Red Sun Bleeding (2 page)

‘I don’t suppose you remember the way back to the mining truck you were driving?’

Her mouth opened but she said nothing. Calder reached across and felt her arm’s sleeve. Like rubbing the surface of an iced pond. Her suit’s refrigeration fibres were still working, the same as his. Without them they would die here from dehydration and heat exhaustion all too quickly.

‘Well, I guess we’re both lost. Our best chance is to listen out for a helicopter from the base. If one comes close I can take a pot-shot close to it with my rifle – that should set off its defence alarm. Let them know we’re close.’

Lento looked around twenty five, but with life extension treatments, she could have been as old as Calder’s grandmother. He really was lost – wrong planet, wrong time period, wrong situation.  Janet’s mouth opened, but this time, rather than just sucking air, he heard words, so faint and rasped he couldn’t make them out. ‘What did you say?’

Now Calder was listening, he heard her the second time.

‘It’s covered in spines.’

Calder glanced around. Some of the jungle’s plants resembled giant cacti, but he couldn’t see any from where they were seated. ‘What is?’

‘It’s covered in spines,’ she repeated, hardly louder than a breath.

Calder moaned in frustration. He was sitting in his tree with someone who was clearly out of hers. What had Janet Lento seen out here to send her off the deep end? ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll get out of this, Janet Lento. My crew won’t give up on me. And your people have been searching for you since you were posted missing.’

‘It’s covered in spines.’

For a moment he wondered if she was talking about what passed for grass underfoot. Thick orange blades that bristled like walking on an old man’s chin. But then, this whole world was old. Just waiting to die. Hopefully, not like him and the mine’s missing driver.  ‘Well, I’ll be sure to wear gloves if I have to pick it up.’ Humouring her seemed to have the desired effect. She fell silent. ‘We could try and light a fire and attract attention. But everything in this land is too damn damp, I’m not sure how well it’d burn. And with the steam from the rivers and rain, distinguishing the smoke from the general boil-off isn’t going to be easy.’ It might be worth a try, though. The
Gravity Rose
’s crab-like navigator, Polter, was still in orbit with the head of the drive room, Chief Paopao. They had been seeding orbital satellite coverage around the world when Calder’s shuttle launched down to the ancient world. Could such technology resolve the difference between a rescue beacon’s smoke and the natural steam from rainfall? Satellites still seemed like magic to him. The wizard’s all-seeing eye. Science or sorcery, he would take whatever help he could get right now.

Calder heard a scratching noise at the end of the branch. He peered through the bloody leaves. There was a spider the size of a rat shaking the tree’s vegetation, a peacock-like fan of multi-coloured fur at its rear, bristling as it drummed its fore-legs against the wood. Disgusted, Calder reversed his rifle and swiped the thing away with the gun’s collapsible metal butt. ‘Off you hop! This tree isn’t big enough for everyone. Guests get priority.’

As the spider fell it made a keening whistling noise, an angry kettle brought to the boil. Its cry answered in the jungle, echoes distant and muted by the thick undergrowth. ‘That’s not good.’ The creature he had dislodged had fallen to the ground in the shade of the tree, whipping around in circles like a puppy chasing its tail.

Janet Lento shinned higher up the tree as the faraway whistling grew closer, ferns rustling as more spiders appeared. And Calder realized that what he had ejected from the tree wasn’t exactly a spider... at least, not an
adult
one. The mature hunters weren’t rat-sized. In fact, the mastiff hunting hounds in the exiled prince’s palace kennels would have given the fully grown spiders a respectfully wide berth. They had a series of legs down either side; large and small limbs interweaved like a dancing tank, with at least four feelers up front for carrying and hacking with sharp, poisoned bristles. Dagger-sized fangs angrily clattered around their mouths, clusters of eyes at the top of the central body bulb focusing on Calder. They didn’t appear happy in the slightest to find uninvited visitors in their tree, mistreating their hatchlings. For Calder, the feeling was mutual. There was a long, low sound like creaking wood. He realised that while Janet Lento wasn’t speaking, she could still make some noises and was at least aware enough of her surroundings not to appreciate having dozens of nightmare-sized spiders scampering towards their perch above the jungle. Calder unslung the rifle and pointed it towards the ground. He squeezed the trigger but nothing happened. Cursing, he pressed the safety selector to semiautomatic and let have at the creatures below. His rifle was recoilless… the same magnetic field that accelerated the darts to hypersonic velocities catching the back burst and absorbing the energy, using it to help power the gun. Only a slight quivering with each hail of pellets triggered. Every short burst made a
zup-zup
sound as the gauss field flexed, followed by an angry explosive cracking as his ammunition broke the sound barrier. A swine-like squealing came from the spiders below as they were literally blown apart by each volley. They didn’t sound much like spiders… the arachnids back on Calder’s freezing home world, Hesperus, had been coin-sized, silent and shy. Shrewd enough to avoid humanity for the most part. These ones kept coming, leaping up at the lower trunk until Calder sighted on them. Not much more to it than pointing and squeezing. Colourful bodies bursting with the impact. The nobleman heard a scampering noise from the back of the tree, and he stood up, leaning against a branch to hose a wave of spiders climbing up the rear with bullets. He changed position, the assault on the front renewed with fresh vigour. They drummed against the wood as they climbed. Calling their pack, or maybe communicating with each other. Calder resisted the impulse to check his ammunition count. He sweated, shooting furiously into their ranks for maybe five minutes, beating back one attack from all sides simultaneously. The spiders finally started acting intelligently too, backing away from the tree, whistling angrily and impotently against the intruders, shaking their colourful fur fans as they attempted to intimidate the two newcomers. What was it the mining camp manager had said back on the landing field, describing the base fence’s murderous automated weapons?
We’re not in the food chain and they’ve learnt it the hard way
. Too damn right. This was probably the first time these things had run into humanity. Their fate was about the same as most non-sentient predators introduced to mankind across so many worlds.

‘Keep away!’ shouted Calder. ‘This tree is part of
my
kingdom now.’ So, this is what his realm had shrunk to, the measure of his reduced circumstances. The first time he actually shot a modern weapon, too. Any guns in the sim entertainment shows that the ship’s android, Zeno, had used to bring him up to speed on modern existence probably didn’t count, as real as they had seemed at the time. It seemed shockingly easy compared to the many tedious years of real training with sword, shield, crossbow, longbow and armour he’d endured in his youth. His father and his man-at-arms permanently disappointed in Calder’s martial progress. If he had only possessed a couple of crates of these rifles back on Hesperus, he could have armed the based peasant farmers with the guns and routed every nation on the world – crowned himself emperor of the planet. He wouldn’t have been beaten on the battlefield, betrayed by his treacherous fiancée and then forced to ignobly flee his world into exile. Part of him was glad he had never been offered the temptation by the wizard who had turned out to be merely a rogue crew member. This rifle was a coward’s weapon, a knave’s weapon. No skill required. Neither strength nor patience. No need to put yourself in risk. Just sit back and slay at a distance like an indestructible god casting lightning bolts. Janet Lento’s wide eyes settled on the blood-mangled bodies quivering at the foot of the tree, seeming to find the carnage as much to her amazement as everything else she’d mutely observed. She shifted her gaze accusingly to Calder.

‘Better them than us,’ said Calder. ‘I know it isn’t exactly glory, but we’re about two hundred light years away from all that… and I’m not a prince anymore, so there’s not a lot left I can bring disgrace to, is there?’
Least of all the House of Durk
.

He checked the ammunition counter on the drum-like magazine. Two hundred pellets left. He had managed to fire off two thirds of his ammunition in one brief engagement.
Great. Calder Durk. King of the Tree.
He moved the fire selector to its sniper setting, single fire and maximum acceleration, to make his magazine last. An optical sight rose from the centre of the gun as he flipped the switch, an integral field projector to paint a target with a laser. Quite unnecessary. At this range a six year-old goat herder would be hard pressed to miss. Down in the jungle clearing the remaining spiders retreated into the neighbouring trees, foliage shaking as the creatures passed through the leaves.
What are they up to now? Are they going to wait until we come down and see us off their domain?
This part of the jungle was obviously serious spider territory. ‘I don’t suppose you know how these hairy monsters hunt… their pack behaviour… intelligence? Any nests near the mining camp…?’

She said nothing.  Something moved below in the clearing, and for a second Calder thought he caught sight of a little child moving through the brush. But then it was gone.
I must be going mad out here
. He wondered how long it would take in the alien jungle until he ended up like the truck driver. Two blades short of a castle armoury.

‘Gods, I wish we had some of the camp’s big robot tanks to protect us.’ And sitting behind a laser fence topped with automatic guns would have been nice right now. Except they obviously hadn’t proved up to the task of keeping Calder on the right side of the defensive perimeter. And tanks wouldn’t have been able to fit in the clearing and stop the spiders… swinging across between the trees on sticky white webbing! Calder swore and moved his rifle up, but the spiders were too dispersed in the surrounding trees, arcing across at random… ones, twos, three at once, a dozen different directions. Too many to sight. He fired off shots as they swung over like great hairy pendulums – all quivering legs, victoriously whistling and clattering their fangs like sharpening knives for a roast, his bullets cracking wide as the creatures slammed into the tree’s high foliage.
His
tree. Foliage trembled above them. How would such a creature hunt? The answer came to him. Dropping out of the tree like an assassin on whatever unfortunate passed below seemed a more than effective method. He tried to hold down his rising tide of terror. Losing it out here,
up
here, would be the very last thing he did.

‘Get down!’ Calder cried at Lento. His shout was unnecessary. She was already shinning her way towards the clearing’s grass. He swung off the branch and grabbed the wood, finding handholds to desperately jab his fingers into. It had seemed a lot less demanding to get into the tree. Then Calder found an easier way… it started raining spiders and he lost his grip, plummeting towards the jungle’s floor without the benefit of a spider’s webbing rope to control his fall. The ground slammed into him sideways – or maybe
he
was sideways, knocking the life out of him for a couple of seconds. His rifle securely slung around his back as two aggrieved wolf-sized arachnids landed close enough to reach out and touch.

***

Captain Lana Fiveworlds ducked under the helicopter’s slowing rotor and ran towards the waiting miners and her lizard-like first mate, Skrat. Her android, Zeno, was off the helicopter and by her side.

‘What’s the situation?’ demanded Lana.

‘It’s terribly perplexing,’ said Skrat. ‘Calder appears to have disappeared from the camp. We were working together unloading the supplies. He went to check on a malfunctioning loading ramp. Calder seemed to be gone an inordinately long time, so I went over to see how he was doing. There was simply no sign of the fellow. We have searched the base and the landing field and every shuttle, but he’s completely vanished.’

The camp’s manager, Kien-Yen Leong, appeared behind them, coming from the second copter. He addressed his own staff. ‘You’ve checked the fence’s sensor logs and all the automated guns?’

‘Of course we have,’ said one of the miners. ‘There’s no record of anything leaping the fence or flying through our air-space’ He pointed to one of the sentry guns on a tower, rotating with elephant-like radar manifolds sticking out of its turret, tracking a dragon-sized beast in the sky above.

‘Could you have had a power outage on your guns or the senor line?’ asked Lana.

‘’There’s no hole in the logs to match that,’ said the miner, looking up at the bloated blood-red sun. ‘Before you ask, all your crew are listed in the camp system as friendlies. None of our guns glitched and blew him to pieces... and even a mortar round leaves some remains. And these systems are hardened against solar activity. They’re rated for badly nuked battlefield environments. Background radiation here can be erratic, but it’s never approached anything close to that.’

Lana held back from retorting that it was a pity the base hadn’t taken the same trouble with the truck that the missing miner had been driving. Maybe she and Zeno wouldn’t have been wasting their time searching for a probably long-dead worker when her crewman disappeared.
Just like Calder Durk
. Green as a meadow – at least, the ones on most worlds, if not Abracadabra - and trouble through and through. She gazed back to her helicopter… Professor Alison Sebba dismounting with a dainty disdain for the landing field’s mud. If the academic they’d transported to this world hadn’t been flying with Lana during the search for the missing miner, she would have suspected the life extended harpy had finally gotten her claws into Calder. Lana would have asked them to search the base again, checking under bunks for the pair.