Darts & Dryads

By Dai Alanye

Roger Fee and Vera Dardani travel to the cloud-enshrouded planet of Grenard to search for Vera's former husband, who has foolishly chosen to investigate the aboriginal Dryads, a vicious race of cannibals.

They venture individually into the dark jungle, hoping that stealth and camouflage will keep them safe during the frightening journey to a dryad settlement. Both are stalked, and Vera faces multiple dangers.

On arrival they are frustrated by both the dryads and a representative of the Multi-World Council, and must give up their search. Some persons, they begin to believe, are engaged in a criminal conspiracy, and they've unwittingly come too close to exposing it.

Uncertain what they are up against, half-starving and desperate, they flee through the jungle, their lives threatened by relentless invisible creatures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dai Alanye
• Release date: Jul 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310519574

Dai Alanye

No superheroes nor anything supernatural (thus far, at least.) Expect merely ordinary people - you and me, as it were - caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Plots are character-driven, and the characters themselves are complex and often contradictory. I aim to appeal to the reader who has an ample sense of humor and an appreciation for irony. You can expect adventure and romance, but graphic violence and sex are at a minimum - think PG or PG-13 at most - and suitable for mature youths as well as adults.

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Darts & Dryads

#3 in the Exploits of Roger Fee

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by Dai Alanye

Copyright 2014, 2019—Dai Alanye

Edition 1.05

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you wish to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not download it, or it was not downloaded for your personal use, please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy.

Darts & Dryads is an original work of fiction, number 3 in a series following Blood & Dirt and Venom & Sand. All characters, locations and incidents are creations of the writer's imagination. With the exception of possible satirical references, resemblances to actual happenings or to persons living or dead are strictly coincidental.

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Thanks to Lynn Clayton, Morris Kenyon, Jon Silverthorn and Annie Onymous. Search online for the works of the first two.

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But just a darn moment, if you please! Have you read the first tale in the series, Blood & Dirt? If not, head to your favorite bookseller and download it posthaste. And next comes Venom & Sand, the delightful predecessor of this book.

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Darts & Dryads

Chapter 1 — Hide and Seek

Windless perpetual dimness… as always under Grenard's ceaseless cloud cover.

The forest's olive dusk hinted of menace—menace real as death. As real as the dart sticking in the tree next to me, not two feet from my face.

I scanned with the rota-scope, using sub-vocal syntax-critical commands—easy to misstate under stress unless experience made them second nature… a stage I had yet to reach.

[tsk scope tsk speed two tsk horiz one three five tsk vert seven five tsk focus one five tsk go]

And when the command completed…

[scope tsk speed three tsk spiral counter tsk step two zero tsk go]

Considering developments in artificial intelligence, there should have been a better way of coding verbal commands, but the Aegis Mark IV(J) protective suit (with attachments) that I wore—though comprehensively advanced over ArmorAlls, and near perfection in other regards—hadn't a program for it. Worse yet, it only recognized metric.

None the less the scope performed, while I strained my eyes to discern the dryad I knew was near—knew because the dart had arrived mere seconds ago. I held achingly rigid. Some movement of mine had been noticed, and only the fact friend dryad hadn't been looking exactly in the right direction at the right time saved me from a strike.

I wondered if it regretted having shot rather than—as I myself was now doing—waiting for better target acquisition.

* * *

Vera surprised me—ambushed me, would be more accurate—in the security and comfort of my own home as I rested following the Watterson-Phyfe fiasco. Serendipitously arriving a few days before me, she immediately reestablished her charming dominance over every member of my family, even managing to neutralize opposition from my mother.

Surprise, surprise! Who would have expected that Vera Dardani, celebrity and adventuress, liked to keep house—to wash dishes, set table, even to help cook?

My daughter Mari unknowingly aided her arguments. My own daughter!

"She made a honey-roll thing for dessert, Daddy. and it was so good!"

Vera—I saw through her. Thought I did, at least, but she rolled out a new tactic—guilty empathy. I'd never realized there was such a thing.

* * *

The Mark IV is capable of superlative adaptive camouflage. Unfortunately, dryads were equipped with their own brand of camouflage, having developed it on the spot by way of natural selection, not in some laboratory back on Terra. And theirs works on a continual basis, whereas the Mark IV displays minor spurious banding while in motion, due to hysteresis effect. Minor, yes, but noticeable to a trained observer. In other words, the suit needs a brief time to settle into the correct pattern—split-second only, but long enough to be fatal in a situation such as this.

Its fabric is theoretically proof against the dryads' tiny sharp darts, but any weakness or damage, any opening created by improper fastening—any flaw whatsoever, in other words—means almost instant death. If a dart manages to penetrate and pierce skin, the only further benefit the suit offers is to make acquisition of the human pelt more difficult.

Sweat trickled down my back… not due to any fault in the suit's temperature control.

* * *

Heaven knows, Roger…

My mother hadn't quite bought the bill of goods yet.

…I sympathize with the poor woman. And with that poor man whom she's—inadvertently, no doubt—driven to sacrifice himself. But to ask you to leave home again after so brief a stay, and before I've managed to fatten you up. You look so drawn.

You should see the other guy! But seriously, Mom, it was no vacation, trying to survive on Ascetica. Not a day on the beach, despite gobs of sun and sand. Those leaping, scuttling eremites…

"Oh, stop! merely to think of them gives me the willies. You know how I feel about spiders. Remember the time—you were eleven or so—the Markams took us out for king crab, and we didn't know what to expect? When I saw them it immediately reminded me of big white spiders, and I had to run to the ladies' room."

I know exactly how you feel, Mom. After this I'll never willingly eat shrimp again, much less crab or lobster—maybe even squid. Ugh!

But Roger… Miss Dardani, or whatever her name is now, that's who I want to talk about.

* * *

If I could spot the little demon, one shot from the short-range mike-gun—.17 caliber sub-sonic—would probably do for citizen dryad. I would select the round containing a stiff dose of 3-nitropropanoic acid plus nicotine—hoping to avoid any vine or twig which might deflect it. The entrance wound would instantly be numbed, with the lack of sensation rapidly propagating throughout the critter's body. Assuming the dryad immediately ran off, within forty yards or so it would collapse, internally bleeding to death in a minute or two more. All silently, following an initial squeak.

In other words, friend dryad was in as ticklish a situation as I was.

But I first needed to spot it.

* * *

"I've said it before, Rog, and I'll say it again—what a woman!"

My father's infatuation with Vera hadn't diminished.

If only Mari can grow up like that… not tough, necessarily, but determined yet charming. I'll tell you, Son, if Vera was American and went in for politics—vice-president wouldn't be beyond her. President, even! Someday, you betcha, Americans are gonna elect a woman such as she—a tough-minded beauty who hunts her own meat, baits her own hook, and cooks the catch, too.

* * *

I could easily bring the dryad to reveal itself with a mini flash-bang, a grenade the size of a gumball. A sharp bang to attract the adversary's look, followed immediately by a flash so bright as to knock it out for a few seconds. Even if it managed to close its eyes, vision would be lost—sensitivity ruined for a matter of minutes in this dimness.

To make certain, despite my suit's automatic faceplate darkening I would manually increase the filter index and close my own eyes. No point taking chances.

Beyond unconsciousness or temporarily blindness, the startle effect of the round would certainly bring a movement from my pursuer, and then I'd have it. But the bang and flash might well—almost certainly would—attract other dryads I suspected to be close.

So, no—I needed to spot it by simple visual acuity, and silently terminate the sneaky tree-rat.

* * *

No, Mister Fee, no. Thank you for your compliments, but I won't change my mind. I gave your father notice within a few days of her arrival, and what has happened since has merely added to my concerns.

Now look, Angel—Miss Degades—if she has said or done anythi…

"That's hardly it! It's not what she has said or done but how she influences everyone—your father, the workmen, even your mother to some extent. I tell you plainly, much of what I've accomplished with Mari has been dispelled as though by malign influence. Don't scoff—I'm quite serious."

But she'll be gone in a week or two, and then…

And then the influence will remain.

But…

"And she's not even all that beautiful, you realize. But no, I can see you don't. Despite seeming to be ruled by logic, even you are under her spell. There's something eerie about the sway she manages to assert over most people. Especially men, as might be expected. And her appearance—those vivid blue eyes… Not contacts, I imagine, but something of artificiality. Were I not a completely modern and rational woman, my ancestors' beliefs in witch-women might break through."

* * *

A few tendrils swayed—tiny fruiting bodies of the lichenoid species that covered most surfaces within this never-ending forest. A fugitive breeze? Breezelet, rather, here deep below treetops on a planet which rarely experienced weather.

I commanded the scope upwards, looking for another dryad to have silently