The alien tilted his head. The purple eyes blinked again. "Hello, Marco."
Keewaji reached toward the tablet Marco was holding, its monitor still showing stats of the ravagers heading toward the moon. The alien made pleading sounds, trying to snatch it.
"Cargo!" he said. "Keewaji cargo!"
"Sorry, buddy." Marco pulled the tablet back. "We need this one."
The alien whined and hopped, trying to reach it. He spoke in his language through all four mouths.
"Lailani, give him your spare tablet," Marco said. "The old one you play Goblin Bowling on."
Lailani gasped. "But I love Goblin Bowling!"
"Lailani, give him the tablet!" Marco cringed and lifted his computer higher, trying to hold off the leaping alien. "It's that, or he'll snatch valuable technology we need."
"Goblin Bowling is valuable technology, and I do need it," Lailani said.
Captain Ben-Ari looked up from a map of the planet she was surveying. "De la Rosa, give the alien your game."
Lailani let out a groan so loud the trees trembled and the flowers rustled. She fished out a small tablet, barely larger than her palm. The game was already loaded onto the screen. The words Goblin Bowling appeared over an illustration of several goblins standing on a bowling lane, prepared to be knocked down. Grumbling, Lailani held it out.
"Cargo!" Keewaji said, joy filling his lavender eyes. He took the tablet, then plopped down and began to play, holding the game with two hands, holding his spear with the third, and laughing with the fourth.
"Great," Lailani said. "We just rotted the minds of the natives. That's us humans, ruining civilizations."
"I think the marauders are more guilty of that," said Ben-Ari, looking up from her map. "And their three ravagers will be here any minute now. We have to move. They know we landed here. Load what you can into your backpacks."
They all had large military backpacks, nearly the size of their entire bodies. They filled them with the equipment they had taken from the Anansi, mostly sensors, telescopes, computers, and batteries, all seeking a new home. It took two more Nandaki days and nights, about twenty minutes, to pack up everything.
While they worked, Keewaji stayed with them. During the five-minute days, he used Lailani's tablet. He soon grew bored with Goblin Bowling and began to watch movies loaded onto the tablet, increasing their speed so that they zoomed by. He found his way into the library of books, and he flipped the pages at astonishing speed. During the five-minute nights, he slept, then returned to his tablet when the sun rose again.
By the time everything was loaded into their backpacks, they heard it.
Engines roaring above.
They all grabbed their weapons.
Across the forest, the other Nandakis—all but Keewaji—screamed and fled.
"Here they are," Ben-Ari said. "Our marauder friends. Move! After me!"
They raced through the jungle, leaving some of the bulkier equipment behind. Marco's backpack weighed down on him, too heavy. His back ached and his shoulders bent. He forced himself to trudge on, never slowing, to follow his captain through the brush. Behind him, Kemi marched with tight lips, carrying her own supplies. Lailani brought up the rear; the little Filipina, only four-foot-ten, nearly vanished under her backpack, and sweat rolled down her cheeks.
The forest shook as ravagers landed behind them.
"Faster!" Ben-Ari whispered.
They ran between the trees. Marco remembered running with his platoon at boot camp, racing for twenty-four hours across the desert, carrying a heavy backpack. They had complained about it then. Ben-Ari had scolded the recruits, told them that someday they would run through war, run from death.
Hard in training, easy in battle, Ben-Ari had said.
That had been years ago, and it felt like a different life. Marco could barely remember Earth anymore, barely remember the kids they had been. But that lesson had stuck with him. He had followed Ben-Ari in the desert race. And he followed her today through the forest of a distant world, fleeing from a new enemy.
Behind, they heard the marauders screech, heard trees crack and fall. Birds, insects, and the native humanoids fled among the branches, crying out in fear. Keewaji hopped from branch to branch just above the Dragons, still gripping his tablet with one hand, using his tail for swinging. When two branches were too far apart, he spread out his four arms, stretching the skin between them, and glided like a flying squirrel.
"Village!" Keewaji said, making eye contact with Marco, then pointed ahead. "Secret village! Come, come!"
Marco blinked. "You speak English?"
"Hurry!" said the alien.
They ran through daylight, then darkness, then daylight again. On the third night, Keewaji began slowing down, but still the little alien plowed on, swinging from the branches above the group. During the brief days, he kept reading from the tablet, even as he swung.
"Hurry," he kept saying. "Almost at village. Warriors there."
From behind them, they heard the marauders. The aliens roared, crashing through the brush. The thuds of falling trees shook the forest. The marauders' stench filled the air, and birds kept fleeing above. Guttural voices rose in the distance.
"We smell you, humans!"
"We will drink your blood!"
"We will crush your bones!"
"We will eat your living brains as you scream!"
The four humans kept running. With their heavy backpacks, the hunger in the bellies, and the thick brush, they were moving too slowly. Every minute, the marauders sounded closer.
"How many are there?" Lailani said. "Maybe we can kill them."
Marco cringed. "There might be a hundred or more. Three ravagers landed. Each of those ships could easily carry thirty of forty of the buggers."
"Fuck!" Lailani spat. "We might have to just fight them all. No choice."
Above them, Keewaji swung down from a branch, still gripping his tablet. "No! We cannot fight them alone. They are the Night Hunters. Too strong! Come, hurry. To village! Warriors there. They don't have much cargo. But they are strong."
"Your English is improving rapidly," Marco said, running below.
The alien nodded. "I learn fast. Cargo taught me. Hurry!"
But when the sun set a third time into their run, the little alien finally fell from the branches. He lay on the floor, panting, shaking.
"Keewaji!" Marco said.
The Nandaki looked up at him, pale and shivering. "I cannot continue. I must sleep. Your kind can run for many days without rest. Will you carry me?"
Amazingly, within an hour of studying the tablet, the alien had become fluent in English.
Marco nodded and lifted him. Thankfully, the little alien didn't weigh much; Marco could barely carry all his equipment as it was. Keewaji slept in his arms as the humans ran on.
When dawn rose again, the marauders were only a hundred meters behind. When Marco looked over his shoulder, he could see them. The beasts were drooling and tearing down trees as they advanced, leaving a trail of rot and shattered wood.
"Come to us, humans!" they cried.
"Come and die between our jaws!"
The marauders laughed, racing forward. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
"Keep running!" Ben-Ari said. Sweat washed her face, and her limbs trembled, and she doffed her backpack. "Leave our equipment. Just run!"
They all dropped their packs. They ran onward, keeping only their guns. Keewaji swung overhead, wailing in fear.
"Your fear marinates your flesh!" cried a marauder, only meters behind them now.
"We have your friend!" said another. "We have Addy Linden! How she screams for us!"
Marco sneered. His hands tightened around his gun. Rage and terror filled him. So Addy was still alive. But she was hurt. She needed him.
"We fattened her up like a pig!" cried a marauder. "She squealed like one."
Another marauder swung from the left, spinning around a tree. "Soon we all will eat her alive!"
A marauder leaped from ahead. "And you will feed us next!"
Lailani spat and cocked her assault rifle. "I've heard enough bullshit. Die, you fucking space shits!" She screamed, firing in automatic, emptying a magazine into one of the marauders.
A marauder swung on a web toward Kemi. The pilot shouted and fired her assault rifle, and Ben-Ari sneered as she fired her own gun.
War.
Marco loaded his gun.
War again.
He let out a wordless cry and fired his gun. His bullet shrieked, hitting a marauder, barely slowing the beast.
Once more I fight.
He hit a marauder's eyes. The alien fell. Another marauder swung toward them, and Marco fired at its strand of webs, and the alien crashed down to the ground. Kemi sprayed it with bullets. When two more marauders lunged forth, Lailani hurled a grenade, and the soldiers all knelt and covered their heads, and the forest shook.
And still more marauders advanced, circling in, a hundred or more. As Marco loaded another magazine, as he fired again, he was back there. Back in the mines of Corpus. Back on the desert world of Abaddon. Eighteen and terrified and fighting with his friends as the scum moved in.
The marauders scuttled forth. He fired. Again. Another grenade burst. And Marco was back in the subways of Haven, the trains screeching along, showering sparks. The enemies closed in, and he was in the call center, surrounded by sneers and sniggers, trapped, head spinning. He was standing on a building over a storm, moments from death.
He was with his friends.
He was following Ben-Ari through the desert, and he was holding Lailani in the tent, making love to her, laughing nervously as their teeth banged together, when their sweaty stomachs clung together, then parted with sucking noises—awkward, silly, clumsy, wonderful sex. He was with Addy again, his best friend, roasting hot dogs on a rake.
Addy.
Addy screaming on a web.
Addy bleeding, needing him.
And Marco knew he would die here. And his tears fell because he would never see her again.
He emptied another magazine, killed another marauder, but countless more were now moving in. They formed a ring around the four companions. Lailani screamed, kept firing until her gun gave a click, empty. Kemi too ran out of bullets. Ben-Ari panted, gun smoking. The four stood back to back, surrounded. Keewaji, their guide, had vanished into the brush.
"Fuck," Lailani whispered.
The marauders moved in slowly, grinning, savoring their victory.
"You gave good chase," hissed one, a towering creature covered with yellow boils. "You evaded us for a long time. But humanity falls."
The creatures raised their claws, prepared to pounce.
Marco inhaled sharply. He raised his empty rifle, prepared to fight with his bayonet, to die fighting.
"My friends," he said. "My sisters-in-arms." His voice choked. "It has been an honor."
Kemi nodded, tears in her eyes. "An honor. Goodbye, my friends. I love you all."
"I never thought I'd die without completing the last level in Goblin Bowling," Lailani said. "Thanks, Poet." But then she too was shedding years. "I love you, Marco. Always. You know that, right? I never stopped loving you."
Marco's tears flowed. He could only manage a whisper. "I ruv you."
Lailani laughed through her tears. "Ruv you too."
The marauders leaped in.
Howls filled the forest.
Arrows and spears flew.
With battle cries, hundreds of native Nandakis leaped from the trees. They circled above, gliding on the skin that stretched between their four arms. From above, they fired their weapons, peppering the marauders. Keewaji fought among them, firing stones from a sling.
The marauders cried out, shot webs toward the branches, and raced up in pursuit of the Nandakis. But here was not their forest, and the Nandakis had evolved here, knew every branch, every vine. The small aliens moved at incredible speed, fighting through day, through night, through day again, never resting, shouting battle cries and firing with deadly aim. Their arrows slammed into marauder eyes, and the great beasts crashed down.
When the sun rose again, hundreds of Nandaki corpses littered the ground. But among them, stinking, oozing, lay dozens of dead marauders.
Lailani shoved her bayonet into one twitching marauder and spat on the corpse. "Bastards."
Ben-Ari yanked her knife out of a marauder's eye. The alien jerked, then fell still. She looked up at Marco and nodded. "Well, Sergeant Emery, looks like your idea of coming here worked."
"Not thanks to me," Marco said. He approached Keewaji. "Thanks to this little fellow."
The young alien looked haggard. Blood splashed him—most of it the black blood of marauders, but also green blood that seeped from his own wounds.
The alien raised one hand and spoke through its mouth. "I told you. My people are great warriors. For many days, the Night Hunters have hurt us, have destroyed our towns, have consumed our flesh. They brought evil into our pure Mother Forest."
Several other Nandakis gathered around, taller and broader than Keewaji; the largest among them stood about as tall as Lailani. Some wore patches of crude armor, and it took Marco a moment to realize the armor was formed from the hulls of spaceships, perhaps a fallen ravager. Black blood coated their spears and clubs. Seeing their dead, the Nandakis cried out in mourning, thumped their chests, fell to their knees, and seemed to pray.
Marco lowered his head. "You lost many," he said softly. "I'm sorry, Keewaji. Can we help you bury the dead?"
Keewaji took a step back, eyes wide. He raised three hands and spoke through three mouths. "Bury our dead? But they are heroes! Why would you dishonor them?"
"In our culture it's an honor," Marco said.
Keewaji frowned. "Your ways are strange. My people struggle to understand the great Night Races from the stars. We will carry our dead to the tallest mountain peaks, and carve their flesh, and let the birds feed upon them. Thus they will rise to the sky, not become the food of worms underground." He stared at a dead, foul marauder. Already insects were buzzing across it. "These things are bad. These things we will bury."
These things we will bury, Marco thought, wishing he could do the same to his nightmares, to the new trauma already breaking him here. He had emerged from the scum war in pieces. He had faced death and horror in those battles too many times. What new fractures were spreading inside him now? What new scars would still linger? These things we will bury. Perhaps Marco had buried too much.
He approached his companions. All had suffered wounds. Lailani knelt, a bloody bandage around her temple. She was busy stitching a cut on Ben-Ari's thigh. The captain grimaced and bit on a stick as Lailani worked, pushing the needle through the skin. Kemi sat on a fallen log, panting, wincing as she touched a scratch across her chest.
Marco approached the pilot, thankful that the HDF had taught him to always keep medical supplies in his cargo pants pockets. "Let me help."
Kemi looked up at him, and he was surprised to see that she was crying.
"I'm all right," she whispered. "Go tend to Lailani's head." She looked away. "She loves you very much."
Marco knelt beside Kemi. He wiped a glob of marauder flesh off her knee. "Kemi, whatever happened between Lailani and me, it happened a long time ago. She . . . she left me, Kemi. We're not—"
"I know, Marco," Kemi said, looking away. A tear hung off the tip of her nose. "I guess when you talked to me about puzzles, about buying that house on the beach together, about being how we were, I . . ." She wiped her eyes. "I was stupid. We were only kids then. And we're all scared. We all face death every day. So we say silly things. I understand." Kemi smiled shakily, tears on her lips. "I know those days can't come back. Go to her, Marco. Win her back."
Win Lailani back? Marco didn't want to think of such things. He had to save his species, save the whole damn galaxy for all he knew. He didn't have time for this. Thoughts of romance had perhaps seemed important on Hav
en, but who cared for love when the galaxy burned?
And yet, when facing death in this forest, his first instinct had been to turn to Lailani, to confess his love to her. And for that moment, near death, he had felt warmth. Now, after the battle, he found himself drawn to Kemi, and . . .
Enough, he told himself. Focus on your mission. Focus on finding another starship. On finding the Ghost Fleet. Not on old ghosts. Because that's all this is. Old ghosts of love, as ancient as the ghosts said to haunt that mythical armada.
As the Dragons continued walking through the forest, following Keewaji toward his village, Marco knew that a new group of ghosts would haunt him. The ghosts of this new war, of this butchery in the forest, of once more facing death and emerging into a broken life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Addy had been young, her teacher had taken her class to a planetarium, a disastrous trip that had changed Addy's life.
At eleven, she had been a scrawny orphan, budding into puberty with rage and madness. Her father had just gotten out of prison again, ending his third stint behind bars, this time for getting drunk and crashing his company's truck. Still wearing an ankle bracelet, he sat at home all day, working on his motorcycle, drinking, and beating his wife. Addy's mother smothered the bruises under the haze of crystal meth, spending her days in a stupor when she wasn't beating Addy, a mimicry of how her husband treated her.
Addy never told her parents how she would steal her dad's booze, how she would smoke cigarettes behind the school, how she sometimes took some of her mom's drugs. She never spoke of letting that older boy, fifteen already, feel her budding breasts in the bathroom. How she and her friends once had found a dead cat, poked it with sticks for an hour, then tossed it into somebody's yard. How she sometimes cut her arm just to feel something. Her parents had enough worries, and whenever her dad brought another whore home, or whenever her mom sank into the murk of drugs, or whenever the fists flew, Addy ran. She ran into the alleyways and drank and smoked and stole and broke things, because she herself was broken.
They had tried to place her in a normal class with normal kids—with smart, clean kids with educated parents, with kids like Marco Emery and Kemi Abasi, and Addy had felt so stupid among them. She failed tests the others passed with ease. She heard them taunting her, calling her a whore, and she beat them, and she tossed desks, and she cut herself again.
Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5) Page 11
