The rest of the night was spent sleeping and/or dreaming of daylight. And so, by the time daylight had crept in, they were eager to move around and stretch out their achy bodies. Snow nearly strangled Max when he insisted that they wait until full daylight before setting out.
Twilight, he said, was as bad as night when it came to lancers. They were always dangerous, night or day, but during twilight and when Mega shone at night, they could see you better, and from further away.
Soon they were up and moving on, using the sun for navigation. They stuck to the more tightly packed groups of trees when they could and when they could not, they scoured the ground for signs of age. The presence of rocks was taken as a good indication that gorgers were not present, since there was no mechanism for gorgers to re-position rocks on top of their pit trap after each meal.
Before long Max had identified a half dozen of the smaller gorgers and a few larger ones. One had clearly eaten recently. Its pit cover, a thick, hard, leathery tarp, had very little debris on it, which made it obvious to anyone with eyes that this was a no-go zone. They learned one thing of use from that example of a denuded gorger tarp. Though most of the tarp was generally a rough, even surface, there were some bumps and nobs on it that could be mistaken for small logs or small dirty boulders. Long sticks were gathered immediately for the purpose of testing the looseness of suspicious stones in the future. It would be bad enough to be eaten by a pit monster, but being tricked by one first? That would add the pain of irony to the pain of a long slow digestion.
After hours of travel, they came upon the remains of what must have been an ancient mountain range. The tree cover thinned dramatically, leaving only small clumps of vegetation here and there. Trees were largely replaced by low brush and soft moss-like ground cover. Though rough-looking, the terrain they were referring to as rockland seemed passable. The stone terrain made it all but impossible for the gorgers to set up shop and with so few trees, lancers were unlikely to favor this terrain either. If the flying craft were to return, they might have difficulty hiding. But they had neither seen nor heard the ship since they first entered the forest some forty hours prior, and so decided to chance it.
They were forced occasionally to slow and climb small hills or other rough patches, but overall, they traveled more quickly in rockland than they had in the forest proper. The mountains had been worn to nubs in ages past, making them an ideal safe haven in this hostile wilderness.
Max and Snow were not the only ones to have discovered the safe haven. Though they had seen signs of wildlife in treeland, out here in rockland, wildlife was everywhere. Wherever they went were creatures scuttling, lumbering, or on occasion, galloping. And as ever, most things were well armored. There were dozens of different crab species, from the size of Snow’s small fingernail, to those taller than Max. Luckily, most of the large ones were too slow to eat people, and likely lacked any interest. Instead they moved ploddingly over the terrain, browsing on vegetation as they went.
There were many other armored beasts as well. One particular species, a large semi-reptilian-looking creature with a massive rounded shell on top, was raising quite a ruckus. Snow heard the noisy creatures fighting before she saw them. Three were battling amongst themselves on a small plateau. The goal it seemed was to flip one’s opponent onto its shell, preferably right over the edge of the plateau. When this happened, the losers bounced from rock to rock as they dropped from the plateau. Snow felt each impact, the hollow, wet, crunchy sound of which turned her stomach.
The creatures themselves however seemed hardly fazed by the ordeal. Upon reaching the bottom, they merely popped back out of their protective shells, righted themselves, and sought a path back to the top. Snow didn’t see prospective mates watching. So, either they were practicing, or the boys and girls were fighting the main mating event. If so, it would not be the strangest thing Snow had seen on this planet. It wouldn’t even rate the top ten.
Some of the smaller creatures in rockland were rather ferocious. Snow and Max learned quickly which ones would bark and which ones would bite. Once a pair of tiny claws and/or jaws clipped onto you, they could be reluctant to let go. Doozer learned quickly to recognize the sound of his human friends squeaking in alarm and to dash over to quickly prune away the offending, but tasty, nippy grippers.
In fact, the whole forest journey had been a buffet for Doozer, he ate at leisure, stuffing his food hole with anything small enough to fit in it. On the occasion that something wanted to eat Doozer, the something instead received a sample of his mesmerizing fur flickering trick. So far that had been intimidating or distracting enough to allow him to retreat.
In addition to the armored menagerie, Snow witnessed a small herd of unarmored animals cavorting across the rocky terrain. They were stocky, well-muscled beasts, that moved around swiftly on four legs. As a description, stocky was an understatement. The creatures had short legs, a short neck, short ears, a short tail, and a short head. Nothing to grab onto in a fight with the pinchy grabby armored types that were in majority. Their only protruding bits were the thick blunt tusks that jutted from their thick blunt mouths. Snow later saw what they were used for, when a pinchy grabby crab got a little too amorous. The response was a crab on its back, flipped that way by the quick twist of a stocky tusk. Short legs didn’t slow the creatures down. Snow guessed they might be the fastest creatures in the forest. Faster by far than anything else they had seen up till now.
The yigrit too took advantage of the relative safety of the rockland. That or perhaps the abundant prey. Max made the first sighting of the infamous beasts, in the distance ahead. There were a pair of them. With Max leading the way, they decided to test the predators in front of them. It was best to test them now when they could see them so clearly. In the future they might not have such forewarning.
The yigrit came closer than Snow would have preferred before they reacted. Despite being out in the open the creatures seemed to have poor vision at distance. When the yigrit did finally see the humans approaching, their reaction was an encouragingly swift retreat. Yigrit were smaller than humans, but their long scissor like claws more than made up for the size difference.
Shortly before midday they came upon a small clutch of trees and decided to stop for rest. They were not alone under the cover of the trees. Much of the local fauna found the pair of them to be perfectly inoffensive. Snow woke first. She gazed for a while out upon the landscape, watching for danger or in its absence, entertainment. When her gaze fell on Max, she found a trio of fist sized crabs, curled up and resting in the crook of his arm. Doozer too was curled up, though fully awake, in Max’s other arm.
“Finally had your fill, have you?” she said.
Once rested, they continued with an uneventful day of travel. The best kind, in Snow’s opinion. A few hours before dark they came to the edge of the rockland which, as they traveled, was slowly returning to proper forest. Snow paused to survey the path ahead, peering into the relative dimness of the forest, when she heard a sound, “thwat! veeee…” Snow dropped to the ground, but too late, a heavy projectile slammed into her and she fell the rest of the way to the forest floor.
Chapter 36
His eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the change in light when Max heard the noise of the lancer’s projectile and dropped to the ground. He was relieved when he saw Snow’s silhouette going down a few feet in front of him. His relief turned to horror when she yelped in surprise as the lance struck, knocking her sideways the rest of the way to the ground. She yelped again as she was yanked in the other direction and dragged rapidly across the forest floor.
Doozer took off after her, running in a strange canter, uncertain if this was a game. Max caught a glint of light from the taut tether strung between the lance in Snow’s body and the lancer lost in the forest brush. He dove forward to grasp the tether, and landed with a thud, skidding on the forest floor. He’d missed the tether.
Snow, being roughly dragged through the forest faster than
Max would have thought possible, was screaming bloody murder the whole way.
Doozer, seeming to decide that this was no game, switched on his flickering display. Max, up again and running, shouted a guttural command. Doozer didn’t need to be told twice. It took him a moment to locate the enemy, then he sprinted forward on the war path.
At full sprint Max gained on, then passed Snow. He could see blood, lots of blood. But Snow was still fighting. He reached out and grabbed at the tether. It was so thin he couldn’t gain purchase and only cut his hand in the process. Ignoring the injury, he pulled the hunter’s pistol from his pocket and quickly aimed at the tether. He pulled the trigger. The pistol fired loudly but the bullet missed the thin line completely. A moment later he was knocked down as Snow impacted him from behind, kicking his legs out from under him and sending him yet again to the ground. He struggled to his feet, his muscles were aching and his lungs burning. Digging deep he sprinted forward again. This time he headed straight for Snow, and the lance. He caught up and saw for the first time that the lance was no longer stuck inside of her. It was impaled in the bag she had wrapped around her body, and the tension of the tether was keeping her from escaping the bag’s strap which in turn kept her from drawing a full breath.
Max grabbed the lance and dug in his heels. Their speed slowed very little at first, then suddenly the line went slack. He could hear Doozer engaging the lancer ahead. A moment was all it took for Snow to right herself. With Max steadying the tether she managed to slip out of the bag’s death grip and dropped to the forest floor exhausted. Max whistled. A moment later Doozer, small and blurry, scuttled out of the brush towards him, perhaps fifty feet ahead. Max realized with a start, that bush was no bush.
Max reached into the bag and pulled out a fist sized bomb. He let go of the lance as the lancer again began reeling it in. Max pulled the fuse and flung the bomb towards the bush.
The blast flung him backwards onto the forest floor. He squeezed his eyes shut as a shower of lancer guts and body parts erupted from ground zero. Max shook off the worst of the ichor from the lancer’s exoskeleton then got up and rushed to Snow’s bloody body lying in the dirt of the forest floor.
She didn’t speak, but she was breathing. Max laid her out flat, removed his jacket, and stuffed it under her head as a pillow. He opened her jacket and blouse to inspect her wound, the white body suit beneath was smeared red with blood and was slashed open across her ribs. The lance had cut into her flesh as well. Though it was not as bad as Max feared, it was far from a simple flesh wound. The lance had skimmed across her ribs, one of its barbs slashing through her jacket, blouse, and into her flesh, on its way through the bag.
“You’re a bit handsy all of a sudden,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and phlegmy.
“I thought you, ah…” he said, and struggled to control his quavering voice. “It’s a long cut. But it isn’t… I thought it was worse. You’ll be okay.” If she didn’t bleed to death…
“My whole side feels like it is on fire,” she said in a subdued tone.
“It does look a bit painful,” Max said. He attempted a smile, but it didn’t stick.
“Pull the suit together. The two sides of the cut. Pull them back together,” she said.
He didn’t understand her reasons, but he did as he was told. Gently, he pulled the two edges of the cut white suit together over the wound. The plasticky material began to meld back together almost as if it had never separated. Max put aside his amazement and continued to fuse the suit, running his finger over the seam. When he was finished, the seam was barely visible, though the cut below could be felt, and its uneven ridges seen through the suit.
“It worked?” Snow asked.
Max nodded.
“It repaired the tiny holes from the gross jelly fish thing in the lock too,” she said. They were each quiet for a minute and Snow broke the silence, “I’m sorry I made us come in here.”
“No, no,” Max said, “what else could we do? Rock and hard place, right?” He laughed a mostly fake laugh.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Find a good place to rest for the night,” he said, “And rest. For the night.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“Then we find a way through,” he said.
Beside them, Doozer sat chittering complacently, casually eating the stumps of two more severed limbs.
Snow was badly bruised in addition to her long laceration. She might have been able to walk, but it seemed stupid to do so. Max propped her against a tree and did a quick search for a place to rest overnight. He found a tiny plateau with a few trees for safety. Satisfied it would serve the purpose, he returned for Snow. He picked her up carefully and carried her to their new bivouac site. Again, he noted how heavy she was in comparison to her small size. Dense.
Once she was settled in, he left Doozer to guard Snow and returned to collect those of their belongings that could be found. Snow’s trail through the forest was easy to follow from ground zero of the lancer explosion. He found the axe which Snow had dropped. On his way back towards the lancer corpse he looked for the pistol that he’d dropped when Snow had been pulled into him. By lucky chance he found it, mostly hidden under a log, but with the bright handle standing out in contrast to the dark bark of the fungal log bark. He realized immediately that the weapon would never fire again. Though whole, a dirt filled crack in its barrel stood out. He put the pistol in his pocket.
When he reached the lancer debris field and the still skewered bag, he grabbed the lance tether and followed it back to the source. When he reached the end at ground zero of the lancer volcano, he found the end of the tether was wrapped neatly around a piece of carapace, like a bony cone shaped spindle. It took a few choice chops of his axe to cut the spindle free of the huge corpse.
It was difficult now to see how the lancer would have looked when whole, but there were legs everywhere. It had at least a dozen large appendages and countless small ones, some of which must have been used to reel the tether in through a small hole in the main carapace. There was something instinctively horrifying about the too many hairy legs and eyes, and the long pair of fangs.
Max managed to free the lance from the wooden digester that had been in Snow’s bag. He then spooled the remaining loose tether onto the bony spindle and pulled the lance free of the lancer corpse. The lance itself was four feet long and had a sandpaper-like feel. The tip was sharp as broken glass, and there was weight behind it, in the heavy bone-like shaft. He’d seen them before, there was even one on his own boat, but those had long since had their sandpapery surfaces worn smooth by decades of use.
Max was gathering things up to head back when he heard the noise. A loud rushing of air, being forced from a powerful engine. The aircraft from the day before had returned and was hovering in the area. There were a number of gaps in the tree cover so Max dove behind a tree to avoid detection.
A moment later the sleek white shape of the aircraft moved into view. It had white shell wings and what looked like four jet engines that were similar to those that powered the dirigible air ships, only much more advanced, much more powerful. The engines rotated and the ship moved forward. Forward toward the bivouac and Snow. As it slipped along, a small portal opened from the smooth underside and two small machines dropped out and flew down below the tree cover. As the airship moved further away, taking with it the noise of the engines, Max could hear the sound of the small flying machines whirring in the distance.
Max dropped everything and began to run, using tree cover and watching carefully for the flying devices. Before long he could barely hear them, and only when he stopped to listen. As his fear built he became less and less cautious and soon he was running at top speed. The aircraft stopped ahead and was hovering again. Max’s heart was in his throat as he pressed on faster and faster. He paid the price for his speed, stumbling over a root and crashing to the ground, but he was up and running again in an instant. He heard a loud buzzing noise i
n the distance and the crashing of branches.
He was almost back when the aircraft began moving again. The noise of the ship continued to move away, past the bivouac. Max’s heart felt like it would explode. He ran on.
Finally, he reached the tiny plateau and scrambled the few feet up. His jacket lay on the ground where it had acted as a pillow. Snow’s top hat too lay on the ground. But Snow was gone. They had taken her.
A feeling of hopelessness overwhelmed him, and Max fell to his knees exhausted. He could still hear the aircraft as it flew away. Suddenly he jumped to his feet he ran forward stumbling through the trees until he found a clearing. He stopped there, and watched the ship fly away, slowly, in a straight line. Two little black dots, the little flying machines, entered back into the ship as it moved away. The ship picked up speed and soon it was out of sight behind layers of vegetation, leaving behind Max, and the first stars of the night in its wake.
Chapter 37
Thanks to the properties of her neck-to-toe body suit, the young woman would have a wide scar long across her torso. It would be… wrong… to cut the wound open, merely to close it again more neatly. The situation irritated Dr Brin. The amazing suit had accelerated the patients healing greatly, healing in a day what should have taken a week or more. It was wondrous. But, if it were not for the suit, Brin could have taped the very clean cut, which would have resulted in a very clean scar, and ultimately would leave very little evidence of the wound at all.
Having determined that she shouldn’t do anything about the scar, Dr Brin decided that she wouldn’t do anything about it. Instead she carried out her duty, examining the patient.
The woman’s pale skin was intriguing. Brin had of course seen people like this before. Almost daily, in the theater. This was different. She was not a moving picture, nor was she one of those characters from the created worlds of the theater. This was one of the first people and she was right here on the table. In the flesh. Her odd pale skin and yellow hair stood out loudly to anyone with eyes.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 18
