Authors: Jason Halstead
“I think we should take cover,” Ben suggested.
“They said they’d drop it on the beach,” Klous said. He frowned as he noticed he was standing in the middle of the beach. “The jungle might be a good idea.”
Sharp scowled at him. “Didn’t say where on the beach, did they? Come on, let’s go! Tarn, grab your girlfriend. She might be tough but nobody’s catching that.”
Tarn scooped Elsa up in the two armed carry that she’d grown accustomed to. His action was so smooth and quick she didn’t have a chance to protest Sharp’s choice of words. Tarn, for his part, just grinned at her before he started jogging towards the tree line.
They’d barely settled in, hiding behind trees or ducking into small ditches, before the thunder of the incoming supply drop roared over them. It grew silent a few seconds later as the wings deployed and slowed it to subsonic speeds. Then they heard the whistling as it sliced through the air. Moments later it exploded and slammed into the ground hard enough to allow them all feel the shockwave from the impact.
Elsa pulled herself up and stared around some bushes that were swaying with the winds from the landing. “A screamer pod?” She asked aloud.
Tarn swore and jumped to his feet so he could see better. The beach had a trench nearly sixty feet long dug in it. Water was slowly seeping into it from the ground. At the head of the trench a screamer pod rested, looking for all intents and purposes as though it had been correctly deployed.
“Thought they weren’t sending no more people?” Tarn growled.
“They didn’t,” Elsa said, pulling herself stiffly to her feet. Her hand covered the stitches in her belly, but it didn’t stop her from stepping out onto the beach and staring at it. “Emergency supply drop. Screamers have the best chance of getting through. They’re fast and small.”
“Hey, you shouldn’t be walking!” Tarn yelled at her. “Sit your ass down or I’m picking you up again.”
“Now there’s a pick up line,” Jess quipped. Tarn gaped at her but the medic ignored him. “Gunny, you sure you’re okay? You really shouldn’t be walking. Hell, you shouldn’t be breathing!”
Elsa shrugged. “Yeah, a little stiff and some pulling, but I’m fine. I know, better than I should be and I won’t push it. If it starts hurting I’ll ride my stallion here.”
Tarn jerked his head back and forth between the two woman. His scowl faded at being called a stallion. He shook his head and headed towards the fallen screamer pod. Elsa followed him, albeit at a slower pace. Jess walked beside her, hands out to catch her if she fell.
The others emerged from their hiding spots and converged on the deployed pod. They studied it without touching it until Elsa arrived. Even Ben and Barry allowed the Gunnery Sergeant to be the first to approach it. She knelt down carefully beside it, the heat from the sand not bothering her in the least. The initial waves of heat that radiated off the pod were already gone. She touched it quickly, then nodded to confirm that the shielding had transferred the heat generated by the entry away.
She pressed unmarked scanners on the side of the pod, letting her biometrics be read. After an expectant moment nothing happened. Elsa frowned, then proceeded to enter a code into those same pressure sensitive panels. That caused the solid metal canopy to jettison away from the pod and the foam dissolving mist to spray. This time when Elsa caught a whiff of it she turned away gagging. It had never smelled that bad before.
Instead of a Marine in First Insertion Special Tactics armor the pod was loaded with several boxes. “Here’s the supplies,” she gestured into the pod. She staggered back to her feet and turned to see Captain Sharp studying her instead of the supplies. She offered him a smile before she remembered what her mission was. “Captain Sharp! I’m sorry Sir, but I just remembered. Fiona wanted me to report back and ready Treetown for evacuation!”
“Evacuation?”
“The new spitters split up. Kira went after one and me and Fiona went after the other. We tracked it and saw its foot prints growing at an incredible rate. By now, if it’s still alive, it’s probably as big as any of the human kids in Treetown.”
“If it’s still alive? What happened?”
“I don’t know. Fiona sent me back when it was almost dark. We were minutes from losing the trail and we knew if we waited the night out we’d never find it again. She was going to try to stop it from getting back to their mound by waiting for it.”
“Waiting for it? If it’s running from her, how’s she going to stop it by waiting for it?”
“She was going to head for the passes between us and the plains. She knew the land, it doesn’t. She should make it their first.”
“There’s a lot of ways over that ridge,” Tarn pointed out.
Elsa nodded. “That’s why it was my job to get the rest of us somewhere safe. If it makes it back we figured we had two days before they were on us. We’re on day number one right now. We’ve got to evacuate to safer ground!”
“What?” Klous had been barely paying attention as he examined the supplies. “We can’t evacuate! Not now that we’re so close to making something of ourselves!”
“We fall back somewhere safe and start over,” Elsa argued. “Maybe we can figure out what we need there. Figure out something better than stone age tech so we can deal with the spitters properly.”
Klous scowled. He turned to look at Ling, getting a shrug in return. “We’ve built our homes in trees! The spitters don’t climb. We’ve got ditches and other traps to keep predators at bay.”
Elsa’s cheeks twitched with the effort clenching her teeth caused. She looked at Sharp, her eyes wide with the desire to strangle the former pirate. Sharp frowned, stroking the short beard he’d grown since he’d been on Vitalis. “Get that gear squared away, we need to get back to Treetown. We’ll have a town meeting. I hate to leave but everything I heard about them spitters says there’s a lot of them and they may be the nastiest thing this planet’s got to offer.”
“No,” Elsa said with a smile. “Not the nastiest thing on the planet, those two are busy right now though.”
Tarn chuckled. “I’d say we got another one right next to us.”
Elsa flashed him a smile. “Thanks, but if you want dangerous you should see my cooking.”
“All right, get this shit ready, we’ve got to move!”
Elsa made her way to the back of the screamer and opened the cargo bay on it. She grinned. “More loot. Ooh, they even left a spare suit of FIST armor and an X109.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Tarn asked.
Elsa shrugged. “Not for me, but we’ll take it. If we need to fight one of my boys can suit up and give ‘em hell.”
“Why not you?”
Elsa glanced down at herself. She was still nude and nobody, not even Tarn was making a big deal of it. She’d forgotten about it already. “Turns out I guess I like being a nudist. I move a lot better and quieter like this, at least. Maybe not as good as Kira but I’ll never get there if I don’t try.”
“Hussy,” Jess coughed into her hand. Elsa gaped at her and saw her eyes twinkling. The others laughed until Sharp yelled for everyone to get moving. They had a rough hike ahead of them, the sun was rising and so was the humidity.
Chapter 7
Kira jogged along the trail left by the hybrid spitter. Her eyes picked out each track with such ease that they practically glowed against the gloom of the jungle. She noted the movement in the shadows of the trees, but paid it little mind. The animals were only beginning to rouse and even when they began their hunts most would leave her alone.
Kira had become one with Vitalis long ago. She’d immersed herself in the planet every chance she got, taking it into her physically and spiritually. The wildlife knew her as one of their own. A hunter that was to be feared and respected. Only the hungriest or the stupidest of predators would try her, and even those would fail.
The spitters were another matter. They were part of Vitalis, as much as the trees around her, but they were also different. They changed rapidly. They evolved, taking something from each host and seeking to improve themselves. She’d seen minor variations in the spitters she’d killed, but nothing like that one she stalked now. Even her rapid pace failed to gain on it as night settled on her.
Fiona and Elsa had been fearful of the night. To Kira it was just another opportunity to experience Vitalis. Her life before Vitalis had given her the gift of enhanced vision that allowed her to see in near darkness. With the improvements Vitalis had given her, all but the darkest of shadows were little worse than a cloudy day. She was able to recognize that the jungle was thinning. She knew the landmarks, it was a region rarely visited by the scouts from Treetown.
She slowed, her tanned muscles slick with sweat but her breathing coming easily. She stepped out, the jungle trees suddenly thick with undergrowth. Two more steps and she stopped on the edge of a rocky overhand. Below lay the region they’d dubbed the pits. A collapse of some subterranean region offered bowls in the jungle floor, some of them were connected via tunnels and others lay open to the sky forming canyons.
The tracks she followed disappeared at the edge. She studied them, noting the size. It had grown as she’d followed it, something only the almost magical life of Vitalis would make possible. She placed her foot beside the marks in the tough grass to compare their feet and frowned. It was nearly as big as hers already. As he peered over the edge she saw a rock ledge a few feet down that her adversary must have used.
She felt a faint tremble in the ground and heard the sound of movement through the underbrush at the jungle’s edge. Kira turned, eyes narrowed. A shape lunged out of the darkness at her. She twisted and bent backwards with a flexibility of a professional gymnast, her spear already on its way to the feathered dinosaurs throat. The creature slammed into her legs, sending her flying even as she grabbed the feathery down on its arms. It was one of the jungles greatest threats, a chickasaurus. This one was young, only a few feet taller than she was. It looked like a two legged tyrannosaurus rex save for a beaked mouth, avian eyes, and iridescent feathers covering it from head to tail. They both fell through the open air.
A hissing shriek issued from the two legged creature’s beak moments before it crashed into the upper rim of one of the pits. Kira had shifted to ride on top of it, allowing the chickasaurus to cushion the fall for her. She rolled away from it, falling into the bowl with as much grace as the situation allowed. When she came to rest at the bottom she felt her bow had broken and lay on the ground beside her. Her spear was also broken, the point transfixing the beasts neck and the shaft missing.
Kira rolled to her feet, ignoring the aches in her body. She crouched, looking into the darkness of a tunnel. From deeper within the passage she saw a faint shimmer. Of greater importance than the mysterious glow was the creature that lunged out of the cave at her. She saw the hard shell on its back and the multiple legs that allowed it to scuttle towards her. More important were the multiple tentacles that surrounded its mouth.
Elsa sprang to the side, hoping this new creature wouldn’t be able to turn quickly. In three years she’d never seen a lobster-like animal. Vitalis remained a great and unexplored world. She’d allowed herself to spend too much time protecting the survivors and not enough time exploring the world. Vitalis had given her so much, yet she knew it had much more to give her if only she would accept the challenges the world offered.
The land-born lobster turned faster than she’d expected, but not fast enough. She scooted past it, barely dodging one of the tentacles that reached for her. She could smell the chemicals on the appendage. They stung her nose and promised pain. She slipped into the dark passage the creature had come from. With no weapons her only hope was to find something to use against it. The tentacles had a range and mobility that made trying to kill it with her hands a suicidal task.
She ran down the passage, the glow growing as she approached it. She found bones and other proof of the lobster’s lair, but it was beyond those that she stopped and stared in amazement. Massive crystals, some as thick as her thigh and as tall as she was, emerged from a passage on her right. They radiated a faint greenish light near the base that shifted to a soft pink near the tip.
Her pursuer scrambled over a rib cage, reminding her of the immediate peril. Kira saw a smaller crystal laying on the ground near her. It was a dull gray, displaying none of the light emanating from the other crystals. She snatched it up and turned.
As soon as she grabbed the crystal and moved it she felt it come alive in her hand. It hummed, sending a vibration through her arm and lighting up as the others were. Even with the obtuse angles of the crystal’s edges their sharpness cut into her skin. She nearly dropped it in surprise. She shifted her grip, holding the crystal by the flatter facets. Blood dripped from the shallow cuts, threatening her tenuous grip on the crystal. She ran towards the lobster, scooping up a long bone off the ground as she closed with it.
Tentacles lashed out at her. She swept them high with the leg bone before slashing with the crystal. All four tentacles were severed, leaving only bloody stumps behind. The lobster squealed and reversed course, trying to escape.
Kira swung the bone, knocking two more tentacles out of the way. She pounced on it, driving one foot into its shell and pinning it to the floor. The crystal came next, slamming point first into the head of the air breathing crustacean. It shuddered and collapsed, its head pierced through by the impromptu weapon. Kira jerked it free, marveling at how not only had it cut through the shell of the animal but it had even pierced into the ground beneath it.