Chapter 4: Contact

Walker pulled up his holographic map as he tried to get his bearings. Everything on this planet looked the damned same, but the slant of the valley and the snowy peaks of the mountains glimpsed on the horizon gave him enough information to work with.

“Another one here,” he said, Kaz walking up behind him to pull another seismic sensor from his pack. She stabbed it into the ground, and it lit up on his display, broadcasting its position. While comms were a pain in the ass in such dense woodland, the sensors created their own little wireless network, Walker able to see all of the ones that had been placed by every scout team thus far as they formed a web across the holographic terrain.

“None of them have been tripped yet?” Kaz asked, leaning over his shoulder to get a look at the map.

“Nope, where the hell are the roaches hiding?”

“Maybe Fleetcom was wrong, and the hive ship on the surface never got the chance to unload its troops?”

“No way,” Walker replied, shaking his head. “They wouldn’t have taken off before dropping their cargo. The Bugs know that we always kick their arthropod asses in space, the only shot they have at holding Jarilo is making the ground war too much of a shitshow for us to handle. They’re just being sneaky, they’ll turn up somewhere...”

They moved deeper into the valley, on their way back towards the base now, the looping route that was outlined on their map covering as much ground as possible. The terrain wasn’t getting any more forgiving, the whole valley was nothing but a tangle of roots and rocks. An army attempting to march through this dense undergrowth might be better served by simply taking a dropship over it. Sure they’d lose the element of surprise, but at least they’d get to their destination. That was if they ever found a tunnel entrance to begin with, it didn’t seem like the other scout teams had come across any either.

“Hold up,” Kaz said, “I got somethin’ over here.”

Walker put a hand on his holstered pistol, scanning the dense trees for signs of movement, but he didn’t see anything. He followed her forwards as she sniffed the air, drawing his weapon to cover her as she crouched to brush the dirt with her furry fingers.

“This soil has been disturbed, recently.”

There was indeed a blanket of disturbed soil, some of it coating the leaves of the shorter plants. Somebody had spread fresh dirt rather than leaving it in a conspicuous pile. An attempt to conceal their activities no doubt.

“What do you smell?” Walker whispered. “Is this fresh?”

“Not very, but there are traces of Bug. They were here. One day ago, perhaps two.”

“Shit,” Walker hissed under his breath, trailing behind Kaz as she followed her sensitive nose. They weaved between the trees, Kaz practically glued to the floor like a bloodhound. Betelgeusians communicated entirely through pheromones as far as anybody could tell, and their smell was even apparent to humans where it was strongest. All that he could smell right now was the forest, but Kaz had picked up their scent, and so he kept his eyes on the trees as they moved forward.

She stopped suddenly, standing upright and shouldering her XMR, Walker lowering his faceplate and switching on his night vision. Even in the middle of the day, the dense canopy made the forest gloomy. They edged forward, coming across something that looked like a sinkhole, a dent in the ground about three feet across that had obviously been dug out and later filled.

“I know what this is,” Walker said, lowering his weapon as Kaz walked around the circumference of the hole. “It’s a scout tunnel, they dug a branch off the main hive to let their scouts access the surface, then they filled it in when they were done.”

He holstered his handgun and flipped up his visor, bringing his wrist-mounted display up to his face and tapping at the screen, putting a call through to Fleetcom.

“Stand still Kaz, I’m calling this in.”

It didn’t take more than a moment for the operator to pick up, a female voice coming through with a hiss of static.

“Receiving you Sergeant Walker, report. Over.”

“We got a Bug hole, Fleetcom. We’ve found a scout tunnel that was recently filled in. My Borealan says they were here within the last forty-eight hours. It probably branches off the main tunnel network. They might be closer to base Charlie than we thought. Over.”

“Roger that Sergeant, marking your position. Continue on your patrol as ordered, call in any anomalies that you see. Don’t take any risks out there, Godspeed. Over.”

“Will do Fleetcom, over and out.”

“This stinks, Walker,” Kaz commented. “This place crawls.”

“Our orders are to continue on our way, now more than ever we need to get these sensors planted. We may have stumbled across a branch of the main hive. Remember Kaz, hold your fire until I give the order, we don’t want to throw rocks at the wasp’s nest.” She didn’t respond, and so he snapped his fingers at her, getting her attention. “Kaz, get your head in the game.”

She nodded, lowering her weapon.

“You don’t smell it, Walker, it’s like they’re still here.”

“Come, let’s keep moving.”

They spent another day walking, coming across nothing of note, and that night they slept in shifts to keep watch. Finding that hole so close to their patrol route had put them both on edge, the enemy could attack at any moment. Walker was glad of his Borealan companion. Bugs could smell him from a fair distance, or taste him with their antenna, whatever the hell it was that insects did. Her keen nose would alert them long before the enemy came into visual range in this dense forest.

The next morning they continued on their patrol, placing more of the sensors as they went, their pace noticeably faster. They hadn’t come across any wildlife here, it was as if the animals had all fled, or perhaps the Bugs had killed them off. Kaz complained of the constant smell, their scent permeating the forest, and yet they never met any Bug patrols.

They stopped at another stream to fill their canteens, Walker taking the opportunity to take off his boots and rub his feet. They had been marching practically non-stop for days, and he was starting to get blisters. He longed to dip them in the water and let the cool liquid run between his toes, but it was a bad idea, it might leave him vulnerable if they were ambushed.

He pulled an oat bar from his pocket and bit into it as he watched Kaz drink. She consumed almost as much water as food, her requirements rising exponentially with her exaggerated size. One of her round ears flicked suddenly, and she dropped her canteen, the bottle hanging from her belt and spilling its contents as her hands shot to her rifle. Walker wasn’t far behind, shouldering his XMR, looking to Kaz as she scanned the canopy with her yellow eyes.

“What is it, Kaz?”

“Quiet ... something...”

He heard it too, rustling branches, coming from somewhere in the tall trees above them. They hadn’t seen any sign of birds so far, could it be some tree-dwelling native animal? Bugs didn’t climb trees as far as he knew, but these were about two hundred feet tall, there could be a whole ecosystem in those branches that they might not have seen from the ground. He flipped down his helmet’s visor, switching from night vision to infrared, scanning for any signs of life.

“There’s something in the trees,” Kaz hissed, “I heard it.”

They spread out, rifles aimed at the treetops, the forest silent save for the quiet trickle of running water. Walker spotted a heat signature, scoping in on the rustling pine needles, his XMR’s sight linked wirelessly to his visor. It could be disorienting to the uninitiated, but he had trained with this weapon for thousands of hours. Closing his left eye would trip a sensor inside the helmet that would open a link to the rifle’s scope and display its aperture inside the visor, meaning that he wouldn’t have to remove the protective plate to use his XMR, and opening the eye would return the view to the camera that was embedded in his helmet.

He spotted a flash of blue material, shiny and reflective, making out a figure between the pine needles.

It was about the size of an average person, perhaps a little shorter at around five feet and six inches, with four arms and two legs. It was covered in a hard, shiny exoskeleton in striking azure, its pink flesh visible between the joints. Some of it was body armor designed to match the style and color of its natural shell, but it was impossible to tell where one ended, and the other began. It had three fingers on its hands that were grasping the branches and three toes on its feet, beetle-like horns protruding from its head, or perhaps that was just a decorative helmet. This set resembled the horns of a rhinoceros beetle, with a long stem and a flared tip, though the style of the Betelgeusian ornaments varied and Walker had never seen two that were exactly alike. Its features were obscured behind its helmet, two green, compound eyes staring back at him that he knew from experience to be visors. He had put slugs through them before and had watched them shatter like glass to reveal the flesh beneath.

It was just watching them, what the hell was it doing up in the tree? He resisted the urge to shoot it down, the supersonic crack of the railgun would alert every Bug within five miles of their position, but his .45 wasn’t powerful or accurate enough to drop it at this range. It must be a scout, but why was it alone?

Kaz was bristling, hackles raised, and he waved for her to calm down as he kept his gun trained on the Bug.

“Hold your fire, let’s wait and see what it does.”

It cocked its head at them, its movements jerky and unnatural, reminding Walker more of a mechanical construct than a living thing. Should they let it go? If they shot it, that would immediately give away their position to any Bugs in the area. But if they let the scout escape, it would take time for it to return to the hive and relay its findings to its buddies. They’d at least get a head start.

“We can’t shoot it,” Kaz hissed, “if any of its friends are nearby they’ll hear us. We should get back to base ASAP.”

“We can’t retreat,” Walker replied, “we have a mission to accomplish here. Unless we get those sensors planted, a whole swarm of Bugs could march right up to Charlie, and they’d be none the wiser until they were already under attack.”