Humanity found, p.6
Humanity Found, page 6
Ariel pointed. Pen could see nothing in the shadow of the ferns. She took a step toward it and jerked back as Ariel grabbed her arm.
“No,” she hissed. “Look from here.”
Pen scanned the area. There was a pile of broken fronds blocking their way. It looked like dead-fall. There was a large fern just ahead of the pile.
“The fern shed branches,” she said.
Julie pointed to the other side of the shadows. “Looks like there’s a giant boulder blocking the way.”
“So we would have gone into the shadow,” Pen said.
“Yes,” Ariel said. “The boulder looks authentic, and so do the fronds. I think the enemy gathered the fronds and took advantage of the boulder’s placement.”
“Tripwires?” Pen asked.
“Not that I can see,” Ariel said.
“Nothing metallic on the scanner,” Julie added.
Pen knew she should have checked her own scanner, but she’d fallen into the role of protector and let Julie and Ariel keep them on track when they stepped off the trail. Now that seemed like a very bad idea.
She crouched to get a better perspective, but nothing changed. “Let’s look, then.”
Julie stayed back while Ariel and Pen inched toward the pile of fronds. From their new position, the shadowy area received enough light that she could see the edge of a pit: it wasn’t deep.
Signaling Ariel to stay put, Pen crept to the edge. Inside were sharp fragments from the crash site. If they had walked blindly into the trap, they would be laying there, bleeding, and waiting for the closest scavenger.
She pulled back from the trap and joined Ariel and Julie.
“So we know someone built that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t any of the creatures we’ve seen so far. I guess the enemy is close by.”
“We should go after them,” Ariel said. “Let Jocaster know, and then try to find the enemy.”
“We are supposed to go back,” Julie said.
Pen wasn’t going to give up the chance to capture one of the enemy soldiers. “We’ll tell Jocaster, and we’ll track the enemy.”
“But that’s not what we agreed,” Julie said.
“I know, but the enemy is between us and Jocaster’s group. We can do both, right?” Pen watched Julie’s expression as she processed the idea. Julie didn’t like it, which was clear from the set of her mouth.
“Okay,” Julie said, finally. “You’re the team leader; any shit coming out of this is on you.”
10
“We’re close,” Loke said. “We shouldn’t stop.”
Jocaster knew everyone was stretched too tight from two hours of creeping forward. He understood Loke’s need to find his family, but if they showed up exhausted, there would be no rescue.
“I said we rest.” Jocaster waved people to sit. “Ten minutes won’t make a difference.”
“Then we should keep going.” Loke turned to Shanna and Asad. “You’re okay to keep moving?”
Jocaster tightened his grip on his weapon. Everyone was pale and most of them had a tightness around the eyes that he worried might be the beginning of a breakdown.
Shanna rubbed her face and nodded. She was too tired to even speak.
“I don’t care what they say,” Jocaster said. “Look around you. If we don’t stop, we’ll lose our edge. Keeping alert to everything drains you.”
“We can rest with our families. We don’t need to head back right away,” Loke said.
It took all of Jocaster’s patience to not punch Loke in the face. He wasn’t a violent guy, but Loke questioned every decision and direction Jocaster gave. For the first time he was grateful for Asher's skills, even if it meant pretending to think Loke was helping.
“How do you know we’re close?” he asked Loke.
“We’re getting close to the caves. I know because we marked their position from orbit. I don’t know for sure if we are getting close to the survivors.” Loke kept his eyes on their surroundings. “For all I know, they are all dead or in an enemy prison.”
His words reminded Jocaster that Loke wasn’t on a rescue mission for survivors of an attack; he was on a mission to rescue his family and friends. Maybe that's why he was such a pain. Jocaster wondered for a second if he should hand over control to Loke. Then the captain’s words came back to him. If he was supposed to use his skills of being unpredictable, he needed to be in charge. And he was right about conserving their energy. They had to start back as soon as they found the survivors. The enemy wouldn’t stop looking for them or agree to a rest break before attacking.
“They will be in the caves,” Jocaster said. “If the enemy took them or killed them, I don’t think we’d be standing here. And the enemy would be gone.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Loke asked. “My wife and kids must be okay because we're not dead?”
So much for empathy, Jocaster thought. “Maybe. But it won’t help us find them. Or find the enemy. I can’t make you feel better, Loke. I can keep us on mission. That means we need to get the survivors off this planet as fast as we can.”
Loke deflated and Jocaster knew he’d won this round.
“Isn't Pen supposed to be checking in about now?” Loke asked.
Jocaster was happy for the change in subject. “She’s about five minutes overdue. She’s been late for every check-in so far. I’ll worry about it when she's more than a half hour late and has missed a check-in altogether.”
Rustling came from the cluster of ferns to their right. Jocaster raised his weapon and stood next to Loke. The rest of the team pivoted and prepared to fight.
“It’s coming low,” Asher muttered. “I just realized we don't know how tall the enemy is.”
“Our size,” Asad said. “I think we could take them if they were tiny enough for this.“
The rustling came closer. Jocaster could hear the padding of multiple feet. “Don't kill unless they attack.”
“Helmets closed,” Loke said. “Who knows what defenses we’ll face.”
Jocaster closed his helmet, annoyed that he was obeying Loke and embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it.
A squeal hit his ears painfully before the suit muted it. He felt a thud just before the ferns shook from the impact. He held up his hand to stall any reaction from his team.
“It’s not coming anymore,” Shanna said.
“Stay here, I’m going to see what happened.” Jocaster knew he should send someone in. As the leader he was supposed to survive to lead. His curiosity wouldn’t let him wait for a report from someone else.
“I’m coming with you,” Liz said.
He nodded and motioned for her to keep her helmet on. Whatever happened to the creatures, it was safer to stay fully suited until they knew the danger was over.
“Get down. We’ll crawl under the ferns,” he said.
Inching along on his belly was worse than he thought. The position left him feeling vulnerable. It would take vital seconds to get his weapon in position if they were attacked. It was uncomfortable and slow, but they needed to be close to the terrain, and slow was better if there was a cliff hidden behind the screen of plants.
Liz tapped his leg, pointing to the right when he looked.
Jocaster crawled toward what she’d seen: a pile of rubble under a large fern.
He inched forward to peer over the top of it into a pit about half a meter deep.
It was one creature. Large, maybe two meters long, probably two or three hundred kilograms by the solid look of it. Ten legs on either side of its trunk explained the multiple footsteps. Its face just a round hole filled with teeth, like some kind of cannibal leech.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
The creature was jerking, trying to pull its body off a spike of metal. Every move impaled it on another spike.
He stood, brushing the broken fronds from his suit and strode back to the path, Liz on his heels.
“Get Pen on the comms,” he ordered as he joined his team. This time no one argued.
While Asher waited for a response, Jocaster reported. “Traps. The enemy has been here; there’s a pit just off the path.”
“Are they ahead of us?” Loke asked.
“I don’t know, the ground was dry, so not a fresh trap,” Liz answered. “We need to find more of them to figure out if they are moving in our direction. Maybe it was cut when they first got here. I’d probably drop some traps in a circle around the crash site if I was trying to stop a rescue or catch disoriented survivors.”
“She’s not answering,” Asher said. “I'm not getting anything on any frequency.”
Jocaster breathed slowly. Pen could take care of herself. If comms were blocked she’d be on her way back. She had two expert trackers with her. They wouldn't fall into a trap.
“I don’t like the idea that they are digging pits, but it’s better than something more sophisticated with technology we don’t understand,” he said. “We keep going.” The rest break would have to wait.
Even though the trap had been designed to catch someone off the path, Jocaster had his team fan out when they started. There was no sign of the survivors traveling the safe route, so he hoped their trail was in the ferns to the side. To call what they were using a safe route was a laugh; it was only a winding, clear thread of harder packed ground under the overlapping canopies of the ferns.
The team was broken up, Jocaster with Raj and Shanna, Loke with Asher, and Asad with Liz. The short-range comms worked enough to keep them updated as they progressed.
He walked beside Raj, both of them holding their weapons ready to fire. Shanna was a few steps to the right of Raj. The heavy canopy created a feeling of being buried alive, the lack of sightlines making him feel exposed. Neither would be acceptable aboard ship. On the planet it was just another pile of anxiety on top of the danger. How would they ever live land-side — if they survived that long?
“Trap,” Shanna whispered. “To your left, five paces.”
Jocaster turned and glanced where she pointed, suddenly feeling like that was the purpose, pulling his attention to a decoy trap while triggering a hidden one.
He saw fronds piled up, a bit too high to be natural since the ferns around them looked healthy. He scanned for tripwires and motioned for Shanna to check it out.
She crept toward the pile, stopping just short of it. “Another pit,” she said. “The edges are crumbling, so hard to avoid getting dragged in when it starts to go.” She lay on her belly and lifted the edges of a frond. “Shit!” She recoiled and stepped back to join them.
“What?” Raj asked, so tense his weapon shook in his grip.
“Take a breath, Raj,” Jocaster said. Glancing at the others he saw they all suffered from the stress of searching for the survivors and that feeling of being hunted.
“No spikes in this one. I think some kind of acid, or maybe it just reacts like that with the locals. There’s maybe fifty of those things we saw before, the lizard things. Acid burns, some down to the bone.”
“It's not going to be a pit every time,” Jocaster said, trying not to visualize it. “We need to prepare for everything.” He looked up at the canopy, a little sky showing through the dense leaflets. “It could be worse. Those could be hardwood. I can’t see anyone making a weapon from a fern.”
“They’ve had time to study the environment,” Shanna said. “Those fronds were cut down, not dead-fall.”
“How much farther?” Jocaster asked. “I’m assuming these caves aren’t under this kind of cover.”
“We’re not making great time, five or six hours.” Shanna checked her locater. “It won’t get easier. There’ll be rocks to toss on us when we get there.”
Jocaster clicked on his helmet comm. “We should join up,” he said into the mic. “Loke, Asad, home in on me.”
“This isn’t a great place to stop,” Raj said.
“No place is going to be,” Jocaster said. “At least here we know where the trap is.”
He directed Shanna and Raj to search under the small fronds. If they were safe, they would be good sleeping spots.
Rustling of fronds to his right announced Loke and Asher’s arrival.
“Down with the weapons. We don’t want to save the enemy the trouble by shooting ourselves,” Loke said.
“Probably should have a signal next time,” Jocaster said.
His comm buzzed. “We’re almost there,” Liz announced. She stepped out of the ferns a moment later, Asad on her heels.
Loke scanned the area. “How long?”
“To rest?” Jocaster asked. “If we stop for a couple of hours, it should give us a chance to recharge.”
“That’s a couple more hours that my family is at risk. We can’t keep resting. We have stims to help.”
Shanna and Asad muttered something in agreement.
Jocaster paused. He wasn’t going to be drawn into an argument, and he wasn’t going to let Loke push them too far. “If you stop arguing, we’ll actually get some rest. We need to let Pen catch us.”
Loke looked ready to argue.
“Look, your families will be at risk forever if we don’t get there. We’ve been on alert all day. The adrenaline is starting to have a negative effect even without stims.” He noticed Asad’s fingers twitching. “Look at him.”
“I’m fine,” Asad said. He clenched his fingers. “I’m fine enough.”
“No,” Jocaster said. “If we run into the enemy right now, we’ll die. If we keep pushing, we’ll arrive exhausted. Shanna said we have five or six hours to go. I’m guessing that will become ten hours soon enough with our current state. We rest, then we push a bit harder. We’ll make up time.”
Loke looked around at the small group, as if he hadn’t noticed them before. Jocaster hoped he’d see the reality, not what he hoped. If Loke pushed, Jocaster might have to do something violent.
“Fine,” Loke said, sighing. “Two hours. Two shifts, one hour each rest. Eat on your wake shift.”
Jocaster assigned them to two teams. Loke would sleep while Jocaster was on watch.
“Next time, we take stims,” Loke said. “No more resting.”
“Stop wasting your rest time,” Jocaster said. “Take a sleeping pill if you have to, and shut up.” Stims might be needed, but the team was already twitchy with fear and fatigue. Stims would make that worse.
11
The traps weren’t working. Kalin nudged Riam to get her attention. She was a good soldier, but sometimes she was too hyper-focused on a task.
“I must check in. Guard me.”
“I obey.”
He blinked open the comm channel and hailed Sola.
“You have them?” she asked.
That was the problem with command. They wanted periodic reports but always expected that he would complete the mission well before it was possible. It made good news into bad; and this time, he didn’t have good news.
“No. They are cannier than we thought.”
A long pause that Kalin knew better than to break. He imagined she was making an entry in the list of things he’d done to disappoint her.
“How close are you to the survivors?” The comms stripped any emotion from her voice, but Kalin thought he could hear the judgment.
“No way to tell,” Kalin said. Another piece of bad news. “There are no tracks. The terrain heals any sign of passage within an hour.”
“Your sensors?”
Did she think him incompetent? “No life masses large enough. Our range is restricted by some damping effect. We’re tracking the rescue team. They seem to know where to go.”
“Following,” Sola said with a sneer to her voice. “You have perfected that skill.”
He wanted to tell her that he’d rather capture the rescue team. That he’d get the answers from them quickly and painfully. Her orders were the restraints, not his lack of bravery. But he didn’t want a stint in the reconditioning cells. “Have our orders changed?”
“Winnow down this rescue team. Find the survivors. Kill only those you must.” The link closed.
Kalin turned his attention back to the world around him. Riam was rubbing a fern frond between her gloved fingers. She was still vigilant to any threats, but the flora had caught the edges of her curiosity. Kalin watched as she stepped away from the fern she’d damaged toward a second plant.
“What is it?” Kalin asked.
She turned to him, slowly, not surprised by his return from the report. “Trying to figure out what happens to the damage,” she said. “You were reporting for as long as morning prayer. Do we have new orders?”
“No.”
Riam scowled. “We should not let them live. The teachings say the Adversary must be eliminated before we are to find peace.”
“It is not our place to question the orders. The Holy Ones know the way to peace. We are only the instruments.”
She turned away and pointed to the lowest frond to her right. “I broke this like I would have if we had passed by as soon as you started reporting. Look now.”
Kalin leaned in to inspect the damage. He could see a bend in the axial spine. It wasn’t broken. There was a thick film across where the break should be; it darkened as he watched.
“I think it will heal anything that doesn’t break off, and probably will heal the wound of the broken piece,” Riam said.
Kalin glanced at the ground, looking for fragments of the frond Riam had broken. They were not visible, but they were missing from the healing plant. At least the fronds they’d pulled to hide the traps wouldn’t jump back to the fern trunk. “We’ve been looking for the wrong signs,” he said.
“Yes, and now we can seek the barely healed marks, but it won’t be of much value.”
“Because it will take too long,” Kalin finished her thought. “Well, at least we have information. Perhaps our prey has not yet noticed. Good work.”
Riam nodded at the compliment. “Should I transmit to the others?”
He gave his permission and started moving toward the life signs ahead; they hadn’t gained any distance in the time he’d been reporting. Winnowing their numbers was going to be difficult. There were two groups; any attack would have to take out everyone if the traps continued to be useless. Perhaps it would be better to attack closer to their destination — wherever that turned out to be.
