Dark Planet (11 page)

Gorilla suddenly stiffened at a silent perimeter alarm. My own special senses were dormant; they didn’t seem to work on bugs, most reptiles, and furry creatures.

“Penetration! Three o’clock!” he warned.

The team switched to defensive mode, swiftly and automatically from long practice working together. Ferret, Gorilla, Maid, and Sergeant Shiva locked into a circle around camp, weapons facing outward. I joined Captain Amalfi, Blade, and Atlas on the ready reaction force. We moved out hurriedly, but cautiously, toward the machine that had emitted the danger signal.

We drew near to a furious thrashing about in the underbrush and saw our bug-like sentinel engaged in combat with one of a pair of giant hunting hellgrammites. Robots were programmed to defend their controllers. The first carnivore had instinctively counterattacked. It and the bot were locked in a manner similar to mating insects. Although the hellgrammite was many times larger than the little bot, the bot was putting up a pretty good fight.

While the second predator warily circled the combatants looking for an opening, the little bot latched itself onto the juncture between its enemy’s head and its enormous yellow-green carapace. It shot out monomolecular spikes, its primary weapon, and literally shredded the hellgrammite’s head. The creature’s deadly mandible flew free. Green-pink fluid sprayed the surrounding foliage and us. The dying insect continued to thump and quiver, shaking the bot free and hurling it into the grasp of the other creature.

The second terrible beast, larger than the first, made short shrift of the robot. Micro-energy innards and metal exoskeleton exploded in different directions. The creature worried the larger pieces with its mandibles for a few seconds, mindlessly attempting to consume it, before it gave up. It reared up and its multi-faceted eyes on stems looked around for more appealing prey. They fixed on us. We had left camp in such a hurry that none of us had donned helmets and activated our chameleons.

Curious about what sort of meals we might make, the enormous insect advanced, swiveling its eye stems down toward us like microscopes examining microorganisms on a slide. Captain Amalfi took aim with his Punch Gun, a blobby-looking submachine pistol that fired an energy rod that obliterated anything it struck. It was deadly effective within fifty meters or so, but useless at ranges beyond that.

Eager for a kill, Blade beat him to the trigger. The Gauss sniper rifle came issued with auto-tracker Hornet ammo, which sought out its target with incredibly accurate sensor tracking. However, Blade’s vanity in his marksmanship refused to allow him to use anything other than old-fashioned “dumb” ammunition. The seven millimeter projectile with its high velocity and extreme range capability, which could reach out to ten thousand meters to touch somebody, virtually exploded the hellgrammite at such close range, spraying us with a disgusting blood slime. What was left of the creature lay in two main twitching parts, while other pieces of it dangled like ornaments in the surrounding trees.

Blade swaggered over, hacked up a goober from his throat and spat it at the remains. He patted his rifle. “Told you this baby would squash ’em like cockroaches.”

Captain Amalfi seemed in deep thought as he holstered his Punch Gun. I managed to read him in a general way. He was concerned about security for the team, about accomplishing the mission. After less than ten hours on the planet, we had already lost two of our five robots to hostile attacks, and we still had days to go. When the robots were gone, we came next.

“You are wondering now what could have dispatched the first robot at the river so quickly,” I said.

“Look at those things,” he replied. “They’re enormous, yet the bot managed to kill one of them. What sort of … of thing must it have been to destroy a bot so easily?”

I
was growing more sensitive to the Presence — or it was getting even stronger. It wasn’t with us all the time, or even most of the time, but I always knew when it arrived and when it left again. The others spoke occasionally in hushed tones about the ominous laughter on the pod. In some subliminal way, they seemed aware of something, but at the same time quite unaware of its being the motivating factor behind the sporadic bouts of dissension and quarrelsomeness within the team. Maid attributed the volatile mood swings to the planet’s malevolent atmosphere, the ubiquity of threat from the local giant fauna population, and the anticipation of possible action at the Blob site.

Kadar thinks it’s something else. What?

I could now read Maid’s thoughts more often than not when they were fully formed and not just wool gatherers or random cogitation. Sometimes I even caught fleeting reverie from the others, especially from Ferret and Gorilla who seemed more open and straightforward than the others. I tried sending mind messages to Maid, but they only seemed to make her uncomfortable without getting through.

“You’re reading my thoughts again,” she accused, mildly rebuking me.

“What naughty thoughts they are,” I teased.

She blushed. “I don’t believe anybody can really do it. Can we conduct a test?”

It was meal break. Atlas had been sent to check the perimeter. I set my food aside.

“I think you also have the Talent,” I said. “You must learn to develop and use it.”

“Okay,” she challenged. “I’m thinking of something you shouldn’t know. Tell me what it is.”

After a moment, I purred, my ears twitching with the pleasure of her company. “It’s on the right cheek of your behind. A tiny tattooed flower.”

She blushed again. “Kadar!”

“Am I right?”

“It’s called a rose. You must have peeked when I was down to my panties for the time couch.”

“You still had your panties covering it.”

“You’re naughty, Kadar.”

She was a wonderful and lovely creature with her wide blue eyes and that thick crop of thatched black hair. She was built beautifully too. I liked to watch her when she shed the baggy cammie uniform in camp and wore only a skin-tight body suit while she administered to her hygiene. It wasn’t even the Zentadon breeding season, but I nonetheless felt a powerful urge to breed. After all, I was half Human. I was beginning to think I knew which half, too.

“Humans don’t call it ‘breeding,’” Maid corrected when I tried to explain Zentadon customs in mating. “We call it ‘romance.’”

I tasted the word. “Romance. I do like it, Pia. And you Humans cohabit as well? I have seen pictures in which your pet dogs come to resemble their masters after a period of cohabitation.”

She laughed in that delightful open manner that simply tore at my heartstrings, as the Humans put it.

“It’s true that married people come to resemble each other after a period of … cohabitation,” she said.

“Married? I know. It is an old, old Earth expression.”

“Actually,” she replied with a touch of sadness, “it’s an old, old Earth custom in which a man and woman take an oath to ’love, cherish and honor beyond all others … till death us do part.”

“I see. An exclusive breeding contract. Do you have one, Pia?”

Her eyes softened. “No one has called me Pia in so long.”

“Then I shall call you Pia always.”

She glanced up. Atlas was returning from his perimeter duties and walking across camp toward us. Rain began to fall again.

“It’s better if you call me Maid, like everyone else,” she said brusquely as Atlas approached.

“The Captain needs you for commo, Gun Maid,” he said. “He’s trying to run an encrypt through the Stealth to the
Tsutsumi.”

“I’ve told him it’s useless to try in this atmosphere.”

A bolt of lightning struck nearby, crashing and splintering a tree, as though to stress the point.

Atlas shuddered. “Damn this lightning.”

He waited until Maid was out of earshot. He glared at me. “Stay away from her,” he warned in a steely tone. “I see the way you look at her.”

“Do you have an arrangement?” I asked.

“You’re stepping on thin ice, elf.”

“An old, old Earth expression?”

“You’re about to fall through it.”

He stalked off.

It rained some more. It rained almost constantly as we slogged relentlessly toward the mountain of the Blobs. Lightning kept the atmosphere electrified and our nerves frayed. Everyone seemed to cocoon in on himself during those tense periods when the Presence walked among us. Once or twice, a lesser predator slipped past the outrider bots, which were spread thin by the decimation of their numbers, and had to be destroyed. The planet’s monsters could see us when we deactivated our chameleons.

One of the hellgrammites was almost upon Atlas, its mandibles slashing and its giant armored legs threatening to pin him for the kill. Taa surged through my veins. I snatched the Viking from the very jaws of death, as Ferret later dramatized it, and deposited him safely to one side before he realized what was happening. Sergeant Shiva dispatched the beast at close range with his Punch.

The team stared at me, disbelievingly.

“I … I couldn’t even see you move,” Ferret stammered, awed. “What kind of enhancement is that? I have got to have it!”

“It’s no enhancement,” Maid corrected him. “It’s taa, isn’t it, Kadar?”

She shivered. Then she smiled, came toward me, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Atlas scowled at her. “This changes nothing,” he said to me before he stomped away. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t understand what’s happened,” Maid said, watching him go. “He’s usually so happy-go-lucky and good-natured …”

I had to sit down on a log. The use of taa left me temporarily weakened.

“Are you all right, Kadar San?”

“I will be fine in a few minutes.”

She sat next to me. Atlas and Sergeant Shiva were examining the dead insect-beast, what remained of it, and the others were returning to their places in the march. Maid looked worried.

“What’s happening to all of us, Kadar?” she asked in a strained voice. “We seem to be … well, different. Growling and snapping at each other, even fighting. All of us except you. You know what it is, don’t you, Kadar San?”

I decided it was better that I not share my suspicions, even with her, until I could be more certain. How did one explain feelings about a presence that could not be seen or, with that one exception aboard the pod, heard or detected in any way by Gorilla’s sophisticated gadgets?

“Sometimes …” Maid hesitated, her brows knitting. “Sometimes it’s like I feel somebody else … Something …”

It’s like the planet is coming alive …
she thought.

“I overheard Atlas and Blade talking,” she confided presently. “They think the trouble is you. They think you’re communicating with the Blobs to lead us into a trap. They think you are a Homelander and that the Homelanders are conspiring with the Blobs.”

“What do you think?”

“Captain Amalfi says there’s no proof of that. Ferret and Gorilla go along with whatever he says. Sergeant Shiva is … well, he’s Sergeant Shiva and handles problems when they develop.”

“And you, Pia?”

She looked directly at me. “You wouldn’t have saved Atlas’ life if you wanted us to die.”

She turned away, then turned back again.

“Kadar San, does what’s happening to us have something to do with the insane laughter in the pod?”

“I cannot be sure.”

She looked at me for a long, searching moment. I felt her uncertainty, her confusion, her determination. I felt
her
. It was like I went inside her and she inside me. I sent her a thought message:
I will let nothing harm you, Pia
.

D
RT-213 reached the lower foothills of the Blob mountains and began to climb. The hills were smooth and rounded and the vegetation thinned out some the higher we climbed. Storms actually seemed to die down during the short periods of darkness, but always returned with the watery dawn. From the top of a rocky promontory, we looked out over a wide purple-black valley to another ridgeline on the other side. Lightning popped and crashed and snapped like a pen full of caged Ganesh two-headed tigers. A spectacular and awesome display that kept nerves jagged. It wasn’t only the weather, however, that kept the DRT-bags of the team popping and crashing and snapping.

We selected a bony ridge to follow down-valley toward the area where previous sensors had localized Blob activity. Eventually, we came to a series of caves which afforded cover, concealment, and shelter against the weather. Captain Amalfi designated it an ORP — organizational rally point — from which scouting parties could be sent out to find the Blobs and recon them.

The valley should have been full of soldiers and activity if the Blobs were really building an assault base from which to launch an invasion of the galaxy. You couldn’t hide an entire invasion army in a valley no bigger than this; you couldn’t even hide an advance element from all the sophisticated aids, detectors and sniffers the team had brought along.

Gorilla’s molecular detector picked up no indications of Blob genetic material, nor could it uncover plastic or oil molecules that signified an alien robot presence. Maid sifted the air electronically for communications signals, without success. Gorilla dispatched one of the bug bots along the ridgeline to scout. It found … nothing.

Patrols returned to the cave to report the same failure. Ferret sniffed the water-clotted winds. He listened through the rumble and bang of lightning. Even though his body was equipped with various enhancements to the five natural senses, he finally shook his head in defeat.

Blade was an excellent tracker with something of the predator’s mien about him. He gave a go at picking up a Blob spoor. He and one of the bots examined the ridgeline in both directions. He returned disgruntled.

“Fu-uck,” he said in response to the Captain’s unspoken query.

The scar on Team Sergeant Shiva’s jaw looked taut and inflamed when he removed his helmet and faceplate to scan the valley basin inch by inch through powerful electronic binoculars.