Raul keyed his comlink, the Captain did not respond, but the other search party did.
“We’ve found a promising blood trail in Shorty’s cave. Pass it along to the Captain. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to hear us; the signal probably won’t make it out of the cave.”
“Thanks, Raul,” Brian said. “I don’t think we are too far behind you. I’ll pass what you said on to the Captain. He can’t hear you.”
Shorty stopped again. The two guards were halfway through the low portion of the cave, and Raul stooped at the last place where he could still stand without bending, watching them ease forward. “Uh, Raul?” The tone of Shorty’s voice spun him around as if a rope had jerked him. “The blood doesn’t go that way.” He turned slowly, panning his light as he did so. “It’s toward the wall there over to your left.” Together they panned their cold torches across the wall to the back left of the cave. What had seemed to be a solid wall in the dim light previously, now displayed a long vertical furrow that seemed to open up to them the closer they got to it.
The blood trail that led into its once dark recesses was fresh and plentiful. They could both now hear a low rumble that faintly echoed out of the crevice, but it wasn’t until Raul was at the opening that he saw its source. Not three meters from where he stood, a massive, furry body lay crouched against the cool, dark stone wall of the cave. As he panned the light across its muscular body, its eyes narrowed into thin slits and what he could now tell was its head turned slightly away from the light. Its head alone was as large as a man’s chest and its body was in proportion to its head as well. Huge fangs hung from its upper jaw.
Other than the warning rumble that was softly rolling out of the crevice, it gave no hint of aggression.
Raul backed as far back as he could while still holding it in the beam of his cold torch. He would hate to lose it now that he saw what they were dealing with.
“Shorty.” whispered Raul, “Go get the others. Tell them to come quickly, but quietly. It’s big and injured and I think we’ll only have one chance to kill it before it would kill us all.”
Shorty hurried off through the low tunnel and returned in a few short ticks with the others in tow.
Raul quietly explained the plan of attack. Raul and Shorty kept it bathed in light and the two guards crouched low where they could see it but were not in the way.
Raul counted “Three, two, one, fire!” All three of them blasted at the creature simultaneously. Though it was large and ferocious, it had no chance. The three laser pulses blew a gaping hole in its chest as it fought to rise. It was over in seconds and left them almost blind from the concentrated power that had streaked across their vision and exploded into the massive animal.
Shorty found that he was shaking uncontrollably and leaned against the cold stone wall while the adrenalin rush that he had been on slowly subsided.
Raul stepped in front of the other guards and made his way warily over to the beast that lay sprawled on the cave floor. “This thing is massive!” he exclaimed and shone his cold torch around the small room. “There’s nothing else in here guys. Come. Give me a hand. We may be able to drag it out of here with all four of us working together.
Shorty was glad to put his adrenalin to good use and he followed the guards through the crevice to where Raul knelt by the creature’s massive head. They each grabbed an appendage or in Raul’s case, the set of large fangs protruding from its upper jaw and started to drag it.
Shorty found it hard to stay out of the blood. He was in a bad position to try to help since he’d grabbed onto one of the hind legs. After a couple ticks of trying to help that way, he gave up and grabbed the head with Raul.
They barely fit back through the crevice, standing shoulder to shoulder as they were, but with some finagling, they were able to get it out into the main cave. They collapsed on the floor while they got their breath back. Adrenalin, gravity, and thin air all played into the exhaustion they felt.
Just as they were standing to begin pulling it the rest of the way to the front of the cave, the other security crew that was tracking the beast yelled in from outside the cave’s entrance.
“Hey, yo. Anybody in there?”
“Yea, we’re in here, Brian,” shouted Raul. “Come on back and give us a hand.” He let go and stood up, watching the silhouettes of the other team as they made their way back to where he stood.
“You guys missed all the action!” Shorty said.
As soon as their eyes had adjusted to the dim light, they saw the dead form at Raul’s feet. “Wow! So that’s what got him, Raul?” They started looking around a little more seriously. “What are the chances there’s another one in here?” asked Brian.
“There’s nothing in the immediate vicinity, but don’t let your guard down just in case. Rooney, can’t you wait to dig into this thing?”
Shorty asked, “If everybody would just lend us a hand, we can drag it out of the cave in short order.”
“I’ve got rope,” Brian said. “Let’s make a sling and we can carry it all the way back to the camp.”
“I really don’t think that would be best,” said Raul. “If we bring this thing in everybody will be in an uproar and scared half to death.
“On the contrary,” said Brian, “I want people to be more careful. We’re stuck here—everybody knows that. However, I can already see people being careless and bringing this in will help them to be more careful. We’re bringing it in. Besides, we’ll need the food and I’m sure it’s edible, right Rooney?”
“It’s too early to tell, but I’ll know by tomorrow,” he replied, still probing its insides.
“O.K. Let’s drag it into the light and then we can make a sling to help us get it back to camp.” It was much easier with eight now instead of four, and they had room to drag it sideways, which helped as well. It didn’t take Brian long to truss up the cat in such a way that all eight of them could share the burden, but when they began to carry it, it was a different story. Brian was in the front with Rooney who preferred not to have to carry a large dead cat for many kilometers. Not that any of them wanted to, mind you, but the rest liked to think that they were “manly men” and accustomed to manual labor. Rooney had nothing to prove. Following in the back were Shorty and Raul with the other guards in the middle. It seemed like every other step they took making their way down the hill they were sliding or falling. When one of them slipped or fell, the weight of the monster cat cut into their shoulders where they hung the rope.
“Why don’t we just roll it down the hill guys?” Shorty asked while taking baby steps to keep from tripping on the body hanging low in front of him.
“You would suggest that,” responded Rooney. “You care nothing for the living, only for your inanimate rocks and holes in the ground.”
“It’s not alive, Looney. It’s as dead as they come. We made sure of that.”
“But it was alive, and we need it in good condition so that we can study it and find a way to co-exist safely with it.”
“I say we’re better off without them,” said Raul. “If we let them live, we will be extinct by the end of the year.”
“Just think how much this thing eats in a day,” said one of the guards. “I bet it could have eaten poor Jed in one setting—two at the most.”
Rooney spoke up again, “Am I the only sane one here? We don’t want to just show up on this world and start killing off stuff. We have no clue how it could affect the balance of life here. What if it is here to help control the population of something even larger and deadlier than itself? There could be another dangerous creature out there that we would have no defense for, but which is a natural enemy for this…this cave cat.”
Shorty almost continued the argument just to be ornery, but what ol’ Looney Rooney had been saying stopped him dead in his tracks, literally. As a matter of fact, they all stopped and stared at one another, alarmed that no one had thought of it yet. The cave cat surely didn’t eat rats or rabbits or some o
ther small critter. Surely there was a reason why it had claws the size of daggers and fangs that could almost be called tusks they were so big.
The rest of their trek home was in almost complete silence and they warily watched for signs of more cave cats or something that was suitable prey for a carnivore that large.
The verbal victory that Rooney felt was offset by the sobering fact that he wished he wasn’t right but probably was. He couldn’t wait now to open it up and find out what it had been eating. Now that could tell them a lot.
They took several breaks as they walked back. The sun was on its way back down from its zenith before they rounded the last outcroppings to the ravine they were walking through and could see the settlement sprawled out before them. Much had been accomplished while they were away, and it was still a bustling hive of activity.
Brian radioed ahead while the rest sat on the ground and rested. “Captain McNally, come in, please. This is Brian.”
“Go ahead Brian, I’m here,” the captain replied.
“We have the cave cat. We killed it. We are almost back at the settlement. Where do you want us to take it?”
“We have a tent set up on the edge of camp. It’s set away from the rest of the buildings a bit, so you should be able to tell which one it is. It’s on the North-Northeast side of camp, just past yellow sector. How long will it take you to get there?”
“We should be there from 30 ticks to an hour from now depending on how many times we will have to stop between here and there. This thing is big and heavy.”
O.K., I’ll meet you there in an hour. Over and out.”
Brian latched the hand-held back onto his belt and turning said, “You heard the captain, gentlemen, it shouldn’t take us too long. We’ll go around camp rather than through it. We may get our feet wet crossing the creek, but once we’ve dropped it off, you can call it a day.”
Together they re-shouldered their burden and set off slowly. They received many curious looks from folks along the edge of the settlement but were not hassled by the onlookers. They rested by the stream while Raul went upstream to find a shallower place to cross. He found a spot only a hundred meters upstream where the creek was much wider, but also shallower.
They sloshed across with the water coming only up to the top of their calf-height boots. Only in the very middle of the stream did the water trickle over the top of their boots filling them completely. They stopped again on the other side to empty their boots and continued on their way.
“I sure hope we are being reimbursed for our troubles,” Shorty commented. “This water could ruin my boots. I need good footwear down in the mines.”
Rooney cackled under his breath, his own discomfort forgotten as he gloated at Shorty’s discomfort.
They arrived at the large tent on the outskirts of camp just over an hour later tired, sweaty, and wet from the day’s activities. Captain McNally walked up just as they were beginning to drop the cave cat onto the ground in front of the tent.
“Hold up guys!” he exclaimed. “Take it inside the tent and put it on the table in the middle.” He waved his hands and acted like he was going to keep it from hitting the ground.
They struggled to get it back on their shoulders. “Lead on, Captain,” Brian said. “Can you open the flaps for us?”
He darted over, pulled back one of the flaps and tied it off, then moved to the other side and held that flap back as well. They carried it in and set it down on the table in the middle of the tent. It groaned precariously as they adjusted the body along its long metallic surface, but it held and did not collapse.
“Man, that’s huge!” the captain exclaimed. “Good job men. Tell me all about it.” Together Brian and Raul filled him in on the details of their adventure amidst interjections from the others as they helped to fill in the holes. Rooney was already immersed in his own world dissecting the body and taking blood samples and only paused to comment to point out the amount of damage done to the cave cat and how they should have avoided that.
When they finished their story, they disbursed in groups until only Rooney, Brian, and Captain McNally remained.
“So, what are the chances that there’s another cat out there like this waiting to descend on us as easy prey?” Captain McNally asked.
Rooney looked up from the blood sample he was working on. “Traditionally the cat family tends to group together but has a fairly wide range of travel. It obviously went into the cave to help protect itself, possibly even against its own kind.”
“We really have no way of knowing,” Brian added. “so we need to do everything in our power to prepare everybody and lay down some guidelines for everybody’s safety. We cannot allow everybody to spread out as we had originally planned; though how we’ll do gardens and farms is beyond me.”
“What if we had community farms and the work was done in groups? I’ll have to talk to Delray and see what he thinks. Well, it’s getting dark; we should head back or we’ll end up getting stuck out here. Come on Rooney, you can get back to it tomorrow when you can see better.”
“Captain, we need to get together with the community soon to sort through this stuff,” Brian said. “Just let me know when and I’ll have my guys gather everyone together.”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow, Brian. Until then, get some rest. You deserve it.”
Early the next morning, Michael Rooney rudely awakened Captain McNally as he burst into his tent unannounced.
“Captain, Captain, come quickly. Come on wake up you need to come now, Captain.” He continued to shake the captain even though he was obviously awake now.
“Rooney, back off! I’m awake! Now what could be so pressing that makes you think you can just come barging into my tent like this. Man! I can’t wait until I get a real house up.”
“It’s them cats again, Captain. Come on. I’ll show you. You’ve got to do something about them.” Captain McNally could not get a word in edgewise as he rattled on about cats and prints and whatever it was they had taken.
The captain shook his head as he swung off the cot that someone had been so nice to put in his tent. He had slept so much better until being awakened by Looney Rooney. “What time is it, Rooney?” he asked as Rooney watched him dress.
“Just a little after sunup, Captain, and I was the first one there. Even Brian didn’t know. At least I don’t think he did. He wasn’t there. I…”
“Rooney, where is it you’re talking about? Can you at least tell me that?”
“I told you, Captain, the big tent where the cave cat was.”
“Was?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I went to the tent this morning and…”
I tell you what,” said the captain finally getting a bit of a picture of what had happened. “You go get Brian and bring him to the cat tent, and I will meet you there as soon as I can, O.K.?”
“But Captain, I…He…Oh O.K., but hurry up.” He turned and tore through the tent flap almost taking the tent with him but leaving the captain with a semblance of peace. Whatever had happened couldn’t be as bad as yesterday! He was probably all worked up over nothing. The captain took his time getting his morning caffeine fix before heading out to the cat tent.
When Captain McNally finally arrived where the tent had been, he was dumbfounded at the amount of destruction. The hardened composite frames lay scattered and broken with pieces of torn fabric still partially attached and other ragged bits scattered to the four winds. Even the table itself was hardly recognizable. There were only a couple of bones left from the cave cat, but they had been picked clean.
The captain walked slowly over to Brian who had been there for some time now and had a few guys walking the perimeter. “What do you think happened here, Brian? What could have caused such destruction?”
Brian turned to face him. He had a haunted look in his eyes that immediately chilled the captain to his bones. “We think they got Mac too, Captain. All that’s left is his boot with his foot still in it!” His ey
es then stared out across the valley at the hills to the North. “We are not safe here.” He turned back looking the captain straight in the eyes. “We are not safe here, Captain!” he said forcefully. “We need to either move into the shuttle again or build a tall perimeter fence or find some caves to live in or something!”
“Brian, calm down. You still haven’t told me what’s going on here or what happened. Snap out of it and explain your thought process to me.”
“Look around you, Captain. Isn’t it obvious? A whole pride of monster cats came in the night and tore everything to shreds, including Mac who was on duty. Then they ate them. They feasted right here. See the blood. Look,” he pointed at several places on the ground. “See the flattened grass and claw marks. There were probably ten cats here last night. See? There are many different sizes of paw prints and some of them are larger than that of the cat we killed. Can you imagine that?” He gave an involuntary shudder.
Captain McNally looked at him as though he were seeing him for the first time. Their situation must indeed be dire if it could reduce a man of Brian’s experience and stature to his current nervous state. “Brian, when will you be done here?”
“I can be done now. It’s just a clean-up job now and my guys can take care of it. Why?”
“I need you with me to help me organize and plan what we are going to do now. I agree with you about the seriousness of our situation. I’m just a spaceship captain and team leader. I need your expertise for the safety of our settlement.”
“Right now, what I think is that we need a curfew from sundown to sunup. Until we get a better barrier up around us, I also think that until it is up we need to sleep in the shuttle. I don’t know why we haven’t seen the cats during the daytime, but until we do I will assume that caution is in order, but that we are still relatively safe.”
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