I was naked. Sitting. My outstretched legs were tightly secured with braided jungle vines lined with tiny nettles that irritated my skin. Behind me, my hands were tied with the same type of vine. Like guy-wires securing an upright post, three lengths of vine kept me from slumping onto my side. Whatever had taken us had dragged us to a boggy clearing. On the ground before me, my clothing and gear was laid out, neat and orderly. Everything had been examined and lined up. My notebooks lay open and my hand-drawn maps were unfurled next to their waterproof cylinders.
“Ted.”
Murray’s voice came from my left. I turned my head and immediately regretted it. My head swam with vertigo and I tasted bile. I tried to focus through my left eye.
“Lisa,” I said, “what happened?”
“Don’t know. Something took us. Your eye? Can you see out of it?”
“Not especially. Does it look as bad as it feels?”
I got a vague sense of movement and interpreted it as a nod. “It’s swollen and there’s a crusty scab on your cheek. Is this the first time you’ve gained consciousness?”
“As far as I can remember. You?”
“I woke… a while ago… to someone screaming in the distance. I panicked and tried to pull free of these vines. I guess I exerted myself too much. Tunnel vision then I passed out. I woke up a few minutes ago and have been calling to you.”
I had a touch of tunnel vision myself and the pasty taste in my mouth had me on the edge of throwing up. I flexed my arms. There was a little give, yet not enough to work my hands free. Besides, with each flex the nettles bit into my flesh, telling me that struggling was not in the cards.
“How many of us are here?” I seemed to be the end of the line, if there was a line, with Murray and any others to my left, invisible to my swollen eye. “More than just you and me?”
“Falstaff is a little ways off. Kind of by himself. The rest of our soldiers are farther away – those that are still with us, anyway. There’s only six or seven. The captain’s at the very end.”
“That’s all?” Thirty-six people had broken camp that morning. “Jesus. Did you get a look at what attacked us?”
The vision in my left eye was starting to clear. I could actually see her nod this time. “I mostly saw their handiwork. Jesus, Ted, they tore our people apart. Private Ho was just ahead of me before that fog rolled in. She screamed. Jesus. Then… pieces of her started hitting me and landing all around. Half of Private Martinez hit the ground next to me. His mouth was still moving. Something like a lobster claw pulled me to the ground… then I woke up here.”
“A claw? Like a crustacean?”
“Yeah. Like a crab or a lobster or the Kiloko people on Chara. Only bigger than any claw you’ve ever seen.”
“I was taken down by a tentacle.”
“A… tentacle? More than one species? Working together?”
I could only shrug.
“Lisa? All of my stuff has been arranged near my feet. I can’t see too clearly over your way yet. Is everyone’s gear down by their feet?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s weird. It’s so neatly stacked. The soldiers’ armor and weaponry are separate from their food and kit. My clothes are apart from my notebooks and recording equipment and from what I can tell one of my voice recorders is missing. It looks like Falstaff confused them a bit.”
“Why?”
“Well, it looks like we’ve been grouped by function. The soldiers with their armor and weapons are all in one group. You and I – the record keepers and note-takers – are over here. But Falstaff is all by himself in the middle. He wears armor and a uniform like any soldier and they’re piled like everyone else’s armor and uniform. His food and kit are stacked to one side. In the middle, where the other soldiers have weapons, Falstaff has that marking stick you make him carry, those beacons of yours, some iron spikes, a hammer and a big empty waterproof case.”
“Empty? My camera was in that case.”
“That’s odd. Two different types of recording devices are missing.”
I shifted, trying in vain to become more comfortable. Impossible. I forced my left eye to open wider. I was rewarded with pain and added focus. I nodded.
“I can see a little more clearly now,” I said. “Do you think that whoever took us understands how to use our devices?”
Murray nodded.
“I’d bet money we’re being recorded right now.”
“By who? Whom?”
“Whom. And that’s the question.”
The days on this planet lasted just over thirty-eight earth hours. The sun stood high in the sky when the captain finally regained consciousness.
Captain Najafi, after straining heroically against her bonds with no success, ordered a roll call.
“What do we know, people?”
Each of us relayed our experience prior to capture. Each described an attack by a different creature, though barbed tentacles seemed a common theme. Captain Najafi listened without comment until Murray mentioned our missing equipment.
“We’re obviously dealing with intelligence. Specialist Murray, do the actions of our abductors jive with what we know of the indigenous people of this planet?”
Murray shook her head. “Not at all. These are a peaceful, timid people. They’re not aggressive at all.”
“So we’re looking at another race?”
“Another species. More than one. But it doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean, Specialist?”
“My experience shows that where two sentient species evolve on the same planet, there’s more similarity – in culture, behavior and physically, as well – than we’ve seen here. It’s almost as if we’re dealing with something alien out here.”
As it turned out we were dealing with something alien, but not in the way Murray meant. Between the people trussed up in that clearing we had over two hundred years of experience in a score of disciplines honed on over five dozen planets. None of it prepared us for what happened next.
A patch of bog a dozen metres away began to pulse with a glow usually reserved for the bioluminescence of a creature dwelling in a very deep ocean. The ground heaved, accompanied by a mucky sucking sound. The air seemed charged with ozone and a metallic taste filled my mouth. A leathery grey hand rose from the centre of the pulsing patch of earth, each of its eight long fingers ended in a dirt-crusted claw. A narrow, lanky arm followed the hand. Another hand and arm followed. Then another. In all, six spidery arms and hands reached out and dragged the creature from the ground.
Spindly and creased, it towered over us. Folds of seemingly mummified skin stretched over bones that looked as if they’d snap with any hint of pressure. Four fleshy legs coated in a layer of sickly yellow quills supported a torso that looked more insect than animal. Each leg ended in what looked like a cloven hoof.
Atop the torso was a tapered, scaly head. Filled with needle-like teeth, a vertical maw opened and closed with the same rhythmic pulse as the luminescent earth. Lining each side of the maw were four unblinking eyes, glassy as marbles and as black as space.
Head pivoting on a pencil-thin neck, the gaze of those eight eyes settled first on the captain, then on Murray.
Sounds, harsh and crisp, slid past all those wicked teeth. It sounded like the language of the villagers only with a hard edge, decidedly nastier.
Murray’s eyes grew wide. Clearing her throat, she answered in the natives’ language. Anticipating everyone’s unasked question, she supplied a translation.
“It asked me if I was the one who was good with language,” she said. “I told it I was.”
The creature rattled off more words and gestured toward the captain with half of its arms. Murray spoke considerably less. If a smile is possible on a vertical mouth, the thing grinned and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all of us.