Radiant (41 page)

Tut stood and gave the Rexy a kick. Then he threw back his head and roared in triumph. Two seconds later he raced into the bush, making bearlike growls... as if he'd forgotten his companions. He never even looked back.

Meanwhile, Li and Ubatu had to deal with the other two Rexies. Li (true to form, but with indisputable common sense) ran away as best he could. Since running forward or back would take him too close to murderous Rexies, Li went the only way left: toward the river. Despite the darkness, he found the edge of the bank and eased himself over. Weeds grew on the low, muddy cliff above the water; Li got a stranglehold on some well-rooted ferns and dug his feet into the mud, plastering his body against the cliff side. His clothes, his hands, his face, were instantly covered with muck... but his grip was secure and his position safe—below the bank's lip so the Rexies couldn't see him, but above the torrents of the rain-swollen river.

Ubatu, however, didn't run. She thought she was a fighter; and the way she'd wrestled Tut into submission proved she knew some martial arts. Unfortunately, practicing in a gym or scuffling with an unaggressive man like Tut wasn't the same as dealing with two reptilian killing machines. If Ubatu had tried surprise tactics, she might have come through unscathed—we'd already seen that a Rexy's minuscule brain couldn't deal with the unexpected. But Ubatu chose to confront the pseudosuchians as if they were honorable opponents facing her in a dojo. I think she even bowed to them... though perhaps she was just assuming some preparatory jujitsu stance I didn't recognize.

It didn't help that her form of combat was based on grapples and throws. Rather than delivering strikes from a distance, she obviously intended to close with the animals—grabbing them, forcing them to the ground, maybe trying a chokehold to make them surrender. As if they were likely to moan, "I give up," and congratulate Ubatu on a well-fought match.

But that's just my uninformed guess. I don't know what Ubatu really planned; she never got a chance to explain.

One Rexy reached her a fraction of a second before the other. She grabbed the first by its small weak arms and began rolling back as if she were going to pull the animal with her, probably tossing it over her head.

Imagine her surprise when a spindly limb broke off in her hand. Snapped away clean at the elbow.

The arm had been flimsy to begin with... and the Rexy's
preta-
driven rush through the jungle had caused several damaging falls: falls that fractured the arm with numerous cracks, to the point where Ubatu's bioengineered strength could finish the job of impromptu amputation. She continued rolling backward—couldn't stop her momentum—but now she was desperately off-balance, only gripping the Rexy by one of its arms while still holding the detached limb in her other hand like some blood-gushing back scratcher.

Ubatu hit the ground awkwardly: far from the smooth roll she must have intended. The Rexy came with her but slowly, not jerked off its feet the way a human might have been. (Jujitsu throws are designed for tossing
Homo sapiens,
not pseudosuchians with a completely different musculature and weight distribution.) Instead of sailing cleanly over Ubatu's head and smacking into the ground, the Rexy landed on top of her—screeching like a demon and snapping its jaws in an effort to bite anything within reach. Ubatu clubbed its snout with the severed arm she held, gashing the Rexy with its own claws; but the animal scrabbled wildly with its legs, trying to get away and stand up. Its great taloned feet raked Ubatu's own legs, shredding her trousers and gouging the skin beneath. She was lucky the claws hit no major blood vessels... lucky too that the Rexy just wanted to right itself rather than use its claws to cripple her. Even so, one talon pierced her left thigh, punching deep into the meat before the Rexy stumbled away. With an injury like that, I didn't know if she'd be able to stand, let alone maneuver and fight.

Then the second Rexy stepped in and sank its teeth into her face.

It was probably aiming for her throat—instinct would dictate attacking the quickest-kill target—but in the dark and confusion the Rexy missed its mark. The animal's huge mouth nearly engulfed the front half of Ubatu's head, jaws on either side of her face. Not quite enough strength to crush her skull, but the teeth punctured both her cheeks and scraped against bone at her temples. For a moment, the Rexy
chewed;
then Ubatu got her hands up and pushed the beast away. Its teeth minced her face some more as they dragged free. Ubatu tried to club the Rexy's snout with her fist, but it moved back too quickly, out of reach. Preparing for another attack? No. It turned its head aside and spat out its mouthful of cheek flesh and blood.

The Rexy didn't like the taste of Earthling meat. The animal spat again in disgust. Bits of Ubatu's face spattered down on top of her.

Festina ran into the open area, stun-pistol ready in hand. Neither Rexy noticed her; they were both too busy fighting the
pretas
inside their heads. My sixth sense told me the
pretas
wanted the animals to finish off Ubatu: she was down, with one leg injured and her eyes blinded by her own blood. But one Rexy—the one whose arm had been torn off—was afraid to close in on the woman who'd done it, while the other was still too revolted by the flavor of human flesh to take another bite. In the long run, the
pretas
would conquer the beasts' resistance by sheer force of will... but in the short term, the Rexies had managed a standoff by brute stubbornness.

Which meant Festina got off her first shot while the Rexies stood doing nothing.

The pistol's hypersonics focused on the nearest animal—the one still bleeding from the stump of its pulled-off arm. It staggered, head drooping: it was already woozy from loss of blood. Festina steadied the gun to fire again... but before she could pull the trigger, furious smoke rose up and surrounded the weapon. My sixth sense felt the resulting EMP: a surge of energy slagging the wires that connected the gun's battery to the hypersonic projectors. Festina's trigger finger finished its squeeze, but nothing happened. No whir to show that the pistol had fired. No reaction from the Rexy in response to the shot.

Festina had one last stasis sphere, containing one last weapon. She didn't even try to open it. Instead she switched her grip on the gun she already held, taking it by the barrel so she could pistol-whip the first Rexy to come within reach.

The Rexies charged in unison—spurred partly by the
pretas
and partly by a knee-jerk instinct to attack moving prey. (The one so sickened by the taste of Ubatu was too stupid to realize Festina would taste the same.) Festina lunged to the left, making it impossible for both animals to reach her simultaneously. In fact, the beast on the right tried to redirect its rush and only succeeded in jostling its companion so that neither could make a clean lunge. Festina had no such problem. Her hand lashed out, and the butt of her pistol caught the closest Rexy in the throat. It happened to be the one-armed animal who had already been shot once; that particular Rexy was moving more slowly, less quick to react... which was how Festina landed a clean solid hit on the creature's windpipe.

The Rexy tried to screech, but no sound came. My sixth sense saw that the beast's esophagus was crushed. In a moment the Rexy collapsed, sucking for breath that wouldn't come. Its heart pounded fast from fear and exertion; but without oxygen, the pounding pulse would stop soon enough.

Another feast for scavengers when the rain let up.

But there was one more corpse yet to come—either Festina or the last remaining Rexy. The Rexy screeched a challenge; Festina only shook her head sadly. "Greetings," she said. "I'm a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality." A brief silence. "But I'm not going to get it, am I?"

The Rexy screeched again and charged.

The fight was over in seconds. Most fights are.

Under other circumstances, the Rexy might have employed a variety of instinctive tactics... but the
pretas
had no such instincts, so they forced the animal to stick with a single form of attack: charging directly at Festina and trying to bite her somewhere vital. Festina didn't stay still long enough to make that possible. Furthermore, during her "sentient citizen" speech she'd surreptitiously untied the glow-tube from her belt. She held it in her left hand, the pistol in her right; whenever the Rexy charged she used the light for distraction, thrusting it out one way as she dodged the opposite direction, or ramming it suddenly toward the Rexy's eyes, blinding the animal for a moment while she kicked at its knees or punched the pistol's muzzle into the Rexy's ribs.

Neither combatant moved at peak efficiency. Like the Rexy who'd lost an arm, the one still on its feet had suffered numerous injuries on its run through the jungle; it was bleeding, battered, bruised. Festina wasn't damaged, but she was noticeably tired—fatigued from jogging so far with my body weighing her down. Perhaps that's why on one of her feints, she didn't move the glow-tube fast enough: the Rexy, pushing itself hard (or perhaps being pushed by the
pretas),
lurched forward quicker than expected. It caught the light in its teeth and bit down hard, spraying luminescent chemicals in all directions.

Including into its own mouth.

The Rexy gagged and squealed. The chemicals inside the glow-tube weren't aggressively toxic—at least not to terrestrial life—but the taste was engineered to be as vile as possible, to discourage children drinking the fluid if some accidentally spilled. (A typical safety precaution to placate the League of Peoples.) It seemed the Rexy's taste buds had the same reaction as
Homo sap
infants: the animal was so appalled by the chemical flavor that for a few seconds, all it could do was retch. The
pretas
tried to overcome the Rexy's reaction, but the animal's instinct to spit out the glowing chemicals was so basic, so visceral, that even the clouds couldn't stop the Rexy from wasting precious seconds on the urge to vomit.

Festina used those seconds. She too had luminescent chemicals sprayed across her—glowing/flowing down her arm, spatters splashed across her shoulders and the side of her face—but she ignored the shining polka dots as she clubbed the pistol hard against the Rexy's skull. The animal half turned toward her, fluorescent vomit spilling from its mouth. She clubbed it again in exactly the same place... and this time the skull broke open, disgorging blood and what little brains the Rexy possessed. Smoke poured out too, wreathing around Festina for a moment as if trying to asphyxiate her. Then the
preta
clouds flowed into the night, vanishing almost immediately from normal vision.

To my sixth sense, however, the clouds remained as visible as a forest fire—ablaze with irrepressible fury.

The chemicals from the glow-tube burned out quickly in the open air. Their shine lasted just long enough for Festina to check that all three Rexies were dead. Over their corpses, Festina murmured, "That's what 'expendable' means": a time-honored Explorer Corps phrase used when confronting the death of almost any living thing. Then she went to examine Ubatu, who wasn't dead or even unconscious.

Just bloodied and disfigured.

Both her cheeks were in tatters: fatty flaps of tissue were almost cut loose from her face. Her temples were also in bad shape—punctured, gore-smeared, oozing. My paramedics professor liked to say, "Head wounds always seem worse than they are"... but in this case, I thought Ubatu's injuries were just as bad as they looked.

As Festina bent over her, Ubatu tried to speak. The resulting slur of sound wasn't words. Her jaw couldn't move—the muscles to do that had been butchered by Rexy teeth. Anyway, what could Ubatu say? "I'm hurt," maybe? (As if that weren't obvious.) Or perhaps "Do I look hideous?"

As if that weren't obvious too.

But at least Festina could stop the bleeding. She got out her first-aid kit.

Some time later, from the bank of the river, Li uttered a weak "Help!" He'd held his tongue in fear, unable to see what had happened with the Rexies and afraid the big predators had slain his companions. I could see he was worried that if he made a sound, killer pseudosuchians would come for him... but as silence drew out after the fight, his nerves grew too frayed to keep quiet. He'd tried a few preliminary whimpers, then managed a more audible cry.

Not that Li really needed help. He could easily climb back to level ground on his own. His aura showed he just wanted to dramatize his situation, make it look like a fearsome predicament. He was dirty and wet, and in shock at
being
dirty and wet; he didn't know that Festina was more so, covered with chemicals, dinosaur puke, and Ubatu's blood. Li probably wouldn't have cared if he
did
know. He just wanted attention. "Help!" he called again when no Rexies came to attack. "Help! Help! Help!"

Festina was just about finished with first aid: Ubatu's bleeding was controlled, and her face had been swathed in bandages, leaving only her eyes exposed. The eyes had suffered no damage—the only part of her face that could make that claim. Festina murmured, "I'll be right back," to Ubatu, then shouted, "Hold your horses, Ambassador! I'm on my way." Moments later, she dragged Li back to the top of the bank, then listened to him babble about how he'd almost been killed. Meanwhile, she scooped water from a puddle and washed off the various residues smeared on her uniform.

When she was clean, she stood up and interrupted Li's tirade. "Did you see where Tut went?"

"How could I possibly keep track of..."

"Tut!" she called, ignoring the rest of Li's sentence. "Tut! You can come out now. The Rexies are dead."

No answer. Tut was already out of earshot, moving south through the bush. He still wore the mask... and occasionally, he went down on all fours and growled, "Grr-arrh! Grr-arrh!"
Pretas
hovered around him. I couldn't tell if they were trying to possess him or simply marveling at the sight, wondering what in the world he was doing. But whether by plan or by accident, he was heading south—toward the Stage Two station.