Mid-Flinx (24 page)

With a disdainful snort, the furcot dropped to all sixes. “Clear?”

“All clear.” Tuuvatem was scrutinizing the rain-soaked encampment while clinging to the side of the branch, indifferent to the twenty-meter drop beneath her. Thirty-six claws ensured that she did not fall.

“You see?” Saalahan gestured with a bloodied paw. “Each night they do the same thing. Each night we will kill one or two more of them. Soon they will all be dead. Then we can go back to the Home-tree.”

Effortlessly grasping the headless body in powerful jaws, it took a step to the edge of the branch and dropped it over the side. Pulse rifle still clutched convulsively in clawed fingers, the dead trooper went bouncing and spinning down in the wake of his predecessor. The forest swallowed both with equal efficiency.

Saalahan considered the sky. “Soon the sun will rise and it will be lightness. Enough for one night. Tomorrow we will kill more of the nonpersons.” Shepherding the two youngsters, the big adult led them off into the depths of the verdure in search of a place to sleep.

“There is no hurry.”

Chapter Eighteen

Field Officer Nesorey was livid as he confronted his four remaining troops. “None of you saw anything? None of you heard anything?” His burning gaze fixed on Hosressachu. “You! You were on the last posting forward. Nothing disturbed your watch? No sounds, no sights piqued your interest?”

To his credit, the frightened, unhappy soldier replied readily. “No, honored one. I saw only the rain and small glowing things. As did he who watched before me.” At this the trooper on his immediate right executed a decidedly sharp gesture indicative of first-degree concurrence.

“Someone should have checked on Tatrasaseep,” the field officer muttered.

“Probably Cheijihagrast did just that, honored one.” Proper sociomilitary etiquette notwithstanding, the soldier initially berated wasn’t about to concede control of the discussion. While he felt first-degree guilt over the loss of two comrades, he wasn’t about to take responsibility for their demise. Such unwarranted acquiescence would be decidedly un-AAnnlike.

What fate had befallen the two soldiers, the survivors could only imagine. Nor were the human captives any help, responding to angry inquiries with blank expressions on their flat, soft-skinned faces.

Morning sounds filled the air, a cacophony of creatures rising in endless variety and profusion to take back the forest from the citizens of the night. The music they made was pure dissonance to the surviving AAnn. Yellow-green light grated on their pupils as the unseen sun sucked at the lingering moisture. Several of them were certain they could feel their flesh rotting inside their suits even as they stood patiently waiting for the aristocrat and the field officer to make a decision.

“Something took them both.” Lard Caavax’s gaze roamed the enveloping forest. “It is likely we will never know what. Evidently our nightly routine must be altered.”

Field Officer Nesorey responded with a gesture of third-degree affirmation coupled with an overlay of frustration. “That which served adequately on our initial foray is obviously no longer valid procedure. There are not enough of us left to set out perimeter guards. We will have to keep close together, half of us sleeping while the other half remain on watch.” He was staring intently into the surrounding growths, searching for an assailant whose identity remained unknown to him. That was the worst part of it: not knowing what was stalking them.

He was suddenly thoughtful. “Something has changed. There is something different about the forest.”

A trooper disagreed. “Most likely it was an isolated, random attack, honored one.” Both soldiers looked to Lord Caavax for resolution.

“There is validity to both preceptions,” the aristocrat finally remarked. “In any event, we will take additional precautions.” His gaze shifted to the four humans.

Flinx kept his expression carefully neutral. A look from Teal confirmed what he’d already suspected. He’d been waiting for the furcots to make their move even before the AAnn had arrived on the scene. Their patience was uncommon. Last night their emotional presence had been stronger than usual. Early in the morning it had peaked, in concert with an emotional jolt from first one and then a second AAnn. That they were alien mattered not. The emotional spectrum he was erratically able to access did not discriminate according to species.

Besides that, death had its own unmistakable emotional signature.

The AAnn knew nothing of furcots, and Flinx wasn’t about to enlighten them. He wondered how confident the Lord Caavax would be if he knew he was being stalked not by mindless nocturnal carnivores but by intelligent symbiotes. Rescue wasn’t assured, but Flinx felt more confident than he had in days. The trick was not to show it. He would have to warn Teal not to sleep too soundly at night. To Caavax’s way of thinking, whatever was out there should be as much a threat to the humans as to their captors. To indicate otherwise would be to raise suspicions in the noble’s mind that would do them no good.

As long as he was convinced that they were in danger only from mindless apparitions, Caavax would continue to act rationally. Was he rational enough to be reasonable? No harm, Flinx decided, in finding out.

“Your escort is down to five, honored Lord. Why not give this up as a bad business and let us go? I know the AAnn, and I know it would be hard for you. But there are precedents.”

“To which I will not add,” Caavax replied promptly. “So long as I live and can lift a weapon, we will continue together toward the landing site.”

Flinx had expected nothing less from a high noble, but it had been worth a try. The attempt had been intended not only to secure their freedom but to prevent further deaths. Now he washed his hands of it, feeling that he’d done all he could. From this point onward, everything was up to Caavax. And the furcots.

“Continue,” the aristocrat declared. Field Officer Nesorey indicated third-degree assent and hissed at his soldiers. With two troopers taking point and two bringing up the rear, the much reduced-in-strength expedition moved out along the branch.

Flinx glanced frequently in the direction of the field officer. To ensure that his subordinates were free to respond to any threat from the forest as quickly as possible, Nesorey had taken charge of the sack containing Pip. The flying snake could go several days without eating, but by tomorrow night would have to receive nourishment of some kind or she would begin to fail rapidly.

At present Flinx knew she was estivating to conserve energy, something Alaspinian minidrags could do at will. Otherwise they couldn’t last a day without food because of their phenomenal metabolic rate. At least, he knew, she hadn’t been forced to expend any energy on flying. But conservation measures would only sustain her for so long. Somehow he had to get nourishment to her or free her from the containment bag.

They were less than an hour’s march from the site of the previous night’s encampment when the soldier walking point on the right side let out a hissing screech and began firing madly into the forest. Before his companion could restrain him, he took off wildly, hissing obscenities as he blasted branches, lianas, fruit, flowers, and anything that moved.

Exhibiting a frenzied surge of strength and agility, he leaped from branch to branch, entering into a maniacal search of hollows and crevices with wide, despairing eyes, firing until his rifle was discharged. Ignoring the pleas of his fellow soldiers and the outraged commands of the field officer, he jammed a fresh energy pack into his weapon and reembarked on his aimless orgy of destruction.

Nesorey roared helplessly at the enraged soldier. “Trooper Hosressachu, return to your position! In the name of the Emperor  . . . !”

Neither his words nor those of the other soldiers had any effect on the wild-eyed Hosressachu, who persisted in annihilating anything that caught the attention of his unhinged mind.

The AAnn’s preoccupation with their wayward comrade allowed Flinx to whisper unnoticed to Teal. “That’s another one gone. If this doesn’t convince Caavax, then  . . . hey, what’s the matter?”

Next to him, Teal had gone cold. Flinx felt her fear, which was genuine and not faked. Casting out with his talent, he discovered an absence of furcotal emotion. That suggested that the furcots had either moved on ahead or were deliberately trailing far behind.

Or else something had scared them away.

He thought of Moomadeem, brave beyond his years, and Saalahan, immovable as a rock, and wondered what there was out there in the forest capable of frightening them. That’s when it struck him.

Maybe the feverish trooper Hosressachu wasn’t firing at nothing.

Nesorey continued to bellow imprecations of admirable elegance at his berserking soldier. Ignoring him, the determined trooper fired into a cluster of thickly entwined small branches. Wood and sap went flying. Bending low, he advanced on the opening his weapon had made.

At the same instant, what looked from a distance like a coiled rope dropped over him and contracted. Hosressa-chu screamed hideously as the coil sliced him into a dozen disklike sections, blood spurting violently from around each loop of the coil. Even more than the violence of the attack, it was the speed that was shocking. The poor trooper never had a chance. The muscular power inherent in those coils, Flinx thought, must be on an unbelievable order of magnitude to slice a body like that.

Suspended from an overhead branch by four multi-jointed legs, the perfectly camouflaged quilimot regarded its prey. Even when Teal bestirred herself to point it out to him, Flinx still had trouble separating the predator from the branch beneath which it hung. Clasped in the coil of the killing tail, the smashed body of Hosressachu rose slowly toward the waiting mouth. His rifle went up with him in the unrelenting grasp, the military-grade composites pulverized by the force of the quilimot’s murderous contraction.

Two longer, slimmer legs reached down. Each terminated in a single, thin gleaming claw. One pierced the soldier’s skull directly between the eyes while the other entered his back. Three bright crimson eyes were visible now, examining the prey.

Badly shaken, the deceased trooper’s comrade on point knelt and took careful aim. Balancing his rifle across his knees in the accepted AAnn fashion, he began firing at the quilimot. When the field officer hissed at him to desist, he was ignored. Cursing, Nesorey unlimbered his own weapon and added his firepower to that of the soldier. Both were soon joined by the last heavily armed member of the expeditionary force.

As several shots struck the quilimot it responded with a cry halfway between a cough and a roar. Body jerking spasmodically, two of its four legs lost their grip on the branch above. Snarling defiance, it dropped to a large liana and attempted to find safety in the dense vegetation nearby, still clutching the crushed corpse of the unfortunate Hosressachu in its coiled tail.

A well-directed shot from the field officer struck near or on the head. Losing control entirely, the horrid being shuddered once before plunging from the liana. It fell some ten meters, bounced off a thick branch, and dropped another twenty before coming to rest in a cluster of thick keskes leaves.

When they finally reached the immobile, stinking form after carefully working their way downward, they found the trooper’s body still held convulsively in the grasp of the unyielding tail. Field Officer Nesorey performed a closer inspection and reported back to the Lord Caavax.

“One would have to cut Hosressachu loose section by section to free all of the remains, honored Lord.” He looked back at where predator and soldier lay entwined in death. “It is as if he is wrapped in metal cable. His bones are crushed, but I think the shock to his system killed him before blood loss or suffocation.”

Lord Caavax considered the remnants of his escort, the cream of an entire AAnn martial burrow. The human’s words haunted him, knowing as he did that they still had a considerable distance to travel to reach the landing site and the safety of the imperial shuttle. If he continued to lose soldiers at this rate, they wouldn’t make it to the halfway point.

He turned solemnly to Nesorey, knowing that these successive tragedies must be taking their toll on the field officer. “There comes a time when aspiration must give way to expedience. You have more experience in the field than I. I await any recommendations.”

Tired, angry, and frustrated, the field officer replied without hesitation. “There are now five of us to watch four of them, in addition to maintaining a watch for predators.” He gestured at Teal. “It is clear the human female cannot warn us of dangers if, like Hosressachu, we choose to stumble into them on our own, or if she is sleeping when night carnivores attack.

“I therefore respectfully submit, honored Lord, that her usefulness to us has been exaggerated and that as such, her presence and that of her offspring now constitute an ongoing burden rather than a benefit. Killing them will allow the five of us who remain to concentrate our attention on the one human whose return to the
Keralkee
is, after all, the purpose of this much suffering expedition.”

Flinx whirled on the AAnn noble. “We had an agreement.”

“Abrogated by circumstance,” Caavax replied remorselessly. “I am compelled to prioritize.”

“Kill them and you’ll never get possession of the
Teacher
!”

“That may be,” the aristocrat conceded. “However, it cannot be argued that I will also not gain control of your vessel if I happen to die on this
sissfint
pestilence of a world. Given the choice, I prefer to live and take my chances with our advanced methods of persuasion.”

“Then just let them go,” Flinx pleaded. “What threat can a small female and two offspring pose to you?”

Caavax considered Teal and the children out of cold, yellow eyes. “On this world? I am long past leaving anything to chance.” Turning to the field officer, he executed a gesture of fourth-degree consent marked with concurrence.

“I am tired of watching only AAnn die. Proceed.”

Field Officer Nesorey gestured to the soldier on his right. Having just witnessed the violent death of yet another of his fellow troopers, this individual was in no mood to question orders, much less feel any sympathy for a clutch of dirty, smelly, damp humans. Advancing, he raised the muzzle of his rifle in Teal’s direction.

Responding to her master’s agonized emotional state, Pip writhed wildly within the restraining sack. Flinx took a desperate step toward Lord Caavax. The AAnn noble raised his sidearm warningly.

“Do not try anything foolish.”

“Kill me and you have nothing,” Flinx shot back.

“I have no intention of killing you. This is a neuronic pistol.” He gestured with his sidearm. “It is set to paralyze, not kill. If I am compelled to shoot you, you will only wish you were dead.”

Incipient sniffles gave way to all-out bawling as Kiss fell to her knees in front of the AAnn soldier. Dwell shifted to stand protectively in front of Teal.

“Please, don’t hurt my mother! Kill me if you have to, but leave her alone!”

“Almost like an AAnn.” The field officer gestured approvingly. “Don’t worry,” he told the boy, “you will have your turn.” He flexed clawed fingers in the direction of the waiting trooper. “Reward the male child. Do him first. And be clean with it.”