Captain Jennings moved over as a sergeant scrambled into the foxhole and thrust her radio at him. “Sir, the computers have dropped our chances. They want us to pull out.”
“Damn.” He grabbed the radio and verified the authorization, pissed at another retreat. He lost men and women every time. They died believing their superiors knew what the hell they were doing.
Acknowledging his orders with the press of his thumb, he passed the radio back to the sergeant. “Tell everyone to pull out.”
He fired to cover the scouts as they retreated. Finding shelter wasn’t difficult; the whole damn planet was an overgrown forest with a thick layer of underbrush. Bella Vista with its fleecy golden clouds and verdant landscape was a deathtrap. The entire planet wanted to kill them. He checked his suit’s containment and ammunition.
Earlier at the mission briefing, the one they received each time they went down to Bella Vista’s surface, Commander Farrell had stood in the front of the room, dressed in the standard black uniform. “This mission is no different from the previous ones,” she said. “Satellites have discovered a nest of wildlings on the southern continent. They’re building a giant catapult able to reach our ships in orbit. Your mission is to take them out before they can complete the catapult.”
Her hair had grown gray since Captain Jennings had arrived on station, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in the intervening months.
“For you first timers,” she said, “Bella Vista seems perfect. Lots of oxygen, water, and plants. No animals except for the blood-thirsty wildlings, which are more plant than animal.”
She went off script, and her voice took on a weary edge. “Bella Vista’s molds, fungi, and plants attacked and killed the original colonists. They had spent billions to purchase Bella Vista, but their settlements were overtaken by carnivorous vines and creepers and spores that reproduced exceptionally well in wet lung tissue. Do not remove your masks under any circumstances, or you’ll die a horrible death.” Not a bad idea to put the fear of God into the newbies.
Despite the significant army losses, the government hadn’t retreated. They kept promising a victory. Jennings had given up hoping to win. He and his team knew each foray could be their last. His goal was to return with as many of his squad as he could each time they went down.
On Bella Vista, the captain joined the scouts as they retreated, crashing through waterfalls of moss hanging from thousand-year-old trees and leaving a cloying scent of crushed rose petals detectable even through their respirators. Outliers formed up on him, along with the radio sergeant, and ducked enemy fire as they ran. They broke through the underbrush like the fleeing targets they were, sounding like a herd of elephants.
The bullets of the wildlings’ “guns” were seeds that exploded from tubes similar to Earth’s bamboo. Fired from the enemy’s shoulders like bazookas, the seeds exploded on impact, imbedding tiny shards of hardened resin that burned through armor and into flesh.
Jennings whipped his rifle towards movement on the left. Wildlings burst from the ground. The five-limbed creatures, their skin the texture of tree trunks and their shaggy hair not dissimilar from the moss they hid within, swung from lower tree branches or jumped from tussock to tussock. After soldiers introduced foxholes to Bella Vista, the enemy imitated them, digging through the loam to attack the humans from underground.
The squad would be overrun before they reached the shuttle if he didn’t do something. He stopped running and wrenched a shock grenade from his belt. He shouted “Squealer!” and threw it. The soldiers scrambled for cover, placing hands over their ears and opening their mouths to minimize the blast pressure.
When it exploded, wildlings stopped pouring from the smoking hole in the ground. Jennings followed his fleeing troops through the brush as they cut a trail. No paths or roads existed on Bella Vista. The aggressive plants overgrew manmade structures and roads as soon as they were built. Anything the corrosive plants couldn’t dissolve, the wildlings, as the planet’s antibodies, smashed.
Jennings stumbled into a clearing, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. A clearing? There were no open spaces on Bella Vista. Even rocks were covered by hungry plants that broke them down for minerals. Yet this ten-foot circle of brown earth was bare. How was this possible? The clearing held no organic material. How had it fended off plant encroachment?
He looked for his troops, but they had run ahead. Stooping as best he could in his armor, he examined the edges of the circle. A thin net of webbing covered the plants. Spiders? Bella Vista had no insect life. Had their probes missed the one thing that could stop the plants from devouring the planet? He had nothing to place a sample in, but he’d report where he’d found the webbing and the next landing party could examine it.
Something stung his neck. Had he been hit by a seed? He checked his readouts, but his armor hadn’t been compromised. Shrugging it off as sweat irritation, he strode through the hanging moss after his troops.
A hovering shuttle waited for them, continuously flaming the surroundings to push back the encroaching forest. Shutting off the flamethrowers, the shuttle touched down at the troops’ approach and opened a port. A dozen soldiers ran up the gangplank, several carrying comrades. Others stripped off smoldering armor and tossed pieces into the trees. If they were lucky, the insidious seeds hadn’t reached flesh. If they weren’t, the medicos would take desperate measures to stop the minute roots from invading the soldiers’ bodies. Amputations and prosthetics were common.
Captain Jennings covered the others with the last of his ammunition and climbed aboard, the final squad member. He stripped as the port closed and herbicide gas flooded the compartment.
Each veteran scrubbed themselves and one another with scalding hot water. The planet thought up new ways to murder them each time they landed. His comrades had begged to be killed as the roots of blood-eating plants spread through their writhing bodies.
He had to tell the commander about that clearing what he’d found. Something on Bella Vista stopped plant growth.
Vacuums suctioned the pungent fumes, and fans produced blasts of hot air.
“Lieutenant Rand, report,” he said.
“Rand’s down, sir.” Lieutenant Wang dried himself. “We got his armor off, but he’d hit his knockout injector.”
If Rand had hit his blocker, he must have been in agony, aware a plant invaded his insides. The medicos would have to wake him. Damn it. Rand had served as the captain’s right-hand man for the past month. “Do you have his report, Wang?”
“Yes, sir.” The naked young man, looking twice his age and covered with small scars, consulted his temple implant. “We lost two and have three injured. The new shock grenades weren’t as effective this time.”
Jennings nodded. Wildlings learned new techniques quickly and improved their fighting skills with each encounter.
The radio sergeant turned from the wall intercom. “Captain, the pilot wants to speak to you after you’ve seen the medico.” She wrapped a robe around herself.
The shuttle jerked as it left the planet’s atmosphere. Tired and pissed, Jennings grabbed a robe and entered the small medical unit. The injured and dead had gotten there before him.
“Robe off.” Medico Getz smiled at him. “Hope nothing rotted off down there.”
He removed his robe. “The pilot wants a word with me, Inez. Let’s make this quick.” Plus, he needed to tell the commander about the plant-killing webs he’d seen.
Getz’s scanner checked his hairless body, crisscrossed with scars from previous battles on the planet. When the machine beeped, she smiled. “No parting gift from Bella Vista today. Join me for a drink on the station later?”
He considered it. Drinks with Inez often ended up in her quarters. “Sorry, but I have to write messages home for the kids in the morgue.” He gave her a smile of regret and put on his robe.
In the corridor, he remembered the sting on his neck, but didn’t go back and tell Inez. If her scanner hadn’t found anything, he must be okay. He headed to the cockpit.
“What is it, Rooster?” he asked the pilot. Through the forward window, Jennings could see the silver sphere of their orbital headquarters, home until they made the planet safe.
He collapsed into the rear seat, rubbing his neck where he’d felt the pinprick.
Rooster turned, his hands on the controls. “Have you heard the latest buzz?”
“I don’t keep up with the rumors. If I believed half of what I heard, I’d chew a handful of Bella Vista seeds and get it over with. Tell me that we’re pulling out.”
Rooster shook his head. “I wish. No, the latest rumor is that whatever is controlling the plant life here might not come from Bella Vista.”
“How could they know?” Jennings asked.
“Probes found plants taking over other planets in the system.”
“Damn it,” Jennings said. “We should nuke Bella Vista from space and go home.”
Rooster nodded. “We’ve stopped bringing back dead wildlings after they were booby-trapped to get seeds onto the station. If the planet ever figures out a way to get plants up here, we’re all fertilizer. Imagine if it reached Earth.”
“I liked the pulling out rumor better,” Jennings said.
“Sorry about your casualties.” Rooster’s voice seemed to come from a great distance, and he turned back to his console in slow motion. Afterimages of him glowed bright yellow and violet in dark cockpit.
Red and green lights strobed through Jennings’s vision.
“I’ll. Have. You. In. Your…bunk on the station in half an hour,” Rooster said, his words coming in spurts. Jennings shook his head. What was wrong with him?
Time and colors returned to normal in mid-sentence, and Jennings shook his head to clear it.
He climbed to his feet, light-headed and feverish, but his vision and hearing returned to normal.
The station grew larger outside the window. He was happy to see it. It was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Bella Vista. He wanted to run naked through the station’s halls when they docked. Smiling to himself, he went to change and check on his squad. There had been something important he needed to report to the commander, but it slipped his mind.
He stood for a moment, gazing out the window and rubbing his neck.
So beautiful.
