Chapter 83: When Information Isn’t Very Informative
"Okay, calm down," said Jun Li, and I let out a low growl. Telling a woman to calm down was like throwing gasoline on a fire. It did the exact opposite of what you were hoping to accomplish.
"Don’t ever say that to me again. I am calm. Or at least as calm as I can be here on my own," I said, trying not to yell. I was more than a bit stressed dealing with a 150-foot snake that looks like the reincarnation of an Asian dragon. "You know. You are more than welcome to get down here and help out."
"I told you; I don’t want to risk my body. Anyways, the best suggestion I have is to place a tracking on the snake. Then I can pull it up into the ship’s hold and leave it there until handoff," advised Jun Li.
"That sounds like a good idea," I replied, still following behind the giant snake. "Why would it blow up in our faces?"
"If the Agkistrodon rhodostomas and the Bothrops lanceolatus manage to escape our hold before we are prepared to transfer them, then we will have eight of them slithering around the ship," explained Jun Li. I was half paying attention to him and half to the snake in front of me when all of a sudden, the snake, the size of half of a football field, vanished into thin air.
Fuck my life.
I was really going to have to do my own research on things before having Jun Li agree to them. This was getting ridiculous.
I shot up higher as fast as I could and continued to look around the area. "I think you also forgot to mention that they turn invisible," I grumbled. I could see exactly where the path the snake had created ended. That meant that it hadn’t gone forward.
That left two options: backward or up.
I was up, and all of a sudden, I felt like I had a giant target on my back. I went up even higher. "Change vision to infrared," I said out loud.
"Changing vision to infrared," answered my helmet, and all of a sudden, I was back to looking at a very psychedelic version of the world around me, and a long blue snake curled up right underneath me. Worried that maybe it was able to see me, I shifted immediately to the right. The light blue triangle at the head of the darker blue coil went to the left, keeping perfect time with me.
Fuck. Killer snake could see me. "Is camouflage mode on?" I demanded to my helmet, and I shot over to the left. The snake’s head moved to the right.
"Both camouflage and external temperature setting is in working order," replied the helmet, anticipating my next question.
Still staring at the snake, I saw it being to tighten. The blue line that I knew was the snake became darker as it prepared itself. Nope, not having that at all. "Jun Li? Where is there a tracking device that I can tag onto this thing?"
"Um, that is a slight problem. You see, because you have a built-in tracking device, I didn’t really send you down with any more of them," said Jun Li hesitantly. Well, fuck. There went that plan.
"Then why didn’t you take that into account when you suggested that ’good option’?" I grumbled. My brain was starting to list everything that it knew about the original species that I thought it was. You know, something much smaller.
I knew that they were irritable and fasting moving, an ambush predator with a specific ambush site that it preferred to draw their prey into. They also learned to improve their strike accuracy over time. They were also polyandrous and gave birth to live young.
If I supplemented that information with my current situation, I could assume that based on the size of the snake, it is old enough to have perfected its strike accuracy and has ambushing down to a science. You don’t get that big without knowing how to hunt.
There was a second in which the serpent froze, and I shot up into the sky as fast as I could, only just avoiding getting bitten on my ankle. Okay, this particular snake could lunge almost its full body length.
I would need to note that for the next time, I am dumb enough to do this.
The Bothrops lanceolatus fell ungracefully to the ground, and I could see the puffs of what I could only assume was dirt rising up around it. It recoiled itself, and I could see a yellowish-reddish think line coming out of its mouth.
"Can this snake smell pheromones?" I asked, concerned. I hadn’t really thought to hide my scent as I did before when I was meeting that wolf man. I didn’t think it was necessary in the middle of nowhere.
"There are no records of the Bothrops lanceolatus being able to scent pheromones," responded my helmet. Then again, there weren’t that many records on these stupid things anyways. So, if I couldn’t scent me, how was it able to find me?
Night!
I still had Nightmare attached to my back, and he wasn’t camouflaged or his external temperature regulated. Fuck. The snake must have realized that Nightmare couldn’t normally fly in the air. That was how it kept finding me.
"Can you move the Nanos to encase Nightmare on my back?" I asked, not too sure if it was possible or even if Night would take being encased in Nanos well. I didn’t know if my armor had managed to do what I asked, but I saw the snake under me start to look around.
Good. It can no longer see me.
"All right, Jun Li," I said with a sigh. "What is the second option for being able to get this thing onto the ship? You know, since you didn’t give me any tracking devices to be able to transport this thing."
"Well, we don’t need to worry about it being alive, so option two is for you to kill it," said Jun Li, not at all put out by my snarky comments. "However, there is about an 80% chance that you will die at the same time."
