Hidden in Predator Planet, page 24
The pulsing thought in my head, swim to CeCe, was a steady beat.
“CeCe?” I pinged my mate.
No answer.
“VELMA, how far away is CeCe?” I asked, both desperate and terrified of VELMA’s answer.
“I cannot detect CeCe’s helmet at this time,” she said. “But do not give up hope. My communication abilities are hampered in cave systems. I will keep trying.”
Though I pushed my hand against the rope, pressing it against the wall, the wall jumped away from me as if a frightened mud-beast. Frantic, I reached out, trying to find the rope in the muddy water. Something dragged against my fingers, and I clamped onto it; it was the rope, and miraculously, it was still taut, though I couldn’t feel the rock behind it.
Breathing settling into a less panicked rhythm, I shifted forward with my rope guide, hoping to find CeCe safe and alive at its end. The quake continued around me, though the sensation was muted being surrounded by water as I was. The defining manifestation was the rope that vibrated like a live wire in my hand. I willed it to hold; it was the literal line tethering me to CeCe’s life, and the moment struck me like a bolt of lightning.
Ever since the moment I stood outside Pattee’s ship and recognized the dream for the warning it was about the fifth human, I had felt such a tether to CeCe. I had no answers to the wonder that a woman from another universe could fulfill my unknown dreams or how she came to be here of all places. Some might declare it the will of a benevolent deity, and to them I would say, may you keep such a beautiful hope in your heart always. But without that faith, I could only feel amazement and profound gratitude while also remaining in a state of uncertainty. And yet there was still peace in my heart.
Because certainty was granted to me via the thread that connected CeCe’s soul to my own. That thread, tether, connection—whatever it was, was as strong as this line trembling in my fist.
Would the anchors hold during the quake? Would the bones of Ikthe shake loose the line that drew me to her stroke after stroke?
If love is enough …
I rammed into a solid obstacle and shouted in surprise. Then CeCe’s arms were a vise around my middle, and I surrounded her with my body while keeping a sure grip on the line.
“I’ve found you,” I said. “And I am never letting you go.”
A tighter squeeze was her answer, and gladness filled me to the brim.
“Thank you,” she said. “That was very dangerous and ill-advised of you. But thank you. I didn’t want to die alone.”
“You will not die,” I said. “Not until we are both very old with countless tales to tell our offspring’s offspring.”
The vibration in the rope stilled, and I held my breath a jotik. The landquake had ceased.
“I’ll address that comment some other time,” CeCe said, amusement in her voice. “Do you happen to have any more anchors and some rope?”
We bolted three more anchors before finding the outlet in a vast and warm cavern dripping with hundreds of stalactites and teeming with countless stalagmite teeth.
“Oh, the girls are going to love this,” CeCe said, and we dove again, following the line through the long tunnel.
One section narrowed to fit one hunter due to a collapse; it must have happened after I’d passed it, but the channel remained passable, and we surfaced a half-zatik later to find our company huddled in the opening that Natheka and Amity had explored before. The havabuthe’s smooth floor was now littered with rubble, and a long crack had appeared across the entire length of the ceiling.
“The canal leads to a cavern adjacent to the lava fields,” I said.
The group filed down to the bank, and we collected and fastened our packs and rucksacks. The first robot had traveled to the cave-in and worked at clearing it under VELMA’s direction, and the second robot would stay in the havabuthe as water travel wasn’t possible for it.
The quake sobered us, and we swam single file along CeCe’s rope line in utter silence and utter darkness, as we conserved energy. The water suns had retreated to their mysterious homes during the quake, and from this point onward, we needed our battery packs for our return trip.
In spite of the danger ahead, I could no longer summon anxiety. CeCe and I were together, bound by an unfathomable link, and for the first time in many long cycles, I was content—and happy.
57
CeCe
“How did you know this was adjacent to the lava fields?” I asked Raxthezana as we all pulled ourselves from the cave pool and chose a path between stalagmites.
“I had marked it on one of my maps,” he said. “But I also sensed a temperature change in the water.”
“Oh, it is warmer, isn’t it?” I said and scrolled display options in my visor. I found one that showed the temperature and humidity and confirmed it.
“These formations are incredible!” Joan said.
“One of the most beautiful caves I’ve ever seen,” Pattee murmured, reverence anointing her tone. We could see scattered smashed formations here and there, but overall, the damage wasn’t as horrible as I expected.
“When do the monsters come out and ruin it for us?” Amity asked, and I laughed.
“So, I’m not the only one on edge?” I said.
“Definitely not,” Esra chimed in. “Any minute now ….”
The humans laughed, but the hunters didn’t join in.
“Girls’ channel,” Amity announced.
“I bet they’re grimacing,” I said.
“They’re 100 percent grimacing,” Esra replied.
“I think I’m in love,” I blurted.
Stunned silence, and then the women laughed again.
A chorus of delighted statements punctuated my helmet. “When did this happen?”
“I knew it!”
“Finally.”
“Wonderful!”
“He’s—I don’t know how to describe it. Except that he’s here for me. He’s never trying to change who I am. He helps me when I need it but otherwise lets me fuddle my way through things. He sees me for who I am, and God. I don’t even know who I am anymore!”
“Yeah, what is it about these aliens? Is it the matriarchal society? Is it cultural or religious?” Esra said.
“Or maybe it’s their occupation or life experience,” Pattee suggested.
“Whatever it is, I can get used to this,” I said. “I’m also a bit surprised, but happily so, about the chemistry. We haven’t even done anything yet, but I just want to eat him up.”
Amity sighed loudly in my headset. “The blush of new love is so romantic.”
We laughed until our guides stopped us with raised hands. We’d drifted into the center of the single file as we talked, and now we were flanked by the hunters.
“I scent ikadaxl,” Natheka said.
“We’re quite far from the nursery,” Raxthezana said. “They nest on the north side of the Black Mist Chamber.”
“How big is their territory?” Amity asked.
By now, all of us crouched along the narrow trail, keeping still and peering into the dark spaces between stalagmites. Naraxthel had suggested we use night-vision for this leg of our journey, the risk of drawing curious creatures with helmet lights too high.
“The ikadaxl roam far under the mountains,” Natheka said. “At times, they are known to emerge into the skies, as well.”
“Into the skies?” Amity said. “I imagined some kind of big worm digging tunnels in the rock.”
“That would be the rock worm,” Hivelt said. “It is large enough to devour you lot, but it does not prey upon meat.”
“That’s a mercy,” Esra muttered. “I think.”
“Did Hivelt just call us meat?” Joan whispered.
“I think so,” I whispered back.
“The skies?” Pattee’s calm voice brought us back to the present danger.
“If it helps,” VELMA said. “I’ve imported a screen capture from Theraxl archives of the ikadaxl.”
The image popped into my visor and presumably those of my friends, as well.
“Holy freaking schist,” Esra said.
Amity’s breathy voice was ecstatic when she spoke next. “Dragons are real?”
“For the record,” Hivelt said. “I am not carrying an unhatched egg back to the surface.”
Natheka’s quiet laugh. “She wouldn’t ask you, my friend,” he said. Then, “The scent faded. I’ll run ahead several veltiks and scan the area.”
“You wouldn’t steal an egg, would you?” I asked Amity.
“Meh,” she said. “Diablo is all the pet I need.”
Amused and admittedly, relieved, a frisson of joy trilled in my heart. Lightyears from my old life, I was crouched in a breathtaking formation cave surrounded by massive hunters and courageous, intelligent women, waiting to find out if we were about to battle a huge, cave-dwelling reptile that resembled an honest-to-God dragon on an alien planet.
It wasn’t precisely what I’d signed up for when I began working for IGMC, but damn if it wasn’t the most incredible circumstance to be in.
Looking behind me, I saw Raxthezana dip his helmet at me, and that little frisson bloomed into a full-on shiver. Chemistry.
“A lone ikadaxl heads toward you,” Natheka reported with calm intonation. “She eluded my notice until now.”
“Enter the monster,” Esra muttered.
As one, the rest of us faded behind the nearest formations and waited, drawing our weapons.
“Do ikadaxl breathe fire?” Joan asked, the slightest tremor detectable in her voice.
“I do not understand the question,” Naraxthel said.
“That’s good enough for me,” Amity replied.
“What do we need to watch out for?” Pattee clarified.
“The ikadaxl are possessed of talons as long as my hand,” Raxkarax said. “A spiked tail similar to that of the spiny warted rock climber, and powerful wings with which it soars over the lava fields and also uses to embrace its prey.”
“It devours its prey with its mouth; ringed by double rows of teeth, it also has a double-spiked tongue,” Raxthezana said from behind me.
“As large as a Theraxl hunter at its smallest,” Naraxthel continued, “it is yet able to lift one of us. And has.”
“Does it have a throat sac?” Esra asked.
“Ik, though its sac is of a tougher hide, that it might withstand the temperatures of the lava fields,” Naraxthel finished.
“Well damn,” Amity said. “There goes my strategy.”
“Right?” Esra said.
I tightened my fist on the hilt of the sword I’d pulled from its sheath. I could feel a stirring in me, and I wondered if the shel somehow sensed the changes in my body when my brain signaled the fight-or-flight response. Of course, they would, I thought. They injected their own amino acid and hormone cocktail into my bloodstream.
The stirring, the adrenalin spike tempered with a preternatural calm, the readiness: the shel, in concert with my body, were preparing me for battle.
Exhilarated, I couldn’t wait. And that feeling had to be the shel, because both the old and new CeCe was shaking in her boots.
58
Raxthezana
I watched in awe as CeCe rose from her crouch and stepped into the path, willing the ikadax to enter the chamber, and I did not stop her.
The humans were a dauntless lot in and of themselves, but never would I have suspected that one could wear the shel armor with such grace or aptitude. CeCe moved as if she had been born into it, but also took up more space than her size suggested, a force of Ikthe.
Jotiks later, I spied the ikadax as it emerged from the darkened tunnel ahead of us, and where the others, both hunters and humans, stayed behind cave formations, CeCe stood at the ready, poised to fight.
She spoke.
“Pattee,” she said. “How is your line of sight?”
“Excellent,” was the reply. “I have a straight shot into its eye if it turns its head.”
“Amity, can you grab its attention?” CeCe asked.
“On it.”
“Esra, take out its Achilles if it passes you,” CeCe said.
My mate knew everyone’s position and developed a strategy in a matter of jotiks.
“Boys, you can sit this one out,” she said, a smirk in her voice, and I wished to shout to the entire universe that this powerful female was mine. I refrained, not wishing to draw her ire.
Amity, two veltiks behind Pattee, darted across the path to the opposite pillar, snatching the ikadax’s attention which placed its eye in the path of Pattee’s spear. Her aim was true; the animal pitched forward, and Esra strode from her hiding place in case the strike failed.
When we approached the fallen beast, we could see it suffered from previous injuries.
“It came in here to die,” Amity said quietly.
“You eased her passage into the Fields of Shegoshel,” Naraxthel said. “Raxthezana, have you seen these infirmities before?”
I knelt by the ikadax’s head and inspected the lesions.
“These resemble burns,” I said. We circled the beast, this one about a hunter and a half in size and judging by the color of its throat sac and its sagging belly, estimated her to be four years old and a dam to at least one litter.
CeCe crouched near the animal and placed her hand on the shoulder near its collapsed wing.
“There is a mythical animal in Earth lore called a dragon,” she said, petting the ikadax’s long scaled neck. “There are many artistic renderings of what it was supposed to have looked like, but these pointed ears, the claws on all four legs, the leathery wings and long tail appear in most of them. The Earth version never had a throat sac, though.”
Pattee collected her weapon and retreated a few veltiks to clean it, solemnity settling over her expression when she returned to the ikadax and said a few words in her original tongue before sprinkling dried sweetleaf on its head.
“Why does it have burns?” Esra asked. “I expected the “fire flyers” would be more resistant to a place called the lava fields?”
“Oh, are the lava fields active lava flows?” Joan asked. “I assumed it was a field of lava rock.”
“Welcome to Predator Planet,” Amity said to CeCe. “Where every day brings a fresh new horror, and the names don’t matter.”
CeCe cocked her head and looked at me.
“Ah, they are all correct,” I said with a shrug. “The lava fields stretch across a great underground plain littered with cooled lava rocks. And yet, rivers of lava flow through it every season. The ikadaxl lay their egg-litters at the perimeter of the lava fields and seldom suffer from burns such as these.” I glanced at Amity. “And every fresh new horror seldom bears a name that expresses the nature of its existence,” I said with a smile. “Tree thief? Does it steal trees? Why does not the puddle bird sit in puddles? Such are the weaknesses of our language.”
Amity’s smile looked sad. “And my devil dog is a precious angel.”
A snort laugh startled her from behind, and Natheka joined us, squeezing Amity in a hug before standing over the carcass.
“I thought its gait unsteady,” he said. “But in the limited light, I was unsure.”
“Perhaps this sister was ill and unable to avoid the pitfalls in the lava fields,” Naraxthel said. “We must keep our wits about us. As has proven repeatedly, our hunt and quest have been like no other before.”
We left the kill where it lay, unwilling to carry fresh meat and its odor with us as we headed deeper into ikadaxl territory.
Naraxthel spoke wisdom. It was natural that the humans would have expectations and assumptions, but had we not all of us learned that to do so now, in this season, was to court death? The old patterns were useless, and even the old maps may have become obsolete with the frequent quakes, as evidenced by our recent wet detour.
“We should expect mistakes, failures, and disappointments,” I said under my breath. But CeCe heard me.
Taking my hand, she walked beside me.
“We call it Murphy’s Law,” she said. “And yet humans are some of the most naïve, optimistic beings in the known galaxies. You’d think we’d learn by now.”
Warmth drawing her soul closer to mine, I looked at her sheathed in her light gray armor and smiled.
“It must be because of your indomitable will as a race,” I said. “If all humans are as resourceful and intrepid as you and your fellows, it is no wonder you ignore danger and surge forward. Would that my Queens were of a curious and welcoming mind, that our races could become friends and partners.”
“Maybe it could still happen,” CeCe said, looking forward as our companions made their way through the narrow opening into the next leg of our journey. “Maybe your BoKama will be able to exert more power with the Ikma’s illness being so serious.”
“Let us hope,” I said, but my brows furrowed, and I frowned as I turned sideways to fit through the crack in the cave wall. Hope was a flimsy veil we couldn’t see through and the obstacles before us were as opaque as the Black Mountain itself.
59
BoKama
I made my choice.
Steeling myself to face the Ikma, I paused at the entrance to her bedchamber and inhaled, the odor of illness wafting through the doorway. The injector lay on a compress beside the other potions the maikshel had deemed necessary for her treatment. Was the antidote already working within my body? What iteration of the Ikma Scabmal Kama would return upon her healing? The mad one with fiery dreams and raging temper, or the milder Queen feigning interest in mending her past sins and working for the greater good of Theraxl?
Glancing down the hall, I imagined what errands might pull me away from delivering the Kama’s medicines. Harsh gurgled coughing pierced the silence. The Kama thought me a traitor, had accused me more than once. Mayhap she deserved to die. But I was no executioner. Let the Tribunal cast final judgment upon the Ancient One.
Striding into her room, I remained emotionless as I approached her bedside and met her hard stare.
