The ruined town—if that’s what it was—stretched across a small vale and up the two sides of hills, with the forest encroaching around the edges and making its slow and ancient way down the open streets. Dane saw rivers of vines and thickets of growth between collections of the mushroom-like dwellings, as if he were in the middle of some tree parade.
The marine also realized that he probably wouldn’t find any supplies or water here, either—which was his entire reason for coming here.
“But the queen said that this entire planet was some kind of ‘challenge planet’ . . .” Dane figured out loud as he found himself walking through the silent, deserted streets.
That would imply that everything here had to be a challenge, didn’t it? That Dane would be facing some sort of ordeal with unknown objectives here. He still felt a soldier’s frustration at not knowing what he was supposed to be facing. If he just knew, if he had a clue, then he could prepare.
Dry. Shelter. Water nearby. Without any direct mission objectives, he settled back on his marine instincts for survival.
And one other thing:
Curiosity.
The sergeant walked deeper into the abandoned town until the sounds of the forest faded behind him. The hoots and calls and shrieks of the alien life grew just a little dimmer. It was strangely quiet in this place, as if the creatures of the forest (not the trees, which seemed more than happy to take their time invading this place) respected the weight of history here.
What was that?!
Dane saw a flash out of the corner of his eye, down a street of these large and small, fat and thin mushroom dwellings. It had moved almost too fast for him to see, but he was sure that whatever it was had been smaller than he was—and had been bipedal. He thought he caught a flash of mottled cream and tawny ochre. Fur? Feathers?
He resisted the urge to call out to the shape that he could swear had crossed the street on his left and gone into one of the empty streets between buildings.
Everything here is a challenge, he thought and raised his dagger up before him and started to pad forward as quickly as he dared.
It might have been nothing, he reminded himself. It might have been a trick of the eye, or one of the bird-ape creatures that had almost killed him earlier with their strong sense of curiosity.
But when he arrived at the T-junction of streets that he thought he had seen the creature run down, Dane waited. He forced his body to relax. His breathing deepened a little as he allowed the sensations of the abandoned town and of the jungle to flood into his awareness.
Still nothing. Whatever it was, it had either long since flown, or his mind, frayed from his recent experiences, was playing tricks on him.
“Urgh, get a grip, Williams.” He breathed a heavy sigh, shaking his head and noticing that the reddish tinge to the sky above was deepening and becoming a rich crimson-purple color, and with it there was coming a drop in temperature too.
It was getting toward night time, and that meant that Dane would have to find somewhere sheltered if he didn’t want to be prey to every alien thing out here that had far better night vision than he did.
Dane peered into the broken-open hole in the nearest of the stone mushroom buildings. Inside, it looked as bare and as derelict as on the exterior. There was a drift of forest litter on the floor and mounded up the opposite side of the wide room, but there were also signs of ancient habitation.
I guess it will do . . . he thought as he stepped carefully inside.
There was a stone plinth at just over knee height against one wall that would serve as a bench or a table or some kind of cover to sleep next to, at least. Two pillars that could have been posts or supports for furniture sat on the opposite side, with carved holes down their length as well as curled, flowing markings along their exposed faces.
“Hmm?” Dane stepped deeper into the room to look a little closer at the markings out of nothing more than a sense of mystery. This writing was nothing like the jagged, pictorial runic shapes that the Exin used in their spaceships and at their Planet 892 Nursery, Dane thought.
No, these shapes had flowing lines, curls and whorls like the lines inscribed in root growth, or the twists and reaches of the vines all around him.
Dane shrugged and turned back to the plinth to start piling dried leaves and earth into something like a comfortable bed.
Just as his foot dislodged something in the forest litter below his feet.
It was, undeniably, a skull.
“Ugh!” Dane wasn’t usually a squeamish person, but something about sleeping right next to a dead person was going too far even for him.
It was indeed a skull, but it had a slightly smaller head than he thought a human’s would have, with a central ridge bone that stretched from the two very large, blank eye sockets all the way to the nape at the back. It looked like a small human with massive eyes, Dane guessed, as he placed the skull back and stood up.
There will be plenty of empty buildings to choose from, right? he was thinking—as there was a click from underneath one of his shoes in the dirt.
Oh . . .
Dane had one short, pristine moment of frozen awareness as his brain recognized that click as mechanical, not organic. Which meant that it came from a machine, from technology.
From a booby trap.
Something small and dark sprang into the air in the back of the building, exploding out of the leaf-litter drift and whirring as it did so.
It looked no bigger than a large dinner plate, made of the same midnight-steel material that the Exin used in all of their constructions.
Most of its size was given over to three long blades of wings that whirled and started to blur as it rose, connected to a small torpedo-shaped body, like a giant metal dragonfly.
Its cigar-shaped body twitched in place as it aligned itself toward the disturbing sound and movement that had awoken it—and Dane had a heartbeat to see one dim orange light flare on its nose—like one blinking, glaring eye.
This is a Challenge Planet. Everything here was designed to be an ordeal . . .
Dane threw himself out of the open door as the whirling, bladed thing threw itself toward him violently.
“Ack!” He gasped as he hit the dirt outside and rolled as the thing swooped past him at a murderous speed, before rising in the air between the buildings and disappearing momentarily.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” Dane scrabbled to a crouch, looked in the direction the thing had gone, but he couldn’t see it. He could still hear it though, whirring in a deep hum that grew fainter and nearer.
The sergeant moved, leaving the booby-trapped building and padding as quickly as he dared while staying low. He tried to listen to the sound of the whirring Exin drone thing as he sought to put some distance between him and it.
It was clearly some kind of trap, activated by his stupidity. Or was it some dormant sensor? Dane slowed, cocking his head as he struggled to hear the whine past the sighing sound of the wind in the trees. Maybe the thing’s job was to fly off to its masters and tell them where to find the stupid human.
WHRRRR!
Dane heard the rising, buzzing sweep of the thing grow tremendously loud in his ear, impossibly fast as the bladed drone suddenly spun out of a gap between the buildings—straight at him.
He dropped to the floor, but he wasn’t quick enough. He saw a sudden eclipse of shadow, suddenly large in his vision, and then felt a slicing electric pulse of pain across his cheek as he hit the ground, tumbling.
“Hss!” He yelled as he rolled to the side of one of the buildings. The drone swooped lengthways down the street and started to rise once again for a returning strike. Its spinning blades had sliced at one of his cheeks just under the bone, and Dane thought that it probably would have taken his head off if he had been even a second slower.
The drone was rising in the air at the end of the street, and Dane saw the orange light flash as it turned back and paused, waiting as it hovered.
I have to get out of
here. He spared a look to his other side, and in that instant of movement, he heard the drone thing tear itself into motion, whining and buzzing as it flung itself toward him . . .
“Frack!” Dane pitched forward and rolled across the exposed street as the Exin drone swooped to his crouching head height. He felt the tug of the air currents as it flashed past him—but this time, it missed.
Dane was lying face-up on the ground, looking at the darkening sky as the Exin drone rose at the far end of the abandoned street once more. He knew that he had to get up and move, that he couldn’t be pinned down here.
The sergeant marine of the Assisted Mechanized Infantry scrabbled and pushed as the Exin drone reached its distant apex and then started to turn back toward him as it detected his movement. He saw a gap between two of the mushroom buildings that was on the opposite side of the street.
It was a few feet away. More than a few—and the drone was already charging down at him.
Dane lunged. He threw his legs out before him in a desperate attempt to get under cover before more bits of him were lost.
But the Exin drone was too fast, even for a trained marine of Earth. It spun down the open street, nothing to impede it, as it centered itself directly on Dane’s body, impossible to miss at this speed and range . . .
“Ch-tk!” Dane was throwing himself toward the gap between the buildings as his brain registered a brief, angry chitter and then a sharp noise.
Chock!
The sergeant dove between the two buildings and hit the ground with a roll, scraping his elbows and back as he did so. Behind him, there was a flash of brilliant light and a bang.
“What!?” Dane’s mind was taking a moment to catch up with the rest of him. He looked back.
To see the afterglow as gobbets of white sparks finished hitting the walls and floor behind, and there at the opening to his avenue were several pieces of sparking midnight-steel metal parts and horribly twisted blade wings.
It must have struck the edge of the building when it followed me! Dane heaved a sigh of relief, about to congratulate himself, when he once again heard that chittering sound.
“Ch-ch-tk!”
Dane couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but he was absolutely certain that it was a voice. It was then that his eyes settled on the large, round piece of stone that sat proud on the street, and with one side blackened as if it had just been sitting in a fire.
Or had struck a drone and made it explode.
Dane blinked in confusion as he slowly raised himself into a crouch. He could hear a light padding sound, as if there were feet coming toward him . . .
Pheet-pheet! There was a sudden, high-pitched peep of a whistle.
He found his hand grasping his tooth dagger a little tighter.
As a small people rounded the corner in front of him. They were furred with large eyes like a gibbon’s, and each carried either wooden spears or loops of crude vines that Dane guessed were the sling shots they had used to bring down the Exin drone. Several also had hoops of braided twine around their necks upon which hung simple hollowed-out tubes, which Dane guessed had been the source of the whistling sound.
And the small aliens were blocking off the mouth of the avenue that Dane had leapt into and staring at him.
11
Hunting Party
“Ch-kr-tk!” The aliens greeted him.
By leveling their spears.
They were furred in tawny and golden browns, but appeared mostly human or primatelike, Dane thought. They also had very, very rounded eyes that were bright with a lambent yellow and reminded Dane of the gibbons and lemurs of Earth’s Madagascar. When they moved, Dane saw that they each had long, prehensile tails that were almost as long as their arms and that moved and twitched as they did.
“Uh, I come in peace?” Dane said—before thinking that he would feel a whole lot better if they had been the ones to say that instead of him.
“Ch-kr-krr-krrr!” one of the aliens said in a low, warning growl. This one, in the middle of the group, appeared to be their leader or some kind of captain. When the alien spoke, Dane could see small, bright, sharp rows of teeth.
“Tsk!” another of the aliens said in a sharp note of rebuke, pushing through the pack to stand in front of the leader, using one hairless palm with long, prehensile fingers to gently push the spear down. This one appeared to be a female to Dane’s eyes, and she had silver speckling to her fur which Dane took to denote age. In one hand, she also held an empty vine hoop, and Dane got the unconscious knowledge that she was probably the one who had shot the Exin drone out of the sky.
And saved me from being cut to shreds, Dane concluded.
“Thank you,” he said, slowly rising to his feet.
In response, the captain and several of the others with spears made low, warning sounds. Dane realized that he was at least a foot and a half taller than these little folks, and broader at the shoulder too.
He also realized that he was still clutching the serrated tooth dagger in his hand, and that the angry-sounding aliens were all staring at it fixedly.
“Ah. This isn’t mine. They gave it to me. The Exin,” he said and pointed up—with his free hand—at the sky.
There was another round of warning, churring noises from the group, and a twitter of lighter sounds from the older female alien. She made several gestures to the skies above their heads and back to the drone on the floor, and then finally pointed a finger at Dane as if accusing him of something.
“I didn’t bring that here,” Dane said hurriedly, forcing his hand with the knife down and holding the other up, palm out, in what he hoped was the universal gesture for peace.
There was another brief exchange of voices among the group which sounded to Dane an awful lot like an argument—but this time, the woman appeared to win, and the aliens soon moved forward to approach Dane carefully.
“Cht-k-urr!” The female alien stood before him, the closest of all of them, and reached into a pouch of woven vines strapped to her body. She pulled out a long frond of a folded leaf and carefully unwrapped it to present a sticky, pale, greenish lotion to Dane.
“Uh . . . Food?” Dane asked, miming putting the gunk in his mouth.
“Chtk!” the female said with a twitter and then beckoned him closer. Dane felt a glimmer of fear, but crouched down all the same for the alien to gently smear some of the lotion onto his bleeding cheek. It stung for a moment, and then a cooling, numbing sensation replaced the sharp bite of pain.
“Thank you,” Dane said seriously.
“Tk-krrr-krr!” The male leader of the little group spat onto the ground. Dane could tell that he was disgusted with this show of help and was already bickering with some of the others, pointing back through the ruins and up at the sky.
Pheet! Pheet! The leader turned away from the others to blow his whistle loudly, and the group broke their huddle as some decision had clearly been reached. Dane saw the alien woman give him what could be an apologetic glance, and then she beckoned him to walk with them. The aliens were clearly on some sort of deadline, and they were not about to hang around being good Samaritans to a universally lost homo sapiens.
Whoever these people are, Dane thought. They have no love for the Exin. And he remembered the old adage about the enemy of my enemy as he had to jog to keep up with them.
The diminutive aliens of the Challenge Planet set a crushing pace, even for Dane’s long legs, as they jogged quickly and lightly up through the ruins, taking switchbacks and zigzag routes through the complex with apparently no reason or rhyme at all, until Dane remembered the booby-trapped Exin drone.
They probably know where those traps are and are leading us around them, Dane thought. That explained the ire of the male captain of this little band.
The alien hunter in question appeared to be the least communicative and the most irate of all of them, Dane thought, if he could trust his instincts. He listened to the soft chirrups and twittering of the aliens around him. The captain
of their group spoke sparingly, but when he did, it seemed to make the others hurry up considerably. They left the compound of the ruins—their historical ruins, Dane figured—and followed a small path through the forest.
The older female alien at Dane’s side did not appear to have any difficulty keeping up with the others, and for the most part, seemed to make more soothing sorts of noises to those around her as they traveled. At least once, she earned the sharp cough of rebuke from the male captain. She sighed in response.
“I wish we could understand each other,” Dane muttered under his breath as their journey took them into the night, as the sky finally gave itself over to an umbral, ruddy-purple darkness.
If they spoke English or Dane spoke their language, then Dane could have asked them if they knew whether there was a space port anywhere here.
But what good would that do me? His feet stumbled in the dark, and he called out softly when he had to stumble and jump to avoid crashing into the dirt.
“Damn it!” He hissed as he paused, slumping against the tree for the aliens to slow to a halt and turn back to chitter at him angrily (except for the older one that had healed him).
“Alright, I’m coming. This isn’t exactly easy for me, you know?” Dane grumbled as he massaged a twisted knee and set off again after their group. His eyes were scanning the forest floor just ahead at every step to try and see the rocks and roots and vines that his companions hopped over with natural grace and ease. They were perfectly adapted to this environment, Dane saw, as their large yellow eyes were bright in the night and gave him an eerie feeling when he saw them. At several junctures during their fast march, the captain or leader would pause and step forward down one path or another. He would look and sniff at the air before blowing a sharp note on the whistle when he had decided the way to go, and they would plunge off once more. Dane started to think that the whistle was being used as an organizer, a hurry-up, something like an echolocation system. Perhaps the aliens could hear distant whistles being blown by others of their people that he couldn’t—or maybe it was just a way to stop the stragglers in their party from getting lost.
Metal Warrior: Steel Cage (Mech Fighter Book 6) Page 6
