Exo-Hunter Read online

  I breathe in again, detecting something else in the mix. Something fetid. Like vinegar.

  Drago stops mid-swing, his body going rigid.

  He smells it, too.

  I’d like to have only bad things to say about Drago, but he’s a competent soldier, and I’m confident enough in myself to admit that his training as a KGB Spetsnaz operator makes my Marine Rapid Reaction Force training look like summer camp. He’s a hairy bastard, but he knows his shit.

  In the silence that follows, my ears perk up. I can hear wildlife all around us, buzzing and singing, but we haven’t seen anything yet. Not even an insect. And that’s fine by me. I’m here for one reason, and it’s not a wildlife safari.

  A vibration moves through my body.

  “What is that?” Chuy whispers.

  “Is sound,” Drago says. “Listen.”

  He’s right. At the fringe of my ability to hear is a low rumble. “It’s distant.”

  “Thunder?” Chuy asks.

  Last thing we need is to get stuck in an alien storm. Animals can be unpredictable and dangerous at times, but our closest calls are always weather related. Lightning, hail, blobs of viscous bacteria, rotting corpses, and flesh-eating larva. You never know what the skies of a new planet are going to rain down.

  “Thunder doesn’t explain smell,” Drago observes.

  “Not sure it can be explained. Could be anything.”

  “Mrm…” Drago swings, severing several strands of grass. Stands still again. Listening. Nothing in the forest has changed. The chorus of creatures continues unabated.

  He swings again and pushes forward.

  Despite our progress being slowed by stopping to listen, I don’t complain. I’m in a rush, but not to die.

  The deep rumble rolls through us again, vibrating in my lungs. A little louder this time. I toggle my mic. “Morton, is there a storm system to the east?”

  “Umm, no,” he says. “Some light cloud cover, but nothing that looks like a storm.”

  “No lightning?”

  “On the west side of the continent, but that system would take days to reach you.”

  “What about seismic activity? Volcanos?”

  “Most of the planet’s volcanic activity is underwater. And on the coasts. Nothing in the middle of the continent. Buuut, you’re right, there is an unusual amount of seismic noise that’s louder than the average planet. Could be because the eight tectonic plates are moving away from each other, albeit very slowly in human terms.”

  “What does that mean? In human terms?”

  “Uhh, well, it’s been a thousand years since you visited Earth,” Morton says.

  “Did not visit,” Drago says. “Lived.”

  “Lived. Yes. Earth’s tectonic plates move up to five centimeters per year. In the past thousand, that’s roughly a hundred and sixty-four feet. If you were to return today, the planet would look the same. It took Earth’s Pangea ninety million years—give or take fifty million—to break apart fully. The supercontinent on this planet will take roughly ten million years to separate.”

  “That’s…” Useless, I think. “…interesting. Let me know if anything changes. Weather. Seismic activity. Whatever.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asks.

  “Dandy,” I say.

  “That’s what you say when things aren’t actually optimal,” he says.

  Chuy looks back at me. “He’s not wrong.”

  “Thanks for the tip. Over and out.” I motion for Drago to push onward.

  It takes another ten minutes to exit the field of tall grass. The forest floor on the other side is a mix of hard-packed soil and crisscrossing roots the width of a bus. I think the trees here are smaller until I realize that they’re actually thirty-foot-tall ferns.

  We come to a stop beside one of the ferns. It’s lying on the ground, compressed into the soil.

  Drago shakes his head. “This world is strange. I no longer like.”

  I ignore the comment but agree with the sentiment. My nerves are wangjangled. Something is very wrong here. A voice in the back of my head is telling me to call it. To regroup. Try to understand the way this place works, and then come back. That would be the smart play.

  But I can’t stop myself from imagining the plight of whoever ended up marooned here. We need to find them now.

  I’m about to push on when I see a footprint.

  I crouch beside it.

  A human footprint. Barefoot.

  “Is small foot,” Drago says.

  “A woman,” Chuy adds.

  “Carter,” I say, lifting the radio wave detector and moving in a slow circle. “C’mon…”

  It squeals, high-pitched and irritating.

  I’m about to charge toward the sound’s source when I notice that the jungle has gone silent.

  Drago looks up at the trees around us. “Shit.”

  “Is this because of us?” Chuy asks, weapon shouldered.

  “Dark Horse,” Morton says in my ear. “Seismic activity is spiking.”

  “How far out?”

  “Five klicks,” he says, “but…it’s getting closer.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Earthquakes roll through the earth. I know that. But I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to say.

  “It means…I think…I think they’re footsteps.”

  Before I can respond to what my modern brain thinks is insane, my reptile brain freezes in place just as another airborne vibrato slams into my body, this time loud enough for me to hear the organic roar behind it.

  You’ve got to be kidding me…

  I aim the radio detector toward the signal’s source, hear the shriek again, and break into a run. Chuy is right behind me. Drago and all his guns can’t keep up. He gives up and stops by a row of boulders. “Will guard way back. You must hurry!”

  Weaving our way between ferns, following the signal, I catch a few more signs that Carter passed through here, and recently. I’m lost in thought when rounding a fifty-foot-wide tree. I nearly barrel into the carcass of an animal the size of a rhino. The six-legged thing is dark green and lying on its side. And it’s not just dead. It was killed. Hunted. A flank of its thigh has been carved away.

  “Did Carter do this?” Chuy asks.

  Hard to imagine a woman who’d never been on a military op taking down something this big. “Maybe she’s made friends with some locals?”

  “Let’s hope not,” Chuy says, and I understand her concern. The Union’s protocol for first contact with another intelligent species is draconian and paranoid: genocide. If this planet was found to host a sentient species, it would be laid to waste from a safe distance. They might not loathe people of color anymore, but their fear of the unknown is real and powerful.

  A spear impales the ground between me and Chuy, catching us both off guard. “Don’t fucking move.” It’s Carter. How she got behind us without being detected is a mystery. “Who are y—”

  I turn my face to the side, giving her a profile view.

  “D-Dark Horse?”

  “The one and only,” I say, turning around slowly and trying to hide my emotions. Our previous relationship was brief and somewhat combative, but I’ve spent a long time searching for any sign of my people without a glimmer of hope. Finding her means the rest of them are out there. I’m happy enough to hug her, but she doesn’t look ready for a warm embrace.

  Carter is perched atop a fern behind us, another spear raised to throw, two more on her back. She’s dressed in rags, covered in dirt, and somehow still looks like she should be in a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

  She drops down, clinging to the fern. It bends under her weight and lowers her to the ground, springing back up when she releases it.

  “Took you long enough,” she says.

  “Huh?”

  “To find me. Where is the rest of your team?”

  “The rest of my…” I squint at her. “What do you think is happening here?”

  “We’re n
ot on Earth,” she says. “I figured that out pretty quickly.”

  I nod.

  “And we’ve been separated for the past three years.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Carter eyes me. And then Chuy. Looks us up and down. “You two haven’t been here…”

  “On this planet?” Chuy says. “No.”

  “On another planet?” Carter sounds stunned, but she’s catching on quickly.

  “More than one,” I tell her. “And it’s been five years, not three.”

  “But how did you get here? How did you find me?”

  I point the radio wave detector at her. It squeals. “Could hear you from orbit.” I point it at Chuy, and then myself, revealing that we’re all emitting the signal. “We’ve been literally searching the galaxy.”

  That hits home, and it gets a hint of a smile.

  “Not just for you,” Chuy adds. “The whole team.”

  “And me,” Drago says, catching us off guard.

  Carter whips around and throws one of her spears at Drago. He leans to the side, allowing the perfectly aimed projectile to sail past and stab a tree. Had he been anyone other than a Spetsnaz, he’d have been impaled.

  “You found spy lady,” he says. “Is good. Can we go now?”

  I shake my head at him. “What happened to guarding the way back?”

  “You’re working with one of the Soviets?” Carter asks, gripping another spear.

  “Carter…” I put my hand on her spear, holding it down. “There isn’t a Soviet Union anymore.”

  “Really? In just three years?”

  Drago has a chuckle. Stops when I glower at him. “What? Is funny.”

  When I look back to Carter, my expression is apologetic. “There’s no Soviet Union. No United States. No countries at all.”

  “I don’t understand. What could have… Oh, God… Was there a nuclear war?”

  “There were a lot of wars,” I say. “And billions of people died…over time.”

  “Billions and billions and billions,” Drago says.

  Carter rubs her temples with one hand. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s been five years for us,” Chuy says, “but a thousand years have passed since 1989.”

  “Whatever we found in the ice,” I say, “it sent us through space and time. Welcome to the future, Dr. Carter.”

  Drago clears his throat. “I don’t mean to be wet blanket on reunion, but we should get back.”

  “Back where?” Carter asks.

  “Spaceship.” Drago points to the sky. “In space.”

  Before Carter can reply, a loud roar rolls through the forest, forcing my hands to my ears.

  “That really can’t be good,” Chuy says.

  I turn to the east, searching for any hint of the sound’s source, but I can’t see anything through the impossibly thick forest. When I look back, Carter is sprinting away from us.

  Drago rolls his eyes and sighs. “Americans...”

  6

  Carter is fast. Life here has undoubtably been difficult, but it’s also turned her into an athletic fighter—which was not my first impression of her a thousand years ago. A hundred yards through a twisting maze of boulders, ferns, and cleared paths through tall grass, we arrive at the base of a massive tree with a coiling trunk.

  Carter climbs a portion of the trunk, which looks like a snake large enough to swallow an elephant whole. Then she disappears into a hole.

  “Well,” Chuy says, stopping at the tree’s base, “she lives like a squirrel.”

  “Yes…yes, she does,” I say, and I start climbing. “Coordinate an evac with Morton. I’ll try to move things along.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  I pause to glance back at her. The lopsided grin says it all. “Fifty credits says you do the nasty before the day is over.”

  “I’m a professional,” I argue. “A Marine.”

  “Not anymore,” she says, and even though I’ve known that for a long time, it still stings.

  “She’s covered in dirt,” I say upon reaching the top.

  “Like that would stop you.”

  My smile matches hers. Then I slip inside the hollowed-out tree. The tunnel is angled up and forces me onto my hands and knees. It’s a fifteen-foot crawl to a carved-out den that’s a good twenty feet wide. The air is cooler than it is outside. Smells a bit like warm oak, but also body odor and smoke.

  She cooks in here, I think, noting the fire pit in the room’s center. I look up. The ceiling is coated in black from smoke, darker at the room’s peak, where a second tunnel leads up, and I assume, back outside the trunk.

  Beside the entrance lies a large steak, presumably from the kill outside. It’s laid out on a cut portion of leaf.

  “Did you do all this?” I ask, scanning the chamber.

  “The den and tunnel leading out were already here. Home to grubs before I found it.”

  “Big grubs.”

  “You wouldn’t want to meet one,” she says, packing a homemade bag. “I made the space a little larger, and I added that.” She points to the hole in the ceiling.

  “What was it like,” I say, “living here?”

  She pauses. Looks me in the eyes. “Fucking bogus. But I made it work.” She cinches the bag shut.

  I motion to it. “What is all that?”

  “Intelligence,” she says. “About the planet. The animals that live here. The environment.”

  “That’s what we came back for? I don’t need to tell you something very big is coming this way…”

  She nods. “She probably saw you land. Beatrice is a grumpy bitch.”

  “You know what it is? Wait. You named it?”

  “I named everything I came across that I wasn’t planning on killing and eating. And this…” She slips the bag over her shoulder. “…is my job. I wasn’t just killing, eating, and shitting the past three years.”

  “Five years.”

  “Definitely three.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “Look, I don’t like saying it, but I’m not sure the information you’ve gathered will do anyone any good. The human race is…different now.”

  “Different how?”

  “They’re expansionists,” I say. “They consume, multiply, and colonize nearly as fast as Exo-Hunters—that’s what I do now—find new habitable worlds.”

  “What kind of government is it?”

  Strange question to be asking while Beatrice closes in, but I sense she needs a few answers before she puts her life in my hands again. “Each planet has its own local government, but it’s essentially a monarchy by council. No single leader, but also no infighting or power grabs. They’re all happy, as long as they keep stuffing their faces and pounding out babies.”

  Her brow furrows. “They sound…”

  “Evil?” I say, smiling.

  “Are you sure they’re not Soviets?”

  “They are definitely not Soviets…”

  “But they are something…”

  “After this, no more Q&A, okay? I’m guessing Beatrice isn’t something I want to meet.”

  “Not at all,” she says. “And fine. Tell me who they are, and I won’t say another word.”

  Riiight…

  “Nazis.”

  “Nazis?! Are you serious?”

  “Some of them are nice.”

  “Nice Nazis?! Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Already established I’m not, and you said you wouldn’t say another word. It’s messed up. I don’t like it. The future is a freak show. But it’s taken five damn years to find you, and I’d rather not get you killed because we spent too long having a chit-chat.”

  We have a stare off for three seconds.

  Then she says, “Fine.” She heads for the tunnel, picking up the wrapped steak on the way. “Try to keep up.”

  I scramble down the tunnel and back out into the world. The first thing I’m struck by is how quiet it was inside—the jungle is coming alive. Shadows whip pa
st. When I look up, whatever flew past is gone. Where Beatrice goes, everything else leaves.

  The second thing I’m struck by is a roar loud enough to stumble me. I nearly fall twenty feet, but I catch myself on the tree’s crusty bark. By the time I’m ready to head down, Carter has reached the forest floor.

  “What’s the situation?” Chuy asks, watching Carter sprint past her.

  “Run like hell,” I say, and I leap the last few feet to the ground. We haul ass together, once again struggling to keep up with the cheetah-like Carter. In a straight-out sprint, I’d be able to take her, but the unsure footing and extra weight from the stupid number of magazines I’m carrying, not to mention the rifle itself, slows me down.

  I toggle my comms. “Morton, fired up and ready to go?”

  “Yes, sir.” He sounds nervous. “The seismic disturbance is very close now.”

  “ETA?” I ask.

  “One mike,” he says. “For you. Three mikes for Lil Bitch’n. What next?”

  “En route,” I say, not answering his question. “We’ll be there in time.”

  We might not be, but I don’t want to risk spooking him. Morton, Burnett, and Porter have all been a good crew thus far, but they’ve always been very far away from the danger. If he realizes he might become a snack for an oversized alien, he might bug out.

  “Drago,” I say, “don’t wait on us. Get to the LZ and—”

  I can hear him on the other end. He’s not speaking. He’s breathing hard. “Are you already running?!”

  “Have you seen creature?” Drago says.

  “No,” I say, looking east and seeing nothing but impenetrable tree trunks. Apparently, he got a look, and it spooked him enough to call a one-man tactical retreat.

  “Whoa!” he says, sounding surprised. “Jungle woman is fast.”

  Holy shit. Carter already passed Drago, even with his head start. “Try to keep up with her. Make sure she doesn’t kill Morton.”

  “Kill?”

  “She’s not quite used to the idea of future space Nazis.”

  “Are you?” he asks.