by GARY DARBY
“Interesting,” Shanon replied. “Sounds as though a small party broke off from the main group and stashed those objects under the tree.”
“My guess too,” Dason agreed.
Dason craned his neck around to see Lara hunched over the tree roots with Bianca stretched out next to her. Lara had switched on one of her vest lights to low power and shined into the cavity.
For some time, the two huddled over the objects before they both stood. Bianca said over the comms, “Close up on me.”
Once she had the scouts gathered around her, she turned to Lara. “Go ahead.”
Lara nodded. “Without extensive metallurgical or chemical testing, and a host of other tests, I can’t give you a definitive answer, but, my recommendation to Captain Ruz is that we implement Alpha Prime protocols. I think this may be the real deal.”
Dason’s mouth dropped open. “Are you saying we have First Contact?”
Bianca held up a hand. “No. We don’t know that for a fact, but between the footprints and these objects, we can’t discount the possibility that there are Alpha Primes on this planet.”
Dason turned to a grinning Shanon, his own mouth split in a broad smile. Bianca went on, “But we have a problem. AP protocols mean we can’t move or touch the artifacts, and they also dictate that I should leave a small team here to guard this cache.”
Frowning, she put both hands on her hips in a wide stance. “But I can’t. Finding our teammates outweighs this discovery.”
She let out a deep breath. “So, we’re going to have to leave these objects and hope that we can retrieve them later.”
Gazing upward at the giant tree, she muttered, “Of course, using this Paul Bunyan of a tree as a marker, even Sami should be able to find his way back.”
Several scouts chortled while Bianca ordered, “Path Finders, back on the trail.” Those who had been kneeling started to rise when, without warning, there came a loud bugling from close by answered by another to their right but at some distance away.
“Three-sixty, weapons free!” Bianca ordered, and the team pushed outward to form a tight ring around the giant tree.
Brant came to stand behind the four young scouts and asked, “Anyone got a hit on their LS?”
Dason shook his head as he held out his sensor shoulder high. “No.”
“Stay sharp,” he directed. “If you have to shoot, make sure it’s not a scout before you fire.”
Dason turned his head at a step behind him. Bianca came up and asked of Brant, “Anything over here? No one’s got a hit on the other side.”
“Haven’t spotted anything yet,” Brant replied. “My guess is that they’re staying out of sight.”
“Uh,” Sami remarked, “you might want to rethink that last statement. Look to your left.”
Dason had taken his eyes off his LS, listening to Brant, and now whipped his head up at Sami’s comment.
From the gloom, dark, lithe forms advanced on the scouts. Low, guttural growls broke the stillness. With slow steps, more hyena-beasts joined the hunting pack until they encircled the humans.
The low growling and baring of razor-sharp teeth could only mean that the humans had now become the hunted prey of a pack of hungry, vicious animals whose eyes flashed with the need to eat, and to eat now.
Chapter Three
Star Date: 2443.060
Unnamed planet in the Helix Nebula
“Hold fire! Close ranks!” Bianca ordered. “Let’s see if we can’t get them to back off before we have to shoot.”
Shanon slumped down next to Dason. “I don’t think they’re too interested in backing off, they look pretty dangerous to me.”
With a quick explanation, Dason related what happened in their first encounter.
“Well,” Sami offered, “either these things have very short memories or they’re very slow learners.”
“You sure it’s the same pack that we encountered before, Sami?” Dason asked. “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get a close enough look at their markings to distinguish one individual from another.”
Dason trained his weapon on the beast to his front and a little more than ten meters away. He thumbed his fire lever to “max” and cupped his firing hand in the palm of his other hand, ready to fire if Bianca gave the order.
He turned his head at the sound of soft footsteps and the rustling of clothing. Bianca was back to kneel between Dason and Shanon and asked, “You four okay here?”
“Checkin’ on us newbies?” Sami asked.
“Yes, Sami,” she replied. “I’m checking on my newbies.”
“Don’t worry bout’ us, Cap'n ma’am,” Sami replied. “If we can handle your Torther Ape, we can handle these characters easy enough.”
As one, Dason, TJ, and Shanon snapped, “We, Sami?”
Sami opened his mouth to reply, but Bianca held up a hand to stop him and commanded, “Hold your fire unless you feel imminently threatened.”
She stood and began checking her other scouts in the circle.
Dason smiled to himself. Bianca’s first inclination was to check her “newbies” and make sure they could hold their portion of the line. Dason understood why and would have done the same if he had been team leader.
His mind drifted back to a session with ScoutMaster Tarracas after one long and grinding training scenario on Alistar. Instructor Scout Grolson had shifted the responsibility of team leader among the novices and none of them had done very well.
“Leaders come in many guises,” the Scoutmaster had begun, “from the brutal dictatorship of a Vlad Knutin to the benevolent pacifism of a Mahatma Gandhi. One led by the crack and sting of the whip, the other purely by moral persuasion.
“Neither style would work in the Star Scout Corps. Most likely, neither Knutin nor Gandhi would live long enough on most unexplored star worlds to rise to a leadership position.
“Real leaders in the Star Scouts will understand that their true power lies not in raising themselves up, but in lifting each team member to a higher level of strength and determination.
“It is said that a rising tide lifts all boats in a harbor. That’s true, but if the boats are not strongly fastened and secured to the harbor dock, the outgoing tide will sweep them out to sea and they will be lost.
“Star Scout leaders will ensure that their teammates are tethered strongly together by a deep conviction of comradeship, loyalty to each other, and a driving desire to complete the mission.”
Dason smiled to himself. His judgment of Bianca before had been that she was a ruthless renegade and he could care less what happened to her.
Now, in just a few short hours his opinion of her had changed to the point that if she ordered him to jump off a cliff, he would only ask which way and how far did she need for him to leap?
Huffing sounds caused him to bring his thoughts back to the present. The beasts had stopped moving closer and now milled in a loose group that circled around the humans.
Dason could only surmise that the human’s appearance was both new and unsettling to the large, hyenalike animals and that tempered their evident aggressive nature.
As the bulk of the threatening pack seemed to have drifted to this side of the scouts defensive circle, Bianca reappeared with Brant at her side and stood just behind Dason.
“Recommendations?” she asked of her second-in-command.
“We have enough firepower to hold our own against this pack,” Brant declared. “But it would drain our weapons even lower than they are now. We used up a lot of charge in those other attacks.
“Most of us are on our backup power clip. If we get into another real firefight, we won’t have much left. Put us at a real disadvantage.”
“And unless we hike back to the scouters,” Bianca returned, “we have no way to recharge.”
She paused, let out a deep breath. “And I’m not prepared to do that as it would put us too far behind. If it rains as heavy as it did before, we could lose the trail altogether.”
&
nbsp; “Plus,” Brant observed, “With this many L-guns going off, it would be noisy. Could alert the hostage takers that someone is on their tail.”
Dason leaned his head toward Shanon and murmured, “Daylight.”
She caught his eye and nodded in agreement.
Bianca remained silent for a few seconds before saying, “Not a bad idea, Dason. My inclination was to fight our way out and keep going, but you’re right, we’d use up too much laz-charge that we may just need later.”
She paused again, ran a hand over her mouth, before saying, “Sunrise should be in a few hours. If we assume that they’re night hunters and don’t hunt during the day, we might be able to wait them out. Daylight might do as much for us as a fusillade of shots at them. Besides, we could use the rest.”
Sami whispered to Dason, “Forgot about her exceptional hearing, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Bianca began, “since they don’t seem inclined to attack, we’ll stay put for now. Brant, let half the team sleep, while the other half remains on guard. I’ll take the first watch; you bed down.”
Dason found himself on the first watch, and everything remained quiet until about halfway through his watch when he spotted one animal slinking ever closer to the encircled humans.
He waited to give the animal a chance to backtrack but when it came even closer, lips drawn back in a snarl, its back fur raised ominously, Dason muttered, “You look pretty imminent to me.”
He placed his weapon on “stun” took aim and fired. The animal dropped in its tracks.
Bianca came running. “What happened?” she asked.
Dason jutted his chin toward the downed animal. “Kept getting closer, had all the signs that it was going to attack. I gave it a chance to back away, but when it didn’t . . .”
He stopped jutted his chin at the downed beast, “Thought it best not to let it get any closer.”
Sami, who had been sleeping close to Dason, rolled over and with a yawn mumbled, “Next time throw a rock, much quieter.”
Bianca and Dason exchanged looks before Bianca shrugged and said, “Next time throw a rock.”
A few hours later, Dason snapped upright from a sharp slap on his boot. Shanon smiled at him. “You awake?”
“I am now,” Dason answered. He rolled over to see if the animals still ringed them.
“They drifted off a few minutes ago when it first started getting light,” Shanon explained.
She pointed to the hyena creature that lay slumped on one side. “The one you nailed during the night is still sleeping it off. What did you do hit’em with full-stun?”
“No,” Dason replied, “had it on the lowest setting.”
TJ spoke up. “Interesting. Their nervous system must be very sensitive to S-emissions.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” Sami asked, referring to the fact that TJ had been stun-gunned twice within just a few days.
Before TJ could retort, Bianca strode up. “We move in ten minutes. Check your equipment. Half a field ration for breakfast.”
She gestured toward the nearest stand of trees. “Girls to the left, boys on the right.”
In short order, Bianca had the team ready to take up the chase. She gathered them together and commanded, “Shanon and Anyar, left flank Path Finders, Sami and Dason, PathFinders on the right. Lara and Hanjeh, rear guard.
“Same trail formation. Weapons free status. Path Finders no more than twenty meters to the front and ten meters between sets. Everyone set? Scouts Out.”
Two hours later, treading with cautious footsteps through the thinning forest, Dason eased around a large, rounded, gray boulder that must have crashed down from the heights above to the valley floor.
He instantly stopped. His “bush radar” had activated.
He glanced around and listened to the forest’s various sounds; the flutter of wings from a birdlike creature, a soft rustling in the brush from some small animal, the creaking of old tree limbs swaying in the breeze, but he didn’t see or hear anything that seemed amiss.
Still, that same worrisome feeling came over him that he’d had before. He couldn’t explain it, but he wasn’t going to ignore it either.
He spoke into his communicator, “Path Finders, we need to hold up.”
Anyar, the leftmost Path Finder asked, “What do you have? LS reading?”
“No—but we might be close.”
Bianca asked tersely, “Do you have a visual?”
“No,” replied Dason, “but I think they’re just ahead.”
“Scouts, go to ground,” the Star Scout captain ordered. “Path Finders, freeze.”
Bianca, with TJ trailing her, joined Dason and Sami. She motioned to TJ and Sami to take up flanking positions on each side. “Overwatch while I powwow with Dason.”
While TJ and Sami trotted away to find concealed positions, Bianca and Dason crouched next to the boulder. “Report,” Bianca directed.
Dason returned Bianca’s stare. “I don’t really have anything to report. LS is clear. But I know we’re close. If we continue, I think we may alert them.”
Bianca paused before saying, “You think? That’s not much to go on to ground the whole team. We can’t afford to stop and go on hunches.”
She eyed Dason. “I prefer to act on direct observation and sensor data.”
After studying his face thoughtfully for a few moments, she added, “However, Scoutmaster Tarracas noted that you were very . . . intuitive.”
She paused briefly. “We’ll trust your instincts this time. So, what do you think you have? And remember, we don’t know if we’re dealing with hostiles or not.”
Dason pointed down the valley toward where the ground seemed to roll in waves of hummocks crowned with trees. “They’re ahead and maybe a little to our right. The LS is clear, so they’re either out of sensor range or something’s blocking the signal.”
“Or,” Bianca replied, “they could be sitting in some low ground or a depression.”
“That too,” Dason agreed. “Plus, I think there might be watchers on their back trail.”
Bianca surveyed the surrounding forest. If they were being spied on, whoever it was remained very well concealed. She let out a little sigh, saying, “The foliage is definitely thinning. Wouldn’t take much to spot us as we troop through these good-sized clearings.”
She nodded to herself while musing in a low tone, “I would be very surprised if they didn’t have sentries. If they don’t, it probably means they have the technology to do the job for them.”
Gazing at Dason, she asked, “Does your intuition have any idea of how many might be in their party?”
“No,” Dason replied. “I can’t say how many there are, I just know they’re nearby.”
Bianca bent over and picked up several small dark pebbles. She slowly dropped one stone at a time to the ground. It was evident to Dason that Bianca was weighing a number of courses in her mind, and all carried risks.
He doubted that any other Star Scout had ever tackled such a situation before.
Something told him that it wouldn't be the last.
She raised her head to ask, “Of you five former novices, if you had to pick your best Path Finder, who would it be?”
Dason didn’t hesitate. “Sami.”
She raised her eyebrows at that as if questioning his judgment before she dropped the last rock to the ground.
Hesitating for a moment, she then spoke into her communicator, “Brant, move forward and join me—I’m with the right flank Path Finders.
“All teams, slide fifty meters to the right, go to ground, take up a defensive posture. Anyar, Shanon, link up with the main body. Lara, take command until I get back, I’m going forward with Brant, Sami, and Dason.”
In a soft voice, she called over to TJ, “You head back, too.”
TJ nodded and hurried away. Bianca looked at Dason. “We'll play your hunch. But if they are waiting for us, we'll only risk a small team.”
She fixed Dason with a fr
ank look. “I know you’re good, but Sami better be as good as you say. We can't fumble this one, but I need my most experienced scouts to watch our own rear and flanks, and to get the team out of here in case we walk into more than we can handle.”
Dason nodded in understanding. “Ma'am, I know that Sami can be hard to take at times but he’s really first-rate in the bush. You know the Taloxin Swamp Trail in Belize?”
Bianca nodded with a grimace. Known as a particularly grueling, tortuous grind of mangrove swamp jungle, quicksand, three-meter-long alligators, and stinging insects, the trail had defeated many a promising novice scout after just a few days.
“Been there, done that,” she noted dryly.
“We were halfway down the trail,” he replied, “near the coast, on a Seek and Locate, when a Cat 4 hurricane hit. Brewed up so fast that the instructor scouts couldn't evacuate us.
“It was bad, incredibly bad. Comms down, debris flying at us like laz-gun blasts—we were in trouble.”
Dason paused as if remembering the fury of the tempest before saying, “Sami led us to shelter; got us out of the storm. Not sure how, because the rest of us couldn't see a half meter in any direction.
“We not only survived that storm, but we finished the trail, with Sami as point all the way.”
Dason met Bianca’s look. “Sometimes, Sami can be a real pain but as a Path Finder, he’s as solid as they come. I’d trust him with—”
Bianca held up a hand. “Stop, you've sold me.”
Several minutes later, Bianca huddled with Dason, Sami, and Brant. “We do a silent sneak,” she began. “Watch for sentries or outposts. Once we start, nothing over the comms unless absolutely necessary, hand signals only.
“Cinch tight your torso vest. No noise, we blend in with the environment. Brant set your LS for free search. Dason set yours to the alpha band, terrestrial humans. Sami and I will be overwatch for you two.”
“Everyone set?” she asked.
With quick nods, the three indicated they were ready. Bianca gave a hand wave and moved forward in a low crouch; the other three fanned out to each side of her.