16. Predator

Jungle southeast of San Teodoro, Vidako
Imperium Stellarum
September 15, 2847

Time seemed to slow down.

Arc had the sense that the Vidakan tree-cat was moving in slow motion, like an actor in a martial arts holo-vid. He had all the time in the world to see what was happening, to know that Maja Seidl, who was just brushing her hands, still wet from filling canisters at the waterfall, off on the thighs of her pants, was completely unaware of what was coming. Arc started to rise to his feet, to reach a hand out, to open his mouth, and she must have seen something in his suddenly wide eyes, because her face changed in the instant before impact.

The tree-cat took Seidl to the ground in a crushing pounce, and everything burst into motion at once. Cassie was the first to move, and one small, inane part of Arc’s mind wondered just how many tailored genetic modifications were pushing her forward in that instant. She swung the barrel of her BA-50 flechette rifle up and squeezed off a three-round burst.

The flechettes weren’t hooked into a neural-lace system. They didn’t acquire the tree- cat or register it as a target, and the optical sensors at the front of the .50 caliber bullet didn’t have time to process, even if they had. The tree-cat, standing on Maja Seidle’s unmoving body, was perhaps five or ten meters distant from where Cassie took the shot—and the flechettes left the barrel of her rifle at a muzzle velocity of well over nine hundred meters per second. There was no time for the actuators inside the sophisticated bullet to adjust the fins, or to steer it through the air for increased accuracy: there was no time for anything but the flechettes to enter the tree-cat’s chest, then blow out its back in a spray of blood.

“Get it off her!” Arc shouted, and dashed across the water-slicked rocks along the edge of the cascades to throw his shoulder against the still warm, shuddering body of the tree-cat. John Rixey was there at his side, and though they’d hardly spoken two words to each other before this expedition, they threw themselves against the carcass with a common will and determination, straining with every ounce of muscle.

Arc had come to Vidako, and to Academy Hill, with the slender body of a boy who’d always disdained physical exertion. He’d never been interested in sports during his time at secondary school, and his parents had never forced him to work a job that involved hard labor. Now, in this moment, he regretted it—because while four weeks of torture at Lieutenant Kekoa’s hands had given him a sort of wiry strength, it wasn’t enough. If he’d only used his time better before coming here, he could have done more.

With a shout of anger, as much at himself as at the tree-cat, Arc gave one final push, and John Rixey, perhaps unwilling to give any less, screamed at his side. Somehow, they rolled nearly four-hundred kilograms of dead weight off Maja Seidl, and then collapsed, panting, next to her. Even having done it, Arc could hardly believe that it was possible, and he could barely even hear what anyone else was saying over the pounding of his heart, the thudding of his pulse in his ears.

Natalie Ramírez, who’d dropped her compass and map somewhere back among the rocks, fell down to her knees next to Seidl, and pressed her fingers to the other woman’s neck. “I’ve got a pulse,” Ramírez said. “She’s still alive.”

Arc desperately thought back to their first aid training. “We need a stretcher,” he said. “You two –” he pointed at two of the tech cadets, Tremblay and Moore. “Get your knives out and find two straight branches, just like they taught us. Shave them down. We’ll need to use our coats.”

The two cadets nodded and got to work, while Ramírez stayed next to Seidl. Cassie came over and crouched next to Arc, and he was grateful to see that John Rixey was up, flechette rifle in his hands, scanning the surrounding jungle. The tree cat had broken a trail through the brush; it must have been moving fast, and something about that struck Arc as wrong, but he couldn’t seem to make his mind work right.

“If her back is broken, we’ll only make it worse by moving her,” Cassie said, keeping her voice low and leaning in close.

Arc nodded, but he was only half paying attention. His eyes were fixed on the broken branches, trampled undergrowth, and scraped tree trunks which marked the tree-cat’s passage. Tree-cats were ambush predators. It didn’t make sense for one to go charging through the rainforest at a group of ten targets, in a mad rush, instead of stalking them and waiting for someone to wander off alone. The only reason that something like that should be running was if it was –

“Forget the stretcher,” Arc said, lurching to his feet. “Rixley, pick Seidl up and carry her. We’re leaving. Now.” He reached up with his left hand to tap the button on his earpiece, turning the microphone on. “This is water buffalo actual,” he said, immediately feeling a surge of hot, burning hatred for Lieutenant Kekoa, for having given them such a ridiculous name. “I have wounded and am returning to base, repeat, I have wounded and am returning to base, over.”

John Rixley, in the meantime, had knelt next to Seidl, and even reached out his hands, but was exchanging hesitant glances with Ramírez. “You sure about this, Sandhurst? We could kill her moving her. Maybe we should just wait until –

Leaves, moving at the end of the broken path. Arc knew that they were out of time.

“Now!” he shouted. “Back to camp! Leave the water.” He shouldered Rixley out of the way, rolled Seidl up, and scooped her into a princess-carry. It wasn’t how they’d been taught, but he was only half thinking clearly. He felt something hot and wet on his hands, soaking into his sleeves, and realized that it was her blood.

“Something’s coming,” Cassie said, swinging her rifle around to point into the jungle. The boughs of the trees were moving—shaking, just like they had been when the elevator was descending. Arc’s earbud crackled, but the words didn’t register, and he took off running back the way they’d come.

The spiked terror—terribilis cornibus—came crashing through the brush, snapping trees off at the trunk in its pursuit of the treecat. The only reason that something like that would be running was if it was being attacked, Arc completed his thought. Attacked by something even worse. Half a dozen BA-50 flechette rifles barked out, but the terror roared, more in anger than pain. Of course; it was the sort of monster that could chew a mech’s armor into scrap. The little guns they’d been given didn’t have a chance in hell of hurting it, because they weren’t meant to ever deal with this thing. It was supposed to be run off by Ọlatẹru and Xiao-Solaris, that was the entire reason Lieutenant Kekoa had sent them out in their mechs. But somehow, impossibly, it was right here, and if Arc and his squad didn’t move, they were all dead.

“Come on!” he shouted again, and this time they listened. A few of the cadets were still squeezing off shots, but the cornibus went right for the carcass of the tree-cat which had taken out Maja Seidl. That was the only thing, Arc knew, that saved them—the only reason they had even a chance of escaping alive.

He glanced back as he ran, boots scuffing along the dirt, branches whipping past his face, and saw the cadets who’d come with him to the waterfall strung out in a ragged line as they followed him. The cornibus had reached the tree-cat’s body, and it bent over, snapping the carcass up in its enormous jaws.

It was, to Arc’s surprise, smaller than he’d expected. There’s no way that’s twenty meters, he thought to himself. Fifteen, at most. It isn’t even as big as a Tyro.

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The earbud crackled again, and he recognized Lieutenant Kekoa’s voice in his ear. “Say again, Water Buffalo actual, what is your situation and location?”

“We were attacked by a tree-cat while we were at the waterfall,” Arc gasped. Talking while running desperately through the jungle, while carrying a grown woman, was nothing like a march around the campus, and his arms already felt like they were going to fall off. “Cadet Seidl is unconscious. The tree-cat was being hunted by a cornibus. Juvenile, I think. Fifteen, maybe sixteen meters tall.”

And if it was a juvenile, did that mean that the two older cadets had chased off the mother? Were there more young around?