Sights are Set

Wolf waited for me at the bottom of the loading ramp. I hesitated a moment before taking that step onto the ground. Once I was clear, he raised the ramp.

Instead of the springy, loamy soil I was used to in the forests where I grew up, the floor here was mostly hard rock beneath my feet. The gravity was a bit lighter, making me feel like I had a bit more bounce in my step. I looked around, taking in the surroundings.

The trees that surrounded us were more like giant weeds, springing up out of the ground and looming several hundred feet taller than us. Instead of a singular trunk, they had three or four stalks that grew up out of the ground, the tops fanning out like giant yellow fan palms. The stalks themselves were a slightly darker yellow than the palms.

Sighing, I said, "|I wish you could see these places the way I do. It's breathtaking.|"

Wolf nodded. "If you say, I believe it. I will be heading out now."

"I wish you a successful hunt," I responded.

He activated his stealth and I paused, staring at the spot where he used to be, then did the same. I took one more moment to look around and really soak in the sights. I thought it might be nice if I had pre-charged my phone so I could take some pictures.

If the air was as toxic as Wolf said it was, it was probably better that I left it on the ship. I'd take some pictures out the window later.

I took a deep breath only to inhale the sterile, manufactured air of my filter. Ah, how I missed breathing in the fresh air of home.

Shaking off the nostalgia, I wandered into the trees. Thanks to their many stalks, the plants were easy to climb and close enough together that I could channel my inner ninja and hop from stalk to stalk.

There had been the question of whether or not they could hold my weight, but they were sturdier than they looked. The plants barely moved at all when I clambered up one.

After putting some distance between me and the ship, I scanned the area with a few different vision modes, but I couldn't find anything interesting to examine. There had to be life somewhere around, though. Maybe if I moved away from the ship some more, I'd find something. Our landing had probably been frightening for any little critters.

All I had to do was make sure I kept the ship in sight. Well, the area where it had landed, anyway. Wolf had since cloaked the ship and I couldn't see it with the naked eye anymore. Its position was on my map, though, and I could track it with just a few clicks.

I would explore a bit, maybe a day at most, then return to the ship for an update.

Despite the fact that I had no real way to track time and had no idea how long the days were, I felt like I'd been wandering around for hours before I found the first sign of life—some small endemic life.

They were tiny, moldy-green rodent creatures with six legs and rat-like tails with blunt faces. I watched them a bit, though they were hard to keep track of because they were so small. They seemed to live underground and ate plants.

Definitely prey animals: all of them ran at the first clue that I was stalking around.

There were also a couple of different flying creatures that I spotted. They hung out at the very tops of the trees and were brightly colored, like the tropical birds at home. Unlike birds, though, they had four wings and a pair of legs. Six limbs seemed to be the norm on this planet.

The bird things also had blunt faces and sharp teeth. When I approached them outside of stealth, they actually attacked me and I had to shoo them away with some slaps from the flat side of my blade before they fucked off.

I made a note to find them later and have an alien chicken dinner. They were big enough for at least one meal, after all.

After playing around with the local animals, I found my first large creature tracks. I started getting ideas about hunting things but tried to keep myself in check. It would be okay to hunt a couple of creatures for meat, but anything bigger than what I was used to might end up breaking Wolf's rule, even if it was a prey animal.

They were large footprints in the ground, depressing the dirt between the slabs of stone that made up much of the forest floor. Most of them were partials, but I could clearly make some of them out. It looked like they had to weigh close to a ton with the sheer size of them.

The tracks were heading north of the ship. I checked my holographic map and decided the ship was still close enough that it was fine if I wandered further. There were still cold-blooded criminals lurking on the planet, after all. If they were as bad as Wolf said, I wanted to be able to easily sprint back to the ship in a timely manner.

I climbed up a tree just to make sure, and the landing site was barely visible thanks to a single broken stalk from one of the nearby trees.

Yes, I could spare a little more time and distance.

From what Wolf had taught me, there was likely more than one animal that had made this trail, maybe a large group. The scattered tracks and grouping made that likely. Probably not predators, then.

As I followed the tracks, I kept tabs on how far I was going. Alert, not anxious. It would be fine if I wandered a greater distance. Just a little. Push those boundaries but don't break them.

When I did locate the creatures, they were grazing in an open field at the bottom of a ravine. The creatures were fat and squat, kind of reminding me of elephants except without the trunk, and their backs were covered in fine quills.

'Fuck, I really should have brought my phone.'

Oh well. If after I came back and Wolf was still out, I'd take my phone on another outing and nab some photos.

With nothing else to do, I decided to watch them for a while and maybe learn about how the animals here interacted with their environment. I made myself comfortable and began observations until the sun set.

When night did finally come, the quillephants (as I decided to call the quill-covered grazers I'd been following around) settled in. They nested as a group under a set of tree-weeds growing close together. Following them had been rather uneventful: they spent a lot of time eating grass and shrubs, then drank from a nasty-looking pond of water.

There were a few babies, though, so I had a good time watching them frolic and play.

I was a little salty that the avian creatures left them alone. Several times the herd had crossed by a tree full of those birds and they did nothing. What had been their beef with me?

Whatever. I had to find somewhere to rest for the night.

Over the course of the day, I'd managed to keep my snacking to a minimum and only drank water from my flask in moderation. I still had enough to get me through the next day, especially if I hunted.

The only issue was that I had to hold my breath long enough to put food in my mouth. I couldn't keep my mask off too long. This planet really was toxic. I wasn't even sure I wanted to eat anything that lived on it. I would just have to go to the ship sometime tomorrow with a dead bird and maybe some samples of local flora and ask Critter if any of it was edible.

Thinking about it, I decided I wasn't sleepy yet. I would explore some more and see what nocturnal creatures were out and about.

That's what my night vision was for!

A deep, thunderous rumbling stopped me in my tracks. I waited to see if it was an earthquake, but the ground was just barely vibrating.

The quillephants started lowing in the distance and I got the distinct feeling that they were on the move.

I scanned the area, flicking between the various vision settings of my mask to try to decide what exactly was going on. An ingrained sense of dread came at the same time the ground started to vibrate even harder than before.

Maybe it was an earthquake.

Or, perhaps . . .

They came barreling through the trunks and over the soft hills, dozens of tiny toothpick legs carrying them swiftly over the uneven forest floor. Giant pillbugs.

There were maybe a hundred or so, all stampeding in my direction. Somehow, they reminded me of the roly-poly bugs I used to play with when I was a kid. Except for the fact that they were bigger than an Earth fox.

I stood frozen and in shock for several heartbeats until I remembered myself. Then I turned tail and sprinted away from the coming herd of isopods. They gained ground quickly and I had a bit of sprint ahead of me before I would reach the next line of trees. As it was, I was caught in a rocky ravine and the colony was so large that it didn't matter which direction I went.

The first few reached me and I wasn't sure what to expect, but they skirted around me, continuing on without minding me in the least. I was in stealth, but they seemed to be able to sense that I was there.

However, the next ones to overtake me weren't so polite. They threatened to jostle and trip me, bumping my legs and shoving me around. I kicked one away from me and used a juke maneuver to bound up onto a moss-covered slope.

With a few well-placed leaps, I bounced from rock to rock and—'shit, not a rock!'

The isopod I'd landed on squeaked and shuddered before zipping out from under me. In an instant, the ground became the sky. I tumbled back and landed flat, then had to roll to avoid being trampled.

I jumped to my feet, dodged a few more isopods, then had one slam right into my chest. Though I heaved it up and over my head, several more of the fuckers bore down and climbed right over me. They weren't much heavier than a fat cat, but when I had half a dozen of them trying to climb me at the same time, I was struggling.

Their clawed toothpick legs bit into the exposed skin of my arms and legs, but my armor kept the more vital parts of my body safe. I coiled my core muscles, moved my legs underneath me, then leaped up and out of the herd of insects.

Back on my feet, free of burdens, I made one more break toward the trees. This time, I used the isopods as stepping-stones. Now I had a feel for how they moved and knew they could at least take my weight for a few seconds before collapsing.

It was slow going at first, but I found the rhythm and bounced from bug to bug until I found my opportunity. The nearest tree was too small to hold my weight, but I could still use it.

The mechanisms in my leg braces whirred as I coiled to spring, then propelled myself up to the tree. Using it as a springboard, I launched myself to the second tree and grabbed the stalk, sliding down a bit. I clung to it like that for a moment while I attempted to catch my breath, then I kicked and heaved until I pulled myself up to the branching fronds and rest.

The branch dipped preciously, so I clambered to a different one and hung out while I watched the big insects swarm.

The scratches I'd sustained stung and itched, but I ignored the discomfort and focused on the isopods as they scuttled over the ground, fleeing some unseen danger. I scanned the horizon they'd come from, but all I could see were trees and more bugs.

It seemed to take forever, but the last stragglers finally hobbled by underneath my perch and I stood to watch their forms disappear from my line of sight. When the forest fell still again, I turned once more to wait and see if what had spooked the things so much to make them stampede like that.

Nothing came skulking out of the woods.

With my luck, I thought it would be some sort of gargantuan armored dinosaur, but it seemed that they had successfully escaped whatever it was.

Sighing, I dropped back down to the ground. My braces absorbed most of the impact, but my legs twinged enough to make me wince and stagger. I made the mental note—'gravity was too much for that drop.'

I used the lull to examine the damage to my legs and arms, but the skin hadn't been broken any more than when my dog had accidentally caught me with his claws, so I chalked it up to nothing more than an inconvenience and moved on. They itched the same way a cat scratch did, though.

That might have been cause for concern if Wolf hadn't assured me from day one that I was inoculated from most diseases and viruses.

'Glad I was unconscious for those vaccinations,' was what I had thought at the time. I could still remember the first time Wolf had dosed me with something, back when we had met on that crashed ship. I'd felt so sick for like an hour.

As I was about to move on, my curiosity got the better of me. I checked my map—the ship was in the general direction of where the isopods had come from. I had to head that way anyway to stay within my comfort radius . . .

What could it hurt to go and find out what had spooked those bugs? I could see what kind of predators hunted these lands. I didn't plan to engage, just look.

Adrenaline had chased away any fatigue I'd started to feel, so I began the task of backtracking where the bugs had come from. The trail led me past the ship's location and toward the other end of my radius, but I didn't bother stopping to check if it was okay, as it was a good two miles out of the way.

Really, I should be a little closer. Two miles was a long way to sprint if danger found me, but I was confident in my stamina and speed.

The real inconvenience was the thousands of tiny footprints from the isopods. They had completely demolished most of the tracks in the area. I rubbed my face in frustration (or, really my mask), and scowled at the ground. The only thing I had going for me now was the fact that I had a general idea of which direction my prey had been heading.

Those isopods had really done a number on the environment, though. Were they burrowers like their Earth cousins? I couldn't imagine something that big digging around below the surface was safe.

I could still hear them far off in the distance, crashing and thundering through. I didn't know how long they'd go before they tired themselves out or felt safe enough to stop, but I hoped it was before they flattened the whole damn biome.

By the time I had my first clue of what I was tracking, I was starting to succumb to the exhaustion from all the hiking and excitement. I trudged on, though, knowing that Wolf would keep going.

There wasn't much of a clue, though. Just a scratch mark on a stone. Everything else was buried under isopod scuffs and prints. Feeling somewhat dejected, I almost thought about giving up and settling in for the night. Maybe just a quick nap to rejuvenate some of my vitality, even.

Finally, I managed to catch a sign that I was waiting for: a cry.

It was like a raspy bark, unlike anything I'd heard so far. It had the faintest tinge of distress to it. It came again and I changed my heading more to the left to compensate for its movement. When I thought I was close enough, I slowed and climbed up a tree for a better vantage point.

Before I found it, I had to move to several different trees—and then I spotted it inside a flat grassy clearing, squashed and battered isopods littering the ground around it.

It was the size of a minivan, maybe, with a scaled hide colored like rust. Overall, it looked like a skinless beast with double-clawed paws and a paddle-like tail. It seemed to have a seam splitting it down the middle, but that didn't make any sense.

The thing pushed around the now-dead isopods, swallowed a few choice bits of meat and innards, then took off running. I almost chased after it but stopped for a second. I had to check the map and my priorities. Make sure I was adhering to Wolf's rules so I didn't get in trouble . . .

Or, maybe, I could just tail it for a bit and then come back before he missed me. I wasn't hunting it, just following it.

Silently, after some hesitation, I went after the creature.