Upon a Savage Shore Ch. 09

"I'm alright," he said. "I'm fine. Liam no shot."

M'pel E'kmel spoke to her for a moment, Clotilda's expression changing from concern to amazement and finally to disbelieving anger. She whirled on Liam and slapped him across the face, then leapt back into his arms.

"I believe she does not approve of you taking such risks," the commander said seriously, but her tail and ears were twitching in amusement.

"Seems like," Liam said, with a roll of his eyes. He rubbed his cheek. Blood leaked from the wounds that had nearly closed and he wiped it away before his mate could see what she had done. The day had been stressful enough.

When they all returned to the camp Tem'Ma'tel was standing behind the abatis with her rifle and a very worried look on her face. She asked what had happened and M'pel E'kmel told her the story, leaving out no detail except the effects of cold water on Human males and Liam's extraordinary level of embarrassment.

+>0<+

Just inside the lower entrance Liam sat with his helmet in his lap, examining the diagnostics readout. He could not understand how the blade-beasts had snuck up on them without the sensors detecting their approach. Nothing was wrong with his electronics. The sensors had been set to detect very small animals and they were working perfectly now, as far as he could tell.

"Liam angry?" Clotilda asked concerned. She had refused to leave his side since they'd returned. Tem'Ma'tel had willingly limped up to the top of the tree, trading her lookout post with the diminutive Pah'Tht.

"I'm fine, Babe," he said, patting her on the butt reassuringly. "I'm just frustrated."

"Clot'ilda look?" she asked.

"You?" Liam raised his eyebrows. Because of her size and her limited English, he had never considered that she might be very intelligent and skilled with electronics. She had been serving on a scout ship packed with all manner of sensory equipment. While the technology of the two races was different, there were only so many ways a sensor could be built. The CP had captured plenty of jZav'Etch equipment and there was no doubt the jZav'Etch had plenty of theirs. Perhaps she would have some insight that escaped him. In fact, given that he was trained only to make field repairs on his equipment, Clotilda might be more qualified to read the diagnostics than he was.

Clotilda smiled happily when he handed her the helmet. She took out her language guide and used it to read the text scrolling over the helmet's faceplate. She frowned and slowed the scroll to a crawl. It took her several minutes to makes sense of what the readouts said and when she was done she looked as puzzled as Liam felt.

"Not..." Clotilda pressed her lips together in thought, finally pushing out the words. "Not broken. Sensor work. Not broken."

"Yeah," Liam said and accepted the helmet when she handed it back to him. "It didn't detect the animals, though."

"Predators," she said. There was something in her tone that made him look at her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Wear," she said and lifted the helmet out of his hands, raising it above his head. He took hold of it and slipped it on. "Liam watch Clot'ilda?"

"Okay."

He switched the sensors over from diagnostic to passive, feathering the gain to alert on anything as small as a house cat, the same as they had been at the creek earlier. Clotilda slipped out beyond the abatis and stepped into the undergrowth. The sensors tracked her movements until she stopped. She remained still for several minutes and then her signature faded from the screen.

The sensors had, of course, recorded where she had stopped, but since she wasn't moving they were no longer displaying her presence. The instant Clotilda did anything more than breathe she would pop up on the screen again. Or Liam could switch over to active sensors and find her no matter how still she was.

Minutes passed and Clotilda stayed hidden in the brush. Liam was about to call out to her to come back when his sensors flashed an emergency alarm and Clotilda stepped from the undergrowth several meters from where she had last been recorded. He pulled his helmet off and frowned his confusion at her.

"Predator," she said proudly and thumped her chest with her knuckles.

"No kidding," he said and smiled. "How?"

She grinned and stepped away from the abatis, only this time she did not disappear into the brush. She stayed close to the opening in plain sight. Liam put his helmet back on and watched as seconds ticked by and her signature once again faded. A minute or so later Clotilda began to very slowly move. The sensors did not pick her up. She edge, millimeter by millimeter, straight at him and the sensors had no clue she was there. It took her several minutes to cover less than half the distance to Liam, but she remained undetected and that was at much closer range than the blade-beasts had been. He pulled the helmet off and sat frowning in thought. Clotilda came and stood next to Liam, putting an arm over his shoulder and waiting quietly.

"Damn," he swore softly. "I'm going to have to set this thing to do active sweeps every minute or so."

It would be a larger drain on the power cell, but it seemed that would be the price of their safety. The sensors were not designed to pick up targets that moved as slow as Clotilda had. But the blade-beasts hadn't been moving that slow. Something else was up with them.

"Commander, are you still awake?" Liam called.

"Yes," M'pel E'kmel replied and sat up in her nest. "I was just going over the survey map. I think I found a place near your pod that we could use as a camp."

"Oh. Good," he said with an approving nod. "Would you mind relieving Clotilda from her watch for a bit? I want to take her over the hill with me."

"If you need privacy, Sergeant, I can sit outside the tree until you are finished," M'pel E'kmel offered with a sly smile.

Liam gave her a reproachful look and said, "Thanks for the offer, but I want to try an experiment with my sensors."

"Sounds decadent," the commander purred, amused.

"Yes," he sighed. "It's the kinkiest thing I have ever done. We'll be back in a while."

Clotilda followed Liam over the hill, alert for any sign of danger. They came to a stop about twenty meters from the carcasses. Small scavengers had been tearing at the dead bodies already, but they scattered as soon as the pair came in sight. Liam did an active sensor sweep and instantly picked up the dead blade-beasts as well as all the small creatures around them. The large animal on the far side of the stream had moved, but was still about a hundred meters away.

"Okay," he said, taking his helmet off. "Picked them up with no trouble and they are not moving. That's some good news."

He switched the sensors to passive scanning then carefully put the helmet on Clotilda's head. She looked confused and not entirely comfortable with the oversized thing squashing her ears down to her scalp. Actually, it looked cute on her, like a child trying on her father's hat or a kitten stuck in a fishbowl. She grimaced at him and seemed about to pull it off when he shook his head.

"Watch," he said and went to the nearest carcass. He grabbed it by the back legs, stood still until he was sure his image had faded from the screen and then slowly dragged the body across the ground. "Anything?"

Clotilda shook her head, intuiting what his question was rather than understanding the word. Liam nodded, having anticipated that result. He next took out three of his cargo straps and looped one around the beast's legs and attached the other two, making a longer strap of them. Again he waited long enough to fade from the screen and then pulled the carcass a little faster. Clotilda shook her head again. Liam repositioned and repeated the experiment, pulling faster this time. It took two more tries before the carcass tripped the sensors. Liam had pulled it at about a walking speed and that told him something about the animals they'd killed. He just wasn't sure what.

"Okay, Sweetie," he said and took the helmet from Clotilda's head. He gestured to his eyes and then out at the forest. "Watch."

Clotilda gave him a serious look and brought her fero-plas pistol up to port arms, looking about sharply. Liam drew his knife and spent half an hour skinning the blade-beast. When he was done he laid the sleek coat of fur flat on the ground and looped his strap around the carcass' legs again. Clotilda donned the helmet and Liam pulled the creature slowly across the ground. This time the sensors alerted as soon as the thing moved.

"I don't believe it," he said, going back to Clotilda. "Their fur is some sort of natural stealth material. I don't believe it."

+>0<+

"Was your experiment a success?" M'pel E'kmel asked when they returned. "And what have you there?"

"Yes, and these are the pelts from the blade-beasts," Liam told her. He was carrying both hides in one hand, holding them away from his body to keep blood from dripping all over him.

"I see," the commander said and then raised her eyebrows. "Why did you bring them? Not trophies, are they?"

"Nope," he said, then explained the results of his experiment.

"Naturally occurring stealth material?" M'pel E'kmel wondered. "I've only ever heard of one other creature like that. It's a kind of... What do your people call those legless creatures that slither around on Earth?"

"Snakes?"

"Snakes, yes, but what is their scientific classification?"

"Reptiles?"

"That's it." She snapped her fingers and nodded. "The creature I speak of is a reptile, more or less."

"These things might be, too," Liam said and slung the skins over the spikes of the abatis. "That isn't fur. It's more like feathers or frilly scales. That's why it looks the way it does. I think they flex the feathers to absorb light and maybe sound. It stands to reason the feathers might also deflect or absorb other forms of radiation."

"So if they move slowly enough your passive sensors can't see them," M'pel E'kmel said.

"I've already set them to do an active sweep every sixty seconds. Anything gets within fifty meters of us and the sensors will sound an alert."

"That means you'll have to leave your helmet where we can all hear the alert."

"It does, Commander." Liam rubbed his jaw. "One of those things gets close enough to charge, whoever's on guard may not have time to get a shot off."

"We will strengthen the abatis," the commander said decisively. "Seal this end of the tree. Those creatures will have much more difficulty coming at us from the upper opening. We can create a barrier across the top of the trunk as well."

"That's a lot of work," Liam observed.

"No help for it," she replied. "Tem'Ma'tel cannot walk and I am not ready to make any sort of long journey, either. We're stranded here for the time being."

+>0<+

Hours later M'pel E'kmel was leaning over the jZav'Etch medical kit she had personally salvaged from her bunk aboard the scout ship. It was not the standard issue kit normally carried by jZav'Etch forces, though it did contain everything a standard kit would. It had several other specialized instruments in it and it was one of these she was employing to inspect samples from the hides of the blade-beasts, as Sergeant Carter called them.

The sergeant and Clot'ilda were currently on the top of the log using the core sample drill to bore sockets for more sharpened stakes. They were creating a barrier to deter any encroachment that might come. Tem'Ma'tel was spending her time on watch adding another row of sharpened stakes to the abatis at the lower end of the tree. She had not yet finished, but the obstacle was already far more formidable than it had been.

"Please be a negative. Please be a negative," chanted M'pel E'kmel in a low, worried tone when the medical kit began to display the results of the comparison she had just run. And then, as the data unspool across the screen, she breathed in relief, "Oh thank the Forger and Builder. Not here. Not yet, at least."

She ran the test again, though she already knew what the result would be. Had the first sequence registered as a match for the data stored in the medical kit, she would have been forced to tell Sergeant Carter and the young females what her special mission was. It would have invalidated the experiment, but she was not so dedicated to that endeavor as to allow them to go to their deaths uninformed. The kit chimed again and displayed the data, confirming the previous comparison. In spite of anticipating the answer, M'Pel E'kmel breathed another sigh of relief.

She folded up the kit and destroyed the samples. Though the results had been a relief there was still a worry about the creatures. The work the other three were doing had to be completed before nightfall. M'pel E'kmel went to lend a hand.