Blue Planet Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Read More

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  There were no cats in space.

  When humans left Earth for the first time with no intention of coming back, there had been a strict prohibition on bringing anything with them beyond the bare necessities. Every single person who boarded that ship, called Hodios, knew this. And yet, every single person who boarded that ship violated the prohibition. Most brought small things, like favorite books, bottles of booze, and pieces of jewelry. The sort of things that were easy to sneak on board in clothing or inside bags of authorized goods.

  Somehow, seven people had managed to sneak dogs aboard Hodios. This suggested that whoever had been in charge of keeping personal items off the ship had done a particularly poor job.

  That no one had snuck even a single a cat aboard the ship said something else entirely.

  Beryl Roberts was about to be very glad for those seven people and their seven dogs.

  Chapter One

  Camp, the dog, growled.

  This was not the low, light-hearted growl of a dog playing with another dog. Nor was it the deep, warning growl of a dog letting all nearby humans know of a potential threat, such as an unknown human passing the house or a branch hitting the window at night.

  This growl was, instead, the full-throated, half-fight, half-flight growl of a dog warning any person or another dog in the vicinity of a genuine threat. The sort of growl that warned of the impending arrival of a large and unpleasant visitor. The sort of visitor who liked to eat dogs for lunch. Or breakfast. Or really, for any meal or snack.

  The sort of visitor who would follow up a canine appetizer with a human entrée.

  The human crouched next to the black dog in the jungle-like woods looked up from the soil samples she was collecting.

  “Shit,” Beryl, the human said. She had heard that growl enough to know it wasn’t good. She began throwing the vials and boxes spread around her on the jungle floor into the backpack she rarely left home without. She was a researcher, after all, looking to find out ways to use the natural resources of humans’ newest outpost in space. Collecting specimens was a significant part of the job. So, too, was dealing with some of the nastier of those natural resources. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  A second later, Beryl heard the voice from the dog’s translator in her head. Their phones had no speakers. Instead, they transmitted directly to the brain of whoever’s phone was being pinged. Iris had told Beryl this was possible thanks to different brain frequencies, but Beryl wasn’t terribly interested in how it or anything mechanical worked, and had therefore failed to pay attention to the vast majority of what Iris had told her. Iris, their IS—Intelligence System, as she always reminded people when they tried to call her an artificial intelligence—was interested in getting people to talk to her about the mechanical aspects of what she did. Unfortunately, very few were willing to do so, and even fewer were capable of understanding even the slightest bit of what she said.

  “Vos,” said the voice in Beryl’s head again. The voice’s soothing tone did nothing to ease Beryl’s anxiety. If anything, it increased it.

  “Time to get out of here.” Behind Beryl, a second figure spoke and began gathering up a similar set of vials and boxes on the ground in front of her. It didn’t inspire confidence in Beryl to know that Iris, the smartest being in the known universe, had not recognized the approaching threat before Camp had.

  Beryl threw the last of the vials into her backpack. Before standing up, she touched the sidearm on her right hip with the tips of her fingers. She knew it was loaded. No one went this far into the jungles on Columbina without a loaded weapon. Touching it served to reassure her that, barring something going terribly wrong, she could at least defend herself, Iris, and Camp from the incoming threat.

  Suddenly, a sound erupted from the jungle to Beryl’s right.

  To Beryl, it sounded like a cross between a howl, a bird’s tweet, and a scream. In her twenty-four years of life, she had watched countless videos of animals from Earth, and none of them sounded remotely like it. It was, unmistakably, the sound of a Vos on the hunt.

  She had no doubt what—or in this case, who—it was on the hunt for.

  Beryl slung the backpack over her shoulders in a smooth and practiced move, from years of doing the same thing. Thankfully, she didn’t usually have to do it with a Vos looking for her. Camp whined and bounced on his front paws, trying to make Beryl and Iris hurry up. In Beryl’s head, his translator began to repeat “let’s go.”

  “Turn off Camp’s translator.” Almost immediately at the sound of her voice, the dog’s translator stopped transmitting, though Camp didn’t stop whining and bouncing. He was clearly agitated, and Beryl didn’t blame him.

  “Are you ready?” Iris asked, picking up her own backpack and slinging it on to her back. Iris was several inches taller than Beryl, and although her voice was decidedly feminine, her look was that of a hyper-androgynous human. If you weren’t aware of her being something other than a biological human, you would be unlikely to notice her few traits and features that were just slightly off from the expected.

  “Yes.” A slight breeze wafted through the jungle. As it did, the thick foliage moved just enough that it allowed Beryl to see something yellow in the woods beyond where they were standing. “Just a sec.”

  The young woman tightened the ponytail into which her red hair had been pulled and pushed her way into the jungle, the branches scratching at her freckled arms and legs. In the heat of the day, Beryl wore nothing but a tank top and shorts, her standard working outfit. Or rather, her standard outfit for all of life’s occasions; Beryl was not someone concerned with how she looked.

  “What are you doing?” Iris’s voice—higher and speaking faster than usual—cut through the woods. Beryl looked back, but even a few steps away from Iris, the leaves and brush between them hid her completely.

  “I thought I saw something.”

  “Well, I know I heard something. Something I definitely don’t want to see.”

  “I’ll hurry.” Beryl took three more steps into the brush before she saw the yellow flash again. It was there, growing on the trunk of a tree that had to be ten feet in diameter. Although Beryl had never seen an orchid—they weren’t among the plants anyone had brought when they left Earth—these flowers looked like the pictures she had seen of them. Balanced in a seemingly precarious position at the end of a thin twig, the trio of yellow flowers seemed so delicate Beryl worried they would break if she touched them. Beryl pulled a small knife from a sheath on her left leg and stuck i
t into the bark below what looked like the flowers’ roots. In a twist practiced on thousands of previous plant samples, Beryl separated the entire plant from the trunk of the tree, catching the flowers by their root ball as they dropped toward the ground.

  Beryl twirled the knife before re-sheathing it. Still clutching the flower in her left hand, Beryl crashed back through the jungle to the small clearing where Iris and Camp waited for her return.

  “A flower?” Iris questioned, even though she knew full well who it was for. This was not the first time Beryl had done this.

  “My mom is going to love it.”

  “She’s not going to love it if this little excursion gets you killed.”

  “That depends on the day.” Beryl knew the statement wasn’t true, but there were days when she was not entirely sure. It was amazing how often her mother threatened to kill her on days when Beryl had already nearly been killed while out working.

  “Any more flowers you need to pick?” Iris asked, annoyed. Beryl shook her head and took the lead as the three of them headed back through the woods to the waiting Bird, loudly careening through the plants on the jungle floor to get out of the woods as quickly as possible.

  The Vos was quiet now and not calling, but after twelve years living on Columbina and in orbit around the planet, Beryl knew this did not mean anything good. A quiet Vos was a Vos stalking its prey.

  Beryl tore down the narrow path she had cut that morning as quickly as she dared. While she was probably the best person at trailblazing and pathfinding on Columbina, this was not the time to take a wrong turn. In the dim light filtering through the canopy, even the most experienced person in the woods could mistake an animal trail for the way back to the Bird.

  In the jungle canopy, a lone hoot rang out above the sound of insects. After a long beat, a chorus of responded in kind. The crowls, probably the most common of Columbina’s large birds and bird-like creatures, were immediately recognizable by their distinct calls. Almost as quickly as their hooting began, though, they all went silent. A moment later, so did everything else in the jungle.

  The Vos was close.

  Very close.

  Beryl really hoped it wasn’t in the trees.

  As they were in the jungle, though, the chances of the Vos being on the ground were slim to none. For such large creatures, they seemed to have no trouble navigating the jungle trees.

  Beryl started moving faster. The last thing she wanted to do was to meet the Vos here in the woods. At least if they saw it in the meadow where the Bird, their transport back home, was waiting for them, they would have an easier time taking it out.

  The trees above them started to lighten ever-so-slightly as they got closer to the meadow, though the underbrush stayed thick. In this part of the jungle, the ground beneath the trees stayed almost impenetrable right up until the edges of the forest, even though the plants down here were still entirely shaded.

  As she moved through the jungle, Beryl listened for any sound above the sounds they were making crashing through it. The Vos were quiet, but not silent; more than once she had heard them following even if they didn’t call out.

  And then she heard it.

  Something crashing through the underbrush, headed toward them from the meadow.

  Beryl slowed down, almost stopping. She could feel Camp at her heels doing the same. Iris, though, was silent.

  All of them had seen enough Vos in their lifetimes to know anything headed their way was not good.

  Beryl took a deep breath and put her hand on the grip of her gun. She pulled it and aimed it down the path toward whatever was headed their way.

  Whatever it was, it would be there soon.

  And then the thing barreled down the path, nearly running into Beryl as it did so.

  It was not a Vos. It was someone Beryl knew far-too-well.

  “Jesus Christ, Beryl, don’t shoot!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Beryl asked the man who was now standing in front of her.

  What she wanted to do was slap him in the face.

  Hard.

  “I was coming out to look for you. I heard a Vos and wanted to check that you were headed back,” Vlad de la Vega replied. “It wouldn’t be the first time you thought you were OK and it didn’t turn out that way.”

  “And it wouldn’t be the first time you came out into the jungle and got lost. You do realize we have these things called phones?” Beryl held her right hand up, showing off the thin band—really more of a bracelet—on her wrist.

  Vlad ran his left hand through his black hair and smiled, looking like no one so much as a darker version of Harrison Ford in his pre-Witness movie era.

  “All I’m saying,” Vlad continued, unwilling to give Beryl the last word, “is that I was wondering if you were planning to get out of the woods any time soon. Or were you thinking you would like me to save you, yet again?”

  Beryl managed not to immediately reply to his comment, which took more restraint than she expected. Sometimes, she wondered why she had ever dated him for four years.

  Camp trotted up to Vlad, his tail wagging and seemingly unworried about the impending arrival of the Vos. Vlad bent over and scratched the dog behind his ears.

  For someone saying he was worried about their safety, Beryl thought, he certainly wasn’t acting like it.

  Beryl watched her beloved dog and had the same thought she always did when the dog happily greeted her ex-boyfriend, also known as Camp’s second favorite person in the world.

  Traitor.

  “As I recall,” Beryl said, unable to ultimately resist replying, “the last time you ‘saved’ us, I was the only one who got off a shot. Some of us were more concerned with getting back onto the Bird and getting as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. Consequences to others with them be damned.”

  “Well, seeing as how only one of us knows how to fly the Bird, it seemed like a good idea to let the pilot get on board as fast as possible so those who didn’t know how to fly the Bird could get away from the giant creature attempting to eat them before it, you know, ate them.”

  Beryl pushed past Vlad, who still stood in the path in front of her and headed down the last bit of the trail. “As if flying a Bird is that difficult. I mean, Iris takes care of, like, 99.99% of it.”

  “How about a little less bickering, and a little more not getting eaten by a Vos?” Iris said. Beryl loved Iris, but at this particular moment, she couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed with her. After all, if the Vos caught them, Iris was the only one who would survive the encounter. Beryl didn’t need to be told the consequences of not getting away from the Vos.

  Without warning and as if responding to the sound of its name, the call of the Vos rang out through the woods above their heads.

  Shit, Beryl thought, it’s in the canopy. Why do they always go for the canopy?

  Beryl pushed through the last bit of woods, breaking out into the bright sunlight of the meadow. It was bright enough compared to the dark woods that she had to pause for a moment to let her eyes adjust.

  When they did, she saw the Bird about 100 yards in front of them. Its sleek gold exterior shone in the Columbinian sunlight, like an airplane capable of space travel. It was so striking, Beryl could almost forget it stood in a field of red, pink, yellow, and purple flowers, stretching toward the low hills on the horizon in a scene so stunning it looked fake.

  Now that they were in the field, at least Beryl didn’t have to worry about taking a wrong turn. She started running toward the Bird, a jog that was fast enough to put some distance between herself and the woods but not so fast that she would be exhausted before she reached the Bird. The Bird’s back entrance was open to the field, a ramp leading up to the inside of it like an old-time cargo plane. Camp, the fastest of all of them, took off at full speed for the Bird, leaving Beryl, Vlad, and Iris to deal with the Vos.

  A traitor and a coward, Beryl thought of her canine companion.

  Halfway to the ship, Beryl
turned around to see if Iris and Vlad were close behind her.

  As she did, she knew that none of them—except Camp—were making it to the Bird without a fight.

  “We have a visitor,” Beryl yelled, dropping the flower to the ground, drawing her gun and turning to fully face the jungle out of which they had just emerged.

  On top of the trees at the edge of the jungle, a Vos had assumed a position Beryl knew all too well.

  It was about to attack.

  Chapter Two

  Vlad turned around in time to see the Vos land on the edge of the canopy, its velociraptor-like figure outlined above the tree against the blue sky.

  It opened its mouth and shrieked its prey call, revealing several rows of teeth that would tear anything on the planet apart in seconds, including any human who happened to get too close.

  He had probably seen a hundred of the creatures over the years he had been on Columbina. Save for Beryl and Iris, he had seen more Vos than anyone else on the planet.

  Still, every time he saw one, it tended to take his breath away. And not in the good, cheesy song from the 1980s way.

  The Vos now above him hesitated on the tree for a too-short second, before launching itself up and out from the tree, away from the jungle and toward them.

  At first, as the Vos fell through the air, it looked like a velociraptor jumping from a hundred feet up. But it jumped with such purpose and confidence, you had no doubt it could land safely on the ground below.

  And then it opened its wings.

  The first time a person saw a Vos open its wings, it usually stopped that person dead in his or her tracks. A large Vos was maybe seven or eight feet tall, but its wings spread out on either side of it made the creature appear three or four times as wide. They looked like the unholy mating of a bat and a bird, the rubber-looking appendages tipped with feathers.

  This one opened its wings one at a time. When they did that, they looked like creatures from some summer blockbuster, stretching out the first entrance of the deadly creature the heroes have to fight in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. As it opened its second wing, it slowed a bit, catching the wind so it could soar down into the field. Once there, it would pursue them much faster on its two legs.