Maeve grinned, straightening up. “It was, wasn't it? Now you see me …” She tapped the console again, and transported away.
Maeve reappeared about a half-mile away, and was immediately thrown off-balance when one of her boots slipped on a small rock. Flailing her arms, she was able to regain her balance without toppling over. “Okay,” she said to herself. “That would've been embarrassing.”
Getting her bearings, she quickly located the malfunctioning motion detector. It was nothing more than a polycarbonate rod shoved into the ground, roughly four feet tall with a collection of micro-fiber optical sensors clustered around its tip. This one, however, was not standing vertically; it had been broken in half, the fractured top half lying on the ground with a few indentations that looked alarmingly like teeth marks along its length.
She pulled her pad from the pouch on her belt, tapped a few buttons, and brought up the last images the sensor recorded. According to the computer data, it went off-line around midnight the night before. Pulling up the last five minutes of video, she switched the feed to night-vision and played it.
A gasp escaped her lips as she watched a blur of movement zoom past the sensor. Then, a few moments later, she froze the screen on the image of a large paw with some alarmingly sharp claws, milliseconds before it destroyed the sensor.
Her eyes wide, she glanced up at her surroundings. She looked around the barren, rocky landscape, with peaks jutting up from the ground, closing around her like a large, broken cage. She felt paranoia creeping over her. Instinctively, she drew her pistol, holding it in front of her as she scanned the area in a 360-degree circle.
Nothing. Only a faint stir of wind to break up the silence.
Maeve was not one to easily give in to fear. She'd fought in and survived numerous space battles, recon missions, and one particularly psychotic ex-boyfriend. Her back bore several ugly scars as mementos, including a six-inch slash across her shoulder blade from a piece of shrapnel she caught when crashing her disabled fighter into a rocky outcropping on Denebius IV.
“Farking shite,” she spat, gathering up the broken sensor. Tapping furiously on the console, she teleported again.
* * *
A few minutes later, she reappeared at the exact spot she'd departed from, right next to the dining table. Hearing the raucous sound of the excavator coming from down the tunnel a hundred yards away, she ran for the Talon.
Sprinting up the entrance ramp, she made her way to the cockpit, plopping down into the pilot's chair and activating the onboard computer. As an afterthought, she removed the transporter from her belt and placed it next to the console. Despite her near-panic, she took a moment to be thankful that the unit seemed to be working perfectly. Apart from almost falling, the transport itself was instantaneous and flawless. There were no side-effects like nausea or dizziness, and the only hiccup was a slight sense of disorientation due to the abrupt change in location and elevation. Have to remember to close my eyes next time, she thought.
The second malfunctioning sensor had been mangled even more than the first, and it took no time to determine that both broken sensors were irreparable. And they didn't have many to spare.
For the next hour, she scanned the optical feeds from every sensor she'd set up, hoping to catch a better view of whatever had destroyed two of them. Even with the night-vision, there wasn't much to see. A couple of the sensors showed a long, fast-moving shape zooming by, but even magnifying and enhancing the images failed to reveal the nature of this silent threat.
“I don't understand,” Maeve muttered to herself. “The sensors are supposed to notify us immediately if they're malfunctioning or if they go offline, so why didn't they?”
She tapped the computer a few more times, and her eyes closed as she pounded her fist on the console. Then she covered her face with her hands.
I am without a doubt the stupidest person in the history of history.
Fark me.
Chapter Fifteen
D avin smiled as his Mom vanished. He couldn't wait for the chance to use the transporter himself. He placed his plate into the synthesizer, stood up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and headed for the entrance to the tunnel they'd created.
They'd been digging for three days now. The mountain range they now called home was made from a type of sedimentary rock resembling shale, according to the scanner. It wasn't tough to dig into, and because there was no seismic activity on Castelan VI—-this part of it, anyway—-they didn't have to spend as much time and energy shoring up their tunnels as much as anticipated.
That didn't change the fact that this whole operation, which would ideally have been undertaken by a team of twelve to twenty, was instead being performed by two people with no real experience in this type of work. They'd both been schooled on how to operate the excavator, as well as the safety protocols they'd need to obey while tunneling into a mountain on an alien planet; even so, it was slow going.
Donning a set of form-fitting, one-size-fits-all blue coveralls and a pair of sound-cancelling earplugs, Davin climbed into the excavator's cab, where he fastened a dust-mask and goggles over his face. Flipping the ignition switch, he smiled as the powerful motors whirred to life, feeling the vibrations it sent through his body. Turning on the powerful lamps on both sides of the cab, he maneuvered the hulking vehicle into the opening.
When the excavator reached the point where they stopped digging the night before, Davin flipped another switch. Harshly bright lasers shot from the vehicle's front, disintegrating the rock into fine powder. The powder was then sucked up by powerful vacuum tubes jutting out near ground level and collected in a huge compartment in the back. When the tank was full, he would turn the excavator around and drive it a few hundred yards down the wadi to dispose of it. They'd already created several six-foot-high mounds of dirt.
He grimaced. So this is fifteen. It sure is everything I thought it would be.
* * *
An hour later, Davin trundled the excavator down the wadi to their designated dumping zone. After emptying the dust compartments, he parked the machine back by the tunnel entrance and turned off the ignition. It was hot again today, and though the coveralls' built-in thermal regulators kept his body cool, he'd worked up quite a thirst.
He dismounted the cab and removed his facemask and earplugs before making his way to the purifiers for a drink of water. Glancing at the Talon, he was surprised to see his mother, sitting at the bottom of the entrance ramp, staring into space. She was rocking back and forth, and Davin gulped. He knew that sign, and it wasn't a good one. Forgetting his thirst, he sprinted toward the ship.
Maeve didn't even look at him as he ran up. She just sat there, glassy-eyed, and at her feet were the destroyed remains of two motion sensors.
“Mom, what's wrong?” Davin asked, kneeling down in front of her.
The sound of his voice snapped her out of her trance, as her eyes focused on him. “I screwed up, Dav,” she said, so softly he almost didn't hear it. “I screwed up bad.”
His eyebrows knitted. “What do you mean?”
She picked up her pad from beside her and handed it to him. He tapped a button and replayed the incident, his guts tightening as he saw the cause of the sensors' destruction. “What is this? Some kind of animal?”
“Yeah,” Maeve said drily. “A big, honkin', scary one. I've checked all the feeds, and that's the best image of the bunch.”
Davin's eyelid twitched in alarm. “I thought these mountains were uninhabited!”
“So did I.”
“Why didn't you scan for hostile life-forms, Mom? Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you land on a strange planet?”
Maeve cast her eyes to the ground. “I set the scan for humanoid life only.”
“You –” Davin shook his head, dumbfounded. “That's great, Mom. That's just great.”
“I've had so much other shite going on, I just …” She sighed, looking him in the eyes again. “I'm sorry, Dav.”
Davin took a few steps back, his mouth dropping open in shock. “You're sorry? You're sorry? Oh my God, Mom! What if this … this thing decided to come into our camp? It could have destroyed our machines, even killed us in our sleep!”
Maeve grabbed him by the shoulders, steadying him. “But it didn't. We've been here for four days, and nothing's happened until now.”
“Yeah, well, we arrived in this great big farking spaceship,” he gestured at the Talon, “and we've had the excavator going practically sunup to sundown since then. That thing makes enough noise to scare anything off.”
“But not at night, Dav. We've been ceasing our digs at sundown. It would seem this creature is nocturnal.”
Sensing his rapidly growing anxiety, she spread her arms out, gesturing at the nearby mountain peaks. “It's just an animal, Dav. Animals need food. We've been a half-mile in every direction, and apart from a few insects and some rodents, we've seen nothing. Not much of a menu for a carnivore.”
“That we know of, Mom,” he replied. “It's not like we had a chance to do a complete work-up of this region's biosphere. The plan was to be in and out in two weeks, tops.”
“That was when there were ten of us,” Maeve said softly.
Davin bent down to examine the broken sensors. “Which two sensors are these?”
“Six and fourteen.”
His eyes went wide. “What? Those were a mile apart! One creature couldn't have done this, unless …”
She nodded. “Yeah. There are more.” Her shoulders sagged.
Davin's breath caught in his throat. “How many more?”
“I'm not sure. If I had to guess, based on the readings, I'd say somewhere between five and ten.”
He tried to process it all; a whole pack of creatures who came out at night to hunt, who were too fast or too stealthy for the sensors to pinpoint, and strong enough to break a polycarbonate rod in half. “Fark,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Maeve said, sitting down on the entrance ramp again.
Davin turned away, not wanting his mother to see the pained expression on his face.
He always thought of himself as an easygoing person, not easily ruffled, preferring to meet life's problems head-on with a smile instead of a frown. Even living under Jegg occupation for five years hadn't crushed his spirit. No matter how bad things got, he still had his parents by his side: his father, who never stopped looking for solutions to the Terran Confederation's problems, and his mother, who was quite simply the toughest person he'd ever known.
Over the last few days, though, it had all come crashing down. This was their last chance to free humanity, and fate seemed determined to block their every attempt at success. Terrans had lost their world; all their worlds. His home, his friends, his father. All gone. And now, their very last hope was circling the drain because of … wild animals. It was ridiculous, and Davin might have laughed if tears hadn't been forcing their way to his eyes.
If only Dad was here. He'd know a way out of this.
But he's not. We're here, and he's not.
Davin began walking toward the lake, his pace quickly becoming a jog, and then a full sprint. Maeve watched him go for a few moments before she stood up and followed him.
When Davin reached the shore of the lake, he was out of breath, bending over and grasping his knees as he fought to fill his lungs with air. His vision was blurred with tears. Unable to stand any more, he balled up his fists and screamed.
The sound of his cry reverberated off the walls of the basin, echoing back in a recurring chorus. Davin continued to scream until his vocal chords were raw and scratchy. His legs gave way and he collapsed on the ground, covering his face with his hands.
Maeve reached the lake's edge. “Dav?” Her voice quavered.
“We're done,” Davin sobbed, picking up a stone and chucking it into the water. “It's all over.” His chest looked like it was caving in, and he was shaking all over.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Dav –”
“It's over, Mom!” He finally turned to look at her. “We're on an alien planet, a gazillion light-years from Earth, we don't know what we're searching for, we don't know what to do with it if we find it, and we can't go home anyway! And to top it all off, we're about to be eaten by animals!”
Maeve said nothing. He'd been bottling this up since finding Gaspar's body, so she just let him vent.
He picked up another stone and threw it in the water, with a lot less force than the first one. “We have to go, Mom.”
She edged her body forward, coming to rest right beside him. In barely a whisper, she replied, “Go where, Dav? We have nowhere to go.”
“You can't possibly think we can win this fight.” He still wouldn't look at her.
Maeve put an arm around him. “As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I think.”
“How can you say that? How can you look at me and say that? Dad's …” Tears overwhelmed him and he finally broke down, falling into Maeve's arms.
She clutched him tightly to her chest, closing her eyes and rocking him gently back and forth. “I know, baby, I know,” she whispered into his ear.
After a few minutes, his breathing normalized again, but he didn't let go. “What do we do, Mom?”
She brushed his hair away from his face. “We keep going.”
“How?”
“Any way we can, Dav. It's what your father would do. It's what our friends would do. It's what we have to do. We give up now, and they died for nothing.”
They both stared at the lake for a long time. Finally, Davin released himself from his mother's arms, straightened up, and turned back to look at the Talon again. Sniffling, he asked, “Do you know where these creatures are?”
“Not precisely. They must make their lairs underground, so the scanners are having a hard time pinpointing their location. They appear to group together in packs of four or five, and based on the sensor data, there are at least two packs that hunt in this area.”
He let out a deep, cleansing breath. “So what you're saying is that this lake is in the middle of their territory.”
“Pretty much.”
Davin stood, scratching his chin as he surveyed the campsite. Apart from their various machines, a few tables and chairs and a couple of unopened crates, the area was clear. Then he turned around and looked at the Talon, scanning it from stem to stern.
“Can we fly the ship into orbit? Come back in the morning?” he asked.
Maeve considered this. “We don't have a surplus on fuel, kiddo. We could do that three, maybe four times, but we'd have to keep coming back here. At the rate we're going, it could be a few more weeks before we strike gold, or whatever it is. No, we're gonna have to deal with this problem here and now.”
“I don't suppose sealing ourselves in the ship for the night is an option.”
“Oh, it's an option, just not one I like. If one of these things is strong enough to snap a sensor rod in half, imagine what a bunch of them could do if they concentrated their efforts.”
“What about that cache of machine guns we got last week?”
“Useless. Those that hadn't rusted through, the firing pins were shot to shite. We never got a chance to replace them.”
“I'm guessing we don't have any energy weapons.”
“Nope. Jegg had 'em all destroyed. The Underground tried to get the parts to build more, but they couldn't swing it. Those black market bastards wouldn't give you a bucket of water if your house was on fire.”
Davin snapped his fingers. “I've got it! I could take one of the lasers off the excavator –”
She shook her head. “Thought of that. Those things get super-hot, and we would have to remove the entire cooling system along with it. That's like a hundred and fifty pounds of machinery.”
His face fell. “Do we have anything more … basic?”
“We're out of D34Z, and don't have any spare fuel to use as an explosive. I did find three concussion grenades in Calvin's footlocker, though.
”
“Figures. He always did love blowing shite up. Anything else?”
“Ji-Yan packed two short swords and a tritanium baseball bat. We also have a few knives, and I suppose we can also use our hand-operated digging tools as clubs if we have to.” She then looked down at her sidearm, a refurbished pistol, which she'd once told him was standard issue for soldiers before energy weapons were developed. “And this.”
“How much ammo you got for that thing?”
“Just shy of six full magazines, I think.”
He rubbed his temples. “Well, it's better than nothing, I guess.”
Maeve sighed. “I'll have to break out some more motion sensors and place them around the site. Lights, too. Then, once the sun goes down, we can take turns keeping watch.”
“Can I execute Birthday Boy privilege now?” Davin asked, a crooked smile cracking through.
Seeing his grin, Maeve's face softened, and she chuckled. “All right, all right, I'll take first shift. Sorry to give you such a sucky birthday, Little Bug.” She moved forward, enfolding her son in a warm embrace.
“Sorry for the meltdown,” Davin said, returning the hug.
“It's okay, kiddo. Sorry I messed up. My sarge back in Basic would've kicked my arse.”
“Hey.” They faced each other again, and he placed his hand on his mother's shoulder. “You're not Major Cromack anymore. You're just Mom. You're allowed to be human.”
“Thanks. You sure you're all right?”
He shrugged, and his smile widened. “Hey, we got mint chocolate cake and wild animals. All we need is some beer and a few girls and it'll be a party.”
She smiled, and playfully mussed his hair. “Back to work, lover-boy. The clock's ticking.”
* * *
By mid-afternoon, they'd unpacked the remaining motion sensors from the Talon's hold and placed them around the campsite, a hundred yards in every direction where they could find even terrain. Davin disconnected one of the ship's audio speakers and hooked it up to the sensors, programming it to sound a loud, obnoxious siren if anything larger than a mouse breached the perimeter.
Pawns (The Wielders of Arantha Book 1) Page 10
