Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) Read Online Free PDF Page A

paleobotanist would call Earthly lycopods. Tressel displayed conditions parallel to conditions on Earth during the upper-middle Paleozoic. No bird chirps echoed through those trees, just as there had been no chirping birds during Earth’s Paleozoic. Six-inch long insects droned. They looked like dragonflies, but weren’t. Parallel evolution sounded as linear as geometry, but actually kinked and swirled like a Jackson Pollock painting. Exploring Tressel and the other Earthlike Outworlds was like paging through an old photo album. You turned the page and saw someone who looked like grandma. But when you looked closer, she was just a chimp in a dress.
    But whether the Tressen Barrens were an upper-middle Paleozoic swamp, or just a malformed twin, they were no place to honeymoon. There were no flowering plants, so the landscape offered two color choices, spinach green or mud brown. The only home cooking was roast tetra, which tasted like warm dirt. It rained most of every day, and drinking the water turned your colon into a garden hose. I sighed. Then I sidestepped down to the water’s edge, extend ps edge,ded the suction tube from my gauntlet’s index finger, and squatted so I could dip my finger in the swamp. I rolled my head on my neck, closed my eyes and moaned. A guilty pleasure of infantry Eternads is that the water purifier’s pump, which nestles between your shoulder blades, whirs you a little back massage while it sucks muddy soup up its intake tube.
    When I opened my eyes, I saw, four feet out in the water, a fuzzy, lemon-yellow worm as small as my thumb, rippling the water as it wriggled on the surface.
    Probably tetras ate them, snapping them up with their tongues the way frogs did. I leaned forward and chinned my optics to record a worm snapshot for the exobiologists back home. At the edges of my vision, another ripple flickered four feet to my left, and another four feet to my right. Maybe the worms swam in broods, like ducklings.
    “Jason!” Aud screamed like my hair was on fire.
SEVEN
    AUD STARTLED MEso that I rocked back on my heels.
    In the same instant, the ripples to my right and left exploded. From the spray, two rigid, segmented black arms, as big as oak limbs, each ending in a two-foot long lobster claw, scissored me chest-high. If it hadn’t been for Aud’s yell, my helmet would have been crushed like a hammered olive. As it was, the stress register on my helmet display flashed yellow. My torso shell would crack within thirty seconds if the squeeze continued.
    The beast that held me lifted its head out of the water, flat and black and bigger than a manhole cover. From the manhole’s top bulged two serving-bowl sized gray eyes, each faceted with compound lenses like a split beehive. The yellow lure that had wiggled in front of me wobbled on a fleshy stalk that rose between the large eyes, and was flanked by two round simple eyes like glistening black stones. This monster had hunted me like snapping turtles with worm-shaped tongues hunted back on Earth, but it was no turtle.
    With me pincered, the scorpion swam backward, dragging me toward deep water. I dug in my heels, but they slid down the muddy bank. When the scorpion undulated, its spade-shaped tail fluke broke the surface. Its tail and head were fifteen feet apart. Water lapped around my chestplate as I tore at one pincer with both hands, and failed to budge it. I kicked the head, and something caught on my foot. Probably the monster’s open jaw. The water beneath me deepened, so I no longer could feel the muddy bank with my feet or fingers. Brown water closed over my faceplate.
    Bang .
    The scorpion half-rolled, and my head came up out of the water for an instant.The„
    Bang . Bang . Bang .
    The scorpion’s grip loosened, then re-tightened, with each shot.
    Bang . Bang .
    My armor’s stress indicator faded back to green, and the pincers slipped away. I thrashed to the surface. Aud, smoking pistol in one hand, reached with his other hand