[mission: totally possible - things that go bump in the night]
The next few days of walking were much like the first, only... More so. More endless hiking. More boring rations (though Leah was able to do a lot with them, and she even managed to whip up a pretty decent dessert to celebrate Tina's birthday. Which, oddly enough, wasn't the same as Christine's birthday. Not even the same month). More time spent hunching over the camp stove, waiting for water to boil. More days of using pit latrines and going without bathing - Tina reflected that her hair would soon be too greasy to escape from her braid in irritating wisps, at least - or changes of clothes.
And more nights of just slightly inadequate sleep, punctuated by eerie noises and a renewal of the fear of the dark that Tina thought she'd outgrown when she was a preteen.
It didn't help that they hadn't yet seen anything to be afraid of in the daylight, either. That just made Tina's irrational concerns about some kind of horrific nocturnal menace worse. And when she tried to make light of them, jokingly, as she and Christine kept watch over their latest pot of water while Nyota and Leah consulted the map during a break for lunch, well... It didn't help.
"There probably is a nocturnal predator," Christine said. "We've seen lots of seed-eaters and some critters that look like they might be frugivores, but nothing with what seems to be a carnivorous dentition. Unless the ecology on this world is fundamentally different than the vast majority of worlds we know, there has to be an apex predator around here somewhere that's keeping the populations of all these lizardbirds in check."
"Should we be worried about that?" Nyota asked, looking up from her PADD.
Christine shrugged. "Not necessarily. 'Apex predator' sounds scarier than it really is. It could be something about the same size or just slightly larger than the animals we've seen. It just has to be efficient at eating the local herbivores, not a big scary monster."
That was reassuring. The largest lizardbirds they'd seen were about the size of Terran turkeys. And they were slow and didn't seem to have any real defensive capabilities. Whatever was eating them at night probably wasn't a threat to four women with flashlights, fire and a phaser, Tina reflected.
But then that afternoon as they walked they startled a new kind of animal, something about the size of a Terran deer, six-legged and lightly feathered in a green and gray dappled pattern, and, as Christine said, "Definitely some kind of folivore." The small herd of whatever-they-were had been standing on their hoofed hind legs, reaching up with grasping arms to pull branches down to a convenient height to nibble on. When the women stumbled upon them, they'd all reared and turned, hooting in alarm, and galloped off with an odd gait that rocked them back and forth from their hindmost legs to the middle set to the knuckles on their hand-like front limbs.
"Those things are as big as we are," Leah pointed out, watching them disappear amongst the trees. "And they're traveling in a group. So how big is the thing that eats them?"
Nyota frowned. "Well, that's why we have watches at night. I don't see what else we can do."
"We haven't come in contact with anything yet, after all," Christine said. "And there's no reason to think that a predator native to this world would have any interest in us. We probably aren't similar enough to the prey they're used to hunting."
Still, the four women were even jumpier than they had been before when they set up their camp that night, and Christine looked solemn when she took the phaser and flashlight and set herself up to sit the first watch.
A few hours later, it was Tina's turn. She took the phaser and light from Christine, and kept the beam on long enough for the other woman to get herself comfortably situated in her sleeping bag before she switched it off again to preserve the battery. Tina grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around herself before taking a seat with her back to their banked fire, facing out into the moonless night.
It wasn't long before Christine's breathing evened out as she joined Nyota and Leah in sleep. And it wasn't long after that before Tina started to jump and startle at the sounds coming from out of the darkness. She'd been hearing far-off screams and whoops every night, she tried to remind herself. It could be anything. There was no reason to think that those sounds were coming from anything big and scary, and besides, they were somewhere in the distance.
A nearer sound, something like footfalls and then a quiet panting, raised goosebumps all over her body. Holding her hands together, flashlight and phaser stacked one on top of the other so that she could fire at what she saw, the way Nyota had shown her, Tina clicked on the light.
The beam was reflected back at her in a pair of enormous eyes, easily the size of one of Tina's hands with her fingers spread. Below the eyes, a toothy jaw gaped open. The creature growled, flinching at the light.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Tina yelped. She fired, her hands shaking.
Before she could process whether or not she'd hit, before she could fire again, something clamped down across her forearms, knocking the flashlight and the phaser from her hands. It was another one of them, Tina realized with horror. Biting her arms.
She screamed and kicked out at it, one booted foot landing heavily against its broad chest even as the creature grabbed her other leg in a pair of grasping paws and clawed at her, sharp nails shredding through her pants and into her thigh. Tina screamed again, in pain as well as fear. Its teeth ground down against her arms, but the tough fabric of her uniform tunic kept them from piercing her skin - barely.
Tina could hear the other women moving, waking up and reacting to her screams - more effective than a standard wake-up call. She could also hear snarling and growling. There was at least one more of the things out there in the dark.
Blindly, she wrenched one arm free of the creature's jaws, feeling a sharp tooth ripping a bloody line in the back of her hand, and tried to punch it in the eye.
And more nights of just slightly inadequate sleep, punctuated by eerie noises and a renewal of the fear of the dark that Tina thought she'd outgrown when she was a preteen.
It didn't help that they hadn't yet seen anything to be afraid of in the daylight, either. That just made Tina's irrational concerns about some kind of horrific nocturnal menace worse. And when she tried to make light of them, jokingly, as she and Christine kept watch over their latest pot of water while Nyota and Leah consulted the map during a break for lunch, well... It didn't help.
"There probably is a nocturnal predator," Christine said. "We've seen lots of seed-eaters and some critters that look like they might be frugivores, but nothing with what seems to be a carnivorous dentition. Unless the ecology on this world is fundamentally different than the vast majority of worlds we know, there has to be an apex predator around here somewhere that's keeping the populations of all these lizardbirds in check."
"Should we be worried about that?" Nyota asked, looking up from her PADD.
Christine shrugged. "Not necessarily. 'Apex predator' sounds scarier than it really is. It could be something about the same size or just slightly larger than the animals we've seen. It just has to be efficient at eating the local herbivores, not a big scary monster."
That was reassuring. The largest lizardbirds they'd seen were about the size of Terran turkeys. And they were slow and didn't seem to have any real defensive capabilities. Whatever was eating them at night probably wasn't a threat to four women with flashlights, fire and a phaser, Tina reflected.
But then that afternoon as they walked they startled a new kind of animal, something about the size of a Terran deer, six-legged and lightly feathered in a green and gray dappled pattern, and, as Christine said, "Definitely some kind of folivore." The small herd of whatever-they-were had been standing on their hoofed hind legs, reaching up with grasping arms to pull branches down to a convenient height to nibble on. When the women stumbled upon them, they'd all reared and turned, hooting in alarm, and galloped off with an odd gait that rocked them back and forth from their hindmost legs to the middle set to the knuckles on their hand-like front limbs.
"Those things are as big as we are," Leah pointed out, watching them disappear amongst the trees. "And they're traveling in a group. So how big is the thing that eats them?"
Nyota frowned. "Well, that's why we have watches at night. I don't see what else we can do."
"We haven't come in contact with anything yet, after all," Christine said. "And there's no reason to think that a predator native to this world would have any interest in us. We probably aren't similar enough to the prey they're used to hunting."
Still, the four women were even jumpier than they had been before when they set up their camp that night, and Christine looked solemn when she took the phaser and flashlight and set herself up to sit the first watch.
A few hours later, it was Tina's turn. She took the phaser and light from Christine, and kept the beam on long enough for the other woman to get herself comfortably situated in her sleeping bag before she switched it off again to preserve the battery. Tina grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around herself before taking a seat with her back to their banked fire, facing out into the moonless night.
It wasn't long before Christine's breathing evened out as she joined Nyota and Leah in sleep. And it wasn't long after that before Tina started to jump and startle at the sounds coming from out of the darkness. She'd been hearing far-off screams and whoops every night, she tried to remind herself. It could be anything. There was no reason to think that those sounds were coming from anything big and scary, and besides, they were somewhere in the distance.
A nearer sound, something like footfalls and then a quiet panting, raised goosebumps all over her body. Holding her hands together, flashlight and phaser stacked one on top of the other so that she could fire at what she saw, the way Nyota had shown her, Tina clicked on the light.
The beam was reflected back at her in a pair of enormous eyes, easily the size of one of Tina's hands with her fingers spread. Below the eyes, a toothy jaw gaped open. The creature growled, flinching at the light.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Tina yelped. She fired, her hands shaking.
Before she could process whether or not she'd hit, before she could fire again, something clamped down across her forearms, knocking the flashlight and the phaser from her hands. It was another one of them, Tina realized with horror. Biting her arms.
She screamed and kicked out at it, one booted foot landing heavily against its broad chest even as the creature grabbed her other leg in a pair of grasping paws and clawed at her, sharp nails shredding through her pants and into her thigh. Tina screamed again, in pain as well as fear. Its teeth ground down against her arms, but the tough fabric of her uniform tunic kept them from piercing her skin - barely.
Tina could hear the other women moving, waking up and reacting to her screams - more effective than a standard wake-up call. She could also hear snarling and growling. There was at least one more of the things out there in the dark.
Blindly, she wrenched one arm free of the creature's jaws, feeling a sharp tooth ripping a bloody line in the back of her hand, and tried to punch it in the eye.