Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Karr inched forward as each creeper broke. The sail leaf fluttered and snapped as the last anchor parted, whipping Karr about the head and back as he shimmied past. At its thinner end, the branch sagged uncomfortably under his weight. Karr looked down. The tree's motion described dizzy circles over aliens and inlet, swinging in a loop over to the far side and back on around. If Karr could nerve himself to leap at just the right moment, he would land on the opposite side. However, in spite of the tree's lean and the downward slope of the branch, he was still quite high. The water would feel very hard from that height. Hitting the ground would certainly kill him.

Up till that point, Karr's decisions had been based on flight, but now he needed a plan. Unfortunately, leaping from trees had not been part of survival training. Don't panic. Breathe. In, out. In, out. Focus.

... It was a puzzle. He just had to think of it as a puzzle. He needed to get down, but could not jump, climb, or raise the ground. Therefore? a few more breaths stripped away obvious impossibilities? the only option was to lower the tree. That determined, everything else just fell into place.

While the tree continued its giddy motion, Karr sat up and, carefully lifting first one leg and then the other over the branch, faced back toward the tree's trunk. He flopped back onto his belly, picked a low-power setting and fired a cutting beam at the base of the tree. Steam rose from the moist bark and then smoke. Karr kept the cutting force moving across the trunk so that things would happen slowly.

The creatures, upset at his leaf cutting, were incensed at this new offense. They growled and gnashed their teeth. When flame appeared around the cutting beam and the tree shuddered, they let loose a

chorus of outrage.

The dominant creature backed up to make a jump at the tree. The suspicious one tried to hold it back, but snarls exchanged and the dominant splashed across to the trunk. It yowled on contact with the super-heated bark, but dug in and climbed. The others, spurred on by its success, followed on after another. Only the dominant's counterpart held back, distrustful.

Karr held to his target with the cutting beam and was rewarded by a sudden lurch of the tree. Its angle of lean increased, every branch and leaf swaying as the base weakened. Karr's plan was working.

Another minute or two of slow descent would deposit him safely on the other side of the inlet. But the aliens were clawing up at him too fast.

Again, Karr could have turned up the power and simply fried the creatures, but the bizarre geography of the confrontation worked in his favor. As the leading creature prowled out onto the branch, opposing pairs of digits on each paw gripping like vises, Karr changed barrels and aiming point. Jerks of the trigger spewed globs of adhesive froth and this time the aliens could not dodge. The lead alien stepped into a glob. Karr was satisfied to see it stuck; several hours and a whole lot of skin would be missing before it tore free. Before they knew it the others were stuck too, splattered by Karr as they bounded onto the branch. They thrashed, but that only made them more stuck.

Now the suspicious alien climbed the tree. It stayed on the glue-free trunk, tearing up the bark in frustration and not venturing out onto the sticky limb.

The branch shook violently, ominous creaks resonating through the wood. Karr shook with it. He worried how much load it could handle, guessing that the seven trapped aliens weighed at least three thousand pounds. As it turned out, the branch was not what Karr needed to worry about.

Crack!

Wood shattered below. A shuddering groan rose from the base of the tree to the tip of its bole as rotting roots crumbled. The tree toppled faster than planned, flexing and spinning, and falling in a different direction than planned. Karr hung in the air for an awful second, facing straight down, then plummeted with the tree as island and water rushed up. The force flung him into the inlet. The aliens were not so lucky. Held by the molecular glue, two were crushed where the tree hammered into the opposite side of the inlet. The others were pulled into the water.

Karr came up spitting bitter brine as the last, suspicious creature raced along the branch, risking imprisonment on the sticky globules to get to the others. They thrashed harder, filling the air with submerged wailing. The lone alien artfully avoided entrapment, sinking claws into its brethren, trying to rip them free. It paid particular attention to the large dominant, its partner, but the glue was designed to hold fugueship wounds sutured shut against the stress of high g-forces. The glue held. It was already an awful sight. And, as Karr averted his eyes and stroked for land, it got worse. The water around the drowning creatures erupted like a thousand tiny explosions. Torpedo-shaped worms attacked the helpless creatures, shredding the water pink.

Karr gripped the far shore. The roots and fronds were slippery and he fell back into the murky under-surface world. The water near the tree was a froth of bubbles and blood. Karr kicked hard, breaking the surface again and stabbing the Gattler spear-like at the bank. It stuck and he kicked his legs up, rolling to safety. Spitting and choking, he looked back.

The lone alien was a blur of talons and teeth, slashing the ravenous torpedoes to pieces, uncaring of its own wounds; but for every enemy slain, two more attacked for a mouthful. In no time the submerged aliens were stripped to the bone.

The survivor raised its head? the glowbuds on one half of its body suddenly blanking out? and let out a mournful cry.

Howwurrrraouuuu!

It was the sound of loss, the sound of a being losing the most important thing in its world, and it pierced Karr to his emotional core, because if there had been a sound he could make to sum up the feelings of a Pilot losing his fugueship, that howl was it. The carnage he had inadvertently caused sickened Karr. He did not like to kill. And if not for his arrival on CG-423-B, those aliens would still be alive.

Man-eating they might be, but Karr had not wished them such a grisly end.

The keening died down, absorbed by the foliage of the ring-island, and the survivor turned its head at Karr. It bounded across the tree bridge with vengeance firing its chameleon skin. Karr rose to his knees, yanking the Gattler out of the bank, but had no chance of firing before the creature was on him. Karr braced the stock on the ground and aimed the barrels at its chest. They glanced off the alien's thick breastplates and dug bloody furrows up the side of its neck and head.

The beast snarled in pain and backhanded Karr into a pile of hardened resin globules at the base of a fractured tree. The Gattler tumbled out of reach and before Karr could react, the monster was on top of him, pinning him under its suffocating weight, stabbing him with its raging eyes. Angry breath huffed on Karr's face.

One deliberate pull of the alien's talons shredded the ghimpsuit from Karr's chest. Karr struggled helplessly as the beast flexed its teeth inward, then pointed them outward again, head swinging down.

The many blades straddled Karr's neck, squeezing effortlessly? each seemed to be rooted in its own separate mandible, Karr couldn't help noticing. And all the while the creature never broke its malevolent eye contact.

Know who kills you, said those bottomless, black eyes. Know your death.

Karr stopped struggling. If he was to die before those eyes, it must be as a Pilot and not a coward.

The teeth tightened and cut. Karr felt cool air on his neck as the alien sucked up trickles of blood.

Karr felt its tongue press against his throat as it swallowed heavily.

"Get it over with," Karr gasped.