Lai cut the gunner's camouflage jacket open with a combat knife as the subcutaneous hemorrhaging spread. She whipped out another bandage, but it was obviously useless as black-and-red pools of destruction crossed the private's tanned torso. The skin around the initial puncture broke, and a slit ripped open down Talbert's ribs as blood, fats, and dissolved muscle poured out onto the forest floor.
The plasma gunner went into fresh paroxysms as the blackness spread and both of her exercise-flattened breasts melted into pools and washed out through the slash in her chest.
Lai backed away in horror as the black blood spread up the Marine's neck and the skin and muscles of her face fell flaccid against the bones of her skull.
Final dissolution didn't take all that long. It only seemed like hours until the private stopped thrashing and screaming.
"What the fuck is this, a picnic?" Sergeant Major Kosutic snarled. She shoved one private towards the perimeter and looked the platoon sergeant in the eye. "We need a perimeter, not a cluster fuck!"
The group around the incident broke up, scattering towards guard positions, as she strode through them.
"Okay, what happened?" She looked down at the skeleton at her feet and blanched. "Satan! What did that? And who is it?"
"It was jus'... it was..." St. John (M.) said incoherently. He was swinging from side to side, training his grenade launcher up into the treetops of the surrounding forest. He was obviously still in shock, so Kosutic looked at Lai.
"Gunny?"
Lai hefted her bead rifle and looked around at the trees, wide-eyed.
"It was some sort of worm." She kicked what was left of the invertebrate where it had fallen at the base of the tree. "It bit her, or stung her, or something. When I got here, it was pulling her up into the tree. I shot it off of her, but she just... she just..." The sergeant stopped and retched, still searching the enveloping mists for more of the worms.
"She just... that," she finished, gesturing to but not looking at the partial skeleton at her feet.
Kosutic pulled out her combat knife and prodded the alien carcass. It was darkly patterned, with noticeable blue patches along its back. All that was left after Lai's bead rifle had blown it apart was ten centimeters or so of the base. What appeared to be the back end had several pod-feet with hooks. One of them still had a bit of bark attached, indicating where it hung out. Literally. And the business end apparently... dissolved people. She stood up, stuck the knife back into her combat harness, and wiped her hands.
"Nasty."
Captain Pahner appeared out of the mist, trailed by Prince Roger and his pet scummy. The captain padded up and looked down at the casualty.
"Problems, Sergeant Major?"
"Well," she said grimly, pulling at an earlobe, "point's not going to be a favorite spot."
Cord walked over to the group gathered around the skeleton and snapped his lower fingers.
"Yaden cuol," he said, and Kosutic raised an eyebrow at Roger.
"'Vampire' what, Your Highness?" Her toot had picked up the "yaden," but the second word wasn't yet in its vocabulary.
"Vampire... baby?" Roger suggested doubtfully. He wore an odd, introspective expression, and the sergeant major realized he was communing with the software. "I'm beginning to think this language program is making too many assumptions. I think it means larva of whatever the vampires are."
"How do we fight it, Sir?" Gunny Lai was beginning to get over her shock, and she turned almost pleadingly to the prince. "Talbert was a good troop. St. John (M.), too. I doubt they were fucking off. And it's camouflaged to the max. How the fuck do you fight something like that? No motion, no heat, hardly any electrical field?"
Roger let loose with a stream of liquid syllables and clicks. The scummy knocked his lower hands together and let loose a string back. Then he looked around, knocked his hands together again, and shrugged his cape up to cover his head, shoulders, and neck.
"Well," the prince said doubtfully, "he says that you need to start paying attention. He says he's watched us walking, and we never look 'hard enough' or we look at the wrong things. He also says that these worm-things hang out in the trees and are hard to see, so if you put something up to cover your head and shoulders you're better off."
Cord produced another spurt of syllables and gestured around the woods. He pulled the cape back down and clapped his hands again, and Roger nodded and gave a grim snort.
"He also says that they're just about the most horrible things in the woods, but not the most dangerous. They can't move very fast, except to strike, so you can easily kill them with a spear. He said, 'Wait until you face an atul-grack,' whatever that is. And these... killer caterpillars... sometimes come in groups.
"He's pretty philosophical about it," Roger added. "That handclapping gesture is a shrug. Basically, 'Life's a bitch—' "
" '—and then you die,' " Kosutic finished with a nod. "Got it."
Eleanora's feet slid out from under her on the muddy hillside, and she landed flat on her rump. The jarring impact sent shooting pains all the way up her spine and into her skull, and she started to slip down the hill. She scrambled wildly for some sort of braking grip, but without success until a hand snapped out and caught the light rucksack on her back. She looked over her shoulder and smiled wearily at her savior.
"Thank you, Kostas," she said with a sigh.
She rolled over on her stomach and tried to struggle to her feet, but it was no use. She'd been barely staggering along as it was, and between the mud, and the heat, and the biting flies, and the screaming muscles in her back and legs from the last two days of exertion, it was just too much.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "I just want to die and get it over with."
A Mardukan insect, more from curiosity than malice, landed on her ear and started to investigate her ear canal. She summoned a burst of energy to shake her head violently and swat at it, but then she slumped back into the mud.
"Now, now, Ma'am," Matsugae said with a smile. "We're nearly to Cord's village. You can't give up now." The valet hooked a hand in her rucksack's straps and helped her claw her way to her feet.
She swayed in exhaustion and leaned on a tree... carefully. Her arm was covered in a welter of swollen bites from the defenders of a previous support, and since that incident she'd become much more careful where she put her hands. But this tree, at least, didn't seem to want to kill her, and she leaned into it gratefully.
They were below the clouds now, and into the fringe of the planet's all-encompassing jungle. They'd followed the river out of the valley as it grew larger and larger, until finally the ground around it became too marshy to continue along its banks. The company had turned off to the south, but continued to parallel the watercourse, although the gurgle of its passage could be barely distinguished through the background racket of the jungle.
The incessant hum of flying insects was everywhere. The Mardukan version was eight-legged and had a six-winged pattern, as opposed to the terrestrial six-limb/four-wing arrangement. The local bugs also used an aramid polymer, similar in some respects to Kevlar, as the hard core of their exoskeletons. Since it was both lighter and stronger than chitin, it allowed the existence of species which would be considered extremely large on Earth—or on most other planets, for that matter.
There were thousands of different kinds of beetle analogues, some of them huge. Most of them seemed to be turners of the detritus on the forest floor, while a few joined forces with the midge analogues to take turns biting the humans. Dozens of species swarmed on the human intruders, ranging from tiny creatures that looked so much like mosquitoes that the Marines simply named them skeeters, to a slow-flying beetle the size of a blue jay that had the troopers pulling out their multitools and swinging axes during its infrequent attacks. The chameleon suits were impervious to even the local insects' best efforts and could be sealed up completely, but while the chameleon cloth actively transpired carbon dioxide and oxygen, the rate was too low to support heavy activities. The Marines would occasionally close up their suits to escape the insects, but soon enough they were forced to open their helmets back up and take deep gasping breaths. Then spit out the midges they'd swallowed.