Dane pressed it, for a small blue flame to appear at one end.
“Ha!” He felt a primal relief. Just so long as he had fire, he could do anything, right?
Gathering his new belongings to himself, putting on the poncho and shoving the rest into the pouches of his suit, he turned to address the problem of getting out—to find that there was a turnable wheel to one side, which he hadn’t seen in the chaos of his departure.
Dane seized it and started to turn the incredibly stiff metal.
“Argh, come on you piece of . . .” Eventually, it managed to move half a turn, and with it there came a loud hiss of escaping gasses. The half turn was all it appeared to take to break some kind of seal and start an automatic process, as one entire panel of the shuttle suddenly popped out under its own miniature explosive charges.
For Dane to see a rich and deep canopy of forest all around him.
“Uh . . .” The shuttle was hanging almost twenty feet up, caught in the trees. When he poked his head out of the open panel and looked up, he could see more limbs and boughs and vegetation ascending above him, as well as the tattered streamers of the parachutes behind. Beyond that, he could see the dazzle of a distant blue sky—as well as streaks of crimson that appeared to be clouds.
Is it near evening here? Dane wondered, before shaking his head at the task at hand. Surviving.
“Right, okay . . .” He found himself breathing hard as the shuttle rocked back and forth from his movement. If he wasn’t careful, then he would be pitched out of it and break his legs on the way down in the first five minutes of his challenge!
“Okay, steady. Find the nearest branch.” Dane looked around to either side of the shuttle—to see a face looking at him from the nearest canopy.
Dane froze (well, apart from the swaying back and forth).
There, in the opposite tree, was a creature very much like a baboon. It was covered in a fine black-and-ochre fur and was about a foot and a half in height, he guessed. Two arms and two legs and a long tail—but instead of a regular mammal mouth and nose, this creature had a bony protrusion like a beak.
“Tkk?” The creature cocked its head curiously at Dane and blinked.
“I’m not interested.” Dane sighed, turning instead to see that there were in fact no nearby boughs big enough for him to easily reach from here. He would instead have to clamber onto the outside of the shuttle until he thought that, with a bit of swaying and a bit of reaching, he could find the nearest, safest vantage point.
“Out I go, then.” Dane grabbed onto the uppermost lip of the shuttle over the opening and slowly, tentatively, moved himself onto the edge of metal. He could feel it hard against the rubber souls of his training boots—which were lightweight, because they were designed to be worn inside the Assisted Mechanized Plate he had been wearing when he had been kidnapped.
Kidnapped by alien invaders . . . The thought made him chuckle, slightly hysterically, when he considered that his life was now almost the same as a pulp sci-fi movie.
Only at the end of those, the heroes always get to return home, Dane thought with a sudden pitch in his stomach. He didn’t even know where in the universe he was or how he could ever see Earth again.
Twang!
The shuttle suddenly lurched as one of the coils of rope or fiber that had been holding him in place snapped. Dane clutched on with all his might at the metal edge as the shuttle swayed violently back and forth.
Oh crap, oh crap, oh . . .
He had to get moving, and fast, before he ended up down there on the forest floor with the entire shuttle on top of him.
“Easy does it, keep it together . . .” He slid his foot around the metal rim that encircled the plates of the shuttle, edging his hand at the same time.
“Tkk?” There was a movement in the trees above him, and he saw that the creature had now crossed to his tree, where the parachutes were entangled—and it had brought at least two of its friends. His upward glance saw their small but muscular bodies moving easily and swiftly through the branches, using their long hands and their tails to catch onto the thinner limbs as they moved—and darting their heads forward at the shining material of the parachute.
“Hey!” Dane managed to wave one arm as the shuttle, not leaning to one side, suddenly lurched.
“Hey—stop that!” he shouted, and rather amazingly, the ape-birds did. For a second. They peered at him curiously, before returning to pluck at the bright parachute material that had invaded their arboreal realm.
Twang!
Pressured by the creature’s interference and Dane’s erratic climbing, another of the threads suddenly snapped—and this time the shuttle lurched violently to one side, lowering itself down by several yards, and the marine felt his feet slip . . .
“Aaargh!” Dane swung, hanging from his fingertips and making the entire shuttle swing like a pendulum.
“Tk-tkk?” the creatures up above him paused in their vandalism to peer at the creature making odd shouting noises below them, before they went back to pecking at the bright material.
“Dammit!” Dane swung a foot, catching the edge of the shuttle and losing it again as it swayed back and forth. With a jolt, it suddenly lowered a further few feet to the floor.
“No! No! No!” Dane could feel the strength in his arms beginning to go.
But the rocking motion of the shuttle was bringing him closer to a nest of thick branches, he saw.
Twang!
Another strand unraveled, along with a bloom of parachute for the shuttle to jerk a few feet lower. Dane knew that whatever he intended to do, he had to do it now.
He kicked out with his legs, making the shuttle wobble and start to swing in a slow and deep arc. Near its apex, he kicked outwards again, tensing his back to give it the maximum push so that . . .
The shuttle swung back toward the trees faster now, and they came up fast—Dane felt his heart skip a beat as it almost reached the apex of the arc . . .
Twang!
“Hgh!” Dane kicked his legs out as he released his grip, at the same time as another of the few remaining parachute cords snapped—and the marine was flailing the few feet through the air to thrash his arms and legs out wildly.
The shuttle shot through the branches and leaves beside him. He swore that he felt its drag just before he crashed into the branches, grabbing with hands and elbows and arms and knees and everything that he could use as he tore through several layers of tree growth before his grip held.
THWAM! There was a resounding boom as the shuttle hit the floor, and Dane could feel the reverberations move through the timber of the tree he was clutching onto. Terror and adrenaline swept away any exhaustion as he scrabbled deeper and closer into the foliage, finding that he could thump himself against the tree trunk and feel at least moderately safe.
“Tkk-tk?” The ape-bird creatures above him clicked and whistled, and Dane did not say anything polite in return.
“If this is what this planet is going to be like, I think I’d rather go ten rounds with the war master,” Dane grumbled to himself when he had finally regained his breath. He started to ease himself down the tree, moving branch to branch just like one of his new non-feathered but beaked nemeses.
By the time that Dane had reached the forest floor, he was already exhausted, and his heart was hammering hard. The jungle around him was thick and green, the bark of the trees deep brown or a light, creamy green.
There were vines here that were almost as thick and strong as the saplings that he had to push aside to clear a path. There were low plants like ferns with darker, almost purple leaves that reacted to his movement by curling up suddenly.
And Dane realized that he had no idea whatsoever what he was supposed to do in this place. He had no map and had been given no instructions that he understood about what this challenge meant.
“By claw and scale, by blood and fire . . .” he repeated the words that the queen had said before stuffing him into the shuttle-capsule. They weren
’t much to go on, to be sure. It wasn’t like one of the marine training sessions, he thought. There weren’t any mission goals or definitions. No objectives that he had to achieve or places that he had to get to.
“I guess I just have to survive, then?” Dane thought, looking up through the canopy at the twinkling light above, interspersed with a deeper, ruddy hue. Maybe it was getting toward evening, as he had first guessed—which meant that he should try and find somewhere to hole up for the night, somewhere like a hollow under a tree.
“I don’t want to be wandering around here in the middle of the night,” Dane advised himself as he stepped forward, his serrated dagger in hand.
And water, he suddenly realized as he heard the distant sound of a gurgling stream. He would need to get water.
Luckily, as a marine, Dane had a small amount of experience in wilderness survival. Not a great amount, because the goal of those wearing Assisted Mechanized Plate was primarily salvage and combat. But he had still been enlisted in the Marine Corps, and that meant that he had some wilderness trekking and survival training. He and others had been dropped in the more remote parts of the foothills of the Rockies or the upper Cascades with limited resources and expected to return to their local training camp in one, two, or three nights.
Dane had to hope that this alien world at least obeyed some of the same natural laws that his own planet had.
“Water has to flow downhill, right?” he said as he found the ground curving down slightly, with the jungle trees clutching onto the side of the hill and their roots forming thick, natural terraces in the forest humus. Small creatures and insects the size of birds scuttled away into the undergrowth as Dane hacked a path with his knife.
For the ground to sweep down abruptly, so Dane could look across the valley to his near surroundings.
He was on one sheer slope of a valley that swept down to a fast-flowing stream, while the other side was also deeply jungled, but not as steep.
And there were some shapes poking up through the trees. Shapes that were creamy-looking and angular—like ruins?
Huh. Dane squinted at them. So, this planet was inhabited once? Had it been by ancient Exin (the queen had said that this planet was a part of some ancient ritual challenge for them . . .) or did those buildings belong to someone else? Another indigenous life form?
A part of Dane’s brain advised him to stay well clear of spooky-looking ruins in the middle of an alien jungle. But another part of him, the marine part, knew that there would be shelter, walls, perhaps dry rooms there too. He might even find something like food or a container so that he could carry water with him, he hoped.
“And even if it is still inhabited . . .” he told himself, “then perhaps I can sneak in, steal a real gun and some better gear. Or even find a way to . . .”
Dane caught himself. He had been about to say “get off this planet” or had dreams of finding a radio transmitter to call Earth for help—but then he realized that neither possibility was anything but a distant miracle. He was deep in Exin territory. He had no idea if they even had the technology necessary to send a message to his part of the galaxy.
But they have warp technology, the marine in him said. Escape is possible.
And besides . . . Dane’s jaw hardened. All he had to do was to survive right now. To try and stay alive as long as possible so that, when the chance came to be reunited with his Marine Corps and his squad—then he could take it. And he would do so bringing with him all of the experience and knowledge that he had so far gleaned from his capture.
All right. Dane felt better when he had at least some kind of mission plan, even if it was a very unlikely one. He set off down the slope toward the river, his feet sliding so that he had to grab onto the trees for support.
Dane reached the water’s edge with a sudden slide, a gasp, and a splash as his feet plunged into the freezing-cold waters. He paused instinctively afterwards, looking around as a flight of brightly-feathered birds rose in an alarming crescendo up into the skies around him.
Well, I hope no one is paying attention, he thought. He looked up and down the rocky stream one more time before slowly lowering his hand to spoon mouthful after mouthful. The water was good. Refreshing and clear and cold, and soon Dane was splashing onto the other side and scrabbling up the boulders to a low, pebbled beach and collapsing on his back under the warm sun.
This isn’t too bad, Dane started to tell himself, when a shadow fell over him.
“Hssss . . .”
Dane’s eyes snapped open for him to see that a large creature was walking along one of the overhanging branches above the river and the beach, and it was looking at him with bright yellow eyes.
No, the creature wasn’t walking, it was stalking, Dane’s mind clarified. He wasn’t being approached, he was being stalked. Hunted.
The creature in question had six powerful legs and would have reminded Dane of a panther or a cat, were it not for the shiny black scales that covered its body.
Its head, too—was definitely not catlike. Instead of a feline maw, it had a long, bony snout that was partially open to look at him, and on either side of its head were two terrifyingly intent yellow eyes.
Dane could see the size of its large, curving claws that bit into the wood as it crept toward him.
“Er . . . nice kitty?” Dane breathed.
And the creature pounced.
Dane kicked himself into a roll out of the way as powerful scaled claws slammed into the pebbles, spraying them every which way as it skidded . . .
And Dane was already bounding up onto his feet and plunging through the undergrowth.
“Hsss!”
He heard the sudden snarl and felt hot breath as Dane leapt to one side, for the black-scaled creature to surge past him with outstretched claws. With pinprick, momentary awareness, Dane saw how the creature’s claws tore through branches and exploded leaves in their wake. He threw himself further into the jungle once again, zig-zagging around the trees as the creature bellowed behind him and turned . . .
Dane ducked under a branch and skidded—there was a fallen tree, dead ahead!
He slid down, spraying dirt to either side as he slid underneath it.
For the creature to spring and pounce up onto one of the branches above, and then leap down to the other side of the fallen tree. Dane pulled himself back the way he had come and ran in a new direction.
“HSSS!” The creature snarled in fury and leapt over the log again, its claws raking huge gouges in the tree as it followed him.
“Come on, come on, come on!” Dane was gasping as he ran as fast as he could. He asked his body to give him everything—and he still knew that there was no way that he could outrun the thing that was behind him. All he could do was to hope that he could outwit and delay it by switch-backing and turning through the undergrowth.
Dane saw a denser patch of trees where the vines appeared to almost form a living hedge, and he threw himself wildly into it, crashing through the vines and finding himself in slightly clearer forest. There was space between the trees and vines on this side, as well as large, hulking lumps of rock.
“Hsss!” His hunter followed him, crashing through the same thicket with ease as Dane ran desperately forward.
To realize that the creature behind him had slowed and then scrabbled to a stop.
Huh? He didn’t understand why it would do such a thing, but he counted his blessings as he continued to run. He wasn’t stupid enough to stop.
“Hssss . . .” With a final, receding snarl, the scaled cat appeared to give up on its quarry, loping back the way it had come and leaping through the hole in the thicket as Dane threw a glance over his shoulder.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dane wheezed as he slowed to a jog and then a panting, hyperventilating stop. “You think you can turn Dane Williams into dinner? Then you clearly have got another thing coming!” He panted and gasped, turning back to take a step.
To see an Exin standing before him and snarling
.
10
The Ruins
Ah, Dane thought after recovering from his initial surprise. The Exin before him wasn’t a real Exin, not in the sense that it was biological.
What stood, semi-crouching and about to rise out of a thicket of forest vines, was one of the stone Exin that he’d seen back on the faraway Planet 892. It was carved, lifelike and life-size and in immaculate detail, out of glistening black rock.
“These guys sure like their statues, don’t they?” Dane muttered as he relaxed his grip on the tooth dagger and lowered his hand. The Exin before him was one of the four-armed type, and it held in stone hands a long metal shaft of a spear with a leaflike blade that looked as though it would have once been fantastically sharp were it not for decades or generations of weather and rust.
Dane wondered if it was a warning or a celebration, or indeed whether it was some kind of trap—the point of the spear jutted out across the rough path to just under the height of Dane’s breastbone, which would probably have put it at the height of a regular Exin’s navel.
If they have navels, Dane wondered. Probably not.
But whatever they were, the spear point would have been mighty painful if someone, running from one of the forest predators like Dane had been, ran straight into it.
“Barbaric,” Dane grumbled to himself, carefully stepping around the statue to see what it and the bushy vines around it were hiding.
A town. Of sorts.
It was a ruined town, Dane saw. Rounded stone buildings made out of natural rock, and most of them were covered with masses of vines or something like jungle ivy. Dane saw that many of them had smashed-in roofs or walls, but several still had rounded openings at their base or high up in their walls that could have been doors and windows. He marveled briefly at the careful stone construction that used no mortars or cements that he could discern. Each block had been placed with such precision that it held its neighbors in place.
Metal Warrior: Steel Cage (Mech Fighter Book 6) Page 5
