Exigency Page 5

  Hynka sounds slowly resumed—quiet at first—their breathy, hiss-and-throat-heavy voices seeming to debate the flare as it disappeared beyond the tips of starlit foliage. The two hulking creatures at either side of the hatch turned to each other, exchanged words, and then snapped their attention back into the EV.

  Minnie began hyperventilating. The things were less than a meter from John’s feet, 2.5m from her, and even more terrifying in person. Most grew beyond 3m tall, the largest specimens nearing 4m, even with their hunched postures—like mega-sized gorillas, with two rows of serrated teeth hidden within tapered gatoresque snouts. As the purple-black figures reached toward John, Minnie still doubted whether their thick leathery flesh could be penetrated by the multirounds.

  Only one way to know …

  She aimed at the one on the right and squeezed the trigger.

  Following plan, John fired at the one on the left. Both creatures reacted with the same stunned confusion. They halted in place, swaying, and regarded their midsections as if inspecting a newfound stain on a shirt. Broad fingers probed in and around the penetration points.

  “Ehswah och!” spoke the one on the right, and pounded its chest before collapsing backward into a seated position.

  The other injured Hynka faltered and tripped in place, held up by those nearby. An eerie calm spread through the crowd. Deep, hushed voices seemed to gossip as necks craned to see what was happening.

  “Smaller one in the middle there,” Minnie said. “He’s eyeing you and puffing up.”

  “I see him. Watch for any others.”

  “They’re acting really odd,” she said. “Not retreating at all … waiting. What do we do?”

  “Just go with it. We only shoot if they’re coming at us.”

  Minnie watched through thermal as the smaller Hynka, a bit taller than John, sucked in a final breath, and dug its blunt foot claws into the moist soil. “Watch it, he’s coming!”

  It spread out its long, bulbous arms, snorting and shoving back those around it, then charged straight for the pod opening. Minnie and John both fired. A second round when it didn’t stop. John fired a third projectile just as it began slowing, mitts clutching at its chest. That same confusion. It labored to breathe, struck its chest, spun a little and fell on its front.

  “We should step out,” John said. “I think now’s the time. A sign of strength, before they start thinking all this over.”

  “Before they start testing again,” Minnie agreed.

  John slowly pulled himself to his feet and stood right in the doorway. Minnie could hear the breathing and whispers of the mob. Her breath went shallow. She fought to uncurl her fingers from the handhold behind her, the pseudo-safety of the EV nearly gone. John lifted a leg over the threshold and planted his boot on the ground.

  One small meal for Hynkakind, she thought.

  John panned the MW across the expanding circle of creatures, slowly inching backward.

  “Keep an eye on the ones on the ground,” Minnie said, doing the same. All three appeared to still be alive, only incapacitated.

  Minnie stepped out beside him just as one of the Hynka to their left advanced a single pace out of its group, arms crossed against its chest. John aimed his MW.

  “Ahh crap,” she whispered. “Testing?”

  “Just keep your eyes on that side. Even if this one charges.”

  The cross-armed Hynka called out, “Khow ayk!”

  Minnie watched her side. The Hynka were no longer backing away, just rocking side to side, eyes intent on the pair. “What did it say?”

  “No idea.”

  “Got a snappy retort?” Minnie asked. “Something that says, ‘Whatever you just said, I’m still the boss.’”

  “I could shoot him.” John kept walking, one leg after the other.

  “Just continue moving that way. Keep therm up in case anyone’s hiding in the vegetation. I’ll watch out for all the ones behind the EV. They may not have witnessed our impressive display firsthand.”

  “Got it,” John said.

  As they moved, the crowd continued to retreat and part. Once passed, the Hynka regrouped and followed slowly behind, Minnie holding her MW at the ready. At any moment one of them might shriek a command and everyone would charge. If they did, Minnie and John wouldn’t have a chance. This was the highest stakes bluff ever.

  “Watch your step,” John warned, and Minnie glanced back to see the strewn heaps of dead Hynka—still warm severed limbs, jutting ribcages, ivory blood.

  “They’re going to keep following us,” she said, stepping over a leg. “Once we’re in the thick, we’ll have to stop that … somehow.”

  “I know.”

  John and Minnie continued on through the throngs, back to back, each scanning their own 180 perimeter. 10m from the EV, 30m, 50m. Eventually, the horde thinned and gave way to immense blades of foliage.

  As she predicted, the pack followed.

  “I have an idea,” Minnie said. “Try your ‘stop’ again. Through your suit’s PA.”

  “Okay, and if they keep coming, we shoot one?”

  “Exactly. And then you say it again. I have a feeling you won’t have to say it three times.”

  John glanced back at her. “Then what?”

  “Just say it. Loud.”

  John faced the advancing rank, stood tall, and shouted, “Khoh!” then resumed walking away with Minnie.

  The front line of Hynka stopped, and then resumed as soon as John and Minnie continued into the foliage.

  Minnie fired at the center of the group, striking one of them in the belly, home of their massive breathing organ. It released a wet cough, and they all stopped once more, attention redirected to the injured.

  John shouted, “Khoh!” and glowing eyes refocused on him. He whispered, “Keep moving!”

  Step after step, back to back, the pair moved deeper into the vegetation. The Hynka no longer followed. When Minnie lost sight of the last of them, she said, “Should we run?”

  “I think we go slow a little farther. They might hear us if we run.”

  Minnie’s thermal optic could see the group hadn’t advanced any closer, but many had circled around the individual she’d shot. They were crouching over it, poking at the wound.

  “How far to the sinkhole?” she asked.

  “Less than one-K. If we run, I figure we could make it in less than ten minutes.”

  “And how fast could they do it?”

  John grunted, “Hell, probably three.”

  “I think we should run.”

  John glanced at her and nodded. “Let’s do it. But switch on infra and watch the terrain. It’s even darker beneath this canopy and we can’t afford a single mistake.”

  John was slow and less than nimble. They had numerous obstacles to traverse or avoid—downed epsequoias, swampy fungal patches, a river. Minnie repeatedly slowed for him to catch up. She switched back to thermal and glanced behind to see if anything had decided to give chase. No one so far, but as she returned her focus forward, a hot spot streaked by in the distance to their left.

  “I think we have some stragglers out there,” she said. “Not part of the group.”

  John panted and gasped. “How do you know?”

  “Therm.”

  “I told you to switch to infra!”

  “Are you ser—come on! Just shut up and switch to therm! They’re going to hear us coming.”

  “I see them. But one of us needs to stay in infra … the terrain—”

  “Fine, you save us from the ground. I’ll protect us from the things that want to eat us.”

  She heard John grumble.

  A minute later, the orange and red blobs beyond the blades perked up as the crackles and crunches of their footfalls reached the Hynkas’ ears. Minnie raised her MW and patted John’s arm to slow down.

  “Hang on, hang on … here they come.”

  John put his hands on his knees, wheezing beside a thin, fan-shaped plant. “Which way? … Dizzy �
�”

  “Two o’clock!”

  Two glowing figures galloped toward them with incredible speed. Minnie worried that the one-ton beasts’ momentum would carry them on well after several shots. Just ahead, the blobs split up, rounded an epsequoia trunk on either side, and then appeared in stark detail 20m away, four eyes shining in the starlight.

  The ground quaked beneath Minnie’s feet. She fired two rounds into the first, two in the second, then frantically unloaded on both.

  John began firing, too.

  The Hynka stumbled but the distance between them continued closing.

  John pulled Minnie to the side, tossed her into a patch of undergrowth. When she looked up, the hacking and hissing creatures lay only a few meters away.

  John helped her up. “Let’s keep moving. And keep that thermal up, huh?”

  “Right.”

  They ran the remaining distance, John gasping and struggling as flat forestland inclined into barren hills. A few moments later, his hand grazed her back, apparently pleading for her to slow down. “It’s … coming up … the sinkhole.”

  Minnie climbed the last few sloped meters and rested on the flat plateau. As John trudged toward the finish line, she surveyed the nightscape with a slow 360 rotation. The sinkhole sat at the top of a gently sloping foothill overlooking healthy forestland to the east. Beyond the forest below, a monolithic mountain loomed above the entire area. Behind Minnie, just west of the sinkhole, the hill they’d just climbed rose gradually higher before a towering rock sprang from the ground like some prehistoric skyscraper. Despite her very recent brushes with death, the scene was disarmingly peaceful, disrupted only by John’s belabored panting.

  “We’ve got eight to ten more to the south,” Minnie pointed. “Maybe two-K away. Some loners here and there. Nothing very close.”

  Gradually recuperating, John went to the sinkhole and scanned around. “The entrance is definitely underwater. Let me see how we get out of here when needed.”

  Remaining on guard, Minnie kept her focus on the forest. She zoomed, spotting the original group as a large, morphing amoeba. “Looks like the horde is all back at the EV. They really listened to you. I wonder if that would work again.”

  John inhaled a wheezing breath. “I wouldn’t count on it. Man … still dizzy. Hard to get air ... out of the air.”

  Minnie sniffed. She’d noticed a sweetness to Epsy’s air once away from the Hynka, but it hadn’t really clicked. Lower O2, higher nitrogen and argon. They weren’t more than a thousand meters above sea level, but the air here would trigger symptoms like altitude sickness. “You’re definitely out of shape, but that’s mostly just the air mixture. Drop your visor and use the tank for now, but the sooner you deal with it, the faster you’ll get—”

  “I’ll get used to it. I know.” He pointed to an outcropping of rock on the other side of the sinkhole. “I think we could hide a rope over there. Tie it to the rocks, then bury it all the way to the hole. Someone’d have to be looking for it.”

  Minnie agreed; they set up the rope, tested the weight, and obscured it from view. Back at the hole’s cliff edge, John pointed to one side of the glistening pool ten meters below them.

  “It’s deeper on the left than the right, but I wouldn’t dive either way.”

  “Feet first it is,” Minnie said, sealed her visor, and leapt in.

  The fall lasted longer than she expected, the impact more jarring. The weight of her gear seemed to balance with the air in her helmet and the compressed minitank in her suit, rendering her buoyancy near neutral. She switched her optic to the highest infra and spotted the cavern entrance a couple meters below her feet.

  MINNIE: M’s only. Our audio’s inop. I’m all clear now. Aim for my landing spot and hold balls. Infra on high.

  JOHN: Okay. Clear out of the way.

  Minnie kicked and paddled downward into the hole in the side wall. Semi-transparent root-like hairs protruded from the craggy tube’s top. Even with the infra, she couldn’t see more than a few meters ahead. She accessed her suit controls and enabled the helmet’s infra emitters. The tunnel was suddenly alight, blinding like daytime, and she quickly decreased her optic sensitivity.

  JOHN: Right behind you.

  MINNIE: Just turned on my emitters. You can reduce your sensitivity.

  JOHN: Already done. That was blinding.

  Minnie sighed, fogging her visor for a moment.

  MINNIE: How long is this tunnel?

  JOHN: Should curve upward into main cave soon.

  Just as his M popped up, the path of the tunnel began sloping upward.

  The tube shrank and tightened around her, dangling roots grazing over her visor and helmet like long brittle fingers. Aether’s scent entered Minnie’s nostrils, Aether’s presence beside her, stretched out in their bed, stroking Minnie’s hair, helping her to fall asleep.

  Her helmet scraped against the jagged roof, jolting her senses. She’d closed her eyes.

  He’s going to have to say something about that.

  JOHN: You okay?

  MINNIE: Fine. Cavern ahead. Switching to therm.

  The tunnel widened out in all directions like a funnel on its side. Minnie stopped herself a meter below the glassy water surface. John drifted up beside her. She scanned the vast cavern for heat, finding only subtle hotspots on the ceiling and walls.

  JOHN: Looks like only plantlife and microbes. We’ll still need to sweep the rest of the tunnels and subcaverns.

  Minnie deleted her M with the same conclusions and proceeded upwards to the surface.

  JOHN: Are we sure the air in here isn’t toxic?

  MINNIE: You tell me. Does it have any surface supply?

  They stepped carefully up the slippery slope until the ground flattened out. Minnie switched back to infra and surveyed the scene. Small puddles and stalagmites carpeted the ground beneath a thousand stalactites. Many had joined into columns thick and thin. As they walked to the other end of the cavern, the walls tapered in as if by a belt at a waist, then widened again into a small subcavern. At the smaller cave’s far side, Minnie spotted a concentration of thin columns. The only other tunnel into the cavern was blocked off by a hundred reedy pillars, like delicate prison bars, along with an equal number of unjoined stalagmites and stalactites. It looked like a prehistoric fish mouth full of deadly teeth, but what it meant was nothing larger than a mouse could enter the cavern via that tunnel. All over the cave, the stalagmites jutting from the ground—thousands of years in the making—confirmed they’d never been visited by Hynka, or anything else of concern.

  JOHN: The air is fine for now. Also, if you look at the fragile cave features, you can tell nothing’s been in here. It’s all been undisturbed for centuries, at least.

  I know. But I don’t need to tell you I know.

  Minnie removed her helmet and sucked in a breath of the cool, moist air. There was a subtle sulfuric scent, like old eggs. Eggs. Other than the artificial sensory input of her game, she hadn’t smelled anything remotely appetizing in decades.

  Food …

  They’d soon need to recommence ingestion and digestion. They only had three days of supplement-infused water. Fortunately, this had been planned before they left Earth. The SSKs had meds and calorie bars to aid the process, but it’d be painful. The mere idea of swallowing solids made Minnie’s throat protest. And they’d eventually need to source sustenance from a planet without much to offer. The SSK only contained a couple weeks’ worth of calories.

  * * *

  Minnie loosened and removed her pack, setting it down in the cave’s only area that was flat, dry, and free of head or knee-cracking formations. John was squatting in front of his, fishing around inside. Minnie unsealed the top of her suit and peeled it away from her chest. The cavern air was even colder than she’d expected, but she needed to be out of the suit, free of the added weight. Conceptually, Epsy’s 1.5 g hadn’t seemed all that drastic a change, but paired with the suit and helmet, full water veins, and l
oaded backpack, it felt like she was carrying around a horse.

  John sat down in front of a little contraption, popped it open, and expanded it into a box shape.

  “What’s that?” she asked. It felt strange to speak again. Strange perhaps because they were, for the time being, safe. They could now discuss things besides that which was immediately required for survival. She could say what needed to be said.

  “Heater. It’s seven-C in here. Probably still best to build the shelter and sleep inside.” The device began to glow orange, bathing the cavern in light, probably for the first time ever.

  “Right,” Minnie said as she stepped out of her boots. “That thing powerful enough to raise the ambient temp in here?”

  She glanced down, realized she was in nightclothes, and didn’t hear John’s lengthy response. She’d just thrown on whatever her hands had found in the wardrobe. Thin PJ pants and a draping top that reached her thighs. It was one of Aether’s.

  How much time had passed? She looked at her clock. Just one hour ago they’d been in orbit, Minnie sleeping peacefully.

  “You know it’s only been an hour?” She spoke without intent, simply sharing the surreality.

  John merely looked at her eyes for an instant, then picked a little case out of his SSK. He walked into the darkness at the far end of the cavern.

  “What are you doing?” she called.

  “Launching a dragonfly into the blocked tunnel. See where it leads or if there’s anything we need to worry about in there.”

  The high-pitched buzz of the dragonfly echoed in the cave for a minute as John fumbled with a headlight. His shadow stretched across the damp floor and swept back and forth as he messed with the tiny flying probe. The buzz grew louder as it lifted off his hand, hovered for a beat, then zipped between columns into the dark tunnel. John stood in silence at the end of the cave, presumably watching the dragonfly’s progress through his fone.

  “Anything interesting?” Minnie called.

  “Not yet.” He walked back and sat down on the other side of the heater, rubbing his hands together and holding them out to warm up.