Simon was surprised to feel his face grow warm. He really wasn’t used to socializing with civvies these days. He backed toward the front door awkwardly, saying, “I’ll make for the shed, then, and say hello to Tyrus.”
“Yes, go ahead,” Amanda said, shooing him out with her hands. “We girls got some catching up to do.”
“I’ll be out shortly,” Sarah called after him as he quickly exited the house.
Simon exhaled a sigh of relief as he descended the steps off the front porch. The sun was setting low toward the western hills. He stopped for a moment to take in the wide-open country, and as the warm afternoon breeze enveloped him, he breathed in deeply, savoring the sweet scent of the air. Feeling more relaxed, he reflected on the situation facing him. He missed social contact, needed it, but after years in the Service it was obvious that he was out of his element when dealing with civilians. Especially women. Great Ares, even Knackers seemed easier to understand. It would definitely some take time to get comfortable here. He wished he could shake the sinking feeling that time was running out.
Chapter Three
As Simon stood outside taking in the tranquility of the homestead, he could understand why early settlers had given Eden its name. The planet’s habitat so closely matched human needs that only mild terraforming had been needed, and the atmosphere and soil were compatible with a wide variety of cultivated plant and animal life. With the advent of Universal Vaccine technology, settlers could colonize a new world without major concerns about foreign microbes. In the end Eden had proven to be a perfect fit for humanity. Too bad that the serpent was about to invade paradise. The thought caused him to glance involuntarily upward at the sky, and his serene mood was broken.
Squaring his shoulders, he turned to his left and walked along the front of the house. Just off its west end stood what he took to be the equipment shed. It looked like a standard EasyFab design, similar to what SpaceForce used when setting up combat bases on new worlds. The sides and roof were of heavy construction, sturdy enough to withstand high winds and even small projectile weapons. The shed also could be set up and broken down quickly, allowing troops to move in, and then move out, of a strategic location on short notice.
This building was large enough to accommodate several pieces of earthmoving or farming equipment. The open double doors revealed what looked like a tiller and a loader parked inside, with an adjacent empty space, which he surmised belonged to the floater tractor Sarah had picked him up in.
Simon stepped through the open hanger-style doors and strode the concrete floor between the big equipment. He could hear someone working in the space beyond the machines. The rhythmic rasping of metal on metal echoed off the walls as he moved closer to its source. When he rounded the end of the loader, he saw the man in green coveralls, standing at a workbench along the back wall.
Careless, Simon thought. He’s got his back to the door, not even aware of what is going on around him. No weapon at hand either. He’s not gonna last long when things go to hell.
Just then the man spoke up, without turning around. “And who might you be?”
Surprise tied Simon’s tongue momentarily, and then he replied, “How did you know I wasn’t one of your family? For that matter, I could as easily have been a Crab creeping in here to have lunch. It’s unwise to leave your back uncovered.”
“Oh, it was always covered,” the man replied, turning around.
As he spoke, something hard that felt suspiciously like the muzzle of an energy weapon jabbed into the small of Simon’s back. He froze as a surprisingly high-pitched voice spoke from directly behind him. “Should I do him now?”
The man pondered Simon for a few tension-filled seconds. After what seemed an eternity he smirked and said, “No, I think we can let him live, this time.” The pressure at Simon’s back eased up a bit, and he turned very slowly, being careful to keep his hands out at his sides. Whoever had ambushed him had been very stealthy, quiet, and...young! The figure holding the gun was female, and couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old. Her head barely came to his chest. A child had gotten the drop on him! Simon would have laughed at the absurdity of it, if not for the steely calm in the girl’s face, and the military style two-handed grip she used to hold the weapon pointed unwavering at his chest.
“Say hello to my niece Jessie,” the man said from behind him, and Simon turned again to face the speaker. The man continued with a grin, “As you say, it pays to watch your backside.”
Simon couldn’t help it; despite his chagrin at being ambushed by a juvenile civilian, he grinned sheepishly in return. “I’ve gotta practice what I preach,” he admitted. “Your niece has very good stealth skills. And you’d be Tyrus, I presume.”
“Aye, that I am. Captain Tyrus McKinley, Eden Ground Defense Force, retired,” the older man replied. He was solid in build, maybe in his late forties, with light brown hair shaded with gray at the temples. Exposure to sun and elements had weathered his face and arms to a leathery tan, and he flashed a lopsided grin as he asked, “And you be...?”
“Major Simon Roy, SpaceForce 2nd Fighter Division,” Simon introduced himself. “My ship crashed on your acreage while you were out; your daughter was nice enough to pick me up and bring me here.”
“Well then, welcome to Eden, Spacer.” Tyrus wiped greasy palms on his coveralls and stepped forward to clasp Simon’s hand. His solid grip testified that civilian life had not softened him. As the two men sized each other up, Tyrus narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, and asked, “It’s begun, hasn’t it? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“What’s begun, uncle?” Jessie piped up, moving around Simon to stand next to her uncle. Her sidearm was now slung in a holster that she wore comfortably on her hip like a pro.
“The battle for Eden, I’m afraid, dear,” her uncle told her. “You’d best round up the boys and get them back to the house. Major Roy and I have things to discuss.”
The girl nodded and jogged out the door without question, and Simon grunted with approval. There was an air of discipline here not commonly encountered outside the Service. These people could prove more valuable in a fight than he had given them credit for.
Something still puzzled him, though, and he asked Tyrus, “So how did you know that I wasn’t a Knacker or one of your family when I entered the shed? I don’t think Jessie signaled you, and you never looked around.”
The other man hooked his thumbs in his belt and replied laconically, “Well, no one in my family wears SpaceForce boots, for one. Those sure don’t sound the same on concrete as regular shoes or work boots. And as for Crabs, well hell, you can catch their stink a klick away. You start smelling like that, and you’ve got some serious personal problems. They’re not big on stealth either, other than the electronic kind. Their feet click and clack something fierce on hard surfaces; I don’t think a Knacker could walk quiet if you held a gun to its mama’s head.”
Simon nodded as the other man spoke; this guy was not dimwitted. Tyrus had been in the fire before, and he had learned from it.
“You make a lot of sense, Mr. McKinley. Well, here’s the situation as I know it. At this moment the Knackers are knocking on Eden’s door, and odds are they’ll break through shortly. SpaceForce was losing the battle when I fell to ground. The alien forces will wait until the defenders are cleared out before bringing their big landers into Eden’s space. After that the invasion will begin for real. Once the Crabs descend, they should target cities primarily, where they can find concentrated populations. But they’re likely to check out where my ship landed, sooner or later. That means they’ll find their way here. There’s nowhere safe to run to at this late hour, and you don’t want to get caught in the open. I’m thinking you’re better off hiding on your property, or making a stand if you have an adequate defensive position.”
Tyrus replied, “Yeah, I agree. We built this homestead with an eye to defending ourselves when the Knackers came; I knew they’d find this planet eventually. We don�
��t plan on leaving.”
“Good,” Simon said. “We’ve got maybe a day, or a little more, before we can expect the Crabs to show up. In the meantime we should coordinate our efforts. Your family said that I should talk to you about defensive plans, weapons and the like. I’d be very interested in what you’ve got prepared. I don’t want to intrude, but I may be able to come up with some suggestions to help out.”
“Hey, any input would be appreciated,” Tyrus avowed. “You’ve got rank on me, and I’m retired anyway. The only thing I’ll insist on is that any decisions that might put my family in harm’s way will need my final approval.”
“No problem there,” Simon assured him. “Like I say, I’m not here to step on toes. But until I can get off-planet, I’m in the same fix as the rest of the people of Eden. Your fight is my fight. Now, about your defenses....”
The two men walked out of the shed together, deep in conversation. Tyrus occasionally pointed at various features of his house and landscape as he explained how they contributed to the homestead’s defensibility. For his part Simon mostly listened and nodded, asking pointed questions here and there, and sometimes offering input when he thought it useful. On occasion he smiled as he heard something that particularly pleased him. It was a rather ferocious smile.
* * * *
As evening fell, the entire family gathered in the central greatroom of the house, and Simon got his first look at its remaining members. Sarah’s three brothers were tall, athletic-looking young men, ranging from seventeen to twenty-three years old. In keeping with the McKinley genes, all had dark brown hair and hazel or brown eyes. Keith was the eldest sibling, followed by Samuel, then Sarah and finally the teenager, Tyrus Junior (called “T. J.” by the family).
The last person to be introduced was Jessie’s mother, Sarah’s Aunt Katie. Sarah had told Simon that her aunt had lost her husband two summers before. Katherine Deloria was a slender, lissome woman of understated beauty, sitting quietly in the corner loveseat with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her long thick hair was a deeper brunette than that of her older sister, but the family resemblance was unmistakable. She had the same small pointed nose, the same upward curve at the corners of her mouth, the same large expressive eyes set under delicate arched brows. Tiny laugh lines perched at the corners of those eyes, but her expression when she thought she wasn’t being watched hinted of a sadness lurking just beneath the surface. Simon wondered when she had last smiled and meant it. She mostly listened in silence as the discussion swirled around her. When she did speak, her voice was soft and soulful, like the sighing of wind in a lonely place in the mountains.
“What do you think, Major Roy?” the eldest son, Keith, asked, jolting Simon back to the discussion at hand. It wasn’t like him to wander, especially when the stakes were this high.
“I’m sorry, I was thinking,” he replied quickly, flustered. “What was your question?”
“Do you think we should hide out and try to go unseen, or ambush the Crabs when they show up?” the young man asked, leaning forward on the couch intently.
Simon formulated his response carefully. “If we go into hiding, then we might avoid confrontation. This has obvious advantages, but there are problems as well. Tyrus tells me you have dug cellars and tunnels for storage of food and supplies, but they lack a secondary escape route. Knacker sensors are sophisticated, and their scans may detect underground chambers. If we get caught down there, we’ll have no way to run. They can simply wait us out, or gas the chambers we’re in, or do a frontal assault down the tunnels. It might be wiser to defend a fortified house above ground, where our options aren’t so limited.”
Tyrus added, “Most of our planning has been along the lines of defending our land, not hiding passively. I tend to think like the Major here; we should not hide. We’ll have to fight smart to survive, but fight we should.”
As the elder of the house was speaking, Simon’s attention was drawn to a small pouch that hung on a string around his neck. The family members all had them; he had assumed that they contained small communicators or something similar. But he could have sworn that the pouch had just moved, and not as a result of its wearer’s motions. When it jiggled again, his curiosity was piqued. “I’m sorry, Tyrus,” he said, interrupting the conversation. “I have to ask—what is in that little bag around your neck? It seems to be moving.”
Tyrus grinned, and several people chuckled. “Ah, that’s my little companion,” he answered. “My protector. Would you like to see?”
Uncertain as to what to expect, Simon nodded. He leaned forward with interest as the other man took the pouch from his neck and loosened the string that held it closed. When he pulled it open, a small head immediately peeked out. Tyrus gestured him to come closer, and Simon got out of his chair to inspect what the man now held in his open hand. A tiny furred creature, no longer than Tyrus’s palm, crouched timidly as it eyed Simon with round black eyes. It had a velvet coat that was striped lengthwise with lavender and black bands, and a long furred tail. It reminded him of tree-dwelling creatures he had seen on other planets, animals that fed on forest vegetation. But as he reached his hand toward it curiously, it bared a carnivore’s tiny fangs at him, and, screeching shrilly, dived back into the pouch.
“They tend to be shy with anyone but their companion,” Tyrus explained as the tiny creature continued to vocalize from its hiding place. Tyrus stroked the pouch as he spoke soothingly to the animal, and within moments it quieted. He tied the bag closed and hung it once more about his neck.
Simon asked, “What the heck is that? And why do you carry it?”
Tyrus laughed at Simon’s perplexed expression, and explained, “It’s called a Dawn Darter. They’re arboreal, very quick, and they subsist on small insectoid life forms found in the canopy of Ironwood forests. They’re most active at daybreak, hence their name. Not easy to tame unless raised from the egg, but well worth the trouble.”
“Aside from the cuddly factor, why?” Simon asked him.
“Ah, now that is an interesting question,” Tyrus answered. “Do you recall the first Knacker processing planet that humans assaulted? A nasty little rock not worthy of a name; they just referred to it by its catalogue number, ‘3G789’.”
“Yes, I remember it,” Simon growled. “A nasty confirmation of what the Crabs intended for us.”
“Yes, and it also gave us some useful intelligence to use against them,” the older man told him. “The troops there reported a number of previously unknown details about the Knackers.”
“I’ve heard all of this,” Simon said impatiently.
“Ah, but did you know that a couple of survivors from 3G789 had stumbled upon a way to evade detection from the Crabs’ sensors, even at close range?”
Now he had Simon’s undivided attention. “No, that I hadn’t heard,” he said.
“Yeah, a couple of SpaceForce grunts were doing recon, with the enemy crawling all over the place, and they ran into some indigenous life forms that resembled snakes. Besides being friendly with humans, they were very nasty to the Knackers. The venom from just a few of those things killed off a large Crab breeder nest, according to the reports. Scientists are still trying to synthesize the toxin from samples the boys collected in the field, to use as a weapon against the aliens.”
“Yeah, I do recall something along those lines,” Simon said, “but how does that relate to your little pouch pets?”
“I was getting to that,” Tyrus replied. “The other item of interest in those field reports was that the soldiers carried the snake-things in their clothing for awhile, and the Crabs seemed unable to detect the humans while the critters were with them. No one was able to verify this, because the snakes were gone by the time the troops were retrieved. SpaceForce labeled the claim “unsubstantiated.” Most people assumed that if it were true, then the animals must have had special physical properties that blocked sensor scans.”
“But you’re thinking otherwise,” Simon guessed, as he began
to see where this was going.
“I wasn’t so sure when I read the reports, so I got on the CompuNet and asked some xenobiologists and tech people. The consensus was that Knacker sensors are usually set to detect a specific life form. When they invade worlds, they want to gather food efficiently, and the dominant species yields the highest harvest number. Lucky us. But although they’ll also reap some large stock animals, this still means that most small life forms are excluded when they run scans. If not, the sensors would be overwhelmed, detecting everything from bugs to rodents to flyers. The important thing is, close physical proximity between two complex life forms seems to confuse their equipment. The sensors treat the paired organisms as a single, unrecognized species.”
“Leaving both of the pair undetected,” Simon concluded with a fierce grin. “Damn! Is this confirmed?”
“Not as well as I’d like,” Tyrus admitted. “There are a few reports from other planets where people claimed success when they carried a pet on their person. No official corroboration though.”
“And you all carry these...Darters?” Simon asked.
The others in the room all nodded. Sarah spoke up, “What about Simon, papa? Even one unprotected person could give us away.”
Tyrus looked to Katherine, eyebrows raised in silent question. She smiled slightly and said, “We’ve got some babies, newly independent from their mother. They’re not bonded to anyone yet, and won’t be tame to handle. But they will stay in a pouch just fine, so Simon could wear one.”
“Fine,” Tyrus said. “See to it that he gets one tomorrow. Also we need to get him a WristWatch.”
Simon looked quizzical, and Sarah laughed and explained, “It’s an archaic name; papa’s a history buff. Basically it’s like a military wrist communicator, but operates on our own private frequency. That way we can coordinate our actions in the field.” She held up a small round device strapped to her left wrist.
The Battle for Eden Page 4
