“This is why the real Moira argues against manned missions. You need to keep emotion out of the equation.”
“Blah, blah, blah. Lots of mica. What’s the deal?” Jensen said.
“As I said, it is not mica. Although it appears crystalline, it has a component I cannot identify. But I am unable to rule out the possibility that it is some type of unknown biological material.”
“Like... it’s alive?” Jensen stopped eating.
“No. I believe it may be waste, of a sort.”
“Waste? As in The Stinky Torpedo? Do I even wanna know what kind of thing would shit mica?”
“Of course you do. And we’re going to find out.”
Jensen had tried the old military joke. “Who is ‘we’? You got a mouse in your pocket?”
For all her sighs and tsks, Moira apparently hadn’t been programmed with a human sense of humor.
The giant ferns and squatty fruit trees made him feel like the star of some old holo serial where the heroes traveled back in time. But the wet jungle smell and the trickle of sweat down the middle of his back reminded him of shipping to an uprising back home. Colombia. Nasty, nasty fighting.
Twitchy now. Rifle already up, though he didn’t know what he was looking for. The fact that Roy stayed glued to his hip didn’t help matters. He didn’t have the heart to order the dog out front. The canine’s normally perky ears had been laid back against his sleek skull since they left the ship.
“Okay, Roy?”
The speaker vibrated so quietly. “No.”
A dragonfly the size of a sparrow swooped across Jensen’s vision and one wing struck the bridge of his nose—
The high-pitched whine and sonic cracks from his maglev rifle filled the air. Plant life around them exploded in green gobs of juice and fiber. Only a split second, but thirty high explosive rounds had sprayed across the landscape.
“Damn it. Teach me to keep my finger away from—”
“Jensen, report.” Moira’s insistent voice in his earpiece.
“Just trimming the bushes a little. Relax, Moira,” Jensen said. Last thing he needed right now was some damn computer—
Roy suddenly began to whine and pace about. He eyed the jungle ahead, near the line of demarcation.
“What?” Jensen said. “Roy, what is it?”
“Bad.”
And then the dog was gone, running toward the dead zone.
“No, here! Roy, damn it, heel!”
Jensen ran blindly, following his dog’s crushed path through the virgin undergrowth. When he ran out of the jungle and spotted Roy, Jensen almost wished he hadn’t found him. Standing with hind feet on the green vegetation, and front feet on the black soil, Roy quivered in place. He stared at the horizon, at nothing at all.
At first, Jensen didn’t notice the little brown lump against Roy’s foot. Then it grew out of the churned soil and leaned against the dog’s foreleg. It looked like an overgrown hedgehog, with sleek brown hair. No, not hair. Shiny stuff, looked hard on the surface.
“Roy, here,” Jensen whispered.
Nothing happened.
One foot at a time, Jensen shuffled toward Roy and the little creature. His rifle stayed up, but he didn’t really know what he would shoot. If he fired now, he’d take Roy’s leg off at the shoulder.
“Roy.”
Nothing. The dog just shivered in place and stared at the horizon while that freaky little thing rubbed on his leg.
Jensen reached out to grab Roy’s collar. The thing against Roy’s leg looked up, revealing a tiny little face amid all the crystalline “hair.” Big brown watery eyes, in what looked like a leathery gray face. It didn’t seem aggressive at all. In fact, it looked cuter than any kitten Jensen had ever seen.
His left hand hung in space, index finger extended to hook Roy’s collar. Those soft round eyes held him entranced...
The creature leaped up and bit off the end of Jensen’s finger.
No pain. No sensation at all. Not really teeth, but a beak-like thing behind those gray lips had nipped the end off his left index finger at the first knuckle.
The warm spatter of blood on his boot triggered a deep reflexive breath. Sudden adrenaline hammered Jensen’s brain and sparks flew in his vision. “Shit!”
He backpedaled, trying to line up a shot that wouldn’t hit Roy. The dog remained still as a statue.
“Roy, here. Damn it, wake—”
Ping-ping! The alarm stopped Jensen cold. From about ten feet out, a ripple began in the soil. The creature that bit him didn’t move. It just stared at him with cartoon character eyes as Jensen’s blood dripped down its hair/scales.
When the ripple in the dirt got close to it, the creature let out a sharp shriek. It started hopping toward Jensen on stumpy legs that reminded him of an armadillo. Then the dirt wave broke open and dozens of them came at him. Exact copies of the first one, all with cute, disarming eyes and razor sharp beaks.
Survival instinct took over and Jensen hosed the advancing wave with the maglev rifle. He emptied his entire magazine and the jungle filled with supersonic cracks and shrieks. When hit by titanium slugs, the creatures burst in a combination of gore and what looked like bits of shale.
When he reached for a new magazine, he saw how stupid he’d been. He should’ve run.
The first five hit him before he could snap the new mag in place. Bit right through a suit that stopped high-energy weapons, taking shallow scallops of his flesh. He screamed and smashed them with his rifle, squashing three of them before his foot caught on a low bush and he went down.
A wave of them crashed over him.
Shrieking that seemed to come from inside his skull. Biting, biting, a never-ending wave of hungry mouths—
A roar like Jensen had never heard. Roy hit him and the creatures at full speed, turning the fight into a whirling ball of blood, shale, fur, and teeth.
The dog snapped and chomped, ripping, crushing, throwing the creatures aside. The disciplined military K9 had disappeared, replaced by a prehistoric wolf-dog, living through its teeth and fury.
Jensen found the strength to push himself to his feet. He froze when he saw the line of creatures. They’d followed him through the brush, so it was hard to count them hidden in the greenery, but there were easily two hundred of them.
Why didn’t they just come then?
Roy growled and the closest creatures seemed to fold in on themselves. It reminded Jensen of an old vid he saw of a hedgehog rolling up. In an instant, they were hard little balls of rock.
Figuring he’d worry about the whys later, Jensen backed toward the ship. He slapped a fresh magazine in place.
“Roy, let’s go. Back to the ship.”
This time, Roy obeyed. He kept his teeth bared at the creatures and backed toward Jensen.
Once Jensen had Roy under the muzzle of his rifle, the jungle filled with a rustling noise. The creatures he could see moved back toward the dirt they’d come from. He didn’t exactly know what happened. He’d never had First Contact training. All Jensen knew was that they needed to leave. Now.
Moira’s surgical arms made short work of Jensen’s injuries. The missing fingertip had been the worst of it. The rest of the wounds seemed terribly shallow for creatures apparently bent on killing him.
“I am still unable to identify the chemical they left in the bites, but it doesn’t seem to be harming you. Perhaps it only serves to deaden the pain so they can continue to feed.”
Jensen didn’t answer. He just watched her robotic arms work on Roy. Silicone-tipped metal fingers delicately lifted Roy’s upper lip and pulled another bit of hard material out. His mouth and upper neck were covered in tiny cuts. What looked like porcupine bristles made of crystalline rock were stuck all over his face and inside his mouth.