A mojo, without a doubt. It matched all the descriptions, fitted all the stories she'd heard from her father and his fellow Cobras... and it was clear that none of them had done the birds proper credit. Hawklike, with oversized feet and wickedly curved talons, the mojo was as perfect a hunting bird as she'd ever seen. And in its eyes...
In the eyes was the same alertness she'd already seen in its companion spine leopard.
Again Jin licked her lips. Standing before her was living proof that the plan her father had worked out all those years ago had actually worked, at least to some degree, and under other circumstances she should probably have taken some time to observe the interaction. But time was in short supply just now, and academic curiosity low on her priorities list. Two twitches of her eyes put targeting locks on both creatures' heads. Easing onto her right foot, she swung her left leg up-
And as the mojo shrieked and shot into the sky, the spine leopard sprang.
The first blast from her antiarmor laser caught the predator square in the face, vaporizing most of its head. But even as Jin turned her attention toward the sky the mojo struck.
Her computerized reflexes took over as the optical sensors implanted in the skin around her eyes registered the airborne threat, throwing her sideways in a flat dive. But the action came a fraction of a second too late. The hooked talons caught her left cheek and shoulder as the bird shot past, burning lines of fire across the skin. Jin gasped in pain and anger as she fought against the entangling undergrowth, her eyes searching frantically to locate her attacker.
There it was-coming around for a second diving pass. Praying that her targeting lock hadn't been disengaged by that roll, she triggered her fingertip lasers.
Her arms moved of their own accord, the implanted servos swinging them up at the nanocomputer's direction, and the bird's shimmering plumage lit up as the lasers struck it. The mojo gave one final shriek, and its blackened remains fell past
Jin's head and slammed harmlessly to the ground.
For a moment she just knelt there among the vines and dead leaves, gasping for breath, her whole body trembling with reaction and adrenaline shock. The scratches across her face burned like fire, adding to the aches and throbs of her other injuries. Up until now she'd been too preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to herself; now, it was clearly time to take inventory.
It wasn't encouraging. Her back and neck ached, and a little experimentation showed both were beginning to stiffen up. Her chest was bruised where the safety harness had dug into the skin during the crash, and her left elbow had the tenderness of a joint that had been partially dislocated and then popped back into place. Her left knee was the worst; she didn't know what exactly had happened to it, but it hurt fiercely. "At least," she said aloud, "I don't have to worry about broken bones. I suppose that's something."
The sound of her voice seemed to help her morale. "Okay, then," she continued, getting to her feet. "First step is to get out of here and find civilization.
Fine. So..." She glanced up at the sky, keying her auditory enhancers again as she did so. No sounds of aircraft; no sounds of predators. The sun was... there.
"Okay, so that's east. If we crashed anywhere near our landing site, that's the direction we want to go."
And if the shuttle had instead overshot the Fertile Crescent...? Firmly, she put that thought out of her mind. If she was going the wrong direction, the next village would be roughly a thousand kilometers of forest away. Collecting her three packs, she settled them as comfortably as she could around her shoulders and, taking a deep breath, fixed her direction and headed off into the forest.
Chapter 12
It started easily enough, as forest travel went. Within a few meters of the crash site she ran into a patch of mutually interlocking fern-like plants that lasted most of the first kilometer, giving her the feeling of wading through knee-deep water; and she'd barely left the ferns behind when she found herself having to use fingertip lasers to cut through a maze of tree-clinging vines that reminded her of Aventinian gluevines with five-centimeter thorns. But physical obstacles were the least of her worries, and even as she used lasers and servo strength to good advantage against the forest's best efforts, she tried to keep as much of her attention as possible on the subtle sounds filtering in through her audio enhancers.
The first attack came, in retrospect, right where she should have expected it: at the spot where the forest undergrowth abruptly vanished into a wide path of trampled earth bearing northwest. The path of a bololin herd... and where there were bololins, there were bound to be krisjaws, too.
She didn't identify the attacker as a krisjaw at first, of course. It wasn't until after the brief battle was over, and she was able to turn over the laser-blackened corpse and get a clear look at the wavy, flame-shaped canines that she could positively identify the beast. Vicious, cunning, and dangerous was how krisjaws has been described to her; and even with only this one interaction to go on she could well understand why the first generation of humans to reach Qasama had done their damnedest to try and wipe the things out.
Wrapping a field bandage from her kit around the gash the predator's claws had torn in her left forearm, she continued on her way. Krisjaws were as nasty as
Layn had warned, but now that she knew what to listen for she should be able to avoid being sneaked up on. If the forest didn't get any worse, she decided, she should be able to get through all right.
The forest, unfortunately, got worse.
The line of trampled undergrowth marking the bololins' route turned out to be nearly three kilometers wide, and within that cleared area an astonishing number of ground animals and their ecological hangers-on had set up shop. Insects buzzed around her in large numbers, attracted perhaps by the blood from her injuries. Most of them were merely annoying, but at least one large type was equipped with stingers and showed little compunction about using them. It was as she was swatting at a group of those that she found out that krisjaws weren't
Qasama's only predator species.
This kind-vaguely monkey-like except for their six clawed limbs-hunted in packs, and it cost her another clawing before she found the best way to deal with them.
Her omnidirectional sonic, designed originally to foul up nearby electronic gear, turned out to be equally effective in disrupting the monkeys' intergroup communication, and the arcthrower with its thundering flash of current scattered them yipping back into the cover of the surrounding trees.
Unfortunately, the sonic had an unexpected side effect, that of attracting a species of gliding lizard that, like the monkeys, launched their attacks in groups from the trees above her. Smaller and less dangerous than the larger predators, they were also too stupid to be frightened by the arcthrower's flash.
She wound up having to kill all of them, collecting several small needle-toothed bites in the process.
It seemed like forever before she finally reached the road cutting across her path.
Captain Rivero Koja gazed down at the high-resolution photo on his viewing screen, a cold hand clenched around his heart. The line of destruction through the Qasaman forest could mean only one thing. "Hell," he said softly.
For a long moment the Southern Cross's bridge was silent, save for the quiet clicking of keys from the scanner chiefs station. "What happened?" Koja asked at last.
First Officer LuCass shrugged helplessly. "Impossible to tell, sir," he said.
"Some malfunction, perhaps, that knocked them too far off their glide path-"
"Or else maybe someone shot them down?" Koja snapped, his simmering frustration and helplessness boiling out as anger.