Nicraan's field communicator beeped and Capel flashed upon its tiny screen. "Any variations in readings?" he asked.
"No hostile elements in the environment. Temperature's dropping, though. About fifty noches Heit." Then Matasire added, "Life forms reported in the area. Non-hostile and not harmful to our mission."
"Keep checking with Rover on nodely intervals," Capel told him. "BeeTee and I are still busy probing that energy field. It could be the cause in the temperature change. You could be nearing it, we can't be sure of its exact location."
"Any clues?"
"Some, but nothing conclusive."
"Tauron?"
"Could be; if it is, there's variations."
"Understood. Nicraan, out."
The communicator went silent, and the pilot returned it to his utility belt. He was about to tell Retho to wait up for him when the bushes and trees suddenly thinned out. A clearing loomed ahead of them. Beautiful bird-wing butterflies fluttered on the air currents as they darted from one delicious burgeon to another.
Nicraan's techcoder blipped wildly for attention.
Studying the screen, he called for Retho to rejoin him. The screen flashed as it cleared and new data captioned a small computer diagram of some mechanical object ahead.
"What is it?" Retho questioned the pilot as he came to stand beside the worried male. "The transmitter?"
Nicraan nodded, made an adjustment on his portable scanner and watched the screen. Information filled the small screen, and Nicraan grabbed for his communicator.
"Yes, Nicraan?" Capel responded to the call the pilot had placed.
"Capel, I have some data I think you should know about. It's not good."
"Report."
"That transmitter is just ahead. Techcoder scans it be an unmanned probe."
"Origin?"
"Tauron," Nicraan breathed, the word almost lost in his choking throat.
Retho gasped and turned pale.
Capel was quiet for a moment, thinking as he read the data being relayed to the Rover as it displayed itself on the drivepit's holoset. Eventually, he said, "Negate the threat, then report in."
"Understood. Command received and affirmed. Nicraan, out." Clicking off the communicator, Nicraan returned both it and the techcoder to his belt. His hand came back with a laser sidearm.
Retho eyed the gun and moved to grab the pilot's arm, saying desperately, "How are we supposed to destroy a Tauron probe?!"
Nicraan held up the weapon with confidence, replying with equal strength in his tone, "With everything we've got. Arm yourself."
Reluctantly, Retho closed up his specimen cases and withdrew his lasergun. Thumbing the selector to KILL mode, he trekked after his intimate toward where the techcoder had detected the Tauron transmitter.
CHAPTER TEN:
Dara stood with Moela on the flight deck, both with mouths agape as they listened to Capel's report. The one-quarter-size holographic figure of the commander floated in free-flight over the hologram jutter disc of the communication viewer. Even though quarter-sized holos didn't show a lot of detail, the two females clearly saw the commander's image's expression was grim and the tone of voice coming over the holoset's concealed speakers was desperate.
"I hate to add to your dire report, Sire," Moela said, glancing at a science station's relay holoset on the command panel.
"What have you got?" the commander asked.
"The Class-M star's growth rate is fluctuating. The planet is like a chronometer ticking..."
"How long?" Capel breathed heavily. He thought that if they must die, sooner would be less painful than later. But though he accepted the logic of that conclusion, he was not yet ready to stop fighting for every instant of life left to them.
"Rotates...maybe nodes," Moela said. "It's a chaotic system, Commander. Which variable will pass the energy threshold and cause everything to disintegrate..." She shook her head. "It's completely unpredictable."
"Best start close-down procedures immediately," Capel was saying. "We'll finish up here as soon as we can, and then head back and help you."
"What of the outer perimeter equipment?" Dara asked.
"Have to pick up what we can on the return route," Capel replied. "Keep all scans on top priority watch for any advancement from Space, Moela."
"It'll be difficult with all the solar particle and meteorite activity in this sector -- that red supergiant is sure causing a lot of hypospace interference; but, I'll run a double check on anything that is heading our way," the science officer said, trying to smile.
Capel appreciated the effort, and returned a weak grin as he signed off, "Do what you can. We'll be back as soon as possible. 'Rover, out."
The holoviewer went out and the two females faced each other. Both held fright in their eyes, but both knew that this was not a time for raw emotion. Professional organization was in order if they were going to escape.
"I'll handle the outside operations," Dara told her daughter, heading for the Inner Door of the airlock. "Have on-board computer assist you with pre-flight checks. BeeTee has programmed it for emergency lift-off procedures."
Moela smiled again, this time more convincingly. "Terran Ancients be with us," she whispered, and then turned to face the flight console set-up. "Computer," she called.
"Request?"
"Begin all pre-flight checks and begin ground-status close-down procedures. This is not a drill. Activate emergency lift-off programs."
"Affirmed."
A moment later the ground began to tremble.
Nicraan's communicator bleeped quietly for attention, and with annoyance, the pilot answered the call. His face softening as Capel's image filled the small screen.
"...I am taking the 'Rover and BeeTee to the outer perimeter outposts to begin collection of equipment. I'll leave Retho and you the Getabout at this location for return to Pioneer Four," Capel said, after Nicraan acknowledged the call.
"Understood."
"I don't want to take any chances," Capel went on to explain, despite the fact that it was unnecessary. "Ancients know how long that Tauron probe has been monitoring us and been relaying back to the Empire. I want to get off this rock as quickly as we can."
"Understood, Commander," Nicraan replied patiently. "We will rendezvous at Pioneer Four."
"'Rover, out."
The screen darkened and Nicraan returned the small hand-held communicator to his belt. Beside him, Retho had taken out his techcoder and was tracking the probe. A beep emitted from the device, and Nicraan looked at his intimate with puzzlement.
"The probe is mobile," Retho reported, almost telepathic to Nicraan's thoughts.
"Heading?"
"Directly at us!"
"Prepare," Nicraan ordered, squatting down in the brush with sidearm poised for firing. His green-black regulation fatigue almost seemed to blend into the environs.
Retho joined him, eyes glued to the portable device clutched tightly in his grip. The small screen that faced the techcoder held a sonar graph with a yellow dot. The glowing speck was moving from the outer sectors toward the center with frightening speed.
“I think it's detected us," Retho breathed, poising his weapon through the weeds in the general direction of where the probe should burst through the dense undergrowth. "Heading three-five point seven mark," he reported tense. "And, Nicraan, I'm picking up a planetary relay signal --" Retho recalibrated the techcoder to try and get a fix on the new signal. "Give me a moment..."
Sweaty palms nervously moved around the butt of Nicraan's sidearm in anticipation. The pilot licked his lips with anxiousness for battle. Even though Nicraan was never trained to be a warrior, his orientation seminars on combat back at the Academy suddenly rushed into his consciousness, and old drills became reality. The anxious Matasire was tall, dark, and inoffensively handsome. It was times like these, when there was insurmountable stress, that Retho noticed just how breathtaking Nicraan was, how strong and masculine, how sharp-minded and confident -- ho
w much he loved the male. It was times like these that Retho understood why ancient armies were mostly same-gendered and coupled-off -- making the legions stronger in battle by the tie of love and brotherhood.
Retho's techcoder's beeping [which indicated the probe's progress through the jungle] increased steadily into a crescendo and the foliage around suddenly began to rustle with unseen activity. Abandoning the second signal's source, Retho returned his full attention to the scene at hand.
Their breath quickened and guns wavered to try to find a target.
"It's on us!" Retho cried as a figure moved within the shadows. At the periphery of his vision a patch of gray like a watery, blurred barrel darted from the light. Retho snapped around. The muzzle of his sidearm leaped up, sweeping from left to right, ready to meet an attack.
"What is it, Retho?" Nicraan's head jerked to the left. The pilot's eyes narrowed as he stared at his young companion. Questioning creases furrowed his highbrow. "Can you see it?"
"Thought I saw it move over there." Retho tilted his head toward the muted glow of the overhead suns coming through the dense upper-storey fronds some fifty micromets to the south.
The techcoder had gone silent; its sensor was being jammed. Retho tabbed the reset control three times before giving up. "Nothing," he whispered.
"It has to be here somewhere..." Nicraan stopped without warning, his sixth sense swelled with alarm.
Retho as well was wide-eyed as his breast brimmed with alert. A split micronode later he caught the same image out of the corner of his eye.
Chaos reigned!
The instant it took Retho's mind to accept what his eyes saw and comprehend the trap they had blindly walked into, the probe opened fire. Sizzling beams of blue-white energy seared the day.
Retho shouted a warning. From the corner of his eye, Retho saw an actinic burst sliced into the trunk of a near-by tree. Flames flared on the rough exterior bark as the tree crumpled and tumbled to the jungle floor. Retho reacted rather than thought. His finger pressed down on his sidearm’s' firing button. Yellow and blue lances bulleted in quick bursts from the weapon's muzzle. A deadly accurate spray of laser flak spat out at knee level cut into the probe charging from the jungle.
"Back!" Retho shouted at Nicraan while he re-aimed his weapon. "Move out of here!"
Nicraan did not protest. Pressing off short bursts of cover fire from his own weapon, he retreated into the protective shadows of the vegetation.
The staccato barking of laser pistols drowned the hissing whine of the probe’s energy blasts when Retho's eyes lifted to the solo advance of the Tauron transmitter again.
A humorless smile lifted the corners of Retho's mouth when he unleashed another twenty-round burst into the probe. The trap the alien machine sought to spring had a bottleneck -- a thicket of dense thorn bushes. The probe couldn't get around it quickly enough to evenly disperse and attack effectively.
The barrel-shaped, multi-limbed probe whirled around aimlessly as it tried to rescan the area to attack. Small spot fires formed a rash across its front as Retho's latest parade of pulsed laser fire bombarded the trim-lined machine. Its anti-grav boosters fired to help stabilize itself, but only caused the probe to gyrate to one side and collide with a massive tree trunk.
Nicraan took aim from his hiding place and fired. Retho joined him, and together the concentrated firepower penetrated the tough outer shell of the probe.
Glass shattered and, for an instant, fire flared. Then clarity returned and small fading wisps of smoke clung to the air.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
The everglades lay wreathed in silvery haze. Great primordial fern-trees reached into the air then drooped down again with the weight of their own leaves. The fronds captured miniature pools of glittering dew-water.
"Looks like rain," Capel said to BeeTee, glancing up at the sky.
The lights of the Landrover pierced the grayness of the bog. The vehicle had come to rest beside scummy waters and gigantic trees that blocked out the burning overhead light of the planet's three suns.
Capel took his biocoder from his belt and turned it on. The bio readings were what he had expected; like the long-range scans. The animate life signals matched nothing he had ever seen before, but they existed. Evolution was running wild. Each species was growing and changing and aiming for its own extinction, without creating any diversity, any new forms, to take over when the old died out. Not that it much mattered. If Moela's estimates were right, the evolutionary process would be only about half done when the more violent geological processes tore the whole planet apart. Soon after that, the sub-atomic attractions would break down, and the entire mass of the star system would generate into a gaseous blob, a fiery formless plasma: a super nova.
The area had become cocooned into a white blanket of mists. Capel couldn't see a thing. His vision was entirely obstructed by the dense whiteness pressing against his and BeeTee's bodies. His only choice in breaking down the weather station and stowing it inside the 'Rover was to go solely by BeeTee's instrumental intuition. He eyes weren't registering anything, even as Capel walked from 'Rover to station and back again and again.
Capel's eyes eventually, gradually began to grow accustomed to the gloom all around him so that he could just barely see the twisted trunks and roots of grotesque-looking trees. The enormous gray trees had gnarled and intertwining roots that rose far above Capel before they joined formed trunks. He tilted back his head and could see the branches, high above, that seemed to form a canopy with the low-hanging clouds. Just months ago, this area had been a clear, thriving forest...now it resembled something from a piece of horror fiction.
Leaving BeeTee in the aft compartment, Capel cautiously stepped out of the Landrover's exitportal and walked along a fog-shrouded trail back to the station's position mostly by memory, a little by sight.
The pathway was sided by a small body of water. The black waters were serene, the surface foggy and almost opaque. The afternoon was quickly burning away; Capel shivered in the thickening fog that closed in on him like something alive. Shadows loomed ominously all around him as he trekked farther away from the security of the Landrover. Distant cries that were definitely interran emanated from the distant forest and Capel shuddered as he imagined the beasts that might be making them.
In the distance, the commander heard the rumble of thunder and suddenly the air was filled with the mist of premature rain.
The fog was so thick that Capel could scarcely see in front of him as he walked. Out in the dense forest he heard a sharp snapping noise and felt a chill run through him. The nape of his neck prickled as tiny droplets of rain drizzled down from the concealed sky. The ground underneath Capel's boots began to squirm with moisture with each footfall as the commander made his way.
Within moments, the fog began to disperse, to snake around the swamp in diaphanous swirls as a torrent of rain showered down upon the bog. This damned storm, Capel thought, it might ruin everything. Something dashed across the path, a white flash in the rain. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Capel began panting, nearly out of breath as he quickened his pace through the dense, wet growth. He was drenched and miserable.
Making a turn in the small path he had been following, Capel saw a huge, tangled tree, its blackened bark soaked with water and crumbling. Raindrops slapped on its leaves. Small ponds of water, where the gigantic roots had grown to form a natural archway, surrounded the base of the tree. As he moved forward, slimy, dripping things brushed against his face and the moisture from the soggy surroundings began to seep in to his uniform and boots. A shiny beetle the size of his hand scurried in front of him and up the slimy tree trunk to join a cluster of its mates.
Capel caught his breath and stepped back, seeking another route. The rain continued to plunk down upon the commander without any sign of ceasing as he trudged through the muddy puddles of the bog around the archway. The heavy raindrops spattered his head, so hard that it hurt. As he
neared the site, he felt relief that at last he would be able to pick up the last piece of equipment and return to the 'Rover -- thus, getting out of this annoying, persistent downpour.
Capel came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth. He stopped at seeing the small fusion generator and began to wonder how he was going to carry the power pack for the weather station back the Landrover without ripping his back muscles. He could probably heave it onto his shoulders -- if he could get a grip on it; its sides were slick with rain. He circled the generator thoughtfully --- one foot skidded onto the edge of a sand pit -- skidded and slipped -- he was tumbling. A sinkhole had formed as a result of the deluge and the sand had turned to mud and was like grease under his feet. He skidded a short way into the pit. He tried to climb out, but this only triggered new waves of sand and muck shimmering down the sides. He redoubled his efforts, falling to his hands and knees and scrambling --
Rain thrummed all around, sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the depression making it hard for Capel to see. Lightning flashed suddenly white and it was then that he noticed the scattering of bones, small skulls and shells around the edge of the pit.
"Uh oh ..."
The sand at the center of the pit was beginning to stir.
"Oh, Ancients." The fear came rising up in Capel like a cork released at fifty fathoms. His hands were shaking and trembling. He flattened himself on the sand and began to breaststroke upward and outward. It almost worked. It would have worked -- if the thing at the bottom of the pit hadn't started pulling sand out from under Capel's feet. He started sliding backward --
Suddenly, Capel knew what lay beneath the center of the pit. It was the same type of creature that had taken the life of his youngest. It was a crivit. A creature that lived underground and tunneled its way towards its victims.
Sidereal Quest Page 10
