Birds of Prey - Bisexual Edition

"You never know with Bugs," Jaeger replied, affixing his helmet and switching on his HUD. It fizzled to life inside his visor, displaying a green overlay, and he began to tune the radio to local frequencies. "They say it's a probe, but for all we know, it might start spontaneously spitting acid or lobbing plasma grenades."

He checked his weapon, syncing the scope with his helmet and making sure that the battery was charged.

"Alright, here are our orders," one of the green-clad Valbarans began. "Our team is charged with investigating the object that fell outside Yilgarn. It's a short distance beyond the East wall. We will leave through the East gate and make our way towards the target on foot, where we will establish if the object poses an immediate threat, and then respond accordingly."

"The East wall?" Maza asked, concern creeping into her voice. "That's Teth'rak territory."

"We're aware of that," the soldier replied, "which is why we'll be treading carefully. We'll have a spotter in the lookout tower keeping watch for the Teth'rak."

"Can't we just take one of the dropships and land directly at the target site?" Baker suggested.

"No, the Teth'rak will attack it," Maza replied.

"What? It would attack a dropship?" he scoffed. "They're designed to withstand reentry and AA fire, there's no way an animal could bring one down."

"It doesn't matter if she can bring it down or not, what matters is that she will try. A Teth'rak will attack anything that enters its territory. She would spot a big, loud spaceship from miles away and she would see it as an invading enemy. If she attacks the dropship, then we would be compelled to defend ourselves, which we need to avoid at all costs. The Teth'rak sustaining any injuries is unacceptable."

"So we can't fire on that giant thing if it attacks us?" Baker asked.

"Absolutely not," Maza replied, "under no circumstances are you to fire on the Teth'rak."

"Even if it's about to eat me?"

"Even then," she said with a red flurry of feathers. "We are intruding on her territory, we must be respectful."

"I guess it's like shooting a white rhino or something," Jaeger suggested with a shrug. "I'm not sure an XMR could bring that thing down anyway, not unless you hit the brain or the heart. You'd probably just piss it off even more."

"That's why we have this," one of the Valbaran soldiers said, brandishing a weapon that looked very much like a forty-millimeter grenade launcher.

"And what's that?" Baker asked.

The soldier plucked a metallic ball from her belt, showing it to him.

"Pheromone grenades. If there's one thing that the Teth'rak hates more than anything else, it's the scent of urine from other females of its species. The launcher will fire the grenade a good distance away from the user, where it will start to mimic the smell of Teth'rak scent marking. The attacking animal should then divert its attention away from us in order to defend its claim...probably."

"So all we have to save us from the giant dinosaur is stink bombs? Got it," Baker complained.

***

The giant wall began to split open, Jaeger watching as the two doors parted to reveal the countryside beyond. It was like a fortress. If the wall was two hundred feet tall, then the doors must have been fifty feet at least, opening wide enough that you could have driven five or six trucks through the opening side by side. He wouldn't have even known that the gate was here, it was seamless, sliding into the wall to either side of it much like the gravity plate in the floor of the lookout tower had.

"Stay close," one of the soldiers said, "roll up your sleeves and don't make use of your color panels. The light might attract the Teth'rak if it comes into visual range." She raised her arm, extending the plumes in a deep shade of red. "For the benefit of the Earth'nay, red means stop."

The Valbarans rolled up their sleeves as instructed, flexing their sheaths like a human might roll his shoulders or stretch his arms. Jaeger was as excited as he was apprehensive. For the duration of his stay in Yilgarn so far, he had been confined within its walls, the only nature around him carefully sculpted and tended by the Valbarans. Now they were about to venture out into the wilderness, intentionally left to grow wild by the planet's inhabitants.

The soldier waved them forward, and they began to march, their pace scarcely a brisk walk by human standards so as not to exhaust them too quickly. The first thing that Jaeger noticed was the heat and humidity, it was even more apparent on the outside. Were the city walls able to influence the climate within in some way?

Before them was a plain of blue-green grass, the ankle-length blades waving gently in the wind, making it look almost like an ocean. The fields and rolling hills extended far into the distance, punctuated here and there by large pockets of forest and patches of scrub like islands. The terrain wasn't entirely flat, but it was flat enough that Jaeger could see straight to the horizon. Water was ever present, the lakes and rivers reflecting the light of the sun with a silver glow. Beyond the atmospheric haze, blue mountains rose into the azure sky, wisps of cloud smeared across it like the strokes of a paintbrush. It was an alien Serengeti, like the Valbarans had dropped their city into the middle of a savanna.

He looked back over his shoulder as they walked forwards, the white wall rising into the air behind him, almost devoid of any detail. The gate was already closing, locking them beyond the safety of the city. What Jaeger wouldn't have given for an APC right about now, but even the most rudimentary vehicle would draw the monster, according to the Valbarans. They had to rely on being small and quiet, no doubt the same way that the aliens had survived their prehistory. They had to be sneaky and fast to escape anything that was bigger than they were.

"I'm already regretting putting this armor on," Baker muttered as he walked beside him. "Whose bright idea was it to make these plates black? I feel like I'm going to melt out here."

Jaeger too was beginning to sweat profusely. The system's star was beating down on them, baking the ceramic plates that they were wearing, he couldn't wait to get to the cover of the trees ahead. They were the same variety that he had seen inside the city, thick, fat trunks with leaves like palm fronds. As they neared the shade, he noticed that there were many other varieties of plants here too, growing wild and untended by the careful hands of the Valbarans.

There was a thick blanket of ferns, their colorful leaves a blend of greens and pinks, along with what looked like miniature trees with trunks that reminded him of pine cones. Splashes of red and yellow from flowering plants broke up the uniformity, and in an instant, they transitioned from open plains to what felt like a tropical jungle. It was even more humid inside, as if the plants were trapping the moisture in the air, the canopy above them blocking the sunlight and preventing the water from evaporating. The trees were so densely packed that Jaeger could no longer see beyond them after walking only twenty feet or so, it was like being teleported to a different planet entirely.

"Uh...do we need to watch out for snakes or anything like that?" Baker asked, the ferns rustling as he trudged through them.

"What's a snake?" Maza asked as she walked beside him. Inside the forest, the purple and green camouflage worked remarkably well, and even the various shades of green and beige that colored the alien's scales helped them to blend into the background. What was it that they had said about the Teth'rak, that it could see prey at a distance of about six miles? It must have eyes like a hawk, and maybe other predators that inhabited these regions did too. Even Maza and her flock were harder to spot with their ocean camo.

"It's like a long, poisonous reptile with no legs," Baker said as he lifted his foot over a protruding root.

"Venomous," Jaeger corrected. "Venomous animals kill you with a bite or a sting, and poisonous animals kill you if you eat them."

"I'm not sure," Maza replied, the brush high enough that only her head and shoulders were peeking out. "We have some venomous reptiles and insects, but I don't know how an Earth'nay might react to the toxins."

"Well this day just keeps getting better," Baker grumbled.

The Valbarans all seemed to have spread out to cover more ground, Jaeger could scarcely see most of them. Only the occasional flutter of color from their crests gave them away, the aliens communicating silently using their feathers. He had expected it to be very revealing, and yet the plants around them were colorful enough that it didn't jump out like he had expected. For every flurry of yellow, there was a patch of yellow flowers to mask it. For every shade of pink and purple, there was a cycad with leaves in the same hues, blues and greens were of course abundant.

There was bird song everywhere, loud enough to be annoying, and for the first time, Jaeger was able to get a glimpse of one of the creatures. Something feathery flitted between the branches of a nearby tree, colorful like a tropical parrot, its little head twitching as it eyed the intruders from its perch.

A bird this was not, it looked more like an extinct missing link between birds and reptiles. It was shaped like a lizard with a long, flexible tail and dinosaur-like legs, its wings tipped with grasping claws and its snout missing a beak. It opened its mouth to reveal rows of tiny, needle-like teeth as it puffed up the plumes around its neck, chirping a song at them before fluttering away to another branch.

"Watch out for those," Coza said as she gestured to the bird-lizard, "it might swoop down at you if it's nesting nearby."

"I'm surprised you can even see anything at all in here," Baker said, "it's just a mess of color to me. I feel like I can't see five feet in front of my face."

"Oh?" she asked, cocking her head. "Perhaps Earth'nay eyes aren't suited to this environment." It seemed more like a jab than an observation, Jaeger watching the camouflaged Valbaran slink away into the ferns like a ghost, her blocky rifle at the ready.

They continued on, Jaeger keeping one eye on the treetops. There were so many different kinds of plants that it became hard to keep track, and everything was so tightly packed together, like someone had taken five different botanical gardens and had thrown them into a blender. It was beautiful and confusing.

The lead Valbaran stopped abruptly, raising an arm and flashing its feathers in a shade of red. Everyone halted, Baker and Jaeger taking a knee amidst the pink ferns and shouldering their weapons. They had flipped up their full-faced visors because of the heat, and now Jaeger closed his, the integrated computer scanning his field of view for movement and heat signatures. He spotted something moving between two thick trunks a short distance ahead of them, scoping in on it.

Two large eyes peered back at him, and he recognized it as one of the brown-feathered ostrich-lizards that they had seen from the observation tower on the wall.

"It's just a Gue'tra," he heard someone say, "keep moving."

The alien creature was skittish, abandoning the blue moss that it had been scraping off the trunk of a tree and fluttering its white-tipped wings as it fled away into the undergrowth. After a while, they arrived at the far side of the patch of forest, the Valbarans lurking at the edge of the plain as they peered out from between the trees. It seemed to be safe, and so they left the shade, emerging onto the savanna again. The change in heat and humidity was stark, another shock to the system. Jaeger couldn't decide whether he wanted to make use of the automatic darkening feature on his visor to protect his eyes from the sun's glare, or if he would rather feel the breeze on his face. The breeze eventually won out, and he flipped his visor up again, doing his best to wipe the stinging sweat from his eyes.

More movement drew his attention, and he looked up to see a flock of birds, different from those that he had seen in the patch of forest. These were smaller and lighter, more traditionally bird-like, swarming through the air in an ever-changing pattern like a shoal of fish swimming through the water. They were far off, so he couldn't make out very much detail.

He noted that the leader of the group had changed, now one of the Valbaran soldiers with a notably lighter scale color was at the head of the flock. It seemed that they were all of equal standing, all seven of them equally in charge. How did that work? How did they decide who got to make the decisions and when? They hadn't paused so far to make a new plan, so whatever they were doing, they were doing it without any obvious communication. It was like second nature to them.

Maza's flock was on the same page, moving silently save for the occasional feather signal. These were more complex than the simple flashes of color used to convey emotion, patterns and alternating hues sharing information that the humans couldn't parse. This was probably how they hunted silently in their distant past, not so much as a whisper giving them away to their prey. Unlike humans, the Valbarans did not seem eager to distance themselves from their predatory, carnivorous past. They seemed to see themselves, and indeed they described themselves, as pack hunters.

Even Tacka, usually so timid and reserved, stalked the forest along with her sisters. He had to keep in mind that she too had flown a fighter during the dogfight in the Oort cloud, she was no less qualified than Maza or Coza to wield that rifle. It was as if by working as such a cohesive unit, they were able to lessen the weaknesses of each individual, Tacka's meekness and Coza's bravado less apparent when they were focused on a common goal. The flock really was greater than the sum of its parts.

They reached another island of forest, and this time the group stopped for a few minutes, the Valbarans resting and checking in with their superiors. There was no sign of the Teth'rak yet, and there had been no new Bug activity. Jaeger and Baker decided to do a little exploring while they waited for their companions to recover their strength, wading through the ferns and checking out all of the strange plants and animals.

They found some kind of lizard clinging to a tree trunk that was covered in green fluff, not quite fur and not quite feathers, along with more of the colorful reptilian birds that were hopping between the branches above them. There were insects everywhere, fluttering things with iridescent wings that seemed to be pollinating the colorful flowers.

When they reached the edge of the patch of forest, they crouched between the trees, staying in cover as they had seen the Valbarans do so as not to draw any unwanted attention. Across the plain, they saw something massive in the distance. There was a whole herd of creatures, perhaps two dozen of them standing around a pocket of jungle as they used their long necks to nibble the tops of the trees.

"Sauropods," Baker marveled. "How far away do you think they are? They must be a hundred and twenty feet long at least, probably a hundred tons. It's like seein' a whale walking around on the land..."

They did indeed look like dinosaurs, they had round bodies that were propped up on four massive, elephant-like legs. Much like the Teth'rak and the Geu'tra, they were covered in a coat of feathers, these ones a vibrant blue in color. They sported tall, decorative crests that rose from their spines. Behind them trailed a long and flexible tail that tapered into a whip, a counterbalance to their long, giraffe-like necks. They were stripping leaves from the tallest trees using horny beaks, the ornate crests that rose from the tops of their heads catching the sunlight, they were like walking lighthouses.

"I never thought I'd be seeing anything like this when I became a pilot," Jaeger laughed, taking a photograph of them with his phone. They heard rustling behind them, and Maza emerged from the undergrowth.

"Come on, we're moving out. The target site is near."

They made their way back to the group, following them out of the forest and into the open once more. Jaeger felt vulnerable as they marched across the open grassland with no jungle canopy to protect them. The patches of forest were perhaps a half mile apart on average, and so it was quite a sprint to make it back to safety.

The impact crater came into view in the distance, the grass around it charred and burned. The Valbarans advanced on it with their weapons raised, craning their flexible necks as they kept watch for danger. As the resident experts on Bug tech, Baker and Jaeger jogged to the front of the pack, reaching the lip of the crater and leaning over to peer inside with their rifles shouldered.

It was a perfect bowl-shape, the sand and dirt had been turned to glass in places by the heat of the impact, but it was empty.

"Uh...wasn't there supposed to be a Bug probe here or somethin'?" Baker asked.

Jaeger walked around the circumference of the hole as the Valbarans looked on in confusion, deferring to the more experienced humans.

"We should not linger in the open for too long, Earth'nay," one of the soldiers warned as she scanned the horizon for danger. They had taken up a defensive position, set up in a rough circle with each of them facing a different direction.

"Wait, there's something here," Jaeger said as he took a knee beside a patch of scorched grass. "Look at this. There are tracks coming up this side of the crater and out into the field. They're like little indents, see that?"

"Yeah," Baker confirmed as he leaned over his shoulder. "So our probe got up and walked out of here? It could be fuckin' anywhere by now."

A Valbaran in green camo sidled up beside him, peering down at the indentations in the soil.

"So you are suggesting that an organic probe could be fired from a spaceship, enter the atmosphere, dig a crater six feet deep, and then get up and walk away? These Betelgeusians are capable of such things?"

"Oh yeah," Baker replied, "that's the least impressive thing we've seen them do."

The Valbaran seemed to pause, it was like watching a computer freeze up.

"What do we do?" she finally asked.

"We should probably follow the tracks," Jaeger suggested, rising to his feet and shielding his eyes from the sun as he peered out across the savanna in the direction that the probe must have gone. "Any of you guys know anything about tracking?"

The Valbaran soldier whistled for her flock, Maza and her companions joining them in a huddle as the two humans waited nearby. They chittered and schemed, flashing their colorful plumes as they formulated a new plan to follow. They also made use of their handheld computers, holding what looked like a conference call with the higher-ups, a solitary head popping out to check for danger every few seconds. For not wanting to remain out in the open for too long, they certainly took their time, a UNN squad would already have moved out by now.

"We will follow the trail," one of the soldiers finally said, Jaeger and Baker sharing a look of relief as they set off again. It was difficult to follow the tracks through the tall grass, they were little more than round indentations, no doubt left by pointed limbs like those of an insect. They were only about two feet apart, so whatever they were looking for wasn't very large, and would likely be hidden by the grass. The aliens had a keen sense of smell, however. They picked up a scent that they described as a blend of burnt metal and ozone, following their noses where the tracks disappeared.

After meandering around for a while, seemingly directionless, the thing seemed to have chosen a target and set off with more purpose. The tracks formed a straight line, leading back in the direction of the city.