"It could be the smell of whatever killed it," Telisa pointed out.
"Possible. None of the other scouts saw anything unusual."
"Bad luck."
"I"m not so sure. A predator would have had to be very elusive to do this without being seen by any of the other scouts."
"Hah, well think about it. Stealthy predators get more food than clumsy loud ones."
"True enough," Magnus conceded, holding his weapon at the ready.
"Maybe it was partially transparent, like the red snake thing," Telisa said. "I think I"ll call it a ribbon snake. That red part inside reminded me of a long red ribbon."
They walked out of the concealing stalks to a relatively open spot. Magnus sent her a search spiral.
"Let"s do a quick patrol and see what we can see. I"d like to get a feel for the central ruins, anyway."
They set off, weapons at the ready. Telisa walked in parallel with Magnus about three meters to Telisa"s left. A large structure became visible above the nearby stalks.
"So much for our spiral. The buildings are in the way," Telisa observed.
"Shiny, do you know of anything large enough to kill off one of our scouts?" Magnus transmitted, including Telisa in the channel.
The alien responded almost immediately. "Several possibilities. Large predators do exist on the surface."
"That might explain the grilles," Telisa said. "The natives had to move freely through their city without being in danger from predators."
"You call this moving freely?" Magnus said. "These things are practically part of the wall."
"Yes. I think I understand that now, though. It isn"t freely movable for us. We must be more like their predators. These creatures most likely moved through the grilles without opening them. Think about the shape required-wide and flat-they were pancake-flat creatures and they probably slid through these openings and moved over the walls and ceiling. Like flat caterpillars."
"Or blobs of formless flesh," Magnus said.
"Oh, now we"re talking real horror VR material."
"Other high probability causes, culprits, explanations," added Shiny. "More Terrans detected, noted, found within ten kilometers your location."
"There are other people around here?" Telisa blurted.
"If you"re trying to give us the best chance of success, you need to brief us more completely," Magnus growled.
"Yes. You could have mentioned that earlier, you know!" Telisa said with anger growing in her voice.
"Previously not detected, noted, found. Currently not detected, noted, found."
"Uhm. I think that means you detected some Terrans briefly? Now they"re below your radar, so to speak. To figuratively speak," Telisa said.
"Recent knowledge, development, discovery. Unable to warn, tell, divulge at younger temporal stage."
"Now that was just obtuse. We like to say that as *I just found out about it myself,"" Telisa said.
"I just found out about it myself," Shiny repeated in his buzzy voice. He mimicked her defensive tone. Telisa couldn"t help but laugh. Even Magnus found his annoyance evaporating as Shiny copied Telisa"s statement.
"How many of them? Where?" Magnus asked.
Shiny offered them a map feed. Magnus saw a map of the ancient Konuan city. He saw the locations of dozens of Terrans almost directly across the bulk of the city from his current position.
"That"s a big expedition or a tiny colony," Magnus said.
"Uh oh. If it"s a colony, maybe most of them died off," Cilreth said.
"What else can you tell us about them, Shiny?" asked Telisa.
"Armed. In hiding. a.s.sociated by hierarchy of command. Rarely pairing off to mate, suggesting s.e.xually h.o.m.ogeneous group."
"You have a way with words, Shiny," Telisa said.
"Appreciated, agreed, accepted."
Telisa turned to Magnus and spoke quietly. "Why are there other people here? Could they be smugglers? UNSF?"
"Could be. Settlers might be the best guess. It"s an open world. But a hierarchy does imply a military presence. Yet they haven"t appeared to arrest or kill us."
"They may not have seen us yet. Maybe we should run."
"They couldn"t have missed the Clacker. It"s huge. Cilreth didn"t mention any Vovokan cloaking."
"We didn"t see any cities from orbit. Must only be a few of them, right?"
"I think so. We could send out a couple of scouts and see what we can see. I"d rather avoid them and continue our work on this side of the ruins. They may not be wanting any visitors."
Chapter 6.
Holtzclaw forced himself to look over the body of one of his soldiers. It lay broken across the red rocks at his feet. It was the same as always. Most of the flesh had been gouged or dissolved away from the shoulder blades upward. Only parts of the brain remained within the skull. The stench of ammonia lingered over the corpse. Holtzclaw did a mental accounting.
The forty-fourth victim of the monster. a.s.suming there really is only one.
Captain Arakaki believed strongly it was the work of only one Konuan. She had a lot of data to back the idea up. The pattern of kills, their distance apart, and the frequency of attacks all supported the idea that only one creature was out there killing them.
Or at least only one creature at a time. Maybe they take turns like some kind of hunting club.
Holtzclaw had Arakaki on the Konuan almost full time. She had the authority to pull a kill team whenever she chose. She had yet to do so, and Holtzclaw knew it was because she was a perfectionist. She wouldn"t scramble the team until she knew they had a very real shot at slaying the creature.
Until then, it had the initiative. Their sensors weren"t tracking it for the most part, though there were tantalizing clues, ghosts really, and half the time even those proved to be deceptions. Holtzclaw had no doubt about one thing: that creature was smart, smart on the level of full sentience. Maybe smarter than the Terrans.
A couple of soldiers wrapped the man up in blackvines. The dead had two destinations here: cremation or burial in one of the plant fissures. Most of the men chose cremation, but this man, Hummel, had been something of a nature lover and had chosen to be put into a fissure to become plant food. The soldiers carried him away.
Holtzclaw looked after the receding corpse and felt his morale slip one iota further into the void.
We"re slowly dying here. Not just from the Konuan, but from everything. There can"t really be any point in resisting the UNSF any longer, can there?
Sometimes Holtzclaw would discuss it with his officers. The new frontier was a big place. They wouldn"t necessarily have to surrender. They could go out and join some of the outfits coming together far from Earth, and no one would come looking for them for a long time, if ever. Yet the dream of humanity freed from the old government of the core worlds was something they all believed in so strongly, they hadn"t given up.
Holtzclaw thought about the recent landing again. Whoever it was, they had come in a big ship. They had to have a lot of supplies. Maybe even mobile factories that could produce new hardware with the right specs to feed into them. He had a feeling they had to turn this to their advantage or it might be over. They had to risk action now.
He used his link to call his officers in for a FTF. He told them to show up at the surveillance tent. It was close to Holtzclaw, in his sight at the moment. He headed for it at a slow walk, knowing the others would take longer to arrive. They had built their above-surface camp carefully, molding it to the terrain and the alien plant stalks to achieve concealment. They only needed access to one of the Trilisk tunnels, because the entire system was interconnected beneath the ruins. A system of active camouflage nets covered the entire camp, open s.p.a.ce and all, so that men could walk between the tents and the underground entrance without notice from above.
Holtzclaw arrived at the surveillance tent, a long, low tent set to a green that matched the clumps of plant material above. He scratched fiercely at the growing skin on his shoulder, then ducked into the tent. Captain Caicedo sat inside among a large collection of stripped drones. The machines had been cannibalized for parts.
"Anything?"
"I don"t think there"s many of them, sir," Caicedo said, focusing his attention on some virtual display. Caicedo was a calm, strong officer. His expansive forehead displayed bulging arteries, even though his skin was dark. "But the ship is huge. There are robots crawling around that quarter of the city. Looks like about a dozen small scout robots. I"m thinking they"re looking for something-same as us."
That idea bolstered Holtzclaw"s resolve. If someone else was willing to expend a huge amount of resources to come here, then maybe, just maybe, there was something worth finding. Alien artifacts had turned the tide of the war once-against the UED-and finding more artifacts might turn the tide again. Or so the ragged band of soldiers hoped. But they had lost so many, and their ships were dwindling. It was a hope that diminished every day.
Holtzclaw waited for more officers. Major Kowalewski, Major Silvarre, Captain Arakaki, and First Lieutenant Racca walked in within two minutes. Holtzclaw took a peek outside.
"Where"s Schimke?" he asked.
"I think he"s too far into the tunnels," Racca offered. Holtzclaw shrugged and decided to start.
"We don"t see that many of our guests. We can take that fat ship for ourselves," Holtzclaw declared.
"What if there"s a lot more of them inside?"
"If it had been a drop ship filled with a battalion of s.p.a.ce force marines or frontal a.s.sault robotics, we"d already be dying," Major Kowalewski said. "You can rule that one out."
"So if it"s not a military ship, it has to be either a big settlement going down or a scientific expedition," said Racca. "The fact they landed here at the edge of the Konuan city indicates the latter."
"Not necessarily. Settlers might make use of the shelter in the Konuan buildings or tunnels," Silvarre said.
Holtzclaw dismissed the idea. He shook his head. "If they came prepared, they have their own more advanced shelters in mind. It would only be a bunch of refugees, a group that was out on their luck, that would think like that."
This could be the best thing that could have happened to us, Holtzclaw thought. If they"re scientists in a ship that big, they have all the equipment we need to get the Trilisk machines and get out. One step closer to being able to fight the UNSF on even terms again.
"No matter who they are, they have things we can use. And this planet is just hospitable enough they"ll be able to survive even if we take some of the best for ourselves. We won"t be sentencing them to death."
"Except by the monster," Arakaki said.
She"s the only one who would say that, Holtzclaw thought, but he wasn"t angry.
"They have to deal with the monster one way or another, now that they"re here, same as we have. Unless you can kill it before we take off. In fact, they may have something we can use to finish it off."
Arakaki nodded. Holtzclaw wanted to try and use the h.e.l.lrakers on the thing, but given they could barely detect it, he didn"t know if it would work, and he couldn"t afford to use the supplies or the wear and tear on their smart artillery machines. Besides, most of the time if it appeared on their scans, it was because it was right on top of their camp.
Still...with a h.e.l.lraker it only takes one good shot. And we"re about to that level of desperation.
"We should use the whole unit, show them how outnumbered they are in a fast strike, and force a quick surrender. No need to let this get b.l.o.o.d.y," Silvarre suggested.
"I agree, but I think the h.e.l.lraker is all the leverage we need," Holtzclaw said. "However, time is important here. We"ll jam their communications and make our move. Take their equipment and use it to find what we want, then get out of here before any other ship could show up."
"Should we approach by ground or by air?"
"Ground, in case they have a.s.sets in orbit we don"t know about," Racca said.
No one dissented. Holtzclaw agreed.
"T minus eighteen hours. Once we"re set up to cover that entire side of the city, activate the jamming systems. I want them cut off from any other people they have in the system. Then we"ll move in and seize their supplies."
"Yes, sir."
Chapter 7.
A nearby scout alerted Cilreth of the approach of her teammates. She stood amidst the chaos of a nascent camp. She had selected a reasonably flat, clear area nestled against an old Konuan building. The foam floor she had sprayed down was almost dry. With the help of her scout robots she had moved the containers from their sleeping spot to the new camp. Most of the equipment was better left in the containers until needed, but every container could be quickly accessed and wasn"t part of the support for the tent. She addressed them through her link as Telisa and Magnus cleared the last stand of native plants.
"That was fast. I"ve got hours left to go," Cilreth said, though in truth the camp was perfectly workable already, though it had no well or solar array deployed.
I just enjoy setting stuff up in a new place.
Cargo containers had started to form a shelter around the perimeter, and she"d put up an all-weather fabric cover to the area. A scout robot showed up, carrying one of the last containers on its back. It looked like an ant carrying a squarish boulder.
"We don"t know what killed the scout, but Shiny found people, Terrans I mean, on the other side of this old city."
"I can"t reach Shiny," Cilreth said. "I was meaning to ask you about it."
Telisa was silent for a moment. "I don"t know, but it can"t be a good sign," she said.
"What?" Magnus said, lagging in the conversation. "Oh. I can"t reach him either. Something is jamming us."
"Something..." Cilreth started.
"It must be the other humans," Telisa said. "They"d be the only ones who would know how to do that without examining our links."
"It is probably the Terrans, but of course, any advanced race could have detected the signals and decided to disrupt them," Magnus said. "Shiny could."
"You"re still thinking he"s against us?" Cilreth said.