Participant Species: Asher in Ordered Space Volume I by Hooper John M. D

Author:Hooper, John M. D. [Hooper, John M. D.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

Soon, all three were crouched around the bole of the tree. Like Asher, the others had drawn their sidearms and held them at the ready. “What now?” hissed Jaydrupar.

“Well first, I say we find out what that glowing stuff is,” said Asher.

They worked their way across the forest floor to the nearest area where the glow seemed brighter. They found what at first looked like a stream of flowing blue light. It wasn’t until Kaz said, “bugs,” that Asher realized what he was looking at. It was a roiling mass of small creatures, much like some kind of insects. The glow, clearly some kind of bioluminescence, came from the rear of their carapaces. The tendrils across the forest floor must be avenues, great bug migration corridors.

“Well,” said Jaydrupar, “I wouldn’t want to put my hand in there, but at least they don’t seem to be aggressive. They’re just going about their business, whatever that is.”

“Here’s something else,” said Kaz.

Asher looked up. In the eerie blue light, he could see that Kaz was pointing off toward the tree they had just come from. In that direction, more bioluminescent things were moving. Unlike the bugs, these blue blobs were floating above the ground surface like tiny balloons. There were five of them, each perhaps about waist height to Asher. As they came closer, they bobbed and weaved drunkenly. The three men stared at them. Asher fingered the trigger of his pulse pistol. He doubted that these things were particularly dangerous, but they were certainly eerie.

As he watched the blue globes, Asher was surprised to feel something sharp stuck against his left side, just below the kidney. Glancing down, he saw what appeared to be a very sharp knife held by the head appendages of a small Cythran. He slowly set his gun back in its holster. “Guys?” he said.

“I know,” said Kaz. “One of them’s got me too.”

“And me,” said Jaydrupar.

“Damn,” said Asher. “All this super-secret reconnaissance mission stuff and here we go and get ourselves caught right off the bat.”

The globes came closer. Asher could now see that they were held on sticks by more of the small Cythrans. There were probably twenty or thirty of them all together. Most were armed with knives like the one that was pressed into Asher’s side. These were long, straight blades, quite narrow, which the Cythrans had tied to the longest of their appendages. As one of the newcomers stood before him and began waving its tentacles around in Cythran speech, Asher almost winced at the blade flying back and forth just inches from its owner’s face.

“[Untranslatable] come from [untranslatable] bone tree people,” said the Cythran. Or at least, that was how Asher’s neural net translated its burbling and arm-waving.

“I am sorry,” said Asher. “I cannot understand you clearly.”

“Bone tree people [untranslatable] outside falling [untranslatable].”

“Kaz, Jaydrupar, are you understanding any of this? My neural net can’t make sense of it.”

Kaz grunted. “Mine neither. And this blade in my side is getting more than a little tiresome.

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