Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier.
Read Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. Online
Authors: Doug Dandridge
This novel is dedicated to all those who push back the frontiers, who
fight the darkness of superstition and ignorance. Scientists, explorers,
teachers, engineers and technicians. All do their part to advance our
civilization.
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Copyright © 2016 Doug Dandridge
Goliath: Copyright © 2014 Doug Dandridge
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including the Deep Dark Well and the Exodus Universe, visit
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Acknowledgements: I would like
to thank all of my fans. Your kind words gave me the impetus to continue
through the not so kind words left in some reviews.
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Contents
Contents
2013 I was invited by Kevin J Anderson to
submit a fifteen thousand word novellette for the next edition of his military
anthology series, Five by Five. I submitted Retribution, one of the
novellettes included in Tales of the Empire book 1. Kevin the editor had some
problems with Retribution, and asked for some changes. Since I now had a good
idea of what he was looking for, I decided to instead write another story,
titled Goliath. Which left Retribution without a home. That was when I
decided to experiment a bit, and wrote two more novellettes staring Exploration
Command, the science and exploration branch of the Fleet. This was released as
Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Exploration Command. The anthology did quite
well, and received as good of ratings on Amazon and Goodreads as the main
storyline books of the Exodus series.
Five by Five
Three: Target Zone did not do as well as hoped. I’m not really sure why, since
all of the authors involved were good at their craft. I was probably the least
known of those authors, and I had expected Goliath to at least draw in the
majority of my fans, as well as gain some exposure with the fan bases of the
other authors. Didn’t happen, and since I recently got the rights back to
Goliath, I decided to put it in this anthology, the second of the Tales of the
Empire series. The anthologies, and the stand alone novels I also have planned
for the series, give me the chance to expand my Universe while exploring some
ideas that really don’t fit into the Empires at War or Machine War storylines.
Volume 1 of the
series, as said before, had three novellettes, all around fifteen thousand
words, for a total word count of forty-five thousand. Volume 2 contains three
novellettes, two well above the fifteen thousand word limit of Goliath, along
with three short stories. Total word count is over seventy-seven thousand
words, almost the length of some novels.
I am hoping that
this series will go on for some time, at least ten volumes. And one day I may
be able to entice some other authors into playing in my Universe. Until that
day, I hope that you enjoy these little tales I have come up with.
Mountains
The frontiers of the Empire
can be deadly places. Many haven’t grown in population to the point where the
technological benefits of human civilization have encompassed the planet. And
many have evolved plants and animals which are the supreme predators of their
worlds. Humans who intrude upon their environments do so at their own risk.
Often trespassing on their territory carries a death sentence. Still, the
riches of many of these worlds are enough to bring the explorers. Or
sometimes, even the rumors of riches.
The first Dang
knew that the snow bear was near was it erupting from the snow from meters away
and heading for him. He yelled for his partner as he tried to bring his rifle
onto the charging target. The bear didn’t give him the time, knocking the
weapon out of his hand with the swipe of a paw, then bringing the other across
to strike the explorer in the head. Dang went down into the snow, his head
ringing, the bear grabbing onto his backpack and biting deep, then shaking the
man like a rodent.
The bear was a
strange looking animal, not really a bear at all, but with enough resemblance
to get the name attached. It massed well over a ton in a standard gravity
field. In the one point three gees of Everest it weighed a bit more, and it
was as strong as any Earth ursid of similar mass. Where it differed from an
ursid was the overall flat front to back plan that allowed it to burrow into
the snow and wait for its prey.
The bear
continued to hammer and bite, ripping through Dang’s insulated clothing,
tearing his levitation harness and its attached equipment to shreds. Another
buffet to his head sent him reeling, and he was sure that he was dead. The
bear flipped him over and started a lunge that would end with its teeth buried
in Dang’s throat.
The mouth opened
even wider, if that was possible, and a shrieking roar came out. The odor of
burning flesh assaulted Dang’s nostrils. The bear jerked and screamed, trying
to turn and face its new tormentor. The angry insect sound of a particle beam
could just be heard over the roars of the animal it was striking. The animal
it was killing. The bear rose to its full height, then plopped down on the
snow, muscles quivering.
Dang rolled
over, his blurred vision picking out the form of his partner, Dallas, her rifle
still trained on the dead snow bear. Dang tried to cry out a warning to her,
but only a croak came out of his mouth. The snow bear’s mate came before the
warning, rocketing out of the covering snow and clamping its jaws over the
woman’s head. With a bite and a twist it took her life, shaking her in the air
to make sure. It dropped Dallas’ body onto the red stained snow and shuffled
over to the form of its mate, snuffling, then crying with a piteous sound.
The human knew
he had to get out of here, before the snow bear attacked him as well. He could
play dead, but the bear had keen senses, and he doubted he could fool it for
very long. Dang wasn’t sure he could outrun one of the predators if he was in
full health. The pain through his body was flooding his central nervous
system, making it hard to think, hard to localize the damage. The damage had
to be significant. He wouldn’t know how much until he tried to move, and then
he was afraid he would find out, just before he was killed.
I probably
won’t bleed out
, he thought. His nanites would take care of that. Given
enough time they would heal all of his wounds. All except for broken bones, if
any. They would cement the sides of the break together, but they couldn’t set
the bone beforehand. And the nanites wouldn’t keep him from being eaten.
The bear was
snuffling at his feet, and he was sure it wouldn’t be long before he felt the
pain of a heavy bite. If he was lucky, it would kill him, If he wasn’t?
Well, he would learn what it felt like to be eaten alive.
I have one
chance, I think
. He reached for the control panel on the strap of his
levitation harness. The rig was made to reduce the weight of the wearer so
they wouldn’t sink into the snow while walking. It could be used for limited
flight, but that ate up the battery power much faster than its primary
purpose. The first bear had ripped into the rig, and he had no way of knowing
if it would even work, or if it would send him in the air only to fall to his
death.
Here goes
nothing
, he thought as the bear started to use its paws to turn him over.
He pulled the rheostat as far as he could to the right. The unit pulled tightly
into his body for a moment, then raised him into the air. The bear swiped at
him and missed. It stood up on its haunches and tried to pull Dang down, but
in moments the man was out of reach. Snow bears were not leapers. They were
runners and diggers.
Dang looked down
on the scene below as the wind that was constantly whistling through the
mountains grabbed him. The female bear continued to snuffle at the body of her
mate, as if she didn’t believe he was dead. Dallas’ broken body lay fifty
meters to the west, her blood staining the snow. From here it looked like the
fight had been even, both sides losing one of their members. He didn’t feel
that way. Dallas had been more than a partner on an exploration mission. She
had been a friend and a lover, and now she was only so much bear food.
The man cleared
his head and tried to contact the com net through the communicator built into
his rig, and met only silence. He thought his implant was still functioning;
the bear would have had to split his skull open to get at it. Unfortunately,
the planet didn’t have a global net at this time. It was said the satellites
would be in orbit in another couple of months, which would probably be two
months too late.
Without warning
tears started to roll down Dang’s cheeks as he thought about his dead partner.
They had come into the mountains of Everest, the tallest in the know Galaxy, in
search of ruins of the ancients that were rumored to be among the continent
spanning peaks. Many had sought them, but none had found them, or had they?
One old man swore he had seen something that looked like ancient tech in the
mountains, and provided the explorers with a map and drawings that showed where
he had thought that something was. Many had not returned from searching this
area. Dang now knew why, and he didn’t have to invoke any traps at an ancient
facility to reconcile the disappearances.
Or was the old
man on that core world just selling fake maps to all comers, hoping to make a
little extra cash off the greed of others? If so, he was responsible for a
lot of death, adding to that total today.
Dang shivered.
The clothing he was wearing had been guaranteed to keep him comfortable no
matter the weather conditions in the mountains. Of course that guarantee had
assumed said clothing would remain intact. His was ripped to shreds by the
teeth and claws of the snow bear. Even the undergarment skinsuit was
compromised. And now the freezing temperatures of the high altitude, augmented
by the wind chill, was sucking the heat from his body.
I’ve got to
get down
, he thought, looking at the mountainside below, checking it for
predators.
I need to set up some kind of camp and get warm.
It was
also just a good idea to get out of the air, since the lift belt could fail at
any moment and drop him like a rock. At his altitude, even landing in a deep
snow bank wouldn’t save him. He tried to reach for the control and found that
his arm was not responding like it should. When he finally forced it into
position, he found that his fingers didn’t want to work either. With a curse
he kept trying, fighting the sense of fatigue that was flowing through his
body. With a last effort he was able to put his fingers around the control,
just before his eyes closed and he faded into unconsciousness.
* * *
“It’s
beautiful,” said Dallas, looking at the view screen that showed the planet
their liner had assumed orbit around.
“Uh huh,” said
Dang, looking over at his partner and thinking the same of her. Dallas had a
perfect honey brown complexion, frizzy hair, and ice blue eyes. He had met her
while he was in the Imperial Marines, and she a petty officer in the Fleet.
They had been equal rank, and not in the same chain of command, though serving
aboard the same ship. They had become friends, confidants, then lovers. Since
their enlistments were both up within a month of each other, they continued on
as civilians. Since both had adventurous spirits, they had fallen into the
role of artifact hunters.
“Is that all you
can think of?” she asked, looking into his eyes, a smile on her face. “You
need to pay attention to the job at hand.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he
said, clicking his heels together, then turning to look at the viewer.
Everest was a
most unusual world. Seventy-five percent water, it was tectonically active, as
indicated by the numerous chains of volcanic islands scattered about the
oceans. At one time it had boasted two continents, about fifteen million
square kilometers total. Several million years ago the powerful plates had slammed
the two continents together, resulting in the one major landmass, known as
Himalaya. About half of the continent, the east, was a combination of rolling
hills and well-watered plains. The west, from the center of the continent to
the coast, was range after range of mountains. The central range was the home
to the mountain named Everest, towering over twenty-one thousand meters above
the level of the ocean. Essentially, it and the other tall mountains in the
central range reached almost out of the atmosphere. Fortunately, according to
their map, they would not be going that high, or they would have had to bring
along spacesuits.
Most of the
mountains in the central ranges were covered with snow, with the exception of
the tallest peaks that thrust bare rock to the heavens. The snow was thick on
the mountains, a snowfall that never melted, but fell and flowed and avalanched
down into the deeper valleys, where it repeated the process, moving the snow
downward until it reached an altitude where melting could occur, feeding the
rivers that flowed out to both coasts.
“You know this
isn’t going to be easy. Or safe,” he told Dallas.
“But if we find
ancient tech, we’re set for life,” she said, her eyes sparkling with the
excitement of the coming adventure. “And we’re heroes.”
Dang nodded.
That was true. The Empire was always hungry for new tech, and the ancients
were thousands of years ahead of the technology base currently in use by
humans. Even if it no longer worked it could in some cases be reversed engineered,
or at least give the current crop of engineers' ideas and a direction to work
in. But it was thought that the still extant ruins of the ancients had mostly
been found. There were still some out there, or so it was thought. They were,
of course, getting harder and harder to find.
Dang shivered a
moment as he looked down on all that snow.
“What’s wrong?”
asked Dallas, putting an arm around his shoulders.
“Where I grew up
it never got cold. In fact, sometimes it got so hot it was impossible to do a
day’s work without environmental containment. And here I am, about to go into
one of the coldest places known.”
“It’s colder in
space,” replied Dallas.
“Different kind
of cold. In space you’re either in a controlled environment, or you’re dead.
In snow you can feel the cold seeping into your bones.”
“How do you know
that? I thought you grew up in a hot climate.”
“The Marines had
us go through mountain and arctic training. Enough for me to know.”
* * *
Dang groaned as
he opened his eyes, his mind taking a moment to figure out where he was.
Several hard objects pressed against his body. His groan turned into a cry of
pain as he tried to move, feeling a stab of intense agony through his ribs. He
knew he had a decision to make here. If he stayed still, he wouldn’t
exacerbate his injuries, but wherever he was, he still wasn’t under cover. But
if he moved the pain might become too much for him. It wasn’t a hard decision
to make, since staying where he was would mean his death.
With a command to
his implant the nanites in his nervous system erected a pain block, enough
where he was no longer in agony. Enough where he could move around a bit and
determine just where he was. His gloved hand ran over a rough material that
reminded him of fur, and he almost panicked at the thought that he was lying on
some animal. He focused his eyes and the panic abated. He was lying on
several interlinked branches of one of the local trees. Instead of bark it had
a fibrous coating like fur, retaining the heat of the exothermic plant. It was
such a good insulator that very little of its internal heat was coming through
to him.
Shifting himself
a bit, grunting from a new pain, he got into a sitting position and looked out
over the forest. He was near the top of one of the taller needle leaf trees
that made up this forest, sitting in one of the high valleys, about twelve
thousand meters up. He wondered if he had fallen here, then rejected that
hypothesis. The only one that made sense was that his lift harness had run out
of power slowly, and he had floated down. And now here he was, thirty meters
off the ground in the cold, his insulated clothing in shreds.
At least I
can breathe
, he thought, taking a deep breath from his respirator mask.
The oxygen system ran off a device that pulled O2 from the atmosphere, as
scarce as it might be, and compressed and stored it. If he didn’t have any
more battery power, the unit would stop operation, and he would only have what
was in the tank, along with the twelve hour reserve given him by the emergency
nanobubbles in his blood stream. He tried to link in to the rig’s computer
with his implant and hit a blank wall. The computer was down, which wasn’t
surprising if the batteries were dead.