Authors: Jason Halstead
She’d thought the grenade had finished the screecher off, she’d been too busy to check on it. A glance at the spear he’d slung across his back with a piece of rope showed a few darker blood stains on the barbed point, confirming his claim.
Her broken arm ached where she held it against her side. There were several purplish spots on it from the bruises caused by the screecher and the near compound fracture. “How’d you get up the cliff?”
“
There’s a pass further up, took me a while to get there though.”
Elsa swore, then swore again when she bumped her arm against the rock. “Can’t wait to get this damn thing fixed.”
“
Don’t worry, it’ll heal.” Tarn pulled a loose rock and tossed it down behind them.
“
It’s not even set yet!” Elsa scowled at her whine. She shook her head to clear it. As big as Tarn was, he wasn’t a Marine, he couldn’t understand what it meant to be self-disciplined and fully functional. People depended on her. Tarn should be depending on her, not the other way around. “When we get to a stopping point I need your help.”
“
All right. No sticks to wrap it with though.”
Elsa stared up at him, impressed that he’d intuited what she’d wanted. She wondered what other mysteries Tarn possessed. He seemed older than he looked. Older or, she mused, prematurely experienced.
They climbed in silence for several more minutes until the ground opened up into a small shelf, complete with moss and some tropical trees. “I’ll be damned,” Tarn muttered. “Might get a stick after all.”
Elsa looked at the trees and nodded. She moved over and took out her knife, then started sawing at a few branches. She cut one free then started on a second. Halfway through the knife suddenly felt dead in her hand. She pulled it away and stared at it, then tried tapping it against the tree trunk. With a mew of frustration she twisted the safety catch and pushed the release to eject the energy pack in it. A simple glance at it proved that it was ruined. Somehow some of the screechers blood had managed to get into the watertight compartment.
“
Why you think I’ve got a sharp stick?” Tarn asked.
She scowled at him, then slammed the knife back into her sheath and tried wrenching on the tree limb. Tarn stepped up and broke it free, the muscles flexing in his arm. She forgot her disgust at her broken gear and waited for him to turn and face her. “You ready?”
“
Let me get the armor off my arm,” she said, reaching across to work the manual releases on the armor.
Tarn walked around her and released the seals with hardly any fumbling. Elsa found her eyes narrowing as she watched him pull the armor off in a surprisingly gentle manner. “What?” He asked. “Told you I wasn’t always here.”
“
No armor in the universe like Marine FIST armor,” she stated.
Tarn shrugged but offered no explanation. “You want me to set this or you want to talk about it?”
She scowled. “Set it. I’ll bra–“
Tarn yanked on her arm before she could finish, pulling the bone and seating the broken ends against each other. His other arm squeezed tight against her forearm, keeping the bone in place while he slowly released pressure.
“
Fuck!” Elsa hissed. “You could have let me get ready for that!”
“
Yeah, I could of. Then you’d be tensed up. Swelling’s already fading, didn’t want your muscles fighting back and making it worse.”
“
Yeah, thanks…dick.”
“
Here, hold this tight.” He pressed one of the branches against her arm and let her take over holding it against her. Then he pressed the other branch against it, but frowned before he proceeded any further.
Tarn leaned over and pulled her knife free, then went to the wounded tree and hacked another branch off. Elsa watched him, marveling at how he used a single chop to sever the makeshift splint. He came back with the third branch and eyed her arm and then the stick. He nodded, then cut the rope free from his spear.
“
My high tech shit breaks but you’ve got rope?” Elsa mused aloud.
Tarn held it up closer to her face plate. “We made this here. That long grass you walked through, it’s got strong fibers in it. We figured how to wrap ‘em together to make rope.”
Elsa felt her eyebrows raise in surprise, then realized he couldn’t see her face through the helmet. It was stuffy and her nose itched occasionally, but considering how the helmet had saved her, she felt safe about it. Missing both arms and parts of one leg allowed fresh air to get in.
Tarn wound the rope around the splints, binding them tightly to her arm. She feared a loss of circulation, but she knew the sticks would keep her bones in place as long as she didn’t do anything stupid.
“
You ready?”
“
Depends, what’re you going to do to me this time?” Elsa asked. She secured her knife in his sheath again and caught Tarn’s smirk as he turned away.
“
We follow that strip of grass up and around that rock, then find a way to get over the rest of the ridge. It can’t be far, then we’ll have to find a way down to the place you think you want to go.”
“
I know I want to go there!” Elsa snapped.
Tarn shrugged. “Then quit yapping and start hiking.”
Chapter 14
Elsa guessed it took them another couple of hours to clear the ridge and reach the foothills on the far side. As Tarn had promised, there was no sign in the distance of the research outpost. There was a mound in the distance. Without any technology to assist her, she assumed the mound was the same place the colony had been.
Halfway down the ridge Elsa needed Tarn’s help in getting her helmet off. The humidity inside of it had gotten to the point where the view screen was fogging over. It took some work, the helmet had been bent and mangled badly, but finally he’d managed to beak the seal and work it free. She suspected he’d bent it back some to make it release, given the way he’d been grunting while working on it.
“
You see that mound?” Tarn pointed it out.
Elsa nodded. She ran her fingers through her short hair, grateful that she’d gotten a hair cut before deploying. It was a long enough buzz to keep the sun from baking her brain but short enough to let the air in and keep her cool.
“
That’s where them researchers were. The megasaur died there too, but it wasn’t your Marine buddies that killed it. It had some kind of infection or something, there ain’t no way to describe it. A whole shit ton of these things come crawling out of it and anybody that wasn’t killed by the megasaur were killed by them.”
“
What?” Elsa heard what he said, but it didn’t make sense to her. “Babies or something?”
“
No, parasites or something. Our best guess is that it ate some eggs and they hatched inside of it. It was being eaten from the inside and it went crazy and attacked your people.”
“
Woah.”
“
Yeah,” Tarn agreed. “Kira comes up to check on it every now and then, she figures there was a dozen or more the first time around, now there’s a hundred or more.”
“
How big are they?” Elsa said after gasping.
“
They hatch only a couple feet long or so. At full size they’re probably about as big as those screechers you killed.”
“
That’s not so bad.”
Tarn chuckled. “Nasty fuckers. They got teeth, they can jump and run, they got a tail we seen ‘em use to smack their prey, and Kira’s been close enough to see them spit.”
“
Spit?”
“
Yeah. She saw one spit some kind of poison that was absorbed through the skin of brutasaur they were after.”
“
Brutasaur?” Elsa interrupted.
Tarn scowled at her. “Big, six legs, stands about as tall as a Megasaur but they’re really dumb.”
“
So this little thing spit on a big thing?”
“
Yeah, a few minutes later it stumbled and fell over. Kira said it was still alive, just paralyzed. She said a couple dozen of them swarmed it and cut it up, then carried it back to their hole.”
“
Holy shit.”
Tarn nodded. “Nasty fuckers,” he repeated.
Elsa nodded. “I gotta find my team.”
“
I’ll take you down there, but you do what I say and we don’t get close to their nest, got it?”
She found herself nodding again. She was the Marine, but she could justify following a local guide. “What are they, insects or something?”
“
Got a guy who used to be a veterinarian, he thinks they’re animals. They got one mother though, a queen or something, and she’s bigger and nastier. Or at least she was when she came out of the dead megasaur. Nobody’s dumb enough to go in the hole in the ground they made to find out how big she is now.”
Elsa let out a deep breath and glanced around. The smart thing to do would have been to get the hell away. Follow Tarn back to the Treetown place he mentioned. Any of her team that went in there were fucked, plain and simple.
“
No Marine gets left behind,” Elsa said.
“
Yeah, figured you’d say that,” Tarn sighed. “All right, let’s go.”
Elsa followed him down from the hills and into the chest high grasses on the plain. He moved slowed, pausing infrequently to look around. She even caught him sniffing the air once or twice. She tried it but couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Then again everything smelled funny on the planet to her. So many scents and so much of it made her just feel alive. Even the dull ache in her arm had faded to a background irritation.
“
Any chance they’d take prisoners?” Elsa asked.
Tarn held up his arm, using the Marine gesture to call a halt. Elsa felt her lips part in surprise.
“
Break our cover again and I’ll leave you to find your own way out of here!” He hissed.
Elsa nodded, sufficiently rebuked. She watched him as he turned back and motioned to continue. He walked through the grasses with a grace that looked very natural, almost as though he was just another predator on the plains. He held the spear ready, moving it every time he changed the direction of his gaze. Elsa found herself nodding, Tarn either had military experience or he’d been trained by someone who had.
He called a halt another half an hour later. She was used to uncomfortable missions but she couldn’t remember ever feeling as disgusting as she did this time. The unpowered armor was like an oven. She knew if her helmet had still been on she would have passed out. As it was she was dehydrated. Stripping the rest of the armor off, however, meant walking naked. Tarn looked liked a great guy to take for a clothing optional ride, but given the circumstances it was the furthest thing from her mind.
“
This is it, no closer,” Tarn whispered.
“
It’s still like a mile away!”
He shrugged. “You want it, you go get it. I’m telling you they’ll swarm and kill you before you know they’re there.”
“
Swarm me?”
“
They communicate. Not like people, but they got something that keeps ‘em working together.”
Elsa stared at the mound in the distance. It had grown larger as they approached, but she was sure it was no more than ten feet tall. It was probably close to a quarter mile around, if not larger.
“
Come on, I smell something.”
Elsa jerked, surprised at his choice of words. She followed him, impressed with how quietly he moved through the grasses. He stopped once and pointed off to their left, closer to the mound. She stared for a long moment until she realized he was showing her some of the animals he’d warned her about. She couldn’t see them directly, but she could see the grass swaying as they moved. She turned and looked harder, now noticing the unusual pattern of movement that indicated a creature was moving through the grass instead of a simple breeze.
“
They’re everywhere!” She gasped.
Tarn gave her a sharp look, then motioned her forward. He led her for another quarter hour, circling at one point to avoid coming too close to one of the drones, then stopped when he reached the wreckage of another screamer.
Elsa gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. It was torn up worse than hers had been. The damage wasn’t from the landing, it had signs of being ripped and battered. Dried blood stained the side and ground, leading towards the mound. She hurried around it, looking for some sign of who’s screamer it had been. Had her armor been working she could have identified the transponder on it. Lacking that, she could only release the cargo pack on the back and look through the equipment contained therein.
Whoever it had been hadn’t even had a chance to defend themselves. As disheartened as Elsa was about the loss of one of her team, she couldn’t deny the grim satisfaction having a new rifle and more supplies gave her.
Chapter 15
Elsa turned to look at Tarn and saw the smirk on his face. She smiled sweetly at him, then hefted her rifle to her shoulder. “Let’s see who this Kira chick found,” she said to him.
He nodded and turned to study the movement in the weeds. She noticed the lines around his eyes tighten, then he swore. “They know we’re here, not sure if they’ve found us yet, but they’re searching.”
“
How do you know that?” Elsa hissed. She saw the movement through the grasses around them. It was more pronounced now, with the drones moving faster. Her gut twisting told her that Tarn was right.