We had no need for masks. Intrepid pioneers had terraformed Melinar centuries ago, with big air generators, water synthesizers, and feeding crops and flora liquid nutrients once transplanted from earth-like worlds.
The four of us stepped out, fully equipped, with R4s, Kevlar vests, coms, helms. The air had a dry distinct tang of slightly tart fecundity, but not unpleasant. Bird song was nonexistent here. The smoke from the escape shuttle had frightened off any animal life. A sudden rank, burning waft of melted metal and gas fumes hit us head on. I motioned Wren and the others up the slope.
Mong and his surviving crew had stumbled up the hill into a grove of weird, strangle-branched trees. Though the word ‘grove’ was a misnomer. Alien flora at best—a petrified forest. Large tracts of thick-boled trees rose up the crumbling slopes, creating a perfect haven for ambush. I weaved among the tan-colored trunks of the broken landscape, urging the others along through the unyielding limbs.
Almost immediately I hunched under the heavier weight of the planet’s gravity. I didn’t have the same spring and jump in my legs at all.
My boots crunched on the gravel-like soil. I heard the distant shuffle and crunch of boot heels and heavy breathing up ahead. Fugitives, not far away.
I gave the signal. We split up to flank them. Wren and Blest took the east, Grild and I took the west, up a steeper, rougher tract with strange flakes of shattered, mars-red rocks. At one time these trees had been living things, but now they were dead, only dry spiky, spidery remnants of a forgotten past.
The runaways had split up too, judging from the scuffling echo coming back through the alien flora. A shrewd tactic, to limit the chance of getting tagged.
I wanted Mong badly. I rasped into the com. “Noss! Do you have a read on them?”
“Negative. We lost air coverage... Wait. Two pulses. Lifeforms at A23.61. Sending location…”
“That’s them.” I firmed my lip. “We see them in our helm scopes. Unless they’re indigenous deer, it has to be them.”
Mong and his company had no chance. When the rebels blew his fucking, wretched Warhawks out of the sky, neutralized every last one of his killing machines, he’d have nothing. This cat and mouse guerrilla war we were playing then would be pointless. But a nagging uncertainty still tugged at the back of my head. What if those jammers failed? What if Mong’s ships came streaking down out of the clouds and incinerated us instead?
I swallowed hard. What mess did you get yourself into, Rusco? Did you think it would be that easy? Your impetuousness may have landed you in a bigger jam than last time.
Voices of doubt. Ghosts of fear. I shook them from my mind and moved ahead, nudging Grild in the ribs.
A deeper feeling hit me, struck now with the growing suspicion that if I didn’t catch Mong here, we’d never get him. He was a monster larger than life, an ulcerous cancer armed with an unnatural tendency to escape justice. I could envisage his hulking frame disappearing in the soil forever, like an everlasting termite, hiding, escaping the justice he was due.
I was not going to let that happen.
Like weasels we moved in undulating, semi-crouched positions while the dim light of fading day filtered through the spiny twigs, lending an eerie unreality to the lands around us.
I heard Noss’s voice hiss over the helm’s com. “They’re moving away from you, Jet. But we don’t have great resolution up here. Grainy. You’ve got to cut them off at the next ravine—A25.44. I can’t blast the area without taking you out too.”
“Affirmative, Noss. Keep scanning. Let us know of any anomalies.” I kept my voice to a bare whisper.
The petrified twigs, like crazy fractal patterns, obscured our view. Surreal this landscape. As from a dream I studied the impossible foliage—a massive primordial canopy that blocked out the little light remaining in the sky and left only a dull golden-amber staining the shattered earth floor.
Distant gunfire echoed hollowly through the trees. Impossible to gauge distance with all these stony echoes in this strange geography. The sound bounced off trunks and ricocheted to other places, prompting even a professional soldier to draw false conclusions.
With less confidence than before, we stumbled forward.
We’d gotten no further than a bend in the knoll when fire bit at us from out of nowhere. Grild fell, uttering a moaning cry. He lay face down in a riddled heap.
I grimaced, dove out of the way just as more deadly fire ate into the trunk behind me. I crouched in the dusky light, a wary wolf, my heart pounding. No hits, but I could hear my blood pound in my throat.
Grild wheezed, shifted his gaze toward me. He snuffed out a trickle of blood from his nostrils. He was in a bad way. I motioned him to silence, and to stay still. No way of getting to the man. He was six feet away. Damn it! Mong or one of his gunmen was closer than I thought. He was covering the area with a marksman’s expertise. How could I have been so fucking stupid? That fiend moved more stealthily than any predator. Now the hunted stalked the hunters.
Chapter 31
I inched forward, creeping on my stomach at a snail’s pace, moving toward shelter amongst the petrified roots. I felt like a foreign grub here, with my R4 trained—hoping it didn’t clink on the flaked shingle, alert for any sound or signal.
Grild gasped behind me. Poor bugger. What could I do for him? I’d get my head shot off if I tried to double back and minister to him. What good would that do either of us?
Where the fuck was Mong?
How far I crawled
