Chapter 57

On a lot of worlds Connor had been to, the moon gave things a silvery tint. Not this nameless world he found himself on now. Instead, everything had more of an unhealthy golden sheen: the shattered pillars; the scrub brush; the ground he was rushing over. Combined with the jungle’s stink of rot, it made him think of old zombie movies.

Zombies. Why had he thought of those? The strange quiet? The ruins?

His boots crunched on the moss-like growth hiding cracked, ancient stone blocks. The noise killed any hope of stealthy movement.

Instead, he jogged, crouching low, staying a little behind Kalpana.

Behind him, Aubriella did her best to hurry Mosiah forward, her hand on his back. She’d put on a little muscle mass and lost some baby fat, but she was still far too small to actually force the tall man to go where she wanted.

Kalpana reached a meter-high wall segment and took cover behind it.

Connor slammed a shoulder into the stone and grunted. “That’s a pretty steep slope.”

The scout sneered. “Dark like this, it sneaks up on you.”

Dark or not, she was gasping and sweating, just like him. The night was going to be miserable, like being in a swamp.

On his home world, he would have guessed a storm was rolling in. Here?

Mosiah stumbled a few meters shy of the wall; Aubriella helped him.

She cringed, looking from Connor to the old man. “You okay?”

The client squared his shoulders. “I survived a helicopter crash, an attempt to hang me, and two bomb blasts, young lady. Tripping over a hidden rock isn’t going to kill me.”

But he rubbed his knee after screening himself from her with his broad back.

Connor held a hand up to silence everyone, craned his neck to get a look over the wall, and strained for any of the familiar sounds: the bug-like clicking and chittering, the thud of heavy limbs rushing toward them, or the heavy flap of wings.

Nothing.

There was his breathing, then maybe the whisper of the wind over the moss and the low globes of dry scrub that had scraped at his pants when he’d passed between.

His tongue felt pasty and itched. A bitter taste built. He took a swig from his canteen, rinsed his mouth, and spat. “Anyone else have an itchy tongue?”

Kalpana nodded. She took a pull from her canteen, rinsed and spat, too. “Like a paste.”

Connor pulled his flashlight out, covered the lens, and hunched over the spot where he’d spat. When he lit the water, it looked like liquid gold. “What?”

His forearm glowed the same way, if not quite as intensely.

He pulled his gloves off. The palms didn’t glow.

The scout was doing the same thing. She showed him her palm. “Something in the air?”

When had he noticed the moon glow being gold? When they moved through the scrub.

Mosiah coughed. “It’s getting hard to breathe.”

Connor ran the light over the old man’s face: puffy, red. “You have any allergies?”

“No.”

“You do now.”

But it wasn’t just Mosiah. The itching was everywhere.

Those scrub growths gave off a pollen or something that was causing a reaction with all of them.

Connor connected to Selen. “Hey.”

“We see you.” She still sounded angry.

“You can move forward, but you’re going to want to take an anti-inflammatory when you get through those scrub globes.”

“Poison?”

He scratched his forearm. “Maybe. It’s mild grade, if so.”

Each member of the team had a med pack that contained some basic medicines in auto-injectors anyone could dispense in an emergency: anti-inflammatory; anti-coagulant; coagulant; stabilizers; stimulants. Pull the desired tube out and slam it against a butt cheek or thigh, and the injector did the rest.

Connor showed the others his injector. “Anti-inflammatory.”

When he slapped the thing against his thigh, he did his best not to react.

But the injector made a popping sound, and the bite of the needle stung.

He shoved the expended injector in a pouch inside the med pack and looked over the wall again.

It was actually part of an old structure, joining another long wall segment to make a corner. The piled debris of another wall was about five meters farther downhill.

It was as good a defensive position as they could hope for.

Aubriella gasped. It must have been her first use of an auto-injector. “Holy shi—”

Connor pointed over the wall, to where the other wall created the nearby corner. “Put your gear in here.”

She clambered over stiffly and dropped her backpack.

The rest of the team scraped down the slope, now almost running after passing through the low bushes.

Or maybe they were animals and what he considered pollen was some sort of venom.

So long as it did nothing more than cause a slight itch and swelling, he could deal with it.

When Vicente’s hulking form drew close, and the others clattered not far behind, Connor waved the big man over to where Aubriella was hunched. “That’s our defensive position.”

Vicente hefted the litter with Mosiah’s crates strapped to it over the low wall, jumped over, then set Mamacita up on a bipod to watch up the slope.

Maybe they should be watching the darkened pit.

No. The known threat was back the way they’d come.

Selen’s armor scraped against the stone when she came to rest next to Mosiah. “All right.” She scowled at their client. “We’ve got you covered.”

It would’ve been better to have a chance to talk to Rudy about the next step, but this was the wrong place for another showdown with their captain.

Instead, Connor rose. “Aubriella, Kalpana, Mr. Young.”

The four of them headed past the defensive position, past leaning pillars and even more intact structures, always listening, checking their surroundings with ultraviolet and infrared optics.

But they were alone. Nothing else crunched and scraped over what remained of the hidden, ancient stone streets.

He connected to Selen. “We’ve got some sturdy-looking buildings down here.”

“I see you.”

“You’re going to lose visual soon. The slope, all these standing walls—”

“I can see you, Connor.”

She was being petulant, reckless.

To his left, Mosiah chuckled. “Decades on, and this place hasn’t changed.”

Aubriella’s flashlight—now attached to her assault rifle—darted over walls and into dark openings. “You really came down here?”

“A long, long time ago.”

Kalpana was about ten meters ahead, not using light, relying on ultraviolet only. She came to a stop beside a high arch on a wall that stretched five meters high, then poked her head around to peer inside.

Connor’s radio hissed, then squealed, then went silent. “Selen?”

He tried connecting to Rudy: nothing. Vicente was the same.

“Hold up.” Connor pointed to Aubriella. “Connect to me.”

She fiddled with the radio mounted to the neck of her armored chest plate, then shook her head. “I can’t get a signal.”

That wasn’t good. “Kalpana.” Connor waved her back. “Radio’s dead down here.”

The scout went through the same motions as Aubriella, then hurried back to the others. “No signal at all.” Kalpana shook her head.

“We head back. Now.”

She gave a quick nod, then jogged back up the slope, boots slapping against the moss and stone.

Then something popped—like a large stone shattering—and she froze.

More cracks and pops followed, followed by a sound like stone raining down on stone.

Ahead of her, the ground exploded, launching dirt and moss and rock meters into the air.

And something rose up from the ground: humanoid, easily twice as big as Vicente, with a second set of four spindly legs twitching and a scorpion tail rising up behind it.

Their path was cut off.