by Chris Turner
His heart fell. Even if he wanted to, he could not contact the NAVO authorities and appeal for help. It was a tough blow. He gave a resigned grunt. Then again, if he were in a different era, thousands of years in the past or future, what would it matter, for there would be no NAVO.
The pilot laughed, a croaking sigh. And why would they help him at any rate? He was renegade pirate.
He sneered at this realization. He had loosed cannon fire upon his own race, lit NAVO ships into ruin. Why would they exercise any leniency?
Miko shook his head in pained dismay. What had he become? The last two years of his life came spinning back to him in a mix of sick clarity.
His childhood danced before his eyes: he saw himself growing up on the ranch in middle Menetin on planet Sileron, the only habitable world orbiting Tau Ceti. His parents, who moved from world to world on their work assignments, had encouraged him to apply himself in many fields. He had excelled. There had been so much closeness. He remembered his father, a successful NAVO commander, devising tactical problems for his son to solve when he was barely seven, and who had landed him his first post at Ursa Minor III as a junior cadet when he was fourteen, and then a junior officer a few years after. How those had been halcyon days—clear and defined. But so long ago. How had it all come to this? This deplorable state of aberration?
Miko wrenched himself away from his unhappy thoughts and turned his attention back to the smoking NAVO ship. He mustn’t wander off... To do so meant death.
Alien grasses, the whine of night insects, hot humid sticky air, the pad of stealthy feet—this was the world that Miko lived in. So unreal after the stark entombment in Sitty II—joined with Audra.
In a feverish haze, Miko tramped on. He itched like the devil as sweat poured in buckets down his cilia-wisped skin. His hide was now red and sore from scratching so wilfully at the already infected insect bites that had amassed overnight.
The dim amber light that peeked through cracks in the foliage, depressed him. The glow cast a perpetual twilight on this forsaken planet. It was a mystery he could attribute only to the peculiar tilt of the planet’s axis, which created an eerie, magnified umbral effect under the strangling cloak of trees. He stumbled on with misery, bashing his shins often on misshapen stumps of knotted wood, or some crusty mushroom that reared up like a troll or dwarf, blocking his path.
Miko feared to eat such flora as the mushrooms, for the effects they would have on him, remembering Kraig’s ghastly experience. The only sustenance he could forage remotely safely were certain rank berries which grew in clumps on a specific vine-like shrub. He tested a speck in his webbed palm and waited some minutes for any adverse symptoms to rear their ugly heads. None came. He did not trust the sulphurous water or the scummy ponds that abounded and could only lick what moisture he could off the cleanest plant leaves.
It was an understatement to say that Miko happened upon many fantastic things on the course of his wild rambling, but he hardly noticed such wonders, nor felt the pain of his wrenched knee and jarred ankle. The truth of it was, he was living on borrowed time. The glorious trees continued to soar above him like unreachable guardians. So high up they were in that thick, dreamy atmosphere that the ferny canopy seemed to wander to infinity and filter the wan light of Rogos’s sun into dappled shades of dim amber, rose and jade.
Miko exhaled. He saw no sign of Audra in those woodlands, but he felt her alien-ness out there, somewhere in that primitive forest, hobbling, gliding or whatever thing she did for locomotion, honing in on him like a night stalker. A strange fire still burned in the loose flesh at his hip and shin, severed now.
A sound rustled at his back.
Miko thrust about, his weapon bared. Expecting the worst, he saw a three legged beast, akin to a stork but low-riding like an aardvark. The creature pushed its reeking body past a flap in the leafy plants and come snarling at him.
No time for flight. The metal bar was his only weapon stopping the thing from mauling him.
He slashed out; the thing’s skull shivered with the impact, but it came veering in at him again, and Miko got another stab at it, sending it sagging to the mossy turf, twitching. A strange sour call drifted out from the dank airs. The cry seemed to emanate from a place distant. Another aardvark had crept from the foliage and halted in its step, ears perked. The plaintive sound echoed amongst the trunks. What manner of creature was it? It had a peculiar melancholy and otherworldly tone to it.
The aardvark sniffed at the air and gave a mournful whine, then tramped back from where it had come.
Miko blinked, puzzled. Why had the creature not lunged for him? Had the cry unnerved it?
Did things roam abroad in these primeval woods more fiendish than the land predators? Miko exhaled a curse. What could be worse than eels, or Audra?
A furtive movement warned him of activity in the upper branches.
He swung low on his heels, barely missing the rush of some gangly tree-dweller. The thing was brawny and agile, some powerful marsupial that had dropped twenty-five feet upon him.
But it was no marsupial, this multi-armed beast. It was crusted with thick greenish hair, matted and muddy in places. It sported a bulldog face and a rhino-like horn centred on its crown. More of the feral creatures dropped in unison. Miko lost count of the beasts; after the seventh, he staggered headlong through the forest in a fit of despair. How could he fight them all?
Bramble caught his skin; he sagged to the brink of an odious low. Aside a pool he halted, his heart beating with mad desperation. He knew the marsupials were fast behind him. He also knew that he could not withstand the onslaught of so many of them. Despair clutched at his innards. It was either face these hound-faced monkey things or the cursed fishy-horrors of the swamp.
The marsupials however, seemed to fear the water as much as the aardvark had feared the hooting, and they began to mewl and hop about. Miko frowned; the things stamped their flat, fur-padded feet.
Miko shook a fist at them, brandishing his bit of metal, but they snarled back at him and clawed the air in his direction.
Miko snorted in mimicry. Maybe he would stay here by this glorious pool, and seek the protection of whatever guardian haunted it?
His mirth died in his throat. He cast a dubious look about him, examining the thick gloomy cast of the forest, repulsed by the teetering stumps and the nests and outlandish flying squirrels that continued in their trajectory to glide across the water, oblivious to the horrors that would snatch them down below the waters.
No mocking curl touched Miko’s lips; the water held some primeval, sinister attraction, as if beckoning. He shuddered at the memory of the scavengers lurking beneath that surface of inky glass and what they would do to him.
Almost in answer, a crest broke the surface and a corrugated fin rose, then submerged as if it had never been.
Miko exhaled a gurgling cry. A disquieting horn-like bass note seemed to follow the arrival of the creature, as if emanating from the very water itself.
Miko cringed at the weirdness of it all. He leaped back, aghast, even as a stringed tentacle came trickling after him. He caught the glint of coruscated lumps like jewels gracing its slimy skin. He hopped away. The member darted sideways and slithered toward his toes.
Miko crabbed back, but before he could strike out, it looped coils about his ankles and began pulling him toward the foul water. He cried out, clawing at the turf. A pair of bold horned marsupials scrambled forward to jab at him while he lay sprawled flat. He felt the acidic bite of the marauder’s teeth clamping on his foreleg.
He squirmed back, swinging his weapon, missing, feeling the juices stinging like vinegar where the teeth had been. In a fit of uncontrollable frenzy he hacked at the tentacle until it frothed blue and lay writhing in the muddy grass like some reptile’s entrails.
Up from the water came the fin and an ugly pocked mouth with it, reared in its horrific majesty.
Miko winced, for new tentacles seemed to sprout from the water and se
ize two of the marsupials before they could dash away. Glistening tentacles plucked them into the black maw before they could bite or claw—and then, crunching with delight, it dove underwater.
Miko staggered along the shoreline, his mood one of hysteria. The obscene gullet that had appeared almost sapped his will to scramble on. The ease with which it had snatched the lives of the land creatures gave him little faith in his own ability to stay alive. Shivering, he fled on shaky legs.
Stumbling along the shore, he did his best to steer clear of the water and the chattering marsupials. The pool’s surface had become unnaturally still.
Dead from exhaustion, he wanted to lie down, and drown in a dream exhaustion. But if he slept, he knew he would wake up with predators at his throat.
He nursed his wounds. He had scrambled twice up baobab-like trees to avoid the advances of several aardvarks, also another creature more feral still, a cross between a gator and a wolf. He could outwit a few more of them before perishing, he thought.
Now a slow rhythmic booming came from behind him high in the sky. Craning his neck, weapon clutched, he detected the swish-swish of powerful wings as they ploughed the heavens. The sound was unlike any other, but like swoosh of giant windmills or the roar of a bitter wind. Perhaps it was a dragon. The winged things which soared overhead certainly would freeze his heart could he see them. But the canopies blocked view of the sky and their breadth was indeterminate.
He plodded on. Another sausage-shaped swamp appeared out of the bracken and he gave it wide berth. Perhaps a half a mile later he stumbled upon an overgrown hollow. The creepers hanging from the lowest branches invested the forest with an eerie grandeur. He thought to spy another pool not two-dozen yards away through the spidery tangles. Was there no end to them? Battling exhaustion, he could plough on no longer. His skin was covered with bites, sores and scratches. His joints ached. He was lost. He limped several yards along the rim of the hollow and crumpled—before the trunk of a gnarled arbutus which sat apart from the others in resigned solitude. He lay down his pipe reluctantly and pitched his back to the bark, quivering amongst huge roots, ancient as time that stretched about the base of the tree.
Miko’s head lolled. His eyelids drooped.
An unknown time later, he awoke to an odd caressing sensation that tickled his stomach. The sensation felt familiar and he jerked back in automatic revulsion. Dismay hit him as he perceived a grey, dough-fleshed creature reclining next to him, cradling him like a lost lover. The thing was sewing the flabs of flesh back between them at shin and hip with some kind of bone tool or awl fashioned from the roots of the forest. Miko almost leapt out of his skin. The creature was singing a happy chittering melody.
Audra.
With ghastly disbelief, he clawed himself to his feet, tearing at the newly seamed flesh. He hobbled back, fingers questing for his pipe as he struggled to distance himself from her questing tentacles. What madness was this? His lips could barely mouth the inhuman shrieks that struggled to gush from his throat.
Audra gave a woeful screech. A pain and rage-filled chitter chilled every creature within earshot—and brought every menace raining down on them from all corners of the forest.
Appalled, Miko clambered like a crab back on his hands and knees. Audra glided after him, looking to punish him for his atrocious act.
He was cornered, his back to the trees. Lunging with a hoarse cry, he menaced her with his pipe. Audra swayed in close; Miko’s weapon tore a glancing gash across her face, or what was his face...for he could see his own features still dimly buried in those sour wads of grey flesh. Smoky blue vapours and bile-coloured liquid oozed from her wound.
She screeched an anguished chitter laced with the most vindictive rage of rejection.
She knocked her faithless companion sideways a fierce blow and reached out with tentacles to send rivulets of electricity coursing through his nerves.
Miko clawed his way back from that familiar pain. However, his aching limbs could barely move. In the fog drifting before his eyes, he saw doomed entrapment. Audra advanced in all her glory. At some incomprehensible moment, she had become hopelessly intertwined with him, addicted to his company. Like a leeching parasite, she craved his life energy. In some perverse corollary of dependency, she needed him as much as he needed her.
In a split of a second Miko divined all this, and he drew back, for the obscene truth both appalled and excited him.
Then in the sudden flurry of aggression came a wandering pack of hostile aardvarks. They pounced on the strangers, uttering gleeful howls and snorts.
Audra whirled to confront them. In turn, they snapped and hissed and reigned in on her with muddy maws and gleaming horns, but it did nothing to hinder her. She glided to meet them. Her outerbody was impermeable to their thrusts as it absorbed their attacks, as a sponge soaks up water. Her hide was tough and pudgy. It bent and shifted to the thrusts and bites of her lunging aggressors. In a quick sideways movement, her fleshy body draped one from the pack in a smothering embrace. The flabby folds of flesh did their grisly work and something horrid unfolded. The squeals of the unfortunate creature reached a frenzy as it was wrapped mummified in her hide which she unfurled and let drop the slushy remains of bones and flesh. As for the fate of the others, Miko did not witness the aftermath, for he had hobbled off in terror and never wished to look back.
But he did. He risked one glance, marvelling at Audra rooted to the spot, wracked with convulsions. The attacking marsupials were likewise riveted, as if tendrils clamped their furred feet.
Miko felt a chill pass over his soul. The strange hornlike hooting returned, keening from afar, beckoning.
Miko’s blood ran cold. A shadow passed over the glade, a pall larger than life. So singular and haunting it was, that it dwarfed the glade.
A strangled whimpering escaped Audra’s polyp of a mouth.
A chitter of pain? Desolation? Miko was at a loss.
His jaw dropped as Audra shivered in unnatural confusion, then she sprawled back into the leaf mould. What had just happened? Had the invincible Audra met her match?
Miko felt a spate of disturbing feelings. Was he ready to lose her? What was this thing that could unhinge the mighty Audra? A ghost? The shadow grew in magnitude. It seemed to consume the very hollow with a darkness that spoke of an ancient terror, something which had lurked burrowed in this planet for millennia. What was the source? He could see no creature or menace in sight, only the petrified aardvark creatures and marsupials that gibbered and sobbed. A near supine Audra swayed in distress nearby. The strange dirgelike call hooted again, this time closer.
Audra’s sudden grief seem to grow, and Miko turned panic-stricken, glaring around him.
Yet the agonizing intuition came to him that to ignore Audra in her time of terror meant his certain doom. A blaze of conflicting emotions stormed his being. He turned to hobble off, but his limbs would not obey his commands.
Reaching down, almost in a trance, he wrenched a chunk of root from the twisted cluster nearby. He tossed the root in the vicinity of the violent shadow. Almost as if drawn by a magical force, the thing paused. Miko drew himself up to his full height, gripped with a peculiar determination and will to survive and he waved his deformed limbs, calling out throaty challenges...his intent was to stir the creature’s wrath...
What an act of utter madness!
But maybe not. An arm of the shadow shifted, bent in an unnatural way in three directions.
While the thing was occupied, Audra took the opportunity to unroot herself and crawl away in whimpering dismay to the nearby pool’s shore.
Miko caught a glimpse of her grey hide oozing purple ichor before it disappeared into the dark water with a soft splash. Miko felt strangely relieved. But why?
He staggered off, fighting for his reason. He tripped over the roots, cursing. He picked himself up, scrambled on again, but hardly had he crafted a dozen steps before he too felt pinioned to the ground and drawn to a halt. He could move his
tentacled arms, but not his legs.
The shadow grew taller, almost a menacing cloud, irked at the loss of its prize in the form of Audra.
With strange stealth, the thing advanced, a gigantic umbrella of cold blue shadow, taller than life itself.
Miko wrenched himself from his stiff crouch, struggling to free his feet, but without luck.
The moving billow froze his blood. Was this the terror that Audra felt? Surely! It was a thing that possessed the power to rob a man of his will and freeze his limbs. His heart pounded in his chest.
Suddenly a crash rent the air.
Shredding branches appeared from on high.
Miko looked up. A sulphurous rain of debris came thundering with it. One of the winged horrors had broken through the treetops. How? Why? Down the creature careened on a destructive path, taking with it dozens of trees and tree-dwellers that clung to branches above.
Miko stifled a cry. Did the thing despise the shadow so much to swoop so direly. Or was it drawn to the shadow? He knew not. He shivered in terror at either condition.
A tree suddenly capsized in front of him, almost taking off his head. He tried to stagger away in an opposite direction, but could take not a single step.
The strange forlorn horn call came drifting again, a hounding menace—a lunatic presence, closer than ever. Was the thing from the sky the source of the chilling sound? No. Miko thought it was something far more insidious, far more ancient.
Bedlam, chaos, horror. There came a gigantic struggle of alien forces that defied the imagination as the winged thing fell. Chittering screams, rends, moans, and tearing flesh filled the air. Of the primitive flying thing, Miko caught only a glimmer of its majestic scale-crusted hide as it pounded upon the ground, or fell into the shadow. The goliath of a bird had two horned heads and an armadillo’s body and a dozen stringed appendages that may have served as legs.