But Isom was there and armed. He’d have a clear shot of the thing’s head, raised as it was, if only he’d wake and act swiftly.
Alexis moved her mouth, but no sound came out. She had to tease a bit of moisture into her mouth, by licking the mist from her lips and working it about before she felt she could make a sound at all.
“Isom,” she whispered. “Is —”
She broke off, scarcely daring to breathe as the snake, centipede, whatever it might be, spun its face to look at hers. She froze, waiting for it to dart forward and strike, but it remained as still as she.
Alexis started to lower her hand. Of course, the hand she raised to pet the damned Vile Creature when she’d thought it was that thing on her chest would be the one on the side she kept her flechette pistol while she slept. Had it been the other she might have grasped the pistol and shot while the snakipede was distracted by her other hand.
The head darted back to stare at her hand and she froze again.
Perhaps if she raised the other she might distract its gaze and reach her pistol.
She’d nearly determined to try that, thinking she’d be unable to remain still enough for much longer and must try something, when an angry, grating, chittering screech sounded from where Isom lay.
Even as the snakipede’s head spun about, a blur of brown-furred motion crossed her chest, crashing into the beast and dragging it away — not off her, the snakipede was too large and the blur too small to do that, but enough that Alexis’ body was reacting even before she could fully note what happened.
She rolled away, toward Isom and out from under the rest of the thing’s body, scooping up her flechette pistol as she did.
Shadows fought at the edge of the hummock, one long and thick, sharp with scaled edges, thrashing from side to side and up and down in desperate motion, the other short and blurry from its bristled fur, latched onto the other’s neck and being taken for a wild ride while the snakipede thrashed.
The dark night came alive with noise and light as the crew had been sleeping lightly. Every one of the crew was up at the sound of the mongoose’s chittering battle cry. Hand torches sprang to life and shouts asked where the attack was.
Their lights played over Alexis’ part of the hummock, illuminating the thrashing figures, as well as the snakipede’s head, which Alexis fixed her flechette pistol on.
She had no clear shot, though, as the constant movement put the Creature’s body in her shot as often as the snakipede’s head.
Not that she cared one whit about the Creature taking a dart or two as well, she told herself, but she was certain the crew would look poorly on it, seeing how they doted on the thing.
For a moment, the mongoose was flung loose, rolling over the hummock and nearly into the surrounding water as its little jaws lost their grip on its much larger adversary.
Alexis’ trigger finger tightened, ready for the opportunity, but then the stupid Creature dashed back in, barely dodging a strike of glistening fangs, and latched on under the snakipede’s jaw to go for another ride.
“Damn you, get off it or I’ll shoot you anyway!” Alexis yelled.
Another lost grip threw the mongoose aside, but it was back again, so fast that Alexis still couldn’t get a shot off and she gnashed her teeth in frustration.
“Buggering … Boots! Off!” she yelled, the command being nearly the only thing she’d ever said to the Creature, though repeatedly, as in, “Off my chair! Off my settee! Off my bunk! Off my dining table! Off my bloody dinner plate, you vile buggering thing what have you done there?!”
Whether obeying or merely flung aside again, the furred blur flew through the air to land in the swamp water with a splash many times its size.
The snakipede reared back, as though gathering itself to follow and strike, but Alexis’ pistol whined.
The sharp, tiny darts of thermoplastic stripped off the pistol’s magazine and propelled from its barrel were almost no match for the thing’s scales. Many whined off into the surrounding space, making men duck and throw themselves into the muddy water. A few, though, made it through — a gap between scales here, one pried loose by a mongoose’s tooth there.
They penetrated, making the snakipede spit and hiss with irritation, then twist to face this new attack.
That brought its eyes to face Alexis and she fired again.
“Did y’see it, lads?” Creasy asked. “Boots takin’ on that serpent ten times his size, he did!”
Alexis shook her head. The Creature wasn’t even out of the bloody water yet, and Creasy was at it.
“Killed the bloody thing hisself, Boots did!”
Alexis glanced at the flechette pistol in her hand and the few darts stuck in the snakipede’s head and neck, including the ones with just a bit showing where they’d penetrated the beast’s left eye and found whatever it had for a brain.
“I’m quite certain it wasn’t —”
“Three cheers for Boots savin’ the captain!”
It doesn’t matter.
“Hip hip —”
“Belay that!” Alexis ordered midway through the cheer. “There may be searchers about!”
She doubted that, and the high-pitched whine of her flechette pistol, as well as the shouts of alarm while the two animals were fighting, would likely have alerted any already, but there was no need in providing more noise if there were — nor did she particularly care to hear the crew cheering for the bloody Creature, no matter it had just saved her, if not entirely as Creasy made it out.
The Creature in question made the hummock and scrambled out of the water. Fur mud-covered and drenched, it was a bedraggled, pitiful sight.
“Boots! Here, Boots,” Isom was calling, having managed to rise despite the pain of still swollen skin and joints. He was holding out a mass of cloth. “Here, come and get dry, Boots.”
“Is that …” Alexis looked closer. “Is that one of my jumpsuits?”
“An old one, sir,” Isom said, kneeling down and holding it out toward the mongoose. “He likes t’have your scent near.”
“If we’d had spares along, I might’ve liked a change, you know?”
Isom looked down at the cloth in his hands. “Old, sir, as I said, and torn —”
“Still —”
“Been in Boot’s crate a time, you see.”
“Bloody —”
She broke off as the Creature ignored Isom and came toward her and the hand she had outstretched to examine the snakipede’s head.
Alexis sighed. She’d not normally give the thing a bit of attention, but she supposed it had earned it, what with distracting the snakipede until she could get a clear shot.
“All right, you vile thing. One head scratch then it’s back to Isom and —”
The Creature knocked her hand away, actually hitched its hips to bat it aside, straddled the snakipede’s head, and let loose a stream that spattered widely, including onto Alexis’ boots.
Eight
For nigh unto a fortnight
The ships fought ‘til they were hulks,
And near fifty thousand men were spilled
To the mercies of the Dark.
“It’s not as though Boots did it a’purpose, sir,” Isom said, his tone the one he used when he wished to admonish her for something — entirely respectful, yet carrying a clear message.
Alexis grunted, more from the effort of pulling her boot from the mud with each step than any response.
“He was more … sending a message, like, I think. To others of those snake things.”
“It’s all right, Isom, I’m not angry at the Creature — over that.”
In truth she wasn’t. The bit of … the stream that had spattered on her boots wasn’t the worst thing the Creature’d left for her to find, after all, and it wasn’t the worst she’d had on her since crashing on Erzurum, come to that.
Her vacsuit liner had split a seam as she stood from kneeling by the dead snakipede and hers wasn’t the only one. While she’d noted i
t before, it was now clearly obvious that all their clothing was wearing at a rate she couldn’t credit to anything but unnatural.
There must be something in the water.
Which would explain the chafing — which was more than chafing, when one really looked.
Under the tattered and split jumpsuits, liners, and vacsuits, all of them had red, sensitive patches on their skin, some with the start of what looked like boils. Those were tiny yet, but painful.
It was enough to make her ponder wearing the jumpsuit Isom wrapped the Creature in, no matter what the thing might have done with it in its crate.
She wondered, if it were the water, what effect it was having on their insides even with their canteens’ filters.
A shout came from the edge of the group, but, thankfully, no shots.
“Passin’ th’word fer the Captain!”
“It is all right, Isom,” she assured her clerk with a pat on his shoulder. “For all I know, a bit of mongoose urine might be just the thing to ease whatever the mud and water here are doing to us … don’t repeat that, especially in Creasy’s hearing.”
Sweet Dark, let that idea out and his followers will be bathing in it.
“Aye, sir.”
Alexis called a halt to their march — it was nearly time to rest a bit anyway — and made her way to where the shout had come from.
“What is it?”
Parke stepped aside from the group of huddled men, which included Creasy, Alexis noted, and approached. He had a rifle in hand, one of the lasers, and had been set to walking picket along their path.
He leaned close, almost closer than was appropriate, and whispered.
“T’ings in t’mist, sir. More’n one.”
Alexis noted his eyes were wide and his hands shaking.
“What sort of things, Parke?”
“Only shadows, sir, but pacin’ us.”
“You did right to call me — and not to fire at shadows.”
Parke swallowed and nodded, as though following that order had been the more difficult than pulling out on the yards with an enemy frigate ready to fire chain into them.
Alexis frowned. “‘Shadows,’ you say? More than one?”
Parke nodded. “Aye, sir. One a’first, din’t call w’that — thort me eyes playin’ tricks. Just now, tree of ‘em.”
“Not more snakes? Snakipedes?”
A shake of his head. “No, sir. Tall an’ upright — like a man walks.”
Alexis heard Creasy in the nearby group.
“Angry,” he said. “Boots killed their serpent, sent to harm the captain. Probably worship it, the bloody heathen, superstitious serpent-men.”
“Belay that!” Alexis turned to the larger group. “We don’t know what’s out there, if anything at all —”
“I saw —”
“No doubt you saw something, Parke, but there are no serpent-men. Mere shadows in the mist are —”
“Sir!”
Alexis turned, ready to snap at the man for interrupting her, but saw all eyes looking off into the misty rain.
Two hummocks away, barely visible, but clear enough it was no shadow, stood a figure.
Covered in the same sort of iridescent scales as the snakipedes, but with only two legs, its other limbs being clearly defined arms and holding a spear in what could only be hands. The torso gave way to a wide, scaled hood that hid the figure’s face in shadows, like a much larger version of a cobra’s hood.
They all stood still, staring for a moment, then the figure slowly backed away to disappear in the thick mists.
They were on only two hummocks tonight, having searched to find one large enough for all of them and settling for two close together. The edges of both were lined with watchers, peering out into the darkness for any sign of more of the …
Alexis sighed.
“Bloody, damned lizard-men,” Alexis muttered. “I’d not have credited it, save I saw with my own eyes.”
“No chance you’re mistaken, sir?” Isom asked. He’d been trained as a legal clerk before being impressed into the Navy against his will and he had a sharp, skeptical mind. “Some trick of the mist?”
“I don’t see how,” Alexis allowed, though she longed to be able to dismiss the sight as a mistake. “Clearly arms and legs, and holding a spear — standing upright, not hunched like some ape. So much like a man, save covered in scales, and intelligent enough to make and use tools.”
Aggressive tools — tools of war.
Yes, a spear could be a tool for hunting, and probably was, but she’d heard of no ancient tribe that hadn’t turned those tools against their own kind — much less a group of strange invaders traipsing through their swamp.
“Do you suppose the people of Erzurum know about them?”
“I don’t see how they couldn’t,” Alexis said. “The planet’s been settled for centuries, for all it’s still sparsely populated. There’s sure to have been some contact.”
That didn’t bode well for Alexis and her group, now that she thought of it. Both that human history showed hunting tools turned to war more often than not, and the history of human colonists interacting with natives of their own kind — she couldn’t imagine scaled aliens, a word hard to even think, would have fared better here than some primitive tribesman back on Earth.
“Kept it quiet all that time?” Isom wondered.
“They must have, or we’d be standing in the lobby of a research center right now.”
“Hard to credit, sir.”
Dockett and Nabb approached and sat with them.
“How are the men?” Alexis asked.
“Sore worried, sir,” Dockett said. “Half’re convinced Creasy’s right and we’ve defiled some aliens’ holy ground or Boots killed their bloody god last night.”
“It was I who —” It doesn’t matter. “Never mind. You made it clear they’re not to fire on shadows, or even a clear sight, without we’re attacked first?”
Dockett nodded. “And spread your boat crew out amongst the pickets, too. They’re the steadiest and’ll keep an eye on the others.”
“That’s good thinking.”
Dockett jerked his head at Nabb. “Young Nabb’s suggestion, sir.”
Nabb ducked his head at the praise, then looked up. “What will we do if we see them again, sir?”
Alexis shrugged. “Try to communicate, I suppose. Make them understand we’re only passing through and mean them no harm.”
“Doubt they speak anything we’d understand,” Dockett said.
“No,” Alexis agreed, “but if there’s been contact with Erzurum’s natives — well, I suppose the lizard-folk are the natives, aren’t they? If there’s been contact with the human settlers, then they may understand some of the Barbary patois and my tablet’s translation software may be able to sort things out for us.”
Dawn came with no sightings of lizard-men and, more to Alexis’ pleasure, no snakipedes crawling up on them in their sleep.
They ate another cold meal of ration bars and water, which the men looked on with more and more displeasure, their supply of spirits being limited to one issue a day, and that so diluted now that it was virtually indistinguishable from the water.
Lizard-men are not the worst of my worries, I think.
Alexis pondered her map as they readied to move on. By her calculations, they were actually trending farther away from the nearest settlement now, after rounding the end of a ravine in one direction and encountering another that edged them back. It might be best to reverse course and try to get around the ravine the other way, even if that took them more afield from the settlement.
It would also, though, take them back toward where they’d seen the lizard-man so clearly, and the crew might balk at that.
So, one more day on this route — if the ravine before them continued to push them away from the settlement, she’d reverse course and try getting around its other end.
She bent to ready her pack for the march to come, then froze at th
e sudden stillness of all those around her.
“Hsst! Passin’ the word for the Captain,” came a whispered notice.
Alexis stood and slowly made her way toward the call — across the short stretch of water and mud to the other hummock’s far side.
All the men were still, but staring in a single direction, and at their edge she could see why.
Their visitor of the day before was back, or one very much like him.
Still at the edges of their vision in the mist, no clearer than the day before, but with visible scales, spear held upright, and hood fully extended.
Is that some sort of threat gesture, like a cobra, or does it mean something entirely different here?
For all she knew, an extended hood could mean a sign of friendship to these … people. There was no way of telling, and though they might be scaled like terrestrial snakes and lizards, that didn’t mean there were any other similarities. She must remember that.
Alexis stepped forward, away from the line of men. As she arrived at the hummock’s edge, a second figure appeared, then another, and another.
“Belay that! Stand easy!” she shouted as the crew behind her made to raise their weapons. “Mister Dockett! I’ll see the first man who fires sent to the gratings, private ship or no, do you hear me?”
“Aye, sir!”
Alexis moved a further step ahead of her crew, facing the aliens, and nearly at the water’s edge. She spread her arms wide, palms open.
“We mean no harm,” she said loudly and distinctly. “I have a device —” She motioned toward her pocket where her tablet was, though the material there was now so thin and frayed that she feared losing it to the swamp soon. “— it’s not a weapon. No danger. It will help us talk, I think.”
She didn’t expect the aliens to understand her words, but hoped her tone conveyed that she and Mongoose’s crew were no threat.
Not the most auspicious ship’s name for this encounter …
One of the lizard-men spoke, or at least made a harsh, guttural sound that she couldn’t quite hear through the sound-deadening mist. It was possible her tablet’s speaker wouldn’t carry that far either and she might have to walk alone through the muck to get close enough to communicate.
The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6) Page 5
