Jack Develle's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The distress beacon had pulsed for six days before Captain Jack Develle came down through Lerath V's atmosphere, and his lander skidded twenty kilometers past the coordinates he'd fed the autopilot. He climbed out into thin orange light. His black and blue suit read the air as breathable and the ground as wrong — a crust of blue moss that broke like glass under his boots. Somewhere past the ridge, the survey team he'd been sent to recover was still transmitting on a dying battery. He had until nightfall to close the gap. After nightfall, according to the orbital scans, things on this planet came out to hunt. The lander was useless for ground travel. Jack marked its position and started walking toward the only structure the scans had shown within reach: a squat research outpost on a rise, panels folded out like tired wings. He reached it as the sun dropped. The door recognized his Fleet codes and hissed open on an empty room. Dust on the console. A half-finished ration on the desk. Whoever had lived here had left in a hurry, and not recently. He found what he needed in a locker beside the airlock. A plasma railgun, cradled in foam, its channels still holding a soft orange charge. He lifted it, checked the load, and slung it across his back. On a shelf above the locker sat a jar of dried purple flowers, the kind that shed glowing spores. A field note was taped to the glass in someone's tight handwriting: predators track by scent, not sight. Jack crushed a handful into his palm and rubbed the luminous dust across his chest and sleeves until his suit shimmered faintly. He stepped back outside and something was already waiting for him. It stood at the edge of the light — lean, dog-shaped, taller at the shoulder than any dog had a right to be. A ridge of black spines ran from its skull to its tail. Pale markings glowed along its flanks in the same cold blue as the moss. It watched him with one yellow eye and did not growl. Jack brought the railgun up. The animal's nose worked the air. It took a step forward, then a step sideways, circling him without closing. He understood, slowly, that it was not hunting. It was reading the spore-scent on his suit. Deciding. He lowered the barrel an inch. "I'm going that way," he said, and pointed toward the ridge where the beacon pulsed. "You can come or you can leave." The creature turned its head toward the ridge, then back to him. It sat down in the moss. Jack exhaled once. He had a weapon, a guide of sorts, and less than an hour of light. He started walking. Behind him, the spined animal rose and followed at ten paces, and the outpost's door sealed itself shut in the dusk.