Children of the Void: Book One of the Aionian Saga (16 page)

Takomi took a video of a creature that hung upside down from the branches overhead. Several tentacles probed the area around it as it crept along the branch. It didn’t seem to have a mouth or eyes, or a head of any kind really.

“There’s so much... life,” said Takomi.

“I was thinking the same thing. Do you think this is what Earth was like?”

“Maybe.” She took several pictures of odd plants. “At least the places the humans didn’t destroy.”

Despite their curiosity, they knew they had to hurry. As they continued into the forest, they found flowers that moved like sea anemones and hovering creatures with heads like lizards but wings like dragonflies. In a meadow, they found a herd of animals that looked like six-legged giraffes with blue and purple skin. Their skinny heads sat on necks that wove through the spiky-leafed trees like serpents to find fruit.

Under different circumstances, they would have stayed for hours to watch the strange new life forms. But sooner or later, one of them would remind the other that they had to get going, and they would continue toward the signal.

As they got closer, Pauline picked up more signals farther down into the valley. They seemed to be spread out over many kilometers, which Gideon thought was logical, considering the chaos of the battle they had survived only just that morning.
 

His mind wandered back to the last minutes before the
Leviathan
was destroyed.
 

“Takomi?”

She looked back over her shoulder at him as she continued to walk through the trees. “Yeah?”

“Who do you think was on that shuttle that got destroyed?”

She looked down at the path. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

Gideon suddenly felt guilty. He’d been so caught up worrying about his dad that he forgot they had no idea what happened to Takomi’s parents. He wanted to say something, to ask if she was doing okay, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He shook those thoughts out of his head. There was nothing to be done about any of it right now, so he focused on the task at hand, remembering the smoke rising out of the trees. Every now and again they caught a glimpse of it through a gap in the canopy. He tried to tell himself someone lit it on purpose as a signal, but the black smudge rising into the sky seemed too ominous.

Gideon was about to say something about this when a glow up ahead caught his eye. “Takomi, what is that?”

She looked at where he was pointing and froze. “It’s a fire.”

Both of them stood still for a moment before Gideon moved again. Takomi followed right behind him.

Up ahead, part of the forest was blackened and smoldering. Here and there small fires still burned. They stopped at the edge of the burnt area. A long scar cut through the forest, leading to the smoking wreckage of a starfighter.

W
ITH
THE
AUGMENTED
speed of their Sentinel Armor, Gideon and Takomi sprinted to the wrecked SF in seconds. They slowed down a few meters from the ship. Repeated attempts to contact someone over the common band yielded no results.

“Why didn’t their chutes deploy?” asked Gideon.
 

Takomi made no reply. She was crouching down and looking at the clawed footprints of a large animal. She looked up at Gideon, and he swallowed hard.

As they crept toward the SF, something stirred from within the destroyed cockpit. They froze. Gideon slowly reached for the rifle slung over his shoulder and circled around to the left of the wreckage to get a better view of the interior.
 

“Can anybody hear me?” whispered Gideon over the common band.
 

Nothing but static answered back. Another movement rocked the starfighter. Whatever was in there was too big to be aionian. He glanced back to see that Takomi had taken up position behind a boulder with her rifle aimed at the cockpit.
 

He focused his attention again on the starfighter. Without taking his eyes off the cockpit, he slowly bent down and picked up a rock. Holding his rifle in his left hand, he tossed the rock at the cockpit. It sailed at least a hundred meters past his target.

“What was that?” whispered Takomi.

Gideon stooped to pick up another rock. “I forgot to compensate for the suit. I guess I’m a little jittery.”
 

Concentrating this time, he hefted the rock. It smacked against the top of the cockpit with a bang. The thing inside stopped moving. Gideon steadied his rifle and tried to control his breathing.
 

After a moment, he saw a shadow moving within the wreckage. The ruined starfighter shifted as something heavy came toward the front.
 

A large, three-clawed hand appeared from a hole on top of the wreckage. A second hand appeared after that, and a scaly head emerged from the hole. It was long and reptilian, with two yellow eyes peering at Gideon from one side of its head. It had a long snout and rows of sharp teeth inside jaws that were red with blood.

Gideon’s hands tensed around his rifle. The creature sniffed at the air and flicked a long, purple tongue out from between its teeth. When it pulled itself out of the starfighter, the whole thing rocked under its weight.
 

The creature had a long, thick body ending in a whip-like tail, and six legs just like the other animals they had seen, each ending with a three-clawed foot. Crawling down the side of the hull headfirst, it slipped into the tall grass and disappeared.

“Gid, where did it go?” said Takomi with a twinge of panic in her voice. “My infrared can’t pick it up.”

“It must be cold blooded,” he said. “Just cover me.”
 

Gideon slowly dropped to one knee. Since he was old enough to walk, Gideon had studied the art of combat for hours every day. His training told him that he needed to take away the creature’s advantage, and he guessed that this creature was most comfortable in the tall grass. He set down his rifle and backpack, then pulled out the long knife strapped to his thigh. Scanning the grass for movement, he slowly dropped down to his belly.

“Gid, what are you doing?” whispered Takomi in a frustrated voice.

He made no reply as he inched through the grass, looking from side to side. He made slow progress toward the wrecked ship, scanning the ground in front of him as he went.

Then he saw it. Through the grass, four eyes peered back at him from about two meters away. Slowly bringing his knife hand out in front of him, Gideon stared the creature down. Its tongue flicked through its teeth again. Their eyes remained locked for several moments, then the creature slithered forward, weaving through the grass without disturbing it at all.
 

Gideon shouted at it, waving the knife in front of him. The creature jerked its head back, snarling and hissing at him. It lifted its head out of the grass and reared up, settling back into a sort of sitting position on its back two pairs of legs, looking much like a coiled snake.

Gideon stood as well and assumed a fighting stance as the creature loomed over him. Its head bobbed back and forth in a mesmerizing dance. Gideon circled around to the left a little to give Takomi a better shot.

“I don’t think this thing is friendly,” he said.

“You think?” Takomi replied. “Be careful, Gid. Remember how fast it jumped out of the cockpit. Want me to shoot it?”

Gideon had stopped moving and stood facing the creature. “Weren’t you just going off about how we shouldn’t shoot things?” he said. “What if it’s part of an advanced species? What if we...”

The attack came the second his eyes looked away. The creature’s powerful body launched at him, and its jaws latched onto his helmet while razor-sharp claws raked across his armor. The impact knocked Gideon backwards into the grass with the creature on top of him. Takomi fired, but the shot missed as Gideon and the creature tumbled into the tall grass.

Gideon slashed at the creature’s side with the knife, cutting a long gash across its ribs. It shrieked and jumped away, giving Gideon a chance to come back to his feet. Seizing his chance, Gideon hurled himself at the creature, aiming a thrust at its chest. The creature dodged and slashed at Gideon. Claws that normally would have shredded him scraped harmlessly across his Sentinel Armor.

The creature let out an enraged shriek, then whipped its heavy tail, knocking Gideon off balance, and the creature again launched itself at him. He raised his arm, and the creature’s jaws clamped down on it, but the teeth were no match for Gideon’s armor and the creature released him. Taking advantage of the creature’s confusion, Gideon attacked with added vigor. Surprised and wounded, the creature backed away and then turned and fled into the forest, disappearing once again into the grass.

Shaking from adrenaline, Gideon turned and looked at Takomi. “Why didn’t you shoot?” he said.

“I did,” said Takomi. “It was too fast, and you kept getting in the way. What possessed you to put down your rifle anyway?”

Gideon shrugged as he wiped the blood off his knife. “I already killed one alien today, and you acted like I was a monster. I just wanted to scare the thing off so it would leave the SF alone.”
 

The starfighter now stood still, and dread crept through Gideon as he glanced again at Takomi. He reached down in the grass to pick up his rifle and backpack, and then walked toward the ship. At the front of the cockpit, he found a good-sized hole, and he lifted himself up to look inside. The second he did, he pulled away.

“Bad?” asked Takomi as she walked up to stand by him.
 

Gideon nodded, still looking at the ground. He took a few deep breaths, swallowed hard, and looked through the hole again. There wasn’t as much blood as he would have expected, but mangled and torn flesh mixed with hair and clothing. It was impossible to discern who the two crew members were from their remains.

He stepped down and walked to the side of the ship to find its hull numbers. Takomi looked into the cockpit with an unreadable expression on her face. Gideon noted her stoic gaze as she surveyed the carnage inside.
 

“Judging by the hull damage, I’d say they were killed on impact. They went quickly,” she said.
 

Gideon stared at her in disbelief. “How can you be so calm about this?”
 

Takomi shrugged. His stomach was still reeling from the sight of the two mangled corpses. It was the first time he’d seen dead people, and he suddenly had the thought that these two would not be his last.

“This SF was probably built before the Martian wars,” he said, circling the craft. “It hasn’t seen action in over a century and a half. I’ll bet the parachutes failed because of corroded tubing or something.”
 

He pulled away a piece of the wreckage to reveal the hull numbers. “Pauline, do you have a record of who was aboard SF7-1894?”

Pauline’s flat voice responded immediately. “First Lieutenant Sanjay Patel and Sergeant Veronica Hallows.”

Gideon blinked. Sanjay’s son, Raj, was Gideon’s age. The name made him wonder what had become of his former classmates. Most likely they had been on the shuttles.

Veronica was only about ten years older than Gideon and Takomi. They’d only just begun to get to know her and her new husband, Connor, through the Order and in flight school. He tried to feel grief, but his emotions had already been spent.
 

“Pauline,” he said, suddenly feeling tired, “please record that Lieutenant Patel and Sergeant Hallows were killed when their starfighter malfunctioned.”

His AI confirmed the command.

Takomi walked over to the side of the starfighter and knelt down to place her hand on the ground. “There’s lots of fuel leaking all over the place, Gid. Do you think we should burn the ship?”

Gideon’s head snapped around. “Burn it? Why?”

“It’s the logical thing to do. If we leave them in there, that thing will come back and finish his meal. We don’t have any shovels to bury them, and even if we did, they’re not very... well, moving what’s left of them would be awful. The next best thing is to burn the SF with them inside.”

She stood and walked around the starfighter, surveying the wreckage. “And don’t forget the fact that the ship that attacked us sent four smaller ships down here to the surface before your dad blew it to smithereens. That means they’re still down here, and probably not too happy with us. We have to keep them from gathering intelligence from our military assets. Plus, it’ll be getting dark soon. The light from the bonfire will be visible for a dozen kilometers in every direction. If there are lost people out there, they can use it to find us. We’ll hide up on that ridge and take turns keeping watch in case the fire attracts hostiles as well.”

Gideon stared at Takomi with his mouth wide open. “Wow, General Tsukamoto, you’ve really thought this through.”

Takomi glared at him. “Well, one of us has to do some thinking around here. We’ve been in combat training our whole lives, remember?”

“Well yeah, but...”

Takomi put her hand on her hip and leaned forward. “But what?”

“It seems so final. Shouldn’t we find the others before we decide to cremate people?”

She shook her head at him and climbed up onto the starfighter. “And in the meantime, Sanjay and Veronica’s bodies are food for scavengers? I think it’s better my way. If you don’t want to be part of it, don’t help me.”
 

Gideon didn’t have time to answer before Takomi dropped into the same hole the creature had emerged from. Fighting back a sense of nausea, Gideon climbed up to the hole as well. As soon as he had poked his head inside, Takomi shoved a gray backpack in his face. He took it from her and tossed it to the ground. Another backpack, this one stained with blood, followed. After that came two rifles, two pistols, and a black metal box.

“What’s this?” he asked as she climbed back out of the hole.

“Transponder. It’s still emitting the signal our AIs picked up. It’ll help the others find us.”