Shoulders aching, he pulled back on the oar, sending his canoe downstream faster. He wanted to glance over his shoulder, but he only had the will to keep paddling. To keep putting every iota of his focus on making more distance between his craft and the pursuit. The palms of his hands burned from burst blisters, his knuckles oozed blood.

While struggling to keep the boat upright in some rapids, a thought dawned on him. What if he’s putting his crew in peril by leading this bastard to them? Can’t be helped, if it caught him, it would torture the location out of him soon enough anyway. He heard the sounds of pursuit again, a wizzing sound followed by a splash and finally bubbling, like the icy river water was boiling.

He’d lost his gun when he fell down the hillside, grinding his knuckles against granite that poked through the slick, mossy surface. His mind snapped back to the present. If he made it back and someone else was around, who would actually help? Tazhna? Maybe, maybe not. She had been frosty since he brought a shifter into the crew. Jerp? Possibly, he owed it enough to warrant stepping in.

A splash off the right side of his boat startled him. The water roiled and a huge bubble emerged. It burst, wafting some noxious pink gas towards him. He held his breath and paddled back into the faster current. His skin tingled where the gas had contacted the side of his face and his arm. In his mind he saw the spindly arms of the abhorrent thing piloting the lurching raft behind him. One launched the eel bait, one steered and one must be hurling gobs of smek.

The smek had already started to affect the vision in his left eye, showing him the surface of water from over _there_, where _it_ came from. He looked away from the oily patches of liquid doom and concentrated on gaining distance. His arms shook. His left hand, smek infested, began losing grip on the oar, slowing him down.

He saw a bend in the river ahead, the familiar outcropping on the bank gave him hope. Those trees meant proximity to their hideout. To struggled to control his canoe as another smek glob burst behind him. He closed his unreliable left eye and focused on maneuvering towards the bank on his right. He heard another whizzzzz…plop! And could feel the foul presence of the being behind him getting closer. He grabbed the emergency signal launcher, losing precious momentum while he let the river pull him unassisted.

His numb left hand could not be trusted to hold the launcher, so he jammed it into the crook of his arm and yanked the pull-cord. The screech-flies swarmed out of captivity and raced to the scent of their hive stationed at the hideout. He looked over his shoulder in time to see a smek blob arcing perfectly towards his canoe. It landed dead-center in his craft and detonated, obliterating his soil samples and sinking his vessel.

The last thing he remembered was disappointment at failing to return with the soil samples.

Inside the smoky confines of the hideout, Tazhna glowered at the sound of approaching screech-flies. “That’s not good.” Worry shone in her remaining organic eye, the other reflected Jerp’s writhing tentacles.

“I hope he didn’t attract another bounty hunter. He still owes me from the last mission,” Jerps translator rattled.

They waited, listening to the sounds of nocturnal insects awakening in the fading sunlight.