by John Foster
The sound of pain, has a way of reaching out to you and then, once it touches you, you can’t unhear it. West felt like this when he heard the whispers of whimpers from the shadows of the cave in front of him. He moved to the front of the group holding his hand light in one hand and beam weapon in the other. He motioned for silence and then moved forward and saw a glimmer of light in the passage in front of him. Curt was on his right side, rifle held ready, and his face etched with furrowed lines and jaw unmoving and tight. West could hear the cries ahead, almost certainly some type of animal that was in distress. As they got closer the brightness grew and seemed to come from a ceiling cave-in letting in the light of the day. There was a dense cluster of short spiky green plants in a pool of light and some small pools glittering in the area of the cave-in. The sounds, now louder, were coming from the shadows along one wall between West and the opening in the ceiling. They moved cautiously aware that an injured animal can be dangerous. West played the light over the area and noticed the plants, in tight little clusters with long slender pointed leaves from a central core, and looked remarkably like aloe on earth. He wondered if they were similar to those found at home and had the same healing properties.
There was a skittering noise of something along the ground in front of them hidden among the rubble from the cave-in. He dialed down his weapon for light stun hoping it would be enough to immobilize the creature. The team was closer to the light now and what West thought was a little creature was making gasping sounds as it attempted to keep West and his party at a distance. Then there was silence. West signaled for the rest to wait and he walked forward using his light to investigate the twists and turns of the cave walls to find the location of the injured animal. Walking along the edge of the wall, there was a slight bend and West shined his light down on a small cluster of stones leaning against the wall and out darted a small animal, much like a hedgehog but with knobs rather than bristles, and it charged at him, then gagged and coughed up blood, and with a scream of fright it ran to the plant clusters in the light. Although West had been prepared for the encounter, he hadn’t anticipated the speed of the animal nor its abrupt moves. He stood watching the fleeing animal, as Curt ran to his side, his rifle ready as the small animal ran shrieking into the plants. They watched with mouths open, wide eyed, as the animal entered into the vegetation. It started to weave faster and faster and then the plant stalks started to twist with the tips spearing down. Several found the poor creature as it entered their midst. It screamed and flopped over on its side, and twitched as it was speared through by several of the plants which repeatedly pierced it with their deadly points.
The rest of the team peered over West and Curt’s shoulders as they looked at the dead animal. The plants stopped writhing and were now vertical as if nothing had taken place. Amal had stepped up to see what was going on.
“That poor little animal,” said Madison, her hand to her chin. “We should burn those plants.”
Amal looked quizzically at Madison, “Why would you do that? They have a right to protect themselves and their young.”
The team all looked to Amal in puzzlement. “What do you mean?” said West.
Seeing their lack of understanding, Amal stepped closer to the plants and knelt down gesturing toward an area of light green grasses around the plants. “Those little bands of grasses that are around the plants are the young of this creature and it was simply protecting them from that little predator,” said Amal pointing to the little furry but quite dead animal.
“How do you know that?” said West, kneeling down but keeping his distance, looking at the little grasses around the plant.
“We have similar plants on the planets that are closest to this system. Their seeds fall to the ground and the animals prey on the young as they seem to be a treat to the little animals. The plants have evolved a protective mechanism to defend the young but these rodent like creatures usually attack in packs and devour the young plants and they eventually become extinct. In this closed environment, they are protected but that very protection also limits them to this one area and the young will die anyway. It is the way of many of these planets,” said Amal. “The plants will stab you if you’re not careful as you pass through.”
Curt scouted the area and found a way through the plants over some of the cave fall that kept them well away from the spike plants.
“I wonder if the panic-stricken trooper heard these animals and that’s what spooked him?” said Madison.
West pondered this for a moment. “I don’t know but I suppose he wasn’t on the surest of ground when they sent him in here by himself and then he heard those cries,” said West his eyes on the little plants.
“It does give us an added bit of security if those troopers come marching in here though,” said Curt.
“I doubt that the armor on their legs will get damage, but if they are marching without it, then they’re going to be in for injuries,” said Amal.
“West! There’s smoke ahead,” said Curt as he crouched, looking into the darkness of the passage ahead, and raised his rifle.
West dropped to a crouch and looked ahead. “I don’t see anything, Volkum use your vision to see if there is a heat signature in front of us.”
Volkum moved to the front, his weapon ready, “I don’t pick up anything, just some faint haze.”
“I could have sworn I saw smoke ahead. It was jerking around as if air currents were gusting about,” said Curt, looking doubtful himself.
“Gusting?” asked Madison, her eyebrow raised looking up at Curt.
“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but it seemed like the smoke wasn’t normal,” said Curt who was shaking his head.
“Wasn’t normal?” asked Madison.
Curt looking abashed, rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, okay, let’s get out of here.”
With the team around him West said, “I know we’re all tired and would like to take a break,” said West. “We can’t do that though, I’m sure the Sovar aren’t taking any naps. We’ve got to make progress and get back to the Cyclops.”
West looked to Curt and nodded to him to take the point again. Curt strapped his hand light to the barrel of his laser rifle and moved out with the others following in a line. The gloom of the cave deepened as they left the light of the roof cave-in behind them. The walls were narrowing and they could no longer pass three abreast. Cesar continued to brush aside their tracks but West had him stop when they reached an intersection of three corridors.
“Which one?” asked Curt.
“We’ll stay in the central one, it’s more likely to go somewhere,” said West pointing towards the middle one.
The walls of the cave were not as straight as they had been and seemed to have more nooks and crannies with sudden large openings, dark and forbidding, along the passage. They passed several chambers that appeared to have been excavated out roughly and lacked the smoothness of some of the earlier areas they had traversed. Investigating one room, it turned out to be a large chamber with faint outlines of arcane symbols painted on the walls. Madison scanned them but could not find any matches in her data base. The smoky mist that Curt had seen before was more prevalent and seemed to hang in the air as they passed them. There was no detectable smell of fire or smoldering and they couldn’t figure out where it was originating.
“What do you think the smoky stuff is?” asked Madison to West.
“I don’t know, never seen anything like it before. Have you noticed that when we pass through it, it seems to become denser?” said West.
“Yes, it’s almost like its being activated by something. Maybe us?” said Madison.
Most of the team were yawning now, their heads hanging low from the exhaustion of the day, and the haze was becoming denser as they walked through it.
“You know, it almost looks like the smoky stuff is sticking to the walls of the cave?” said Curt as he played his light on the nearby walls.
“Amal? Have you ever seen anything like this?” ask
ed West turning to her.
“No, this is a strange phenomenon to me as well. It may be some form of gas that accumulates in these caves and that may be why we are feeling so sleepy.”
They stopped and looked at each other. “That’s not good,” said West, “Let’s make tracks.”
The pace picked up considerably and they moved ahead through the same endless dark corridors. They passed several other branches of passages but continued on in the direction they were going. Cesar moved up to West and stopped him, “I’m starting to lose contact with the grenade detonator at the cave entrance.”
“Well, I guess that’s one surprise that the Sovar aren’t going to get to celebrate,” said West.
“We could always set it off now before we get farther out of range?” said Cesar.
West pondered this and then shook his head, “If they had bypassed the cave earlier, that would only draw them back to it and then they’d come after us in a big way. Better to let them find us without our giving ourselves away.” As West said this, he noticed that the space behind the group in the passage way seemed to be getting cloudy and the hand light reflected back at him. “Has the smoke been getting thicker behind us?” West asked Cesar.
“Yeah, it seems to be denser, but I just thought it was the dust we were kicking up as we walked,” said Cesar.
“Hmm....... yeah, it does seem like dust mixed in with the smoke too, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll let you know if anything changes,” said Cesar looking back into the darkness.
West nodded and walked back to the front of the team and noticed most of them were kneeling or sitting against the walls resting.
“Okay, let’s keep moving,” said West.
“I think we should rest,” said Madison, “The Sovar probably haven’t found the cave and aren’t coming after us.”
The troopers gathered about Dragaan and his officers while the squad leaders gave their report on the search. Each report was negative as were the aerial patrols circling above the crash site and within 10 miles of the search radius. The senior officers were summarizing their reports to Dragaan.
“We’ve searched the area twice now and haven’t seen anything to report. The initial report indicated a food wrapper at the cave complex near the wreck and river area but other than our own tracks, none were found within the cave nor any other evidence. They probably had a food break and moved on.”
Dragaan turned and looked towards the caves looming along the cliff face on the edge of the river. “Send another team of commandos and have them search the cave area. Tell them to search any tunnels or passages for the Terrans but only for a short time and then report back.”
The officer nodded, “I’ll attend to it myself,” saluted and hurried to the cave entrance signaling a team of heavily armored troopers to follow him.
Dragaan watched them go and while frustrated with the escape of the Terrans, he realized that they couldn’t escape for long and then he’d have them and potentially the weapon.
The corridor continued in a straight line for almost a half mile, then started to zig zag every few hundred feet, their mapping program on the HDA’s showed that the corridors were probably not natural but had been created by the Kaa or some other race. The walls weren’t smooth but showed obvious evidence of tool marks that had shaped the passages. There were more chambers but none as big as the first one they had entered. The smoke trails they had encountered before were lessening when they picked up speed and they felt more refreshed and less tired. After five more hours, they came to a chamber off to the side of the main corridor. They almost missed it and it was only due to Cesar who had spotted it when he leaned against what he thought was a passage wall and had fallen into the room. It had a dog leg entrance which hid the main room. Plying his hand light about the room, Cesar realized that it could offer concealment from the Sovar if they caught up with them. He ran out of the room and hurried after the others who were moving down the corridor.
“Hey boss, I got a place to rest,” said Cesar to West.
“Rest?”
“Yeah, we’ve been dogging it now for quite a while and I found a side room that’s partially concealed where we could rest up a bit. Maybe an hour or two,” said Cesar, his head nodding.
“Okay, let’s take a look, we could use a break.”
They walked back to the room that Cesar had found and entered it.
“Yeah, this would be fine, but only for a couple of hours,” said West. The others crowded around and shined their lights on the walls and ceiling which was lower than others they had found but high enough to not hit their heads.
West turned to the group and said, “Okay, we rest for two hours, I’ll take the first hour watch, then Volkum, Okay?” Volkum nodded his head and they quickly moved to the walls of the cave, and either sat down or lay down.
Senior Captain Petrov, returned to Dragaan and saluted, “We found a hand grenade and remote detonator on the ceiling of the cave and signs that they had tried to hide their passage into the corridor. I would assume they are making their way through the caves as we speak.”
Dragaan nodded, fumed, and then said, “Captain you will have the honor to lead our troops into the caves and capture the Terrans. Make sure you do not kill the woman that is with them. The others can be taken if they do not resist. Do you understand?”
“I understand Commander,” said the Captain.
“I will take the remaining men and seize their vessel,” said Dragaan and he turned to signal the remaining officers to gather their men to move out.
Captain Petrov, saluted, then turned to hurry back to the cave where his men waited.
West sat outside the room in the dark corridor. He left his light off so that anyone approaching wouldn’t notice it. The others within the room had turned off their lights too except for one small thumbnail light near the entrance to the room. Now that West was sitting, he could feel sleep creeping over him and it seemed like the misty vapor was forming around him and he batted it away with his hand dispersing it. The motion seemed to refresh him and he continued to wave his hand whenever the vapor seemed too condense around him. What none of them could see, now that the lights were off, was the slow filling in of the room with smoky vapor from the top of the entrance from the outside corridor. West couldn’t see it moving along the top of the corridor as if it were being drawn in. Strands of it were flowing in from the corridor and starting to coalesce into ephemeral little clouds of gas about two feet in diameter. As the clouds became more solid they started to move purposefully and dart about in short movements. Those vapors that had formed into more solid forms were circling above the unsuspecting team below. As more of the Terrans fell asleep, the vapor forms slowly moved above them, floating like jellyfish of Terra’s oceans. Above Curt, one of the floaters started to flatten and spread out and slowly fell across his face and covered his eyes, nose, and mouth like a silk handkerchief. His face had an iridescent sheen over it. He continued to breathe, then coughed, and started to struggle a little bit, thrashed his arms, and then lay still, his eyes lids rhythmically opening and closing. Other little clouds started to form over the other team members as well, first with Cesar, then Amal, and then the others. After an hour, West got a vibration from his HDA and got up to wake Volkum. He didn’t turn on his light, due to the thumb light posted by door which gave sufficient light to find his way. He moved to Volkum who had stationed himself by the doorway so that West could find him easily. West shook his shoulder to wake him but he wasn’t responsive and West gave him a harder shake and then with both hands. Volkum started to rouse himself and then coughed violently, spitting, and gagging. West sat back in amazement at the reaction. “Wow, you must be really tired to be in such a deep sleep,” said West.
“Sorry, Chief, don’t know what got over me, felt like I was choking or something,” said Volkum, who sat up and leaned forward on his knees.
“No problem, just keep your eyes open, it’s easy to fall asleep out there
.”
“Yeah, I guess we’re pretty tired.”
Volkum stood and turned toward the door and walked out into the tunnel. He tapped his forehead and looked both ways with his infrared vision. He could see nothing moving and sat against the wall and fell immediately asleep as the vapors settled around his face again.
Madison was having nightmares as she slept, feelings of suffocation, deadening of her thoughts as if something was stealing into her brain and changing her thoughts. She would start to try to end the dream but every time she did, she felt she was losing control, and if she gave way she felt relaxed, if she stopped fighting it. She knew there was something critically wrong and that if she didn’t act soon, it would engulf her completely and she wouldn’t be able to escape it. She had been trained in Zen meditation and brought that training of focus into her mind, concentrating on the creeping malaise that threatened her mind. She was proud of her intelligence and determined that she would beat off whatever was attempting to control her. She concentrated, focused her will into pushing the creeping thing out of her mind, and then struggled as it pressed back. It became a contest of wills, her against what? What was the other? She felt these thoughts struggling against her concentration and put them away, one task at a time now, just push! She could feel it weakening, felt it struggling as she had, then realized it was some kind of intelligence, primitive in some ways, but thinking and alive. Her mind was grasping at a word, a thought, so repellant, that would allow her to push the alien thing away and then she had it, just the word that would allow her to succeed, and it was “parasite.” And with her mind framing that word, allowing the revulsion to sweep over her, she pushed the intelligence away and she sat up coughing and spitting as the cloud thing dissipated in front of her. She started to speak, found she couldn’t, then spit and coughed again, expelling the mist from her chest and mouth. She gagged and spit up and smoke spilled from her mouth. She rolled over and gagged again with more of the smoke coming out of her mouth and nose like misty gray vomit. Her eyes cleared and she sat back up, then fitfully got to her knees and then fumbled for her light and turned it on. She saw the others covered with creeping clouds over each of their faces, their eyelids flickering open and shut, as if something was in their minds. She realized that there was indeed something in their minds and she screamed as one fell on her shoulder and started to swim around her face. She clawed at it, dissipating it as she did so. She turned to West who lay still, a shimmering cloud over his face. She reached for him and slapped his face, knocking the clouds into strands of gas which then reformed and tried to re-attach itself, “No you don’t,” said Madison. Her scream hadn’t alarmed anyone and worst yet, none had even appeared to have registered it. She grabbed West by the shoulder and shook him again, harder than the first.
