by Mina Carter
He turned back to Dex.
“Marine,” he said, knowing they probably suspected some kind of military background from the way he moved. To deny it would just lay seeds of doubt in their minds, and he didn’t want them looking at him any closer. Sure, he could walk and talk human, but he wasn’t. Sooner or later, the cracks were going to show.
Dex grinned, fist-pumping the air. “I knew it. You owe me ten strips, Rob,” he shot at the other man.
“We had a bet you were military of some kind. Rob here said you couldn’t be, too young, but I just knew you were something. No one moves the way you do without some serious combat experience.”
Oh, little human, you have no idea, Xaan thought, keeping his expression neutral.
“Come on then, spill. What were you? Recon? Armored?”
“Combat Engineer,” Xaan replied, keeping as close to the truth as possible. Yes, his background was science, but Latharian science seemed to encompass areas humans considered engineering and, after decades as the emperor’s champion, what he didn’t know about combat wasn’t worth knowing. It seemed to satisfy Dex, who nodded and returned his attention to the path as they walked.
Once again, he checked his communicator. Perhaps the guy had a lover and he was waiting for a message? He was certainly waiting for something from someone.
It didn’t take them long to leave the valley, their steps winding steadily upward. Their progress disturbed more of the wildlife, the humans around him getting more and more skittish with each rustle in the undergrowth. He shook his head to himself as the one on his left whirled around for the seventeenth time to check the bushes that side.
Finally they reached the booster tower on top of one of the highest hills that surrounded the valley. Xaan stopped, looking it up and down. Three times the height of the main colony building, it matched the three other towers he could see dotted around the edges of the valley. However, he could only see a third of the gleaming metalwork at the top. The rest of it was covered in thick vines. The base was a thick mass of green leaves and vicious looking thorns half the length of Xaan’s forearm. Needle sharp, they evoked groans from Billy.
“Devil-plant,” he muttered, reaching for a machete sheathed at his belt. “Fucking great. Fucking hate this stuff.”
“Clear it out,” Dex ordered, motioning them both forward as he checked his communicator again. “We need to get to that control box.”
The two men slung their rifles over their backs to start chopping into the thick plant life. Xaan watched impassively, arms folded over his broad chest. They hadn’t asked him to help, and he hadn’t brought his own weaponry. There was no way he was going near that plant without a laser cutter and heavy gauntlets. It seemed semi-sentient, the vines twisting and moving away, as though trying to escape the bite of the heavy machetes.
His decision was confirmed a few moments later. A vine, detached from its root by a heavy swing from Rob on the left, dropped. Its vicious thorns slashed across Billy’s arm, whose back was turned for a moment as he dealt with a particularly stubborn tangle of vines. He grunted in pain as the lethally sharp thorns sliced through his skin. Blood splattered on the ground and across one of the lower vines.
It caused an instant reaction. Every thorn on the plant turned toward the blood, the soil beneath it writhing as though the roots themselves were also aware.
“Holy shit!” The two men stumbled back, trying to get away from the plants. Rob fell on his ass in his haste. He fumbled for his rifle, almost dropping it as he yanked it around.
“NO!” Dex and Xaan yelled at the same time, launching themselves forward to try and snatch the weapon from his hands, but it was too late. His finger jerked the trigger and held, the sharp retort of bullets ripping through the vines in a hail of devastation. The smell of sap filled the air as bits of vegetation splattered everywhere. Underneath it all, there was a metallic ping-ping-ping as the bullets tore through the radio repeater box. It exploded in a shower of sparks.
The bullets stopped, the rifle still clicking as the human kept his finger on the trigger with his gaze fixed on the now destroyed vines and radio like a rictus. His companion reached out and removed it from his grasp.
“Well fuck,” Dex muttered, looking at the smoking remains of the radio. It was completely destroyed. “Looks like we got a long walk.”
8
The morning, although crisp at first, soon warmed up. Kenna closed her eyes as she walked with the other women, savoring the sweet breeze that swept through the valley toward them. It brought with it the scent of the heather-grasses that swept the edges of the valley. Obviously, it had dominated the valley before the colonists had cleared it for their crops.
She recognized some of them. High yield protein-wheats were used as the base for a lot of the mass-produced foods common through the Terran worlds. Most of it was bland and tasteless, but it was filling and provided adequate nutrition for the body, if not for the palate or soul. She knew the stuff well. It was a staple of the marine corps’ diet when deployed either in the field or on outer bases, but like recycled air, she hated it.
Some people were so poor, that all they had was money. Wall to wall luxuries and the best staterooms on orbital platforms with views of the rarest supernovas or spacial borealis. They breathed air filtered through ice-rock imported from the outer reaches and their water was infused with the rarest tri-platinum. And they thought they had it all.
They were wrong. This… the chance to walk through fields under the sun, her boots on real dirt and clean air in her lungs… these were real riches. And she intended to savor every moment.
The chatter of the women around her was the usual gossip—kids, teething… what romances were forming between who in the colony as kids whooped and ran about them. It was like a scene from her childhood before she’d gone into fleet service and for a while she just absorbed it.
Several of the women were armed, but she didn’t think anything of it. Unless you were really lucky with a planet, there were always predators to be wary of. That was colony life.
“So… Suzie.” One of the younger women at the front of the group turned to smile over her shoulder. “How’d you meet that handsome hubby of yours?”
Kenna hid her small smile. Here it came, as she’d known it would. There wasn’t a red-blooded woman alive who wouldn’t be interested in Xaan. Just something about him, the way he moved, and the indefinable aura of danger that clung to him, even when he was relaxed and nonthreatening, hooked right into the primal part of a woman’s reactions and sent her ovaries into overdrive. Must be something to do with the search for the strongest mate or something, she mused. So it made sense that women on a human colony would gravitate toward a Lathar man… a bigger, stronger and faster version of the human males they knew.
“Oh, it was the usual love story,” she grinned. “Eyes meeting across a crowded room. Bar in the Heleas Four system… smoky, crowded, filled with merchants… then the place got shot to shit by mercenaries. Steve pulled me out of there after I got hit in the calf. Carried me to safety… It was so romantic.” She sighed, playing the starry-eyed woman in love.
It actually wasn’t too far from the truth, if you discounted the fact that Xaan had never carried her injured from a bar fight. She had been shot in the calf by mercs, though, on one of her first missions. She still had the starburst scar to prove it. And their eyes hadn’t met for the first time over a smoke-filled, crowded bar. It had been a courtyard in the Imperial court, and he’d taken a gun off her after she’d threatened to ventilate a Latharian warrior’s skull. To be fair, though, the warrior in question had been threatening her friend’s now-husband. Kenna had taken exception to that and the asshole’s assumption that any of the human women were his for the taking.
“Was it love at first sight?”
“Have you been together since?”
The questions came in thick and fast, making her smile broaden. Although she’d had female friends in the corps, and she’d been w
ith a group of friends since the Lathar had taken them from the base, that group had dwindled a lot now as her friends had all paired off. She’d missed the simple chatter and concerns of colony women.
“Yes. It was love at first sight,” she admitted, realizing it was true. “He was big and growly and I fell for him in a hot second. It just took me a while to get him to admit he felt the same.”
“Men,” a woman at the back chuckled. “Never see what’s right under their damn noses.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Kenna replied as the soft laughter of the group surrounded her. Conversation continued until they reached the berry patches, as the group gently teased one of the younger women about a crush she had on one of the single men in the colony.
Splitting off into pairs, they worked through the scattered bushes, picking the ripe berries off the thorned stems. Goojan berries were sweet, kept well and made great preserves, but they couldn’t be cultivated, so finding a patch like this must have been an unexpected but welcome bonus.
“Do you freeze these or make jam?” she asked Sami, the woman she was working with, and then popped another berry in her mouth. A small moan of pleasure escaped her as the tart, sweet taste exploded on her tongue. She’d already eaten more than she should, but the damn things were addictive.
“Both,” Sami managed around a mouthful of berries. “And Maggie makes awesome pies as well. She might make one tonight if you’re lucky.”
“Oh.” Disappointment filled Kenna at the news. Goojan berry pie was a rare treat. “I think Steve wanted to be gone by then. I’ll have to see if I can persuade him to leave a little later. Here, grab this for me? I need to nip off for a moment…” She jerked her head toward the thicker bushes behind the berry patch and made a show of crossing her legs.
“Sure thing. Just make sure to use a stick and beat the longer grass,” Sami warned, reaching out for Kenna’s basket. “Some mean-ass snakes out this way and you don’t want your lady garden to become snake-chow.”
Kenna gave her the thumbs up as she walked away. Ducking into the thicker bushes, she turned right instead of left and skirted around the back quickly.
Breaking into a trot, she stayed just below the ridge line that ran around the edges of the fields. She didn’t have long before she was missed, so she needed to make every second count. Not that she didn’t trust the colony was exactly what it appeared to be—a fledging colony making its mark on its chosen planet—but she was a marine and nosey as hell. A sergeant early in her training had drummed it into her to trust but verify so something didn’t bite her in the ass. Other than a snake, that was.
So she ran, legs eating up the distance quickly. She’d made sure to keep up her fitness levels during her time with the Lathar, which wasn’t difficult in the warrior-based culture. She’d learned fighting techniques she’d never dreamed of and taught them a few tricks herself, especially the younger ones. Used to fighting larger opponents all her life, along with Dani Black—seriously, she was still fangirling over meeting the legendary general—she’d been able to show them how to level the playing field.
The fields looked normal and boring, so she discounted them. Nothing doing there. But the closer she got to the foothills, things got interesting. Voices ahead warned her to keep out of sight. Instinct and training made her keep to the ridgeline and low as she approached. Flat on her stomach, she moved forward to the top of the rise, using a clump of grass to keep herself hidden. Her top rode up, dirt and stones digging into the soft surface of her stomach, but she ignored the discomfort to peek between the long bushes.
“What the fuck?” she breathed as a frown furrowed her brow.
There was a junk yard hidden behind the rise, between the fields and the back of the colony buildings. But not just any junkyard. In a colony this size she’d have expected some broken down industrial machinery. Standard colony issue stuff was rugged, yes, and designed to work for many years without maintenance, but eventually they did need some care and attention.
This wasn’t just industrial equipment though.
Her gaze widened as it wandered over machinery, small transports, even the skeleton of a ship bigger than Xaan’s in the process of being stripped. But what made her breathing catch wasn’t the ships, or the machines. It was the smashed-up ruins of a smaller colony and the large mound next to it. A chill went down her spine.
A destroyed colony and unmarked graves.
Xaan had been right. These people were lying to them.
She needed to warn him. And they needed to get off this planet. Fast.
Something was stalking them.
Halfway to the next tower Xaan’s instincts went on high alert. Between one moment and the next, all the hackles rose on the back of his neck. Normally, he would have stilled instantly, snapping out a field command to alert those around him that there was a problem, but if he did that here… he could give away the fact he wasn’t the human he was pretending to be.
So he continued walking, looking around circumspectly to check their surroundings. His fingers itched to go for the blaster normally holstered at his hip, but it wasn’t there. No amount of playing human would matter if he’d come here openly carrying Latharian weaponry. The most he had was a small, non-descript knife in his boot so close in design to the ones he’d seen Kenna and her friend Jane use that it shouldn’t cause comment. That was a weapon of last resort, though, one he didn’t want the humans around him knowing about.
Nothing moved in the trees on either side of the ridge they walked along, the leaves and bushes suspiciously quiet. It was like all the animals nearby had registered the presence of a predator and had frozen. It wasn’t because of the humans and, by extension, him… it couldn’t be. They’d been hearing bird song all morning, proving the local wildlife was used to the colonists’ activity out here.
No. This was something different. Something else had caused the silence. He could practically feel the tension in the air. The pent-up fear and adrenaline of the animals around them as they waited, ready to run for their lives if need be. Nature, on any planet, was dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, whether the dogs had four legs or eight.
Slowly, the humans around him started to become aware of the silence and the impending threat hanging like a malevolent cloud over them. They looked around, jumping at shadows as they belatedly made sure their weapons were all close at hand.
Lady goddess above. Xaan had to stop himself shaking his head. They were bloody clueless. How the draanth had they survived this long without either being wiped out or wiping themselves out? If whatever it was hidden in the shadows had been an Ovverta or even a Krin, they’d have been fucked even before they realized they were fucked.
A cold chill rolled down his spine at the thought. Could it be a Krin? There was no way it was an Ovverta. They were near extinct, with no more than a handful of breeding pairs left. Little more than a footnote in the history of the universe.
But the Krin? The predatory, carnivorous race was very much alive and well. Unfortunately. Many races would breathe a sigh of relief if they were as extinct as the Ovverta. But they weren’t. They still hunted their territory in the outer reaches of the galaxy, an area cordoned off with big warnings left there by every other sentient race that to cross the line was a death sentence.
They’d have left it at that, but the eight-armed bastards didn’t like staying in their territory. Oh no, they preferred prey from the inner systems. Intelligent, sentient prey that screamed as it was being devoured alive.
But not all inner system species were hunted. Although the Lathar were considered a rare delicacy by the Krin, they’d long ago learned that the Lathar not only fought back, but that any incursion against them caused a violent reaction beyond anything they could cope with, often resulting in them losing multiple breeding pods in retaliation for each Latharian victim.
No, it couldn’t be a Krin, Xaan told himself. If it was, the colonists would already be dead, or in the larder of the Krin’s ship. T
here was no way it would have let any of them escape. Not when it had found a planet without defenses. It would be like all its draanthic pod-days had come at once, and it had landed in the middle of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Plus, the wounds on those two bodies were telling. Krin did not mangle their food like that. Or leave so many juicy bits to rot and decay. They might leave the husk of a corpse, discarded like some empty nutrition wrapper, but that hadn’t been the case with the bodies in the colony medical bay.
Yes, some of the torso had been excised, but the chest and abdominal cavities had been largely intact. Which wasn’t indicative of a Krin attack. No Krin would have been able to resist the lure of a live, beating heart and a pair of breathing lungs. He’d seen them himself, in the inner systems, practically salivating as other species walked by them. Only the control collars they were forced to wear in polite society and the threat of Latharian or even Krynassis retaliation kept their murderous impulses in check.
“Keep it sharp,” Dex murmured. “Predators in this area,” he added as an aside to Xaan, as though to explain why normally macho males were jumping at shadows suddenly.
Xaan frowned. “Why did you pick this planet if the wildlife is so hostile?”
He might not have been a colonist—the planets he’d always made his home on had been Latharian for countless generations—but he knew there were lots of tests and surveys before resources were committed to placing a colony on any planet. At least, that’s how it worked with his people’s colonies. He couldn’t see human ones working much differently. It would be illogical to commit lives and resources to a planet where there was a high probability of the colonists dying or being killed by creatures unknown.
