“ Holy shit.”
Tarn nodded. “Nasty fuckers,” he repeated.
Elsa nodded. “I gotta find my team.”
“ I’ll take you down there, but you do what I say and we don’t get close to their nest, got it?”
She found herself nodding again. She was the Marine, but she could justify following a local guide. “What are they, insects or something?”
“ Got a guy who used to be a veterinarian, he thinks they’re animals. They got one mother though, a queen or something, and she’s bigger and nastier. Or at least she was when she came out of the dead megasaur. Nobody’s dumb enough to go in the hole in the ground they made to find out how big she is now.”
Elsa let out a deep breath and glanced around. The smart thing to do would have been to get the hell away. Follow Tarn back to the Treetown place he mentioned. Any of her team that went in there were fucked, plain and simple.
“ No Marine gets left behind,” Elsa said.
“ Yeah, figured you’d say that,” Tarn sighed. “All right, let’s go.”
Elsa followed him down from the hills and into the chest high grasses on the plain. He moved slowed, pausing infrequently to look around. She even caught him sniffing the air once or twice. She tried it but couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Then again everything smelled funny on the planet to her. So many scents and so much of it made her just feel alive. Even the dull ache in her arm had faded to a background irritation.
“ Any chance they’d take prisoners?” Elsa asked.
Tarn held up his arm, using the Marine gesture to call a halt. Elsa felt her lips part in surprise.
“ Break our cover again and I’ll leave you to find your own way out of here!” He hissed.
Elsa nodded, sufficiently rebuked. She watched him as he turned back and motioned to continue. He walked through the grasses with a grace that looked very natural, almost as though he was just another predator on the plains. He held the spear ready, moving it every time he changed the direction of his gaze. Elsa found herself nodding, Tarn either had military experience or he’d been trained by someone who had.
He called a halt another half an hour later. She was used to uncomfortable missions but she couldn’t remember ever feeling as disgusting as she did this time. The unpowered armor was like an oven. She knew if her helmet had still been on she would have passed out. As it was she was dehydrated. Stripping the rest of the armor off, however, meant walking naked. Tarn looked liked a great guy to take for a clothing optional ride, but given the circumstances it was the furthest thing from her mind.
“ This is it, no closer,” Tarn whispered.
“ It’s still like a mile away!”
He shrugged. “You want it, you go get it. I’m telling you they’ll swarm and kill you before you know they’re there.”
“ Swarm me?”
“ They communicate. Not like people, but they got something that keeps ‘em working together.”
Elsa stared at the mound in the distance. It had grown larger as they approached, but she was sure it was no more than ten feet tall. It was probably close to a quarter mile around, if not larger.
“ Come on, I smell something.”
Elsa jerked, surprised at his choice of words. She followed him, impressed with how quietly he moved through the grasses. He stopped once and pointed off to their left, closer to the mound. She stared for a long moment until she realized he was showing her some of the animals he’d warned her about. She couldn’t see them directly, but she could see the grass swaying as they moved. She turned and looked harder, now noticing the unusual pattern of movement that indicated a creature was moving through the grass instead of a simple breeze.
“ They’re everywhere!” She gasped.
Tarn gave her a sharp look, then motioned her forward. He led her for another quarter hour, circling at one point to avoid coming too close to one of the drones, then stopped when he reached the wreckage of another screamer.
Elsa gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. It was torn up worse than hers had been. The damage wasn’t from the landing, it had signs of being ripped and battered. Dried blood stained the side and ground, leading towards the mound. She hurried around it, looking for some sign of who’s screamer it had been. Had her armor been working she could have identified the transponder on it. Lacking that, she could only release the cargo pack on the back and look through the equipment contained therein.
Whoever it had been hadn’t even had a chance to defend themselves. As disheartened as Elsa was about the loss of one of her team, she couldn’t deny the grim satisfaction having a new rifle and more supplies gave her.
Chapter 15
Elsa turned to look at Tarn and saw the smirk on his face. She smiled sweetly at him, then hefted her rifle to her shoulder. “Let’s see who this Kira chick found,” she said to him.
He nodded and turned to study the movement in the weeds. She noticed the lines around his eyes tighten, then he swore. “They know we’re here, not sure if they’ve found us yet, but they’re searching.”
“ How do you know that?” Elsa hissed. She saw the movement through the grasses around them. It was more pronounced now, with the drones moving faster. Her gut twisting told her that Tarn was right.
“ Move fast and quiet,” He muttered, then he turned and was off, crouching as he moved so that his head was barely above the weeds.
Elsa followed, keeping her rifle ready. She was focused on watching the grasses for signs of the hostile animals and nearly ran into Tarn when he stopped in front of her abruptly. She looked past him and saw another ditch carved into the ground by a different screamer pod. “Back up slowly!” Tarn hissed.
She turned to follow his gaze and saw the tail end of one of the chitin covered animals. She felt her eyes widen as she took in the slender but still dangerous tail and the four multi-jointed legs that looked like a cross between a spider and a lizard. She backed up slowly, carefully picking up her feet one at a time and retracing her steps. She stopped abruptly when she heard a soft rustling noise made by something large moving through the grasses behind her.
Elsa turned and dropped to her knee in a single smooth motion. The scene before her made her hesitate, she was staring at the four eyed head of one of the drones less than six feet from her. The vicious mandibles were stretched wide and its inner mouth opened to reveal rows of sharp teeth. They both fired at the same time, hers a blast of supercharged ions that caused the short and bristly hair on the side of its head to melt and burn. The brunt of the energized burst struck the armored body of the beast.
The stream of spittle from the creature splattered against her abdomen and hip, on the side that the screecher hadn’t destroyed. She could smell a caustic odor from it, but thought no more of it as she adjusted her one armed aim and yanked the trigger again. Its mandibles waved wildly and it tilted its head to the sky, then its legs gave out and it collapsed to the ground. One of its eyes exploded and viscous juices ran out of it.
Elsa heard some grunting and a scuffling sound behind her. She turned and saw Tarn standing on the top of the other drone. He pulled his spear free of the creatures head and looked about briefly to find her.
“ Time to go!” He told her, no longer speaking quietly. She nodded and jogged over to him.
“ Lead the way, I’ll cover us!” She said.
He took off at a run, angling straight away from the mound toward the ridge. One of the drones intercepted them but Elsa hit it in one of its shoulders, causing it to dip low and crash into the ground. Tarn speared the beast before it could pick itself up, then wrenched his sharpened stick free and kicked it hard enough in the head to snap one of the mandibles off as he ran past it.
Else clutched her rifle between her broken arm and her side so she could toss both of the grenades behind her as they ran. She set them with a time delay to grant them some cover and felt both blasts, even though they were well beyond the area of affect by the time they detonated. Whether they’d hurt their pursuers or not she couldn’t tell, but at worst they’d slow them down or confuse them.