Kali's Fire

by Craig Allen

  His suit’s comm whined, then he heard a familiar voice. “Banshee Five One, this is the Olympus Mons. Please respond, over.”

  Cody laughed so loudly it sounded hollow in his helmet. “Olympus Mons, glad to see you’re still alive.”

  Commander Gaston’s face appeared on the inside of Cody’s helmet. He sported a medical brace on his right forearm, and cuts covered his face. “You’re not the only one, Doc. I assume you need assistance.”

  “You guys couldn’t have come at a better time. We need immediate dust off. Sonja requires medical attention.” Cody regarded the broken hopper wistfully. “Unfortunately, you’re going to have to give us a ride.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Cody sat on a stool in the Tokugawa’s infirmary, staring at Sonja as she floated in breathable liquid. Nans had gone to work on her arm. The med-techs had cloned a new one and fast-grown it. The microscopic nans just had to attach the arm while she lay there, unconscious.

  Sonja would miss the show—at least, that’s what everyone was calling it. Cody called it a travesty, but he saw no other option. After that battle, nobody was questioning that the creatures of the planet had gotten out of hand. They would try something similar again. It was only a matter of time. Also, all attempts to contact the reeds had failed, and every species refused to talk to the fliers, probably out of fear of what the reeds would do.

  Furthermore, everyone was angry. Thirty-eight hoppers had been lost, along with their crews, not including Banshee Five One. Four ships were lost and seven crippled, one of which would have to be towed back to dry dock or destroyed so the denizens of Kali couldn’t get their hands on her.

  The Churchill lost her Daedalus struts, which meant she was stuck in system until repairs were completed. The Shiva lost a quarter of her crew when a whole section was exposed to vacuum. The list went on. Every other ship suffered damage, particularly the Olympus Mons, which had managed some repairs while sitting in the ocean.

  Not to mention the Washington, her entire crew lost, and Bodin, of course. Good people had died for a planet that would have been left alone if the denizens had just left humans alone.

  The hatch opened, and Admiral Jericho entered. Doctors and nurses acknowledged him as he wandered sick bay, talking to injured crewman and officers. The ones resting in sick bay would survive, thank God. Earlier, med techs had carried out three others in body bags.

  Jericho joined Cody. “How is she?”

  “Doing better.” Cody stood. “Still too early to know for sure.”

  “She’s a marine. She’ll pull through.” Jericho took a deep breath. “Are you going to try to talk me out of what’s about to happen?”

  Cody shook his head. “I don’t know how.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. The Spicans are chomping at the bit. They’ve already decided the whole goddamn planet is a threat to civilized space and to make sure it is never a threat again. I’ve managed to convince them to not conduct the bombardment without us and to stick with the areas that we are certain contain technology.”

  “We could return the fliers to their homes after the job is done,” Cody said.

  “Assuming anything is left of the ecosystem when we’ve finished.”

  “We need to help them, Admiral. We owe them a great deal.”

  “I’m aware of that, Doctor.” Jericho rubbed his brow. “I just wish I had other options.”

  The wall comm rang. “Dr. Brenner?”

  Cody pressed a button on the wall. “Dr. Brenner here.”

  “Hoppers are ready to pick up the cargo, Doctor.” The voice was that of a lieutenant on the bridge. “They leave in fifteen minutes.”

  The fliers are people, not cargo, Cody wanted to say, but he kept it to himself. The fliers would transfer to the Berlin then back to the planet once all was clear. What the lieutenant neglected to mention was that “all clear” meant when radiation levels died down. That could take months, and they might end up having to leave the fliers near the poles.

  “Understood, thank you.” Cody slumped back onto his stool while Sonja slept peacefully in the med tank. He didn’t want to leave her, not for a minute.

  “You’re going?” Jericho asked.

  “I have to,” Cody said. “The fliers trust me.”

  Cody remembered a time two months previous, when Admiral Rodriguez had suggested they bombard the planet. What they had done instead was send a message to the toads, one that they wouldn’t forget. They had to do the same thing again, instead sending it to the red reeds.

  “Admiral,” Cody said. “I have an idea.”

  ~~~

  Cody zoomed in on his HUD while the fliers boarded the four hoppers. That would be the last load to the Berlin. By their count, only a few thousand of the fliers remained across the planet. Dear God, their species is almost gone.

  He could barely make out the Spican vessels, but they were sitting in the upper atmosphere. Each was larger than a warship like the Tokugawa and carried a significant complement of torpedoes.

  Furthermore, they intended to use those torpedoes. Cody reread the response from the Spicans, which they had sent once they had received his plan.

  We will wait until the exercise in futility is complete prior to vaporizing known technology. Should the lifeforms decide to attack we shall extinguish all life on the planet. We take on this burden to relieve smaller nestmates from the shame of what must be done.

  By “smaller nestmates,” the Spicans meant humans, and by “burden,” they meant to spare human souls the weight of genocide. He hoped they would agree to leave the world alone after they’d finished nuking the technology, at least.

  The fliers had, once again, pinpointed the major locations of technology that they knew of. Strangely enough, no signs remained of either the toads or the reeds, at least not in the immediate area. Reeds had been spotted from orbit, but whenever they attempted to make contact, they retreated into the ground at once.

  Cody didn’t think that would save them. He did his best to convince the Spicans to use nukes instead of tacs. A couple dozen tacs would eliminate most of the biosphere, including microscopic organisms. They respected him for being one of the first humans they had met, but if they were agitated enough, they might tac the planet until it glowed.

  Cody watched a flier as it herded its young into one of a dozen hoppers sitting on the ground. They had always been helpful. Cody couldn’t blame them. The planet had essentially abandoned them. Everything on Kali wanted the fliers dead. The only other species that cared about their survival was the human race.

  Stripe bounded over to Cody, holding a viewer while its wings fluttered wildly.

  We will return after?

  “Yes.” Cody hoped he sounded sincere, but the fliers had learned much about humans, so Stripe’s response didn’t surprise him much.

  Where will we go if we cannot return?

  Cody couldn’t bring himself to lie. “We’ll think of something.”

  The flier lowered its head, a gesture that it seemed to share with humans—resignation.

  “I’m sorry,” Cody said. “We want what is best for your people. Please understand.”

  Stripe gave a head bob then bounded back toward the others. He noted it absently when his suit registered higher magnetic readings. He hoped Stripe was being reassuring to his brothers, at least.

  Finally, Stripe returned.

  We help you find technology and now you destroy our world.

  Cody’s heart chilled. “Stripe, you have to believe me. We want your people to survive.”

  Stripe ignored Cody as he entered another message.

  We are at your mercy and hope we have a home.

  Stripe bounded away before Cody could respond, which was just as well. He had no idea how to convey the guilt he felt for what had happened to them as well as the fear he had for their safety.

  A voice sounded over the comm. “Stand by for display in thirty seconds.”

  Cody’s plan was a ga
mble, which Admiral Jericho had decided was worth a shot. At the very least, it wouldn’t interfere with the bombardment.

  The display would happen only over a small area of the planet, but that was fine. The reeds were everywhere, even if they couldn’t be seen.

  The Joan of Arc lowered itself into the atmosphere, six kilometers over the ground. The air just below it fluctuated briefly, then images danced into being. The pictures themselves were a couple of kilometers across—nowhere near large enough for everyone on the planet to see, but that was fine. Those in control, the red reeds, would see it.

  The fliers stopped boarding the hopper. Magnetic readings skyrocketed as they communed. The display likely didn’t impress them. They were familiar enough with human capabilities at that point. What really mattered was what the reeds would think.

  On the immense display, an image of the planet appeared. The view zoomed in on the southern hemisphere and again on the plateau where Cody, Sonja, and Bodin had escaped two months prior—the same place they had found the tunnel to the factory complex. The image shifted, showing a side view of the plateau. A few seconds later, the entire plateau was engulfed in a mushroom cloud.

  Stripe looked at Cody then at the sky image again, which had switched to a view of the entire planet. Vessels were shown escaping the planet, both hoppers and Kali ships. They were grased into nothingness.

  The fliers watched the scene, entranced. Cody was grateful the young were inside the cave. What was coming was horrific.

  A single torpedo approached the planet, one that was no ordinary device. It stopped outside the atmosphere of the holographic planet and exploded. A wave washed over the world, obliterating the atmosphere. Images appeared of trees being ripped from the ground and disintegrating. The reeds on the surface were burned away, along with several meters of ground. The wave of energy washed over the whole world, and all that was left was charred dirt.

  Cody was glad Sonja wasn’t there to see the image. The destructive power of an ASEB was what had killed her husband during the war, along with billions of other humans.

  The final image showed the sun setting over the horizon near the plateau, and a timer appeared at the bottom of the image, showing a one-hour countdown—the precise time the sun would set in that part of the world.

  As the image repeated, the timer continued to count down. The fliers watched the message again, ignoring commands from the marines to board the hoppers. Some actually left the hoppers to watch. Cody suspected the red reeds understood English, but he wanted a visual representation for the creatures on the planet who might not understand English.

  After a second run-through, the fliers handed Cody a viewing pad.

  The Reed will not do what it is told.

  Cody hoped that wasn’t true. He wanted to say something encouraging. They wouldn’t actually ASEB the planet. The UET Council would never agree to it and not just because of the political fallout. Using ASEBs to annihilate a planet’s atmosphere would horrify everyone back home. The fleet would just nuke the locations containing technology, spotted by the fliers.

  However, before Cody could explain all that to the fliers, someone shouted through his comm, “Contact! This is Banshee One Eight, I have a contact. It’s… Jesus, you have to see this for yourself.”

  An image piped into Cody’s suit HUD, which meant everyone in the fleet was seeing what he saw. Sitting on the ground at one of the designated targets was a pile of debris. Each pile was a mishmash of bulkheads, Daedalus struts, stacks of G-1 Gauss rifles… even bridge-sat arrays. As Cody watched, the pile grew larger, as if the planet was regurgitating the technology from its bowels.

  “This is Banshee Three One,” somebody else said. “I’m seeing the same thing here.”

  Another image appeared on the HUD, a pile of debris a full two kilometers across.

  Cody projected the image outside of his suit so the fliers could see. Stripe typed out a message, his whole frame quivering.

  The Reed has answered.

  Images appeared on his suit’s HUD, showing scenes from across the planet. An enormous amount of technology was being disgorged, far more than Cody could have imagined. Even locations not targeted for detonation were disgorging the bits and pieces of what had once been spacecraft and the factories that built them.

  The planet appeared to have decided it had enough of modern technology and was vomiting it up. Cody hadn’t planned on the reeds surrendering the technology like that, but if that was enough to keep from nuking the planet, it would do.

  “Eyes on.” A marine charged in Cody’s direction, causing nearby fliers to jump aside. He had his coil rifle aimed at something behind Cody. “Who the hell is that?”

  Cody spun. A figure stood at the edge of the fliers’ plateau, arms behind his back. No, Cody realized, behind her back. She was as still as a statue, wearing a battle dress uniform with no rank.

  Cody couldn’t believe his eyes. “My God. It’s Ann.”

  “What?” The marine did a double take at Ann. “Sound off, marine!” He still had his weapon trained on the woman, as did everyone else present. “Name and rank now.”

  Cody walked toward Ann, and the marine nearby joined him, keeping his rifle trained on her. Her head was bowed, and she didn’t take notice of Cody at all, even as he sidestepped away from her so he could see behind her.

  Red tentacles protruded from her back and stretched fifty meters into the water, disappearing beneath the waves. The tentacles were identical to the reeds Cody had seen underground. From the back, she was a mass of undulating reeds, but from the front, she appeared completely human. The woman before Cody was a puppet made up of the red reeds, and it looked just like Ann Salyard.

  Her eyes opened. For a brief moment, red worms slithered where the eyes should have been, only to be replaced by eyes. The Ann facsimile focused her attention on Cody as he stepped forward.

  “You represent them, don’t you?” Cody asked.

  “Them?” Her voice even sounded like Ann.

  “You represent the red reeds.”

  She stared for a moment before answering. “I represent myself.”

  Cody needed a moment to realize that her lips weren’t moving when she spoke. Her mouth simply opened, and the words spilled out like water.

  “You are one of the red reeds, then?”

  She ignored the marines who had formed a semicircle around her, focusing only on Cody. “I am the only one.”

  Cody pondered what the fliers had told him and what the toad in the Tokugawa’s brig had said and what the fliers had echoed. They had referred to the reeds as just “the Reed”—in singular.

  “So what we saw in that large cave was only a small part of you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Ann took a step forward, the legs moving like a normal human’s, even as they were driven by the reeds behind her. “I have never been hurt like that before.”

  “You were warned not to build technology. You have no right to it, as your recent actions have demonstrated.”

  “You warned my servants,” she said.

  “Servants.”

  Behind Cody, the fliers had huddled behind the hoppers, peeking around them once in a while to steal glances at the Ann-puppet.

  “Did you make them the way they are?” Cody asked.

  “They evolved into what they are.”

  “But did you give them sentience?” Cody asked. “Are you responsible for all life on this world being self-aware?”

  “I experimented,” Ann said. “Ten of this world’s cycles around the sun have passed since I realized how large the universe is. The metallic shell you call Kali showed me much. I learned and then added to that knowledge. Ideas I had never considered unfolded before me.”

  Her eyes fluctuated as the reeds fluttered inside the sockets. “Such as language. Interesting. Each of you cannot create these wonders on your own, so you work together, like a collective intelligence. Not unlike certain species of this world.”

  The
Ann-puppet gestured out across the plateau. “The nature of magnetic waves on this world allowed me to insert ideas directly into the psyche of the natives. Then they knew what I wanted them to know, and I made them build. The predators fought me, but when their provider made an agreement with me, they became mine at once. And they became the best at using technology after I reformed them.”

  “You altered their bodies.” Cody remembered the toad in the brig, which made him grit his teeth. “You had no right to sentient beings.”

  “Right?” Her head tilted ever so slightly. “I had the ability to alter them. I have done so for endless turns of this world. I will continue to do so. Why would I not do this?”

  “But why do it at all?” Cody asked. “What use is technology to you? You can’t use it to leave. You’re too massive.”

  “I want to learn. I have learned more in the past ten revolutions of the sun than I have in the past ten thousand. I wanted more knowledge. I still do.”

  “At the expense of others,” Cody said.

  She took several steps toward Cody, ignoring the marines who hefted rifles. “You are a surprise. I never thought creatures such as yourselves could exist. I did not understand until I absorbed one of you.”

  “The one whose form you’ve taken now,” Cody said.

  She tilted her head in an almost human gesture. “Others of your kind have died here, but I couldn’t absorb them. Either the people of this world consumed them for sustenance, or they died out of my reach.” Ann closed her eyes. “I could not catch all of you, but I could plant a copy of you on the hopper for when I needed her.”

  “You ordered her to destroy the Washington,” Cody said. “Why would you kill so many? For what gain?”