by GARY DARBY
Nase reappeared out of the brush. “How are you doing?”
“The antivenom’s working, I think,” Dason replied. “My pounding head has gone from pure torture to mildly torturous, and sometimes I can make the world stop spinning.”
He met Nase’s stare. “How are you holding up and how’s our back trail looking?”
“I’m okay,” Nase answered. “And we haven’t seen any large aliens since that overhead flyer. Maybe we lost them.”
“That’s good, because if I had to choose who could move faster, a Randorian Mud Slug or me, I’d pick the slug.”
Nase gave him a light pat on the shoulder and slipped away to scan their rear trail. Dason pushed along until the planet’s sun began to slide behind the overlooking ridges. Light footsteps caused him to turn.
Nase trotted up, and Dason asked, “Backtrail?”
“Clear,” the tall, ebony-skinned youth replied.
Dason gestured toward the lowering sun. “I wonder if Bianca is starting to think about a night camp.”
“I would think so,” Nase returned. “But I doubt if we’ll take to the trees. Our XTs don’t seem particularly suited for climbing or sleeping topside.”
Dason rubbed the large lump on the back of his neck that was still hot to the touch. “Agreed, but I’m not too keen on sleeping in the bushes, either.”
He lifted his eyes upward at the dusky sky. “We’d best find something suitable soon because we’re running out of daylight.”
Just then, Shanon spoke over the comms. “Captain, we’ve got trouble with the XTs. We need to hold up.”
“Path Finders and rear guard, freeze,” Bianca ordered.
Dason and Nase knelt beside a rust-colored tree trunk. After several minutes, Bianca spoke over the comms. “We’ve got a problem. The aliens don’t want to move, and we’re not sure why. It may be that they’re just too tired to continue. Anyone see a spot to make camp?”
Sami spoke up. “TL, this is Path One.”
“Go ahead,” Bianca replied.
“As a matter of fact, I think we’ve found an excellent bed and breakfast for the night.”
“What do you have?”
“Would a nice deluxe cave that overlooks this tranquil valley setting work? Complete with a view of our rushing streamlet. Not quite the Starburst Resort in Old Town Las Vegas but— ”
“Sami,” Bianca snapped, “enough with the chatter. Any current or previous residents?”
“Nope. Looks clean.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“About forty meters ahead and to your left. Watch for a good-lookin’ blonde standing next to a dark, muscular—”
“Knock it off, Sami,” TJ answered tartly.
“Nase, Dason,” Bianca asked, “did you catch that?”
“Got it,” Nase replied.
“Back trail clear?”
“Clear.”
“Then let’s call it a day. Sami, TJ, guide us in.”
Dason and Nase continued up the trail until they came to a looming, striated cliff that cut the hillside’s rounded hump. TJ stepped out from behind a boulder and waved them on.
She led them up the incline to where a jagged tear marked the cave’s opening. Bianca waited outside the craggy portal with Shanon and Alena, while the XTs huddled off to one side.
They waited for a few minutes until emerging from the bushes, Sami announced, “Nothing behind us, we’re clear.”
Bianca spoke low. “Good, inside everyone. Nase, Dason, see if you can rig up something to cover the opening.”
Shanon and Bianca motioned to the XTs that they were to join the humans inside the cave. At first, the aliens hesitated but then after several singsong exchanges between themselves they pushed through the rock doorway and into the dark grotto.
Nase and Dason formed a makeshift frame from broken tree limbs and once inside hung a field poncho over the cave’s inner entrance.
After they had the opening blocked, Bianca popped two green glows to provide a diffused light to see by and ordered, “No vest lights. No fire. We sleep cold tonight.”
Dason surveyed the small, dry room which was just big enough to fit them all in, though they would be almost shoulder to shoulder. Not comfortable, but it would do for the night.
The three aliens stood near the cave’s rear, their heads just below the low rocky ceiling. Every few seconds one of them would chitter to the other two in their language. Dason spoke to Shanon and motioned toward the XTs. “What happened back there?”
Shanon shook her head. “I don’t know. We were marching along pretty well and then they started to slow until they stopped and started talking to each other.”
With a little shrug, she said, “If they were human, I’d say they were having an intense argument over something.”
“Did they get hurt in the fighting?”
“Not that I can see, at least not outwardly.”
While he and Shanon talked, Dason shed his vest and pulled out one of his field rations. He split it in half and offered a portion to Alena. She hesitated before taking the outstretched offering. “You’re a brave man, Thorne,” she declared.
Dason lowered his eyes. “Oh,” he replied, “you mean back at the ravine. It was—”
“No. For eating this.”
Sami guffawed and muttered, “Spoken like a true civilian.”
Shanon broke one of her rations in three pieces and offered them to the still standing aliens. With expressionless faces, they stared at Shanon and the food in her hand.
To Dason, their cold, black eyes registered no emotion or feeling, but he tempered his opinion with the fact that he couldn’t use his own human temperament to judge the aliens.
They turned, sat down, and placed their backs to each other. They closed their eyes and leaned their heads backward until their skulls touched.
“So much for breaking bread together,” Shanon murmured.
“Folks after my own heart,” Sami quipped. “No crème de la old shoe on their menu.”
He glanced at the three aliens and said, “Hey, would you look at that.”
Dason saw it too and crabbed his way to squat near the aliens. Something moved on their heads. He leaned in to get a better look. A soft breath touched his cheek and Bianca whispered, “Sami’s right, would you look at that.”
Like a tiny snail jutting its head out of its carapace, the needle-like appendages on the alien’s heads began to slide forward until each touched a neighboring skull.
Dason watched the fleshy tentacles touch, and then fold onto each other, linking all three aliens together. Dason could see a light glistening at the end of each tentacle, which seemed to suggest each exuded a tiny amount of fluid.
He pulled back and sat on his haunches. “Well?” Shanon demanded. “We couldn’t see. You two blocked the view.”
“Sorry,” Dason replied. He explained what had occurred between the aliens.
When Dason finished, Sami cracked a smile while saying, “Sounds personal to me. Say, speaking of heads, what happened to you back at the cache tree? One second you’re up, the next you’re down and out on the ground.”
Dason shook his head and hesitated before he answered. He hadn’t had a chance to sort out in his own mind his experience after touching the extraterrestrial. “I’m not real sure.”
“Well, you’re lucky that Shanon pulled your carcass around that tree,” Sami muttered.
“I thought you’d caught one of those red-light specials and were a dearly departed. Good thing those Xees are lousy shots. They had us dead to rights a couple of times and how they missed I don’t know.”
Dason turned to Shanon and sincerely said, “I thank you. That’s the second time you and the others have saved me.”
Shanon gave him a little wink and mumbled, “Welcome,” around a bite of her cakelike field ration.
Bianca asked Dason, “What about the effects of the creature’s bite?”
“Pretty much gone,” Dason replied.
“I can pull my own now. Sorry that I couldn’t before.”
Bianca waved a hand. “Forget it, I’m just glad it wasn’t worse. A reminder for all of us to extra cautious when we’re in thick vegetation.”
“You were real lucky, Dason,” TJ interjected. “That antivenom doesn’t always work against XT toxins.”
Bianca sat with her back to the wall and in a downcast voice said, “Yes, we were lucky, but not all of our teammates.”
The young scouts glanced at each other, sadness etched on their faces at the mention of the loss of their Star Scout comrades.
In a hopeful tone, TJ responded with, “Ma’am, there’s always a chance that they’re still alive. They could be held hostage, like Nase and the others were.”
“That’s possible, TJ,” Bianca replied. “My fear is that after we raided their camp that the large aliens are not going to treat our comrades in a humane way.”
She let out a long sigh. “But, there’s always hope, isn’t there? We’ll just have to hang onto that thought until we know differently.”
She gave TJ a wan smile. “Thanks for reminding me.”
Bianca glanced over at Alena and asked frankly, “So, Alena, what’s your story? What are you doing Out Here and what happened to your ship? You’re certainly off the proverbial beaten path.”
Alena swallowed, taking her time before she answered curtly, “Freelancing for Intergalactic Minerals.”
Bianca looked into Alena’s face in the dim green glow light. “I don’t recall the Imperium opening this sector to private enterprise; plus, I wasn’t aware of any major corporations running operations this far out.”
Alena shrugged in reply. “Intergalactic isn’t a major and I wasn’t headed for the Helix, but I’m not going to say where I was going because that’s proprietary information.”
Bianca considered Alena’s answer before asking, “Okay, suit yourself but my question still stands. What happened to you and your ship that brought you here?”
Alena broke off a small piece of the golden brown bar, held it up as if to inspect it, before saying, “My ship got hijacked, they stun-gunned me, and I woke up with one bad headache on this planet.”
She gestured toward Nase. “From what he told me, my ship must have crash-landed, and the big aliens took me hostage.”
Pausing, she popped the small morsel of food in her mouth, began chewing, her eyes never meeting Bianca’s. After swallowing, she said, “So I’m making the assumption that either they cracked my ship up or . . .” she glanced over at the immobile aliens, “it was them.”
From the corner of his eye, Dason caught Nase staring at Alena, head tilted to one side while rubbing a finger across one cheek. He recognized the look; Nase was sizing up Alena’s explanation, as if he didn’t quite believe her story.
Alena stopped for a second before saying, “When I woke up in the company of your three scouts, they told me that the big ones brought me out of my ship and carried me to their first campsite.
“Next morning, we hiked through the forest. I’m not sure the large aliens knew what to do with us. There seemed to be a lot of gesturing and pointing, talking back and forth. I think one of your party tried communicating with them.”
Bianca looked over at Nase, who answered her unspoken question, “Granger.”
“Obviously, he didn’t get through,” Alena remarked.
She put an elbow on her knee and leaned toward Dason. With a voice thick with sarcasm, she said, “We stopped to camp and then the fearless space warrior here came to rescue the fair maiden in distress.”
Bianca ignored the jibe and asked, “We were attacked last night by some humans packing blasters and firing indiscriminately at us. They were kill shots shooting at anything that moved. Know anything about that?”
Alena frowned while saying, “How would I? First, I was out cold and then with your captured teammates until you showed up.”
Bianca asked Nase, “What happened after you set your scouter down?”
Still staring at Alena, Nase settled back against the cave’s wall and with a little gesture at the sitting aliens, said, “We were within twenty, twenty-five meters of her ship when those three XTs appeared on one side of the clearing.
“Almost at the same time, the larger aliens came rushing in from the other side. It was a large assault force. They charged out of the forest in one mass wave. No fear. No hesitation.
“A firefight erupted and Granger ordered us to hit the deck. The whole thing only lasted a few seconds, and then the big aliens were on us.”
Dason interrupted to ask, “Did they take casualties?”
“I think so,” Nase replied. “I saw several bodies on the ground.”
“Stunned?” Dason asked.
Nase shook his head. “No. Burned flesh, missing limbs from energy weapons.”
“Ours?” Bianca asked.
Nase shook his head in an emphatic manner. “Not from us. In all honesty, they caught us flat-footed. I doubt if we even got a shot off. Besides, we didn’t know who to shoot at.”
Jutting his chin toward the little aliens, he said, “It may have been them.”
He stopped to gestured at Alena before saying, “Or maybe the ones who grabbed her ship. I thought I heard what sounded like disruptor fire, but I can’t be sure, it was kind of chaotic.”
Alena held her hands up in a defensive gesture. “If it was, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Remember, I wasn’t even conscious when all of this took place.”
“Why do you think the big ones grabbed you?” Bianca asked Nase. “Did we do anything to provoke them?”
Nase didn’t answer for several seconds and then said somberly, “I don’t think so, ma’am. I’m pretty confident that none of us fired a shot, and once the shooting stopped, they were on us before we had any chance to react.
“Granger ordered us not to fight back. It wouldn’t have done much good, two or three of them pinned each of us down. They didn’t hurt us, just a little rough when they confiscated our weapons.
“But they worked the little XTs over, practically strip-searched them. Took everything they had.”
“After that?” Bianca prompted.
“Pretty much the way she described. The small XTs had a hard time of it. From the way they acted, I think they must have taken a stunner shot or something similar because they struggled the whole way. I might add that this doesn’t appear to be their natural environment.”
“Meaning, you don’t think this is their home world?” Bianca asked.
“Yes ma’am,” Nase answered. “One reason I think we stopped, is because the big aliens seemed to be frustrated at the slow pace and wanted to give the small XTs time to recover.”
“Interesting,” Bianca remarked. “I wonder why they were moving you through the forest? Why didn’t they just stay in place and have one of their craft, similar to the one we saw, pick you up there?”
Nase shook his head. “I don’t know. Granger tried to communicate, but they just ignored him. Once they took our weapons, I don’t think they considered us much of a threat.
“The XTs made it clear we couldn’t leave, so we just sat. But other than preventing us from leaving, they didn’t threaten or harm us.”
Dason nodded toward the three extraterrestrials and asked, “I take it they didn’t retrieve their gear from the tree?”
“Nope,” Sami replied. “They tried, but those energy weapons just about nailed them, so they stayed behind the tree. Funny, when the one you knocked down got up, he started verbalizing, real excited like.
“Then they all started talking back and forth, all the while the other XTs are shooting down our throats. When we returned fire, one of them gets on the ground and manages to scoot a little around the tree.
“I guess he tried to reach the belts but couldn’t. Saw him come back with some ball-looking shapes and hand one each to the other two. But nothing else.”
He grinned while saying, “So much for ‘Seven Steps to Hi
ghly Effective Extraterrestrial First Contact’ per the Star Scout field manual. Especially that part about ensuring peaceful relations between spacefaring races.”
“Obviously they didn’t get the same manual,” TJ commented dryly.
“Yeah,” Sami snorted. “Sure would like to know why those big XTs are so hostile. Chasing, shooting people—taking hostages. I thought extraterrestrials were supposed to be the civilized ones, and we were the caveman, uh, I mean, cave person types.”
Bianca spoke in answer. “It may be that we’ve unwittingly placed ourselves in the middle of an interstellar war between two cosmic species.”
“Great,” Sami replied. “They can shoot at each other all they want, just stop shooting at us, well, at least the big uglies since they seem to be doin’ all the shooting.”
TJ said, “You know, we just can’t keep calling these people the ‘little XTs’ or ‘the big uglies.’”
“No problem,” Sami answered. “We’ll call these three, the Worm Heads, and the others we call the Furry Heads.”
“Oh, real clever, Sami,” TJ retorted. “But not very complimentary, don’t you think? Besides, if they named you, it’d be Ego Head.”
“Hey—” Sami began, but Bianca held up a hand to stop him. “Hold it. TJ’s right, it gets a little silly to keep saying little or big XT. So, how about we give them some temporary names for now? Any ideas?”
“Call the little ones Kerebians or Kerebs,” Nase said, “And the others are Jakuta.”
“What language is that Nase?” Bianca asked. “And what does it mean?”
“Cirillian,” Nase answered. “A Kereb is a person from the mythical island of Ker. They were supposedly a very close knit dwarf clan who were very standoffish when it came to outsiders.”
“Boy, have you got that one right,” Sami said.
“A Jakuta is an angry mythical being,” Nase explained. “Also known as a ‘Thrower of Light’ which is usually taken to mean lightning. Thunderstorms and lightning are his way of venting hostility.”
“Nailed that one, too,” Sami said.
