"Well said, Lollee, and true."
Et Avian leaned over and landed on his hands and forearms, trotting easily. Lollee pushed off with a leap, and the two kones moved down and across the face of the hill, moving fluidly in the light gravity, dodging and weaving between fir trees.
"Spread out but keep me in sight," Buccari ordered, voice low and tense. "Keep the weapons holstered or hidden. When we see them, I'll walk up to them, real friendly. Stay away from me until I tell you different. If things get nasty, shoot in the air to warn our people. Now spread out."
Hudson went to the left, and Jones moved out to the right. They ascended above the thick underbrush of the hardwood forest and entered open pine glades, hiking past the trunks of tall, straight trees. Buccari stalked at a deliberate pace, eyes and ears searching for conspicuous sounds or movements. A screaming bird called in the distance. They continued, the rustle of needles underfoot the only noise. After a kilometer, the tall trees gave way to the shorter, mustard-barked firs. Hudson moved closer.
"We're near the bears, Sharl," he whispered. "One of the dens is just over that rise." They stood on an upslope mounted with a sharp ridge.
"Steer to the right," she replied. "A kilometer to the tree line?" "If that," Hudson said, edging away.
Buccari gave hand signals to Jones, shifting him further to the right. The trio resumed their climb and had not gone ten paces when a ferocious roar from behind the near ridge obliterated the silence. Amid the growls and roars could be heard the sounds of heavy footfalls and grunts, and a peculiar metallic ringing reverberated through the animal din. A scream—a scream unlike any scream ever heard by humans—soared into the skies.
Three mother bears and their cubs had spent the morning tearing apart the rotten tree, flushing out swarms of insects from the crumbling humus. The huge beasts sat on their great posteriors patiently, if incongruously, eating the tiny bugs. Gargantuan pink and purple tongues licked and dipped over the moldy limbs, and massive, claw-studded paws rent the deteriorating bark. The cubs, grown impatient with the pastime, had moved across the clearing and cavorted in yellow wildflowers under dappled sunlight.
Lollee, with Et Avian close behind, burst into the clearing between the she-bears and cubs. Lollee froze, big brown eyes opened wide in stark terror. With a fatal hesitation, he reached for his blaster and swung it from his belly pouch. The bears, roaring their deepest displeasure, exploded to their feet with blurring ferocity. Et Avian, lagging behind, was the closest target. The noblekone was knocked from his feet, dazed and helpless, his helmet slapped away by the vicious impact of an immense claw. Lollee, seeing Et Avian down and about to be mauled, fired the blaster at the attacking bear, cutting it in two, just as a second bear rammed him against the bore of a pine. The third angry mother closed her cavernous jaws over Lollee's haunch, dragging him relentlessly to the ground.
With strength borne of fear and a love for life, Lollee struggled back to his feet, fighting desperately to train the blaster on his brutish adversaries. His gasping efforts were no match for the taller and heavier bears. With renewed fury, the towering beasts overwhelmed the valiant kone, ripping and tearing his body maniacally, crushing his helmet from his head. Lollee screamed horribly as he died.
Buccari topped the ridge and stopped, aghast. Jones and Hudson caught up, and all three stared down at the hellish scene before them. Blood flowed freely from the alien held against the tree, covering the combatants and the ground with crimson gore. Great growling bears insanely mauled the alien's body, the dying creature still clutching a weapon in its bloody hands. A second alien lay only paces away.
"The aliens!" Buccari gasped. "They're as big as the bears."
"Let's get out of here, Sharl," Hudson grimaced. "We're not going to stop those monsters, much less the bears, with these peashooters."
"Mr. Hudson's right, Lieutenant," Jones huffed. "The bears will be after us next."
As the humans watched, the downed alien staggered to its feet and stumbled toward the mayhem, mindless of its own safety. Its courage moved Buccari to action; she sprinted down the slope, her pistol ready, her mind blank, her nerves and muscles reacting to the emergency. Below her one of the bears lifted its gore-spattered snout toward the surviving alien. The great beast turned abruptly, towered fully erect, and roared—a noise primeval and terrible. The horrible growl resounded majestically through the forest, halting the giant alien as if it had been hit with a stout stick. The bear roared again, a foul blast of ferocity, nose curling grotesquely, saliva dripping from its bloody maw. The alien's shoulders sagged, and it turned away, but then it hesitated and turned back to bravely face its death. The bear charged.
Buccari dodged past the ravaged alien, its mangled corpse still being worried viciously by the closest bear. She fired a single shot into the wild beast's head as she ran by, not stopping to see its effect. She trailed behind the monstrous hulk of the attacking bear. With incredible speed and ferocity the charging beast knocked the surviving alien on its back and bit down with knifelike teeth on the alien's shoulder. Buccari heard the brain-numbing crunch of bone. The giant alien, wide-eyed in terror, looked imploringly at her. She grabbed the bear's thrashing and gnashing head, repeatedly firing the pistol point-blank into its meter-wide skull, until her pistol magazine emptied. The immense bear rolled its head in slow motion to stare at her, its tongue lolling, and then the animal fell away, heavy. And dead.
The flat crack of pistol shots sounded behind Buccari. She whirled toward the noise. With teeth-rattling force, a massive paw struck her violently on her shoulder, knocking her across the clearing. Dazed, spitting dirt and bark, she looked up to see the remaining bear staggering after her, its red-rimmed eyes intent with rage, obsessed with killing—killing her. Blood streamed down its skull, soaking its grizzled mane. In two heartbeats Buccari cleared her brain and bunched her feet beneath her body, ready to leap to either side. Her left shoulder was numb. Beyond the approaching bear she saw movement from the alien, and, farther away, she noticed Hudson struggling with his pistol, trying to reload. Jones was nowhere in sight.
Mere paces away, the bear lurched and whirled with fantastic speed. As the bear spun, she saw Jones clinging to the beast's fur, resolutely stabbing a survival knife into the brute's back. Jones, as strong as he was, was an insect to the ursine monster. The boatswain was shaken loose and flung violently clear, landing limply on his head and neck amidst the decaying pieces of bark and the swarming bugs. Jones shuddered convulsively and lay still.
With the knife impaled in its back, the great bear pounced on Jones' inert form, snatching his head and neck in cavernous jaws. Looking more like a rag doll than a large human being, Jones was viciously shaken back and forth, his head held firmly in the bear's mouth. Hudson ran up to the animal, aiming his pistol.
"Shoot!" shouted Buccari. "Shoot!" she screamed. "Shoot, now!"
Hudson jockeyed position and fired two shots, and then another. The insane bear, impervious to Hudson's bullets, worried the limp human. Suddenly, a metallic ringing resounded, and an energy beam blasted the bear squarely in the back, exploding fur and muscle. The monstrous beast collapsed in a bleeding heap with Jones's lifeless body at its side. The air reeked of blood and ozone.
Buccari and Hudson turned to see the alien, blaster in hand, standing next to its dead mate. As they watched, wondering if they would be its next target, the alien collapsed.
Chapter 30. Contact. Gun shots!