Dark Planet Read online

  It would soon be daylight. Blade would be coming to drive off the lizards with his rifle. Good for Sergeant Kilmer. Then all he had to do was lob a grenade into the cave, fire a round from his Punch gun …

  Goodbye cruel world, hello eternity. Rich Blade. Poor enslaved world once more ravished by the savage heirs of the recently pacified Indowy.

  I had to keep fighting. If not for myself, then for Pia. And for the ultimate destruction of Pandora’s box and the salvation of the galaxy. A lot of weight on one lowly Zentadon’s shoulders.

  I tested the small opening again, reaching through where the chamber widened once more. I felt some moisture in the dust. I ran my hand around the opening on the other side. There. A small rift in the rock, a tiny fracture. I pried my fingertips into it and worked and pulled until the moisture was my own blood and not rainwater.

  I thought I detected a slight give in the rock. I concentrated my entire strength into it. Nothing. My muscles must surely snap from the effort, like a rubber band stretched too tautly.

  Suddenly, the rock gave. A little pile of rubble came out with it. Elated, I shouldered my way through, using both hands to pull.

  Another fifty feet of easy going and I saw the flash of lightning. Smoke boiled out behind me. The flue suddenly opened as I dropped from the chamber into another small cave. It was protected by a ledge with water pouring over its mouth like a curtain. I looked outside. It was still dark. Flashes of lightning revealed a forested valley twisting around to the east and paralleling the black river.

  I gave smoke time to clear out of the chimney before I returned to where Pia waited. I explained my plan to her.

  “Rest,” I told her. “I will draw Blade and the lizards away from the cave. When I give you the word, head due north. You should make the black river within six hours or less.”

  “I can’t leave without you, Kadar San!” she protested.

  “You will not be leaving without me, Pia. We Zentadon believe we are eternal and that we become a part of the essences of those to whom we are closest. At least one of us must return to carry the intelligence about the Blobs.”

  “Kadar San. Let me come with you …”

  “Hush.” I placed my fingertips to her lips. “It is better this way. Besides, I will be back.”

  “I love you, Kadar San.”

  I thought of my father and mother and the bastard they produced who belonged comfortably in neither of their worlds. Now was not the time to confront it, however. There was a better than even chance that neither Blade nor I would be accompanying Pia on the pod shuttle when it took off. I had to keep our final minutes together light. For her sake, and for mine.

  “Does this mean we are exclusive?” I asked.

  That brought up another worry instead.

  “Where will we go?” she asked. “We’re against the law within the Galaxia Republic.”

  “There has to be a place. Maybe we could go to Earth.”

  “Earth …” she whispered longingly. “I have heard there are places on Earth free of the mutants. Perhaps we really could go there.”

  “We will go,” I promised.

  “Do you think the Blobs are on Earth?”

  “We will deal with the Blobs, then go to Earth.”

  That seemed to satisfy her.

  We raided her combat harness for anything that might be useful to my scheme. Its pouch contained a clasp knife, some personal items, and a roll of what DRTs called “thousand-mile-a-minute” tape. It stuck like cement glue to anything it touched. Blade had taken everything else when he ransacked bodies after the killings.

  “Perfect,” I said, taking the tape.

  The dying firelight reflected in the incredible blue pools of her eyes. She ran her hand through her black crop of hair, the way she did whenever she was upset or nervous. My ears twitched. She placed both hands over them. She kissed me tenderly.

  There was nothing else to say. I rose quickly, picked up the black box, and headed for the chimney. It was the day of reckoning.

  “Kadar San?”

  I paused.

  “I’ll keep the light burning for you.”

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  FIFTY TWO

  The rules of the game were now under my control. I intended changing them. Since my plan called for leading the sniper into a trap, it was vital that I make new contact both with him and with the lizards, then break it again at the appropriate time after luring them away from Pia’s cave. I derived considerable satisfaction in knowing that Pia had a chance, even if I didn’t make it. Love was a strange Human condition. The word was applied emotionally to everything from “greasy Big Burgers” and fast hovercraft to pet terriers and each other. Zentadon had a single word, unpronounceable by Humans, which applied — and then only rarely — to the bonding of exclusives. Only death broke such a bond, not courts of divorce or a sweaty tryst with a non-mate on a long interstellar flight.

  I felt that unpronounceable word for Pia Gunduli as I squirmed back into the chimney and emerged into the open beneath the rain-veiled ledges on the ridge above. I permitted myself a moment of sadness as I waited for enough light to travel by. Then I shut it out. A hero did what a hero had to do and never looked back.

  I plunged into a strengthening downpour and circled around to where I attracted the attention of the lizards. I took a chance on inciting another shot from Blade, whom I sensed vaguely in the vicinity, but it was a risk I had to take. If I didn’t draw them away, the lizards seemed tenacious enough and one-tracked enough to lay siege to the cave for days. I needed to give Pia every possible advantage to make it safely to the pod.

  “Hey!”

  The big king of the reptiles jumped up and looked puzzled, inasmuch as a beast could look puzzled. He began barking surprised commands to the three survivors of his dwindling patrol. Although the lizards were intellectually evolved tooth and claw, so to speak, above the other inhabitants of this wet and dreary planet, they were still stupid. But not stupid enough to try to take me on face to face again. At least not right away. I was counting on their following me while they screwed up their courage and devised another pattern for my takedown.

  It worked well enough. They fell in behind me at a distance, like a troupe of trained Hrimfaxi zantels the Humans captured and trained to entertain and pacify the prolies in their circuses. I counted on Blade following the signal from the Indowy Hell Box; that was his only choice.

  Whenever the lizards got too close, became too froggy, to coin one of Pia’s old, old Earth expressions, I turned and pointed the Punch Gun at them. They backed off, barking and grumbling among themselves.

  I first angled toward the pod to make Blade think Pia and I were making a desperate run for it. Along the way, I captured a couple of the newt-things for breakfast. I had to have energy. I closed my eyes, put a damper on my returning taa and broke the backs of the little organisms, skinned them with my clasp knife, and ate the flesh raw. It immediately renewed my strength.

  In spite of my injuries, I willed myself to function at some level above what I might have otherwise been capable by releasing minute traces of taa into my system. It reduced the pain of my leg wound and gave a modest sensation of well being. With it, I could do this job, accomplish what I and the GP expected of me.

  I sensed Blade’s bewilderment when I unexpectedly changed directions and headed as rapidly as I could for the large burn I had discovered a few days earlier. I expected him to be slightly ahead and to the northwest between me and the pod, where he would attempt to establish a hide from which he could launch a long-range ambush. My sudden change of directions to the hard east had to confuse him while it momentarily gave me the advantage of increasing the distance between us. He took the bait and followed. What other choice did he have?

  Kadar San?

  I am fit as your fiddle, Pia. What is a fiddle?

  An instrument for making music.

  I can hear the music. I will contact you telepathically from now on. Do not conta
ct me unless it is an emergency. I must keep my mind clear. When I am thinking of you, it is not clear.

  That is a compliment? She sounded pleased.

  Yes.

  Please take care.

  It was a good feeling to have someone treasure me. It gave me strength and courage. I liked my Human side for perhaps the first time.

  I counted on the burn being populated with herds of the giant Goliath beetles, as it had been the first time. They seemed to relish the new growths of pioneer weeds that sprouted in the wet char. I was not disappointed. Their dark forms dotted the burn, smudged and eerily ghost-like through the layered gray membranes of rain.

  I made my way into the streambed with the high concealing banks that transfixed the burn. The water in it, relatively shallow before, now ran waist deep and slowed my progress. I was in the middle of a terrific storm, several of them, or so it seemed. Daylight was not much lighter than darkness, only a deep gray instead of black. Lightning furiously attacked the forest, splintering trees with a crashing bombardment that sounded like a nuclear cannon barrage delivered by Star War systems. A bolt of it lit up one of the beetles, detonating it, and splashing guts and blood and parts in a wide radius. His herd mates ignored him and kept on browsing in the rain.

  I felt like the elements had turned against me. I listened for the Presence’s hideous laughter.

  The lizards followed me to where I entered the streambed at the edge of the burn. They hesitated, clearly undecided about venturing into the open. I yelled insults at them and waved. Agitated, they jumped about until anger overcame their inhibitions and they also took to the stream. They kept their distance. The beetles sensed their presence and began to bunch and move away and ahead.

  Good. Exactly what my plan needed. I wanted the Goliaths on the move. Not stampeding, just moving. I hoped the lizards had fed recently and would not be distracted by so much food on legs.

  I selected one of the “herd bulls,” a huge six-legged creature with an enormous purple-black forward carapace. To support that bulk required an exoskeleton of a material far stronger than chitin. Although it would be an easy kill at near range with a Punch, I had discovered earlier that even Blade’s Gauss would not always take down one of the creatures easily. That was important in the event he prematurely discovered what I was doing.

  I backed the lindal with tape. I crouched as the herd bull approached. Then I scrambled out of the stream and darted at the insect, trying to do this fast to reduce Blade’s chances of discovering what I was doing. Always before, the beetles ignored Humans and Zentadon, as we were not in the local food chain, unless we appeared to be a direct threat.

  The Goliath apparently perceived me as a threat. It whirled and caught me with an antenna that felt like a whip lash and knocked me rolling. I instantly sprang to my feet and circled the creature. It wheeled back to the left, but by then I was ready. I dashed in and leaped, slamming the sticky side of the lindal high on the giant’s carapace.

  It stuck. I fell back and scrambled to my feet and dashed for cover into a small copse of charred tree stumps. I hid there as the big insect, now carrying the case on its east side, continued south with its west side exposed toward Blade’s approach. Later, I would have to recover the case, but it now served a more useful purpose.

  I used taa and the masking herds to disappear out of the burn. I dropped exhausted into shrubbage near the treeline, leaving the lizards dumbfounded. I lay on my belly, panting to prevent lintatai, and watched as Blade entered the burn from the far northwest corner. He cut directly across, following the signal from the lindal and obviously assuming Pia and I were using the beetle herds as cover and concealment. His chameleons had apparently gone completely out by now, but he had nothing to fear from my short-range Punch. Nor did he fear the predators. After all, wasn’t he in his own mind the most efficient killing machine on the Dark Planet?

  It was working.

  The lizards made the beetles nervous and kept them moving. Blade followed the signal attached to the big bull Goliath. Having lost me, the lizards took up Blade’s track at a respectful distance. The beetles, Blade, and the lizards moved across the burn and toward the tree-studded savannahs beyond.

  Humans told an old Earth story with a moral. About how little creatures called lemmings periodically followed each other to die in the sea.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  FIFTY THREE

  Over the generations and centuries and millennia of interstellar sentient evolution, we “intelligent” and “civilized” life forms developed technology to increasingly isolate ourselves from our environments. We broke or bent or changed all the natural laws to meet our demands for comfort, convenience, safety, and wealth. We wrenched control from nature and assumed it for ourselves. Nature was put at bay while we created, or so we thought, artificial habitats that met our own selfish requirements. There were many people — Human, Zentadon, Indowy, Kutaran, Terran — who lived their entire lives catered to by technology. They ate processed food the origin of which few knew, they worked through the media of artificial intelligence, which even fewer understood, they traveled by means almost none comprehended. They lived, worked, procreated, were entertained and pampered by artificial means. Some among us, the most wealthy, even managed to cheat death through the rejuv process, at least to some extent. Many individuals died without ever being truly alone with themselves and with nature. No wonder God had been wrenched from his throne.

  But nature had her own little ways of snickering up her sleeve. The Kutaran generations lost their teeth, no longer needed for eating soft processed foods. We Zentadon were gradually giving up our tails, as the balance they provided for speed across open plains and savannahs proved un-needed in an age when most complained of sitting on their tails. Young among the Indowy were reared in colonies by the government; few females possessed teats for nursing infants and even sex was being done in test tubes. Humans were flabby, soft creatures, except for those like Gorilla, Sergeant Shiva, Atlas and Blade, who were provided with certain enhancements to facilitate their function as soldiers. Heaven only knew what the Blobs had given up as they became shapeless, sexless forms virtually indistinguishable one from the other and bent on a single collective goal; conquering the universe.

  Within the few days since our landing on Aldenia, the members of DRT-213 had been thrust back into raw nature. Technology failed us piecemeal. The sensors, communications, monitors, robots, chameleons, processed foods, all environmental controls … gone. Death and the threat of death returned as a reality. I, a reformed predator, caught my food with my own hands, tearing it apart and eating it while it was still alive. Any dominance Blade or I professed over other creatures on the Dark Planet would vanish the moment we used our last bullet from weapons created worlds away. The lizards, the scorpion-things, the giant snakes, they understood nothing of our sovereignty, would not understand it even as they tore our flesh from our bones and ate it, as I tore flesh from the newts.

  How much more irony could nature deal out than to drop two “civilized” beings into a savage world and pit them against each other mano a mano, as the humans put it? Without our weapons, Blade and I would be thrown back to fighting tooth and claw. How much indeed had we advanced when stripped of artificial accouterments? I pictured God back on his throne while the Presence and the Good Presence acted as referees, each partial to its own champion and eager to bestow upon him any advantage. Nature might be impartial, destroying equally the good and the bad, the smart and the stupid, but the forces within natures were anything but.

  Sens were amateur philosophers. How could it be otherwise for those of us whose profession encouraged the exploration and reading of others’ thoughts and emotions?

  I restlessly sifted for mood and tone coming from either Blade or the lizards. The lizards were easy to read, being fairly uncomplicated beasts of revenge attached to stomachs. Blade proved more of a challenge. He kept his mind locked down for the most part, knowing that I located him throug
h his cognitive waves, much in the same way that he positioned me with the sensor bug on the Indowy Hell Box. He was about to find out, however, that technology could be deceptive and manipulated.

  My ears twitched in anticipation as I broke off the trail and took to the high country. I cut a path to intercept ahead of the one being inscribed by the beetles, Blade, and the lizards. Hunter instincts previously dormant surfaced so that my wounds, aches, and pains were relegated to some locked room in my brain. Commander Mott of the broken tail always said that a Zentadon was physically capable of much more than he ever realized. He only had to be tested under real life circumstances. It was all in the mind, he lectured. The mind was the engine that powered the machine. The machine kept going as long as the mind continued to function.

  Thank you, Commander Mott. I wondered if he had ever been tested beyond the breaking of his tail.

  It was more satisfying being the hunter than the hunted.

  The herds of lumbering beetles, mere monstrous gray forms through the swirling clouds and shimmer of rain, illuminated into frequent brief highlights by the pop of lightning, were being funneled into a boulder-strewn narrows between the descending apexes of two mossy hills. There the burn ended. I squatted under cover on one of the hills and scanned below, watching as Blade darted and dodged, maneuvering in an attempt to catch a sight picture of either Pia or me among the Goliaths. He was bare headed after finally discarding his malfunctioning helmet. The beetles appeared jittery, either because of the activity among them or the increasing ferocity of the storms, maybe both. They milled, circling and kind of rearing up on their back sets of legs to test with their antennae before continuing their forced march toward the narrows.

  Blade seemed so focused and intent running across the burn among the bugs, trying to locate his prey, that he paid no attention to the remaining four lizards in the pack. The lizards were as centered upon him as he was upon what he thought was me and the treasure. Time was running out. For him. For all of us. I tasted his desperation when he relaxed enough at moments to let out traces of himself.