Invardii Box Set 2

by Warwick Gibson

  Then there was the sound of massive thumps as the slugs tore into the creature, and Kanuk staggered as the recoil hammered his body back. The lizard stopped dead in mid-air, as if it had hit an invisible wall. Then it dropped to the floor of the forest, a bloody mess.

  The team gathered around it, raising eyebrows at the razor-sharp claws longer than their hands. Bosun couldn’t resist prodding it with his boot, to make sure it was really dead.

  “Good weapon,” said Kanuk approvingly. The others nodded.

  Bosun had been instrumental in providing projectile weapons rather than energy weapons for his team, and he had trained the pilots in their use. He figured an energy weapon would burn away skin and paralyze nerves, but it couldn’t stop a tonne of killing muscle from carrying on under its own momentum.

  On the other hand super-dense composite metal slugs had a huge kinetic energy, and could stop a charge dead in its tracks. The recoil on them was equally fearsome, but the Hud pilots had the strength and steadying mass to cope with that.

  The party reached the position of the downed Lyceum shuttle in mid-afternoon of the second day. The snapped-off tree and blunt starfish shape of the shuttle, partly buried behind a bow wave of soil, told the story of its last moments. Kanuk took a look around, and got more jumpy than ever.

  “There’s beast sign everywhere,” he said, and indeed a musty, slightly spicy smell hung in the air. Then they found tracks, and the length and depth of them said very plainly that this was no lightly-built tree lizard. They were up against a new predator, and a much bigger one.

  The team moved forward slowly, a bristling hedgehog of weapons pointing out in all directions. Bosun led them to the long tear in the wall of the shuttle. The two Hud girls on the team took up a kneeling position on one side of the rent in the hull, and Battrod stood with Bosun on the other, weapons establishing firing lines across the forest floor about them.

  Kanuk entered the downed shuttle with the last pilot right behind him. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and they scanned the interior for creatures that might have taken up residence. There was nothing.

  Kanuk lowered his weapon. The shuttle was safe, but where was Fedic?

  A very tired voice sounded from behind a makeshift barrier at the front of the ship.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?” it said, the hint of a smile in the voice, before it trailed off in a fit of painful coughing.

  CHAPTER 21

  ________________

  Kanuk ran uphill to the barrier, and found Fedic slumped behind it. He had bound his ribs, and one arm was tied against his chest. Blood had seeped through bandages over one shoulder, and dried into a dark stain.

  Kanuk asked him what his injuries were. Fedic realized he didn’t understand the Hud pilot’s words. He fumbled with his night goggles and dropped a linguist earpiece into place.

  “Get me upright,” he whispered, and Kanuk propped him up against the wall of the shuttle, stuffing his pack pack behind him to keep Fedic in place.

  “Get everyone inside the hull,” said Fedic, “and set up firing lines left and right. They like to come in around the outside of the hull.”

  “Who does? Who is ‘they’?” said Kanuk.

  Fedic waved him away, too exhausted to speak.

  Moments later Kanuk and Leana had been put on sentry duty while the others clustered around Fedic. The Recon Maiden’s pilot coughed weakly, and Bosun handed over a squeeze pack of water mixed with electrolytes and fruit sugars. Then he introduced himself to Fedic.

  Fedic nodded. Bosun wasn’t a man to be seen in boardroom meetings at Prometheus, but he had heard the name. He knew Bosun mentored the Hud pilots at Prometheus, and the man had spent time on their planet.

  “I made too many mistakes,” said Fedic a short while later, when he had improved a little.

  “The biggest one was not recognizing the adults are bonded pairs. I left too many ‘other halves’ still alive. There are at least three I can now recognize, and they just want me dead. They’re not eating, not leaving the shuttle for anything, and they would sacrifice themselves in an instant if it meant one of the others could get at me.”

  There was a pause while Fedic gathered his thoughts. He was beginning to ramble, but he forced himself to concentrate. His superb mental discipline held him together, while he described the situation.

  “One of the smaller ones got in at night, a juvenile probably, and trashed everything while I hid in one of the equipment lockers and took potshots at it using the night scope.

  “I lost the sub-space radio and the last of the food. Energy weapons don’t work on them, their coat conducts most of it away or something, maybe they don’t feel the pain. Anyway, I didn’t have anything bigger to use on them.”

  Bosun waited while Fedic drank from the squeeze pack again, and took a while to get his breath back. Then he asked him to describe the creatures.

  “Look like a huge black otter,” said Fedic. “Perfectly camouflaged for the night. Bent in the middle like an upside down U, very strange when you first see them. That humped back allows them to tower over us, even on all fours.

  “The front limbs have a cutting edge at the hock, so they can rip downwards at one target and stab back at another in the same movement. The humped back allows them to rake off flesh in a sideways movement with their back legs. They have small cone-like claws, incredibly hard, which they can drive right through bone.

  “But mostly they’re just very, very fast, and stronger than you would think possible.”

  Fedic laid his head back again, then spoke in a whisper. “Can’t believe you just walked in here, didn’t lose one of your team. They must have allowed you in, wanted to keep us all in one place.”

  Then he started to nod off.

  “Keeping us caged up, maybe sending for more of their clan . . .” he said, as he dropped off to sleep.

  Battrod got to work on him with the medical kit, taking blood readings and replacing essential nutrients through the skin, and adding a few more painkillers.

  Bosun gathered the team around him after night fell. They limited the evening meal to cold food and no lights, using the goggles and night scope helmets instead. The guard on the door changed, and two new pilots joined the meeting.

  “Fedic still sleeping?” said Bosun.

  Battrod nodded. “I’ve given him something to put him out, he should sleep right through the night.”

  Bosun looked around him. “This could be a lot harder than we first thought, people. It looks like there’s a concentration of these ‘otter’ creatures in this part of the forest.

  “We’ve got the right sort of weapons, though, and you’re the right people for the job. The only problem is carrying Fedic on the way out. That would slow us down, and reduce active shooters, and that might tip the odds in favor of these creatures.”

  “Who’s got some ideas?” he said, as he finished.

  In the end they decided to wait for Fedic to recover over the next day or two. Maybe he could ride on the maglev unit. In the meantime they would find out the numbers and tactics of the strange predators.

  They didn’t have long to wait.

  Bosun woke with a start as the launchers chattered and composite slugs ricocheted off the hull. Battrod had a line of fire down the right side of the ship, and was repelling something. There were two dull thumps as slugs hit home, and a feral scream.

  “Godsdammit!”yelled Battrod. “Didn’t even slow it down. Took a swipe at me and vanished into the trees.”

  One of the others had a line of fire down the left side of the shuttle, and leaned out to take a better look.

  “Something moving out there,” he said sharply, and then a tall, sinuous form landed on him from the top of the hull, pinning his arm to the ground. The pilot screamed as his forearm broke, and Battrod swore as he caught the edge of the hull trying to swing his launcher around.

  The creature lifted its back legs off the ground to rake the wounded pilot from head to waist.
Then a stream of high-energy slugs slammed it back, bowling it across the ground like a rag doll.

  “Thought I’d give it the whole magazine,” said Leana ruefully, doubled over in the approved low kneeling position and nursing her right arm. That was a lot of recoil for one of the more slightly built Hud females.

  Kanuk and another pilot took over the defensive positions, while Bosun dragged the wounded pilot into the shuttle and got to work on him with the medical kit.

  “Slag-spawn thing came over the top of the shuttle,” said Battrod, shaking his head. “Didn’t hear it, didn’t see it until too late.”

  Bosun nodded, finishing his work on the pilot’s broken arm and turning to Leana to bind her bruised arm.

  “That’s us finished then,” he said evenly. Battrod turned to look at him. The others stopped what they were doing.

  “The odds are stacked too highly against us with another fighter out for a while,” said Bosun. “It’s too risky to take Fedic to the shuttle, and we can’t stay here, so we’ll have to bring the shuttle to Fedic.

  “The rest of us wouldn’t mind being rescued either,” he added dryly.

  “We’re all pilots, so who’s going to go for the shuttle?”

  The others didn’t say anything, but they looked thoughtful. Then they went back to what they were doing.

  The following morning found Bosun listening to the rescue team’s sub-space radio, as the first rays of light angled low through the trees. He was talking to Prometheus, and he nodding slowly to himself as he assimilated the information he was given.

  Finch was explaining what the Sumerian government intended to do to evacuate their remaining citizens from Uruk. Preparations were well underway, and their deep space navy would be leaving for the Sumerian home planet within a day or two.

  “We’ll be there for the evacuation as well, with every available Javelin we can muster,” said Finch, “but it all depends on how much resistance we get from the Reaper ships above the planet.

  “It would help us if you could get your team to RockHaven, along with Fedic, so we can take you off with the refugees from there. We could risk a shuttle to try and lift you out now, but it all depends on how the evacuation goes.”

  “Understood,” said Bosun, fully aware of the difficulties facing the evacuation forces. On the other hand, the team’s position inside the Recon Maiden was just about as dicey.

  Finch closed the sub-space connection, and Bosun was left hoping the rescue team would have their own rescue plan ready by the time he talked to Finch again.

  Bosun had also spoken to AldSanni and PraktuParBrahmad at Ba’Regan, but they were busy preparing for the evacuation. Bosun didn’t want to put Sumerian lives at risk in a rescue attempt from Ba’Regan either, so that suited him.

  The rather large ‘otters’ had learned to keep a healthy distance after Kanuk killed two of them during the first night. It was a standoff now. The otters prowled restlessly through the trees where they had some cover, and the pilots couldn’t get an accurate shot. But it was also clear the rescue party weren’t going to be allowed to leave the shuttle.

  “Look at that,” said Battrod, getting ready for the morning watch at the tear in the shuttle’s hull. “One of them just brought back a kill for the others to share.”

  There was the sound of scuffling behind a group of trees in the forest, and then the sound of flesh being torn. That was followed by a bout of high-pitched snarling, as the rights to some part of the kill were contested.

  Much of the action was outlined by the recently risen sun, and Kanuk thought of risking a shot at the otters, but then he decided to save the bullets. The appearance of the kill was frustrating to the occupants of the shuttle. It was evidence the otters had well and truly settled in.

  The last of the night watch turned in, and curled up at the back of the shuttle to get some sleep. Battrod and another pilot took over guard duty. The remaining members of the rescue team ate sparingly of their survival rations, before Bosun assembled them for a morning briefing. Fedic had improved substantially overnight, and he slowly made his way to join the others.

  “I think we can take them,” said Habid. “I’ve only seen seven, maybe eight, of the creatures out there, and we’ve got four able-bodied fighters and five launchers. Leana could probably handle the last launcher, but Gotar and Fedic are out with more serious wounds.”

  “There’s more than seven or eight of them,” said Fedic, without preamble. “If you can count that many, then we can assume some are watching the rear of the shuttle, and some will be out hunting.

  “There were few large animals of any sort left alive on Uruk after the Sumerians colonized the land, so they’ll have to range a long way to feed a group as big as that. You can factor in maybe half of them out hunting at any one time.”

  “So, how many in total do you think?” said Bosun quietly.

  “Eighteen, maybe twenty,” said Fedic, “and if we shoot our way out, the ones out hunting will return to the shuttle within half a day. Then they will follow our trail, plus the scent of their own who’ve gone after us.

  “You might kill a few of the creatures, but there would still be a dozen of them ready to rip your camp to shreds as soon as it became dark.”

  It was a sobering assessment of the situation.

  CHAPTER 22

  ________________

  In the end the standoff with the otter creatures continued. Bosun was on guard duty after the sparse midday meal, and he was trying to think of solutions to the problem. He didn’t want to ask Finch for a shuttle to rescue the little party, not when the evacuation forces would be stretched so thin.

  Then Kanuk took over Bosun’s spot, and waved him toward the sub-space radio to listen in. AldSanni was asking to talk to Fedic.

  “I thought you were invincible,” said AldSanni, when he was told of Fedic’s wounds. The Recon Maiden pilot smiled. It was hard to pick, but this was an example of the dry Sumerian sense of humor.

  “If I made it look easy they’d all want my job,” he said, chuckling.

  AldSanni had an extraordinary plan to discuss with him, and Fedic listened with increasing interest. It was a surprising plan, especially coming from a Sumerian, but everyone in the Alliance was changing under the desperate conditions of this unholy war.

  “I’ll discuss it with the others, and get back to you,” said Fedic, but in his heart he knew they had to accept AldSanni’s offer. Then he closed the connection and put the plan to Bosun.

  The evacuation fleet came out of star drive in the Uruk system on the following day, and the attention of the Reaper ships shifted toward them. It was then that a Sumerian shuttle left an abandoned airfield not far from Ba’Regan, and traveled at tree-top level toward the Recon Maiden.

  “Where did the Lyceum brothers get the shuttle from?” asked Bosun, as Fedic drilled them one last time on what they had to do when the shuttle arrived overhead.

  “The wreckage of a private airfield not far from Ba’Regan, and it’s a miracle PraktuParBrahmad’s Lyceum brothers managed to patch it up. It belonged to a retired Admiral. He could still pull a few strings to get himself a shuttle it seems, whoever he was. He wanted to do private trips around the planet.”

  “What was wrong with the transport systems the Sumerians had in place?” said Bosun.

  “Not good enough for him. Some people are like that,” replied Fedic.

  “Even Sumerians?”

  “Yes, well, that is harder to fathom. Maybe he had the shuttle as part of some research their government was doing,” said Fedic. “But let’s not ask too many questions, the shuttle’s our only way out of here.”

  Bosun nodded his complete agreement.

  The rescue team were in position a short time later. Two of the Hud pilots had their usual firing positions either side of the tear in the hull. Another pilot was ready for anything that might be coming over the top of the Recon Maiden. Kanuk had his eyes on the sky, looking for their ride out of the clearing, b
ut he heard it well before he saw it.

  “Incoming,” he reported, and waited, listening intently. “Sounding closer,” then, “I can see it now.”

  Powerful air jets bent branches around the clearing, and blew a storm of leaves across the ground. A bright white beam stabbed down at the ground, and Fedic started his countdown.

  “Back inside,” he said, when he got to zero. They took up positions around the inside of the entrance, and waited. Moments later canisters rained down among the trees all around them. Powerful concussions shook the downed Recon Maiden, and set off a cacophony of squeals in every direction from the otters.

  “That should buy us some time,” said Bosun, as Fedic watched the shuttle land a short distance away, and the rear cargo hatch open. Two Sumerians beckoned them toward the opening.

  “Let’s go,” snapped Fedic, and headed at a run for the safety of the open door. The others were right behind him. Then he saw two of the otters coming over the shuttle, and another closing rapidly on his left. Dammit! he thought, the creatures hadn’t been put off by the noise of the shuttle, and the concussion grenades.

  Kanuk was the last of the team to leave the downed ship, and he dropped to one knee and started firing as several of the beasts closed fast on Fedic’s right. Fedic veered to one side of the shuttle door, and snatched a launcher off the first of the Hud pilots to arrive.

  Everything slowed down, and Fedic saw two of the otters cut to pieces by Kanuk’s launcher as he himself opened up on the ones coming over the top of the Recon Maiden. He swung back to see a third go down in front of Kanuk, and then the fourth made an extraordinary leap over the ones on the ground and slammed into the Hud pilot. Fedic put three fast single shots into its head as it stood over Kanuk, bared teeth already dropping toward his shoulder.