Long Days (155 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-11-06 18:34:58 EST
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On maps of ancient Earth there were blank spaces, unexplored territories. These areas were often filled in by superstition and fear, cryptic warnings about terrible beasts inhabiting those places. The notion that many ancient maps contained the phrase 'here be dragons' is a myth. There are very few actual maps bearing those words, but there are many warnings about beasts just as curious or frightening to sailors and explorers of a young Earth.
We came to this distant star seeking a new home, an Eden.
We found dragons.
~
We found them on the great plain above the rift. They had been moving west like a herd of cattle, and now they stood silently, covered in dust.
It was night, and we were exploring above the rift in the beams thrown by our wrist and helmet lights. Mosquito-like bugs filled the air, searching our suits for exposed skin, attracted by our heat. We called them buggers. Their non-toxic bites stung and itched. Down in the rift buggers were seldom seen, and we could walk around in zip-up cottons. Up here we wore our patrol suits, and just as well, otherwise we would have been eaten alive.
Small jetbirds perched on unmoving horned heads and scaled backs while sucking in breaths that would be released with a loud razzing sound as the little things took to the night air on leathery wings. Jetbirds ate buggers like a kid ate popped corn. That made jetbirds our friends.
We had set down weeks ago, three days ago by the rotation of this new world, which was one and a half-times the size of Earth. The planet turned on its axis slower than we would be accustomed to as we had maintained Earth's day-night cycle aboard ship, and each day and night lasted three Earth days. They were long days and long nights.
While others continued settling into the calm depths of the rift, we were exploring. We had gone fifty kilometers up and down the rift, and this was our first climb up to the vast plains we had seen briefly as we had made our descent from space. We took pictures and bagged small plants and scooped up soil in plastic jars.
Greenfield raised a gloved hand and rapped on the head of one of the beasts.
"Solid as rock," he said, shouldering his rifle and pulling on the two long horns on the snout of the leading beast. "These things look like they are a thousand years old. Probably petrified."
There were thirty-six of the creatures in this group. Most were hunkered down, heads tucked in. The creature in the lead had its head cocked upward.
They were big. As big as horses, with rounded humps on their backs.
There appeared to be several other groups of the creatures on the plain, but further away it was hard to discern them from jumbles of rock and mounds of earth as everything was covered in fine gray dust.
With the heel of one boot I dug at the soil nurturing foot-high grassy blades. The blades danced and as the dust fell away I saw that they were a vivid green. They looked tough, almost leathery. I angled my wrist light down. In a few seconds I had a hole ten centimeters deep.
"The dirt is soft," I said.
Greenfield gave me a sneer. "So? What's your point, little girl?"
"The point is this," Burgundy said, "Wouldn't these things have sunk into this soft earth if they were standing here for any period of time?"
"Oh sure," Greenfield said. "These things just arrived yesterday. You fuck—"
"Enough," Ballisteros said. His voice was like the rumble of an engine. "We've done our sweep. There's nothing up here. Back to the ship."
Burgundy looked from me to Ballisteros. "With all due respect sir, I don't think a short radar sweep is a guarantee that there isn't any indigenous—"
"That's an order, Burgundy. We head back down now. You and Shiina can cover the rear in case anything tries to sneak up on us."
"Yeah, Lefty," Greenfield laughed. "With you shooting one-handed and Shiina trying to shoot straight without getting her tits in the way the two of you just might hit a moving target. Or you could just call for help."
I took a deep breath and stood tall, my breasts clearly outlined by my impact suit, which could be as hard as steel upon impact but was now as supple as latex.
"Don't worry, Greenfield. I'll be sure to keep these out of your way."
Greenfield raised his rifle and fired between Burgundy and me. The depleted uranium shell hit the left horn on the snout of the leading creature. The horn shattered.
"Knock it off," Ballisteros roared.
"Dead as shit," Greenfield muttered.
As our eight-man squad headed back to the trail leading down into the rift, I picked up a fragment of shattered horn and tucked it into one flap pocket.
~
We named this new world Bliss. Actually, the Turners named this world. The Far Corps squad laughed and jeered when it was announced ship-wide.
The Turners had been the single largest religious denomination back on Earth for over a hundred years when there was a backlash against them. Most of them were genuinely good people, but as their movement grew, so did their power base and socio-political influence. It was inevitable that they would be hated instead of admired. It's human nature.
The backlash happened in the time of my grandmother. By the time I was born, the Turners had put three ships in Earth orbit. They were looking for places to start over, free of religious persecution. Places where they didn't have to defend themselves. They were looking for Edens.
The Turners followed selective teachings of Jesus Christ. Their core belief was simple. When faced with antagonism and violence, turn the other cheek. That made for a peaceful and admirable society, but it set them apart from the rest of humanity.
And while they were peaceful, they weren't stupid. Back on Earth they took their beatings with a stoicism some admired and some condemned as crazy. When the Turner ships set off in search of new worlds, they took along mercenaries, most of whom where selected from the Far Corps, soldiers who had fought in the Lunar Civil War and had been in skirmishes on Io station and darkside Mercury.
The Turners did not fight. Nothing in their religion prohibited others from defending them, however. The mercenaries were along for the ride just in case they were needed. They were all grateful to be doing something productive.
I was born aboard the Hopeful, four years into the three-decade journey. I was schooled with Turners, who ran out the doors when the end bell rang and went home to chores or worked in the gardens or laboratories. I went home to chores as well. Cleaning rifles. Throwing knives. Hands-on combat.
"Turners can be sweet and good," my teacher said. "But sweet and good doesn't last long alone. They need muscle and steel and a heart that can be as cold as ice when the need arises."
Teacher taught me well. She had been drummed out of the Far Corps because she had restraint issues. When all hell broke lose, she was the one you wanted nearby, but in times of peace she might break your spine over one knee for some innocent comment taken the wrong way. Teacher knew the Turners were giving her one last chance.
She fractured one of my legs twice, broke a total of seven bones in both arms, broke my nose and my cheek, and gave me the thin white scar that bisected my left nipple.
When teacher was fifty years old she caught a cancer and died. She was buried in space with full Far Corps honors and sent on her way to the voices of a Turner choir. When the ceremony ended and I was alone in the quarters I shared with her, I was able to mourn my teacher as my mother.
~
Bliss was one of five Earth-like planets circling a distant star almost identical to our sun.
During our journey to Bliss, forty-five Turners died and thirty-eight were born. Three mercenaries died. I was the only replacement.
Turner scientists did all the scans they could from space, but that only told us so much. The day-night cycle on Bliss would take a lot of getting used to if we decided to stay, but the gravity was just slightly less that of Earth, and the atmosphere was a perfect match, if not cleaner. As we watched from orbit we saw that there were hellacious dust storms that kicked up at dusk, and cleansing rains at dawn, but there were deeps rifts in the great plains of the northern hemisphere that seemed to be sheltered from the storms and held deciduous forests, which would hopefully support anything we wanted to grow there. After studying the temperatures in the southern hemisphere we realized that winters would be mild on this world.
The air and soil could have been full of deadly microbes, or there could be savage primitives down there. The only way to know for sure was to set down and explore. That's why Far Corps mercenaries like me were on board. Just in case.
A shuttle went down and collected samples. The samples indicated that this world could support us.
The Turners decided to set down in one of the rifts for a single day-night cycle. The Corps would stand alert and go on recons while Turners sampled everything they could. After that, we would know if this world would welcome us.
After the Hopeful entered the atmosphere she switched from her fusion drive to jet engines, and extended her massive wings.
The sun was setting beyond the rift we were headed for, and the clouds around the ship were pink and gold.
I was looking forward to the smell of a wood fire.
A flock of wayward birds made this world our home, for better or worse. The birds were the size of condors. One moment we were dropping down through cloud cover at twelve thousand meters, and then the ship was jolted as five of eight engine intakes were filled with bird carcasses. Three engines exploded, two stalled, and the Hopeful dropped toward the rift like a stone fitted with wings.
It all happened so fast there was no ship-wide alarm raised, no time for warnings.
Our pilots were very good. We lost part of a wing and our communications tower to one jagged side of the rift, and hit and bounced and hit and tore a trench in the ground.
Of two hundred and six Turners and thirty Far Corpsmen, there were only nineteen deaths.
After realizing that the Hopeful would never again be airborne, we spent three day and night cycles exploring the rift we were in. We were lucky. The rift was hundreds of kilometers long and fifty klicks across. There was a river running along the bottom of the rift, perhaps the remainder of the flow that had carved this rift into the rock of millions of years.
The high ground above the river was forest, with small open plots where we could one day plant gardens. The Turners had livestock, but they weren't meat eaters. They ate milk and eggs and cheese, but no flesh. Along with breeding livestock and hundreds of frozen embryos they had seeds and transplantable gardens in the ship that could one day become orchards and fields providing all the food they needed.
Which is why my squad of Corpsmen went up onto the plains after many Earth days of staying by the safety of the ship. Damage assessments had been made and what little dust that filtered down from the twilight storms above had been cleaned away. With the coming of another long night the Turners had finally decided to send us out on a short exploratory recon, to observe and photograph and collect soil and plant samples. If we were lucky we could plant hardy crops that could survive the dust and rainstorm cycles that occurred on what we were already calling topside.
~
We had been away from the Hopeful for two Earth days of continuous night. Once back down in the rift we left our samples with the science division in the ship and then went to our quarters outside. The Corps had tents not far from the squat ruin of the Hopeful. It was cool at night, but it felt good to breathe fresh air and bathe in the river.
I went to the tent I shared with Burgundy and changed into layered cotton zips. He acted busy, but I knew he was watching by the bluish light of our lamps. It was a cool, clear night. I in turn watched Burgundy change clothes with one arm and admired his skill. Even though he was nearly twice my age he was a handsome, capable man. He had lost a limb in the battle of Venus Station. He must have been just a boy then.
All of the Far Corps mercenaries hired by the Turners were unfit for Corps service but still had a lot to offer. Sergeant Ballisteros was missing an eye. Greenfield had gotten his cock and balls sheared off by a laser at some time in the past. I assumed that was why he treated women like trash. Members of our squad had prosthetic legs and strap-on kidneys and titanium skulls.
We could still point and shoot better than any Turner, though.
I was intact, and I was here because I was an accident. Or so my teacher told me. I like to think she lied, and my mother really wanted me.
It was impossible to avoid seeing Burgundy's erect penis as he stripped down. I often looked in the mirror and wondered what it was about me that made that made me arouse most of the men and one or two women in the squad.
He saw me looking down at that jutting horn of flesh and gave me a 'what are you gonna do?' shrug.
I hadn't realized how awful recycled water tasted until I drank from a river for the very first time. I gave Burgundy sex, and asked him if he wouldn't mind filling up our big plastic water jugs at the river. Mother had always told me I was pretty, and as my teacher she said there was nothing wrong with giving sex for favors from time to time. When he left the tent I remembered the horn fragment in the flap pocket of my suit.
I found the fragment and returned to the Hopeful, looking up at the stars and realizing the night cycle would be ending soon. Up on the plain the first light of dawn was probably visible on the horizon, and the scudding clouds carrying the rainstorms that came with it.
A younger Turner scientist named Orem was overseeing work on many of the biological specimens collected, bugs and birds and the only mammal found so far, a ferocious little marsupial that looked like a tiny grizzly bear.
Orem was looking into a microscope when I entered his lab. He stood and gave me a little bow, a courtesy reserved for ladies, not mercenaries. Orem had a soft prettiness that made him the mockery of men like no-balls Greenfield, but the scientist had a gentle way about him, and an inquisitive nature I found appealing. Mercenaries asked very few questions before they started shooting. When I had returned from my first upriver recon in the rift me had asked me a hundred questions, his eyes glowing with fascination as I described the rift valley beyond the ship. He had complained that the Turner elders had declared him too valuable to set foot outside the Hopeful until we knew it was safe.
"Nao," he said. "I welcome you."
"Got something here," I said. I held up the dusty gray horn fragment.
He took it and examined it closely, turning it over and over.
"Incredible," he said. "Is it bone?"
I told him what we had found up on the plain.
"Even though they looked long dead," I said, "This one with the shattered horn bothered me. He was looking at the sky, but he didn't look like a dumb animal. He looked more like a cat than a mouse. There was something bird-like about his eyes. Like a hawk I saw in a library film about Earth animals. Like a hunter."
Orem washed the fragment with a bottle of sterile solution. Under the layer of dust the horn was blue-black, like the steel of an old handgun in a museum.
The tip was very sharp.
I took a seat and watched Orem. He was my age, maybe a year older. He turned the fragment this way and that, examined it under a light, poked inside the shattered end, and frowned the whole while.
I must have dozed off while he was looking at some of the pictures of soft, dusty shapes we had downloaded from our helmet cameras, something I never did on patrol, and then Orem gave me a gentle shake.
I nearly laughed when he asked, "Are you sure this was dead?"
"Greenfield shot that horn off of the creature's head," I said. "It didn't move at all."
Orem thought about that a moment, then said, "Come with me."
He led me outside the ship. As we stepped outside I saw him glance around nervously, clutching the horn fragment in one fist.
"It's perfectly safe," I said. "I'll protect you."
Orem scowled at that, and I imagined his masculine nature was butting up against his Turner disciplines.
Upriver we could see the glow of Far Corps lamps inside of tents, and campfires outside of them.
I saw a line of figures moving up the path to the plain above.
"Another patrol?"
Orem nodded. "The elders want more samples."
"I should be with them."
Orem looked almost embarrassed when he said, "I told the elders you were assisting me."
When he saw the look on my face he took a step back. "You were sleeping."
I looked again. I thought one of the tiny figures was missing an arm.
"Some of my squad are going out again?"
"As far as I know this recon is volunteer. That one armed fellow is going, yes."
Just as light began to brighten the sky over the rift, it grew dark very fast.
"Squall," I said, shoving Orem under the cover of a rent in the Hopeful's hull.
Water poured down. The air was so humid it was like breathing through a wet cloth. The river turned white and the earth looked at if it were being struck by invisible bullets.
After a few minutes the rain moved on. Now we were in for three days of sunny autumnal skies.
Rills of brownish water streamed into the rift.
"That dust in the rainwater is actually soil," Orem said. "It washes off of the plains and flows down here, where it accumulates and creates fertile soil. That's why we have such lush forests along the river, and why the plains are almost barren. I bet parts of those ledges on the edge of the rift are holding thousands of kilos of old dust."
I stepped outside and turned my face to the sun. It felt good after such a long night. I saw Corpsmen squatting and brewing coffee rations over campfires. Fresh brewed river water coffee was the best. Further up the rift wall I saw the distant recon patrol moving up and out of sight.
Gravel crunched behind me and I turned to see Orem holding up one hand, shielding his pale face from the sun. I laughed, and then felt alarmed.
"You cut your hand on that damned horn."
"There's no need for such vulgar language," he said with a smile, gently mocking the strict morality of Turner elders. He lowered his hand and inspected it closely. After a moment he said, "My hands are fine."
He was much paler now, and his eyes were wide, confused and a little scared.
"Well where is the blood coming from?" I asked.
Orem held up the horn fragment.
The shattered end looked like a broken bone, moist and red inside. A ruby-red drop of blood fell to the ground.
"Come with me," he said, his face now dark and stern.
He grabbed my hand and moved quickly, almost dragging me down the corridor. I found this rough handling unexpected, and appealing.
Back in Orem's laboratory he fiddled with a hand-held light source while a machine analyzed a drop of blood.
"I'm going to mimic the light of our new sun," he said.
He had set the fragment on the table. Under the standard ship lighting it looked dead and dry.
Orem moved the filtered light over the fragment, and it seemed to come alive.
"Its biophotonic," he said. He looked at a monitor and read the results of the blood analysis. "Carnivorous reptilian."
"What does that mean?"
"This horn contains cells that absorb light and..." he shrugged. "Convert it to energy, I suppose. And if the creature it came from had those cells all over its body, it could conceivably be dormant during the long nights and during the long days..."
"What?"
"I imagine it would awaken quite hungry."
~
I ran down corridors painted a soothing gray, running hunched over along the wall of one segment that had been twisted and crumpled during the crash. Alongside the shuttle docking bay and a line of storage bays was the Far Corps com room. Our old quarters were here as well, segregated from the general population during the flight. It made sense. We could be a rough bunch.
I thought of the creature I had taken the horn fragment from. I had begun thinking of it as Shatterhorn in my mind. Teacher taught me that. Name your enemies even in the heat of battle, and you won't loose track of them. A dozen faceless men were harder to account for than Fat Man and Bleeding Shoulder and Cracked Faceplate.
I thought of Shatterhorn. There had been something so unsettling about the way his head was cocked at the end of that long neck, those avian eyes turned up to the sky. Shatterhorn was no dumb animal. He had known what was coming.
Fifteen Far Corpsmen were standing in the orange glow of central com. I hadn't seen these men and women ever look this tense, not even when we came in for a crash landing. Twenty-three of us had survived the crash.
"What's happening?"
Most of them looked at me and looked away, since many of them saw me as a child. I had been born when they were in their prime, and now they were well into middle age.
Ballisteros was sitting at the com. He wasn't wearing his prosthetic lens. He said it gave him headaches. In the harsh orange glow of the com his missing eye was a ragged crater of scar tissue in a face twisted with frustrated rage. He looked like he could go mano-a-mano with the Turner's all-powerful God.
I edged closer. "Sergeant?"
He was holding an earpiece to one ear. With his free hand he held a finger to his lips, shushing me. Until then, I never would have imagined him capable of such a gentle gesture.
I looked up at the single large monitor on one wall. It was divided into eight segments, some of them already dark. Other feeds from the helmet cams topside showed flashes of sunlight and arms and legs and blue steel blurs.
Another picture went dark. The cameras were cheap things, and usually the first thing to go in a patrol suit.
Ballisteros closed his one good eye and lowered his head. Then he reached up and yanked the earpiece jack out of the com console. The speakers set high on each wall erupted with noise.
There was a mixed roar that was high-pitched and rumbling.
"Fuck!" somebody said.
"What was that?"
"Sounds like a lion trying to imitate a pig."
Ballisteros released a rumble of his own. "Quiet, people."
We Far Corpsmen shut our mouths.
And listened to what came out of the speakers.
"...falling back, falling back..."
A jumble of voices were fading in and out. Shouts, mutters, screams, and roars.
"We're falling back, Sarge." That was Burgundy. The picture from his cam was rolling and distorted. He sounded like he was still in control, but when he wasn't speaking his breath came very fast, faster than when he had been on top of me, not so long ago.
I could hear the quick put-put-put of rifles firing on semi-auto. It was such a little sound, I thought, knowing the devastation those depleted uranium shells could cause.
"Falling back, falling— Ruvier! Your back!"
There was another squeal and rumble and a man screamed.
"Muthafucka muthafucka muthafucka!" That was Barone. Each curse was punctuated by a gunshot. Barone had lost most of his digestive system to an acid grenade. When the rest of us were in the mess hall eating chow, he stayed in his bunk, injecting a thick, nutritious paste into a metal fitting on his scarred abdomen.
There was a lull, and then Barone whispered. "Three shots, corporal. Three shots, Burg. Two in the chest and one in the head. Don't these fuckin things have hearts or brain—"
There was a squealing roar and a thud and a cacophony of shots. For some reason I suddenly thought that this horror should be happening in the dark of night, not of a fresh and sunny morning.
Finally, Burgundy spoke again. His voice was choppy. He was running. "Men down... Barone, Ruvier, Sheih, and Long River. Tippins is in bad shape. I don't know what happened to Shennelwort. These things are everywhere, Sarge. We only killed four of them. Four! Tippins and I are heading for the path down into the rift."
His camera transmitted images of a jumping landscape.
For the first time, Ballisteros spoke. "You can't do that, son."
The speakers emitted white noise, broken by harsh breathing and nearby squealing roars.
"—the fuck? Fuck that shit man, I say fuck that fuckin—"
That was Tippins. Everybody called her Black Diamond because she was unbreakable. She was in full-blown panic now. Her helmet cam was dead, but her voice was coming through loud and clear.
Burgundy cleared his throat. "Sarge?" Burgundy knew. I could tell by his voice that the Corpsman part of him knew what the Sergeant was saying, but the part of him that wanted to live had to ask. "Can you repeat that?"
Ballisteros spoke softly, his voice rumbling like an engine on the other side of a steel wall. "Whatever those things are, you can't lead them back here, Burgundy. Lots of women and children down here, son."
There was a long silence. Huddled in the safety of the Hopeful very one of us wished we were topside right now. We could hear ragged breathing, and those roars that sounded so much like sounds of rage, drawing closer.
"Tippens, turn off your com."
"No, Burg, fuck that, FUCK THAT!"
"Tippens."
"Okay," Tippens said. "Sarge, don't let this be a motherfuckin waste now. You circle the wagons and get ready, cause if these things find you, you got a hell of a fight comin." There was a tiny click.
Now we could only hear Burgundy breathing. "Hey, Nao," he whispered. "Thanks... for before."
As he clicked off his com, everyone looked at me.
After about a minute Ballisteros opened his mouth. "All right, soldiers. We—"
With a dry snap a com clicked on and a patch on the big monitor lit up. Someone was screaming. We saw the edge of the rift, and the trail leading down.
"I'm almost there! I'm almost at the edge of the path! Get ready for me cause I'm almost—"
The speakers transmitted a crunching, choking sound and someone whispered, "Fucking Shennelwort."
Jagged white shapes filled the picture from Shennelwort's helmet cam.
Jenny Allunga pointed at the monitor. "Are... are those teeth?"
There was a buckling crunch. The monitor went black. We could all imagine Shennelwort's faceplate shattering.
Just before the sound of breaking bones filled the room and Ballisteros switched off the com, we heard snuffling, like a dog testing the wind for a scent.
~
We hustled out of the com room and went to the armory, a storage closet filled with weapons, where we grabbed battlebags and filled them with loaded magazines for our rifles. Ballisteros grabbed a four-shot rocket tube and then raised the dusty cover of a wall-mounted emergency alarm and slammed his fist against the flat button. For the first time the ship was filled with rise and fall of the alarm.
As we went down the corridor to the nearest exit, Turners jumped out of our way, some of them covering their eyes when they saw our weaponry, as if we were carrying something obscene.
We filed out of the Hopeful and stood looking up at the edge of the rift. Since we had been off duty, all of us were wearing our casual zips.
"Shiina and Allunga stay with me," Ballisteros said. "The rest of you get suited up."
I kept my eyes on the ridge above us, trying not to think of the protection my suit offered. I was wearing a thin layer of cotton and rubber soled shoes.
Ballisteros set down the rocket tube and raised a rangeviewer to his good eye. "Don't worry, you two. If those fucking geckoes come down here I don't think patrol suits will make much of a difference."
"Way to reassure a girl, Sarge," I said.
Ballisteros looked at me a moment as if he wanted to say more, glanced at Jenny, and then went back to watching the ridge through the rangeviewer.
"Turner's Christ," he said. "Here they come."
I set my battlebag and rifle on the ground. Among the confusion of magazines were a burn pistol and a rangeviewer. I held the device to my eyes and scanned the ridge.
The stone-hard dusty dragons we had seen topside were now coming down the steep path in single file. They were dark blue and supple, and they moved like intelligent lizards, testing their footing as the descended. They had skin like armor plating, jaws two feet long, sharp snout horns, and strong legs that ended in thick claws.
When I turned to Ballisteros he had the rocket tube on one shoulder. He looked through the sight and said, "This is what happens when you piss off mammals."
A missile leaped away from the rocket tube on a streak of white vapor. The trail was a series of old ledges winding down into the rift. The missile struck one of the ledges. We saw rocky debris and a cloud of dirt rise up into the air and heard the concussion a moment later. Two of the dragons were blown apart. Two fell a long way, striking jumbled rock above the river.
I looked up. The long line of dragons continued to move. When they came to the damaged ledge they would pause, sniff the air, and then jump the gap.
"I count twenty," Allunga said, looking through her own rangeviewer.
I saw movement in the distance and used my viewer. One of the fallen dragons was thrashing as if it had a broken back. The other was slowly crawling across tumbled rock toward the Hopeful.
Three Corpsmen in patrol suits ran to meet it, firing their rifles. When they got closer the slow-moving dragon leaped onto one of them. Rifle shots echoed up and down the rift.
When the dragon finally stopped moving, only two Corpmen were standing.
Ballisteros looked grim. "One hundred and fifteen shots," he said. "Just to take down one of those things. An injured one."
He looked over his shoulder. Inside one of the access ports he could see Turners peering out of the shadows. He shook his head.
I looked back and thought I saw Orem in the gloom.
The suited-up Far Corpsmen assembled before Ballisteros. One of them was Greenfield. He was covered in dragon blood. He had been one of the two shooting the fallen dragon. His face was as white as snow.
The sun was still at an angle, not yet over the rift. The dragons were still making their way down the trail on the sunny side of the rift. They would be here in minutes.
If only it was night, I thought, looking back at the virtually helpless Turners peeking out from the shadows of the Hopeful. And they were the brave ones. The rest of them were probably cowering in the dark.
Ballisteros began deploying a defensive line. I saw him point at me, but I didn't hear a thing he said.
Shadows, I thought.
"They don't come into the rifts because of the shadows," I said.
Ballisteros frowned at me.
"They can't function in the dark."
"It's fuckin daytime, little girl," Greenfield said.
Peering through her rangeviewer, Allunga gasped. "There is another group of those things gathering up top."
I raised a hand, pointing at the opposite side of the rift. "Yes, but the sun is still rising. If we can—"
Ballisteros grabbed my wrist and squeezed, hard. God damn me, he was strong for an old man.
"Join the line, Shiina."
"Sarge, think about it. These things were dead in the night and—"
"And we have an enemy force approaching our position. Join the line, Corpsman!"
I turned and ran for the ship.
Ballisteros shouted, "This isn't a game!"
I looked back and saw him deploying the mercenaries in two lines of seven.
The first of the dragons had reached the bottom of the rift and was galloping toward us with frightening speed.
I ran inside the ship.
Scattershot weapons fire from outside sounded distant and weak.
~
"We've got to keep everyone inside the Hopeful," I said, after finding Orem in the relative dark of the ship interior. "Shut down all the lights. Those things out there can't operate in the dark."
Orem shook his head. "And then what, Nao? We hold out until dark and... what? Try and destroy them? Run from the rift? You said they were like stone—"
"We could use explosives to blow the fuckers to pieces."
"And if more come, what then? Cower in here until our food runs out? Try to outrun them topside? What—"
"Turners seem to be authorities on cowering and running," I said. "Are you going to eat, or be eaten, you fucking spineless—"
Orem slapped me, hard. It was so unexpected I reeled backwards, and he was already grabbing me and holding me like a mother with a child.
"I'm sorry, Nao. God forgive me, for I have sinned."
I looked him in the eye and smiled, tasting blood from a split lip.
"So you can fight after all," I said.
Orem hung his head, ashamed. "What now?"
I told Orem that all of the Turners should seal themselves behind locking doors. When he passed on that order I grabbed his hand and led him through the ship to the animal bays. When we reached the little cheese farm, I took my burn pistol from my holster and grabbed a tether. I chased down one of twenty plump goats and put the tether around its neck.
Orem gave me a look that verged on disgust. "What are you going to do to this poor creature?"
"It's time we gave your God a sacrifice," I said, leading Orem and the goat outside.
When we stepped out of the ship I kept my eyes of the shadowed side of the rift. In the corner of my eye I could see the Far Corps firing their rifles furiously at the advancing creatures, and I was proud of them. I was also certain they were all going to die.
"My God," Orem said, "Those things..."
"Shut up," I said, picking up the rocket tube and tossing it to him. "Carry this."
We ran down to the riverbank and I pointed my burn pistol at the goat's flank and fired, angling the pistol to create a wide, bleeding wound instead of a small cauterized hole.
The animal let out a bleating cry and I saw more than one dragon head turn our way.
We ran to a shallow part of the river and waded across, and then started up the gentle slope to the trees lying in shadow. I dragged the goat as it weakened, leaving a trail of blood behind.
"This is ridiculous," Orem said. "Those things probably see your fellow soldiers as fresh meat. Why would they follow us?"
"Because," I said. "I saw parts of the last attack. They killed Corpsmen, but they didn't eat them. Maybe we taste bad. They have to eat something though, and since they don't know how many goats we have I'm hoping—"
I started pulling the goat along as fast as I could. Orem looked over his shoulder and let out a squeak. I swore that if we lived through this I would tease him about making that unmanly sound until his dying day.
At least forty dragons had veered in our direction and were splashing across the river.
We ran across loamy soil and entered the trees. The forest growth was a thick band of vegetation only a few hundred meters thick, up and down the length of the rift valley.
When we were clear of the trees, we started entering an area of heavy shadows. Above us was the rift wall, jutting ledges of rock. Fifty meters away was a small hollow of rock that looked as solid as granite. Shelter.
The sun was still moving, and the shadows under this part of the rift wall were receding faster than I had expected. I was counting on them to keep the dragons at bay.
The goat was staggering and sluggish, and I let go of the tether.
From across the river I heard a Corpsman let out a horrifying scream.
I raised the rocket tube and aimed at a part of the rift wall that looked dry, untouched by runoff from the rains. I remembered what Orem had said earlier, about the ledges holding lots of old dust.
I fired the three remaining rockets up into the rift wall, pulverizing a lot of rock, but not all of it.
I turned to grab Orem and saw that he was kneeling by the dying goat.
"God damn me," I said, hearing a growing rumble above and roars and the furious snapping of branches in the trees below.
I grabbed Orem's arm and dragged him just as I had dragged the goat.
Dragons burst out of the trees and paused, looking upward with their avian eyes.
A stone hit my shoulder and another bounced off of Orem's stupid goat-loving head. I threw him into the rock hollow and rolled in after him. The world was obscured by dust and falling rock.
When the last fragment of the rift wall fell, I looked out into a gray world. The dragons were covered in dust and moving slowly.
A small group of bloody, beaten and beautiful Far Corpsmen came out of the trees and began systematically shooting the dragons with round after round until the creatures dropped dead.
I heard the gruff voice of Sergeant Ballisteros and laughed out loud.
"The hump! Shoot the hump! It's either a brain or a heart under there!"
"Who gives a donkeyshow fuck what it is!" That was Greenfield, and I was amazed at the joy I felt when I realized he was alive. "Just fill those fuckin humps with the heavy stuff!"
Orem reached out to hug me like the softie he was, when I noticed one of the dragons slinking through the trees. He dragon had only one horn rising from its snout. Shatterhorn.
The dragon wasn't trying to hide. It wasn't running away from the remaining Corpsmen. It was edging around them. It was heading for the river, over which a hanging shroud of dust moved toward the fighting dragons on the far side.
I thought of how good it felt the first time I bathed in the cool water, naked under the sun.
"Turner's Christ," I moaned, not realizing I had picked up the Sergeant's favorite epithet.
Shatterhorn was going to wash himself off in the river.
I caught up with him just as he was stumbling to the water, his great clawed feet kicking up sprays of water. I realized I was only carrying my burn pistol.
I didn't want to do this.
My teacher would have done this. My mother would have done this.
I jumped onto the dragon's back and fired the pistol, burning through the hump on his back. The dragon surged ahead into deep water, and then reared up. The world spun around me. I saw a long line of dragons standing motionless and watching from the trail high above the shifting cloud of dust.
Shatterhorn fell to one side. I was swept off of him by the water and felt a tearing pain in one shoulder. After that, all was darkness, until I woke up inside the ship, in the infirmary.
~
I learned later that Shatterhorn had swiped me with his claws just before the water carried me away.
Half of the Far Corps were dead or mortally wounded. Those still living converged on Shatterhorn and shot him down.
Ballisteros told me the dragon had reared up one last time and let out a roar directed up at the others on the trail leading down into the rift. After that, the creatures on the trail had turned around and gone back the way they had come.
Greenfield had jumped into the river and pulled me out, even though he was a mass of injuries. He even gave me mouth to mouth, the bastard.
I spent a month in a bed inside the Hopeful, healing. Orem visited from time to time, wary of me. He would babble excitedly about the dissections he planned for the dragons, but wouldn't come too close.
"Don't dissect Shatterhorn," I said. "Just bury him. You have enough other carcasses to play with."
When he asked my why I would make such a bizarre request, my answer was simple.
"The beast fought well," I said. I knew the Far Corps would understand.
When I was well enough, I went to the library. I could have asked Orem or Ballisteros to look for what I needed, but I didn't want to alarm anyone. I had to be sure.
After some searching I found the video archive of images caught by the hull cameras as the Hopeful had been coming in for her crash landing. There were pink and gold clouds all around the ship. Then the Hopeful shuddered, and began a fast descent toward the rift we now called home.
I waited for the moment just before the ship entered the rift. I froze the image from one particular hull camera and enlarged it. The picture on the monitor showed the western plain from a height of a few hundred meters.
On the horizon a dust storm was sweeping toward us, the storm that came before every long night. In the middle distance were fields of blue. I enhanced the image as best I could, and then simply stared. The plain was covered with thousands of dragons moving in herds, like the buffalo of old Earth.
A final count showed we had killed eighty-one of them so far. We had lost half of the Far Corps, who had either died during the fight or soon afterward from the injuries they had received. They were buried as heroes.
Sooner or later, more dragons would come for us, and there might be more of them as intelligent as the one with the shattered horn.
The Turners were going to have to learn how to fight.
There were long days ahead.
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Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:42:19 EDT (#)
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