Nova Romae (The Adventures of Christopher Slone Book 2)

by Donald Nicklas

  The others also assured Tavia that what she did was right and she should not feel guilty about the collateral damage. She had no way of knowing what was in the transport.

  “We’ll need to find out where they are and how we can get to them. We’re going to have to infiltrate the city again,” Diana said.

  “That will greatly increase our risk of discovery here. We need to find them fast and get them out of there. If they are too injured to travel, we will have a real problem,” Decanus Marshal stated. “But I have an idea.” The Decanus moved over to the ship and called for Sly to come out.

  The serpent moved out of the ship and seemed to bask in the surrounding jungle. It was obvious this is his element.

  Decanus Marshal said to him, “The Slones are in trouble. They have been injured in an explosion and they are somewhere in the city. Can you get in there and find them for us and see if they can move under their own power?”

  There was the ever-present quivering, and then undulation of the lips and the serpent said, “Sss. Sly likes the Slones. I will find them and bring them back.”

  Before anyone could say another word, Sly leapt into the jungle and disappeared in the underbrush.

  “Wow that was fast. Can he find them?” Diana asked.

  Decanus Marshal stated, “I have seen the serpent find people we could never have. They have abilities and they are chameleons, they actually can become invisible with the background. If they can be found, he will find them.”

  Chapter 5 - Sly

  Sly moved rapidly into the jungle surrounding the ship. She could travel fast, but decided to slow down a bit to enjoy the sights and sounds of the place. Cities were interesting, and her kind had many of them, carved out of jungles similar to this one. However, the serpents loved the jungle. The humans called them serpents and that was fine with her. She knew the humans did not have the vocal apparatus needed to pronounce her language properly. It was difficult for her to vocalize human speech, but she could understand everything they said. For instance, she knew they thought she was a male and decided not to correct them. After all, what did it matter? She did not intend to mate with them. Her thoughts were suddenly distracted by a smell. A beautiful floral waft came in her direction and she changed course slightly to intercept its source. As she came to a clearing, she saw a magnificent carpet of small, white flowers that tickled her senses and made her desirous to halt and enjoy. She paused a moment to inhale deeply.

  She could not stay. She had to continue her mission. She liked her new partners. The humans could never be equal to her kind, since they were of inferior intelligence to the serpents, but they were valuable as friends. No one ever told the humans that serpents had visited their home world, the one they call Earth, many millennia of their time in the past. They found a very primitive sentient human race, which they tried to help. However, the young humans, as they came to be called, did not trust the serpents. They did not trust their own reptilian creatures and thus feared the serpents. As a result, contact with earth was abandoned. To humans, contact with the serpents became a source of legend in the collective memories of the human race. Sly knew that serpent speech made humans tranquil, and she often used it on her friends to calm them or persuade them. She liked the Slones very much. They never questioned her actions and she knew the female Slone was close by blood with the leader of the humans with whom the serpents were allied. Serpents could smell blood and could smell blood relations. Humans did not know this.

  She moved rapidly onward and soon came to the edge of the city. She took in the smells of the place. The first smell was blood, but not the fresh blood of a pumping heart, but blood that was spilled on the stones underfoot. This was a site of battle, and she was suddenly very alert as her own heart pumped faster and a slight drooling began at the angle of her jaws. Serpents were similar in appearance to the creatures the humans called raptors. This was purely parallel evolution, since serpents were not in any way related to dinosaurs. They had larger hands and longer upper extremities. Their feet were webbed to allow for fast swimming. There also was not the killing claw of the raptor, but they did have claws. They were long and sharp and were the reason they did not carry weapons. They had the teeth of a carnivore, but more along the lines of an earth mammal and not the even rows seen in pure reptiles. Their dentition was similar to the Gorgonopsids of earth evolution, except the canines did not protrude from the closed mouth. They were sheathed in sockets in the jaws.

  Sly reached a fence marking the end of a narrow street radiating from a large, parallel street. There were building entrances just on the other side of the fence. Sly felt the street would be too exposed and she needed a place to get her bearings and sample the air for a taste of the Slones. She was next to a flat roofed building, about three stories high. That would do. With a bound, she jumped half way up and used her clawed hands and feet to climb the rest of the way. She looked over the rim of the roof to make sure no one was there. She altered the scales covering her body and willed them to match the color of the roof. When she was fully on the roof, she was now invisible from the air. All she had to do was stay low and move to the front of the building and she could test the air and check the surrounding area.

  She quietly and deliberately crawled to the front of the roof. Once there, she realigned her scales to fit in with the background and again became invisible to the casual observer. As long as she did not move, no one would see her. It was now time to sample the air, so she rapidly stuck her tongue out and pulled it back into her mouth. Like earth reptiles, she could whisk molecules from the air and separate them into individual scents. However, her race could do more than that. Over the years, they developed the ability to visualize the recent past through scents. That is not to say, they could see the past. However, they could visualize where in the area the scents came from, and from which direction the windblown scents have come. The scents formed visual images in the brains of the serpents that translated before them as colorful blobs, each one representing a different scent with color intensity increasing the more powerful the scent. Slowly shifting scents represented normal movement and very swift scents represented wind carried odors. From the current mix, Sly slowly studied the scents before her. She knew the normal scent of each one of her crew mates. It was part of how serpents recognized different humans, since most of them looked quite similar to her kind, provided they had similar skin colors. Nevertheless, the visual, combined with the scent, made each human an individual. After a few minutes of study, she picked up the scent of the Slones. They were near the center of the city and a bit to her right. She looked at the rooflines and found a long set of buildings leading towards the center, whose roofs were within jumping distance of each other. This would be her path into the metropolis. She would have little chance of being seen, since humans rarely think of movement as three-dimensional and do not look up. She made her top scale look like the roof below and her bottom scales look like the pale blue-green sky. Then she took a running start and leapt from roof to roof in the direction of the homing scent. Her movements were swift and quiet. No one saw or heard her.

  A half hour later, after leaping across many roofs, she came to an area filled with scents and destruction. She sniffed the air and could smell the dried blood. She looked over the edge of the latest roof and saw fragments of a hover transport that was blown apart. The buildings around this site were shattered and some had collapsed. It was time to sample again. She looked over the edge and saw activity. Soldiers were standing guard and civilians were being forced to clean up the mess. The human soldiers were mistreating the civilians. Serpents did not treat each other this way, though they did sometimes fight wars against each other. However, in war, you kill your enemy; you do not make them work. That does not show honor to your foe. To Sly and her kind, this shows contempt. She made sure to adjust her camouflage and then stuck out her tongue and sampled the air. She could visualize the explosion and the human scents moving quickly in all directions to get away fro
m the hover transport. There was the distinctive scent of missile fuel and missile explosion. Then there was the scent of damaged machinery followed by the scent of human fear coming from the stricken hovercraft. Finally, there was the scent of fear and concern coming from all directions as the hovercraft fell from the sky and exploded. Sly mentally picked through the scents until she had the ones she was looking for. There were the Slones, moving first slowly then much faster away from the hovercraft. After the explosion, the area was filled with the scents of the escort hovercraft racing to the north.

  Again, the tongue came out and again the scents entered the serpent brain. This time Sly concentrated on the Slones and discovered a disturbing scent, the scent of their blood. The Slones were injured as she had heard from the Decanus, whose smell was also in the area. The scent then travelled rapidly towards the administrative area, which was heavily guarded. She moved closer to the center of the explosion and then stopped suddenly. She was next to a building that held the scents of the entire Slone group. She sensed that Captain Rand left the group, but what was odd, the group scent could be detected here and a faint scent of them about a kilometer in the direction of the administrative buildings. However, there was no connection between. That could only mean they went underground. If there was a path, she needed to find it.

  Sly moved to a broken window and slipped into the building. The front of the structure was shattered from the explosion, but the rooms away from the front offices were intact, as was the staircase. She quickly and quietly took the stairs to the bottom floor, constantly changing her colors to match the background. She followed the scent to the most interior location and found herself in an abandoned food market, whose interior was filled with broken shelving, fragmented by the explosion. The group scent was strongest in a room that also reeked of meat smell. Sly saw a small square crack in the floor extending from underneath a big chest that was blown back by the explosion. She pushed the chest completely out of the way and exposed the entire trap door. She passed the claw of her right, second digit through the ring at one end of the square and gave it a pull. Out of the hole came the most delightful waft of decay. To the serpents, decay smelled sweet and enticing. They were not carrion feeders, but where the sweet smell of decay existed, there will eventually be scavengers who are alive and ready to be eaten. She plunged into the opening and landed at the bottom of the ladder. Serpents have night vision and infrared so she can see well in the tunnel. She rapidly moved along, with the candy smell of decay continuing to assail her nostrils. When she came to the end of the tunnel, there, at the foot of a ladder, was the source of the odor. A high-ranking human officer with his throat cut. The sight of the clotted blood coming from the neck raised the heat in Sly’s body and assailed her brain with emotions of blood lust. She liked humans, but looked forward to a war where she may get to taste them. From their smell, they would be sweet.

  She willed herself back to her mission. She climbed the ladder and pushed open the trapdoor at the top. There were voices. She closed the door and looked around. She was in a storage closet and knew there were humans beyond the door. She listened and adjusted her scales to blend into the background. She was invisible as long as no one suddenly flicked on a light. She moved ever so slowly to the door and opened it a crack. There was an empty room with another room beyond. The rooms were separated by a glass door and glass windows, which were frosted. There were four humans in the farther room and three of them left, leaving one behind. She tried to understand what they were saying, but they spoke too fast. She needed to get information. Sly left her closet and moved into the empty room. She knew humans could not see well in the dark, so she decided to lure this human to her. To Sly, humans were curious and, even if this were not a war situation, they would investigate a strange sound. She moved to a corner near the door and made a slight trilling sound, mimicking a bird from the jungle. After repeating this a few times, she saw the desired effect when the human got up from his desk and came to the glass door. It was a human male, slightly built and young, not an officer. Before opening the door, the human took his gun out of the holster and held it before him. He slowly opened the door and was about to turn on the flashlight he just pulled out of his vest, when Sly pounced. Serpents were much faster and stronger than humans were and could use all of their extremities if needed. She rapidly disarmed him and put a hand around his neck to keep him from calling for help. With one of her feet, she grasped the door handle and slowly closed it. She then pushed the human against the wall. Her lips began to quiver and then undulate.

  “Sss. Human, you are quiet and I will remove hand from neck. Understand?”

  The hypnotic speech caused the Petrov soldier to relax and nod his assent. Sly loosened her grip on his neck and again the lips quivered. “Sss. You have prisoners from the explosion. Where are they?”

  By this time, the soldier was so mesmerized from the hypnotic voice he answered without hesitation. “They were taken to the hospital and are being interrogated.”

  Sly wondered if there was anything else to ask, but could not think of it. She could find them easily by scent and she knew she had to get there. She turned to the human and looked him in the face. “Sss. How many humans are beyond the door?”

  The soldier looked at the head of the serpent. “There are three outside.”

  Sly had all the information she needed. She could sense the pulse of the human’s neck artery and silently place a claw at the spot where it was pulsating. A quick movement of her digit and the claw plunged into the artery and a powerful spray of blood fired across the room. A quick movement of her hands and the neck was snapped. She had no intention of waiting until he bled to death, but needed to smell the blood to sharpen her sense for the blood she would smell in the hospital. She licked the blood from her claw and thought; they are indeed sweet.

  Sly moved into the office and turned off the lights. She then opened the door and moved back.

  “Everything alright in there, corporal?” a voice came in from the outer room. “Corporal, report. Corporal?”

  Two of the three guards moved to the open door and shined a light in. The lights landed on the body of the corporal in the room behind the glass door, which Sly had left open for this purpose. “What the hell?” said one of the guards and ran into the darkened office as the other guard reached for the light switch.

  In a flash, Sly grabbed the arm of the guard reaching for the light and pull it towards her mouth. There was a crunch of bone, a sudden scream as the arm came apart, and the hand and wrist was in her mouth. Without waiting to spit out the hand, she reached over, clamped onto the front of the human’s neck, and pulled apart all of the vital structures. The guard let out a gurgle and fell like a rock. Sly then moved rapidly against the second guard who was just turning around to see what the commotion was. He saw Sly and froze. The alien would be the last thing he saw in life. There was a flash of claws from the foot, the front of the guard was ripped open, and the internal organs spilled out. By this time the third guard entered with gun drawn but Sly was faster. There was also the ‘Wow’ factor at seeing an alien. The guard saw what Sly did to the previous guard and took to his heals, screaming. He didn’t get far as Sly leapt across the room and ripped his back open from the base of the neck to the lower back. A second swift move and his neck snapped. Sly now finally spit out the partially chewed hand.

  The serpent could hear activity in the next room and made a beeline for the stairs leading up. She opened the fire door and bounded up the stairs. In a few seconds, she was on the roof and camouflaged. The guards checked the roof, but Sly stayed still. She learned that humans are not good at finding serpents. When the roof was clear again, she went back to searching. From the side of the roof she picked up the scent and it lead to a large building that was undamaged. From the sign, Sly read ‘Penllyn Emergency Services’. She carefully jumped from roof to roof, until she reached the hospital. That building was much higher and there was no way to jump to the roof. She h
eard sirens in the distance and realized they were reacting to her actions at the other building. She had to move and get into the hospital. She looked down at the small street between the buildings and saw a metal door. There was no traffic and it was only a three-story drop, not much of a challenge for a serpent. She dropped off the roof and landed next to the door. There was no handle on the outside. It was meant to be an exit but not an entrance. Sly fixed the claws of her hands into the gap between the doorframe and the door and pulled with all her might. The door did not move, though her superior hearing told her the lock strained a bit. Three more applications of force and the lock gave way and the door swung open. She entered and pulled the door shut. She then bent the steel bar on the inside across and wedged it into the side frame. This kept the door locked.

  Sly now found herself in a fire staircase and tested the air. She could taste the scent of the Slones. They were not up in the regular rooms they were below her level. They were being kept in the basement of the hospital. This meant they were being tortured but also meant there were limited witnesses. Sly moved down the stairs for two levels and found herself in front of a locked door. This one did have a handle and a lock on her side of the door, and that allowed her to pry out the lock cylinder and open the door as quietly as possible. The corridor was empty. The Petrov troops did not expect any attack in the center of their headquarters. Sly moved down the hall, following the scent of her friends until she stood in front of the door. She then listened. She could smell electricity being applied to human skin and the grunts of Alaya as the shocks hit her. She could hear Slone say to someone, “Leave her alone.” In addition, a third voice saying, “tell us what we want to know.” Sly could not see through the door, so she would have to size up the situation in the room on the fly and act accordingly. She focused all of her attention to the task and burst through the door.