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Tuttle’s on your crew. Tell her to make sure there’s plenty of medical supplies on both levels, just in case—and food and water. Caroline and Barbara are up in main operations. Tell them to rig up an automatic distress call if they can and get down here with everyone else.

She stopped, wondering if she’d covered everything.

You stay. I’ll take the hunting party out, he said.

No.

Then I’ll go with you.

I need you here, damn it!

I need to be with you! he said.

Despite the fact that her nerves were on edge, Victoria felt a smile tug at her lips. What?

Raphael gave her a narrow eyed look. I need to be with you.

And this is because?

I’ll go out of my mind waiting here.

Victoria smiled. Close enough. Pick the team and relay the message I just gave you to Brown and Quinton. I want Brown up top, Quinton leading our back up.

Raphael’s brows rose. Roach is third in rank.

Victoria gave him a wry look. You really want Roach watching our backs?

You have a point.

Exactly. Besides which, he’s the closest thing we have to a guide. Brown’s a good man, but he’d be hampered by his suit. Quinton won’t and Quinton is telepathic. He’ll be able to communicate with everyone. The com units don’t work worth a damn in these conditions.

When Raphael returned nearly fifteen minutes later, Barbara was with him. We made contact.

Hope surged through Victoria. Who? Are they coming?

Barbara looked distressed. We couldn’t make it out. The signal’s too weak. But they responded to the distress call.

The disappointment was acute, following so closely upon the heels of the surge of hope. We don’t know if they’re coming, though, do we?

Maybe we should just go back to the habitat and wait? Raphael said.

Victoria considered it. She wasn’t particularly happy about the task at hand. Finally, however, she shook her head. If we knew for sure that they were coming, or even had some idea of when, I could see taking a chance that they might get here before we lose anyone else. As it stands, they might never come. We need to at least try to eradicate the threat. Otherwise, they’ll be picking us off one by one until there’s nobody left.

Raphael nodded. Let’s do it, then.

* * * *

To Victoria’s surprise, the ‘valley’ was just as Roach had described it ... right down to the current. Despite the fact that she’d more than half expected it, she was very nearly carried over the edge. They paused, looking down.

Ask Roach which direction, Victoria told Raphael.

Raphael glanced at Roach and Roach pointed.

How far?

He’s not sure. He says the first he noticed were about a half a mile down slope, maybe a mile.

Check your weapons. No wild shots. No squandering fire power. Keep an eye on the man next to you and make damn sure you don’t cut across our line with fire. If your weapon drops below 75% firepower, yell out. Retreat on my orders and not before. Got it? Victoria said, glancing down the row of men and women. They nodded as her gaze touched them.

Form a line, no more than an arm’s length between anyone. We’re going to do a sweep. You’re responsible for the man next to you. Anyone goes down, grab them.

They formed a ragged line and started down the slope at an angle, watching the surface for any sign of the depressions Roach had described.

Victoria halted abruptly when she spotted the first pit, scanning the area around it. At first, she could see nothing. Then, slowly, as she concentrated, her eyes focused on the faintest of movements. It was the general shape of a manta ray, flattened, almost saucer shaped, but so nearly transparent, or so well camouflaged, that it appeared as nothing more than the ocean bed around it.

Her heart skipped several beats as she stared at it, then she slowly moved her gaze across the landscape. As far as she could see there were identical pits, approximately a meter in diameter and probably no more than three meters between them. She didn’t need to see them to know a creature lay in each one.

Oh my God! It’s a nesting ground!

The thoughts had scarcely formed in her mind when the creature nearest her turned bright red, rising menacingly from its nest.

Fire! Fire!

* * * *

There was no sweep. The moment they stepped within the territorial range of the creatures, they rose like a swarm of bees and attacked aggressively. Victoria pulled her group into a turtle formation, only vaguely aware of the two men on either side of her and those at her back. The color the animals turned when threatened made them marginally easier to see and they were not proof against the fire power of the lasers. She cut five in half in two seconds.

The problem was, there were hundreds of them. As quickly as she killed five, ten more swarmed toward her. She realized very quickly that they didn’t have nearly enough firepower.

Fall back! Keep the circle tight!

With the current flowing against them and the creatures swarming, it took them almost twice as long to reach the summit once more as it had taken to move down it.

Once they’d cleared it, Victoria halted for a head count and discovered they had three men down ... which translated to six because the injured had to be carried.

Raphael, try to reach Quinton and warn him we’re coming his way.

Albert check our heading. I don’t want to waste time looking for the habitat.

I can’t reach him, Raphael told her after a moment.

Keep trying. I’d like to be sure they know we’re between them and these things when the censors go off.

They began moving once more, covering as much ground as possible before they were forced to halt again by the circling creatures. Once they moved beyond the tug of the current that dipped into the valley, the water around them turned murky with the fluids of the animals they killed and Victoria couldn’t decide whether she was having difficulty breathing because of the effort of fighting and retreating, or because the creatures had released their poisons into the water at death.

I’m down to 20%, the man beside her said, then yelped as one of the creatures brushed against him. Victoria shot it as it arched away, grabbing for the man as he sank slowly toward the ocean floor. Tugging him behind her, she kept moving, kept firing.

It was with a great deal of relief that she saw the habitat come into view once more, for she’d begun to realize that she was almost certainly sucking poisons inside her with every gasping breath. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe. They’d been cut nearly in half, and the few still able to move were each carrying a man as well as fighting.

To her relief, their backup swam out to meet them, helping to pull the downed fighters to the habitat and up through the access pool.

It was all Victoria could do to pull herself up to the edge of the access pool. She hadn’t the energy to climb out. Raphael grabbed her, pushing her up onto the lip of the pool before following her up.

“Head count,” Victoria gasped.

Quinton took the count. “All present and accounted for.”

Victoria nodded. “Seal the access pool. Raphael, did you get any kind of count?”

He shook his head. “Maybe a couple of dozen were still with us when backup arrived.

She smiled wryly. “That’s what I thought. I was hoping it wasn’t just wishful thinking.”

Roach glared at her. “You stupid bitch! You just had to go out and stir them up! Now we’re all going to die on this shit hole planet!”

It took more of an effort to get on her feet than she would’ve thought possible, but Victoria managed it. When she’d steadied herself, she kicked Roach squarely in the jaw. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Satisfied, she turned to look at the rest of the group. “Let’s get these people up to medical.”

* * * *

Guilt swamped Victoria as she stared out over the eight sheet draped figures lying perfectly still on the floor of the sickbay. “Are they ... comatose?”

“Not in the strictest sense of the word,” Tuttle said grimly. “These Kaymons produce some sort of poison similar to some species of wasps. They paralyze their prey, but the paralysis doesn’t seem to affect the internal organs to a great degree ... at least it hasn’t caused death at this point. They’re still alive, quite possibly aware of their surroundings, but unable to move or speak. The problem is, I don’t know if they’ll come out of it, or when.”

Victoria glanced at her sharply. “Kaymons? You’ve identified them?”

Tuttle gave her a wry look. “No. These monsters are exclusive to Kay. I was calling them Kay Monsters, but Kaymons is easier.”

Victoria nodded, but a look of revulsion crossed her features. “They looked very much as if they were nesting. There were little pits all over the sides of the ‘hills’ of that valley. And in each one, one of these ... Kaymons. There were hundreds. We probably killed a couple of hundred, but I doubt we diminished them by half. It was impossible to get a very good look at them, but they looked almost disk shaped, and they moved like manta rays. I’m guessing they can move through the air the same way they move through water--One thing I don’t really understand, though, is that they attacked us without provocation.”

“They were nesting,” Raphael said grimly. “It’s mating season.”

Chapter Fifteen

Victoria glanced at him sharply. “You saw young?”

Raphael shook his head. “Remember the sleeping vision I had? You said it was a nightmare? It wasn’t a nightmare. He reached out to me telepathically. I wasn’t certain at the time. I took your word for it, because it was easier to accept that it was a disturbing dream than something that was actually happening.

But, when Tuttle explained the way the poison works, I knew. They paralyze their prey and leave them in their ‘nests’ to feed the hatchlings when they emerge. It’s to preserve the ‘meat’, to make sure it’s still fresh for their young. Apparently, food is scarce ordinarily and, in the past, they had to hunt over a wide area to find enough food—which is why they developed the ability to paralyze and preserve the food.

But then the company set a smorgasbord right in their backyard.

That’s why there’s so many. Last season, they had more than enough to feed their young. This season, we’re on the menu.”

Roach, who’d been nursing his head on a cot nearby, made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a laugh. “You’re just guessing!” he said angrily. “You’re just trying to help cover her ass because she screwed up!”

Raphael turned and glared at him. “Let’s have your theory.”

Roach gaped at him, looked around at the rest of the crew, who were watching him. “I don’t know. And neither do you!”

“We all know that’s why the last crew went missing,” Raphael pointed out grimly. “You saw Kichens. You said....”

“No!” Roach covered his face. “Don’t! I don’t want to think about it.”

“It’s not going to do any of us any good to pretend it isn’t happening. But I don’t think anybody here is qualified to question Victoria’s judgment on how she handled the threat. Those things are a threat to our survival. I’m guessing, whether we’d gone out or not, they would’ve been coming for us ... just like they came for the others.

At least going after them gave us the chance to increase the odds in our favor a little bit. We know where they are now. We can identify the threat and we know what they’ll be using against us.”

Victoria studied him, wondering if he had said it to make her seem less negligent, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. “We upset the eco-system,” she said thoughtfully. “They’d almost hunted out the area—that’s why we didn’t see anything else, not because they’d moved further away because we’d invaded their territory, but because there was next to nothing to begin with. These things—Kaymons—must have been on the verge of extinction ... until the company provided a new food source for them.”

Raphael shrugged. “That’s my guess.”

Victoria frowned. “So why weren’t they hunting us from the time we arrived?”

“If we accept the theory we’ve developed so far, they would have had to survive on very little food. Maybe you were on track before. Maybe they hibernate for long periods of time—or something like it. Maybe that’s how they were stirred up by the first crew ... maybe that’s how we got them stirred up.”

Victoria looked around. “Anybody else want to volunteer any theories here? Remember anything you saw, but didn’t think much about it at the time?”

“I’m more interested in what we’re going to do about it,” Sylvia said. “You’ve got everything you need to survive, assuming we can keep them out—but from what Raphael has told us, we’ll die if we’re out of water more than twelve hours and we might not even have that long.”

Victoria blushed. “I didn’t consider that we might be trapped here indefinitely.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Sylvia said quietly. “You’ve always looked out for us. I’m just saying, regardless of what Roach seems to think, we never had the option of just hiding and hoping we wouldn’t be one of the hunted. Caroline said they’d made contact—somebody may or may not be coming to rescue you and the others, but nobody’s coming for us.”

Brown leapt to his feet. “What does she mean by that?”

Victoria glanced at Raphael and then away. “The company....”

“Fucked up,” Raphael finished. “We were supposed to be primarily human, with aquatic traits that would allow us to work the mines for extended periods of time ... traits that could be reversed per the law. Instead, they’ve found the traits aren’t reversible, and the accelerated growth hormone seems to have upset the delicate balance they thought they’d achieved. We’re becoming progressively more aquatic and less human. Which means we wouldn’t be able to leave, because we can’t survive the conditions you require to live.”

Brown stared at Sylvia a long moment before his face contorted with rage. “Those fucking bastards! You’re not going to go along with this shit, are you Anderson?”