by R Coots
He let them take a good look at the image, then shrank it slightly and threw the next pic up. This was the one of the dens. Incomplete on its own. Stitched together with the ones that came before and after, it spread out further than the image of the beacon. “See those?” He lit up the dens.
The men leaned forward. Behind him, Quinn’s flattened-out bundle of emotions shifted slightly. Syrus let himself smile. They saw it.
“Could be a few different things using the dens.” Syrus pulled the large pic off to the side and brought up the one of the bunker. “Best bet is on packs of jenmal.”
They looked blank. That didn’t surprise him. The Fleet usually focused on population centers and high profile military targets when they invaded a planet. Once they were done killing and enslaving all the people they could round up in the first strikes, they Seeded the atmosphere with poison. Anyone stuck out in the rural areas was fucked. The military outposts probably held out a little longer, but no air-processing system lasted forever. Neither did food or water. Nothing went untainted by the Seed. The only way to stay alive on a planet after it was Seeded was to bow, scrape, give your women to the invaders, and hope the anined of the planet doled out antidote faster than the Seed killed you.
“Jenmal,” Syrus continued. “Genetically engineered animals the Navlad bred for the Navlad military. Who put them here doesn’t matter. It’s why. This.” He tapped the ping of the power signal. “This is the why. They will guard it. It’s in their programming. They were given the DNA of the person or people allowed to get in that bunker when they were installed. That person is probably dead.”
To top that off, he laid down the next bit of bad news. “The Empire as a whole stopped using jenmal about two hundred years ago. Right around the time arguments over the Imperial throne went from bitchy slap fights at the dinner table to some of the more remote Border systems breaking off and declaring independence. Course, you can still find them here and there on the black market.”
More confusion behind those impassive faces. Mixed with frustration now. Syrus shook his head. “Back hall.”
Understanding dawned. “By the age of the dens, whoever introduced the jenmal put them there when they were still easy to come by. Either this is an old military outpost, or someone had contacts.” He waited until the shifting and muttering stopped.
Not that they were ever far from a fight, but the rank and file first-gen recruits tended to need some sort of direction before getting shoved out the ship. Otherwise they’d just rampage over anything in their way. Sometimes they rampaged anyway, no matter what the orders were. That was why they got stuck out in front. They had to prove they could hold their temper and survive to move up the ranks. Or they’d die and solve a bunch of problems instead.
He wondered if they knew they were just fodder for surface-to-air missiles.
“We’ll have to fight our way in,” he told them.
Which, of course, got them back on task and made them pretty happy in the bargain. To be honest, he wasn’t disappointed either. For months now, he’d been wasting his time with practice bouts and formal Challenges. During Campaigns, he had to worry about strategy and tactics. He hadn’t really cut loose since . . . well, since he’d killed Brander.
That had been more cathartic than fun. He didn’t remember most of it anyway.
Pulling the stylus free of the slate, he started running lines through the dens, crossing them over the bunker like spokes in a space-station hub. He was probably getting them wrong, but this was more for a visual picture than accuracy.
“General layout for this sort of defense puts the oldest den closest to whatever needs protecting. The babies grow up, they go build themselves a different place out along the perimeter. Further in we get, the more of them we’ll find. The more willing they’ll be to cross into each other’s territory.”
“Sir,” said the man who’d announced him to the rest. “Why not set down up mountain?”
Syrus raised an eyebrow. At least one of them was trying to think. Just not very well. “How much you weigh?” he asked instead.
The man looked confused. “Ten roid, sir.”
“And your armor is another ten. Even if she just dropped us instead of setting down, you know what would happen trying to hike off the glacier? You see all those crevasses?” He pointed at the deep blue cracks around the edges of the ice. “That’s not counting the risk of avalanche. The noise this thing makes could shake all the snow off the peaks. She’ll find a place to leave us down mountain. The terrain is more predictable. Besides, fewer dens up mountain means there are probably more traps in that direction. Can you survive walking over a landmine?”
The man shook his head.
“Ok then.” Syrus pulled all the images back onto his slate, then headed towards the cockpit as the engines changed pitch. “Suit up. No heavy artillery. We’re taking a look, not occupying the place.”
> Chapter Two
Syrus
Distance from primary star: ~1 Ayeu
Eccentricity:.0254
Orbital period: 298 d, 11 hr
Rotation: 30 hr
Axial tilt: 28.223
Population: 0
-preliminary report, Geo-Tech Uura Janiu
The only place to land the ship without sucking a tree branch into the engines was a clearing halfway down the side of the mountain. They’d have to walk fast if they wanted to get up there before night.
The wind coming from up mountain shook the ship, turning the ground below into a gold-and-bronze lake of rippling grass. Bushes clung to the edges of the clearing, purplish-black leaves flipping up to show silvery undersides. Whippy little deciduous trees reached out between the blue-green needles of evergreens like the bony hands of the old women Syrus’d snuck food from as a child.
Fresh air. That was another thing he missed. Untainted. Clear. He could almost taste it. Smell it. He couldn’t wait. But first . . .
“Drop us and move down into the foothills.” The pilot didn’t look at Syrus when he stuck his head back into the cockpit, but he knew she’d heard him. “We’ll send up a beacon for evac. Till then, you land, button up, and don’t let anything chew on the propulsion. Got me?”
“Sir.”
She was still pissed at him for having helped her get through atmo. He snorted and went back into the jump bay. So long as she did her job and came back for them when they called, she could burn him in effigy for all he cared. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The first squad was already out. The four techs, who’d stayed at the back of the group during his little lecture, were up next. Syrus was too hyped on anticipation to get a clear read off them, but one look at their faces told him all he needed to know. His men were looking forward to this. He was looking forward to this. The women? They were spooked, but determined. If he’d needed proof that Fleet women were just as crazy as their men, he had it.
Tell them the biggest, baddest animals on this mountain would be actively hunting them, and they’d jump out of an Atmo class ship with only an eight-pulse handgun as protection. They had armor, yes, but it would slow them down if things came to a fight. They wore the stuff because that was what any Fleet person did when they dropped planetside, not because they had combat experience.
How the fuck had he ended up in charge of this insane excuse for a nation? Oh. Yeah.
They were out, all four clipping their jump harnesses to the drop lines and sliding down to the men waiting to catch them. He hoped everybody kept their hands where they belonged. He didn’t have time to deal with any of that shit.
His turn. Quinn was half a breath behind him. They dropped the forty feet between ship and ground to land on soft knees, weapons drawn. The first squad was already setting up the perimeter, beating down trails in the waist-high grass as they took up station and scanned the tree line for the enemy. Syrus unclipped from the drop line and moved off to give the next squad more room.
A minute later, the second squad was down and moving
to cover the gaps in the first squad’s line. Syrus shielded his eyes as the pilot banked the ship and took off. They were on their own.
“One other thing.” Syrus flipped the faceplate of his helmet into place and brought up the squads and their techs on the display. “Whatever’s down here is gonna come check out the noise. Let’s make as much time as we can before they find us.”
>><<
It didn’t take long.
The sun was high in the sky, beating them down with a uniform heat. Through the trees, shafts of light struck the ground in bursts of bright green. Moss, probably. Here and there, through the gaps in the tree branches, clumps of some tall plant with heart-shaped leaves all but glowed when the light hit the fine fuzz of gold on their woody stalks. The rest of the undergrowth was covered in thickets of hip-high bushes with deep purple leaves.
Something snapped off to his left. Turning his head, Syrus focused the various sensors in his helmet. Sure enough, the jenmal were here. The shapes on his HUD were heavy bodied, but their centers of mass were higher than he’d anticipated. Shoulders high, broad heads down in the classic stalking pose. They registered hot on the heat vision. Mammalian then. But not human smart. The things should have waited until further up mountain, where the slope and the close-packed trees would make defense that much harder. Apparently, whatever these things were, they weren’t supposed to let strangers anywhere near the bunker. Not even if it gave them tactical advantage.
He looked again, scanning the trees around him. The critters surrounded he and his soldiers surrounded. Pack hunters. So, whatever scientist had cooked them up must have added wolf. Or something like a wolf.
“Circle up,” he told the men. “Techs in the center. Set a shield.”
One of the women started to protest. He glared at her. “Set a shield and get inside. Or I’ll cut you up and leave you for bait instead.”
She pulled the grounding stakes from a pouch at her hip and crouched to start setting the shield bubble.
Stepping back until he met Quinn, Syrus nodded out at the circling pack. “Draw them in. As many as we can.”
The other man nodded. The squad pulled the circle in tighter. If they’d been fighting humans on Campaign, one of them would have put up a siren set to the universal emergency frequency. Civilians came looking for help. Soldiers came to help civilians. They all died or got caught, depending on who showed up first. Not this time. This time, all they needed to do was wait.
Whatever was coming for them just barely showed above the branches. Dark fur. No help there.
The bushes rustled, and a broad head striped in white slid into view, followed by a huge spadelike paw.
A bajbar.
“Fuck!” Syrus spun and lunged for the shield. Teach him to make assumptions. “Pull the stake,” he shouted at the nearest tech.
She stared at him through the haze of the shield bubble.
The ground under his feet trembled. Inside the bubble, a set of claws broke through the earth, followed by a dirt-covered head. The bajbar swung around, clamped its yellowed teeth around the leg of the nearest tech without opening its eyes, and started pulling. The earth around it crumbled, caving into the tunnel below. The woman shrieked and scrabbled for her belt. The creature let go, lunged again, and snagged its teeth on the join between the armor of her thigh and her groin. Blood spurted.
“Pull the stake!”
This time, the tech obeyed. The hum of the shield stuttered as she yanked the stake out of the ground. Around him soldiers fired, the animals roared, and Quinn shouted orders in a voice that would do justice to any parade ground. Syrus ignored them. He grabbed the nearest woman by the shoulder and threw her out of the way. The other two scrabbled for the other side of the circle. Good. That just left the bajbar and its victim.
Too close for his rifle. Instead, he pulled the hilt of a knife from his belt, flipped it on, and sank the blade into the thing’s spine before the living metal had a chance to take its proper shape. The animal shuddered, stiffened, and died.
As he checked the tech’s leg to see if the armor’s med system had managed to activate in time, a yell pulled his attention back to the fight. He turned and saw a soldier go down beneath the weight of another bajbar. Half the man’s face was missing. Syrus slung his rifle and went to go plug the gap.
Another yell. Another man down. Leg crushed as he was dragged out of the circle. One animal took him by the throat—where the armor was weakest—shook hard, and then he was dead. The animals left him, turning back to the ring of defenders, and went down in a hail of rifle fire.
But there were too many. For each one killed at a distance, another got that much closer. The soldiers were left with a choice. Focus on the bajbar close enough to use claws and teeth? Or try to pick them off further out and end up easy targets for the ones popping out of the ground?
“Alternate,” Syrus barked through the comms. “Every other. Start with Quinn. Half distance, half near in. You.” He turned to the remaining techs. They huddled together, eyes wide and staring at the corpse of their sister. “Get her free of that thing.”
They took a collective half step away instead.
Another rustle behind him. He spun, put a shot through the head of a bajbar mid-charge, then reached for the nearest woman, ignoring the electric jolt of terror that lanced through his armor and sizzled up his arm. “I said, get her free of it. Now!” She landed on her knees next to the body, yelped as she got a face full of monster fur, and crab-walked backwards. The other two went to help her up. Syrus turned his attention back to the fight.
This wasn’t going as well as he would have liked.
More and more creatures were popping out of the ground. The alternating fields of fire helped, sort of. The half of the squad taking on the nearest bajbar had plenty of targets. Quinn’s half took the distant targets, but there weren’t as many as before. Not near enough bodies, either.
Something was wrong.
A manic yell, the clatter of a weapon hitting the ground, and the sound of running footsteps announced the fact that one of the soldiers had just lost his own private war with the Frenzy. The man ran out to meet the advancing tide of animals with a knife in each hand, screaming curses. The animals changed course to meet him.
Syrus snarled and shifted up to fill the gap the man had left. “Either of you so much as thinks of following him,” he told the soldiers to either side of him, “I’ll kneecap you both.” Out in front of them, the Frenzied soldier had gone under, his weapons sending fur and blood flying everywhere as the bajbar put jaws and digging claws to work.
Syrus figured he should be happy the man hadn’t turned rapist, like some Frenzied soldiers. The bajbar were further away than the women. And much more capable of taking down two hundred pounds of violent lunatic. The little popguns the women carried wouldn’t have even fazed him.
The soldier had maybe thirty seconds, a minute at the outside, before one of the creatures either crushed his armor or punched through the living metal seals and hooked an artery through one of the expansion gaps. Another fifteen to twenty seconds of breathing room for the defenders while the animals sorted themselves out and realized their main target hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Focus on these ones,” he told the men. They didn’t usually need to be told. But he’d seen too many squads get caught up in one man’s Frenzy and lose all sense of strategy.
The Frenzied soldier had lost his momentum. Fewer bajbar showed fresh damage. Just in time. The dirt under his feet vibrated slightly.
“You got her loose yet?” he asked the women behind him as he sighted on an animal just breaking through the trees. It went down in a tangle of paws and pulped brain matter.
“Yes, Warlord.” The scorn in her voice was clear. Good. She’d need it to get through this.
“All right then.” Slinging his gun back over his shoulder, he toggled the comms. “On the signal, fall in. Dropping a sewer seeker.”
A chorus of “Aye Warlord” answer
ed him.
“Outta my way. Leave her.”
The women left off trying to pull the fallen tech free of the pit and scattered. Syrus grabbed the body by the collar and hauled it out of the way, then reached for the bajbar. For one insane moment, he thought the thing looked at him. But it was just the head lolling loose on its broken neck. He hoped. It had been a long time since he’d gone up against this particular menace. Maybe they’d been made different back when they were put on this planet.
Paranoia gave him an extra edge of strength as he heaved. First came the paws. Then he hooked his hands under the thing’s shoulders and around its back. His eyes watered at the reek of musk and some half-rotten carcass the thing must have rolled in. Bears, he remembered. They’d crossbred bears and badgers and hyenas, of all things. Fucking scientists, playing with things they had no business messing with.
If rumors are true, that includes people, an unwelcome little voice reminded him. Good thing, or you wouldn’t be able to do this. He kicked the voice back into its mental hole and shut the lid—then sealed it. Now wasn’t the time for memories.
People yelled at each other over the comm systems, soldiers to soldiers and techs to techs. Syrus didn’t have time to worry about any of it. He’d have to trust his men to hold the circle and the women to stay out of the way until he could get this thing out of the ground. Bracing himself, Syrus heaved again. The carcass popped loose with a shower of dirt, and he nearly went over backwards under the weight of the thing.
He managed to change the direction of the animal’s fall at the last moment, pushing it to one side. One of the women yipped when it landed, but so long as they weren’t screaming in pain, he didn’t much care. Dropping to his knees, he pulled the hand light off his belt and pointed it at the hole.
Huge teeth and gleaming brown eyes lit up in the dark. A snarling roar blasted his ears through the helm’s speakers. A huge paw just barely missed his hand as the animal swiped at him. Syrus lurched back and fell on his ass. Fucking hell! How many of them were there?
