Dark Planet Read online

  THIRTY TWO

  My heart pounded. Drawing my Punch, I hid underneath the low concealing branches of a tree to examine my back trail. I waited, my throat dry and my chest wracked with spasms of pain. I saw him. A mirror image among the trees, the telltale presence of someone wearing chameleons.

  I aimed the gun. My hand shook at the prospect of killing. Again I verged on lintatai. Which was the mirror and which the mirrored? Now would be the time for his chameleons to malfunction, for my benefit if certainly not for his.

  Lightning cracked, reverberating and rumbling across the sky, strobing into the forest. A breeze rustled one side of the mirror but not the other. That meant it wasn’t him after all. I collapsed with relief, the moment of truth postponed, and felt the hard rough bark of the tree grinding against my forehead. It suddenly occurred to me that my gold hair must shine in the dark forest like, well, gold. I cut off part of a leg of my cammie trousers with the clasp knife and tied it around my head like a scarf, leaving my ears free to twitch. They had reason enough to be active.

  What with the sensors in Blade’s possession and his training and experience on the battlefield, I had about as much chance of waylaying him in an ambush as I did of reaching Galaxia without the pod. His canniness had aided him in surviving my booby trap whip. I felt him out there, patient, waiting now until all the advantages were on his side, playing with me.

  I turned once again into the forest, desperation driving me. Looking back over my shoulder, expecting him.

  Absorbed as I was, I literally ran into one of the snake-like creatures stretched across the path. It was of a thickness equal to my height and so black it gleamed dully in the rainwater washing off its sides. It was hard and muscular. When I bounced back, its entire amazing length converted into a lashing whip. Its tail hurled me thirty meters through the air and into the trees. When I landed, the breath knocked out of me, its triangular head lifted high among the trees, darting and probing, searching for the interloper. Tongues, for it had four of them, flickered like mercury, testing the air.

  I didn’t know if the thing could climb trees or not, or if I could climb fast enough or high enough to escape it, but the treetops seemed my only hope. I scrambled painfully to my feet and made it to one of the forest giants. Because of lightning strikes, the trees were exceptionally tall but also exceptionally slender. Dropping the black lindal at the foot of the tree, I hugged the trunk and began shimmying up it like a simian.

  The ebony head slithered through the trees. I swung out onto a branch just as it struck. Rows of teeth ripped off bark just above my hands, leaving a bright gash in the trunk. The head cocked for a second strike. Lidless black eyes the size of plates sized me up. Contemplating the little animal that was about to become lunch.

  What difference did it make if I gave away my position to Blade if I were to be killed and eaten by this creature anyhow? Hanging onto the branch with one hand, I drew my Punch Gun and fired. The creature’s head and half its body blew up, showering the surrounding forest with purple-gray blood and shredded flesh.

  A moment after, a bullet ripped past my head so near and with such velocity that it seemed to suck out my breath. Twigs and leaves exploded. I had no taa left, so I merely reacted. I let go the branch.

  Underbrush cushioned my fall. Luckily for me, I managed to hold onto my gun. I scrambled around in the snake’s gore until I found the Indowy case.

  “Elf!”

  Blade’s grating voice, diffused and multiplied, seemed to come from all around me, as though it were the voice of the dark forest. Bruised and scratched and breathing heavily, I listened on hands and knees.

  “Give it up, elf. This is one you can’t win. You can make it easier on yourself by turning the case over to me now. Or we can do it the hard way. Either way, you have to die.”

  I tried to think of a brave, snappy comeback, something like I have just begun to fight, or Damn the starships, full warp ahead. All I came up with was one word. I shouted it from the bottom of my lungs, hurling it back at him. “Fu-uck!”

  I plunged deeper into the forest with the black box, laughing almost hysterically. I was going mad.

  Soon, however, I was again nursing a core of loneliness and fear. I had grown up in a civilized, rather protected environment. Taa was something I only experimented with occasionally, cautiously, aware of its danger. Now, here I was, taa-depleted, wounded and battling for my life. One damned thing after another, to coin one of Pia’s endless old, old Earth expressions.

  It occurred to me that Blade didn’t have to kill me in order to get the case. Aldenia’s savage denizens could do it for him. Either way, he had the prize and a clear claim on the landing pod.

  I paused and looked at the case. I had to make sure he didn’t get it, no matter what happened to me.

  I found an outcropping of rock and smashed at the case with the largest stone I could wield. As I expected, the thing proved virtually indestructible. I beat on it without even marring its glossy surface. No wonder it had survived the centuries and still functioned.

  I thought about throwing it in the stream and letting it sweep out to sea. It floated. I even contemplated hiding it. In the end, however, I kept it. Sooner or later, the energy it emitted with the Presence’s help would lure Blade to it. If not him, then, someday, another Blade. The genie contained in the lamp possessed such evil that only the vastness of space was large enough to bury it.

  Survive, said a solemn voice fully formed inside my head, if for no other reason than to get rid of the case for all time.

  That, I promised this new Presence, I would do.

  The shorter of the two Aldenia nights was almost upon me. I halted, thinking. My tracks were leading Blade in the direction of the pod. No matter what tricks I used in attempting to shake him from my back trail, I felt him doggedly back there. It was almost like an electronic string led from me to him; it was much more than the LF tracker, which was precise as to locations only at short distances. The Human was good at tracking, I had to hand him that. Sooner or later, the way things were going, he was bound to win.

  I should reach the river early in the morning after the coming short night. If I reached it, Blade was toast. I was out of here like a bad dream, leaving the sniper behind to see if he could survive Aldenia a second time.

  He couldn’t let me do that. So what was his next move?

  All he had to do was forge ahead — he had no problem getting ahead of me in my weakened condition — and set up an ambush between me and the pod. I might survive one ambush, perhaps even a second. But he would eventually score.

  But what if the prey did the unexpected, the unpredictable …? As long as I was heading for the pod, the only game in town was “Blade wins.” Changing rules in the middle of the game might extend the chances against me from perhaps one in four or five, to perhaps one in eight or nine. Play the odds. Another old, old Earth expression. Make my day. They would have amused lovely Pia.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I murmured, pleased at the phrase and still thinking of Pia.

  Mind made up, I turned away from the north and toward the east. The stream I had been following faded behind me into the trees and I looked for rugged, rocky high ground that would both challenge Blade’s tracking skills and prevent his getting another shot at me.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY THREE

  The strength and endurance of a Zentadon did not come without costs. Although the chemical analog our bodies used instead of ATP was more efficient, the lack of long-term energy storage meant that after a day or so of high energy activity without food our bodies began drawing entirely upon muscle mass. Plant matter might be high in complex sugars, but there was minimal usable protein in it. The grueling events since the neural grenade went off in the rocks, along with my injuries, had taken a lot out of me. If this pace continued, I needed food, real food. Meat.

  The thought caused my stomach to roil.

  The matter should all be academic
tomorrow anyhow — if my ruse worked. There was plenty of food on the pod.

  Before night fell in the higher country, I committed to memory exact details of the fastest route to the black river. Crouching under cover of rain-dripped stone, I traced in my mind a wide ravine down from the ridge that I had been traveling. It ran half full with water, naturally, but the swiftness of its passage and frequent flooding cleared its banks of most foliage. Negotiating it at night would be possible.

  The ravine opened onto an open plain lush with purple-black grass swept with rain and dotted with various giant herbivoric insects. Animal life on the planet slept at night, so the big bugs should be no problem. The real problem lay in the band of thick forest that lay between the marshy meadow and the river. It would make tough going in the dark, but as long as I continued north I couldn’t miss the river. A left turn should then bring me to the pod in short order.

  An extremely hazardous undertaking in the total locked-in-the-closet darkness of Aldenia, but it appeared at the moment to be my best hope of escape, and perhaps my last hope.

  I studied the route one final time before the shorter of the two nights descended. Far to the west, I made out the dark hint of the sea where we had landed barely five Galaxia days ago. The black river snaked through the jungle to empty into it. In a briefing while DRT-213 was still orbiting in the Stealth, Captain Amalfi explained how the pod extraction worked. You didn’t have to be a small craft pilot. Once the senior living member of the team approached, the pod read his DNA signature and automatically extended the debarkation/embarkation tube for boarding. Adjusting a few computer settings released the pod from anchorage. It guided itself back to the sea, became a surface craft, then blasted off for re-docking with the Stealth in orbit.

  I was thinking of that and of food when night fell like a curtain and the storms, as usual, slackened somewhat. I went through the pockets of my cammie vest and combat harness, hoping to find something to eat I had overlooked, but discovered only the tiny watch-sized squad radio intended for emergency communications within the team. It was useless now. Wet, miserable and enduring almost as much hunger as pain, I had to settle for the relative shelter of a rock ledge and no food. I shivered from the wet and the cold.

  Before going into meditation and self-hypnosis to relax my muscles and thus help their regeneration, I sent out my mind to probe for Blade. My shivering increased. I found the Presence; it and Blade seemed immutable, melded together. In my mind’s eye, I saw a pair of giant baleful eyes staring at me in the night, as though reveling in my misery and anticipating my end.

  The Presence, I thought, must have specifically selected Sergeant Blade Kilmer to do its bloody bidding because Blade was the most susceptible to evil. He was a good choice. Toward what ultimate end the Presence aspired I could only speculate, other than the releasing of the lindal’s dark powers once again into the universe.

  I tried to find the Good Presence. It must be sleeping — or it had abandoned me. I touched upon another sentient, however. Fleetingly, but it was there, only with insufficient strength to be identified. Then it was gone too and I slept in the rainy night for exactly one hour.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY FOUR

  Day was still another hour away when I awoke, feeling somewhat rejuvenated. I twisted a second knot into my string, the beginning of my second day on the run. Four days to go before the pod took off on its own. Which shouldn’t matter in another three or four hours anyhow, once I boarded the pod with the case.

  I set off in the dark along the route I had earlier plotted and memorized. Blade wouldn’t expect me to start moving until daylight. An hour’s head start, with luck, should be all I needed.

  Traveling Aldenia rainforests was exhausting going under the best conditions, almost impossible in the dark. Sheet lightning illuminated the way ahead, briefly, then plunged me back into even greater darkness by the contrast. I slipped and slid down the ravine, once or twice falling into the rushing water and almost being swept away to a horrible drowning death. I attempted to use my psychic powers as a type of sonar to guide me, but it failed miserably and I was soon battered and bleeding from stumbling into rocks and trees.

  Daylight brought new hope. Goliath beetles and other herbivore types were already in the meadow when I reached it, but I avoided them by skirting along the forest edges. A total of three hours’ hard trudging brought me to the river, where a sense of urgency propelled me at a great pace downstream toward the pod. I threw caution to the wind as I raced, to the best of my depleted abilities, toward sanctuary.

  I probed for Blade on my back trail, unable to find him. That should have persuaded me that I caught him sleeping with my unexpected move, but it troubled me instead. It is much better to know where the fanger lurks so that you can avoid him.

  I came to the tiny glade of purple-black grass where the team had first set forth on Aldenia soil, where the first bot was mysteriously destroyed. Could it have been so few days ago? I fell to my stomach and low-crawled to a point where I peered out of the foliage and across the opening. The river ran black and swift. There was nothing to indicate the pod was submerged there. I wondered how near I had to come before the pod’s computers recognized me and sent out the tube. Obviously, I had to go nearer than this.

  I listened. I batted falling water from my eyes. I explored with my senses, reluctant to expose myself in the short dash to the river bank. If I was wrong about Blade and he had not been fooled, he was likely already set up with his deadly Gauss and waiting for me to reveal myself.

  The way appeared clear.

  I took a deep breath and bunched my muscles. I tested my taa reservoir. Perhaps I could get a small boost at least.

  Steeling myself to possibly receive a slug through my heart, I jumped up and sprinted across the glade to the edge of the river, already anticipating food and rest and a quick ride the Hell out of this place. I crouched where the water lapped shore, my feet actually in the stream. Rain churned the surface. Debris rode the current, swirling and diving and foaming. I waited for the sunken pod to send up its embarkation/debarkation tube for me. I looked around. Hurry, hurry.

  Nothing happened. Maybe I was at the wrong place after all. I stood up and soon found the trunk of a nearby tree where Gorilla had fastened a homing device. This was the right place. Why didn’t the pod recognize me?

  I returned to the edge of the river. I jumped around like a fool, giving the machine’s sensors plenty of opportunity to see and recognize me. Still, nothing happened.

  Desperation caused me to consider diving into the river and down to the pod. A foolish thought. Even if I knew how to swim, which I didn’t, the current was fierce enough to tear trees off the riverbank, roots and all. Besides, I couldn’t get into the pod even if I reached it.

  Another thought struck me, freezing my blood. Maybe the pod had ripped free of its anchors and been swept out to sea, stranding me here with Blade and the Presence forever. Common sense soon replaced panic. The pod’s systems and backups were designed to withstand unbelievable tidal actions.

  No, the pod was still there. It was still functioning. It simply refused to recognize me and open.

  That left only one conclusion. The Humans mistrusted me to the point that I hadn’t even been entered into the computers. The pod was never going to open for me. But why the lecture from Sergeant Shiva about my being fourth in the chain of command and all that? A pretense, a cruel subterfuge? I felt such helpless anger and frustration that I would surely have gone into lintatai had I sufficient taa to trigger it.

  Blade was never concerned about my reaching the pod ahead of him because he must have known all along that he was the ranking live member of the team entered into the pod’s computers. He could leave Aldenia anytime he wanted, which he would do as soon as he seized the Indowy case from me. I, in turn, could never leave if all the Humans were dead.

  I backed away. The Presence suddenly loomed strong and near. A hideous peal of laughter burst o
ut of the rain. I turned and ran. The best I could hope for now was that Blade die with me, preferably he first, and that both of us take the secret of the Indowy Hell Box to our unmarked death sites. At least that would delay the genie’s release into the galaxy.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  THIRTY FIVE

  I ran hard for an hour, as hard as I could, taking a straight suicidal line to lead Blade as far away from the pod as I could. I crouched by a slow, deep pool in a stream and drank from it like an animal. I saw my reflection rain-dimpled in the surface of the water — the scrap of cammie cloth around my golden hair to cut down the glint, the pointed ears in almost constant spasms, my face scratched and battered and gaunt. In short, to quote an old, old Earth expression, I looked like Hell.

  The stream ran between clay banks. I drank, seeing things swimming in the water. Exhausted, I pulled myself back to rest in the bushes. I lay for a minute, using the lindal for a pillow.

  Kadar San …?

  I shot upright.

  It wasn’t the Presence. There was no feeling of slime to the thought. It had to be the Good Presence warning me not to sleep, warning me that Blade was hunting. So far, he had been so successful in blocking my mind probes that I had no idea where he was. Until he actually fired at me, an event I hoped to delay or prevent, I had only a vague sense of his being near or far.

  Kadar San … help …

  What? Help? How could I help? And who was I supposed to help?

  The voice was very weak, no more than a whisper. I attempted to extend the contact, but there was no more.

  I rested for another few minutes, then forced myself to get up. I sent out feelers for the voice, but it was gone. I was weak from hunger. I had to eat if I hoped to lead Blade to his destiny.

  I scooted myself to the pool and easily snagged one of the newt-looking things swimming in it. They were thickly-built slabs about the size of my hand, finned, slimy, and had external gills. Rather than fish, they were more like reptilian larvae. I had noticed little furry mammals eating them previously, so assumed they were edible.