Shifter Planet: The Return Read online

  As if drawn by the thought of her name, Ripper pushed the cabin door open without even the fake courtesy of a knock, nearly running into Rachel. Putting one foot over the threshold, she said, “You’re on watch again today, Fortier. Keep the hatch closed, and we’ll be back before sunset.” She didn’t wait for a response, just dropped her hand from the door and stepped back into the passageway to follow her crew.

  Rachel stepped into the hall and glared after her for all of ten seconds. “Fuck that,” she muttered. Ripper was trying to sideline her for some reason, to keep her away from whatever they were doing when they marched into the shadows beneath the trees. What were they doing? And exactly what the galactic fuck was going on?

  Well, whatever it was, it was going to stop right now. She was a scientist, and this was her mission. She’d do them the courtesy of not straying too far, just in case there was a medical emergency, especially since there wasn’t a doctor among the crew. Granted, her degree was in veterinary medicine and her specialty was xenobiology—that is, the study of non-Earth life-forms—but critical care principles were the same for all animals. She’d treated plenty of human animals on her previous missions.

  But that was the extent of her cooperation. She was a fully-trained, expedition-capable researcher, and it was about time she acted like one.

  She waited long enough for the others to be well away from the ship, then made her way up to the bridge. The engines were all shut down; just a trickle of power remained active. Enough to keep environmental control and the various monitoring systems working. Crossing to the science station, she brought up the exterior cameras, then zoomed in on the crew as they moved into the trees on the other side of the clearing. She counted heads, making sure everyone was there, and then switched the screen back to where she’d found it, which happened to be environmental status. It was ironic, really. She hadn’t been invited to the bridge even as an observer while they’d been in transit. But now that they’d made planetfall and had something else to do—presumably something they considered more important—she was suddenly good enough to be on watch. She ought to do a quick liftoff and move the shuttle to a new location, something a few miles away. That would show them. And she could do it, too. One of the courses she’d had to take in order to qualify for extraterrestrial missions was a basic course in FTL-capable ship operation and navigation. No one expected private specialists like herself to pilot a ship into battle, but if worse came to worse, she had to be able, at the very minimum, to maintain life support and send out a distress signal. Rachel could do better than that. It might take a little bit of study, given the weird dual engine setup on this ship, but she was smart and intuitive. She’d figure it out eventually. And then Ripper would come back to…nothing. The image that idea conjured up, the expression on their faces…it cheered Rachel immensely.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to be moving ships around this morning. She wasn’t writing off the possibility, but not today. Because she was going to do a little exploring of her own.

  Going back to her cabin, she checked her weapons first. She was a scientist, with a duty to do no harm, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t defend herself. Given Harp’s restriction on any kind of plasma or electronic weapon, she’d brought a double-draw crossbow along with a supply of bolts. It was small enough for her to carry easily, but modified to notch two bolts at once, each firing independently. And, as always, she had her combat knife, which was a seven-inch fixed blade of carbon steel. The knife was carried in a leather sheath on her hip, and it was something she’d included in her kit for years. One never knew when a good knife would come in handy. For this trip, she’d stowed a second knife in her boot, as well. She still felt somewhat naked without the lightweight plasma rifle she typically carried, but she was armed with the standard capture gun used to study wildlife on a variety of planets. It was loaded with powerful tranquilizer darts, although she didn’t anticipate using it. Her mission on this planet was to observe only. Still, it didn’t hurt to have a weapon handy. Her goal was always to avoid hostile confrontations with native species, but she’d had to defend herself more than once against a local beastie who didn’t want to be observed.

  Grabbing the backpack she’d already put together, she made her way down to the landing deck. The hatch opened with a rush of warm, wet air, rich with the scents of green, growing things. Rachel had traveled extensively, including to more than a few distant planets and space stations, but she didn’t think she’d ever smelled anything quite so…fertile as the air on Harp.

  She was smiling when she walked out from under the belly of the ship and lifted her face to the warm sunlight. There was the scent of fresh rain in the air, confirming what the sensors had already told her. It was spring in this hemisphere of the planet. The daytime temperatures should be quite warm, with some light rain, though it could still get cold enough at night to be uncomfortable without proper protection.

  But while the sun felt terrific on her upraised face, time was wasting, and she had things to do. Who knew how long before Ripper and the crew came marching back? Walking to the ramp, she sealed it against casual intruders, then moved out from under the ship’s belly and into the sunlight, where she turned in a full circle and looked around. There was so much to see, to study, and to watch out for. She found herself longing for the support of a real science team. It was unusual to have a lone researcher on such a difficult and dangerous task. She hadn’t really discussed it with any of the crew but had assumed at least some of them would be assigned to share her mission, even if only to provide security. She was increasingly convinced, however, that Ripper’s mission and hers had nothing in common. Whatever the commander and her crew were doing on their daily marches, it wasn’t science or research.

  She frowned then shook her head in dismissal. There was nothing she could do about the Ripper situation. She was here, and she was going to make the most of it. She reached down for the small nav computer she always used, but of course it wasn’t there. The technological limitations of Harp didn’t stop at pulsed weapons. Anything that utilized a laser was specifically prohibited on the planet. Not because they wouldn’t work reliably, although they wouldn’t, but because their energy could interact with the planet’s atmosphere and cause catastrophic damage. Everyone on the ship had been required to view video of the devastation caused by the earliest visitors who’d chosen to ignore the prohibition. The damage was so widespread that it could be seen from space. Not even Ripper could ignore that kind of destructive potential.

  Rachel slowly crossed the clearing in the opposite direction from the crew’s heading, aiming for the thick trees at the clearing’s edge. She’d taken only a few steps in among their crowded trunks before she had to stop because she was very simply…overwhelmed. This was heaven. A living, breathing heaven, filled with so much life! It was amazing. Everywhere she looked, there was something growing. Even the trees were a revelation. So much variety in type and size, from slender, green shoots just barely getting started, to enormous giants with trunks so thick that she was unable to walk all the way around them because of the riotous growth at their base. Vines climbed everywhere, straining for the sunlight, which was filtered and far away, barely seen through the tops of the tallest trees.

  But her true fascination was with the animals that she could hear scurrying through the undergrowth and scrambling over the rough bark of the trees. The ones she could see didn’t seem bothered by her at all, as if she posed no threat. That was unusual in her experience, and anything unusual only raised more questions in her researcher’s mind.

  A small, furry something scratched its way to the lowest branch of a nearby tree, putting it at eye level with her. She watched the little beast curiously, touching the eye shields she wore that doubled as both safety glass and sunglass, verifying they were in their proper place. The lenses had been tested against some of the most corrosive fluids in the universe. She had no reason to think Harp’s poisons would be any different. She
took the added precaution of pulling the gator neckline up on her shirt to cover her lower face. The fabric was similarly treated for protection.

  The furry creature glared at her from green-tinted eyes, then chittered angrily and raced away, scurrying along the low branch, before leaping into the next tree. She laughed in delight, even as she automatically catalogued the interlocking limbs of the trees from the lowest to the very highest part of the forest. Her gaze dropped to the ground, with its tangled growth of vines and plants, and then back up to the treetops. She’d bet anything that the more successful animals used the trees to move quickly through the forest. And that meant the most dangerous predators, including the big cats she’d been tasked with studying, would be up there, too.

  As if the idea of predators conjured them up, she suddenly had the strongest sense of being watched, a weird itch on the back of her neck, as if some great hunter was studying her with an eye toward picking the juiciest part to nibble on. She tilted her head back again, staring upward, turning in a circle as her eyes strained to see through the tangled branches. But it was impossible. She stared a while longer, then shrugged and set about her work. She wanted to get as much done as she could before the rest of them came back.

  …

  Aidan crouched down deep among the twisted branches of a great grandfather tree. The trees were increasingly uneasy about these uninvited visitors. Wordless whispers skimmed over the forest tops with a wariness that bordered on fearful. The invaders hadn’t done anything outwardly hostile yet. Hadn’t mistakenly blown away an entire swath of forest or even begun chopping down trees for fire or shelter. Only shifters knew which trees could be safely felled. The trees on Harp were aware. They were the lifeblood of the planet, and Harpers knew enough about the way the universe worked to understand just how unique their Green was. Which was why their forests were one of the secrets they were unwilling to share. That, and the existence of shifters.

  And that’s what made Aidan nervous. He didn’t believe for one minute that these very militant looking invaders had come to Harp to study the foliage, but what they had done made no sense to him. They’d left their ship the past two mornings and marched off across the clearing, before eventually delving deep among the trees…where they’d done nothing useful at all that he could see. They’d marched around, muttered among themselves, and taken readings on some sort of handheld devices that seemed to require minimal power. Their path had been a big loop, and they’d gone around, rather than through, any obstacles they encountered, such as particularly heavy patches of undergrowth, or vines that were twisted so thickly between the trees that they were impassable.

  They hadn’t shot or killed anything. Although, Aidan’s presence in the treetops had kept the lesser predators off their backs, so they hadn’t been threatened by anything that needed killing, either. They’d taken two rest breaks during the day, eaten food from their packs both times, and then completed their loop back to the ship, where they remained until the next morning.

  Aidan didn’t like it, but he couldn’t have said why it bothered him.

  Today was looking like a repeat of the same, except for one addition. The Earther troop had marched off across the clearing again this morning, but just as he’d circled up into the trees to follow, a hydraulic hiss had pulled his attention back to the ship in time to see the hatch crack open and the ramp lower to the ground.

  He paused and stared. It was the woman again. He hadn’t seen her since she’d been ordered back aboard ship that first morning. Was it possible the daily marches were nothing more than an attempt to divert Harp’s defenders away from this woman, who was the true threat? He frowned. The idea didn’t sit right, given her interaction with the other female, who was clearly the commander of the larger troop. But these were strangers, and he might have misread that first confrontation.

  He reversed course, gliding through the forest in perfect silence to take up a position above the woman. Who was she? And what the hell was she doing, smiling at that Mauden mouse as if it were a cute little pet? It might be small, but its bite contained a deadly toxin that could stop a person’s heart in seconds. She’d be dead before she even knew she’d been bit.

  Fortunately for her, the Mauden registered Aidan’s arrival before it had a chance to do more than chitter angrily at her. And there she stood, watching the thing leap through the trees, seeming completely unaware of the danger she’d been in.

  She pulled down the cloth guard she’d been wearing over her mouth. So she wasn’t a complete novice when it came to protection against unknown environments. She smiled to herself—it was a lovely smile—then crouched down to pull a camera and notebook from her bag. When she did, he noted the knife sheathed at her hip, along with a tranq weapon that was a smaller version of the ones carried by her militant shipmates. He approved of the knife. It was a good weapon to have in these woods. Theoretically, the tranq gun was, too. But the sight of it sent the trees’ anxiety over these visitors buzzing over his skin like an electric shock. What, exactly, were they planning to tranquilize with those weapons? And what would they do with their captives?

  He sat up abruptly as the distinctive wail of a banshee scout echoed through the forest. The song of the trees warned of approaching danger at the same instant, and only minutes later, a series of escalating banshee wails replied to the scout’s call, signaling the pack’s race to whatever prey the scout had found for them. Aidan hesitated. The banshees were some of the deadliest creatures on Harp, especially for humans. They had the vicious, ripping teeth and long, knife-sharp claws of a carnivore, with a diet that was almost exclusively meat. If the scout had found something for them to kill…it might just be the Earther troop.

  For all that they were uninvited and probably up to no good, Aidan wasn’t about to abandon them to become banshee meat. On the other hand… He swung his gaze back to the lone woman on the ground below. If the pack attacked her, she wouldn’t stand a chance. There had to be some way…

  A solution struck him, and he started downward, lethal claws digging into the thick bark of the grandfather tree as he circled toward the lower branches, his golden hide blending perfectly in the shifting light so that he wasn’t visible to the woman…until he wanted to be.

  Stopping ten feet above her, he glided out onto a wide branch overlooking the section of forest where she was working and stopped. His plan involved letting her see him in all his ferocious glory, with the intention of scaring her back into the safety of her ship. But he was so taken by her serenity as she scribbled notes and took pictures of everything around her, that he crouched low and simply watched.

  She was even lovelier up close, with beautiful, golden brown skin and hazel eyes that seemed to reflect the sunlight shining through the trees. She was taller than he’d first thought. Not anywhere near his own six feet, four inches, but still tall for a woman. Her hair was black with red highlights when the sun hit it, and full of curls. Her movements were confident and graceful and, despite her obvious interest in the trees and wildlife, he saw now that she wasn’t foolish enough to touch anything with her bare hands. She was wearing gloves, tightfitting enough that he hadn’t noticed them until he’d drawn closer.

  She stiffened abruptly, her hand freezing in midair as she reached toward what she probably thought was a harmless insect. But nothing was harmless in Harp’s forest. What looked like a plump worm was in reality the tentacle of a pseudo-mole, a half-rodent, half-insect creature that hid beneath the low-hanging plants near the forest floor and waited for its prey to be tempted by the worm-like free meal. It couldn’t kill a human, but it would still attack, leaving a painful, stinging welt that would take days to heal.

  But Aidan didn’t think it was a realization of the pseudo-mole’s presence that had her stopping mid-reach. She twisted around to stare almost directly up into the tree where he crouched, and then slowly stood to turn and face him. Her gorgeous eyes grew wide, and he could hear the sudden, rapid pounding of her heart, could see he
r muscles flexing almost involuntarily as her brain made a lightning-quick fight-or-flight calculation. If he’d been hunting her, her worst choice would have been to run. Staying put wouldn’t have saved her life, either, but she might have lived a few minutes longer.

  Fortunately for her, she wasn’t on the menu today. He only wanted her to retreat to the safety of her ship, so that he could waste his energy running after her shipmates, in case those banshees were headed their way. But she wasn’t retreating.

  “Hey there, big guy,” she said calmly, even as she slipped her camera and notebook into her backpack and placed a hand on the tranq gun which hung on a strap at her waist.

  Big guy? What the fuck did she think he was, a giant domesticated house cat?

  She took a careful step back and paused, studying him. Her heartbeat had slowed, and she smiled. “You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?”

  He blinked slowly. Pretty? Okay, that was one insult too many. He growled low in his throat, a rumbling noise that rose from his chest as his lips drew back to reveal his very unpretty fangs.

  Her heart sped into triple time, and she seemed finally to understand her danger. She still didn’t turn and run, too smart or too brave to take that route. But she did edge backward toward the clearing which was a good fifteen yards behind her. The clearing was no protection. If he’d truly been hunting her, she’d have been long dead before she reached it. Luckily, his only goal was to get her out of the forest and back onto her ship. He rose to a half-crouch and took a prowling step out onto the branch, letting her see him completely, opening his mouth wide enough to bare every one of his deadly teeth.

  “Okay,” she whispered, as if expecting him to understand at least the intent of her words. “I get it. This is your territory, and you want me gone.” She kept backing up slowly as she spoke, one hand behind her checking for obstacles, the other held low in front of her in a placating gesture. “I’m going, see?”