Location: Unknown, A-class planet, Cave system
Date: March 27 2728 — Standard Earth Calendar (SEC)
It had been four days since I fought the bobcat.
Or one week, since I fell out of hyperspace and my ARC got fried.
Or seventy hours, since I got my periods back, after not having any for almost seven years.
Irritating.
It had also been two days since Lola told me that shielding the scaf with aetherium, while possible in theory, was not viable at the moment. Not with the tools we had at hand.
The pure ore was not refined enough to form the needed field density, as she said, and carrying half a ton of ore on my back instead was a sure way to die tired. The scaf was not designed for such a load, nor was it intended for use with such extra weight.
No, it wasn't a complete waste of time, she said. As if painting the scaf with a mix of aetherium ground to sand and ST-100, the sealing compound, was any better.
Sure, it was supposed to protect me from The Anomaly's influence, and perhaps even some scaf functions would stay intact (or would not), but that was not enough to risk the only scaf, or the septic system, I had.
Forty-two per cent efficiency, she said.
At least that was enough for my Sixer, but only after we cut down everything we could, leading to decreased power output, reduced firing rate, and a shorter sighting range. I only hoped that having modified ammo, with a small crystal of the aetherium embedded in each needle, was enough to balance that out.
Most expensive needler, fuck my ass.
Ruining my only scaf, or my pilot underlayer for that matter, was out of the question.
Hence, me sitting and painting a suit from the survival kit.
It was similar, in a way, to my underlayer—a one-piece, toes to neck suit, with detachable gloves and a slim helmet. It also had built-in active camouflage, closed-loop breathing, perhaps even thermoregulation, and who knew what else.
I closed the file before reading further than that. It was better not to know what I would be left without.
Hell, even if only the smart-seal on the suit would stay working, that would be enough for me.
Flipping it once more, I smoothed out the back side and, double-checking with AR projections, continued "painting" the suit.
For obvious reasons, the suit had no armour plates, and their role had to be played by the energy shield—good for saving from a high enough fall, standard needles, or unexpected debris, but not from what the bobcat had shown me before.
My scaf had the upgraded energy shield, my last resort to survive, and even that got depleted in a single fight with it.
Why it failed so fast was bugging me for days after, and it took me a while—and extra tests with the bobcat claws—to figure it out.
Whatever shit had happened to them had turned simple claws into almost atomic slicers. In my frenzied state, I even scratched Ateeve's armour, for god's sake, while testing them.
It was only when they stopped working, stopped slicing through the rocks I was carving through, that we found out that the effect was based on The Anomaly itself.
Half an hour in The Anomaly, and claws were ready to slice again. Wild.
That was when we started to test everything once again, learning in the process that the fur itself had similar properties, but focused on protection. And before you could cut through it, you had to deplete its "field" first.
But put it back into The Anomaly, where it could recharge all the time, and fucking good luck to cut it with anything else except a high-power laser. If you could even make it work there.
I didn't know, didn't even want to ask, what it took for Lola to make a set of protection out of it, but she did it in the end. Unfortunately, that was just a poncho with a hood and arm bands—that was all we had enough fur for.
Finishing the back, I let Esdie cover it with another substance that made the paint solidify in an instant, and checked out the end result.
Ties, only ties left.
The suit had been grey in colour, made of mimic-fabric, and had been designed to match the surrounding environment. Not anymore, though. That was the first sacrifice to The Anomaly.
Instead, it now had brown-ish plates painted on it, mimicking the armour from my scaf. For some unknown reason—and as Lola said, no one was rich enough to mix aetherium with ST-100 to find out the effect, let alone why—the solidified mix was not glowing green, as it did in the shower.
Only for the better.
"Lola, I am done. DOC can start on the ties now," I said, standing up from the rock-chair and stretching.
"Sending now," she replied, and DOC jumped out of the technical hatch in the Ateeve.
"What were you up to?" I asked, watching DOC hurry to the suit lying on the rock-table to add ties, in case the smart-seal failed.
"Anti-missile payloads," she replied, and I nodded.
Having only one payload was not enough if bats attacked our position. Based on recon droid observations, the colony had close to a hundred members, and it seemed like they had younglings, soon to be flyers as well.
Suppressing the shiver running down my spine, I looked at DOC again.
It was using some kind of goo to stick the prepared ties to the suit for binding it together.
Almost ready.
—
It was the same place, the same tunnel, the same steep and steady climb where I had fought the bobcat.
Only with the dawn that was barely casting any light, if any at all, instead of the harsh and bright daylight of the other day.
Shakily breathing out, I made the final step forward, over the line marked with stones on the ground, leaving the safety of the caves behind.
The suit felt somewhat wrong, uncomfortable. Was it because it had never been worn before, or all the added weight on top, including the poncho with a hood over the helmet, or simply because none of the features meant to increase comfort were working—I didn't know.
Perhaps, it was all of it together.
An hour ago, we had already tested the suit, putting it into The Anomaly, albeit inside the Bat Cave.
As we expected, most systems began to malfunction and were removed, including the energy field and mimic-fabric processor, leaving only comms, which Lola had managed to replace with a crude analogue, and a smart-seal—though I tied the ties anyway, not knowing if it would fail later.
The detector in my left armband softly glowed yellow, signalling that I was in The Anomaly proper, and I flipped the cover over it, hiding the glow.
"I am in," I said into the comm to Lola.
"Roger, RW-7," she replied, using my old callsign, and it helped me to centre myself, to focus on what I was about to do.
Holding Sixer at the ready, I carefully began to move up the tunnel, watching for any shadows, for any sign of an upcoming attack, not relying on my sense of danger, but hoping it would warn me, as it always did.
With slow, careful steps, I was getting closer and closer to the source of the morning light at the top, at the end of the tunnel. It was becoming brighter and brighter with each step, making the shadows sharper around me in the crisp, fresh air, filled with tranquillity and a barely noticeable hum.
And, against my expectations, nothing happened.
Not in the tunnel, and not at the end of it, where it was turning nearly ninety degrees to form the exit arch into an even brighter place beyond.
Leaning against the wall next to the arch, I readied Sixer and carefully looked out.
Before me, down the small bank, was a recessed cavern with a wide opening on the left, leading into the stony mountain valley covered in greenery, and with a waterfall, falling from a high cliff at the far end, twenty meters away or so.
With not a single soul around to see.
On one side, something inside me uncoiled after seeing this greenery, as if an unknown worry were leaving my shoulders, but on the other, I didn't trust my eyes, even for a bit—I didn't see the bobcat the other day either.
And while I was fighting diametrically opposed forces inside me, my eyes never stopped looking around, looking for any sign, for any clues, and soon bore fruit—I began to see the old, deep scratches on the walls, the whitening bones, all scattered around the cavern, and the lingering bobcat scent I hadn't felt until now.
This had been its territory.
Carefully stepping out of the tunnel, just to better see the valley, I leaned against the rocky wall, continuing to surveil the area with Sixer at the ready before me.
I had been lucky with the bobcat, really lucky. For most of the fight, it didn't show all its abilities, all its power, letting me control the fight.
Only a few glancing scratches on my energy shield with its claws, and it was enough to deplete it almost completely, and if… if I hadn't got through his own shield first, it would have torn me apart, and now my own bones would have been scattered around this cavern.
Still nothing.
The rocky sides of the valley were quite steep, rising almost vertically, but here and there, small trees and bushes were tightly clinging to them, making it possible to climb all the way up.
The waterfall at the end, humming quite noticeably now, was luring me to come closer, to undress and dive into the turquoise pool of water at its bottom.
Not a soul.
Checking the detector and noting that The Anomaly's density stayed the same, I began my careful walk toward the waterfall, navigating between the stones scattered across the valley floor.
The water looked even more alluring with each step closer, and the pool beneath, with an inviting half-sunken boulder in it, was just asking me to take a sunbath there.
Stopping and slowly turning around, still holding Sixer at the ready with both hands, I looked for the way up. The bobcat had to get out of the valley somehow, and I really hoped it wasn't just jumping out—it was ten fucking metres, for god's sake.
In a way, it was good, of course. The more secluded this place was, the better, but I needed a way up, and I needed it to be usable for coming down as well.
I was ready to go back, see if I missed something by the cavern exit, or inside, when I caught a movement by the pool.
On the half-sunken boulder was sitting… a squirrel, as innocently as it could be, even though it hadn't been there the moment before.
It was an inch bigger, with black fur instead of the rusty red with white stripes I used to see on Ladoga, but otherwise, just a squirrel sitting nonchalantly on the boulder and drinking water from the pool.
Not moving, I stared at it in a stupor, not able to look away.
The squirrel, the waterfall, the greenery, all of it was as if I wasn't in some unknown Anomaly, as if I didn't fight the bobcat the other day, as if it was all just a result of a sick imagination…
In the blink of an eye, the blurry shape fell from the sky, right onto the squirrel I was looking at.
The squawk, the feathers forcefully flying away, the hard-to-catch blurry movements—and in less than a second, all was done.
The same, peaceful squirrel, now all covered in blood, was gutting the giant hawk with a wingspan of a few metres, tearing it apart and pulling out a tangled mess of organs from inside.
The core?
Nonchalantly, as before, the squirrel just put it in her mouth and, jumping on the air as if it were the surface itself, vanished somewhere above the valley edge, with bloody parts of the hawk dangling behind.
Looking down at my Sixer, noticing how it was shaking in my hands, I had only one question in my head.
The fuck is this…
My stupor didn't last long, not with a strong scent of blood in the air. It forced me to move, to get away from the bloody boulder, from the scene that looked like a live bait trap, pulled by a squirrel.
Moving away, back towards the cavern, I kept an eye on the sky, now knowing what it could bring down on my head.
Perhaps that was why this time I spotted a narrow ledge along the valley wall leading up.
Glancing back at the waterfall and up the valley side, I doubted what to do only for a second.
"Lola, prepare the Ateeve. I might be coming in hot," I said, and with no more delay began to scale the valley side, walking up the ledge.
"Roger. Coming in hot, readying Ateeve," she replied through the comm, heavily crackling with static noise.
"Weeeekgh!"
A choked squeal reached me when I was halfway to the top, and I glanced back, looking for the source of it.
On the boulder was another gutted animal with dark brown fur, only half the size of the bobcat, but it was hard to tell what it was.
Seeing the same little squirrel scaling through the air with another mass of bloody organs behind her, I turned around and kept moving, perhaps a bit faster. This little monster had just baited someone else with the hawk corpse.
Fucking hell.
Reaching the top, I paused to look over.
The greenery continued there as well, with bright green grass and a line of mixed trees standing just five metres away, equally bright in colour—a colour only seen in spring.
Patch or the beginning of the mixed forest? Unclear, but nothing unusual, almost normal. The view I had seen many times before.
The fortieth parallel, it seems.
Glancing up once more, I looked to the left and the right. The space between the valley and the trees was littered with old stones, covered in moss, and bordered with knobs on both sides, creating another enclosed space above the valley.
Checking the detector—the same density—I mentally marked the place where the ledge was getting closer to the top, deciding where to go next.
Heading into the woods was out of the question, not with what could be living there. To the right? To the waterfall? Not after I saw what that squirrel had done. Left then, towards the knob over the cavern I had come out of.
With a decision made, I crawled out on the grass and, slightly lowering my profile, began to creep along the drop into the valley, each step pulsing with danger in my guts.
Reaching the stone knob, I started to ascend it, almost physically feeling how my time was running out, but I needed to see above the trees, to glimpse around. To find something that would give me a chance to survive, to get the hell out of this hellish place.
And it paid off.
Reaching the top of the knob, I saw before me the side of the mountain sloping down. It was split in two by a fast mountain river cutting from left to right, vanishing into the forest stretching to the horizon.
My ticket out, if I was lucky.
More instinctively than consciously, reacting to a sharp pulse in my guts, I whipped Sixer up and was tapping at the approaching shape—another giant bird—already mid-jump to the side.
It splashed on the stone where I had been a moment ago, with a torn-apart chest and almost cut-off wing, unnaturally angled.
Not sparing even a second, I was on my way down, jumping from stone to stone, or sliding down others, barely staying on the edge of my abilities to handle the descent, the landing, the terrain.
Landing harshly on the grass between old stones, rolling over my shoulder, I broke into a sprint, back to the familiar spot I had just memorised, to the ledge down the valley.
A brown animal, similar in size to the bobcat, blurred from under the tree canopy on my left, catching up to me, clearly on a path to intercept.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Sixer reacted more slowly, with the stretching delay between taps it didn't have before, but it was still enough.
The animal stumbled upon itself and flipped over its head a few times, slowing down enough for me to reach the ledge first.
I was running down the narrow pass, discarding all caution I had before, with the pulsing in my guts telling me that it was not over.
Faster. Faster.
Something landed behind me on the ledge, sending small stones down the valley wall and, without thinking, I jumped down from half the height, landing with a roll between rocks on the valley floor.
Changing direction to the cavern, jumping back in a full sprint, I was running as fast as I could, leaving nothing behind.
Now
Pushing against the cavern wall with one leg, I jumped in another direction, spinning in the air, to see, to tap behind me.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I saw my hits land, piercing through, with no shimmering air around the target, but somehow it was only slightly stumbled, able to tank my taps.
Why is it not working?
Finishing the spin, face to where I was running to, I continued my sprint, finally reaching the arch into the tunnel.
Another sharp turn, with the rushing air behind me, and I was pushing against the wall to change direction again, to run down the tunnel.
Hearing a loud smack against the stony wall behind me, I pointed Sixer back, tapping without looking.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Faster!
"Coming through!" I screamed, shoulder-checking the boulder's face at the end of the tunnel and, slipping to the side, entered the main cave, immediately jumping down the cornice where the boulder was.
"Whoosh-BDash"—exploded stone above, and something smashed down beside me.
In the silence of the ringing ears, I saw a still living, still moving animal with a quickly closing, bloody gap in its torso.
Putting my Sixer to the head—
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap
—I was tapping until it split apart, spraying blood and brain around in the bright lights of the hovering Ateeve nearby.
Dead, fucking dead.
Tap. Tap.
To be sure.
"Lola, if you see a squirrel, any squirrel, hit it with an anti-missile payload," I said, changing the clip.
"Squirrel, anti-missile payload. Roger that," she replied, but not really making me feel any safer.
If I ever would be, in this hellish place.