It paused when it detected Maid. Its four antennae swept back and forth, swishing aside foliage. Venom dripped from its harpoon. Maid frantically worked with her cammie controls as the beast crouched, preparing to spring.
Maid disappeared from sight. The scorpion-thing relaxed, confused.
She reappeared. The huge predator emitted a type of squeal and again crouched to attack.
Captain Amalfi prevented Blade from shooting it, snapping, “The Blobs’ll hear.”
Mission always came first.
Terrified, Maid edged away from the trail, attempting to melt into the jungle. I again experienced an explosive rush of taa. Thousands of generations of selective breeding had engrained into Zentadon males the need to protect and preserve females. Zentadon breeding season was fast approaching, a time when young Zentadons’ attention spans for most matters shortened and their … well, lengthened. Besides, this female in danger was virtually the only member of 213 who had shown me any kindness or friendship, and I had promised to protect her.
No bug, no matter its size, was equal in speed to a young and vigorous Zentadon under the influence of taa. I moved too rapidly for the Human eye to follow. I appeared next to Maid and deftly whisked her to concealment behind a growth of large ferns. To the disoriented insect, it must have seemed its quarry simply vanished.
Another victim appeared running in the trail, however. Lovelorn Atlas had deactivated his cammies and thought to distract the scorpion away from Maid by running directly at it. The poor brave Human was willing to sacrifice himself for the woman. For an instant, I thought to leave him to the attentions of the vermin. That would free Maid from him. I had my weaknesses of character. After all, I was half-Human.
That I even considered letting Atlas cede his life showed I might be no more immune to the unseen influence of whatever entity had linked itself to this mission than any of the others. After only the one thought, however, I left Maid among the ferns and in an instant deposited Atlas beside her. The three of us hid while the scorpion-thing quivered in lost anticipation. Its antennae searched the rain-driven air. Then, as though shrugging, it dumbly scooted on down the trail and out of sight.
“Kadar San, we owe you our lives yet again,” Maid cried, hugging me.
“Spare me the sentimentality,” Atlas flared. “I had it under control. I didn’t need him. It was a piece of cake.”
He reactivated his chameleons and moved off like a shifting image. Maid rubbed my arm.
Kadar San, you’re the better man.
With that one thought left behind as consolation, she jumped up and went after Atlas. I wasn’t sure which weakened me most, the burnout of taa in my system or the choice Maid apparently made.
Gorilla patched a micro-electrode replacement into Maid’s cammie suit, but even he admitted it was only a stopgap measure. There would be other failures. He had insufficient replacements to repair them all. It was only a matter of time before all the suits went.
“Captain, we need to get this recon done quickly and return to the pod,” Gorilla proposed, worried. “If the chameleons malfunction entirely, which they’re starting to do …?”
“Bugs gotta eat too,” Blade said.
Atlas laughed a little too shrilly. He gave Maid a spiteful look and slapped Ferret on the back. “Don’t worry, little man,” he gibed, still looking at Maid. “If the fauna get you, I’ll take care of your little prolie slut for you. I won’t let Naleen get lonely.”
It required quite some time for a Zentadon’s body to replenish itself following the use of taa. One other time, long before the attempted sabotage of the Tsutsumi, I had witnessed a Zentadon go into instant lintatai from the prolonged use of taa and explode. The incident occurred during a crisis when little Zentadon children were trapped inside the flames of an interplanetary shuttle that crashed. The Zentadon teen rescued four of the children, but it was too much for his system when he started back into the fire for more. There wasn’t enough of him left to wrap in soul-cloth to be shot into burial space.
I felt shaky and substandard for the rest of the day’s march and took every opportunity to rest. It was a welcome relief when we came to the ruins of an old Indowy encampment and Captain Amalfi called an early camp.
Centuries ago, the town must have been a spectacular achievement of architecture and construction. Time, however, along with the relentless rain erosion and the wrecking bar lightning, had reduced it to piles of rubble with here and there a wall still standing encrusted with lichen and snarled with lianas and vines. Giant spider creatures, black with red legs, had spun webs out of strands of silk as thick as hawsers. Abandoned webs stretched across many of the trees. They looked like fishing nets and were coated with a substance so sticky that we had to literally laser Ferret free when he stumbled into one.
After the Humans’ Great Revolution succeeded, the conquerors started the initial destruction of the Indowy by nuking the towns and settlements and systematically laying waste to the Indowy war technology so that it could never be used again. Today, remnants of the Indowy technology, unsurpassed in either of two neighboring galaxies, were literally invaluable and brought huge prices on the black market. Space bandits, pirates, scavengers, pot hunters, and other restless ones sought to enrich themselves by finding and exploring old ruins for their secrets. Few of them, however, ever came to Aldenia. Aldenia kept its remaining Indowy and Zentadon skeletons.
A giant dragonfly lifted into the clouds from the dome of what appeared to be the only structure that offered some relief from the storm. It circled lazily above us, as though curious and sensing us even if it could not see us in our chameleons.
“It’s like a vulture,” Maid commented through her helmet intercom, watching it.
I selected her channel to talk to her in private. “A vulture?” I inquired.
“It’s an Earth bird, a carrion eater. It circles over the doomed and waits for them to die for its meal.”
“A pleasant Earth thought.”
“This place gives me the creeps, Kadar San.”
“Duly noted, Sergeant Pia.”
Water circulated out of hidden rooms and ate runnels through rubble. Rain slashed at walls with empty window panes.
“How did the Indowy manage to build camps here and live in such a horrid and dangerous place?” Maid asked me. “You would think it would take a miracle to survive.”
“Technology is a sort of miracle,” I replied. “The Indowy erected force fields around the camps through which nothing could enter … and nothing could leave. During the time that the Indowy bred Zentadon to fill the ranks of their soldiers, there is record of only one escape. A brave and rebellious Zentadon named Ghia San.”
“What happened to him?”
“It is supposed that he was eaten by the predators.”
“A pleasant Zentadon thought,” Maid murmured.
The team crowded into the domed structure. It was small, moldy, and empty of all furnishings. Soon, my energy restored, the relief I initially felt at bivouacking early turned to apprehension. I suspected the camp must once have been an Indowy experimental compound holding Zentadon slaves. That impression was strong in my genetic memory. The character of the evil place slowly seeped through our skins. I felt the Presence stronger than ever. Stronger than in the pod when it emitted its chilling death’s laughter.
I recognized its reflection in the faces of the others as we ate, helmets on the floor at our sides. Rain splashed in sheets outside the open door and lightning flashed hard shadows and light, transforming Human features into ghoulish masks. Atlas glared at me for no discernible purpose, considering that I might have saved his life, twice. While I didn’t expect him or my other teammates to throw themselves at my feet in supplication for what I had done, considering their mistrust of me, I had thought someone might at least acknowledge it. Instead, exhausted from the long, continuing trek and the constant strain of environment, we huddled together in individual isolation.
Sergeant Shiv
a, his scar ragged and gorged like a war leech, snarled at Gorilla. “You eat like a pig.” He issued a dry and raspy chuckle, an echo of that we had suffered aboard the pod. I half-expected him to burst into maniacal laughter.
Even Maid’s tanned and pretty face was not so appealing in the presence of the Presence. I couldn’t stand to look at her.
“Fu-uck,” Blade said. He stood up, looked contemptuously at his teammates, replaced his helmet and went out into the rain to rummage around in the running dark water that had cut gullies, ditches, and channels among the ruins.
“Are you trying to get rich by finding Indowy war treasures?” Gorilla chided him through his helmet intercom.
“Fu-uck.”
It was a cold and silent camp. I lifted my head once, thinking I heard the eerie chuckle of the Presence. It seemed I could never focus on it, study it, because the moment I became aware of it, it was gone. There was nothing there except Ferret at the door taking his monitor watch.
Perhaps it was only my imagination and rain washing relentlessly off the dome and skeining the open door.
C·H·A·P·T·E·R
NINETEEN
It was against military regulations for a soldier to scrounge planetary artifacts with the intent to black market them for personal gain, but sometimes the temptation proved too strong to resist. Especially here on Aldenia where the Indowy war technology had once flourished. Greed was a difficult drive to resist. For some.
Curious about Blade’s rummaging around in the old camp alone, I slipped out of the domed shelter. It was not yet dark, but rain fell in such layers, drumming hard, that vision was reduced to a matter of yards and the only sound was of the downpour. Lightning crashed on the Blobs’ mountain. I picked up Blade’s spoor telepathically. He seemed to have left his thoughts and emotions momentarily unguarded. Within him I also sensed the Presence, whose repugnant signature I was beginning to recognize. It was almost like they were one. Conjoined, as Mina Li might have put it.
Something about the place, undoubtedly its sordid history, at least in part, gave me the jitters. Among these now-rotted remnants of walls and spires, domes and towers and degraded electronic barriers, the Indowy had kept Zentadon herded and confined under deplorable conditions while they experimented on them like laboratory animals. The entire galaxy suffered the result: tailed devils of superhuman strength under the complete control of a madman race intent on sacrificing the Zentadon population in order to eradicate populations and dominate the planets. The Zentadon had been a large and prosperous people prior to the Indowy death camps.
I almost walked up on Blade before I actually saw him. He wore his helmet as protection against the rain, but his chameleons were deactivated. A monster dragonfly materialized out of the wet gray, but Blade jumped up and waved his arms and the insect skidded across the sky, swirling water, and made a few curious circles before making its retreat. At least the dragonflies had proved, so far, not to be a direct threat to us.
I crouched out of sight behind a crumbled wall. Blade returned to digging and pilfering among the rubbish. He seemed to be frantically looking for something. I picked up his thread of impatience and ill temper. Then, to my surprise, I actually received his thoughts, they were so powerfully projected. I couldn’t read them completely, but enough fragments came through for me to understand. It was almost like my Talent received a boost once we landed on Aldenia. I had first noticed it in exchanges with Gun Maid.
Blade appeared to be having a thought quarrel with himself. With a shock of understanding, I realized he was communicating with the Presence, but in such a way that he likely wasn’t even aware of it. He probably thought the conversation originated within his own fertile mind.
… Was here … know it was here …
Fu-uck … idiot … know where it was when I get …
I saw him … buried it here … Right here. Fu-uck!
…fucking lizard got him …
Not the lizard … fed him to the lizard … Killed him and …
Fu-uck. Stanto … Stanto dug it up again … Stanto wanted … for himself … Cheatin sonofabitch … He took it. What did he do with it?
… Buried It … buried … on high ground near base camp … before killed Stanto …
Horror wracked my body. Blade and the Presence had encountered each other before and found themselves compatible. This Stanto must have been a member of the explorer mapping team Blade accompanied here years before. Apparently, the team had found something important, something valuable here in this camp. The impression that came in strong was of quarreling and bloody fighting that decimated the team. Violence and death spurred by greed and emcee’d by the Presence.
Just as the Presence now choreographed dissension within DRT-213.
I assumed this Stanto Human ended up with the treasure, whatever it was, and reburied it elsewhere. Blade didn’t know where it was because Stanto was dead. But the Presence knew where it was.
… On the high country east of here … Remember …? Near the explorer camp … If I hadn’t killed …
The Presence was trying to tell him, but Blade listened only to himself. I felt the Presence’s slimy tentacles burrowing deeply into Blade’s soul.
It’s there! That’s where it is … near where I dumped Stanto off the cliff …
It’s not here … It’s there, damn you …
It was difficult to distinguish which voice was whose. What I now knew clearly was that the fauna of the Dark Planet had not entirely destroyed Kilmer’s mapping team. The members had got to fighting among themselves and killed each other. Blade Kilmer was the last man standing.
Now he was back and still seeking the “treasure.” The Presence apparently intended to assist him as much as it could.
I glimpsed movement from the corner of my eye. Blade also sensed something, for he immediately clamped down on his thoughts. He snapped erect. The globe of his helmeted head ran with water and his face was barely visible through the glass as he peered intently through the rain.
Off to my right, a figure in deactivated chameleons flitted behind an outcropping of weathered stone and darted into a maze of standing walls. It was a small figure that could belong only to someone like Ferret or Gun Maid. It occurred to me that I was being followed even as curiosity had sent me looking for Blade.
I eased away from Blade without being spotted, then ran an intercepting course to cut off the spying DRT-bag member. Few Humans were as fleet as a healthy Zentadon, even without our use of taa. I leaned casually against a wall, arms and legs crossed, looking as nonchalant as possible. Maid sneaked out of the dilapidated buildings, concentrating on her back trail. She jumped and gave a little startled cry when I spoke up.
“Looking for me?”
She recovered quickly. She straightened herself. After another glance back in Blade’s direction, she responded with her own question. “Why should I be looking for you? Can’t a lady go to the john?”
I must have looked puzzled.
“The john,” she clarified. “The bathroom.”
“Did you find it?”
“Close enough. I’m going back to shelter now. I’d advise you to do the same. I saw Blade out using the john also.”
“Blade is the john.”
She chuckled.
“Why were you following me?” I asked bluntly.
“Why were you following Blade?” she countered.
For a fleeting moment, it occurred to me that Blade was the second Human form I saw with Mishal at the hangar, along with the female Human that might have been Gun Maid. Blade and Maid, conspirators with the Homeland Movement? Conspirators now in attempting to recover some unknown treasure?
Preposterous!
Yet …
I probed her mind, finding it remarkably clean and centered now only on getting out of the rain and finding a place as dry and comfortable as possible. Was she so good at mind control that she could project to me the thoughts she wanted me to hear while covering up all others?
He’s a Zentadon … she thought. He’s a Zentadon …
As though she had to keep reminding herself that a Zentadon could not be trusted. I was thinking the same thing in a slightly different context. Whom among the Humans could I trust?
“Walk back with me,” she invited. “I thought you didn’t read other people’s thoughts without being invited.”
“Lying is sometimes a fault of mine.”
“Do you often lie?” she asked.
“Only during the breeding season,” I quipped to divert her.
I was wrong about some things. Politics, prolie problems, Homelanders, traitors … DRT-213 brought it all with us to Aldenia. It still mattered, more than ever. The team was falling apart. And in this harsh and inhospitable land an individual alone had about as much chance of surviving as a live organism shot into an airless vacuum.
C·H·A·P·T·E·R
TWENTY
Rain almost stopped during the short night, but the paradiddle of sprinkles gave way in a bang of lightning to a serious drumming once daylight arrived. Everyone had been pushed hard mentally and physically. I was as anxious as the others to complete the mission and return to the pod waiting in the black river. Even the cramped confines of the Stealth seemed luxurious compared to living in a waterfall.
We located the Blob base at midday.
We were traveling the military crest to avoid silhouetting ourselves. Gorilla deployed one of the bots to the top of the ridge to check out the valley and the side of the ridge facing the valley. The robot relayed feed to a miniature monitor. The screen displayed the narrow glacial valley heavily forested, revealed where it curved abruptly back to the north. At its bend were caves — and definite movement among the caves.
“Captain?” Gorilla said in a low voice.
The way he said it was an alert. The rest of the team immediately deployed into a security perimeter. I huddled with the command element — now Captain Amalfi and Sergeant Shiva — around the monitor with Gorilla.
Dark Planet Page 10
