by Clara Woods
They had no further clues, other than the coordinates to find the planet itself. Even though it wasn’t a big planet compared to populous worlds like Astur, with its tens of billions of inhabitants, searching the whole land surface wouldn’t be a small feat for one little ship.
“Let’s hope entering the planet from the exact angle our coordinates suggested will already get us close,” Doctor Lund murmured, but he didn’t sound too convinced.
Lenah nodded and nudged the ship forward on manual control. It rocked slightly when they entered the planet’s atmosphere, and instantly her color conception changed. While everything had looked turquoise from above, now the surface below had changed to a more natural green and gray.
“Fascinating,” Doctor Lund murmured. “Gas in the atmosphere is causing this color distortion.”
Sure enough, when Lenah looked up toward the horizon, the sky had taken on the same turquoise hue as the planet had before.
“The air reads breathable, if a little bit low on oxygen for humans,” he said. “It’ll be like climbing a mountain. We’ll have to be careful not to overexert ourselves while we’re still getting used to it.”
As they lowered down toward the planet, Lenah noticed more details. It was world of extremes. Lush tropical forests were interrupted by steep volcanoes with zero plant growth. There was no sign of any advanced culture living here, no buildings or infrastructure visible anywhere.
After almost two hours of systematically flying over the surface, Doctor Lund pointed his arm excitedly. “Look, a building. It appears to be a temple or palace of some kind.”
Lenah followed the direction he was pointing, and sure enough, a large stone structure was perched on the side of a giant volcano. It was built from the same material as the volcano itself, and easy to miss, despite its size. Its angle on the mountain spoke of master craftsmanship. Every square meter of the uneven terrain was taken up by an intricate combination of circular domes and thin towers, some of which were in ruins, while others formed perfect spheres. As Lenah pulled closer, the others joined them in the cockpit. Cassius crammed in behind Lenah’s seat, peeking over her shoulder.
“Are those ships?” he said softly, gazing toward a clearing a hundred meters down from the building.
Then Lenah saw what he’d seen. “Shit, we’re not the first ones to come here.”
That was worrisome. Wherever they went, it seemed someone was already there, waiting for them. Weren’t they supposed to be the first ones to uncover the Mapstone’s mystery? But the three small ships parked in the clearing a few hundred meters down from the temple didn’t look like they’d been there very long.
Lenah flew lower until they were hovering just over the tree line. Hopefully their careless approach hadn’t been spotted.
As the temple vanished from the window, she noticed the strange shapes of hardened lava stone that flowed straight in the direction of the temple, only to end in a neat wall right outside the structure. That was definitely odd. It didn’t look natural. The streams had hit some invisible wall and piled up there, instead of flooding the building.
“At least this might mean we’re in the right spot,” she murmured, referring to Cassius’ comment. She waved a hand toward the side window. “And those lava walls don’t look natural to me.”
“That’s a lot of old lava. This building should have been destroyed a long time ago,” Doctor Lund said.
“Yet here it is.”
“Let’s worry about the other ships first. The longer we stay in the air, the more likely they are to spot us,” Cassius said.
Agreeing, Lenah turned the ship toward a forest clearing a couple of kilometers away. “I can touch down over there.” Unfortunately, the Star Rambler didn’t have a life form scanner, and they wouldn’t know what was out there before they actually got out.
“We better gear up. Cassius and Persia, can you get us all set up with weapons? I think I even saw some rope somewhere in the cargo hold,” Lenah said. “Uz, please grab some meal bars from the kitchen. Doctor Lund, is there anything you can figure out about this planet from here?”
“I have a few scanners. I’ll go get them and see what I can find out.”
They filed out of the cockpit, leaving Lenah to land alone. She was glad that in the past few days of uneventful travel, everyone seemed to have slowly forgiven her. Even Uz had started to talk to her again. Now they were almost treating her like they had before, though they probably had no idea what that meant to Lenah. After talking to her father over the comm on the other ship, she’d noticed a distinct break in how she felt toward him. He was clearly lying, as if she was still some stupid child, but worse was that he also seemed unable to keep his smuggler buddies from pursuing and attacking her. Lenah shook her head, trying to free herself of the negative path her thoughts had taken so many times in the past few days.
The clearing she’d chosen to land in wasn’t large, and she needed to come in at a steep angle. Touching the control sticks felt natural now, and Lenah only needed one try to bring the ship down smoothly, worlds away from how she’d started in Port Dumas.
As she joined the others in the cargo hold, Cassius handed her a backpack, his gaze going down to her hip, where she had her pistol already holstered. After all the recent events, Lenah had started to carry it around with her most of the time. Even when she slept, it sat right next to her bunk.
“Did you figure something out?” she asked Doctor Lund, who was huddled over the screens of his readers. He was the only one not carrying a weapon, proclaiming that he and everyone else would be safer if he wasn’t armed.
“Not yet, I need to read it from the outside.”
Lenah sighed. She’d hoped to learn something, anything, about this place before leaving the safety of the ship.
“Ready?” At everyone’s nods, she opened the hatch door.
It was undeniably beautiful. The intense turquoise of the open sky could only be fully appreciated by standing under it. But Lenah also immediately noticed that breathing had become harder. The air also smelled of something resembling a stinky flower. Belatedly, Lenah realized it must be sulfur from all the volcanic activity. The hike up wasn’t going to be pleasant.
They stood just outside the hatch for a minute, but no monsters jumped out at them from the thick forest. Strange cries were audible in the distance, but she couldn’t make out who was making them. It must come from something big, though. She shuddered.
Lenah turned to the doctor. “Why is there nothing growing in this specific area, Lund?”
Lund was huddled over his readers. “I can read high acid content in the ground. The local fauna doesn’t seem to be able to conquer the area back.”
“Back from what? Lava explosions?” Cassius asked, turning around from scanning their surroundings in all four directions.
“Could be volcanic. Sometimes the craters spit out huge rocks that can fly several kilometers before hitting the ground. Or even a meteor, as the surrounding area doesn’t contain any of the same acids, and it seems evolutionarily ‘off’. Hardly any local fauna has found a way to live here.” Lund pointed absently toward a single thorny bush growing stubbornly in the clearing.
“What about monsters?” Persia asked from a few meters ahead of them. She was kneeling down at the area between the clearing and vegetation, leaning on her hammer. Lenah followed her there, seeing what she had discovered. A large claw print was visible in the dust. It was bigger than her head, and the nails dug several centimeters deep into the dust.
“That looks like a dinosaur print,” Doctor Lund said, frowning. He had followed them, and was taking images. “Huge creatures that lived on Earth even before humans. Many of them were actually vegetarians. They died out after an asteroid storm caused half the planet to burn.”
“Let’s hope that we’re indeed parked inside an asteroid landing mark, and all these things died with it,” Persia murmured with little conviction.
“I doubt it. Those marks don’t look
old, unless it never rains here. But that seems improbable with all the forest around.”
“Even more reason to do this quickly. Come on.” Lenah joined Cassius at the side of the clearing. He seemed to have decided where to enter the forest for their destination.
Lenah couldn’t determine which path was better than the other, seeing that they all were dirt tracks made by animals, not actual paths, but Cassius pulled out his huge knife and took off into the forest through a small opening, hacking away at the thick plant growth. They all followed him in silence for the next few minutes. Everyone but Cassius was breathing heavily, struggling with the slope and the thin air. Expecting the owner of the claw print to show up any time, Lenah was startled when she heard a cry in the distance.
“What was that? One of those dinosaur things?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Cassius said, but he started to move his head toward each side, like he did when trying to hear things no one else could pick up. They walked on in silence, the only sounds their heavy breathing and the occasional twig breaking when whatever lived in the forest scurried out of their way. As they came across another clearing, everyone was startled by the awful squeaking of several birds with scales that were sitting on large branches. Suddenly, the very earth started to shake underneath their feet. They all stopped abruptly in their tracks and looked around. Lenah drew her weapon, ready to take on whatever was about to burst out of the forest.
“Ah, yes, I expected this,” Doctor Lund said, typing something into one of his devices.
“You can detect these dinosaurs with one of your sensors?” Lenah asked.
“No, the earthquakes,” Lund said. “They must be a constant companion on a volcanic world like this.”
“You expected earthquakes and didn’t tell us?” Cassius hissed from the front of their group.
Lenah relaxed a fraction. Of course it was an earthquake, not the silent approach of a huge pre-historic animal. Not that she didn’t expect one to break out from behind a tree at any moment.
“Planets with such intense volcanic activity will almost constantly shake. We can’t feel the majority of those tremors, but this planet seems extreme. It might just be why it’s deemed uninhabitable, despite the pleasant climate and breathable atmosphere.”
“That and the dino-things lurking around,” Persia said under her breath.
Luckily the ground had stopped shaking, and their group continued on. The scaly birds continued their terrible singing. Apparently the earthquakes didn’t alarm local creatures. Then again, birds could fly away if it got dangerous, something Lenah and her group couldn’t do. Then there was that giant footprint. She was imagining the size of whatever animal belonged to those claws when, suddenly, silence fell.
First the squeaks farther away stopped, then the ones closer to them. Cassius halted and started listening in all directions. He pointed toward their right. “See that tall tree over there? There’s a split in the middle. Make a run for it.”
Persia didn’t hesitate to follow his orders, and Uz grabbed Doctor Lund by the arm and dragged him in the same direction. Lenah saw that Cassius wasn’t following, and she hesitated. “Aren’t you coming?”
He made a shooing motion toward her. “Go. I want to see what we’re up against.”
“Can’t you check from within the tree trunk?” Lenah could hear twigs breaking now, and loud rustling of leaves as something approached. She mimicked Cassius, who’d lifted his laser gun.
“Do you always talk when you should be running for your life instead?”
“I don’t have a particularly broad experience when it comes to running for my life,” Lenah said. She was glad to have an opportunity to banter instead of standing scared of whatever was coming. But cyborg or not, she didn’t want Cassius to stay out here alone trying to protect them. She figured that was what he was doing.
Cassius didn’t have time to answer, because something huge started to move the trees just a few meters ahead. The fast footsteps had ceased, and were replaced by slower ones. Whatever was there, it seemed sentient enough to look carefully for its foes, or its dinner. Then six huge legs, each larger than the tree trunks next to it, came into view. They were followed by part of a spiked and scaled torso. The skin was covered by scales, and the body structure resembled that of a giant lizard with two extra legs. Cassius was motioning to her to not shoot, so they waited in silence. The full figure broke into view. It was an ugly beast with a tall neck that stuck out as high as the tallest treetops, towering over them, six times their size. Scaly wings were folded on its back. It looked down on them with a slow, lazy motion, and Lenah saw that two tongues shot out of two mouths that were stacked on top of each other under a bright-green nose. Ugh.
Seeing those mouths, Lenah had no doubt it considered them dinner. This was anything but one of those vegetarian dinosaurs.
Still, Cassius didn’t shoot. Was he waiting to see if it would attack? Lenah found the possibility that something with two mouths full of dangerous-looking teeth wouldn’t attack them unrealistic. But she’d learned to trust Cassius’ leadership in fights, so she waited as well. The beast turned two green eyes on them in a curious gaze.
Considering how far away from civilized space they were, it was entirely possible that it had never seen anything humanoid before. But then it seemed to come to the conclusion that they qualified as food, and the two jaws snapped in their direction. For such a large creature, it was fast. Lenah had barely followed the movement when Cassius had already started shooting. His initial shot against the creature’s neck didn’t stop its approach. He adjusted his aim and shot several more laser beams with no visible reaction, until one beam hit an eye. The monster let out a screech, like a big version of the birds she’d heard earlier. Then it turned its head, looking at them with its good eye.
Lenah ducked away and lined up her pistol to aim at it when she saw something coming in from above. A shadow swooped over them, and something swooshed by her with a gush of wind and hit Cassius straight in the back. Lenah looked up, managing to fire a few beams in the general direction of the beast’s face, and saw that a tail with a nasty-looking stinger at its tip was coming at her. She stumbled out of the way, landing hard on her hands and dropping her pistol in the process. With a quick motion, she grabbed hold of it and got to her feet. All those hours spent in fighting lessons with Cassius had at least given her a good technique to get up from the ground again. She tried to find Cassius, but he’d flown somewhere through the air and vanished from view. The creature had turned its head, looking for Cassius as well.
Hoping he was fine and would quickly be able to rejoin the fight, Lenah went for the cover of the woods. Leaves crunched loudly under her feet as she ran, and she hoped the beast didn’t have good hearing. But if it heard her, it still wanted Cassius even more, because it was still facing toward where she suspected he had fallen.
Finally, she reached the large tree trunk she’d run for and knelt down next to it, pulling up her pistol.
She spotted Cassius standing underneath the beast. He was shooting at its body, but to no effect. The scales were protecting it against the heat of the laser. With his enhanced arm, he was trying to fight off the stinger, but it kept coming at him. Lenah took several precious seconds to aim, her nerves threatening to get the better of her. She shot three times in rapid succession, and her second shot landed straight into the creature’s second eye. It let out a scream, but didn’t let go of Cassius. Instead, it seemed to double down its effort on him.
Lenah kept firing, finally hitting the eye again. A giant head turned toward her. It seemed to search for a moment, and she ducked to hide herself behind the tree. She realized her mistake when she heard the unmistakable sound of sniffing. Big, scary sniffing. Peeking around, she saw the green nose inching closer until thumping footsteps sounded, accompanied by the cracking of branches. They might injure the creature’s eye, maybe even blind it, but it could still smell her.
As silently as
she could, Lenah ran over to another tree, hoping the thing wouldn’t instantly catch on. She crouched and took aim again, but worried that shooting the eyes wouldn’t be enough this time. Sure enough, the creature was approaching fast, adjusting its course toward her new location. She shot at it just as a big head lowered down on her. She had to throw herself out of the way of the stinger a moment later, and her laser burst went wide.
Cassius sprinted into view. He wasn’t carrying his gun anymore; instead, the blade of his long knife blinked in the sunlight coming through the tree cover.
In an impressive show of his cyborgness, he launched off the floor, shooting up higher than should have been possible, and landed straight on the creature’s neck. It jerked and almost threw him off, but Cassius grabbed hold of a scaly thorn and stayed up while keeping hold of the knife with his other arm. He swung up and balanced himself onto the beast’s neck in a mad sprint. It turned its head and snapped at him. Nimbly, like this was easy, he avoided contact with those two jaws. Cassius planted himself in a wide stance, his knife drawn, and the next time the jaws snapped at him, he stabbed it. It let out a terrible screech that was answered by several similar sounds in the distance. Cassius stabbed the creature’s mouth a few more times, until the sounds stopped. Finally, it went down, felling a nearby tree with its big body.
Uz and Persia came running out of cover a moment later, Doctor Lund hurrying after them. “I can read electrical waves coming from that direction,” he said, seeming unfazed by the fight that had just happened. Cassius, breathing hard, walked away, looking at the ground for his gun.
“Let’s go,” Lenah said. “I didn’t like the sound of those screeches in the distance. Sounded like this one’s buddies to me.”
Cassius nodded when he returned, and they continued to walk uphill. Lenah kept looking back over her shoulders for the next creature to darken the sky, but nothing came. Instead, the forest suddenly stopped, and the large structure of the temple towered above them.
