The Rexy screeched again and charged.
The fight was over in seconds. Most fights are.
Under other circumstances, the Rexy might have employed a variety of instinctive tactics… but the pretas had no such instincts, so they forced the animal to stick with a single form of attack: charging directly at Festina and trying to bite her somewhere vital. Festina didn’t stay still long enough to make that possible. Furthermore, during her "sentient citizen" speech she’d surreptitiously untied the glow-tube from her belt. She held it in her left hand, the pistol in her right; whenever the Rexy charged she used the light for distraction, thrusting it out one way as she dodged the opposite direction, or ramming it suddenly toward the Rexy’s eyes, blinding the animal for a moment while she kicked at its knees or punched the pistol’s muzzle into the Rexy’s ribs.
Neither combatant moved at peak efficiency. Like the Rexy who’d lost an arm, the one still on its feet had suffered numerous injuries on its run through the jungle; it was bleeding, battered, bruised. Festina wasn’t damaged, but she was noticeably tired — fatigued from jogging so far with my body weighing her down. Perhaps that’s why on one of her feints, she didn’t move the glow-tube fast enough: the Rexy, pushing itself hard (or perhaps being pushed by the pretas), lurched forward quicker than expected. It caught the light in its teeth and bit down hard, spraying luminescent chemicals in all directions.
Including into its own mouth.
The Rexy gagged and squealed. The chemicals inside the glow-tube weren’t aggressively toxic — at least not to terrestrial life — but the taste was engineered to be as vile as possible, to discourage children drinking the fluid if some accidentally spilled. (A typical safety precaution to placate the League of Peoples.) It seemed the Rexy’s taste buds had the same reaction as Homo sap infants: the animal was so appalled by the chemical flavor that for a few seconds, all it could do was retch. The pretas tried to overcome the Rexy’s reaction, but the animal’s instinct to spit out the glowing chemicals was so basic, so visceral, that even the clouds couldn’t stop the Rexy from wasting precious seconds on the urge to vomit.
Festina used those seconds. She too had luminescent chemicals sprayed across her — glowing/flowing down her arm, spatters splashed across her shoulders and the side of her face — but she ignored the shining polka dots as she clubbed the pistol hard against the Rexy’s skull. The animal half turned toward her, fluorescent vomit spilling from its mouth. She clubbed it again in exactly the same place… and this time the skull broke open, disgorging blood and what little brains the Rexy possessed. Smoke poured out too, wreathing around Festina for a moment as if trying to asphyxiate her. Then the preta clouds flowed into the night, vanishing almost immediately from normal vision.
To my sixth sense, however, the clouds remained as visible as a forest fire — ablaze with irrepressible fury.
The chemicals from the glow-tube burned out quickly in the open air. Their shine lasted just long enough for Festina to check that all three Rexies were dead. Over their corpses, Festina murmured, "That’s what ‘expendable’ means": a time-honored Explorer Corps phrase used when confronting the death of almost any living thing. Then she went to examine Ubatu, who wasn’t dead or even unconscious.
Just bloodied and disfigured.
Both her cheeks were in tatters: fatty flaps of tissue were almost cut loose from her face. Her temples were also in bad shape — punctured, gore-smeared, oozing. My paramedics professor liked to say, "Head wounds always seem worse than they are"… but in this case, I thought Ubatu’s injuries were just as bad as they looked.
As Festina bent over her, Ubatu tried to speak. The resulting slur of sound wasn’t words. Her jaw couldn’t move — the muscles to do that had been butchered by Rexy teeth. Anyway, what could Ubatu say? "I’m hurt," maybe? (As if that weren’t obvious.) Or perhaps "Do I look hideous?"
As if that weren’t obvious too.
But at least Festina could stop the bleeding. She got out her first-aid kit.
Some time later, from the bank of the river, Li uttered a weak "Help!" He’d held his tongue in fear, unable to see what had happened with the Rexies and afraid the big predators had slain his companions. I could see he was worried that if he made a sound, killer pseudosuchians would come for him… but as silence drew out after the fight, his nerves grew too frayed to keep quiet. He’d tried a few preliminary whimpers, then managed a more audible cry.
Not that Li really needed help. He could easily climb back to level ground on his own. His aura showed he just wanted to dramatize his situation, make it look like a fearsome predicament. He was dirty and wet, and in shock at being dirty and wet; he didn’t know that Festina was more so, covered with chemicals, dinosaur puke, and Ubatu’s blood. Li probably wouldn’t have cared if he did know. He just wanted attention. "Help!" he called again when no Rexies came to attack. "Help! Help! Help!"
Festina was just about finished with first aid: Ubatu’s bleeding was controlled, and her face had been swathed in bandages, leaving only her eyes exposed. The eyes had suffered no damage — the only part of her face that could make that claim. Festina murmured, "I’ll be right back," to Ubatu, then shouted, "Hold your horses, Ambassador! I’m on my way." Moments later, she dragged Li back to the top of the bank, then listened to him babble about how he’d almost been killed. Meanwhile, she scooped water from a puddle and washed off the various residues smeared on her uniform.
When she was clean, she stood up and interrupted Li’s tirade. "Did you see where Tut went?"
"How could I possibly keep track of…"
"Tut!" she called, ignoring the rest of Li’s sentence. "Tut! You can come out now. The Rexies are dead."
No answer. Tut was already out of earshot, moving south through the bush. He still wore the mask… and occasionally, he went down on all fours and growled, "Grr-arrh! Grr-arrh!" Pretas hovered around him. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to possess him or simply marveling at the sight, wondering what in the world he was doing. But whether by plan or by accident, he was heading south — toward the Stage Two station.
Festina, Li, and Ubatu would soon turn that way too: the two diplomats couldn’t be left on their own in the jungle, and they refused to go back to Drill-Press. Ubatu could walk — slowly, with a limp, muttering inarticulately thanks to her slack jaw — so proceeding forward was the best of a bunch of bad possibilities. Anyway, Festina wanted to get back to where she’d left me, to make sure I was safe. Who knew how many more Rexies might lurk in the darkness?
I knew. Two more Rexies were approaching fast from the south. They’d been coming this way all the time, following Festina and me as we’d gone back to help the others.
The Rexies would reach me long before Festina would — with her glow-tube destroyed she’d have to stumble through near-total blackness, while the Rexies came on, unerringly guided by pretas. I could even tell I’d been singled out as the animals’ target; I was helpless, and they were zeroing in on me, timing their pace to arrive simultaneously.
Aloud I said, "The next few minutes are going to be tricky." Then I began pulling myself along the ground, heading for the river.
It was hard going. My legs were useless, nothing but deadweight. I could pull myself forward with my arms, but when the foliage was low it was slippery under my hands, and when it was high I had to bulldoze my way past countless stalks and tangles. The mustard smell of Muta’s ferns was thick and pungent this close to the ground, made stronger as plants in my wake were crushed to pulp beneath me. I didn’t have far to crawl to the river — only forty meters from where Festina left me — but getting there took the effort of a marathon.