As hard as Seb focused, he couldn’t see the thing’s weak spot. A huge clumsy creature, it came towards him like a train.
Both SA and Bruke unloaded on the beast too with the same result as Seb. Their guns wouldn’t get through its thick skin.
Already out of ideas, Seb winced as his gun shook in his hands. They were about to fall at the first hurdle.
CHAPTER 60
They had no other choice. Sure, the time in their radiation suits would run out, but the only thing that might save them now would be a retreat. Seb opened his mouth to shout the order, but then he saw it. The yellow tint to his visor must have dulled his gift in some way, but now the creature had got closer—too damn close—he saw the slightest shimmer above its blood-red eyes.
“Aim for its forehead,” Seb shouted at the others, “just above its eyes.”
It had got to within a few metres of them when SA took a shot at the beast. It sank deep into the spot Seb had identified. A puff of blue blood, the creature tripped, fell, and hit the ground so hard, it felt like the vibrations could topple the trees around them.
But they had no time to gather their thoughts. Where one of the beasts had fallen, three more appeared behind it. Seb, SA, and Bruke opened fire again.
The most accurate of the three, it still took SA several shots to drop the now closest monster, its bobbing head hard to hit as it charged forward.
Seb sent a barrage of blasts at the next one, the heat indicator on his gun already turning a deep orange.
Just a few metres left and probably no more shots, Seb hit the creature in the forehead. It tripped and fell like the other two had.
Although Bruke had adopted Seb’s scattershot method, he didn’t look anywhere near to taking down the last one.
The trumpeting roar of the creature shook the foliage around them. The beast ran straight at Bruke, about to take him down. Then SA hit it with a crack shot. Bruke flinched away from the spray of blood and then jumped aside to avoid being gathered up in its clumsy topple.
It took a few seconds for Seb to regain his senses over the pounding of his pulse, but as he listened, he couldn’t hear any more creatures. He ignored the buzz in his hands urging him to bend down and help the brutes. Maybe they were a passive race, taken over like the humans had been in the mines. Maybe they deserved saving, but he couldn’t fix the dead. If he could, Gurt would be beside them at that moment, and the creatures wouldn’t have got anywhere near to them.
After he’d cleared his throat in the hope it would also clear the memory of Gurt, Seb said, “At least they’re big. We may not be able to see them coming, but we can certainly hear them.”
“What if some of the smaller grubs are in here too?” Bruke said.
Before responding to him, Seb looked at SA and she looked back. “I can’t think about that,” he said. “We’ll deal with it if we have to.”
“But we won’t see them coming.”
“Let’s not create problems, yeah?” Seb said, and before Bruke could respond, he added, “We need to wait for the grubs to come out of these things and then we can push on.” The radiation reading on his suit had dropped to ‘2h25m’.
CHAPTER 61
Fortunately the grubs inside the large creatures were much easier to kill than the creatures themselves. Four of them, they were easily the size of a small farm animal each, just like the ones they’d met out in the desert. They slid from their hosts’ mouths and met a laser blast for their troubles. Each one exploded, their fat, liquid bodies popping like lanced boils.
By the time they were done, Seb and the other two were covered in slime from the vile creatures. Were it not for their radiation suits, the smell would undoubtedly be unbearable. Just the sight of the sludge as he wiped it from his view made him slightly nauseated.
Before they moved off again, Seb looked at the numbers on his visor. Hopefully they all had the same time. “Bruke, what’s your radiation reading?”
“Just over two hours and ten minutes,” Bruke said.
SA nodded with a slight shrug. She clearly had about that time too.
“Me too,” Seb said. “This is far from a master plan, but I reckon we should walk in a straight line for fifty-five minutes and hope we come across the queen in that time. If we don’t, we’ll have to turn around and come back. Unless either of you have a better plan?”
Both Bruke and SA shook their heads.
“Bruke, you lead the way,” Seb said.
At first, Bruke froze. Then he shook his head again. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if I can’t kill one of the creatures when they spring us. I don’t have the reactions of you and SA.”
“We’re right behind you,” Seb said. “If a creature springs you, it springs all of us.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“Which is why you need to. Being brave isn’t about not being scared. Being brave is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Come on, Bruke, you’re in the Shadow Order now, you need to lead once in a while.”
Bruke straightened his posture, gripped his weapon, and nodded at Seb.
Seb and SA shared a look as Bruke strode off into the deep brush, pushing the blue and red bracken aside to get through it.
SA looked back at Seb as if to question his decision. But he stood by it. Bruke needed to get braver.
The crack of splitting rock took Seb’s focus away from the ethereal bioluminescence of SA’s attention.
Where Bruke had been a second before, there now sat a huge hole in the ground.
CHAPTER 62
Seb and SA rushed through the vibrant bracken to the edge of the hole Bruke had fallen into. It dropped down about five metres at the most. Not far. At least, it wouldn’t have been far had Bruke not landed on a large cluster of rocks. He squirmed and twisted from where he’d clearly hurt himself.
What looked like a stream sprang from the rocks. Just a few metres farther along, it turned into a wide river. When Seb looked at SA and saw her still staring down into it, he said, “I suppose we’ve found where the water for this place comes from.”
When Bruke sat up, he reached across and grabbed his left arm with his right hand. A wince crushed his face as he stared up in their direction. Despite the distance separating them, Seb’s hands tingled with his desire to get down to him. To be fair to Bruke, he looked like he wanted to scream, but he held it in.
“We need to help him,” Seb said, sitting on the edge of the hole before slipping down to their friend.
Soundless as ever, SA landed next to Seb when he reached the rocks.
Seb kneeled down beside Bruke and picked up his arm.
“Ow,” Bruke said and pulled in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth. Tears glistened in his brown eyes, but he hadn’t cried yet.
The buzz in Seb’s hands nearly rendered them useless as he lifted his friend’s arm and cupped where he sensed the injury to be.
In a matter of seconds, the twisted grimace of pain left Bruke’s face and he stared in awe at Seb. He spoke as he exhaled relief. “Thank you.”
After a nod at his friend, Seb looked down the underground river. It stretched far away from them. A crack ran through the ground above it, lighting up the long waterway. Bruke must have stood on a particularly weak spot along the crack. Were it not for the long line of light, they wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
“Where do you think it leads?” Bruke asked, voicing Seb’s thoughts. “To the queen, maybe?”
Before Seb could answer him, the water splashed up by his feet. Not a large splash, but enough to command his attention. The movement went against the natural flow of the river.
Easy to dismiss the anomaly, Seb then heard a loud splash a distance away from them. Too far away to see. When he glanced at the others and saw the looks on their faces, he knew they’d heard it too.
As one, they all stood up and raised their weapons. A second later, another loud splash sounded out closer than the one that had preceded it. “Get ready,”
Seb said, his mouth drying, his pulse quickening. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, closed one eye, and watched the water.
CHAPTER 63
The next loud splash introduced another pink creature. Larger than any they’d seen, it burst from the water like a giant seal. Seb’s world slipped into slow motion as he watched the huge beast fly towards him. He pulled the trigger on his gun and sent a pulse of blasts into its face.
The first few green bolts hit the brute, but they did nothing. Then one landed square in the centre of its forehead. It sank in and blew a cloud of blue blood out of the back of its skull.
The force of the blast sent the beast’s head backwards, its bum swinging around beneath it before it fell into the water, back first, with a loud splash.
Before the water had settled, another one burst from the river. Despite being the size of hippos, they leapt like salmon.
Bruke shot the next one. The same blue cloud of blood showed he’d killed the thing as it too fell back into the river with an almighty splash.
SA took down the third one. Unlike Bruke and Seb, she only needed one shot. A fourth, fifth, and sixth burst from the river and SA sent three more direct hits into them.
When the seventh and eighth creatures jumped out together, SA shot one and both Bruke and Seb went for the next one. They both missed, hitting its face with a barrage of blasts.
The beast continued to fly through the air at them, so Seb dropped his weapon, stepped forward, and met it with a heavy blow to its fat snout. A wet clop and he drove the creature back, its head flying away from them, spinning it over in a backwards somersault.
As it spun through the air, SA shot it in the forehead, turning the snapping brute limp. A loud splash met its collision with the river.
The blue of the creatures’ oily blood ran through the water, but the pink bodies were nowhere to be seen.
“It must be deep,” Seb said as he bent down to retrieve his gun. He aimed down at the river, waiting for more of them to come. More of them, or the grubs inside them.
CHAPTER 64
A few minutes had passed and no more of the pink creatures had jumped from the water. They might still have to deal with the grubs, but Seb lowered his gun all the same. He kept a hold of it should he need it, but at present, their way looked clear.
Seb turned to the other two, but before he spoke, he saw the shocked look on SA’s face through her visor. “What is it?” he said.
When SA tapped her screen where the radiation monitor displayed the remaining time, Seb looked at his own and gasped. “What the …? One hour left? What’s that about? We had over double that a minute ago.”
Suddenly the water looked very different. What Seb had assumed to be the effect of the creatures’ blood now looked like something else entirely. Like a blue glow of radiation. It must have been why the trees were covered in tumours. If they used poisoned water to keep themselves alive, of course they’d look that way.
A look at SA and Seb saw her staring down at the rushing water. She clearly thought the same as him, so he voiced it for both of them as he pointed down at the river. “The radiation on this planet’s coming from there.”
CHAPTER 65
“We’ve got to turn back,” Bruke said as he backed away from the river, turned around, and reached up the wall to climb out of there.
But Seb didn’t follow him. Instead, he said, “And turn our back on Sparks? We leave here now, and we’ve done nothing to help her. We might as well have got in the shuttle and blown up with Wilson and his family.”
Bruke’s face fell limp as he turned to look at Seb again. “You can’t say that!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Seb said, “I’m sad about what happened to Wilson and the others, of course I am. I just wanted to highlight the futility of coming into this forest if we’re going to back out at the first sign of trouble.”
“Radiation poisoning’s more than trouble, Seb. If the radiation’s coming from the water, which it seems like it is, and we get caught down here, what good are we to Sparks then?”
“About as much good as we are now. We’ve got to try. Besides,” Seb said, “the time’s adjusted. It’s worked out how long we have down here. We still have an hour. That’s enough time to give it a go. We just need to keep an eye on the clock.”
For a second Bruke didn’t reply. Then he pointed down the river. “Who’s to say going down there’s the right thing to do anyway?”
“Did you see those creatures?”
“Of course I did.”
“They’re much better suited for water than land. This must be their natural habitat.”
“And?”
“They live down here. They belong down here. So if they’re down here, maybe the parasites have found them and holed up with them. Maybe the queen is down here too.”
“And if she’s not?”
“Then we get back to the tank and think of another plan.”
Bruke shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“None of us like it, Bruke.” The timer on Seb’s screen had dropped to ‘55m’ already. To look at it quickened his pulse. “We haven’t got the time to discuss this. If you want to go back to the tank, you do that. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”
Seb turned his back on Bruke and moved towards the river. The rock must have been wet, because when he stepped on it, his foot slipped. Although his gift served no purpose at that moment, panic sent his world into slow motion. Already falling, he had nothing to hold onto as he toppled towards the body of water. The water full of those huge creatures. The water potentially still crawling with the grubs inside of them and aglow with radiation.
A splash rang out as Seb broke the surface of the river. An adept swimmer, he didn’t panic. At least, he didn’t panic at first. Not until he started to sink.
CHAPTER 66
The first time Seb had tried to swim since he’d had his metal fists. They fell through the water like anchors, dragging him with them.
The stripe of light from the crack in the cave’s ceiling faded the farther Seb sank into the river. The faster he fell, the more rapid his pulse beat until it thrummed through his skull. What about the parasites in the creatures they’d just killed? They would come out of the corpses at some point and find him pinned to the riverbed. Hopefully they couldn’t swim.
When Seb looked down, he still couldn’t see the bottom of the river. How would he get back up again when he reached the dark bed? Maybe it went straight to the planet’s core.
And then he stopped. Almost like he’d reached the end of a bungee rope, something pulled beneath his armpits and halted his downward fall. But he didn’t bounce back up like a bungee. Instead, he hung there, his rescuer’s hands enough to halt his drop, but not enough to pull him back to the surface.
Seb turned and looked up into the bioluminescent gaze of SA. Where she usually appeared composed, he saw the struggle in her pinched eyes. She couldn’t drag him to the surface on her own.
When Seb kicked with her, it lifted them both a little closer to the shimmering crack of light above. Fortunately their suits were watertight. The press of the cold river might have pushed against him, but he remained dry and could still breathe.
They made slow progress and Seb’s legs burned from the effort of the swim, but they beat gravity’s pull as they edged closer to land. The shimmering strip of light above them grew brighter.
When they got close to breaking through, a hand reached down and grabbed the back of Seb’s collar.
After Bruke had dragged Seb up onto the riverbank, Seb fell on his back, gasping and sweating from the effort of getting out of there. He watched Bruke hold a hand out to SA, who didn’t need to take it as she climbed from the river on her own.
“Thank you,” Seb said to SA, breathless from the effort of the swim. SA, on the other hand, looked like she’d waited beside the river for the entire time. Were she not wet, he wouldn’t have been able to tell she’d exerted herself in any way.
“I can swim,” Seb said.
Bruke looked at the water. When he turned back to Seb, he raised his eyebrows.
Seb held his hands up. “It’s the metal that made me sink. I didn’t realise just how heavy they were until now.”
“Come on,” Bruke said, rolling his eyes at Seb as if he were lying. He tapped his visor where the timer was. “We don’t have the time to stand around and chat.”
CHAPTER 67
How hadn’t he noticed it before then? In the commotion of sinking and being rescued, Seb had focused on his friends rather than his visor. Panic sat close to the surface since they’d landed on the damn planet, it now threatened to reach up and throttle him. “Uh, Bruke?” he said, the breath he’d only just got back running away from him again.
Bruke had walked away from them along a rocky ledge running alongside the toxic river. He stopped and turned to his friend.
“What time does your radiation reading say?”
A shift of Bruke’s eyes from where he looked at his reading. He then looked back at Seb. “Forty-five minutes.” He frowned. “Why?”
One final check and Seb’s heart kicked. “Mine doesn’t.”
“What does yours say?” Bruke’s familiar anxiety twisted through his face. “Please say it’s longer.”
“It says twenty-five. What about you, SA?”
SA pointed at Seb.
Eradication: A Space Opera: Book Four of The Shadow Order Page 16
