Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (5 page)

“Wait just a
minute,” he told the enraged man, flashing a hand signal by his side to his
companions.  “We can talk about this.”

His two men
moved as soon as the last word left his mouth, pulling their weapons from
underneath their coats and swinging them to bear on the man.  At the same
moment the augmented’s hand moved in a blur, the pistol flying from the
holster, the particle beam leaping from the barrel while it was still
elevating, burning a slash through the walkway and it the body of one of the
Enforcers.  Part of the man’s leg and his groin region flashed into vapor,
while the gunman swung the pistol onto the second target and the beam flared
again, this time vaporing the thoracic region.

As fast as he
was, he couldn’t take all three of them before one of them got a shot off.  As
he had planned, McManus was the last target, and the leader’s pistol was almost
lined up on the Tobias’ head.  Before he could pull the trigger something heavy
slammed into his shoulder and spun him around.  An instant later his skull
exploded as the particle beam in the augmented’s hand intersected his head.

*     *     *

“Dammit,
Timothy.  I told you to wait until I got here.”

“And if I had
waited, Constable, they would have gotten away with my brother,” said Timothy
Kelvin, holding his particle beam and letting the weapon cool before he
reholstered it.

Farrell shrugged
his shoulders and looked down on the bodies, which had been left where they had
fallen.  Tobias had already taken DNA samples, and the drone cam had taken
pictures of the two who still had recognizable faces.  Their bodies were a
mess.  That’s what happened when a fraction of a gram of protons came in at
relativistic speeds.  Nothing like the speeds that major weapons systems used,
but still a lot of energy.  Those protons blew through the matter of the
target, in this case merely clothes and flesh, then converted their energy to
heat, vaporizing large regions of the body.  The third man didn’t have a head,
much less a face.

“What’s done is
done,” said the Constable.  “But this won’t be the end of it.  You both know
that.  They’ll send more people until they get what they want.”

“I know,” said
Timothy, looking over at his son, who looked like he wanted to throw up as he
stared at the bodies.  He turned his gaze back to the Constable.  “That’s why
I’m going to take my brother with me out into the Swamp.”

“I have my work,
Timothy,” protested Tobias.  “Who’s going to help the local Swampers if they
need medical aide?”

“And who do you
think is going to help them if you’re dead?” countered Timothy, glaring at his
brother.

“Your brother is
right, Doc,” said Farrell, pointing his finger at Tobias.  “I don’t want to be
standing over your body when the Mob comes back.  Or, even worse, wondering
what happened to you after you disappeared.”

“And it’s your
job to make sure that doesn’t happen,” growled Tobias.

“And I can’t
protect you all day, every day.”

“You can’t get
some more people?  Deputize them?”

“I could at most
get two more constables in here, and we know these people are going to
escalate.  And who do you want me to deputize.  We might be able to get two or
three people to sign on, but for how long before they have to go back to their
own lives.  Listen to your brother, and get your ass to safety.”

*     *     *

“I can have my
team ready to go in an hour,” said Claude Deveroix, looking down at the floor
to avoid the gaze of Centari Numbra.  “But you realize we will be operating on
their territory.”

“I want these
fucks,” screamed the Boss, her voice rising to a high pitch.  “I don’t care
where they are.  This whole planet if my territory, and I can’t allow people to
get away with this shit.”  She waited for a moment for Deveroix to look up,
pinning him with her glare.  “If you don’t think you can do this, let me know,
and I’ll get someone else.”

Deveroix felt a
shiver run down his back at her words.  She was talking about retirement, and
there was only one way someone retired from the Organization.

“I can do it,”
he said quickly, before she could think otherwise.  “I want some more people. 
That’s a big area to search, and from what I know, that bastard who killed our
people is one tough son of a bitch.”

“What do you
have in mind?”

“I know some
boys just out of the military.  Really top rate.  We could hire them for this
mission, and if they work out…”

“If they’re so
good, why weren’t they recalled, with the war and all?”

“Let’s just say
that they prefer to remain in civilian life.  That’s one reason they came here
in the first place, since it’s out of the way.”

“Hire as many as
you want,” growled Numbra.  “Just bring me that boy.”

“And his
family?”

“Kill any of
them that get in your way.  But I want his father, mother and that uncle dead. 
Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.  It
will be done.”

Deveroix turned
and walked away, his skin crawling as he felt the eyes of the woman following
his every move.  And knowing that with a word she could have his life as well.

*     *     *

“Thanks for
taking us out with you, Uncle Timothy,” said Matthew, holding the control rod
that was the rudder and throttle of the boat.  The ten meter long craft was
cruising slowly through the stream, Matthew keeping it in the center.  Heads
poked up from the water here and there, the top oriented eyes and nostrils of
several species allowing them to breath and assess threats without exposing the
rest of their bodies.

A giant
carnotropus grunted at the slight sound of the boat, its eyes following the
craft.  A moment later its massive, toad like body hopped forward, the four
rear legs moving it while the smaller front pair took up the landing.  With a
final jump it landed in the water and went under, coming up a moment later with
only its eyes and nostrils showing.

“I don’t think
he’s coming after us,” said his Uncle, holding onto a heavy magrail rifle and
pointing it in the general direction of the predator, just in case.   A moment
later one of the smaller amphibians thrashed in the water, its whole head and
upper body rising above the surface, followed by the massive jaws of the tropus
as it struck its prey.

“Pay attention,”
said his Uncle, pointing to a bend in the river.  “I’m hoping you don’t find
yourself on foot out here, but if it happens, remember.  You know this
ecosystem.  The people coming after you don’t, so use that to your advantage.”

“Yes, sir,”
agreed Matthew, nodding.  That was one of the reasons his Uncle had taken him
on gathering trips.  To refamiliarize him with the Swamp, an area outsiders
would know little about. 
But the family should be able to handle them,
shouldn’t they
? he thought, recalling the meeting the night before.

Timothy and
Tobias had been the leaders at that conference, along with their other brother,
Sebastian.  An uncle from his mom’s side, Thomas Staffman, had also come, along
with a number of adult cousins and a half dozen neighbors.  All had seemed to
be hard, competent, self-reliant men, the kind who could live off the Swamp,
while tracking intruders sight unseen.  His cousin Sophie, Thomas’ daughter,
was also there, and she was as hard and competent as any of the men.  He had
felt confident that they could handle anything the Mob sent at them.  But his
Uncle Timothy had not seemed so sure.

“Tell me what
you see there, Matthew,” said his Uncle, pointing to a small cove.

“It’s a trope
nest,” answered the young man, seeing all the signs of the predators on the
banks of the cove.

“Giant or
lesser?”

“Lesser, I
think,” said Matthew after a moment’s thought.

“Correct, and still
something to avoid.  Or something you could lead enemies into.  And what about
the tree?”

Matthew squinted
his eyes to try and focus the writhing mass at the bottom of the trunk.  It
took a second, but he recognized the murder vine after a short time.  It wasn’t
really a plant, though there were carnivorous flora on the planet.  It was an
animal that mimicked a plant, waiting motionless until something eatable passed
underneath, at which time it fell from above and wrapped around its prey like a
nest of snakes.  It was hard to spot before it struck, and several gatherers
through the years had fallen prey to the killer.

“Murder vine,”
he said with conviction, then followed his Uncle’s pointing finger to another
tree, where one of the creatures was in its waiting stance, looking for all the
world like a set of flowering vines wrapped around the tree.

A greater hopper
moved through the underbrush, stopping every couple of leaps to crop the
vegetation with its sharp incisors.  An herbivore, at up to eight tons it was
too much for most predators to handle.  It hopped under the murder vine, which
remained in place, knowing from the vibrations of its hops that this was
something it didn’t want to tackle.

Far ahead on the
river the neck of a hooter stuck out of the water, its jaw working the soft
water weeds that made up a good bit of its diet.  The huge herbivores were too
large for any native life to threaten, and as he watched another of the beasts
stepped closer to the river on one of the paths they made, reaching its head on
its long neck to crop some leaves from a tree.  The one in the river looked
over at the other and hooted loudly, the sound they derived their name from.

‘There’s a topor
flower,” said Matthew as he spotted the bloom from ahead.

“Why, so it is,”
agreed Timothy, smiling.  “Pull on up to it and check it out, but slowly.”

Matthew nodded
and started the boat on its way to the valuable harvest.  His eyes were not
just focused on the bloom.  The numerous unopened buds around it that were just
as valuable.  Almost every valuable botanical on the planet had its hazards, if
not part of the plant, then creatures which called the flora home.  Valuable
animals were even worse, as Congo had more venomous creatures than any other
know planet, and the Swamp the most.

“We’ve got some
fire lizards on the stems,” called out Matthew, spotting a dozen of the scarlet
streaked lizards hanging out on the branches of the plant.

“Steer clear for
a moment until I can stun them,” said Timothy, setting his sonic stunner while
motioning for Jacob, who was also with them, to get the capture nets.

Fire lizards
were not named for their color, but for the caustic venom they projected. 
Enough could kill an uninoculated human in seconds, causing so much agony that
that quarter minute would feel like hours.  Those with a full complement of
nanites would survive, but would experience the full range of pain for the time
it took the nanobots to clean out the venom, while still suffering massive
tissue damage.  But that venom was also a valuable biological resource for the
medical industry.

While his Uncle
stunned the lizards one at a time, Jacob caught their falling bodies in the net
and secured them in a box.  Matthew kept an eye out for more of the lizards, as
well as other threats, though the probability of something else living on this
bush along with the scarlet killers was unlikely.

“I think I’ve
got them all, dad,” said Jacob, moving the net around in the foliage.

Matthew looked
through his heat imaging goggles and couldn’t spot anything.  He looked over at
his uncle, who was also checking out the topor bush, nodding.

“Let’s get this
thing harvested so we can get home,” said Timothy.

Matthew and
Jacob both grabbed the harvest poles and started to work on the plant.  The
poles had bulbs on the end that surrounded the buds and snipped them off.  With
practiced moves they dropped each bud into a container that would preserve them
and their valuable biochemicals.  There were over fifty buds, most near to
opening, each worth almost two hundred imperials on the open, legal market. 
The one that had already opened into a large bloom was not worth as much, and
Timothy decided to let it stay.  It would produce seeds and spread more of the
plant’s kind, which would be all to the good.

“Watch out,”
yelled Jacob as a scarlet form rocketed from the bush toward Matthew, jaws wide
open and tongue pulled back, forward legs outstretched while the back four were
tucked under.  It was in its attack profile, aiming for Matthew’s eyes.

Matthew was frozen
in place, seconds to react but unable to act.  He had a full spectrum of
nanites in his system, which would not keep the venom from destroying his eyes,
necessitating a full regrowth that would take at least a week.  At a time when
he needed all of his senses.

The lizard went
slack in midair, while Matthew felt numbness come over him, his vision going
from blurry to black in an instant.  He felt his legs go out from under him as
he fell.  The next thing he felt was his head hitting the deck, and then nothing.

“You OK, son?”
asked Timothy, as Matthew came to in a fog.

“What,
happened?”

“I stunned the
lizard, but you were in the line of fire.  I’m sorry, nephew, but it was a
choice between stunning you, or letting the little hellion take out your eyes.”

“Thanks for
making the right choice,” said Matthew, shaking his head.  “Did you harvest the
lizard?”

“Of course,”
said his Uncle with a smile.  “We’re not going to pass up a bag of Imperials
like that.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re heading
back to the homestead.  I don’t think you sustained any kind of lasting harm,
but I still would like your dad to check you out.”

Matthew sat up
and nodded.  Concussions were still fairly common.  The effects of concussions
lasting beyond the quarter hour or so it took nanites to repair the damage were
almost unheard of.  But Matthew could see the logic of getting him back to the
homestead, especially since his uncle had just harvested a week’s worth of
valuable biologicals in a morning.