box in his hands. “What makes you think any of us are going to survive anyway?”
“Don’t be stupid, Gid.”
“Seriously, Takomi, look at us. We’re marooned on a planet full of monsters, and don’t forget the aliens that came down after the Luzariai. They’re down here somewhere and probably pissed that we blew up their mother ship. We’re doing okay now because we’ve got supplies and Sentinel Armor, but the supplies will run out and the armor’s batteries will eventually run down.”
She dropped down from the SF and glared up at Gideon. “Our parents have survived worse than this. We’re literally built to survive. So I’m not going to let you give up, and if you start talking like that again, I’ll break your nose.”
Feeling ashamed, Gideon gave her a weak smile. “Sorry, Takomi. I’m not used to all this.”
Takomi laughed. “We just crashed on an alien planet. No one’s used to all this.”
He looked over at the wrecked starfighter with the two aionian bodies inside. “So how do we do this?”
Pulling out her knife, Takomi walked up the SF and sawed at a hose until fuel spilled out of it. “For starters, we stand way back when we light this.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Night
THEY SET UP camp six hundred meters away on a ridge overlooking the crash site. The orange glow from the massive blaze lit up the valley below them as twilight faded into darkness. Two of Valkyrie’s moons hovered overhead, while the third hid somewhere behind the planet. On the hill opposite them, the transponder was set up on a pile of rocks broadcasting its position. If hostiles came looking for it, Gideon or Takomi would spot them from a long way off. If any aionians came looking, they would find a note Takomi scrawled across the black box with grease from the wreckage. “Hide until daylight. Meet you in the morning. Takomi Tsukamoto and Gideon Killdeer.”
Gideon took first watch while Takomi curled up on the ground next to him. He would have loved to have taken off his Sentinel Armor, but they both decided it would be unwise at this point. Instead, they allowed themselves to open their visors so that they could eat some solid food instead of sucking liquefied goop out of the feed tube.
At first, the air seemed too thick somehow, heavy with a thousand alien smells lingering on the wind. Gideon gagged when he took his first breath of Valkyrian air, but soon learned to tolerate it, and after fifteen minutes, he found he rather enjoyed it. It smelled of decay and life at the same time, something he was not used to. The only word he could think of to describe it was earthy. The irony made him smile.
He breathed deeply, surprised at how cold the air was. Now that he had time to think, he pondered on the novelty of his situation. He was sitting on an alien planet, breathing alien air, listening to the sounds of alien creatures in the forest around them. He had encountered dozens of alien life forms, he had even fought and killed one, possibly two of them. Not quite how he’d expected his first day on Valkyrie to play out.
The more relaxed he became, the more he wished his parents were there with him. So much had happened that he wanted to share with them, and he had to admit he would like to hear some words of encouragement from them right about now. Thoughts of his mother made his chest tighten up, and when he tried to think of something else, his mind immediately turned to his father.
Gideon tried not to think about the odds that had been stacked against the admiral in his last moments aboard the Leviathan. Even more disturbing was the thought that maybe the admiral had known it was a suicide mission, and only told Gideon he would attempt a halo jump to give his son hope.
Movement below him caught his eye, and he looked down to find a herd of large creatures had entered the clearing to examine the fire. Digging through his backpack, Gideon found a set of binoculars and looked down at the newcomers. The creatures resembled flat-faced rhinoceroses with duckbill mouths and a varying number of horns protruding from frills around their necks. They had lean bodies, and despite their size they jumped through the grass like six-legged deer.
The smaller ones cuddled up in the grass close to the fire. The larger ones bedded down in a protective circle facing outward. It seemed like a comfortable place to sleep, and he found himself envying the young creatures in the middle, with a warm fire behind them and the adults protecting them from danger. For a moment, he considered waking up Takomi, but decided she needed her sleep. The creatures were bedding down for the night anyway, so she would see them when it was her watch.
Watching the strange creatures from the hilltop, it was easy to imagine he was on a scientific mission, researching Valkyrian animal behavior, and not marooned with little hope of survival. The illusion kept his mind from darker thoughts, so he passed the time by trying to think up names for the different animals they had observed thus far.
With his visor down, he had Pauline bring up data for all the organisms they had come across. The sheer number of plants and animals they had discovered in less than a day was staggering. Whole generations of biologists would have been green with envy at this cornucopia of scientific discovery before him.
Coming up with a name for each plant and animal proved incredibly hard. He decided to leave the name of the creature he had killed as rocodile, but for the rest of the animals, he came up with entirely original names. He named the snake-like creature he’d fought a rasp. The animals sleeping near the fire he called gruffles. The giraffe creature that plucked fruit out of the spiny trees he called tobolos. The spiny trees he named jumbada trees.
Takomi would make fun of him when he told her the names he came up with, but right now he didn’t care. Someone would have to do it eventually, so he might as well get started.
Time flew by as he documented all this on his AI, along with any other data he could think of. He included level of hostility, warm or cold blood, size and color. Pauline filled in the gaps where he couldn’t remember or had not paid attention. It was a nice distraction, and he was actually having fun. Maybe when this was all over, he would become a zoologist after all. The prospect of exploring an entire planet ignited his imagination.
A small noise behind him brought him back to reality, and he spun around, groping for his sidearm. Once he’d located his weapon, he held perfectly still, trying to pinpoint the noise again. A moment later, he heard it, coming from somewhere near where Takomi lay. He crept toward her, holding the pistol out in front of him. When he heard it again, he realized that it was Takomi that was making the noise. She was crying and trying to keep it quiet.
He leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. She whipped around to look at him, and before she could hide her face again, he saw a re
d nose and wet puffy eyes.
“What is it, Takomi?” It was a stupid thing to say. Their parents were lost, their ship destroyed, and they were alone on a planet full of unknown monsters. And all he could think to say was, “what is it.”
She dropped her face down into her chest, covered her head, and made a muffled reply.
“What did you say?” asked Gideon.
“I said I’m fine, Gid. Leave me alone.”
He sat next to her and patted her arm. Something told him that it would be a bad idea to leave her alone now. “There are some pretty cool animals down by the bonfire,” he said, remembering how they had distracted him from his own thoughts. “You should take a look.”
Takomi didn’t move. Gideon chewed on his lip, trying to think of the right thing to say. “Look, your mom and dad have Sentinel Armor, remember? They’ll be fine. We’ll find them soon and then...”
“And then what?” said Takomi, sitting up and turning to glare at him. “You said so yourself, Gid. None of us are going to survive this. We’re trapped here and no one’s coming to the rescue. We’re only alive because of dumb luck and these stupid suits, and neither of those are going to keep us alive for much longer. Look down in that valley, Gid. We just torched the bodies of two warriors. They couldn’t make it. What makes you think a couple sixteen-year-old kids can make it?”
Gideon looked away from her piercing glare. “I wasn’t really thinking when I said that. We can still make it. Our parents are out there somewhere, thinking up something. My dad’s a pretty smart guy, Takomi. He basically built the starships by himself.”
“Gideon,” said Takomi, her face softening, “you have to accept the possibility that your dad might be dead. He saved us, but....”
“You don’t know that,” he said, trying not to raise his voice. “Like I said, he’s a smart guy. He could have figured something out.”
“I hope so, Gid. But even if he survived, that still doesn’t change the fact that the Leviathan is gone and we’re trapped here with a bunch of angry aliens with ships that shoot lightning.”