Mercy Kill by Allston Aaron

Author:Allston, Aaron [Allston, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Flanked by two clusters of patchy, waist-high grasses, Scut sat staring at the square building thirty meters away. He kept very still, blaster rifle across his lap, macrobinoculars to his eyes, moving only to sweep his field of enhanced vision across the terrain before him.

Wheet.

That was a whistling noise, not the wind, not human, coming from well past the building.

A response came from the north: Whooo.

Wheet.

Whooo.

Scut frowned. He hadn’t heard these noises before. He slowly scanned leftward, looking for their source.

Wheet.

Whooo.

He didn’t worry about the bluehair spiders creeping up on him while he was concentrating on events farther away. They already had. Twice now while he was aware of it, perhaps more times when he wasn’t, spiders had walked cautiously up to him, had begun to step up on him … and then had apparently decided they didn’t like the feel of the ambience suit cloth. They had turned and wandered away at an unconcerned pace.

Wheet.

Whooo.

There, motion—something had moved, closer than his depth of field. Scut adjusted his optics, bringing his point of focus back toward him twenty meters. But there was nothing to be seen on that patch of ground, though Scut was sure he’d found the correct place.

He remained motionless.

From a dark spot on the ground, right at the center of his macrobinocular view, a creature rose into place. It was furred, rodentlike, with long incisors and stubby arms that ended in paws like spindly hands. It was perhaps thirty centimeters long, and it sat up out of a hole in the ground as though it had been raised by a tiny turbolift.

It opened its mouth, and that noise emerged: Wheet.

A call came in response from off to the south: Whooo.

Scut grinned. It had to be a pop-dog, the original variety. Was that a mating call, an all-clear, a We’re fine here, how are you cry to a distant nest? And could he, Scut, get a tissue sample before they left?

The pop-dog lowered itself into its hole.

From behind, a huge, heavy hand came down and clamped onto Scut’s right shoulder.

Myri, Trey, and the Joyls kept to the rail trench all the way back to the motor pool chamber. It was slow going—Usan Joyl was not a young man, and his knees did not permit fast passage—but they moved steadily.

When the motor pool chamber was visible ahead, Trey, in front, waved to stop the others. He peered at the trench ahead, clearly troubled.

Myri, in back, scooted up to join him. “What is it?”

He pointed to a spot on the trench’s right side. There, a circular metal hole a centimeter in diameter could be seen. He tugged his right glove down and held his bared wrist over the hole. Then he withdrew and gestured for Myri to do the same.

When she did, she felt cool air on her skin.

Trey groped around on the floor. “All four bolts holding that panel to the trench side are gone. I swear, there was no panel undogged like that when we came this way.

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