14. Contact

Southeast of San Teodoro, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
September 11, 2847

Cassie was on her way back from the latrines when the psycher cornered her.

Rain had gotten better, as the weeks had gone on—there was no doubt in Cassie’s mind of that. Having a group of friends had helped, and the Alu’kan girl had latched onto both her and Vee with the ferocity of a child clutching their favorite stuffed animal at night. Being chosen by Lieutenant Kekoa to help with unarmed combat training had been a clear boost to the girl’s confidence, as well; but she’d still been afraid to walk through the camp at night without having Cassie with her.

So, Cassie had walked with her friend. It wasn’t the threat of Vidakan zombie flies or tree cats, or God knew what off in the jungle, that made Rain tremble. No, it was the approach of any man that she didn’t know, and that made Cassie furious. In all honesty, she was amazed that anyone had allowed Rain Makani into the academy; she couldn’t imagine how her friend had passed a psychiatric evaluation. But then again, Senator Dorotea Catalina had quite a lot of pull, and what wasn’t difficult to imagine was the woman quietly making a problem go away. It was one of the three reasons that Cassie had quietly been considering sending a message to her older brother.

The second was Arc Sandhurst, and the third stepped out of the gloom and directly into their path, into a circle of light illuminated by one of the LED bulbs which had been strung up to light the camp, and connected to the grav-trucks. The light seemed to soak into C’rise of Bian’s headcrest, the pearlescent shell glistening in a rainbow of colors, like that of an oyster. Cassie doubted that many of the other cadets would have had a word for it, nevermind actually having seen it before; but she’d walked along the beaches of Terra as a child, at Cape Cod and Virginia Beach and Bermuda and a dozen other getaways. The privileges of being a princess imperial.

Cassie stopped immediately upon seeing the pink-skinned LeShaii, but, to her surprise, Rain moved. Her roommate, usually so still and quiet, placed herself between Cassie and C’rise with all the bristling fury of a guard dog about to bite.

C’rise’s disturbingly vibrant eyes, shading to magenta at the edges, flicked to Rain, and then back to Cassie. “I am not here to fight, or to argue,” the psycher said. Four weeks of Hard Burn had softened that accent, but not eliminated it. “I am here to warn you both that there are dangers in the trees.”

“We know that.” Cassie chewed her lip for a moment. She didn’t like the psycher, and certainly didn’t like having someone who could read her mind close at hand, but if this was some sort of peace offering, she also didn’t want to be the one to immediately throw it back in the girl’s face. Or, more accurately, she knew that her father wouldn’t want that. Not after how hard he’d worked to bring the LeShaii into the imperium.

“Doctor Vogel’s lectures were… thorough,” Cassie offered, after an uncomfortable moment’s silence. “But, we have sentries keeping watch, and four mechs. They’re keeping them powered up, I was there for the diagnostics. Those sensors will be running all night, and an alarm will go off if anything too big gets near the camp.”

“I can hear them,” C’rise said, her voice dropping to a gentle murmur, so that Cassie almost had to strain to make out what she was saying. “So, so much life, all around us. Small frightened things, hiding from hungry, great things. It reaches beneath us, even here, where the trees and the roots have been cut away. You have to dig out the roots, princess. If you leave any of it behind, the organism will only grow back.”

Rain stepped back, and turned her head to meet Cassie’s eyes, as if to ask a question. All Cassie could do was shrug and shake her head.

“Is there something coming this way right now?” she asked.

“Animal minds are easy,” the psycher answered. “They are aware of us. We intrude upon their territory, drive them back from the city. Press them up against each other. Hem in their hunting grounds.” C’rise shook her head, as if waking from a dream, and her voice firmed. “My people owe your father for his support. It would be a poor repayment indeed to allow you to come to harm, or to die. Remember, it is the predator you don’t see who gets the prey.”

With that, the psycher turned and vanished back into the hot, jungle night.

𝝮

In the morning, after breaking camp, they moved into the jungle.

A track had been cut between the trees, at some point, but it was clear that no one had bothered to come out here and maintain it regularly. The cadets at the front and sides of the march were given short machetes, to hack away any brush that might need to be cleared—though having a fifty-five ton F-3 Janissary at the front of the march certainly went a long way. The front line mech, which had been painted in the combination of brown, red and black irregular shapes which made up Vidakan jungle camouflage, brushed aside saplings, fallen logs, and dangling vines with the same ease that Cassie might use a hand to sweep a gossamer spiderweb out of the way.

The sight of her cousin Bhaskar’s mech up there, taking the lead, made Cassie’s mind turn toward hangar 417, back on Academy Hill. She’d visited only a single time, in the company of Chief Dimitri Jastrow, on the fifth night after her arrival. It had taken them that long to get around to unpacking and removing the plastic.

“You are here to verify that it’s arrived in one piece,” Jastrow had told her. “That’s the only reason. I don’t expect to see you here again until you’ve qualified on a Janissary. Sign this.”

She’d signed, and let her eyes linger on the clean panels of reinforced silicon nitride ceramic armor, painted a bright, gleaming white with gold accents. And then, Cassie had walked out of hangar 417 and quite firmly put what was waiting there out of her mind.

Until now.

As she marched deeper into the jungle, with her friends and comrades arrayed ahead of her, behind her, and to either side, a rifle in her hands, Cassie couldn’t help but think that a Vidakan zombie fly didn’t have the slightest chance in hell of getting its proboscis-stinger through mech armor.

The ‘weapons free’ order was given the moment they marched into the jungle, and not five minutes went by that entire morning without the bark of a BA .50 flechette rifle from somewhere along the line of march. Cassie didn’t actually see a zombie fly herself until they were a standard hour underway, and when the moment came, it was over before she’d even had time to process what was happening.

At first, she thought it was a bird, swooping down out of the boughs which crossed overhead, turning the path through the jungle into an enclosed tunnel with a roof some twenty-five meters above their heads. But a bird would never swoop down directly at the tech cadets marching three rows behind Cassie, wings buzzing in a sort of low drone that raised the thin hairs on her arms.

Cassie swung round, shouldered her flechette rifle, and fired. After all the training they’d done, the motion was automatic, though she wasn’t certain that she’d ever be entirely used to the kick of the rifle’s butt against her shoulder. There was a crack, an explosion of goo in the air, the cessation of that droning sound, and then the tech program students scrambled out of the way with cries of disgust. Cassie took a deep breath, and then walked over to the corpse. She wasn’t surprised that Arc, Pika, Rain and Vee went with her.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“That’s a zombie-fly, alright,” Vee said, poking at it with the toe of her boot. “Think it’s got eggs in there? Should we crack it open and find out?”