Star Runner (Star Runner Series Book 1) by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iron Tower Press
Published: 2020-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We advanced into the field at a steady march. All around me, on both sides, I saw dark figures beyond the edge of the field pressing their way inside. A few of them lost heart and had to be dragged inside by their braver compatriots.

Once we were in, we expected to be greeted with a hailstorm of enemy fire—but we weren’t. Instead, it was quiet. Ghostly.

The lurid redness of the light persisted. We walked forward over muddy land, reaching the camp where we’d left our wounded. It was now abandoned, except for the dead.

The colonials rushed around to check on a dozen friends. None had lived.

Major Hendricks came to me, his face twisted into a mask of rage. “We should have rushed in. We should have come for them—they were slaughtered.”

I didn’t argue. I knew fear had held us all back. I couldn’t blame him on that score—the field was pretty freaky. These men weren’t accustomed to marching into odd, dangerous tricks of physics.

We swept past the camp and the mine. We marched up the slopes of the mountain, which grew ever steeper and more rocky. Near the top, we found alien bodies.

The native ducks lay all over the landscape at the summit. Their corpses were twisted into poses of pain and fright.

“That one moved!” one of the sergeants shouted.

This single statement was enough to trigger a storm of gunfire. Every colonial was on-edge, ready for an ambush. They hosed down the figures that lay strewn over the boulders, hammering the bodies with thousands of hot bolts of burning metal. The rail-guns accelerated small bullets to such speeds that they burned in the atmosphere, creating sprays of blinding, streaking flashes.

“Ceasefire!” Major Hendricks shouted, walking along the line and slapping down muzzles.

It was too late. Most of the natives had been torn apart. How many of them had been alive before we’d shot them? We’ll never know.

Advancing carefully, we noticed the alien ducks had linear tears in their lower bellies—exit wounds where the Tulk had abandoned their hosts.

“They seemed to be in some kind of shock when we found them,” I said, toeing one of the bodies.

“Leave him alone,” Hendricks said. “Even a duck deserves some respect when he’s dead.”

I withdrew my boot, and we marched on. Soon, we noticed traceries in the mud—it was raining now, lightly sprinkling the mountain top. Each raindrop came down hot and sent up a tiny wisp of steam when it hit the ground. The field surrounding us must have brought the droplets nearly to a boiling temperature.

“There, the tubes,” Hendricks said.

We reached the summit. A polyhedron of tubes existed there, just as he’d described. All around the place were nuclear-powered battery packs. They were attached by leads and some strange-looking equipment to the woven tubes.

“I know what this is,” I said, while the others gaped. “It’s a transmitter. The Tulk—they weren’t bringing in an army. They were retreating.”

“To where?”

“The stars. The next cluster over, maybe.”

“The Faustian Chain?”

I shrugged. “I guess. That’s what the Tulk who was riding Colonel Fletcher said.

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