The Wounded Warrior

by Jim Laughter

  As the red creature drew closer to the hiding man and girl, the old man could make out other distinctive features he had not seen from a distance. Protruding from the creature’s forehead was a pair of vestigial horns three or four inches long. Other small protrusions around the creatures head indicated that other horns may lie beneath the red, leathery skin stretched over the monster’s massive head, but only the two horns were clearly visible.

  Another distinctive feature of the creature was a heavy long tail that started at the base of the monster’s spine and stretched out to the length of five or six feet before coming to a fork at the end. The creature used its tail to keep its balance when it rose up in excess of eight feet tall to look over the surrounding brush, trying to find whatever had made the noise.

  The scraping of the creature’s cloven hooves on the paving stones drew ever louder, grating on the old man’s already frayed nerves like fingernails on a chalk board. The stench of the creature became unbearable, causing the girl to wretch onto her grandfather’s trousers. She whimpered and then became sick again. The creature turned toward them, its long forked tail lashing from side to side.

  “Be quiet, baby. Be very, very quiet.”

  Without warning, the creature let out a horrific roar, the sound of which reminded the old man of jungle felines he had heard when he had taken his granddaughter to the zoo. Spittle and other substances spat from its enormous maw and spilled down its leathery red chest. It was almost impossible to tell where the red leather of the creature’s battle dress ended and its rough skin began.

  The sunken black eyes of the creature scanned from side-to-side, trying to locate the source of the noise. Its snout searched the air, trying to catch the scent of the hiding game. It beat at the bushes with a long weapon it carried in both front claws, occasionally thrusting the spear-like weapon into the brush. The old man knew it was only a matter of seconds before their hiding place would be discovered.

  Another whimper escaped the lips of his granddaughter but he covered her mouth with his right hand to keep her quiet. Fear gripped his mind as the creature drew closer, an acrid odor of death preceding it.

  Panic overcame the small girl and she bit down hard on the fingers of her grandfather, causing his reflexes to remove his hand away from her face. She screamed once, then again. The monster whirled toward the noise and raised its weapon in their direction.

  With her grandfather’s hand released from its grip, the girl twisted away from him and bolted out onto the cobblestone path directly in front of the red creature. Without hesitation, the creature fired its terrible weapon, the energy bolt burning through the girl’s chest and out through her back. She only had time to scream “Grandpa!” once before her frail body fell to the ground.

  The old man leapt from his hiding place in a vain effort to protect his grandchild but he was too late. The red creature caught the motion of the old man and clubbed him hard with its weapon. The old man fell and rolled off the walking path down into a drainage ditch that served as an overflow from the pond. The monster roared again, realizing that he had lost a valuable piece of meat. However, it had its orders not to follow game into the woods, so he would have to let this one go. They would catch it later.

  Barely conscious, the old man crawled into a culvert that ran under the pathway, the run-off water soaking his clothes and chilling him to the bone. The last image he had of his granddaughter was when the creature grabbed her by one foot and slung her limp body over its shoulder then turned and started its terrible scraping walk back toward the strange red spacecraft.

  He hoped he would never wake up from the terrible dream. But the dreams persisted. There was no getting away from them. This nightmare had something to do with ducks and geese with his grandchild being killed by one of the red invaders. But he knew this couldn’t be true. His daughter and her husband had been killed while trying to escape into the mountains, and his granddaughter had been taken captive by the harvesters. He had been there. He saw it himself. So why was he dreaming these terrible dreams?

  Every time he laid his head down to rest, the terrible images flooded his mind. Someone grabbed his shoulder and began to shake him. He fought back as everything began to swirl and fade. Opening his eyes, he found himself looking into the worried eyes of one of the people in the small band of refugees. Sitting up, he found himself inside the makeshift shelter in the basement of a ruined building.

  “Gerad, you were dreaming again!” the younger man said in a loud whisper.

  “Let me be!” the old man hissed as he tried to clear his mind. “The dreams are all I have left!”

  The younger man backed away, and after throwing two pieces of wood onto the fire, went back to where he had been sleeping. The old man watched him for a moment and sighed to himself. Laying back down, he tried to find a comfortable position. He pulled a thin tattered blanket over his shoulders and longed for sleep, or death, or whatever the Unseen One would find more merciful.

  But sleep eluded him. All he could see were the terrible after-images of his family’s burned bodies and his little granddaughter being carried away by that terrible beast. All he could see was that day; the day they came and Credence died.

  Chapter Nine

  Leatha sat and fumed. The morning shift nurse had passed on the message that Rose wanted her to meet her in a small conference room later that day. Her anxiety getting the best of her, she rushed through breakfast and her morning routine and was at the conference room fifteen minutes early. Choosing a chair she felt comfortable with (its back was to a corner) Leatha sat down and tried to wait without fidgeting. That was a lost cause because her mind raced as she tried to think of why she was to meet Rose here rather than in her room.

  The conference room could easily accommodate a dozen or more people. Leatha suspected that Rose would not arrive alone at the appointed time. She mentally reviewed the last couple of days, trying to discern what might be up.

  Thankfully, she had not suffered any more nightmares. But that did not completely comfort her. All too well, Leatha remembered the last ones that had troubled her. Images of what she now knew as Red-tails flitted here and there through them, most often seen at a distance. That was just as well as far as she was concerned. The few dreams or recollections she had of Red-tails up close were tinged with mind-numbing and paralyzing fear.

  These weren’t the memories of when she had fought Red-tails as a young adult in the service. She recalled telling that tale to her fellow students in Flight School as if it was yesterday. It was the day she had been assigned the captaincy of the Aurora.

  “I want something with lots of firepower,” she’d told her friend, Delmar Eagleman, who’d been taken back by her sudden intensity.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I have a score to settle.”

  “Care to tell me about it?” Delmar asked.

  Leatha didn’t answer for several seconds. She only stared into space and seemed to forget that Delmar was there.

  “It was about a month after basic and I was on my first assignment,” she remembered telling Delmar. “I was posted at one of the supply bases for the picket ships out on the rim. Life was interesting at first as I got into my new assignment. I was even starting to make some new friends among the other Ladies-of-the-Fleet posted out there.” Her face darkened.

  “Then the attacks started,” she said in a whisper. “The picket ships were hard-pressed to keep track of the incursions and repel them.”

  In retrospect, she knew the Axia determined the Red-tails had tried to overwhelm their defenses by opening up over dozen intergalactic transit tubes into Axia space and sending through whole fleets of their ships. By overtaxing the entire defensive net, they hoped to drain the Axia’s resources. Only by mobilizing reinforcements and the fleets available from the independent planets were they able to outlast the Red-tails. Although the incidents had occurred several years ago, it still caused repercussions within the service.

  “We
’d already experienced over thirty percent losses by the third week,” Leatha continued with her story, “but we were starting to hold our own and even managed to get some of the damaged ships repaired and back on line.”

  “Then what happened?” Delmar gently asked.

  “Then one morning they hit our base in unexpected force,” Leatha said with a shudder. “Within minutes they’d overrun our outer perimeters and were pressing us back toward the main buildings.”

  A tear trickled down her left cheek. “Two of their ships overflew the landing area and torched virtually every ship on the ground. Then it got worse. One of their large troop ships landed in the middle of the base.” Leatha’s face grew ashen at the memory.

  “Hordes of them charged our position, killing indiscriminately,” she said, her voice hard. “We took up defenses wherever we could, but still they pressed us back, separating off isolated groups that they slaughtered one by one.”

  The horror of the experience darkened her face. “The group I was with took refuge in one of the supply buildings, but it wasn’t enough. By blasting through the roof they were able to attack us from all sides. It soon became hand-to-hand.”

  She remembered Delmar asking, “What stopped then?”

  “Someone managed to get a call out on the comm before the Red-tails found him,” Leatha said. “We later found his remains burned into the ruined comm console.”

  Leatha wiped the tears from her cheek and paused for a moment.

  “The fleet finally arrived and joined the fight,” she said. “The tide turned when more troopers landed. We heard the firefight outside and the attack against us abated a little. We even managed to repel them from our position. Troopers broke through to us and the Red-tails scattered. I was among only a handful of survivors in my group.”

  She concluded the narrative by sliding up her left sleeve. “They left me with a little souvenir.” There across her upper arm was the unmistakable festered scar left by a Red-tail claw.

  Shaking herself, Leatha realized that several people had entered the conference room and sat down while she was lost in thought. Seated to her left was Rose Sharon. A haggard look of concern masked her face.

  “Are you all right, Leatha?” Rose asked.

  “Yes... uh, yes I am,” Leatha stammered back as her eyes took in the rest of the people there. By their dress, they were obviously medical personnel. A few sported service insignia on their collars. “I just remembered telling my friends about a Red-tail attack a few years back,” she added.

  “We know about that, Leatha,” a man across from her said. His nametag said ‘Karl Krieg’. Besides a service insignia, he also wore one denoting his specialty but Leatha did not recognize it.

  “It’s all right, Leatha,” Rose said. “They’ve been going over all your records and tests with me. Let me take care of introductions.”

  Rose introduced each person seated there in turn, including Dr. Krieg, whose specialty turned out to be Combat Psychology. Leatha had never heard of it before but suspected its subject of interest. She didn’t readily remember the other people Rose introduced. She did notice, however, that many were involved in the fields studying the human brain. The young captain didn’t like what this was adding up to.

  In a rush, it came to her. Flying was out of the question so her service career was over. No one wanted a pilot who blacked out, risking the ship, so there went her main skill for civilian life. She’d probably even lose Stan. My life is over, Leatha thought as she tried to fight down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “You’re going to ground me,” Leatha said very quietly.

  ∞∞∞

  The Red-tail commander growled. Flipping through the reports again on his reader only made him angrier. The mission was not working out according to his vision.

  The day they raided Credence had been a glorious one in his mind. Even the Hive Rep along to oversee the operation was pleased. In less time than they anticipated, his soldiers had rounded up almost all of the humans on the planet. In fact, the raid had been so successful that a second transport fleet was needed to take all the captives home. As a result, the commander had made the decision to send the frozen human remains in the first shipment along with his raiders.

  The arrival back at the home worlds had been everything he hoped. His name was brought before the main Hive and he was elevated to drone commander. Quite an honor indeed! From this new position he was able to secure a suitable planetoid (a now unused dump for derelicts and other ship wreckage) upon which to start his experimental human farm.

  Others had tried this before but had made critical mistakes. Capitalizing on lessons learned, he chose a planetoid that was cooler than normal for his species. True it was warmer than Credence, but it was well within the tolerance of humans. He also made sure to have enough stock to meet both immediate demand and provide successive generations of food. Whereas other attempts had brought back only a score or so of captives (and some of these failed to distinguish gender of the humans or viability for breeding) he brought back thousands of healthy stock.

  The facilities were built in short order under the edict of the Main Hive and were ready when the second fleet of transports arrived with their captives. A third smaller fleet brought the other food-worthy species captured on the raids and likewise deposited them on his planetoid. As a precaution for future expeditions, the commander left a small contingent of harvesters on Credence. They were charged with rounding up any uncaptured humans and preparing a base for future raids. All in all, he was quite pleased with his achievements.

  But then the difficulties began. First there were the losses in shipping. Humans, it turned out, were more fragile than he thought. Packed tight in the holds of the transport ships, they succumbed to acceleration and transit tube stress enroute.

  Where he had figured a loss rate of less than five percent, the actual figure approached forty percent. Hoping to offset the loss by marketing the dead human meat hadn’t worked out well either. His outlets were flooded by complaints about the poor and damaged condition of the product. There was nothing he could do about that except feed the remains into grinders and sell it as compressed disks for reconstitution and consumption. It brought a lower price but it ended the complaints that were threatening to reach all the way up to the Main Hive. He certainly didn’t need that.

  Next he ran into problems providing compatible food for the humans. They refused to eat the rendings from his processing plants, and flora native to the planetoid left the humans undernourished. The humans also required an inordinate amount of water which was scarce on the planetoid. His managers related to him that the humans were complaining about it and losing body mass as a result. Finally, he had deep wells sunk into the aquifers and that problem was solved.

  The other animals his third fleet brought back from Credence were nothing but an unmitigated disaster. In spite of the information he had gleaned from the humans before the harvest, his soldiers and harvesters were ill prepared to handle the large four footed beasts. Although they seemed to lack intelligence, these animals could be quite a problem when threatened. He lost more than a few soldiers who were gored or trampled by these normally docile beasts before they were herded aboard the transports.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t work well either. You would think that since they were larger and stronger than the humans, they would handle the stresses of transport better. But they didn’t. He lost over eighty percent of them when they were crushed or suffocated in transit. Most of the ones that survived were in bad shape and had to be slaughtered on arrival. The only bright point in this part of the venture was that the humans would eat the frozen remains of these beasts.

  Back on Credence things were not going as planned either. Instead of the smooth operation of loading and shipping the captives, the harvesters had to quell a series of riots among the humans. Although individually, any Red-tail was more than a match physically. Humans in large numbers became dangerous. A number of cap
tives had to be blasted down after they overcame their handlers and broke free of their holding pens. The commander felt his soldiers had used excessive force in putting down the riot leading to the loss of scores of viable breeding stock. He had been on the verge of disciplining some of his underlings for over-reacting, but before they could be dealt with they changed tactics and regained control of the situation. Later riots were subdued with stun weapons which preserved the large number of humans alive for his farms. Eventually all captives, both human and bovine, had been shipped. The teams left behind started on their other tasks—rounding up stray humans and preparing a base for future operations.

  Things finally settled down, or at least he thought they had. He had a sufficiently large enough pool of breeding stock. He had (at least for now) compatible food for the humans as well as enough water. Costs were up but still manageable. The commander was well into planning the next harvesting mission when the one problem he hadn’t figured on surfaced—his stock would not breed!

  From his own research and data stripped out of human machines, he had determined the correct number, gender diversity and age groups to provide the best number of births. Projecting this onto the number of captives and their approximate age groups, he could cull ten percent of his stock on a sustainable basis. Everything was in place. The only problem was the humans refused to breed. Oh, he had a few births among the herd, but these were determined to be from couplings prior to the raiding of Credence. This was one problem that caught him by surprise. His handlers tried threats. They tried enticements. Nothing worked. His whole operation was threatened.

  And then right in the middle of this problem a new one cropped up—escapes. Somehow, someway his captives were slipping away and escaping from his farms. At first his handlers wanted to go after them but on a hunch he held them back. There was no place they could go on the near barren planetoid. Given the hostile environment and the isolation of the planetoid in relationship to the human’s galaxy, he felt safe. What could they do, develop space travel out of rocks? Besides it occurred to him that let to run wild they might start doing what he couldn’t force them to do in captivity—breed.