Horizon Alpha: Predators of Eden Page 5

  “Take your pants off!” Ms. Arnson panted, running next to me. Streaks of blood made her blond hair mostly pink.

  “What?” I stopped running and batted at the swarm.

  “Your pants,” she repeated. “They smell their eggs on your pants. You have to wash them off.”

  The rest of the squad heard her and ran back to cluster around me. They waved their lightning sticks in the air, filling the stream with the smell of charred Buzzer as the little fliers got zapped in flight.

  I dropped to a crouch in the middle of the circle and unzipped my pants. Facing away from Ms. Arnson, I pulled them down and over my soaked boots, rubbing them frantically against the rocks in the stream. The smell had seeped into my underwear. I’m only going so far. I sat down in the stream in my underpants and scooted across the rocks, my face burning as much with shame as with the hundred little bites.

  Finally the swarm dissipated. A few angry holdouts still circled, sizzling as Shiro or Brent found them with the lightning sticks.

  I wrung out my pants and pulled them on. “Sorry,” I said.

  The General glared at me. Brent and Shiro knelt down in the stream to start washing the blood from their faces and arms.

  Ms. Arnson crouched next to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, turning away from her.

  “We need to wash off all the blood. Another ‘saur might smell it.”

  “I know.”

  Shiro ambled over as I washed my exposed skin. “You okay, Squirt?” It was my brother’s old nickname for me and it rankled even as it brought a lump to my throat.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That’s a novel approach,” he said, patting me on the back. “Squash the eggs before the ‘saurs can hatch. I like it, but I don’t think there’s enough of us to clear all the ‘saurs off the planet.”

  I shook my head, too embarrassed to answer.

  “But honestly,” he continued, “I think I could have gone my whole life without seeing you in your underpants flopping around in the water. That’s going to haunt my nightmares.” He grinned and my tense shoulders relaxed a little.

  The General squatted down next to me. “Everybody smear up with mud. Cover up all these fresh wounds.”

  I was close enough to my fellow soldiers that I could tell that we all smelled ripe in the sweaty jungle. Now we were all bloody. Our scent trail would be easy for a Wolf pack to follow if they came upon it tomorrow. We splashed up the stream in hope of confusing any predators that might hunt us in daylight.

  Soon we would leave the dense jungle and get a sat signal. Then all we had to do was wait for the shuttle and fly home.

  ***

  We left the stream and headed up the steeper slope. More moonlight penetrated through the moist forest as it gave way to a drier, rockier hillside. My heart lightened a bit as we climbed out into open air. The oppressive sweltering jungle felt like a heavy coat around my shoulders, and I was glad to shrug it off. There were dangers in the dry rocks as well, but most of the creatures that dwelled in the higher elevations were smaller than humans and kept away from us if they could. An unlucky step on a rock snake could be fatal, but we shuffled ahead, enjoying the improved visibility of the night.

  The General herded us under a rocky overhang and told us to wait for him there. He left the backpack containing the power core and climbed higher on the hillside hoping to pick up the sat signal. The satellites weren’t always in the right place to pick up our frequency even if we had a clear view of the sky.

  We sat on the dry ground while the General made the call back to base. The wind up here ruffled my hair and blew dusty grit into my eyes. I closed them and leaned back against the cool stones. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the last two nights of fear caught up with me, and I must have dozed off.

  I woke up to the sound of the General yelling at someone. Sitting bolt upright, I looked around to see where the rest of the team was. Ms. Arnson was asleep nearby, and Shiro was keeping watch. The General must have been arguing with Brent, but I couldn’t see either one of them.

  The rock I was leaning on had dug into my back and it took me a few seconds to straighten up. I brushed dry mud off my itchy neck and shook the dirty bits out of my shirt. The General’s voice stopped me cold.

  “They’re not coming. We’re on our own.”

  Chapter 9

  “What do you mean, they’re not coming, sir?” Shiro asked. His high-pitched voice was shrill in the wind.

  “Everyone huddle up.” Ms. Arnson struggled slowly to her feet and leaned against the wall. She looked as tired as I felt. The General herded us behind the sheltering rock face.

  “Eden base had a power failure last night,” the General began and my stomach clenched. My mother and sister were at base. They were all I had left. “Brachis shorted out the fence-line and the power core overloaded. They’ve had to hook up the two remaining shuttles to keep the fence juiced. If they send one of the shuttles for us, they won’t have enough power to run the fences.”

  We all knew what that would mean.

  “What about the hydro turbines?” I asked. My heart was starting to pound. They have to come for us. They just have to.

  “I’m sure they’re working on them. But they’re not operational right now, either. The two shuttles are all that’s keeping Eden powered. I’m sure you understand. They can’t risk the whole base just to come get us.”

  “But we have another power core,” Shiro said. “If they’d just fly out here, we could have it hooked up in a couple of hours. That’s why we came on this scatting mission in the first place.”

  The General shook his head. “Too risky. I told them how our shuttle went down. If they did send us rescue and we lost that shuttle too, that would be it for Eden. They can’t risk it. They’ll get a week or two out of the shuttles’ power, and maybe that will give them time to figure something out.”

  “They haven’t figured it out in three years.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Everyone at Eden base worked tirelessly to keep it safe. But nothing they came up with ever worked for long. This cursed planet was at war with the humans who were trying to survive its hostility, and the humans weren’t winning.

  “We have no choice here.” The General didn’t sound angry anymore. His shoulders sagged, which scared me almost as much as anything else since the pterosaur clipped our shuttle in the air. A Rex up close was terrifying. The General giving up hope would be worse.

  He looked out over the dark forest. “We’ll have to walk home.”

  “But we’re kilometers away from base, sir. We’ll never make it back.” Brent said. The silence that followed showed we were all thinking the same thing.

  Ms. Arnson’s voice sounded deceptively calm. “We made it this far. We’ll travel at night and sleep in the trees. The General is right. We have no choice. We’ve got to get this power core back to Eden.”

  “We’re about a hundred kilometers out from Eden now. If we push hard, we can make it back in about five days, walking.” The General made it sound easy, like all we had to do was walk the distance. Like every ‘saur in this part of Ceti wouldn’t be sniffing our trail. Like he really thought any of us were going to make it back alive.

  “Can we stay up in the hills?” I sounded whiny and afraid. Ms. Arnson patted me on the back to reassure me, and that just made me mad.

  “These hills make a U shape that arcs away from where we’re going. We’ll cross near them again about halfway back, but if we stick to the hills we’ll add over a week to the trip. Eden has maybe two weeks’ power left. Less if anything touches the fence and causes a surge.”

  “But it would be so much safer going,” Brent said.

  Yes, Brent, I thought. Convince him to stay up in the hills.

  “Safer for us,” the General agreed. “But not completely safe, and not worth the time it would take. Wolves hunt in the foothills, and if a Rex sees us, it won’t hesitate to leave the jungle. We could spend an ext
ra week walking and still not make it back.”

  “I agree with the General,” Ms. Arnson said. “Eden’s only hope is for us to get this core back as fast as we can. We need to start back tonight.”

  So it was decided. We all looked at the maps on our sat transmitters, orienting ourselves to our location, the hills we were on now, and Eden’s location. It looked impossibly far away.

  Brent picked up the heavy power core and the General took a lighter bag of supplies. The General motioned for me to join him and we moved a little away from the group as they collected the small amount of gear that would somehow have to get us safely back home.

  “I spoke to your mother.” I looked down at my boots. The General continued. “I told her you were with me and I promised her I’d keep you safe. Stay close to me. We’re going to get back to her. I promise.”

  I nodded and returned to the rest of the team.

  I checked my pistols and ammunition. I was carrying about fifty rounds, which had seemed like a lot when I packed them up at the transport but now felt laughably inadequate. Fifty rounds against a Rex. Fifty rounds against a Gila. Or a pack of Wolves.

  Crazy, terrified laughter bubbled up from somewhere inside me, and I bit my lip to keep it from coming out. If I started laughing, I might never stop. A small gurgle escaped my lips as I fought the panic that threatened to unhinge me.

  “Five people, a hundred kilometers, and a thousand ‘saurs that want to eat us. What could possibly go wrong?” I wondered.

  “Not now, Caleb,” Brent snapped.

  “Quiet,” the General commanded, and we both fell silent.

  The General divided the rest of the food among us and made sure we each had weapons in easy reach. He said it was in case we got separated somehow, but we all knew he was sharing out what we had because he didn’t think we’d all make it back. Like the scientists of Earth had packed humans into four Horizon ships, four Arks to carry human refugees away from a doomed planet, the General was hedging his bets. Maybe he was right. Maybe some of us would make it back to Eden alive.

  As we hiked back down the hillside and entered the steaming jungle, I followed him closely. His shoulders still sagged under the weight of his pack, and I understood that even our leader didn’t believe any of us would live to see Eden again.

  Chapter 10

  We pushed through the thick undergrowth, smeared brown and green with mud and skitter slime. In another hour, dawn would make us head up a tree for safety, and the General wanted to cover as much ground as we could. We spoke in whispers and jumped at every breaking twig.

  “We should have stayed in the hills.” Brent’s voice from behind me wouldn’t carry up to the General leading us.

  “It’s not just about us. We have to make time.” Shiro answered him just as softly.

  “But it’s all for nothing if we get killed out here,” Brent said.

  “It’s all for nothing anyway,” I said. I couldn’t see the other soldiers’ faces in the pre-dawn darkness but I heard Shiro sigh behind me.

  “It’s not for nothing. This core will keep Eden going for a while longer.”

  “How long?” I demanded, looking back over my shoulder at him. I could almost make out his expression. He was looking down at the ground, maybe sorry he’d said anything at all. I kept talking, as much to myself as to him. “A few months? A year? We’ve been here three years and it all comes down to one stupid power core?”

  Ms. Arnson spoke up from in front of me. There was no way the General couldn’t hear this exchange now.

  “We just need to buy them some more time. The engineers will get the hydroelectric or the wind turbines going. Then we won’t need power cores.”

  I pretended to accept what she said, but whether it was the exhaustion of the past two days’ walking or the stress of near-constant terror, I was having a hard time caring right now. If we made it back with the core, would it matter? In another year, would there be a single human left alive on this planet?

  The subtle vibration of the soft ground under my boots snapped me out of my reverie. We all stopped in our tracks.

  Again I felt it. The smallest buzz of the damp soil concussed by a very heavy footfall.

  We looked wildly around us, unsure which direction the Rex was coming from. The vibrations were coming harder and faster now. It was getting closer.

  “Up, now!” the General hissed and we each bolted for the nearest tree.

  I stuffed my pistol into the back waistband of my pants and climbed for my life. I was making a lot of noise, but there was nothing I could do about that. Get higher. Get out of reach. My palms scraped on the damp bark and my tired thighs protested each step. I didn’t look down, only up, higher, safer.

  When I was high enough to see the sun’s earliest rays peeking through the foliage, I paused, panting. I peered out through the branches. From the south came the unmistakable commotion of a Rex on the move, smaller trees swaying and cracking in the sudden silence as every smaller lizard went still.

  Its massive head burst into view, turning left and right to scan the jungle floor. A muffled cry sounded below me and I gripped the nearest branch.

  Ms. Arnson was stuck too low on the tree. She clung to the opposite side of the trunk from the Rex. It couldn’t see her from where it was right now.

  My hands shook on the branch. My brain whirled with indecision. If I climbed down, could I reach her in time? Could I help her up higher to safety? Or were we better off staying still and silent, hoping the Rex wouldn’t notice our scent? I bit my lower lip. What would Josh have done if he were here?

  The Rex sniffed the air, surely noticing our unusually potent scent. This far from Eden base it might not have smelled humans before, but it certainly could tell there was something warm in these trees.

  Ms. Arnson looked up and her eyes locked with mine.

  Be silent. Don’t move, I willed her with my gaze. Her mouth was open a little bit and her eyes looked shiny. The sight of her abject terror made me feel braver somehow. I risked a small gesture, pointing around the tree to where I could see the Rex, and then motioning her to stay where she was. I couldn’t tell if she understood me, but she remained frozen in place.

  After an eternity, the Rex moved. I pressed my body into the tree trunk as the whole forest shook in the wake of the huge ‘saur’s passing. It crashed away through the forest and I held my breath until the usual songs of the smaller lizards started up again. I sagged into the tree.

  Chapter 11

  I climbed down the tree until I reached Ms. Arnson and helped her up to a safer spot. We were the only two who had fled up this particular tree, but the General called from nearby and we risked a quick count off. Everyone’s voice sounded about as high as we were in the trees, and no one was missing.

  Ms. Arnson and I shared a protein pack from my supplies. I tied her to a thick branch for safety, then roped myself to another. Tension hung thick in the air.

  “So . . . that went all right,” I said. “Better than the last Rex.”

  She gave me a tight-lipped smile.

  I tried to sleep but was too keyed up. Ms. Arnson fidgeted on a branch right below me. She didn’t seem sleepy either.

  “So why did you come out here?” I asked her after a few minutes.

  “Collecting samples,” she answered. “The more we can learn about this place, the better. We’re stuck here now and we know so little about it.”

  “You have lots of eggs and plants and stuff back at base.” Her makeshift science lab was full of the planet’s flora and fauna. Leaves and flowers dried in the sun, open notebooks were full of carefully drawn replicas of everything we had encountered here. Scouting missions had brought her back eggs of every size, and some of them had hatched under her careful incubation. It seemed unlikely that we would ever be able to domesticate any of the ‘saurs, but a few of Ms. Arnson’s hatchlings had started off well. It broke her heart when they died, lacking some nutrient or parental care she couldn’t reproduce.
She dissected them with reverence and contributed to our deepening understanding of Eden’s inhabitants. Not that it did us much good. Understanding what kind of digestive system a baby Gila had didn’t help us at all when Gila poison stung a soldier in the field. Ms. Arnson hoped to figure out an antivenin of some kind, but without the tons of medial and lab equipment that was still orbiting uselessly on the dead Horizon, she was at a disadvantage.

  “I wanted to pick up my own. I’ve asked the units going out to get me things, certain plants and things I wanted. But it’s never their main objective and they always come back with the wrong stuff. The General started taking me out on some of the quicker, safer missions last year.”

  I snorted at that. “Quicker” and “safer” were two words no one would ever use to describe our current mission.

  “I didn’t think they’d let a female outside the fence.” It sounded cruel to say, but it was true. The breeding-age women of Eden were humanity’s last hope. They were much too valuable to risk in the army. Our birth rate was supposed to grow exponentially once we left the confines of Horizon and had a whole planet to populate. But few babies had been born since we landed as most of the women hesitated to bring a new life into such a perilous existence.

  “I can’t have babies, so I’m expendable. Just like you.” That last was supposed to be a joke but I heard the pain in her words.

  “You can’t have a baby?” I repeated. I was glad for the darkness of the night. I couldn’t read her expression in the dim glow of the forest. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, but it surprised me.

  “No. Something’s wrong with me. The doctors on Earth probably could have fixed it, but not here. I lost two on board Horizon, both of them so early that nobody but me knew I was pregnant. I would have had the ship docs try to figure it out, but then we got here and lost most of the equipment, and most of our doctors, too.”