Chameleon in Chrome

*****

We continue with D'Jymm's story. He's down for repairs, hidden in a bit of rain-forest, and given that there is an active hurricane in the region, we're talking serious and pretty much continual rain, high winds and where he's parked, the mounting threat of a mudslide that he's in the path of.

He knows that he's only going to have so much time.

But ... it's not all bad. The nightlife does get pretty interesting, when nobody's actively trying to kill you.

But then, D'Jymm is an Anubian. Folks like him just tend to have ways to deal with these things. Oh, and in the local vernacular, the term "floater" refers to a utility hovercraft.

0_o

*****

By the next morning, the rain still hadn't stopped and depending on where you were and whether you had any kind of shelter, it might have looked to be getting worse again.

He ate a light meal and then gathered the things that he thought that he'd need and prepared to set out for the tubing. It wasn't quite an afterthought though there came a moment of hesitation before he strapped on the holster and slid the pistol into it.

He didn't think that he'd need it, but after the things that he'd seen the previous day, he rationalised that having it along and not needing it was better than the other way around.

Stepping out into the lightening pre-dawn gloom made him think about going back inside and just forgetting everything for today. It wasn't cold, but it was exceptionally damp with bands of showers moving through, pushed as they were by the storm.

He heard a slight commotion off to his right and set his tools down carefully to investigate. The sounds during the next moments removed the adjective as he heard squeals and odd chattering noises mixed in with some splashing.

As he approached through the sodden grass, he noted flurries of light thumping noises which he equated with the sort of sounds which hooves might make. He eased up to the edge of the vegetation and hung back at the point where he could see at least something and as the scene before him formed fully, he froze.

Though visibility was poor in the almost-darkness and the rain, he noted the four very agitated wild pigs that he could see from his vantage point milling around and maybe three young ones who stayed near them. They looked to be trying to summon up the courage to rush a predator which looked back at them across perhaps twenty feet of stream bank. They were farther away from him than the predator was.

He wasn't familiar with all of the life forms found on this planet though he recognised the pigs as peccaries, quite common in this part of the world. He'd never seen anything like the predator, however he amended his observation a moment later as several features came to him. Perhaps he had seen this one, or one very similar.

But then she moved and he noted several things besides her gender, for this was quite obviously a female and she held a half-drawn bow. She was crouching down low next to her prey, an immature peccary who was not dead at the moment and still struggled feebly with an arrow in it's side.

He saw the pack and the quiver on her and then noted her very dark fur. He saw the black mane, though in these conditions, both it and her long hair hung down wetly.

He watched her as she eased off on the draw to free her right hand. Never taking her eyes from the adults, she reached back and drew a knife and, leaning forward with the side of the bow pressed against the stricken pig, she dispatched it with a thrust through the chest, under edge of the ribcage. The result was a very short and quiet screech.

The sound very nearly precipitated the charge of the adults and she let go of the knife to draw back her bow, though she seemed wise to D'jymm because she did not to appear to be withdrawing, somehow knowing that to pull back now would cause them to attack. Peccaries are not large as pigs go, but they will attack if they feel the need.

He leaned forward a little, wanting to be sure of the number of adults that she faced and in doing it, the adults saw him and froze for a moment before drawing back and then moving cautiously away.

She seemed puzzled for a moment, but seized her chance and began to butcher the young pig with amazing and obviously well-practiced speed so that it would bleed. She looked at the stream and she took the pig to the water's edge, along with the bow and the knife, where she washed her prey roughly.

He knew that she'd be facing where he stood when she was done and so he withdrew quietly into the grass and stood about ten feet inside the tall growth, bent down a little so that his head wasn't visible over the tops of the fronds.

Thinking about what he'd seen, he guessed that she must be either extremely confident or perhaps extremely needful to have attempted to take a piglet from a group which was nearby. Then again, he thought, he didn't know how many adults were typically in such a family group. Maybe this one was small enough to risk things in her eyes.

The things being the tusks on each of the four adults.

He could just see thin vertical sections of her then, but he did see it as she finished. It was the way that she slowed at the end which told him that she'd sensed something.

She rinsed her blade quickly and sheathed it.

Then, reaching up for the pack, she took hold of the corner of a blue plastic sheet which must have been placed in the pack with the corner out. Pulling the sheet free, she looked around and quickly rolled up the pig's carcass and pulled off the pack to place the pig inside before slipping her arms through the loops again.

Taking up the bow and renocking the arrow, she came back cautiously and approached the tall grass. He watched as she stopped suddenly and looked down and at that instant; he knew that he'd left a footprint on the muddy ground.

She drew back more on the bow as she stepped forward very cautiously.

He took a step backward.

She stared for perhaps half a minute before he knew that she saw him through the grass.

He shook his head and held up one palm as he turned away.

He didn't return to his vessel right away, deciding to go back from a different direction. As he walked, he considered what he'd seen, deciding that she was some sort of bipedal feline like the one that he'd seen last night.

He smiled unconsciously.

He liked the way that she looked. Aside from her mane, he saw her long hair as a human trait, though her face was very catlike, and the image of it and those pale yellow eyes stayed in his mind as he walked.

Reaching the ship, he picked up his own pack with his tools and began to walk toward the refinery. He was about half way there when he felt something and stopped. He knew that she was nearby and after a moment, he had the direction.

She was walking carefully on a course perpendicular to his and would cross his path about twenty feet or so ahead of him so he waited, sinking into a low crouch.

She passed by a few seconds later, moving carefully but not dead slow and he watched her.

Glancing up at the brightening sky he guessed that he had a few minutes before the dawn - which he'd be able to see but for the weather.

Not being able to sense much of her then, he stood up and moved on.

--

Very shortly after first light, D'Jymm managed to get to where he needed to be and with a little time, some tool twisting and even a pocket cutting laser, he had more than enough tubing for what he needed four times over. He knew that he'd have to replace the tubing on each of his engines and this gave him enough in case he messed up one try.

It left him with a few problems. Specifically, how to get the lengths that he'd cut down from where he'd been doing the cutting.

He pondered on it for a little while and then just bundled the lengths of tubing which were straight or nearly so and began his downward trek, being very watchful this time and doing his best not to make a sound if he could manage it.

He wasn't worried in any real sense, but he was concerned about something untoward happening - or the probability of it happening increasing the closer that he came to his vessel. It made no sense to him, a hunch of some sort if anything.

Nothing happened at all in the event and he made it to his ship in near silence, though the steadily-falling rain helped to provide a backdrop of white noise. He got everything put away inside, tools and all and was just heading back to close the hatch when he heard a sound like ... he wondered if it might have been a woman or a child calling out in pain or frightened distress.

Overall, he still wasn't a fan of the humanity that he'd come into contact with the past couple of years, but ...

He shook his head.

Closing the hatch, he dropped to all fours and loped off; hoping vaguely that the female who he'd helped the previous night was not the source of the cries.

Every once in a while he stopped still in order to listen and the third time, he heard more distressed screaming, so he headed off in that direction.

Getting closer by the sounds, he then heard male voices and they didn't sound casual or friendly. Whatever was said, it was between three to four individuals and the sound of a person crying was the constant background.

There was a loud curse from one of the male voices and then there was the sound of an impact and a sharp cry of pain. D'Jymm eased nearer through the tall grass.

He had difficulty accepting the information that his eyes sent to his brain when he finally got a look.

There was a young woman in a beaten-down, roughly circular area of grass and she was tied to stakes, spread out on the ground. Her clothing had been torn mostly off and she was weeping. He watched as she begged and pleaded while one of her captors stepped closer and reached out a little cautiously to touch something against her skin and the reaction was instant.

She screamed in pain and the place on her where the article which had touched her skin began to hiss. He held it against her and D'Jymm saw a thin tendril of smoke rise up into the air.

The four men that he could see all laughed.

Two of them stepped forward and the girl strained against her bonds, struggling to get free, but a third man stepped forward and kicked her in the ribs and then again in the face and she settled into quiet sobbing gasps. D'Jymm saw the small pile of rags and the can of what he guessed was a hydrocarbon fuel of some kind. So the game was to torture her and beat her and whatever else before lighting her on fire.

He remembered reading about how the neighbors of one of these Nahual beings would sometimes attack and kill them, blaming them for whatever might or might not have befallen the village or area in the particular case. He wasn't involved in any of that, but from what he'd read of these Nahual people - meaning the ones who could actually become their totem, some of them were very strong psychically as well as physically.

It made him wonder what happened if the intended victim of the attack just happened to be one of the more powerful ones.

He looked at the men and decided that, whatever this was; he knew his place in it. He didn't know them or the girl at all.

But he sure knew how to do the befall thing all by himself.

One of them began to bend a little and the thing that he held out toward the desperately struggling girl was positioned over her pubic mound.

The grass parted and something dark flashed through the clearing. There was a cry and the others saw that one of them was missing. They asked each other hissed, worried questions and then fell still, listened intently as the rain hung around them all like a steel grey shower curtain.

The man with the object over her genitals whispered a warning to the woman.

The young woman began to cry and to D'Jymm as he crept back toward the circle, the meaning of his hissed warning to her was clear. He didn't want any noise now. He was being emphatic about it in very quiet tones.

D'Jymm chose him to be the next one.

The other two were looking outward, trying to see over the wall of standing grass. What they heard then was a soft thump followed by the wet swish of the grass and when they looked, they were alone with the girl who was still weeping softly.

One of them turned toward the girl cautiously, not wanting to look away from the green wall of this little arena. He held his finger to his lips.

The woman looked at him as though he'd lost his mind.

But when he remembered to look back, he saw that he was alone with the girl, his third companion was gone.

The third man ran for his life through the tall wet grass, his wet clothing against the grass stalks was a serious impediment, the way that it seemed to want to slow his progress. He'd just gotten out of sight of the circle, not far at all, when he heard a soft sound and he froze, listening.

The sound continued and he cautiously followed it as quietly as he could and in a moment, he saw some clothing through the tall stalks in front of him. The sound was growing eerily familiar in a dark way which he could not place, but seeing no movement, he stepped forward cautiously and saw ...

His knees felt as though they were about to buckle as he looked at his own brother, who was lying on his back with the rain falling into his eyes, trying to breathe past a partially crushed throat. A wheezing gurgle was the best that he could do if he was careful. He didn't dare to swallow, not knowing if he'd be able to breathe even this much afterward.

The newcomer stood, transfixed with horror, without an idea of what to do. He wanted to tell his younger brother that he was sorry, that it had always been his job to protect him from when they'd been boys.

But as he struggled to find the words, he saw his brother's eyes bulge, opening wide. He thought that this was the moment where his brother passed but he was wrong. He looked again and saw that his brother was looking past him and trying to vocalise a warning.

The man turned around and for the first and only time in his life, he saw a wrathful Anubian standing on two legs, his long snout wrinkled, showing his teeth.

He screamed.

The last one in the circle with the young woman heard it and marked the direction. He began to turn away as quietly as he could manage to but it was too late. He stared as a wet and bloody ball cap sailed toward him over the wall of grass to land near his feet.

He spun and took one step before he was pulled backward viciously and yanked downward. Something broke his fall as well as his back.

He looked up into the coal-black, fur-covered face of some wolfish demon and began to cry as he watched the lips pull back from some very cruel-looking teeth.

D'Jymm looked away and down, noticing the bag of galvanized tent pegs. He picked one up and looked at it for a moment.

As he left the circle, he smiled, hearing the man's screams at finding himself face-down on the grass with a steel stake through each of his hands into the ground.

In less than two minutes, the others were all in the circle as well, though only three of the four were alive, one barely hanging on with his ruined throat and the other two with broken backs.

Before he went to work on getting the young woman out of her predicament, he staked the other survivors as well. During that brief time, he remembered the knife lying near one side of the circle.

Grabbing the knife, he cut her bonds and she was up in an instant and turning to run. D'Jymm held her back gently and when she looked back at him in fear, he gestured at the men, two of whom were looking back and weeping.

She shook her head, speaking rapidly and beginning to draw away again.

He tried to gesture once more, but she shouted at him and he let her go just as she tried to yank her arm free. She almost fell over, but she looked into his face and thought that she saw surprise. He looked away and stepped over to the men.

He found what he was looking for in only a moment in the shirt pocket of the dead one.

Walking to the first of the ones who were living, he grabbed the man's head and almost twisted it off. From there, he killed the other two in the same manner and began to pour the fuel around the clearing.

He lit a match and held the weak flame near the shirt of one of the dead men and the flame spread rapidly in spite of the rain. When he turned back, the young woman was gone.

He looked over the grass and saw the furrow that she was leaving as she ran and knowing that the grass would get shorter farther on, he headed a slightly different way and it took him to a low hill. Walking to the top, he saw a small half fallen-in building in the near distance and he sat down on his haunches. There were few trees out this way and he had a fairly wide field of view.

In a few moments, he saw her walk out of the taller grass and turn away, heading toward the little house. He sat motionless, but he got what he was looking for from it.

Though the darkness of the previous night was what made this harder now, he was certain after this.

She was not the one in the tree last night.

When she reached the house, she turned around and he could see the expression of shock on her face to find him sitting on the hill looking back at her. She suddenly looked hesitant, as though she might walk toward him.

He rose to his four feet and walked off, disappearing once more into the sea of long, wet grass.

---

As he got down to work cutting and bending the stainless steel tubing, there were a couple of issues.

The weather was something that he needed right now to hide his vessel as he repaired it. But there was also a time limit even to this. The way that the rain came down driven by the strong winds ... He felt unsettled, as though he was standing beneath a suspended sword hung point-down above him.

At some point, he knew that the broken rock of the ancient volcano's rim and the mud which held it in place would give up and the slope above him could come sliding down onto his only ticket off this mudball.

He sometimes heard his situational console give indications of something living and making some body heat in the vicinity. He'd walked forward a few times and backed off on the sensitivity and the threshold range so that he wasn't constantly alerted every time that a rodent walked under his vessel to get a minute's relief out of the rain.

The indications continued however and several times, he'd gone forward to activate one of the outside cams so that he might see what it was.

And a couple of times, he saw that it was the young woman from the unpleasant episode in the tall grass. She stood in the rain and looked at his ship, as though wondering what it was, why it was here and maybe wondering why he was here at all if he rode in something like what she was looking at. And she looked a little annoyed once. It made him wonder if where he'd set down might be a place that was important or special to her somehow.

One time, he felt a little odd for a few seconds and walking forward quickly, he saw the woman on the screen walking away slowly and just before stepping out into the deluge once more, he saw her looking back over her shoulder for a second and then she was gone.

She certainly didn't look very comfortable out there. He wondered if she wanted to talk or if maybe she was going to try to tell him that he was trespassing or something like that.

--

A while later, he was trying to decide which variety of barely appetizing foods that he would dine on this evening when he noticed the situational awareness console showing some red blooms from something outside which was a fair bit warmer than the surroundings. He walked forward and, not satisfied with the images that the navigational cameras provided; he turned on the forward one over the flight deck for a higher viewpoint.