Planet of Beasts

Troo was alone, again.

This time, he had been abandoned by his expeditionary team in the cold, bleak dead of the night. This world was a pulsating nightmare, and more so without backup or comms.

They had failed to read his vital signs when they had finally caught up with him after a terrifying trek through the intense, hostile, challenging terrain. It was as if they knew that if they tried to save him, they would all inevitably perish. These decisions were not easy, but they were shared, in an unspoken way, like a pact for survival.

His deputy, Sash, new to his role, had taken one look at Troo through his analytical visor. Unbeknownst to the subordinates waiting nervously for his decision, the deputy had fear in his eyes. When he glanced up for a brief second, the smart technology revealed the whole crew crouching nearby, marking their outlines through their cloaking, which reassured him for a moment, a moment he needed.

He looked hard at Troo’s motionless outline, and ‘conveniently’, he assumed the worst was happening, and his superior was unsavable, ordering the others to return to the ship in haste. His mind was working too fast, biased to the idea of leaving and living. That was the moment their intelligence-gathering mission was officially over. They had been there too long and were all in a state of abject terror. Troo was barely breathing, concussed and pale. He had the presence of a withered corpse, and that was enough for Sash to decide to flee to give the team a chance at least, to make it back home to their families.

It was the wrong call, the call of a rookie.

Only moments later, Troo regained consciousness abruptly, like he had been shocked to life by a supernatural spark, only to see the heat signatures of their footprints through his own smart-visor, trailing off into the alien landscape. He intuitively understood his team’s fears, and despite his distress, accepted without judgment their decision to leave. It was hard to think of his own family back at the orbiting space station, his young daughter especially. She would take it badly when he didn’t appear from the shuttle bay to greet her with the tight, warm hug she was accustomed to. Every time he said goodbye before a mission, he wondered if it would be the last time he saw her, but he kept that to himself, like a hard knot concealed in his mind.

He fumbled the back of his skull under the thin material of his hood and located the egg-shaped lump where he had struck the ground, falling from the branch of a large tree he had been hiding in, into a clearing framed by the usual strangely symmetrical entrenched foliage. It was uncomfortably near a beast’s den, so he was vulnerable.

Equipment was failing; there was something about the planet that interfered with their sensitive electronic devices, which meant they were often lost in the worst places. Every grey crevice and corner of the dank, dirty world felt like a trap. It was arrestingly alien, the weird pathways laid down by the creatures, that seemed to be illuminated, revealing every potential hiding place. There were odd, angular, rock-like objects in the landscape; they were large and would seemingly glide across canyon floors via some unknown method of propulsion. He had seen the beasts utilise them as a crude way of transporting themselves across distances. One of the studies was determining their origin and purpose. A downside for Troo’s team was that the movements confused their topography technology, and their maps frequently failed. The creatures were voracious builders, so there were constant changes in tracked environments to compound that confusion. What’s more, the beasts emanated powerful hidden signals on so many frequencies, like they were enticing prey somehow across the airwaves. Troo was sure that intelligent malevolence was at play from what he had already witnessed.

Every field research and exploratory mission was dangerous, but it was rare to be left behind, for one, it put everything at risk.

He knew that his team were exhausted; they had been separated from him for three extraordinarily long solar cycles, days that seemed to never end in this confounding hellscape.

They had split up when confronted with a roaming herd of the creatures, and despite the team’s invisibility, they had panicked a little, and who could blame them? All it took was one of them to brush against any of the beasts physically, and it would all be over. They were now, at least, on their way back in single file to their hidden lander, which was also cloaked and concealed behind a distant forest treeline on the periphery of the creatures’ boundary.

Finding focus from the blur of his concussion, Troo instinctively tried to rise and realised his left leg was painful and injured. His electromagnetic light-bending camouflage was glitching in and out like static flashes. When it failed, for a split second, he could catch a glimpse of a splash of fresh blood on the torn fabric around his knee. It looked bad. He knew it could be his death sentence, as any mistake that revealed them was.

The low-lying foliage around him provided a little cover from the open gully ahead, and a couple of the tall wandering beasts that seemed to guard the space. The creatures were highly territorial and fierce with it, so fierce. Despite their intelligence, they were never to be approached. They were predictably aggressive as a first response to anything unknown to them. Like all recorded predators in their files, their senses were very sharp. Landing teams were briefed that if these things happened to witness an expeditionary crew, they would tear them apart on sight or drag them to a lair to be eaten at their leisure. These strange creatures had been studied by masked satellites and drones long enough to understand the rhythms of their behaviour, the baseline patterns of their daily routines. They were as fascinating as they were deadly. They had little restraint as a species, but did, however, have rule systems. He knew from observations that they were driven by hierarchy, which was common to most animals, with a social structure dictated by fear and necessity. But in his reports and recordings, it was not a simple hierarchical structure, and much more complex when explored.

Their filth-oozing giant lairs stunk of dead meat and acids, the hoarded detritus of these aggressive, pack-hunting monsters. They seemed to stick to the trails they had created on their weird hooves, trails which were beaten hard underfoot, close to the tall funnelling walls that marked the labyrinth of their territories.

They were what researchers called jokingly, ‘bind weed’, as they would wrap their intent and make their mark around everything they found, and proceed to crush the life from it.

When Troo’s camouflage was working, he dared sneak up close to listen to their howls and chirping exchanges with a recorder on, watch them sway and group together in small herds – often breaking out into sudden, violent attacks on each other. The sharp noises they made were grating to hear, which left him shuddering with heart palpitations. He would assume at first they were in harmony, but the mood would sometimes change in a second. Nothing could prepare you for that. The beasts were apex predators and seemed to enjoy decimating anything that tried to compete with them for resources, even each other. There was stark evidence of dead, eviscerated, or exploited weaker animals all around. When it decided to work, Troo’s DNA reader picked it up in every tiny pocket of every square inch of the canyons, traces of death, murder and desecration of lifeforms, including their own species. Of course, apex predators were common around the galaxy, but there was something about this species that scared him above all the others. It felt like they would allow nothing to get in their way in any circumstance.

In previous expeditions, better-prepared elite teams had dared capture one or two of the beasts to study them, scraping hasty cell samples before releasing them back into their habitat, stunned and confused. It was well known that once in a while, one of the creatures would open its dark eyes while being examined in a makeshift lab before they could scramble to sedate it again. What pure terror that must be, he often pondered, to see one of the beasts gain awareness while you dared steal its blood into a vile.

Troo limped across the expanse of grassy ground and crouched beside a neat opening in the foliage. The creatures were builders; they would reform their landscape at every opportunity, yet unlike most animals related to their genus, the land failed, rather than profited from the interference. Troo found that staggering, because survival was about environmental exchange, not domination, yet somehow, against odds, these things were survivors, up till now. They had found furry creatures in some waterways on the world, that dammed rivers but improved ecosystems, which was the normal way building worked, but not with these beasts. The research teams back at base had studied pests, swarms and viruses, but this lifeform was not classified in the same way. They were subtly strange, and in between everything they had known previously.

From the side of the gully, he had an overview of the whole clearing with its glinting walls and swirls of bold colours. He noticed a pack of the beasts in one of their cave dens in the wall opposite, biting into dead prey, pulling it apart with their sharp teeth. They seemed to ritualise everything to a degree that made him feel ill. Their rituals were like addictions. It was something darker and more twisted than his own interpretation of ritualistic behaviours.

Beyond, on the crest of the hills on the horizon, he recognised the black, distinctive treeline, now his only hope of an escape. But to reach it, he would need to cross the bright, exposed gully and get ahead of the others in his team before they departed. It seemed impossible, but what could he do? There was only so much time he could hide, and he was hurt. If the beasts cornered or caught him, it would all be over. Worse, he would have failed everyone in the galactic exploratory mission, from low-ranking administrators to mission leaders, and they had come a very long way and sacrificed so much for this research opportunity. The whole operation would be shut down, with Troo’s name on the report. He did not want that on his shoulders – they had worked too hard. The predators they were studying had properties in their DNA that they could harvest to prevent and cure diseases, to protect teams in future missions to explore the galaxy. Beyond that, the top tier wanted as much knowledge and as many samples as possible, for a preservation project, to learn and to educate for the future. This world they were studying was in terminal decline; it was obvious from orbit and obvious on the ground, so this was a rare moment to capture, to make records of a significant species before it was lost forever. They had zoo projects where they could control and preserve a sample group, but that was not Troo’s agenda. He was a data gatherer, an intelligence officer. He observed and went home; that was his job. He had done the observation, so now he had to find a way to go home.

The suit glitched again, and for two long seconds, he was visible from the gully. A beast stopped and looked his way directly, but Troo’s cloaking kicked in just after the creature’s eyes glared at him. He froze, held his breath and felt his heart accelerate with panic. The monster was huge, at least twice his height and loomed in the centre of the expanse before him. It had wiry black hair about its bony face and was unusually muscular, draped in colourful materials it had stuck to its body, perhaps for attracting a mate. Its teeth were clenched in a threat display. It could sense Troo’s presence, and Troo knew it. It sniffed the air with flared nostrils and searched with mad, blood-lusting eyes. It was terrifying to be so close, yet also exhilarating.

Troo closed his eyes to centre himself, and then slowly opened them, making a deliberate rhythm of his breath. He would need to move, so he limped as fast as his legs would carry him straight into the gully. He realised if his suit glitched before he reached cover on the opposite side, he’d be stone dead.

Blood dripped as he walked, as if from thin air, squirting into the cracked, rock-hard ground. The creature noticed it straight away, the thin arches of blood appearing and falling in a splatter in the dirt.

By the time Troo was halfway across the expanse of the gully, the creature was turning as if tracking Troo’s presence, stupefied, clutching a transparent green tubular object in one claw.

It sounded off, a cry he had witnessed many times from further away, in safer situations.

“Fuckin’ hell…” it screeched and dropped the object in its clutches, which shattered into a hundred jagged shards.

Instantaneously, blue and red light seemed to flash from behind Troo, and so he turned sharply to see more creatures, a different genus of the species, attired in tribal dark garments. They looked like they were advancing slowly to attack the lone monster, measuring their prey up, to strike.

“Don’t move, we’ve had reports of break-ins to gardens and sheds, is that you, son?” the noises came.

Troo had the presence to turn his recorder on; this was valuable data to take back.

Out of the near feeding cave in the canyon wall, another creature asserted itself to join the fray. Troo stood perfectly still and watched the animal closely, as it crept a little closer but seemed to stand away, concerned in case it was drawn into the rage of a challenge unwittingly.

“John, you can’t keep doing this, you twat, you’ve got to keep to the twelve steps, brother. We saved some chicken for ya. Don’t bother with this guy, officer – he’s harmless!” a creature chirped.

Troo listened to the cadence and sounds clearly. He liked finding the pattern, knowing it meant something, but what? If he made it back, they would need to unravel the sounds in a laboratory setting.

The suit glitched just as the group came together in a circle.

“Did you not see it, it’s a fucking pixie in the fucking road?!”

“Ok, that’s enough, son. Come with us to the station.”

“Ahh… it made me drop my fucking beer! Fuck…”

Troo dared not look behind him as he ducked into a thin space in the gully wall, shrouded by darkness. He could hear the escalation of danger back in the exposed space, the shrieking and shuffling of violence erupting as it seemed to do all the time with these volatile monsters.

He emerged from the narrow fissure in the grey walls and realised he could clearly see the treeline where their lander was concealed. There was a lonely hill rising into the nearby greenery; it was a gift. Up ahead, to his relief, a crew member had stayed behind as a lookout and was surveying the environment with a handheld scanner. Troo could make out the crew member’s bodily outline in his smart visor. That was when he knew he was going to make it; he was going home.

As he lumbered up the hill, blood drops flicked behind him like a trail of breadcrumbs. He waved frantically to his crewman, who immediately waved back in acknowledgement.

From the elevated slope, he turned back for a final scan of the glittering grid of lights of the territory of the animals.

He would not return to this forsaken place, ever again. He would issue a formal request for this world to become a forbidden zone. It was too dangerous for explorers; indeed, it reminded him of the fables they used to scare their children with back home.

There was always a moment where you knew you had to draw a line, to protect your own against risk and horror, and for Troo, he decided the planet, and this sector especially, for all its promise, was a death trap. It stank of decay; it was turgid with evil and hatred. He sensed it. He guessed even the creatures would probably agree, recalling the horror and despair he had witnessed secretly in their daily routines.

The End