Under Strange Suns (18 page)

It appeared to be a form of crossbow; a curved bow arm topping a straight stock. The aliens leaned the weapons against their chest armor, the bow arm resting against the ground. The end of the stock was hinged. Each alien levered this forward, activating some sort of pulley or ratchet system that drew back the bow. Leaving the crossbow leaning, the alien then reached back for an arrow–or perhaps the proper term was quarrel, though it looked about long enough to be an arrow–and slotted it into the stock, just before the drawn bowstring. Must be some sort of notch to keep the quarrels from slipping free, but Aidan couldn’t make it out at the distance. Aidan figured it for a nuisance weapon, slow to load, inherently inaccurate with one-armed firing, and intended more to provide covering fire and to keep the enemy’s head down than for precision sniping.

While four of the aliens readied their crossbows, the others closed in.

Aidan placed the front sight center mass of the closest alien and squeezed the trigger. The caseless round accelerated to supersonic velocity and punched through armor and torso. The alien’s momentum propelled him a few more steps, but he was dead before sprawling into the clover.

Aidan shifted his aim. Absent the need for a blowback mechanism to capture and channel gasses from a standard round of ammunition, there was little felt recoil. The spring in the magazine popped the next round into position in front of the electronic firing pin instantaneously and Aidan dropped his next target nearly as fast. Mechanically it felt more like using the light gun of an arcade game than an actual fire-fight. The nature of his targets did little to alleviate that, though Aidan knew the blood and corpses were real, not pixels on a screen.

An arrow slammed into the tree. Three inches to the right and it would have punched through his throat instead of driving half its own length into the trunk. The arrowhead, a needle-like bodkin point, was hammered entirely through, digging into the padded webbing of Aidan’s combat harness.

Shit. The bows were more accurate than he’d guessed. Time to move.

Aidan whirled and darted deeper among the trees, zigging and zagging about a dozen yards before taking cover again. The aliens continued their pursuit. His sprint had gained him a couple more yards distance, a distance that disappeared in the time it took him to bring the pistol to bear and squeeze off another round. Then another.

His maneuver appeared to have removed him from clear bow shot. Through the staggered gaps among the trees he saw the archers moving, presumably to a more advantageous firing position. While they were moving he was shooting, dropping one alien after another.

It wasn’t going to be enough. He had put down ten. Four were temporarily out of the fight, looking for a spot from which to drill him with bolts. That left six, and they were spreading out to flank him.

Time to move again. But instead of another brief retreat Aidan exploded to his left, leaving the cover of the tree trunk and charging the three oncoming aliens. He screamed at them, right arm extended, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. One crumpled, a leg shot out from beneath him. A second fell.

Click.

He’d emptied the magazine. No time to eject it and slap in a spare. No time to draw his knife.

He raised the pistol, pointing at the third. Maybe he could parry the inevitable sword thrust, get in close, pistol whip the little bastard.

The alien drew up short, eyes fixed on the barrel aimed at his head. He spat a single syllable, turned and fled.

Aidan spun again, thumbing the eject button while with his offhand reaching for a fresh magazine. The other three aliens, seeing their comrade in flight, apparently also decided they’d had enough.

Aidan considered shooting a couple of them in the back while they were still in range, then thought better of it. He already had enough to answer for to posterity.

He bent to retrieve the ejected magazine, and keeping low, trotted to the nearest tree. Using that for cover, he confirmed that the archers had joined the general retreat.

Aidan heard a muted grunt and turned to see the alien he’d shot in the leg groping for his dropped sword. The leg wound was pumping blood in profusion. Despite his complete lack of knowledge regarding the alien physiognomy, Aidan felt pretty sure the guy was a goner without immediate medical assistance.

He holstered his pistol. He held his arms up, palms out, wondering if it would register as a sign of peace to creatures born with a single arm. For good measure he crouched, lest his greater height be considered intimidating. He crabbed forward, moving slowly. The alien’s smell was odd. Not unpleasant, just odd. It reminded Aidan of backroom stocks of yellowing paperbacks in a used bookstore, musty, on the verge of mildew. The alien lifted the sword, point of the blade centered on Aidan. Aidan stopped. He lowered one arm, grabbing his own leg at a point congruent to the area of the alien’s leg where the bullet had entered, then pointed at the alien.

It seemed to Aidan a clear enough message: “Let me help you with the leg.” He crept forward again.

The alien rolled up to his knees and lunged at Aidan. Aidan leaped back, the tip of the blade scoring a line in the plastic casing of the flashlight strapped to the front of his harness. The alien toppled forward, rolled to his side and continued to menace Aidan with the sword.

The activity was doing the wound no good; it poured blood at an accelerated rate. It struck Aidan that the only chance of saving the alien’s life was to leave him alone. Perhaps he could apply pressure himself, staunch the flow of blood. A doubtful prospect, but Aidan didn’t know what else to do. So, not without certain conflicted feelings, Aidan turned and left the alien to his fate.

Giving wide berth to the nearest aliens, not wanting to come within sword range if they weren’t in fact dead, he made his way back to the cluster of monoliths. He’d need to take his bearings again, get back on course.

He stopped before the body of the first alien he’d shot. The corpse was still slumped against the monolith, sitting in a pool of his own blood. The skin tone had faded to a yellowed ivory. The eyes stared blankly, pupils a horizontal oval set in wide irises the color of wheat beer. Aidan could see no sign of respiration.

He reached out cautiously with one foot, placed his boot on the sword blade that lay near the body. No sudden, violent resurrection occurred. Breathing more easily, Aidan scooped to pick up the sword.

A voice in the back of his mind informed him
you should loot the bodies
. Lessons from playing D&D. A grim joke, not the least bit funny. He laughed anyway. During years of racking up body counts with Captain Merit’s team, that joke had never occurred to him. Something about these particular, non-human corpses brought it to mind.

He couldn’t spare the time to examine the body, learn something. Right now, these aliens were obstacles to his mission, not science specimens. Besides, there were at least seven aliens out there who might return at any moment. The body had a pouch belted about his waist. Aidan worked the tip of the sword beneath the flap closing the pouch and flipped it open, exposing small bundles wrapped with purple leaves. Food? Probably. He decided it was too early to cast the die and find out if the native chow was edible or poisonous or simply non-nutritive. This particular sample would probably spoil before he ran short of rations, so he left it alone.

Well, the sword wasn’t bad loot.

Getting a fix on the pass between the two mountain peaks, he left the battlefield behind.

He pushed himself, wanting to reach the summit of the pass before nightfall, but realized after about an hour that was not going to happen. The summit rose above the terminus of the tree line; as far as he could tell, he would be tromping through forest for hours to come. The primary sun was edging near the western horizon and the sky was deepening to violet. The eastern horizon had taken on a robin’s egg blue sheen.

He’d need to find a place to bed down soon. Someplace sheltered, concealed, defensible. Someplace–

It should have come as no surprise to Aidan that this world had evolved apex predators. Nor that such would inhabit forested mountainsides. Perhaps Aidan had wandered into its territory. Perhaps the scent of all the blood-shed further downslope had drifted upon the prevailing breezes, attracting the attention of both hunters and scavengers alike. Ultimately it made no difference if Aidan was an interloper, or had accidentally intersected the path of a hungry creature on its way to a meal it scented. There he was. And there was the top of the local food chain, a thousand pounds of muscle, bristling fur, and fangs.

Aidan had time for a good look at it. That was about all he had time for. He doubted he had time to drop the sword and draw his pistol.

The creature was bipedal, muscular legs propelling it in a sort of rapid shuffle, allowing gravity to provide much of the locomotive force, the legs pistoning just fast enough to keep it upright. The barrel-like torso leaned forward, as if an erect posture was not the creature’s customary stance. A single arm, corded with thick muscle, jutted from the center of the chest. Its outstretched claws stood at the level of Aidan’s head. The barrel of the torso tapered to a bullet-shaped head that seemed to Aidan all fanged maw and huge, blood-shot eyes. The entirety was covered in a pelt of deep purple bristles, more like quills than fur.

Aidan couldn’t plan or scheme. He could only react. He extended the sword, putting something sharp and pointy between him and the onrushing danger. At the same time, he hopped backwards and to his left.

Contact occurred while he was in mid leap. The predator’s own speed and bulk conveyed the sword point deep into its abdomen, beneath the arm. At the same time its claws raked Aidan’s arm below the elbow, ripping through the tough, Kevlar-reinforced fabric of his jacket, lacerating the flesh. The impact threw Aidan five feet downslope. The oversize sword hilt tore loose from his grip, leaving the blade protruding from the creature like a second arm.

Aidan hit the turf on hands and knees, sliding in blue ground cover. This high up the ground cover thinned, leaving exposed patches of bare soil and rock.

The predator emitted a shriek of pain or anger. Aidan had expected a roar, like a bear’s, and was surprised by the almost cat-like yowl he heard instead.

Aidan pushed himself to his feet, a blaze of pain firing along his arm where the claws had scored him. He reached for his pistol, hoping the blow hadn’t damaged tendons. He was relieved when the arm responded as directed.

The creature was pawing at the blade in its gut, swatting at the painful thing. It bent to bite at it, temporarily ignoring Aidan. That was more than fine with Aidan, who used the respite to take aim and put two rounds center mass, then two more in the head.

The monster went down. The body spasmed once, contorted into a ball, then went still.

“I fucking hate this place,” Aidan said. “Goddamn wandering monsters.”

He wanted to slump against the nearest tree and check the severity of this wound. But first he needed to put some distance between him and the body. Could be more where that one came from, or scavengers drawn to the scent. He approached the carcass, reached down and worried free the sword. Seemed worth holding onto, useful in a pinch. Sword in hand, he plodded uphill until he found an outcropping of rock he could put his back against, a vantage providing decent visibility.

Aidan unbuckled his combat harness and stripped off his jacket and shirt, wincing as fabric pulled free from the flesh it had been forcibly entangled with. He squirted a stream of water onto the wound, getting a look at the depth of the gashes before they welled full of blood again.

He fumbled open the first-aid kit with his left hand. He spritzed the wound with antibiotics. He was unsure if there was any point to that step here. Would the microbial life forms here be affected? For that matter, were they any danger to him in the first place? Still, follow training. Better safe than gangrenous and dead, right? He unwrapped a sterile bandage and slapped it in place. The blood-coagulating agents and analgesics impregnating the fibers got to work. Aidan applied pressure for ten minutes, and felt the sharp edge of the pain dull.

He checked the bandage. The blood had clotted. He gingerly donned shirt and jacket again, easing them over the bandage. He buckled on his harness.

He moved on again.

His arm throbbed. It would, of course. But he hoped it was simply the normal reaction to trauma, not some alien flesh-eating bacteria. Something else for the history books that would never be written–the first case of Upsilon Andromeda d gangrene. Something else that wouldn’t be named after him.

Another thirty minutes uphill. He was beginning to tire. The high oxygen content and the marginally lower gravity had bolstered him so far, but the long trek and two life-or-death battles were beginning to take a toll.

The terrain altered subtly. He wasn’t yet above the treeline, the forest still marching upslope ahead of him. But he had entered a section of smaller trees. As near as he could tell they were the same species, but they did not stand nearly as tall. So, younger presumably. The slope was broken as well, shelving. Almost like terraces stepping up the mountainside. He clambered up a sheer break in the slope, like climbing atop a retaining wall, then walked across a nearly level surface until reaching the next terrace.

He considered whether he might be in an orchard. But the trees displayed no evidence of being fruit-bearing, and they did not stand in ordered ranks. No, this wasn’t an orchard. These trees were growing naturally over previously cleared land.