Elsa nodded. She ran her fingers through her short hair, grateful that she’d gotten a hair cut before deploying. It was a long enough buzz to keep the sun from baking her brain but short enough to let the air in and keep her cool.
“ That’s where them researchers were. The megasaur died there too, but it wasn’t your Marine buddies that killed it. It had some kind of infection or something, there ain’t no way to describe it. A whole shit ton of these things come crawling out of it and anybody that wasn’t killed by the megasaur were killed by them.”
“ What?” Elsa heard what he said, but it didn’t make sense to her. “Babies or something?”
“ No, parasites or something. Our best guess is that it ate some eggs and they hatched inside of it. It was being eaten from the inside and it went crazy and attacked your people.”
“ Woah.”
“ Yeah,” Tarn agreed. “Kira comes up to check on it every now and then, she figures there was a dozen or more the first time around, now there’s a hundred or more.”
“ How big are they?” Elsa said after gasping.
“ They hatch only a couple feet long or so. At full size they’re probably about as big as those screechers you killed.”
“ That’s not so bad.”
Tarn chuckled. “Nasty fuckers. They got teeth, they can jump and run, they got a tail we seen ‘em use to smack their prey, and Kira’s been close enough to see them spit.”
“ Spit?”
“ Yeah. She saw one spit some kind of poison that was absorbed through the skin of brutasaur they were after.”
“ Brutasaur?” Elsa interrupted.
Tarn scowled at her. “Big, six legs, stands about as tall as a Megasaur but they’re really dumb.”
“ So this little thing spit on a big thing?”
“ Yeah, a few minutes later it stumbled and fell over. Kira said it was still alive, just paralyzed. She said a couple dozen of them swarmed it and cut it up, then carried it back to their hole.”
“ Holy shit.”
Tarn nodded. “Nasty fuckers,” he repeated.
Elsa nodded. “I gotta find my team.”
“ I’ll take you down there, but you do what I say and we don’t get close to their nest, got it?”
She found herself nodding again. She was the Marine, but she could justify following a local guide. “What are they, insects or something?”
“ Got a guy who used to be a veterinarian, he thinks they’re animals. They got one mother though, a queen or something, and she’s bigger and nastier. Or at least she was when she came out of the dead megasaur. Nobody’s dumb enough to go in the hole in the ground they made to find out how big she is now.”
Elsa let out a deep breath and glanced around. The smart thing to do would have been to get the hell away. Follow Tarn back to the Treetown place he mentioned. Any of her team that went in there were fucked, plain and simple.
“ No Marine gets left behind,” Elsa said.
“ Yeah, figured you’d say that,” Tarn sighed. “All right, let’s go.”
Elsa followed him down from the hills and into the chest high grasses on the plain. He moved slowed, pausing infrequently to look around. She even caught him sniffing the air once or twice. She tried it but couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Then again everything smelled funny on the planet to her. So many scents and so much of it made her just feel alive. Even the dull ache in her arm had faded to a background irritation.
“ Any chance they’d take prisoners?” Elsa asked.
Tarn held up his arm, using the Marine gesture to call a halt. Elsa felt her lips part in surprise.
“ Break our cover again and I’ll leave you to find your own way out of here!” He hissed.
Elsa nodded, sufficiently rebuked. She watched him as he turned back and motioned to continue. He walked through the grasses with a grace that looked very natural, almost as though he was just another predator on the plains. He held the spear ready, moving it every time he changed the direction of his gaze. Elsa found herself nodding, Tarn either had military experience or he’d been trained by someone who had.
He called a halt another half an hour later. She was used to uncomfortable missions but she couldn’t remember ever feeling as disgusting as she did this time. The unpowered armor was like an oven. She knew if her helmet had still been on she would have passed out. As it was she was dehydrated. Stripping the rest of the armor off, however, meant walking naked. Tarn looked liked a great guy to take for a clothing optional ride, but given the circumstances it was the furthest thing from her mind.
“ This is it, no closer,” Tarn whispered.
“ It’s still like a mile away!”
He shrugged. “You want it, you go get it. I’m telling you they’ll swarm and kill you before you know they’re there.”
“ Swarm me?”
“ They communicate. Not like people, but they got something that keeps ‘em working together.”
Elsa stared at the mound in the distance. It had grown larger as they approached, but she was sure it was no more than ten feet tall. It was probably close to a quarter mile around, if not larger.
“ Come on, I smell something.”
Elsa jerked, surprised at his choice of words. She followed him, impressed with how quietly he moved through the grasses. He stopped once and pointed off to their left, closer to the mound. She stared for a long moment until she realized he was showing her some of the animals he’d warned her about. She couldn’t see them directly, but she could see the grass swaying as they moved. She turned and looked harder, now noticing the unusual pattern of movement that indicated a creature was moving through the grass instead of a simple breeze.
“ They’re everywhere!” She gasped.
Tarn gave her a sharp look, then motioned her forward. He led her for another quarter hour, circling at one point to avoid coming too close to one of the drones, then stopped when he reached the wreckage of another screamer.
Elsa gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. It was torn up worse than hers had been. The damage wasn’t from the landing, it had signs of being ripped and battered. Dried blood stained the side and ground, leading towards the mound. She hurried around it, looking for some sign of who’s screamer it had been. Had her armor been working she could have identified the transponder on it. Lacking that, she could only release the cargo pack on the back and look through the equipment contained therein.
Whoever it had been hadn’t even had a chance to defend themselves. As disheartened as Elsa was about the loss of one of her team, she couldn’t deny the grim satisfaction having a new rifle and more supplies gave her.
Chapter 15
Elsa turned to look at Tarn and saw the smirk on his face. She smiled sweetly at him, then hefted her rifle to her shoulder. “Let’s see who this Kira chick found,” she said to him.
He nodded and turned to study the movement in the weeds. She noticed the lines around his eyes tighten, then he swore. “They know we’re here, not sure if they’ve found us yet, but they’re searching.”
“ How do you know that?” Elsa hissed. She saw the movement through the grasses around them. It was more pronounced now, with the drones moving faster. Her gut twisting told her that Tarn was right.
“ Move fast and quiet,” He muttered, then he turned and was off, crouching as he moved so that his head was barely above the weeds.
Elsa followed, keeping her rifle ready. She was focused on watching the grasses for signs of the hostile animals and nearly ran into Tarn when he stopped in front of her abruptly. She looked past him and saw another ditch carved into the ground by a different screamer pod. “Back up slowly!” Tarn hissed.
She turned to follow his gaze and saw the tail end of one of the chitin covered animals. She felt her eyes
