“How did they miss?” Colby asked, his voice a little too strident.
“They were at the station, sir. There wasn’t an obvious reason to put a guard on the gig.”
Which was true, Colby knew. But that left an opening, that left hope.
“So, the gig is 500 meters from the station?”
With the station landing pad torn up and covered with debris, the shuttles and gig had landed in an open field outside of the rubble.
“Yes, sir, about that.”
“So, they might have been too far to see clearly?”
“Two meters tall, broccoli-looking thing that moved along a bunch of roots?”
Whatever hope he’d been grasping at was gone. He looked to Topeka who had a resigned look in her face.
“The Gardener’s back,” he said.
Interlude II: Passage and Illumination
Boarding the Meat vessels had been simplicity itself. Its consciousness was borne upon uncounted numbers of specks carried aboard each of three craft in the days before departure. Greater numbers of specks were left behind on the planet itself, but the Gardener simply withdrew its awareness from them, passing those portions along to bits upon the vessels. Initially, once it understood that the trio of arriving vessels would soon depart, the Gardener had considered maintaining its consciousness upon all three. It abandoned that strategy when it became clear that the Meat that had interfered with its garden on the earlier world would be leaving as well and traveling aboard a specific craft. That Meat had stolen its vessel, co-opted its purge agents, imposed its will upon a mega seed. None of its fleshy associates had given any indication of such capabilities. Obviously then, the greatest opportunity to nullify this species involved marshaling its powers in proximity to the only Meat that had demonstrated any intelligence beyond the simple destruction that defined all of them.
Much as it had withdrawn its awareness from the specks scattered outside of the three vessels, the Gardener abandoned its presence on the other craft and consolidated its intellect and cognition aboard the vessel that would transport the Meat it now considered its only real opposition. Once that had been accomplished, it applied itself to a better understanding of the Meat, the better to eradicate the pest from its garden and, potentially, the rest of space.
Gardeners did not measure time in the frenetic way of Meat. Time was subjective, different for different things. The life cycle of growth, the seasons of a world, the movements of planets, the generations of limbs and roots within every different plant and tree and shrub. None of these were the same, not like the units of seconds and minutes that so entranced these Meat, defining their lives at every step. The Gardener balanced both forms of perception. The rotations of this world, prior to the vessel’s departure, contained both a billion Meat busy moments but also, for it, only a single contemplative point, even given its consciousness distributed across so many specks throughout the Meat vessel. Each speck observed, recorded, sorted the data presented through its limited sensorium. Each passed every datum forward to be collated and compared and considered by the gestalt of all. The data flow might be vast, but it hadn’t yet yielded true knowledge. Nor had the Gardener expected it to; little learning occurred at the level of the microscopic specks.
Exceptions existed. It only required the loss of several tens of thousands of specks to the vessel’s crude atmospheric filtration systems before the Gardener’s consciousness learned of the brutal assault on so many of its components and steered its elements away from the numerous passive intake valves found in every space aboard.
In counterpoint, it also identified numerous, out of the way nooks where it could gather and reproduce its constituent numbers to more than make up for the losses from the vessel’s systems. Moreover, as small, clumpy layers of green accrued on the underside of consoles, along containers in seemingly locked storage areas, and throughout the exterior lengths of conduits hidden from regular view, the Gardener generated nodes of concentration and processed the massive influx of information. It came to understand, to its astonishment, the nature of this variety of Meat.
They engaged in meaningful, complex behaviors that resembled true language. Many forms of Meat in the Gardener’s experience made use of audible signals for basic communication, but these had been limited to Call systems, finite subsets of content limited to informing others of danger, the presence of food, or sexual availability. But this form of Meat actually spoke to one another. The language was crude, to be sure, but also open-ended.
Once the Gardener had realized they had language, it discovered something equally astonishing. They had not inherited the Mech at their disposal, they had created it themselves. However unthinkable, the parsing of their newly acquired language as well as the trickle of details from its countless observers left no doubt. This Meat had developed and designed the means to remove itself from its planet of origin and was well on its way to infesting large swaths of the galaxy. Moreover, they had discovered a technology that its own people had missed. Gardeners understood how to fold space, from the edge of one solar system to the edge of the next, eliminating the need to traverse the empty space between. This Meat lacked that ability but instead had harnessed portals that traversed space of orders of magnitude greater. But typical of Meat, they did not truly understand what they did, could not control it, and used it only opportunistically.
Thus had they left the worlds of their infection far behind when they discovered its garden and bespoiled it for their own purposes. That passage had presumably skipped over vast regions of space, systems where other Gardners toiled for their art or nurtured the seeds of society’s successive generations, each side utterly unaware of the other. Cluelessly, the Meat had reached beyond the safe range of worlds unknown by Gardeners and intruded where they did not belong.
All this it had learned and one thing more. The specific Meat of its attention on this vessel, and the other two craft besides, were returning, back through the far-from-understood portal. All unknowingly, they would be taking it back, back to a region of space it understood, back where it had resources scattered in caches across the planet from its seeding two hundred cycles before. Regardless of its own fate, in less than a rotation upon that world, it could encode everything it had learned into messenger probes to be sent on to its people. This rabid and uncontrolled Meat required action, preparations for defense, contemplations for its eradication, likely even a long-range plan to identify, locate, and purge the hundreds of worlds it had already infected. It was. . . ambitious, the kind of plan that would require incalculable spans of time. But then, what was time to a Gardener?
Part III: Pyrrhic Melons
“We need to track it down, Captain. Period.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll do our best.”
“No, you won’t, Captain,” he snapped. “Your best isn’t good enough. You’ll get it done. Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir. We’ll do it.”
Colby looked at the crude sketch of the area drawn by one of the survivors. The Gardener had been spotted running into the small pine forest on the far side of the captain’s gig, the same one where it had landed its spacecraft during the initial invasion.
It’s not staying there—it’s only passing through the Earth trees. It wants its own kind, he realized, “because it’s not behaving tactically. It’s not some kind of vegetable soldier, it’s a Gardener!
“Captain, change of plans.”
“Sir?” Captain Wallace Singh asked, clearly confused.
Be clear, Edson. That’s on you.
“Your mission is still to kill the boss plant, but it’s not in the pines.”
“Where is it, sir?”
“Leda, come look at this,” he said, calling the woman over. “This area right here is the pines over there,” he said, pointing. “And over here, this is how you came to the station, right?”
“Uh, yes, I think so,” she said, her eyebrows scrunched up as she tried to make sense of the sketch.
I
t’s not that hard. This is just a map. Look at it, he thought, before he realized he was being too demanding. Calm down Edson and give her a break. She’s never seen a printed map, much less one hand-drawn from memory before.
“Look, your home is up here. You walked down this road, so you must have passed the area on the other side of the pines, right.”
She pulled it closer, and after a moment, Colby could see the understanding flood her face.
“Yes. Yes, we came that way.”
“OK, you told me that most of the area had been taken over by the alien plants, right? So, are there alien plants on the other side of the pines?”
She studied the map as if she could see the answer in the drawing, before she said, “Yes. They were the alien plants. I’m sure of it.”
He thanked her, then turned back to the patiently waiting company commander, saying, “OK, Captain, I don’t think the plant boss is in the pines. I’m betting it’ll be over here. I want you to go around the pines at the double time, then look for signs of its passage.”
He considered having the captain try and surround it, but the area was just too big. No, his best bet would be to run the thing down, like Early Man running down a gazelle.
“And I’m coming with you,” he blurted out before thinking.
“Sir?” the captain asked.
Two minutes before, he’d told the captain that he’d be staying at what was left of the station to coordinate the two landing areas, and now he’d changed that, too. The man had to be wondering if Colby had lost his mind, but his training kept any such thoughts off his face.
“I’m coming with you. I’ve had more experience with this thing than anyone else.”
Beside him, Sergeant Dela Cruz stepped up, a protest forming on his lips, but Colby stopped the Marine short with, “And you’re coming, too.”
“And don’t forget me,” Topeka said quietly—but leaving no doubt that she was not asking permission.
“Fine,” he said, not wanting to argue.
Within two minutes, Captain Singh was moving his company—minus a squad that was left with the civilians—out. Colby and Topeka were in the rear of the formation, surrounded by not only Sergeant Dela Cruz’s team, but two squads from Singh’s company. They’d only gone about 20 meters when Duke broke free of the man Colby had asked to hold her and streaked through the Marines to him.
He just accepted her presence, reaching down to pat her head just before the company broke into the double time. Topeka grimaced, but she kept up.
Colby had led the way five days prior when he and Topeka had run to the Gardener’s ship, and he’d been the one pushing the pace. That was then, and this was now. Surrounded by fit, young Marines, Colby was feeling his age in comparison as they jogged to go around the pine forest. He kept his face steady, smiling and nodding at the Marines who kept looking at him, but inside, his gut was in spasms, and his lungs cried out for air. He was glad when they got off of the natural ground and onto the hard road that led north out of the station. He was still sucking wind, but at least the footing was easier.
Beside him, Topeka was in worse shape, but she struggled ahead. At least Duke wasn’t having any problem, darting back and forth between the Marines and Colby.
Within a klick, they rounded the pines and started the gentle downslope into the bottomlands. Going downhill was easier on the lungs, but it changed his stride. Beside him, Topeka was struggling, and he thought she was going to stop until a Marine stepped up, told her to grab the back of his assault pack, and dragged her along.
She looked mortified as Colby caught her eye, but he knew that telling her to go back would be useless. She was seeing this through.
They’d only gone another 800 meters or so when the Marines in front of them slowed to a walk. Like an accordion, the formation collapsed on itself, and Colby stumbled, running up the back of the Marine in front of him.
“You OK, sir?” the Marine asked, turning around.
“Fine, son. No problem,” he said, keeping his voice calm despite his burning lungs and trembling legs.
All senior Marines, officer or enlisted, thought that they were the same private or lieutenant who’d first joined the Corps. It was hard to accept that bodies aged, let alone admit it. Several of the younger Marines were breathing hard, but Colby was not going to show he was suffering even if it killed him.
He was tempted to query Captain Singh about what was going on—more than tempted. But he held back, slowly trying to recover his breath. And then, they rounded the last bend in the road, the entire bottomlands stretched out before them. In the far distance, he could see the tops of the Hastert Hills through the light haze.
Just 200 meters ahead of them, the agricultural richness of the bottomlands began, and the lead platoon was deploying from a column to a line, getting ready to enter the nearest field.
“This was Megan Tines’s farm,” Topeka said quietly between deep breaths as they looked out over the bottomland.
Colby had never met the famous Megan Tines, one of the first farmers to receive a charter on the planet, and one of the most successful. She’d grown the delicate vacuberries, a good money crop that Colby wouldn’t have attempted on his farm until he had far more experience.
What had been acres of the low vacuberry vines had now been replaced with large, round, vaguely melon-looking things—two-meter-tall melons. They were a bluish-green, evenly spaced, each one about four meters from the next. Between them were smaller plants. The transformation had taken only days.
Something about the larger plants bothered him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but for the life of him, he couldn’t put his finger on the reason.
“Has anyone reported seeing those, yet?” he asked Topeka.
“Nothing like that.”
“Take a full bio scan of the field 70 meters to my zero-two-zero,” Colby passed to the watch officer on the Pattani. “Let me know what they show.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Colby didn’t know what had sparked that thought, but sometimes, a commander had to go with his gut. If nothing else, this would be just more data for the science-types back on Earth to pore over.
Without an immediate threat to the wormhole, Captain Whitehouse had switched rolls with the Pattani in geosynchronous orbit over DeStaffney Station, and the other two ships doing a detailed ground scan of the planet.
Ahead of him, the first platoon was about to enter the field. Colby watched nervously, taking a couple of steps forward. Sergeant Dela Cruz and Private Queen, a huge, 130kg Marine, matched him, step-by-step.
OK, OK, Sergeant. Don’t get excited. I’ll be a good boy and stay back.
He could monitor the company net, though. With a brief mental command, he was listening in to the Marines.
“We’ve got movement,” a Marine—Colby’s implant identified him as Lance Corporal Morganstein—said.
Colby ordered a direct feed from the Marine, and he could see what looked to be several meter-high plants moving forward. They weren’t the trefoil type, but there was a sense of purpose to their movement.
Stupid feed. Why isn’t it clearer? he fumed, trying to determine what was about to happen.
Only the feed was normal, he realized. It just didn’t compare to the immersion he’d experienced back on New Mars, when he was “seeing” through the plant soldiers.
The cracka-cracka of a burst of automatic fire reached him, and Colby pulled back from Morganstein’s feed. More Marines started firing. Colby resisted the urge to run forward and take over, but he’d learned long ago that would be an invitation to disaster. Generals could set the stage for their Marines, but when it got down to brass tacks, it was up to those same Marines to fight the fight. Trying to get involved would only confuse matters, and that would get Marines killed.
He flipped from the orbital feed to the captain’s and then to his own eyeballs, settling on the latter. The Marines, some 15 meters deep into the plants, were being attacked by the smaller
, one-meter-tall plants. The big melons remained motionless. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the smaller plants were swarming the Marines, who were retreating in good order, firing into the mass. There were too many for the slug-throwers to cut down, so the Marines had switched to their M88s. A fine green mist rose up between the rows of melons. Waves of plants were exploding into bursts of green goo as the water in their bodies was excited to a boil by the beam weapons.
Not all, though. Colby saw one Marine, then another, then three more fall beneath the onslaught. If the plant soldiers had been able to tear a Marine in a battlesuit apart, Colby knew these Marines stood no chance.
“Sir, we have to retreat,” Sergeant Dela Cruz said, pulling on his arm.
Colby whipped the arm free. He wasn’t going anywhere while the Marines were in contact.
If the Marines had retreated pell mell, then more would have fallen, but their disciplined retreat, with each Marine’s fire supporting the other, kept most of them alive as they emerged from the field. Orders were flying over the net, but Colby kept quiet, letting the NCOs fight the battle. And he was proud of what he saw. He knew how terrifying the plant soldiers could be, things out of nightmares, but the Marines never faltered.
The plants did, however, much to Colby’s surprise. They stopped at the edge of the field, green arms waving, but not moving forward even as more fell to the Marine fire.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Marines shouted, passing on the order as they stopped 20 meters away and faced the plants. Colby could see NCOs checking their Marines.
“General Edson, what are your orders? Do you still want us to advance?” Captain Singh asked him over the person-to-person net.
Colby stayed silent for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in line. Something told him that the Gardener was out there among the melons and small soldiers. If nothing else, the fact that the small soldiers had stopped at the edge of the field was indicative that they were being controlled.
The Seeds of War Trilogy Page 22
