by Craig Allen
“It’s like they’re protecting us,” Deveau said. “Isn’t that nice.”
“I don’t trust ’em,” Bodin said. “They want something.”
“You don’t know that,” Cody said.
Bodin laughed and shook his head. “You think they’re doing this out of the kindness of their hearts? Naw. They’re up to something.”
Cody couldn’t argue with that. “Maybe they’re helping us in exchange for something.”
Bodin shrugged. “Maybe. I just don’t think we’re going to like what they want us to do.”
“Whatever.” Deveau glanced back at them every once in a while, still keeping an eye on his sector. “I hope we can contact the bridge-sat from the Kali.”
“What if we can’t?” Cody asked.
“It’s working,” Sonja said. “The signal is being rerouted to us through the bridge-sat. That means something around here has already contacted it.”
“Which means we can call home.” Anne winked at Cody. “Don’t worry.”
“Who’s worried?” Cody wondered if anyone else heard the tiny shake in Anne’s voice. She was a marine. She could protect him better than he could her. But she was also human and inexperienced, which also meant she was terrified, just like he was.
Cody adjusted his pack as he took a sip of water from the straw in his helmet. They had water reserves in their packs, but lately, they had focused on the recycled water in their suits. It still tasted like water to him. Bodin called it “lemonade” because it was mostly recycled sweat and urine. He pushed aside the thought. Yes, they had to hydrate, but rehydrating with his own body’s fluids didn’t appeal to him.
“Hang on a sec.” Sonja stopped and touched her helmet with her hand. The beetles let out a tiny squeal and also came to a halt. They gathered around the group, holding their clawed stalks upright, facing the humans.
“Gunny?” Anne asked.
“We’re off course.” Sonja glanced at the sun. “We’re veering north.”
Cody checked his HUD. The marker indicating the location of the signal pointed to his left.
Deveau let out a muffled snarl. “Gunny, we need to follow the signal.”
“I’m aware of that, Corporal.” She gestured east. “We’re going back on course.”
Sonja managed to take two steps. The beetles broke all semblance of formation and gathered in front of her, piling on top of each other and squealing.
“Sorry, guys,” Sonja said. “We have to go our way.”
To the right of the stack of beetles, several others formed shapes that quickly became words.
NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo
Bodin’s coil rifle hummed briefly as he slid the power supply into place, making the weapon hot.
Staring at Bodin, the beetles quivered almost immediately.
“Gunny, say the word.”
Sonja waved him down. “Not yet.”
“Not at all.” Cody stepped toward Sonja. “We can’t hurt them. They haven’t done anything.”
“I didn’t say anything about shooting them,” Sonja said. “I just want to scare them if they don’t see reason.”
The beetles rearranged themselves into a large arrow pointing north.
“Where’d they learn what an arrow means?” Cody turned back to Sonja. “If they want us to go with them, it must be for a good reason.”
“Good for them or us, clue?” Bodin strode toward Cody. A quiver went through the beetles, like a wave across water. “Look around you. This ain’t hell, but it’s close. These little guys are using us to get something. They ain’t even taking us in the right direction.”
“Actually, they are.” Deveau held up the viewer that was linked in to the bridge-sat. “Look.”
Sonja reached up and touched her helmet reflexively. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
Cody interfaced with Deveau’s viewer through his HUD. The marker was moving. If the crew continued north, in the direction of the arrow, they would intersect with the marker’s present course.
“It’s a rendezvous,” Bodin said. “How’d they manage that?”
“I assume they’re not moving the ship,” Anne said.
“They? Who the hell are they?” Sonja gestured at the beetles. “More of these guys or something else?”
The beetles disassembled the arrow and gathered around the humans’ feet. The beetles’ single arm pointed up at Cody and the others.
Cody shrugged. “Whatever’s going on, we have to get to the Kali, which means following them.”
At that, the beetles jumped up and down in unison, like waves flowing across a metallic pond. After a few seconds, they scurried away and eagerly returned to the wedge formations. In less than half a minute, they were back in their old positions. They faced everyone, waiting.
Sonja sighed, shaking her head. “I guess so, Doc.” She proceeded in the direction the arrow had once pointed. “Everyone back into formation.”
Cody took up his position as they went forth. The beetles continued their perimeter sweeps.
“They’re so eager,” Anne said. “Like children.”
“They ain’t children, Salyard,” Bodin said. “Don’t forget that.”
~~~
The sun slid farther down into the sky, more quickly than it would have on Earth. The red reeds covered everything, but only in the distance. The reeds retreated underground whenever the team grew too close, only to rise again once they had passed. Reddish, vine-like growth covered most of the iron rocks. Growing in clumps of five, each leaf had five sub-leaves, and each sub-leaf growing five more sub-leaves. Every leaf was smaller than the one from which it grew.
Cody stepped away from the group and approached one cluster that covered a three-meter-high boulder. Its leafy structure turned and faced Cody briefly before curling into tiny tubes and slinking away, to the other side of the rock. He started to walk around to examine the rock, but a hand grasped his shoulder.
Bodin shook his head. “Let’s not play with the locals, huh, clue?”
Deveau stormed toward Cody, stopping toe-to-toe with him. “Doc, what do you think you’re doing?”
Cody swallowed. “I was just looking at—”
“Never leave the group.” Sonja towered over him. “Understand? We can sightsee some other time.”
“Okay,” Cody said, but she had already gone.
Anne patted him on the shoulder. “Stay close, okay?”
“I will. I was just—”
The beetles broke their formation. They scurried over, crawling on top of each other. They stopped in small piles around the group. A handful created a message:
HideHideHide
Bodin held up his hands. “From what?”
They quivered, turning to face a ridge fifty meters away.
No noise
“What is it?” Cody kept his voice to a whisper. He knelt, and the beetles gathered around him. “Something close by?”
Yes
Sonja also kept her voice low. “What?”
War
~~~
They crawled up the side of the ridge, keeping as low as possible. The hill they ascended wasn’t very large. On either side was a thirty-meter drop. Sporadic bits of red appeared at points in the distance, but none were near the hill.
The beetles threw a fit as they climbed, but they kept quiet. Whatever was on the other side of the ridge terrified them. Cody inched past, trying not to crush any beetles. Sonja glanced in his direction, and then did a double-take. “Doc, I told you to stay put.”
“I want to see.”
She swore before continuing her crawl up the ridge. Following, Cody smiled. Bodin spoke a few choice words over the comm system, but Cody ignored him.
A few moments later, everyone reached the top of the ridge. The other side was so steep that it was almost a cliff. At the bottom was a field, devoid of everything including the red reeds, which would be hiding only if there were trouble. Soon, the nature of that trouble became apparent.
A
column of a dozen bulbous five-legged creatures stood near the base of the ridge. A reddish growth covered them, almost like centimeter-thick hair. Three of their appendages rested on the ground. Two more gripped hooked spears. Lined up along the bottom of the ridge, they faced the open field before them. A dust storm had kicked up, obscuring whatever waited in that field.
Thirty meters ahead, a row of creatures appeared out of the dust storm. They hopped forward almost like toads, their back legs propelling them with a middle third leg steadying them. A reddish fur covered their backs. Each carried a harness of some kind in two smaller limbs that sat forward of the central third leg. A black rock sat inside the harness. Their limbs flexed, changing in width as they moved. The legs seemed able to bend at any point, as if they were tentacles that became stiff when bearing weight. At the end of each limb protruded five opposable digits. At the front end of each creature’s body, a head twisted back and forth, but it didn’t seem to have a neck. The only features on the head were two yellow orbs that might have been eyes and a shiny metallic band that wrapped around the front like a visor that grew out of its head.
Sonja reached for her wristband. “Stealth it.” She ran her finger across her wrist, and her entire form wavered. Then she seemed to wink out of existence, leaving a slightly hazy outline. Bodin and Anne did the same and disappeared just as quickly. Cody’s HUD outlined their forms for him and labeled them so he wouldn’t lose track. Bodin nudged Cody. He ran his hand across a holo-console visible only to him. His hand vanished before him.
“Guys.” Anne’s voice sounded low over the comm. “We may have a problem.”
The beetles had gathered around them, focusing their central stalks on the humans. For a moment, they sat. Then in unison, they began to move. Several crawled on top of Deveau, poking at him. The beetles seemed to hover in the air as they stood on him. Others gathered in front of Deveau near his face. Cody wondered how they knew what his face was, considering that they didn’t have faces themselves.
“How can they see us?” Cody whispered.
Bodin let out a low growl. “Never whisper, clue.” His voice was very low. “Whispers carry. Talk low, like me.”
Cody nodded out of habit, and then remembered Bodin couldn’t see him with their camo active.
Anne’s voice was low, but not as low as Bodin’s. “So how do they see us?”
Cody tried to keep his voice low without whispering. “The field must be interacting with the natural metals around here.”
“If the little guys can see us,” Deveau said, “what about those guys down there?”
Cody shrugged out of habit. “Possibly.”
Below, the bulbous creatures became squatter and broader. The pseudopods they used to grip their spear-hooks grew larger, holding the weapons more firmly. Their attention was on the approaching toad creatures.
The toads’ forms looked clumsy, but they hopped forward gracefully. Abruptly, four jumped in the air a good two meters. They flipped over, and the four appendages of each swung around to catch them as they landed. Each came to stand on four legs—two large back ones and two smaller forelegs. The central appendages protruded from their backs. Smaller forelegs gripped the ends of the harnesses while the central arms grasped the parts of the harnesses wrapped around the large rock. The toads stopped. They waited for a moment, and then each swept its large central arm backward, well past the length of its body. They snapped their arms forward in wide arcs.
The boulders flew from the harnesses and sailed across the battlefield. Their targets, the bulbous creatures, flattened themselves quickly, becoming almost giant pancakes. One wasn’t fast enough. A boulder smacked its upper body, rupturing it. Pinkish liquid splattered the hillside. The creature deflated like a busted water balloon.
The bulbous creatures flexed their bodies rapidly. Some stretched pseudopods back so far that they became almost as thin as small tree branches. They snapped their arms forward, sending the weighted spear-hooks end over end. They spun in the air like bolas. The toad creatures dodged, but one caught a hook in its right leg. It pulled the spike out, taking out some flesh with it. If the toad felt pain, it didn’t show it. The toad creatures, including the wounded one, marched forward. The bulbous creatures grew squat once more, spreading out flatter until they almost touched one another.
“Look.” Bodin pointed to either side of the hill.
From around the edges of the ridge, a group of eight toads closed in. There were four on each side of the bulbous creatures. The giant toads stayed low, darting from one boulder to another as they proceeded to flank the blob-like creatures. They carried long spears with sharpened stones on the ends. The bulbous creatures were too focused on the toads ahead of them to notice the others.
“Nice,” Sonja said. “That whole line ahead is just a diversion.”
The line of toad creatures stopped suddenly, and the toads waiting in the wings charged. By the time the blobs spotted the flanking toads, their spears had sliced through the ones on the ends as if they were jelly, bursting them. The line of toads in front charged forward. The bulbous creatures twitched and altered their shapes. About a third of their numbers were lost in a few seconds. The rest dropped their weapons.
The toads surrounded the blobs. For a minute or so, they stood, not making a sound. The bulbous creatures shook. Fear was the same, regardless of species. After a minute, their shapes relaxed. They retracted limbs inside themselves and shrank until they were much smaller than they had been before.
“Magnetic waves increasing,” Deveau said.
On Cody’s HUD, the magnetic waves centered on the creatures below jumped in intensity.
Cody nearly whispered it but corrected himself. “They’re talking to each other.”
One of the toad creatures inspected each of the bulbous ones. It hovered over one of them. Its head seemed to split in half as its maw opened and bellowed a sound like a hundred out-of-tune trumpets. Everything within ten kilometers must have heard it.
“Look at that,” Bodin said. “Cavalry, maybe?”
Off in the distance, a large force emerged from the dust storm. Toads appeared first, and a group of behemoth-sized creatures followed. Each large creature looked like a mammoth with thick, reddish hair and walked on four squat legs while a fifth appendage rose from its back. Ten such creatures lumbered forward, all interconnected by a framework of multicolored wooden beams—wood that looked just like the heavy branches of the satellite trees. Various globes constructed of the same satellite-tree wood sat atop the network of logs. The branches of the globes interlaced with one another and were tied together by a reddish vine.
A stringy, mantis-like creature sat on top of each behemoth. Disks about the size of dinner plates were wrapped around their heads. The yellow plates, probably eyes, were spaced evenly around a head that appeared to be connected directly to its body. The head did not move, and probably didn’t need to, given the arrangement of its enormous eyes. Thin, twiggy fingers at the end of narrow arms gripped the reddish hair growing on the behemoths. Equally thin prehensile toes gripped the hair on the sides.
The toads at the base of the ridge pushed the captured blobs toward the approaching caravan. The behemoths sank to the ground without bending their legs, which seemed to simply retreat into their bodies. When the behemoths sat—or knelt down, it was hard to tell which—the network of logs and globes rested on the ground.
The toads with the caravan arranged themselves around the orbs. They pulled at the edges of the globes, which opened down the center. The toads forced the blobs inside the globes. They didn’t resist. Once the blobs were inside, the toads closed the globes again.
“Slave caravan,” Anne said. “Oh, my God. Look. There’s more.”
The behemoths’ legs extended, lifting the cages off the ground. Slowly, the caravan turned around. Each globe held additional creatures, some so tightly packed together they couldn’t move.
“We could do something about that,” Bodin said. �
�Save some lives, look good to the locals.”
“Negative,” Sonja said.
“What?” Cody almost forgot to keep quiet. “They just took them. Shouldn’t we help?”
“Can’t risk it,” Sonja said. “If we shoot them, they’ll overwhelm us before we can get them all. If we nuke ’em, we’ll just take the civilians out.”
Cody knew the term “cherry” referred to the grenades at her side. He had seen a cherry used on a range a long time ago. The explosion incinerated everything within five meters—and that had been a small one. Using the grenades meant hurting everyone present. There was nothing to do but watch helplessly as the toads took away their prisoners.
“Why would they do this?” Anne asked. “Forced labor maybe?”
“Or worse,” Deveau said. “Everything we’ve encountered so far seems intelligent. What if everything here is?”
“Everything?” Cody frowned. “That seems unlikely.”
“Does it?” Deveau asked. “They used tactics against each other. The fish in the ocean seemed to stack corpses in patterns. I don’t think it’s farfetched at all.”
“What’re you getting at, Corporal?” Sonja asked.
Deveau made a motion of some kind, but Cody couldn’t tell exactly while the stealth mode was on. “Think about it. What do living things eat?”
“Other living things.” Sonja gasped. “Oh, Christ.”
Cody took a minute to understand, and when he did, the realization filled him with dread.
The toads weren’t slavers. They were a hunting party.
~~~
The beetles continued leading the group east. They avoided everything, no matter how small or large. Some of the plant life retreated into the ground as they approached. Others seemed to loom over the group, pondering them as they passed, or perhaps trying to be intimidating. The red reeds stayed hidden, never coming to the surface within less than fifty meters.
Cody glanced at the marker on his HUD. The location of the signal had remained in a fixed position—more or less. Sometimes, it drifted north, then south. Sometimes, it went farther away and then returned.