A TIME TO RUN by Shawn P. Madison 
Published in Alien Worlds #22 
Falco drove the small knife deep into his opponent's thin back and heard the thing squeal through the faceplate of his helmet. Twisting the serrated blade of the knife in deeper, he could see the gush of sticky amber liquid that the Twig used for blood running down the green sleeve of his suit. 
He pushed the Twig off his knife with his left boot and took the thing's head off cleanly at the neck with one strong swipe. The Twig's helmeted head hit the dark purple soil of this planet and continued to chatter eerily in its language of clicks and hisses despite the lack of a body. The gangly limbs of the long torso continued to convulse upon the ground. 
Damn the Conduit! He screamed at himself. His Expansion Team had been told that this dismal little planet was currently clear of all life by the IntelNet. Despite that, his ship had come in with sensors blind due to the proximity of this system to Twig controlled space. Within one kilometer of their Survey craft, his team of fifteen men and women had been ambushed by this larger group of Twigs. The tall, thin and ugly creatures had come at them from the top of a small rock outcropping, dropping in among them with impossibly thin legs and killing two of his team before the others knew what was happening. There must have been twenty to thirty of the disgusting plant-like creatures but his team fought back and hit them hard. 
Falco whirled around to see the last of the Twigs go down at the hands of his Weapons Master, the head of the thing bouncing on to the hard packed soil soon after. The sounds of the head's incessant death chatter gave him the chills as he inspected the remnants of his team. Six people left including himself. "Filthy Conduit bureaucrats," he muttered under his breath and checked his suit for perforations. Bad Intel always sent him into a rage, especially when the consequences of faulty information cost him the lives of team-members and put his own life at risk. First chance he got he was going to make a little visit to Petersen at Conduit HQ and the soulless swine wasn't going to be too happy about it either. 
The light purple hue of dusk on this planet continued to settle as Falco and his remaining team-members gathered up weapons lost during the battle, both their own and those of Twig design. Only minutes had passed since the battle had been fought and won...if what they had survived could be counted as a victory. Now they would have to journey back undermanned and without the expertise of specialists whose job it was to assist in the safe piloting of their Survey craft. Damn the Conduit, I'll kill every last one of them... 
"Let's get back to the ship," Falco muttered and turned back toward the way they had come. 
"What about...them?" A voice sounded in his helmet. 
Falco paused briefly, glanced back at the lifeless members of his crew who laid sprawled and bleeding against the purple moss-like grass of the small clearing and said, "Leave them. This place isn't safe for one more second." 
"But..." the same voice began. 
"Falco!" Another voice broke in and he saw his Weapons Master pointing in the direction they had been heading before the ambush. 
Falco turned and felt his heart sink lower than it already was. Upon the horizon and moving very quickly must have been a full five squadrons of Twigs. Some of them in the sleek little vehicles they favored but there were hordes of them on foot lumbering forward with great sloping strides. 
"Looks like we've outstayed our welcome..." a young voice rang in his helmet and Falco tended to agree. He took one last look at the rest of his team and knew immediately that opposing the oncoming forces would be suicide. His only hope for saving the lives of his crew now lay in the slim chance that their ship had not yet been discovered about a kilometer away. The Twigs seemed to be moving unbelievably fast for a force that size, eating up great distances of purple terrain as they advanced. Falco gulped once and turned to address his team-mates. 
"People, I believe that in this universe there is a place and a time for everything," he said and glanced back briefly toward the swiftly approaching Twigs. "Although it runs contrary to all I believe in, now is a time to run." 
"Amen to that, skip," he heard as the small group moved out quickly in the direction of their ship. 
Falco took a deep breath, felt instinctively for his weapons and felt his heart race as he realized just how fast the Twigs were coming. "Damn the Conduit..." he snarled and wished he could spit on to the foul soil of this world through the faceplate of his helmet. "I hate Twigs." 
Falco ran. 
THE END 
Copyright 2002 by Shawn P. Madison