Read Online The Black Pod by Martin Wilsey - Free Book Online Page B

swing to his back on the sling and waved for her to come with
him back to the safety of the pod. She started to get up and fell
again, her one hand never leaving the
beast.
    She reached out to the Chief with her
other hand.
    Suddenly, beyond her, he
could see another great cloud of smoke coming their way. Decision
made, he risked a bite
from the beast. He lifted her up in his
arms and ran. The creature ran alongside. The girl
extended an arm out to it in reassurance.
    That’s when Tony saw her burns. Her
clothes had been half burned off. He knew his jostling must be
agony for her. They had covered maybe half the distance back to the
pod when he paused and gently set her down. She immediately cried
out in pain and rolled onto her belly.
    He unslung his pack. As the beast
tried to lick her wounds, she screamed and pushed it away. It
whimpered like a pup even though the thing was huge. Adams had
never seen this species.
    The
med spray brought instant relief. The pain
was numbed, and the nanites would have the second-degree burns
completely healed in just a few hours. She was
able to stand before he was even done treating her.
    She patted his shoulder.
Speaking rapidly in a language he didn’t understand, she pointed to
the beast. He realized it was also severely burned, even worse
than the girl. There
was a scorched area on its right flank, and both its front paws
were burned horribly to the first joint. Its muzzle was also severely blistered.
    Adams didn’t know if the
beast’s physiology was compatible, but he treated it with the
nanites anyway. When he sprayed its muzzle it sneezed, and the
girl actually laughed for a moment, until the creature began
to push her forward with its lowered head.
    It wasn’t just smoke coming their way
this time. The grasses were on fire, and it was moving towards
them. The girl led the charge to the ramp leading into the Black
Pod. With all the gear down, sitting in the tall grasses, the pod
looked like a great, black dome of a building that had been there
since the dawn of time.
    They ran.
    ***
    The hatch closed behind
them just before another cloud of smoke engulfed them. Safe inside
the lower deck of the pod, the girl fell flat on her face as soon
as she hit the heavy gravity plating.
    “ Box, grav-plates off,
please.” He saw the girl react when it returned to
normal.
    She sat up and started speaking
rapidly to Adams. He could tell by the upward inflection in her
voice that she was asking questions. He thought he recognized a
single word: “Keeper.”
    He started to speak over her, “Please, I cannot understand you. Do you speak English?
Are you a colonist? What is the name of this planet? I am here from
Earth.”
    She became quiet. Adams
did not know what he said to cause this, but she fell to her knees
and placed her forehead on the floor at his feet. The beast
slowly moved to
position itself protectively between the
girl and Adams.
    Alarms sounded in the otherwise quiet
room. Not so loud as to panic his guests, but urgent nonetheless.
Box reported, “Passive sensors have discovered that there is comms
traffic. Sat-based. Air traffic has also been detected.”
    “ Oh shit, ” he said
as he climbed the ladder to the control room. “Tactical display,
Box.” A map appeared to Adams’ right. It was more detailed than he
had expected of this continent. It had distant cities annotated and
comm signal points of origin. It even had their position and the best guess at the fire’s progress around them.
    Tony was worried that ships would come
to mop up. The tactical map revealed that only four were currently
detected in the air, all on vectors away from his location. They
were easy to track because they emitted constant ident codes on a
side beacon.
    Box speculated, “They look like old
colony shuttles, based on these protocols. And not many of
them.”
    “ Where did you get these
maps?” Adams asked as
he looked closer.
    “ A prior survey. No dates.
No additional information. How