He thought his roar had alerted Danika. He hoped that it had for he heard sounds of contact before he could actually see anything.
He had counted six of the creatures. When he arrived upon the scene, he found a heaving mass of four. Two were just picking themselves up from the ground and since Danika was nowhere to be seen, he knew she was at the center of the mass.
Ignoring the two since he knew Dane and Niles were directly behind him, he focused on the mass, trying to decide how he could remove them from Danika without causing injury to her himself. She was shorter than the creatures, though, and he decided that he could strike the head without transferring the power of the blow to her.
He did not want to spare the time to try to determine how powerful a blow he should use. As a consequence, his fist connected with the head nearest him hard enough it exploded like an egg and separated completely from the body. The fragmented skull slammed into the head of the creature next to him hard enough to break its neck and the two bodies buckled and dropped to the ground. The two that remained both held long knives and he focused on the knives, grasping the hands that held them and snapping the bones that connected the hands to the arms. Both creatures screamed. The one who'd coiled an arm around Danika's throat, however, lifted her bodily, by her head, and tried to carry her away. He caught the creature's wrist and elbow and pried them away from Danika, snapping the elbow. As soon as Danika dropped to the ground, he punched the creature that had been holding her in the face and his head tore free from his body and bounced away into the grass.
When a quick survey assured him that there was no longer any threat, he dropped to a crouch to examine Danika. To his consternation, he saw that she was unnaturally white and he did not have to touch her to see the tremors wracking her body.
"Where are you damaged?"
Chapter Thirteen
Danika stared at Seth blankly at the question, trying to figure out what he meant. As his meaning finally filtered through her shock, however, she turned her mind inward, inventorying the pounding aches and trying to decide if they were actual injuries that would require medical attention or merely bruises. "I think I'm ok," she said finally, "just banged up a little."
Discomfort of a different sort assailed her when she'd managed to get shakily to her feet. She'd been distracted by her discovery, but she hadn't beenthatdamned distracted! She didn't know how a half a dozen primitives had managed to get the drop on her. She hadn't heard them until they'd been practically on top of her. "Where the hell did they come from?"
"The trees," Dane supplied.
Danika gaped at him and then looked up. She wasn'tunderany trees! She would've examined them for threat if she had been. In fact she had scanned the area in and around them for any sign of movement or lurking shadows. The nearest were at least twenty feet away or more. She should've heard them--wouldhave, she was certain--if they'd charged from the trees.
"They used vines and swung from the upper branches like primates," Niles elaborated.
"There is blood here," Seth interjected before Danika could comment.
She looked down in surprise. "Theirs, I guess."
"Not theirs," Seth responded grimly. "Their blood is yellow."
Danika blinked at Seth a couple of times while that sank in and then felt her knees abruptly buckle.
Seth caught her, lowering her slowly to the ground and then opened the suit to examine the wound. "It is not bleeding badly--now--but I cannot tell how deep it is without prying it open or ascertain whether organs were compromised or not." He frowned. "I think it will be best to take you back to the ship to tend the wound. They are nasty creatures. I believe we must be concerned with infection."
Despite his cool analysis of the situation that scared Danika. She hadn't considered the possibility that the primitives might have anything capable of penetrating the hab-suits. They were designed for combat. In general, the light-weight armor couldn't be penetrated by projectiles, even if they didn't exactlyrepelthem and a direct hit could pack enough punch to kill the wearer at times. It came as a very unpleasant surprise to discover she'd been wounded at all. Regardless, she didn't think the wound was deep enough to have damaged her internally.
Unfortunately, infection was another matter altogether. It took no more than a scratch to make her vulnerable to whatever bacteria might have been on the weapon.
And he was right about them being nasty things! She'dsmelledthem before they got close enough to attack.
Beyond that, this was an alien world and could be home to all sorts of things her immune system wasn't equipped to deal with, regardless of the immunizations they'd been given before they shipped out. After all, they hadn't been expected to end up on Xeno-11. They'd been shipped out to Xeno-12.
Despite her protests that she was fully capable of walking, Seth ignored her and picked her up to carry her. "This way is faster."
"You said it wasn't bad."
"It does not appear to be," Seth corrected her. "I am not programmed as a medic-borg, however. I have virtually no data regarding human injuries."
"None of the others are either," Danika said unhappily.
"This is not true. There were two among those we found at the second Andorian base."
"Really?" Danika said hopefully. "You aren't just saying that to make me feel better?"
Seth frowned. "I would not mind saying that to make you feel better," he said hesitantly. "However I do not see that it would be helpful to lie in this circumstance. You would know as soon as we returned."
"Good point."
Dane, who had been brooding over the fact that Seth was always first to grab Danika up when there was a situation that allowed it, arrived at what he thought was a logical argument to convince Danika to allow him to carry her instead. "I should carry you. Seth is first man. He should take point since we cannot know that there will not be another attack, and Niles is third man and should bring up the rear as always."
