Then, as the roots wiggled, she hurried to the next, but to her surprise, when she cut the thing loose, it was a fractured piece of a scimitar tooth. The next hump was a football-sized skull from some creature she’d never seen. And now, down so close, she could tell the entire forest floor was a mass of humped refuse. The amount of it astounded her.

Then she recognized the rifle butt. Carefully she peeled the rhizomes back, got a grip on the stock, and worked it free from the clinging roots.

“Goddamn it!” Briah cried from where she hunkered on the root tangle. “Fired?”

“Nope,” Talina slung it over her shoulder, next to her own. “Safety’s still on.”

“They never knew what hit them,” Valdez said bitterly.

Talina checked the section of carapace armor sticking out of the mass, though a fine weave of roots had laced themselves over the surface. “Says Corporal Xing on the stenciled ID,” Talina called.

“Fuck!” Briah snapped.

Talina kept glancing from side to side, keeping low as she carefully made her way to the land tank, seeing how the creature’s hard shell had been smashed from both sides. The cloying odor of decomposition tickled her nose. The inside of the shell was crawling with invertebrates who made a sort of high-pitching singing when she got too close.

Talina found the next rifle beside one of the smashed helmets, struggled to pull it free, but too many thick roots had a firm grasp on the weapon. She did get enough of a look to call, “This one’s been fired.”

“That tells us that whatever happened, it went down here. Come on, Tal,” Briah called. “Get back. We’ve got what we need to know.”

Talina took a deep breath. Stood fully upright and stared up, overhead.

If I’m right, there should be a . . .

It came as a blur from both sides. Just the shimmering of the branches at the edge of her vision. Closing in from the right and left . . .

Talina flipped her body—all of her strength galvanized—as she pitched herself forward, landed flat on the roots. Felt them twisting and wiggling at the impact.

As she did, a deafening bang! sounded; she felt the hard puff of air. And then she was scrambling on all fours, scampering on the now-excited roots.

For the moment, all she could think of was to get away. Out of the range of those deadly tentacles. Glancing up, it was to see eyes. Three of them, peering down from above. They might have been floating against the background of branches, vines, and diffused light.

She knew those eyes, had looked into their like before. Known this same terror. This was death.

She heard shots, screamed, “Don’t fucking shoot!” And, as she got a second lungful, “Hold your fire!”