Chapter 2

They marched for hours, struggling through the rough terrain, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the crash site as possible. Zhari’s leg ached constantly, and her armpit was sore from leaning on the XMR stock. She wanted desperately to use another painkiller, but they only had a limited quantity, it would be foolish to expend them so quickly. Besides, she did not want to show weakness in front of the human pilot, McGregor. She eyed him bitterly as he strained to support her weight. Had he done his job properly? Could he have avoided the enemy AA shells? Had he been inattentive? Was he flying too low? Breaking some kind of protocol?

It was pointless to blame him, it wouldn’t help them now. But as she banished the thought to the back of her mind and tried to focus on her mission, the resentment remained. The little human prattled incessantly about everything and nothing, it was grating and fruitless. It distracted her from her broken leg, however, and so she tolerated it, humoring him with her monosyllabic and dismissive replies. Did she owe him a debt of honor for saving her from the wreck? Not if he had first endangered her. But she couldn’t be sure of that, and it was likely that the landing craft’s black box would never be recovered so deep inside enemy territory. She would default to cold neutrality for now.

The forest smelled wrong. The signature chemical stink of Betelgeusians was obscured by the more powerful, unfamiliar scents of alien flowers and plants. She would not be able to rely on her nose here. The human seemed wholly unaware, perhaps they didn’t have a sense of smell at all. The sun was beginning to go down as the planet rotated, the days here were short, they would need to find shelter soon. Her light-sensitive eyes pierced the darkness, seeking a cave or a rocky outcrop between the ancient, gnarled trees. Their trunks were rough and twisted, their roots making the ground dangerously uneven. Under normal circumstances, her people were agile and perfectly at home in the jungle, but this broken leg was the most inconvenient injury in this environment. The wound had transformed her into a stumbling, hobbling liability.

She tripped, but the alien caught her, his small hands wrapped around her upper arm.

“Watch it, don’t break your other leg too.”

A joke? Not funny. She ignored him and continued on, her clawed, paw-like feet kicking through rotting leaves and fallen twigs.

McGregor unscrewed the cap of his canteen and drank deeply. The jungle was humid, but even in the low light, the heat was crippling. His boots were full of sweat, and his clothes were drenched. He offered the canteen to Zhari, and she sat down on a giant root that broke through the soil, taking a long draw. Sweat made her muscled, athletic body glisten, dampening the tank top and knee-length shorts that she was wearing. She had discarded her combat armor shortly after hey had left the crash site, it was damaged, and its bulk had made the already difficult trek even harder. The fabric clung to her figure, it might have been attractive under different circumstances.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her furry hand and passed the canteen back to him, McGregor clipping it onto his belt to let it refill. The canteens had solar cells to power a condenser that would automatically replenish them over time, drawing moisture from the air. Moisture was plentiful here, they were practically swimming. He sucked air into his mouth experimentally and felt wetness on his tongue. Sunlight might be a problem under this canopy, however. If the canteens ran out of energy, then they would have to be filled conventionally from a fresh water source. Who knew where they might find one of those.

“We must find shelter,” Zhari said, and McGregor nodded in agreement.

“The area is pretty rocky, there must be caves around here. If we can find one, we can hole up and wait for help. If the other landing parties succeeded then a UNN fleet is going to pound those orbital defenses into space debris. They’ll find us once the planet is recaptured.”

Zhari stared at him, an unspoken question in her amber eyes.

“McGregor, our mission is not yet complete.”

He turned to her, a look of horror on his face.

“What do you mean? We’re MIA. Our ship was downed, our team is dead, you’re injured. We don’t even know which direction to go in!”

“Our team is not dead, we are still alive,” she said poignantly. “My leg will heal, we must find the target and neutralize it.”

“You’re insane, did you get brain damage in the crash? What can a pilot and a crippled Borealan do against a whole army of Bugs?”

Zhari glared at him, her lips rising in a snarl to expose her sharp teeth. Her incisors were like razor blades, pearly white against her pink gums. He took a step back, wary of her, a million years of instinct warning him away from a dangerous animal.

“What is your rank, human?”

“Lieutenant...” he answered warily.

“I am a Lieutenant Commander, I outrank you. That makes me your Alpha.”

McGregor began to protest, but Zhari unholstered her weapon, pointing the jagged bayonet that was mounted on the end of the long barrel at him.

“The penalty for desertion is summary execution, carried out by the ranking officer.”

“You can’t be serious,” he snapped. “What purpose would killing me possibly serve? You can’t even walk, you’d die out here on your own.”

She aimed the barrel of the XMR at his face, staring down the sights.

“I’m deadly serious. Our mission is not over. If you refuse to fight, I’ll shoot you. You’ve seen me shoot, you know that running from me is pointless.”

McGregor considered just kicking her crutch over the next time they were walking and making a break for it, but she was probably right. That was a high powered, long range XMR, he couldn’t outrun a railgun slug. He crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby tree, its bark covered in old moss growth.

“I guess you’re in charge then, boss,” he chimed sarcastically.

“We will try to find a cave,” she said, leaning on her crutch and rising from her sitting position on the root. “Keep moving.”

McGregor shot her a mock salute, then walked off into the trees.

McGregor dug through the forest, pushing past plants and shrubs, Zhari trailing behind him at a slower pace as she stumbled through the foliage. It was so damned hot. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes and making his clothes stick to his skin. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be many insects here, which he found unusual. The jungles of Earth were teeming with them, maybe animal life had not progressed very far on EE-4? He climbed over high roots, his boots slipping in the wet soil, looking for some sign of rock protruding from the ground or a cliff face with an opening. He had seen odd stone pillars protruding from the jungle canopy when they had entered the atmosphere, they couldn’t be too far away. There might be caves in their faces. He glanced up at the treetops, wondering if he could climb one and get a better view of their surroundings, but they were hundreds of feet high. He looked over his shoulder to check on his surly companion. Zhari was just about keeping up, he didn’t feel like helping her along anymore. If she wanted to be the supreme leader, then she could make her own way.

Zhari struggled after McGregor, the stock of her crutch-rifle digging into her armpit painfully. The terrain was becoming steeper now, he must be leading her towards a mountain. She was exhausted. Her muscles burned, and her broken leg throbbed painfully, every step sending a sharp twinge up through her body. She had established dominance, and that was good, it seemed as if McGregor would obey her orders despite his complaints. Once her leg had healed enough to walk unaided, they would attempt to complete their mission, whether the cowardly human liked it or not. Through the trees she glimpsed grey rock, and shortly afterwards McGregor called back to her, waving his arms.

“I found it! I knew I had seen mountains, there must be caves here for sure.”

She limped up the incline as he moved along the vertical cliff face, searching for openings. Far from being mountains, the structures were more like towers of solid bedrock, extending above the trees like giant pillars hewn from stone.

After a few hundred meters McGregor found what he was looking for. It wasn’t exactly a cave, more of a recess in the rock with an outcrop that would protect from the rain, but it would do. It was just tall enough for Zhari to crouch inside. McGregor threw his pack into the cave and went off to gather vines to drape over the entrance in an attempt to make it less conspicuous.

Zhari sat down, wincing as the motion sent a flare of pain up through her leg. She set her crutch against the moist stone wall and reached for her rucksack, digging through it to retrieve another painkiller from one of the first aid kits. She pressed the needle into a vein on her arm, then relaxed a little as the medicine spread through her body, the sharp pain becoming a dull ache that could be more easily ignored.

She lay back on the cold floor and looked up at the ceiling of the recess. Water dripped from thick growths of moss, it was a little colder than the humid jungle outside, a welcome reprieve. She watched as McGregor threw armfuls of vines over the entrance, hanging them over the rocky outcrop. After a few minutes, there was a curtain across the opening, it would be a lot harder to see from a distance.

He pushed his way inside and sat down next to her, panting and wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

“That’s about as safe as we’re gonna get.”

She nodded in agreement, appraising their hideout. It was as much as she could hope for, at least they wouldn’t have to sleep in the jungle.

“How’s your leg, boss?”

Was he being passive aggressive? It didn’t matter.

“It’s manageable, it should be healed in a few days.”

McGregor looked at her, incredulous.

“A few days? Seriously? It would take me months to heal an injury like that without medical equipment.”

“Humans must be frail.”

“You say that, but I’m not the one with a broken leg.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Fine fine, you don’t like jokes, duly noted.”

They sat in silence for a while, the monotonous drip of water hitting the stone floor echoing through the cave. The quiet became too much for McGregor, if this surly alien wasn’t going to talk, then he would talk enough for both of them.

“So, we have enough food to last until your leg is healed I think, and we’re good for water. The Bugs probably won’t find us in here, so what are we gonna do? Just sit in silence until you can walk again?”

Zhari considered for a moment, then answered.

“We need to find out which direction the objective is in.”

“And I suppose by that you mean I need to find out which direction the objective is in?”

She glared at him, her brow furrowed as she looked him up and down disdainfully.

“Are you not a Marine, McGregor? Did you not sign up to fight?”

“No!” he protested, “I didn’t sign up to fight. I’m a pilot! My job is bringing Marines to and from the fight, not ground pounding with them. Do I look like a jungle commando to you?”

She didn’t reply, her sharp claws clicking on the stone floor as she drummed her fingers impatiently.

“Why are you so fucking uptight anyway?” McGregor exclaimed, crossing his arms and returning her cold stare. “Fleet Command already wrote us off, they’ll assume we’re dead. Why go on a suicide mission now? They won’t expect our control station to be captured and they’ll plan around it.”

“Because those were our orders,” Zhari snarled. “Do you think I became the Alpha of my pack by being lazy and unreliable? Typical of a human to want to stay in his cozy ship while others do the fighting.”

McGregor rolled his eyes.

“Oh here we go again, I’ve heard this spiel before. It’s not my fault that your people never discovered superlight travel, and now every time a Borealan has a complaint we have to hear about how humans are cowardly and dishonorable for not wanting to disembowel their enemies with their own teeth like some kind of tribal savage.”

“Watch your tongue, human,” Zhari snapped.

“Watch your misplaced pride. What are you gonna do, hit me with your crutch?”

“No, but I could shoot you with it.”

McGregor gave up and rested his arms on his knees, staring at the floor. They sat in silence for a few more minutes until he dared to speak again.

“You had to complete the integration training on the Pinwheel, right? That space station they send all the aliens to? I thought the Borealans they put in mixed units were all socialized.”

“Yes, they sent me there.”

He waited a moment, but she didn’t elaborate.

“So what, it didn’t stick? Usually, the Borealans who have fought in mixed units are less of a pain in the ass than the ones who haven’t.”

“I completed the program as instructed, I learned human customs and how to interact with them on a professional level, but that doesn’t mean I have to respect them. My instructor was fond of humans, too fond. She had forgotten the traditions of our people.”

“What are the traditions of your people?” he asked sarcastically, “being an asshole?”

She chuckled and shook her head slowly.

“You have spirit McGregor, I’ll give you that. It’s a shame that you only direct it towards antagonizing me, rather than accomplishing your mission.”

He unscrewed the cap of his canteen and took a swig.

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned my mission is over. My orders were to land a commando squad on the surface of EE-4, then wait with the ship. Granted we came in a little harder than I might have liked, but I performed my duty to the best of my abilities. Nobody told me that I had to go traipsing into the jungle and shoot at Bugs.”