Dreadnought (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 2) (18 page)

“Hold on,” I said. “Where are you taking us?”

“To our village,” Jkal said. “You asked to go there.”

“Yes, but… aren’t we already underneath your village?”

“What? The buildings? We don’t live in buildings! We did once, of course, but that was before even my parents were born.”

I was beginning to catch on.

“Who raids your planet?” I asked.

He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “What?”

“Someone comes and captures your people, right? That’s why you hide like rats under the ground.”

Jkal looked suspicious. “What’s a rat?”

“A noble animal,” Morris said over my shoulder, grinning.

I didn’t chide him for lying. After all, it was for a good cause.

“We’ll talk when we reach our destination,” Jkal said.

At length, we were led to a natural cavern. I had the feeling we were under one of the peaks that circled the valley. That meant we were entombed beneath a thousand meters of rock—the very thought was oppressive.

Heading upward through winding, natural passages, the cavern eventually opened at last to a yawning mouth. I was quite relieved to feel the sting of Sapphire’s breath in my lungs again.

Jkal walked some steps ahead, peering intently into the distance for long moments.

We could see the sky again. From underneath a thick overhang of granite, I could see the valley sloping away. There was a tremendous amount of cover provided by trees. The terrain was rough and covered with scrubby brush. The village itself must have been hidden by the strangely twisted trees.

“Hmm…” I said, looking around. There was no encampment here in the cave mouth. There were only a few ash heaps, indicating people had burned campfires and eaten game.

Jkal came to me. “You must stay here,” he said. “I’m going to get our leader. You must wait. You may start a fire if you like.”

Shrugging, we did as he asked. The group of villagers left us and stealthily crept out of the cavern and into the open.

Sitting down on a rock, I noted that Zye was looking agitated.

“What’s wrong, Zye?” I asked.

“I don’t trust these men,” she said. “They’re carrion-feeders.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Morris said, stepping into the conversation. “Sure, they’ve had a rough time of it. They’re failures in comparison to your civilization. But not all colonies were destined to be successful. Especially not after they were cut off from Earth. These folks just got the short end of the stick, that’s all.”

I frowned, thinking about Zye’s concerns. She was standing, not sitting. She was near the edge of the cavern mouth, staring outside.

Darkness was falling fast. The local sun had dropped behind a craggy peak, and the light was fading rapidly, as it always did in the mountains.

Standing up and walking to the edge of the cavern mouth, I decided to communicate with
Defiant
. I hadn’t done so for quite some time, as we’d been trapped underground.

“Captain,” Durris said when I contacted him. “There’s something wrong. We’re picking up an audio signal from your location. A repeated pinging sound, too high in pitch for human ears to pick up. Are you transmitting something?”

Puzzled, I assured him we weren’t. I immediately set my team to searching the area.

We found the source of the noise just as the darkness became total. A silver box with a crude speaker attached to it sat just above the cave mouth. I put my hand on it, and I felt a tiny vibration, but I couldn’t hear anything.

I yanked the cord out, and it stopped vibrating.

“That little red-headed bastard,” Morris said when he saw the contraption. “What kind of a trick is this? He set this up deliberately, that’s for sure. I’m going to have some words with him when he gets back here.”

“He’s not coming back,” Zye said.

There was certainty in her voice, and I had to agree with her.

The first thing I did was try to contact Rumbold. There was no response from the pinnace.

I growled in frustration. We were faced with a difficult decision. Should we march back down to our pinnace? Or should we search for Jkal?

“I vote we hunt that skinny frigger down and burn some holes in his legs until he explains himself,” Morris suggested.

“Certainly not,” I said. “This is an exploratory expedition, after all. The locals may have played a trick on us, but they’ve done nothing overtly hostile yet.”

“Always do the unexpected,” Zye said in the tone of one quoting a proverb.

Glancing at her, I put up my hands. “What would that be, in this case?”

“I don’t know, but we shouldn’t stand around in this cave any longer.”

She was right, of course. For all we knew the transmitter could have been a homing device marking our location for some kind of primitive missile.

“Let’s head back toward the ship,” I said. “They might be back there now, breaking into it.”

Hurrying this time, we used our compasses to draw a line through the forest. The terrain was rough, and we were breathing hard before we were halfway there. This planet had no moon. The darkness was nearly complete. We had to use the infrared systems in our helmets, and the light boosters in our implants to see where we were going.

The first warning we had was a tremendous crashing sound.

“What was that?” demanded one of the marines.

“A tree went down,” Morris said, “I’m sure of it.”

“Keep moving,” I said, drawing my pistol and saber.

Zye had her weapon out now as well. No one was calm, but we weren’t running in a panic. Not yet.

Another tree went down. The sound was unmistakable. In spite of our hasty pace, it seemed to come from closer behind us than the first one.

“Something’s coming,” Zye said. “Something big. I’ve been stalked before by megafauna on Beta. They come like this, sometimes—the largest of them.”

That was it. We’d been jogging, but now we broke into a run.

A thumping sound came from behind us. A series of cracking sounds joined it. There was something big on our tails. And it was gaining.

When the third tree crashed down, closer than ever, I ordered a halt.

“We’ve got nearly a kilometer to go,” I said. “We can’t make it. We should consider hiding and ambushing it.”

Nodding, Morris and his troops spread out. Zye stayed with me. We chose a boulder that was big enough for the two of us and crouched in the frosty darkness.

While we waited, and the thing crashed closer and closer, Zye reached out a big arm and gave me a squeeze. I looked at her in surprise. She met my eyes.

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “If it can die—we’ll kill it.”

She flashed me a smile that I could see by the lights inside her faceplate—and then something waded through the trees and paused right on top of us.

I knew in an instant that we’d miscalculated. The alien creature was
huge
. Above us, where there had been branches and stars a moment earlier, there was now nothing but blackness. I tried not to breathe, and for a moment, the beast seemed to have lost us.

“Permission to fire, sir!” Morris’ voice hissed inside my helmet.

“Hold,” I transmitted back.

We were conversing using our helmet radios. The creature shouldn’t be able to hear us, not unless it had—

But the beast reacted. Twisting and looking this way and that, I saw the shadowy monster searching for our voices. Fortunately, Morris had shut up. I thought of the high-pitched sound Jkal had used to summon this monster—it only made sense that it would have excellent hearing. Many predators did.

One of my marines didn’t follow my orders to hold his fire, however. He broke from his hiding spot and opened up with his chest-cannon, ripping the air with flashes and a crackling spray of plasma.

The creature attacked immediately. A long curving shape dipped out of the sky and lifted again, taking the man and his weapon away.

Jaws? Had I seen, in a brief flash of gunfire, the drooling jaws of a bizarre monstrosity?

To me, it resembled something like the toothy head of a barracuda on a long, sinewy neck. But instead of scales or smooth skin, the beast was shaggy with matted fur.

The neck convulsed, and the teeth crunched down. After a few tries, it choked down the marine, swallowing the body-shell armor, gun and all.

“That’s it!” I shouted. “Light this thing up!”

All of us began to fire then. We concentrated our weapons on the head, which was hopefully a weak point.

Releasing a thunderous howl, the head dipped and tried to get Morris. He rolled away and came up firing in a new position.

Deciding my own pistol was useless, I drew my saber. Switching it on, I found it lit the region in a reddish glow like a torch.

The monster stopped trying to eat Morris and turned toward me instead. The light of my power saber, rippling with force, had made me its target of choice.

There was nowhere to run. I was between two tree-like legs—of which it had at least six. The neck coiled and then lengthened again, reminding me of a striking snake.

I knelt, activated my personal shield, and thrust my blade toward the gaping mouth.

The blade touched the creature’s tongue before those teeth reached me. There was a snapping sound, and the smell of burnt meat filled the forest.

Bellowing, the creature reared up, then struck again, enraged. I stared in the dark, hoping it had weakened.

Was
it weakening? Yes—a rolling shiver convulsed through the assemblage of its massive form and it paused. The pounding fire of two rifles, peppering the neck, body and skull with burn marks, had taken a toll.

The second strike came then, and I was snatched up in those vast jaws. A sickening sensation filled me, and I realized I was being hoisted aloft. The teeth were crushing down, but they weren’t penetrating my shield as yet.

Forming a ball with my body, I endeavored to thrust and cut the inside of the monsters’ mouth. It convulsed around me, and I recognized the unmistakable signs.

I was about to be swallowed whole.

-25-

The monster’s throat gaped, and I almost slid down into the acid-bath churning in its stomach. I knew my only possible move was a single thrust up into the monster’s brain, and I went for it.

I couldn’t brace my feet, as I was riding the rolling, burnt chunk of meat that served the creature for a tongue.

Taking my best shot, I stabbed upward. My thrust never reached the creature’s brain, but it did quite a bit of damage to its olfactory region. What saved me, I think, was lacerating the sinuses.

Choking and coughing, it spat me back out. I crashed to the ground with jarring force and lay there with the wind knocked out of me, coated in disgusting fluids.

The monster, snorting and shaking its head, ran off into the forest. It crashed through the trees and trumpeted in rage and pain as it went.

I remained where I’d fallen until Zye came and helped me to my feet.

“Are you injured?” she asked, running her hands over me.

“Stunned, but alive,” I said. I rolled to my knees so I could begin wringing slime from my clothes and wiping it on the turf.

“Captain!” Morris shouted. “This way!”

Not knowing what the trouble was, I envisioned a full herd of additional monsters. Zye and I rushed toward his voice.

We broke through a copse of brush to find Morris standing over Jkal and two of his compatriots. He had his rifle leveled in their faces.

“Here they are,” the Marine Commander said. “They came back to gloat. To watch us die.”

I walked unsteadily toward Jkal and put the tip of my glimmering blade near his throat. He watched the power sword with naked fear.

“Don’t kill,” he said. “Humans don’t kill humans. It’s forbidden.”

“Really?” I asked. “But it’s acceptable to lure your fellow man into a cave and summon a monstrous beast to devour him, is that it?”

“The serpent was hungry. We fed it. Better you than one of us.”

I nodded. “Very logical. Now, it’s time for you to start talking to us, Jkal. Or I’m going to have to damage you.”

“Don’t kill. It’s—”

“Yes, yes, I heard that part. But I won’t kill you. A brush with the tip of this weapon usually isn’t fatal. It isn’t pleasant, however.”

Zye came up and squatted near us, watching. She didn’t turn away. She didn’t seem squeamish at all. Betas were a stoic people. They neither relished giving pain, nor avoided dispensing it when effective or appropriate.

“The Beta,” Jkal said. “That’s why we did it. You’re in league with them. We know it.”

I glanced at Zye. “You know about Betas?”

“Of course. We’re not fools. We’ve been trapped here for generations, but there are a few old ones who still teach us of the neighboring colonies.”

“Where’s your leader?” I demanded. “The one you were going to take me to.”

Jkal licked his lips, then shrugged. “I’m the only leader here. These few are all that survived in this town. All the other nearby towns are empty.”

“What about the women and children you mentioned?” I asked. “Where are they?”

He shook his head. “Not anywhere near here. Maybe some live on the far side of Sapphire. The Stroj took all of them from our village. They come every year in the summer heat for a hunt. Those who are slowest, the weakest—they don’t survive.”

I lowered my sword and switched it off.

“You believe me?” Jkal asked.

“To a point,” I said. “The Stroj did come through this system. We saw their ships exit hyperspace here. We were following them until we lost them in this system.”

Jkal licked his lips again and got up into a crouch. I sensed he wanted to run, and I barely had the heart to stop him if he did.

I believed he was telling the truth about the Stroj. They were hunting humans on these worlds, taking them like trophies. That explained a lot.

What I knew of the Stroj led me to think these worlds would be attractive to them. They’d found fast-running prey full of tricks. I suspected immediately that Jkal and his crew had been left behind to provide further entertainment. Perhaps the Stroj allowed them to run free here. There were probably knots of survivors on all three of these worlds. The Stroj liked to track wild game. They would enjoy nothing better than a pack of feral humans who could be hunted and used as a source of fresh body parts to adorn themselves.

“Hmm,” I said, “can you tell us exactly when the Stroj are due to come back?”

“Any time now,” he said. “This is high summer. We watch the skies every day.”

Looking around, I felt a chill in the night air, but said nothing. I suspected that on Sapphire, summertime was a relative thing.

“Jkal, have you ever heard of a Captain Lorn?” I asked.

His face paled. “Are you in an alliance with that devil? Is that why you came here, to sell us to the—”

“No, no,” I said. “I’m merely asking the question. When I said we’d followed a Stroj pirate to this system, I’d meant Lorn.”

Jkal looked more frightened and worried than he had when I’d put the tip of my sword to his throat.

“We know Lorn. He’s worse than the Gi. Don’t trust any promise he makes you.”

I smiled grimly. “Don’t worry. Obviously, he’s come here before. How often?”

“I have to get back to my camp now.”

“Not so fast,” Morris said, prodding him with the barrel of his weapon. “Answer the Captain’s question.”

“Let him go,” I said, standing up straight and stretching my back painfully. “I doubt he can be any more help.”

“One moment with him first, sir?” Morris asked.

Glancing at him, I nodded.

Morris grabbed the man up and dragged him to a collection of stones where one of the marines lay, crushed and mangled.

“This isn’t all fun and games to me, Jkal,” he said. “If I get my way, I’ll kill the lot of you for this. Now, run off before the Captain changes his mind.”

Jkal and his companions vanished into the dark forest with pounding feet.

With a heavy heart, I helped Morris carry the body of our fallen comrade. After a ten minute hike, we reached the pinnace.

The tiny ship’s door yawned open. Rumbold was gone.

“They ransacked the ship,” Morris said. “I bet they ate Rumbold or something.”

“He’d be a tough old bird,” I said. Straightening and looking up and down the abandoned streets, I called loudly for Rumbold.

After a few echoing shouts, a figure appeared.

“Sorry Captain,” he said. “They surprised me. I opened the hatch when they said you were injured. Their leader—”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “He’s quite persuasive.”

“I slipped away while they were busy taking our foodstuffs and our gear.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked him.

“Only my pride, sir.”

“Very well. Let’s lift off from this accursed planet.”

Moments later we soared up into the high thin layers of the atmosphere. The entire experience had been sobering, but in a way, it was also understandable.

The degenerate people who still clung to life on this world weren’t a friendly bunch. Maybe half of what Jkal had told me was a lie. Probably, there
were
women and children somewhere, but he didn’t want to reveal their location. I couldn’t blame him for that.

They’d survived decades of Stroj hunts. What kind of a man could keep breathing under such circumstances? Only the meanest of men. A rodent on two legs.

Trying to forgive them for their trickery and thefts, I thought about what had been visited upon them—the suffering they’d undergone. That was the true evil.

The more I thought about it, the more I came to blame Captain Lorn and his band. They were the ones who had to be dealt with harshly.

In my mind, a plan began to take form.