by Dan Oakley
“Of course, that’s only natural. You were a kid.”
Kira’s expression was pinched and tight, and I wondered if she believed being abandoned by her parents was punishment for her misbehavior. That was a hell of a lot of baggage to carry around for ten years.
We went back to the lobby and accessed the console to run diagnostics on the whole security system. It took quite a while, but when the results were displayed on the screen, I was pleased with the outcome.
Other than one section downstairs that was offline, everything was working as it should. There’d been no security alerts while we’d been gone.
Using the external cameras, we then located lizards lurking on the perimeter of the building.
“Why don’t they go back into the jungle?” Kira asked, pushing her dark, spiky hair back from her elfin face.
“I don’t know, but I wish they would.”
We spent about an hour going over the security logs and camera feeds and then went back to retrieve the fencing we’d abandoned when we heard the lizard approaching.
One of the rolls of thin fencing material was covered with lizard saliva but was otherwise unharmed. We brought them inside, and I suggested just leaving them by the door. There was no need to take them back to Kira’s room as we’d only need to drag them back here tomorrow.
The light emitting strips were already illuminating the corridors as outside the sun dipped behind the trees. Another day over, and it had been a pretty productive one.
Tomorrow we would start to tackle the fences, and I had a feeling that would be our biggest challenge yet.
Before we headed back to crash for the night, I took another look at the security feed showing the outside of the building.
I toggled between the infrared and standard feed. They were still there, sniffing the air, snarling at each other. I swallowed and felt uneasy. There seemed to be more of them now…but that couldn’t be right. I had to be imagining things.
When I switched back to the regular feed again, it was hard to make out the forms of the lizards, but there was no mistaking the glow of their amber eyes.
My hand froze over the console as one of the beasts looked directly at the camera.
My heart thudded as its eyelids flickered. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it knew I was watching.
Chapter 33
The following morning, I was woken by the sound of voices arguing. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and listened.
Angry voices… They were quiet though. Were they coming from the next room?
I sat up sharply. What the heck? There were no humans on this planet except Kira and me.
“Morning,” Kira said brightly as I scrambled out of bed.
“Can you hear those voices?”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think it would wake you. I’ve got the volume turned right down.”
She had a portable monitor resting against the wall next to her bed.
I ran a hand through my hair. So that was where the noise was coming from. Kira was watching her soaps again.
“You’re addicted to those things.”
“It’s the finale,” Kira said. “It’s the part where we discover who killed the police detective.”
“Have you seen it before?”
“Of course. But it gets better every time I watch it.”
I shook my head as I walked over to the washbasin. Formerly this room must’ve been part of engineering and the basin used by workers to clean up. It came in handy now, but once we’d fixed the fence, getting the showers working was next on my list.
I washed as Kira avidly stared at her monitor screen.
I couldn’t help picking up some of the storyline. A sobbing woman was in an interrogation room.
“Why doesn’t she just come clean and tell him the truth?” I asked. It seemed to me that would solve all the problems.
“Because then he’d know she’d hidden his convict brother in the basement when he broke out of jail after attempting to kill his stepsister,” Kira said with an impatient shake of her head as though all this should have been obvious to me.
I shouldn’t have asked.
“I am going to check the security logs. I will be in the communication suite.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Kira asked, looking up from the monitor.
“No need. You finish watching your episode and come and find me afterward.” I felt guilty, keeping things from Kira, but she didn’t seem to pick up on it.
I wanted to be alone when I went to the communication suite because I intended to set up a scanner to relay a message to any passing ships. And Kira had an understandable fear of outsiders.
It didn’t take me too long to set up the recorded message and broadcast it at set intervals. The instruction manuals for the software was kept in cabinets under the touchscreens and processors.
Once I’d set up the message and scanning software, I turned my attention to the security logs. There were no alerts.
With that out of the way, I walked back towards the secure room, wondering where Kira had gotten to.
As I passed a long, rectangular window, I paused. A huge butterfly was hovering just outside.
Its segmented body was as thick and long as my forearm, and its wings were a mixture of bright pink and purple. I focused on the insect. Would I be able to control this like the dragonfly?
I took a deep breath and felt a jolt as my magic kicked in.
“Let’s try to get you to fly to my command,” I said to the butterfly, though it wouldn’t be able to hear me through the thick, toughened window.
Not that it would be able to understand what I was saying even if it could hear me.
I pictured the butterfly sinking down until it was level with my head. Immediately, the butterfly dropped until it was on my eye line.
I imagined it landing on the floor a few feet away. When it obeyed me, I grinned. This was even easier than moving balls around.
I spent some time having the butterfly do swirling dances just outside the window. With a bit of practice, this magic could come in very handy.
“What are you doing?” Kira’s voice came from behind me.
My attention faded and the butterfly flew away.
“Nothing important,” I said. “Have you finished watching your soap?”
She nodded. “Yes, and I checked on the water purifier. It is running fine, but I like to check it daily.”
“Very sensible. If you’re ready, we should go and get the tools and our weapons and head out to fix the fence.”
“I am ready. What weapons do you think we will need?”
“Nothing too heavy because we need to carry the tools as well. Two of the plasma weapons, as well as two knives, should be enough.”
We went back to the secure room and grabbed the tools and weapons.
Using the main security panel, we found three patches where the fence was broken. Before setting off, we made sure the power to the fence was off. It looked like it had been set up so the power turned off automatically when the fence was damaged.
But I didn’t want to risk either of us getting electrocuted if the safety mechanism was faulty for some reason.
The mid-morning sun beat down ferociously. I carried a single roll of fencing. If we needed more, we would have to go back for it, but it would be a false economy to lug all three rolls around with us.
Though it would have been more comfortable to do this job in the cooler early morning or the early evening, we couldn’t risk it. Now, was our best chance of avoiding the lizards. They didn’t much like the heat either, and Kira had told me she rarely saw the lizards during the hottest part of the day. I just hoped they didn’t make today an exception.
We walked across the courtyard, keeping a watchful eye on the jungle as we approached. The bugs were out in full force today. I hadn’t worn my headset for a while. It had the benefit of the reverse camera so I could see things coming behind me, but it was cumbersome and heavy and made it
hard to communicate with Kira. I couldn’t say I was used to the heat, but it was just about bearable.
The downside to not wearing the headset was that the stupid bugs got tangled in my hair and flew straight at my face. I batted them away. They were the most annoying bugs I’d ever come across.
Still at least none of them had bitten me. Yet.
We walked in single file through the jungle, pushing away the big waxy leaves and hacking through the vines. It took us forty minutes to locate the first break in the fence.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” I said. “We’ll only need a small section to patch it up.”
Kira pulled some of the vines away that were tangled in the fence, and I rolled out the fencing material and cut off a section. I didn’t need much.
I’d intended to use the small fire weapon to create a stream of steady heat and solder the thin lace like material together. It seemed like a good plan until I got started.
I overlapped the fencing material, while Kira kept watch. As soon as I directed the small flame to the fence, I yanked my hand away.
“Flaming fires.”
“What’s wrong?” Kira asked nervously looking around.
“The material is an excellent conductor of heat.” I squatted down on my haunches to study the fence. “Unfortunately, that means the heat makes it impossible to hold the fencing in place while I solder it.”
I looked around the ground and gathered up some large waxy leaves and a piece of bark. Using that as a kind of glove, I was able to hold the fence.
“This should do the trick,” I said and began to solder.
Again, I regretted not bringing my headset. The bright light and sparks were not good for my eyes. I spent the whole time squinting.
I was almost finished when I heard Kira squeal.
I dropped the fire gun and reached for my plasma weapon as I turned to see what the problem was.
A huge, fat, brown millipede as long as my leg was crawling over Kira’s boot. She kicked it off.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Kira shuddered and nodded. “Yes, I was too busy looking off into the jungle for bigger predators. I didn’t see that thing crawling towards my foot!”
She moved closer to look at the fence. “Are you done?”
“Yes, I think this section is complete. One down, two to go.”
The second broken section was not far away. But even a short distance was a tough trek in terrain like this. We guzzled down water before we left. For the third repair, we would need to go back through the complex, as although the distance was longer, it would take us less time to walk the route unimpeded by vegetation.
The second repair was easy. It was a clean break, and we didn’t even need extra fencing material to make a patch. I just had to solder the two sides of the fence together. It took me less than ten minutes.
“Great,” Kira said after she took a sip of water. “Just one more to go.”
Sweat was pouring off me by the time we reached the clearing around the mining complex. We paused at the edge of the jungle. I’d started to walk forwards when Kira grabbed my arm.
“Wait!”
“What is it?”
“Over there.” She pointed to the far end of the building.
At first, I couldn’t see anything, but then I noticed a movement. I held a hand over my eyes to shade them from the sun.
It was a lizard. How could I have missed it?
Slowly, we both retrieved our weapons.
The creature hadn’t seen us. I stepped back into the shadows.
“We are sealing the perimeter fence to try and keep the lizards out,” Kira said. “But what about the ones we trap inside with us?”
“We’ll have to kill them.” With these lizards, it was either kill or be killed.
Kira swallowed hard. She had survived alone for this long because she had avoided confrontation with the lizards. But once the fence was intact and functional, we would have no choice but to hunt down the creatures and destroy them.
We kept watch, and it seemed like ages before the lizard shuffled off around the side of the building.
“Do you think it’s safe for us to move now?” Kira asked. Her hands were clutching the plasma weapon so tightly her knuckles were white.
Safe? I wasn’t sure how safe we would ever be on this planet, but I weighed up the risk and decided we needed to move.
“Yes, you lead, and I’ll keep watch from behind and make sure it doesn’t creep up on us.”
We were silent as we walked around the edge of the clearing.
We kept close to the edge of the jungle for cover, but that meant we constantly had to watch where we were putting our feet so we didn’t stumble over vines and tangled roots. It would have been easier to walk out in the open, but we couldn’t risk it.
I used my wrist device to measure the distance we traveled. After two kilometers, we headed into the jungle, looking for the broken fence. The vegetation was even denser there, and we made slow progress. Sweat dripped from my forehead and stung my eyes. The journey had taken me longer than I expected and we only had a couple more hours until sunset. We didn’t want to be out here after dark.
The roll of fencing was really starting to annoy me. My arms ached from carrying it around.
“I think that’s it,” Kira said, bending down and picking up a fragment of the fence.
I frowned. The lizards had caused some significant damage here. I could picture them thrashing at the fence, chewing it up and then heading to the building to hunt down the scientists.
I had a flashback, to discovering the mangled bodies of the scientists and the communication suite. I took a breath. There was no point dwelling on what happened before. I needed to get this fence fixed before nightfall.
This time, I needed Kira’s help, which meant she couldn’t direct her full attention to watching for predators.
We rolled the material out across the floor as best we could, and I was intending to cut off a large section, using the fire gun. But it didn’t need cutting. In fact, we’d be lucky if we had enough material to cover the gap.
“Do we need to go back for more?” Kira asked anxiously.
“I’m not sure. Let’s give it a go while we’re here.”
We spent a few minutes measuring up, and I thought we might just make it.
Holding a pile of leaves, Kira held the two sections of fence together as I soldered them.
Satisfied, we moved on to the other edge of the tattered fence. With only inches to spare, I managed to join the two sections. As I concentrated on soldering the material together, I heard Kira laugh.
At first, I thought she was laughing at my heavy-handed technique. I was probably going overboard, but I wanted the soldering to hold and to be able to conduct the electric current that would run through it when we switched the power back on.
When she chuckled again, I said, “I hope you’re still keeping watch.”
She laughed again. “They’re distracting. They are just too cute!”
Too cute? What was she talking about? This place was overrun with bugs, creepy crawlies and mutant lizards.
I can’t say I’d noticed anything cute on this planet since I’d arrived.
I tested the fence, and when I was satisfied, I looked around.
Kira had been laughing at two small, furry bears. They did look pretty cute as they scampered around, jumped and play wrestled with one another, but that wasn’t what worried me. The bears were juveniles. They were still very small and would be dependent on their mother, and that only meant one thing.
Any second now, those bear cubs would be joined by a huge, angry mama bear.
Chapter 34
I began packing up our tools as quickly as possible. “Quick, Kira.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, a frown wrinkling her forehead.
“Those baby bears might be cute, but mum is around somewhere. And I’m pretty sure she won’t be happy to see us.”
“Oh,” Kira said slowly, her lips forming the perfect O-shape as her eyes widened. She quickly grabbed one of the laser blades, put it in her holster and helped me pack up.
“Right, start backing away slowly,” I said when we’d gathered all our belongings.
“If we do see the mother, what should we do?”
I was hoping to get out of there without any trouble. The last thing I wanted to do was kill a bear and leave the poor cubs to starve.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
I carried the sack of tools over my shoulder. My throat was parched, and I could have done with finishing the rest of the water, but there was no time to pause for a drink now.
We’d managed to get a few feet away and with the thick greenery around us could no longer see the baby bears when I heard a noise to my right.
I dropped the sack and grabbed my plasma weapon.
Kira gasped. She turned in a circle, frantically looking for the source of the noise. The sound of rustling plants and heavy footfalls made me hold my breath.
We didn’t have to wait for long. In the next second, a huge brown bear came crashing through the undergrowth.
I fired off a warning shot that hit the ground just in front of its front paws, and it skidded to a halt.
“Let’s move out of reach,” Kira said, nimbly scurrying up a towering tree. I had no idea how she managed it. The trunk looked slick and steep to me.
But it wasn’t a good idea. Bears could climb trees.
“Kira, no! Stand your ground.”
But it was too late. She was already high up the tree, and the bear was after her. It easily managed to pull itself a few feet off the ground. Its huge claws cut through the bark like butter.
Within seconds, the bear had almost reached Kira.
I fired a shot, narrowly missing the bear’s head and started shouting wildly to try and distract the massive, furry mammal.
“Over here! Pick on someone your own size!”
Not that I was anywhere near the size of the bear, but I was much closer than Kira who must have weighed less than a hundred pounds.