Ron didn’t bother to say what was on both of their minds: Then what?
Jane remembered how running had stimulated the nepatrox’s prey drive during their encounter on the ship and did her best not to break into a sprint, though it felt like the hounds of hell were at her heels. Those same instincts and thoughts echoed in Ron’s head.
They continued on toward the tree, stiffly ambling at a fast walk.
There was a sudden burst of thought from Ron: “Too late! Run!”
Then she heard the flapping. The hissing. The prancing paws on the rocky surfaces of the hillside.
Jane bounded forward, her strides elongating, gaining more vertical height and forward thrust with each footstep than she could on Earth. Just before they reached the tree, she pocketed the palm blasters so that she could climb.
The tree was similar to a conifer. It had only small tufts of needles at the tips of its gnarled branches. Jane hoped the nepatrox couldn’t climb it, but even if they could, only a few at a time would be able to. She and Ron would be able to pick them off. Ron motioned for Jane to climb first. He took up a protective stance to cover her while she got started.
She reached out to grasp a low branch to test its strength. She didn’t know if it would hold an adult’s weight, but she didn’t have a lot of choice. She wrapped her hands around it, kicked up, and swung a leg over—much easier in lower gravity.
An unearthly scream pierced the sound of rainfall. It sounded like an inhuman battle cry. Ron backed into her, his shoulder brushing against her thigh as she hung upside down trying to pull herself up onto the branch. She didn’t weigh as much here, but she didn’t have any recent experience at tree climbing, and the branch was smooth and covered in something slimy.
She looked up. The scarlet-shelled, no-neck nepatrox surged into view. The fluorescent orange-and-magenta hinged flaps that flanked their wide mouths seemed comically bright in the dim light, flaring to make them look larger and more menacing. They were apex predators that were more numerous than atellans on this world.
They were pressing Ron back. “Come on, QD, you just shimmy right on up there.” Then came the concussive thud and resultant splatter as Ron used the palm blasters against the animals that got too close.
Her fingers kept losing purchase. Her hood slipped back. She turned her head and gripped harder, digging her nails into the bark as she tried to flip her position on the branch.
Her eyes widened. There was one coming from the opposite side of the tree from Ron, slashing its barbed tail around in the air. It was bigger than any nepatrox they’d seen on the ship. Its mouth opened, revealing rows of jagged teeth. The brilliant mouth flaps ruffled and vibrated around its head, displaying the creature’s aggression and intent. It was too close.
It was about to strike her in the face.
10
Alan’s nap didn’t last long.
He was snoozing away when a loud thunk reverberated from one side of the shuttle. He snorted awake and half rose before the aching heaviness in his left leg stopped him from swinging it over the side of the reclined crash seat.
Ajaya moved silently to the starboard window and peeked out. After only a moment she ducked and turned, sinking to the floor, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Oh, dear. We’ve got company,” she said.
Alan’s eyebrows drew together. He started to get up to see for himself.
“No. Don’t.” Ajaya crawled toward him and gently pushed him back down. Her tone was firm, but she spoke barely above a whisper. “You need to stay immobile while the leg finishes the binding process. We’re fine. They can’t get to us. We’re safe in here.” Ajaya had turned on the reassuring doctor tone she used when she didn’t want to alarm anyone.
Alan was starting to freak out. “What the fuck is out there, Ajaya?”
She inhaled sharply and held that breath, her face drawn. “Nepatrox.”
He let out a barrage of curses when an impact rocked the shuttle.
Ajaya’s eyes went wider. Her fingers were suddenly clamped over his lips. They are attracted to sound, remember? she mouthed.
How could he forget? He knew better than anyone what the critters were like. He looked down at what was left of his ruined leg and snarled silently, his fingers curling into fists. Nepatrox had done this to him.
He felt an intermittent pressure, like a gentle tapping, on his brain. He opened up and let Ajaya in. He sensed Ei’Brai in the background, busily working on something else. Before she could say anything, he mentally said, “Get out all the weapons we have.”
She stared at him, blinking. He could hear the echo of her thought. We shouldn’t need them. But then her head bobbed solemnly and she turned away to gather them, moving silently, deliberately.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bergen saw movement and turned his head. The unhinged jaw of a nepatrox mouth—with the wide flaps to either side flapping away—greeted him through the window. The beast had climbed up on the wing. It was bigger than any of the ones they’d seen on the Speroancora. The brilliant flaps folded back in on themselves as the mouth closed and the monster head butted the window. The shuttle shuddered.
Leg be damned. He was on his feet and gimping into the cockpit as quietly as he could. He triggered the release that retracted the wings. It would make some noise, but it would also make it harder for the nepatrox to pound on the windows, which were easily the weakest point on the shuttle. Then he shut off all of the lights inside the vehicle to further obscure the view inside. As the shuttle retracted its wings, the nepatrox scuttled off and fell out of sight. No more reenactments of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” necessary.
Ajaya rejoined him, her lips drawn into a thin line. She handed him a couple of palm blasters.
He took them silently. His leg throbbed. He felt a little lightheaded. He’d lost some blood when the device was shorn off. But the tiny display on the inner calf of the unit showed that the device was reattached and stabile now. He wasn’t in a lot of danger from that anymore. Just some.
There were a lot of drugs in his system. His head felt thick. He should have been lying flat on his back, but who could do that with monsters at the door?
Deprived of the wings to climb up on, the nepatrox began to launch themselves at the windscreen. Thankfully, they couldn’t find purchase. They scrabbled fruitlessly on the aerodynamic cone at the front of the ship, leaving slimy smears behind as they slid back into the swamp.
Alan rolled his eyes and beckoned Ajaya to the back of the tiny ship. There was no sense in letting the ghouls see their prey if it could be avoided.
The damn things were smarter than they looked.
Alan wondered about the nepatrox sense of smell. Or was their hearing just that acute? The animals switched tactics and began lunging in groups at the ship.
Ajaya braced herself in the rear corner as the animals impacted the shuttle and it lurched over the watery landscape.
Alan did the same in the opposite corner. He shook his head with disbelief. He sent a thought to Ei’Brai that he needed a stronger link with Jane. He wasn’t a bit surprised to hear an edge in her mental voice. He’d had a growing feeling that things weren’t going well on her end either, though the connection had been very limited.
She wasn’t paying much attention to him. That irritated him more than it should have. But whatever. He was human.
Throughout his brief conversation with Jane the shuttle was being shoved around in the marsh, sometimes twisting in violent turns as the beasts hit it from both sides nearly at the same time. There had to be dozens of them out there, all of them fully mature and well-fed brutes.
Ajaya went pale and her chest heaved as one particularly loud impact pushed them up on just one sled. For a brief moment it felt like they were suspended in midair. Every loose object in the shuttle skittered to one side.
Jane was saying she was sorry she couldn’t help…
He didn’t hear anything else she might have said. Another loud thud and the ship fell over
to crash on the port side. Luckily, he’d been in the corner on that side, so he didn’t move far and his leg stayed relatively stable. Ajaya, on the other hand, tumbled onto him, letting out a scream that she cut off immediately. He helped her right herself.
“I’m okay. You?” she sent in an urgent thought. She looked anxiously at his leg.
He swallowed thickly. His vision was swimming and he felt nauseated, but he sent back a confident, “Fine.”
She looked shaken. She was staring at the windscreen, which was now partially submerged in brown water that sloshed around as the critters pawed at it and attempted to look inside.
“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “It holds air in a vacuum. It’ll keep water out.”
But he stared too as one of the monsters pawed at the seam where the windscreen met the fuselage of the ship. He was actually more worried about being tumbled around. They were in a precarious position. The ship was bottom-heavy. Hopefully they’d fall back onto the sleds, but he wasn’t sure if the angle would allow that. If he got tossed around, he was also at real risk of losing the leg again. Ajaya might not be able to reattach it fast enough before he bled out. He started having all kinds of dark thoughts.
Ajaya gasped, pulling him out of his internal maelstrom of doom.
He turned to see what she was looking at. A tiny stream of water was running into the cockpit from the spot where the crazed creature pawed at the edge of the windscreen.
Another couple of animals slammed into the windscreen then. The dim light coming from the front of the vehicle went out as the windscreen was sloshed with mud and churning bodies. The impact shoved the shuttle several feet. Water sheeted off the windscreen as the front of the vehicle suddenly tipped up. Every loose object slid along the port wall—that was now the floor—toward the rear of the shuttle. Dirty water ran toward them too.
Bergen tried to reconnect with Jane, but he couldn’t get through to her. He opened the connection with Ei’Brai to its fullest extent. “Come on, Ei’Brai. Tell me you’re gonna zap these freaks with a precision laser that you’ve been keeping close to the vest…”
“I apologize most sincerely, Dr. Alan Bergen, but I’m powerless to assist. Would that I had such devices at my disposal.”
“Where’s Jane?” Alan demanded. “I can’t connect to her.”
“Qua’dux Jane Holloway is injured and unconscious but is safely en route to an atellan compound. However I can connect you with Dr. Ronald Gibbs, who is currently conscious.”
They were slammed again, knocking them askew. The windscreen surged higher into the air. They had to be at about a twenty to twenty-five degree angle from level now.
“We’re sinking!” Ajaya cried out loud. Being quiet hardly seemed to matter at this point.
Alan surged to his feet, grabbed Ajaya’s arm, and pulled her up too. Adrenaline was in control now. “Other side of the fulcrum,” he declared and hobbled up the slope to the other end of the shuttle, dragging Ajaya behind him. They clung to the seat backs just behind the cockpit. It didn’t change anything.
“I have alerted Dr. Ronald Gibbs to your situation. He is attempting to communicate your predicament to his hosts. I have switched my outgoing beacon to a distress call that will alert them to your coordinates, should they pick up the signal.”
“Fuckity fuckity fuckity fuck!” Alan bellowed. “Why did we have to land on Dagobah?”
“What can we do?” Ajaya asked him. She sounded relatively calm.
Their end of the ship dipped a little bit as another animal slammed into it.
He didn’t know what to say. He was in a state of complete and utter disbelief.
That was when he heard it.
On the other side of what would normally be the floor, a nepatrox had managed to get into the empty engine compartment. It was scratching and scrabbling at the circuitry and components inside there.
Alan started to shake with choler. “No!” he roared. “That’s my shit! Don’t mess with my shit!”
Without thinking he slipped the palm blasters over his wrists and fingers and staggered to the midpoint of the ship to jab at the control overhead that would trigger the exit hatch. It instantly opened. He climbed up over the sideways crash seats until he was balanced on the one nearest the hatch. He popped his head outside. He didn’t see anything up on top of the ship.
“Alan! This is not a good idea. Come back,” Ajaya called from inside.
He got a leg up and eased out onto the uppermost surface of the shuttle. He kept his body weight spread out as he slid closer to the sled rail until he could peer over and see the exposed underside of the shuttle. He could see the tail end of a nepatrox sticking out of the empty engine compartment.
He heard Ajaya scrambling behind him, and then she grabbed onto his good leg with both hands, steadying him. “For the record, I object to this course of action.”
He didn’t bother to reply. He had the tail end of that goddamn monster in his sights. He blasted the shit out of it until all that remained in the engine compartment was a lump of charred, stinking meat.
Then he fired on every other nepatrox he could see. He thought about sliding to the other side, toward the top of the shuttle, but moving his weight to that side might tip the shuttle onto its roof. That would be bad. He did see a couple of the monsters sink into the quagmire near the rear of the ship, and that made him feel a little more cheerful about their situation.
When no new critters came into view after a few minutes, Ajaya patted his leg and said, “We’ve stopped sinking, I think. Just come inside where it’s safer. We should eat something.”
Reluctantly he agreed. Sliding back inside wasn’t as easy as getting out had been. He cursed like a sailor when he bumped his bad leg. It was throbbing now that he was starting to calm down.
He eased down on the spot where the wall met the floor. It was the best place on this end to sit comfortably. He didn’t want to tempt fate by putting weight anywhere near one of the windows.
Ajaya handed him a food cube and a pouch of water then sat next to him. They ate in silence. Ajaya was asking Ei’Brai more-specific questions about what had happened to Ron and Jane and the atellans who had rescued them when Alan heard movement outside the craft. It sounded like something was climbing the exterior. They were back.
His teeth ground together. He listened carefully, wondering if he had the energy or the stupidity to climb back up there again. Then a very civilized knock drummed on the hatch.
Alan and Ajaya looked at each other in amazement.
A voice rang out from overhead. “Scaluuti?”
Ajaya stood and called out, “Scaluuti!” She clambered up over the seats and pressed the button to trigger the door to open. “Scaluuti!”
A face like a hatchet leaned over the hatch after it opened up. Heat rolled in. The ears on this inhuman face pulled back dramatically, and its eyes widened. It rattled off an impressive amount of Mensententia. Alan lost track of what was being said, but Ajaya was nodding and replying and motioning to him.
The face disappeared and there was a lot of talking and other commotion outside. Alan started to feel really tired.
Suddenly Ron dropped through the opening. He and Ajaya had a little reunion. Alan closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it.
Hatchet face dropped in too. The three of them helped Alan up and strapped him, with great difficulty, into his reclined crash couch. Apparently Ajaya didn’t want his leg to get dirty or wet outside. And she didn’t want it to be wrenched badly as they righted the shuttle. He was too woozy to disagree.
11
“Ron!” Jane cried out loud in a panic, forgetting that sound only enflamed their hostility.
Ron swiveled and blasted the beast just before its barbed tail struck Jane.
Adrenaline surged though her. Every muscle tensed. And even though she hadn’t climbed a tree for decades, muscle memory kicked in.
She pulled herself up on the wet branch until she was astride it and sc
ooted quickly over to the trunk. From there she was able to stand, hugging the trunk with one arm for stability, and reach for the next branch overhead to pull herself onto it, pausing only to wipe the slime off onto her clothes to try to keep her hands from slipping.
When she was sure she was out of reach, she palmed the blasters again, primed them, then mentally signaled Ron to join her while she covered him.
She went into a trancelike state as she alternated between the blasters looped over each hand. She began to fall into a rhythm, deftly re-priming after each shot, sighting the next beast she would obliterate, and firing. It became a smooth, practiced motion. She carefully aimed through the sights between her fingers so that she wouldn’t hit Ron or the tree as she picked off one after another.
Ron was much taller and far more agile. He made short work of the climb. The tree creaked under his weight as he joined her, and the top dipped a bit lower to the ground. Soon he settled on a branch on the opposite side and resumed killing the beasts himself.
They kept coming. She worried that the power supplies inside the blasters would fail before all the monsters were dead, and she experimented with aiming at angles that might let her hit more than one at a time. Ron shared her concern and was doing the same.
A few of the larger beasts darted in, grabbed a nepatrox carcass, and pulled it back out of Jane and Ron’s range. She could see their silhouettes through the veil of the rain, hunched over, feasting on their fallen brothers. They were wily. They’d learned to stay back and take advantage of an easy food source rather than put themselves on the front line and risk being killed themselves. She’d seen this behavior before on the ship. It turned her stomach.
“Um, Jane? You there?” Jane heard inside her head. It was Alan. He sounded nervous.
She leaned out precariously on a branch, her nails deeply imbedded in the smooth wood. The top of the tree swayed lower to the ground for a moment. “Yes?”
Confluence 2: Remanence Page 7
